Message to Feves

Hush: The summer dark has fallen
On the fertile Kansas plains;
On the people and the locusts
Whispering their little stories.
As the rabbits in their burrows,
And the coyotes in their dens,
And the prairie dogs and badgers
And the raccoons and the quail,
Tell their young of those who vanished
Tell their young of prairie chickens
Buffalo and antelope
And the soaring great wild turkeys
That once lived here blest in hope.
Coyotes coax their young to caution -
To pour swiftly through the grass.
Lest they too must flee or perish
Like the buffalo and deer,
Like the prairie hens and turkeys,
Like the Indians themselves.

So the people tell their children
In the peaceful dusk of Kansas
As the winds grow soft and cooling.
Of the people come before us,
Of the people free as deer,
Of the ones before this evening
Of the brave ones who came here
When the street out there was prairie
And the stores were gopher mounds.

People tell their young of hardship
Of their legacies in courage, and of vision
And of faith and of honor and of Kindness.
Of our heritage from Europe
And the cultural gifts of Asia
Like the comfort of hot tea -
Like the jungle's gift of coffee
Like the comfort of kimonos
Of chrysanthemums and fans.

People tell their children - Careful!
Move with grace. The prairie bluestem
Is cut down. It cannot hide you
Hide you in a circling world.
People know the world is watching
People tell the children - Stop!
Take no more of food than feeds you
Seek the wounded ones who need you
Love the ones you need to love you
Tend your fields with eyes above you
Lest we die before the hunters
Lest the buffalo and deer
Find us fellows in oblivion.

People tell their young be wiser
Be more cautious than the Indians,
People tell their young be worthy
Of our heritage and, blessings,
So we think about our blessings
Tell them like a rosary.
Say excuse me to the Indians,
Pay our penance to the vanquished;
Pay our penance to the living;
Pay our penance to the starving;
Pay our homage to all beauty
Gathered from the world beyond.

And regard their gifts as precious
Music, pictures, dances, prayers,
Recipes and songs and dresses.
All the world has loved Hans Brinker
And his shining silver skates.
Joan D'Arc and Lafayette
We have thought of as our own.
Let us mention them with homage.
We are glad for La Paloma
As the stars have watched the River -
The Republican's meanderings
In this valley in the high-plains
We will move in fact and fiction
Over fields and hidden places
Telling now our little stories

Thinking of our German cousins -
Hungry too. A town in France
Needing milk for thin, pale children
We may laugh and try to dance -
It's a gay world and a good one
Life is light as well as sad.
Like the rabbit hiding from us
We will eat the sweet raw carrot
We will live as best we can
And repeat the old traditions
And the legends and the tales.
Take the good and fashion new ones
Take the best for modern new ones
Build a new and brave tradition
As we take from Hiawatha,
We once knew in childhood schoolbooks
Words and meter for our story -

"Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple
Who have faith in God and Nature
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not
That the feeble hands and helpless
Groping blindly in the darkness
Touch God's right hand in that darkness
And are lifted up and strengthened"

Listen to this simple story
To a cycle of our village
To our coming to snug haven
To our little town's outgoing
To our greeting to our neighbor -
To a Song of Morganville.

Many years ago this evening
In the memory of none
In the minds of no one living,
Though the story lives somehow -
Proved by arrows in the pastures,
Arrows children still are finding
Indians camped where we are sitting.
Where the deep, hard paths go winding
Over prairie yet unplowed,
Arrows point the farewell route;
All that's left of futile battles -
Arrows washed of blood long since,
Lost and harmless under daisies,

"Who was it whose silver arrows
Chased the dark o'er hill and valley?"
Did they love this land as we do?
See the beauty in the springtime,
Plan it for their children always,
In the drowsy dreamy sunshine,
In the never ending summer?

Did they laugh to see a star fall
Were there those who saw the forked road
Saw it as they followed wild things?
Saw the ring around the moon
Saw the sun dogs and the omens?

Do their Indian spirits watch us?
Are they angry still or tranquil?
Have the many moons and suns since
Washed blue calm across their souls?
Has our tall corn yet appeased them
Do they see our cattle graze
Feeling by the great sun spirit
We were chosen for these ways?

