If I Had A Hammer

Published in edited form May 14, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette 

If I had a hammer

I'd hammer in the morning

I'd hammer in the evening

All over this land

I'd hammer out danger

I'd hammer out a warning

I'd hammer out love between

My brothers and my sisters

All over this land. 

            When I told my mother I was going to write a piece under this title, I heard her suck in her breath over the phone.  Pausing, she said cautiously “They might think...” 

            Both of my parents were raised in small towns and vowed after they left they’d never go back.  Born in different towns on different sides of the tracks, they both were still massively concerned with what people might think.  To find freedom from that, they made our homes in unincorporated settlements, rural fringes, and subdivisions of larger towns.  But they never got free of their fears about the opinions of other people.  Early childhood learning, I think. 

            I actually do have a hammer, in fact, three claw hammers (tack, medium and large) and a woman-sized sledge, if I knew where it was.  I know how to use them for hanging pictures and outside Christmas lights, re-nailing a board coming loose or pounding a stake into the ground.  With my brother’s fiberglass-handled carpenter’s hammer, I can pry nails out of boards, straighten them on a rock, and nail things back together with the best of them.  My father’s a carpenter: more early childhood learning, learning by doing. 

            His father was a blacksmith, and he hammered metal into beautiful wrought iron fences and gates; he also repaired plowshares and other farm equipment.  Both men saw their hammers as extensions of their creative, productive, useful selves.  However, both men were quick to pound their opinions down the throats of other people, so I know the hammer as both useful and dangerous.  Dad stopped throwing his hammer after it went through a stack of windows he’d saved and he had to eat a piece of humble pie.  He's only recently stopped hurling his words. 

            This beautiful song from the early folk movement started pounding through my head when I read the letter to the editor authored by Councilmembers Pam Kimball and Danny Salinas several weeks ago.  It wasn’t what the letter said about me that was so disturbing: it was their attack on the truth.  They’re not only in denial about the possibility of wrongdoing in the Lindsay PD's arrest of Councilman Mecum, but in denial about their own wrongdoing in making Rich Wilkinson joint City Manager and Director of Public Safety under a contract irresponsibly difficult and expensive to break.  They’re in denial about the staff’s role in generating the lawsuit we filed and their own role in running up their attorney's fees defending against it.  They’re in denial about their role in excluding the public from real participation in city council meetings, the detrimental CalTrans re-realignment of Highway 65, the non-promotion of voluntary water conservation measures in this city, and other leadership challenges too numerous to mention. 

          The song, written by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger, has been recorded by hundreds of people and sung at thousands of gatherings over the last 60 years.  I hear Peter Paul & Mary’s version in my head now as I type; according to Wikipedia, singing the Spanish version may have gotten Chilean activist Victor Lara assassinated after the military coup of Salvador Allende in 1973.  It's a song for The Struggle, no matter what country or miniscule jurisdiction you find yourself called to enter it.  Sing the last verse with me in your head. 

Well I’ve got a hammer and I’ve got a bell;

I’ve got a song to sing all over this land.

It’s the hammer of justice, it’s the bell of freedom

It’s the song about the love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land. 

          Gather up your hammers, bells and songs, friends - we have work to do.

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Trudy Wischemann is an old folky who writes.  You can send your songs of love and freedom (not to mention justice) c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.