WHEN TRADITION SITS AT OUR TABLE

WHEN TRADITION SITS AT OUR TABLE
A Constellation of Comfort Foods

As difficult as it may be to come up with an exact definition, those with whom I have raised the question had no trouble understanding what I mean by the term “comfort food”. Recently, I began asking the question of listeners to my weekly radio program (call-in’s went on for three weeks !), as well as folks I met in my daily comings and goings. In each case I asked what food dish rang a bell in the happiness center of their brain, and why. In most cases, the answer was immediate and certain, usually accompanied by a story or two.
At its heart, the question of food involves family, history, geography, tradition and ethnicity. Mostly, I found that a true “comfort food” is usually simple, uncomplicated fare, whose great value arises from origins not associated with the kitchens of some culinary institute. A New England friend of mine summed it up when he said, “whenever I tuck into a feast of Dundee pudding, my ancestors sit with me at my table, and when we pull a steaming crock of baked beans, made with onions and salt pork and love from the oven, it’s my great grandfather who passes the salt.”
And so you see, it is a very personal subject, allowing of no dispute, and striking close to a person’s heart and soul.
If, among my respondents, there was one dish which rose to the top it was meat loaf. That should come as no surprise, because researchers with time on their hands, report the same thing. I also found that peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches scored high, as they do nationally. Children who grew up in the homes of depression era, or just plain farm-family parents remember with great fondness meals of bread and milk; my own wife is one of those. Like myself, many callers continue to be warmed by memories of coming home from school or chores to find a hot bowl of cream-of-tomato soup and a toasted cheese sandwich waiting.
Most people take a moment to think before answering so profound a question, but one local businessman, hard at a task in front of him needed no more than a split second: “hand-cranked vanilla ice cream on Sunday evenings”. When invited to give it more thought or add a second favorite, he stated flatly, “No, that’s it”, thereby underlining what I pointed out on the notion of the deeply-held certitude attached to the personal nature of food traditions.
People who grew up or have roots in other parts of the country reveal the geographic nature of food proclivities, such as a friend from Louisiana who grows absolutely poetic when describing his love for Gumbo, rich with real andouille sausage and accompanied by red beans and rice. (To which I say, “Amen !”) I grew up with a neighbor boy whose parents were immigrants from Hungary, the father a painter of scenery for the New York Opera House. Once, when visiting Sandor, I was invited to a table, at the center of which sat a huge, ornamental bowl filled with a sumptuous Hungarian goulash, redolent of the paprika seasoning which infused its mystical ingredients. In later life, I have tried in vain to duplicate that unforgettable dish which still claims a special place in my culinary soul.
I have a special interest in and affection for the Amish people, and the whole wide world of “Pennsylvania Dutch” food tradition. While they have some commonality, the two are not necessarily the same. That said, I greatly appreciate a chance to sit down to a Sunday roast long-and-slow-baked over a lake of blackened vinegar and dried cherry gravy, and served with mashed potatoes and sweet-and-sour red cabbage. And nothing gladdens my heart more than a side of Amish buttermilk biscuits covered with a layer of apple butter, and topped with Schmeerkasse, a creamed cottage cheese dear to the heart of Lancaster county farm folk. A large helping of sorghum-rich Shoo-fly pie, fresh from the oven not only touches my psyche, but never fails to enhance my sense of luxury and well-being.
Utah has its own claim to some notable food traditions, from deep-fried scones, which give a new definition to a word with a different meaning in the Scotch and English world, funeral potatoes and of course Dutch oven upside-down cake. Perhaps less-known is an old-time Utah dish composed of mashed potatoes smothered with chicken and noodles, or just plain noodles.
The long list of true American comfort foods includes, but is not limited to, Mac-and-cheese; turkey and stuffing; chicken noodle soup; eggs and bacon; hot dogs; hamburgers in all their myriad forms; fried green tomatoes; root beer floats; corned beef-and-cabbage; and if you have a touch of southern blood in your veins fried catfish and hush puppies, and certainly biscuits and sausage gravy with a side of grits and collard greens.
As for me, if really pinned down I have to vote for apple pie and cheddar cheese. (Three kinds of apples, and white cheddar, aged at least three years. Thank You) !

Known as “cranberry” or “October” beans to New Englanders, a serving of these marvels, cooked while still in the green state is a comfort food today, just as it was for Thomas Jefferson who also grew them at Monticello, an example of history and geography in every spoonful.

LIEUTENANT ONODA’S WAR

Within months of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7th, 1941, Japanese Imperial troops had conquered and occupied much of the southwestern Pacific, captured the “impregnable” British fortress of Singapore, and laid claim to the petroleum and rubber-rich Dutch East Indies. By June, the last U.S. troops holding to a small piece of Bataan had surrendered, and the Philippines were in the hands of Japan’s rampaging forces. Even as the U.S. Navy prevented the impending fall of strategic Midway Island, Japanese troops landed and established a foothold on Kiska and Attu in the Aleutians, threatening both coastal Alaska and the American west coast as well as sea routes across the north Pacific.
Because we enjoy the benefits of “rear-view vision”, it is easy for historians of today to see that the battle of Midway in June, 1942 was the turning point in the Pacific war. Japan was never again able to resume the offensive, and while the U.S. military capacity was expanding month by month, Imperial Japan had lost the core of its Pacific fleet, and the best of its most experienced airmen by the end of that first summer. The successful amphibious landings on Guadalcanal signaled the beginning of the so-called island-hopping campaign which would ultimately take U.S. forces to the very home waters of the “Land of The Rising Sun”. Knowing this, it might be difficult for those of us who study World War II history to recognize that the enemy did not see things that way. To the Japanese people and members of her fighting forces, who were never permitted to have access to war news, defeat was an inconceivable concept. A century of militarism and a military culture imbued with Yamato damashii (Japanese Warrior Spirit) made surrender an unthinkable eventuality. Undoubtedly, some Japanese fighting men took this ancient code more seriously than did others, and that brings us to one of the most compelling stories to come to us from the steaming jungles of that faraway but not so long-ago conflict.
Hirro Onoda became a soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army in 1941, at the age of nineteen. Trained as an Intelligence Officer, he found himself in December, 1944 serving his Emperor in the Philippines at a time when things were not going well there for his side. On October 20th, General Douglas MacArthur himself had waded ashore at Leyte, as Americans and Australians began the bloody campaign to retake the country MacArthur had previously called “home”, and to which he had famously promised to “return”. On December 26th, Onoda was put ashore on the island of Lubang, a jungle-clad strip of land situated about 75 air miles southwest of Manila. He was given direct orders from his commanding officer, Major Taniguchi to rally other soldiers on the 80-square-mile island in its defense, with the added words, “under no circumstances will you surrender, nor are you to take your own life”.
An American and Filipino invasion force finally got around to Lubang island on Feb. 28, 1945 quickly killing or capturing the Japanese garrison; all that is except for Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda and three other soldiers he took with him to hide in the hills. Unlike the ordinary Japanese fighting man, Onoda had received special training in guerilla warfare, and with his small band he set about doing just that.
On August 15th, 1945, the people of Japan heard the voice of Emperor Hirohito on their radios for the first time, but what surprised them most was his announcement that the war was over. The Empire of Japan had accepted terms agreed to with the enemy. Just two weeks later, on Sept. 2nd, the instrument of surrender would be formally signed on the veranda deck of the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo harbor in a simple ceremony that took only 23 minutes.
In October, Lt. Onoda and his men saw the first leaflet claiming that the war was over, but since they had been fired upon several days before, they discounted it. Still later, leaflets were dropped on them from U.S. aircraft, demanding surrender, but the soldiers were sure it was just one more Allied hoax. One member of the small band walked away in September, 1949, and after six months on his own, surrendered to Filipino forces. In 1952, letters and photos from their families back in Japan were dropped to them, but they continued their guerilla activities, disrupting transportation, burning rice fields, and firing on “the enemy” whenever they had the chance. The last of Onoda’s team fell to police gun fire in October, 1972, leaving Lieutenant Onoda on his own to continue his duties as a soldier of Nippon, living off the country and shooting a cow now and then for extra protein.
In February, 1974, Onoda’s whereabouts were uncovered by a young Japanese student who had been searching for him. Norio Suzuki befriended and won the confidence of the bearded warrior, but found he did not have the kind of authority Lt. Onoda would accept. Armed with photos and details of his encounter, Suzuki was able to arrange a meeting on Lubong between Onoda and his former commander, Major Taniguchi, now a humble bookseller in Japan.
Finally, on March 9th, 1974, Hiroo Onada, Second Lieutenant, Japanese Imperial Army, dressed in uniform and with his sword at his side, laid down his perfectly-maintained arms and ammunition, and with tears streaming down his face, accepted the fact that his country had been defeated, and he must surrender. Lieutenant Onoda’s War had finally come to an end almost thirty years after the official end of hostilities. He had spent 33 of his 52 years under arms in the service of his country.
Onoda found life in modern Japan difficult, and became a cattle rancher in Brazil, where he and his wife raised a family and lived for several years. In 1996 he returned to Lubang Island, where he donated $10,000 to the local school. As far as I know, he is still alive and would be 88 years old.

Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda emerged from the mountains of Lubang 29 years after the end of World War II. He was pardoned by the Philippine President and has devoted much of his life to working with youth.

JIMMY STEWART – AMERICAN PATRIOT

Brigadier General Jimmy Stewart wearing the star which was a capstone to more than 27 years of devoted service. Stewart died at his home in Beverly Hills July 2nd, 1997 at the age of 89.

