News
Page 8
Street Roots • April 29-May 5, 2016
Street Roots • April 29-May 5, 2016
News
Hie long
incubation
of a dream
Harold Johnson, a longtime
teacher and poet, aspired to
write a novel. Decades later,
his goal has come to fruition.
BY MARTHA GIES
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
ast fall, Portland poet Harold
Johnson launched his novel at
Broadway Books, and a standing-
room-only crowd filled the Northeast
Portland shop to hear him read. Set on
Portland, poet Harold Johnson, author of “The Fort Showalter Blues, ” said the years he spent teaching at Portland Night High School were his most fulfilling.
a U.S. Army base in the late ’50s, “The
Fort Showalter Blues” is a story of a
second place - and cash - in a national essay
boys were close all through school.
Johnson was bom in Yakima, Wash., in
young African-American trumpet player
contest sponsored by Seventeen magazine.
But it was Nat and Betty Rosler, a white
1933, the year President Franklin Roosevelt
(Later, when poetry became primary in his
Jewish couple from New York, who most
took office and began introducing Depression
from Portland who gets initiated into
life, he realized the young Sylvia Plath had
powerfully influenced him. They had come out
recovery programs. Late summers during
published in the same issue.)
the racism of the U.S. armed forces.
to Portland to work in the shipyards and had
World War II, the whole family would rise at
He began to think about college. “Of
washed up in Yakima after the war. At the
3:30 in the morning so Johnson’s father could
After reading two short sections and
course, my buddy, Bob, was aimed toward
beginning of Johnson’s junior year, they
deliver them to the hop field before going to
college all along. And I knew damned well if
happened to see a particularly lovely
his own job collecting garbage for the city.
taking questions from the audience,
he could go, I could go. I just had no idea
watercolor, signed “Harold Johnson,” hanging
“My father was a man with four kids who
Johnson closed the program with a
how I might pay for it”
in
their
children
’
s
elementary
school,
and
probably never made more than $60 a
Yet once, back when he was 12 years old
asked
Johnson
’
s
father,
who
often
stopped
in
month,
”
Johnson
said.
“
I
didn
’
t
know
anybody
story he loves to tell, one dating back
and caddying for Yakima’s bigwigs out at the
at their little convenience store after work, if
as poor as we were.”
golf course, he’d earned enough money to
that might have been painted by his child.
to his undergraduate days as an English
Despite the hardship, he remembers being
buy a trumpet he had coveted for three years,
You’d better go down there, his father told
a cheerful child.
major at the University of Portland.
so he knew miracles did happen.
Harold, because these people wanted to meet
“I loved school. My teachers were all kind
The two halves of the college miracle came
people.” They especially encouraged his
you.
“I had a friend in one of my classes,
together in quick succession.
“So I got to talking about art with Betty and
painting and drawing, for which he showed an
A University of Portland recruiter showed
and we both wanted to be novelists.
Nat, and nobody had ever talked to me like
early talent
up at Yakima High School, and Johnson, an
that.” First they hired him to work behind the
“It was a white town,” Johnson recalled. “In
Charlie was two years older than I, and
avid reader of the sports pages, knew that
counter, and then, having just had their fourth
a town of 30,000 people, I was aware of
the Winters brothers - two African-
maybe 100 African-Americans.” He would see
child, asked him to babysit their children.
he told me he figured he could get his
Americans with a spectacular talent for
them when he visited his maternal
“They had lots of books! They gave me
novel published by the time he was 30.
basketball - both played for that college.
grandmother on South Sixth Street, and he
‘Anna Karenina’ to read and ‘The Brothers
“Wayne Durrell was this recruiter’s name,
described
going
down
to
this
little
four-block
Karamazov.
’
And
they
had
all
these
records:
And I remember feeling sorry for him
and somehow I talked to him. ‘Oh, yeah,
black district as “entering an enchanted
Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Beethoven,
come on down! Give us a call! Write to us!’”
grove.” Where his family lived, up on South
because he was going to be so old by
Caruso. They had the opera ‘Carmen’!”
Then his cousin Lizzy, 23, came up from
11th, he was often the only black child in his
Johnson’s voice rose to his original
then.”
Portland on a surprise Saturday afternoon
classroom.
excitement, even after all these years.
visit Johnson returned home from caddying
“My best friend from the first grade was a
He worked one year for the Roslers, until
Johnson paused for a beat, then
to find her standing in the family front yard.
white kid who was a very big influence in my
they moved back to Ozone Park in his senior
smiled broadly for the punch line: “So
“And she says, ‘Oh, do come down; you can
life.” Bob Linn was the son of college-
year, shortly after Johnson’s own father died.
live with us!’”
educated North Dakota parents who were
“I was just pretty much on my own.”
here I am, at 81!”
Out of his correspondence with Wayne
warm and welcoming to Johnson, and the two
However, he got straight As, and won
b
Durrell came the offer of a loan and the
promise of help finding work.
Sure enough, once he arrived in Portland,
the school referred him to a Southwest 12th
Avenue and Washington parking lot, where he
not only got the job but worked the 5 to 10
p.m. shift six nights a week for all four years
of college and straight through the summers.
At night, he could study under the light bulb
hanging in the parking shack. Meanwhile, he
met a number of memorable customers who
came through there. Among them, Thurgood
Marshall, just one year after Marshall
successfully argued Brown v. Board of
Education in front of the Supreme Court, and
Mark Hatfield, then serving in the Oregon
Legislature.
Johnson lived with Lizzy’s family on
Southeast Ivon and took the old
Eastmoreland electric trolley coach and two
buses to get up north to campus. Yet even
with the job and free rent, money was tight.
