Woody Guthrie Archives
Tracking Woody's HD: From Instinct to Institution
Research notes by Thomas H. Conner
Nov. 17, 2000

The following notes are presented in chronological order - not in order of the history of events but in order of Woody's and others' comments on them. The themes on which I focused throughout my archival combing were mentions of anything that might be a symptom of HD, direct mentions of the disease, medical records, family history (particularly his mother's misunderstood battle with the disease), the recurrence of fire in the family history, and other possibly related material (such as his discussion of and songs about venereal disease). To easier differentiate between Woody's own commentary and the observations of others, all material quoted from Woody's writing are, in this report, in bold type.

.. .. .. .. ..

- Prelude

The earliest instance found on record of Woody discussing the disease that so devastated his family - and would eventually devastate his own - is a conversation between Woody and Matt Jennings, in Pampa, Texas, circa 1930. Guthrie biographer Joe Klein recounts this moment in Woody Guthrie: A Life:

Slowly, quietly, he told Matt the family history: the fires, the death of his sister, the insane asylum. "When I went to visit my mother, she didn't even recognize me," he said. Then he talked about the disease: it ran in the family, crossing from father to daughter and mother to son. "Does that mean you could get it?" Matt asked. "No. There's no way I'm gonna get that disease," he said, and in the whiskey haze, Matt believed him. It was the only time they ever talked about it. [Klein, Delta: 1980, p. 49]

Woody apparently publicly mentioned his mother's illness for the first time in a Library of Congress recorded interview, which likely was conducted during Woody's visit to Washington, D.C., in May of 1940, a visit that preceded his trip back to Oklahoma and Texas with Pete Seeger. In Washington, he and Seeger completed work on the songbook Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People, unpublished until 1967.

In the introduction to this songbook, Woody is describing these songs as the ultimate outlet for "the story of their life," that is, the hard-hit people, but in his dramatization of what in their lives is worth singing out, he uses a few of his own biographical details: "...how it used to be, how it got to be, how the home went to pieces, how the young wife died or left, how the mother died in the insane asylum, how Dad tried twice to kill himself, and lay flat on his back for 18 months - ..." [Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People, Univ. of Neb.: 1999]

- Boomchasers

The real path to self-discovery of his family history and his own disease begins in earnest, though, in 1942. Encouraged by his new love, Marjorie Greenblatt Mazia, Woody begins work on a book entitled Boomchasers. It was an autobiography, of sorts - a collection of colorful stories from his life thus far as a travelling soul and singer - and would eventually be published under the title Bound for Glory. The reflection on his past began to raise questions in both lovers' minds.

In an initial story synopsis for Boomchasers, under the subject heading "The Boom Town," Woody wrote of his family's misfortunes and of his father's dwindling fortunes in Okemah during the mid-'20s: "He lost still more money, and a brand new 6 room house caught afire and burnt to the ground, with not a drop of insurance money on it. This worried my mama so much, that, added to papa's other losses, she had to be watched very carefully."

Later in this chapter description, he gets around to the family's move to Oklahoma City, then adds parenthetically: "(I forgot, in 1918, my 14 year old sister was ironing on an oil stove, and it exploded, burning her to death.)"

The OKC motorcycle-sales job never materializes when the entrepreneur dies, and Woody sums things up this way in the synopsis: "This caused my mother to lose her mind, and we moved back to Okemah, and a few months later, she went to the asylum at Norman. Papa was fixing an oil stove later, and caught afire, putting him flat on his back for 18 months, and he was sent to the panhandle of Texas to get well living with some relatives, wheat farmers."

[Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 1, folder 15]

Marjorie helped Woody considerably during the work on this manuscript, in 1942, and according to Klein, she asked Woody about the disease one day:

...Once, in the midst of a description of his mother's illness, Marjorie stopped and asked, "Woody, could you get sick like that?" "No," he said. "Only women." [Klein, p. 242]

In the published version of Bound for Glory, Woody first publicly recounted his mother's strange behavior and unsettled health. In Chapter 2, Charley announces that he's purchased the London House in Okemah and the family reacts coldly. In the published version, the section ends with everyone in quiet distress, but a second draft added an extra, eventually deleted, paragraph in which Nora first brings up the subject of her own troubled mind:

"In the other house," Mama was talking into a cloud of hot steam over the stove, "Everything had its place. Everything was clean and every stick of furniture, and every little piece of silver ware, and every little rug on the floors made you think of somewhere, where you was, what you were doing on the day that you bought it. That's what a home is. That's what a home does. Make your mind stay straight. Instead of everything all dirty, and everything all twisted and all mixed up." The cold sweat oozed out on mama's face. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 2, folder 08] * This graf is marked through, deleted, in the bond pages in folder 09.

In an earlier draft for Chapter 2, this section continued on much further in a passage marked for deletion. The passage carries on the narrative with Clara offering insistently to do the dishes for Nora, and Nora is resistant:

"What's wrong with me washing them?" Mama's voice didn't sound like it sounded in the other good house. It might as well have been a different person. And Clara's little ears were keen and sharp, and they knew every little sound of that voice, and Clara's eyes just tried to figure out puzzles. "Why can't I wash them? What's wrong with me? Do you see anything wrong with me? I'm not sick. You don't have to treat me like I was a blooming six year old; or like there was something wrong with me! I can still do just as much work as the next one!"

"Sure, I know you can," Clara told her, "But what's the use of arguing about a thing like this? Why, mama, you know I offer to do the dishes every single night -- because I know you've been working hard all day, and the rest would do you good. That's all."

'"ou asked me different today."

"Asked you different?"

"Different, yes."

"Why, I've asked you this same thing a thousand times."

"It was different today."

"How was it different?"

"You sounded different."

"How?"

"Today, you talked, and you sounded like you thought I wasn't able to wash the dishes the same as ever." When mama said this, her face got tight, and she kept her eyes straight ahead, looking at a little place on the stove pipe.

"Oh. Well. Maybe that was because I'd been outside crying, and just hadn't blew my nose, yet."

"Wasn't no such a thing."

"Maybe my eyes were so full of tears I didn't see how I was talking."

"No. I told you. I know."

"Know what?"

"I know what you know."

"What do I know?"

"About the good house burning down."

"Sure, it burnt down. Let it burn down, see who cares. We'll get us another new house. Better one. Papa's going to buy one. He's already told me. What's that got to do with me washing dishes?" Clara asked mama.

"Got a lot."

"Like, what?"

"You think I worry too much about the other house. You think it's bothering me too much. You think it is, but it's not. It's not. ..." [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 3, folder 01]

In Chapter 3 of the published book, Woody recounts a conversation between his mother Nora and her mother, called here simply Grandma (Mary Sherman-Tanner). Grandma can tell something is wrong with Nora, but Nora tries to brush it off as the strain of "just everday housework." Grandma eventually gets to it:

Mama rubbed her hair back out of her eyes and said, "I feel good, I feel good all over. I work hard and I feel good, but I don't know. Just seems like right in through my head some way or another, something. Little dizzy spells." [Bound for Glory, p. 61]

In the manuscript drafts for this chapter, a great deal of text was edited out - marked through by handwriting that could be Marjorie's or Woody's editor, Joy Doerflinger - including more of Nora's deflections of Grandma's health inquiries. At one point, Nora assures Grandma, "You don't have to worry about me. Just a little headache. Dizzy spell. Lots of people get them. I feel as spry as fox otherwise. ... I'm all right!" Grandma huffs, indicates that she knows better, and then adds: "But I know. Nora. You haven't got over that fire, yet." In further deleted paragraphs, Nora relents and agrees to have Grandma summon Doc Watts, but she reiterates: "I'm not that sick. Just a little old crazy dizzy spell that comes about once a day, and then it goes away and I feel all right again." [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 1, folder 20] As the chapter continues, young Woody rides off with Grandma on her errands and eventually on to her home in the country. On their ride, the conversation weaves in and out of the sensitive subject of Nora's condition. Woody recounts his own worries about Nora's health. He tells her that Nora doesn't go out, that no one visits, that she spends most of her time sitting around the house and staring blankly:

"Jest sets. Looks. Holds a book in 'er lap mosta th' time, but she don't look at where th' book's at. Jest out across th' whole room, an' whole house an' ever'wheres."

"Is that right?"

"If Papa tells Mama somethin' she forgot, she gits so mad she goes off up in th' top bedroom an' cries an' cries all day long. What makes it?" I asked Grandma.

"Your mama is awful bad sick, Woody, awful bad. And she knows she's awful bad sick. And it's so bad that she don't want any of you to know about it ... because it's going to get a whole lot worse." [Bound for Glory, p. 65]

A large deleted passage from this scene finds Woody in a rambling conversation with Grandma, turning to a discussion of heaven, including this curious mention of fire:

"When you're up in heav'n, reckon can you see down here on th' ground? What all folks is doin'?" I asked her.

"I'm sure I don't know. I've never been to heaven."

"Maybe if th' graveyard caught was to cetch on afire, an' start out to burn all of them crosses down with peoples names on 'em, maybe if you was up in heav'n, you could look down here an' see it, an' come down an' put th' fire out," I asked her.

"I don't know whether the angels want to wast [sic] their time going around putting out fires or not," she told me.

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I'm just guessing. But I know one thing, I'll bet you there's a whole lot more fires than there are angels to put them out." [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 1, folder 20]

In a deleted passage a bit later, on the same ride to Grandma's, the discussion of Nora comes up, though here it's Woody who broaches the subject by asking Grandma point-blank:

"Grandma," I saked [sic] her, "Do you think my mama's sick?"

"Well, I guess you heard what I told her, didn't you?"

"Yeah. I heard you talkin'."

"Is my mama real sick?"

"She needs rest of some kind. A trip, maybe. I don't know. That old house ain't good for Nora." [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 1, folder 20]

A few paragraphs of the published version go by, then in another deleted passage Woody mentions: "Clara's afraid to tell mama she's sick; 'cause mama gets mad." After Grandma warns in the published version that Nora is indeed sick and that "it's going to get a whole lot worse," there's a deleted extra line at the end of that sentence: "... and all of you'll know about it soon enough." [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 1, folder 20] Grandma's worries continue in another set of deleted paragraphs further on. Woody is pestering her with questions about horses and kittens, and Grandma cuts him off:

"No. Shut up. I want to think. I don't want to ride along here and worry trying to answer your silly questions. I'm thinking about something a whole lot more important. I'm worried. I'm worried about your mama."

"I wanta go back home an' be with my mama."

