What I Learned About Sweden

My father emigrated from Sweden in 1913. He died when I was only 7 years old, so I know very little about him. During the summer of 1998 my wife and I traveled to Sweden, and through the kindness of relatives we were able to visit the small subsistence farm in Smaland where my father was born, and the cemetery where my grandparents were buried. My cousins knew only that my father, his brother and sister had gone to America before 1920. Upon returning home I decided to learn about my father’s homeland. I wrote the following essay as part of a series I was contributing to a local newspaper.

The Nordic gods held court at Svitiod (Old Uppsala) in ancient Thule, where a temple sheathed in wooden “dragon scales” and entwined in carved serpents housed idols of Odin, Thor, and Frej. Today, their sacred names stripped of pagan trappings are more familiar to us as days of the week: Wednesday (Onsdag-Odinsday), Thursday (Torsdag) and Friday (Fredag). In a sacred grove near the temple sacrificial offerings, “seven males of every species from man to the lowly cat,” hung from the tree branches.

About 470 years after Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, a humble missionary named Ansgar, a Frankish monk from Hamburg, Germany, came to what then was Sweden’s first large trading center, Birka, on the island of Bjoko in Lake Malar, an outpost predecessor to Stockholm. Ansgar set up a church, made a few conversions and then returned to Hamburg, where he soon was made a Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church.

Some years later, another missionary, Bishop Unni, also of Hamburg, brought his cross, mitre, crosier and keys to God’s kingdom to Birka and was summarily murdered for his trouble. 

For the next three centuries Christianity advanced somewhat awkwardly, sometimes violently, convert by convert into the legendary Realm of the Sveas.

The wandering Swedes (Sveas and Gotar, or Goths) of southeastern Sweden, were known as Varangians. Some of them had already paddled and portaged their way through Germany and western Russia. (Later, their descendants are identified in history as the Visigoths and Ostrogoths.) Drawn southward by mythical tales of a rich city known as “Miklagrad,” Varangians reached the Byzantine Empire capital, Constantinople. Upon arriving they threatened to destroy the city unless paid a generous ransom of gold. Viking Berserkers of southwestern Sweden and Denmark pillaged and burned Catholic churches in England, Ireland and France. Norwegian Viking longships ranged the North Atlantic, and settlements were established on Greenland and Iceland. A group of adventurous Norsemen led by Leif Eriksson and Thofinn Karlsefni spent three winters on the North American continent.

Early in the eleventh century, Norway, Denmark and Sweden for a time divided into separate kingdoms. It was near the end of that century, said the revered Swedish historian and epic novelist Vilhem Moberg, “The final struggle between heathendom and Christianity took place . . . The Christians pulled down the heathen temples and burned the wooden images. Just before the end of the century the temples of the gods of Uppsala, the citadel of heathendom, were overthrown. At long last the struggle had been decided.”

The Norwegian King Sigurd Jorsafalar in 1123 brought Christian teaching to an area of south central Sweden known as Smaland. Here existed the last refuge of the Norse gods. A legendary St. Sigfrid of Varead, Smaland, is said to have baptized the first Swedish Christian King, Olof Skotkonung. King Olof united the Sver and Gotar in one kingdom. He installed a missionary bishop at Skara, but also allowed Norse paganism equal status with Christianity.

One hundred years later, a successor to the Swedish crown, Erik Jedvarsson (later to become the patron saint of Sweden) put aside the old gods and promised to Christianize his subjects with “sword and word.”

Yet, five hundred years later Odin under the fictitious guise of “The Other” was still worshiped in secret according to the ancient Asa doctrine by Smaland peasants. Smalanders retained the belief that blind fate, an inescapable predestination was supreme over gods and men.

“The Smalanders were the last Swedes to become Christians,” wrote Moberg, a Smalander by birth, “and perhaps this is why heathendom has so long retained its grip on them. At their three great annual festivals, Christmas, Easter and Midsummer, the whole Swedish people still celebrate many old Asa customs, Magical in origin, they are relics of our forefathers’ nature worship.  But in the end, although it took three hundred years, the ‘White Christ’ overcame them. But in the depths of the folk-psyche notions of their power have survived right up to our own time.”

The Skanninge Assembly of 1248 confirmed the power of the Roman Church throughout the Swedish kingdom.

Traditional Viking democracy (from which we have inherited “bylaws” -- byalag-village law --  and that representative of the people in local assemblies known as an “alderman”) so long the heart and soul of village life began to give way to a modified form of European feudalism under King Magnus Ladulas around 1280. (The succession of the early Swedish kings, by the way, was not hereditary but by election.) Magnus inducted landed “nobility” into the Order of Knighthood, These feudal lords would compete with bishops and kings for a share of government power.

Catholic monasteries and convents were widespread in Sweden during the fourteenth century. Ecclesiastical parishes encompassed scattered rural villages. The Roman Catholic Church canonized St. Bridgitta of Vadstena in 1391. Bridgitta’s bones were interred with those of other saints in her church at Vadstena, and are venerated today by Catholic pilgrims.

