I finished my court docket just before noon. Even though it was a crappy day (wind, cold, snow on the way only a day after the temp hit seventy degrees) I needed a walk. To clear my head. To feel the fresh breeze. I was in one of those moods that only putting your feet on the ground and moving forward can cure.
I’d heard about a new CD released this week by Duluth’s quintessential slow rock group, Low. I saw the band once, years ago, before they became like me (the writer): semi-famous. My kid’s gave me that label in Winnipeg when the A-Channel up there interviewed me and put my mug on Canadian television after the publication of my first book. In hindsight, “semi-famous” isn’t the right adjective for Low. “Mostly famous” is likely a better fit.
Anyway, my original intent was to walk to the Last Place on Earth in downtown Duluth and buy the new Low CD. I’m the kind of guy who shops at a very limited range of stores: places with music; places with words; places with shovels; and places with electronics. That’s about it. I rely on my good wife Rene’ for toothpaste, underwear, the occasional Christmas gift tie, food, and shoes. Everything else, in my view, is extraneous and not worth wasting my precious time on.
Of course, any meander on a city street usually includes a diversion or two. My walk today had one: A stop and a period of reflection at the Clayton Jackson McGhie memorial at the corner of 1st Street and 2nd Avenue East. I hadn’t planned on walking east on First Street but something prompted me to do just that and once I headed east, it became clear that the memorial (dedicated to three young black men wrongfully accused of the rape of a white woman and lynched from a light pole by a mob of Duluth working men) was not going to allow me to walk past history. So I stopped. Not for hours: just for a few minutes. As long as it took to read the quotations from Rumi, Dr. King, and the others inscribed into stone. As long as it took to read the description of that terrible event. As long as it took to pay my respects, silently stare at the busts of the three victims, and wonder whether we’ve learned anything at all in the two hundred plus years of our country’s existence. I didn’t cry. I didn’t pray. I simply stopped, read, and pondered. And only then was I able to walk on.
As I picked out the Low CD (and the latest by guitarist Charlie Parr) at the Fetus, the bronze likenesses of the three black men overwhelmed my thoughts. I’m certain that the clerk at the music shop wondered why an old guy with graying hair and scratched glasses was buying music meant for her generation. But I doubt she understood that my blank stare was due to a hauntingly real vision of me (or someone like me) standing in a crowd of angry white men, screaming for the blood of three innocent black circus workers.
I was there that day. So were you, is what I was thinking as I paid the young lady and left the store with my music. The walk back to the courthouse was slow: I labored against the wind carrying my city’s guilt as if it was my own.
As I approached the Priley Fountain, the water shut off and drained, members of the “Tea Party Express”, maybe fifty or so, stood in front of Duluth’s memorial to the Civil War, beneath a gigantic, fluttering American flag. One of the Tea Party leaders was screaming something over a bullhorn to loud applause. I didn’t hang around to hear what was being said: I doubted whether more than a handful of the self-proclaimed “patriots” standing in the civic center had ever visited the Clayton Jackson McGhie memorial or knew what had happened in Duluth on June 15th, 1920. As I passed them, I looked into the faces of the protesters: There were no folks of color in attendance. I left the rally without comment. I followed my old man’s advice “Never to get into a pissing contest with a skunk” and I wandered back to my office.
I’m typing this piece during the remainder of my lunch hour. I’m listening to the gorgeously arranged song, “Nothing but Heart” from the Low CD, “C’mon”. The music is playing on my computer. Low is on loud enough to drown out the protesters outside my window. With the song as background, I piece together what I’ve learned this lunch hour and I come to this:
Despite the wind, the gray sky, the cold, our city’s past, ignorance, and anger, there is beauty in the world. Take a walk. Go out and find it.
Peace
Mark
