Hodge PodgePourri

The Underside of Corporate Personhood

2012-01-26T10:00:00.000-09:00

I. The Founders Distrusted Corporations

“We The People”, the very first words, signal the essence of our Constitution. It was created as a governing framework to “…establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty” …for us, humans!

There is no mention of “corporation” or “company” throughout its scope. The word “business” occurs once, but only in reference of congress needing a “Quorum to do Business”. “Commerce” appears twice, both concerning the government’s power to “regulate Commerce”. “Person” and “People” are found two dozen times.

The framers had no intention of extending the same protections to corporations. The American colonies, like their brethren around the world, were formed and governed by corporations, proxies for the Imperial European Monarchs. Years of experience had given the colonists little reason to trust their self-serving dominance. The Boston Tea Party, harbinger of the Revolution, had not only been a protest against the short-sighted policies of the British Crown, but a violence committed against the abuses of the East India Company. Thomas Jefferson, wary of corporate power, voiced his concern of the need for a bill of rights that included “freedom of commerce against monopolies“.

The Constitution reserved the powers for controlling corporations to the states. Many included strict corporate regulation in their own constitutions. Only state legislatures could issue corporate charters. They were quasi extensions of the state, granted for specific purposes, limited in operation to the issuing state, and constrained in the amount of capital they could raise. They were allowed neither to buy stock in other companies, nor own property unless needed to fulfill their charter. Shareholders were personally and individually responsible for debts incurred. Charters were granted for a set number of years, had to be renewed, and could be revoked.

Corporations were rare during the early years of the America union. Charters were granted to do the “people’s business”, to built roads and canals. Banks and insurance companies had to be chartered. Most businesses were not incorporated, but existed as sole owner and partnerships. That model proved adequate. By 1860 total American production rose to one of the highest in the world, second only to Great Britain. The system, by no means perfect, did work for nearly three-quarters of a century.

Railroads arose in the 1830’s. Charters were granted to the new form of transportation, and it grew swiftly over the next thirty years, replacing canals as a major form transportation. That was also when the charter system began to break down. Business boomed and railroads grew rich and powerful. They lobbied state legislatures for changes in the charter system, and people favored a fairer system. That started in the 1850’s, and accelerated after the Civil War. The original charter system was dismantled by 1880, replaced by a general incorporation process that was simple, easy to obtain and none-restrictive. The benign form of the corporate system was killed. Unwittingly, a virulent form was conceived.

II. Corporations Commandeer the Constitution

“Slavery is the legal fiction that a Person is Property. Corporate Personhood is the legal fiction that Property is a Person”. There is more irony in this quote than the truth it speaks; corporations gained personhood by commandeering the Constitutional Amendment that was meant to provide the rights-of-citizenship to former slaves.

The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in1868. In part it read, “...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Note that the Amendment refers to “any State” in its admonition. The amendment was directed toward the states, specifically the formal Rebel States. The federal government had little to do with regulating industries in the early days, leaving it to states and local governments.

Railroads counted among the richest and most powerful corporations to arise after the Civil War. With the adoption of the 14^th Amendment they became strident in their insistence that they were “persons” and should have equal protection of the law. Time and again their lawyers brought the argument to court, all because corporations had been referred to as “artificial persons” in the earliest charters. Time and again their cause went down in flames, but great wealth allowed them to play the Phoenix…and they had friends in high places.

In 1886 yet another case came before the Supreme Court, Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad. If not for a brief statement by Chief Justice Morrison Waite at the beginning, before argument commenced, the case would have been assigned, along with the many others like it, to the dust bin of irrelevance.

He remarked, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does”. The court‘s final decision, like the many cases before, did not include a ruling on the question of “corporate personhood”. The headnote (a summary of the decision) included Justice Waite’s statement, and that headnote seems to have launched our democracy on a path toward destruction.

It is yet a mystery as to why the Chief Justice made that statement. Speculation persists to this day. Several of the Supreme Court justices had been railroad attorneys - one Associate Justice, Stephan J. Field, was an unabashed supporter. Nearly every talented lawyer had worked for railroads in those days. The Court clerk, Bancroft Davis, who wrote the headnote, had also been a railroad attorney. That headnote subsequently set court precedent - corporations were “persons” as far as the Law was concerned.

Justice Hugo Black observed that, of the cases in which the Court applied the fourteenth amendment during the first 50 years after Santa Clara, "less than one-half of 1 percent invoked it in protection of the Negro race, and more than 50 percent asked that its benefits be extended to corporations".

During those fifty years corporations won numerous Supreme Court decisions that granted them Bill of Rights protections: First Amendment guarantees of political speech, commercial speech, and negative free speech; Fourth Amendment safeguards against unreasonable regulatory searches; Fifth Amendment double jeopardy and liberty rights; and Sixth and Seventh Amendment entitlements to trial by jury. The virulence usurped the Constitution, and there was yet more to come.

III. Corporate Control of Government with Money

In the 1970’s corporations opened another front. This one was aimed directly at controlling legislation passed by Congress and state legislatures (see: Powell Memorandum). It has been a highly organized campaign propelled with money - lots of money. Cash flowed into the political system in unprecedented volumes creating and financing organizations whose aim were to influence government policy. The operation has been hugely successful.

The Business Roundtable, one of the earliest and most powerful, was formed in 1972, and made up of CEOs from several hundred of the largest corporations in America - big table laden with money. One of the Roundtable’s early victories was the defeat of The Labor Reform Bill backed by labor unions in 1978. The bill was expected to easily pass because both Houses and the Presidency were controlled by Democrats. Congress was confronted by an unparalleled lobbying effort. Defeat came as a devastating blow to labor, and its been down hill for unions ever since.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) arose in 1973. This operation is more subtle. It professes to be a nonpartisan provider of technical services to understaffed state legislators. In reality it is an association of over three hundred corporations that writes “model” legislation presented to several thousand state legislators who attend its sponsored meetings. Of course it goes without saying that these “nonpartisan” legislative “models” are anything but.

The Roundtable and ALEC are only two of the earliest associations. Billions of dollars fund many other corporate financed entities: Foundations, Think Tanks, Coalitions, Litigation Centers, PR agencies, Judicial Education Seminars, and K Street Lobbies. Phalanxes of lobbyists write “White Papers”, authoritative reports, to sway congress to “special interest” view points. Fifteen thousand K Street lobbyists are registered to push corporate agendas on Capitol Hill. That’s twenty-eight for each member of congress, and each lobbyist is supported by a gaggle of aides. For every public sector lobbyist in Washington there are a hundred speaking for Corporate America and the superrich.

Corporations also finance scores of front groups that pose as “grass roots” movements. Many public TV announcements are deceptive attempts to sway public opinion. The National Wetlands Coalition was sponsored by oil and gas companies and real estate developers to ease restrictions placed on wetlands. Consumer Alert fights government regulations on product safety. Keep America Beautiful, sponsored by the bottling industry, actively fights mandatory recycling legislation. The Center for Indoor Air Research was funded by the tobacco companies to mislead the public about the danger of tobacco smoke. American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is an association of coal producers, utility companies, and railroads trying to convince us that the phrase “Clean Coal” isn’t really an oxymoron.

Huge sums flow into political action committees to finance campaigns and manipulate elections. Fund raisers add millions to politicians’ campaign chests insuring corporate access and the best democracy that money can buy. In 1976 the Supreme Court ruled that political money was equivalent to First Amendment free speech (Buckley v. Valeo), and the 2010 decision (Citizens United v. The Federal Elections Commission) freed corporations to pump unlimited funds, anonymously, into politics. So, as the old saying goes… “You ain’t seen nothin yet”.

Vast resources enable corporations to broadcast limitless “free speech” over the airwaves. No mortal voice of dissent can match the deafening output. Corporate media interject opinions from “talking heads”, “think tanks” add their “learned and wise” voices, and coalitions chime in on specific issues. We are immersed in corporate “white noise” to the relative exclusion of all others.

The forty year campaign has enabled corporations to achieve overwhelming influence in government. A revolving door, by which individuals move back-and-forth between government and corporate jobs further enhances their dominion. The lines separating government from corporate power have become so blurred its difficult to tell which is the dog and which is the tail or which is wagging which. The malignancy has captured the machinery of government.

IV. Corporate Pursuit of Deregulation

The early American corporation was an entity chartered for public good, to serve people. That intension has been inverted. In the present economy it is people who serve and are expendable. The only reason for a corporation’s existence is profit, and that which limits it is anathema. A guaranteed way to maximize profit is to externalize costs (pass them off to people, society, government or the environment). If modern corporate political activity can be distilled to its essence, it is the endeavor to squash regulation, and return to a “Gilded Age” where its possible to destroy competition, cut wages, disregard working conditions, inflate prices, and foul the environment - all in pursuit of profit.

An endless bombardment of anti-regulation noise emanates from the corporate world. TV infomercials and media “talking heads” amplify the often repeated message, effectively shaping public opinion by transmitting a continual stream of propaganda into homes.

A balance between government regulation and corporate activity is obviously needed in a functioning system, but it is the “Big Lie” that government regulations are strangling business. Corporations simply don’t want to pay the full cost of doing business in the modern world and the financial sector is the biggest player.

It has spent millions to successfully nullify banking regulations, some enacted in the aftermath of the Great Depression. The Glass-Steagal Act of 1933 was passed to guard against the repeat abuses that brought the economy down in 1929. Congress effectively scuttled safe-guards by 2000 enabling banks to gamble with derivatives, credit default swaps, and other risky financial instruments that contributed to the Great Recession presently afflicting people.

The financial sector’s share of the Gross Domestic Product has dramatically increased over the last decades. That gain is not from productive investment, but from an extractive process conducted by speculators, arbitrageurs, and corporate raiders who do not create wealth, but extract and concentrate existing wealth. Other investors and society are the losers.

Bankers currently battle the potential effectiveness of the newly established Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. The bureau was formed to shield people from the predatory practices of the industry, requiring it to write contracts in plain, understandable English for example. The bankers say the Bureau doesn’t have enough congressional oversight, it will be bad for business, hurt the economy, or the consumer, …or something. They aren’t able to provide a convincing argument, but that doesn’t matter. Their lobbyists are busy in Washington, and have paid handsomely to get the attention of Congress, and successfully delayed the Senate confirmation of a head for eighteen months. The financial sector will continue trying to emasculate the bureau. Congress could provide a fair deal to the people by making it difficult for the moneyed interests to continue gaming the system, but the outcome isn’t certain.

Fracking, a process that dislodges natural gas from shale rock, has generated extensive activity in several states. The process involves pumping millions of gallons of water, under high pressure, into the rock strata - water no longer available for farming or drinking. The solution is 98 percent water, but the other 2 percent amounts to millions of pounds of chemicals, some toxic, and industrial secrecy surrounds the exact composition. Some residents are making fortunes leasing drilling rights, but others complain of ground water contamination (faucets catch on fire), poor air quality, noise, health issues, and a curious up-tick of earthquakes. The EPA gave its blessing in 2004, but is looking at it again. The gas companies say that it will alleviate our energy needs, and boost the economy. That’s probably correct, but what costs will corporations divert to the public and the environment in the process? Their coalitions say its perfectly safe, but we’ve been told things like that before.

Energy companies, think tanks, and associations wage a disinformation campaign over scientific evidence warning of climatic change. They follow the tactics tobacco companies used earlier in a long-running effort to discredit studies revealing the health hazards of smoking. Slick “public service” ads touting the corporate agenda enter American homes via the ubiquitous television. Many sponsors have innocuous names, like Americans for Prosperity, another of those front groups, this one belonging to Koch Industries, big in the oil industry, repeatedly fined for environmental violations, and one of the big backers of climate denial.

If regulations are likened to a democracy’s antibodies, then the corporate malignancy is destroying the immune system. Recent history is replete with examples of enormous costs being passed on (i.e. externalized) to people or society or the environment as a result of deregulation and/or lax regulation - the Fukushima Nuclear plant disaster, The Deep Water Horizon Spill, and The Great Recession to name three recent ones.

V. Modern Corporate Colonialism

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) were created in 1944 to integrate the world‘s economies into one global market, a process known today as “Globalization“. In many ways this “Free market” economy has been a great success. Corporations and a relative few wealthy individuals have done fine. Poor countries and most of the world’s people have faired less well.

The Bank and IMF are mandated to provide loans to poor countries, stabilize exchange rates, do research, offer advise, and facilitate an international payment system. But the economically powerful nations are the ones who run the show and choose the leadership - who happen to be corporate executives. They therefore have a systemic bias in favor of rich countries and multinational corporations.

Policies, set unilaterally and in secret, have resulted in mounting criticism. Strategies required poor countries to abandon traditional economic structures and adopt western practices so raw materials could be supplied to the industrialized nations. Small farmers were displaced by estate sized agribusiness. Other export industries, logging and mining, caused environmental devastation due to poorly regulated operations.

The Bank demands draconian restructuring as a debt crises continues to overwhelm the Third World. Sharp cuts in social services are considered necessary so the impoverished governments can continue making interest payments on balances they will never repay. The net effect on indigenous people has been the disruption of their social fabric and fracturing of communities.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1994 by Canada, United States and Mexico in a major step toward removing trade barriers. “Globalization” and “Free Trade” became the catchwords in the run-up to Senate ratification. Corporations and their political shills praised it, assuring skeptics that all was for the best. But those guarantees proved hollow as thousands of our factories have since been closed, dismantled, and shipped to Mexico, India or China, or elsewhere.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) was created in 1995 to manage the global economy and arbitrate trade disputes between countries. The arbitration panel, staffed by multi-nation corporate personnel, is the most powerful legislative and judicial body in the world. They are the unelected whose decisions go unchallenged because of treaties entered upon by the United States and 186 other countries. The panel, unaccountable to the people, can nominally overrule national laws by laying heavy sanctions against noncompliant countries. Their actions have generated anger. Large, sometimes violent, demonstrations occur wherever they conduct meetings (Seattle in 1999).

Fifty-one corporations count among the hundred top economies of the world. The combined sales of the two-hundred largest corporations equal more than 28% of World Gross Domestic Product, but employ less than one percent of the world‘s work force. The corporate work force is a body that continues to shrink, blue collar workers made up earlier cuts, management counts among the latest. Innovations in computer and robotic technology may eventually position corporations where they no longer need humans. Who then will buy their products?

The present global economy, dominated by multi-national corporations, resembles the imperial colonial system of yesteryear in that it extracts wealth from the “colonies” and concentrates it in the hands of a relative few. It may be less brutal than its forebear, but human depravation still follows in its wake.

Fifty years ago the middle class was a robust segment of the U.S. population. The economy boomed with a plethora of good paying jobs, and wealth was more evenly distributed than at any time in history. The middle class is now shrinking, and the populace begins to mirror the “haves and have-nots” of the third-world. Instead of other nations catching up to us, we are joining them. The virulence has metastasized.

VI. So where does this leave “We The People“?

There are some “natural persons” among us who can live forever; possess neither a soul nor a moral compass; values nothing beyond profit and growth; may own others like themselves; enjoy limited liability for their transgressions; are rich beyond most dreams; use their wealth, anonymously, to commandeer our political and legal systems; and exhibit behavioral patterns that psychologists describe as psychopathic. One can appreciate how Dr. Frankenstein must have felt when he realized the nature of the creature he had loosed on the world.

GO TO: Movetoamend.org

The Hungry Men

2012-01-21T00:04:00.001-09:00

I took a job at Graves Sheet Metal Company in Kokomo in June of 1966 after teaching the previous year at Smithville School in southern Indiana. The educational experience convinced me that I wanted nothing to do with that profession. So, at twenty-six years of age I found my life void of any immediate life goals, and decided to go adventuring in Europe. I applied for passport and a bought ships passage to Bilbao, Spain, and then took a job at Graves to make a little money before taking off in the fall.

The passport that was never used.

