Archive » September 2020 » Columns

We all wish, hope, pray for this “pandemic” to be over. The disruption is getting to be a real pain. Pretty soon it will become commonplace; however, the OMOTM are still around and waiting.

It is getting close to hunting season. This is one thing that people can do and social distancing is almost automatic. Most of the time, the hunter is out there alone with his gun. Some of the OMOTM are hunters. The scribe knows this from all the stories told by the OFs and their conquests bantered around the table many times from previous years.

Out hunting with these guys must be an experience. Handling a cane and a gun at the same time is not the easiest thing to do. So one OF may be out with another OF in the woods, one has one eye, and the other has arthritis and both are carrying loaded shotguns. Now this is a combination anyone else in the woods would not want to run into because both of the OFs have hearing aids and a tendency to fire at whatever rustles.

The other eventuality that could happen and often does happen, according to the OMOTM: They do manage to bag what they are hunting for. Now comes the problem of getting the prey out of the woods. This is a real huff-and-puff situation, with many stops to let the heart get back into rhythm or catch their breath. At least with all this work it gives the OFs something to talk about at the next Tuesday’s breakfast. At times, there have been some nice show-and-tells of exploits completed with a trophy.

Fishing

Fishing is better; this is another activity many of the OFs partake in and now it can be done with no worries about social distancing because in most cases again it is automatic. This is unless the OF decides to go to Pulaski and the Salmon River when the salmon are running. There, this river becomes shoulder-to-shoulder with anglers at this sport so distancing is out of the question, because any vacant spot is soon filled in with another fisherperson with their poles ready to go.

But going to a creek, or taking your boat out on the lake or pond with maybe another OF having a grand time, singing the great Johnny Russell song “There is no place I’d rather be than right here, with my rednecks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.”

OK, now substitute “old friend” for redneck, add a beat up ole rowboat with a little 10-horsepower mercury on the stern, a full can of worms, a packed cooler, and go out on the Vlaie Pond (note: a tributary of Catskill Creek in Schoharie County. Vlaie or vly is a term brought to us from the Dutch and its meaning is swamp).

Fishing any of the local lakes or ponds for whatever would bite would be a great way to spend the day while practicing social distancing.

Hiking

Some of the OFs hike, and many would like to go for a long walk in the woods, but the OFs’ hearts, legs, lungs, or feet won’t let them do it.

One OF explained, before all this started, that he was really discouraged because he was a hiker, and even maintained some of the local trails but his body won’t let him do it anymore. Now his eyes won’t even let him work in the shop.

Writing 

This OF has led quite a life, and he should begin to write it down, if not for everyone else, at least for his kids. It might be a good suggestion for many OFs especially while all the faculties are still there, and the kids are still around to help out.

The problem is where and how to start. 

How about: “The first thing I can remember without help is” and go from there, backward and forward. 

Well, I just changed my password to “incorrect” so that, whenever I forget what it is, the computer will say, “Your password is incorrect.”

Some of the Old Men of the Mountain are taking chances and are going out to a few restaurants; however, this scribe is not one of them nor are many others. As ancient as we may be, many of the OMOTM are learning to be “virtual.” This is really no fun because there is nothing like person to person, eyeball to eyeball, heinie to heinie, or any other of those people-connecting terms.

One thing about virtual ability is, if the conversation becomes a little testy and one of the ones in the virtual group says something the others don’t agree with, the OF that uttered the offensive or wrong words can’t be slugged, whereas in a real group situation the OF might have to defend himself.

This has never happened in the OMOTM for two reasons. The OFs are too old to get their arms up to slug somebody, plus most of them can’t hear anyway and sometimes disparaging remarks go right over their heads or they just hear them wrong.

We all say age is just a number and that may be so, but our bodies react differently. In many discussions, the OFs say they can’t do this or that anymore and they still try, but a few things get in the way. Arthritis is one of these things, and depth perception is another (few people realize how important this depth perception is). One can hurt like crazy (the arthritis), and the other is painless and creeps in without the OFs knowing it.

When everyday life is too much like work

Another item is, for some reason, the OFs become tired easier and earlier. Of course the other ailments let the OFs know they are around, and sometimes the OFs fail to acknowledge their existence, but the body doesn’t.

In conversations with the OGs, the indication that some of the above is taking hold, and in some cases not slowing the OFs down, but it is just the words used. For instance, one OF complained about how long it takes him to get showered and dressed.

