Tall Tales From Capt Rogue

Edwin Streeter Egelston

My Great Grandfather on my Grandmother’s side, Edwin Streeter Egleston, known as Ed, was the son of Asa Barrett Egleston, and his wife Rebecca Ann Arnold. Edwin was the last child born to their family when Asa was 50 and Rebecca was 39.

Early census and other documents show him using the name Edwin as a child, later in life I start to see the use of Ed, Edmund (incorrectly), and finally on his death certificate, Edward (also incorrect). Most of these can be attributed to census takers taking creative license.

Assorted folks also tend to adjust the family surname as Egelston, Egilston, Egelston, Eggleston, Egglestone, Eggelstone, Eggleton and so on. The spelling of a surname is one of the first things you can’t take too seriously in doing genealogy. Many times, you need to search many different spellings for the same person…but it is usually still all the same family. I tend to use Egleston, as it seems to be the most commonly used, but you can see differences within the same family group.

As a further example of how last names can change over time, my own grandfather, John M Profitt, used a spelling of his name different from what his brothers used, Proffit, and the more commonly used Proffitt. So someone telling you they aren’t related because of the way they spell their name should be taken with a nod and a smile…or, in a more southern way, just a “bless your heart” will do.

Edwin was born on October 9^th, 1868 in Pendleton Kentucky when Andrew Johnson was the 17^th president. President Johnson had assumed the presidency when President Lincoln was assassinated just 3 years earlier.

The Civil war had just ended in 1865, and the country was still reeling from the assassination of Lincoln and the massive carnage of countrymen fighting each other…and the Indian wars out West were in full swing with General Sherman and Colonel Custer leading the way. Crazy to imagine my great grandparents in these times.

Here are a few other notable things that happened in 1868; Andrew Johnson was the first president to be impeached… for trying to dismiss the Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the Mardi Gras in New Orleans had floats in their parade for the first time, the city of Reno was founded, Memorial Day was first observed, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted, guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship, Lt. Col. George A. Custer led an attack on the Cheyenne, killing 103, President Johnson unconditionally pardoned all Civil War rebels and Ulysses S. Grant was elected president.

Ed was the youngest of eight children in his family and had three brothers and four sisters… Sarah, James (he died when he was only 1 year old, when Ed was 7), Alonzo, who was apparently called “Lonzo” when he was young, Malinda, Amanda, Matilda, and Marcus.

In 1854, 1-year-old James’ cause of death is noted as “Teething”. I was curious how teething might cause a child’s death, so I did some research and discovered that teething was often listed as a cause of death back then and found these tidbits:

The conclusion reached by medical professionals of the time was because the teething process coincided with the ages of high mortality, it was actually responsible for infant illness and death. According to accepted medical wisdom, teething led to a number of afflictions and displayed a variety of symptoms including convulsions, diarrhea, bronchitis, croup, vomiting, neck abscesses, insanity and meningitis. The teething phase was perceived as fraught with risk, a process to be dreaded.

The tendency in the past to attribute serious disease to teething was so prevalent that in 1842 teething was the registered cause of death in 4.8% of all infants who died in London under the age of 1 year and 7.3% of those between the ages of 1 to 3 years according to the Registrar General’s repo.

Babies often get a very high temperature when teething, with a fever, which causes convulsions and that is what causes the death. Even today a young child can get a high temperature with teething, but antibiotics have stopped a lot of the trouble but even so they used can catch other infections, such as scarlet fever and diphtheria. I have seen a lot of Victorian death certificates with the babies dying of “teething”

Additionally, in the first half of the twentieth century, teething powders in the English-speaking world often contained calomel, a form of mercury. It was removed from most powders in 1954.

The 1860 census shows a 42-year-old great-great grandfather Asa with his 30-year-old wife Rebecca farming in Pendleton Kentucky, just northwest of Louisville, with Sarah 8, Lonzo 3, and Malinda 1. The nearest Post Office is noted as Elizabeth Town.

The 1870 census shows Asa is 52 and Rebecca is 41, and they are farming with their children Sarah 18, Alonzo 14, Malinda 11, Amanda 10, Matilda 7, and Marcus 5. They are shown still living in Pendleton KY.

Their oldest daughter Sarah was married in December of 1870 to Norvin G. Dougherty. She died just a few years later in 1875. Her younger sister Malinda appears to have then married her widowed husband Norvin a year later in 1876.

Interestingly, this is not the first time a younger sister married the husband of an older sibling in this family. Asa Egleston divorced his first wife Mary Arnold when she ran off with “an abandoned and degraded single man” named Woodford Wilson after nine years of marriage to Asa. Asa then married her younger sister Rebecca Arnold, seven years younger than Mary.

We only have Asa’s side of the story, from testimonies taken for the divorce, so what actually happened is anyone’s guess.

Divorce - Asa B. Egleston — (Transcript) Asa Egleston -v- Mary Egleston – Bill filed June 5, 1850 Asa Egleston was married to Mary Arnold in 1841 in Pendleton County and they lived together as man and wife in said county happily and contented so far he was concerned and to all appearances as far as his wife was concerned until about May 16, 1850 to the surprise of him (something unreadable) she secretly abandoned him and eloped with Woodford Wilson, an abandoned and degraded single man, to parts unknown to Asa. He charges that she is now and has been since her elopement living in shameful adultery with said Wilson…prays for divorce.

Mary eventually remarried a man named Joseph Soden a few years later and had four children with him.

According to Ed’s youngest daughter Bertha Mae, Edwin’s family moved from Pendleton to Menifee when he was just six years old, which would have been around 1874. This is substantiated by the next census in 1880.

The 1880 census notes Edwin’s father Asa is 62, with Rebecca 51, now living in Frenchburg, with their children “Lonzo” 24, Matilda 16, Marcus 14 and Edwin, now 12. Asa is listed as a farmer, with his sons listed as laborers, but it also shows he had not worked for the past 6 months…Marcus and Edwin are shown as not working for the past 6 months as well. Alonzo hadn’t worked for 7 months. The census was taken in June, so you would think they would have been active planting and tending crops, so this is curious to me.

In 1883, Ed’s married sister Malinda died at the age of 24. Ed was 14. I can’t find a specific reason for Malinda’s death so far, but again, she had married her sister’s widowed husband Norvin by then and may have had complications with child birth…but that is just speculation on my part.

Poor Norvin must have felt he was living a tragic life, having lost 2 wives, sisters at that, at such a young age. He remarried again in 1885 to Rosa Plunkett and later had at least 3 children, with 2 daughters that also died at the relatively young ages of 40 and 20 as well.

In 1886, Ed experienced death once again as his mother Rebecca died June 9^th, 1886, at the age of 56. Ed was only 17 at the time. I often ponder at the seemingly glum faces of folks in old photos…it is not too hard to imagine why in Edwin’s case.

Rebecca Ann Arnold Egelston’s headstone

But at least a few happier times were in Ed’s future…on October 6th, 1894, at the age of 26, Ed married Margaret Ann McGlothen, born in Menifee County 7 August 1877. Margaret was known as Maggie a good part of her life, and Ma later in life. They were married in Menifee County. Their first child Loyd Lee was born a year later in 1895.

Margaret and Edwin’s wedding photo. This is an old tin type…printed on a sheet of metal.

