William (Buck) R. Buckingham - Part 3, The Hobo

On June 1st of 1935 Dad began one of the great adventures of his life. He had just graduated from Ball State teachers college, and for want of a little adventrue, started to hitch-hike and hobo across the country. Mom once said that he kept a journal about the trip but destroyed it after Don and I were born because he didn’t want us to see it.

I don’t know why he told her that. I found it in the attic years later, and there were no skeletons in his closet. The journal was written in an old composition booklet from his recently finished college days. The first four or five pages were a combination of notes from a math class, names and addresses of a dozen fellow students, and doodles. He then began his journal.

Dad’s itinerary shows he made it to California and back in just thirty-three days. It started out with a list of where he stayed each night. Many entries refer to “box car”, so he apparently was in transit on those nights.  He wrote quite a lot on the first two days of his trek, but sadly it ends there. He added nothing more other than the list of places he stayed at each night.

The following is a lightly edited version of what he wrote.

Saturday, June 1, 1935 - Box car in Greencastle, Indiana.
Sunday, June 2 - St. Louis Monday, June 3 - Kansas City, MO
Tuesday, June 4 - Junction City, KS
Wednesday, June 5 - Driving
Thursday, June 7 thru June 9 - Denver (Probably stayed with Aunt Lelah Buckingham)
Monday, June 10 - Box car
Tuesday, June 11 - Salt Lake City, UT
Wednesday, June 12 - Box car
Thursday, June 13 thru June 19 - Maryville, CA (Stayed with brother, George Buckingham.)
Thursday, June 20 - Fresno, CA Friday, June 21 - Long Beach, CA
Saturday, June 22 and 23 - San Diego, CA
Sunday, June 24 - Yuma, AZ
Monday, June 25 thru June 27 - Box car
Friday, June 28 - Tucumcari, NM
Saturday, June 29 - Amarillo, TX
Sunday, June 30 - CCC Camp
Monday, July 1 - East St. Louis, MO
Tuesday, July 2 - Indianapolis, IN
Wednesday, July 3 - Home

“June 1. Started today. 1st ride took me to Milton - Fellow had another hitch-hiker. A guy in a milk truck picked us up next (Fellow hitch-hiker and myself), and took us to Dublin as he was only going to Cambridge. He was just one of those helpful hands.
 
Baking truck stalled. Mechanic too dumb to fix it - I fixed the fuel pump for fellow who was very pleased, and gave me two pies which I put in my pocket as I was not very hungry at the time. Got my clothes greasy! I next got a ride into Greenfield in a stock truck with neighbor Earl Abernathy. He gave me some donuts. They also went into my pockets.
 
I didn’t have to wait very long in Greenfield as I was soon picked up by a drug salesman and I was very glad when he took me clear thru Indianapolis to some small town on the other side. And who do you suppose picked me up there? No one but my teacher, Billy Crone, who took me about 5 miles out in the country where he left me - out in the dark. At last I got another ride, this time with a couple of fellows going to Greencastle, although it was out of my way. They were a cheerful lot - told me about a pal of theirs who had served on the notorious Georgia chain gang because they had caught him hitch-hiking thru that state. They advised me to catch a freight out of Greencastle and were so obliging to even take me down to the yards.
 
Thought I would catch myself a “side-door” Pullman in Terra Haute that night and inquiries told me that one would be thru the yards in about two hours. Well I got into an empty box car and laid down to wait - That’s all.”

“June 2nd - I was awakened by a freight train pulling out but I was too late. I got up and walked the tracks a distance along an upgrade so I could easily catch the next one because it would be going slower uphill. I laid down under a tree with my little suit case as a pillow and went to sleep.

Again I was awakened by a freight train pulling out, but it was day light now so I hopped on this one. I saw a hobo riding just ahead of me so I ran up and started to talk to him. The first thing I learned from him was that I was on the wrong train - this train was headed south.

It was a rough old road but it seemed to be plenty fast. I road upon the top, and after a short time it started to rain. The fellow bo (hobo) was pretty friendly after he found that it was my first experience. He explained where the “dicks” would be found; mostly at the division yards. I met my first “dick” in Bloomington. It was raining like hell and he ordered me out of my dry place and out of the yard. It sure was raining and I stood under a tree just outside the yard. Although there were none there at the time, it was a bo’s jungle. As soon as the train gave the hi-ball (two sharp blasts of the whistle) I made across the yard for it. I had been told of this by my fellow “bo”. I stayed with this freight until I came to the town in southern Indiana where the B&O lines crossed the Marmon lines. (I was on the Marmon). It was not yet noon when I arrived here - My first thought was to clean up, particularly to shave, but I didn’t care to spend the money for a hotel.

I went out to the yards and there a “brakie” showed me where I could get some water. He was real friendly after he found that I wanted to clean. He even let me use his own private wash room. Well, I went down town and got something to eat. I sure was hungry. That afternoon I met several bos down around the railroad track. They all seemed to be gambling - using the old army game. One fellow seemed crazy. They all told me how hard the “dicks” were out west.

