The Town that John Built: Salinas Then and Now

SALINAS, CA.-The name Steinbeck is synonymous with Salinas. It could easily be called Steinbeckville for it leans heavily on this native son to keep the tourist dollars flowing. Businesses are named for novels, streets in subdivisions sport the monikers of characters, and the local coffee bar features a "Steinbeck Blend." John Steinbeck was born in Salinas in 1902. He is the quintessential local boy who makes good and the payback has been considerable. While he was president of his senior class, he was neither a particularly outstanding student or athlete. He was shy and didn't date in high school. He went to Stanford, had a great time, learned a lot, but he never graduated. Steinbeck, from his early teens on, knew that he wanted to be a writer. He worked earnestly and unsuccessfully until he published Tortilla Flat in 1935- his first real best seller. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath, a book that he had researched carefully in the work camps and fields filled with Dust Bowl refugees who were refered to as "Harvest Gypsies" in the San Joaquin Valley of California as well as in his beloved Salinas Valley. The locals were not amused, and this book brought him derision and notoriety in the Salinas Valley. It was ceremoniously burned by the local Salinas library. Of course, as with most book censorship or burning, it increased the demand for the novel. The influence of this book and the movie that was made from it was monumental. Steinbeck lived in this area for much of his life up through the early 1940's. It was in Salilnas, Monterey, and Pacific Grove and other spots on the Monterey Peninsula that Steinbeck set most of his fiction. This is what he knew and what he loved, so, warts and all, he provided colorful, funny, poignant, always real glimpses of life in this "garden by the sea." He and Gwen, his first wife, lived in a cottage in Pacific Grove (a town often referred to as the Butterfly Capital, since the Monarch Butterflies migrate through here every fall). She helped him type and edit his manuscripts and was first mate on the ocean trip along the Baja California coast which resulted in the non-fiction work, Sea of Cortez. Indeed, Steinbeck often went exploring with his buddy, Ed Ricketts (Doc in Cannery Row)in the tidal pools along the shore in Pacific Grove, and he spent lots of time drinking and carousing with Ed and the guys on the docks in Monterey.


When I arrived in Salinas, I was amazed first that this was a very prosperous town with a vibrant downtown and activity in every direction. Could this be the town that nearly closed all of its public libraries just last year because there wasn’t enough money to run them? It was, and when I posed this question to a member of the Steinbeck Preservation Society, she said “Oh, that was just our city manager playing politics.” I think Steinbeck would have liked that answer and what it says about the tendency of those in power to engage in rather cavalier gambling with the public good The center of Salinas is dominated by the National Steinbeck Center. It is a large and imposing building built in the same brick style as much of the rest of the downtown area. The center has a large gallery devoted to Steinbeck, which outlines his life and works, but does it with numerous activities and lots of film clips to keep the multitude of students who visit interested in the various parts of the author’s life. I spent almost three hours reading the documents, watching the various clips from The Grapes of Wrath, The Red Pony, East of Eden, etc, It was great to see so many artifacts, especially “Rocinante” the truck that Steinbeck drove across country in his American journey- Travels with Charley. The Steinbeck Center also has an exhibit room about agriculture in the Salinas Valley, a special exhibits gallery, and, of course, an extensive gift shop. Just up the street is the Steinbeck House, which is run as a restaurant by a local non-profit group, The Stenbeck Preservation Society. It is nicely restored and serves as one of the anchors for the Steinbeck tour that highlights all of the places in central Salinas that the author visited and that subsequently made their way into his novels. In Monterey, Pacfic Grove and through the valley, there was a heightened awareness of Steinbeck and the places that he had immortalized in his fiction. It is a vast literary playground which gives life to the settings of such works as East of Eden, Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, I felt a real kinship with this place like I was revisiting a familiar spot although the changes have been massive as time has passed. Cannery Row is a particularly tragic development filled with cute shops and restaurants to meet the demand for Steinbeck memorabilia and shore dinners.