Bill Graves hired me to clean up the shop which was littered with scrap metal piled high behind and around various cutting machines. He had no janitorial service, and debris was threatening to envelop the place. The sheet metal workers’ union wage was to high to employ them for janitorial work, so I became the all-purpose handy-man hired to accomplish whatever odd job that might arise.

A small part of the building was occupied by a roofing firm, but the sheet metal business took up most of the space. The shop was housed in an old building, long and narrow, with a big overhead door at each end. There was an open loft on each side piled high, a segment of it stored sheet metal parts that had been fabricated but not used. The loft was a dust choking place to work on hot summer days, so I was thankful when that particular task came to completion. It took me several weeks to clean and organize the place.

Bill had six or eight journeymen working for him. They were a highly skilled bunch who produced duct work for heating and cooling systems, and also installed them. Most of the contracts were for work done for newly constructed buildings. I liked his crew right away, but I‘m not certain how they looked upon me, a college graduate, ex-teacher, grubbing around in attics, unloading sheet metal, and doing odd jobs. Journeymen went through rigorous training that used a lot of math in design of pieces they make. I was talking math with one of them and he ask me to calculate the square root of a number. I was almost finished when he stopped me and said he just wanted to know if I could really do it.

On one slow day I worked on a safe that sat in the office. It was a big heavy one standing three feet high, but useless because the door could not be shut and the mechanism was jammed. I played around with it, figured what was wrong, got it working, and changed the combination. That impressed everybody, and I was fairly well accepted after that. After all, I could do something practical.

Once I finished the job I expected to be let go, but Graves assigned me to work with Dutch Coady, his father-in-law. The work was more enjoyable after that as I got to go around town with Dutch who ran errands and delivered materials to work sites. Since he was the boss’s son-in-law he had more latitude and many of his errands could be better described as “government jobs”, that’s how he characterized them.

Dutch was an accomplished poker player, a reformed alcoholic, and active in the AA. From him I received advice in card playing and an eye opening introduction to the world of Alcoholics Anonymous. He was a jovial guy who seemed to know half the city residents. We often met people on the street who he would stop and talk to. Upon finishing, as we turned to walk away, he would say, his thumb jerking back toward the individual, “He’s an alcoholic”. “He” might be a lawyer on one occasion or a doctor the next. I began to wonder if half the people in town might not be alcoholics.

I accompanied him to several AA meetings, and when he went on “government jobs”, like taking a bottle to someone on a bender. Once he had me climb a long flight of stairs with him when he delivered booze and cigarettes to a couple in a run down apartment. I remember the guy wore a sweaty T-shirt and the woman stood in her petty coat - both strung out. Dutch said there was no use trying to keep booze from anyone still bent on pursuing the addiction. They were going to drink one way or another, and it was safer to just take a bottle to them. He said they might consider quitting when they hit bottom, but nothing was certain about alcoholism.

Once when were on lunch break, just outside of the café, guy hit us up for money to get something to eat. Dutch invited him in telling him he‘d pop for lunch. The guy made some excuse about having a weak stomach and needed a special diet. To my surprise Dutch turned and headed on to the café. Inside he said, “If the son-of-a-bitch asked for money for a drink I‘d have given in to him“.

I learned something there. Since there was no hunger in America the only people on the streets to ask for money were alcoholics. Offer to buy them a meal. They won’t accept an invitation because they just want a drink. I never dreamed there were people who might really be hungry.

I’ve never been hungry, at least I’ve never known the gnawing emptiness that goes on for days or weeks. Mine was always of the pleasant kind with anticipation of a meal to be forthcoming. I wasn’t aware of anybody being hungry in this country as a cornucopia seemed to lie all around us, but events set me straight on a winter days in January of 1967.

Summer came to an end. Friends gave me a going- away party at which they presented me with a leather passport wallet, which I still have. But my adventure to Europe was postponed due to a war in Vietnam, and the fact that I had a record thirteen deferments granted by the local Draft Board. I made the mistake of asking the board if it was okay if I sailed for Europe. They said no, and I learned that there are times you don’t ask questions, do it and ask later. So in early winter I moved to Chicago to try my fortune in the “Big City”.

Life is faster in a big town. I once read of a study that determined people walked faster in big towns, that their speed of perambulating is directly proportional to the size of the city - the bigger, the faster they walk. I was from a relatively small city and it took a while to adapt, so my pace was slower and I often made eye contact with those coming toward me. I didn’t realize it for a time, but that behavior made me a target. People approached me to ask for money to get something to eat. It happened more often than I would have expected.

Thinking they were just drunks wanting a drink I’d answer as Gus would. If I were close to a restaurant, I’d invite them to a meal. To my surprise too many accepted. Usually I bought them a hotdog or a hamburger, but one old man stands out in my memory. Tall and thin, he was wearing a long overcoat and a mariner’s sock hat, his wrinkled skin as black as ancestors of slave ships not many generations before.

He ask me in front of an upscale cafeteria in the Near North. I told him I wouldn’t give him money, but I’d take him in for a meal. He accepted. We went in and I gave him a tray and told him to go on and pick what he wanted. The man humbly took it and went down the line selecting a healthy amount. I paid and we found a small table for two. I sat opposite him for a short while, now wishing I’d talked to him, but I’ve always been cautiously aware of the fine line that can exist between friendly curiosity and the nosy invasion of a person’s privacy.

I remember he was slathering butter on a bun when I decided it was time to go. I stood and put out my hand to shake his as I said goodbye. He surprised me by grabbing it with both of his and pressing it to his cheek; his eyes closed. It was emotionally moving to experience such gratitude. Embarrassed, I jerked it from his grasp and said, “Don’t do that”. I took my leave and turning away, noticed a woman at the opposite table looking at me with an enigmatic smile.

I became like a big city person after that. I walked fast, kept my eyes trained on the sidewalk and never made eye contact. I couldn’t afford to feed all the people that were hungry.

The Old Photo in the Attic

2012-01-12T23:34:00.000-09:00

Every time I returned to my boyhood home in Kokomo to visit Mom and Dad I would eventually find myself in the attic rummaging to see what treasure had previously escaped me, or been added.

It was a “cold attic”, meaning the temperature approximated the outside - cold in winter and like a sauna in summer. Insulation showed between rafters, so it was important to watch ones step. A few areas had been covered with boards, and that is where most of the stuff had been stored.

Many of the items were stimulants to memories of things gone by, like the box packed years ago with the first curtains to hang in our bedroom in 1950. They were of leafless trees, black skeletal trunks against a white background, cold and stark - an accurate interpretation of an Indiana winter.

There was the stand-alone floor model ash tray, an “art deco” model with a gaudy red body trimmed in flashy chrome. Don and I had given it to Mom for Christmas in about 1951.The top surface, a circular flying saucer shape with space on the outer edge to set drinks, sat on a conical pedestal with a chrome base. In the center, under a chrome plated handle, were chrome plated grooves for holding cigarettes around the edges of a chrome platted trap-door with a chrome plated button. Push the button, and the door opened to drop ashes and butts into a tray hidden below. For a lot of years it was an out-of-date piece of junk in the attic. Today it would be a sought-after collector item.

I made yet another trip to the attic in about 1992. Back in a corner, hidden behind some boxes, sat a large framed picture turned against the wall. I pulled it out to see a photo of a man sitting with his arm resting on a pedestal and a woman standing beside him. They were staring out toward me, but focused a bit to one side. He wore a beard, striped pants, black coat and vest; she stood in a floor length print dress that had an odd repeating design that suggested zodiac symbols. I guessed the photo to have been taken more than a hundred years before, possibly in about 1880.

My first thought was that it had been something Dad bought at one of the auctions he frequented, and it had been put in the attic and forgotten. He died in 1985 and Mom probably didn’t ventured up there any more. I took it down and showed it to her. She said it was a photo that our cousin, Jake, had brought back to Kokomo years ago. Jake died the year after Dad and the few personal items he left were up there in the attic, most of them in a old trunk.

"Jake" Jacobs, c. 1930, Connersville, IN

Jake had always been close to his Aunt Della (Jacobs) Frank, my grandmother. I think he was the only child of a fragmented family of grandma's older brother, and she "adopted" him. She came to live with Mom and Dad before I was born, and he followed her to Kokomo shortly after the war. Born William Thomas Jacobs in 1903, he was twenty years younger than grandma, and the same age as her oldest son. He grew up near them in Catawba, Kentucky.

He and his wife, Babe, stayed in Kokomo for a year or two and moved to Toledo, Ohio. They were eventually divorced and Jake showed back up in Kokomo in 1951. He got a job at the Stellite factory shortly after arriving, worked there till retirement and lived in Kokomo the rest of his life.

Jake was a eccentric character who stood only five feet tall, wore bib over-alls most of his life and expressed himself in a flow of colorful language, much of it with a blue tint. He rented a single room for many years just eight blocks west of us on Sycamore Street, and frequently stopped by the house. I never saw much of him after Grandma suffered a stroke. That was in 1958, right after my high school graduation, and ten years before she died. Mom said she’d see him from time to time after that. I don’t remember the last time I was with Jake, but he was fairly old and wrinkled.

The old photo Jake brought back from Kentucky was of my Great grandparents, Charles and Julia Jacobs, It measured about 16 by 24 inches. The bottom had some water damage, but the rest was okay. I took it out of the frame and packed it back to Alaska where a photo shop produced a useable image. I salvaged something for posterity, and it was also a great find because I had just become interested in genealogy. The photo is the only one I have of direct ancestors who died before I was born.

A Brief Encounter and The Sadness of Farewell

2011-12-03T09:00:00.000-09:00

I bartended at the Moose Lodge for several years while I was going to college. My work station was usually at the service bar, a small cubicle looking out onto the ball room and stage. There were no bar stools, no customers, just four or five waitresses calling out a constant stream of drink orders. The compact bar had everything within reach: booze bottles on rear shelves, beers in the front coolers, clean glasses on the bar top, and ice in the hole. One other guy joined me in the limited space as we turned out one drink after another. The fast paced action made for a lot of fun.

I worked with a couple guys over those summers, either Art or Wayne. They were both Moose members, fifteen or twenty years older than me, and worked to pick up a few dollars on weekends. Both were fun to work with as our activity often resembled a choreographed dance. Maybe the band music helped set the tempo, and much of the enjoyment came from our coordinated action.

We served a variety of drinks. I might grab two beers with each hand, pop the caps and set them on the tray, while the other would be making a grasshopper and I’d hand him a needed bottle of Crème de Mint. I’d start a martini. He’d mix a seven and seven, then I’d reach for the sweet vermouth to make a Manhattan, then a whiskey sour…and so on. We worked well together and I think the two enjoyed the harmonized dance as much as I did.

The weekends saw a lot of action at the Moose. A local band performed each Friday and Saturday, and the spacious dance floor was always full. Sometimes all the waitresses would be shouting orders at us at the same time. There were few lulls during the evenings, and closing time at twelve or one was always welcome.

I would be a bit weary, but having been injected with adrenalin by the evening’s action, was not prepared to go home. We’d draw our pay, ten or twelve bucks for the night ($2 per hour) and put a receipt in the till. The vigor of youth was running through my veins, so I usually joined others heading off to a local establishment to relax and unwind.

One night, near the end of the summer, some people brought in a woman who had worked as a waitress at the Moose the year before. Mom and Dad had told me her story. She was in a fiery auto accident the previous summer, had been burned over most of her body, and hospitalized for months. Several described the young women as having been pretty and popular before the accident dealt her a sad fate. I’d never met her, so the only memory I have is of a burned out hulk. She was a human wreck, likely unrecognizable by those who had known her before. Most of her face had been spared the flames, but her voice was effected, and I think much of her body was scar tissue. Both legs were trapped in braces, and she shuffled, each leg swinging awkwardly forward as she managed a hobbling walk on crutches.

That was back in 1963. Nearly half a century has passed. I didn’t know much about her. I never knew her age, maybe thirty. She was tall, maybe 5’ 9”. I knew nothing about her past, where she was born and grew up, or who her family might have been. I no longer even remember her name.

She came by the lodge on two or three occasions, and one night joined a small group after closing. We went to a bar with music and a dance floor. Art, my bartending partner, and his wife were her friends. He plodded me to ask her to dance. I did so as a courtesy and was surprised she accepted.

Our dance was more of a balancing act than a slow two-step. She had neither the coordination nor strength to do more than teeter back and forth. I noticed a young man smirking at our presence, looking us up-and-down in a manner that signaled his attitude of superiority. I could have challenged him, but I was wise enough, even then, to realize that his attitude was more his problem than ours.

I drove her home that night, stopping in front of a small house in a nice neighborhood. She open the door on the passenger side and asked me if I‘d come in, and then said something like, “You won’t be sorry!”.

I was at a loss. I was being propositioned, and had no idea how to deal with it. I made some lame excuse of it being late and I was tired. A slight pause followed and then, in a plaintive voice she said, Well, I won’t beg”. She closed the door and shuffled up the walk and disappeared into the house. I never saw her again. Mom said she died the following year.

I think she asked me in because she was trying to find a reason to go on living, but I lacked adequate experience in that side of life, and wasn’t willing or able to help. I’ve often wondered what my response would have been had she ask for such a favor before misfortune befell her. Or would she even have bothered? In a way I was as prejudice as the smirking jerk on the dance floor. Maybe, if I’d known her before, or if I had been older and wiser, then maybe I could have offered a benevolence.

Part 7 - Hazel's Last Years

2011-11-15T09:00:00.006-09:00

Mom lived three more years. I was on my way for a visit in the spring of 1997 when I received a phone call upon getting into Los Angeles. It was Don. He told me that Jodi Spiegel, Ellie’s middle child from her first marriage, had died suddenly of a brain tumor. She had been having severe headaches for weeks. Don had helped raise Jodi and her two sisters since she was eight years old. They were still at the hospital, in shock, and not sure they would be able to pick me up as planned. I told them not to worry, I’d find my way, but they managed, and were waiting when I deplaned in San Diego.

I stayed with Mom at her one-bedroom apartment. Her rental was in a small retirement community of four two-story buildings that enclosed a beautifully landscaped courtyard - rather charming. There were gates at each corner, one lead conveniently to a strip mall and grocery. Don and Ellie lived only a couple miles away.

The clan gathered at Don and Ellie’s place each evening during those sad days. The core group included more than a dozen people: Ellie’s surviving daughters, Stephanie and Susan, along with their families, her first husband, Jerry Spiegel, and Don‘s sons, Lee and Dennis Buckingham, who flew in from Indiana. They planned a memorial service for Jodi at Dog Beach in San Diego, a favorite of Jodi as she had often taken her dog there. It was an entertainment to see the dogs frolicking in the waves, seemingly with
out a care in the world. A pavilion was pitched on the beach, and the service consisted of friends and family taking turns telling remembrances of events that they had shared with Jodi.

One evening, as I was helping Mom into the car to take her back to her apartment she let me know she would be interested in trying some pot. This was a bit of a surprise. She had been a smoker all her adult life, but never showed the lease interest in the stuff of Reefer Madness. She had, no doubt, smelled the characteristic aroma of the weed wafting through the group that night, and I suspect her dormant curiosity became aroused. Maybe she had always been curious, but the opportunity had never presented itself at a convenient time. But she was in California now, land of liberalism, so why not join in. Besides, what did it matter at that stage of her life. I told her I would see if someone could help her.

Jerry Spiegel was known to be a connoisseur, and the next evening he presented Mom with a joint. She immediately took a puff, inhaled deeply and started coughing. She coughed for several minutes, loud and hurtful hacks, with big tears rolling down her cheeks. She never finished her joint, never got to experience a marijuana high. Most everybody smiled sheepishly, and I think all felt sorry for her, though the sympathy might have followed different paths of reasoning.

Mom never got into the California niche, once admitting to me of feeling overwhelmed by the move, and not able to make herself get involved. She was depressed and withdrawn.

There were plenty of activities at the senior complex. Don said they passed the community room on one occasion where a number of residents were playing cards and kibitzing. It looked like a lot of fun, but they were on their way to dinner, and didn’t stop. He regretted not taking her in as it was a perfect opportunity to introduce her to the new neighbors as Mom was not the type to boldly go in on her own.

