Simple Things/ Lang Kenneth Haynes
Life in a prairie house
Life in a prairie house
“Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders” by William R. Drennan is getting considerable attention these days.
Fine and wonderful and I find myself wondering why the book has such mass appeal. I don’t pretend to have it figured out, but my guess is that one
essential element of popularity is the size of the canvass upon which we can impose our own assumptions. “Death in a Prairie House” provides
plenty of room in the form of interesting juxtapositions. Frank Lloyd Wright was internationally known. Julian Carlton — the man who is alleged to
have committed the murders — was relatively unknown, and in fact invisible, before the murders. In Ralph Ellison’s novel, “Invisible Man,” he
wrote: I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I
am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply
because people refuse to see me. I don’t know how or why the murders happened. I don’t know if the murderer felt invisible — as if people looked
through him instead of at him while having the audacity to act as though they knew all there was to know about him. I do know that murder cannot
and should not be justified for any reason. And I have come to believe that understanding the motivations behind our actions is essential or, at
least, interesting.
The contrasts make for a compelling story: Julian was from urban America — Chicago, I believe. Taliesin was and is surrounded by open
land, farms and the Wisconsin River. Julian reportedly murdered several White people in absolutely horrible ways. Many of the murdered people
could have been considered innocents. The murders happened in 1914, a time in this nation’s history when it was not considered murder to lynch
a Black person and lynchings took on the form of some sort of perverted public entertainment. They provided opportunities for ghoulish family
gatherings while families and friends ate cold chicken and drank lemonade while some unfortunate Black person dangled, kicked, foamed at the
mouth and possibly pleaded for mercy as the party-going throng laughed and wolfed down more potato salad. Light and breezy joy and abject
horror all in the same afternoon.
My personal experience of the Wisconsin River Valley, Taliesin and the farm my former wife and I owned and lived on, a mere six miles from
Taliesin, was not fraught with seething rage, indignation or the kinds of glaring contradictions capable of literally causing one to lose his mind. And
there were ample contradictions. Perhaps the most obvious being that I am a Black man who grew up in New York City. But my Taliesin-area
experience opened my mind and heart to what it is possible for human beings to achieve when the assumptions are put aside. The goal of life, I
think, is not to vainly and insanely try to all become the same. What a waste of time, and how boring if we could ever manage to succeed in such a
futile pursuit of blandness. But, at the same time, it is essential for us to recognize the essential things that hold us together as members of the
human race. And in Clyde, Wisconsin in the Wisconsin River Valley, the home Taliesin, the essential thing was called survival.
We had neighbors help us with a vast array of things that included tying the barn together with cable to prevent the ends from blowing out;
helping heifers with difficult births that always seemed to happen on the coldest nights in January; checking on us routinely to see if we were okay
when the phones and electricity were out during the ice storm of 1976; providing life-saving instruction in the art of cutting down trees; and gently
but firmly admonishing me to not do stupid things like smoke in the hayloft whether the cigarette was hand-rolled or store bought. They didn’t go so
far as to say that smoking was a bad idea in general. I eventually figured that out on my own and have not smoked for many years.
I am personally intrigued by “Death in a Prairie House” because I know the geographic area. I drove by Taliesin just about every day from
1975 through 1981. I’ve been inside Taliesin. I worked on a carpentry crew and helped to build several houses that had a heavy Frank Lloyd
Wright influence because I was privileged to know several people who had strong ties to Taliesin. I had the honor of knowing Herb Fritz who
survived the deadly attack at Taliesin on August 15, 1914. I worked on a carpentry crew with Herb’s son and I remember marveling at the skill and
knowledge that was embedded in the young man.
Our first son was named Isaac after a Black leader of a farming community in Grant County, Wis. in the area of Pleasant Ridge. Pleasant
Ridge is about five miles west of the town of Beetown and a stone’s throw from Lancaster. There was a White farming community adjacent to the
Black farming community and the two communities helped each other with a variety of work because it made sense. This was around the time of
the Emancipation Proclamation. They shared expertise, labor and tools and eventually built a schoolhouse together for Black and White children to
attend. We named our second son Julian because we liked the name. Julian Carlton’s story was not widely known at that time. I question if his
story is even close to being completely known and understood today. Our third child, Alicia, was born after our Wisconsin River Valley experience.
It is at least mildly interesting to consider that Julian was named Julian without any conscious awareness of Julian Carlton. Maybe it’s another
example of our collective inability to see where we stand at any given moment. We possess only scant knowledge of our environments. Maybe
because it’s hard to see things that we’re standing right in the middle of the same way it’s hard or impossible to read a page that is held too
closely to our faces. Maybe that is the purpose of history. A way to look at things from a distance. And if this is the case, it is incumbent upon all of
us to write the history of the things we experience, because if we don’t someone else will impose their assumptions on our lives and their version
may not even be recognizable.
