Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

by Studs Terkel

  Instead of a headstone, I’d like to have a bench somewhere with a pretty nice view, where somebody could just sit in the middle of their day. Nobody’s going to be doing that in the middle of a graveyard. I could just give somebody a nice moment in their day. They could park their butt down on a bench and take a deep breath and think about things. If you want to be immortal, have a kid. Go to a sperm bank. That’s another path to immortality: have a kid, hope you’re lucky. Don’t have too many expectations in this world because, at a certain point, you get the immortality but you don’t necessarily get to write the script of that next person’s life. And that’s that.

  One other thing that is interesting about the software. We all seem to operate better when we believe in something. If you look at people who have some sort of religious belief, whether it’s humanistic or some particular lodge hall, people who have some sort of belief live longer—they operate better. Life isn’t just about them. If you want to live longer, believe in something and feel good about it. Today, we live in a time where we have to keep reinventing ourselves, and I’ve reinvented myself. I was in advertising and, at a certain point, they want to see some young guy there. So either you send in a young actor to play you in the meeting or you go find something else to do. Exit laughing.

  *Studs Terkel, The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream (New York: Pantheon, 1988).

  *An irreverent monthly out of the West Coast. Its vintage years were the sixties.

  Part III

  Fathers and Sons

  Doc Watson

  A blind folksinger. He was born and raised in Deep Gap, North Carolina. “I feel that music is an expression of people’s joy and sorrows and all the in-betweens that come along in life.”

  WAS MY FAMILY RELIGIOUS? I’ve heard people call Dad’s religious approach to the Almighty fundamentalist. He wasn’t exactly that. He wasn’t as strict as a lot of people. Some of the people there used to skin me alive. I was playing with a dance band in the fifties. A cousin of mine, a Baptist preacher, he used to say, “Doc, you shouldn’t play that music—you ought to play gospel music all the time.” One day, right after I moved out with my sweetie on our own, he came up to the house and I knew he was going to get on the subject in about two minutes. I said, “Brother, you were talking to me the other day about music,” and I said, “I’ve been thinking about the good old book that you and I both love.” I said, “In that book, it says the man that provides not for his own house is denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. I figure if I can get out there and earn a little of that money them old boys are blowing on booze and beer and the slot machines at the VFW clubs and help my sweetheart raise these two little children, I don’t think I’m doing too bad. Can you help what they do with the lumber you cut at your sawmill? They may build beer joints or houses of prostitution or whatever.” He says, “I never thought about that.” I said, “Well, you better think about it.” [Laughs]

  Music covers everybody trying to find their way.

  My dad was a singing leader at the church, but he made me my first little stringed instrument, a homemade banjo, when I just had turned eleven, in ’34. I took it to the School for the Blind over at Raleigh the first year, with me. A little later on I said, “Dad, pick me another piece on the banjo. You showed me a few things.” He said, “Son, you can pick it better than I can.” He handed the banjo to me and he said, “Here, learn to play it real well. It might help you get through the world.” The best thing he ever did for me, Studs, was put me to work on the end of a crosscut saw when I was fourteen. I didn’t have to sit in a corner, and he knew it.

  He had a little hillside farm where we grew about what we needed to eat. He also did a lot of work when he wasn’t in the fields on Public Works jobs—everything from having built some of the buildings at ASU College in Boone to doing work on the highway. He was what they call Freewill Baptist. My mother—there were lots of hymns, too. Mama knew a few of the old ballads. She’d sing some of the sweeter ones to the little children when she’d rock them to sleep. Somebody said to me once, “Did your mother play the guitar?” And I said, “No, she raised nine little brats—she didn’t have time to learn it.”

