I like Post, but they won't let me choose what image appears with links, and it's not fair use to post entire cartoons w/o commentary. Until we figure that out, here's a link to CSotD at the Daily Cartoonist.
Why I don't like sorghum or onions
The Federal Writer's Project was established in 1935 during the Great Depression, as part of the Works Progress Administration. Writers, editors, researchers and artists were employed to create guides for each state and territory as well as many major cities as well as to compile local histories and folklore, including oral histories. This lightly edited memoir by George Strester is one of those oral histories.
My father was a Methodist preacher and at one time was assigned to take charge of a small church at Indianola, Nebraska, when that country was being settled, our family arriving only one or two years later than the first pioneers, or about 1873.
There were mostly very poor people who came to try to make a living farming in that dry arid country, and father saw at the start that his followers would not be able to pay the preacher enough for him and family to live on, so he took to farming as a side line, and located a homestead a mile south of the general store and post office of Indianola.
Here he built a two-room house made of sod out in ribbons three inches thick by twelve in width. The floor was the bare ground with the grass shaved off and tamped to make it firm to walk on. The doors were of boards cleated together and hung with leather hinges.
It was a happy day for all when father and I moved the cook stove from the covered wagon into our new home. We didn't have any table but my pa was quite a genius; he went right to work and made one. He drove four stakes in the ground--all the proper height--and laid the front end gate of the wagon box on top of the stakes and when mother spread the cloth on, you wouldn't know but what it was a beautiful table.
There were about five acres of land that had been plowed before by some settler who had abandoned the place before we came. Father hitched the oxen to the plow and stirred up this patch of earth. He planted part of it to garden vegetables for family use, and the balance to onions and sorghum cane, about one half to each. The onions and sorghum were to sell to buy other necessities.
Then I drove the oxen on the breaking plow and turned over about two acres of sod land. This was planted to corn. Father would travel down every third furrow with an ax and at every stop, strike the ax through the sod and I went along with a bucket of corn and dropped four kernels in each hole made by the ax, and stomped it shut with my heel, until the field was all planted.
The season was favorable and we raised a wonderful crop of everything. My brother and I did the most of the work. Father tended to his pastoral duties, and worked with us at his spare time. We built a cellar in the back yard with a dirt roof in which to store our winter supply of vegetables, also a building in which to store the onions.
We were all well and happy, plenty of vegetables stored in the cellar, corn for the oxen and cow, which were already fat, from gorging on the buffalo grass. Corn meal for mush and johnny cake, which we ground as needed with a mortar and pestle. The cow gave a bucket of milk at a time, so we had plenty of milk to drink, cream for our mush and butter for our johnny cake.
Mother was an expert at making butter. We also had two dozen hens that were brought along in a crate tied on the back of the wagon. They seemed to be trying to see which could lay the most eggs.
There was a great pile of buffalo chips at one side of the house that us kids had gathered and piled there for winter fuel. We seemed to be enjoying the height of prosperity when alas, several things happened to mar our happiness.
One day father opened the onion house to see how they were keeping, and found they had heated and were starting to rot. Father didn't say any cuss words, just "well, well, that's too bad."
He said something had to be done quick if we saved any of the onions. So we all went to work with a will, and in about a week we had the job done, and we had saved about one half of them, but there were rotten onions scattered far and near. The chickens pecked at them and it made their eggs taste like rotten onions, and the cow ate them and spoiled the milk and butter. So we didn't have cream for our mush or butter for our johnny cake.
And father didn't say any cuss words just, "well, well, that's too bad."
So he says we'll harvest our cane, get it into sorghum, then we can have molasses on our johnny cake and that won't be so bad. He set my brother and I stripping the leaves off the cane with sticks while he loaded some onions on the wagon and started out to find a market for them, and get some barrels to put the molasses in.
The store keeper at Indianola didn't want any onions so father decided to go down the river to Arapahoe. He traded his load for 12 long boards and two small barrels.
