Among the great ironies of American politics in this era of “don’t believe what you see and hear” is the elephant as the emblem of the Republican Party.
For starters, the animal itself is not indigenous to America, and is brought here only to perform in circuses and be admired in parades and zoos. Sheer size lent to its popularity in illustrated books for children in which Disney’s name of “Dumbo” was never heard as an insult, but as a play on the word “jumbo.” The character is as endearing as enduring.
As political symbolism, however, elephants have a trait that we site as or more often than that of any other animal: a long memory.
With that in mind, consider Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) who, when asked to explain her vote to acquit just days after stating that there was an impeachable offense, smiled and chuckled: “Oh, I think he’s learned his lesson!”
Collins may have been what Simon and Garfunkel had in mind when they sang “the elephants are kindly but they’re dumb,” but to be that gullible after three and a half years of this Republican president means that you have no memory at all.
Now that the Republican Party has devolved into a circus with a ringleader who expects us to disregard, deny, and forget things that he himself said just months, weeks, days, sometimes minutes before, an animal that “never forgets” fits them no better than a banana into a doorlock.
As a symbol chosen for a size that conveys dignity and strength, an elephant today, were it able to pay legal fees and sign documents, could sue today’s Republican Party for defamation of character.*
Consider, for example, Mitch McConnell’s full-speed-ahead mass production of judicial confirmations (of Trump nominees), calling the senate to order in DC despite concerns regarding both travel and assembly during the first month of shut-down. Just four years ago the same Mitch McConnell delayed a nomination (by Obama) to the Supreme Court for ten months as a way to nullify it.
Ten months.
It shouldn’t take the memory of an elephant to realize that Black Lives Matter must mean that a Black Presidency Mattered. Doesn’t it follow that either Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, or Amy Covid Barrett should be forced to step down from the Supreme Court pending confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland, the white nominee of a black president?
Republican senators, voting in goose-step to McConnell, act as if they have no more memory of that overtly racist stunt than they have knowledge of the tear-gassing of a peaceful assembly outside the White House for the sake of a photo-op. One by one, including Sen. Mitt Romney who cast the single vote to impeach, they walked past reporters saying “I haven’t seen it” and “I don’t know” regarding the upside down Bible and the subsequent condemnation of Trump by the pastor of that church.
Elephants? More like ostriches.
A jellyfish would be another far more honest representation of today’s Republican Party due to its complete lack of a backbone, but neither they nor ostriches ever do harm to those around them. Yes, a jellyfish might sting if you get too close, and an ostrich might peck at you for the same reason, but they never attack.
A duck would serve to capture Dr. Quack’s endorsement of a drug not endorsed by the FDA, of Clorox as a laxative, and of UV lights as catheters–not to mention its nod to his many Duck Dynasty wannabe followers. A goose would depict the lock-step obedience of Republicans to him since the close of their convention in Cleveland four years ago, and a friend suggests that the elephant be replaced with a small bird to represent Captain Bonespur’s incessant tweeting.
Birds, however, are a harmless lot, something which no one in their right mind can say of today’s Republican Party. Though they may be fowl, they are not foul, and so none of those suggestions are fair.
Winged creatures, like the ostrich and the jellyfish, therefore, all fail to represent the assault that Republicans have made on the environment, occupational safety, affordable health care, education, and pretty much everything that benefits all of us rather than continuing to funnel as much American wealth as they can to their donors, as they’ve been doing for 40 years.
Then again, there’s the Canada goose which is very much like today’s Republicans: They are often in groups that leave shit all over public parks, office parks, school and hospital grounds, etc. That alone would make them an ideal choice, but the name Canada could be grounds, fair or foul, foul or fowl, for another defamation lawsuit, this one from our friends up north.
Much of that mess as well as its lasting stench comes from Republicans in the House, many of whom would be well-represented by the hyena. Consider Ohio’s Jim Jordan as he questions and grills witnesses before a committee meeting. Listen to his rapid-fire speech, his carefully inflected screech, his frequent, punctuating “Guess what!” Watch his eyes pop, his neck swivel, his arms flail. Everyone comments on his lack of a jacket, but do they realize that it’s on the back of his chair only because the white shirt provides a better backdrop for the blurred props of his hyper-ventilated hands? What could better represent him than a vicious predator that is somehow associated with ridiculous, out-of-control laughter?
In an attempt to project a kinder and gentler image while also acknowledging the Republican Party’s debt to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, they might consider the cub. They could make it look like Theodore Roosevelt, as happened with the original teddy bears a century ago, and try to reclaim his Republican aura–trusting that no one would remember that TR bolted the party and formed his own Progressive Party when he saw the beginnings of the transformation away from Lincoln and more toward Jefferson Davis. Anyone who did know it and might try to tell them could easily be dismissed with cries of, “Fake News!”
Or maybe “old news.” TR’s party was dubbed “Bull Moose.”** Anyone trying to claim any similarity between today’s Republicans and TR–or saying that it is still “the party of Lincoln”–might as well call their party “Bull Shit.”***
A cub would accurately symbolize their dependency on the Russian bear, as anyone who read the Mueller Report rather than AG Barr’s four-page whitewash knows. But a cub is an image of innocence, Chicago is a big city, and Illinois is a blue state. Do the Electoral College math.
As qualified as the hyena or cub may be to represent Republicans, there’s another animal with a better claim thanks in no small part to the no small part it played in Genesis, leading us into the temptation of what might be called Make Ourselves Great the First Time.
Yes, the Snake!
In a year when most of us are beginning to wake up to the lasting stain of slavery–what Mark Twain well over a century ago called America’s “original sin”–what could be a more honest representation of today’s Republican Party than the creature who introduced the original original sin to the world at its origins?
Or at its oranges as our Commander-in-Tweets would have it. (To be fair, he does have orange literally on the brain, or at least on the place where a brain would be, given all the evidence, including a Sharpie on a weather map, that he does not have one.)
In addition to religious symbolism, such a mascot would link today’s Republicans to American history as far back as 1754 when Benjamin Franklin published an editorial cartoon in the Pennsylvania Gazette of a chopped up snake with the name of a colony on each over the legend “Join, or Die.” In the revolutionary war, American General Christopher Gadsden unified Franklin’s snake on a yellow flag to inspire his troops.
Moreover, that link to the past would acknowledge those who support Republican candidates today, many of whom sport Gadsden flag decals on their cars and trucks, insignia on their shirts and hats, and wave them at Republican rallies with the legend: “Don’t Tread on Me.”
But more to the point, and far more important than all the religious and political significance combined, the snake is associated with deceit. What is more Republican than that?
With their convention banished from North Carolina, with retired military generals making unprecedented condemnations of their party’s president, and with one of their own senators, Barbara Murkowski of Alaska, finally stating openly, if all too briefly, what has been in plain view and earshot these past 3.5 years, Republicans are clearly in need of something to unify themselves and rally their supporters.
Bring on the Snake!
Republicans’ best bet for November would be to announce the change at the convention they hold in whatever Confederate city is rebel enough to hold it. And to do it by hoisting a variation of the Gadsden flag. They like flags. They already wrap themselves in two, Stars & Bars, Stars & Stripes, why not make it three with Snake that Bites?
Instead of the legend, “Don’t Tread on Me,” another friend suggested “Don’t Fact Check Me,” which is a demand that many Trump supporters and fans of Fox News actually say with no hint of irony or humor.
But there’s another variation more representative of Republican office holders and candidates in 2020. Gadsden’s snake already has it’s tongue out, and the militarized crackdown on a peaceful protest in DC proved beyond doubt that a boot is coming down. A boot they already lick. A flag showing what would replace not just the elephant but the name “Republican” with something that accurately, fully, and immediately reveals what they are:
The Bootlickers!
From Party of Lincoln to Party of Stinkin’, bring on the Snake!
It destroyed the Garden of Eden. Why should it not destroy America?
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BREAKING NEWS: Not only do they have a ready-made new flag and name, but as of today they already have a “public disservice announcement”:
đș NEW VIDEO
Donald Trump and his venomous politics and ideology are un-American.