Early in the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III had declared “Ecclesiastical liberty is nowhere better preserved then where the Roman church has full power in temporal as well as spiritual matters.” The tide of Catholicism had washed across Europe and left in its wake the Holy Roman Empire, a confederation of “more than 300 Church- and family-controlled units and free cities, often at odds with each other and obedient to the emperor when convenient.” The obedience of the Empire’s inhabitants was divided among feudal princes, dukes, counts, archbishops and city governments. The Emperor was little more than a figurehead sanctioned by Rome. As the sweeping flood of clerical power ebbed during the next three centuries, there appeared the golden light of the Renaissance. Humanism began to challenge religious dogma; a revival of ancient knowledge, classical literature and art, and a critical scholasticism spread by printed books threatened to undermine the Papacy.

Martin Luther, a German monk and professor of theology, criticized the Roman Church for what he believed to be abuses of its religious authority. He was excommunicated in 1521, but, protected by Frederick the Wise, Prince of Saxony, Luther continued to express his religious ideas and attracted a following. Luther’s teachings became known as Lutheranism, and led to the formation of the Lutheran Church. Luther’s teaching shifted the focus of religious life away from the ecclesiastical authority and sacramental traditions of the Roman Church to a family centered congregation. Luther proclaimed a direct spiritual relationship between God and believers who are redeemed through Christ. The “Reformation” of Martin Luther began a religious movement known as Protestantism.

The Reformation arrived in Sweden by the middle sixteenth century. Evangelical Lutheranism became the state religion around 1540. King Gustav I Vasa (1521-1560) founded the Swedish State Church, confiscated Roman Church property, and stripped the parish churches of their ornaments and religious furnishings. What had been church real estate became crown property. Some Medieval Romanesque and Gothic churches with statues and paintings remained, and have been restored, but renovations of many old churches incorporated Italian Baroque and Rococo art and architectural styles.

As Moberg said, by the 12th century all Swedes had been baptized, but it was not until four hundred years later did they realize they had been baptized into the wrong church.

“The struggle between heathendom and Christianity lasted for three hundred years. The armed struggle between Catholics and Protestants lasted for thirty, out of which the Swedes took part for eighteen. Several thousands of Swedish soldiers sacrificed their lives in the Thirty Years War, or else came home again as invalids to spend the rest of their days in the Vadstena hospital for invalided soldiers.

“No doctrines cost so much human life as doctrines of salvation. Yet history teaches us that humanity cannot do without them.”

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) began as a civil war between Roman Catholics and Protestants in the German states; it finally became a general struggle for territory and political power involving most of the European nations. The Swedish King, Gustav II Adolf (1611-1632), “the Lion of the North,” motivated by ambition for his native country, and to support Protestantism entered the war in 1630 by invading Germany with 13,000 soldiers. He hoped to unite all the Protestant countries into one kingdom. Two years later, near Leipzig, Gustav Adolf was killed while fighting the Catholic Imperialist army. In 1634 the Swedish army was destroyed in battle at Nordlingen. By the end of the war, Germany lay in ruins and would not recover for almost two hundred years. Thousands of Europeans fled to the New World with the hope of a better life.

As priests of a state church Lutheran clergymen were given the responsibility of recording every birth, death, and marriage, the names of those who left the parish and those that moved into it. The parish census even included names of residents who never came to church. Within various church archives are detailed records of parish members. The parish priest kept reports or household examinations, which contained much personal information about families. A few of these reports are dated as early as the 1620s, but the majority begin about 1750.

The churches remain in Sweden as a testament to the faithful, and as a vast repository of Swedish history. Although no longer well attended the churches are kept in good repair, are always open -- are never locked -- and are much a part of the cultural life of the people. 

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Flight and Fancy at the Turn of the Century

