Part 3: Southern Jail

Intimidation by the Madison County Sheriff
by Charlie Leck

This is Part Three of a series written for my youngest child.
She wants me to remember the sixties and write about
them for her – especially my involvement in the civil
rights movement of that decade. So, I will do that in a
series of essays here on my blog.

The conversation with the gentlemanly, white dentist had not gone well. Clearly, we were not seeing eye to eye on these matters about the social customs of the south and southern hospitality. We were less concerned about southern hospitality and more concerned about social injustice and matters of equality. We were outside the dentist's office, standing in downtown Canton, just across from the court house, trying to get oriented. The gentlemanly dentist had hoped his remarks would cause us to take the next train out of town and back to the north. After having met Angelina Davis, I was more convinced than ever to stick it out. David and I told Doctor Nelson and John about her and the lovely children. The two of them had got twin beds in a comfortable room in the house of an elderly black couple.

John suggested we had work to do. We'd better get back to Freedom House and get going! Boldly, he led the way. Somehow John had become our captain in those first two days. He was a native of Memphis and he had something left of a southern accent even though he'd lived in the north for more than a decade. He seemed to be able to lead our communications with the white gentry of the south. And, he had a better internal, geographic compass than the rest of us. He knew the way back to Freedom House and he waved at us to follow him.

It was a quiet morning with no congestion or traffic of any sort. It was already growing hot. We were standing in the middle of a downtown block, each of us in coat and tie, looking like slightly lost northern gentlemen. Our leader headed out across the street toward the court house. As lemmings, we followed him. As we arrived at the curb on the other side of the street, Deputy Sheriff Fullmer was waiting for us and announced that we were under arrest for jay walking. Wouldn't we kindly follow him to the Sheriff's office? Naturally, we protested the silliness of the charge, pointing out the utter lack of any traffic or movement in the entire downtown region. Nevertheless, he instructed us to follow him.

We were gently urged into a couple of jail cells and told we would need to wait for the Sheriff's return from an appointment. He wanted to talk to us about obeying the law in Canton. Our cell doors were not locked and the four of us found places to sit down and await the Sheriff. Each of us had a sense of anger and fear mingling with a touch of absurdity and humor.

In only moments, the Sheriff arrived and asked us to come with him to his office. He led us down a narrow hallway and into his spacious headquarters. Four chairs were neatly lined up across from his desk. The sheriff sat down behind his desk and invited us to sit in the chairs out in front of him. He tilted his chair backwards on only its two rear legs, and leaned his back against the wall. He had a black, leather billy-club in one hand and he gently slapped it into the palm of his other hand as he spoke to us.

We had to be stupid, he let us know, if we didn't realize that, for two reasons, we were going to be carefully watched while in his county. One reason was that we were seen as potential trouble makers, stirring up a hornet's nest of problems. The other was for our own safety, in an attempt to protect us from many of the white folks in the county who might like to do us harm.

"Y'all realize that's there's jest no word about your fellow rabble rousers who disappeared on Sunday night. They seem to have just vanished and I speck that they're in a heap of trouble. The same, y'all know it could happen to y'all jest as well."

The club was slapping more loudly into the palm of his hand now, making a very audible cracking sound. I had Mickey Schwerner on my mind a lot. I had a feeling he met up with someone just like this idiot who was trying so hard to intimidate us. We hoped to God that he and James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were still alive, though we knew in our souls that they were not. It would have taken some mighty fanciful thinking to imagine there would be no more violence in Mississippi during the remainder of the summer. We knew in our souls that there would be more. One only had to look at this Sheriff and watch how he slapped that heavy piece of steel into his hand.

"It'd be far better for y'all and for all of us'n, too, if y'all would jest get on the afternoon train and go back home. It's not often that we're not sociable and hospitable and welcoming, but this here is one of them times. I'm mighty afraid some harm is goin' to come to y'all if you stick around here."

The slapping sound was even more distinct as he paused and looked intently from one to the other of us. He appeared to be looking for a weakness. He pointed the tip of the leather club at me.

"You, I hear, are a hot-head. You use obscene language as well. We don't take to talk like that in our community, especially when conversing with gentlemen."

The Sheriff returned to rhythmically slapping the leather wrapped hunk of metal into the palm of his hand. He glared at me intently, waiting for an answer. I sat silently and tried not to blink. I did. He looked away, to Doctor Nelson. The professor looked like the most mature and rational of us all and, perhaps, he might have seemed like our weak link as well. He wasn't.

"Sir, can't you talk some sense into these young men. Y'all comin' here in your suits, and ties and fancy polished shoes, are just given a general blessin' to all these young goons who're takin' over our town and stirrin' up our Negras."

There it was – that paternalistic expression again. I felt the heat rise up in me and my face burned hot. David, sitting next to me, put a hand on my arm and pressed downward, signaling me to stay cool. The Sheriff knew already about my encounter in the dentist's office. He may also have known the very phrase that riled me up. I forced myself to stay calm even though I wanted to scream at the son-of-a-bitch. I wanted to slam a fist down on his desk and ask him who made all the black folks in the county "his Negras."

