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PEREGRINATIONS: September 2004

It was a glorious day.

But since glorious days were the only kind of day that came along that June in Wexter, it was, to be precise, a boring glorious day -- yet another in an unbroken series of glorious days. Bright sun, blue skies, white clouds, lark’s on the thorn, and all that.

And especially bright sunlight. Dangerously bright, was the opinion of Old Egg. [Officially, per the Register of Births in the Vestry at St. Hilda's-In-The-Vale, 'Crispin Noel DeLaWarre Howard.'] He was, perversely, not a bit old, though a few years past his majority. And he never ever thought of himself as any kind of egg, scrambled, easy over, coddled, or three-minute. With uncharacteristic reflection, Egg admitted he might be obliged to re-visit ‘scrambled.’ His chums, nd even his nearest and dearest, thought his noggin might be a tad scrambled. At least in June -- and when the sun was flashing into the eyeballs of a young man suffering a teensy hang-over.

Egg strode into Wexter’s chief watering hole, the pub whose official name was "Master-At-Arms," but known to those who loved it, many of whom were even then hoisting a midday pint, as "Miss Wattle’s."

Just inside, he paused to allow his patriotic orbs -- white, blue, just a touch of red -- to adjust. After recovering from an excess of glorious day, Egg was able to discern through the smoke and airborne ale-froth, exactly the person he hoped to meet.

‘Nebbins, I must ask you to be good enough to lend me fifty pounds.’

‘Fifty?’

‘Fifty.’

‘Nothing less would do?’

‘No. Fifty it is, neither more nor less. And I must have it today.’

‘Today?’

‘Today.’

Nebbins, a reliable spear-holder in Wexter’s cohort of presentable bachelors, and exceeding likely to be invited to occupy a chair at Lady Britling’s sumptuous Soirees Musicales, blushed. His blush achieved a novel and quietly lovely tint, somewhere between fuchsia and lavender, though the ears were, regrettably, Pepto-Bismol.

‘Er, Egg . . . We’ve been chums for donkey’s ears, and you know I want to help. But fifty pounds . . .'

'You did say “fifty”?’

‘Fifty.’

‘Sorry, Old Man. Too much lettuce. I’m between jobs just now.’

Egg did not reply, being quite aware that Nebbins had never occupied a position that was linked to a salary. Egg thought it more accurate if his chum had said, plainly ‘I’m between nothing and . . . The Dole.’ Fortunately, and in this matter Egg envied him greatly, Nebbins had a never-failing personal Dole. His M.O when in straits dire or minor was to hit up The Parents, known to all in Wexter as ‘rolling in Lettuce.’

‘You don’t think you could tell me why you need fifty pounds?’

‘No.’

‘Not even a hint?’

‘It is a matter of a lady’s honor. That is all I can say.’

‘Oh.’

An awkward pause . . .

‘Anyone I know?’

‘Well, you know her, but I simply cannot reveal the name.’

‘Would the initials be “Daphne”?’

‘You’ve wormed it out me, Nebbins you worm. Yes, Daffy’s mad to lead me down the aisle into what I think she called "the cosmic union of two souls, miserable if apart, but united as one so that together we might fulfill the Divine Plan."

A pause, as Egg thought, quite accurately, that Nebbins needed a moment to contemplate the gravity of these words.

'Divine Plan? Er. . . Did something happen?'

'Well, I confess I went a bit heavy on the bubbly last night. I may have said some things. . . I may have made some promises.' Egg thought Nebbins' head-bod was intended to convey mutuality and empathy. 'I have heard, on what I think is good authority, that you yourself have been in the same predic. Naturally, I must absent myself until Daffy's insane ardor cools. I’d say until mid-July, at least.'

'I need fifty pounds for the journey.’

‘Going abroad?’

‘As far away as fifty pounds will take me.’

‘It’s that serious, eh?’

‘As serious as it gets.'

Egg’s brow grew furrowed and his countenance clouded over, despite the gloriousness of the day.

‘Daffy maintains that we are betrothed, and that the knot must be tied while her Mater and Pater are at The Manse. Nebbins, you are well-known to be a quick-witted chap, and I have no doubt that you will immediately ascertain the seriousness of the sit. You cannot but agree that I must absent myself . . .’

Egg paused for effect . . .

‘Immediately.’

‘Immediately?’

‘Well, just say I had best be absent before Daffy tells her M. and P. And her uncle. That one is positively Dangerous. And Crazy.’

‘Both D. and C.?’

‘Lord Loathlea is both. In spades.’

Egg’s face took on the strange cast which he habitually assumed when forced to produce a thought. A naïve observer might assume that Egg wore pince-nez screwed much too tight, twisting his features into manifold wrinkles.

‘His Lordship is lately obsessed with the THE-a-ter. He’s bankrolled a pantomime -- an adaptation of Chekhov set in Glasgow.'

'But his passion this week is Hollywood. Some bloke there thinks Loathlea will cough up serious lettuce for a film about Tarzan.This confirms my opinion. . .' And at this point Egg looked about to make sure he was not oveheard, 'That Lord Loathlea is in great need of a little chat with a friendly alienist.’

‘Egg, Old Spot. You are, indeed, in an exceedingly tight squeeze.' And then a new thought: 'Was "a tight squeeze" the cause of your misunderstanding with Daffy? I assume you did not, in point of fact, say you intend to marry her? Nor tell her M. and P.?’

‘Of course not. Do I look C.?’

‘No more than the rest us.’

Just then there was a great hubub in the lane and there hove into view a large Rolls-Royce with its top down. The driver, a tall dignified black man wearing driving goggles and a tall red tarboosh, looked fresh off the boat from Ashantiland. He manuevered the lengthy machine expertly through the village's narrow lanes. Seated beside him was a young man whose features were so exquisitly chiseled, he might have been mistaken for a just-excavated bust by Praxiteles. The profile spoke loudly: it said "Adonis." But the tightly curled marcelled hair, made "Hermes" seem more likely.

In the back seat was a bald, red-faced man flaunting a long Hav-A-Tampa cigar. Seated next to him, his legs crossed with careless nonchalance, was a gorilla.

The machine came to rest at the half-timbered entrance to Miss Wattles'. The inmates rushed blinking into the glorious sunlight. Most assumed they had exceeded their noon-day quota.

'Splendid, James! Please ask around, chop-chop. We don't have much time. Hey, you! Is there a gent here called "Nebbins"?'

Egg stepped forward.

'Did you enquire after my friend Nebbins?'

'Sure did! He's my man! Right size! Ain't he related to Lord Lothlea? Told me in London he is good on the parallel bars, maybe even the trapeze. Think he'd like to pick up an easy hundred pounds? You a friend of his?'

Nebbins stepped forward. 'What's this about size? And the trapeze?'

'Well, you certainly look like you could fit into a gorilla suit okay. Small enough, slim enough. And. . .' The bald man looked around tellingly, and are you positive you are related to Lord Lothlea?'

'The gentleman is my uncle.'

'Swell! Great to meet you! Here's my card: Jack Brisketoff, head of production, Gargantuan Pictures. I'll bet you'd like to meet the star of our next film. It's a lulu. "Winged Tarzan! The King of the Apes flies Around The World!" What a film! All the stunts from "Wings," the gorilla suit from "King Kong," and as much "Tarzan" as we can squeeze into three reels.'

'That's Tarzan up front here. . ." Adonis turned to the left, his best side, so Nebbins could take in the beauty of his profile. 'Hop in!' thundered Brisketoff, and pulled Nebbins and Egg onto the running-board. 'James, take us to Lord Loathleys digs! Chop-chop!'



APHORISMS: July 2006

Continuous partial attention is about all the attention anyone ever gives.
Wheat, crushed for bread; men crushed for profit.
Wonder and light/ (If a Believer, add praise.)
Rock of Ages, cleft – thank you, mountain, for the cleft!
This sinful and broken world is all we’ve got. Our job: clean it up.
As longs the deer for cooling streams, so long we for “vigorous calm.”
Borne as on eagle’s wings. . .by the vulture of death.
Until we are parted by death. . .and we will be. . .let us join hands and WORK.
It is meet and right. . .to be meet and right.
Whatever it takes? No, whatever it needs.
Doesn’t matter what button you press, you’ll never talk with a human.
It’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.
Time is the lens through which dreams are captured.
‘All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us’
Gandalf, LORD OF THE RINGS
Nothing is too wonderful to not be true.
Epitaphs: Did Not Live Up To His Potential.
Awaiting further developments.
Return to Sender.
Is that all there is?
The world is everyone’s oyster.
Living in denial of problems is the only way to have fun anymore.
Love lives on.
I will marry my best friend, the one I laugh with, live for, love.
How to improve any town: clean up my side of the street.
Sounds like a plan to me!
Problem? Just throw it against the wall.
‘God is what mind becomes when things have passed beyond the scale of
our comprehension.’ Freeman Dyson
‘Art is a playful kind of work.’
‘Design is a method of action.’
‘Eventually everything connects.’
‘Design should bring the most of the best to the greatest number for the
least expense.’ Charles and Ray Eames
Don’t postpone joy.
Nothing loved is ever lost.
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
An artist is someone who is not bored with his own company.

Daniel Boone boasted that he moved west every time he could see smoke from a settler’s cabin. In 1820, just before he died, he realized the impact of humans upon nature:‘There were thousands of buffaloes on the hills in Kentucky. . .and the hunt in those days was pleasure indeed. But when I was left to myself on the banks of the Green River, I daresay for the last time in my life, a few signs only of deer were to be seen. . .


DISCOVERING DR. WALKER, DISCOVERER, May 1997

After being away for many decades, I went back to Pineville for the Kentucky Mountain Laurel Festival. I enjoyed seeing the old places again; I hardly knew anyone, though old-timers greeted me warmly, as though I had been away no more than a day or two. They recognized me; I regret to admit that I was not able to recognize them. But over time, more and more began to seep up from the recesses of memory.

