Way back in the mid 1970s I was teaching high school in Menomonie Wisconsin. I loved the job and the students but being a new teacher I was very concerned about classroom discipline. The result is that I was very serious in the many cases of students telling jokes or pulling pranks. Didn't want the classroom to get out of control. Well about half way through the year the students told me that their nick-name for me was "Stoney" because I was so serene and serious all the time. It was true. I had to laugh at myself so I wrote several stories about Stoneyman. Here is the opening:

 

 

ORIGIN OF STONYMAN

As with all legends, the stories about the beginnings of Stonyman are many

and varied. According to one of the myths, the stony hero had his beginnings

in the haze of a hippie haven where the grass was not cut-—it was sucked. This

story pictures the beginning not of Stonyman, but of Stoned-man, one of Stony-
man's arch enemies. Another story, completely fallacious, tells of a vortex
of cosmic forces hovering over a statue of George Washington, thus producing
Stonyman.

You now have in hand the true story of the origin of Stonyman. In real life
he is the mild mannered teacher Lythos Stein, but in his heroic form he is
Stonyman, master of the basic matter of the universe, rocks, and stones,
pebbles, and even the smallest grains of sand.

Faster than a speeding fossil, able to leap tall pebbles in a single bound.
Is it a boulder? Is it a cliff? NO! It's Stonyman.
Lythos Stein was born an ordinary child, like all children slapped into life
upside down. He spent his boyhood days in a small Wisconsin town-—running,
laughing, crying, puppy-dogging like any boy in any town. In those days, there
was nothing heroic in his nature. He was normal in every way, normally good,
normally bad, normally educated in a small Wisconsin high school.
It was during the first year in college that Lythos first began to be interested
in rocks and stones. "Interested" is a mild term——he was preoccupied. His
roommate reported him to the college shrink. Lythos had stones in his closet,
pebbles in his drawers, and (at least his roomate thought) rocks in his head.

Perhaps Lythos was crazy in those days. His roommate was convinced, but
inside Lythos Stein there was order. His consuming interest lay in the stuff with
which the universe was made. His search was deeper than the inanimate rocks
and stones that he handled and observed. He was searching -— looking for that
which would bring unity to the universe. He was Aristotle. He was Plato. He was
Einstein.

In his search for rocks and stones, Lythos came to love digging. Whatever
came into his experience, he dug.  Legend says that when his pet dog died, he got
carried away and buried him twelve feet deep. Figuratively speaking, he dug into
any subject related at all to stones. Literally, he dug as a member of the Yeahoo
Archeological Society.

Lythos was chosen to lead the Third Yeahoo Expedition to an archeological
dig at the ancient biblical city of Jerusalem in Israel. To Lythos, his findings
were fantastic. The museum curators back home however, were not impressed by
the mass of artifacts sent back by Lythos. They were looking for bones, for pots,
for statues, but all they got were stones, rocks and pebbles. Finally Lythos'
funding was revoked. They wouldn't even fund his trip back to the states. Lythos
didn't care—-he was in heaven in his hole beneath the streets of Jerusalem. ;,

We pass quickly over the days of tedious digging——deeper and deeper. Lythos
found city foundation upon city foundation. He dug through a hundred glorious ages
in a hundred thrilling days. The deeper he dug, the simplier and more beautiful
the cities became.

]ust as spring was spreading over the Israeli countryside, Lythos was reaching
the first city. A normal archeologist would have stopped at this point, but Lythos
kept descending for the virgin soil on which the original city had been built. The
Easter pilgrims filled the city above the day that Lythos' spade hit the rock. He
quickly threw aside the last foundation stones and uncovered—-the R0CK——foundation
of a hundred cities. He shoveled away the dirt from side to side, but there was no
end to the Rock. It was as if this rock was the foundation of t  cities
all over the world. Exhausted, Lythos threw his shovel and began to study the
Rock. The Rock was hard but strangely warm to his searching fingers. There
also was a pulse in the rock, much like a heartbeat, barely discernable. Lythos
to this day refers to it as the Rock which Lives.

It is at this point that we must return to the surface for Lythos has never
revealed the details of his communion with the Rock. We see him only as he comes
forth from his digging--changed—-imperceptably but fundamentally different. There
is an understanding in his eyes. He knows why he is in the world and the world
will never be the same.

Stonyman, the rock has sent you.
Stonyman, Stonyman.
Stonyman, the Rock has shared his power with you. Stonyman.
May the Rock be with you forever. Stonyman, Stonyman.
May the Rock in you forever. Stonyman.

Lythos’ secretary Pebblius Granite put the whole history of those days in a poem,

THE DIGGINGS
 

"Behold that young fool

With excavating tool. "
Said the man in black,
As he turned his back.
 And the young man drilled
His shovel filled,
Hard at his work,
To the world, a jerk.
 
"He can not build,
He's too unskilled, "
Said the man in black,
Munching on a snack.
 And the young man drilled
His shovel filled,
Even he didn't know,
What he sought below.
 
"Why does he search,
It's in my church."
Said the fat in black.
Egomaniac.
 And the young man drilled
His shovel filled,
Found an ancient rock,
An old stumbling block.
 
"Wonder where he's gone?‘
Said the automaton,
Handicap in black,
Hypochondriac.
 Up the young man came,
With his heart aflame,
With a renewed mind,
Power to unbind.
 
It was such a shock,
That it stopped the clock,
Of the man in black,
With a cardiac.
 Now he knew how to build
No longer unskilled,
On that deep foundation,
Real edification.
 
But it’s got no pretty glass,
 And those people got no class.
Said a new man in black,
Dipsomaniac.