"Where the deer. . ." ii

 

You’ll find Smith County, Kansas, in the northern tier of counties, not all that far from Red Cloud, Nebraska, much-celebrated home of Willa Cather, yet another world-famous writer, a marvelous novelist whose bountiful book sales come nowhere near to the mega-thousands who could sing along with “Home on the Range” right now, with or without a fiddle or campfire.

Once upon a time Smith County, Kansas, became the dream of a pioneer doctor named, ingloriously, Brewster Higley--huge black beard atop a pair of wide square shoulders. Just imagine this, if you can—that man sitting outside a cave he’d just sculpted as his claim, the original "home on the range," that bear of a man sitting, alone, pen in hand, scribbling down verses as they came to him, gloriously describing, unmistakably, his brand new domicile in the west.

Oh! give me a gale of the Solomon vale,
Where the life streams with buoyancy flow;
Or the banks of the Beaver, where seldom if ever,
Any poisonous herbage doth grow.

Not all verses are universally beloved.

Dr. Brewster Higley is worth a novel himself, a man with a wonderful reputation for handling dozens of patients among the Kansas pioneers and, of all things, a poet, and a pioneer doctor, some believe—and not without reason—to have been a bit too interested in drinking what he’d carried in his own medicine bag, understandably, maybe—he had five wives (not at the same time).

Dr. Brewster Higley never made a dime on the hymn to the prairie the whole world sings. Nor did Daniel E. Kelly, Brewster Higley’s friend, a Civil War vet, the musician who first picked out a tune to carry Higley’s homage to the prairie.

Historians are pretty sure Kelly and Higley deserve the credit for America’s favorite hymn to the west, but neither made a dime on their most famous creation. The thing is, the ballad became popular so fast that it created a thousand variations almost immediately. How? Because everyone sang it, and not just cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, balladeers like Big Crosby and John Denver, just about everyone, including Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, and the Simpsons.

Tell you what. Next time you’re in Smith County, Kansas, follow US 36 to Athol, then follow the signs to the Home on the Range Cabin, where the good doctor lived after his homestead hole in the ground.

It’s the least we can do.

Home on the Range cabin

"Home on the Range"

 

Pure speculation on my part, but what I’m betting at this very moment is that all you have to do is repeat the three-word title I’m using today and whether or not you’re a musicians, those words unwind themselves in your imagination musically—I’m saying you sang the words even as  you read them, and  you did so because of such unshakeable familiarity that it’s just plain impossible for most adult Americans not to burst into song.

What song? An old hymn to the glories of the west, to the beauty and grace of our home out here in fly-over country.

“Oh, give me a home

Where the buffalo roam,

Where the deer and antelope play…”

You know the words darn well.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our only four-term President (‘33, height of the Depression to ‘45, end of Second World War) loved America’s hymn, even though Siouxlanders of his time would have called him a city slicker. It’s tough to imagine FDR sitting in front of a roaring fire in his office and, accompanied by staff, suddenly breaking into song. But it happened and more than once, a sing-along in the Oval Office, the whole gang, including Mr. President, in the lead.

With that kind of billing, “O Give Me a Home,” in 1934 sat comfortably  atop the nation’s top-40, numero uno. Among whom? Most all of America. Your particular origins were of no consequence; no matter how far you roamed from the shadow of Statue of Liberty, you sang it. As ordinary as Iowa mud—well, moreso.

Richard Byrd, the renowned explorer, claimed he sang “Home on the Range” more frequently than he would have liked to during his lonely six-month sojourn at the North Pole, especially when his phonograph froze up, forcing him to solo with nary the help of a harmonica. Penguins don’t like us reading their old reviews, but rumor has it they weren’t all that grand. The whole world knew that the homesickness for the plains that’s at the heart of a tune the whole world sings.

Where seldom is heard

A discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day.

You know. I know. We all know.

______________________

A little more tomorrow.

Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 32

 

“My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer”

Yesterday, I mowed my lawn. I thought it would be a quick job because I’d done it less than week before. I am not one of those Dutch folk who believe that “cleanliness is next to Godliness” is found somewhere in Leviticus. But in summer, when I spend hours and hours in the basement clicking computer keys, come mid- to late afternoon I love to get outside and do some honest, sweaty labor in the vineyard of our backyard, where we don’t, of course, have a vineyard.

