Category: Reflecting on the Past

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ONE OLD PHOTO – A WINDOW INTO BASEBALL AND BARNSTORMING IN THE 1930s

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“Take me out to the ball game.
Take me out with the crowd….
For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out.
At the old ball game!”

It all began when I saw again a blurry photo labeled “Park Day 1933” among my mother’s photos. The photo was of a Black baseball team, some doffing their caps for the photographer.  The photo had intrigued me before but this time I pursued more information.

It was taken in Cambria, Wisconsin where the population was 671 in 1930, a white farming community of mostly Welsh and German heritage – almost certainly all white. It is 46 miles from Madison and 85 miles from Milwaukee: a pretty isolated area. What was the story behind this photo? How did the residents receive this team? I was so curious!

I contacted the Cambria-Friesland Historical Society via Facebook messaging and asked what they knew about this day. Mary Jane helpfully tracked down a newspaper description about that Park Day in 1933:

 “On Tuesday, August 22, 1933 the House of David of Benton Harbor, Michigan played the Giant Collegians of Piney Woods, Mississippi.” The article states the Collegians also played at Park Day the year before, and on August 21, 1934 the Collegians returned and played “Happy” Felsch’s Wilkes Dairy team of Milwaukee.

The Giant Collegians

Aha! Zooming in I could see “Giant Collegians” on the baseball shirts. A starting point! Piney Woods at that time was a junior college. It was one of many historically Black colleges and universities around the country who fielded baseball teams that traveled around playing all over the United States in the 1920s and 1930s to raise money for their colleges.

It turns out that not only those teams but other teams, Black and white, were organized into leagues and traveled around from town to town – particularly small towns in rural areas to entertain. It was called Barnstorming and it started in about 1860 on a small level but grew massively during the 1920s and 1930s with poor economic conditions (the Great Depression of the 1930s). It provided entertainment for the communities and income for the players or their organizations. Baseball was the number one sport in the country during these years, so crowds always showed up.

I learned that in 1932 135 players tried out for the Piney Woods team and they sponsored three teams – the Giant Collegians, the Brown Cubs, and the Little Brown Cubs. Together they played  169 games in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota, winning 148 games, losing or tying 21. They played against professional squads as well as semi-professional and amateur teams. In 1933, the Giant Collegians team headed to the Midwest to play 20 games in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The total number of games played that season is unclear.

Piney Woods added a twist by surprising the fans who stood expecting to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch. Instead, a quartet sang a couple of Negro spirituals, told the story of their school, and solicited donations. The music and the story served to expand the awareness of the audience to a culture they knew little to nothing about.  A definite bonus!

The House of David

The Collegians’ 1933 opponent at Cambria Park Day – the day the photo was taken – was House of David of Benton Harbor, Michigan. They turned out to be a unique piece of barnstorming history! The House of David, established in 1903, was a sect that lived communally and considered themselves Christian Israelites. They got into the barnstorming circuits in about 1915.

Photo credit: Chris Siriano’s House of David Baseball Museum

They couldn’t cut their hair, so their appearance was distinctive among the baseball teams. They followed a strict moral code and were strict vegetarians. That moral code included egalitarian beliefs so they played against teams of all kinds including Negro League and historically Black college teams like the Piney Woods Giant Collegians. Apparently an example of this happened on that Park Day in Cambria, Wisconsin on August 22, 1933.

The team even traveled for a few weeks some summers with the Kansas City Monarchs in the depth of the Depression for financial reasons. The Monarchs were known as the greatest Negro team of them all. In an interview House of David player Lloyd Dalagar said, “We didn’t care what color they were. To us they were just gifted athletes who weren’t allowed to play in the big leagues.”

In 1934, before their largest crowd to date, they defeated the first Negro team invited to the famed Denver Post Tournament, their traveling companions the great Kansas City Monarchs, for the championship.

This book provides rich information about the barnstorming teams and specifically the House of David and its teams. (They had up to three teams at some times.)

Baseball and the House of David: The Legendary Barnstorming Teams, 1915-1956  by P.J. Dragseth.