"So do I. That's what I'm worrying about. Somebody has just naturally got to go and stay right there at that old house with Nora till she gets all right again." [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 1, folder 20]

In Chapter 8 of the book, Woody tells the story of his older sister Clara's death by being burned in a mysterious fire at home. After a run-down of the events as he understood them, he comes back to a second, brief explanation of the events (as if adding the account, and possibly language, of another person):

Her school teacher was there. Clara had stayed out of school to do the ironing. Mama and her had quarreled a little about it. Mama felt sick. Clara wanted to get ready for exams. ... [Bound for Glory, p.134]

Further on, this event is described as:

... the breaking point for my mother. She got worse, and lost control of the muscles in her body; and two or three times a day she would have bad spells of epileptics, first getting angry at things in the house, then arguing at every stick of furniture in every room until she would be talking so loud that all of the neighbors heard and wondered about it. I noticed that every day she would spend a minute or two staring at a lump of melted glass crystals, a door stop about as big as your two fists, and she told me, "Before our new six-room house burned down, this was a twenty-dollar cut-glass casserole. It was a present, and it was as pretty as I used to be. But now look how it looks, all crazy, all out of shape. It don't reflect pretty colors any more like it used to - it's all twisted, like everything pretty gets twisted, like my whole life is twisted. God, I want to die!! I want to die! Now! Now! Now! Now!"

And she broke furniture and dishes to pieces. [Bound for Glory, p. 135]

This passage goes on about his mother's lost good looks, and about Woody's opinion that she worried too much. She must have eventually consulted a doctor, as Grandma had insisted, because Woody adds: "She concentrated on her worries until it got the best of her. The doctor said it would." [Bound for Glory, p. 136] Continuing later with Nora's symptoms:

The whole town knew about her. She got careless with her appearance. She let herself run down. She walked around over the town, looking and thinking and crying. The doctor called it insanity and let it go at that. She lost control over the muscles of her face. Us kids would stand around in the house lost in silence, not saying a word for hours, and ashamed, somehow, to go out down the street and play with the kids, and wanting to stay there and see how long her spell would last, and if we could help her. She couldn't control her arms, nor her legs, nor the muscles in her body, and she would go into spasms and fall on the floor, and wallow around through the house, and ruin her clothes, and yell till people blocks up the street could hear her.

She would be all right for a while and treat us kids as good as any mother, and all at once it would start in - something bad and awful - something would start coming over her, and it come by slow degrees. Her face would twitch and her lips would snarl and her teeth would show. Spit would run out of her mouth and she would start out in a low grumbling voice and gradually get to talking as loud as her throat could stand it; and her arms would draw up at her sides, then behind her back, and swing in all kinds of curves. Her stomach would draw up into a hard ball, and she would double over into a terrible-looking hunch - and turn into another person, it looked like, standing right there before Roy and me. [Bound for Glory, p. 136]

He then explains the family's move to Oklahoma City not as a necessity for Charley's employment options but as a medical consideration for Nora: "We didn't want to send Mama away. It would be better some other place. We'd go off and start all over. So in 1923 we packed up and moved away to Oklahoma City." [Bound for Glory, p. 138] The next chapter, Chapter 9, finds the Guthries back in a dying Okemah, relocated to the shabby side of town. There is a passage ending the first section in which Woody plays with matchsticks, which makes Nora nervous. The narrative in the published version ends with Nora saying, "We're not scared people, Woody!" The first carbon draft of this chapter adds an extra, reworked graf to close out the section:

She struck the match on the floor and held it up between her eyes and mine, and it lit up both of our thoughts and reflected in both of our minds, and struck a million memories and ten million secrets that fire had turned into ashes between us. She went on saying, "No. Not of fire any more. I'm not afraid." And she blew the blaze out just as it crawled down the match stick to her fingernails. "Not of fire, anymore." [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 1, folder 31] * This graf survived through the second carbon draft, as well. Though in another, possibly later, draft [in folder 26, "Assorted Pages"] the last three sentences are marked to be deleted.

The next section finds Nora and Woody working outdoors in the garden on a hillside while the house is fumigated. In the published account, Woody asks Nora how she feels, and she says, "I feel better than I've felt in years." [Bound for Glory, p. 154] Then Nora sees smoke coming out of the house and runs toward it in a fit. Woody runs for help and is then sent to Grandma's while the family deals with it. When he gets back, he finds out from Roy that: "Oil stove exploded. Papa's in the hospital. Pretty bad burns." This is odd, since, as Woody points out in the narrative, he had removed the oil tank from the stove and put it outside. Nora has now been sent to the Norman hospital. [Bound for Glory, p. 157] The first carbon draft of this section includes these deleted paragraphs, relating some of the action that occurred once Woody arrived at Grandma's after being sent away:

Grandma was walking back and forth on her porch rubbing her head and saying, "I've been looking for this. Yes. All along. Sometimes I hated to admit it. I didn't want to admit that my best and smartest child could ever break down and end this way."

I was talking pretty quiet, hanging my feet off of the front porch, "Will she ever be all right?"

Warren leaned against a post beside me and said, "Oh, she might. She's been having these spells now for how long?"

"It just barely first got started, I remember, back in that new seven room house, then a little more in that old London House, then come the cyclone, then Clara, then Oklahoma City and Leonard." Grandma walked the floor of the porch and looked across the yard of dry leaves with tears running down. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 1, folder 31] * This graf survived through carbon 2, as well. It is marked for deletion in a later draft [folder 26, "Assorted Pages"].

- Rage, rage

By the end of summer 1942, a pregnant Marjorie had returned to Philadelphia to be with her husband (carrying Woody's child). Woody began a thorough habit of correspondence, writing usually every day, and began revealing a certain confusion about his own behavior. He would often get angry with her, cuss violently, then write to apologize, as he did in this letter dated Sept. 17, 1942, from the Almanac Singers' house on Hudson Street:

I'm thinking about all the things I said the other day and not asking you to excuse them or overlook them - because they must have been whirling around somewhere in my mind or else they never would have come out. That's a habit of mine. It happened every so often. And there really are quite a big bunch of little red devils with pitch forks poking around in me somewhere and making me yell out some pretty bad things. If it's not one thing it's something else. I just pick a subject and start. And that's just one of the wagon loads of wrong habits in me. It puzzles me almost to even try to think how a person with a mind like yours can even stand the presence of a mind like mine. ... [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 1, folder 44]

At about this time, he wrote the following confession in one of his many diaries to his unborn child, whom he called Railroad Pete: "I have dreams that tell me I'm not entirely as sane as is comfortable. ... I don't know what kind of feelings are in me to cause me to write all the things I do. ... One minute I'm nervous and afraid, and the next minute I'm as big and strong as anyone...." [Klein, p. 248] Also about this time, Klein relates an incident in which Woody got angry for little reason and smashed a new mandolin and several vases, saying he wanted to kill Millard Lampell. [Klein, p. 250] A long letter, dated Nov. 17, 1942, goes on about shows and love; then, late on page 7, Woody mentions how hard he's been working and adds this:

I have already found out that the only thing that keeps me from going completely screwball is just to keep at work every minute of the night and day, and maybe this is a good thing, maybe the best thing that can happen to anybody. To keep at work. If I can think that I'm, somehow helping others, I can forget my own little personal troubles. [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 1, folder 44]

By December, he mentions in one letter, dated Dec. 7 from 74 Charles St., that "my head is unexplainably clear." The upswing continues in another letter that week:

... I'm, I guess, what you would call a happy man. And the old crazy tailspins I have gone into so regularly in the past few months, I see now, almost that they were absolutely necessary in order for me to get my head running right and my eyes to seeing. ... And do you know that even that crappy, cheap and lousy speech I made ... even that, I think, was my last gathering of all the planless and dreamless and thoughtless forces in my whole life, piling them on you, because I really was thinking just the opposite of every word I said. ... [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 1, folder 44]

In a long letter dated Jan. 25, 1943, he thanks Marj for sending a couple of articles; one was apparently about life in Russia, where "it seems like man-woman and the whole business of sex, even venereal diseases, are all pretty well cleaned up in Russia." He eventually continues, rhapsodizing about disease:

In fact, I am forming my own personal opinions on a theory that venereal diseases as we know them here, are the direct outcome of nervous frustration, and fear, that either weakens the system so the germ can take hold, or gets the body in such a nervous state that it can't fight back like it ought to. Do away with neurotic laws, rules, fogey customs, narrow minded marriage and divorce and clinical laws, and create a job and a time for leisure, a home and time for work and rest, love and all that goes with it, for everybody, and three fourths of not only our sexual diseases, but all bodily sicknesses (which are based in the soul) would disappear like smoke. [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 1, folder 45]

It's about this period now, end of '42 and start of '43, that Klein starts remarking on the volume of Woody's production, that he was just producing reams and reams of words, and here he describes it:

He would chug along with a routine account of the latest gossip or what he'd had for breakfast or whom he'd bumped into and then, suddenly - whoosh - he'd explode off into a wild fantasy, the words spilling out effortlessly, on and on, for pages and pages, single-spaced, mad, brilliant, disorganized, uneven, impossible, unique. [Klein, p. 263]

Marjorie had the baby, Cathy Ann, in February. By March, she still hadn't returned to New York as promised, and Woody was frustrated. In a letter dated March 21 from "same old lonesome place," he complains: "But is the news that this must keep going on for another month, another four whole weeks? They'll sure have to move over and make room for me in the raving ward. I couldn't take care of a bankrupt popcorn stand in this frame of mind." In a letter later that month, he gets angry and calls off their relationship, ending the letter with: "I can't live insane any longer." [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 1, folder 46] - In the service Woody's letters to Marjorie from his Merchant Marine service in the Atlantic are still lengthy but brisk. On July 23, 1943, aboard the William B. Travis "somewhere on the ocean," he writes: "I feel on the whole better than I have ever felt in my life." [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 1, folder 47] From that mission, Klein recounts this conversation among Woody and his bunkmates, which included friends Cisco Houston and Jimmy Longhi:

...When the nervous back-and-forth subsided, Woody took over and began to tell them, very calmly and in surprising detail, the story of his family and the fires and his mother's illness. And then, in conclusion: "And I'm pretty sure I've got the same thing my mother had ..." "That's a crock," Jimmy started, then: "How do you know?" "Dunno, just feel queer sometimes." [Klein, p. 279]

By June 10, 1944, from the Sea Porpoise "at sea," Woody wrote to Marjorie:

There is a wave of good health that comes over you out here. Nervous, a calm nervousness which is really not a guilt nor a fear but a desire to shape your life so that it swings into action. I have felt this way many times before. Usually when things seem pretty tangled up. [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 1, folder 50]

In a letter to Marjorie, dated July 5, 1944, from the Sea Porpoise, Woody discusses his theory that Cisco and Jimmy are "he males" while he himself is quiet and contemplative, adding: "Cisco looks upon me as a good old boy that had a fine start then lost my marbles and maybe my own mind, somewhat, ..." [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 1, folder 50] Home that autumn in Coney Island, Woody penned a song, dated Oct. 11, 1944, called "Face My Cold Grave," marking it "*needs no comment," though itÕs probably a VD song. The first verse:

I'm well known and famous From stateline to border For giving you women just what you so crave! Why must I take down With this mean old disease? Too soon! Too soon now I face my cold grave!

