A Brief History Of The Indignant Peoples | Paul Smith

Anthropologists have long studied the demise, possible extinction and the horrid probable rebirth of the Indignant Peoples, at times arguing over each stage of their evolution, yammering over the meaning of their existence, and parsing over words like two parsons arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. And further – what dance were they doing? Was it the Mashed Potato, the Lambada, the Two Step? The dictionary refers to ‘indignant people’ as a citizenry or riffraff known to be the original, earliest known inhabitants of an area or region, characterized by their stubborn refusal to change or adapt to modern ways. They are also known to get very touchy about being left behind. Researchers Eloise Leakey (aka Leaky Louise) and Elizabeth Worthy (aka Spongeworthy Sal)† have weighed in on this heavy topic and referees have called it a draw or a tie, depending on whose side you are on.
To begin with, what made the Indignant Peoples indignant? Herein lies the first bone of contention that these skilled paleontologists wrestled over, like two Tyrannosauruses wrestling over the thigh bone of a Dimetrodon††. Leaky Louise, heretofore referred to simply as ‘Louise’, claims that the Indignant Peoples (often referred to as I.P.) got indignant during the advent of the transistor radio, claiming that radio waves should stay put, stay right where they are in their trailers, their outhouses, their general stores. Sal (now simply referred to as Sal)†††, argued that it was the decline and fall of Waffle Houses or possibly Pop Tarts that caused them to fall out of the toaster, into oblivion or disrepair or obsolescence or tumescence or something. She reasoned that the popularity of Waffle Houses in the late twentieth century caused a spike in the demand for bib overalls, which the I.P. would wear, standing in line for hours in the hot sun, chain-smoking and talking about carburetors. Blue Jean producers could no longer keep up with the demand for bib overalls, which often caught fire from the ashes of Lucky Strikes and Camels and also suffered dry-rot from drool dripping onto them from the mouths of hungry, eager I.P. dreaming of all they could eat. Thus – no bib overalls, no Waffle Houses. This issue has not been resolved, but led to further research by Louise and Sal. This led to a truce, an armistice, a break in the action, a farewell to arms if you will, between our intrepid researchers, leading to an important question, followed by controversy and here-say.
And here it is. The question.
If the I.P. were still around, would they not easily be discovered at some sort of ritual? Louise and Sal bought into that whole-heartedly, so much so that they went out and bought a box of Cheerios (which has a big heart on the outside of the box) and shared it, which led to another disagreement as to whether I.P. would ever share anything, the I.P. being very possessive, defensive and having eyes so beady that they nearly met and converged into one – Cyclops-like. The important point here being that Louise and Sal agreed not to agree that rituals were the key to discovering either the absence or the absinthe or the re-emergence of the I.P., who were also thought to lisp or lithp before throwing down all the pancakes or waffles they could eat. Louise was pro. Sal was con.
‘What sort of rituals?’ one might ask. The most logical answer is of course – mating rituals – anything to do with copulation, population, fornication, California, Tijuana, inflatable love dolls and Wesson Oil. They came up dry. Leaky Louise was especially disappointed, having hoped to find some wet spots in our national rubble that would prove or disprove her theory of extinction. Archeologists unearthed tantalizing clues – foundations of the Admiral Theatre, Heavenly Bodies in Elk Grove Village, adult book stores – all of which led Louise to claim that the I.P. were now extinct since all of these venues were espoused by folks who went there simply to play with themselves, which led, of course, to decreased fertility and eventual annihilation.