Ed and Maggie ultimately had 8 children: Lloyd Lee 1895-1925, Walter Hobart 1897-1901 (died at 3 years old), Ulysses Sidney “Grant” 1900-1976, Reece Kash 1903-1978, my grandmother Nannie Elizabeth 1906-2002, Loberta “Berta” Gertrude 1909-1963, Sylvia Pearl 1912-1964 and Bertha Mae 1915-2004.

Ed and Margaret’s adult children: Loberta Gertrude Egleston Blevins, Ulysses Sydney Grant Egelston, Nannie Elizabeth Egelston Profitt, Reece Kash Egelston, Sylvia Pearl Egelston Profitt, Bertha Mae Egelston Day.

Ed’s father Asa died May 19^th, 1897 at the age of 79. Ed was 28 at the time. Walter Hobart was born in October of the same year, followed by Ulysses Sidney Grant, who went by Grant, 3 years later in June of 1900.

Asa Barrett Egelston’s headstone

By 1900, Ed, 31, is listed as a carpenter living on his farm in Frenchburg with “Margret” 22, Lloyd 4 and Walter 2. The census states he owned his home at the time and it was not mortgaged.

Maggie and Ed

In 1901, Ed and Maggie’s three-year-old son Walter Hobart died. I have not found a cause of death yet, but this had to take yet another toll on poor Ed’s heart.

Reece Kash, who went by Kash, was born in 1903. My mamaw, Nannie Elizabeth, was born in April of 1906. Loberta Gertrude followed a year later in April of 1909.

In 1910 we see that 41 year old Ed is noted as “Edmund Egilston” on the census record and he is again farming rather than doing carpentry work… the family is noted as living in Mariba, the farm, perhaps a new one, is now mortgaged with “Margret”, 32, Grant 9, “Rease” 7, “Nanie” 4, and 11 month old “Laberta”…spellings are from the census enumerator and of course not to be trusted for accuracy.

Ed and Ma

In 1912, Sylvia Pearl was born in January. The baby of the family, Bertha Mae, was born 3 years later in March of 1915.

Eldest son Loyd married Louellen Ingram around 1915 and had 5 children over the years: Elbert 1916-1995, Margaret 1919-1998, Bernice 1920-1998, William 1922-1975, and Ruby 1924-2003. His wife Louellen passed away in 1959.

Ed and Maggie’s son Grant married Sarah Steele in 1919 and they had 9 children: Fred Denton 1919-1998, Gladys Gertrude 1921-2000, Reese Clay 1924-2017, Chester Lee “Peanut” 1926-1997, Audrey M 1930-?, Olive Ray 1930-1931, John E 1932-?, Bobby Darrell 1936-1936, Sidney Carl 1939-2004. Grant and Sarah both passed away in 1976.

US Grant Egelston and Sarah Belle Steele

Ed and Maggie’s 18-year-old daughter Nannie married my grandfather John M Profitt in 1924, moving out to live with him and start a family. They had 5 children over the years: my father Gordon Lester 1925-2006, Alma Jean 1928-2021, Helen Maxine 1930-1996, Densil Ray 1932-1994 and Janice Gaye 1935-2017.

John M Profitt and Nannie Elizabeth Egelston

In October of 1924, son Kash married Viola Gillie at the age of 21. They had 7 children over the years: William Hobart 1925-2001, Dorothy Florence 1928-2015, Marion Chalmer 1930-2000, Virl Paul 1934-1935, Kenneth Ray 1939-2011, Reece Kash 1947-1949 and Doris 1947 (still living). Kash passed away in 1978, with Viola passing away in 2001.

This is a photo of Ed and Margaret McGlothen with their son Reece’ family along with their daughter Bertha’s family. I believe this photo to be taken about 1938, as Ed McGlothen died Dec of 1939. Also, Bobby Day was born in 1938 and there are not enough kids for 1939. Anna Jean Day also died in 1939. My Guesses: Lt to rt standing: Reece Kash Egelston, Edwin Streeter Egelston, Margaret Ann McGlothen Egelston, William Hobert, Oliver C. Day, Chalmer Egelston. In wagon: Bertha May Egelston with Anna Jean Day, Dorothy Egelston, Viola Gillie Egelston

In October of 1924, Ed’s brother Alonzo died at the age of 68.

Alonzo Egelston

Also in 1925, Ed’s oldest child Loyd Lee died at the age of 29. The death certificate says he was a miner, and died from what looks like “pysonia”. Of course, miners led very hard lives, but I haven’t been able to conclusively ID what pysonia is, but it took over a year to have its effect on poor Loyd. While the Spanish Flu pandemic raged from 1918-1920, it should have calmed down by 1925. Yet another young death in the family.

Lloyd Lee Egelston

Ed’s sister Amanda died in November of 1927 at the age of 67.

The 1930 census lists Edwin’s name as Edmon Egleston, 61 years old, living on a farm on Indian Creek Road in Leatherwood, Menifee County. Margaret is 52, with only the 3 youngest girls remaining at home…Laberta 20 (Loberta), Sylvia 18, and 15-year-old Bertha.

Margaret and Ed at their home

An interesting note here, is that Ed, Margaret and Loberta are listed as not having attended school, while Sylvia and Bertha had. It says they can all read and write. I know my grandmother Nannie at least made it through grammar school:

In 1935, the youngest daughter, Bertha Mae, married Oliver C. Day when she was 20.

Oliver Day and Bertha Mae Egelston getting their marriage license in 1935

Bertha and Oliver had a number of children: Anna Jean 1937-1939 (Death Certificate states she swallowed a large bean and choked), Bobby C. 1938 (still living), Alma Pauline 1939-1941 (Death Cert states died of Influenza), Janet Irene 1941 (still living), Bonnie F (still living), William (Billy) Raymond 1946-(Still living), Larry F. 1948-(Still living).

5 years later, daughter Sylvia Pearl married James Austin Profitt on May 27, 1937.

James Austin Profitt and Sylvia Pearl Egelston

James was born in Powell County 22 March 1910. I found several notations on photos, margins of envelopes, as well as Aunt Janice telling me, that James was thought not to be related to our Profitt line.

After doing much digging, I discovered James was indeed related, although it was going all the way back many generations to one of Great Grandfather x7 Sylvester’s other sons, Reverend John Proffitt Sr. from Virginia. Sylvia and James had one daughter, Shirley Faye, born 27 February, 1938 in Middletown Ohio. Shirley passed away in 2019.

James and Sylvia seem to have gone their separate ways after the 1940 census, as James next showed up with a new family in Texas. Sylvia doesn’t seem to have remarried and passed away Jan 26^th, 1964 at the age of 51. James passed away in California June 11^th, 1968.

On May 22nd, 1937 Loberta, at the age of 28, married Clarence Emit Blevins. Loberta and Clarence had 2 daughters: Norma Jean in 1939, and Marilyn Kaye 1941-2011. Clarence passed away in 1956 at the age of 47 and Loberta then married William Taylor Hatton.

Loberta Gertrude Egelston and Clarence Emit Blevins

In yet another heartbreaking chapter of this family, Berta was killed by Hatton a few weeks later, in February of 1963. I have been reluctant to share this shocking occurrence in the past out of respect to those involved, but I do feel it is a significant part of our family history.

