Of Mule and Man

by Mike Farrell

  How many times have I heard this story or one like it? But something … something about this awful situation—me headed to a warm bed and him reduced to this state—makes me think, What the hell? When I hand him the money he looks at it, does a double-take, and exclaims, “Oh my God! Thank you! I can get a room!” As I wish him well and move away, he comes after me, thanking me profusely and insisting that I give him an address so he can return the money when he gets back on his feet. I tell him it isn’t necessary and say good night, but he begs me to let him prove he isn’t lying.

  Finally, I figure What the hell? again, give him a business card, shake his hand and head back to my chi-chi hotel for the night. Mom would not have liked the place.

  (And you know, six months later I get a letter from Billy. He wants me to know that he’s working at a mission, serving his brothers and sisters and doing well. Our meeting that night, he writes, was the beginning of a turning point for him and he sends God’s blessings.)

  DAY TWENTY-THREE

  Sunday, June 1, 2008

  CITY: MINNEAPOLIS, MN

  OFF DAY

  A day off! Not due in Sioux Falls until tomorrow night, I’ve been given a day of leisure here in the Twin Cities.

  Mule and I go over and prowl around South St. Paul, where I was born. It’s odd driving these streets, remembering some houses, feeling a pull of … something. My folks left for California when I was two, my sister Sally about seven and my brother Jim just a baby, so the actual memories are from our annual summer trips back to reconnect with family. But the stories we heard so many times occasionally seem to bring forth vestiges of earlier memories, hints of things seen, faces known, shadows of long, long ago …

  I’d called my cousin Bob Scheerer and arranged to take him and his wife Sis out to lunch. When I get to his house, I learn that he has called another cousin, Dave Canniff, who drove up from Hastings with his wife Belinda, and yet another cousin, Barry Cosgrove, who stopped by. Bob and Dave are the sons of two of my mom’s sisters and Barry, unless I’m mistaken (which is quite possible given the size of this family), is the son of one of her brothers. There are many more, needless to say, but given the craziness of my schedule I didn’t want impose on too many of them.

  It was nice to check in, though, to laugh, catch up, remember old times and pay tribute to those now gone.

  Two interviews in the morning, so an early night, for once.

  DAY TWENTY-FOUR

  Monday, June 2, 2008

  CITY OF ORIGIN: MINNEAPOLIS, MN

  CITY OF DESTINATION: SIOUX FALLS, SD

  MILES TRAVELED: 271

  VENUE: BARNES & NOBLE—SIOUX FALLS

  It’s all downhill from here—or so it would seem. South and then westward toward home. Mule and I get a late start because of a live radio interview I have to do from the hotel before we take off. And, once we get going, heading south and west out of Minneapolis, the city continues to be just as confusing as has been every other drive here. One-way streets and construction and detours have thrown me off since we got into town Saturday. And I couldn’t understand why everything was so screwy until I remembered the bridge collapse last August. Of course! Losing one of the city’s main arteries must have created chaos. And trying to reroute everyone who used that bridge has to be madness. So I guess I can be a little more understanding and a lot more patient.

  It does piss me off, though, how a study said the money necessary to examine and retrofit the bridges in the U.S. would be less than $20 billion, but we somehow can’t afford it—while Bush spends that much in a few weeks in Iraq.

  Down to the southern part of the state, almost to Albert Lea before turning west toward South Dakota, it appears everything I said about Iowa applies here too. Flat, slightly sculpted land, well-tended homes, barns, fields and pastures paint a very attractive picture. Add Minnesota to the warm, pleasant, Norman Rockwell heartland feeling I ascribed to Iowa.

  They even have the same graceful windmills here. And a town named Blue Earth. What’s blue about it isn’t immediately evident, but I love the name.

  The BBC—which is a breath or fresh air on the radio: actual news—says the UN Food and Security Summit is in an uproar because of worldwide food shortages. It’ll take a $60 billion–per-year contribution from the donor nations to see to it that the people of the world have their fundamental nutritional needs met. Yet others are saying there is sufficient soil, seed and ability to provide plenty of food that is not being realized because of subsidies, imposed tariffs, and other methods of economic strangulation used by the U.S. and the European Community that are impacting the underdeveloped world, underselling their own farmers and causing them to go out of business. Fair trade, they say, can solve the problem.

  Another source of contention at the conference is the presence of Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe in an increasingly tyrannical manner for nearly thirty years. The irony is that as the leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) who fought and ultimately expelled the racist white Rhodesian regime, he was hailed as a hero in Africa and supported by many freedom-loving Americans, including my friend, the late Allard Lowenstein. A classic example of the corrupting influence of power, the country has suffered increasingly as his leadership descended into antiwhite racism, ruthless, autocratic oppression of his own people and self-serving policies that have destroyed its economy and turned it from a stable, food-exporting country (called by some “the breadbasket of Africa”) into a debtor nation now suffering hyper-inflation. People are starving and leaving the country in droves. An opposition political group, struggling to survive where others have been crushed, may have actually succeeded recently in winning power at the ballot box, but are now facing brutal opposition and legal and political chicanery from Mugabe’s forces who are trying to change the results.