“Whoa!” said Sal. “Hold your horses!” She wasn’t sure what she meant by that. It was partly to shut up Louise and her primitive fascination with rituals, but it was also fun to just say it, so she said it again.††††. She discovered she liked the sound of the word horse and said it over and over. Then she thought of words that sounded like horse – elephant, antelope, Titanic, misanthrope, cantaloupe. And then it hit her – horsepower! She said it again – horsepower! What had she heard about horsepower? Nothing. So she drove her buggy††††† to the library to do some research and on the way there was nearly run over by a Thunderbird, revving its big, loud engine at a red light and then accelerating when she approached. Dusting herself off, she went in the library and read that horsepower was a big ticket item favored by rural people, pockets of yokels in burgs, hamlets, hollows (hollers) and the boondocks, all of whom seemed to eerily have the same lifestyles of the I.P. She concluded that if a researcher really wanted to research the I.P., all she had to do was listen.
So Sal listened.
Late that night, Sal lay down in her bed and listened to the sounds around her. Her city was never quiet. There was this hum, this background noise that never went away. She hadn’t really paid attention to it and had absent-mindedly thought it was insects, but now she perked up her ears. It was not insects. No. Nor was it the stars. No. Nor was it angels dancing on the head of a pin. Traffic? No. Yes, there was traffic, but Sal listened deeply. It was what was behind the constant hum of traffic – the restlessness, the yearning, the desperation of a country wanting something that was always just out of reach. The night noise was not even outside. It was in her, just like it was in the soul of John Lee Hooker, who once said, ‘Last night I heard Papa tell Mama, ‘Let that boy boogie-woogie. It’s in him and it’s got to come out.’’ It was in her. It was more than a hum. It was something that told her that nothing – not dancing, not rituals, not religion, not research, not cynicism – would ever satisfy her. The only thing that had a chance was – horsepower.
So she listened closer to the darkness and heard chanting and followed the chanting south, deep into the bowels of a country she once thought she knew, past the South Side, past Oak Lawn, past Kankakee. She didn’t even ask Louise to tag along. There was no time. The chanting became immediate and portentous as it called her further and further into the oblivion of the hill country, till she finally spotted them one night – in a clearing with a tent set up, and from the tent came a purring sound she recognized from her childhood as something her pappy once liked – the sound of a Chrysler 426 V-8 Hemi.
Sal crept up to the tent and peeked in the side. Here was the ritual she had sought – a hundred people, maybe more, and the people craned their necks and stood on their tiptoes to get a gander at a Holley four-barrel carburetor sitting in the open hood of the Chrysler C-300 as a cowboy in a sharkskin suit sat in the driver’s seat and revved the engine over and over. ‘They live!’ she shouted inwardly. They are still among us. She couldn’t wait to tell Louise. Here, a day’s drive from the city was the display of backwardness she had sought, something that might even make her famous, a vast horde of unkempt, uneducated heathens worshipping an obsolete piece of machinery. The roar got louder and louder, and soon the roar of the people out-decibeled the roar of the four barrel carburetor. Sal got scared. She put her hands over her ears and cried out,“Whoa!”
All of a sudden, the tent got quiet. She had out-decibeled the crowd and the Chrysler. All was hushed. Sal took her hands down and saw all these eyes staring at her. They crept forward, curious, like a herd of animals inspecting an interloper.
“Why, it’s just a little girl!’
“It’s just a little girl come to take a look at us.”
“Hello, little girl.”
She was frightened beyond words. The men wore bib overalls. She had researched them, but had never met one in person. One of them stepped up in front of the others.
“Hello, miss. My name is Kates Ogle. Are you alright?”
“Kates?” she asked. “Isn’t that a girl’s name?”
He smiled. His face was long and weathered, almost like the face of a horse – not a race horse, but that of a plow horse, a draft horse that had plowed the same fields year after year in a farm that scrounged to make a living, falling deeper in debt as money ran thin, and the horse got skinnier and more tired, staring at that malevolent sun beat down on him and the guy behind him, who whispered softly to plow just one more row, just one more furrow, just one more acre, till the horse and this owner behind him had the same gloomy face – the face of despondence and poverty and longing and the knowledge that there was something out there they would never get.
