"For Tommy and Clona

             With admiration and affection

                                Ross Lockridge, Jr.

                                       and

                               Vernice" [her signature]

                          "LET NO ONE BLAME ANOTHER ONE.

                     A man is an accumulation of many men,

                    of all mankind

                    quartered in a now, inescapable,. unasked for,

                    absolute,

                    ultimate . . .

                           There are good people,

                     though whether they are good

                      for reasons other than the compulsion 

                       of their experience or not,

                        remains unanswerable."

                                                          Ross Lockridge Jr.

                                                   SUICIDE NOTE, March 6, 1948

                                   DUAL FAME: THE PAW PAW FAMILY REUNION OF 1947

"Pie was the prize for these Hoosier literary cousins, Mary Jane Ward, author of 'The Snake Pit,' and Ross Lockridge Jr. (right), author of 'Raintree County,' at the reunion of the Lockridge family [in the Paw Paw Methodist Church] near Peru, Ind., yesterday.  They are receiving their awards from Lockridge's father, Ross Lockridge Sr., head of the Hoosier Historical Institute." THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR, September 21, 1947, one month to the day before Dad's "breakdown."  Grandpa used the occasion to pressure Dad to exert his new-found fame to publicize the Hoosier Historical Institute, which may explain its mention in the news story.  One doubts that Grandpa exerted similar pressure on Mary Jane, whose fame was tainted by her ties to mental illness. 

                                   UNLIKELY PAIR OF BLOOMINGTON AUTHORS

                                             MAKE HEAP BIG SPLASH

In 1948 Professor Alfred J. Kinsey, Bloomingtonian and founder of Indiana University's Kinsey Institute, came out with SEXUAL BEHAVIOR OF THE HUMAN MALE, which topped the best-seller list for nonfiction simultaneously with RAINTREE COUNTY'S topping the list for fiction.  The Kinsey Institute during the years that Kinsey himself was in charge has become infamous for: junk science; sexual predation and staff orgies in the name of "research"; heavy reliance on the testimony of convicts, rapists, and sexual psychopaths; willful disregard of sampling techniques and statistical methodology; proselytizing a Religion of Polymorphous Perversity--to name a few of the Institute's less egregious shortcomings.  Kinsey, himself a closeted homosexual and self-mutilating masochist, would have granted Ross Sr. high standing among pedophiles; Kinsey considered them "intrepid Adventurers who, in the face of great personal risk even to the point of mortal danger, yet maintain a noble courage and, indeed, an elan vital and the sheer masculine nerve to plumb those extreme boundaries and depths of human sexual behavior which for the ordinary man forever languishe [sic] in the realm of mere imaginings, unacted upon and therefore unfulfilled."  (We know the Unenlightened to employ a somewhat less sychophantic terminology, and not unlike the pitchfork and torch-bearing villagers in Frankenstein to howl for the rack and the screw.)  Inclusion in Kinsey's Pantheon of Pedophiles would have heartened Grandpa, whose literary preference ran to little bands of men-without-women, societies unto themselves slogging in close-knit company through the Uncharted Wilderness.  Grandpa wrote a couple of such adventure stories--a book for boys extolling Sieur LaSalle, and one extolling George Rogers Clark .   Kinsey, unlike Freud, did not deny that incestuous child sexual abuse existed, merely that it caused anyone any lasting harm.

[Here, if you can stand it, is a bit more Kinsey, whose callous moral relativism, by virtue of Kinseyism's extension into the universe of concrete reality, far surpasses the Marquis de Sade's: "A number of persons have turned in sexual calendars and diaries showing their day to day activities over some period of time . . .  They ADMIRABlY {emphasis added} supplement the information routinely obtained on the standard histories. . . In each of two cases there are over a thousand pages of such supplementary material."  We know, now, that these "two cases"--one a Nazi murderer of children--were pedophiles actively pursuing children during their collaboration with Kinsey; between them they recounted thousands of child-rapes.  "Persons who have kept records or who are willing to begin keeping day by day calendars showing the frequencies and the sources of their sexual outlet, are urged to place the accumulated data at our disposal," urged Kinsey. There can exist no reasonable doubt that had a Gacy, Bundy, or Dahmer provided Kinsey with such "supplementary material," he would have welcomed it with gratitude and dispensed ongoing advice to transform the novice "information provider" into a "trained observer."]

