Signs and Wonders and Mayans

Orion the hunter

The gravel crunched under my feet as I walked slowly down our driveway in the new moon darkness of a chilly December night.  My eyes were aloft.  High in the eastern sky, Jupiter shone brightly.  At the metaphorical feet of Jupiter, Orion the hunter guarded the eastern horizon.  Finding a soft dry spot in the grass, I sat down, leaned back, and waited.   Suddenly, a streak of light shot out from Orion's belt, followed the tree line of our woods a few seconds and disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared.  My chilly quest had been rewarded.  The Geminid meteor shower had begun.  From a mile away the wind carried the whistle of a train to where I reclined.  A hundred yards in front of me from the security of our woods a thousand coyotes (give or take 990) noisily celebrated the darkness and probably drooled at the prospect of the large solitary hunk of marbled meat beside our driveway (me) possibly becoming their Christmas dinner.  Just then another meteor, then another, flamed into the darkness and disappeared.  One may have gone into our sewage lagoon.  I'm not certain.  What I am certain of is that I won't be going in to look for it.

I was prepared for the show.  My Conservation calendar clearly stated that the Geminid meteor shower would peak on December 14.  The local weatherman gave these precise instructions:  Go outside and look up.  On November 13, 1833, Mr. John H. Tabor of Yellville, Arkansas didn't get a heads-up like that.  In The White River Chronicles of S.C. Turnbo, Mr. Tabor describes the fear an intense meteor shower imparted to him and his traveling companions, his brother Smith, and a friend, Nimrod Teaf:

Just before midnight, my brother woke up and was nearly paralyzed with fear at beholding the air filled with falling stars.  When he was able to speak he woke us all up and told us to hurry and get on our clothes for the world was coming to an end. 

I was almost stupefied with wonder and astonishment and hurriedly rose from my couch of bear skins and looked out at the door and saw that the whole heavens, as far as I could observe, was brilliantly illuminated with hundreds and thousands of 'stars' shooting swiftly down toward the earth.  It was a grand but fearful sight.

Like my brother, I and Nimrod Teaf thought it the last of earth, and we all concluded that it was too late to pray and submitted ourselves to await the approach of destruction.  I fully believed that we would have to give an account of our sins to God at once and we sit down and waited  for the awful moment to appear.  The night seemed a month long, and the end of the world had not come yet.

When at last to our surprise we noticed that day was breaking in the east and it looked as natural as it ever did . . . we found to our joy that mother earth was still here and the end was not in sight.  I was a wicked man then but after the date of the 'falling stars' I did not live so sinful toward God.

For some people, mainly those with school zone speed limit IQ's, the future of the world currently hangs in the same precarious position in which the Tabor Brothers and Nimrod Teaf found themselves in 1833.  The Mayan calendar, the current long version of which started in 3114 BC, ends on December 21, 2012.

While some people are awaiting the end of the world, others are trying to make a buck to spend just in case the world doesn't end.  In the Russian city of Tomsk  "Apocalypse kits" are for sale.  The kit includes food, medicine and your choice of vodka or tequila.  If you want to hedge your bets, I'd suggest buying a kit using a credit card with a bill due date after December 21, 2012.

For some people, the Mayan calendar prediction was tardy.  Their world world ended when Twinkies, Ho Hos and Sno Balls went off the market. 

Those people are known as Ding Dongs. 


Gone, but not forgotten!