Nelson Algren lived the writer's life in the 1930s and J. Edgar Hoover was watching

I write a fan letter to fellow writer Colin Asher:

Dear Colin:

Just finished reading “Never a Lovely So Real.” I loved it. Your intro sections read more like an historical novel than standard biography. It helps that Nelson’s origins and his writing life were so real and unpredictable. Overall, I found out so much more about the writer who conducted my creative writing workshop at University of Florida in 1974. Nelson’s reputation preceded him and he took it with him after the 12-week session. Until I read your book, I was content to remember the grizzled old 63-year-old who wandered into the classroom on a hot September night in Gainesville. Now I know better. I’m glad you found his life worth writing about.

Nelson was my first writing teacher. He was a gruff but entrancing presence in the classroom. I only knew him by reputation. As you write it, that was part fact and part fiction, some of it fed by Nelson. I’d read one of his books and a half-dozen stories. His past was checkered but I knew little about it. He’d been friends with James T. Farrell and Richard Wright and lover to Simone de Bouvier, a feminist writer found on many women’s studies reading lists. Two of his books were made into movies and he spent some crazy time in Hollywood. His political activities earned him a file in J. Edgar’s commie blacklist (886 pages – one heck of a file).

Remembering that time almost 50 years later, Visiting Writer Nelson Algren was an unsettling presence on the sprawling University of Florida campus. His clothing was more Dust Bowl Goodwill than Central Florida Casual. He wore rumpled shirts, loose-fitting slacks, and what looked like the army boots he wore during his time with a medical unit in France during World War II. He sported a grizzled beard and a cap that looked better on Tom Joad. He was old, probably the worst sin you could commit on a campus known for frats, football and consistent listings on Playboy Magazine’s “Top Party Schools.” Schools made the grade by earning an A-plus in three criteria: Sex, nightlife, sports. Creative writing is not mentioned. Keggers under the palms were the order of the day and nobody really wanted to take a walk on the wild side or meet the man with the golden arm who prowled The Windy City’s mean streets.

Me – I wanted to take that walk. Nelson Algren was the real thing. Here he was, stuck in a classroom in one of the campus’s oldest buildings teaching writing to kids from Daytona and Apalachicola. I looked at him as a weathered sage. We were a wave of youth in the U.S.A. who knew very little about what life was like for most Americans. We wrote stories about surfing and soured relationships. The stories in Algren’s “Neon Wilderness” might have been about Martians for all we knew. Grifters and gamblers, whores and junkies. I wanted to know these people because I desperately wanted to be a writer. I just didn’t know how to go about it.

Nelson was generous of his time and expertise. He told great stories. One of our fellow students invited us to her apartment where we smoked dope. Nelson partook, noting that he used to smoke it with Chicago’s jazz musicians and the addicts he met when writing “The Man with the Golden Arm.” He even grew his own brand of weed outside his bungalow near Gary, Indiana.

Another night, my pal Big Mike, piled us into his big black station wagon and took us to the strip club where he was a bouncer. Big Mike was a teetotaling Vietnam vet whose studio apartment was piled high with cases of bottled Pepsi because he could never find enough Pepsi in Coca-Cola country. I had a feeling that Algren had been in rougher places but he was a good sport. After his second drink, he demonstrated how he would put his head between the dancer’s big breasts and make motorboat sounds. It shocked me, the idea of this old writer motorboating a stripper. What he might have been saying is this: “Don’t waste any time, boys. Do motorboats when you can. It all goes by faster than you know.” I wasn’t listening then but now know something about the brief span of a lifetime.

In class, Algren was kind to our stories but made suggestions to make them better. I wrote a story about a homeless guy getting evicted from a tent in a mall parking lot. Algren said it needed some work. He handed out his recommended reading list. I wish I still had it. Hemingway was on it along with books I didn’t know: “A House for Mr. Biswas” by V.S. Naipaul, “The End of the Game and Other Stories” by Julio Cortazar, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “The Good Soldier Svejk” by Jaroslav Hasek, and the collected stories of John Collier. On the last night of class, Algren handed me a slip of paper with his agent’s name and address and told me to contact her. I didn’t see him do that with any of the other students and felt pretty special. I never followed up. I had nothing to show an agent except a half-finished story and late-night journal entries.

