James M. Redwine

Events

I Wannabe A Girl Singer In A Rock Band

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I am so excited! Our new granddaughter-in-law is already what I have always wanted to be: a girl singer in a touring rock band. Well, maybe not the girl thing, but ever since I spent my Sunday School offering of a dollar to buy my first record, a 45 rpm single of Sonny James’ “Young Love”, I have secretly dreamed of headlining a rock and roll show. I could have done it too if I hadn’t been unfairly held back by the inability to know a musical key from a wash tub.

But before we get to the wedding of our grandson, Alec, and his bride, Arielle, I have a few questions you, Gentle Reader, who may also be a closet rock star, can answer. First, whatever happened to the Roll in Rock and Roll? Remember Bill Haley and the Comets or Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard, etc.? We used to have rock and roll stars. Now all we have are rock stars. Have we lost the art of rolling? What is rolling anyway? For that matter, what is rocking? I think I used to know the answers to these fundamental youthful behaviors. Now about all I can dimly recall is loud music, conversations about hair and the vague impression of a concert venue filled with strange smelling smoke.

Well, if you have any thoughts on these issues, as the Tappet Brothers used to say, put them on the back of a $20.00 bill and send them to me. For now, let’s get back to our grandchildren’s wedding which was living proof of how men have allowed their once dominant position in such matters to be cast into the dustbin of ancient history.

For example, I am fairly confident our grandson, who is also a fine heavy metal musician, would have been completely okay with a ceremony that involved a large club and a couple of animal skins. The whole thing would have taken ten minutes and cost only some sweat and maybe a broken bone or two. Au contraire mon ami. When Alec asked for Arielle’s lovely hand in marriage it came with a female retinue of mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts and a multitude of feminine wedding enthusiasts. JPeg Ranch, the wedding venue, was transformed from a bucolic backwater to a bastion of bustling estrogen-driven frenzy.

The quiet emptiness of The Ranch was filled with potted plants, satin drapery and netting, twinkling lights of several varieties, enough chairs and tables to accommodate the Light Brigade, fountains, food, cakes, libations mit tender, coolers, a bonfire, a DJ, two large white tents that would have made Lawrence of Arabia proud and even a bishop’s stand for me to stand in as I performed the official duties. This campaign resembled the D-Day Landing. If General Eisenhower had had these women, he could have forgone Omar Bradley. And have I mentioned the pink and blue porta potties?

Well, it was a glorious and happy event and even as a grumpy old Grandpa I loved it, especially when Arielle channeled her inner Janis Joplin and sang Me and Bobby McGee. Maybe there’s hope for me yet. After all, any reasonably competent journeyman can be a judge, but to have grandchildren who are rock (and roll) stars, now that is a real accomplishment!

Enough Suggestions, Already

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Those few of you who actually read this column on a regular basis will recall my completely justified response to Peg’s destruction of my weekend by sentencing me to help her haul, open and spread 120 fifty-pound bags of brown mulch at JPeg Ranch. You might say, “Well, Peg worked too”. But you see, Peg lives for such opportunities so to her it is not work. On the other hand, as for me, a ball game viewed from the couch is a more appropriate way to spend a Saturday.

I was quite astonished and even a little hurt when several readers of last week’s article weighed in with suggestions on what I should do with the mulch. It surprised me that everyone who responded so uncharitably sided with Peg. After all, she was the one responsible for the mulch being there in the first place. I will relate a few of the unkind, and even inappropriate, suggestions.

Neighbors, who need not be named as we only have two, came over during the mulching marathon last weekend and instead of offering sweat offered advice. “Why don’t you just put all the bags out while Peg is planting the garden and the new flowers?” I did not respond what I was thinking but chose to just pretend I heard nothing.

Then at Sara’s Harmony Way Coffee Shop on Sunday morning Barb Mc Connell who had been the initial instigator of the mulch acquisition from the New Harmony Garden Club asked Peg about the progress of the mulching program which gave Peg an opportunity in front of the entire round table crowd to point out my poor attitude.

Then I received an email from the Posey County Jail referencing the previous article and making a rather rude suggestion of what I could do with the mulch. How do those people access the Internet anyway?

But, as is often the case with my big sister who read the article from the safety of her home in Missouri, Janie took Peg’s side again. Janie, who was always allowed by our parents to lord it over her three brothers, first mentioned that Peg was just trying to beautify JPeg Ranch for our grandson’s upcoming wedding. Then she sarcastically suggested if I was too lazy to properly spread the mulch before the wedding I could just cover the piles with white satin.

Mucho Mulch

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Ah, spring! The hummingbirds have returned to JPeg Ranch and the falling locust tree blossoms can make me forget for a while how the thorns attack me each time I must deal with a fallen branch. The air is filled with perfume and a symphony of avian love songs.