The fourth verse continues, pointing out how hard the narrator worked at pleasing women, especially when:

You tell me your husband Just don't know his business To give you women just what you so craved! I come through your door To ease you and please you! Too soon! Too soon now I face my cold grave! [Archives: Songs-1, alphabetical]

Two days after he was inducted into the Army, Woody wrote to Marjorie on May 9, 1945, on US Army air mail stationery, from Fort Dix, N.J.: "My arms hurt [from his shots] and I whirl in the brain but they say you got to stay in action to keep it from getting you down." [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 2, folder 01] On May 22, 1945, from Sheppard's Field in Texas, Woody writes home of his "second complete medical checkup today," describing it thusly:

He [the medic] gave us a paper as we went in the door. It was a list of all the diseases we had had, ruptures, hernias, neuroses, nightmares and so forth. My chart was perfect except for two things. One was my broken elbow. One was that my Mama had been an inmate of a mental institution. (I am also 10 lbs. underweight.) My teeth are pretty good the man said. (We all had to strip naked again and be looked over by several specialists. Urine. Blood. Blood pressure. Teeth. Ears. Eyes. Nose and throat. Posture. (Mine is good!) Our feet. (Mine are good!) We had to bend down and touch the floor ten times and then get a heart check. ... Everybody back at the barrack was telling about all the initials, codes, long words that the meds wrote on our charts and since none of us know what the marks all mean we beat our brains out trying to guess. I got a mark of "O.S." (I think). The boys all told me it meant "Over Seas" - But I said "No that's Officer Special." One kid said it meant "Oh, Shit!" [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 2, folder 01]

Incredibly bored in the postwar Army, Woody wrote two long letters to Marjorie on July 10 from Scott Field in Illinois. The first mentions a new but uneventful medical exam. The second includes this:

Time comes when I feel like I lost my light. I see and I hear things but they don't make sense. And then time comes when I feel like I find it and I can see any two things work together. This could be true and it could not be true to you, but you are one of those that this is true to.

Later in the second letter, he recounts a scene in which he tells two soldiers on their way to a dance not to turn the barracks lights off and on so quickly, warning them that the wires could heat up and "these walls would burn like paper." Then this:

If those men only knew the visions that fly through me after seeing fire burn three of our houses down and taking my sister, Clara, the prettiest girl in our school. Oh. Maybe no one wants to hear my old cinders talk so sad. [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 2, folder 03]

A letter to Marjorie dated July 12, 1945, is more of an essay, entitled "The Big Dance." It's a clever cautionary tale about venereal disease (though the phrase is never used until the very last line) and possibly something larger. The complete text:

This is big dance night. I am at my table here in my good Information Center. The band plays and the drums beat. Feet trip a gay fandango and uniforms and dresses whiff through the breeze. Cigaret smoke is in the air. I hear loud voices and laughter. This is the night of the big dance. Horns will blow, couples will whirl, eyes shine, cheeks will smiles and the jokes and wise cracks will run. Everybody will have a good time, most everybody. Nearly all will have a good clean time. Almost.

Somebody in the dance hall will catch a disease which he or she can track germ by germ back to the dance hall door.

Somebody will lose a part of life, it not all. Somebody will be nervous and worried for all of the remainder of their days. The nervous worry will track back to the big dance down there tonight.

The nervous worry will really trace back to the door of carelessness. Just didn't care. Just didn't give a damn. Heard and saw the lecture, the book, the word, a thousand times. Still didn't care.

Didn't care because he thought we didn't care. He didn't care because he really figured at the bottom of his heart that nobody really cared.

The way to make the guys and dames all like you is to go roll them good and then come back and tell a hundred jokes about her for the next six months. The way to have a lot of pals is to have lots of good raw meat jokes to spill out. Make it all a big joke. A laugh. Ridicule it. Stretch it. Make it like a cartoon book. She's this old dame, see this old broad, this pretty little piece, this cute little satchel, see. See.

Yes, this is it. This is the way to make all your pals and gals smile and tell you howdy. This is the way to stay in with that click [sic] you want to be with. Yes. Make her funny.

Work it all up. Toss it around. Tickle your buddy's funnybone. Put it in his mind. You're a man on these ladies. They mash their feet off chasing you around. Tell all of your comrades where you can be sure to knock of [sic] a little chunk. Use your imagination. Build it up. Make fun of her. Stir up another good yarn.

Keep your nerves all worked up. Knock yourself out. Work yourself up into a lather. Get them hot.

Just remember one thing. You laugh in the face of the first law when you spread your nervous sex tales from one buddy on to your next one. You fan a flame that has taken more people than fire. You feed a storm that has killed more people than guns. You blow a poison that has murdered more races of people than hunger. You keep an enemy a thousand times deadlier than fascists, than Nazis and Japs multiplied by twenty.

You lead your friends and sell them over to this enemy when you try to prove that the lightest thing in human existence is a joke, a dead circus, a thing to yell, whistle, and laugh about. You sell your boys friends and girl friends for just the price of tickling your own greedy ignorance. Because to turn your eyes from the first law is to drown yourself in your ignorance.

Your ignorance proves that you are a coward too full of your own fear to face the law. You are such a big coward that you are afraid to live with the law. You choose to kill yourself in the greediest possible manner, so you spit out your birthright on the ground, and you make the law over to fit your ignorance. You mould life into the jokes of your own vulgarity. You slip over into the jungle you made in your wild nightmares and you get lost. You see nothing except your pitiful greed and ignorance. You actually believe that this silly world of rotten, nervous, wasted time, is the real world. You see the unreal as the real and the real as the unreal.

You worship nervousness. You believe in vulgar. You see only the law that you made for your own suicide. Your sex gets out of balance. Your brain functions wrong and your nerve ends are irritated for months or for years. Your tissues and organs get weakened, strained, irritated, and run down. The germ comes and he finds himself at home. The poisons from your glands did not work right because you kept the nerves all upset, cramped, overly taxed. Your defense fails. The germ lives. He makes your body his rotten log to breed his city of germs in.

You chose your own destruction. No living human can keep you alive when you really desire to be dead.

You say I am stretching the dead side of the picture. I say that I have not made it one half as clear as it ought to be made. I have stated nothing except pure scientific facts.

Not all scientists will agree with me that this sort of vulgar nervousness sets up a nervous irritation which paralyzes defense glands, but I will stick to my point. It is pure psychiatry. Pure and simple. The nervousness is caused by social and economic insecurity. A further cause is your high desire to appear as a man amongst men, a woman of the world, a somebody who is cute, clever, popular, witty, and highly sexual attractive. You feel short of almost all of your positive, useful goals and plans, so you spend too much energy in the art of spreading a false sex security in your own mind and in others. You see life very dimly, complascently [sic], spasmodically, because your blood leaves the higher cells and centers of your brain and flows to those organs which laugh, clap, slap, and yell, and tell dirty stories. Your blood flows in a confused and excess manner to the nerves, tissues and organs of your sex, which includes all the other organs in your body. You make use, the wrong use, of beer, wine, whiskey, liquers, to confuse your vision and intellect still more.

You are as cannibal, as savage, moreso, than the wildest creature of the jungle, because you turn your back on several million civilized helping hands and all our modern tools. The poor savage would run a hundred miles to receive this much attention.

Now, who is right. Be truthful. Be honest about it? Mama Nature, and the human race, or you and your wild ignorance? If you see no hope for the human race, if it is a planless and painful place, if you just cannot stand it, then gooff [sic] somewhere in the weeds and blow your brains out. We won't miss you. Go ahead. Blow. But you had sure better not try to run that obstacle course of loose and vulgar wild sex, because you won't last for twenty feet. I went heavy on the cause. You go heavy on the cure. The only cure for V.D. is a plan of living for everybody.

Woody Guthrie
[Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 2, folder 03]

For the period of September, as Woody languishes on the Illinois base, Klein observes:

He couldn't be sure if it was the army or his own boredom, but there was an odd, drifty sensation, an inability to concentrate or keep track of what he was doing. "Confused states of mind, a kind of lonesomeness, a nervousness stays with me no matter how I set myself to reading, painting or playing my guitar. Without trying to make it sound too serious, it never does get quite straight in my head." [Klein, p. 314]

In an Oct. 22 ramble to Marjorie about sex and physicality, Woody wrote: "To me the body is the mind. The mind is the body. Neither goes far without the other." [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 2, folder 09] In a Nov. 3 letter to Marjorie, still from Scott Field, Woody wrote about self-control:

I learned before very many of these dark nights that here is one of the deepest dares and challenges that ever comes over the human brain, this dare to wrestle and to try to control your own nervous thoughts out here in all of this wild world by yourself. I know that I could never pretend to be a full grown adult till I could keep my head clear out here. So I felt like I was learning one more part of a big lesson. I felt like I could see all of the weak spots in my own mind here, could learn how to over come it, and how to free my mind so that all of the reflections of my brain would come sure and true and quick and healthy. I felt a terrible craving to do this over and over. I never have told anybody more than a dozen words about this, except you. I wanted to know how to make use of the contents of my own mind, and something told me that I could learn in this way how to know other peoples hearts and minds, also. [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 2, folder 10]

- Home at last Once out of the Army, Woody launched into several other projects, but he had difficulty bringing them to fruition. In '46, he and Cisco Houston went to Boston to study the Sacco and Vanzetti case for the purposes of writing an album's worth of songs about it. Klein notes Woody's inability to finish the songs "to his own satisfaction," and how the spark had gone from his writing, his songs had become "ponderous and self-righteous; he seemed to have lost his sense of humor." [Klein, p. 328] Klein also notes Woody's deteriorating stage presence during his immediate post-Army years:

He still conveyed the same sense of having stumbled accidentally onstage that he'd used so brilliantly in the past to set up his humor, but now the punch lines often were muffled or missing entirely, and all that remained was aimless confusion. The fact was that he really did stumble onstage at times. Some of his friends were quite concerned about Woody's incessant boozing, and Marjorie agreed that it was becoming a serious problem.