When father got home my brother and I had the cane all stripped and the seed tassels out from the tops, and father helped out the stalks which had to be kept from touching the ground and piled them on some leaves or seed tassels to keep them clean. Then we loaded them on the wagon and started for a sorghum mill which was one days drive over prairie where there was no road.
About noon we came to a dead carcass. The oxen stopped, smelled it, started to bellow and paw dirt, then bolted, and, one being a little faster runner than the other, they ran in a circle, and the cane being very slippery, it all lost off the wagon before father could get the oxen stopped.
Father didn't say a cuss word, just says, "well, well, isn't that too bad."
He brought the team and wagon to about the center of the scattered cane, unyoked the oxen and turned them loose to grass, while we went to work loading our cane. This took until dark when we made a dry camp for the night.
We arrived at the mill at noon the next day. We made a bargain with the man who owned the mill to make the molasses for half if father would drive our oxen on the sweep to grind the cane and we boys would feed the stalks between the rollers. The owner of the mill was to do the boiling of the juice.
We finished the next day and the following morning loaded our two little barrels of molasses, and started for home. We hadn't traveled far, when I noticed the bottom of the wagon box was nearly covered with molasses. Both barrels had sprung a leak.
Father didn't cuss, he just said, "well, well, that sure is too bad."
He brought the team and wagon to about the center of the scattered cane, unyoked the oxen and turned them loose to grass, while we went to work loading our cane. This took until dark when we made camp for the night.
We arrived at the mill at noon the next day. We made a bargain with the man who owned the mill to make the molasses for half if father would drive our oxen on the sweep to grind the cane and we boys would feed the stalks between the rollers. The owner of the mill was to do the boiling of the juice.
We finished the next day and the following morning loaded our two little barrels of molasses, and started for home. We hadn't traveled far, when I noticed the bottom of the wagon box was nearly covered with molasses. Both barrels had sprung a leak.
Father didn't cuss, he just said, "well, well, that sure is too bad."
Then he urged the oxen to the top of their speed (which was about three miles per hour) in an effort to get home before all the sorghum leaked out, and when we arrived we emptied one barrel into the other and had just enough to fill one barrel which we set over a washtub to catch the drip. Mother put a wash boiler of water over the fire to heat, soaked the empty barrel with hot water until it was tight again, then poured in the molasses from the other barrel together with what had leaked into the tub.
Father had a spigot but no sugar to bore a hole for it near the bottom of the barrel. So he put a rag around it and drove it in the bung hole, then all hands rolled it down into the vegetable cellar and set it in one corner by the door where it would be handy to get at, and father says, "Now we will be sure of that much of our sorghum."
But he was wrong again, for in coming out after placing the barrel, the door was left open and my baby sister found her way down there and turned the spigot handle and before any of us knew it, all the sorghum in that part of the barrel above the bung hole had run out on the cellar floor and under the pile of vegetables stored there.
They had to be taken out and the molasses scrubbed off and laid in the sun to dry and the cellar had to be dug about two or three inches deeper to get rid of the molasses that had soaked into the dirt floor.
Now everything was ready, and we put the vegetables back in the cellar but daddy didn't want to run any more chances of loosing the rest of the sorghum, so he got a large demijohn that he used to haul water from the river for home use, that he didn't use for that purpose any longer, an we had recently dug a well. He said "We'll fill that and set it in the corner of the bedroom where it will be easy to watch."
There was just enough to fill it, and it was set in the corner by father and mother's bed and father said "It surely will be safe there, and we still have enough left for winter use."
But alas, daddy was wrong again, for one night not long after, there was an explosion like the firing of a gun or the bursting of a bomb. Of course everybody jumped out of bed, to land half way to their ankles in sorghum molasses. The demijohn was in a thousand or more pieces and molasses was all over everything in the house, even dripping from the ceiling. Our clothes, bedding and hair was smeared and poor father's beard was matted with it.
