MDDM Ch. 63 Zepho and Stig & John Henry

[Doug Millison]

>> 620-622  Zepho's wife cooks up a contest between her husband Zepho the
>> werebeaver and Stig.
>
> fable of the
>Tortoise and the Hare.


Speaking of contests, manual labor, the Industrial Revolution:

http://www.ibiblio.org/john_henry/
http://www.ibiblio.org/john_henry/analysis.html

[...]
The story of John Henry, told mostly through ballads and work songs,
traveled from coast to coast as the railroads drove west during the 19th
Century. And in time, it has become timeless, spanning a century of
generations with versions ranging from prisoners recorded at Mississippi's
Parchman Farm in the late 1940s to present-day folk heroes.

>From what we know, John Henry was born a slave in the 1840s or 1850s in
North Carolina or Virginia. He grew to stand 6 feet tall, 200 pounds - a
giant in that day. He had an immense appetite, and an even greater capacity
for work. He carried a beautiful baritone voice, and was a favorite banjo
player to all who knew him. 

One among a legion of blacks just freed from the war, John Henry went to
work rebuilding the Southern states whose territory had been ravaged by the
Civil War. The period became known as the Reconstruction, a reunion of the
nation under one government after the Confederacy lost the war. The war
conferred equal civil and political rights on blacks, sending thousands
upon thousands of men into the workforce, mostly in deplorable conditions
and for poor wages. 

As far as anyone can determine, John Henry was hired as a steel-driver for
the C&O Railroad, a wealthy company that was extending its line from the
Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio Valley. Steel drivers, also known as a hammer
man, would spend their workdays driving holes into rock by hitting thick
steel drills or spikes. The hammer man always had a partner, known as a
shaker or turner, who would crouch close to the hole and rotate the drill
after each blow. 

The C&O's new line was moving along quickly, until Big Bend Mountain
emerged to block its path. The mile-and-a-quarter-thick mountain was too
vast to build around. So the men were told they had drive their drills
through it, through its belly. 

It took 1,000 men three years to finish. The work was treacherous.
Visibility was negligible and the air inside the developing tunnel was
thick with noxious black smoke and dust. Hundreds of men would lose their
lives to Big Ben before it was over, their bodies piled into makeshift,
sandy graves just steps outside the mountain. John Henry was one of them.
As the story goes, John Henry was the strongest, fastest, most powerful man
working on the rails. He used a 14-pound hammer to drill, some historians
believe, 10 to 20 feet in a 12-hour day - the best of any man on the
rails. 

One day, a salesman came to camp, boasting that his steam-powered machine
could outdrill any man. A race was set: man against machine. John Henry
won, the legend says, driving 14 feet to the drill's nine. He died shortly
after, some say from exhaustion, some say from a stroke.

So why would one man - one among a hundred years of other men and other
stories - emerge as such a central figure in folklore and song? For this,
we can only speculate.

Like Paul Bunyan, John Henry's life was about power - the individual, raw
strength that no system could take from a man - and about weakness - the
societal position in which he was thrust. To the thousands of railroad
hands, he was an inspiration and an example, a man just like they who
worked in a deplorable, unforgiving atmosphere but managed to make his
mark.

But the song also reflects many faces, many lives. Some consider it a
protest anthem, an attempt by the laborers to denounce - without facing
punishment or dismissal by their superiors - the wretched conditions under
which John Henry worked.

This old hammer killed John Henry
But it won't kill me, it won't kill me.

Another refrain perhaps allowed the men to imagine they could walk away
from the tunnel. And of course they could have. The whites driving them
were not their owners. But still, for many blacks, the railroad was an
extension of the plantation. Whites were barking the orders; an army of
blacks was doing the work. And, for the most part, they had no other
option.

Take this hammer, and carry it to the captain,
Tell him I'm gone, tell him I'm gone. [...]