During the war in Vietnam I was assigned to a fighter squadron whose mission was to kill as many Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers as possible. I flew 328 sorties to that end and would describe my abilities as being average among the pilots, which means I was very good. All of us were highly trained volunteers with soaring morale. We were ideal fighting machines operating on orders from the President of the United States, who was Commander in Chief of the strongest military and economic force in the world. I assume that our soldiers, sailors and marines also were highly trained. So why did we lose that war? I think there are many answers. Let me tell you about one.

A holding camp for prisoners of war was several miles from Tuy Hoa, South Vietnam, where I was stationed. A friend and I happened upon it while visiting a wounded buddy who was in a nearby army hospital. The prison consisted of a ten-foot-wide circular plot of dirt surrounded by razor wire. It looked like some lazy jailer’s afterthought. There was no door, no bed, no toilet, no water, and no nothing except one lonely-looking Viet Cong prisoner. Although he appeared to be a young man, his face looked archaeological, with mud and wrinkles for definition, and he had a profusion of long black hair that suffered no organization on his head. 

My friend and I walked up to him with blank faces and he forced a guarded, blank face back. As there was no one else around, we studied him from three feet away. We had not seen a prisoner before and this one was easy to pity because he looked so frightened. I felt empty inside and wished for earlier times when distinctions between right and wrong were simpler made.

He had been newly captured by South Korean soldiers and wore only flimsy, short pants and shoes. His malaise was acute, probably with good reason, and he didn’t appear to be enjoying any of the routine advantages of fantasy.

When a jeep pulled up and a sergeant stepped out with food, water, a portable outhouse, some socks and a pair of GI brogans, I felt better. That’s when I noticed what the prisoner had on his feet and I was quickly introduced to the cold, grim face of life for jungle warriors. He was wearing sandals carved from a truck tire with straps from a rubber inner-tube. After all of my training I could not help but feel inadequate.

After he put on his new boots his grin said that he was elated, not only because he had footwear that would last him many years, but because he could now wallow in the realization that no one was there to kill him.

When my friend lit a cigarette the prisoner indicated that he also would like one. After a few minutes of hand haggling and grinning, we traded a package of cigarettes for his sandals. It seemed that we had become friends and were strangely satisfied, especially me because I was the proud new owner of a pair of war souvenirs that would give me bragging rights back home, and two reminders of a lost cause.

As I sit here by my little fire, forty-three years later, my mind harkens to that innocent event. I wonder what happened to my friend behind the concertina wire, and hope that he’s at home with his family. For some reason I feel like the college boy who crammed all week for a test, then flunked it. Why had I flown so many missions trying to kill this man?

I had fought in a war that was waged mostly for philosophical reasons designed by men who never allowed their sense of morality to get in the way of what they mistakenly thought was the right thing to do.

With a tenuous peace in Iraq and a war in Afghanistan that continues to weary us, I can’t help but wonder how historians will write the final accounting of those conflicts. Perhaps in the future we should more carefully weigh our possible gain from similar involvements against the probable toll, lest we suffer punitive atomic reprisals on our own soil. With all of our military superiority we lost the war in Vietnam, in part because we were fighting an enemy who was less encumbered by politics, and whose soldiers could readily make their own shoes from old truck tires.

We had the kind of friendship where we could get nose to nose in a stimulating art discussion and later laugh it off… or so I thought: lots of inside jokes and personality talk. He was a burly man of tough fiber, and some of his opinions were disguised with a varnish of artistic authority that sometimes made me a little nervous. Nevertheless, our mutual respect came from my having been an art dealer for almost as long as he’d been a painter. I appreciated him because he’d paid his dues at the bottom of the food chain, earning only about $100 for magazine illustrations while working longer and harder than most people.
                                         
One day during a business meeting back east, an important art director alleged that my friend was a man “…with only moderate creative equipment who lacked the potential for sustainable growth in the competitive art industry.” Of course that reflection put my friend on an express track to tragedy. “You pompous, over-educated and under-talented art directors keep telling me what every little rock in the river should look like,” he said, and he pointed the blunt end of a paint brush at the director as if contemplating some offensive exploratory procedure. He was a stranger to humility in a way that rarely worked in his favor, and he soon found himself standing on a curb in the rain looking for a cab. So he packed up his wife and his brushes, put some air in the tires of his old Ford “Bullet,” and headed west, finally settling in Santa Fe.

Over time he became popular and his prices edged up into the middle five-digit range. All of the dealers called him for paintings and some even sent flowers to his wife. As the demand for his work surged he fell back into himself more and more and became self-assured that each picture he painted was the best one, since the last one, or until the next one. Even as he was enjoying his newly-found significance he still had memories of “the haughty commercial jerks” telling him what to do. And he spit those words out like they should be cast in bronze.

One day an influential lady collector cornered him at an art opening. “She wanted me to make her a large painting of prairie dogs. Of PRAIRIE DOGS!” he emphasized with obvious contempt. The look in his eyes told me that he was backing up to get a running start at something. “I don’t have to take orders anymore, and now I am painting only for myself, whatever I want, and always just for myself, no exceptions.”

That was a perfect time for me to just sit still, shut up and be my normal saccharine self. But of course I didn’t. I calmly said that he was no different from the rest of us and that his ego would not allow him to be unaffected if a few important collectors suddenly didn’t want his work anymore.  His right eye jerked a little when I said that he would paint whatever he wanted only as long as his adoring public approved. His ice cream started to melt as he slowly leaned forward in his chair. I could sense the unpadded prowling of his temper and suddenly realized that I’d said the wrong thing. His sense of propriety started losing traction fast.

I am sure that somewhere in a peaceful mountain meadow the spring daffodils are gently blooming as the morning mist settles on a tranquil lake. But let me tell you this: that’s not what was about to happen in that poor little restaurant. One little old lady in the corner tried to hide behind her coffee cup.

When I told him he was over-heated, he yelled that I was over-rated. It went on, and we found ourselves suddenly alone. I think the cute little waitress, whose tight skirt was about four inches too short to be long enough, tripped over a scrub bucket trying to get out the back door.

During a lull when he was trying to catch his breath I said, in words so soft that my mother would have been proud of me “Listen, I’ll tell you what. Let’s go out to this little deserted island I know about and I’ll give you all the brushes you want and all of the paints you want and all of the canvasses you want and…” He started to raise his hand but I raised my hand higher. I wasn’t through yet. “And every time you finish a painting I will buy that thing wet off of the easel, and run out under a palm tree and burn it. I propose that you will suddenly lose interest and never make another painting. So you’re not working just for yourself, are you?”

His annoyance did not appear to be mitigating so for the next few minutes I just sat there not daring to move a muscle in any direction. His eyes looked heavy as he carefully explained why I should buy a first class ticket to the nearest personality rehab, and he used an assortment of creative adjectives that were not in any polite dictionary. His defiance was like an Oreo to his spirit as I sat in petrified thrall.

And I sure hated paying for lunch.

She was interested in me because John Connally, the former governor of Texas, and I had purchased 100 oil paintings by Elmyr de Hory, the great forger of French Impressionist paintings. Orson Wells made an hour-long documentary on the subject and Clifford Irving wrote the book Fake about Elmyr, who famously said that all of the great museums in America had his art and didn’t know it. He forged more than 1,000 paintings and probably thought he was too well bred to get caught.

John and I had flown to London in the mid 80’s to see a former shop keeper by the name of Bill Talbot, who had been a pawn broker on the island of Ibiza when Elmyr lived there. Bill had loaned the artist money and taken paintings as collateral. I don’t think Elmyr ever intended to reclaim his work because it was too easy for him to paint new canvasses.

On the plane coming home John said, “Well Forrest, we’ve got all of these forgeries, now how’re we gonna get rid of em?” I wanted to tell my friend that he should have thought about that before we gave Talbot a check for $225,000. I decided to throw it back at him. “What we need is a good article and a picture in Time Magazine. (I knew that one of his close friends was chairman of Time Life Inc.) John said, “Ok, what else do we need?” (I loved the way the conversation was going). He could handle easily what I couldn’t handle at all, so I suggested that he contact all of his art-thirsty friends in Houston, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio and let them know what a superb opportunity this was for them to own some really fine art. After all…if you see what looks like a painting worth 40 million dollars on a rich man’s wall you don’t ask him if it’s real - do you?

Anyway, a few days later a reporter from Time Magazine showed up on my doorstep. Soon the story was all over the news, and Elmyr de Hory paintings started jumping off of our walls. We asked each buyer to sign a document that said he understood his painting was by Elmyr de Hory, regardless of how it was signed on the front of the canvas. Most of the paintings were fairly large and our retail prices varied around $4,500. The art was wonderful but I hid a little apprehension behind my optimism. Casual viewers were sometimes a little shaken to see such art hanging on our walls, but culture shock had already become a fashionable concept in Santa Fe.


Peggy and Forrest and Nellie and John. Photo by Tony O’Brien

Elmyr had forged the signatures on all of our paintings, which were executed in the styles of Degas, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Modigliani, Matisse, Picasso, Monet and others. He was careful, however, not to copy any existing painting because most of them were in the great museums around the world and he knew the Gendarmes would be all over him if he were discovered. John and I decided that each of us should keep six of the paintings for our own collections and my wife selected a Modigliani.

Peggy’s Modigliani

With all the national publicity our fame grew exponentially. Art curators whispered terrible things about us but we were high on the A list of many art collectors. The bantering back and forth and the news would have been more fun to watch if I had not been the star player. John said I had to take all of the heat for selling the forgeries because I was an art dealer and he was just a politician.

The president of the Art Dealers Association of America wrote a brusque letter that said it was my duty as an art dealer to educate the public and that a forged painting certainly wasn’t art. I wondered if he had a copyright on culture. My note in reply said that I wasn’t a school teacher and it was not incumbent upon him, or his organization, to define the parameters of art. That determination must always be the left to the consuming public. To his credit, he capitulated and apologized.

After studying the questions from the reporter I decided that they were pretty straight forward and I might be able to respond without embarrassing myself too much. Besides, the publicity would be good for us.

When I heard the camera start to whir I gasped, and when she asked the first question I gasped again. “Please, Mr. Fenn, tell me why anyone would want to own a fake painting?” NOW WAIT JUST A MINUTE, LADY. THAT QUESTION IS NOT ON THE LIST! I could see the dumb camera man laughing although it was a soul crushing moment for me. I had blundered into the fierce reality of human nature at its rawest moment, and with about 20 million people watching.

Through the rapidly dissipating light of my career I managed to respond: “Picture yourself in the National Museum of Art in Washington. The docent is walking your group through the galleries, and stops in front of a great painting. You look at it for a few seconds then say, That’s the greatest masterpiece I’ve ever seen. I just love everything about it: the composition, the palette, the symphony of color. It is truly breathtaking. The docent pauses for a few seconds then says, “Yes, it is very lovely, but it isn’t authentic. It’s a forgery by Elmyr de Hory.”

Gulp!

A few seconds ago you loved the painting, and it hasn’t changed. If you like it less just because it’s a fake, who is the fraud now?

I was surprised when he replied because I thought he’d be out in the forest someplace waving a double-bitted axe. I can still hear the echo of his rancorous words, which were flung at me with impetuous abandon and prompted an unfortunate dialogue.

“The beautiful trees grow very slowly,” I said.

“But I am a patient man,” he held.

