The video posted below is 15 minutes, and if you are interested in an American’s reflections about camp life in Venezuela, you’ll appreciate it. You will find Mr. Howland’s commentary low key but compelling. He reminds me much of that generation of men I grew up with.
The camp was built by the Mene Grande Oil Company, a subsidiary of the Gulf Oil Company. It was located near the town of El Tigre, about 60 miles north of Ciudad Bolivar which lies on the Orinoco River, and about 120 miles northwest of San Félix, which is also also on the Orinoco, only further east. It was about 160 miles northwest of El Pao.
He mentions the South Camp. In Mene Grande the North Camp was the “staff” camp, mostly populated by Americans in its early history. The South Camp was the labor camp. But both were well run and fondly remembered by its inhabitants.
This was “nationalized” in 1975 along with the rest of the oil and iron ore industries.
Some comments below the video say much:
“I was born in Caripito Monagas State in January 1959 and 6 months after being born we arrived in San Tomé where I grew up. Many are the good memories of a town that I consider was an example of society. I thank Mr. Howland for that beautiful video [which goes back over] 80 years of existence.” [emphasis mine]
“Hello Mr. Howland. Your videos bring back many wonderful memories. I lived with my parents in El Tigrito and graduated from San Tomé Staff School in 1953. I saved a little boy’s life in the club pool for which Mene Grande gave me a watch when I graduated.”
“Jake — amazing video. As the Venezuelans would say, it was “muy emocionante” to see such old footage of our beloved camp.”
I have an email that was forwarded to me and am hoping to receive permission to post it. Meanwhile, I’ll only post the mildly sardonic conclusion:
“As you can see, it was very difficult living with those American imperialists.”
To learn just a tad of the massive American investment in Venezuela and a time when conservative outlooks and mores somewhat ruled the day, you might want to parcel out the 15 minutes it takes to watch
Some “ground level” photos of areas alluded to in the film (am a bit surprised at the dearth of readily available photos, as this was well-known site):
Five hundred and two years ago, on October 31, 1517, an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther posted ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. This was a common action in this university town and was intended as an invitation to debate and discuss.
Instead, a conflagration ensued and the world was transformed.
The event was preceded by the labors of men such as Jan Has (John Hus), and John Wycliffe, both of whom lived in the 14th century, and also William Tyndale, whose labors were greatly influential to the translators of both the Geneva Bible (the version first brought to America’s shores) as well as the later Authorized (King James) version.
The Reformation came “in the fullness of time.” The peoples of the world, especially Europe, were “ready” to seek, find, and act upon the Truth.
The following quotes will serve to remind us that, absent the Reformation, especially the work of John Calvin and the the Genevan reformers, we would have been a very different people and place:
“[Calvinists] are the true heroes of England. They founded England, in spite of the corruption of the Stuarts, by the exercise of duty, by the practice of justice, by obstinate toil, by vindication of right, by resistance to oppression, by the conquest of liberty, by the repression of vice. They founded Scotland; they founded the United States; at this day they are, by their descendants, founding Australia and colonizing the world.” — French atheist Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893)
“Calvinism has been the chief source of republican government.” — Lorraine Boettner
“In Calvinism lies the origin and guarantee of our constitutional liberties.” — Goren van Prinsterer
“[John Calvin] is the father of America. He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty.” — Historian George Bancroft
“John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.” — German historian Leopold von Ranke
When we speak of the Reformation we think of men like Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, Ulrich Zwingli, and many such others, mostly hailing from Switzerland, England, Holland, Scandinavia, Germany, and France.
And then there is Spain.
Perhaps the most known Spanish Reformation names are the remarkable Casiodoro de Reina and Cipriano de Valera, the erudite and pious men who translated and revised the entire Bible into Spanish from the original languages. The Reina-Valera version was first published in 1569, less than a decade after the Geneva Bible and four decades before the Authorized (King James). And it remains to this day as influential to the Spanish speaking peoples as the King James is to the English speaking.
