James M. Redwine

Pawhuska

Dear Mr. Scorsese

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Osage Hills State Park Falls

As Martin Scorsese ramps up production for his movie of David Grann’s book, Killers of the Flower Moon, concerning the tragic murders of members of the Osage tribe in and around my home town of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, I thought Mr. Scorsese might appreciate a little movie making advice. Here is some information he may find helpful.

Ten years before Pawhuska’s favorite son, Ben (Son) Johnson, Jr., won an Academy Award for his role as pool hall/movie theatre owner Sam the Lion in The Last Picture Show I sold him a Stetson hat. Son, I called him Mr. Johnson, was home for a visit in Pawhuska, Oklahoma in 1960 and I was working Saturdays at Hub Clothiers Men’s Store on Kihekah Avenue. Son had just that year had a gun fight with Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks.  I am not suggesting I deserve any credit for Son’s later success but I am pretty sure the hat he wore in The Last Picture Show was the one I sold him; it looked about right for wear and tear.

In addition to that association with stardom I would like to point out that one summer during Vacation Bible School my Sunday School teacher at the First Christian Church, Violet Willis, had our class film a re-enactment of the Christmas story. It was in July and we threw up a manger of blankets and black jack posts on the banks of Sand Creek near the falls in Osage Hills State Park. I played a shepherd. Now I know there aren’t too many sheep in Osage County but I thought my portrayal was still pretty authentic. And it may be of note to Mr. Scorsese as he directs his new movie about Osage County that Violet both lived and worked at the Osage Agency and was herself Osage.

My memory is that Violet used an 8-millimeter hand-held Bell & Howell camera and that she cast my friend and classmate, Glenda Van Dyke, as Mary. Glenda was blond haired, blue eyed and ten years old but she pulled off the young Hebrew mother role quite well I thought. I wish Glenda was available for a casting by Mr. Scorsese now.

Another person who might merit consideration is my big sister, Janie. Much as Lana Turner was discovered at the soda fountain of the Top Hat Café on Sunset Boulevard in Burbank, California, Janie used to work at the soda fountain of Mom and Pop Curry’s snack shop next to the Kihekah (now the Constantine) Theatre in Pawhuska. Janie might be of more utility behind the camera as she is good at giving directions.

And although I do not wish to accentuate my own resumé, I think in fairness to Mr. Scorsese I should mention that I did have a role in my high school’s junior play. Further, I am generally available except when Peg has me doing some chore around JPeg Osage Ranch.

 

Football vs. Politics

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Democracy is messy but usually bloodless. Football is sweaty and sometimes painful. Football teams choose representative colors such as black and orange or cream and crimson. American politics are red versus blue. Football teams are led by coaches and financed by taxpayers or fat cats. Political parties are led by politicians and financed by drips and drabs via the internet or fat cats. Football teams have a few stars supported by several Sherpas. I was happy to be one of the Sherpas on the Pawhuska, Oklahoma high school Huskies football team a while ago and enjoyed every minute of it, except for wind sprints of course. I am still enjoying supporting the Huskies team which is undefeated and on their way to what I hope will be Pawhuska’s first state championship in football.

Political parties have a few stars supported by, usually, faceless minions. Football teams have one mission, to win, whoever the opponent is. Political parties believe their mission is to provide better government than competing political parties would provide. I will leave it up to you, Gentle Reader, if you believe any political party manages to achieve this goal.

Both football teams and political parties are governed by rules of procedure and conduct. With football teams a conference sets the standards and with political parties governments from the local level on up to the top have a hand in determining policy and ultimate victory. Football games are controlled by officials on the field who can enforce the rules. Their rulings are immediate and not subject to appeal but some can be reviewed. Albeit the final ruling, in effect, is made by the same people who made the initial one. Political races are governed by laws and can be subject to recount, review, repeal and reversal. Football fans sometimes must just grimace and bear a referee’s egregious error, such as giving one team an extra down as in the 1990 Colorado v. Missouri game. Of course, the problem with any attempted remedy in football is it would be impossible to completely and fairly recreate the original game circumstance. On the other hand there is the benefit that, other than endless conversations over beer, the calls at football games are final. But political races such as Bush v. Gore in 2000 may end up in the U.S. Supreme Court and may never be universally accepted as final.

