Wobbly.

so i was reading howard zinn yesterday (always an enlightening/depressing experience) and in chapter 15, i came across a lumberjack/IWW member named Frank Everett. at this point in history, the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World, militant labor union) was trying to recruit lumberjacks in Centralia, Washington. On Armistice Day, 1919, the American Legion marched past the IWW headquarters in Centralia and attacked. Among those being attacked in the headquarters was Frank Everett.

I wrote a song based on the events:

Looking out from the headquarters
The headquarters in Washington
Looking out from your headquarters
Your headquarters in Washington
Open fire in your army jacket
Your army jacket, into the crowd
Open fire from your army jacket
Your army jacket, into the crowd
Run now, into the woods
Where they'll track you down and they'll find you out
Run now, into the woods
Where they'll track you down and they'll find you out

They'll lock you up...
...and they'll drag you out.

Goodbye, Frank Everett
You are not looking so hot
Good try, Frank Everett
You got tied up, you got shot.

As you could probably tell from the lyrics, Everett's fate is not a good one. Upon firing a rifle at the legion, he was chased by a mob into the woods. he put up a fight, but was ultimately captured by the pack. he was then tied up to a telephone pole and thrown into a jail. That night, he was kidnapped and dragged out of his cell. He was de-genitaled and hanged on a bridge, where he was then shot at multiple times.

The reason Zinn put this in the chapter is because 1) it shows how disgusting mob mentality can be and 2) no one was ever charged for Everett's torture, while 11 members of the IWW (known as wobblies, hence the title) were charged for killing a member of the Legion... which is wrong, seeing as how the Legion planned the attack on the IWW, and not vice versa.

Obviously, I'm not going to include all the gruesome details of the story in my song. I like the tied up and shot line because it kind of keeps the song from getting too violent/scary, but it still gives an idea of what happened. The music for this song is just a tom-tom and a ride cymbal, no piano. I think if it were to go on an album, it would bring about a nice change in pace. Because I don't think there will be any drums on the songs I have in mind right now.

So yeah, thought I'd share that with you.

~-~