*Editorial cartoonists began using the elephant, an oversized depiction of corruption and inflation, to attack the Republican administration of Pres. U.S. Grant, 1869-1887. The legendary Thomas Nast was not the first, but it was his portrayal that gave the party the idea to adopt the elephant as their permanent, foremost symbol. Prior to that they used several symbols, most often an eagle. The elephant had been used among other symbols in the campaigns of Abraham Lincoln, 1860 and 1864.
According to history.com, “during the Civil War… ‘seeing the elephant’ was an expression used by soldiers to mean experiencing combat”:
**At a campaign stop in Milwaukee, a would-be assassin took a shot at TR that hit and had to penetrate the fat manuscript of his speech before inflicting a minor flesh wound on his chest. A day or two later, a reporter asked him about his health. “I’m as fit as a bull moose!” he hollered. The remark dominated headlines and photo captions the next day, and “Bull Moose” immediately replaced “Progressive” as the name of his party whether he wanted it to or not.
***For a survey of how the Republican and Democratic parties have switched positions between Lincoln and Nixon, simply type words such as political, parties, american, philosophical, and shift into a search engine and have your pick. One appears in Keep Newburyport Weird under the headline, “A Shift in Presidential Tense.”
What if the National Anthem had been broadcast from an outdoor speaker or played by a nearby busker at the scene during the arrest? Would that be enough for âpatrioticâ Americans to object to the officer taking a knee?
And if the recorded voice was that of Roseanne Barr or if the busker was Jose Feliciano, would they think the rendition more âdisrespectfulâ than the officerâs knee?
And if the last line were changed to âland of the carefree and home of the oblivious,â would they notice the difference? And if they did, would they still probably think the song was about them?
Over here on the island, I’ve been living at a social distance for 38 years, so Iâve been feeling guilty that Iâm so little inconvenienced by shutdown.
When the road into the Plum Island Refuge was closed to motor vehicles, I felt even more guilty.
My door to that gate is so close that I barely have time to tie my bandana behind my head if anyone is standing at the gate–as happens with small groups, often families gathering on bicycles to enter or leave together.
Harper’s June issue reports that bicycles rank with toilet paper, bleach, cologne, condoms, and guns for sharp increases in sales since the shutdown began. Judging by what glides by me on my daily walks to Parking Lot 3, I hesitate to imagine having to dodge or even say hello to as many people brandishing any of those other items.
Many cyclists say hello or wave. Some will call out “on your left!” or ring a bell if they approach from behind. Their courtesy is appreciated, though the absence of motor vehicles makes it unnecessary.
Some will call out encouragement to what now must resemble some lost, wandering character out of the Old Testament now that I havenât been touched by a razor or a pair of scissors since the Ides of March. The âCall Me Ishmaelâ t-shirt might reinforce that notion, though the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap should tell them otherwise.
âIâm flattening the curve!â I call back.
Patrons of the Screening Room, recognizing the voice if not the overly landscaped face of their projectionist, will circle back to tell me how much they miss me.
âWell, thereâs a lot to miss! As soon as I get home, I start wolfing down IPAs. To hell with the curve!â
Usually I can hear approaching cyclists because they tend to chat. With spacing between them to avoid their hitting more than spitting, their voices are raised.
Yes, I enjoy those fragments of conversation that leave me wondering what came fore and aft. During the hour or so that I sit on one of the benchesâotherwise never used, much less sanitizedâI might jot them down if I can tear my attention away from whatever book or magazine I brought with.
Theyâre probably still looking for a parking spaceâŠ
I sold it as soon as she was goneâŠ
We fell in love with Aunt Addieâs cousinâŠ
Like, I was like what? And, like, she was like I donât care! And likeâŠ
After all he has put her through, how does she still expect heâll ever grow up?
Worst movie I ever saw!
Kept an eye out for that last character pedaling out. Wanted wave him down to say that if he is talking about anything other than Blair Witch Project, he is dead wrong.
If I were doing a survey, or what today is called a âword cloud,â Iâd report that âopenâ and âclosedâ are most often heardâoverheard in my case. âReopeningâ and ânot worth itâ are up there.
One snatch has proved serendipitous:
We donât know whether to put it in the play or before itâŠ
No idea what her play is, but just a week ago I started writing limericks for the birthdays of friends on social mediaânot about them, but to express views that we share:
There once was a man from Queens
Who talked like heâd just eaten beansâŠ
Occurred to me that I might put them in my columns and blogs for comic relief in these unavoidably oh-so-menacing times, but it seemed so strainedâwhat English teachers call âtrivializingâ and what editors call âshoe-horning,â two different sins with one poem. How, after all, can you opine about America 2020 turning into Germany 1933, asking readers to see that, yes, there are similarities between what weâve become and what we want to believe has no comparison, and then say:
So when he passed gas
Which was often en masse (?)
Now, from a woman I never saw talking about a play Iâll never seeâor even know what it isâcomes the idea to use the limericks as introductions.
So, yes, I am a willful eavesdropper, but thereâs something I’d rather not hear, something thatâs often used to describe or intensify âopenâ and âclosedâ up there on the word cloud. Something I rarely if ever heard along that road or while perched over Sunset Blvd. where I live all these years–not until this pandemic sold so many bicycles.
Sure, Iâve heard it spoken aloudâvery loudâoutside bars downtown when patrons gather for their cigarettes late in the evening. And I admit using it from time to time for emphasis in private conversation.
In fact, I used to say that if I could make one four-letter word disappear from our language, it wouldnât be that one. It would be âlike.â I recall telling my fellow teachers twenty years ago that I wish we had remotes that would administer mild electric shocks to students every time they said it. Snap them out of a lifetime of sounding like nervous idiots. As always, they agreed with the end, but not the means.
Be that as it may, when the (expletive deleted) did â(expletive deleted)â become an airborne virus that can infect any ear young or old, at any time day or night, in any place public or private? Â WT(ed) happened?
No one my age or anywhere near it needs any commentary on the state of American language since Martin Luther Kingâs âDreamâ devolved into Madonnaâs âMaterial Girl,â but we never heard (expletive deleted) from a president or presidential contender until 2015 when one puckered his lips and pointed his finger to the tune of âTell them to go (expletive deleted) themselves!â
Keep in mind that this (expletive deleted) was yelled into a microphone before a rally, light years and heavy decibels from the Watergate tapes to which Richard Nixon was oblivious while using his (expletives deleted) during private phone calls.
Any honest, observant American must know that the victory of this (expletive deleted) piece of (expletive deleted) in the (expletive deleted) Electoral College in 2016 has unearthed and encouraged all kinds of (expletive deleted) cruel, racist, anti-Semitic, hateful behavior by his (expletive deleted) low-life, Confederate flag-waving supporters.
Stands to reason then, that this “(expletive deleted) moron,” as his first secretary of state called him, by so many hideous examples such as âgrab âem by the (expletive deleted),â has unleashed the use of expletives undeleted by all these subliterate, if literate at all (expletives deleted).
Thatâs not to say that this (expletive deleted) president created this viral obscenity. To the contrary, it was there awaiting him to unleash it, to rip the cover off it, to spread it like the first jumbo jet out of Wuhan, China, to Milan, Italyâonly he stays on the tarmac, running the engines, blowing gas.
It came out his mouth not his jeans
Back in 2016 many of us referred to him as âthe middle-finger candidate.â No surprise, then, that his presidency has been a non-stop “(expletive deleted) You!” to all American values and traditions. Why are we surprised that it has turned our language into (expletive deleted)?
For all that, I count myself lucky for living on an island where I have minimal exposure to it, as I have to all else. Maybe I should feel guilty, but I’m too interested in language, too invested in it, not to give a (expletive deleted).
-30-
The photo appears courtesy of a real estate agency trying to sell one of my neighbor’s homes. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll track down a name and phone number and get you a quote.
Call it my “finders fee.” It faces south-southeast, and if you follow the road south from 47 Sunset, you’ll soon pass by me at 59. My mailing address is on Jackson Way due only to the position of the mailbox at the foot of a driveway barely twenty feet from the corner.
