Pulled into Nazareth

This year I’m working on a book entitled Pulled into Nazareth, from the first line of “The Weight,” a song generally attributed to Robbie Robertson of The Band. It was first recorded in 1968 on the album Music from Big Pink, one of the albums I listened to obsessively. Full of allusion and cryptic references, the enigmatic lyrics leave themselves open to many interpretations. For me, without putting too fine a point on it, they suggest the stumbling process of individuation, which for myself and some of my siblings, took up the years of the 1970’s.

This great version features the Staples Singers. It isn’t really a matter of the lyrics alone. The music is very exciting and the combination of the lyric suggestions and the music’s blues and wailing against the drums adds up to an emotional experience which might mean something to whatever place you currently find yourself. And that, is what the Seventies were about: finding yourself somewhere you didn’t expect but which is surely (is it not?) helping you along your very own path.

Pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' about half past dead

I just need some place where I can lay my head

“Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?’

He just grinned and shook my hand, "no" was all he said.

Nazareth was at least partly the location of a legendary guitar maker in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, but also the home of a wandering carpenter.

Take a load off, Fanny

Take a load for free

Take a load off, Fanny

And you put the load right on me.

According to Robbie Robertson: “For me it was a combination of Catholicism and gospel music. The story told in the song is about the guilt of relationships, not being able to give what’s being asked of you. Someone is stumbling through life, going from one situation to another, with different characters. In going through these catacombs of experience. you’re trying to do what’s right, but it seems that with all the places you have to go, it’s just not possible. In the song, all this is ‘the load.’”

Titles for books are really interesting. I tried other ones, but kept coming back to this. The song is so well known and has been covered by so many people it can’t help but be recognized. In this book, Line, Marty and Paul have all left home. They all stumble, but their experiences take them deeper into the lives they have been given to lead.

Paul goes to Alaska, determined to find himself in a place none of his family has been. Alaska is the North Country and no mistake. So much is happening there in the Seventies. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 is, at the time, “widely described as the most openhanded and enlightened piece of legislation that has ever dealt with aboriginal people” [John McPhee, Coming into the Country, 1977]. An oil boom brings people to work on a pipeline laid from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez in the south, a technological feat. And midway in the decade, high schools begin to be built in the villages which had previously sent their high school age kids off to board under difficult conditions.

After a few dicey adventures, Line’s husband attracts her to Santa Cruz, where he is studying for his doctorate and later teaches in the History of Consciousness department at the newly-formed university. During this time, Allan Chadwick introduces French intensive gardening and is called the “Pied Piper” of the organic gardening movement in California. Line spends much time in his garden established at the university. She has more kids of her own and becomes midwife to others.

Marty, doing administrative work in architecture firms, finds herself at the beginning of a tech revolution. She is introduced to databases and word processing and there are rumors that architects will soon begin doing computer-aided drafting. Meanwhile, her boyfriend Erik continues to dabble in drugs on the one hand and architecture on the other. None of this answers the urgent identity questions Marty continues to pursue on her own, but this cannot be helped.

I look forward to the year of research, discovery and writing!