This post isn’t numbered, because it really isn’t a post. I said what I needed to say last Veterans Day, and I have no need to repeat it. However, there were fewer people reading then, so I am going to remind you that you can cick here to read . . .
Over in Raven’s Run in Serial today, Ian Gunn is reminiscing about:
The feeling in a night drive —- the humming of tires; the warm heaviness of the air, the darkness beyond the car —- when you were a child in the back seat —- and the thick air slid in and out of your throat like oil.
That description is pure memory.
Oklahoma is the edge of the South, with thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hot, humid summers. Air conditioner country – but I lived there before people has air conditioners. Days over a hundred were common, and the nights brought thick, moist, warm air. There were scraggly trees in the creek beds and flattish land between that was half native grass pastures and half grain fields.
Was. Now it grows houses, and people live indoors with the AC running, but in the fifties people were sparse on the ground and they spent most of their time outdoors.
I spent my summer days driving a tractor. There were no air conditioned cabs – no cabs at all, actually – but it wasn’t bad. There was an umbrella clamped to the seat, and as long as I was moving, which was at least ten hours a day, there was a breeze.
Nevertheless, nights were a pleasure by contrast. After the cows were milked, we sat in the living room with the west windows open to the wind. My parents watched TV (black and white, two channels). I joined them, or read a book. Once or twice a year, we would all go see a movie.
Those same years, my wife-to-be lived in Saginaw, Michigan. She used to walk to Saturday matinees. It’s a common reminiscence, but my nearest theatre was twenty miles away, so going to a movie was a family expedition.
After the day’s work, and milking the cows, and supper, and cleaning up, we would drive to Collinsville as the sun was going down. When we arrived, we went right in. There was only one theatre with one screen, and it changed movies every three days, so you went on the day your movie of choice was there. It didn’t matter what time the movie started; we went in, sat down, and started watching. Then we watched the coming attractions and the cartoon, and pretty soon the next showing started. We watched until my dad said, “Okay, this is where we came in.” Then we left, with no wasted time, because four AM was coming all too soon, and the cows weren’t going to milk themselves.
What I remember best about movie nights, is the ride home – especially when I was ten or so. Twenty miles on a two lane blacktop, lying stretched out on the back seat, reliving the movie, and the coming attractions which were pretty exciting for a ten year old in the fifties. Imitation of Life previews were disturbing, largely because I didn’t understand the premise of the picture (see 95. Literature of Passing). Then there was a scene of a girl wearing only a towel in a cowboy movie preview that revisited my libido for months. Mostly though, I remember a science fiction movie – something I would never have seen outside of previews – with animated pterosaurs and dinosaurs chasing people as they fled in their cars. Tame stuff for the Jurassic Park generation, but scary to me.
Outside the car, the night dampness amplified the smell of grass and weeds. The soundtrack of the night was the humming of tires and the unending churr of cicadas. The air swirling in through the open windows was syrup thick, damp and cool. The vibrations from the road, softened by the seat and transmitted through to my spine, was electric, and the little shocks from potholes were like tiny bursts of pleasure.
All this comfort was balanced by the emotional rush of hearing those imaginary dinosaurs in pursuit, along with the scree of giant pterosaurs flashing overhead.
I’ve forgotten most of the movies we saw, but I will never forget what the night felt like.
Next week, we elect a president. Today and tomorrow let’s look at the lives of two of our early ones, Jefferson and Jackson.
Everybody knows the passage in the box above. Thomas Jefferson wrote it. It is logical to think that he believed what he wrote, and yet he held Sally Hemings and his children by her in slavery.
Odd? By the standards of our day, certainly. By the standards of his day, it was odd that he freed any of them. His father-in-law also had a black concubine and children, and freed none of them.
If you have read anything I posted from mid-January to the end of February of this year, you know I am no apologist for slavery, Jim Crow, or resistance to interracial marriage. However, if you plan to understand historical events and beliefs, you have to examine them in their own context. The Sally Hemings story gives us a lens through which to examine both slavery and women as child bearers, whether wife or concubine, in the days when our nation was being created.
