These Traditions Reveals the Ways Churubusco Relates to Other Communities and to the Nation Through Its Folklore

10 MIDWESTERN FOLKLORE these traditions reveals the ways Churubusco relates to other communities and to the nation through its folklore. Further analysis suggests how participation in the broader American symbolic system both influences and inhibits local collective representations of identity and pride. Although the symbols introduced in this chapter recur in various guises in later turtle days traditions, they play minor roles since they convey neither the sense of community uniqueness nor the absolute national significance of the Beast of ’Busco, the focus of the emergent folklore. Chapter Two, “The Great Turtle Hunt,” relates the history of the 1949 events. Local newspaper sources, along with interviews with participating townsfolk, establish a chronology of the historic events. Folkloristic discussion focuses on local and national turtle lore, the American tall tale/traveler tale tradition, and the mythical animal quest theme. The events of 1949 are viewed as an enactment of American cultural themes. Chapter Three, “Town Folklore,” concerns the town’s elaboration of the cultural script enacted by the turtle hunters. This chapter examines the symbiosis of folklore and popular culture by detailing the extent to which elements of folklife and folklore along with commerce, industry, and media hoaxing produce a complex of celebratory protofestive behavior. The focus here is how the town placed itself on the map and acquired its source of local and national identity. Concluding discussion addresses the American provenance of protofestive behavior. Chapter Four, “Emergent Folklore,” is based on interviews and observations twenty-two years after the events of 1949. The reader is returned to Fulk Lake and to Churubusco to discover that personal-experience stories, conversations, tall tales, practical jokes, folk poetry, folk speculation, hoaxing, and legend related to the Beast of ’Busco theme continue to appear in a variety of contexts, both oral and printed. The entrance of the beast into formal academic and popular literature is also considered as a new development that contributes to the manifestation of local tradition. Chapter Five, “The Festival,” examines the history of “Turtle Days” from 1950 to 1992. An extended ethnographic description of the 1971 event conveys a sense of its structure and performance. Chapter Six, “Turtle Town Revisited,” focuses on 1992 festival highlights, described under circumstances in which the ethnographer becomes more the performer-observer than participant observer, with his work guided by the community. This chapter concerns itself with interpretations of the continuing Beast of ’Busco legacy as shown in dramatic enactments, changing practices, and the filming experience within the Turtle Days context. A concluding section addresses the broader issues of both festival and community metaphor. This leads to a final commentary on meanings and values of the Churubusco phenomena in terms of their local and national contexts. THE BEAST OF ’BUSCO 11 1 COMMUNITY AND TRADITION The Community Churubusco has the look, feel, and substance of the familiar Midwestern, middle-American, Main Street town. In the 1920s, it would have resembled the Gopher Prairie of American fiction. In the 40s it would have compared favorably with the Plainville of American social science. By the 60s and 70s, like many a small town in mass society, it would assume characteristics ascribed to “fringe communities” and “bedroom suburbs” located near metropolitan areas. Today it sees itself as an attractive satellite town for the nearby, city of Fort Wayne, twelve miles away.1 Churubusco derives economic and cultural benefits from its metropolitan hub as it perpetuates its historical function of service center for surrounding “open country neighborhoods.”2 The town itself is small but expanding; agricultural in origin but industrial in development; Republican in politics but democratic in principles. Churubusco values rural tradition and frontier individualism, while it accommodates urban change and institutional bureaucracy. It is a place where the local weekly newspaper reports community rather than national news; where what is said at the Rotary or Jaycees meeting still has an impact on town life. It is a place that retains a Main Street manner and identity despite its immersion in a mass society.3 Yet, as even its traditions attest, Churubusco also remains a place where the events, trends, discourses, ; . and problems of both region and nation continue to inform both the content and the quality of everyday life. Except for a few pioneers who arrived early in the decade, settlement of this area began in 1834 when the United States Government Land Office in Fort Wayne began selling tracts in Smith Township, Whitley County. By 1838 the township, named after Samuel Smith, 1834 Yankee settler, became organized, and by 1840 the first school was built.4 Throughout the 1840s the site of Churubusco was occupied by two growing settlements on