“You are destroying the delicate animal habitat,” I countered, “and winter is coming on.”

“You should be more considerate of the educational needs of the people,” he blurted.

“You don’t have to write so much about the stock market, most people don’t even care,” I yelled.

“You must live in a cave;” he was scrambling!

I crossed my legs and told him that his argument reminded me of the lady in the opera who gets stabbed in the chest but instead of bleeding, she sings an aria. I guessed he wasn’t laughing. It went on – and I finally lost to the big city hustle and a few last words that I didn’t have time to look up.

But there was a point to all of that madness. We take our undomesticated countryside too much for granted. The mountains are not sleeping; they are alive with the healing smells of pine needles and pinon pollen and juniper berries. The shades of fall are yellow with blooming chamisa shrubbery, and the golden glow of rabbit brush can be intoxicating. The Indian paintbrushes are clustered around for little reason other than to display nature’s ruby flush of color. Those accounts continue to stir me and are too important to let languish.

But I’ve had my turn and am rich with the experiences that nature offers. For hours at a time I’ve hiked through a forest looking for arrowheads and other signs of prior life. The gentle nudging of the wind provides an ambience that is almost talismanic to me, and I love the privacy and stillness.

When a sound breaks the calm of the canyon I know it’s something important, and I quickly turn. Maybe it’s a squirrel whose tail is beating a rapid cadence that lets all creatures know that he’s aroused by a visible danger. He doesn’t want to be mean but I think he wants to look like he could be. Perhaps a tepid black bear has topped the hill, or an unreasonable barn owl is on the hunt.

Sitting quietly can bring many smiling rewards. Perhaps an aptly named Least Chipmunk, whose size might make you think that he’s one of nature’s afterthoughts, will scamper into view and scurry around digging berries and nuts for winter. When the snow falls deeply he’ll go into a state of torpor, but will not hibernate. Isn’t that interesting? There is so much to learn.

And I know there are costs. Every Montana evening when I smashed a mosquito on my arm, fifteen of his relatives came to the funeral. But the rewards of traipsing through the hills and canyon bottoms are winner-take-all proof of personal fulfillment for me.

If some of my friends think I’m wrong to be a distant dreamer, vaguely disinterested in many of life’s modern habits, they could be correct. But “wrong” is one of those concepts that depends on witnesses and that’s why I’m always right when I’m alone in the mountains. I’ll happily share my national forests with you, but please try to stay at least twenty miles away.

Lots of people are always saying that youth shouldn’t be wasted on the young. What a stupid thing to say. Of course youth should be wasted on the young. That’s when kids start to be noticed as real people instead of just babies. For instance, I remember when I was about eight and overheard two ladies talking. They were neighbors who lived down the block, and both thought they were better than me because they lived in a brick house. One said to the other, talking about me of course, “He’d run away from home but he’s not allowed to cross the street,” and they laughed real hard and didn’t even care who heard. How humiliating do you think that was for a kid my age? And sure enough, it had to happen at the big church social when absolutely everyone was there. Well, I didn’t say anything out loud at the time but I certainly remembered, and I’ve loathed those old biddies ever since. They were a lot older than me, probably at least thirty, and both were married although I can’t imagine how they put that together. How intimate they were with their husbands is probably a matter of academic dispute anyway because the tall one was the best excuse I can think of for zero population growth.

Besides, I could cross the dumb street anytime I wanted to and it was stupid of them to say I couldn’t. I walked to school almost every day didn’t I? And cars were whizzing every which way weren’t they? But just to be safe, my mother always told me to wear clean underwear in case there was an accident. She was smart like that and I usually did what she said because I loved her so much. She was a perfect example of nature’s long-sightedness and everyone around our block knew it. And just to prove the point, when I walked to school I always watched where I put my feet on the sidewalk. “Step on a crack and break your mother’s back.” I always remembered that one, and that’s why my mother was so proud of me.

And as far as running away from home was concerned, no kids ever did that back then because they just didn’t. Those things came later when girls started making trouble. Anyway, those two old biddies are probably long since dead and what do I care? That’ll teach those two.

One of my early dreams was to be a great movie star like Errol Flynn because he was handsome and made a lot of money. All of the requirements to that end were within me, save looks and talent, which is a failing I still am fraught to overcome. I felt better after my mom told me that being broke was sanitary.

I categorically deny some of the things I’ve done, and my greatest regrets are the chances I didn’t take. It would be so nice to revisit the 1940s when I was in the blossom of my youth. Many of the things I did are still vivid in my mind. One was watching my favorite rival make a big mistake while playing marbles. I so enjoyed not interrupting him. But the best one was asking my seventh grade teacher the difference between two miles square and two square miles. She didn’t know and I did. That was a good one. Then somewhere along the way I learned that no revenge is as rewarding as forgiveness, which is a special kind of winning, if you can think like I do.

When I reached middle age I forgave myself for not having been nominated best actor and started writing prose, which resulted in the creation of a few books. But in my sixties that got tiresome and my life needed some different mental textures to continue its existence. So I decided to become a poet. That was a regrettable decision because I started by beginning each line with a capital letter and then continued writing prose. It made me more versatile but less productive. My world was stagnant while a myriad of new electrical technologies exploded all around me.

So a friend gave me a computer. But it didn’t make the clicking noises when I typed the way my old Underwood typewriter did. That’s one of the things I miss, in a stubborn sort of way. Maybe the typewriter’s steady pecking cadence gave me a sense of accomplishment that’s now missing in my life.

Anyway, with computers being so highly cryptic today sometimes I think there’s a diabolical little genie in my laptop who suddenly, and without my permission, jerks my misspelled words into correction. And that’s not all. The thought occurred to me that I may soon become an obsolete entity in my whole story writing process, and that bothers me a lot. I know my friends are talking about it. They whisper that I’m overly fretful about things I can’t control, and that I may be heading over the edge a little. Maybe, but there are some adversaries to which I shall never yield. Age is one of them. Time is another. There are a few things that should have been done better along the way so I want to go back and try again.

But there may be a clash with my most stubborn adversary - the image in my bathroom mirror. Our mutual irritation is constant and we’ve started quarreling more. It looks back at me with an awkward desperation that’s new in recent years. We don’t seem to like each other anymore… so I think we need to talk.
     

Mirror, don’t you stare at me so fast,
  A view that no one can adore.
You know that sight ignores my past,
  Confirming something I abhor.

Why do you always look so weird?
  How did you hurt your hair?
Would you suggest I grow a beard?
  Or don’t you even care?
                     
Please make my age do what I want,
  And change my looks to twenty-three.
If you won’t do the things I can’t    
  You’ll never be a friend to me. 
                           
You might present me in my teens
  And not be smug with what you see. 
I’d pay the cost within my means;         
  A friend would do it just for free.

You’re nobody without me here,
  Your stare is blank when I’m away.
So it’s my age that you should fear,
  You know I hate it being gray.
                     
Let’s see if we can improvise,
  Forget the things I said before.
Maybe we can compromise,
  If you’ll just make me forty-four.

Our one room cabin in the pines. Skippy sips water taken from a bucket on the nearby stand where my dad shaved. Our hand-pump well is at left.

For my Saturday night bath ordeal mom heated water on a wood burning cook stove in the kitchen corner while I sat in a washtub with my legs drawn tight. The water she poured over me was always too hot or too cold but I didn’t care because the abhorrence of having to suffer the indignity of being nude in the presence of others was the prevailing consideration in my mind. Those weekly episodes always exposed one of my main psychological fault lines.

If I had money, I could walk a mile to the Union Pacific Railroad Station where the attendant would give me a towel and let me shower for fifty cents. That was an enigma because I had a job washing dishes at the Totem Cafe and was paid an hourly wage that was identical to what I had to pay for a shower that lasted only ten minutes. And after I worked another hour I needed another shower. I never quite reconciled that math.

Anyway, occasionally I’d ride my bike into Yellowstone Park to a spot about twenty miles from town where a seldom-used dirt road turned right off the main drag. From there it was about a mile down that road to the Firehole River. Just before the river, there on the right, was a green geyser pool which spilled and spewed a small streamlet of boiling water that ran downhill for about fifty feet and into the cold river. My secret bathing spot – where the hot water tumbled into the stream – was maybe four feet deep, and long, beautifully-green river grasses swayed back and forth in the gentle river currents just several feet distant. Sometimes I’d pull up a handful of grass and use it as a wash cloth. I never used soap there because I was afraid it was bad for my karma to pollute the pristine river.

Photo courtesy of Dal Neitzel

I could change the water temperature around my body just by moving a foot or so. Sometimes I stayed in that place for two hours or more and when I decided it was time to leave I’d back a couple of feet downstream where the water was cold. That gave me instant incentive to climb out and sun dry in the tall grass that populated the river bank. It was a wonderfully uncivilized pleasure in a remote area where nothing could interrupt the purity of my naked solitude.

Photo courtesy of Dal Neitzel

I made that bike ride more than a few times, even though it was somewhat arduous to pedal that far at only one manpower. But it was always worth the effort.

Now the National Park Service forbids swimming where geyser riverlets enter a stream. They also closed that little road to all vehicles, even though where it meets the river is one of the most beautiful places in the park, as buffalo and elk graze nearby and river otters often wiggle through the water looking for fish.

Firehole River from dal neitzel on Vimeo.

Several years ago, with my daughter Kelly’s family, my wife and I drove to the little road (It’s paved now) and walked to the river. I tried to get my granddaughters to swim where I had spent so many peaceful hours. The idea didn’t interest them much. That spot, which was so important to me sixty-six years ago, is mostly overlooked now by the occasional passerby. My memories of those experiences are so dear to me that I hope in time all of my grandchildren will follow my footprints to that special place.

There is something about nude-dipping in a mountain stream that awakens the fantasy of unfettered freedom lying restless just below the skin of all dreamers with romantic notions of the past, when life was roomier and less encumbered by the rules of social custom.

Sometimes, when Kelly curls her long blond hair through her fingers in the sunlight, I am reminded of those long water grasses gently weaving and twisting in the river. Winters are cold for those without such memories. Surely, God underestimated his ability when he created the Firehole River.

His amiable wit was no random act of chance because he illustrated what he had been: an impish boy, a factory worker, a family man and a calloused ranch hand that had seen everything. Williams drew from his experiences, and impending havoc on his page was his norm. Many of his cartoon captions later became his book titles: Out Our Way, The Bull of the Woods, Why Mothers get Gray and Born Thirty Years Too Soon – about twenty books in all, but I’m guessing.

If you grew up to be the sort of person your mother warned you about then you will relish J. R. Williams. His intellectual abstractions will make you appreciate your mother’s wisdom, especially if you see yourself in some of his renderings, most of which display a slight propensity for overstatement. He had a knack for expressing humankind in all of its rawness, and usually at the expense of those who took themselves a little too seriously. Some of his horses look dead but are too tired to lie down.

His usual fare is served with no cultural apologies offered, but with a promiscuous disregard for easterners and others who wore coats and ties. If you love the underdog there is nothing in J. R. Williams cartoons to dishearten you as many of his characters and commonplace happenings are soaked in salvation, so to speak.

I always thought that if you lived within your means you lacked imagination. But not so with “Blossom,” “Stiffy,” “Curly,” “Cotton” and the bespeckled “Wes,” who are some of the Williams revolving characters. They lived within their resources, not because they lacked creativity, but because they didn’t know any better, and besides, there were no other options for their genre in their times.

