She says someone came by the Whetstonian years ago, she doesn’t remember how many years, and she doesn’t remember the person’s name. She’d not seen him before and didn’t see him again. He was there long enough to put Walter’s story on the wall. Since then, water damage has eaten away at parts of the narrative.
There’s an image of Walter’s grandfather, working with lumber at big saws,
an image of his father, who drove an ice truck,
drawings of old family shotgun shacks,
and a portrait of a young Walter Whetstone in the Western Union shirt he wore when he delivered telegrams from a brick building beside Hemming Park where the Main Library sprawls now.
For years, I’ve been arguing for Walter’s carefully placed assemblage of mannequin parts, musical instruments, wagon wheels, streetlamps, carousel horses, African statuettes, Virgins Mary, cow skulls, portraits of black Jesuses, wrought-iron gates, hitching posts, old beer signs, old glass bottles, antique clocks, and Harriet Tubman heads as a masterpiece of Outsider Art, art created by people not trained in the arts and not seeking artistic fame who yet have an unyielding passion and need to create.
I’d love to see the Whetstonian preserved and shared with the world like Pasaquan, but as I stare at the mural that tells Walter’s life story, Dot says resignedly, “All this might be gone soon, and I’m about ready.”
From his seat at the table, Walter says wearily, “This too shall pass. This too shall pass.”
Article by Tim Gilmore of Jax Psycho Geo. Tim Gilmore is the author of Devil in the Baptist Church: Bob Gray’s Unholy Trinity (2016), Central Georgia Schizophrenia (2016), The Mad Atlas of Virginia King (2015), Ghost Story / Love Song (2015), In Search of Eartha White (2014), The Ocean Highway at Night (2014), Stalking Ottis Toole: A Southern Gothic (2013), Doors in the Light and the Water: The Life and Collected Work of Empty Boat (2013), This Kind of City: Ghost Stories and Psychological Landscapes (2012) and Ghost Compost: Strange Little Stories, illustrated by Nick Dunkenstein (2013). He is the creator of Jax Psycho Geo (www.jaxpsychogeo.com). His two volumes of poetry are Horoscopes for Goblins: Poems, 2006-2009 and Flights of Crows: Poems, 2002-2006. His audio poetry album Waiting in the Lost Rooms is available at https://eat-magazine.bandcamp.com/album/waiting-in-the-lost-rooms. He teaches at Florida State College at Jacksonville. He is the organizer of the Jax by Jax literary arts festival. www.jaxbyjax.com