WALKING WITH THE MOONDOG

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text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A few days before the 4th of July 1932 a fifteen-year-old boy named Louis Thomas Harden was walking along beside the railroad tracks near Hurley, Missouri.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The local mill pond had recently flooded, and pieces of inscrutable debris were left beside the tracks when the water receded.</span><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w3og-aB420..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="398" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w3og-aB420..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Louis was a tinkerer, the kind of kid who made wooden models and built projects out of Popular Mechanics magazine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>So when he found an especially intriguing piece of debris there where he was walking, he picked it up and took it home with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The object may have have looked something like this:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xc3q-r-ABZ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xc3q-r-ABZ..." width="562" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On July 4th itself he examined his new find more closely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It proved to be a detonation cap left behind by a construction crew some distance away, and transported trackside by the flood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>As Louis looked more closely at the object it exploded in his face, and despite some desperate and painful surgery he was left permanently blind.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In due course Louis Thomas Hardin (1916–1999) became Moondog; an all-American original, a composer, musician, and poet, who between the late 40s and the early 1970s could be seen in various locations around Manhattan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>At one point he was a fixture in Times Square, but more often he could be found on 6th Avenue between 52nd and 55th Street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>He looked like this: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b3PbHmpweQ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b3PbHmpweQ..." width="426" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes he played music, just like any busker, sometimes he tried to sell merch, and other times he just stood there looking like a Viking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I’m sure he was photographed many thousands of times, by gawking tourists as well as by serious photographers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">   </span>The classic image shows him as the still point, as the other walkers of New York swirl around him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xtSbN5dh2N..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xtSbN5dh2N..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Le0DPIo9uK..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="338" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Le0DPIo9uK..." width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m always slightly surprised by how many blind people there are walking the streets of Manhattan, especially when you consider how many sighted people claim to be terrified at the prospect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_dIqodKHhV..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="490" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_dIqodKHhV..." width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m sure Moondog had friends and helpers but he obviously did get around the streets under his own steam. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Philip Glass, in his essay “Remembering Moondog” (which is the preface to Robert Scotto’s authorized biography </span><i><span style="color: #0e0e0e; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Moondog, The Viking of 6th Avenue</span></i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">) writes, “he was so confident in his walk you wouldn’t think he was blind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I wondered how, as a blind man, he managed to cross the street without an instant of hesitation until he showed me how he listened to the traffic lights; I had never heard them before in this way.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">   </span>I don’t suppose Moondog ever had much use for a printed map of New York, but he had a sound map in his head.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZjCj4JUnRt..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZjCj4JUnRt..." width="640" /></a></div></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>