off/Illness and death. You donât have anything/If you
donât have the stories.â 1
Over the years, Iâve lost more than my fair share of friends to
suicide. The majority of them have been mixed-bloods. Native men and women who occupied
those racial shadow zones that have been created for us and that we create for
ourselves. The latest and greatest loss was the Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish writer Louis
Owens, who killed himself in an airport parking garage on his way to an academic
conference in Bellingham, Washington.
Louis was a fine novelist and an even better literary/cultural critic and
theorist. But most especially, he was a good friend, more a brother, really. We were of
a like age, shared much the same background, were haunted by the same fears. We loved
fly-fishing and the solitude of quiet places. We understood in each other the same
desperate desire for acceptance. And we were both hopeful pessimists. That is, we wrote
knowing that none of the stories we told would change the world. But we wrote in the
hope that they would.
We both knew that stories were medicine, that a story told one way could
cure, that the same story told another way could injure. In his memoir
I Hear the
Train
, Louis tellsthe story of a summer that he spent
picking tomatoes. It was 1965. The year before, the U.S. government had decided to end
the Bracero program that had brought half a million migrant workers up from Mexico each
year to work in the fields of California. Faced with the continuing need for cheap
labour and the prospect of a long, hot, politically dangerous summer â urban
riots, Vietnam protests, and disillusioned youth had been the order of business the
summer before â politicians at the state capitol came up with the bright idea of
making field jobs â normally the domain of Mexican workers â available to
Blacks from the inner cities and to the generic poor.
âThe government men decided to call it an economic opportunity work
program,â Louis writes. âAny lucky person with a sufficiently low income,
they announced, could qualify to work in the fields for minimum wage. They advertised
the program heavily and recruited in Los Angeles, Stockton, Compton, East Palo Alto,
Oakland â those places where summer jobs for Black teens had never existed and
where young Black males with time on their hands posed potential complications for the
coming summer. Somehow we heard about it in Atascadero. It sounded like
fun.â 2
The labour camp where the workers were required to stay was an old
military barracks left over from World War II that, over the years, had housed thousands
of Mexican workers. Now it housed close to three hundred young Black men and a handful
of others. The barracks where the workers stayed were spartan at best. Old metal cots
lined both sides of a long, narrow room, withmattresses flattened
thin and hard as plywood by seasons of exhausted farm workers.
Best of all, a new ten-foot chain-link fence had been thrown up around the
camp, topped with barbed wire to make sure no one wandered away. Each night the camp was
locked and a guard stationed at the gate. Each morning Louis and the other workers were
let out and taken to the fields. Each evening they were brought back and locked up
again.
It was hard work. The food that was provided was inedible. Worse, the
workers were charged for it. As well they were charged for their cots, for
transportation to and from the fields, for insurance, and for anything else the growers
could think up. And when the first payday rolled around, after all the expenses had been
deducted, Louis discovered that he had spent more money than he had made. Twelve dollars
to be exact.
This experiment in economic opportunity didnât last long. Three
weeks. Given the rate at which the workers were going broke, it probably wouldnât
have lasted much
donât have the stories.â 1
Over the years, Iâve lost more than my fair share of friends to
suicide. The majority of them have been mixed-bloods. Native men and women who occupied
those racial shadow zones that have been created for us and that we create for
ourselves. The latest and greatest loss was the Choctaw-Cherokee-Irish writer Louis
Owens, who killed himself in an airport parking garage on his way to an academic
conference in Bellingham, Washington.
Louis was a fine novelist and an even better literary/cultural critic and
theorist. But most especially, he was a good friend, more a brother, really. We were of
a like age, shared much the same background, were haunted by the same fears. We loved
fly-fishing and the solitude of quiet places. We understood in each other the same
desperate desire for acceptance. And we were both hopeful pessimists. That is, we wrote
knowing that none of the stories we told would change the world. But we wrote in the
hope that they would.
We both knew that stories were medicine, that a story told one way could
cure, that the same story told another way could injure. In his memoir
I Hear the
Train
, Louis tellsthe story of a summer that he spent
picking tomatoes. It was 1965. The year before, the U.S. government had decided to end
the Bracero program that had brought half a million migrant workers up from Mexico each
year to work in the fields of California. Faced with the continuing need for cheap
labour and the prospect of a long, hot, politically dangerous summer â urban
riots, Vietnam protests, and disillusioned youth had been the order of business the
summer before â politicians at the state capitol came up with the bright idea of
making field jobs â normally the domain of Mexican workers â available to
Blacks from the inner cities and to the generic poor.
âThe government men decided to call it an economic opportunity work
program,â Louis writes. âAny lucky person with a sufficiently low income,
they announced, could qualify to work in the fields for minimum wage. They advertised
the program heavily and recruited in Los Angeles, Stockton, Compton, East Palo Alto,
Oakland â those places where summer jobs for Black teens had never existed and
where young Black males with time on their hands posed potential complications for the
coming summer. Somehow we heard about it in Atascadero. It sounded like
fun.â 2
The labour camp where the workers were required to stay was an old
military barracks left over from World War II that, over the years, had housed thousands
of Mexican workers. Now it housed close to three hundred young Black men and a handful
of others. The barracks where the workers stayed were spartan at best. Old metal cots
lined both sides of a long, narrow room, withmattresses flattened
thin and hard as plywood by seasons of exhausted farm workers.
Best of all, a new ten-foot chain-link fence had been thrown up around the
camp, topped with barbed wire to make sure no one wandered away. Each night the camp was
locked and a guard stationed at the gate. Each morning Louis and the other workers were
let out and taken to the fields. Each evening they were brought back and locked up
again.
It was hard work. The food that was provided was inedible. Worse, the
workers were charged for it. As well they were charged for their cots, for
transportation to and from the fields, for insurance, and for anything else the growers
could think up. And when the first payday rolled around, after all the expenses had been
deducted, Louis discovered that he had spent more money than he had made. Twelve dollars
to be exact.
This experiment in economic opportunity didnât last long. Three
weeks. Given the rate at which the workers were going broke, it probably wouldnât
have lasted much
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