According to public records of their day, Troublesome community leaders intended the statue of Major Abner P. Trumble as tribute to the man credited with founding their village. The statue, so reasoned the powers that were, would go some way toward repairing the damage done by that forgotten aide and/or records clerk of years gone by. They might better have asked themselves why the good Major himself never undertook such corrective action, except that they likely already knew the answer. (Troublesome School District students surely do.)

Major Abner P. Trumble did not exist! At least no such man of that name existed who so faithfully and heroically carried out actions during the American Revolutionary War that “George” (assumed as Washington) awarded him a grant of land upon which to establish a community. Contrarily, it must be noted too that no records exist to support claims, mostly arising from hated rival Keaneyville, that the George in question was actually the British monarch and that Trumble was really a Loyalist.

Whoever and whatever Trumble may have been, the one fact that has survived the chain of fires (and one explosion) that have destroyed most anything of historical significance in Troublesome is that a man who called himself Major Abner P. Trumble did indeed lead the first group of European settlers into the area. So says a journal from that era kept by one Henry Storm. (That Henry Storm appears to have been a Hessian by the name of Henrik Schturm – spellings of his real name vary – is most likely the wellspring of those persistent reports that Trumble was a Loyalist.)

At any rate, a statue of Major Abner P. Trumble now stands at more or less the heart of Troublesome and nobody – save for Keaneyville Comet supporters – seems to really care. Troublesomians are much more concerned and irritated by the fact that visitors invariably mistake their monument for that of a man standing on a whale.

"How come you've got a statue of a guy on a whale?" visitors have been known to ask, their eyes reporting nothing save rolling hills to the horizon in any direction and most assuredly no whale-worthy bodies of water this far inland.

Troublesome School District students – and others – have done their best to correct this misbegotten notion by painting IT AIN’T A WHALE on the most visible side of the boulder base. Unfortunately, this rather ungrammatical declaration reflects poorly upon Troublesome Central School which stands less than half a block behind the icon and so village leaders have undertaken to paint over the graffiti. Rather, they have instructed the Troublesome Department of Public Works to paint over that and the occasional declarations of young love as well as notices that “So-and-So was – or Wuz – Here (Heer, Hear, or Her).”

Alas, the numerous paintings-over, at least in days gone by, created further misinterpretation. Given that it was difficult to impossible to match the boulder's color with something produced by Glidden or Sherwin-Williams and given that the various taggers used different parts of the rock for their canvases (so to speak), the results were a patchwork of painting and over-painting that led one visitor to ask, "do whales get mange?"

The solution then, at least according to “new Mayor” Gary McCorvey (“new” meaning he has only been in office for two terms whereas his predecessor served seventeen three-year terms) was to have the boulder painted white. After all, he reasoned, it would be much brighter and cleaner than the former, drab gray. It would also lead to one more misinterpretation.

“So Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick here?” asked a visitor.

There is a statue in the Troublesome Municipal Park (also known as the Troublesome Vacant Lot.) The statue is of a smallish man by the name of Major Abner P.Trumble. It stands as a monument to misunderstanding.

As the leader of the first European settlers, Trumble naturally thought it a grand idea to have the settlement named after him. Unfortunately for the Major, he could not be bothered to do the paperwork required and delegated the task to an aide who managed to misconstrue Trumblestown as Troublesome. That or the aide's handwriting was so atrocious as to render it virtually illegible. Indeed, some sources claim that a clerk, upon seeing the document, exclaimed, "this is most troublesome!" then bowed to the suggestion that within his words lay a solution. "Just drop the Most."

Whatever the case, the damage was done and Troublesome was born, though in what year remains unknown for the same aide who wrote out the documents was not big on matters such as dates. And so it is that in the Troublesome of today, there stands a statue of a man named Trumble and a WELCOME TO TROUBLESOME sign that bears the notation: Est: ____.

Both sign and statue continue to sow seeds of confusion. For one thing, as mentioned early on, Trumble was a smallish man and the statue created years later was life-sized. On its original base, it stood perhaps 5'6". Moreover, while the statue was originally to be solid, money was tight and the statue is hollow. This meant that for several years, a game of “kidnap the Major” became popular both for locals and for members of rival communities. Subsequently, the Major appeared in corn fields, on the platform of the local railway station, balanced upon the railing of the Rye Creek Bridge as though contemplating a leap, and, most tellingly, in the cheering section of hated rivals the Keaneyville Comets at an away basketball game.