“Happy” Felsch’s Wilkes Dairy Team of Milwaukee

I was unable to find information about this team that apparently played the Giant Collegians on Park Day 1934. Perhaps it only played locally and sporadically. But “Happy” Felsch was a renowned baseball player from Milwaukee who rose to fame in the Chicago White Sox team beginning in the 1915 season. The scandal about the fixing of the 1919 World Series (the Black Sox scandal) derailed his promising major league career. Although there is detailed information available about his activities after that, I could not find a barnstormer team of that name, or even just connected with Wilkes Dairy. The Society for American Baseball Research is the creator of the detailed account of Felsch’s life: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/happy-felsch/

The Life of Barnstormers

Life on the road was tough for barnstormers and even more so for the Black teams. For all of them, the drought that extended through the decade of the 1930s caused dust storms in the Midwest and southern Great Plains which impacted travel and availability of food and water. They traveled by bus mostly, with automobiles in some cases. Extreme heat, vehicles without air conditioning and travel on backroads to reach small towns made for tough travel. Black players weren’t allowed in hotels in these years of segregation and Jim Crow laws. But still they played.

Reflections

This fascinating journey of exploration began with one blurry photograph from 1933.  I am grateful to learn more about the time, the town and the sport – including the examples of breaks in the segregation of the time. I would love to learn about reactions of the people of Cambria to these (at least 3) visits of the Giant Collegians and their opponents. What kind of welcome did they receive? Was there apprehension or fear? Any backlash? Perhaps I can learn more. And I will be looking for other opportunities to explore stories behind photos from the past. Stories expand our awareness in profound ways. The path from generalized facts and knowledge to more specifics is a rich one.

I’m Carol Brusegar, author, photographer and curator of information. My focus is on gathering and writing on topics that enhance all our lives – regardless of our age. Topics include health and wellness, personal development, innovation and creativity, and a variety of helpful, practical tools and practices. I have a special interest in helping people over 50 years of age to create their 3rd Age – the next stage of their lives – to be the best it can be.

 

 

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Band Concert in the Park – When an Experience Elicits Memories and Exploration

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Hundreds of people in lawn chairs and on blankets at El Dorado Park West waited for the music to begin. Many had brought picnic dinners and were enjoying them with family and friends. A traditional band concert in the park had brought them there on this beautiful July evening to relax and enjoy.

The Long Beach Municipal Band played Broadway music – Gershwin, Oscar and Hammerstein, Meredith Willson, Jerry Bock and more – with skill and enthusiasm. The second half of the concert featured a jazz ensemble from the band with vocalist Crystal Lewis. An accomplished musician with 20 albums to her credit as well as two Grammy nominations, she performed a combination of standards and original compositions which were enthusiastically received.

Music, Memories and Legacy

After 2-1/2 years of attending only a couple of such public events, I felt peace and delight. As I sat back and listened, often nodding or tapping to the rhythm, memories of past band concerts in other places were triggered.

I thought of band concerts in my hometown that featured the community band led by a past high school band director of mine. And a variety of concerts in the band shell at Lake Harriet in Minneapolis with the community bands and orchestras being my favorites. I remembered taking my two toddler grandchildren to their first band concert in a Nashville park, and another time attending an orchestra concert with a group from my church there. And most poignant for me, I recalled the quintessential small town band concerts in Friesland, Wisconsin that featured the local band for many decades. And that memory led me on a journey.

I attended a few of those concerts in Friesland with my mother and cousin as an adult. They were always like stepping into the past with pie and ice cream for sale (2019 prices: $1.75 for pie, $0.75 for ice cream). Thinking of them launched me back to thoughts of my Mom who played in that band for years when she was in her twenties. The Cambria-Friesland Band was a huge thing back in the 1920s and 1930s Mom played clarinet and saxophone and her sister played trombone.

During intermission at the concert, I googled the band and found an article on the Cambria-Friesland Historical Society’s Facebook page! The article was published in the Mid-County Times on February 23, 1961 and included historical information including the debut of new – very fancy – uniforms donated to the band in 1929. The best part was a photo of the band at that time, including my Mom and my Aunt!

This was a busy band. They performed concerts of semi-classical music and lots of marches in concerts, 3 times a week in the summer at 3 different locations, and events like county and state fairs.

