Remembering Michael Cotter

As Trish and I are driving west, we spend a night in Austin, Minnesota.  I immediately began to remember my good friend and fellow storyteller, Michael Cotter, who lived and farmed his life just west of here.  I can’t stop thinking about him.

 I first met Michael Cotter more than thirty years ago when we were both telling stories at the National Storytelling Festival. I immediately fell in love with his stories and in a short time also fell in love with the man.  He was a giant ordinary human.

Michael’s great grandmother (whom he described as a pipe smoker) brought her family from Ireland to Minnesota during the potato family.  Her son, Michael’s grandfather, turned the unbroken sod of the Minnesota plains with a team of oxen and established the farm that Michael’s son, Tom, still runs today.

Michael spent his life on that farm, a time which saw farming move from horse power to tractor power, a change that modified everything.  His stories were about animals, people, and the land they both inhabited. He told us about how if you take care of the land the land will take care of you.

Michael had something to tell stories about: life as he had experienced it.  His stories were gentle and hard, just like life well lived.  They were a microcosm of the larger sweep of American rural history painted across the middle of the 20th century.  Listening to him was listening to truth, listening to reality.

I shared stages with Michael for more than twenty years, always with respect.  I miss him.

Michael had, at age 86, worked on the farm the day he had the stroke that soon ended his life.  He left this world on July 31, 2017.  

When Trish and I spent the night in his home town, we were blessed to have memories of this dear man wrap around us.  

Evanston Performance

 About a year ago, I was scheduled for a performance in Evanston, Illinois, on August 17.  This was before either the location or the dates were set for the Democratic National Comvention.  So, it was by mere chance that I was telling stories almost next door to where Kamala was giving her acceptance speech!  There were good feelings in the air all around. 

We were somewhat concerned about the traffic getting around Chicago with the Convention going on, but, no, everything moved right along on a beautiful day and we had no hold ups.

My event was held in the Unitarian Church of Evanston, a beautiful and accessible setting in the middle of lovely downtown Evanston.

The Chicago area is a real hotbed for storytelling with multiple events happening each week.  The main organizer for this event was our friend, Louis Greenwald, one of the earliest and to this day strongest advocates for the power of storytelling in this whole area.  He put in months of hard work pulling everything together.

We ended up with a totally sold out house of nearly 500 listeners.  Our dear friend, Beth Horner, told an opening story and then kindly introduced me.  

I had wonderful fun because the audience was such a mix of old friends and new listeners.  

Whenever you are in the Chicago area, look up storytelling events nearby.  It is almost certain that something will be happening there that you will love.

Greenfield Village

 In 1933, Henry Ford began the creation of Greenfield Village, an 80 acre outdoor museum where he assembled actual and replica buildings preserving much of the history of American industry and literature.

One of the initial buildings moved to the Village was the actual house in which Ford was born and raised.

From there you can walk down Main Street where you find a replica of the workshop building where Ford built his first cars, the actual home of the Wright Brothers and their actual bicycle shop, and other historic buildings.

You can take a break from walking and have a ride in a Model T Ford that is at least one hundred years old and still running eight hours each day.  They are proven remarkable vehicles.  Ours was a 1914 model year.

Trish and I also took more than one ride on the steam train pulled by a beautiful 1920 Baldwin locomotive.

Ford recreated Thomas Edison’s New Jersey and Florida workshops as the holding place for the actual contents of those buildings assembled following Edison’s death.  You can see the whole layout of his invention space from the light bulb to the phonograph and all sorts of things in between.

It is overwhelming to take it all in.  There are the homes of Robert Frost, Luther Burbank, Thomas Edison,  Noah Webster, George Washington Carver, and others.  The workshops are too many to mention.  

This is a great place for any age to visit.  We will come here again…it takes more than twice to do it justice!

The Henry Ford Museum

 From Dayton, Trish and I drove up to Lake Orion, Michigan, where we spent four nights with her ninety-five year old mother.  We got to see other family members while we were there. 

Leaving Lake Orion, we drove down to Dearborn, Michigan, where we spent most of the day at the amazing Henry Ford Museum there.

The museum, which opened in Ford’s lifetime, is a remarkable collection of Americana, not just automobiles, though they are there in plenty.

We first visited the Buckminster Fuller model house.  Designed to meet the post WW II housing crunch, the aluminum and glass house was to be factory manufactured and installed for what today would be just over $100,000.  It would not, however, have been on the market until 1952, and the need was for housing in 1946.  This is the only existing model.

Among the fun things was the original 1952 Oscar Meyer wienermobile!

Among the more important things was the actual bus on which Rosa Parka refused to give up her seat.  We got to sit on the bus and hear the recording of Parks herself telling about that day. (Near the bus is also displayed the chair in which Lincoln was shot.)

