Yes Virginia, There Is a Marvin Gardens

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Yes Virginia, There Is a Marvin Gardens

Contributed by Bruce Gilbert

Dear Editor:

I am 18 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Marvin Gardens; that he's a myth made up about some old lounge act that tours endlessly. Papa says, "Yes, there was, but he's dead now." Please tell me the truth, is there a Marvin Gardens?

Virginia O'Scamlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except they see, and they hardly see at all when they drink. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little; all minds except those of Marvin and the incomparable Steve Goodman, that is. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge and chord changes.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Marvin Gardens. He exists as certainly as beer and whiskey and unnamed substances exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Marvin Gardens! It would be as dreary as if there were no O'Scamlons. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance, no excess to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in money and commercialism and Bolton concerts and Stallone movies and $25 t-shirts. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Marvin Gardens! You might as well not believe in David Allen Coe. You might get your papa to have men to watch in all the bars on Christmas eve to catch Marvin Gardens, but even if you did not see Marvin getting down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Marvin these days, but that is no sign that there is no Marvin Gardens. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men nor barkeeps can see. Did you ever see little pink elephants dancing on the lawn? Well, maybe you have; bad example. What about magic Leprechauns that are magically delicious? Of course you haven't seen them, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world; nobody except Marvin, that is.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest men, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men in the World Wrestling Federation could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, and acoustic guitar sets, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding, not even naked pictures of Madonna.

No, Marvin Gardens, thank God, he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of songwriters everywhere.