Newspaper article from 1963

As a family historian and genealogist that spends a great deal of time digging around in the past, uncovering skeletons stashed away in hidden closets is a part of the work. Much of it I keep to myself or only share with those involved… but far too much family history is lost over time.

I was only 4 when this horrific incident happened…living in Germany with the family and shortly to be on our way to Ft. Benning Georgia. I was oblivious to all of it for decades…until I happened to put a photo up on one of my early family web pages 10-15 years ago that happened to have Berta and Hatton together…my Aunt Janice then gave me the story, including a 1963 newspaper clipping, along with a request to please take the photo with “that evil man” off the page.

According to Janice, my Uncle Densil was the one that found the crowbar that killed their aunt Berta in the back yard of her house in Middletown, Ohio.

Murder weapon

Hatton had fled to some of his family down in Lexington, Kentucky and when confronted by local law enforcement at the front door, ran out the back and took his own life with a pistol.

At least Ed and Maggie were spared this additional tragedy after so much loss in their family. In researching many of our ancestors over the years, losing so many family members was unfortunately not a unique experience.

In this day and age, I think we become rather complacent and secure as medicine and medical procedures have allowed us to live healthier and longer lives. Hopefully we strive to ensure it is a life worth living.

After 71 years, 1 month and 26 days, Great granddaddy Edwin Streeter Egleston passed from this life. His death certificate (his name is noted as Edward) states he died of Laryngeal Tuberculosis, a relatively rare disease, on Dec 5^th, 1939, at the age of 71 in Mariba, KY.

Edwin’s Death Certificate

After Ed’s death, the 1940 census shows that Maggie, age 63, moved in with her eldest daughter…at my mamaw and papaw Profitt’s house. My father Gordon, the oldest child, was 14. The youngest, Janice, was only 5. That must have been interesting living with young children again after so long.

Margaret lived for another 22 years, to the age of 84, passing away on May 30th, 1962, when my family was still stationed in Germany. I was only 3 when she passed away.

Ed and Maggie are both buried in the Mack Cemetery on McCausey Ridge Road.

Why yes, I am a BRAT

I belong to an online social media group that is focused on Military BRATs…the children of military families. Several comments where we commiserated over our shared culture got me to thinking, as things often do, and started me writing down the bits and pieces noted here.

The name may sound derogatory to non-BRATs, but it is very much worn as a badge of honor amongst those of us belonging to this invisible subculture. No one can say exactly where the term originates, but many suggest it came from an old status label standing for British Regiment Attached Traveler, and it was assigned to families who were traveling abroad with a soldier. Eventually, it simply referred to children of military parents. But the term stuck, and was adopted in many places around the world, including in the U.S.

There are many shared attributes that bind BRATs together, most notably that our parents served in the military and were subject to the needs and wants of the service. This meant constantly moving every couple of years, losing any friendships you had developed along with any real sense of home or place that you belonged to. Changing homes and schools, missing family get-togethers and parties and likely moving off to foreign countries where everything is turned upside down.

Indeed, the hardest question a BRAT gets asked is “where are you from”. While this seems an easy question for most, even after 6 decades I still answer with “well, I am an Army Brat, so I lived all over, but I lived the longest in Ohio.

I was born at Fort Knox, Kentucky at Ireland Army Hospital, and lived there for less than a year. Dad then got orders for Germany, but dependents were not allowed as President Eisenhower thought it was still too dangerous for families as the Cold War was in full swing with the USSR.

These were the years after the Berlin Blockade and airlift. The Iron Curtain was a real thing: the Berlin Wall was built while we were living in West Germany and the Cuban Missile Crisis had everyone on edge in Europe. My father’s job was to patrol the Bavarian/Czechoslovakian border and stand in the way of any Soviet aggression.

So we then moved to Ohio to live with my father’s parents John M and Nannie in Dayton, where my brother Greg was born at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

Me and mom with a picture of dad when he was alone in Germany

Eisenhower eventually relented, and off we went to join dad in West Germany. My first plane trip was flying over the Atlantic, first to Ireland. I distinctly remember mom pointing out the lush green patchwork of fields below us and Greg screaming bloody murder because his ears were giving him fits on the decent. Mom was a real trooper packing up everything with 2 young kids, dealing with all of this on her own.

Our passport photo for going to Germany. Greg in fine form.

Of course, when we arrived there was no housing for US families, so we ended up living above a Bavarian Gaust Haus…Guest House…a tavern. This is the kind of experience BRATs get normalized to. We thought there was nothing unusual about being babysat by Momma Myer, the proprietor of the tavern who barely spoke any English. We were not exactly thrilled about drinking our Orange Fanta warm, as she forbid children to drink cold beverages, but we got used to it.

The Gast Haus we lived above when we first got to Germany. Mama Meyer’s Family with our family

When one of us got sick, she would pile all of us, including her grandchildren, in the big feather bed to be sick at the same time. This is how I had Chicken Pox, Measles, Mumps and who knows what else before I was 5. Is German Measles just measles if you are already in Germany?

I was forbidden to go downstairs to the bar alone of course, but when all the whooping and hollering and yodeling started I would creep down the stairs far enough to watch all the fun until mom or Momma Meyer caught up with me.

When dad was off patrolling the border, sometimes for days on end, mom would pack Greg in a stroller, with me on a leash, and we would catch a bus or train to a PX for some shopping as she didn’t drive. Using the German metro system was an adventure of its own with 2 kids. We lived above Momma Myer’s for about a year until housing was built.

All the social activities were with military friends and families. Company Christmas dinners and holiday spreads, parties with dad’s army buddies, that kind of socializing. Momma Meyer and her family were the only civilian friends we had.

When housing was finally available, we moved up to the 3^rd floor of an apartment style building. It was a long haul up and down all those the steps for short legs, so I would yell up at mom for our toys and she would toss them out the window down to us.

Our apartment complex when we finally got housing

Another favorite past time for 2 young boys was peeing on the steam radiator next to the toilet in the bathroom for the sizzle and steam. Mom wasn’t as big a fan as we were.

It was also very exciting when I got a Handy Andy toolbox for Christmas. It had all the essentials: hammer, saw, screwdriver, pliers, square and so on. Now, these were not harmless plastic toys back in those days…everything was made of metal and the saw had real teeth.

After 50 years the only thing I still have is the triangle

Being an adventurous and curious kid, I had each tool systematically taken away as I explored my newly discovered handyman skills on table legs, chairs, my brother’s head and most exciting…pounding the screwdriver in the standard German 220 volt wall socket and shutting down power in the whole apartment. I still miss that toolbox…I still have the triangle, my oldest possession along with my Bavarian hat.

So after we moved into the military housing at Christensen Barracks in Bindlach, along came Laurie, born at the US Army Hospital in Nuremburg. If you’re keeping track that’s 3 kids in 3 years in 3 different places and 4 moves so far.

One of the interesting things about Christensen Barracks apartment where we lived is that there was still a big pile of demolition material just behind our building. This was from a WWII Luftwaffe airfield at Bayreuth-Bindlach that had been razed…remember this was still only 15 years after WWII and Germany was still rebuilding. It was absolutely off-limits to us due to the unstable piles and oh, the odd unexploded bomb or two from when it was targeted by the Allies. So, of course it had a magnetic attraction for a young boy, and I had my behind fanned a time or three for being out of bounds. Not too many civilian kids have to worry much about unexploded ordinance.