Both men, at different times, pastored a Spanish protestant church in London. Valera translated Calvin’s Institutes into Spanish. From his introduction to the Institutes: “Therefore, open your eyes, O Spaniards, and forsaking those who deceive you, obey Christ and His Word which alone is firm and unchangeable for ever. Establish and found your faith on the true foundation of the Prophets and Apostles and sole Head of His Church.”
Both men died in exile after productive lives, despite hardships.
Spain, like her fellow European countries (including Italy, but that’s beyond today’s post), was also ripe for the Reformation. Reformistas Antiguos Españoles is a magisterial, 21-volume work which offers biographies and writings of Spanish reformers, including Juan Valdés, who, in 1529, published Diálogo de Doctrina Cristiana (Dialogue of Christian Doctrine) the first protestant book to be published in Spain. He also translated much of the New Testament from the original languages into Spanish. You could say he was the William Tyndale of Spain. An extraordinary man, as were many others of his compatriots.
Other examples of the spiritual fervent in Spain before and after Luther include the fact that there was at least one protestant congregation in Spain, established around 1510, years before the 95 theses were posted. Also, Adrian Saravia, born in the Spanish Netherlands to a Spanish father and a Flemish mother, fled to England and became one of the English Bible’s (Authorized) translators.
Another powerful indication predates 1517 by almost three centuries: Spain’s open mindedness and piety can be inferred by knowing a bit about the thirteenth-century Spanish king, Alfonso the Wise, who ordered the Bible be translated into Castilian Spanish and thus began to standardize the language. I understand there is still an extant copy of that Bible but to date have not succeeded in finding it. It was this king who laid the groundwork for the Siete Partidas, which includes large portions of the Old Testament in Castilian Spanish and which became the basis for law in Spain and her colonies until the catastrophic French Revolution’s incursions. For more on the Siete Partidas, refer to my May 11, 2019 post, “Simon Bolivar III — Influences.”
To begin to appreciate this king, however imperfect, the following was the instruction behind the Siete Partidas: “The Law-Maker should love God and keep Him before his eyes when he makes the laws, in order that they may be just and perfect. He should moreover love justice and the common benefit of all….If [the ruler] should make a bad use of his power … people can denounce him as a tyrant, and his government which was lawful, will become wrongful.” But this does not justify anarchy. “The union of all men together, those of superior, middle, and inferior rank” would determine what course to take in case of tyranny. This presaged John Calvin’s “lesser magistrates” theories, which we have institutionalized in the United States (federal, state, county, township, governor, sheriff, etc.) by three centuries, and anticipated our Fairfax Resolves and our Declaration of Independence by five!
The Spanish Inquisition, was energetically pressed by Pope Leo X, whose hatred for Luther was undisguised, not to say unhinged. He became alarmed at the incursions of the “Lutheran heresy” into Spain (apparently unaware that the “heresy” had resided in Spain for centuries before Luther) and he forcefully pressed the Spanish Inquisition whose first auto de fé took place in 1559, decades after the launching of the great explorations, including Columbus (1492), Cortés (1519), and others. If you read Columbus unfiltered by modern historians you would be forgiven if you thought he too was a Protestant.
My point is that, while the Reformation fostered unmistakable and long-lasting impact and influence on English and French America, it also affected Spanish and Portuguese America. An influence later truncated, if not extinguished by the Inquisition, which, unfortunately, had severe impact on Spain and its colonies, and even on the Roman Catholic Church in Spain, whose developing “evangelical” component was snuffed out.
As I’ve noted several times in this blog, North, Central, and South America have more in common with one another than is usually assumed. Granted, in some regions one would have to dig much deeper under the surface to find that shared background. For one thing, the French atheistic revolutionary influence forcefully invaded the Spanish colonies centuries ago in contrast to the English, who greatly delayed that infiltration.