                                EPIC PRECURSOR

                  TO “RAINTREE COUNTY”

                    ". . . THIS SOUL HATH BEEN

              ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA:

               SO LONELY 'TWAS, THAT GOD HIMSELF

               SCARCE SEEMED THERE TO BE."  S.T.Coleridge 

               "GOD IS MAN'S DESIRE THAT GOOD

                HAVE AN ABSOLUTE GUARANTEE. 

                ONCE MAN BECAME AWARE OF DEATH,

                LEARNED ANTICIPATION, ACQUIRED KNOWLEDGE,

                GOD BECAME NECESSARY AS THE GUARANTOR OF GOOD,

                 AS THE PROMISE THAT MADE HUMAN LIFE POSSIBLE

                 AND TOLERABLE"  R.F.Lockridge Jr., SUICIDE NOTE

                           SNAKE PIT

Herewith the lion's share of Dad's medical records of his brief stint at Methodist Hospital of Indianapolis, 12/23/47-1/4/48.  "Referring Doctor" is "Robt. Peters" (his signature), prominent Indianapolis physician and husband of Dad's Aunt Marie, his father's sister.  (Cf. RAINTREE COUNTY inscription, above.)  "Doctor Bob" thought so highly of Dad's character and intellectual ability that he once offered to pay his way through medical school if Dad would join his wealthy practice.  Dr. Bob was thoroughly distressed by Dad's condition, and the inability of my mother and other Bloomington relatives to cope effectively.  (Grandma Lockridge was pushing an aggressive regimen of Mary Baker Eddy, whose notion that the "real world" is an illusion had long been a balm to Grandma, for reasons that will become obvious.)  Dr. Peters realized Dad's condition was life-threatening and followed the "progress" of his in-hospital stay, indicated by his presence at the three Electro Shock treatments administered by Dr. DeArmond ("EST & grand mal"--from "Nurses Clinical Record," 12-27-47, 12-30-47 and 1-1-48 [Happy New Year!], "Dr. Peters here"). No record exists of psychotherapy. Having registered under a pseudonym ("Charles E. Duncan") to avoid scandal, he guards his false identity with his life, revealing zilch about his true self beyond his spiritual "agony." DeArmond, who knows nothing of RAINTREE COUNTY, learns nothing of Dad's real life. Thus, an iron curtain of secrecy makes "talk therapy"  not merely ineffective but impossible."Treatment" is limited to insulin, "Seconal etc.", plus Electro Shock Therapy "& grand mal."  The "Nurse's Clinical Record" for 1-3-48 reads, "Cheerful and responsive.  Wants to go home."  In fact, having been traumatically shocked as a child while changing a light bulb at Murmuring Maples, Dad had a profound electrocution phobia; according to Mom the unsedated Shock Treatments were agony for him.  Dad told her he never fully lost consciousness during the grand mal seizures, that it was like being tortured in Hell for his sins.  It was THE SNAKE PIT of his double-second-cousin Mary Jane Ward's best-selling novel, only infinitely worse.  So he cranked up the charm, and as with all his endeavors he met with stellar success: after less than two weeks in the hospital, three shocks treatments "to grand mal," a bunch of barbiturates, and no talk-therapy, he is discharged as "Recovered."

                            RICHARD COREY

Dad's friends and acquaintances, those I've questioned over the years, agree that he was the most secretive person they have ever encountered.  They would say, "I never really knew him at all."

"Some lives are fortunate, and some which seem fortunate become involved in agony . . ."  Ross Lockridge Jr., March 6, 1948

 12-23-47           2pm

Is unwilling to submit to a history and physical untill [sic] he consults Dr. DeArmond.

                                                 R.M.Seibel

In September 1947 the patient had a "let down" in which he was aware of a change in his feeling.  He says it seemed as if he had lost contact with the world although this does not appear to be a process of depersonalization.  There has been a tendency to avoid social contacts and he fears and dreads to face the ordinary daily problems.  He has lost some weight, appetitie has been below par, sleep poor and disturbed by harrassing dreams.

        Past illnesses have been insignificant.

        [Physical Examination] reveals a well-developed, well nourished male who has no complaints except he doesn't know what has happened to him.  Neurological examination--normal.  Heart normal.  [Blood Pressure] 120/74.

