I believe we are somehow inordinately shaped by the things we are afraid of when we are very young. At age five, before we really have any sense of ourselves as having power, the things that frighten us are monumental. The dark in the corner of our rooms, the clown at the circus, men with beards (What? Like you weren't? Shut up!)... Eventually, our reactions to these fears mold us, turn us into the adults we become. Later, when we are faced with the daunting prospect of being relied upon by a child and are confronted with THEIR fears – ‘That scary rock won’t come alive, WILL it?” – we are able to confidently say that, no, there’s nothing to worry about. We’ve been down that road before.
On top of the Bank of Willmar, in Willmar, MN, stood my greatest and most throw-up inducing nightmare. A statue, perhaps only fifteen feet tall, had been placed atop the bank as its talisman, its mascot, its... [shudder] good luck charm. Originally known as the Kandiyohi County Bank, the statue is a representation of the meaning of the word “Kandiyohi.” In the Lakota tongue, my home county’s name meant “Where the buffalo fish are.” Now, had this been a mere statue of a “buffalo” fish, I would not have screamed when taken down Willmar Ave under the statue’s baleful gaze. No, this statue was of a shirtless and loin-clothed Native American, holding a stringer full of corpulent buffalo fish. Now, I’m not a racist, nor was I at age five (I wanted to be Native American just like my idols, Jay Silverheels and Buffy St. Marie), so it was not the fact that it was a statue of an Indian that upset me so much. It was the fact that his brow was lowered, as if to express disgust at the puny mortals who passed below him. It was his broadly carved mouth, which looked as if it could barley contain the snarling teeth that surely lurked behind those malevolent lips. It was the fact that he (I can’t call the statue “it,” no matter how hard I try because he had such a vivid life in my nightmares that he can’t possibly be inanimate) was painted gold and the casual passerby would be blinded by the reflection of the sun bouncing off his unnaturally powerful looking chest at certain hours of the afternoon. It was the fact that he carried a barbed SPEAR in one hand, ostensibly the tool that he used to nab the catfish, but which could easily be used on human prey.
One day, I knew, I JUST KNEW that “Chief Kandiyohi” would come to slow, grinding life. I, of course, would be the only one to notice until it was far, far too late. First, he would blink. I would see it and start to scream, but no one would listen to me…I was just a kid, after all. Then, he’d throw the spear down, skewering one of the bank tellers on her smoke break. The teller was pretty, in my imaginings, innocent. She probably looked a little like Betty June Heubner, Miss New London 1967, with her hair done in a tasteful beehive, wearing a sweater set and pencil skirt. And she probably carried her cigarettes in one of those soft-sided snap-top cases that had the pouch on the outside big enough for a lighter. Then, as the entire street full of people watched in mute horror, he would pick the spear up and eat the woman slowly, like a sish-kebab, the wretched sounds of her bones crunching under his teeth reverberating from the façade of the J.C. Penney. Only then would the people of Willmar, Minnesota begin to realize with shattering finality that they had been very, very foolish when they commissioned Eben Lawson to make this statue in 1915. Very foolish, indeed.
I remember begging my Nanna (whom I only called “Nanna” after her passing, incidentally…prior to that, she was always just “Grandma”) to walk down a different street when we were in Willmar one day on an errand. I remember telling my mother that it would be SO much easier to buy my clothes through the J.C. Penney catalogue than to go to the store…in Willmar. My hopes were dashed when she pointed out that we’d still have to pick the ordered clothes up at the store when they arrived. My mother and father, my grandparents, various friends, all stared in wonder as I went nearly apoplectic with fear at the prospect of even glimpsing the top of Chief Kandiyohi’s hideous feathered headdress over the roofs of the Willmar downtown business district. I told one classmate of my dread and, rather that getting the answer that I had hoped for, the dismissive yet oddly comforting “That’s a dumb thing to think!”, my classmate’s brown eyes opened wide and she said, under her breath, “You, too?”
One day, as I napped in my grandparents’ back bedroom (the one with the white candlewicking bedspread and red velvet curtains), I dreamed that Chief Kandiyohi had come the fifteen miles from Willmar to New London and was stomping down Main Street, looking for more people to kill (he had already left Willmar a veritable charnel house in his wake). He had grown, from fifteen feet to a hundred, and he was pissed. In the dream, I was in my grandparents’ apartment, in the back bedroom, watching him slaughter his way down main street when he started to turn toward the firehouse directly opposite my grandparents’ apartment building (and from my grandmother’s beauty shop, A&B Beauty, where I got to fill shampoo bottles for a dollar an hour plus candy). With a sickening dread, I realized that he wasn’t turning toward the firehouse, but toward ME. He KNEW my fear and I was going to die by his mammoth, pockmarked gold hand. I screamed with horror, screamed until I thought I’d pass out, screamed with all the terror I’d ever felt over anything in my short life… At the last second, right before he punched his fist through the window to pluck me out like a contestant on the Price Is Right playing the $10,000 punch board game (my favorite), a distant bugle call sounded. Monster Chief Kandiyohi paused, then wheeled around in fury. Over Burbank hill (where my grandparents would later have an apartment without red velvet curtains) strode a magnificent giant gold Daniel Boone-y pioneer. I was saved, though in a totally un-PC way. Pioneer beat Indian in my brain, just like rock beat scissors or Reagan beat Carter. Monster Chief Kandiyohi was as good as dead and I would surely later thank Monster Daniel Boone by buying him a sarsaparilla at the Walnut Chalet Café.
In 1983, Chief Kandiyohi was removed from atop the bank building and placed on a corner right in front of the courthouse. Suddenly, he didn’t seem so imposing anymore. He was closer to being on the same ground as me, and that did a lot to humble him. His spear was no longer pointed at an angle that could send it downwards through my solar plexus should he just loosen his grip. No, at this new angle, he could maybe amputate a toe, if one wasn’t quick enough to snatch away one’s foot before the spear descended. Robbing Chief Kandiyohi of his height neutered him a little. And thank god for that! Still, nearly twenty years after I dreamed about his carnivorous rampage through New London as I went into the courthouse one day to contest a parking ticket, I could have sworn his eyes followed me....
--Amy Roeder is an improvisor, actor and producer based out of Chicago. She loves to hear other people's stories.
I believe we are somehow inordinately shaped by the things we are afraid of when we are very young. At age five, before we really have any sense of ourselves as having power, the things that frighten us are monumental. The dark in the corner of our rooms, the clown at the circus, men with beards (What? Like you weren't? Shut up!)... Eventually, our reactions to these fears mold us, turn us into the adults we become. Later, when we are faced with the daunting prospect of being relied upon by a child and are confronted with THEIR fears – ‘That scary rock won’t come alive, WILL it?” – we are able to confidently say that, no, there’s nothing to worry about. We’ve been down that road before.
