Amongst my collection of books read and yet to be read are some number by Professor Dr. Bart D. Ehrman, who currently chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a recognised authority on the early Church.
Too bad his books are not required reading for the faithful: they just might learn something about the book they revere so much.
Here is my take on his text: "Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew." He delves into most of the major texts that circulated during the first century of the current era, and the various sects of Christian belief that these both engendered and supported. There are 'forged' gospels by Simon Peter, Jesus' closest disciple, and Judas Thomas, Jesus' alleged twin brother, the texts recently found at Nag Hammadi, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the epistles attributed to Paul but not written by him (some found in the New Testament), and numerous others. The sects that battled for supremacy included the Jewish-Christian Ebionites, the anti-Jewish Marcionites, and various 'Gnostic' sects, amongst others.
All of these groups had an unshakable faith in their version of the events in the life of Jesus; but all were at odds with one another. Could they all be right? Not hardly. Could they all be wrong? Quite possibly.
The battles Dr. Ehrman discusses show the ebb and flow of doctrine up through the fourth century C.E. until the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were codified. The story that these books - out of the hundreds that circulated up through that time frame - tell us today is a carefully formulated doctrine meant to shut out all other faiths, creeds and sects who had called themselves Christian, in order to capitalize on the symbiotic relationship with the Roman emperor and government.
The story of these battles, the lies told about and aspersions cast upon the various competing sects, makes one distrust all writings we have today, turn one's back on all forms for Christian faith as we might know it today, and disbelieve all the stories told from Sunday School to Wednesday evening Bible study.
For they are concocted, contrived and compiled from erroneous forgeries from nearly day one of the Christian era.
Were believers to read how their Bible came to be codified, how their creeds came to be formulated, how their most sacred stories came to be manipulated - they would sure shun Christianity as we who have studied these histories have done.
The religion is a sham, a contrivance, less than a shadow of what we can estimate the original intents and meanings to be. And they are provided in order to control the illiterate masses - just like those who first heard the word and believed: the most illiterate, the most gullible, the least critical of all who lived in those times and in the places.
For a believer to say, today, that he knows the word of God as written in His Book, the Bible, must make scholars of religion and the Bible laugh; the book they cherish today is a fraud. Pure and simple.
g
BLACK BEAUTY IS A'WAITING
THIS BEAUTY ROCKS!
Monday, September 27, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
CHAPTER 5: MAIN 70 - MAIN 78 .... THE ONGOING SAGA OF LIFE IN ALASKA
When I was just old enough to know something about telephones – you know, those big, black heavy plastic boxes with rotary dials that went “click-click-click” in rapid succession when you turned them, and hand pieces that looked and felt like lead dumbbells on a leash – Anchorage was what my father euphemistically called a “berg”.
As in, “This berg’s too small for two cab companies.”
But he was wrong, according to my definitions:
- A “city” is so large that you have too many neighbors and you don’t know nor do you want to know any of them;
- A “town” is so large that you still have numerous neighbors but you do know and let your children play with those who live on your same street, or perhaps the next street over;
- A “village” is small enough that most of your neighbors are your friends and everyone else is neighborly, even those who live many streets away;
- A “berg” is so tiny that all its residents are your neighbors and there are no streets!
Anchorage was definitely a village, albeit a very cosmopolitan one. We could claim, in the late ‘40’s, to be Alaska’s largest population center, to have Alaska’s largest “international” airport, seaplane base, Army base and Air base – and two taxi cab companies.
How may “bergs” have two cab companies?
In fact, how many “villages” can boast that? Maybe we were actually a small town; I’ll leave that open to debate.
But what isn’t debatable is the rivalry that existed between the Yellow Cab Company and its archrival, Union Cab.
The ubiquitous, yellow Yellow Cabs could be seen at the head of a billowing trail of dust as they raced though our streets. In my youth I thought of the color yellow as being closer to the shade of mustard, so dirty were these Chariots of Convenience.
Union cabs were far fewer and definitely less noticeable. Their drab green and grey two tone exteriors didn’t seem to show the dust and dirt so readily. Their drivers, too, were undistinguished, whereas the Yellow Cab drivers wore snappy yellow caps.
Like a train porter. Or an airport sky cap.
To a young boy, they had a military kind of look and aura, and were the favorites of my school friends and me.
And apparently of the townsfolk, as well, since it seemed to us that the fleet of Yellow Cabs kept growing and the number of Union cabs kept shrinking by comparison.
Their rivalry led to fare wars and advertising campaigns that kept us all in a state of eager anticipation, awaiting the next volley in their game of one-upmanship.
The most memorable to me was when each company came up with a slogan – and advertising jingle – based on its telephone number.
Being a village, as we were then, our phone numbers were prefixed with an exchange name. The “downtown” area was, of course, “Main”. We dialed “M” “A” as the prefix to those numbers. An astute phone user would know exactly where on the grid of Anchorage and its environs a particular number was located by having learned where all the prefixes were. “MA” was the core downtown, the business district.
And the Main exchange had – get ready for this – 99 numbers assigned to it. The number given to Yellow Cab was “MA70”, which we all pronounced as “Main Seven-Oh”.
Union Cab, a later addition to our growing community, was assigned “MA78”, which we all said as “Main Seven-Eight”.
The advertising war started when Yellow Cab began airing this jingle on our one radio station: “When you gotta go, call Main Seven-Oh!” Having a larger fleet, Yellow Cab used central dispatch. The ad implied, and correctly so, that your phone call started a cab on its way to you from the downtown headquarters. Cabbies sat around the pot belly stove in the cramped dispatch office drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, waiting for their turn. The dispatcher would write the address for pickup on a slip of paper, call the next driver and send him on his way.
The jingle was catchy, easy to remember, and boosted market share immediately. It also appealed to the old-timers in town who always “went” in a Yellow Cab.
But Union Cab, not to be outdone, countered with an equally ingenious jingle based on its “newer” number: “When you can’t wait, call Main Seven-Eight!”
Union Cab, you see, was the first to use radio dispatch in their vehicles. Many of their cabbies were war veterans who were accustomed to the use of two-way radio communication.
In truth, Union’s response time was much faster, since the dispatcher could call for a cab that was already in the area of the pickup address and a taxi could arrive in far less time than it would take for Yellow’s cab to drive all the way there from downtown.
The jingle was not only cute and memorable – it told the public just how different Union Cab was from its nemesis.
Because of their inspired counter to Yellow’s ad, Union Cab saw its own fleet grow over the next several years to match the size of their rival’s. The two companies traded places as Anchorage’s largest taxi operation for a couple years.
Right up until Anchorage switched to seven digit telephone numbers and Union Cab could no longer capitalize on being first with radio dispatch.
In later years as I reminisced about these two jingles I was struck by how appropriate they were, how memorable, how fixed in my mind even after forty-plus years. And how many gazillions of dollars Coke, or Pepsi, or General Motors, or any of the other current major corporations has spent trying to get their message across to the public – and how unmemorable their jingles are.