“Well, miss, ‘Kate’ is a girl’s name, yes. But the name ‘Kates’ came to England with the ancestors of the Kates family in the Norman Conquest of 1066. My name Kates refers to my ancestral family's residence near an important thoroughfare. It’s from the Old English - ‘gate’, which became ‘Kates’ and means road or boulevard. It started out being a last name and somehow became a first name. We don’t have a big thoroughfare here, just this old road – Cartertown Road. It’s funny. Lots of things start out one way and become something else. Where are you from, honey?”
“Chicago,” was all she could say. Kates did not seem indignant. He spoke like a researcher.
“I heard Chicago has some mighty fine people in it. What are you all doing down here? You got family?”
The cowboy stopped revving the engine of the Chrysler. He peeled the sharkskin jacket off his strapping chest and shoulders. Underneath he wore a simple old-fashioned shirt – a no-collar flatiron shirt with five buttons leading up to a sturdy neck. Sal had never seen a researcher or an archeologist with a bearing like that, or a flatiron shirt. It was as simple as the sky. The crowd crept up in front of her to get a closer look and see what she wore. She felt naked, unclothed, unprotected, vulnerable, invisible.
“No.”
Kates Ogle’s forehead scrunched up, revealing the deep kind of furrows you find in a freshly plowed field of tobacco. “Well, we like it when people come visit us so we can show them around. That’s Junior there behind the steering wheel. He likes to show off his muscle car, but I don’t think you much like the sound of that four barrel carb, so I had him stop. Come here, Junior.”
Junior Ogle approached in a lanky, bucolic gait, his arms swinging from his sides, his face tanned from what Sal sort of thought must have been some time spent in the fields or the hollows or the bottomlands of a country she had heard of once, maybe had researched but had never visited because it seemed so far away. Now here it was. And here was Junior Ogle, a raw-boned, backwoods farmhand who had an earnest but easygoing face and a muscle car that sent shivers up her spine.
He stopped and held out his fist. She wasn’t sure what to do with it. His eyes told her to put her hand out. She complied. Then he reached out with his other hand, clasped hers and made it open up. When it did, she felt the cold metal of something get pressed into her palm. She looked at it. It was the key to his muscle car, and she was now holding it. If it was good enough for her pappy, it must be OK for her. “What’s your name?” he asked. Then he smiled.
She smiled.
And this is where the research ends and the stories and controversy start. Louise never saw Sal (aka Elizabeth Worthy) again. Since Sal had no real family, it fell upon Louise (aka Eloise Leakey) to sell Sal’s things, including her buggy††††††. Nobody much wanted her scarce belongings, so Elouise gave practically all of it to the Salvation Army on Addison Street, a block from Sal’s apartment.
At night, Elouise thinks about Elizabeth Worthy when she hears Chicago’s hum. It is not the cicadas rubbing their legs together. It is not just the traffic, although the four stroke engine is part of it. Maybe, Elouise thinks, it is Elizabeth Worthy somewhere, having found a different life devoid of research, a life she now likes better. Maybe it is Elizabeth dancing on the head of a pin with thousands of angels. Maybe it is Elizabeth driving Junior Ogle around in a supercharged Chrysler C-300 out on Cartertown Road till it reaches Highway 441, and she is showing him how to make it go faster.

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† Elizabeth’s middle name was Sallie Mae. This rural style name embarrassed her so much that she tried to keep it a secret since she was old enough to ride a horse.

†† Tyrannosauruses did not live at the same time as Dimetrodons. By the 1930’s, Tyrannosauruses were extinct.

††† I just threw this is there because I know you like footnotes.

†††† saying ‘Whoa’ over and over will make your jaws sore, but will also guarantee you an extra order of oats.

††††† Her ‘buggy’ was actually a Ford Falcon with a bad transmission. It drove her ‘buggy’ taking it to Sears Automotive every other month.

††††††† Sal also called her car ‘Bugs’ because she liked Looney Tunes.

Paul Smith writes poetry & fiction. He lives in Skokie, Illinois with his wife Flavia. Sometimes he performs poetry at an open mic in Chicago. He believes that brevity is the soul of something he read about once, and whatever that something is or was, it should be cut in half immediately.