Remembering a morning with Mac

This weekend brings the annual M.A.C. ride in Easley - a bicycle ride that was originally meant to as a tribute to my Dad. He immediately refocused the effort to send support and money to those who needed it.  Joshua Adams made an amazing video that included a speech he gave at the last one Dad attended. Give it a listen here, and if you feel inclined, donate here.  Money raised goes to providing shoes to kids. 

 

I am hearing my dad's voice in a lot of places.  And some of the vignettes that I am hearing are just magical.  This is from one of the visits he made to Louisiana a number of years ago.  One of the most spectacular days I have ever spent.

 

 

A beautiful predawn. The stars were bright - living in New Orleans, between the light pollution and the humidity, it is rare to see more than a single star or two in the night sky. But the cold front removed all the humitidity from the air, and we were far enough from any residence to see the glorious spray of stars stretching across the sky.

We got into the boat, and the cool of the night became cold as we started out. I relaxed my jaw to keep from chattering; the breeze cut right through the long-sleeved camo t-shirt and left me chilled. After five minutes in the mud boat, we dropped the first crew off at their pirogue, and then followed the twists and turns of the canal to our own. We swapped from a small boat into a smaller, shifted all the gear over, and started off. The first hints that dawn was on its way peaked over the horizon, and we could see shadowy vegetation on either side of the canal.

Roger turned towards us, and I was surprised to hear him talk in a normal voice - it seemed like talking loud in church, not exactly sacriligeous, but inappropriate.

"It gets a little shallow here, so I have to pole us over the low spot."

Sure enough, he pulled out the long aluminum pole and slicked the bottom of the boat over the plough mud. A few seconds later, the canal opened into a large open area with clumps of grass still obscured in shadow. Roger guided the boat towards the center of the clearing, straight towards the largest of the grass clumps.

Fishing in the Agarope

No TV.  No radio.  No internet.  No telephone. No electronic babysitters.  So what does a 9-year-old boy do in the middle of Nowhere, Para, Brasil?

He learns to fish.

During the two years we were at Olaria, Dad chartered a boat a couple of times to go fishing.  We went back in some odd distributaries and even hooked a few plate-sized piranha.  But we also found that it was a lot harder to eat such a bony fish than we would like.  So we didn't do that too often. 

And there was one time that Dad caught a monster catfish.  After having the machinist make a huge hook, and loading it with a slab of bacon (it did not come pre-sliced...) he tied the line off to the dock.  A couple of weeks later, there was a 150-pound catfish on the line.

(That evening, sitting on the dock, Dad wove a nice tail he 'heard' from the workers that night about a full moon and the catfish feeding on the top of the water.... just before pushing me in.  Other than that moment, I have never in my life walked on water - before or since.  You can relate this little vignette to the reporters when they ask when it was that I started to turn bad)

But those trips were not the norm.  Mostly, the vignette included a boy with a closed face reel, hunting for crickets in the high grass, running to the dock to cast the hapless insect into the river, trying to catch silver-dollar fish.  For the most part, I was trying - unsuccessfully - to catch the small, flashy fish with a tiny hook.  For a hyperkinetic kid, the lessons necessary to successfully learn the art of fishing - especially the sitting still part - were far beyond my abilities. 

But after the schooling, the swimming, the canoeing and hunting were done for the day, I would often try my hand at fishing.  The end result was more reminiscent of a cane-pole-jerk-the-fish-out-of-the-water-and-onto-the-bank effort than the more traditional scene of fighting the fish to the dock, and carefully placing it on the stringer.  And I was never able to pull together enough of a 'mess' of fish to feed our family of four.  But Mom would pan fry the results of my efforts whenever they were successful enough to warrant it.  (The rules were clear, though - the 9-year old was still responsible for cleaning the fish). 

The most-productive fishing effort, however, was done one day with the neighbor.  Francisco had a long woven-reed fence, and during high tide one day, he asked for my help to stretch it across the agarope - a little tributary that ran through our property.  We then waited until low tide, and waded in to collect the fish that were left behind the makeshift seine net.  Flopping in the muddy crick were about twenty pounds of shrimp, a half a dozen flounders, and all sorts of small catfish (the fins were razor-sharp in both directions, so you had to be careful how you handled them) - enough for three families to eat for a week.

And for a family living at the margin of poverty, that was a gift.

Oddly enough, fishing for food was very much a famine-time effort.  For all of the teeming life that lived in the freshwater of the river - we saw porpoises, manatees, sawfish, and limitless other species - they were not available to the working man as a source of protein. 

Fish, it turns out, was poor-man's food.