He was born James Maitland Stewart, on May 20th, 1908 in a Pennsylvania town with the confusing name of Indiana. Known from the beginning as “Jimmy”, he grew up in small town America, working in the family hardware store, singing in the church choir, and playing the accordion at Sunday evening “family nights” He is fondly remembered – and will long be remembered – as one of Hollywood’s most famous and well-loved actors. Tall, trim, handsome and modest, he projected the very image of the characters he portrayed in such movies as It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, both on and off the stage or the Big Screen. His cadre of close friends included the likes of Henry Fonda, (with whom he shared living quarters in New York, and later in Hollywood), Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, Ginger Rogers, and other Hollywood luminaries. That is one side of Jimmy Stewart; the side well known to several generations of movie-goers, and those who today, still watch the late-night reruns of hits that never lose their luster.
From an early age, young Jimmy was fascinated by aviation, and while a high school student, he was captivated by his first fifteen minute flight with a barnstorming pilot, in return for the fifteen dollars, (one dollar per minute), he had been saving from odd jobs all summer for the opportunity. Jimmy’s sometimes overbearing father, Alex Stewart gave his permission reluctantly, so worried that his son might be injured that he insisted on bringing along the family doctor, who sat with him in the car with the engine running until his son was back safely on the ground. For Jimmy, his feet never really touched the ground again.
With a Princeton degree in architecture, some acting roles on Broadway, and a contract with MGM in Hollywood behind him, his love for airplanes found some fulfillment when he obtained a pilot’s license, and began accruing flying time, even competing in a coast-to-coast air race as co-pilot. He flew regularly, out of a then-modest airstrip known as Minesfield, now known as LAX; Los Angeles International Airport.
What should have been the best of times for Stewart, who had just starred in The Philadelphia Story, became a time of uneasiness, as the war in Europe took on a new urgency, and as old Hollywood friends, like David Niven, Laurence Olivier and Leslie Howard left to fight for their English homeland. In the face of an isolationist sentiment which dominated America, Jimmy decided that he should not wait until the inevitable happened to join the military. His decision was opposed not only by his ever-concerned father, but his boss at MGM. He tried to explain, “It may sound corny, but what’s wrong with wanting to fight for your country. Why are people reluctant to use the word patriotism ?”
When he tried to enlist, he was rejected as underweight for his height-weight ratio. Only after an appeal to the Army, and an assist from a body-building expert he knew did he become “Private James Stewart” on March 22, 1941. He was 34 years of age and Pearl Harbor was still nine months in the future. The other side of the Jimmy Stewart story was about to begin.
From the start, Stewart never sought to receive special treatment. As an enlisted man, he soldiered right alongside his much younger peers through Army basic training. He applied for flight school, and since he already had both private and commercial pilot’s licenses, and hundreds of hours of flight time, he was assigned to train at Moffet Field near San Francisco. As he progressed through training and an assignment with a strategic bombing squadron flying the B-17 Flying Fortress, he found that the high profile nature of his background played against him, as his superiors sought to “protect” him from a combat role, seeing him as a possible asset in the area of public relations, war bond sales, and recruitment efforts. At a crucial point in his chosen USAAF career, he discovered that a “hold” order in his file was keeping commanders from giving him a combat assignment. In what was the only time Jimmy Stewart ever asked for a favor from anyone, he finally got the “hold” order to disappear.
When he finally joined the Eighth Air Force in England, it was not in B-17s, but in the unlovely B-24 Liberator which he came to love with a pilot’s passion. On November 25th, 1943, Captain Jimmy Stewart brought the 703rd Bomb Squadron he had trained, and now commanded to East Anglia, where they joined the 445th Bomb Group at Tibenham. Jimmy Stewart quickly proved himself, not just as an excellent pilot, but as a leader. Soon, as a major, he was the Group Operations Officer, planning missions for hundreds of 8th Air Force bombers, still later becoming the Group Commander, involved in thousand-plane missions. In each of these positions, he inspired great confidence and trust among those he commanded.
By the summer of 1945, now Colonel Jimmy Stewart commanded the entire 2nd Air Division, where he continued to play an important role in proving the concept of Daylight Precision Bombing in the war against Nazi Germany. Long after he no longer was expected to fly on missions, he continued to show up at take-off time to fly with one of the crews. He made sure these missions did not get added to the official twenty already in his record.
Asked to sum up what those he served with thought of him, one who flew with him said: “James Stewart was one person that if his life ever touched yours, you could never forget him.”
Jimmy Stewart – Broadway actor, movie star, accordion-player, husband and father and one-time Army Private, also made his mark as a leader of others, going on to fly little-known jet combat missions in Viet Nam, retiring from the U.S. Air Force Reserve June 1, 1968 as Brigadier General Jimmy Stewart To quote Jimmy ….”why are people reluctant to use the word patriotism ?”.

ECHOES FROM A LONG AGO ENCOUNTER

A scene photographed by Al Cooper during a recent visit to South Korea is reminiscent of the farm house in which he shared that unexpected meal nearly sixty years ago.

The village of Chi Hyang Ri was little more than a clutch of old-style, thatched buildings nestled among rice paddies just south of the 38th parallel in war-torn South Korea. The fighting had raged across the area in three campaigns, as that piece of farming country was occupied by succeeding sets of victors. Even as I arrived in-country in the Fall of 1952, the area was scarred by trenches and “fighting holes”, and pock-marked by craters in which live ordnance could be a hazard anywhere outside the barbed wire which circled our encampment. The village was occupied by a few hardy inhabitants, some of whom had fled from the north. They scraped what must have been a skimpy living from the rice harvest gleaned from paddies they worked hard to restore to a pre-war level.
The small unit of U.S. Air Force forward observers and close-air ground support controllers to which I was assigned carried out our mission mostly from a nearby mountain top named Kookla-bong, known to us merely as “Radar Hill”, several very long and dangerous miles north of the village next to which we had our living quarters. Our association with the local people, therefore, was very limited outside of the handful who worked for us as contract employees.
Returning to our tent area from a security inspection in the field one day, I was walking on a well-worn path which snaked its way between rice paddies and dwelling places when I met an elderly Korean gentleman. After exchanging bows and polite greetings, he motioned toward a thatched-roof building from which a thin ribbon of smoke and cooking smells escaped. I knew little Korean, but this native of the area knew enough English to make conversation possible. Motioning for me to follow, he led me to the small courtyard just off the path to introduce me to his wife, who bowed deeply, obviously honored that I should pause to visit them. With much pointing and smiling, they invited me to sit with them around a cooking fire and what was clearly their dinner. I tried to beg my leave, not wanting to intrude on the intimacy of their meal time, but I wished also not to disrespect such a sincere invitation.
The main dish was rice, with cooked soy beans. My clumsy attempts with chop sticks could not match the natural dexterity with which my hosts maneuvered the food from bowl to mouth. My obvious discomfort brought first smiles, then giggles from Mamma san. Rising to her feet and disappearing for a moment, she returned carrying a spoon which she generously handed to me. It was a very old, handmade utensil, carefully forged from brass and shaped by hand, probably by some long-ago craftsman, and it saved me from further embarrassment. The rest of the meal was marked mostly by the hard-to-hide pleasure my presence somehow brought to the residents of this humble, dirt-floored abode. For reasons I was too young and immature to appreciate at the time, sharing their meal with an American soldier who was a stranger to their beleaguered land represented for them a moment of honor. So much so that upon my departure, they forced me to take as a gift the ancient and valued spoon with which I had partaken of their own generous hospitality. I understood that this was the kind of gift one could not refuse without offense. And so over the years, I have kept the brass spoon in a box containing mementoes from my life, a repository I refer to as my “treasure chest”.
In connection with the Utah Veterans’ visit to South Korea in 2009, the story of the spoon became part of a film documentary produced by Korean National Television which has been shown widely across that country. That fact leads to the second part of this nearly sixty-year-old story.
Among those citizens of South Korea who watched the documentary was 28-year-old Kang Hur of Seoul, whose parents had lived through the war but who, himself, had been born long afterward. For Kang, the film brought about an awakening to the realization that he had become so comfortable with the freedom he inherited, that he had failed to experience the deep sense of gratitude which now overwhelmed him. For Kang, revisiting the history of United States intervention brought about an epiphany, and for some reason, he was especially touched by the story of the spoon. All of this is recorded in a letter he sent to me by way of Mrs. Sunny Lee, a Korean-American friend and neighbor, who had been the moving force behind both the Veterans’ Revisit and the documentary. With her own emotions impossible to hide, Sunny translated the touching letter for Shirley and me. The two-page letter itself is a thing of beauty, elegantly hand-printed with great precision in Korean characters. The letter had been attached to an attractive gift box, in which lay nestled an incredibly-beautiful matched pair of engraved, gold-plated Korean spoons and chop sticks.
The 2010 gift of sparkling gold has taken its place near my “treasure chest” and next to the 1952 gift of hammered brass. And Kang Hur’s heartfelt letter sings to me like an echo of that long-ago moment in time.

