LINDA’S BEAR SOOTING

I am thinking, with flashbacks, about a trip Eileen and I are taking next week to Michigan. Here is where I tell you that when I graduated from the University of Oregon back in the weird 1960s, I had no firm idea about how I would find employment or make a living. I slipped through my undergraduate years taking liberal arts courses and reading poetry. So, in my last month on campus, I stumbled upon a table set up by recruiters for a Lyndon Johnson Great Society program called Volunteers in Service to America. Now that sounded very preferable to military service in America’s most unpopular war in history – the Viet Nam War. And in no time at all, as I was used to the speedy answering of test questions, the fine art of determining what the test administrator wanted to read and the ability to nimbly supply some pretty arty sentences and a few obscure words and references, I had signed up for this noble-sounding service to my country.

Very soon afterward, I received a billet-doux saying “Your country needs you” and I was in. A couple of weeks later I was on a train to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Here, the story turns good for me. After some training, I was turned loose in a strange country, very Appalachian-like, and populated by an American sub-culture made up primarily of hoards of “Finlanders”, a few Italians, and fewer Polish persons. In my three-quarters of a century, I have never been among a finer group of people. They may now be called “Yoopers” according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

So, back to the title of this essay, it took me a little while to get the hang of the speech-dialect-slang of my dear Finnish friends. And as time went on I grew to appreciate the straightforwardness of their speech patterns.

About eighteen months later and shortly before I left the Upper Peninsula, I picked up a book of regional poems which has become a favorite of mine. I wish to share a delightful, Finnish dialect poem by Jingo Viitala Vachon, a skilled raconteur, and poet from this area. This poem involves a Finnish girl from the tall timber of the Upper Peninsula, a wildlife encounter, and a well known type of architecture which Kent Haruf in “Plainsong”, his novel of life on the Eastern Plains of Colorado called “the stepout” and which my Kansas raised father-in-law called “the Eleanor”. We called it “the outhouse” when I was growing up.

LINDA’S BEAR SHOOTING

Up nort vere ta voods meets ta town of toivola

Now Linda ta housevife is sarp sooter tere,

An’ here is ta story of Linda’s great glory

See von on tat morning see sooted ta bear.

Vas early vun Monday, ta day after Sunday

Her husband vas leaving for vork vit no care,

Now, how could he know tat as soon as he’d go

See vould haf a new caller, a black saggy bear.

Her dog gafe her varning tat October morning

Tat something vas eating her garbets outside;

He started to bark an’ altough it was dark

See could tell tat big bear by his black saggy side.

In all ta commosen ta kids took a nosen

To also get up an’ see vhat vas ta fuss;

Ta ports light vas on, but ta bear vas not gone,

An’ he simply kep’ eating an’ stayed vere he vas.

See opened ta door vit a ear splitting roar

Ten ta bear slowly rose vit a sad injured air,

Ta dog sent him loping but Linda vas hoping

Ta nex’ time he came see vould soot her a bear.

See vent to see Charlie tat evening to parley

An’ see if he’d skin him if see sot him dead;

He said tat he vould, an’ see tought, “Vell, tat’s good,

Cause I want nutting else but his hide an’ his head.”

Tat night tey vere sleeping, tat bear he came creeping,

An’ Linda got up an’ vent to ta john.

See saw tat big sadow, an’ boy, see vas glad, oh,

See’d pick up ta rifle tat October dawn.

So ten see got ready, ta gun firm an’ steady,

An’ bang-bang ta bullets let fly.

Ta bear squealed and started to sviftly depart, it

Yust yumped in ta bushes and lie down an’ die.

So tis is ta story of Linda’s great glory

Ta people vill alvays remember her name,

An’ nuts to Ann Oakully, Linda is locally

Toivola’s sarp sooting lady of fame.

Ve’ll alvays remember her every November

Ven rifles are pewing an’ sots fill ta air,

How see, in October, vit face grim an’ soper

Sat down on ta toilet an’ sooted ta bear.