I realized through these memories and research that my enduring love of band music and concerts came from my Mom. Her deep affection for them were shared with me and she supported my participation in bands from junior high school through two years of college. I played clarinet as she had. And beyond my own participation, the love of the music and the experience of attending these unique community events persisted.

The Long History of Band Concerts in Parks

Band concerts such as this have been staple summer activities in towns and neighborhoods across the country for a century or more, in some cases nearly 200 years!

The New York City Parks Department notes that Castle Garden Park was the site of regular military band concerts from 1824 to 1855. The first free Saturday afternoon concerts in Central Park were in 1859. The tradition grew from there at various sites and continues to this day.

The State Capital Band of Helena, Montana is celebrating its 120th continuous year of presenting weekly outdoor free summer concerts in 2022, debuting in 1903.

In fact, this is the Long Beach Municipal Band’s 113th season! These are not isolated examples. There are hundreds – probably thousands –  more across the country.

These days, a wide variety of music is featured in free outdoor concerts, attracting different demographics. My favorite will always be the community bands with their unique mix of music and instrumentation. There’s nothing quite like a band concert in the park! They are enjoyable in the moment, elicit precious memories and connect me to the legacy left by my Mom.

 

I’m Carol Brusegar, author, photographer and curator of information. My focus is on gathering and writing on topics that enhance all our lives – regardless of our age. Topics include health and wellness, personal development, innovation and creativity, and a variety of helpful, practical tools and practices. I have a special interest in helping people over 50 years of age to create their 3rd Age – the next stage of their lives – to be the best it can be.

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Reflections on Pandemic Liminal Space, Between Past and Future

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Between What Was & What Will Be...

It’s been over a year since the COVID-19 pandemic hit us. We’ve all experienced things we couldn’t have imagined. For those who have lost family members or friends or suffered from the virus themselves, it has been devastating. For all of us, life-changing.

As we are moving out of the pandemic – I sincerely hope slowly and carefully – the insights of the past months are important to capture and use. There is value now as we formulate post-pandemic life, and in the future as we look back. Imagine 10 or 20 years from now, reading what you write now. And those who come after us will have a treasure we left behind.

I have a journal entry for each of the weeks since the end of March 2020 and using that as a base, I have written a short ebook. Besides looking back, I recorded questions and things to consider as I move forward. An important element of my particular story is that I also made a cross-country move, from Tennessee to California, during the year. Within the book you can also access a free journal that I designed just for this period of time as we progress.

I invite you to check out my Kindle book here: http://carolbrusegar.com/between-what-was-what-will-be  It will take you directly to Amazon.com. The book is just $0.99. If you are not a Kindle user, a PDF version for download is available on Gumroad for the same price: BWWAWWB on Gumroad

Here’s a more complete description:

Between What WAS and What WILL BE reflects on my experiences during the initial year of the COVID-19 pandemic which included a cross-country move. I share the insights and struggles of the months leading up to and following the actual physical transplant of my life from Tennessee to California. And I reflect on the decade I spent in Tennessee: experiences, insights, and connections to the past.

During the process I experienced:

+ Letting go of possessions

+ Transitioning relationships

+ Leaving and settling with great restrictions

+ Putting my experiences into a larger context

+ Considering what I want to be different in the future

I hope it will inspire you to embrace big endeavors regardless of the situation. May you take the opportunity of this unique time in our common history to reflect and create a post-pandemic life based on what you have experienced and learned.

 

 

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Honoring the Lost in a Year of Great Loss

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Remembering the Lost

Honoring the Lost From Every Walk of Life

The hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by COVID-19 continue to mount as I write this in the last days of 2020. May we all make honoring the lost a part of our year-end reflections. For the families and friends of those people, they are the most important losses of the year. Each of these deaths is a loss to a family, a circle of friends, a community, and often beyond that.

Some of them were health care workers – doctors, nurses, specialty technicians, food service, maintenance staff – who served in specific locations. Also lost were other “essential workers” who continued to do their jobs that allowed life to continue at some level – paramedics, police officers and firefighters; grocery store and other retail employees; providers of transportation and city services and more. They are all heroes and martyrs on another level this year.

