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March 2025 readings

title slide with book covers

For those of you who wonder why I didn’t post a sermon on Sunday, it’s because I didn’t preach. I was recovering from a stomach bug and was still in the “infectious stage.” I doubt anyone wanted to risk seeing me. It all started late Wednesday night when I became violently sick and between episodes, was unable to maintain my blood sugar levels. I ended up in the ER, receiving IV fluids and shots to control nausea. After 4 hours, I came home but as late as Friday was experiencing diarrhea. As I was to have 48 hours after the last symptom, I was blessed to have someone else preach for me. The next sermon, God willing, will be posted on April 11th. This week, I had planned to be off in order to attend the HopeWords Writer’s Conference in Bluefield. Hopefully, you’ll find an interesting book or two from those books I finished reading during March.

Jon Meacham, His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope with Afterword by John Lewis 

cover of Jon Meachan's "His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope"

(New York: Penguin Random House, 2020), 354 pages including note, bibliography, and an index. 

In a way, Meacham’s biography on John Lewis reads like a spiritual memoir. Meacham provides the details of Lewis’ early life. However, his real focus is on Lewis’ faith and how it helped him as a young leader of the Civil Rights Movement.

Lewis wanted to preach from an early age. The family’s  chicken coop became his church. He preached to the birds and took offense when his mother cooked one of his “parishioners.” Throughout this book, Meacham captures the theological themes of Lewis’ life. These include love in the face of hate, non-violence, and with Martin Luther King, a vision of a beloved community. 

This book mostly focuses on Lewis’ first 28 years, until the death of Martin Luther King in 1968. A long epilogue brings the reader up to date on Lewis later work. This includes his 17 terms in the United States Congress. Following this is an afterword, written by Lewis himself, before his death on July 17, 2020. The book was published later that year.

Jon Meacham, as a young reporter for The Chattanooga Times, met Lewis on election night, 1992. He had just won his fourth term in Congress and Clinton had beaten George H. W. Bush for the Presidency. They would meet many more times over the years. Meacham began working on this book toward the end of Lewis’ life. Even thought Meacham focuses on Lewis’ work before they met, the closeness of the preacher/politician with the author is sensed throughout this book. 

Lewis’ grandfather was born a slave. But after Civil War, he worked hard and brought land. Lewis’ own father was a tenant farmer, but the family seldom saw the white owner of the land they worked. Lewis himself saw few white people in his early life, living in a segregated world. In 1951, at age 11, this changed one summer when an uncle took him to Buffalo, New York. It was an eye-opening event for Lewis. 

The 1950s were a time of change and uncertainty in the South. For African Americans, there was a bright light when the Supreme Court ruling against school segregation in 1954. Of course, nothing changed fast. But it was also a time of lynchings and the torture death of Emmett Till, a boy from Chicago close to Lewis’ age. 

For young Lewis, another change came when he started listening to the Martin Luther King, Jr. preaching on the radio. In 1957, Lewis left his hometown for American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. The small school trained African American men for the ministry. While a student, Lewis learned about non-violent protests and participated in sit-ins at local cafes. He even volunteer to attempt to integrate a local white university. He was invited to meet with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, who suggested he needed his parents’ approval since he was not yet 18 years of age. They refused and Lewis returned to the seminary. He continued his involved in non-violence as he participated as a Freedom Bus Rider. In all these experiences, Lewis saw the brutality of the Southern Whites as they resisted the demands of Black Southerners. 

As a young man, Lewis quickly became a leader within the Civil Rights movement. Even before his brutal beating on the Emmett Pettit bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965, he had be with other leaders meeting President Johnson in the White House. It’s amazing that Lewis could continue to advocate non-violence and envison a beloved community with the violence he experienced. But he did. He even had to resist others within the movement, especially after Selma and later the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. These events led many to call for violence and Black Power as a way to confront the White backlash. Lewis stood firm for nonviolence. 

The reader of this book will take away an appreciation of what Lewis and other Civil Rights leaders endured. At a time when many of our rights as Americans feel threatened, the examples of those like Lewis, who Meacham likens to the Founding Fathers, provides an example of what courage looks like. He kept his eye on justice, avoiding violence but willing to get into “good trouble.”

I have read four other books by Jon Meacham and reviewed Let There Be Light.  Like His Truth is Marching On, Let There be Light is also a spiritual biography, but of Abraham Lincoln. I have also read his biographies of George H. W. Bush and Andrew Jackson. All have been exceptional. 

Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays 

Book cover of Upstream

(2016, Audible,  Pushkin Industries, 2023, 4 hours and 3 minutes)

A number of years ago read some of Mary Oliver’s poetry and her book on writing poetry. This is my first foray into her essays. This collection has been finely crafted, showing Oliver’s love for nature, life, and her home in Provincetown at the eastern tip of Cape Cod. As with her poetry, Oliver provides the reader with close views of the world. Owls, foxes, herons, spiders, turtles, fish, and her beloved dogs are all captured with her words. The reader learns the poet’s blessings upon those in the past. She drew strength from writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allen Poe, William James, Walt Whiteman, William Wordsworth. She takes us on predawn walks. We’re introduced to a carpenter who wants to be a poet. Then we learn of her desire to master woodworking. I recommend this series of essays as a reminder to take our time to enjoy what’s around us. 

Amanda Held Opelt, Holy Unhappiness: God, Goodness, and the Myth of the Blessed Life

Book cover for "Holy Unhappiness"

 (New York: Worthy Publishing, 2023), 239 pages including notes. 

The title of this book, “Holy Unhappiness,” caught my attention. After all, doesn’t God want us to be happy? Doesn’t God want us to be blessed? Drawing on the account of the fall from Genesis 3, Opelt counters the idea we’re made to be happy. The curse of humanity includes our suffering in this life.  Of course, the pursuit of happiness, which Americans hold dear, isn’t found in Scripture but the Declaration of Independence. Yet such ideas have found their way into American Christianity through the various forms of the prosperity gospel. Opelt’s book directly attacks the heresy of the prosperity gospel. 

The author grew up in a loving Christian middle-class family in the Bible Belt. She felt she did all the things required of her to achieve blessedness. But as she grew older, she realized many of her expectations were hollow. The idea she just had to find the right job, the right spouse and they’d have the perfect children, and life would be easy was an allusion. 

The book is divided into three parts. Each looks at four places where we seek blessings followed by a chapter on the real source of blessings. The first part of the book looks at us as individuals in our work, marriage and parenthood. While there are wonderful aspects to each of these, they can also fluster our attempts to obtain a blessing. The real blessing comes in our delight of accepting what God has given us. 

Part two focuses on our life in a community. While much of American Christianity is focused on individuals, Opelt points out that the gospel is to be lived out with others. In this section, she discusses calling and community along with our bodies (through which we serve and work together). The blessing we discover is humility. The third part examines our gathering as believers, along with our suffering and sanctification. The resulting blessing is hope.  

Opelt encourages American Christians to avoid “one-verse-theologies” and to delve into the Scriptures. I applaud this suggestion. However, I wonder why Opelt didn’t link suffering and “holy unhappiness” with the cross. Perhaps this is because I am writing this review during Lent, or because yesterday I read nearly 100 pages of Fleming Rutledge’s, The Crucifixion. Nonetheless, there is a lot to commend in Opelt’s book. I was especially moved by what she has to say about the community, the church, and humility. 

Oplet will be one of the presenters at this year’s HopeWords Writer’s Conference in Bluefield, West Virginia.

Nathaniel Philbrick, Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy 

Book cover for "Travels with George"

(Penguin Random House, 2021), 375 pages include notes, bibliography and index. Penguin Audio, 2021, narrated by Nathaniel Philbrick, 9 hours and 34 minutes. 

This is the third book I read by Philbrick. The first two were In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution. I have enjoyed all three and have his book on the Mayflower sitting on my to-be-read pile.

I began listening to on audio, but ended up picking up a copy from the library. This allowed me to follow along and to see the illustrations. Most notably is John Trumbull’s painting of George standing in front of the hind end of Prescott, his horse. Prescott’s tail is raised. In the background sits the city of Charleston, for whom the painting was made. The artist’s joke is that the horse is relieving himself on Charleston even though I first thought Washington was lifting up the horse’s tail (as to say, go here?). 

Unlike the other two books of Philbrick’s I read, this one is more personal. Philbrick and his wife Melissa along with their dog, Dora, retraces the steps of Washington in their Honda Pilot. The one time they left their car behind was to sail, like Washington, to Rhode Island. This created an exciting adventure as they were caught in a dangerous storm. Thankfully, they’d left Dora behind.

Both Philbricks are avid sailors. Early in their married life, Philbrick stayed at home and cared for the kids while working as a freelance writer. Melissa worked as an attorney. I also discovered that he grew up in Pittsburgh. However, he spent lots of time in the summer on the coast where he could sail. Sadly, Phil did not reveal if he remained loyal to Pittsburgh’s sports or if he became a traitor for the Red Sox’s and Patriots. 

Blending into their personal experiences along the road, we learn much about Washington and the challenges he faced as the first President of the United States. At the time, the nation’s future was far from certain. Washington, a “Federalist,” was from the anti-federal South. Like all great men, he had his faults, especially when it came to his inconsistent views on slavery. Yet Washington was the man who brought the nation together. He strove to unite a collective group of former colonies into the United States. Philbrick notes that Washington didn’t desire the Presidency. Furthermore, Martha really didn’t relish the possibility of being the First Lady). During the time Washington made these journeys, he also worked on establishing the nation’s capital along the banks of the Potomac. This effort remained on his mind while on his last and longest of the journeys through the South. 

Washington’s journeys begins as he leaves his home at Mt. Vernon for New York. There, he took the oath of office. His desire to learn more about the nation and show national unity, Washington, led to these trips.

His first journey left New York for New England, with stops in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and a brief foray into Maine. Notably, he skipped Rhode Island as it had yet to ratify the constitution. However, Maine wasn’t even being considered as a state and it didn’t become one until 1820. 

Washington’s second journey was a tour of Long Island. The Island had mostly remained under British Control during the Revolution. However, a series of spy rings on the island, kept Washington informed as to the British plans. Even during this trip, Washington kept the identity of almost all the spies quiet. At this time, his concern continued to be their safety. What would happen if the nation failed and Britain regained control? 

Then, in August 1790, Washington sails from New York to Rhode Island. While he shunned the colony on his New England trip, he wanted to welcome them into the union after they ratified the constitution. Washington stayed with John Brown, a Quaker who helped establish Brown University. Philbeck had attended Brown, and his family had long ties to the university. We learn Brown’s chariot provide Washington with ideas of the type of coach needed for his southern journeys. More importantly, however, to the story was the Quakers mixed relationship with slavery. While the religion shunned the practice, many of the ships bringing slaves to the Americas came from Rhode Island. 