There is a profusion of illustrated stories in Williams’ work for those who bend toward nostalgia, and as Oscar Wilde said, “Twilight is not without loneliness.” The following poem is on page one of Out Our Way, which was reprinted sixteen times that I know of.

“They are ridin’ past th’ sky line, Curly Cotton an’ th’ rest,
I’ve seen ‘em turnin’ westward, th’ commonest an’ best.
Th’ humanist of humans ever seen in any land,
With ther souls an’ moral natures an’ ther faces full o’ sand.
I’ve seen th’ windmill fallin’ near th’ round up of th’ past
An’ I’ve heard th’ dying hoof beats of a day thet could not last.
For th’ ranch house in th’ hollow an’ th’ dirt tank on th’ plain,
Are crowded in a corner by th’ cotton an’th’ grain.
In th’ glimmer on th’ grainfields of a summer day I see
Phantom pictures of th’ prairie an’ th’ things thet uster be.
So I’ve set ‘em down on paper as they came thru memory’s haze,
Just a touch o’ recollection of th’ silent vanished days.”

Drawing by Allen Polt

The driver was a brawny – looking guy named Homer who barked orders at us like he was overpaid. “House on the right – three quarts, one cream,” he’d shout. And if he thought we weren’t running fast enough he’d go into instant sensory overload. “Did you stop for lunch, or what?”

Anyway, we’d grab whatever order Homer said, step backwards off the truck running and head for the rear of the house. No one locked their doors, so for some customers we’d just run into the kitchen and put the milk in the icebox, grab the empties and head full speed back to the truck. Some customers would leave a cookie or candy bar on the table for us to snatch on our way out.

Homer never stopped rolling and we never stopped running, except to grab more milk and head out again. Dodging cars as they whizzed by was part of the thrill. We didn’t care. It was a pride thing.

A few people had refrigerators by then – 1945, as I recall – and every kitchen was different. They weren’t always used for just cooking. Sometimes the lady of the house would be preparing breakfast or something and standing there with nothing on but her foundation garments. We’d run in and run out, yelling “hi” on the way by, pretending not to notice. It happened so fast most of them didn’t have time to blush.

In a day when the word “cool” was only used to describe the weather, Mickey and I knew what cool really was. Cool was jumping the milk truck and all the girls in high school knew it. I was just fifteen, but I could carry four quart – bottles, two in each hand, without using the rack. It seemed we never stopped running and we were in great physical shape for football, basketball, and track after school.

Sixty-five years later Mickey remains a good friend and we reminisce and grin about some of the things that happened back then, like the delivery I made to a certain elderly spinster lady customer. The first day I ran in she was ironing something on the kitchen table with nothing on but a pair of dangling earrings and some rouge. That was long before looking at naked people became fashionable. I thought she was going to faint when she saw me. I just put the milk down and ran out as fast as I could. As I jumped off of the porch there was a loud bang. I didn’t know if it was her falling or the screen slamming. I never saw her again so maybe she started ironing in the pantry.

Eric Sloane was the best thing that ever happened to Fenn Gallery in Santa Fe, but he had some quirks. He was happy with the two-thirds cut he received on each of his paintings we sold, but he didn’t like to price them because it embarrassed him. He said I was his manager so I should be the one to do those things. Little did I imagine at the time what problems that would cause later on.

Three or four times a week Eric and I would have lunch at Ernie’s or The Pink because both places had paper place mats on which he could doodle while we waited for the waitress, and I made him sign each drawing. To overstate his modesty, he usually scratched his name upside-down or backwards or both. That was Eric all over. My archive is full of his clever scribbling because I could grab faster than the waitress.

Well, one rainy noon, when he was right in the middle of onion soup, hold the bread, I made an innocent remark that should have gone right past him without even a wrinkle. “We’re selling your paintings for $17 a square inch.” Good Lord, you’d have thought I’d stolen the burnt umber right out of his paint box or maybe even something worse. His eyes became maddingly deliberate as he leaned forward, pushing his soup bowl aside, and started to expound on what a terrible way that was to price any painting, much less his very own. It was an anxious moment. I had the dreadful feeling that he thought I had somehow taken the sacredness out of his work. I tried to explain that we needed a par so we could establish his prices and build at a steady rate that would reflect an honest appreciation. “That’s not enough,” he said. I felt naked, so I just sat there, eating my bologna sandwich with mustard, pickles and horseradish.

Part of my pricing logic was based on Eric’s painting output. He could produce a major painting in a few hours, go to lunch with me and to dinner that night with his wife. People don’t believe me when I say that, but it’s true. One time we had twelve of his paintings in my office waiting for them to dry so we could put them in the bins.

And once, when he had a few minutes to kill while waiting to lunch with me, he made a wonderful mural on the curved plaster wall in the adjacent gallery guesthouse bathroom. It portrayed an old country outhouse in a brownish-red housescape with a barn and some trees. When Jackie Kennedy stayed there, she said it was “Charming, but the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.” After that we called that little room “The Privatorium.”

He didn’t say anything more for a while, so I suggested that he might have misapprehended my intentions, and tried to explain that everything is sold by size: airplanes, houses, yachts, diamonds, picture frames, even fish. It didn’t help, and as the syllables rolled off of the end of his tongue and just hung there in mid-air, he made it clear that his paintings weren’t exactly mackerel. He was in a swivet, so prudence whispered that I should just sit tight and try to appear useful.

Finally, I told him that at $17 a square inch one of his larger paintings, say 21” x 43”, (with Masonite you can cut any size you want) would bring about $15,000, plus or minus a little depending on quality and subject. It didn’t help. Even when I reminded him that he could paint one in five hours, and his percentage was $2,000 an hour, which was even more than Marilyn Monroe was making, it didn’t matter. He ordered Rosalea’s crème brulee, and didn’t even ask me what I wanted. That told me I would probably have to pay for lunch.

Anyway, I narrowed the discussion to a tight focus, “That’s more than 33 bucks a minute when you’re painting, and in the length of time it takes you to change brushes you’ve made 55 cents.” It didn’t help. He said it was the principal of the thing. (I didn’t remind him that principal has always been a convenient excuse to abandon logic.) He wasn’t listening.

Fortunately, a new short-skirted waitress sauntered up about that time, tossing her thick braids at Eric, and refilled our glasses with lemonade, which gave me time to think. After all, he was twenty-five years north of me, age wise, and a person who had been elected to the National Academy of Design, and had already garnered many more accolades than I ever would.

Eric soon acquiesced with a smile, and I realized that all of his bravery was in his talk. Nevertheless, we agreed that he would price his paintings for a year and see what happened, so he added about a third to every painting we had. The next year, 1981, we sold only 27 paintings, so his income was reduced by about two-thirds, or $105,500. What bothered him most, I think, was seeing all of those paintings stacked side by side in the bins while his wallet was beginning to grow mildew. Besides, he was still bringing in two or three new paintings every week.

So in 1982 we went back to my system of pricing. He blushed to admit that he didn’t even want to know about it. “Just do it like before.” His eyes glazed when I reminded him that we don’t tell him how to paint so he shouldn’t…oh, never mind. That year we sold 39 of his paintings, 58 the next year, and 73 in 1984. We were selling a painting every other work day, on average. Oh, and that doesn’t count the 68 paintings of his that our gallery purchased outright over the nine-year period.

Eric and I were both grinning again. What I wanted to tell my dear friend, but didn’t, was that we had gone up to $22.50 a square inch. I didn’t want to ruin his lunch because he was having Rosalea’s black pepper-garlic tenderloin with autumn apple dip and free range okra on the side.

The story above starts my book on page 11 and 98 pages later I close with these words:

And now, twenty-two years after Eric’s death, I sit here past midnight, alone with only the fire to know my thoughts. The dancing flames hypnotize me, and in my reverie Eric’s spirit comes floating back on the faint smell of pinon. I sense that he’s out there somewhere, grinning down, because he knows that his paintings are now selling for 81 bucks a square inch. “See there Eric, I told ya.”

Amelia was everybody’s darling with her short curly-bob hairdo, ingratiating smile, angelic face and girl-next-door persona. A pioneer aviator in the decade before WW-II began, she sought celebrity flying the skies as Charles Lindberg had done. His flight from New York to Paris in 1927 was much heralded by most living humans, and Amelia wanted to savor the splendor of similar adulation.

She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and she held many endurance and altitude records. President Herbert Hoover awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the tickertape parades held in her honor were riotous celebrations. She would waive with both arms and a huge smile as her white scarf fluttered in the enthusiastic breeze, her brown leather bomber jacket adding not-needed color to the aura. She was tall, slender, blond and everything.

She also was an impulsive maverick, and if she had been born fifty years later she might have been a poster woman for the feminist movement. She was quoted as saying, “Never interrupt someone who is doing something you said couldn’t be done.” How can you not love a lady who thinks like that? Amelia wanted women to know that there could be more fun to flying than just sitting in the back.

On July 2^nd, 1937, she departed Lae, New Guinea for Howland Island -2,556 miles distant. It was the third from last leg of her 24,557 mile attempt to fly around the world. She was never seen again. She had said: “Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.”

If she had been writing an autobiography it would have ended there, somewhere, when her Lockheed Electra twin engine aircraft disappeared into the watery waste of the South Pacific. One of her last radio transmissions was “…gas is running low.”

Many countries hurried to the search, and the air and sea rescue efforts by the American Navy and Coast Guard were the most costly and intensive in US history up to that time. Tantalizing clues as to her whereabouts still abound, and the world continues to love her mystery.

When Amelia disappeared at age forty she had been married for six years to George P. Putnam, her publicist. She had turned down his first five marriage proposals as she was disinclined to undertake what she felt might hinder her flying activities. A letter handed to him the morning of their wedding spoke powerfully to that subject.

Dear GP,

There are some things which should be writ before we are married. Things we have talked over before, - most of them.

You must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work that means so much to me. I feel the move just now as foolish as anything I could do. I know there may be compensations, but have no heart to look ahead.

In our life together I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. If we can be honest I think the differences which arise may best be avoided.

Please let us not interfere with each other’s work or play, not let the world see private joys or disagreements. In this connection I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage.

I must exact a cruel promise, and this is that you will let me go in a year if we find no happiness together.

I will try to do my best in every way. AE

That was February 7, 1931. Her husband said the note was “brutal in its frankness but beautiful in its honesty.” Amelia’s quest to be the first woman to circle the globe ended tragically although the location of her plane, her body and that of her navigator have not been physically established.

Nevertheless, the world lost its darling.

Google Letters of the Century by Grunwald and Adler

And, of course, he always asked everyone standing nearby if they knew of any old Indian campsites in the area. Bill and I were really into collecting arrowheads. He even named his son Flint. Flint Fyke - it has a certain ring…

Now, you might be surprised by what you can get in trade if you offer someone a fresh, fried, pineapple pie. Bill always denied it but I think that’s how he met Ernest Ingenhuett. Ernest had a ranch that started about seventeen miles down a little dirt road south of Boerne, in the beautiful Hill Country of Texas, and it ran for miles. That’s very special country and the Boerne Chamber of Commerce swore that God had a summer place down there somewhere.

Anyway, many of the ranches in that area are so large they are remote by their very nature, and only occasionally does a fence punctuate the mesquite and prickly pear landscape. Even today a lone jaguar might be seen in the southern reaches. Much of that country hasn’t changed in thousands of years.

