My Liberty on the Fourth

Among the many events and programs celebrating the Fourth of July this year, the ABC-Disney production with David Muir featuring the Statue of Liberty sparked a memory that had escaped me for years.  About 1945 or perhaps ‘46, my Aunt Bubs took my brother on a visit to New York City.  She had recently returned from England where she had served as a WAC during the war.

                                  

She brought back watches she told us that had been given her by U.S. airmen for safe keeping if they did not return from missions over Germany.  She said that she had two that she would give to my brother and me if we bought them for $10 each.  I assume her idea was that we would take better care of them if they cost us than if they were free.  Jim gave her the money right away and got the first watch.  It took me longer to accumulate the funds—from my 25 cents a week allowance—but finally, with help from my parents, I received mine.  My first watch.  I wore it day and night.  Within a year, it stopped running.

          Jim was 7 or 8, I was about 5.  I don’t know why she wanted to take him to the city.  My father was teaching at Rider College and we lived in Trenton so it was not a long trip. Before the war she had lived on MacDougal Alley in the Village, perhaps she wanted to visit it, perhaps show it to her nephew.  I was not invited.  I don’t remember being disappointed at the time.  He was older and was allowed to do a lot that I was not.

        Later, my mother told me that Aunt Bubs and Jim were walking down Fifth Avenue when she discovered that he had walked out of his shoes.  I was not surprised.  He often kicked off his shoes; for some reason my mother could not find him a comfortable fit.  At that time, I had not been to Fifth Avenue, I doubt my mother had, but I knew that it was the fanciest street in the city and pictured it peopled with wealthy, well-dressed, proper folk.  Mother said that Aunt Bubs was mortified, and immediately found a store where she bought Jim new shoes.

        When Jim returned, he was not concerned with shoes.  He reported with great pride that he had been to the Statue of Liberty and had climbed to the crown.  

I was overwhelmed: hurt, envy, disappointment.  That disappointment lasted for years.   Gradually, however, the feelings not only faded, so did the memory. 

I have lived in Manhattan, ridden ferries by Liberty Island, passed the statue on numerous occasions including on freighters sailing to and from Europe, but I never visited. 

And then, on the evening news this July, David Muir said he was going to visit Liberty and memories flashed before me as vividly as if I were again five years old.  I had to watch. 

        As everyone knows, the statue was designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel.

                                     
        It is 151 feet 1 inch from her feet to the top of the torch, 305 feet 1 inch high from ground level.  It is made of copper about the thickness of two U.S. pennies and has within its web of girders a circular stair from the base to the crown. 

         Of the 15,000 to 20,000 visitors each day, some 400 climb the 354 steps to peer out the windows in the crown.

I mentioned to my daughter that I planned to watch the program and she told me that when she was at Princeton, she and her husband visited the statue and climbed to the crown, that the climb up was tiring but the trip down killed her knees.  When she visited again with her kids, they did not attempt the climb.

          The hour-long program did a fine job of showing the statue, inside and out, with views of the harbor and the city.  David Muir not only climbed to the crown, he went up the ladder in the arm to the platform below the torch, a climb that has not been allowed to the public since 1916.  

So.  My brother, my daughter, my aunt, and other family members have visited the statue and made the climb to the crown.  I no longer desire to do it.  After some eighty years, I am liberated. 

 

Hunting Elephants in India

Hunting Elephants in India

2/14/2004

We arrive at Jungle Retreat, our destination at the edge of the Nilgiri Mountains.  People come to greet us, embrace Steve.  We walk up steps through a hedge and along a path to a one-story brick building with a large attached pavilion, corrugated metal roof supported on bamboo rafters, under it a central bar with stools on three sides, wicker sofas and easy chairs, tables and chairs for dining, We talk with other guests, with the owner, Rohan Mathias, and the friendly staff, college-age young people from around India, all fluent in English.  

       At about 4:30, three Dutch women, two German men, Deb and I, and two guides climb into two safari vehicles and drive several miles to a smaller resort, then walk into the forest, across a dry stream bed where we stop to watch cavorting in the trees shencaros, the Indian giant squirrel, and half a mile or so later arrive at a house owned by an Indian MP. his land on the edge of the reserve, and about a hundred yards beyond his porch through a grove of scattered trees he has constructed a water hole: a shallow concrete pond perhaps 30 feet across kept full by a hose from the house well.  We are offered a chance to sit on platforms in trees close to the hole, but I am still coughing up Bangalore pollution, uncontrollably at times, so I turn the chance down.  We sit on the open porch and wait.  As the light fades, spotted deer carefully approach the pond, then we see wild pigs, and as darkness advances, sambar and gaur.  The MP tells us that elephants, tigers, leopards, buffalo, regularly come up to the house.  We don’t see those.  In the dark, we take flashlights and walk back through the forest for the ride back to Jungle Retreat and a buffet dinner. 