According to this OF, he thought it was just part of the daily routine. The OF would do both, go down have breakfast and go about his business. Recently he noticed that the shower took more time and, when he got out, it was like he had just finished some work.

Then, the OF continued, he rested a bit before he got dressed, and it was just until recently he was able to do that without much complaining. Then, suddenly, getting dressed was a form of work, and he just recently realized that also.

To add to this (and again it was a recent add to the morning routine), he sat down to put on his socks. His question was: When did all this happen? He feels just the same, and he does pretty much the same thing but now this bit of everyday life is getting to be too much like work.

Some of the OFs agreed with this guy and a few of those admitted having the same thing begin to happen to them. An OF said he was checking the clock just the other day because he thought he was having breakfast later, and the OF found that he was a whole half-hour later.  

One OF added to the conversation: “Just wait until one day you begin to notice the ache in your hands doesn’t go away. What you thought was because you bumped your hand is not what is hurting,” the OF said. “It is the beginning of arthritis. Welcome to getting old.”

This was the term the other OFs did not want to accept. They insisted they would continue to do what they were doing. The OFs agreed this was the thing to do, and so most of them try to keep on keeping on.

The thick of things 

As this scribe keeps reporting on the OFs activities, the OGs for the most part, are still in the thick of things. A few have had to slow down because the ailments and doctor appointments get in the way. One OF said, if you looked at his calendar, it looks like the OF is a pretty busy guy, but most of the dates are doctors’ appointments, or physical-therapy appointments, mixed in with a few birthdays and social events, and church work. 

Today, this scribe wonders what the calendar would look like minus the social events and church work. This scribe knows it is becoming rather boring hunkering down and not seeing all the OMOTM, the table laughter, and the discussions. The scribe keeps mentioning the hobbies of the OMOTM, but as with this scribe, the human connection is very important; soon the hobbies become more like work and not as much fun.

Flying high

We have one OF who really knows about social distancing and he is keeping the other OFs that are joined on Facebook with him interested in what will be his next local aerial presentation. As long as the weather is good, this OF takes his plane, flies over the area, and on Facebook posts his latest shot.

If the OFs who get his pictures and then save them to photos and then enlarge them, it’s fun to see what the OF is able to pick out. Like we mentioned above, some hobbies do keep us occupied.

OFs’ texting decoded

And another thing. We hear that some senior citizens have taken to texting with gusto. Texting keeps them in touch with their friends and even their grandchildren. These OFs have their own vocabulary:

— BFF: Best Friend Fainted;

— BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth;

— CBM: Covered by Medicare;

— FWB: Friend with Beta-blockers;

— LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out; and

— GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low!

To cross the Hudson River and head east on routes 43 or 2 or 7 onto the Rensselaer Plateau is to enter a landscape vastly different both geologically and topographically from that west of the river.

The Mohawk-Hudson lowlands stretching from Albany north to the shores of Lake George are composed of sand deposited on the shore of glacial Lake Albany, which formed over 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age and feature low, rolling hills and scattered lakes formed from glacial meltwater. 

To the west and south of Albany rises the northernmost section of the Appalachian Plateau — called “the Helderberg Plateau” or simply “the Helderbergs” locally — consisting of mostly flat layers of sedimentary rock: sandstone, shale, and limestone deposited in the late Silurian and Devonian Periods of geologic history. Famous throughout the world to geologists, the layers — or “strata” — contain a vast collection of fossils of ancient species and have been called “the key to the geology of North America.” 

The strata that once lay under the sea were elevated by plate tectonic movements during the “Appalachian Orogeny” some 290 million years ago when the land masses that would eventually be known as Europe and North America crashed together in the formation of the super-continent we call Pangaea. East of the river, Ordovician-age rocks took the full force of the collision, and were compressed, folded, and elevated much as the hoods of two colliding cars would be; to the west the Appalachian Plateau was elevated but little deformed — much, say, as the rear parts of the crashing cars might be pushed up above the chassis. 

There was a time far earlier — some 475 million years ago — when the east coast of what would eventually become North America was located somewhere near what is today the Hudson Valley.  It collided with another land mass consisting of volcanic islands in the great event called the Taconian Orogeny, pushing up mountains that may once have been as high as the Himalaya. Imagine today looking east from Troy and Albany and seeing a range of jagged, snow-capped peaks over 20,000 feet high!