But father didn't say any cuss words, he simply said "well, well, this surely is too bad."
We didn't go back to bed that night, and we want to house cleaning, which lasted for several days before we got rid of the last of the molasses. Father said "well I am glad that is all over, and that is the last of the molasses."
But dear old dad was wrong again, for some of the horrible stuff had gone through the cracks in the floor, and soon began to mould and smell, so we had to move things out of the room, take the floor up, dig the dirt out that the molasses had soaked into, scrub all the boards and replace them before the molasses deal was finally finished.
Mother decided if we did not eat the eggs on account of the rotten onion flavor, we would have to eat the hens, so she cooked a nice fat one, and made corn dumplings with it, but nobody could stomach the rotten onion taste that it had. So there was the milk,butter, eggs, and chicken dinners "gone with the wind."
Father said we'll have to have something beside vegetables to eat, so he decided to butcher the cow. She had gone dry anyway (probably because of eating so many onions) and was nice and fat and would make prime beef and enough to last all winter.
We children all shed a few tears when Old Broch was killed, for she was a family pet, but we had to have something to eat. That was the day before Thanksgiving, and the next day mother planned a real Thanksgiving feast -- a large roast of meat with potatoes and carrots laid around it. Something we had not had for years.
But there was a peculiar odor that filled the house while it was cooking. Mother said she might have spilled something on the stove which in burning, caused the stench.
The table was set and the roast brought on and how delicious it looked, and father, after giving thanks for the prosperous year and the many blessings that we had enjoyed, carved the roast, placing a liberal helping of meat, carrots and spuds on each plate. Mother took a bite and looked at father; he took a taste and looked at us kids.
I took a mouthful and my stomach heaved, and horrors of horrors, there was that familiar taste of rotten onions. So our dinner was entirely spoiled and all we had to eat was johnny cake straight with nothing to put on it or go with it.
Still father did not say any cuss words and though sorely tried, was still able to say "well, well, that surely is too bad."
We took the remains of Old Broch and buried them out in the field, and my little sisters laid flowers on her grave. Father decided then and there to quit farming, and although this all happened over 60 years ago, to this day I just can't say that I'm very crazy about sorghum or onions.
Dear Janet
ACT I
(The curtain opens on a cross sectional view of a giant human head. The outer rim is bright blue with a red stripe representing the skull. The brain proper is divided into little rooms like the layout of a ship or a science fiction rocket. In the rooms, little tiny men can be seen running to and fro, up and down by means of hatchways and elevators. Some are sitting at desks, typing and answering phones. In one room, there is a scene of a family of four watching television and eating Fritos and drinking Coca Cola. In another room, a woman in leather is flagellating a writhing masochist in ecstasies of pain. In another room, three men in Day-Glo clown costumes are determining the fate of the world. In another room, two people are smoking a water-pipe and listening to Abbey Road. In another room, two people are making love and listening to old Beach Boys albums and laughing an awful lot. In another room, a teacher is explaining the Crito to a roomful of freshmen in glen plaid slacks and penny loafers and London Fog jackets who are picking their noses and whispering. In another room, another teacher is picking his nose to a roomful of freshmen who are taking notes. In another room, someone is dying and the priest is preparing Last Rites and trying not to laugh at the family who are in the other room steaming open the will. In another room, Annette Funicello is surfing with Frankie Avalon on an ironing board, clad only in a floor length one piece bathing suit with turtle neck and long sleeves. Frankie Avalon is being titillated. In another room, a young couple is falling in love over a bottle of Lancers and an order of garlic bread. In another room, someone is crying while his friends try not to laugh thinking about their own hang-ups. In another room, two turtledoves are discussing cinema verite. In another room, Eric Clapton is trying to fix his amplifier in time to play before he stops rushing, and cursing an awful lot. In another room, an old maid is sweeping up around a large mahogany desk, and helping herself to a box of cigars. In another, room is being made for another room.)