Among the most interesting cars in the museum collection are four presidential limousines.  These include the car in which John Kennedy was shot, which was later totally rebuilt and returned to White House service as a totally enclosed bulletproof vehicle.  It served until the Nixon era.

My favorite was the Lincoln used by both Truman and Eisenhower known as the “Bubbletop.”

You could spend days in this place and still never see everything from trains to airplanes to machinery to furniture.  A very worthy way to spend a day!

America’s Packard Museum

 Before leaving Dayton, Trish and I spent a couple of hours at America’s Packard Museum, located right downtown in a beautiful old art deco Packard dealership building.  Even without any cars, the building is fascinating.  Everything there is intact from the showroom to the service department.

The museum claims to have the largest collection of Packards in one place of any museum anywhere and they certainly have enough to fill your eyes and imagination for a day.

The showroom, with its original tile floor, is set up to display cars just as they would have in the 1930’s when it was new.  Here, a beautiful 1934 touring convertible is on display.  It looks brand new.

As you proceed through the museum, you move forward through time.  From the great vehicles of the 1930’s, we go to the more practical but luxurious examples of the ‘40s.

In a second whole connected building we arrive at the beautiful 1950’s vehicles. These are long, low, and colorful.  This particular red convertible was Perry Como’s personal daily driver.

Finally we see the end of the line for Packard. The company just did not have the resources to compete with Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler after WW II.  As sales slumped they merged with Studebaker, which had similar financial weaknesses, and the last Packards were actually rebranded Studebakers.  This 1957 is, but for the slightly modified grille, a Studebaker Golden Hawk. It is a real contrast from the yellow 1933 twin-cowl convertible that sits beside it.  These two cars represent the highest and lowest moments in the life of this great car maker.

We had a great visit! 

Air Force Museum

 After we finished in Jonesborough, Trish and I drove up to Dayton, Ohio, to visit her son, Greg, and his family for a few days.

Greg and his wife, Annette, are both career Air Force (he retired three years ago, she is still active), and they were stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton.  She has now been transferred on to Texas, but Greg and the kids and staying in Dayton for now for school.

One of those days, Trish and I went to visit the US Air Force Museum, located on the air base there.

Located in these four huge hanger type buildings, the museum has more than twenty acres of indoor space.

We started at the Presidential Plane Gallery where we saw the planes used as Air Force One by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and the 707 that was in service from Kennedy to Clinton.

The museum is in chronological galleries from the beginnings of flight to the present.  We walked several hours through all of them.

Being from North Carolina it was interesting to see Ohio try to take all the credit for the Wright Brothers who actually did much of their research plus their first flight and many follow-ups in North Carolina!  We claim them too!

Of the military planes, I loved the WW II gallery the most.  These were the planes I first remember seeing and learning about when I was growing up.  This B-29 was an impressive example.

The Memphis Belle has quite a record in the Pacific.

This museum is 100 years old this year and it keeps interpreting history and looking to the future.

Jackson Theatre

 Every year for forty-four years I have been in Jonesborough, Tennessee, each October for the National Storytelling Festival.  Trish and I even made the trips to town during the two years when COVID shut down the live festival so we could support businesses and be where we always belong in October. For well over twenty years I return to Jonesborough in the springtime for a performance at the Visitors Center.

Through all those years, one building on Main Street has stood out as it was empty and unchanged through all those years though curiously present.  It was the old and closed Jackson Theatre.

Opened originally in 1922 as the Lyric Theatre, the theatre played to full houses not only with movies but with a myriad of live shows through the 1920’s.  Then the Depression came and the theatre was one of its economic victims.

After several closed years, when WW II ended, people once again had money nd a need for entertainment. In 1945, the building was remodeled and reopened now as the Jackson Theatre, named for Andrew Jackson who, more than a century earlier, had practiced law just across the street.

But…once again, after several decades, the old theatre closed.  It has been standing for several more decades…just waiting!

Now, rebirth is on the near horizon!  After a multi-year and mult-million dollar restoration, the Jackson is about to open its doors again to new life!

Though the official reopening is to be in November, the Jackson may have some use during the October Storytelling Festival.  It is a perfect size, seating about three hundred, just between the large tents and the small Storytelling Center theatre.

So…what’s happening now?  Two documentary films, one short and one longer, are being produced telling about the history interlaced with stories of theatre memories through the years.  It is my honor and privilege to be asked to narrate those videos.

Here Ren Allen takes off the shine so we can begin filming.

A lot of the work is voice-over, but sometimes I do actually show up on camera.  

When they are all edited and put together the films can be used for both publicity and interpretation. One will likely be shown at the beginning of each new theatre event.

I am honored to be the first person seen on stage at the new 102-year-old Jackson Theatre, Main Street, Jonesborough, Tennessee!