THE CHOWDER CHRONICLES Chapter II

Sometimes I think we fail to take the time to really enjoy the bounty of the land and sea which is served up at our dinner tables each day; a moment to allow a deep sense of appreciation to whisper to our souls. Perhaps we have allowed ourselves to become jaded by the seductive “plenty” with which we have been blessed by time and place, and the “convenience” with which it comes to us.
One of my favorite essayists (and a distant cousin at that) the late Robert Tristram Coffin, writes of an island picnic in the early 1930s, and of the making of an iron pot of seafood chowder by an extended family, with the whole Atlantic at their feet: “You stir in everything you can find, the spray from the sea, the iodine of kelp, the smell of bayberry bushes scorching in the sun. Even the wind and the blue day get into the chowder sooner or later. It is a wedding of sun and sea.” Whenever Coffin writes about food and family, he does so with so much enthusiasm and gusto you are left nearly breathless with vicarious pleasure. I think some of his genes have come down to me; especially when it comes to chowder.
The essential ingredients of a New England style chowder begin with either salt pork or bacon. I prefer to use a very lean smoked bacon, which is cut into small pieces and slowly brought to a sauté, with the bacon bits (chittlings) set aside to be added back at the finish.
Another “must” ingredient is onions, with the yellow Spanish being preferred. Chopped celery is an option for some, but a “must” for me, including the leaves. The onions and celery constitute the “mirepoix”, going into a tablespoon or two of the bacon fat to sauté to start softening, but not browning. Potatoes have become a “Down East” staple ingredient, cut into chunks and added. Use only a medium starch potato, not an Idaho Russet type which will go mushy; I prefer a small red, or better yet, a Yukon Gold. Finely minced garlic is an option. I recommend two or three bay leaves – a soup-maker’s secret weapon. To complete the chowder base, I favor chicken stock for a farmhouse chowder rather than a beef stock. Of course that will be clam juice in the case of a seafood version.
Whether to use milk, half-and-half or heavy cream for the final touch is up to the chef. I go for heavy cream, because in the end, a cup of that will prevent the necessity of “watering” everything down with two cups of milk to get the desired results. What’s more the cream will not tend to curdle as the milk might.
A grind of pepper, a pat of butter and a sprinkling of bacon crumbs on the top and the steaming bowl is ready to serve.
“Farmhouse” chowder is a term used to identify any of a whole set of “look-alikes” which feature a substitute major ingredient, such as beans, squash, corn, parsnips, chicken or something else. I have recipes for Crabmeat ball, Potato & Cheddar, Pheasant & Cabbage, Mushroom & Leek, and another dozen variations.
The most popular farmhouse chowder across America, and a favorite “comfort food” in itself, is “Corn Chowder”. It is as highly esteemed by The Amish of Pennsylvania as by a resident of Navajo country in the southwest. It is almost as good using canned corn as fresh newly-shucked ears, and so can be enjoyed year-round. For a more intense corn flavor, boil a few of the stripped ears and add the water to the soup base. A handful of chopped bell pepper pieces will give additional color and crunch.
Bread adds a whole complimentary dimension to a steaming bowl of chowder. Hot corn bread, a loaf of French baguette, buttermilk biscuits, or fresh-from-the-oven sourdough bread sticks complete a memorable meal. That, and a minute to say THANKS for the abundance that surrounds us.



A bowl of Farmhouse Corn Chowder from the Cooper kitchen features crisp kernels cut from fresh bi-color Utah ears.

PREPAREDNESS TIP

While economists argue about whether the country is headed for a period of inflation ( an increase in the cost of goods and services), or whether an extended period of deflation ( a decrease in the cost of those same goods and services) is just around the corner, it is important to understand that both are bad news for the consumer. A reduction in costs (deflation) might seem to be attractive, but long term it threatens to result in a cut back in manufacturing and production, a loss of jobs, and possible shortages of goods across the board. Worst of all, they can both be happening at the same time as government attempts to control the money supply. There has never been a better time to get out of debt, and add to your supply of commodities essential to everyday living. Pay attention to economic news, keep an eye out for price movements, and do something every week to strengthen your family’s situation.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH RAILROADING IN COLORADO

The story of the American West is closely tied to the coming of “The Iron Horse”, and the ribbons of shiny steel which sought to bridge the Atlantic and the Pacific. Nowhere did this mighty endeavor face a greater challenge than in the tortured geography which makes up much of the state of Colorado, with narrow canyons that are 1200 feet deep, and grades which were difficult enough to discourage even early pack trains. At the same time, gold, silver and other precious minerals in which those same mountains abounded spawned a mining industry that hungered for rail transportation, across a landscape in which water transport was not an alternative. And then too, there was the coming of the telegraph and the promise of near-instantaneous communications across the miles of singing wires which followed the laying of pioneering tracks and rights-of-way.
To the rail historian, Colorado’s unique geography is nearly synonymous with the story of America’s “narrow gauge” phenomenon – the deviation from the world’s newfound fondness for trackage measuring four-feet-eight-and-a-half inches from rail to rail. With the need for short, sharp curves and frequent switch-backs on grades sometimes amounting to 7.5 percent, the narrower three-foot spacing was just what the doctor (or engineer) ordered. Where a minimum radius of 955 feet would have been required for a standard gauge turn, only 220 feet would accomplish the same turn for a narrow gauge system. The difference in cost was significant: in 1870, the cost of grading a particular stretch of roadway up Clear Creek Canyon would have cost $90,000. for the standard gauge, but came in at less than $20,000 for the chosen narrow gauge. Additional savings came from being able eliminate some of the tunnel construction otherwise necessary. Of course in time, the advantage of being able to carry much heavier loads and at greater speeds would change that advantage, and standard gauge would come into its own. (It is fascinating to learn that at times and in places, the two rail systems would be so intertwined on the same road bed that trains of “mixed” axle widths could operate.)
While literally dozens of long-forgotten names litter the history of railroading in Colorado, the two surviving “giants” came to be the Denver & Rio Grand Western (D&RGW) and the Atichson, Topeka & Santa Fe (Santa Fe). A little-remembered battle took place between the two in 1879 over ownership of the right-of-way through Colorado’s Royal Gorge, a route which would eventually become the most important passenger route connecting east and west. What came to be known as “the Royal Gorge War” pitted some of the most legendary peace officers of the day against each other (including Bat Masterson and “Doc” Holliday), ending with one dead and a peace treaty carved out in Boston, which saw the D&RGW building the line, and the Santa Fe leasing its use.
A “war” of another kind played out with the enactment of the “Sherman Silver Purchase Act” of 1890 – an early example of what can happen when government attempts to solve one economic problem, and thereby ends up creating something much worse. (Do I hear laughter?) The nation had been suffering from a period of deflation – the overproduction of farm commodities had burdened a number of entities with high debt. Enter a well-intentioned Senator from Ohio named Sherman, who believed that if the federal government would just buy more silver allowing it to issue more paper money, folks would buy more stuff, and all would be well. In the short term, this really helped Colorado, where more silver had to be mined. But alas, the folks,(and many big investors), suspicious of silver certificates (paper money), began buying up gold, nearly emptying the nation’s gold reserves, before President Grover Cleveland brought about a repeal in 1893. The damage was done, and the panic which followed ruined many parts of the business community, including railroads; and it particularly hurt Colorado’s silver mines.
A recent visit to the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden reacquainted me with a niche of railroading history worth some pondering. It reawakened personal memories of traveling the entire length of Japan, from the north to the very southern tip, on a coal-fired, narrow-gauge rail line still operating for U.S. troops in 1952, and of being rocked to sleep in a hammock slung from the ceiling of a swaying, wooden passenger car left over from another age.



The oldest locomotive in Colorado today, this 2-8-0 Baldwin was built in Philadelphia in 1880. It went into service for the Denver Leadville & Gunnison narrow gauge line in 1885, and still wears the proud “191” tag.



Two of Al’s great grandkids peer into the interior of a beautifully-restored narrow gauge caboose dating back to 1881. Equipped with the original four-wheel configuration, this artifact also saw service as a bunk house at an Animas River placer mine. The museum sometimes allows children to hold birthday parties in its historic crew quarters.



Rocky Mountain snowfalls have always been a challenge for train traffic negotiating Colorado’s narrow canyon defiles, and this rotary snow plow with its ten-foot blades has many stories it could tell; One more “eye-catcher” at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden.

