Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: History

  • The Ballad of Lenin’s Tomb

    I hope everyone is familiar with Robert Service – the man who wrote “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.” Watching the film of Chavez’ tomb in Caracas blowing up last weekend brought another Robert Service poem to mind. It was written in 1930 – and is reputed to be the reason his poetry was never translated into Russian – kind of like Kipling losing any chance of becoming poet laureate of England after Queen Victoria read his poem “The Widow at Windsor.” The Ballad of Lenin’s Tomb is readily available online – and I’m fairly sure its in the public domain – so until someone writes a ballad of Hugo Chavez’ Tomb, we have this Robert Service poem to remind of us the immortality of communist leaders:

    The Ballad Of Lenins Tomb

    By Robert William Service

     This is the yarn he told me
 As we sat in Casey's Bar,
 That Rooshun mug who scammed from the jug
 In the Land of the Crimson Star;
 That Soviet guy with the single eye,
 And the face like a flaming scar.

Where Lenin lies the red flag flies, and the rat-grey workers wait
To tread the gloom of Lenin's Tomb, where the Comrade lies in state.
With lagging pace they scan his face, so weary yet so firm;
For years a score they've laboured sore to save him from the worm.
The Kremlin walls are grimly grey, but Lenin's Tomb is red,
And pilgrims from the Sour Lands say: "He sleeps and is not dead."
Before their eyes in peace he lies, a symbol and a sign,
And as they pass that dome of glass they see - a God Divine.
So Doctors plug him full of dope, for if he drops to dust,
So will collapse their faith and hope, the whole combine will bust.
But say, Tovarich; hark to me . . . a secret I'll disclose,
For I did see what none did see; I know what no one knows.

I was a Cheko terrorist - Oh I served the Soviets well,
Till they put me down on the bone-yard list, for the fear that I might tell;
That I might tell the thing I saw, and that only I did see,
They held me in quod with a firing squad to make a corpse of me.
But I got away, and here today I'm telling my tale to you;
Though it may sound weird, by Lenin's beard, so help me God it's true.
I slouched across that great Red Square, and watched the waiting line.
The mongrel sons of Marx were there, convened to Lenin's shrine;
Ten thousand men of Muscovy, Mongol and Turkoman,
Black-bonnets of the Aral Sea and Tatars of Kazan.
Kalmuck and Bashkir, Lett and Finn, Georgian, Jew and Lapp,
Kirghiz and Kazakh, crowding in to gaze at Lenin's map.
Aye, though a score of years had run I saw them pause and pray,
As mourners at the Tomb of one who died but yesterday.
I watched them in a bleary daze of bitterness and pain,
For oh, I missed the cheery blaze of vodka in my brain.
I stared, my eyes were hypnotized by that saturnine host,
When with a start that shook my heart I saw - I saw a ghost.
As in foggèd glass I saw him pass, and peer at me and grin -
A man I knew, a man I slew, Prince Boris Mazarin.

Now do not think because I drink I love the flowing bowl;
But liquor kills remorse and stills the anguish of the soul.
And there's so much I would forget, stark horrors I have seen,
Faces and forms that haunt me yet, like shadows on a screen.
And of these sights that mar my nights the ghastliest by far
Is the death of Boris Mazarin, that soldier of the Czar.

A mighty nobleman was he; we took him by surprise;
His mother, son and daughters three we slew before his eyes.
We tortured him, with jibes and threats; then mad for glut of gore,
Upon our reeking bayonets we nailed him to the door.
But he defied us to the last, crying: "O carrion crew!
I'd die with joy could I destroy a hundred dogs like you."
I thrust my sword into his throat; the blade was gay with blood;
We flung him to his castle moat, and stamped him in its mud.
That mighty Cossack of the Don was dead with all his race....
And now I saw him coming on, dire vengeance in his face.
(Or was it some fantastic dream of my besotted brain?)
He looked at me with eyes a-gleam, the man whom I had slain.
He looked and bade me follow him; I could not help but go;
I joined the throng that passed along, so sorrowful and slow.
I followed with a sense of doom that shadow gaunt and grim;
Into the bowels of the Tomb I followed, followed him.