I was much impressed with the exhibit of old photographs which had been organized by the Bell County Historical Society, and very much enjoyed talking with the President of the Society, Jerry Browning. We agreed that the interesting and significant history of our area had been neglected. This was a crying shame -- an oversight that needed to be corrected! Jerry pointed out that there was not a single decent book about Kentucky's first explorer, Dr. Thomas Walker. We were fast approaching the 250th anniversary of Walker's foray into our neck of the woods. What could we do to call attention to this unfairly neglected explorer?

Jerry and I began 'phoning and writing. It was clear that Walker deserved a book, and equally clear that we could not rely on anyone would undertake the task but myself. If a book was to be available for the 250th anniversar of Walker's discoveries, I would have to work VERY fast.

Well, I got it done -- twelve months from decision to copies. I ended up paying for the entire production -- hiring an excellent photographer, doing all the research, tracking down original material, taking some photos myself, etc.

I printed 5,000 copies -- half of which were distributed by the 'Kentucky Virtual Library' to every school in Kentucky -- k-12 and on up to graduate schools, and to every library and to every county historical society. A delegation of school children from Bell County trooped into the Capitol and presented a copy to every law-maker.

The remaining 2,500 copies were given to the Bell County Historical Society, which has derived a significant continuing income over the years from their sale. Finally, we had a glorious ceremony at the very spot where Walker had first seen a river, and had named it 'The Cumberland,' a name which now graces a chain of mountains and a wide swath of Appalachia. The spot is now an official Kentucky Historic Site, with a fine lookout tower affording a fine view of the River, Pine Mountain, and The Narrows.

GATEWAY: Dr. Thomas Walker and the Opening of Kentucky by David M. Burns, Introduction by Thomas D. Clark (Photographer Adam Jones). Available from Bell County Historical Society [bellhist_society@hotmail.com], Box 1344, Middlesboro, KY 40977, phone (606) 248-2067.

Book Description: Daniel Boone did not discover Cumberland Gap, nor was he the first explorer of Kentucky, then an unknown "Wilderness" on the Western frontier of the Colony of Virginia. In 1750, Dr. Thomas Walker, Agent of the Loyal Company, and 5 others, discovered Cumberland Gap, discovered and named the Cumberland River, discovered Pine Mountain Gap ("The Narrows"), Cumberland Ford -- the only place where the river could be easily crossed by people, horses and wagons -- and he built the first cabin in Kentucky. Walker's Journal, maps, and surveys led to The Wilderness Road, over which 300,000 pioneer settlers entered Kentucky. The book has 90 illustrations -- photographs, maps, holographs pages from Walker's Journal, and through words and images makes the period come alive. Walker was a physician, surveyor, entrepreneur, explorer, high official of Virginia, a negotiator of Indian treaties, and a supremely successful speculator in frontier land. This is the ONLY book-length work on an important (through unfairly obscure) leading member of Virginia's 18th Century "landed gentry." The book provides interesting insights into the French and Indian War, and the Amereican Revolution, including the role of George Rogers Clark. Walker was a close friend of Peter Jefferson, and was for a time, the guardian of his young son Thomas, the future President. He was also connected by marriage, friendship and shared business interests with George Washington, James Madison, Joshua Fry, and with every leading Virginian of his time.

David Burns' articles, profiles, op-eds, and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Time, The Washington Post, and many other newspapers and magazines.

Paperback: 100 pages.
Publisher: Bell County (Kentucky) Historical Society
(April 15, 2000)
ISBN: 096777651

From http://www.amazon.com/: December 6, 2002, Reviewer: Byron K. Howard (Corbin, Kentucky United States):

"This is a very well written, photographed and illustrated book that reveals many little known truths about the origins of Kentucky and the migration west through Cumberland Gap. It is a must read for all students of early Kentucky history. Virtually every other page contains either a map, illustration or beautiful photograph. The photography by world-renowned photographer, Adam Jones, is simply stunning! In truth, it is the photography of Adam Jones that first attracted me to this outstanding book. As a student of early Kentucky history, I consider this book in particular to be indispensable to understanding the truth surrounding the opening of Kentucky and all points west. This is a truly great historical work, replete with bibliograhical references, indicative of the author's extensive research. Therefore, I highly recommend it!"

The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society said: "As Walker pushed the boundaries of his known world, so, too, this publication pushes the boundaries of what a book of history can be." The book won an award from the Historical Society.


TRAVELS IN ARABIA, QUASI-DESERTA. March 9, 2006

In March 1955, I abandoned graduate studies and went to Washington for training in USIA’s second officer training class. When that was completed, I was told, “You are being posted to Damascus.” “Great!” I said, “Where is it?” I flew to Kansas, and on June 8, Sandy and I were married. The next day we flew by TWA Constellation, which had sleeping berths in First-Class [now, sadly, just a memory!], mitigating long hours in a piston-engine plane. Following honeymoon stops in Paris and Rome, we landed in the Syrian capital. Assistant CAO [libraries and English teaching] was a marvelous assignment. Sandy and I [two for the price of one] plunged in and, despite culture shock, it was wonderful. We worked hard, but also enjoyed picnics amid the apricot and almond groves of the Ghouta (water from the Anti-Lebanon makes Damascus an oasis), went across the desert to Palmyra, up Mount Hermon on mules, saw “Rome” at Baalbek, Petra when it was pristine, and Crusader castles. Our first child was born in 1956 in the hospital of the American University of Beirut.

Then Gamal Abdel Nasser took control of the Suez Canal and blocked the Straits of Tiran, the narrow outlet to the Red Sea. On October 29, 1956, Israeli troops invaded the Sinai and raced for Suez. Two days later, military forces of Britain and France invaded Egypt. When the Soviet Union threatened to intervene on behalf of Egypt, the United States feared a larger war, and forced the British and French to withdraw. This came too late to help our embassy, and Damascus erupted in anti-Israel (and anti-U.S.) rioting. We were given a half-day to pack, and our convoy drove over the mountains to our “safe haven.” Sandy, me, and our two-month-old baby camped out in a Beirut apartment hotel. Nobody knew when or if we might return. In the meantime, I helped out at USIS, producing, among other things, a sound-and-light show on the occasion of the death of Toscanini [emphasizing his years at The Met and NY Philharmonic]. When we could afford it, we treated ourselves to world-class food at Lucullus, and if we could find a baby-sitter, went dancing at Les Caves Du Roi.

I was a fairly recent Princeton grad (’53), and struck up a Tiger friendship with Tom Streithorst, a classmate who was trying to break into journalism as a freelance, with a day job as Editor of Middle East Forum. Through him, we met several Lebanese politicians, including the Druze chieftain Kamal Jumblatt. My esteem for Tom’s editorial judgment soared when he printed my profiles of Middle East cities (the first was “Damascus”). Tom had one of the earliest heart transplants.

Another Tiger was Bill Stoltzfus, and his wife Janet. Bill had just been assigned to Saudi Arabia. But he had a problem: he loved his new Chevrolet sedan and they could sure use that car. But how to get it there? The Canal was blocked, and for months, maybe years, the only way to get a car from Beirut to Jeddah was around the Cape of Good Hope. The best estimate was a year, port-to-port. Bill thought there was another way, and he asked if I was game to join them – across the Arabian Desert! “Well,” I said, “I’m just waiting for another assignment, and until that comes. . .Sure!” My Job Description: Digger and [though Bill was too nice to say it] Designated Hostage.

No American could have been better prepared than Bill Stoltzfus for what might otherwise have been foolhardy. His parents were Presbyter-ian missionaries, his father principal of a boy's school in Aleppo and later president of Beirut College for Women. Bill was born in Beirut in 1924, and grew up speaking Arabic. He entered Princeton in 1942; after a couple of years as a Navy pilot, he returned to study politics, economics, and history at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, and with the legendary Philip Hitti. After graduation in He 1949, he joined the Foreign Service. He was first an intern at State, followed by assignments in Alexandria and Benghazi. He then attended Arabic Language School in Washington and Beirut, concentrating on the written language (a classmate was L. Carl Brown).

Bill and Janet were married in 1954 in the Princeton University Chapel, and posted to Kuwait. Transiting Beirut in January 1957, Bill was just back from the first state visit to the U.S. of a Saudi monarch. Saud ibn Abdul Aziz al Faisal was the eldest of Ibn Saud’s 38 living sons. [Ibn Saud was a disciple of Mohammed Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahab, Islam's 18th-century Martin Luther, who preached that the faith must be purged of corruption. Ibn Saud became the scourging sword of Wahabism, a zealot for Allah in Arabia's inner desert. The Old Lion reared his son in the stern tradition of the Bedouin. The young prince’s formal schooling consisted of the Koran, and ended at 13. But he learned the slashing swordsmanship of Arab horsemen, and as late as 1929, was dealing with a domestic crisis by chopping off the heads of captured tribesmen.]

Oil made the Saudis important. On his visit to the U.S., King Saud traveled with a 65-man entourage – and Bill Stoltzfus, interpreter. Thanks to this personal relationship, Bill had a laissez-passer signed by the King, embellished with beautiful calligraphy and enough gold seals and red sealing wax to impress even the illiterate. Bill equipped his car with cans for gasoline and water, a tool kit, and (what proved to be essential) two extra wheels and tires, and an air pump. Janet left their baby in Beirut with a friend, having made arrangements that the baby be entrusted to a specific stewardess on Middle East Airlines. Janet would retrieve the baby when the plane landed in Jeddah.

