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What’s a special Lewis and Clark day like?

I always approach the day of November 19 with religious reverence and a large dose of grateful joy.

When I wake up on the morning of November 19, I give thanks to the universe and to a greater power. And then comes a laugh and a day of happiness celebrating the simple facts that, No. 1, I once completed a rugged journey that few folks in our modern age have made; No. 2, I survived; and, No. 3, I’m still alive, almost a half-century later, to tell the story to you, my friend.

November 19 was the day of the year—back 46 years ago—when four of my friends and I reached the St. Louis Gateway Arch, completing a half-year, 3,700-mile journey along the trail of the 1803-06 Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Our excursion was undertaken when I was a young man, a very young man, age 23, and it was by backpack; two canoes and a kayak on the rivers; and by foot across the Rockies.

Sometimes, as we hiked the Lolo Trail, the mountain forests were so silent all we could hear was our own beating hearts.

Our journey was a poetic ballad of sweat, Nature’s beauty, friendship, aching muscles, blisters, sunburns, the fresh smell of pine trees, starry nights, snowy mornings, unbounded enthusiasm, at times gut-wrenching fear, great laughter, cold rain, and more sweat, always sweat, and always wind in our faces no matter which way we faced, a great mystery how that always seemed to be.

We started in early June at Fort Clatsop near the mouth of the Columbia River at the coastal edges of Oregon and Washington. The fort of today is a replica of a long-gone winter fort constructed there by the Lewis and Clark explorers in late 1805 after they spent the previous year and a half traveling through the wilderness from St. Louis. They lived at their Fort Clatsop for almost four months and in the spring of 1806 undertook a 6-month journey back to civilization at St. Louis.

One member of our group, Mike Cochran, was a cartoonist. This was his version of how Lewis and Clark and the dog Seaman felt at times as they moved along the Lolo Trail. Back in their time, Lewis and Clark rode horses across the mountains. Poor ol’ Seaman, though, had to hoof it!

From Fort Clatsop, our group—we called ourselves the 1973 Lewis & Clark Expedition—paddled up the Columbia, Snake, and Clearwater rivers, hiked across the Lolo Trail in the high mountains of Idaho and into western Montana (our canoes and kayak were trucked over the mountains), and then paddled down the Beaverhead and Jefferson rivers to the Three Forks of the Missouri River. The Missouri took us north—to within 50 miles of the Canadian border—and then curved us directly south through the Dakotas, along the edges of Nebraska and Iowa, and southeast across the state of Missouri toward the beautiful Gateway Arch towering 630-feet tall in the St. Louis skyline.

Our route from west to east covered the same territory as Lewis and Clark. The explorers, in the first half of their journey, went up the Missouri River, crossed the Rocky Mountains—from western Montana and across Idaho—on horses they acquired through trading with Native Americans. On the west side of the mountains, they built canoes and paddled down the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia rivers to the Pacific coast. After their winter of 1805-06 at Fort Clatsop, they returned to St. Louis mostly by the same route.

Oh, what was it that the poet Robert Burns once wrote about the best laid schemes of mice and men? The best-laid plans of Lewis and Clark reenactors often go awry, too.  We figured it’d be a little tough going up the Columbia, Snake and Clearwater rivers, against the current—and it was, but not overly bad. More importantly, we thought it’d be easy, really easy, going with the current flowing down the Missouri River. That was the deciding factor—the Missouri’s downstream flowing—for why we went from west to east. We couldn’t have been more wrong; not much was easy on the Missouri River. So much for schemes and plans.

Today’s upper Missouri River is still free-flowing, clear, swift, narrow, relatively shallow, and gorgeous through a stretch of Montana. But then, farther on, 19 dams now back up huge reservoirs in Montana and the Dakotas, and the mighty river becomes what seems like one endless lake. Some reservoirs are so wide you can’t see across to the far shore. High winds often skim along the surface of the water, churning up giant, dangerous waves. Travel by muscle power was so slow that some days we struggled to make a dozen miles of progress across the reservoirs.

When they were constructed decades ago by the Corps of Engineers, the reservoirs inundated villages, farms and ranches, historic Native American sites, and, among other things, large forests. In some places, the trees were left standing in the rising reservoirs and have since died and turned an eerie pale gray.

Amid a wind storm and big waves, we paddled one day through a dead forest thick with towering gray cottonwood trees. Our boats became separated in the big waves as we maneuvered around the trees, and we were lost until we luckily spotted each other on the far side of the forest. It was an odd, dangerous and yet memorable part of our journey. After all, how many people can say they became lost while paddling big waves through a dead forest?

 

Forty-six years ago I stepped across the source of the Missouri River. This photo was published in an article that I wrote for the Denver Post’s Empire Magazine. Click here to read the article. On August 12, 1805, Lewis and some of his men reached the source not far from where I stood for this photo.  Lewis wrote in his journal that one of the men, Hugh McNeal, “had exultingly stood with a foot on each side of this little rivulet and thanked his god that he had lived to bestride the mighty & heretofore deemed endless Missouri.”

By the time we reached the Gateway Arch on November 19, I had lost 50 pounds, capsized 22 times, and almost drowned once when I was stuck under a capsized canoe—and would’ve certainly not survived if one of our companions, Mike Wien, hadn’t happened to spot my hand sticking up for help out of the water.

This happened on the upper Missouri in Montana where the river was swift, narrow and shallow, bordered by stands of willows and pine trees. I was paddling at the bow, the front of the canoe, and I noticed the air was at the perfect temperature where you can’t feel it either warm or cool on your skin. The setting sun cast the stream into deep shades of shimmering red. Beavers were everywhere in the water. Some were surprised as our boats came alongside them. Then, there’d be a loud, sharp thwap of a tail on top of the water, a warning to beaver buddies, and the beaver dove under the water, leaving behind a swirling disturbance on the river surface.

The thwapping happened again and again, almost with a rhythmic cadence, sometimes from a cluster of beavers swimming only a foot or two away from where I sat in the canoe. I was intrigued by the all of it, the red hues on the stream fading toward gray twilight, the scent of fresh river air when I inhaled, the long darkening shadows of the trees on shore, and the comforting feel of the current gliding along under our canoe. I felt a great sense of moving in unison with Nature.

Then came a quirky rapid, a fast rise followed by a deep angled descent, and I was suddenly flipped into the cold river. I landed in a way that the current pushed me under the canoe. The boat had me hopelessly pinned between it and the rocky river bottom. And then came a hand to my hand. It was Wien’s; he was steering in the stern and had the presence of mind to back-paddle to slow the canoe so he could find me. And, now, here I am writing about it decades later.

Another time, we almost lost a companion, Mike Cochran, when giant waves, kicked up by a sudden windstorm, swamped and sank the canoe he and Clay Asher were paddling on the Snake River. This was at a location where the river flowed through a lonely, wild landscape of nothing but boulders, sagebrush, rattlesnakes, and driftwood. The river was cold, so cold my hands stung as water droplets were flung up against my skin as I stroked a paddle through the water.

It seemed to take forever to get Mike Cochran and Clay to shore. By then, Mike had slipped so far into hypothermia that we had to encircle him in a ring of campfires to bring warmth back into his body. Clay? A hardy guy, a young guy, age 18, rugged, a lover of outdoor challenges. The long dip into the cold water was just a lark for him!

We retrieved the canoe as the big waves rolled and rolled it along. Our backpacks—except the one containing our cooking equipment—were still safely tied into the boat. However, that morning we had overlooked tying in the backpack that contained the pots and pans, so it was now lounging somewhere on the river bottom.

We had plenty of food, but nothing to cook in, and we were days from the nearest town, Lewiston, Idaho. The day after the capsizing we luckily found a rusty coffee can along shore. We used the can for cooking until reaching Lewiston. There—as happened in most of the dozens of communities along the Lewis and Clark Trail—the local newspaper published an article about us. The Lewiston article included a brief account of how we lost the cooking equipment. A businessman associated with the Chamber of Commerce read the article and donated new cooking equipment to us.

 

One of the more bizarre incidents occurred along the Columbia River in western Washington. This was a land of big gray boulders, dry brown sand, no vegetation except for willows now and then along shore, rattlesnakes and creepy spiders, and heat so hot that sweat didn’t even emerge on our skin as we exerted ourselves paddling.

Unfortunately, we ran out of drinking water during the hottest part of the afternoon. We always filled containers with potable water when we were in a town, but we hadn’t been for a while and now the drinking water was gone. When I have told this story to friends since then, I always like to say our mouths became as dry and sandy as the floor of a camel-skin tent in the middle of a summer afternoon in the Sahara Desert.

It was an ironic situation. There we were, sitting alongside one of the biggest rivers in the United States and, regardless of our dreadful thirst, we refused to drink from the waterway. The reason? Self-preservation. We could see shimmering gasoline, hazy yellow chemical waste and other nasty-looking things floating along the surface—the dregs of pollution coming from upstream communities and industries. No drinking water from that river. No jumping in for a swim to cool off.

We were so tired from the heat that we could no longer paddle, so we pulled the boats onto shore. There was no shade to be found anywhere. All we could do was recline back on boulders. The hot sun in the cloudless sky, the ceaseless heat, the waves of heat over the river, the searing air drifting off the landscape—those influences mingled with our bodies and our sensibilities. We moaned. We groaned. For a while, we entertained ourselves by debating the many wonderful benefits of ice and snow. Then, we moaned again. We groaned again. Finally, we stopped talking.

We laid there, panting, moaning and, of course, groaning, unsure we could survive the heat, becoming more certain minute by minute that we wouldn’t survive. There was nothing we could do. We were stuck in the middle of nowhere with our camel-skin mouths and sweat-less skin.

Suddenly, a miracle.

Five big grapefruits came floating down the river, only an arm’s length from shore. We scrambled and retrieved them. With no hesitation at all and no thought at all (all of our sensibilities were burned away by then) as to whether polluted particles had seeped into the innards of the grapefruits, we quickly peeled away the skins and sucked down the fruity insides. Juicy, cool, quenching. Refreshing enough for us to be re-energized and able to paddle on for several hours to the next town and safe drinkable water.

Where did the grapefruits come from? Did they fall off a grapefruit truck crossing a bridge somewhere upstream? Did kids playing dodge-ball with grapefruits toss five of the fruits into the water? Did the ghosts of Lewis and Clark throw the grapefruits into the river as a special favor for us? Those explanations are as good as any. It didn’t matter, though. Five miraculous, mysterious grapefruits had pulled our over-heated bacon out of the blazing afternoon fire.

There are life lessons to be learned in the episodes I just related. Always tie in your backpacks; that is, expect the unexpected regardless of what you are doing. Always have enough water—and other necessary resources—to keep you going. Be grateful for gifts; they often can mean the difference between failure and success. Enjoy listening to the thwapping of beaver tails. And, of course, never look a gift grapefruit in the mouth. Instead, take a big bite of it.

 

A few times during our walk across the mountains we became lost as the trail disappeared in the pine forests and rocky terrain. At such times, our always optimistic leader (I say this with great admiration), Bob Miller, emphasized we weren’t really lost because, truly, we knew where we were, just that we didn’t know for sure how to get where we wanted to be. He was right. We always got there, wherever there was. Bob’s philosophy offered a great lesson that has helped me through all of these years—don’t worry so much about where you are; instead, focus on where you want to be and somehow you’ll get there.

Bob Miller on the Missouri River as it passes through the White Cliffs region in Montana. In a lengthy, eloquent description on May 31, 1805, Meriwether Lewis journaled that the enchanted cliffs “exhibit a most romantic appearance.” Here’s what else Lewis wrote about the White Cliffs…

We were awed just to be out there, lost or not, standing at times on the ridge of a high mountain and viewing nothing but dark green forested mountains ahead and, beyond them, more mountains and, still, beyond those, even more mountains, fading into the hazy horizon of a blue sky. At night, in places where the ambient light of communities didn’t exist, the sky was so thick with stars seeming so close to us that I felt like I could reach up and touch them. Such views few of us in today’s world enjoy.

{Learn more: What food did we eat? How experienced were we prior to our journey? Why did we go? And what became of the five of us after our expedition? (Click here to find out.}

 

It’s interesting to compare the era of Lewis and Clark’s expedition more than two centuries ago and, likewise, our journey in 1973 to what’s happened today, in 2019.

Forty-six years ago, most locals we encountered knew only scanty details, if any, about the travels of Lewis and Clark through their region. Many locals had no idea of the connections between the names of local rivers and other geographic features to Lewis and Clark. The same goes for local flora and fauna. Lewis and Clark identified 174 plants and 134 animal species previously unknown by the science of the early 19th century. Many local folks in 1973 had no idea of Lewis and Clark’s significant role in identifying and naming plants, birds and other wildlife in their area.

How Mike Cochran showed what it was like to reach St. Louis on Nov. 19, 1973.

Now, it’s easy to find information about the explorers on the internet. Prior to 1973, only a smattering of books about the expedition had been published; now there are dozens and dozens written by historians and interested lay people. The popularity the explorers gained during the 2003-06 national bicentennial celebration of their expedition continues today. Meanwhile, citizen groups like the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation and such governmental agencies as the National Park Service have made strong commitments to keep alive the story of the expedition.

As a result, it’s now pretty darn hard to spit along the Lewis and Clark Trail without hitting a historic marker or statue commemorating Lewis and Clark or Sacajawea or Clark’s slave, York, or the other 29 men on the expedition or, for that matter, Lewis’ Newfoundland dog, Seaman.