That pile of rubble behind me is the old WWII airfield

Being in on-post housing meant we were much closer to a PX (Post Exchange for you civies), so it was a relatively short jaunt for mom and us. This is when she started collecting 45’s to play on our brand new Grundig/Telefunken Hi-Fi stereo console. It was done in beautiful black walnut with a receiver, record turntable and stereo reel to reel tape machine.

Greg and I looking dapper in front of the Telefunken Hi-Fi stereo console

Mom bought whatever was new and available, so I became schooled at a young age with Elvis, Del Shannon, Ray Charles, Bobby Vinton, Sam Cooke, Nat King Cole, you name it…some of my favorites were Apache by the Shadows, The Stripper by David Rose, Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles and Moon River by Henry Mancini. There were so many, and I am so grateful I was exposed to so many tunes at such an early age I even learned to sing Musse I Denn (Wooden Heart) with Elvis in German.

We lived in Germany for almost 3 years and still picnicked with our German friends Mamma Meyer and her daughter’s family, including her daughter Karin, my first girl-friend. But, duty called and we didn’t stay anywhere too long.

We corresponded with them with letters and Christmas cards for a few years after we were back in the US, but eventually lost track.

I recently joined a German Facebook Group from Bayreuth and worked with the German members to figure out exactly where that old Gaust Haus was. Today it is a beauty shop. Pretty cool to track it down.

Dad’s next orders were back to the US, where the Army was interested in testing a new theory in mobile warfare, Air Mobility using helicopters. Used mostly for medivac in the Korean War, the generals were now interested in taking the war directly to where ever the enemy was at the time. They gathered a bunch of veteran warriors and assembled them in the 11 Airborne, renaming it the 11^th Air Assault Division at Fort Benning, GA.

We moved into on-post housing right away in Georgia, a two-level townhouse style apartment building. Our building had a short patio in the back, a few feet of grass, and then it dropped down an embankment to swampland. As a kid I loved it, dad taught me what snakes were poisonous, what poison ivy and oak looked like and to stay away from the big snapping turtles if I wanted to keep my fingers. Greg and I would wander those swamps for hours looking for critters.

You can see the drop-off to the swamp just past the fence. Not much of a yard to play in!

Moving in we instantly had neighborhood pals that were all BRATs as well, there was instant camaraderie as we all had parents doing the same kind of thing. There were a few neighborhood bullies, as there are anywhere you go, but we learned how to stay away from them most of the time.

I remember one kid whose nickname was Sweety, he had a switchblade knife that he would flip into the ground, pull out, and lick the blade to show everyone how tough he was. It worked on this 5-year-old pretty well. Looking back, Sweety must have had a tough life at home, I remember his dad chasing him down and thrashing him badly all the way home. Of course, he had to take it out on us for seeing him crying the next time he caught up with us.

One of the other things that was not all that common in civilian neighborhoods back then was the different cultural and ethnic backgrounds in our BRAT neighborhoods. I played with Black, Hispanic, Filipino, Puerto Rican and other diverse children and didn’t think too much about our differences…it was more about our similarities with being military kids whose fathers did the same things.

The one noticeable thing was how the rank of our fathers came into the picture more than color as we got older. Officers were typically in a different area from the enlisted, but you would get a warning about playing with kids with higher ranking NCO fathers. It was not good when you beat the Sergeant Major’s kid at something and he went home crying. Dad might have something to answer to with his heels locked the next day.

Luckily, dad was a higher ranking NCO at the time, so I might have pulled rank as a kid once or twice. I did enjoy going through the barracks with him once in a while as he checked on his soldiers. Strutting along behind him as he expertly tore a private’s bed apart, or kicked over a trash can gave me a sense of importance.

The powers that be decided the unit he was going to Vietnam with all had to be airborne qualified. Now, dad was a tough old bird and by then had made it through WWII as an infantryman in the Pacific, Korea and Ranger school. His knees were not what they used to be, but he went through it. One of the things his unit did for airborne school was to shave their heads down to a nub. So, of course his boys got a similar treatment. None of that 60’s hippy hair for an Airborne Ranger’s sons.

Buzz jobs all around!

I started kindergarten at Fort Benning. I remember the school house was just a three-room building made out of an old barracks. They had just put-up walls to divide the big open bay into separate rooms. The thing is, the bathrooms and drinking fountain were at one end and there was no hallway, so to do your business or get a drink you had to walk through the other classrooms, which was a constant source of entertainment.

I also remember one of my first traumatic life events: I had a Bozo the Clown lunchbox that I left on the bus and was unconsolable until the bus driver gave it back the next day.

Bozo lunch box

A short time later brother Phil was born at Martin Army Hospital at Fort Benning. That’s 4 kids, all born in different states or countries with 5 moves in 5 years. Moving around this much starts to build a sense of flexibility and independence that most civilian kids are oblivious to. I came to expect a move, not to settle in one place

It does not build a sense of “this is where my roots are” and perhaps it is why, as the oldest with the most memories of this nomadic life, I am the only one that has moved farther than a 30 mile circle from where the family is now centered in Ohio.

Dad’s unit was reflagged from the 11^th Air Assault Division to the 1^st Bn 8^th Cavalry “Jumping Mustangs” (Airborne-Airmobile-Air Assault) in the 1^st Cavalry Division. They then got orders for Vietnam and everything changed for our family.

Dad reading letters from home in his tent at An Khe Vietnam.

Up until then, Vietnam was a place no one had really heard much about and few knew where it even was on a map. The 1st Cav Division was the first divisional sized element to deploy to Vietnam, a place that would be so important in everyone’s lives for the next 10 years.

What it meant to my family was another move…something that was totally expected and by then normal…but the new embellishment to the game was that dad wasn’t coming with us. He was going to this odd sounding place called Vietnam to fight bad guys and we wouldn’t see him for a long, long time…and he might not even come back. We were used to him being gone for days, even weeks at a time when he was out in the field or patrolling the border, but I couldn’t fathom what a year was at that young age.

They said the usual cliché things you see in all the movies: “You are the man of the house now”, “You have to behave and listen to your mother”, “You have to be a big boy and help take care of your brothers and sister”, ”I have to go fight these bad men to protect you” and so on. I was six years old. I knew something was up from their tone, so I took it all in, nodded my head in solemn acceptance and still figured he would be back in no time after he beat the bad guys.

This would be the last war for dad, he would have his 20 years for retirement in Vietnam, so my parents decided to move us all to Ohio to be near family and find a place we could finally start putting down those fabled “roots” while dad was off fighting in Vietnam.

I’m still not sure how we all got from Georgia to Ohio…dad must have taken leave to drive us all in our Impala Wagon as my mother never got her driver’s license.

What I do remember was mom dealing with the contractors finishing off our brand new house. It was in a new subdivision and still had a lot of work to do. Picking paint colors, finishing off one side of the basement with a family room and half-bath, arguing about all the things on the punch list they didn’t feel was their responsibility.

