Joshua Tree Gazette

Samuel Donald Glenn Heath was born December 4, 1935 in Weedpatch, California to a mother that was only sixteen years old.  His teenage mother had an aversion for doctors and hospitals so Sam ended up being born on the kitchen table of their small dilapitated farmhouse which sat out in the middle of a huge cotton field.  In Sam's own words, "Weedpatch had a few ramshackle shacks, an irrigation canal, dirt roads, and cotton. That was all.  Hotter than Hades in summer, freezing rain in winter.  And like most of San Jauquin valley the fine, alkali dust was all-pervasive."  Sam's father, a tall, lean Texan farmer, abandoned the family when Sam was three years old.  After that the family moved to Southeast Bakersfield, a district known then as "Little Oklahoma."  It was a hotbed of Arkies, Oakies, scallywags, farmers, and people just plain running from the law.  Quite the colorful place to enter the world.

The poverty that Sam was born into and grew up in was just as stifling as the valley heat.  When he tells stories about his formative years it's as if one is reading passages from Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.  It's not too difficult to see why Sam fell so much in love with the book.  He lived the world that Harper Lee created.  It is truly remarkable how Sam managed to escape that life, and not only survive it but go on to earn a doctorate degree.  During his long life's journey he worked as a manual laborer, mechanic, machinist, peace officer, engineer, pastor, builder and developer, educator, social services practitioner (CPS), professional musician and singer.  He was also a private pilot and a columnist.  He was awarded the American Legion Scholarship and became an award winning author.

Sam's start in life as a young man wasn't perfect.  In fact it was a rather difficult time for him and very well may have sent him down another path in life than the one he accomplished.  In his book, The Lord and the Weedpatcher he writes:  "Even in those incomparably simpler times, an eighteen-year-old boy and a sixteen-year-old girl still had the deck stacked against them.  So it is not surprising that, continuing my fast pace, I found myself a father of two, divorced and introduced to child-support payments by the time I turned 21."  He then goes on to say later, "Manhattan, Redondo and Hermosa Beaches were my Camelot, a fairy-tale world that only exists in the imagination unless you were fortunate enough to have been young and lived in them in the fifties.  The sheer magic of such an environment made anything possible in a slightly different way than the possibilities of my other life in the mountains."

Sam further elaborates on the best times of his life in the same chapter:  "I was young, had a full-time job and a car, a Desoto convertible.  I had my music and my books.  The ultimate fulfillment of my contentment and excitement was realized in holding a lovely, soft, warm girl in my arms as we sat in the open convertible watching the waves roll in on an immaculate, uncrowded beach to the music of Ebb Tide on the car radio.  Gas was twelve cents a gallon, an apartment by the beach was thirty-five dollars a month and you could buy a brand new Chevy convertible for less than eighteen hundred dollars;  a house for four thousand at four percent interest.  A dollar or a dollar and twenty-five cents an hour job was sufficient to live a life about which the rest of the world could only dream or watch movies of it."  Sam went on to finish his higher education while taking jobs as a school teacher in the San Jose and Los Angeles school districts, and even doing a short stint in Watts.  He later served in administrative roles at two private schools in Colorado, which he helped found.  He also ended up with a number of ex-wives.

Sam eventually quit the day-to-day merry-go-round of regular society, and went to live a bachelor's life in a little cottage in a place called Bodfish, located in the Sequoia National Forest.  He made the move so that he could finally write fulltime, not be bothered and enjoy the peace and solitude that such a place offers.  The fact that his last wife cheated on him probably played a role in his decision to live a life of seclusion.  Moving back to the mountains where he spent many a wonderful year growing up, gave him the chance to mimic his esteem literary mentor, Henry David Thoreau.  Bodfish became Sam's Walden Pond in so many ways.  Sam was a lover of nature and the great outdoors and his passion was based on his attitude that nature was a gift from God to be nurtured and cared for.  Who knows.  Maybe someday Bodfish will become synonymous with Walden Pond.  From this lonely retreat Sam initially mailed out copies of his type-written American Poet:  Weedpatch Gazette series.  Sam proclaimed that his mailing list had many famous people on it from many walks of life but he never revealed who these people were out of respect for their privacy.  When the Internet became popular Sam bought a computer and set up a website and continued on with his mission.