Deep within these mountains, pressures were unimaginable and the rocks there were twisted and distorted and the resultant heat cooked the rocks in the process known as “metamorphism,” forming new minerals and rock types: slate, phyllite, gneiss, and schist, often laced with thick veins of milky quartz. Excellent displays are visible in Petersburg Pass on Route 2 not far from Williamstown.

But the inexorable forces of weathering and erosion — rain, wind, and sculpting glaciers — tore away at the peaks over millions of years. Their remnants in our part of the world — a series of much lower, often steep-sided knobs and ridges — are often called “the Berkshire Hills,” though Berlin Mountain above Petersburg Pass is a very respectable 2,818 feet in elevation, the highest point in Rensselaer County. 

Examine the bedrock that is exposed in the pass — or bordering the ski trails on the summit of its neighbor to the south, Jiminy Peak — and you will find twisted and distorted cliffs and ravine walls of heavily fractured phyllite, a metamorphosed form of shale.

Both Jiminy Peak and Berlin Mountain are features of the Taconic Crest Trail, a 37-mile-long hiking path stretching from south to north, weaving in and out of New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Extending 60 miles or more on clear days, views from it are often stunning, especially in the fall when the hardwood trees that cover the surrounding slopes put on their spectacular colors.

The hike

From a parking lot on the high point of Route 2 at Petersburg Pass near where the borders of New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont come together, one segment of the Taconic Crest Trail leads south to Berlin Mountain. Another moderately challenging portion of the trail begins on the north side of the highway, leading to the curious feature known as “The Snow Hole”; it can be done as part of a much longer day hike starting farther south or as a 5-mile round trip from the parking lot.

Its ups and downs are for the most part not particularly steep — but as a friend of mine remarked, “It’s just that there are an awful lot of them!” In other words, good hiking shoes and perhaps a walking stick along with water and trail snacks are necessities and, given the often changeable weather, a rain slick is a good idea in warmer months. In winter, the trail is a superb and challenging snowshoe hike, but winds on the Taconic Crest Trail can be fierce and mandate a warm parka.

A steep but short pitch at the start of the trail soon begins to level out and offers an impressive view of the summit of Berlin Mountain and of the eastern and western slopes of Petersburg Pass. Though today the slopes are thickly overgrown with hardwoods, sporadically from 1962 until around 1980 there were trails here for downhill skiing at what was called Petersburg Pass Ski Center. 

On clear days, the ski trails of Jiminy Peak and Bousquet may be visible, as well as the rhythmically rising and falling Berkshires to the east and the Helderberg Plateau to the west. A glance at a topographic map of the area shows that the trail runs first along the side of and then on top of a narrow, steep-sided ridge geologists call an arete.

Aretes form in areas previously glaciated when glaciers descend from opposite sides of a mountain, creating the feature that is also sometimes called a “knife edge.” The knife edge on Maine’s Mount Katahdin is undoubtedly the best-known in the east and has long been a heart-pounding challenge for climbers.

But the arete en route to The Snow Hole is far more user-friendly; it is broader and that fact and the thick forests of maple, oak, and paper-birch that cover the slopes bordering this trail prevent any dangerous exposure. There are occasional herd paths that wander from the trail, but the main route is wide and well-marked.

A hard-to-find side path departs from the trail at one point, leading upwards to a feature called “Jim Smith Hill.” This is supposedly named for the “James Smith Club” the main requirement for joining this national social organization is to be named “James Smith” (variant spellings of the names are allowed). Why this bump on the ridge was so named is as obscure as the feature itself.

The trail subsequently passes through a constantly changing variety of meadows and forests with occasional long views to the southern stretch of the Berkshires and west to Albany before reaching a loop trail marked by a sign directing hikers to “The Snow Hole.” After a few hundred feet, the trail begins to descend the north side of the ridge leading to a feature that looks for all the world like one of the sinkholes in the limestone karst areas of Albany or Schoharie counties.

The Snow Hole

The Snow Hole is a vertical fissure in the bedrock lined with mosses and other moisture-loving plants.  One end offers a fairly easy descent to the bottom while the other end is a precipitous 60-foot drop. But the fissure is narrow enough and deep enough that its bottom never gets direct sunlight — and that leads to the conditions from which it gets its name.