That afternoon I saw passenger trains “blinded” - that is, to ride right in back of the engine. It looked real good and fast riding to me, so I “blinded” the next passenger train going west. Three CCC boys had already “blinded” it , but they were just going a short distance. They were just kids but good fellows. They were dressed up and were they black. The four of us stood in a space about the size of a doorway.

After about 50 miles they left me and the next 250 miles sure was hell. I did everything but stand on my head After riding about six hours we got into St Louis. I didn’t know enough then to get off - went across the Mississippi. It looked a mile wide, and then into a damned tunnel. I came out of there sweating and black, and right into the railroad yards. I got off and made for the streets. I was in negro town - I stopped some negro (that’s all there were) and asked him where the transient camp was. He, thinking I was a negro also, directed me to the negro transient camp. I soon found out my mistake or rather the negro’s mistake, but I had to show the fellows in the transient camp that I wasn’t a negro by pulling up my sleeve. They told me where the white camp was a couple of miles up town.

I walked the longest distance without seeing anyone as it was after midnight. I finally saw a white fellow and ask him where the transient camp was and he said he was going up by it. We walked along and he asked me a million questions. I finally asked him if he knew where there was a cheap hotel as I said I didn’t care to go through the red tape of getting into one of the transient camps. He took me to a good clean hotel were I got a room for 25 cents. He was leaving me he showed me that I had been in good company - he was a plain clothes man (a policeman??). I went into the hotel and asked for a room and was given it. I then asked for the bath room. After I had cleaned up I went to the lobby and the clerk called me to the desk and changed my room. It seemed that because of my dirty appearance he thought that I was one of those kind of bums who never take a bath and he had put me in the section with them. He apologized and gave me another bed, and although it looked the same I noticed that the fellows around me were much cleaner.

They kidded me about looking like a negro before I cleaned up. They agreed that the “blind” was not a very good place to ride, and I was thoroughly fed up with trains. I resolved to go back to hitch-hiking the next day. I went out and got something to eat - a greasy stew.”

Monday, June 3, I awoke about 7 o’clock.”

His journal ended there telling only about those first two days. His trip lasted another 31 days. Mom told about how he hitched a ride for several days with a guy who drove a vehicle with a frame only, no body, and they sat on wooden boxes. The guy stopped at night and syphoned gas from filling station tanks.  There were probably other adventures - lost now, never to be told. I wish he had completed his journal. It would have made a great story.
GO TO: Part 4, The Father I Knew

William (Buck) R. Buckingham - Part 2, His Parents



Dorma Leora Manlove

My grandfather, John Harrison Buckingham, a cabinetmaker, was employed for many years as a woodworker in an Auto body factory in Connersville. The second born in 1881 in Franklin County, Indiana, he was the only male child in a family of five siblings. I know he was tall, slender, had red hair and gray eyes because that info was listed on his WWI draft card in 1918. He was also deaf in his last years, but I don’t know for how long. I know little more about him. He died of cancer in 1939, six months before I was born.

I’ve never seen a photo of him. I spoke to my Aunt Martha a few months before she died in 1998. She was the youngest, probably her father's pet, spoke warmly of him, and said she had many family photos and was going to send them to me. She had suffered a stroke a few years earlier, and wanted to get someone to write names and dates on the backs of the photos. Sadly, she passed shortly thereafter, and I don’t know what happened to her collection.
My Grandmother, nee Dorma Leora Manlove, was a big woman, tall, broad, and stiff of body. She carried herself as if her spine was fused throughout its length. Grandma had "lockjaw" (tetanus) when she was a child, so her jaw emited a clicking sound when she chewed food.

Brother Don and I visited Grandma Buckingham several times in the mid-1940s. I have little memory of her other than those visits. Her house was a big two storied building with covered porches, on the front and one side. It sat back a ways off the road. Two old trees near the gravel road shaded the front yard.

Grandma rented one side to a family who had a boy named Larry. He was our age and the three of us played in the creek (below) just down the road. I doubt that things had changed a whole lot in the thirty years since Dad was a boy. Grandma lost the farm in 1950 and moved to California to live with her daughter, Annis. She died there in 1962.

By the time I became aware of life it seemed that nearly everybody referred to Dad as “Buck”. I don’t know when that nick-name became common, but it was probably after he left home because there were too many in the family for all of them to be called “Buck”.

Dad graduated 3rd out of a class of 110 in 1930 from Connersville High School. Four years later he managed to graduate from Ball State Teacher’s College. His sister Annis attended college in Muncie Indiana also and graduated the year before him. It was in the middle of the Great Depression and I never heard how the two financed their higher education, but they probably worked their way through college. Aunt Annis’s daughter, Sarah said that, “My mother often talked about her college days. She worked as an au pair to the college administrators and their families. She never mentioned to me that Uncle Bill was there at the same time she was, odd.” Aunt Annis moved to California in 1937.
 GO TO: Part 3, The Hobo

William (Buck) R. Buckingham - Part 1, Childhood in Harrisburg, Indiana

Dad was born in Connersville, Indiana, but grew up on a small farm between there and Harrisburg, a nearby village. The farm was probably no more than three or four acres. They had a couple of cows and some chickens, but their place was mainly a residence, not a working farm. Dad grew to be tall and lanky. At six-foot three he bested his two older brothers by several inches. Tom, the oldest, was born in 1907. George followed in 1909, and then Annis in 1911. Dad came a year later in 1912, and the family was complete with the birth of Martha in 1918.