Mom stayed in the apartment for a little over a year before Don moved her into a care facility. She had a series of small strokes that robbed her of short-term memory. Don was devoted in his caretaking, going over every day to spend time with her. I visited a last time a few months before she died, and took our newly adopted boy, John. We visited at the hospice. Mom was confined to a wheel chair. We strolled with her out the walk around the facility. She stopped to ask about the name of a flower along the path‘s edge. Don said she asked that same question every day. Mom died a month later on May 5th, 1999, four and a half months short of 86.

Part 6 - Hazel's Life Without Her Friend Bob

2011-11-15T09:00:00.005-09:00

Bob had a stroke the next year and was confined to a nursing home. I visited Mom right after the stroke. Mom was busy; she had a mission. She went to the nursing home every day, brought clean cloths, and stayed with him till evening. She was devoted. They had become very close over the years. Bob sat in a chair resting his head on a table with his face turned to one side. He was helpless, wasn’t enjoying life, and had run his trapline for the last time. He lifted his head off the table only one time. He made the effort to look at me and attest that it sucked, and then laid his head down again. Bob died a month or so later.

Mom was alone and very much lost again. She got sick and brother Don took a bus from San Diego, getting to Kokomo in time to put her in the hospital. When she improved he loaded her in her car and drove back to California. I flew in and we had a conference as to what should be done. It was evident that Mom, at nearly eighty-three, could no longer live by herself. We decided she would sell the house and move to California to be near Don and Ellie.

Don took Mom back to Indiana, and in three months we met again to clear her house, arrange shipping for what she wanted to keep, and put the rest up for auction. The attic and basement were full of fifty years of living. We found curtains stored in the attic that had hung in our bedroom in the 1950’s. Grandma Frank died in 1968, but her clothes were still hanging in a stand-alone closet in the basement. We rented one of those big trash containers, the type you see at construction sites, had it set at the back of driveway, and the proceeded to fill it.

Most of the stuff was in the attic. I’d go up, rummage around till I found something interesting, and bring it down to the driveway. Sometimes we’d decide it should go into the trash bin. If it passed muster Don would clean it (often washing it with the garden hose), and store it in the garage.

The auction was held on Sunday, September 29, 1996. The auctioneer lined tables along the length of the driveway, and filled them with smaller items. Larger things were carried from the garage when their turn came. Lots of people showed up to buy lots of interesting artifacts. One of the last things auctioned was Bob’s car, a late model Chrysler. Mom had driven it to the nursing home everyday after his stroke, and he indicated that he wanted her to have it. We got the title out realized that Bob had never signed it over to her. I handed it to the auctioneer, he looked at it a moment, took out his pen and forged Bob’s name on it. The auction was a complete success.
GO TO: Part 7 - Hazel's Last Years

Part 5 - Hazel and Friend Bob Visit Alaska

2011-11-15T09:00:00.004-09:00

Mom and Bob Eschelman at Portage Glacier, Alaska, 1993

Mom believed mightily in fate. What was to be, would be, so when a direction was set she generally followed course. I think this was the result of her having been the youngest sibling in a family of three older brothers. She never got the chance to be the lead dog while growing up, and since Dad was older by a year and a half the situation continued into their marriage.

Bob, Mom and Mary at Garage Sale in Anchorage, Ak, 1993

In 1992 Mom and Bob planned a trip to visit Don and Ellie in California by car, and then to fly up to Alaska to see us. I think she had misgivings about the road trip; probably because of Bob’s drinking. She called when they were about to head west. She seemed subdued, and when we hung up she said “goodbye” in a tone of such finality that I wondered if she thought she might be speaking to me for the last time. They made the trip without incident.

Mom and Bob at neighbors for a Salmon Bake

In August they flew into Anchorage. Mary and I waited for them to deplane at the gate. The passengers filed out, and we stood there as the last trickled by. Then Mom came out trailed by a flight attendant shoving Bob in a Wheel chair. He suddenly rose from the chair, tripped on the foot rest, and fell flat on his face. He was drunker than a skunk, and Mom was beside herself with anger and embarrassment. We got him back in the chair. The attendant informed me that if I didn’t take responsibility she would have to turn him over to airport security. I was tempered to decline the option, but agreed to see after him. It seems Bob had bought two bottles of Absolute Vodka just before departing the Minneapolis Airport. Mom hide them in her purse on boarding, and Bob preceded to have a four thousand mile party.

Mom and Bob in boat returning to Cabin, 1993

I no longer recall how we got to the baggage claim on the lower level, but we soon found the designated carrousel with weary travelers crowded in front of a conveyor laded with rotating baggage. Mom recognized her bags, but couldn’t identify Bob’s so I maneuvered him in behind the first row of people. He spotted his sliding down the shoot, and bolted out of the chair, dived past the people in front and landed on the conveyor belt. He lay there clutching his suitcase in triumph as the conveyor transported him toward the exit. I hesitated for a moment but then extracted him and his luggage before they disappeared behind the curtain.

Bob and Mom at Window all Day

We took Bob to the house, filled him with coffee, and put him to bed. He slept on a fold-out couch in the recreation room, a large open area downstairs. A big wood stove stood near the couch/bed. I pulled the curtains to darken the room. It was August but daylight still lingered long into evenings That proved to be a mistake, because Bob got up in the middle of the night needing to take a potty break. In the alcoholic infused confusion he tripped, fell over the stove, bruised a rib and skinned his nose. He was quite a sight for the next week, but continued to smile in that uncomplaining way even though we limited him to beer for the rest of the stay.

Bob and Mom at window at night

I took them to the cabin in Seldovia for a week. Mostly I remember them sitting at the table before the big picture window, Bob on the left, Mom on the right. They would sit there for hours with heads turned toward the window, chins propped on a hands supported by elbows on the table. The tide would flow from high to low in six hours, sometimes with as much as a twenty-seven foot change in level. The high tide flooded the cove climbing up the banks to where tips of tree limbs dipped into the ocean’s surface. Then it would drain exposing the sea floor with mud flats extending out for hundreds of feet from the shore. They could never get enough of watching it.

Bob, Mom, Joe and Mary at Farewell Celebration, 1993

Mary had planned a garage sale on our return. Those events were always more like parties at our house. It was a big success, lots of friends showed up to meet the soon to be departing couple. Mount Spur blew its top the day before they were to fly home. Volcanic ash covered everything and their departure was delayed for a couple days. Bob seemed more anxious about the interruption, and was more eager to depart than we were to see him go. Things ended fairly well as it was hard to stay mad at Bob.
GO TO: Part 6 - Hazel's Life Without Her Friend Bob

Part 4 - Hazels' Life After She Renewed an Old Friendship

2011-11-15T09:00:00.003-09:00

It turned out that Mom’s “boyfriend” was Bob Eschelman, a person I‘d known for many years. I’d met him in the sixties when I bartended at the Moose Lodge, and Bob was one of the two full-time bartenders, working there for many years, possibly till his retirement. He and his wife had been at Dad’s funeral. She died a couple years after that.

Bob was a jovial fellow with a mischievous smile perpetually pasted on his face. He liked to drink, was fun loving, and partied till his dying day. I went with him on one occasion when he run his “trap lines”. That is what he called his daily round of visits to a string of local clubs: VFW, American Legion, Eagles and the Moose Lodge. He had a drink at each one, visited with the bartender and fellow patrons, and then went on to the next. Bob never appeared to be drunk, but did manifest a watery-eyed glow through most of each day. He had a spontaneous nature, and didn’t seem to put much thought into contemplating the consequences of his actions, he just did them.

Mom told me that Bob grew up only child of a prominent family in Anderson, Indiana, hinting that he had been a bit spoiled. He was a wiry little guy, a veteran of World War II, and had served in Europe through most of it. I remember something about the “Battle of the Bulge“. He might have been a prisoner-of-war, though I’m not certain of that. I often wondered if the war might have had something to do with his laissez-faire approach to life, and the uncomplaining toughness that I liked about him .

One time in 1989, after one of my visits to, Mom and I had planned to fly to California to visit my brother and his wife, Don and Ellie. Bob volunteered to drive us to the Indianapolis airport. He arrived a bit late to pick us up, but there was still time to comfortably make it. Kokomo is a long narrow town, measuring two miles on its east-west axis and eight miles north-south. Mom’s house sat on the eastern edge. When Bob pulled out of the driveway he turned west toward the center of town instead of east which would have taken us the half-block to the by-pass and quickly around town. He drove to the center, turned south weaving his way through perceived shortcuts, and finally reached the south edge of town and open road.

It was then that Mom realized she had forgotten her airline ticket. We had to go back to the house. Bob could have taken the by-pass back but retraced his way back through town. Mom retrieved her ticket and Bob started back through town, but I intervened. Now we were running late so Bob sped down the road only to be stopped and ticketed. That took another ten minutes. It did not seem probable but we did make the airport on time.
GO TO: Part 5: Hazel and Her Friend, Bob, Visit Alaska

Part 3 - Hazel's Life after Dad Died in 1985

2011-11-15T09:00:00.002-09:00

Dad died in 1985. Mom was 71 years old, my age as I write this. She was alone for the first time in her life, and in shock for sometime afterward. Don and Ellie had recently lost their farm in Wisconsin, had moved to New Orleans, and arrived there only a few days before his passing. They dropped everything and headed to Kokomo. I took a day to arrange for a substitute before boarding a plane for home.

Mom lived another fourteen years without Dad. I think several of those years were pretty lonely especially the first and final few. She visited Don and Ellie in New Orleans, and came up to Alaska, but was kind of a lost sole in both places. She had lived in Kokomo since 1937, but life around town seemed alien to her after he passed.

The trouble with living a long life is that you out-live most everyone else. One of her friends sat in the front row at Dad’s funeral. I no longer remember her name, Bernice maybe, but she and Mom had been the best of buddies since the sixties, did a lot of things together. The woman had emphysema, and breathed with difficulty. I heard that she passed a short time later.

Mom was the last of her generation to go. She outlived her three brothers, and Dad’s four siblings - family members of whom I’d known from my beginning.

Three or four years passed. I visited for a week every year of so, cleaned gutters and did needed repairs around the house. We tried the Senior Center for lunch a couple times, but she didn’t seem to know any one there. We went to a Unitarian Church service. She liked it and continued to attend till summer recess, but never went back when they commenced in the fall. She lived in her bedroom with the television on 24/7. On visits I often crept into the room to turn off the blaring TV after she had gone to sleep. The TV was her constant companion in those days. The bedroom and kitchen became all she needed and were the only rooms she went into.

Then things changed for her in the next year. One night she called me, said she had been out with a couple old friends, a rare occasion. The three had a couple of drinks and Mom’s voice possessed a bit of an uncharacteristic slur. We talked on for a while, then the phone line went silent for a short spell, and then Mom blurted out, “What would you think if I got myself a boy friend?” In-a-way she was asking my permission, would it be alright with me? If I had said something like, “You don’t want to do that.”, she would have dropped the subject and I’d have never heard anything more about it. I said, “That sounds like a good idea to me”. I consider that to have been one of the wisest and most thoughtful statements I’ve made in my life.
GO TO: Part 4 - Hazel's Life After She Renewed an Old Friendship

Part 2 - Hazel's Life in the 1940's and 1950's

2011-11-15T09:00:00.001-09:00

Mom took care of Don and I through our toddler years, but went back to work at the Globe factory in Kokomo before the war ended. The factory made parachutes, and was only four or five blocks from the house. I still remember the factory whistle sounding its sad low tone at noon every day.

She ironed clothes at Riggs Dry Cleaners shop for several years in the early fifties. It was a true sweat shop in a small building behind the Riggs’ house. We picked her up at 5pm in the evening and the shop was sometimes so hot that I could not stay inside. She took some courses at the local business school, typing and bookkeeping, and went to work for the Moose Lodge as Dad’s assistant in 1953. She worked in the Moose office until she retired some twenty years later.

Mom was five feet two and weighed 108 pounds. I’m not certain why I remember such an exact weight, but it has stuck in my mind these many years. She was slim, and had auburn colored hair. When I was young she had rounded shoulders; the condition would be diagnosed as scoliosis nowadays. The rounded shoulders became more pronounced as the years passed. Near the end of her life her back was curved into a classic hunchback. It came about so gradually that I don’t think it much concerned her.

Her private time was early in the day. I remember hearing her pad around the house at four and five on many a morning. She had two or three hours to herself, and I still don’t know what she was doing, not for certain. The Kokomo Tribune, like many newspaper of its day, was an evening edition, so she had no morning paper to read. She made coffee, and probably did some light house cleaning, or laundry, but mostly, I think it was simply a private time for her. The rest of the family was up by seven, had breakfast, and on our way to work or school by eight.

We gathered at home again around five or six. Grandma Frank usually made supper, and by seven the dishes were done and Mom laid down on the living room couch to watch some television. Sometimes, early on, she would spoon with Dad as he lay at the back of the couch and she cradled in front. Other times she crashed alone, but she invariably fell asleep and missed most of the nights TV shows. She’d awake, sleepy eyed, about ten or eleven and go off to bed. Five or six hours later the pattern would repeat, and you could again hear quiet padding about the house.

Mom was a smoker. I don’t know when she started, but I suspect she began in her teens. She came from tobacco country, and I expect she saw nearly everyone around her smoking while she was growing up. Phillip Morris cigarettes were her choice when I was young, and later she switched to Kools and Salems. As a kid I heard her hacking cough almost every morning. She smoked to nearly the end of her life, but emphysema eventually destroyed her lungs.

A low point for the family came the year after I graduated from high school. Dad had an affair with a divorced woman who was affiliated with the Moose Lodge. Mom got suspicious and had me drive her by the woman’s house on more than one occasion. One night, as we drove through the alley behind the house Mom spotted Dad’s car in the drive way.

She had me stop and then left the car, picked up a board in the offending woman's yard and broke a window in the back of her house. She then proceeded around the house smashing one window after another. I watched in stunned disbelief as Mom sent shock waves of smashed glass resounding through the neighborhood. I had only a vague notion as to why she was having me drive her, and no idea about what she planned to do. Dad came out about the time she reached the front. He put her in his car and drove away.

A day or so later two police officers stopped by at midnight with a warrant and took her to jail. It was the worst time our family ever had. I felt used by Mom for dragging me into it, and I was angry at Dad for the betrayal. It was not pleasant around the house for a while, and I never did hear the outcome. I assume someone in the family paid for the broken windows. I do not love them any less for what happened. There was a lot more good than here ever was bad.
GO TO: Part 3 - Hazel's Life After Dad died in 1985

The Life of Hazel (Frank) Buckingham (1913-1999)

2011-11-15T09:00:00.000-09:00

Mom always claimed she would never live long enough to see Halley’s Comet, but 1986 came and went, and she was still here. She said she would never make the Millennium, and proved herself right on that one - she died Cinco De Mayo, 1999. Mom often saw the darker side of things, so her prediction of an early death, at 85, was understandable. She was a nice person, even gentle, but her outlook was fatalistic. She accepted life as something of which she had little control, but was frustrated by her powerlessness. Mom often groused against the injustices and stupidities of the world, and she especially loved to hate politicians.

Happiness is a phoenix with a short life span. There were many times when she was buoyed with a smile or laughing at a joke. She loved to play Euchre and I remember her sitting in a foursome at the Moose Lodge on many occasions. She worked crossword puzzles, and read lots of books. She could be on a high for weeks, but the mythical bird of happiness would eventually crash and burn. She did not plunge into an emotional darkness, but simply leveled off flat after a shallow dive. A lot of people who are depressed can be irritable but it wasn't her way. I never recognized it then but now realize she probably suffered mild depression most of her life.

Mom was born in a railroad car in eastern Kentucky on September 17, 1913. She went by Hazel Mae Frank, but her birth certificate indicated that she was "Mary Frank". She didn't know why that name was on it, and was never given an explanation. Mom once told me that she always felt like an outsider in her own birth family.