This is what it was really like. Bob Miller, in the bow, and Clay Asher headed to the Gateway Arch on Nov. 19, 1973.

Today, school kids can recite dates, adventures, and Lewis and Clark journal entries that describe what happened and when and where it happened in their locality. Annual Lewis and Clark festivals are held in many communities along the trail. Bridges are named in honor of the explorers. So are streets, schools, and even a college. Many communities have named local trail systems and parks after the explorers. People frequently pick up their paddles and set out to retrace parts of the expedition’s journey on water.

During five months in 2019, for example, a small group named the Missouri River Corps of Rediscovery paddled down the Missouri River from Three Forks, Montana, to St. Louis. Organized and led by Tom Elpel, the group studied the landscape and the wildlife, and took time to educate people about Lewis and Clark and what they discovered along the river. The Rediscovery’s journey was remarkable. Elpel wrote 34 blog articles along the way. I highly recommend that you read all of them (Click here to read his last article from when they reached St. Louis).

Elpel’s telling the story of the Rediscovery’s journey is on par with, if not better than, a classic account written by John Neihardt, the author of the ground-breaking book, Black Elk Speaks. in 1908, Neihardt and two companions journeyed down the Missouri in a 20-foot canoe. His book, The River and I, describes the wild waterway and storied sites of the Missouri before the Army Corps of Engineers dammed much of the river. It’s a very fine read that I also recommend.

In March 2019, a federal act extended the official Lewis and Clark Trail by 1,200 miles. Where once the officially recognized trail started near St. Louis, it now goes from Pittsburgh, Pa., down the length of the Ohio River and a short distance up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, From St. Louis, the route goes another 3,700 miles up the Missouri River, across the Rockies, and down the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia rivers to the Pacific coast. These 3,700 miles were considered the federally designated Lewis and Clark Trail until the extension was approved in 2019.

The federal approval of the extension was a major accomplishment for the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation and other organizations. (Click here to read an article I wrote about the extension for the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation’s website.)

{To learn more about Lewis and Clark, click here for the website of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. While you’re there, become a member—it’s a worthwhile organization that is the keeper of the Lewis and Clark story. (Here’s the foundation’s Facebook page.}

 

Today’s widespread popularity of Lewis and Clark speaks to the yearning for great adventure that many Americans have but are unable to pursue beyond short canoe trips or day hikes along the trail, or expeditions by car to follow parts of the route of the 1803-06 expedition. Some Americans turn to Lewis and Clark activities because they are are searching for a respite away from the pressures and complicated events of our times.

One important point that we have to remember, though, is that, no matter the era, whether it’s back in Lewis and Clark’s time or ours back in 1973, there will always be tough issues for our nation to face. In 2019, we have a country politically and philosophically divided in harsh ways. Back in 1973, it wasn’t so much different. A disgraced Spiro Agnew resigned the vice presidency as we paddled the Missouri River, and Richard Nixon was lying about Watergate and other matters.

During the time when Lewis and Clark were forging their trail, Alexander Hamilton was fatally shot during a duel with Aaron Burr, the ultimate price of political rivalry. And Jefferson’s government was involved in a war with Barbary Pirates, the first terrorists to haunt the psyche of America. In 1973, the U.S. was embroiled in the Vietnam War. There was a severe national oil crisis. The American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee, South Dakota, and, of course, the Watergate scandal made big news headline.

And today, in 2019? Turn on a national TV news program and you’ll quickly see our world is impacted by issues—although they are far more complex today—that originated from the same underlying basic reasons that existed in Lewis and Clark’s time and in 1973: the struggle for power, greed and inequality, among others. Involving yourself in Lewis and Clark activities and the history of their expedition are fine ways to take a break from it all.

Mike Cochran drew this cartoon after he nearly died from hypothermia when huge waves sank the canoe he was in.

Anyway, those are just some of my musings as November 19 came around for its annual visit. It’s a good day of the year. A fine day to remember the way things were and to think about how they are today.

How did Lewis and Clark spend the day of November 19 in 1803, 1804, and 1805? You’ll be surprised! Click here to find out…

 

 

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Learn the real story of Thanksgiving

For most American families, the Thanksgiving holiday is abundant with good cheer, good food, a wonderfully smelling roasted turkey, family and friends, maybe a football game on the TV, and a great sense that all is well in the world. It’s a time to enjoy, relax, reflect, and express thanks.

When I was a kid—just like youngsters of today still do—we cut out the shapes of turkeys and Pilgrim hats from colored paper and decorated walls of the classroom. Back then, as now, Thanksgiving was a grand marketing opportunity for advertisements featuring clean, well-dressed Pilgrims and Native Americans happily eating dinner at a long table covered by a white tablecloth.

What the Mayflower may have looked like when it set sail for the New World. Note the supply of apples in the lower left corner. The fruit and vegetable supplies soon ran out and the crew and passengers came down with scurvy. Painting by Bernard Gribble

It wasn’t until I was an adult in my later years that I became interested in genealogy and discovered I am the descendant of six colonists who came to America on the Mayflower: William Brewster and his son Love Brewster; Richard Warren; William Mullins and his daughter, Priscilla, age 18 when they set sail; and John Alden, who married Priscilla not long after her father and step-mother, Alice, died shortly after reaching America.

Back then, the population of Europeans along our Eastern seaboard was severely limited; in fact, almost nonexistent outside of the Mayflower settlers and a few others at small colonies scattered long distances away along the coast.

As a result, a fair amount of intermingling of Plymouth families occurred during the first few generations, this among the original Mayflower families and others who later immigrated there. By the fourth generation, the intermingling produced a lady named Janet Murdock, who married my ancestor Stephen Tilson, whose English grandparents immigrated to Plymouth shortly after they were married in 1625.

After discovering this ancestral tie to the Plymouth colonists, I puffed myself up and thought, “Well, hey, this is pretty neat! I must be a very special guy, having come from such special ancestors.”

Self-aggrandized as I had suddenly become, I probably should’ve let things alone. But…I decided to find out how many Mayflower descendants are alive today. I expected maybe a couple of dozen, if that. After all, those Pilgrim people lived a long, long time ago. There couldn’t be many descendants alive today. Gosh, I mused to myself, I really am special!

Well, uh, as I discovered on the Internet, the estimated numbers are 10 million descendants in the U.S. and 35 million worldwide. Some descendants comprise notable figures in American history. Among John and Priscilla Alden’s descendants, for example, are U.S. Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams; poet William Wadsworth Longfellow; Julia Child, chef, author and TV personality; and actors Orson Welles, Raquel Welch, Dick Van Dyke, and Marilyn Monroe.

Here’s an interesting point to consider: The nation’s public schools have about 50 million enrolled students this year. The 10 million Mayflower descendants in the U.S. means that in any given public school classroom today, which usually have about 30 students, give or take, there may be at least one or two students related back to the Mayflower folks. Most kids, unfortunately, don’t know it. Nor do their parents.

All of this is a roundabout way of getting to a couple of topics. First, I want to encourage people to delve into their own ancestral past. It’s amazing what could be found there—maybe kings or queens, or perhaps inventors or great authors, or maybe a famous outlaw or soldier, or a Pilgrim or two. Second, my interest in genealogy has encouraged me to learn many things about history that I once never imagined I would find interesting. Case in point: the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. I’ve done considerable research and reading since learning that my ancestral line, on my mother’s side, is connected to the Pilgrims.

One of the important things I discovered: The arrival of the Mayflower and its 102 passengers and their survival in America comprise one of our nation’s most important historical events (and yet—just a side note here—very little attention is given to telling their real story in the curriculum of our public schools).

It’s a story of bravery, grit, determination, optimism, and great faith. The themes behind the adventure cover about every literary genre one can think of: humans against nature, love of fellow beings and the land, the demands of sacrifice, overcoming major challenges, a quest for religious freedom, and, among others, the bold search for something better.

In the fall of 1620, 102 Mayflower passengers and crew—there were about 30 crew members—spent 66 tough, nearly unbearable days on the tiny ship, often amid terrible storms and big terrifying waves. The ship was 80 feet long and 24 feet wide (in comparison, a tennis court is 78 feet long and 36 feet wide).

Rough seas for the Mayflower.

One terrifying storm cracked a massive wood beam that supported the ship’s frame. This had the potential to leave the ship stuck drifting at sea. Fortunately, the passengers had in their supplies and equipment a large iron screw mechanism that they used to help raise the beam back into place. In another storm, a young passenger was swept off the deck. He was saved only because he had the presence of mind to grab one of the ship’s lines so he could be pulled back on deck. One crew member, who had taunted the passengers over their seasickness, died during the voyage—the passengers saw this as a sign from God, the sailor’s punishment for being so cruel.

Passengers were required to spend most of their time in a deck below. They squeezed into thin-walled, cramped great cabins with low ceilings (you had to hunker down if you were more than five feet tall). Each passenger had living space about the size of today’s single bed, if that.

Imagine the body smells—no deodorant, no clean clothes, no showers or baths. Imagine the lack of privacy when it came time to do your personal business. Imagine weathering bad storms, not knowing if the old clinker of a ship would sink at any moment. Imagine the snoring at night. Imagine…well, you get the point.

It wasn’t a fun trip. Lousy food. Poor water. Short tempers. The supplies of vegetables and fruit soon gave out, resulting in a lack of vitamin C and then scurvy. Gums bled. Teeth fell out. Breaths stank. Colds, fevers and coughs were easily passed around due to the cramped quarters. Soon, everyone was sick. All in all, a trip you wouldn’t want to make, never, ever.

When they reached America and finally stepped on shore, this on Nov. 13, 1620, the first thing some of them did was consume raw blue mussels abundant along the shoals during low tide. They must have sighed with great relief—finally, finally fresh food—oh, joy!

And then, their hungers satisfied, the violent vomiting and diarrhea set in from shellfish poisoning.

Imagine that, too. You somehow manage to survive more than two horrible months on the dreadful ocean and the first thing you eat on shore is so toxic you feel like you want to die. This, by the way, is one of those stories you don’t hear in school.

Another usually untold story relates to the makeup of the passengers. There were 50 men, 19 women and 33 young adults and children. Most Americans today believe they were all Pilgrims. However, only 41 were. The rest were what the Pilgrims called the “Strangers”—non-members of the Pilgrims’ religious sect: hired hands, farmers, servants, and children, four of whom were indentured servants, given over to the Pilgrims by their parents before the Mayflower set sail.

The Pilgrim’s religious sect believed its congregation should be separate from the Church of England, thus the basic reason for seeking refuge in the New World. Back home in Europe, they were threatened by jail time or worse (and, in fact, William Brewster once was jailed for his religious beliefs). The Pilgrims were the first refugees to step on our soil—and, comparing the trials and tribulations of today’s refugees seeking to enter the U.S., they didn’t have to do complicated legal wrangling or sneak in by digging a hole under a border wall.

Many Americans believe the first landing was at Plymouth. It wasn’t. The first on-shore steps—the place of the eating of the blue mussels—happened at what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. It was in there, too, in a lower deck of the Mayflower, that 41 adult males signed the Mayflower Compact, a document of about 200 words. This was the earliest document that called for self-governance in America even though, under the terms of the compact, they would remain loyal to England’s King James.

Today, Americans generally believe—if they know about it at all—that the Mayflower Compact originated because all of the settlers were in gentlemanly accord on governance issues. The truth is, the Pilgrims drafted the document because the Strangers were ready to revolt and go out on their own. The Strangers were angry because the Mayflower had sailed beyond the jurisdiction of where the colony was supposed to be located. The Pilgrims saw that splitting up the small number of colonists would likely have ended in disaster; the larger number of 102 at least gave hope for success. So Pilgrim leaders drafted the Mayflower Compact as a way to quell the conflict and maintain peace.

Signing of the Mayflower Compact. From Library of Congress.

A month later, the Mayflower arrived at a settlement site the voyagers named Plimouth (the spelling later become “Plymouth”) after the port city from where they sailed away from England. Plymouth was the wrong place, however. The colonists had a patent to settle at the Hudson River near Manhattan, which was part of the Colony of Virginia at the time. They missed the mark due to irascible winds, storms and dangerous shoals. Nonetheless, the ship’s commander decided the passengers were too sick and frail to sail on to the site where they were supposed to settle, so, in essence, he announced to them, “This is it, folks, all out”—my words, not his, but the sentiment is the same: Like it or not, here’s where we stop!

Myth has it that the colonists stepped upon Plymouth Rock as they disembarked. There is, however, no historical accounts or facts that back up this long-held assumption.

Myth has it that the Pilgrims took their first steps on land on top of Plymouth Rock. There are no historical accounts or facts to back up this assumption.

Another typically untold story is the tragic circumstance through which the Pilgrims and Strangers were lucky enough to settle on land previously cleared by Native Americans. Upon the Mayflower’s arrival in the Plymouth bay, there were no natives to be seen in the area, only mysterious scatterings of bleached human skulls and bones. Regardless of the carnage that appeared to have taken place there in the not-so-distant past, the Pilgrims considered the vacant land to be a miracle, a true gift from God.

Unbeknown to the Mayflower voyagers, the new homeland was littered with the aftermath of a holocaust. Large numbers of natives—thousands upon thousands, possibly 90 percent of them—died from 1616 to 1619 along the Atlantic seaboard from what is believed to be bubonic plague brought ashore by European fishermen.