       In the morning, we climb into the vehicles again and drive up a long, narrow, winding road to the top of one of the hills in the reserve.  Along the way, we see buffalo in the scrub jungle.  There is a small Hindu temple at the top and a Raj era hunting lodge, closed and locked, a water hole, and elephant droppings all over.  No elephants.  We walk along paths through the grass, the views are nice, eat a sack lunch, visit the temple, peer in the windows of the lodge, see a framed photo of the sahib, his retinue, a dead tiger at his feet. 

Among our group are three photographers who freelance for Discovery Channel.  One has found a dying buffalo, wants to come back and set up cameras.  We drive back to Jungle Retreat, swim in the pool to cool off, wait for evening.

          We drive to a coffee plantation and climb to the second floor of a pavilion on pillars, sit on the veranda.  About a hundred yards down the slope is a mud hole.  Halfway between us and the water is a box wire fence, a dirt road, a few trees, and beyond, the jungle.  Besides the driver, the guide, and us, on this safari there is only a young British couple.  We whisper, set up cameras, wonder what luck we’ll have this time.  We see the first shape through the trees: slowly, quietly, an elephant moves toward the water.  Then out of the trees, another, and another; then a baby, then two adults together.  The guide comes crashing up the stairs, the whole structure shakes.  “Elephants!” he whispers.   “Come, we move closer.”

          We approach the fence, bent over, trying to look small.  The guide, the driver, Deb, and the other woman sit in the dirt about 30 yards from the fence.  The Brit and I move quietly toward a small wood structure, about three feet on a side, three feet tall, next to the fence.  We sit, and I start shooting through the fence, annoyed by the blur of the fence through the lens.  I scoot closer, trying to shoot between wires.  I’m about sixty yards from the

 

elephants.  The matriarch moves away from the rest, swings around, looks toward us.  The Brit moves back, out of my sight.  I scoot forward, trying to get the wires out of my lens.  I think, if she moves closer, I can scramble behind the box.  She moves towards me, her ears out, trying to figure out if I’m a threat.  I think, once out of sight behind the box, I’ll be safe.  I think, she sure is big. 

Behind me, Deb asks the guide if I should stay.  

      I hear him yell, “Simon, get out of there!”  I get to my feet and scurry, bent over, toward the group already heading back up hill toward the shelter.  Once there, we stop, panting from the run, and watch the elephants form a group around the baby, then gradually calm down, move to a nearby salt lick, rub themselves on trees, and then one by one, they move off into the brush and trees, and disappear.

       We climb in the jeep and start driving slowly down a trail, jeep tracks through dried grass as tall as the windshield.  There have been tiger sightings here, and an old tiger kill.  We stand in the back, bracing ourselves with the top supports, the canvas top having been left behind, trying to see over the grass, trying to keep our balance against the sway and bounce on the rough track.  I think, if we meet anything, there is no place to go.  The trail twists through brush, grass, trees, over rock outcropping, around bends, down gullies, up hillocks.  As we top a rise and round a bend: in the trail forty yards away stands an elephant, looking at us.  The guide whispers in Tamil, the driver shifts into reverse, kills the engine, starts it, we move back out of sight, the engine kills again, the driver is scared, the guide’s voice rises telling him what to do, then behind us in the direction we are trying to flee, off to the side of the trail in the trees, another elephant.  We stop.  It is the matriarch with the baby.  We wait.  We are very quiet.

          Later, the Brit says he was trying to figure out how far up the hill it was to the electrified fence.  He said with an elephant after him, he thought he could scale it, electricity or not.  I was thinking that if we stayed on the opposite side of the jeep from the elephant, even if the elephant were turning it over, we’d be okay.  The night before, the Discovery photographers were chased by an elephant down this very trail—they showed us video of the escape; they were annoyed that the driver had lost his nerve when the elephant charged: the video ended with a jumble of shots as the cameraman was jostled off his feet when the jeep bounced at speed down the hill.

          Finally, the guide decides it’s safe.  The driver gets the jeep turned around, and we bounce away from the direction the elephants were moving.  In more open country we look for other animals.  We surprise sambar, look at buffalo bones from the tiger kill, and at full dark head back to Jungle Retreat.  There, we eat supper, share the Champagne we smuggled from Bangalore.  They’ve baked a cake for Deb and me.  It’s our wedding anniversary.

