What I Mean   Simon Ortiz  Agee, I don't mean that Agee, I mean
Agee from home He was just one of us, but a hero. I mean not in
a big way but real, because he was one of us.  He was a young
guy who never got beyond nineteen. We were the same age though
in school he was always behind and the teachers were always on
him for not doing well. Agee was always laughing and fooling
around and talking Indian (you couldn't do that) and making
English sound like Indian (you couldn't do that either) English
had to be English, and Indian was just Indian - the teachers so
much as said that to us.  Agee quit school in junior high and
went to work in the mines. He went to work because his family
was poor like all our families were poor. He was one of the
first guys from home in the mines and probably the youngest.
After high school when I started working for Kermac mill at
Ambrosia Lake, he was at Haystack working underground.  You know
it's funny - I mean this: teachers in school were always on him
because he couldn't read