She had three older brothers, Art, Charlie and Joe. The family returned to Catawba Kentucky shortly after she was born. It was her parents hometown, and both their families still lived there. Her maternal grandparents, Charles and Julia Jacobs, died the year before she was born, but her Pop’s parents, George and Mary Frank, were still alive.

She grew up dirt poor because her Pop too often drank up his paycheck. He had a good job with the railroad, but was a bit crazy and several of Mom’s stories about his escapades are hair raising. Catawba was an L&N Railroad creation. There wasn’t much to it then, and it’s not even a ghost town now. The old town is gone, the Jacobs family home was razed years ago, and there is new house sitting where it stood. Their graves lay in a far corner of its backyard.

The family left Catawba in about 1919 and spent a couple years outside Cincinnati before moving on to Connersville, Indiana when she was nine. She quit school after her sophomore year, and was working at the Auburn Auto Company when she met Dad in 1935. They married in June of 1936 and moved to Kokomo, Indiana the following year

GO TO: Part 2 - Hazel's Life in the 1940's and 1950's

Wes Warner's Memorial Day - July 23, 2011

2011-08-07T23:45:00.001-08:00

Wes's Salmon Carving at the Fish Camp

Friends and family met at Wes's Fish Camp, his home on the Kenai River, to remember and celebrate his life, They came from Arizona, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, and Alaska.

Our new Winnebago Class C

Mary and I drove our new RV on it maiden voyage. It was a brand new 2007 model... but it was new to us. Pogo, our young dog made her fisrt camping trip with us.

Mary and Pogo at Wes' s Fish Camp

Carla & Frances Ann Prepare food

There was a hugh run of Red Salmon up the river, so the river was packed with fish in the channel and people on the banks pulling them out. Lots caught at Wes's fish camp that weekend.

Paul and Pete Warner share a memory.

Ernie Warner flew in from Coeur d' Alene, ID

Warren and Wendy Hagman came in from Henderson, NV

Paul Warner flew in from Seattle to make friends with Pogo

Pete Warner talks to his cousin, Sean Waterman, from Arizona.

Frances Waterman came from Arizona with his two sons.

Friends and Family gather to share memories.

Waitning for the start of the Memorial Service.

Fishing was great on the Kenai - the Reds were running.

At five the group gathered for the Memorial to Wes. Warren Hagman read The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service, Wes's favorite Alaska poem.

Warren reads The Cremation of Sam McGee

The launch to spread Wes's ashed.

Scott Waterman of Arizona pays his respect.

Carla Warner gives Wes's sshes to the Kenai.

In Memory of Wes Warner.

Wes We'll Miss You.

More Taxes on the Wealthy

2011-07-15T10:21:00.001-08:00

They Can Afford it, and the Country Needs It

The rich and Corporate American can well afford to pay more taxes. Congress and President Reagan enthusiastically reduced government revenue thirty years ago, but lacked the will to make corresponding cuts in spending. That is also the time our country began to run huge deficits, and started borrowing to fill the void. We have been selling our financial soul to the Orient ever since, a fact that many Americans seem to have been ignorant of until two years ago - curious.

Much of the grousing about President Obama’s plan to “tax the rich” circles around the specious theory that tax cuts for the wealthy spurs economic growth, and increases revenue (remember the “Laffer Curve“, “Supply-Side” and “trickle down“ economics?) The Republicans have been pushing the bogus argument for thirty years. It has yet to bare fruit; we aught to stop trying things that don‘t work.

Over those same thirty years the wealth of the country has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Republicans seem to think taxes are evil and unfair, especially taxes on the rich. They conveniently disregard the fact that government, by its nature, redistributes wealth. They don’t acknowledge that the redistribution has, for the past generation, been a continual siphon from the lower to the upper classes of the economic ladder.

It is ludicrous to hear Republicans complain that Obama wants to “spread the wealth” by increasing the top tax bracket to the 2001 level of 39.6%. - a rate that is historically modest. For many years government tax policy was geared toward an equitable distribution of wealth. That started to shift in the mid-sixties, and accelerated in the early eighties. Only twice in our history has the top bracket been lower than the present era: 1.) 1913 at 7% when income tax was enacted. It jumped to 67% in 1917 and rose above 70% in succeeding years; 2.) 1925 thru 1931, when it fell to 25% . By 1928 the nation’s wealth was concentrated at the top of the economic pyramid, a recorder breaker surpassed only by the present. “The Great Depression” followed in 1929. We are now in “The Great Recession”.

The top tax bracket from 1944 through 1963, a twenty year span, was never less than 91% and had as many as 26 brackets. The economy boomed. The middle class was active and robust. Jobs were plentiful. The wealth of the country was more evenly distributed than at any time in our history. One can argue whether higher taxes make that possible. Maybe, but it certainly didn’t stymie economic growth.

The federal tax code presently has just six brackets, the top being 35%. A person making a taxable income of $250,000 will pay $67,617 (that’s maximum - lots of loop holes to whittle it down). Another way of looking at it - the person gets to keep over $182,000. Most Americans today would have difficulty comprehending an after-tax paycheck of $3,500 a week. An earner making a million a year will take home $13,000 per week; one making ten million a year gets to keep over $125,000.

Impressive! But those are paltry in comparison to the super-rich. One making a hundred million a year takes home $1,250,000 per week. A billion year earner - yes, there are such creatures - takes home $12,500,000 - like winning the lottery every week. Many pay a smaller tax rate than the rest of us. Numerous corporations pay no taxes. CEO’s and hedge funds managers pay only 15% “capital gains” tax.

One thing that’s changed over the last thirty years is the rivers of money that have flowed into the political system. This commenced in the mid-seventies when businesses began to form (The Business Roundtable, an early example) in unprecedented ways, creating and financing organizations whose aim were to influence government policy. The trend continues. Hundreds of millions fund “Think Tanks” and K Street Lobbies. Phalanxes of lawyers write “White Papers”, authoritative reports, to sway congress to “special interest” view points. Sometimes they even write the laws. For every public sector lobbyist in Washington there are hundreds speaking for Corporate America and the superrich.

Equal sums are funneled into political action committees to finance campaigns and manipulate elections. The recent Supreme Court decision “Citizens United vs The Federal Elections Commission” has freed corporations and labor unions to pump unlimited funds, anonymously, into politics. That contest will certainly go to corporate America because its adversary, labor, is a frail shadow of its former self. These moneyed activities are self-serving. They act neither for the common good nor the long-term interest of people.

The unequal distribution of wealth hasn’t come about because the rich are smarter, or better educated. They don’t work harder, or have an edge on technology. It has transpired, as it did in the “Gilded Age” of the 1870‘s, and again in the 1920’s, because money is power and organized power impacts government policy.

We Americans pride ourselves on being an egalitarian society, but a natural tension exists between democratic ideals and the moneyed aspirations of Capitalism. Wealth presently dominates the system. The middle class is in decline. Many wonder if the unequal economy is devolving toward us becoming a nation of “have-and-have-nots“. Some think we are already there. Others say that our democratic government is a parody of its former self? The article was published in the Anchorage Press

Wes on the Kenai River

2011-07-09T12:00:00.139-08:00

Bob Evans & Wes Warner visiting, 1987

Bob Evans came home one day in 1975 to inform us that he was buying a condo in Mount Vernon Estates in mid-town, and would be moving. That was the beginning of the end of our bachelor household. Wes had met Carla Clayton a year earlier and the two would marry within a couple years. So our trio broke up and I became the sole owner of the house.

Wes, Carla, and Frances, visiting in 1994

Wes went into business with two other guys, obtained a NAPA auto parts franchise, and opened their first store on the Old Seward Highway. Over the years the business expanded to include stores in several towns around the State.

Joe & Moonshine visiting Wes in 2007

Wes and Carla had a girl, Frances, and in 1992 they moved to a log home on the Kenai River off Funny River Road near Soldotna. Wes managed the NAPA store in Soldotna for several years before retiring. They went to Mississippi each winter, but Wes never missed coming back to Funny River every summer.

Mary visiting Wes on Kenai River in 2007

We continued to get together over the years. Mary and I stopped by to visit Wes nearly every season. More than once we parked our travel trailer behind his house, over-looking the Kenai River, and spent a few leisure days fishing and visiting while sitting at the fire pit near the river’s bank.

Joe at the firepit at Wes's place, Kenai River, 2007

On one occasion I picked him up at the airport on his spring return from Mississippi when his flight leg to Kenai had an extra long layover. He came back to Anchorage only one time that I remember. That was in 2003. He drove up intending to spend a few days looking around town to see how much it had changed. He stayed two nights - couldn’t stand the bustle of the big city any longer.

Joe, Moonshine & Wes on Wendys Way, 2003

Mary, our dog Moonshine, and I spent three or four nights with Wes in 2007. Moonshine was forever transfixed by the resident squirrel living in the tree next to the house, but the main event that visit was Mary’s decision to fish for salmon. A run of Sockeyes filled the river, and she, after twenty years of distaining the fish, had discovered “blackened salmon” and couldn’t seem to get enough of it. We went to Soldotna and got her a license, but she gave up the sport before getting a line wet. I caught the first one, clubbed it over the head to send it to fish heaven, and Mary decided, then-and-there, the sport was to violent for her. However, she had no qualms in continuing to consume the abused creatures.

Moonshine visits squirrel at Wes's, 2007

View of Kenai River from our Trailer, 2007

In 2009 we stopped by for an afternoon to introduce Wes to my nephew and grandnephew, Lee and Daulton, who were making their first visit to Alaska from the flatlands of Indiana. Mary and I were giving them a whirlwind tour in seven days, and I wanted them to meet Wes.

Joe with a Red Salmon, 2007

I went down by myself for the last visit of 2010. The summer had been miserable with constant rain - a record of more than thirty consecutive days. A break in the weather finally came in September. I had a pleasant stay with Wes and his son Pete. Pete fixed a freshly caught Silver Salmon the first night and we had steaks the next.

Wes at Funny River, 2007

I called Wes several times over that winter. We invited him and Pete for Thanksgiving, but the drive was, I think, more than he could handle. We talked to him right after New Years - invited him again.

The ladder to the fishing hole at Wes's, 2007

Pete called to report the sad news the first of April. I knew Wes had felt poorly for a couple of years. I’d ask him how he was feeling, and he’d say, “Not so good”. He didn’t sleep well, had trouble walking, couldn’t even get down the ladder to fish anymore. Several times he said something like, “I don’t know why I’m still around!”. Wes “Crossed the Bar” on March 31, 2011. He was one of the nicest guys I ever knew, and the first friend I made in Alaska. I’ll miss him.
GO TO: Wes's Memorial Day

Buying A House and other Adventures with Wes

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Home on Wendys Way, Ahchorage, AK 1970

I returned to Indiana in the fall of 1968 to work on a graduate degree in education, and headed back over the ALCAN the following August. In December, Bob Evans, our new roommate, found a beautiful, four bedroom home to rent on Wendys Way. The place belonged to some old friends of his, Don and Gladys Beattie. It was on the west end of town off Northernlights Blvd., and near the International Airport. We moved on December 19, 1969. Bob, Wes and I pooled our money and jointly bought it in the fall of 1971.

Wes Warner on back porch of Wendys Way, 1970

In the spring of 1970, Wes joined me, Dan Wilson, Jim Sumner, three teachers at West High, on an early spring fishing trip. Someone had the idea that we could get some grayling out of Crescent lake on the Kenai Peninsula. The lake sat in the mountains nestled in a crook of the bigger S-shaped Kenai Lake that lay below. The six mile hike into the lake was mainly uphill. Our trek started on a warm May day with hints of spring in the air, but as the trail gradually climbed into higher country we ran into snow that became deeper with elevation. No one had anticipated the depths we found, waist deep in places.

Wes and his first big Salmon

The five trudged laboriously onward. Several avalanches thundered ominously, unseen and distant. We came to the lake a few hours later, wet and tired. To add insult to injury, it was still frozen. The ice had yet to go out. No fishing that day. We held up in a Forest Service cabin for a hour or so - built a fire and someone made a watery, tasteless soup. Then we trudged back over the trail. The misadventure led Wes to refer and count all future outing that Dan Wilson and I were involved with as “Fiasco Number One”, “Fiasco Number Two” , etc.

A friend, Bob Evans, and Wes Warner, Winter, 1970

Wes Warner, Turnagain Pass, 1970

We had a number of adventures over the years. The three of us bought snow machines shortly after moving. Wes and I went out nearly every weekend over the next three or four winters. Bob often accompanied us, but it was rare for Wes and I to miss. Sometimes several others would go along.

Wes Turnagain Pass, Alaska, 1970

Wes Warner & Larry Robidue, Lake Louise, 1971

Hatcher Pass was our favorite area. We accessed it from either the Palmer or the Willow end. Once we went to the top of Mount Baldy from the Willow side and explored the wreckage of a Military transport that had crashed in the 1950’s. Old abandoned mines were accessible from the Palmer side. We visited several perched on the sides of mountains. One mine was located four or five miles up a valley on the Palmer side. The mine had not been in operation for several years, but a cabin with basic furnishings still stood in fairly good condition. We went in to it several times one winter. I remember a steel cable crossed the path as we came into the mine area. We could not reach up and touch it on our first trip in. We road over it on the last.

Wes Warner & Bob Evans, Mt. Baldy, Hacher Pass, 1971

We made excursions to Lake Louise, and Juneau Lake on the Resurrection Trail, among others, but Turnagain Pass was our other favorite place to snow machine. Wes and I went there on our first trip out of town. I recently purchased a pair of Air force mukluks, blue canvas boots that reached half up my calves. They had thin rubber soles with thick wool liners, and were so light it was like wearing house slippers. I remember wiggling my toes in them on our way to the pass that morning wondering how they could possibly keep my feet warm in such cold weather. We spent most of the day on our machines exploring, stopping once to take each others pictures in front of backdrop of snow covered spruce trees. We had so much fun we both, like kids with new toys, could hardly wait for the next weekend to come. I never worried about the mukluks after that first trip.

Staging Area at Hatcher Pass, Willow side, 1971

A half-dozen of us went to Turnagain Pass on another occasion. We worked our way up to a bench at the mountain base and were spread out, maneuvering through widely spaced trees. I would, now and then, catch a glimpse of one of the other riders off to my side. We were in deep snow. The boughs of the trees were heavily laden with snow, but there was none at their bases. I went too close to one and slid into the hole, an inverted cone of empty space, around its base. It took me nearly an hour to work my way out. I shut off the engine at one point and heard nothing but absolute silence, and knew I had to get out of it on my own. Wes and I purchased snowshoes after that and carried them strapped to our machine. The snow was too deep to walk through, and you could go further on a machine in twenty minutes that you could walk all day - even in snowshoes.

Wes riding on Oil Well Road near Ninilchik, AK, 1971

We bought Honda motorcycles at the start of the 1970 summer. All three cycles were small, not the macho Harley Hog type, but better for running on the back county trails. Bob’s was the smallest, a Honda 90. We teased him saying it looked more like a girlie bike. It was a low geared vehicle with a large platform on top of the rear wheel - a good work horse for carrying things. Mine was orange, with a 100cc engine. Wes had the largest with an emerald green 125cc machine.

Wes on beach near Ninilchik, AK, 1971

Our two cycles were the classic dirt-bike variety with a gap between fenders and tires, but they had little power. We tried hill climbing a couple times. Other bikers, with bigger machines, could easily beat the hills, but ours repeatedly petered out before reaching the top.

Joe Buckingham on his Honda 100, Ninilchik, AK, 1971

One weekend the two of us went south on the Kenai to the Ninilchik area. We road miles along the beaches, feeling free and exuberant, as we leaned into curves, and carved “figure-eights“ in the wet sand. Later that weekend we explored the fifteen miles to the end of Oil Well Road (off of which I’d staked my Open-to-Entry land claim) where it ended at a circular pad. A large diameter, “well-head” pipe rose vertically from the center. It was a bit eerie - we had finally come to the end of the road - fifteen miles through wilderness, no fences, no houses, no poles, no nothing…and then it suddenly ended.
GO TO: Wes on the Kenai

My First Year in Alaska, Wes Warner - Part 3

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The Christmas of 1967 was especially difficult for Wes. He told me that he had married the prettiest girl in school, thought it was a happy union, but surprisingly found it to be illusion. He dropped everything and came to Alaska after they broke up. One morose evening he told me that he considered his life to be over. That thought proved to be false; life had just taken a new direction for him.