There was no yard at all, nothing but mud. Apparently being “the man of the house” included working me like a borrowed mule to spread and rake topsoil to start the landscaping. Blistered hands and sunburns “so daddy will have a nice place to come back to.”

Brand new house with no yard, just straw over mud.

As it sunk in that dad was really not coming back any time soon, I began paying more and more attention to the evening news talking about this Vietnam place where dad was. Vietnam was really just starting to heat up when dad went over, and the news started silently running a scrolling list of the KIA’s/MIA’s to close out the newscast each day. These were short at first but began to get longer and longer…and I began to grasp the notion that if dad’s name was on that list he was not coming back. That list became all important to watch, and mom even allowed our little black and white TV to be rolled over into the dining room so we could watch while eating dinner.

It became a nightly ritual to glue myself to the TV as the news showed footage of American GI’s in the background. I scoured each one to see if I might see dad, then read every name on the scroll at the end. This is one of the terrible things that BRATs with parents on a deployment share in common that they all wish they didn’t. Waiting for that telegram or call or visit or whatever they do these days to find out your parent is dead is something that stays with you forever.

*Walter Cronkite giving the news on Vietnam on TV*

I had started the 1^st grade, in a brand new elementary school, built just the year before. It was huge and intimidating compared to the little 3 room school house I had gone to kindergarten in. So many kids! I had to walk to school, and the new subdivision we had moved to didn’t even have roads paved yet, just the curbs surrounding sticky clay mud where the streets would eventually go. I did this by myself as mom had to take care of the other kids, but I was a big boy and man of the house used to playing in bombed out Nazi airfields, so no biggie right?

Now that we had moved into this new “civilian world”, away from an Army post, suddenly no one else had parents in the military. They couldn’t understand where my father was, or were paying the slightest attention to the all-important-to-me Vietnam War. There must have been some kids at my school that knew of someone in Vietnam, an older brother or cousin at least, but I don’t remember a single one. They all seemed oblivious, even the teachers, which made it feel even lonelier.

I’m sure that by then, I had already starting developing the shell that many BRATs do from always being on the move. Losing good friends constantly. Becoming very independent. Being flexible and adapting to whatever comes your way. But being in the middle of so many kids that did not share this lifestyle was very tough at first. Many of the kids had already formed bonds from living together in their neighborhoods since birth and having at least one grade together under their belts.

Some BRATS speak of moving and instantly falling in and befriending the new BRATS in school and their neighborhoods, but I was right on the cusp and went from the military environment to the civilian world and it was a sudden and unexpected difference. Luckily, I had a big family with plenty of brothers and sisters, and many, many cousins, to foster that sense of family, place and roots.

A few years later my sister Melody would be the last of the children born in a military hospital, Wright Patterson Air Force Base. When my youngest brother Paul arrived on the radar I remember mom telling my father she was not having another child in a military hospital, even though it would cost much more in medical bills.

I don’t believe my brothers and sisters feel as “BRATty” as I do, as they were all very young, and dad had already retired from the Army by the time they all started school, but I’m pretty sure they still feel like a part of a military family as both my parents served and our common language was filled with military terms and stories from the far off places they were born.

That 1st house my parents bought after dad retired from the Army was the only house they ever owned, and they lived there for over 40 years until they both died there. Dad had so many more dozens of moves from his 20 years in the service that he said he was done moving. He came from a large farm family and enjoyed being around his parents, brother, sisters and cousins that he spent so much time away from. Most of the family have stayed close to that home as well, which after perusing many hundreds of genealogy records would be considered normal.

I wasn’t done yet though, and the first years of my life instilled in me the concept that moving around was normal. I also joined the service at 18 and the Army acted as my travel agency, showing me many additional places around the country and world until I found a spot I decided I might want to spend a dab more time. I do some math and suddenly find I will have lived here in Washington for over 40 years now…maybe I have found a home.

When I find a kindred spirit that I see has moved away from family and the bonds that connect them, I always think about what may have driven them to break those family bonds, especially when they move across the country or world. Perhaps it is one of the reasons I dig rather deep in assembling a family history…to know where we come from, who we have been, to see the bigger picture of what a family is.

Woman Slain; Husband Kills Self

I have avoided putting Aunt Bertie’s murder out there for many years, mainly to not bring up old, painful feelings. It is family history though, and understandably interesting to those that knew her. It has been 60 years ago today, so here is a story I have been sitting on for some time, put together from several articles from the time.

———————————————————–

Two Middletown residents are dead today as the result of a murder-suicide, shattering a romance that began in childhood.

Mrs. Loberta (Blevins) Hatton, 53, of 3223 Seneca St., was found dead in her bed late yesterday afternoon.

Dr. Garret J. Boone, Butler County coroner, said she had been beaten repeatedly, probably more than a dozen times, on the right side of the head with a crowbar.

Her husband, William Taylor Hatton, 54, whom she married four weeks ago today, fatally shot himself late last night at Versailles, Ky., police tried to arrest him in connection with Mrs. Hatton’s death.

The two deaths were the 9th and 10th violent deaths in the Middletown area or involving Middletown residents since October. In that period, there have been two traffic deaths, five homicides, two suicides and one traffic homicide.

Attention was attracted to the Hatton home yesterday afternoon when Mrs. Hatton’s daughter, Marilyn, was seen on the porch by a neighbor. Mrs. Carl Childers, 3224 Seneca St.

Marilyn, about 20, is an invalid and unable to speak. Mrs. Childers reportedly had acted as a babysitter for the girl before and, seeing her on the porch, thought the family might be away from home.

She ran to the house to take the girl inside and was led into the bedroom by the girl. Mrs. Childers called Albert McQuinn, 3219 Seneca St., and together they notified police.

Dr. Boone said that Hatton’s clothes and car were missing and one of the license plates from Mrs. Hatton’s car removed. An attempt had been made to remove the second plate.

Knowing that Hatton had relatives in Versailles, Ky., police were contacted there.

Law enforcement officers went to the home of Hatton’s brother, Johnny, Near Versailles around 10;30 PM., Dr. Boone said.

William Hatton came out of the house and ran, then used a .22 caliber pistol to shoot himself three times. One of the bullets entered the jawbone and emerged from the top of his head.

He was taken to Woodford County Hospital, Versailles, then transferred to Good Samaritan Hospital, Lexington, where he died about 2:30 AM today without regaining consciousness.

Dr. Boone said he didn’t think the murder was planned, but that Hatton was probably ”mentally disturbed”.

He said Mrs. Hatton reportedly had told relatives her husband suffered from “moody spells and temper tantrums” and had been discharged from the U. S. navy because of a “problem of this type.” Hatton was said to have been depressed Monday.

The couple were childhood sweethearts and had attended school together in Kentucky. Hatton reportedly had wanted to marry her years ago, but she married someone else.

Her husband, Clarence Blevins, died here in 1956. Hatton was recently divorced from his first wife. He and Mrs. Hatton were married Jan. 9 by the Rev. Henry Howard, assistant pastor of the Grand Avenue Church of God.

Mrs. Hatton, however, was a charter member (1945) of Grace Baptist Church and was very active there until the death of her first husband, who had been a deacon.

Mrs. Hatton had lived at the Seneca Street address “at least 18 years,” according to a neighbor.

Both the crowbar and the pistol were kept in her room for self-protection.