Sam's very independent thinking about what it meant to be a Christian earned him the wrath from many orthodox religionists, including Christian fundamentalists.  Gary North, a friend of Sam's since high school, and son-in-law of the famouse Christian Nationalist, Rousas J. Rushdoony had this to say about Sam's excellent book, Hey, God!:  "After reading your book I will only say this...you are so far into flagrant heresy that it is highly unlikely that you are saved...you are in the position of a self-excommunicated man...that you are on the road to hell.  I would not waste even this much time on you except for my personal debt to you for having presented the gospel to me.  That would be the great irony:  the man who led me to Christ roasts in the lake of fire forever...you are a perpetually lawless man whose wives treated you just as you have treated the Church...be not surprised at your present lonely condition.  It will get worse.  Much, much worse.  In hell, it will be forever...here is my counsel...recant publicly and send out a newsletter telling your readers that you have done so."  This seemed to be a common reaction to Sam's writings on religion in general and Christianity in particular.  Sam spent his life studying the Bible and had some rather unique positions that didn't quite jive with other Christian fundamentalists.  It was for this reason that Sam left the Church when he moved to Bodfish to practice his own unique Christian faith "in the solitude of God's creation."

Sam was a man born out of his time.  What I mean by this statement is that Samuel Heath by all rights, should have been born in that period of America known as the post civil war era (1870-1900).  One can certainly surmise that he would have felt far more comfortable and at home.  His personality nuances amd unrepentent provincialism would have made him a natural for that era.  But alas, fate deposited him into present time.  When I read Sam's writings and met him for the first time I quickly came to the conclusion he was indeed an odd duck.  I also came to the conclusion he was profoundly set in his ways.  Even though Sam was highly educated he had the misfortune of carrying a lot of baggage from his formative years in "Little Oklahoma" well into adulthood.  But most of us do that very same thing.  It's called being human I guess.

Dr. Samuel D. G. Heath was the master of a literary tradition called the "personal essay."  His primary literary mentors of course were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henery David Thoreau.  And like his mentors the hallmark of Sam's essays were their intimacy.  He seemed to be speaking directly into our ear like a nosy neighbor, confiding everything from the most trivial gossip to the most profound cosmic wisdom.  By sharing with us his memories, complaints, whimsies, and desires, Sam established a relationship with us the reader.  Through his writings we all became his best friend.  We were able to identify with him, understand him and see him as the Everyman.

At the core of Sam's essays is the doctrine of a certain unity to the human experience.  Michel de Montaigne, patron saint of personal essayists, once said:  "Every man has within himself the entire human condition."  Sam was a walking testament to this fact.  When he spoke about himself he was telling the story of all humanity.  When he was angry we were all angry.  When he dreamed we all dreamed.  When he was laughing we were all laughing.  When he got frustrated with the most trivial things of everyday life we were right there with him.

Sam's essays sought to break through the great wall of formal discourse with language that was just plain, simple and to the point.  He never wasted words!  Reading his essays is like having the man sitting in front of you in your own living room having a casual conversation.  Sam had a lot in common with the great essayist, William Hazlitt, a giant of the personal essay form.  Hazlitt defined his own ideal, the familiar style, as follows:  "To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as any one would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes."

A very good example of Hazlitt's maxim is taken from Sam's The American Poet:  Weedpatch Gazette For 1990-1991, page 99-100:  "The school was having a talent show.  I was 'volunteered' by this teacher to sing in front of the whole school.  She had a few selections for me to choose from but none of them seemed to 'hit' me quite right.  They just didn't fit my mood.  Bakersfield radio stations carried many good musical programs.  I was always listening to music from the radio, the church and mom's records.  I had mentioned many old favorites such as 'Cocaine Blues.'  As a result, I had an extensive repertoire of widely diverse songs and decided to do one of my own favorites.  But I failed to share this decision with the teacher.  And so it was that good, old Mt. Vernon was treated to my rendition of that great and famous ballad:  'Cold Icy Fingers!'  The teacher was most unforgiving.  Little did she realize how lucky she was that I didn't treat the school to Cocaine Blues (circa 1942), my alternative choice.  Looking back, I think it was the reference to naked bones that got to her.  She was quite the 'old maid.'  My cultured tastes and refinement knows no bounds and I am always anxious to share the bounty of my childhood with others who have similar, discriminating tastes."

How the outside world filtered into Sam's local life in Bodfish, the dreams, the hopes, the irritations, the stories of children's difficulties, the humorous insights - these were the building materials for Sam's essays.  We learned how he received the outside world, how he digested it, how he spat it out, and from this we learned about his inner life and the shape of his soul.

Most of all, Sam was a complete contrarian:  He often went against the grain of popular opinion.  He raised the ante, if you will, making it sometimes extraordinarily difficult for his readers to identify seamlessly with him.  Sam was the ultimate but lovable curmudgeon, a role he played exceedingly well.  He sometimes showed a prickly opposition to what the rest of us viewed as patently wholesome or correct, and then again he seemed to find merit in what the community of readers regarded as loathsome or politically incorrect.  This ever alert and touchy sensibility of Sam's, made us follow him with amused suspense:  what is he going to object to next and how is he going to say it?

