Bad Land

I walked away from this blog in a state of (kind of) malaise, feeling repetitive and no new ideas coming to me. A  good thing came of that state of mind … I have no need to write on a regular basis. If it happens, it happens. But I am not done.

So it happened that this last week a man got in touch with me concerning my work on Columbine. He wanted to get to know me and offer up his own ideas on the subject. He said that most sources had dried up and that mine was one of the few remaining.

We had an exchange, which I enjoyed. I began to realize about this man, who will remain anonymous, had the very thing I had been lacking … psychic energy. I don’t need to prod him or pull him along. He’s on his own and will figure things out, and even set me straight.

One thing that needs to be understood came from another source, anonymous, and some months ago, that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were real people who really attended Columbine. In my work, they became literary devices, which is why Michael Moore in his movie Bowling for Columbine had to place them in a bowling class at 6AM. He hired two actresses to claim that they had taken that same class with the boys.

There is a key to this riddle, and I will write about it in the not-too-distant future. For right now, I have recovered from some medical issues that were nagging, inability to walk properly for nearly a year but one of them. It is all behind me now, and I have noticed a return of something that was lacking … psychic energy. Also, physical strength. New adventures await my spouse and I.

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“Maisie Dobbs” ** and her co-conspirator Billy Beale are on a case, she a private detective, he her companion/employee. She has discovered a placed called “retreat” where veterans of the Great War have taken up residence, some disappearing. All of them, taking up residence, turn over their accounts to the owner, who uses the proceeds to pay bills. Upon leaving, what is left is returned to them. Maisie is suspicious of foul play, and enlists Billy to take up residence and observe. Prior to doing so, he wants a means of communication that will rouse no suspicions. Billy lays down wires to tap into the main house to be able to contact Maisie while out late in the day walking the grounds, as wounded veterans are apt to do.

“Nicely done, and quick too. Managed to save meself some work by using the bottom wire of this ‘ere fence.” Billy pulled back the grass to point to the wire in question. “I hear that’s what they’ve done  over there in America, y’know – used the fences on farms to make connections between places, like.” Billy pushed back his cap and wiped the bottom of his hand across his forehead. “Stroke of luck it bein’ there – the telephone – see more of them in the towns, don’t you? S’pose it’s used by them what live in the terraced cottages in the ‘amlet. I tell you, no one will see that line, mark my words.”

Maisie and Billy will go on to solve the mystery. Jacqueline Winspear, author of the Maisey Dobbs detective series, will go on to write twenty or more sequels. My wife introduced me to her and I’ve a pile of delightful reading ahead of me.

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That passage, which occurs late in the book Maisie Dobbs, reminded me of another book I read long ago called Bad Land: An American Romance, by Jonathon Raban. My late Aunt Dorothy had given the book to my late mother, who gave it to my brother, who offered it to me. Later, thinking she would be interested, I offered the book to Dorothy. I did not know she had originally owned the book and started the circle.

My mother was born in Wisconsin, near Sheboygan, and was the oldest of seven sisters, Dorothy one of them. Some time in the late 1920s, their farm house caught on fire, and Mom ran to the nearest neighbor for help. Running back she came upon her parents and six sisters alive and well, and a house that had been reduced to cinders.

Grandpa George had a brother, my Uncle Mike, who was a dry land farmer near Ekalaka, Montana. George got in touch with Mike and asked if he could come and work for him in his time of need. Mike agreed. George did not tell Mike that he was bringing his wife and seven daughters. Such conniving, but he had no choice, mouths to feed. I asked Mom if there was any insurance on the house. “Wasn’t done back then” was her answer.

I interviewed my mother for posterity years ago, and learned two things about that time: When my Grandma Marie got off the train in Baker, Montana, she looked about and said “This is it?” It was late August, and the Eastern Montana prairie was brown and parched, unlike lush green Wisconsin. The other was my Uncle Mike, whom she said was always angry. She said reflectively that she would have been angry too if a family of nine moved into her homestead, which was a three-room shack with an outdoor privy.

George would eventually find another home, which is pictured to the right here. It looks oddly like the cover photo of Raban’s book. My copy of the book remained with Dorothy after her death, and so I have sent away for another. In the meantime, I am reminded of a passage in Bad Land wherein the saying used among the farmers of that time was “Good neighbors close gates.”

The passage talked about how the fences out on the prairie were used to conduct telephone signals, and that if someone forgot to close a gate, the signal went down. It brought me full circle to Billy Beale in the Maisey Dobbs book.

I gave the interviews of Mom and Dad to my brother Steve, who actually took time to sit back and listen to the hours of recordings done on a cassette tape with lots of background noise. His reaction … “What struck me was the poverty of these people in those times.” My dad lived in very similar circumstances Great Falls, Montana. Fate brought them together, as she for a brief time attended Normal School in Billings while he apprenticed there in the sign business. They married on May 18, 1940, and forty years later (to the day) we would celebrate their anniversary while Mt. St. Helen’s erupted. Who else gets a volcano to go off to take note a wedding day? It beats a cake with candles.

Dad was drafted into the military and sent to the South Pacific to serve. Mom took my older two brothers back to Baker to stay with her parents. To the left here is a photo of my older brothers on what is surely Saturday afternoon, getting cleaned up for church the following day. Notice how the photo is rated G. In those days when film was precious, someone took great care to make it so.

When we cleaned out Mom and Dad’s home in Billings after moving them to assisted living, I uncovered a box of photo negatives, large three-by-three scratched up pieces of plastic. I have cousin who earned a photography degree at Montana State University in Bozeman. I asked her if she would clean up the negatives and digitalize them. She did a wonderful job, which is why I have photos of the Baker era.

I knew somewhere was a photo of Mom and Dad, he in uniform, during the Baker/war days. I did not have a copy, but my cousin here in Denver recently sent me 180 photos of the general past, all of great interest. Included was that missing photo. I am complete now, seeing them at the Baker property while he was on leave.

Quite a journey this is, from some guy curious about Columbine to the Baker days to retrieving a long-missing photo of Mom and Dad. I feel whole this morning.

One more thing about Bad Land, which I will write more about later. There is a town out on the prairie of Eastern Montana called Ismay. Sometime in the 1990s someone in that town had a bright idea to temporarily change the name to “Joe, Montana.” The idea was to entice the retired quarterback to come to his namesake and lead the Fourth of July parade. It did not work. After all, it was hard to get someone to leave San Francisco, to get off a plane in parched and dry Eastern Montana, and exclaim “This is it?”

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** On re-reading this piece I came upon the two asterisks I had placed next to the name of the book, Maisie Dobbs**, and wondered why the hell I had done that. Rather than remove them, I thought ” It’ll come to me”, and it just did. I thought the book could be made into a great screenplay, maybe even one of those ten-part series that are so popular these days. I searched for Maisie Dobbs at IMDB, and nothing has been done. I then went on to learn that the movie rights to the book are owned by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. I trust that something good will come of that and that this excellent work of fiction will hit our Samsungs in the not-too-distant future.