Yesterday, the grass out front was long enough to call in the sheep. So I mowed, and the clippings—our yard is thick with maple seed whirlybirds right now—filled up the bed of my son-in-law’s big pick-up. The rainfall this spring has been magnificent.

By late July, I likely won’t be able to walk barefoot on my grass because what’s left will be yellowed cactus points. By July, I’ll cut the lawn once every three weeks at best, and then mostly weeds, the only verdure that prospers once the rains stop.

Only once in the near-fifty years that I’ve lived here have I seen a black cloud rolling in, a storm of dust. Only once. But that day I won’t forget because it prompted fear from a memory I don’t have—a vision from the Dust Bowl that turned prairie into the Sahara not all that far west from here.

By November, 1933, dust storms had roared by for years already, in the middle of a drought that went on for ten years. People were actually accustomed to hacking up mud from their throats, to enclosing drinking water in Mason jars to keep it from turning brown, even in the house, to knead bread inside drawers drawn just wide enough to allow their hands inside.

But what came on Armistice Day that November was like nothing else.

In 1923, about two hours northwest of here, a man named A. Karstrom retired and went to town, leaving his son the 470-acre spread that made Mr. Karstrom a good living. What followed was thirteen progressively bad years and the Black Blizzard, which broke his son’s heart and back, the air an image of midnight. In the heat and dust, the farm blew away. Four years later, a new owner took over a place that hadn’t been lived and moved five tons of sand from the acreage. Five tons. That’s how dry it was just northwest of here in 1933. That’s how lifeless.

The NIV, in verse four, holds on to a bit of what the KJV used to say. “My moisture is turned into the drought of summer” has been changed to “my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” Sapped is the link, as if the sap, the fluid, of David’s soul has dried up by the torturous heat of his own sin and misery. What’s in him is drought, dust. When he looks up from his anguish, all he sees is a black blizzard.

His spirit and strength is as lifeless as that Karstrom farm. Even if the weather turns, he can’t move in the tons of choking dust that rises in his heart and throat.

What he needs is someone to carry away all those tons of dust, to bring him back, to refresh him with living water.

And that’s the story of Psalm 32, his story and ours. Black blizzards turned miraculously verdant by the living water of God’s own forgiveness. That’s the story all right.

Me and politics ii

In 2007 I wasn't ready to sign into anyone's campaign, wasn't particularly "political," but I loved the idea of a black man getting even close to the Presidency. Besides, it appeared that this particular  candidate had no scandals connected to him, carried a background in community organizing, and loved basketball. I'm quite sure I noticed the t-shirt in one of those pop-up ads that come unrequested from the internet, and liked the idea of this one--a sort of football jersey thing. 

I don't remember how much it cost, but I'm guessing it wasn't cheap--and it's a good one. I gambled that its subtlety would make it wearable in Sioux County, Iowa--or so I believed. After all, it didn't just blast out his name; it seemed, first of all, a jersey, and then a political statement.

In 2007 I was edging close to retirement and going over to the college gym early in the morning, along with other colleagues and other emeriti. I don't know that I would have worn that shirt to the downtown mall or a church picnic, but the gym was sparsely populated so early in the morning. I wasn't sure all my friends' eyes were even open.

I was wrong. Two colleagues ripped at me and my shirt, were not only open about their disapproval but voluble in what seemed their hate for Obama. I don't know that either of them said it in their summary anger, but today I'm quite sure their anti-Obama vehemence grew from his toleration of abortion, not his race. At least I'd like to think that was the truth. Whatever their specific motivation, I wasn't accustomed to being slaughtered in public--in front of others--by old friends who thought an Obama t-shirt an abomination, an outright sin. Ripped, screamed at, scolded--one of the prophets of doom was a woman, the other a man. Their whippings happened at different times and different spots in the gym, but both were very public. 

Their shocking fusillades made me more of an Obama supporter, but I didn't wear that t-shirt to early morning workouts again.

Just a couple of mornings later, I happened to come away from the workout with another retiree, the just-retired President of the college, who'd heard part of one of those Jeremiads. "Just thought you'd like to know," he said, whispered, as if we were behind enemy lines, "Louise and I think you're right, but it's not something I can say publicly." I was being commended.