  From the time I can remember, I was vaguely aware of death. My first memories of music, in the form of singing, unaccompanied singing, was at the church. I was sitting on my mother’s lap, I must have been about two, and they were singing “The Lone Pilgrim” and “There’s a Foundation Filled with Blood.” “The Lone Pilgrim” speaks of death. I can remember thinking about the fellow who went to the old boy’s grave and stood there in contemplation of the man’s life: “I came to the place where the lone pilgrim lay and intensively stood by his tomb.” I think that headed me in the right direction to a little later think about death for what it really was, because they took us to funerals from the time I was just a little boy. Death was talked about, and Heaven, and the danger of being lost. They didn’t fully understand how to clarify the truths to young children. I had to learn about that later, the truth of the gospel. But death was certainly there, very present from the time I was a little boy.

  I believe in the presence of the Almighty and spirit in our lives—I believe that with all of my heart. If I hadn’t, I don’t know what I would have done when we lost Merle.* There was times on the road when I had to go to my knees at the hotel rooms after we’d do gigs. Me and this boy over here, Jack Lawrence, and T. Michael Coleman that played bass with us—it was tough. Without that assurance, I don’t know what I would have done.

  Three weeks before Merle’s fatal accident, we were coming back from Nashville. I said, “Son, I’m not the best candidate I can think of to talk about this with you, but if old death was to slip up on you, how is it between you and the good Lord?” He said, “Dad, I’ve been on my knees in the woods and I’ve made my peace with him—I don’t have to worry about that.”

  His mother, Rosalie, taught him his first chords when I was on the road in ’64. Ralph Renzler called me and told me Merle had started playing the guitar. Man, I was in seventh heaven. I couldn’t wait to get back home and hear him. I got back and he was already doing some finger-style things. He started doing occasional jobs in the summer in ’64. His first trip was to the Berkeley Folk Festival. We worked together a long time.

  When I first heard of Merle’s death, I was numb emotionally. I couldn’t cry for a long time. Even when I was by myself, I couldn’t cry. It was so unbelievable, so unreal. When you’re in shock . . . There was scrap paneling that I was going to use for kindling left over. I worked a whole day the week after his funeral cutting that stuff up with a little, tiny saw. And all I could think about was his laughter and his enjoyment of a trip we did in ’68 to Africa. Especially the sounds, and how we talked about the different birds, the mynah birds and things that were in the wild and their natural calls. And I could hear all of that. It was just as real as if he was standing there by me. The hurt didn’t come down fully, the full hurt to where I could really shed some tears and lift the load, for oh, two or three years, or four. I wasn’t fittin’ to be amongst man nor beast for a long time. It’s the hardest . . . I can’t describe it.

  I guess, if I can be honest with you, I overcame it with God’s help. I don’t think I did it. I think I just leaned on the promise that He’ll get you through if you trust him. I’m as honest with you as I can be. I’m not a saint, Lord knows. Faults, just like me and you and everybody else has got. I just . . . He helped me through it, that’s all I can say.

  Between his accident and the funeral, I had called my manager and told him to cancel the tour we were about to do, I wasn’t going back on the road. But financially we had just built a new house and my family was in need and the savings was gone. I dreamed that night that I was in a desertlike place, and it was hot. Like quicksand, I couldn’t go any farther, and I could feel the darkness, it was so awful. And I thought, I just can’t make it. And that big, old, strong hand reached back and said, “Come on, Dad, you can
make it.” And he helped me out to where it was cool and it was sunny, and I waked up. And I knew God sent him. His resting place is right close to our yard. It’s our own family cemetery, immediate family. We fixed it with the state. I’ve already taken care of our immediate family’s funeral expenses.

  Merle’s son Richard does occasional jobs with me, festivals, whatever. He plays mainly blues. His dad taught him some blues licks before the accident. But he waited a long time before, one day, he said, “Pa, I’d like to play some music with you.” So we began to work and we did a little tape first, and then recently we did a CD called Third Generation Blues. We used Merle’s guitar as the stand-in for him in the cover picture.

