Here is the next installment for the new book I’m working on. Feel free to comment.
PART ONE: NATURAL RIGHTS
I have had the type of freedom that, unfortunately for western culture, few people experience. I have backpacked over 15,000 miles on wilderness trails, always with a group of people, on journeys of up to seven months. I know how small groups can live life on our own terms, faced only with the unbiased challenges that Nature sets forth. Through this freedom I have gained insights into our natural rights.
Some might think that backpacking with a group of people falls short of the “Grizzly Adams” persona of individualism. Yet individualism is not really natural. Our prehistoric ancestors did not “go it alone;” they formed small tight-knit social groups that depended on each other to survive the challenges of the natural world. A modern day wilderness backpacker replaces the challenge of a nomad finding food sources with the challenge of reaching a difficult goal, but in other ways the two nomadic experiences are similar.
I experienced the personal freedom to set my own challenges, with Nature as the foil, and experienced both the benefits and costs of undertaking those challenges. Rain cares not whether you are black or white; the mountain cares not whether you are rich or poor; the wilderness cares not for any of your past failings or successes. I was free to succeed or fail in the moment, each moment, without culture either constraining or indulging me.
I experienced the social freedom of a small group working out the rules for living together on our own terms, independently of any predetermined laws or cultural mores. Laws have been touted as a necessity for ordered liberty and democracy, but nothing could be further from the truth. Laws are nothing but silly for a small group of people working out how we are to survive our wilderness experiences together. We were restrained individually at times by our social bonds, but that is similar to the saying about laws being “the wise restraints that make men free.”
I experienced the spiritual freedom of reveling in beauty every day. This was the beauty of a radiant sunset in the calm following a storm. This was the beauty of sitting under the shade of a pine with a gentle breeze on my face, listening to the music of a dancing brook. This was the beauty of making a tough climb together with another person who experienced life deeply. This was the beauty of sharing those beautiful experiences with others. This was the beauty of a close connection to God.
Freedom involves the possibility of choice. To say I have the freedom to breathe is meaningless, since I have no choice in the matter. Through my natural freedom I gained insight into natural choices, choices granted to us by Nature. Something granted to us is a right. Thus the choices that Nature grants to us are natural rights, whether directed by God or Evolution.
The natural rights of my wilderness experiences depart from the natural rights of John Locke, or the inalienable rights of Thomas Jefferson, which prove not to be natural or inalienable at all. The life processes such as breathing are not really a conscientious choice, though ending those processes might be. Owning property is a right, but one granted by government, as will be illuminated in a later chapter. Liberty is a vague term that could be contrived to mean a natural right, though in most contexts we think of liberty as something granted by government and not by Nature.
As the Part One chapters explore more fully, the choices/rights granted to us by Nature evolved to help us survive Nature. They are the choices that respond to our experiences. As such our natural rights are the evolutionary “toolbox” that makes us precisely human, unlike any other species. Other species share some of these rights, but not the complete set or to the same extent. To diminish these natural rights would be to diminish what makes us truly human.
Our life may end without our humanity being diminished. I knew this during those moments when I was hanging from a cliff, staring down a bear or holding off hypothermia. What got me into those situations may have lacked judgment but not my humanity. Indeed, I have never felt so exhilaratingly human as in those moments where life seemed near to an end. There are many smokejumpers, deep sea fishermen, police officers and soldiers who know precisely what I am talking about.
We may be devoid of property with no impact on being human. In fact, property sometimes deters us from our humanity, when we focus on possessions rather than the experiences of life. Early nomads survived without private property. To think that exclusive property ownership falls under the category of a natural right is simply ignorant.
In the traditional sense of the liberty concept, we may even have our liberties stripped with no impact on our humanity. The humanity of Nelson Mandela and other freedom fighters did not diminish through their imprisonment. This was because government deprived them of the liberties that government controls, but not of those natural rights that make us human.