 It has been one hundred and eight years since the Wright brothers first historic plunge into what author Guy Murchie (The World Aloft) calls the “Ocean of the Sky.”
        One hundred years ago what we accept as simple fact today was thought of as mostly romantic fantasy and futuristic speculation.
        The Wright brothers first successful flight had been preceded by decades of predictions and fanciful tales.
        Nineteenth century visionaries saw the future of flight realized in many ways. They imagined hybrid, sausage-shaped balloons carrying ship-like appendages into the air; and mechanical birdlike flyers with flapping wings.
        Looking beyond the compass of scientific fact, turn-of-the-century writers, inspired by the “romantic fiction” of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, and illustrators of “nickel thrillers” defined the popular images of aeronauts and airships.
        It was then, during the late years of the Victorian era, that steel hulls, powerful steam engines and electric dynamos gave muscle to the ships of the world’s sea powers. In 1907 the United States boldly sent The Great White Fleet of sixteen spit-and-polish battleships on a round-the-world cruise as a show of ultimate international power.      
        The use of nautical terms to describe aeronauts and their craft clothed the improbable with familiar analogies to Victorian era naval power. That tradition has been firmly embedded in the jargon of science fiction; it persists today in the most futuristic of Star Trek adventures.
        Those nineteenth century images became so compelling that many people believed stealthy, searchlight wielding aeronauts were roaming the sky in steam-powered, electrically-energized, gasbag frigates -- particularly at night. If their home port was not of this earth, it may well have been beyond.
        Item: (The Kankakee Times, Wednesday, April 7, 1897)
        “Flying Machine in Michigan: Niles, Mich., April 3 -- In many towns in southwestern Michigan people say that last Thursday night they saw an airship. At Galesburg about 10 o’clock that night people heard a sharp, crackling sound, and saw a huge black object tipped with flame at a great distance above the earth and moving northward. Some declare they heard human voices coming from the object.”
        On April 27 the Times printed a squib offering a likely reason for a rash of nationwide airship sightings. Were the sightings due to the unusual brightness of the planet Venus, then visible in the evening sky between 7:00 and 9:30 p.m.?
       This explanation did little to dispel the belief that during winter and spring of 1897, a phantom airship appeared to be cruising eastward from the West Coast.
       In mid January there were sightings at Lodi and Acampo, California; in Kansas and Nebraska during March. “The airships were generally described as cigar-shaped, apparently metallic, with wings, propellers, fins, and other appendages,” says Ronald D. Story, editor of the 1980 Encyclopedia of UFOs. “At night, they appeared to be brilliant lights, with dark superstructures sometimes visible behind the lights.”
       At 2:00 a.m. on the morning of April 9, “the vessel had arrived in Chicago,” writes J. P. Chaplin (Rumor, Fear and the Madness of Crowds), “and was observed by thousands of people who stood about the streets . . . to watch its maneuvering in the early morning sky. There was general agreement among the viewers that the apparition was either an airship or some kind of floating object hovering miles above the earth. Some -- ‘men of unquestioned veracity’ -- declared it was definitely an airship. They described its shape as ‘cigar-like’ and alluded to its ‘great wings.’”
      After viewing the object through “his powerful telescope” a Northwestern University professor identified the airship as the star “Alpha Orionis.”
      In 1923, in his book New Lands, Charles Fort, a journalist who collected and published reports of weird mysteries for which science could provide no explanations, wrote a commentary on the Alpha Orionis event:
        “Upon the 28th of April, 1897, Venus was in inferior conjunction. In Popular Astronomy, 5-55, it is said that many persons had written to the Editor, telling of 'airships' that had been seen, about this time. The editor writes that some of the observations were probably upon the planet Venus, but that others probably were related to toy balloons, ‘which were provided with various colored lights.’
       “The first group of our data, I take from dispatches to the New York Sun, April 2, 11,16, and 18. First of April -- ‘the mysterious light’ in the sky of Kansas City -- something like a powerful searchlight. ‘It was directed toward the earth, traveling east at a rate of sixty miles an hour.’ About a week later, something was seen in Chicago. ‘Chicago’s alleged airship is believed to be a myth, in spite of the fact that a great many persons say that they have seen the mysterious night-wanderer. A crowd gazed at strange lights, from the top of a downtown skyscraper, and Evanston students declare they saw the swaying red and green lights.’ . . . There does not seem to be an association between this object [the Chicago sighting] and the planet Venus, which upon this night was less than three weeks from nearest approach to this earth. Nevertheless this object could not have been Venus, which had set hours earlier. Prof. Hough, of the Northwestern University, is quoted -- that the people had mistaken the star Alpha Orionis for an airship. Prof. Hough explains that astronomeric effects may have given a changing red and green appearance to this star. Alpha Orionis as a northern star is some more astronomy by the astronomers who teach astronomy daytimes and then relax when night comes. That atmospheric conditions could pick out this one star and not affect other brilliant stars in Orion is more astronomy. At any rate the standardized explanation that the thing was Venus disappears.”
        Fort notes other sighting:
        “April 16 -- reported from Benton, Texas, but this time as a dark object that passed across the moon. Reports from other towns in Texas: Fort Worth, Dallas, Marshall, Ennis, and Beaumont -- ‘It was shaped like a Mexican cigar, large in the middle, and small at both ends, with great wings, resembling those of an enormous butterfly. It was brilliantly illuminated by the rays of two great searchlights, and was sailing in a southeasterly direction, with the velocity of the wind, presenting a magnificent appearance.’”
        No satisfactory explanation for these 1897 sightings exists. Story says: “Aviation historians state that craft such as were reported were not operational in the United States during the late 1890s. . . . One is forced to admit that the strangers in the skies of 1897 remain as much of a mystery to us as they were to our ancestors.”
        Tales of turn-of-the-century phantom airships read like flying saucer stories of the 1950s and ‘60s. Back in 1897 there were claims of landings, fake photographs of airships, sighting of “aeronauts,” etc.
        One of the more bizarre 1897 reports detailed a sighting on April 17 at Aurora, Texas. Writes Ronald D. Story (The Encyclopedia of UFOs):