The three of us set off – Beirut-Damascus-Amman, then south to intersect with Tapline. [The Trans-Arabian Pipeline carried Saudi oil 1,200 kilometers to the Mediterranean. The line went originally via Jordan to Haifa, then part of Palestine; establishment of Israel resulted in its diversion to Sidon, in Lebanon. The pipeline was eventually superseded by supertankers.] The road alongside Tapline was graveled and easy, and the pumping stations (which still had Haifa names – H4, H5) offered us sleep, food, water, and gasoline.

When we saw flaming gas flares lighting up the night, we knew we were nearing Dhahran, Aramco’s Levittown in the desert. It was a PX in a sandbox -- ranch houses with dish-washers, bowling alleys, ladies’ socials, nightly movies, and black-market Scotch at $40 a bottle. Dhahran was home to the foreigners, mostly American, required to get oil out of the ground and move it to market. The country was heavily dependent on foreigners to run electric and water plants, airports, and the airline. "We have only one thing in common," said an Aramco employee "They have oil, and we want it." The U.S.-built an airfield at Dhahran with 10,000-foot runways capable of landing big bombers.

After Dhahran, it was good-by America and hello sand. From this point on, there were no roads of any kind, just a vast empty expanse. The best way to visualize this is to recall the dramatic opening sequence of the film “Lawrence of Arabia.” One Aramco employee called the interior “the world’s biggest parking-lot.” Bill’s plan was to follow the trucks heading to Riyadh. Excellent plan -- except when the tire tracks diverged. We chose the ones heading west. There were many stretches of loose gravel and stones in the reg and hamad areas. Wind and sand had eroded some areas to bedrock. We tried to avoid soft sand in the ergs, but nonetheless got stuck a half-dozen times. This was my cue to dig, hoping to get the wheels down to where enough moisture remained to make the sand firmer. If that didn’t work, we would deflate the tires, and then re-inflate them when unstuck. [This worked, but it also destroyed two tires. Thanks to Bill’s foresight with extra wheels and tires, we were able to continue.] If all else failed, a blanket under the tires gave some grip. Pushing helped a little.

We had brought enough food, but finding water and gasoline was a constant worry. Bill stopped every truck-driver or nomad to ask directions. A typical oasis was a collection of falling-down adobe hovels, with not much of anybody in sight. We used a goatskin to haul up water from the well; it looked highly dubious, but the floating insects (?) eventually settled out, and we had disinfectant tablets for our water can. It took time and a lot of asking, but Bill would eventually locate someone who remembered that Abdul Fulan might have had “some gasoline a month or two ago.” After finding Fulan, and waking him up, he would totter out to a rusty oil drum and brush off the dust. “Might be something left.” Next trick was to siphon gasoline out of the drum and into the Chevy’s tank and our jerry cans. This usually resulted in a sickening mouthful of gasoline, but enough fuel to make it to the next oasis. Fulan had only a vague idea of which track might end up, “insh’Allah,” in Riyadh.

When we finally got there, we found a chaotic construction site choked with swirling clouds of concrete dust. The Saudis were determined to equip their capital with proper ministries, and every building had a sign – Ministry of This, Ministry of That; but it was hard to tell whether a specific site was demolition or construction, as both conditions looked about the same. The Saudis were determined to make Riyadh a capital. They built a hospital with fine equipment, unfortunately most of it gathering dust for lack of trained medical people to use it. Riyadh’s best “hotel” had rooms; the rooms had beds; and there was running water. But just above every tap was a blunt message: “WARNING: Do NOT drink this water. It is contaminated,” and the sign specified with what.

About a day out of Riyadh, we came across a dozen black tents surrounded by fierce-looking guards, gold daggers and machine pistols thrust into bullet-studded bandoleers. This turned out to be the encampment of a prince. Arabia, then and now, has no shortages of princes: the 322 (!) sons of King Saud were scattered widely, and each received a generous allowance for palaces, cars, and travel.

When our prince learned that Bill had just returned from traveling with his father, we were REQUIRED to accept his hospitality. This would have happened anyway, as every Bedouin host is obliged to honor his guest. The palaver was long, and full of ritual phrases and the requisite allusions to Allah, and Mohammed, “Peace and blessing on his name. . .” The prince was proud of his ancestors. Bill for his part recalled the great deeds, strength, and courtesy of the dignified old tribes of central Arabia. My Arabic was so rudimentary as to render me effectively deaf and mute, but I THINK most of the talk was elaborate mutual flattery.

Then we got down to coffee: qahwah 'Arabiyah, is as sacramental as tea for a Geisha. Green beans were roasted over the fire, and the brass mortar and pestle rang as the blackened beans were pounded to powder, and then boiled. Just as the pot threatened to froth over, the servant dropped in cardamom seeds. The brew was poured it into a pot with a palm fiber in the spout to serve as a strainer. No sugar. We were given tiny cups without handles. After the obligatory three servings, Bill signaled ‘all done’ by rapidly shaking his cup. Our host passed around the mabkhar hand censer, perfumed with frankincense.

Coffee was the warm-up. We sat on rugs around a copper tray heaped with mutton and baby lamb, roasted over a spit. The meat had been rubbed with cinnamon and basted with clarified goat butter. We had knives to cut off what we wanted, dipped the meat into powdered cumin, and used rice to work burning chunks into a mouth-size bolus. The first course was meat, with meat for the second course, followed by a third course of . . . more meat. Then came a few dates and flat rounds of unleavened bread. And more qahwa. We had encountered a prince that, as the Bedouin saying goes, “makes coffee from morn till night." In other words, a generous man, worthy of praise.

After a fitful lie-down (too much qahwa?) we set off west, once again following distant trucks. We slept in the car and took turns driving, as we simply HAD to get to Jeddah in time to meet the plane and baby.

Then came the sandstorm. The storms have many names – harmattan, khamsin, shamal. In this part of Arabia, the usual name is haboub. Strong winds whipped up twisting clouds of sand and the sky turned an ominous red. We turned on the headlights, which did no good at all. The dust was so thick we could not see the ground, and there was no possibility of following a track. The powdery dust boiled under every barrier; the rolled-up windows were ineffective. Our hair and clothing were covered in dust and we inhaled it with every breath. But we had to keep moving if we were to reach Jeddah in time to meet plane-and-baby. Bill was worried that grit would ruin the engine, so Janet donated a nylon stocking. We fitted this over the engine’s air intake, and it probably helped. But sand and grit pitted and frosted the windshield so thoroughly we could not see through it. We had to drive the remainder of the way leaning out the car. The storm abated after half a day.

Unfortunately for us, the tracks made a beeline straight for Mecca. We stopped at a ceremonial arch ten miles from Mecca. Well, we could not, for every reason, follow the trucks into the city. But how to get through the mountains of the Hejaz? The sunset was beautiful, but it got dark very quickly. We saw campfires in the distance, but no way to tell how far away they were. Bill hoped shepherds or a camel-driver would act as a guide, but we couldn’t get far in the dark.

Well after midnight, a pickup truck pulled up beside us. Bill explained that we needed a guide. The driver and his helper practically leaped out of their skins. “Oh, sure! Certainly! No doubt! We know the way! We know exactly the route! We are guides! No problem! We’ll get you to the Medina-Jeddah road very quickly.”

We set off in the pitch-black of night, following the aimless turns of the pickup truck – up this wadi, left into that wadi, double around, right into wadi number three . . . and so on. There was no road, scarcely a path. Our car would pitch up, and then bang down hard on the rocks. The crash was so loud we were sure it must be the oil pan cracking. Two hours of this, and we were deep in the mountains north and east of Mecca. We weren’t in Mecca -- but we had no idea at all where we were.

The pickup truck stopped, and the driver and helper came back. They were terribly apologetic. “We’re lost. We do not know the way. We cannot continue. We don’t know which direction to go. We cannot find the Medina-Jeddah road. Very, very sorry. I guess you’ll have to stay here.” Janet, thinking of her soon-to-be-airborne baby, looked at her watch, very distraught. The baby was coming; we had run out of time.

The driver’s tone changed. “Well, MAYBE we could remember. Maybe. We MIGHT be able to get there. Well, I’ll bet we COULD find the road. You are rich Americans. Just give us two hundred dollars! That will help us remember. Give us the money and we’ll get you to the road. Or, your choice. Maybe just stay here -- forever!” Bill looked grim; Janet said to Bill, “Show him your pass.” This was extracted and explained.

“I have just returned from an extremely important trip with King Saud. I was with him every day. He knows me very well. He and I became very good friends. He gave me this letter. It requests that every official and every subject of his Kingdom extend the utmost courtesy and respect to ‘My honored guest, Mr. William.’ Look! Here is his signature. Here is his Royal Seal. The king will soon learn that his guests have been mistreated. He will learn who has done this. I assure you that King Saud will be angry. He will be very angry. He will find you. He will punish you. And I pity you. Because his punishment will be severe!”

Well, this did the trick. The predatory thieves, which is who they were, made abject apologies, got back in the pick-up and within an hour we were on the Medina-Jeddah road. We realized we had had a very close call. Bill’s cool, and his fluent Arabic, and fluent cuss words, saved us.

We thought we had clear sailing. Then the clutch started to slip: the engine was going 100%, but the wheels were turning maybe 50%. Bill got out and got under, but neither of us had any idea what to do. Auto repair and diplomacy are not closely related. It was now almost ten o’clock in the morning, and plane-with-baby was due to land a little after eleven. We were sunk in despair. Then a truck came along, with an African-looking fellow sitting beside the driver. The passenger said he was from Sudan and was a fitter, a mechanic. The truck driver said he simply could NOT stay. But the Sudani fitter said he would stay and keep the car moving. He got out his spanner wrench, tightened a nut under the chassis, and we set off again. He had to get under and tighten it again every five miles. We drove the last twenty miles on a bad clutch, one of us leaning out the window so as to see the road. But we made it, limping into the airport just as the MEA flight was on final approach.

