Sunday magazine inside: page four-books page five-revisiting wounded knee page six-looking back C contributing editors: laura berman howie brick Number 14 Page Three FEA January 27, 1974 TURES A ride on the Grea the Northern: Rediscovering Wild West By David Stoll YEARS AGO, magazine advertise- ments displayed golden-haired women and handsome men stepping aboard shining passenger trains with names like the 'Golden Zephyr' and the 'Sun Chief'. Seated in cars top- ped with bubble glass domes, these phoenix - like creatures of the Ameri- can imagination then rode west to the coast through blazing glories of mountain and desert. It can still be done. A month ago I boarded a train at the bottom of N. State St. and, with one change in Chicago, rolled into the New Year aboard a train bound for Seattle. The trip cost me $101.50 from Ann Arbor, exclusive of any sleeping or eating arrangements, and took parts of three days and two nights. The stream-lined dream I boarded in Chicago's Union Station was call- ed the Empire Builder and would carry me across the top of the United States. While the Empire once be- longed to James J. Hill and the Great Northern Railroad, just who owns it now is less than clear. Somewhere in the snow plains of western Minnesota, when it was dark and the trees were beginning to drop astern, I explored all the cars and rows of faces to the very end. There, beyond the last door on a snow-en- crusted platform, a cold windy vac- uum blew up great flurries of snow and the tracks were a fast, rocking regression into the past. The con- ductor pulled me back inside by the seat of my pants. IN ONE OF THE dome cars forward sat a cowboy from Glendive, Mon- tana. He came complete with ten gal- lon hat, boots, Western shirt and chewing tobacco, but wore no chaps or six guns. He felt bad about the three fellows who jumped him in Minneapolis his last night there. "If they'd a tried it back in Mon- tana," he vowed, "I'd uh got even wif 'em:" - By midnight and Fargo, North Da- kota, the temperature outside had dropped to twenty four degrees below zero and a noticeable chill was set- tling over some of the cars. As the train sat and sat in the station, great clouds of steam issued from it and ob- scured the small, bundled figures of the maintenance crews, who were working several cars down at thawing out the steam lines. On his way home to the State University in Grand Forks was a very un-Dakotan looking academic. "How did you get out to a place like Grand Forks?" I asked. "It's a job," he shrugged. "The old faculty circuit." "Do you have much to do with the native Dakotans?" THE PROFESSOR looked embarras- sed and gestured toward a stocky, red-haired man of about thirty who was standing next to us. "Sure, here's one right here." The North Dakotan was born in Mi- not, a stop further up the line where it's supposed to be colder than any- where else. He teaches sixth grade in Grand Forks. I asked him questions and he told me stories, considering everything he said very carefully, like a Viking broken to the word, thinking slowly but steadily ever since. "Just a month ago the people had a bookburning in a little town west of here," he began. "Deliverance and some book by Henry Miller, I can't re- member the name. A teacher assigned them to his high school English class." "What did they do to the teacher?" I asked. "Oh nothing much. He came out from California and grew a beard a month after he got there, had as lit- tle as possible to do with the peo- ple and didn't go to church on Sun- days. Then he tried to teach Deliver- the curtains so no one will see us." "Parents don't want the teachers of their children to drink alcohol?" "It's not so much that. It's more they don't want the teachers to see them drinking, so teachers can't go to bars." BACKING SLOWLY out of Grand, Forks at dawn the next day I first saw the flat wheat and cattle country by light, subdivided into squares of snowy emptiness by power lines, fences and roads. Rolling up to hills as the day wore on, the West that I began to see was a land of peo- LOUIE CAME BY and got into an argument with one of the men about the maximum speed allowed passenger trains. The passenger said he worked for a finance company but knew-what he was talking about be- cause his father had worked for a railroad. "If it comes down to a choice be- tween profits and people," said the passenger defiantly, "management 'will always go for the profits. I would." "Oh Jerry," gushed his nubile young wife. "He's not really like It's hard work fuckin' a r o u n d in those godamn woods. And it ain't any easier when you got six holes in you," the logger said. "How'd you get six holes?" I asked. "They calls it Vietnam." "Where'd the six holes come from? "They calls 'em bullets." ' "k T " f +: Sa .L, "gk: c.bRa:agik'.