The story begins two generations before Jefferson. A slave name Susanna bore a child to a white man named Hemings; the child was named Betty. Both were owned by Francis Eppes, then were inherited by Eppes’ daughter Martha. When Martha Eppes married John Wayles, the slaves, mother and daughter, went with her.
Martha Eppes Wayles had a daughter, also named Martha, before her death. Wayles was widowed twice more, and also had several children by the slave Betty Hemings. The youngest of these was named Sally.
Martha Wayles (the daughter) married Thomas Jefferson. Sally Hemings was her half-sister (they shared a father) and was three-quarters white. When John Wayles died, Thomas and Martha Jefferson inherited his slaves, including Betty and Sally Hemings.
Martha Jefferson had a daughter, also Martha. Thankfully, for ease of reading this post, she was called Patsy. Jefferson’s wife Martha died. When Thomas Jefferson was appointed American envoy to France, he took Patsy with him, and took Sally Hemings as her companion. It appears that the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings affair began in France.
Accurate research is difficult on affairs that are semi-hidden. As best we know, Sally Hemings bore Jefferson six children: two daughters who died in infancy, one daughter and three sons who live to adulthood. All these children were seven-eighths white, and all were slaves.
The children and their mother remained house slaves. They never worked the fields; the male children were given training to become artisans. At age 24, the eldest son was allowed to “escape” to the North. The daughter followed shortly after. The younger sons were given their freedom in Jefferson’s will. Sally Hemings was inherited by Patsy and informally freed.
Why did Jefferson, the champion of unalienable rights, hold his “wife” and children in slavery? Let’s look for answers.
Sally Hemings was legally negro, genetic heritage notwithstanding. That could not be changed. She could have been freed, but Jefferson could not have married her, even if the thought had ever occurred to him. If freed, she would have not become a full citizen of Virginia or of the United States. If freed, she would have passed completely out of Jefferson’s control, and she would also have passed out from under his protection. Which of those two factors weighed more heavily on Jefferson? We cannot know.
We can speculate, however, based on how he treated his children. They were legally negro, although actually seven-eighths white. They could not be given the rights of white children. They could not inherit, which was something of a moot point since Jefferson died deeply in debt and his estate went to his creditors. He allowed his elder two to “escape” to the North after they were adult. He freed his younger two in his will; they were just reaching legal maturity at the time of his death.
He did not free Sally Hemings in his will. Why? Was he unable to let go, or was he depending on his daughter Patsy to take care of her in her old age? She was in her mid-fifties when Jefferson died. Again, we cannot know.
A lot of scholarship has been devoted to Sally Hemings. We know quite a few facts, but from this distance, understanding comes hard. Did Jefferson do the best he could under the circumstances? Do we even have the right to be disappointed that he didn’t do more? We have more questions than answers.
** ** **
It is important to consider what happened to Sally Hemings’ offspring, but that will require a future post.
Here in California, Halloween doesn’t look like itself any more. I suspect the same metamorphosis is taking place across the country. Images from the Mexican Day of the Dead are everywhere, competing with Anglo witches, ghosts, goblins, and jack-o-lanterns.
It’s no surprise, really, since Halloween has become a $econd Chri$tmas, in terms of commerce. I have no trouble understanding why retailers are producing big-eyed, flower painted skulls for sale. I have some trouble understanding why anyone is buying them.
As a matter of full disclosure, I don’t care for Halloween, and at both ends of my life I have had little to do with it. In the middle, when I lived in cities, I hosted the trick-or-treaters who came to my door, just like everyone else. I admit the mid-level kids were fun and putting up with a little pleasant extortion was just being a good grown-up. I wasn’t much impressed by the adults with infants in arms, or the overaged teenagers who grunted and threatened like gang bangers. But many Americans have no sense of age appropriateness, so they were no surprise.
Anyway, I would be a hypocrite if I hated trick-or-treaters after all my praise of Christmas last year. After all, trick-or-treat and wassailing are the same ritual.
I haven’t had a trick-or-treater at my door since I retired to the foothills, and that brings me full circle. When I was young – during the fifties in very rural Oklahoma – we didn’t trick-or-treat. We were simply too spread out. It would have been impossible to walk to anyone’s house, and in those days parents weren’t about to drive their children all over the county just for their amusement.