Of course, it is not called spring for nothing and the Equinox strikes deeply into Peg’s cortex causing her to spring into a frenzy of projects around the Ranch. Unfortunately for me Peg’s projects become my sentence.

Then there is Peg’s deeply held belief we should contribute to virtually every cause that advances the beauty of Posey County, especially New Harmony. The confluence of her obsessions of yard improvement and public service converged when our friend Barb McConnell, who is a hardworking member of the New Harmony Garden Club, mentioned to Peg that the club was selling bags of mulch as a fundraiser.

Now, New Harmony is our home and we care about it. My affection for our small village is best expressed by patronizing Sara and David Brown’s Coffee and Wine Shop, David and Vicki Campbell and Sara and David Brown’s microbrewery, Kenny and Nancy Weinzapfel’s Yellow Tavern and the Owen family’s Red Geranium Restaurant. My position is I spend money on a good meal and/or a good glass of red wine, then I have well met my duty to improve our community. With Peg that’s not quite enough. Therefore, Peg bought 120 (you did not misread that figure) of brown mulch from Barb and the Garden Club.

When Peg gave me the good news my first thought was, “Okay, you bought the mulch, you must want to lift, move, open and spread every last 50 pound bag of it.” Gee, how could I have ever had such a fleeting dream? Oh, no, Peg demanded that I have the pleasure of spending an entire weekend frolicking in the yard with enough mulch to recreate the Old Plank Road between New Harmony and Mt. Vernon.

We put mulch on every possible tree, shrub, flower bed and mole hole within sight. The left over was used to get ready for our grandson’s wedding to be held at the Ranch this month. I bit my tongue when the thought arose, “Does the happy couple really want to stand on a 3 foot high pile of mulch to take their vows?”

Those Folks Were Tough

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My Mom’s three brothers and one of her three sisters served in the Army during World War II (1941-1945). Aunt Betty was a nurse, Uncle Bud, who was a rodeo cowboy, was in the cavalry, Uncle Buck flew close air troop support over Europe and Uncle Bill killed and saw killed way too many men from Anzio to Germany. Mom sent any extra we had, and some not so extra, to support her siblings and their comrades.

My Mom’s Mom’s Mom’s father, my great-great grandfather immigrated with his parents from Bern, Switzerland in 1852 when he was fourteen. His father served as a career soldier in Switzerland for 21 years. They settled in LaGrange, Indiana.

My great-great grandfather, John Giggy, enlisted in Company H, Forty-Fourth Indiana Volunteer Infantry on August 28, 1861. His first major battle was Fort Donalson then he was wounded at Shiloh and sent to the military hospital in Evansville to recover.

After a short furlough he rejoined his regiment in Murfreesboro then at Chickamauga was wounded in the hip on September 19, 1863, after which he walked back to Bridgeport, Alabama using a bed slat for a crutch and having nothing to eat for 3 days but 3 crackers. He was then ordered to the hospital in Nashville before being furloughed again until he rejoined his regiment at Chattanooga on December 31, 1863 (Happy New Year?)

He continued fighting and marching, marching and fighting until mustered out at Indianapolis in October 1865. He became a farmer and a stone mason and fathered 9 children including my great grandmother, Agnes (Giggy) Vulgamore.

Thereafter he simply went about his life without thinking his country owed him anything more than a fair opportunity to raise his family and be left alone.

I never had the chance to meet him but I am confident his toughness helped buy me and my siblings a better life. Thanks to Grandpa, Aunt Betty, my uncles and all the other tough and non-assuming veterans who did their duty so the rest of us could do things they could not have dreamed of.

The Birthday “Girl”

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My sister is not an antique. She is sometimes cranky, opinionated and usually stuck in the last century. However, she is not an antique.

Those few of you who actually read this column either know Janie or have heard of or from her. She is known for railing against many things, as old people often do, but usually saves her most acerbic wit for her three brothers. As Daddy’s favorite and Mother’s pet Janie could never accept her status as a possible antique.

No, Janie is more like a superannuated coquette with political views that do not gladly suffer fools and opinions which are of the adamantine variety. But an antique, not so fast.

Delores Jane (Redwine) Bartlett cannot be an antique because she still travels to Europe and preaches frequent sermons as a lay minister in several churches. Please be warned if you should be in one of her congregations: she was a college psychology professor and is still in recovery.

My sister may be intelligent, generous and of a happy heart, although she, as other older people, has endured some of life’s bitter slings and arrows. However, she is not an antique, as of yet, because, Gentle Reader, by definition an antique must be at least 100 years old and on July 23rd she will be only 80.