In 1952, Johnson’s first year at University
of Portland, the student body was mostly
white. The great Jackson Winters had
graduated and was playing center for the
Harlem Globetrotters, and his brother Jim
was serving in Korea. In those days, colleges
recruited black kids for their athletic skill,
but it was uncommon to recruit them for
academic aptitude, and University of Portland
was no exception. There were two other
black students in his freshman class.
Page 9
Mary Frances Bowers, who was with
Johnson was a talented student; he was
Portland Public Schools from 1973 to 1997,
great at memorization and loved languages.
remembers Johnson’s work at the night
At University of Portland, he took four years
school with unwed mothers, gay students,
of French and later, working on a master’s at
Portland State University, four years of
artists and musicians.
Italian.
.
“He was perfect for that,” she said.
He was disappointed University of Portland “Harold was a humanist, immensely well-
didn’t have an art department, but was
educated in several subjects, and he was
pleased with the possibilities for writing.
funny. He just had a good spirit”
“I had a wonderful teacher right away,
When he retired from teaching in 1995,
Father Michael O’Brien,” Johnson said. “The
Johnson served as co-editor for “Fireweed:
guy had studied with Robert Penn Warren at
Poetry of Western Oregon” for two years. He
Minnesota and was really good.”
had already been writing and publishing his
By “good,” Johnson meant rigorous, and
own poetry - in literary journals, two
he took classes with O’Brien for four
chapbooks and several anthologies - for 25
semesters.
years.
“He encouraged me by publishing my work
Finally, as the new century began, he got
in the college lit magazine,” Johnson said.
down to business: It was time to write that
And it was here that Johnson’s dream of
novel.
writing a novel began.
“The Fort Showalter Blues” took 13 years
Geoffrey Chaucer was a beautiful discovery
to complete, during which time Johnson’s
for him, and he loved Shakespeare class.
work was twice internipted by bouts of
“Though I didn’t have the money for the
cancer. But he rested, treated - chemo the
Shakespeare text,” he recalled.
first time, radiation the second - and
Instead, he used an edition he had seen
persevered. When the book
advertised on the back of
was
finally finished to his
a comic book during his
satisfaction, he did not seek
senior year in high
an agent.
school. “It cost $3, and I
“Given my age,” he said,
had sent away for it.” He
“I didn’t want to be
simply made do without "Harold was a humanist,
bothered with all that”
any of the footnotes and immensely well-educated
Instead, he self-published
still earned top grades.
in several subjects, and be under the imprint Irving
He loved it aJL
was funny. He just had a
Courts, a reference to the
By the time he
good spirit."
Irving Park Tennis Courts.
graduated, in 1956, he
had accumulated the
MARY FRANCES BOWERS, In the long list of activities
'
HAROLD JOHNSON'S FORMER
at which Johnson excels,
credits required for a
• COLLEAGUE AT PORTLAND PUBLIC
SCHOOLS tennis holds a key position.
teaching certificate,
which he called his
And a beautiful novel it
“route to employment.”
is, written with a poet’s love
He quickly paid off his
of language, an artist’s eye
school loan teaching
for detail, and a musician’s
eighth grade at Sitton
ear for dialogue.
Elementary, was drafted in 1958 and played
At the book launch, Paulann Petersen,
trumpet with the 62nd Army Band at Fort
Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita, was seated in
Bliss. When he returned to Portland, he
the front row. A longtime friend, she had
taught at Boise Grammar School for a few
championed Johnson’s recent volume of
years, then began a Master of Arts in
poetry, “Citizenship,” with an enthusiastic
Teaching in painting and drawing at Portland
back-cover blurb: “Savvy, sassy, satiric, his
State.
work is so encompassing, so compassionate,
At PSU, he met the poet Sandra
his poems can sing for a whole nation.”
McPherson, who mentored and encouraged
“When Harold began to read,” she said
his poetry, and the artist Anne Griffin, whom
later, “I was transfixed by the voice of the
he married in 1971.
incomparable Harold. Exactly marvelous. Yes,
Meanwhile, in 1969, Portland Public
he
is.”
Schools opened John Adams High School, at
Petersen was just one of the many
Northeast 39th Avenue and Jessup Street,
Portland writers listening to Johnson in the
launching a bold new experiment that
room that night, but there might have been
garnered national attention for its
other friends present whom the rest of us
conspicuously non-traditional curriculum.
could not see: his classmate Charlie, who had
Each sub-school had a master teacher, called
harbored the same desire for novel-making;
a director, who worked with the same group
and O’Brien, the English professor who
of high school students all four years.
expected so much from his students; or Nat
Out of Adams was from Portland Night
and Betty Rosler, who had briefly and
High School, an outreach program to kids
angelically descended into Yakima so many
who, for one reason or another, could not fit
into conventional high school, and with it was decades ago to encourage the young boy in
his talent
bom Johnson’s true calling.
Johnson has an easy comfort with good
Johnson’s career flowed smoothly along
two channels: writing poetry and teaching
fortune.
“I do think teaching was a lucky thing,” he
troubled kids, many of whom graduated,
made their way in the world and still call on
said. Then, with a broad smile: “And living
him today.
long enough to write.”
He remembers those years of teaching as
his most fulfilling.
Martha Gies is the author of “Up All Night”
“Those kids that I had during that time, I
and of numerous essays and short stories
• mean they were really.... ” He could not talk
published over the past 30 years. She teaches
about them without his voice breaking.
in Portland, where she lives, and abroad for
“Excuse me a minute,” he said, “but that hit
the workshop Traveler’s Mind.
me. We were like family.”