A year later, my next writing prof was Harry Crews. I figured he probably knew some of the same people Algren did, ne’er-do-wells and junkies and killers. Algren came from the mean streets and Crews from the mean swamps of the Okefenokee. If you’re curious about how mean it was, read his memoir “A Childhood: The Biography of a Place.” This was before Crews got sober and didn’t always make it to class, regaling the locals at Lillian’s Music Store which wasn’t a music store. When he did, he told great stories. One night, he read aloud his favorite story, “How Beautiful with Shoes” by Wilbur Daniel Steele, a wonderful writer whom nobody in class had ever heard of, This from Wikipeda: “Steele has been called ‘America's recognized master of the popular short story’ between World War I and the Great Depression.” Crews wrote an Esquire column called “Grits” and had stories and essays featured in Playboy. One I remember the best was “The Button-down Terror of David Duke,” infamous KKK grand wizard from Louisiana. Crews wrote about an ill-fated backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail that ended in a Tennessee town that once convicted and hung a circus elephant for stomping a boy to death.

I was lucky to have two great early mentors. At the time, I didn’t understand it but knew it was important to my imagined writing career. After graduation, I worked in Denver as a sportswriter and edited a weekly alternative newspaper. I was a corporate editor until I decided it was killing me. I wrote a novel and snagged myself an agent in Ray Powers of the Marje Fields Agency. He helped me revise the book and shopped it around. I told him I was quitting my job and he advised me to get a numbing day job so I could have plenty of energy left for writing. Instead, a went off to get my M.F.A. at Colorado State University. It helped my writing and helped me get published. It also sent me off with a career as an arts administrator at a state arts council and then the National Endowment for the Arts. It cut into my writing time. I’m retired now and have time to think about paths taken and not taken. I write every day and have a short list of published fiction. I have a fine family and a house. Still, Ray Powers might have been right. I’ll never know.

Thanks again. I look forward to reading your other work.

Sincerely,

Michael Shay, michaelshaywyo@hotmail.com, hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com

P.S.: Ordered a copy of “Nelson Algren’s Own Book of Lonesome Monsters” after reading about it in your book. Couldn’t resist.

"Meet John Doe" -- a 79-year-old movie has something to say about 2020

I watched Frank Capra's "Meet John Doe" Friday night on Turner Classic Movies. I've seen it before but not in the Trump era. I see it now with new eyes. It's a story about decency. A hackneyed subject, boring even. But a lively tale in the hands of director Frank Capra.

If you don't know the 1941 movie, here's a synopsis. After the credits roll over scenes of Depression America, the film opens with a workman taking a jackhammer to a chiseled stone logo: "The Bulletin: A Free Press Means a Free People." It's replaced by a shiny new metal sign: "The New Bulletin: A Streamlined Paper for a Streamlined Era." 

Cut to the newsroom. An officious young clerk strolls in, points at each expendable employee, whistles, makes the universal cutthroat sign across his neck, and clucks his tongue. The somber looks on faces reveals the awful truth -- that they are now cast loose into The Great Depression with no real safety net. 

Mitchell is one of them. But she is not going to take this lying down. She marches into the editor's office and pleads for her job, saying she will take a pay cut from $30 to $20. Editor Henry Connell is a grizzled old school editor brought in to make the paper, now owned by millionaire businessman D.B. Norton, more exciting and more "streamlined." He has no patience and no job for Stanwyck and shoos her from the office, reminding her to write her final column before she leaves.

What comes next? It's a Capra-style exploration of celebrity, greed, patriotism and fascism. It was released in 1941, almost two years into the war and just a few months before Pearl Harbor. An unsettled time, maybe as angst-ridden as 2020. As the plot unfolds, I had Trump on my mind. Couldn't help it. And I kept contrasting Capra's worldview and the one that emerged after the 2016 presidential election.

In the movie, Mitchell's parting newspaper column is a fake letter from a John Doe who rails against society's ills and says he will make his point by jumping off the city hall building on Christmas Eve. An editor, who's also been fired, comes to Mitchell and says her column is two sticks short. She hands him to new column and he runs with it. When printed, the column causes an uproar. The competing newspaper calls it a fake. Mitchell is rehired at a higher salary and told to produce John Doe. She finds a washed-up pitcher named Long John Willoughby (Gary Cooper) who bums around the country with The Colonel (Walter Brennan). Mitchell persuades Willoughby to be Doe and the plot thickens.

Doe takes to the role. He eats regularly and has money. The Colonel warns him of "the heelots," those heels who just want your money. The Colonel is the voice of reason to Doe's aw-shucks naivite. He urges Doe to flee before it's too late. But Doe is stuck -- he likes the attention and having money ain't a bad thing either. Meanwhile, Norton gets his hooks into Mitchell as Doe warms to his role until a radio appearance pushes him over the edge and he flees with The Colonel. Doe is recognized at a diner and the crowds swarm to see him. He sees that he, as John Doe, has made an impact. He returns to the city and forms hundreds of John Doe Clubs, financed by Norton.