THE FINAL FLIGHT OF “OLD JOHN FEATHER MERCHANT”

The story about which I write today – on the 65th anniversary of its occurrence – is one which I revisit each year at this time because of the impact it had on me at the age of twelve, and because its fascination factor is only magnified by the confluence of so many ripples and eddies of history. In June of 1945, World War II in Europe was over, and the boys were coming home. The War in the Pacific was gearing up for the final push toward the Japanese home islands, and a transition in military priorities was obvious across America.
For one thing, the mighty Eighth Air Force, whose B-17s and B-24s had hammered the Axis powers from bases in England and elsewhere was being broken up, and its personnel by the thousands were slated to be reconfigured into a “New 8th Air Force” taking shape in the American West and Mid-west, at bases where many air crews were being retrained in the new and larger B-29 Superfortress.
To understand the bitter-sweet nature of this “homecoming” for the flyboys of the Mighty Eighth, one has to consider what they were leaving behind. 45,000 of their comrades would not be coming home again ever, and those who had survived the deadly skies over Germany and occupied Europe had been welded into nine-and-ten-man crews whose intimate unit cohesion knew no parallel in modern warfare. From early 1942 to the end of fighting in 1945, much of the Eighth were scattered among bases situated throughout the countryside of England’s East Anglia, adjacent to small villages with names like Rattlesden, Old Buckenham, Bury St. Edmunds, Grafton Underwood, and Polbrook. More than 40 U.S. Bomber Command fields, carved out of English farmland were home to at least one operational Group each, composed of four squadrons of twelve bombers per Group.
One of those air combat veterans coming home in June, 1945 was Lt. Col. William Franklin Smith, Jr., who during his two-year combat tour had risen from 1st Lieutenant to Lt. Colonel, having served as Commander of the 750th Squadron, and then Deputy Commander of the entire 457th Bomb Group flying out of an AAAF field at Glatton. He had accumulated more than 1000 hours of mission time, and witnessed the planning and execution of 236 missions during those 24 months. A graduate of West Point, and a popular and widely-respected leader, he had been awarded the Air Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Croix de Guerre. He was 27 years of age as he planned a routine flight through civilian air space on July 28, 1945.
Compared to destinations like Berlin, Merseburg and Schweinfurt, the flight from Boston to New Jersey probably appeared to hold no particular threat to Smith’s plan to pick up his Commanding Officer at Newark, so that together they could proceed to their new stateside assignment at Sioux Falls Army Air Base in South Dakota. This time, he would not have to wrestle with the controls of a four engine heavy bomber like the B-17, but would be flying the fast, twin-engine B-25 Mitchell, retired from tactical combat roles, but much favored for short-range transportation between bases in the states. Fittingly, this plane, with the tail number -0577, was named “Old John Feather Merchant” a vernacular terminology among the military for someone who preferred to carry a light load, or do less than their share. Traveling with him was one crew member, and a “hitch-hiker” from the Navy.
At about 9:45 AM, Colonel Smith had a conversation with the tower at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, noting the heavy fog covering the area. LaGuardia thought he should land there rather than Newark – for reasons that have never been clear to me. The operator noted that “from where I am sitting, I can’t even see the top of the Empire State building”. Smith apparently caught sight of the East River, and believing it to be the Hudson, began to let down, looking for a view of the ground, which – if he had been over the Jersey swamps – would have made perfect sense. In fact he lowered his landing gear in anticipation of an approach to Newark. The plane was at 500 feet when he realized he was in downtown Manhattan, with skyscrapers all around him. Veering to avoid first the New York Central building, then the Chrysler tower, he would have had only a split second to see the world’s tallest building filling his windscreen. It was too late, and the plane no longer had the power and lift to respond to his attempt to turn aside.
At 9:49 AM, Saturday, July 28, 1945 the B-25 bomber plunged into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building at close to 225 miles per hour, entering from the 34th street side amidst a rolling ball of burning aviation fuel, one engine and the landing gear on a trajectory which carried them out the 33rd street side, only to tumble onto the roof of a 13-story building below, setting yet another fire. The other engine severed the cables of elevator No. 6, carrying it and its two passengers 75 floors to the building’s basement. The elevator operator, Betty Lou Oliver survived the fall (thanks to a buffer of oil designed into the shaft), despite a broken back. The passenger died later. Ten office workers employed by the Wartime Catholic Relief Agency died, along with the three men in the plane, bringing the death toll to 14.
Three miles away, on the Jersey side of the Hudson, a twelve-year old boy who anxiously followed every smidgeon of war and aviation news was shaken by this breaking bulletin. The next day, my aunt took me to see for myself the tail half of that sad B-25 protruding from the 79th floor 975 feet above where we stood on the street below.
Lt. Colonel William F. Smith, Jr. is buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Birmingham, Alabama.



Smoke pours from the 18X20 foot hole in the 79th floor of the Empire State building in which a WW II B-25 twin-engine bomber is embedded. Smoke also arises from a nearby building whose penthouse was set ablaze by one of the plane’s engines. The wreckage was disassembled and retrieved from inside in the days that followed the July 28, 1945 event.

A LOVE AFFAIR WITH LIGHTHOUSES

Pemaquid Point Light captured in a setting no longer possible after years of change in the surrounding landscape. Stones weighing many tons are sometimes deposited here by surging storm tides.

Shortly after Shirley and I were first married, I was stationed with a USAF Fighter Interceptor Squadron on Washington State’s Puget Sound. We lived off-base in a home in the ocean-front village of Mukilteo which we shared with the Coast Guard couple who manned the nearby lighthouse. I can’t be sure, but that may be where my love affair with “lights” actually began.
What is certain is that over the next fifty years, our affection for coastal New England blossomed into an almost-familial connection with the lighthouses of Maine. While I have researched, visited and photographed lighthouses on both coasts and the Great Lakes, and gathered lighthouse lore and history along the way, there are a handful of lights which have carved out a special place in my heart.
Our primary “Down East” destination has long been the village of New Harbor, home to the Pemaquid Point Light, perhaps the most-photographed beacon in the U.S., often gracing calendar pages and magazine covers. Built in 1827 during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, it marks a jutting rocky finger of glacial debris which has claimed many wrecks over the years. The small building with a white “pillar” attached houses one of the few remaining Phillips’ Striking Bells, a fog signal designed around a wind-up timing mechanism like that of a grandfather clock. A natural drawing card for seascape artists, it is also a favorite gathering place for local residents who hold a traditional sunrise religious service there every Easter morning. One of our own traditions is to gather wild rosehips from a clutch of flourishing sea roses near the base of the light, from which we make a batch of rosehip jelly to bring back west with us. Like most Maine lighthouses, Pemaquid was a “family” light until 1934 when it was automated. The old Keeper’s house has been turned into an excellent fishermen’s museum.
Officially, the first place to see the rising sun on the mainland of the continental United States lies in the extreme northeast corner of Maine at a place known (oddly) as West Quoddy Head. The lighthouse which marks this picturesque spot is one of only several “barber pole” lights, painted in alternating red and white horizontal stripes. It provided a key visual navigational aid to ships destined for both U.S. and Canadian ports. West Quoddy also marks the approaches to the Bay of Fundy, where tides of 55 feet and more create moving “bores” of swift water, where small boat handling requires both good timing and great skill. Fundy is also known as the birthplace of record fogs, one more nightmare for mariners.
(At the opposite side of the continental U.S., the lighthouse on Cape Blanco, Oregon is the last point on the mainland to see the sun as it sets, and one year we managed to visit both of these lights within a two-month period.)
Another of our favorite Maine mid-coast haunts is Monhegan Island which lies about fifteen miles out to sea from Port Clyde – a one-hour boat-ride I have made many times. ( I confess to enjoying the trip most when a high sea is running, and waves are breaking green over the mail boat’s bows, a joy not always shared by members of the tour groups I have led.) Monhegan lays claim to a tantalizing history, from Viking visits, Indian battles, and momentary invasions during the French and Indian Wars, the Revolution and the War of 1812, to raging wildfires and a “lobster war”. It is likely the first piece of America visited by English fishermen who came ashore here to salt down their cod, long before the first settlements were even contemplated. Perched at the island’s apex, 180 feet above the sea, is a stocky stone lighthouse whose white pulses can be seen from twenty miles away, and a nearby fog signal of mighty aural authority. This light was constructed in 1824, during the presidency of James Monroe, and was not automated until 1959. Hiking the island’s miles of trails always begins for us with a pause at the pinnacle to admire this historic light whose early lamps were fueled with whale oil, and tended by a long succession of hardy keepers.
Monhegan Island waters are famous for the lobsters harvested there by dedicated fishermen who impose and respect their own short season, and theirs is another story I will save for another day.