        “A huge silver-colored, cigar-shaped object . . . came in low over the Aurora town square, zoomed north above Judge J. S. Proctor’s house, which was located on a hill, struck the judge’s windmill and exploded.” A Signal Corps Service Officer is said to have identified the dead pilot as a Martian!
         Public curiosity about the planet Mars had been titillated by Percival Lowell’s observations of so-called Martian canals from his observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, and his published speculation that the canals were artificial. The following year, 1898, H. G. Wells would publish War of the Worlds, the story of a Martian invasion of Earth.
        On 23 April, 1897, cattle rustling aeronauts allegedly made off with a calf belonging to a Leroy, Kansas, rancher. The hide, head and legs were found several miles away. This story and the Aurora, Texas, incident were proved later to be hoaxes.
        J. P. Chaplin (Rumor, Fear and the Madness of Crowd) points out that controlled balloon flights had been made since 1852. “Many of the devices employed by inventors in their attempts to overcome propulsion problems are even more fantastic then some of the details in the airship reports of 1897,” said Chaplin. “There can be little doubt that these pioneer experiments provided an aura of credibility to the reports of an airship cruising over the Midwest.”
        An example of one of these fantastic devices is remembered by author Rupert T. Gould (More Oddities and Enigmas), who as a young man saw a machine in a Paris museum that looked ”like a huge black bat.” It was the creation of Clement Ader; a steam-driven, man-carrying flying machine named Eole. Gould said the strange machine was officially tested in 1897, “before representatives of the French Army, at Satory near Paris.” The test failed.
        Our next local phantom airship sighting is recorded in The Kankakee Daily Republican, Wednesday, April 29, 1908:
        “STRANGE LIGHT SEEN IN SKY; IS IT AN AIRSHIP? W. S. Taylor and family North Harrison Avenue, have been seeing things at night.
        “A couple of weeks ago, C. I. & S. employees who work nights reported a strange light in the skies above. W. S. Taylor and family also saw it. Last night the Taylor family noticed again.
        “Was it an airship?
        “Or a balloon?
        “Or were they just seein’ things at night?
        “The railroad employees swear it was an airship and say they could see the men in it. Mr. Taylor and his family say it was too far away to distinguish what it was, but it looked like a balloon.
       “‘We saw it one night a couple of weeks ago,’ said one of the Taylor family today. ‘And last night we saw it again. It was off in the northwest. All we could see was a light. It looked like a toy balloon.
       “‘The first time we saw it, it was sailing along smoothly, but last night it was windy and the light kept bobbing back and forth.’”
        May 15, 1908: “AIRSHIP IS SEEN AGAIN. The airship -- strange light -- the spot in the heavens -- or what ever you want to call it, was seen again last night.
        "It was seen by several people in various parts of town.
        “Mrs. Mary McFarlan, and family, 168 Washington Avenue, saw the strange object in the skies shortly after 9 o’clock, and insist it was an airship. They watched it through a field glass as it came from the east, sailed over where they stood and disappeared in the northwest.
        “It was plainly visible to the naked eye and is described by one who saw it as looking like a large light, red on one side and yellow on the other.
        “Miss Leah Ollis who lives on North Greenwood Avenue also saw it while on her way home last night. She says it looked like a star, only much larger and lighter colored.
        “Miss Martha Birr is another who saw the strange light.”
        Journalist Charles Fort (Strange Lands) reports that during the summer of 1908 sightings of mysterious lights in the sky also had come from Bristol, Conn., “and later from Pittsfield, Mass., and from White River Junction, Vt. ‘In all these cases, however, no balloon could be found, all known airships being accounted for.’”
        Fort also wrote that in December of the following year, 1909, the New York Tribune reported “a ‘mysterious airship’ had appeared over the town of Worcester, Mass., ‘sweeping the heavens with a searchlight of tremendous power.’ It had come from the southeast, and traveled northwest, then hovering over the city, disappearing in the direction of Marlboro. Two hours later, it returned. ‘Thousands thronged the streets, watching the mysterious visitor.’ Again it hovered, then moving away, heading first to the south and then to the east.”
        The Kankakee Daily Republican, Monday, February 14, 1910: “SAW AN AIRSHIP. The train crew of No. 90, on the C. I. & S. consisting of Conductor Sid Williams, Brakeman J. F. Roach and F. C. Andrews, while on their eastbound trip at North Liberty, Ind. Sunday night, passed beneath an airship bound in the opposite direction. Brakeman Roach was enabled by its searchlight to see the hands on his watch clearly enough to tell what time it was.”Tuesday, February 15, 1910: “AIRSHIP, OR WHAT? IS THE QUESTION. Others Who Saw It Sunday evening -- Lights of Blue and Red Sailing In sky.
         “Was it an airship that passed over the eastern part of Kankakee early Sunday evening, or what was the blue and red light seen traveling through the heavens, by members of the train crew on the Chicago, Indiana and Southern railroad and also by several farmers living east of the city -- which light could be plainly seen from the ground, and whose rays illuminated the surface of the earth enough to enable telling time by one’s watch.
        “On seeing the mention of the light in Monday night’s Republican, Mrs. Charles Saville, residing two and one-half miles east of Kankakee on the Exline Road, called up this office this morning to state that she was sure she had seen the ‘boat with wings’ soaring through the air.
        “Said Mrs. Saville today: ‘I don’t recollect just what time of the evening it was but anyhow, I had occasion to go out in the back yard Sunday evening, and as I left the back porch I noticed a peculiar light and shadow traveling over the orchard.
        “‘At first I was considerably puzzled as to what could be causing it to be so light. The light seemed to be disappearing to the east. On looking toward the skies, I saw what appeared to be a ball of fire. It was reddish white and also east a bluish glow over the orchard. It was really good and light. When I first noticed it I did not think such a thing as an airship, but I am now certain that it must have been. It was traveling fast and when I first saw it, it did not appear very high, but as it traveled to the east, it appeared to be getting higher and higher.
        “‘I could not notice any outline of an airship, for the lights were unusually strong and bright and the night was dark.’”
        As in the case of the 1897 airships, there are no satisfactory explanations for these sightings in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Note: A just published book, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Bases by Anni Jacobsen, Little Brown and Company, 2011, offers explanations of some of the sightings beginning in the 1950s.