          The next day, my cough is gone, so at 6 p.m. at the MP’s, Deb and I climb a bamboo ladder some 30 feet into a tree overlooking the waterhole onto a wholly inadequate bamboo platform about six feet wide and eight feet long with a bamboo rail about six inches high around it and an inch thick pad to lie on.  We have been admonished to lie still and not talk.  After 10 minutes, lying still is next to impossible.  After 20 minutes, excruciating.  If an animal, any animal, shows, perhaps the discomfort will be worth it, but there is no sign of life.  We start whispering, wondering how the two in the other tree are doing.  Finally, at 7, a few spotted deer appear, then wander off.  Fifteen minutes later, a gaur comes to drink, then leaves.  I say to Deb, “This going to be a bust.”  It is beginning to get dark.  Soon we won’t be able to see anything.  We are scheduled to come down at 8.  At a quarter to 8, a young bull elephant, tusks maybe three feet long, walks toward the water, swinging his trunk back and forth with what can only be described as swagger.  He dips his trunk in the water, puts it in his mouth, then removes it and sprays water left and right, dips it again, repeats.  When he’s had enough, he walks toward our tree.  We lie very still.  He walks directly under our platform.  Deb feels like she could reach down and touch him.  About twenty yards beyond our tree, he stops, paws the ground with a front foot, raising dust.  Then he snorts dust up his trunk and sprays it over his back.  He continues dusting until it is completely dark and he is only a blacker presence among the trees.                  

          Fortunately, the air is warm, and lying on my back, the pad is reasonably comfortable.  We could spend the night if we had to.  Romantic, under the stars in India.

          The 500,000 candlepower spotlight suddenly beams through the trees.  Someone calls out, “Don’t come down!  Don’t move!  Don’t speak, there’s a leopard!”  Leopards climb trees, eat monkeys.  I feel a little like a monkey.

          The elephant moves off a few yards, stops.  Near the house, a fire starts.  We can see men feeding it wood, then one takes a long stick, makes a torch, walks into the grove, poking it at the elephant from fifty, sixty yards away, shouting at in Tamil or maybe in elephant, “Ho!  Ho!”  As the flame dies, he retreats to the fire.  

          Someone yells, “Are you okay?”  I call back, “We’re fine.”  I’m sure they’re worried we will do something stupid, tourists that we are.  The torch is rekindled, the man moves slowly into the trees again, shouting.  The elephant ignores him.  So much for being quiet and still.

          At about 10 p.m., the elephant moves to the edge of the grove, a hundred yards from our tree.  A flashlight approaches.  “Come down quick!” the MP calls.  We scramble down, follow the light towards the house.  Once there, Deb heads for the bathroom, one of the amenities lacking in tree platforms.  The men in the other tree had seen the leopard, trees obstructed our view.

 
 
 
 

Skunks in my life

Warning:  The following contains material that may be disturbing, thus: “Viewer/reader/listener discretion is advised,”  (Good luck with that.)

Recently, my niece (who grew up an archetypal Valley Girl in Southern California) put on FaceBook a post that stirred memories: “Out of curiosity has anyone ever been in the vicinity of a skunk spray, but not the actual victim of the spray?? Both Koda and Chewy went after a skunk and I got out of the car to tell at them to leave it and they got sprayed and I smell like a f'ing skunk. I put my clothes outside, but I think it's in my hair and skin! I can't even stand to be in the room with myself!!! This is no Bueno... Well tomorrow we will be smoking pork, so maybe I'll just smell like smoke to cover the skunk! Good times.. When you can laugh at it all! I gotta smell me while I'm sleeping. I made the whole house stink! ”

 Among the memories her story brought me: Mitzie, a pet cat that lived to be about 18 or so.  When she was young, almost daily she brought home a kill to share her success, left on the porch, or if my mother was not careful, on the kitchen floor: mostly mice or shrews, but also sparrows, snakes, young rabbits and squirrels.  I praised her, took the trophy and oohed and aahed over it and returned it to her, so that once I could rescue a hummingbird unharmed and let it go.  When I was 8 or 9, she came home soaking wet from a close encounter, skunk spray dripping off her face and shoulders.  She looked miserable and smelled worse.  Mother filled a wash tub with a few inches of warm water, put the cat into it and lathered her copiously.  The cat, despite her inherited hatred of bathing, sat perfectly still while mother scrubbed, rinsed, and scrubbed some more.  I don’t know what kind of soap mother used, but when the cat was finally fluffed dry, she was happy again, and I think, never tackled another skunk.