Norton is the stand-in for every fascist ascendant in the 1930s and 40s. He issues orders. He has his own paramilitary force (Norton's Troopers). He feels that the country is going to hell in a handbasket and needs a strong hand to restore order. His ultimate goal is to transform all those members of John Doe Clubs into compliant voters. But Doe, Mitchell and Connell rally to stymie Norton's plans. That's a spoiler but, if you know Capra films, that's how they end. Decent people win, the grifters lose.

Which brings us to the America in 2020. Decent people are everywhere. They heal the sick, feed the hungry, help their neighbors.

The indecent are always with us. Perhaps we just notice them more in our time of greatest need. Trump, of course, is Indecent American No. 1. Just the other day he was asked was about Rep. John Lewis's contributions to society. He replied that they weren't so great, that Lewis didn't show up for Trump's 2017 inauguration. He wasn't alone of course -- many thousands had something better to do on 1/20/17. Trump didn't even bother to attend Lewis's farewell at the Capitol Building Rotunda.

Everything is about Trump all of the time. He has his own band of Norton's Troopers. They were out in force the night that Trump decided to go to a church he had never attended to hold up a bible. Donald's Troopers tear-gassed and beat down peaceful protesters.Then Trump's Troopers traveled to Portland to do their dirty work. 

In the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, the U.S. had its own problem with fascists. The German-American Bund (America's Nazi Party) had thousands of members. Some 20,000 of them showed up for a rally at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 20, 1939. Bund members battled with protesters outside the Garden. Trump's pop probably said "there was good people on both sides." The Bund supported Hitler and his thugs, possibly history's most indecent group although there are a lot of contenders.

We need decency in film. Not the National Legion of Decency version. The Catholic org rated films and condemned some, telling Catholics that seeing one was a mortal sin and would send you straight to H-E-L-L. To teens in the 1960s, it was a handy guide for those films we just had to see. Censorship tends to backfire on the censor. We youngsters were also keen on reading banned books. I'm no youngster now but I always check the banned books lists to make sure I've read them. It's the decent thing to do.

You can watch "Meet John Doe" on YouTube. For a story about pre-war conflicts between Nazis and protesters in New York City, read Irwin Shaw's short story "Sailor off the Bremen." 

Learning to Breathe, Part IV

Read Part III here.

In Part IV, our concluding episode, the Hailie Salassie automaton comes to life and chases down some fascists. 

“Here he comes.” Bobby the cowboy pointed the front doors of the depot. They opened, and an entourage stepped out. Several photographers, three uniformed policemen and, finally, the lanky and lucky Mr. Lindbergh. He blinked when the sun hit his eyes. He was dressed in a gray suit. He didn’t look like a famous aviator. He didn’t look like a guy whose baby had been kidnapped and killed. He didn’t look like a guy who was Hitler’s buddy.

“Let’s go boys,” said Doherty.

He stepped forward and others followed.

Weaver had rigged the truck’s tailgate to serve as a lift. He and Doherty rolled the Lion of Judah to the tailgate, Weaver hit a lever on the side of the truck and Ras Tafari dropped slowly to the ground. They rolled the statue off of the tailgate onto the pavement.

Weaver always referred to his creation as Halie Selassie, Lion of Judah. He had tried and failed to get his statue to walk. But he did figure out how to make him move. Doherty didn’t understand it all. A coal-fired boiler turned some gears that turned other gears that powered wheels on the bottom of the statue. Smoke escaped out of an exhaust pipe at the back, which added an ominous fire-and-brimstone element to the scene. Weaver had also rigged a phonograph which played a recorded version of Selassie’s League of Nations’ speech from speakers on the truck cab roof. Not a bad set-up, and effective as long as the automaton didn’t get too far ahead of the truck. He and Weaver had even used their sound system to play music at hobo jungles and tent camps. One night Weaver tried to get Ras Tafari to spin with the music. He played with the gears but the best he could do was get Ras Tafari to stop and go in four-four time. That was at an encampment near Des Moines. They had a fine time that night with the dancing and the moonshine. And Weaver had his reefer.

Weaver walked next to his contraption, making sure it kept on course. Ras Tafari had his eyes on the fascist Lindbergh. Doherty stood in the open door of the truck. He waited for Weaver’s signal. Their goal was to drown out Lindy’s speech. And to cause a commotion. Lindy now stood behind a microphone in front of the depot. He and his entourage had certainly by now seen the coal-powered Selassie coming their way. The automaton’s exhaust added to the day’s haze caused by dust from farmers’ fields hundreds of miles away. A fire burned in Cheyenne. It joined thousands of other fires burning all over the world. And this was just the beginning.