That made me even more sure that my jersey was a good buy.

On January 3, 2008, I caucused for Barack Obama in the traditional Iowa way, by walking over to the side of the room those in charge had set off for the Obama supporters. Most of my liberal friends caucused for John Edwards, who would nosedive soon after. 

As everyone knows, that  night was a huge and unexpected win for the skinny Obama, and I still have the t-shirt. It's been a pj for all of these years so it's in great shape. 

And today, I'm a registered Democrat.

Me and politics -- 1

I'm quite sure everyone we knew in Arizona was Republican--shoot, even the liberals were Republican, as was the newspaper, the Arizona Republic. The Goldwater effect was very much alive, as was the man with dark-rimmed glasses. In the community where we lived, it was just about impossible to be a Democrat. Besides, my family was Republican, so I'd never done much thinking when it came to politics. The truth?--I'm embarrassed by how conservative I was back then,  but then so was everybody else.

So when we moved to Iowa, I told myself it was time--new place, new times, new rootedness--to participate in American political system, so I did. The Sioux County Republicans were meeting at TePaske Theater on some Thursday night that bicentennial fall, so I went, alone, and sat somewhere  in the back. I was a conservative, but I no right-winger. I'd attended a meeting of the local John Birch Society when I was in high school, a strangely clandestine gathering in the top floor of a lakefront mansion in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, maybe a dozen people who sat around watching a slide/tape program (remember those?) of shots featuring Martin Luther King shaking hands with men who were supposedly known communists. This was Wisconsin, after all, and blood from Sen. McCarthy's whacko hack jobs still pooled in the sandy soil hither and yon.

What I witnessed in TePaske Theater in August, 1976, was a political convention that made me ill because the dialogue was pretty much the same as it was in that little meeting in the lakefront mansion a decade ago. Men--I don't remember seeing any women--would raise their hands and contribute comments drawn from what seemed to me to be Depression-era sentiment. I wanted no part of it. My first political visit in our new home in Iowa was also my last. 

To say it turned me into a Democrat would be presumptive. I would have asked the age-old question back then about tigers changing stripes. It was impossible to think of myself as a Democrat. I didn't know my grandfathers' political leanings, but I knew I didn't have to ask--they were thoroughly Republican, as was my dad. I couldn't have thought of myself as Democratic. They were liberals, the sworn enemy for most of my life.

In the following years I tried to avoid party labels. I voted for McGovern, the prairie populist who promised to end the Vietnam war; but then I went Republican during the Bush years, trying to stay like W and his father somewhere close to the middle.

By '08, I'd had enough conservatism, enough tiddly-winks with wedge issues, enough clap-trap from the conservative world to make me look left, where I saw and heard someone who appeared out of nowhere, a guy with a horrible name that most conservatives opposed, not because he was black--of course, not because he was black. Of course. 

When the Iowa caucuses came around early in 2008, I'm not sure I had a political affiliation, but I had decided opinions, and those opinions formed around two particular candidates, this black guy with the awful name and, of all things, a woman named Hillary. But before the rise of anyone to the top, there were more candidates, including a liberal from New Mexico, Bill Richardson, and John Edwards, a politician a bald guy like me couldn't trust because he had such perfect hair.

___________________ 

Tomorrow--memories of the '08 race.

"Field of Dreams"

It went something like this, I guess. The filmmakers started with sixty pictures of Iowa farms thought to be possibilities for making this movie. What they wanted, of course, was endless cornfields where there was the fairly substantial promise that the crop would come up tall and healthy, and where, out west of the place ("if you build it, they will come") gorgeous sunsets would delight the evening sky. 

So, the story goes that the woman appointed to do the choosing, a woman named Sue Reidel, got to a photograph of the Lansing farmstead, down a lonely gravel road, and, just like that, went for it--"perfect." The truth is that they trucked in water early that summer, pulled it all the way from Lake Michigan, because they needed to be sure that the corn that season would reach optimum height. Otherwise, once the decision was made, the Lansing place started to take shape as a baseball diamond.

The man who wrote the book Shoeless Joe that became the movie is a Canadian writer named W. P. Kinsella, who went on to have a successful career as a novelist and died ten years ago already. The story, the novel, and the film all employ what people call magical realism--no, gangs of dead baseball players didn't come walking out of the corn like they do so gracefully in the movie. That's magic realism.

