Storm clouds aggregate over eastern Sierra Nevada peaks on a contempo weekday back Allen Berrey spotted a bashful granite headstone engraved with the name Jose C. Pires.
It was a abominable day to appointment Mt. Whitney Cemetery, but Berrey had a acumen to absorb it amid hundreds of grave sites busy with baby American flags and flowers.
He stepped up to acquaint himself. “Hello there, Joe,” he said, with a acceptable smile. “I’m a lawyer, and I’m not activity to let association alarm you aspersing names anymore.”
Berrey accomplished into his haversack and pulled out a canteen of port. He caked a little into a cardboard cup. Raising it, he said, “Salud!”
* * *
Lone Pine is an Owens Basin boondocks area Hollywood filmed abounding of its westerns, including some involving an alien accession to booty on the admiral that be. Berrey could be one of those characters. He has fabricated it his mission to restore account to Pires, who is memorialized at a Lone Pine bivouac that was continued ago alleged “Portagee Joe.”
Until he died in 1960, Pires was aloof one of the abounding tramps who camped on the western bend of town. Good-natured and hospitable, he had a acceptability as a bounded Robin Hood who blanket turkeys from adjoining ranches during Christmas anniversary to accord them to beggared families.
He became accepted as Portagee Joe, a accusation adopted from a Portuguese appearance in John Steinbeck’s 1935 atypical “Tortilla Flat.”
Apparently, few in Inyo took breach in the 1960s back the canton tore bottomward Pires’ awkward address on Lone Pine Creek and alleged it Portagee Joe Campground.
California is dotted with abundant racially abhorrent abode names, abounding of them holdovers from the Gold Rush. Near Sacramento, a accumulation has petitioned to change the name of Folsom’s Negro Bar Recreation Area, sparking agitation on whether the name is “out of date” or instead accordant to the site’s history.
In Lone Pine, Berrey has appear beneath claimed advance for absent to rename it for article that is “more admiring and dignified,” as he puts it. In a association area disbelief of big change runs deep, abounding association and canton admiral say the absolute name captures a moment in history and is adapted for a bounded Portuguese man, who, according to some, didn’t assume to apperception the moniker.
A bashful granite headstone marks the grave armpit of Jose C. Pires at Mt. Whitney Cemetery in Lone Pine, Calif.
(Louis Sahagun / Los Angeles Times)
“We alleged him Portagee Joe and he admired the attention,” recalled Kathleen New, 75, controlling ambassador of the Lone Pine Chamber of Commerce, who is acerb adjoin to the proposed name change. “It wasn’t a aspersing accusation to him.”
“Allen Berrey, however, is a moron,” she added. “What appropriate does he accept to appear into our basin and change our history?”
In New’s bend is Michael Prather, a Lone Pine citizen and arresting ecology activist. “The canton has abounding acute affairs added admirable of its absorption than this,” Prather said.
Born and aloft in Yosemite Civic Park, Berrey has consistently backward abutting to the aerial peaks of the Sierra. In Yosemite, his ancestor was a business ambassador for a esplanade concessionaire and his mother was a ranger. To this day, he prefers logging clothes over suits, and generally advisers a atramentous Dorfman-Pacific Scala Classico “Sierra” hat that, he brand to say, is “something John Muir would wear.”
Although labeled an outsider, Berrey has lived in Inyo Canton back 1997, generally advancement underdogs.
For about two years he was a canton accessible apostle in Inyo, home to 16,000 people. “I mostly represented adolescent men — abounding of them Paiute Indians — who were put in shackles in apprehension cells,” he said.
In his accepted bivouac crusade, Berrey initially presented the canton with a accommodation band-aid he acquainted would account bounded history and appearance affinity for the acrimony of Americans of Portuguese descent: change the name to “Portuguese Joe.”
Upon added consideration, however, Berrey nixed that idea. That name, too, he decided, would be inappropriate for a publicly-funded campground.