Troublesome town fathers (and maybe mothers) arrived at a solution. To keep the Major from roaming the countryside, they had a sizable boulder hauled in and set in place in the Municipal Park/Vacant Lot. They then replaced pedestal with boulder, bolting the Major into place up top. Voila! No more roving icon.

Only belatedly did anyone notice two problems with the solution. For one, the boulder was set in front of a fan-shaped iron bench that was anchored to a concrete slab. For another, just forward of where the Major stands atop the rock is a roundish hole. The result is a monument of a man who seems to be standing on the back of a whale, this in a community well inland from the ocean. Worse, the statue depicts the Major pointing with his right hand and holding a map in his left as though guiding that wayward beast. Regrettably, he is pointing westward, even farther from the ocean and in the general direction of the WELCOME TO TROUBLESOME sign.

There is another curiosity. Given that most visitors (aka: lost tourists) arrive from the east, why has Troublesome seen fit to place its WELCOME mat at the back door or western end of the village?

In so many words, the answer is rivalry and no little jealousy for the sign not only bids WELCOME TO TROUBLESOME, but proudly proclaims: HOME OF BELTIN’ BUTCH BRADLEY. And who is or was Beltin’ Butch?

He was and is the son of Harold “Hal” Bradley of Bradley’s Auto Repair, Martin Newly’s rival for the trade in towing wrecks from scenes of accidents, (a lucrative business, given the sorry condition of area roads.) So the sign bearing the name of one of Troublesome’s most famous native sons stands opposite his father’s auto repair shop and junk yard.

But who in heck is Beltin’ Butch Bradley and what did he do? For those guessing: a boxer, wrong. Beltin’ Butch was a baseball player and local legend who became the first Troublesomeite ever to sign a professional sports contract. Indeed, if not for a tragic collision with an outfield wall in Cincinnati’s old Crosley Field, he might well have ended up in the Hall of Fame. That collision though effectively ruined both his right arm and his blossoming baseball career, forcing him to turn to his sideline career as an advertising pitchman for a local car dealer.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history for Bradley parlayed that start into ownership of a string of used car lots across the Midwest thereby marking his old hometown as probably the only PROUD HOME of a used car salesman anywhere in the civilized world.

Some Background On Troublesome

The infrequent visitors to Troublesome are most generally tourists who are lost. People seen pouring over a map in the vicinity of the Five Corners that lie in the center of town, have usually come off the highway to the east, turned the wrong way at the bottom of the ramp, and eventually missed the white-on-green sign tucked back from the road near the much larger sign for Newly's Auto Salvage. Their presence in the middle of the community also means they have avoided being stopped by Troublesome's finest who sometimes lie in wait in the parking lot alongside Troublesome's Farmers' Market across the road from Newly's.

In days gone by, visitors (read: out-of-towners who turned the wrong way) were guaranteed to quickly find out where they were. As soon as they entered the village. having missed the Troublesome sign and its accompanying-but-smaller: Speed Limit 30 mph sign in black-on-white, one of Troublesome's finest would flip on the lights and siren and pull them over. This was because there is a natural tendency for motorists to accelerate up the hill at the east end of Troublesome in order to maintain the posted highway speed of 55 and it is almost impossible to drop 25 mph upon cresting the hill and entering the village.

That happens much less frequently anymore, which is a sign of the times. Not only have soaring gasoline prices cut into travel by those from out of the area, but Troublesome is one of those communities that nature forgot, a place to be from rather than a destination. Where other towns and cities have broad or rushing rivers, scenic lakes, gorges, or mountains, Troublesome's river is more a large, sluggish creek with an even smaller creek feeding into it. Its one lake, Gulby Lake, resembles an overgrown farm pond bordered at one end by a swamp and Troublesome itself resides in a long, narrow valley ringed by hills that roll onward, seemingly without end, to the north, east, west, and south.

It is the sort of town, in sum, that as one out-of-towner so aptly and crudely put it, "has a %#&* it! This is far enough feel to it."

Granting that the view expressed may have been colored by the speeding ticket he had received, it nonetheless is an apt description for a village whose main reason for existence originally was to give neighboring farmers someplace to go every now and again.

Those farms still exist.

Next: More Troublesome