The light within was weird and dim, and icy cold the air;
My brow was wet with bitter sweat, I stumbled on the stair.
I tried to cry; my throat was dry; I sought to grip his arm;
For well I knew this man I slew was there to do us harm.
Lo! he was walking by my side, his fingers clutched my own,
This man I knew so well had died, his hand was naked bone.
His face was like a skull, his eyes were caverns of decay . . .
And so we came to the crystal frame where lonely Lenin lay.

Without a sound we shuffled round> I sought to make a sign,
But like a vice his hand of ice was biting into mine.
With leaden pace around the place where Lenin lies at rest,
We slouched, I saw his bony claw go fumbling to his breast.
With ghastly grin he groped within, and tore his robe apart,
And from the hollow of his ribs he drew his blackened heart. . . .
Ah no! Oh God! A bomb, a BOMB! And as I shrieked with dread,
With fiendish cry he raised it high, and . . . swung at Lenin's head.
Oh I was blinded by the flash and deafened by the roar,
And in a mess of bloody mash I wallowed on the floor.
Then Alps of darkness on me fell, and when I saw again
The leprous light 'twas in a cell, and I was racked with pain;
And ringèd around by shapes of gloom, who hoped that I would die;
For of the crowd that crammed the Tomb the sole to live was I.
They told me I had dreamed a dream that must not be revealed,
But by their eyes of evil gleam I knew my doom was sealed.

I need not tell how from my cell in Lubianka gaol,
I broke away, but listen, here's the point of all my tale. . . .
Outside the "Gay Pay Oo" none knew of that grim scene of gore;
They closed the Tomb, and then they threw it open as before.
And there was Lenin, stiff and still, a symbol and a sign,
And rancid races come to thrill and wonder at his Shrine;
And hold the thought: if Lenin rot the Soviets will decay;
And there he sleeps and calm he keeps his watch and ward for aye.
Yet if you pass that frame of glass, peer closely at his phiz,
So stern and firm it mocks the worm, it looks like wax . . . and is.
They tell you he's a mummy - don't you make that bright mistake:
I tell you - he's a dummy; aye, a fiction and a fake.
This eye beheld the bloody bomb that bashed him on the bean.
I heard the crash, I saw the flash, yet . . . there he lies serene.
And by the roar that rocked the Tomb I ask: how could that be?
But if you doubt that deed of doom, just go yourself and see.
You think I'm mad, or drunk, or both . . . Well, I don't care a damn:
I tell you this: their Lenin is a waxen, show-case SHAM.

 Such was the yarn he handed me,
 Down there in Casey's Bar,
 That Rooshun bug with the scrambled mug
 From the land of the Commissar.
 It may be true, I leave it you
 To figger out how far.

  • Starting Montana

    There are many spots in history where you can start Montana’s story – I’m looking for the spot where the Montana Attitude starts. Leslie Fiedler, in his 1949 essay about the Montana Face touched around it – but missed the moment and the incident.

    Our origin includes Meriwether Lewis (whose Apron resides with Montana’s Grand Lodge in Helena) and Colter’s Run – John Colter, who mustered out from the Corps of Discovery early, who stayed in the mountains to begin the beaver trade, and who left Montana in 1810 and died a couple of years after returning to civilization (well, St. Louis, Missouri).

    Even in grade school, I learned that the Custer legend didn’t pan out – but Custer barely made it into Montana before screwing up at the Little Big Horn. But his poor decision occurred after the Montana perspective began to develop.

    Go back in history – and remember that Lewis and Clark passed through, Colter expanded on what they had mapped, but in the middle of the War Between the States, men from both North and South moved to Montana. And, in 1863, men from both sides came together for the funeral of William Bell. Bell, dying of natural causes, asked that he might receive a Masonic funeral. Seventy-six of his lodge brothers showed up for that funeral, and the realization hit, that while the criminals held the Sheriff’s office, they had the organization with a group of fraternity brothers that they could trust. (The seventy-six attending the funeral, plus the deceased William Bell totaled 77 – the final number of the Vigilantes 3-7-77. The blending of North and South wasn’t free of strain – Bozeman still has two separate Masonic Lodges, one originally formed of Confederates, the second Unionists.)

