1937, In January...

In January, that year of my birth, Franklin Roosevelt said in his Inaugural, "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." In that first month of the year, 1937, almost a million were left homeless when the Ohio and the Mississippi flooded.

In February they sat down in Flint, Michigan. Strikers won a wage hike from G.M. It was the first major labor dispute in the automobile industry. And ya know, in February, Dupont patented a new thread, nylon. The year cranked up.

Benny Goodman packed 'em in at the Paramount in New York. March 3. Teenage zealots swing and scream. 21,000 lay down their 35 cents to hear one of five shows that day.

The horrors of war; German bombers devastate Guernica. Headline. Headline.

In the town of Guernica, Spain, hundreds die when German warplanes strafe a marketplace and farm houses. Guernica is capital to the Basques. They are warned with one-half ton bombs, grenades and firebombs, fired mercilessly at peasants in fields.

May. The Hindenberg blows up.

In June, Jean Harlow dies and Joe Louis is champ, beating Braddock.

July 18, the search for Amelia Earhart is abandoned at sunset.

August. Buchenwald. A very large camp. It is not unusual for a prisoner to lose fifty percent of his weight.

And in September, Bessie Smith dies in an automobile accident in Mississippi. There are rumors she would have lived but she was denied treatment because she was a Negro. The Blues Empress will reign no longer.

October. A new thing called a television will be available for home use. A picture of this unusual device is shown to the public.

November. The Redskins aim for the title, scoring an upset over Chicago.

So, to December. Jane Fonda is born. U.S. actress.

China. Japanese armies occupy Nanking. The Panay Incident occurs. Five U. S. military men die.

In 1937 the first full-length movie of an animated sort came of Walt Disney. A famous and great one, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." It has in it the song, "whistl while you work."

Town report, Wrentham, 1937

Memorial. Perley R. Dexter, Late Chief of Police. Appointed June 15, 1925. Died June 10, 1937.

The report lists those people in the town who were over 70.

The Selectmen. Warren R. Gilmore, Chairman. Henry R. Passey, Raymond F. Hemenway. The new chief of police is Charles J. Bishop.

There is the list of dogs; those folks who licensed their canines in that fine year and we find that number one is Laura Lou Startz , residing at Dedham Street.

There is a report on page 55 of the doings of the W.P. A., the Works Progress Administration, which was active in the town, providing income and needed work.

Money spent under the W.P.A.; around 26,000. Pipe was laid, moths controlled,brooks improved. There is a project to grade and seed at Sweatt Memorial Park. Also to build some concrete walls and tennis courts. Money to survey town highways. There is a project to upgrade and centralize town statistics and to conserve old demographic records.

The roads were busy that year with 54 accidents where people were injured and seven fatals. With 41 arrests for drunkedness.

The Fiske Public Library had in circulation over 10,700 volumes, of which around 8000 were adult fiction.

The town had cash on hand of $40, 644.35 and almost no cash liabilities.

Space is tight in the schools. More seats and classrooms are needed to meet the press of students entering .

The Principal of the high school says on page 18; " A great amount of benefit and pleasure has been derived from our new picture machine this year. Both silent and sound pictures, of an educational nature , have been shown at our weekly assemblies."

"The amplifying set which goes with the machine has been used every noon to furnish dance music for the studenst who remain in the building during the lunch period."

High School enrollment. 234. Vogel, 196. Sheldonville, 39. Grand total, 469.

The high school graduates 8 in the college course, lists 5 in the commercial course and 5 more in the general course.

Facts and photos

War is in the air. Times are still hard, as the depression hasn't gone away. I give you a few facts of the day, as the pictures roll by. Here's 1937 unfolding in print and picture. Unemployment in the country, still high at 14.3%.

Average salary, $1,250. Teacher, $1,367. Lawyer, $4, 485. Physician, $4,285.

Factory worker, $1,376.

Henry Ford says, "We'll never recognize the United Auto Workers' union or any other union."

Top Box-office stars; Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, Bing Crosby, William Powell, Jane Withers, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Tonja Henie, Gary Cooper, Myrna Loy.

Hit songs. A Foggy Day. Harbor Lights. Nice Work if you can get it. Whistle while you work. I've got my love to keep me warm. The lady is a tramp. My funny valentine. Thanks for the memories. In the still of the night.

And the facts are telling.....people spend 4.5 hours a day listening to the radio.

In a Gallup poll 80% approve of relief through paid public work as opposed to a dole.