We are overwhelmed and numbed by the sheer numbers. It is largely incomprehensible. I found this article with multiple visuals helpful in grasping this reality: Breaking Down the Numbers I hope we can take some time to remember and honor these victims of a horrible pandemic that still grips our country and the world.

Honoring the Lost Whose Names are Well Known

We have also lost people whose names are known by millions of us – some related to COVID-19 but most not. They are known for their various contributions to our national identity or culture. Musicians, actors, artists, other entertainers, leaders in civil rights and government, athletes, journalists, authors, scientists, and more. They are people whose talents and skills enrich us in multiple ways.

The television networks feature lists and photos that stream past us as they recap the year as usual. Magazines and newspapers will provide their selection of notables. Who are the people you wish to particularly remember as they leave this dimension?

For me, the loss of three lifelong Civil Rights leaders are at the top of the list. The recognition and honoring of John Lewis, 80, was most visible to all of us. His lifelong activism, beginning when he was very young, through 30 years in Congress left a huge list of accomplishments and a legacy of leadership.

T. Vivian, 95, one of Lewis’s compatriots in the movement died the very same day and sadly we didn’t hear enough of his life and contributions. He grew up in Illinois and Missouri and was involved in a sit-in to integrate lunch counters in 1947! As a student at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, he became involved in sit-ins, marches and the Freedom Rides. He organized affiliate organizations to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Nashville and other cities. He moved to Atlanta in the 1970s and from that point organized and headed multiple educational, activist and business organizations focused on equality and access.

Joseph Lowry, 98, died at the end of March when the pandemic was gobsmacking all of us. He was involved in the group of ministers around Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that was so key to so many of the advances of those years. He served as the president of SCLC from 1977 to 1997, leading campaigns for justice in multiple states at a time when it was difficult to get media attention to this work. He pastored Methodist churches for nearly 50 years.

Another giant lost was Ruth Bader Ginsberg, 87. Her death and legacy were covered extensively, and we learned more about her contributions during those days. From being only the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States to being a pop culture icon in her eighties, she was amazing. Her legal activism on behalf of equal rights for women extended over decades.

Why do I highlight these four? Prime among my reasons are their dedication to values and causes that motivated long lives of contribution.

A trailblazer of another kind also died this year – Lucille Bridges, 86. Hers is a unique story of having her 6-year-old daughter, Ruby Bridges, be one of the first children in the south to integrate an elementary school. Lucille was 26 years old when she and her husband made that bold and difficult decision in 1960 New Orleans. Through an entire school year, she walked Ruby to school with white people jeering and federal troops protecting them. No white students would be in a classroom with Ruby, so for the entire school year she and the one teacher willing to teach her were in a classroom alone together. The family paid a steep price for this bold action. Ruby’s father lost his job as a service station attendant when he wouldn’t withdraw her from the school. The local grocery store stopped selling to them. Lucille’s parents in Mississippi were forced from the land they sharecropped. Ultimately the stress and conflict caused Lucille and her husband to separate. The courage and persistence of this family which included eight children is an example that needs to be shared.

I encourage you to reflect on these and other losses of 2020. How do their stories inspire you? The Washington Post’s “Notable Deaths of 2020” provides information on the above and others: Notable deaths of 2020 – The Washington Post

 

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Dixie, Stephen Foster and the Song Track of Our Childhoods

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The Golden Book

 

“I wish I was in de land oh cotton, old times dar am not forgotten,

Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land.

In Dixie Land whar I was born in, Early on one frosty mornin’,

Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land! Den I wish I was in Dixie, Hooray, Hooray! 

In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand to lib and die in Dixie.Away, away, away down south in Dixie….”

I picture myself as one of about thirty white children ranging in age from six to thirteen, in a rural one-room school near Stoughton, Wisconsin in the 1950s, heartily singing this song, “Dixie,” (as we did). It takes me back and it prompts questions about the role of music in our early years and what if any imprinting it may have done.

In those rural one-room schools that endured until the mid-1900s, one teacher taught all subjects to all eight grades, including music. I really can’t imagine managing all that. Of course, they relied on basic curriculums and standard songbooks. For our regular music time, we relied heavily on The Golden Book of Favorite Songs, A Treasury of the Best Songs of Our People.

