NET Playhouse; 57; An Evening's Journey to Conway, Massachusetts

10 seconds. What you say said I'd never even seen it my own town was a town I was born in anyway. That's what a town is. I made a meeting of my. We talked about the need not the town not my neighbors neighbors I could walk to talk to I am Archibald MacLeish the words you have just heard are from a play I have written for the bicentennial of the town I live in. They are about that town and other towns in New England and America I call it an evening's journey to Conway Massachusetts. I am Archibald MacLeish. I have written a play for the bicentennial of the town

I live in a play about that town and other towns in New England and America what they are and were were and are particularly what they are to the young who live in them and what they were to the young. I call it an evening's journey to Conway Massachusetts. National Educational Television.

Presents any place playhouse. Find true.

There is nothing. Like that with a population of. A small and beyond. Question. The. Day. That.

You get.

How do you get there from here. In town and all down any way is like an iceberg. Six sevens under water only the ground part with a town is under earth water. Many dead in their graves. New. Meanings of a fallen Varnum on the old. This. Was one. Ring all lost among the bridges. How do you get back to all of that. What it was but it was like from now on

here an anniversary is a year turn a return of the year the 100 year the 200 1767 to 1867 in 1967 you remember try to always good to remember against depth to live human life. And we need depth. But can you remember that. Can you remember the six seconds whatever it is under the earth what it felt like live like what the town was to the people who lived in it. If you started from here from our idea of the town you might never get to. There's Oh we love what we have. Beautiful country not yet spoiled but the mass developers with their half

acre slums chewed up by the bulldozers. The graves farm is lovely in the valley. The ladies upon their farm for 200 years. The Toughman farm in the north part of town from your book called. The Harris farm. Near little rivers the tainted like all the others in the Commonwealth are still beautiful to look at. And.

We work. We go about our business. But it's a different tone from the town of 150 years ago or 200. As every town in the country is different to every town in the past. That is. Our idea of a town now. It's a place you go through in a car and a couple of minutes or a place you go through in a couple of months or years in a rented house or apartment and. We've. Lost a sense of living in a town making a life in it of. And. As a nation and we have.

As a people. Our houses are built to shelter our automobiles and keep us comfortable in between times. In between times do we head off somewhere else. That's the way we are now in America. A good way may be in its way but there aren't. It's hard to work your way back from that idea of a town. The other idea of a town or whatever it was teenage kids in 1967 were the polls show the cars and his ears and a longing like an ache in his bones to go with them. Doesn't think of his time as a teenage boy of the 1840s thought of leaving to make his fortune in the West. Young Marshall Field. For one example born on a dry hill across the valley made himself a merchant prince and Chicago the nearest thing to a merchant prince. This country has yet produced traveled all over Europe lived in London and never stop thinking of this town as home

came back to us. Over and over. Building a library is far too big and grand. While the teenage kid in 1967. Doesn't think of it as. You. Wonder what people knew about this town back 150 years ago or 200 that we in our time don't know half forgotten. You wonder how to get there from here. I.

Know. Waiting for somebody anybody

going somewhere anywhere out of here you don't like it here. Does I do. You can have it all Amerikay and like oh we had to sell the farm. My father had to close the road. We had to sell the farm farm. Farm gate Boynton's what farm fields he helped. Me Feel till there isn't any farm fields nothing but souls. Guess you've never been there have you. The good fight drive a good pastor all the way to twin mountain climbing to the top of it. Not a tree on the whole hill. You can see Demarest on a shiny day. When I was four I could see it. They set me up the strays that summer so I could

see the sun on the steeple at Amherst and Holyoake range. Crazy I've been up that hill it's all fine burgeoned sumac you can see the with a spyglass see them and at once I saw snow and I had no. I knew what that was even then. Who are you anyway. Marsh nuts is nobody by the name of marsh in this town ain't there. Listen to me if you're looking at him. Well maybe you don't live here. Not in this town. Maybe you don't know this town. Hell I don't. Eighteen years I've known it. You don't know we've been. Nobody hates a thing he knows. What do you mean. I don't know. That's all there is to the street. That's what they call the street silly street there isn't Conway the way it goes. Baptists Hill

to pumkin home. Know where you are. You don't know what's between Bappa the pumpkin house nothing. Not a goddamn thing you see. So you don't know what right you tell me what's between them. You do yourself. That's why man can't leave town. You can go but he can't leave now I guess I have to go where west west where Pittsfield. You call Pittsfield West today's West the way I walk. Maybe I'll go father after wherever I go to. I'll be back. You'll have to come back to your town. That's what it is. The place you come back to. No not you are really nuts. Nobody come back to this if once got clear of it clean away.

