A dairy-farming Fortean.
John Edward McWilliams was born 8 April 1924 in Sheridan, Wyoming—where he would spend most of his life. His father was Henry. According to the 1930 census, he was a native of Buffalo, Wyoming, and was employed as a painter of railroad signs. John’s mother was Julia; he had a younger sister, Marcia or Marsha, about a year his junior. John attended the one-room Beckton School. Henry had been a farm laborer earlier in his life, and by 1940 owned a dairy ranch. At some point, John lost a hand in a farming accident. A neighbor helped out with his summer chores that year.
McWilliams graduated from Sheridan High School, where he edited the school newspaper. By this point, war had broken out, but his accident would have kept him from the service. He attended school in Ohio—his obituary says the University of Ohio, but there is no such place; probably it means Ohio State, but it could mean Ohio University—for two years, but then returned to help with the farm. This would have been around 1944; there was a labor crunch at the time, as so many able-bodied men were enlisted.
John Edward McWilliams was born 8 April 1924 in Sheridan, Wyoming—where he would spend most of his life. His father was Henry. According to the 1930 census, he was a native of Buffalo, Wyoming, and was employed as a painter of railroad signs. John’s mother was Julia; he had a younger sister, Marcia or Marsha, about a year his junior. John attended the one-room Beckton School. Henry had been a farm laborer earlier in his life, and by 1940 owned a dairy ranch. At some point, John lost a hand in a farming accident. A neighbor helped out with his summer chores that year.
McWilliams graduated from Sheridan High School, where he edited the school newspaper. By this point, war had broken out, but his accident would have kept him from the service. He attended school in Ohio—his obituary says the University of Ohio, but there is no such place; probably it means Ohio State, but it could mean Ohio University—for two years, but then returned to help with the farm. This would have been around 1944; there was a labor crunch at the time, as so many able-bodied men were enlisted.
Likely it was around this time—but I cannot specify the date exactly, so I may be wrong—that John married a woman named Esther. She was, or would become, a teacher, naturalist, and photographer. They had three children. City directories had them together as late as 1965, living with John’s mother on Route 2 (later Big Goose Rd.) but divorced sometimes afterwards. He married Mary Ellen Geiss in 1971, and became stepfather to her two children. Throughout this time, McWilliams remained a dairy farmer.
But he seems to have had a wide diversity of interests. In 1970, he co-founded the No. 9 Ditch Company. He was on the local school board, as well as the board of Sheridan College. He ran the public library for a time and founded the “Great Books Discussion group. He was also an early adopter of Macintosh computers, and helped to organize a Wyoming enthusiasts group. As late as 2011, when he was 87, (a man like to be him) reviewed a book about Wyoming’s history on amazon.com.
That review points to his prolonged interest in history—what might even be called nostalgia, though I am not sure on this point. There’s a quote from him in a Senate committee publication from 1978—probably it’s taken from a journalistic article, perhaps from even earlier—which reads, "Wyoming may be an anachronism," dairy farmer John McWilliams says between sips of early-morning coffee in his front yard at the base of the Big Horn foothills, "but we have a set of values and a way of life worth preserving.” That kind of reminiscence—that the old ways are not just old, but perhaps true—would inform his short (?) Fortean episode.
John E. McWilliams died 6 July 2015. He was 91.
*******
It is not true that Forteanism was primarily an urban phenomenon, but it is true that most of the organizing of Forteanism in cities; that was where the action was. But there were rural Forteans. McWilliams was one. How he came across Fort, though, is not clear. He seems to have read widely, so perhaps that brought Fort to his attention. Perhaps, too, he saw the blitz of advertising around the publication of the Fortean omnibus; the advertising continued on through the war and in the years after, too, though it was more of a trickle—and she could have come across a notice then, too. From the sounds of it, McWilliams was disappointed in the drift of American Society, and so was likely looking for a critique, a place to stand in opposition. He found it in the Fortean Society.