Nevertheless, I do hope we will one day see the fruits of the common ancestry of the Reformation. Perhaps within the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren.
May you enjoy Reformation Sunday, October 27, and Reformation Day, October 31.
Diálogo de Doctrina Cristiana, first edition (1529) facsimile. Only one copy survived the Inquisition and that was discovered in 1925.
Geneva Bible, First Edition Facsimile, 1560
Authorized Version (King James), 1611
King Alfonso the Wise (1221-1284)
Edition of the Siete Partidas dated 1555. However, note the source atop the page: Don Alfonso Sabio Rey (Wise King) who reigned in the 13th century.Casiodoro de Reina (right; 1520-1594) and Cipriano de Valera (1531-1602). Eminent translators of the universally loved and respected Reina-Valera Spanish Bible.
Juan de Valdés (1490-1541), published the first protestant, evangelical book in Spain. Died in exile in Italy where he played a role in the Italian Reformation.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506). A man of his time, however extraordinary; many of his writings read like those of the reformers.
Hernán Cortés (1485-1547). A man of piety; he pleaded with Montezuma to forsake human sacrifice and cannibalism, practices which “lead to hell.”
William Tyndale (1494-1536), executed by strangulation; then his body was burned at the stake. His last words were “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes!” Within the decade several Bible translations were published in England, with the king’s approval. What the king ignored was that all were fundamentally Tyndale’s work. His prayer was honored.Martin Luther (1483-1546). “Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us…. Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else fails.”John Calvin (1509-1564), the father of the American Colonies. “It were cold and lifeless to represent God as a momentary Creator, Who completed his work once for all, and then left it. Here, especially, we must dissent from the profane, and maintain that the presence of the divine power is conspicuous, not less in the perpetual condition of the world than in its first creation….”
I saw this book in a Texas museum. The small town, early twentieth century setting piqued my interest, given my respect for folks of that era. Looking back, I see that my early childhood experiences were not dissimilar to what’s reflected in the excerpts below. Furthermore, my boyhood placed me among men and women who played an important role in my rearing and who could easily have been characters in Homer’s Place.
Granting the unreliability of early life memories, to my best recollection, the folks and mores which can be inferred from the below are consistent to what I recall in the mining camp before the early 60’s. I invite the childhood friends who read this to contact me if their recollections are dramatically different.
Homer’s Place is not Little Britches, but it reflects much of the same mores and morals of that earlier book and series. And these were conventions readily apparent in an American mining camp far from cities and related conveniences.
Regardless, the novel has a terrific plot which I’ll leave to you to discover.
Excerpts:
“We kids were like chickens in an Asian village. Every adult knew who owned us, and where we lived, and we were aware the entire town indirectly observed and controlled us. It was as if we were everyone’s responsibility, and this was sometimes annoying. But even without the services of a town psychiatrist, or the expensive present day counselors, this community situation made us feel very secure. No one ever snatched us off the street.
“As an example of how it worked, one day when I was in the fifth grade, I was in a large, vacant lot directly behind the Commercial Bank. I sailed a coffee can lid high into the air, immediately lost sight of it in a flash of sun, and like a boomerang, the tin lid came back and struck me squarely on top the head. It was nothing serious, but head wounds do bleed profusely, and very shortly I looked like attempted murder. Blood streamed down my forehead and into my eyes. Before I could panic, the observant bank cashier, Tom Perry, ran from behind the cage to the lot, grabbed my hand, rushed me the half block to Doc Clapper’s office, and then quickly returned to cashiering at the bank.
“There were no forms to complete — abominable health insurance was not even in the imagination stage. Doc shaved the wound, used three metal clamps to hold the wound together, and then personally walked me around the corner to the Majestic [theater owned by his father]. He told Homer of Tom Perry’s quick action. My dad thanked Doc, promptly paid his four dollar fee, and invited Tom to a game of dominoes at the Snooker Parlor. Good Samaritan deeds worked smoothly in 1933 without insurance or fear of lawsuits. It was a matter of looking out for ‘one another.’
