MARCH 2-5, 1919 & ANOTHER OLSON STORY
ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018-19
March 2-5, 1919 plus
Another Olson Story
ABOVE – With the coming of the Alaska Railroad interest expanded in tapping the resources all along its route as well as encouraging settlement. The Seward Civic Fair of 1916 was part of that promotion. Photos like this became popular as Seward represented the Kenai Peninsula in spreading the word about the various possibilities of homesteading. Photo circa 1916, source unknown. Photos below of the Seward Civic Fair from the collection of the Seward Community Library & the Resurrection Bay Historical Society.
On March 3, 1919 – before even mentioning Fox Island -- we see
Kent the anarchist. One can’t easily define the anarchist movement of this
period – there were many variations (See AnarchistModernism: Art, Politics, and the First American Avant- Garde by Allan
Antliff (2001). Kent’s friend, Carl Zigrosser, editor of the Modern School, probably influenced
Kent’s thinking. “In this ideal community of Fox Island,” Kent writes, “we’re
so little concerned with law – the only law that bears on us at all we delight
in breaking – that one wonders how far no government can be carried.” Most
people never had contract with the law, Kent claims – thus indicating that
“most of the law code is but a writing down of what the average man naturally
wants to do or keep from doing.” He calls this the “common” law and adds,
“There’s a sharp difference between such ‘common’ law and the exceptional law
that strikes at the personal liberty of a man, laws concerning morals,
temperance, or that conscript unwilling men for war. In all law there is
tyranny, in these laws tyranny shows its hand. The man who wants true freedom
must escape from the whole thing.”
He must escape from the from the masses, from the city, from the
mediocrity and tyranny of the herd – this is what Kent’s experience on Fox
Island has taught him. This is what he hopes his New England rural refuge will
provide for him and his family. “How farcical sound these days ‘Life, Liberty,
and the pursuit of Happiness.’ ‘No government without the consent of the
governed,’ and other old-fashioned principles. But they have to still be
reckoned with till the last Bolshevik has been converted into a prosperous
tradesman and the last idealist is dead. And now for Fox Island.”
Mornings are cold, but that doesn’t stop father and son each day
from dashing naked down the shore to plunge into Resurrection Bay – even in snow
squalls. The weather has been dull and gray, but late afternoon on March 2nd
“the clouds suddenly vanished…and the sun shone as warm and beautiful as on the
fairest summer day. I sat out-of-doors
and painted while the snow and ice melted and dripped all about.” He has less
time for lengthy letters to Kathleen and others. The illustrated journals are
essentially finished. Now, he must paint and paint more. “I work ceaselessly,”
he writes. “Time flies like mad and the day of our departure is close.”
The two islanders spend Tuesday, March 4th indoors.
It’s snowing hard. Rockie is “hard at work upon his chart of ‘Trobbeabl Island’
– a wonderful imaginary land where his own strange species of wild animals
live.” Kent washes and mends clothes, and repairs his seaman’s bag which was
damaged on the steamers to Alaska. Olson joins them, quietly rereading
Kathleen’s letter to him with the drawings little Kathleen has done for him.
The old man is charmed.
BELOW -- We don't have Kathleen's letter to Olson. It probably went into his treasure box and traveled with him to Vermont and later Wyoming where he died. Fortunately, we do have Olson's long letter to Kathleen. It's very obvious that Kent had a role in its composition. The main purpose of the letter was to convince her to come to Alaska. Below is the first page. Olson ends the letter with a P.S. that tells Kathleen not to blame him for the letter because her husband made him write it. He added that she could answer it if she liked but if she didn't it was all the same to him. As you read the letter, you can feel Olson's accent. He spells the way he speaks. In the scene from my play further on in this entry, you need to imagine Olson speaking he way he writes. Archives of American Art.
Olson won’t give up
trying to persuade Kent to stay longer. All the gifts Kent and Rockie have
given him -- Kathleen’s letters and little Kathleen’s drawings -- he has stored
away in his mostly empty box of treasures. “These scant treasures, what a
memorial to a lonely life,” Kent laments. There are a few photographs, one of
an old friend from Idaho, Tom Crane. Another of Crane’s wife and his sister. On
a short winter journey with his wife, she froze to death and Tom lost both
feet. Olson led the rescue party, Kent records “bringing in with great
difficulty the dead woman and then tending to Crane through long, painful days
until his crippled recovery."
The scene below is a dramatized version of the story about Olson
Kent tells on March 2, 1919 in Wilderness. You’ll see that I’ve take some
dramatic license based upon what I’ve learned about Olson’s character. It’s
stories like this that turn Olson into a symbol to Kent. He represents man’s
freedom and liberty. The right to live life as one chooses with all its
unintended consequences. Olson the human embodiment of wilderness.