One time, the captain of the boat that came to carry lumber to the US brought us a huge red snapper as a gift.  Dad and Mom both drooled, and immediately invited the company bookkeeper (who was native to the area) to share it with us at dinner that week.  Tilon looked up sharply at Dad, and then realized that the poor gringo was just clueless.

"Senior Macque, let me explain.  I know you didn't mean any insult, because you just don't know the customs here in Brasil.  But you can't - EVER - invite someone to your house to eat fish.  If you can't afford to put meat on the table, you just don't invite them." Tilon eventually accepted the invitation, and was delighted with the meal, even saying afterwards, "Senior Macque, any time you have that red fish, don't worry about customs.  you can invite me any time."

So when I helped Francisco gather the fish, he was perplexed that I would be willing to take a couple of the flounders as payment for my 'help'. 

But who can figure out gringos, anyway?

None of my practice on the Rio Jabiru helped me become a fisherman as an adult.  I enjoy the occasional fishing excursion, but it is more like the specialty trip - for recreations - than a regular source of protein. 

But I still remember the delight in the catch from all those years ago.   And the joy in taking home my share, to be prepared for dinner.
 

Cashews

Cashew apples.  One of the sweetest fruits on the planet.  Slight alum taste, but the juice would gush down your chin enough to make a SC peach jealous.

And as far as we were concerned, that was the only thing to do with them.  Eat the fruit, throw away the nut.  I mean, we remembered that expensive warped-peanut looking thing in the grocery store, and they were always the first item to go when the jar of mixed nuts were opened, but when we were in Brasil?  Nobody eats them.

But mom and dad asked the question anyway.  I mean, in a place where it grows wild, why are people who are living in poverty not supplementing their diet with easy, free protein? 

Turned out that the nut is poisonous. Muito perigoso.  Very dangerous.

Until it is roasted.

Roasting, as our predecessors on the river explained to us, is a tricky process, too.  Charles and Barbara Lawton (1st cousin, once removed) had tried it a year earlier.  Barbara had roasted them in the oven, and at the end of an hour roasting a pan of cashew nuts at 375 degrees, she opened the oven.

A poisonous steam shot out at her, making her face swell shut. For the next week, she could not open her eyes and her mouth and throat were raw from the superheated toxic steam.

So no oven-roasting for us.  My folks decided that the only way to do it was to make an outdoor fire, and roast them on the open fire.  Much better.

Now, O Best Beloved, in a jungle, keeping a fire going is tough work - 100% humidity is not conducive to campfires.  While I stayed my safe distance, Dad fed the fire, and mom turned the roasting cashews.  Both of them, inhaling smoke the whole time. 

The resulting rashes that they got were minimal, and I assume there was no real long-term effects from the inhalation of toxins.  But I do know that none of us ever thought that cashews were 'easy, free protein' ever again. 

And we always made sure to clean out the cashews from any party mix first off.  We know what kind of effort went into the prep.

Jazzy

This week, I got to watch my grandkids playing jazz for the first time at Tipitina's amazing Sunday Youth Music Workshop.  They are both hard-working musicians, practicing their craft, getting beats and fingerwork and crossovers and flams and frets and hemiquavers...

...those two, like every musician I have ever met, speak a different language when they are talking music. 

So these competent budding musicians, who I have been admiring  am terribly envious of, got on stage and played with the house band.  The chord progression was simple, and was repeated over and over.  The drum line was not terribly intricate, and the house drummer walked them - all seven aspiring drummers - through the line a few times, and helped adjust them when they were not driving hard enough. 

Gabi and Remi in the all-new G&R.

But this was not learning and practicing a song.  This is not discovering how to play in sync with one another. 

"Air France to you, too!"

I am no fan of Air France Airlines. Our family has used the term “Air France” with the force of epithet for almost forty years, now. It is an insult just this side of “Belgium”.

And yet.... the trip we took with them in 1978 left me with a debt I just realized I still owe.

Lemme explain.

While we were in Brasil, we had to leave the country every six months to renew our visas. Now this renewing took place when Jimmy Carter was President of the US. During this time, Carter was supposed to come to Brasil to meet with some officials, to talk about helping the economy. At the last minute a conflict arose, and he was unable to go. Instead, he sent his wife.

If you don’t know about Latin American countries, you probably don’t understand the seriousness of the insult. The result for us was that the Brasilian government decided to act as though they were not particularly well disposed to Americans, and threw up bureaucratic roadblocks to anything we tried to do. Foremost among these was that we were not allowed a permanent visa, which would allow us to stay in the country for the entire two-year stint. Instead, we were issued a tourist visa, requiring us to leave the country twice a year to renew.