Many of us, by the way, incorrectly think only a few Europeans visited America prior to the Mayflower’s arrival. In reality, an estimated 300 ships a year fished for cod off the northern East Coast. Sailors often visited natives to trade and mingle. Such interactions didn’t always turn out well for the natives. Case in point: the bubonic epidemic for which the natives had no antibodies. As the plague progressed along the coast, so many natives died that no one—like those at the site of the new colony—was left to bury the dead.

The first year for the settlers was nearly disastrous. Half of the 102 colonists died from sickness and malnutrition. Many survivors were left like Priscilla Mullins. One day her parents and brother were alive, and then they were dead, leaving her in an untamed land with little hope of returning to the civilization of Europe.

Miles Standish (left) looks on as Priscilla Mullins and John Alden are on their bridal procession.

Priscilla’s dire situation, I imagine, helped in her decision to marry John Alden. A marriage of convenience, perhaps, no doubt? It’s hard to say. Today, Priscilla and John are probably the most well-known of the colonists, thanks to a narrative poem, The Courtship of Miles Standish, published in 1858 by one of their descendants, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose works are still studied today in colleges. In the poem, Miles Standish asks John Alden to speak on Standish’s behalf to the single Priscilla. He does and Priscilla replied, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” So he did and they married. A good lesson for all of us: Never ask anyone else to proclaim your love to another!

Anyway, the Thanksgiving story that we hold near and dear today is true in some ways and pure fiction in other ways. Parts of the modern story were created by marketing experts who saw ideal opportunities for selling more food, merchandise, cars, and other retail products during the Thanksgiving holiday.

One part of today’s telling of the colonists’ story is true. Some natives did help the colonists at times, showing them, for example, how to cultivate corn, catch fish, remove sap from maple trees, and avoid poisonous plants. Even with the help, it was still definitely touch and go for the settlers. They had to rely on their own initiative, their rapidly developing skills, hard work, luck, and, as they believed, the intervention of God

Many of the colonists had to develop new skills to meet the challenging intricacies of farming and building shelters. William Mullins—Priscilla’s father—may have been somewhat unprepared. He was a shoemaker by trade.  He brought along 126 pairs of shoes and 13 pairs of boots—the sign of a true entrepreneur when it came to retail merchandising. Unfortunately, he didn’t live long enough to wear out even one pair on the soil of the New World. He died within four months of reaching America.

The name “Thanksgiving” wasn’t used by the Pilgrims as we use it today to mark the annual holiday. They believed a thanksgiving was a time of devotion and spiritual thought. In the 170 years after the Pilgrims’ arrival, there were often festivals of harvest in the fall throughout the American territories. The concept of an official Thanksgiving celebration originated in 1789 with a proclamation by George Washington. After that, a designated day of thanksgiving was honored on and off until it became a federal holiday during the Civil War. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

In 1621, the Plymouth colonists celebrated their first harvest with feasting that probably took place in late September or October rather than late November. The event was also a celebration to give thanks that they survived their first year in the New World. Within that first year, half of the colonists had perished from disease and malnutrition. That included 78 percent of the women.

This First Thanksgiving—as we call it today—was a three-day event. The local sachem (it’s a native name for “leader”) Massasoit and 90 to 100 members of the Pokanoket, a local tribe that in 1621 began interacting with the colonists, participated in the celebration. Historians are unsure why the natives were in the area. Massasoit’s village was a three-day walk away. The end of the harvest season may have been a time when he and his group made rounds to visit other native tribes; and, perhaps since they were already in the area, they were invited to the colonists’ festivities. Regardless, the natives didn’t come merely for a single dinner. They showed up with five freshly killed deer and intended to stick around for a while.

There were no pumpkin pies since the colonists didn’t have butter, wheat flour or a stove to cook in. They didn’t have potatoes, either; spuds weren’t available to them back then. It would be years before white potatoes, which originated in South American, and sweet potatoes, from the Caribbean, reached Plymouth. Sweet cranberry sauce likely wasn’t on the menu since local cranberries were used more for tart garnish. It would be another 50 years before an English writer described boiling cranberries and sugar into a sweet, delectable sauce. Nor did the colonists and natives have forks. Forks didn’t show up in the colony for another seven decades. So it was fingers and knives to eat with.

In addition to the deer, the menu may have consisted of ducks and geese—they were plentiful at that time of the year in the nearby bay—and squash, beans, corn, barley, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, leeks, lettuce, parsnips, and beans from the harvest, as well as striped bass, cod and bluefish. It’s possible, too, that the menu included native wild plants: Jerusalem artichokes, grapes, walnuts, chestnuts, and garlic. There may also have been lobster, seal and swans on the menu. Every history book and account that I’ve read about the menu seems to have its own version of what was or wasn’t served.

It was a big chore to prepare food for the approximate 150 diners—the surviving colonists and the approximate 100 natives. Only four married women were still alive by then, so they likely had help from children, servants and unmarried men. And perhaps some natives. I’ve wondered about what was recorded from back then about “unmarried” men helping with the dinner. What about the married guys? The image in my mind: The married guys were lounging around smoking big cigars, drinking beer—of course, yes, my over-wild imagination. It was the culture at the time (and often even now) that food preparation was woman’s work.

Were turkeys on the menu? Historians are divided over whether they were. Some say nay. Others say yes. Most admit no one knows for certain.

Many Americans believe turkeys were served at the First Thanksgiving. That may have or may not have been the case.

Wild turkeys, though, were definitely available to the Plymouth settlers. It was a common bird in the New World and a popular one that could be domesticated. Many decades later, Benjamin Franklin called the turkey a “a true original native of America” and “a bird of courage” that “would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British Guards who would presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.” (Just a fun aside here: Regardless of common American lore, Franklin did not campaign for the turkey to become our national symbol. Instead, he wanted an image of Moses extending his hand over the sea, commanding it to overwhelm the pharaoh in an open chariot. Franklin’s proposed motto was “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”)

Today, some Americans think turkeys were unknown to the Pilgrims and Europe prior to the arrival of the Mayflower. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. The conquistadors, after they arrived in the 1500s in Mexico, found that natives of Central America had domesticated turkeys. Turkeys were then imported to Spain and, by the 1520s, had become a regular food for Christmas meals in England.

The turkey gained popularity in the United States thanks to a writer and editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, the author of the Mary Had A Little Lamb nursery rhyme. She thought we needed a national holiday to unify the nation; the day, she believed, should also have religious overtones.

Sarah Josepha Hale, the lady largely responsible for the Thanksgiving holiday. She lobbied five presidents before Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a federal Thanksgiving Day.

In 1827, she published a novel, Northwood; Or Life North and South, Showing the True Character of Both, that introduced the idyllic Thanksgiving table, with turkey as its star cuisine. She wrote: “[It] is considered as an appropriate tribute of gratitude to God to set apart one day of Thanksgiving in each year; and autumn is the time when the overflowing garners of America call for this expression of joyful gratitude.”

Hale was one of the earliest trendsetters in our country’s history. She was editor of a popular women’s magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book, which, with a circulation of 150,000 in 1860, became the leading advocate for establishing Thanksgiving as an annual event. She published Thanksgiving recipes and menus in the magazine. She also wrote a dozen cookbooks. She petitioned five U.S. presidents to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Her successful pitch to Lincoln focused on the need to unite the country through a national holiday during the Civil War.

By the time Lincoln signed the proclamation to establish the holiday, the idea of Thanksgiving was already solidly planted, thanks to Hale, in the minds of homemakers throughout the nation. The Thanksgiving menu we think of today—roasted turkey stuffed with sage and other tasty ingredients, mashed potato dishes, and the like—was already established in their holiday menus because of Hale.

Today, about 88 percent of Americans eat 46 million turkeys on Thanksgiving Day.

Historians believe those who attended the First Thanksgiving stood or sat on the ground because the colonist hadn’t made tables like the one shown in this painting. Nor were there white tablecloths. Smithsonian: Bettmann/Corbis

The Plymouth dining fare did not resemble what we think of today. There were no long tables covered with white tablecloths. The colonists’ had spent their precious time over the first year in farming and constructing shelters, and not making furniture for themselves. They and the natives stood, squatted or sat on the ground around campfires as meat cooked on wooden spits and stews simmered in pots.

Many modern Americans mentally view the Pilgrims as an austere, somber group of straight-back stature. That may be largely true—it’s a good PR image for the Pilgrims—but they also had ribald sides, too. A written description of the First Thanksgiving from a Pilgrim leader seems to describe a traditional English harvest festival that dated back to the Middle Ages: food, drink and games.

The colonists surely evoked God’s name and grace as they gave thanks. For Native Americans, giving thanks was an ongoing practice. Theirs was a daily routine of thankfulness. They offered a prayer or acknowledgement every time they hunted, fished or harvested a plant.

One of the likely features of the First Thanksgiving that normally isn’t thought about today is the countryside itself. Some of the surrounding Plymouth land looked barren due to previous native residents burning away vegetation to make room for crops.

But within short strolls of the new colony there were forested areas of oak, maple, hickory, birches, and other trees. These offered beautiful fall scenery unlike trees in England and Holland, from which the Pilgrims originated. Back there in civilization, typically cloudy days and warm nights resulted in muted, uninspired and bland fall colors. In contrast, fall days in the New World were sunny; nights, cool, a perfect condition for decreasing chlorophyll in leaves, allowing colorful pigments to emerge.

At the First Thanksgiving—I like to imagine—the forests were painted in fiery reds, lively amber, crimson and scarlet, russets, golden brown, and bright yellow. It would have been a visual feast for the new arrivals to America.

Now, as this year’s Thanksgiving approaches, it’s a good time to learn more about the First Thanksgiving and how a tiny group of brave people overcame the tough odds against them. Check out the resources that I listed below.

We should also give thanks for where we are, what we have and where we came from. And do as I did for myself: Learn about your family’s past.

 

Here are good resources to read (I used information from some of these to write this article):

–The nonfiction book Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick. It’s an entertaining account, accurate and in-depth. I highly recommend it.

—Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, by William Bradford, a leader of the Plymouth colony. This is the most authoritative account of the Pilgrims and the early years of their colony.

From History.com: Thanksgiving 2019. An excellent article for learning about the history of the modern Thanksgiving.

How the turkey became Thanksgiving’s mascot.

From History.com: Colonists at the first Thanksgiving were mostly men because women had perished.

Smithsonian magazine: What was on the menu for the First Thanksgiving?

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Commercials: The best of the worst Super Bowl

The 53rd annual Super Bowl on February 3 was notable because, quite frankly, it was so forgettable, the most forgettable football game ever. And ever.

I make this point in the kindest way possible. I love football and Super Bowls. Like many of the 100 million Americans who viewed this Super Bowl, I’m obsessed with the thrill of the game. Give me chips and dip, a brew, big-screen TV, an overstuffed easy chair, and I transform into a football slob who yells at the referee when calls go against my team…and I want excitement in every play. They (whoever “they” are) claim that baseball is our national pastime. Nay, ’tis wrong. Armchair quarterbacking is our national pastime, not only in football and other sports, but also in politics, social issues and, well, many things.

Even though I know the players and teams gave it their best, I felt like I wasted my time watching this Super Bowl. The score was the lowest in Super Bowl history. Defense trumped offense during the game, a recipe ripe for low-scoring, less exciting outcomes. There was only a woeful tiny, tiny smattering of almost-halfway-exciting plays. The overnight ratings showed this lackluster Super Bowl had the lowest rating in the last 10 years.

The halftime show reeked of confusing boredom with rappers whose words couldn’t be understood. Adam Levine was the lead singer. He’s normally a great entertainer; this time, he was barely passable. Unfortunately, he dramatically ripped off his shirt to proudly display how his upper body is creepily etched with indecipherable tattoos. It ain’t cool, Adam, put your shirt back on.

The Super Bowl’s redeeming quality came from the commercials, most of which were humorous, entertaining and enjoyable.

Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) chased around a mutt whose barking ordered Amazon’s Echo to purchase dog food.

In a Hyundai commercial, Jason Bateman was the spiffily dressed operator of an elevator that carried riders way down and way down and down to jury duty, vegan dinner, a root canal, and, yucky, even worse.

Ragged-faced Jeff Bridges and Sarah Jessica Parker, whose chest showed more flesh than not, promoted a beer, Stella Artois, that most consumers of brew, including Mr. Bridges, just call Stella because they don’t know how to pronounce Artois.

Among other advertisements, a dragon magically melted a Bud Light commercial into a Game of Thrones promo.

There was also a crazy-fun NFL commercial where famed football heroes at a black-tie banquet (almost 50 of them in the commercial, plus a couple of refs) dove for a loose football. I still belly-giggle when I think of it.

By far, the most important commercial focused on the role of the news media.

In a harried, worrisome world where the U.S. president is quick to use the label Fake News for any news story that doesn’t support him, the commercial offered an insightful look into how democracy dies in the darkness without a free press. Narrated by Tom Hanks, the commercial sponsored by the Washington Post focused on three critical messages: knowing empowers us, knowing helps us decide, knowing keeps us free. The commercial is worth viewing—click here.

The game-winner: Jason Bateman as an elevator operator in a Super Bowl commercial. Watch...

The commercial, by the way, never mentioned the president. Nonetheless, it only took a few minutes for Donald Trump, Jr., to tweet out hateful criticism of the commercial for its “leftist BS.”

The mere fact that Don, Jr., has the freedom to speak his inane view is—I would like to emphasize—one good example of why free press (and, by extension, free speech) should be heartily supported by all of us.