I do not know, either, how extensive his Fortean interests were, how long they lasted, if they ever wilted. What I know is he appeared in the pages of Doubt only once, in Doubt 24. This issue came out in April 1949, the month that McWilliams turned 25, and some five years after he had returned from Ohio. (Of note: his obituary has him taking over his father’s farm in 1956, but his comment to the Fortean Society seems that he may have been, at least, the de facto person in charge earlier than that.) For unknown reasons, McWilliams wrote in to Thayer, after seeming to have been subscribed for some time, and Thayer chose to print (an excerpt from?) the letter.
The entirety of the bit from Doubt is as follows:
“A couple of years ago I took over a ranch out here in Wyoming, and attempting to build it into a first class dairy hasn’t left any too much time for extra-curricular activities. But I still read DOUBT with as much fascinated interest as ever. It’s my favorite reading.
“Incidentally, I note the last issue or two doesn’t have much of your usual polemics. How come? I enjoyed those blasts of vitriol better than anything else, even the occasional cartoons, in the magazines.
“There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of Forteana to report from these parts, or if there is, I have had my nose too close to the grindstone—pardon the cliche—to notice. This business I am in—milking cows—gets discouraging sometimes. I hate to produce good rich milk, as I assure you I do, and then wholesale it to a bottling plant, which thins it down to a watery blue substance which they retail to customers as ‘whole’ milk, and at a thoughtful profit, too. It doesn’t make any difference as far as I am concerned, but I do hate to think of children having to forego milk for that stuff. But the dairy regulations are so strict out here, it requires a terrific outlay for automatic equipment such as bottlers, washers, sterilizers, pasteurizers, etc., etc. before anyone is permitted to retail bottled milk. The small producer is just out of the picture.”
The letter touched on concerns that Thayer and Russell raised repeatedly—that industrialism was destroying food, making it carcinogenic, even. Thayer appended to McWilliams’s letter his own editorial: “Dear John: you should taste what is sold for ‘milk’ in N.Y.C.—only you shouldn’t. T.T.” Others, too, had expressed the worry—Sussman, Gee, Ajax Carlson; Henry Miller devoted an entire essay to how poor American bread was compared to its European peer. It wasn’t just Forteans, either: Sigfried Giedion’s 1948 book “Mechanization Takes Command” also spent a chapter discussing the ills of bread, once the “staff of life” but no more.
All of which, of course, is part of a larger critique of modernity. Forteans spread across the political continuum, from socialist to fascist; they were urban animals and rural ones, too. Atheists and mystics, even straight-up Christians. But what the majority of them shared was a discontent with the modern world, with he growing power of the state, of science, and of religion at the expense of the individual. Art Castillo’s vision of a three-headed monster may have been paranoid, but it was not altogether wrong. McWilliams, too, was expressing irritation—frustration—at the way the powers-that-be were altering the fundamental fabric of life. Notably, this critique, though, at least as expressed here, was more about government and business, less about science. (Indeed, McWilliams was probably using new scientific techniques to update his farm.)
McWilliams wanted to strike back at these changes. He wanted Thayer’s vitriol (the same vitriol that put off Fred Shroyer). He even wanted Castillo’s cartoons—which expressed graphically the anger he felt (graphically in both senses of the word). Individual initiative was being penalized by people who were too enthralled by the bottom line or who were more interested in regulations than authentic economic activity. He saw big business and big government working together to squash his enterprise. The work of the artisan, of the individual, had no place in the world taking shape after World War II.
But he seems to have had a wide diversity of interests. In 1970, he co-founded the No. 9 Ditch Company. He was on the local school board, as well as the board of Sheridan College. He ran the public library for a time and founded the “Great Books Discussion group. He was also an early adopter of Macintosh computers, and helped to organize a Wyoming enthusiasts group. As late as 2011, when he was 87, (a man like to be him) reviewed a book about Wyoming’s history on amazon.com.
That review points to his prolonged interest in history—what might even be called nostalgia, though I am not sure on this point. There’s a quote from him in a Senate committee publication from 1978—probably it’s taken from a journalistic article, perhaps from even earlier—which reads, "Wyoming may be an anachronism," dairy farmer John McWilliams says between sips of early-morning coffee in his front yard at the base of the Big Horn foothills, "but we have a set of values and a way of life worth preserving.” That kind of reminiscence—that the old ways are not just old, but perhaps true—would inform his short (?) Fortean episode.