Instead, the local tradition was ritualized vandalism by teenagers. That was the night outhouses got turned over – and yes, people still used them. Windows got egged, toilet paper got tossed, there was even some graffiti. In Oologah, the next town south, I saw a business sign which had been tagged with Oologah hoars. Vandals couldn’t spell back then either.
As October rolled around, all the adults started telling outhouse stories from their misspent youths, and current youths started planning. I took no part in any of it, but I heard it all, and one story in particular caught my fancy. I think it was true; at least I knew the old lady in question.
She lived in a little house in town, with no plumbing and an outhouse out back. Every year somebody turned it over on Halloween, and she was tired of it. This year, she went out when it was still light and settled in to wait with a shotgun across her knees. Eventually it got dark, and eventually she heard whispers and the first creak as the local teenagers got a grip the outhouse. She threw the door open, leaped out and gave a mighty scream, and fired both barrels into the air. When the echoes cleared, there was no sound but retreating footsteps.
The old woman went to bed with a smile on her face. The would-be vandals, once they recovered from their fright, had the memory of a priceless adrenaline rush and a story to tell for the rest of their lives.
I love it when everybody wins.
I’ve told my personal story regarding justice for black citizens several times, and I fleshed it out over a month and a half in February and March of this year. Here is a brief reprise for those who weren’t following yet.
I was born and raised in a small Oklahoma town with no blacks in sight. My father was a Baptist deacon and lay minister, and a dominating man. I never disagreed with him – out loud. He did not hate blacks – really, he didn’t. He expected to see many of them in heaven. He did think they had their place, ordained by God, and they would be happy if they only kept to it. He considered Martin Luther King an agitator and an evil man.
I agreed with his views of God and man when I was very young, but by my teen years I was beginning to question both. Silently question, that is. There was no discussion in our house, only my father’s statements ex cathedra and our silent nods. My final conversion away from his thinking on race came when black marchers were washed down the street by fire hoses in Selma and elsewhere.
This Sunday is the anniversary of the March on Washington, and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. When it happened, it passed me by. At the time, I was wrestling with my father’s views on God. My change of view on race was a couple of years in my future.
In our house, it was just another speech by that self-serving agitator King.
When I was doing research for posts earlier this year, I became aware of Philip Randolph, who orchestrated the March on Washington. Shamefully, I had never heard of him. At that time I said that I would find out more about him, and I did. His story is worth telling, but it isn’t mine to tell. I had planned a post detailing the March, but that isn’t my story, either. I’ve decided to leave both to those who fought the battles while I was still coming to realize that there was a war.
The story of the March on Washington isn’t mine to tell, but it changed my life, as it changed all of our lives, even if I didn’t know it at the time.
“Congress takes two years to vote on anything. Twenty-millions of people are hungry and cannot wait two years to eat.” Joseph Coxey
This weekend marks the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. It wasn’t the first march.
When I was a kid, my father would occasionally say something like, “That kid eats enough to feed Cox’s army!” We’d all laugh. It was just a saying. I was an adult before I realized where the phrase came from, or that “Cox” was actually Joseph Coxey.
Long before our present financial difficulties, even long before the Great Depression, the American economy has had a history of booms and busts. The origins of the Panic of 1893 are complex, but the result was clear. Unemployment rose dramatically – to 25% in Pennsylvania and 43% in Michigan.
There were few resources for the unemployed and hunger spread. Everybody had a theory as to the cause of the problem. Everybody had a different solution. Does this sound familiar?
Among those who spoke out was businessman Joseph Coxey. He called for government expenditures, not for handouts, but for a massive program of public improvements. He was branded as a crank for his position. Thirty years later it became the New Deal.
In order to push his agenda, Coxey organized a march on Washington. Leaving Massillon, Ohio in March of 1894, he and his followers marched approximately fifteen miles a day along the National Road.
The National Road was the first major highway built in the US by the federal government. It represented the kind of public improvement Coxey was calling for. Ironically, construction on the road had been stopped in 1837 by an earlier financial panic.
