Where the Suckers Moon by Randall Rothenberg

Author:Randall Rothenberg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307833549
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-02-05T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Come Alive

ONE MIGHT CLAIM that the era of modern image-making began before television, before radio, before the rotogravure press; began, in fact, in the year 1811 on a field not far from what is now Interstate 65, about midway between Indianapolis and Gary, Indiana. It was there that William Henry Harrison, an undistinguished career soldier from Virginia by way of Philadelphia who had married into some land in Ohio, fought the battle of his career … and lost.

He was lucky to get away with his life, for at dawn on November 7, Harrison and some eight hundred men under him were surprised at their encampment on Tippecanoe Creek by a force of Shawnee warriors under the command of the Prophet, the brother of the Indian leader Tecumseh. Sixty-one of Harrison’s soldiers were killed and 127 wounded.

Yet somehow, as time passed, Harrison managed to make people think he had won the Battle of Tippecanoe. Persistence was his ally: He wanted nothing more than to gain political office, and over the years, he ran for several positions; although he generally lost, people tended to remember his overblown biographical claims because, ever cautious, he rarely was cornered into taking memorable political positions. Which was how, in 1840, financially insolvent and reduced to serving as the clerk of the court of common pleas in Hamilton County, Ohio, he managed to persuade the Whig party to nominate him and the American people to elect him President of the United States. The campaign slogan that propelled him to victory, as every schoolchild to this day knows, was “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.”

So it was only appropriate that Subaru of America and Wieden & Kennedy should choose Tippecanoe County, Indiana—site of the creek, and the battlefield, and Purdue University, and the Triple XXX Restaurant’s Duane Parvis All American Burger (“1/4 lb. of 100% ground sirloin served on a toasted bun with melted cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickle, Spanish onion and peanut butter”), and, not incidentally, the Subaru-Isuzu Automotive manufacturing plant (known as SIA)—to begin the job of repairing Subaru’s image.

About two miles from the plant, in Room 109 of the Homewood Suites motel, as dawn broke sullenly over the sweaty summer landscape, the organization of that repair job was well under way. Taped to one wall were ten manila envelopes containing all the information needed to make the next week in the personal and professional lives of several dozen refugees from New York and Los Angeles smooth: “Indiana Maps,” “Call sheets,” “Tibor’s Itinerary,” “Maps to Airport,” “Maps to SIA,” “Messages,” “Vendors List,” “Menus,” “SVX Boards” and “Shot Lists.” Stuck to another wall were five penciled sheets detailing all the flights in and out of the Lafayette airport from and to New York and L.A. A handwritten weather forecast tacked nearby disclosed little respite from the weather—“Heat index 100+!”—which only made the Amberglow log in the fireplace seem more incongruous. Next to it, a television set silently played an old Hollywood newsreel story about the motion picture The Diary of Anne Frank.

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