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The voice of Peace, though many think it weak,
is a voice that is clear,
stronger than the most furious gale in mountain forest or sea,
and, oh, so so beautiful.
It was a run down migrant labor camp in the mid seventies.
Around one hundred and fifty people--- Mexican, Jamaican, Winter
Haven Black, Ozark Hills White, Philadelphia drunk Rainbow--- lived in
the leaking, dark and beshambled farm house and in the cabins and shanties
about the Pennsylvania wood.
I had come there by a random route.
Actually, I had been kicked off another migrant labor camp earlier
in the season.
You see, I was teaching the people, old and young, to read
and this greatly threatened the folk who ran the camp.
I'll not forget the first day I showed up at the that first camp.
I must have made a sight in my floppy wide brim hat, my cape raincoat,
and my scrubby growth.
They probably at first figured me for another drunk young man escaping
his life in Philadelphia.
"I want you to know this is a Christian camp," soft-eyed gray whiskered
brown elder Brother Joslin said once we had settled that I could work on
the camp.
"That's right," said clear-eyed Sister Joslin who stood at Brother
Joslin's elbow in the door of their trailer. "It's a Christian camp, and
we expect folk to behave that a way. No working on Sundays..."
"Yes, ma'am..." it was all fine by me.
So the next morning I had moved into a cement bunkhouse with tiny
windows about twelve feet up the eggshell blue cement walls. There were
easily one hundred people in that bunkhouse. The youngest was a two week
old baby. The oldest, Old Tim we called him, did not know how old he was
We were charged two dollars a week for clean sheets.
Fact of the matter was, was that many people did not have a bed,
let alone sheets.
And no one had clean sheets, unless they went to town and washed
them themselves.
There was a dollar and fifty cent per week charge for 'Janitorial
Services.'
The Janitorial Services were supplied by Dusty, a small elder fellow
who was given a weekly bottle of wine to say that he was being the janitor.
Breakfast was two dollars and fifty cents. This is the mid seventies,
I would remind you. And that is breakfast without the toast or coffee,
thank you. That's extra, of course. A bottle of Thunderbird Wine was six
dollars. (When I convinced Jamie and Jamie and a small group of friends
to go without wine for a few days, Donny The Cook, as we called him, sent
over a few bottles of wine to congratulate the fellows on their decision.)
A pack of cigarettes, two fifty.
Of course, we were all working people. That is why we were all
there...
The Mexicans and Jamaicans to earn money to support their kin back
home,
the Ozark grandfather, Cliff,who had grown up "On Harvest" in the
cotton of Oklahoma and who, with his wife of fifty years, Betty, was rearing
not only several of their grandchildren but also several temporarily abandoned
children.
And not least of all Mary, the truly noble black matron of a small
migrant clan of mostly young women, who she all referred to as 'daughter'
and their children.
Yes, we were all their to earn a dollar.
Trouble was, the dollar was not all that easy to come by.
Now, some think it bigoted to say that a person of color can outwork
a person of European stock. But I, myself, can outwork any other person
of European stock, especially from the New World, who I have ever worked
along side. In my youth it would usually take two or three fellows to replace
me in the many simple jobs I tried. But I am at best a B average Jamaican
worker.
That's probably why the American farmers resist so much the governmental
programs that attempt to force them to hire Americans. Americans just truly
don't know how to work. We're always fighting our own bodies with our pea
brains. The two just wont get together on the matter.
.
That said, on the best day in the best orchard with the most
bountiful crop, the best Jamaican worker set early to make good money that
day. He worked at a racing gallop with no break until dark.
He earned thirty three dollars.
And twenty five cents.
The noble grandmother, with all her clan old enough to stand on
two feet and carry an apple, earned just under eighteen dollars that day.
Now, let it be known, that if these folk ever decided to work a
lazy day, they would still be working at a pace that would tire the average
North American long before the twenty minute lunch break.
It was easy for the hardest working true soul to sink into debt.
And then there you were,
lined up single file on Pay Day.
None of you could read or cipher much, so Sister Johnson did the
ciphering for you.
Of course the Ozark grandfather had been able to cipher some.