On average, the time length of a professional football game is 3 hours and 12 minutes. The action—the time that the ball is actually in play—totals an average of 11 minutes. I didn’t time this Super Bowl, but I imagine the length of the game exceeded the average, this as a way to slip in more commercials, each of which cost $5 million for 30 seconds.

Having written all of the above, I’m kind of wistful now, and wishful. For 2019, I wish we would’ve had a Super Bowl of Commercials rather than a Super Bowl of Football Game.

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A special Lewis and Clark day

I always approach the day of November 19 with reverence and a large dose of grateful joy.

When I wake up on the morning of November 19, I give thanks to the universe. And then comes a laugh and a day of happiness celebrating the simple facts that, No. 1, I once completed a rugged journey across much of America that few folks in our modern age have made; No. 2, I survived; and, No. 3, I’m still alive, almost a half-century later, to tell the story.

November 19 was the day of the year—back 48 years ago—when four of my friends and I reached the St. Louis Gateway Arch, completing a half-year, 3,700-mile journey along the trail of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Our excursion was undertaken when I was a young man, a very young man, age 23, and it was by backpack; canoe and kayak on the rivers; and by foot across the Rockies.

Sometimes, as we hiked the Lolo Trail, the mountain forests were so silent all we could hear was our own beating hearts.

The journey was a poetic ballad of sweat, Nature’s beauty, friendship, aching muscles, blisters, sunburns, the fresh smell of pine trees, starry nights, snowy mornings, unbounded enthusiasm, at times gut-wrenching fear, great laughter, cold rain, and more sweat, always sweat, and always wind in our faces no matter which way we faced, a great mystery how that always seemed to be.

We started in early June at Fort Clatsop near the mouth of the Columbia River at the coastal edge of Oregon. The fort of today is a replica of a long-gone winter fort constructed there by the Lewis and Clark explorers in late 1805 after they spent the previous year and a half traveling through the wilderness from St. Louis. They lived at their Fort Clatsop for almost four months and in the spring of 1806 undertook a 6-month journey back to civilization at St. Louis.

One member of our group, Mike Cochran, was a cartoonist. This was his version of how Lewis and Clark and the dog Seaman felt at times as they moved along the Lolo Trail. A slight bit of editorial license here—back then, Lewis and Clark rode horses across the mountains. Poor ol’ Seaman, though, had to hoof it!

From Fort Clatsop, we paddled up the Columbia, Snake, and Clearwater rivers, hiked across the Lolo Trail in the high mountains of Idaho and into Montana (our two canoes and a kayak were trucked over the mountains), and then paddled down the Beaverhead and Jefferson rivers to the Missouri River. The Missouri took us north—to within 50 miles of the Canadian border—and then curved us directly south through the Dakotas, along the edges of Nebraska and Iowa, and southeast across the state of Missouri to that beautiful Gateway Arch towering 630 feet above the river.

Our route from west to east covered the same territory as Lewis and Clark. The explorers went up the Missouri River, rode across the Rocky Mountains—from western Montana and across Idaho—on horses that they traded for with Native Americans. On the west side of the mountains, they built canoes and paddled down the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia rivers to the Pacific coast. The spent the winter of 1805-06 at the mouth of the Columbia and then returned to St. Louis mostly by the same route.

Oh, what was it that the poet Robert Burns once wrote about the best laid schemes of mice and men? The plans of Lewis and Clark reenactors often go awry, too.  We figured it’d be a little tough going up the Columbia, Snake and Clearwater rivers, against the current—and it was, but not bad. We also thought it’d be easy going with the current flowing down the Missouri River. That was the deciding factor—the Missouri’s downstream flowing—for why we went from west to east. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

Today’s Missouri River is still free-flowing, clear, swift, and gorgeous through a stretch of Montana. But then, farther on, 19 dams now back up huge reservoirs in Montana and the Dakotas, and the mighty river becomes what seems like one endless lake. Some reservoirs are so wide you can’t see across to the far shore. High winds often skim along the surface of the water, churning up giant, dangerous waves. Travel by muscle power was so slow that some days we struggled to make a dozen miles of progress across the reservoirs.

Almost a half-century ago, I stepped across the source of the Missouri River. This photo was published in an article that I wrote for the Denver Post’s Empire Magazine. Click here to read the article. On August 12, 1805, Lewis and some of his men reached the source not far from where I stood for this photo.  Lewis wrote in his journal that one of the men, Hugh McNeal, “had exultingly stood with a foot on each side of this little rivulet and thanked his god that he had lived to bestride the mighty & heretofore deemed endless Missouri.”

The youngest of us was a tall, rosy-cheeked Idahoan, Clay Asher, who had just graduated from the Twin Falls high school and reached the age of 18 only a few days prior to our departure. He could paddle all day. Even with a 60-pound pack on his back, he would keep a long-legged stride going for hours along rough and steep mountain trails. He loved the outdoors. He knew the wildlife and the plant life. He had a natural instinct for navigating rapids. Most importantly, he knew how to laugh while standing soaked in a freezing downpour in the middle of nowhere. Lewis and Clark had a youngster with them, too, George Shannon, who sometimes got lost but knew how to hunt. I’ve often wondered if Clay was George Shannon’s reincarnation.

By the time we reached the Gateway Arch on November 19, I had lost 50 pounds (I was on the chunky side prior to our journey…But the daily rigors of outdoor life slimmed me down considerably!), capsized 22 times, almost drowned once when I was stuck under a capsized canoe—and would’ve certainly not survived if one of my companions, Mike Wien, hadn’t happened to spot my hand sticking for help out of the water. Another time, we almost lost a companion, Mike Cochran, when giant waves, kicked up by a sudden windstorm, swamped his canoe in the cold Snake River where it flowed through an isolated landscape of nothing but boulders, sagebrush, rattlesnakes, and a bit of driftwood. By the time we rescued him, he had slipped so far into hypothermia that we had to encircle him in a ring of campfires to bring warmth back into his body.

A few times we became lost as the path disappeared while we trekked through the great mountain forests of the Lolo Trail. At such times, our always optimistic leader (I say this with great admiration), Bob Miller, emphasized we weren’t really lost because, truly, we knew where we were, just that we didn’t know for sure how to get where we wanted to be. He was right. We always got there, wherever there was. Bob’s philosophy offered a great lesson that has helped me through all of these years—don’t worry so much about where you are; instead, focus on where you want to be.

Bob Miller on the Missouri River as it passes through the White Cliffs region in Montana. In a lengthy, eloquent description on May 31, 1805, Meriwether Lewis journaled that the enchanted cliffs “exhibit a most romantic appearance.” Here’s what else Lewis about the White Cliffs…

We were awed just to be out there, lost or not, standing at times on the Lolo Trail, for example, on the ridge of a high mountain and viewing nothing but dark green forested mountains ahead and, beyond them, more mountains and, still, beyond those, even more mountains, fading into the hazy horizon of a blue sky. At night, in places where the ambient light of communities did not exist, the sky was so thick with stars seeming so close to us that I felt like I could reach up and touch them. Such views few of us in today’s world seldom enjoy.

{What food did we eat? How experienced were we prior to this journey through Nature? Why did we go? And what became of the five of us after our journey? Click here to find out.}

Looking back now, I find it’s interesting to compare those days of Lewis and Clark’s expedition and, likewise, our journey in 1973 to what’s around today, in 2019.

Back then, five decades ago, most locals knew only scant details, if any, about the travels of Lewis and Clark through their region. They had no idea of the connection between the names of local rivers and other geographic features to Lewis and Clark. The same goes for local flora and fauna. Lewis and Clark identified dozens of plants and animals previously unseen by Americans of the early 19th century. Many local folks in 1973 had no idea of Lewis and Clark’s role in identifying birds and other wildlife in their area.

How Mike Cochran showed what it was like to reach St. Louis on Nov. 19, 1973.

The prairie dog is a great example. The explorers viewed it as a small dog that barks, and one time they poured buckets and buckets of water into the hole of a prairie dog colony in an attempt to flush out and capture one of the tiny critters to send back to President Jefferson, a fellow with quite an inquisitive mind. In 1973 and even today, some locals merely consider prairie dogs as a growing nuisance, not as a biological oddity as Lewis and Clark did.

Now, thanks to the popularity of the 2003-06 national bicentennial celebration of the expedition and groups like the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, it’s pretty darn hard to spit along the trail without hitting a historic marker commemorating Lewis and Clark, or Sacagawea or Clark’s salve, York, or the more than two dozen other men on the expedition or, for that matter, Lewis’ Newfoundland dog, Seaman.

This is what it was really like. Bob Miller, in the bow, and Clay Asher headed to the Gateway Arch on Nov. 19, 1973.

Today, school kids can recite dates, adventures, and Lewis and Clark journal entries that describe what happened and when and where it happened in their locality. Historians and authors continue to publish books with new insights about the explorers. Annual Lewis and Clark festivals are held. Bridges are named after the explorers. So are streets, schools, and even a college. And frequently people pick up their paddles and set out to retrace parts of the expedition’s.

In March 2019, a federally approved law extended the trail by 1,200 miles. Where once the officially recognized trail started at St. Louis, it now goes from Pittsburgh, Pa., down the length of the Ohio River and a short distance up the Mississippi River, to St. Louis. From St. Louis, the route goes another 3,700 miles up the Missouri River, across the Rockies, and down the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia rivers to the Pacific coast. I sometimes wish I was a bit younger—I’ll be 72 years old in a couple of months—and still had the stamina of youth to paddle from Pittsburgh to St. Louis so I can brag that, well, by golly, I did the whole Lewis and Clark Trail.

The federal approval of the extension was a major accomplishment for the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation and other nonprofit organizations. (Click here to read an article I wrote about the extension for the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation’s website.)

{To learn more about Lewis and Clark, click here to go the website of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. While you’re there, become a member—it’s a worthwhile organization that is the keeper of the Lewis and Clark story. Here’s the foundation’s Facebook page.}

Today’s widespread popularity of Lewis and Clark speaks to the yearning desire for great adventure that many Americans have but are unable to pursue beyond short canoe trips or day hikes along the trail, or expeditions by car to follow parts of the route of the 1803-06 expedition.

In 2019, we have a nation that is politically and philosophically divided in harsh ways. Back in 1973, it wasn’t so much different. A disgraced Spiro Agnew resigned the vice presidency as we paddled the Missouri River, and Richard Nixon was lying about Watergate and other matters.

During the time when Lewis and Clark were forging their trail, Alexander Hamilton was fatally shot during a duel with Aaron Burr, the ultimate price of political rivalry. And Jefferson was involved in a war with Barbary Pirates, the first terrorists to haunt the psyche of America.

Mike Cochran drew this cartoon after he nearly died from hypothermia after huge waves the canoe he was in, capsizing it.

Anyway, those are just some of my musings as November 19 comes around for its annual visit. It’s a good day of the year. A fine day to remember the way things were and to think about how they are today.

How did Lewis and Clark spend the day of November 19 in 1803, 1804, and 1805? You’ll be surprised! Click here to find out…

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What’s in a handshake? Hope, history and a festival

A fun educational festival will take place Oct. 20-21 along the Ohio River to commemorate the 215th anniversary of a handshake that may or may not have occurred between two men who became American heroes.

The first annual Handshake Festival on the grounds of the Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, Indiana, will honor the handshake that may have happened between Meriwether Lewis and William Clark when the two men met there to begin their expedition of discovery from 1803 to 1806.

Lewis and Clark handshake statue at the Falls of the Ohio Interpretive Center.

A major festival attraction is a statue that depicts Lewis and Clark shaking hands. Sculpted by the late C.A (Carol) Grende, the statue is 10 feet tall and sits on a 4-foot-tall, 16.5-ton native slab of 387-million-year-old Jefferson limestone. The statue is located outside of the Falls of the Ohio Interpretive Center near the Ohio River. The festival is sponsored the Ohio River Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation in conjunction with other partners.

The outdoor festival will draw Lewis and Clark experts and enthusiasts from around the country, as well as locals, school kids, scouts, and others interested in history. One of Clark’s descendants, Charles Clark, will be on site to talk about his famous ancestors. So will Hasan Davis, a lawyer who is a juvenile justice advocate and a re-enactor of York, Clark’s slave and an important expedition member.

Hasan Davis portraying York, an important member of the expedition. Davis will give talks at the Handshake Festival.

Displays will depict the time period of the Lewis & Clark Expedition: blacksmithing as done during the expedition; weaving; tomahawk and bow and arrow demonstrations; early 18th century medicines; dulcimer and strings music from the early 1800s; and, among other offerings, old-fashioned games for children.

Presenters at the festival have an impressive depth of knowledge about the expedition. Among them are Richard and Sandy Hennings from Charlotte, Michigan, 340 miles from Clarksville. Sandy is the festival’s organizer and the person who proposed that the Ohio Chapter host the event to commemorate the 1803 handshake.

The Hennings, both of whom are retired, have participated in events in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, and Michigan over the last two decades, sometimes 15 to 20 events a year. They often dress as re-enactors and set up camp and cook over a campfire. Their museum-quality displays show period-piece firearms, medicines, maps, knives, sewing kits, fishhooks, beads for trading with Indians, and other replicas of supplies and equipment used during the expedition.

Their displays at the Handshake Festival will include one about the mathematical methods the explorers used for navigation. The Hennings will also have a journal that kids and adults can sign using a quill pen, much like the quills that Lewis and Clark used to write in their journals.

