Dead Boy's Glove **Possible Spoilers**

  • This message board permanently closed on June 30th, 2020 at 4PM EDT and is no longer accepting new members.

Roy J

New Member
Jan 15, 2014
2
10
36
Just finished reading the novel but one thing puzzled me. If a dead boy was dug up from the ground and the buried baseball glove was retrieved from his decomposed hand, would there still be a glove left after two years in the ground? With the moisture, the bugs, the worms and bacterial decay on the organic matter of the leather glove, it would have decomposed to fertilizer, would it not?
Any one have a thought on this question?
 

Walter Oobleck

keeps coming back...or going, and going, and going
Mar 6, 2013
11,749
34,805
Chapter Eleven, "Thome 25"...sections 12 & 13 of that chapter, pages 308-310 in my USA hardback for anyone trying to locate the scene. When I read the opener the first thing I thought about was something from earlier this year for me...working on "the 2nd oldest house in Dollar Bay"...old as in I dunno maybe late 1800s, 1880 1890 thereabouts...the construction a curious thing, not logs, but close. We were tearing off some clapboard since it had layers of chipped paint and trying to salvage it would have been too costly. Anyway, once the clapboard was removed we find this chunk of leather on the wall, a long strip maybe two feet or better, maybe 4" wide...had to have been there for decades, dry, yes, behind the wall, a kind of Tyvek from pioneer days. Still somewhat intact and I imagined one of those Indian quivers I had as a kid....remember those? Little bow & arrow set so you could play cowboys and Indians?

The glove was lovingly oiled. Remember doing that? I do. So I imagine the oil helped preserve the glove although if the piece of leather we found in the wall of that house in Dollar Bay is any indication, two years isn't much. There's also this vision of old boots that keep bobbing to the surface of my memory old leather clodhoppers but I can't place them in time.
 

Roy J

New Member
Jan 15, 2014
2
10
36
Just finished reading the novel but one thing puzzled me. If a dead boy was dug up from the ground and the buried baseball glove was retrieved from his decomposed hand, would there still be a glove left after two years in the ground? With the moisture, the bugs, the worms and bacterial decay on the organic matter of the leather glove, it would have decomposed to fertilizer, would it not?
Any one have a thought on this question?

Jan 16 Thanks everyone for your comments to my question. You all are correct and I was surprised by the longevity of a piece of leather. From Maryland's Department of the Environment website:



Did you know?



It takes 40 years for leather to decompose.
 

Neesy

#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
May 24, 2012
61,289
239,271
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Just finished reading the novel but one thing puzzled me. If a dead boy was dug up from the ground and the buried baseball glove was retrieved from his decomposed hand, would there still be a glove left after two years in the ground? With the moisture, the bugs, the worms and bacterial decay on the organic matter of the leather glove, it would have decomposed to fertilizer, would it not?
Any one have a thought on this question?
Welcome to SKMB Roy J!
 

MadamMack

M e m b e r
Apr 11, 2006
17,958
45,138
UnParked, UnParked U.S.A.
Just finished reading the novel but one thing puzzled me. If a dead boy was dug up from the ground and the buried baseball glove was retrieved from his decomposed hand, would there still be a glove left after two years in the ground? With the moisture, the bugs, the worms and bacterial decay on the organic matter of the leather glove, it would have decomposed to fertilizer, would it not?
Any one have a thought on this question?


Maybe so in real life, but, maybe not in fiction.