Monday, January 21, 2008

Wausau, Color and MLK

It's Martin Luther King, Jr Day as celebrated this year, 2008, on January 21. I never tire of listening to his "I Have a Dream" speech. Today I watched the video and it moved me again, watching him read much of it, head bowed, occasional glancing right, left and forward. A hand reaches in to lower his microphones to match his low delivery; but when he intones the first "I have a dream..." he forsakes his text, looks to the heavens and all but those two microphones are also uplifted. And I recall again the day late in 1966 or early 1967 (I forget) when Dr. King came to Wausau, to the University of Wisconsin Marathon County Center as it was known in that day.

I had just completed my term as president of the student government and was involved in the selection of a speaker for a student assembly. Somehow we had, I think, about $5000 to pay out to someone of national stature to come to our northern outpost. There was a list someone had proposed from which a selection would be made and it was put to some sort of a vote of the student council membership. Still a birthright Republican and a Goldwater supporter (not a rabid but more of a radical position I took at that time) I voted for William F. Buckley but was not the least disappointed when King was chosen because, believe it or not, I was into the civil rights movement. I shall digress...

The Wausau of my youth had no people of color. None. However, a combination of the purer christian teachings of my catholic education, an awareness of the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution and my father's attitudes and actions resulted in an uncontradicted fundamental belief that all people were created equal, whether under the law of god or the law of the USA. Of course slavery and discrimination were evil and, somewhat paradoxically, the absence of racial differences among the residents of Marathon County Wisconsin solidified that assumption because there were no confrontations to even suggest bigotry or racism because there was no one around against which to discriminate on the basis of race. So this provincial little white boy went all the way through high school without ever meeting a flesh and blood "Negro". But isolated incidents began accumulating and, because of their relative singularity, they became that much more memorable...

One such incident: a very brief item printed the the Wausau Daily Record Herald reported that the "first" black man ever had moved into a home in rural Marathon County just east of town. I believe it was near Hatley or Bevent. A few weeks or months later another small item appeared in the interior of the newspaper and reported that fire, probably due to lightening, had destroyed the home of the first black man to settle in the county and that the man had left the county, whereabouts unknown.

I also recall that my father came home from work rather upset one day in the early 60's and told us that news of the civil rights protests was brought up among his co-workers. Dad said he opined that the protests were a good thing due to the discrimination in the South (Dad had trained in Biloxi, Mississippi prior to going off to WWII as a tailgunner in a B-24). One of the guys suggested that he wouldn't feel that way if he had a daughter and his daughter married one of them. Dad replied that he would rather have his daughter marry a black man rather than someone like his co-worker. I guess the shit hit the fan with that. I recall thinking; cool.

Then the Job Corps workers came to town. I was 18 and had just graduated from high school and got a job at American Can Company through the efforts of my uncle Don (and joined my first union, the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers. Dad didn't have much use for unions, however and would probably not have his daughter marry a union man.).
The Job Corps was one of LBJ's civil rights programs that got kids out of the cities to work in rural and suburban areas. Camp McCoy, up towards Black River Falls, was one of the sites where workers were housed and for a little r&r, a group was brought to Wausau to hang out and see the sights. In fact, I saw my first African-Americans, a few of the Job Corps kids, walking down the street a couple blocks from my home. My street was Grand Avenue, US Highway 51 which ran through the city of Wausau (and, somewhat ironically, the Highway I drove down on my first trip though Mississippi as a truckdriver several years later). I heard some guys in passing cars yelling something at these visitors but there was a lot of traffic and I couldn't hear what but I was terrifically naive and didn't think much of it, until I went back to work a couple of days later.

[The job was to catch paper products, mostly soap and ice cream containers, that started out at one end of a long and complicated machine as a roll of paper and, after being cut, folded and glued, that a couple of workers would catch and put in cardboard boxes for shipping to Proctor and Gamble or Sealtest or some such food processor. It was noisy, dusty and gloomy place as were the men who worked there. The kind of job that certified one's decision to continue with higher education. There were scheduled breaks but many unscheduled ones caused by machinery breakdowns when conversations could resume.]

That day, the conversations were, to say the least, heated. As I recall one guy came over to where I and a lifer were working and ranted about the black kids who had come to town and that the only reason he was living up in the cold north was because there were no "n.......s" living here. I took a cue from my father's on the job confrontations and suggested that people of color had every right to be here. My co-worker on that machine told me that I wouldn't talk that way if I lived in South Africa where the blacks carried submachine guns and shot white people. I replied that I hadn't been to South Africa but I did know he had the situation backward. We worked directly across from each other about two feet apart and he never said another word to me.