The Sheriff was expecting it of me and I think he was disappointed that I resisted. Public obscenity was probably a crime in Madison County, punishable by months in prison.

"Now listen up," the Sheriff said, as if he might be a drill sergeant in boot camp, "Depaty Fullmer is gunna hand out some identity cards. We got a new law on the books that visitors to our county who plan to stay more'an two days has to fill one out, give us a copy and then have the original on them at all times."

"Identity cards?" Doctor Nelson asked in surprise. "That doesn't sound very American or very constitutional. It sounds more like something we'd expect of the Soviets."

The professor knew that a comparison of southern gentry to the communists, who they so feared and hated, would touch a sore spot in the Sheriff. It did. The big man's face reddened and he visibly fought to control his temper.

"This is for y'all's own protection," he said crisply. "We don't want nothin' to happen to y'all like happened to those poe kids up'n Meridian. We want to know where y'all are stayin' so we can give y'all more security."

"It seems more like an invasion of our privacy," Doctor Nelson replied firmly. "Perhaps it's also an invasion of the privacy of the people with whom we are staying. Perhaps it puts our hosts in danger, too. I'd like to protest such a procedure."

"My, oh, my," the Sheriff said with great sarcasm, "ain't that purdy talkin' now. Well, sir, protest all y'all want, but y'alls gonna fill 'em out or y'alls gonna sit y'alls fannies down in the jail cells 'til y'all do." He cracked the billy-club on the top of his desk for emphasis.

[I kept my identity card for many years. It's probably still in some drawer or box somewhere, but I've not been able to find it].

So, this was the closed society that James Silver had written so powerfully about. The threat we were posing was immense and white Mississippi was scrambling around, trying to figure out what to do to protect itself against open voting. This closed society honestly believed that black citizens might no longer be slaves, but they weren't entirely free either. They certainly were not so free that they could determine public policy through their participation in elections. The concept of identity cards was stupid both on the surface and as any kind of strategy to stop us. Intimidation was the only weapon left in white Mississippi and it wasn't a very good weapon. The power of the black vote was on the horizon and the Sheriff of Madison County could see it. In fact, before 1965 only 6.7 percent of Mississippi's eligible black voters were registered. By 1988, thanks to the kick-start of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project, nearly 75 percent were registered.

We each filled out our identity cards. Copies were made of them. David nor I had any idea what our street address at Angelina's was. The Sheriff told us that was no problem. He knew where we were staying. With great cynicism he recited the address so we could copy it down on our identity cards.

I wanted so desperately to confront the buffoonish Sheriff. I wanted to tell him that his job was in jeopardy. The day would be coming when a black man would be elected Sheriff of Madison County.

In 2008 it is nearly impossible to imagine the power of a sheriff in virtually any Mississippi county, or of the state's highway patrol, in 1964. These law enforcement officers were, for all practical purposes, an arm of the infamous White Citizen Council, a plain and simple and violently racist vigilante operation. As Ben Bagdikian writes in his article, Returning to Mississippi.

"At that time,… it was just as dangerous when in a "mixed" car (carrying both whites and blacks) to be followed by the patrol cruiser as by the Klan or the many Klan-like vigilantes. …the sheriff of Holmes County was notorious for being an enforcer of segregation and a danger to the life and limb of civil rights workers from the north and to the colored people who cooperated with them."
http://www.reportingcivilrights.org/perspectives/bagdikian.jsp

Bagdikian returned to Mississippi in 2002 and stopped to visit the Sheriff of Holmes County and found himself in the presence of a black man. Would it have happened without the Mississippi Voter Registration Project of 1964 or the Federal Voting Right Act of 1965? I think not.

END: Part Three

Next: Working the Streets in Mississippi's Closed Society(Part Four)

Part Five: Getting out into rural Mississippi and Praying for Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner

Part Six: Saying Goodbye to Angelina and Back Home on the Speaking Circuit

Part 2: Remembering the Sixties

Sharing the bed of Angelina Davis
by Charlie Leck

This is Part Two of a series written for my youngest child.
She wants me to remember the sixties and write about
them for her – especially my involvement in the civil
rights movement of that decade. So, I will do that in a
series of essays here on my blog. You can begin with
the first part of the series by going to
Remembering the Sixties: Part One

22 June 1964

"I believe you gentlemen should try with more diligence to understand our customs. We are not like a northern city or town and we are proud of the sense of hospitality and courtesy that pervades our community."

We were chatting with a dentist in Canton, Mississippi. The conversation had been arranged by the Chamber of Commerce. We were considered the more mature of the northern visitors who had invaded their city and their goal was to talk some sense into our heads. The man appeared to be a kindly, sincere fellow of portly build and nattily dressed. He was very soft spoken and had laid out coffee and delicate baked goods for us.

Doctor Nelson spoke up for us: "We have no quarrel about matters of hospitality and courtesy, Dr. Barrett. We find you folks of the south to be impeccably polite. We are in your community because of matters of injustice and inequality."