Through the hoop we jumped. Grandmama and Granddaddy Lawton came down to “run things” while we were in French Guyana. Neither spoke any Portuguese, so the plant was left to run itself, but there was a figurehead in place while we were gone (and they got to experience the beauty of the country for a couple of weeks).

So after going to Belem (7 hour trip), we boarded a flight to Cayenne, French Guyana. Since we were only going to be there for one hour, just long enough to get the visas stamped and return, we took only what we needed. We arrived in French Guyana on an Air France jet without incident, got the visa stamped, turned around to get on the plane, and… there were about a hundred people in front of us.

By the time we got to the front of the line, we were informed that the flight was overbooked, and there was no room for us on the flight.

“But we have CONFIRMED reservations!” my father explained to the ticket agent.

“I am sorry, but you cannot get on that flight.”

After a number of useless repetitions of the same information, we finally agreed on the point that we were not going to get on the flight that was leaving. So when was the next flight? Seven days.

Did I mention that we traveled light? We were carrying about $200, the clothes on our back, and a paperback – a biography of Sandy Koufax. My dad demanded that the airline provide us with a place to stay. They refused. And as if the problems were not bad enough, the language card was played. “I am sorry, monsieur, but I no unnerstan’ Eengleesh. Mais vous parlez français, n’est-ce pas?…

Portugese? No. Français, s’il vous plaît.”

So my dad was reduced just that quickly to sputtering in a language he had not spoken since college.

“You are responsible for this, and YOU will put us up for the night.”

“No.”

“Then we will sleep here.”

I was not too keen on the idea. The mosquitoes were ferocious, and the seats were uncomfortable.

The issue was made moot, however, when two guards, complete with Tommy guns, escorted us out of the airport, and unceremoniously left us on the curb. 4 miles outside the city of Cayenne. At 3:15 in the morning. In the drizzling rain. Welcome to French Guyana.

So there was a single cab left (everyone else either had transportation waiting or was not surprised by the delay, hailed the first cab and immediately left). Dad approached the cab driver.

“Listen; I have almost no money. I have a wife and two small kids (we were 8 and 4) and need to get them in out of the rain. Can you take us to a motel to stay the night?”

The cabdriver was sympathetic, but could not do it. He did know a guy that could, however, and when he dropped off the last fare, would get him to come out. Sure enough, some time later, a cab drove up and out steps an enormous man. Mac Lawton was a big man; this guy absolutely dwarfed him. The look on Dad’s face was clear – he was totally convinced that the other cabbie sent a buddy to rob us.

And then a huge grin broke across the cabdriver’s face.

Turns out that the cabdriver’s daughter had been stranded in New York, and a couple had taken care of her while she was there. Since that time, he had looked for an opportunity to repay someone else for the kindness of strangers. So he took us downtown, met with a lady he knew that was willing to put us up in her motel, and promised to come back and drive us wherever we needed to go.

Now everyone back in Brasil expected us to return immediately; worse still, the lumberyard has no communication with the outside world. The closest thing to communication was a radio (with intermittent reception) a couple of miles upriver. So not only did our lawyer in Belem not know where we were, but my grandparents were equally in the dark, with no way of finding out what had happened after we left the plant.

Meanwhile we are stuck penniless for a week in Cayenne, where we do not speak the language, owe our shelter to the kindness of a new friend, and have no way of getting money. The owner of the motel went each day to Air France, argued for a half-hour about whose fault it was that we are there, and departed with money “for just one more day”. Her response every day was the same:

“Fine, I’ll be back tomorrow.”

In the meantime, we ate daily in the motel restaurant. The Museum of Natural History has nothing that we did not see on the menu (tiger, by the way, has a very sweet taste). Flies were terrible. We had contests to see who can trap the most flies in a bottle of coke. Twenty-four remains the record. And we read and re-read the Koufax book. We bought a t-shirt each, and washed everything every day, so that we didn’t have to buy an entire wardrobe.

Finally, after a week of killing time, trying to find another way to get back to Brasil, the time finally arrived to go back. We headed to the airport early (oddly mistrustful of our Air France tickets that are "confirmed reservations"), and the cabdriver turned to us and says “For one week you have seen all the things in this country that are ugly. Let me show you some of its beauty.” And he drove us around through some of the most beautiful houses, gardens, and subdivisions I have ever seen.

He took an experience that had been negative from start to finish, and made it lovely.

It might be about 36 years late, but seems like I could do something similar. I can find somebody in a bit of a bind, and help them out.

Maybe I'll look for that chance today.