Jackson is the last paved road off Sunset. Not far past it you’ll notice that the road widens on both sides, looking like a circle, That’s the gate to the Refuge, and the dark block in the middle of the road just past it is the gatehouse. Follow the road past where it disappears behind a mound, reappears curving toward the ocean, disappears again behind a thin line of shrubs, and–if you look very carefully–reappears yet again right along the marsh. That’s where the two benches are, not quite 1.5 miles past 59 Sunset Drive.
What happened in Minneapolis is anti-American–and anti-human–enough, and the ensuing demonstrations all across the country deserve all the attention they are getting.
However, we cannot overlook a speech over the holiday weekend in Denver, in which an American president urged supporters who voted by mail in advance of a state primary to vote a 2nd time in person. That is a clear violation of the oafâs oath of office.
Of course, he will hide behind the “I was only joking” ruse just as flippantly as he will disavow responsibility for how his “very fine people” interpret his looting-leads-to-shooting tweet.
What else can we expect? He adamantly disavows all responsibility for the botched response to the pandemic no matter how many videos and witnesses there are to the contrary. As his wife would wear it, “I don’t really care. Do U?”
To see his supporters waving American flags (next to their “Selfish & Proud” signs) may be the most absurd irony of all when everything about himâand themâhas rendered the American flag a rag that might as well be toilet paper.
Given his neo-Nazi attempt to crackdown on social media yesterday, itâs time for a more honest American flag:
And, oh by the way, speaking of crackdowns needing more attention, America is now fully in support, expressed by Sec. of State Pompeo, of China’s imminent suppression of Hong Kong, a violation of the 1997 transfer from British colonial rule to China in an agreement called, “One Country, Two Systems” through 2047.
So much for “Beacon of Hope” and “Shining City on a Hill.”
Don’t be shocked that masks and social distancing have turned into political litmus tests.
As a mask-less Captain Clorox ridiculed a masked reporter who offered to speak louder during a Memorial Day press conference, “Ah, ya, okay, because you want to be politically correct. Go ahead.”
Such is the attitude at the anti-shutdown rallies as well as at the parties on Florida beaches and at Lake of the Ozarks this holiday weekend.
Wearing a mask is a sign of weakness and a submission to socialism, a betrayal of all that is American. Not wearing a mask shows strength and insists on individual freedom, an assertion of all that makes America “great.”
How can “Memorial” mean anything to those who refuse to be mindful? Instead, as the sign frequently seen at these rallies boasts, they are “Selfish and Proud!”
Frome Reuters News Service, taken in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
I sympathize with–I share–the frustration caused by this resistance to common sense, this rejection of science, this contempt for anyone and anything other than the self-styled “rugged individual” him- or herself. However, I stop short of agreement when I hear anyone call it incomprehensible.
There have been dozens of analyses that make the macho, racist, cynical, and paranoid psychology as clear as Clorox and as obvious as an ultraviolet light. Nor is it anything new, which means we need to look at history.
And, as we like to keep reminding ourselves, learn from it.
Here’s a passage from The Thoreau You Donât Know, a myth-busting biography written in 2008. Following a long, visual account in Henry David Thoreauâs Cape Cod‘s opening chapter of a shipwreck washing up in 1849–including descriptions of several of the 145 victims, adults and children–it is mostly on the subject of mid-19th Century immigration.
The last line is at the heart of America 2020:
Today the federal government builds a wall along the border with Mexico. In Thoreau’s day, the first immigration stations were set up to inspect Irish immigrants, in order to repel what the governor of Massachusetts compared to “the horde of foreign barbarians” that brought down the Roman Empire. The Irish were thought to carry disease, as well as the threat of miscegenation. Prominent citizens such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s father, [Minister] Lyman Beecher and Samuel F.B. Morse railed against the Irish taking over the country from “native Americans.” In American literature, the Irish famine goes nearly unmentioned. (Herman Melvilleâs novel Redburn describes the horror of a famine ship in transit, and Melville saw that immigration was what made the United States a new nationâânot a nation, so much as a world.â) Thatâs partly because of the racism and anti-Irish xenophobia of the time. It’s partly because the famine and the cargo ships full of dying immigrants stands in relief to all that Manifest Destiny stood for: the national prosperousness. Put another way, the feminine issues associated with famineâhunger and familyâare at odds with the masculine dreams of expansion and conquering.
A woman in Santa Rosa was startled by a loud knock at her door Sunday morning, the middle of the Memorial Day Weekend. Through the spyglass she saw a very large man wearing a red MAGA cap, a t-shirt, and American flag shorts.
Sheâd have taken more care were it someone nondescript, but she never shies from an idiot. So she opened the door.
The man invited her to a âLiberty Rally,â or some such Orwellian-named gathering, on Santa Rosaâs downtown square that afternoon, in defiance of all social-distancing orders, not to mention common sense. She was still shaking herself awake, so his next line barely registered:
âWe can offer you $20 to offset any inconvenience you might have getting there.â
Still fixated on the hatâand the idiocyâthen looking him right in the eye, her head bent back as if looking up a tower, she answered:
âNow I know what MAGA stands for. âMorons Are Governing America.â Have a nice day.â And she closed the door.
She thought she heard the idiot grumble, but admits she may have just imagined it. When she described it over the phone, I reacted as would a newspaper editor to a reporter:
âYou buried the lede!â
Like all those âadoring fansâ at the foot of Trump Towerâs escalator for his deus ex machina announcement in June, 2015, many of the people at these rallies are being paid.
For those of us who keep asking, with various degrees of despair and urgency, what has America become, the answer is this:
We are now a nation where idiocy doesn’t just pay, but openly bribes.
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The knock at my friend’s door took place just two days following the publication, here on the other side of the continent, of a column in which I redefined the word “great” according to the MAGA mantra. When I mentioned it to her, we agreed that our two interpretations carry the same message, differing only in emphasis:
We also agreed that the only possible solution begins–but does not end–with a heavy voter turnout in November. It’s not that things will change with a Democratic White House and/or Senate, but that there will be a chance of change.
Bad enough that America is now governed by idiocy. Much worse that America in November might be surrendered by cynicism.
In basketball, to understand a teamâs game plan, you donât watch the player taking the ball up-court, but teammates moving without it.
Thatâs a most valuable talent. It earned Celtic legend John Havlicek the nickname “Bouncing Buckeye.”
Letâs apply it to governance.
The most revealing expressions of the Republican Party are not from the president but from those on the court with him:
A mask-less Mike Pence at the Mayo Clinic, Melaniaâs “I Don’t Care” jacket, AG Barr’s fraudulent summary of the Mueller Report, Stephen Millerâs âshall not be questioned,â Kellyanne Conwayâs âalternative facts,â Jared Kushnerâs “success story,â the very existence of Betsy DeVos.
Such deadbeats would be ejected from any reasonably officiated basketball game.
But for this administration, a Republican senate serves as a crew that never calls their fouls.
Instead, they blow a whistle on any whistle-blowing scientist, doctor, diplomat, or decorated lieutenant general who does.
To date, enough of the American public has accepted thisâa few brandishing firearms, but most by silenceâthat Dr. Fauci and other doctors are benched while four meat-packing conglomerates slam-dunk at will.
Nothing like a pandemic to clarify just how sick a nation has become.
Sometimes it seems no amount of reporting, expose, science, even death can remind us that in a democracy, there are no spectators at home or in the stands, only playersâor deadbeatsâon the court.
Maybe Charlie Chaplin had the right idea, using mockery to help shake a complacent America into action against another authoritarian ruler.
Rather than opinion columns, I should write limericks:
—
There once was a man from Queens Who talked like he’d just eaten beans So when he passed gas Which was often en masse It came out his mouth not his jeans
—
Sorry, but is that any more foulâflagrant or fragrantâthan what so many Americans think of our elections?
Look past the names on the ballot, and this November will be less an election than a referendum:
To confirm or reject what America has become these past three years.
