MissouriGreen

I love history. Not necessarily the big stories: the world wars, and tales of kings and queens and daring do. No, I like the stories of people who do acts of normalcy that end up creating waves that ripple from small to large to larger until an ocean of change sweeps across the age and the land; leaving the debris of old ways, fractured customs tumbled about like the broken pieces of concrete that are left when the Mississippi swells its banks.

Did you know that the first formalized woman's suffrage movement in the US originated in Missouri? That Missouri was the last state to be admitted to the Union as a slave state, but the first state to free slaves, even before the 13th Amendment was passed? That the first woman lawyer practiced law in this state? Her name was M. Lemma Barkeloo. She was also the first woman lawyer to participate on a case in Federal court.

The James gang plied its nefarious trade in Missouri; the Pony Express started here, as did most treks west. The first steel bridge was created here, the first steamboat race ended here.

The worst earthquake in history, in terms of strength and potential damage, as well as sheer impact on the geology of the area happened here. Luckily it was before all these red brick buildings were built.

The first woman to sue to be allowed to vote was Virginia Minor here in 1872.

On October 15, 1872, Virginia Minor tried to register to vote in the upcoming election, but was refused by St. Louis' sixth district registrar, Reese Happersett. Happersett refused to register Minor because she was female, thus provoking a civil suit brought by Virginia and her lawyer husband, Francis Minor. Minor's action was part of a nationwide pattern of civil disobedience, in which hundreds of women across the country attempted to vote. Susan B. Anthony led a small delegation of women to the polls in Rochester, New York, and was successful in casting her vote for Ulysses S. Grant. Three weeks later, however, on Thanksgiving Day, Anthony was arrested on the charge of voting fraud. Anthony was a celebrity who was used by the judicial system as an example and a warning to all women in the United States. When Anthony's case came to trial early in 1873, the judge had written his opinion before the trial started, and directed the jury to find a guilty verdict. Anthony was ordered to pay a fine of $100, which she refused to do.

The list goes on an on. In terms of sheer social upheaval, Missouri is literally the epicenter of change in our history.

It's the little facts I like. The ones that make great stories. The best possible event that can happen to a history buff like me is discovering a historical fact that has the potential to be a great story, and to realize that no one has told it yet. No, not even Wikipedia.

Saturday was the Artica event downtown, which promised many photographic opportunities. I wasn't up for the crowds, though, and headed towards the Botanical Gardens to look at leaves turning color.

The leaves were still green except for a sugar maple here and there. The other colors of fall are soft and muted, but the sugar maple screams defiance at the winter. That and the poison ivy, of course, but catch me trying to capture its red color against the blue of the sky.

There's a fountain at the Gardens that the children play in. It's red brick, with water spigots spaced equal distanced in a curving line on either side of a cement sitting platform. The water rises up slowly into the air, and falls just as slowly back. No one was at the fountain on Saturday; I put my macro lens on and spent 45 minutes taking pictures of the water. My pants were soaked by the time I finished, none of the photographs came out, but it doesn't matter.

The Victorian waterlily came through, though, champ that it is. Thank goodness for the Victorian waterlily.

I delete more pictures than I save from each trip through the Gardens now. Too much of anything, no matter what, can lead to loss of interest over time. I decided not to renew my Garden subscription.

There was music in the air on Saturday, though, which I followed. A new section of the Garden had been opened; marked off by curly vined fences and centered by a lovely reflective pool. By coincidence, it was the grand opening of the George Washington Carver Garden. Several dignitaries were there for the unveiling of the statue. One such was an older, distinguished gentleman, sitting in a chair, cane handle between his hands. He wore glasses, and he looked oddly familiar, but it was hard to see his face–so many people kept coming over to greet him.