Maybe they could take a lesson from the Main 70 - Main 78 battle.
05. MAIN 70 – MAIN 78
© 6/14/99 Gene Brown
As in, “This berg’s too small for two cab companies.”
But he was wrong, according to my definitions:
- A “city” is so large that you have too many neighbors and you don’t know nor do you want to know any of them;
- A “town” is so large that you still have numerous neighbors but you do know and let your children play with those who live on your same street, or perhaps the next street over;
- A “village” is small enough that most of your neighbors are your friends and everyone else is neighborly, even those who live many streets away;
- A “berg” is so tiny that all its residents are your neighbors and there are no streets!
Anchorage was definitely a village, albeit a very cosmopolitan one. We could claim, in the late ‘40’s, to be Alaska’s largest population center, to have Alaska’s largest “international” airport, seaplane base, Army base and Air base – and two taxi cab companies.
How may “bergs” have two cab companies?
In fact, how many “villages” can boast that? Maybe we were actually a small town; I’ll leave that open to debate.
But what isn’t debatable is the rivalry that existed between the Yellow Cab Company and its archrival, Union Cab.
The ubiquitous, yellow Yellow Cabs could be seen at the head of a billowing trail of dust as they raced though our streets. In my youth I thought of the color yellow as being closer to the shade of mustard, so dirty were these Chariots of Convenience.
Union cabs were far fewer and definitely less noticeable. Their drab green and grey two tone exteriors didn’t seem to show the dust and dirt so readily. Their drivers, too, were undistinguished, whereas the Yellow Cab drivers wore snappy yellow caps.
Like a train porter. Or an airport sky cap.
To a young boy, they had a military kind of look and aura, and were the favorites of my school friends and me.
And apparently of the townsfolk, as well, since it seemed to us that the fleet of Yellow Cabs kept growing and the number of Union cabs kept shrinking by comparison.
Their rivalry led to fare wars and advertising campaigns that kept us all in a state of eager anticipation, awaiting the next volley in their game of one-upmanship.
The most memorable to me was when each company came up with a slogan – and advertising jingle – based on its telephone number.
Being a village, as we were then, our phone numbers were prefixed with an exchange name. The “downtown” area was, of course, “Main”. We dialed “M” “A” as the prefix to those numbers. An astute phone user would know exactly where on the grid of Anchorage and its environs a particular number was located by having learned where all the prefixes were. “MA” was the core downtown, the business district.
And the Main exchange had – get ready for this – 99 numbers assigned to it. The number given to Yellow Cab was “MA70”, which we all pronounced as “Main Seven-Oh”.
Union Cab, a later addition to our growing community, was assigned “MA78”, which we all said as “Main Seven-Eight”.
The advertising war started when Yellow Cab began airing this jingle on our one radio station: “When you gotta go, call Main Seven-Oh!” Having a larger fleet, Yellow Cab used central dispatch. The ad implied, and correctly so, that your phone call started a cab on its way to you from the downtown headquarters. Cabbies sat around the pot belly stove in the cramped dispatch office drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, waiting for their turn. The dispatcher would write the address for pickup on a slip of paper, call the next driver and send him on his way.
The jingle was catchy, easy to remember, and boosted market share immediately. It also appealed to the old-timers in town who always “went” in a Yellow Cab.
But Union Cab, not to be outdone, countered with an equally ingenious jingle based on its “newer” number: “When you can’t wait, call Main Seven-Eight!”
Union Cab, you see, was the first to use radio dispatch in their vehicles. Many of their cabbies were war veterans who were accustomed to the use of two-way radio communication.
In truth, Union’s response time was much faster, since the dispatcher could call for a cab that was already in the area of the pickup address and a taxi could arrive in far less time than it would take for Yellow’s cab to drive all the way there from downtown.
The jingle was not only cute and memorable – it told the public just how different Union Cab was from its nemesis.
Because of their inspired counter to Yellow’s ad, Union Cab saw its own fleet grow over the next several years to match the size of their rival’s. The two companies traded places as Anchorage’s largest taxi operation for a couple years.
Right up until Anchorage switched to seven digit telephone numbers and Union Cab could no longer capitalize on being first with radio dispatch.
- - - - - - - - - -
In later years as I reminisced about these two jingles I was struck by how appropriate they were, how memorable, how fixed in my mind even after forty-plus years. And how many gazillions of dollars Coke, or Pepsi, or General Motors, or any of the other current major corporations has spent trying to get their message across to the public – and how unmemorable their jingles are.
Maybe they could take a lesson from the Main 70 - Main 78 battle.
05. MAIN 70 – MAIN 78
© 6/14/99 Gene Brown
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
THE BLOGGER IS NOW A 'DISABLED VET'!
Back in November, 2007, during a routine annual medical exam, the doctor found that my white blood count was too high - in fact, it was in the area usually reserved for patients with leukemia. She ordered a visit to the hematologist who confirmed it: I had leukemia. Actually, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL). This is a leukemia of the blood and the bone marrow - the spongy stuff in the bones that makes the blood cells.
The hematologist asked what work I had done in the past that might have led to exposure to various causal agents, such as asbestos or Agent Orange. And the light went on: I was in Vietnam in January, 1964, while aboard the 7th Fleet flagship, the USS Providence, CLG-6. At the time I was playing lead trumpet in the Com7thFleet Band. It apparently didn't take much exposure - we were there three days, on the ground, playing concerts, marches and Admiral's receptions. But that was enough; both the trombonist Dave Courson and I contracted cancer from this little jaunt.
Dave, I soon found out, had struggled long and hard with the VA to get his medical claim approved; but he had gotten it. So I immediately contacted my local America Legion District Service Officer (DSO) and filed a claim with the VA for disability.
They initially rejected my claim: Navy records weren't detailed enough to specify that the band had been ashore; only that we were aboard the Providence. And being in the waters off Vietnam was not enough for the federal government to authorize the VA to accept my claim. In fact, they still only approve claims from veterans who had "boots ashore" or were in the "brown water navy" - meaning that you had served on the ground in Vietnam or were on the patrol boats in the inland waterways. But "blue water sailors" - those who served in the coastal waters off Vietnam, where the wind blew the Agent Orange spray onto your ship and polluted the water that you drank - these sailors are still denied their benefits, even though the VA's own investigations show that such exposure is a definite causal agent for contracting several forms of cancer.
Turning to the other members of the band, including Dave, I asked for their remembrances of that three day stint in Saigon. Sending their affirmative email responses along with numerous other documents I had from my Navy days (see - it DOES pay to be a pack rat and keep every scrap of paper from your past !!), including a copy of my handwritten itinerary, I appealed the VA decision.
And now, after nearly three years, I have been granted 100% disability. My status as a Disabled Vietnam Veteran is confirmed.
