by Studs Terkel
Is but phosphate and lime under earth,
When this victim of fertilization,
Can no more thwart the process of birth.
Will some frail little daisy he sires,
Now proclaim him expressed and fulfilled,
And release all his hostile desires,
From his fellows who fashion and build?
Will the tunes and rhymes he so humbles,
Still annoy him there under the ground?
Where his critical cranium crumbles,
While the songs still survive all around.
[Chuckles] Shaw would have liked that very much.
Yes. He influenced me a great deal, this kind of thinking. Here’s one I like, a little quick one called “Of Thee I Sing, Babel.”
Build thee more stately mansions, little man,
More grandioso, more gargantuan.
But as the towers rise, and derricks roar,
Remember there was once a dinosaur.
You know, there’s a marvelous writer of nature, Hal Borland, who died recently. This verse of yours reminded me of Hal Borland’s articles he wrote so often. He said: What has made man feel so arrogant that he thinks that his species won’t go if he fools around too often? Other species have gone. He speaks of the dinosaur. He’s certain that other species once ran the world or inhabited the world, but they went, the time went, it was over. And he says, well, if man behaves the way he does now, why don’t they think their time won’t be over, too? And that’s the point you made right there.
There’s no doubt about it. From all my reading, from all my thinking, and don’t forget, I’ve reached an age now where I can claim a little wisdom.
You are eighty-two, but who would believe it?
And I think that the world is an experiment. That the way a man in a laboratory experiments with a test tube, the world is an experiment for something on the outside, for nature. Nature wants to survive. Nature wants to have birth, creation, growth. And it is constantly trying to find a species that will live in harmony with its laws and all its elements. And she is trying very hard to get that superman, the man that will live in conjunction with nature, with all its elements. So that he won’t be neurotic. So that he will be at peace. So that he can enjoy the beauty of all that life offers us. And so far, she has tried many species. She has tried the albatross, and the albatross went out of business. She has tried the dinosaur; the dinosaur went out of business. As soon as they get too big for themselves, and too powerful, something happens to the species. In fact, nature has tried hundreds and hundreds of species. Man is nothing more than another species of nature, which so far has shown the greatest acumen for survival. But he is not beyond all the others; he is not any greater than any of these other species. And nature has no use for a guest that is not a good guest in its logistics.
Not a courteous guest.
Right. If we can’t be decent human beings and have respect for one another, and know the laws of nature, and the laws of mankind, nature’s got no use for us and will wipe us out as easily as she did any of the insects.
I’m thinking At This Point in Rhyme really wittily, funnily, nimbly says all this with humor. One more from that, and then I’ve got to ask you about Bloomer Girl.
Well, now here is a poem, I think, in which I offer, “The Far Out Generation,” in respect to what we’re saying.
The freak out,
The flop out,
The psyche out,
The drop out,
The black out,
The fall out,
The conk out,
The cop out,
The wipe out,
The sweat out,
The strike out,
The sell out,
Are warning the world,
We may all get the hell out.
But then, as you say that, you also are saying, you speak always of the beauty. I’m thinking of that song from Finian’s, “Look to the Rainbow.” By the way, we haven’t talked about Bloomer Girl. Bloomer Girl dealt with the suffragists, Seneca Falls, and abolitionists all at the same time. If ever there were a contemporary musical . . . When was Bloomer Girl written?
Nineteen forty-four.
So that’s thirty-four years ago. Can it be that long ago?
That’s right.
If ever there were a woman’s movement musical . . . Now, you called the shots then. That could run for years, it seems to me. If MS magazine could sponsor a month of that, and now could sponsor a year of it.
Well, I’m hoping that somebody will revive it again because it’s so apropos now. It’s everything that the people working for the ERA are saying.
You know, just as everything is related, and I think . . . you speak of the whole man—you’re a whole man, all around. In Bloomer Girl, just as you were saying a moment ago about the human species and the need for a whole man, your artistry reflects that. Because in Bloomer Girl is a song the slave sings—Dooley Wilson, “the runaway slave.” It’s about when the world was an onion, the eagle and me. And you describe in a way—you remember how those lines go again?
Yes. We showed that the women’s movement was part of an indivisible fight for equality. Equality cannot be divided. If there’s no equality for the black man, there is no equality for anybody, because if you can do that to one minority, you can do it to all. And the women knew that, and so they kept an underground railway in 1860, and they helped the runaway slaves to get across the border. So one of the songs in Bloomer Girl was “The Eagle and Me,” which went . . . I wish I had some music to keep me on pitch. [He recites]
What makes the gopher leave its hole
Trembling with fear and fright?
Maybe the gopher’s got a soul
Wanting to see the light.
That’s it, oh, yes, oh, yes, that’s it.
The Scripture has it writ,
Bet your life that’s it.
Nobody likes hole,
Nobody likes chain.
Don’t the good Lord, all around you
Make it plain?