Well into summer and occasionally into early fall, the bottom of The Snow Hole has a thick deposit of ice formed from pressure exerted by the deep snows that accumulate on the higher summits of the Berkshires during their long winters.

Sinkholes form commonly in carbonate bedrock such as limestone and marble when mildly acidic water from rainfall or runoff percolates through fissures and dissolves the rock, often feeding cave systems below. But The Snow Hole is what is known as a tectonic feature, formed by physical forces.

The steep slope of the ridge contains extensive cracks in its bedrock known as joints that run parallel to the ridge line. Over millennia, water and ice have eroded this fissure and, because it is located on the very steep north slope of the ridge, it has widened and deepened under the pull of gravity. Several much narrower fissures are found between The Snow Hole and the main ridge trail.

Another result of these same processes can be found in Thacher Park at the narrow cleft in the rock known for a century as “Fat Man’s Misery,” which offers access to the trail leading to Hailes Cave though it does not collect lingering snow. A massive section of the limestone has separated from the cliff and gravity has pulled it away sufficiently to allow slender hikers to traverse it. Someday it will tumble from the cliff and crash onto the talus slope below as have many such masses before it.

And this is the fate that ultimately awaits The Snow Hole of Petersburg Pass. Over time, the accumulating snows within it will continue to be compressed into ice, which will further deepen and enlarge the fissure; as the steep hillside is carved away by the agents of erosion the outer wall will collapse and become part of the talus slope that falls away into Vermont.

But there is another fissure between The Snow Hole and the top of the ridge that will also continue to deepen and widen — and some millennia from now it may become the next Snow Hole as the forces of weathering and erosion continue their relentless assault on the ancient bedrock of the Berkshires.

Imagine a family of four seated at their dinner table, sharing one or two frankfurters sliced into a bowl of macaroni covered with a tomato soup sauce accompanied by a side dish of a can of green beans or corn. Sound far-fetched?

During the 1930s, such a meal would not have been unusual for a family headed by an unemployed breadwinner or one whose wages and hours had been cut. While not every family in Guilderland was so impoverished, there were others who were suffering.

The following notice appeared in the Village Notes column in the Nov. 4, 1932 Enterprise: “While the thoughts of many of our residents are on unemployment relief, it might be well to remind ourselves that there are many others in need of help at this time of the year. The Enterprise knows of one case, not far from Altamont, where a middle-aged woman, who is caring for her little nephew, is almost destitute.

“She has been unable to obtain work of any kind. If this notice strikes a responsive chord in the hearts of those who read it, the Enterprise will be glad to furnish the name of the person needing help — or the Enterprise will receive and dispense gifts received from our readers. The need for help is urgent.”

By 1932, the unemployment rate in the United States had risen to 23.6 percent and a year later hit an all-time high of 24.9 percent.

Examples of local charity for the truly destitute made its way into the pages of The Enterprise at times, often involving young people. A Dec. 1, 1933 headline read, “Local High School Pupils Bring Thanksgiving Cheer.” The story described the efforts of Altamont High School students who raised $30, allowing them to fill 11 baskets with chickens, vegetables, and fruit to be distributed to needy families.

The committee for the 1932 Sunday School and congregational Christmas party at St John’s Lutheran Church requested that attendees bring a donation to be given to the needy. Earlier, the church’s primary Bible Classes had run a food sale with proceeds dedicated to purchasing Christmas gifts and food for the needy.

The public was urged to “buy and help encourage the young folks in well doing.” A tremendous amount of charity was done quietly over those Depression years, much of the time individuals helping to assist friends or family members who were in dire financial straits.

Even for those steadily employed, average wages were low. Workers such as farm hands, waiters, and dressmakers earned under $1,000 each year at a time when the average annual wage was estimated to be $1,368. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents.

Even though the 1933 dollar had the buying power of $19.61 in 2020 dollars, enabling the fortunate few who had high wages or salaries to live well, the average American found it challenging to meet everyday expenses, especially putting food on the table.

Home grown

Family farms, still very common in 1930s Guilderland, could easily supply their owners much of their own food. Even townspeople in local hamlets and the village of Altamont often had large backyard gardens and fruit trees.

For anyone without a garden, some local farmers, themselves trying to earn some income, opened farm stands. William Hartmann set up opposite the McKownville Methodist Church; his stand was open six days a week — even evenings. In Altamont, Charles H. Britton, a Parkers Corners’ farmer, offered his “full line of fresh vegetables each day” and at “very reasonable prices.”