As for me, I am currently marveling how my alma mater, Indiana University, can be undefeated in football after many years of wandering in the football wilderness. This column was written before Michigan v. I.U. upcoming on November 7, 2020, so I am hopeful it remains valid when you read this. And I am chagrined that Oklahoma State University where I started college could have lost to Texas last Saturday. I want a recount! I know I personally saw several blown calls that might have changed the score of the Cowboy game.

Regardless, what I have decided after suffering through the entire 2020 political season and cheering (or moaning) my way along the football season is that the temporary pains that I experienced playing football pale in the excruciation caused by the clanging brass of competing political parties and noxious news anchors. I am thankful for football and am past caring about the motes in the eyes of those who do not see eye to eye with me on politics.

 

The Good Guys

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Cowgirl Sister Shirley’s Covid-19 Mask

On Saturday mornings at the State Movie Theater in Pawhuska, Oklahoma in the 1950’s you could see a black and white double feature western where the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black masks. The lines were not blurred. Cowboys, good; rustlers, bad. Lawmen, good; bandana wearing holdup men, bad. No mask, good; mask, bad.

Today society has divided into two warring factions that are as defined as those satisfying old movie plots but which are themselves not very satisfying. One group champions masks as proof of one’s concern for others and the other group eschews masks as unnecessary and an infringement on individual liberty. However, most of the members of both groups still view cowboys as the good guys.

In my family we had my mother’s youngest brother, Uncle Bud, a rodeo cowboy who roped calves and steers. He was one of my heroes even though the mean billy goat he used to practice his roping often butted me across the roping arena.

Another of our family’s cowgirl heroines was and is my oldest brother’s wife, Shirley Smith Redwine. Sister Shirley competed in barrel racing, pole bending and flag racing for several years at the International Roundup Cavalcade in Osage County, Oklahoma. Shirley was a member of both the Turley, Oklahoma and Sand Springs, Oklahoma round up clubs and she competed as a queen candidate several times. Shirley’s mother, Esther, designed and sewed Shirley’s fancy outfits and Shirley’s father, Hollis, trained her horses. She competed from age twelve until her freshman year at Oklahoma State University where she met my brother, C.E. Redwine, who managed to win Shirley’s heart with his saxophone and ended her rodeo career.

But Shirley has always remained a cowgirl at heart. She knows right from wrong and has always fearlessly championed the right. Cowboys are supposed to stand up and be counted. Shirley did just that when Covid-19 struck our world. She put her sewing skills to work and made masks for our whole family. Now I do not know how many other cowboys and cowgirls have mounted up to confront ’Ole 19, but I believe true cowboys and cowgirls are not afraid to stand up against any evil. So, cowgirl Shirley, thanks for the masks. Peg and I follow your lead and wear them whenever we go out and about. We do notice there are some folks who do not wear masks. Maybe the rest of the good guys can help get the message out until ’Ole 19 goes the way of the Saturday morning horse operas.

 

A True Depression

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If a recession is when your neighbors lose their jobs but it is a depression when you lose yours, what is the analogy for our society’s losses due to ’Ole 19? Let me suggest that for Peg it was when she finally submitted herself to asking me to cut her hair. Yep, it’s complete capitulation; 19 can claim total victory. I should be able to show you photographic proof but it turns out that a wife’s hirsute humiliation is in the same category of bad husbanding as failing to separate the whites and colors for the laundry. No pictures of my artistry were allowed. In fact, Peg has found a new use for the flowered bandana she uses as a face mask; it now covers the top of her head too. And my attempts to assure her that within a few months her hair will grow back just seem to exacerbate the situation. Please allow me to digress.