Lindbergh stepped up to the microphone. “Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Charles Lindbergh.” A smattering of applause. Two men held up signs that read “Defend America First” in big black letters. A group of women dressed in old-fashioned black mourning attire huddled by the microphone. One held up a sign that read “Mothers Against War.”

Weaver turned, grinned and smartly saluted Doherty. That was the sign. Doherty dropped the phonograph's arm on the record. Scratching noises erupted from the truck-top speakers. Lindbergh paused. Some in the welcoming crowd turned to see the truck. Their gazes alighted on Ras Tafari chugging toward them. Doherty thought he heard a gasp.

“It’s OK, ladies and gentlemen,” said Lindbergh. “Just a stunt. Communists try to interrupt me all of the time. They fear my message.”

Hailie Selassie addressed the League of Nations in Geneva on June 20, 1936. He told them that “God and history shall remember your judgment,” just as his automaton told the crowd in Cheyenne three years later.

Doherty now could hear only Selassie – the distant emperor was doing a terrific job of drowning out the words of America’s heroic aviator.

“What answer shall I take back to my people?” Selassie said.

Lindbergh talked on. Some in his entourage glanced nervously at the mobile and articulate Ras Tafari. A man in a suit walked over to a policeman and had some words with him. The policeman nodded. He gathered two of his officers and walked toward Weaver and Ras Tafari. Doherty had seen this happen before in other towns. Officials become alarmed and attempt to stop Ras Tafari as he delivers his message. Smarter ones go to the truck and tried to interrupt the broadcast by confiscating the equipment or smashing the record. After this happened twice, Weaver and Doherty got wise. Doherty now locked himself inside the truck cab. The cops would stand outside and stare, not knowing what to do. One enterprising cop in Grand Island, Nebraska, ripped the speakers off of the top of the truck. They got wise to that and, next time someone tried that, Doherty sent a jolt of electricity along the wires. The cop screamed and went flying off the truck, landing on his keister on the asphalt street. He then took out his billy and broke the truck window and then the phonograph. They got arrested that time.

But here in Cheyenne? The cops walked over to Ras Tafari. The burly police chief barked orders at his minions. They stood in front of Ras Tafari. They put up their hands and yelled, “Halt.” Ras Tafari must not have understood because he kept on rolling. It’s tough to tell the Lion of Judah to halt. The automaton reached the cops’ hands but kept right on going. The cops tried to lean on Selassie, but were finally pushed back and then parted, each moving to the side of the automaton. The one closest to Weaver grabbed him and his compatriot came over and grabbed Weaver’s other arm. Weaver didn’t resist – he knew better. One of the officers said something to Weaver. He shrugged, pointing over at Selassie and shaking his head no. The police chief came over. He barked at Weaver who shook his head again and probably said, “There’s nothing I can do Mr. Police Chief sir.” Meanwhile, by the depot, Lindbergh continued to speak and here at the truck, Doherty chuckled.

Then, the unexpected. Ras Tafari, obviously impatient to meet Lindbergh, sped up. Lindbergh didn’t seem to notice but his entourage did. They began to drift away. One man in a dark suit walked up behind Lindbergh. The man whispered something to Lindy, who looked up to see the automaton closing on him fast, not at running speed exactly, more like a brisk walk. Lindy shook his head and returned to his remarks. The crowd made a path for Ras Tafari. The police chief now walked over to the truck. He banged on the closed driver’s side window with his fist. Doherty had taken all precautions. Windows up, doors locked.

“Come out of there now,” the police chief said, “or you will be arrested.”

Doherty did what he always did. He put his hand to his ear and said, “I can’t hear you.”

“Turn it off,” yelled the police chief, pointing at the photograph.

“What?” yelled Doherty?

The police chief had a decision to make. He looked at Doherty and then over at the automaton. He saw that America’s hero was in danger of being run over by the emperor. Doherty knew that the man would love to smash the window and then smash his face. But he also knew that police chief’s don’t let Lindbergh get killed in their town. It wouldn’t look good and it wasn’t the right move as far as job security. Fuming, the police chief took one final look and yelled, “I’ll get you” and then sped off toward the depot.

The two photographers on the scene were having a field day. They were lined up and ready to snap the moment when Lindy got run over by the Lion of Judah. This would be big news and they’d get paid well for their shots.

But Lindy was wise to the situation. He let Selassie get to within two feet and backed away from the microphone. Ras Tafari was still moving and closing fast. Lindy shook his fist at the automaton. The automaton kept coming. Weaver looked over at Doherty and smiled. This was the best yet. Lindy backed up. The automaton advanced. The photographers were getting their shots. The crowd murmured. The police chief came to Lindy’s aid. He inserted himself between the aviator and the emperor. He and Lindy both gave way. The police chief wore a determined look. He wasn’t sure about the look on Lindy’s face. It wasn’t anger. More of a bland acceptance. He just backed slowly while Selassie chugged. The police chief barked at Lindy. He took one more look at the automaton, turned and walked quickly for the depot doors. He disappeared inside. Now it was just the cop and the statue.