ACT II
(The camera pans over a landscape of snowcapped mountains and pines. It centers on one particularly large mountain, which looks to be the Matterhorn. As we are zoomed into a close up, we begin to see a small log cabin about five hundred yards from the summit. Smoke is pouring from the chimney. We are by now looking through the window, where a cheery fire is burning in the fireplace, and being reflected off the pine paneling of the walls. The cabin appears to be empty, but as we look in front of the hearth, we see a couple sitting naked on a bearskin rug gazing into the flames and passing a joint. They are not touching, nor do they look at each other. A small gray and white cat passes before them and pauses for a second in front of the fire. Then it leaps into the fire, where it turns into a panther, and then bursts into a blue flame and is sucked up the chimney into the air above the cabin. The boy turns to the girl and speaks.)
BOY: (handing the joint to the girl) Oh wow. Did you see what the cat just did?
GIRL: Is that what that was, a cat?
BOY: Yeah. What did you think it was?
GIRL: I don't know, man, but I didn't know it was a cat. If I had …
BOY: If you had what?
GIRL: If I had known … that that was a cat.
BOY: Well, what if you had known that it was a cat?
GIRL: Yeah, what if?
BOY: Say, what are you doing tomorrow?
GIRL: I have to go home. I forgot my deodorant.
BOY: You can use mine.
GIRL: Thanks, but I'd rather have my own. I feel more secure.
BOY: What’s wrong with my deodorant?
GIRL: Nothing. I just like having my own deodorant. Makes me feel, you know, more independent. Liberated.
BOY: Well, I don't know why you use my toothbrush and my mouthwash and even my razor but you can't use my deodorant.
GIRL: Did you see that cat a minute ago?
BOY: Is that what that was, a cat?
GIRL: What did you think it was?
BOY: A cat. I knew it was a cat. It was my cat. Its name was Delilah and it slept next to the stove and ate chicken and hamburger. It was two years old and killed mice and small birds and laid them at my feet. It had four kittens a year ago. It shedded like crazy for a while until I fed it a small lizard.
GIRL: Did it stop shedding?
BOY: Oh yeah, immediately. But there were some side-effects.
GIRL: Such as?
BOY: I think that was one of them. Do we have any more lizards in the medicine cabinet?
ACT III
i wish that i could
talk to e.e. cummings.
I would say
e.e., do you
realize
the effect
the influence
of your p
o
e
t
r
eht no y
yrteop
eht no
fo selyts
p etaigelloc
o
e
t
s
?
he would
probably nod and
he
might
a
p
o
l
o
g
i
z
e.
ACT IV
(Still here? Did you remember your gloves? Good. The scene opens on the floor of the Grand Canyon. Two burros are attacking a tourist. The Park Ranger is attempting to MACE the burros, who are protected by their long
winter coats and their abnormally long eyelashes. The wind shifts and the MACE drifts off into a village of prairie dogs who immediately succumb and fall backwards and head-first into their burrows, where they become wedged in awkward positions.)
INTERMISSION
(Orange drink is available in the lobby at the phenomenal price of $15 a carton. The cartons, however, prove to be only half-full! The straws are very narrow and collapse easily. You forget your matches and have to ask a stranger for a light. Your date is mortified at your flirting and general incompetence. You inadvertently burn a hole in the carpet with a stray ash, and several people notice the smoke before you do. There is a general panic which your date resolves by pouring $7.50 worth of orange drink on the spot. The stench is horrendous. Your date fixes you up with one of the ushers and goes home. The usher keeps shining his flashlight on the ceiling.)
ACT V
(We switch back to the cabin, where the young couple is snorting a lizard preparatory to making love.)
BOY: Oh wow. I can hardly wait to finish this.
GIRL: Me neither. It will be such fun.
BOY: I hate my parents. That is why I am going to make love to you.
GIRL: I hate the establishment. That is why I am snorting this lizard. BOY: I hate cops and teachers and all civic authorities.
