A most elusive American legend...

"Pray as you can, not as you can't." (quote attributed to John Chapman aka Johnny Appleseed)

We went looking for Johnny Appleseed this morning during our Saturday 6-mile Volksmarsch (or Death March, as I've come to refer to it). We made it beyond our the hotel were we stayed when we arrived, a little farther south along the St. Joseph river, to Johnny Appleseed Memorial Park where the man himself is said to be buried... We looked around but couldn't find him. I did an Internet search which revealed that we were close when we were in the park, but it's a grave site not easily found. I guess we'll have to try again next week!

The Internet also revealed that Johnny was a Swedenborgianist, a neo-Christian. From Wikipedia: According to Harper's New Monthly Magazine [in 1871], toward the end of his career, he was present when an itinerant missionary was exhorting an open-air congregation in Mansfield, Ohio. The sermon was long and severe on the topic of extravagance, because the pioneers were buying such indulgences as calico and imported tea. "Where now is there a man who, like the primitive Christians, is traveling to heaven barefooted and clad in coarse raiment?" the preacher repeatedly asked until Johnny Appleseed, his endurance worn out, walked up to the preacher, put his bare foot on the stump that had served as a podium, and said, "Here's your primitive Christian!" The flummoxed sermonizer dismissed the congregation...

He would tell stories to children and spread The New Church gospel to the adults, receiving a floor to sleep on for the night, and sometimes supper, in return. "We can hear him read now, just as he did that summer day, when we were busy quilting upstairs, and he lay near the door, his voice rising denunciatory and thrillin—strong and loud as the roar of wind and waves, then soft and soothing as the balmy airs that quivered the morning-glory leaves about his gray beard. His was a strange eloquence at times, and he was undoubtedly a man of genius," reported a lady who knew him in his later years.

The legends about Johnny Appleseed are many, including where he's actually buried. Oh well. The closest thing to the man, the myth, the Tincaps' mascot we've seen, so far, is, well, Johnny, the Tincaps' mascot, at the ballgame last night (by the way, Single A baseball is not too far removed from high school baseball, $7 draft beers excepted).

So the search continues...

We'll find him yet.