 I like skunk smell—at a distance.  In the spring, we used to sleep with the windows open; lovelorn skunks wandered by and we could smell them.  To me, it was the smell of spring.

I used to feed barn cats in the tack room where I also kept dog, horse, and cattle feed in metal cans to discourage pilfering.  The cats were largely feral so I saw them only at a distance, but I enjoyed seeing them hunt in the pastures and I assumed they kept the mouse population under control.  A neighbor girl used to hunt through the mangers and the loft to find the nests with kittens.  She played with them and brought them to the house to show us, so over generations the cats became tamer.  Not so the skunks who also visited the tack room for the cat food, easier fare than they could find in the wild.  I once went into the tack room, turned on the light, and standing there was a surprised full-grown skunk staring at me.  He pounded a front paw on the ground several times to warn me to stay away.  I did not need further warning.  I backed out and left the door open to make his retreat as easy as mine.  After that encounter, I left the tack room light on all the time.

When the skunks became a nuisance, I started live-trapping.  They happily enter a large wire-mesh trap for the cat food I place on the spring plate.  I approach the trapped skunk holding a tarp wide in front of me so the skunk will not be frightened and spray. I wrap the tarp around the trap, and place it in the back of my pickup.  I used to carry the trap to the trail near the boat ramp at the north end of Willamette Park.  There I opened an end to let the skunk escape into the woods by the river.  I knew this was largely a futile exercise.  Mostly, wild animals are territorial; if a stranger enters an animal’s territory, the resident animal chases it away, or it moves further away itself.  I pictured a line of skunk properties stretching south along the river with each displaced skunk moving to the next property south until the skunk in the last property near my barn moved to the barn and the easy pickings there. 

 I might have repeated this futile exercise for a long time, but I came back from a transport to find an official park truck and a city squad car in my drive.  Apparently, park employees had noticed my activities and objected to skunks being released on park property.  The officer was polite when he told me it was against the law to transport wild animals.  One needed a license.  I said, “I didn’t know that.  I’m sorry.  The next skunk I catch, I’ll call you and you can transport it.”  He was adamant that I not do that. 

Instead, I started transporting skunks to Kiger Island.  The bridge to the island is above a branch of the Willamette with a steep trail down to the water.  I set the trap near the top of the trail, open the end facing the river below, step quickly away just in case, and the skunks race down toward the water.  That summer, I transported perhaps thirty skunks.  The entire operation takes about an hour, from finding a trapped skunk, wrapping the trap, driving to the river, releasing it, and returning home.  Once, however, road workers were repairing the bridge, so I left the skunk covered for hours in the back of the pickup in the summer sun until the workers finished.  After they left, I returned, pulled the trap out of the pickup, set it on the trail, opened the end and started to back away, but stumbled, fell on the trail by the trap.  The skunk was not happy.  He bounded down the trail, and with each bound, a cloud of spray filled the air behind it.  I thought I had escaped since the spray was not aimed at me, but when I returned home, Deb declared I had not.  She insisted I leave my clothes outside and immediately take a shower.

Other encounters also proved problematic.  One spring morning, I noticed Annie, our Cane Corso, chewing on something strange.  She readily

gave it up.  Apparently, she had made friends with an amorous skunk and had kept evidence.  The multitool is two inches long for comparison.  I am not sure what part of the animal the fur came from, but again, Deb was not having any.  She took Annie to a local farm store with bathing facilities, and with newly formulated commercial skunk removal fluid, scrubbed a happy dog.

Before Deb insisted that we get dry-mouths so she could have them inside the house, I had Neapolitan Mastiffs, a breed once raised by Romans as war dogs. Neos have large heads, powerful jaws, and drool, hence the term “wet-mouth.”  According to legend, Romans mounted padded saddles on the mastiffs, attached fire pots to the saddles, and let the dogs run under enemy elephants.  Later Italians used the dogs for bear baiting, and in more modern times chained them at gates to protect estates.  They are intelligent animals, and can be intimidating.

One summer day as I was relaxing in the yard, my Neo, Bogie, discovered that a skunk had entered his house to scarf dog food.  Bogie and the skunk faced each other for a moment.  Bogie barked.  The skunk spun around and lifted its tail to spray, but Bogie ducked and ran completely around the house. When he reached the front, the skunk had

turned back around to see what was happening.  It saw that Bogie had returned, spun again, and Bogie again raced around his house.  The third time, the skunk was slow.  Bogie grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him into the yard and shook him.  I could hear bones crunch as they were crushed.  Spray filled the yard.  When the animal stopped struggling, Bogie set him down.  Amazingly, because the way Bogie held the skunk, none of the spray got on him, but the yard stunk for days.