[Sings]
River it like to flow,
Eagle it like to fly,
Eagle it like to feel its wings,
Against the sky.
Possum it like to run,
Ivy it like to climb,
Bird in a tree and bumblebee,
Want freedom in autumn or summertime.
Ever since that day,
When the world was an onion,
’Twas natural for the spirit to soar,
And play the way the Lord wanted it.
Free as the sun is free,
That’s how it’s gotta be.
Whatever is right for bumblebee, and river, and eagle
Is right for me.
We gotta be free,
The eagle and me.
A GATHERING OF SURVIVORS, 1971–72
FRAN ANSLEY, 21: My mother had a really big family . . . she was one of seven kids. And she brought me up, not on fairy tales, but on stories about what she and her family used to do, and that meant the Depression, and other stuff, too. So they feel almost like fairy tales to me, because she used to tell me bedtime stories about that kind of thing.
TOM YODER: My mother has a fantastic story, in my opinion, of growing up in the Depression in a small town in central Illinois. And, I don’t know, from what she says, and I don’t think she tries to glamorize it . . . these were times that were really tough. And it just seems absolutely . . . it’s almost, in a black humorous sense, funny to me that, to realize that, you know, a hundred miles from Chicago, about forty years ago, my mother’s older brothers, whom I know well now, were out with little rifles hunting for food to live on. And if they didn’t find it, there were truly some hungry stomachs. And this is just . . . this is just too much as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think that my generation can really fully comprehend exactly what all this means.
PAM: It’s weird, because my mom is very much ashamed of the hard times in
the Depression. But my aunt and uncle are very different; they’re very—they’re almost proud of it, and I think a lot of that is because they made it, and they got a lot of money. So they say to me . . . they talk about lazy people, and I know my parents sit there and think: Well, does that mean I’m lazy, you know, and that kind of jazz. And yet, they know they’ve really worked their hearts out. And I think, thinking back on that, and on my parents’ feelings, and on finding out what happened, had a lot to do with my feeling like you gotta have money to make it. And my mom had the habit of having little piles of money stashed away around the house, and we thought that was really weird.
TAD, 20: It’s something that’s been filtered through my parents. I don’t know much about it and I think that they don’t mind my not knowing much about it; they’d rather sort of control this one source of information. Sort of like, I don’t know, the high priests and you can’t approach the altar too closely or you’ll be struck dead. Because they weren’t so much aware of the Depression at the time, but since then, this Purple Heart in their background has become such a justification for their present affluence that, you know . . . that if we got the idea that they didn’t have it so bad, well then that would be that one less sort of psychological control they’d have over us.
CHRISTINE: For my father, I know, he talks about having gone through the Depression meant that he needed things for security, because he always felt that since like there was a big black hole out there somewhere you might fall into. And he defends himself to me a lot of times by saying, “I need these things around me, ’cause if I don’t have them, that might happen again.” At the same time, I know for some people it meant that they found out that you’re still human even if you don’t have money, and what the hell.
TOM BAIRD, 21: My father talks about it didactically, you know, and tries to draw little lessons from it, and he has anecdotes which come up every time the Depression comes up. It’s sort of this heroic past for them.
STEVE, 21: So many times, people—people like us, young people—are told that idealism is fine for youth, but that there’s a point one reaches when he must face up to the practicalities, the realities of existence. I think that lesson was learned during the Depression, at least to my parents that what actually happened to America was that they were forced at a point, at a period of time, to give up their idealism; forced to face up to the hard realities of making a buck and staying alive, surviving.
MARSHALL, 13: You know, I was thinking of one other issue. We talked about the value of the dollar being one difference. The other is the word “fear.” America’s always had a lot of fear: xenophobia, anticommunism, something or other, Red Scare after World War II. Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. Fear, I think, is the thing that people learned in the Depression.
FRAN ANSLEY: The things that they teach you about the Depression in school are quite different from how it is. You knew that for some reason, society didn’t get along so well during those years, you know. And then you found out that everybody worked very hard, and so everything somehow just got better. You never hear about any struggles that went on. A lot of young people feel angry about that. Wanting to protect you from . . . from your own history in a way.
[strains of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” playing]
JIM SHERIDAN: These fellas that come with their families, and by themselves, some of them with their wives, they came mostly by boxcar! Can you imagine women and children riding boxcars? Well, this is actually what happened.
Well, many of the bonus marchers took their families with them.
JIM SHERIDAN: They took their family because after all, many of these bonus marchers had been evicted from their flats or their houses because they hadn’t the rent to pay. Probably they owed the landlord three or fourth months’ rent, maybe sometimes more. And some of them were evicted, and some of them just left, and left their furniture behind them. Sometimes there’d be maybe fifty or sixty people in a boxcar. That many.