One of my favorite essays is “Are We Miracles or Machines,” by Loren Eiseley. He refuted a New York Times article claiming that humans could be considered machines, reporting on his own experiences with sparrow hawks that were bonded as mates. Eiseley had captured one of the pair and described the obvious joy when the two were reunited. For Eiseley this intense connection between beings distinguishes us from machines, but the same conclusion can be drawn based on our natural rights.
Robots are machines; humans are not. Robots may someday function exactly like humans. They may be created to have the exact mental, physical and even emotional capacity as us. They still will not be human, precisely because they lack our natural rights. Robots may be programmed to do anything someday, but not through autonomous choice.
The best way to discover your natural rights is to experience the natural world apart from both the indulgences and constraints of culture. We sorely miss out as humans when we replace the natural walkabouts, rites of passages, vision quests or even apprenticeships for entering adulthood with the culturally indulgent college scene. College is an invaluable training ground for our modern social systems, but too many people graduate with diploma in hand and no clue about the most important ingredients for what makes them human.
Too much of what great schools and scholars do amounts to fitting the square peg of their treasured scholarship into the round hole of human experience. Do not take my word for this. Rather, embark on your own natural rites of passage far away from cultural influences. In lieu of such a critical pursuit I offer to you the following chapters which, when considered all together, describe why humans are not bacteria, or whales, or robots.
The first installment was on Natural Altruism.
Tags: Natural Rights, Restoring Balance
It’s been a couple weeks since the first part of this letter came out. That included a funny story about Pop saving a dog.
I will never forget the Tides in Nova Scotia either. Have you ever been there? They rise and fall as much as 60 feet, I believe it is. I know we tied up to the dock in Yarmouth one night and could step onto the dock, and the next morning when I woke up I was looking at seaweed hanging from the piles, and we were at least thirty feet below the dock.
One more and then I won’t bore you any longer. This was a bit humorous also. We were fogbound in Arichat, Cape Breton Island for five days. We were the first American Yacht that had ever docked there (or so they said)/ The whole town turned out to greet us, and they opened up the Town Hall and gave us a big dance, records on the victrola of course, but we had a whale of a time and of course like all sailors, each found ourselves a girl.
Mine happened to be the daughter of the Mayor. They are very strict in Arichat and her mother chaperoned her throughout the dance, and made her go home and pull her stockings up as in those days “rolled stockings” were the vogue, and I guess when I “swung her” around on one of the Contra dances that mama saw to her horror that she had her stockings rolled. Straight away she had to go home and roll them right back up, while mama and I waited outside.
Well the fog lifted a bit on the fourth day and we pulled away from the dock and out to sea, but the fog swells were so heavy that the Captain decided to go back to Arichat dock again and wait it out. My little girl friend had come down to kiss me goodbye at four in the morning. When we came back and docked the Captain went uptown for some line or canvas or something and I was scrubbing the top deck, when he came up and said (my nickname was Sinbad) “Well Sinbad it looks like we have to leave you here.” You can see how gullible I was. I said again, “Why, what have I done?”
He said “You know how strict they are with their girls up here Sinbad” and I told him that I did, so he informed me that some of the dory fishermen who were going out to their “lobster traps” early in the morning had seen Christine come off the boat (we called a Yacht a boat) and had gone and told her father that she had stayed aboard the Yacht all night as he had seen her leaving it at four in the morning.
“In other words,” he said, “although you and I know that she just came to kiss you goodbye, in the eyes of her father she has been compromised, and since we are a visitor to this country and want no bad relations, I see no way out of it Sinbad but for you to marry the girl and stay here with her.”
I believed him, and kept sending anxious glances up the dock expecting any minute to see the Mayor, the Justice of Peace or whatever they have in Canada, and a detachment of Royal Mounted Police and what have you coming for me.
