I took Latin in high school a half-century ago, using a book that was published when Latin was not yet a dead language, I think. The book wasn't stodgy, though. It was kind of hip for a high school textbook published -- in the forties. Anyhow. I recall near the front of the book, before we had to buckle down to Julius Caesar's "Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est," and we were translating the Latin equivalent of Dick and Jane, there's a color cartoon of a Roman cop (looks a lot like one of those soldiers in Quo Vadis? red-plumed helmet?) making a bust of a comely, long-tressed girl in toga who's been driving her chariot too fast. "Ubi ignis est?" he says: "Where's the fire?" (The movies of the forties had stupid, grumpy cops who always hollered to speeders, "Where's the fire?" That was as big a cliche as a dog peeing on a red fire hydrant.) Mark Twain went to a Wagner opera while visiting Europe and he said it "sounded like a fire at an orphanage." Three Johnstowners who are to play the Magi show up for the Baptist Nativity pageant wearing back-billed hardhats and slicker raincoats. "What the--?" says the Sunday school teacher. "You said the three wise men came from afar, right?" they say.
Humor having to do with fires, right? Got some doozies. Today I began research for the Johnstown-Clifty County Library. I was compiling a list of Johnstown fires in the nineteenth century. Here are a couple of nuggets:
(1) 1845, March 19. Presbyterian Church ... [The church] had recently renovated the sanctuary and had also carpeted it. When the fireman arrived, the town marshal and several members of the church stood in the doorway and forbade anyone from throwing water on their new carpet. Soon the building was completely destroyed.
(2) 1890, September 28. The shift had just started at Richwood Distillery when workmen smelled smoke. They discovered fire in the cooperage shop where barrels were made to age whiskey.
Mr. Snyder, manager of the distillery near Milton, Kentucky, had seen the entire facility wiped out in an 1882 fire. And he quickly saw that there were not enough men or equipment to fight this blaze. So he phoned city hall at Johnstown, Indiana, asking that fire equipment and help be sent.
Joseph Brashear was Johnstown mayor and founder of Volunteer Co. No. 3. He ordered two of the horse-drawn steam pumpers to the ferry boat landing, bound for the distillery on the other side of the river. Within an hour the steamers arrived, crossing the river and going two miles upstream. Volunteers soon had four lines of 2-1/2 inch hose stretched to the burning building.
The two pumpers were from Fair Play Fire Co. No. 1 and Washington Fire Co. No. 2. The engines stayed on the boat and pumped water from the river at the rate of 400 gallons per minute.
The delay of getting the pumpers there allowed the fire to spread from the kiln to a warehouse holding 2,000 barrels of whiskey with government stamps already paid. They were for a Cincinnati broker who had sold them to some Western outlets.
Volunteers hosed the blaze for about seven hours until they thought it was extinguished, then took up the hose and the boat returned to Johnstown.
They had returned the engines to their stations and had gone home to clean up and have supper, when a call came from Snyder saying the embers had started blazing again. This time the No. 2 pumper went to the fire. It was daybreak before they got home.
But it seems that there were nearly as many battling "firewater" as fighting the fire. Several volunteers joined distillery workmen in trying to save the 2,000 barrels of whiskey. The three best known brands then were Crab Orchard, Teakettle Bourbon, and Susquehanna Rye.
Bungs on some of the barrels were lost and pulled out. Other barrels broke open in the confusion. A regular river of "likker" oozed down the bank to River Road. Some of it flowed near the buildings and caught fire.
Fast-thinking volunteers threw sand on the burning booze while others got feed sacks from the nearby barn, wet them, and smothered the blaze. Then some more volunteers thought of the horrid waste of the valuable liquid and began scooping it up with their hands -- putting it in any container they could find. Boots and shoes became "bottles." Derby hats were tried. But the fragrant contents leaked out.
A nearby watermelon field provided the answer. A large plug taken from the side made an opening through which the seeds and inner fruit could be removed. The melon filled with the whiskey could be stoppered with the plug.