One hot summer afternoon Ernest drove us in his old Ford pickup to a small creek of water that wandered deep into his ranch. Gentle flooding over the decades had eroded the side of an Indian campsite that had been occupied about 5,500 years ago. We dated it by the stone artifacts that were scattered about: spear points, atlatl dart points, hide scrapers, drills, knives and burins. Charcoal and ashes from early fires were washing out. There were no arrowheads because the bow would not be invented for another 4,000 years.

Castroville Point, ca 5,500 years old

Pedernales Point, ca 5,500 years old

After a few minutes a man, woman and three small children approached within about 200 feet, and sat down. Ernest waived them over. He had cautioned us earlier that we might encounter this family and that’s why he wanted to be present when we first met them. None of the five wore clothes. They didn’t speak Spanish or English but they seemed to communicate very well among themselves. They gestured a lot and grunted different tones, each emphasized with a facial expression. Bill and I were utterly entranced and the whole occurrence suggested that we were in the company of an ancient civilization.

Ernest stood aside and watched our awed reactions. He said these folks had been on the ranch longer than anyone could remember and that before the turn of the last century they had numbered thirty or more. To his uncertain knowledge they had not wandered more than a few miles from the creek. Although Ernest held a deed to the ranch we certainly felt like intruders, a thought that still lingers…

Although we never saw a weapon we were told that they ate anything that moved, including insects, but mostly squirrels, opossums, armadillos, snakes, javelina, raccoons, deer and everything that lived in or about the creek. They seemed healthy and the bottoms of their feet were like rawhide. A recent email from Bill’s daughter, Janet Fyke Lewis, refreshed my memory:

“I recall that when my parents and I would visit the ranch, that same mother was mesmerized by my blonde hair and fair skin, and always wanted to stroke my hair and pat my arm.  Her hands, probably much like the soles of her feet, were rough and almost had a gritty feel to them, yet her touch was light and gentle.  I remember Mother not caring much for their presence, but Daddy encouraged me to not be fearful of them and respect that they looked and lived differently.  Looking back on his wisdom, that was a beautiful life lesson for me ... and humbling.  I don’t know the last time Daddy visited the Ingenhuett Ranch, nor its exact location, but it was always one of his favorite places to go hunting.”

As the family curiously watched from a distance, Bill and I picked up a few projectiles from the surface and excavated in the eroding campsite that was mostly black dirt and small limestone rocks. Just being there was an emotional experience.

We quickly became close friends with Ernest, who was from good German stock, and returned a few times to excavate and eat his venison BBQ. The one thing he insisted on was that we not give anything to the primitive family or accidentally leave a tin can or a slice of bread at the site. He said it was important that those indigenous folks stay pure of modern man. We agreed, and promised not to photograph or talk about them when we left.

One time we were sitting on the bank eating pineapple pies and drinking Dr. Peppers when one of the children came up to us with his hands outstretched and a wide-eyed look on his face. He was offering dozens of stone projectiles he had picked up and saved for us. I don’t know when I ever felt more useless.

After a few years Ernest died and so did Bill. I never went back because the moment had passed and the ambience was gone. And I sure didn’t want to learn that my prehistoric friends were no longer living at the creek.

Somewhere along the way I learned that my cost could also show a profit. Olga Svoboda was a good example. She lived immediately behind our business in a space that was much too small, even for one person. Her bathtub was just thirty-six inches long and looked crowded in her bathroom. When I offered to move her into a condo and pay all of her housing expenses forever if she would trade me her little casita, she just smiled. She knew I wanted to expand my gallery space and declined, of course. So we laughed and drank red tea.

Then one day she asked me to go to her. When I arrived, her attorney was present. The mood turned somber when she said she was dying of cancer and needed a favor. Her plan was for me to spread her ashes on top of Taos Mountain and in exchange, she would state in her will that I could have her little rooms at their appraised value. She loved the sacred old mountain with its strong ponderosa and aspen groves that blanketed its landscape so completely. She said her father’s ashes were there and she wanted to be with him again. The deal was soon struck, so we sipped black tea and nibbled on Oreos.

Olga was a delightful woman with a warm and giving heart. She was also too young to be treated with such disrespect by the ungentle laws of nature and she joked about outrunning the well bug.

She had not seen the mountain from the air so I asked her to fly the ninety miles with me and take one last look. She was fearful of flying and said she would never undertake such an “outrageous adventure.” I explained that no one should ever fear crashing because it is only the last inch that counted. That brought a smile but not one of approval. We joked about the irony of my plane wrecking with her ashes on board as being nature’s ultimate affront.

Such good-natured repartee continued as the light in her eyes slowly dimmed. Over the weeks and months my little gifts of flowers and bubble gum brought temporary relief but did little to belay the relentless feeling of sadness that permeated our visits. The tea drinking rituals we always enjoyed had somehow become necessities. Although Olga’s cancer was insidious and unforgiving by nature, it also allowed time for her to reflect and prepare.

It was bright and sunny when my little plane lifted off and headed north, and I looked forward to performing the promised duty. The billowing clouds seemed to frame the task ahead and with a small window open I enjoyed the ever present aromas of sage and juniper.

My first view of the great mountain brought a shock. The top was covered with snow that I should have known would remain most of the summer. It looked cold and foreboding as I circled, trying to decide what Olga really had wanted. She said “on top of Taos Mountain.” That desire seemed unlikely under the circumstances and somewhat aloof from any sober voice of reason. The bitterness of cold remains long after the sweetness of a sentimental moment is forgotten. Surely her father was not way up on top.

I know Olga’s spirit was pleased when her white bone fragments flittered through the small window and softly floated down to a place where the chamisa and mountain laurels were blooming, and chipmunks scurried around all year. When my plane and I turned south for home I felt a serene sense of warmth and satisfaction. Olga was at peace at last and I suspected she may be having green tea with her father. Time had taken them apart but it eventually brought them back together.

“The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country. Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps. I bid you farewell.”

Academically, at West Point, cadet MacArthur earned 2424.12 grade merits out of a possible 2470, or 98.14%, the highest mark ever achieved at that institution. He served his country through the whole of two World Wars and much of the Korean Conflict, all toll encompassing fifty-two years of military service. He was staid and stoic. And he removed the metal ring in his garrison cap because he liked the rumpled look. He said it better suited his personality.

In 1945, as Supreme Allied Commander in the Southwest Pacific, MacArthur accepted the Japanese surrender aboard the battleship Missouri, officially ending WW-2. After all of the principals had signed their names MacArthur stood at the microphone and commanded “THESE PROCEEDINGS ARE CLOSED,” without shaking hands or accepting a salute from any of the many participants from the losing country. Then MacArthur supervised the reconstruction of Japan for three years while their new constitution was being drafted. He was a man for all reasons.

On August 11, 1951, President Truman relieved the general of his duties for making public statements that contradicted the official policies of the United States Government. He was ordered home. Many Americans were outraged, while others applauded, saying Macarthur had been insubordinate.

Nicolai Fechin, the great Russian-American painter, was working on an oil portrait of MacArthur. From his upstairs window he watched the largest tickertape parade in history as the five-star General of the Army sat high in traffic, reverentially waiving to the adoring masses and accepting the praise that many thought he so abundantly deserved. The war had been over for five years, but it had been hard and the American people remembered. He personified the victory in Asia as General Eisenhower did in Europe. It was a natural time to celebrate.

The flying blizzard of paper rubble completely choked the deep canyon between tall buildings along the parade route. It was reported in the press that entire rolls of toilet tissue went streaming and careening out of windows and onto the street, thrown by some who were not so much addicted to the general’s aura, as to a desire to join the merriment of the moment.

Fechin was horrified. He was so distressed that he refused to finish the portrait in deference to the poor workers who had to clean up the massive confetti clutter. He was very Russian. It was explained to him that the debris provided jobs for a thousand men who had families to feed. His reaction is unknown but twenty-five years later I sold the historic MacArthur painting. It wasn’t very good and it certainly wasn’t finished.

After his retirement in 1951, the general and his wife moved into the penthouse apartment of the Waldorf Towers at 100 E 50th Street in New York, adjacent to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Conrad Hilton, the owner, so admired MacArthur that he offered him a suite of rooms that would normally rent for $133 a day, for only $450 a month. He lived there until 1964 when he died after an emergency operation for prostate cancer. He was eighty-four. Jean, his wife, stayed on in the apartment for another thirty-six years until her death at age 101, in 2000. She was eighteen years younger than her husband.

But wait, that’s not the end of the story.

In 1976, when our gallery had an apartment in the city, I went to the Waldorf Towers and asked the doorman to please ring Mrs. MacArthur’s suite, expecting a growl. Instead, he doffed his cap and smiled. When she said hello I introduced myself and explained that I was a retired military officer and that her husband had been one of my heroes. “I just wanted to say hello.” She asked if I would like to come up for a visit. I was thrilled and the wonderfully gracious lady seemed pleased to see an admiring face. The elevator operator said, “The madam rarely entertains callers.”

Mrs. MacArthur served dainty tea and sweets from Japanese red and white demitasse cups and saucers. In her unassuming manner she spoke fondly of baseball and especially of the Mets. It was an engaging conversation although I did most of the listening. She proudly showed me the fifty medals and ribbons her husband had been awarded, include his Medal of Honor and two Purple Hearts. It was a pleasant interlude.

The apartment was cozy-small and from the drawing room where we were sitting it was impossible not to notice that the carpet was heavily worn and somewhat threadbare in a straight line from a window by my chair, through a nearby door, to a window in the adjacent room that overlooked the street. Mrs. MacArthur noticed the puzzled look on my face and smiled. “The general paced,” she said.

Google General MacArthur
Google Jean Marie MacArthur

One morning when it was still mostly dark I was walking along bank of the Madison River, leisurely fishing and enjoying myself when I suddenly caught a very strong, musky odor that I didn’t recognize. It puzzled me. When I looked around there were twelve large buffalo resting in the tall grass, chewing their cuds and looking at me with immense disinterest. They could not have been more than ten feet away. So much steam was on their bodies that it formed a cloud as it slowly rose to dissipate in the pine branches above. If the wind had not been just right I might have walked past those great beasts, being totally oblivious of that wonderful experience.

The buffalo is king of his realm and is probably the most magnificent of American animals. It is not known to offend except in self defense or to protect its young. Over the years I have remembered that incident on the Madison and thought how nice it would be if all animals, human especially, would just go on about their business in peace, as we did that morning, and leave others alone. There must be a moral in there somewhere.

Anyway, in order to acquire a channel I had to gently move a little copper wire along a crystal. The radio had a small antenna but no power source and no speaker. They weren’t needed. My brother was a genius with things like that. The sound was faint but my hearing was good, especially if I held the little set close to my ear. I put it under my covers at night when it was cold and listened into the wee hours. When there were no clouds I could sometimes get two stations.

Well, the first night I discovered Fran Warren. She had a thirty-minute program that came on late at night. At the first sound of her voice I quickly tweaked the little copper wire until it was exactly on frequency. Her voice was foggy-smooth as she sang the great old torch songs from the 30s and 40s. My favorite was “Sunday Kind of Love.” As she moved from one slow song to another I just knew that she was a comely, brunet, teenager, with buttercup eyes, forlorn in love, and being mistreated by the whole world. I dreamed of riding a white horse adorned with colorful garlands as I charged through the night and swept her to safety. It was so romantic.

