December 18, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES Archaeology while there is yet time Every once in awhile, I find something that is worth reading. Usually, it is a story about archeology. A few months ago, “Ultimate Tut” gave us a Tut for our times. When I was a kid, the young pharaoh was said to have died of malaria. A purported mosquito bite on his cheek was cited as evidence. When I was a young man, in the heyday of conspiracy theories and suspicion of power figures, Tut was said to have died of a skull fracture from behind, murdered, it was said, by agents of his own father- in-law who wanted to be pharaoh. Later, the poor kid was said to be so inbred -- Egyptian pharaohs often married their half-sisters to keep the bloodlines pure -- that one leg was drastically shorter than the other. Tut supposedly tripped over his own feet while walking with two canes and fractured his skull, an ignominious end if ever there was one. “Ultimate Tut” gave the kid back some posthumous self- respect. The theory now is that 19-year-old Tut, already the father of two stillborn children with his half-sister, was killed while personally leading his army into battle. Some believe he fell head-first out of his speeding chariot and was run over by both wheels, which explains the broken leg, the fractured skull, and the fact that his sternum was missing from the hastily embalmed mummy. Give the kid a break: He died with his face to the enemy and not due to imperfections due to incestuous marriages or the predation of mosquitoes. Neanderthals in the days before DNA research were said to have been wiped out by homo sapiens. William Golding, a prescient author in many ways, wrote a book in which, as I remember it, a Neanderthal child was captured and adopted by a family of Cro-Magnons and presumably lived to have kids with a Cro-Magnon spouse. DNA tests of modern youngsters proved Golding had something going for him, just as he did in “Lord of the Flies,” where the kids fling off their choir robes and everything goes to you-know-where. The DNA tests show that most Europeans and some Asians have a small quotient of Neanderthal ancestry, generally about one to four percent, with the heaviest concentrations in mountainous areas of Europe where there were limited social opportunities. Tut and the Neanderthals owe modern science some thanks. Think, however, how hapless the scientists will be to recapture the more immediate past: department stores, libraries, and other public buildings that are more inacces- sible than those lost cities Edgar Rice Burroughs used to write about. The library in my hometown was a beautiful building from the outside. George Washington rode past on his way from Fort Lee to Pennsylvania. Inside, the books were often archaic and some of the librarians did not like kids, which is not surprising considering some of the kids. I did not like some of them either, and I was a kid at the time. The hometown library was not a user-friendly place. My real library was Modell’s on Route 17, which had a book- shop near the entrance that featured paperback classics at a price even a teenager could afford. (They also had a liquor department where I could pass for 21 with a phony French accent, particularly when I made rude faces over the prices on the bottles and shook my head.) The paper- backs I bought at Modell’s for pocket money let me coast though literature courses in college because I knew what was in the books they wanted me to read. Sometimes they even ordered special books for me. Last time I looked, that particular Modell’s was no longer there and had not been for many years. As a summer job during college years, I worked at Alex- ander’s at the intersection of Route 4 and Route 17. I knew the place inside and out. The store closed years ago. Right after I got out of the Army, when I was working on my first (unproduced) screenplay, I worked in Bamberger’s on the far side of Route 4 from Alexander’s. I knew that place, too. I could show you the secret locations -- the rect- angular hidden nests made out of cardboard boxes where the stock boys took naps when they were supposed to be working, and the tunnels where the security guards loaded stuff into the trunks of their friends’ cars for a discount price until they got caught and fired. The mechanical baling machine that turned crushed cardboard boxes into blocks of iron-shod cardboard figured in my unproduced screenplay. The good bad guy in the screenplay used one like it to get the bad good guy out of circulation, as in permanently. People who read that screenplay were often very afraid of me. I assured them it was all entirely imaginary. They said that made it worse. The central figure was something like Rambo, except at the end you knew he was nuts. Shoot- ing people or disposing of them in balers was shown in all its negative implications and not as heroic. It was a very moral work of art if you managed to get through the first seven-eighths of it. If somebody with a social conscience dusts off that screenplay, they will not be able to shoot on III • Page 21 location. Bamberger’s is also long gone. The previous libraries in many towns have also van- ished. I remember the “old” Ridgewood children’s room and the annex where they kept the foreign language children’s books that hardly anyone read. My kids did. Granted, they had no choice, but they could read French, German, Italian, and Spanish from the time they were in middle school. Had I ordered all the books they read from France, Germany, or Italy, I would still be digging myself out of the financial hole. There were books in that room by Hansi -- Jean-Jaques Waltz, a patriotic Alsatian children’s