Thursday night, the Minnesota Twins will face off against the Philadelphia Phillies, real, live professional teams, not spirits or ghosts or fantasies. Tickets are long gone, but Netflix will put the game up for those of us who can't make it all the way across the state. 

That t-shirt at the top of the page is mine, purchased for me by an old friend who told me some time in the 90s that he was taking his family out east and stopping at Dyersville just to see "the field of dreams." He was just eccentric enough to do that, so I told him, jokingly, to pick me up a t-shirt. He did. 

Sometime later, this old friend was killed on a Sioux Center street when struck by a truck. That death--and something of his life--is somewhere in it, a stain in the old t-shirt only my eyes can see. It can't be removed. It's not just another t-shirt. It's been with me for decades.

Anyway, I'll be watching Thursday night. 

A Joey photo shoot*

It was the kind of little shack that had no use whatsoever. It stood behind their house, just off the alley out back, and when the old retired farmer and his wife decided, once and for all, to get rid of the thing, someone came along, picked it up, and hauled it off.

Unearthing thereby a nest of opossums suddenly turned up, four or five joeys (little possums) totally incapable of escaping the back of the old lady's spade. Our kids were kids, and they were out back, witness to the carnage. The old woman showed no mercy. They came home heavy with grief, anger, and total disbelief.

Me? They were only opossums.

I hit one with our brand-new, silver '64 Impala, just weeks after getting my license. I was driving a party of teenagers around to school that night, on our way to the prom, specially selected as cool sophomore servers. I know exactly where I hit that beady-eyed beast--it was just a couple miles from Hingham. Whack! Thump! All night long I heard that sound. That death haunted the prom. And it was only an opossum.

Truth is, I've often wondered what kind of joke the Lord perpetuated on us when he created the opossum, ugly rooters with eerie pink hands and a fleshy pig snout to match. What a mistake. 

When I was no older than my kids were that day in the alley, I saw one shot dead. I was out on a trap line with a loving man the prototype for the father in my first novel, Home Free. 

His father gave him the flashlight, aimed, and squeezed the trigger of the .22. The shot was muffled, silenced. They stood there, waiting for the motion to cease. The animal pawed at its forehead, at the perfect hole between its eyes, as if somehow it could scratch out the lead. "Possum," his father had said, as if it were some kind of eulogy.

My words, my sentences, years ago, drawn from my childhood experience of the first murder I'd ever seen. But it was only a 'possum.

So 'possums and me, we've got enough of a history, enough for me to recognize this little one coming up the trail toward me yesterday (see him up top?) on a sunny winter solstice afternoon. I knew 'possums didn't see well, and the wind was at his back, not mine. So I stood still, camera in hand, while Joey snooted around along the well-traveled back road along the river. 

In fact, kept coming at me as if I weren't there, kept coming until I barked at him to let him know that I wasn't just some cottonwood. He snarled a little and wiggled off--opossums come from the factory with only low gear. 

So I shot this little one with a camera, walked back home, and opened the files. 

Now pardon me for giggling. But what I found is a regular portrait gallery. It was as if Joey is coming up on graduation, and he or she wanted a senior portrait. I might not have chosen the season (first day of winter) or the place (a foot of snow on a river bank), but this Joey in buffalo coat was determined. I don't know why I say it, but this he has got to be a she. 

So here's Joey, class of '17, River Floyd High. She needs something comely for the high school annual. I'll send her proofs today. I know where to find her. 

Got a favorite? Here's a sexy little peek-a-boo.

This one left her a bit more exposed. Darling pose though, isn't it?

Got a couple of her outside the weeds too.

Tried something full body, with less than wonderful results. That winter fur makes you think her roots are gray. They are, I guess. But I'm thinking there's something in this pose a little cheeky for a high school girl, don't you think? But then, nowadays. . .

My favorite? Something close up, even though I think I'd have preferred a bit of powder on her nose.

Now at least she's got possibilities. I hope she's not too picky--she didn't seem to be yesterday. 

I swear I always thought the Creator of Heaven and Earth simply released possums out into the world about a week or so before he had the design down. 

But I've got to admit it--this Joey is almost cute. 

________________________________

*from December 21, 2016