I caught the return flight to Beirut, where we lingered another month. Then, at last, an assignment: Director of the Iran-America Society in Isfahan. Great! And this time I knew, more or less, where the post was. When we evacuated Damascus we had left our car behind. I arranged to have it driven across the Syrian Desert, following the Nairn Bus Company route. We flew to Baghdad, picked up the car, and Sandy, baby and I headed over the Zagros mountains to Kermanshah and Hamadan. We drove along what little remained. I thought of it as “formerly a road”; it once carried U.S. help to the Soviet Union during the dark days of Stalingrad. We passed Darius’ Sassanid rock relief, Behistun. We stayed overnight in the capital to check in with my boss at USIS Tehran, then drove south, past the “holy city of Qum.”

In Isfahan, we moved into a classic Persian villa with a lovely garden. It was across the river, near the quarter inhabited by Armenian artisans imported by Shah Abbas to decorate the glorious mosques he built. Sandy thought the floors of the villa looked dusty, so she started sweeping with a broom. And swept. And kept on sweeping -- until she had exposed the straw in the adobe. Our baby was nearly brained when the Iranian cavalry polo team whizzed a ball past his head. And I was so busy trying to get the Iran-American library and English teaching program up and running, we had no time at all to see Isfahan.

A vignette: the Iranians who ran the Society, and Sandy and baby and I, went for a picnic. I was sitting under a shade tree, with my To-Do List. I’m sure I appeared lost in thought, as I intently added must-do items. A member of the Board came over, and was impressed: This young American is a Persian at heart! He’s composing a poem!

Sandy and I promised ourselves we would really see Isfahan – after we returned from home leave. That never happened. The Director of the U.S. Information Agency was an Eisenhower Republican. While in Hawaii, so far from Washington he perhaps thought he could let loose with what he really thought, newspapers quoted him saying Democrats are dumb, hurting the country, not good Americans, and so on. Lyndon Johnson was Majority Leader of the Senate. I have no idea what Johnson said, but I can imagine: “Well, let’s just teach that pissant a lesson!” The USIA appropriation was slashed, and there were huge cuts in programs and people. My job was eliminated, and we never made it back to Isfahan from home leave. We eventually did see Isfahan (and returned to Damascus) forty years later.


SAGA OF OUR DIGS AT DUPONT CIRCLE.
September 20, 2006

We began to build 1712 19th Street NW in 1976 and moved in June 28, 1978. Deciding to build and DOING IT was probably the most audacious decision Sandy and I ever made. We had ZERO experience in building, and nowhere near enough money. We stumbled along, and mainly by LUCK ended up with what seems to us today a nearly ideal situation.

The sequence of decisions went like this:

1) We had moved to Arlington while David and Patrick were in high school. But now David was in college, and Pat was almost there, so we no longer needed Arlington's desirable high schools.

2) I had decided on early retirement from USIA's Foreign Service. I was 49 and (in a personnel system similar to military service) could retire at 50. I had paid into USIA's Retirement System to get 'credit' for my three years of military service, and almost three years as a Capitol Hill employee. Adding in about 24 years with USIA gave me an Annuity based on 30 years of government service. I did the calculation -- an adequate income. I opted for the maximum 'survivor' protection for Sandy.

3) USIA had an employee 'program' whereby FS officers could leave USIA for a sabbatical year with a business or university, etc. The idea behind the program was to make sure FS personnel were fully 'rooted' in the United States on the basis of fairly recent hands-on experience. This seemed like an attractive way to explore a second career. I went to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an organization I knew fairly well, since I had been 'a Constant Reader' of Science magazine for the previous decade. I made them an offer they couldn't refuse: USIA would pay my salary for twelve months; AAAS would get an employee for free. All AAAS had to do was create some useful work. Bill Carey, Executive Director of AAAS, thought it over for a few days, made a couple of 'phone calls, and then invited me back for a chat. An ex-President of AAAS, Roger Revelle, had proposed a significant new international project. He would lead a Committee of eminent scientists to investigate whether the build-up of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere was a serious issue. . .or not. Revelle said he needed a good staff person with international 'chops' to support the Committee as Project Director. AAAS and I began on a temporary contingency basis: three questions: 1) could Revelle and I work together effectively; 2) could a prestigious Committee be assembled, and 3) (the really ESSENTIAL question), could I write persuasive grants and obtain funding? AAAS would provide start-up money for only one year. . . Over the next twelve months we answered all of these questions -- with solid affirmatives. And so, effective December 1, 1978, my 50th birthday, I officially retired from USIA and was on the payroll of AAAS.

4) I hated commuting, which then and now seems a TOTAL waste of time. Sandy and I had loved the Capitol Hill neighborhood and wanted to move back to the city. My office at AAAS was at 1776 Massachusetts Ave. NW, corner of 18th and Mass. Dupont Circle was the logical place to live if I wanted to walk to work. Sandy and I began to search.

5) Even in 1975, Dupont Circle had already been pretty well 'picked over': there seemed to be two categories of houses: a) Victorian row houses which had been 'rehabbed'; and b) Victorian row houses which needed everything -- in other words, a gut job, with only a 'shell' remaining. The 'modernized' houses had been cut up in unattrative ways, often with cheap materials and questionable workmanship. But the other category -- potential 'gut jobs' -- seemed ridiculously overpriced since they needed EVERYTHING. We looked at scores of possibilities, but ended up 'passing' on everything: too unattractive, or way over-priced.

6) Then our agent said he knew of "a lot" which might do, provided we were willing to build: "1712 19th Street" consisted of a tiny clapboard house, built in 1865. The house was similar to the 'share-cropper's cottages' you can still occasionally find in Maryland tobacco country. There was 1) a front room, 2) a trashy 'lean-to' kitchen, and 3) a half-story 'sleeping loft.' That was it. The kitchen opened up onto a deep lot full of rank weeds. At the back was a falling-down 'garage' of corrugated steel.

7) We checked out the requirements for a Building Loan: a) we had to own a buildable lot; b) we needed clear Plans and Specifications; c) a Contract with an experienced builder; and d) Permits. There were A LOT of 'ifs' and no 'certainties' at all. It was a huge gamble.

8) Dave began a crash course in 'comparables,' costs of construction, architects, current rents for apartments were as an indication of potential income, carrying costs, interest. The calculations made clear this project would be a huge stretch -- but might be barely possible. There would never be a better time -- particularly since a pending Historic District designaton meant that in a few years we could not tear down the share-cropper's cottage.

9) We bought the lot using the proceeds from the sale of our house in Arlington, 2717 N. Fillmore St. Next step was to find an architect. Trouble was, we simply could not afford an architect with any kind of track record: priced out of our league. We ended up talking with an architect on MacArthur Boulevard. He concluded that the job was too much trouble for too little money. We began discussion with his assistant, 'John Samuel Williams,' who explained that 'my boss can't draw, and I'm the draftsman on all his Plans; I also do Specifications based on his ideas and discussion with his clients.' We took on 'the Architect's Assistant,' and thirty years later, we're convinced we lucked out.

10) We then began investigating contractors. Those with well-established reputations for quality were FAR beyond our modest budget. No hope. Still, we had to protect ourselves: the only sensible route, so far as I could tell, was the well-established and lawsuit-tested Long Form contract of the American Institute of Architects.

11) As we began working with the architect, it became clear that the lot (and zoning regulations) meant we could build only a single rental unit, which made the money calculation impossible. But as we checked out Plats and called in surveyors, we discovered that the house next door, 1710 19th Street, occupied only the front two-thirds of a lot as deep as our own. The back third was taken up with another ramshackle corrugated-steel 'garage' owned by Anton Butinelli, who used it as parking for the staff of a Connecticut Avenue bar, 'The Junkanoo.' [This bar had its 'fifteen minutes of fame' when it was the site of encounters between Congressman Wilbur Mills, powerful Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and a stripper known as Fanne Foxxe. As you may recall, Mills ended up crashing his car into the Tidal Basin, entered alcoholic rehab, and lost his seat in Congress. . .in about that order.] I asked Buttinelli if he would consider selling that third-of-a-lot. And I offered an amount which seemed high at the time. . .We ended up acquiring it, and that extra third made all the difference. With a bigger lot size, we could build a genuine 'Carriage House' at the rear, and could plan for a Townhouse, three Apartments, a Garage, and highly desirable Parking. "The numbers" began to look more encouraging.

12) The configuration was strange -- two buildings separated by a large garden: the townhouse (with English basement apartment) oriented conventionally toward the street. The 'carriage house' however was oriented parallel to the alley; it would contain a three-car garage and two one-bedroom apartments on the second and third floors. The really unconvential part of the design -- which made the DC Building Permit people go bonkers -- was the 'passageway' which created a separate street address [1712 1/2] and a totally separate entrance for the three apartments. The only way we could obtain a Building Permit was to agree that this configuration would be called a PUD ["Planned Unit Development"]. This means that the "parcel" must remain a single entity and cannot be subdivided. This probably reduces the value of the property somewhat.

13) Sandy and I knew we were flying blind in dangerously expensive territory. I tried to think of everything that could provide some kind of safety net -- we had shoved out ALL our chips -- credit cards, loans from family, everything! We had to require the Contractor to provide a Performance Bond and a Completion Bond and guarantees that the building would not be encumbered with 'liens' from unpaid suppliers or sub-contractors. We thought the AIA Contract provided us with a lot of safety, and it did. [Except a phrase, 'liquidated damages,' added by the guys [lawyers, of course!] who won the bid, that proved to be a Trojan Horse.]