They have slipped away forever,
Past the misty, purple hill rim.
Leaving only chiseled flint heads
Leaving us uneasy hearts.
Leaving us the untouched great sky
Leaving us the gallant legends
Leaving us to mend the peace pipes
Leaving us the forked road!

Now we sing the song of Morganville
Tell the tale of destiny and chance -
Should you ask me whence these stories,
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the memory of wigwams,
And the creaking covered wagons?
And the life of Captain Morgan.
And the nonsense and the half-facts?
Say we found them in an old house -
Say they're children's half-heard tales;
Say we heard them in the pool hall;
In the grocery store and church.
Some are mentioned, some are left out,
As a squirrel chooses corn.
We repeat them as we heard them,
From the lips of friendly gossips.
Found these bits so wild and wayward,
From the ones who do the talking;
From the ones who add and fix them;
From the savers of old clippings -
From an heirloom like a shawl.
From the extra cup of coffee,
From the cluttered city hall.

While the Shawnees and the Pawnees
Hunted deer along the Kaw,
Around the world upon the sea
Eb Morgan hunted whales.

As a small boy of New London
In Connecticut, the place
Of clipper ships and captains' homes
And chests of Spanish lace,
And teakwood and sandalwood
And tales of distant ports,
He stowed away and sailed the world
Until his hair was grey.

And all the while he hoisted sail,
And scrubbed the crusted decks,
And read the stars and studied charts,
And won his clipper ship,
And dodged typhoons and coral reef.
In the vast and wild Pacific,
In the wild and vast Atlantic,
In the gulf and Indian Ocean
And the outpost of Cape Horn,
And knew a girl in every port
From Asia to Peru -
He had a dream and purpose!
He had a Shangri La.
He had a gleam of glamour for the tedium of his day.
When he'd made his wealth from whaling,
From the dreariness of oceans,
The monotony of travel,
From pursuing "Moby Dicks,"
In the same old South Sea Islands -
He would seek the great Wild West!
He would ride a horse! And cattle
Would graze the sheltered plains
Halfway between the oceans.
He chose this spot in Kansas.
Too far for temple bells
From any a heathen port
To hinder meadowlarks.
No others must be there!
Here in the arm of water one could wade;
Here in the shelter of a wall of hills;
Here where you'd have to dig the earth to China;
Here on ground that never ebbed in tide;
Came the ex-Captain Ebenezer Morgan.
In 1870 to shut away the world.

Look! As those who are uneasy in their hearts
May see the spirits of the Indians yet
Watching us from shadows of the trees -
Is that a covered wagon, or a ghost?
Is that the living story of us all?
Watch quietly! This is your past,
Your grandma's or your mother's
This is the beginning of Morganville.

Who was here before the Morgans?
Who was first upon the scene?
William Silver was the first one.
Jacob Miller was the next
Gertrude Miller is our symbol.
Then Lars Anderson arrived -
These you see are now the oldest
Live descendants in our midst.

Back in 1858 with forty dollars and some change!
Young Bill Silver staked his claim
Twenty miles from any neighbor
Thirty miles from Indian camping.
Still young Silvers learn their primers
Still the Silvers harvest wheat
Is it still a thousand acres?
Where a flail once did the threshing
Where the chaff was blown by shaking?

Listen, neighbor town in France.
We began by simple hardship
We had neither seeds nor houses
Only prairie sod and work hands.
Then the Edelblutes and Vincents
And the Raridans and Hayes
And the Mertens and the Malcolms
Found their destiny with Silvers,
Brought their gifts to Morganville.

Could we pause for one short story
One about our daily bread?
It's about the young Lucinda
William's bride of long ago.
She was baking bread for many
Huge dishpans of dough and yeast
All alone in her small cabin
Twenty miles from anyone
When a courier stopped to warn her
When a rescuer came by
Saying Indians were returning
She must run and hide or die
Young Lucinda grabbed her bonnet
Rode off on a running horse
Left the rising bread forgotten
Two huge batches in the warm place
When the Indians moved some place
She returned to meet her bread,
Coming toward her in the pasture.
It had risen from the dish pans,
It had crawled down from the stove.
It had flowed across the cabin,
It had found the open holes.
It had started out to find her
Hitching posts stood deep in dough.
How she scraped her house and cleaned it
Every Silver child must know.