The lighthouse at West Quoddy Head looks out on the Bay of Fundy and the border with New Brunswick. The water that sweeps into the Bay each day exceeds the volume of all the world’s rivers combined.


Maine is 300 miles closer to England than any other part of America, and Monhegan Island was for centuries the exact landmass toward which early Mariners set course. The light house is short, since it is already 180 feet above sea level. Keeper Thomas Seavey lit the first whale oil lamps July 2, 1824.

All Photos By Al Cooper

THE CHOWDER CHRONICLES Chapter One

Al Cooper’s version of fish chowder for this week features fresh steelhead salmon from the Pacific Northwest, fresh garden peas, and tiny whole onions.

My very first experience with the subject about which I write with a deep sense of appreciation took place in the basement of an old stone Episcopal Church in Edgewater, New Jersey. I was probably around five years of age, and the occasion was the annual clam chowder supper which happened to be a long-standing tradition of this particular congregation – one of several for which my uncle was the organist. It was a Manhattan style (tomato-based) chowder, the version favored by folks who lived on the Jersey shore. All these years after, I can still call up a detailed picture of the time, the place, the people and above all, the steaming bowl of wonder passed to me through a kitchen serving window along with a handful of requisite “pilot crackers”.
Here I have to take a few minutes to pay homage to the great American ethic known as “the church supper”, especially in northern New England where I was fortunate enough to do much of my growing up and where, to this day, we try on each year’s pilgrimage to hit at least one or two: from “chicken pot pie”, “baked bean and winter squash”, “turkey and sage dressing”, “venison and wild game”, and of course “clam bakes” and “lobster festivals”. One of our favorites is in the small Vermont village of Shrewsbury, where we can count on being entertained by a group of local Blue Grass musicians as we wait our turn in line. (The local volunteer fire department gets most of its annual funding from this popular event.)
You will notice that the word local is used several times in this soliloquy, underlining what makes these occasions so important to those of us who love to see food, history, geography and tradition blended together in such a delicious setting. Just as I savor corner book stores featuring local writers, I find delight in the culinary wonder hiding from the larger world in America’s small towns and forgotten neighborhoods. And nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of chowders and chowder-makers.
In 1732, a New England diarist named Benjamin Lynde mentions having “dined on a fine chowdered cod”, the first written reference in America to the dish we call chowder (or in Maine chow’dah). It is believed it probably originated some time earlier in the 1700s, probably on board a sailing ship or fishing boat where a freshly-caught fish was layered with other ingredients, including salt pork and ship’s biscuits , and cooked in an iron pot. The name may well come from that cooking vessel, known in the French as a “chaudiere” or cauldron. Some think it started with the Old English term for a fish monger or “jowter”. The first known recipe for chowder to be published appeared in the Boston Evening Post on September 23rd 1751.(I have a copy of that relic which is written as a clever rhyme.)
The most important thing to understand is that chowder is not “soup”. While it is closer to being a stew in consistency, it is distinct even from that designation in that there is nothing “random” when it comes to constituent ingredients and the order in which they come into play. The first chowders featured a principle component from the sea, such as fin fish and/or shell fish, married together with available root vegetables, salt pork and milk or cream. Crackers were often used as a natural thickener. As New Englanders moved west and new immigrants arrived (Portuguese sausage in Rhode Island etc.) they found new ways of varying their old kitchen traditions. In this inaugural “chapter”, we will concentrate on seafood chowders, saving “Farmhouse” chowders for another time.
More often than not, the word chowder is associated with the word clam – that luscious bivalve which graces our shores in great numbers. In northern, New England, the most favored are the little neck or cherry stones while in the Boston area, the larger quahogs predominate in chowder-making kitchens. On the west coast, the even larger and comical-looking geoducks (pronounced gooy-duk) work well, while Bahamians substitute conch meat in their own unique version.
The “war” between red and white chowder aficionados is long and legendary and will never be settled. I like both, but white (New England style) is a clear winner for me. Then there is the ongoing contest between “thick and creamy” versus ”thinner milkier” versions. I come down squarely in the middle on that one. Over the years, we have conducted our own delicious tasting contests as we travel the “chowder corridor” from Boston, down east to Bar Harbor. (We are the quintessential chowder snobs, avoiding some communities altogether if their chowder isn’t up to snuff.) Our favorite remains a Portsmouth, New Hampshire eatery known as The Dinnerhorn, with Shaw’s Wharf in New Harbor, Maine being a perennial hang-out. And of course, Cappy’s Chowder House in Camden, Maine gets an honorable mention. For old-fashioned Haddock Chowder, it’s hard to beat The Anchor Inn at Round Pond Maine. Fresh haddock is, on all counts, the supreme choice for the dedicated fish chowder chef!
Whenever I can obtain a bucket of freshly-dug cherry stones, I prefer to make my own clam chowder, building first a base of clam broth, onions, celery, bay leaves, smoked bacon, and cubed new potatoes, with the chopped clam meat (or fin fish) and heavy cream added at the tail end and allowed to cook for just a few final minutes.
In future chapters of “The Chowder Chronicles”, we will look at “Farmhouse” and other variations of this traditional American “comfort food” along with companion breads to go with them . . . but I have to stop here because a noble cauldron of newly-made fish chow’dah is waiting for the final touch in the kitchen.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND THE “LOST CAUSE” WRITERS

A Pennsylvania sun sets over Little Round Top, where on July 1st, 1863, Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain and the men of the 20th Maine Volunteer Regiment saved the Union line at Gettysburg from being flanked and rolled up.

The American Civil War – or what is still called “The War of Northern Aggression” by my friend from Louisiana, and many other southerners, was arguably the most impactful event in U.S. history; so much so that some historians think of it as our “second revolution”. To this day, it remains one of the most researched, studied and written-about chapters in the whole wide sprawling story of America. More than any other conflict, it defines not just the geography of our land, but the question of who we are and how we got this way. That being so, why do so many today accept so readily the idea that “it was inevitable that the North would win”, and “it wasn’t really about slavery” ? My life-long interest in this part of our unique history has not only led me to the battlefields and burial grounds of that cataclysmic contest, but to the diaries, journals and writings spawned by it, and thereby to some conclusions relative to the topic I write about today. I do not accept as holy writ that the North was “bound” to win, and I believe that in the final analysis, it certainly was about slavery.
It is often stated that war histories are written by the winners, and certainly a number of observers from the North chronicled the Civil War from the victors’ viewpoint. There was a strong motivation in the post-war North however, to work toward rebuilding and reconciliation, and to “get on with life”. In a war which had cost everyone something, there was not a great deal to be celebrating, especially after the assassination of the President within days of Lee’s surrender. Most of the scholarly writings from a Union perspective were yet to be written in the future; certainly Grant’s reminiscences fell short.
In the former Confederacy, on the other hand, there was a mad scramble to put a positive “spin” on what some feared would be said of them by writers and historians of the future. Jubal Early was the most prolific and strong-voiced of a whole battery of chroniclers who would become known as “The Lost Cause School”, a group which included former President Jefferson Davis, with no less a figure than Robert E. Lee himself furnishing constant encouragement (although his own book would never see print). Recognizing the political corner into which the war and the context within which the North had pursued it had painted them, the gist of their writings posited three principal ideas: (1) The Confederacy fought to preserve constitutional liberty, and slavery was never the main reason (Even Gen. Lee, they insisted, was against slavery). (2) Robert E. Lee was a great patriot, the greatest General in America, and a personage in the very flawless image of George Washington. And (3) The North was always destined to win, due to its great technological, industrial, transportation and manpower superiority, (and knowing this inevitability from the start, “wasn’t our cause brave and noble” !)
Many school books over the years, have been influenced by historical accounts based on the numerous and earlier “Lost Cause” quotations. A more careful study of original material would argue that the public support in the North essential to “buying into” a war policy and support for the new Republican Party would not have taken shape without a strong anti-slavery constituency. After all, the Confederacy had existed as a full-fledged and separate nation, with a functioning constitutional government for a full year prior to Fort Sumter without provoking the firing of a single shot, so “preservation of the union” was clearly not a sufficient goad by itself.
Despite the obvious fact that the northern states had the advantage of industrialization and a larger population upon which to base a war economy, it faced the daunting task of blockading thousands of miles of southern shores and hundreds of potential ports; denying use of the Mississippi, the Cumberland, the Ohio, the Tennessee and other river systems; fighting its battles almost entirely in enemy territory at the end of long supply lines and surrounded by a distinctly unfriendly public, and the need to occupy or otherwise manage a civil population spread across the vastness of eleven states. At the same time, Lincoln had to fight off the growing enmity of a U.S. Congress just waiting for a reason to defund his war efforts, while hanging on to the presidency in an 1864 election in which the war itself threatened to unseat him. Only the win at Gettysburg saved his presidency, and only the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation after Antietam reinvigorated a war-weary and disillusioned populace.
In the South, a slave-based economy permitted a far greater percentage of draft-age men to serve in uniform, while the Confederate armies enjoyed the advantage of fighting from defensive positions, with internal supply lines much of the time. It can be argued that all the Confederate States had to do to win was not lose, while Lincoln’s Armies must win the big campaigns, in order not to forfeit Congressional support.
Lincoln would never have come to power without the backing of New England’s staunch anti-slavery Republicans, and the support needed to see his military through the first two years of mostly-lost battles came from the hatred of slavery which burned in a key majority in Congress. And as much as I find to admire about Robert E, Lee and as much as I am impressed by the genius of his leadership, I am not persuaded that he held strong anti-slavery views prior to emancipation.
Between battlefield casualties, illness, accident and disease, somewhere around 750,000 Americans died in the Civil War, Blue and Gray – more than in all our other wars combined, and from a combined national population of only 31 million.
In the end, the Union was preserved, and a new amendment was added to our Constitution which said that it was not right for one man to own another. America is not where slavery began, but it is where slavery ended, and a great deal of blood was shed to make that true.