14) We sweated bullets with the architect: we wanted a design which maximized the income from the property; that was 'modern' yet blended in with a neighborhood of Victorian townhouses; and which was constructed of durable materials requiring a minimum of maintenance. I think we managed to get what we wanted, but it took a lot of research. One choice -- Pella windows with double panes, a venetian blind between them -- was expensive; but by using standard sizes, we got the cheapest possible cost, and the windows have been trouble-free for 30 years. The Dupont Circle area had recently experienced some robberies and break-ins: we specified steel dooors set into steel frames. The colored mortar between the bricks cost nothing, and improved the appearance: we got that idea from the New Executive Office Building just around the corner from The Renwick Gallery. The open staircases which appear to 'float' on a steel girder, was the architect's idea, and it made the living room feel 'open' and much larger. The skylights brought in sunlight, always deirable; and the huge two-story wall of windows opened us up to the outside and the big garden.

15) We spent a lot of time checking out the Contractors [not many willing to bid!]. We called suppliers, we called sub-contractors, we checked with architects, and with owners. The winning Contractor, Blanken and Silverman, had glowing reports. Every enquiry was positive: this was a firm that was completely 'correct' and there was no reason whatsoever to anticipate any problem. [There was, however, a hidden worm in the apple: unbeknown to us, Blanken and Silverman, who had been spectacularly successful in building one or two houses at a time, had just expanded their scope: they were now, for the first time, contracting to build ten or even twenty houses at a time. Contracting is, essentially, an exercise in fine-grain management; Blanken and Silverman had just expanded to a scope they were could not manage! They had reached their 'level of incompetenece'! 1712 may have been their first failure.]

16) So, we owned a lot, had Plans and Specifications, Surveys and Plats, and a Contract (Bonded) with an experienced Builder. But it quickly became apparent that NO BANK ANYWHERE was interested in putting up money for a Building Loan. Dave approached perhaps thirty; all said no thanks. Most were not interested at all, under ANY conditions. Finally, Dave found a Vice-President who asked Dave to bring in this document and that document; show all of the 'comparables'; PROVE that the supposed rental income was real, even VERY conservative; and PROVE that we were putting up a solid chunk of our own cash. In short, the Bank wanted 'NO RISK AT ALL' -- if there was going to be risk, it would devolve on US, not on them or their depositors. This took a lot of time.

17) Finally, everything was in order, and we signed. And in the space of a single day, Blanken and Silverman tore down the old clapboard shack and the two corrugated-steel 'garages' and began to excavate. We were underway!

18) Dave was on the Building Site almost every day, and he took photographs of every detail. Dave's concern was sloppy workmanship.

19) Blanken and Silverman's concern was 'cash flow.' We (naively) had had NO IDEA how desperate they were to keep the cash flowing. The Building Loan made clear that the Bank would fork over money only after the had inspected the Site, and satisfied themselves that specific 'benchmarks' Bank had been met. They were absolutely NOT going to fork over 75% of the money if only 50% of the building had been completed. In fact, they would fork over 25% of the money AFTER 50% had been completed. The Building Loan specified that the Contractor could 'draw' a certain percent of the contract amount "after the floors had been installed." Blanken and Silverman immediately installed the floors because they were desperate to get that 'draw.' UNFORTUNATELY, they had not yet put on a roof, and [of course!} UNFORTUNATELY it rained, and good new oak strip flooring was nearly ruined. Much of it buckled and curled; some turned black. This was just one episode in the Comedy of Errors which plagued this project.

20) The project dragged on and on, far behind schedule. We had 'settled' the sale of our house in Arlington, assuming (again, naively) that we would be able to move in to the new house more or less on the date specified. No way this was going to happen. We had to put our furniture in storage, and rented a one-bedroom apartment at 1800 R Street, where we camped out for almost a year. . .

21) Finally, it became apparent that Blanken and Silverman had run out of gas (and were flat broke). The bank asked the Bond insurers to step in, and, after more delay, they did. The job was completed within a few months by a replacement (insurance-paid) Contractor.

22) But could we recover anything from Blanken and Silverman for the costs we had incurred -- the storage of our furniture, the costs of renting? The hassle? The extra carrying costs of the Building Loan and of our own cash tied up in the project? Could we? No, we could not. The matter went to 'arbitration,' as specified by AIA. This is where our Architect could have been a hero, since the AIA contract makes clear that it is the Architect who is, as Bush says, "the decider." But he let us down badly; he simply refused to say plainly what had happened. So we had lawyer expenses -- for naught -- on top of everything else.

23) Finally, we got the all-important Certificate of Occupancy, and moved in, complete with new Kawai Studio Grand piano. We started renting the apartments and the garages and parking. s 'vacancy' from that day in June 1978 to the present. And we continue to watch the local 'market' and raise rents so as to stay even, though not ahead, of local supply-and-demand.

APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA: 2000 >>>>

Newspaper delivery-boy: Cut the string on the bundles; rollw and tuck; throw; collect the money.

My generation grew up during The Great Depression. Most of us were too young to be drafted in World War II, but a few got called up for Korea. As a teenage elevator operator in the Senate, I had an up-close look at politics, and work as a copy boy for the Washington Evening Star gave me a peek into the world of journalism. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki I feared we would all be killed in an atomic Armageddon. Three years in the U.S. Army Air Corps (yes, Corps!) gave me a chance to grow up and travel. It also gave me the G.I Bill. That life-changing benefit enabled me to go to college, otherwise scarcely imaginable. I also experienced a bit of factory life; a Fulbright year in Europe; two decades overseas ‘winning hearts and minds’ during the Cold War and VietNam; and twelve years working with scientists studying global climate change. Along the way my generation enjoyed wealth of a magnitude and extent unprecedented in human history. We witnessed the zenith of ‘The American Century’ . . . and its decline

Now I’m retired, and enjoying it. Our house in downtown Washington is a bull’s-eye for terrorist fanatics and Iraq has multiplied the number of people who want to kill us. I believe ‘The Long War’ has been hyped by paranoid obsessions, though myths can be self-fulfilling. The arrogance of the Bush administration has wasted thousands of lives and a trillion dollars. No country should elect a deluded moron as leader; it is truly dangerous for the U.S. to be as powerful as we are and have such a leader. The world condemns us, with reason, for wars that seem mainly about oil. When I was growing up, we knew our country had serious flaws, but we thought a free press and elections made our system self-correcting. We thought America was fundamentally good, and many around the world thought so, too. Sadly, terrible misjudgments have recklessly trashed our good name.

Our individual lives are stones in a colossal mosaic. As a young man, I experienced many aspects of our culture; at Princeton, I began to study American literature and history; and in France I saw that my own life could help foreigners understand my country a little better – and “telling America’s story became my career.” The United States is still incomparably rich and powerful. But we have squandered virtually all moral authority, and we are greatly diminished. This is heartbreaking, and probably irreversible. I hope that reviewing my life, and placing it in historic context, will help me comprehend why this happened.

I grew up in a little town in the eastern Kentucky coal-fields. The history and culture of Appalachia and of my town set my course in life in ways I only now begin to understand. This is where my story begins. This story may give you a better understanding of America. It may give me a better understanding of my life.

APPALACHIAN SEQUENCE

The Kentucky Road followed creek-beds, a watery thread winding through a disorderly tapestry of trees. Enormous hemlocks, towering beech, black gums, blooming sorrel, cucumber magnolia, and pungent sassafras grew in wild profusion on hillside, cove, and valley floor. There were clearings where trees had fallen from age, lightning, or high winds, enriching the soil with their decay. A thick layer of humus and duff carpeted the forest from creek banks to ridge-tops. These primeval woods were part of the great forest that once stretched from Nova Scotia to Alabama and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The road was choked with thickets of grapevines, holly, and impenetrable tangles of rhododendron. It was a place of fragile bogs, a great variety of mosses, shoulder-high cinnamon ferns, bizarrely shaped and colorful fungi and mushrooms, lichen-covered rocks, sharp spurs, narrow valleys, and sandstone caves.

The giants were the poplars, many ten feet in diameter, straight as arrows and centuries old, so tall their tops could not be seen. Foliage was often so dense little sunlight reached the forest floor, and the hollows were murky and menacing.

The path was first trod by Ice Age animals including mastodons and the giant sloth, whose Latin name includes a reference to Thomas Jefferson, fascinated by the mysterious remains of enormous animals found at Big Bone Lick in northern Kentucky, just south of where the glaciers stopped. Thousands of years later, the path was followed by modern-era woodland bison, elk, and deer, and by the Shawnee and Cherokee who hunted them. In the mid-18th century, it was followed by Long Hunters, lost in the deep forest who-knows-where, gone a year or more, competing with Indians for game, returning with horse-loads of bison, bear and beaver pelts and with deer and elk hides, tanned in creek bottoms with animal brains, and with chestnut, oak, and hickory bark, carcasses left to rot in places that still bear names like Greasy Creek and Stinking Creek.

The route was first known as Athawominee, The Warriors Path. Indians and hunters followed it through Cumberland Gap, and ten miles further north, through a dramatic cleft in Pine Mountain. They called the second Gap Wasioto (written in French as Ouasioto, and shown on 18th-century maps), meaning in Shawnee, or perhaps in Wyandot, no one is sure, land where deer are plentiful. The name designated both Pine Gap (which settlers later dubbed The Narrows) and the rich hunting lands of the Cumberland Plateau, to which it gave access.

Dr. Thomas Walker of Charlottesville was by no means the first European to follow the Path into present-day Kentucky. But his 1750 exploration, almost twenty years before Daniel Boone, provided much information for early maps. He discovered and named the Cumberland River, and noted a place a mile beyond Pine Gap where the river runs wide and the water becomes so shallow horses and even children can wade across. Cumberland Ford was where settlers camped as they waited for the river to drop. The river was the last physical barrier to overland settlement of Kentucky. Pine Gap and the Ford formed, together with Cumberland Gap, a triple gateway to The West. Walker noted in his Journal, the first written account of what lay beyond Virginia’s Blue Ridge, that there were outcroppings of coal, and brought back samples, perhaps to prove there was something of economic worth on the other side.