When he had a crew, he had gone in line with each one personally
to be sure that Sister Johnson's ciphering was correct.
You don't suppose that he lasted long as a crew leader, do you?
But, there you were, single file curled through Donny The Cook's
dining area.
Pay Day.
The line moves slowly.
Sister Johnson for some reason liked to pay in as small a bill
as was possible.
Finally, it was your turn.
You step up to the long table where Sister Johnson is sitting.
Donny The Cook is seated at her right side.
Sister Johnson counts up the marks that indicate the buckets of
tomatoes or of apples that you had brought to the central area that week.
Then she multiplies those buckets times so many pennies.
She gets a sum and tells it to you.
You nod or say "yes, ma'am," before she will continue.
Now she is counting out the dollar bills,
one by one,
in a neat stack close in front of her on the table.
She looks you in the eye as she counts.
When all is counted, she pauses, catches your eye like a tiger
with a mouse,
and then slides the pile of cash across the table towards you.
I tell you, that antic even made me jump in my throat. And I was
one who was able to walk away at any moment I chose. I cooked for myself,
ate mostly wild food and had no family or children that needed support.
Nearly every single person, no matter how many times they had been
the toy of Sister Johnson, extended their hands immediately to take the
cash.
But
there was always Donny The Cook waiting patiently at the right
side of Sister Johnson. And sister Johnson, her eyes cold within the heart
of your eyes, slid the pile of cash, which by now seemed enormous to you,
almost to your belt and then slid it slowly round to Donny The Cook.
"Let's see," Round-fleshed Donny The Cook would begin. And there
were the meals to be deducted. And the cigarettes. And the wine. And of
course the Clean Sheets and the Janitorial Services, not to mention the
services of Donny The Cook's whores. Or to mention the card games.
.
But if a person went into debt, as many did, there wasn't much
to worry about.
It was, after all, a Christian camp.
Donny The Cook would happily extend credit.
There were, of course, conditions.
Donny The Cook was very imaginative in his capacity to think of
conditions, and he would tell them to you as time passed and he needed
what he needed from you
Let it simply be said that Donny The Cook and his kitchen crew,
let alone his customers, had many and varied sexual persuasions.
So I decided that the people needed to learn to read.
And I decided that they needed to learn to read food labels.
There was a small country store not four miles from camp. There
they sold cans of soup, cereal, eggs, milk, pasta. I went and purchased
some of these items. These packages and the New Testament were the reading
materials I chose.
That lasted about a week.
Sister Johnson called me to her trailer to inform me that they
were suspicious of my kind and that I was no longer welcome at the camp.
I knew what she meant, saw no alternative at the time, and left
that very evening for the hills again.
Two mornings later I heard a some folk approaching. I had made
the mistake of telling slow talking kind eyed Winter Haven Jimmy and Cliff
the grand father where I was going. Soon enough they found me. I was a
still a young man and felt pretty chewed up.
"We want you to come with us to this other camp, Cliff was the
spokesman for the four men.
"I don't know, Cliff ... I just don't think I can..."
"Look," kind-eyed Jimmy whose heart always made mine feel warmed
and honored spoke, "this camp isn't like the other one. They know all about
you there. They know that you do healing and work with the bible. And the
fellow who runs the camp wants you to teach us to read."
"He does?"
"We told him all about you ... And he doesn't run a kitchen like
Donny The Cook. He wants us to buy our own food and cook it."
So there I was, nightfall, walking pulling up to a tall and leaning
clapboard farmhouse nestled down in the wood near a small river that ran
through the Pennsylvania tomato and corn and apple country. The wooden
porch that slanted slightly from the front of the large, tall farmhouse
was full of people I knew. The Noble Grandmother and her clan, the two
close friends Jimmy and Jimmy, the clear mined and brilliant Jamie who
was here to support his wife and children back in Mississippi....
"What's this?" I was a bit bewildered.
"Well," Lionhearted barrel-chested Jimmy always spoke in a drawl
so slow that this yankee had to listen very carefully to understand, "most
half the camp left when we found you had been booted. We all came here."