“It is us today, it will be you tomorrow.” Selassie ended his speech and applause rang out from the august body sitting on their asses in Geneva. They would do nothing, of course. They would congratulate the dark-skinned emperor on his fine speech and then adjourn for lunch. Selassie would return to the safety of England. Italians would continue to gas illiterate tribesmen. Franco killed Basques in Spain. Japanese raped and killed women in Nanking. Hitler put Jews and communists in concentration camps.

The automaton collided with the depot wall, tilted slightly and then changed direction. It was hard to say how far he would go. The fire would go out, eventually, the smoke would dissipate. Selassie would once again be a big mute mass of metal. He and Weaver would spend at least one night in jail. He’d call one of his old union buddies to bail them out.

Lindbergh, meanwhile, would be on his way to Laramie and Rock Springs and Ogden. Maybe they’d catch up with him, there. Maybe not. But they would, somewhere along the line. He had his mission, they had theirs.

Doherty unlocked the truck and stepped outside. The cops had cuffed Weaver and marched him toward the truck.

“I’ll go peacefully,” Doherty said.

The cowboy returned. “Can I take care of the statue while you boys are being detained?”

"Sure,” said Weaver. “How do we get in touch?”

The cowboy’s grizzled face beamed. “I’ll know where you are.”

“OK,” said Weaver.

The cop urged Doherty forward. “You’re in trouble, boy,” he said.

“No, you are,” said Doherty. “You just don’t know it yet.”

#          #          #

On Monday, Jan. 30, the author talks about the roots of this story. 

Learning to Breathe, Part III

Read Part II here.

In this episode, Doherty and Weaver wonder about the motives of the three cowboys hanging around outside of the train depot. 

Three cowboys stood across the street, eyeing Doherty and Weaver. They spoke to each other briefly, and then set off toward the truck.

“Might want to get out that billy club,” said Doherty.

“You get the tire iron.” Weaver nodded.

It had come to that, more than once, in their journey from New York into Wyoming. Sometimes it was fists. Sometimes billy clubs and tire irons. They knew where their weapons were stashed and moved toward them. Doherty and Weaver were not harbingers of peace but of war. They brought sad tidings to the heartland.

Two of the cowboys looked like brothers – tall and thin, youngsters. The third cowboy was older, short and stout, with a dark beard and mustache. They all wore dungarees and battered cowboy hats. They didn’t say anything, not at first.

“Hello,” said Doherty.

“Howdy,” said the older cowboy. “What ya got here?”

“Hailie Selassie, Lion of Judah.”

“He’s putting up a fight against those fuckin’ fascists, the Italians. They’re using poison gas.” He tapped his chest with a calloused hand. “I got gassed in France by the Huns.”

“We’ve both been gassed,” said Doherty.

The older cowboy looked him up and down. “You been in the fight, ain’t ya?”

Doherty nodded.

“You too,” said the older cowboy to Weaver. “You got iron in your face.” He turned his head to spit a stream of tobacco into the dusty street. “These two boys,” he said nodding first at one of his companions and then the other. “They ain’t been in the fight. You’ll be good hands when the next war comes, won’t you boys?”

They both nodded.

“They don’t say much,” said the older cowboy. “What you got planned for that pansy-ass Lindbergh?”

Doherty gestured at the statue and then the banner. “That’s our message,” said Doherty. “It’s aimed at Lindbergh and his appeasement pals. We usually get some pushback from crowds. We always get other people who know we are facing a mess and have to do something about it.”

The cowboy reached over and grasped Doherty’s left hand. “Fights?”

“Sometimes.”

“This black fella,” he said, nodding at Weaver. “He can hold his own?”

“Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek,” Weaver said. “Sometimes you run out of cheeks.”

The cowboy laughed. “True enough.”

“He’s also one hell of an artist,” Doherty said.

“He do that statue?”

“Made from spent Italian artillery shells.”

“No shit?” He walked over to the truck bed and ran his hand along the statue. He peered closer and looked over at Weaver. “I see numbers from the shell casings. That is something. Come over here, boys.”

The young men joined the older cowboy. All three of them eased their way around the truck bed, looking at the statue. When they rejoined Weaver and Doherty, the older cowboy asked: “How can we help?”

“Well,” said Weaver. “We want Lindy out here where he can see our message.”

“He coming out?”

“We don’t know,” said Doherty. “We just knew he was coming into the station for a stop on his speaking tour.”