In a telephone interview, the Hennings noted their enthusiasm for historical festivals started with Richard’s interest in muzzle-loading black-powder weapons and history in general. “I grew up watching Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone on TV,” Richard said in explaining how he became interested in black-powder weapons and history.

The Hennings’ passion about Lewis and Clark evolved over four decades. During the initial two decades, the couple participated in festivals dedicated to the French and Indian War from 1754 to 1763 and the mountain men period from about 1810 to the 1880s. It was a natural transition to focus on Lewis and Clark.

A replica of the George Rogers Clark cabin where the handshake may have occurred between Lewis and Clark.

“When I got more into it (Lewis and Clark’s exploration), the more I was fascinated with what they accomplished,” Richard pointed out.

During events, the Hennings pass out trinkets and handouts copied from Lewis and Clark’s journals. “That way people can take a piece of history with them,” Richard noted. “We enjoy having conversations with people about the (Lewis and Clark) trail. Sometimes they’ll say, ‘I’ve been in that part of the trail.’ It touches so many people. That’s amazing. Lewis and Clark are unique.”

One of the questions asked at Lewis and Clark festivals: Where do presenters find period clothing and replicas of early 19th-century equipment? Most sew their own period clothing. And most have engaging stories about how they acquired beads, buttons, firearms, and other items like those used by the explorers.

A replica of George Shannon’s sewing kit, also called a “housewife,”  made by Richard and Sandy Hennings. The replica is accurate even down to the coloring. The outside of the leather kit was dyed red while the inside (photo below) was dyed green. Photos by Richard and Sandy Hennings.

The Hennings have made many replicas. One replica, for example, was of a sewing kit carried by George Shannon, the youngest explorer. To learn the kit’s dimensions and other details about it, Richard called the Oregon Historical Society, which has Shannon’s kit. Such kits were nicknamed “housewife” in the early 1800s. Shannon’s housewife is made of leather dyed red on the outside and green on the inside. Dimensions when the kit is open: 7 1/2 by 15 3/8 inches. “It was fun making it,” Hennings said.

“People come up (at the festivals) and ask what’s this for and what’s it used for?” Richard said. “It gives us a chance to explain history to them.”

{Click here to view the festival’s schedule of events.}

The 1803 handshake is an interesting symbol around which much speculation and debate have occurred over the years. Did the two men actually shake hands? No one knows.

Lewis and Clark, who had become friends during their earlier military service, had only communicated about the expedition by letter. They did not have the opportunity to talk face-to-face until Lewis reached Clarksville, where Clark was living and waiting for Lewis to arrive with a keelboat and supplies.

“This was the first time they physically were able to talk about the expedition,” said Sandy Hennings. “Clark may have just said (to Lewis), “I’m with you. Let’s go.” And, she added with enthusiasm, there was most likely a handshake.

Sandy and Richard Hennings in their period costumes at a Lewis and Clark event.

Regardless of how the two men greeted each other, the story of the handshake is intriguing. It spans two centuries and involves the handshake mystery itself, a famous historian and author, the handshake statue, two women who became close friends, and a magical concept called Lewis and Clark Luck. And there is possibly some Divine Providence tossed in, too.

The story requires you take great jumps through time. Here the story is:

On April 1, 1801, Lewis, 27, was appointed the private secretary for the newly elected President Thomas Jefferson. The two men had known each other for years through Virginia society. The president correctly summed up Lewis as adventurous, intelligent, a leader of men, and someone who is reliable and could be trusted.

So in early 1803, Jefferson named Lewis as the leader, the captain, of an expedition that, as it turned out, would cover more than 4,900 miles along wild rivers and through treacherous mountains to and back from the mouth of the Columbia River at the Pacific coasts of what are now Oregon and Washington.

They decided a co-leader needed to be appointed, a precaution in case something happened to Lewis along the arduous journey.

Lewis recruited a good friend, William Clark, four years his elder. The two men had met in 1796 after Lewis joined the military to fight in the Whisky Rebellion. After funding for the expedition was approved by Congress in January 1803, Lewis and Clark communicated about the expedition by writing letters to each other. The plan was for Lewis to travel from Washington, D.C., along the way purchasing supplies and overseeing the construction of a keelboat. He would then meet up with his friend in Clarksville where Clark was staying at the home of his older brother Gen. George Rogers Clark, who was famous for his military service in the American Revolutionary War.

{Want to learn more about Lewis and Clark? Click here to check out the website for the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation and, while you’re there, become a member.}

 

Now…jump ahead almost two centuries to a book, Undaunted Courage, published in 1996 by historian and popular author, Stephen E. Ambrose. On page 117, Ambrose brilliantly described what he believed the meeting of Lewis and Clark at the cabin of Gen. George Rogers Clark in Clarksville was like:

“When they shook hands, the Lewis and Clark Expedition began.

“Each man was about six feet tall and broad-shouldered. Each was rugged in the face, Clark somewhat more so than Lewis, who had a certain delicacy to his profile. Their bodies were rawboned and muscled, with no fat. Their hands—sunburned, like their faces, even this late in the season—were big, rough, strong, capable, confident. Each man was long-legged. Just a glimpse of their stride across a porch, or at how they seated themselves, showed the physical coordination of an athlete. Each, probably, was dressed in fringed buckskin. And who can doubt that, as they stuck out their hands to each other, both men had smiles on their faces that were as broad as the Ohio River, as big as their ambitions and dreams.

“Oh! To have been able to hear the talk on the porch that afternoon, and on into the evening, and through the night. There would have been whiskey—General Clark was the host, and General Clark was a heavy drinker. There would have been tables groaning under the weight of pork, beef, venison, duck, goose, fish, fresh bread, apples, fresh milk, and more.

“There were the two would-be heroes with the authentic older hero, all three Virginians, all three soldiers, all three Republicans, all three great talkers, full of ideas and images and memories and practical matters and grand philosophy, of Indians and bears and mountains never before seen. Excitement and joy ran through their questions and answers, words coming out in a tumble.”

Stephen E. Ambrose. Photo by Jim Wallace (Smithsonian Institution)

“Unfortunately,” Ambrose concluded, “we don’t have a single word of description of the meeting of Lewis and Clark.”

In other words, we of today have no idea what occurred, what was actually said, what was planned during the meeting, or whether a handshake even occurred. What we believe is a matter of faith and hope.

Lewis had earlier started writing in his journal, back on August 30 when he departed Pittsburgh in the newly constructed keelboat. For some unknown reason, however, he did not maintain his journal from the entry of September 18 to November 11, which included the time period when he and Clark greeted each other in Clarksville.

Some Lewis and Clark aficionados believe the meeting means Clarksville should become known as the location of the start of the expedition. Other enthusiasts think the starting place should be farther upstream on the Ohio River: Pittsburgh, where the keelboat was constructed and launched. Others believe the start of the journey began when Lewis departed Washington, D.C. There is no win-win scenario in this debate. Nonetheless, it brings about fun verbal sparring that shows how knowledgeable and passionate some people are about the expedition.

 

And now, again, jump ahead, this time a few more years to Clarksville area resident Phyllis Yeager, who has a deep and long interest in Lewis and Clark’s story. Friends describe Yeager as a bubbly individual with enthusiasm in her voice when she talks about the Lewis and Clark Expedition

{Click here to learn more about Phyllis Yeager.}

On a January day in 2000, Yeager began reading Undaunted Courage. When she reached page 117 and read Ambrose’s opinion of the handshake, her destiny was sealed. She knew she needed to bring the story of Lewis and Clark into the lives of Clarksville residents and others living along the Ohio River. Until then, many local people had little, if any, knowledge about the explorers’ presence in their part of the country.

While Yeager planned how to help Clarksville receive recognition as the expedition’s point of departure, the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was approaching; a national commemoration was planned from 2003 through 2006. During the years of the commemoration, Yeager and others diligently worked on projects to bring recognition to Lewis and Clark’s presence along the Ohio River. One important goal was to have a statue of Lewis and Clark created and erected in Clarksville to commemorate the handshake.

As all of this activity was underway, Ambrose passed away in 2002. Yeager, though, had the opportunity to meet him prior to then. He autographed page 117 of her copy of Undaunted Courage and wrote on the page “This is where it all began.”

It was around this time that Lewis and Clark Luck began to play a vital role in the handshake story. Lewis and Clark Luck is a term used by Stephanie Ambrose Tubbs, Stephen Ambrose’s daughter and a noted historian and author, Yeager pointed out.

The phrase explains the many seemingly miracles associated with the explorers, Yeager noted in a book she wrote, The Story of the Lewis and Clark Statue, published in 2012 and funded by the Indiana Lewis and Clark Commission and given to attendees of the annual Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation meeting. As Yeager emphasized throughout the book, Lewis and Clark’s fortunate happenstances may actually have been “Divine Providence.”

{Yeager’s book about the Lewis and Clark statue will be available for sale ($20) at the Handshake Festival. Look for Yeager at the Indiana Lewis and Clark Commission booth.}

Regardless of whether it was because of luck or Divine Providence, Lewis and Clark and their companions often experienced good fortune when times became tough or dangerous. Take, for example, their 1805 arrival in the remote wilderness of today’s western Montana, where they faced the challenge of crossing the formidable Rocky Mountains.

Horses were desperately needed for the rigorous journey. None were to be found. It appeared at one point as if all might fail for want of those four-legged critters. Then, Sacagawea discovered she was the sister of the Shoshone chief, whom she hadn’t seen since she was kidnapped years earlier when she was 12 or 13 years old. “Consider the chances that the chief of the Shoshone would be Sacagawea’s brother,” Yeager said. “This streak of Lewis and Clark Luck ensured the Corps with the horses they needed from the Shoshone tribe and played a big role in the success of the expedition.”

Now, almost two centuries later, it seemed to be with some of the Lewis and Clark Luck that Yeager met Carol Grende on a 2003 visit to an art gallery in Great Falls, Montana. Yeager was in Great Falls to attend an art auction.

Phyllis Yeager (left) and Carol Grende.

As she walked through the gallery, Yeager “came to a sudden halt when a young Indian woman seemed to jump out and stop me. Staring at me was a stunning clay model standing on a round swirling table…This Indian woman had a cradleboard strapped to her back with a baby in it and she exhibited such strength of character in her face as she planted a walking stick in the ground that my eyes welled up with tears gazing upon this young girl and her baby. I recognized her immediately as Sacagawea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It was as if she came to life before me and intuitively I knew her creator had extraordinary talent.”

The creator, Carol Grende, just happened to be there “poking and pinching the clay of Sacajawea’s buckskin dress.” As the two women began talking to each other, Yeager suddenly blurted out that a statue of Lewis and Clark’s handshake needed to be created for the Falls of the Ohio. She related Ambrose’s page 117 quote about the handshake.

“Carol’s face lit up!” Yeager recalled in her book. “She started giggling while telling me of her love for the Lewis and Clark story.” And Grende boldly said “I can do it” about creating the statue.

Grende was born near Idaho’s Clearwater River on October 7 exactly 150 years to the day when the explorers departed a site they called Canoe Camp along the river. She lived most of her life near the Lewis and Clark Trail and attended a junior high school named after Sacagawea in Lewiston, Idaho. She rode horses on the same trails traveled by the explorers. She was well aware of the page 117 reference. And she wanted to be involved in the upcoming Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration.

“Carol then got very personal,” Yeager recalled, “telling me that the previous summer she had even participated in a spiritual Indian ceremony where the elders encouraged her to become involved in the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.”

And so began a close friendship that lasted until Grende passed away in 2009 at age 53 from pneumonia brought on by the complication of leukemia that she fought for 20 months. Yeager fondly remembers Grende as a lovely woman with graceful long brown hair, fun-loving smile and a life filled with laughter. Her motto was “Charge On—Have No Fear.”

Carol Grende’s statue of Sacagawea in Great Falls, Montana. The 9.5-foot statue evolved from the clay model she was working on when she met Phyllis Yeager.

Grende and Yeager’s journey to create, fund and place the handshake statue became a huge challenge that involved many people donating their time and talents. Grende sculpted the handshake statue at a record pace, completing it in only a few months, while Yeager focused on acquiring the money to pay for foundry work and other expenses that totaled $125,000. As an offshoot to the effort, Yeager started a business, Phyllis Yeager Promotions, specifically to help Grende in her sculpting endeavors. The business now assists other artists.

The story of the handshake statue’s funding is an excellent example of a community working together—and of Lewis and Clark Luck, and, yes, maybe Divine Providence. Yeager and others, including the Clarksville Historical Society and the Clark-Floyd Counties Convention & Tourism Bureau, began the proverbial knocking on doors to enthuse people and politicians about the statue.

In less than a year, after some unexpected twists and turns, the statue was funded through small donations; major donations by two local residents: Elmer Hoehn and Jan Huff, the former board president of the local convention and tourism bureau; and a bond issue through Floyd County. Placement of the statue at the Falls of the Ohio was worked out thanks to political connections aligning at the right time.

Grende’s Lewis and Clark sculpting dreams extended beyond the handshake statue. She envisioned statues all along the Lewis and Clark Trail. This was a valiant goal, especially considering she had never created a monument prior to her Great Falls meeting of Yeager in 2003.