"We believe deeply about equality, sir," the dentist replied. "Our strategy, however, is one of separate but equal. Black folk and white folk have precisely equal facilities. It is a matter of deep custom that we discourage a mingling of the races and interpersonal relations with our Negras."

The four of us were left rather aghast. We had actually heard this distinguished man say it. David was red in the face, but he tried to control himself.

"Are you expecting us to be fools, sir? We spoke yesterday with a woman in a neighborhood not far from here who had a bomb thrown into her front yard because she had volunteered to house some of the volunteer workers who were arriving in your community. Do you call this discouraging a mingling of the races? Discourage, sir?"

"Well, I know about the lady of whom you speak and I must say that some of our citizens do get rather worked up about violations of these customs we hold to. I would call those fellows rather radical in their behavior; however, Miss Davis should know better because she is well aware of the customs of the south. Her kind of behavior belongs in Chicago or New York. This is a woman with a household of children that she cannot afford and husbands or uncles, or something of the nature, who just keep passing through. She then expects the welfare system to support her and her little ones. This is not what America is all about – at least not what it was meant to be all about."

I had removed a bite of cinnamon doughnut from my mouth for fear I might choke on it. I was brushing sugar from my chin and my face was flushed with rage. I felt my hands tremble.

"She is a human being, sir, who your social customs have treated more like an animal. She has been cut off from opportunity and lives rather hopelessly. She is a lost soul because of your fucking social customs and phony southern hospitality."

My dear ethics professor reddened in his face at my insolence and spoke up quickly, trying to calm the moment.

"I hope you'll excuse Charles. He's rather upset at the signs of racial injustice and inequality we've seen here. We don't doubt your sincerity in these matters, but we deeply believe you are incorrect about things being equal for both races. Your practices – carefully planned practices – of denying the vote to those of the black race are all too obvious for us. We thought equality in America began with equality at the ballot box. That is why we are here, Doctor. It is precisely because of inequality in voter registration. We are not going to delve into other matters. Our goal will be to see to it that the black people of your community are fairly registered to vote and we will then try to teach them how to exercise that important right of all citizens."

The conversation droned on. The dentist remained under extraordinary control, but he was not really hearing anything we were saying. He did plead with us to leave his community before there was more violence. He assured us we had enough problems of racial inequality and injustice in our own communities to keep us busy for a long, long time. We agreed with him about that matter, but assured him that the national focus – the eyes of the nation – was at this moment on the State of Mississippi and its closed society (as James Silver called it in his book, Mississippi: The Closed Society).

Politeness hung in the air and drenched all of our words as we parted. I apologized for my outburst and my request for forgiveness was accepted. I knew, however, that I was now identified as the "hair trigger" in the group.

I could excuse myself, I supposed, because of a poor night's sleep the evening before. David and I had been dropped off at the home of Angelina Davis early in the evening. We'd first had a good dinner of ribs and chicken at a barbeque restaurant, owned by a black family, to which George Washington III had taken us. He told David and I what to expect at Angelina's home. She would do everything in her power to make us comfortable. He told us of the bombing of a few nights before. The thrown explosive had landed in the front yard, a few feet from her bedroom window, and had shaken the house. He was proud of her courage. She continued to be committed to housing us.

Angelina greeted us warmly. Five little children – black as blackness can be –were keeping their distance from us. They were wide-eyed and occasionally giggled nervously. They must have found our pale, colorless skin quite awful. I could almost see them wondering why it wins us any more honored place in society than their own rich, dark complexion. Angelina instructed the oldest girl, probably nine or ten, to show us to the bedroom. As she did, she explained that it was her mom's room. Where would her mom sleep? With the children in the other bedroom! We found Angelina in her tiny kitchen, preparing a pitcher of ice tea for us. We protested about taking her bedroom and we offered to sleep in the living room, on the floor. She wouldn't hear of it. She insisted. It would be safer in the back of the house any way, she joked.

David and I were both uncomfortable about sharing a bed. He courageously volunteered to take the side near the window, closest to the little crater in the front yard. During the night each of us clung to his own particular edge. Rigid and stiff, I slept poorly through most of the night. Every little, strange noise caused me to sit up and scan my surroundings. As daylight broke, however, I was sleeping soundly on my back when I felt something creeping across my uncovered chest. I rose up in fear, expecting to find a giant spider or tarantula about to strike. Instead I saw a little black boy standing by the bedside. His fingers were resting gently on my chest. His eyes were wide with fear when I jumped, but they relaxed when I smiled at him. I realized that he was probably touching a white person for the first time in his life. He was awfully curious about my strange skin. He didn't resist when I lifted him onto the bed and put him between a suddenly awakened David and me. David bounced in the bed and made the boy fly upwards and land on his tummy. We all began rough-housing and laughing far too loudly. Before long the other children were standing in the doorway, peering in at us, only slightly frightened for their brother.

Our first, real day of work in Mississippi was about to begin. Morning had broken in an enjoyable way.