The area around my place has been built up: fields are filled with streets, upscale houses and condominiums, the park slough is a disc golf course, Roger Hamlin’s cornfield is soccer fields, paths through the park are paved so walkers can keep feet dry.  Lovelorn skunks no longer wander under my windows.  But the memories remain.

 

A few whales in my life

 Many people on the West Coast who live close to the ocean have experience with whales, either Grays migrating between Alaska and Mexico or Orcas that lurk in the coastal waters looking for prey, which gives them the name Killer.  My first exposure, however, came on the East Coast, where I grew up.

When I was about 7 or 8, my father’s parents took me to eat at Gage & Tollner’s in Brooklyn, which they said was the best seafood restaurant in the city.  At the time, we were staying with my grandparents in Schenectady while my father sought medical treatment for his hearing loss.  I have no idea why I was alone with my grandparents in the city, but I remember thinking Brooklyn was far from Manhattan; I remember crossing a bridge to get there, and I remember white tablecloths and complete place settings and the waiter in black coat and tie, not the kind of restaurant I ate at with my parents.  I remember perusing the many paged menu and discovering “whale.”  I don’t remember how it was listed, as steak, chopped, or stew, but I remember being excited.  When asked what I wanted, I said “whale.”  The waiter apologized and said they were out and would not have more until next week.  I don’t remember what I ordered, but the disappointment stays with me to this day.

My second missed whale came on the West Coast at the Makah reservation on the Olympic Peninsula.  As part of the 1855 Neah Bay treaty with the U.S. Government, the Makah gave up 300,000 acres of tribal land in exchange for their continued right to hunt whales,  That treaty established the Makah as the only U.S. Native American nation with a whaling right clearly specified by treaty—though the tribe stopped hunting in the 1920s when Gray whale existence was threatened by commercial whaling.  By the 1990s, the U.S. government declared the Gray whale no longer endangered, and despite objections by many groups, the Makah determined to resume one of their most important tribal traditions.  On May 17, 1999, Makah whalers in a traditional canoe harpooned a 30-foot Gray and towed it to Neah Bay.  To celebrate the successful hunt, the following weekend they held a potlatch.  Everyone who was there received some of the whale.  Deb and I, planning to hike and camp on the peninsula, arrived at the reservation the next day.  We missed the potlach and whale by one day.

We stopped at a local store to get supplies and were attracted to a display of Makah carvings.  One of the carvers happened to be arranging his contribution and I asked him about one of his masks.  He said that when the Makah harpooned a whale, one hunter jumped in the water and sewed the whale’s mouth shut to prevent the whale from filling with water and sinking.  Sometimes the whale was not yet dead and fought back.  The mask, with white skin and a red mouth, represented the spirit of drowned whalers.  Because of my interest, he offered me the mask.

We were at the reservation because when Deb was in college, she visited the excavation of an Ozette Makah village that had been covered by a mudslide about 1560CE (according to radiocarbon dating).  The excavators found more than 55,000 artifacts spanning a period of about 2,000 years; many are now on display in the Makah Museum at the Makah Cultural and Research Center. 

We hiked the Ozette Loop trail, a mostly easy nine-and-a-half-mile walk through lovely woods to the coast.  Among other sights, we found 300- to 500-year-old petroglyphs of Orcas.   

When we kayaked in the Queen Charlottes, we saw Grays.  It seemed that they wanted to stay far from us, but the Orcas were not shy.  In Johnstone Strait, two adult Orcas and a young one swam within yards of our boats, ignoring us as if we existed in a different reality.

In the first photo, a dorsal shows just beyond the bow.  I suggested to our guide that they behaved as if they didn’t know we were there.  He replied, “Oh, they knew.” 

On Sunday, June 17, 1979, forty-one sperm whales beached at the Siuslaw River’s south jetty near Florence.  It was at the time the third largest beaching known.  The next day, I drove with my daughter to see.  The beach was taped off to keep on-lookers away, but I noted that within the taped area people had strips of tape tied to their upper arms to identify them as official participants.  I found a length of tape hanging from a post, cut it, tied it on my arm, and headed toward the nearest whale.  Laurel stayed at the edge of the taped area and told herself the story she told me later that she was going to tell her mother after I was arrested and taken to jail. Even at a distance, the stench was powerful.  As I approached, the smell grew overwhelming.  One of the things no one tells about fields after a battle: Bodies swell, and explode.  For years, I could think about that scene and the smell would return.  Laurel claims she can smell it still. 

I have had encounters with whales since, but this was the most memorable.