Oh yes he would if he knew what it was. You don't. You've never even seen it. Just plain nuts. Who are you waiting for. What Marshfield. I never heard of a marsh. Never heard of me. Let me tell you what you heard. Do you. All right. I'll tell you. You heard about foxhounds I was the fox and every other single boy and Deacon Clowery school was hounds. Why foxhounds How do you feel it back was something bigger than myself you'd be back in more than twenty. He knows he can carry school any more the range of a Hoosick all by Whateley plan that's what you heard. How I can run now but I heard him Marsh field. Mr. Marshall Field he was born here. Course he was born here could I say. He left the town he was 17 when he left the town sixteen. Went west. Made a million dollars in Chicago.

A million dollars. There was a long time back he left here a hundred years more than the. White. Marsh. Take me with. Me. Oh. Say. My fellow. Citizens. Let me say to you my beloved

let me say to you on this triumphant day when the war is won when the dead returned to us when those who are now no longer day are returning to us. Let me say to you that there are others who have not returned who are not to restore to us. We will never be restored. Bodies will never lie as we are in this. Our fathers open to us open to our lives through our deaths. Let us remember them by fellow citizens. Let us call our names day and no longer here. Marcus of the fifty second Massachusetts infantry. Careful of the 50 Massachusetts infantry.

Dennis Lee of the fifty seven Massachusetts infantry Albion abbot of the 1st Massachusetts cavalry. Dickens and Alice of the Massachusetts infantry. The dead can no longer live and the living who return from death meet in this moment in this town. They know this town this way of life and death can meet each other or the future and the past can meet each other where the living return from death and the dead.

Are removed from living. Each Other The common habitation of the living and the dead. You are a stranger. Let me introduce

myself my name. Great day great town you know Conway. Why yes they speak of us everywhere. The Greenville Gazette and Courier assures its numerous subscribers that no town in the county of Franklin offers more encouragement inducements for the investment of limited capital than Conway. What do you. See for yourself. There are at the present moment police a for seven weeks seven weeks. The rest of your self is of granite a granite dam. Think of a church or a granite dam and beyond question be on the question. A railroad will cross the town at no distant date. Already several alternative routes have been surveyed in prospect for Prospect arrives in town and a growing state a long way a long way toward another century shell and for all its magnificent panorama will have achieved a power of prosperity that the imagination cannot conceive

nor of the foresight delineate. Young men like yourself should take these things into consideration make their prospects his own joy his future with this glowing future. What do you not. What things says the Gazette inquiry courier then capital I make of Conway a flourishing town of a population of ten or twelve thousand a small city prefect my friend consider this high. But I have no capital. I know a young man in this community that can afford shoes like look for a shirt. Surely you jest with me. But you know you have your capital capital or Capital. Give us your baby or young friend in invest your vitality invest your youth. Mr. Delamar the man who owns the little mule happens I happened to know in the market for workmen

even an unskilled workman can find a position that would work well paid work 12 hours a day a dollar a day. Think of it now. Think of it only only. Only what my young friend. Why is that. Whereas what the will of the town. What town Conway. Well this is Conway says good days. He didn't care. I don't blame you. For all those contraptions newfangled meals fancy machinery thingamajigs. I couldn't find a town quite right. Quite right you couldn't find the town just the way I feel about it. But I couldn't find the time I couldn't. Of course you couldn't. It isn't there oh Reiser's my name jobs right. All right if you know so much where is it.

Fella sent me back. Tell me go back and see the town. Way back. And you met Mr. Burke and the glories of Birchmere. Was that it was all it was. All right where do I go. Farther back than Birdville anyway. How far. You will know. How will I know. Here a fellow sent me back he said. What. He say. I never even seen it my own town. Yours. Well a town I was born in anyway. It was probably right. You have never once seen the town or they see the roofs the houses hills if there are hills running water what else a man gets used to things like that. Blind to them once you get used to you don't see. All right I asked you what else is there. People Time time and people. That's what a town is time people.