Bill Smith, Tim, & Wes Warner, Big Lake, AK, Septermer, 1967
Four of us had driven north to Big Lake the preceding September. That had been the extent of our exploration till May when Wes and I took an impromptu trip to Homer and Kachemak Bay. During the summer we tried our hand at fishing, but often found the streams to be “sterile” - our way of justifying fishless returns. We had yet to learn the ways of fishing in Alaska; that waters could be full of fish at certain times of the year and empty at others.

Wes Warner fishing the Sisitna River, AK 1968

One weekend, while fishing down on the Kenai, we decided to try the Lower Russian Lake. We’d heard that it had some nice Rainbow trout. It was a bit late on a Sunday afternoon, after another fruitless day without fish. We started up the three mile-long trail with nothing but fishing poles in hand. I don‘t remember much about the trek other than it was a nice sunny day, and we walked along at a brisk pace. It probably took a hour to walk in; we fished for no more than an hour, and then walked back out - shows how determined and desperate fishermen can get.

Joe Buckingham with Pink Salmon on the Sussitna River, Ak, 1968

Mom and Dad drove the Alcan the following summer, 1968. They arrived in mid -June and stayed several weeks. We flew up to Kotzebue and Nome on Alaska Airlines during the Solstice. Mom and I were having a beer at the local saloon in Nome when I went out to take a photo of Main Street at midnight. Later the three of us walked an ice field at Portage Glacier, drove a very rough road to Lake Louise, and then fished for Red Salmon on the Russian River. They had a memorable time, and reluctantly headed back in July.

Mom and Dad at signpost in Nome, AK, 1968

Dad and Mom left their small travel trailer with me to sell as they did not wish to tow it back to Indiana. I sold it to a couple, that had just arrived in Alaska. I remember they were in their forties, had just obtain jobs in the boom town of Kenai, and were excited about starting a new life. The price was $900 dollars, they paid $300 down and were to make two monthly payments of equal size. The next payment did not arrive as promised, so I had to drive down to Kenai to look them up. I found his wife working as a waitress in a popular bar, and she went and got him. His arm was in a cast. He had a accident shortly after beginning work, and they were up against it. The trailer was in a local park, and his mother was living with them.

Mom and Dad on Snow field, Poertage Glazier, 1968

Dad with Red Salmon catch, Kenia Peninsula, AK, 1968

Mom with her first Red Salmon, Russian River, AK, 1968

I had borrowed Bill Smith’s truck and driven the hundred and sixty miles to Kenai thinking I might be taking it back with me, but I didn’t have the heart to put them in the street. I had a potential sale lined up with a contractor in Anchorage, but told the guy I didn’t want to do that if he would make the two final installments. I gave him another month. I did not tell him I was heading back to Indiana in a couple weeks. Both payments arrived on time.
GO TO: Buying a House and other adventrues with Wes, Part 4

My First Year in Alaska - Meeting Wes Warner

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Wes Warner at home on 26th Avenue, Anchorage

Wes Warner, having flown in from Idaho in July, was like the rest of us, a new arrival to Alaska . He was working the sales counter at the auto parts store with Bill Smith, and had rented a room, of which he found wanting.

We decided he should move in with us, but the only room available was one jammed full of junk. Our entrance, at the back of the building, passed through a small vestibule that doubled as a tool room and catchall area. From there we entered the kitchen to the right. The small room at the back of the vestibule had been filled and forgotten for years. The landlady was not opposed to our suggestion that we help clean and furnish the room. Wes moved in mid September.

Wes Warner, Christmas 1967

Wes Warner was not an imposing figure. The first time we met I perceived a short fellow with a slightly rotund body. His hair, kept short in a brush style cut, rose above bespectacled owl-eyes that stared out of a round face. Wes’s visage was remarkable in its plainness. He was, at thirty-seven, ten years my senior. We possessed very different backgrounds, but circumstance had introduced us, and over that winter we found common ground for a lasting friendship.

Wes Warner & landlady Louise Machevski

Two things helped to bring us closer: we were single men arriving in a new world; and we had arrived alone. Wes was starting a new life; I had yet to decide what I was going to do with mine. Neither of us considered ourselves to be a vanguard for those who might follow. Bill Smith and Bill Peasal had wives back home; Smith expected his wife and family to join him, which they eventually did; Peasal planned on returning to South Dakota and eventually did.

So Wes and I, unencumbered by domestic responsibilities, began to frequent nearby establishments on Friday and Saturday nights. There were many in the neighborhood, but our favorite haunts were the Chef’s Inn, a mere two block walk to Northernlights blvd, and the Pink Puddle, located in a strip mall off Spenard Road, only a block from home. Both had live music on weekends and offered diversion and entertainment within safe walking distances.

We often drove to the Office Lounge because we liked its uniqueness. The establishment lay a mile east on Northernlights. It had a circular bar on the second floor of a hex shaped building with windows on most sides. The view of the mountains and surrounding city was spectacular, but the unique aspect of the place was that the bar rotated. We would sit there as giant gears revolved unseen somewhere below, slowly spinning us as we sat at the bar - a merry-go-round of a different breed. Its movement was imperceptibly sluggish, making one revolution per hour. Many new visitors, ignorant of its capacity, sat on bar stools as it made one complete rotation after another. They watched the ever shifting scenery, mountains then city, mountains then city, without ever perceiving the ambiguity.

That winter we got to know each other while bar hopping. Many a night we would walk toward home after midnight, tramping through crisp snow that squealed ever louder underfoot as the temperature grew colder. Some nights we would rock back and forth listening to the crunch, trying to gauge the air temperature from the pitch of the noisy squeak.

On more than one night Wes broke out in slightly tipsy rapture, reciting a poem he learned in school. He never got beyond the first stanza - couldn’t remember the next line or the rest of the poem - didn’t recall the author - but he really loved it, and recited it on many a cold evening walk home.

I eventually found the poem, by Alfred Lord Tennyson, copied, memorized it, and waited patiently for Wes’s next attempt at recital. Eventually it came:

“Sunset and evening star

And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,

       When I put out to sea,"

He faltered at that point and I took over:

       But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

       Too full for sound and foam,
      When that which drew from out
        the boundless deep
      Turns again home.

       Twilight and evening bell,
       After that the dark!
       And may there be no sadness of farewell,
       When I embark,

       For though from out our bourn of
      Time and Place
      The flood may bare be far,
      I hope to see my Pilot face to face
     When I have crossed the bar.”

I gave him the copy, and we joined in late evening recitals thereafter.
GO TO: My First Year in ALaska, Wes Warner - Part 3

My First Year in Alaska

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The day after I arrived in Anchorage I started hunting for a room and a job, mainly a room. June is one of the few months when sunny days should not be surprising, but it was raining the day I arrived, and I don’t remember being exposed to sunlight for some while after. There was one cloudy day after another in June of 1967. I did not feel like camping any longer, didn’t like the idea of crawling out of a soggy tent each morning, and I wanted to be able to clean up and hunt for a job.

I settled in the Mid-town area though the reason escapes me; perhaps it was because the Moose Lodge happened to be located there on Arctic Blvd. I was a member of the Kokomo lodge, knew fellow Moose would have ideas as to employment and housing, so I frequented the lodge several times over the succeeding months.

The local newspaper provided a couple leads on housing. The first was at the Fireweed Hotel off Arctic. It lay between Fireweed Street and Northernlights Boulevard and seemed more of a rooming house than hotel. The tenants were really young. I was only twenty-seven, but felt like the old man of the place. The room must have been a closet in its former life. The door jammed against the bed upon opening; there were no windows, and one’s legs brushed the bed and wall while edging around its perimeters. The place was a prescription for claustrophobia.

My First home in Alaska

1037 W 26th Avenue, Anchorage, Alaska

The second offering, only a couple blocks away, on 26th Avenue, was near perfect in comparison. My new abode was in the basement of a three story stucco house. The main floor housed the owner/landlady and her teenage daughter. The top floor and basement had been converted to room rentals. I had a spacious room adjoining a small living room that lead into the kitchen. The house sat a block east of Spenard road, close to a grocery, several restaurants, and a couple bars - everything a single guy needed. I was in the “Heart of Spenard”.

Bill Peasal and Bill Smith

Two fellows occupied a room off the kitchen. They were both named Bill and both came from South Dakota, though the similarity ended there. Bill Smith was tall and slim like a bean pole. He stood six foot six, and weighed no more than a hundred-fifty pounds, wore plad cowboy shirts, slim fitting jeans and cowboy boots. Smith was confident, sure of himself, and spoke of things in a knowing manner. Bill Peasal reached a medium height and weight, but was a quiet, mild-mannered fellow, almost bashful. Both were married with wives back in South Dakota. Smith worked at an auto parts store; Peasal labored for a construction company. Both had been in the state for less than a year.

Bill Smith

Anchorage numbered about fifty thousand, and the military bases counted for that many again. Much about the town was frontier, many side streets were gravel, sidewalks were rare, and more than one parking lot lacked pavement. There wasn’t much happening in town that year, the economy was kind of slow, and not many good jobs were available. I took one as a custodian with the school district within the week, figuring something better might come along, but continued to work through the winter. Crews were involved in giving each school a thorough cleaning. During the summer I moved from one location to another as the season progressed and was assigned a position at the new Dimond High School that fall.

Landlady Louise Machievski

I was a bit short of money through the summer. Mom and Dad sent me a check for a couple hundred. I had to open a checking account and wait several weeks before the money was available so I didn't adventure out of town other than a one day trip to Portage Glacier in July. Mainly I stayed in town working and passing time reading books, many about Alaska and the North.

Bill Peasal

Several things happened in August. Bill Peasal and another fellow were taking building materials to Valdez, Alaska when the truck’s breaks went out going down Thompson Pass into Valdez. The driver could not navigate the final curve at the bottom and they crashed. Both survived, but only by luck. It so happened the only doctor in town was being visited by his three sons, who also happened to be doctors. The four worked on the two injured men for several hours. That coincident saved their life, but Bill was in the hospital for a month. The other thing that happened in August was I met Wes Warner.
GO TO: Meeting Wes Warner

Seldovia on Memorial Day Weekend, 1975

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Four of us stayed at the end of the Homer Spit in Land’s End bunkhouse Friday night, awaiting our Memorial holiday adventure to Seldovia. Two guys from Kodiak joined Dan and I on the excursion. Roger was an old friend of Dan. The other’s name has escaped me. The three had purchased property in Seldovia, and wanted to walk over and inspect their new acquisition. They had bought about 25 acres on the Slough near town. Each had a two acre lot on the water, and the rest of the property, laying adjacent to the lots and climbing to the top of a hill behind, was held jointly by the three. So we had a two part objective. The other - to retrieve our fishing gear from Yukon Island, where we had stashed it a week earlier

This time out the waves were not so big, the wind not so calm. Calm seas usually occur in early morning or late evening. In between, as the day bores on, the sun warms the air, and starts it to moving. High winds and high tides go together. We were in a high tide cycle that weekend, and higher winds were definitely with us - choppy seas rocked the boat as we rounded the Spit and headed for Yukon Island. A gentle morning breeze pushed two and three foots waves at us, a little spray portended heavier stuff to come.

The four of us, big deckhands, quickly hustled the gear off Yukon, and directed the skiff into the Eldred Passage, running parallel to and just off the island‘s shore. We decide to stop for a break, though it escapes me as to why. Maybe it was for lunch, maybe we wanted to do some clamming, or maybe the weather was picking up. I no longer remember, but we put to shore on either Yukon or Hesketh.

We spent a couple hours on the island. The first thing we discovered was that none of us had thought to bring food. There wasn’t a candy bar between us, and we were all prepared to dine. Nothing! Dan had brought some old frozen fish to use as bait. Roger and his buddy stuck pieces on the end of a stick and tried roasting them over the campfire; can’t remember if any were consumed; don’t recall any accolades about the seafood cuisine.

Dan and I retrieved our fishing poles and used an old fish to try an catch a fresh one. No fish, but we were flabbergasted to land a small King Crab. Its legs probably measured a two feet span. We broke the leg joints into pieces small enough to fit into a like-sized pan, and suspended it over the fire. There was enough to provide four modest meals. No butter! I did not know King Crab were in the bay, and never heard of anyone catching them before or after.

Entrance to Seldovia Bay

We made it to Seldovia without further incident, but I can’t tell much about that visit as memories of it have merged with hundreds of later ones. We probably ate at the Seldovia Lodge. We did slept on Dan’s land, on bare ground, with sleeping bags laid on plastic sheeting with other piece draped over us - tent like. In the morning we probably returned for breakfast at the Seldovia Lodge and then set sail for home.

Seldovai Boat Harbour

The passage out of Seldovia Bay proved easy. We rounded Seldovia Point, Barber Point, passed McDonald Spit, and tacked into the Eldred Passage without much trouble. When we came to the end of Yukon Island and started across the open bay, the boat began to ship water. Wind knocked the top off waves and sent a continual spray into the boat. Within a short interval there was several inches of salt water sloshing around in the bottom. I grabbed a coffee can we used for bailing and started scooping water over the side. Two buckets of clams sat in the bilge, and before long the two Kodiak guys dumped the clams to the side and started bailing. We were able to keep up but decided the wiser move would be to turn back, find shelter, and wait out the wind for a few hours.

Crab boats in Seldovia Harbour

Dan directed the skiff onto the leeward side of a small peninsula projecting into the bay. It lay almost due south and about four miles off the tip of the Homer Spit. We beached the boat, water logged, and clothes soaked through, but happy to be on dry land. Roger built a fire, while the rest of us finished bailing the boat, and restoring the clams to their buckets.

The peninsula was narrow, jutting out a hundred yards from the mainland. A homestead sat at the junction of land with smoke flowing from its chimney. Before long three or four left the cabin and headed out the peninsula toward us. The men arrived well armed. They carried rifles and at least two had holstered revolvers strapped to their side. They wanted to know our intention. Why were we camping on private property?

We apologized for trespassing, and explained our dilemma; that we were returning from Seldovia and thought it prudent to wait out a dangerous sea. We told them we were four harmless seafarers temporarily cast upon their shore - two teachers and two Alaska Fish and Game biologist taking refuge from the storm. They accepted our explanation and withdrew. A short time later they sent am unarmed emissary to invite us to share their Memorial Day dinner. We thanked them for their gracious invitation and ask when they should expect our presence.

We four tidied up as much as possible (combed out hair), and preceded, single file, down the path to the house. After introductions to maybe a dozen people, adults and children, we were all seated at a very long table to share a pleasant dinner - fried chicken wings being the main entrée. The unusual offering was pickled kelp, that tasted like…pickles.

Before leaving we had a chance to return their gracious hospitality. Upon stepping from the house we noticed the owner was in the act of removing debris from a nearby area, and were told the place use to be a fox farm. Fox farms were found all over the Bay in the 1930s and 40s - a major industry of the region. The fox cages had to be wired on all sides, including the bottom, to keep them from digging out. Now they wanted to put in a garden but found that old chicken fencing lay beneath the ground and was matted in the sod, nearly impossible to dig out.

We took long coils of rope, laced them through the fencing at strategic points and harnessed them to two teams of pullers. Like plow horses, we strained against the buried obstacle, broke it loose, and rolled the ancient fencing out of its shallow grave. Half hour later we were walking single file back down the path to the boat and heading toward Homer over a moderate sea.