writer with a charm- ing style of art. Those books disappeared even before it somehow became patriotic to hate everything French. You could meet Tin-Tin before he became a movie star. Again, those books are gone. The northern European languages are becoming extinct in the school systems. The trouble with eradicating a somewhat modern build- ing is that it is so quickly replaced by another even more modern building, or by a parking lot, that there will be noth- ing left to go by some thousands of years hence when scien- tists wonder how we lived. In mid-career, David Macaulay, having toured the first U.S. Tut exhibit in the late 1970s, weighed in with “The Motel of the Mysteries” in which archaeologists 2,000 years from now excavate a suburban motel crushed in an environmental catastrophe and try to figure out what the artifacts were. They get almost every- thing wrong, sometimes with hilarious results. At least the fictional cartoon archaeologists had something to start from. In my dreams, I sometimes roam long but well-lit and reasonably clean corridors that can only be the department stories of yore, and the libraries before they were refur- bished, substantially improved, but weeded sometimes injudiciously and changed forever. When the dreams end, where will archaeologists go to reconstruct history? Waldwick Watch Bank hosts Toy Drive Pascack Community Bank in Waldwick is collecting new, unwrapped toys and clothing for the Tomorrow’s Children’s Fund Toy Drive to benefit the children at Hack- ensack University Medical Center. The bank, located at 64 Crescent Avenue, will be accepting donations through Wednesday, Dec. 18. For details, call (201) 689-7750. WCA Wine tasting announced The Waldwick Community Alliance will hold its Annual Wine Tasting benefit on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2014 at Saint Luke’s R.C. Church, 340 North Franklin Turnpike in Ho-Ho-Kus. The evening will feature over 100 wines, craft beers, cheeses, hors d’oeuvres, chocolates, and prizes. The wine selection will be provided by Maratene’s Fine Wine and Spirits in Waldwick. Tickets are $45 per person and may be purchased at waldwickcommunityalliance.org or by calling (201) 873- 8919. Proceeds from the event and 20 percent of the wine sales will benefit the train station restoration. Council plans meeting, reorganization The Waldwick Borough Council will meet on Tuesday, Dec. 17. The session will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the council chambers of the borough’s administration building located at 63 Franklin Turnpike in Waldwick. The borough’s annual reorganization meeting is sched- uled for Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2014 in the council chambers. This session will be held at 7:30 p.m. Club welcomes new members The Italian American Social Club of Waldwick, now in its seventh year, welcomes new members and families to share the rich traditions of the Italian-American com- munity in Waldwick. The club is currently celebrating the Italian Christmas season with Saint Lucy festivities. The club is holding events featuring the special foods associ- ated with the fourth century saint, and an Italian Cookie Exchange. On the eve of Epiphany, the organization will celebrate “La Befana” at the Brownstone Inn in Paterson. The club is dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of Italian heritage and culture. Members share their knowl- edge of Italian culture, including the language, literature, traditions, art, music, and food. IASCW hosts a full roster of annual activities, including pizza and pasta making for kids, family and adult bocce tournaments, wine and Limoncello making, Italian card games, bus rides, and the club’s signature celebrations: a Saint Joseph’s dinner in March, and the Ferragosto Family Festa in August. The club meets on the third Tuesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. in the second floor meeting room at the Waldwick Ambulance Corps Building at 20 Whites Lane. For more information, visit iascw.com. Spirit towels available Warrior Nation Spirit Towels are available for sale at $5 each. Contact Adele at paja6611@msn.com or (551) 427- 2526. Checks should be made payable to WHS Booster Club. Flu vaccines still available The Waldwick Health Department still has a limited amount of flu vaccines available. Anyone interested in receiving the vaccine may contact Public Health Nurse Carol Shepard at (201) 444-3914 or cshepard@waldwicknj. org. Shepard is available at the health center on Wednesdays from 8 a.m. to noon and 2 to 3 p.m. or by appointment. Those individuals with Medicare Part B should bring their card, so Medicare may be billed directly. For all others, the cost is $25. The health center is located at 22 Whites Lane. Shepard is available at the health center on Wednesdays from 8 a.m. to noon and 2 to 3 p.m. Library seeks yearbooks The Waldwick Public Library is seeking donations of old yearbooks from Waldwick schools. Those who no longer wish to keep their yearbooks are asked to consider donating the books to the library’s new local history collec- tion. Yearbooks should be in good condition and free from mold. Donations will be accepted during regular library hours. Call (201) 652-5104. Cooperstown team seeks donations The 2014 Waldwick Warriors 12U Travel Baseball Team has been selected to participate in the Cooperstown Dream Park tournament in the summer of 2014. The team is seeking donations from the community to help defray the $20,000 needed to send the 12 players and four coaches. The tournament is a week-long series of games played against teams from all over the United States. The program is held in Cooperstown, New York.