Portraits of Character: The Golden Rule

While traveling in Louisiana earlier this year, I determined to drive just over the western border to see Orange, Texas. I had been visiting a WWII veteran in Louisiana--a paratrooper from the 101st Airborne Division, and I discovered that he lived only a few hours from where Clancy had been born and raised.

It was my first visit to this part of the country and I did not know what to expect. Driving through low lying farmland intermingled with swamp brought back memories of conversations I had with Clancy about his childhood. In those conversations he had sometimes brought up a life lesson. At times, they were encapsulated in a single story. On other occassions, they were behaviors he observed over time.

A road sign with the name Vinton came into view as I continued to drive west towards Orange. Clancy had learned a lot about swamps there, I remembered. In the summer, when he was about ten, he would stay with a Cajun family and help pick Spanish moss which would be used to stuff mattresses. He would get a few cents for every bushell. A visit to a bayou by boat a day earlier gave me a little understanding of what might be involved in picking the moss and what could be hidden in it -- insects, spiders, and even snakes. The Cajun family he stayed with taught him some Cajun French and how to live off the land in the swamps. They were skills that would prove to be very useful in his future military service.

After a significant traffic delay due to construction, I finally found myself driving towards the center of Orange. The route that Clancy would likely have taken to get to and from Lousiana had long been torn down and was being reclaimed by the swamps and bayous. In his day, there had also been at least one ferry across the river. I crossed on a modern concrete bridge miles north of where the steel beamed bridge spanned the Sabine and connected old Highway 90 in Texas and Lousiana. A short drive down the business route brought me to the center of town.

It was a weekend afternoon and the streets were largely empty. That was a big contrast to where I lived. At this time of day people would be out and about, shopping or running errands. Here it was virtually a ghost town. I found a place to park and began to walk along the streets of the downtown area. The information about the library -- a place I hoped to get a brief history of the city --indicated it would be open in the afternoon, but when I arrived it was closed, having adopted new hours at some point. Those changes were not reflected on the pamphlet I had in my hand. Unsurprisingly, the governmental buildings were also closed. Had I known there would be a great traffic delay, I would have started much earlier in order to get some more local knowledge of the city.

Orange and its environs looked a little different in Clancy's time. Photographs from the time period attest to the changes. Loggers and trappers were not to be seen. The railroad station was now somewhat derilict and for sale. There were new buildings now and others long since torn down, but many vestiges of Clancy's day still remain. Cypress trees still grow in spots along the Sabine. Landmark buildings and houses still stand, now with historical plaques in front. The heavy humid blanket of the southern clime remained unchanged as did the smell of the river. I had to wonder where it was that his father tossed him in and gave him his first swimming lesson and where it was that he bathed every day for a week after being sprayed by a skunk when he walking around the corner of the barn on their farm. Somewhere along the meandering stretch of river he must have done so. This is wehre he spent the first thirteen years of his life. I naturally gravitated towards the river from the sidewalks and streets. Crossing Front Street, I saw railroad tracks, now disused, and covered partially with asphalt. That triggered a memory of a story Clancy told me. I continued to walk as I thought about it, but was eventually compelled to go back and try to photograph some sections of the tracks.

Clancy had grown up there during the Great Depression. The city had gone from a boomtown on the river to a time of decline and recession. The population tapered. I would imainge, like many other well-to-do families, not a few lost their wealth overnight in the stockmarket crash. People were impoverished in the days that followed and the drought of the "Dust Bowl" era made things more difficult regionally. Many across the country were without work and had little if any means to feed or clothe themselves. Orange was no expetion, but people were still coming there in hopes of finding work, whether in the shipyards or farm fields.

Clancy was born and raised on a farm in Orange. He knew first hand the hard work of maintainnig a farm--one worked "from dark to dark", but there was enough to eat and one could usually trade or barter for what one did not have. His mother, he told me, had a table outside of the house on the porch where they would feed women and children and men who had come in, following the rail line that went to Beaumont, Texas, looking for work. While not rich (the kitchen had a dirt floor), they let women and children stay at their home while the men searched for work, and they never charged them a penny, as Clancy put it. They shared what they had. People survived by helping people.

In contrast to this hospitality--one that turned a blind eye to all appearance and turned away no one, Clancy, being of Cherokee lineage through his mother, found, as he grew older, that he was not so welcome in the city. Though the surrounding farmers were kind enough and he had good memories of the people and especially harvest time, in the one room school he went to he was called among other things a "half-breed" and his mother a squaw. At one point, though still just barely a teenager, he was run out of town. Things changed with time and Clancy's native roots and native skills were admired and seen as a great asset when he was in the service, but as a child he treated very poorly by some. He did not forget that. But what is remarkable is how he used those experiences as a tool.

One of the things I first noticed about Clancy when I met him was his generous spirit and his overall lack of judgment towards people based on appearance. While a very strong and mentally tough man, he was generous to a fault and kindhearted beyond most anyone I had met. When he told me the stories of being treated like a lesser human as a child, I wondered. I wondered how he had not become bitter or resentful or why he had not returned the same actions on those who had been so cruel to him.

When he told me about his mother, It became apparent why. In spite of this sort of treatment in the immediate circumstances, Clancy and his mother were kind to everyone who came to their door. They remained totaly unlike those in the city in that respect. They did not return evil for evil. And, Clancy continued to be kind and generous and accepting of people throughout his life. Those who attended his funeral were testiment to the diversity of people he impacted--everyone from bikers to government officials came, male and female, young and old, and in every shade of skin color.

His own rejection had toughened him, but not in the way of bitterness or of upheaval. It had toughened him to "stick to his guns" on who he was and not believe or act as though he was lesser because of what someone else thought. He had learned from his mother how to act, not from the biased on how to react. He treated people the way he believed he should be treated even though others did not treat him that way. And, overwhelmingly, throughout his life, that basic golden rule reaped great rewards. It was a powerful example of how to overcome the actions of people of lesser character and even of systems that for a time allow disparity of justice or inequality. He worked his way through it. It did not happen overnight, but was built in a life time of discipline to virtue--action by action, choice by choice. It earned him much respect though I don't think people always realized why. His example became a powerful advocate of the golden rule, more by his actions of kindness and generosity than any provocative or dominating words ever could.