Many years later I was in the Air Force driving down the strip in Las Vegas when I saw on a marquee, “FRAN WARREN.” She was singing in the lounge at the Flamingo Hotel, a prelude to Tony Bennett, who was the main attraction. It was sad because only a few tables were occupied. I sat close to the stage and kept ordering Cokes as the bartender leered. Fran’s songs brought back wonderful memories from my youth that had been resting dormant in the back of my mind for so long.
   
When her show ended she walked into one of the hotel restaurants and sat in a booth. I couldn’t stand it so I went over and introduced myself and said how much I liked her music, and that I’d been in love with her for twenty years. She asked me to sit down. We had dinner and laughed at my story about the crystal radio. She didn’t even know what it was. We talked about her career and I learned that she had recorded “Sunday Kind of Love” with Claude Thornhill’s band when she was nineteen years old. That’s the year I was fourteen and listening to it under my covers. I never saw her again but I sure remember the thrill of that meeting. How can you not love stories like that?

Google Fran Warren
Google crystal radio

As I read into his book the story expanded and the pages seemed to turn themselves in my hand. The airplanes he flew in that war are forever indelible in my mind, the P-38 and the P-51. In high school I sketched their pictures endlessly in class and fantasized my most vivid dreams. Robin was only eight years my senior. The weekly news of his exploits told the stories and at night I pretended to fly his wing in a P-38 with my white scarf gallantly flapping in the slipstream. We searched the enemy skies, daring, and singing away to the music of our blazing machine guns as Nazi fighters exploded in the face of our heroic onslaught, their wreckage scattering all across the country side. I fell asleep exhausted.

In Vietnam Robin shot down 4 Migs with his dashing F-4 fighter. He flew 155 combat missions around Hanoi, the most dangerous air of that war. The myriad words required to explain the war deeds that define him are prohibitive in this space, but a hint can be given by looking at the medals he was awarded: The Air Force Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, 4 Silver Stars, the Legion of Merit, 6 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 40 Air Medals, the Distinguished Flying Cross (United Kingdom), 2 Croix de Guerre Medals (France) and the Vietnam Air Gallantry Medal with gold wings. Almost impossible!

In 1958 I flew with Robin at our gunnery camp in Tripoli, Libya and on one mission he allowed me lead our flight of four F-100s, and he flew my wing. It was a religious experience. Twenty years later he visited my gallery in Santa Fe and we went to lunch. We were both retired and proud. Every fighter pilot I know brags about knowing Robin Olds, although most of them didn’t. What greater tribute? We all wanted some of him to rub off on us. 

After Vietnam his battle scars remained because all of his wars had ended and he was left alone on the beach with no enemy to fight except the overpowering military bureaucracy. It turned him into a junk-yard dog and he loved being that dog. Lyndon Johnson said “I must meet that man” and Robin was summoned to the Oval Office. He said the White House and the Pentagon didn’t know how to win a war, and their ten minute visit turned into thirty. His words were not well received and he was ordered to report to the General Staff. Everyone thought he would be fired, but he was an imposing figure and commanding in his briefings. He was promoted to general and became Commandant at the Air Force Academy where he’s buried. The last four words in his book are, “I have flown home.”

When Robin died, in 2007, a story circulated in the Pentagon. They wanted to put his body in a display case outside of Fighter Operations and hang a sign that read,

IN CASE OF WAR – BREAK GLASS.

Google Robin Olds

When I was sixteen, I read a book titled Journal of a Trapper by Osborne Russell, who traveled along the Madison River in 1835, just outside of West Yellowstone where Hebgen Lake is now. Russell, along with a few of Jim Bridger’s trappers, was attacked by eighty Blackfeet Indians near where Hebgen Dam would be built nearly a century later. After a brief fight, Russell escaped west toward Stinking Creek. About thirty years earlier, Lewis and Clark, on their wonderful Corps of Discovery, had passed through Montana not too many miles to the north. I was thrilled and wished I could have been part of those great adventures. Sixteen year old kids are like that I guess.

Anyway, after telling my parents that my elbow needed some room, I mentioned to my friend, Donnie Joe, that I was going out to look for Lewis and Clark. He was quick to take the hint and said he would just ride along and help me keep the mountains company. So we rented a couple of horses from a friend and started up Red Canyon. Why my horse was named Lightning was something I never figured out because he hardly had the power to get out of his own way. As it was important to be honest with the situation, we limited ourselves to three Babe Ruth candy bars each, bedrolls, a shotgun, fly rods, knives and matches. And we got a map of the Gallatin National Forest that would really come in handy later on.

The first afternoon we found ourselves way up on top of a beautiful mountain under a lapis lazuli sky. We were thrilled and knew the whole place was there just for us. Surely the rippling brooks would be grateful for our company and the grizzlies would understand that we were just exploring the area and meant no harm.

Well, the first night we couldn’t get the dumb fire started, and we had already used most of our matches, so we very wisely wadded the map and hoped that we would be forgiven that one small foible. It worked and as the fire crackled and our horses wandered off, we ate our three candy bars and talked long into the night. Osborne Russell had been in those mountains for nine years and suddenly we felt like we were with him.

We spent the next day looking for the horses and finally found them down by a rivulet where the grass was tall and abundant. There were no fish around anywhere and prudence whispered that we should not shoot the two magpies we saw. Later we realized the folly of that decision.

The next day we rode the mountains, the hills, the valleys, the hollows, the dales and the depressions, looking for something to catch or shoot. There was almost nothing, but we did shoot one animal that I promised not to talk about. So on the fourth, fifth, or sixth day, I forget which, we were pretty sure we’d used up most of the fun.

I could have tolerated Donnie’s displeasures more easily if my saddle sores had not become such an issue. The insides of my legs were raw most of the way down. I found that riding behind the saddle on Lightning’s warm, soft, furry, rump helped some but he didn’t like it much and kept doing some funny dance step that I didn’t trust completely, so I put my handkerchief over the hardest part of the saddle and tried to think soft thoughts.

But Donnie got in a serious swivet and wouldn’t speak to me for a while, except to say that our unfortunate adventure was ill conceived, dumb thought out, and I was overrated like my horse. I think he even compared my intelligence unfavorably with that of the two of us, the horse I mean. He said that he had important things to do in town and insisted that we go out. I quickly agreed, but the problem was neither of us knew where out was.

So I applied some mountain man wisdom to the situation. The sun comes up in the east and we thought out was south so that made it easy, except that south was over the highest mountain we’d ever seen. It didn’t help much that a bunch of arrogant ravens kept flying around yawking at us, and always out of range. They probably knew that our hunger had long ago stopped being just a theory.

We decided to follow a fast running stream that seemed to have an anxious purpose of some sort. At least we could have water and surely it would lead us to a road or a Forest Service man trail somewhere. Gradually, that little stream got narrower and narrower and deeper and deeper until it developed vertical sides that nothing could get through but water. I think Donnie was getting delirious because he kept saying, “If we don’t change course soon we’ll end up where we’re going.”

Then his right stirrup strap broke and he had to ride on one foot. Well, that was it. He got real serious about being mad and lost at the same time. He insinuated that I couldn’t find my butt with both hands and all the lights on. When Lightning seemed to take his side I knew the crisis had arrived. So we turned back for half a day until we found another stream to follow. Bad luck can always be trusted.

I won’t dwell further on that because I’m grateful that the space between fact and fiction is often blurred by the passage of time, except to say that we finally loosened our grip on the reins and the horses took us to a dirt road. We were 50 miles from where we started and Donnie was in good spirits again, and started talking coherently. He’s gone now, but I still think about him a lot. At the time, we were both important to ourselves in our own way, and for the same reasons, but no one will judge us anymore when I’m gone too.

A few days later with the luxury of hot chocolate, I made some notes that might be helpful to any future sixteen year old geniuses who think looking for Lewis and Clark might be fun:

• Hunger is both unrelenting and unreasonable.
• You can’t hide from thunderstorms.
• Porcupine meat tastes like kerosene.
• Coffee made by boiling pine needles can bring on cardiac arrest.
• There’s nothing worse than a wet bedroll on a cold night.
• Mountains can suffer instant personality reversals.
• The older you get the smarter your parents become.
• Movies lie to you.

Over the years I’ve read Journal of a Trapper a dozen times, and always with a deeper appreciation for who Osborne Russell was and what he did. The mountains continue to beckon to me. They always will.

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Google Hebgen Lake

The scenery around Tuy Hoa Air Base on the central coast of South Vietnam where I spent a year was right out of National Geographic Magazine. The beautiful South China Sea lapped the beach only 300 feet from where I slept. It was never cold, it didn’t get hot and the daily rains soaked straight into sandy loam. Plentiful grasses grew tall and fresh water flowed in great abundance. Many of the trees stretched to the sky. That place was a paradise. The last thing one would normally think about was blowing it up or burning it down.

We jumped into that conflict and didn’t know how to get out. An old axiom says that those who don’t study the past are doomed to repeat it. Well, we’ve studied our past conflicts over and over and we’re still doing the same old thing.

We fought the war in Korea and lost, and those folks didn’t attack us. We suffered 128,650 human causalities.

We fought the war in Vietnam and lost, and those folks didn’t attack us. We suffered 211,454 human causalities.

The final outcome of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is yet to be written, but neither of those countries are capable of attacking us with a military force. So far we’ve suffered 49,017 total human causalities and counting. If we win those wars I’m not sure what we’ll have to show for it. When are going to stop policing the world?

We certainly need to keep supporting our troops in all ways possible. And perhaps it’s time for us as citizens and voters to insert more influence on those in our government who are making the big decisions. Our cry should be “Let’s just leave other folks alone unless they attack us.” And if they do, let’s not fight back with rifles and hand grenades. It’s stupid for so many young men and women to be killed by land mines, roadside bombs and snipers when we have such awesome technologies available.  

If you are interested, here are the Air Force losses in Vietnam by aircraft type.

Impressive isn’t it?

My father mostly had me figured out and was surprisingly intuitive. For that reason it was hard for me to roll something past him. For instance, sometimes he’d sense that I’d committed a misdeed of some kind but wasn’t positive. Maybe he’d suspect that I’d ditched school to go fishing with Herbert Persky, or some other miniscule infraction. I never lied to him. On those occasions he’d send me to the back hedge to pull a switch the thickness of which I figured was commensurate with the seriousness of the alleged violation.

One of my secret tricks was to put a leaf from the hedge in my mouth and chew on it. It was truly a bitter taste so it helped take my mind off of what was about to happen.

Anyway, the size of the switch was critical to the process so it was always a test of wits, me against my father. I quickly learned that it was not in my best interest to pull a switch that was unreasonably thin because he’d go out and replace it with one that was exaggerated the other way. But if he was just medium mad I’d pick a medium-thick switch and forget the leaf. No big deal.

On rare occasions my father would underestimated what I’d done and he wasn’t really mad. That meant I could pick a thin switch and it’d be a waltz-around. But always during the dance I’d exaggerate the severity of the inflicted pain. That was another secret I had. And a thick handkerchief in both back pockets was good too. I was developing techniques that would serve me well when I got to high school.

But if my father was really, really mad he’d head for the back hedge himself and I knew I was about to be a star player the World Series of switchings. The velocity with which he slammed the screen door on the way out was indicative of the rigorousness of my impending whipping.