In fact, Steinbeck alluded to the changes that had already swept through this place when he visited on his “Travels with Charley” trip in 1960. By that time, Steinbeck had lived in New York for over a decade. He remarked “The place of my origin had changed, and having gone away I had not changed with it. In my memory it stood as it once did and its outward appearance confused and angered me.” He says sadly but thoughtfully “Old crimes and old triumphs were brought out and dusted. And suddenly my attention wandered, and looking at my ancient friend, I saw that his wandered also. And it was true …I was the ghost. Tom Wolfe was right. You can’t go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.” He knew that he must accept this altered version of the town and valley so dear, and yet now so different. This experience was profoundly bittersweet, filled with the sadness embedded in the knowledge that these spots so central to his own personal history no longer existed or were so altered as to be unrecognizable. These places and most of the people who had made them dance with life no longer existed. In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck sits atop Mt. Toro surveying the whole Monterey Peninsula, a place that he had visited often in his early years, and he sees not just the place but the lost scenes of his own life spread out like a panoramic dream in front of him. He observes (to Charley, his beloved poodle) "I printed it (this scene) once more on my eyes, south, west, and north, and then we hurried away from the permanent and changeless past where my mother is always shooting a wildcat and my father is always burning his name with his love." Thus, he was ready to move on to what had truth and purpose for the life he must continue to live with engagement and wonder. For his body of work, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. His knowledge of the human animal and his celebration of the human spirit permeate the characters and quandaries of his fiction. Steinbeck was a regular guy who shunned the spotlight as he embraced the pen and its possibilities. I think of him as a man who used words to enlighten, himself and others. Thus, its fitting to end with a favorite JS quip: "No one wants advice, only corroboration." - a wise man indeed.

From Tao House to Tor House: Long Days Journey Into Light

CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, CA- He built his house by the sea with his own hands. He found the spot on the sparsely settled, ruggedly beautiful California coast just south of Carmel-by-the-Sea, and he knew it was the place. He came with his love, his wife, his muse, Una Call Kuster to this place above the rocks and the erratic undulation of waves, and together they built Tor House, their haven and home for the rest of their lives. He said “we had come without knowing it to our inevitable place.” (Powell, 24) He studied with a stonemason learning the art of making “stone love stone,” and set about his work. He had been using words in the building of poems since he was a child, and Robinson Jeffers was 26 when he came north to create his home and construct his artistic vision on this "perfect" spot with its straight eye view of craggy Point Lobos and the unending ocean beyond. His complementary identities as a worker in stone and a craftsman of words formed the basis for his life and his art. This duality receives a simple but splendid treatment in his poem "To the Stone-Cutter"

To the Stone-Cutters

Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart;
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.


The Jeffers had come to Carmel in the wake of their grief over their first baby, Maeve, whom they had lost at birth. Jeffers purchased his remote property, two miles south of the village on a treeless headland. This bold adventure, on the heels of sadness, indeed was the new beginning, and their twins, Donnan and Garth, were born during their first years on the north coast. They were a close and devoted family, much as Jeffers had experienced with his parents growing up in Pennsylvania and California. Tor House, rose up with the careful and tenacious work of “Robin,” as Jeffers was known to his family, and eventually the boys helped out as they grew. Una saw his work in stone as a real kinship which awakened “strengths in himself unknown before” much like a conversion experience. In 1920, Jeffers began to build Hawk Tower, which was for Una. It perched solidly on the other side of the garden looking out into the bay. It had four floors and included a dungeon and a secret staircase. They would often share their last glass of wine together at the end of the day, with the boys climbing up and around the stones, as they gazed from the top out to the ocean and the natural world that surrounded them on every side.

Visiting this place was a real inspiration for me. The town of Carmel, which has become a toney playground for the monetarily gifted, has completely swallowed all of the land around Tor House. Only the original lot with the house, garden and tower remain, and, yes, alas- the view . It is small and personal in scale and yet gigantic in impact and implication. There is power in this place as it contains the mystical energy of the poet unleashed. In the details of family, and celtic folklore, and in the treasures from the Orient and the “Isles,” the sense of something beautifully loved and felt and then expressed comes through with a redolence worthy of the finest reverie.
The front room in Tor House is the guest bedroom which has the best view of the sea. Jeffers wrote a poem to this room or more specifically to the bed which gives it its name.
The Bed By the Window

I chose the bed down-stairs by the sea-window for a good death-bed
When we built the house; it is ready waiting,
Unused unless by some guest in a twelvemonth, who hardly suspects
Its latter purpose. I often regard it,
With neither dislike nor desire: rather with both, so equaled
That they kill each other and a crystalline interest
Remains alone. We are safe to finish what we have to finish;
And then it will sound rather like music
When the patient daemon behind the screen of sea-rock and sky
Thumps with his staff, and calls thrice: “Come, Jeffers.”

Una Jeffers died in Robin’s arms in this bed in 1950. Twelve years later, with his family nearby, Robin heard the “thump of the daemon’s staff” and was gone from his home of stone. His ashes, their ashes were sprinkled in the garden amongst the rocks and flowers between Hawk Tower and Tor House. A fitting epitaph for these two and an embodiment of the place which they created is provided by the final lines of Jeffers’ poem “Credo”

“The mind
Passes, the eye closes, the spirit is a passage;
The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.”

