Unforgettable

 The Reader's Digest magazine used to have a feature called "My Most Unforgettable Character." Maybe it still does, but I haven't picked one up in years.  I don't think waiting rooms have them anymore.  I never considered writing a piece by that title because I always thought it was something best done in the later years of life.  Now that I've arrived at that distinction, here goes.

His name was Bob DeWitt.  We first met at his place in Mariposa, California.  He had a ranch in those Yosemite foothills where he'd built a little barn theater he called the "Feedback Theater." Bob's connection to the outside world was through the Pacifica radio station KFCF in Fresno, Ca.  He'd heard some excerpts of a show that my friend Lenny Anderson and I were doing called "An Evening with Woody Guthrie" and invited us to do the program at his venue.  Apparently, local ranchers, folkies, and interested people from far and near often attended these performances.  This one would be very different for us because Bob had been a friend of Woody Guthrie and some of his fellow musicians in their heyday in the 30s and 40s. Apparently, Mr. Dewitt had owned land in Topanga Canyon in Southern California, sold it for a nice profit, and re-settled in the Central California hills. 

Bob Dewitt was an original nature boy with a mischievous twinkle in his eye and brimming with creativity. He'd been a dairy farmer in his younger years and still kept a couple of milk cows on his ranch, along with assorted goats, chickens, cats, dogs, and who knows what else.  

Aside from Woody, Bob had known and loved the famous Lord Buckley, the original hipster and in a way resembled him in many ways.  We played the show at this little barn theater but from the get-go, we knew it was going to be different.  With no word of warning, Bob positioned himself behind us and proceeded to accompany each dust bowl ballad on his bongo drums.  Whatever, it's his home, his theater, and his guests all knew this was the way it was.  

Over the next few years, we visited Bob at his ranch with our significant others, sometimes their kids, and sometimes other musicians.  Bob's place had a couple of lakes and large ponds where everyone skinny-dipped and sometimes fished.  They were loaded with bass and bluegill, so it was great for the kids.  I usually regress to a 9-year-old under those circumstances, so it was always a memorable time.

Once I decided to interview Bob because he's known so many interesting people that were friends as associates of Woody Guthrie.  I'd ask him about Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGee, and others.  But interviewing Bob was no simple task.  He rarely sat still.  Ultimately I just put my tape recorder on record, slung it over my shoulder, and followed him around one morning.  As he has done so many times before to the uninitiated, he paused from talking to me while milking a cow and shot the stream of warm milk directly into my face.  His cackle followed. I  was now an official member of Red Mountain Ranch.

Dewitt was known for his art, ceramics, and deep commitment to environmental causes by his friends and neighbors.  He gave me a wonderful cup with an impish face, typical of his ceramic work.  Others were fond of a series of characters made of clay that adorned his barnyard.  They were brick red, wild male figures always in a state of sexual arousal.  

We corresponded for a few years after I first met him.  His letters came in envelopes that he's drawn on.  Bob liked to nick-name people and because I did narration in the Woody show he dubbed me "deep throat." That was both humorous and dangerous, but that was Bob.

I heard he died some years ago.  He must have been in his 90s by then.  There is so much more I could say, but nothing tops what happened the last time I actually saw him.  It was somewhere around 1985.  I'd heard he was in the hospital at UC Medical Center in SanFrancisco and his prognosis was not good.  One afternoon, I went over to see him there thinking this might be the last time.  I found him in a weakened state, far from home, and really scared.  We exchanged pleasantries and then he called me close to him. 
"Deep throat, I'm not a religious person at all, but I'm praying.  If I ever get out of this alive, I think I'm going back to the Catholic church."  Bob was desperate.  I only stayed a few more minutes because he was having surgery the next day and was told to rest.  I asked if his wife or others were coming that night and he told me that Doey, his wife, was going to be there and that a Sioux Indian friend was going to do some ceremony for him in the room that night.  I left.