Throughout the book, Philbrick explores Washington’s own troubled relationship with slavery. It has long been noted that Washington freed his slaves upon his death, but they were only part of Mt. Vernon’s slaves. Many of the slaves belonged to his wife’s first husband and were property Washington didn’t control. Furthermore, while troubled by slavery, Washington still chased down runaway slaves and kept them in bondage. And while he was on these journeys, he traveled with enslaved menservants. 

Ironically, Washington’s final tour took him through a land of which he was unfamiliar, the South. During the Revolution, Washington time was mostly spent in the northern part of the colonies. Other generals lead the fight in the South. This was area was also the least developed part of the nation. Overland travel was difficult. It was also a place that was most hostile to Washington’s ideas, especially the tax on whiskey. 

For me, the Eastern leg of Washington’s Southern journey was the most familiar. Having spent my childhood in Wilmington, NC, and six years as an adult just outside of Savanah, I’ve traveled the roads which parallel Washington’s journey numerous times. Like Philbrick, I’ve read much of Archibald Rutledge’s writings. I have even published a piece on Hampton Plantation, where Washington stayed. I knew all of stories Philbrick told of Rutledge’s ancestors. 

The part of the Southern journey that I was less familiar with was Washington’s westward swing which took him from Augusta, Georgia through the Piedmont of South and North Carolina. While I have been to most of the sites mentioned, I never associated them with Washington. 

Washington’s travels seemed to help create the myth and numerous stories seemed to be repeated along the way. Many towns have their own version of “He’s just a man,” often exclaimed by some youngest when they met Washington. Another popular and frequent story are about the coins he gave out as gifts. Interestingly, these were British coins as America had yet to mint its own money. And then there was the stories of Washington’s beloved dog, “Greyhound.” Sadly, Philbrick discovered the story had been made up in the 19th Century. 

While this book wasn’t as detailed in historical research as the other Philbrick books, I enjoyed it. Philbrick. portrait of Washington gives insight into the type of leadership our nation needs at present. Furthermore, reading this book makes me think it’s time for a road trip.

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Getting to the Trailhead. The Southern Crescent, 1985

Title slide with photos of a wildflower and the Appalachian trail in Georgia, 1985

As I work on Part 3 of my first transcontinental rail trip which I took in 1989, I brushed off this old piece I wrote about a short trip I took in 1985. The plan was to meet up with friends and head out for a two week hike along the Appalachian Trail. At this time, my only experience of trains had been in kindergarten, on Tweetsie (in the NC mountains which featured an attack by hostile natives and a hold-up by Butch Cassidy wannabes ), at 6 Flags, and in Japan.

I wait, my backpack resting against my thigh, and look up the tracks for the lights of Southern Crescent. The night air is heavy, warm and moist. The clock on the platform reads 1:30. We’re told the train is 30 minutes late. I tell Paula, a friend who drove me down to Gastonia, that she can go home if she wants. But she, like many of the others who have brought friends and family to the tracks, waits. We make small talk, mostly about my plans to hike for the next two weeks.

Finally, a light is seen in the distance, growing brighter. The locomotives blow by. It feels as if train will skip us. Then the metal wheels squeal and the train comes to a stop. An attendant steps off, sits out a step. Those of us waiting make a line and begin to climb aboard. I give Paula a quick hug and thank her again for the ride, shoulder my back and board. A minute later, the whistle blows, the attendant picks up the step. As he boards the train as the cars jerk and continue their southbound run through the night. Next stop, Spartanburg, but I’ll be asleep by then.

author somewhere between Springer Mt, GA, and Fontana Dam, NC
That’s me, somewhere between Springer Mt and Fontana Dam



I stow my pack overhead and take a seat next to a man who’s already fast asleep. A few minutes later the conductor comes by and collects the $30 for my ticket. Back then, before internet and computers, you could still board and pay. I lean back my seat and close my eyes, attempting to sleep to the swaying of the car and the clicking of the wheels. Although tired, I’m also excited. I haven’t been on a train in the United States since I was a kindergartener. Then, my class rode the Seaboard Coastline from Southern Pines to Vass. Or Cameron? All I remember is that it was a mail train. We were treated to a tour the mail car where postal workers sorted the mail as it came aboard at each stop. 

Tonight, I’ll ride a couple hundred miles through the Piedmont, from Gastonia to just north of Atlanta. I watch as we race through small towns, the lights of the crossbars and the stoplights blinking on deserted main streets. Finally, I finally fall asleep. 

A few minutes later I wake up shivering. The AC is running full blast. The car feels like an ice box. I grab my sleeping bag from my pack, unzip it and wrap it around me for warmth and fall back asleep. A couple hours later, the attendant shakes me, informing me that my stop is next. 

The guy next to me is awake and he asks if the lounge car is serving coffee yet. Not until 6 AM, he’s told. I stuff my sleeping bag into its bag and secure it back to my pack. Then I sit back down to wait.

I chat a bit with the guy beside me. He boarded the train in New York and is going home to Mississippi. He’s curious as to what I’m doing on the train with a backpack. I tell him that I’ll be meeting friends in Gainesville. And we’re heading up into the mountains to the beginning of the Appalachian Trail. He, too, grew up in the South. Like many African Americans of his age, he had to leave if he wanted decent work. 

As he tells his story, I recall a photograph a friend of mine from the early-60s. Phil worked for the Charlotte Observer then. He caught on film the faces of three black boys looking out of the window of a northbound train. He titled it, “Chicken Bone Special,” based on the nickname the Southern Crescent at the time. The name came from how hardworking families from the Deep South, with little money in their pockets, headed north for work with a basket of fried chicken to tide them over.

The sky is pink when I step off the train at Gainesville. A sense of loneliness and abandonment washes over me as the train resumes its journey toward Atlanta, then Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Hattiesburg and on to New Orleans. 

I can tell right away that this isn’t the best part of town. The rails run between industrial buildings, many abandoned, with their dark windows reflecting the morning light. Those who got off the train with me are all met by friends and family. Soon, I’m the only one left. A cab driver asks if I want a ride. I tell him that I’d be meeting friends later in the morning. I ask if he knows where I can get some breakfast. He points to a diner down the street. I head off in that direction. 

Entering, I’m aware of the stares, as drop my pack on one side of a booth and sit in the other. Most of those eating appears to have just gotten off their shift in one of the industrial plants by the tracks. 

I order a big breakfast: poached eggs, corn beef hash, toast and coffee. As I eat, I pull out A Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut and begin to read. I stay, long after finishing my breakfast, drinking coffee and reading. It’ll be noon before Reuben, and his brother Bill, will arrive and pick me up at the train station. There’s plenty of time to kill.

I sit in the diner for a good 90 minutes, wanting the sun to get up above the horizon. Then I leave to see the town, walking away from the tracks. When I find a small neighborhood park, I place my pack against a tree, using it as a backrest, and sit, continuing to read. Later, as the stores open, I check out a couple of antique shops. It’s a safe hobby. I’m surely don’t plan to buy anything to add to my pack that already weighs 50 pounds. 

I head back to the train station an hour early, thinking I can find a bench there to sit and read. But before I get to the station, I hear Rueben call my name from the passenger seat of a station wagon. He’d hired the janitor at his law office to drive him and his brother in his wife’s station wagon. I dump my pack in the back and crawl in the backseat next to Bill.  

We make a short stop for burgers and then drive toward Amicalola Falls. The Appalachian Trail begins at the top of Springer Mountain, but it requires a hike to get to Springer. We skip the falls, as we take a Forest Service Road which drops us off a couple miles from the peak of Springer Mountain. We unload and say goodbye to our chauffeur, shoulder our packs and head off into the woods. I don’t stop till we get to the bronze plaque bolted on rock, identifying the summit. There, we stop long enough to take a few photos, and then head north, following the white blazes toward Maine. 

The three of us at the start of the Appalachian Trail
Reuben, me, Bill, at the beginning of the Appalachian Trail, July 1985



Reuben and I are out for two weeks. We’re heading to Fontana Dam at the beginning of the Smoky Mountains. Bill, his brother, will hike with us the first week. He’ll get off the trail just south of the North Carolina border, where his wife will pick him up. She’ll also bring our resupply. This was Bill’s first trip, and it would be a tough one. For years afterwards, Reuben relished telling how, after he got off the trail, Bill called their mother and told her how Reuben, her other son, tried to kill him. 

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Pittsburgh to North Carolina, Leg 2 of my Transcontinental Trip

title slide with photo of the author boarding a train

Click here for Part 1 of this trip (Reno to Pittsburgh).

I’d arrived early in Pittsburgh on Friday, March 31. I dropped my stuff off at Bill and Mike’s apartment. Bill and I had shared the apartment the year before I took a year off for my western adventures. I spent much of the day around campus. I checked in with teachers, especially Ron Stone as I was doing an independent study with him on Reinhold Niebuhr. That afternoon, I met Linda, whom I had met the previous spring when I preached at First Presbyterian in Cumberland, Maryland. We had written back and forth a few times. She had invited me to her family’s cabin in the Laurel Highlands. It was a nice place, and she brought dinner that evening. We enjoyed a fire and spent Saturday hiking. 

On Sunday, she drove me to Butler, where I preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church. I had worked as a student assistant at Covenant for my first two years at seminary. It was good to see Steve Hamilton, the pastor who’d been my mentor for two years, and many of the people who had become close during my time there.

Photo of the steeple on Covenant Presbyterian in Butler, PA and Steve Hamilton
Covenant’s steeple and Steve

Linda dropped me off at the seminary that afternoon. While there wasn’t any romance in our time together, I had a nice weekend. But the pleasant weekend became tainted when I realized Carolyn had tried to call me at Bill’s apartment several times. While I was honest and we had discussed our relationship evening when I left Nevada in August, I recognized she was hurt, and we were more serious than I realized. 

I had come to the seminary for Jane Dempsey Douglas’ lecture series on the changing views of the imago deo (image of God). She drew heavily on her book, Women, Calvin, and Freedom, which I purchased and would read on my way back to Nevada. During my time there, I had lunch with Sue Nelson, my advisor at school. She’d just published Beyond Servanthood: Christianity and the Liberation of Women. I purchased her book and had her sign it. It’d also read it on the return trip, a trip in which my reading was every bit as deep as it was on my first leg.

As I was enjoying lunch with Sue and other classmates, Barry Jackson, another professor, hunted me down with an urgent message to call Ken Hall at Hill Presbyterian Church in Butler. Somehow, Ken heard I was in town and wanted to meet. As this was in the days before cell phones, Ken knew Barry and thought he might be able to find me. Ken was the moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA. In the two years I worked in Butler, I had only meet him one time, but I had worked with his youth minister on a few activities between our two churches. 

Ken was elected as moderator at the 200th General Assembly held the previous June in St. Louis. As a seminary student, I was there working for the Office of the General Assembly. The moderator was elected on Saturday. On Sunday, everyone attended different churches in the area. Then we came back together Sunday night for the moderator’s reception. There, with a group of seminary students from around the country, I waited in line to meet him.  When I approached, I stuck out my hand to shake his as I started to introduce myself again. But before I could, he yelled, “Jeff, I didn’t know you were going to be here.” Then he pulled me close for a hug. I was shocked that he remembered me with the 1000s of people who were present. The other seminary students were impressed. 

