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In Search of History We go in search of history and find a guillotine at a garage sale where the lady of the house in curlers and stretch pants sits in a lawn chair knitting, knitting. The guillotine is ugly but has historic value, we say, and take it home to replace the wagon wheel in the yard, but we can’t get the damned thing to work. Nobody told us the lubricant of history is blood. We thought it was money. Is Grandma’s pickle crock historical? How much is it worth? Could we convert the rusted old tricycle into a fountain? But history sings like a chainsaw in the woods, a freight train in the night. History is the grizzled Vietnam veteran with his dog and sign, begging at the intersection. History is the yellow detritus of used condoms at the edge of Lovers’ Lane. History is a lottery ticket, a truck full of cocaine approaching the border crossing, a drunk on the wrong side of the highway. History is hallucination, fantasy, a mirage 8 in the desert, as blind as justice. Historians suffer from the fever of time but never know what time it is. They are mad poets making up stories. The history of war passes a hat and we put our children in it. Then somebody gives us stars to put in our windows, one star for each child. 9 ...

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