In Memory of

James Buford Levitz

A Deering Trade Card (circa 1890), included in the online collection of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Novelty trade card advertising harvesting machinery manufactured by William Deering and Company. At close range, the image shows two young girls holding a dog. At a distance, the image appears as a human skull.

The caption reads: "The beginning and the end of life (Hold the picture 1 foot away for Life and 20 feet for Death)."

The reverse of the card reads (in part): "...the skull duggery practiced by some manufacturers of Harvesting Machinery, in palming off cheap machines on unsuspecting farmers, finds no favor in the Deering factory."

In which we are introduced to some of the principal characters of these tales----the Peddler and Captain Maximillian Robin among them-----and the recurring themes of America’s distressed abundance, our woods and wealth ripped out of the earth, yet hope not exhausted by our inexhaustible expectations.

After the Civil War our nineteenth century America was extreme, a time of delirious boons and desperate busts. The mighty white pine forests-----”green gold” as it was called-----which had carpeted the midwest land were nearly gone from clear cutting. Farms, ever larger, ever harder to keep, yielded fickle profit at the cruel mercies of giant Trusts of money and industry which extorted them. Daunting depressions in jobs and markets repeatedly crushed as many with debt and poverty as in the 1930’s, but no one spoke for welfare.

Hence, such stories as this from the Badger State Banner of Black River Falls, Wisconsin:

John Kuch, a farmer living in the town of Oakland, was found in his barn the other morning, hanging by his neck…. No cause was known. About 12 years ago, his father hanged himself in the same barn.

16 January 1890

(corresponding to “Esther: Her Story”)

You will see that it is loosely inspired, although the mood and quality of magical absurdity is kept, I hope.

Again, we see these abstractions in terms of our own concrete images. Whether it is people who are animals, or animals who are people.

This is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, one of several models of self-sustaining rotaries, which he proposed for perpetual motion. His experiments, however, displeased him and he declared: "Oh, ye seekers after perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you pursued? Go and take your place with the gold-seeking alchemists."

Many men of science have nonetheless pursued it. Pascal, the logician, pursued it.

One Proud American Inventor

In America the pursuit for the perpetual motion machine was popular throughout the nineteenth century, and several dozen hopeful patents were issued by the U.S. government for its invention, none of which were ever manufactured.

(corresponding to “Myth of Perpetual Motion”)

The myth of capturing the sun or capturing fire is a myth of human transformation. Man claims a place in the cosmos no other can attain, but also pays a price for it.

The traditional Pacific Northwest Coast tale, as related by the Haida in the this instance, is the tale of the Raven Stealing the Sun, quite different from that of Mrs. Wilson:

Long ago, near the beginning of the world, Gray Eagle was the guardian of the Sun, Moon and Stars, of fresh water, and of fire. Gray Eagle hated people so much that he kept these things hidden. People lived in darkness, without fire and without fresh water.

Gray Eagle had a beautiful daughter, and Raven fell in love with her. In the beginning, Raven was a snow-white bird, and as a such, he pleased Gray Eagle's daughter. She invited him to her father's longhouse.

When Raven saw the Sun, Moon and stars, and fresh water hanging on the sides of Eagle's lodge, he knew what he should do. He watched for his chance to seize them when no one was looking. He stole all of them, and a brand of fire also, and flew out of the longhouse through the smoke hole. As soon as Raven got outside he hung the Sun up in the sky. It made so much light that he was able to fly far out to an island in the middle of the ocean. When the Sun set, he fastened the Moon up in the sky and hung the stars around in different places. By this new light he kept on flying, carrying with him the fresh water and the brand of fire he had stolen.

He flew back over the land. When he had reached the right place, he dropped all the water he had stolen. It fell to the ground and there became the source of all the fresh-water streams and lakes in the world. Then Raven flew on, holding the brand of fire in his bill. The smoke from the fire blew back over his white feathers and made them black. When his bill began to burn, he had to drop the firebrand. It struck rocks and hid itself within them. That is why, if you strike two stones together, sparks of fire will drop out.

Raven's feathers never became white again after they were blackened by the smoke from the firebrand. That is why Raven is now a black bird.

The song in this story----Wildwood Flower----is now a traditional “folk song,” but was composed as parlor music by J. P. Webster, living in Elkhorn, Wisconsin at the time, shortly before the Civil War.

The original lyrics by Maud Irving were so strange that most renditions of the song make mondegreen of them.

Take, for example, the first stanza. Maud wrote:

I’ll twine 'mid the ringlets of my raven black hair,

The lilies so pale and the roses so fair,

The myrtle so bright with an emerald hue,

And the pale aronatus with eyes of bright blue.

But the usual version given, is that which is sung here by Maybelle Carter in 1928:

Oh, I'll twine with my mingles and waving black hair,

With the roses so red and the lilies so fair,

And the myrtle so bright with the emerald dew,

The pale and the leader and eyes look like blue.

Actually, neither one makes much sense. But there is no flower called “aronatus;” what Maud meant by that is anybody’s guess.

(corresponding to “The Story of the Bride”)

Women are central to the myths told by Mrs. Wilson. They control the plot. They dominate the characters. Their interests and virtues are foremost.

Once again, we find out how important it is not to be stingy with your wife.

“Hope is the Heart in the Body of Belief.”

In which we learn how the peddler made Maximilian Robin the man he became and why he hated water, how Amy was a singer and Amy was a dancer, and how love can split you in two.

(corresponding to “Catching Sky”)

In which we learn how birds get their colors and why you ought not to trust little girls who go digging for roots that aren’t really good to eat.

In which we are introduced to Chicago, city of America’s Will, Heart, Muscle, and Nerve.

In the mighty words of Carl Sandburg:

“They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

“And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

“And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

“And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

“Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

“Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;

“Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness....”