After about two hours, I guess I looked so glum that he took pity on me as he came up and told me he was just kidding. Of course I have had many a laugh about it since, but if at the age of 18 you could have looked off at those, stark, cold and barren rocks, you would imagine how I felt.
In all my travels though, I don’t think that I ever met more hospitable people than those of Nova Scotia, and all the more so because they have a struggle to survive. This particular town of Arichat, had lost a great many men some years before when the Columbia fishing fleet, or most of it anyway went down in one of the Atlantic’s worst storms, and besides that they had lost a great many men (for the size of the town that is) in World War 1, and yet they showed “no quarter”, kept their dignity, and were certainly most hospitable to us.
The people were just lovely, and many a night I sit down now and my mind wanders back over the years, and over the fine people it has been my pleasure to meet over the years. They were a far cry from the well lighted, well heated, well paid, “coffee break” people of today, who are screaming for a $5 an hour pay, and a 20 hour week, and all expenses paid not only when they are old, but while they are young also. It looks like we are headed for a country where “everybody just VOTES for a living”.
Well there are a few around who have made private enterprise something to be proud of, and quite a few of those I am sure inhabit the new building of Newton Mfg. Co. Long may they prosper, and I HOPE that I can get my “tail wagging” and contribute a darned sight more to it in the next few weeks than I have in the past few, but as you so often say, in the meantime I will “roll with the punches”.
So, it’s “shipshape and Bristol fashion” to you sir!
Leon.
Oh yes, and ahoy the dory!
Tags: Pop's Letters
The working title for the next book I am working on is called Restoring Balance. My first book, Systems out of Balance, was a referential guide for how our social systems work and how misinformation affects that. Restoring Balance will be more of an inspirational guide and much shorter in length. I will post chapters on this site about once a week. Here is the first installment. Feel free to comment.
INTRODUCTION: ALTRUISM
Are we naturally bad, victims of original sin? Are we naturally good as spiritual descendants from God? We might get caught up in one fixed belief or the other but if we truly look into ourselves and observe the behaviors of others the answer is undeniably: neither. We are naturally variable. We vary in our “goodness” or “badness” from one individual to the next and even within the same individual. There are consequences to succumbing to fixed beliefs, particularly the one that holds we are naturally bad, which I learned the hard way.
When I was a junior in high school a vocabulary word engulfed me in spiritual darkness. The word was misanthrope, defined as a belief that all human behavior was self-motivated. For better or worse I was always a thinker, and the more I thought about the word misanthrope the more I became convinced of its apparent truth. Thankfully, a penny saved me from this mental morass.
After high school I took a year off before going to college. In hindsight that was a critical step in understanding life, rather than automatically accept whatever fixed beliefs were being taught by schools or scholars. I had the opportunity to form my own beliefs based on real experience.
I was Christmas shopping in a mall when I decided to get myself a fifteen cent ice cream cone at a Baskin and Robbins outlet. The disheveled, elderly woman in front of me at the counter paid the fifteen cents for her cone but was informed there was a penny tax. I detected a look of concern on her face. As she rummaged through her purse for an extra penny I instinctively took one out of my pocket and slapped it down on the counter.
That experience provided several revelations. Why did I detect a look of concern on this stranger’s face? The simple answer is because I could. We all can read other people’s emotions fairly well, that is part of being human.
Why did I donate a penny to a stranger? The misanthrope would say the cause was to boost my own self-esteem, or to get the line moving, or because I’ve learned that general reciprocity makes a better world for me to live in. Though I was a misanthrope up until that moment I did not accept any of those motivations for my altruistic behavior.
Instead, I felt compassion for a total stranger that looked like she was down on her luck and I behaved out of pure instinct without any thinking or “self-motivation” involved. As hard as my mind wanted me to believe that my behavior was self-motivated my heart would not allow it. My new conclusion, based on my own experiential evidence, was that not all human behavior is self-motivated.