I excused myself and went back with Barry to his office where we called Ken. He wanted to know if I could come up and visit, but he was only free that afternoon. I borrowed Bill’s car and drove to Butler for the second time in two days. We spent an hour and a half talking. He asked me to get him a resume. His associate had left, and they were interviewing for another. But he suggested if they didn’t hire one, he would be interested in hiring me during my senior year to fill in the gap. While they would hire someone that summer, it was good to contact Ken again.

Ken and my path would cross several times at General Assemblies over the years. Afew years later, he went to work for the Presbyterian Foundation. Nine years after our meeting, I was a pastor in Cedar City, Utah. Having just built a church, I looked for someone to preach a dedication sermon. I invited Ken. He did a wonderful job. 

On Tuesday night, I played basketball with a group from seminary whom I’d played with for the previous two years. Afterwards, I went out with a group of friends to one of our favorite watering holes in Shadyside, “The Elbow Room.” 

As that party broke up, three of us who were visiting Pittsburgh decided we should visit a real Steel City place. John White, who had moved to Princeton, had been the director of admission who recruited me, and Karen, another former student, whom I barely knew, but who’d come back from the lectures, and I headed out to the “O” for hot dogs and more beer!. 

The “O” stood for “The Original Hot Dog Shop” or “The Dirty O”. The was a long-established hot dog place in Oakland section of Pittsburgh, on Forbes Avenue. When they started, they were across the street from Forbes Field. They witnessed the Pirates World Series win in 1960. By the time we arrived, the Pirates had long moved to Three River Stadium. Across the street from “the O” stood the University of Pittsburgh’s massive library was across the street. 

 John dropped me off at Bill and Mike’s apartment at 1 AM. I had just long enough to shower and catch a few hours of sleep. Bill took me to the train station at 5 AM the next morning. 

It was dark when I boarded the train for Washington. I took my seat at the back of partly filled car. Soon, I fell asleep as we pulled out of Pittsburgh in the dark and ran up the Monongahela River. An hour and a half later, I woke as the train worked its way over the Allegheny Mountains. 

The author boarding the train

The morning was gray. I headed to the lounge car for coffee. When I came back, others were stirring in the car. I grabbed some food from my bag. Then, two blonde hair and blue eye kids popped up from the seat ahead of me. Aaron, the boy was seven and Ashely, the girl, four. Sleeping in the seat across from them was their mother, Karen. As I drank my coffee and ate fruit and a cinnamon bun for breakfast, they played peak-a-boo from behind the seats. Soon, they were drawing pictures for me. When their mother woke, she told them not to bother me. I assured her it was no bother. We spent much of trip to Washington, playing and talking to the three of them. 

Karen, a single mother, was taking her kids to see the capitol. I learned she’d been divorced for a few years and worked in the layout department for the Grand Rapids, Michigan newspaper. 

At this time, the Capitol Limited which ran from Chicago to Washington, DC, was a single deck train. Today, it’s a double decked train, like the trains in the American West. With everything on one level, the lounge car had a dome section where you could have a better view of the mountains. The four of us experienced that for a while that morning, before giving up our seats for others to enjoy.  When we arrived in Washington, we went our separate ways. 

Early that afternoon, April 5, 1989, I left D.C. on the Silver Star, heading south. That night, my parents picked me up in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We spent the night at my grandmother in Pinehurst, before driving to Wilmington the next day. It was a short trip.  I spent time with my parents and saw my grandmother, my brother and his two kids, as well as a few friends. I even went for out to Wrightsville Beach Friday night.  Then, late Saturday night, April 8th, we drove back to Fayetteville. The agent looked at my tickets and commented, “you’re going the long way home.” At 12:50 AM on Sunday, I boarded the train for Philadelphia, the first stop on a long roundabout trip back to Reno. 

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Other train trips

Danville to Atlanta, 2020

Coming home to Pittsburgh, 1987

Doubly late to West Palm Beach, 1986

Riding on the City of New Orleans, 2005

Edinburgh to Iona, 2017

Riding in the Cab of the V&T, 2013

Bangkok to Seim Reap, 2011

Riding the International: Georgetown to Bangkok, 2011

Malaysia’s NE Line: The Jungle Train, 2011

Coming Home on the Southwest Chef, 2012

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Randsburg and a 94 year old redhead

Photo of old cabins in the Mojave

This is a second post on a trip I took with Ralph to the northern Mojave in California. Click here to read about the morning at Goler Gulch.

Olga’s the first 94-year-old redhead I’ve met. I’m sure she has some artificial help; even so, her hair shows spunk. She gets around well and lives by herself. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she confesses. She still runs “The Joint,” pulling a regular shift, tending bar. When things are not busy, she steps out front and pull weeds from the flower bed. That’s where we first saw her. Ralph and I along with Bill and his friend had stopped in Randsburg for a late lunch after our tour of Goler Gulch. As we headed to a restaurant, Ralph mumbled something about it can’t Olga pulling flowers. He recognized the woman who none of us had seen. 

Ralph and Olga in "The Joint" in Randsburg, CA

After lunch, Ralph and I walked down to “The Joint,” a bar in Randsburg. Olga’s washing glasses as we enter. She stops and turns to take our order. Olga doesn’t recognize Ralph, so he introduces himself. She looks at him for a minute, then smiles and comments about how much she misses his brother. He lived in the area and died a couple of years earlier. The two chat for a minute about Olga’s son, who was Ralph’s age. The two of them went off to war together in 1944. Ralph asked how long she’s been tending bar at “The Joint.” We learn she and her late-husband brought the establishment in 1955. “I’ve had honest work ever since,” she tells us. I was curious about what kind of work she’d done before but decide not to interrupt their reunion. 

Selling booze in a mining town was lucrative business. Selling anything liquid use to be lucrative business as water in these parts was expensive, even as late as the ‘40s. Today, there is little mining and its mostly tourists who stop in want something alcoholic. The establishment is open from Wednesday through Sunday and they close in the evening when they are no longer busy. “The Joint” is in the heart of Randsburg’s business district and one of the original structures in town. The building was first a bakery. In the 30s, it was converted to a bar and a pool hall.

Ralph and I both order a couple of Mojave Greens, a local beer made in Inyokern and named for the famous rattlesnake of the Mojave. Ralph, who grew up in this area, said he’d only seen two of these snakes in his life. She pulls us two bottles out of the cooler, opens them, and ask if we want a glass. Ralph, always the civilized one, takes a glass and slowly pours his beer into it. I shake my head, grab the bottle and tip it up to drink. Ralph and Olga continue talking until Olga pauses to fix another drink for the woman sitting at the other end of the bar.

Its then I notice Faye, who’s sitting a few stools away and looking for a refill. I’m not sure why I hadn’t noticed her earlier as she wears a barely ample halter displaying more than ample breasts. She’s attractive or certainly could be. With her tight mini-skirt and heels which must be five inches high, I wonder what kind of business she’s in. We chat for a few minutes and learn she’s the proprietor of the Silver Dollar Saloon in Red Mountain. This is her day off. 

The day before, when we drove through Red Mountain, Ralph had told me earlier about the red-light district there. It was a hoping place when he was a schoolboy before the war. The saloons in Red Mountain lined the west side of the street and featured backroom gambling. Gambling was illegal in California, but this wasn’t exactly on the main highway and most people looked the other way. On the east side of the street were “cribs,” where prostitutes who free-lanced in the bars and around the gambling dens, led their clients. It was a cozy arrangement, and local authorities did little to discourage business. 

But then World War 2 came along. The Navy built a base on China Lake. Since there’s not enough water in China Lake to float a canoe most years, they used the base to train pilots. Naval authorities found that after a night of drinking, gambling and whoring, the drive over the mountain was too difficult to negotiate. They lost many pilots before they had a chance to sight in on a Japanese Zero. The Navy called in the FBI, who shut down the gaming establishments and ran the women off.

A few minutes later, Faye’s partner at the Silver Dollar joined us at the bar. While I’d enjoyed glancing over at Faye as we talked, I now divert my eyes. This guy is scary. His bare skinny legs end within fancy black leather cowboy boots, with pointed toes, and scroll threading. Personally, I think wearing cowboy boots without long pants should be a misdemeanor. Wearing cowboy boots with super tight short shorts, the kind which hadn’t been seen since the 80s, should be a felony! This guy’s pants are shorter than his partner’s mini skirt.

I’m glad I’m not alone in the bar with him. Had it just been me drinking and he came in, I think I’d wallowed over to the Methodist Church and take the temperance pledge. But he joins the conversation and seems to be an okay. However, he and Faye, to say the least, are one unique couple.

Ralph and I finish our beers and head out. The darkness in the bar forces our eyes to squint as we adjust to the bright desert sky. We take the long way back to Ridgecrest, through Inyokern. I tell Ralph about my one other trip to Inyokern. It was approaching midnight. I was with Eric, another friend of mine who Ralph knows. We’d been looking for a place to stop for the night. We were on our way to do a week hike from New Army Pass, to the Pacific Crest Trail and then up the backside of Mt. Whitney, and then north along the John Muir Trail to Onion Valley. And we wanted to get an early start the next morning so we kept driving late into the night. 

Eric sighted a spotlight for an airport. As a pilot, he suggested we head there and camp, telling me about camping under his plane at such places. There was no one to stop us. I slept on one side of the car and Eric on the other. The night was warm. I laid out my pad and sleeping bag and slept on top. I must have been exhausted for I don’t remember anything else until 5:00 AM, when a loudspeaker rudely awaken me as it called out for those boarding the 5:30 AM flight to LAX. Shortly afterwards, we were on the road.

Ralph, who always had a way with words, quipped something about how Eric and I must not of been living right. Ralph and I had camped out when in the wilderness. But he felt if we’re going to stay in civilization, we should, at least, find a motel. 

We drive back into Ridgecrest as the light softens. The shadows of the barren peaks provide definition to the distant hills in the low warm light. It’s nearly dark when we arrive. Unlike Randsburg, Ridgecrest is a new town, built during World War II. The purpose of the town is to serve the China Lake Naval base. We drive around, looking for a place for dinner. In our search, as we navigate ubiquitous four-way stop signs, But what amazed me of the town was to see not only had a dollar store, but also a 99-cent store and, for those who that’s even too much, a 98-cent store. Every place needs to be known for something. 

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From Reno to Pittsburgh, 1989, the first leg of a transcontinental journey

title slide with Amtrak post card of the California Zephyr in Colorado

This piece is from my journals, memory, and the train guide for the California Zephyr. Sadly, I must not have taken as many photos as I do now, but then this was long before digital photography. 