GETTYSBURG AND THE MAN IN THE OVAL OFFICE

One hundred and forty-seven years ago this June 30th, a handful of troopers from Major General John Buford’s Union cavalry ran into a group of Confederate soldiers on the Emmetsburg road just outside the Pennsylvania crossroads town of Gettysburg. What followed from this unplanned and largely unexpected encounter would turn out to be an epic event whose echoes still resound through the halls of time today. No single three-day moment in American history has had so enduring an impact and has so captured the imagination of all the following generations as the clash of arms we call The Battle Of Gettysburg. Whether or not it was the so-called “turning point” many so denominate it in America’s Civil War, what took place there, and the words which were afterward spoken there by our sixteenth President have helped to make it one of our most honored tracts of “hallowed ground”.
Both Union General George Gordon Meade, newly-appointed commander of the Army of The Potomac, and General Robert E. Lee, leader of the Army of Northern Virginia were many miles away when the shooting started and the opposing sides began to establish their respective fighting positions. From the very beginning, this was to be a “soldiers’ fight” rather than a contest between Generals, although there would be enough of those to go around. In all, more than 170,000 men and boys (and an unknown number of women dressed as men) would take part. The North would suffer 28,000 casualties, and Lee’s forces 25,000.
If one were keeping score, July 1st and 2nd would have to be chalked up as wins for Lee, but on July 3rd, the legendary man-in-gray guessed wrong and sent George Pickett’s division on a one mile march against the strongest section of Meade’s line, and into the teeth of withering Union fire. One of the many ironies of Gettysburg is that Pickett, one of the least talented of Confederate generals on the field should be the most-remembered name of the event.
In one of numerous side-bar stories of that day, two former West Point classmates and life-long friends were on course to fulfill a destiny they had both vowed to avoid. Lewis B. Armistead, a North Carolinian and Winfield Scott Hancock, a son of Pennsylvania had been serving together in a U.S. Army post in California as the secession crisis expanded. After Armistead and other officers from the south announced a decision to join the Confederacy, a final party was held, at which the two old friends pledged never to knowingly give harm to the other. Now, it was Brigadier General Lewis Armistead who rode at the head of Pickett’s ill-fated advance toward the copse of trees which would mark the Confederacy’s “high water point” in a war which would go on for two more costly years - but would never be quite the same again – and Union Major General Winfield Scott Hancock who waited in command of the defenders. In the final minutes of that violent collision of arms, both men would fall, mortally wounded within feet of each other. Armistead would die of his wounds, while Hancock would survive, to hand-deliver her husband’s silk scarf to his friend’s widow, and to go on himself to a full military career, and a nomination for the presidency of the United States.
Another Pennsylvania boy came home that day. Wesley Culp of Gettysburg had courted and wed a southern girl some years earlier and had chosen to live in her native Virginia. Now, clad in the gray uniform of his Virginia regiment, he was among the many who fell on July 2nd in the fight which would ever after be known as the Battle of Culp’s Hill. He died within a hundred yards of the farm house in which he was born, and which was defended by a Pennsylvania regiment in which his brother Robert was a lieutenant.
George Gordon Meade gave President Lincoln the victory he needed in his battle with a Congress ever-more-reluctant to support the war effort, and to convince European powers that threatening the blockade of southern ports might be unwise after all. Yet Meade disappointed the President by failing to follow up the field victory, and allowing Lee to retreat with his exposed 90-mile long “caravan” back to the safety of Virginia. Lincoln could put up with commanders who were openly hostile to him (i.e. George B. McClellan) but who understood how to fight and win a battle. (He had even chosen as his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, a Democrat who often stubbornly opposed him.) He was very unforgiving though, of Generals who failed to understand that victory meant destroying the enemy, not taking over cities.
In his classic Civil War study “THE FINAL FURY”, Bruce Catton noted that in the final analysis, the man behind the Union victory at Gettysburg – and elsewhere in that epic struggle - did not wear a uniform, but was a civilian who sat in an oval office many miles away.


A foggy September sunrise outlines a Civil War cannon in front of the famous copse of trees where the culmination of Pickett’s Charge marked the South’s high water mark of the Civil War. Along with “Little Round Top” and “Devil’s Den”, it is one of Al Cooper’s most
revered sites of the sprawling Gettysburg National Battlefield.


Not far from this resting place of one of the hundreds of “Unknowns” at Gettysburg
is the site from which President Lincoln delivered the address he thought would be “soon forgotten”.

PRESERVING OUR SEED HERITAGE

One of Al Cooper’s garden favorites is a bi-colored heirloom tomato known as “Georgia Streak”, with some specimens reaching nearly two pounds in weight.


