Injun Summer

I miss the annual publication of John T. McCutcheon’s “Injun Summer” in the Chicago Tribune. The Trib used to run it every fall in the Sunday Magazine.

The illustration and poem, originally published in 1907, depict both day and night views of an old man smoking a pipe and a little boy looking out over the smoke of burning leaves into a corn field. The old man regales the little boy with tales of “Injun sperrits marchin’ along and dancin’” and all “the homesick Injuns” that come back to play. He tells the little boy not to be “skeered” as night falls and Injuns dance among the corn shocks that take on the appearance of teepees.

Nothing stoked my imagination more as a kid than “Injun Summer.” It reminds me of my own corn field subdivision in the 1960s, making forts in the farmer’s field and building pumpkin totem poles on the front lawn. I always imagined “Injun Summer” taking place beyond the reaches of my own suburban neighborhood and Indian spirits rustling in the leaves outside my bedroom window.

Then around the early 1980s, people began writing letters to the Tribune complaining how “Injun Summer” advocated the genocide of Native Americans and other minorities. I even remember the Trib printing one letter to the editor saying that what if instead of Indians, the old man was telling the young boy about “Jew sperrits hoppin’ around to beat the old harry.” Eventually, the Chicago Tribune retired “Injun Summer” and now you can only find it on the Internet.

I’ve re-read “Injun Summer” a million times looking for these references to genocide. It doesn’t say anything about white settlers and Indians murdering each other. While I admit McCutcheon’s Midwest portrait of early 20th century rural life isn’t exactly p.c. by today’s standards, it’s certainly not racist or bigoted. Rather it is full of charm and whimsy, and it’s a damn shame that it has been recast into something sinister and cynical.

To me, it’s just some old codger – maybe the kid’s grandfather or some other crazy neighborhood coot – telling scary, inappropriate stories to a child. It reminds me of the stories that my grandmother used to tell when I was growing up. She was a fantastic artist who worked a succession of crappy day jobs so she could paint, but like most talented, creative people she never made any money at it.

She used to tell all sorts of inappropriate stories to me as a child about being married to a drunk (my grandfather) and how she had to secretly move out of their apartment in the middle of the day while he was at work to another place across town. She didn’t even tell her sisters her new address because she knew he’d wheedle the information out of them and he would talk my grandmother into taking him back. Even though she loved him dearly, she was tired of being a co-dependent – and this was in the early 1940s – long before Oprah and Dr. Phil. She even wrote a song about it called “I Saw The Clouds Go Wandering By” about how if she spent another day loving a hopeless alcoholic she’d die.

Many of her stories were cautionary tales so I wouldn’t do something stupid and accidentally kill myself. For example, she had a dozen stories about kids who died or severely injured themselves playing with matches. Most of the scenarios involved her coming home work and seeing fire engines on the street, and kids being brought out on stretchers with their skin hanging off their burned bodies. The kids' mothers would invaribly show up and the firemen would explain how they found the children dead inside of closets or under their beds. The mothers would start screaming hysterically. The dads would eventually come along and start beating up the mothers for leaving the kids home alone.

My grandmother also saved a horse from being whipped to death by its owner when she was ten years old. Horses were still used to pull wagons in her day, and she was coming home from school when she saw the rag man beating his horse. The horse was old and tired and as much as it tried to get up and pull the wagon, it couldn’t. My grandmother begged the man to stop hitting the horse, but when he threatened to whip her, she ran home and got her mother – my great-Grandma Bostrom – who called the cops. Anyway, the rag man was arrested and the cops took the horse away. My grandmother said the horse was retired to a farm but this took place in 1913, so the poor horse was probably sent to a glue factory.

She also used to show me the knife that she carried in her purse in case she got attacked coming home at night from her job selling candy at the Granada Theater. I must have been really sick as a child because I used to make her run through her whole repertoire of stories. Anytime you asked her a question, she always had some twisted tale to tell to illustrate her point. Once my brother asked her what a tornado was, and she drew a picture of one sucking up some children.

I’m sure she got most of these stories out of the Chicago Daily News. When I was learning how to read, she’d make me practice reading stories out loud from the newspaper about babies being abandoned inside mailboxes. She could also make a card table spin on one leg using hyperkinetic energy in her kitchen on Albany Avenue. It scared the hell of out of me, but I thought it was normal.

My grandmother’s stories made me feel important because she trusted me. She'd recite them in a quiet "It-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night" kind of voice. She wasn't afraid to discuss forbidden topics with her young granddaughter. In 1965, my grandmother fell in the alley behind her house carrying her groceries home from Jewel's and broke her hip. She claimed she slipped on a stone but it was probably an osteo break. She never walked or painted again, but she still told stories. I haven’t heard too many since that can even compare to them.

Tomorrow, I’m going to send $10 to the Chicago Tribune and get my own reprint of “Injun Summer” to hang in my kitchen.