A three week break from Nevada

I left my car at Carolyn’s house in the Washoe Valley on the southside of Reno. We had an early dinner, then she drove me to the Reno Amtrak Station where we waited for the eastbound California Zephyr. It was the Tuesday after Easter, March 28, 1988. I checked my suitcases through to Pittsburgh, keeping with me only a small duffle bag which contained a pillow, blanket, toiletries, a few clothes, books, and snacks. The train pulled up to the station. It’s a short stop, just long enough for passengers to debark or step aboard. Carolyn and I hugged; I threw my duffle over my shoulders, grabbed the handrail and stepped up. 

As I was finding my way up to the second floor of the double decked train, we pulled away. A few minutes later, we stopped in Sparks, for a longer stop so they could service the train. I looked out the window and saw Carolyn by the tracks waving. Knowing there was going to be this stop, she followed the train over. I waved back but couldn’t leave the train as I was waiting on the conductor to process my ticket. By the time he reached me, the train was running east alongside the Truckee River and passing the infamous Mustang Ranch. The train guide described the gaudy brothel only as “one of Nevada’s unique institutions.”  

At this time, Amtrak had a promotional which allowed you to name your destination. You were allowed one additional stop each direction. The nation was divided into three zones. For 150 dollars, you could travel in one zone. For 300, you could cross all three zones. Looking to make the best of the offer, my destination was Fayetteville, North Carolina, three zones away. Going out, I would make a stop in Pittsburgh, where I would attend a lecture series and catch up with old friends. In North Carolina, I’d have a short visit with my parents, grandmother, and siblings. Coming back, I planned to stop in Seattle, cause I had never been there. I was a little scared but also excited about riding over 7,000 miles on the train over a three-week period. 

I tried to do a little reading as I got use to my seat. While I brought several books with me, the reading was all heavy, mostly on theology and Biblical Studies. I had a commentary on the book of Revelation, a collection of Reinhold Niebuhr’s shorter writings, and Doris Lessings, The Summer before Dark.  With daylight fading fast, I found myself unable to concentrate. I went to the restroom to brush my teeth and long before we stopped in Winnemucca, the rocking of the car and the occasional sound of the whistle blowing in the night had me asleep.

The previous week had been brutal

The past week had been brutal. The Wednesday before, I had officiated at my first funeral. It was for Lois Bowen, a longtime member of the church whom I had not met. Shortly after learning she had cancer, she left Virginia City and moved to Las Vegas to be near to family. They brought her back to the funeral, which I was to conduct. I don’t know how it all came together, but those who knew her shared with me pieces of her life and I somehow managed to work it into a homily.

The small sanctuary was packed for the funeral. Rudi, a former opera singer and a church member, sang a solo while Red, a local banjo picker in his 90s, played a wonderful rendition of “Amazing Grace.” When it was over, Pat Hardy, who served as my supervisor as I was only a student pastor, complimented me on having given one of the best funeral homilies he’d heard. 

Then Holy Week kicked in. Thankfully, Pat came up to Virginia City again on Thursday to lead the Maundy Thursday service since I was not yet ordained and not allowed to officiate at the Lord’s Table. On Friday, I preached the ecumenical Good Friday service at St. Mary’s in the Mountains on John 19:17-20. The service went well except for the confusion which came in leading the Lord’s Prayer the “Presbyterian way” in a Catholic Church. (Presbyterians say debts instead of trespasses and the Catholics don’t have the doxological ending to the prayer). Also, on this day, I learned I had passed all four of the ordination exams I taken in February.  A major hurdle toward ordination had been completed, but with two Easter Services, I had little time to reflect. 

Then on Easter Sunday, two days before I stepped on the train, I held my first Sunrise Service at the cemetery on the north end of town. It was a cold morning. The temperature was in the 20s and a cold wind blew off Mount Davidson. We hurried through the service with me giving a short homily on Luke 24:1-12. Afterwards, we rushed back to the church on South C Street where Norm had coffee and pastries waiting for us. A few hours later, I conducted my first Easter Service, preaching on 1 Corinthians 15:19-26. 

On the train

By the time I boarded the train two days later, I was exhausted. I don’t remember much after the Mustang Ranch and slept soundly to the rocking of the train.

In the dark, we passed Lovelock, Winnemucca, and Elko, towns I recalled from my drive the past Septemberfrom the Sawtooth Mountains to Virginia City.  I woke at 4:30 AM. The train no longer rocked as we had stopped in Salt Lake City. I got off and walked around the platform in the cold. As we waited for another train, the Desert Wind from Los Angeles, I headed into the station and out onto the streets seeing if I could find a diner. It’d been a long time since dinner at Carolyn’s the evening before.

The streets were dark. Having only been to Salt Lake City once before, the previous summer as I drove west, I didn’t know where we were in relations to anything.  When I came back to the station, I was ready to board the train and snooze again but was held on the platform as they hooked up the cars from Los Angeles. Once the cars clanged together, it was safe to board. Soon we pulled out from the station, heading south toward Provo. As we passed Geneva Steel, dawn was just breaking. The steel plant, with its furnaces glowing, made me feel as if I was already in Pittsburgh. I quickly fell back asleep. 

I slept through the stop in Provo. When I woke, the engines up front rumbled and the wheels squeaked as the train labored over the steep and tight curves heading up to up to Soldier’s Summit. I head to the laboratory to brush my teeth and wash my face, then back to the lounge car, where I picked up a cup of coffee.  I would spend much of the day alternating between the lounge car and my seat in coach, and between looking at the scenery across the Utah desert and reading. Late morning, after the stop in Green River, and just before leaving Utah, the tracks began to parallel the Colorado River. We followed the river for the next 282 miles of stunning scenery, with stops at cute ski towns. 

Somewhere in Utah

Leaving the Colorado River, we made a steep climb over the Rockies. Shortly after a stop at Winter Park, the train entered into darkness as we ran through the 6.2 mile long Moffat Tunnel. Coming back into daylight on the other side, we began our slow descend toward Denver as we ran through many tunnels. 

inside the lounge car

Denver was another long stop on the train. I got to talking to an African American passenger on the platform, who was heading from his home in California to Cleveland, where he had family. We decided to see if we could find a place to get dinner and a drink. Not far from the station was a brew pub. This was still a new concept in 1989, with the only other one I knew of being back in Virginia City. We each ordered a sandwich and one of their brews. We consumed our food and drink quickly, making sure we didn’t miss the train when it headed out across the plains. 

Day 2: Leaving Denver

Darkness was falling as the train left the station. I went to the lounge car where they were showing a movie, but it was crowded and I wasn’t interested, so I went back to my seat, got out my blanket and pillow, and quickly fell asleep. 

Early to bed meant that I also woke early as we were rolling through eastern Nebraska. Knowing the lounge car didn’t open until 6 AM, I headed to the lavatory to clean up and brush my teeth. I got off the car for a few minutes when we stopped in Omaha and walked around in the platform. The sky was just beginning to lighten, and I could make out a few of the buildings. When the conductor called “All Aboard,” I went back to my seat and waited. 

It wasn’t long before I saw the lounge car attendant heading from the crew quarters for the lounge, I followed him with my book, with the hope of getting some early coffee. When he entered the car, with me on his heels, he had a fit. 

The lounge car attendant was an older African American gentleman who had spent his adult life working on the railroad. He was friendly, took pride in his work, and saw the lounge car as his kingdom. What he saw once he opened the door was a dozen or so dozen college students passed out on the floor and in the seats. Empty beer cans rolled from one side of the car to the other whenever the train went around a curve. He cussed and began nudging them with his shoe, telling them to get out of his lounge car. They slowly got up, rubbing their heads, and heading back to their seats. I helped him pick up the empty beer cans and clean up the tables as he gave me a lecture about what’s wrong with today’s youth. 

The college students had been skiing over spring break and had boarded the train the day before in Steamboat Springs. He had been willing to sell them one beer each when he closed the car the night before, but it obvious they had a supply of their own as many of the cans were of brands not sold on the train. 

That morning speed by. We stopped for a few minutes in Ottumwa, Iowa. It was a smoking stop, and all the smokers got off, lighting cigarettes as soon as they were on the platform. I got off to look around at Radar’s hometown. Radar, if you remember, was the loveable corporal on the TV series, “Mash.”  At Burlington, Iowa, we crossed the Mississippi. The California Zephyr pulled into Chicago early in the afternoon. 

Crossing the Mississippi

A stop in Chicago, then onward to Pittsburgh

I had over five hours before catching the train to Pittsburgh, so I checked my duffle and walked across the Chicago River, down West Adams Street a few blocks, to the Chicago Institute of Art. There, I spent a couple of hours looking at paintings. To this day, I remember turning down a hall within the museum and looking at Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” This was the first time I had seen the frequently parodied painting of a farmer with a pitchfork and his stern looking daughter standing in front of a gothic style house Wood’s had seen in Iowa. I was shocked by the small and unassuming size of the original. I’d always expected a much larger painting.

I left the museum around 5 PM, stopping at a bar and grill for dinner, before heading back to Union Station. Around 7, I boarded the Capital Limited for Pittsburgh. As we made our way around the south shore of Lake Michigan, through the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, it felt as if Pittsburgh was getting closer. Soon, I was asleep in my seat as we rushed through the upper Midwest. At 6 AM, we arrived in Pittsburgh. I gathered up my stuff and stepped off the train. Bill, a friend from the seminary, was there to meet me. 

Ticket jacket, route guide, and post card of the California Zephyr

Other train trips of mine: 

Danville to Atlanta, 2020

Coming home to Pittsburgh, 1987

Doubly late to West Palm Beach, 1986

Edinburgh to Iona, 2017

Riding in the Cab of the V&T, 2013

Bangkok to Seim Reap, 2011

Riding the International: Georgetown to Bangkok, 2011

Malaysia’s NE Line: The Jungle Train, 2011

Coming Home on the Southwest Chef, 2012

Other Virginia City Stories

Driving West in ’88

Matt, Virginia City 1988

Doug and Elvira: A Pastoral Tale

Christmas Eve 1988

Easter Sunrise Services (a part of this article recalls Easter Sunrise Service in Virginia City in 1989)

The Revivals of A. B. Earle (an academic paper published inAmerican Baptist Historical Society Quarterly, part of these revivals were in Virginia City in 1867) 

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Reviews of my reading during February

cover photos of books reviewed

The weather has often been cold and unpleasant, so I have been doing a lot of reading. These five books are all different, so maybe you’ll find something that is of interest. I often read something in February in honor of Black history. I have been reading His Truth is Marching ON: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham. But, I won’t finish this book before the end of the month. Look for the review next month.

Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir

 (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2010), 288 pages, no illustrations. 

One of the first books I remember reading after my ordination was Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon. The book came out during my last year in seminary, and I borrowed a copy for the presbytery office. I liked the book so much that I ordered a copy for myself and reread it. I often go back to that book, and it has informed my ministry over the past 35 years. Beside that one book, I have only read articles by Hauerwas. Learning that he had a memoir, I decided to read it. While this reads more like an autobiography than a memoir,[1] I’m still glad that I read it and recommend it to others. 