Room at the Top: Eugene O'Neill's Tao House

DANVILLE, CA - Tao House was Eugene O’Neill’s only real home, and he lived in it for only six years. He remarked that it was the only place that he ever felt at home other than at sea. During this time, he wrote his final six plays, some of his best. Tao House is the only National Historic Site devoted to an American playwright.
Always a wanderer, Eugene O’Neill was a brilliant author of plays who revolutionized American drama. He won four Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel Prize for Literature, all but one of the Pulitzers came before his time at Tao House. Yet, his personal life was unconventional and often filled with dysfunction and alienation. Born in a Broadway hotel room to a popular actor and his adoring wife, O’Neill had a father who was a hunk and a stage idol in his own right. Eugene’s mother, Ella, became a morphine addict while recovering from the difficult birth of Eugene. The family moved from hotel to hotel, so there was no real home, and his older brother Jamie provided the most influence in his early life and much of it wasn’t positive. O’Neill always felt a severe lack of communication from his parents. After several schools, day and boarding, O’Neill was asked to leave Princeton before the end of his first year. His education was of a different sort when he was said to pursue the three things that were of most interest to him: books, booze, and babes. He married three times, the first time secretly, and had three children. He did not meet his first son, Eugene Jr. until he was 12 years old. His son Shane, like his mother, was troubled and became a heroin addict. Both of his sons committed suicide. He disowned his daughter Oona after she married Charlie Chaplin when she was 18 and he was 54. Oona had already had a romantic attachment with J.D. Salinger before she met Chaplin after a visit to Tao House. Her father never spoke to her again. Never having a real home, but instead living in other people’s houses and hotels because he was always starting the production of another play, he decided with his third wife, Carlotta Monterey, that they should buy a ranch and build a secluded sanctuary where he could avoid the heightened limelight that surrounded him after winning the Nobel Prize in 1936.
Choosing California for its climate and the East Bay for its proximity to the ocean, this pair found an old ranch on the east slopes of a mountain overlooking majestic Mt. Diablo near the town of Danville. They designed and built the house which they named Tao House because of O’Neill’s love of Asian art and ideas. Here O’Neill lived a peaceful life where he could think and write uninterrupted if he chose. He wrote, swam, gardened and, of course, spent time with his beloved dog, Blemie, whose grave is grandly marked on the ranch. Declining health, especially the degenerative palsy which ultimately made it impossible for him to hold a pen, and the depression he felt about the Second World War made O’Neill increasingly cynical and discouraged, and by 1943, he had written his last play. They left the house when they could no longer find staff because neither of the O’Neills could drive and their isolation made it impossible for them to deal with Eugene’s physical degeneration by themselves.

In order to visit Tao House, which is a National Historic Site, you must make a reservation and take a special bus up the side of the mountain to the ranch. The road is winding and the destination is still quiet and above the fray even with the increased development in this San Francisco/Oakland suburb. The house is simple and presents elements of Taoism and feng shui. All but one of the ceilings are deep blue, the mirrors which fill several alcoves are colored shades of blue or green rather than being silver in order to subdue the bright reflective effect in each room. While the view from the front of the house is spectacular, heavy curtains and blinds were installed because of Carlotta’s sensitivity to light. O’Neill’s love of the sea is manifested everywhere. During his brief interlude in this haven from his family failures and the hellish developments leading to WW II, O’Neill wrote six plays including three of his greatest: The Iceman Cometh, A Moon for the Misgotten, and Long Day’s Journey into Night. Fearing the effects on his family since it was starkly autobiographical, O’Neill stipulated that Long Days Journey Into Night not be published or produced for 25 years after his death. Carlotta instead waited just three years. The play is O’Neill’s crowning achievement, and he presented the play to Carlotta on their twelfth wedding anniversary in 1941, with a dedication that read:
For Carlotta, on our 12th Wedding Anniversary
Dearest: "I give you the original script of this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood. A sadly inappropriate gift, it would seem, for a day celebrating happiness. But you will understand. I mean it as a tribute to your love and tenderness which gave me the faith in love that enabled me to face my dead at last and write this play--write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones.
These twelve years, Beloved One, have been a Journey into Light--into love. You know my gratitude. And my love!
Gene
Tao House
July 22, 1941.

It is fitting that this play and this place serve as enduring reminders of the triumph of the artist and of love in the face of despair, personal disaster, heartbreak, and tragedy. The solitude and simple elegance of the place holds this promise for all of us.