The Trees and our 1936 Ford in front of Dad's Childhood home

I don’t remember Dad relating a single thing about his childhood. I’ve spoken to several cousins and they tell the same tale. There was a curious silence from dad and his siblings about their formative years. The four older were in their teens during the 1920’s, but little has filtered down to us about the farm, how they did in school, life around Connersville and Harrisburg, who they hung around with, or what they did. Mom told of Dad’s interest in radio at a time when broadcasting was in its infancy. He built “crystal” radios and strung antenna wires crisscrossing the attic. Cousin Sarah, Aunt Annis’s daughter, wrote, “My mother always told me how smart he (Dad) was and what a great memory he had…their father let the kids each have one animal pet (chicken, pig, etc.) on the farm… and a charity bought them Christmas gifts one year and dad sawed the head off the doll my mother was given”. That is the extent of what I know about my father’s childhood.

The 1930 US census in Indiana listed all the family in residence except George. He was, apparently, the first to leave the hearth. George would have been twenty-one that year, and had enlisted in the Army, The 1930 Census listed him in the Vancouver Barracks, and indicated he was in the “guard house”. His daughter, Mary Ann, thought of him as being the “black sheep” of the family. He settled in northern California, living around Oroville and Marysville until his death in 1980. Tom, the oldest, moved to Norfolk, Virginia. Annis got a degree at Ball State and migrated ot California by 1935, and Dad moved to Kokomo in 1937. Martha, the youngest, was the only one to remain close to home.
GO TO: Part 2, His Parents

The Moose Lodge - Part 6, The Epilog

I went to Google Images while writing this article, hoping to find a photo of the lodge as it existed in its original condition. To my surprise, there was not a Moose Lodge listed in Kokomo. I did a Web search and found the building up for sale. I called the realtor and he told me the Lodge’s charter had been given up a couple years ago, the building was rented for a while, and a local restaurant had recently purchased it. I know comedians have mined a wealth of material from the quaint rituals, frocks and caps donned by members of the fraternal lodges. I know the Moose, Eagles, and Masons, etc., are vestiges of a bygone era, and the part played in society will not rise to the prominence once enjoyed. I know all things come to pass, but I can’t help feeling a twinge of sadness, and wonder that maybe, we have lost something of value, something that will not be easily replaced. THE END

The Moose Lodge - Part 5, The Tornado Aftermath

An eerie silence followed after the funnel passed. The surviving light fixtures swung listlessly, providing the sole animation to the shadowy scene. Don complained of pain in his side. I found a place for him to sit, and then went to survey the destruction.

The building resembled structures I’d seen in photos of bombed out cities. The glass doors behind me were the only survivors in the front area. Cool air circulated through the wreckage as I went out to the front, noticing the flag pole (above) was bent 30 degrees from the vertical. I didn’t stay long as a hail storm trailing the tornado began pelting me with golf ball sized projectiles.

I scurried around and found a flashlight behind the bar. Vehicles were beginning to move up and down Washington Street. I flashed the light toward them but got no response, and guessed they had more important things to do, or more likely, didn’t even see my faint signal.

Two of the outside walls of the office had blown outward causing the roof to collapse (above). The office doors were closed, there were no windows, and the vacuum of the funnel cloud had caused it to explode. Dad later said that it was lucky for him that he wasn’t there as he would probably have taken refuge in the office.

It was an eerie surprise to go into the kitchen at the back of the building; its was entirely intact, nothing out of place. The back windows had been left open (above) so air had vacated through them - no explosion.

Window frames at the windward front of the building were bend, curving inward (above). The frames on the leeward backside were blown out and lay on the ground (below). That included the window frame behind the stage area. It too had been ripped loose and the grand piano that sat on the stage was gone. The tables and chairs had been removed and replaced by new furniture - a mattress in one case. Mom‘s car was nowhere in sight.

A man and wife I’d seen at many moose activities drove into the parking lot while I was outside looking for Mom’s car. They were on their way home when the tornado crossed their path, forcing them to ride it out in the car. They were pretty shaken as the auto had been bounced around, even lifted off the ground at one point and carried to the other side of the road.

Mom and Dad were let into the area about a hour after the storm. They decided Don should go to the hospital, which was a good thing, as he had several broken ribs. They dropped me off at a temporary medical station on the way. I think it was on Markland Avenue near Washington Street. They had lots of things that needed attention so I told them I’d get home on my own once my cut finger got some stitches.

