"Stop there, Brother. You know you can’t come to services with your horse outfitted with that bridle!" A cluster of neighbor men in black suits and hats gathered around my husband’s great-grandfather and his family and bared the church door. "That bridle has silver medallions all over it!"
Bill’s ancestors were Pennsylvania Dutch who settled in the green hills before the Revolutionary War. They were plain people who didn’t draw attention to themselves and modesty was appropriate at all times. But, Great-grandpa had his own ways.
Grandpa was a creative carpenter who was capable of making almost anything, from a new rocker for Ma to the barrels that were one of his specialities. One merchant, long in need and short on cash, offered to swap a number of oaken barrels for the silver bridle.
Grandpas liked to keep a firm, strong grip on the horse and used extra thick leather for his harnesses and bridle. He liked the feel of the sturdy reigns. To his eye, the shinny, polished silver detracted from the farm-looking utility of the strapping. Besides, he was adventurous, mischievous, and loved to impress people with a new practical joke.
That Sunday morning, when he hitched the horse to the black buggy with the new silver bridle and drove his family to church, he had taken things too far. The Elders of the church confronted the family before they could set a foot to the ground.
"Don’t you ever drive to church with that silver bridle on your horse again!" they warned.
The next Sunday, Great-Grandpa loaded his family in the buggy but left the horse in the barn. Instead, he hitched his bull to the bridle and drove leisurely off to services. Not a single church member complained about the flashy, silver bridle again.
Christina, in my novel, Length of Days - The Age of Silence, doesn’t ride in a horse-drawn buggy. She sits in a Public Transit and skims above the city on a ribbon of steel. Grandpa lived in 1712 and Christiana’s world is 2112. As you can see, their circumstances are vastly different. Yet, they are similar.
Christiana lives in an age when the water supply is drugged, robbing everyone of emotion. In spite of her practiced indifference, she rebels against a government that has changed the country from a freedom-loving democracy, to a society controlled by a few. The people have no hope, no joy of living and no reverence for life. But, when her dear grandparents near the end of their Length of Days, her passion to find a solution to overthrow the despicable laws that force people into the never-ending-sleep, rises within her and cannot be put down.
What will she do? What can she do? Christi doesn’t have a silver clad bull, but if she did and that was all she had to take a stand against the authorities of her day, she would have outfitted a whole herd of them in shinny silver.
In 2112, the entire society had turned into mind-numbing, robot-like empty shells. If you were the only one who could save your loved ones, even the whole country, what would you be willing to do? Would you be afraid to stand up? Or, would you be brave like Christiana?
Would you have the nerve to hitch the bull to the buggy?
Doris Gaines Rapp
Copyright 2012 Doris Gaines Rapp
Book Trailer:
http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/DorisRapp-1207656-length-ofdays-the-age-silence/
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