ARCHITECTURE DESIGNED BY EXPERIENCE

As I write this column, more than one million people in the northeast corner of the U.S. are without electric power, inundated by two or three feet of unexpected, late season snow, and sheltering from winds gusting up to hurricane speeds. Numerous are the personal “horror stories” being penned by observers describing the hardships growing out of the succession of such meteorological events which have made the winter of 2009-10 one of the most memorable in history. In some cases we hear of community evacuations being ordered by harried emergency responders, not because of any life-threatening scenario, but because householders had run out of food and the ability to stay warm.
Because I grew up in that country, I can easily picture how all of this impacts a modern, commuting society whose very technological genius leaves them relatively helpless when mother nature decides to “play hardball”. An earlier generation – one I often think of as “the hardiest generation” comes to mind as I read and ponder today’s media stories. I consider myself fortunate to have grown up on a Vermont hillside farm at a moment in time when I could easily look over one shoulder into the best of those rapidly-disappearing times, still peopled by staunch, proud “Yankees” whose roots were sunk deep in the rocky soil and harsh climate of the land they loved, and who had learned through long experience to take care of themselves and their neighbors in good times and in bad.
The very architecture of rural New England is a reflection of all that earlier generations had learned and passed on. A good example of that is the long, low interconnected farmstead still seen here and there, anchored by a center-chimney Cape style residence at one end, a commodious barn at the other, and with what I think of as an “hierarchy” of working structures in between. Built in the last decade of the 1800s, my own home place was just such a fortress.
The center chimney Cape is a veritable symbol of New England, with a roof (often slate-shingled), steep enough to shed rain and snow efficiently, but without long overhanging eaves to invite ice build-up and hinder run-off. The central location of the chimney not only insures uniform heat distribution, but permits two or more fireplace or stove flues to vent through it, including the upstairs. Often a smaller annex will be built on one end to house a kitchen or other room.
The kitchen of our family’s home place was by far the busiest room of the house, with six doorways leading to other parts of the house and ¬– most important of all – to the connected wood shed.
The wood shed connected to the shop, the shop to the equipment shelter, and from there it was only a few footsteps to the barn and milk house. No matter how blizzardy, wet or icy the outdoor environment, one could make the round trip journey between house and farm duties with ease. Freezing rain storms were an annual reminder of what far-sighted people engineered that thoroughfare, especially in the pitch black of a stormy night. With or without electricity, life continued without serious interruption.
Many of Vermont’s old barns have been abandoned, and the connecting buildings removed as unnecessary eye-catchers. Nowadays, as I roam the back roads of a land I love, I keep an eye peeled for survivors. And I still remember with fondness how good it made me feel to look out from an occasional window at the storm-tossed outdoors, while sheltered within an architectural wonder designed with “mother nature” in mind.



Shadowed by century-old sugar maples, a classic center chimney cape near Shrewsbury,Vermont is an Al Cooper Favorite. A red-painted wood shed hides behind the kitchen annex.
Al Cooper photo

REQUIEM FOR A MASTER CRAFTSMAN

All too often we are reminded of the old adage “all good things must come to an end”¬. The downside of mortal longevity is an increasing awareness that bits and pieces of our personal world - the very stuff we feed upon for our own sense of continuity - are being eroded by the passage of time. I thought about this recently when I learned of the death of an old friend I never met in person.
I read my first Robert B. Parker mystery novel back in 1973, with publication of “The Godwulf Manuscript”, in which a wise-cracking, straight-talking, elegantly-sarcastic, Boston tough-guy named Spenser (no first name) strode onto the literary scene. Now, thirty-nine Spenser novels later, the series I hoped would never end has ended with the death in Boston of Robert B. Parker at the age of 77. Those who are non-readers may recall the popular television series of the ‘80s known as “Spenser For Hire”, a take-off on the inimitable character invented and fine-tuned by Parker.
Parker was at his best in the characterization of the cast of always-compelling personalities who populated the pages of his prolific output. Beside the deadpan but deftly-sardonic Spencer, one could always anticipate some gently-needling ebonic input from his tall, powerful, and streetwise black friend “Hawk”, whose dark side never endangered his absolute sense of loyalty. Spenser’s one true love, Susan, was always close by and yet ever-independent; his “on-site psycho-therapist” and paramour.
There was another – always faithful – presence in Spenser’s small circle of confidants, and her name was “Pearl”. Whether occupying her spot at one end of the couch at Spenser’s apartment or the lone soft chair in his Boston office, the German Short Hair pointer was ever ready to display her approval or disapproval of almost everything her “alpha leader” did or said. Unless she was away for an “over-nighter” at Susan’s place.
Along with Spenser, another of my favorite – and more recent - Parker characters would have to be Jesse Stone, a “washed-out” former Los Angeles detective trying to escape from his alcoholism by taking a job as Police Chief of a small seaside Massachusetts town. Five of the six Jesse Stone novels have found their way into made-for-TV movies starring Tom Selleck, in one of those unusual collaborations where the inspired casting, moody cinematography and haunting background music produce a movie rivaling the book which spawned it. Once again, a silent, but most expressive dog, whose eyes fill with an evocative disappointment every time his master clinks a bottle to a glass, is cast in a supporting role.
Proving that he is a master of more than one genre, Parker has also written four westerns, built around two nomadic not-quite-lawmen known as Everett Hitch and his shotgun-wielding side kick Virgil Cole. Appaloosa introduced the series in 2005, followed by Resolution, and Brimstone, with a 2010 release, Blue-Eyed Devil.
In 1999 actress Helen Hunt asked Parker to write a story introducing a female private eye with the expectation that she would play the role in a motion picture. Nothing ever came of the movie, but Parker’s publisher liked it, and the popular Sunny Randall series was born. Between 2000 and 2007, Robert Parker’s loyal followers were treated to seven of these “unexpected” mystery gems.
Bob Parker’s eclectic talent embraced a number of fields, yielding in all, more than 60 books – both fiction and non-fiction - over the years, including several co-written with his film-maker wife Joan. In 1989’s Poodle Springs, he completed a manuscript begun by the late Raymond Chandler, and his Perchance to Dream (1991) was a sequel to Chandler’s Big Sleep.
Perhaps more than any other fiction writer of his time, Mr. Parker has been an inspiration to a large handful of successful mystery authors whose books grace the shelves of book stores and libraries today. . . and tomorrow. He religiously wrote ten pages a day, six days a week, without self editing or re-reading, sometimes – he said – not knowing who was guilty until the final chapter. His wife would read it over to make sure he hadn’t “embarrassed himself”, and then he would “send it off, and start the next book.” Honored by his peers over and over again, his books have sold 4.5 million copies world-wide.
Robert Brown Parker died at his writing desk, at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts January 18, 2010 at the age of 77. He and his wife Joan had known each other since childhood, and been married for 53 years. They have two sons.
And, oh yes. . . over their years together they have enjoyed the companionship of a succession of German Short Hair Pointers. And every one has been named Pearl.


Al Cooper can be heard each Monday at 4:00 PM on Cedar City’s KSUB, 590 AM

THE INGLORIOUS DEATH OF AN OCEAN QUEEN

The distinctive “clipper” bow and three broad stacks mark the image of France’s proud luxury liner “Normandie” at sea. It could make an Atlantic crossing in 4 days.

Seafaring folk are generally a superstitious lot who honor the counsel of tradition and folk law. One of the most cherished and time-honored of such is the unwritten commandment that decrees: “thou shalt not change the name of a vessel” ( from that with which it was christened and launched). I do not consider myself a superstitious person, but I have read enough salt-stained literature, and been around coastal sailors enough to say that if I were ever lucky enough to see fulfillment of a long-time dream of owning and converting an old Beal’s Island lobster boat, I would think twice about renaming it. To do so –according to the salty wisdom of some of my “Down East” friends- would be to court the worst kind of bad luck. More about that in a few paragraphs.
At the height of the “roaring 20s”, the popularity of transatlantic travel approached its zenith, fueled by the mood of a more affluent society on both sides of the pond, and the thirst of alcohol-deprived Americans weary of an unpopular Prohibition at home. Competition between the shipyards of England and France led to the laying of keels for some of the greatest luxury liners of all time – an era that saw the French eager to take the “Blue Riband” for speed, and admiration for beauty of design last earned by Italy’s Rex.
And so it was against this background that France launched Normandie on the 29th of October, 1932, three years to the day after Wall Street’s big “crash”, and at a time when England’s superliner - later christened Queen Mary- languished in the builders’ yard for want of funding.
On her maiden Atlantic crossing in May, 1935, Normandie set a new speed record of close to 32 knots, thanks to four turbo-electric engines of more than 160,000 hp – still today the most powerful ever to see ocean service. In its final version, those shafts would turn four 4-bladed propellers weighing 24 tons each! Thanks to a uniquely-shaped “clipper” bow, and a bulbous, but invisible, underwater forefoot, the 80,000 ton, 1,029-foot long superliner literally sliced its way through even a rough sea with hardly a bow wave to mark its passage.
Hidden inside her artificial third funnel was much of the operational infrastructure which otherwise would have used up deck space now designed for passenger pleasure. With two swimming pools, interior ballrooms with vaulted ceilings, apartments with baby grand pianos, and statuary and wall art found in great museums, Normandie’s 2000 passengers traveled in the kind of luxury never before found at sea. Their needs were further assured by a working crew of more than 1300.
As a young boy, I sometimes got to accompany an aunt and uncle to a “Bon Voyage Party” for friends departing New York on one or another of the big liners. We would spend a short time on board before returning to the pier, and watching as a band played and Port of New York fire boats rendered their unique salute to the debarking vessel. On one such visit to pier 88, I was privileged to admire the high decks of the adjacent Normandie, a balsa-wood model of which lay half-finished on my brothers’ work bench at home.
Normandie, (and you’ll notice that in the French tradition, we do not precede the ship’s name with a “the”, as we might for an English language nomination), made 139 transatlantic crossings westbound before the arrival of World War II in Europe. The fall of France in June, 1940 found Normandie docked in New York harbor. Even though a neutral country, the United States government was loathe to allow the great liner to fall into the hands of the German navy. Under the provisions of a set of international rules of war known as the “vagary” law, it is legal for a neutral country to seize assets belonging to one of the belligerent powers under certain circumstances. Thus, Normandie was kept from making the 139th eastbound voyage to a France which was now divided between the German-occupied north and a so-called “Free” sector, watched over by a “puppet” French care-taker at Vichey.
The U.S. Navy took possession of Normandie, renaming it The U.S.S. Lafayette. At first they planned to convert it into an aircraft carrier, for which its design made it a good candidate. Ultimately though, the need for troop ships outweighed other options and the massive overhaul was underway.
I don’t ordinarily keep a mental record of such mundane milestones as hair- cuts, but I remember one as if it was last week. It was February 9th, 1942, and I was waiting for my turn in DeNicio’s barber shop in my home town on the New Jersey palisades when a passer-by came storming in with word that something really bad was happening: “Maybe” he wondered,” the Germans have bombed New York City”. We all followed him out to the sidewalk to stare at the huge column of black smoke filling the sky to the east of us. Beneath that pall of smoke, we learned, lay the former Normandie, now the USS Lafayette; victim of a welder’s torch.
The Russian-born engineer who had designed the ship told the fire supervisor to open the vessel’s seacocks, admitting the sea water, thus allowing the ship to settle to the shallow bottom in place. It would then have been possible for the fire boats to concentrate water directly on the fire. Ignoring his advice, the Admiral in charge and his men watched helplessly as the entire ship became involved in fire, finally turning turtle the next day from the fire-boats’ fruitless bombardment of tons of water.
Several days later, my Dad took me to a viewing site from which we could look down on the overturned wreckage of the once- proud luxury liner. I was nine years of age. My country had been at war for two months. And I wondered what lay ahead.