Listen, little town in Europe
Listen, people who remember
Andersons have fought for milk, too,
Now they're doctors, teachers, farmers,
Mixed with Davises and Thorpes,
Mixed with Higgins, Ness, and Astons,
Mixed with those beyond our rim.
Still the children get a story
Of a woman's brave firm glory
Hunting for a wayward cow
Baby Jennie needed breakfast.
Then no store had icy bottles
Bossy took the only milk
With her when she ran away,
In a vast and unmarked prairie
All one day on foot alone
Up ravines and over hilltops
In the creek beds miles from home,
Helen hunted for the lost cow
Found her with a herd of wild ones
Long horned wild ones, dumb and vicious.
Knowing that they might stampede,
Knowing that one toss would kill her,
Murmured "Bossy, you come home."
Tiptoed to the wild herd circling
Bravely showed one ear of corn
"You bad bossy, you need milking,
Follow me and get your corn�
Miles across the wild rough prairie
Helen led the wild rough cattle
Following Bossy to her corn
In the dark night all alone
Through deep grass, stones, snakes, and wolf holes
Helen led the angry herd home.
One misstep, and Bernard now
Could not rise and take his bow.

Listen, little Lorraine village,
Little French-town-bombed and roofless,
Listen people born in dugouts, sod,
And log house, shed and lean-to
Listen to the Miller's story
Joined with Gastons, now, and Behrends,
Caudwells, Eubanks, Rhodes, McLavey,
They are Jacob Miller's families.
He who came before old Morgan
Made the town out of a farm.
Their first home on rolling prairie
Their first parlor, bedroom, bath,
Was the wagon that they came in,
Like the covered wagon yonder -
All their shelter from the north wind,
All their shade beneath our sun,
All between them and the hard rains.
This is how their home began
"Unhitch the team now - we are home:
Put a stone against the wheel -
Roast the sage hen on a campfire
Take the big tub down and wash"
This was Annie Miller's story
Friend of Helen and Lucinda
Friends of Andersons and Silvers
Bread and milk and roof are vital.
But in such a covered wagon
Driven from our history
Annie Miller had a baby
John was born. You all have known him -
In a wagon in the night
Listening prairie dogs heard first-cries
Stars stood close to one another.
Gertrude, we salute your mother!

Let us get now to our program
Let us hurry through the pattern
These three tales are everybodys'
These three stories are our own.
These three stories are the world's, too,
Through the years, and fresh today -
Captain Morgan, though you traveled
To the center of new country
While the ashes in the Indian fires were warm.
Running from all foreign nations,
Running from the every-port girls,
Running from the foreign flesh pots,
Their religions, skirts and cookies,
You ran smack into three families
Who had other origin.
Irish, Spanish, and Norwegian
Were the three roots planted first.
Though it lately was Ohio or New Jersey
Illinois or Tennessee, Kentucky or Vermont.
The Millers laughed with Irish blood
Oh see the sweet Colleen
Who brings to every Irish heart
The Wearin' O' the Green
Now Lars was pure Norwegian
Born on a Norway farm - wait!
He came from Tvedt in Holmedal Sogen, Skonevegs
Prestejedt South Hordland Bergens
Stift, Norway - Skol! (Hunt up our ginger cookies)
Oh handy bright coincidence
Oh drama in real life!

Oh peg to hang our show upon
Is this legend, and a true one -
The Silver blood's a blue one.
(The name was once Silvaro)
If they had stayed in Spain our Lon
Would now be bowed to, and called Don
Bring on the gay fandango -
Bring on our Spanish Dance

Sing a song of Morganville
And Captain Morgan's dream
Like the hoof-prints of the bison
His wild west has come and gone
Automobiles ride the range now
(What is left - out in the hills -)
Coyotes echo winter evenings
Cowboy songs he used to sing.
Captain Morgan got his cattle
Captain Morgan got his horse
Got eight hundred rolling acres
Found his dream come true in Kansas
Found the lonely melancholy
Loved the magic blue horizons
Bought the best of many cattle
Bought a head of nature's best
Turned them loose upon the prairie
(Many a farmer knows the rest)
Winter came with frozen creek streams
Captain Morgan with his wild dreams
Who'd survived the ocean's fathoms
Lost his herd in shallow creek beds
Lost his dream in shallow water
Where the cattle grazed on bluestem,
Buffalo grass and rabbit berries,
In the valley of the river,
On the site of Morganville -

Little boys now live the old dream
Little boys keep his wild west
Little boys and girls ride herd yet
Ride old Paint home on the range.