Also:

Woody was beginning to lose control of the anger that he'd always been able to harness as the fuel for his best songs; the rage that he'd once controlled like a stiletto was becoming a bludgeon. ... His driving, which never had been very steady, became a campaign to flout every known traffic law and terrorize his friends. He'd run red lights, go down one-way streets the wrong way, and make sudden, lurching U-turns across traffic islands on the Belt Parkway. [Klein, p. 335, 336-7]

In February 1947, fire claimed another Guthrie - this time the first child of Woody and Marjorie, Cathy Ann. Woody is, of course, stunned by the incident and writes in his note book: "And the things you fear shall truly come upon you ..." [Klein, p. 350] A few months later, Woody shoved off on a trip west, visiting Lefty Lou in California (who Klein reports thought Woody "seemed troubled and weird"). He wrote home to Marjorie many times, and off-hand descriptions of his mental state began to sneak into his reports, such as, "I don't know what has hit me. I've never felt this low before," and "Every day seems like it's no go. I don't feel like doing very much of anything. All scrabbled up." [Klein, p. 355-6] The following poem is undated, but I'm guessing it comes from around this period, based on the similarity of its ink and paper to other material from this period. It's a simple poem, a personal expression of his uneasiness:

"Sometimes I think I'm a gonna lose my mind..." Sometimes I think Im a gonna lose my mind But it dont Look like I ever do. I loved So many People everywhere I went Some too much And others not enough. I don't know I may go Down or up or anywhere But I feel Like this scribbling Will stay.

Maybe If I hadn't Of seen so much hard feelings I might not Could of felt Other peoples. So When you think of me If and when you ever do Just say Well Another man's done gone Yep Another man's done gone. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 1, folder 27]

- Seeds of Man Later in 1947, Woody began work on another manuscript: Silver Mine, the tale of a trip to south Texas he took with his father and some Pampa relatives in search of a family legend's silver mine. The manuscript title eventually was changed to Seeds of Man and wasn't published until after Woody's death. Woody's initial drafts included a long, drawn-out but poignant scene in which Woody argues with his father about the family's history and circumstances. This scene appeared between what became chapters 1 and 2 and did not make the published version. First in this deleted scene, he pleads with his family to commit itself to music as a way to earn a living instead of some of the other means by which Charley Guthrie had used to feed his family: "I'm jista sorta lettin' m'self hope a little han'ful th't if we throw down our guns an' grab up our squawling fiddles, an' jist lumber off an' out down th' music road, nowhere, anywheres, we might still save all of th' resta us fr'm goin' an' a-dyin' where mama went when she died." Everyone chastises Woody for dragging Clara and Nora into the argument, so in the following passage Charley moans, then Woody's response:

"... I hired the best doctors I could get. They all told me the same thing. Humor Nora. Pet her. Be nice to her. ... That Doctor told me that I had to find every possible way to try to make Nora feel proud of all of her fine things. But I donÕt know why, and I just never did know why, and I never will know why, she just turned mean and hateful towards every good thing I tried to do for her," Papa said. "I know what was going on in Mama's head. I stood there in our house and watched 'er make ever' move she made, an' I stood there'n listen'd to 'er talk and argue to me right in the days when she commenced t' havin' them first nervis fits. Oh. Most alla this hyere stuff she'd talka 'bout jist aft'r ya'd walk outta th' door an' ride old White Sam off ta werk at y'r offis. I lissen'd to 'er all day an' ever' day. Roy an' Clara didn't liss'n to 'er mutch's I did, 'cause botha them'd chaise off outta crost th' yard fence an' git ta playin' with alla th' neighbor kids. Roy'd come back t' eat. Clara'd come back ever' coupla hours t' see how good 'er how bad things wuzza driftin' along. An' alla th' time th't you's down there at yore offis, well, Roy an' Clara an' m'self seen a big plenty. Jista big big plenty. Plenty enuff ta let us know th't our mama wuzza havin' reg'lar fits an' spasms an' a cussin' out at papa all day long sa loud th't ever'body along our whole block'd git out onta their front an' their back porches jist ta stan' there'n lissen to 'er. Beggin' ya ta take off y'r guns an' ta throw that there big biadge away, an' ta move outaa y'r ole fightin' cheatin' real escape offis out ta liv onna farm of some kind she had all eyyed up an' pick'd out. ... That's what she talk'd an' sigh'd an' cried an' roll'd down acrost th' floor an' th' bed all day longa 'bout. She had th' kinda eye it takes ta see th' bloody kindsa han's th't yore dollers an' yore lan' titles wuzza goin' through. I didn' jist hyear 'er weep an' wail 'er soul an' 'er body away f'r jist one time, ner f'r a hundred times, but after ya'd go off t' werk ever day an' alla them gone nights, too, well, f'r my firs twelve years till we fell down ta th't ole rotty east end shack where we's a livin' that bad ole night th't th' docters come down an' drove 'er off ta th' 'Sylum. ..."Ó [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 5, folder 02]

- Demon alcohol Quoted in the Woody biography by Henrietta Yurchenco, Marjorie pointed out she and the family had begun to notice Woody's change about this time:

What confused me, and Woody himself, in the early stage of the illness, was that by nature he was a rather moody person. As early as 1948, we began to notice that he was more reflective, and often depressed by trivial things. [Yurchenco, McGraw-Hill: 1970, p. 139]

By 1949, Woody was drinking pretty heavily, as Klein notes:

The level of tension was higher than ever before. Woody was drinking more heavily again, and behaving very strangely at times. One afternoon he lost his temper and came charging at Marjorie with a kitchen knife. She screamed, "Woody!" which shocked him back to his senses, after which he apologized profusely ... but the incident stayed in her mind. [Klein, p. 366]

In a discussion of Woody's artwork from this period, Ellen G. Landau quotes from "notebook of the later forties," in which Woody wrote:

The old head I've got seems to be all cluttered up with trash and garbage and crazy moving pictures - that whirl around all of the time and never see anything quite clear enough - and never feels [sic] anything quite plain enough. Never knows anything quite sure enough. Maybe something ought to happen to me to make me born again brand new. ["Classic in Its Own Little Way," Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie, Weslyan Univ.: 1999]

About 1950, Howie Richmond is grooming the Weavers and takes an interest in Woody. Woody spends lot of time talking with him and to Pete Kameron, rambling stories, Klein writes: "Kameron was a man who enjoyed conversation, no matter how fractured it sometimes seemed - as opposed to Moe Asch, who'd grown tired of watching one of his favorite performers fall apart." WG waits for Richmond at his office one night, all night, police arrest him for loitering, Klein says, "Richmond, and most other people, assumed that his brains had been scrambled by alcohol." The next graf elaborates:

It was not a difficult assumption to make. He showed all the classic signs of alcoholism. There was a boozy, light-headed quality to him; his walk had become a lurch, and his speech often was decidedly slurred. What's more, he looked like a bum. Photographs taken of him in Washington Square Park in 1952 show him with a full beard and long, curly hair, looking very much like a biblical prophet ... or a vision from a future time, the late 1960s, and a state of mind not yet even vaguely imagined. [Klein, p. 376]

Continuing in this vein, of 1950, Klein writes: "Marjorie found she was frightened by him." An important discussion begins here of Marj's sharpening perception of WG's worsening state, his air of danger, his flunking of auditions, etc. Klein mentions this, too: "An odd thing was happening, too, with his writing. It was beginning to bulge and warp crazily, like images in a fun-house mirror." [Klein, p. 377-8] Late in 1951, the crazily warped letters were coming from Beluthahatchee, Fla., where Woody had run to live with anti-KKK figure and soon-to-be politician Stetson Kennedy. While living in Kennedy's refurbished bus, Woody brainstormed an idea for a new novel, which he wrote out in a letter to Marjorie:

Story about a drunk man that has a fight in a house of prostitution, gets knocked down a stairs, and wakes up in the A.A. ward of a hospital. He is bodily and mentally sick and must be treated with several well known shots and pills of modern day wonder drugs. It's under the influence of these dopes and drugs that he mumbles, murmurs, yells and loudly debates with all his nurses, doctors, analysts, experts, as well as with all the inmates of his ward, about what he claims to be the greatest grandest foolproof religious theory and science. ... The hero of the tale, being under the influence of many narcotics and many dopeyfying tablets, pills, and intra muscular needle shots, and, also, having been too much of a drinker and a sinner in every degree, yells all sorts of twisted, unrelated, disconnected, and [uncommenting???] words, and phrases, and sentences, both questions and answers, queries and replies, and more isolated, disjointed, senseless phrases. [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 02]

A song that shows up in this period, dated "April Foolery of 19+52," illustrates some of the tension at home. This song is written in Woody's hand but attributed to Arlo:

"My Daddy Got Mad" My daddy got mad My daddy got sad and he jumped inna bottle of wine; My daddy felt bad so he jumped in a bottle of wine; and He didn't come out cause mommy wouldn't pay his fine [Archives: Songs-1, alphabetical]

Later that month, Woody continued to ramble, this time making a run back to Okemah, where he apparently stayed several days checking out his old haunts. The following four passages are from letters written to Marjorie during his stay at Okemah's Broadway Hotel. The first two are dated April 25, 1952 - the second being written on both sides of a paper bag from a department store called Dunlap's - and appear amid long monologues about the apparent failure of their marriage, which he blames on his alcoholism:

I'm positive that 99% of our trouble is caused by my drinking; it only comes over me to hate and fight and to be so unreasonably jealous about you when I'm drinking. The drinking causes every damned ounce of trouble between us, mainly because it causes my brain to imagine a whole world of things about you that are not true. [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 03]

I know that, if I can stop using liquor and tobacco that my head will stay clearer .... The use of alcohol and tobacco both are a dizzy kind of a sickness and they make me weak enough without your pushing me out. ... Liquor causes every ounce of these crazy fits of blind jealousy that come over me. [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 03]

This third passage, from a letter to Marjorie from this Okemah visit, is quoted in Klein's book but was not located in the Archives. It concerns one particular kind of weakness Woody seemed most concerned about at this point:

"I feel terribly afraid of everything connected with the act of sex ... the sudden loss of this sexual ability, my fear of not being sexually attractive all add up to a very strong, nervous, fearful feeling that amounts to hate. ... I knocked all my sexual attraction out of myself simply simply out through the necks of all those sickly bottles. ... That bottle is my disease, and just about my only disease." [Klein, p. 385]