Well, those of you fortunate enough to know Janie and those of us blessed to have her in our family, know what a unique treasure she is. I, of course, as her much younger brother am just glad she’s a lot nearer to being an antique than I am!

Are We Still Separate?

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Although I wrote the first few Gavel Gamuts in 1990 the every-weekly column began in April 2005, about 700 articles ago. In light of our current political and cultural dissonance I thought it might be interesting to revisit the following thoughts from over a decade ago to assess what changes may have occurred. This Birthday Greeting to America was first published July 04, 2005. I hope those of you who read it then and those who are considering it for the first time will find it worthwhile in our on-going conversation of Separate versus Equal. Also, Peg and I are returning to Osage County, Oklahoma for this Fourth of July. Maybe we’ll find the bus station is now just a memory.

Happy Birthday to U.S.!

Let’s Have a Party and Invite Everyone!

The United States Supreme Court has occasionally succumbed to popular opinion then later attempted to atone for it. The Dred Scott (1857) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1892) cases come to mind as examples of institutionalized injustice with the partial remedy of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) being administered many years later.

In Dred Scott, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that American Negroes had no rights which the law was bound to protect as they were non-persons under the U.S. Constitution.

And in Plessy, the Court held that Mr. Plessy could not legally ride in a “whites only” railroad car. The Court declared that laws that merely create distinctions but not unequal treatment based on race were constitutional. SEPARATE BUT EQUAL was born.

Our original U.S. Constitution of 1787 disenfranchised women, and recognized only three-fifths of every Black and Native American person, and even that was only for census purposes. Our Indiana Constitution of 1852 discouraged Negro migration to our state in spite of Posey County Constitutional Convention Delegate, Robert Dale Owen’s, eloquent pleas for fair treatment for all.

Were these documents penned by evil men? I think not. They were the result of that omnipotent god of politics, compromise, which is often good, but sometimes is not. Should you have read this column recently you may recall that I strongly encourage compromise in court, in appropriate cases.

However, as one who grew up in a state where the compromise of the post Civil War judges and politicians led to the legal segregation of schools, restaurants, and public transportation, I can attest that some compromises simply foist the sins of the deal makers onto future generations.

When I was 6 years old, my 7 year old brother, Philip, and I made our first bus trip to our father’s family in southern Oklahoma.

We lived on the Osage Indian Nation in northeastern Oklahoma. It sounds exotic but our hometown, Pawhuska, looked a lot like any town in Posey County.

In 1950 our parents did not have to worry about sending their children off with strangers except to admonish us not to bother anyone and to always mind our elders.

When mom and dad took us to the MKT&O (Missouri, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma) bus station it was hot that July day. Oklahoma in July is like southern Indiana in July, WITHOUT THE SHADE TREES!

My brother and I were thirsty so we raced to the two porcelain water fountains in the shot gun building that was about 40 feet from north to south and 10 feet from east to west.

Phil slid hard on the linoleum floor and beat me to the nearest fountain. And while I didn’t like losing the contest, since the other fountain was right next to the first one, I stepped to it.

“Jimmy, wait ‘til your brother is finished. James Marion! I said wait!” Dad, of course, said nothing. He didn’t need to; we knew that whatever mom said was the law.

“Mom, I’m thirsty. Why can’t I get a drink from this one?”

“Son, look at that sign. It says ‘colored’. Philip, quit just hanging on that fountain; let your brother up there.”

Of course, the next thing I wanted to do was use the restroom so I turned towards the four that were crammed into the space for one: “White Men”, “White Ladies”, “Colored Men”, and “Colored Women”.

After mom inspected us and slicked down my cowlick again, we got on the bus and I “took off a kiting” to the very back.

I beat Phil, but there was a man already sitting on the only bench seat. I really wanted to lie down on that seat but the man told me I had to go back up front. And as he was an adult, I followed his instructions.

Philip said, “You can’t sit back there. That’s for coloreds. That’s why that colored man said for you to go up front.”

That was the first time I noticed the man was different. That was, also, the point where the sadness in his eyes and restrained anger in his voice crept into my awareness.

As a friend of mine sometimes says, “No big difference, no big difference, big difference.”

And if all this seems as though it comes from a country far far away and long long ago, Posey County segregated its Black and White school children for almost 100 years after 600,000 men died in the Civil War. In fact, some of Mt. Vernon’s schools were not fully integrated until after Brown was decided in 1954.

And, whether we have learned from our history or are simply repeating it may depend upon whom we ask. Our Arab American, Muslim, Black, Native American, and Hispanic citizens, as well as several other “usual suspects”, may think the past is merely prologue.

Sometimes it helps for me to remember what this 4th of July thing is really about. It’s our country’s birthday party; maybe we should invite everyone.

There is nothing equal about separate.