From Sea to Shining Sea: Sailing in Place

The sun sets across the dunes. The beach is nearly deserted, but the curve of Monterey Bay reveals city lights beginning to twinkle in the distance. This is Marina Dunes,California and my view out into the white caps accompanied by the strange music of screeching gulls begs me to look back at the western half of the continent that I have just slipped across like a sea passage.

When I left Chadron in far western Nebraska, the air was cold and the snow was falling. By the time I got fifty miles into Wyoming, the horizon had grown demonstrably, and the temperature began to rise. Following the railroad line, I could see that towns grew because of the train and were now dying because the train wasn’t stopping in so many places anymore. Larger settlements had shrunk, smaller settlements had disappeared. In every direction, there were vast high plains with cattle and the infrequent but distinctly marked entrances to ranches. The town of Lusk seemed prosperous and healthy with its own Carnegie Library and lots of bustle. As I headed southwest, the temperature rose and as I slowly veered west, the mountains emerged in the distance. River valleys were green and there were wild turkeys, antelope and deer visible in the landscape. The sky was getting sunny, and the mountain pass was narrow and winding although not particularly high at 5200 ft. The rest of Wyoming was scrubby desert with lots of sagebrush and infrequent towns. The entrance into Utah was spectacular with red outcroppings and a huge descent into the Salt Lake Valley. Salt Lake City was clean and very orderly, and as I made my way west skirting the south shores of the Great Salt Lake, there were several salt processing facilities with the Morton Salt Girl trademark beaming forth boldly. As I passed from West Wendover, Utah to Wendover, Nevada, the contrast was striking. West Wendover was sedate and rather dour with its churches and quiet cafes, while Wendover was bodaciously brilliant with its strip of enticements for gambling, girls, and feasts of all sorts- a jolly juxtaposition of disparate approaches to ecstatic experience.

Nevada was amazing. Very dry and vast with so many mountains in every direction, it was a wonderland, other-worldly, but comforting in its quiet and unhindered horizons. Towns now seemed to wear their casinos like gas stations or fast food outlets, just part of the mix. Elko, Winnemucca, Lovelock- all had somehow integrated the “sin” industry into the larger fabric of the greater community life. Each town had its distinctions, Winnemucca its Western Heritage Museum, Basque flavor, and a possible connection to Butch Cassidy; Lovelock, seat of Humboldt Co., had one of only two round courthouses in the U.S. Through extensive irrigation, this is the alfalfa seed capital of the U. S., and the county is proud of its locally developed burrowing bees that pollinate the alfalfa crop. These towns, surrounded by miles and miles of open country, have, out of necessity, developed distinct personalities as places as they have struggled with the beautiful but often inhospitable environment of the Great Basin.

Climbing the mountains by Reno, Nevada means that California is over the ridge. Entering the Golden State on the old Truckee Trail is like a luge ride from 7000 ft to sea level when you finally approach the Pacific coast where again, traffic snarls, Targets and Wal-Marts decorate exit after exit, and theme-based sub-divisions crowd together, mile after mile- hopeful enclaves in service to the good life and the American Dream and then, of course, there’s the sea.

Way back in Nebraska, Mari Sandoz had lived her young years in a sea of grass. “About a quarter of Nebraska, 19,600 square miles, is covered by the Sand Hills, so called because the hills are entirely made of sand. The Sand Hills are Pleistocene sand dunes derived from glacial outwash from the Rockies, and now (mostly) stabilized by vegetation. (Dutch, “Nebraska Sand Hills.” P.1)

This vast unsettled area attracted Mari’s Swiss father. His lack of luck in love meant that by the time Mari was born, he was in his mid-forties with a permanent physical injury, married to his fourth wife, with irrepressible optimism about the potential for this vast untamed area and little interest in doing the everyday work of the farm. He hated fiction, saw it as the fodder of the lower class, and Mari had to hide her books in her straw mattress. Yet, Mari, for all of her early years, was an author in the making. She wrote 85 short stories, all of them rejected and when she had lost hope that any of her books would ever be published, she burned her stories and went back to the Sand Hills. It was only then that she learned that her book about her father, Old Jules, had been accepted for publication. In this book, which through the advice given in her many rejection letters, had been revised multiple times, she tried to capture both the brutality and beauty of her father and the place that she called home. She said of her father that “here was a character who embodied not only his own strengths and weaknesses but those of all humanity- that his struggles were universal struggles and his defeats at the hands of his environment and his own insufficiencies were those of mankind; his tenacious clinging to his dream the symbol of man’s undying hope that over the next hill he will find the green pastures of his desire. Further, I looked about me in life and in history and literature and I saw there were two kinds of men, the defeated and the undefeated, and that surely the last was the first.” (Sandoz, Hostiles and Friendlies, (p. xviii)