Taken that way, Democrats will win both White House and Senate, and the progressive wing will have a chanceâa chanceâto improve our economy, our healthcare system, our treatment of the environment.
Taken that way, the most vocal all-or-nothing supporters of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the rest of The Squad will accept their candidatesâ endorsements of Joe Biden.
They endorse a moderate precisely because a Democratic president will give progressives, give us, give democracy a chanceâa chanceâto keep air and water clean, to make healthcare affordable for all.
And not least of all, to make the revenue generated by Americaâs âgreatest economy everââmade possible when the Obama/Biden team pulled it out of Republican ruins in 2009âreach those who do the actual work in some honest proportion to those who hold shares.
Nothing like a pandemic to clarify who those essential workers are.
I share the wariness of my fellow Bernie supporters. And of cynics, some of whom never vote, as much as I consider cynicism an excuse for laziness.
The word âlaziness,â Iâve learned more than once, hits a nerve. It is the lifeless sap of social media where it bleeds cynical memes constantly re-posted by supporters of Captain Clorox.
Nothing written by the poster, no thought required by the viewer, pure Pavlovian reaction by both.
âLazyâ is too kind a word for it.
Like the Republican administration itself, the trick is to reinforce cynics and paranoiacs. For others, itâs not to convince but to confuseâto alienate us until we stop paying attention and give up.
A Republican victory will mean no chanceâno chanceâfor a protected environment, affordable healthcare, or a living wage for our most essential workers. Game over.
Thatâs why November will not be an election, but a referendum. To be, or not to be: To confirm, or to reject authoritarian rule.
Not âBlue No Matter Who,â but Rules of Law and Science No Matter What.
Democracy is not a spectator sport. We need to look away from names on the ballot and toward those never on a ballot.
We need to look at ourselves.
–30-
The chart, posted by Business Insider, showing America’s GDP from 2001 through 2019, is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis via FRED, the Federal Reserve Economic Data. When added to other metrics such as personal income, cost-of-living, and rates of unemployment. It’s a steady rise from 2009, even during quarters when the GDP leveled off. Also easy to discern is the seeming “success” of the mid-Bush/Cheney years, 2003-2006, all due to rampant deregulation which led to the disaster of 2007-2008. That’s what happens when nothing is held in check.
Drive down US 1 through Rowley early on a weekday morning and you may see two flags flying atop a pickup headed this way.
Eight score years ago they represented the opposing sides of the bloodiest war in American history. Contradiction?
Both stand for individual liberty, but only one stands for the common good, starting with the Constitutionâs general welfare clause. The other, in the language of the Confederacy, symbolically nullifies any call for civic spirit.
The Confederate flag doesnât contradict Old Glory so much as narrow it. To call it racist misses the point persistently made in many history textbooks, tailored for the largest unified markets, most notably Texas which prohibits any criticism of the free enterprise system.
To maximize sales, the same books are marketed across the country. Result? The Labor Movement and the New Deal are absent from many texts adopted nationwide. Makes one wonder how or why we still observe Labor Day.
Historian Peter Charles Hoffer, author of Past Imperfect (2004), calls this âconsensus history,â versions of “a blameless past.” In books prepared locally, ancestors can be exemplary Christians, such as in Virginia where slavery was a âbenevolentâ institution, all slaves very kindly treated.
But enough about the South.
What about us? What about Newburyport where âlocal historians,â whoever they are, a few years back, proclaimed Caleb Cushing (1800-1879) âthe most accomplished and most colorful public figure in (Newburyportâs) long historyâ?
Quite an achievement in the birthplace of William Lloyd Garrison, founder of The Liberator, the leading voice of the Abolitionist cause for decades leading up to the Civil War. Especially for Cushing, a “doughface” (a Northern apologist for the South) whose avid support for the Dred Scott decision drew a letter of thanks from Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who presided over the most disgraceful Supreme Court ruling in American history.*
One of our current local historians offered an explanation in a letter to the editor summed up by its headline: âFor Cushing, popular sovereignty solution to slavery.”
That cosmetic term appears several times in Broken Glass, a biography of Cushing which defines it as allowing newly settled territories to decide on slavery. Since western territories aimed at statehood, âpopular sovereigntyâ was a step to States rights, the all-purpose excuse for slavery, followed by Jim Crow, followed by discrimination, followed by prejudice that yet waves from sea to rising sea, followed by the current epidemic of young black males gunned down by white males who are slowly, grudgingly, if at all, brought to justice–all under cover of the 10th Amendment.
Before 1832, according to biographer John Belohlavek, Cushing condemned slavery as âan evil of great magnitudeâ but âemphasized the legal right of southerners to own slaves.” However, when slaveholding Virginian John Tyler became president in 1841, Cushing could no longer âtread water in the rough sea of morality.â
To gain favor with Tylerâand later with Franklin Pierce who made him US Attorney GeneralâCushing put yet another coat of lipstick on the pig: âemancipation through cooperation.â Other than beneficiaries of the triangular slave tradeâincluding Cushingâs shipping-magnate father and brothersâwhat Northerner could fall for that?
Not former president John Quincy Adams who declared that Cushingâs âsacrifice of principle lost him the favor of his constituents.â
Not Newburyport chronicler John Lord who called Cushing âa man of splendid talents, but who basely prostitutes those talents.â
Not Free Soil VP candidate and, later, Lincolnâs Minister to England, Charles Francis Adams, who called Cushingâs 1853 treatise on slavery âthe most monstrous doctrine⊠ever presented to a free people.â
But the most damning indictment is Cushingâs own March 1861 letter addressed to âHonorable Jefferson Davis,â President of the new Confederate States of America, in defiance of Pres. Lincolnâs prohibition on communications with the rebel administration.
Belohlavek excuses this as âharmlesslyâ recommending a job applicantâto an enemy government!âdownplaying the act of treason that it was.
Letâs give Cushing the benefit of that doubt.
Letâs accept the âman-of-his-timesâ excuse for his defense of the slave tradeâas well as for his pompous, life-long dismissals of womenâs rights.
And letâs overlook his conflict of family interestâas well as his support for Pres. Polkâs fabricated war against Mexico after he, Cushing, bought land south of the Rio Grande.
Question remains: What does it say about Newburyportâs priorities and values in this supposedly enlightened 21st Century that a man needing so many allowances stands as our âmost accomplishedâ citizen?
Especially considering William Lloyd Garrison who ranks among Americaâs foremost humanitarian activistsâbut whose abolitionist cause defies any happy âconsensusâ for Newburyportâs commercial backstory.
Letâs ask our âlocal historians,â wherever they are, possibly heading our way in that flag-flying truck.
–30-
*Some might argue that Citizens United in 2010 was as or more disgraceful. There’s certainly a strong case to be made for it, but rather than engage in an academic comparison, it’s more useful to know this:
The 14th Amendment in 1868 was prompted by Dred Scott in 1857, overturning it. In 1886, the Equal Protection Clause of 14A was invoked in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., a case having to do with the railroad’s right of way, and the Supreme Court ruled that 14AÂ grants constitutional protections to corporations. A classic case of unintended consequences that, 124 years later, begat another when it served as a precedent for Citizens United in 2010. Two years later, “Corporations are people” became a mantra of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.
—
The flag pictured above is one of many combinations of the Stars and Stripes with the Stars and Bars being marketed online by groups with names such as Redneck Nation, Dixie Shop, and Smart Blonde. In addition to flags, they offer keychains, lapel pins, license plates (including small plates for motorcycles), hats, and shirts. If that’s not moronic, ironic, or incoherent enough, there’s also a triple combo that would make far more sense these last three years if it said, as a friend pointed out following my post about the Gadsden flag just yesterday, Don’t Fact Check Me:
From the US Flag Code: “The flag should never have placed on it, or attached to it, any mark, insignia, letter, word, number, figure, or drawing of any kind.”
From Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing & the Shattering of the Union (2005) by John M. Belohlavek:
“The changing ways in which we see individuals, both contemporary and historical, are a reflection of our own society, priorities, and values.”
“Don’t tread on me” declares the coiled snake on a friend’s yellow cap.
