Rip Van Winkle, Reinterpreted
Who could resist Rip Van Winkle? And how did his knees stay
so young after sleeping for 20 years?
Rip Van Winkle is
a favorite story of mine. Written by Washington Irving in 1819, it is set in
the Catskill Mountains of Dirty Dancing
fame. I can’t imagine respectable Rip dancing like that, although Irving did
relate that Rip was a shiftless sort, who got to drinking with a Dutch bowling
team and actually slept through the Revolutionary War.
I was excited when I first saw this postcard, but apparently
slept through the online auction and missed the bidding process. Fortunately I
got a second chance, and now Rip is mine, mine, mine! He just arrived in the
mail today (which is always funny when people send postcards in envelopes), but
turns out that’s because he was already sent by a lady from Hunter, N.Y., to a
lady in Binghamton, N.Y., in 1908.
On the front of the card, a wistful Rip clasps his hands
over his overgrown beard and casts a bewildered look around as if to say, “But
what happened to the party?” Serves him right for helping that little Dutchman
carry a vodka-filled watermelon up the mountain. We can only speculate that
Rip’s pants were chewed off at the knee by wild dogs. And what’s up with those
leather gaiters? They look suspiciously new. Did someone put those on him as a
joke while he was sleeping?
On the back side of the postcard, along with a nice, green
Ben Franklin one-cent stamp and an eagle-and-shield logo, there is a witty
message penciled in at a jaunty angle:
“I see this feller quite often here.”
It is signed, “Lottie,” which is great because it sounds
like something my Great Aunt Lottie would have said. Especially the “feller”
part. We can only guess at what other private jokes these two women had. But
I’m sure they never let poor Rip in on them – looking the way he did.
At the end of Washington Irving’s story, Rip’s adult
daughter takes pity on him and lets him live in her house. But I’d like to
think he’s still wandering around Hunter, NY, looking for a place where he can
really Mambo.
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