Other farmers such as Oakley V. Crounse sold fruit, dairy products, chickens, and eggs from their own farms. Kolenska Dairy Farm in Guilderland offered both raw and pasteurized milk and would deliver.

Come winter, fresh fruits and vegetables were a rarity, forcing everyone to turn to canned foods, either grocery-store brands or for the lucky ones, home-canned fruits and vegetables. By mid- to late summer home-canning supplies were a common feature in supermarket ads running in The Enterprise.

The Super Market offered Ball quart jars at 62 cents per dozen and pints at 52 cents per dozen, while at Central Markets prices were 4 cents for one dozen jar rubbers, 21 cents for one dozen Mason jar tops, 9 cents for a large package of parowax, 23 cents for Certo and 62 cents for one dozen quart Mason jars.

If canning pickles were on the agenda, pure cider vinegar was 17 cents (plus jug deposit) and cans of spices were 10 cents each. In 1938, The Enterprise writer from Guilderland Center noted in her column, “Vlasta Drahos is again champion canner of this vicinity. She was awarded first prize in the 4-H department of the Altamont Fair for canned fruit, for tomatoes and tomato juice and second prize for vegetables.”

“These days of thrift”

Deciding what to feed the family was made easier for housewives who could turn on their radios for food programs that offered recipes and suggestions. On WGY, there was Food Talk with Col. Goodbody, WGY Household Chats, the Radio Household Institute or the A & P program. For years, the United States Bureau of Home Economics sponsored a radio show where “Aunt Sammy” discussed housekeeping and feeding the family.

By the early 1930s, the U.S. Printing Office had produced several hundred thousand copies of Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes, available free to help housewives through what the government called, “these perilous times,” “these days of thrift,” “this frugal period.”

Appearing periodically in The Enterprise were menu suggestions from Ann Page, “spokeswoman” for the A & P supermarket chain. Tactfully appealing to all levels of income, here is a sample of “her” suggestions: For a low-cost dinner, serve braised lamb shanks, potatoes, mashed yellow turnip, bread and butter, vanilla pudding with preserves, tea or coffee, and milk while for a medium cost dinner the housewife could serve chicken fricassee, boiled rice, carrots and peas, bread and butter, chocolate cream pie, tea or coffee or milk. A very special dinner suggestion was cranberry and orange-juice cocktail, chicken pie, browned sweet potatoes, creamed onions, green salad, French dressing, hot rolls and butter, jelly roll, tea or coffee or milk.

Even the most self-sufficient housewife or farm wife was forced at least some of the time to shop at a local grocery store or supermarket.

Both Empie’s Market in Guilderland Center and Ward’s Store in Guilderland were affiliated with the WGY buying network, actually named after the radio station, but not connected with it. The increased buying power of this large group of independently owned stores allowed the local WGY grocers to offer weekly specials and regularly advertise in The Enterprise.

Altamont had independently-owned stores such as Hudson Food Store, Altamont Cash Market, and Pangburn’s Food Store, although they may not have all operated during the same years. Altamont Cash Market offered a pound of soup bones for 5 cents, stew beef  for10 cents per pound, stew veal for 10 cents per pound, lamb stew for 10 cents per pound, and butt or shank ham ends for 22 cents per pound.

Cash Store butcher Charles Ricci was selling a pound of shoulder veal for 25 cents or a pound of veal chops for 28 cents to those who could afford prime meat. These small stores faced stiff competition from two national chain super markets, the A & P and the Grand Union, both of which had expanded their chains into Altamont

Compared to modern supermarkets, these were relatively small stores but had great buying power and were able to offer lower prices than local independently-owned markets. To their advantage, the locally-owned markets offered credit to customers who didn’t always have ready cash and they would make deliveries. Neither the Grand Union nor the A & P advertised regularly in The Enterprise.

Two Schenectady-based supermarkets did seek to attract Guilderland customers, possibly because a certain number of local people worked at General Electric or other jobs in the Schenectady area and traveled back and forth. Advertising regularly in The Enterprise were The Super Market with two Schenectady stores on Broadway and Central Market, and the two local Golub stores that grew to become the Market 32/Price Chopper chain today.

