Americana & the U.S.

In 1966, I drove to Kinsman, Trumbull County, Ohio, to visit youthful home of Clarence Darrow, now a museum. A worker there called, set up interviews with number of locals who’d personally known Darrow. One man at museum was visiting from Chicago. Mr. Megs informed me his late father had befriended Darrow after he’d moved to Chicago. He said Darrow had given father a “monkey statue,” sent to Darrow in 1925 after the Scopes Trial. When I asked Mr Megs what the statue had looked like, he’d motioned for me to follow him to his car. On front seat of car was wrapped up statue! Mr Megs explained he had it with him with idea of donating it to the Kinsman

Museum… but after meeting me had decided I should have it! I promised Mr Megs I’d use the statue to champion a man like Darrow who’d defended world’s underdogs!

Before we’d parted, Mr. Megs told one last little detail about his father using statue in a periodic ceremony in Chicago after Darrow’s death in 1938. Ray Megs told me his father, Arthur, each March 13th for years after Clarence Darrow’s death in 1930, would go to the bridge in Hyde Park of Chicago where Darrow (to prove there is no afterlife) declared if there was an afterlife, he would appear as a ghost. His father would place at 11:45 pm on March 12th the monkey statue on the handrail at center of the bridge. Most gathered at the bridge just to honor memory of Darrow, but some believed using monkey statue which in life Darrow had touched, would conjure his ghost!

In 1972 I took monkey statue to the bridge. I saw nothing, only felt Darrow’s spirit of wisdom and justice in those gathered!