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Community Performance Inc.

December 01, 2008

It's amazing what shaking loose some blocks can do. Once I realized what was holding me back, it's like the dam opened, and the flow of stories started coming to me. Stories and voices, free and flowing. Not just for one play but for a couple of them that I'm working on right now. I opened up transcripts for all of them, and out they rolled, roaring in my ears, wave after wave of voices! I found out how to use one particular story I'd been thinking about. An older man, during the 50's or so, was a ditch digger and well digger. He was slim, so slim he'd shimmy down inside of wells to dig them or clear them of debris so they'd flow again. (Is he who I was looking for this month?!) Then he'd be hauled back up on the rope that held the bucket. he was often warned that the bucket was gonna crack him in the head and split his head open, and he said "No, I'd just dodge it, besides, nothing bad happens to me". His name was Sammy, and he took care of everybody's well in town. Everybody knew him, and he walked everywhere he went. When he was walking down the road one day , a young man he knew, who'd recently returned from military training, stopped and waved. Sammy, the ditch digger, waved to him, palm up, fingers to his forehead, a slick, English salute. The man was utterly surprised and asked what he was doing and Sammy says to the uniformed man, "I hear you been flying them planes. That is an awesome thing, sir." The uniformed man told Sammy to stand at ease and asked how he knew how to salute so sharply. "Were you in World War II Sammy?" "No, I been too old for that. I was in the Great War." This especially astonished the uniformed young man. (I forgot to mention that Sammy is an African American.) Sammy tells him he started off unloading ships. After a while, they said

"if any of you fellows ain’t scared of bombs, you can go up and work in the trenches and tote white boys in and food in and out and tote white boys out, the wounded and dead ones."

Sammy says, "I told them I was able and wasn’t scared and I’d go."

He had about two bushels of bread and ten gallons of soup on his back. Two bushels in the front and the kettle on the back.

"Them trenches were good and deep. You didn’t have to stoop over to keep from getting shot. I went on in there and the fellow said 'go on up to the end, there is a wounded man up there and you need to tote him on out.'

"I got my soup kettle off and got all the bread out and got to the fellow and a man said, 'ain’t no use to worry about him, he’s dead. Besides the German’s quit dropping them shells on us, the bombs quit going off. So you know what's coming?' And I tell him no sir.

He said do you know how to load a rifle?

Oh, yeah, I’m from South Carolina, I know how to load a rifle.

He said do you know how to shoot?

Oh, yeah, I’m from South Carolina.

He said, well if you know how to shoot, you get up here and shoot. You don’t mind doing it?

No I don’t mind doing it.

He said I’ll load them for you.

The uniformed man was hooked on every word. Sammy quit talking, and he asked him, Well, Sammy, what did you do?

Sammy looked far out, like he could see it all playing in the field in front of him. Standing there near the ditch in the road, the young man beside him could almost see it to as Sammy continued the story.

"I dug myself in. I got up there and he said when they start coming, I was to start shooting. "

"You started shooting with the rifle?"

Yes sir.

I said where’d you shoot?

I shot the belt buckle. I done like the man said, he said don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.

"Well what did they look like?"

"They was fine looking boys, they was blonde headed and blue eyed."

How’d you know they were blond headed?

"Well the helmet would fall off when they hit the ground."

"they were that close?"

"oh yeah."

"They weren’t shooting back?"

"No, they weren’t shooting back. They weren’t shooting at a black man, they ain’t never seen a black man before. They thought I was a dead white man. Don’t you know the white man turns black when he’s dead?"

"No I didn’t."

They both stood there for a moment, looking out on the field. Then the young man asks Sammy, "Sammy did you ever get any veterans bonus from World War I?"

"No, sir I never got a nickel from them."

"Sammy do you have the paper?"

"Yes, sir I got the paper, got my discharge."

"Well you get that and I’m gonna take it and see if you can at least get your veterans bonus."

Sammy got it to the young soldier that same weekend. The young soldier took it to the veterans officer, and three weeks later Sammy got a check from the United States government. It was almost one thousand dollars and it knocked Sammy off from digging and cleaning wells. His time in the trenches was finally over.

Nobody ever got another well cleaned out. But the timing was good, because tenant houses were getting running water by this time. I don’t know how old he was when he died but he’s buried across from the Webb Wildlife Center. He’s got his company number and engineering company on his tombstone.

I started working with this story and realized where I want to take it. A story about taking care of your brother, and recognizing a brother, beyond color, beyond class, beyond generations. It's not even so much a war story. It wasn't about the glory of killing Germans or anything like that. (Good heavens, I have a German sister in law and my brother lives there.) Its more than all of those things. It's a recognition of the self in another person- in another generation, in another color, in another class. A recognition that I and you are not so far apart on any of these scales.

There's a lot more, as you well know. But wow, this is a voice I was looking for. This is the story I got when I gave myself permission to just open up and listen. Sammy, who unblocked people's wells for years and years, came in and unblocked mine, too, decades after he stopped walking this earth. Why do I say that? He still walks this earth-- through story. And in telling his story, we don't just keep him alive, he keeps me alive, too. Thanks, Sammy, you came just in time.

   

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