GIRL: I hate motherhood and the flag and apple pie.
BOY: I hate circuses and hot dogs and baseball games.
GIRL: I hate church and the Girl Scouts.
BOY: I hate TV dinners and the Boy Scouts.
GIRL: I like straight people.
BOY: I like … wait a minute. What did you just say?
GIRL: I like straight people.
BOY: You're not supposed to like straight people.
GIRL: I don't like all straight people. But some straight people are pretty nice.
BOY: Yeah, well, some of my best friends are straight people. I got nothing against them. They sure can dance. But I still wouldn't want my sister to marry one.
GIRL: I wouldn't want her to, either.
BOY: I got nothing against straight people. I just wouldn't want my sister to marry one.
GIRL: God, no. I hate marriage.
BOY: I hate pigeons and squirrels and cotton candy.
GIRL: I hate Johnny Carson and my parish priest.
BOY: I hate Glen Campbell and Arthur Godfrey.
GIRL: I hate the boy next door and color TV.
BOY: I hate breakfast and beer.
ACT VI
(Fourteen pregnant pandas are filing paternity suits against An-an or Chi-chi, as soon as they figure out which is the male. Meanwhile, the Russians are rounding up character witnesses in the event that they discover their bear to be a male. Chi-chi and An-an are trying to remember.)
ACT VII
(An aerial shot of the Santa Anita freeway, showing a traffic jam consisting entirely of old buses painted in Day-glo paisley containing freaks off to do their own thing.)
ACT VIII
(Two sentries at Elsinore: Thodwick and Benvenuto)
Thodwick: What time is it'?
Benvenuto: The clock has but struck.
Thodwick: T'is a nipping and eager air.
Benvenuto: Sure is. Where the hell is Horatio?
Thodwick: Hold your tongue. I hear something.
GHOST: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark!
Thodwick: Hark ye! He calls the Prince!
GHOST: I am the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come!
Thodwick: You're lost, man. This Is Denmark.
GHOST: I know, I know.
Benvenuto: What happened to the other guy?
GHOST: You mean Hamlet's father?
Benvenuto: Yeah.
GHOST: Bad earache, man, couldn't make it.
Benvenuto: Well, what do you want?
GHOST: Another lizard, please. And make it a long one.
ACT THE NINTH
(Amid the splendor of a sylvan glade, three satyrs are mugging a young nymph. A Centaur enters at right, and they run off, leaving the girl behind. She thanks the centaur and gives him a kiss. They ride off into the sunset, to the utter amazement of all, since it is one o'clock in the afternoon.)
DIXIEME PARTIE
(The entire cast ad-libs a completely tasteless, meaningless nude scene, grossing out not only the audience, but each other as well. At the end, they select the best actor by use of a meter indicating how many people walked out on his account. Other actors count as two members of the audience. The winner is given a $25,000 bonus and is beheaded.)
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Charles got off the train without a word to Eve. As the train pulled out, she watched him walk to his car without looking back.
"Who was that masked man?” the porter asked.
"Which masked man?" Eve answered. "There have been so many, I may have forgotten one or two."
“The one who was running up and down the aisle naked but for a pair of argyle socks, making improper suggestions to several of the young ladies present."
"I don’t know," whispered Eve, gazing at the rising moon, "but I wanted to thank him.”
CANTO XII
249 I clattered over mountain trail 249. The Song
To help the elk to quell the quail. of Oedicox
I clashed on moss and tripped on vines, I bit the fork to mesh the tines.
I stripped the truth and fed the lies
On bigot blood and apple pies.
255 I helped to stop the wild oat seed
With a massive dose of LSD
Which nurtured minds as smooth as silk
And turned their brains to curdled milk,
Then skimmed the curds, and sold the whey
To other souls who thought it fey.
261 Oh woe to thee, oh wicked knight, 261. Oedicox
Who dragged the dragon's corpse to light, lays a heavy
And brought upon the land a blight. curse on the
A curse upon thee, wicket king, house of
265 Who sought the fairies dancing ring, Nadir
And smote the griffon on the wing.
