Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum, counted 55 people — the largest crowd ever — who converged on the cemetery that holds the writer’s gravesite near downtown this frosty morning, and was fearful that the Poe toaster would be put off by the crowd.
[…]
But, in what has become a tradition on Poe’s birthday, the visitor arrived, and the crowd at first did not realize who he was, Jerome said. When it became clear that the Poe Toaster had arrived, and placed a half-empty bottle of cognac and three red roses on Poe’s grave, the crowd rushed to one entrance to get a glimpse.
The mystery visitor used the opportunity to slip out another entrance, Jerome said.
The crowd this year was large, but well behaved, Jerome said, unlike last year, when unruly Poe toaster watchers tried to interfere with the mystery visitor’s tribute.
And there we have it. The Poe Toaster returned yesterday and left his expected reverences on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. The idea of a person making an annual visit to a macabre and celebrated writer for all these years appeals to the tragic goth in me. That’s 58 years of Cognac and roses. I’ve kept an eye on this about as long as I’ve had this blog.
It’s the strangeness of the act that’s most appealing. He/she does it for no gain that I can think of. Sure you get visitors standing by and gawking at a gravesite for hours on end. Last year those gawkers stirred up a bit of trouble, which was very uncool of them. Some would call it bastardly. Well, that’s what I call it anyways. The there was that one year that the toaster refused to leave french cognac because of recent french politics. The Toaster lost cool points for that one.
The world needs to remain strange in some ways. In the good ways preferably. Weird happenings keeps you guessing about reality’s perating system. It keeps the mind sharp and open. It adds a sense of wonder you can’t buy on TV. Not even QVC.
People should enjoy the mystery of things more often. Everybody can’t grow up to be a cynical bastard like me.