The press dubbed the group Coxey’s Army, and spread the word. It would be easy to forget, in our cell-phone world, that instantaneous communication is not new. It began in the mid nineteenth century when the telegraph advanced along with the railroads. The railroads had to have the telegraph to coordinate their trains; the newspapers co-opted it to carry local news throughout the nation.
Newspaper reporters followed along, reporting the progress of the march. Local people gave the marchers places to camp and donated food to sustain them. The local unemployed would join the march for a day or so, although few stayed for the whole journey.
A second march, called Kelly’s Army left San Francisco, also heading toward Washington. A few made it all the way by July. Fry’s Army from Los Angeles used a stolen train for part of their attempt to reach Washington.
About 400 of Coxey’s Army reached the Capitol on May first, but were stopped by police. Coxey and a few others climbed a fence and were arrested for trespassing on the Capitol grounds.
Coxey achieved nothing immediate, but began a long tradition of marching on the seat of government. Wikipedia lists well over a hundred marches, calling for everything from jobs, to peace, to abortion rights, to an end to abortion, to labeling on genetically engineered foods.
The most important of these was the 1963 march where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech.
If you missed how this all started, Leap Alan Hed was tagged, against his will, as a write-in candidate for President. He fled in the middle of the night from the media circus that ensued. See 178. Leap Boy, back in the news, 192. Billy Joe Takes a Leap, 200. The Last Sane Man and 203. Leap on the Bandwagon.
Leap was born in 1952, on Leap Day, which was the start of all his troubles. He made his run from the media in his 64th year. That isn’t an age to start running.
Leap didn’t drink much, had never smoked, and had never had a wife, so he wasn’t too broken down. Still, 64 is 64.
Leap followed the genetic pattern of the American species. He headed west. That wasn’t hard in Nebraska where all county roads are routed by compass. He was in the middle of nowhere, half way to Rockville, when a pickup ground to a stop beside him and the driver motioned him to get in. The manure crusted on the wheels and fenders was reassuring; this was not a TV person. Besides, the sun was coming up, Leap was tired, and an old man walking down an empty road would be easy to spot from the air. Paranoia, or whatever you call it when they are really after you, had set in, and Leap had no problem imagining a horde of drones fanning out across the landscape, looking for him.
True to form, all Leap got from the driver was a nod and a grunt until they were back up to speed and a mile had passed under the tires. Then he said, “You’re Hed.” Leap admitted that he was. “Saw your picture in the newspaper. Heard about the ruckus in Dannebrog.” Then he called the newsmen a word that two men in a truck might use, but would never like to see written down. Leap agreed with him.
Another mile passed. The driver said, “How did you get into this mess, anyhow?”
“How does a guy get struck by lightning? Bad luck. Real bad luck.”
“How come you’re running for President?”
“I’m not! Some (and he used that word again) from Tulsa called me up and tried to get me to run as a joke. I said no, and he didn’t take no for an answer. Now the whole country wants me to run, or pretend to run, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
At Rockville, the driver turned left, crossed the Platte River and followed highway 68 toward Ravenna. He said, “You got any money? If you’re gonna run, you’ll need money.”
“Some. I took the rainy day money out of the sock drawer before I left.”
“I could loan you forty.”
“No, you keep it. But thanks.”
They drove on in silence. Fifteen miles later, as they were coming into Grand Island, the driver said, “I’ll drop you at the bus station.” Leap nodded. He didn’t ask the driver’s name. It didn’t matter, really. In the short time he had lived in Dannebrog, Leap had met a dozen men and women who would have helped him out just as automatically, with no hesitation and no thought of reward. In fact, Leap would have done the same himself.
At the bus station, he walked around the pickup and reached up to shake the hand of his new, anonymous friend. For the first time he saw him full face, not profile. He was tanned and whiskered, lean, maybe forty years old, with a ball cap and a khaki shirt. He grinned at Leap and said, “Running from president. God almighty. Only in America.”
Leap said, “What would you do if they tried to stick you with the job?”
“Run like a deer, leap like an antelope, burrow like a prairie dog. Anything it took to get away. Good luck. I hope they don’t catch you.”