….
“Another Winelda [town where the story develops] code or standard was that every kid in town clearly understood, that under no circumstances, was he to be disrespectful toward any adult. To do so would have been a gross miscarriage of courtesy, and Homer and other fathers would have been super quick to correct such crass manners. I don’t recollect how these lessons evolved — certainly not from counsellors, because parents neither wanted nor needed them — but it seemed the families all taught ethics from the same book. No matter what the adult’s station in life, we were always to say ‘Mister’ Patton and ‘Mrs.’ Miller and thank you ma’am, thank you sir — yes sir and no sir. When speaking with adults, the word ‘Yeah’ was never a part of a kid’s vocabulary. A donkey-like ‘Uh huh’ was a close step toward a perilous precipice. The business of saying yes sir and no sir had absolutely no military connotation whatsoever nor did it imply subservience. They were simply the unwritten rules of behavior everyone expected between juniors and seniors. It was a pleasant departure from today’s sometimes crass egalitarianism. The grownups liked or loved us, but we were not to consider ourselves their buddies unless some special rapport permitted it.
….
“So, because the community bonded together when it came to kids, Wineldans were able to turn their offspring loose to figuratively graze from one end of town to the other, and into the surrounding hills. I recall no kid that was killed or maimed, and none ran away or disappeared. If there were some few that were molested, it was the deepest kind of secret. Such a despicable act might well have spawned unmanageable Winelda vigilantes.
“Kids were never told they could not go in Mrs. Dutweiler’s house or to Mr. Wentworth’s barn because Winelda had no real strangers living among them. Everyone was a known quantity. But even in Winelda there were a few cautions.
“‘I don’t want you riding around the Square in Haywire Dwyer’s car.'”
“Haywire was different from most, and somewhat strange for the times. He was a happy-go-lucky, twenty-eight-year-old who drove a bright yellow Model-A roadster with a rumble seat, chromium plated wire wheels, mud flaps, a coon tail, and an Ah-oo-gaw horn. On weekends he especially liked to drive slowly around the Square with a couple of his boy friends who some might very well have called ‘sissy.’ As they cruised the Square, one of them occasionally yelled to a curbside gawker, ‘Hey, you wanta ride with us.” They were always tickled pink when some young kid frothing for a chance to ride in Haywire’s rumble seat would join them. That insignificant act would energize Winelda’s all-seeing community eye. Word would swiftly pass to the dad, ‘Hey, Emory, yer kid was a riding’ with Haywire’s bunch Saturday afternoon.’ And Emory would seek out little Marvin and make his instructions crystal clear, ‘Don’t you ever again git in Haywire’s car. You understand, Boy?’
….
“I got my ample share of being yelled at and boxed around. Perhaps this will sound strange in this day of abuse issues, but I seldom felt like some poor, mistreated kid. I figured [my father’s] punishments were probably no more severe than what any other kid endured. This was a big people world; consequently, in my kid’s world, I always strived to avoid wrongdoing that would enrage big people. In my view, [my father] wasn’t so bad. A few neighborhood girls had confided in me that on a number of occasions their parents had ordered them to bed without dinner. To me that was indeed bestial; that was abuse of the first order. Mild beatings were decidedly better.
….
“It was a wonderful, simpler time when there were no driver’s licenses, and no niggling sales taxes. Many of the other socialistic taxes were slyly generated to be paid by those who worked, and then handed out to those who didn’t work.
….
“We weren’t choir kids, but neither were we hooligans. Other than a few pranks, none of us ever found ourselves in serious trouble. Come graduation day, Winelda’s kids were well prepared to face either college or the world. We learned to earn our own money, and by doing so we had acquired a work ethic. This gave us all an inner feeling of competency and self-reliance, and we had the basic manners needed for getting along in everyday life. Not one of my forty-three Winelda classmates was a failure as an adult. All could read, all could write an acceptable letter, and none went to prison. Something must’ve been very right with Winelda’s simple lifestyle in the thirties and forties. Unfortunately, American families in the fifties and sixties allowed the government to systematically destroy what some later called the Greatest Generation.”
