Three Portraits of Teddy Roosevelt
Carl Lavigne, Georgia, Vermont.
Keywords: Vermont, Eugenics, Teddy Roosevelt, History
Teddy Roosevelt Day
It’s not his birthday, and only one small Vermont town celebrates. The day commemorates one time the 26th President of the United States visited the Green Mountains. Only he was Vice President at the time. Small towns take what they can get.
It’s an all-day affair. There’s a picnic on the town green, face-painting, hayrides, and the earliest apple cider of the season. A Teddy Roosevelt impersonator from upstate New York comes and drives around in a fancy old car, honking, waving, and reenacting the itinerary of the former President’s—Vice President’s—visit.
Teddy speaks on the importance of conservation, how keeping America’s natural landscapes pristine is every good citizen’s duty. He takes pictures with children, who have a hard time standing still long enough for the old-fashioned box camera to get a good impression. A small child always tugs on his mustache, confirming the actor’s dedication to authentic facial hair. A good time is had by all.
The climax of the day takes place on a stage at the center of the town green, where the Historical Society installs a period telephone to reenact the famous phone call Teddy received during his time in Vermont. The president of the Historical Society is delighted every year to play alongside Teddy. The phone call goes something like this.
“Hello, Mr. Vice President Roosevelt?”
“Yes, hello, this is he.”
“I’m calling to inform you that President McKinley has just perished from a gangrenous infection in the gunshot wound he received eight days ago during an assassination attempt by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York!”
“My word! The President is dead?”
“I’m afraid so, sir. You are now THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”
It did not, historians will note, really go that way. Teddy was told by telegram of the assassination attempt in Vermont and was on his way to Buffalo to meet with McKinley, who appeared to be recovering. Teddy was informed of the President’s passing while in North Creek, New York, about 126 miles away from the Vermont town that celebrates him. But small towns take what they can get.
The Stars and Stripes are hoisted up the flagpole, and the local schoolchildren are herded together to sing “Hail to the Chief.”
Teddy’s Road
The Theodore Roosevelt International Highway goes from Portland, ME to Portland, OR,
4,060 miles literally from sea to shining sea; destiny made manifest in asphalt.
It enters Vermont in the Northeast Kingdom, goes through the heart of Montpelier,
into Burlington, to South Hero, where the road gives way to water and a ferry
that takes you across the lake to upstate New York, and onward.
If it isn’t winter when the lake is frozen and the ferry won’t run
you can cross the whole state without a map, without a worry.
Watch out for leaf peepers pulled over on the side of the road;
they will park anywhere that they see beautiful dying leaves.
You can’t see everything from the main road, of course.
Teddy Roosevelt never saw his highway, of course.
A memorial highway. A memory lane, if you will.
Does a road remember every foot that steps on it?
Does a road remember everything buried beneath?
The earliest roads in America were paved over
the trails people walked for thousands of years.
They say Teddy was a trailblazer. Does that mean
he lit the way forward by setting the path on fire?
The highway reaches like a vein across Vermont,
running down from the mountains in the east
like a river to the water in the west,
long as the state is wide, black as dried blood.
Teddy Roosevelt’s Taxidermy
I.
Teddy Roosevelt had asthma as a kid, so he didn’t get out much.
He spent his youth learning taxidermy,
the art of making a thing appear alive long after you’ve killed it.
[Formaldehyde is a common taxidermy preservative.]
[Formaldehyde may cause occupational asthma.]
A noted naturalist and conservationist in adulthood,
he expanded his hobby across America.
[Land robbed of its people is a taxidermy.]
[Land stuffed with cotton is a taxidermy.]
(When the first preserved platypus was brought from Australia,
scientists thought it was a Frankenstein forgery,
assembled from disparate animal appendages.)
[The Noble Savage is a taxidermy.]
[The Happy Slave is a taxidermy.]
After his wife and mother died,
Teddy moved to Dakota to become a cowboy.
[The Cowboy is a taxidermy.]
Popular imagination remembers him
crowned with a coonskin cap, astride a horse,
armed with a big boomstick.
[This is a taxidermy.]
The story goes:
on hunting trip,
Roosevelt’s assistants tied a black bear to a tree,
and encouraged him to shoot it.
Teddy refused,
[He thought the act unsportsmanlike.]
and that’s where the stuffed toy gets its name.
He told someone else to shoot the bear.
II.
Teddy once visited Vermont,
[Vermont was the first state to outlaw slavery.]
to see the pristine Green Mountains,
[No one had slaves in Vermont.]
to applaud Vermonters’ long-standing ties to the land.
[No one made treaties with the Abenaki.]
What good citizens, successful farmers.
[Vermont is a taxidermy.]
III.
In Night at The Museum (2006),
Robin Williams plays the wax figure of Teddy come to life.
[No horse in America is too dead to beat.]
[Nothing so decomposed it can’t be stuffed.]
Somehow this isn’t a horror movie.
[This history has always smelled of formaldehyde.]
[We like the way the fumes make us feel.
- Carl Lavigne
Authors Bio
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