And finally, from a letter dated April 26, amid a few more pages of self-pity, Woody writes off his latest symptoms to the alcohol: "I get awful dizzy and awful sick and it robs me of even my ability to fight it back." [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 7, folder 37] When Woody returned to New York, the uncertainty of his future with Marjorie agitated him greatly. He continued writing her letters in May, first telling her off, then pleading with her to give him another chance. It's the alcohol, he insisted, in a letter dated May 12, 1952: "Alcoholism is like being sick. It feels just like any other sick spell you pull into and out from under." Two days later, another letter mentioned that Cisco had intervened, talking to Marjorie and then speaking to Woody. Woody wrote: "He helped me to undo, and to wash out, and to get rid of several thousand destructive, deadening suggestions you're so truly shot at me, oh, about being a psycho case, and an alky case, and every other poison kind of a sting you tried to shoot into me." [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 03] - Brooklyn State I The next day, May 15, 1952, everything came to a head. Marjorie came home that night after a date with Tony; she found Woody at the house "beyond reason" with scissors in his hand. He charged her, fell on her, hit her with his fists and was allegedly frothing at the mouth. Marjorie got him off her, and Klein notes the pivotal realization in this incident: "And another odd thing she noticed: he hadn't been drinking. He was sober, and yet crazier than she'd ever seen him drunk" Police are called, and as Marjorie sat with him later, Klein writes: "After a while, she said, 'Woody, you're sick ... and you weren't drinking, and you shouldn't be that way. I don't know what it is and you don't know what it is, but you're sick.'" On May 16, Woody was checked into the detox center at Kings County Hospital, and Klein notes the hospital's records: "Although no diagnosis was made, hospital records noted a 'bluntness of affect' (meaning that Woody didn't talk or express himself very much) and 'sensitivity in the sexual sphere with regard to the last time he slept with his wife.'" Woody is released June 5 and immediately goes back to writing Marjorie, blaming the alcoholism: "It was the dope in me, the alcohol in me that forced me to behave so wildly. It turned me into a senseless raving idiot." Marjorie began to keep a record of the incidents in her day book. On June 14, Woody threatened to jump from a roof if Marjorie didn't leave Tony. Cops were called. He was taken to Bellevue where the diagnosis was schizophrenia, though Klein adds, "but the doctors seemed rather puzzled by his case. One of them told Marjorie, 'Mrs. Guthrie, your husband is a very sick man, and we don't know what to do with him.'" He's released on July 15. That same night he shows up at Marjorie's home "drunk and disorderly" and attacks the kids, though Klein notes that "the events of that evening aren't entirely clear." He checks into the Kings County drunk tank the next day and from there wrote, "Alcohol made me thrash my kids with my fists because they played around my house too loud when (I figured) they should have been asleep. I took my fists to my own wife in one of my senseless, alcoholic fits of jealousy." In a later notebook he wrote: "I'll never lose my temper again in that old alcohol stuff that drove me to hit you that night (like I did) because you wouldn't go to sleep on your bed, remember?" He goes on to beg forgiveness and says, "We'll both pretend it never did happen, won't we? Yes, we will. Yes, we will." He wrote songs in Kings County; Klein quotes this chorus:

Pacing this ward in Bellevue Pacin' Kings County too I'm gonna pace on outta my psycho ward Gonna pace back, baby, to you

Woody voluntarily transfers to Brooklyn State Hospital on July 22, 1952. The examining doctor at Woody's admission was Dr. Marlowe, who concluded that "this is one of those cases which stubbornly defies classification. In it, it has elements of schizophrenia, psychopathy and a psychoneurotic anxiety state, not to mention the mental and personality changes occurring in huntington's chorea, at this patient's age." Klein says this "offhand inclusion of Huntington's chorea ... was the first official suggestion that Woody might, indeed, be suffering from the same disease that killed his mother." Klein follows this up:

But the young examiner obviously was confused about the nature of the illness, since he didn't realize that the 'psychoneurotic anxiety state' and all those other conditions he was describing were symptoms of Huntington's chorea. But then, he'd probably never seen a case of it before. It was so rare that it existed, for most doctors, merely as another oddity in their medical school texts.

Klein wraps a section with this projection:

Woody was told about none of this. All he knew was that groups of doctors were inspecting him periodically, and that they asked about his mother on several occasions. It was odd, he thought, that they were so curious about his mother, since he was absolutely convinced that his problem was alcoholism, pure and simple, and it was his father who'd been the drunk in the family.

Klein then quotes a letter Woody wrote to Mary Jo but never mailed: "You're just associating me with mama, thinking surely since she broke down and died like she did over those long, slow years that I'm bound and destined to break the same as she did. All the good doctors I talk to tell me there is no connection between Huntington's Korea which mama had, and my own trouble whatever my own will be named and labeled." [Klein, p. 387-394] From his first tour of duty in Brooklyn State Hospital, Woody wrote continually - letters, songs, notebooks. A lengthy letter to Marjorie in splotchy ink, dated July 1952 from Brooklyn State, begins a recurrent note of optimism ("I'll have myself back under control in another minute, another hour, another week or so"), then goes into great detail about his feelings and symptoms:

Feel terribly restless always. I get here and I want to be yonder. I get over yonder and I want to be back over here. I get out west and I crave to back east. I get down south and hope to get back up north. I feel dissatisfied with myself no matter where I'm located. ... I don't trust anybody I see. ... It's worse when I feel hungry, and I feel hungry every minute, even after eating a big double helping and getting up from the table. ... Disoriented. That's the book name for what I am. Useless to a point where my pain is all but unbearable. Not needed. Not wanted. No good to myself nor no good to anybody else, a derelict of a failure. A wreck not worth the salvaging. ... Yet in some odd way since my hernia operation over at Bellevue, I feel better in my head and all over (in general) than I've been feeling for many a dizzyheaded year. ... [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 03]

Marjorie explained something about the developing appetite increase in a later interview:

In Huntington's the body metabolism doesn't work properly. Woody needed lots of food, and lots of sweets. When he came home weekends, we would feed him tons of food. This was a big joke for the children: How many frankfurters would he take that day? Six; and how many milks? He'd take four. And how many cakes? He'd take six. And how many root beers? And whatever. [Yurchenco, p. 148]

In a notebook from July and August, Woody made a drawing titled "Why I'm Here." The drawing features a circle in the center of the page with three arrows pointing out in equidistant spacing. Next to this is written, "I came to Brooklyn State to" and each arrow is labeled with a reason: 1. "sober up," 2. "calm down," and 3. "to dry out." In this same notebook, Woody later writes to discuss how he learned to be a drinker from watching his dad. There's a new mention of Charley's fire that once again confuses the account of that very mysterious incident:

... his abuses of an economic sort and his backsets in finances and losses in political prestige hurt him very deeply and left him threatening a great many times to take his own life. He finally tried to burn himself to death on a bed full of kerosene soaked Sunday papers that caught fire as he lay there reading them. Some say it was accidental; some say he did it on purpose; nobody quite knows, not even the family in our house with him at that very minute. ...

Several pages later, Woody is sketching more and writing less. Some pages have titles but no words. Among this is the following list called "Diseases I Beat," apparently a list of songs ideas for a thematic album:

1. T.B. 2. Polio 3. Cancer 4. Vee dee 5. Hydrophobia 6. Malaria 7. Flu 8. Alcoholism 9. Insanity 10. Penicillin story 11. Scarlet Fever 12. Doctor Song

Some songs came off rather well, like the three-verse "Brooklyne State," which starts with this cheery verse:

Brooklyn State! Brooklyn State! Hurry up, buddy, don't be late! Big Hall's ready! Grab your plate! I gotta gain weight at Brooklyn State!

On the next page is this, less cheery but still optimistic, lyric, "Hopes Ahead":

I get a feelin' I'm nearly dead; Nearly dead. Then I get to seein' my hopes ahead. Hopes ahead. I get a real bad knockin' in my head; In my head; But I still hear hopes ahead Some hopes ahead.

Another song, "Student Nurse" (not the same as "My Student Nurse," two years later and quoted here ahead), finds a cheery Woody wondering, "What makes us all perk up / When you come around?" Finally, here's a song from August taking a different approach to the subject of fire, titled "World on Fire":

When the world's on fire, fire, My little darling I want your bosom to be my pillow I want your bosom to be my pillow My little darling When the world's on fire! When God's big fire comes and the world is dry bones I wanta build it all back for you my darling! I wanta build it all back for you my darling! We'll stick together When the world's on fire! I never shall fear, fear, When the flood of flames come; I'll hold your warm hand and stand beside you! I'll hold your warm hand and stand beside you! My little darling When the world's on fire! [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 7, folder 40]

In a notebook from early August 1952, from Brooklyn State, Woody scrawled this poem, titled "Patient and You," twice on two separate pages:

When a patient cries and screams like hell; and when he yells and yells and yells, It'll turn your blood From red to blue; But it's worse on the patient Than it is on you.

Also in this file are some early September pages, including the following pages:

"Full Belly" My dizzy drifty feeling, my old low sinky feeling always goes away quickest when I eat and keep my belly full. Let's get famished a lot together. "Humanly Seed" I see myself as a long scientific experiment to prove the indestructibility of my humanly seed. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 7, folder 41]

Another set of notebook pages from August includes more titles and short scrawls:

"Dad and Me" I wanted to prove To my dad that I loved him the same as ever In spite of his habits of drinking and smoking too much So I smoked too much And I drank too much And I cussed too much And I sinned too much To prove to my dad that love can laff at our bad habits. What else have we got to laff at anyway? I never did know clear. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 7, folder 42]

Among seemingly endless ramblings on looseleaf notebook paper, all addressed to Marjorie, he includes this description of his feelings - and how he hides them - dated Aug. 21, 1952 still from Brooklyn State:

Here's my funny feeling over me again. That lost feeling. That gone feeling. That old empty whipped feeling. Shaky. Bad control. Out of control. Jumpy. Jerky. High tension. Least little thing knocks my ego down below zero mark. Everything cuts into me and hurts me several times more than it should. Everything hits me. A word or a look or an action of anybody here deals me a misery. I've not got strength to go on, nor to see things in the light as they should be. No bodily (physical) pains; just like my arms and legs and hands and feet and my whole body belongs to somebody else and not to me; so ashamed of myself I want to run hide away where nobody can find me nor see how bad I feel. Can they tell by looking at me how useless and weak and flimsy and artificial (and how foney) I feel? Worse than this, I ask myself what makes me [break my head???] to try to hide my weak jitters? Why don't I break down and spill them out all over to the first person I see? Why don't I? Why? It would all be over (the worst of it) if I could only cave in and fall down and tell everybody how I feel. My trouble isn't in the dizzy spell nor the pains not in my [weakly???] feeling, but my worst pains come because I spend every drop of my bodily strength trying to hide my trouble away so you can't see it; trying to keep you from reading it in my face, or my eyes, or in any words I'd say or in that stumbly way I walk around. We never try to help our coal miners till our mine caves in; we never can let you help us till our pride caves in, and till our fears cave in. This business of trying to hide our weaker feelings surely surely must be in all of us. Surely I'm not the only man on this ward that hides all this as long as he can. Everybody does it; everybody tries to hide it so's you'll never guess how bad and how empty we feel. Some of us hide it more (and longer) than others. Some of us break down under it sooner than others; some talk it out, some weep it out, some yell and scream and curse it out, some battle and fight it out; all of us drive it out in our own way, but all of us must get your help, must borrow your bosom to cry on, must ask you to help us, must break our damnfool secrecy and our damnfool pride on your shoulder. Why do I stall off my own breakdown like I do? ... Could be partly because I've just never been in a hospital like this before and my own crazy pride keeps holding me back from breaking down and letting you know how thin and how bad and how miserable I feel.

