IN T HE PRESENCE OF ANCESTORS

The Paddle to Seattle in 1989 was coordinated by our good friend Emmett Oliver (1913-2016) a member of the Quinalt Nation, retired Coast Guard commander, and educator, was serving on one of the State of Washington’s centennial committees. Tall ships would be participating in the celebration, and Oliver felt the state’s indigenous population was being ignored.

The high profile return of Coast Salish canoes to ancestral waters was a shot in the arm to Native cultures. A new generation of canoe carvers emerged. Young ones began learning their Native language. Elders who as children were punished for speaking their language, began teaching their dances, songs and stories.

Then, in 1993, in response to an invitation issued during the Paddle to Seattle, canoes traveled to Heiltsuk First Nation in Bella Bella, British Columbia, and the Tribal canoe Journey was born.

Villages long separated were once more connected by Native pride. Once more Arts and Culture were exchanged.

Emmett Oliver is gone, but his legacy burns on in his descendants. Son Marvin Oliver, professor of Art at the University of Washington, and daughter Marilyn Bard, are involved in the Journey, even the youngest grandchildren, too young to be pullers are learning their heritage. In the water, in their canoes, as they are traveling the highways of their ancestors, they cannot help but feel the powerful connection to their people’s lifeways, and for the connection to the other tribal territories they now visit.

OLD GUYS RULE!

Today in retaliation to the incompetency of local government inadequacy, Dr. A rose at five a.m. and joined the waiting line at the DMV to politely inquire where the heck his driver’s license was hiding within their files.

Paperwork in hand, and a somewhat pleasant attitude in place, he put the question of age to them. “Does the fact that I am 92 years of age have anything to do with putting my license in the holding file?” As our daughter reminded me, does the fact that he has never had an accident, that he drove over 300,000 miles a year over all kinds of terrain, and that his faculties are intact, mean nothing?

His Danish charm in full operation, they put him behind the wheel of his car to demonstrate that he still had it, and renewed his license for two years. It is truly a day of celebration!

THE GREYHOUND BUS

During the years I was busy growing up in Long Beach, CA, my maternal grandfather came to celebrate each holiday with us. Having been long divorced from my grandmother, with whom we made our home, he lived alone in the tiny town of Tujunga, nestled in the arid foothills of the San Gabriel mountains east of the city of Los Angeles. He moved there sometime in the 1930’s, taking advantage of the dry mountain climate as a palliative for his asthma.

I remember the long hot, infrequent drives we made when we visited him. Upon arrival, we asked for him by name, and were directed to the clump of large oak trees in the park, where card tables with other old men seemed to play unending cribbage games. But our best visits were when he came to stay with us.

It never occurred to me to wonder how he got to our house. He had no car, yet there he would be standing on our front porch; a small grey man, dressed in a grey suit and wool cap, carrying a battered cardboard suitcase and a jolly smile. To my knowledge he never owned a car, so he took the bus whenever and wherever he wanted to travel.

“GO GREYHOUND AND LEAVE THE DRIVING TO US”

Aptly named, the Greyhound bus has been in operation since 1914, thanks to a young entrepreneur named Carl Eric Wickman, who came from Sweden in 1905 to work in the mines in Minnesota. When he was laid off in 1914, he went to work as a Hupmobile salesman. Failing as a car salesman, he took his own vehicle, a seven passenger car, and transported mine workers from Hibbing, Minnesota to Alice, Minnesota, (which also happened to be where the saloons were) for 15 cents a ride.

In 1915 he joined forces with a similar service going as far as Duluth, Minnesota. By the end of World War 1, Wickman had 18 buses, and saw a profit of $40,000. Four years later, he purchased a West Coast operation and began the first national intercity bus company.