Deep underneath Sam's contrarieties was, I believe, a fear of staleness, standardization and cliche'-ridden pablum that can be found on any supermarket book shelf.  To proclaim that all men are brothers, that prejudice and racism are bad, that all should be equal, and that the environment should not be trashed may win a writer points in heaven and a Nobel Prize, but it is seriously doubtful that these proclamations will quicken the readers pulse.  Sam poured salt on an open wound, locating a tension between two valid, opposing goals, or an ambivalence in his own value system.  I'm not saying Sam was morally delinquent just for the sake of originality, but that he was always on the alert for contradictions that opened up new ways of looking at old subjects.  He forced us to look at our own limitations, insights and petty prejudices by his writing.

The past, especially the 1940's, was often visited by Sam through his essays and he became our interpreter for an era so very long ago.  The retrospective glance came as naturally to Sam as a fish swimming in water:  the past became his own Aladdin's lamp which he rubbed often.  The following is taken from an essay, "Is This Real Water," from The American Poet:  Weedpatch Gazette For 2006:  "When I was a boy I anxiously awaited the warm weather as the opportunity to move my bed out of the cabin and place it under a large pine where I would be lulled to sleep by the balmy night breeze soughing through the pine needles, an Aeolian harp, one with Universal Lyre the strings swept by the hands of angels.  These many decades later, there is still magic for me in that whispered music.  Granting the difficulties of living without electricity and indoor plumbing, nevertheless I was thoroughly spoiled as a boy living on the mining claim here in the valley before the lake went in, to have the whole of this part of the Sequoia National Forest and the wild Kern River flowing unrestricted through the valley to myself to explore, hunt and fish to my heart's content.  Therefore it should not be surprising I would want to share this part of Creation with my children as they were growing up."

Looking at Sam's essays for the past 10 years, one can sense an evolving tone of melancholy that permeated his literary life.  Some refer to this as the voice of maturity.  Sam's essays frequently presented a mature point of view because it was the fruit of ripened experience, which naturally brought with it some worldly disenchantment, or at least realism.  With maturity also came equilibrium;  that stubborn, almost unnerving calm that so often pervaded his work.

(Samuel Heath's 20-year series of The American Poet:  Weedpatch Gazette can be purchased at Powells Books in Portland, Oregon or at Amazon Books online.)

On Monday, May 10, 2010 at the age of 75, one of the most colorful characters west of the Mississippi left this earthly life to travel to parts unknown.  He was a modern day Transcendentalist who lived the moral philosophy of Emerson and the naturalism of Thoreau, who wrote with the passion of Wordsworth, and suffered personal vilification from orthodox religionists much like John the Baptist.  He was the 21st Century equivalent of a true Renaissance man;  a complex and many times baffling enigma.  His primary beliefs were that love could conquer all and that freedom to be left alone was the pinnacle of the American experience.  He was a self-described "oakie intellectual" who had great admiration for the late William F. Buckley.  He seemed to be always obsessed with glorifying the America of illustrator Norman Rockwell and author Harper Lee.  But he also had a very dark side that unfortunately distracted from his unique power as one of the best and most prolific American essayists of our time.  Like his spiritual benefactors, Emerson and Thoreau, he was stubborn about his provincialism and unapologetic about his narrow-minded prejudices.

So why would anyone call Samuel D. G. Heath a prophet?  I can just imagine people thinking that I have completely taken leave of my senses.  Let me explain.  Webster's Third New International Dictionary Unabridged, 2002, says the following about the word prophet:  "a divinely inspired revealer, interpreter, or spokesman."  If one does a close read of his many volumnes of The American Poet:  Weedpatch Gazette series, Sam definitely saw himself as a prophet - warning us all that we as a people were on the wrong path, and possibly heading for self-destruction.  And it was this vision that kept him writing at such a prolific level and breakneck speed over the past twenty years.  Sam was an interpreter for the America of Norman Rockwell and Harper Lee;  an America that quite frankly no longer exists.  He was also a spokesman on behalf of abused children everywhere.  He wrote a book called It Shouldn't Hurt To Be A Child, and unfortunately it is now out-of-print.

I first discovered the world of Samuel D. G. Heath in the summer of 1994.  I was rummaging around in the book section of the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Southeast Portland.  I came across a copy of his The American Poet:  Weedpatch Gazette for 1990-1991.  It was only five dollars so I took a chance and bought it.  It was one of those humid, lazy Sunday afternoons you often hear about where the only tolerable activity seemed to be doing nothing at all.  I sat down on the couch, opened the book, and began reading.  By the time I put the book down six hours had past.  I knew instantly this was a keeper!  And I also knew that someday, I wanted to meet the man in person and congratulate him on being one of the finest essayists in the tradition of Michel de Montaigne.