Now Nat you can't see Asher Cadger ever look for it. What do you think he sent you back for your friend. Let me back his time. Look at him. I want to show you something. What do you see. Nothing. Nothing at all. A woman. What kind of woman. Old Donald. Poor poor. Oh they were all poor. You know what the reverend Emerson told the town. He was the first pastor who came before the meeting with Bill preached in bar. Well he spoke to the town on its first anniversary 50th year 1817. By that time there was glass in the windows. Most of the windows of the cabins in the fireplaces. My friends he said to them let you my friends children and descendants of the first settlers of Conway

remember and mark the fact that rank and situation of your fathers did not admit of that refinement and luxury in living which modern fashion and taste have introduced refinements. He meant like a tight roof like food almost always luxuries like shoes. He meant they were poor although poorer than any one you ever see. Hungry often cold lonely died without medicine without doctors. Their children died too without doctors. All right so she's poor so what. Nothing except that she's back there. Pay back. She's Mrs. Lieutenant Alexander Oliver. Her husband fought in the war of the revolution. They lived in the south on a dry hill. The nearest water a hundred rods away and down mostly down. That's why she did her washing in that room. She'd come back and say it's son

said a baby under her arm and the wash and a couple of pails tub on top of her head like a wooden hat. With a watch going on inside it. Not much in the House to come back to. And not another house in sight. We used to think there was the great thing. Sometimes. Sometimes I could. Almost smell the smoke. In the smoke. A neighbor's chimney. Here's the door. I could only hear the dog and. It was worse too when the wind blew in winter when.

When that teaches you you learned to be alone in the wind. So we never talked about it. Instead we talked about the name. Not the town not met neighbors. Neighbors or didn't want to talk to. You can't tell the children not right. They say something you say something. Let's not talk. And. There's another one from way back there.

Malikai main town treasurer at 26 years figured he sums in his head and figured him right and dealt fairly the way he figured you know how Malakai Maynard got his Biddles pigs anyway and Connecticuts shared it lug them home on his back from Hatfield to pigs of considerable size and 19 Shadd. Oh he rested once on the way at the top of people here at midnight. He leaned the load against a tree didn't dare set it down and get it back up again. They say he left the shed for breakfast all night and he was at home. Not the pigs or not just then and all in all the shad either if the truth be told or they shared a river shed would taste like. After a winter's salt cod and corn much day to day. So why did he walk. I wouldn't want to have you look at that track with your eyes on those boulders even if you had a voice. And I haven't people say to me all roads roads in a country are like this with a new hill

around every rise in the brook. Beyond that I answer them. I got my answer. Listen I say is this a town or causes a town they say all right what is a town. They don't answer so why answer. I'll tell you what a town is. It's amazing. A meeting of minds. Well how do you get a meeting of minds by meeting a man without a man made by the ways and one of the ways the road runs right. Rose Rose Rose. That's what a town is made of going back and forth on rare occasions passing each other. Not always passing pausing sometimes. Speaking.

PALABRA. That's what a town is. I may be. Meeting a man. You. See him. He. Were. You more than. You did on the other side in Bruges. The edge of the big wood the Old Forest. I think about is sunlight and no light. She complains never patches sodomite in her kitchen. William Warren had an axe hole a chain one cow and a bulldog cover. That's all he had to do with an axe a whole chain. That was his apparatus as they called it. Even the cow had to work and gets to

heat the trees. Is barrel's big ash old pine locust hemlock going to the trees. On do the roots see the grub the roots out and the boulders into the branches can burn them. This season you split the logs. Try to get the wind to split them long with one man and the next. The axe splits just can't let up trees. Will this

one a town fight the trees. Down needs sunlight. Open meadows pastures where the pines. Took me. Seven years to clear the meadow. She sees the sunlight. Still once more. It's a life's work. Keep in the open. Keep in the sunlight. It's worth it. That's what a town is. It's. Open. Worth it for what.

Falling trees with an axe. All forest worth it for what not well. They had no hope of well not for ease certainly. There was no ease from a life's beginning to its end. I knew that every one of the phone. Then why'd they come. Why would anybody come to a place like this it's words. What did they say. They didn't know. What they came back. That's Mrs. Howell. Mrs. John Howard. She was born in Dedham back near Boston back in civilization you might say when her babies were born she bring them home to get him a girl alone on a horse with a new baby a hundred miles over roads that were tracks. Sometimes worse. The tracks and a hundred miles back. She wanted her father and mother to see them. One of them to see her father and mother. To be born in the wilderness. To be born to live your life. And his. Need to Know who you are to be born in the world does need to be sure who you are.

Where you came from. He won't remember his grandfather grandmother. My old room in the house and dead. The smell of the barn. The apple tree beside the barn. But. When he's older I'll tell him. I say. You were there Johnny. You saw them. That's where you came from Johnny. Where I came from. You know who he is then in the wilderness. You know how to build his house. He's told. He should have left him in Dedham and go to Boston from Dedham go to sea. Go anywhere but to me here you obviously like it here. Thought he'd like it like that. I'd like this town like the words the cold the labor seven years to clear a hay field hole.