Another friend approaches: “I like your hat!”
“Thanks! Got it at a Trump rally.”
Somehow I refrain from asking an uncomfortable question, but he answers it anyway:
“Look at the tag.â
They share a chuckle at âMade in China,” and the wearer shrugs:
“It’s the way of the world.”
At a party, pub, or coffeehouse, I’d quickly counter that point, but this is a workplace and we need to agree on a cool key, G or D, never mind anything as hot as conservative or liberal. Just as well, since the subject is too detailed for hats, shirts, bumper-stickers, and other soundless sound-bites such as the new Virginia license plate, yellow with the snake centered between and the motto below the black numbers.
Since this exchange months back, I have learned that at least ten states offer a Gadsden flag plate. Originally designed by Gen. Christopher Gadsden in 1775 to help inspire the American Revolution, it evolved from Ben Franklin’s chopped-up rattler in his iconic 1751 editorial cartoon. The Gadsden flag’s “me” was understood to symbolize a unified nation, as in Franklin’s “Join, or Die.”*
Not anymore. Libertarians, wannabe “Rebs,” self-styled “rugged individualists,” and gullible fools now use it to repudiate–or is it “refudiate”?–all attempts at public endeavor, to stand exclusively for individual liberty. âWe the People” is now “Me the Individual.â
Historical confusion? How about grammatical? Texas now refers to its population of over 29 million in the first person singular. How about ironic? Virginia is one of the four states that call themselves a âcommonwealth.â Maybe they made a typo and actually meant, âDonât read to me.â
So much for the flag, how about the tag? Outsourcing took hold in the 1980s after the Reagan campaign distributed thousands of hand-waved 3×5-inch American flags to anyone who might put themselves in the sights of cameras at their events. The source of those flags went unremarked until Sept. 11, 2001.
Made of papery plastic, they appeared everywhere including utility poles along the Plum Island Causeway. As winds ripped them down, I picked them up during walks and kept seeing the label: “Republic of Korea.”
We may have shrugged at the time, but in 2012 it became an issue in the presidential election. For those who missed it, social mediaâif not the networksâwere flush with images of Romney/Ryan hats and shirts with Third World sweatshop tags.
Meanwhile, all of the Obama/Biden apparel sported “Union Made” tags, all from a factories along New Yorkâs Erie Canalâthat too over-looked, monumental early-19th Century achievement that transformed the USA from a fledgling nation into a global economic power.
In the original spirit of Franklin’s snake, the Erie Canal was a public works project, a foreshadowing of FDRâs New Deal which made possible the rise of a prosperous middle classâuntil the Reaganites started to dismantle it on behalf of those eager to cash in on outsourcing. So devastating was the trickle up result that they called the theory “trickle down” to fool the inattentive.
But I digress…
In 2016 we saw photos of tags inside very stylish suits that read: “From the collection of Donald J. Trump” and “Made in Mexico.” No word yet whether his proposed Great Wall of Rio Grande will admit his own “collection.” Like so much else sponsored not just by the Republican president but by the Republican Party, that wall is a pork barrel for private enterprise, funded in part by diverting funds for preventing the spread of diseases and viruses such as the one now spreading. If it’s any consolation, I can tell you that my “Bernie” shirt is “Made in USA” and “Produced by UFCW Union Labor,” or the Union of Food & Commercial Workers.
These contrasts belie my friend’s claim. This outsourcing of patriotism is not “the way of the world,” but the way of those who pay too little attention.
Outsourcing has been an overriding Republican principle since 1980. Of course, they avoid that word, finding “deregulation” far more appealing to those whose inattention renders them gullibleâand, therefore, ripe for appeals to anger and cynicism. In an age more responsive to the “You’re fired!” crassness of reality TV than to the home-spun reassurance of “win one for the Gipper,â Donald Trump is Ronald Reagan without the aw-shucks, regular-guy veneer.
In their rush to claim the legacy of Reagan, the other Republican candidates cater to what is now Trumpâs following. “Don’t tread on me,” in its modern sense, could as well be the GOP’s motto as âMake America Great Again,â with “great” meaning not having to give a shit about anyone or anything other than yourself.
Those who fall for it will never notice that their patriotism has been outsourced right out from under the visors of their Chinese, Bangladeshi, Mexican, Guatemalan, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, Philippine, and anything but American caps.
-30-
*Notice that in Franklin’s 1751 cartoon, the New England colonies are already unified as “N.E.” while Delaware and Georgia are nowhere to be found. Also, there were just four N.E. colonies, as Maine was still attached to Massachusetts–in effect, a colony of a colony–and Vermonters regarded themselves as an independent republic.
Photos above are a Gadsden flag and Ben Franklin’s editorial cartoon courtesy ofWikipedia.
As for Trump “merchandise,” something that always goes unnoticed is the use of an American flag in the advertisements. That’s not illegal, but it is a violation of flag etiquette:
Will not surprise me if someone counters this with a photo and/or a link to prove that Trump shirts, hats, and other items are made in the USA. Yes, a few of his items are. Very few, and just for that reason. This is the trick of gaslighting that we hear in his rhetoric all the time: “Maybe it will, maybe it won’t” and “It could disappear, or it could come back,” or “Who knows?” and “That’s what I hear” and “A lot of people are saying” followed by “We’ll see what happens.” The tactic is to enable him to deny anything you say he said by pointing to the other thing. In this case, despite most of all his campaign material being made overseas–including “Trump 2020” flags manufactured in China while he rails about a trade war and tariffs to impose on China even though tariffs are inevitably paid by consumers in the country that institutes them–all he needs is a single hat with a “Made in USA” sticker to make his followers think that everything else is “fake news.” And all they need is the photo of it to “disprove” you.
That paragraph I just wrote, the two links that I am adding here, and any mention of the outsourced manufacture of Trump and Republican campaign attire will not matter to them because they do not have the attention span to get past the opening exchange, seven short lines, of this post.
When the Lowell Spinners minor league baseball team announced âJack Kerouac Bobble-Head Dollâ night, a dear friend realized that she could check me off her gift list while enjoying a night out with her Little League grandnephews.
A welcome addition to my modest abode, it stands, about eight inches, on the sill of my largest window overlooking the marsh. As the legend of the Beat writer who gave us On the Road would have it, he has his thumb up at the end of his extended right arm, his left arm akimbo, as he faces the road in jeans and a white shirt with rolled up sleeves sporting a small backpack. As this long-time fan of his would have it, that right hand from where I sit appears wrapped around the slender rope to pull the blinds. Helping create that illusion is the spring added to the right wrist.
Having the hand shake while the head bobbles is a nice touch. Itâs also a misimpression.
This will come as no surprise, much less shock to those who have actually read Kerouac, but he did very little hitchhiking. Most of the road adventures he chronicled in On the Road and other books were in some old beater with his friend Neal Cassady. Canât recall the exact dates, much less estimates of miles, but after reading all those books, and after several long-distance hitches in the 70s and early-80s, I long ago figured out that my thumb had logged more miles than Kerouacâs after just two trips which, added together, would not reach cross-country. And I had at least a dozen more to go.
Not to belabor the point, but the only passage from Kerouac that I can recall on the subject is from Big Sur, bitter ridicule of middle-aged males driving station wagons on Californiaâs spectacular coastal Route 1 looking nervously straight ahead while their wives in the passenger seat glared at Jack as if his face was a billboard for murder of the prescribed 2.6 kiddos in the seats behind them.
No matter. Kerouac was with me on the first trip from Salem, Mass., to Akron, Ohio. Felt like cheating when, soon after breakfast, a friend from Salem with friends of his heading for the Berkshires in his hippy VW van found me at the entrance to the Mass Pike. Could have had another cup of coffee and taken the ride west with him had I known. Not long after he went his way, a young woman returning home to Cleveland craving conversation was going mine.
Talk about beginnerâs luck! I thumbed out of Salem at dawn and made it well past Buffalo in time to watch a sunset over Lake Erie. Late that night, after a call on something called a payphone, which was easy to find back then, I boarded the last Cleveland-to-Akron bus and promptly fell asleep. Cousin Kathy was surprised when the Greyhound driver told her no-one was aboard other that those bound for Canton. She was likely back home and asleep when I awoke in Canton.
