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 !

THE CHRISTMAS JACKET

I suppose everyone has a fragment of personal history which has the power to stand out among that unfolding landscape of people, places, and events we call “life”, for want of a more precise rubric. It has slowly dawned on me over the ever-circling years, that Christmas, 1949 was one of those moments.
For one thing, it was to be the last Christmas which would see all of my family together in the parlor of the Vermont country farm home which so recently had become our “home place”, warmed by a woodstove fueled by chunks of hard maple, cut, split and stacked by our own hands, in front of a glowing fir tree cut from our own property. It was a “good” time; I can think of no hovering cloud of worry or pending twist of destiny to spoil that setting. Then again, I was a high school senior, full of my teenage self, and filled with an innocent contentment with the small world I occupied; challenged at most by occasional outbreaks of teenage acne.
Word had been put out that in addition to some books, my Christmas list contained a description of a much-admired wool jacket, then popular with young hunters my age. It came in both red-and-black and green-and black checkered patterns. My “down-country” Aunt Molly – my mother’s older sister – ended up with the assignment. Unfortunately, Aunt Molly did her shopping among a clutch of upper-end, big-name New York City stores, not at Lamson’s Hardware where anyone would have known what a “Vermont checkered hunting jacket” was.
The long-and-short of it was that I got to display my not-unknown acting skills that Christmas morning, as I lifted from the colorfully-bound box, a finely-made, multi-colored, “kind-of-a-plaid”, half-length jacket. One hundred percent wool. With a zipper no less.
Despite whatever other social deficits may have been mine, I was the product of many years of careful tutoring in “gentlemanly manners” – especially where my mother and her sisters were concerned. I never allowed my disappointment to reveal itself, and dutifully wore the Christmas jacket when called for. Even in front of my pals. At the same time, I dared not buy for myself the prize I had been expecting, so as not to reflect badly on Molly’s thoughtful (though uninspired) selection.
Within a matter of months of that milestone family gathering, my whole world would change: a few days after my seventeenth birthday, I would graduate from high school, war would break out in Korea, and I would be enlisting in the recently-created United States Air Force. Just before Christmas, 1950, I raised my right hand to the square, and prepared for the long train journey from Montpelier, Vermont to San Antonio, Texas. We were told to take with us only the clothing necessary for the trip, and since it was chilly the day of departure, I wore the plaid jacket.
The Air Force Training Command was totally unprepared to deal with the sudden influx of volunteers descending on Lackland Air Force Base at that time. Long-abandoned, tar-paper-covered wooden barracks became our home, and my flight - # 6631 - was turned over to the eager hands of a pair of recently-recalled, former Marine Corps drill instructors, who not only shared the same last name of Larsen, but a determination to make our lives as miserable as possible while no one else was looking ! These guys were the product of a World War II Paris Island culture which is the stuff of legend. From day one, they were in the business of erasing any civilian contamination left clinging to us. “This is a time of war “ we were constantly counseled, “forget about home, forget about Mommy, make up your mind you’re never going to see them again !”
To reinforce that idea, we emptied our wallets of photos of loved ones, and abstained from writing letters for several weeks. AND. . . we were asked to surrender the civilian cloths we had arrived with, for donation to the Salvation Army. “From now on you are required by articles of war to wear only your uniform, so you will have no need for civies”.
And so I said goodbye to my gray, gabardine trousers, blue double-breasted shirt, other accessories and the all-wool, Christmas jacket. At last I was done with it – December, 1950.
It was a warm, lazy blue-sky-kind-of-day in 1955 when I received a mystifying phone call. By then, I was a happy “civilian”, married to my high school sweetheart, and already father of the first of our four children, living back in central Vermont. The call came from the Railway Express agent at the nearby train station, advising me that my “baggage had arrived”.
“Some kind of mistake” I replied. “I am expecting no baggage.”
Well”, the agent went on, “if you are S/Sgt. A.C.Cooper, USAF, AF11206059, it belongs to you; come and get it. There’s no charge.”
Sure enough, that’s what was stenciled on the side of the nearly-empty military barracks bag I found waiting at the terminal. More mystified than ever, I unsnapped the unsecured buckle, and turned over the sack. Out tumbled the clothes I had last seen in an old tarpaper building in Texas more than five years earlier. And last out was the many-colored Christmas jacket, staring up at me accusingly from the platform of the same old depot I had departed from on that great journey which would take me across the world, and into a lifetime still unseen.
I can think of several scenarios that might explain that intrusion into a life I thought I was in charge of, but mostly I didn’t try too hard. Every time we faced a family move, I would run across the old travel sack, and consider getting rid of it. After all, I didn’t plan to wear any of those old duds. And finally, I did get rid of most of it. All except the Christmas jacket.
A few years ago, on Christmas Eve, I pulled the woolen garment out of the closet where it seemed to have found a home of its own, and modeled it for our grandkids, after telling them the story which went with it. Somehow, it became for me, unknowingly, but undeniably, a touchstone – a simple inanimate object of inexplicable value. Holding it lovingly in hands which have not survived the years nearly as well as the old coat, has become a part of every Christmas for the past dozen years.
As I write these lines, my Aunt Molly’s gift hangs just within easy reach, on a closet knob in my writing room. And I realize, looking at it, that this Holiday season will be the 60th since that gathering in the old family farmhouse so long ago, the one which would be the last of its kind; the year of The Christmas Jacket.