In writing her own story about her father and growing up, Sandoz captured the very essence of early Nebraska. Much like Cather in her admiration/criticism of the Nebraska trailblazers like her father, Sandoz once told a friend: “I consider Old Jules not so much a pioneer as a frontiersman. And he was that. He had the skill, the violence and the courage to cope with the unknown elements of a wild country; but not the patience for the dull road of the pioneer.” That Mari Sandoz understood and shared not just this personal revelation but a lifetime of stories and research that will forever illuminate the lives of the disparate people who settled, suffered, and grew in this distinctive place is certainly a fine and noble achievement. Her future is assured by the opening of the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center at Chadron State College, a learning center for the study of Nebraska and High Plains culture, literature, and history. As a meticulous researcher and a lover of good stories especially of the people from the Sand Hills, Mari Sandoz would be pleased.

Deep in the desolate and undulating hills south of Gordon, Nebraska on the last homestead of Jules Ami Sandoz and Mary Elizabeth Fehr, is the grave of Mari Sandoz. While she spent her last twenty years living in New York and writing the rest of her twenty two works on Nebraska life, when all was said and done, she returned to her first and now her final home in the Sand Hills. On a marble bench outside the Sandoz High Plains Center is the following inscription:

“Our place is our origin, starting point, and center to which we return when adrift.
Place is our bank of daffodils.
(Andrew Elkins, Teacher and Scholaar, Chadron State College, 1981-2000.)

Cather, Carhenge and Sandoz of the Sand Hills

Having now spent seven days in Nebraska, it has become more difficult to characterize what Nebraska really is. This is a huge state with great variations in landscape and atmosphere. For Willa Cather, it became the storehouse and font for her creative energy. Her attachment to the place and the deep impression that the first year living in untamed wilderness nestled in the earth became the source of her truth and her art. She came back again and again to Red Cloud and the country that surrounded it and just as Jim Burden discovers at the end of My Antonia when he wanders away from the Black Hawk (Red Cloud) out into the prairie “ I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man’s experience is. (p.371)

I had hurried to make it to Red Cloud on the first day to take in a special cowboy poet performance at the Opera House. R.P. Smith, who runs a ranch in Custer Co., Nebraska was an entertainer, who shared much about the rural life of his family and the challenges of working with horses and cows and the unpredictable actions of Mother Nature. Cowboy poetry is quite popular in the West with its even rhyme and old fashion values and its humor. Much of the presentation was like a stand-up comedy routine. He described in his folksy style, reminiscent of Will Rogers or Edgar A. Guest, the thorny process of introducing a Japanese foreign exchange student to the hazards of herding cattle, the security nightmare of taking a group of teenagers to Washington, D.C., and the joys of working with horses, who often have a mind of their own. I found the show earnest, funny, and not as maudlin as I had expected. I liked the honesty and sincerity and the way that the poetry reflected the real life experience of the fast diminishing number of people who inhabit the rural West. Here’s a sample:

To the Participant

Here’s to the pickers and singers
you’ll never see on CMT;
To the undiscovered poets
who read their prose for free;

To the roper whose loop comes back empty;
…the barrel racer whose horse don’t bend;
To the roughstock man who is dismounted
before the whistle signals his ride’s end;

To all the folks who keep on tryin’,
though their efforts seem for naught-
They get back up, brush off the dust,
and give it all they’ve got.

The saddest song in all the world
is the one that goes unsung.
So, here’s to life’s participants
who do their thing for fun-

And if your talents never raise you
far above the rest-
Well all that really matters friend,
is that you give your best!
(From A Ride Through Rhyme by R.P. Smith p.25)

I had arranged to tour the seven buildings that the Willa Cather Foundation now owns. I was lucky enough to have a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide who had lived in Red Cloud most of her life and had raised her family there. In the Cather House,it was amazing to see the attic bedroom with the original wall paper that Willa had chosen and applied. The house was a good size but had to serve the needs of 11 people- Mr. and Mrs. Cather, Mrs. Cather’s mother ( Rachel Boak), the hired girl who had come with them from Virginia, and the seven children, the four who migrated and three that were born in Nebraska. It would have been quite snug. The attic rooms were not insulated, and there were obvious cracks where snow and wind could penetrate. Our modern temperature control demands would have been laughable in this house. All of the buildings were important in one or more of Willa’s books- the depot, the Miner House, the Opera House, the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, and The Farmer’s and Merchants’ Bank. When I mentioned that I had seen many small towns that seemed to be shrinking, my guide said that Red Cloud was half as big as it as in the middle of the last century. She credited the Willa Cather Heritage for much of the success of keeping Red Cloud stable and thriving. Most small farming town are drying up as farms get bigger and services are centralized. Children don’t stay. They are attracted to the opportunities and lifestyle of the cities. Red Cloud has a Subway Restaurant but no McDonalds. You can be happy now knowing that Middleburg is not the only small town in America without a MickyD’s.

