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ISSN: 1941-4137 |
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Volume One Issue Two |
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Jugville, USA Jugville, Michigan, 1999 It's Jugville for a pottery works that once throve here. Now fragments hint at the thousands of crocks made on this site and shipped all over the Midwest, to be used in dutiful kitchens and set in larders: flour, molasses, oil, oats for porridge; rye whisky secreted away. In a yellowed photograph I see the wooden factory, the kilns with massive chimneys, workers in shirtsleeves, in derby hats, mustached, chewing on cigars, laboring in a wilderness of crocks set out in rows, ready for shipping, enough to store an ocean of honey or beer. Cotton to pad their wares, the men load the new-fired receptacles carefully. The horses steam and puff — loading performed by those who, like us, don't think they will ever die, ever become a relic, ever join the clay when the life breathed in goes out. |
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