Just months before his death in 1972, Baptist Ott presented an unusual gift to his granddaughter Diane Whealy and her husband Kent: three tightly-lidded glass jars containing garden seeds which had come from Bavaria, four generations before. It took a while for Diane and Kent to realize the value of the old-time morning glory, tomato and bean seeds which were the legacy of forbearers now long gone, and for which they now had the sole responsibility of carrying on. At about the same time as they were relocating from Missouri to the farming country of northeastern Iowa for family reasons, the Whealys began their search for other “long-forgotten” family seed gems among friends, relatives and perfect strangers, seeds often discovered slumbering in dusty attics and back rooms around the country. They had no idea they were embarking on a mission that would become their life’s work.
On a 57-acre farm near Decorah, Iowa, the Whealys established “Heritage Farm”, headquarters for the non-profit organization they founded in 1975. With humble beginnings, “Seed Savers Exchange” took on the task of gathering open-pollinated (non-hybrid) seeds from volunteer donors from across the nation, and eventually, around the world. What they learned from extensive research was that more than eighty percent of garden vegetable varieties once widely available from seed companies in a 1902 inventory, were no longer in existence, and another 25,000 were endangered. With the proliferation of hybridization, and the promise of higher profits, plant breeders were on their way to losing a connection with the very gene pool from which the future of bio-diversity must depend. One need only examine the Irish potato famine of the mid-1800s, and the near-catastrophic corn blight that decimated U.S. feed corn production in the 1970s to be reminded of the dangers implicit in “monoculture”, and the narrowing of highly-hybridized food varieties.
While some types of vegetable seeds have a long storage life (I am germinating tomato and bean seeds which have been in my collection since 1983), most plant seeds need to be sown and reinvigorated every three years to retain their viability. In contrast the 2000-year-old seeds of a Judean date palm sprouted successfully in 2005 !
Each year since its founding, SSE has published a catalogue of seed varieties in the inventory available in their expanding seed bank, the 2010 issue offering a listing of 20,407 different varieties, making the Decorah collection the country’s largest non-governmental repository. Joining hands with similar efforts in Europe, SSE recently contributed a sizeable sampling of their collection to be held in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.
Each July, SSE members come to Decorah from far and wide to participate in an event which has become a fabled tradition at Heritage Farm. Visiting and exchanging ideas with one another, they get to have a hands-on relationship with the acres of fruit, vegetables, and even heirloom livestock. There is something very vitalizing about walking between grow-beds overflowing with Mortgage-Lifter, and Aunt Ruby’s German Green tomatoes, Moon and Stars watermelons, Pennsylvania-Dutch Crookneck squash, Perfection Drumhead Savoy cabbage, and Scarlet Runner beans dating back to the days of the Revolution. And for me, biting into an Esopus Spitzenberg, a Wolf River, or Cox Orange Pippin apple is enough to bring tears to my eyes !
I can’t help but believe that if Baptist Ott could look back over his shoulder, he would be proud to see what has come from those three jars of cherished seeds he left in the custody of his granddaughter.


Heirloom leaf lettuce plants flourish among rows of venerable pole beans, whose Vertical growing habits have endeared them to space-conscious gardeners.


Nestled in the rolling hills of northeastern Iowa farm country, “Heritage Farm” is home to Seed Savers’ Exchange and acres of a living seed history. “Caged” grow beds protect certain varieties from unintended cross pollination. The red barns in the background display the craftsmanship of local Amish artisans.


America’s love affair with maise corn reaches back into early history. Native Americans of long ago valued varieties of popping corn as much as we do today.


Temperature and humidity-controlled storage facilities house part of the collection of the tens of thousands of vegetable varieties carefully catalogued and kept viable by SSE staff and volunteers at the Decorah repository.

RENDEZVOUS ON THE LITTLE BIG HORN “TAPS” FOR AMERICA’S BOY GENERAL Part II

Chief Sitting Bull (Tatanka iyotake), a Hunkpapa Sioux spiritual leader was 45 at the time of the Big Horn battle. In 1890, he would be shot dead by his own people as predicted in a prophecy.

A much-loved New Hampshire General of the American Revolution named John Stark had described his motivation to fight the British with the famous words “Live Free or Die”, a quote which is presently emblazoned on license plates from that state. I can think of no more succinct explanation of how and why Native Americans of seven disparate tribes and as many bands were willing to overcome their ancient differences and outright enmities, to gather together under a single leader to do battle with the mighty U.S. Army, in June of 1876 on Montana’s Little Big Horn River. With the buffalo herds on which they depended intentionally decimated, their promised lands seized, and reservation life a virtual enslavement, they felt they had nowhere else to go.
Together with families, that gathering numbered nearly eight thousand, supported by perhaps twenty thousand horses. The first of the many mistakes which Custer made that 25th day of June, was to ignore the warnings of his Crow scouts that the village they were approaching was much larger than he had bargained on. The second - and most unforgivable for the commander of such a small force – was to divide his command. He broke off a13l- man battalion under Major Reno, a second of 113 men under Captain Benteen to make circling movements from his own 215 man attacking group (which he then further divided in half for the assault). Another group of 131 troopers and packers he left to protect the pack train, which carried all the supplies, including much of the ammunition and scarce water which now would be separated from the fighting men who would need it !
Custer kept with him his younger brothers, Tom and Boston, his favorite cousin “Autie”, a newspaper correspondent (Custer was ever-attentive to his ongoing PR campaign), and his trusted four Crow scouts. Reno and Benteen shared 35 Indian scouts, mostly Arikara, whose devotion to duty by the way is worthy of special note. (The Indian scouts who served the U.S. soldiers at Big Horn were the most emotionally-affected and heart-stricken of all the survivors. They wept openly for their comrades in blue, and at least one became a suicide. A side story almost never told !)
Nearly half the men of the 7th Cavalry were foreign-born, German and Irish immigrants predominating,, part of a mix from 14 European countries. Many had enlisted because regular jobs in a depressed economy were hard to find. Some spoke and understood little “American/English”, and most had only recently learned to ride a horse – and not very well at that. They were equipped with the standard U.S. Army rifle: a single-shot Springfield carbine. (The U.S. military has long been guilty of arming its troops with weapons left over from the previous war.) In this case, senior commanders wished to conserve on ammunition, arguing that a “good soldier” could still manage to reload and fire 17 times a minute. In actual fact, the Springfield used metallic casings made from copper which swelled in an overheated barrel resulting in a jam which could only be freed with a knife blade.
As a result of battlefield archeology only recently documented, we know that among a mix of weaponry, many Indian warriors carried Winchester and Henry repeaters, firing ammunition with brass casings and capable of rapid and accurate fire, even from horseback. And here there was another telling dichotomy: Cavalry soldiers fought dismounted, forming first into skirmish lines, requiring that one of every four troopers acted as a “horse-holder” and was virtually unable to join the fighting ! Warriors fought individually and often from the saddle. Ironically, even the bow-and-arrow turned out to be a not-so-secret but very effective battlefield weapon, capable of flying through a parabolic trajectory to take casualties among troopers seemingly protected by earthen berms and barriers. As many as 10,000 arrows may have littered the two scenes of battle in the immediate aftermath.
Reno and Benteen were quickly isolated from the “valley fight”, coming together to hold off 2000 warriors for almost two days with their 400 embattled and exhausted troopers on a hilltop now known as “Reno Hill”, while a mile away, and out of sight, Custer and his battalion were losing their fight in an ever-collapsing circle on “Last Stand Hill”. In the end, Custer’s 7th Cavalry were not only outnumbered, but outgunned.
With all the contrary criticism given ample weight, there remains much evidence and compelling testimony to the acts of personal courage and bravery exhibited on the battlegrounds of the Little Big Horn. Fifteen Medals of Honor were won that day, and Captain Frederick Benteen, with all his many faults and a legion of detractors ended up providing the motivating leadership that kept the defenders of “Reno Hill” from joining the list of fatalities marking the battle of June25th and 26th, 1876. Altogether, the U.S. 7th Cavalry lost 268 killed and 62 wounded.
2nd Lieutenant Henry Harrington, CO of Custer’s C Company won the respect of the warriors on the other side who observed his selfless efforts to save his trapped companions not once but twice before falling himself.
Moving Robe Woman, a Lakota mother, was one of several Indian women who joined the field of battle to defend their warrior sons and husbands, while Hunkpapa boys as young as 12 rode into battle.
Several Courts of Inquiry looked at evidence of drunkenness, cowardice and dereliction of duty in the months following the Big Horn disaster and several reputations were tarnished within the military. One may wonder though why much of what was discovered was never made public, and why history books were pretty much written in support of the “Custer Myth”; a story which today is unveiled by new research and technology. The answer probably comes down to a desire to protect the families of the lost troopers, and especially Libby Custer, the widow who devoted the remainder of her long life to guarding and polishing the reputation of the man she loved.
NOTE: The last survivor ot the Little Big Horn was Private (later Sgt’) Charles Windolph, an immigrant from Germany, who died in 1950 at the age of 97.
The Custer disaster was not the most costly U.S. Army defeat of the Indian Wars, but an event during the Wabash campaign in Ohio in 1791, in which 700 troops died and 300 were wounded. It was a great embarrassment for President George Washington.

Three Custer scouts, Little Brave, Bobtail Bull and Bloody Knife, are honored near “Custer Hill” with epitaphs which note that they “died in defense of the Arikara way of life.