AMERICA’S FIVE THOUSAND¬YEAR- OLD SNACK FOOD

Among the food gifts brought to that first Thanksgiving feast at the Plymouth Colony back in 1621 by the Wampanoag Indians, was an item whose long-term significance could not even have been guessed at by that gathering of delighted English expatriates. In fact the brother of Massasoit¬- who was probably the donor of that gift- would have had no idea himself that his handful of familiar seeds already represented a food history reaching back to the most ancient of this continent’s civilizations. In pre-historic Peru, the Aztecs popped corn from tiny, intact cobs roasted on a stick, and Cortez probably observed its daily use. Kernels recovered from excavations near Mexico City had been so well preserved that they still held enough moisture to pop when recovered centuries later.
To the colonists, the seeds looked no different than those which had already become an important grain replacement for their ill-suited barley plantings, thanks to their new Indian friends. Maise – or “Indian Corne” as they called it - would become a food mainstay for the Plymouth colony, and ultimately, much of the rest of the world. The Pilgrims had probably already noticed the decorative necklaces sometimes worn by Native American women, seemingly made from strings of strange white “puffs”. Now they were to see how those puffs were made as the Wampanoags placed these particular maise seeds in ceramic pots buried in the hot coals.
At that long-ago harvest feast, the new settlers not only learned about “popping corn” and its magical qualities, but they were also introduced to the confection which resulted from coating those white puffs with thickened maple syrup. In fact, those colonists may also deserve the credit for inventing the whole idea of cold breakfast cereal made from “puffed grains” when they added sugar and cream to popped corn for their first meal of the day.
During the depression years of the 1920s and 30s, when ordinary candies and confections became a luxury for most Americans, popped corn really came into its own. While country families had long enjoyed the starchy novelty as a matter of nightly course, residents of cities and towns got theirs from street vendors, whose entrepreneurial drive rewarded them handsomely. After all, who couldn’t find a few pennies or even a nickel for a bag of popped corn, when there was so little else to take their minds off the hard times they were experiencing. One of my fond memories is shopping in a nearby town whose main street was usually plied by a colorfully-dressed “organ grinder”, who played music from his mechanical music box, and sold red hot peanuts and popcorn while a pet monkey sat on his shoulders, holding out a small hat into which I would happily drop my nickel allowance for the street treat.
The movie theatres of the day at first tried to shoo away the vendors who would work the waiting ticket lines, where the pickings were easy. It didn’t take the showmen long to discover that inviting the vendors into the lobby, and splitting the “take” with them was a better idea. Of course we all know what the next step was !
When Frederick William Reuckheim stepped off the ship from his native Germany in the late 1800s, he was quick to catch on to the eating foibles of his new neighbors. After saving up his hard-earned money as a farm laborer until he had the $200. necessary to purchase a steam-powered popping machine, he began selling popcorn to the workers pouring into Chicago to support the giant rebuilding effort following the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. Two years later, and joined by his brother Louis from Germany, he invested in candy-making equipment in order to turn sugar into marshmallow, and the brothers expanded their product line.
After several moves and setbacks, they finally perfected their marriage of popcorn, peanuts and molasses in time for the 1893 Chicago World Fair. It was an immediate hit and an enthusiastic sales person exclaimed his opinion with the words “that is a crackerjack!”. The brothers liked that enough that they copyrighted it.
In those early years, Crackerjacks were sold in large tubs for eating fresh on the spot, but that would change when an inventive genius named Henry Eckstein joined the Reuckheim brothers, bringing with him the idea of making boxes treated with a wax protective coating. The red, white and blue color scheme came with WW I, and the sailor boy with his dog, was a salute to Frederick’s grandson who – sadly – died shortly after the box was introduced. Beginning in 1912, the legendary “prize” in every box was added.
What is thought to be the most valuable bit of free advertising ever associated with a named product was born on a subway train in 1908, when Vaudeville notable Jack Norworth was inspired by a sign advertising an upcoming baseball game. His friend, composer Albert VonTilzer wed music to Norworth’s verse, and “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”was the offspring. Interestingly neither had ever seen a baseball game, and wouldn’t for another two or three decades.
The song that features the lament. . . and buy me some peanuts and crackerjack is considered by music historians to be a true American folk song; one which – like the molasses-covered popcorn it celebrates – is part of the story which sweetens our national memory and a five thousand-year-old gift to the world.

Even Henry Ford contributed to the national craze for hot peanuts and popcorn with this
classic Model “T” vending truck on display at the Transportation Museum at Owl’s Head Maine.

THE THIEF WE CALL TIME

In Jonathan Swift’s classic tale, Gulliver’s Travels there is a memorable scene in which the sleeping “giant” who has fallen among them is being bound and examined by a swarm of Lilliputions. They are curious about a large round object on a chain which has slipped from his pocket. It is emitting a continuous and mysterious ticking sound. One wise citizen of Lilliput thinks he knows what the great machine is. “I believe it must be his god, for those like him consult it before making all decisions. It guides their very lives”, he explains.
There is one school of historians who think that the clock is actually the invention that ushered in the great industrial revolution rather than the steam engine. If that is true, we probably have the Benedictine monks of Europe to thank. The practice of their faith required adherence to a set schedule of daily activities, dividing their time between work, prayer, sleep and betterment. Their ethic embraced the concept of social organization and stressed the spirit of an ordered life. In the absence of spoken communications, the ringing of bells defined each activity. It was of course, an inexact system, until someone came up with the invention of a device made up of rotating cogs driven by a descending weight which in turn caused a clapper to strike a bell, thus taking the guesswork out of time-keeping. In fact the very word clocke comes from the old Dutch word for “bell”.
It was not long before villagers caught on to the advantages of the monks’ system and asked their local officials to install similar mechanisms in the center of their communities, for the benefit of all. The addition of a numbered face, with a moving hour hand, and a pendulum followed in the mid 1600s. At first, no one worried very much about mere minutes, and it was not until the expanding textile trades began employing a large work force that the 60-minute hour became more commonplace.
The further subdivision of minutes into seconds, long important to astronomers and navigators, began to be appreciated by the watch-makers of the mid 1700s, although truth be told, the 60-second minute, and 60-minute hour can be traced back to the Babylonians as early as 300 BC.
In the end though, it was the coming of the railroads which really made the whole business of time-keeping a matter of national and even international relevance. Even in the mid-1800s, there was no uniformity of of time-keeping across America and Canada, with each community setting its own arbitrary system, depending usually upon where the sun stood at noon-time. The “father” of standardized time was probably a Canadian railroad engineer, Sir Sandford Fleming, who in 1878 suggested a system of 24 worldwide time zones. Eventually it was agreed that the starting line would be the longitude running through Greenwich, England (thus GMT or Greenwich mean time). This conveniently placed the international date line in the middle of the Pacific ocean where it wouldn’t bifurcate any country.
Even today, some time anomalies persist. The vastness of China for instance, should have five time zones, yet the entire country chooses to have but one. Some countries have half-hour time zones, including the central region of Australia, and there is a place where the corners of Norway/Finland, Norway/Russia and Russia/Finland meet where you can be in three time zones at the same time.
Despite all the organizational attempts of a world which now measures time in nano-seconds and observes regular “leap seconds” to compensate for minute changes in the earth’s rotation, humans still respond to a circadian rhythm as ancient as the race. I had to deal with this in the summer of 2009 as I traveled across the International Date Line and twelve time zones twice in a single week. Sometimes I think Native Americans knew ageless truths the rest of us have forgotten in our pursuit of “progress”. This month for instance, would be the “Hard time to build a fire” Moon for the Nez Perce, or “The Moon When The Geese Come Home” for the Omaha; a practical time system linked to tradition, the cycles of nature and long-established folkways.
Some years ago, I was in attendance at an annual gathering of Crow Indian people in Montana when the host, with the aid of a microphone, made an announcement reminding the 500 tribal members of the forthcoming barbecue dinner. “ It will be at 4:00 PM ”, he said “or maybe at noon”. No one around me evidenced any confusion at what I thought must be some mistake. In the end, it took place at neither appointed hour, but at 2:30 PM. And everyone magically showed up.
The late Calvin Rutsrum in his book, “Chips From a Wilderness Log”, told of two trappers meeting at a Canadian trading post before making the long trip to their respective trapping cabins at the beginning of the new season. The white man asked his old Chippewa friend standing by his loaded canoe, how long it would take him to complete his journey. “Oh, three, maybe four days” he said.
Pointing proudly at a nearby float plane with a canoe strapped to one pontoon, the first man boasted “I will be at mine in four hours.”
With undisguised puzzlement on his face, the Indian asked . . . WHY ?
Amplifying on the point he wished to make, Rutstrum went on to write: “Our infatuation with speed and getting to a destination quickly, often forces us to bypass many of life’s most valuable and profound experiences”.
Glancing at the clock, I see it is time to close this column.