In El Pao in 1958, we children did not know that, back in the States a horrible drama was unfolding, which, as I saw decades later, confirmed a comment I had heard. Something about breakdowns in the fringes of society, if left unaddressed, would take center stage.
This was an era when, for the most part, certain subjects were not discussed in the presence of children. I recall sitting in the El Pao bar with WWII veterans and never hearing a single curse or blasphemy. So much was the care to not offend children, that when Hollywood profanity was unleashed in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s my shock at the language suddenly present in films was genuine and guileless.
So it does not surprise me that I only heard about the Starkweather murder spree decades later, when movies and at least one rock song were based thereon or alluded thereto.
We children did hear conversations about movies like East of Eden and Rebel Without A Cause. Films which, according to the general tenor of the discussions, reflected disaffected, conflicted, alienated, and mutinous youth. You might call them Jean-Paul Sartre’s offspring. Furthermore, when families were portrayed, the depiction was not flattering.
I remember seeing Rebel Without A Cause during a movie night in the camp. Several things struck me: the father walking around wearing a girly apron; the absence or diminishment of God; an utter incomprehension as to what exactly was bothering the James Dean character; and revulsion at the Dean character’s drinking the family milk directly from the bottle and placing it back in the refrigerator. As usual, I assumed these themes were too profound for children; hence my distaste was probably unwarranted. However, I wasn’t alone in the confusion, as I heard adults talking about it and also expressing less than full admiration.
The series of aforementioned events took place in Nebraska. The protagonists were a nineteen-year-old young man who dressed, combed his reddish hair, and acted like the Rebel’s James Dean; and a thirteen-year-old girl who dressed and acted as much as possible as her Dean-like boyfriend, except her hair was dark brown.
These two could be Exhibit A for those Americans who “knew”, in a guts-knowledge sort of way, that the theatre, of all other arts, had perhaps the greatest influence or effect on behavior. But most did not know the men across the Atlantic who worked obsessively to use the stage and the theatre precisely to influence the society in which they were reared. Men such as Bertolt Brecht and, of even more influence in America, Kenneth Tynan, and a few others, who were transparent in their purpose: to promote hedonism and permissiveness, including the unrestrained use of coarse, blasphemous, profane language on the stage and in public: some, because they believed there was a link between the utter denial of self-denial and their socialistic political agenda; others, because they simply were compelled to tear down whatever Christian pillars remained in what they considered to be a stifling, boring, bourgeois society.
So we should not be surprised that Brecht fervently worked to use art “not as a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.” He also said, “Don’t expect the theatre to satisfy the habits of its audience, but to change them.”
Kenneth Tynan’s oeuvre can probably best be summed up with his, “I hope I never have to believe in God, it would be an awful confession of failure.” Well, he succeeded wildly in coarsening our culture. It is sad to think that, despite his ugly outlook, he did admire C.S. Lewis, who had been his tutor at Oxford. After having read Lewis’s The Hideous Strength, he said, “How thrilling he makes goodness seem — how tangible and radiant!”. It is unfortunate that he did not follow through with this admiration.
I will readily concede that by the time of these men’s work, there was already a demand, however inchoate, in western audiences for the excreta they would put out. But their impact is undeniable, nevertheless.
Of course, it is much easier to tear down than to build up. And the two Nebraska murderers certainly destroyed: a masterful vindication of Brecht, who died a mere 3 years before the events related here, and Tynan, whose influence was greatest in the America of the late 1950’s through the 1960’s. Not to mention the existentialist tenor pervading society, especially youth.
The girl’s parents (mother and stepfather) were opposed to her relationship with the young man and acted to stop it. In addition, the youth’s parents were also opposed, a position which enraged him to the point of physically attacking his father, an event resulting in his expulsion from home.
