Woody Guthrie, Kingsborough-This Land Is Your Land.

Famed American Folk singer Woody Guthrie who wrote  the legendary song ,“This Land Is Your Land” in 1940 began his training at the Sheepshead Bay Maritime Training Base for the Merchant Marine in 1943 at the place now known as Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York. There he re-worked his most famous song until it became the song we now know today.

The book details much of Woody Guthrie’s time at the Sheepshead Bay Training Base just three years after writing his most famous song “This Land Is Your Land” and details his re-working the song while doing his training at the maritime base.

“This Land Is Your Land”.is one of the United States’ most famous folk songs. Its lyrics were written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie in 1940, based on an existing melody, a Carter family tune called “When the World’s on Fire”, in critical response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” When Guthrie was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing “God Bless America” on the radio in the late 1930s, he  wrote “God Blessed America for Me” before renaming it “This Land Is Your Land.”

The story is outlined in the book “Woody, Cisco and Me: Seamen Three in the Merchant Marine” by Jim Longhi.

The book details Woody writing and re-writing the Lyrics to his song ” This Land Is Your Land” while looking out over the Atlantic Ocean as a Merchant Marine trainee at the Sheepshead Bay Base.

Most fans know that Woody and Cisco made a few voyages as merchant seamen during WW II. One ship was torpedoed and another struck a mine. Woody would often pull out his guitar and sing to the men aboard the ship especially in times of danger.

Following are the original lyrics as composed on February 23, 1940, in Guthrie’s room at the Hanover House hotel at 43rd St. and 6th Ave. (101 West 43rd St.) in New York, showing his strikeouts. The line “This land was made for you and me” does not literally appear in the manuscript at the end of each verse, but is implied by Guthrie’s writing of those words at the top of the page and by his subsequent singing of the line with those words.

The original title was “God Blessed America”, but it was struck out and replaced by “This Land Was Made For You & Me“. It appears therefore that the original 1940 title was “This Land”.

This land is your land, this land is my land

From the California to the Staten New York Island,

From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters,

God blessed America for me.

[This land was made for you and me.]

As I went walking that ribbon of highway

And saw above me that endless skyway,

And saw below me the golden valley, I said:

God blessed America for me.

[This land was made for you and me.]

I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts,

And all around me, a voice was sounding:

God blessed America for me.

[This land was made for you and me.]

Was a high wall there that tried to stop me

A sign was painted said: Private Property,

But on the back side it didn’t say nothing —

God blessed America for me.

[This land was made for you and me.]

When the sun come shining, then I was strolling

In wheat fields waving and dust clouds rolling;

The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting:

God blessed America for me.

[This land was made for you and me.]

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple

By the Relief Office I saw my people —

As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if

God blessed America for me.

[This land was made for you and me.]

According to Joe Klein, after Guthrie composed it “he completely forgot about the song, and didn’t do anything with it for another three years. When he began re-working it while training for the United States Merchant Marines” (This is a March, 1944, recording of the song.)

 

Between 1943 and 1945, Woody Guthrie’s life was a rather erratic batch of activity. He entered the Merchant Marines three times with his friend and sometime singing partner, Cisco Houston. It seemed the best way to avoid being drafted by the Army. He escaped death by torpedo more than once.

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island

From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway

I saw above me that endless skyway

I saw below me that golden valley

This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts

While all around me a voice was sounding

This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling

And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling

A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,

This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island

From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.

Note that this version drops the two political verses from the original: Verse four, about private property, and verse six, about hunger.

 

“Talking Merchant Marine” a song written by Woody Guthrie during his time at the Sheepshead Bay Maritime Training Base along with the new verses for “This Land Is Your Land”.

The March 1944 recording in the possession of the Smithsonian, the earliest known recording of the song, has the “private property” verse included. This version was recorded the same day as 75 other songs. This was confirmed by several archivists for Smithsonian who were interviewed as part of the History Channel program Save Our History – Save our Sounds. The 1944 recording with this fourth verse can be found on Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land: The Asch Recordings Volume 1, where it is track 14.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;

Sign was painted, it said private property;

But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;

This land was made for you and me.

Woodyguthrie.org has a variant:

As I went walking I saw a sign there

And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”

But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,

That side was made for you and me.

It also has a verse:

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This land was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;

By the relief office, I’d seen my people.

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,

Is this land made for you and me?