RENDEZVOUS ON THE LITTLE BIG HORN “TAPS” FOR AMERICA’S BOY GENERAL Part I

Major General (brevet) George Armstrong Custer in 1865 – The U.S. Army’s “Boy General”

No chapter in American history has been so thoroughly written about yet more subject to myth and misunderstanding than the event we all know as “The Battle of The Little Big Horn”, or “Custer’s Last Stand”, (the “Battle of Greasy Grass Creek” to the Indians). It was unquestionably the most humiliating defeat for an army of The United States since Bull Run in the Civil War, but in the long term it came to represent a much larger loss for the future of the Plains Indians in their fight for ownership and sovereignty over their ancestral lands. It was in fact a prime example of a people who won a great battle, and as a consequence lost the larger war.
For military historians, this unusual battle between the warriors of two very different cultures, the politics of the era in which they fought, the battlefield tactics employed, and the commanding personalities of the opposing leaders has been a topic of controversy to this very day. Was the massacre of most of his command an inevitable consequence of Custer’s over-reaching arrogance and personal ambition, or was he simply surprised by the unexpected size and competence of the massed combination of forces he met near the bend of that western river on June 25th, 1876 ? Is it true that his two battalion commanders, Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen were somehow guilty of dereliction of duty in failing to come to his aid in time, or was the whole unfortunate affair simply evidence of the fact that Custer’s well-known “luck” finally ran out? Did the Indians really have better rifles as some proclaim, and would it have made a difference if the 7th Cavalry had brought along the Gatling guns available to them?
At the center of all the questions sits the larger-than-life personage of George Armstrong Custer himself, known throughout the country as the Union Army’s “Boy General” who had cut a huge figure in the American Civil War, from First Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg, to The Wilderness, Petersburg, and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. He became the youngest Brigadier General in history at the age of 23, and by war’s end he wore the two stars of a Major General (brevet). The son of an Ohio blacksmith, he would have been an unlikely candidate, in 1858, for admittance to The U.S. Military Academy at West Point but for the intervention of a congressman. Even with that, he barely escaped dismissal on behavior demerits several times, only to graduate at the bottom of his class just in time to join the ranks of the Civil War Union Army.
As a cavalry commander, Custer built a reputation for his aggressive – even audacious – use of mounted troopers in close combat, matching skills with J.E.B. Stuart, his Confederate counterpart . Along with an apparent disdain of danger, he was driven by ambition and a need to be noticed. As another officer once noted, Custer “always needs to do too much and go too far”.
Somehow, despite his relentless drive to place himself at the head of nearly every assault, Custer failed to win the Medal of Honor he so coveted. Ironically, it was his beloved younger brother Thomas Custer, who garnered not one but two of the country’s highest awards, within days of each other. A number of Custer historians believe that in his ill-conceived attack on the Indian village at Little Big Horn ten years later, he was still trying.
At the end of the Civil War, the Union Army went into a rapid down-sizing mode, and those officers who were invited to continue in service had their brevet ranks reduced to the lower or “permanent” grade level. Thus, Major General George Armstrong Custer became Lt. Colonel Custer, though he was typically honored with the term “General” by those serving with him. Controversy continued to plague Custer in the post-war years, and relations with his Commander-In-Chief, President Ulysses M. Grant were prickly at best. In fact just before being given field command of the U.S. 7th Cavalry in time for the Cheyenne campaign in the west, he had been serving out a one-year disciplinary removal from duty. Already a veteran of Indian warfare, he carried with him the baggage of prior run-ins with fellow officers, including Major Marcus Reno who would now be his second-in-command. In fact, Reno nurtured a hard-to-hide hatred for Custer, whom he had accused of abandoning wounded at the battle of Washita. On top of all that, Custer and his regiment were under the command of General Alfred Terry, a somewhat timid and conveniently “distant” overseer in the upcoming campaign in a flawed and largely failed national policy designed to drive the remaining plains Indians into reservation life.
As the country prepared to celebrate its proud Centennial birthday on July 4th, 1876, Custer and his 750-man regiment set out on what would be their date with destiny on a hill overlooking the Little Big Horn River. Waiting for them would be an unprecedented amalgamation of more than 2000 Indian warriors from seven nations under the determined leadership of a Hunkpapa Lakota chief and holy man by the name of Tatanka iyotake, or Sitting Bull.

REMEMBERING FALLEN PEACE OFFICERS

Since the founding days of our republic, Americans have been a “holiday-keeping” people. We have long established and honored days of celebration, days for feasting, and days for remembering. Although I often lament the crass commercialism which seems to have misplaced the original meaning behind these traditional demarcations on our calendars, I appreciate the national sense of respect for the unique history which makes us who we are which is still implicit in the practice.
Of the two dozen or so of those special days, only four are of sufficient solemnity to officially require the flying of the national flag at half staff. The most neglected of these occurs on May the 15th when we observe (or ought to observe) Peace Officers’ Memorial Day.
On April 29, 1853 Salt Lake County Deputy Rodney Badger drowned in the Weber river while attempting to rescue an immigrant family stranded in a wagon in mid-stream. He had already successfully rescued four of the children and their mother. While swimming to shore with the last two children, he was swept under the water. His body and those of the children were recovered more than a year later a mile and a half downstream.
Deputy Badger was the first of 118 Utah Peace Officers who would give their lives in the line of duty, the most recent being Utah County Detective Kevin Orr, who died in the crash of a helicopter searching for a missing woman, Millard County Deputy Josie Fox, shot during a vehicle stop, and Sevier County Deputy, Sergeant Franco Aguilar, who was pushed off an icy bridge while aiding an accident victim.
When Provo City Police Officer William Strong was shot to death by a transient in 1899, he had been serving his community for 30 years, while Juab County Deputy Floyd L. Rose was killed by a jail escapee in 1922 only hours after being sworn in. Ogden Patrolman Albert G. Smalley was only 19 when he suffered accident injuries which would take his life months later. At the other end of the age spectrum, Carbon County Sheriff S. Marion Bliss was 70 when shot to death by “friendly fire” in a shoot-out with a murder suspect who also died.
Every time a police officer dies in the line of duty, the chain of those who are affected by the death is a long one. 91% are married with an average 3.6 children, and a medial age of 40. 57% of Utah’s fallen were murdered, the remaining 43% died in accidents, many of which involved inattentive, distracted or impaired drivers who crashed into them.
Until the line-of-duty death of Navajo Dept. of Public Safety Officer Esther Todecheene in 1998 while attempting to come to the aid of another officer, Utah’s fallen police officers had all been male. Officer Todecheene however, was the fourth Native-American to pay the price.
Since the beginning of record keeping, 19,160 American law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty, an average of seven per month (32 so far in the current year.)
When you see one of those tall white crosses with the famous beehive symbol here and there beside Utah highways, take a moment to consider the dangers faced daily and routinely by members of the Utah Highway Patrol. Since the death of the first of their number in May, 1931 a total of 14 Troopers have died in the line of duty, a third of those by gunfire.
Every time a police officer answers a house call, knocks on a door or stops to cite an offender or assist a motorist, he places his or her life on the line in ways which might never have seemed likely at the beginning of shift. And those who wait at home for the safe return of that loved one will appreciate every thoughtfulness those of us who travel Utah roads extend to those who serve to keep us safe.
Each May 15th as I lower my flag to half staff, I pause to consider the sacrifice of Deputy Badger all those years ago, and the long line of those who have followed in his footsteps, and I hope that all patriotic and observant Utahans will take a moment to do the same on Peace Officers Memorial Day.

THE TOWN THAT REFUSED TO DIE

Lying at the northern tip of a narrow peninsula on Willapa Bay, it is a destination one doesn’t discover by accident.