either side of the new railroad line running south from DeKalb County to the Whitley County seat in Columbia City. In 1847 the original settlements, one called Union, the other Franklin, decided to incorporate in order to qualify for a local post office. The townsfolk decided upon the name Franklin; but when the state government informed them that Franklin had already been appropriated by a southern Indiana village, a meeting was organized to rename the town, and Churubusco’s first community legend was bom. A heated discussion ensued between a German, an Englishman and an Irishman. The German proposed the name Brunswick, the Englishman suggested the name Liverpool, while the furious Irishman insisted that die name should be Mahoney, that he’d be darned if he would have the name of his town burdened with an English or German name, and to make his demand emphatic, he jerked off his coat. The Englishman squirmed with anger, the German just puffed hard on his long-stemmed pipe, and for a moment it appeared as if a fight was at hand. A Mrs. Jackson was permitted to speak and in an effort to establish peace at this gathering, appealed to the patriotism of the men in disagreement; she said she knew that all present were now true patriotic Americans and would willingly fight for their country if occasion would demand; she read a letter she had just received from one of her relatives who was a soldier in the war with Mexico with the United States army; and in the letter it told of the victory that 12 MIDWESTERN FOLKLORE the Americans won at the battle of Churubusco and she thought that it would be a patriotic move for the citizens to name the town Churubusco and felt quite sure that it would not conflict with the name of another town in the state. The Irishman put on his coat and remarked that although he could not pronounce the name, yet he was for it if it was patriotic, but he never would permit a foreign name for his town. The little group decided upon the name, made an application for a post office under it, and a permit was granted in 1847, and to this day not another post office by the same name has ever been registered in the United States of America? The origin legend’s resolution of conflict between Churubusco’s three dominant ethnic stocks through appeal to patriotism, Americanism, and onomastic uniqueness, lends the tradition a special community appeal. The legend continues to be reprinted in the local newspaper, reproduced in Chamber of Commerce publications, while fragmentarily known and debated by a good number of townsfolk even though it is unrecognized in the official History of Whitley County.6 As the origin legend states, most of the early settlers were a mixture of Yankees and Germans who moved west from Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania; and Scots Irish from Virginia, Southern Ohio, and Kentucky. These ethnic strains remain dominant today; however, there is little conscious recognition of ethnicity as a factor in community life. When townsfolk do use ethnic labels, these usually are voiced in association with either the remnants of a small, early settlement of the Polish at nearby Ege in Noble County or the Amish, whose main settlement in Nappanee is much more distant. As one person told me, “We got the Polish in Ege. They’re a little bit eccentric like the Amish, a little bit conceited, but I like ’em. They’re well read, intelligent, good farmers all of them.” The town has one Jewish family, prominent in local business and civic affairs since the 1880’s. According to the government census, the racial constitution of Smith Township is essentially Caucasian.7 In Churubusco, both local and national self-identification transcends ethnic affiliations as well as religious and class differences. Most belong to the two Methodist congregations that unified in 1971. Lutheran, Nazarene Baptist, and Roman Catholic denominations have distinct, smaller memberships. Religious issues seem to be regarded as the private, social concerns of an individual. Though class distinctions exist in Churubusco, their significance is minimized in everyday social interaction in which feelings o f egalitarianism and democracy color personal relations. Here people do say things like “One man’s as good as the next” or “No use putting on airs.” They speak of class differences with difficulty and without a clearly conceived standard for status ascription. People are classified as “ordinary and better,” “rich and poor,” “people who live in ordinary frame homes and people who live in new brick ranch homes,” “businessmen and people who work with their hands,” “farmers and people who don’t farm,” “people who drink in the bars and people who don’t.” To some, the “better” people are local schoolteachers, who are highly respected despite their average economic status. Others recognize wealth accrued through small business or large farm operation. In no way do these inconsistent distinctions reveal anything more than a fundamental two class system, the kind described by West in Plainville, U.S.A.

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