One night, the angry youth stopped by a gas station in the town where they lived. He pulled a shotgun on the attendant, a young man of twenty-one, married and soon to have been a father. Before long he lay dead, his head blown beyond recognition.
The youth then went to his girlfriend’s house where they killed the girl’s mother, step-father, and two-year-old sister with rifle butt, kitchen knife, and bullets. They stuffed the mother’s body down the outhouse toilet opening; crammed the baby sister’s body in the box that had been used as a garbage can and placed it in the outhouse; dragged the step-father’s body to the chicken coup and left it there.
They then cleaned up the blood in the house and drank pop and ate chips that evening. For almost a week, they remained there, buying food and milk on credit from the milkman, as her family’s corpses rotted nearby. When folks would come by to visit or inquire, they were scooted away by the girl who would tell all that everybody was very sick with a highly contagious flu, an excuse which soon began to wear thin.
They realized they’d have to skip town and decided to go to an old friend of the young man’s family: a seventy-two-year old farmer who often let the boy and his siblings play and hunt on his farm some twenty miles from town.
The murderous couple’s intention was to steal the farmer’s car. And kill him.
After shooting him in the head, wounding his dog as it ran away, and dragging his body to an out building, they spent the night in his house eating and drinking pop.
The next day they drove off but got stuck in mud and had to abandon the car and walk, with the old man’s 22 rifle and handgun. They were befriended by a teenage couple, childhood sweethearts, who offered them a ride. The killers asked them to drive back to the dead man’s farm; this they did, in innocent ignorance.
The seventeen-year-old young man was shot six times in the head; his sixteen-year-old sweetheart was shot once in the head and stabbed repeatedly in the abdomen and pubic area.
Their bodies were hauled to the storm cellar and abandoned there. The killers took their car and drove off, back to town.
There they invaded an industrialist’s home which the youth had often seen during his days as a garbage collector. They repeatedly stabbed the wife in the neck and chest, while finding a moment to break the family poodle’s neck to keep it from barking.
When the man of the house arrived, he was met with the barrel of a gun, but he quickly deflected and began a fight to the death with the killer, who excelled in only one class in school: gym. The fight dragged on but finally the youth got the upper hand and shot the forty-seven-year-old man dead.
The killer couple remembered the maid they had locked up in a bedroom closet. The maid, who was hard of hearing, meekly allowed the degenerate teens to tie her to the bed where she was repeatedly stabbed. They then drove off in the family Packard.
This time they drove west, towards Wyoming. They had car trouble. Seeing a car parked alongside a road, they thought it’d be a good one to steal. Its owner, a middle-aged shoe salesman was sleeping and the youth woke him, only to shoot him nine times in the head. That was to be their last murder victim, Mr. Merle Collison, husband and father. The murderer pushed the body to the passenger’s side and tried to drive off, only to have trouble releasing the emergency brake.
A young geologist saw them and, thinking they were having car trouble, walked up to the driver’s window only to have a gun pointed at him as his eyes glanced at the corpse in the front passenger’s side. He figured he had to fight and so did.
That was a good decision, for while they struggled, a Wyoming deputy sheriff drove by and, seeing the commotion, stopped. The youth jumped back in the Packard, while his girlfriend ran to the sheriff, quickly transforming herself into a damsel in distress.
After a short pursuit, both were in custody and returned to Nebraska where they were tried and found guilty of murder. He, playing the deceased James Dean to the end, was electrocuted in 1959; she made parole in the 1970’s.
Later in life, I apprehended how prescient had been that conversation I had heard, that the breakdowns in the fringes of society were not being explained, let alone denounced.