The crowbar was found in the back yard. ( Les Note: Aunt Janice said Uncle Densil was the one that found the crowbar) Dr. Boone said there was clay, hair and traces of blood on the end of it.

Crowbar Densil found.

Dr. Boone said Mrs. Hatton’s daughter, whom he described as “highly mentally deficient,” is in Hughes Hospital, Hamilton, now. She was taken to the Children’s Home in Hamilton, then transferred to the hospital.

He said there was no way of knowing whether she understood what had happened to her mother.

Dr. Boone estimated Mrs. Hatton’s death as occurring at 4 a.m. yesterday.

Neighbors saw Hatton leave the house early, but Dr. Boone said he apparently returned for his clothes and personal belongings because a Poasttown Heights relative saw him at the house around 1 p.m. yesterday.

Hatton reportedly had been employed a few days by the Miles Moving & Storage Co.

Penciled signs were found on the front and back of the Hatton home saying that the family would not be back until Friday. Dr. Boone said these were an apparent effort to avoid having Mrs. Hatton’s body discovered.

Investigating officers included Clifton Hyde and James Maxwell from the Butler County sheriff’s department, officers from Versailles, Ky. and Det. Harold Gray of the Middletown Police Department.

Mrs. Hatton was a former employee of the old P. Lorillard Co. here. She was born in Frenchburg, Ky.

Surviving are two daughters. Mrs. Norma Jackson of Franklin and Marilyn; two brothers, Grant Egelston of Frenchburg, Ky., and Cash Egelston of Mariba, Ky.; three sisters, Mrs. Oliver Day of Frenchburg, Ky., Mrs. Nannie Profitt of Dayton, and Mrs. Sylvia Proffitt of Dayton; and two grandchildren.

Services will be held at 2 p.m. Friday at the Grace Baptist Church, with Rev. Howard Sears officiating. Burial will be in Woodside Cemetery.

Friends may call at the McCoy – Leffler Funeral Home tomorrow from 2 to 5 and 7 to 9 p.m., and at the church Friday after 1 p.m.

Mr. Hatton will be buried in Kentucky.

His immediate survivors include two sisters, Mrs. Dora Mae Amburgey of Middletown and Mrs. Angie Hatton of Jackson, Ky.; a brother, Johnny; a daughter, Pearlie Mae, and two sons, Carl and Eugene, all of Kentucky.

William Taylor Hatton and Bertie Egelston Blevins Hatton

Mt. Stuart West Ridge

Climb – Mt. Stuart West Ridge Date(s) – July 5-8, 1996

Area/Range – Alpine Lakes Region/Stuart Range

Approach Route – Surprise Lake Trailhead #1060 to Ingalls Pass

Ascent Route – West Ridge

Decent Route – West Ridge Couloir

Altitude – 9,415 feet Elevation Gain – 4,200 feet

Total Distance – 12 miles Maps/Guides – Becky Guide, page 328, Alpine Lakes Guide page 42, Green Trails Topo #176 Stevens Pass

Times: Approach – 3 – 4 hrs. to Ingalls Creek Ascent – 1.5 days Decent – 1.5 days

Grade – II Class – 5.6/5.7 Pitches – many

Equipment Used/Recommended – 2 – 60 meter ropes, stoppers & cams, long slings & extra biners, (a few pitons wouldn’t be out of place) pickets would have been useful for snow belays.

Weather – Good weather, clear skies, cold Friday, warming as weekend progressed. Cooled down on our bivy’s to low 40’s – high 30’s

Climbing Partners – Tom, Rick, Nicole

Climb Leaders – Les Profitt Number in Party – 4

Flora/Fauna – Wildflowers, saw a few marmots & picas. Lots of Goat tracks. Saw one goat.

“Without a rival as the crown peak in the central Cascades of Washington, Mount Stuart has been pronounced the single greatest mass of exposed granite in the United States…its northern and eastern faces are the alpine climax of the Wenatchee Mountains. They make a powerful impact on first sight…The mountaineering problems are magnified by the mountain’s massive dimensions and its complexity.” “Cascade Alpine Guide” by Fred Beckey.

Quote from Rick Baker during the climb: “Beckey is one lying-ass MF!”

This recollection/trip report from one of my climbing logs was written right after we returned from the climb back in 1996. It has gotten dusty and moldy over the last 25 years, but I cleaned it up and added photos from the trip.

====================================================

After celebrating the 4th of July the day before, we met at Rick’s house around noon on Friday and headed over to Alpine Experience to get a bivy sack for Tom. I had decided I wasn’t taking a sleeping bag and Tom decided to join me and get a bivy sack.

Rick said the hell with that, he was taking his sleeping bag. I decided I needed to go through his pack and take out some stuff I already had or he didn’t need. That boy could squirrel away more shit than he ever uses (he was packing a half gallon of bourbon and 2 full rolls of TP on top of everything else).

Scan-130223-0001 — Tom and Rick with Tom’s old Mazdarati at the Teanaway Trailhead getting packs ready.

The drive over to the east side of the mountains from Olympia was uneventful. We arrived at the trail head somewhere around 3:30 or 4:00 and found a note on the trailhead bulletin board that Nicole, our 4th, had gone up the trail the day before saying that she had a stove and bottle of fuel with her to camp out at Ingall’s pass.

Scan-130223-0002 — Note Nik left on bulletin board

We made it up the mountain to the pass in a couple of hours with Rick dragging ass with all the shit he was still carrying and just because he was Rick.

Scan-130223-0004 — View of Mt Stuart from top of the pass

I cruised a little faster and found Nicole sleeping in a group of trees. She had her stuff spread out all over the place and I told her we planned to keep going to get down into the big bowl below the West Ridge before nightfall.

She had been playing that morning and did Ingall’s Peak with some folks she met up there. While she was packing her stuff I dropped my pack and went back to see what was taking Tom and Rick so long. Tom had waited at the pass to make sure Rick was on the right path, he was still moving pretty slow.

We all saddled up and headed cross-country across the snow covered slopes. We descended down into the bowl below Ingall’s lake (which was still frozen over) and proceeded to beat the bushes and cross snow and rock slabs to a site just the other side of Ingall’s Creek.

It was about 9:00 PM by the time we dropped our packs and we were all pretty tired from the snow covered cross-country work.

We unrolled our sleeping gear, with Rick and Nicole playing up the fact that it was getting chilly and boy were they glad they had their sleeping bags. Tom and I put on our fleece and tried to play hardman with gritted teeth.

We cooked some dinner and sipped a little bourbon and turned in for the night after getting our stuff together for the climb the next morning.

Scan-130223-0005 — Cranking the stove up for a late dinner

I woke everyone around 5:00 AM and we got the last of our gear together and had a quick breakfast. Tom said the bivy sack thing sucked, his feet got damn cold. I knew he had hardly snored all night so he must have been cold!

Scan-130223-0009 — Tom getting his fleece pants on in the chilly morning.

I got a little chilly, but I had put on fresh socks so my feet weren’t too cold. Of course Rick and Nicole complained about how hot they had gotten during the night, poor babies.

Scan-130223-0008 — Rick getting his gear packed up

We moved out and headed up the steep, open meadows and talus to the first continuous gully east of the west ridge.