I had not realized my spiritual impoverishment up until that moment. For I now felt truly buoyant. I skipped in a crowded mall. I went up the down escalator and down the up escalator. I became a child at heart once more, similar to what fundamentalists would call being born again.
I indeed was saved from a life of cynicism. When I later went to college I did not automatically accept popular but unproven assumptions such as “the selfish gene.” Some of what my general field of science assumes as truth amounts to tautology, or circular reasoning. For example, we assume life to be selfish because life has the “self-motivation” to survive. Survival then “proves” selfishness.
If we step back from this assumed dogma we can attach greater meaning to the observation of life. Some organisms do indeed fit the meaning we attach to selfishness. Bacteria behave totally as individuals. The only responsibility one bacteria has for another is through asexual reproduction. Otherwise, each individual bacterium seeks merely to consume resources only for itself.
In contrast, there are organisms whose survival absolutely depends on functioning as a social group. As part of a group individuals sacrifice for each other with even their own lives. You could chalk this up to selfish survival of the species if you want, but you would lose a great deal of meaning for how whales survive in contrast to bacteria if you claim both to be acting in their selfish self-interest.
Though science may be guilty of such tautological assumptions, I find science now to be a saving grace for western culture. Science ultimately depends on experience, not on scholarship. Though many of us are not comfortable with the mathematical or technological tools used to further science, we all were born scientists. We all were given the ability to make educated guesses from our own experiences, and strengthen or adjust our guesses with further experience. That is the essence of science.
By honestly valuing and experiencing our own lives we can discover many problems with traditional western beliefs, including some perpetuated by dogmatic miscarriages of science. This inspirational guide draws from my own experiences as a wilderness backpacker, as a lifelong resident of a small village and, yes, as a trained scientist. These experiences refute the assumption that all human behavior is self-motivated. As both you and I know if we give due credence to our own observations and experiences, human intent and behavior is variable.
Though we have variable natures humans evolved to function as an altruistic species, behaving more like whales than bacteria. Both our individual and social well-being depends on realizing the full potential of our altruism. When culture persuades us instead that selfishness is not only natural but good, as evidenced in the way Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of self-interest” has been worshipped (and distorted) uncritically by economists, we have lost our natural balance.
Another instigator for an otherwise Enlightenment culture losing balance is Thomas Hobbes, who claimed that our natural condition was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Because of his misanthropic assumptions Hobbes concluded that paternal institutions, namely government, needed to save bestial humanity from ourselves by establishing order for us. This is utter hogwash that Hobbes derived from observations of “industrial man,” not “natural man.” Hobbes failed to understand that industrial man is caused, not prevented, by paternalism. This inspirational guide counters that you and I can save ourselves if independent from paternal influences, precisely because of our naturally evolved altruism.
This book could have been called Restoring Well-Being, Restoring Health or Restoring Cosmic Harmony. They all refer to the same thing: how to once again live our lives the way we evolved to live over hundreds of thousands of years of fine-tuning. The concept of Balance fits with the naturalist approach for how to live one’s life well in the natural order of life.
Most inspirational guides focus on the individual. They might include social goals as important, but undermine this with a focus on “me.” The focus of this inspirational guide is very much on “us” because no matter what impression you might have been given by Enlightenment philosophers or economists, we cannot attain individual fulfillment except as a social creature, that is how Mother Nature hotwired us. Ecologists and cultural anthropologists understand this, even if the natural supporting observations and experiences eluded some of the great Enlightenment thinkers.
I wrote a previous book called Systems out of Balance with original research and number crunching to inform us how we have been confused about what is natural. That book was a referential guide for explaining how our social systems are now out of balance and how misinformation got us in such a predicament. This inspirational guide focuses instead on heading towards where we naturally need and want to go. Five sections address five areas of prevalent social confusion. Eliminating the confusion about our natural rights, sense of belonging, democracy, public interest and quality of life will help us to restore our balance as a naturally altruistic species.