THE SAD, SAD ROAD TO TREBLINKA

In the spring of 1945, during the closing days of World War II, at a place known locally as Ettersberg Hill in eastern Germany, advance elements of the U.S. 8th Army broke through the gates and barbed wire of a prison facility called Buchenwald. What the battle-hardened American soldiers found there would not only live forever in their memories, but would make of the name itself an epithet on the lips of generations to follow. In its eight-year history as a prisoner “work camp”, the crematorium and surrounding forests of Buchenwald had witnessed the disposal of the bodies of at least 56,000 of the quarter million slave-laborers who had toiled there. The American liberators were met by 28,000 emaciated survivors.
As terrible as were the grizzly statistics carefully recorded in the German captors’ daily logs, they paled in comparison with the lists just as meticulously maintained by other “camps”- especially those master-minded by Heinrich Himmler and created as part of the infamous “Operation Reinhard”. Such facilities as those at Sobibor, Chelmno and Belzac in Poland were different. At these places there were no labor projects; no detention barracks; no temporary holding pens. They were “extermination camps”, pure and simple. The one held up as a “model” of perfection by Himmler and his SS leaders – an example of the kind of efficiency to be emulated – was Treblinka.
Situated in a remote and heavily-forested area in the northeast corner of Poland, where Bison still roam and forests are primal, it is easy for a visitor today to understand how the secrets of Treblinka could have remained hidden for so long. While names like Dachau and Buchenwald quickly became world-infamous, very little was said about Treblinka well into the 1970s and 1980s. For one thing, it lay in an area occupied by the Soviets whose own anti-Semitic activities were not so foreign to what the Germans had done. Secondly, by 1943 the Nazis had managed to cover up much of the evidence – even exhuming and cremating what bodies had not previously gone to the ovens. And thirdly, very few of those taken there in the first place ever saw the light of day. There was, though, a prison uprising in 1943, with a handful of prisoners escaping to survive with local partisans.
The Reinhard Plan had as its goal the annihilation of Europe’s Jews. The daily trains which came down the single track leading to the make-believe station at Treblinka pulled box cars filled with Jews gathered from at least twelve countries. Within two hours of arrival, death by asphyxiation, cremation over a system of grates, and burial of the ashes would be completed, and all would be in readiness for the next arrival. The camp’s infrastructure could handle 2000 per day.
Treblinka operated as a death camp for only one year, in which time 800,000 Jews were “processed”.
Of all the stone memorials which share the silence of Treblinka today, the most telling is a large circle of 1700 carefully-placed native stones, each commemorating one of the villages whose innocent residents ended up here. Gone with them are the untold stories of the 800,000 individuals who made that sad, sad one-way journey. There is, however, one stone honoring an individual. It carries the name of Januse Korczak, the pen name of a radio host and writer of childrens’ books. Dr. Henryk Goldzmit also operated an orphanage in Warsaw. He declined an opportunity to leave the ghetto, but instead chose to march with his 192 orphans to the train station, and to die with them at Treblinka.
As we mark Holocaust Memorial Day, on January 27th, we are left still with the haunting question: How could an inhumanity of such gigantic proportions take place amidst the cultural and educational landscape of one of the world’s most progressive countries in the middle of the twentieth century ?
We each have our own way of dealing with the act of mourning. For me, I regularly take from a desk drawer, and hold in my hands a hand-written list of sixteen names I have committed to memory and determined never to forget: Aushwitz – Buchenwald – Dachow – Bergen-Belsen – Sachsenhausen – Mathau – Birkenau – Chelmo – Ravensbruck – Mittelbau – Nordhausen – Sobibor – Theresienstadt-Matheusen – Treblinka.
And as I write these words today, I am able to weep for those who traveled THE SAD, SAD ROAD TO TREBLINKA.


Al Cooper can be heard on Cedar City’s KSUB talk radio each Monday at 4:00 PM. Al was recently awarded “Hall of Fame” status by the Utah Emergency Management Association.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF FLYING BOATS Part 2

In researching this story, I made contact with one of the last living crew members of the Boeing 314 era, and was able to obtain and view copies of the flight log from Clipper NC 18602 on its round-the-world flight. As a young boy, I watched the famous flying boats arrive at and depart New York’s Battery Bay.

Every once in a great while, the dreamers with drawing boards, the engineers with slide rules, and the captains of industry with an ever-dawning technology come together in a moment of creative destiny to produce by that rare coupling a true masterpiece. In the field of American aviation, classic aircraft such as the North American “Mustang” in WW II, the Douglas DC-3 “Gooney Bird” which transformed air transport, and the supergiant 747 which remains a worldwide heavy-mover today stand out. If there was one such moment in the Golden Age of Flying Boats, it came in the form of the Boeing 314 “Clipper” which first flew on June 7, 1938 only to meet with an early and quiet retirement in 1946. Only 12 were ever built, and its instant of fame was fleeting. Yet all these years after its demise – a casualty of war and the passing of an era accelerated by that war – the niche it carved out for itself in the annals of transoceanic flight remains unchallenged.
In many ways, the 314 was the Boeing 747 of its day, with a wingspan of 152 feet, and passengers, cargo and crew occupying different parts of its two-level ship-like hull. Its four Wright Twin-Cyclone engines turning extra-large propellers at 1600 horse power each were beautifully fared into a high wing originally designed for the experimental XB-15 bomber which never made it into production. Its unusual fuel capacity gave it a range of nearly 4,000 miles at 180 mph. It could carry 70 passengers and a crew of 11 in daytime configuration and could sleep 45 in berths at night. Passengers ate in a formal dining room in three shifts, served by full-time stewards. Crew sleeping quarters made it possible for two sets of pilots, navigators, engineers and radio officers to work in shifts on long flights, and from the spacious flight deck, hatches on opposite sides afforded in-flight access along walkways in the thick wings to the engines themselves.
Both in the air and on the water, the Boeing design was distinctive. Gone were the usual wingtip balancing floats and all signs of reinforcing struts and guy wires. Instead, short sea wings –or sponsons - sprouted from the hull, acting both as a steadying device when taxiing or maneuvering on water, and a natural gangway for boarding and disembarking passengers. Another hallmark was the triple rudders which aided steering and stability.
The Boeing Clippers not only resembled seagoing ocean liners, but Pan American World Airways
maintained a management and operational culture just as formal as a steamship line, with captains due the
same level of respect, authority and courtesies. When on duty, crew members wore the complete uniform, including officers’ hat and tie, even during hours at the controls . Corporate rules and protocols were strictly adhered to, including the keeping of detailed flight logs, and fifteen-minute en route radio reports. B-314 flight crews endured rigorous training, cross-training and certification testing, with an emphasis on celestial navigation. In short, only the very best got to walk the flight deck of a PanAm Clipper.
On December 1, 1941, a PanAm Airways B-314 with tail number NC 18606 lifted from the waters of San Francisco bay and set a course westward on a scheduled flight to Honolulu, Hawaii. Captain Robert Ford and his crew knew they would be swapping for another plane – number NC18602, The Pacific Clipper - at Pearl Harbor before continuing on to New Zealand and then back home.
At about the same time, somewhere near the Kurile Islands in the far north Pacific, a carrier task force flying the flag of the Empire of Japan was turning south, also heading for Pearl Harbor. The approaching confluence of these two events was about to result in one of the most unusual, and long-secret dramas to emerge from World War II.
Recognizing that hostilities between the two nations could break out at any time, Pan Am’s management had delivered secret orders to its transpacific captains, a set of which was carried in a sealed envelope in Captain Bob Ford’s inner pocket. When Clipper No.18602 now in Auckland, New Zealand, found itself cut off from its normal route “home” by Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the crew looked on as Ford broke the seal. To no one’s surprise, their orders were to get the airplane back to the U.S. mainland with all possible dispatch. But NOT by flying east ! Rather than take a chance of flying right into a brand new war, they were to fly WEST. Secretly, and in total radio silence.
And so, the world’s first round-the-world flight by a commercial airliner involved a route which had to be made up as they went, without navigational aids beyond the sun, and the stars, and sometimes based on charts hand-drawn from a school geography book. With some of its legs involving 23 plus hours over water, their course took them across three oceans, five continents and twelve nations. In 31,000 miles of flight, they crossed and re-crossed the equator four times and made 22 landings, sometimes on waterways which were uncharted, and from which no aircraft of similar size and weight had ever taken off. With no more than $500. in spendable cash between them, they had to beg or purchase with questionable I.O.Us, fuel, food and temporary housing, perform engine overhauls, endure compromised engine performance because of low octane fuel at times, and escape cannon fire from an enemy submarine.
Thirty four days after its departure from New Zealand, Clipper No. 18602 landed at New York’s LaGuardia marine terminal, having written one of the most remarkable chapters in aviation history.
PanAm Captain Robert Ford passed away at his California ranch in 1994 at the age of 88.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF FLYING BOATS