The waiting area of the station had several rows of folding chairs filled with people - all appeared to be in shock. Several canvas cubicles were aligned against a wall, a doctor worked behind each curtain. Most everybody seemed to be in worse shape than me so I sat over two hours as the room emptied. I spoke to the guy next to me. He sat, huddled with a blanket wrapped around his body. He said he and his wife had gotten under the bed, and the last thing he remembered was spinning around and around. He woke up in a field next to his house. He didn’t know what had happened to his wife.

I was the last to be called behind one of the curtains and there stood John Hutto, a former high school class mate who I had not seen since our graduation. We exchanged mutual histories of our intervening years while he sutured the “V” cut at the side of my middle finger. He was about to complete med-school, and that night was possibly his first real experience at doctoring. I think that I was one of his first stitching jobs, and noticed his hands were shaking more than mine. He did well. We parted and I never saw him again.

I walked the three miles home, getting there after two in the morning. I don’t remember that I slept that night as adrenalin continued to surge. I took several showers over the next few days because I’d find grit and sand under my finer nails when ever I scratched my head.

I worked for the Moose all of the following week. Dad hired me and my truck to be available for odd jobs during cleanup. Mom’s car sat in an adjacent field a hundred yards north of the lot - a total loss. It had been picked up, carried, and dashed to the ground several times. I found a perfect imprint of the front grill and headlights stamped into the soft soil. Further on there was a big gash in the newly plowed field where the car had landed on its side. It sat upright facing the direction from which it had blown. It was rumpled but intact. The piano was fragmented, and scattered over the field and beyond.

The night’s event became known as the Palm Sunday Tornado. It was actually a series of 47 tornados, the second biggest outbreak in history. The funnels passed through six Midwestern states: Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. The one that struck Kokomo, one of the most violent, had wind that reached a velocity up to 260MPH, while cutting a swath of destruction 900 feet wide. The tornado followed a 48 mile path through Russiaville, Alto and the southern part of Kokomo before heading toward Greentown and Marion. It was responsible for 25 of the 271 lives lost that night.

GO TO: Part 6, The Epilog

The Moose Lodge - Part 4, The Palm Sunday Tornado

Easter weekend of 1965 was one of those mile-stones in my life, one I’ll vividly remember. I was home from college on holiday, and dad hired me to help the janitor, Don Fewell, clean the building that Sunday. It was April 11, Palm Sunday. I left the house after dinner and drove Mom’s 1962 Chrysler Winsor, as it sat behind and blocked my 1950 Dodge truck. I got to the Moose about 6PM, parked in back, near the kitchen door. Don’s car was the only other on the lot.

We worked for several hours, Don in the bar area, while I swept and mopped the other end near the stage and dance floor. The folding doors that partitioned off the dining and poker area were open, so the building was one big long room from stage through to the poker area. It was partitioned off for Lodge meetings, Bingo, and special events, but usually, like that night, left open.

Don had tuned the radio to local WIOU. We worked to the sound of music, but kept getting an increasing number of weather updates - repeated warning of tornados moving in from the southwest. Don and I went to the front door to check toward the indicated direction. The wind was picking up; we could see fast moving clouds in a turbulent sky, but nothing to get alarmed about. We went back to work. I remember returning to check the weather several more times. The sun had set by 9pm, and the sky on the western horizon was bitch black. We could see the wind was getting even more active.

The radio reported a tornado sighting in Alto, a small farming community just two miles from us. Shortly thereafter we began hearing the wind from inside the building. Vent shudders in the ceiling began to flap open and shut in noisy rhythmic beats. The sound of the wind rose to an alarming pitch. Don and I, without agreement, walked toward each other, meeting in the dining area near the front. We stood between the two walls that jutted a short distance into the room. (“J” and “D” in the drawing). Both of us were transfixed as the noise became even louder. We stood looking into the room toward the bar area. There were large windows all around the building, big double pane ones nearly eight feet high. Glass doors stood right behind us. Through those doors could be seen the glass doors of the lobby, and then the glass front doors opening to the portico. We were looking through the windows along the wall behind the bar. We could see a big steel incendiary the lodge use for burning trash. It probably weighed a half ton. It suddenly lifted off the pad like a rocket heading for the moon, and then one of the big windows behind the bar exploded. Don and I both had the same thought, “Damn, that’s going to be a mess to clean up”. We were soon absolved of that chore as every window in the place began to crash as the storm moved inside.

Things suddenly got serious. The lights failed; the decibel level rose to that generated by freight trains; light fixtures swung violently; and the air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. I grouched and then laid prone against the wall with my hands covering my head. I looked into the room to see ghostly silhouettes flying by. Don, to my right, was grouched in a semi-squat at the end of the other wall, holding on, but dangerously exposed - not doing well. The violence lasted only a few minutes - minutes of fear, exaltation, and wonder. I couldn’t help from looking into that wind tunnel of cascading debris. I didn’t even notice I’d been hurt.