Now sing some more of Morganville
And sing about the Swedes
Who came in pairs and crowds and ones
Until the other day.
Sing of their neat white houses
Still peaked for Sweden's snow;
Their lutfisk suppers and their church
Proportioned with an artist's sureness
Put up with craftsmen's hands -
Sing of their coffee and their bread.
Sing of their children's honesty.
Sing of their pale gold hair.
Name all the names like Johnson
The Berggrens and Brodens
The Nelsons, Larsons, Carlsons and the Alm
The Wibergs, Linquists, Alquists, Solts,
Halversons, Wicklunds, Nybergs, Holtes,
Petersons, Olsons, Carpenters, Stroms,
Dahlgren, Swenson, Rundle, Crome -
Sing for yourselves in Swedish!

At the same time come for freedom
Were the German and the Swiss folk
They came close behind the Captain -
Came the Roenigks and the Lippes
Came the Kirchners and the Deetjens
And the Mertens, Kollings, Youngs,
The Mellieses and Taddikens,
Moellings, Klipaches, Hagens,
Petermeyers , Nemnichs , Germanns,
Duggers, Eilers, Ruffner, Seitz!
And because we like to say it -
We will name the Aemmesseggers.

Who has married with the Ruegges?
Fully half of Morganville
Calls a Ruegg girl aunt or grandma -
Never talk about a Ruegg girl!
Someone's sure to be around -
Who is kin, in-law or cousin
Child or great-grand child or nephew,
Son-in-law or niece or great-niece
Anna, Mary, Lena, Emma, Rosa M. and Lizzie Ruegg
Have raised other Swiss - and gardens
Like the Weisses and the Steffins
The Schaffners and the Schorrers
The Affolters and Schwabs.
Hear their offspring play a folk song
Hear the old-time German band.

Then there were Scotch came to this town
That Scotchman's so well-known
I don't even have to say it's Alex Purves.

French came after Captain Morgan
Ere the team was fed and watered -
Came the Perreaults and Parontos
With big families and thrift
Came with Celtic wit and scrubbed house
Came with good potato soup
Came the Perreaults and Parontos,
Cyrs, Gelinos and Menards,
Came the Brouillettes, Bechards, Belleaus,
Pequettes, Sauvains, and Girards, Chaput
Mechands, Morissettes, DesJardins, Sorells and Bertrand
Father Pierre of St. Joseph
Rang here first the Angelus -
Parley vous Francaise? Un Peu.

And some boys were not returning -
Chateau Thierry, Belleau Wood,
The Marseilles, Joan D'Arc,
Bordeaux, Au Revoir, Allo.
Captain Morgan, Stanley Hanson
Saw your terrible Pacific
Saw the islands red with blood
So did Dean Young saw and never now can tell us

Let us pause then without words
For those who did not return
Lars Anderson's grandson -
Darlene Bahr, the Phillipines
Maurice Schooley saw Australia
They've all been to Timbuktu -

But tonight let's take from Asia
Little bits of this and that thing
Let us reach into the carved chest
For our paper napkin figures
For some fragments from our childhood
For the tinkle of the wind chimes
Saris, Buddha, Arabs, Coolies
Persian Queens, and Cathay splendor
For poor Madam Butterfly -