Scan-130223-0011 — Slogging up through the meadows and brush

Scan-130223-0013 — Time for the fleece to come off

It was full of snow, unlike the last time we tried the route two years prior. It had been a heavy snow pack year and the mountain was still piled high with snow in the ravines.

Scan-130223-0014 — Getting crampons and ice axes ready to his the ice slopes

We put on crampons and headed up the steep, hard snow. It was steep enough that a slip would find you all the way back at the bottom.

Scan-130223-0016 — Looking up the gully towards the top

We didn’t rope up because a fall would just have pulled the rest of the team off as well. It was every person for themselves.

Scan-130223-0017 — Cramping up the hard ice

The slope continued to get steeper until we were almost front pointing with our crampons and using our axes for hand holds.

Scan-130224-0006 — Nik waiting for Tom and Rick

Rick had been having problems keeping his crampons tight, in fact I had told him at our last break to make sure they were adjusted properly because the next slope was no place to blow a crampon. Of course he promptly lost a crampon when he was on a steep pitch.

I had just made it to an ice covered rock ledge when Rick started cussing and said his crampon had come off. I didn’t have a rope on me so I had to wait for Tom to get up to the ledge.

In the meantime I set up a couple of cams and slings for an anchor. Tom got up to me and I tossed the rope down to Rick, who was unable to move at all. His calves were beginning to cramp from the strain of keeping his one set of points in.

One slip and he would be off on a run that would go at least 600 feet. Rick tied in while trying to keep his balance on the ice slope and finally managed to get his crampon back on. All this took about an hour or so.

Scan-130224-0001 — Rick cinching down his crampons after blowing one out

Scan-130224-0004 — Beautiful summer day…with plenty of frozen snow and ice

After the excitement, we continued up even steeper ice, higher and higher up the mountain.

Scan-130224-0007 — Tom belaying Rick up past a steep spot

The gully seemed to go on forever and our calves were beginning to feel strained. I had decided to just tie the rope to me and drag it up after me in case someone else lost a crampon or something. I could feel the extra drag from below for sure!

Scan-130224-0009 — Getting really steep now…

The snow was so steep and hard that there was little hope of self arresting. A fall would be all the way to the bottom. It was rather intimidating with all the exposure.

Scan-130224-0011 — Nik looking back where she does not want to fall…

Scan-130224-0014 — The lads gaining ground.

Scan-130224-0012 — Nicole continuing up while I wait on Tom and Rick

Scan-130224-0018 — Last little bit in the shade before hitting the ridge crest

Finally we made it to the crest of the West Ridge, which was composed of loose rock mixed with large patches of snow. At least we were in the sun instead of the shady gully.

Scan-130224-0019 — Sun feels good at last on the ridge crest.

Scan-130224-0021 — You can see how steep the terrain is.

We continued up, crossing a couple of rock bands where we had to take our crampons off, then back on for more ice.

I was wishing we had brought some pickets and screws for the ice, but we had left all the snow protection at home.

We got off the ice and started climbing class 3 rock, across loose blocks and gritty ledges. This whole area has many possible ways to go, but many of them are dead ends that lead nowhere.

We traversed to the next gully over to the east and moved to the system under Long Johns Tower (8,700 ft.).

This area was very iced up and wet. I decided to drop my pack and lead it in my boots so that I could belay the others up. It had some moves that were difficult in hiking boots on wet, icy slabs.

Some of the moves were fairly run-out between protection, including moving out onto the face when the crack system began to overhang. This would have been pure pleasure on dry granite, but the theme of this climb was turning out to be wet, icy and slippery.

The chimney to the right looked easier, but it was full of snow and I couldn’t see a way to get into it. I reached a point where I didn’t see anywhere else to go, but found an old rusty piton someone had pounded in a long time ago.

I thought that was good enough for now and picked up a chunk of rock and pounded it in a little more solid, clipped it, placed a stopper and slung another big block for a belay.

I then brought Rick up (he wore his pack climbing up) using a little tight-rope hoisting action, to about halfway up the pitch and then he hauled the others packs to a ledge there.

Scan-130220-0006 — Rick hanging on for a powerboat break

This was necessary because I couldn’t see the others and there was an overhang the packs might get stuck under.

Stewart 3 — Me belaying the others up a pitch

Rick clipped the packs off to a cam and came up, cleaning the rest of the route of gear. Nicole came up to the belay and then Tom moved up to where the packs were. We then hauled the packs to the belay and Tom then came up. This extra work from the snow and ice was taking a toll on time.

By now everyone was looking around wondering where the hell we were going from here. I had been checking out a potential route while I was belaying and they all looked fairly grim.

Scan-130220-0010 — The route is somewhere up there…

To the left was a blank slab, with no cracks for placing pro, leading to an overhanging roof. Directly overhead was a thin finger-tips crack that looked like it might go at 5.12.

What I was hoping would pan out was a move around the arête to the right that traversed under a huge loose-looking block that looked like if the wind blew too hard it would smash me to bits.

It looked like the best bet so I put my rock shoes on and headed out that way into who knew what.

I managed to avoid using the block for a hold and slowly worked my way up some loose chunks to a left slanting crack. Of course there was no place for any pro up to this point and everyone was getting pretty nervous down below (not as nervous as me!).

I had to make a pretty exposed move with no pro in, but I eventually got a piece in and made a few more nice moves to get to easier ground up higher. Again, the rock on Stuart is very clean granite compared to much of the funky, moss covered rock in the cascades but we were still a bit early on this route even in July it seemed.

I scrambled up to a nice ledge and set up a belay. We hauled packs up to that anchor and took a break and had some food.

Water was a real problem all the way up. All of us would take a drink and then top our bottles off with snow. I was sucking on chunks of ice and I could tell I was still getting dehydrated.

By now the sun was on us and it was hot with the reflector-oven action of the snow. Directly above the rock pitches was another steep ice chute, so the crampons went back on again. That section was another calf burner.

The team caught their breath while I scouted where the route went from there. There was supposed to be a couple of ways to move up, but it all looked snow covered and grim again.

Scan-130220-0014 — Where’s the best line?

While we were climbing the rock pitches, a group down below us had tried another way up and ended up having to rappel down after moving up several pitches into a dead end. We never saw them again, they must have bailed after that.

I moved us up to try the West Horn route, where there is supposed to be “a broad ledge 200 feet below the summit of the horn (9,100’) under a “scissor like formation”. I could see what I thought was the right formation, but the ledge looked like it disappeared for 20 or 30 feet.

By now it was 5:30 and it was obvious that if we did make the summit we would be down-climbing in the dark. We were very tired, hungry, and dehydrated.

Nicole wanted to go on, but I think it was only because she had no idea of the work involved in getting off the mountain in the dark and wanted to get back to camp.

Stewart 5 — Nicole wondering what she has gotten herself into

The vote was to do a bivy so that we could dry out our boots and socks before the sun went down, get some water and rest for the push in the morning.

Scan-130224-0025 — Soggy boots and socks drying out

I could tell Nicole was nervous about bivying that high on a steep mountain on a small perch. This was her first time bivying and we had no tents, sleeping bags, stove, etc.

Scan-130224-0022 — A tight little perch to spend the night on

Tom had carried his bivy sack as the designated safety bag in case someone got hurt, and he claimed it to sleep in.

