It's impossible to avoid the inherent deception of the interview process. You've got split loyalties. At once, a writer needs to buddy up with subjects. If you want a great story, you're not going to get it by berating the subject or treating him or her like chopped liver. You have to like your subject, even if it isn't easy. And he or she has to like you.
Every time you turn on the tape recorder or the voice recording app on your phone, you announce that whatever is now going to happen isn't solely a friendly visit. You make clear it's not just him or her you're after; you've got more in mind. You wear two hats, and you 're always a carpetbagger. You ride in on flashy white horse--the writer!--by hook and by crook, you grab what you can in the time that you got, then you get back on that horse and get out of town. You're a carpetbagger, who needs to do and say most anything he or she can to get the story, because finally, when all's said and done, what you want out of interview is the story. It's always number one.
I don't know that I would have said what I just did when I was in Emo that weekend for a youth retreat--and dance. I don't know because it was something I had to learn through the course of the interviews I did. If there's an edge to what I just described, it results from the inherent guile of the process. I was always after the story because I had two masters--subject and story, the people I interviewed and the readers I served.
For years after that series ran and were collected in a book, every Christmas there would be a card from an elderly woman whose story I did because it seemed to me that every church had someone like her, an unrelenting prayer warrior, an ancient really, a saint. For years after I did that interview, this wise and gentle lady in a head scarf would send a card that always included the same note--"stop by for coffee sometime." She meant it.
She lived a day away. I could have made a three-day trip out of it, but I honestly didn't have that kind of time. I was teaching full-time, writing when I could, and trying to be a husband and father. I can't help thinking that if you're doing the kind I did, you can't help but fall for the subject, or him or her for you.
It's understandable. How many times in 75 years are people given three or four or five hours to piece together the story of their lives? If ever, not often. I'd enter people's lives, notebook in hand, and ask men to give me everything they could of themselves. If they did, what happened was often rich with intimacy.
I didn't get back to the lady who sent cards, but I did get back to Emo, generally to speak for some event going on just above the border. Once one of the Veldhuisen boys, now a man, took me out in a boat to watch the local tribe pull walleye from gill nets, legal because the fishermen were Native. I went to a lodge where a barrel or two were delivered and men were cleaning them in the light of a few naked bulbs.
Once three of us from Iowa went fishing, rented a cabin and a boat and went out on nearby Rainy Lake, a gorgeous place, had a great time that probably couldn't have been better had any one of us knew anything about fishing. Somewhere I have three pictures, one of each of us holding the same walleye, the only one we caught. We visited church on Sunday, and met once again some of the kids who still lived in the Emo area and were no longer kids. Always, the welcome mat was out.
There were Septembers when Nick and Johanna would come to Iowa to bring another of their kids to Dordt College. Sometimes, they'd stop by. Once in a while I'd look a new class roster and spot one of the kids or then, eventually, grandkids.
It may well be that of all the people who gave me their lives, their stories, I saw the Veldhuisens, the originals, more than any others. They were first, after all, and I don't think any of them ever forget seeing their mother on the cover of the Banner.
I don't remember how it was I found out about Mom and Dad Veldhuisen's deaths. Nick died first, Johanna sometime later. But when Mom died, I couldn't help feeling that with everything they'd given me, I should head up north again to attend the funeral. Should carries the crisp edge of guilt, as if my going back to Emo was something someone required of me. It wasn't. I honestly wanted to attend. Let me use the old line because it fits snugly--"I wanted to pay my respects."
When I told a good friend and colleague, a man with an immigrant Canadian boyhood, a man who'd been to Emo, he insisted. So we went, the two of us. I called or sent a note--I don't remember which--and told them we'd be coming. We reserved a room in a local motel and left.
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Tomorrow: the Visitation.
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