Long before white man arrived on the scene, the grass-covered tongue of land that reached out into the Pacific in what is today the very south-western tip of Washington state, had a name: to the Chinook Indian people who knew it well, the place was called tsako-te-hahsh-eetl, or “place of the red-topped grass”. When Chief Nahcatl paddled up fog-shrouded Willapa Bay on April 20th, 1854, he prepared to meet with two new-comers, R.H. Espy and I.A. Clark, and to share with them a “secret”. In the tidelands verging the attractive site he introduced the visitors to ancient oyster beds which had been providing food and sustenance to the native peoples for generations. To Espy and Clark who knew all about the oystermania afflicting the seafood-hungry populations of San Francisco, this was like discovering an untapped gold field.
California’s tidewater oyster beds had succumbed to over-harvesting and contamination at the very time when the love for the succulent bivalves had reached a zenith among well-to-do San Franciscans. By the mid 1850s a plateful of oysters – whether raw on-the-shell or in a flavorful stew – commanded as much as two twenty-dollar gold pieces at favorite dining spots. Soon Espy and Clark presided over the birthing of a vibrant industry, and the town of Oysterville, Washington Territory, was on the map.
With 500 residents, a city hall, school, library, newspaper, college and all the trappings of an important settlement, Oysterville quickly became the proud seat of Pacific County government. A thriving oyster processing plant employed 200-300 workers, and oyster schooners arrived and departed daily. Gold flowed into the pockets of community residents and night life of several competing complexions flourished side by side. In 1873, Mr. Espy donated a building lot to the Baptists, and a church was built, at a cost of $1,500.00.
Records show that during the 1850s and 1860s, sale of Washington oysters to San Francisco averaged $45,000. per year, allowing village residents access to high quality building materials as northbound vessels sought ballast for otherwise empty hulls. The residences that filled the large and accommodating lots along Front Street and Territory Road reflected the relative affluence of a community that soon aroused a level of jealousy in other peninsula towns as well as on the “mainland” across the bay.
With the approach of 1890, lights began to dim for the future of Oysterville. First, the long-awaited railroad pushing its way up the peninsula stopped at Nahcotta, a devastating four miles short of the hopeful village; it might just as well have been a one hundred mile deficit. On top of that blow, the oyster beds began to run out from years of heavy harvesting. Still, there was the importance of local government, as Oysterville’s dwindling population still carried on as the county seat. Then, the final blow fell on a night in 1893 when a gang of “raiders” from across the bay came ashore under the cover of darkness and “stole” the county records, with which they declared South Bend to be the new seat of Pacific County government! After that, the old pioneer community became a virtual “ghost town” with a beautiful view.
Not everyone was willing to abandon a place filled with so much history and natural beauty, and in 1976 Pioneer Oysterville was placed on the register of “National Historic Districts”. The “Oysterville Restoration Foundation” was formed, and a new life came into being for the town that refused to die. Today, dozens of proud owners have combined to rebuild, beautify and maintain the integrity of the once-remote community.


Known as “The Red Cottage”, the home built by Captain J.W. Munson in 1863 is today the oldest surviving structure in Oysterville. Even the pink rose clinging to the picket fence is an 1870s variety.


Arriving on a ship from Sweden, Charles Nelson built this home in 1873. Seven children grew up in its modest rooms.


A whimsical hand-carved hitching post greets visitors to a home built by Ned Osborne in 1873 for his wife-to-be. When she died before the wedding, Ned lived alone in the downstairs as a life-long bachelor.


The Oysterville church operating today as an interdenominational chapel treats visitors to a musical vesper service each noontime.

A FAMILY RAISED ON SUNSHINE

One of the great joys of life for Shirley and myself, is the close connection we feel with three generations of our offspring. We think of this in a special way as we go about the chores associated with stocking our shelves, making out shopping lists, and savoring the good things of life that come from garden, greenhouse, pantry or root cellar to grace our daily table. Our extended family live away from us except for celebrative get-togethers, but we talk to one or another of them daily.
The subjects of these phone and e-mail conversations are wide-ranging, but one thing comes up with heart-warming regularity: “Grandpa, how do you go about creating a roux for that New Orleans Gumbo of yours” asks a granddaughter in Colorado ? “Mom, how do you get your chocolate chip cookies so crispy yet tender at the same time ?” “Priya wants to know if Grandpa will be making black bean soup when we visit you” asks the mother of a five-year old great–granddaughter many miles away. “ Tell mother my latest whole wheat bread came out looking just like hers”, reports a daughter trying a new combination of flours. Or. . . “Will you two be making corn relish this year ? Will you let us know so that we can come down and learn how you do it ? By the way. . . we are all out ! Do you have an extra jar ?”
And when we do get together as a family, regardless of occasion, we end up at the now-extended dinner table where life-long memories are rekindled by a menu filled with the history we have shared as a family over a fifty-six year span. (So far.)
In an honored corner of our pantry book shelf resides a small cookbook written and self-published more than three decades ago by a friend and former neighbor of ours back in the mid-west. Beverly Nye’s recipes are great, but what has long endeared her book to us is the title she gave it: A FAMILY RAISED ON SUNSHINE.
Bev’s book is not just a collection of time-tested recipes assembled by a devoted wife, mother and home cook, but a celebration of the threads of everyday love bound up in the humble art of home-making and family-keeping.
I mention all of this because at a time when all is not well across the country with our economic challenges, and the prospect of higher fuel, food and living costs, there is something of an incipient renaissance going on. Many people are beginning to rethink our high-consumption / high -dependency lifestyle, and wondering if maybe grandma and grandpa knew something after all. Perhaps being able to do more with less is worth thinking about. Perhaps there is a silver lining to having to stay home more, travel less, watch our dollars more closely and be more creative and frugal in meal-planning and table-keeping.
Recent statistics tell us that the average American family eats 38% of its meals away from home while depending heavily upon “convenience” ingredients with a short shelf life and a high cost for the meals that are prepared at home. There are many who would argue that our modern-day dependency upon the very technologies which promised to simplify day-to-day family life may actually make us more vulnerable to economic swings and temporary set-backs than any previous generation. It’s worth thinking about.
When all is said and done, whether it rains or doesn’t, the two of us continue to cook and bake and home-preserve together, (and answer the phone when it rings ), encouraged by the idea that the best pay-off of all is to have a family raised on sunshine.


Shirley and daughter Shayne mix up a batch of yeast-based dinner rolls – a family favorite.

Al teaches two great grandchildren the fine art of making whole wheat-yogurt-blueberry pancakes.

ROOM 40 THE MESSAGE THAT CHANGED HISTORY

Within five hours of England’s declaration of war on August 14th, 1914, the British cable ship Teleconia dragged its grappling hooks across the sea bottom at a strategic point in the North Sea, raising then cutting Germany’s deep sea cable running from Borkum to Spanish Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The order had come directly from First Sea Lord Winston Churchill, and was destined to begin a chain of events which could not have been foreseen at that moment.
On the 26th of that same August, the German cruiser Magdeburg ran aground off the Estonian coast where it was seized by the Russians. Several copies of a book containing the German Naval codes were also seized, and two of these books were shared with the British. Those books found their way to the Admiralty’s intelligence service, where they were quickly relayed to “Room 40”, an actual office address which would ultimately become a euphemism for the top secret group of cryptographers whose job was decoding enemy messages – an operation which presaged the “ULTRA” system which helped to win WW II for the Allies. The occupants of “Room 40” already possessed a copy of Germany’s “Office Codes”, lifted from a sunken U-boat early in the war which, when linked with Russia’s contribution to their “library of secrets” – would bring about a revelation of historic consequence.
The occupants of “Room 40” consisted of an unusual blend of wizards, from mathematicians to linguists, who – together – represented the world’s first glimpse of what would grow into computer science. In 1914-17 they were a mere handful, unlike the hundreds like them who in World War II would occupy a former girls’ school at England’s Bletchley Park.
In the United States, public sympathies lay largely with the “Allied Nations” in their expanding war with Germany and the “Central Powers”. Despite the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, and the loss of 128 American lives in May, 1915, and the infamous “Black Tom” sabotage incident of July 30, 1916 (*), the mood across the U.S. did not favor involvement in what was viewed as “Europe’s War”. Although Woodrow Wilson – a Democrat “Progressive”- held different views, he was locked in a tight campaign for the presidency with Supreme Court Justice John Evans Hughes, and ran on an anti-war platform. Wilson won the presidency by an extremely slender margin in November, 1916, by promising American mothers their sons would not be drawn into a foreign war.
As Germany prepared to move toward a more aggressive use of submarine warfare in its blockade of aid shipments to England, American intervention seemed more and more likely to the Kaiser’s military planners. So in January, 1917, the Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann authored a secret document suggesting that Mexico declare its alliance with the Central Powers in the event the U.S. entered the war. It was further suggested, that in return for this action, a victorious Germany would see to it that the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona would be returned to Mexico. Because Germany’s undersea cables had been cut early in the war, it was necessary for Zimmermann’s coded message to be sent in the form of a telegram. The telegram was intercepted by British Intelligence where the missile was promptly turned over to the occupants of “Room 40”. Because the German Office and Naval codes had been “broken” by England’s cryptologists, the contents of the message were quickly translated and forwarded to U.S. authorities.
On March 1st, 1917, the “Zimmermann telegram” became national headlines, infuriating the American public. On top of Lusitania, and the “Black Tom” incident, it became the “straw that broke the camel’s back” (and played right into Woodrow Wilson’s hand).
On April 6th, 1917, the United States declared war, and American “doughboys” would soon be on their way to the trenches of France.