The Greyhound name had its origins on the inaugural run from Superior. Wisconsin to Wausau, Wisconsin, when the operator, Ed Stone, saw the reflection of his 1920’s bus in a store window as they passed. For some reason it reminded him of a greyhound dog, so he changed the name of that segment of the route from the Blue Goose Lines to Greyhound. The name became popular, calling to mind the speed of the greyhound dog, and later applied to the entire network.

After my father retired from the Navy, he and my mother moved to Grants Pass, Oregon, my father’s hometown. In order for me to visit, I had to drive or take the bus, as there was no airport, and the railroad only went as far as Dunsmuir, CA. So gathering my two daughters aged four and six, the three of us set off on our first Greyhound bus ride. My husband drove us to the downtown station in Oakland, CA for an overnight adventure. And an adventure it was.

A big city bus station at night was seemingly a gathering place for people who had no place else to go. As I look back on it, it brings back memories of the depressing Marilyn Monroe movie “Bus Stop” But a night trip with small children seemed a better option for us,.

Once on the bus, we found it to be large, spacious and clean, with enough room to spread out. I had packed enough snacks to last the night, but the convenience or inconvenience of bus travel is that it stops at every small station along the way to pick up or drop off passengers. Greyhound operates 2,700 stations across America, but in small to mid-size cities, an agent can operate from a convenience store or a roadside stop.

It seemed that just as we fell asleep, we were awakened by the bright lights of a new stop, and the voice of the driver telling us to get off and stretch our legs, drink coffee, or get a bite to eat. Luggage is stored in an enormous cavern under the bus, which sends bangs and crashes throughout the night as it is loaded. Then we were back in the bus and on our way again.

The long night over, in bright sunshine with dry mouths and sleepy eyes, we were met at the Greyhound bus station in Grants Pass by happy grandparents. A successful journey.

The Greyhound bus can take you anywhere, anytime.

A ONCE IN A LIFETIME GUY

I always knew that I had to write about Uncle Henry; one of those uncommon men who enter your life quietly and remind you that goodness abounds in unlikely places.

Uncle Henry married my mother’s sister, Aunt Corrine, in Saudi Arabia sometime in the 1950’s when both were working for Aramco. It was a fortunate union for both of them.

During the 1950’s I was involved with family and work, so I missed most of the good stuff as I like to call their life over there, but later, when they returned to their native soil after 30 years overseas, I caught up.

Henry Alisch was born in New Jersey to a German-American family, and whose cheerful Bavarian mother was often ill. Henry, much like his mother in personality, was her loving caregiver.

Late in the 1920’s when he finished high school, he and his best friend met a man who gave them his business card and offered them jobs in the movies if they wanted to come out to California.

Saying goodbye to family and New Jersey, they hopped a train and came to Hollywood to become movie stars. When they presented the business card to the person at the gate of the movie studio, they found that their benevolent “producer” no longer worked at the studio.

Friendless and out of cash, they quickly found jobs as bell boys at one of the hotels in downtown Beverly Hills, where they were paid 25 cents plus tips per bag to carry them up to the rooms. Both boys being good looking and personable, they amassed a small stash of extra cash.

Lindbergh had already made his flight across the ocean in the last decade, and the barnburners were on each corner offering flying lessons for $5.00 each to eager young men. Feeling brave and optimistic, Henry, or Hank as he began to be called, took a few lessons and got his pilot’s license.

The war had started in Canada, and Hank’s friend went off to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. Henry’s eyesight prevented him from joining up, but he spent four years in MATS, Military Air Transport Service, ferrying planes to Europe during the war. Being highly intelligent, he became an expert in airplane maintenance.

In 1946 the War was over and Henry saw an ad for Airplane Tech, top pay, overseas. Knowing he was qualified, and looking for new adventure, he stepped off the DC-3 and onto the hot tarmac in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia into 124 degree heat. Wishing him well as they picked up their suitcases and stepped onto the waiting airplane were two young men on their way back home.