The Attack of the Killer Clowns

It could be a script for the next Dark Knight graphic novel.

The nation is enveloped in a gray fog of intellectual confusion. The populace is on the edge of ominous social and economic crisis.

The preceding era of deliberate skullduggery by an administration, whose policies have made serious dents in citizens’ civil rights, has created a climate of fear and cynicism that encourages unprincipled men to seek fortune and fame as court jesters to a pride of testy corporate privateers and a small cohort of hidebound senior statesmen — the conservative prone “Unmovables”: zombies with an ideologues’ all-consuming appetite for the status quo.

Those jesters, these garrulous bald-faced mountebanks, profess only to be “entertainers” (I’ll-huff-and-I’ll-puff-and-I’ll-blow-your-house-down Limbaugh, Off-with-their-heads! O’Reilly, “Liar-liar-pants-on-fire Beck and other lesser personalities of that ilk, ego driven humbugs — EDHs.); entertainers who secretly envision themselves as “Killer Clowns,” the zealot assassins targeting the new administration. They saw an untested president as a new kid on the playground of public opinion. So with the bravado of the school bully they launched a barrage of innuendo, half-truths and outright lies. Their audience stood on the broad middle ground of national politics; men and women who were fearful of what lay ahead, worried about new taxes, reluctant to embrace radical change, and opposed to any legislation that might be tainted by socialist sentiment. The Killer Clowns, these minions of the unshrivin, bared their daggers and schemed to bring reason to its knees and their victim to ultimate failure.

If this were a Dark Knight tale it would be time to call in the Caped Crusader.

But this is no comic book fantasy, it’s the state of the nation.

This is the United States of America at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century. It is a time when sincere and clear-eyed bipartisan leadership is critical to the nation’s survival. There are voices of reason on both sides. Yet we have one political party leading a hell-bent-for-leather charge toward a utopian tomorrow on Don Quixote’s horse; and another party acting as if its members were truculent children refusing to put away their favorite toys, intractably frozen in opposition to every progressive thought, even to the most basic of human needs — universal health care.

The Killer Clowns and their EDH counterparts having poisoned the well of mutual trust, triumphed. They gleefully sacrificed the bright promise of tomorrow to the gods of chaos, while standing on the trash heap of venality. It is betrayal of civility during a gathering meltdown; it is infamy writ large across the cherished ideals of a democratic people.

So what lies ahead?

A mobilization of the extreme ends of the political spectrum in angry response to the prodding of advertising revenue hungry mass media?

Disaffected socialist radicals and ultra conservative secessionists egged on by autocrats who are eager to exploit every failed nuance of government policy for the sake of increasing their political supremacy?

There are lemmings of various stripes on each side who follow only megaphones and TV cameras. Every corsair has his crew of sycophants. Multinational corporations are stateless wielders of economic power with self-serving interests and deep, deep treasure chests. Because of a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court, corporate buccaneers have a strategic opportunity to lob salvos of money into the political arena from their offshore flagships. That’s equivalent to throwing gasoline onto already kindled fires of public outrage.

When governments fail, want-a-be despots with an obsession for absolute power and wealth aspire. We are standing on dangerous ground under a threatening sky. Insurgents hoist tea bags and red flags into the darkness to test the wind. In Jeffersonian prose the surly wind whispers, “revolution.”

Wolves of T’auwkiki: Resting Thunder and the Mahegan people

A winter camp of the Potawatomi (Nesh-na-bek) nestled on the north bank of the T’auwkiki (Tea-AUW-ki-ki) River. The dome-shaped wigwams, half buried in snow drifts, were arranged in a circle. Thin columns of gray smoke drifted up from small holes at the top of each wigwam. The men had gone hunting. The Women were at work making rabbit fur moccasins and doing winter chores inside the wigwams. Several small children played fox and goose at the center of the circle.
            Inside his lodge, Nen-ke-we-be (Resting Thunder) sat cross-legged on his bed of cedar boughs and deer skins. His favorite elk robe was wrapped around his shoulders. The fire at the center of the lodge made dancing shadows on the reed mat walls. Resting Thunder was the oldest and wisest “mesho,” grandfather, in his village. He had been a respected warrior and hunter and although his hair was now as white as snow, his back was lodge pole straight. He could still pull the strongest bow and send an arrow speeding to its target. No hunter shot a musket truer than Nenkewebe. The old man watched the flickering shadows and remembered olden times and the festival dances of past summers.
            “Mesho!” said a small voice. “Can we come in?”
            Resting Thunder saw a little boy standing in the lodge doorway. “Byan,” said Resting Thunder, beckoning with his hand. “Jib de ben, sit down.”
            Several boys and girls filed in and sat along the curving wall of the lodge.
           “Tell us a story, Mesho,” they said in a chorus. “Tell us, tell us . . .”
            Resting Thunder looked into the fire for a long moment.
          “Once, long ago, when I was a young,” he said, “I worked for an old Frenchman who had a trading house up on the river the wabinini call St. Joseph. In the winter he sent men down the T’auwkiki to collect the muskrat and beaver skins our people took from the marshlands. These men made a winter camp at a place called French Island, on the great north bend of the river. My job was to supply them with fresh meat. I would go up onto Tassinong Prairie hunting for birds. I hunted deer along Sandy Hook Creek.
          “The Mahegan, the Wolf People, lived on Tassinong Prairie. As you have been taught, they may run on four legs and be covered with fur, but they are our brothers. The first thing I had to do when I started hunting was to make peace with them.
            “Several days passed before one of the Mahegans came to see what I was doing. He was the pack leader. His eyes were yellow and his fur the color of fallen leaves. I sat down, took out my pipe, filled it with tobacco and offered him a smoke. I asked the Mahegan for permission to hunt on their land. Then I put some dried venison on the ground. The Mahegan took the meat and trotted off. I later came to call him Annug, Morning Star, because every day before sunrise this wolf would call to his pack and bring them down to drink at Sandy Hook.
           “I hunted on Tassinong Prairie for many years. Annug became my friend. Often as I sat by a game trail waiting for a deer to come along, Annug sat near me. I’ve been told by some Neshnabe that they can talk with wolves, speak their language and understand what they say. I could not, but Annug and I spent a long time together and we seemed to know the thoughts of each other.
            “After a while, if a deer failed to appear, Annug would shake the dust from his fur and leave. Then, when the sun had moved four fingers across the sky, I would hear the distant voices of the Mahegan people. A deer would come running down the trail to within range of my musket, followed by Annug and his pack. After thanking the deer for providing us all with food—it is important to do this so that the deer will return to another life—I took the hind quarters back to French Island, and left the rest for the Mahegans.
            “Annug had a wife. Because she moved so gracefully and always seemed in good humor, I called her Azen, Sky Spirit. Early one morning during the Moon of the Strawberries, Annug and Azen came down to Sandy Hook with two pups. They were small furry balls and blue-eyed. I stayed very quiet. Azen brought them close by. The smallest pup was a girl. I called her Kikyago, which means girl. The boy I called Sasika, which means first born.
            “Oh I could tell you more about the Mahegan people, how the wabinini found out they were living on Tassingnon Prairie and told me to bring their hides to them. That I will tell you some other time.” Resting Thunder pulled the elk robe tighter and closed his eyes.
            “Megwetch, Mesho!” said the children. “Thank you Grandfather.” And they went back to their games in the snow.