** ** ** **
For those of you who don’t live in Nebraska but still recognized the name Dannebrog in the last two posts, yes, you’re right, this is an homage to Roger Welsch, who would also run from President.
This series starts with 178. Leap Boy, back in the news and continues in 192. Billy Joe Takes a Leap and then in 200. The Last Sane Man.
It’s hard to say who made the first mistake. Certainly Leap’s mother should never have named him Leap, even if he was born on Leap Day. Some temptations just have to be resisted. Worse, she should have spoken his name out loud when she named him. Leap Alan Hed, for heaven’s sake. How could she have missed that Alan would become A., and no one could ever meet her son without saying Leap A. Hed.
Leap wasn’t blameless himself. By fighting back to the point of absurdity, he made himself famous enough to come to public attention. Counting his age by leap-day-birthdays and calling himself 16 when he was in his sixties — that’s just asking to be noticed.
Of course Billy Joe Barker was to blame for touting him as a write-in candidate for President. Then when he said that Leap was sane because he really didn’t want to be President, it was the last nail in Leap’s coffin.
People never give you what you want, but they always give you what you don’t want. Didn’t anybody know that?
Shelia Barnstaple of Wilmington, Ohio started a blog called I Want Leap for President. Wilton Damonson of Ash Fork, Arizona started a competing blog called Leap on the Bandwagon, also using the hashtag #LeaponforLeap. You would not believe how many people have 140 characters worth of something to say.
Throughout August, as Donald sank in the polls, people first sighed with relief, then suddenly realized that Hillary would probably win. Someone published a poem anonymously that read:
When Donald came I feared the worst,
If he won it just might kill me.
He surely was the worst of worst,
But second worst was Hillary.
Within days the doggerel was re-posted four million times, and a hundred and ninety-two people were claiming authorship.
Meanwhile, Shelia Barnstaple and Wilton Damonson combined forces and the draft Leap movement really took off. Leap found his house in Dannebrog surrounded by reporters. It looked like Marilyn Lovell’s lawn in Apollo 13. Leap came out with a shotgun to run them off, but they only clicked their cameras faster. He retreated. The shotgun was never loaded, since Leap was basically a peaceful fellow, but the hashtag #Leapforlawandorder raced around the globe at the speed of light.
Leap drew the shades and locked his doors, turned out all the lights but one, and settled in to wait out the silliness with his paperback collection of Nero Wolfe novels. After an hour, the reporters started pounding on his door, then on his windows, and finally on the walls of his house. He couldn’t call for help since he didn’t have a phone, but his neighbors took pity and brought in the county sheriff. He drove the mob back into the street.
That night, Barnstaple and Damonson posted a call to join Leap in his Silent Vigil for America. Three hundred thousand people promised that they would.
Sometime during the night, a darkly clothed figure joined the reporters breifly, then quietly faded away. Once it was light the next morning, Armin Arkin of WFUD noticed that the back door was ajar and announced that he was going in. Within minutes, the street was empty and the house was jammed with anchors and their cameramen elbowing for room to broadcast, but Leap had disappeared.
If you didn’t read Tuesday’s post, you might want to do so before you proceed. This week is on the subject apprenticeship literature.
Grosset and Dunlap was the most important publishing house of the twentieth century, in my opinion, because they provided literature for all the kids who didn’t have access to a library and didn’t have much money to spend. For a dollar or so, depending on the decade, you could buy books from any of a dozen or more series. This was before paperbacks made books affordable. If it weren’t for Grosset and Dunlap, I would not be a reader or writer today.
Grosset and Dunlap was almost synonymous with the Stratemeyer syndicate, which provided them with most of their titles. There were exceptions such as the Ken Holt series and the Rick Brant books. Ken Holt never appealed to me, but the Rick Brant books were the jewels of my childhood.
All of the G & D books carried pseudonyms as author. In books from Stratemeyer, this disguised the fact that they were works for hire, written to outlines which were usually provided by Stratemeyer himself. The Ken Holt books however (pseudonym Bruce Campbell) were all written by Sam and Beryl Epstein. The first three Rick Brant books (pseudonym John Blaine) were written by Peter Harkins and Harold Goodwin. The following twenty-one books were by Goodwin alone. (see also 60. Thank You, Harold Goodwin)
In other words, they had real authors, not poorly paid hacks, and it showed.