Tags: Restoring Balance
This is the day of the week that I usually post one of Pop’s letters. Today I’ve got to give it up to my daughter Serena, who was awarded first place by the Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association for their poetry contest. Here is the sonnet she submitted.
That look is clear and cold my dearest friend
And met with charm and wit by only I
Apparent now that this will be the end
But you alone shall suffer this goodbye.
I know the way this story soon will play
The ghost of pity lying in disdain
On you a look of apathy does stay.
Is it enough to act like there’s no pain?
Too soon you’ll wander back to me and plead
And claim mistakes and accidents were made
I’ll say that I agree but won’t concede
Your heart shall know the truth and start to fade
Your arms no longer home, your touch erased
But lucky love is easily replaced.
Tags: Serena's Poetry
I grew up with this long garage in my backyard. You probably can’t see the property marker, but it reveals that the garage goes right up to the property boundary on two sides. For that matter, so does the neighbor’s garage that you see in white. Neither practice would be allowed today with zoning requiring a fifteen foot setback. The terrain used to be flatter by the side of the garage and I would spend afternoons kicking a soccer ball against the side. The garage was originally part of a bakery business, gone before I came into the world. Of course, as a kid I climbed and cavorted on the garage roof, using the black cherry in the corner to get up there. Now both the black cherry tree and the roof has seen better days.
Tags: Sense of Place
I just returned from a vacation to Florida, driving both ways. As we drove through cities, particularly Washington and New York, I reflected on the presence of expanded lanes and dedicated commuter lanes. Knowing what we know now, these solutions to commuter traffic are inferior to developing better public transportation. I would suggest further that we always have known, or should have known, to give more credence to public transportation. Our problem has not been with knowledge but with attitude.
In either case, expanded highway lanes or public transportation, government is necessary to implement and maintain the solution. In the case of expanded highway lanes and commuter lanes the purpose of the solution is to indulge individual lifestyles. I use the word indulgence intentionally because, once again, government must provide this indulgence. The individual cannot decide: “I’m sick and tired of this commuter traffic so I’m building myself an additional commuter lane.” Without government the individual lifestyle preference for driving one’s car and not be stuck in commuter traffic cannot be fulfilled.
In the case of public transportation the purpose of the solution is to become more independent. Wait a second! How can an individual be more independent if they depend on public transportation? The individual depends on government for most transportation, public or otherwise. Whether driving in a metro bus or a commuter land the same refrain of “there but for the grace of government” still applies. Yet with public transportation there is less social dependence created for fossil fuels, and less individual dependence created for owning and maintaining an automobile.
So the choice really comes down to whether government should facilitate indulgent lifestyles or independent lifestyles. We have been convinced by corporate media and even some noted academics that the indulgences of consumerism is the essence of liberty, but don’t be fooled. We have been herded in our dependence on fossil fuels and automobiles, herded by government and herded by corporations, with grave consequences. When a soldier dies in Iraq, he dies not for the sake of real freedom or independence, but for indulgence.
The irony of commenting on public transportation after driving to Florida and back is not lost on me. In truth, I do not know the fuel comparison for individuals driving to Florida versus taking a plane or bus. I do know that driving in my 43 mpg Toyota Echo saves money over flying and renting a car in Florida. I know that commuting with a car does not similarly save money over public transportation when all the expenses of commuting are factored in. I know that following the path of public transportation might lead to the next logical step of solar panels or some other renewable energy solution being installed along the public transportation lanes. I know that in all these cases what government does affects the choices we make.
Tags: Government Entitlements
I’m back from vacationing in Florida where two of my brothers have homes in Venice. It was a good week to get away from stormy Norfolk, but I was basically sick the whole time. Oh, well. Here’s the next installment of Pop’s letters. This will be in two parts; the first part includes a good story about Pop rescuing a dog.
Mr. Harold Lufkin, V.P. Norfolk, Conn.