GO TO: Part 5, The Tornado Aftermath

The Moose Lodge - Part 3, The Old Lodge Burns; A New One Rises from the Ashes

The original moose building burned in the spring of 1960. I believe it was caused by an electrical short in the kitchen. The multi-alarm fire sent flames dramatically skyward, as fire trucks arched streams of water into the air, and hoses crisscrossed the streets. The glow, visible all over town, attracted people like moths to a flame, and a good portion of the citizenry showed up to view the pyrrhic spectacle.


The building was declared a total loss. We walked through it a few days later. Most of the main floor, the office and the ball room did not seem to have received much flame, but the hardwood floors, having had thousands of gallons of water poured on them, were warped and buckled, standing like sea waves frozen in a storm. The upstairs got the heat. That is where Don and I found our portable stereo record player that Dad had borrowed. It was barely recognizable, and the records resembled the warped floors.


Don and I received a hundred dollars for our melted records and charred player. We preceded to order a stereo amplifier kit and speakers. I assembled the amplifier over the summer while Don built the speaker boxes. By fall we had a state-of-the-art stereo system to take on campus at Indiana University in Bloomington.


The insurance money enabled the Lodge to plan a modern, state-of-the-art building. It was finished in 1961 - a beautifully designed edifice that surely became the talk and envy of the town’s other lodges. The floor plan below is not to scale but provides an accurate depiction of the layout.
The new building sat on six acres. There was nearly an acre of lawn in front imbuing the place with the façade of wealth and high society. A driveway passed under the front portico. The obvious intent of the architect was that cars would empty their passengers in front, simulating high class clientele attending gala events. Unfortunately the parking lot, big enough for a couple hundred cars, was placed in the back. Drivers seldom disgorged there people in front. Nearly all chose to go directly to the rear, and none elected to walk back around to the main entrance, opting instead to enter through the service door. The lodge possessed a facility the Country Club set salivated over and the members chose to come in through the kitchen. So much for refined life and sophistication. The members were working class, proud of it, and thought nothing of using the back door.
Mom said that for a while she signed up new members nearly everyday, and their rolls skyrocketed. By the mid-sixties the Moose counted three thousand members. That period marked its hay-day. The place was jammed every weekend as members danced to the music of local bands. Big name bands such as those of Guy Lombardo, Artie Shaw, and Bob Crosby were scheduled and sold out. The restaurant dished out a daily lunch special to a large clientele, and offered a variety of steaks at dinner. The club room was active six nights a week, and the poker tables filled to capacity on Thursdays with six-card stud players.


My twenty-first birthday present was a membership to the Moose. The induction was probably at the temporary location on north Washington Street in early 1961. About a dozen of us were inducted that night. We sat in three rows of folding chairs awaiting the ceremony. I was in the second or third row. The guy next to me asked why I was joining, and I told him it was because Dad was the head of the lodge and it was his wish - that I didn’t really care much one way or the other. When dad handed me the membership slip he apologized rather than offering me congratulation. I never thought he could have heard what I said, which he must have, or I would have answered the man differently.


I became a part-time employee that following summer. The new lodge was in need of additional bartenders on weekends so I earned $2 an hour mixing a number of fancy drinks popular at the time. Weekend work was fast and furious with three and four waitresses calling out orders at the same a time. There was constant action, and lots of fun for a 21 year old. That fall I got jobs bartending in Bloomington when I went back to campus. I worked five or six years at the trade.
GO TO: Part 4, The Palm Sunday Tornado

The Moose Lodge - Part 2, The Original Building

The original Kokomo lodge building was constructed around 1910 on the northeast corner of Buckeye and Taylor Streets. The gaudy Victorian architecture was familiar to the era. The brick building boasted four thick columns in front with a steep stairway ascending to a large covered porch.

The only inhabitant of the spacious porch was a modest sized, stuffed moose mounted on a wheeled platform; its sad demise being indicated by the round bullet hole conspicuous in its side. It stood alone on that platform through many seasons. The porch would have provided a great vantage for watching parades, but none came that direction, so I don’t remember ever seeing anybody keeping company with that silent sentinel of the Loyal Order of Moose.

The front door opened to a spacious lobby with a couple of large antlered Moose heads sticking out of the opposing wall. The office, to the left, was in the front corner. A counter ran the length of that end. Double doors to the right of the counter opened onto the Ball Room . That was the main entertainment center, where the lodge had its weekend dances.

Stair cases at the other end of the lobby led up and down. The more conspicuous one led to an upper level whose floor plan matched the one below. The stairs opened to a front lounge with windows looking down on the porch. The large room behind, usually reserved for solemn lodge meetings, was often commandeered for weekend activities.

The other staircase on the main lobby, less conspicuous, led to the basement. It housed the Club Room, which was a stag area, a place for men only. Members had a key to the door, or were “buzzed entry” by a button in the office.

I was down there only once that I remember. Dad took brother Don and I to the lodge one Sunday when I was about eight or nine, and we were allowed to see that inner-sanctum of male bonding. It was a large windowless room, dark, emitting an odor of tobacco smoke and stale beer. There was an old mahogany bar against one wall, lined with stools.