As severe deterioration was increasingly evidenced here and there (for instance, the Clutter murders took place in Kansas a mere year later), some (many?) parents were closed mouthed about it, believing that “the experts” – teachers, bureaucrats, psychiatrists, clergymen — were better able to deal with it. However, some clergymen, either directed their fury to wine and beer and other irrelevancies (alcohol played no part in this ghastly series of crimes), while others continued slouching their congregations away from the historic faith towards a sort of progressive twentieth century new beginning, cheerfully oblivious that, thus far, more people had been killed in that degenerate century than in any other, while still others preached what was termed an evangelical gospel message, but one that had little relevance to what was happening right before their very eyes.
In an age whose elite was feverishly busy destroying and mocking its Christian foundations, all under the guise of creating a truly “civilized society”, the church should have been dedicating the time and sweat to intellectually and spiritually denounce such intellectual termites.
So it is no surprise that, when it came to parenting, millions of parents of “The Greatest Generation” turned from the Bible to Dr. Spock’s humanistic advice in Baby and Childcare. The results have not been pretty as generations have been trained to look to themselves for solutions as opposed to seeking the Mind of God, our Creator and Redeemer.
To take two noteworthy examples, while parents and churches hearkened to humanism’s siren songs, Marx’s 19th century Manifesto and Connolly’s 20th century “programme” were being promoted in the theatre and university and legislatures throughout the twentieth century and bore spectacular fruit: abolition of the death penalty; equalization of wealth; rehabilitation of criminals; free medicine; food subsidies; decriminalization of homosexuality; easing, if not outright elimination of divorce laws, thereby weakening marriage; children’s rights; elimination of all discrimination; and so forth. Question any of the above today and you will be denounced as a troglodyte. Or worse.
As for teachers, they were coming awfully close to intellectually justifying or at least “understanding” these acts – acts which even children (before twentieth-century-indoctrination took hold) could plainly see were wholly, horrendously unjustifiable by any civilized measure.
As for politicians and bureaucrats, they sought for angles and positioning: the political Freudians, in their myriad manifestations, urged more therapy and, therefore, more dollars to state-funded psychiatrists and psychologists, most of whom represented another, alien, philosophy as opposed to an empirical discipline; the political Quakerians, in their multifarious, contradictory incarnations, urged more jails, as if evil could be transformed into goodness by some inner light emanating from a cell in Sing Sing.
A mere twenty years later and beyond, Hollywood was making, not one, but up to four or more movies, in effect, romanticizing these murderers who were absolutely devoid of any sense of pity or compassion. A major rock star wrote a song about them. And a major publisher was backing a project where the murderous lassie would be able to tell “her side” of the story (she claims innocence, of course).
If you don’t denounce breakdowns in the fringe, you’ll soon see them lionized in the center.
In that era, the paradoxical 1950’s, precious few men forcefully and learnedly tied such actions, whether murder or otherwise, to their antecedent: a loss of the Faith. Lonely preachers valiantly made that case. But they were few.
Typical reactions to such acts were ineffectual because both the action and the reaction proceeded from the same source: an antithetical faith whose genesis occurred way back in Eden, where man determined to decide for himself what was good and what was evil.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980)
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)Caril Ann Fugate and Charles Starkweather, convicted murderers.Robert Jensen (17) and Carol King (16), the sweethearts murdered by the killer couple. This was the murder which was tried and for which the James Dean wannabe was executed. Their high school junior class was reduced overnight from 8 to 6. Both were greatly loved and greatly missed. And, decades later, their town was aghast to learn that the murderers held a fascination for some people, including Hollywood.
Robert Colvert (21), murdered gas station attendant. His only daughter, Barb, was born five months later. She still weeps when talking about him, given her recollections of interactions with her mother.
Mr. and Mrs. Ward. He was the industrialist who fought to the death. Still remembered as a generous couple.
Lilyan Fencl, the Ward’s maid. She was remembered as shy, gentle, quiet, and hard working.
Velda Bartlett: Caril Ann’s mother. One of the first murder victims.
Betty Jean Bartlett, the 2-year old step sister of the murderess. They killed her with the butt of a gun.