Newton Mfg. Co. Feb. 21, 1962
Newton, Iowa.Dear Mr. Lufkin:
First of all, thanks for your letter of the 12th and the nice assumption that I am at least half a salesman. I have the blues for sure this month, and especially so in that I guess I said something about Jan was for Mr. Peck and Feb. was for you, and I just can’t seem to buy a sale in Feb. this year.
So it cheered me up a bit to think that SOMEBODY thought I could sell anyway. I will give Mr. Paler his Executive “pile o gold” and I know he will be delighted with it, and it was certainly most thoughtful of you to send it, but there again is why YOU are the sparkplug. I remember, many years ago The Wadham’s Company in Torrington had a 75th anniversary, and you wrote him a nice letter about it. The old chap was pleased to no end, and al long as he lived (he died last year) I always had whatever business in this line that he bought. I forget just how it went, but it was something about anyone that had kept their doors open through all those years of wars, depressions, recessions Etc should be very proud of it, and you know I don’t think he ever gave it a thought until you wrote him that letter, and he was kind of proud after that. Anyway may God rest his soul in Peace. He was a fine old gentleman. Of course I have always liked older people anyway. Even when I was a boy I chose the companionship of much older boys than myself.
There now, enough of that. I’ll just cross this week off as a dead loss, and try to get going the few days that I have left of the month, knowing that somebody THINKS I can sell anyway.
Now I will go on to the Ford Times. How nice of you and the Mrs. to think of the “old salt”. It is a very interesting magazine and our local Ford dealer always sent me one until he finally decided that I was a “dyed in the wool, confirmed Pontiac man” which I sure as heck am, so I would have not seen the item which is of tremendous interest to me unless you had sent it along.
The first dory that I ever used was many, many years ago when I used to help an old Civil War gent (and he was nearly 80 then) do his haying. His field was near a part of Frenchman’s Bay (which you have seen) and in those days they used to use seaweed and kelp for fertilizer for the gardens and field, so when there was nothing else to do, I used to take the dory and go collect seaweed and kelp, and I can smell it to this day. What a clean, glorious smell.
However, to really admire the dory you have to see it handled by the people that practically live in it and those of course are the Grand Banks Fisherman, and even more expert the Pilots.
I see Lunenburg is mentioned in the article and I have been there as well as every seaport along the Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island Coastline, in order of “ports of call” on the Steam Yacht Sachem, owned by a gentleman from Philadelphia by the name of Taylor.
First we anchored at St. Andrews, New Brunswick, and from there we went on up to all the ports. Yarmouth, Chester, Mahone Bay, Shelburne, Halifax and what have you.
We took on a pilot at Shelburne, if I remember rightly and it was a very rough sea. Of course when you take on a pilot, you lower a “gangway” down the side of the Yacht, a couple of “dory men” land the pilot on the gangway, and he takes you into the harbor. If you are going to dock, he of course goes right in with you and stays aboard until you are tied up, if you are going to anchor, he pilots you to the anchorage and the dory men pick him up again.
Anyway, as I said it was a very rough sea, but never if I live to be a hundred will I forget the way those chaps handled that dory. Of course the timing had to be perfect, or else the dory would smash into the gangway, but those chaps just timed the “crest of the wave” just right, and the pilot stepped off as lightly as a feather, and those chaps pulled away on the crest of the next waves that came along in a manner that was almost uncanny. Believe me a “dory” is a rugged boat.
A few nights after Shelburne, we were in Mahone Bay, I think it was, and our own launches (motor powered) were tied to the boom. Each night one of us unfortunate sailors had to take a little French Poodle that belonged to Mrs. Taylor ashore for his nightly walk. Mr. Taylor I might add (and which I did not find out until too late) hated the dog.
The night that the chore fell to me to take the poodle ashore was, and that’s the usual situation in Nova Scotia, a bit nippy to say the least. I took the dog ashore, gave him his nightly stroll, and as I went to step off onto the gangway with the poodle in my arms, the launch man (not being as good as the dory men) hit the gangway head on, so I went into the sea, dog and all.