END PART TWO

NEXT: Intimidation by the Madison County Sheriff

Remembering the Sixties

Part One:
Riding on the Spirit of New Orleans
by Charlie Leck

One of my daughters – the youngest one – asked for a strange
holiday gift this year. She wants me to remember the sixties
and write about them for her – especially my involvement in
the civil rights movement of that decade. So, I will do that in
a series of essays here on my blog.

The United Airlines plane landed in Chicago, at the O'Hare Airport. I had flown first class because I booked at the last moment and couldn't get a coach seat. First class travel in those days was a real luxury. United Airlines called it "Red Carpet Service." I was twenty-three years old and had never had a drink of hard liquor. Not knowing the names of drinks very well, I could only call to memory a martini, and that's what I asked for. It burned going down and my head spun a bit from it, but I also felt a rush of relaxation. The flight was the last bit of luxury I would see for a while. From the airport, I grabbed a train downtown and then a cab out to the south side Illinois Central Railroad Station. The two guys with whom I was to travel were waiting outside on the big, concrete stairway that led up to the station. One of them was puffing nervously on a cigarette. I had worried so much about being late. They had taken the train down to Chicago and waited patiently for me to arrive. I can't even remember why I couldn't join them on the train, but something important must have been happening in the family and I had to delay my departure.

It was 1964. It was summer. The weather reports from Mississippi were not promising and neither were the news reports. It was very hot there. We were going to roll into a very uncomfortable place.

Our destination was the town of Canton. Our assignment was to be the eyes and ears of the voter registration movement in that city and throughout Madison County. I was a student in graduate school. I was considered old enough and mature enough to be assigned as a monitor, to observe and supervise the work of the northern college students who were converging on Mississippi. A national program was underway, targeting Mississippi, to register black citizens to vote. The state had used every technicality of the law and of administrative procedure to deny such registration to blacks. Our program, a combined effort of several of the major black civil rights organizations and mainly of Martin Luther King, Junior, intended to break the back of those procedures.

We were traveling on the famous Illinois Central train, The City of New Orleans. We'd roll along the rails throughout the night and arrive in Canton in the heat of the day. We settled into the club car and ordered some cold beer. My traveling companions were Doctor James Nelson, PhD., one of my professors, and the Reverend John Fisher, the Director of Social and Community Ministry for the United Church of Christ in Minnesota. Soon after we began sipping our beers, we met another member of our team, a pastor from an Illinois community south of Chicago. I'll call him David, though his actual name has escaped me after all these years. Somewhere, stuffed in one of these drawers or in a box pushed to the back of some closet, I have a diary of those days in Mississippi. It would likely reveal David's real name to me. I wrote a long novel in the late sixties and early seventies in which David is one of the main characters. It's also shoved in a box in the back of some closet.

As the train rolled south, we'd try to occasionally grab some sleep in the reclining seats of the passenger car to which we were assigned; however, unable to sleep because of the heat in the train, the crying of little babes wanting to nurse, and because of the anticipation of the problems that we would soon encounter, we'd end up together back in the club car. We could hear the rails singing in the heat and the loud squealing they would emit whenever the engineer applied any brake at all to his big, diesel locomotive.

The popular song about the train by Steve Goodman was to come along in the next decade, and it described to perfection the mood and atmosphere on the train that moved through the night. Goodman wrote the entire song on a trip aboard the train. This famous train was scheduled to disappear and Goodman thought the song might be used by the protestors who were trying to save it. Soon after, Arlo Guthrie recorded the song and won many awards for it, and rejuvenated the futile fight to save the service used by so many poor people.

Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm you native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

…Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor.

And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel.
Mothers with their babes asleep,
Are rockin' to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel

Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm you native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

Nightime on the City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.
But all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.

How, when I heard Guthrie sing it years later, the song brought back the memory of this nervous, deliberative night! The train raced southward "through the Mississippi darkness." My heart beat recognizably. The air conditioning was totally dysfunctional. The odor of stale perspiration assailed me. I wondered if it were mine or from other passengers sitting nearby. My hands felt clammy. My shirt stuck to me. My feet burned. I was having second thoughts about the journey. The train rocked. Passengers, mostly African-Americans, stirred and rose to walk the aisles. The toilets stunk. I could see a tremble in my hands. My mouth and throat were dry. My thirst was slaked well enough. It was the dryness of fright that assailed my mouth.

The morning broke across the Mississippi countryside and I knew we were ever so close to Canton, a town named after its Chinese counterpart half way around the world – exactly opposite each other on the globe. "Dig a hole straight down, fellas, and yed' still be in Canton when yed' come out on th'other end!" It would be my summer home. On this very night, somewhere out in the hot, Mississippi darkness, Mickey Schwerner, Michael Goodman and James Chaney were assailed and murdered and their burned-out station wagon was left in the swamps of Bogue Chitto. It would be over a month later before their bodies were discovered. Had I known their fate, I'm sure I would have turned back.

The train slowed and the conductors strode down the aisles of the passenger cars calling out the name of the town.

"Canton. Canton next!"