During the short period from then to 2007, Grende created an unbelievable collection of Lewis and Clark artwork, more accomplishments than most artists might ever do in decades. She crafted an entire series of small-sized Lewis and Clark bronzes, some cast, others now still in clay. Her Lewis and Clark-related statues have been placed in five cities along the trail: Lewiston; Dayton, Washington; and Nebraska City; Nebraska. The handshake statue is in Clarksville. The clay model of Sacagawea that Grende was poking and pinching when she met Yeager in 2003 in Great Falls evolved into a 9.5-foot statue named “Arduous Journey.” It stands at the Missouri River Federal Courthouse in Great Falls.

The handshake statue in Clarksville, Indiana.

“Carol was like the eagle—ready for flight the day we met,” Yeager recalled. “She spent her lifetime preparing for that one great thrust.”

Now Carol Grende is gone, but she left behind something that people can readily see and touch, the statue at the Falls of the Ohio. There may or may not have been a handshake in Lewis and Clark’s time, but it’s there now, representing partnership and adventure of historic proportion.

{What’s happening along the Lewis and Clark Trail? Legislation before the U.S. Senate would extend the official trail by 1,200 from St. Louis to Pittsburgh. Read about it…}

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Passions and value of extending Lewis and Clark trail

Legislation now before the U.S. Senate would extend the official federally designated Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail to include 1,200 miles of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

It’s a proposal that has excited Lewis and Clark buffs, as you’ll see when you read profiles about two Lewis and Clark enthusiasts later in this article.

The proposed extension would encompass such riverside communities as Clarksville, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, all of which are important in the story of Lewis and Clark.

Currently, the official Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail goes for 3,700 miles from Wood River, Illinois, near St. Louis, Missouri, to the mouth of the Columbia River at the Pacific coasts of Oregon and Washington. The expedition comprised of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and other expedition members left Wood River on May 14, 1804, and returned to the St. Louis area in September 1806.

For some unknown reason, the explorers’ 1,200-mile journey on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in 1803 to reach Wood River was not included when the current historic trail became federally designated decades ago.

“We’ve always felt our story was an untold one,” said Phyllis Yeager of the Ohio River Chapter of the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.

The Ohio-Mississippi journey, as well as Lewis and Clark sites as far east as the nation’s Capitol, are generally referred to as the Eastern Legacy. The Eastern Legacy spans parts of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, and Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia.

There are places in those 14 states and the District of Columbia that may be significant in the planning and execution of the expedition, or locations of Lewis or Clark events prior to or after the journey. For example, Lewis’ gravesite near Hohenwald in Tennessee is considered to be part of the Eastern Legacy.

In February 2018, the National Park Service released an extensive study that looked at extending the official historic trail to include all or parts of the Eastern Legacy. The study, done from 2009 to 2016 through a 2008 congressionally authorized study, followed criteria established by the National Trail System Act.

Cover of the NPS study. Click here to read the study.

The study reviewed 25 historical sites and geographic segments related to the expedition. Options were narrowed to three segments that encompass the 1,200 miles of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

After a draft of the study was completed in 2016, the NPS held a public comment period that garnered 323 responses from individuals, organizations, and agencies. Overall, the comments indicated public support for extending the official trail, said Tokey Boswell, chief of planning and compliance for the NPS Midwest regional office based in Omaha.

“As with most projects, there was a range of enthusiasm and concern,” said Boswell, who oversaw the study. “Non-profit organizations that interpret the Lewis and Clark story and some individual sites and cities along the study route appreciated the possibility of an NPS presence and a bigger platform to share their history. Others were concerned about private property rights and inviting visitors into areas where there is not much visitation currently.”

“When the National Trail System Act criteria were applied, the activities at Pittsburgh and beyond really stood out,” Boswell noted. “The study was very careful to note that any successful trail extension will depend on partnerships (with local volunteer groups, communities, and agencies) and additional funding.” The plan, he added, would be to “start slowly and grow over time” as far as adding NPS staff, funding, signage, publications, and other items necessary for administering a successful trail.

With the study in hand, Rep. Luke Messer (R-Indiana), along with co-sponsors Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Indiana), Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), and John Yarmuth (D-Kentucky), introduced bipartisan legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives to extend the federally recognized Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail to include the 1,200 miles of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The House legislation passed July 23.

This is a map of the official federally designated Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail from the area of St. Louis, Mo., to the mouth of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. The proposed trail extension includes 1,200 miles of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Pittsburgh to St. Louis. See the map below to view the proposed trail extension. The map above came from Weber State University.

Subsequently, similar Senate legislation was introduced August 23 as the Eastern Legacy Extension Act. The legislation would extend the official historic trail to include the 1,200 river miles from Pittsburgh to Wood River in the St. Louis area.

The bipartisan bill was introduced by Sen. Todd C. Young (R-Indiana) and co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Indiana). The proposed legislation was read in the Senate and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

It’s unknown how long the senatorial process may take.

{Read the Senate bill titled S.3375}

In testimony before the House, Lindy Hatcher, executive director of the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation headquartered in Great Falls, Montana, said the journey on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers was important because Lewis and Clark recruited, organized, and trained men for the grueling exploration of the Pacific Northwest. It was along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers where the Corps of Discovery—the expedition’s name—began working together as a team, Hatcher noted.

The proposed extension of the Eastern Legacy (in green) from Pittsburgh to Wood River, Illinois, in the St. Louis area. Map source: National Park Service.

Meanwhile, in an April letter to Congress, Matt Pierce, a state representative in Indiana, offered this analysis: “A large concentration of population in the eastern United States will be brought closer to the official trail by extending it to Pittsburgh. Many of those residents will see official trail sites along the Ohio River corridor for the first time and be inspired by those locations to retrace the steps of the Expedition all the way to the Oregon coast, boosting tourism for all Lewis and Clark Trail states.”

{Click here to check out a travel brochure that shows  Lewis and Clark offerings in the Eastern Legacy}

For this article, I interviewed two Lewis and Clark buffs living along the Ohio River in the Eastern Legacy: John McNulty of Pittsburgh and Phyllis Yeager, Clarksville, Indiana. Both have good stories to tell about their involvement with Lewis and Clark activities. Each has an enthusiastic passion for including the 1,200 miles as part of the official historic trail.

Interested in Lewis and Clark? Click here to learn more and join the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.

When I talked by cell phone with McNulty, he was on a brisk walk from his home toward a meeting about extending a bicycle trail that would include Lewis and Clark sites. He paused from his walk at a spot where he could view not only the Ohio River and historic Lewis and Clark locations but also the Pittsburgh Steelers’ stadium.

John McNulty in his Lewis and Clark re-enactment garb.

Not far from him was the site where a Lewis and Clark interpretive sign will be erected through funding by the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. The sign will offer information about the nearby Brunot Island in the Ohio River. The island was where a mishap with Lewis’ unique weapon, an air gun, ended with a woman accidentally getting shot, a grazing non-fatal but surely painful head wound.

McNulty, 54, grew up in Pittsburgh. In his younger years, there was a severe dearth of local information about Lewis and Clark. In the 1980s, he was a camp counselor at the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, and he began learning about Lewis and Clark to teach scouts about 19th-century living.

“Nobody ever told us that Lewis and Clark had anything to do with Pennsylvania,” McNulty recalled about his days of youth in Pittsburgh. “That was really a shock when I realized it.”

In 2003, he heard about a modern expedition, a re-enactment for the 2003-06 national bicentennial commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. McNulty quit his job as a narrator on an Ohio River tour boat and joined the re-enactment. He remained with the modern expedition for only three weeks, until his father became ill and he returned to Pittsburgh to help care for him.

Three years later—in 2006—the ongoing re-enactment again called to McNulty’s sense of adventure. He left a job in a call center in May and caught a Greyhound bus to join the modern explorers in June. At that time, they were departing from Lewiston, Idaho. McNulty traveled with the re-enactors east across the Lolo Trail that Lewis and Clark followed through Idaho and into Montana. He remained with the re-enactment until September 23 when it reached St. Louis. September 23, by the way, is the day the original expedition was completed in 1806 in St. Louis.

What do you think? Please take a short survey at the end of this article.

When the re-enactors entered a community, celebrations were held by locals to honor them and the original explorers. During these festive occasions, McNulty often took on the persona of Pierre Cruzatte, an experienced boatman. The son of a Frenchman and an Omaha Indian mother, Cruzatte played the violin and often entertained the explorers around campfires.

“I can play the violin,” said McNulty in explaining why he took on Cruzatte’s role, “and I can fake a good French accent.”

Today, McNulty performs one-man music shows in area nursing homes, leads history hikes in the city through a non-profit group called Venture Outdoors, and does living history displays with a theme of Lewis and Clark at festivals and other public events.

Now, though, he portrays expedition member George Gibson, a native Pennsylvanian and hunter. Gibson also played the violin but not with Cruzatte’s flair. “I thought George Gibson would be the best person to portray since he’s from this area,” McNulty said.

McNulty can easily offer reasons why Pittsburgh is important in the Lewis and Clark story. It was there that the explorers’ keelboat was constructed and launched. Lewis began journaling the happenings of the adventure as he left Pittsburgh. It was in Pittsburgh where Clark’s letter to Lewis arrived to say he is “cheerfully” honored to “partake of the dangers, difficulties and fatigues” of the impending expedition. The plan was for Lewis to meet up with Clark downstream near the Falls of the Ohio.

With admiration for Lewis and Clark always close by in his thoughts, McNulty is working toward his vision that the theme of Lewis and Clark becomes a prime mover in efforts to teach young and old about local and national history; and about such issues as watersheds, journaling, literacy, geography, and the values of friendship, teamwork and outdoor recreation.

Currently underway for McNulty is a project to start a wildlife conservation area on the 129-acre Brunot Island, part of which is now the site of a 315-megawatt power plant. The rest of the island is unused and a potentially good site for a bird sanctuary. He is also involved in a project to create a family-friendly bike system through the upper Ohio River watershed. The bike system could be a boon to tourism and tied into Lewis and Clark history.

Another of McNulty’s projects sparks one’s imagination directly back to Meriwether Lewis. The project is a community effort to save the Old Stone Tavern, built in circa 1782 and now Pittsburgh’s oldest commercial structure. The tavern has ties to the Whiskey Rebellion and was likely in operation when Lewis suffered through an agonizingly long wait in Pittsburgh while a boatwright, who seemed to enjoy whiskey more than boatwrighting, constructed a keelboat for the expedition. It’s not too far-fetched to imagine that Lewis, known for enjoying a dram or two, would have partaken of a fair share of adult beverage in the tavern.

McNulty said the inclusion of the 1,200 miles of the Eastern Legacy would be invaluable in these efforts. “It could help Pittsburgh rebrand itself. It would be a great thing for the Ohio River valley and Pennsylvania, as well as the entire Lewis and Clark Trail.”

He added, “It would be like all the Super Bowls rolled into one.”

{Read an article about McNulty, published May 18, 2018, from an interview with The Alleghany Front, a public radio station in Pittsburgh.}

 Phyllis Yeager has worked diligently to promote Lewis and Clark within the Eastern Legacy. Her home in the Clarksville area is near the Falls of the Ohio. Louisville, Kentucky, is located across the river from Clarksville.

Phyllis Yeager with some of her Lewis and Clark mementos.

Yeager grew up in Montana’s Lewis and Clark country where the history of the expedition is commonly known. Her grandfather told her stories about the extraordinary journey. From her childhood home, she could see national forests and mountain peaks named after the explorers. So Yeager was steeped in the expedition’s story when she moved to Indiana in the 1980s and became associated with the local convention and tourism board.

After relocating to Indiana, she was surprised by the small smattering of local appreciation for Lewis and Clark’s time in Clarksville and Louisville, and along the Ohio River. The only Lewis and Clark recognition to be found was an inconspicuous historical marker on the banks of the Ohio River. Yeager photographed the marker caked with mud from a high flow of the river. Next to the marker was an old car tire.

Once described as “a natural phenomenon of energy” by a former magazine editor, Yeager was appointed in 2001 by the Indiana governor to sit on the board of the state’s newly created Lewis and Clark Expedition Commission, a position she continues to hold. She served on the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation board from 2004 to 2010, and was active in the local, state and national celebrations of the bicentennial commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition from 2003 to 2006. She was also active in successful lobbying efforts in Indiana and Kentucky to have Lewis and Clark’s names put on a new 2,500-foot Ohio River bridge in 2016 that connects the two states.

During her years of Lewis and Clark volunteer work, she realized the Eastern Legacy’s potential importance to public education, tourism, recreation, and, among other benefits, keeping alive the story of the most important expedition in U.S. history.

“It’s been a passion for me,” she said in a telephone interview.

The idea of extending the official trail to include Eastern Legacy segments gained strength as activities of the 2003-06 bicentennial familiarized more Americans with the expedition. The extension effort was long on volunteerism but short on funds. This prompted some creative maneuvers. Yeager and others began promoting the Eastern Legacy’s contribution to the expedition. Among their endeavors was a successful project that resulted in the state issuing special vehicle license plates designed with Lewis and Clark artwork. A portion of the revenue from the ongoing project goes to the state’s Lewis and Clark Expedition Commission.

An example of the specialized Indiana license plates that help raise funds for the state’s Lewis and Clark Expedition Commission. 1803, by the way, refers to the year when the explorers traveled the Ohio and Mississippi rivers on their way west. And, of course, “LC” refers to Lewis and Clark.

In another interesting tactic, Yeager and husband Ray held annual Kentucky Derby parties with Lewis and Clark themes, a public relations effort to acquaint influential people about the local importance of the expedition. At first blush, tying Lewis and Clark to the nearby famous horse race may seem like a stretch, but there is an unusual connection. Churchill Downs, where the Kentucky Derby is held in Louisville, was developed by William Clark’s grandson, Col. Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr.

