I loved him, my Robert E. Lee, for
his horse—though I can’t remember if I knew the horse’s name the day I brought
my replica of the Confederate general home. Complete with saber, pistol, and a Confederate flag secured
to the back of the saddle, both horse and rider were cherished. All of the
various accessories were separate pieces, and sometimes at night, I would
unsaddle the horse, remove the general’s gray hat and lay them both on the
ground (which, in reality, was a shelf in my bedroom) to sleep. In the morning
I’d set them up again, saddle the horse, place Robert E. Lee astride him, and
prepare for another day of battle, saber raised, flag flying. In my head, this
involved galloping, and Traveller, whose name I learned at some point, was a
galloper beyond compare.
I knew about galloping. And I knew the
names of some of the other horses in my collection because I learned them from
television. Buttermilk and Trigger were excellent gallopers too. I was five
years old in 1957, the year that I received my final horse and rider, and my
head was a receptacle for whatever I saw on TV. Galloping with abandon toward
the screen astride my palomino Wonder Horse, it’s a wonder I didn’t give myself
whiplash bouncing on that spring-loaded steed. Roy Rodgers, Dale Evans, the
Lone Ranger, and Tonto were my heroes, and it was thrilling to keep pace with
them.
I
have 13 of the Hartland horse and rider sets manufactured in the 50s. I
memorized to which general, TV cowboy, U.S. president, or Indian warrior each
pistol, feather, spear, rifle, bow, knife, saber, flag, or hat belonged. I did
not know the history of the Confederate flag or that my General Custer had
engineered genocide. On TV cowboys and Indians fought each other. Soldiers
defended the nation. Women and children needed protecting. By the time I
finished grade school in 1969, I must have known something about the Civil War.
Walter Cronkite was already covering the Civil Rights Movement on the evening
news. When I started high school, I must have learned something about the
struggles of Native Americans, but all that comes to mind is the anti-littering
crying Indian TV commercial. At least I knew enough not to throw my Coke bottle
and Hostess Cupcake wrapper out the car window. By that time Robert E. Lee,
General Custer, and their anachronistic companions had been in my possession
for more than a decade, and my head was still soft as a Twinkie when it came to
social consciousness.
There
were approximately 40 horse and rider sets manufactured (some were different
poses of the same character) by the Hartland Company in the early and mid-1950s.
My 13 were acquired one horse and rider at a time. My father bought them for
me. Some auditory memory track tells me that Sundays he took me to church to
give my mother time to rest at home with my little brother. I have no memory of
actually attending church with my dad--a Presbyterian who’d tried and failed to
convert to Catholicism when he married my mother. Maybe he told my mother he was taking me to church in the same manner than
he told her he’d convert while failing to mention that he was divorced and
therefore not eligible to become a Catholic. What I remember is holding my
father’s hand in a cramped store that smelled like cigarettes, cigars, and
candy. My dad would buy a newspaper for himself while I had the agonizing
delight of choosing a new horse and rider for my collection.
It
wasn’t until I left for college that the collection was packed away. Knowing
how much I valued them, my mother wrapped each horse and rider and hid them
away in the attic in a sealed box out of reach of my little brothers. My sophomore
year of college my father died suddenly of a heart attack one February night
after supper. His death was so unexpected that I never thought of asking for
one of his vintage silk ties or one of the pens he carried in his shirt pocket.
The neon sign from his business would have been a treasure, but I had nothing
of his (until my mother gave me a pair of cufflinks year later) except the box
of Valentine’s Day candy that he’d already mailed to my dorm by the time I was
en route to his funeral. And my horses and their riders, still tucked away in
my mother’s attic.
I
was in my 30s, a mother myself, by the time my mom sent the box from her house
in Iowa to my house in Los Angeles. When I displayed the horses and riders in
my family room, I wasn’t thinking of the Confederate flag or racism or
genocide. I was thinking of my father and how I’d tell my kids that the
grandfather they’d never know bought each and every one of those horses and
riders for me. The collection lived a quiet life in that house, tucked away in
dark room with garishly unfashionable carpeting and used only as a playroom and
occasional guest quarters for visiting relatives.
The
collection has moved with me four more times over the years. It’s garnered many
compliments from my children’s friends and nostalgic children of the 1950s. No
one has ever exclaimed, “Cool! A Confederate flag!” Or "How terrible! A Confederate flag!" Mostly the generals,
presidents, cowboys, and Indians have kept a low profile, sandwiched between
books and travel souvenirs on an upper shelf in a study or family room until,
post-divorce, I moved into a house where I could put anything anywhere I
wanted. In this house that I moved into with my mother, I put the horses and
their riders in my kitchen on a high perch above the kitchen cabinets
overlooking the kitchen island that is the heart of every gathering.
This
year, post Charlottesville, I hosted a writers’ salon and there were writers of
color attending. Some of us do not really know one another personally, and I
didn’t want to hurt anyone or come under suspicion as an idiot or a
racist. I took the horses down. It
was easy. Robert E. Lee and Traveller were not purchased by my father to
inculcate me with racist values. They were purchased to indulge my love of
horses and to indulge my father’s love for me. My Robert E. Lee has no chance
of attracting a gathering of white supremacists with Tiki torches, but by
removing him and his companions, I was honoring my respect for my fellow human
beings.
The
Confederate flag was, and is, the banner of the seven states that seceded from
the United States of American in order to preserve for themselves the
institution of slavery. The Confederate flag, often argued as being about Southern
pride or history or patriotism, is first and foremost the emblem for the states
that chose not to abolish slavery. We pour a lot of fiction into the heads of
children, and as adults we are exposed to fiction too—on Facebook, on TV, and
on talk radio. Sometimes it’s difficult to track down the beginnings of
ignorance, but we can always find its end. As for knowledge, there’s no end to
it. Or to paraphrase the actor Iron Eyes Cody (not a Native American, but an
Italian American who pretended to be an Indian) in the famous crying Indian
commercial: People start prejudice; People can stop it.
Looking toward the past
