Blue Highways: Potlatch and Tensed, Idaho

Unfolding the Map

All I can say right now is wow.  If you go to the map to identify Potlatch and Tensed, Idaho you'll see that Tensed is the 200th point we've marked on the Blue Highways reading journey.  Pat yourselves on the back, Littourati!  Since I've combined some map points into one post, I've done about 175 posts on Blue Highways, and we still have a long trip to go.  I think we'll make 300 map points before the book is finished.  In this post, William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) picks up a hitchhiker who happens to be an evangelist for the Seventh Day Adventists.  Despite a rough start, LHM comes to like him.  I'll reflect on what there is to admire in evangelists, even if you don't necessarily want, like or agree with their message.

Book Quote

"...he climbed in, smiling, introducing himself.  His name was Arthur O. Bakke...

"Now the first question from a hitchhiker never varies:  'How far ya goin'?'  ...Arthur O. Bakke's first question was, 'Do you want a free Bible course?'  Oh, god, not this, I thought.  'Jesus is coming,' he said.  Save me, I thought and started working on a reason to turn back and head the other way.

"'....The Spirit's moving in you, but never mind that.'  He pulled out a palm-sized notebook made of two pieces of linoleum.  'Where did you pick me up?'

"'Near Potlatch, Idaho.'

"....When I pulled in for gas, he checked his watch and said aloud as he wrote:  'Fueling stop at Tensed, Idaho.'

"Tensed is on the Coeur d'Alene reservation.  As a young Indian scrubbed the windshield, Bakke leaned out the window.  'Would you like a free Bible course?'  The boy never stopped wiping, but he looked in at me.  I shrugged.  'Jesus is coming soon,' Bakke chirped.

"The Coeur d'Alene said, faltering, 'No read white man word.'

"Bakke thought for a moment.  The Indian finished wiping, and I followed him inside to sign the credit slip.  Filling out the form in a precise hand, he said, 'What's wrong with your buddy?'

"'He's okay.  Just a friendly fellow.'

"'That's what they say at the funny farm.'"

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 2

Downtown Potlatch, Idaho. Photo at the Palouse Country website. Click on photo to go to host page.

Potlatch and Tensed, Idaho

What do you do when you're confronted by a person who wants to talk to you about God or Jesus?  A person who fervently believes that by doing so, they will plant the seed to your salvation?

If you're like me, you probably close the door or walk away.  You hang up the phone or you quickly change the channel from that religious station you accidently switched to when you dropped the remote.

When your own life is racked by doubts and fears, iffiness and uncertainties, and then someone tells you that the answer to everything is to simply let Jesus into your heart, is it surprising that many people feel like they are being exposed to a scam by some salesperson?  I still go to a Catholic church relatively regularly, and I still sometimes feel that way after a sermon.

Perhaps you might think the person is a little bit crazy.  Who in their right mind not only gives themselves over to the teachings of a person who lived over 2000 years ago, but also has based their daily life around that person and feels compelled to share their obsession with everyone else?  Crazy, right?

Or, take my father's.  When a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses came to our house and asked if he would be willing to talk about his salvation, my father did a masterful job of pretending that he was simple and only interested in the strawberries he was tending.  Only later did I realize that as they were trying to point him toward the beauty of salvation, he was trying to point them toward the simple beauty of a garden of strawberries.  My father was a damaged man which had major ramifications for me in my childhood, but that was one time that I was able to see some of his often hidden wisdom.

That's what I enjoy about these quotes from LHM - which I've culled from a much longer passage.  We'll continue to ride along with LHM and Arthur O. Bakke, Seventh Day Adventist and earnest adherent of Christ, for a few more posts.  From this dubious beginning, where LHM just wants to get him out of Ghost Dancing (his van) and where people, like the young Coeur d'Alene native man, smile and slowly back away from his offer of a free Bible class, LHM grows to like him and to admire him.  In a way, I have also found admiration for these self-appointed messengers because I find that if you put aside religion, my thoughts and their beliefs can find common ground.

Evangelizers often preach that society is too materialistic.  We focus on things rather than what's important.  As I take in news reports this season of a woman pepper-spraying people in a store to get one of a dwindling supply of XBoxes on Black Friday, or mobs stampeding to grab two-dollar waffle irons at a Wal-Mart, I agree with those who would want to save me.  We are too materialistic.

Evangelizers often preach that life has become too complicated, and that accepting Christ and putting our energies toward him will make things clearer.  Currently, I am trying to slow my life down.  I want to simplify and to de-clutter so that I can put my energies toward things that will lead to personal growth and happiness and which will make a positive influence in the world.  I have no disagreement with making space in one's life for such meaningful things.