As one moves north and west in Nebraska, the landscape becomes more sweeping and the towns and other signs of civilization become more and more scarce. However, in Alliance, Nebraska, I was able to visit a unique American artistic take on that historic and cultural icon- Stonehenge. Nebraska’s answer is – Carhenge. Designed and constructed by artist, Jim Reinders in memory of his father who farmed this land, this striking formation with the sand hills in the distance copies the original size and placement of Stonehenge (96 ft. in diameter) with 38 American cars, all painted gray. The heel stone is a 1962 Cadillac. Carhenge was dedicated on the Summer Solstice, 1987. It is truly one of a kind.


Another one of a kind was Mari Sandoz. Born deep in the Sand Hills to a father who thought writers were akin to maggots, she overcame this but never felt loved by this father who did not spare the rod or the criticism and her mother who worked hard but had little time left to do anything but assign her more chores to do. The Sand Hills are lonely and often grey, with wind and great extremes of weather. Mari loved to write and when she won a contest at the age of twelve, her father, Jules, beat her for her foolish endeavor. She soon escaped life on the Niobrara River and her father by passing the rural teachers exam at the age of 16. She left the Sand Hills finally in 1919 after a short, disastrous marriage to a neighboring rancher and escaped to Lincoln where she could work on her writing. It was an amazing irony, that her first successful book, published in 1935, was Old Jules, the story of her father’s life and his struggles as a new settler in the Niobrara Valley. A review described this book as being “written with barbed wire on sandpaper." More later...

The "Will" of the Prairie: Red Cloud's Tale Spinner

"Superstition vs. Investigation" was the title of Willa Cather's commencement address given at her high school graduation on June 5, 1890 at the Opera House in Red Cloud, Nebraska. In this sweeping review of Western learning and thought, Cather stated boldly "It is the most sacred right of man to investigate; we paid dearly for it in Eden, we have been shedding our heart's blood for it ever since. It is ours; we have bought it with a price." Willa, or Will as she preferred, was a notable wunderkind and a definite odd duckl, in this prairie outpost, but she was accepted almost without question and became a vital part of this embryonic community. One of three in her graduating class, which was only the third class since the school had been started, it is safe to say that many of those gathered hadn't a clue what she was talking about, and, much of what they did understand was out of tune with their beliefs.. But- Willa was first and foremost one of theirs and they were proud of her oratorical skills.
Cather came with her family to Webster Co., Nebraska at the age of ten. She experienced in her six years in Red Cloud the invention of a community. From the sod cave that the Cather's inhabited during the first winter to the life in the new bustling town, flush with optimism and potential for financial success, Willa took it all in, and then left after her graduation. She returned for visits frequently as her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and brothers and sisters were here for many years, but she never again lived in Red Cloud. It became, in a sense, a hermetically sealed vault of deeply felt, almost archetypal experiences which would be a well-spring of ideas for many of her stories. This was a town giddy with growth and success, a town that welcomed as many as nine passenger trains a day, that established a horse drawn street car to bring the hoards of new settlers into downtown from the depot. The founder of Red Cloud, Silas Garber, served as one of the first governors of the new state of Nebraska. This was a place which had many hardships and tragedies served up to its citizens, but delivered on the promise of success for the Cathers and other families from the East and many parts of Europe.

In Red Cloud, Willa found mentors- adults who helped her learn, made her feel safe and in the way they lived their lives emphasized the happiness and satisfaction that was possible through hard work and a loving committment to others. From Mrs. Weiner, who lived just behind them in Red Cloud, she learned to love French and German and, of course, reading since the Weiners had lots of books and loved to lend them. From William Ducker, "Uncle Billy," she learned Greek and Latin and maintained a love of these ancient languages and the stories of Classical Literature throughout her life. Under the tutelage of Dr Cook and her work at his City Pharmacy, she learned dissection and a love of science, and when she left for the University of Nebraska she fully intending to study to become a doctor. Those of us who love her stories were saved from a great loss by a teacher- her English Professor in Lincoln, Ebenezer Hunt. Willa always maintained a romantic view of the first pioneer generation that she had watch build the town that always remained her true home. She said "The Old West had been settled by dreamers, great-hearted adventurers who were unpractical to the point of magnificence; a courteous brotherhood, strong in attack but weak in defense, who could conquer but could not hold." To be continued...