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Revenge of the Bluegill

“If that son of a gun had a bigger mouth he’d take my finger off,” said the man pointing to a fish in a galvanized tank.

        The man was Leo Pachner and the fish was a half-pound bluegill.

       Leo’s admiration for the scrappy little sunfish was legendary—not only was it a game fighter when caught, he said, but when filleted it made a tasty shore lunch. Leo had been feeding bluegill food pellets in this tank for a year or more. As editor and publisher of Farm Pond Harvest magazine he had invested time and money in experimental aquaculture projects that he featured in his magazine.

     Leo was born in Chicago’s back-of-the-yards district in 1908, and introduced to life in the great outdoors at nine years old, when his family became sugar beet sharecroppers near Unionville, Michigan. After harvest season the family stayed in Michigan, and took up hunting and fishing to survive until the next summer's crop.

    Often Leo’s opinions on fish nurturing rankled professional aquaculturists. But Leo’s advice was widely accepted by those pond owners and fishermen to whom he preached the necessity of conservation, fish feeding, and pond management.

     He is a member of the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, helped found the Sport Fishing Institute, an expert fly fisherman, once a partner in an artificial bait company (P&K Bait), and inventor of the automatic retrieving fly reel. Nothing gave Leo greater pleasure then taking some youngster aside handing him or her a fly rod and teaching the rudiments of fly fishing, particularly if bluegill were to be had. To Leo, fly fishing was an everyman’s sport, and not to be enjoyed only by the wealthy or the privileged.

     Leo is no longer with us. If he were, the flap over bluegill invading Japanese waters and preying on native species, would bring him a feeling of, well, sweet revenge. (Japanese Emperor Akihito introduced bluegill to a Fisheries Agency research institute in 1960.) It’s ironic that the bluegill Leo so admired, and encouraged its acceptance as Illinois’ state fish would overrun Japanese rivers and vex Japanese authorities.

    Because after World War II Leo’s P&K Bait Company eventually went out of business. It could not compete, Leo told me, with the cheap fishing tackle flooding the sporting goods stores from Japan.

Celluloid Dreams on the Silver Screen: “To the delirious eye/More lovely things of Paradise and Love.”

“I have been happy—tho’ but in a dream./I have been happy—and I love the theme—/Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life—/As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty stride/Of semblance with reality which brings/To the delirious eye more lovely things/Of Paradise and Love—and all our own!/Than young hope in his sunniest hour hath known.”

—Edgar Allen Poe, “Dreams,” 1827

What is a motion picture but a writer’s dream made animate and articulate by light and sound. “That Holy dream,” said Poe in another poem, “While all the world were chiding/Hath cheered me as a lovely beam/A lonely spirit guiding.”

Can you imagine a world without “movies”? What would happen to the popcorn market?

There would not have been or continue to be those demigods of the silver-screen dream. They come before us in a hundred lovely and handsome guises, in fleeting, shadowy, misty stride, a semblance of reality that transcends time.

What would our life be like without those spirits of light and sound transfigured upon the silver screen, those once-upon-a-time motion picture stars of my youth?—Yvonne DeCarlo, Hedy Lamarr, Ingrid Bergman, Groucho Marx, Roy Rogers, Boris Karloff, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and, of course, Kankakee’s own Andy McBroom?

Never heard of him? You might know him by his professional name, David Bruce.

Not the proprietor of a local automobile franchise! Today’s owners of which by some peculiar twist of fate first acquired the automobile dealership once owned by the McBroom family; then innocently chose to use the first names of the co-owners, David and Bruce, as the name of their dealership.