A couple of pool tables stood nearby, card tables sat off to one side, and slot machines lined another wall - a “speak-easy” out of the past. Dad gave us a few coins with which to play the machines and the one-arm bandits promptly stole them.
GO TO: Part 3, The Old Lodge Burns

The Moose Lodge - Part 1, Dad Becomes the Moose Manager

My dad, William R.(Buck) Buckingham, became the secretary and manager of the Kokomo Moose Lodge in 1946. I don’t know why he choose that particular career as he left one that seemed to have greater promise.

He knew electronics and had worked as a civilian instructor for the Army Air Corp during the war teaching airmen to operate and repair their radios. Mom claimed that federal officials approached him after the war to offer a position in the new space program, but he declined. For what ever the reason he quit his job in the lab at Delco radio and took a position that he held for the next twenty-five years.

The Moose Lodge, along with the other fraternal clubs - the Eagles, Elks, Masons, etc. - were prominent fixtures on the American landscape at mid-century. The lodges, combinations of social club, bar, restaurant, and nightclub, were active in local and national politics. They were also deeply involved in the community, sponsoring social events and participating in charitable activities.

In a sense the lodges operated in place of insurance companies. No one in my family had health or life insurance. We were not unusual in that respect, most middle class folk did without it - things were different then, doctors made house calls, you paid them at the door as they were leaving.
The Moose supported Mooseheart, an orphanage the kids and wife could go to should death make an unexpected appearance. Moosehaven was a retirement home in Florida available to older members. The other lodges offered their own form of “insurance”.

A good portion of the town’s people were affiliated with one or the other of the lodges, and the blacks had one too, The Keystone Club. Dad was also a member of the Elks and the Eagles. I always considered the Elks to be the upper crust of the lodges, but that opinion may not have merit.

There was an intercity-lodge council in which all the clubs came together to jointly plan many events. In those days the lodges, along with labor unions, acted as social glue, and they represented one leg of power for working and middle class America.

I was six years old when Dad went with the Moose, an age at which my understanding of the world was at the beginning of coherency. Before that there was only disjointed images of the war. Moose lodge activities formed one of those milestones of my life. There was the war and then there was the Moose.

I grew up around lodge activities, events such as: Saturday night dances and being endlessly bored in the baby-sitting area (I happily aged out of those in a few years); the Children’s Christmas program (at which each kid received a brown paper bag of candy, nuts and an orange - its contents identical to the ones provided in all the previous years), delivering food boxes to needy families with Dad (and sometimes recognizing the house, and knowing the kids inside); Fourth of July fireworks (and getting to serve “behind the lines“); Moosehaven in Florida (Dad drove an aged Moose member to the rest home in January 1953. Brother Don & I got to go as it was Christmas vacation); Mooseheart, “The City of Children” (We went on a chartered bus one time).
GO TO: Part 2, The Original Building

Counting Salmon - Part 8, A Fisherman's Paradise

It was a fisherman’s paradise. I brought a new spinning rod equipped with a Mitchell 300 reel and fifteen pound test line. I was ready for a summer of fishing, and I never looked upon the sport quite the same after that. Red, Chums, Silvers and King salmon spawned in the river. The Reds came in first and then Chums. Silvers were the last to run the river starting in September. I was interested in the Kings. These were the big ones, the tackle breakers, the trophies.The Kings started showing up not long after the Reds, but they did not appear in large schools - usually only a few crossed the panels at a time. One day, while I was on the tower counting, a loner crossed close by my shore. I was truly stunned. It was the largest fish I’d ever seen in the water. It was at least six feet long, like a submarine.I hooked into Kings nearly every day, and landed many that ranged fifteen to twenty-five pounds - the biggest was maybe forty to fifty, but I wanted a really big one.

I had lots of fun for a while, but soon realized that my reel had a flaw I sat the drag so a fish had to work to take line, but after I hooked one and it made several runs, the line became frayed. On the third or forth run it would break, and I’d loose a spoon and thirty or more feet of line.

Little by little my tackle box emptied of lures and my spool dwindled to almost nothing. I was down to my last lure, a little red “Dare Devil” spoon, an inch long. I replaced its small treble-hook with a larger one, added some weights, and went out one more time. Yes! You guessed it. I hooked into the Submarine King. It didn‘t jump, but made a ran for the far shore. Its back, a foot wide, raised out of the water as it headed downstream. I never turned it. It kept going…with my last lure and all my line.