“Let’s see if we can get him out,” said the older cowboy.

“I can go into the depot and yell fire,” said one of the younger cowboys.

“No, boy, we’d have a stampede then. The cops will come and the first to be arrested will be our Negro friend here.” The cowboy pointed at Weaver.

“I’m not a Negro anymore,” said Weaver. “I’m Rastafari.”

“Huh?”

“Jamaican,” Doherty said. “It’s a religion they have down there.”

The cowboy nodded, but Doherty could tell that he didn’t understand.

After a moment of silence, the cowboy asked, “So how are we going to get Lucky Lindy out here?”

One of the young cowboys said, “Maybe somebody could go in and ask Mr. Lindbergh nicely to come outside.” He gave a tentative grin.

Everyone stared at him. The older cowboy sighed. “These boys are still wet behind the ears. You going to ask those Nazi dive bombers to nicely stop bombing you when the war starts?”

“No,” said the young cowboy.

The older cowboy spat a stream of tobacco juice into the street. 

“What if we go inside and announce that there’s an air show?” That was the other young cowboy. He smiled.

“Sure, why not,” said the older cowboy. “Lindbergh flew into our airfield when I was a kid. Didn’t get to meet him but saw his plane. I bet he loves air shows.”

Doherty looked at Weaver. “What do you think?”

“Might work. Lindy is an airplane guy.”

“He is that,” said the older cowboy. “That’s a fine, idea, Bobby. You surprise the hell out of me sometimes.”

Bobby beamed. His brother looked down, scuffed his right boot against the pavement.

But Lindy didn’t have to be lured outside. That’s where the cameras were, and Lindy liked the cameras. The sun pushed back the dust cloud, brightening up the day. 

Doherty surveyed his impromptu group. The future was a dangerous place, He would walk into it with a black sculptor from Detroit and an odd trio of cowboys. So many of them, all over the world, regular folks tired of being stepped on. Bullies like Lindy and Hitler and Mussolini and Franco and the bosses of industry. Their time was done. He had witnessed their deeds in Madrid and San Sebastian. Doherty was angry. He often was up nights, awakened by visions of shell bursts and open wounds. He was surprised to be 28 and alive. He’d been a paid soldier for the capitalists and a piss-poor mercenary in Spain. He had to laugh at that. Yes, he had a satchel filled with his book of poems. He gave one to each person who put two bits or more into the collection box. It was his cry for justice, no matter how small. All he knew was that the world’s bullies needed a shellacking and he was here to start the payback.
To be continued...
Read Learning to Breathe, Part IV, on Friday, Jan. 27. Next week, the author talks about the background of this story. 

"Sailor off the Bremen" shows that punching Nazis is nothing new

It's only a movie -- or is it? Indiana Jones punches a Nazi in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

USA Today offered its summary of the past weekend: "Analysis: One weekend, two Americas. Are we falling apart?" It examines this past weekend in the U.S., in which Trump was inaugurated as president and concerned citizens protested millions-strong around the the U.S. and the world.  

The article leaves us with chilling words from pollster Frank Luntz:

"We've never had as many people who don't trust the media, don't trust the politicians, don't trust economics, don't trust business," Republican political consultant Frank Luntz said on CBS' Face the Nation. "I think we're going to remember this weekend for a long time to come as not the end, not the campaign being over, but this is the beginning of the most tempestuous ... awful conflict between left and right, between men and women, between young and old." 

He warned, "I think we are breaking apart."  

Luntz works for Republicans. As a pollster, he interviewed scores of potential voters leading up to the election. I watched many of those segments on CBS This Morning, back when I was watching TV news. They were illuminating and scary. Give credit to Luntz for showing us the inklings of the cataclysm that was to come. 

What's next?

Punching Nazis. U.S. Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer was punched in the face Saturday during D.C. inauguration activities. It was filmed, and the vid went viral. The #punchingnazis hashtag became a sensation.  Facebookers posted old cartoon panels of Superman punching Nazis during WWII. Hitler memes were big. 

Liberals had a big laugh. Conservatives were silent. Nobody wants to be on the side of the Nazis, even though we thought that this abbreviation for German's National Socialist Party had been consigned to the dustbin of history. Now we call these people alt-right or purveyors of white pride or white identity or white nationalists. They shouted "Hail Trump" at their post-election rally. 

So why not punch Nazis? Because Trump will use public violence as an excuse to clamp down on public protest. One of the reasons we peacefully gathered out in the streets this weekend is that we fear that very thing. Vice President Pence has already stated that it is time to curtail protests. We knew this was coming. 