This goes on a while more, with Woody lamenting his own stubbornness and how miserable the results. A few pages later, it turns paranoid, with Woody accusing Marjorie of being an FBI spy simply because she tries to figure out what pains and symptoms he is actually hiding. At the end of this letter is a page with several separated grafs on it; they look to have been written at different times, in different penmanship. A few of them:

I still feel that cool numbness in my left (infected injected) hand a little too much to suit me. I'll ask some nurses and docs what I ought to do about it. Sometimes I feel like some kind of a machine running too fast and all the parts flying out in every direction. Do you get to feeling this way, does everybody, or just me? I'm not the only person that flies apart am I? Or do I make my troubles sound worse than they are? Could be. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 7, folder 43]

The pages and pages of notebook rambling continue, all dated from August. At one point, Woody mentions the strange sensation of cold he felt in his left arm, and concluding that the very act of writing was his best medicine:

Funny thing When I feel my uncertain spell creep and sneak down around me, I grab up my paper and my pencil to write it all down and it (my spell) runs like fourteen nests of wild rabbits to try to hide so I can't write about it; and so I guess your pencils and packs of paper (and yourself like you look right now) are just about my best sober upper, bluesy chaser, warmup hand, nurse, nurse, doctor, healer, and helper after all chips are in and down.

Later, probably on another day, he mentions how he's feeling:

Feel better all day today. Sociabler. Friendlier. Talkies to folks. Not so damnably shy nor so quick to run off to hide myself. I feel like I'm finding out that I'm just about like all the rest of you here after all. I feel soberer and soberer and eat more and more and two plates of several things and one plate of several others. Drink floods of water. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 7, folder 44]

A lengthy letter to Marjorie late in August includes this manifestation of his health:

I feel mentally, physically, economically, neurophysically, bodily, soulfully, economically, theoretically, esthetically, mathematically, scientifically, hygeinically, psychologically, religiously, numerically, philosophically, and sexually, and socially, and schizophrenically better this morning than I feel most mornings here. I feel politically better, too; and musically better, also; and husbandly and fatherly, and manfully better. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 8, folder 01]

A notebook from September includes another 100-plus-page ramble to Marjorie, which at one point says, "Sure anxious to see what brand name of a psychopathic label they'll tattoo onto my skin." He's acknowledging he's sober, but still wondering if there's more to his diagnosis than mere alcoholism. This uneasiness apparently started from a doctor's examination, which he describes a few pages later:

I can't understand why I still stay so dizzy in my head. My doctor asked me about the dizzy spells and I told him I thought I had all the scientific symptoms of alcoholic withdrawal pains. And he asked me how many days I'd been off the alcohol, and I told him 45 days and he said 45 days is a long time to stay dizzy. To which I agreed it was a long time. He asked me to pace up and down his office for him which I also did. To call my dizzy business a pain of withdrawal is not any too true, because I feel no aches or pains of any actual bodily kind. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 8, folder 04]

Klein quotes from a lengthy Sept. 6 diary entry: "I don't think anybody will find any tracks of insanity or hereditary disease in me, except for my mother's death by Huntington's Chorea which I've read in a heavy book or two is not pass-onable." [Klein, p. 396] In a notebook that runs from Sept. 12 to Sept. 20, Woody includes this description of his symptoms and situation:

Psychoed feeling plenty bad. Drifting worse. Dizzy head. Slide around at work. All seems hopeless. Just plain hopeless. I look so bad and feel so bad the other patients ask me what's eating at me. Kid asked me at the table why I act so screwy. I'm almost falling out. Maybe they'll not release me my day home this weekend. Figure I'm not able to be at large. Face seems to twist out of shape. Can't control it. Arms dangle all around. Can't control them. Wrists feel weak and my hands wave around in odd ways I can't stop. Seem to shake and shiver and break out in hot and cold sweat. Awful afraid of people here seeing me break down. Try to stall it off and act different. What if I do break and go down? They can't help me here.

Then, a few pages later, recounting another examination: "All these docs keep asking me about how my mother died with Huntington's Chorea. They don't tell me if Chorea is pass-on-able or not, so I never know." Later, he's mulling this over: "If it's not just alcohol which has me I wonder what it's going to turn out to be?" Instead of answering, he quickly diverts the discussion to complaints about the hospital's overcrowding. Still later, it seems the possibility is finally breached in Woody's mind:

Doctors and nurses came around to bed today and asked me again if my mama died of Huntington's Chorea and I said yes. Got me worried a bit. Wondering. Could it be that I'm taking an early stage of that same disease? Sure love to read some books on it so I'll sorta know partly what to expect. It sure does put a new light on the subject, doesn't it?

Over the next few pages, he seems more mournful toward Marjorie and begins to mention the possibility that he might not come home from the hospital, after all. The reality of HD is still parenthetical to him:

It may really be now plainer than ever that maybe I won't be coming back to Beach Haven quite as quick as I planned and prayed. Some important business might keep me away. (Chorea).

From here on, he begins dancing around the subject, occasionally mentioning "chorea" in a discussion of "Korea." Then he starts talking to others about it, testing out how it feels to express this fear:

I told Andy in the men's crapper this morning how my mother died with that old three way disease of Chorea (Epilepsy, St. Vitus Dance and Mild Insanity); and told him how I felt dizzy and how the entire forces of medical science were today split right down the middle as to question about "will insulin shock do me any good?"

Another abrupt change of subject, then back to his own theories:

I'm not of the opinion that Chorea can be passed on to any child. I was born before mama took her Chorea, anyhow. I don't worry any more about my own case history. I'm glad it all happened like it did. I'd have it happen chapter by chapter like it has and not change one line of the story of the books of my life.

He then launches into a couple of pages about how tough he must be - and of such tough stock - to have survived all he has and still be well-known and a good man. Later, the dizzy spells are actually interrupting him. He breaks his train of thought sometimes with parenthetical lines like this, before resuming his discussion: "(dizzy spell struck my town just now. Tumty. Tummty. Tum Tum. Tumm.)" By Sept. 20, things seem to be worsening. He writes:

My dizzy head hits worse than ever now. Funny how I woke up so clear and already so danged woozey all over. Sorta stumbled through my kitchen job worse than ever. I don't exactly feel afraid nor scared. Easy to get all excited over anything. Can't laff at anything. Forget little things. Keep seeing my end in sight. Keep telling you all not to feel guilty about my condition. I wonder if it could be chorea? If it is, I wonder if there's any kind of a cure for it? [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 8, folder 05]

- Running After being released from Brooklyn State Hospital on Sept. 22, 1952, Woody heads to Pete Seeger's house upstate. Pete is in California, Woody discovers; so Woody stays a few days with Pete's family and wife Toshi, writing this letter to Pete (an account Klein refers to as "selectively truthful"):

I fit my way past all the doctors and psychofolks they could muster against me to get out from that Brooklyn State Mental Observatory. They analyzed me as being partly in the first pains of alcoholic's withdrawal period, plus a certain percentage of the mental disease my mother had, Huntington's Chorea. They're not plumb sure about my dizzy spells I feel now twice every day because I ainÕt got no bodily pains of any kind. All of us alky boys go through some odd sorts and flavors of craving (liquor) spells from a mild dizzy feeling on up (or down) to the worst of aches and shakes you nearly ever saw or seen. There are lots of kinds of chorea and nobody is plumb sure about what kind I'll most likely have if any. They say it aint deadly nor fatal, so, my days in yonders hospital werent quite wasted if they got me off my bottle or helped me to get strong enough to bypass old Whiskey Town. Chorea keeps me just as dizzy and a good bit cheaper. I feel a thousand million times better now that I'm a old dry drunk AA man. Doctors all told Marjorie to get a divorce from me for the safety of the kids, which is the hardest part of my troubles at the time. She's willing to talk later about a rematch between us if my chorea stays mild enough for a few seasons, which is the best word of good news I've got to offer you at today's dawning. ... [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 24]

In October, Woody fled to Will Geer's place in California. He stayed in a cabin at Geer's Topanga Canyon property, and from there wrote to Marjorie on Oct. 13: "I feel my dissssy spppells a bit around here but not as dizzzzzery as I felt them back along Avenue Zee there...." [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 04] Woody began hooking up with old friends, and Klein wrote that Woody "did seem to make a remarkable recovery" there. He added:

The various tics and shakes, the slurred speech and other 'symptoms' the doctors had noticed in Brooklyn State Hospital all were so subtle - they had insinuated themselves gradually over the course of many years - that most of his old friends didn't notice much of a change in him. To them, the odd little mannerisms, the way he walked and talked were Woody. It was true that at times he seemed less certain than in the past, but often he was as clear and sharp as ever. [Klein, p. 402]

In a November letter to Marjorie from Topanga Canyon, Woody referred to his condition as chorea and discussed the worsening loss of bodily control:

My chorea sure isn't kidding these days. I feel it as a nervous fluttery heart condition along with a slight lack of control over my body at times. I feel it sort of steady now at all times and a bit moreso sometimes than at other times. I don't entirely lost nor entirely gone but partly so part of the time. I'm pretty sure that I do need companionship like you say but I'm not any too posolutely certain about who'd be foolish enough to shack up with me when it gets down to bare facts. [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 04]

Later in '52, Woody meets Anneke. By spring, they have returned to Stetson's vacated place in Florida, and Woody's writing Anneke letters once again apologizing for his short temper and something he said in the heat of rage. In one letter, dated March 14, 1953, he's romanticizing the excuse:

I know that poetic, dreamy minded, absent minded, visionary folks are very often short tempered like both of us are; I cant say that I really feel angry at you, mad at you, nor anything like that when you see me drift so allfired easylike over into one of my spells of nervous toutchy short temperedness; I'm just mad, mad at ten thousand other things in my world around me ... [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 29]