The U.S. is the world's greatest producer and consumer of spirits, with gin most in demand, followed by whiskey and rum.

Pierce Arrow autos goes out of business.

Spinach growers in Wisconsin erect a statue to Popeye.

According to Vogue; "It is no longer smart to be sleek, slick and sexy but smart to be feminine.... in a new, calm way, showing the body as a superb piece of sculpture."

John D. Rockefeller , dead at 98, leaves an estate estimated at $1 billion dollars.

From September 1, 1936 to June 1, 1937, 484,711 workers have been involved in sit-down strikes.

Finally, a few of what we may call first appearances; nylon. Flag Day, June 14. Trampoline. Pepperidge Farm. Spam. Shopping cart. Howard Johnson franchises. Lincoln Tunnel.

Chilson does his documentaries.

The times were a celebration of the courage and goodness of the common person. Everything about the man, woman, child of the day was of interest. As we say, people mattered. In this grand communion with average persons Chilson fits in well. He hits homeruns, scores knockouts, films with grace and care.

Please hear Frank Brookhouser; " I think that in the thirties, despite their troubles and their tragedies, the men, women, and children in America, loved more strongly, felt more deeply, generated more warmth and held more compassion for their fellow men than ever in our history, before or since."

Stott, the fine author of the book, "Documentary Expression and Thirties America," says to us about this euphoric outpouring from Mr. Brookhouser, "that is too much surely; it implies that Americans of the thirties belonged to a different , nobler species than the rest of humankind. They didn't."

He continues. "Yet the tone of the time, its spirit, was different. When Eleanor Roosevelt says that , 'fundamentally it was a spirit of cooperation that pulled us out of the depression,' one does not laugh or squirm, for one recognizes there is a truth in what she says."

There is a peculiar feeling loose among the people. A wind of a sort. William Saroyan, the writer, puts it thus; "there is a brotherhood of things alive." That is a bit of a sweeping statement he makes, but he means it. This vast pulling together was on the minds of many. This wildly democratic urge to pull everyone along in the drive for survival and hopefully, prosperity.

Another way to express it is to quote the novelist, Gerald Green , who says, the people in the thirties have a strong "concern with others." Nicely put. Concern with others.

The accolades for Mr. and Mrs. Common are everywhere, including the work of Chilson. His images are simple, straighforward. His concern is with common experience. The basics of daily life. Going up and down stairs to vote or worship. Strolling down South Street. Funerals, parades, razing of damaged structures, building, etc.

Through it all, he is neutral. An invisible. Standing unobtrusively behind his machine, acting as if he is part of the newscamera.

To Chilson, objectivity is no problem. He is truly objective, just letting his warm eye flow over the scene he portrays, records, cajoles into video-history. He sells nothing, argues no political or religious message.

He is just taking pictures, is all.

Getting it down, so to speak.

He is everyman, filming every woman and everyman. He is doing what Martha Graham does in her play-dance of the time, "American Document." Chilson is a thirties person, a thirties artist, doing a thirties thing, as I am a nineties person doing what is done in my time. I am saving in the way he does. Only his song is a bit different from mine. As it should be. It is so amazing to me that in the year of my birth, 1937, in Boston, this guy is a few miles away dreaming and recording what he saw in the same sort of way I would try some 58 years later. I was trained to see at the best schools, waiting for tv and video to mature, so I could make my own minor contribution in the spirit of Chilson.

So, listen to Martha Graham's interlocutor. The speaker in her play, in her dance performance, celebrating the greatness of American people of the day." This is one man. This is one million men. This man has power. It is himself and you." Talk about empowerment! This is some statement. Then it goes forward again, with , "we are three women. We are three million women. " Graham strives to capture and praise some essential spirit of America. Walker Evans and James Agee distill the spirit of the poor tenant farmer of the South. Rockwell, the average American on Main or South Street. All praise-documents. All glossies. All stuff that raises goose-bumps on your skin , if you have any feelings at all. Most of us Americans have feelings.

The delivery system for this praise-statement is often the documentary in the thirties. Stott in his book calls it "straight documentary." Like the soaps which developed in the thirties. A slice of life right there on the radio. The grand evocation called, "One Man's Family."

It was the thing to do to be true to life. To do that was enough. Chilson manages to do this with his fine eye for detail, for the little drama of everydaylife. For the glance to the side of one of his figures. The jab in the coat pocket by another. The look on the man's face. He is late for an appointment. The contentment on another's face as she looks at the scene around her on the church steps. This sort of everyday detail he provides us free of charge. All we have to do is look and know what we are seeing. That , of course, is not easy to do because we have become used to fast action and a killing a minute in our media.