Venturing by Ourselves on to Kachemak Bay, 1975

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Seldovia, Alaska is a small fishing village across the bay, and nineteen miles west of Homer. It had originally been a native village, became the center of a major herring fishery in the early 1900s, and was the main town on Cook Inlet through the fist quarter of the twentieth century. Canneries, built on pilings, lined the waterfront with boardwalks linking them one to another. Its setting, picturesque in the classic Alaskan way, was forever changed with the Good Friday tsunami of 1964. The canneries, the boardwalk and much of the town was swept away.

Dan Wilson, 1976

Dan Wilson bought land on the slough in Seldovia in 1974, decided to fish for halibut the following summer and wondered if I might be interested in working as a crewman on his boat. He couldn’t pay anything, but would trade room and board for my labor. We’d be fishing out of Seldovia, could stay on his property, and would dine on freshly caught fish all summer. That seemed like a grand idea, so I promptly signed on as his first mate and only crew member.

Dan Wilson (left) works on his skiff, 1976

Dan acquired a twenty-two foot open dory, and a 35HP Evinrude outboard that winter. He purchased longlines, buoys, buoy lines, anchors, snood lines, and hooks, the gear necessary for fishing halibut. He borrowed a boat trailer, loaded the equipment into the boat, and the two of us headed south on a Friday evening in early May of 1975. Our plan was to take the gear over to Seldovia on Saturday, stash it on his land, and return to Anchorage by Sunday evening. School was still in session and we had to be back home to teach on Monday morning.

Dan knew an older couple living in Homer that summer. They were staying in a small travel trailer while the man worked at the new hospital being constructed. They graciously feed us on more that one occasion that season. Their trailer was a bit too small for overnight quartering, so we often stayed on the Spit, usually in my Alaskan Camper, sometimes in the bunkhouse at Lands End.

We launched our boat the next morning and ventured out onto the bay - two slightly intrepid sailors, gazing upon, and wondering if those really big waves that we were heading into were a normal phenomena. There is a deceptive illusion about boats. They appear enormous while dry docked, or on a trailer, but instantly shrink as soon as they are placed in water. Our skiff, after launching, seemed no more than a pint-sized toy boat. Once riding those big waves it shrank to the size of a wine cork.

There was no wind. We were sailing up one side of a big roller, sitting momentarily on top, and then gliding down the other side - one large, gentle roller after another - the likes-of-which we had never seen before, and never saw again. The waves must have been fifteen feet high, and their length, from crest to crest, measured forty to fifty feet. Dan was cautious, holding a moderate throttle as he drove up each hill and slid down its backside. We were not making good time. There was no wind spray, and the bow never plowed into the bottom of a trough splashing water into the boat. The ride was more like that of a kiddy roller-coaster. We judged that there must have been a big storm a long, long way off, and these giants were the remnants sweeping up Cook Inlet and turning into Kachemak Bay.

Yukon Island

What might have been a two hour crossing turned into a full morning, and we were only half way to Seldovia. We never felt in danger, but did notice a bit of stress as time was running short. We had cleared the open part of the bay, were passing the eastern end of Yukon Island, and about to enter the more protective waters of the Eldred Passage when Dan decided to stash the equipment right there on the island.

The boat edged up to shore and I jumped out pulling the bow onto the sandy beach. The tide was still coming in so there was no fear of the boat going dry in the time it took to carry the tubs of gear up the beach and into the woods. We felt somewhat like pirates hiding our treasure as we stacked the tubs and covered them with a tarp. Thirty minutes later and we were in the boat heading back to Homer. Memorial Day was coming in two weeks. We’d complete the transfer then.
GO TO: Seldovia on Memorial Day, 1975

At Bay with Lawyers, My First Exploration of Kachemak Bay

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Most of my adventures on Kachemak Bay were shared with friend and fellow teacher, Dan Wilson. The first episode occurred in 1973 when a gaggle of lawyers hired a boat to carry them across the Bay to Hesketh Island. Dan finagled a ride, and we joined the legal group aboard a WWII vintage Landing Craft, one similar to the those seen in films landing Marines on hostile beaches. This one was probably designed to carry heavy equipment as there was space in the well to easily accommodate the fifty people along with their gear - enough for a weekend camp out.

Landing Ship similar to what the Lawyers hired

The craft left the boat harbor early Saturday morning, rounded the tip of the Homer Spit and set a southwest bearing. We were presented with a calm sea under a cloudless sky, and that placid experience made us more confident when we later ventured onto the bay ourselves. We were both more neophyte than old salt. Dan was from Texas, and I grew up in Indiana. The only thing the two states have in common with the ocean is flatness. Once you’ve experienced days of calm seas, when the boat drifts aimlessly with a gentle roll, can you appreciate a revisit to the flatlands, and feel the same rolling sensation induced by the prairie visage.

Sixty Foot Rock

The boat crossed the open water and eased into the Eldred Passage, a sheltered channel between the southern shore and the island chain made up of Sixty Foot Rock, Cohen, Yukon, and Hesketh islands. We sailed past them and turned into the western shore of Hesketh. After ten miles and sixty minutes the craft pulled onto its beach. The bow gate dropped and the legal team disembarked, lugging packs and ice coolers up the graveled beach and into the woods. Dan and I chose a less populated site to make camp.

Elephant Rock, Between Yukon and Hesketh Islands

We spent two nights on the island. I remember only a few events during the outing. That first night the lawyers had a bond fire to which they invited Dan and me. I don’t recall how Dan happened to find out about the excursion, but we felt a bit like intruders. The only person I recognized was the wife of one of the lawyers. She had done her student teaching at West High. The rest were strangers. So, here we were, a couple of nerdy biology teachers, out numbered twenty to one, and surrounded by a gang of litigating lawyers who probably knew little more about the life around them than we did about the law. Dan and I didn’t wish to bore them by expounding on local fauna and flora, and we were unfamiliar with the vocabulary of their arcane language so we kept a respectful silence while sipping the wine they offered.

A typical Scene on Kachemak Bay

There was a low tide, a clam tide, the next day and many of us wandered onto the exposed sea floor. I had taken my little Kodak along, was snapping a number of pictures, but set it down on a rock, not thinking to retrieve the camera until after fifteen feet of water covered it. I found it sitting on the same rock at the next low tide, decided it was ruined and figured the to invest in a new one. There are no photos to record the Hesketh adventure, and several subsequent outings, as I didn’t get around to replacing it for a couple years.

I don’t know the size of Hesketh Island, but would guess its foot print covers over a hundred acres. Members soon diffused over the islands expanse exploring coves and beaches. Until that time, our presence on the island was probably unknown, but the owner was in residence, and soon showed up in the attorney’s camp. I didn’t hear all the specifics, but it seems the lawyers had neglected to seek permission to camp on private property. Maybe they had relied on the boat’s skipper to place them on a nice camping spot and he had pulled a fast one.

The owner might have requested a camping fee, but graciously declined that alternative. He could have ordered us off the island, but swimming was our only option. He may have had an impulse to sue, but that probably did not seem prudent as he was standing in a nest of lawyers. I understand he let them know he did not much appreciate the invasion of his privacy, and made a point of not inviting them back.
THE END

Regrets

2011-05-06T09:00:00.040-08:00

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other.

Those first lines of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken best exemplify my thoughts on “Regrets”. There is no use in having any. They are acts in futility . I do not think of things in that way. By this time in my life I have looked down thousands of roads, and then taken others. Many of them would have lead me into alternate life histories that I would not recognize now. Some might have been better, and others would most likely been worse. I can’t say. I’m only certain that they would have been different. Some of those forks in the road were merely narrow paths; some were super highways.

In the late spring of 1964, I was living in Bloomington Indiana attending Indiana University. I had been in school for about seven years by then. My brother had graduated, married and moved on. Most of the friends I’d made during those years had followed the same road. I wondered why I was still there.

One late morning I was walking along Kirkwood Street toward the campus when I heard a knocking on the store window to my right. Two voluptuous coeds in bikini swimming suits were sitting in the window beckoning to me. I had seen them several times, and figured the store had hired them as live models to entice customers. I felt a bit of consternation as I went in to see what they could possibly want of me.

They smiled coyly, and explained that because of the hot day they were uncomfortable and would I please buy a couple poor girls a cone from the ice cream shop next door. Now, a smoother mover than I might have considered this a golden opportunity. Unfortunately, I had just stopped by a gas station on the way to campus, and spent my last two dollars on gas. I was broke and lacked the experience, creativity, or finesse to take advantage of the opportunity.

In embarrassment I mumbled a response that was not all that nice. It was not so terrible, just an insinuation that they should pay for their own damn ice cream cones. The girls had been expecting a little fun, some banter, and were surprised by my unfriendly rejoinder. They excused me and I left - feeling a bit of a jerk.

Later I thought of all the smart lines I could have laid on them. “ I can see that you ladies obviously don’t have much on you - money that is - but I by chance have left my wallet at home. If you could see your way clear to loan me a couple dollars I’d happily buy cones and pay you back tomorrow”.

Or, I could have been the honest supplicant bemoaning fate. How I had elected to spend my last two dollars on gas in order to get there, but if I had chosen otherwise I probably would have run out of gas and not had the pleasure of making their acquaintance. It was a road I didn’t take - more of a narrow path, but some narrow paths run into major highways.

A couple years later I was in Chicago interviewing for a permanent job through an employment agency. One place they sent me was in an industrial part of town. I went into an older building and entered an old office. It might have dated back to the 1920’s or even earlier, with hardwood floors, worn and polished with time, and furniture from the same era. It was like entering a time-warp.

The place was clean and tidy. Two middle aged women sat at old desks behind fenced off railings. The main office sat across the room behind glass windows. They ushered me into see the boss, an old man in a double breasted suit with a matching vest - more time-warp. We sat and talked for quite a while. He ran an oil business, and wanted a young man to train to eventually take over. That is about all I remember about the job. What stuck me and called me back through the years was the friendliness of the three. It was a welcoming and comfortable place, and the old man probably had a lot to teach me. He offered me a job right there and then. I told him I had to think about but knew as I left that I wanted something flashier. I took another offer with a company that sold science equipment the next week and went down that road for a short while, but I always wondered where the other road would have taken me.

I started with a poem so it seems fitting to finish with this one by Omar Khayyam

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

The Fraidy-Cat, Fear and Foolishness - Part 3

2011-05-04T09:00:00.018-08:00

Those fears are the type that had build slowly and I had time to think and wonder about the situation I’d gotten myself into. Other times things happened so fast that I didn’t have time to think about them. I just reacted. Instinct took over, hormones flowed, my heart rate and blood pressure went sky high, and I didn’t know whether to fight or run. Something like that happened to me in the summer of 1965 while I was in Canada on a fishing trip.

I drove up into northern Manitoba by myself and spent six weeks, first at Reed Lake on Canadian Highway 39, and then further north over a newly finished gravel road (Canadian Highway 6) that ended in the mining town of Thompson. Some years later the road was extended even further toward Hudson Bay. I camped 35 miles west of Thompson on a cleared area that had been used by the crew while they were constructing the road. A new bridge spanned the rapids that cascaded from Setting Lake into another big lake. The rapids were named Pisew Falls. The site was beautiful with lakes on both sides of the road., I spent two weeks there, seldom seeing another human being. I had no boat so I fished off the shore, and would catch a Walleye each morning to have for dinner that night.

Pisew Falls, Setting Lake, Manitoba

One day I went to explore along the lake. Much of the shore was edged by giant boulders jetting out into the water, and it was easy walking, with open views for the first half mile. I came to a place where I had to cut inland to move around a small cove with steep walls. I went through a thicket of brush, turned back toward the lake, and was swinging my leg over a fallen log when I heard a loud screech off to my right. What happened next could not have spanned more than two or three seconds, but time expands for these events because too much happens to adequately fit into a normal time-space continuum.

I saw a wildcat crossing the ground out of the corner of my eye. It was closing fast. In an instant I had backed over the log, picked up a sizable stick, and was still backing up when I got a better look at my assailant. It wasn’t a wildcat after all, but an big owl. I remember a thought flicking through my mind - that the ground was an odd place to find an owl, but it was screeching bloody murder and still coming at me so I continued my retreat.

I raised my weapon ready for defense. I was also contemplating the possibility of abandoning the field of battle and plunging into the lake when I got my first real look at my adversary. It was a chicken…a damn chicken. I knew there was nothing to fear, and now realize that it was probably a ptarmigan, but at that particular time I was not much into bird identification. I was a sweating bag of nerves, and the bird seemed prepared to fight to the death. It was now circling, crouched close to the ground with its wings held out, making it look bigger and more menacing. I still had the stick in my hand and half heartedly through it in the direction of the bird, and then withdrew. I climbed a small knoll behind and sat on top in the cool breeze. I could hear the bird below screeching and thrashing about in victory for several more minutes. Sometimes experience doesn’t help.
THE END

The Fraidy-Cat, Fear and Foulishness - Part 2

2011-05-03T09:00:00.038-08:00

There are times when people are injured or killed because they aren’t experienced enough to know they are in danger. There are other times when a person becomes paralyzed with fear while another, in the same situation, may recognize there is no real danger. I’ve been in both situations.

A friend, Dan Wilson, and I were near the top of a mountain once and started across a boulder scree. Most of the rocks were small, only eight or ten inches on a side, stacked on top of each other, and the scree ran down the mountain several hundred feet. The rocks weren’t big enough to give solid footing and some would shift under foot and slide a bit. The scree was maybe a hundred feet across, and we were on a fairly steep incline. Under the circumstances, it was a bit scary to look down that steep slope. I started to wonder if we had made a mistake. Would one of the next steps result in a slippage and cause a cascading slide? Most of it seemed solid and we were, by then, over half way across - the point-of-no-return - so there was no sense in turning back. I picked every step carefully, testing each rock, and happily made it to the other side, but I still don’t know how perilous the situation was.

Another time I was on a snow machine heading up a river north of Eureka. Wilson was following on his machine, and I began passing open water near the shores. The river was wide and we were running right down the middle, but those open holes started to bother me. I could see water rushing in them and knew if I stopped my machine and turned off the engine I would hear the water flowing. I wasn’t about to stop. A moving snowmobile can pass over thin ice and be gone, but stopping is not a good idea.

I was following another snowmobile track so I felt somewhat secure as long as it did not abruptly end in a hole, but then the track suddenly made a tight 180 degree turn and went back the way we were coming. I was now riding point and entering uncharted territory. I got spooked. I went no more than another quarter mile and pulled onto a small island in the middle of the river. I told Dan I wasn’t going any further. He seemed to be a bit peeved, but did not offer to take the lead, so I guess he was no more sure of the ice than I was. Again, I don’t know if we were in any danger. Maybe someone familiar with the river might not have thought anything about it, but again, maybe those tracks that turned around had been made by a more experienced traveler or maybe the spook got them too.
GO TO: Part 3

The Fraidy-Cat, Fear and Foolishness

2011-05-02T09:00:00.024-08:00

In my youth I was neither fearless nor cowardly, but would describe myself as cautious. I remember Mom was deathly scared of snakes and swimming. I did not much care for snakes myself. I found something revolting about the thought of handling them because I always thought they were slimy until I touched a big Boa in a college class and found its skin to be cool and dry. I learned to swim when I was six or seven. I liked to climb trees and never feared heights.

There was, however, one specific thing that terrorized me. It was a dream. When I was five or six I had a nightmare from which I woke distressed and crying. I had the dream several times and always woke up terrified. They asked me what it was about, but I was never able to describe it. The rhythm and beat of that dream is still with me, but there was little then or now that I could tell you about it. There was no form, no monster, no scene. There was a sense of something expanding and contracting - pulsating. Some sound that rose, than sank in intensity; a menace that was near but could not be seen. If I were superstitious or a believer in the supernatural, I would think that a door briefly opened, and for short time I looked upon pure evil. I had other nightmares after that, but they paled in comparison.

Every time I went to a monster movie, I would swear that I would never go to another, but the next time one came into town, I would find myself sitting with my brother and several other neighborhood kids watching the latest offering. Most of the movies featured either, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi or Lon Chaney. I probably saw every horror film made during the 1940’s and 50’s : Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Werewolf, Dracula. I spent much of each show with my hands covering my eyes, peeking through splayed fingers.