Newspapers at the time were full of things that happened at the whiskey fire. One told of a bevy of good church women standing close to the the fire. They said they got dizzy from the whiskey fumes -- and none of them had ever touched the stuff.
But the finale was a drinking party held by several small boat owners who had visited the fire and scooped up several gallons of the escaping liquor. They had a party near the Johnstown Brewery at the corner of Park Avenue and Ferry Street. And after they got gloriously drunk, they had a free-for-all brawl. The sheriff put all of them in the brig to stop the bloodshed.
A final report of damages showed that of the 2,000 barrels of whiskey, only 96 were removed safely.
That's my hometown.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Event of My Lifetime
Event of My Lifetime
Barack Obama, African-American among his many identities, has become the President-elect of the United States. He accomplished this tour de force on his own. It was not due to affirmative action. He is not a token black. He won, fair and square, by running an extraordinary campaign and by inspiring enough people of all cultures and walks of America to vote for him and campaign for him.
President-elect Obama's election means a great deal to me.
Born in 1939, I grew up in a town on the Ohio River that, although touted by some as a stop on the Underground Railroad in the nineteenth century, a bastion of Abolition then, was strictly segregated all the years of my growing up, with a small African-American neighborhood at the north end of Broadway.
I am mortified to recall a minstrel show staged in about 1950 here. It had six "end men," white males in "blackface," cracking racially offensive jokes. I was naive about a lot of things and I recall becoming increasingly shocked by the pervading racism, cruel and crude, among several of the adolescents I knew and hung with.
Our high school yearbooks actually segregated the individual snapshots of the black students in our classes at the end of the pages for each class. We had a music teacher who deliberately excluded all African-Americans from band and choir and nobody ever challenged him about it while I was in school. Movie theaters were segregated. The municipal swimming pool, all restaurants, and all barber shops excluded blacks entirely.
Until Indiana grudgingly ended school segregation in the early 1950s, Johnstown’s black school was declared "separate but equal" -- as the Supreme Court in Plessy vs. Ferguson had nonsensically ruled in 1896. Although heroic teachers and students worked there, and many excellent graduates came from the school in spite of its deficiencies, that school was inherently unequal.
Discrimination was a silent conspiracy in public. As for the teachers we had for American history and social studies and current events, they were generally idiots. Or cowards. Just as my sophomore year of high school ended, Plessy vs. Ferguson was thrown out. It had been superseded by the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka decision, to wit, “integration is the law of the land.” My recall is that teachers glossed over even the facts of that momentous ruling, let alone the implications, getting back to more comfortable material, like George Washington’s sailing a silver dollar across the Potomac.
My dad was born in Kentucky in 1898 and, although he himself was not a pathological racist – he did not hate – he was taught at home and church that segregation was Biblically mandated, and he sincerely preached to us that separation of the races was morally imperative.
My mother's side of the family had and still has members who hold some of the most scurrilous, hate-filled views of African Americans I have ever encountered. I forgo talking with them, clamming up now when they hint at tirades or crude social commentary. Come to think of it, my dad's side had plenty of hateful racists too, whose attitude was not tempered by Christianity and idealism as his own attitude was.
I read a lot as a child and adolescent, much of it junk but also some pretty decent things, classical and modern literature, which also gave me a window on a world larger than little old Johnstown, Indiana. I read of current events and drew my own conclusions. I tended to be a rebel and a maverick and a malcontent, coming by that honestly, and the status quo with regard to racial relations in my immediate environment just didn't agree with me.
And I let those about me know it. At home we were not "polite," so we did "talk about religion and politics." So I disagreed vehemently with not only my friends but also my family at times. We talked a lot about race, in high school and in college. Always in all-white company: black people were an abstraction, not real human beings we actually knew – just like us! My brothers and sisters, all older, were intelligent and articulate and loved to debate, and in retrospect I am grateful to them for their contributions to my education.
I hope I don’t sound too pious. I’ve had my prejudices, and my education has been slow, halting, and painful. I’ve made some terrible blunders that I recall with shame. But I’ve been willing to learn.