Relevant aside: Years ago I was attending a teachers’ conference, against my will. If you’ve never been at one, you don’t know what boredom means. I had settled into my normal conference stance of a calm face covering intense irritation at the endless stream of BS. The only bright spot was the keynote speaker, Steve Wozniak. When he came to the podium, he mentioned Rick Brant as a childhood influence.
I whooped. You could have heard me in the street. Then my face turned red. You see, I had never before heard anyone else mention my childhood favorite. This was before I had access to the internet; now I know that there are enough fans of the series to run a fair number of Rick Brant themed websites.
Rick Brant had the perfect life. His father was a noted scientist who lived and worked at home. Rick, his family, and his best friend Scotty all lived on Spindrift Island, which was the headquarters of a group of scientists and engineers. Zircon, Weiss, Briotti and others formed a cadre of the best uncle figures any boy ever had.
He was a junior member of the team. A member -not a mascot. He never outshone the scientists, but he pulled his own weight, mostly building electronic gadgets that the scientists had invented. This was during the electronic middle ages (first tubes, then transistors, then solid state), when a reader could go down to Radio Shack and buy the wherewithal to try his own hand at the trade.
Rick Brant was eighteen years old for 43 years, always working with his avuncular scientists and always learning. That’s good work if you can get it. During that time he went on dozens of expeditions throughout the world. He helped the Spindrift scientists launch a rocket to the moon, find a lost civilization, excavate a sunken temple – the list goes on for twenty-four books.
I so wanted to be Rick Brant.
A week is enough for now, but there are other authors that deserve attention, particularly Howard Pease. Someday soon, we’ll return to this subject.
I grew up in the fifties, when men were men and women were women, at least in the movies, sitcoms, books, and in the minds of the adults I knew.
Reality was a bit different, of course.
Since we didn’t have modern conveniences – for the first few years of my life we didn’t even have running water – just doing “women’s work” was a full time occupation. Still, when you are young and poor, as my parents were, you do what is needed. When we moved to what became the home farm, there were no fences. My mother and I (I was seven) put a fifty pound roll of barbed wire onto a crowbar and walked the quarter mile south boundary unrolling it, five times repeated, while my father set fence posts, tightened the strands with a block and tackle, and stapled up the wires.
Farm women did things like that whenever it was needed, but it wasn’t considered normal. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. Men had their work and women had theirs and crossing over was, if not abnormal, at least out of the ordinary.
I grew up. The fifties became the sixties. When women’s lib came along, I bought in 100%, but I still don’t criticize the old ways indiscriminately. They were a part of the way people made a living. Sometimes those customs made life unnecessarily hard on women – or men – but they weren’t without a basis in need.
The division of labor was also there in the books kids read. Boys read the Hardy Boys and girls read Nancy Drew.
The Hardy Boys worked for a living; they were detectives. But it always seemed more like play, and more like fantasy than reality. Tom Swift (Jr.) was worse; ten minutes at the drawing board and he would pass the plans on to the work force of Swift Enterprises. Three weeks later his rocket ship would be done. It felt like a portrayal of work designed for kids who had never worked, and who wouldn’t notice how fake it was. Frank and Joe and Tom weren’t kids at all. They were watered down, unrealistic pseudo-adults.
I’m sure there were plenty of books about kids living kid’s lives, with kid’s concerns, while their parents stayed in the background. I certainly read enough of those books after I became a teacher, but they never crossed my path when I was young. I don’t think they would have interested me if they had.
There was another kind of book that did interest me; fascinated me, in fact. You would not go far wrong if you called it apprenticeship literature. These were stories about young guys, usually in their teens, who wanted to become men. They worked. They learned from adults who knew the jobs the youngsters wanted to learn. They were young auto mechanics, or wipers in the engine room of a steam ship, or kids who did odd jobs at the air field so they could learn how to fly, or starry eyed young rocket engineers learning their trade.
I plan to spend the rest of the week on that kind of book.