+a 'a .k ' c :. .v. . X2% 'a, " e +r. : h.ase ple huddled together into towns against vast expanses of empty space -the Big Sky country. Late in the afternoon we stopped at Wolf Point, Montana, where the sun was setting red on the smoke and steam from a thousand chimneys. Outside in the main street it was very cold and dry, bright blue sky, tem- perature around zero. Flocks of peo- ple moved in and out of the liquor stores. An old man wearing a cowboy hat wished me a happy New Year and assured me that they had enough heating oil in Wolf Point to keep themselves warm. In the mountains of west Montana and northern Idaho that night, the old year faded uncertainly into the new, maybe twice, because we were just passing from Mountain into Pacific Coast time. Fueled by 24 bot- tles of champagne which Louie, the train's social director, had distribut- ed, New Year's celebrants tooted horns and cracked peanut shells in the bar car. Up in the dome lounge above the bar, a set of smart young marrieds in their mid-twenties were having their own party. The women aroused my lust; the men sported stylish mod haircuts, moustaches and heavy bot- toms. They were returning from a ski- ing trip. that," she apologized to Louie, laugh- ing. "Don't pay any attention to him," jeered another of Jerry's companions. "Last week he totaled his Camaro against a telephone poll." Everyone joinel in uproarious mockery. "Say, what's this I hear about the railroad giving away their old ster- ling service to the first class passen- gers?" ventured another of the men. "Not on your life," laughed the so- cial director. "That stuff is worth money and it gets auctioned off for good prices." "Here's. a twenty dollar bill," ans- wered the young man, laying one on the table, "that says you'll get what you want if you slip it to the right man." OFF THE TRAIN and two nights later I came to a little logging town on the Olympic Peninsula call- ed Forks, ten miles in from the ocean. I spent my evening there in a bar, chin in palm, elbow on the table, watching the logging men and their girlfriends play pool. Later in my six dollar room at the Antler Hotel, where the bedspread had holes in it and the faded picture of a woman from earlier in the cen- tury hung on the wall, I listened to the compelling progress of half-au- dible slaps, tickles, and protests coming from the next room .After a fight waged around the door to the bathroom which the two rooms shared, the noise subsided and the mattress springs began to sound in steady rhythm, culminating in a lengthy, disorganized jiggle. No Tammy Wynette wailed the end of love the next morning, however, as only three words came through the wall. "Forget about me," said a male voice, husky with working man pity. Waiting downstairs, after I had dressed and packed, was the fast- est chainsaw operator in the Pacific r Northwest, formerly the meanest first lieutenant in the U. S. Marine Corps and now the alonest man in the world. "You the fella they tells me is looking for work on a loggin' crew?" he asked. "Last night I was asking around, yes." "Well, whatta you got? We need a man," said the logger, chewing mean- ly on a toothpick. "I DON'T KNOW," I replied. "I don't have much, no experience and not even a very strong body. In fact, I was just asking around because I've decided to go back east and finish up my last semester of school. Maybe I'll come back out in the spring and find work then." The logger snorted, and with his hands thrust into his rear pockets, paced up the room, thektoes of his boots pointing outward. He was bet- ter than six feet tall and had blonde hair greased back over the top of his head. The logger spat out his toothpick. "Me, I'm a logcutter and they calls me about the fastest there is. Some days I cut 40,000 board feet of tim- ber. That's $120 in my pocket. Whad- dya think you're doin' comin' out to a place like this in the winter, espe- cially if you're weak and you ain't got no experience?" "I just wanted to see it." He snorted again. "Well, you'll see it plenty if you go for a logger. Me, I've had enough of this god-damn place.' "Why are you here then?" "Make money, why else?" "Hard work?". "You bet your khaki britches it's hard work fucking around in those god-damned woods. And it ain't any easier when you got six holes in you." "How'd you get six