A Lesson from the Oaters
Sometimes when reading the news of the day, it helps to be a certain age. Take that vandalism the other day at the Fraternite of Notre Dame property near Marengo. You probably read about it. Some nuns and their bishop returned to their convent on New Year’s Day to find statues of the Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart defaced with spray paint along with subtle messages like “Go Away,” “Leave,” “666” and “KKK.”
Some folks seem confused as to who might be responsible, no matter that the convent was the center of a bitter and hard fought zoning dispute with the neighbors replete with confrontational public meetings and a blizzard of letters to the editor. The use of the “666”, a common symbol of Satanic worship, and the initials of the Ku Klux Klan leaves some wondering. Others chalk it up to possible teen age hi-jinks.
If you were old enough to sit in the Bijou on Saturdays in the Thirties or Forties or even, like me, old enough to run home from school and snap on the primitive Motorola to catch the afternoon movie, you knew what was going on.
Remember those grainy two reel westerns? You know the ones-where the cow ponies mixed with the running board Fords, crank telephones hung on the wall and lantern jawed guys with extra tall white hats in double-breasted shirts twirled pearl handle revolvers and saved the day. Remember the bad guy? He was the one with the pencil moustache, brocade vest and string tie who always showed up at the ranch after the well was poisoned, the herd stampeded, and Uncle Jeb cut down by bushwhackers. He oozed oily sincerity when he offered sympathy to the heroine and offered to save the day by “taking this old place off your hands.” Not only would he offer her only a fraction of the real value of the land, he would not tell her that he had found gold/the railroad was coming through/he could undam the creek to bring water to his sheep.
It was pretty much the same here. Except, of course, that the girl was not a spunky gal with bobbed hair and jodhpurs, but a nun in full habit. And Uncle Jeb was a French bishop on bad paper with the Pope. We shouldn’t be any more fooled by the “666” and “KKK” than the hero was when the bad guy disguised his minions as Apaches or Mexicans. It was just a ruse to throw us off the track.
No, I’m not saying that the neighbor who reportedly expressed sympathy to the nuns was a black hatted criminal mastermind. He very likely was totally innocent. But someone among those wailing about property values and warning about cults last summer probably decided to take matters into his own hands and drive the “feriners” out.
What is missing in this scenario is Tom Mix or Gene Autry. Where, oh, where is our hero when we need him? And make no mistake, we need him. Even if the Klan and Satanists are just red herrings, there is plenty of evil afoot here. There is an admixture of xenophobia (they don’t even speak English!), knee jerk religious bigotry, and good ol’ nimbyism run amok. Nothing ever cried out louder for a cowpoke on a good, fast white horse.