Punching Nazis is nothing knew. One of Irwin Shaw's best short stories is ":Sailor Off the Bremen." In it, Nazi sailors off the ship Bremen attack anti-fascist demonstrators on the New York docks. One demonstrator is so injured that some of his compatriots decide to punch Nazis.

Shaw has always been one of my favorite short story writers. He lived during the golden age of short story writing and publishing. Yes, short story writers got paid to write in the 1930s. Shaw was featured in some of the best mags of the era. He wrote for radio. He went off to war and kept writing. Many of his novels became best-sellers. One was made into a Brando movie, The Young Lions. Two were made into blockbuster TV miniseries, Rich Man, Poor Man and Beggerman, Thief. Shaw lived in Paris. For the most part, he is not studied in M.F.A. writing programs due to his potboiler novels. A shame, really. Many of us could learn storytelling skills from this master.

"Sailor off the Bremen" serves up a pre-war cast of Nazis, communists and tough guys. Nobody really comes off as a hero. A young communist activist gets beat up at a protest against the Nazi-flag-flying Bremen. He loses his eye. His football-playing brother avenges the crime by beating a Nazi almost to death on the streets of New York. Nothing gets solved. The war will begin in September. The beatings and killings will commence on a global scale.

A white nationalist gets punched in the face in D.C. We cheer. White nationalists in Whitefish, Mont., target the Jews in their community. How do we respond to that? Peaceful protest may be the answer. Until it's not.

Lawrence Block included "Sailor off the Bremen" in the 2008 anthology he edited for Akashic Books, Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics. It's a good thing. Shaw's stories are hard to find these days. 

I leave you with a quote by James Fallows from the latest issue of Atlantic Magazine Online. Fallows recently spoke at a conference in Cheyenne. In the Atlantic article, he mentioned Laramie as one of the many places where local citizens are transforming their communities. At the same time, they hold a jaundiced view of national politics.

Fallows wrote this:

And now we have Donald Trump. We have small-town inland America—the culture I think of myself as being from—being credited or blamed for making a man like this the 45th in a sequence that includes Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. I view Trump’s election as the most grievous blow that the American idea has suffered in my lifetime. The Kennedy and King assassinations and the 9/11 attacks were crimes and tragedies. The wars in Vietnam and Iraq were disastrous mistakes. But the country recovered. For a democratic process to elevate a man expressing total disregard for democratic norms and institutions is worse. The American republic is based on rules but has always depended for its survival on norms—standards of behavior, conduct toward fellow citizens and especially critics and opponents that is decent beyond what the letter of the law dictates. Trump disdains them all. The American leaders I revere are sure enough of themselves to be modest, strong enough to entertain self-doubt. When I think of Republican Party civic virtues, I think of Eisenhower. But voters, or enough of them, have chosen Trump.

How many of our fellow citizens do we have to punch to make this right? If you punch, are you prepared to be punched back? Or worse?

Learning to Breathe, Part II

Read Part I here.

April 1939, Cheyenne, Wyoming. In Part II, anti-fascists and their Hailie Selassie automaton prepare to confront fascists arriving on the afternoon train.

The door groaned as Doherty pushed it open. He stepped out and walked to the rear of the truck. The statue was tied securely to the bed. Six feet tall, about his height, although that was taking some liberties with the subject who reportedly topped the five-foot mark only when wearing thick-heeled boots. Still, the ruler of a mighty kingdom. Doherty had to hand it to Weaver –- the man had done a fine job sculpting Hailie Selassie out of the metal from expended Italian artillery shells that he found in piles across Ethiopia. The serene face, the mustache and beard, eyes that seemed to come alive.  

Doherty walked to the driver’s side. In the cab, the driver was toking on a spliff. “Jeez, Weaver,” the white man said. He knocked on the window.

The black man rolled it down. “What is it, Irish?”

“You have to smoke that now?”

“Calms me, man. And it’s part of my religion.”

“I know. But now? You are a black man in a city that’s 110 percent white. We are waiting at the train station to do a number on a hero of the white race. Is this the right time to be doing your drug?”

“No problem, Jim.” The black man held the spliff like a cigarette. “How they going to see my ganja cloud when the sky is brown with dust already?”

“They can smell it.”

“Smells like burning weeds.”

The train whistle blew.

“That’s our train,” Doherty said.

Weaver inhaled one more batch of smoke and tamped out the spliff on the truck floor. Doherty didn’t understand Weaver’s so-called religion. He worshipped Selassie, a.k.a. Ras Tafari, as the second coming of Christ. Smoked leaves of a weed like Doherty smoked cigarettes. But when Doherty wanted to dull life’s pain, he turned to whiskey. Calmed him down. That’s what Weaver said ganja did for him. When they camped out at night, Weaver lit up and the stuff smelled a bit like the sage he and his father burned for cooking fires while hunting in the Red Desert. A bit sweeter – not unpleasant. When Weaver was not driving and smoked, Doherty could swear that the smoke got to him. He felt mildly elated, even imagined shapes crossing in front of him on the road. At Weaver’s urging, he’d smoked it a few times but felt it made him lazy. A guy couldn’t afford dreaminess when fighting fascists.