Sometimes I knew my father was mad at something else and was taking it out on me. I could tell because what I’d done didn’t merit the punishment, like the time I locked my little sister out of the bathroom. Those lickings never hurt because I knew he was just blowing off steam. I was always willing to help if it made him feel better. Besides, I was so far ahead a good hanging couldn’t catch him up with me.

It can’t be just a coincidence that I never drank, smoked, did drugs, cussed or got pierced and tattooed. Maybe we should reintroduce spanking into our school systems. I’d vote for it. What do you think?

Mrs. Rockefeller was interested in the fifty or so pairs of beaded Indian moccasins that were hanging from the ceiling in one of our rooms. Most of the moccasins were late 19th century and all were stuffed with tissue paper that helped preserve their form. And they were in pretty good shape considering they had previously been worn by teepee Indians around the mountains in Montana and Wyoming.

Well, Mrs. Rockefeller sat down and pointed out several pairs that she would like to look at. We thought it was a little funny when she started removing the tissue and trying the moccasins on. No one had ever done that with us before because those things were antique collector pieces, and they weren’t cheap. Soon, tissue paper and beaded moccasins littered the floor.

Finally Mrs. Rockefeller found a pair of Blackfoot moccasins that she liked. A giant smile rose from her face as she paced back and forth testing the fit. “There,” she said, picking up her designer shoes and dropping them in a trash can by the desk. Everyone was calm as she wrote a check and headed for the door with her bewildered husband in tow. But when the screen slammed there was a wild dash as three stampeding female bodies flung across the room and clanked upon that poor little trash can. No one was seriously hurt but it was so funny. I’m glad my wife wasn’t there because she might have been killed.

Now, I’m not an imbiber but the situation made rules that were not of my own selection, so I had a beer and heard a couple of stories that insinuated another beer. Steve knew everything about art and clients and dealing with other dealers. Some of his stories scared me pretty good, but I was becoming insulated by the fermented juice of a few vineyards.

Well, when I entered the hotel it was about midnight and there was just one person in the lobby, standing right there in the middle like Joan of Ark. Actually, I could have worded that sentence a better so I’ll try again.

The hotel lobby was absolutely filled up with Bella Absug.

She wore a wide rimmed hat that made her look shorter, and she was already kinda short. The problem was, I recognized her right off, and worse, I knew a lot about her. That she was the first Jewish United States Congresswoman and a severe feminist. That was OK with me but I had seen her on television at a hearing where she totally beat up some poor guy witness to the point where even some of her colleague Democrats on the committee tried to calm her. They seemed embarrassed at being there and I totally hated her. The word embargo came to mind.

So a few beers and I walked right up to her as she stared me down. I said, “You’re Bella Abzug, aren’t you?” She countered, “YES I AM,” and put her hands on her hips. “Well,” I said, “I’ve never liked you but maybe I’ve been wrong. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” That’s really what I said! So she blurted, “Yes you can,” and grabbed my arm as her hat aimed at the coffee shop.

I knew that President Carter had appointed her to some high commission on women’s affairs, and then fired her when she criticized him. I was in waaaay over my head. Besides, she was ten years older than me and had a law degree from Columbia. Her biographer said she was “born yelling.”

I just Googled Bella Abzug and here are some of her quotes:

“Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick. Those days are over.”

“The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.”

“I began wearing hats as a young lawyer because it helped me establish my professional identity. Before that, whenever I was at a meeting, someone would ask me to get coffee.”

“We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room. We want an equal share in government and we mean to get it.”

“All of the men in my office can type.”

I was preying for an earthquake.

Bella ordered black coffee and I did too. I wasn’t going to let her up me. The first question from her was, “Do you believe in equal rights for women.” I felt like a mouse at a mountain lion convention because I knew I was about to get stomped. I could hardly breathe and quickly checked where the exit was, and if there was a bouncer.

But I managed, “No I don’t. I don’t believe in boys in the Girl Scouts, I don’t believe in men in the ladies room, and I don’t believe in American women being drafted in the Army to fight hand-to-hand with the Gooks in Vietnam.”

Her hat probably started to tighten but she didn’t appear fazed.

“That’s different.”
“No it isn’t, equal means equal.”
“You’re a damn chauvinist.”
“That’s not what we’re talking about.”
“Yes it is, everything is on the table.”
“Now you sound like a damn lawyer.”
“So, you hate women and lawyers both.”
“You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Somebody has to help you.”
“I’m not intimidated by your hat.”
“Be careful sonny, you’re getting brittle.”

It went on.

The waitress had her hand on the phone.

Bella’s hat was getting tight.

We sipped and glared.

A feather on her hat kept swinging around and getting between her cup and her mouth. I saw it as an omen.

“Look,” she said. “I don’t care if the little boys want to go with the little Girlie Scouts, and if perverts want to go in the ladies room we can handle that, but I’m wondering how in hell you would deny the rights of women who want to fight for their country? Whose side are you on for Christ’s sake?”

What do you say to a woman who thinks that fast? I was completely denuded, out of ideas and out of courage, all at the same time. And I wishing I was out of the dumb coffee shop.

But soon we both started laughing and pointing at each other and claiming victory. That sweet, chunky feminist could tell some pretty filthy jokes. Finally, the waitress threw us out saying she had stayed open late to clean up the mess. Bella and I walked out arm in arm and her hat fit again. I promised to vote for her. She promised not to kill me.

The next morning I wondered why I liked the woman I hated so much.

PS The best feminist line I ever heard was from the mouth of Gloria Steinem. “I lived in my New York apartment four years before I found out the oven didn’t work.”

With me Arie was mostly one way or the other. Either she was tolerant and aloof, or she totally ignored me. So when she was tolerant that meant she was being considerate of my mother, not wanting to say anything that would offend her. That kind of treatment would’ve bothered other kids but it didn’t matter much to me. She was just kind of there and I had my own stuff to worry about.

But Arie loved pansies, and so did my mother. It was as though pansies brought focus to the whole family social stratum. Each evening in West Yellowstone, Montana, where we spent our summers, they would sit out in front of my grandfather’s cabin camp and pamper the pansies with water and words. If adjectives had been fertilizer those pansies would’ve been the prettiest things in the whole world. I didn’t last long around those conversations though because they embarrassed me, even way back then. That would have been about the summer of 1934, and I still remember.

At least that’s how I saw Arie then and remember her now. There were times though, when that wonderful old lady would warm up to me, and I wanted that all over. Sometimes she’d tell me things. “When I was your age the Kiowas and Comanches would run through our barnyard in Ft. Worth, trying to catch chickens. They’d sometimes trip over each other as the panicked hens flustered and flitted around making all kinds of noise. The Indians would just jump up laughing and keep grabbing. I remember pressing my nose against the window and seeing feathers flying all around the place. My father said for me to just stay in the house and if they could catch the chickens they could have them.”

Of course I didn’t know her father, but I sure knew her husband pretty good. His name was Charles Karl Simpson but everyone called him CK. There are six things I remember about that man. He was tough, he smoked cigars, he hated anyone who didn’t drive a Ford, he was a dead-head Democrat, he shaved with his hat on, and he didn’t know I was there. I felt like a shadow around his place and when he came home I hid behind a tree if I could find one close-by. It’s not funny but he had a heart attack and died one morning while he was shaving with his hat on. I always wondered if the hat had something to do with it.

Anyway, sometime in the early eighties I received a call from Jill Cooper, who was married to Tom Udall, now US senator from New Mexico. She was a friend and asked if we could put Jackie Kennedy up for a few days in the guest house that was attached to our gallery. “Of course,” I said, and was thrilled even at the thought of such a thing. Mrs. Kennedy worked as an editor for Doubleday and was in town to meet with Stuart Udall on a book he was writing.

Although I’m an indelible conservative and a trying-to-recover Republican, Mrs. Kennedy and her husband were certainly like Camelot to me. They brought dignity and an air of respect to the White House that has been mostly lacking in the forty-eight years since their tenure ended. But I won’t go there.

So of course Mrs. Kennedy’s entourage was an hour and a half late arriving at the gallery, which by now should have been long closed, and would have been but for our staffs equivocation and attempts to think of some aberrational oddments to do, not wanting to miss the arrival of such a distinguished guest. I think some of them even cleaned their desks, which may have been a first. The shipping clerk combed his hair and I know that was a first for him.

The next evening I was working late in my office and there was no one else around. Mrs. Kennedy evidently had taken a shower because she donned a white terrycloth robe we kept in the closet, wrapped her hair in a large white towel, walked out of the hot tub room, down the steps, across the library, through the little atrium and into the back door to my office – barefooted – and asked if she could sit down and chat for a minute. For some strange reason it seemed ordinary although I’m sure it wasn’t. She had read the flyleaf of a book I had written that spoke to my having been a fighter pilot in Vietnam. She was curious and wanted to question me about that experience, and reminded me that her husband had been the president to first send troops into that conflict – “advisors they were called,” she said. It was easy to see that she had given that subject some thought.

We spoke of her children and of art and other things for a few minutes. She was expected to attend the opera that evening, but was looking for an excuse to vacate what she saw as an unfortunate circumstance. Finally, when she got up to leave I walked around the desk and said I would like to tell her something. She stopped and looked at me. And I said that I thought she and her husband had brought a sophisticated elegance to the White House that in my mind had not been evident since Thomas Jefferson’s time. I said that they made me especially proud to be an American. I knew that she had heard similar words many times before, but I had to say them again. She looked down and didn’t speak for a few seconds, and was pensive. When she thanked me I wondering if I had been out of line. The next morning she thanked me again and it made me feel better. She was so easy to be with.

Later we were walking out of the side door to the guest house where my car was parked. As we walked along the high adobe wall toward the patio gate we heard voices. She quickly grabbed my arm. “Wait,” she said, and pulled me back. It was so funny. There was a small walking tour of tourists standing, huddled as the guide exponded the merits of the “quaint Santa Fe architecture.” They were totally oblivious of our presence, only five feet or so away. After they departed (the guide’s chatter continued unabated) down the little alley-street, we went on our way. We both had smiles of victory, knowing that we had won a fun battle, and saved some time. Of course it would not have bothered me one iota to blunder out into the midst of that small gathering, but she well understood the consequences of her unannounced appearance. I wondered how many times she had experienced similar episodes.

After a few days Mrs. Kennedy departed our guest house after leaving a long note to our housekeeper, thanking her for some ironing and other things she had done – and she left a $50 bill on the pillow. In all the seventeen years at the gallery, with three guest houses that were constantly being inhabited by movie stars, politicians, and other famous persons abounding, she was the only one that ever left a note of thanks, or a monetary consideration. The housekeeper is still with us today after thirty-eight years, and she prizes her letter.

Several weeks later I received a package from Mrs. Kennedy. It was a limited edition book of drawings by George Catlin, an important, early western painter. It was inscribed, and inside of the front cover was an original letter written by the artist and dated 1838. The book is one of my prized possessions today, along with several of her letters that are safely tucked in along side the one from Mr. Catlin.

Years later, when we sold our gallery and moved out on the Santa Fe Trail, one of the treasures I kept was a half-pint bottle of Korbel Brandy, 80 proof, that had been left on the turquoise counter near the sink. Looking at it now I see my label, “Jackie Kennedy, 6-2-84” A full inch of liquid remains in the bottle.

