He’s a Stinker

During the late ’70’s and early ’80’s I lived in Spokane, Washington. My wasband and I were scratching out a very poor existence as documentary filmmakers, subsidized by the state Humanities commission. Our subject in 1980 was Gordon Vales.

Gordon was 45 years old when we met him in Riverside Park. He had just moved into his own apartment. He had lived for most of his life in an institution for people with mental retardation in Medical Lake, Washington. When he was in his early forties he was fostered out of the institution by his art teacher and her husband who helped teach him independent living skills.

The story we heard about Gordon was that he a child born from rape. The father was a black man, the mother a white woman, somehow they both ended up in jail. This was in 1935. Gordon was born with a lazy eye, so was placed in the institution as an infant. The term the professionals used for Gordon later in his life was “institutionally retarded.” In other words, had he not been placed there, he may have been higher functioning.

Gordon had an amazing talent. He would take a piece of black construction paper, glance briefly at a person standing before him, and tear the person’s silhouette from the paper using only his fingers. He learned to do this at age five in art class at the institution. The residents were not allowed scissors.

Gordon lived, in his mind, in the 1940’s and 1950’s. His heros were Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, Superman and Tarzan. Each day he would pack his briefcase with black construction paper and walk the mile or so from his apartment to Riverside Park. There he would place a few of his silhouettes out for people to see with a handlettered sign that said, “Silhouettes, One Dollar.” People would stop, Gordon in his very soft voice would explain briefly what he would do. “Stand there,” he would say. “Look there.” As he was tearing and looking off into the distance, only occasionally glancing at the paper or his subject, Gordon would talk about Tom Mix or Roy Rogers or Superman or Tarzan. He knew they were characters portrayed by actors, or cartoon characters drawn by people. But in his mind they were also real people who once lived.

“How many Tarzan’s were there?” he would ask, then proceed to name them before you could answer. “Johnny Weismuller was the best Tarzan,” he would often proclaim. Or, “What do you think of Tom Mix?” No matter who the character, there was always only one theme to each day, be it Superman or Tarzan or Roy Rogers or Tom Mix. Each person who came along would be asked the same question.

As time went on and we interacted with Gordon more and more because of the film, he began to trust us more and more. We learned that he lived on Social Security and food stamps. He would only tear as many silhouettes in one month, for a dollar each, that would keep his extra income from affecting his social security check. Policies instituted during the 1980’s by the Reagan administration changed how that was structured, and one month Gordon didn’t receive his full social security check and was unable to pay his rent in full. Because his life skills were still being developed, this frightened him very badly and he was unable to tear silhouettes for a while, until his foster parents were able to help him restructure his budget.

Then he had a new theme as he was tearing people’s silhouettes in the park.

“What do you think of Ron Reagan?” he would ask his subject. No matter what the person would answer, Gordon had only one reply. “He’s a stinker.”

I thought of Gordon all last week. I know he would be watching television, and I can picture him in my mind looking at the festivities in honor of Reagan and saying to himself, “He’s a stinker.”

CKS/BL stinker rating: 93