THE ERA OF GREAT AIRSHIPS Part II

Perhaps the high point of that “Age of Giant Airships” was attained by the Graf Zeppelin, here seen in its hangar at Friedrichshafen, Germany

One of the lessons of history tells us that every great conflict produces in its wake a period of extraordinary scientific, industrial-commercial, and experimental activity. The years following World War I (The Great War), are no exception. Suddenly, any open country farm field could become a destination for one of the hundreds of second-hand “Jennys” powered by America’s “Liberty” aircraft engines now in the hands veterans and neophytes alike. Aviation had come of age, and the world was fascinated by the possibilities and drama of powered flight.
In the moment of time between 1924 and 1937, much of that fascination was focused on the giant, gas-filled rigid airships born in the creative mind and drafting boards of Count graf von Zeppelin (who had himself died of old age in 1917). They seemed like an answer to the challenge of trans-oceanic travel, offering passengers luxury passage without having to deal with days at sea. In 1929, the Graf Zeppelin flew around the world after establishing regular flights from its home field at Friedrichshafen, Germany to Lakehurst New Jersey, offering those who could afford the fare, 20 sleeping berths, a dining room and other amenities.
With the world’s first flight over the South Pole thrown in for good publicity, the “Graf” introduced regular transatlantic flights from Germany to Rio de Janero, Brazil, carrying up to 91 people on each 6800 mile-long trip, and cementing a close relationship between the two nations. In fact, over its nine-year operational diary, the giant, hydrogen-filled airship completed 590 flights, carrying 34,000 passengers millions of miles without injury to anyone. After its June 18, 1937 flight, it was allowed to quietly retire from service, and was finally broken up in 1940. Not bad, when compared against the very different history of rigid airship operations elsewhere.
The popular belief widely-held even today, is that the airship was doomed from the start because of the flammability of the gas which gave it flight – especially when that gas was in the form of hydrogen; the Hindenburg disaster often used as a reminder. What is now known is that it was the experimental surface paint which was the flashpoint that May day at Lakehurst. In truth, fire was not the greatest menace to LTA operations, nor was it America’s unwillingness to sell non-flammable helium the reason that the Germans didn’t have it. Airship design and operations was by its nature a very expensive undertaking even before filling the internal gas bags. Helium was heavier than hydrogen, and was a thousand times more expensive per cubic foot.
Actually a look at America’s experience with rigid airships brings us to the greater weakness waiting in the promising skies over planet earth.
ZR-1 Shenandoah: Broke apart in a storm front over Ohio, Sept. 1925 -14 died
ZR-2 Built for the U.S. in England. Broke up and crashed over Hull, U.K.
ZRS-4 Akron: Wrecked in storm off New Jersey coast, Apr.1933 – 73 died
ZRS-5 Macon: Damaged by storm, sank in Pacific off Pt. Sur, Cal. Feb. 1935 – 2 died
And then there was the world-wide attention brought to the famous British introduction of a new, cutting-edge design launched as the R-101, at the time the largest man-made object ever to be sent aloft. On its first, and heavily-publicized trip from London to India, it somehow managed to fly into the ground near Allons, France in a nighttime storm, October 4, 1930, where it burned. 48 died. There were 8 survivors.
It is worth noting that the U.S.S. Macon successfully served as a “mother ship”, launching and retrieving five pursuit airplanes from hangers slung along its underside. Another Navy dirigible, the U.S.S. Los Angeles avoided mishap, and was decommissioned in June, 1932 in good condition.
A “side bar” story to all of the above, involves the conflict which was going on at the time between the Army and the Navy over the question of which arm of the service should be home to a full-fledged air force. General Billy Mitchell, the most vocal officer in this debate took the occasion of the repeated Navy airship disasters to criticize Admiral Moffett and naval aviation itself for the mismanagement of the program. It was a public comment of his that led eventually to his famous court marshal.
It is doubtful we will ever again see those kinds of giants in the sky, but it is heartening to see one of those Goodyear blimps filming sporting events every now and then, and to wish I hadn’t lost –over the moves of a lifetime – a tube of ping pong balls which had crossed the Atlantic on the Graf Zeppelin.

