My Hoosier Heritage

Jump to Comments

A blue state marker notes the historical home site

Hidden in plain view, resting in the vacant

Parking lot of the Red State university campus

In the ironic shade of the business school building

We make this pilgrimage to Terre Haute

Home of Convict #9653

Five times Candidate for President of the United States

Founder of the American Socialist Party

Great American Granddaddy Wobblie

All but forgotten on this last Friday before Xmas 2007

No one comes through this wet grey Indiana day

Save for my songwriting buddy and I

We have a wild hair idea to write the musical

Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs

And we have come to see for ourselves

The rooms the grand orator occupied

We must bang a good long time
before the old Victorian door opens

A plain socialist girl in silk slippers

and sad skin nods us in; points to the register

She passes us a worn typewritten guide

Items of particular note thumbed and red-lined

She leaves us quickly, dodging behind a

doorway posted ‘Employees Only’

Grand old home, well made, and ornate

like the man – gold initialed alligator bags

and fine folding slippers share display space

with campaign buttons and signed first editions

from Fellow Travelers Upton Sinclair

Mother Jones, Clarence Darrow,

Big Bill Haywood, even ‘Hoosier Poet’ James Whitcomb Riley

A man for the people, with a heavy sense of self-importance

he saved every letter, every poster, flyer, poem and speech

Ideas and the words that transported them were sacred

Convicted of treason for his refusal to be silenced

Such radical notions as child labor reform

Women’s Suffrage and Worker’s Rights

Seditious and dangerous ideas a century ago

crumbling these days in dusty letter boxes

We climb the stairs and down again

Winding our way through gentile rooms

Papered walls where oiled portraits and framed photos

Tell the story of the American Labor Movement

On the way out, we explain our mission to the

Sullen sister who emerges just as our last steps

Creak down the old firebrand’s stairway

She confides she used to get paid by the Foundation

When she was still an official student

But now the young socialist stays in the basement

Alone with her thoughts and the great man’s relics

We smile knowingly, buy a handful of buttons

And re-enter the harsh haze of daylight

 

 

   

0 Comments

Filed under Blogroll, David M Rheins, Eugene Victor Debs, God, Hoosier Heritage, IWW, Indiana, Jersey City, New Journalism, Rheins, Strike, Terre Haute, Volunteer, Wobblies, carpe diem, cosmic giggle, day-in-the-life, death, every morning, existentialism, give us this day our daily bread, philosophy, poetry, toil, visual content, work your plan, zen

Tags: American Socialist Party, Big Bill Haywood, Clarence Darrow, David M Rheins, Eugene Victor Debs, Hoosier Heritage, Indiana State University, James Whitcomb Riley, Mother Jones, pilgrimage, President, Red State, workers of the world unite