    At any rate, the Montana Attitude begins with the organization of the Vigilantes – who, in a couple of months, organized, hanged the crooked sheriff, and restored law and order. With an origin like that, a fundamental mistrust of government – as personified by Sheriff Henry Plummer – and the willingness to confront that government, is kind of engrained in the collective psyche of Montana.

    The next incident occur with Montana’s Acting Territorial Governor – Thomas Francis Meagher. Before President Andrew Johnson sent him to Montana, Meagher had used a horsewhip on an editor who criticized him (in New York, as I recall). As Montana’s acting governor, he threatened to repeat that behavior on the editor of the Virginia City paper. The editor responded with the invitation “Pistols for two and coffee for one?” I’m not real certain as to the date, but obviously it was before July 1, 1867, when Meagher disappeared from the deck of a steamboat at Fort Benton.

    While Meagher, who was appointed Territorial Secretary, filled the position of Governor, he also ran up the territory’s debt to pay the militia – I recall reading of that debt being recently paid off shortly before I graduated grade school (though I may have been reading an old book).

    In those three formative years, Henry Plummer set an example that made Montanans skeptical about trusting local government, while Governor Meagher showed us that state government was willing to incur a debt that would take most of the next century to pay off, as well as attempting to censor the press. I still kind of like Meagher, but if he was pushed off the steamboat, the perp may have had the idea that he deserved it. There’s a reason why Montanans tend to mistrust government – though I’m not sure today’s journalists would be ready to send the “Pistols for two and coffee for one?” response to the governor.

  • Outsourcing Your Security

    I was reading the Bugscuffle Gazette, and saw an article about outsourcing your security. The author was looking at how long it took the Aussie cops to get to the shootings at Bondi – and it turned out four were right there on the beach, and they were keeping under cover as a couple of half-assed jihadis shot about 20 people. He stressed that one of the shooters had a bolt gun (4 shots), while the other had a pump shotgun. The one with the pump gun was the one neutralized by a middle-aged bystander.

    The author mentioned the Uvalde police – where the crew hung around outside the school as a jerk shot up kids. Then he stressed that you can’t afford to outsource your security.

    The author explained “If the government is going to take the right of self-protection away from the citizens, then it is incumbent on that government to actually, you know, provide protection. If the government can’t provide that protection, then get out of the citizen’s way.

    This is what happens when you out-source your personal security to the government.“

    So I got to thinking about Montana History, as it started in Bannack and Virginia City. There, the baddies were the police. The good guys were the Vigilantes. Nobody read Miranda rights – the phrase was “Men, do your duty.” Outsourcing security to a government police force does seem to provide more options for the bad guys and better treatment. Vigilantes, lacking jails and jailers, tended toward more permanent solutions.

    I’m in Trego – I figure it takes (on a good day) about 20 minutes to get a cop out here from Eureka. That will be close to an average – if the dispatcher radios and there is an office at milepost 168, it will probably be a little less. If the officer is north or west of the big town, it can be a little longer. Somehow, I don’t believe that my neighbors have outsourced their security. There may be a gun-free home in Trego – but it isn’t the way I would bet.

  • The Australian Attack

    I’m tired of anti-Semites. As I look back on 75 years, I’ve been blessed to somehow find several friends. Not necessarily people who see the world the same way as I do, but generally good people. Several of those friends have been Jews. None have been anti-Semitic. That will not change – hating a person because of skin color, or religion, etc. just isn’t right.

    When I was a young man, some of the older generation had the forearm tattoos – from Auschwitz. They are gone now, but during the sixties and seventies, there was a time when my consciousness of the Holocaust was rudely brought to the front of my mind by a tattoo forced upon someone before 1945. The Hamas and Isis types have more in common with the Nazis than with me. And it makes me wonder about the narrative, the story that has convinced them.

    I’m remembering Bob Mendelsohn – my teacher, my colleague, my friend. His tongue-in-cheek description of Nick’s Hamburger shop in Brookings – where cheese was added to a burger as a condiment, not cooked with the burger, thus maintaining a kitchen he could regard as kind of Kosher. When Bob retired, he moved from secular college professor to studying the religion he was born to, and eating according to Jewish teaching. He described how he missed deli ham sandwiches. Bob was a Jew who loved Christmas – the trees, the decorations, the songs. He’s gone now, but part of his lessons included leaving the campus – there is nothing less needed than a retired professor.