Fine and wonderful and I find myself wondering why the book has such mass appeal. I don’t pretend to have it figured out, but my guess is that one
essential element of popularity is the size of the canvass upon which we can impose our own assumptions. “Death in a Prairie House” provides
plenty of room in the form of interesting juxtapositions. Frank Lloyd Wright was internationally known. Julian Carlton — the man who is alleged to
have committed the murders — was relatively unknown, and in fact invisible, before the murders. In Ralph Ellison’s novel, “Invisible Man,” he
wrote: I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I
am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply
because people refuse to see me. I don’t know how or why the murders happened. I don’t know if the murderer felt invisible — as if people looked
through him instead of at him while having the audacity to act as though they knew all there was to know about him. I do know that murder cannot
and should not be justified for any reason. And I have come to believe that understanding the motivations behind our actions is essential or, at
least, interesting.
The contrasts make for a compelling story: Julian was from urban America — Chicago, I believe. Taliesin was and is surrounded by open
land, farms and the Wisconsin River. Julian reportedly murdered several White people in absolutely horrible ways. Many of the murdered people
could have been considered innocents. The murders happened in 1914, a time in this nation’s history when it was not considered murder to lynch
a Black person and lynchings took on the form of some sort of perverted public entertainment. They provided opportunities for ghoulish family
gatherings while families and friends ate cold chicken and drank lemonade while some unfortunate Black person dangled, kicked, foamed at the
mouth and possibly pleaded for mercy as the party-going throng laughed and wolfed down more potato salad. Light and breezy joy and abject
horror all in the same afternoon.
My personal experience of the Wisconsin River Valley, Taliesin and the farm my former wife and I owned and lived on, a mere six miles from
Taliesin, was not fraught with seething rage, indignation or the kinds of glaring contradictions capable of literally causing one to lose his mind. And
there were ample contradictions. Perhaps the most obvious being that I am a Black man who grew up in New York City. But my Taliesin-area
experience opened my mind and heart to what it is possible for human beings to achieve when the assumptions are put aside. The goal of life, I
think, is not to vainly and insanely try to all become the same. What a waste of time, and how boring if we could ever manage to succeed in such a
futile pursuit of blandness. But, at the same time, it is essential for us to recognize the essential things that hold us together as members of the
human race. And in Clyde, Wisconsin in the Wisconsin River Valley, the home Taliesin, the essential thing was called survival.
We had neighbors help us with a vast array of things that included tying the barn together with cable to prevent the ends from blowing out;
helping heifers with difficult births that always seemed to happen on the coldest nights in January; checking on us routinely to see if we were okay
when the phones and electricity were out during the ice storm of 1976; providing life-saving instruction in the art of cutting down trees; and gently
but firmly admonishing me to not do stupid things like smoke in the hayloft whether the cigarette was hand-rolled or store bought. They didn’t go so
far as to say that smoking was a bad idea in general. I eventually figured that out on my own and have not smoked for many years.
I am personally intrigued by “Death in a Prairie House” because I know the geographic area. I drove by Taliesin just about every day from
1975 through 1981. I’ve been inside Taliesin. I worked on a carpentry crew and helped to build several houses that had a heavy Frank Lloyd
Wright influence because I was privileged to know several people who had strong ties to Taliesin. I had the honor of knowing Herb Fritz who
survived the deadly attack at Taliesin on August 15, 1914. I worked on a carpentry crew with Herb’s son and I remember marveling at the skill and
knowledge that was embedded in the young man.
Our first son was named Isaac after a Black leader of a farming community in Grant County, Wis. in the area of Pleasant Ridge. Pleasant
Ridge is about five miles west of the town of Beetown and a stone’s throw from Lancaster. There was a White farming community adjacent to the
Black farming community and the two communities helped each other with a variety of work because it made sense. This was around the time of
the Emancipation Proclamation. They shared expertise, labor and tools and eventually built a schoolhouse together for Black and White children to
attend. We named our second son Julian because we liked the name. Julian Carlton’s story was not widely known at that time. I question if his
story is even close to being completely known and understood today. Our third child, Alicia, was born after our Wisconsin River Valley experience.
It is at least mildly interesting to consider that Julian was named Julian without any conscious awareness of Julian Carlton. Maybe it’s another
example of our collective inability to see where we stand at any given moment. We possess only scant knowledge of our environments. Maybe
because it’s hard to see things that we’re standing right in the middle of the same way it’s hard or impossible to read a page that is held too
closely to our faces. Maybe that is the purpose of history. A way to look at things from a distance. And if this is the case, it is incumbent upon all of
us to write the history of the things we experience, because if we don’t someone else will impose their assumptions on our lives and their version
may not even be recognizable.