From Buckeyes to Cornhuskers with Frank, Ernie, Katie, and Elizabeth

OSCEOLA, IOWA - The road west from Cleveland led me through Oberlin. I had spent part of a summer in the late 80’s participating in a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on Hawthorne, Stowe, and Dickinson at Oberlin College, so I revisited the dorm which had been my home while there, Baldwin Cottage, which was done in the irregular organic style of Henry Hobson Richardson. Oberlin is probably one of the most beautiful college towns anywhere with the huge community green and an eclectic mix of architecture. The Carnegie Library building here, while no longer a public library, serves as the Office of Admissions.

As I headed further west, I made one last stop in Clyde, OH, Sherwood Anderson’s childhood home, and the infamous locale for his Winesburg, Ohio. (more on that in a later entry). They certainly have gotten over the bad wrap that SA gave them as frustrated, straight-laced, sexually maladjusted humans and have found lots of ways to capitalize on this literary connection. We could even see this change of heart as a monument to American ingenuity and the entrepreneurial spirit. It’s hard to hold a grudge against a local boy especially in the face of real economic opportunity. Anderson would have loved that.

It was my intent next to head up to Ann Arbor, Michigan. I went to grad school at The University of Michigan, and I enjoyed every minute of the year I spent there. Ann Arbor is really like no other town, and while it has grown dramatically, it still has the academic electricity of a major intellectual center. I probably spent most of my time at the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library and not a small amount of time at the mostly upstanding establishments on South State St. especially The Brown Jug. When I looked for the first place that I had lived which was a couple of miles north of the city near Whitmore Lake, there had been so much change that I couldn’t find the house. The pumpkin fields that I remember had become subdivisions. So Hart Crane and Sherwood Anderson aren’t alone in having the artifacts of their former lives obliterated by progress. I made a short detour through Hell, Michigan just so I could say that on this trip "I have been to Hell and back."

I then headed west to Chicago. Sherwood Anderson had escaped to Chicago when his marriage failed, and there, he was a key member of the group which became known as the Chicago Literary Renaissance. He was joined by Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, Harriet Monroe and others as they achieved a truly American brand of “modern” literature – realistic but often experimental and hell-bent on reflecting the steel and grit of the diverse human experience that swirled around them. While Sandburg’s house is well preserved on the North Side, and you can peer down the street (then an alley) where the infamous Dil Pickle Club met on an decidely irregular basis, there is no trace of Anderson in Chicago. He was the poor escapee from a former life and very intent on working only enough to provide support to allow him to write. The man, who had worked non-stop since he was 12, decided that his true job was writing fiction. It seems much of the physical evidence of authors is lost because so many were poor and either bunking with various friends or living in places that weren’t officially theirs and were no better than hovels anyway and thus have long since disappeared.

I couldn’t visit Chicago without a stop in Oak Park. It is one of my favorite communities in America. Any town that boasts both Ernest Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright as former residents certainly deserves a visit. I had a personal tour of the Hemingway House which shed light on his budding creativity and emphasized many of the people and institutions that were early influences on his writing. Oak Park is the true epicenter of early Frank Lloyd Wright “Prairie School” architecture. There are a total of 25 structures which include the groundbreaking house of worship- the Unity Temple and Wright’s original house and studio. It was a beautiful sunny day, so I decided that the time was now to do the architectural walking tour, but a half hour into the tour, it started to sprinkle and then pour. My safety under a huge maple tree, which I willingly shared with a couple from Buffalo, soon became no protection at all. Suddenly a teenage girl dashed out of the house that we were standing next to and invited us to wait the storm out on the porch of what was a beautiful Victorian house on Kenilworth Ave. It became clear that the deluge was not going to be short in length, So, as we waited enjoying our good fortune and dry perch, the door of the house opened and we were invited inside by the owners for tea and cinnamon rolls at the kitchen table. The house was extraordinar,y and this was an unexpected and delightful experience. I thought that perhaps the residents of this much visited city would have little tolerance or time for the hoards of tourists that constantly “walk" the neighborhood, but these were friendly and generous people who added a wonderful human dimension to my vision of Oak Park. It was a personal testimony to me about the inherent value of spontaneous kindness. I can’t wait to let my friend, Gayle Pumphrey know that Northern hospitality can be as wonderful and warm as the Southern variety.