        Psychiatric examination shows good insight--no evidence of hallucinations or delusions.  He is fearful, depressed, has lost confidence and feels helpless to straighten himself out.

                                                     Impression: Reactive depression.

                                                                  M.DeArmond

 12-23-47

[Patient] states he is here because of "nervousness."  He has been under care of Dr. DeArmond and states he preferred to wait and make one recital of his troubles.  He admits to insomnia but says he has been eating fairly well.  He looks sad and unhappy.

                                                                                                         Schuster

Jan 4, 1948

    Insulin sedation was started on admission because of sleep difficulty and it was advisable to observe him for a short time.  He was profoundly depressed, showed no interest other than the agony of his own lack of initiative.  His intellectual analysis and insight are good but his affect is flat.

    Very soon it seemed advisable to resport to Shock Therapy and this was started on 12/28.  His improvement was prompt and after three treatments it seemed to justify a trial in his social activity.  He was released on Jan. 4, 1948

                                                                             DeArmond

                                                           "CAN'T I BE YOUR GIRL?"

When I was around 12, my fetching Aunt Lillian, or as I called her, "Aunt Kiki"--the formidable "Teeter"--turned to me intimately with a look I will not attempt to describe and said, "Ernest, am I your girl?  Just because I'm your aunt, can't I also be your girl?"  In a chaos of utter existential confusion resulting in a total lack of chivalry I somehow (!) managed to brush the "offer" off.  This instance of unrequited romance occurred in a docked touring boat in the Wisconsin Dells, which Grandma and Grandpa had not yet boarded.  I maintained a guarded truce with Grandpa, whom my ingratitude (having ratted him out) so disappointed that I was no longer under consideration for future Director of The Hoosier Historical Institute.  Grandma, however, still had me pegged as the future Torch-Bearer for her Demi-God father, my great grandfather John Wesley Shockley.  A single 1000-page tome deifying the guy was downright insufficient: did not Jesus Christ have FOUR entire Gospels devoted unto HIM?

                                                          "ULTIMATE PHILOSOPHY

"Let no one blame another one.  A man is an accumulation of many men, of all mankind quartered in a now, inescapable, unasked for, absolute, ultimate.  Good and bad are human discoveries.  The universe is neither good nor bad.  It does not care about the individual human being.  It is he who learns care and who is taught good and bad from infancy.  There is nothing that we are that is not taught us by our bodies, by events, by other men.  God is man's desire that good have an absolute guarantee.  Once man became aware of death, learned anticipation, acquired knowledge, God became necessary as the guarantor of good, as the promise that made human life possible and tolerable.  And thus there are good people, though whether they are good for reasons other than the compulsions of their experience or not, remains unanswerable.  As for the evil, as for those who lose their grasp on the stuff of life, who become unable to cope with their world, are they to blame or are they not also the victims of long circumstance?

    "As for the miracle of being--it is of course a miracle, but it is not necessarily a good miracle.  Some lives are fortunate, and some which seem fortunate become involved in agony, and who shall say whether this is through their own fault or not?  Just as poets are born so, the brave are born so, and the cowardly are born so.  That is, they are born to their fate.  No one blames the child of less than ten for the errors of his personality, but link by link he is bound to the grown man."  Ross Lockridge Jr., March 6, 1948

I discovered this chilling abrogation of all responsibility the morning of March 7, 1948, atop a neat stack of paper on the desk in the guest room downstairs,Dad's room in the months after we returned to Bloomington from Manistee.  The dysgraphia in the lower lefthand corner is mine ["I'm out at the car"], as are the blazing sixguns.  "The car" refers to Uncle Shockley's Buick: Dad's older brother was spiriting me off to Indianapolis until the funeral, which I was not allowed to attend.  Did Dad leave behind a second statement, one that was concrete, personal, signed--and unambigulously a suicide note?  And did Teeter bury it with the Elextrolux hose in our alley trashcan? The implications of Dad's "Ultimate Philosophy" are horrendous.  Plenty of suicides far less philosophically grounded in Nihilism than my father have spared the wife and kids the meaninglessness of further existence.  So, I feel most fortunate that my father allowed me the privilege of soldiering on, continuing to experience that "not necessarily good miracle""of being," to go on living as a human person with a future that keeps on expanding. 