THE END

Counting Salmon - Part 7, Tagging Salmon

Arnie came in to help at the height of the Red Salmon run. We set up a small tapered net to catch salmon smolt, newly hatched salmon making their way to sea. The net funneled the smolt into a small chamber which we emptied everyday. We counted and measured the smolt and included the info with our nightly report.
A wide bend with a deep hole lay further down stream. I often walked up the gentle slope behind the cabin to the high ground overlooking it. The high perch gave me a bird’s eye view of the large schools that congregated there, sometimes in the thousands, swimming in slow circles before continuing upstream.The three of us spent several days tagging fish. We used a purse seine to catch them. A purse seine has lead weights on bottom and cork floats on top. Ours was maybe a hundred feet long, and six feet deep. A person would see only the top row of corks if it lay straight in the water . It would look like a six foot fence below the waterline. We anchored one end to shore, and using the boat, pulled the other in a wide arc encircling a number of fish. The net was taken in and soon there would be fifty salmon thrashing about in the shallow water. We would toss a dozen salmon at a time into the tagging box which sat close to shore in a foot of water.The fish were “tagged” with round plastic disks. Different colored disks might be used at different times and places. Each was two inches in diameter with a hole in the center. Arnie would place a disk just below the dorsal fin, shove a pin through it, the fish, and through another disk, then bend the pin with pliers. A survey of the upper river would be conducted by the ADF&G in September. They would register the locations along the stream where the tagged fish were found.
GO TO: Part 8, A Fisherman's Paradise

Counting Salmon - Part 6, The Ground Squirrel

We usually saw Ken about once a week. He would bring in kerosene and gasoline, along with a week’s supple of fresh and canned food. I remember there were always two T-bone steaks, which went first, a canned ham, that went second, bacon, a dozen eggs, bread, canned fruits and vegetables. We were fed well, or at least the intention was to keep us happy. But all depended on the weather.

There are no roads, all transportation depends on planes. On one occasion, when the climate showed its ugly side, we looked into grey, empty skies for nearly three weeks before seeing Ken‘s plane. By that time we had consumed all the store-bought food, and were existing on Krusteaz blueberry pancakes and salmon.

There was a small ground squirrel living under the cabin that we fed leftover-pancakes each morning. It became grossly overweight, waddled when it ran, and went missing by summer’s end. I guess we did it a disservice.

GO TO: Part 7,Tagging Salmon

Counting Salmon - Part 5, The Runway & the Bear

If I developed a fixation that summer it had to do with the runway (photo above taken from runway). George and I decided we should work an hour each day. The project started as a way to fill time, of which we had a surplus. It soon became something more for me, and it might have been the same with George, though we never talked about it. Neither of us missed our stint at the shovel, even on rainy days.

There is a rhythm to wilderness. Digging the earth in solitude, without traffic noise, or other civilized distractions can produce a beat similar to the tempo of music, and its just as hypnotic. I’d get to the runway and begin my daily symphony with shovel in hand; push the blade in with the foot, crank the handle down, heave the load to the side. Push, crank, heave. Push, crank, heave. And before long I would be lost in the rhythm while revisiting things I thought I‘d long ago forgotten.

One day the hum of an airplane roused me from my revelry. I turned to see Ken’ Super Cub (photo above). Instead of coming in low, on final approach, he was adding throttle and banking to the right. The plane swooped over head and made a shallow dive toward a clump of willow thirty yards from me.
A brown bear shot from the thicket and started running up the hill. It was large and seemed to have an unusually long body. Ken (photo above) buzzed it, circled, and buzzed it again. I can still see that bear looking over its shoulder at the Super Cub as the plane’s wheels passed just above its head. The bear disappeared over the hill with Ken in hot pursuit.

I was amazed to find the bear had been that close. I had toiled in silence, shoveling for nearly an hour. The patch of willow stood alone in open country. Was it there all the time or had it moved in while I was digging? What was its intention? Curiosity? Or perusing the local menu?
GO TO: Part 6, The ground squirrel

Counting Salmon - Part 4, The Count

We started counting salmon early the next day. The first count each morning was at sunrise, about four in the morning. The initial morning count was twenty minutes long, thereafter we counted ten minute on the hour throughout the remaining of the day. The days total was called in using a short wave radio each evening. The department used a formula to estimate the daily escapement.

George and I reached agreement to alternate the early risings. The first to rise would count every hour until the other got up at about eight. Thereafter we would alternate through the day - count ten minutes and have two hours off. Mostly we lay in our bunks and read. Sometimes we go out for a walk, but that seemed strangely pointless as you could see as far in the distance as you could walk - no trees. We’d often go over to the runway and dig for an hour adding a few more feet to its length. Each morning one of us climbed the steps of the tower and looked down upon the white panels shimmering through a rippling current. We used a counter that nested in the palm of our hand. It had a thumb operated button that advanced by one number each time we pressed it. The session might pass without a single fish crossing, or they would transit in numbers beyond our thumb’s capacity to keep up.

Schools usually approached the panels with caution, the leader often circling back, and pulling the rest in an orchestrated swirl of bodies. One would eventually dart across, then a couple more would chance it, and then the whole school would stampede to the other side.

We measured velocity and direction of the wind each day and included the results in the daily shortwave report. The breeze never stopped, a constant that blew at fifteen to twenty miles-per-hour every day. I had neglected to bring a hat, never thought to wear one in the summer, and the wind played havoc with my hair, twisting it into a variety of creative styles. We pined for a calm interlude, and were eventually rewarded, but mosquitoes rose from the tundra in swarms of biblical proportion. We were thankful when the wind commenced blowing.

