Scalling Statuary
The Source
The Roman pizza man looked at the fountain and said, “See! That is my joy!” He was nice little fellow selling slices of pizza off the street near the Trevi Fountain, built in 1730 and for nearly 300 years a gathering place for both thirsty Romans and camera-toting tourists from Morgan County. Children were splashing in the gushing waters, families were climbing onto the statue’s parapets and lovers were…well…loving. The whole structure looked like a massive anthill with young and old crawling over the statuary. My new friend hawking pizza by the slice was delighted. “Look!” he said. “The statue is alive!” I’ve seen the same thing at Trafalgar Square in London, the statues in Tivoli Gardens in Paris and even in the land of stodginess as youngsters crawled all over the statuary in front of St. Basil’s cathedral in Moscow’s Red Square. To loosely paraphrase Nancy Sinatra, “Those statues are made for climbin’!” So it was a joy for me to stand on the north side of the Jacksonville Square on the night before the Downtown Turnaround celebration and watch families make a Matterhorn of the statuary in the center of the square. Kids were running, kids were jumping, and yes, kids were climbing. And of course, people being who they are, there were those who were aghast. It reminded me of the attempt of Londoners to cage in the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Square. (Actually it isn’t Eros, but he’s become known as such and besides, “Eros” sounds more exotic than the actual title, “The Spirit of Charity.” Try telling a tourist that the actual lady in New York Harbor is “Liberty Enlightening the World” and you’ll get a similar smirk.) Visitors enjoyed climbing the statue of Eros so the British put up a barricade. One London tour guide told me, “Leave it to the British to put up a statue to the goddess of love then put a fence around it.” The fence eventually came down and brave souls still try to climb it. It’s a people’s statue and the people have once again taken possession. Salzburg has two major statues of the city’s most famous son, Wolfgang Mozart. One is very accessible and is situated in a plaza where you can walk up and touch the famous composer’s leg. In fact, his left leg is now shinier than the right, and its’ becoming a meeting place for lovers, vendors, and lost tour groups. The other statue, just a block away, is fenced in. No one goes there. Statues seemed to be carved to commemorate the dead, but unless they belong also to the living the dead are soon forgotten. I once sat a church board meeting shortly after our little congregation had added a new fellowship wing. One lady was aghast at the scuffmarks on a wall. Our church hosts an after school group called God’s Kids, and they had been very active in their fellowship. The disgruntled old gal sniffed and said, “I’m not sure we can allow them to continue using the building if they’re going to tear it up.” I was sitting alongside my friend Martin Burrus, one of the wisest men I’ve ever known, and he responded, “Them marks are the prettiest decoration we’ve got in this church. You let ‘em tear it up and I’ll pay for it.” Another wise man, my father, built the home in which he now lives. To say that Dad is “neat” would be to put it mildly. He’s always been a stickler for order, painted fences, carefully stacked newspapers, and he even eats his watermelon using precise, horizontal cuts. I was sitting in his living room one day when I noticed that each doorway had scratch marks about four inches up from the carpet. Scratch marks? In Dad’s house? I asked him what made them and how he’d allowed them to stay. He said, “You and Keith made them with the wheels of your toy John Deere riding tractors. I didn’t have the heart to sand them off.” And of course all locals know the tale of Lincoln’s nose and how years of friendly rubbing by thousands of tourists had worn it to a gleaming brass proboscis. The State of Illinois deemed this bothersome to the memory of Abe so they raised its pedestal so no one could reach it. After only a busloads of disappointed nose-rubbers, they again lowered it to a place where Daddy could lift up little Suzie to rub it just like he did as a child. The Jacksonville Square is struggling to come alive after years of slumber. Let’s invite the statue to the party.