Hauerwas was the son of a bricklayer. His parents were modest lower middle-class Methodists from Texas. Both parents were older when he was born and his mother, like Hannah the mother of Samuel in the Old Testament, promised to dedicate her son to the Lord. Hauerwas sensed this and even committed his life into that direction, which led him to college and on to Yale Divinity School. But instead of becoming a pastor (he was never ordained and wasn’t even sure, at first, he was Christian), Hauerwas went on to earn a PhD focusing on ethics. He spent his career teaching and writing. 

Hauerwas began teaching at Augustana, a small Lutheran College. After two years, he moved to Notre Dame, where he taught for fourteen years, and then on to Duke Divinity School. Throughout this time, the nation dealt with Civil Rights and Vietnam. In his memoir, he is also honest about the political struggles in academia. This was especially true at Notre Dame, where he was a Protestant teaching in a Roman Catholic university.

Another intimate part of the book deals with his first wife, Anne, who had mental health issues that showed up early in their marriage and increased over time in severity. Bipolar by nature, Anne struggled with reality. She often thought she was in love with other men (who she fantasized as loving her) and much of this first marriage was without sexual intimacy. Along the way, they had one child, Adam, who was mostly raised by Hauerwas. After moving to Duke, Anne decided she wanted to go back to South Bend (where she was again in love). They divorced and her world unraveled. In her 50s, she died of a heart attack. 

Hauerwas then married Paula, a woman who was working at Duke and an ordained Methodist pastor. According to his story, their relationship has been much steadier, and both have been able to thrive in their relationship with each other and others in the academic community. They also both love baseball and at one time (before I moved to the Blue Ridge) owned a house on Groundhog Mountain, which I pass every Sunday morning between Mayberry and Bluemont. 

One of the things I appreciate about the book are details about who have influenced Hauerwas. Early on, it was Barth and the Niebuhr brothers. Later came Catholic theologians and a Mennonite, John Yoder, who helped Hauerwas move toward Christian pacifism. In addition to those Hauerwas personally knows, he also credits books which have helped shape his theology. There is much in this book for those who enjoy theology, philosophy, and how thought process is shaped.  

[1] I think of a memoir as focusing narrowly on one aspect of a life. This book tends to focus on many aspects of the author’s life, from his birth to his sixties.

Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for the Twentieth Century 

(New York: Crown, 2017), 127 pages. 

This is a valuable little book that shouldn’t take most readers more than an hour or two to read. I’ve heard it mentioned often lately as an antidote (or resistant manual) to a more authoritarian society which seems to be preferred by many in the western world. As for the desire for authoritarian desires, see Anne Applebaum, The Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism.

Snyder offers easy to understand lessons on how we might resist tyranny.  The first one has become a rallying cry since the election, “Don’t Obey in Advance.” The lessons themselves are just a few words, making them easy to understand. Then, following each lesson is a bolded paragraph highlighting the importance of such action. This is then followed by several pages of examples from European fascist movements early in the 20thCentury and the collapse of Eastern Europe into the communist domain following World War 2. Snyder also highlights the troubling trend of many of these same countries, after having a short bit of freedom with the collapse of the Soviet Union, have slipped back into authoritarian control. 

The Twenty Lessons:

  1. Do note obey in advance
  2. Defend institutions
  3. Beware of the one-party state
  4. Take responsibility for the face of the world
  5. Remember professional ethics
  6. Be wary of paramilitaries
  7. Be reflective if you must be armed
  8. Stand out
  9. Be kind to our language
  10. Believe in truth
  11. Investigate
  12. Make eye contact and small talk
  13. Practice corporeal politics
  14. Establish a private life
  15. Contribute to good causes
  16. Learn from peers in other countries
  17. Listen for dangerous words
  18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives
  19. Be patriot
  20. Be as courageous as you can

I especially liked his lesson on being kind to our language. Here, he encourages us to read books (not just what’s on the internet). His reading list includes: 

*Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 45
*George Orwell,        *1984, *Animal Farm, and his wonderful essay, *“Politics and the English Language” 
*Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
*Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Albert Camus, The Rebel
Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind
Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless
Timothy Garton Ash, The Use of Adversity
Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility
*Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men
Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible 
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

The * indicates books I’ve read (8 out of 18, so I have some catching up to do). 

This is an important book. It might be a good one for a small group of people to read together and to discuss, over a period of time, each of the lessons. 

Leo Damrosch, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age, 

narrated by Simon Vance (2019, Audible, 15 hours and 1 minute.


In 1763, the English portrait painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to Samuel Johnson to start a club that would meet each Friday evening. Starting with nine members, the club voted on new members (and membership had to be approved by all members allowing one no vote to blackball a prospective member). While this book focuses only on the activity of club members in the 18thCentury, the club continues to this day as the London Literary Club. For most of the 18th Century, The Club met at the Turk’s Head Tavern, starting with dinner at 6 PM, and then drinks and conversation going on till midnight (or afterwards). 

The membership of the Club in the early years were men (the membership was all male), who made their mark on history. In addition to social critic Samuel Johnson and biographer James Boswell, The Club had an impressive list of members. Reynolds made a fortune with commissioned portraits. The great political philosopher Edmund Burke, who is best known for his quote, “All that is required for the triumphant of evil is for good men to do nothing,” was a member. He still influences true conservative thinkers today. Sadly, most who consider themselves conservative probably don’t know him, the exceptions being George Will and Arthur Brooks.  Another Scottish political philosopher, Adam Smith, gave us economics as a discipline. Edmund Gibbons wrote the multi-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Other members included David Garrick, the great Shakespearean actor who changed the way actors performed, and playwright Oliver Goldsmith. 

While each of the above members receive a short biography within the book, Damrosch focuses most on James Boswell (who joined The Club after its establishment) and Samuel Johnson.  Johnson was English and Boswell was Scottish and would later become the Lord over a vast estate upon his father’s death. Boswell also wrote a major biography of Johnson. The two of them even took a Scottish holiday, traveling across the lowlands and to the Inner Hebrides. Both would published books on the journey. 

Johnson valued the control of one’s passions while Boswell often drank to excess and sought out prostitutes. In Boswell’s journals he used codes, which have been broken, to indicate sexual activity. Boswell had a rough relationship with his father. Johnson who was 20 years older than Boswell, became a surrogate father for him while he was in London. 

Damrosch dedicates some focus to what was going on in the larger world during this era, from the Seven Years War (known as the French and Indian War in America) to the American and French Revolutions. Club members discussed topics such as capital punishment, slavery, and religion. 

While I have listened to this book, I have also ordered a copy because I want to go back and collect quotes. Also, the text often refers to paintings of the era which was printed within the book. I recommend it. 

J. Murray, To Hunt a Sub 

(Laguna Hills, CA: Structured Learning LLC, 2016), 370 pages. 

I picked this book to read because it was about submarines. For some reason, my daughter has been fascinated with submarines and I partly to be able to keep up a conversation with her, I have read several books on submarines over the past several years. I also chose this book as I have followed Jacqui Murray’s blog for years and wanted to read one of her books. 

However, if you’re looking for a book on submarines, this isn’t your book. Only a few pages of this story deal up what happens in a submarine. In this case, the sub has lost control due to a computer virus. The story is engaging. It reminds me of some of the action books I read in high school. 

To Hunt a Sub centers on an Islamic terrorist group who figured out a way to incapacitate the American submarine fleet. To pull it off, they need the help of an Artificial Intelligence research of Kali Delamagente, a single parent PhD candidate at Columbia University. Her research blends AI, geography, and paleoethology. Her computer program named Otto allows her to go back in time to places where she follows “Lucy” around as she and her tribe made their way out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago. This story is very creative, blending life in the “pre-human world,” paleoethology, computer science, geo-positioning and terrorism. 

Center to the story is Kali, who is running of out of funds and time to finish her research and complete her degree. Two shady men attempt to help her, but for their own benefit. One is a male professor who secretly kill off lovers and stole their research, which he published as his own. The other is a Muslim on a secret jihad. Kali’s research will help him in his goal to kill large numbers of “infidels.” He promises money for her research. 

Helping Kali avoid the dangers she faces is Zeke Rowe, an ex-Navy Seal, whose last mission resulted in permanent disabilities. He is now a professor of paleoanthropology at Columbia but has been secretly recruited by the Navy to help them discover what’s going on with the submarine fleet. The two are romantically drawn to each other, but both put the importance of their work ahead of any relationship. In addition, Kali is not just concerned for her well-being but that of her son and her three-legged dog.  

The book was a fast read as I was drawn into the story. There’s lots of action and plenty of violence, but in the end the good guys win, and the American fleet is safe. The number of characters (and how some of them used various names in different settings), was confusing until I got further into the story. Some of the encounters seemed far-fetched. But this is an action book and it keeps your attention. 

Fred Chappell, River: A Poem 

(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), 51 pages. 

This is a delightful collection of poetry by the late Fred Chappell, who taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for forty years and served four years as Poet Laurate for the state of North Carolina. Originally from Canton, North Carolina, these poems draw heavily on the image of the mountains.  River was Chappell’s second book of poetry. In addition to poetry, Chappell has also published novels and short stories. 

While the title suggests the book is “a poem,” it consists of 13 rather long poems. Some like “Susan Bathing,” are prose-like. This poem describes in detail but without slipping into pornography his wife’s body. Another, “Science Fiction Water Letter to Guy Lillian takes on the form of a poetic letter.  Others are more traditional, often drawing on stories of his grandparents. One moving poem, “Dead Soldiers,” is about the floods in 1944 and the empty liquor bottles in a man’s basement which are washed down the river as he shoots at the bobbing bottles with a 22 rifle. Reading it brought the floods in the mountains after Hurricane Helene last year to mind. The poems capture the rough life many in the mountains endured. 

Water, more than rivers, provides a unifying theme of the poems. While rivers often show up, but so does water such him as a child being lowered into a well to clean it. Other water themes include bathing and baptizing. The poems draw on Appalachian sayings and include clever phrases and metaphors. Humor is also inserted into the poems. 

I found similarities in these poems and Wayne Caldwell’s Woodsmoke, which I read last year and Ron Nash’s, Among the Believers, which I read several years ago but didn’t review. I recommend this book especially for someone wanting to capture the sense of the mountains in the early 20th century.  

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Goler Gulch, March 2005

Ralph at Sam's Cabin in the Majovie, near Randsburg, CA

An early morning drive in the desert

Last week, I told a story about an adventure with Ralph into Central Nevada. This week, I rewrote a piece I wrote in 2010, shortly after Ralph’s death. This trip I spent more time jotting down in my journal some of Ralph’s unique bits of wisdom. Hopefully, you’ll get a better view of my friend who died 15 years ago.