In Florida, Woody burns his arm badly while starting a morning cooking fire. Anneke begins to freak out and writes to Marjorie for help. Marjorie writes back to Woody: "I suppose you are wondering again about fire. ... Let's stop it right here. ... It was an accident, and so were all the other fires." [Klein, p. 412-13] Meanwhile, Woody's connections to the Communist Party in America attracted the attention of the F.B.I. As anti-Communist paranoia escalated in 1953, the agency began reporting on Woody's actions and whereabouts, classifying him as a potential security risk. A summary report from Woody's F.B.I. file, dated Oct. 9, 1953, summarizes Woody's biographical details before reaching section no. 7, "Status of Health." Here, the unidentified agent brought J. Edgar Hoover pretty well up to date on Woody's health, thanks to a mysterious but at least knowledgeable informant at Brooklyn State:

-------- *the Brooklyn State Hospital for the Mentally Ill, at 681 Clarkson Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, was interviewed on April 10, 1953, by SA - - advised that the subject entered the hospital on a voluntary basis on July 22, 1952, and was discharged on September 24, 1952. - - advised that the subject was diagnosed as suffering from Huntington's Chorea, which he described as a chronic neurological condition with occasional psychotic manifestations. - - said that this is a disease concerning which very little is known and for which there is no known cure. He explained that the disease appears to be inherited, noting that it had been determined that the subject's mother had died of a mental disease which appeared to have been Huntington's Chorea. He said that the disease usually strikes men in their late thirties or early forties and follows a rather distinct pattern of periods of neurotic and psychotic behavior followed by periods of apparent complete rationality. This disease is a deteriorating disease in that periods of being rational get shorter and the periods of emotional unbalance get longer until the patient is finally a hopeless mental cripple and finally dies. - - said that it was impossible to determine the length of the disorder because there was so many varied factors involved, but that a patient could live from five to twenty years with the disease. He said that the disease manifests itself in the fortieth year and that most patients have succumbed by the time they are 55 or 60 years of age. - - stated that the clinical record indicates that GUTHRIE's case was fairly well advanced and that hospitalized would have been recommended but that because the subject was a voluntary admission, he could not be held without a court order which would have had to be [???] for by the subject's wife. The records indicate that GUTHRIE was released in the custody of his wife at the 49 Murdock Court address. [Archives: Personal Papers, Box 2, folder 48] * Dashes here substitute for lines and names blacked-out by the F.B.I. before releasing these files.

In July, Woody and Anneke return to California. In January 1954, they travel back to New York City, stopping on the way to see Uncle Jeff in Denver. Klein reports Jeff's comments, including this: "He wasn't shaking or anything then, just acting unconcerned-like. I didn't know, but I figured he had the same disease that all them Shermans had. ..." [Klein, p. 416] In a later recollection, manager Harold Leventhal remembered an incident after Woody and Anneke had returned to New York:

One rainy night in 1953* he appeared at the [Folkways] theater very wet, holding a little baby. By this time he had separated from Marjorie and married a woman called Anneke Marshall, with whom he had recently had this baby. He put the baby on the chair and was all set to join in onstage. But something was wrong. Physically, he couldnÕt handle his guitar; he seemed drunk. Most of the actors and musicians there that night were annoyed by his behavior. No one knew that Woody was suffering from the onset of Huntington's disease. ["Remembering Woody," Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie, Weslyan Univ.: 1999] * Leventhal's date of 1953 is likely inaccurate, as Woody and Anneke returned to New York in January 1954 and their baby was born in February.

- Brooklyn State II On Sept. 16, 1954, Woody checks himself back into Brooklyn State Hospital. He will be permanently hospitalized from this point forward. In November, this poem:

"No Help Known" Huntington's Chorea means theres no help known In the science of medicine For me And all of you Choreanites like me Because all of my good nurses And all of my good medicine men And all of my good [attenters ???] All look at me and say By your words a by your looks Or maybe by your whispers There's just not no hope Nor not no treatments known To cure me of my dizzy [???] Called Chorea Maybe Jesus can think Up a cure of some kind [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 8, folder 34]

During this stay in Brooklyn State, he wrote numerous topical songs about his hospital experience, including this first draft of "Perty Nurses," dated Dec. 9, whose second verse is this:

I don't mind being sick I hope I never get well My perty nurse is an angel to me I love more'n c'n tell [Archives: Songs-1, alphabetical]

Another song from this period:

"I Ain't Dead" My corpse has beat me over my head and call me a [Roos ???] Red I'm puffed and [???] and all bled low But still though I ain't dead [Archives: Songs-1, alphabetical]

The song "Jesus My Doctor" is dated December 1954, and includes this first verse:

"Jesus My Doctor" Christ you're still my best doctor Jesus you're still my best doctor Christ you're still my best doctor You can cure what ails me... [Archives: Songs-1, alphabetical]

Also in December, Woody wrote this song:

"My Student Nurse" Ho ho hee my student nurse things look bad but they could be worse Ho ho hee my student nurse things look bad but they could be worse [???] [???] Needle is a needle and a dime is a dime I don't need a nurse if you don't mind A worm is a worm and a germ's a germ A spinner is a spinner and a turn's a turn I sure need a nurse that's willin' ta learn I need a student nurse that's willin' ta learn All day long I felt like killin' You shot me fulla y'r penny cillin You shot me fulla y'r penny cillin and now I feel a little more willin' [Archives: Songs-1, alphabetical]

It was also in December that Woody wrote a letter to his father, admitting that he had his mother's disease: "I've got the 1st early signs and symptoms of a dizzy disease called Huntington's Chorea, same disease that Mama had which lets me stay dizzy in my head everyday without paying my barman one penny." [Klein, p. 428] On Jan. 1, 1955, he wrote this song/poem:

"Brooklyn State": Brooklyn state december late Kick '54 out Ôcause 55 cain't wait fifty five cain't wait fifty five fifty five gonna be more better still yet than fifty four [Archives: Songs-1, alphabetical]

In February, he revised his earlier song, "Perty Nurses." Now it's only the chorus that is a light horny romp; the verses are now more introverted. The first line introduces, "I'm a shellshock'd GI," then the narrator refers to himself in the third verse, saying, "crackyuppers like me," concluding the verse with these two lines:

From sea to sea it's whacks like me Built all y'r perty things for you

(He revises this song again in May 1956, retreading a couple of the verses to little effect.) [Archives: Songs-1, alphabetical] In April, he wrote a song called "I Was Sick," whose first and seventh verses are as follows:

I was sick and you healed me I was sick and you healed me I was deadly sick and you healed me Young brung me thru my fire... ... I was low sick an' y' healed me I was low sick an' y' healed me Christ leads me to Gods heaven Like he brung me thru my fire...

Each verse's final line is "...y' brung me thru my fire." The note at the end reads: "*God's my best and my cheapest docter" [Archives: Songs-1, alphabetical] On May 25, 1955, an unidentified F.B.I. agent updated the information in Woody's agency file, explaining: "- - explained that the subject is not insane but is afflicted with severe mental depressions which cause him to go on severe alcoholic binges. - - advised that the subject will be paralyzed eventually, but could not say when this would happen. ..." The next report in Woody's F.B.I. file is dated June 3, and it recommended cancelling Guthrie's Security Index card 'in view of the subject's health status." [Archives: Personal Papers, Box 2, folder 48] A manuscript from Brooklyn State dated simply 1955, titled "Chorea and Me" may be Woody's most frank discussion of his disease and the link to his mother. The full text:

I got my first good early look at my chorea on back several years ago as I watched how it worked on my mother, Nora Belle Guthrie, back in my old homey town of Okemah, Oklahoma. I got myself such a good clear look at it (chorea) that I want to try and show you what things it caused her to do and how I fell heir to it through her. I'm still glad I did fall heir to my chorea because it makes me stay dizzy and drunk all time without gulping down your [???] or without paying my bartender one little blue cent. It's been a couple or three good years ago when I headed my own rambling self in here to the door of my good Brooklyn State Hopeystial and give myself up to be looked at, observed, examined, checked over, digested, analyzed, and score boarded from my head on down to try to see if I could find out and see what makes me walk around so dizzy as I do. And just what its been that makes me walk around dizzyer every day. I stumbled in here just one hop ahead of it, but when you told me how it was that my mother passed it on to me, I guessed I'd better go on back towards old Okemah Town one more time and try to tell you how I seen it hit her away on back before I even knew what name you called it by. Some of you experts called it by one name and some of you called it by some other [nomiere ???]. I just saw how odd it made her act and do around our house and I seen her lots more every day than my Dad ever seen her. He'd get up real bright and real early every morning and he'd [scribble ???] down his little bit of a breakfast and he'd go saddle up his horse and he'd ride on off to his office down in town. Then she'd throw all of our furniture and all of our fixings, our chairs and our tables and our beds and our bookcases and our dressers all around over our whole house while she had one of her bad spells, and after her fit had worn itself off and gone on and left her, us kids would all go and pitch in and we'd help her straighten our whole place up again and get it all fixed up nice and pretty again by the time we heard Papa's foot heels scrape on our front porch for our supper time. I could see my mother get worser and worser every little passing minute of all of my passing years even before I saw her get really bad enuff and really loud enuff for any of my next door neighbors to get wind of what she done or even for my very own Daddy to get very wise to it all. I learnt how if not why it is that my people spend a good ninety nine and nine tenths of their earthly hours here on my worldly planet just trying to hide the simple little facts and truth of life from one another. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 9, f-01]

A poem, dated from '55, projects Woody's situation onto an unnamed drug addict while bemoaning the secrecy of his own troubles:

"My Secret" Nothing in this earth life is vulgar to me Nothing around this planet's crust is low down to me I see nothing obscene around me No matter where my ten senses scratch around Love is the only medicine

And for you of the deathly dope drug, You of the crazy needle, the pill, the reefer fag, The hot needle, the hot spoon, the opee pipe, The dead mattress, the gone spirit, the gone life, The heavy headache, the cracked temples, the walleyed eyeballs, The gun, the gat, the stickup, The cops, the big chase for more dope - Your own fears and hates can be cured by one kind of love tonic That's all my new bible book is - a command of nature And a control over all the forces of Ma and Pa Nature Then I got Chorea and it did me in I've learnt how if not why it is That my people spend a good 99 & 9/10th of their hours Just trying to hide the little simple facts Of truth and life from one another [Archives: CCHD notecard from Nora]