  I think the good in our lives, if you will, is gleaned out and left to live in our offspring. I believe in an afterlife, but I don’t believe in reincarnation. I envision an immortal soul that’s us, that goes on, besides what we leave here in our offsprings as immortality. When we’re young fellas and newly married and the little ones come along, we don’t think about how strict an example we need to set and the gentleness we need to instill in our offsprings, rather than being a bossy daddy or mama and all that kind of thing. All of that has to come down, and it’s a shame that it comes down too late in our lives most of the time. [Laughs] I look back and see so many things I left undone with Merle—little things that would have mattered so much. I could have done a better job of living rather than talking about it to Merle and things like that. I was angry at God because I thought I needed Merle worse than eternity did. But then I thought about it. I’m not going to go into detail about this because we don’t need to. [He pauses and sighs several times.] Merle, as far as his domestic life and his love life, had one hell of a rough time. And the road, because of his emotional depression and his load, was too hard on the boy. He was about to get mixed up in some things that would have utterly destroyed him. We found out from a paper that Merle got from the specialist where he was examined in Winston-Salem some months before his accident that he had a brain tumor. It probably caused the accident. Instead of giving it to the family physician, he left it hid in his files at home so Rosalie would find it some time after his death and know that that was the probable reason. Merle knew he was going to die, he didn’t know for sure when, but he knew it as good as the Almighty knew it. He never told us. He didn’t want to worry us with it—he was like that. He knew that we’d pamper and baby him, and he didn’t want any part of that. He wanted to live as near normal as he could possibly with his load of problems. I understood that, though. It took me a while. I eventually said, “Lord, I guess you knew it was time for him to check out and get out of this trouble.” But it sure left us with a load. Will I overcome it? It will be here as long as I am. His memory is so richly celebrated with that annual Merle Fest where all the top folk artists come. Fifty thousand people show up annually.

  My life’s been seventy-seven years long with all its problems and misunderstandings and regrets in some cases. To me, Heaven is a place where everything will be perfect. There’ll be no sickness, none of that—all will be good. It’s a utopia that mortal man dreams of making upon this earth which, in my book, will never happen. Because we’re mortal and all of us have misgivings about everything.

  I think the flames of Hell is a representation, but I think it exists as a place without the knowledge of God. A place of total mental darkness and regret. A mortal mind couldn’t even comprehend the awfulness of it. I think it’s reserved for those who become totally evil, all the way to the core—I really do believe that. Because if there wasn’t, how could there be a Heaven? If everybody got in there and the bad ones who have no thought of caring for other people or don’t care who they kill or what kind of misery they cause, how could they be let in the gate? You have to call Heaven out too, if you don’t believe in Hell. I have thought and wondered if—Merle was such a fast-learning, good musician—taking him on the road with me affected his life and caused his problems. But I’ve sorted it out to the best of my ability and asked for guidance from the Almighty. And I’ve come to the conclusion that Merle’s problems could very probably have been worse if he hadn’t gone with me. Because he had the music, he found a lot of friends, and he loved the music. The road was, as the old saying goes, tough as the devil on the boy. But there’s some things I have thought, maybe I shouldn’t have done it. And that thought hurt me. And then I’d begin to use a little faith and a whole lot of reason to think about all the problems he had. And I put it aside. I don’t let that trouble me. I think Merle’s life on the road with me was meant to be, I think it was in the cards.

  POSTSCRIPT

  When I think of you and Merle, I think of the old hymn “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”

  I’ve always loved that song. It’s an old hymn, long before A. P. Carter did his arrangement of it. Let me give you the lyrics that was probably in an old hymn book:

  We have loved ones gone to glory

  Whose dear forms we often miss

  When we close our earthly story

  Shall we join them in their bliss

  Will the circle be unbroken by and by, by and by

  There’s a better home awaiting far beyond the starry sky.

  In this other version, the last verse says: [sings] “We can picture happy gatherings around the fireside long ago/And recall the tearful partings when they left us here below.”

  It’s just as real as life itself for those who believe. Whoever wrote it was inspired to write it because of the way they felt about life and death and the hereafter. [Sings]

  Oft they told us in our childhood of that happy land above

  Pointing to the dying savior as they told us of his love

  Will the circle be unbroken by and by, by and by . . .