Seldom do we have the opportunity to have any direct, meaningful contact with members of the motion picture industry. But occasionally “fate steps in,” as the song says, and life takes an unexpected turn. Only due to another improbable twist of fate would I meet and eventually work with that celebrated celluloid hero of my youth, David Bruce.

Marden “Andy” McBroom was born in Kankakee to Mr. and Mrs. Vernon McBroom in 1916. He graduated from Northwestern University, acted in 72 motion pictures for Warner Bros, and Universal Studios using the stage name David Bruce. He appeared in films with Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith, Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, Deanna Durbin, Yvonne DeCarlo, Randolph Scott, Ronald Reagan, Robert Mitchum, and Loretta Young. He was seen on TV in Playhouse 90, Schlitz Playhouse, The Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid, Burns and Allen, The Red Skelton Show and Hopalong Cassidy. Gillette Razor, Schlitz Beer, Camel cigarettes, both Standard Oil and Lever Bros. hired Andy to do TV commercials. He wrote scripts for Tales of the Texas Rangers and The Beulah Show, and appeared in 80 stage plays, many of which he directed.

I met David Bruce, Andy, in the spring of 1966. He was living in Kankakee at the time. I was introduced to him by Jim Marek, his brother-in-law and owner of Colonial Studios. I was working for Mobil Chemical Company and had hired Jim to do some photographs for an advertisement. We needed a model to pose for pictures. Jim persuaded Andy to take the job. A few days later we were standing among tropical plants in Garfield Park Conservatory (Andy dressed in bush jacket and pith helmet), where I found myself saying: “Mr. Bruce, please stand there, look this way, no, raise your head a bit . . .” Strobe lights are flashing and Jim’s Haselblad is chewing up yards of film. What the hell am I doing? I asked myself. (David Bruce was a movie star—big time—when he came to talk to our high school assembly in 1945; he was co-starring with Deanna Durbin in Lady on a Train at the Paramount Theater.) “Your expression (my voice sounded odd, remote and a bit squelched), ah, Mr. Bruce, look . . . look as if you see something, ah, something that really catches your, uhm, eye, er, attention.”

Well, I’m not sure Andy felt happy about my “stage direction.” The full page ad, however, turned out very nice, thanks to Jim’s excellent photography. It was featured in a wood finishing magazine and used as the theme of a trade show display in Louisville, Kentucky.

At that time I was writing some material for Imperial International Learning. I mentioned to Andy that they were looking for someone with his talent and experience. A year later Andy and I were working together at Imperial.

Andy was a production manager, and developed dramatic material for educational audio tapes. He even recruited me for a role or two in some of his stories. One tape is particularly memorable: Andy, his daughter Amanda, several of the Imperial Players, including me, have roles in a dramatic, recreated moment in history. It wasn’t the movies, but at the time it seemed like the next best thing.

Many dream of a life of stardom in the camera’s eye, and the actor’s art — as transitory as the moon’s shimmering reflected sunlight on dancing waves — given immortality in microscopic grains of silver on celluloid. Only a celebrated few out of legions, have the Midas touch that turns celluloid dreams into the movie Mogul’s golden dreams.

“A small group of actors, fresh out of college hit New York in the 1937-38 season to try to make it on Broadway,” recalled Ardis Marek, Andy McBroom’s sister. “It was a disastrous time as the country tried to work its way back from the devastating depression. Theater was moribund, few plays were mounted, and only experienced, sure fire draws were being cast.”

Within that group, who were enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, was Ardis’s brother, Andy McBroom, and three of his friends, Dotty Keaton, Phillis Isley and Bob Walker. Between acting assignments they took whatever odd jobs available. Andy was hired as a page at CBS; Dotty and Phillis had waitress work, Bob spent a summer on a South American freighter. They shared a flat in Greenwich Village and parcelled out care packages from home.

Had these four seen their future at that moment, would they have turned aside from the bright dream of stardom? Probably not. Utah born, twenty-year-old Robert Walker, already emotionally wounded by his parents divorce, was high strung and vulnerable, slight of build, boyish in appearance. He would eventually take a “star turn” in the World War II movie, See Here Private Hargrove; Alfred Hitchcock would give him an unforgettable roll as a psychopathic killer in the 1951 nail-bitter, Strangers on a Train. Phyllis Isley from Tulsa Oklahoma, angelic of face and sensual of body, would at 24 be christened Jennifer Jones by the Moguls, star as the tragic Bernadette of Lourdes, and live the golden dream as best actress of 1943. Dorothy Keaton within a year would surrender the acting life. Andy in the guise of David Bruce, tall, athletic, answered Hollywood’s call for the hero, the swashbuckler, the stoic military man, the laconic cowboy, and the impassioned adventurer. Andy’s career would be longer, more diverse and perhaps more satisfying than those of his companions. But he would never focus down to one brilliant golden moment of celluloid afterlife. His ubiquitous talents as actor, writer, narrator and stage director; his cultivated air of urbane civility and an innate wit for light comedy, would never be transfigured by a Mogul’s Midas touch.

Bob and Phillis found work as a team in Greenwich Village’s Cherry Lane Theater at fifty cents a performance. Then a call came from Phillis’s home town of Tulsa asking her to join a dramatic group. Phillis suggested the four form a stock company, accept the offer and say good-bye to New York.