I know of only one other dream I had and it ended with me waking up laughing. I dreamed that I walked into my bedroom. The closet was just to the left as you entered the room. In the dream the closet door had a window in the top half, and I saw Frankenstein sitting in the closet with his back to me. I ran away so fast that a cloud of dust, leaves, other debris rose in my place obscuring everything. I had injected that dust cloud into my dream after having seen a similar scene in a ghost movie in which Jack Benny and Rochester starred. It seemed very funny.
GO TO: Part 2

The Worry-Wart, 1947

2011-04-22T09:00:00.004-08:00

When I was about seven years old I was plagued by a wart infestation on my hands and arms. This was uncomfortable, not physically painful mind you, but undesirable in a social way. I had no idea why I should be cursed with that particular scourge. I was told that touching toads would cause warts, but I had not handled any such creatures. Brother Don was clean of warts, and none of the other family members were afflicted. So, why me? I do not remember anyone ever making fun of me or even bringing up the subject, but I was sensitive to it, and very self-conscience. I wanted them to go away. Mom took me to a doctor, and he removed a small torch-like instrument from his desk drawer. When he plugged it in a bright blue arc erupted at its tip. It popped and snapped when he trained it on one of my warts, creating a hurt that exceeded any social pain. The cure seemed a bit excessive and I feared my hands and arms might resemble charred stumps by the time all the warts were burned off. I let Mom know later that the Doctor’s methods resembled torture more than treatment, and I hoped to find a more benign cure.

Art Moore was to deliver my benign cure. He had come to visit my Grandma Frank in 1946. Art was my first cousin, once removed. His mother and my Grandmother were sisters. Art’s mother, Lydia, had been the oldest of a very large family, and Grandma had been the youngest. There were eight living siblings between them. Grandma was twenty-three years younger than her older sister, and so she was closer in age to her nephew Art, than she was to her sister. Art had been discharged only recently from the Navy. He had served on a ship in the Pacific during the War, and was now making the rounds, renewing family ties.

I remember Art as being an all-round round person. He had a round face sitting on top of a round body. His eyes were round and his glasses were round. He might have had a round belly later in life, but when he visited I think he was fairly solid. He was born and raised in Maysville, Kentucky. He was the youngest of four sons born to Lydia and John Moore, but he was still single when the war began and was one of the older enlisted men to have served. He married his home-town sweetheart a couple years later, after both his parents died in 1948, just three weeks apart from each other. Art was a nice guy. He was friendly and jovial. Though I only met him two or three times, I liked him right away, and never had reason to change my mind.

Art stayed with us for several days - maybe a week. A couple of days after he arrived, he noticed my warts and said, “Remind me before I leave, and I’ll take them warts off you”. He said nothing more for the rest of his visit, but I wasn’t about to forget. I don’t think I said anything more to him until the day came for him to leave. I could keep mum no longer, and reminded him of his promise.

Art Moore sat down at the kitchen table and ask Mom and Grandma if they had an apple. “No”, there was none in the house. “How about an onion?” “Yes”, a medium yellow onion was produced. Art cut a thick slice of the onion, and then proceeded to dice it into a number of small pieces. He rubbed a piece of onion on each of my warts - one onion chunk for each of the fifty warts. He would select a piece, ceremoniously rub it on a wart and then place the piece in a discard pile. He was very deliberate and precise in the procedure. It was ritual at its best. I was impressed. When he finished he told me that there was more to it than that, but he could not tell me. He had some excuse that Mom and Grandma solemnly agreed to - something about a man could not tell a man. Art told me I had to do one thing before the warts would go away. “What is it? What is it?”, I asked. He answered, “You have to forget about them”. He said they would not go away until I forgot about them. He left that day.

I had been told to forget the warts, and I found it nearly impossible to do so. The suggestion made me look at and think about the warts constantly. I looked at my hands, and studied them all that day. When I woke the next morning it was the first thing I did. That went on for a week or more. I was focused. I could not forget. Then one day, after a week had passed, I remembered that I had forgot to look. I looked at my hands and arms. The warts were all got, every blessed one of them - just like Art said they would.
THE END

My First Real Job, Summer 1958

2011-04-21T09:00:00.004-08:00

Glenn and Marsha Drysdale were family friends. Mom and Dad got to know the couple through the Moose, and I often saw them at the lodge. I know very little about them, though Mom once said that Glenn had traveled the world in his younger days. They were ten or fifteen years older than my parents, and had no children that I ever heard about. They liked Don and me, maybe because we reminded them of the kids they never had. At any rate, we seemed to find favor with them and they found reason to bestow small blessing on the two of us.

We worked our way through college by painting houses in the summers, so they hired us to do their house. Another time they asked us to pick cherries from a tree that was laden with fruit. They owned a small machine shop on East Monroe Street, just west of the railroad tracks, and they asked me to work during the summer of 1958 - right after I got out of high school. I had worked for Mom and Dad since I was thirteen, but this one was my first real job - I got a pay check every Friday afternoon.

The shop was located in a one story building with four or five big “screw machines” sitting on a concrete floor. There were a few other smaller tools off to the side, drill presses mainly, but the big ones dominated the scene. They had a restroom, but no office that I remember. Glenn and Marsha were the owner/operators, and I was their only employee. My first day of work was also the first day I’d ever been in the shop. I use to pass it on the way to downtown when I lived on Lafountain, but had never much noticed it before. It also happened to be close to where brother Don had thrown the black boy over his shoulder ten years earlier.

Glenn was the master craftsman and he alone adjusted the machines for specific jobs. Metal rods were the raw material he fed to his machines. All kinds of things popped out the other end. The rods varied in diameter, the smallest being about half an inch, and the larger more than two inches. They measured ten or twelve feet long, and the big rods were real heavy. I found that out very soon as one of my first tasks was to unload a shipment and store the rods on metal racks. The steel rods were coated with a thin film of oil, making them difficult to grasp with leather gloves, and I had to be careful not to pinch a finger when laying them in. And I got dirty doing it.

Each machine could hold five or six bars. They were arranged in a circle, looking somewhat like a Gatling gun with ten foot barrels. The bars were fed into sharp tools that cut away pigtail shavings of unwanted metal. Glenn could program the machines to make a wide variety of products. I mainly remember two, because I put the final touches on them. One was a type of bearing made from the larger rods. Each bearing that Glenn made had two parts . An assembled bearing was similar to a wheel bearing, and looked somewhat like a doughnut with a hole in the middle. I would take the first part, a hollowed-out doughnut with the top missing, and fill it with a circular row of small ball-bearings. Then I’d set the other part, a cap like piece, on top and place it in the press, step on the foot pedal, and the two parts would be clipped together, each part rotating on the balls independent of the other. It was a revelation. So, that’s how things like that are made - neat!

The other piece was simpler. He made small aluminum nuts less that half an inch in diameter. Each nut had a smooth hole in the center. I sat at a drill press working a foot pedal, and a special bit cut threads in it. I found this job very satisfying as there was a certain rhythm to it. Glenn had a special device sitting on the press platform with a channel in which to thread the nuts. I could feed four or five nuts into it and then shove the lead nut under the drill, press the foot pedal, and the drill would descend.

After a while I discovered that if I pressed the pedal and held it down the drill bit would keep going up and down at a constant pace. I finally got the rhythm right and could sit there threading nuts as fast as the drill would work, but every once in a while the drill bit would miss the nut and break. The bits must have been expensive as Marsha thought I was breaking too many, but Glenn came up and said not to worry for I was drilling a lot more nuts per hour than anyone had ever been able to do. He said it was okay to break drill bits as long as I was being that productive.

I was making a dollar fifty an hour so I was expecting sixty dollars in my first check. I was shocked to see it was less. Something called Federal taxes was taken out and State taxes, and social security, and workers comp. Gee! Then I noticed that the gross pay was only fifty-two fifty. I ask Glenn about it and he pointed out that we worked Monday thru Friday, eight to four, with an hour off for lunch - that was seven hours a day, and only thirty-five a week. I said, “Oh”. I forgot that the lunch hour doesn’t count.
THE END

My 50th Kokomo High School Reunion

2011-04-20T09:00:00.004-08:00

My Dad went to his 50th high School Reunion in 1980. His was a small class compared to mine and their newspaper group-photo showed a gang of thirty old people looking into the camera eye - a bunch of gray, wrinkled, heavy-set fossils. That was my impression at the time, and my own 50th was so far in the future that I did not much think about it. I remember him saying that it had been a lot of fun, and he said it had been interesting. I could understand the fun part, but I had to wait till my own reunion to discover what it was that he found to be so interesting.

I graduated from Kokomo High School in 1958. The ceremony was in the school Gym, and about 450 of us occupied folding chairs on the main floor. The bleachers were filled with proud families. Mom, Dad, brother Don, and Grandma Frank were there, and Uncle Joe and Aunt Gail had driven north from Connersville to help commemorate the happy occasion. I can’t recall much other than some guy droned on for an extraordinary time giving a commencement address that missed the connection between my ears and brain.

Fast forward 50 years and I’m landing at O’Hare Airport on a pilgrimage to meet those with whom I had spent my formative years. The first night we stayed with Ed Raab, a fellow graduate living in Michigan City, and then completed the hundred miles to Kokomo the following day. After checking in with our motel we immediately headed down the By-Pass to the corner of Markland Avenue to feast on a large number of White Castle hamburgers. Supermarket frozen ones are no substitute for hot off the grill. After satiating that particular hunger we proceeded to the town square.

There was an informal gathering of classmates at a place called Sondy’s Martini Bar. We entered, found a table with blank name tags and pens, and then turned to see a crowd of people I’d never seen before - very interesting. Everybody I met bent over to read my name tag, and I did the same. Why! Dick DeWitt. The last time I saw you, you were skinny, thin faced and had hair. Ramona Wilson, you use to be a voluptuous blond. About an hour later someone walked in that I could recognize from afar. Dick Chegar was tall and thin, and still wore the face I remembered. I experienced the same pattern the next evening at our formal reunion. Only about one in ten could I recognize - Dick Campbell, Barbara Ehrman, and Ralph Williams to name a few. I thought about taking a camera, but elected not to, as it would be futile to match old names with new faces …that were old.

They announced that 170 of the original class attended the reunion. I was able to identify four or five without cheating. We were all given a copy of The Kat Kaller, the name of our school phone book (We were the Kokomo WildKats). It gave all our names and present addresses . Sixty-seven were listed as deceased. That’s about 15 percent of the total. It was interesting.

I remembered a scene from thirty years before - one of my Mom sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of her. I was home for a visit and we were talking about things past. Her age came up. She was about 65 then. A look of awe came over her as she stared into a distant past, and wondered aloud, “How did I get here so fast?” Yes, its interesting, for that was the thought that often came to mind during my 50th reunion pilgrimage.

Homer and Kachemak Bay, First Visit in 1968, Part 2

2011-04-19T09:00:00.014-08:00

The remaining drive to Homer proved uneventful. We marveled at the beautiful grassy meadows that topped the sloughing bluffs along the coast, at the sight of the Redoubt and Iliamna volcanoes standing tall across Cook Inlet. We were impressed by the giant fragments of ice floes that had been stranded on the mud flats by the receding tides, some the size of trucks.
We took the main drag, Pioneer Street, through downtown Homer because the by-pass swinging south of there didn‘t exist, so we did not see some major landmarks along that stretch - Alaska Island & Ocean Visitors Center, the Carrs/Safeway store, the U.S. Post Office, McDonalds - all lay in the future.

East End Road is a paved highway offering sweeping views of Kachemak Bay for most of the twenty plus miles it runs along the high ground overlooking the bay. It was not like that in 1968. The road disappeared in a mud rut a mile or two east of town. Wes and I did not explore that feature. Its “cow pasture” attribute was left for us to discover a couple years later.

We went straight through town and headed out the long, narrow sand bar known as the Homer Spit. The Spit is one of the longest in the world, stretching four and a half miles into the Bay. Its not very wide, sometimes no more than the road, and its elevation above sea level allows big storm waves to crest over it at some spots.

In 1968 the Spit could claim a few facilities: the small boat harbor; the Whitney-Fidalgo Cannery; a couple restaurants; the Alaska Ferry dock; and located at the very tip, Lands End Hotel - but not much more. There use to be more to the Spit, a copse of trees in one area for example, but the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964 lowered the whole region by about six feet, and a portion of it now resides in Neptune’s domain.

Four years had passed, but we could still see evidence of the quake’s reshaping of the land. There were buildings along Turnagain Arm, near Girdwood and Portage that sat on land now invaded by tidewater. Standing forests of dead trees offered further evidence. Some of the bridges on the highway were still doing temporary duty awaiting new construction.

It was a bit early in the season for the annual invasion of the “Spit Rats”. That is the term applied to the young, mainly college age summer adventurers that descended on the Spit every year. Many worked the cannery, some found fishing jobs. They camped in make-shift housing: tents, drift wood shelters, etc, wherever there was an unclaimed few feet on the Spit. By mid-summer the spit would be overrun with rat’s nests. It was a free-wheeling time, and when shrimp were present, the Ferry Dock would be loaded with people lowering homemade nets and then quickly raising them full of the wiggling crustaceans. An ice chest could be filled in an afternoon. You can’t even go out on the dock any more.

The Rats were driven from the Spit years ago, and it was gradually commercialized. Expensive condos now block the view of the far shore mountains, and there are numerous piers aligned along both sides, crowded with shops that offer a variety of products: tours of the bay, fishing charters, souvenirs, art, and food - everything that a tourist might covet. Some days, especially during high tide, when there are so many parked vehicles, and people milling around, one has the sensation it’s sinking.

Wes and I explored the Homer Spit, walked the docks looking at the fishing boats, ate dinner at the nearby Porpoise Room, and then started the long drive back to Anchorage.
THE END

Homer and Kachemak Bay. First Visit in 1968, Part 1

2011-04-18T09:00:00.008-08:00

The first time I visited Homer, Alaska on Kachemak Bay was in early May of 1968. The trip was impromptu, the decision made after a Saturday night of bar hopping. Some might conclude the midnight adventure was nothing more than an impulsive, alcohol fueled piece of foolishness, but people of northern latitudes would recognize such an act with sympathetic understanding. Those who have endured a dark, seemingly endless winter, will appreciate the need that wells up when longer days and cloudless skies clearly register the impending spring; when cabin fever finally breaks, when the need to get outside, to do something, go anywhere, becomes overpowering.

So, Wes Warner and I were off on our first look at the Alaska that exists outside of Anchorage. Wes and I shared an apartment with two other guys. We had been friends since the previous September. He was a recent divorcee just arrived from Idaho, and I had pulled into the state over the ALCAN a couple months before.

I don’t remember why we arrived at a Homer destination, but were, never-the-less, driving through a moonlit night along Turnagain Arm, climbing the long incline onto Turnagain Pass, and going by landmarks that we would revisit hundreds of more times in the years to come. The road through the mountains was narrow and tortuous as it followed the contours of the land, but oil money, flowing from the North Slope, would eventually transform it to super-highway quality.

Fatigue replaced exuberance after three hours. Morning light showed behind us as we cleared the mountains and preceded through the “Kenai Burn”. We figured the fire had swept through the forest, maybe a year or two before, but were surprised to learn those white skeletons of dead trees, thousands of them, had been standing there for more than twenty years. I discovered at a later date that there were as many trees crisscrossed on the forest floor as were standing - obstacles, one after the other, to step and climb over.