A Tollgate to raise money for the upkeep of the Kentucky Road was located at the entrance to Pine Gap. Over time a village grew up beside the Gate, houses clinging precariously to the riverbank -- cabins, stores, and stables strung out a mile or so. Today, virtually all traces of the past are obliterated. The haze that billows along is not dust raised by moccasins or hooves of horses, but diesel smoke from 18-wheeler trucks. The Warriors Path has become a four-lane superhighway.

Between 1780 and 1810, some 300,000 pioneer settlers followed the path, known first as Boone’s Trace, trees blazed to mark the way to Judge Henderson’s ‘Transylvania.’ They walked, as horses and mules had to carry their kit. Anxiety about Indian attack, entirely rational given eyewitness accounts of scalpings and murders, made the woods a place of wild terror, and changed The Warriors Path into The Wilderness Road. Fear was mixed with euphoria, the feeling among settlers that they had entered a new Eden.

Armies of squirrels, the foremost delicacy of frontier cuisine, grew fat on mast. Dogwood, redbud, yellow lady slipper, and trillium provided splashes of color. In spring, jack-in-the-pulpit and pink buds of mountain ivy swelled into bloom. There were occasional whirling clouds of passenger pigeons, thrush singing in nests, yellow-headed Carolina parrots feeding in cocklebur patches, woodpeckers hammering noisily in dead snags, owls flapping silently in the night. Many creek banks were choked with cane, Kentucky’s native bamboo.

The Kentucky 'Wilderness' was a forbidding jungle of impenetrable cane-brakes, tangles of vines, huge trees, and thick brush. The pioneers saw it as a place of menace, full of wolves, poisonous snakes, and murderous Indians.

Migrants into Kentucky were not much interested in forest -- they wanted fertile flat land for a farm. Trees were just a nuisance. You can't farm land until it is clear, so they promptly felled and girdled as many trees as possible for 'a clearing' and a patch to grow corn. Many cords of timber went up crude cabin chimneys as wood-smoke. Trees were plentiful and free for the taking, providing split-rail fencing, logs for cabins, and wood for heat and cooking.

It is not possible today to experience 18th-century 'Wilderness.' Only tiny remnants of old-growth forest remain. One is Lilley Cornett Woods in Letcher County. 'The Wilderness' that confronted the ambitious pioneers who braved Kentucky's forest were once an unbroken canopy stretching from horizon to horizon. But after 250 years of non-stop logging, only fragments remain.

But far and away the biggest and most spectacular is Blanton Forest in Harlan County, abutting Bell County on the southwest slope of Pine Mountain.

The Kentucky Natural Lands Trust is raising money to buy forested land so as to connect existing national and state forests, wildlife management areas, parks, and nature preserves, to form a contiguous 110-mile corridor from Breaks Interstate Park to the Tennessee border. The Pine Mountain Legacy Project [the excellent map takes some time to download, but worth the wait] will provide a refuge for plants and animals atop Kentucky's eastern backbone. A hiking trail along the crest is half-completed.

On the trek and until they could make a crop, settlers lived mostly off deer, turkey and wild greens. Forest game remained an important part of their diet, and a rifle, powder and lead were indispensable, as essential as a horse, an axe, and seeds. [The final entry in Walker’s Journal reads: We killed in the journey 13 buffaloes, 8 Elks, 53 Bears, 20 Deers, 4 Wild Geese, about 150 Turkeys, besides small game. We might have killed three times as much meat, if we had wanted it.] Many settlers drove hogs, turkeys, cattle or sheep, and carried chickens in baskets. All brought as much parched corn, hominy, or meal as their animals could carry. They knew what they wanted -- land and freedom.

Settlers sought out fertile bottoms, though in thin valleys there was never much. Clear steady-flowing water was essential, but springs could be found everywhere. Having selected a site, the settler’s first task was to chop down as many trees as possible and burn the stumps. This was his clearing, a place for his cabin and his crops. He then invited neighbors to help with a workings. Settlers knew they had to rely on each other.

They felled tulip poplars and oaks and dragged them to the clearing with horses and mules. The logs were set on stone piers, ends hewed to a tight half-dovetail notch with axes, wedges, and maul. Most cabins were single-pen, one door leading to the front of the clearing, two leather-hinged windows on each side. Gaps between the logs were chinked inside and out, then daubed wind-tight with clay. Chestnut logs were shaved flat for puncheon floors, and pegs held clothing. The cabin was roofed with split oak shingles set on skinned poles. There was enough height for a sleeping loft above the room, tiny windows in each end. Bedsteads laced with sinews and topped with mattresses of corn shucks would do just fine for children certain to appear. A good-drawing chimney, stones set in burnt limestone and sand, was essential for cooking and heating. Firewood was consumed in vast quantities, summer and winter, and trees were split for fencing. The work went quickly. The men were proud to build a solid cabin.

It was a life of unceasing hard work and lonely isolation. But there was land, though usually no clear title. The threat of massacre by Indians slowly subsided, as their numbers were diminished by warfare with settlers, and, more significantly, rampant epidemics of measles and smallpox. Year by year more settlers arrived, and squatted. Like their hopeful predecessors, the newcomers also sought a better life. Big families, often exceeding eight children, were the norm. But increasing numbers meant more to be sustained from tiny slivers of cropland. With the forest cover gone, much good soil was steadily washed away. Corn patches grew larger. When there was no more bottomland, they grubbed corn up the steepest slopes. After wild game was shot out, they relied on cows, sheep, and thin hogs feeding in the forest on mast.

By the time the grandchildren of the first settlers were grown, the land was useless for hunting, as little game was left in the forest. Big trees, and many small ones, were gone, hastening the relentless erosion. The land had been gutted, and, as rich soil accumulated over eons washed down hillsides to be deposited on floodplains miles away, the land was stripped of its hide. Farms were less productive, families reduced to bare subsistence. Cabins went unrepaired; some fell off their foundations; roofs leaked. Clearings became trash-filled hog-wallows, privies overflowing into springs and creeks. People themselves seemed to erode, children dying of croup, adults dying young of vague fevers. All were inexorably diminished. Poverty led to bitter fatalism. No one intended it; most were simply unaware. The new Eden had been milked dry, and a listless apathy descended. Raw corn whisky was the main source of cash and the proximate cause of a malady afflicting many.

Game animals, at least in areas close to 18th century forts, were quickly shot out, though some game has been re-introduced. The killing continued until there was little left to shoot at. Eastern bison, passenger pigeons, Carolina parrots, and many plants are extinct.

Industrial-scale logging, made possible by railroads, allowed virgin topsoil to wash down hillsides, though conservation farming is beginning to take hold. Within fifty years, 1870-1930, the forest giants -- cherry, hickory, spruce, ash -- were skidded down the mountains on a one-way trip to sawmills, most sold for a pittance. The timber boom left eastern Kentucky nothing of lasting benefit, no furniture industry, no craftsmanship. Preservation began only after forests had been severely damaged.

The hills were denuded, and with little vegetation to absorb the rainfall, sheets of water ran -- and continue to run -- unchecked. Floods devastate downstream towns. Today some are protected, after decades of damage, by expensive dikes and floodwalls. Trees re-grow, but it will take many centuries to recreate even an approximation of the Wilderness encountered by early settlers.

Coal mining first hollowed out the mountains, and then removed them entirely. Coal also hollowed-out miners and their families. Coalmines did provide jobs -- though at a great cost in injuries and diseases such as emphysema.

The people, most of them descendents of early settlers, are tough; they will endure. Young people, who have been Kentucky’s most valuable export for generations, leave as soon as they realize there is little or no work. Many in eastern Kentucky, like their kin elsewhere in Appalachia, seem devoid of hope, withered husks of their fiercely independent ancestors. Like the mountains that surround them, they too have been stripped.

Mining has been characterized in many times and in many places by an attitude of get it all, right now. It seldom asks, what will be left? or, is it worth it? The people of Eastern Kentucky are intensely attached to the mountains by ties of kinship and sentiment. It is ironic that much devastation was abetted by mountain people themselves, including entrepreneurs like H.C. Broughton. Many mountain people were active participants in degrading the hills of home. They themselves are at least partly complicit.

Coal brought electricity, hospitals, schools, motion pictures, and stores. The coal life, at least in the early years, held great appeal for poor farmers in remote hollers. They came eagerly -- not that the poor ever have much choice. Families have to eat, and you simply cannot make a living farming eroded hillsides. In boom years, miners had decent salaries and hope. But a bust followed every boom; thousands were laid off. Wage jobs weakened proud traditions.

Coal operators controlled towns like little kingdoms. Miners were paid on a piecework basis and began to view themselves as company property and the hills around them as a mineral colony. They were expected to vote as the company wanted. They paid high prices at company-owned stores, a policy enforced by paying them in scrip that could be spent only at the company store. A wage check-off paid for doctors and teachers hired by the company. The operators also hired deputy sheriffs, mainly to intimidate union organizers. Miners were expected to be silent, and were fired and evicted if they were not.

Uneducated men, many in their teens, often illiterate, went into the mountains, navigating a black maze of tunnels, roofs so low there was no place to stand upright, a sputtering carbide lantern their only light. They blasted and shoveled till they dropped, and were often killed or injured by dynamite that went awry, pockets of explosive methane, roof falls, electrocution. Old miners die today from dust inhaled when they were young, their last years a time of distress. They cough constantly, gasping for breath, as black lung kills them, slowly, but very surely.