  I may do another gospel album sometime before I lose the old voice and age takes the vocals down to where I can’t sing. I have some allergies, but I told the boys on the festival, I said, “I can still croak ’em out pretty good, boys.” [Laughs] I love to sing gospel and hymns I heard when I was in church. I get a lot of enjoyment out of that.

  *Merle Watson, Doc’s son and colleague for many years—“and a very able musician”—died in 1985 at the age of thirty-six as the result of a tractor accident.

  Vernon Jarrett

  He retired as a columnist for the Chicago Tribune as well as the Chicago Sun-Times. He had begun his newspaper career as a journalist for the Chicago Defender. For years, he conducted a weekly television program on Chicago’s ABC affiliate.

  DEATHS WERE QUITE frequent in the black community. The life expectancy of black men and women was anywhere from ten to twelve years less than whites. It seemed as though somebody was always dying. The old folk used to sit around at nights, before we had radio, before we had record players, and certainly before television, and remember when old sister so-and-so died, and how she looked. Older people always explained predilections about how they would like to die and warnings of death in the clouds, or in the shadows at night that the moon liked to give. [Laughs] As little boys and girls in the South, you grew up sitting there listening because you weren’t permitted to talk. Our entertainment was relating to each other at night great moments in your personal histories. Some of these stories you heard over and over and over, until they became real to you . . . About how a friend died right after a big picnic in the country. They used to say, “He died from indigestion,” when he was actually having a heart attack. I used to hear that all the time.

  I remember when B.B. died, one of my little playmates. First grade. Because people were very poor, when my dad took me to the wake, he didn’t have a casket. He was laying on what they used to call the cooling board. It took a little time for them to raise money to get him a little casket. I remember going by and there was little B.B. laying up there. I blamed God for this. Why would God do this to a little boy? A little innocent child. Do I believe in God? The whole God concept is unavoidable. Whether you believe there was an identifiable God, as we grew up
believing, is too heavy for us. I don’t think our brains will ever be able to understand the idea of a God. So we make it up. The human being has the capacity to create situations to make up for what you don’t know. So we are going to create a God. Who knows?

  My paternal grandfather used to come and live with us in Trenton, Tennessee. Two thousand people. My maternal grandmother used to come, too, because they were very old. They sat around and talked all the time. She would read the Bible to him. He couldn’t read, but we didn’t know it. He claimed his eyes were bad—actually, he was illiterate. Both of them were ex-slaves. They talked about dying, and they remembered specific deaths all the time. How some people saw signs in the sky predicting death—sometimes the image of it was on the clouds. They were saying, “That looks like old man so-and-so. We don’t know whether he’s going to make it to next year.” [Laughs] They had me believing all that too. Shadows that were on the outhouse in our backyard had the configuration of the moonlight through the clouds, and these configurations might take the shape of some face that they knew—and people would become worried. Especially if you were already ill, usually somebody old. They didn’t see any for young people.

  My grandfather was very strict, very stern. I didn’t like him too much. He didn’t like it when I asked him questions. He was a runaway slave. We learned later that he didn’t know where he came from. He just ran north. One Sunday morning, I went to Sunday school and I was mad at him. He had pushed me around a bit, whupped me, because I talked back to him once. I asked the Sunday school teacher, “Who was God’s father?” She said, “You don’t believe in God, little boy?” I said, “Yes, I do—but I would like to know who was God’s father.” She made me go sit in the corner and reported me to my parents . . . [laughs] because I was entertaining atheistic thoughts. I guess I couldn’t have been over seven. Finally she said, “There’s God the son, the father, and the Holy Ghost, and that’s all you need to know if you are a true believer.” I just swore I was a believer. I said, “OK, you told me who God’s father is, but who was God’s grandfather?” I thought about that all my life. I’m grandfather-conscious. I wanted to know. She couldn’t tell me who his grandfather was. Then I asked her, did God’s grandfather ever give him a whipping when God was a little boy? [Laughs]