I have never been so consumed by fear. Now I knew it was my own stale, fearful body that I smelled. Something crawled across the surface of my flesh. It was the explosive sensation of fright arousing my adrenal glands. My travel companions were pale as they moved toward the exits of the car. The train crept slowly and then jerked to a halt. Jet black conductors swung open the doors and placed a step on the pavement for us. They offered their white-gloved hands to help us step down. Their eyes held a warning glance and their heads jerked just slightly to the side, warning us that white men were observing our debarkation.

It was a blunder to look over toward the spectators. Nevertheless, I did. Their faces were as stiff and solid as stone and they looked intently and hatefully at us. I jerked my eyes and head away from them and followed my companions to the station. A pay phone hung on the wall. We had a number to call, to request a pick up. After the call was made we moved toward a waiting room. A sign above it said, "Whites Only!" Offended, we stopped and looked at each other and then down the platform to another waiting room for "Colored Only!" We were honor-bound to move toward it, passing separate drinking fountains for white and colored. Feeling the need to demonstrate our mission, each of the four of us took a long draw from the fountain for "Colored Only!" Our observers were deadly silent. Deadly! We stepped into the waiting room that black people had to use.

A police officer walked to the waiting room and quietly opened the door and slipped in. He stood silently, observing us. The more mature fellows stared back at him. I looked down at the big pistol holster on his hip and the shiny, black billy-club that hung from his belt.

"Gentlemen," the officer spoke softly, "y'all are violatin' the important traditions of our community and of the southern states. Y'all should be in the other waitin' room, down the platform."

None of us budged. The law enforcer pawed the floor with his shoe.

"Frankly," he said in a deeply southern drawl, "y'all would be very wise to catch the northbound train that will come through here late this afternoon, and return to your northern homes and loved ones. This, unfortunately, is not now a safe place. I am sure you have not yet heard the rumors that three northern boys, much like yourselves, have disappeared. You are not really safe here. It would be a shame for your families if something were to happen to any one of you gentlemen."

He paused, waiting for us to make a reply. I followed the lead of my companions and did not stir. None of us spoke. We were careful to show no signs of fear. No one cleared his throat, or coughed or stirred.

"Well, I cannot force y'all to leave this room, but you should know you are bein' very foolish. You are insultin' us and our customs. If you remain in our community, you will be watched carefully and we will consider you as unfriendly visitors who are here to stir up trouble."

Behind the officer, the door opened and a young black man stepped into the room and stood looking at us. The policeman turned and stepped toward the door.

"Howdy, Asa. I expect you are here to pick up these unfriendlies. I hope you understand the responsibility you will have to accept if some harm comes to them."

"Thank you, De-pa-ty," the black youngster said.

With that the uniformed man strode firmly and quickly from the room, slamming the door shut behind him.

A large volume of air escaped me. My entrails stirred, making a sound that everyone heard. The young black fellow looked at me and laughed.

"Don't have no fear of him," Asa said. "He's a mite more bark than bite."

The reassurance helped some. We smiled and grabbed our bags.

"Just the same," Asa went right on, "I'd avoid him and d'other whites in this here town if I wassa you guys. Come on! We're a goin' over to Freedom House for a strategy plannin' meetin'."

Freedom House was an old, one-room meeting hall of some type. It was painted bright red and sat up on a tiny knoll. There was a kitchenette in one corner and the rest of the room was filled with folding chairs and one moveable blackboard.

Asa nodded to young, short, stocky, black man as we entered and held the door for us. About 25 young, white men and women sat around the room in a disordered way, sipping on coke bottles and munching chips. Most of the male students had long hair and beards. They wore jeans and t-shirts that bore varied and sundry slogans about freedom and peace. The young women were also in jeans and t-shirts and they clearly wore no bras beneath the clever slogans. A cigarette was being passed among them. We were in coat and tie. There was an aroma in the air that I did not recognize then. I was to learn it was marijuana

"Depaty Sheriff Fulmer wassa given 'em some shit when I got there," Asa was telling the stocky young man. "I told 'em to be cautious of him and give him some respect if'fin dey come across him."

The young man offered his hand to each of us, pulling us gently into the room as he did.

"I am George Washington the Third," he told us. I'll be your official host while you are in our community and I'll maintain Freedom House as a safe house for you. No harm will come to you while you are here. We have made it clear that the town will burn if any harm comes to this place or its inhabitants."

Washington stared carefully at us to see if his words were registering. There was some comfort in them, but I was asking myself if that meant we were in great danger when we were outside of this building.

Each of the four of us introduced ourselves to George Washington, III.

"Come, now," Washington said, "come and meet the others."

[END PART ONE]

NEXT: Angelina Davis gives me her bedroom!

Anne’s Great, Great Grandfather

Her great, great grandfather and great grandfather arrive in Wayzata
by Warren Wakefield

The following essay is taken from a memoir that was written by
Anne's great grandfather. It is about his arrival in Wayzata,
Minnesota, as a seven year old in 1857. I've fallen in love with
these memoirs and they make me wish I could have known
this extraordinary man who wrote them.