Had to thumb back to Akron, so early in the morning that there was no traffic on that interstate. I made myself comfortable on a guardrail and broke out the one paperback I brought with me, opening it for the first time.
Yes, I started reading On the Road on the road.
Twelve pages in, two young women going to Akron spotted my âAkronâ sign and were so amused by the street address I gave them that they insisted on taking me right there. As if to call my bluff, they waited to see if Iâd be admitted. And so, I arrived on Loverâs Lane in time for breakfastâwhich for Kathy was usually well past 10:00 and consisted of a Coca-Cola and two or three Marlboros.
Not sure if it was that trip or another a few years later when, for my return to Massachusetts, Kathy drove me out to an interstate interchange near Kent, about 15 miles east. It was always my strategy to hitch as much as possible outside of a city, and at times I would get out on the outskirts past a city from a ride going into the next city, even if I was going past that second city. On the outskirts, thereâs less confusion, and itâs easier for a driver to stop.
Good example of that was what happened next. Kathy wasnât gone ten minutes before a driver headed for a Pennsylvania town just over the Ohio border picked me up. I got out about 15 miles sooner to take advantage of traffic leaving Youngstown. That was just in time to catch a fellow in a large Ford who pulled over. As I was hustling toward the passenger side door, he got out and asked if I could drive. I took the wheel. Exhausted, he took the back seat and passed out.
He was ticketed for NYC, and I may have driven the full length of Pennsylvania into New Jersey before he awoke in time for a pit stop. I picked up a map and showed him that Iâd get out there rather than in the city to catch an interstate that veered north to avoid it. He picked up the tab.
Weather can dictate strategy. When I wanted to catch the aging flautist Jean-Pierre Rampalâs concert in Minneapolis some 400-plus miles away from Bismarck on a mid-winter night, I knew that I couldnât accept any ride short of Fargo, halfway there. And if I got that, the next ride had to be into the Twin Cities by noon, otherwise I was turning around. In single-digit weather before sunrise, bundled to the max, I declined three offers before I was off to Fargo where I was barely out of the car before I was off to St. Paul where I caught a bus back into Minneapolis. A minute after I walked into Orchestra Hall, a policeman in the lobby answered the ring of the payphone, dropped his jaw, looked at me, and said, âItâs for you.â No one else in the lobby, barely a dozen of us an hour before show time, fit the description of a bundled-up long-hair with a backpack. A friend wanted to make sure I was there before he walked over.
The immediate connection outside Fargo was especially fortunate because it was at an intersection of interstates, 29 and 94. That leaves you on an interstate where it is always illegal. Anywhere else you would stay on the entrance ramp, but high enough on it so that thru-traffic would see you. Rather like the street-musicianâs rule to be in the way and out of the way at the same time.
A few years later it would happen at the split of I-90 and I-94 outside Tomah, Wisconsin. I barely turned around when a state trooper, about my age, pulled over, lights flashing. So resigned was I to spending that night in some cell, I didnât register anything he said before I got in, but I snapped to attention at his first question: âCan you play me a Christmas carol?â
Sometimes Iâm amazed that âLuckâ is not my middle name. âWell, not on this,â referring to the dulcimer, âbut on this.â I fished a harmonica out of my pack and played âGod Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen,â followed by a wild, improvised mash of âWe Three Kingsâ and âJoy to the World.â âTâwas the season. Felt like I was playing for my life as he laughed, more so as he got on his radio to his dispatcher and said, âListen to this!â
Had no idea what it meant, but I played myself out of breath just as he left the road, not for an exit, but for a truck stop where he told me I should have an easy time finding a ride, reminding me to stay within the bounds of the truck stop.
âMerry Christmas!â I said in a gush of relief.
âYou coming back through here New Yearâs Eve?â he asked with mock admonishment.
That was the only encounter I ever had with police, state or local, anywhere in the country in all the hitchhiking I did.*
The ride I found at that plaza was not from a trucker, but from a young couple, both profs at a college in the Twin Cities, with three young children in their VW van. They approached me after seeing me walk into the restaurant with the dulcimer and a sign saying âBoston,â and thought Iâd be a good fit for the passenger seat to chat with the one who drove while the other played card games with the kids in the back. They took me to Pittsburgh, by which time I felt so lucky that I had them drop me at the airport where I splurged for a flight home.
Advantage to hitchhiking in the upper mid-west is that so many people canât bear the thought of leaving anyone out in the cold. Cold they have, but they also have heat which I felt as soon as I walked out of the Minneapolis Airport years later to play in a South Dakota summer arts festival run by friends in Brookings. I may not be the only person to walk out of an airport terminal with my thumb out, but I have yet to hear of any other. Thankfully, the highway wasnât far off, and it was surprisingly crowded at 10:30 am. Among the vehicles crawling past was an enormous RV with markings I recognized before I could read them: âThe King and His Court.â
Behind the wheel, mopping his brow, was the King of fast-pitch softball himself, Eddie Feigner at the age of 59 still barnstorming the nation, beating local all-star teams everywhere with just three teammates: a catcher, a first-baseman, and a guy who played in shallow center. Heâd pitch from second-base. Heâd pitch blindfolded. How good was he? My cousin John boasts of having faced Feigner in Haverhill even though he struck out. Well, John, Feigner also left me in the dust.
Fellow who took me out of that dust brought me halfway to Dakota. After I bought him lunch in a diner, a second driver took me right into downtown Brookings where I bought him a beer in a favorite old haunt. Invited him to my friendâs barbeque, but he was in a hurry to get to Pierre.
When I was still living in Dakota, one friend turned my thumb into an emergency service. He had booked himself for a weekend conference in Michigan, way up on the lower peninsula, and planned to take a ferry from Manitowok, Wisconsin, across Lake Michigan. Had to be there before 5:00 pm, but he wanted to celebrate some occasion the night before, so he asked me to arrive at his place at dawn. His wife managed to get him up, dressed, out the door, and into the back seat of his Pontiac Tempest. Took him halfway across southern Minnesota to Blue Earth before he came to. We stopped for coffee to take him east and me back west.
Trip back was quick, thanks in some part to the dulcimer case I took with me. From the side, people will assume itâs a guitar case, and, hey, a musician canât be so bad. Thatâs the main reason I occasionally took it to the Twin Cities and elsewhere while living in Dakota. Other reason is that it serves as a suitcase for the sweater and jacket Iâll need in the morning but not at midday, a change that I made in Blue Earth. Thatâs why the dulcimer itself was often left at home.
Friends and family can be reluctant to see you wander off into an uncertain distance, leaving them to the safety and security of their cars. On a spring break at South Dakota State, I took a ride east with a friend returning home to Michigan. He was to turn north off the Indiana Toll Road just before Ohio, so I got out at a rest stop ten or so miles before his exit. Knowing that I would be at a service plaza, I made a sign that would have been too wordy for the actual road: âWill Buy Gas for Conn or Mass.â
While we had lunch, he insisted that he should drive me into Toledo and put me on a bus. âBill, Iâll be out of here before you turn your ignition.â
When we walked out of the restaurant, I spotted a Connecticut plate on a full-sized sedan at the gas pumps with two young guys standing next to it. I walked toward them and held up the sign. They perked up, waved me toward them, watched me pay the cashier, and put my bag in their trunk. Bill was still standing there when we drove off.
In the upper mid-west, it pays to keep your eye on cars that your ride passes. Itâs common in the Dakotas, that you can walk into a restaurant or bar anywhere in the state and hear someone call your name. Happened to me twice, once in the Black Hills, 400 miles from the college town where I got to know the guy. Returning from Iowa, it was after dark when I recognized the Olds 442 hauling a small trailer on I-29. Looked over and met the eyes of a good friend who pulled over behind us when I mentioned it to the driver. Changing cars, I had a ride to my door, my first driver didnât need to go out of his way, and my friend had a place to stay rather than driving all night to the North Dakota border.
