If you believe, as I do, that the ultimate purpose of individual human existence, our “telos,” is the development and nurturing, first, of self-knowledge and, then, of ways of interacting creatively and honestly with the real world outside ourselves, then critical thinking is the surest way I know of getting there.
Dogma is out. So, too, is the choosing of blind faith over the power of reason.
Hence, I saw parenting as an opportunity to open rather than close my wonderful daughters’ young minds.
Thus, I arranged a sit-down with an Amish couple we encountered checking into a motel on a vacation trip. It would be helpful, I thought, to expose Caitlin and Heather to a very different set of beliefs and practices from which they were accustomed. The same was true when I enrolled them in Palouse’s Federal Church Sunday school. To grow up in a culture so saturated with the symbols and mythology of a dominant Christian religion without a basic familiarity would be all wrong.
To see all sides of issues like religion and national identity didn’t mean that my own views be kept out of the equation. I have no doubt that growing up in rural eastern Washington, they would hear from their teachers, their minister and their peers a very different view of reality for my own.
Thus, after their bedtime songs, I would unlimber my old Yamaha dreadnought and play for them songs of the struggling underclasses. Simple tunes written by the likes of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Tom Paxton.
As I sang, if either girl had a question, she would raise her hand and I’d answer when I finished that number. Paxton’s “Black Lung” required explanation.
When the older girl heard Woody’s lyrics “as I went walkin’ that dusty highway, I saw a sign that said private property, but on the other side, it didn’t say nuthin’. That side was made for you and me.”
When I nodded, she quietly remarked “I really liked ‘This Land Is Your Land.’ ” When I asked her what she liked about the song, she thoughtfully replied, “that part about the sign.” When I asked her again what that meant for her, she took even longer. Eventually she said quietly, “it means we should all share the earth.” That was one of my proudest moments as a parent. It is possible to raise up a generation believing in social justice and compassion.
When I sang “Hobo’s Lullaby,” and came to the verse “I know the police cause you trouble, they cause trouble everywhere,” Heather’s hand went up.
Tough question but I tried my best to explain that, yes, there were good cops. Like our town cop, Phineas. I also explained how, in a country where property rights frequently take priority over human rights the police, too often, come down on the side of the ownership class as opposed to the dispossessed.
It was with this in mind that I read of the anniversary of the April 1914 Ludlow Massacre. Here in the Colorado coalfields, striking miners, forced out of company shacks, lived in a makeshift tent city. The mine owners, impatient with the length of the work stoppage and the refusal of the miners to work in unsafe conditions at starvation wages, paid company thugs and local militia to answer the union men with bullets when demands alone didn’t work
When this intimidation and violence failed to break the miners’ resolve, the coal operators appealed to Governor Elias Ammons, who promised to send the National Guard. The strikers welcomed the news, figuring the troops were being dispatched to restore order and prevent any further violence from the company’s goons.
What the union men didn’t realize was that the Guardsmen were paid by the mine owners and that they came for the sole purpose of breaking the strike.
Their method of doing so was to set up machine guns on a hillside overlooking the tent city. After the troops sent the men, women and children who had not been killed by gunfire fleeing, they set fire to the camp burning two women and eleven children alive in a pit dug to provide safe haven. The total count of victims ran as high as 55. There was not a single perpetrator brought to trial.
Those in America today who work with their hands as I did, may be well-advised to remember who has always had your backs. It wasn’t capitalist greed that brought you the 40-hour week, overtime pay, workmen’s compensation, unemployment insurance and safer work conditions. And in your senior years, Medicare.
McGehee, a lifelong activist, settled here in 1973 and lives in Palouse with his wife, Katherine. His work life has varied from bartender to university instructor to wrecking yard owner.