By sheer luck, that day finally arrived in May 1998.  I had been temporarily living in Tehachapi for the past several months, spending time with my father who was in hospice care at the local hospital.  As I was preparing to go back to Portland I decided to make one last trip up to the Kern River Valley area.  I made a stop in Bodfish to get a few things at the general store.  I made my purchases and was walking out the door when I nearly walked inro Sam.  I immediately blurted out, "Hey, you're Sam Heath, the writer!"  The tall, gangly fellow looked at me with the piercing stare of a schoolmaster waiting for an answer to his question.  I bubbled over with excitement and started telling him what a great essayist he was and declaring that I thought he was a modern day Transecendentalist.

He folded his arms across his chest and listened to me babble on without saying a word.  When I finally shut my mouth he politely thanked me for the kind words and said, "Are we finished now?"  I got the impression he was in a really big hurry.  I ended with a rather bold statement about his political leanings and that I thought it interfered with his great essay form.  He then knitted his brows sharply and proclaimed:  "I thought as much.  I can smell a liberal a mile away and boy howdy do you stink."  At once I was both shocked and embarrassed.  I quickly apologized.  His countenance softened somewhat and declared he was busy with errands.  I walked away to the car feeling pretty stupid that I actually insulted a perfect stranger for no good reason.  As I opened the car door I heard Sam yell after me:  "I don't give a rats ass what you think of my politics."  And then he broke out in a big grin and waved at me.  Thus ended my first meeting with the man.

In the summer of 2005 I was visiting with family in Tehachapi.  I decided to drive up to Bodfish and visit Sam.  Previously we had been in contact by email over many months about things of a literary nature, and he had given me his phone number as well as sending me a signed copy of his The Lord and the Weedpatcher book.  I remember that day well.  It was stifling hot in the Kern River Valley with smoke off in the distance from a brush fire.  I was using my mothers car which lacked air conditioning and my only relief had been driving up there with the windows wide-open, the hot, stale air blowing in on me.  By the time I arrived at Sam's small pictureque cottage I was exhausted from the heat.

Sam's place was an eyesore by any standard.  But what would one expect from an old curmudgeon, living by himself and spending the better part of each day writing.  Out in front of Sam's place he had erected a wooden monument dedicated to abused and murdered children.  There were photos, names and little ribbons documenting these children.  Sam told me his neighbors thought it a bit odd but he became known for who he was and everybody pretty much accepted him and left him alone.  After Sam offered me some bottled water we had a rather pleasant conversation about literature, Kern history and the Mojave desert area.  This was the common link that brought us together.  We did not broached the subject of politics for good reason.  After two hours I left for the long, hot drive back to Tehachapi.  This was the last time I ever saw Sam in the flesh.

In the fall of 2008 I called Sam to see how he was doing.  By this time his health wasn't so good and getting progressively worse due to COPD.  We talked on the phone for an hour about things we had in common.  It was during this conversation that Sam volunteered who his favorite women writers were:  Carolyn Chute and Annie Dillard.  If one were to read these authors it becomes exceedingly clear why they were Sam's favorites.  Ms. Chute is quite frankly a female version of Sam Heath in writing style as well as lifestyle.  And Ms. Dillard, simply put, is one of the great essayists of the 20th century.  Sam talked in length about the educational system in this country and the lack of reading among young people.  I agreed wholeheartedly!  This was the last time I ever spoke to Sam and now I regret not calling him last Christmas to wish him well.

The Sequoia National Forest will be a little quieter now since Sam's passing.  Visitors will no longer make pilgrimages to Bodfish just to say "hello" and look at his wooden monument with the names of abused and murdered children from all over. Sam will be especially missed by the children in present time whose lives were touched by his generosity, respect, love and admiration.  And most regrettably, all those children in the future who will never know the man from Bodfish who had their highest interest at heart.

As it says in the above this will be a blog about Kern County, California.  I lived in Tehachapi, which is in Eastern Kern, for two years (1980-82).  I since have visited there many, many times to see my family and explore the region.  I had the chance to temporarily live there for a six month period, from December 1997 to May 1998, while my father was in hospice care at the local Tehachapi hospital.  I worked part-time at Big Kmart to secure some extra funds while there.

Tehachapi and the Kern River Valley have always held a fascination for me.  Even though I couldn't wait to leave the area I still miss it terribly.  It is a contradiction I am unable to explain right now.

The content of this blog will be written in the manner of the 19th century personal, informal essay much like that of Thoreau, Emerson and others at the time. 

More Later,

Ben Douglass