Weaver opened the door and stepped out of the truck. He was a few inches shorter than six-foot-tall Doherty. He wore Army boots, denim trousers and a blue work shirt. He had the hands of a workman, calloused and cut-up, a blue-black bruise on the knuckles of his right hand, souvenirs of a bar brawl in Omaha. Doherty’s left hand still hurt from that same fight. This Rastafari religion might profess a love of peace, but he’d never seen anyone fight like Weaver when the chips were down.

Doherty inspected the truck. Statue was OK. The banner wrapped around the outside walls of the truck bed read: “It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” That’s what Selassie had said in a warning to the rest of the world.

Nobody seemed to be listening.

Doherty and Weaver met on the New York docks. Longshoremen refused to unload the Bremen, a German cargo ship that flew the Nazi flag. A riot erupted and the two men ended up taking shelter in the same waterfront bar. After a few drinks, Weaver invited Doherty to a warehouse in Brooklyn to see the Salassie statue. Doherty was impressed. Weaver, an art school grad from Detroit, built the statue. He went overseas to fight for the world’s only black monarch. He stayed for the art.

The two met in January. In March, they loaded Ras Tafari onto Doherty’s beat-up truck and they were off.

 “Think he’ll come out the front door?” said Weaver, eyes on the depot.

“Where else?”

The train depot was built of stone with a large clock tower. They could see the train’s passenger cars as they eased to a stop in back of the station. Their target was in one of those cars. They planned a surprise attack on their fascist opponent. But, there were limits to violence. One often got better results with theatre. He had seen enough of human behavior to know that drama was a handy form of persuasion. He had seen the National Socialists of Germany at work. He had watched the Spaniards and Italians. They all loved the movement of large casts of actors against decorative landscapes, whether that was the mountains of northern Spain or the deserts of Eritrea.

“Maybe he’s just going to talk inside the depot and then get back on the train?”

Doherty thought about it. “Can you maneuver your statue into the station?”

Weaver smiled. “It could be done, depending on the size of the doors.”

Doherty saw the glint in Weaver’s eyes and knew his friend was conjuring. The man was good at improvising. Good with his hands, too, whether it was fighting or sculpting statues from old artillery shells.   

People were arriving at the station. First thing they did when getting out of their cars was look at the two strange men and the big statue in the back of the truck. None came over, at least not at first. Two young couples got out of a sporty yellow coupe and walked over to the truck.

“What’s this?” asked a pretty girl whose brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She stared at Weaver. “Are you the artist?”

Weaver nodded.

“Who is the statue of?” the girl asked,

“Haile Selassie, Lion of Judah,” Weaver said.

“Must have taken a long time to make,” said the girl.

“I know who Haile Selassie is,” said the boy next to ponytail. “Ethiopia, right?”

“Right,” said Weaver.

“Did he say that?” said the other girl, a long-haired blonde. “On the banner?”

“Yes,” said Doherty. “He said it in a speech to the League of Nations.”

“Oh,” said the girl. “They’re a bunch of communists aren’t they? That’s what my dad says.”

“The U.S. is in the League of Nations,” said Doherty.

“Commies,” said the boy with the blonde. “C’mon, guys, we got to see the speech for Mr. Lain’s class.”

The ponytail girl took one more look at Weaver before being pulled away by her boyfriend. Doherty and Weaver watched them go.

“She liked the cut of your jib,” said Doherty.

Weaver shook his head. “Kids,” he said. “Those are the boys America will send off to fight. Think there’s any hope?”

“Those two guys don’t look very promising,” Doherty said. “But ponytail? I could see her with a carbine. She’s feisty like those Spanish Republican women. Some were damn good shots.”

Weaver looked at Doherty. “You still writing that Spanish woman, what’s her name?”

“Anna – she’s Basque.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out sheets of folded paper. “Took this letter a month to find me. She’s safe in France now.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Fine. It surprises me. She was a tiger.”

“In bed?”

Doherty chuckled. “You kill me, Weaver. Yes, in bed and on the field. Her husband and brother were both killed in Guernica. She took no prisoners.”

“Except you?”

He slapped Weaver on the back. “I went willingly, chum. Like a lamb to the slaughter.”

To be continued...

Tune in to this same channel on Jan. 25 for Learning to Breathe, Part III.