That night there was a terrific rainstorm with intense thunder and lightning all over the Bay Area.  It was unusually strong.  I thought of Bob and the ceremony that was supposed to take place in his room that night.  That must have been something, I thought.  The next day I called the hospital and couldn't reach him but someone answered the phone in his room and told me he was fine.  Apparently, his illness had to do with his gall bladder.  They'd removed it and he'd made a complete recovery.

It's Here Now

 I just finished The Four Winds, a novel by Kristen Hannah.  My sister recommended the book to me because it's a dust bowl story, and she knows I've studied that period of history for many years and taught both history and English classes using materials, books, artifacts, and films of the period.  This novel is important because it is from a woman's perspective.  That's a criticism that Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath has long withstood.  Were I still in the classroom today, there's no doubt I would pair these two novels for a richer and more accurate picture of the people and issues that have been so poignantly been portrayed in this culture.

Like the existing literature on the dust bowl, The Four Winds includes the bloody labor struggles of the period.  So many of the things we take for granted, like weekends, minimum wage, and paid vacations, came from those labor wars.  The author doesn't shy from the collusion between the big growers and the politicians and their enforcers aside from law enforcement.  

In so many ways, these same issues are with us today.  Any trip down the main thoroughfare in most big cities will show you the tent cities of people living on the margin.  Like the 1930s, people are scrabbling together shelters from shopping carts, sheet metal, tarps, and pieces of cardboard.  Some 85 years later and we still have differences of opinion about what constitutes minimum wage, who can live where, and how to find a meal when one has no resources.  People still hop freight trains, they still hitchhike or walk, or bum rides to keep moving.

We're pretty good these days at hiding the downside of the American Dream.  But these days it seems to be surfacing more and more.  My local supermarkets all have families that stand outside the doors asking for money for food and housing.  Finding a person asleep in a doorway or at a bus stop is also a daily occurrence.  If dust bowl refugees were the norm back then, today it's climate refugees.  As the wildfire season begins to gear up earlier and earlier each year, we're beginning to hear about the new migrants, the "climate refugees."  This is primarily why Idaho is the fasting growing state in the union right now.  

It's becoming clearer all the time that the big issue of our time is now water.  Historic drought and global warming have given us record high temperatures and restrictions on water use.  It's not coming, it's here. I hope I never see a book titled The Four Fires.

Writing Your Name

 I remember the day.  My colleague who taught right next door to me came over to see me a few minutes before the first afternoon class that day.  She'd been assisting some of the counselors with programing for next year so I wasn't too surprised with her request.  

"Is it possible," she asked, "for me to pull out your students one at a time to check in with them about their programs for senior year?" 

I had no problem with that.  It was a 90-minute block class and my American Lit students were finishing up an assignment, after which we'd share responses and discuss the play we were currently reading.  My only concern was that everyone is back in the room by the last 15-20 minutes of the period.  She assured me they would.

So, that's what happened.  Students were called one at a time and they quietly exited and reentered the classroom until all 30 or so were finished.  Marilyn, my neighbor, popped her hear inside the door, thanked me, and then went on her way.

I thought nothing more of this until the last week of that 2004 school year.  That's when I found out what they were really doing.  A handful of students in that class got the idea of burning in their names to a student desk and presenting it to me so that I would not forget them.  The concepts of personal identity, alienation, and immortality had been big ideas in much of the literature we read and discussed that school year.  Of particular interest was an Arthur Miller quote about immortality.  In describing Willy Loman's desire to be known and liked, Miller once said, "It's like writing your name on a cake of ice on a hot July day."  Obviously, that resonated with this group.  

I've kept this student desk and recently removed it to my garage, where I now use it to sit and chat with my neighbors as we share a drink and catch up with each other.  Since the pandemic, we've been having these outside, in the courtyard get-togethers in front of our garages.  I have the perfect seat, complete with a built-in table.  Recently I put a picture of the desk on Facebook and heard from many former students as well as friends.  These former students are now in their mid-30s and many are parents of high school students themselves.  The signatures they left me are in fine shape.  Burned in with a wood-burning kit, there are also some small messages.  I'm not sure that this gesture will insure immortality, but I do know that the desk will be here long after I'm gone.  It won't melt either,