Fie upon thee, maiden fair,
With silver cowbells in your hair;
A wealth of changelings shalt thou bear
270. But love go with thee, kith and kin, 270. Love song
For thou hath saved my fiscal skin, of
and caused the GNP to grin, Oedicox
And all the dreams contained therein,
275. Shall live to praise your deadly sin,
And they shall kill you, raise a din,
And mount a motto on a pin;
“[ Your name here] has Never Been!”
ACT THIRTEEN
A terrible tragedy will befall anyone who watches, performs or reads this act. You will be chosen to emcee a late night talkshow for the next fifteen years. Your sidekick is Lester Maddox. Your first guests will be Shirley Temple Black, David and Julie Eisenhower, and three members of the Ice Follies.
Merry Christmas to those not having one
(This column originally ran in the Press-Republican, Plattsburgh, NY, December 24, 1994)
I had a problem with my Christmas cards this year.
When you do cards, you have to wrap up the year's news in a few deft sentences before you ask about the other person's family and then add your wishes for a good holiday season and so forth.
The problem was, things have gone very well for me this year. I like my job. The kids are wonderfully content with what they are doing. We're healthy and happy, and, you know, about the fifth time I wrote that in a card, all the good news began to make me want to puke.
Tolstoy is right: All happy families are alike, which is why he didn't bother writing a novel about a happy family. Nobody wants to read about a bunch of perky, cheerful high-achieving jackasses.
I recognize, however, that having too much good news may not be your particular problem this Christmas.
I certainly wasn't facing a crisis of over-cheer a decade ago. My Christmas cards went out early in 1984, so our faraway friends would know in time that they should either choose which of us to send the card to, or else send two cards: One to me and one to my wife of 13 years but no more, at her new address.
It could have been worse. I had my kids part-time and the Colorado economy hadn't crashed yet, so I was still able to pay most of my bills and to buy basic groceries, though I couldn't afford health insurance or car repairs.
Still, it was bad enough. I took what little money I could afford to spend on presents for my kids and bought a toboggan, one good present the three of us could enjoy together. Then, the only times it snowed, they happened to be over at their mother's. It all seemed to go like that for me in 1984.
I could write an uplifting holiday message here, suggesting that my current swell Christmas is some cosmic payback for having been put through that really lousy one. But I don't believe that, not even at Christmastime.
No, I wasn't visited by three yuletide spirits, or by an angel-in-training named Clarence, that blue Christmas.
The transformation, rather, came over the course of the next year, through the agency of mortal folks who had been down that road themselves and were willing to extend a hand to assist a fellow-traveler.
For instance, I dropped off a manuscript at a client's office one day, and mentioned to his accountant that I was working on my income taxes. Turned out she was also a single parent, and she proceeded to give me a quick lesson in filing as head-of-household despite having joint custody and thus qualifying for the Earned Income Tax Credit. It saved me a generous fistful of much-needed dollars.
My dentist had been through a particularly unpleasant divorce: He repaired a cracked filling for me at no charge.
And my main client, God bless her soul, was big sister and counselor and a boss of saintly patience and forbearance throughout the year. She'd been through it, too, and we had many extra cups of coffee and a few unnecessary "business lunches" while she assured me that everything was going to work out for me in the long run. And she went across the hall to a sister publication and got the editor there to throw a little work my way.
If this is not a cheerful Christmas for you, I can't fill your teeth or give you a job, though I do suggest you look into that earned-income tax credit.
But what I can do is to promise you that blue is not a permanent color.
Others have been through this, and, while there is no fast-forward button you can push, it will eventually end.
Yesterday, Dec. 23, was the longest night, the darkest day, of the year. Beginning today, the sun will start shining a little earlier every morning, and it will stick around a little later every evening.
