Telling of Justice, Truth, and Freedom, and that Right ever conquers Wrong

Speak up to the next person you see and ask if he or she knows the shape of the Liberty Bell, and odds are good that the person will be taken by surprise and, not having expected that question, didn't quite hear you. Try again, making some pleasant introduction so as to warn the person you want attention and intend to ask a question, and even then you might be frustrated by the person wanting to know what's got you suddenly thinking about the Liberty Bell. Attribute it to a school assignment, and if you're challenged on the grounds you're not in school, plead a bad procrastinating habit.

You might not even be getting this far if the next person you happened to be were just yourself in a mirror, since mirror reflections of oneself tend to be shy and to not speak even when directly addressed. Maybe it's better to not worry and accept that the Liberty Bell has a distinctive and highly memorable shape. It's kind of bell-ish.

The Liberty Bell is renowned for many of its distinguishing traits: the little chipped segments where metal's been stolen from it, the innovative and nearly correct spelling of 'Pennsylvania' and skimping on 'Philadelphia' in the unread text around the top, and the famous crack which the tedious will be quick to remind you is not the actual crack, but rather a much larger crack drilled to keep the small actual crack from turning into a much bigger crack, which worked fine apart from the other crack they couldn't do a thing about. And yet where would the Liberty Bell be if it weren't for the wooden yolk from which it hangs?

A bit lower down, most likely, and it wouldn't be the least surprising if it were left on its side to save drawer space. Then it would roll around in amusing spirals whenever the ground shook enough. People would stumble over it in the middle of the night and probably one of the cats would wrestle the clapper until it fell on the cat's tail, making the cat run into the laundry room.

And there at last is this essay's point: without the yoke, we'd have much less of a Liberty Bell, and the somewhat ungainly part at the top of the metal bit would be more prominent, and the whole thing would look weird. The yoke is made of American elm (actually born in Europe, but moved with its parents while still quite young, applying for citizenship at age 25 in advance of asking for its first passport), and it enjoys a nearly unbroken record of not repeatedly growing cracks and needing to be re-casted unlike certain other alloyed parts of the Liberty Bell that it could name.

Only once, during the 1880s, was it seriously attempted to remove and replace the yoke, which it was feared a hundred and change summers had damaged. After a team of amateurs was called in to examine the wood structure and the attachment points for the bell the amateurs quickly gave up and called for a team of experts, then hid underneath the bed.

The team of experts reached similar conclusions, declaring shortly before they hid underneath their beds that they couldn't figure how you'd get the yoke away from the bell anyway. After some further debate one bold restorer tried to remove a pin holding something in place, but when change fell out of his pocket and made a metallic ringing noise this set off the Panic of 1893 and in the panic everyone decided the yoke should be left as it was.

``When you come down to it,'' the final report -- published in 1895 but in the fine print of the business pages -- ``we're none too sure that the thing is even actually named a `yolk'. Frederick thought it might be a `mast', and `axle' seems plausible too.'' No part of the yolk, if we may presume upon it, was noted to respond to any name it was called, even with. So the yolk's psychologists are left puzzling over what the yolk does, in its innermost thoughts, think its name really ought to be.

Trivia: The Germans invaded the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa with 3,550 tanks, about 800 more than used in the invasion of the west. By August 1941 the Soviets claimed they had destroyed eight thousand. Source: History of the Second World War, B H Liddell Hart.

Currently Reading: ``I Am Not A Crook'', Art Buchwald. ``What did people talk about in this country before Watergate?'' There was shocked silence. It was hard for any of us to believe there was anything before Watergate. ``Didn't we talk about meat?'' one of the men asked.