The prognosis of the hematologist is fairly positive: so long as the CLL remains 'asymptomatic' - that is, it's not racing off the charts, yet! - I might just outlive the disease. But if it gets a bug up its ass and decides to make a run for it, I'm in trouble. CLL is not curable; I'll have CLL the rest of my life. Just how much it will impinge on my continued enjoyment of life is unknown. But as long as I can read a good book, play a tune on my trumpet, peck away at the keyboard, and enjoy the companionship of family and friends, I'll be glad to be alive!
g
The hematologist asked what work I had done in the past that might have led to exposure to various causal agents, such as asbestos or Agent Orange. And the light went on: I was in Vietnam in January, 1964, while aboard the 7th Fleet flagship, the USS Providence, CLG-6. At the time I was playing lead trumpet in the Com7thFleet Band. It apparently didn't take much exposure - we were there three days, on the ground, playing concerts, marches and Admiral's receptions. But that was enough; both the trombonist Dave Courson and I contracted cancer from this little jaunt.
Dave, I soon found out, had struggled long and hard with the VA to get his medical claim approved; but he had gotten it. So I immediately contacted my local America Legion District Service Officer (DSO) and filed a claim with the VA for disability.
They initially rejected my claim: Navy records weren't detailed enough to specify that the band had been ashore; only that we were aboard the Providence. And being in the waters off Vietnam was not enough for the federal government to authorize the VA to accept my claim. In fact, they still only approve claims from veterans who had "boots ashore" or were in the "brown water navy" - meaning that you had served on the ground in Vietnam or were on the patrol boats in the inland waterways. But "blue water sailors" - those who served in the coastal waters off Vietnam, where the wind blew the Agent Orange spray onto your ship and polluted the water that you drank - these sailors are still denied their benefits, even though the VA's own investigations show that such exposure is a definite causal agent for contracting several forms of cancer.
Turning to the other members of the band, including Dave, I asked for their remembrances of that three day stint in Saigon. Sending their affirmative email responses along with numerous other documents I had from my Navy days (see - it DOES pay to be a pack rat and keep every scrap of paper from your past !!), including a copy of my handwritten itinerary, I appealed the VA decision.
And now, after nearly three years, I have been granted 100% disability. My status as a Disabled Vietnam Veteran is confirmed.
The prognosis of the hematologist is fairly positive: so long as the CLL remains 'asymptomatic' - that is, it's not racing off the charts, yet! - I might just outlive the disease. But if it gets a bug up its ass and decides to make a run for it, I'm in trouble. CLL is not curable; I'll have CLL the rest of my life. Just how much it will impinge on my continued enjoyment of life is unknown. But as long as I can read a good book, play a tune on my trumpet, peck away at the keyboard, and enjoy the companionship of family and friends, I'll be glad to be alive!
g
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
HERE'S AN INTERESTING SITE
If you're interested in the views of other Americans on the growing division between the religious and non-religious folks in the old U.S. of A., or between the various (and incredibly Numerous!!) religious sects themselves, take a look at this blog: http://tohellwithbetty.blogspot.com/2010/09/tennessee-mosque-burnings-christian.html
There's one thing for certain: the two main religions in America - Christian (and yes, I include here Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Christian Science, and all other, lesser numbered, ilk) and Islam - are being defined more and more each day by their extremist fringes.
And as might be expected, the great, silent majority of both religions sits idly by as these fanatics take over their religion, foment unrest for THEIR sake, and blatantly disregard the peace-loving tenets of each religion. (Yes, I know, most of the Koran ISN'T peace loving, but there are some few parts ...)
I hope you read and enjoy Betty's article.
g
There's one thing for certain: the two main religions in America - Christian (and yes, I include here Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Christian Science, and all other, lesser numbered, ilk) and Islam - are being defined more and more each day by their extremist fringes.
And as might be expected, the great, silent majority of both religions sits idly by as these fanatics take over their religion, foment unrest for THEIR sake, and blatantly disregard the peace-loving tenets of each religion. (Yes, I know, most of the Koran ISN'T peace loving, but there are some few parts ...)
I hope you read and enjoy Betty's article.
g
Monday, September 6, 2010
CHAPTER FOUR OF MY COLLECTED SHORT STORIES: MY FRIEND DARRELL
MY FRIEND DARREL
Darrel Bergt, my best friend of my early youth in Anchorage, Alaska, was also my envy. His hair was just a little curly while mine was not; when he'd get up in the morning he could go straight to the breakfast table without having to comb his hair and it would still look OK. I had to wet my hair and comb it or it would have cow licks sticking out in all different directions.
His father, Percy, was an executive at the local power or light company, I think. His family always seemed to have nice things, and I enjoyed playing at his house because of the many toys he had that I didn't. He was one of four children: Three boys and a girl corresponding in ages, roughly, to the four children in my family. Darrel, like I, was the youngest. His sister dated one of my older brothers for a short while. When I was about nine and his parents lived far out of town, one of Darrel's older brothers lived with my family for a year or so while working or going to school in town. He always had a sack in our refrigerator with lunch meat, cheese and mayonnaise and I always snacked on them when I would get home from school. I didn't know he often complained to my parents that someone was eating his lunch fixings. Until one day, when I opened the refrigerator door, I found he had pinned a large note to his lunch sack: "LEAVE MY FOOD ALONE!" Which I did after that.
Our two families were very close. We visited frequently at each other's home; our parents played Pinochle together every week. Darrel and I were inseparable.
Both of our families belonged to the First Methodist Church. In 1948, this was a small log cabin on 9th and G streets. My dad was choir director; my mother was the church pianist. The elder Bergts sang in the choir. So at Sunday morning services, Darrel and I, then about six years old, sat in the front row together, unattended.
During one service in the spring of '48 he and I sat together at the front of the church whispering, giggling, tickling, fidgeting, squirming and doing all the other things that young boys will do when told to be quiet and sit still. Which, of course, we didn't.
My mom glared at me many times throughout the service, to no avail. I knew well what the glare meant, but we were having too much fun for me to let a glare stop me. During the prayer she even came over to us and whispered to me to stop creating a disturbance or I would be punished after the service. Still, to no avail. And during the sermon there were more glares and finger wagging in my direction; but I was oblivious.
After morning service the pastor always walked down the aisle to the church door which he would dramatically open while my mom played the traditional recessional, and the congregation would obediently rise from their seats and file out the door, stopping to shake the pastor's hand while he rejoiced in their attendance. They would dutifully praise his sermon, thank him for the service and move on out the door. And always, my parents were the very last to leave, since my dad would talk to the choir about the next choir practice and my mom would be playing the recessional.
Except on this morning: This morning my mom jumped up from the piano stool, grabbed my hand and raced down the aisle ahead of the pastor. My little feet barely touched the floor as we flew towards the back of the church. The amazed pastor followed quickly, his black robe flowing in the turbulence created by our hasty retreat.