Life is real. No alienation. Little vignettes of warmth in a world, a larger world that is become violent, scary, increasingly dangerous.

In that period when Chilson was recording, the visual image was becoming ascendant. It would become equal partner with the spoken and the written word. The radio, magazine and book had company now. The newsreels became popular in movie theatres. The still picture was refined . Life magazine and other picture mags grew in circulation. Their photographers would become world-famous. Photojournalism was gearing up to report on a war that would top all others for horror and death..

The spirit in the air was to get it down in all ways possible. Lists, photos, stories, oral histories, recipes, yarns, and so on. Daily realities seemed important to document. There is a compulsiveness afoot in the nation , as Stott points out in his book. One films the Boy Scouts in uniform, the process of skunk-skinning in the garment industry of New York, a steel strike in Pennsylvania, beekeeping in Georgia.

Everything is grist for the photographer's mill. Across the nation. Recording the dislocation and the common event, both. The turbulent times of depression, of war, strike, flood, and at the same time, the little dramas on Main or South Street. Chilson does the latter. He looks at life about him and finds it fine.

He captures common experience and locates it in what may be called an "American document." An important American document. One that can accompany a town's annual report or group picture at the local grammar school. Chilson provides us with a vital document of U.S. life.

I quote now Carl Mydans, a Life magazine photographer.

He says, we are at the job of creating a "vital document of U. S. life." It is before you. He says it as follows; " here set down for all time, you may look at the average 1937 American as he really is. " and

"take stock of some of the abiding things which are magnificently right about America."

If we study carefully Chilson's contribution, we can see it as a valuable addition to the story of the thirties and forties. He offers a visual image of his place , Wrentham. He fleshes out for us what is in print in the library about those years and what is in the minds of citizens still living who experienced the thirties and forties in the town. His historical value is great, offering us the opportunity to dream and wonder about what it was like to be there then. In those years of change and portent.

His style is gritty, realistic, aiming to capture the sense of the time in the face of the average citizen. He provides us a "maximum of concreteness," to borrow a phrase from Stott's book. It is up to us as viewers to make something more of his efforts. To , in effect, add further bulk ; to flesh out a good story.

He seems to me to have no objection. He encourages us to tend to our work of showing the people of Wrentham. He seems to me to say, do it tenderly, fully, with care and attention. He never seeks to bruise or jangle his subjects. Like say, an interviewer on the tv today who may ask the most embarrassing question. This in some investigative show bent on getting the dirt out. No. He is gentle, loving and easy-going. I feel he wants the same of us who are continuing the story he is telling us.

To create important American stories, in the way Chilson does, one has to be aware of the fact that every person is valuable. To Chilson that is the case. One sees it looking at his films. They all count. No matter who or what they are.

This is Dawn Mc Culloch who says her say in a book of the time, called,"Hard Times."

"How important a part radio played in all our lives, all during the depression.

Everything was important. If one man died, it was like a headline. Life was more important, it seemed to me. I remember a headline story of a young golfer- he had on metal shoes and was hit by lightning. Everybody in the neighborhood talked about it. It was very important that this one man died in such a freak accident. Now we hear traffic tolls, we hear Vietnam..... life is just so; it 's not precious now."

One comes to the conclusion that Chilson is averagely competent for his times. He is just doing what comes naturally. Naturally to a sharp and competent and historically aware citizen of the time.

Only it looks so special to me in this time. Then, people cared about those they heard about on the radio or saw in a picture. As people. They cared.

Stott says, "they believed in the reality of these people they saw or heard about. They felt toward them the way they felt toward people they knew personally."

The documents we created from early mark us as American. They are our dreams made concrete and ever vivid. The Declaration of Independence, for example. Our documents are us. All Chilson did was a small thing in giving us a memory to savor, a document of his time and his life and his loves. Archibald Mac Leish says these documents are all we have to offer as evidence that we have an American culture, that we exist as a viable and valuable people. The artists, photographers, writers, newspaper persons, actors, playwrights, dance and show impressarios, costumers, all these folks of the thirties, were accumulating and stating and saving a sense of who we were becoming as a people, an American people.

Documentation of our place in the history of humankind became a civic duty. In small places like Wrentham, Chilson was on the job, feeling his way among his townspeople.

t farmer of the South. Rockwell, the average American on Main or South Street. All praise-documents.