The first thing I spied when I came up was my white sailors hat and struck out for it thinking it was the dog, but one of the sailors on board shouted at me “that’s not the dog, he is over there”, so I swam over and got the little bugger, threw him up on the gangway, where one of the sailors ran down and got him, and then dragged my own half frozen carcass up on the gangway.
I went down in the engine room, stripped down, dried out and put on some dry clothes, and by the time I had gotten back on deck again, Mrs. Taylor was there gushing about what a hero I was to have saved “little Fritzie”.
Well you know you can just bet I thought I was quite a guy until I met the Captain on deck the next morning. He was an old schoolmate of mothers. He said “Leon, I always credited you with a few brains, but after last night’s episode I have changed my mind.” I was quite upset and said “Why, what did I do?” He said “It’s not what you did do, but what you didn’t do. The “ole man” hates that darn dog like poison, and if you had let him drown, I would not be in the least surprised if he might not have written you a check for a thousand this morning, as it is we are saddled with the damn mutt for the rest of the cruise.”
Tags: Pop's Letters
I’ll be away on vacation until the beginning of March. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this music video from The Bards of Balance.
You can keep an eye out for other videos on our YouTube site.
Tags: Restoring Balance
Pop tells of his varied experiences as a sailor and of his first jobs as a youth in Maine. He also worries near the end of the letter that circumstances may prevent any of his sons from getting college degrees. For the record, this proved to be one of many instances of needless worry for Pop.
Mr. Harold Lufkin, V.P. August 1, 1961
Newton Mfg. Co.
Newton, Iowa.
Dear Mr. Lufkin:
I will answer your letters of the 19th and 26th both at the same time.
Yep! I get a terrific thrill out of a “storm at sea.” Although believe it or not, these little ponds around here give me the creeps, they look so murky and dark, yet when we were over the Mindan Deeps in the Philippines (five miles straight down) I did not feel the slightest apprehension.
We were (all at the same time) in the second battle of the Philippines and also one of the worst Typhoons that had hit the old Pacific in 110 years, or so they said at the time and I could well believe it.
We were in a “Task Force” of some 1200 ships of all tonnage and character. The waves were so high that they went into the ventilators way up in sky control, and there was about two feet of water sloshing around in the after mess halls. The shields for the 20 millimeter guns were rolled up just like toilet paper from the terrific force of the water.
At the time I was looking through a little slot, way up in Sky control and on our Port side was the Battleship New Jersey. The waves would hit her, and huge as she was, she almost completely disappeared from sight, then slowly (like a submarine coming up) she would rise out of the sea, shake herself like a shaggy old sheep dog, and just for seconds you would see her whole outline, and then Wham! Another sea would hit her and she would be almost submerged again. It did not seem possible that she could survive. We were of course undergoing the same kind of treatment, being in the same sea and only a few hundred yards away, but you cannot (like a person) see yourself as others see you, so I was just fascinated in watching the New Jersey. As for my own ship, I had complete confidence that, angry as old Father Neptune was, that we would survive all the same.
Yes! A passenger is just a passenger, but a sailor is part of his ship and she is part of him. I don’t imagine there can be any love for a ship (especially in a typhoon) by a passenger, but the ship and the sailor must combine their efforts to survive.
Of course I have always had an intense love of the sea. My first money was earned, “treading hay” at the sum of ten cents a day, and the field was right side of the Ocean, down in Maine or up in Maine, whichever you prefer.
The smell of the “flats and seaweed” at low tide, and the lonely (but lovely) dry of the seagulls, were the first sounds of my boyhood. What is it they say about seagulls? Something about the lost souls of sailors or something like that I believe.