I don’t remember Soldotna, partly because there wasn’t much there, a filling station, maybe a restaurant, but mainly because I’d dropped off to sleep with my head resting against the front passenger window. Wes, driving his little foreign car, bumped to an abrupt stop, and announced that we had just ran out of gas. I roused from slumber to see a “Y” intersection, of which I’m still trying to figure its location. He said the gas station in Soldotna, only a short way back, was closed and he had hoped to make it to the next one - where ever that may have been. I gallantly offered to stay with the car, and rolled into the more comfortable backseat as Wes took off down the road with a gas can in hand.
GO TO: Part 2

Fishing in the Far North of Canada, 1964 - Part 2

2011-04-15T09:00:00.002-08:00

We set up the trailer, launched the boat and mounted the outboard. The next morning, with scattered white puffy clouds against a beautiful blue sky, we set out boating north across the mouth of a bay that was formed by a long peninsula jutting east into the open lake. There was a slight breeze and small waves as we passed the end of the peninsula and headed on across the channel that lay between it and a long island that ran parallel to the peninsula.

We passed the end of the island and were surprised by a strong wind blowing big waves at us from the north west. In what seemed like an instant the conditions changed from mild to menacing. We were suddenly tacking head long into 4 foot waves. Our boat, with low gunnels and only14 feet long, was too small for such seas. I was piloting the boat; Dad was in the front seat and our large tackle box sat on the floor between him and the middle seat.

The urge to turn the boat around and head back was compelling. I didn’t yet have a whole lot of experience in boats, and I very much wanted to throw the tiller sharply to the left and start a quick turn, but it seemed the boat would probably broach in the trough and swamp as the next wave hit us broadside. It was best to just head into the waves and attempt a landing on one of the many islands that lay ahead.

We continued into those waves for forty-five minutes. I aimed for one island, couldn't make it, and then went for the next. We were catching a lot of spray and the bottom of the boat was starting to fill. Dad was catapulted skyward by a large wave. He landed hard on the aluminum seat, bending it in and leaving a three inch impression of his backside. I missed the first few islands, but was finally able to beach the boat. There was a shallow rocky bottom to the approach so I pulled up the engine and rowed to shore.

We were soaked and the boat had about four to six inches of water in it. We gathered wood, built a fire to dry off, and waited for the wind to abate. A hour or so later we set sail heading back south. We found ourselves in an archipelago of small islands, and tried to maintain a southern bearing while weaving our way past one island and around another. It seemed like there might be hundreds of them, and they all looked alike. We were soon hopelessly confused, but the lake was placid - not even a ripple, so we didn’t much care; we were alive, and only a little lost.

After an hour of wandering we came upon and guy who was standing in his boat while fishing with a long fly pole. He told us how to get back to camp. We didn’t get any fishing done that fist day, but we did strap the boat back on top of the car and rent a bigger one for the rest of the stay.

Fishing in the Far North of Canada, 1964 - Part 1

2011-04-14T10:43:00.014-08:00

Our old friend, Lamar Hammer, had been on a fishing trip up into northern Manitoba and returned full of big fish stories and praise for the area. His enthusiasm for a subject could border on infectious, and anything dealing with fishing usually grew to epidemic proportion. So, after hearing Lamar’s often repeated tales of Reed Lake, giant Northern Pike and five pound Walleye, Dad was mesmerized by a fish-eyed contagion that could only be cured by a trip to the infecting area. Brother Don was in his second year of marriage, so Dad enlisted me as a willing participant. Reed lake was at the end of the road with northing much in the way of civilization as we knew it - no lodges, no restaurants, no stores.

Lamar brought over his maps and information showing that the only thing on Reed Lake was a Provincial Camp ground, which included both a boat dock and an outhouse - all other amenities had to be brought in. We didn’t own a tent so Dad went down to the local rental agency and rented a small camping trailer, a 14 foot boat and small outboard motor.

We drove up there in the fall of 1964 and spent what was mostly an enjoyable week of nice weather, good fishing and great adventure. Lamar’s map showed us that Reed lake was big - twenty miles long on an east-west axis, and ten miles wide. The camp was mid-way along the southern shore. The western half of the lake was dotted with many islands, and the eastern end was open water. Lamar instructed us to stay on the eastern half and to fish the river flowing into the western end of the lake.

We drove north into Minnesota, then west across the rolling plains of North Dakota and then on north into Canada. We followed Canadian Highway 10 to a point halfway between the villages The Pas and the end of the road at Flin Flon. From there we headed east on Hwy 39, a gravel road, more that 60 miles long, to the camp at Reed Lake. It was the longest gravel road I’d been on, and it seemed to go on for ever. It was rough enough that the back bumper on the trailer shook loose and broke off on the way back over it.

GO TO: Part 2

William R. Buckingham - Part 6, Dad's last Resume

2011-04-08T09:00:00.004-08:00

I found the following in Dad’s papers. He had completed it in about 1981, maybe for a job resume. I think it gives a good first-hand synopsis of his life in his own words.

Personal, Educational, and Employment History of William R. Buckingham

I. Personal
a) Lives at 1628 E. Sycamore St., Kokomo, and have lived at that address for 31 years.
b) Married with two grown sons. Both are graduates of Indiana University.
c) Born in Connersville, Indiana on May 27, 1912.
d) Telephone No. is 452-2483
e) Social Security No. is 304-12-8201
f) No conviction record.

II. Education
a) Graduate of Connersville High School in 1930. Third in class of 110. Course pursued was College Preparatory.
b) Received B.S. degree from Ball State Teachers College in 1934. Majors were Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, and General Science.
c) In Summer 1937, started work on Masters Degree in Education. It was never completed.
d) Other undergraduate courses were taken at Indiana University, Butler U. and Yale U. III.

Employment History
a) Davison Enameling; Connersville; general laborer. 1934-1936.
b) Harrisburg High School; near Connersville. Teacher of math and science; also basketball coach; 1936-1937.
c)Clay Township High School (Howard Co.), now Northwestern; Teacher of math and science; also basketball coach; 1937-1939.
d) Omar Baking Co. Door to door route salesman in Kokomo; 1939-1940.
e) Stellite Company; Routine Chemist; 1940-1942.
f) Civil Service; Instructor in electronic engineering at Yale University for the Army Air Force; 1942 - November 1944.
g) Delco Radio; Jr Electrical Engineer; Nov 1944 to Nov 1946.
h) Loyal Order of Moose; Kokomo; Secretary and Manager; 1946 -1971.
i) Substitute teacher in High Schools of Howard County; math and science; 1971-1972.
j)Western High School, Russiaville; teacher of math and physics; 1972-1975.
k) Since 1975; Substitute teacher in math, science, and Industrial arts at Haworth, Western, and Northwestern.
THE END

William R. Buckingham - Part 5, The Day Dad Died

2011-04-07T09:00:00.004-08:00

Mom called in the late morning of April 20, 1985. There was a momentary silence after I said hello, then she said, “This is your Mom. I have some bad news. You father died this morning.” Her voice was matter-of-fact; her words, steely hard, without emotion. There was another silence as my mind fought to reject the meaning of her words. I don’t remember her saying anything more and I tried to fill the empty silence with reassuring words that meant nothing. I ask if anyone was with her. I don’t remember if she answered. I told her I’d get home as soon as I could arrange it.

Mom was in shock. They had been married for nearly fifty years, had shared a life through hard times and good - the Great Depression, World War II, raising two boys, working together at the Moose Lodge, vacations, travel, and the usual bouts of marital strife. Life as she knew it had come to an abrupt end.

Dad passed on a beautiful Saturday morning. He was in the front yard, on the west edge of their house when his heart failed, and he laid down on the grassy yard to die. Mom saw him laying there a short time later. He was on his back with his right arm laying over his chest, his left knee, bent slightly and pointing upward. He looked like he might have been napping, but Mom said she knew he was dead as soon as she got out to him.

I told my classes on Monday that I’d be leaving the next day, and would be out for the rest of the week because my Dad died. One of the students raised his hand and asked if I had been close to my father. I said, “No, not really”, and wondered immediately why I answered in such a way. It wasn’t a truthful answer; it was accurate. In truth, I had a good father-son relationship with Dad; it was accurate in that we had lived 4000 miles apart for the last eighteen years.

Dad was short by a month of turning seventy-three. I’m writing this when I’m a bit short of turning that age myself, so it seems to me that he died too young. I’d say that he had plans for things he did not get done.

“Buck”, as he was called by almost everyone (even Mom), would have described himself as a practical man, but his nature was positive - he saw the glass as half full. He seemed to always have a project going: planting a garden, planning a trip, or repairing a radio/TV. He was always ready to demonstrate his latest culinary discovery such as a new pizza recipe, or a Ruben sandwich.

A couple days later I stood before his casket during the funeral, reached out and touched his hand. It was stone cold and just as hard. It wasn’t him. He wasn’t there.
GO TO: Part 6, Dad's Resume

William R. Buckingham - Part 4, The Father I Knew

2011-04-06T09:00:00.007-08:00

Dad was not a reader. I do not remember him ever picking up a book. As far as I know he never read a novel, a biography or a history book. Books were expensive and paperbacks did not become plentiful until well after he reached adulthood, so I doubt that there were many books in his home while he was growing up. Mom said he claimed that reading weakened a persons eyes. That was just an excuse. He simple was not into reading - other than consulting reference books. His was not an introspective or contemplative nature.

He was more of a hands on guy, a practical man - the original do-it-yourselfer. The first project I remember him working on was the remodeling of the kitchen on Lafountain Street. I was only five or six, but remember him standing between the floor joists while working on that project. He and another guy moved an inside wall of the house, maybe at the same time. I think the wall was in Don and my bedroom, they moved it over a couple feet, but that memory is very vague. He also did electrical rewiring of houses, both our own and others. Mom said he and Uncle Joe did some original wiring of several older houses in Connersville before they moved to Kokomo. When we bought the “Buckingham Palace” (another story), Dad directed and worked with Don and I in redoing the whole place.

I'm not absolutely certain, but I don’t think Dad believed in God - definitely not the Hereafter. The only occasions he attended churches were at marriages and funerals - mainly funerals. I don’t recall him ever speaking harshly about any religion, place of worship, or holy book. He expressed neither negative nor positive opinions on the subject. I remember him saying only one thing about the “Afterlife”. It was something like, “There is none. You die. Your body rots. That’s it.” The statement might have shocked me had he related the thought when I was at a younger, more tender age, but I was in my mid-twenties by then, and somewhat insulated against such radical ideas. He was the only atheist I ever met that did not seem to be angry about it.

In a way he was satisfied with his level of knowledge and understanding of the world and felt no need to seek anything more. That is not to say something new would not grab his interest. I got an Apple II computer in 1978 and showed Dad a little about it when he visited a couple years later. It was the type of thing that was right up his alley. He played around with it for several days, and could have gotten deeply involved, but computers were still very basic and expensive in those days. I have often thought of Dad as being the last Victorian. This is because he seemed so satisfied and certain with the progress that was taking place in his time. The momentum of the Industrial Revolution reached steam engine force during the Victorian Age and the movers and shakers of that era seemed complacent in their certainty. They knew what was important; they knew what they wanted; and they knew how to get it. Dad was born a few years after Queen Victoria died.

I grew up in a period when, after the war, the American economic engine ran full throttle. Progress and positive attitude seemed to be the rule, and Dad exemplified it. He had a background in math, physics, and chemistry, and he felt confident in that knowledge. He knew what he knew, and he knew a lot… and that was enough for him. Lastly, I think Dad was a would-be adventurer. He and I went up into northern Manitoba fishing in 1964 (another story), and I remember him talking on our drive home. He spoke of life experiences forming the memories we hold on to, and that’s what life was all about. There was a part of him that craved adventure. After college he hoboed/hitch-hiked to California and back on his own. Mom told the story of when he brought some papers for her to sign during the war - while we were living in Connecticut. He wanted to volunteer for a dangerous mission to parachute into occupied France, set up a two-way-radio for members of the French Resistance, show them how to work it, and then find his way out - probably with the help of the Resistance. She would not sign the papers.Brother Don told me once that he thought Dad had a pride in me because I was leading an adventurers life that he would have liked to have experienced. Mom and Dad visited me in Seldovia in 1975 when I was commercial fishing halibut with a friend (yet, another story). Dad was so taken by the place that he applied for a teaching job and almost got it. He wistfully said he wished he had come to Alaska years ago. Mom retorted that he could not have been pried out of Indiana back then.

GO TO: Part 5, The Day Dad Died

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

2011-03-29T09:00:00.038-08:00

On June 1st of 1935 Dad began a great adventure. He 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. It 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 lists where he stayed each night and since many entries refer to “box car”, he apparently was in transit on those nights. The first page of the journal listed the place he spent each night during his 33 day trip. 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 at; he said, 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 the first two days. His trip lasted another 31 days. I wish he had continued it. It would have made a great story. GO TO: Part 4, The Father I Knew

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

2011-03-28T09:00:00.025-08:00

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

2011-03-25T09:00:00.009-08:00

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

2011-03-24T09:00:00.008-08:00

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

2011-03-23T09:00:00.007-08:00

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

2011-03-22T09:00:00.010-08:00

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

2011-03-21T09:00:00.010-08:00

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

2011-03-18T09:00:00.009-08:00

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

2011-03-17T09:00:00.011-08:00

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

2011-03-16T09:00:00.003-08:00

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

2011-03-15T09:00:00.006-08:00

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

2011-03-14T09:00:00.005-08:00

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

2011-03-11T09:00:00.007-09:00

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

2011-03-10T09:00:00.009-09:00

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

2011-03-09T09:00:00.009-09:00

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

2011-03-08T09:00:00.005-09:00

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

2011-03-07T09:00:00.009-09:00

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

1886 Letter From Jane Bailey to Charles and Julia Jacobs

2011-03-04T09:05:00.004-09:00

June the 6 A.D. 1886
Saline Co. MO.

To C.D. and J.A Jacobs
From G.W. and J. Baley

Dear Children one and all. This day I meat with the pleasure of answering your verry unexpected letter. We was alful glad to hear from you all but sorro to hear of the deth of your sister and brother. But we was glad to hear you all was yet alive and well. We are all well as can be expected . Pap and I are very frail. Billa, Eliza and Angeline, that is Eliza dauter is well. Hope this ma fiend all well. Juliann You never said whitch one of the Boys was ded nor when him nor Elizabeth died. We want you to tel us when tha died. It is a grate greaf to us all. Tel us why Liza left hur farmin Pendleton. Did she marri Again

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How many Children did she leave and whare ar tha? Let us hear from all and ho Jake married. Is Charleys mother Aliving yet?? and Gilligan Wash and Betsa and Mary Hastings. Tel us all the news. charley what Jula cant think of you think of as we cant speak face to face let us talk by pen and paper. It is a grate pleasure to hear from you but a grate deal more to see you all. Gave all our love to all of your children. I can look back and see all of you that I ever seen as you was when I saw you last. You dont have no idea how glad we would be to se you all. Tel me your childrens age and names. We hant recevd A letter from you sens the year of 80. Jake rote to Ann in 81. John sent..

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That is the last word we ever got from any of you. I cant tel you any thing of John and Ann. I rote to them in April - hant got any answer yet. As for poor Ben we no nothing about him and Tilda. Ben was so troubled with fitts that his mind was nearly gon. He cant rite his one name. Tha was in very lo circumstance. They have 2 boys a living as far as I no. Two girls ded. tha oldest and youngest Mazzana and Arradell Mazzana livs in Davis Co., Gallatin P.O. Tha have 5 children a livin, 1 ded - 4 boys and one girl year old last march. She is a grate pet. As for Margaret, she left three children. Tha ar all ded but the oldest Marietta. And the last Acount we had of hur she

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was in Dacota if she is A living. Hur father is married Again and livs in Prinsen, MO. Eliza is a Widow and livs with us. She has one child. Angeline Elliot will be nine years old the 23rd of this month is A goin to school, learns fast, can read and rite and as hansom as a pink, has hazle eys, fare skin, black curley hair and smart in Maners and work - can drive the team any place hawl anything for hur uncle W.M. She is a grate pet. She goes 2 miles and a half to get to school ever day. She says she is a goin to lern and be A school Miss. Here is some verses she sends to your youngest daughter. Bud livs eight miles off. He maried Rebeckey Jackson. Tha have two children, Luca Oleva and Floid Tilmon. The older one is ded. Jessa Cornelus tha boy was born the 1 day of last May.
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