Aramco, or American Arabian Oil Co. had a few planes, and Hank was in charge of their maintenance. Dhahran had an American community where he met a beautiful blonde secretary who had arrived in 1949. On a two year contract with Standard Oil of California; this was my Aunt Corrine.

For the next 30 years they lived an exciting life while traveling around Europe for work and pleasure. While Aramco had very few planes when Henry arrived, through the years that number greatly increased. They went often to the Rolls Royce factory in England, and to the Hague to KLM Royal Dutch Airline to check up on engines and parts for the Aramco planes.

During their travels, my Aunt, who had extraordinarily good taste, was able to collect first edition books in England, lovely Persian rugs, handmade furniture in Copenhagen, and china wherever she found it.

Children were only allowed to stay until they reached high school age, and my cousin went off to school in Cannes, France. Years later, while shopping a younger woman remarked on my gold bracelets. When I mentioned Saudi, she immediately said “Oh, Aramco!” I asked where she had gone to boarding school and she had been sent to London.

In 1953 Corrine and Henry’s son Kendall was born. Kendy was Henry’s first born child, and with Down Syndrome it was apparent that he needed help. Henry’s early skills as a caregiver kicked in and through the years he devoted much of his time lovingly trying to give Kendy a happy life. While my Aunt was frustrated much of the time, Henry never tired of taking care of Kendy before he went to live in a school in California.

Years later, after they had moved to Brookings, Oregon, Henry looked at his computer and saw a puzzling message from a long lost and nearly forgotten friend. “Hey, are you the same Hank Alisch who went out to California from New Jersey and learned to fly?” His boyhood friend had found him on the internet.

There are things a born caregiver knows that the rest of us don’t. They know if you need your pillow plumped, or a bite of out of season fruit, or whether you want to talk or just sit and stare at the empty TV. Henry Alisch knew all that, and when each of my parents became ill, they were living next door to Henry and Corrine in Brookings, Oregon, he was able to give them care which I could not while living in California. Later on, after their passing, my Aunt needed someone kind and loving to help her through the days, Henry Alisch was there. They both passed at the ages of 98 and 99. I’m glad I knew you Henry Alisch, you helped me through the pain of losing my parents and were a kind and altruistic friend.

INDIAN CAPITALISM

“Plains Indian Chief” watercolor painting by kayti sweetland rasmussen

It is hard to imagine the Plains Indian of the 1800’s as a pedestrian hunter, but until the arrival of the horse in the early 1500’s, they were a nomadic society following the “grocery store”. As the herds of buffalo meandered, so too did the tribe.

By 1865 the Sioux nation was a century into an economic and social revolution, triggered by the arrival of the horse. They were feeling pressure from the neighboring Objiwa, who in turn felt pressure from their own eastern neighbors and from whites. They traveled on foot and hunted on foot, devising elaborate strategies for killing the largest animal species they encountered, the bison, or buffalo. A favorite strategy entailed setting fire to the grassland behind the herd and then channeling the resulting stampede toward a cliff. most of the herd would stop short, but a few beasts would fall or be pushed over the cliff by those behind.

Sioux Chiefs

The Sioux encountered the horse about the time they reached the plains. The horse increased their nomadic range, but not until the mid eighteenth century did they truly become an equestrian people.

The Sioux had to learn how to train them, breed them, and care for them which all took time. But the long lag also gave them an understanding that, in adopting horses they were giving up other things.

The Cheyennes told a story about their own adoption of horses from the Comanches. According to this story, the Cheyennes god spoke to them through the oldest priest of the tribe:

“If you have horses, everything will be changed for you forever. You will have to move around a lot to find pasture for your horses. You will have to give up gardening and live by hunting and gathering, like the Comanches. And you will have to come out of your earth houses and live in tents. You will have to have fights with other tribes, who will want your pasture land or the places where you hunt. You will have to have real soldiers, who can protect the people. Think, before you decide.”