    I recall Trinidad, Colorado – when I was there, volunteers from the local Catholic church were doing maintenance work on Temple Aaron – the town’s Jewish population was too old to do the work. There was no publicity – just younger neighbors helping maintain the synagogue that their older neighbors could no longer accomplish. That’s the way to treat people.

    In Suriname, I saw Paramaribo’s mosque and synagogue adjacent to each other – here’s what it looks like there:

    Somehow, I want a world where the tolerance I saw in Suriname is the norm.

  • Capital, Labor and Lincoln

    Somehow, 160 years after the war between the states, there are a lot of people who have forgotten (or never learned) that the Republican party that nominated Abraham Lincoln wasn’t exactly a capitalist. It has been fun to look at Lincoln’s writings, and quotations. I never wrote a test asking students to identify whether the author was Lincoln or Marx – but I kept these quotes on hand in case I ever decided to write an extremely tough test.

    “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Abraham Lincoln

    “We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name – liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names – liberty and tyranny.” Abraham Lincoln

    “A commodity has a value because it is a crystallization of social labor. The greatness of its value, or its relative value, depends upon the greater or less amount of that social substance contained in it; that is to say, on the relative mass of labor necessary for its production.” Karl Marx

    “Labor, being itself a commodity, is measured as such by the labor time needed to produce the labor-commodity. And what is needed to produce this labor-commodity? Just enough labor time to produce the objects indispensable to the constant maintenance of labor, that is, to keep the worker alive and in a condition to propagate his race. The natural price of labor is no other than the wage minimum.” Karl Marx

    “All that serves labor serves the Nation. All ^ that harms labor is treason to America. No line can be drawn between these two. If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.” Abraham Lincoln

    “The values of commodities are directly as the times of labor employed in their production, and are inversely as the productive powers of the labor employed.” Karl Marx

    “And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.” Abraham Lincoln

    “Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” Karl Marx

    “Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Abraham Lincoln

    “The product of mental labor – science – always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.” I didn’t say I would give all of the answers – figure out who this sounds most like.

  • Thinking of That Congressional Dormitory

    I’ve been thinking more of the implications of housing all Congresscritters in dormitories, much like college freshmen (who are often required to reside in university housing). This meme suggests building that dorm might make congressional service more accessible to the average American:

    Part of the problem appears to be that congresscritters don’t want to leave DC once they get there. I can’t explain it – from the moment my plane hits the ground there, I feel that I’m “in the presence of mine enemies” and I want to go home. Dormitories aren’t places where you get so comfortable that you want to stay. Look at Jon Tester – he got to DC and stayed 18 years before the election results forced him back to Big Sandy. Compare him to Marc Racicot – who took a job in DC, then lobbied there, and then made up his own mind to move back to Montana. Think of Nancy Pelosi – 37 years in DC representing San Francisco. John Thune was running for Senate when I hired on with SDSU (2000). Admittedly he didn’t get to DC until 2005, but he hasn’t made it back to a home in Sioux Falls yet. His predecessor, Tom Daschle also served as senate majority leader, spent 26 years in DC, and when South Dakota’s voters sent Thune in, Daschle stayed in DC until a few years ago, when he moved to South Carolina. He has yet to make it back to Aberdeen to live. The list of people who get to Congress and never go home is long.

    My proposal to counteract the incumbency advantage will work – every time an incumbent runs, he or she is limited to a campaign spending limit that is half of their previous election spending. Under that limit, Nancy Pelosi would have been down to three bottle caps, a subway token, and a half-stick of Wriggly’s gum for her last election.

    A Congressional dormitory might help bipartisanship – but it would definitely make congresscritters more anxious to travel home for weekends and holidays – Dormies like going home. I recall AOC’s challenges in finding an apartment when she first went to Congress – the congressional dorm would eliminate that problem. Who knows – with affordable housing for congresscritters in Washington, and reform that would counteract the incumbency advantage, we might wind up with less than half of Congress being millionaires and more.