Murderer statement shortly before his execution in 1959. A self-pitying, alienated sentiment, worthy of Jean-Paul Sartre, who is very much with us still.
Frank Reaugh painted a life he loved but a life that was already gone by the time he memorialized it. He painted from sketches he had drawn as a young man. He loved the big skies, the eternal prairies, the longhorn cattle, and the cowhands. He lovingly recreated these as best he could in paintings which are evocative and, to me at least, deeply moving.
Charles Goodnight was a giant of a pioneer. Far more exciting than the Rock Hudson and James Dean characters in Giant, the 1956 smash movie hit about early 20th-century Texas. And, of course, Mr. Goodnight and his friend, Oliver Loving, the characters who were fictionalized in Larry McMurtry’s novel, Lonesome Dove, were not filthy-mouthed but were much more colorful than those depicted in the novel and subsequent smash TV mini-series. And, yes, it is true that Goodnight returned his friend’s body back to Texas for burial in Weatherford, as in the novel.
At the age of 9 he rode bareback behind his parents’ covered wagon. At 14 he was hunting with the Caddo Indians beyond the frontier. At 25, he scouted for the Texas Rangers in the war with the Comanches and Kiowas. He preserved the Buffalo; founded a college; encouraged the settlement of the plains, and “led a long fight for law and order.” He died in 1929.
Both men, and much more, are featured in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas, about a twenty-minute drive south of Amarillo. If you are in the area, you might check it out if you have an afternoon to spare.
My father was born twelve years before Mr. Goodnight passed away and, looking back, I realize I knew men who grew up during that generation. I recall sitting at the El Pao bar or in the pocket billiards area in the presence of men now long gone. One, Mr. Marley, a Texan, would tease me saying he had more hair than my father. Mr. Marley was completely bald (naturally, that is; it was an era when shaved heads were not “in”). That would trigger me in defense of my father (in an era when triggers were something on guns). Mr. Marley would howl with laughter, and I would complain to my father, who would also be laughing. I can still see him walking from the club to the bachelor quarters, wearing his ten-gallon hat, the only one in the camp with such accoutrement. Mr. Marley was not a young man, but his expertise was in setting up mining camps and that was in great demand in that era.
I can see men like Mr. Marley growing up in the presence of men like Mr. Goodnight. Men of great stamina, good humor, and sterling character.
And, like Frank Reaugh, I am blessed to have the ability to remember a life that is no longer, but that can be evoked and which has lessons for us today, I believe.
A childhood friend met me in Caracas about fifteen years ago and in catching up on our respective lives, I spoke about Texas and it’s heritage of independence. My friend laughed, “Texas is just like [the Venezuelan western state] Zulia!”
Of course! There are some similarities between Texas and the land of my birth. Both are rugged lands with stark beauty, tempting landscapes, and beguiling skies. And, like Texas, Venezuela is an enchanting land but if you are careless, if you take things for granted, if you treat it as a sandlot or a plaything, it can be fatal.
Up to that conversation, I had seen great similarities between Kalamazoo, Michigan, and El Pao, the place of my birth. The friendliness and easy hospitality of southwest Michigan still enchants me, even after thirty years, and allows for easy and favorable comparison to the mining town of my childhood, including the fact that I made lifelong friends in both places. And the ruggedness of Texas (which, by the way, also characterizes the Michigan Upper Peninsula) allows for easy and favorable comparison to the striking landscape of Venezuela.
Frank Reaugh (1860-1945)
Frank Reaugh paintings. The last one (immediately above) is “The O Roundup”. It compels one to sit and contemplate it for a while. Charles Goodnight (1836-1929) This is believed to have been the last time Mr. Goodnight was able to ride a horse.
Michigan Upper Peninsula coastline Southwest Michigan coastline Downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan Los Llanos, Venezuela. Los Llanos is a vast area in Venezuela and also eastern Colombia.
One of countless sites on Venezuela’s northeastern coast.