The story of coal in eastern Kentucky, or anywhere in Appalachia, is a tangled skein of investments, boom-and-bust economics, jobs, emotional and bitter labor conflicts and violence, and grief from mine accidents. Coal has affected the quality of life of thousands, and still does. The tentacles of the industry run deep into the lives of families, and coal permeates every aspect of Kentucky politics.

Coal mining in Eastern Kentucky has been characterized by a century-long straight-line trend to extract more and more and more coal using fewer and fewer workers. Year by year the corporations brought in bigger, faster machines -- and laid off more miners. No one today would think of blasting and picks and shovels to load "Sixteen Tons." In 2005, the work force employed in eastern Kentucky mining was only one-fourth what it had been in 1980. Mining, like every other sector of the U.S. economy, has been automated. Operators immediately adopted any method that increased their profit. Hand work was obviously inefficient and machines -- continuous miners, auger and strip mining, and long wall – took over. Unemployed miners migrated north, often to DEE-troit.

Eastern Kentucky reached its peak population during World War II, and has been losing population ever since. In the 1940s, coal was in demand, and required lots of workers. Today, almost all underground mines are closed. A handful of men with machines can produce the coal that once required thousands of workers. Tipples rot. The infrastructure of under-ground mining was sold for scrap or has rusted away. Weed-choked ex-coal camps are ghostly shadows. Mountain people say the scars of surface mining ‘hair over’ with scrub. This is true, and makes it hard to find the huge mounds of slate and slag that smoldered from internal combustion. Old camps, dismal and dirty, are where the Depression never went away.

County seats also suffer from Appalachia’s chronic poverty. Towns in eastern Kentucky prospered in tandem with coal, providing surveyors, lawyers, engineers, doctors, dentists, mechanics, railway workers, postal employees and telegraph operators, banks, and stores of every kind -- hardware, dry goods and notions, animal feed and fertilizer, drugs, and groceries, including hundred-pound bags of sugar to give the corn mash a bigger wallop and gallon tins of malt syrup which gave it a little taste. Most towns supplied twenty or more mining camps. Mining camps are desolate and rundown, and so are the little towns that once served them.

Eastern Kentucky strives hard for economic development. It has greatly improved education, but is still stuck just above Mississippi in national comparisons. Schools often have excellent physical facilities. But teachers are poorly paid and many are not fully qualified. There are programs that teach job skills, often for jobs that do not exist. Despite an abundance of ‘initiatives’ and ‘programs,’ almost all state and federally funded, there is little industry and scant hope of much. There is an excellent modern road system, built mostly in the past fifty years with federal dollars. Like the rest of America, drugs are ubiquitous. Kentucky’s most important cash crop is marijuana, far surpassing tobacco. Methamphetamine is produced in backyard labs, and there is an active market for all kinds of narcotic prescriptions.

It may require generations for mountain people to work their way out of endemic psychological depression and wean them away from welfare dependency.

Pioneer settlers wanted land to farm, and the right to be left alone. They braved the terror of The Wilderness to make a better life for themselves and their children. Eastern Kentucky’s resources, natural and mineral, were severely depleted by greed and profligacy. Its human resources are also depleted, and an intelligent, hard working people is left with slim prospects. The mountains of eastern Kentucky are, or were, black-veined with valuable seams of bituminous coal. It is a puzzle. Why does an area with an astounding cornucopia of natural and mineral wealth remain mired in poverty? Mining jobs are mostly gone. Many people survive on remittances such as Black Lung and other disability payments, Social Security including SSI, WIC [Women, Infants and Children] payments, and Food Stamps. Many descendants of pioneers subsist today not by farming hillsides, but by remittances and welfare. Their chief concern is that the green checks arrive on schedule.

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The life of H.C. Broughton, descendant of Dillion Asher, the first tollgate keeper, illustrates the progression -- from wilderness, to game and hides, clearings and cabins, subsistence farming, logging, coal, unemployment, persistent and pervasive poverty, to welfare dependency. Dillion Asher’s cabin still stands at Red Bird, preserved by his numerous great-great grandchildren. Henry Clay Broughton, known from birth as H.C. was born in 1848, not far from Dillion’s grave on a hill overlooking his clearing.

In 1868, dressed in heavy brogan shoes, home-knit wool yarn socks, a hickory shirt, and homespun trousers and coat, he rode over the ridge, down the creek, and across Cumberland Ford. He felt rich, because in his pocket was $48 earned from ‘coon and possum hides he had trapped and tanned. He was on his way to court a lovely tall girl he had met at a camp meeting. He slept in a nearby barn, but spent every day that summer at the Garrett farm. He was five feet six inches in height, Wanda Garrett, five feet eleven. H.C. had piercing blue eyes, an unkempt mustache which seemed imposingly large on a very young man, and the beginnings of a small belly. The differences in height stirred doubt, but the couple was bound and determined. H.C. and Wanda were married in 1870 in the Chapel near Wasioto.

Like virtually all of his contemporaries, H.C. never attended school, but by combining his native intelligence with patient coaching from his wife, was, within a year, able to read. He kept his accounts in his head, and never made a mistake on what was owed to him or what he owed others. For the first five years, Wanda handled the paperwork for his business transactions. By the time he was twenty-five, H.C. was supremely confident of his abilities, and with good reason. He never again involved his wife in business matters.

They began married life in a cabin he built overlooking the river. H.C. cleared land and planted crops to feed his family, but saw immediately that the real money was in felling trees and snaking logs. By working from dawn to sunset six days a week, he had within a year earned enough to build a proper two-story frame house from timber he felled himself, and sawed at the gristmill-cum-sawmill up the creek.

H.C. got the best price for big black walnut logs, but there was no way to get them to buyers except down the river. Unfortunately, walnut logs are sinkers. H.C. got around this by lashing walnut logs to huge poplars -- excellent floaters -- and which also fetched a good price. In late winter when the river was in flood, he drifted his log rafts forty miles downstream to a sawmill at Williamsburg. He continued to begin his workday at dawn. But he now had enough cash to hire gangs of men to work beside him, and other gangs led by foremen he carefully selected. He also hired boys to cool off his teams, throwing buckets of water on the horses and mules, and in summer on the backs of his workmen as well. For eighteen years, H.C. made good money off walnut, poplar and oak trees, felling every big log that could be snaked down to the river, huge logs suitable for Victorian furniture or Grand Rapids veneer. Much timber was exported to Europe.

H.C. worked long and hard, and he had a sharp eye for business. He was also extremely frugal, a characteristic most often seen in those afraid of risk. H.C., however, was confident, many said over-confident, of his judgment, willing to take a chance even when others held back. He would take a chance if he had calculated the risks and benefits. He was a devoted exponent of the ancient proverb, buy low, sell high. He operated his business on what he called his rule of ten: I will buy anything -- timber, land, wagons, horses, mules, oxen -- and I’m not concerned about price! -- provided I see a reasonable chance that what I buy will return ten times what I pay -- this year!

After the Civil War, steel mills created an insatiable demand for coking coal. It was the coal that prompted the Louisville & Nashville railroad to extend its line from Corbin, reaching Wasioto in 1888. Friends of the L&N board learned of the railroad’s plans and saw an opportunity. They invested in a steam-powered sawmill, shipped by barge from Pittsburgh and by rail from Louisville. The mill was sited at Wasioto, upriver from the Ford and the Gap, just where the L&N crossed the river toward Middlesborough, a boomtown that English bankers imagined might become another Birmingham, Alabama.

The sawmill was a sure-fire moneymaker, except for one thing. H.C. had been buying standing timber and options on timber, constantly since 1871. By this time he owned virtually all the trees for many miles upstream. He was quite prepared to sell logs to the new sawmill, just as he sold logs to the mill in Williamsburg. But he had cornered the market on easily accessible timber. He knew it. And his price went up and up.

He owned the raw material, they owned the new mill. Why not work together? After two decades of backbreaking labor, he used his savings and the value of his timber to buy controlling interest. The minute he was in charge, he replaced the old circular saw with a modern band saw, which increased production by a factor of four. In 1890, age 42, he placed a great boom across the river to hold floating logs as they awaited their fate. The L&N ran a spur into his mill and he could now easily ship sawn timber, greatly increasing his profit. He was now a major lumber supplier with no further need of log rafts. His mill brought in more cash than he imagined possible, and he bought thousands of additional acres of standing timber.

Within a year he began buying land outright. Exploring geologists had described vast beds of bituminous coal under the wooded hills, and H.C. had heard of the reports. So, with a view to coal mining, he also began buying mineral rights. This was much cheaper than owning land of no value aside from the coal underneath it. Just as he hired gangs of lumberjacks and teams of mules, he similarly hired squads of smooth-talking attorneys, often good ol’ boys with local surnames, the lucky few who had managed to get an education, many only one generation removed from the poor families they were trying to bilk. They camped out in county clerk’s offices, searching out titles, lawyering and dickering to obtain rights to both timber and minerals, sometimes by fraud. The buyers used charm and the immediate allure of shiny gold coins. They often acquired mineral rights from illiterate farmers for as little as fifty cents an acre, even when it was certain that under the land lay millions of tons of coal.

Kentucky’s Broad Form deed, in force from 1890-1990, permitted the owner of mineral rights to do anything, anything whatsoever, to extract the mineral, without further permission or further payment to the landowner. The ignorance and poverty of subsistence farmers made for easy pickin’s. Poor farmers watched helplessly as their land was ripped and gutted.

