No subject

corrosion and tragedy of alcoholism.

Our eyes -- hers almost twin caves --  lingered for an instant. What =
broken
pieces of Dreams and Visions with all their cutting edges lived far far =
down
in there?

There was no recognition from those dark caverns.

But she was still Indian.  A brightly beaded barrette held her hair =
back.

And when I looked at her son, I  saw clearly the young Black man who had
come to the I.W.W. hall to check out the books.

And it all came together then, in the old train station at Seattle -- at =
what had
become her tribal grounds. On what was left of Old Skid Road.

The young man was looking at me, knew I was Indian. Nodding, I smiled at =
him
and he at me.  Then they went on, very slowly, for the short Station
remainder of their walk routine.  Reaching the door through which they'd
come, they left.

And She was gone.  Forever.

_________________________________________=20

Some months before all of this, I'd mentioned the long-ago Hank's Place
confrontation -- two young Indians with competing radical brands of
Save-the-World -- to a historian friend of mine who published much on =
the
I.W.W. He suggested I write it up and get it into print.  And, when I
returned to North Dakota, I did just that.  In due course, the piece was
published in a rather surprisingly august journal along  with an =
excellent
sketch of Skid Road during its High Time.

But that Account ended in the park -- with myself sitting in the rain =
under
the now-tall trees and thinking deeply of her and of another Time.

My essay did not go into the old train station.  I  simply could not =
bring
myself to
do that to her. Certainly not at that point.  Not then.

Over the many decades after our meeting at Hank's Place, I had often
wondered  whatever had become of this beautiful and fiery Torch.  The
Communist Party went through wrenching factionalism beginning only a =
year
after our meeting. That built to tremendous  internal intensity in '57 =
--
when many indeed left it forever.

She, like I, was Indian and therefore most likely  to place loyalty to
friends over any ideological intricacies. And did she ever go back Home =
-- I
had frequently wondered -- back to the Blackfeet country?  Or had she =
stayed
in Seattle?

Now I knew.  And the truth was super heavy.

So when I wrote the  initial piece about the two of us and Hank's Place =
and
Wobblies and Communists, I stopped the ending short.  Let those
professorial readers, I figured -- all of them --  speculate as I had =
for
more than 30 years on the possible scenarios of her personal and =
political
future:  the Sun and the Clouds.  And let them, as I had for so very, =
very
long a time, remember the extremely young and the extremely  beautiful =
--
and the
extremely committed -- Native person in that early Spring evening during
that hideously grim time in 1955.

Let those initial readers remember Her -- as I still try to.

But until now, no one will remember the dried Red leaf, blowing along =
the
tortured Earth, blowing toward the inevitable Winter.

Hunter Gray  [Hunter Bear]
www.hunterbear.org=20
Protected by Na=B4shdo=B4i=B4ba=B4i=B4

_________________________________________________________

INSERT NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR [APRIL 8  2007]

THE THINGS ONE FINDS ON GOOGLE:

American Communism and Anticommunism:
A Historian's Bibliography and Guide to the Literature

 Compiled and edited by John Earl Haynes

Chapter 22

Biographies and Memoirs of the American Radical Left

John R. Salter

Salter, John R., Jr. "Red Encounters." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 78, =
no.=20
1-2 (January-April 1987). Reminiscences about a 1955 confrontation =
between=20
Salter, then a young Wobbly, with Communists in a Seattle bar.

****************************************************************




HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by Na=B4shdo=B4i=B4ba=B4i=B4
and Ohkwari'

Check out our Hunterbear website Directory =
http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm
[The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm

I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands.=20
http://hunterbear.org/WHEN%20THE%20RED%20LEAVES%20FALL.htm

And for a good feel for some of the civil liberties challenges faced by =
an effective=20
organizer, see this cluster of four related pages covering late '50s to =
late '70s:
http://hunterbear.org/a_bizarre__1979_fbi_smear_effort.htm
=20