Flowers in Goler Gulch

Ralph and I stayed the night in Ridgecrest. Before heading out for the desert early in the morning, we stopped at a grocery store to pick up fruit and pastries along with coffee and juice. Dawn broke as we drove along the highway toward Goler Gulch. In the soft morning light, the carpeting of highway shoulder with flowers amazed me. The wet winter had given growth to white and yellow asters, daisies and bluish heliotropes. Even beyond the road, the flowers grew under clumps of greasewood. 

It was March 2005. I had flown out west the day before so I could officiate at a wedding. I picked up a rental car in Las Vegas. As I had a few extra days before the celebration, Ralph took a bus down from Cedar City and met me in Vegas. We then headed over into the Southern California desert, to see where he grew up. We’d talked about doing this trip several times while I lived in Utah, but had never gotten around to it. 

Our next stop this morning was Sam’s Cabin, located just off the highway. Arriving, we sit outside on a picnic table and ate our breakfast while watching the changes in the morning light across the El Paso Mountains to our north. “You can find any kind of mineral up there in those mountains,” Ralph noted. “Just don’t start a mine, because whatever your digging will quickly disappear.” It was the words of one who knew a bit about the folly of mining. 

Sam’s Cabin

I’d heard a lot about Sam, who’d built this cabin seventy-some years ago. Once, I met his daughter, who’d recently died in her mid-nineties. Sam was an old-time miner. He’d worked in Nevada and as a young man headed up to the Klondike in 1898. He supposedly made enough money up north that he didn’t have to do much work the rest of his life. In the 1930s, he showed up in the Mojave, working as a caretaker for a mining firm. It didn’t take much to live like he did. He had a wife, who lived over on the coast. Sam would go visit her a couple times a year and occasionally she’d come out to the desert, that being the extent of their marriage. 

Sam's homestead in the Mojave Desert
Sam’s homestead

My favorite story of Ralph and Sam was their trip to Death Valley in Ralph’s family Model T truck, taking it across China Lake early in the World War II, before the government converted the dry lakebed to a Naval Aviation bombing site. Ralph had fond memories of the trip, including meeting Scotty of Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley. Today, this trip would be impossible because the bombing range is still in use. 


We discovered Sam’s cabin in a state of “arrested decay.” The BLM keeps it from blowing down and one can rent it for up to two nights. Sam died in 1965, in his early 90s.

After breakfast, we looked around the old cabin while waiting for Bill, a friend of Ralph’s from Southern California to arrive. Rocks and boulders of all shapes, colors and sizes dot the yard. Ralph pointed to many of them and told me which gulch from which they’d been taken. Most of the rocks had been hauled in by Sam with the help of Ralph and his brother Charlie. 

Sam's place in the Mojave
Another view of Sam’s homestead

Ralph’s family homestead in Goler Gulch


Bill arrive a few minutes later, driving a huge Suburban SUV. We decide to take his Suburban and leave my rental car at Sam’s Cabin. We climbed in and Ralph began the tour of Goler Gulch. The gulch has always been a placer mining district, meaning the ore is found in sediment washed down from the mountains. Attempts have been made to find the ore body from up in the mountains, but no one has ever identified the source. When Ralph was a kid, old miners held to the belief the gold had been pushed down during the last ice age, by glaciers. Of course, there is no evidence of glacier activity this far south. Another popular theory, according to Ralph, who reported this with a straight face, is that the gold came from Alaska.

Old Behren homestead in the Mojave
Ralph showing us around the old Behren homstead

Ralph’s family’s Model T

Ralph was born in Kansas. When he was an infant, his parents moved to California. They added a bed to their Model T coupe, making it into a truck in which the family made the journey. After a short stint in Los Angeles, they headed into the desert, where his dad worked as a miner and a cook. Interestingly, the Model T still runs. Ralph has driven me around in it and even let me drive it.

Ralph told about his brother Charlie and him taking the Model T on trips through the desert. In the spring or after rains, when the water would be raging in the gulch, they’d stop the car on one side of the stream, take off the fan belt and drive through the water, hooking the fan belt back up on the other side. The car seemed to go anywhere; you just had to know the tricks. If the fan was spinning, it would kick water over the distributor cap and short out the electrical system. The engine could take a little more heat than the electrical system could take water. 

Behren homestead around 1930
The homestead around 1930 with Ralph, his father and his brother and pet dog. They often slept outdoors, especially in the summer.



Ralph’s family homestead includes a collection of buildings. Ralph pointed to a building he and Sam had built at the beginning of the war for some women from Pasadena who wanted a place to flee when the Japanese invaded. “They were sure the Japanese were coming to rape them,” Ralph said sarcastically. They hired him and Sam to build them a home in the desert. Another building Ralph rescued from the Navy, who’d set up operations at China Lake during the war. Abandon as surplus, he brought it and hauled it home so he could have his own room when he returned from the Pacific.

The Old One-Room School House


We made another stop at the site of the old one room school. Ralph and his brother attended school here with eight or ten other kids from 1932, when the schooled opened, to 1936 when they were bused into Randsburg. He told us about his first-grade teacher who’d just celebrated her 100th birthday. Ralph pointed up stream and said that the girl’s outhouse was up there, and the guys were downstream. “Why didn’t they just have a unisex bathroom with a lock,” I asked, “since there were never more than a dozen students.” Ralph, in all seriousness, responded. “I assume the school board had concerns about mixing urine.” 

We saw the shaft for the Yellow Aster mine, one of the larger mines in the district. As we explored, Ralph picked a leaf of Indian Tobacco and talked about as a kid he’d harvest it and sell it to an old miner. The other miners forbid the old miner from smoking it underground because it stank. He also found an “Indian pickle,” a plant with a long stem and an open chamber on the end where you could place your tobacco as you drew the smoke up the stem. The “Indian pickle” made a perfect bong. He also showed how the new growth on a greasewood (also known as Creosote bush) could be crushed and smoked for a “natural high.” “This also stinks, which is what you’d expect from such a plant,” Ralph informed us. None of us wanted to try it out for ourselves.

Heading up the gulch

Yellow Aster Mine framing


We next headed into the gulch itself, a canyon where much of the mining took place. There were five shafts dug down into the dirt, named Fine Gold Number 1 though 5. Only Fine Gold #1 had a traditional gallows frame, the others being pick and shovel operations with a windlass. In time, the miners discovered that the gold was mostly deposited in the sand within a few feet of bedrock, some eighty feet down. They’d sink a shaft then work out following the bedrock as they made their way up and down the gulch.

Old miners Ralph knew


As we drove up the gulch, Ralph told us about miners he’d known growing up the desert. One was a kid, just 18, who discovered enough gold to buy himself a brand new ’36 Ford with an 85 horsepower V8 engine. Another was a guy named Happy, who was the first pot-head Ralph knew. This was before the Second World War. Happy came looking for work and the miners wanted him to work with them. So, he asked where he might find a place to prospect. One of the old-timers, to be done with him, sent him to the most unlikely place around. Happy discovered a 14-ounce nugget. He remained happy for some time thereafter.  

Some of the miners were more adapt at mining outsiders, an ancient trick of the mining trade. Curly would pull out his pan anytime he saw a tourist driving by. They’d get to see him work out some nuggets from his washings. He’d tell him he dug the ore at his mine, Eagle’s Roost,” up in the mountains. It they seemed interested, he’d ask if they’d like to buy a few inches or feet of the mine from him. During the war, Curly talked to a man from Kansas. Ralph’s father, who was from Kansas, warned the man not to trust Curly. Curly moaned to the man about how everyone talked bad him and were always saying that he was dishonest because they were jealous. So, the man brought from Curly a bunch of land that wasn’t worth much and most of it, Curly didn’t even own. Afterwards, Ralph said, “Curly went into Randsburg and brought war bonds and became a hero.”

Turning around and heading for lunch



The creek ran strong, and the ground softened before we reached the end of the gulch. Bill said he had a shovel in the back if we wanted to keep going, but none of us were excited about using it. We turned around and headed back to Randsburg for lunch. That’s a story I’ll have to share at another time. 

Postlude


Ralph lived in the Gulch until he graduated from High School in 1944, at which time he joined the Army Air Corp. He was hoping to become a pilot, but they had enough so he became a crew member of a B-24. He made it to the South Pacific in time for the war to end. Ralph received a combat citation, and just so no one thought of him as a hero, he loved telling the story about how some General thought he should have another medal, so the General sent several hundred airplanes into the sky to blow the hell out of some island a few Japanese soldiers had the misfortune of being marooned on as their island had been leaped over in our drive toward the Japanese homeland. “We blew the hell out of them,” Ralph said. His second mission was to drop supplies, mostly boots, into POW camps after the surrender. After the war, Ralph attended school on the GI bill and became a chemist. He spent the rest of his life in the Southwest. Ralph died in 2010. Two weeks ago, on his birthday, he would have been 99 years old. 

Other Ralph Stories:

Camp Bangledesh: Ralph as my assistant scoutmaster the summer I was the summer camp scoutmaster for Troop 360

Treasure Hill: Ralph and I exploring Central Nevada

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A Great Basin Mining Adventure

Photo of Ralph's truck around Hamilton, Nevada

This was a trip I made with a friend from Cedar City in the late 1990s. I wrote this piece for another blog about 15 years ago, around the time of Ralph’s death. I bring it back out because in last Sunday’s sermon, I mentioned this trip. I have updated the writing a bit. I should go back through my slides and pick out more to feature (or maybe add a map of our travels).

Camping on Main Street, Treasure City


“This street used to be bustling with noise,” I think, as I stroll down Main Street, Treasure City. The sounds of wagons and the clicking hooves from horses, added to the cussing of teamsters, the pounding of stamp mills and the music from saloons would have too much. But I swear I can still hear voices in the brisk wind, bringing a chill the summer air. My belly is full. Ralph and I had just eaten a steak and a baked potato, along with a salad. We’d drown it with a beer. Before hitting the sack, I decide to walk the length of the road. Ralph stays behind to tend the fire. The distant mountains are turning purple. This street had once a thriving business district with forty stores and a dozen saloons, but today just the shells of collapsing rock structures remain.


By the time I get back to the truck, Ralph has let the fire die down and is already in his sleeping bag. I blow up my mattress and rolled my bag out on the other side of the truck. Plopping down, I watch the summer stars and listen to the wind and Ralph’s snoring. Soon, I too am asleep. I wake at first light. The wind has died and silence seems eerie. While the coffee perks, I explore some nearby ruins. The evening before, I stayed on the gravel road for the mountain is pitted with mine shafts. A wrong step could send you several hundred feet down and into oblivion.