I also had this dream. I'm not sure when but, despite my egalitarian views, I also had a certain anxiety about actually meeting and touching a black person. It was the unknown. The dream was so simple but it was also incredibly vivid and unlike any other dream I can recall. I shook hands with a black man and it was ok. And that anxiety was erased years by a dream prior to the real thing.

Anyway. I'm drafted to usher at the appearance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. which took place on Marathon County Park grounds adjacent to the UW Center in a structure called the Youth Building, which was essentially a gym where I played basketball and lifted weights. It was also a site for judging events at the annual Wisconsin Valley Fair. The stage was set at one end of the hall and folding chairs were set up for the full house of attendees and I simply helped people find seating in addition to guiding dignitaries to the front rows. There was some tension due to the fact that someone, rumored to be some UW students, had burned a cross somewhere in the neighborhood the night before. Now, I cannot recall much at all about Dr. King's oration other than all went well, without disruptions, and he was applauded and then led off stage right, to the room where I lifted weights, for a press conference. One of the openings to the room was directly to the side of the podium set up for the press conference and my job was to just stand there (I was wearing my only suit, the one I got for high school graduation) and just keep anyone from wondering in. No one made any attempt to do so. As I watched the press conference from that vantage point the only sight line I had was directly toward King's left and at a certain point he cast a wary look at me. Up to that point I was fairly blase about the whole event but that moment of eye contact with Martin Luther King, Jr. had a power that created an imprint in my memory and psyche few other moments have in my life. And this wasn't a memory recovered after his assassination less than two years later nor occasioned by his "I Have a Dream" speech three years earlier. I had yet to wake up to that. This was, to put it rather tritely, a Magic Moment. A moment of true inspiration ignited by a man probably and rightfully suspicious of some guy lurking in relatively close confines. A moment of inspiration ignited by a great man, a man of such power, intelligence and goodness that the forces of ignorance and fear had to destroy. But how fortunate was I to have had that moment and I am ever (and, I hope, humbly) grateful for that moment.

Happy Birthday to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

So way back on Thanksgiving I took the family to see Todd Haynes' cinematic impression(s) of Bob Dylan I'm Not There, (link to Hayne's bio and note some of his work; "Far From Heaven" and his 1985 short "Assassins-A Film Concerning Rimbaud" another "aha!" Dylan connection.) Loved the film. Love Dylan. He's a member of the family in the way he's been part of my life for about 40 years now. In spite of, or maybe, because of, his occasional unlikability, exasperation and infuriation. But his words, work, meanderings and mystery has always kept me interested.

You can google this film and get all sorts of analyses and critiques and it is kinda dylanesque in how and why you respond to the film. To each his own. I smiled through most of it. You know, that (sometimes smug) delight that comes from one's personal recognition of performances, lyrics, legend and associations one may note in a film. I have one, in particular in "I'm Not There". It made me laugh. Admittedly a self-satisfied laugh but here it is...

Haynes gives the various characters different names; Jude, Woody Guthrie, Jack, Arthur and Richard Gere as, according to the cool "Official Guide the the Movie" that was given out at the theater, Billy. No character is named or addressed as "Bob Dylan". However, you have Richard Gere in that Western period setting. The Basement Tapes motif is certainly evoked in that segment but there was one moment, basically one word, that rolled me back in my comfortable, 608 Sundance movie chair. Gere/Billy is wandering around the scene with some very interesting characters, animals and just odd stuff all over when he comes upon this guy kind of hunkered down with, as I recall, a wife and kid or two near a wagon or some piece of equipment (no, I haven't attended a second viewing, yet.). Gere saunters over to this family tableau and says one work of greeting..."Chester". Immediately, from the depths of my television saturated mind came the programmed response "Mr. Dillon"................The INT character, of course, did not say "dillon/dylan" and I cannot recall what he said because I was listening for any other audience reaction, of which there was none but I was plenty pleased with my reaction/recognition. Of course, on the heels of that sweet thrill came the question; coincidence or did Haynes' only mention of the name or sound of "Dylan" come in an ethereal, unuttered reply that reached back to how Dennis Weaver's Chester would respond to James Arness's Matt Dillon every week in that great, black and white tv classic, "Gunsmoke"? That's how it would go, the man of few words Matt Dillon would greet people with just their name; "Miss Kitty" - "Hello, Matt" "Doc" - "Matt" but when he acknowledged "Chester", Chester would reply "Mr. Dillon". Of course, Chester's replacement, Festus addressed Mr. Dillon as "Matthew" but then that was in color and a 60 minute format. That's it. A moment of particular pleasure in a pleasurable film.