The Kentucky Derby story “made for a fun time,” Yeager said, “and it helped us tell the story of Lewis and Clark in our area.”

{Read two articles about the involvement of Phyllis Yeager and others in the Eastern Legacy and bicentennial celebration}

One of Yeager’s favored keepsakes from her Eastern Legacy volunteer work is an autograph of Stephen E. Ambrose in her copy of Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the West. For many Lewis and Clark fans, Ambrose’s book is the bible of the Lewis and Clark’s story.

Knowing that Yeager resided in the Clarksville area, Ambrose signed his name on the page that has this important statement about the meeting of Lewis and Clark in Clarksville: “When they shook hands, the Lewis and Clark Expedition began.”

This shaking of the hands occurred in October 1803 after Lewis arrived in Clarksville. There he met up with Clark, who was living in the home of his older brother, Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark. This meeting was the first opportunity Lewis and Clark had to talk face-to-face about the impending journey. Until then, the two friends, who knew each other from serving in the army years earlier, had only corresponded about the expedition by mail.

The image of the handshake has become a major theme in promoting Lewis and Clark in the Ohio River region of Indiana and Kentucky. A museum in the Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville features an exhibit on the topic while an outside bronze statute by the late Carol Grende portrays the two men shaking hands. Yeager, who has written a book about the statue (The Story of the Lewis and Clark Statue), helped arrange the creation and acquisition of the statue. This October 20th a festival celebrating the 215th anniversary of the handshake will be held at the park.

No one knows for sure whether the two men actually shook hands. But the handshake is a good story and a significant image to think about.

At the Falls of the Ohio: Carol Grende’s statue of Lewis and Clark shaking hands.

Whether the expedition actually began with the handshake is a matter that Lewis and Clark buffs sometimes debate. Some strongly believe the journey began in Pittsburgh; others, in the nation’s Capitol when Congress appropriated funds. Or did the expedition begin in the mind of Thomas Jefferson in his earlier years when he daydreamed about the expansion of the United States into the West? The answer: No one knows. But it’s a fun issue to ponder.

However they greeted each, Lewis and Clark would have intensely focused on planning and practical matters as they slowly traveled the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Conversations would have centered on boats and equipment, food and other supplies, and the grit of men recruited along the way. They also would have discussed weapons, gunpowder, and the need for military readiness.

They honed skills they knew would be needed in the wilderness: navigating flowing waters, sawyers, and sandbars, and techniques for mapping land and waterways. They probably discussed the diplomacy of interacting with natives and the collecting of specimens of plants and animals. They wrote in their journals, entries that have delighted and captured the imagination of generations of Americans.

It was time well-spent and helped to ensure the expedition’s success—significant reasons for now extending the current historic trail to include the 1,200 miles of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

{Interested in offering your views on the trail extension legislation? Contact your U.S. Senators. Here’s how…}

Iconic portraits of Lewis and Clark painted in 1807 by Charles Willson Peale. Courtesy of ExplorePAhistory.com and Independence National Historical Park.

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By Magic or Dumb Luck…

Somehow—through magic, happenstance, chicanery, divine intervention, or, most likely, just dumb luck—I’ve reached a milestone in life that most of us never thought about when we were young: The 50th year since my high school graduation.

This is the reunion weekend, a two-day gala. Our graduating classmates totaled 578. Sixty-five have passed away.

I doubt I’ll be able to instantly recognize many of the 200 who plan to attend the gala—you know, wrinkles come on with age; potbellies arrive; chins triple; hair, if any remains, becomes arctic white; backs hunch; strides slow down, maybe even canes.

Of course, I still look the same: fine, smooth skin; confident stride; hard muscles; the same handsome features…and, if you believe that, I have the proverbial bridge I’d like to sell you. I do not even recognize myself nowadays when I look in a mirror. My solution is simple: Turn all the mirrors around so I don’t see the stranger in the reflection.

Col. Van Horn, dead now these last 102 years. He is still present, though, in the name of my alma mater.

Our high school class has experienced a phenomenon that many high school classes in the U.S. haven’t: Large numbers of us have remained in contact with each other over the decades.

The availability of social media helps, of course. There are five Facebook pages dedicated to Van Horn friends, including a site for the Class of 1968. We gather for a monthly brunch at a local restaurant and, on a weekly basis, many of us show up for what we call Taco Tuesday at a local pub–$1 tacos, happy hour brew, can’t beat it!

I have never figured out what the exact glue is that makes us stick together in one way or another. The comfort of common backgrounds? The familiarity? Many of the same interests? Our careers in adulthood are widely varied, as are our political and religious views. The ‘ol opposites attract theory?

Last night, some of us attended a gathering at the home of a classmate who wanted us to meet the family of her grown son. The family was visiting from New York. The daughter-in-law’s jaw dropped in amazement when a couple of us mentioned how we all remain in contact.

“No one get away from us,” said a classmate, Vikki Van Trump Mitcheltree.

“Even if someone dies,” I added in, “they’re still stuck with us ‘cause we keep talking about them.”

Our high school—it’s named Van Horn—is located in Independence, a quiet suburb in the metropolitan area surrounding Kansas City, Mo. The school was opened in 1955 on the former site of a mansion nicknamed “Honeywood,” the residency of the late Col. Robert T. Van Horn, a newspaper publisher and Kansas City mayor during part of the Civil War. I’ve been unable to learn why Van Horn nicknamed it Honeywood.

Honeywood, Col. Van Horn’s mansion, torn down in the 1950s to make room for Van Horn High School. Photo from a newspaper circa the early 1950s.

Honeywood was in major disrepair by the 1950s. So it was razed to make way for the much-needed school to accommodate all the local kids born immediately following World War II. The major thoroughfare where Honeywood was located was originally called Van Horn Road in the late mayor’s honor, but it was eventually renamed Truman Road after Harry Truman, whose home, now a national historic site, is a couple of miles further on from the school.

Our class was one of the last of the Baby Boomer Generation, and therefore we had many students, almost 2,000, in our school. Now, Van Horn’s graduating classes average only about 200 students.

Like the population of Independence, the school’s student body was largely white back in my day—by this, I mean 99.999 percent white. We had two students with Hispanic surnames in our class and a wonderfully feisty black math teacher.

I have to plead complete stupidity here and a huge amount of blind unawareness. I didn’t realize it at the time, but back then we resided in what today would be called a racist community. I don’t recall ever seeing overt racism as I grew up, but later, in young adulthood, I realized it had been there all along, covert.

Van Horn back in the day, my day, that is. We used to keep dinosaurs and Dodo Birds in the field behind the school, that’s how far back my day was.

Independence and Van Horn = white. A few minutes away, Kansas City’s inner city = largely black. Even though our school was located in Independence, it was part of the Kansas City school district because the K.C. district lines looped into Independence land. The physical boundaries of K.C. and Independence marked not only the city limits but also the racial boundaries as far as residing, shopping, work opportunities, and education.

The only times most of my classmates and I faced black students were in the sports arenas: football, basketball, and track. The inner city schools always fielded tremendously talented athletes. We competed evenly in football, but we were, well, woefully woeful in basketball. Our tallest player was Jerry Kelsey, six-foot-two (maybe three on tiptoes). The rest of us were six feet or, mostly, less, much less.

By the way, I remember Kelsey not only because of his height and prowess on the court but also for his prankster ways—you probably recall such classmates from your own high school. One day I was shooting free-throws prior to basketball practice. Kelsey tiptoed up behind me and yanked down my gym shorts. As I fumbled trying to get them back up from around my ankles, I noticed a girl, a pretty classmate, watching from the gym’s doorway. She rolled her eyes, shook her head in disgust. I could almost hear her thinking, “Those stupid boys.” It was an embarrassing moment that still haunts my nightmares.

Van Horn today: A pretty good place.

Nowadays, when I’m around Kelsey, I always keep a hand tightly gripped onto my pants belt. I’m more than well-qualified and experienced enough by now, all on my own, for ladies to think “that stupid boy” about me even without the assistance of Kelsey’s prankster ways.

The inner city schools put giants on the court. Some were nearly seven tall. Many went on to college scholarships, some into the NBA. Our school gained the record for the lowest points scored in a league game. This was against Central High School. They scored the highest on record: 116. We stumbled in at 26, and only then because Central put in its third string for the last quarter (Huh, I think they may have even put in a couple of their lady cheerleaders, too, and I think I saw an ancient janitor dribbling a ball on the court.) As far as I know, the records—both for Central and Van Horn—still stand. Our season: two wins, 17 losses.

Nonetheless, it was a mightily fun season. I learned a great lesson that would help me through life: humility. I’ve also learned since then that I missed out on a lot of fine people and experiences because I was tucked away in a nearly all-white school and community.

No high school remembrance (at least one written by a guy) is complete without a photo of the cheerleaders. From left: Nancy Copeland, Nancy (Windler) Reeves, Stevie (Shipley) Pepitone, Pam (Mayer) Bell, Patty (Abreo) Kimsey. Center ground: Kathi (Gerard) McKee.

Thankfully, that scenario has largely improved in both the school and community. It was a tough road, though. I was a reporter for the Kansas City Star when federally mandated busing was finally forced upon the Kansas City area in the mid-1970s. I had the opportunity to write about the issue. Students from the inner city were required to sit on a bus—in some cases, an hour each way—to ride to Van Horn, and vice a verse with students going to inner city schools. Nobody was happy.

It was an extremely complicated issue that involved equality, public education, and economics. I won’t go into all of it here, other than to mention a couple of points. The Missouri state school board revoked the Kansas City school district’s accreditation due to lack of meeting proficiency stands. Van Horn left the Kansas City district and moved in 2008 into the Independence School District.

The move was a major game-changer for our alma mater. The school building had deteriorated over the years, so good-spirited Independence community members took up paint brushes and made repairs. Independence voters approved a couple of bond issues for the school district, respectable portions of which went into remodeling and expanding Van Horn. Minority families moved into the suburb to gain access for their children and for other reasons. The quality of education greatly improved and has become innovative.

When I was a student there, Van Horn offered a good education. I think. ‘Tweren’t my bag, unfortunately. I sat through all the right classes to be able to get into college: algebra, geometry, beer-drinking 101, trig, biology, beer-drinking 102, chemistry, and physics.

Jerry Kelsey himself. That is, how himself used to be…!

I made it through physics thanks to Valerie, a foreign exchange student from Italy. We sat next to each other at a table. She whipped through tests with ease while sweat poured off my answerless brow. As I struggled and grunted and nervously chewed on my pencil, she kindly inched her completed answer sheet a bit my way. She softly tapped the tips of her fingers on the table to wake me up from my engrossed state of self-imposed disaster.

I passed the class. My final grade? Let’s just say, well, I passed the class.

Valerie went on to become a successful physician in Italy. I’ve spent my life since our physics class avoiding Tasmania Devils like physics, chemistry, biology, and math. I have excelled, though, in beer-drinking 102 through 150, and I do know how to balance my checkbook, sometimes.

The year 1968, when we graduated, was a watershed time for America. Our nation had been mired down in foreign wars for many years. The environment was crumbling. Women earned far less than men. Minorities were disrespected and often in danger. Certain religions were targets of hate. Politicians were dirty. The president was a….

Huh, hey, wait just a senior moment. Isn’t that 2018?

 

 

 

 

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The Big Picture?

If you set aside Russian interference, fake news, political squabbling, and photographs of cute puppies, Facebook really is a remarkable tool.

It sometimes affords us the opportunity, the spark, to think beyond where we are. I suspect I’m like most Americans: I get too easily entangled in the minutia of daily living to think beyond my overly cluttered existence.

That’s a reason why I’ve always admired people like Stephen Hawking and some theologians—they focus on The Big Picture. Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we headed?

Early this morning—after I let the dog out to do its business, after I pondered whether I put 10 or 11 teaspoons of coffee in the coffee maker, and right after I checked to make sure I didn’t put my tee shirt on backwards, again—I ran across a Facebook posting that caught my interest.

The posting involved two of my high school friends, neither of whom I have seen since we graduated 50 years ago. (But I’ve kept up with them on Facebook, another benefit of Facebook).gods_450pixels

Pat Pearce, a very talented musician in Kansas City, Mo., posted the photograph that you see on this page. This is a reposting. The photo has circulated widely on Facebook.

To which William (Bill) Shull, a successful and astute lawyer in Warrensburg, Mo., commented: “Pure coincidence, obviously. The dude on the left only has four fingers on his right hand!  Actually, that is amazing if it’s true. It makes you wonder if ‘historians’ actually have factual history figured out.”

Pat’s posting and Bill’s comment brought about memories of a book that I read years ago. It was by an archaeologist (sorry, I don’t recall his name or the book title) who wrote about why there are ancient pyramids located in most cultures around the world.

His take—no, not that ancient aliens built the pyramids around the world—was that trade routes back then were more widely established, even across oceans, than what is commonly believed today.

As commerce was established, religious missionaries made their way into native cultures and brought along concepts like pyramids. Sometimes conquerors came, too, and so did shifts in cultures, and there was an establishment of new norms imported from other cultures. Then comes McDonald’s, Air Jordan tennies and tee shirts displaying Bob Marley (Oh, well, hmm, this last bit is my take on the archaeologist’s take).

Bill brought up an interesting point in his comment: Do historians “actually have factual history figured out”?

My answer: seldom, sometimes, not often, more often than not, no, maybe yes, heck, I got no idea.