                                             Jingo Viitala Vachon

The Ku Klux Klan in Heppner, Oregon

Here I present some information about how the Irish of Morrow County smashed the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920’s. I wouldn’t have had an inkling of this had I not chanced on a very interesting article, “The Empire and the Editor: The Ku Klux Klan in Heppner, Oregon” by Gavin D. Cronkrite. This is a 2015 BA thesis for the University of Oregon Department of History. I tend to think that Heppner doesn’t attract its share of attention and it’s always interesting to find local history. This is a short article, thirty-nine pages of double spaced text, but rewarding to the memory of our Morrow County ancestors in that Cronkrite portrays the county as somewhat of an outlier to the popularity and political power of the Klan.

I have reached out to Cronkrite to ask him why he chose this topic and Morrow county for his thesis, but have been unsuccessful. But this is the sort of thing that you ponder in your early schooling. What happened here, you ask yourself, when the Klan was becoming so powerful in Oregon? What did our grandparents think and do about this? What was going on at the time of the Klan’s singularly successful strike at Catholics with the Oregon Compulsory Education Act of 1922.

Cronkrite spends quite a bit of text outlining the reemergence of the Klan in this period both nationally and in Oregon. About page 20, in the chapter titled “Shepherds in the Blue Hills” he gets to Heppner and Morrow County, which he treats interchangeably. He notes lack of major industry in the county, predominance of agricultural production (Wheat, Hay, and Wool), and the influence of the Irish population as factors related to the lack of acceptance of the Klan. He says that “The stereotypical shepherd on the hills of Morrow County was an Irishman.”

Among his major sources are Heppner’s two newspapers (The Gazette-Times and The Heppner Herald) and two locals who published reminiscence articles in the Oregon Historical Quarterly (Elinor Cohn Shank and John F Kilkenny). Cronkrite meticulously cites newspaper coverage from about 1917 through 1924, making for an impressive four pages of small print research notes.

The core of Cronkrite’s paper, and I present here his complete paragraph,  is “Morrow County’s large Irish population may have helped slow the process of Klan organization. The Irish were an integral part of county business, with some men like John Kilkenny owning large ranches and employing community members. News of St. Patrick day Celebrations and well-attended Ancient Order of Hibernian events filled the local newspaper pages. While the Klan initiation ceremony in January 1923 attracted a crowd of several hundred persons, it is likely that many of the audience members were there simply to witness the spectacle. In comparison, Hibernian events regularly attracted attendance varying from 150 guests to several hundred, as evidenced in the extraordinary claim that 'the promoters of the [A. O. H.] affair expect to sell 1000 tickets of admission.' Morrow County Klan’s thirteen person inaugural recruitment class was eclipsed by the size of the Irish Catholic community.”

I wish there were a little more passion and excitement in Cronkrite’s paper. For example, he tells us after some recruiting events, that the first actual meeting of the Klan in Morrow County was in Lexington on January 28, 1924. I would like to think that my grandfather, James G Doherty, whose ranch was up Blackhorse Canyon a few miles outside of town was there, ready to wade in if things got out of hand. But that’s a Walter Mitty kind of thinking, projected back a couple of generations. 

I take from this paper two messages. First is the “Heppner Spirit,” a phrase coined by the Gazette-Times in 1918, characterizing the community as resilient and optimistic following the flood of 1903 and subsequent disasters. Second is the leadership and prose of Sam Pattison, Editor of the Heppner Herald beginning in 1917. Cronkrite’s take is that …. “The Herald changed the discourse: it led Heppner residents to examine Klan rhetoric by challenging it at its very core of Americanism.”

The article is unsurprisingly academic and a little thin, but if you slog through it, you’ll almost certainly end with a sense of pride in our area and our ancestors.

You can read “The Empire and the Editor” at: https://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=E211US105G91207&p=the+empire+and+the+editor