PRESENTATION ON WHAT I DO TO THE ROTARY CLUB IN RIPON

I spoke to the Rotary Club in Ripon

at lunch-time yesterday, at the request of a former colleague of mine, Diane Shady, the manager of human resources at Ripon Community Printers where I worked for a quarter century. A few months ago, Mary and I had seen Diane and her husband Kim in the grocery store, as happens in these small communities. Diane asked: "What are you doing these days?" I told her, and she thought that a talk about my projects might make an interesting presentation; a few weeks later she invited me to speak to the Rotary.

What did I tell them?

I told them that I have written since I was in grade school, and since high school I have defined myself "a poet." That is, whatever else I have to do, I am a poet; it was the poet who worked for twenty-five years at Ripon Printers, for instance.

I told them that I had already written several books before I retired from RCP in 2002, some of which weren't published until after I retired.

I told them that I was fortunate to be able to retire at age 55 in order to taking up writing full-time. That my wife Mary keeps us in groceries and health insurance, and I write.

*

I told them that I have two big books coming out this fall, Peter's Story and The Idea of the Local.

I came to Peter's Story, I told them, after teaching a class in writing memoir at the Northshore Public Library in Glendale in November 2003. There I met the Peter of Peter's Story, Peter Pizzino, one of the students in the class who came to it hoping to learn how to tell his life story. Peter and I connected, and I tried to help him begin writing his memoir.

Yet as much as I tried to help Peter, the more I saw that he needed me to co-write it with him: he had health problems and was losing his eye-sight and when he wrote you couldn't read what he had written.

So I interviewed Peter. I recorded twenty-five ninety-minute tapes, and his friend Anne recorded ten more. I transcribed those tapes and fashioned a narrative of Peter's life from age two and a half to eighteen. Peter was born in 1923 and grew up in the Italian community in Milwaukee's Third Ward during the 1920s and 1930s. His mother abandoned the family when Peter was three and a half years old, and the children were put in an orphanage.

Peter's father got custody of the children when Peter was about seven years old. Peter turned into "a little Third Ward hoodlum," and took to stealing chickens and potatoes to feed families in the neighborhood. Eventually the local padrones noticed Peter's talents, and sent him into "underground" training in Milwaukee and Chicago. He started working for the padrones: collecting envelopes; hauling moonshine from southwest of Thunder Bay, Ontario, and from Lafayette, Indiana; hi-jacking furs and liquor in New York for disposal in Milwaukee or Chicago; driving the padrones to their meetings in Chicago and New York; and eventually tracking down and bringing back those who had crossed or had dishonored the bosses. "You live by the sword, you die by the sword" was the rule.

By the time he was almost 18, Peter decided that working for the padrones wasn't the life he wanted to live, and he asked to be let out of the outfit. (But, hey, you can buy the book to find out what happened....)

*

I told the Rotary Club about The Idea of the Local, my forthcoming collection of essays about place and people in relation to place. The book is divided into three parts:

Part One, called "Riding With the Local Used Cow Dealer," is about people. I profile seven different historic or contemporary people: Elsa Rhein, a storekeeper in Manchester, for instance; a woman who ran a tavern in small town Wisconsin during the 1950s; the rendering truck driver who is the "used cow dealer;" and others.

Part Two is called "Being Here," and is about our lives in Fairwater: about the old-fashioned Christmas program we put on every year; about the annual Valentine brunch; about walking in the country south of town, and so on. This section concludes: "In that moment, I wondered how anyone could wish to live some place else."

Part Three is "The Idea of the Local." It could be called: "Being There." I talk about having breakfast in Red Cloud, Nebraska, and supper in Winneconne, Wisconsin; about pursuing my "Trifecta" of foods in Cozumel and eating campfire walleye in Quetico; about helping some folks refurbish the house my grade school buddy grew up in, my friend who died in Vietnam; about walking with the spirit of Wallace Stegner in Eastend, Saskatchewan and circling Iceland with my wife. And much more.

And, yes, in the final essay I do ponder "The Idea of the Local."

*

I told the Rotary that these forthcoming books have slowed my real life work, which is Vagabond In the Middle, a long-term undertaking to understand what makes us middlewestern. Vagabond takes me into one town in each of the twelve states that are wholly or partly middlewestern. So far I have interviewed more than 170 people, asking three questions: (1) Why are you here? (2) What did the community used to have; what does it have now; and what do you expect to have in 15 or 20 years? And (3) can you give me three or four adjectives which describe the people of the community, and tell me stories which illustrate those characteristics? I have toured factories, attended talent shows, and watched high school girls' basketball play-offs. I have ridden with a Kansas wheat farmer harvesting his fields until 10 p.m.; have accompanied a small town police chief making rounds in the evening; have watched the volunteer projectionist run the movie at a non-profit, ghost-inhabited theater, and when the film broke, they called the cops and the officer on duty came and repaired the situation. I have recorded nearly a quarter-million words of journal entry, and I have all those interviews on tape.

And some day, I told the Ripon Rotary Club, if I live long enough, all this Vagabond material will be a book, too.

*

Afterwards, I answered questions until all of them had to get back to work and I had to get back to whatever it is that I do.

Which is what?

This, I guess.

Comments

[beth]

"Afterwards, I answered questions until all of them had to get back to work and I had to get back to whatever it is that I do.

Which is what?

This, I guess."

You betcha, Tom. And it was good to hear what you told them. (I connect to your statement that "it was the poet who worked 25 years for RCP.")

[Tom Montag]

Hi, Beth--thanks for the good words. I wonder who besides poets and artists go through life with a self-image they hold to in spite of whatever livelihood they have to make? I mean, do lawyers take on the self-image of "lawyer" in grade school or high school, and live their lives to that image?

[Tim]

Great to hear your presentation, Tom. You seem to love what you do! I wanted to ask you how you isolate “Midwestern” qualities — that is, whether you are able to distinguish what is uniquely Midwestern from characteristics that might better be explained by one’s geography (urban vs rural), ethnicity, age, family background, etc.

Thanks for sharing your time with us Monday.

[Tom Montag]

You know, Tim, I would likely have to do an equivalent study of the west and the southwest, the northeast, the east, and the south, in order to say any characteristic is "uniquely" middlewestern; so I think what my prose will try to do is say "This is who we are" rather than "This is what we are uniquely." Further, if I describe the communities well enough, we will understand the context (regarding those geographic and ethnic elements you mention) in which, specifically, "This is what we are." That is the poet's way, I think. The social scientist would have to do it differently, I know. My descriptions and observations might end up being useful for the social scientist, but they won't be social science.