I often part ways with evangelizers, though.  They often literalize the Bible and have an idea that they can slice through the mass of conflicting messages and know exactly what God and Christ intended for us.  I am more aware of the conflicts inherent in the Bible, a document written by different people at different time periods and in different cultures that has been translated from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English with all kinds of meanings lost and new meanings added.

Like evangelizers, I also choose what I think are the true messages of the Bible.  Do we, as the Old Testament says, take an eye for an eye, or do we, as Jesus in the New Testament commands, love our enemies and turn the other cheek?  Do we condemn to Hell those who can't or won't accept Christ, or do we walk among the sinners, the poor and the outcast as Jesus did?  I tend to be one who wants to love enemies and turn the other cheek in most cases.  I'm the guy who wants to walk among the sinners, the outcast and the poor.  Not only do I find them more interesting than most of the supposedly pious, but I also learn and grow from them and their experiences.  I don't see the evangelizers as being open to all except in the context of getting people to renounce everything and accept their Christian beliefs.  Otherwise, they have no time for you.  This has been driven home to me by the actions of a local evangelical homeless shelter in Albuquerque which won't shelter people for the night unless they promise to accept Jesus into their hearts, and a local, wealthy, evangelical mega-church who, according to one woman my wife met, refused to help her when she was down and out and advised her to go see the Catholics instead.

There are times, however, when I think it is very attractive to be so certain - to be so sure of one's convictions that all of the cloudiness and uncertainty of life disappears and things become quite clear.  That's why I sometimes envy the evangelizers.  If I can gain just a little of that serenity and conviction in my own life, I think I would be a lot more satisfied.  I don't see giving myself completely over to Christ as the answer for me.  I'm perfectly happy with the level of my participation in my church.  For me, the challenge is accepting and believing in myself.  That's why to me the message of the evangelizers is so deceptive.  If I did completely devote my life to Christ, I would be subsuming myself.  I finally feel, at the age of 47, I'm just truly getting to know who I am and I don't want to lose myself again.

Musical Interlude

Evidently the great guitarist Ry Cooder is known for his rendition of Jesus on the Main Line.  I found at least five or six of his renditions on YouTube and this one is from his younger days in the 1970s.  It's a great song, even if you're not into the message.

If you want to know more about Potlatch and Tensed

City of Potlatch
Potlatch.com
Wikipedia: Potlatch
Wikipedia: Tensed

Next up: Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

Blue Highways: Lewiston, Idaho

Unfolding the Map

We cross the Snake River and leave the state of Washington and Clarkston behind.  Entering Idaho, we take a little time in Lewiston to explore William Least Heat-Moon's mention of a potlatch and relate it to the season that we find ourselves in at the writing of this post.  To see the close symbiotic relationship between Lewiston and Clarkston in geographical space, try navigating over to the map!

Book Quote

"Lewiston, some residents think, looks like a European mountain town, what with its old brick buildings pressed in the valley.  Maybe so, although a yellow pother over it from the Potlatch particle-board mill on the Clearwater gave it the appearance of a one-industry town anywhere.  A potlatch, by the way, was a Northwest Indian ceremonial feast in which the host either distributed valuable material goods or destroyed his own to prove his wealth.  Which conclusion the Potlatch company had in mind I couldn't say."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 10

Downtown Lewiston, Idaho. Photo at the Idaho Department of Commerce website. Click on photo to go to host page.

Lewiston, Idaho

Now that we are past Thanksgiving and, if the Christmas music on store and restaurant speakers is any indication, into the season where we are supposed to think charitably of our fellow humans, the topic of the potlatch that LHM brings up as he drives into Lewiston, Idaho is very appropriate.  I like how LHM points out the irony of the meaning of the potlatch with the use of the name by a corporation.  In many ways the concept of the potlatch as practiced by natives and the tenets of capitalism that most advanced nations now practice (with all the ironies and hypocrisies that occasionally arise within market-based economies) couldn't be more wide.

This Thanksgiving, many people in the United States participated in the most benign form of a potlatch-type gathering - the Thanksgiving dinner.  The Thanksgiving dinners that I experienced growing up and which I still participate in are potluck affairs.  The term potluck might be loosely adapted from the Native-American term potlatch.  In the Thanksgiving dinner, perhaps one person might cook a big turkey meal for friends, or cook the main portion of the meal and ask others to bring food to supplement the main dish.  That's how I celebrated my Thanksgiving this year.  Friends cooked the bird and my wife and I and other guests brought side meals like yams, cranberries and pies.

Whether one is celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas or simply having an office potluck or potlucks among friends, the concept is similar.  Everyone shares something, everyone gets something. Often we also invite those family or friends that might be having economic or personal difficulties and can't contribute.  The spirit of connectedness and giving associated with such events allows us to set aside the ordinary demands that everyone contribute something or provide reimbursement.