My mom flung open the door with great drama - the pastor could take a lesson from her flair - and stopped on the small porch. There, in full view of the pastor, the congregation, all the other children (my friends, who ALWAYS had to sit with their parents in church and ALWAYS had to sit still and be quiet: A fate I had never had to endure), my mom pulled down my pants and whacked me repeatedly on the rump, all the while telling me that I had better never again disregard her warnings, and had better listen to her every word, and if I ever again embarrassed her at church she would beat me "within an inch of my life" - one of her favorite expressions that I heard her use on me many times throughout my youth - all the while whacking me with her hand. I, of course, refused to cry or say I'm sorry. After all, my friends were all watching in horror mixed with glee!
How the screw had turned; their weekly envy of my freedom in the front row quickly became their delight that I, and not one of them, was getting the tar beat out of me in front of everybody. And of course, I could hear other parents admonishing their children - my friends - that this is what happens when you don't listen to your parents, and I was only one step away from becoming the city's worst juvenile delinquent, and so on.
Now, I don't mind telling you that my mom could do a pretty fine job of paddling a kid's butt. She had had three older boys on which to practice, so whenever she needed to discipline me she had years of experience. Her hands, and her heart it often seemed, were callused. And although my cries and pleadings to stop, and my tearful expressions of sorrow, usually would have gotten through to her heart, this Sunday morning I was as determined to bravely endure without crying out as she was determined to make sure everybody heard me say I'm sorry.
After what seemed like all Sunday morning, but was most likely only several minutes, I could bear the pain no longer, and cried the words for which she had been waiting, "I'm sorry, mom. I'll sit still from now on. I promise."
She stopped the whacking and pulled up my pants. I wiped at the tears, now steadily streaming down my face, and searched the sea of faces for Darrel's. He was staring at me, a look of satisfaction on his face: His mom hadn't beaten him in front of the masses! I knew that I would never forgive him for that look.
And I never forgot that beating in front of the church and the embarrassment I felt that Sunday morning: To this day I will not set foot inside a church.
The Bergts built a new house on a bluff overlooking Turnagain Arm many miles out of town and moved there when I was eight or nine. Before they moved, Darrel and I had visited back and forth at each other's house and played in each other's neighborhood. We had bulldozed and excavated his yard and my yard with our toy road graders and bulldozers, built roads and runways, reenacted major battles with our toy Civil War and World War soldiers, and carried on like young boys will do. But after he moved he never wanted to come into town and play in my yard anymore. It was more fun at his house, he said, because there were acres of woods in which to play, and freshly dozed mounds of dirt in which to build cities and forts, and we could explore for hours without getting bored. And I agreed.
So I began spending weekends at his house. I'd take clothes to school with me on Friday and ride home with him on the school bus after school. I hated that bus ride because the other children seemed so unruly and boisterous. Darrel didn't like them, either, and we kept very much to ourselves on the bus. But as soon as we reached his long driveway, as soon as we got off the bus and started the quarter mile trek to his house, we forgot all about the bus ride and the other children and would break into a run, challenging each other to see who could get to the front door first. Then, we'd play all Friday afternoon and all day Saturday, take our Saturday night bath together - where we'd reenact every naval battle in the history of mankind - and I'd meet my parents at church on Sunday morning, ending the weekend of nonstop playing at Darrel's.
His mom always fixed a huge breakfast for the family on Saturday mornings: Eggs, bacon or ham, toast, juice, a large glass or two of water "to keep our system clean," and some sweet treats. The toast, she always said, was to make our hair curly. It had apparently worked for Darrel and I needed little encouragement to eat my fill.
They had drilled their own well and had sunk 200 feet or more of pipe in order to get water to the house, which was built directly over the well. Shortly after they moved in, they noticed a significant drop in water pressure. His parents were very concerned that they may not have dug deeply enough and had run out of water in that well. This would mean they needed to dig another well away from the house. So they had a contractor come to the house to test the well, and he said it had quite an adequate amount of water in it.
Mrs. Bergt had noticed that the well water, which at first had been very clear and had had a sweet, refreshing taste, had taken on a murky look and now had a strange taste. But the contractor found the well water to be clear and clean.
So, they pulled out the pipe, section by section, to inspect it. And in one section they found a dead, drowned rat plugging the pipe.
I never enjoyed drinking the water there again. To this day I don't drink water unless I absolutely must. It always seems to taste funny.
And while my chest hair must have received benefit from all the toast I ate on Saturday mornings – it is curly to a fault - my head hair is thin and straight.
Just like a drowned rat's.
- - - - - - - - - -
Sometime during our junior high school years Darrel’s family moved from Alaska, back down to the South 48, and he and I lost track of each other. But I did learn many years later that he had become an Air Traffic Controller at the airport in Oakland, California. While living in San Francisco during the 1970s I called him there – and received a very terse, uninterested reception. We have never spoken together since.
His brother Neill, I heard, founded and was president of Markair Airline in Alaska during its brief lifespan. I guess the Bergt family was as nuts about airplanes as the Browns were.
(Photo from the Internet)
4th Avenue, Anchorage, taken in September, 1956.
LEAVING COMMENTS
I have reviewed all the options in the 'Help' menu and have set and re-set all indicators to allow anyone, whether signed up to this blog or not, whether in English or any foreign language (translation from Klingon is in progress: please be patient!), to leave a comment. However, it took me several attempts to write this posting on the blog, indicating that the blogmaster may be having difficulty of some sort.
So please: try to leave a comment if you want. And if it requires you to sign into the blog, please do so. It won't bite (altho, depending on who you are and how tasty I consider you to be, I might bite...) and I'd enjoy having your comment.
In any case - I just work here. It's not my problem. Take it up with the boss. She's at lunch. Write your complaint in a 1/2" X 1/2" square box and send by by courier to me ....
g
So please: try to leave a comment if you want. And if it requires you to sign into the blog, please do so. It won't bite (altho, depending on who you are and how tasty I consider you to be, I might bite...) and I'd enjoy having your comment.
In any case - I just work here. It's not my problem. Take it up with the boss. She's at lunch. Write your complaint in a 1/2" X 1/2" square box and send by by courier to me ....
g
Saturday, September 4, 2010
MORE FUN-FILLED FACTS FROM "THE PORTABLE ATHEIST"
The final chapter in the book, chapter 46, is an article excerpted from "Against All Gods" by British moral philosopher Anthony C. Grayling. In today's blog, I'm going to just sample some of his observations.
Re: the infallibility of the Catholic Church's Pope: "...the latest eternal verity to be abandoned is the doctrine of limbo - the place for the souls of unbaptised babies."
Re: sustaining religion in the face of growing Enlightenment: "... it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their votaries in a scare of intellectual infancy (how else do they keep absurdities seeming credible?)"