Whatever this performance may develop, be it history, song or sermon or a series of anecdotes, it will be entirely lacking in exact chronology.

My personal knowledge of the Frontier development of this community begins October 1, 1857. I never saw A. O. Garrison, the founder of the village of Wayzata, he had finished his work in this region and moved farther West in the year 1856. To me the real pioneer settlers of Wayzata were William Dudley, B.F. and Tom Keesling and A.W. Day. These four men and their families constituted the entire population of the village when I first saw it. Three of these four original settlers were in the hotel business as early as 1855 and the fourth, Tom Keesling, was a frontier merchant, the proprietor of a small general store.

At that time the freight that went West to the various settlements in the Big Woods passed thru the village, and Wayzata, being a long day's drive from the river, was a stopping place for the freighters, which explains the popularity of the wayside hotel as a source of income. These freighters were more than ordinary men, for on each trip they solved problems in road building that would puzzle a modern engineer.

As we entered the one street of the Village that October afternoon fifty-six years ago, the first hotel we encountered was occupied by B.F. Keesling, a long, half log, half frame structure, which stood on the present site of the Gleason store. This tavern was never popular as a stopping place and was abandoned by its proprietor in the spring of 1858, when it was converted into an ashery and equipped with vats and furnaces for the production of potash and pearlash. This was a thriving business, the settlers in the surrounding country were clearing land and burning acres of log heaps; ashes were plentiful and could be had in unlimited quantities for the hauling.

The next hotel and the most popular one with the traveling public, stood on the present site of the Saunders House, and was the property of William Dudley. This house was furnished with an inviting bar; its beds were always clean and its basswood floors polished to a startling degree of whiteness. Aunt Ann could roast a leg of venison, bake a fat coon or convert a corpulent woodchuck into a stew that would tempt even a modern vegetarian. This hotel was burned in the fall of 1859, when Mr. Dudley built a small house on the site of the Nedderly building. This house was moved back from the street a few years later and is now a part of the Daughterty house, and the oldest building in the village.

The next hotel stood on the present site of the Dr. Tibbett's residence. A huge log barn stood on the street level, directly in front of the house. The house itself was an imposing affair for its period, and Uncle Abel W. Day, its proprietor, and Aunt Eliza, his wife, were unique characters. The popularity of the Dudley hostelry rested securely upon the popularity of its proprietor and Aunt Ann's prowess as a housekeeper and cook; while the Day enterprise was a failure, owing to Aunt Eliza's sour bread and Uncle Abel's mysterious and whispered conversation.

Tom Keesling's store, a 14-foot square frame building, stood on the lake shore, across the street from the Tibbetts and Wise Hardware store. Mr. Keesling quit business and moved to Minneapolis in the spring of 1858.

The Wakefield Family
Arrives in Wayzata
In the fall of 1857 the village front was almost wholly under water, the marsh south of the main street was navigable and the big swamp between Wayzata and Holdridge was an arm of the lake. Nowhere around the bay away from the village settlement was there a suggestion of a human habitation. The leaves had fallen and the growth of red cedar, which at that time skirted the entire lake coast, alone was green. The progress of our cavalcade through the village that October afternoon excited no interest. In fact, no one appeared on the street to be interested. Our coach dog looked in vain for an adversary, for, strange as it may seem not one of these frontier men owned a dog.

We ended our journey that night a mile and a half west of the village, where we made our final camp, and that night, just at dusk, my father killed a fat deer and for breakfast we had fresh meat, the first we had tasted for several months.

They Become Squatters
and Build Log House
There was no vacant Government land in this locality in 1857. The Territorial Legislature had set aside sections 16 and 36 in each Congressional Township as school lands, but no provision had been made at that time for the sale of this reserved acreage, so my father decided to become a squatter upon this state land and await the issue of its sale. Our first house was built upon the present site of the Bowman residence one mile west of the village. It was late in the season and the weather was cold, but the community came to our assistance and an unhewn log house roofed with oak shakes and chinked and mudded with clay mud was ready for occupancy within three days after the foundation logs were laid. We were at home at last.

My father and his family had started from Ashtabula County, Ohio, in the spring of 1856 and traveled with a wagon to Mower County, in this state, where we located, too late in the season to raise a crop. We did, however, break 20 acres of prairie land and prepare it for the next season's cultivation. That winter we lived in a pre-emption shanty of small dimension. We had neither vegetables nor meat; our entire bill of fare for eight months was bread or biscuit made of grown wheat flour and eaten to the accompaniment of a cheap quality of molasses. So stringy was that abominable flour that biscuit made of it could be extended like an accordion, tho it refused to relax and assume its original shape.

There was no game in Southern Minnesota that winter and no fish. The Winnebago Indians had combed the prairies for everything that wore feathers, and the crops of the settlers that had preceded us had been destroyed by grasshoppers. It was ninety miles to the nearest market, and to add to the burden of our existence, the snow fell three feet deep that winter and for ten weeks was covered with a crust so thick and sharp that travel with a team was impossible. When spring opened, we put in a crop of wheat and corn, made a big garden and waited for the harvest, but the harvest was never realized. A July hail storm again reduced us to a diet of bread and molasses, and made it necessary for us to abandon our claim and seek a locality where wood, game and fish could be had in abundance. We were a happy family that winter on Bowman hill, where we had plenty of palatable corn bread, fresh fish and venison and cranberry sauce, after eighteen months of wandering and trial we were mighty glad to get home.