Blarney

It was 1999 and I was walking across Tulane's campus between classes and saw a stone with a plaque on it in the entrance to a courtyard between buildings. Curiosity got the best of me, and I walked over.

"Tulane's Blarney Stone.  Removed and returned to its rightful location, April 1994."

Oh, man.  If there was ever a need for a little bit of sleuthing, it had to be this.  I asked first in one place, then in another, walking into nearby offices and asking people I had never met if they knew the story behind it.

Finally, after a number of blank stares and strange looks, someone suggested that I go ask the resident silverback - a professor emeritus whose name escapes me.  "He's bound to know," I was told.

As is the case with all emeritus professors, his office was not accessible through normal means.  The small door under the staircase opened up to a tiny office overstuffed with old papers and a teetering bookcase on the verge of collapse.

The white-haired man in the tweed jacket with patches on the elbows seemed startled.  "Can I help you?"

I asked my question to Dr. Edmund Meritus and he laughed.  And immediately dropped into storytelling mode.

It was the aftermath of WWII, and there were a huge number of older student at Tulane using the new GI bill to fund their education.  During this time, there were a number of unexplained things that appeared overnight, including a small boulder that simply appeared on campus one morning.

The engineering department adopted it as their totem, which, at the time, assured that the other departments would work to steal and/or deface the totem.  Each time it was stolen, the thieves would look to secure the stone in a way that would prevent future boulder raids.

Times were different then.

Eventually, the engineers decided to stop this nonsense, once and for all.  They stole the stone back from architecture, proceeded to drill a hole in the base (schist fractures easily, so this had to be done carefully), inserted a pipe that was cemented into place, and connected the other end of that pipe to the underground high-pressure steam pipe, located twenty feet underground.

It stayed there.

Generations passed. 

The geology department put together a rock garden, and without actually asking the engineering department for permission, went through the administrative route, and got approval to abscond with the stone.  A work order was placed, and the facilities guys got out the backhoe, exposed the base of the pedestal to which the stone had been cemented, and yanked the stone out of its base.

Remember the high-pressure steam pipe?

Yeah.  Engineering did, too.  Fortunately, it was accompanied by a monster BOOM, but nobody was hurt.  The backhoe driver changed underwear, the pipe got fixed, and geology got their piece of schist for their rock garden.

It was, after all, a different age, with different rule, and the department loyalty meant less. So once the Blarney Stone had been incorporated into Geology's rock garden, it was forgotten. 

Except for the emerite. He remembered. And passed the story off to his graduate students. Year after year.

Finally, a graduate student got the hint, and recruited several of his cohort to steal the rock.  After some minor planning, and perhaps a dram of courage or two, the four of them waited until midnight to make the heist.  They comprised the Committee for the Recovery of and Restoration of the Blarney Stone.

They backed the truck up with no lights, attached the ropes and pulleys (this is a BIG rock) and proceeded to begin the process of lifting the rock into the back of the truck bed.

At which point, predictably, Mr. Campus Security Officer strolled by, making a nightly rounds.

They froze, hoping that Mr. C.S. Officer would not see them.

No such luck.  There was no opportunity to flee; the truck was blocked in.  So the leader of the pack did the only thing he could do. 

He pulled out his clipboard, and showed the officer the Requisition Form, signed and in triplicate (it was an undergraduate paper he was supposed to be grading), granting permission to relocate the stone from Geology to Engineering.  Her further explained that the truck had only been approved to drive on the campus grounds to undertake the extraction after hours. 

By the end of the discussion, Mr. CS Officer was nodding, had a bogus phone number of a nonexistent professor, and was lending a hand putting the rock in the back of the truck.

The next morning, the chair of the Geology Department chair was apoplectic over the theft, and filed a campus police report, claiming that a schistose stone was stolen overnight from the rock garden in front of the geology building.  The value of the stone was listed as $0.00.

Oddly enough, the Campus police never solved the crime....


The story was over, and Professor E. Meritus watched me to gauge my reaction.  In the process, he threw down the gauntlet.... would I be the one to re-initiate the stealing of the Blarney Stone? Would I be willing to take on the challenge of starting an internecine war over the possession of a worthless rock?

Photo used without permission, stolen from http://tulane.edu/about/traditions-pre-sept-2014.cfm 

The stone is now cemented into place, complete with its brass plaque, in the U-shaped courtyard of one of the buildings on campus.  The Engineering department is now defunct.  Professor E. Meritus is now removed from his spot under the stairs. 

And I still want to steal the stone back.  Just to start the process all over again.  Anybody got a diamond rope saw I can borrow?