We had leased a place in Virginia. It was a very hot day, and I noticed that in this jungle there was a man, a very tall man, about six feet tall. . . . He had a woman with him who was his wife, and several children, and an infant. The infant I don’t think was a year old yet. And we invited them over to have something to eat with us, and they refused. Well, I could see that the baby . . . the baby was crying from hunger. Finally, I—me and some others—went down to bum the center of town, and I figured probably that they didn’t have any bottle to feed the baby with, or any milk. And I remember going into a drugstore and seeing the druggist and bumming a baby bottle with a nipple. Now, can you imagine a guy bumming a baby bottle and a nipple? Then I went and bummed the milk.
When I got back to the jungle camp it was kind of dark. I addressed myself to the man’s wife, and I told her here was a baby bottle and here was some milk. We had even warmed up the milk. But she looked at the husband, and the husband said he didn’t want it. And what could I do about it but just feel blue that . . . The pride of this fella fascinated me, but here he was subjecting his wife and his children to unnecessary hardships because of his extreme pride. And going through the tunnel, the baby died, probably one of the unreported tragedies of that bonus march.
And when we got to Washington, there were quite a few ex-servicemen there before us. There was no arrangement for housing, and most of the men that had their wives and children were living in what they called Hoovervilles at the time, across the Potomac River. And they had set up housing there made out of cardboard and tin of all kinds. Most other contingents—it was along Pennsylvania Avenue; they were tearing down a lot of buildings, and a lot of the ex-servicemen just sort of turned them into barracks; they sort of bunked there. Garages that were to be torn down that were vacant—they took over these garages, had no respect for private property, didn’t even ask permission of the owners—they didn’t know who the hell the owners were. They would march; they would hold midnight vigils around the White House . . . they would march around the White House practically in shifts. They were ordered out of Washington four or five times, and they refused. The one that they did get to shove these bedraggled ex-servicemen out of Washington was none other than the great Douglas MacArthur. But when these ex-soldiers wouldn’t move, they poked them with their bayonets, or hit them on the head with the butt of the rifle. As night fell, they were given orders to get out, and they refused, and they crossed there, and the soldiers set those shanties that these people were living in on fire. So the bonus marchers straggled back to the various places they came from without their bonus.
KITTY MCCULLOCH: There were many beggars and people that would come to your back door, and they’d say they were hungry. Well, I wouldn’t give them money because I didn’t have it. But I did take them in and put ’em in my kitchen and give them something to eat. Well, this one man came; it was right before Christmas. And my husband had had a suit tailored . . . and it was a very nice suit, so he put it to one side; he didn’t wear it for ordinary. And I thought he didn’t like the suit, because it had hung there, you know. So this man . . . I said, “Well, your clothes are all ragged. I think I have a nice suit for you.” So I gave him this suit, and the following Sunday, my husband wanted to go to a wake . . . And it was a black suit with a little fine, white stripe in it, and he said, “Where’s my good suit?” And I said, “Well, Daddy, you never wore it so I . . . I . . . Well, it’s gone.” He says, “Where is it gone?” And I said, “Well, I gave it to a man that had such shabby clothes, and he didn’t have any. Anyway you’ve got three other suits, and I think that he didn’t have any, so I gave it to him.” He said, “You’re the limit, Mother.” He said, “I . . . I . . . I just can’t understand you.”
EMMA TILLER: The whites in the South is like they is I guess most other places. They will not give and help. Especially the ones who has turned out to be tramps and hobos. They come to their door for food, they will drive them away. White tramps, they will drive them away. But, if a Negro come, they will feed
him. They always go and get something or other and give him something to eat . . . and they’ll even give them a little money. They’ll ask ’em and say, you know, “Do you smoke, or do you dip snuff, or do you use anything like that?” “Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.” Well they would give ’em a quarter or fifty cents, you know, and give him a little sack of food and a bar of soap or somethin’ like that. Well, but they own color, they wouldn’t do that for ’em. And then the Negro woman would say, you know, “Well, we got some cold food in there we can give ’em.” She’d say, “Oh, no, don’t give ’em nothin’; he’ll be back tomorrow,” you know. So they won’t bestow—
Oh, you mean the Negro woman who works for the white mistress, the wife?
EMMA TILLER: Yes, yes, yes. She would take food and put it in a bag and sometimes wrap it in newspaper, and would hurry out, and sometimes would have to run down the alley because he’d be gone down the alley, and holler at him, “Hey, mister!” And he would stop, you know, and said, “Come here.” And he’d come back, and said, “Look, you come back by after a while, and I’ll put some food out there in a bag and I’ll set it downside the can so that you don’t see it.” If we could see soap, we’d swipe a bar of soap and a face rag or somethin’ or other, you know, and stick it in there for ’im. Negroes always was feeding these tramps. Even sometimes we would see them on the railroad tracks picking up stuff, and we would tell ’em, you know, to come to our house, and give them the address, and tell them to come by; that we would give them an old shirt or a pair of pants or some old shoes . . . and some food. We always would give them food.