A 1945 pamphlet which omitted the last two verses has caused some question as to whether the original song did in fact contain the full text. The original manuscript confirms both of these verses.

As with other folk songs, it was sung with different words at various times although the motives for this particular change of lyrics may involve the possible political interpretations of the verses. Recordings of Guthrie have him singing the verses with different words.

The radical verses are not often performed in schools or official functions. They can be best interpreted as a protest against the vast income inequalities that exist in the United States, and against the sufferings of millions during the Great Depression America, Guthrie insists, was made—and could still be made—for you and me. This interpretation is consistent with such other Guthrie songs as “Pretty Boy Floyd”and Guthrie’s lifelong struggle for social justice.

The song was revived in the 1960s, when several artists of the new folk movement, including Bob Dylan, the Kingston Trio, trini Lopez Jay and the Americans , and the New Christy Minstrels all recorded versions, inspired by its political message. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded the song in 1962 for their Moving  album. The Seekers recorded the song for their 1965 album, A world of Our Own It was performed many times by the cyclist choir, accompanied by guitarists and a wash-tub bassist, during the Wandering Wheels historic 1966 U.S. coast-to-coast bicycle trip.

Bruce Springsteen first began performing it live on the River Tour in 1980, and released one such performance of it on Live 1975-1985, in which he called it “about one of the most beautiful songs ever written.”

The song was performed by Springsteen and Pete Seeger, accompanied by Seeger’s grandsonTao Rodriguez Seeger, at the Obama Inauguration at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2009.

The song was restored to the original lyrics (including the ‘There was a big high wall there’ and ‘Nobody living can ever stop me’ verses) for this performance (as per Pete Seeger’s request) with the exception of a change in the end of the ‘Relief Office’ verse to “As they stood hungry, I stood there whistling, This land was made for you and me.” The original lyrics are “As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking, Is this land made for you and me?”

Arlo Gutherie who has played at Kingsborough’s Summer Music Festivals in honor of his father, tells a story in concerts on occasion, of his mother returning from a dance tour of China, and reporting around the Guthrie family dinner table that at one point in the tour she was serenaded by Chinese children singing the song. Arlo says Woody was incredulous: “The Chinese? Singing “This land is your land, this land is my land? From California to the New York island?”

Woody would ride the subways of Brooklyn while he was doing his training as a Merchant Mariner and below is his address in Coney Island on Mermaid Avenue.

 

 

 

 

 

A New Brooklyn Morning-Kingsborough

 

“Manhattan is like Beverly Hills. And the soul of New York has moved to Brooklyn, where everything new and exciting seems to be.”

Alec Baldwin

Brooklyn,Brooklyn,Brooklyn,Brooklyn-MC Lyte

The Kingsborough Beach-Brooklyn NY August 2016

Hemingway, Brooklyn, Wheelers and Kingsborough

 

In Gravesend Bay, the most famous shipbuilding company was the Wheeler Shipbuilding Corporation, a collection of wooden sheds at the foot of Cropsey Avenue in Coney Island Creek founded by Howard Wheeler — a Bensonhurst resident — in 1910. A second Wheeler yard was opened on the East River at Whitestone, N.Y.

Focus on this business has re-surfaced because it is mentioned in the new book, Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson (Knopf). It seemed that in 1934 Ernest Hemingway commissioned Wheeler Yachts, the Cadillac of yacht builders, to build a 34-foot yacht, the Pilar, named for his wife, which he sailed to Cuba and used for fishing expeditions as well as for inspiration for his novels, To Have and Have Not and The Old Man and the Sea. Pictures of Hemingway on the boat with his catches appeared on the covers and inside the pages of Time and Life magazines.

Hendrickson goes into detail on Hemingway’s dealing with the Wheeler family, from the 1933 brochure he received to his purchase of the $7,495 yacht in 1934. Then he quotes a gossip-style entry from The New York Times: “Back from writing about picadors in Spain and ambulance drivers in Italy, Ernest Hemingway, who has gone to his home in Key West, has taken up motorboating and last week bought a 42-foot cruiser [sic] at the Wheeler shipyard in Brooklyn.” The bit cited that Hemingway preferred a black hull rather than the standard white one.

Hemingway took the boat around Jamaica Bay and Sheepshead Bay by Kingsborough to test run the yacht and see if it passed muster before it was sent for final delivery to Miami.

