Based on the ‘Uncle Scrooge’ McDuck comic strip story by Don Rosa, which followed the main events of his life between 1877 and 1947, at which point, they say, he first met his nephew Donald, or was perhaps reunited, thereby exploding his presence into popular consciousness until the ‘present time’.
‘Present time’, Why inverted commas?
Meaning these flickering moments in which an essential mix of architecture (city, or wilderness as you prefer), moving images (and sound) intertwine and swarm with our texts in a Mixed Media Entertainment (or opera), without which these days words have no agency; in inverted commas, and thereby not to be confused with present time itself of course, the inverted commas category being under the umbrella of the ‘Just Past’ (go talk to Uncle Walter for further explanation).
So it was that I was able to trace back MacKay to his relationship with that larger than life Texas to Wyoming cattleman Murdo Mackenzie (1850-1939), with whom he had had professional dealings, as it is still politely described during the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth. They say it was 1882 when ‘Uncle Scrooge’ actually met Murdo, being the same year as the founding of the Matador Land & Cattle Company and purchase in December of Texas and other properties; “about 100,000 acres in fee simple… all range and other rights and privileges in or over 1,500,000 acres… 40,000 head of cattle… 265 horses and fencing improvements”.
“Fencing improvements”? Barbed wire was just coming in, and it is an easily checked historical fact that Murdo Mackenzie, who went on to become manager of the Matador in 1892, was to oversee this momentous change to the customs and traditions of wandering the Great Plains and prairies of the American Midwest, until his resignation in 1912 when he went to Brazil.
As can be observed, this is also essentially a forensic methodology, one that is securely grounded in the tradition of the novel – ‘Brazil’; so that I was quickly able to reach up to a high shelf in an older part of MacKay’s library for the plain cream coloured tome of the same name (Bulletin No 7 of the Bureau of the American Republics, Washington USA) issued in June 1891, in order to conclude that our man MacKay got there first. Sao Paulo, and thereafter south to Argentina and Buenos Aires, and home to the young Borges, where, who knows, perhaps he also was instrumental in encouraging the Borges family to leave for Europe in 1912, in contrarian style and economic contrast to Murdo and the tide of other adventurer immigrants heading in the opposite direction at that time…
… in this story that here encompasses the ‘western provinces’, as well as the ‘eastern provinces’ simultaneously explored, and which nicely coincide, and now authorise a moment’s pause and dawdling, with that other book I am reading currently – Visitation (Heimsuchung) by Jenny Erpenbeck, in order to quote from page four and five, concerning an incident from around the same time; “When a woman gets married… the horses wear two ribbons on the outer edges of their bridles, red for love and green for hope. The whips display the same ribbons”. That are, as I have said before, the editorial commands; Red flag / Green Flag; Walk / Don’t Walk.