10A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL July 20, 2016
G OTTA CATCH ' EM ALL
S YMPHONY
Continued from page 1A
Cottage Grove's
Katie Warhol gets
a little canine help
while playing Poke-
mon Go during a
walk down Sixth
Street. During its
fi rst full week of
play, the game drew
players who could
be seen congregat-
ing in pairs or small
groups or playing
alone using their
smart phones in var-
ious local hotspots.
The game, which
was released on
July 6 and became
an instant phenom-
enon, offers over 100
types of characters
that can be virtually
"caught," and Bo-
hemia Park and the
Humane Society's
This n' That store are
rumored sights of
much game activ-
ity. Players say the
game encourages
exercise and so-
cial activity as they
battle it out or work
together to catch as
many Pokemon as
possible.
photo by Jon Stinnett
to help choreograph the
movements of his three
dancers. They would add a
Cottage Grove fl avor, with
scenes reminiscent of Buster
Keaton, covered bridges, car-
ousels and gold mining.
The Symphony program
featured a wider, more eclec-
tic range of music than last
year’s performance, with a
tune by Cole Porter and a
Sousa march complement-
ing a viola performance by
star soloist and 19-year old
Maia Hoffman. The familiar
jump of Tchaikovsky’s “1812
Overture” closed the show to
a round of cheers.
The City of Cottage Grove
sold buttons and raffl e tick-
ets to help fi nance this year’s
show, in addition to several
sponsor tables. Funds raised
from last year’s performance
also helped offset the $30,000
or so it takes to bring a sym-
phony to town. Afterward,
City Manager Richard Mey-
ers said he thought the City
“broke even” but did not raise
enough money to contribute
toward next year’s perfor-
mance. Still, Meyers lauded
the evening’s events.
“It was a great night,” he
said. “Having the Symphony
start a little later made the
timing just about right, and
what a beautiful sunset!”
photo by Jon Stinnett
Symphony bassist Evan Pardi helps Braxton Handsaker pluck a few
notes at the instrument petting zoo.
O FFBEAT
Continued from page 4A
African-American crewmem-
bers. A provincial jury made up
of white people whose familiar-
ity with black people consists
entirely of racist pulp-mag sto-
ries about savage black rapists
attacking pure white maidens
will be far more likely to con-
vict such a man in the absence
of any real evidence of guilt.
And such a fall-guy just hap-
pens to be handy, so with a little
help from the LAPD’s jailhouse
interrogation squad, they fabri-
cate what they need.
So, is this what happened? We
can’t really know for sure. But
it seems very likely. The motive
was certainly there.
The U.S. War Department
But the agency with the most
compelling motivation to cru-
cify Folkes was the U.S. War
Department. Here’s why:
Imagine, for a moment, that
you are an 18-year-old single
woman, and it’s early 1943 –
close to the darkest hour of the
war. You’re doing your best to be
brave, and everyone must make
sacrifi ces, so you’re riding trains
unchaperoned and walking to
your home-front manufacturing
job in the dark by yourself. But
it’s OK, because you feel safe
with all the uniformed soldiers
and sailors around. Strong and
brave and confi dent, they rep-
resent security to you, and you
feel sure that if you should ever
need anything, you could ask
one of them to help you out.
Then suddenly you hear about
a story from the West Coast: A
U.S. Marine has been accused
of having raped and murdered
a pretty girl just like you, in a
Pullman sleeper car just like the
ones you’re riding in regularly,
all by yourself, on long war-
related trips. Suddenly you’re
looking at those soldiers and
sailors in a completely differ-
ent way – as potential threats
rather than as sources of com-
fort. And every other pretty
woman in the country is doing
the same. They’re avoiding rail
travel. When forced to take an
overnight train, they’re arriving
at their destinations exhausted
and unrested. Worse yet, other
low-quality men in uniform are
starting to jump on this criminal
bandwagon. There’s another as-
sault, and another. Soon wom-
en are refusing to travel alone
on rail cars and wondering if
they’re safe on the streets. Mo-
rale, at this most key point in the
war effort, collapses.
And it all could have been
avoided if … if the crime had
been committed not by a uni-
formed soldier, but by, say,
an African-American railroad
cook. It’s more of a random
sort of threat; a black train cook
climbing into a Pullman berth
with a passenger would be so
unusual that people would view
it as a freak incident rather than
a new threat to guard against.
Looked at this way, railroad-
ing Folkes was almost a patri-
otic duty, and his subsequent
execution wasn’t much different
from a death on a battlefi eld. It
may even have saved lives.
But the price of that non-out-
come was a grave injustice, an
innocent man killed and a guilty
one not only set free, but re-
leased from the duty assignment
that would likely have cost him
his life. And in fact, out of all
the military personnel in that
“murder car” on the night Mar-
tha James was killed, the only
one who survived the war was
Pvt. Harold Wilson.
(Sources: Geier, Max G.
The Color of Night. Corvallis:
OSU Press, 2015; Barker, Neil.
“Murder on No. 15…” Oregon
Historical Quarterly, fall 2011)
Finn J.D. John teaches at Or-
egon State University and writes
about odd tidbits of Oregon his-
tory. For details, see http://fi nn-
john.com. To contact him or
suggest a topic: fi nn2@offbe-
atoregon.com or 541-357-2222.
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