Closest to Guilderland was their store at 2600 Guilderland Avenue, touted in their ads as “most convenient if you live in or near Altamont.” “Shop the easy basket way” meant serving yourself but, if you didn’t mind traveling a few miles and had cash to pay, a budget-minded customer could snag some real bargains.

Central Market’s clever merchandising included staying open until 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights and assuring shoppers there were plenty of parking spaces. Quoted in one of its 1934 ads was, “For the past year my friends have talked about nothing but Central Market and their easy prices. Now I’m talking Central, too.”

A three-store Albany chain called Trading Port also appeared in The Enterprise, appealing to McKownville folks with the slogan, “Every day a bargain day, shop and save the basket way.” Its location was 1237 Western Ave. at the city line.

Unlike the local independent stores, both Schenectady supermarkets offered prices with half cents. Central Market was selling cans of fancy pumpkin for seven-and-a -half cents, a pound of Maxwell House coffee for twenty-four-and-a-half cents and genuine Long Island ducklings for nineteen-and-a-half cents per pound.

Some samples from The Super Market were pork loin roast for eighteen-and-a-half cents per pound, a package of Grape Nuts Flakes for nine-and-a-half cents and California sardines for seven-and-a-half cents.

Dining out

Dining out was another option that families could enjoy, although restaurant dining seemed rare and few restaurant ads ever appeared during those years. Scanning the local columns of The Enterprise shows a tremendous amount of visiting among friends and relatives, often with dinner or luncheon mentioned.

For families with some spare cash, church suppers offered the dual opportunity to socialize, and to dine out at a reasonable cost. In 1932, when the Ladies’ Aid Society of St. John’s Lutheran Church put on its annual chicken and waffle supper, approximately 200 attended.

The Village Notes column pointed out, “…while the patronage fell off fully a third from last year due to current conditions, the supper was reported a success and a considerable sum of money raised.”

The coming-events columns frequently mentioned church dinners. McKownville Methodist Church, Hamilton Presbyterian Church, Parkers Corners Methodist Church, and St. Mark’s Lutheran Church all had dinners or food sales of some sort.

For 75 cents in early October 1935, you could stop by the Hamilton Presbyterian Church for a chicken dinner with chicken, biscuits, dressing, mashed potatoes, buttered carrots, cabbage salad, jello, rolls, apple and pumpkin pies, and coffee on the menu.

A few weeks earlier, the Parkers Corners Methodist Church was charging adults 50 cents and children under 12 could eat for 25 cents. The Harvest Home Supper menu: roast lamb, mashed potatoes, corn, pickles, rolls, coffee, and jello.

At times, other groups such as the 4-H and Altamont Businessmen’s Bowling League also offered suppers as well.

Like the rest of America, some of Guilderland’s families sailed through the Great Depression easily and could take advantage of the depressed prices to live very well.

Most were forced to be very thrifty to manage to eat, pay the rent or property taxes, run their car and heat their house, while there were others in our town who suffered poverty, deprivation, and sometimes malnutrition.

For most Americans, the Great Depression years were a very trying time.

Let’s start with a short culture quiz.

The first question is: Which is the greater work of art: Andy Warhol’s “Brillo Box” (1964) or Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” (1937)?

You have until the Final Jeopardy! song ends to give your answer.

And the second question is: Which is a greater song? Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria” (written in 1825), or Willie Dixon’s “Back Door Man,” which Howlin’ Wolf premiered in 1961? 

With respect to the first question everybody of a certain age knows who Warhol and Picasso are, so their choice of painting might be more or less à chacun son gout.

In terms of the two composers, Schubert is 99 times better known than Dixon and his song has been played in practically every church on Earth. With Willie Dixon people ask: You sure you don’t mean Willie Mays?

How a person responds to both questions is a measure of that person’s view of “the sacred” and “the profane,” a division that derives from the value a person puts on people and things when constructing a vision of the world. Despite the denial of many, it’s a primary category of thinking.

When those in the “sacred” camp hierarchize, they use metaphors like holy, God, divine grace, and virgin birth. The images are so powerful that sometimes people forget they’re economic variables reflecting the price put on something. Concepts like value, worth, compensation, payoff, and “equity” are part of it.

Incidentally, when ordering their world, some people decide to reject hierarchy altogether — the basis of anarchist thinking — which means a person is equal to God. Holy God is holy Me and holy Me is holy All — what Allen Ginsberg announced in his footnote to “Howl.”

