Yes It Is, It’s True: I met Tea Party forerunner in 1980

Though I didn’t know it at the time, my first encounter with what later would evolve into the Tea Party occurred during my first year as an editor, in 1980.

I was still worried about being a good example of the Peter Principle, about not being up to the job of being editor of a small daily newspaper. So I was somewhat perplexed by how to deal with one Gar Dickerson, owner of a music store in Albion and owner of a farm in Sheridan Township.

Dickerson visited me personally to tell me all about his outrage that township officials had served him with a summons, charging he was in violation of the local junk car ordinance. Dickerson apparently had old farm machinery and some inoperable automobiles on his property, thus prompting the legal action.

I still remember his words to me, spoken with great anger: “It’s nothing less than land control, and we won’t tolerate it!”

Dickerson had a somewhat imposing appearance with his lengthy beard and long hair. I mistakenly took him for a neo-hippie, well before the rise in popularity of “Duck Dynasty,” a much more appropriate description.

Dickerson was the ringleader of a recall movement against the entire Sheridan Township Board and its constable for having the temerity to practice this land control against him. Eventually, all of the board members were spared the indignity at the polls, except for the constable, who served the summons on the morning of Thanksgiving in 1979.

Supervisor Marty Wellington told me privately that Dickerson wasn’t just an odd duck, that he was a member of a religious cult and his wife had given birth to their children on the kitchen table. Wellington grew to despise Dickerson, not surprisingly.

Then later in 1980, a new slate of officers was elected, with James Shimkus unseating Wellington as supervisor and Dickerson’s wife, Dorothy, elected clerk. In the runup to the election I tried to call Mrs. Dickerson at her home, and Gar answered, flatly stating, “She’s doin’ chores.”

I attended the Township Board meetings after the November elections and observed almost immediately the sessions were chaotic. People were speaking out of turn and loudly arguing with one another, so it seemed like nothing was getting done.

Shimkus, the subject of one of my first forceful editorials “Bang the Gavel, Mr. Supervisor!”), spent much of his time talking about tax reforms and demonstrating his admiration of Ronald Reagan in his many letters to the editor. Wellington was so upset by this outcome that he canceled his subscription to the Albion Evening Recorder, suggesting the local daily simply stood by and allowed the right-wing takeover of local government.

Albion City Attorney Joseph Wilcox referred to the new gang at Sheridan as “Paranoid Swine” and was not pleased to see their brand of politics spread to the city in 1983 with a proposal to eliminate the city manager form of government. The city manager was black.

Dickerson in 1982 placed his name on the ballot in 1982 for state representative under the banner of the Tisch Party, named after a right-wing drain commissioner from Shiawassee County who had a proposed the Tisch Amendement state-wide tax reform proposal turned away in 1978 because it polled fewer votes than its less radical rival, the Headlee Amendment.

The bottom line was that virtually nothing got done in local government in Sheridan Township for four years and the City of Albion went backward temporarily with pseudo-racist government. I left in 1984 for more money and greener pastures, and I was glad to get out of Dodge.

I researched and learned that Gar Dickerson died in 2014 at the age of 84.

Little did I know that I would some day encounter organized right-wing resistance again in 2009 and 2010 in the form of the Tea Party. The similarities between them and the “Paranoid Swine” was striking, except for the influence of fundamentalist and evangelical Christian politics.