  In the face of all this, Mugabe’s arrival at the Food and Security Summit has caused outrage among some of the member nations in attendance, with one British delegate calling his presence “obscene.”

  I heard Phyllis Bennis, an old friend from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), interviewed about the question of Mugabe’s attendance and she framed the dilemma nicely, saying that the mandate of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is to bring nations together to deal with the issue of food security, so it cannot be expected to handle human rights issues outside their scope at the same time. When pressed about Mugabe’s participation, she said that all countries are invited and the FAO can’t tell them who they can or cannot send to represent them. If they were to do that, she pointed out, there could be objections raised to North Korea’s being represented by Kim Jong Il because of his human rights violations, or to George W. Bush’s presence for the same reason.

  FROM THE JOURNEY AND THE GRACE

  by Gary A. Westgard

  “August 29, 2006”

  Today, in South Dakota,

  we plan to kill a man,

  the state, all of us, so

  students in school

  have the opportunity

  for discussion, and over

  lunch, between bites,

  old men can debate

  gas prices and lethal

  injection and a woman

  questioned at the mall

  says she wants to

  be there to watch, but

  a high school student

  has homecoming

  to plan, so hasn’t

  thought much about

  this man who will die,

  who did a terrible

  thing, who killed

  another human being,

  and today we plan to show

  this man how wrong

  it is to kill another

  human being, by

  killing a human

  being. Today, in

  South Dakota the

  Shepherd will leave

  the ninety-nine in the

  wilderness, go off

  after the one which

 
is lost, and when he

  has found it, he will

  lay it on his shoulder

  and cut its throat.

  Made me laugh.

  Food security is a very serious issue, however. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called hunger “the most degrading human condition” and insisted that subsidies and tariffs imposed by the West to support their own farmers must be dealt with.

  Flying low into South Dakota, Mule got me to Sioux Falls in time to check into the hotel and do a quick and much-needed load of laundry before changing and heading over to Barnes & Noble for tonight’s gig.

  Senator George McGovern told me he’d try to be there to introduce me, but I knew it would be hard since the much-touted “last of the primaries” are here and in Montana tomorrow. It was nice of him to say he’d try. When I found out that Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea Clinton were all here in Sioux Falls tonight and having a big event at the Fairgrounds, I thought, Oh shit, it’s the Pens again. Being up against the Penguins in Pittsburgh and the Beer Festival in Minneapolis had been responsible for the only two disappointing turnouts so far, but this promised to be possibly the worst yet.

  And boy was I wrong! I got to Barnes & Noble a bit early and there was already a small group gathered, which at least reassured me that it wouldn’t be a blowout, but the manager asked me to stand by for a while because, she said, people often showed up at the last minute. And by the appointed time, I was warmly greeted by a hell of a crowd.

  I must say it turned out to be one of the best evenings yet. When I thanked them for coming, particularly in view of the competition in town, a woman called out, “We’ve already made up our minds!” Everybody laughed and it just got better from there. The questions were terrific, ranging all over the map. There was a lot of talk about M*A*S*H, of course, but we got into politics, the world situation, the Bush administration, torture, and quite a bit about the death penalty. The manager, a young woman, had told me that she had served on a jury for a death case that had caused a storm of controversy in the state. She said it was one of the toughest things she’d ever done. But, she said, when the parents of the murder victim got on the stand and stated that they had forgiven the perpetrator, it was clear that they didn’t want to see their daughter’s killer executed.

  Once the Q&A was over and the book signings and picture taking began, the line of people waiting kept the questions coming. It took a long time to get through it all and I began to worry about keeping everyone there so late, but they were all very patient, cooperative and in such good moods that it was a delight.

  One man introduced himself as a retired Lutheran minister and knocked me out by praising the discussion of the death penalty, saying, “You were ministering tonight.” He very sweetly handed me a book in which a passage was marked. When I had a chance to look at it, I saw that he was the author, Pastor Gary Westgard (see sidebar, pages 160–1).

  Later, as I was about to leave, one of the B&N staff gave me a note from Susan McGovern, George’s daughter. She’d been there the whole time, had come at his request to apologize for his inability to be present. The note said, He was tied up with responsibilities for the Barack Obama campaign today in Mitchell. She sat through the whole thing, the staffer said, but didn’t want to jump the line and had to go.

  Don’t people just knock you out sometimes?

  DAY TWENTY-FIVE

  Tuesday, June 3, 2008

  CITY OF ORIGIN: SIOUX FALLS, SD

  CITY OF DESTINATION: OGALLALA, NE

  MILES TRAVELED: 507

  TRAVEL DAY

  Today is a drive day. We have to be in Denver tomorrow night and it’s over 700 miles, so we’ll drive partway today and the rest tomorrow.

  It’s overcast again, with rain expected. Mule takes me over to a co-op we learned about and I stock up on munchies before hitting the road.

  Heading down through South Dakota, the highway swings back into Iowa (or maybe Iowa sticks into South Dakota) for a while before we cut west toward Nebraska. Rolling hills here, and more cattle than I’ve seen for a while, but still lots of agriculture—beautiful green fields.