GO TO: Part 5, The Runway and The Bear

Counting Salmon - Part 3, The Set-up

Our primary purpose was escapement, to determine if enough salmon were evading commercial fishermen and swimming up the river to spawn. We did this by counting the salmon that passed each day. Fish are difficult to see in the the water, because their dark colored backs and light bellies allow them to escape notice of predators, potential prey, and us. We set out to make them visible by turning part of the river bottom into a light colored background so we could see them as they crossed. Arnie flew in shortly after I arrived to direct preparations for the count.

We began by taking eight wooden panels from storage. Each measured three feet by ten. We proceeded by giving each a new coat of white paint. George and I hammered a long metal stake into the bank at waters edge. A steel cable was attached and dragged across the river, two of use holding the cable while George piloted the skiff. Another stake was driven into the far bank and the cable secured. One by one we attached panels onto the cable, and shoved them out. After a couple hours we had eight panels, arcing with the current, but floating on the surface. We had to sink them.

The skiff was tethered to an up-current cable that spanned the river’s width, hanging several feet above its surface. Arnie, manning the boat, sidled it across with its stern at the panels edge. George and I donned chest-waders, and held on to the gunwales as Arnie dropped sand bags onto the panels. We weighed down the panels and maneuvered bags into position with our feet. The river was about five feet deep in the middle, so it was a bit hairy at midstream when the water came close to the top of our waders. It took a hundred bags to sink the panels. Some were used to plug holes, preventing fish from swimming under.
GO TO: Part 4, The Count

Counting Salmon - Part 2, The Cabin

The one-room cabin, about sixteen feet square, with bunk beds built into three walls, sufficed as our home. The “kitchen counter” ran along the front wall to the right of the door. A two-burner Coleman sat on the countertop next to the canned food, and a curtain covered the cookware on the lower shelf. A small kerosene stove sat in the corner next to the counter. A tea kettle sitting on top served as our water heater.

The cabin was not insulated so the interior temperature seldom rose much above that outside. When we were both in the cabin one of us sat huddled over the stove, while the other lay in his sleeping bag - each with his nose in a book. A small window in each wall lighted the cabin‘s interior, and a couple Coleman lanterns added heat and more light for reading.

There are those who might describe me as somewhat reserved, not much inclined for talk, but compared to George Carnes I was a motor-mouth. This taciturn man, a recent veteran of Vietnam, had almost nothing to say. He was friendly, and we got along, but he seldom communicated, and we parted, two months later, as near strangers. It might have been that he was still coming to terms with his war experience. I don’t know. We never discussed that. Most exchanges that summer were to the point, usually dealing with the business at hand, and except for the Fourth of July we never got into any deep philosophical discussions.

Arnold (Arnie) Shawl, our supervisor, asked what sort of libation we preferred for the Independence Day celebration. We each selected a fifth of booze though I no longer recall the types - maybe whiskey and rum. Both of us consumed our fifth that day, and proceeded to fill the Fourth with gravid conversations of profound meaning. The exchange lasted till the wee hours of morning, but the specific nature of our discourse managed to escape me by the time I roused from blurry eyed slumber the next day.
GO TO: Part 3, The Set-up

Counting Salmon - Part 1, Sand Point

The plane lifted off the runway into an overcast sky. The pilot, a young guy named Ken, climbed a few hundred feet and then ventured across Unga Strait which separated Popof Island from the Alaska Peninsula. We left the village of Sand Point, and were soon across the strait, and winding our way through a pass with mountain peaks towering on each side. The landscape changed to low hills and then flattened to lake dotted tundra.It was June of 1970.
I had just finished my first year of teaching high school biology in Anchorage, and was set for an Alaskan adventure that summer.

The take-off out of Sand Point marked the third day of a journey in which each succeeding aircraft was smaller that the one before. I flew the 270 air mile leg from Anchorage to Kodiak in a Boeing 707, transferred the next day to a Grumman Goose for the 350 mile flight to Sand Point, and now sat in tandem behind the pilot in a Super Cub. My backpack, small suitcase, and supplies were strapped in behind me.

A structure appeared in the distance - a small red speck on a vast green matrix - nothing more for as far as the eye could see. The red speck, some sixty miles distant, was a cabin maintained by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G). Ken directed the plane toward a short runway, one so narrow that the wingspan exceeded its width. Its length seemed to shrink on approach. We crossed the Sapsuk River, touched down on the end , and quickly ran the runway’s meager span. The plane passed the far limit and bumped over rough terrain before coming to a “complete stop”. I think we landed with a slight tailwind, but there was a low hill at the other end, and Ken would have had to fly just above it and then quickly drop to make an even more perilous landing. The runway needed lengthening.A man left the cabin and walked the fifty yards separating us. George Carnes got to the plane as we finished setting my gear and supplies to the side. The three of us lifted the tail, spun it around, and shoved the Super Cub back onto the runway. Ken took off in the direction from which he had come. We stood watching as the plane climbed into the gray canopy. Its size soon dwindled to a speck, and its barely audible hum diminished to silence. George reached for a box of supplies; I grabbed my gear and we started for the cabin.

GO TO: Part 2, The Cabin