PART ONE OF TWO

In the years between the two great World Wars, aviation rapidly came of age, and as ever more powerful aircraft engines became available, the potential of commercial air travel became a driving force in all of the industrial nations. Crossing the Atlantic by the fastest seagoing passenger liners of the day was still a five-day affair, and the vastness of the Pacific defied easy solution for all but the most committed. As technologies brought together larger air frames and matching power plants, multi-engine aircraft made it more and more profitable to establish regular passenger service between major cities, and commercial carriers began to serve the traveling public as well as to transport mail and cargo.
The oceans still presented a barrier to that growth. To carry sufficient fuel to feed two, three or four hungry engines for a three or four thousand mile flight, and enough passengers to make it feasible in the first place meant larger airplanes. And industry had long since been capable of building those. The problem was that not many destinations possessed runways of sufficient length and engineering standards to accommodate them.
Seaplanes of one kind or another had been around since the very earliest days of aviation history; usually float planes on pontoons, or even amphibians which had the virtue of being able to land and take off on either land or water, and a handful of manufacturers had continued to pursue these duel-capability craft. The “flying boat”, however, was a creature unique in both design and operation. It was built around a fuselage which was basically a water-tight hull, much like that of a sea-going ship. Moreover, a true flying “boat” obviated the need for land-based runways and their associated operational costs.
By the dawning of the 1930s, Italy’s Savoia-Marchetti, and Germany’s Dornier were well along with designs no longer inhibited by the constraints of such considerations, and an American dreamer named Juan Trippe was already thinking about an airline operation without borders. Trippe envisioned a world-wide airline system which would offer regular scheduled service across the Atlantic, down the coast of Central and South America, and even to the far-flung Pacific frontier – all built around a fleet of yet-to-be-built flying boats offering a level of customer luxury rivaling sea-going ocean liners.
One of the first aircraft designers to be captivated by this idea was an immigrant from Russia named Igor Sikorsky, who had escaped the 1917 revolution, and who had been experimenting with seaplanes. It was Sikorsky’s S-40 which became the first true “flying boat” in the stable of famous aircraft which would make Juan Trippe’s Pan American World Airline company a commercial pace-setter for decades to come.
Story has it that it was on an early demonstration flight when Trippe was talking to his guest, Charles Lindbergh aboard the new S-40, that the plan for using the log books of old clipper ship captains from the age of sail in setting up a navigation system arose. From that moment on, PanAm would name each of its yet-to-be-born trans-oceanic flying boats “Clippers”.
Besides Sikorsky, the Martin Company and the infant Seattle-based Boeing Company would be asked to submit designs and bids. Martin won the bidding competition with their model 130 (which they underbid, to their eventual misfortune). Thus the first “clipper”, the famous China Clipper was a Martin 130, inaugurating mail service to Manila, Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island and Guam under the command of Captain Edwin C. Musick, in November, 1935. In October of 1936, the same “Clipper” would carry passengers in unprecedented luxury along the same route while the whole world watched. The first nine passengers each paid $1,438.20 in 1936 dollars for the round trip. That same year Humphrey Bogart and Pat O’Brian starred in a film named for the famous flying boat.

The original Sikorsky S-42 with its distinctive twin rudders, soon to be eclipsed by history and the coming of the mighty Boeing 314 flying boat, which stars in PART II of this story.

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A STORY-TELLER

Our tabletop Christmas tree is long gone; packed away in the basement along with wreaths, ornaments and other seasonal decorations. A visitor to my writing place though might think I had forgotten to retire the colorful bits of frippery still adorning the top and edges of a nearby computer monitor. Actually, each “ornament” is a small square from a pad of “Post-It” notes, and each is imbued with a value which belies the few hand-written words printed neatly on its surface.
As I look back over the last year, I calculate that between the scripts for 50 radio programs, a similar number of newspaper and newsletter columns, and notes for two dozen classes and public lectures, I have written close to 80,000 words on a wide range of subjects. Because of the very eclectic nature of the subject matter I choose to pursue, the difference between the two venues in which I work, and the challenges implicit in the contrasting disciplines, I am always searching for new ideas and fresh fields of discovery. Many of the stories I have voiced on the radio or reduced to the written word as a columnist , and many of those I hope to explore in the days ahead, began on one of those “post-it” notes or on a 3X5 index card in a shirt pocket.
More than thirty years ago, I began to keep a “Happiness Calendar”, an informal journal – usually again, a collection of 3x5 pocket cards - of things worthy of remembering; things observed, overheard, discovered. Sometimes they would come in the form of a sentence or paragraph glimpsed in passing, or simply a word which triggered something more. The article I wrote about the “Forgotten Art of Listening” was born years before on a scrap of paper in my Happiness Calendar. So too was “History From Klootchy Creek”.
It is no exaggeration to say that researching, gathering, considering and finally converting to words, what is destined to become the theme of a radio program, a chapter in a book, or a column for NEIGHBORHOODS is an adventure. Looking back on just the past year, I can revisit the many “adventures” I have lived in my search for stories to tell.
One day while broadcasting, a caller came on the line to ask if I was the same guy who had written an article or two about planes and aviation in the SPECTRUM. Because of the few words shared by this humble man, I ended up visiting with, and getting to know Sam Wyrouck, who had flown an amazing 35 missions as a B-17 ball turret gunner with the 8th Air Force in WW II. From that chance phone call came the article called “Saying Thank You to The Greatest Generation”. More important, Sam has become for me a real hero and an admired friend.
Speaking of wartime history, I was researching for another project the strategic bombing policies of the Allied air forces in WW II – in particular the fire-bombing of enemy cities ¬– when, while considering the phenomenon known as a “fire storm”, I ran across a forgotten story of our own. There followed research into the personal accounts of Wisconsin victims of a naturally-spawned parallel event which became the article about the Peshtigo firestorm of 1871, printed on October 7, 2009.
My life-long love affair with the New England coast, and particularly the lighthouses of Maine, acquainted me long ago with the story of Abbie Burgess Grant who, as a young girl, became the heroine of the U.S. Lighthouse Service in the 1850s while living on a sea-washed islet known as Matinicus Rock. What earned Abbie a page in my “Happiness Calendar” was the sense of fulfillment I felt the day I finally found her burial site in a wooded forest sanctuary near Tenants Harbor, Maine. The article about Matinicus Rock found its way into print on October 21st.
There is a well-established article of faith known to all public speakers which points out that it is far more difficult to prepare and give a five-minute talk than a one-hour address. As a writer, I can also attest to a comparable dictum for authors. The columnist confronts the challenge of trying to say well and compellingly in a few words what might otherwise make a good short story. That and the matter of facing weekly deadlines, make this caper a unique balancing act. At this, the beginning of a new year, I can only say thank you to those who allow me to contribute this column and – especially – to those unnumbered readers for whom I write.

Daughter posting...

Pardon my interruption... This is Al's daughter posting today. I just wanted to say that my father has made my life richer by his example. As far back as I can remember, books and writing have been a very important part of my Dad's life. He took me to the library as a young girl, he read to me and my siblings. His example made reading important to me. It is always special when he shares stories that he has written with the family. His Christmas stories are among my favorites! So, I just wanted to pay a little tribute via a digital scrapbook page that I made on the subject.
You can click on it to make it bigger if the text is hard to read. Thank you for looking.
Cindy

