We passed Squire Boone Cavern on a road trip yesterday. My
daughter announced to the nine and six-year-old girls in the back seat that
Squire Boone was Daniel Boone’s brother and was disappointed when the
ten-year-old asked, “Who’s Daniel Boone.”
Being the typical grandmother—seriously, NO, it isn’t just
the teens—I had my phone in my hand and immediately went to Google. Only we
were in a battleground and cavern dead area with no connection. My daughter and
I looked each other in the eye, fumbled over our non-existent knowledge of this
folk hero and spit out some nonsense.
I said, “He was a Kentuckian.” (We live in Kentucky and
started the trip in Kentucky, but were driving through Indiana, to get to a
location in Kentucky, which was confusing enough to the kids.)
My daughter said, “You know those coon-skinned hats you see
people in old pictures wearing? He invented those,” and talked about hats while
I wished for Google.
As I am apparently wont to do, (another nine-year-old girl
at the event we attended later told me I am boring because I only talk about
things that happened in the, “Good old days,”- words I am fairly sure I’ve
never said to her so I’m taking that as her assessment that I’m old), I
reminisced. About forty-five years ago, I spent a day in Frankfort with Cotton
Keen, the father of my then boyfriend. During a break from whatever we were doing
at the State House, he took me to Daniel Boone’s grave and told me all about
the man. But yesterday, I remembered none of it and was distracted by trying to
remember what in the hell Cotton and I were doing in Frankfort for the day.
Must have been political.
Finally, we exited the dead space and my Google returned.
Things got crazy and I’m not sure those little girls will ever see me the same
again.
Anxious to tell them about Daniel Boone before the
conversation was too far behind us, I started reading aloud instead of skimming
ahead first. I read two seemingly inconsequential (especially by today’s
standards, which is all those little girls know) things and then the date of
his death. And, because the only two things preceding his death were rather
meaningless, I laughed when I read the part about him dying.
The nine-year-old said, with appropriate confusion that
bordered on disdain, “You’re laughing because he died?”
To make myself feel a little bit better, I confirmed that my
daughter was also laughing, because she understood why I was laughing. Also,
because she was laughing at me laughing. Of course, that only snowballed.
I quickly clicked on the next Google entry, and started
reading (I’m a slow learner), sure I was going to find some interesting
information before the avalanche of laughter. Wrong. So very, very wrong.
The next entry was the same – a couple of benign
accomplishments and then he died. Only this one specified that he died of indigestion,
he didn’t even wear the coon-skinned hat he is remembered for, and his last
words were, “I’m leaving now.”
We laughed until we cried. Tears poured but the volume of my
daughter’s laughter wasn’t quite as maniacal as mine, so she will probably not
be remembered forever as a crazy lady. My reputation is surely shot.
Luck was on my side, though. I was wearing the waterproof
mascara. Also, laughter really might be the best medicine because I received a
number of compliments on my appearance yesterday.
(Don’t feel bad if you aren’t laughing aloud. This was
apparently a had-to-be-there thing. I tried to tell the story to the older
granddaughters and they didn’t laugh.)
Interesting tidbit: The
body in Daniel Boone’s grave might not be his