History of the mining region


In the later part of the 1860s, miners from Austin and the Reese River Mining District in search of another mother lode discovered rich in what became the White Pine Mining District. One of the first discoveries, in 1865, was named Monte Christo. It’s just a few miles west of here. From there, miners set out in all directions and in 1867, discovered what became known as Treasure Hill, the mountain upon which we’d camped. The land was unforgiving. There was little shade in the summer and an altitude above 8,000 feet created brutal winters. But with some of the ore as pure silver chloride and assayed as high as $15,000 a ton, people were willing to put up with the hardships.

ruins of an old mill
Ruins of an old mill

By 1869, Treasure City with a population of 6,000 had been established on top of the mountain. There were nearly 200 mines along with ten mills to crush the ore into powder, in preparation to leaching out the silver and gold. A water company laid pipe and had the ability to pump 60,000 gallons a day to the top of the thirsty mountain. But it was all short lived. Most mines played out after a few hundred feet and the rock proved a formable challenge. Early in 1870, the excitement began to wane. By the end of 1870, only 500 people remained. In 1880, when the Post Office closed, there were only 24 people left living on the mountain. 

Economic lessons for the region

A look at Treasure Hill’s rise and fall provides an economic lesson in the danger of speculation and bubbles and international finance. Western Historian W. Turrentine Jackson, in his classic study on the region, Treasure Hill, goes into great detail of the financing of the district. In the late 1860s, so much money was poured into the region, more than was ever needed to develop the mines. Much of this capital was wasted; some of it spent on bogus mining operations that existed only to mine the pockets of capitalists who hoped to make a fortune and were willing to take great risks. Then, as the availability of high grade ore begin to wane, money begin to be withdrawn from the region. John Muir visited the area after the rush and wrote in Steep Trails:

“Many of [the mines] do not represent any good accomplishment and have no right to be. They are monuments of fraud and ignorance—sin against science. The drifts and tunnels in the rocks may be regarded as the prayers of the prospectors offered for the wealth he so earnestly craves; but like prayers of any kind not in harmony with nature, they are unanswered.” (Elliott, 105)

Leaving Cedar City

Ralph and I got an early start for this remote spot in the Nevada desert. Leaving Cedar City, we drive north to Minersville and then on to Milford, where we cross the Union Pacific tracks and set out across the desert on Utah 130. Our travels take us just south of the ghost town of Frisco and north of the Wah Wah Mountains. We enter Nevada at Baker. Shortly after meeting up with Highway 50, we leave the pavement for a rough road that skirts the north boundary of Great Basin National Park.

Osceola

Our first stop is at the site of Osceola. Here, In 1872, a unique mining community for Nevada existed. Hard rock mining is the norm in Nevada. This was industrial mining. Miners dig shafts and drifts as they blast into rock for ore. The ore was then crushed and chemically treated to extract the metals. However, in Osceola, free ore existed in sediment. Placer mining, as was done in the California gold fields, was possible. All one needed were shovels and pans, some water, and perhaps a sluice box. The difficulty with placer mining here was the lack of water. Early in the town’s history, they dug a ditch up Wheeler Peak to divert water to the town. This mining district boasts the largest gold nugget ever found in Nevada. There is not much left of the town that existed here for nearly fifty years. Fires, the bane of mining camps, sent most of the town up into smoke. Modern mining operations destroyed the rest. Only the graveyard and some mining equipment used more recently remains.Interestingly, even with gold near historic lows (this was in the late-90s), there’s still a few people mining in this district. 

Ely

Leaving the cemetery behind, we drive out of the canyon and head west, across an alluvial fan and toward the highway. Reconnecting to US 50, we continue on to Ely where we stop and have lunch at the historic Hotel Nevada. I suggest we eat on the road to make better time, but Ralph cringes. “If I can’t sit down and enjoy my meal, I’m not living right,” he insists. After lunch, we continue west on US 50, passing the huge open pit copper mine at Ruth and thirty minutes later, the Illipah Ranch. Somewhere between Ely and Eureka, we abandon the pavement and head south on a gravel road.

Ralph inspecting som kind of left-over equipment

Hamilton

Hamilton is our first stop, nine miles south of US 50. It sits on the north side of Treasure Hill and served as a logistical point for the various mining communities south of here. The town was first called Cave City as so many miners from the mountains sought refuge there in caves during the harsh winters. As mining flourished, they laid out a town. By the spring of 1869, more than 10,000 people lived here. It became the county seat for the newly established White Pine County. They built a courthouse. Stage coaches connected the town to Austin and Pioche and the railroad at Elko.

But the town’s life was short. The excitement lasted on a few years and by the time of the 1870 census, less than 4,000 people remained. The town struggled on. In 1873, a shopkeeper by the name of Cohen, seeing his investment falter, set his store on fire in the hopes of collecting on his insurance. The fire spread and much of the town burned. Another fire destroyed the courthouse in 1885. In 1887, the town’s future died as the county seat moved to Ely. Today, only a few ruins and a cemetery remain. There’s plenty of mining junk left out, along with the leftovers of a cyanide leaching operation and a few junked house trailers used in the last attempt to mine in the area. We see no one as we poke around.

Treasure City

photo of ruins in the Treasure Hill mining district

After Hamilton, we head south to Treasure City, located just a mile and a half from Hamilton, but on top of the mountain. We take the wrong road and I find myself out in front of the truck with a shovel, clearing rocks as we make our way up a switchback road to the top. Had we known, another road to the west would have taken us to the top without any trouble. It’s getting time for dinner and we find a place along Main Street where we stop for the evening.

I build a charcoal fire behind the truck. As soon as we have coals, I put in two foil wrapped potatoes and, in a wire basket, begin to grill the steaks we had socked away in the cooler. As the sun drops toward the horizon, the wind picks up and soon we’re both pulling on jackets. We eat dinner, washing it down with a beer. I throw a few pieces of pinion onto the coals and the fire blazes. After chatting for a bit, I take off on my walk.

Shermantown, Eberhardt, and Charcoal Kilns

The next morning, we head south off the mountain and stop by the sites for Shermantown and Eberhardt. We link up to the Hamilton-Pioche stagecoach trail and follow it to US 6. Turning left, he head back into Ely in time for lunch and to gas up the truck. Then we head south, stopping at the Ward Charcoal Kilns, a state historic site. It’s interesting that there was a large charcoal operation in this desert region. They harvested all the pinion and juniper for miles around to feed these massive kilns. The charcoal was mostly used to roast the ore in the milling process. Leaving the kilns behind, we head down US 93, stopping at Pioche, another mining town.

Pioche and Home

Pioche is still alive and holding on now as an out-of-the-way tourist town. The community received a new lease on life in World War Two, at a time when the government was forcing the closure of gold mines as non-essential industries. But the ground around Pioche included large deposits of zinc,. Considered an essential mineral for the war effort, zinc mining lead to a revival of Pioche. They continued mining zinc around Pioche till the 1980s. We stop long enough to have dinner at the Overland Saloon, and then headed on home. At Panaca, a Mormon farming community, we leave US 93 and head east, toward Cedar City. An hour later, as we approach the city with the sun setting to our back, the red hills glow in the evening light.

A photos were slides which I digitally copied.

Camp Bangladesh: another adventure with Ralph

Sources:
Shawn Hall: Romancing Nevada’s Past: Ghost Towns and Historical Sites of Eureka, Lander and White Pine Counties(University of Nevada Press, 1994)

W. Turrentine Jackson, Treasure Hill, (University of Arizona Press, 1962)

Russell R. Elliott, History of Nevada, revised edition. (University of Nebraska Press, 1987).

_________., Nevada’s Twentieth-Century Mining Boom: Tonopah, Goldfield, Ely (University of Nevada Press, 1966).

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Puzzles this winter

Title slide with pictures of puzzles

Kelly, a regular reader, often posts photos of puzzles she completed, along with great book reviews. When I commented about a puzzle I was enjoying, she challenged me to post photos! Generally, at my house, the puzzle table comes out around Thanksgiving. We put away by Easter. These are the puzzles completed so far this season, all of them are 1000 pieces.

I have been on vacation, taking my last week of time off from 2024 this week. That’s why there were no sermons on Sunday.

Cabin on a lake puzzle

This puzzle was done over Thanksgiving weekend. I love the Northwoods and this cabin on a lake with a full moon and what seems to be northern lights feels like a place I could hang around for a while.

Shay locomotive puzzle

I love trains and especially like the beauty of these Shay locomotives. But this puzzle was the most difficult one this season. A 1000 pieces with about 800 of them being black!

This puzzle was perhaps the easiest of the puzzles. Colorful and cheerful, it almost makes you want to camp out for the holidays in a travel trailer. However, in reality life, it’d probably be a good way to freeze yourself. This December, two friends and I helped close in the underpinnings of a travel trailer in which a handicap woman is living. She refused to go to another setting and I can’t image living there when we had temperatures well below freezing with high winds.

National park puzzle

This was a Christmas gift from my daughter. I always love National Park puzzles. I counted and have visited 30 of these parks. Several I’ve hiked through including the Great Smoky Mountains, the Shenandoah Mountains, Isle Royale, Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon. I should write more about those hikes. I did publish a blog post of an incredible trip with my father and sister to the Dry Tortuga’s in 2018.

Monet masterpiece puzzle

A neighbor lent us this Monet puzzle and it was most enjoyable to put together his masterpieces. In 1990, I was able to see a large Monet exhibit of his serial waterlily paintings as the Chicago Museum of Art. In 2020, I had planned on seeing another large Monet exhibit in Boston (along with a game at Fenway Park), but COVID caused us to cancel that trip. I love his use of light in his paintings.

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Readings in January 2025

title slide with book covers

Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

 (New York: G. P. Putman and Sons, 2018), 372 pages. 

Kya Clark, “the Marsh Girl” lives in the salt marsh of Eastern North Carolina. As a child, her mother abandons the family. Then one by one, her siblings’ leaves. Finally, her father, the one who has run everyone else off, leaves. Abandoned by everyone who should have cared for her, she learns how to survive. She digs shellfish and sells them to Jumpin, an old African American who sells gas and bait along the marsh. Jumpin and his wife Mabel, in a way, become surrogate parents for Kaya. She gets by, eating what she collects along with making enough money to buy cornmeal and oil in town. 

Kya only spent one day in the school. Picked on by other children, she never went back, always staying one step ahead of the truancy officer. She befriends Tate, a former friend of one of her brothers. Over time, Tate teaches her to read and begins to lend her books which allows her to learn more about the marsh. But he, too, leaves as he heads to Chapel Hill for college. He fails to come back as promised. Only later, does he come back and try to re-establish contact as he establishes a nearby research lab on the marsh.  Kya, who had taken up painting, becomes a self-taught an expert in marsh ecology. She even publishing books based on her paintings. 

While feeling abandoned by Tate, Chase, another town boy seeks out Kya. Primarily interested in sex, Chase promises to marry her and build her a house. Then Kya learns through the newspaper of his engagement to another woman.  Later, in 1969, Chase ends up dead, having fallen from a fire tower. It’s not clear if foul play is involved, but Chase’s mother points the finger at Kya. Eventually, the sheriff on sketchy evidence, arrests Kya. Tried for murder, she’s found not guilty. 

After this ordeal, Kya and Tate get back together, living in the marsh until Kya dies from a heart attack in her 60s. Afterwards, Tate discovers Kya’s secret, which he had not suspected. 