My first paying job was driving an ice wagon in Bar Harbor Maine for the old Brewer Ice Co. Believe me, it was hard work too. A hundred to a hundred and fifty pound piece of ice, carried up a couple flights of stairs maybe, on the back of a 16 year old boy is WORK. It was not too bad though as you eventually learn to kind of “balance the weight.” The worst job was of course filling up the huge coolers of the large cottages and the markets. They would take tons and tons at a time, and we had to get inside the cooler and stack it up, so as to take up every possible foot of space with ice.
It was really a nice job though. Many of the Irish maids at the cottages always left a bottle of home made root beer and a piece of cake or something for the iceman, and of course the iceman was not at all adverse to chatting with some of those “beautiful and completely unspoiled Irish girls.” Straight from “the old sod” they were, and as innocent and unaffected as the day they were born. The girls of today (to me at least) look very shoddy in comparison with them.
However to get back to the Sea. My route was on West St. in Bar Harbor, and that as you know, runs right along the seawall. At this time of year (in fact exactly) in August, the British ships and the American ships were anchored in the Harbor for the annual Tennis matches at The Bar Harbor club. In addition to that, there would be as many as forty to fifty big Yachts lying at anchor in the Harbor. J.P. Morgans, Corsair. A big, black steam yacht. The Normahaul which belonged to Vincent Astor. The Alondra which belonged to Atwater Kent, the Lone Star, the Atlantic (a beautiful sail yacht which was always in the Cup race of Sir Thomas Lipton), and many, many others. It has been a long, long time, but I used to be able to tell the name of every Yacht in the Atlantic, the minute she came over the horizon.
At any rate, by the middle of the second summer on the Ice wagon, I could stand it no longer. Captain Parker, who ran the Ships chandlery asked me one morning if I would like a job on a Yacht, that the Sachem had lost one of their sailors and was leaving for Nova Scotia in the morning and must have a man.
I rushed back to the office of Brewer Ice Company and quit right then and there, and at 4 A. M. the next morning, we were heading out to Sea for Nova Scotia, and after that I just never got it out of my system. To this day I would “jump at the chance” to be called back into the Navy, but of course I am in my second fifty years, so I guess the hope is a dim one. Also I could not bear to leave Janet and the boys at this late stage in life.
Enough of the Sea. Yes! Bobby was a very lucky boy indeed, and we as his parents are very grateful to God indeed, that he was not only spared his life, but that outside of having to limp for a week, he is apparently just as good as ever.
I am a little upset (nothing unusual for me) this morning as David was warned yesterday by the Draft Board, that in spite of the fact that he has only one and one third more years at college that he still may be taken. I am both heartbroken and furious. Furious as all this Administration preaches is that Russia is ahead of us and that we must catch up, and then they consider cutting off David’s career at this age. Heartbroken because neither Ernie or Pete finished and David has the “stuff to see it through”. I guess I am not destined to have any College Graduates for Sons, but I do have five fine sons and that is something to be very thankful for indeed.
Well I have to take Dave back to Springfield now. He works days in a child study home taking care of disturbed children and nights as a waiter in Vincent’s Steak HOUSE OUTSIDE OF Springfield. (Sorry the keys slipped), so he is a pretty busy and tired boy, but has nearly enough money for his first semester already.
Hope to see you and the Mrs. during our lovely fall, except that if lack of rain continues, the foliage will be pretty dry looking.
Sincerely,
Leon R. Sinclair
Tags: Pop's Letters
Emerson Street is a short street with a 90 degree turn in the middle. My block is the east side of Emerson Street below the turn. Last week’s Sense of Place featured the brown house that belonged to Bill Hurst when I grew up. When he died a few years ago that left me the longest remaining resident of Emerson Street. The other houses, going from right to left, belonged to Colwell, Sinclair and O’Connor. O’Connor was the first to move away from the street during my lifetime, about when I was ten. The MacBurnie’s moved in, a large family including one son (Jim) who was my age.
Tags: Sense of Place