" "Intellectual infancy": the phrase reminds one that religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young. ...all the faiths currently jostling for our tax money to run their "faith-based" schools know that if they do not proselytise intellectually defenceless three- and four-year-olds, their grip will eventually loosen. Let us challenge religion to leave children alone until they are adults, whereupon they can be presented with the essentials of religion for mature consideration."
Re: the term 'Atheist': "Is an acceptable (acceptable to the faithful, that is) atheist one who thinks it is reasonable for people to believe that the gods suspend the laws of nature occasionally in answer to personal prayers? ... no atheist should call himself or herself one. The term already sells a pass to theists, because it invites debate on their ground. (Emphasis added by me.) A more appropriate term is "naturalist," denoting one who takes it that the universe is a natural realm, governed by nature's laws. This properly implies that there is nothing supernatural in the universe - no fairies or goblins, angels, demons, gods or goddesses. Such might as well call themselves "a-fairyists" or "a-goblinists" as "a-theists"; it would be every bit as meaningful or meaningless to do so."
((As an aside, by me: pursuing his term "naturalist", I would encourage you to visit the Pantheist page, at: http://www.pantheism.net/index.htm. Interesting to see the people who support the ideas proffered by Pantheism.))
"In conclusion, it is worth pointing out an allied and characteristic bit of jesuitry employed by folk of faith. This is their attempt to describe naturalism (atheism) as itself a "religion." But by definition a religion is something centred upon belief in the existence of supernatural agencies or entities in the universe; and not merely in their existence, but in their interest in human beings on this planet; and not merely their interest, but their particularly detailed interest in what humans wear, what they eat, when they eat it, what they read or see, what they treat as clean and unclean, who they have sex with and how and when; and so for a multitude of other things, like making women invisible beneath enveloping clothing, or strapping little boxes to their foreheads, or iterating formulae by rote five times a day, and so endlessly forth; with threats of punishment for getting any of it wrong.
"But naturalism (atheism) by definition does not premise such belief. Any view of the world which does not premise the existence of something supernatural is a philosophy, or a theory, or at worst an ideology. If it is either of the two first, at its best it proportions what it accepts to the evidence for accepting it, knows what would refute it, and stands ready to revise itself in the light of new evidence. This is the essence of science. It comes as no surprise that no wars have been fought, pogroms carried out, or burnings conducted at the stake, over rival theories in biology or astrophysics.
"And one can grant that the word "fundamental" does after all apply to this: in the phrase "fundamentally sensible.""
Read, again and particularly, his sentence above: ".... it proportions what it accepts to the evidence for accepting it ...." which leads us, of course, to the idea that 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence', which has NOT been the case in any religion to date. Religious claims must be taken 'on faith' due to the simple fact that THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF ANY KIND FOR THEIR CLAIMS!!!
Putting his above referenced sentence into simpler terms: if there is little evidence, there should be little acceptance; and it therefore follows that if there is no evidence, there should be no acceptance.
We have the intellect to discern when there is no evidence for a mystical claim; we need to use our intellect so we don't blindly follow the claims of the religious hucksters and those who sell their godly snake oil.
Remember my motto, emblazoned on many a tee shirt: Reliance on Ancient Mythologies is Degrading to the Rational Mind.
g
Re: the infallibility of the Catholic Church's Pope: "...the latest eternal verity to be abandoned is the doctrine of limbo - the place for the souls of unbaptised babies."
Re: sustaining religion in the face of growing Enlightenment: "... it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their votaries in a scare of intellectual infancy (how else do they keep absurdities seeming credible?)"
" "Intellectual infancy": the phrase reminds one that religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young. ...all the faiths currently jostling for our tax money to run their "faith-based" schools know that if they do not proselytise intellectually defenceless three- and four-year-olds, their grip will eventually loosen. Let us challenge religion to leave children alone until they are adults, whereupon they can be presented with the essentials of religion for mature consideration."
Re: the term 'Atheist': "Is an acceptable (acceptable to the faithful, that is) atheist one who thinks it is reasonable for people to believe that the gods suspend the laws of nature occasionally in answer to personal prayers? ... no atheist should call himself or herself one. The term already sells a pass to theists, because it invites debate on their ground. (Emphasis added by me.) A more appropriate term is "naturalist," denoting one who takes it that the universe is a natural realm, governed by nature's laws. This properly implies that there is nothing supernatural in the universe - no fairies or goblins, angels, demons, gods or goddesses. Such might as well call themselves "a-fairyists" or "a-goblinists" as "a-theists"; it would be every bit as meaningful or meaningless to do so."
((As an aside, by me: pursuing his term "naturalist", I would encourage you to visit the Pantheist page, at: http://www.pantheism.net/index.htm. Interesting to see the people who support the ideas proffered by Pantheism.))
"In conclusion, it is worth pointing out an allied and characteristic bit of jesuitry employed by folk of faith. This is their attempt to describe naturalism (atheism) as itself a "religion." But by definition a religion is something centred upon belief in the existence of supernatural agencies or entities in the universe; and not merely in their existence, but in their interest in human beings on this planet; and not merely their interest, but their particularly detailed interest in what humans wear, what they eat, when they eat it, what they read or see, what they treat as clean and unclean, who they have sex with and how and when; and so for a multitude of other things, like making women invisible beneath enveloping clothing, or strapping little boxes to their foreheads, or iterating formulae by rote five times a day, and so endlessly forth; with threats of punishment for getting any of it wrong.
"But naturalism (atheism) by definition does not premise such belief. Any view of the world which does not premise the existence of something supernatural is a philosophy, or a theory, or at worst an ideology. If it is either of the two first, at its best it proportions what it accepts to the evidence for accepting it, knows what would refute it, and stands ready to revise itself in the light of new evidence. This is the essence of science. It comes as no surprise that no wars have been fought, pogroms carried out, or burnings conducted at the stake, over rival theories in biology or astrophysics.
"And one can grant that the word "fundamental" does after all apply to this: in the phrase "fundamentally sensible.""
Read, again and particularly, his sentence above: ".... it proportions what it accepts to the evidence for accepting it ...." which leads us, of course, to the idea that 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence', which has NOT been the case in any religion to date. Religious claims must be taken 'on faith' due to the simple fact that THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF ANY KIND FOR THEIR CLAIMS!!!
Putting his above referenced sentence into simpler terms: if there is little evidence, there should be little acceptance; and it therefore follows that if there is no evidence, there should be no acceptance.
We have the intellect to discern when there is no evidence for a mystical claim; we need to use our intellect so we don't blindly follow the claims of the religious hucksters and those who sell their godly snake oil.