Almost certainly the Cheyenne story showed the wisdom of hindsight, which may or may not have helped the Sioux appreciate what they were getting into. At that point the Sioux might have reconsidered and become full nomads following the buffalo herds for most of the year, but the lure of private ownership and a competitive system brought them new opportunities. With change comes new opportunity; still a hallmark of our society.

V-J DAY 1945

The stories have become priceless, because those who lived them are fading into the lost memory of time. The smell of death, gunfire and blood are part of a life gone from a generation of people all over the world who can never forget.

My father, who stood on the deck of his ship amid the unimaginable horror during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; Dr. Advice, who was merely nineteen year old Sam Rasmussen then, watching the first kamikazi dive over Okinawa, became part of the generation of men who didn’t want to talk about it.

This day marks the 70th anniversary of V-J Day, the day the Japanese surrendered to the Allies and the war came to a merciful end. It is a stark reminder of what some call the most momentous event in human history.

According to the World War 11 Museum in New Orleans, 16.1 million Americans fought in the war. An estimated 855,000 are still alive. Nearly 500 die each day, and fewer than 100,000 will survive to celebrate the 75th anniversary of V-J Day.

It’s hard to think of a comparable event that affected so many people in so many parts of the world. Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute reminds us that it was the most lethal event in human history. with seventy million people killed—greater than the Black Plague, World War 1 and the Napoleonic wars. It entered every ocean, every continent.

A young Japanese woman asked a 92 year old Marine friend who had made landings in every major Pacific Island, why we bombed Nagasaki. She knew nothing of Pearl Harbor. “Because you would never have given up”, he told her.

Without the bomb, as terrible as it was, our own casualties would have been over one million in the invasion.

In the silence of devastation Emperor Hiro Hito said “I swallow my own tears and give my sanction to accept the Allies proclamation.”

As the news of the surrender spread around the world, a collective breath was taken, sucking up air which had been filled with the waste of the youth of a generation. The world had been changed, and we were changed as well.

Those who had left as boys returned as hardened men, but in the meantime all Hell broke loose. Wherever we were, we celebrated–loud and long. At sea, aboard Sam’s ship, they brilliantly fired a 5 inch gun—straight up in the air. Fortunately it landed right beside the ship and not in the middle of the cheering men; the captain, the oldest man aboard, was only 28 years old.

The offices in San Francisco, where I was working in my first job at Matson Line at the age of 18, exploded at the seams as we all plunged down the middle of Market Street shouting and laughing. I don’t remember how I got home across the Bay.

THE TECHNOLOGY OF RECAPTURE

Sunset in San Juan Islands photo by KSR

Two weeks ago I was typing away, minding my own business, decided to empty my recycle bin, and suddenly with no warning, over 4,300 files slipped rapidly away in front of my eyes. What did I do to deserve this? Not even the clever tech people could say what happened, but they were smart enough to fetch it back; for a price. The only things worthwhile to me were Art records, so yes, it was worth it to me.

The computer came home clean, with all 4300 files home again, this time in incomprehensible computer language. Being a determined woman of a certain age, I muddled my way through all of them and now life is again running along as it should be.

Among much-loved photos, I found this one of a sailboat at sunset, taken one evening several years ago in the Canadian San Juan Islands. We had pulled into a small secluded cove and dropped anchor for the night. Shortly afterwards this boat pulled in with the same idea and as the sun was setting, presented this lovely scene. A friend aboard with us, unwrapped his bugle and gave a tender rendition of “Taps” to end a perfect day of sailing.

ETERNAL RIVALRY

Like beautiful, headstrong sisters in a potboiler novel–one a rosy-cheeked English aristocrat, the other a purring Gallic seductress–London and Paris have vied for centuries to be crowned queen of the European capitals. Each has soaring cathedrals and treasure filled museums, a great river, and an iconic tower, and enough shopping and dining to occupy fashionistas and foodies alike for months.