Various people spoke at the dedication, all excellent speakers with their own favorite story of Carver. He was born in Diamond Grove, Missouri, and is one of this state's favorite sons. At birth a slave and an orphan, through hard work he won through to an education. He wanted to study art, but was convinced by a teacher that his strengths were in Botany. His Garden will serve two purposes: be a fitting spot to introduce young people to botany; and hopefully open a door to the black community who have, for over a hundred years, refused to enter it's gates. As Shaudra McNeal said at one event held here last year, You know Shaw owned slaves. That's why some people won't come here.

Three of his slaves, a woman named Esther and her two children, tried to run away in 1855. They and several others boarded a small boat pulled up to the levy along the Mississippi to escape to Illinois, a free state. However, they were met by local police on the other side. The place where they attempted to cross has now been designated as part of the historical Underground Railroad.

Esther was returned to Shaw, who kept the children but paid a slave dealer to sell the woman down river to Vicksburg, Mississippi. I've always wondered what happened to Esther. I looked into the faces at the ceremony and wondered if any were her children's children's children In four years of going to Shaw, Saturday was the first time I'd seen black people in the Gardens.

Before the ceremonies, an older woman came to sit on the bench next to where I stood. After a few minutes, she spotted two women she knew who were sitting in reserved seating close to the reflective pool. She walked over and they greated her warmly, they black, she white. They had an empty seat near them and invited her to join them. She hesitated because it was marked 'reserved', but one lady patted her arm and said, "…that was alright, we can sit here. We're priviledged." She came and got her bag, and one of the ladies seated moved over to make a spot for her; she sat down between them, hand on the arm of one, while the other hugged her closely. And that's how they sat during the ceremony: three old women, two black, one white, arm and arm.

My ruminations were interrupted, though, when the master of ceremonies began, introducing the different speakers, including a local historian and expert on Carver, a local minister, the director of the Gardens, and finally introducing the older man I had noticed earlier: he was the actor and opera singer, Robert Guillaume. He had been invited to read a poem in honor of the occasion.

Guillaume made his way to the podium in slow, stiff steps, leaning on his cane. His voice was soft and his words halting at times, but still beautiful to hear. He mentioned growing up in St. Louis, and how happy he was to have been invited by the statue's sculpture to attend. Then that lovely, wonderful voice, unimpeded by stroke, came over the speakers; reading Carver's favorite poem, Equipment by Edgar Guest:

Figure it out for yourself, my lad,
You've all that the greatest of men have had,
Two arms, two hands, two legs, two eyes
And a brain to use if you would be wise.
With this equipment they all began,
So start for the top and say, "I can."

Look them over, the wise and great
They take their food from a common plate,
And similar knives and forks they use,
With similar laces they tie their shoes.
The world considers them brave and smart,
But you've all they had when they made their start.

You can triumph and come to skill,
You can be great if you only will.
You're well equipped for what fight you choose,
You have legs and arms and a brain to use,
And the man who has risen great deeds to do
Began his life with no more than you.

You are the handicap you must face,
You are the one who must choose your place,
You must say where you want to go,
How much you will study the truth to know.
God has equipped you for life, but He
Lets you decide what you want to be.

Courage must come from the soul within,
The man must furnish the will to win.
So figure it out for yourself, my lad.
You were born with all that the great have had,
With your equipment they all began,
Get hold of yourself and say: "I can."

There wasn't a large group of people attending the ceremony and after the statue was unveiled, we were invited up to see it and meet the speakers. On the platform, I turned around from trying to get close to the statue and Guillaume was, for the moment, not surrounded by people. I hesitantly approached him, and gibbered something along the lines of, "Sir babble babble honor gibber gibber Phantom babble gibber wonderful." Luckily he spoke Fan and could decipher what I was saying. My favorite picture of him was when he signed an autograph for the television cameraman.

You are the handicap you must face,
You are the one who must choose your place,
You must say where you want to go,
How much you will study the truth to know.