Miraculously, the Cubs were in town for their last series. So I left Oak Park,took a CTA train and made my way to Wrigley Field, the classic neighborhood ball park. Arriving late because of rain, tea, and train delays, I was deflated to find that the Cubs were already down 8-0 at the end of the 3rd. Yet, the never-die Cubbies battled back to tie the game 9-9 in the bottom of the ninth- an astounding comeback which unfortunately turned into a tragic loss at the end of the 14th . In the end, not a good game or a good year for the Cubs, but wait ‘til next year. I left the park as they called a rain delay in the top of the 12th and met Katie Rotblat (Class of 2002) for dinner. We went to a terrific Northside neighborhood called Andersonville, ate fabulous Persian food at Reza’s ,and then made our way down Clark St to Hopleaf, a bar/restaurant which specializes in Belgian beer and food. Katie introduced me to a great Belgian brew, Vuuve, which is described as “60% barley, 40% wheat-- plus hops, coriander, and organic orange peel”- a definite winner. Katie is doing well, majoring in African American Studies and really loving being in the Windy City. We talked about life, death, parents, small towns, literature, teachers, friends, food and, of course- Foxcroft. It was a great evening, and she left me on the train as she made her way to visit Margot Hoffar , a good friend since they were freshman classmates- where else but at Foxcroft .

It was time to head north again and visit the place that Frank Lloud Wright called home for much of his life- Taliesen. Positioned in a lush river valley about 30 miles west of Madison, Wisconsin, Taliesen is a bold expression of Wright’s architectural ideas. The house sits perched, not at the top of the hill, but on the brow of the hill. Taliesen is Welsh for “shining brow.” Wright’s idea of architecture as a natural complement to the landscape rules supreme here. The house is kept very much the way it was when Wright died at 91 in 1959. The vistas, the angles, the function and form artfully fused create a masterful picture of a brilliant thinker and doer. This place is not a museum but a working architectural fellowship where accomplished architects, schooled in the Wright style, continue to take on apprentices who then learn the craft and, of course, add new dimensions and twists to the guiding principles of Wright and his disciples. For his last twenty years, Wright divided his time between Taliesen in Spring Green, Wisconsin and Taliesen West in Scottsdale, Arizona. This practice is still followed today by the members of the architectural fellowship. Taliesen is closed at the end of October, and everyone heads west to Arizona. Some say that it was not just his need in later years to have a more moderate climate in winter that brought this yearly migration, but more the coolness that his third wife always felt for Wisconsin and the emotional ties and turmoil that Wright had there which preceded her.

Back on the road, I headed south to make my break across Iowa for Nebraska. Dubuque, IA provided an insight into modern Iowa culture. When I asked the motel clerk what people did around here, he said “Drink!,We have 20 or 30 bars on Main St..” I then rephrased my question and asked him where people worked. He said “Most of the factories have closed” so it seems that most people must work in the casinos or at the dogtrack or, I guess, in the local motels. Ah- the wonder and challenge of making ends meet in modern mid-America.

I headed south along the Mississippi River through U.S. Grant’s home, Galena, IL and then slowly down the river. The river often formed the western margin of the road, and it was wonderful to watch the boats and marvel at the soaring bridges which connected life on and next to “the” river. I was especially taken with the town of “Savanna” which sits right on the river, just a few miles south of the Mississippi Palisades, a true natural wonder.



My destination before I shot across Iowa toward the wide expanses of Nebraska was Galesburg, IL and a visit with Elizabeth Waters (Class of 2006) at Knox College. I met Elizabeth, after her Japanese class, and we enjoyed a snack at the GIZMO which is the student snack bar and gathering place. I was pleased to confirm that she loves Knox College and is looking forward to four fabulous years studying creative writing and Japanese and making lots of new friends. She has temporarily replaced choir with fencing, but we know that there will always be music in her life. She took me to see the room in Old Main where one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates took place in 1858 (Thus the picture of me sitting in Lincoln’s chair) and, of course, we had to visit the library. She sent me on my way “West” with the assurance that her new life at this great midwestern liberal arts college was “Excellent.!” Go Elizabeth! Little did I know that the route that I would have to take through the rest of Illinois would be the “Ronald Reagan Trail.” For those who know me, this is not a path that I have ever been tempted to follow, and the only advantage is that,I think, I probably went just a tad faster and veered a little to the left on my way to zip back across the Mississippi River into Iowa.
If this is Iowa, can Nebraska be far away?