  Leaving South Dakota, we pass another town with a great name: Friend, Nebraska. Driving through this state takes me back a number of years. When teenagers, my buddy Pat and I hitchhiked to St. Paul to see a girl I had a terrific crush on—the daughter of a family friend. We did okay until we got into Nebraska, where for some reason we just couldn’t get a ride. Finally, a state policeman stopped and told us that this was the area where Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend had gone on a killing spree and nobody was going to be willing to pick up a couple of young hitchhikers, so we’d better get on a bus.

  Bus, nothing, we thought, we’d just hop a freight train. And we did, from North Platte to Grand Island. Problem was, it was at night, it was colder than hell, and, unable to find an open boxcar, we hopped onto a flat car. I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold in my life. Pat and I ended up huddled together trying to keep from freezing to death, waiting for the train to slow down enough for us to hop off.

  Adventuresome youth …

  Well, Mule and I just passed the town of Alda, Nebraska. I wonder if he knows …

  Did I say Iowa was flat? Nebraska is FLAT.

  Lots of history here, though. We just passed what they claim is the original Pony Express station. And then Buffalo Bill Cody’s Ranch. Rough and ready folks.

  Shit. I just learned that Bill Ford passed away. A good man. Bill’s sister, Ita Ford, was one of the four North American churchwomen raped and murdered by the Salvadoran military in 1980. He and I were together on a human rights delegation to El Salvador a couple of years later. Bill had become a passionate advocate for human rights and, unwilling to accept that the verdict against the five lower-level National Guardsmen did anything to resolve the issue or punish those truly responsible, he was intent on seeing to it that some of the higher-ups in the Salvadoran military were brought to justice for the murder of his sister and her colleagues. As Bill said, investigating his sister’s murder had “radicalized” him. He called the Salvadoran military leadership “a group of gangsters in uniform.” And he was ultimately instrumental in getting a $55 million judgment in a U.S. court six years ago against General José Guillermo García and General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, two of the worst thugs who ran the military in that country.

  On the upside, the news says that Barack Obama has secured enough delegates to clinch the nomination and become the Democratic candidate for the presidency! It’s been a long and complicated journey, so I’ll wait to hear more before letting myself celebrate, but if it’s official, this is a great day for the U.S.A.

  If it’s true that Hillary now wants to be his running mate, I hope he doesn’t give in. She’d be much better on the Supreme Court.

  Too many miles. Time to turn in.

  DAY TWENTY-SIX

  Wednesday, June 4, 2008

  CITY OF ORIGIN: OGALLALA, NE

  CITY OF DESTINATION: DENVER, CO

  MILES TRAVELED: 213

  VENUE: TATTERED COVER BOOK STORE

  EVENT COSPONSOR

  ACLU of Colorado

  After spending the night in Ogallala, Nebraska, Mule and I take off and soon cross into Colorado’s rolling brown hills with dark clouds gathering before us and storm and tornado warnings being broadcast.

  Also being broadcast are the squeals of Rush Limbaugh, whose outrage at the success of Barack Obama is palpable. The list of adjectives he rains on those stupid enough to vote for this upstart is long and demeaning, but it’s not quite enough to disguise the abject terror he clearly feels at the possibility of an Obama presidency. It’s as though he fears that the change in this country promised by such a development threatens to make him and his ilk a mere asterisk in history. And maybe he’s right. At any rate, his tenuous grasp on reality is exemplified this morning by rants against “the Global Warming hoax” and the announcement that the five percent unemployment rate—evidently a right-wing
staple—means that “anybody willing to work has a job.”

  Switching away, I run into the dulcet tones of Dennis Prager, easily the most pompous, self-righteous, and self-satisfied of radio’s rightwing blatherers. Prager, too, is clearly terrified, caught mid-rant about how America has turned left. We’re all Marxists, you know …

  Another twist of the dial and I actually find some sense on the air. Ed Schultz is commenting on the political developments, telling us that Obama has invited three people to look at vice presidential possibilities for him—and one of the three is Caroline Kennedy. How great to hear that’s she’s involved to that degree in the campaign!

  For a few minutes, I catch up on the phone with a friend who has been representing Governor George Ryan of Illinois. It’s such a tragedy that this good man has been locked up on what seem to me to be bogus charges. A complex case involving assertions of cronyism and abuse of power, it really arose out of a public campaign that falsely blamed him for an accident that killed six children and severely burned their parents. A piece of equipment fell off a truck and struck the family’s car, puncturing its gas tank and causing a devastating fire. The truck driver, it turned out, had gotten his license illegally by bribing an employee of a department under Ryan’s supervision when he was secretary of state, before becoming governor. As it turned out, the truck driver was not at fault, Ryan had not hired the dishonest employee who sold the license and had no actual responsibility for the entire event. But the furor from the campaign resulted in an investigation and charges on other issues that, while defensible, fed into an emotional tide that ultimately ruined him. Our hope was that the Supreme Court would overturn the conviction based on the incredibly poor conduct of the trial judge and some craziness with the jury, but that didn’t happen; so now they’re trying to examine what options are left.