Lots of good things move in and out of our lives, sometimes only to punctuate a special moment in a singular way. I learned something from Jackie Kennedy that I may have suspected, but didn’t know for sure. That she could move easily and with unlimited grace and poise among royalty at the highest international levels, but she could also take her shoes off and mingle with art dealers and cowboys who wore the trappings of a life she was comfortable being around. I hope history also remembers her that way, and if it does maybe one of my heirs, a hundred years from now, will sip one last goblet of Brandy.

My periodic blogs will wander into most fields of human endeavor. If you agree with me please let me know and if you disagree just try not to hurt my feelings too much. I’ve been known to be wrong but usually that fact is admitted only to this blogger.

A few weeks ago a man whom I did not know sent me a digital photo of a sword that a relative of his had found many years ago in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. It was rusted pretty good but some of the markings on the blade were still discernible. I forwarded the photo and his comments on an archaeological list that is maintained by Dr. Dave Phillips at the U of New Mexico. The list has a membership of a few hundred people, many of whom are pretty bright souls. I wanted to know if anyone had seen anything similar or could identify what the fellow had found. The general consensus was the the Sword is of Spanish origin, probably 17th or early 18th century.

One response came back was from Dr. Bob Kelly at the U of Wyoming. and he forwarded information about another sword, probably early Spanish, that had also been found in the Bighorns. His story reminded me of an incident that took place about 1972. I was driving from Santa Fe to Cody, Wyo. and stopped for gas in the little town of Meeteetse, not far from Cody. While the gas guy was pumping fuel into my car a pickup truck pulled up in front of a house about thirty feet from where I was standing. A couple of guys jumped out of the truck and were looking and pointing to something in the back. Soon six or eight other folks had gathered around and everyone seemed pretty excited about something. So of course I had to stroll over and see for myself.

Well, I could not believe what was in the bed of that truck. A horse skull and lots of other bones, large and small. Maybe some of them were human but I don’t remember seeing a human skull. The interesting thing was the horse gear and associated accouterments, including an ornate Spanish bridle bit that had rusted iron jangles hanging on it, a wonderful Spanish saddle and some weaponry that left no doubt in the minds of those present that this horse had been ridden by a Spaniard soldier. The headstall, reins and other trappings were made of tanned leather that had become dark and brittle from having been buried for a few hundred years. The rancher who brought the things in said he had found them eroding from a dry arroyo on his place, which I later learned was the Pitchfork Ranch.

After a few minutes the owner decided to unload the artifacts and bones and store them in a house that was adjacent to the gas station. In the excitement there was talk of building a museum to display this important cache. After the truck had been unloaded I looked in the bed and noticed a lot of small brass tacks that had become dislodged from the brittle horse trappings. So of course, after obtaining permission to collect the tacks, I jumped in and picked up 123 of those beautiful things. They are typical of what we saw later on early Plains Indian leather knife sheaths, especially Blackfeet. They have square shanks and the heads measure about 9mm in diameter. I still have those very historic pieces of American history.

And thinking about it now, forty or so years later, it is natural to wonder about the person who rode that horse. History does not say that the Spanish in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries ventured that far north. And the thought naturally follows; how many other such interesting stories have occurred across the vast reaches of this country that are unknown or forgotten by history.

I recently published my memoir. It’s called The Thrill of the Chase and in it I told of some misadventures from my youthful years gr owning up in Central Texas and around Yellowstone. If I had my way everyone would jot down their memories, if not for their children and grandchildren, then just to document how life was lived during our times. And if those memories are not published then surely they should be sent to the Library of Congress where they will be stored in some long forgotten alcove for a few hundred years. But just think how some elderly historian, five hundred years from now, wearing bespeckled glasses will be touched by your words. Those things are important. What if no one had ever written about what happened at the Alamo?

The mass media in this country well know the rules. When an archaeological discovery is made, all but the most compelling stories go to the bottom of the page, making room for what many Americans love most, the sight of an ancient object that gives an exciting hint about their past. How many times have the stories of Mesa Verde and Spiro Mound been told? We always thirst for more.

For many decades our museums have purchased prehistoric artifacts or had them donated by those with the far vision to know that otherwise our public displays would stand in need. Good examples abound: the Field Museum in Chicago, which houses the original private collection of Marshall Field, and the wonderful collection of pre-Columbian gold and jade objects that was purchased by Ray Diekemper and given to the Texas Tech Museum over the objections of the curator.

Was the Chicago Art Institute correct in purchasing the most significant Mimbres cave objects ever discovered, a ritual cache of brilliantly colored and feathered snake and mountain lion fetishes and human effigies? Of course they were! The Society of American Archaeology (SAA) hates to see commercial traffic in archaeological material, yet one must ask which is more important - the education of the public or the perceived ethics of the SAA?

Professional archaeological societies have long looked for easy marks to blame for the escalating interest in collecting artifacts, and their editorials have accused collectors for many of the problems found in their own science. United thinking in the collecting community (collectors outnumber archaeologists by an estimated 250 to one) is that this emphasis is inappropriate. Shadowy excuses mask what everyone knows to be true: it is the written reports and photographs of both artifacts in situ and museum displays that hone the tools of those who would vandalize archaeological sites looking for what they have seen in print or on exhibit.

The premise is that those looted objects are sold to collectors, which promotes further looting. To a degree that is true, albeit a tertiary reason. Nevertheless, it is our museums that make these items desirable. At arrowhead shows across the country, the sale of books about prehistoric artifacts is second in total sales, surpassed only by that of stone tools. While no collector condones illegal excavations, they all know that logic defies the tenet that prehistoric artifacts should not be privately collected. If museums routinely purchase these items, is it unethical for individuals to do the same? I don’t think so.

Over 1400 people attended the important “Clovis and Beyond” conference held last October (1999) in Santa Fe. The 62 speakers, selected for being the best in their fields, included two members of the National Academy of Science (NAS), the present President and three past presidents of the SAA, and the heads of anthropology departments in universities and museums across the Americas. When the conference was over, Dr. Joe Watkins, who was also a speaker and Chair of the American Anthropological Association Ethics Committee and member of the SAA Ethics Committee, wrote an editorial in the Anthropology News (March 2000) titled, “Salvaging Our Ethics.” He questioned whether he should have attended the conference at all because it had been put on by me, a collector and avocational archaeologist. He said I had been “accused” of “mining artifacts” in a pre-contact pueblo that I own. For Dr. Watkins, mining artifacts refers to the excavation of an archaeological site by someone without a Ph.D. in archaeology. He asked the question. “How did the collector get involved in the “Clovis and Beyond” conference in the first place?” a question that speaks volumes about where the SAA seems to be headed.

Since he called me by name, I feel compelled to examine the question. In the organization of the conference, I represented the Museum of New Mexico, Laboratory of Anthropology. Other co-sponsors were the Smithsonian Institution and the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Oregon State University. Maybe Dr. Watkins’ question should be asked a little differently: “Why did the collector feel inclined to originate and organize the meeting?” Where were all of the archaeologists, and why did none of them see the need and step forward?” The last such conference, from which the term “Clovis point” emerged, was held in Santa Fe in 1941. In the ensuing years, giant steps have been made in our knowledge of the peopling of the Americas, knowledge that everyone agreed needed to be presented and discussed. Dr. Watkins seemed to be saying, “We don’t have time to do it, and I don’t want you to either”. I am reminded of the Rolls Royce that pulled up to the Ritz Plaza Hotel, and no one got out.

Because Dr Watkins listed Indiana University as his academic affiliation for the conference, I thought it would be interesting to look at that school’s archaeological record. Ironically, the archaeology and anthropology departments at Indiana University would not exist were it not for the long-term vision and direct financial support of a single individual, an artifact collector and amateur archaeologist Eli Lilly (Griffin, 1971).

There was neither an archaeology program nor an anthropology department at any of the colleges or universities in the state of Indiana until Lilly became interested in collecting artifacts (Griffin, 1971), It is important to emphasize that the same is true of many other states as well. While Lilly insisted on anonymity throughout his life, it is now useful to refer to him by name so the reader can understand the exact nature of his contributions and the role he played in the development of American archaeology, a particularly important point because his contributions have been omitted from the formal “History of American Archaeology” (Willey and Sabloff, (1974,1980).

In the summer of 1930, when Lilly visited the home of J.P. Dolan, a lawyer and artifact collector in Syracuse, Indiana, he was struck by the quality of workmanship of the artifacts that Dolan displayed in his “Indian cabinet” (Griffin, 1971). The sight of Dolan’s collection stimulated Lilly’s innate curiosity and a never-ending passion for artifacts and “digging” archaeology. With the help of Thomas Hendricks, an Indianapolis buyer of antiquities, Lilly began to acquire a personal collection from both various other collectors and his own excavations. He quickly amassed one of the most important collections in the United States. This activity brought him into close association with numerous artifact dealers, fellow collectors, and amateur archaeologists, including Glenn A. Black.

In 1931, when Black led Lilly on a field trip to Angel Mounds (the largest known Mississippian site in Indiana), Lilly was both impressed with the vastness of the village and cemetery and was struck by Black’s self-taught knowledge and enthusiasm. Although Black never attended college, like Lilly he was well read and had been collecting artifacts for many years. Lilly realized that the only way archaeology was going to advance would be if he funded a full-time person such as Glenn Black to devote all of his efforts to archaeology. Lilly initiated efforts to acquire the title to Angel Mounds. After federal, state, and local governmental sources failed to acquire the site, Eli Lilly provided the funds to purchase it. Black moved into a house on the site and, with funding from Lilly, devoted the rest of his life to excavating it.

Dr. Watkins’ position is particularly curious in the light of the fact that he is currently seeking the directorship of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology at the University of Indiana, a position endowed by a collector and untrained excavator.

The program at Indiana University began when Lilly endowed a fellowship in anthropology in 1932. Black began teaching the archaeology course in 1944, and with many generous donations, a formal department of anthropology was created in 1947. Lilly also funded archaeology laboratories at the University of Chicago and Ohio State University and endowed a fellowship at the University of Michigan. Its first recipient was James B. Griffin, the “dean” of American archaeology. Lilly provided full-time support for Griffin between 1932 and 1941, and continued to fund his research efforts thereafter. It is interesting to note that the lifelong support from this private collector was completely ignored in the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology’s 1997 “Tribute to James B. Griffin.” Griffin would have been the first to admit that he would not have had a career without the support of Eli Lilly, who also funded 11 presidents of the SAA: A.V. Kidder (1937-1939), Will C. Mckern (1940 -1941), Glenn A. Black (1941-1942), Carl E. Guthe (1945 -1946), Frank H.H. Roberts, Jr. (1950 -1951), James B. Griffin (1951-1952), William A. Ritchie (1956 -1957), George I. Quimby (1957-1958), James A. Ford (1963 -1964), Albert C. Spalding (1964 -1965), and Richard “Scotty” MacNeish (1971-1972). Dr. Watkins seems to be saying that these distinguished archaeologists were unethical for associating with and accepting the money and leadership services of a collector - that Eli Lilly’s money was tainted.

Scotty MacNeish, a participant in the “Clovis and Beyond” conference and the most recent recipient of the SAA’s Fryxell Award, wrote in a letter to James B. Griffin on December 14, 1970, “Mr. Lilly’s interest in archaeology, particularly in the Midwest, and continued support of it were responsible for many, if not most of the advances that were made in that region from the twenties to the seventies. This was not just the direct donating of funds for field excavations and publications, but it was, more importantly, the support and encouragement he gave to so many students and scholars in the field of archaeology” (Griffin 1971).