People didn't like it well enough to fight for it anyway. Fight for the right to build it this time. The towns all the. Every one of them you ever hear of Saratoga is a sum of seventeen hundred and seventy seven gentlemen. Johnny Burgoyne came down from Canada on Lake Champlain Ticonderoga more than 7000 men regular troops British papers Haitian's. How was the march from New York to meet him. Between them they cut New England off Thornell Massachusetts. It was an excellent plan to win the war. Only it didn't. They heard the news in the hills on. The benches in the Green Mountains. That was a sabbath day in June. They told the bells in the meetinghouses those that had bells.

But that was the spring of the great sickness. All families are bad. So they sent the boys to the farms to spread the brooms you Shiksha Hoosick hardscrabble those that could stand on their feet. They went home. They went to. Captain Lucias. Alice led them to his grave in the burying ground in pumpkin hollow. He was known for his boots throughout the town only power on the south farm used to load them up to neighbors for journeys but that they wore the music. We fell in the brook by the meeting house all on the old road north to Shelbourne although the Deerfield on North north and west got a Benham's on stock was where we were all militia loose town in the other town much skitch.

You never saw such must get some of the older real friends wall or Gornje and the Germans out to deal with us. This Spurs us that was the word he used the Spurs. They were the go right ahead and march where you met them back to the stone wall it was you town man that ran their work boots and coats and the June rash muskets for all of us and a little after that we marched which are all starts up from Albany. The continentals were camped above their general deep green mountain boys. They call us. We told them we were

heroes in Massachusetts. That was July. Because the British 3 months later ran them down at Saratoga when gentleman Johnny Burgoyne surrendered. He stared at Gaige you for an old granny looking fellow. H never blinked. I'd be a granny and I have delivered you this day. Seven thousand men. He was wrong though it was 7000 men. Some of them were back at Benenson in the hay field. They marched home. That was when Captain Barfoot got his name. There

was snow in the Green Mountains that November. Four inches of snow on the flat. And he marched home barefoot in the snow. Now you have to care for something to do that to set off from home through the wilderness fighting a disciplined army with old guns. Beat it twice and then come home through the wilderness. Barefoot in the snow. It's got to be something to care for. Love. Something you can see to care for or think you see and you don't see it. I don't know at all where the first one. Even the Reverend Emerson couldn't see. Not at the start but you mean he couldn't see it he was there wasn't he. He was wasn't he wasn't. He was and he was about. To settle among them and become their pastor of a place different indeed to the ancient church in Bratton's Street in Boston

where I had been called but only the Lord's day before to preach. To be removed so remote from my native place separated. So far from friends and connections most dear and intimate. Fixed. For life in a new place at the very beginning of its cultivation to which my education and habits were unused. My natural inclinations and taste averse. Among people in low and dependent circumstances purely unable at the time to support public worship of Christian instruction. These were circumstances which at the time seemed to forbid the undertaking. But after mature deliberation considering the apparent Union and affection of the church and society as affording a prospect of

of usefulness and peace the parent union and affection of the church and society. The prospect of usefulness and peace it was the dream wasn't it. The old dream at the beginning of the consulate the dream of the town the town constructed in the wilderness for men to live in with each other and with God considering the apparent Union and affection of the church and society as affording an opening for usefulness and peace. My mind was at length brought to acquiesce in what then appeared the will of God. He was almost as young as you still an apprentice minister a young man from a comfortable settled cities used to the life of Cambridge the company of his kin and conquer the great world you might say that was the month of April.

Seventeen hundred and sixty nine. In which I commenced my public labours here on the Sabbath being the ninth day of the month. We met in a barn. That being the best place which at the time could be selected for holding divine service. It was surrounded by controlling wouldn't. Except a small edge of space cleared which admitted the light of heaven. The congregation was small. But attentive. And God it is believed was sensibly present among us. It was like Cain and Abel. A land of hills and vales of springs and reveal that's. Fording. Like Kamin of all that's what he remembered his life and 50 years afterwards how he saw the top

when he really saw when he really saw it. Sure. When he knew he belonged to it that's when you really see your time when you know you belong. Yes I suppose you do when you know you belong to him. Or.

You. Or.

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not. But you.

Do. You. Do. Do. Well at all. You. Will. All the. At

the gate. For. A.

Half. Hour. In. The.

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Or. This is in the National Educational Television