Make the effort to stand where that sun can shine on you. Keep your head up so you can see it. Avoid the shadows, and especially, refuse the company of those who wish to share misery and bitterness instead of hope.
The days will eventually become longer than the nights, it will be warm once again, the flowers will bloom.
And then maybe one day, a few years down the road, you'll be faced with the problem of phrasing your good news in a way that won't make people want to puke.
When that happens, remember how you got there, and help someone else find the way to a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Johnny Clegg's Crossing
Lecture with music, or vice versa
(April 2011)
One of the benefits of living in a small community with an Ivy League college is that, if you keep your ear to the ground, you can stumble across some pretty interesting events.
South African musician and activist Johnny Clegg came to Dartmouth this week, delivering some classroom lectures on Wednesday and then delivering a kickass concert Thursday night. It wasn't terribly well promoted, but I spotted some posters while I was walking Vaska and I managed to make both his public lecture at the end of the day Wednesday and his concert. That picture is from the lecture part, and most Johnny Clegg fans wouldn't recognize it, since he's generally more colorful, but they would recognize it in that his concerts are a sort of confessional in which he talks about himself and his life and his country's culture and then slams you with some fantastic music and spectacle.
The lecture was more restrained than that.
I've been a fan since sometime in the late 80s when he came to Montreal and, in addition to giving a concert, appeared on local TV. I didn't make the concert -- probably a combination of a job that was often more than 9-to-5 and being a single dad. But I was blown away by his interview and one song on the TV show and went out and got a couple of his CDs.
Clegg was born in England but lived in Zimbabwe (his mother was Rhodesian) as well as Zambia and Israel before settling in South Africa, where, at 15, he saw a man on the street playing Zulu guitar, an instrument that uses different string placements and tunings to convert a European instrument for African music. The player was a maintenance man, but in his off hours, he gave the young white boy lessons on the instrument, and Clegg began to hang around the hostels where the migrant workers lived.
These, he recounts, were large residences, where a couple of thousand workers might live, and, because "home districts" are critical to Zulu identity, it was not uncommon for entire floors of hostels, or even whole hostels themselves, to be taken over by men from the same or allied districts. They worked during the week, but, on weekends, you could find them selling various native things or vending traditional food and beer, while dance teams practiced or competed against each other in the streets.
"When I first saw the war dances, I was smitten," Clegg said. "I'd done karate, which comes from centuries of Japanese tradition, and when I saw the war dances, I saw some of the same thing." The way the Zulu men moved in the dance not only reflected their daily lives and culture, but "carried certain messages about masculinity, certain messages, values and concepts." He applied himself to learning those as well as the music, and became accepted as, he admits, "something of a mascot" to one of the dance teams.
In the mid-1960s, hanging around the hostels was a little dubious, but what was plainly illegal was when he visited his Zulu friends in their districts. But the dance team was headed up country, to visit a district with a powerful chief who had 35 wives and 160 kids, and the now-16-year-old Clegg went with them.
"I had certain romantic ideas of Zulus from seeing them living in the city," he says, but seeing them at home changed his perspective. "It was a wild place for me," he says, and the difference in seeing them there rather than in the urban environment was that he now saw how they incorporated a world of animals -- both the animals they hunted and the cattle they raised -- into basic aspects of their culture, especially in the ways the men expressed their identity in dance and in stick-fighting, a form of martial arts that defined their place in a very strongly structured pecking order and that informed the form of their dancing.
And on the third day, he was arrested by the security forces for being in an area forbidden to whites. He was threatened with deportation and his friends were charged with bringing him into a tribal area, and were only spared by a technicality -- the signs barring whites from the area without permits had not been erected.
But he continued to sneak into the tribal area to be with his friends and to learn more about their language, lives and culture, and at this point in his lecture, Clegg went into a discursion on cattle and, specifically, bulls.