Midwestern archaeology has never recovered from the loss of Eli Lilly. Since his death, academic training and employment opportunities in Midwestern archaeology have become limited (Schott, 2000). Lilly provided funding to students and scholars for the scientific study of pottery, stone and copper sources used in the manufacture of artifacts, geophysics, absolute dating, artifact classification, and linguistics. He also sponsored conferences and excavations, and was the underwriter of numerous publications. Many of these publications, including Prehistoric Antiquities of Indiana, featured illustrations of artifacts from his personal collection, some of which he had excavated himself.

The argument might be made: that was then, this is now. In other words, the days of Eli Lilly are ancient history. But are they?

Where is the money for archaeology coming from today? In the past decade a number of artifact collectors have supported the positions and research efforts of many contemporary archaeologists including Chris Hill, Robson Bonnichsen, David Meltzer (a mentor of Joe Watkins), Don Fowler, C. Vance Haynes, and George Frison, to name a few. A Colorado collector has donated more than four million dollars for archaeological research to institutions including the University of Wyoming, The George Frison Institute, the Museum of the Rockies, Montana State University, Oregon State University, The Center for the Study of the First Americans, the University of Nevada, and Joe Watkins’ alma mater, Southern Methodist University.

At the same time, grants from the National Science Foundation for applied research in anthropology have dwindled almost 78% from $2,630,000 in 1973 to $583,000 in 1997 (National Science Foundation/SRS, Survey of Federal Funds for Research and Development). Furthermore, these figures do not reflect either the decreasing value of the dollar since 1973 or the fact that most of that money goes for research in anthropology, not archaeology. If, as Dr. Watkins implies, it is unethical to receive support from or co-mingle with artifact collectors, what is left? Maybe the only completely “ethical” refuge is government archaeology and Cultural Resource Management (CRM). But is it?

Each year, state and federal governments spend millions of taxpayers dollars to survey, excavate, protect, preserve, conserve, and curate the archaeology of the United States. What does the average American citizen get for his money? Most of the results appear as unpublished contract reports written in an oppressive technical jargon that the public cannot decipher. To make matters worse, our nation’s museums are becoming filled with literally hundreds of tons of dirt, fire-cracked rock, bones and broken pottery bits from the CRM and government archaeology.

In an investigative report conducted by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Trimble and Meyers 1991), they found that the status of most physical facilities used to store artifacts and archaeological records from government-funded excavations did not conform to the minimum federal standards for archaeological curation. Many artifacts and paper records were found in substandard facilities scattered on floors, while elsewhere they appeared in cardboard boxes in cluttered storage areas subject to unauthorized entry, leaky roofs, and lacking either fire suppression systems or pest control programs.

Each year millions of taxpayer dollars are spent to recover artifacts and produce records that are later destroyed or damaged because archaeologists improperly pack, over pack, stack boxes without lids, or place them in areas with excessive levels of humidity, water, or active rodent populations. In these situations, provenience labels and brown, craft paper field bags rapidly deteriorate. In many cases, artifacts and site records not only go unprotected, but also remain uncataloged for decades. The Army Corps of Engineers (Trimble and Meyers 1991) found that the substandard record management at government-funded institutions resulted in the loss of information that impaired the usefulness of artifact collections acquired from CRM.

I have often wondered why a professional archaeologist who excavates (the site is necessarily destroyed in the process) is viewed with respect while an avocational archaeologist is accused of mining for artifacts. It has been estimated that between 60 and 75 percent of work completed in the field by professional archaeologists is not reported. A comprehensive search for statistics on this problem has revealed nothing. Everyone knows the majority of field work goes unpublished but no one wants to admit it. The archaeological community has really buried that one. And worse, many times the field notes are closely guarded secrets, lest someone else should use the information.

“Too often archaeologists have failed to match the scale of their efforts in the field with the scale of their publication effort. Archaeology is justified only if the information is later made available to the public” (Sharer and Ashmore 1993:156). “Publication is the ultimate responsibility of all archaeologists and, like all other scientists, their results must be made available to public audiences. This obligation lies at the very heart of professional archaeological responsibility.” (Sharer and Ashmore 1993:599). “Unfortunately, communication to the public is the most neglected aspect of professional archaeology” (Sharer and Ashmore 1993:599). However, in many cases the work completed in the field by avocational archaeologists is reported in local archaeology society journals. So it is legitimate to ask which is worse, a professional who excavates correctly and fails to report the findings, or an amateur whose techniques are less than perfect but reports on his work?

While everyone is interested in historic preservation, it would appear that some have wandered around the bend. Jon L. Gibson and Joe Sanders, both archaeologists from Louisiana, wrote in the SAA bulletin (vol. 11, no. 5), “We suggest that just because sites happen to be on private property should not make them privately owned. We also maintain that archaeologists must challenge one of American’s most precious rights - the right to do as you please to your own land - if we are going to have any chance of preserving our diminishing heritage.”

As if that were not embarrassing enough, they went on, “First, we must press for legislation that places an archaeological lien on private property with significant archaeological sites. Second, archaeologists must be the ones to choose which sites are to be protected. We can not entrust this selection to a governmental board or legislated process, which would give land owners the final word on whether a site will be protected.” Now I think I remember what started the French Revolution!

But that’s not all: “Archaeologists must be more than just stewards of the past. They must serve as the public conscience. They must act on society’s behalf even when society is insensitive or objects.” EVEN IF SOCIETY OBJECTS? Well, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In my faxed response (which was published in a subsequent SAA Bulletin), I pointed out that most Americans would probably agree that private property rights guaranteed under the Constitution related to illegal search and seizure are more important than archaeology and historic preservation combined.

Where would one suspect that museums get the artifacts that are being displayed? Who are the major supporters and contributors to those institutions: professional archaeologists, the United States Government, or the private collectors? Why is it that collectors are discredited by archaeologists for purchasing artifacts, but celebrated when their collections are donated to an institution? Does that transformation not seem strange and hypocritical?

So the wedge of discontent is driven ever deeper between archaeologists and the collecting community by ill-thought-out or unfortunate comments published in private-subscription journals. Both Dr. Watkins (a Native American and political archaeologist) who speaks officially for the SAA and publicly preaches the rhetoric of cooperation with all groups, and two Louisiana rogue revolutionaries, who would commandeer the law because they think our elected officials cannot be trusted to do the right thing, are defining new and radical directions.

While most archaeologists understand that cooperation among all parties is beneficial and productive, there are those who are loud and overly zealous. Extremists seem to be floating to the surface everywhere, collectively revealing the soft underbelly of archaeology. An item that appeared in “The American Committee for Preservation of Archaeological Collections” newsletter, (March 2000), amply illustrates the trend: “It seems a planned and approved exhibit of Clovis projectile points, that was to coincide with the Santa Fe conference last October and be a part of it, was cancelled at the Museum of Fine Arts. A local archaeologist apparently complained that Clovis material should not be exhibited in an art museum, and he persuaded a Native American to claim that Clovis points are sacred and should not be displayed at all. The museum director (Stuart Ashman) folded under the pressure and the exhibit did not take place. (Ed. Note: Clovis points certainly ARE works of art and would make a splendid exhibit in any art museum.”) In canceling the show (titled “Points of View”) meetings were held behind closed doors, and the names of the dissidents remain closely guarded secrets. Ironically, the same museum currently has an exhibition that features “Clovis” points recently knapped by a pueblo Indian.

As another example of extremism, an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico said he would resign from the SAA because its president was a speaker at the “Clovis and Beyond” conference. He evidently objected to privately owned Clovis materials being displayed at the conference along side those held in the public trust, including collections from the Peabody Museum, The Smithsonian Institution, The Denver Natural History Museum, the University of Texas, and many others.

Public money for archaeological research is rapidly becoming an endangered species, necessitating an increased dependence on private funding, much of which comes either directly from collectors or is heavily influenced by them. There are things professional archaeologists can do to help themselves. Here is some advice and a few observations from Indiana Jones to the SAA

1. I am born of you and am nourished by your lectures, your reports, and your beautiful museum displays. Thank you for giving me life.

2. Leave the jargon at home. Your future depends on increased public interest, and that’s where your future funding will originate. If 14-year-old students don’t understand your report, you’re doing it wrong. And incidentally, color in books is OK.

3. Stop whining about what amateurs are doing. You have bigger problems at home, like unreported field work, for starters.

4. Collectors are not going away, and you’re heavily outnumbered. Get used to it and learn from them.

5. Don’t get carried away with your importance. Private property rights come first, now and always.

6. If it’s a Canis Latrans bone, give us a break; say it’s part of a coyote.

7. Your peers already know you’re smart, so write for the rest of us sometime. We’ll buy your book and read it; they probably won’t

8. Lighten up. It’s not as if dreaded diseases are being cured or famines being prevented by archaeology. You should be enjoying it more.

References
Barker, Alex W. 2000 Ethics, E-Commerce, and the Future of the Past. Society for American Archaeology Bulletin 18:1:15.

Bonnichsen, Robson, Michele Punke, Charmay Allred, Kenneth B. Tankersley, Forrest Fenn, and Mark Mullins 1999 Clovis and Beyond: A Peopling of the Americas Conference, Abstracts, Collections, and Exhibits, Santa Fe.

Brose David S., William Green, and Mark Seeman 1997 Tribute to James B. Griffin (1905-1997) Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 22:2:125-158.

Clovis and Beyond conference WebPages

Fenn, Forrest 1994 Letters to the Editor. Society for American Archaeology Bulletin 12:2:3.

Fenn, Forrest Personal communication with the archaeologist who received the call.

Frison, George C. 2000 Progress and Challenges. Scientific American Discovering Archaeology, January/February, pp. 40-42.

Gibson, Jon L., and Joe Sanders 1993 The Death of the Sixth Ridge at Poverty Point: What Can We Do? Society for American Archaeology Bulletin 11:5:7-9.

Griffin, James B. 1971 A Commentary on an Unusual Research Program in American Anthropology, in Dedication of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

Leach, Jeff D. 1999 Clovis and Beyond. Discovering Archaeology, September/October, p. 28.

Lilly, Eli 1937 Prehistoric Antiquities of Indiana. Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis.
Museum of New Mexico WebPages.

National Science Foundation/SRS 1999 Survey of Federal Funds for Research and Development.

Ray, Louis L. 1941 Symposium on Folsom-Yuma Problems. 48:10:234-235.

Sharer, Robert S., and Wendy Ashmore 1993 Archaeology: Discovering Our Past, Mayfield Publishing, Mountain View.

Shott, Michael J. 2000 Geographic Emphasis In American Archaeological Practice. Society for American Archaeology 18:2:22-27.

Society for American Archaeology 2000 Past Presidents of SAA. Program of the 65th Annual Meeting, p.121.

Trimble, Michael K., and Thomas B. Meyers 1991 Saving the Past From the Future: Archaeological Curation in the St. Louis District. US Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District.

Watkins, Joe 2000 Salvaging Our Ethics. Anthropology News 41:3:26-27.

Watkins, Joe, K. Anne Pyburn, and Pam Cressey 2000 Community Relations: What the Practicing Archaeologist Needs to Know to Work Effectively with Local and/or Descendant Communities, in Teaching Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Susan J. Bender and George S. Smith, Society for American Archaeology, Washington DC.

Willey, Gordon R., and Jeremy A. Sabloff 1974 A History of American Archaeology, First Edition, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London.