By 1907, H.C. owned outright, or owned the mineral rights, on 35,000 acres of land containing unimaginably vast deposits of coal. But this was of little value without railroads to transport his coal to industries in the north and east. Coal was also bought for electric generation, steam-powered factories, and home heating. Railroad commodores were snaking rails into every Appalachian valley that had a seam of coal. Unfortunately, H.C. could not persuade The L& N to extend its rail line to his coal property, which lay mostly in the northern part of the Cumberland valley. In exasperation, he built the forty-mile Wasioto & Black Mountain Railroad himself. It was a daunting challenge, but it was a carefully calculated gamble, not crazy at all. He owned the land, he owned the sawmill that provided oak for ties and trestles, and he had gangs of workmen thoroughly familiar with mule teams and dynamite. As the owner of a very prosperous timber business, he also had access to capital in Louisville and Cincinnati.

The completion of H.C.’s railroad in 1911 opened the rich coalfields of Harlan County. L&N quickly saw the profit to be made, and bought his line in 1915, which gave him an enormous infusion of cash. As the L&N reached deeper into the narrow valleys of the plateau, H.C. raced ahead, buying more land and more mineral rights. He was now a big time coal operator, opening scores of mining camps in Bell, Harlan and neighboring counties. Coal-camps sprang to life almost overnight. H.C. gave them names like Wanda, Clay, Garrett, Henry, and Dinah [after dynamite]. At his urging, the L&N extended its line toward the cabin where he had been born, and H.C. opened Gilley, Hargis, Blackfork, and other mines there.

A holler with one lone cabin could become, in a few weeks, a booming coal camp. Tenant houses, row on row of cheap shacks with tarpaper roofs, were thrown up quickly, pump-wells for water, outhouses for sanitation. A few big camps, such as Lynch, owned by U.S. Steel and Benham, owned by Wisconsin Steel and International Harvester, were more substantial, with brick buildings and good amenities. Most mines, however, were shoestring operations, everything done on the cheap. Miners lived where they were told. Control of housing strengthened the company’s hold over its workers, and high rents could make up for low prices for coal. Mine owners got rich, and their descendants are now happily retired on horse farms near Lexington. Lawyers and doctors also made out well.

By 1917 H.C. owned 58,000 acres. He concluded that buying coal land and leasing it was more profitable, and much less bother. Real estate became his chief business. He was elected County Judge. In old age he enjoyed rocking on the porch of his white-columned Victorian mansion atop the Indian burial mound at the Ford. He had a fine view up the creek toward the cabin of his grandfather James. He relished watching the mile-long trains pulling more than a hundred gondola cars full to the top with black coal from his mines.

In 1931, he gave the state two thousand acres on Pine Mountain west of Pine Gap, land that became the nucleus of Pine Mountain State Resort Park. Young men from the Civilian Conservation Corps built roads, trails, and cabins for visitors. Giving the land away was a good business decision, as H.C. thereby escaped taxes. In any event, there was no more money to be made off that acreage: blight had killed all the chestnuts and there was no coal on that side of Pine Mountain. More importantly, he and his timber crews had already felled all the valuable trees. The forests had been cherry-picked, leaving behind only stumps and waste.

Henry Clay Broughton died in 1936, age 88. He would not recognize Cumberland Valley today. Much of his land has been surface mined. Power shovels remove entire mountaintops, and bulldozers push trees, rocks and mud over the side, choking valleys, polluting streams, and killing aquatic life, though bass are returning to the river. Once the overburden is removed and the black seam is revealed, draglines, some as tall as multi-story buildings, scrape out the coal, which is trucked to hundred-car unit trains, often headed for TVA steam-powered electric plants. Some strip-mined land has been ‘restored,’ but the result looks more like logged-over scrub than the forest it once was. Even on so-called ‘reclaimed’ land, no black walnut trees remain. H.C. would find few valuable trees at all.

A LITTLE TOWN IN SOUTHEASTERN KENTUCKY

I was born December 1, 1928 in The Continental Miner’s Hospital, a two-story frame structure at the end of Cherry Street in Pineville, Kentucky, a town twelve miles north of Cumberland Gap. The house is still there, just barely escaping the destruction occasioned by the building of an earthen dyke to spare the town repeated flooding. Highway traffic roars atop the berm, named The Bob Mason Bypass in honor of the Mayor-For-Life, who worked tirelessly to put the place back together after the devastating flood of 1977.

Underneath the earth and rocks of the dyke, under the concrete of the modern highway, are remnants of The Warrior’s Path, Boone’s Trace, Wilderness Road, Kentucky Road, Dixie Highway . . . all now totally obliterated. The haze that billows along is not dust raised by Indian moccasins or by hooves of stagecoach horses, but diesel smoke from 16-wheeler trucks. US25E has become a four-lane superhighway.

This is the countryside where, around every bend, at least up to a few decades ago, every barn was decorated with signs, CHEW MAIL POUCH . . . BRUTON’S DENTAL SNUFF. . SEE ROCK CITY. Many warned then, and some still do: ARE YOU SAVED? GET RIGHT WITH GOD! JESUS IS COMING SOON!

The route curves around the valley to The Water Gap, a thousand-foot-deep gorge sliced through the middle of Pine Mountain. We called it The Narrows, and this remains its local name today. Indians and Long Hunters called the Gap ‘Wasioto’ [written in French as Ouasioto, and shown on 18th-century maps of the area], meaning [scholars think] in Shawnee, or maybe in Wyandot, no one is sure, ‘land where deer are plentiful.’ The name designated both the Gap and the rich hunting lands of The Cumberland Plateau, to which it gave access.

There is no better way to understand the geology and geography of southeastern Kentucky than the outstanding Atlas of Kentucky. If you can, see also the physiographic relief map of the Eastern Kentucky Coal Field, locating the mineral that has been blessing and curse. The Hubbard raised relief map (Johnson City, TN) makes the terrain understandable at a glance. The 'wall' of Cumberland Mountain, an impenetrable barrier for decades, is clearly visible, as is the long dramatic ridge of Pine Mountain. [The Kentucky Natural Lands Trust is creating a magnificent two-hundred-mile ecological corridor atop the ridge, from Breaks Interstate Park south to the Tennessee border.] As a teaching tool, this map is indispensable. The hollers and creeks are there.

The Appalachians are by far the oldest mountain range in the United States, dating back to the super-continent Gondwanaland. When the mountains were forced upward by the collision of the North American Plate, peaks in Kentucky loomed as high as the Himalayas. Four hundred million years of relentless erosion have washed the once-towering mountains down the valleys, depositing mud and minerals in the Gulf of Mexico. It is ironic that some Appalachian mountains, now no more than a stub of what they once were, are today being blasted away entirely. Mountaintops are blasted by ‘anfo’ (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, as powerful as dynamite and a fraction of the cost). Giant draglines pull the rubble into the nearest valley. The companies are interested only in the coal. The U.S. needs energy and every mountain that has a seam of coal will WILL be removed. But will we still be mountain people after the mountains themselves are gone?

The Ford was important during the Civil War, a strategic choke point for the armies of both North and South. The tollgate was moved to The Ford after 1830, and the toll was eliminated a few years later. The tollgate at The Ford was located on the farm of J.J. Gibson, land 'patented' under Virginia Military Warrant by Isaac Shelby, hero of the Revolutionary War battle of King’s Mountain (1780) and first Governor of Kentucky. Shelby built a brick house at The Ford and also operated a ferry. Wagons crossing The Ford dug into the riverbank, ruts still faintly visible as recently as 1970. The Ford could be crossed easily throughout the year, except for a week or so in winter or early spring when melting snow raised the water level. When two rocks could be seen above the water, this indicated that the river could be safely forded, even by children. If the river could not be forded, pioneer settlers just camped. They didn't have to wait long.

The Ford was also important in Kentucky's drover trade. Vast numbers of animals were herded east for sale to the tobacco plantations of Virginia. Stage Coach Days in the Bluegrass (1800-1900) by J. Winston Coleman says that in 1824, 4,005 horses and mules, 58,011 hogs and 412 'good beef steers' crossed The Ford headed toward market in Virginia. In Agrarian Kentucky, Thomas D. Clark notes that in the winter of 1838-39, 4,549 cattle, 2,039 horses, 3,177 mules, 7,864 hogs, and 3,250 sheep crossed The Ford, and that 'every decade saw an increase in numbers.' The plantations needed horses and mules, and because they concentrated on producing and exporting a cash crop, they also needed cattle and hogs to feed the slaves and farmhands who cultivated the tobacco. White farm laborers, mainly Scots-Irish indentured servants (maybe my ancestors?), lit out for Kentucky as soon as their contracts expired. Plantations that fell on hard times sold slaves in Kentucky or to the Cotton South.

Dr. Thomas Walker of Albemarle County, Virginia, founder of Charlottesville, physician, surveyor, frontier aristocrat and supremely successful speculator, mapped the area in 1750, when he explored an 800,000-acre grant of land to The Loyal Company, a group of tobacco-slave barons with influential connections in Williamsburg. The final entry in Walker’s Journal reads: ‘We killed in the journey 13 buffaloes, 8 Elks, 53 Bears, 20 Deers, 4 Wild Geese, about 150 Turkeys, besides small game. We might have killed three times as much meat, if we had wanted it.’

Walker and his fellow-speculators gained control of thousands of acres. The wealth and prestige of English Lords and Dukes and Earls was based on huge estates. But New World Colonials could also play that game, and did. They were adept in acquiring vast estates by ‘treaty’ with Indians, midnight appropriation. Easiest of all, if they were politically influential, was by simply ‘granting’ each other enormous tracts in the unknown Wilderness which lay just over the western mountains. [See Gateway: Dr. Thomas Walker and the Opening of Kentucky, David M. Burns, Bell County Historical Society, Box 1344, Middlesboro, KY 40965, Telephone (606) 242-0005].

Kenta-ke was not the permanent home of any Indian group, but it was a vitally important hunting ground for many tribes. Game from Kentucky provided food and clothing for Cherokee based in North Carolina and Tennessee [by 1730, a third of them had been wiped out by European diseases], and for Shawnee based in Ohio.