What Is A Treasure That’s Been Lost?

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22978 – 1056

Dear Fans, Friends, Fiends, Foes, Foundlings, Fun-Lovers, Fellow Bloggers, and assorted other Followers,

Here’s the haps:

Prompt: What Is A Treasure That’s Been Lost?

I really love/hate a prompt like this but I will go with the very first thing that popped into my mind when I read it. I am going to try to do these before I go blog hopping or visit the prompt site and read what everyone else has said so I won’t be influenced. There are so many ways to answer this, both lighthearted and serious. This, I think, is kind of in the middle. Maybe. I’ll find out when I get to the end of my missive today.

This is an abbreviated backstory of Herb and there may be some time in the future when I fill in many of the blanks but this isn’t the day or post for it. To some, that’s a relief and to others a disappointment but to me, it is what it is. As a boy, when I wasn’t reading, I would always be drawing pictures or making up stories. When I got to be a teenager our family was excommunicated from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and I wound up with a lot of time on my hands and took to writing poetry as well. At the same time, I read a book of novelty poetry I got at the library. I don’t remember the name of the anthology but it contained verses by Ogden Nash, Walt Kelly’s Deck Us All With Boston Charlie, Gilbert and Sullivan, Lewis Carroll, and many more. I wish that I knew what book it was. That doesn’t really seem to move our story ahead but it’s actually a large impact on my life. Along with reading Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe as a teenager, I also discovered poetry didn’t have to be boring and could even be fun.

One of the poets from that anthology (Which may have been Fireside Book of Humorous Poetry after a little bit of looking around and asking The Google) was Don Marquis who created a cockroach named Archy and a cat named Mehitabel. Archy would write poetry by jumping on the keys of a typewriter. Because of the amount of work involved, there were no caps or punctuation. I loved it and found a collection by Don Marquis at the library as well. I wanted to do something similar and created a character named Bloopie Freen, who was from another planet and did not understand English punctuation (who does, really?) or capitalization. He was a bright blue soap bubble with bright green antennae, orange eyes, and a squiggly mouth. The best (the only) computerized version is this:

Toward the end of 1975 sometime I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost in a very powerful and dramatic display and was baptized in Jesus’ Name a few days later. God can give you power over sin but he doesn’t change your personality. He just helps you be the best you that you can be. I was given a brand new King James Bible with these important dates and a dedicatory note written in the front. I kept writing and some of the younger kids really liked Bloopie Freen. A couple of years later one of the ladies in the church made a puppet of Bloopie Freen. She took a Cookie Monster puppet and some colored pipe cleaners and made a working Bloopie Freen hand puppet that I could use to entertain some of the littler kids. It was my early history of working in Sunday School.

I met Mrs. Herb and in 1979 we decided to elope. I was 19 and she was 16 going on 17. We didn’t have much but we made it from South Beloit, Illinois to Crofton, Kentucky, about 450 miles. We didn’t have much but one of the things I started out with was a sleeping bag with that Bible and Bloopie Freen wrapped up in it. Which got left in somebody’s car along the way.