During World War I, Wheeler Shipyards had built wooden-hulled submarine chasers to patrol U.S. coastal waters. After the war, the shipyard turned to steel merchant ships as well as wooden yachts. At one point, the Wheeler operation was important enough to retain its own marching band and have a Park Avenue showroom. By World War II, the Navy purchased land next to the Coney Island Wheeler Shipyards in 1942 to build wooden-hulled minesweepers and small steel-hulled freighters for both the Army and Navy. Wheeler also supplied 230 patrol craft for the Coast Guard. Even macho Hemingway joined the anti-submarine searches with forays aboard his Pilar.

After the war, the adjunct Navy Yard was closed and Wheeler returned to constructing yachts and small commercial vessels, but as orders became rarer, the Coney Island yard closed permanently in 1948. Hendrickson revisited the site of the shipyard but found no trace of the business, its closure attributed to the depressed economy as well as the putrid condition of Coney Island Creek. He traced references to the Pilar in Hemingway’s novel Islands in the Stream.

Ernest Hemingway and Carlos Gutierrez aboard Hemingway’s boat, the Pilar, 1934. Photograph in the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

During World War II, Hemingway used his boat to search for German U-boats in the Caribbean waters. Pilar was outfitted with communications gear including  or “Huff-Duff” direction-finding equipment. He had minimal weapons which included a Thompson sub machine gun and hand grenades. Most accounts state that any effort to attack a submarine would be futile. Hemingway wrote about his intent to attack if he spotted a sub. Other accounts of these patrols imply that they were a farce and that he did them in return for extra gas rations and immunity from Cuban police for driving drunk.His hunting for U-Boats was inspiration for the third act, “At Sea”, in his novel “Islands in the Stream.”

The subsidiary yard in Whitestone continued operation until it moved to Clason Point, the Bronx. In 1961, it closed, the same year that Hemingway died. During those 50 years, the shipyard built over 3,500 hulls for ships. A recent online story reported that Wesley Wheeler signed an agreement with Bennett Brothers Yachts to begin building yachts once more, this time in North Carolina.

Hemingway’s wife Pauline “Pilar”, Patrick, Ernest, John, and Gregory Hemingway with four marlins on the dock in Bimini, 20 July 1935. Please credit, “Ernest Hemingway Collection/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston.”

Records online document the history of Wheeler boats that were sold by the U.S. government to foreign countries, many to Cuba and South America in the 1940s.

Of course, yachting developed into a major American sport with yachting clubs sprinkled throughout the borough’s coastline. A sport that developed from early 19th-century privateers, it mushroomed into a competition for the gentry when the New York Yacht Club challenged British yachtsmen for America’s Cup.

After the Civil War, millionaires such as New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, William K. Vanderbilt and newspper mogul William Randolph Hearst competed for the most luxurious yachts. Yacht clubs grew in Brooklyn in Sheepshead Bay, Bath Beach and Canarsie. The most famous yacht club was built by Sir Thomas Lipton in 1898 along the shore of Sea Gate, but burned down in 1933.

Now fewer yacht clubs exist in Brooklyn although the best in Sheepshead Bay include the Miramar, the Brooklyn Yacht Club and the Hudson River Yacht Club, with the Paedergaet Yacht Club over in Canarsie. On the other hand, the Gowanus Yacht Club in South Brooklyn is anything but a yacht club;  it’s a restaurant in landlocked Carroll Gardens.

The boat is currently on display in Cuba at the Museo Ernest Hemingway. The museum is located at Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s former home near Havana. Hemingway left the boat to his captain Gregoria Fuentes. Fuentes, one of the hired captains of the boat is said to have been the basis for the character Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea and Eddie from Islands in the Stream. The boat is now owned by the Cuban government after being donated to the people of Cuba by Fuentes. The Pilar’s sister ship (also named Pilar and with the original Wheeler name lettering) is on display in the Bass pro Shops store in Islamorada , Florida

” I Didn’t Appreciate Brooklyn Until I Left It.” – Rosie Perez

“There’s a Tree that grows in Brooklyn, some people call it the Tree of heaven. No matter where it seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky.” Betty Smith

Brooklyn-There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man’s bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die.” Walt Whitman

“I love Brooklyn; it’s a part of who you are.” Paul Dano

“I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.” Thornton Wilder

“Listen, and you’ll hear a story being told, one you may need to know.” ― Alice Hoffman, The Museum of Extraordinary Things

From

From Alice Hoffman’s acclaimed novel, The Museum of Extraordinary Things which takes place in Sheepshead Bay and Coney Island by Kingsborough Community College.