F.Scott Fitzgerald put forward his melodramatic notion that "there are no Second Acts in American Lives," and my father did indeed bring down the curtain after the first act, dashing backstage and leaping into the trashbin, when he might have waited it out and come through, still alive now at 95,having written even better novels, entertaining his great-grandkids, watching his garden grow.

Second acts are possible in American Lives.  Second and third lives, too.  Nine lives, even.  Why not? 

Be on guard and "unwilling to submit." 

                                                                          HERE'S THE RUB: 

Dad had long kept an acolyte's faith that Sigmund Freud held the Open-Sesame to the human psyche.  Why then in the throes of his agony did Dad settle for a plain-vanilla therapist like Dr. DeArmond, in a primitive snake pit of seconal and grand mal seizures?  Why no Freudian Analysis? Or Freudian Anything? He'd undergone Electro Shock Therapy, numerous seances with a Christian Science Practitioner to please his mother, tolerated his father's vigorous ministrations--but there exists no evidence that he considered even one consult with a Freudian Analyst.  Well, Folks, like Virginia Woolf who refused Freudian ministrations when her own sanity was on the line, Dad was fully aware of Freud's ultimate conclusion that child sexual abuse is merely a wish-fulfillment fantasy of the "victim."

                                           THE PHANTOM OF 46 MOUNTFORT STREET

                                                                             Or:

                                                              MY FATHER'S MUSE

                                                          DOUBLE WHAMMY

Throughout his life my father struggled to forge an identity separate from the man whose name he bore and whose mission was to obliterate him. Senior bullied Junior into acting as his amanuensis, ghost-writer, office boy, Boy Friday, and far worse.  Grandpa relentlessly dogged Dad to take on an array of "projects," as though Dad were a gifted vassal, an exotic parrot or trained monkey. When Dad emerged from the asylum with all his defenses gone, Grandpa came to the rescue.  He put Dad on display in Rotary-Club-type venues where his inanition disappointed the micro-audiences.  Hoping to "revive" my father, Grandpa challenged him to memorization contest after "EST & grand mal" had disabled his phenomenal memory.  He resumed badgering Dad to assume co-directorship of The Hoosier Historical Institute.  

If Grandpa could not save Dad, neither could the enormous success of RAINTREE COUNTY, a work inspired by his mother and written "for" her.  Dad had rebelled against his father only to deliver himself into his mother's strait-jacket.  Trapped in a nightmare marriage to an incestuous homosexual pedophile (talk about hitting the trifecta!) and his repellent victimizing of their children, Elsie Shockley Lockridge co-opted her brilliant youngest son to transform the sow's ear of her degraded existence into the silk purse of "The Great American Novel."  In the Civil War between his parents, Dad took on the role of his mother's Savior, sacrificing himself to make her the victor. 

March 6, 1948: Ripped apart and cannibalized upon the family hearth, my father finished off what little remained.

 After his loss Grandpa proceeded to train me in public speaking--or, in the knack of projecting my voice from the barn to the rear of the house, reciting passages he had me memorize: e.g., "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," "Concord Bridge," "The Gettysburg Address," "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck," "Charge of the Light Brigade," etc.  My words had to be clear and audible from a distance of at least 100 feet, and though I could never hope to equal the oratorical acumen of Tecumseh's brother "The One-eyed Prophet," whose voice carried a country mile, Grandpa declared me "promising."  He was indoctrinating me in the lore, minutia, and "manly virtues" necessary to someone who might one day qualify to direct The Hoosier Historical Institute when I ungratefully put a stop to it.  Meanwhile, Grandma was extolling the extraordinary virtues of her father, far more sensitive and romantic than her husband. Great Grandfather Shockley had been "reborn" in my father, and she sensed that it was I who now embodied both of these dead souls, "heroic dreamers" whose greatness lay not in what they accomplished (John Wesley Shockley was a "mute inglorious Milton,") but quite literally in what they "dreamed."

Not unlike most victims of intolerable childhood abuse Dad went somewhere inside his head for escape, and it became a way of life.