- Greystone Park Woody left Brooklyn State of his own decision on May 23, 1956. The next day he was arrested for apparently "wandering aimlessly on [the] highway." Unfortunately, he was in New Jersey at the time, and the Morris County court delivered him to Greystone Park mental institution in Morris County, N.J. A nurse made these notes upon Woody's admission to the hospital: "Ambulatory from Morris Co. Jail - arrested for wandering aimlessly on highway. Involuntary movements of body - states he has Huntington's chorea - also says his mother had it - Well-oriented to time and place." [Archives: Personal Papers, Box 2, series 4, folder 09] The actual commitment papers from the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of Morris County, N.J., dated June 6, proclaim: "It appears that Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, hereinafter designated as 'patient,' is alleged to be insane..." They also include the following notes as justification for this allegation, signed by George W. Comeau:

The following are the facts as to the insanity of the said Woodrow Wilson Guthrie upon which my opinion is founded: (1) The patient said: 'I got $3000 for writing a song, I left Brooklyn State Hospital on May 23, 1956. I wanted to find the orphans to give them the money - I wrote about 8000 songs and I got $10,000 for writing.' (2) The patient: untidy, unkempt, kept talking all through interview about all the money he has. (3) Other facts perceived by me indicating insanity: Lacks insight and judgment, Gradiose ideas, untidy & unkempt, wanders about the highways [Archives: Personal Papers, Box 2, series 4, folder 08]

At Greystone, Woody was back to feeling optimistic about an eventual release and back to blaming his situation on alcohol. In a letter to Marjorie dated July 14, 1956 (his 54th birthday), he wrote in a big, sickly scrawl: "I'll be with the bunch and my whole Guthrie gang once more justs quickedy just's fasty as some of me do comey here and sign me out from here." [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 09] The Greystone medical staff got around to logging an official diagnosis on Aug. 4, in which a "medical staff record" note says: "...Dr. Dolinsky presented a diagnosis of SCHIZOPHRENIC REACTION, PARANOID TYPE, which was unanimously accepted by members of the staff." [Archives: Personal Papers, Box 2, series 4, folder 09] On Oct. 6, Woody wrote to Marjorie from Greystone: "I feel my jerkin chorea a little bit more and I feel my alkoholism a little bit less and so I'm still every day feelin about as jerky one way as another." On Oct. 19, amid a lengthy homily on the evils of alcohol and the pain of its poisoning, he adds, "and with alla my choreas hittin me and all I guess I'm just really a funny funny sight to see." [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 10] An Oct. 22 letter addressed to "Joadsy" finds Woody rambling about God; hen his handwriting tightens a bit and suddenly he links his own disease to his mother's:

My mother Nora Belle did have my very own huntingtons chorea along with Joe's Saint Vitusy dance and my doctors say she had spells of epilepsy also at the very same time God is just giving me here my real perfect kind of a chance to just see and to just feel exactly how my own Mother saw and felt. [Archives: Correspondence-1, Box 3, folder 10]

Doctors at Greystone changed Woody's diagnosis on Jan. 8, 1957, on which a "medical staff record" note says: "...It was also the unanimous opinion of the staff that the diagnosis be changed from SCIZOPHRENIC REACTION, PARANOID TYPE to - CHRONIC BRAIN SYNDROME ASSOCIATED WITH DISEASES OF UNKNOWN OR UNCERTAIN CAUSE: CHRONIC BRAIN SYNDROME OF UNKNOWN OR UNCERTAIN CAUSE: HUNTINGTONÕS CHOREA WITH PSYCHOTIC REACTION." A memo sheet, with the same date, marked for "record room" and closed out by "Clinical Doctor," also notes the official change: "From: SCHIZOPHRENIC REACTION, PARANOID TYPE (22.3x) To: CHRONIC BRAIN SYNDROME, ASSOCIATED WITH DISEASES OF UNKNOWN OR UNCERTAIN CAUSE; CHRONIC BRAIN SYNDROME OF UNKNOWN OR UNSPECIFIED CAUSE: HUNTINGTON'S CHOREA WITH PSYCHOTIC REACTION (19.11)" Of Woody's state during his five years in Greystone, Klein wrote:

His physical condition had deteriorated markedly since he'd entered Greystone. The little twitches and shakes had become gross, unpredictable lurches of his arms and legs and torso. Despite heavy medication, he was in constant motion. The worst of it seemed to be his right arm, which would fly up and strike his forehead with such force that sometimes, when they hadn't clipped his nails at the hospital, he'd gash himself with his thumb and blood would pour down his face. As a result, Sid Gleason began to clip his nails and, indeed, take responsibility for much of the rest of his personal hygiene. She also found that she could hook Woody's right hand into one of his belt loops when the spasms came so that he wouldn't hurt himself. He still was able to walk, but he looked like he was walking across a trampoline. His speech was a slurred guttural rumble and difficult to understand if you weren't used to it. He never spoke much, in any case, and occasionally seemed to slip into a sort of trance, and no one could reach him. [Klein, p. 446]

In a batch of material from June 1957 is a page torn out of Life magazine. The page is titled "Speaking of Pictures," and it features three black and white photographs of a fashion model in three different outfits, from a fancy print parasol to a weird fur stole thing wrapped around her body. The model's name, listed in the captions, is Norina di Muro, an Italian actress for Cinecitta Studios, and she's described in the main kicker as a "coquettish pin-up." Between the photos, Woody scrawled this: "Exactly like my very owne Mother," and his signature. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 9, folder 04] In material from October of '57, there's a yellow legal pad page titled "Mister Two O'Clock" featuring this single line: "I been in here three years and nine months," with signature. [Archives: Manuscripts-1, Box 9, folder 04] Doctors at Greystone kept Woody on Thorazine. Medication lists show that Woody received 100mg of Thorazine each day at least from May 22-28, 1958 and from Dec. 1, 1959 through April 4, 1961. [Archives: Personal papers, Box 2, series 4, folder 15] An "Occupational Therapy Progress Note," dated Aug. 7, 1959, records Woody's latest artistic achievements: two belts and a pot holder. Dr. John H. Fudge comments: "He has to wait for the therapist to give him instructions before he continues with his work ... He seems to enjoy his work in spite of his trembling difficulties." [Archives: Personal papers, Box 2, series 4, folder 17] - Final years Of one of the many 1961 hoots paying homage to Woody, Klein writes:

One Sunday, Woody nearly went berserk when he overheard a kid say that he was dying of syphilis. Slurred and blathering, he grabbed the kid and tried to explain that it wasn't syphilis, it was Huntington's chorea. Huntington's chorea that came from his mother, and not from sleeping with whores or living out on the road. There was nothing, nothing he could have done about it. Nothing. [Klein, p. 449]

In July 1962, Marjorie wrote to Mary Jo to update her on Woody's condition, now that he was back in Brooklyn State Hospital:

About Woody ..... it is over a year now that we moved him to Brooklyn State. It is much better because he is failing all the time, and all winter long I took him home on Sunday and each month I noticed that our visiting time is becoming shorter and shorter. After a few hours he really can't take the noise and gets overly excited. I suppose the greatest change is that he finds it difficult to speak and has begun to say less and less. And when he does say something, I don't understand him and ask him to repeat he gets exasperated and then of course with anger, but carefully he'll sort of mouth the words! I must say that even the doctors are amazed at his mental condition. And since they can't understand him they keep asking me about his condition. And all I can say is that he is alert mentally as he has ever been. When he speaks it's usually a funny comment on whatever it is that we're talking about! And his memory for dates, details, addresses etc. is better than mine! Perhaps his concentration is failing a bit. ... [Archives: Correspondence-3, Box 1, folder 03]

In April 1963, Marjorie - straining under the weight of so many letters - wrote an open letter to Woody's friends and fans, saving her the trouble of writing individually to all of them. The letter was published in that month's Woody Guthrie Newsletter, a product of the Woody Guthrie Children's Fund (run by Louis Gordon, Harold Leventhal, and Pete Seeger). In the letter, she included this description of Woody in the hospital:

Actually, Woody's muscular condition continues to deteriorate. I find it more and more difficult to understand him when he speaks ... and this is when his fiery temper jumps out ... but when I finally get the words, it usually is some funny remark about something or somebody! His memory remains uncanny but he just hasn't got the muscular control to "mouth" the words. His balance is very poor ... he looks like he is about to fall any minute ... but he remains standing! Actually he spends most of his time in the hospital or at home lying on his back ... smoking away ... forever lighting up a new cigarette because the old one fell out of his mouth! To see him light a cigarette is really to see a man fighting for his life. Yes, he wants to live! [Archives: Stetson Kennedy files, unprocessed]

Klein continued later:

By 1965, he had stopped speaking entirely and could only communicate by pointing a wildly flailing arm at "yes" and "no" cards that Marjorie had made for him. Then, after a while, he could no longer even do that. All he had left were his eyes, which he blinked in recognition when Marjorie entered the room and, sometimes, when she asked him a question or told him something. The real horror, Marjorie was convinced, was that Woody could still understand what she was saying. He could still think and know. There was an active mind trapped inside the tumultuous decrepitude of his body. [Klein, p. 459]

The capper, among Klein's summation of the discovery of Huntington's, as explained to Marjorie by a doctor:

And while it would be absurd to suggest that Huntington's disease made Woody Guthrie a brilliant songwriter, Dr. Whittier (and, later, Marjorie Guthrie herself) would wonder aloud if the disease hadn't worked like a drug on Woody, as a creative spur (in much the same that some artists use alcohol and other drugs), enhancing his natural rhyminess, forcing the brain to continually rewire itself as cells died, forcing new, wonderful, and unexpected synaptic pathways to open (which also led to some unexpected and not so wonderful behavior), forcing the brain to become - in effect - more creative to survive; and then, after a point, exhausted and starving for energy, the synapses and ganglia short-circuiting ... preventing him from concentrating on anything, making him fidgety, antsy, causing him to lose perspective and, eventually, his creative sense of himself. [Klein, p. 459]

Seeger had the final remembrance of Woody:

About eight months before he died in 1967, I visited him once more, this time with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Woody was in a wheelchair. He couldn't walk anymore, so the hospital attendant wheeled him out onto a porch where it was warm. Sonny, Brownie and I played some music for Woody. We did "Rock Island Line," with Sonny blowing his harp, sending beautiful notes into the air. Woody must have liked what he heard because you could see how much he wanted to be part of our little group. He tried to get his arms going, but they were just flailing around like a windmill. It got to the point where it looked as though he might hurt himself, so the attendant said, "You better quit playing that loud tune. He's tryin' to join you and he can't." So we stopped "Rock Island Line" and played some quiet blues instead. ["Hobo's Lullaby," Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie, Wesylan Univ.: 1999]