A potlatch takes this farther.  Potlatches were part of the fabric of "gift economies."  Such economies were, in the United States, associated with tribes in the Pacific Northwest but are also found in other areas of the world, particularly the South Pacific.  In such societies, wealthy individuals (however wealth was defined) gave gifts to other individuals in the society with no expectation that their generosity would be returned.  Of course, our societies now are based on barter or trade, in which the exchange of goods and services is accompanied by an expectation or a demand of recompense.  It is seen as the hallmark of the advancement of a society if exchange systems based on barter or trade develop.

The potlatch allowed for the redistribution of wealth throughout the tribal community.  A person proved his or his family's worth in the society not by endless accumulation of wealth, but by sharing it with others.  The potlatch was a ceremony in which this transfer of wealth happened, and usually occurred around other special events such as weddings or births.  Sometimes the gifts that were given weren't even used, but ritually destroyed. 

To be clear, this custom was not about equalizing society.  Potlatches were not some sort of pre-industrial communism.  Instead, they reinforced the hierarchies in society.  Those who had the most wealth cemented their importance by giving the most wealth away to others.  They weren't lassaiz-faire activities either, in which people have the ultimate choice whether they are going to give to others.  Instead, it was expected that the wealthy give up their wealth ritualistically and in practice.  Those who didn't abide by societal expectations to give away their accumulation would have been shunned and maybe even driven away.  However, such customs helped maintain the structures of society in that those who had power and wealth were accorded their due importance and it allowed those on the margins to continue to live within the society.

Both the U.S. and Canadian governments put into their federal law bans on the potlatch.  The custom of giving among the natives, evidently, was seen as being antithetical to the process of Christianizing and civilizing the natives.  In reality, the ban was difficult to enforce and the custom continued during the time of the prohibition underground with authorities often looking the other way.  The last ban on the potlatch wasn't repealed until the 1950s.

I am struck by the fact that we cannot escape the question of whether, in our modern and civilized societies, we should or should not redistribute wealth.  The current debate revolves around whether those who do not accumulate enough to escape poverty deserve to be helped, and whether those who have accumulated a lot, regardless of whether they accumulated their fortunes through inheritance or through hard work and sacrifice, should be compelled through taxes and other redistributive means to share with those less fortunate.

These arguments get more heated during uncertain economic times, such as the present.  As I write, the "Occupy" protests have spread to a number of cities and among their amalgamation of concerns, one common issue that has emerged is the inequality of the distribution of wealth in our society.  In our barter and trade economies, wealth is defined by what and how much is accumulated.  With wealth comes power, and therefore those who have the most wealth and keep it are those who are the most powerful and who make the decisions for everyone.  As wealth becomes concentrated among fewer and fewer people, we entrust the our main decisions to an ever-smaller group of decision-makers.  This has fueled fears of an oppressive and tyrannical government on the right and an oppressive and tyrannical corporate structure that controls government on the left.

Like anyone, I have personal feelings on these issues.  I'm not arguing that we should regress to a gift economy.  However, I'm not opposed to more equal distribution of wealth and the redistribution of wealth through fair means.  Just as some do not trust the government to make wise decisions, I trust a democratically elected government to make wiser decisions about what is best for the country than a small group of wealthy and powerful individuals.  To be clear, I am not a socialist,  but I don't mind paying taxes to ensure a more stable and fair society.  I worry, based on history, that when societies become saddled with great inequality, that society becomes threatened.  Our major economic growth has been based, historically, on the strength of a thriving middle class.  As more people slip from the middle class into poverty, and as fewer people control the bulk of the nation's wealth, I fear that the "American dream" for most people will become more elusive and perhaps even non-existent.  I like my country, and want to see it thrive, not endanger its existence.

As we head into this season of gift-giving, we are essentially doing a radical thing by giving as the season intends.  We expect no return for our gifts to others.  We do it because for a few days each year, we can feel good about being charitable to others.  A side effect might be that we gain a reputation for being generous with what we have to others.  Not completely unlike a potlatch.

Musical Interlude

I was listening to a James McMurtry album I picked up a couple of months ago when he came into town, and was struck how this song, We Can't Make It Here, is relevant today even though this song was written in 2004.  A number of YouTube videos of this song had images that left no doubt about the political feelings of the video creators, though I suppose there's no doubt about McMurtry's feelings either.  I think the words should speak for themselves as they sum up feelings that are being articulated in the current political debate.  James McMurtry is a musician out of Texas and the son of famed author Larry McMurtry.

If you want to know more about Lewiston

City of Lewiston
LC Today: 60 Things to See and Do in the Lewis-Clark Valley
Lewis-Clark State College
Lewis Clark Valley Chamber of Commerce
Lewiston.com
Lewiston Tribune (newspaper)
Port of Lewiston
Wikipedia: Lewiston

Next up: Moscow, Idaho