THE TRAIN WRECK THAT WAS NO ACCIDENT

The last decade of the 19th century was not a good time for American business as the country attempted to weather the effects of an economic depression. Among the industries to feel this downturn were the railroads, the heart and soul of the nation’s transportation network. It was at this time that the Missouri Kansas and Texas Railroad, the - M.K.T. line - hired a public relations guru named William G. (Willie) Crush as an assistant to the vice president. Crush, who had been associated with the P.T. Barnum enterprise, was given the task of developing programs to promote a greater public appreciation for the sprawling rail line whose tracks connected Texas with key cities such as Kansas City and St. Louis, and through those hubs with the rest of the country. Known affectionately as the “KATY” line, the company was wide open to suggestions, and it was hoped that Crush was just the man to have a few.
What Crush knew was that train wrecks were like ”mothers’ milk” to headline-hungry newspapers and the public alike. It seemed to him that a well-planned and heavily-promoted train wreck would be just the ticket to focus national attention on the KATY, and management of the line soon agreed. It remained only to select a location, consult the engineering and technical experts, and set the publicity ball rolling. The most logical spot for the event was a long straight
level stretch of track with hills at both ends just to the north of Waco, Texas. Since no town existed at that location, one would have to be built, so two water wells were drilled, a temporary depot was erected, viewing stands built, and all the accoutrements to serve an expected gathering of 25,000 people installed. Not a man to miss an opportunity for a little self-promotion, Willie named the new town – what else, “Crush”. And so the event became advertised and promoted everywhere as the “Great Train Wreck at Crush”.
The technical aspects of the plan involved not insignificant considerations. Crucial was the question of whether or not the impact of two trains traveling at great speed might cause the boilers to explode. Supplying the power to drive a steam locomotive was a boiler made of thick heavy metal capable of withstanding pressures resulting from steam expanding to a volume 1675 times that of water. Already, the world had witnessed the consequences of such a disaster, as with the sinking of the steam ship “Sultana” on the Mississippi, which took the lives of 1700 returning Union Army soldiers in 1865. But not to worry: all but one of the railroad engineers consulted assured Willie that such would not take place.
Then there was the question of speed, point of impact, and the integrity of the hitches connecting each locomotive to the string of six cargo cars making up the train. The two aging Baldwin engines selected – No. 1001, and No. 999 – with their old-style diamond-shaped stacks, would be painted alternately, green with red trim, and red with green trim, and would begin their speed run from two directly-facing hilltops separated by four miles of track. The sides of the box cars were painted with large advertising signs, including one for the P.T. Barnum Circus who would be supplying a huge tent to house food and other services for the event.
As part of the advertising campaign, the two colorful trains puffed their way to many parts of Texas during the preceding weeks, and tickets for round-trip transportation for the event were sold for $2.00. (The big show itself would be free.) The “instant” town of Crush soon took on the appearance of an amusement park, with rides, concessions, medicine shows and entertainment galore. Just to make sure nothing would get out of hand 300 police officers were brought in to control crowds expected to include many who would indulge in more than lemonade, and barriers were erected to make certain that no one other than photographers and officials could get closer than 200 yards.
On the morning of Tuesday, September 15, 1896, thirty passenger trains fanned out across the state to haul enthusiastic minions to a city which – for one day – would be the second largest in all of Texas. The crowd is estimated to have numbered over 40,000.
At 5:00 PM, the two trains touched cow catchers at milepost 881, the appointed place of impact, then slowly backed their way to the tops of the opposing hills as the thousands of viewers held their collective breath. At 5:10 William George Crush lifted his hat and quickly brought it down as the crowd let out a roar. The two locomotives began the journey belching black smoke, their throttles tied wide open. After four turns of the drive wheels, the two crews leaped from the accelerating cabs as planned. Fireworks placed on the rails and the blast of whistles tied open accompanied the rumble of the trains as they swept down the hills, the crowd raised on tip toes and straining for the best possible view of what was about to happen.
At a combined speed of 90 miles per hour the two trains crashed together with what might at first have seemed a rather disappointing lack of drama, the remains seeming to collapse downward onto the tracks. A few seconds ticked by, then the two boilers exploded simultaneously, sending timbers and debris into the sky and showering the entire area with thousands of shards of metal shrapnel. Three observers were killed outright, a newsman blinded in one eye, and others injured.
In the aftermath, “Willie” Crush was fired, and the families of the victims quietly compensated. As MKT railroad derricks moved in to clean up the debris, they found there was almost nothing to retrieve. Souvenir hunters were in such a hurry to claim their piece of history, some ended up with burned fingers.
Agent Crush was quietly hired back within two days, Scott Joplin wrote a song about the incident, MKT noticed an increase in passenger travel, and the country moved on. Today, all that remains of the famous “Crash at Crush” is a small, hard-to-notice marker beside a freeway interchange 14 miles north of Waco, Texas. That is, if you don’t count thousands of strange pieces of ragged metal scattered on mantels and gathering dust in attics and basements across the state of Texas.

A time-worn news photograph captures a staged face-off between the two KATY trains just prior to the “Great Train Wreck at Crush”in September, 1896.

FADING GLORIES – A CENTURY OF RAILROADING

A classic EMD-E7, in Western Pacific colors receives a lot of attention at the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento. One of the most-loved diesel-electric “streamliners”of all times, nearly 500 of this locomotive model and its offspring were built.

I have often thought that Dame Fortune smiled in a special way upon anyone born early enough in the 20th century to know the long mournful call of a steam locomotive. Late at night, curled deep in the protective folds of an eiderdown in an attic bedroom, I have traveled to distant and mysterious destinations on the wings of that solo refrain carried to my garret window by an errant breeze. Rising and falling, mellowed by distance and intervening topography, sometimes jubilant, sometimes plaintive and seductive, always filled with a yearning no other man-made orchestra has ever been able to match, the song of steam is so powerfully evocative, it is clenched tightly in the memories of a generation or two who can only lament its passing.
I thought of all this recently as I spent a day at the California Railroad Museum in old town Sacramento, wandering among and even touching more than a hundred years of railroading history, where acres of restored and even serviceable locomotives and rolling stock tantalize the imagination of young and old alike. There I sat in the engineer’s position in one of the only remaining “cab forward” locomotives in the country, examined the unbelievably narrow kitchen of a Santa Fe dining car, and revisited one of the rolling post office cars which serviced daily the small-town America of my youth.
For the fan of combustion locomotives, there are two dozen beautifully-restored models on display, including two Electro-Magnetic Diesel Corporation streamliners in “Super Chief warbonnet” paint jobs. And for those of us who are closet historians and researchers, the on-site book store is worthy of a full-day visit all on its own. (I now have six months of reading to do and a host of Santa Fe dining car recipes to try out in my kitchen.)
My own personal love affair with the fading days of American railroading began with the stories heard at the feet of a father, who in his youth decided to “see America” by riding the rails. From his home state of Washington, he “hitched” his way from state to state, stopping long enough to earn a few dollars, harvesting hay, or wheat or hops, or loading logs, before moving on, gathering tales from engineers, brakemen and fellow travelers. Along the way he witnessed several derailments and wrecks while learning lessons in geography and civics his stories brought to life for his four sons.
By the time I was fourteen, I had traveled with such hallowed names as the beloved “Pennsy”, the Delaware & Hudson, New York Central, Long Island, Canadian National and Central Vermont. In the decade to follow, I would come to cross the continent nearly a dozen times by rail on military courier missions, covering the miles between New York and Texas or California on many of the great trains of the early 50s from the Super Chief to the Texas “Katy”. It was during a time of war, and the uniform I wore and the orders I carried had an unexpected but welcome effect on conductors and porters, who quietly saw to it that I enjoyed dining car meals far beyond the reach of the parsimonious military “meal tickets” I carried, and a first choice of sleeping berth at night. I always chose an upper Pullman berth, where the swaying motion of the car was more pronounced, and the clickety clack of the rails a soothing counterpoint. When escorting prisoners, I often had a compartment assigned to me for greater security,
and that was especially luxurious.
One of the most interesting train journeys was a 935 kilometer trip on a steam-powered, narrow gage railroad from Tokyo to the city of Iwakuni at the extreme southern tip of occupied Japan. Tunnels through mountains were numerous and long, and almost every small town we passed had its waiting audience of small children vying for the candy and chewing gum we threw to them from the moving train. We slept on swaying hammocks which dropped from the ceiling at night and dined on military rations. A brief stop to take on coal and water at a station overlooking the devastation of Hiroshima was an eerie experience. I don’t think any of us spoke as we looked down on what once had been a thriving city.
By 1916, there were 254,000 miles of railroad tracks in America, and passenger rail traffic had reached its zenith. By 1920, 1.8 million people were employed by the industry. But big changes were ahead, one of which was Americans’ growing love affair with the automobile, another the coming of the combustion engine itself. The construction, maintenance, and operation of steam-powered locomotives was an expensive proposition, and diesel power offered greater economy in all three areas. For awhile the two ran side by side, to the delight of a portion of the public who loved the mystic of steam.
Today, only 154,000 Americans are employed in the rail industry, yet we manage to haul four times the freight tonnage of the heyday year of 1920 !
Except for a handful of tourist trains scattered around the country. steam-powered rail travel is only a fading memory, but one filled with enough glory to be worth passing on to our grandkids.


Clinchfield caboose number 1078 is connected to a coal train near Mt. Holly, No. Carolina, one of the last of a dying breed. Rendered redundant by new technology, the venerable caboose was mostly dropped from service in the 1980s.