When their Grayhound bus pulled into Chicago, Andy offered them a weekend stopover at his parent’s home in Kankakee. While there Dotty Keaton decided she would not continue on to Oklahoma, nor return to her home in Oregon. The McBrooms offered her a job in their restaurant and she remained in Kankakee for seven years.

“Oklahoma provided audiences with some good plays,” said Ardis, “and the actors with the experience they needed.”

Bob saved his $25-a-week salary for 14 weeks. On January 2, 1939, Robert Walker and Phillis Isley were married.

Andy, Bob and Phillis then journeyed on to Hollywood. Phillis soon was cast as an ingenue in Tracy’s G-Men, and a western with John Wayne, The New Frontier. However, the roles did not keep coming in and the Walkers returned to New York, where they took up housekeeping in a $16-a-month room at the rear of a tenement.

Andy soon found himself under contract to Universal Studios and in a number of motion pictures. His 1940 filmography lists 13 appearances in such diverse movies as The Sea Hawk, River’s End and Dispatch from Reuters and others.

As we see annually on TV, the pride and power of Hollywood’s Moguls still have the Midas touch of fame and fortune for talented artists of the motion picture industry. Perhaps the gift of an Academy Oscar does not gild the recipient as augustly as in the era of the strict studio system. There was a time in the 1930s and ‘40s when future stars were groomed carefully, pampered and contractually bound as celluloid chattel. For some, the happiest days of managed stardom were luxurious beyond imagination; for others, they were far too short and sometimes ruinous.

In 1940, when Phyllis and Robert Walker returned to New York from Hollywood, their future in films seemed at an end. The bright hope of stardom paled in the melancholy shadows of Phyllis’s bleak tenement apartment. Bob answered casting calls for stage work. He took odd jobs to support a growing family. Two sons were born. Then, favored by a bit of luck, Bob got a role in the radio soap opera, Yesterday’s Children. By 1943 the Walkers were again on their way to Hollywood.

Their Kankakee friend Andy McBroom, who had remained in Hollywood, married Cynthia Sory in January 1943. He also had appeared, more or less as a face in the crowd, in several action motion pictures—The Sea Wolf, Sergeant York, Flying Tigers, Gung Ho! The parts were small but they led to bigger assignments.

Universal Studios offered Andy a second banana part in a movie billed as “A Sensation in Horror!”; sharing the romantic lead as the fiance of B movie queen, Evelyn Ankers, and victim of George Zucco’s “ancient Mayan nerve gas.” As the plot coagulates, Zucco, aka Dr. Alfred Morris, hoping to romance Ankers, slips Andy a Mayan “mickey.” The devious doctor is unaware that lurking in the background is another Ankers fancier, the inscrutable Turhan Bey. Under the influence of the nerve gas Andy becomes what the movie’s title describes as “The Mad Ghoul,” a revengeful Zombie. Although this parchment-skinned horror was not as fearsome as the Mummy, Dracula, the Wolfman or Frankenstein’s monster he did provide a few Saturday afternoon thrills at the long-gone Luna Theater on Kankakee’s South Schuyler. Fortunately there was no sequel and Andy escaped the fate of other actors who were forever breathing life into the living dead to earn their bread and butter.

Nineteen forty-three was an auspicious year for Phyllis Flora Isley Walker. David O. Selznick changed her name to Jennifer Jones and cast her as Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette. In a twinkling of the camera’s magic eye, at the age of 24, Phyllis ascended to that seventh heaven of cinematic fame, best actress of 1943.

The Walkers soon were separated. He took small rolls in Bataan and Madam Curie; she prepared for the next Selznick epic, Since You Went Away. This film starring Claudette Colbert, Shirley Temple, Lionel Barrymore had the pretensions of a previous Selznick blockbuster, Gone With the Wind. Estranged in life the Walkers were reunited as lovers in Since You Went Away.

For her portrayal of Jane Hilton in Since You Went Away, the Academy nominated Jennifer Jones as best supporting actress of 1944. The same year, Robert Walker triumphed as a journalist GI in See Here Private Hargrove.

Jennifer Jones and David O. Selznick were married in 1949. She continued to be cast in a number of first run movies including Madam Bovery, Ruby Gentry, and A Farewell to Arms. Her last movie, Towering Inferno, was in 1974.

A dispirited Robert Walker died unexpectedly in 1951, soon after finishing what is considered the best performance of his career as Bruno Antony in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.

Meanwhile, Universal gave David Bruce a small part in a Deanna Durbin movie, Christmas Holiday. He then played opposite Louise Allbritton in That Night With You. In a film that put Yvonne De Carlo’s name up in lights, Salome, Where She Danced, Andy shared with Rod Cameron a rivalry for Yvonne’s affections, and he dueled with villainous Albert Dekker. Andy was given a romantic lead in the 1945 Deanna Durbin comedy-murder mystery, Lady on a Train. He later had top billing in a low budget 1948 production of Prejudice; and was featured as Daniel Boone in Young Daniel Boone in 1950.

In 1952 and ‘53, Andy played Harry Henderson on the Beulah TV series. He also was writing scripts for Tales of the Texas Rangers, making guest appearances on TV’s Lone Ranger, Sky King and The Cisco Kid, and acting in several adventure movies. The last one was Jungle Hell, with Sabu, “the elephant boy,” in 1956.

Andy’s wife Cynthia died in 1962.

After several years absence Andy returned to Hollywood intending to resume his acting career. He died on May 3, 1976, while working on the set of a TV series.