I don't care much for Guest as a poet — too manly man for me. But such complex truth in so many simple words. If I had gone to Artica, I never would have heard Guillaume say these words. I guess the luck was with me, though I've not been a believer in luck. Loren Webster wrote something on luck recently when he discussed the Elizabeth Bishop poem, One Art, which starts with:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

It's a wonderful poem; resigned but not defeated. Loren speaks of loss and luck, writing, I still remember that period in my life when I repeatedly played Ray Charles’ version of “If It Wasn’t For Bad Luck,” I wouldn’t have any luck at all, and ironically referred to it as my theme song.

I sometimes think we see bad or good luck, when what we're given in both cases is opportunity. Being invited to a special event with many movers and shakers is opportunity, but so is not being invited. Spending the rest of our lives with the perfect love is opportunity, but so is being alone. In the end, as George Washington Carver would most likely say, it's not what we have, or what we've given but what we choose to do that matters. Some people prefer to hack life; others prefer to just live it.

Loren also wrote:

Things often have a way of righting themselves, though it certainly doesn’t seem that way when you’re in the middle of a losing streak. Unfortunately, for some people things never do quite right themselves, and who can blame them if they’re left feeling lost and alienated?

Feeling lost and alienated can also be an opportunity.

I'm reading a lovely little book titled Bittersweet Country, edited by Ozarkian author Ellen Gray Massey. It contains the best articles from a periodical named Bittersweet, published by Massey's English class from the Lebanon, Missouri high school. The magazine focuses on the Ozarks, the culture and the way of life of the early Ozark settlers.

The first section of the book focused on kitchens: what appliances existed and how they were used, how food was prepared, giving recipes, and even providing diagrams of typical kitchen organization. Most had a big, rough table, usually made by hand, with benches for seats. On this, food would be placed–for eating in the next meal or to hold for the next day. It would be covered with a pretty cloth to keep the bugs off.

In those days, the settlers were frugal and nothing was every thrown away; even ash served a purpose because ash that is wet and allowed to sit and rot forms lye as a by-product. Lye was essential for both cooking and cleaning, and many homes had an ash hopper where ashes from the wood stove and fireplace would be thrown. When it rained, water would trickle through it, resulting in the lye. The cook would then combine this with water and dried corn and boil it for a time to create hominy–a fluffy, and tasty, corn dish.

(I found a recipe for homemade hominy at WikiBooks. If you're not familiar with WikiBooks, it's a Wikipedia-related site for …open-content textbooks anyone can edit. )

In 1927, the rain kept falling in the Mississippi delta. Folks would look at the sky anxiously, hoping for a break, but none came. Those who lived near the Mississippi, well they knew he was a cantankerous old bastard and could turn on they any old time. They'd watch the levees, those mounds of dirt and tough old swamp grass that was all that stood between them and the waters.

Most years, the levees held and the rich, wet lands yielded plentiful crops–usually cotton, though some land owners ran sugar cane. The folks that farmed the lands were black, but they didn't own the lands, no sir. No they were sharecroppers, which back in those days was only about a drop of blood away from slavery.

Then early that year, a wall of water came down south, riding the Sip like a drunk-happy gambling boat captain. It started in Illinois, where those in charge, the Mississippi River Commission pointed to their work, their levees and said without a doubt they'd hold. Then right before Easter, the levees gave up their fight and started to fail, one after another.

"On that night that the levee broke, when daddy went out and he could see the water coming across the fields. And our house was about, I guess about eighteen inches off the ground. And he come back in the house, he says, “"I see the water coming across the field. It done filled up a big slew coming between our house and the levee,” and it’s level out there. So he come back in the house and stayed about twenty minutes. About 10: 00 that night, we were moving a few bed things up in the loft part of the house, and there’s where we was until the next morning. And we stayed in there, up there, two nights and three days. Finally a seaplane come along, and my daddy had done cut a hole where we could look out on the outside, and he was waving a white rag when that seaplane come by. And then about two hours after then, it was a gas boat going up there and taking us all to the levee. And we lived up there on the levee until the water went down."

William Cobb On the Night when the Levee Broke

In Greenville, Mississippi over 13,000 blacks are stranded on the levee without food and water and little protection from the elements. When boats arrive to rescue those flooded out, only the whites are picked up, because the plantation owners in the area are worried that if the blacks are ferried out, they won't return to farm the land.