Remember my motto, emblazoned on many a tee shirt: Reliance on Ancient Mythologies is Degrading to the Rational Mind.
g
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
CHAPTER THREE: FUN MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD IN ALASKA - A CONTINUATION
Butch Coomer, Human Guinea Pig
My three older brothers didn’t usually play with me. At nine, twelve and fifteen they had outgrown the kinds of games a five year old liked to play. So, I learned to explore the woods around our new house, alone, and learned to ride a couple-of-sizes-too-big bicycle on Sunset Lane, alone, and hunted for pollywogs and tadpoles in the small lake and stream that were in a marshy area not too far from Butch Coomer’s house, alone.
Did I say “house?” Actually, I remember it as being a very small, several room shack. It had a tar paper roof that leaked when it rained and plywood sheets for siding. The floor was always covered with dirt and mud from everybody’s shoes so I don’t really know what it was made out of. As with other houses on this prestigious lane, Butch’s house had no indoor toilet. I’m not certain it if had a well or if they had to carry water to the house for cooking and drinking. Only those with a well could take a bath at home, as no one could transport enough water to fill a tub. I suspect his didn’t.
Our house did have a well: It was hand dug by my dad and us four boys, under the barn after it had been put in its place on our property. The bigger boys helped dad dig it to about four or five feet deep. We would all crawl under the house – remember, it was sitting on skids perhaps a foot and a half or two feet off the ground – crouch as low as possible and dig. They used the short handled army trenching shovels, since a regular shovel had too long a handle for them to use underneath the barn.
Then, they would lower me in a bucket and I would dig with that little shovel. When I’d filled the bucket they would haul it up, drag it out from under the barn and dump it in an ever-growing dirt pile beside the house.
All five of us took turns digging. But to me at five years old, all I remember is that it was me. Alone. In a dark, damp, cold pit in the ground underneath a big barn that smelled of cow dung and chicken poop. Alone. Digging with that little shovel.
Sometimes one of the other boys would shine a light down the well to see how deep I was and if we had hit the water table yet. But I would know that: I’d be standing in cold water! Exactly why we dug the well in that spot, under the house, instead of beside the house I can only conjecture. Since the temperature in winter might drop to a minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit – that’s -30! – an outside well and its plumbing would certainly remain frozen most of the long winter.
But as a five year old I neither knew this nor cared much about the physics of freezing water. So I dug. When I did finally reach water, they pulled me up for the last time and finished digging, then casing, the well. They assembled a one inch pipe and connected it to a large, anodized metal hand pump bolted to the shelf in the room that served as our kitchen - and during the first winter, also served as our dining room, reading room, library, bedrooms, closet and guest rooms.
I learned to prime the pump by pouring a ladle of water from a bucket kept on that shelf down the top of the pump, then pump the handle up and down, up and down, listening to the sucking sound as the pump tried to coax the well to give up a little water for us. And I learned the true joy of the rewards for my efforts when pure, icy cold water came gushing out of the pump and into the little sink.
We would always fill our bucket so there was always water to prime the pump the next time. Woe to you if you left the little bucket empty!
Did we escape having our pipes frozen? Usually. But occasionally my dad and older brothers would let themselves down through the trapdoor they’d rigged in the kitchen area, light a blowtorch and gently thaw out the pipe. When it seemed ready to accept our efforts, another one of us would prime the pump and heave on the handle.
- - - - - - - - - -
But as I said, Butch’s house didn’t have a well. So Butch looked filthy and smelled filthy. He was about the age of my brother Dick, perhaps twelve or so. While his mom worked he was to watch his two younger siblings. But they pretty much took care of themselves, hardly venturing out of their house even on the best of days. I don’t know what they did to pass their days: They didn’t come outside much and I didn’t enjoy going in their house so I rarely saw them.
Butch seemed to talk a little slow. Even to me, at five, he sounded like he was never fully awake. My brothers called him names like moron, or idiot, or sometimes imbecile. I didn’t know exactly what those words meant, but I sensed they meant he wasn’t normal.
When we weren’t digging that first summer, Butch would try to play with my brothers. The oldest, Skip, was too busy with work on the house to play. But Dick and Ernie liked to play cowboys and Indians with Butch.
I remember he liked to be the cowboy. He’d chase through the marsh, getting soaked and covered with mud. Then race through the woods yelling and slobbering after them. He’d use his fingers as pistols and shoot his imaginary revolvers as he ran. And they would pretend to shoot arrows from imaginary bows, whooping and yelling in their best warrior style.
Then, one day in fall, when the sun shone its warmest and the leaves were offering our eyes their most glorious colors, Dick and Ernie got one of the metal pipes we’d used for the well and sunk it deep in the ground so about four feet of it stuck straight up.
It was planted on a little knoll overlooking the marshy pond, maybe a quarter mile from the end of Sunset Lane.
This day, when the Indians captured the cowboy, they stripped him to his shorts and tied him to the pole. Using rope, they secured his ankles, then tied his waist tight to the pole so he cried out, and pulled his arms behind him, tying his hands behind the pole. Lastly, they tied a bandana around his eyes, knotting it behind the pole so his head was pulled hard against the metal.
I watched from a little distance: I’d never before seen them be so rough with him. Now, they filled a bucket from the pond and repeatedly doused him, cleaning the “white man’s stench from him.”
Wet and cold, tied and blindfolded, Butch began to cry out. They danced and shouted all the more – were they still playing? I couldn’t be certain – dousing him, poking him with sticks and terrifying both him and me.
I ran home, through the woods, past the pond, down the dirt trail we called a road and across the small clearing that served as a yard and parking place. Had I heard my mother calling? I hoped so.
But no, the house was empty. Neither of my parents was home from work yet and Skip was nowhere in sight.
Later my brothers came home. They looked tired and dirty, but somehow happy and satisfied, as though they had done something that day they had wanted to do for a long, long time.
When I went to that little knoll a couple days later, Butch wasn’t tied up and the pole was gone. Had I really seen that? No one ever spoke of that incident again, not Ernie, not Dick, and not Butch. Too this day I wonder if it was real or did I have a really bad dream?
- - - - - - - - -
Sometime in winter that year – 1947 – around the time of my sixth birthday, Grandpa Wilkins, my maternal grandfather in Pennsylvania, suffered a heart attack. Fearing he might die, my mother hurriedly flew to see him.
This left us five “men” to fend for ourselves. Skip was still busy helping insulate and frame the section of this barn in which we were to live all winter long, and neither Ernie nor I knew anything about cooking, so Dick was “volunteered.” He had joined the Scouts, so he welcomed the opportunity to learn how to do even more things and work on some Merit Badges at the same time.
As a matter of fact, Dick did so well in Scouting that he became the youngest boy to be awarded Eagle Scout in Alaska up to that time, and he was one of perhaps four Scouts to attend the World Jamboree in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1950. On the way home from the Jamboree he toured several famous European cities, most memorably Venice. There, he was treated to the sight of the city’s Death Row: a stone basement that, during most of the year, was slightly above water. But annually, during the period when the city’s canals are inundated beyond capacity, the water pours through the barred windows of this prison, flooding Death Row and drowning the condemned who occupy its cells.