Real hissing matches occur occasionally, and the hairsplitting could go on for years. Think of “The Tale of Two Cities”. During all the years since Dickens wrote his masterpiece, nothing has been settled. The statistics are notoriously confusing especially in the hands of tour guides who extol their chosen city with their iconic attractions. Their main arguments seems to be over who has the most visitors. Personally I wouldn’t visit a city just because or in spite of its number of visitors.

These cities have absolutely distinct personalities. I may be wrong, but my take has always been that London is a man’s town, with its solid stability, its mighty Thames river flowing majestically as a grand avenue to the sea, along with the solemnity of Christopher Wren’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the imposing fortress of the Tower of London with its history of incarceration and stash of royal jewels.

In Paris, the Seine River is more intimate, lined with waterside walkers and strolling lovers past the gargoyles of Notre Dame, it’s Eiffel Tower seemingly woven of gossamer, and sparkling at night like champagne bubbles, could not be more feminine. As Rick Steves observes, “The is something enduring about London and endearing about Paris.”

BEYOND THE BOTTOM LINE

When I was a little girl in what, God forbid, might be called the “olden days,” I had a great many relationships with stores and the people in them. I went grocery shopping with my mother and with my grandmother and sometimes with my great aunt where Piggley-Wiggley was a regular, and See’s candy a treat. The milk and produce stores came to us, and were sometimes good for maybe an apple or a bunch of grapes. I remember butcher shops because you could write your name with your toe in the sawdust on the floor.

Knott’s Berry Farm, Buena Park, California 1920

We played store which was easy because all you needed was a board and something to balance it on like a couple of chairs, and a few cans from your mother’s pantry. I was caught in the act one day by my father coming home early to find me “selling” flowers off the front porch steps, flowers I had liberated from a neighbor’s garden. So I went out of the floral business.

Escher, maybe an idea of what early stores looked like in a crowded town.

As time went on, stores moved up and became multi storied.

The business of making all these stores attractive became important, as did the business of enticing people into them. The stores with the expensive merchandise were the most fun, and I once even considered the impossible desire to actually live in one.

Think of it: elevators to take you upstairs, restaurants, departments catering to all your needs. Everything to make life pleasant and all under one roof.

When we moved to Alameda, we often took the ferry to San Francisco where the really big stores were; The City of Paris, I. Magnin, the stuff of dreams. My mother and grandmother and I would sweep into the glove department at the White House and begin the ritual of buying a pair of gloves. You didn’t just point to a pair and say “I’ll take that one.” The saleslady would put your elbow on a a little velvet pillow and place her elbow alongside yours, as though poised for an Indian wrestle. She would turn and flip open several of the hundreds of little drawers that lined the wall. She then placed a number of small packets of gloves on the counter and then began the effort to try them on your hand. This was not something to take lightly, as it might take several tries to get just the right glove. It was almost as much fun as hats!

Years later, taking my daughters to these same stores, I confessed my early urge to dwell in these marble halls.

When we moved to Seattle, I found my dream in the Frederick & Nelson store in downtown Seattle.

Frederick & Nelson had their own dark green delivery vans, uniformed young women manning the elevators, a tearoom where my favorite lunch soon became a turkey sandwich on cranberry nutbread, introduced to me by my friend Katie Johnsen. There was a beauty shop, candy counters which sold Frango Mints, a melt in the mouth chocolate, and a monthly change of decor. Surely everything necessary to live “the Good Life”. All this without even mentioning Christmas. The window displays were spectacular, and the inside of the store fulfilled every child’s glowing Christmas fantasy.

Like so many of the fine old stores of the past, Frederick & Nelson has long gone out of business, succeeded by the Bon Marche, Macy’s and more. The fancy accoutrements have disappeared, supplanted by acres of clothing rounders and disinterested salespeople. Macy’s however, now sells Frango Mints which is a tiny touch with the past. Surely there is still something below the bottom line.