Will Percy decides that the only honorable and decent course of action is to evacuate the refugees to safer ground down river and arranges for barges to pick up and transport the refugees. Many people are reluctant to abandon Greenville, despite the fact that their homes have been submerged. The planters, in particular, oppose Will's plan, fearing that if the African American refugees leave, they will never return, and there will be no labor to work the crops. LeRoy (ed. note: Will Percy's father), placing his business interests above his family's tradition of aiding those less fortunate, betrays his son and secretly sides with the planters. Boats with room for all the refugees arrive, but only 33 white women and children are allowed to board. The African American refugees are left behind, trapped on the levee. Later, Will Percy will write that he was "astounded and horrified" by this turn of events.

To justify his relief committee's failure to evacuate the refugees, Will Percy convinces the Red Cross to make Greenville a distribution center, with the African Americans providing the labor. Red Cross relief provisions arrive in Greenville, but the best provisions go to the whites in town. Only African Americans wearing tags around their necks marked "laborer" receive rations. National Guard is called in to patrol the refugee camps in Greenville. Word filters out of the camps that guardsmen are robbing, assaulting, raping and even murdering African Americans held on the levee.

From: PBS A Fatal Flood

The flood waters covered over over 27,000 square miles across several states, Mississippi and Arkansas being hardest hit. Over 240 are known to have died, but record keeping was poor in those times.

“Back up to a house . . . there was seven people on it. I presume it was wife . . . man, his wife, and five children. And I was heading over to this house. This was on my first hauling, the next day after the levee broke. And on the way getting to the house—this house was just moving along [in the river], you know—and all of a sudden it must of hit a stump or something. And the house flew all to pieces. And I searched the boards and things around there for ten minutes, and you know I never saw a soulÌs hand come up, not a soul.”

Henry Caillouet Seven All Together Went Down

The flood lasted two months, and the folks in New Orleans had actually dynamited a levee before the city–an act that proved unnecessary because broken levees elsewhere along the Sip had spilled enough water so the river wasn't a threat to the city.

By the time it was over, 700,000 people had lost their homes, and a hundred thousand homes and businesses were destroyed. The costs of the flood topped 4 billion dollars by 1993 standard's–a comparison brought to mind because in 1993, another great flood hit, but this time further north in Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. I remember talking to a man in an old lighthouse on the hill overlooking Hannibal, Missouri about the day when the waters began to rise. He was a simple man who liked to talk with people, becoming an unofficial greeter to those visiting the lighthouse.

"You see there", he pointed out at the far shore of the Mississippi. "The water came from that direction. It just kept rising and rising, and it came toward the town, like a great, slow moving wave."

He then pointed at the bridge that spanned the River.

"There was another bridge here during the flood. I watched as people tried to get across the bridge, to get to their families and homes before they were cut off from the waters." I remember him smiling, raising his red feedcap (of which he was very proud), to resettle back on his head. "I watched as they blowed it up to make way for the new bridge."

When the floods washed out the approaches to the bridge, people had to commute from one side to the other of the river either by plane, or driving 200 miles away. Hannibal was underwater for 147 days before the flood began to recede; some towns were under even longer. Even St. Louis had flood waters lapping at the heels of the Arch, and flowing down the normally dry Des Peres river into the city and into the neighborhoods only a block or two from where I live now.

The 1993 flood displaced 74,000 people, and destroyed 45,000 buildings and homes. It's cost was 7.5 billion.

Today, the most significant sign you see of the flood of 1927 is the number of blacks living in northern cities. After the flood, many left the delta area, either because they lost their homes, or because of their harsh treatment; most likely because of the harsh treatment. There is some irony in this mistreatment of blacks, and the fears on the part of the white landowners about losing their workers. I think if the blacks had been treated decently, many wouldn't have left, thereby hastening the final curtain call for the old southern plantation culture.