THE ERA OF GREAT AIRSHIPS

It was a gray morning, that first Thursday in May, as a group of neighborhood friends gathered with me and my brothers in the expansive front yard of our New Jersey home. I was only four years old at the time, but the excitement of the moment has never been diminished by the passage of time in my memory.
Evidence that our vigil had not been in vain came first not from anything we could see or hear, but from a vibration that caused the ground beneath our feet to tremble. Next came the sound, and the cause of that resonance, the slow heavy beat of five powerful Daimler-Benz 16-cylinder diesels. It seemed forever before the bulbous, silver nose of the great airship came into view, just over the roofs of nearby homes, flying much lower than we had expected. Even the grown-ups around me exclaimed in wonder as little by little the full extent of the massive craft came into view. Living where we did, the sight of both rigid airships and their non-rigid and smaller cousins, the blimps, were not unknown. After all, Lakehurst, with its docking station was just a few miles away. But this was different. The Hindenburg was nearly the length of three football fields, and got its lift from more than 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen gas.
If a close-up view of the history-making giant wasn’t enough to stir emotions among onlookers, the red and black swastika which adorned the port tail fin was. While the Nazi symbol was a common image in newsreels and magazines, there was something discomforting about seeing it so boldly displayed in New Jersey’s peaceful skies, and over America, isolated from the gathering storm clouds of Europe. What we didn’t know, and couldn’t see from our vantage point, was that the opposite – starboard – side of the tail fin was painted differently – featuring the traditional and less menacing German national tri-colors. Wishing not to fan negative sentiments among New York City’s Jewish population, the Hindenburg crew was instructed to make its planned circling of the city so that mainly the politically-correct side of the ship would be seen by the waving crowds.
Growing up in a home with two much older brothers who were enthusiastic followers of human events and voracious readers, I was exposed daily to conversations, discussions and debates on a wide range of subjects. My father was a wounded veteran of The Great War, and a great-great uncle who lived with us had been born when the Battle of Gettysburg was being fought. Only years later would I be able to look back and realize that our home was a dynamic “class room” and I was an eager student. Which might help to explain why all these years after, I am sill captivated by moments of history. . . and the era of Great Airships.
Germany had been a world leader in aviation technology, and the giant “lighter-than-air” dirigibles were born there. German “Zeppelins” – named for Count Graf von Zeppelin, their pioneering “godfather” had actually dropped bombs on London in WW I. Paradoxically, the whole concept of a military role for aviation was spawned on the battlefields of America’s Civil War, where tethered gas-filled balloons had been used by the Union Army’s Signal Corps to observe enemy defensive strategies. President Lincoln had given permission for Prussian officers to travel with the Army of The Potomac as observers.
That May day, as enthusiastic crowds stood marveling at the sight of the mighty Hindenburg pass overhead, we might be excused for thinking that we were seeing a preview of the future, despite the fact that our own introduction to airship technology had been disastrous, with the crashes of all but one of our own rigid airships, as had England and Italy with theirs. But here was something more hopeful, a modern wonder capable of carrying transatlantic passengers between continents in great comfort and luxury in a matter of mere hours. After all, Germany’s famous Graf Zeppelin had already done that very thing for nine successful years, without so much as a personal injury to anyone.
What we didn’t know at that moment was that within hours, the Hindenburg would meet with disaster just miles from where we stood, and the era of the Great Airships would die with it.

