9 May 1976, Hudson Valley NY
‘Opus-40’ is an ambitious stoneworks comparable to Stonehenge, flaunting six (6+) acres of hand-built stone ridges, bridges, moats and monuments. Quarried at the site by old dead guy Harvey Fite, his magnum opus is a wild landscape of stoner madnesss!
Dry-stack stonework is a time-tested and durable technique. It's how the Roman arches hang together! And as goes the Roman , so goes Harvey Fite who died in 1976 only a few years short of completing the ramps and stairways, pools and murky moats, culverts and subterranean passageways of his dreams.
And how did this stonemason bite the dust?
He died Darwin dumb, to be honest. While riding a lawn mower, Harvey zoomed out onto a precipice and fell into his own stone quarry. And snap, just like that he was stone dead! On the sunny side, this artist loved where he lived & and died where he loved. Surely his heart still resides in this amazing place.
Magnum Opus: An impressive work of art culminating a lifetime spent mastering the arcana.
Gotta love a Darwin Award winner with such dedication in life and in death. Today, forty years down that rocky road, his heirs and successors are squabbling over his legacy, according to the New York Times report that brought this noble Darwin Award to our attention.
Age Discrimination!?
Some quibble that a person with heirs, an oldster of 72, is not nearly as worthy of a Darwin Award as a youngster. More leniently, some say 'out of the gene pool' applies to old and young alike. Cryopreservation of sperm and ova? Nobody can guaranteed the deceased took take every last gamete to the grave. And are Darwin Awards in limited supply? No, they’re unlimited! Giving an Award to Old Fart is not stealing an Award from Young Gun. From spirited historic discussions weighing the merits of geriatric Darwins, elder wisdom was distilled into THIS Rules Discussion. So I would thank you to kindly take a chill and please enjoy the Big Darwin Awards Tent.