Patience, Asia, with your Western
Brothers on this trembling planet
And our jumbled crazy notions
Of your prayers and your songs.
This is what the captain told us -
But we shiver and remember
Boys from our town brought the costumes
Oh Captain Morgan, when wild turkeys
Rose and flew at your approaching
Who could dream within the century
Who could dream our very grandsons
All those grandsons yet unborn -
Would be likewise soaring skyward
Would go flying to the Asia
You had left behind forever?
Asia once was only fancy
Asia once was only pink maps
Heaven was more real than China -
In that first sod-schoolhouse atlas,
Children traced with tissue paper
Outlines that they later knew
As they know Mulberry Creek
Know Idana, Clifton, Green -
Marsciene Perreault was in India
Dan has seen the Fiji Islands
Lyle Hahn brought these kimonos
From a sojourn in Japan
William Reed was held in prison
Three long years in Tokyo
Morganville has traveled Asia,
Captain Morgan's distant ports.
Coming home by the Pacific
Greetings sister from the mainland

Hawaii - Aloha Oe - Thank you for the pineapple,
Thank you for the ukelele,
Thank you for romantic songs
Thank you for your loyalty
Pray we none of our boys long
For the beach at Waikiki.

Here is all we know of Russia
Take your own notes as you see them
They have children loved as ours are,
Want the future for them always,
They have vim and they have vigor -
They have learned to pull together -

Let's now come back to Morganville
Back to home things we remember
Back to nearness and to dearness
Of our own ways and our own folks.
Here, the meanest person with us
Isn't all bad. Maybe he can
Drop ten dollars in the milk can
None of Spain's or Asia 's silk fans
Will be beautiful as money
Spent on children's bread and honey.

As clouds gather for a cyclone
As Spring flowers crowd in color,
We remember dust, Depression.
We remember lush and plush times
Fifty years of Morganville's
School and church and games of billiards
We remember work and ball games
We remember Doctor Stillman
And his fondness for our village
We remember Marshall's band
Berggren's store, grand and colossal
All the Leonards and the Arners
We remember helpful people
People not afraid to give
People good to one another
People free with time and talent
They have left this summer evening
Better for their sojourn here.
Thank you, Todd Huff,
Thank you, Hansons,
Sweets, and Charlie Hagenbuchs
Thank you, Severt, Ira Bodine
And Sheb Conkright, Will O'Harro
And the Fletchers for their days here.
Schooleys, Purves, Millers, Stonebacks,
Robinsons and Greens and Clampitts,
Sterlings, Grays, and Lees and Allens
Woods and Dysons, Mudges, Piersons,
Wilkersons and the Gennetts
Browns and Hull and Oetingers.

Little town in France, we know you
Better than you comprehend.
Grasshoppers once ate us bare -
Many times - our crops and foliage -
Ate our suppers, and the year's food;
Ate our clothes off of the line.
Once we choked on dust so heavy
Day was dark and lamps were lighted.
Even better years - the good ones
We've been hailed or blown or blighted
Some years cattle died on parched earth
And our fruit trees died of long thirst.
Morganville went out and buried
Dead fish on the blistering sand.
Turn the page. We could talk ten nights -
Of our floods and droughts and bug-fights.

But never have we plowed our ground,
Waiting for explosion's sound -
Never has our sky rained horror
Made by man. God's lightning's tender -
God's worst wrath is mild as cream,
Compared to bombs of man's devising.
Oh, helpless man against himself!

Come, then, Boy Scouts, do your good deed,
Lead a hit and miss parade,
Of the years of happy peacetime.
We are one church and united.
Quakers followed Captain Morgan;
Baptists used to use the river;
Adventists, and non-adherents
Episcopalians, simple Christians,
Presbyterians and such,
All our welcome in our one church.
Catholics are all our warm friends.
Church has long known that it's one world.

Edna Johnson went to India.
Lois Adams Africa
Little girls in Sunday School
Learned to teach the golden rule
And they do a little Dutch dance
To remind us we have neighbors.
Come, our oldest living members
Six hundred quilts, six million stitches
Women here have made for others
Made for beauty and the God-dream.
Comes a singer of the choir
For the melodies of gladness
And a final psalm of sadness

In the song of Morganville
Where the Indians hunted bison,
Roamed the land for sustenance,
Where the pioneer with an axe
Chopped the sod to put in corn-grains,
Where we dug for beet and radish
See this gift of Heaven's giving -
In the blessed peaceful years.