My first attempt to act on my emerging ideals regarding racial equality and harmony was to apply to the new Peace Corps, and to ask to be assigned to sub-Saharan Africa. How thrilled I was when I was accepted! In October 1962 I set off for UCLA for training for living in Nigeria as an American emissary and teaching secondary school there. We trainees would gather evenings and among other activities often sing “We Shall Overcome.”
My idealism relating to freedom in this great nation got a gigantic boost when at age 21 in 1960 I campaigned for and voted for John F. Kennedy to be President, and he defeated Richard Nixon. We had a new leader, young and idealistic too, whose first executive order was to create the Peace Corps!
When I came home in 1965 the civil rights movement was apace and going brutally in the South. Dixie, particularly Alabama and Mississippi, was an inferno of hatred and strife that year. I wanted to have the courage to be a civil rights activist, participating in Freedom Rides and sit-ins, helping with voter registrations, but I had serious problems, most notably with alcohol, that kept me from doing so.
My own hometown had desegregation activities on its small scale and, mirabile dictu, without violence. At last all commercial institutions in the town removed their color bars. An undertone of racism still exists today but it is not as bad as it was. At least anybody can in theory live and work wherever they want, because the law is on their side. They’ve had to sue and demonstrate to get their due rights a good many times since the sixties but blatant Jim Crow is all but gone.
My return home was more than four decades ago. When the daughter of JFK endorsed Barack Obama in a New York Times op-ed column on January 27 this year, that spark of idealism I’d felt during her father’s Presidency was ignited again. Yes! Why not?
This has been an event of my lifetime.
Barack Obama, African-American among his many identities, has become the President-elect of the United States. He accomplished this tour de force on his own. It was not due to affirmative action. He is not a token black. He won, fair and square, by running an extraordinary campaign and by inspiring enough people of all cultures and walks of America to vote for him and campaign for him.
President-elect Obama's election means a great deal to me.
Born in 1939, I grew up in a town on the Ohio River that, although touted by some as a stop on the Underground Railroad in the nineteenth century, a bastion of Abolition then, was strictly segregated all the years of my growing up, with a small African-American neighborhood at the north end of Broadway.
I am mortified to recall a minstrel show staged in about 1950 here. It had six "end men," white males in "blackface," cracking racially offensive jokes. I was naive about a lot of things and I recall becoming increasingly shocked by the pervading racism, cruel and crude, among several of the adolescents I knew and hung with.
Our high school yearbooks actually segregated the individual snapshots of the black students in our classes at the end of the pages for each class. We had a music teacher who deliberately excluded all African-Americans from band and choir and nobody ever challenged him about it while I was in school. Movie theaters were segregated. The municipal swimming pool, all restaurants, and all barber shops excluded blacks entirely.
Until Indiana grudgingly ended school segregation in the early 1950s, Johnstown’s black school was declared "separate but equal" -- as the Supreme Court in Plessy vs. Ferguson had nonsensically ruled in 1896. Although heroic teachers and students worked there, and many excellent graduates came from the school in spite of its deficiencies, that school was inherently unequal.
Discrimination was a silent conspiracy in public. As for the teachers we had for American history and social studies and current events, they were generally idiots. Or cowards. Just as my sophomore year of high school ended, Plessy vs. Ferguson was thrown out. It had been superseded by the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka decision, to wit, “integration is the law of the land.” My recall is that teachers glossed over even the facts of that momentous ruling, let alone the implications, getting back to more comfortable material, like George Washington’s sailing a silver dollar across the Potomac.
My dad was born in Kentucky in 1898 and, although he himself was not a pathological racist – he did not hate – he was taught at home and church that segregation was Biblically mandated, and he sincerely preached to us that separation of the races was morally imperative.
My mother's side of the family had and still has members who hold some of the most scurrilous, hate-filled views of African Americans I have ever encountered. I forgo talking with them, clamming up now when they hint at tirades or crude social commentary. Come to think of it, my dad's side had plenty of hateful racists too, whose attitude was not tempered by Christianity and idealism as his own attitude was.
