Re: Moon Studies / a poem by Will Dockery

General Zod <[email protected]> posted:

> Will Dockery wrote:
> > Zod wrote:
> 
> > > I kid... You know I love old Don Barfield.
> > 
> > I know that's right. The best story ever about Danny Barfield has to be when 
> > Barfield's art almost got me arrested a few years ago, a nosy peeping tom
> > thought I had "dead bodies" stashed in the backroom:
> > 
> > ----
> > Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (GA)
> > July 13, 1997
> > Section: LOCAL
> > Edition: FIRST
> > Page: B1
> > 
> > HOW GROSS THY ART
> > Tim Chitwood
> > 
> > Apparently it was all just a big misunderstanding.
> > 
> > The misunderstanding led to a 911 call about a decomposing body in an old
> > house M***** S*****'s husband R****** owns at 2113 **th St. in Columbus.
> > That led to the discovery that it wasn't a body after all, but artwork 
> > made of barbed wire and blowtorched Barbie dolls. But it sure looked like a 
> > body to police. And it looked like a body to paramedics. And it definitely 
> > looked like a body to Danny W****.
> > 
> > Danny is a real estate agent who with M***** went to look at the house 
> > July 2. He wanted to buy it and fix it up. It needs fixing up. The roof leaks 
> > in places and some of the floor's rotting. The S**** now live on F**** Drive
> > and use the **th Street house for storage. M*****'s son Will Dockery lets
> > friends -- artists, poets and madmen, Will says -- store their work there.
> > 
> > Among those artists is Dan Barfield, who has a concept piece called
> > "Vietnam," part of which the veteran made of melted Barbie dolls. ("He
> > hates Barbies," says his wife Judy.) It now lies on the floor among other
> > stuff stored in the dark, northwest bedroom of the ##th Street house. To
> > someone who didn't know what it was, it might look like a rib cage and
> > sternum atop decayed matter. That's what it looked like to Danny W**** when he walked into that musty room, first staring up at the rafters. Then he looked down. Then he froze.
> > Then he ran.
> > 
> > He wasn't sure what he saw. Maybe a body. Maybe it was sealed with wax,
> > which trapped the odor. Maybe this was a bizarre ritual. Maybe he didn't
> > want to know.
> > 
> > M***** followed Danny as he dashed outside, where he tried to make a call 
> > on his cell phone. She told him not to. According to her, she told him he'd
> > just seen some artwork. According to Danny, she never said that; she just
> > said they didn't need the police coming there/ This did not sound reassuring. Danny had to make that call. Now don't call the police, M***** said again. She says she also told Danny her son Will Dockery had a bad temper, and he wouldn't like Danny calling the police. She says Danny replied that the police wouldn't do anything to her; she wasn't involved. That's true, she said (she wasn't involved in storing the art), but the police needn't be bothered.
> > 
> > M***** claims Danny then offered her $13,000 for the house, then said it
> > needed so much work the most he could give her was $10,000. Danny maintains all M***** did was tell him no one should call the police.
> > 
> > The next day, someone called the police. About 10:30 a.m., police and paramedics rushed to the house, unboarded a door to get in and examined what they, too, thought was a decaying body,
> > oddly odorless. Then they poked it and figured out it wasn't. It was such 
> > a weird story, the Ledger-Enquirer ran it on the front page July 4.
> > 
> > That's how M****** learned police had broken into the house. She was
> > perturbed. She blamed Danny. Danny won't say he called police, but admits he told someone what he  thought he saw. Stan Swiney of the 911 center says the call reportedly came from a Billy Hanson. (No Billy Hanson listed in the Columbus telephone directory
> > was involved; I called.) The 911 report said someone saw the alleged corpse through a window. That's difficult: The room's dark; the window's dirty; the art's hard to see.
> > 
> > The artist, Dan Barfield, says it's funny Danny W**** would be frightened,
> > because the real estate agent stopped by a few months ago when Dan was
> > moving art into the house, and this piece was out on the lawn at the time.
> > The artist claims the agent told him a decayed body was found in the house
> > once. Danny says that's outrageous: He has never met Dan Barfield. "I would
> > remember that," he says.
> > 
> > Danny says he just wanted to buy the house to help clean up the
> > neighborhood, where he owns other property. "As far as I'm concerned now,
> > they couldn't give it to me," he says. Perhaps it will remain the house of scary art, where once people thought
> > they saw a dead body.
> > 
> > But didn't.
> > ----
> > 
> > I know you remember that one.
> > 
> > :)
> 
> Interesting addition to the Barfield story....

Good times, agreed.