CONFESSIONS OF A WISTFUL WOODBURNER

I knew right from the start this would be a good day. (When it comes to certain rituals, I believe in karma.) As I carefully scraped the ashes of last night’s fire through the grates for transfer to the waiting scuttle, there hidden in and protected by an insulating layer of gray wood ash were two or three still-living coals, glowing red with promise; the remnants of a pinyon knot, imbued at its core with natural resins bestowed by a long-ago marriage of sun and sapling. Open the draft, ply with a feathery wreath of cedar bark and voila ! We have flames, ready to be cajoled with a “teepee” of hand-split cedar withes into the day’s birthing fire. And without having to resort to the calumny of paper or match !
For the dedicated wood-burner, there is something particularly and deeply satisfying about building that first-of-the day fire. No matter the dimension or design of the hearth, there is something undeniably primal and elegantly elemental in an act which connects us with generations of fire-makers stretching back to humankind’s very roots.
It is especially satisfying when outside, gray storm clouds are reaching earthwards, the west wind is bringing showers of rain and sleet on its chill breath, and warmth produced by human hands begins to fill our log home’s frosty interior. The progressive placement of slender pieces of dry white pine and hand-split billets of red cedar which have been curing for two years under a home-made outdoor shelter are each a steppingstone in the ritual. The Dutch West’s double layers of cast iron begin to tick and ting as they expand, joining the song the chimney draft and crackling wood are singing.
I can’t help but notice that among the cradles of fire wood toted from barn to hearth individual pieces bring their own sense of history and personality with them: there is that knot-filled twisted juncture of cedar burl I almost gave up on splitting last August; here is the single silver-white length of cottonwood salvaged from a lightning-struck branch which had to be cleared from the trail along the river bank after a springtime storm, and mixed in are those misshapen, impossible-to-stack odds and ends purposely set aside, or thrown on the top of a finished stack and just begging to be gotten rid of on a bed of hot coals. The symmetry of an artfully constructed section of a near-perfect corner or end-stack reminds me of a weekend when a visiting grandson took the time his grandpa never would have to show his architectural skills. Here and there, as I work my way through the wood pile I will happen upon a tiny stack of still-green meadow grass, where a far-sighted deer mouse built winter quarters, and wonder if its inhabitants escaped the notice of a California king snake I knew hunted nearby.
As I travel the backroads of the New England I love, and where my own association with wood-gathering and wood-burning was first given life, I am always on the lookout for the inevitable evidence that cold-weather providence is still alive and well. I see wood stacks that are straight-and-true, short or long, sometimes circular or even whimsical in shape and design; out in the open, or under carefully-crafted shelter. These stacks, of course, are made up of white birch, some ash, and a lot of long-burning, BTU-rich maple – the true wood-burner’s ”fillet mignon” of the hearth. Sometimes I stop to admire or even photograph what most travelers would pass by with hardly a glance. And . . if I think no one is watching, I will even saunter over to the stack, and allow my nostrils to inhale deeply of an amalgam of forest perfume which has the power to open the memory vaults of my mind to the magic of a thousand morning fires.
Each Fall as we take temporary possession of a primitive cabin overlooking the Atlantic in coastal Maine, I pray for the first night of frosty weather, or better yet, an actual “Nor’easter” , so that I can feed split chunks of gathered and carefully-husbanded maple into the waiting fireplace.
Just outside my back door here in southern Utah, I keep a chopping block and splitting axe – as I have wherever I have lived, down through the years - so that I have to walk by them every day. They, and what they stand for remind me of who I am, and of a legacy of self reliance which helps to define me.
I was right this morning. This has been a very good day. Day number 27,950.

A neat home-built shelter houses a supply of split hardwood at historic “Furnace Brook Farm” in Chittenden, Vermont.
For many New England farm families, firewood gathering is a never-ending, year-round job.

AFTERMATH – THE OTHER PEARL HARBOR STORY

As Admiral Nagumo’s fleet turned away from Hawaiian waters and headed back to the safety of homeland seas on December 8, 1941, they had every reason to believe they had accomplished a great victory for the Japanese Empire. They had sent most of America’s Pacific Fleet to the bottom and either destroyed or damaged much of the infrastructure needed to support fleet operations. Nearly half of all military aircraft on hand had been eliminated in ninety minutes, mostly on the ground, and the dead and wounded – half of that total aboard the U.S.S. Arizona – would send shock waves across a “sleeping” America.
Like their American counterparts, Japanese admirals were still following a naval doctrine advanced by English captain, Alfred Mahan which held that ultimate victory at sea would always be determined in one great battle between opposing battleships. With virtually all U.S. battleships and heavy cruisers out of the equation, Admiral Yamamoto and his planners figured they would have at least one year to complete the conquest of the Philippines, Guam, the East Indies, Singapore, and New Guinea, while strengthening their hold on Korea, Indochina, Manchuria, and the string of Pacific islands which served as a protective shield for their homeland. And they were confident that a weak and self-absorbed America would be sufficiently demoralized to seek reasonable terms for a non-aggression agreement.
The Japanese, of course, were wrong on almost every count. To begin with, the three aircraft carriers they thought would be at anchor were safely at sea, and would shortly play a key role in reversing the fortunes of war. In the months to come, the greatest sea battles ever fought would take place – between opposing fleets which would never even come within sight of each other. It would be the aircraft launched by those fleets which would secure both victory and defeat. The vaunted battleship would become mostly a gun platform supporting invasion actions, and the aircraft carrier would become the new “capitol ship”. And Pearl Harbor would “rise’ again, as the arsenal of victory in the Pacific. The massive fuel depots, submarine pens, dry docks and repair shops, along with the fleet headquarters complex itself, were left untouched by the first two waves of bombers, and for reasons which will be forever debated, Nagumo failed to launch the third wave which might have corrected that oversight.
But there is more to this part of the Pearl Harbor story. Of the eighteen fighting ships sunk in the attack, all but two would be raised from the dead to play roles in the final defeat of Japan and the Axis, some of them within six months. In what must be recognized as one of the major engineering feats of all time, teams of underwater divers worked round the clock, making 5000 dives in the most treacherous and toxic environment imaginable to make the impossible possible. Navy and civilian divers spent more than 20,000 hours in oil-and-sludge-filled waters, both outside and inside ripped and torn hulls, not counting the many hours spent in a decompression chamber normalizing blood nitrogen levels following prolonged stays underwater. Exhausting efforts and great care went into recovering human remains, ship’s documents and ammunition.
On the other hand, the Japanese fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor did not fare so well. Of the six carriers which delivered the 420 bombers, fighters and torpedo planes, four were sunk in the battle of Midway six months later, with the fifth going down at Coral Sea, and Zuikaku , the sixth, in Leyte Gulf in 1944. Two of the Imperial Fleet’s battleships were sunk at Guadalcanal in November, 1942, and two cruisers, Tone and Chikuma sometime later.
In the end, despite all the military errors and oversights which can be ascribed to both sides in that initial battle of a war which would drag out for four more years, the Empire of Japan made the most fateful by profoundly misreading the people of America. The consequences of that mis-judgement was perhaps most succinctly captured by Admiral Hara Tadaichi who said, “We won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbor and thereby lost the war.”

Exhausted U.S. Navy divers stand in front of a decompression chamber at Pearl Harbor following the December, 1941 attack on the U.S. Pacific fleet.

THE WOOD CARVER WHO SHAPED CHRISTMAS

America’s history is so crammed with the stories of exceptional people who did exceptional things that it has become easy to lose track, overlook, or under-appreciate many. It would be difficult to find a more deserving character than an immigrant boy of the 19th century to honor with a brief remembrance – especially during what has euphemistically become known as “the Holiday Season”.
Thomas Nast was born in Landau, Germany on September 27th, 1840. Six years later, he and his family undertook immigration to America, settling in New York. Young Thomas had a difficult time fitting in, right from Day One. He was short, fat and unattractive. He was a poor student, slow to learn basic English, and was soon sent home from public school as “unpromising”.
Making use of cast-off crayon remnants supplied by a neighbor, Thomas began to fill his lonely hours by drawing pictures of the everyday neighborhood in which he lived. His talent got him into an art school about which we know little – except that by age 15, he no longer had the funds to continue, or to enter the kind of long, drawn-out apprenticeship program the times required.
In the days before photography, the publishers of journals and newspapers employed illustrators to add visual interest to the printed media which served a public hungry for news and entertainment. Motivated by desperation and sheer audacity, young Thomas presented himself to the publisher of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. To get rid of the persistent pest, Leslie gave him a drawing assignment and deadline he knew the petitioner couldn’t complete. To his surprise, Nast appeared at his desk the next day with the finished work in hand. He was hired on the spot.
While working for Leslie, Thomas learned the exacting art of carving wood cuts – the technique of creating a reverse image on a wooden plate which when inked would produce a near photo-like reproduction on paper. Some time around 1858 or 1859, he tried his hand for the first time at drawing a political cartoon. It was immediately bought by the publisher of Harper’s Weekly where Nast found a new “home”. Not only had he become adept at depicting current happenings in life-like illustrations, but he quickly revealed a rare insight into what was going on in the world of politics around him. It was Thomas Nast who invented the democrat donkey and the republican elephant, and many historians give him credit for developing the Uncle Sam image which remains a national institution.
The impact of Nast’s cartoons was deep and widespread, and they informed the public in a way mere words couldn’t. He helped to bring down the corrupt Boss Tweed political machine in New York and to elect Rutherford B. Hayes U.S. President in 1876. In fact he was eerily successful in picking political winners, and in six successive presidential campaigns, his cartoons were a predictor.
During the Civil War, Nast became depressed with having to illustrate the tragedy of death on the battlefields, and in 1862 he decided to try to bring something uplifting to the nation with the beginning of a series of what came to be known as his “Christmas Drawings”. The first depicted a plump, bearded, hearty, happy elf of a man in a sleigh delivering gifts to soldiers. Building on the old European idea of a stark, stern, black-robed “Father Christmas”, Thomas Nast began polishing and fine-tuning the new Santa Claus, building on the popular Clement Moore poem, T’Was The Night Before Christmas, suggesting a home in the North Pole, and the expanding storyline which quickly captured the imagination of children and grown-ups around the world. For the next 24 years Nast would produce 76 original Christmas engravings, including everything from the idea of a Santa workshop to the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe, finally giving us the Merry Old Elf image we have today.
The chubby immigrant boy with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge who carved his art in wood went on to become one of the most successful, wealthy and honored artists of his day, ending his career as U.S. ambassador to Ecuador. What his world of admirers didn’t know, was that Thomas Nast had a secret. He had never learned to read or write. His devoted wife – his greatest admirer – was his window on the world, mentoring his searching mind and reading aloud to him even as he carved.
The Santa Claus Thomas Nast gave us will be 147 years old this Merry Christmas !