A picture postcard of the era, which he brought home to share with us all, shows an arching, stone causeway between the city courthouse on one side of the canal and Death Row on the other. The windows of the basement are barely a foot above the normal water level, and you know the prisoners can see daily the fate that awaits them at the spring high tide.
But in 1947 he wasn’t yet so accomplished a cook. We ate watery soups, crusty oat cereal, brittle spaghetti and who knows what else.
After a couple days of being ashamed of the food he was preparing, he decided to use Butch as his “tester.” Dick had labored over a huge pot of peas he was cooking for a ham and pea soup. He knew we all liked pea soup, and if this dinner was actually edible he’d earn the praise – and perhaps forgiveness – of us all.
Late in the afternoon he had Butch come over to taste the soup. Ladling some into a bowl he watched Butch eat it all. Then eat a second and third helping. There was plenty – Dick has used our ten quart pressure cooker as the pot – so Butch ate ‘till he was full. Then, saying it was “pretty tasty” he went back down the road to his own house. We all waited for dad to get home so we could all sit down for dinner.
But before we could taste it for ourselves, one of Butch’s little brothers knocked at our door. Butch was very sick, he said. Butch was holding his stomach and vomiting all over the floor. Could we come with him to help, since his mother wasn’t home yet?
Ernie was left to watch me; Dick and Skip ran down the road to see what was wrong with Butch. My dad got home just after that, and he too went to the little shack at the end of the lane. In minutes they had brought Butch back and loaded him into our car. Dad and Skip drove him to a doctor who lived on Spenard Road partway into town.
Dick dumped the pea soup into the pit that was out back of the house where we put all the kitchen scraps. That pit was about halfway from the door to the privy – the outhouse that sat in the woods a hundred feet or so from the house. After we threw food into the pit we’d shovel some dirt over the food to help keep wild animals from being attracted to it.
What was wrong with our dinner, I asked. Dick said the cans of peas must have gotten dented because Butch got very sick from the soup. He called it botulism. I didn’t know what it was, but was happy that Butch got better in a week or so.
Maybe having Butch as the guinea pig for that batch of soup saved all our lives that day. I think about that sometimes.
- - - - - - - - -
Dick really learned to enjoy cooking during the two weeks my mom was gone that winter. To this day he can throw together a pretty decent meal and make a lot of it from scratch, too.
He made a very memorable batch of spaghetti, I recall. Again using the ten quart pressure cooker as his pot, he filled it full of water, added a shaker of salt, and brought it to a boil. Then he opened five pounds of spaghetti noodles – Army surplus food in mess hall-sized packages – and dropped them all in the water.
In minutes the noodles started to boil over the top of the cooker.
“Bring another pan,” he yelled to nobody in particular. “Bring another pot,” he yelled again. We did, and he filled that one too. A second and third burner were lighted on the stove.
Three more times he yelled for another pan and three more times we came running with a container to catch the overflow from the pressure cooker. Noodles and froth covered the stove, his clothes and the floor. There weren’t burners enough to handle the pots, so some sat on the 50 gallon drum that we used as our heater.
From this little incident we boys learned several important lessons that have served us all very well in life:
- spaghetti noodles expand, perhaps exponentially, as they cook;
- adding too much salt to boiling water creates a frothy head that resembles good draft beer;
- you needn’t cook five pounds of spaghetti noodles in a ten quart cooker for five people’s dinner;
- Unless you want to eat spaghetti till your mom gets home!
My three older brothers didn’t usually play with me. At nine, twelve and fifteen they had outgrown the kinds of games a five year old liked to play. So, I learned to explore the woods around our new house, alone, and learned to ride a couple-of-sizes-too-big bicycle on Sunset Lane, alone, and hunted for pollywogs and tadpoles in the small lake and stream that were in a marshy area not too far from Butch Coomer’s house, alone.
Did I say “house?” Actually, I remember it as being a very small, several room shack. It had a tar paper roof that leaked when it rained and plywood sheets for siding. The floor was always covered with dirt and mud from everybody’s shoes so I don’t really know what it was made out of. As with other houses on this prestigious lane, Butch’s house had no indoor toilet. I’m not certain it if had a well or if they had to carry water to the house for cooking and drinking. Only those with a well could take a bath at home, as no one could transport enough water to fill a tub. I suspect his didn’t.
Our house did have a well: It was hand dug by my dad and us four boys, under the barn after it had been put in its place on our property. The bigger boys helped dad dig it to about four or five feet deep. We would all crawl under the house – remember, it was sitting on skids perhaps a foot and a half or two feet off the ground – crouch as low as possible and dig. They used the short handled army trenching shovels, since a regular shovel had too long a handle for them to use underneath the barn.
Then, they would lower me in a bucket and I would dig with that little shovel. When I’d filled the bucket they would haul it up, drag it out from under the barn and dump it in an ever-growing dirt pile beside the house.
All five of us took turns digging. But to me at five years old, all I remember is that it was me. Alone. In a dark, damp, cold pit in the ground underneath a big barn that smelled of cow dung and chicken poop. Alone. Digging with that little shovel.
Sometimes one of the other boys would shine a light down the well to see how deep I was and if we had hit the water table yet. But I would know that: I’d be standing in cold water! Exactly why we dug the well in that spot, under the house, instead of beside the house I can only conjecture. Since the temperature in winter might drop to a minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit – that’s -30! – an outside well and its plumbing would certainly remain frozen most of the long winter.
But as a five year old I neither knew this nor cared much about the physics of freezing water. So I dug. When I did finally reach water, they pulled me up for the last time and finished digging, then casing, the well. They assembled a one inch pipe and connected it to a large, anodized metal hand pump bolted to the shelf in the room that served as our kitchen - and during the first winter, also served as our dining room, reading room, library, bedrooms, closet and guest rooms.
I learned to prime the pump by pouring a ladle of water from a bucket kept on that shelf down the top of the pump, then pump the handle up and down, up and down, listening to the sucking sound as the pump tried to coax the well to give up a little water for us. And I learned the true joy of the rewards for my efforts when pure, icy cold water came gushing out of the pump and into the little sink.
We would always fill our bucket so there was always water to prime the pump the next time. Woe to you if you left the little bucket empty!
Did we escape having our pipes frozen? Usually. But occasionally my dad and older brothers would let themselves down through the trapdoor they’d rigged in the kitchen area, light a blowtorch and gently thaw out the pipe. When it seemed ready to accept our efforts, another one of us would prime the pump and heave on the handle.
- - - - - - - - - -
But as I said, Butch’s house didn’t have a well. So Butch looked filthy and smelled filthy. He was about the age of my brother Dick, perhaps twelve or so. While his mom worked he was to watch his two younger siblings. But they pretty much took care of themselves, hardly venturing out of their house even on the best of days. I don’t know what they did to pass their days: They didn’t come outside much and I didn’t enjoy going in their house so I rarely saw them.
