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Chapter 14. Do Not Go Gentle
- The University Press of Kentucky
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14 Do Not Go Gentle The locusts have eaten nearly all of my years And left the husks and hulls of endless days And now I must discover how to live with the bitter Husks and tattered fragile hulls Of days I shall never see again. So if you see me trying to piece the shards Of broken days and tiny fragmented moments together To brighten the dark night of my loneliness, Be kind, be gentle, be affectionate to an old man Who has given his years to the locusts: be kind. —John Jacob Niles, Brick Dust and Buttermilk A white-haired, stern-faced old man, stooped slightly forward at the waist, wearing black tails and a white tie, walked slowly from the wings. He stopped at the center of the stage, where there were three card tables , a dulcimer lying on each. According to an account in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Slowly, he sat down at one of the tables, reached out and his lean brown fingers began to move lightly across the strings of the dulcimer. “Do not be surprised at my high voice,” he said. “It has always 260 I Wonder as I Wander been a high voice. And may God let it remain a high voice.” And he began to sing. “Black . . . black . . . black . . .”1 The time was shortly after eight o’clock on the evening of April 28, 1967, as Johnnie Niles, the seventy-five-year-old “Boone Creek Boy,” trilled out the familiar opening line of “Black Is the Color,” a song he had performed on stages across the world for the past thirty-five years, a song he had sung in public more than five thousand times. It was his seventy-fifth birthday—a conflagration of candles on the cake of life. In keeping with his longstanding tradition, Niles celebrated the event by performing a concert designed to introduce his most current compositions. The festivities surrounding this particular birthday were really no different, except that this occasion became special in presaging the future rather than lingering on the past. From the stage at the University of Kentucky’s Agricultural Science Auditorium, Niles concluded the evening passionately embracing his large B cello-like dulcimer in a dramatic version of “Hangman,” followed by a pensive “Amazing Grace” and then a final formulaic benediction: “It was awfully pretty to be with you all. God bless you and good evening.” Unfortunately, as Niles was entertaining the standing-room-only audience , thieves were ransacking his Boot Hill Farm living room, stuffing several suitcases full of unpublished manuscripts, stealing what Niles had been giving so freely of on stage. Reflecting on the theft, Niles spoke to Norman Nadel of the Cincinnati Post and Times Star: “It was somebody who knew a lot about me—maybe a friend. He knew where I live, just where the manuscripts were kept, and what was worth taking, and he obviously knew that my wife Rena and I would be at the university that night. He wasn’t an ordinary thief; he passed up an expensive camera lying near the music and other things of value. He’ll wait until I’m dead, then let the manuscripts drift onto the market. They’ll bring a good price.”2 The puzzling theft of Niles’s songs and poetry was never solved. Niles occasionallygrumbledthatitwastheuniversitythathad“sethimup.”Kenneth Wright, a composition professor at the university who had worked closely with Niles, also thought the theft might have been universityrelated , characterizing it as a “disgraceful event—was it really a fraternity [3.92.96.247] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:30 GMT) Do Not Go Gentle 261 joke or initiation?”3 Clearly, it was not a typical robbery, since no jewels, electronics, or other valuables were stolen; the thief or thieves must have been speculating that the manuscripts would someday prove valuable. Perhaps it was only as Wright suggested, something as thoughtless as a fraternity prank.4 In one fell swoop, original copies of the music and poetry Niles had been actively working on had vanished—songs, 175 sonnets, choral arrangements , an “Indian Summer Suite” for piano; all disappeared. Rena said, “This is the loss of a lifetime.” At seventy-five, Niles must surely have despaired; at that age it must have seemed more than daunting to think of starting anew on days’ and months’ and years’ worth of accumulated work that had not yet made it to publication. But remarkably, Niles embraced this loss as a gift, observing...