holes?" "They calls it Vietnam." "Where's the six holes come from?" "They calls 'em bullets." "What happened?" He stared out the .window at the early morning gray. "Twelve years in the Marine Corps, get to lieutenant and they bust me for breakin' up a stupid colonel with my hands." "WELL THEN," I said ,"We're both fools, me for coming out here and you for busting up a colonel." "I ain't no fool buddy. That son of a bitch was set to puttin' my men into an ambush he knowed was there." "How long ago did you break him up?" "Three years." The meanest log- cutter inspected the toes of his boots, rocking back on his heels. "He just got out of the hospital at Bremerton." "Three years," I repeated dumbly. "Yeah, I fixed him good," smiled the logger bashfully, settling back easily against the wall with his arms folded. "You got family around here?" I asked. "Got no one." He resumed his fixed stare out the window. "Father died a couple of years ago, mother died last spring, wife died while I was in the Corps, brother got killed up here by Tyee last winter when a tree fell on him." "God damn that bastard," the log- ger muttered, clenching his fist aft- er a long pause. "That's another rea- son for hanging' around this hole." "What's that?" I asked. "Gonna get even with that son of a bitch who killed him." AT DAWN on New Year's Day the train was rolling through the dry interior of Washington State, bad- lands and faraway hills covered with snow and scrubby tufts of dark grass. After two days and two nights, the Empire Builder smelled of peo- ple and baloney sandwiches, but it was all right because I would be in Seattle by afternoon. From Chicago to Seattle is 1800 miles, and following the track for every mile were the telephone lines, hung in sets on triple-yarded poles. Lounging across a pair of seats in the dome, I watched the lines swoop backward from pole to pole across the land. Cattle grazed on a ridgeline against the growing light. Behind them the towers of a power line marched away toward a city. As the grade of the rail bed changed and the line of poles traversed uneven ground, the sets of wires blended in and out of each other in soaring, tri- umphant compositions against the sky. Success: By Laura Berman Brenda Starr worked hard to get where she is today. An aggressive and successful comic-strip reporter, Bren- da doesn't regard women as "sisters" but as competitors. She contemptu- ously ignores the call of women's lib- eration. This comic strip heroine has coun- terparts in real life. In fact, Brenda Starr's rather elitist attitudes are so commonplace that three researchers from the Institute for Social Re- search (ISR) have given them a name: "The Queen Bee Snydrome". The Queen Bee thinks herself su- perior because she has garnered a position usually restricted to men. She identifies with the men in her peer group rather than with women. And she has no intention of helping other women climb to the position she has worked hard to attain. "People who succeed, like the Queen Bees, tend to identify with the Women and Queen Bee .r.."r.": ..... . s< . .... h: .. ? 'i.:w:4.. K~ ... "+%:i3 The Queen Bee identi- fies with the men in her peer group and has no intention of helping women succeed liberation. The three decided to work together, using data collected from two readership surveys in 'Psychology Today' and 'Redbook' as the basis for the study. yndrome American women who see her suc- cess in terms of a boyfriend, then a good marriage, then the roles of wife and mother," explains Staines. "The women's movement is a threat to that way of life." For much the same reason, the three psychologists discovered that older women are opposed to the wo- men's movement. "It's natural," Ja- yaratne said, "These women have spent 50 years living another way. They aren't about to change now." Does the Queen Bee Syndrome mean that the women's movement is self-defeating? That if more women are allowed to succeed in the system they will try to keep equal numbers from following them to the top? The University researchers don't think so. "The movement has gained credibility," .said Jayaratne. "It's hard for anyone to ignore it. And eventually, the Queen Bee Syndrome should disappear." Toby Jayaratne Graham Staines searcher Nate Caplan found that bourgeois blacks -- who enjoy suc- cess in the system - help stop riots. Less successful blacks blame the sys- tem and have no desire to stop the system that has let her reach the top," Staines explains. "She identi- fies with her male colleagues rather than with the concept of women as a class."