Owen captures the beauty and diversity of the marsh. The reader also feels empathy for Kya, someone who has fallen through the cracks. While alone, she develops resilience but is unable to trust anyone else. Only later, at her trial, do we learn there were those in the town who tried to help her, such as the woman at the grocery story who would give her back more change than was due, taking the money out of her own pocket.  

This an enjoyable read. I recommend this book. Having grown up near the marsh in North Carolina, this book helped take me back to a time the marsh wasn’t overgrown with housing. 

Bernard DeVoto, The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto

 (1948, Portland OR, Tin House Books, 2010), 127 pages. 

For the past few years, I have avoided alcohol during most of January, at least when I been at home. But I break my fast on the 25th, to celebrate the birth of the Scottish bard, Robert Burns, with a shot of “Balvenie” and the reading of a few poems.  So, why I chose to read a book about the cocktail hour during January is beyond me. But so far, I managed to keep the fast. Instead of placing this book in a bookcase, I have stored it in my liquor cabinet. For like a good Scotch whisky, one should savor this book.. 

Bernard DeVoto died two years before my birth. But as a some-times 19th Century Western American historian myself, I have been familiar with his work for nearly forty years. Decades ago, I read a couple of his classics: Year of Decision, and Mark Twain’s America. Both were serious works, although one can’t deal with Twain without enjoying a good joke. Last year I read This America of Ours, a biography of DeVoto and his wife Avis. From that biography, I learned of this little book. Much of the book had me laughing out loud. DeVoto precision details about the making of a good martini ranks up there with George Orwell’s essay on how to make a proper cup of tea. I wonder if perhaps Orwell might have inspired DeVoto as his essay appeared two years before DeVoto copyrighted his work. 

DeVoto and his wife were known for their cocktail parties. Much of what makes this short book so funny is DeVoto’s seriousness. It’s his way or the highway. Those who disagree with him, from his perspective, deserve some terrible fate. 

In the opening essay, DeVoto praises America’s greatness for we have “enriched civilization with rye, bourbon, and the martini cocktail.” He also praises Scotch and Irish whiskeys alongside of bourbon and rye, insist they consumed straight. He had no use for rum and was willing to damn to hell those who abided in the nasty drink. However, as a historian, he knew rum’s role in American’s history and acknowledges how rum played a role in our freedom and in the institution of slavery. Had the sailor’s “primordial capitalist bosses not given them rum, [they] would have done something to get their wages raised.” 

The second chapter begins with an assault on recipes for various cocktails found in cookbooks and women’s magazines. In DeVoto’s world, these are all unnecessary, for one either drank whiskey or a martini. Pity the poor man who would allow vermouth and whiskey to meet for “the Manhattan is an offense against piety.”  Of course, vermouth is used with gin to make a martini. In DeVoto’s world, it better be dry vermouth. And don’t get cute with your drinks. He bemoaned a bar in Chicago which offered “Whiskey on the Barney Stone.” They used green colored ice. DeVoto suggested the proprietor be “put to the torture.” In a later chapter, he goes after the couple who has all kinds of fancy drinking kitsch such as stoppers featuring women’s legs, fancy stirring rods, and signs about drinking. DeVoto had no patience with such foolishness, but then they were probably making daiquiris. 

Long before James Bond, DeVoto suggested it didn’t matter if one shook or stirred the martini. What mattered, however, was avoiding splinters of ice in the drink. Each round of martinis is to be made fresh. There can be no salvation for the man who makes pitchers of martinis and stores them in the refrigerator. Those who desire an olive in their drink were probably denied a pickle in their childhood which sent them on a lifelong quest for brine. As for those who want an onion, “strangulation seems best.”

The only thing one might mix in with whiskey are bitters, but then only Angostura bitters. And no fruit salads. The fruit from orchards do not belong in cocktails. Drinks should be served cold. I’m not sure what DeVoto thought about Japanese sake, which is usually served warm. Writing in the aftermath of the war, he probably thought it justified the use of the bomb. 

In the third chapter, DeVoto attacks the enemy of drinks—sugar. He believes the reason too many people want sugary drinks is that we give our children too much sugar.  “An ice cream soda can set a child’s feet in the path that ends in grenadine…” While such drinkers are to be pitied, they should also be treated as “a carrier of typhoid.” DeVoto even prophesizes the demise of our Republic will most likely come for “this lust for sweet drinks.” And sugar comes from other sources, not just crystals. Fruit has no place during the cocktail hour. DeVoto suggests “orange bitters make a good astringent for the face,” but they don’t belong in drinks. 

I did take a bit of offense at DeVoto’s attack on winter drinks. He has no use for eggnog or a Tom and Jerry. I assume If he hears I occasionally like a hot butter rum after spending time outdoors on a cold snowy day, he’d roll in his grave. But then, that’s a ski drink, and DeVoto didn’t care for the sport. 

I wish I had read this book 25 years ago. Two friends of mine from Utah, both now deceased, would have enjoyed it. Or maybe just one of them. Ralph insisted on making his and his wife’s martini, one at a time. Thankfully, he always had some good peaty Scotch to offer me. Myron, however, might have taken offense. Myron was one of those martini drinkers who made the drink by the pitcher and stored it in the fridge. DeVoto would have had a cow had he witnessed Myron pouring himself a martini from a pitcher he mixed three days earlier. But I never blamed Myron, for he always offered me a pour from a bottle of Glenmorangie

Obviously, while I have never cared for martinis, I enjoyed this book. If you want a martini, that’s fine. Just offer me some converted rye, corn, or barley, aged in a white oak barrel. Ice would be nice, as long as it’s not green.  

Sarah Frey, The Growing Season: How I Built a New Life-and Saved an American Farm

 (Audible, 2020), 8 hours and 41 minutes.

In a way, this book reminded me of Stephanie Stuckey’s book which I read last year.  Both are women executives leading major companies. But that’s where the comparison stops. Stuckey came from a well-to-do family. She took over her family’s business as it was about to completely go under and lead back to thriving. However, Frey came from a very modest background and built a major business.  

In this book, Frey describes her childhood on “the hill,” a small farm in southern Illinois. Her dad, who had ties to horse racing, always wanted to have a winning horse and sunk all the money the family was able to provide into his beloved horses. While he doted on his daughter, he could be mean. This was especially true tohis sons and wife. He also had another family before setting out with Sarah’s mother, which gave Sarah and her brothers a huge family of stepbrothers and sisters. Yet, for all his faults, he instilled in his daughter a belief she could do anything.

As Sarah grew older, and her older brothers began to move out on their own, the family began to collapse. Still in high school, Sarah moved out on her own and continued to work and attend school. Having watched her mother buy watermelons for local farmers and sell them to supermarkets, she tries it on her own. Soon, she was borrowing money from a bank for a larger truck. Her business thrived and after two months was able to pay off the truck. She would continue expanding, adding pumpkins to extend her season. Soon, she realized that she should also start raising some of the produce to provide better returns. When the bank took over her father’s farm, she went back to the banker who’d lent the money for the truck. He. helped arrange the purchase of the property from the bank which held the title. 

Then, as a nearby Walmart distribution center opens, she talks the produce buyer to let her provide watermelons and pumpkins. She readily agreed she could supply them the four loads a week, thinking of her normal load and not four loaded tractor trailers. Realizing she was about to get in over her head, she gave a call to her brother. Soon, she has all her brothers working with her. 

In time her business expanded and included not just Walmart, but most major grocery stores. She also began producing drinks made of vegetable and fruit juices. In telling the story, lots of things seem to be left out (such as financing and attorneys). Throughout the book, but especially at the end, she continued to hit several key points. These include giving people a chancl, treating employees and customers right, hiring those with potential whom others over look, and being creative such as using that usually left in the field for other products. While a lot of the book focuses on herself, she always offers thanks to those who helped her along the way.

Frey is also frank about her husband. And while the marriage didn’t work out, it gave her two boys whom she now tries to spend more time with. 

While I felt a lot of details were missing, I enjoyed this book. It’s a fast read/listen.

  

John Musgrave, The Education of Corporal John Musgrave

2021, Random House Audio, 9 hours and 38 minutes

He always wanted to be a Marine. At the age of 17, John Musgrave signed up with the Corp, having his parents sign for permission. The summer after graduation, he left the Midwest with a couple of friends for the Marine Corp training facility in Southern California. The experience nearly killed him, metaphorically.  He describes the experience the rude awakening once they arrived by train to graduation. But he endured and became a proud Marine. This was 1966 and, after advance training, he headed to Vietnam. 

At first, Musgrave was excited about the war. They sailed from California to Vietnam on a troop ship. He was first assigned to an MP group in the southern part of the country, but wanting more action, volunteered for a transfer. The transfer landed him just south of the DMZ, a unit known as the Walking Dead, as they were taking so many casualties. He complained when military took away his M14 and gave them all M16, with just one cleaning kit per squad and how they gun so often jammed, which lead to many dead Marines. 

Musgrave writes with honesty, as he had done with his boot camp experiences. He tells about his first enemy kill. He discusses the hardship of slipping through the wire to conduct night patrols. He’s honest about how scared they were, in the dark jungle where one not only had to deal with the enemy but mosquitoes and leeches. 

Twice wounded, the second time he took a bullet in the chest. No one thought he would make it, even some of the doctors who treated him. But one surgeon didn’t give up. Eventually, he is stabilized and moved out of the country to better facilities in Japan before moving back to the States. He’d spent 11 months in country. 

Throughout the first half of the book, Musgrave shares personal struggles. Although his father served in World War 2, he and his mother continued to worry about him being in the Corp. He was in love with a girl from his high school and wanted to get married, but she broke off their relationship. He is also very honest about his religious feelings. As a Methodist, a Catholic neighbor had given him a St. Christopher’s medallion which he carried wore on his dog tags. The medallion causes him to be superstitious, thinking that if he keeps it, it will protect him. However, the day he was wounded a second time, he had a premonition he would die that day. While he lived, it was a close call. 

Arriving back in the states, Musgrave discovered things were different. The anti-war movement was just beginning. At first, Musgrave didn’t want anything to do with it as he began college. But soon agreed that the war was a mistake and began to speak out. He became a leader in the Vietnam Vets Against the War movement and even helped led the protests in Miami during the Republican National Convention in 1972.  

While Musgrave eventually became a leader of the movement, he continued to work to bring Vietnam Veterans together. He is critical of how Vietnam Veterans were not welcome in American Legion and Veterans of Foreign War posts. Through this, he struggles with his pride at having been a Marine and the guilt of having fought an unjust war.  As our nation experienced other wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he worked with veterans, helping them cope as they returned home. 

I enjoyed the book. Growing up watching the news every night at the dinner table, the Vietnam War was always very real. I knew lots of veterans and wondered if it was in my future. Thankfully, we pulled out of the war when I was a sophomore in high school. As I was preparing for graduation, Saigon fell and the war was over.