Perhaps you grew up in a small town like I did. I keep up with the local newspaper even though I no longer live in that little still semi-rural backwoods burg, population 600, with a struggling city nearby that is still going through the tailings of its own version of ‘the rust belt.’

You might remember my article about the good old guy who made tin can scarecrows and drove around with them in the front and back seats, delivering them to various small truck farmers. He got stopped on the toll road for carrying too many passengers at one time (all the scarecrows had hats on their 5 pound bucket heads.)

You probably remember the recipe from my hometown newspaper for fresh-ground black pepper oatmeal to strengthen your health, and the advice on how to pick the blueberries before the birds do, and how soybeans are down, but corn is up.

You might remember too about the sad parents this summer who lost their children when the kids dove from the jetties into Lake Michigan and hit sand bars instead open water, breaking their necks and dying. The legislature is thinking of banning diving from jetties. Since I was a child, every summer there have been deaths from jetty diving by people who don’t know the ways of big water and rush into it all too soon.

Also this time of year, for decades beginning in the 1930s, townspeople who had made the 200 mile round trip to Chicago often brought back this one issue of the Chicago Trib for these two pictures (see the masthead of this article) of Indian Summer that ran every October without fail… up until a couple years ago.

The artist of “Indian Summer” was an Irishman born in the late 1800s, name: John McClutcheon. My dad couldn’t read, but he always thought he could ‘read’ pictures out loud. It took me years …until I learned to read in grade school… to realize that Dad was making up the dialogue to the Sunday ‘funny papers’ when he ‘read’ them to me.

He did the same for these two pictures of “Indian Summer” that ran in the Trib every year. For years I thought he was reading the words under the picture. But, he wasnt. He was making it up out of whole cloth.

This is what he ‘read’ to me: He said that long ago, new people came to this land, the wood and lakelands, but there were already people here, an old old people. The original people were called Indians. Just like in Hungary which had been run over by Huns, Hapsburgs, Turks and others over the centuries, Dad said the Indians were run over too. Run over and run over til there were hardly any left.

But, he said, like the Hungarians, the Indians knew corn and wheat. The Indians knew about seeds and trees and important things like about singing and dancing and drinking and smoking. They knew about the best of life, hunting and gambling and music and love of horses… that Indians were just exactly like Hungarians, good people.

Dad would point to these two colored pictures in the Chicago Trib (a full-color picture in a newspaper back then was a wondrous thing) and say that we just had to see that no one can wipe out a people like that. They come back. People who love and live like that… You cannot kill them. They come back.

See, he’d say, there are the corn stalks all tied together, but really, the spirit of the corn is the true home for people all across the world. The simple seed keeps even poor people alive. The seed is the thing that makes ten of itself for every one of it you plant. All you need is one seed, to keep coming back and back.

That’s how Dad ‘read’ the pictures to me.

Tonight as I was writing this for you, I wondered why the Chi Trib wasn’t running “Indian Summer” any more. In my research I found that some thought the story that had traditionally accompanied the two pictures, was racist.

So, I found and read the old written story in all its James Whitcomb Riley-esquery, and will put it here for you to decide how you see it.

I can see in McCutcheon’s story, the utter obfuscation of the annihilation of the Indians, even though near where I grew up, the French and the British and the Indians were often strong allies and intermarried. But, I also can see the story is from a ‘blind-in-one-eye, cain’t see outa t’other’ time past. Yet, the Magyars, like the Pottawatomie and other tribes of my hometown area, are a tribal people also… and maybe Dad read the pictures pretty well from his wild Magyar heart….

Dad was no sentimental immigrant, but a brave, brutal, hard-working, and hard-drinking man. And the story he ‘read’ wasn’t just his story; it was and is everyone’s, I think. Sometimes, I think I’d rather carve this on edifices: No matter how many times anyone or any group tries to kill a people, a radiant idea, a priceless thing… if just one seed is left, in just a few dots of dirt, it can come back… it can come back tenfold. And more.

_________________________

INJUN SUMMER
by
John McCutcheon

Yes, sonny, this is sure enough Injun summer.

Don’t know what that is, I reckon, do you?

Well, that’s when all the homesick Injuns come back to play. You know, a long time ago, long afore your ganddaddy was born even, there used to be heaps of Injuns around here - thousands - millions, I reckon, far as that’s concerned. Reg’lar sure’nuf Injuns - none o’yer cigar store Injuns, not much. They wuz all around here - right here where you are standin’.

Don’t be skeered - hain’t none around here now, leastways no live ones. They been gone this many a year. They all went away and died, so they ain’t no more left.

But every year, ‘long about now, they all come back, leastways their sperrits do.

They are here now. You can see’em across the fields. Look real hard. See that kind o’ hazy, misty look out yonder? Well, them’s Injuns - Injun sperrits marchin’ along an’ dancin’ in the sunlight. That’s what makes that kind o’ haze that’s everywhere - it’s jest the sperrits of the Injuns all come back. They’re all around us now.

See off yonder; see them teepees? They kind o’ look like corn shocks from here, but them’s Injun tents, sure as you’re a foot high. See’em now? Sure, I knowed you could. Smell that smoky sort o’ smell in the air? That’s the campfires a-burnin’ and their pipes a-goin’.

Lots o’ people say it’s just leaves burnin’, but it ain’t. It’s the campfires, an’ th’ Injuns are hoppin’ ’round ‘em t’ beat the old Harry.

You jest come out here tonight when the moon is hangin’ over the hill off yonder an’ the harvest fields is all swimmin’ in the moonlight, an’ you can see the Injuns and the teepees jest as plain as kin be. You can, eh? I knowed you would after a little while.

Jever notice the leaves turn red ’bout this time o’ year? That’s jest another sign o’ redskins. That’s when an old Injun sperrit gets tired dancin’ an’ goes up an’ squats on a leaf t’ rest.

Why, I kin hear ‘em rustlin’ an’ whisperin’ an’ creepin’ ’round among the leaves all the time; an’ ever’ once ‘n a while a leaf gives way under some fat old Injun ghost an’ comes floatin’ down to the ground.

See - here’s one now. See how red it is? That’s the warpaint rubbed off’n an Injun ghost, sure’s you’re born.

Purty soon, all the Injuns’ll go marchin’ away agin, back to the happy huntin’ ground, but next year, you’ll see’em troopion’ back - th’ sky jest hazy with’m and their campfires smoulderin’ away jest like they are now

‘Injun Summer’ by John McCutcheon 1912

CODA:

“Seed corn shall not be ground,” is the title of a drawing by Kathe Kollwitz on the utter destruction of the young and old during war.

We ought carve that on edifices, too.