The major problem with Schubert’s “Ave Maria” is not that it’s soppy with emotion but that, exegetically speaking, it does not reflect the story that happened: the story of an angel appearing to a young woman telling her she will have a child, not only that but the child will be a god, and not just any god but the savior the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures longed for for centuries.  

Even taking into account à chacun son gout — how many people can say that “Ave Maria” changed their lives or shook up the way they think?

On the other hand, Willie Dixon is not just one of the great songwriters of all time but a man who penned words that allowed Black men to speak about their identity in direct and truthful ways. He said, men, we have a need to express our love just like white men.   

Rolling Stone magazine ranked Willie 51st on its best-ever-songwriter list — Dylan is 1, McCartney 2, Lennon 3, and Chuck Berry 4 — but Willie deserves to be right there with them because he helped restructure identity.

As a performer, Willie — all six foot, six of him — could put a song across, but the singing of his songs is most associated with Muddy Waters, the greatest blues artist of all time. He’s as good as Sinatra.  

In January 1954, Chess Records came out with a forty-five with “Hoochie Coochie Man” on Side A — Muddy singing and on guitar; Willie is billed as Songwriter/Composer.

The song starts with a stop-and-go bump-and-grind heavy bass rhythm and then words flow, telling Black men they no longer have to hide their manhood. It’s an anthem of liberation.  

On YouTube, you will see Muddy proclaiming the message, not strutting up and down the walk like a banty rooster but laying out the facts of Black identity as if making a presentation before a Fortune 500 company — but is in no way matter of fact.

Muddy begins:
 

The gypsy woman told my mother

Before I was born

I got a boy child’s coming

He’s gonna be a son of a gun

He gonna make pretty womens

Jump and shout

Then the world wanna know

What this all about

And who’s that son of a gun?
 

Muddy says:
 

But you know I’m him

Everybody knows I’m him

Well, you know I’m a Man

Yeah, everybody knows I’m him
 

And when you hear his emphasis on eev-ree-body, you realize Mr. McKinley Morganfield — Muddy’s birth name — is not singing “Hoochie Coochie Man” he is Hoochie Coochie Man. 

Dixon wrote more than 500 songs. Two others he gave to Waters are “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” and “I’m a Natural Born Lover,” and to Wolf he gave “Little Red Rooster,” which the Stones shared with the white world in November 1964 — introducing that world to Willie Dixon and the electric blues of Chicago. 

By saying how a little red rooster handles the barnyard Willie was giving all men a context to explore their sexuality.

The world is a strange place though for, as “Hoochie Coochie Man” was making the rounds at Chicago’s radio stations, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from that city was visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi — 100 miles north of Lynchburg where Dixon was born — and, while there, was beaten, shot, and submerged in a river tied to the fan of a cotton gin to keep him down.

The facts reveal that, when Emmett went into town to buy a pack of gum one day, the 21-year old owner of the store, Carolyn Bryant, said the boy got sassy, he whistled, and on the way out shot back, “Bye baby!” Carolyn’s husband, Roy, and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, showed up and took the story from there.

Sixty-two years later, the lady-judge storekeeper whose words sentenced Emmett to death, said she made it up; there was no sex-stuff. It was her white supremacy speaking, her repressed-sexual libido was pining for a Hoochie Coochie Man.

When the United States established a draft in World War II, Willie got messages to come get fitted for an army hat but he threw them in the trash, forcing officials to come to one of his gigs and arrest him. 

Willie told the draft board it was nothing personal; he couldn’t serve because he was a conscientious objector — 30 years before Muhammad Ali!

Willie said that American society said he was a non-person and a non-person can’t fight in war because there ain’t no one there!

He was put in jail but raised such a ruckus that the draft board classified him 5-F and set him free; the whole story is in Willie’s riveting, and disarming, autobiography (with Don Snowden), “I Am the Blues.”

How can a person, Willie kept saying, help a system stay afloat while it’s dragging him down tied to a piece of a cotton gin?  

Toward the end of August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Ma Rainey declares, “White folks don’t understand about the blues. They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there. They don’t understand that’s life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better. You sing ’cause that’s a way of understanding life.”

And that’s what Los Angeles Clippers Coach Doc Rivers was trying to figure out last week, speaking about America’s treatment of Black men: “We keep loving this country and this country doesn’t love us back.”