Butch seemed to talk a little slow. Even to me, at five, he sounded like he was never fully awake. My brothers called him names like moron, or idiot, or sometimes imbecile. I didn’t know exactly what those words meant, but I sensed they meant he wasn’t normal.
When we weren’t digging that first summer, Butch would try to play with my brothers. The oldest, Skip, was too busy with work on the house to play. But Dick and Ernie liked to play cowboys and Indians with Butch.
I remember he liked to be the cowboy. He’d chase through the marsh, getting soaked and covered with mud. Then race through the woods yelling and slobbering after them. He’d use his fingers as pistols and shoot his imaginary revolvers as he ran. And they would pretend to shoot arrows from imaginary bows, whooping and yelling in their best warrior style.
Then, one day in fall, when the sun shone its warmest and the leaves were offering our eyes their most glorious colors, Dick and Ernie got one of the metal pipes we’d used for the well and sunk it deep in the ground so about four feet of it stuck straight up.
It was planted on a little knoll overlooking the marshy pond, maybe a quarter mile from the end of Sunset Lane.
This day, when the Indians captured the cowboy, they stripped him to his shorts and tied him to the pole. Using rope, they secured his ankles, then tied his waist tight to the pole so he cried out, and pulled his arms behind him, tying his hands behind the pole. Lastly, they tied a bandana around his eyes, knotting it behind the pole so his head was pulled hard against the metal.
I watched from a little distance: I’d never before seen them be so rough with him. Now, they filled a bucket from the pond and repeatedly doused him, cleaning the “white man’s stench from him.”
Wet and cold, tied and blindfolded, Butch began to cry out. They danced and shouted all the more – were they still playing? I couldn’t be certain – dousing him, poking him with sticks and terrifying both him and me.
I ran home, through the woods, past the pond, down the dirt trail we called a road and across the small clearing that served as a yard and parking place. Had I heard my mother calling? I hoped so.
But no, the house was empty. Neither of my parents was home from work yet and Skip was nowhere in sight.
Later my brothers came home. They looked tired and dirty, but somehow happy and satisfied, as though they had done something that day they had wanted to do for a long, long time.
When I went to that little knoll a couple days later, Butch wasn’t tied up and the pole was gone. Had I really seen that? No one ever spoke of that incident again, not Ernie, not Dick, and not Butch. Too this day I wonder if it was real or did I have a really bad dream?
- - - - - - - - -
Sometime in winter that year – 1947 – around the time of my sixth birthday, Grandpa Wilkins, my maternal grandfather in Pennsylvania, suffered a heart attack. Fearing he might die, my mother hurriedly flew to see him.
This left us five “men” to fend for ourselves. Skip was still busy helping insulate and frame the section of this barn in which we were to live all winter long, and neither Ernie nor I knew anything about cooking, so Dick was “volunteered.” He had joined the Scouts, so he welcomed the opportunity to learn how to do even more things and work on some Merit Badges at the same time.
As a matter of fact, Dick did so well in Scouting that he became the youngest boy to be awarded Eagle Scout in Alaska up to that time, and he was one of perhaps four Scouts to attend the World Jamboree in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1950. On the way home from the Jamboree he toured several famous European cities, most memorably Venice. There, he was treated to the sight of the city’s Death Row: a stone basement that, during most of the year, was slightly above water. But annually, during the period when the city’s canals are inundated beyond capacity, the water pours through the barred windows of this prison, flooding Death Row and drowning the condemned who occupy its cells.
A picture postcard of the era, which he brought home to share with us all, shows an arching, stone causeway between the city courthouse on one side of the canal and Death Row on the other. The windows of the basement are barely a foot above the normal water level, and you know the prisoners can see daily the fate that awaits them at the spring high tide.
But in 1947 he wasn’t yet so accomplished a cook. We ate watery soups, crusty oat cereal, brittle spaghetti and who knows what else.
After a couple days of being ashamed of the food he was preparing, he decided to use Butch as his “tester.” Dick had labored over a huge pot of peas he was cooking for a ham and pea soup. He knew we all liked pea soup, and if this dinner was actually edible he’d earn the praise – and perhaps forgiveness – of us all.
Late in the afternoon he had Butch come over to taste the soup. Ladling some into a bowl he watched Butch eat it all. Then eat a second and third helping. There was plenty – Dick has used our ten quart pressure cooker as the pot – so Butch ate ‘till he was full. Then, saying it was “pretty tasty” he went back down the road to his own house. We all waited for dad to get home so we could all sit down for dinner.
But before we could taste it for ourselves, one of Butch’s little brothers knocked at our door. Butch was very sick, he said. Butch was holding his stomach and vomiting all over the floor. Could we come with him to help, since his mother wasn’t home yet?
Ernie was left to watch me; Dick and Skip ran down the road to see what was wrong with Butch. My dad got home just after that, and he too went to the little shack at the end of the lane. In minutes they had brought Butch back and loaded him into our car. Dad and Skip drove him to a doctor who lived on Spenard Road partway into town.
Dick dumped the pea soup into the pit that was out back of the house where we put all the kitchen scraps. That pit was about halfway from the door to the privy – the outhouse that sat in the woods a hundred feet or so from the house. After we threw food into the pit we’d shovel some dirt over the food to help keep wild animals from being attracted to it.
What was wrong with our dinner, I asked. Dick said the cans of peas must have gotten dented because Butch got very sick from the soup. He called it botulism. I didn’t know what it was, but was happy that Butch got better in a week or so.
Maybe having Butch as the guinea pig for that batch of soup saved all our lives that day. I think about that sometimes.
- - - - - - - - -
Dick really learned to enjoy cooking during the two weeks my mom was gone that winter. To this day he can throw together a pretty decent meal and make a lot of it from scratch, too.
He made a very memorable batch of spaghetti, I recall. Again using the ten quart pressure cooker as his pot, he filled it full of water, added a shaker of salt, and brought it to a boil. Then he opened five pounds of spaghetti noodles – Army surplus food in mess hall-sized packages – and dropped them all in the water.
In minutes the noodles started to boil over the top of the cooker.
“Bring another pan,” he yelled to nobody in particular. “Bring another pot,” he yelled again. We did, and he filled that one too. A second and third burner were lighted on the stove.
Three more times he yelled for another pan and three more times we came running with a container to catch the overflow from the pressure cooker. Noodles and froth covered the stove, his clothes and the floor. There weren’t burners enough to handle the pots, so some sat on the 50 gallon drum that we used as our heater.
From this little incident we boys learned several important lessons that have served us all very well in life:
- spaghetti noodles expand, perhaps exponentially, as they cook;
- adding too much salt to boiling water creates a frothy head that resembles good draft beer;
- you needn’t cook five pounds of spaghetti noodles in a ten quart cooker for five people’s dinner;
- Unless you want to eat spaghetti till your mom gets home!
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