John E. McWilliams died 6 July 2015. He was 91.
*******
It is not true that Forteanism was primarily an urban phenomenon, but it is true that most of the organizing of Forteanism in cities; that was where the action was. But there were rural Forteans. McWilliams was one. How he came across Fort, though, is not clear. He seems to have read widely, so perhaps that brought Fort to his attention. Perhaps, too, he saw the blitz of advertising around the publication of the Fortean omnibus; the advertising continued on through the war and in the years after, too, though it was more of a trickle—and she could have come across a notice then, too. From the sounds of it, McWilliams was disappointed in the drift of American Society, and so was likely looking for a critique, a place to stand in opposition. He found it in the Fortean Society.
I do not know, either, how extensive his Fortean interests were, how long they lasted, if they ever wilted. What I know is he appeared in the pages of Doubt only once, in Doubt 24. This issue came out in April 1949, the month that McWilliams turned 25, and some five years after he had returned from Ohio. (Of note: his obituary has him taking over his father’s farm in 1956, but his comment to the Fortean Society seems that he may have been, at least, the de facto person in charge earlier than that.) For unknown reasons, McWilliams wrote in to Thayer, after seeming to have been subscribed for some time, and Thayer chose to print (an excerpt from?) the letter.
The entirety of the bit from Doubt is as follows:
“A couple of years ago I took over a ranch out here in Wyoming, and attempting to build it into a first class dairy hasn’t left any too much time for extra-curricular activities. But I still read DOUBT with as much fascinated interest as ever. It’s my favorite reading.
“Incidentally, I note the last issue or two doesn’t have much of your usual polemics. How come? I enjoyed those blasts of vitriol better than anything else, even the occasional cartoons, in the magazines.
“There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of Forteana to report from these parts, or if there is, I have had my nose too close to the grindstone—pardon the cliche—to notice. This business I am in—milking cows—gets discouraging sometimes. I hate to produce good rich milk, as I assure you I do, and then wholesale it to a bottling plant, which thins it down to a watery blue substance which they retail to customers as ‘whole’ milk, and at a thoughtful profit, too. It doesn’t make any difference as far as I am concerned, but I do hate to think of children having to forego milk for that stuff. But the dairy regulations are so strict out here, it requires a terrific outlay for automatic equipment such as bottlers, washers, sterilizers, pasteurizers, etc., etc. before anyone is permitted to retail bottled milk. The small producer is just out of the picture.”
The letter touched on concerns that Thayer and Russell raised repeatedly—that industrialism was destroying food, making it carcinogenic, even. Thayer appended to McWilliams’s letter his own editorial: “Dear John: you should taste what is sold for ‘milk’ in N.Y.C.—only you shouldn’t. T.T.” Others, too, had expressed the worry—Sussman, Gee, Ajax Carlson; Henry Miller devoted an entire essay to how poor American bread was compared to its European peer. It wasn’t just Forteans, either: Sigfried Giedion’s 1948 book “Mechanization Takes Command” also spent a chapter discussing the ills of bread, once the “staff of life” but no more.
All of which, of course, is part of a larger critique of modernity. Forteans spread across the political continuum, from socialist to fascist; they were urban animals and rural ones, too. Atheists and mystics, even straight-up Christians. But what the majority of them shared was a discontent with the modern world, with he growing power of the state, of science, and of religion at the expense of the individual. Art Castillo’s vision of a three-headed monster may have been paranoid, but it was not altogether wrong. McWilliams, too, was expressing irritation—frustration—at the way the powers-that-be were altering the fundamental fabric of life. Notably, this critique, though, at least as expressed here, was more about government and business, less about science. (Indeed, McWilliams was probably using new scientific techniques to update his farm.)
McWilliams wanted to strike back at these changes. He wanted Thayer’s vitriol (the same vitriol that put off Fred Shroyer). He even wanted Castillo’s cartoons—which expressed graphically the anger he felt (graphically in both senses of the word). Individual initiative was being penalized by people who were too enthralled by the bottom line or who were more interested in regulations than authentic economic activity. He saw big business and big government working together to squash his enterprise. The work of the artisan, of the individual, had no place in the world taking shape after World War II.