The Golden Book was first published in 1915 with subsequent copyrights in 1923 and 1946. Probably thousands of schools used this popular volume around the country as a first exposure to American music for millions of children. The nostalgic value for many of us is indicated by the price of “vintage” copies of the 1946 edition on Amazon.com: $799.39 and $855.58. Now reprint copies are also available.

I remember not only using it regularly at school but also receiving my own copy as a reward from my teacher Mrs. Olson at the end of first grade. She had written in the front “To a very sweet girl with a very sweet voice.” Somehow through the years, I lost that special copy of The Golden Book but happened to find one of those reprints on Amazon.com some years ago.

I haven’t paid much attention to it recently, until reading a reference to “Dixie” – one of the songs I first learned in that book. I found my songbook to see if the authorship and background of the song matched and took some time to examine the whole volume. I have recently been doing a lot of reading and viewing about cultural diversity and how racist policies and practices have been built into American culture and commerce. A part of that is also understanding how the actual events of our history have been taught and told from a largely white view over the years. There’s so much more to learn to have a full view of who we are as a nation and why.

Looking at The Golden Book as an iconic mode of learning during at least half of the past century is quite enlightening. It is an interesting combination of three major elements: 1) patriotism: quotes from the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge to the Flag, The American’s Creed, and the Gettysburg Address plus all of the typical patriotic songs; 2) religion:  a responsive reading from the Psalms, several Christmas carols, and a group of typical hymns sung in Protestant churches; and 3) culture.

Culture is the theme of the majority of the songs. One category, “Folk Songs,” includes several Stephen Foster compositions – “Old Black Joe,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Folks at Home,” “Uncle Ned,” and “Massa’s in the Cold Ground.” Other songs in that category come from Scottish, Irish, English and other Northern European countries.

Reading the words to the Foster songs makes me cringe. I wish I remembered how I reacted to them when I was 7 or 10 or 12 years old. Our area of southern Wisconsin was all white and far enough from Milwaukee that we weren’t regularly exposed to the diversity and issues of that city as young children. These songs provide imagery, words written in dialect, and depictions of formerly enslaved people as missing and yearning for a return to those days. Noted in this section of “The Golden Book” is that Stephen Foster lived from 1836 to 1864, pre-Civil War. It states that he often visited “Negro camp meetings and there studied the music of the colored people.”

For example, from “Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground” –

“Massa make de darkeys love him, Cayse he was so kind,Now dey sadly weep above him,

mourning cayse he leave dem behind. I cannot work before tomorrow, Cayse de tears drop now.

I try to drive away my sorrow, picking on de old banjo. Down in de cornfield, hear dat mournful sound;

all de darkeys am aweeping.Massa’s in de cold, cold ground.”

What did we think about that? How did we process it? What messages were implanted that we couldn’t even articulate? How did the songs fit into what we were explicitly taught? I wish I had access to some of the textbooks we used back then. How did they address slavery and describe Black people? How whitewashed were the descriptions?

 Going back to “Dixie,” notes in The Golden Book indicate it was written by Dan D. Emmett to be performed by the minstrel group of which he was a part, Bryant’s Minstrels, in 1859. This all-white group that performed in black face was one of the most popular of the time. “It became the great inspirational song of the Confederate Army” notes also indicated. (I learned elsewhere that Emmett disavowed the song’s association with the Confederacy.) Minstrelsy was popular from the late 1830s into the 1920s and even beyond in various forms.

Have you thought about how the music you heard and sang when you were a child affected you? What kinds of songs were they? What were the messages, implicit, explicit and inferred? How might these still be affecting your beliefs and attitudes today? Ask those same questions about the music your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews and other children are hearing and singing today.

As white folks striving to expand our knowledge and awareness of American history in all its dimensions so that we can change things that must be changed, this kind of learning and reflection is so important. It’s an essential part of creating a more perfect union.

This is one of the Memoir Essays included in my Kindle book, “Memoir Essays: Memories + Context + History = Deeper Appreciation of Your Life Journey”