Oh! the wondrous golf club picnics!
Dinners the last day of school -
Pot-luck suppers, great church luncheons
Covered dish feasts, socials, ice-cream.
Hail! the cooking in this valley
Needs an opera to sing it;
Needs an orchestra and trumpet
Oh, the pageant of our vittles
Is the best show ever seen.
This cake's going to the social
This cake's going to the altar
This cake's going to be vanquished
From the heirloom silver plate.

Who has raised this food? The farmers
Bravely, steadily. We lean
All of us, upon the farmers
And their faith and optimism
On their wits and their toil -
When the Mertens came from Quincy
John and Herman, long ago,
They brought farmers to the future
Herman, Jr., as the eldest of the brothers. Merten
Children here, How-do-you-do for all the farmers -
Once they walked clear to Clay Center.
Walking only on their own land.
Walls of corn are our defenses
Wheat the golden recompenses,
Wheat and corn will feed the restless -
(Do you think those stalks are spliced?)

Oh, little girls of Morganville
From the first ones to the last ones
Like first violets in the orchards
Like pink roses every May
Every year we watch new blossoms
Cling a moment to the stem
One short moment to each parent
One Spring moment's fragrant promise,
Lovely daughters in their morning!
Then they graduate, and leave us,
Blow a kiss, and dance away!

Miss Viola Belle - Miss Pettey
Sixty years ago September
Taught you ABC's - remember?
Bought that plush cape with the money
Taught a Miller and a Silver and an Anderson to read.
(Someday we must have a pageant
Of our school days - nothing else)
Tonight we take one picture
From a text book for its contrast
Of what they learn today of Greece
Once in our isolation
We read the ghostly classics through
And columns of the Parthenon
Were white against each
Schoolhouse wall.

Oh Captain Morgan, hear your namesake,
Hear your prairie-island town tell
Of those five years of our travail,
Of our secret pain and praying,
Of those five hard years of war
All these people from the world's ends
Who came here to mind their business,
As the prairie dogs build their towns
Far from men and stalking hunters,
Saw our boys and girls fly scattered
From the Arctic to Equator;
There was some boy's life in balance
In each so-called war theater.
Glenn Rose flew the Kate Smith Bomber,
Urbans, Stonebacks, Gelinos,
Donald Merten fifty missions,
Brown, Fischer's twins and
Old Dan Roenigk
Davis and Hanson never to return
Holte, Deetjen, Anderson,
Miller, Bahr, Park, Olson, Fletcher and Gennett.
Shock that struck at Hiroshima
Had struck here in hearts already
All these names were heard before
Mixed at random, Fox and Bloom.
Must we lose someone to black war
Every generation, always?
Lawrence, hear us from your French grave,
Youngs have one again from this war
Half the globe away from you,
They have one who comes no more.
The world brought trouble to our song
Found us here in Morganville
Found us as boys find a bird's nest
Stilled the song of Morganville.
Found us home at Morganville.

Now this evening where the same stars
Saw the Indians leave their campfire
Guided once the covered wagons
Guided Morgan to his wild West
Lighted women's night long worry
Guided soldiers home again

Evening stars show on our gardens
Stood above the peaceful scene
When the Angelus was ringing
In our hearts at eventide
Gratefulness came like an East wind
For the basket full and brimming
For tomatoes red as sunset
For potatoes plump and filling

Like the new moon, slowly, slowly,
Rose unease into our hearts
In that picture in the school room
Of the Angelus at evening
Of the man and woman praying
Is their basket heaping too?
No their basket now is empty
Empty from the blight of war
From no fault of their own making
Mothers reach for bread, and stones
Fill their hands, and children cry.

Can we pray while empty baskets
Line the world, and ours are full?
How then shall we feed the whole world
When we are so far and small?
Each one, some one - that is all.

Shut the eyes and turn the dial
Of the heart to some misfortune.
F�ves! In scorched and bombed Lorraine
Happens up. In this chance Friendship -
Fate has made it F�ves in France -
Someone else can help another

F�ves, we're Morganville in Kansas,
Respondez vous, sil vous plait.
Captain Morgan, may your spirit,
Join us in this swelling song -
One World. Everybody sing it
Sing the song of Morganville.