That same friend was with me on a short hitch out of Winnipeg straight south alongside the Red River, the eastern border of Dakota Territory, the only hitch I recall that was not solo. We took a bus out of the downtown Rail Canada depot as far south as it went. A car with North Dakota plates pulled over as soon as I stepped off, but when I got to the door, I turned to see my friend still yakking away with passengers on their way home to farms in the surrounding cornfields. As I feared, the driver seemed annoyed by the seeming bait-and-switch, but I think that the guitar case following the dulcimer case was reassuring. This time the cases carried their instruments.
More than once I took rides with friends moving to another part of the country, not just to help them, but for a hitch back. Two brothers moved to Tucson just as I went on spring break from South Dakota State. When I returned, my sweatshirt was stuffed in my backpack, my jacket slung over my shoulder, and I considered myself blessed that my ride north was in the back of a pick-up where I enjoyed the 65-mile-an-hour highway breeze. The morning was quite nice, but by early afternoon I was noticing the cacti getting smaller and the appearance of small pine trees among them. As the cacti disappeared, the pines were thicker and taller, while a drop in temperature caused me to put on the sweatshirt, later the jacket.
By the time I landed in Flagstaff, I had the beginning of a sore throat which I treated with a couple black Russians in the bar of the old hotel where I checked in. Bartender heard my story and explained that I had crossed into Arizonaâs high country. It wasnât so much climate that went from cactus to pine. It was altitude.
Next morning Flagstaff was under 22 inches of snow. Roads to the Grand Canyon were closed. I resolved that I wouldnât take a ride unless it was going very long distance where I could land in a fair-sized city. Not many of those in that part of the country, though I was hoping for a fairly direct route through Denver.
Instead, the lingering storm was keeping most everyone off the roads, so when a fellow stopped on his way to Salt Lake City, I got in. As happened with many of the drivers who gave me a lift, he was a college prof, and we yakked away about literature and history for a few hundred miles. He insisted I stay with his family that night and treated me to âthe best breakfast youâll ever haveâ the next morning. Thought it was a joke when we walked into a hospital cafeteria, but it was true until 2012 when I stayed a long weekend in a San Luis Obispo B&B.
Long distance hitchhiking demands such improvisation, often on the spot as I was in Flagstaff. By taking the admittedly long detour, I dodged the remnants of the storm in Colorado, gained a place to stay the night, and was able to hitch a more travelled east-west highway back to Dakotaâplus a long look at Utahâs monuments, south-to-north, not to mention the breakfast.
One summer I left South Dakota aiming for Seattle where I thought I could land a job on a boat bound for China or Alaska. Young fellow from Omaha who found me had a letter from a mining company up in the Yukon where his brother was already employed. Seemed a sure thing, so I agreed to join him long before we turned north in Montana. Not so fast. Canadian customs was having none of it. The letter was for him only, and when they asked about our relationship, I said âhitchhiker.â My new friend was miffed by my unforced admission, but I told him that a hitchhiker is already on the border of our countryâs legality, so I wasn’t going to risk anything on the border of another country’s legal system.
You might say that I then un-improvised by reverting to Plan A and thumbing to Seattle. On the hardly-travelled roads of Montana through Idaho, I started passing time between rides by playing a small recorder, a musical instrument still new to me and, as the airlines might say, an easy carry-on. At an intersection in downtown Spokane where I-90 plows right through the city, a hiker just off it noticed that I was improvisingâthe music, not the travel. After a few questions he knew that I was playing entirely by ear. âLet me show you something.â
He had me look at the brick building next to us while he motioned to the layers of mortar as if they were lines on a staff. Moving his hand up and down and saying the letters A through G, he taught me the concept of scales and at least the beginning of the relationship of notes, including the lack of half-steps between B and C, E and F. We were startled by a car horn, a driver offering to take me to Seattle. And so it was that my first ever music lesson was as thick as those bricks and cut short by a heart-attack A-flat.
In Seattle, when I found the docks on Puget Sound filled with queues of card-carrying Merchant Marines looking for work, I had to re-improvise. Tempted to call it Plan C, but there is no planning necessary when you take a credible tip and immediately act on it. When two buskers waiting for the ferry to Alaska told me they had left jobs at a state hospital in Oregon that is always looking to hire attendants, I jammed with them for a few songs before heading back to I-5, aiming south.
At times, as Chuck Berry wailed, I had no particular place to go. After a couple months zig-zagging between Seattle and San Francisco, I awoke at dawn covered in St. Helensâ ash in one of Portlandâs lush city parks not knowing where to go or what to do next. As always, I had black and red magic markers and blank cardboard.
At times I wondered how much of my luck owed to shaded signs. Earlier on that zig-zag, a restaurant owner in Lincoln City, Oregon, saw me take out my markers and a piece of dull, blank cardboard I had picked up roadside. âHey! Hey! No! Stop! Gimme that!â
This was late morning, between breakfast and lunch, and I was his only customer. While his cook took my order, he tossed my cardboard and returned with a clean white one, two square feet. He then took both markers, right out of my hand, without asking, and shaded a most attractive âS.F.â right at my table while I feasted on his fabulous Hawaiian pancakes. âThey donât like the abbreviation âSan Franâ,â he warned.
In Portland, just before the divide for intersection of interstates 5 and 84, I made two. California and Oregon plates were easy to see at a distance. They got the âCalifâ sign for I-5 South. Everyone else, which were very few, got âChicagoâ for I-84 East to take me toward Dakota.
Not only did I get a ride to Salem, Oregon. I got a free room in an abandoned dormitory and a job landscaping that enabled me to stay in Oregon until South Dakota State was back in session. When I did return, I caught a ride in an RV as large as Eddie Feignerâs, an elderly gent returning home from a vacation after his wife flew home for the sake of a family emergency. Like many drivers who picked up hitchhikers, he wanted company and conversation, but he also needed someone to occasionally go back into the camper and take his next can of beer from the refrigerator, and he always added, âGrab one for yourself!â
Ah, those were the days! It was perfectly legal back then, and frankly, I donât know how you can ride across those western states in the dead of summer without it.
Since most drivers who stop for you are young, it stands to reason that you land in college towns and are offered places to stay in college dorms. I stayed in dorms at Mankato State in Minnesota and at Notre Dame on consecutive nights. Perhaps the second-most likely driver you will catch is an elderly man looking to relive his youth, looking for a conversation full of vicarious adventure reminiscent of his own.
The fellow in the RV was one of many of my drivers in that category, and surely the restauranteur was reliving his youth by making my sign. But I have no example that tops a classmate who, just after our high school graduation, thumbed from Lawrence 160 miles west into the Berkshire Mountains. A grey-haired gent, elegantly dressed in a plush Lincoln Continental, stopped for him at the entrance to the Mass Pike and took him all the way there. Paul told me that the man said nothing about himself but, instead, kept pumping him with questions about Lawrence and growing up there, about Central Catholic High School, about Salem State where Paul would be going in the fall, what he was studying, and about all that was going on, which in 1968 meant Vietnam, the draft, the drugs, the music, assassinations, race relations, a presidential election, the âgeneration gap.â
When he dropped Paul at the pikeâs last exit, he handed him his card: âA delight talking to you. If I can ever be of serviceâŠâ he said before driving off. Paul settled into a nearby diner and nearly finished a sandwich when two local cruisers pulled up. One cop came in. âStep outside please.â
There had been a rape in town the night before, and he fit the description. The police didnât believe that he had just hitched in. Not until Paul took the card out of his pocket. Two cops raised their eyebrows, and one took it back to his cruiser. The other turned fidgety and mumbled some small talk, including, âWe need to be sure of this.â
A couple minutes later, the other walked into the restaurant, had a word with someone behind the counter, and then returned and handed Paul the card: âVery sorry to bother you.â And then, after a glance into the diner, âYour tab has been paid.â
Paul looked at the card for the first time: âUS Representative Silvio Conte,â followed by Berkshire County and Washington DC addresses and phone numbers.
