WEBVTT

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I want to begin
with a poem which

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is very untypical of Wright,
in its casual talking,

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as it's a prose poem.

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But, many of his concerns are
in the poem, his discomfort

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with himself, with America,
even with his own sentiments

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to some degree.

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It's called The Flying
Eagles of Troop 62.

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It is analogy of sorts to
a man named Ralph Neal.

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Ralph Neal was the scoutmaster.

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He was still a young man.

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He liked us.

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I have no doubt he
knew perfectly well

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we were each of us
masturbating unhappily

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in secret caves and shores.

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The soul of patience, he
waited while we smirked

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behind each other's backs,
mocking and parodying the Scout

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Law, trying to imitate
the oratorical rotundities

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of Winston Churchill in
a Southern Ohio accent:

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"Ay scout is trusswortha, loll,
hailpful, frenly, curtchuss,

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kand, abaydent, chairful,
thrifta, dapraved, clane and

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letcherass."

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Ralph Neal knew all about
the pain of the aching stones

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in our twelve-year-old groins,
the lava swollen halfway

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between our peckers
and our nuts that

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were still green and
sour as half-ripe apples

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two months before the
football season began.

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Socrates loved his
friend the traitor

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Alcibiades for his beauty
and for what he might become.

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I think Ralph Neal loved us
for our scrawniness, our acne,

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our fear; but mostly
for his knowledge

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of what would
probably become of us.

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He was not a fool.

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He knew he would
never himself get out

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of that slime hole
of a river valley,

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and maybe he didn't want to.

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The Vedantas illustrate the
most sublime of ethical ideals

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by describing a saint
who, having endured

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through a thousand lives
every half-assed mistake

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and unendurable suffering
possible to humanity from birth

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to death, refused
at the last minute

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to enter Nivarna
because he realized

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that his scruffy dog,
suppurating at the nostrils

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and half mad with rabies,
could not accompany him

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into perfect peace.

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Some of us wanted to get
out, and some of us wanted

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to and didn't.

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The last I heard, Dickey
Beck, a three-time loser

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at housebreaking, was doing life
at the State Pen in Columbus.

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The last I heard,
Dale Headley was

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driving one of those
milk trucks where

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the driver has to
stand up all day

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and rattle his spine over
the jagged street-bricks.

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The last I heard from my
brother-in-law, Hub Snodgrass,

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he was still
dragging himself home

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every evening down by the
river to shine, shower, shave,

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and spend a good
hour still trying

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to scrape the Laughlin steel
dust out of his pale skin.

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He never tanned much, he
just burned or stayed out

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of the river.

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The last I heard, Mike Kottelos
was making book in Wheeling.

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I've never gone back there
down home to see Ralph Neal.

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My portrait hangs on one of
the walls of the Martins Ferry

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Public Library.

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Ralph Neal would think
I've become something.

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And no doubt I have, though
I don't know just what.

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Scribbling my name in books.

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Christ have mercy on me
alive; and after I'm dead,

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as Pietro Aretino of Florence
requested of the priest

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after he had received extreme
unction and his deathbed,

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"Now that I've been oiled,
keep me from the rats."

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When I think of
Ralph Neil's name,

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I feel some kind of ice
breaking open in me.

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I feel a garfish
escaping into a hill

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spring where the
crawdads burrow down

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to the pure bottom and hot
weather to get to the cool.

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I feel a rush of long fondness
for that good man Ralph

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Neil, that good man who knew
us dreadfully and utterly

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vulnerable little bastards
better than we knew ourselves,

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who took care of us better
than we took care of ourselves,

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and who loved us, I reckon,
because he knew damned

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well what would
become of most of us,

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and it sure did, and he knew
it, and he loved us anyway.

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The very name of America
often makes me sick,

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and yet Ralph Neal
was an American.

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This country is enough
to drive you crazy.

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