AND NOW THE WORLD AGAIN
A Play Based on the Rockwell Kent
and his book
Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska
by
Doug Capra © 2019
ACT II -- SCENE 4
OLSON AT THE GOAT
FAIR
DRAFT – March 4,
2019
KENT
OLSON
ROCKIE
FAIR COMMITTEE
LADY
CLERK #1
CLERK #2
KENT
The
first of March.
OLSON
It
snows hard.
ROCKIE
Last
week Father and I started taking our morning baths in the bay.
KENT
During
most of the winter we took naked snow baths -- but now the snow’s too hard. So
every morning at about seven we scamper down the shore...
ROCKIE
Wearing
only our sneakers...
KENT
...and
plunge into the waves.
OLSON
And
some say I’m crazy! I’ve got to watch you two some day.
ROCKIE
Try
getting up earlier
KENT
You
always miss us by a few minutes.
OLSON
This
dipping in the bay will not end well.
ROCKIE
Brrrrrr.
It’s cold, but it wakes me up.
OLSON
Last
time I was in Seward I bought some odds and ends, molding for the pictures Mr.
Kent and Rockie gave me. I framed them myself.
KENT
On the little picture of himself that I painted he
has what he calls a ‘camoflag’ frame; it’s made of different moldings on the
four sides.
ROCKIE
It looks creepy – oh, not you, Mr. Olson – the
frame looks weird. Right, Father?
KENT
It’s
unique – like the man himself. People in Seward say Olson talks of us often. In
town they think it a wonder that we’ve managed to get along with the “crazy”
old man.
OLSON
(to the audience)
Swimming
naked in the bay. And they say I’m crazy?
KENT
We
get along just fine. I guess the craziness explains it. I can’t imagine -- as a
constant companion here -- one of those fine, stalwart, shrewd, honest,
wholesome-to-sterility Americans that our country admires with so much pride.
OLSON
(Mumbling)
They’re
the crazy ones.
KENT
People
in Seward told me an amusing story about you and your goats, Lars -- at some
kind of Seward Exposition a few years back?
OLSON
Back
in 1916 – the Seward Civic Fair -- and it wasn’t amusing for my goats. They put
’em into narrow packing boxes.
(ENTER – FAIR
COMMITTEE LADY. Throughout all of this ROCKIE is in hysterics, sometimes
rolling on the floor.)
And
that Fair Committee lady -- damned stupid grandmamma sun of a sea urchin, etc.,
etc., etc., (ADLIBS)
FAIR COMMITTEE
LADY
But,
Mr. Olson, we don’t want their...dirt...to fall on the floor of this building.
OLSON
You
mean their shit?
FAIR COMMITTEE
WOMAN
Mr.
Olson! Watch your language, please!
OLSON
Who
do you think you are -- treating my two beauties like...beasts.
BELOW -- Olson in his cabin on Fox Island with two of his beloved goats. Photo by Rockwell Kent, courtesy of the Rockwell Kent Gallery, Plattsburgh State University, Plattsburgh, N.Y.
FAIR COMMITTEE
WOMAN
They’re
animals, Mr. Olson, and their droppings…well, the odor…
OLSON
Everyone’s
shit smells, madam. Even yours.
FAIR COMMITTEE
WOMAN
Mr.
Olson! How dare you!
BELOW -- Olson on Fox Island with one of his goats and an unidentified child, probably taken a year or two before the Kent's arrived. His cabin is in the background. Photo from a private Kent family album.
OLSON
They’re
wonderful animals. You treat them like they’re potatoes or turnips or cabbages.
All of you -- you old pompous windbags, grandmamma sea urchins...son of a
backwards...
FAIR COMMITTEE
WOMAN
How
dare you! At least potatoes or turnips or cabbage wouldn’t drop
their...droppings on our clean floor.
OLSON
To
Hell with your clean floor. These goats are as good as all of you. Your shit’s
no better than theirs.
FAIR COMMITTEE
WOMAN
Watch
your language, Mr. Olson! I’m warning you! We will not have your goats soiling
our floors.
OLSON
(He picks up the
droppings and scatters them around)
So
their droppings are dirty and soiling the floor? I’ll show you droppings.
Droppings?
Soil the floor? Here, have some. I give you their nasty droppings. Here... take
them. And together we’ll decorate your floors with this soil of the goat. Drop,
drop, droppings, drop...
FAIR COMMITTEE
WOMAN
Well,
I never...Mr. Olson...in my life I never...
OLSON
(suggestively)
Oh,
I bet you have…once in a while…when nobody’s looking…
KENT
So
the old man spread the droppings all over floors and stomped on them. Then he
lifted his goats from the packing boxes and threatened to remove them from the
exhibition -- all the while muttering...
OLSON
(He talks to his goats as he frees them.)