(*) “Black Tom” was the name of an island in New York Harbor, associated with Jersey City, New Jersey. In 1916-17 the built-up island and its mile-long pier became a loading platform for munitions ready for shipment across the Atlantic. In the early morning hours of July 30th, 1916, a tremendous explosion measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale shook the eastern seaboard, breaking windows 40 miles away, and imbedding shrapnel in the nearby Statue of Liberty, so damaging the structure that to this day, it is unsafe to enter the monument’s raised arm. The “Black Tom” explosion killed at least seven, injured many others, and did millions of dollars in damage. It was deemed to be the work of a small group of German saboteurs, and stirred strong anti-German sentiment.
Interestingly, an international commission eventually assigned a penalty of $50 million 1953 dollars, the final payment of which was paid to the U.S. by Germany in 1979.

THE BATTLE OF TANGA Britain’s Most Stinging Defeat

One of the most innovative guerilla commanders of all time, General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck invented camouflage, led herds of cattle to feed his army, and tended his native troops with natural herbs and remedies. He never suffered defeat.

A map of the African Continent and its constituent parts as it would have appeared in the opening decades of the 20th century would be seen to bear very little resemblance to the Africa we see today. It had been largely “carved up” into colonies claimed and administered by most of the major European powers. France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Belgium and Spain all had their names circumscribed over various pieces of the huge landmass. From The Belgian Congo to Italian Somaliland, the map looked more like a piece of patterned linoleum with international names for the titles of its random subdivisions.
As Europe moved toward World War I, with more than 24 countries declaring sides by 1914, Africa became a piece of that military and political chessboard. To the British it seemed like a good time to make territorial gains by launching an invasion into German East Africa, a land immediately adjacent to their own Kenya (British East Africa). Under the command of General Arthur Aitkin, an 8000 man force made up of both British and Indian troops went ashore on the evening of November 3, 1914 to assault the town of Tanga, a seaport outpost only about 50 miles from the border, defended at the time by only two companies of Germans.
Although he would ultimately outnumber his adversary by an eight to one margin, what Aitkin did not realize was that he was about to come up against one of the most amazing field commanders in military history in the person of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.
Trained in the proud Prussian tradition and descended from an old military family, Lettow-Vorbeck had assembled and trained a force of African natives, known as askaris, around a core of only a handful of white German officers and non-com’s. Previous to the upcoming battle, he had kidnapped the sitting German territorial governor in order to keep him from surrendering to the invading British.
From the outset, the British effort was fraught with bad luck. First what should have been a surprise attack was given away by the untimely firing of gunboat cannons, followed by the deployment of the attacking force into swampy terrain in the absence of any advance reconnoitering, ending in disorderly and undisciplined formations. Although the Germans never had more than 1000 troops in the fight, they quickly sent Aitkin’s faltering attackers back toward their boats. Then, to add insult to injury, they ran into squadrons of enraged African bees which attacked the retreating troops unmercifully.
The ill-fated attack on Tanga would forever after be known as “The Battle of the Bee’s”, and a legend would spring up suggesting that the German commander had planted the wild bee colonies as part of his strategy.
The story of this one battle barely scratches the surface of the much larger story of the exploits of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck himself, who without any support from, or even communications with the German high command at home, managed continuously to fight vastly superior forces arrayed against him, without a single defeat for four years. All of this while living off the land as they went, surviving by their wits and local knowledge. At one time, his small but dedicated band faced an army of 45,000 fresh South African soldiers who, time after time failed to extract a victory from their best attempts to encircle him. In all, 130 generals and 300,000 men took the field against him in the course of the war, without ever winning a battle.
The native askari men who soldiered under the German guerilla leader loved him like a father, and he treated them the same way. He lived daily life among them, and led them personally in every engagement, sometimes riding a bicycle into battle to their absolute delight. While scoring an excruciatingly high cost in casualties on the part of his enemies, he managed always to protect his own men from suffering in kind. Rather than burdening his own small force with the need of caring for prisoners, he routinely placed POWs under an oath to renounce fighting in return for a battlefield parole.
Only after successfully taking possession of British territory in Rhodesia (the only time this ever took place in WW I), in November, 1918, did the German Commander learn from a prisoner that an armistice had been signed between the warring parties. Obliged by his honor as a German officer to comply, he ended his war by disbanding his force on November 23rd, 1918 – still undefeated.
General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck passed away in Hamburg, Germany, on March 9th, 1964 at the age of 94. Ironically he would have died penniless but for a small pension granted to him thanks to an old enemy, Jan Christiaan Smuts of South Africa.

ICE SKATES AND THE LONG YELLOW BUS

One of my favorite light houses is perched on a tiny nubble of rocky land which becomes an island at high tide, but is loosely connected to the equally-rocky shoreline for a few slippery hours each day when the tide is out. For generations, Maine’s “Nubble Light” was a family light station, and children grew up in the white-painted bungalow which shares the two or three acres of grassy landscape with the light and its red-painted oil house. Some long-ago family constructed a cable and breeches buoy connecting the island to the mainland, some two hundred yards away, so that children could safely negotiate the cauldron-like moat which isolated them, facilitating thereby travel to and from school in nearby York. Though today an automated light, the last I knew the cable car was still there.
Other island families I know of – including several from whom I am descended – welcomed winter, so that their children could skate across the iced-over bays, reaches and inlets, saving them the cost of having to “board-out” their kids to mainland families during the school year.
For most rural school kids, well into the 1940s, the long walk to school was a part of everyday life, and what’s more, the first boy to arrive at the old one-room school in West Brookfield, Vermont was expected to split enough wood for the day, and fill the wood box behind the big round stove that sat in the middle of the room. I know, because my younger brother often got that job while I was off to a much more remote school destination which was seven miles away.
The town of Quincy, Massachusetts really started something when, back in 1869, they decided to provide a horse-drawn “school wagon” in an effort to improve attendance at village schools. The idea was soon copied by others, and some of those early school wagons became impressively elaborate, with canvas-covered roofs, and side curtains which could be lowered in inclement weather. Even the driver got to sit on an enclosed perch, perhaps the better to deal with over-active passengers – probably with no more success than his modern-day counterpart. In fact drivers soon learned that the noise of children climbing aboard was troubling to the horses, leading to a coach design with a rear entry door, a feature which continued into the automotive age.
By 1920 there were a small handful of school districts around the country which put model-T based truck chassis to work as school coaches, one of which I know is still used by an automotive museum to carry patrons between outdoor exhibits. In the years which followed, other communities followed, utilizing everything from refurbished circus vehicles to converted delivery vans, painted in every imaginable color. A patriotic red-white-and-blue color scheme seems to have been very popular. It was not until 1939 that a national color standard was agreed to by every state, and the “long yellow bus” was born. Unlike the U.S. and Canada, most other countries which provide some degree of school transportation are not hung up on colors, and school coaches look pretty much like public transportation vehicles. In Hong Cong such vehicles are much smaller, and are known as “Nanny Vans” !
People who get their kicks keeping records for almost everything claim that 475,000 long yellow buses shuffle 25 million kids each day to and from American schools. That works out to something like ten billion student trips per year, in a nation which is unique in giving each driver the power to stop other traffic in both directions at each stop.
With the ubiquitous yellow buses a common sight wherever one travels nowadays, there is something particularly charming about the mule-drawn sleds crowded with Amish school children which can now and then still be seen making their way across a snow-covered winter landscape in rural Pennsylvania. Where – by the way – the one-room school house is also still alive and well. I will have to check though to find out if there are still a few fiercely hardy and independent island kids around Casco Bay who still get to make the journey on ice skates. Probably not allowed.


We don’t know where old yellow school buses usually go to die, but Al Cooper found this one, doubtless crowded with old memories, languishing away in an overgrown Utah hay field.


Al's Great Granddaughter looks forward to riding to and from her school each day on a modern day long yellow school bus!