Short, Wise Blog

Thoughts at the year's end
by Charlie Leck

I would give anything to be able to give you a hyperlink
to Garrison's Keillor's weekly column published by
Tribune Media Services, but, evidently, that company
chooses not to make this particular piece available on
the Internet. I don't know how much of it I am
technically allowed to quote to you, but let's try to get
away with the following, which is down-right delightful
wisdom

"God prefers honest doubt to false piety." [Garrison Keillor: The Nativity Story and the Mystery of Faith, Tribune Media Services, 9 Dec 2007]

"God prefers admitted incompetence to fake authority." [Garrison Keillor: The Nativity Story and the Mystery of Faith, Tribune Media Services, 9 Dec 2007]

If you a regular reader of my blog you already know
that I'm a big fan of Garrison Keillor – at least the
public man. As he gets older, Keillor is expanding
in wisdom without losing his sense of humor. This
makes him mighty powerful.

I'm trying to find out from Tribune Media Services
just where Keillor's column is published across the
country. If I get information I will share it with you
here.

Ponte dei Sospiri

Is Richard Russo the best novelist in America today?
by Charlie Leck

As the legend goes, beneath the Bridge of Sighs, in a gondola at sunset, kiss and you are guaranteed eternal love. (I can guaranty that it doesn't work!) The bridge is one of many built in Venice during the 16th century. It connects the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace to the old prisons on the other side of the Rio di Palazzo. Lord Byron gave the bridge its name. He imagined the condemned prisoners crossing through the bridge, from the courtrooms back to their prison cells, sighing heavily as they go to their executions. In fact, criminal executions had ceased before the bridge was built and the jail cells really only housed low-level prisoners. Good story though!

So is the one Richard Russo tells in his book by this same name, The Bridge of Sighs. It's a very good story, wonderfully told, with delectable little surprises and curious mysteries along the way.

Like all of his works, The Bridge of Sighs is about the lives of plain, but complex people in a small town in the eastern United States. The characters in this novel – even the nasty ones – are likable enough. Each of them is so carefully created for us that it is simple to keep track of them and we are allowed by the author to experience them quite viscerally. When I turned the last page over and began the last paragraph ("That's how we leave it."), I was very comfortable with all these new, fictional friends I had made and I was terribly glad that I had shared time with them.

Russo has this extraordinary ability to do that with his characters, in all his novels, and you don't easily forget the experiences you've had with them. The first of his books I ever read, on the recommendation of a friend, was Straight Man. It remains one of my all-time favorite books. I smiled and giggled throughout the reading and still do today when I bring the characters back to mind. The narrator of Straight Man, William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the improbable, temporary chairman of the English department in a small Pennsylvania college, is still very memorable to me. No novelist in America has the talent that Russo has to create and describe the players in a story. Lou C. Lynch, the newest lead man created by Russo, joins the ranks of these wonderful and memorable characters. Lucy, as he became accidentally known, is the general narrator of the story and the all-purpose tour guide on our visit to Thomaston, New York.

So real is this story that one is convinced it must be biographical. That's not likely so, however. It's just that Russo has this knack for making every event in the lives of his characters seem so perfectly probable and possible. Such a story ought to be downright boring, but Russo makes it downright fascinating and tantalizing.

I'm trying in these few paragraphs to introduce you to Lucy Lynch and to tempt you to go on down to the library to pick up his story and read it for yourselves. He's a common man who spent his life in an ordinary town among routine, small-town people. As a boy he had great difficulty making friends and most other kids took advantage of him. Somehow, as a teenager, he meets a spectacularly plain, ordinary girl who turns out to be an extraordinary and delightful person. The girl-woman basically saves Lucy from himself and from a likely personality implosion. This is all purposefully vague because I don't want to ruin the surprises for you.

Go visit Thomaston yourself. See the stained and polluted Cayoga Stream that runs through it. Be sure to get to know the down-and-out folks who live on the west side of Division Street and the upward moving families that managed to settle on the east side. Get on over to Whitcomb Park to meet Gabriel Monk. Gabe is a fence painter and he loves to howl. He'll tell you that you can call him anything you want "'cept nigger." That's a bad name and you'll get your head busted open if you use it. You'll learn some important things from Gabriel and his son, Three. Spend most of your time in Ikey Lubin's, the little convenience store that rules over this story, and get to know the delightful and delicate family that owns it. Whatever you do, though, just stay away from the water! The stream was terribly polluted by the old tannery that spilled waste out and into it for so many years.