I read a lot as a child and adolescent, much of it junk but also some pretty decent things, classical and modern literature, which also gave me a window on a world larger than little old Johnstown, Indiana. I read of current events and drew my own conclusions. I tended to be a rebel and a maverick and a malcontent, coming by that honestly, and the status quo with regard to racial relations in my immediate environment just didn't agree with me.
And I let those about me know it. At home we were not "polite," so we did "talk about religion and politics." So I disagreed vehemently with not only my friends but also my family at times. We talked a lot about race, in high school and in college. Always in all-white company: black people were an abstraction, not real human beings we actually knew – just like us! My brothers and sisters, all older, were intelligent and articulate and loved to debate, and in retrospect I am grateful to them for their contributions to my education.
I hope I don’t sound too pious. I’ve had my prejudices, and my education has been slow, halting, and painful. I’ve made some terrible blunders that I recall with shame. But I’ve been willing to learn.
My first attempt to act on my emerging ideals regarding racial equality and harmony was to apply to the new Peace Corps, and to ask to be assigned to sub-Saharan Africa. How thrilled I was when I was accepted! In October 1962 I set off for UCLA for training for living in Nigeria as an American emissary and teaching secondary school there. We trainees would gather evenings and among other activities often sing “We Shall Overcome.”
My idealism relating to freedom in this great nation got a gigantic boost when at age 21 in 1960 I campaigned for and voted for John F. Kennedy to be President, and he defeated Richard Nixon. We had a new leader, young and idealistic too, whose first executive order was to create the Peace Corps!
When I came home in 1965 the civil rights movement was apace and going brutally in the South. Dixie, particularly Alabama and Mississippi, was an inferno of hatred and strife that year. I wanted to have the courage to be a civil rights activist, participating in Freedom Rides and sit-ins, helping with voter registrations, but I had serious problems, most notably with alcohol, that kept me from doing so.
My own hometown had desegregation activities on its small scale and, mirabile dictu, without violence. At last all commercial institutions in the town removed their color bars. An undertone of racism still exists today but it is not as bad as it was. At least anybody can in theory live and work wherever they want, because the law is on their side. They’ve had to sue and demonstrate to get their due rights a good many times since the sixties but blatant Jim Crow is all but gone.
My return home was more than four decades ago. When the daughter of JFK endorsed Barack Obama in a New York Times op-ed column on January 27 this year, that spark of idealism I’d felt during her father’s Presidency was ignited again. Yes! Why not?
This has been an event of my lifetime.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Sister Sadie -- a Brief Note
Watching It Happened One Night on Turner, I recalled my sister Mary Virginia’s love of Clark Gable. I recall Mary V. -- "Sadie" -- who at the last of her life referred to me as her “baby brother.” I think she was pretty fond of me, which I always took for granted but did less so as the years went by. I know while growing up I idolized her as smart, funny, pretty, and successful. All of which she was.
Another event that prompted my nostalgia over My sis was the recent passing of the great World War II-era singer, Jo Stafford. Mary Virginia and I were fond of "G.I. Jo," whose beautiful, clear voice graced many hits of the days of Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers (Jo was one of them for several years). We laughed at Jo's mock hit, "Tem-tation." (You'd have to hear one of the original versions of that tune to appreciate her parody fully.) Of course, there is no disputing taste, but I think Sadie and I had unimpeachable taste in our love of Jo Stafford. Maybe Sadie and Jo have had the opportunity to meet at last.
Another event that prompted my nostalgia over My sis was the recent passing of the great World War II-era singer, Jo Stafford. Mary Virginia and I were fond of "G.I. Jo," whose beautiful, clear voice graced many hits of the days of Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers (Jo was one of them for several years). We laughed at Jo's mock hit, "Tem-tation." (You'd have to hear one of the original versions of that tune to appreciate her parody fully.) Of course, there is no disputing taste, but I think Sadie and I had unimpeachable taste in our love of Jo Stafford. Maybe Sadie and Jo have had the opportunity to meet at last.
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