And when the blacks left, they took with them part of the southern culture, manifested in the blues that followed every where they went: Chicago, Seattle, New York, and points beyond. Some would even say that the 1927 flood was the birth of the blues, such as this When the Levees Break, recorded by Kansas Joe, recorded in 1929.

If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay

Well all last night I sat on the levee and moan
Well all last night I sat on the levee and moan
Thinkin' 'bout my baby and my happy home

If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
And all these people have no place to stay

Now look here mama what am I to do
Now look here mama what am I to do
I ain't got nobody to tell my troubles to

I works on the levee mama both night and day
I works on the levee mama both night and day
I ain't got nobody, keep the water away

Oh cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do no good
Oh cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do no good
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to lose

I works on the levee, mama both night and day
I works on the levee, mama both night and day
I works so hard, to keep the water away

I had a woman, she wouldn't do for me
I had a woman, she wouldn't do for me
I'm goin' back to my used to be

I's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan
I's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan
Gonna leave my baby, and my happy home.

The flood was also responsible, in part, for some of the success of the Civil Rights movement later in the 1960's. Whites in the north, and even parts of the south, came face to face with the atrocities committed on blacks in the delta. And blacks found that they were no longer willing to be free in name only.

You also don't see any of the damage from the 1993 flood, though again you see signs of it everywhere. At the restored Hodgson Mill, there was a pencil scratch half way up the second floor of the mill that marked the highest level of the flood. Most of the towns at risk along the Sip have also installed high floodgates, painted or not dependent on the town. The government also bought out flood-prone farms and made many into parks and conservation land.

When floods happen, people move, but when the waters recede some return, while others move in. Life goes on, because flooding, no matter how tragic the losses, is a part of life. It is a part of the delta, a legacy and a price for living by the river.

Right now, the delta is being hit again, but this time it isn't Old Man River who is to blame. Lots of stories about this new flood, too; lots of cries of doom and destruction: Thousands are dead, exclaims the mayor, even while he has people on roofs listening in on radio;Katrina leaves a trail of death and destruction, says the papers, even while people desperately hope for a green cot in a dome in another city; The Mississippi coast is gone, says the governor, even as people pick through rubble and find a single shoe. The recovery will take years, says the President, even as the finger pointing and blaming has begun. Stories about looters and havoc and ruin and how nothing will be the same again.

The city is destroyed. Well, now, I take exception to that one. You can't destroy a city unless you kill off every last one of the people who live in and love the city. You would also have to remove every reference to it in history, and all of its culture, and every last bit of influence it has ever had in the past, present, and we presume, future.

But I do not intend to give up easily. Why? Because I am absolutely convinced that New Orleanians will not allow their city to become a ghost town. And I intend to be part of the renewal that springs from this determination.
…
The culture of New Orleans has long since factored disasters and general uncertainty into its economic and philosophical outlook. An early-19th-century cholera epidemic killed one out of five New Orleanians, the equivalent of 100,000 today. Even the gravediggers died, forcing people to pile bodies at the cemetery gates. The first owner of the Lombard Plantation was among those who succumbed. But his wife and family stayed on, and some of their descendants, both white and black, are still in New Orleans today, perhaps perched on their rooftop awaiting rescue or huddling gratefully with friends out in Lafayette or Breaux Bridge.

I expect they, too, will return, and that life in New Orleans will go on, with all its precariousness and sense of fragility and, yes, with all its relish for the moment. That relish, by the way, which arose from the constant awareness of precisely such disasters as we are experiencing today, accounts for much of what gives the people of that city their reckless abandon, their devil-may-care attitude, and their zest for life. Rebuilding after Katrina will be just the next in a long series of events in which that spirit has been manifested.