Gentle Reader, you may have noticed it is hot in July and August near the latitude along the Mason-Dixon Line. Well Peg, who was born in upstate New York, had not quite acclimated to the previous weeks of 100-degree temperatures. Her Joan of Arc length hair tended to stick to her forehead and the back of her neck whenever she lugged water to her flowers and her vegetable garden. The martyr-type comparison will make sense by the time you finish the column. I was understanding and sympathetic, but my advice that Mother Nature would eventually provide rain was not received gladly. She stubbornly persisted and even suggested I could get involved if the TV re-runs of old golf matches didn’t interfere. Surely, we need not revisit that painful discussion.

The real problem is not me but ’Ole 19. Peg used to go to the beauty shop to get her hair cut. Or, when we still lived in Indiana, our daughter, Heather, who is a beautician would take care of it. However, now, as we do not wish to contribute to 19’s macabre statistics, we have socially isolated since our last foray out to eat which was March the 5th. We wear masks, we wash our hands, we ignore our friends and family, we shop online, we eat lots of tuna. But we both knew the Corona Virus had achieved complete domination when Peg said last week, “Jim, I just can’t stand this heat and having my hair string down my face and neck. Nobody but you is ever going to see me again anyway (I thought that a little overly dramatic) so you are going to have to cut it. Come watch these YouTube videos and try to pay attention.”

Well, it didn’t look that hard to me. I remember when I got my hair cut in Pawhuska, Oklahoma by Clyde Ensley or Bob Butts or in Mt. Vernon, Indiana by Steve Burris. Heck, it appeared about like cleaning a squirrel or a chicken. Just slice here, snip there, shear off the sides. No problem. After watching for ten minutes or so I was pretty sure I could give Vidal Sassoon a run. “Peg, get a towel and I’ll grab a pair of scissors and the electric clippers you used to use on our dearly departed dog and meet you on the front porch.”

It probably would have turned out better if Peg had not sat as if she were an unfortunate customer of an electric chair and if she hadn’t jumped and squirmed each time the clippers whirred and the scissors snipped. Regardless, in my unbiased opinion I did a fine job. If the bowl I used had fit better it would have helped. I can only guess at Peg’s opinion as she hardly has spoken to me for three days and when she does it is difficult to make out what she is saying amid the shrieks, sobs and expletives as she tries to pull her hair back to its former length.

Hair on the porch floor

A Thousand Words

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I was born in Pawhuska, Osage County, Oklahoma where I spent my first 19 years (1943-1962). Osage County is adjacent to Tulsa and Tulsa County. The Tulsa race riots of 1921 were never mentioned during my 12 years of public education and one year at Oklahoma State University.

I served as a judge in Mt. Vernon, Posey County, Indiana from 1981-2018. Until March 14, 1990 the lynchings of African Americans that took place on the courthouse campus on October 12, 1878 were unknown to me and never brought to my attention.

Upon being made aware of the Posey County murders I began to search for more complete information. A friend of mine, Glenn Curtis, who was born and raised in Posey County advised me he had seen a photograph of the 4 young Black men hanging from locust trees outside the courthouse door. He told me he remembered the elongated necks, swollen tongues and cue ball sized eyes of the hanging bodies. I have searched for a copy of that photograph since 1990.

October 12, 1878 Mt. Vernon, Indiana Courthouse Campus

My friend, Doug McFadden, who was also born and raised in rural Posey County told me that his grandfather told Doug that the day after the lynchings Doug’s grandfather watched as white citizens used the hanging young Black men for target practice. And while there was no photograph taken of the young Black man Daniel Harrison, Jr. who on October 10, 1878 was burned to death in the fire box of a locomotive in Mt. Vernon, another Posey County native friend of mine, Basil Stratton, told me that his grandfather, Walker Bennet, was an eyewitness. Walker told Basil that as a young boy he was present and saw several white men, including Walker’s father, force Harrison into the steam engine. Basil’s grandfather told Basil he never forgot the Black man’s screams and the smell of his burning flesh.