As one reads, one gets the feeling that these ordinary details of a simple and plain story are leading somewhere. Janet Maslin, writing in the New York Times, put it this way: "But in the midst of these small matters, the big contours of 'Bridge of Sighs' emerge. They are richly evocative and beautifully wrought, delivered with deceptive ease. Another of Mr. Russo's hallmarks is that wonderfully unfashionable gift for effortless storytelling on a sweeping, multigenerational scale."

I think this book is going to be deeply loved because Lucy Lynch will remind nearly all of us of the child we were – spot on! I'm email-chatting these days with two friends I began kindergarten with over 60 years ago. I see them both, and I see myself, in some of the plain and remarkable characters created in Bridge of Sighs. How fascinating it is to now remember the complexity of the emotions we had when we were such wee ones. One would think those jumbled emotions would not make a very good story, but Mr. Russo knew better.

This is not just a good book. It's a perfectly wonderful one!

Is Richard Russo the best novelist in America today? I think so! Certainly, he's the best of all the popular, best-selling writers.

Russo, Richard: Bridge of Sighs [Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007,
ISBN: 978-0-375-41495-4]

Note
It's not central to this review (book report) of Russo's latest novel, but one remarkable paragraph brought me back so clearly to my own childhood and my own parents that I had to write it down and tuck it somewhere that would cause me to come across it occasionally. I know my two brothers and my sister do not share this same, odd feeling I have about my parents and I have never been able to reason out why they don't.

"That's what our parents are. The first mystery we encounter in a mysterious world. We see them every day as they go about their business. Painting the fence. Painting it again. One thing's for sure, they aren't telling us."

I've likely spent too much time trying to figure out who my parents were; that is, what in life meant most to them, and what great secrets did they have, and how dearly did they love each other, and what were their great disappointments, and how did they feel about social injustice. I see my father every day, opening the store, closing the store and then opening it again. The same routine every morning and every evening – long, tiring days – every day of the year. Yet, my old man wasn't a boring and ordinary fellow. He was complex and mysterious. He didn't want anyone to see too deeply inside him. It was nearly impossible to get to know him. This extraordinary book by Mr. Russo brought me back to all those thoughts in such a wonderful, both playful and painful way.

The Man Who Would Be President

An Inconvenient Truth
by Charlie Leck

The 2000 presidential election in the United States was an unmitigated disaster. "We wuz robbed," as my old man used to often say. Had there not been cheating in Florida, Al Gore would have been our national leader and one wonders how completely dissimilar things would be today. I can list a few things that would surely be different: (1) We would not be losing young Americans in Iraq and spending billions upon billions of dollars there; (2) we would not be deeply in debt as a nation; and (3) we would have taken serious giant steps to cooperate with the other nations in the world to solve the problem of global warming.

Have you read any of the accounts of Gore's speech in Bali at the conclusion of the global warming summit? If you haven't, you may want to take in the New York Times account of Gore's remarks. For now, everyone stand and give the former U.S. Senator and former Vice President a thunderous round of applause. He been the only leader with enough guts to tell it like it is!

Fresh from receiving his Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to alert the world to the massive problems caused by a warming planet, Gore spoke to the delegates at the United Nations conference on global warming in Indonesian: "My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali." He told his audience that things would be different in the near future – when George W. Bush is out of the White House. He promised that there would be a policy change.

There was plenty of real anger and frustration in Gore's voice as he spoke. He's not running for office. He doesn't have to follow the rules of politics. He simply told it as it is.

The European Union and the United States are currently so far apart on an agreement to establish target goals on the problem, that the EU is threatening to boycott an upcoming U.S. conference on the issue. Naturally, China and India, now running big and booming economies, are also far from agreeing on such lofty objectives.

This is a time when U.S. leadership and inspiration is definitely needed. It will be a crucial task for the next President of the United States. Anything would be an improvement on the current level of leadership.

Here's what Kevin Knobloch, the president of the Union of Scientists, said of the recent conference in Indonesia: "The best we hoped for was that the U.S. would not hobble the rest of the world from moving forward. Our delegation here from the States has not been able to meet that low level of expectation."

The NY Times points out that there were two faces of the United States at the conference. One is represented by the idiots George Bush sent over and it expresses caution and an unwillingness to take the big steps until all the nations are on board and unified on the issues. Michael Bloomberg, the New York City mayor, expresses the viewpoint of the other America: "There's a belief that the United States should not do anything until all the other governments are willing to go along and do it at the same time. We should be doing this regardless of whether the world is following or not." Now, that's an inconvenient truth!

NOTES
The more I read about Michael Bloomberg (Democrat turned Republican turned Independent) the more I like him.

You want to read the chilling facts, figures and statistics on global warming, go the Environmental Defense web site on the subject. This week the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released figures showing that the globe's surface temperature had risen by 0.74 degrees Celsius since the beginning of 20^th century. Scientists say that is an alarming increase based on past history. WMO says we are only 5 or 6 degrees Celsius warmer today than during an ice age. That makes the temperature movement cited here very frightening. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also has a web site with alarming, disheartening information.

All of you should be telling your Senators and Congressmen to get off their butts and do something. Vote carefully next year and make sure we have leadership that will rally all nations (including China and India) to get on board to solve this problem.