S. Frederick Starr in A Sad Day, too, for Architecture.

Here's a prediction: come March, 2006, with our help, the towns along the coast will rebuild. A home will replace rubble, and a church will open its doors again. With our care, the bodies will be buried, and those who have suffered loss will be comforted. With our force, we will overcome those who grab gun and seek to cause fear (and in the process find that the 'gangs' become 'groups' and the groups are fewer than our lurid speculations imply). With our support, the casinos and businesses along the coast of Mississippi will be in full swing, and folks will be back at work. And with our hard work and sacrifice, the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans will be the best. Ever.

The city is destroyed. What foolish nonsense. You know, the people that wrote this, they really don't know the South, and the people who live by big water.

Today was going to be the last sunny day until midweek, and it would have been a shame to waste it inside. I remembered a hike I had intended to take once in the summer, Bluff View at Meramec State park, but didn't because of the spider webs across the path. Today seemed an ideal day to try it again.

And it was an ideal day–in the 50's, with a gentle cool breeze, and not a web in sight. Like the earlier hike, Bluff View is also a moderately difficult hike, with very rocky ground and steep hills, and narrow paths that border a cliff overlooking the Meramec River. Unlike earlier, though, the terrain was more familiar. And dry. In fact, other than having to use caution with footing, today's hike ended up being more of a enjoyable walk than a challenging hike.

There are a couple of shelters made by the old CCC (Conservation Corp) back during the depression, along the way. Kids had spray painted messages over the one I visited. In particular, "Leslie + Jeff" featured prominantly, along with various exclamation of people 'rulz' and 'Jesus Savs'.

I usually get annoyed by graffiti, but wasn't very annoyed at the marking, primarily because the shelter itself is a marking as such: a shelter that really wasn't needed, funded by a society that was both crafy and benevolent; built by men desperate to feed their families during one of our darkest times. The trail that led to the decision to create such a shelter is one that grew over time, rather than developed naturally–the markings of thousands of hikers like me who saw the hill and had to climb it, just to see what was at the top. And it was these same hills that provided home to ancient Indian people, who used to carve pictures of animals and gods into the rocks to celebrate a hunt or protect a new child. At the most, Leslie and Jeff were just leaving this generation's scent on stone long claimed by humanity.

The rest of the trail was without much to remark, other than the casual mention of the quiet only broken by my footsteps and the beautiful weather and how wonderful it is to stand at the top of a tall bluff and see for miles around. But Missouri in Winter tends to exist in shades of rust and brown and gray, with an occasional slash of blue or green — I'm not sure I can continue to remark on this tree or that rock without resorting to, 'There was a tree' and 'there was a rock'; or variations such as 'there is a tree on the rock'.

The best part of the hike was getting back to the car and feeling like I hadn't walked enough. Say now, this is progress! Especially after my dismal showing in the earlier hike. So I treated myself to a gentle walk along the road that parallels the Meramec by the campgrounds.

There were a few hearty souls out camping, friendly as always when in the back woods–nodding their heads and saying hello, or stopping to chat. Yes the same inbred ignoramuses who threw aside the chance to toss Bush out will smile at you, and tip a finger to their hats in greeting as you pass. Those savages.

I noticed a group of large, predator like birds flying in circles overhead and a man and his wife passing told me they were turkey vultures. I was surprised, because I know what an ugly bird this can be, but they were beautiful and graceful in the air as they circled. I continued walking, trying to take a photo of the birds, but without a telephoto, this would be impossible. As they flew, they overlapped each other and dove and circled, but never made a sound, quiet as death itself.

(I shamefully confess to feeling no small amount of relief when the birds suddenly found something to land on across the river because it did seem as if they were uncannily matching my steps for the longest time. I know these creatures sense of smell is keen; were they trying to tell me I needed a shower after my hike?)

I stopped at the end of the walk to take some photos of the cliff across the water as the colors seemed pretty. When I got home, I looked at one of the photos and thought I saw spots of red in the picture. Alarmed, I grabbed my camera to see if something was wrong with it, but it was fine–the red was in the pictures. I enlarged the photo and cropped down to the trees with the red.

Then I enlarged the photo again and cropped out just one of the red dots. Looking at it under magnification, it looks like a Christmas tree ball.