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

The warm October sun clings to the lost days of summer like the shorts on the long-limbed girls strolling along the bank of a flat calm lake. The two boys rowing ten feet off shore aren’t unmindful of the tanned walkers. One of the boys yells a loud “Hi”, and the girls giggle.

I have just finished reading “The Boys in the Boat” by Daniel James Brown, and was sorry to see it end. It tells the stories of nine boys from the University of Washington who came from poor and sorry circumstances in the Great Depression, yet worked their way through to obtain college degrees and become the finest crew team in the world.

Rowing is an ancient sport, and at both the University of Washington and the University of California they give it deep respect. Crews from both schools have captured gold medals at the Olympics, and Washington’s biggest win was when they did it at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, leaving Hitler red faced and in an especially foul mood, as it had been planned and expected that Germany would grab the gold in all events, and for awhile it looked as if they would. Berlin and the surrounding Olympic venues had been sanitized for the Olympic events, everything depicting a picturesque and sublime Bavarian life, but the terror of the Holocaust had already begun and lurked behind scenes, resuming when the Olympic flag was lowered.

Race rowing was a big sport at Eton College and Westminster School in England, and the elite sport then spread to the east coast of the U.S.A. and from there to the west coast.

The racing shell, unlike the ordinary rowboat, is an extremely narrow, extremely long boat, originally built of wood, and outfitted with long oars and sliding seats. The boat for an eight man crew is sixty feet long and 24″ wide! An eight man crew actually has nine men, eight rowers and a coxswain who is in charge of the steering and navigation of the boat. He sits facing the oarsmen and shouts his orders while the boat ghosts along the water, the long oars dipping in unison and leaving not a ripple. Bobby Moch of the UW team was one of the finest coxswains in that or in any time.

A second generation boat builder whose father built boats for Eton, George Yeomans Pocock came from England to the University of Washington in 1912 and began to build boats used by nearly every college in America.

A champion sculler himself Pocock worked out of a boathouse on the campus of the UW and built his beautiful wood racing shells over the next half century. Shells today are made from reinforced carbon fibre, strong and graceful for sure, but the polished beauty of the wood boat is gone forever. Pocock was a mentor to many of the rowing coaches of the day, including Al Ulbrickson, head coach at Washington, and Ky Ebright, head coach of the University of California, Washington’s rival, for whom Pocock also built boats.

For the four years the boys struggled to stay in college and stay in the boat, Ulbrickson drove them hard and Pocock gave them gentler suggestions steering them toward their biggest victory in Berlin in 1936. During this time, Seattle’s most famous sports writer, Royal Brougham, registered every win and loss of the UW crews, and helped fuel the enthusiasm for crew racing still felt today. Seattle is a big sports town and partly because of the lack of TV coverage in those days, the public swelled with pride at every win heard on the family radio and every word of praise in the local newspaper.

Brougham traveled with the team to Berlin and reported every move of the American teams. His excitement was boundless and on the day of the varsity win over Hitler’s teams, Brougham pounded out probably the greatest column of his 68 year career with the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Unfortunately it was never seen because of a union strike the next day in Seattle.

You might ask why my great interest in the story told in this book? We grew to love Seattle and the University in th years we lived there. One of our daughters and her children graduated from the University, and we attended every sports event for five years. We still fly up for occasional college football games.

Living on the banks of Lake Washington, the vision of rowers, crew or single sculls was an everyday pleasure. Here in California, we of course also root for the Cal boys in their boat since that was Dr. Advice’s school. They row down the Oakland estuary, which lies beside my old home on the island of Alameda. While living in Connecticut in the 30’s I watched the Harvard and Yale crews rowing on the Thames river in New London. The Thames was also the water in which I learned to swim. I don’t seem to be able to get too far from water!

As a final irony in Berlin, Bobby Moch, coxswain from the winning University of Washington, stood on the podium alone to receive his gold medal. Unbeknownst to Hitler and his band of evil, intent on the destruction of an entire race of people, Bobby Moch was a Jew.