My
poor beauties are going home with me. Are you all right my precious babies? Out
you go from your prison. Don’t worry now. Papa’s going to get you out. Yes,
you...the one with the pretty little face and lovely lips. We don’t have to be
insulted by these...these human animals. They are the dirty ones. They leave
worse droppings than your shit all over the territory. They build their towns
and cities and stores and banks, their canneries and their sawmills -- until
there is no more room for us, my sweet beauties. We’ve got to escape to an
island to get away from them.
(To the Audience)
You
see -- humans are just one kind of animal. But their the meanest. Animals will
fight and kill each other -- but they never do it without a good reason.
KENT
He
denounced the fair committee for their abuse of the other animals there, too,
and the whole place tumbled about, but
they listened -- and Olson won. He saw the other animals treated better and
his goats given an honorable amount of freedom in a special curtained-enclosure
with a sign that read: “Admission To See Goats -- 10 cents.”
OLSON
And
I threw away the sign and let everyone in free. And it was a big crowd, too –
so Hah!
KENT
With
the coming of the railroad with Seward as its terminus, the town is growing rapidly
with a lot of new comers. Some of them have no idea of the frontier culture.
They bring the worst values of the Outside here with them. They’re busybodies.
They won’t mind their own business. They’ve got to know everything about
everybody. They’re the ones who spread the rumors of a German spy on Fox
Island.
OLSON
Damn
fools. This isn’t the Alaska I came to 30 years ago. We were all oddballs and
cranks – but them that didn’t follow the code – well, they didn’t last long one
way or another. (to Kent) You should warn people about the busybodies.
KENT
I’ve
no need to warn my friends in Seward – the Roots, Brownell, Hawkins, Sylvia,
and Thwaites and the others. These are the real old timers, the true pioneers. They
know how to deal with this
OLSON
They’re
my friends, too. They’re good folk.
KENT
To
these newcomers, Olson is…well, you said it Lars – an oddity, a crank, a
misfit.
OLSON
(sadly)
I’m
nothing but an old, broken-down, frontiersman.
KENT
You
are the frontier, Lars. The epitome of liberty and freedom.
OLSON
Whatever
the Hell an “o-pit-amy” is, I guess I’ll take it.
KENT
Some
of these new comers take advantage of him when comes to town. But like he did
at the 1916 Civic Fair --- he can give it back in ways people won’t forget. On
one of our trips to Seward he spent hours sitting beside the stove in Brown and
Hawkins General Store, which gave the clerks a chance to torment him. One
grocery clerk is a rather stylish looking rake...
OLSON
Stylish?
Fat and pompous son of a sea urchin’s misbegotten grandmamma’s bastard child of
the devil…
(BEGIN ENTRANCE –
CLERK #1 AND CLERK #2)
KENT
Yes,
Lars -- one of those fine, stalwart, shrewd, honest, wholesome-to-sterility
kinds.
OLSON
Bastard!
KENT
That
particular clerk has always aroused Olson’s ire. This time he said:
CLERK 2
Knew
you were in town old man. We could smell you coming.
CLERK 1
Olson
-- We saw you down the railroad tracks last night with a strange lady? Who was
she, old man? Huh?
CLERK 2
Out
for a little walk, aye? Pick her up on the Line, did you? I think he had two
whores with him. Out for a double feature, aye?
(They both laugh)
CLERK 1
Didn’t
know you were a lady’s man, Olson. Thought you were more attracted to the
goats.
(Both CLERKS laugh
and hoot throughout all this. OLSON is holding in his anger, just waiting for
the right moment.)
CLERK 2
No,
that would be sheep.
CLERK 1
Or
cows, or a nice heifer, huh, Olson?
CLERK 2
Oh,
oh -- I know who she was -- that nice lady at the fair.
CLERK 1
Ah,
you mean the one who didn’t like your precious goat droppings. That one?
CLERK
2
Yes,
and one of her friends. Didn’t know they moonlighted on the Line.
CLERK 1
So,
that’s the kind of monkeyshine you’re up to when you come to Seward, huh, old
man?
CLERK 2
Tell
us, Olson. Where’d you go and what’d you do, aye?
CLERK 1
Who
were those two ladies, really, Olson? Come on, who were they?
CLERK 2
Tell
us who they were, old man?
OLSON
(Pause, then mock
pleasantry)
I’ll
tell you who they were....
CLERK 1
Yes,
tell us who they were?
OLSON
I
will. I’ll tell you so you two can have some fun with them sometime.
CLERK 2
(Pause)
So
-- who were they?
OLSON
(Pause)
Oh,
I’ll tell you. They were...
(A
more dramatic pause as he gets right up to them and stage whispers to each one
separately)
They
were -- your mother. And -- your wife.
BLACKOUT
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