I live in Beacon, New York, where three men are known by their first names. One is a paranoid schizophrenic who lurks around the coffee shops, one is a member of our town council who owns a local bar, and the third was Pete Seeger.
In my seven years in town, I had maybe four encounters with Seeger. (I could never bring myself to use the overly familiar “Pete” when talking about him with friends.) Once, shortly after his ninetieth birthday, I was behind him in line at the post office; he was picking up a huge bin of fan letters and birthday cards that had overfilled his P.O. box. As he left with his haul, a guy buying stamps muttered something about his being a hippie Communist. (Beacon has its share of tensions between old-school residents, many of whom are working class, and recent immigrants from Brooklyn. Seeger lived in Beacon longer than just about anyone, but his political leanings and the adoration of hipster parents meant that he was often associated with “new” Beacon rather than the more authentic “old” Beacon.) My favorite postal clerk, who is decidedly “old” Beacon and probably went to elementary school with the stamp-buying guy, watched him walk away. Then she made a simple announcement to everyone in line: “Pete has done more for this town and this river than that guy and his alcoholic friends ever will.”
One weekday afternoon in 2008, I was putting up flyers for the Dutchess County branch of the Obama campaign. I went into the oldest black-owned barbershop on Main Street. There was one customer: Pete Seeger. I remember the barber was trimming the hair around his ears, so Seeger had removed his hearing aid and put it in his lap. Seeger inserted his hearing aid and listened patiently as I explained some minutiae of county campaign strategy. The owner took pity on me—after all, I was literally explaining political organizing to Pete Seeger—and he cut me off with a conspiratorial smile: “You know who this is, right? My friend here?” Before I could answer, he was directing me to his collection of faded newspaper clippings about Seeger. I walk by that barbershop all the time. Seeger is the only white customer I’ve ever seen inside.
During the Iraq War, if you were driving to the mall in Poughkeepsie, you’d always see two small crowds of protesters clustered on opposite sides of Route 9. On one side was a group sporting tie-dyed shirts and sloppy banners and acoustic guitars; on the other side, American flag jackets and signs with bald eagles on them. Every so often you’d see a lanky figure with a banjo singing with the tie-dyed people. Understand this: Pete Seeger, one of the icons of twentieth-century American music, was spending his Saturday afternoons on the side of a six-lane thoroughfare singing folk songs about peace while people yelled at him. He was in his late eighties. And he would wait for the traffic to calm, cross the street, and chat with the opposing protesters. My friend says he saw one of them giving him a hug.
Photograph: Andrew Sullivan/The New York Times/Redux