In recent years Iâve heard friends reminisce about hitchhiking, but all of it is as far in the past as mine. Most everyone thinks that increased danger and insanity have made the practice obsolete. I donât dispute that, although I do think that the popularity of smaller cars due to the steep rise of the price of gas in the 80s had as much to do with it. How many times in those last years did drivers make that sign to me with their thumb and index finger meaning âtoo smallâ through the windshields of their Toyota Corollas and Honda Civics? As soon as I saw the packed back seat, the gesture was redundant.**
When that happened, the waits became longer. As friends of mine have said about their service in Vietnam, much of the time spent with your thumb out roadside is warding off boredom. Drivers who picked me up were always talkersâthe main reason they stopâbut that can be worse than the wait. One fellow in Ohio started worrying aloud as soon as I sat down that he was taking a risk by helping someone who might rob and/or kill him. He wouldnât shut up. This was while we lurched toward an interchange on the Ohio Turnpike. In broad daylight. In a traffic jam.
By the time we got there, I wanted to kill him. Instead, I was thankful and relieved to be back out in the boredom of well over an hour before my next ride. Thatâs what paperbacks are for, and to this day I wonder what percentage of their royalties Kurt Vonnegut and Herman Hesse owed to the popularity of hitchhiking. The titles of their many novels peaked out of the pockets of backpacks everywhere.
In the desert of northern Nevada with not a tree in sight, it was too hot to be comfortable reading anything. And there were precious few drivers to read my âCaliforniaâ sign. I was beginning to write my own obituary in my head when a VW Beetle pulled up ahead of me. A young woman got out and asked if I could drive, a replay of the scene years earlier outside Kent, Ohio, except that she got into the backseat with an infant after a barely coherent story about needing to be in Sacramento that night. She didn’t exactly say it, but between the lines I read that she was fleeing an abusive husband or boyfriend. The VW’s Indiana plates made me marvel that she made it that far.
Reaching Sacramento before sunset was no problem. She was awake when I told her I’d get off at any exit she wanted, but she wanted to return the favorâactually extend itâand suggested I drive to the west of the city and then she would drive back in. She knew a thing or two about the art of the thumb. The baby gave a brief shriek as if to object, but was otherwise miraculously quiet.
Other women have given me rides, and yes, I became friends with them, however briefly due to geographical impossibility. One chose me out of a line-up of thumbsâcalled a âslugââ on an entrance ramp to I-5 outside Berkeley, California, because I was alone, carried no more than one small pack, and had a sign saying “Seattle” where she was going. Clearly, I was the only one in the slug who could fit into her very small, unusual, I-donât-know-what, packed carâyes, she was movingâbut she claimed she chose me because I “looked safe.” So safe that when I offered to drive through the Oregon night, she had a better idea. We split the cost.
Strange that after a few hundred miles of sharing likes and dislikes, memories and hopes, only then does the present come down like a fist on a table to announce that the meal is over and the bill has come due. She wasn’t fleeing an abusive partner so much as charges of theft he had brought against her. Way too much of a mess for someone who doesn’t know if he’s going to spend the next night checking into a YMCA or sleeping on a park bench.
But I did help her gain the safety of her parents’ home. One of Mount St. Helens’ eruptions was still in the air when we started noticing cars pulled over, hoods up, and drivers banging air-cleaners against guardrails, clouds of ash exploding in front of them as they turned sideways, flinched, and tried to cover their faces with their free hand. At times they were within yelling distance of each other, one after another. Long before we reached Seattle, the VW started choking. âCan you do that?â Sure, I said, and when she stopped, I noticed that it took her awhile to find the latch for the hood, making me think to this day that I had taken that long ride in not just an odd, but a âborrowedâ car.
If my hunch is right, that was the only encounter I had with any crime in all of my hitchhiking trips.
About that line-up on the I-5 entrance ramp: Slugs were common back in the 60s and early-70s, which is why they earned a name. You might think it would be demoralizing to be dropped in, say, rural western Pennsylvania or just outside teeming Chicago and see a half-dozen or more hikers in front of you. But back then, it was hard to tell supply from demand. Many drivers wanted and looked for us. Thatâs why having a signâa particular placeâand a backpack or duffle bag mattered. Thatâs why being reasonably clean and neat mattered. Thatâs why the expression on your face and look in your eye mattered most. And if it was rural Pennsylvania where traffic was scarce, even late in the afternoon, you could count on one of those ever-popular VW vans to stop and invite several of you aboard. I was one of six.
Yes, I miss it, but it isâor wasâa young personâs game, a time of life, what Bobby Kennedy might have called âa spirit of adventure over the love of ease.â Might even call it a way of life before settling down. In my 30s and 40s, and twice more in my 50s, I have driven solo coast to coast, or to Denver, once to Louisville, another time to Houston via North Carolina, and have always kept the front seat clear for a hiker, the back seat as much as possible for a backpack or a second hiker. Only once did I find one, and that was the earliest of those trips in 1984, a young fellow I found just past the Soo Locks heading east. He got out along the St. Lawrence Seaway before I turned south into Vermont. Yes, the one and only long-distance ride I ever gave a hiker was from start to finish in Canada.
In retrospect, the chance encounters and random conversations with people from all parts of the country, and from all walks of life, no doubt prepared me for a life as a street musician. Sure gave me the taste. In 1979, I attempted to combine the two in an application for a modest grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I offered them a book to be titled, Minstrel in the Streets. It was unsuccessful, but 35 years later I turned the document into a chapter in my first book, Pay the Piper!, under its own title.***
Despite its disappearance from our highways, hitchhiking keeps reappearing on our screens, including many of our most popular filmsâForrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Crash, Borat, Mr. Beanâs Holiday, and three by the Coen Brothers: No Country for Old Men, Inside Llewyn Davis, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Call it nostalgia we cannot let go.****
How ironic that, as upturned thumbs along our roads disappeared, they became ubiquitous in American pop culture and later in business and politics as expressions of agreement and approval. What was once a request for assistance and an offer of company now boasts of gratification and declares success. From my generation, Jack Kerouac gained thumbs up. For a younger generation, The Fonz was thumbs up.
Whether or not he took the title of his best-known song from Jack Kerouacâs novel, Willie Nelson catches the spirit with the lyric, âSeeing places I may never see again,â to which I add, âHearing people I may never hear again.â
On my window sill, Kerouac is welcome to shake all he wants so long as he never pulls the blinds on either one.
–30-
*In the Netherlands, not only is hitchhiking legal, there are signs to let hikers and drivers know where the best places are to do it.
**You might ask, what about the advent and proliferation of SUVs over the past 20 years? Good question, but it seems to me that most people driving SUVs tend to be on tight schedules with demanding occupations, often with young children strapped into back seats who at times are also on tight schedules. It’s not that they are afraid of strangers or are indifferent to hitchhikers, but that they have no time for them.
***For those of you who may have read it, yes, I am still peeved that, ten years after denying my bid for $2,000, the NEH awarded $15,000 to a photographer who gave them an exhibit that included a shot of a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine. However, Iâm willing to bury the hatchet that I wanted to bury in NEH skulls and send them the book they could have had 42 years ago in return for what they gave the photographer adjusted for inflation. A brand new Prius would look very nice in my driveway.
Not until I started writing this did I realize that in all the columns Iâve written for newspapers since 1983âwell over 500âI never treated long-distance hitchhiking. In fact, I may have never mentioned it. I wrote one about a short hitch from here on Plum Island to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but even that was a lark. Hitching from Plum Island to the mainland is so common and everyone is such a familiar face that we call it the âPlum Island Shuttle Serviceââa name invented for the sake of its acronym. (Or to appeal to the NEH.) Also, a friend offered the use of his Honda Civic, but I knew I had a ride back and was out for a lark. The column, âThe Ride Not Taken,â is more a flight of fancy answering Robert Frostâs poem and Simon & Garfunkelâs âDangling Conversationâ and will appear in my upcoming book, Once Upon an Attention Span.
All three photos courtesy of Wikipedia. Songs courtesy of YouTube.
Mouth of the River 