It’s easy to interpret history incorrectly, especially on cultures that existed many thousands of years ago and no written records exist today. And it’s even easy to re-interpret and reshape history where written histories do exist today. Think Columbus—once a good guy (back when I was in elementary school), then a bad guy as details about him emerged. Think Hitler, bent on wiping out anything Jewish. Think of what’s happening now—some American political leaders are trying to rewrite history in their own image.

One of my great interests is the 1804-06 Lewis & Clark Expedition. The explorers maintained extensive journals of what they saw and experienced. Their journals have been published word-for-word multiple times over the last two centuries. Many, many books have been published about the two leaders, their companions, the natives they met, the landscape, and the wildlife. The amount of scholarly research is stunningly impressive.

I’ve found, though, that sometimes modern interpretation of historical figures or events may be less accurate than what actually occurred or what people were all about. Even for the most careful of historians and writers, one missed word in the reading of the journals, the incorrect analysis of a vague phrase, an inability to understand what it’s really like to be attacked by a grizzly bear—and suddenly the facts of history are unintentionally revised. Try as one might, it’s impossible to feel the sweat and physical strain of something that happened in the past, the mental anxiety of a person, the real thought process behind why a person did this or that.

After I let in my dog, who is now snoring on the couch, and remembered I had put in three too many teaspoons of coffee, I did a bit of online research on the photograph reposted by Pat. The photo appears to have originated from research done by Jim Allen, author of Atlantis: Lost Kingdom of the Andes (I haven’t read this book). Click here for more info about Jim’s research. Disclaimer: I make no guarantee on the photo’s authenticity, whether Jim Allen actually exists, or, for that matter, whether who I am that I think I am.

It’s been an enjoyable and interesting morning thanks to Pat, Bill, and the photo. I got to ponder part of The Big Picture.

And I discovered I do have my tee shirt on correctly, for once.

And I got to wonder when the aliens will return. This time, will they bring intelligent life to Earth?

 

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Treed by wild hogs while delivering “heat and light” to Americans

The yuletide season is the time of year when my feelings of gratitude go out to a group of extremely busy employees at an organization whose work over the last 241 years helped create America: the carriers of the United States Postal Service.

Mailman circa 1900

This holiday season postal carriers will deliver more than 15 billion pieces of mail, including 850 million packages. That’s 10 percent more than last year’s yuletide season.

Most Americans know little, if anything, about the Post Office’s prestigious role in the development of our country. Some folks know, of course, that Benjamin Franklin was the first postmaster. But that’s about it.

I’ve been reading an interesting book—How the Post Office Created America by Winifred Gallagher—that delves into the postal service throughout America’s history, including recent challenges faced by USPS in the digital age. For anyone interested in America history, Gallagher’s 2016 book offers a fresh view of how our country evolved.

Back when our fledgling country was only 13 states, thick forests and rugged terrain isolated communities from one another. Communication was extremely limited due to the lack of roads. Only narrow paths linked some communities; in some places, the only way from one community to another was trudging through pathless forests.

The first stamp issues were authorized by an act of Congress and approved on March 3, 1847. The earliest known use of the Franklin 5-cent stamp is July 7, 1847, while the earliest known use of the Washington 10-stamp stamp is July 2, 1847.

Gallagher relates life-endangering episodes that mail carriers encountered while traveling through the great wilderness. One carrier, for instance, was treed by aggressive wild hogs. Another was badly delayed after being struck in the head by a floating log when swimming across a stream while leading his horse. Always, the threat of hostile natives existed—native Americans early on; later on, gun-toting robbers.

Early post offices were usually located in local taverns. Recipients of mail often read newly arrived letters and newspapers out-loud to folks who eagerly gathered to learn the news. News, it seems, drew interest even if it was only tidbits about someone’s Aunt Sally in a far-away hamlet. And a dram or two of whiskey heightens interest in news, too, you know.

Our country’s founding fathers—Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and, among others, (here’s a fellow few modern American are familiar with) Dr. Benjamin Rush—strongly believed the new United States would only survive if a communications network was established to connect widely scattered and culturally diverse hamlets, towns, and cities.

An early postal truck designed for muddy roads.

In short, the country desperately needed a postal service that would be a “means of carrying heat and light to every individual in the federal commonwealth,” according to Dr. Rush, who by some historical accounts was less than an adequate physician but one heck of an intellectual.

He and others also thought western expansion hinged in many ways on the availability of a reliable and affordable communication lifeline (a postal system, in other words) for adventuresome farmers and merchants to remain in contact with family members back at the old homestead. “Pioneers were likelier to venture into the wilderness if they anticipated maintaining a link to the great world,” Gallagher pointed out.

Oh, the good ol’ days!

Another goal was to make postal delivery affordable for every American. In 1779, the postal delivery fee was dependent on how far the item was sent. The cost ranged from 6 cents for 30 miles or less to 12 cents for 150 miles (back then, 1 cent could buy a pound of coffee). With inflation over the last two centuries taken into account, the six and 12 cents of 1779  is the equivalent of $1.59 and $3.18, respectively, in today’s currency. This is considerably more than the 49-cent cost of a first-class mail stamp of 2017 that will carry a letter to anywhere in the U.S. All in all, the Post Office has kept postal delivery reasonably affordable.

The U.S. postal system was a bold revolutionary idea designed to connect all people in the nation. Until the Post Office’s creation, the best mail systems were in Europe. Those were sketchy at best; the cost of delivery so exorbitant only the rich could afford it.

After the federal government established the Post Office, the service subsidized—through various configurations of public-private endeavors that spanned decades—the creation of roads, shipping on waterways, and rail lines that could be used for mail delivery. There was another great advantage. This new transportation infrastructure was there for the public’s use, too, a huge benefit that allowed Americans to more easily travel from here to there.

A 2006 stamp that commemorated the animated movie Beauty and the Beast.

“The public-private collaboration between the post and the independent carriers it paid to move the mail caused dirt roads to shoot through dense forests, turned remote hamlets into centers of civic life, and supported the sense of an American identity,” Gallagher wrote.

In 1790, the mail system consisted of only 75 post offices and 1,875 miles of post routes. By 1830, the numbers had increased to 8,400 post offices and 115,000 miles.

Now, the USPS delivers mail to more addresses in a larger geographic area than any postal service in the world. Each year the Post Office delivers 154 billion pieces of mail to more than 156 million addresses in the U.S. This is about 47 percent of the world’s volume of mail.

All of this history, of course, may mean little to us in comparison to our great desires of today to have holiday cards and gifts arrive before Christmas. Nonetheless, the history is a good reminder of how we got to where we are as a nation.

Ponder the history a bit when you see a postal carrier headed to your mailbox. And offer the carrier a hearty thank you.

Learn more:

 

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Body-slammed at Harry Truman’s

One of the things I like about Facebook is the almost magical ability to re-connect with old friends and make new acquaintances online. This happened the other day when I saw a post on a group site by a lady named Maryann. Turns out, she and I went to the same elementary school, Bristol, and the same high school, Van Horn, in Independence, Mo. Maryann and I were six years apart in school.

Maryann asked on Facebook if anyone had met Harry Truman.  He returned home to live in Independence after the end of his presidency. Every morning Harry roamed the city’s old town area by taking a 2-mile walk at the rapid military pace of 128 steps. Try that pace sometime—I did and was wheezing within minutes. On his daily walks, Harry enjoyed greeting children and their parents. It was an event that most kids remembered throughout life.

Harry and Bess Truman on the sidewalk in front of their home in Independence, Mo. 

I never had the experience. But Harry Truman—or, rather his wife Bess—did play a role in an incident where I was body-slammed by the nation’s top reporter. And, as serendipity would have it, I was relating my memory of the experience in a letter to another friend at about the same time that Maryann asked her Facebook question.

After I graduated from college more than four decades ago, I became a reporter for the Kansas City Star, one of the nation’s better newspapers. This was my first news job and I was eager and thrilled, with all the naiveté of a cub reporter. Because I grew up in Independence and knew the territory and many local folks, I was stationed in the Star’s Independence bureau.

By then, Harry had passed away. Bess was still living in the family home, which was built during the period from 1867 to 1885 and is now a national historic site. I rented a tiny apartment on the second floor of an older house directly across the street that not surprisingly was named Truman Road.

Since I had an excellent view of the Truman home, I became the Star’s unofficial “Bess Watcher”—that is, I was supposed to keep an eye on the place when I was at home to make sure an ambulance didn’t show up in the middle of the night or some other untoward event happened. The fear was that Bess would die without the Star’s knowledge and the newspaper would be scooped by other media. Back then, there was no worry about terrorist attacks; nonetheless, the Security Service kept agents on watch from a house on the street corner. I had a good view of their house, too.

This was in the early days of computers and Star reporters still used typewriters. Mine was an ancient Royal with part of the “e” missing and an “s” that often got stuck as I typed. The obituary for Bess was already written—typed out on paper—and safely tucked into the bottom right-hand drawer of the bureau chief’s desk. That was the first thing I learned on my first day on the job. Every “e” in the obit was a partial letter and now and then an “S” was missing, so I figured whoever had written the obit had probably used the Royal now assigned to me.

Sometimes dignitaries visited Bess. This rarely happened, however, when I was the Bess Watcher. She was in her 90s and suffering from the early stages of the congestive heart failure from which she died in 1982 at the age of 97.

But along came President Gerald Ford, recently named to replace Richard Nixon. Ford wanted all of the publicity he could gain since he was running for election in 1976. He figured a trip to see Bess would make him look good. His golden opportunity came May 10, 1976, when he was the keynote speaker at a public event to dedicate a statue of Truman in Independence.

Ford was accompanied by the national press corps, a pack of elite reporters who followed presidents around. Among them was Helen Thomas, a veteran White House United Press International reporter.

Helen Thomas

Thomas was considered “the” reporter of the American print news media, the brightest star among the stars of the national press corp. She began covering presidential news in 1960 by following around John F. Kennedy. She was the only female journalist to accompany Nixon on his 1972 landmark journey to China. She was the only reporter to have the honor of her own front-row seat in the White House Press Briefing Room.

Presidents all the way through Barack Obama started press conferences by calling on her so she could ask the first question. Her career spanned almost seven decades before 2013 when she reached life’s final “—30—“, the symbol once used by reporters to alert copy editors and typesetters that a story had reached its end.

Helen Thomas in her designated front-row seat in the White House Press Briefing Room, with President Obama and celebratory cupcakes on her 89th birthday in 2009.

Thomas was an icon, my hero. I learned about her in journalism school. I read her articles. I studied her. I imagined how she developed the questions she asked. I visualized how she took notes. I analyzed the way she wrote sentences and how she arranged facts and structured the flow of her articles. Yes, starry-eyed was I.

In the era of Gerald Ford, reporters were not looked upon by the Secret Service as potential assassins. They often could get close to the president—so close that a bold reporter could actually reach out and tweak the nose of the commander in chief. Most reporters restrained themselves, though, and asked questions from a respectful distance. Helen Thomas had a reputation for charging in as close as possible.

When Ford visited Bess, I was a healthy young guy, age 26, almost 6 foot tall, 200 pounds, solid, well-balanced, fairly nimble on my feet, a no-guffaw type of fellow when it came to my job.

While waiting for Ford’s arrival, dozens of local and national reporters were gaggled on the side street and along the sidewalk in front of the Truman home. It was a narrow street crowded with 700 to 800 people who had come to catch a glimpse of Ford and maybe Bess, too.

I had arrived early and managed to locate myself at a good spot near the sidewalk that Ford would walk along after exiting his limo. Nearby was Charlie Burke, a reporter for the competing local newspaper, the Independence Examiner.

I looked around at all of the reporters jammed together behind us. That’s when I saw her in the back of the crowd. Helen Thomas. There she was herself. She was tinier in stature than I expected. Her face was craggy and wrinkled almost like a peach pit. She looked like a granny who should be home knitting. Yet, it was her. It was Helen Thomas! … Please excuse my use of the exclamation point—I still recall my excitement of seeing her live.

Harry Truman in the most famous news photograph in the history of presidential politics.

After a long wait, as I jostled hard with other reporters to maintain my magnificent position, Ford finally arrived in his limo.

The president was approaching me—my questions were ready, my enthusiasm was great—when I was suddenly tossed aside like a bag of feathers. So was Charlie Burke.

Right over the top of us came the assailant—Helen Thomas. She wasn’t going to let anybody get between her and her prey, the President of the United States. The rest of the national reporters bulled along with her.

Charlie recounted the experience in the Examiner’s next issue: “They came charging like troops with fixed bayonets. Have you ever been hit with a camera? One of the veteran national press photographers swung his camera at me (or so it seemed) and missed —just grazed my shoulder. Another one jostled the tripod of a local press member and got warned to stay away. Then came gum-chewing, well-built Helen Thomas like a juggernaut, and whammo, into my ribs went the elbow.”

Charlie and I were both twirling this way and that way, and neither of us heard the question that Helen Thomas shot out to the president. But ask her question she did. She must have gotten a good answer because she looked slyly pleased, a hunter who just bagged the big one.

Ford was in and out of the Truman home in less than 30 minutes, and then back into his limo and gone. Helen Thomas disappeared, too, like a cartoon witch vanishing in a big, black poof!, back into the elusive fame of journalism, leaving behind a bruised and battered one-time hero worshipper.

So that’s my Harry Truman story…at least one of them. No walk was taken with him. But plenty of body-slamming happened because of him.

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