Don Ogden, CalledDong

Chapter One:
Don Ogden—CalledDong

Dong: The deep resonant sound of a bell; in Chinese it means understanding; in slang it meanspenis.

His hair hung up, his hair hungdown

He looked amok, like aschmuck

Goll darn it Don Ogden calledDong

Tell us why you are wearing afrown

You’re just here from out oftown

And from the looks of you, and all you’veshown

It won’t be long before you’regone

With your frown, out oftown

It got worse before it gotbetter,

He was such a muss. He caused afuss.

We were called to witness. To just lookdown,

We asked. He said, “My name is Dong.”

“Where am I?” he asked, wesaid

“Upon the sidewalk in Dinkytown.”

What? Where? The little shopping area and funneling point for students to enter the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis East Bank campus. You wouldn’t have thought at first sight or scent, but Dong, or The Dong, as he was sometimes called, became the object of legend. A fame and a tale not commensurate with his surface attributes: his appearance, bearing, disposition, eating habits, and ancestry tell the story of a man from anywhere, lost, starving, snarling, broken, and unwholesome. He’s about one third Irish, one third African, and the other third Jewish. How do you get thirds out of two parents? He was a child of anomaly. Over six foot, long and lanky, pigeon toed and with a permanent sneer upon his lips, he certainly was a singular dude. With an enormous black halo of hair, twisty moustaches that hung below his chin, and clothing too large—possibly due to malnutrition and lack of food. He had a rather French musketeer look about him, sans the musket and sword, ofcourse.

And the intercessors of the transformation to come? We were Alex and Frank and Marta and Steph. We were best friends, unaligned romantically. Our individual and occasional dalliances occurred outside the boundaries of our unwritten covenant. Within our close comradeship, we felt safety, a kind of haven. We called ourselves the compost crew. Why compost crew? Mostly because, as we looked around we saw all the stinking rot in wars, politics, destruction of the earth, inequality, you know, basically the whole playing card. So. We were devoting our lives toward a soft landing for the last days, the way of the aerobic process of converting organic materials throu