A Zulu man is inextricably linked to the bull of his herd, he explained, and there are certain rites that must be observed, including that the man must rise in the morning before the bull and must take his morning piss before the bull takes his. It is a matter of pecking order. The bull is his "little brother" and must keep his place, but, of course, for that to happen, it's more a matter of the man asserting his status than expecting the bull to defer.
If the bull is sick, the man is sick, and, if the bull seems likely to die, it is critical that the man slaughter and replace it before that happens. For the bull to simply die would be a disaster for the man.
When two men have a serious rivalry, it was common to settle it by having their bulls fight, and Clegg managed to get video of one of these events, which are becoming rare. The two men shouted encouragement and "praise words" to their bulls, and supplied trash talk while the bulls, excited by the attention and atmosphere, began to paw the ground and go at each other. (I would point out that, at least in this particular instance, they didn't seem to inflict much damage, but rather did some pushing, shoving and clashing until one yielded, to the immense delight of its owner's human rival.)
Clegg noted that a bull has one horn with which he deflects blows and that he initiates his attack with the other horn. Similarly, in stick-fighting, the boy has a small shield -- very much smaller than a goalie's blocking pad -- on one hand and a stick with which to attack in the other. You could not only see the similarity to the bull's attack and defense in the video, but (and Clegg did not mention this) it was also apparent how this system of stick-fighting would translate very directly into use of the cowhide shield and the short spear, the assegai. I was also struck by the fact that Shaka, who invented the shorter form of the assegai around the turn of the 19th century, also devised an attack strategy that involved a double-flanking move and that was known as the "buffalo horns" formation.
Clegg's interest being musical, he noted that the bond between man and bull is such that there are "bull poems" recited that record the bull's history -- where it was bought, how it fought, etc. And the dance team is referred to as "oxen" when they do a group dance, and they are "plowing the dance" with a dance leader who carries a stick.
A man who seeks the "ugly heart" of the bull can become the type who constantly starts fights, but that "ugly heart" is also part of the paradox of masculinity, Clegg said: A man must work well with others, as one of the neutered oxen, but he must also be prepared to take life when that moment comes, as the fertile and intact bull.
"There's a lot of pecking order in their culture," Clegg said, "and, when a man walks into a room, it can be very funny seeing how he gets sorted out into his place."
I was fascinated by his lecture because I had never contemplated the nature of a warrior culture that raises cattle. Many of our own native people have a deep, rich warrior culture, but they don't have a strong identification with animal husbandry. After the coming of the whites, they did have horses, but only the Nez Perce are strongly associated with purposeful breeding of stock, and, while the coming of horses transformed many native cultures, this basic identity that Clegg spoke of simply doesn't exist within those cultures: American Indians have a strong identification with the animals they hunted, but that's an entirely different relationship.
The buffalo dance is simply not the same as the bull-influenced dances of the Zulu because no Lakota or Blackfoot ever felt compelled to drag himself out of bed in the morning so he could be sure to piss before the buffalo had pissed. It's a different relationship because the relationship with the buffalo is impersonal -- it is not "that" buffalo, but buffalo in general. The Zulu knows the specific bull with which he is linked the way he knows his wife or his child and he has a daily, working relationship with that bull.
So I walked around pondering all that new information for a day, and then went to Johnny's concert and got to see some of what he had spoken about. He had two young men who danced, and I have to say that, while everyone cheered and whistled, I sat there and thought to myself that I was seeing only a very small moment of something that, if I wanted to know what I was looking at, I should have started thinking about it when I was 15, and I should have been living in Johannesburg and I should have been willing to go over to the hostel to take guitar lessons, and to listen, and to learn.
Or I could have done it the simple way and be born into the Zulu culture. But I don't think there's another road to follow. And I think only Johnny Clegg can be Johnny Clegg.
Here he is in action. "Asimbonanga" translates as "we have not seen him" and refers to Mandela, as do the lyrics about looking across the water, since Mandela was being held in an island prison.
(Video updated to 2014 Mandela Tribute version)
So long, Johnny