In ornate calligraphy on the backside:

"Elsie Lillian Shockley

          The

Only Daughter

          of

JW and Emma Shockley

         who

was born January 26, 1880

         Near

   Messick, Indiana

          and

united in the holy bonds of

         Matrimony

             to

Ross Franklin Lockridge

             on

     July 23, 1902"

In Dad's hand at the bottom: "Mother, Summer of 1901

              February 1, 1947

Dear Ernest,

   Daddy has been very busy, and that's why you haven't had a letter from me lately.

   I thought you might want to know what's happening along Mountfort Street.  The other day I was walking to our building, when suddenly a small boy shot out of an alley running with all his might and two larger boys after him.  On looking closely at this boy, I saw that it was none other than our old friend Henry Miller.  I said, "Hello, Henry," and Henry immediately began to talk under my arm, while the two bigger kids slunk off, muttering things under their breath.  "How is the William McKinley School these days, Henry?" I said.  "It stinks," Henry said.  "Who's your teacher now, Henry?" I asked.  "Bucktoothed Murphy," Henry said.  "She stinks."  "Is she hard on you, Henry?" I asked.  "She pulls your hair and hits your knuckles with a ruler," Henry said.

   Just then we saw a small blocky kid walking along the street loaded with war equipment and having a surly smile on his face.  It was Lee Oliver, who hasn't grown much since you saw him last probably because he drinks coffee.  After Lee had passed, I said, "Henry, does Lee still beat the boys up?"  "Not so much now," Henry said.  "The other kids can run faster now."

   It wasn't many days after that, that I came out of our apartment building and saw a small boy stirring with a stick in a puddle of dirty slush right in front of the mailbox in the gutter.  It was Errol, who is bigger now but no better looking.  "What are you doing, Errol?" I asked.  "Fixing it so that cars will get stuck in this mud," Errol said.

   Same old Errol.

   All the kids want to be remembered to you, Ernest, and Sandra Kelley promises me that she has some old comic books that you may have.  Don't get your hopes too high, though, as I still don't have these comic books.

   You can see that life on Mountfort Street is much as it always was except that little Ernest Lockridge is no longer dodging around corners there to get away from other kids.  Some relics and reminders of little Ernest Lockridge are still there, however, as every now and then I see a terribly battered old gun or something that looks like one you used to have.

   Henry Miller says he knows where I can get caps, and I'm going to try to get you some.

   I hope you are getting along fine in that good school that Grandma has started you at.  You know that Daddy expects you to be a good boy in school and at Grandma's.  Thanks ever so much for that good letter about the basketball game, and write me again soon.

                            Love, 

                            Daddy

                                  RAINTREE COUNTY:THE RELIGION

                                                                     IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

Those of you who have exposed a child sex abuser know well the great rewards that befall your act.  Moreover, you have experienced first-hand how these rewards multiply in direct proportion to your abuser's blood ties, how your family falls all over itself with gratitude: "Oh, see how your brave act has spared your brothers, sisters, cousins, even the children of neighbors and strangers! Why, can it be that you've protected little precious US!"

Uh huh.

Being branded "liar," "evil," and "insane" represents only a small portion of a reward that includes withdrawal of parental love and support, alienation from one's closest relatives (often a necessity for your own survival), marginalization, ridicule, slander, and outright treachery.  Bottom-feeders with no visible dog in the fight will attack you.  Sadistic thugs admonish you to "turn the other cheek."  Those once "near and dear" all too generously disseminate the lie that you are demented, or deceased.  It never quite ends.

But remember:

WE ARE NOT ALONE!  Indeed, it is we strangers who are one another's true sisters and brothers.

And:

THERE IS NO NECESSITY FOR THIS EVIL TO UNDO US!

 At twice my father's age at his death plus five I want to set the record straight, in the hope that wide knowledge and understanding of this profound American tragedy might help prevent the waste of even one life.

"BE NOT OVERCOME WITH EVIL, BUT OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD." St. Paul

Ernest Lockridge

November 28,2009

                                                December 17, 2009

In my el supremo position as President of the Worthington [Ohio] Area Art League I'm awarding WAAL's inaugural President's Award to my mentor and dear friend Bill Westerman (left), gifted artist and teacher.

                            "2/12/48

"For Lillian

    Or as she was first called by the

author of this book "Teeter"

     With affection and admiration

                              Ross"

  "For Uncle Bob and Aunt Marie

          With the affection and admiration

              of the author and gratitude

               for many kindnesses rendered

               down the years. 

                                Ross, Jr."