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Loyd Evangelical United Brethren Church, Wisconsin, circa 1960s
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Shaw’s store, Loyd, WI, 1921, next to old church
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Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908 – 1957) was a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957.
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The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) led civil rights demonstrations for people of color in the United States.
The annual pancake supper was my favorite event when I was a kid in the 1950s and 1960s at our little Evangelical United Brethren Church in Loyd, Wisconsin. The cows were milked earlier and faster the night of the pancake supper. Milk cans full of water were delivered in late afternoon. There was no running water in the church; there was no indoor plumbing of any kind. The outhouses were in the back across from the cheese factory.
The church had no basement. Suppers were held in what was called the Community Building, which served as our fellowship hall and Sunday School classroom. There was an upright piano in one corner, which Cleo Scott played for our opening exercises Sunday mornings. A gas cook stove and cupboards sat behind a long counter along another wall. Two big coffeemakers were plugged into an outlet next to an improvised sink, which drained into a bucket.
The hall had once been a grocery store, way before my time. There is a 1921 picture of it in Allen Clary’s book “Town of Willow: 150Years of Early History.” Shaw’s store was a two-story structure with a full-length porch; it stood about 20 yards from the church. The top story was removed eventually; the old Smyth Hollow Church was moved between the store and the church. It was used to connect the two buildings. A furnace room with a large storage area for wood was added later. It was also where the long tables and extra folding chairs were stored.
The Community Building was buzzing and the tables were always full by the time we arrived after chores were finished. The tantalizing aroma of sizzling pork sausages and coffee filled the air. My mouth still waters when I remember the buttermilk pancakes slathered with butter and smothered with maple syrup. There were a variety of cakes to choose from – all made from scratch, not from a mix in a box. I always had the buckwheat cakes served with sorghum and apple sauce for a second helping because we didn’t have those at home.
What I remember most was the simple pleasure of sitting at the long white-linen-covered tables that were strung together in three rows across the width of the community building. I would listen to the neighbor men talk smart and tell lies. I didn’t know they were lies at the time and maybe those good men didn’t know either. But they were more than the common-place tall tales that old men tell with twinkling eyes. They were whopping speculations and exaggerations about threats to the nation. Now we would call them conspiracy theories.
It was the time of the “big lie” propagated by one of our Wisconsin senators, the now-infamous Joseph McCarthy. The Senate Historical Office recounts how “… McCarthy rocketed to public attention in 1950 with his allegations that hundreds of communists had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies. These charges struck a particularly responsive note at a time of deepening national anxiety about the spread of world communism.”
It all came to a head when “… McCarthy picked a fight with the U.S. Army, charging lax security at a top-secret army facility. … The army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch to make its case. At a session on June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that one of Welch’s attorneys had ties to a Communist organization. As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy’s career.
“‘Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.’ When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, ‘Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?’
“Overnight, McCarthy’s immense national popularity evaporated. Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man.”
While much of the nation came to gradually accept that McCarthy’s fear-mongering were indeed lies, vestiges of the big lie remained and still linger to this day. It was not uncommon in the late 1950s and early 1960s to hear people I knew attribute anything that seemed to threaten their beliefs to a communist conspiracy. Teachers, preachers, politicians and anyone else with whom they disagreed were labeled communists.
That was brought home to me by a single remark I overheard in a pancake-supper conversation that has stuck in my memory for more than 60 years. I was sitting next to Everett Stoddard, a farm neighbor who was as old then as I am now. Dad and Everett traded labor and equipment. At father-son banquets Dad would loan me out to sit with Everett when his son couldn’t attend. I was fond of him. Everyone loved Everett.
Another farm neighbor, who was sitting across the table from us, leaned in and looked at Everett.
He said, “I have a friend in the FBI who told me that Martin Luther King is a communist.”
He added that they were tapping Dr. King’s phone so he knew for sure it was true. I don’t remember Everett’s response, but everyone else within earshot nodded. The majority of people in our mostly-white community shared that opinion of Dr. King. The Civil Rights marches he was leading around the country were perceived as a threat.
I learned many years later that the FBI was, indeed, tapping Dr. King’s phone. That much of the remark was true. The part about him being a communist was a big lie. He was, in fact, deeply committed to the teachings of Jesus, to the point of teaching nonviolence in all circumstances and giving his life, as Jesus did. The fact that I, and most of my neighbors in little Loyd, Wisconsin, could not, or would not, recognize what should have been an obvious truth to good church-going Christians, made us just like millions of other pancake-loving Americans in the late 1950s and early 1960s – and like millions of us good church-going Americans today who remain silent in the face of big lies.
I didn’t nod in agreement when that neighbor declared that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist. I didn’t say a word.
Dr. King said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
John Sumwalt
Writer John E. Sumwalt lives in Menomenee Falls, Wisc. This post is republished with permission from his Facebook page.