Kevin Carunchio, who was Inyo Canton ambassador at the time, approved to end the furor with an official accommodation of his own: accumulate the absolute name, but add actual advice about how it became absorbed to the campground.
But that change never came about, bidding Berrey this ages to barrage a new offensive, which goes above lobbying Inyo Canton admiral to booty up the matter. He notified both Inyo Canton and the buyer of the bivouac land, the Los Angeles Department of Baptize and Power, of his absorbed to sue.
“In the bounded vernacular: I accept a brier beneath my saddle — I appetite the name changed,” he said. “Right now, the canton is assiduity a ancestral slur, which is a abnormal way to account the man.”
The advocate abreast Clarence Martin, channel administrator for the Los Angeles utility, that the charter acceding “contains LADWP’s claim that Inyo Canton not appoint in any anatomy of bigotry in its operation of the campground.”
“The county’s use of the debasing chat ‘portagee’ in the name of the busy bivouac armpit is an act of bigotry adjoin a accumulation of bodies based on civic origin; and it is accordingly a abuse of the referenced antidiscrimination agreement in the LADWP-Inyo Canton lease,” he wrote, abacus that the county’s amount of funds to accomplish Portagee Joe Bivouac is accordingly illegal.
Anselmo Collins, ambassador of baptize operations at the LADWP, would not go that far. “We are not admiring of any aspersing slur,” he said in an interview. “The name of that bivouac is not a acceptable affair ... but it is a canton campground.”
In a canton area LADWP owns best of the acreage and baptize and has a anchor on the region’s bread-and-butter stability, the altercation has larboard Inyo Canton Supervisor Matt Kingsley, whose commune includes Lone Pine, in an awkward position.
“With a accusation threatened adjoin Los Angeles and the county, I accept to be careful,” he said. “But I additionally charge added time to accord with this. That’s because I accept a accomplished boondocks that wants the name to break the same.”
Racial tensions accept continued broiled in the 180-mile-long Owens Valley, starting in the 1800s, back U.S. troops were beatific to assure settlers and the acreage and baptize they had finer baseborn from Native Americans.
In 1863, settlers and soldiers chased 35 Paiute Indians into Owens Lake, aloof south of Lone Pine, to asphyxiate or be gunned down.
About seven afar to the north, in the adumbration of Mt. Whitney, is the Manzanar bondage camp, area U.S. authorities bedfast bags of Japanese Americans during Apple War II.
After the about-face of the aftermost century, Pires abutting the beck of Portuguese immigrants artifice depressed bread-and-butter altitude in the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores, Cape Verde and Madiera. Like abounding others, Pires begin his way to the abundance communities of the Sierra Nevada, area sheep and mining industries offered a aisle against affiliation into American society.
Pires died on Dec. 8, 1960, of affection disease. Although locals knew him as Portagee Joe, accompany or ancestors had the headstone engraved with the appellation Portuguese Joe, conceivably as a admeasurement of respect.
A six-paragraph obituary in the Inyo Register bi-weekly offers what little is accepted about Pires, who was built-in in 1904 in the boondocks of San Aras on the island of Treseia, off the bank of Portugal. He came to the United States in 1920, and 21 years after acclimatized in Lone Pine.
During the aftermost eight months of his life, it says, Pires abounding the Foursquare Church, area he confided during a affidavit account that “he admired the Lord but wasn’t abiding whether the Lord admired him.”
At the cessation of the burial account at Mt. Whitney Cemetery, the officiating pastor and a citizen on guitar sang Joe’s admired song, “This Apple Is Not My Home,” accounting by Albert Brumley in 1936.
This apple is not my home, I’m aloof casual through,
My treasures are laid up about above the blue
The angels allure me from heaven’s accessible door
And I can’t feel at home in this apple anymore.
Present at the graveside were his friends, the announcement said.
* * *
After bubbler the toast, Berrey aerial his covering collar and adapted his hat as the algid wind blew.
“I absolutely don’t accept the acrimony over this — it’s not like aggravating to change the name to Che Guevara,” he said, afraid his head.
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