Mrs. Wilsons True Tales Retold

In Memory of James Buford LevitzA 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, han

(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 InventorIn 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

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....”

In which the adventures of the masked man begin and end.“A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.”Nathaniel Hawthorne

(corresponding to “Fabulous Masked Man”) From Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act II, Scene I:THIRD FISHERMAN.... Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.FIRST FISHERMAN.Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones: I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale; a’ plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful. such whales have I heard on o’ the land, who never leave gaping till they they’ve swallowed the whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all.PERICLES. [Aside]A pretty moral.

In which we are introduced to Mr. Kite and Mr. Boyd, better known as Even and Odd, and the enterprise of logging and those occupations which supported it. In Wisconsin and Minnesota white pine forests covered better than half of the entire territory, before settlement; so densely covered it that a squirrel could travel leaping limb-to-limb from the shore of Green Bay to the Lake of the Woods, almost a thousand miles, without ever touching ground, and its 150-foot mature trees were prized for sailing masts, so tall, so straight, so indomitable they were.They----sons of the industry who had decimated the forests of New England----had started cutting them down in earnest after the Civil War ended, and in less than a single human generation, before the century was over, they were virtually all gone.

(corresponding to “How to Make a Buck----First”) John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of Kellogg’s corn flakes, a vegetarian, and a guru of health and the mind cure movement which dominated popular culture in America of the late nineteenth century, held that clean bowels was the road to wellness. Patients to his Battlecreek Sanitarium were required to undergo a therapy of enemas. Every patient every day was plied with purgative rinses, from above and below. His favorite device was an enema machine that could rapidly instill several gallons of water in a series of enemas. Every water enema was followed by a pint of yogurt— half was eaten, the other half was administered by enema. In the words of Dr. Kellogg: “Thus planting the protective germs where they are most needed and may render most effective service." Yogurt, he believed, served to replace the intestinal flora of the bowel, creating what he claimed would be squeaky-clean intestines.With these daily purgatives patients also devoted themselves to ri

Image is the botanical drawing of American Ginseng (Panax Quinquefolius), an herbal native to Wisconsin, but related to the Asian ginseng (Panax Ginseng), which grows wild in Northern Manchuria and has been harvested there for thousands of years.Ginseng was one of the earliest marketable herbs to be harvested in America. In 1860, more than 120 tons of dried ginseng roots were shipped from the state to China.

(corresponding to “How to Make a Buck----Second”) Two variations of the myth are presented. Both tell the tale of how the salmon came into the river. Both begin with the notion that the people were dying of hunger and ate roots, before the salmon appear, that food which dominates and enriches their diet, and which symbolizes wealth.The action of the myth is how salmon goes up river for the first time. As he goes up, the salmon travels with “people” who stop him as he goes and declare they want out of the canoe. The people referred to are not only the human beings. All living creatures are sentient, even plants, and therefore all are “persons” and are called “people.” So in the first instance it is skunk-cabbage who stops wants to go ashore, then Arrowhead, and then other roots. Each one goes ashore and settles into its environment, encoding the tale with the ethnology of naming and finding these foods. And to each one Salmon makes a gift—a potlatch, in the traditional manner—giving him something of val

Of the monsters told in this tale, I believe you can find further information on the internet concerning the common Hodag and Wobblecat. The Hidebehind is rarely spoken of out-loud and is not to be found there. The mysterious bayl is not a creature that can be described and is only known by intimation; hence, the word “baleful,” which is etymologically derived from the creature’s name and its lore.

(corresponding to “Monsters Today...”) Because we live in a world that is largely man-made, in which our needs are fulfilled by intercession of a society that is the predominant reality of our lives, we are not aware how monstrous, irrational, unconscious are the forces that govern and surround us. We have forgotten the experience of being prey. The unexpected in our lives is an accident, and we think we should avoid them, if we are careful, if we are intelligent. But this is not so. We are yet the animal in the wilderness. Our predators surprise us.And while we like to believe that our capacity to control our lives is absolute, our own bodies, our own minds are like that wilderness in which our being, like animal, is vulnerable. We are stalked by what we cannot control; our natural frailty makes us its prey.

The Motto of the 
graduating class of ’96 was:
 “Vim, Vigor, Victory.”Badger State Banner18 June 18961896 was the last year of a severe depression that had begun with the bank Panic of 1893. At its height 19% of American workers had lost jobs, the middle class lost homes on foreclosed mortgages by the thousands, 15000 companies shut down, more than 500 banks failed. The worst of it occurred in the mid-western states like Wisconsin. By 1896, however, times began changing. The progress of science and affluence put forth promise and portent. The Klondike Goldrush began in earnest after Kate Carmack and Skookum Jim found motherlodes in Bonanza Creek. Tens of thousands stampeded north for their fortune. In that year too scientists used x-rays for the first time to reveal the skeleton in a live human body. In that year history recorded the first time that an automobile killed a pedestrian, a mother holding the hand of her child, as she crossed a road.Our story takes place twenty-five years earlier in 1871 w

“It was the completeness of the wreck; the total desolation which met the eye on every hand; the utter blankness of what had a few hours before been so full of life, of associations, of aspirations, of all things which kept the mind of a Chicagoan so constantly driven.”
 ––– Elias Colbert and Everett Chamberlin, Chicago and the Great Conflagration, 1871The web site----The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory Copyright © 1996 by the Chicago Historical Society and the Trustees of Northwestern University----describes the aftermath of the fire this way: Devastated Chicago remained so hot that it took a day or two before it was possible even to begin a survey of the physical damage. According to the papers, in some instances when anxious businessmen opened their safes among the rubble of what was once their offices, precious contents that had survived the inferno suddenly burst into flame on exposure to the air. Shortly after the fire, Stephen L. Robinson, a North Division resident