The mighty Hindenburg bursts into flames at the mooring mast at Lakehurst N.J., on May 6, 1937, effectively ending the Era of Great Airships.

A GIFT FROM THE FIRST THANKSGIVING

Two American originals – cranberries and maple syrup – combine to make this double - crust pie a reminder of the first Thanksgiving. Recipe Below.

The story is still told among descendants of the Algonquin People of a young boy who aspired to become a holy man – a Shaman. He set for himself a spiritual quest to prove himself in the eyes of the Great Creator. He decided to bury himself partially in the deep mud of a swamp, and there to concentrate his mind and being solely on the desire of his heart. Although it was still fall, there occurred an unexpected early freeze, and he found himself frozen fast in place there in the wilderness of a northern bog. It is said that he would have died of starvation had not a miracle come, in the shape of a strange white dove, carrying something in its beak. From the sky, a red berry was dropped so that the lad could reach it. There followed many flights of the beautiful white bird, bringing berry after berry, until his friends were able to find and rescue the boy from the swamp.
It is thought that in these mercy flights, the dove must have accidentally dropped some of the magic berries, because the following spring, new and never-seen-before plants began to establish themselves in the swampy country which The People frequented in their canoes, producing increasingly generous harvests of the tart but wondrous berries. The fruit became an important ingredient in the pemmican which helped to insure food during the long winter months, and was the centerpiece of their harvest celebrations each fall.
And so when the newly arrived people with pale skins and blue eyes invited the Indians to a feast they held the year after their first arrival, Samoset and his friends introduced the Pilgrims to dishes made from the wild berries gleaned from the nearby ponds and swamps. The puddings and maple-flavored treats sparkling with the red fruit would become an annual reminder to the Pilgrims and their offspring, of that first enduring celebration.
The plant which produced the red berries was called Ibimi by the local Indians, but was renamed by the colonists who noted that when in the flowering stage, the waving blooms looked like the heads of the cranes who frequented the same waterways. And so they began calling them crane berries, a word which over the years was shortened to cranberries.
Today, cranberries are a major crop in several northern states, with Wisconsin and Massachusetts producing the lion’s share of the seven million barrels which will end up on holiday dinner tables across the country this year. They will be made into jellies, relishes, salads and fruit compotes in great variety, with a preponderance slipping out of cans bearing the Ocean Spray logo. At our southern Utah family Thanksgiving table, they will show up in a double-crusted baked pie, whose filling is based largely upon an old Algonquian recipe worth sharing.
Combine in a non-reactive saucepan: 3 cups fresh cranberries – 1 cup sugar – 1 cup maple syrup – 2 Tbs. flour – ½ cup boiling water – 1 cup currant raisins – 3 Tbs. grated orange peel – and a pinch of salt. Bring mixture to a simmer, stirring until the berries begin to pop open. Stir in 2 Tbs. of butter before setting it aside to cool while preparing your favorite pie crust recipe for a two-crust pie. Set your oven to 375 degrees. Line a 9-inch pie dish with the bottom crust and fill with the cranberry mixture. Cut the top crust into strips and lay a latticework over the top before crimping the edges and sprinkling some sugar crystals over all. Bake for 50 – 60 minutes, or until the crust is just lightly browned.
I can’t vouch for the authenticity of all Native American myth-stories, but whenever asked about the origin of the North American cranberry, I prefer to go with the version that features a magical white dove.