Inside Dutch, an elder black man, sat in a well lit kitchen. There
was a cast iron Glennwood wood cooking stove. A few of his young hands
milled here and there. Four young women were semi-circled near the front
window.
"So what do you want, man?" Dutch finally looked up from the dark
brown table where he was seated.
I laughed nervously. "A place to work."
Dutch eyed me. Not threatening. Just business. What I as a young
man did not know then was that look an elder man may give a younger when
he is trying to place your trustworthiness, your ability to honor yourself
and your present capacity.
"Hear you know herbs."
"Some"
"Hell," barrel-hearted Jimmy broke in from behind me, "he cured
my cough overnight."
"That so?"
.
"Yeah, I've read a little. I know a little."
"They say you sometimes show em how to read."
"Mostly food labels and the such."
"And the Bible?"
"Yeah."
"You a preacher?"
"No. I'm just me."
Dutch was silent a while. One of the hands whispered in his ear.
He looked back up at me. I could tell that he could tell that I was hiding
something, but I did not think he knew what it was. I thought that he thought
that I was probably just someone hiding from the law.
I was wrong. He could see what I could not. Age and contemplation
does have its benefits.
"So..." Dutch finally spoke, you are welcome here. They tell me
you want to pitch a tent."
"That's right. I figure the sumac grove across the way looks pretty
good."
"You can set up there, then."
"Thank you," and I reached out to shake his hand. We shook on it
and I turned to go.
"Say..."
I turned to face Dutch again.
"I wont kick you out of here for teaching people to read and eat."
I nodded my head and turned to go again.
"And ... îDutch continued. I turned again to face him. "If you
ever want any one of these ladies," Dutch's hand swept to indicate the
four young women near the window, "to visit your tent for the night, you're
welcome to them."
This was an honest offer of appreciation from Dutch. I did not
wish to offend him, so I thanked him and then turned to the ladies and
said, "you all are welcome any evening at my tent." They looked at me with
a look I could not interpret. "We'll spend the evening reading this," and
I pulled a tattered New Testament from my side pack.
Life was much more human at that second camp, but the life of folk
who live On Harvest is hard in even the best of times. The bounty of our
modern tables is seasoned throughout with tears, confusion, self doubt,
decades of weary toil and an almost inescapable oppression.
The fights were frequent. Often they were fought over smallest
of incidents. The resort to drink or to dark depression was severe. The
hearts, despite the immeasurably bad conditions of the subculture, were
often of the noblest of qualities.
It had been a long week of hard rain.
Food and cigarettes were running low.
There had been no working days.
Spirits were even lower.
That day fight after fight, mostly with fists and impromptu clubs,
broke out. The juke box blared constantly. Several radios blared into the
sound storm. At every corner of the small settlement, it seemed, there
were children crying, women pleading, men screaming.
Then, late that afternoon, just by some strange and unique coincidence.
There was silence.
.
Ten seconds of sweet silence.
And in that ten seconds a young, wise Jamaican man who was known
for his simplicity and his compassion and who was a Seventh Day Adventist
seized the moment.
The screen door on the front of the farm house went bap-a-bap.
There were soft footsteps. And then a man's voice.
"There's a lamp that is fairer than day..."
the man's sweet Jamaican voice sang clearly,
"and by Faith we can see it afar.
And the Father waits over the way
to prepare us a dwelling place there.
"In the sweet
bye and bye
we shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet
bye and bye
we shall meet on that beautiful shore..."
And while the clear strong and deep voice continued to sing all
of the verses,
not a sound other could be heard throughout the entire camp.
As fate would have it, by the time the man's sweet lips had finished
last verse of the song, there was sunshine literally and actually breaking
thorough the clouds and splattering warmth upon the drenched land and the
mudden camp.
Again the screen door went 'bap-ta-bap'.
And there was Silence.
The silence lasted about fifteen minutes. It was broken by some
children giggling then by a man's voice cooing and asking forgiveness of
his partner.
Soft and heart-filled conversation were the feast of the end of
that day which had begun in hunger and in despair.
_______________________________
"How beautiful upon the hills
are the feet of he
who comes bringing news of Peace."
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