Billard Crow Day

This was originally posted one year ago today, on 11-11-2004

It is the 94th anniversary of his birth. I was in 5th grade and we had to come up with a story for class. I created a local fable that would become the cornerstone of legend amongst a small group of weirdoes.

As the story goes, a house burned down in the outskirts of Downers Grove, Illinois. The date was November 11, 1911. On that fateful day a family of 13 would perish in the flames, either as a direct consequence of the fire or from trying to rescue family members. It was a grizzly tale for a kid to spin, but my prepubescent brain preferred evil human stories to those conceived by other kids. I didn’t give a crap about super heroes and stuff. I liked the drama uncased in human suffering and triumph.

The downer story had a silver lining. A baby born that day was somehow tossed from the flame and landed in an adjacent thicket. The accompanying poem (Yes, multimedia. Today I would have been institutionalized or at least heavily drugged) went something like this:


Billard Crow Day, by Kevin F., Miss Yates' Class

It was November 11 on the far side of town,

Thirteen lives perished, house burnt to the ground,

Except for the baby, newborn and cast from the flames,

Lay crying in the weeds, Billard is his name,

A flock of black birds gathers ‘round the young child,

Born of the womb… to be raised in the wild.

There was some weird part about birds eating his placenta, but my teacher made me take that out. I don’t even think most kids know what a placenta is.

The story became local legend among us kids. We all waited for 11-11 and at 11:11:11pm something would always go weird. It was possible that weird stuff always happened around us and that we only stopped being idiots enough to notice it because of that moment.

There always was something not right happening. The lights would go out, there would be an explosion—always something not quite right. According to lore, mishaps and evildoings are the work of Billard Crow. We’re 7 years away from his 100 birthday. I might stay inside that night.