I have long thought that a photograph of the lynchings might be the evidence needed to finally get a memorial to the victims erected on the Posey County Courthouse campus. And yesterday my friends, Liz and Jeff Miller of Posey County, emailed me a copy of just such a photograph. Jeff and Liz received the copy from our mutual friend and historian, Ray Kessler of Mt. Vernon. Ray told me when we spoke by phone last night that he got the photograph from Karen McBride Christensen of Indianapolis who retrieved the picture from Georgia’s Emory University archives. I do not, as yet, know how it came to be there. Because of its graphic nature I have not attached it to this newspaper article. However, it did call me to reprise an article on race relations I first published July 4, 2005. Gentle Reader, as recent events may lead one to conclude the issues discussed in that article remain raw in our national psyche today, I offer it once more for your consideration.

 

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO U.S.!

LET’S HAVE A PARTY AND INVITE EVERYONE!

(Week of July 4, 2005)

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.

Choices And Consequences

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Should you have read last week’s column you may remember the specific topic was the Electoral College and the general topic was our Constitution’s guarantee of our right to matter or free choice. Free choice, that is what separates humans from animals and America from many other countries. Our Founders designed a government where the ideal was: All matter, but none too much. Of course, as with most ideals, America’s vaunted guarantees of freedom of choice and equality for everyone remain as goals not yet attained. On the other hand, it is no small thing that America not only proclaimed these ideals but set them forth in writing at our founding. And we have struggled mightily since our Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787 to live up to our ideals which were declared on July 04, 1776 to be: “That all men are endowed with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Although the term “all” was advisory only.

To me these ideals come under the general category of a right to make our own choices but with an understanding our choices have consequences. These Civics lessons were burned into my psyche in a most graphic manner one day in Junior High School by one of my teachers who was straight forward, stern and strict; I liked and respected him. As he was also my Junior High football coach I always called him Coach even in the classroom probably because football was a lot more important to me than Civics. Coach’s successful coaching techniques relied heavily on those previously mentioned traits coupled with a no-nonsense attitude that victory came only through sweat. In the Pawhuska, Oklahoma school system of the 1950’s such was the general credo of the entire staff. And remembering my student days I confess such a system was necessary to force an education into me as my personal credo tended more toward the laissez-faire when it came to school work. Alas, the same was also true for some of my classmates including my friends Abby and Jack whom you will meet soon.

An example of how Coach’s attitude helped instill American history in me occurred during our Civics class section on the Civil War. Coach was one of those teachers who did not allow Political Correctness to cloud the facts. When it came to the reasons why the South seceded he taught that the immorality of slavery was a choice supported within our Constitution and the Civil War was about that choice. States Rights to determine whether to allow slavery, not slavery itself, was the gravamen of “The Cause” at the beginning of the war for the South and preservation of the Union, not the elimination of slavery, was the cause for the North. It was these competing choices and their consequences that brought about the Civil War that eventually both ended slavery and preserved the Union.

I probably would have remembered no more of these Junior High Civics lessons about States Rights and slavery than the other lessons I daydreamed through in school had Coach not given that particular lecture right after grabbing my attention with a long, thin paddle. That otherwise hazy school day began with Coach being called away from class for a brief meeting. When he left his discipline left with him and some of us fell immediately back into our natural educational state of benign ignorance.

My friend Abby who sat in the front row got up to talk to a girl two aisles over. When she did my friend Jack saw fit to sneak behind her and remove a thumbtack from the bulletin board then place it, business end up, on the seat of Abby’s desk. Somehow Abby sensed Coach was returning so she turned and hurried back to her seat. Abby sat down on the tack just as Coach entered the classroom and observed and heard Abby react appropriately.

The Coach affixed his terrifying stare on each of us individually and when he got to Jack, Jack folded like a pair of dirty socks. Coach called Jack up to the front of the class and ordered him to bend over and grab his ankles. From an assortment of paddles he kept hanging from the chalk rail Coach chose a thin paddle about two feet long and pushed a thumbtack through it. After the Coach vigorously applied paddle to posterior while Jack manly gritted his teeth in silence, we had our Civics lesson on choices and consequences concerning the Constitution, slavery, States Rights, the Union and the Civil War. I remember them well. And if any of my classmates from that day read this article I bet they do too.