Here the annual harvest is underway at a New Jersey cranberry farm. More than 40,000 acres of cranberry bogs are cultivated across six states.

CRYSTALS MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD – THE STORY OF SALT Part II

Viewed from outer space, earth stands out from its sister planets in our Sun’s solar system as “the blue planet”, an appellation explained by the oceans which cover three fourths of the surface of our circling globe. Most of that watery expanse is saline by nature, and in earlier eons of time was probably even more so. Beneath the land itself can be found vast deposits of that same salt, left behind by receding oceans and evaporating lakes and seas as mountains were born and died, and time reshaped ancient landscapes. When placed within the context of a global environment which is friendly to life at every level, that salty element must be viewed as one of the greatest gifts of all.
In the previous article which introduced the subject, we looked at the pages of human history upon which salt has written its own particular passages. In this article, we will look at it more from the viewpoint of here and now. Where does our salt come from ? How do we make use of it ? Why do we care ? And . . . are there some things which might cause us to appreciate it just a little bit more ?
Most of the salt which flows into our commercial and personal lives today is mined from those underground deposits before being processed and refined to one extent or another. A very large percentage of mined salt finds its way into something like 14,000 different end uses – some of it, for example going unto our roadways to combat winter ice and snow, and into the water-softeners in many homes and businesses. In fact, some of the technology which laid the foundation for oil drilling and the mining of coal and mineral resources in modern times was born in long-ago salt mines.
In many parts of the world, salt is still produced the old fashioned way, by evaporating the water containing it, either by heating it mechanically, or allowing it to dry by solar action. Around Israel’s Dead Sea and Utah’s Great Salt Lake, solar evaporating ponds are major enterprises.
In the typical American kitchen, there resides somewhere near at hand a familiar round cylindrical box containing the basic family supply of what we call table salt. Chances are it is the same box our parents and grandparents had in their pantries bearing a “girl with an umbrella” label that was introduced back in 1914. Salt that did not stick together in clumps was a new idea then, made possible by an ingredient such as calcium silicate. And, because hypothyroidism was commonplace across much of the country bringing with it goiter growths in many sufferers, sodium iodide was added. The “iodized” table salt we take so much for granted today compensated for diets which were often deficient in naturally occurring iodine.
Because I have a love of food history, and spend a lot of time in our own family kitchen, I take a special interest in the whole wide world of culinary diversity available to the home chef today. The round blue box described above is ever-present, but I seldom make use of it because there are so many alternatives to choose among. Just as we grind our table pepper from selected whole peppercorns, we salt our food from large sized crystals of natural sea salt in a similar table-top grinder. My personal favorite is an additive-free, solar-dried sea salt from New Zealand.
It is said that the human tongue has 10,000 taste pores which are capable of distinguishing between five different areas of taste. The rear of the tongue, along with the soft portion of the upper palate are where we register saltiness. Sea salt has a more vibrant taste than most mined salt, and it takes less of it to achieve the desired effect on food combinations. On the other hand, the pink-tinted crystals mined from 200 feet beneath Redmond, Utah contain traces of associated minerals which give it not only its distinctive color, but a tantalizing flavor not found in any other salt.
Last week we enjoyed a dinner revolving around a flat brisket cut of beef which had been marinated overnight, then slow-baked in a low-temperature oven for five hours. Before marinating, I treated the meat with a coating of kosher salt to draw out some of the moisture, making it more receptive to the barbecue flavoring in the marinade. This process is known as “koshering”, which gives its name to the very sharp-edged salt crystals which work in a way other types of salt cannot duplicate. Thus, kosher salt has a special place on our pantry shelf, right alongside the non-iodized pickling salt we use for everything from dill or sweet pickles, to the corned beef roasts we cure in stone crocks every fall.
We take comfort from the knowledge that in the event of a prolonged power outage, our supply of preserving salt, vinegar and pickling spices assures us of a method of giving the contents of our inoperative freezers a second life. In such an instance, we might ourselves look upon these salty crystals as being “worth their weight in gold.”

Home made kosher dills ready to take their place beside peppery sauerkraut, corned beef and smoked salmon.
Photo by Al Cooper