Nicole had one of those thin foil-like rescue blanket things, we called it the pop-tart bag. Rick and I had Hefty trash bags and our packs pulled up around our legs.

Scan-130224-0024 — Steep walls and beauty all around

We all had our rain gear and pile jackets. We dug out a spot barely big enough to cram 4 people onto with our ice axes and stacked a rock wall on one side to keep us from rolling over the edge.

Scan-130224-0027 — Snug as a bunch of snaffle hounds in a rug

Rick found a drip from a chunk of ice and we slowly filled our water bottles. We ate what munchy food we had left (candy bars, cheese sticks, etc.) and started drying our clothing out.

Scan-130224-0023 — Rick sniffing out some water trickles to fill up bottles

As the sun went down it got colder and soon we were all hunkered together in our Gore-Tex and makeshift bivy gear watching the light over on Rainier and Adams. In the summer the sun stays up well past 9:00 PM at this latitude.

Scan-130224-0028 — The crew acting like they are asleep for a pic.

Scan-130224-0029 — No academy awards for this bunch

The night was uncomfortable but not totally hideous. The stars were actually beautiful in the clear air that high up. Everyone was stiff from the cold and all the climbing. Rick stuffed his ears with toilet paper to muffle Tom’s snoring.

Scan-130224-0026 — The sun heading down to the west

I figured I wouldn’t sleep much anyway and didn’t bother. Of course Tom and I had good sport with the fact that there were two warm sleeping bags down at base camp all alone.

We watched the sun rise from high on our perch and started moving about to get warmed up and shake out the stiffness. We collected our gear and got suited up for the days activities.

I was looking around for a possible route and for a way to get up to the so-called “broad ledge” that was supposed to be there.

I found a way that led back up to the crest of the ridge and we followed it for a while, traversing east and moving up and down as the rock dictated.

We dropped down a bit and traversed over into the next gully system and I found a way to get up to the ledge that had looked so ominous the day before. It started out not too bad. A couple of short moves and we were on a fairly broad ledge, although it had tremendous exposure.

It dropped straight down for over a thousand feet to the gully below. Traversing along the ledge I got to the part where it looked bad from below. It now looked worse than bad up close.

The ledge shrank to almost nothing for about 15 feet. Then there was a gap of about 5 feet where there was no ledge at all, and you had to step across nothing to a big loose block on the other side that rocked when you got on it.

This would have been just a quick scamper if it was at sea level, but up here with the exposure it was rather intimidating.

When you looked between your legs or at your foot placements you could see down for what seemed like for-fucking-ever. Scary, but very cool and Alpine!

I dropped my pack and put on rock shoes to lead across it and put up a rope to belay the others up.

Scan-130225-0002 — Tom starting across the missing ledge section

Scan-130225-0001 — He’s across the hairy exposure bit…

Scan-130225-0003 — …and now has to climb over the loose block that rocks back and forth

Rick volunteered to go last, knowing that meant that the piece of pro I put in the middle would be gone and the if he fell there was the possibility of a smashing pendulum into the other side that might dent his ass like the fall he took on Knife in the Toaster, but that’s another story.

We hauled packs across and Rick made it just fine. Broad ledge indeed.

I then looked across to the next section and decided we needed to down climb a bit across an interesting system of ledges. This was again tricky route finding.

We came to several dead ends and had to back track for short sections, moving either up or down to the next ledge. We came to a fairly steep ice section that we had to traverse.

The run-out was again all the way down the mountain so slipping was out of the question. Solid crampon placements and good ice ax belays were needed here.

It moved across a very steep section to a corner where it eased a bit. Then you had to down climb about 50 feet of very steep ice to a blocky ledge. I tried to kick pigeon holes as deep as I could for the others to follow.

Scan-130220-0017 — Down climbing a steep bit of ice.

Nicole thought this was the most intimidating section of the trip. It was kind of scary thinking about falling there.

Eventually we moved our way up and around to the west ridge notch, a deep cleft that marks the base of the final summit block. On the north side it drops off so fast it makes your head swim from just looking that direction.

The south side offers a bit of a help, but it quickly went no where. I saw a big ledge down below about 200 feet, so we again put on crampons and descended a steep gully to the ledge.

Scan-130225-0006 — Steeper than it looks…

Everybody else took a break while I scouted the ledge. I down climbed for several hundred feet only to find the ledge dead ended at a nasty looking drop. I climbed back up and told them we needed to climb back up the gully and find a different route. Grumble, grumble.

We searched high and low and decided to start rock climbing a pitch that didn’t look too awful. We got up to a ledge that went to the north and south. I followed it both ways looking for a route but nothing looked obvious.

The north side was covered with a big patch of crusty snow and got real steep. The west face was also steep and slightly overhung, while the south side was sunny, but long and steep with a wild system of cracks with snow all over it.

We went to the south and scoured the rock for a possible route. Nothing seemed to look like it was under 5.9, and there was supposed to be a 5.6 route. Back to the North side for another look.

The snow looked too dangerous to try moving through it on such a steep face. Back to the south side and a descent down a loose funky ledge to nothing. Back up to the ledge and a team meeting about the possibilities.

We were only about 150 feet from the summit. A single rope length. We could see people looking over the edge and could hear them talking. They had gone up the much easier Cascadian Couloir, the standard route which is simply a walk up, comparatively. That was the easy gully route we had planned to descend.

The thought of going back down anything like we came up was extremely uncomforting. The snow was getting soft and balling up under crampons.

One of the issues was that there was a solid layer of ice a few inches under the soft snow on top, making every step on the steep snow totally unpredictable and prone to blowing out.

Everyone was tired, water was still scarce so everyone was again dehydrated. We were all out of any substantial food. We did have a little bit of “emergency” food like power bars and such. Looking down the steep drop off in the gully, we reluctantly decided to bail. Strike 2 on Stuart.

We began by down climbing the rock we had climbed up. This took us to the top of the West Ridge Couloir. Looking down this steep chute I knew we had an epic decent in store for us. At first we could use our crampons, but the snow quickly turned bad as it thawed out more.

Scan-130225-0004 — Up and down, up and down…

Scan-130225-0005 — Now committed to down…

The first few inches was mush while the base was hard ice. The angle was steep enough that if you tried plunge stepping the heel would dig in just until it hit the ice and then slide along the crust.

This made descending very tedious. We had to turn around and face into the slope and kick foot holes, known as “pigeon holes”.

These toe holes also served as hand holds as you climbed down past them. One hand on an ice ax and one hand in a pigeon hole. This made for cold hands and is extremely tiring on the calves.

Scan-130225-0007 — The sun is turning the snow to mush on top, clogging up the crampons. We eventually had to take them off.

Rick was unsure of using his ax in the dagger position and so he used the slower self belay technique where the shaft is shoved down into the snow with each step. This is also more taxing on the arms.

We proceeded in this fashion for hours, taking small breaks on the steep ice and on little outcrops of rock when we could.

Scan-130225-0008 — Nik taking a short breather before heading back out the snow gully

We began rappelling whenever we could find a half decent anchor to put a sling around. This would give us 200 feet at a time pretty quickly, although we had to move one at a time.

We rapped so many times that I can’t remember the exact number. Rappelling and pigeon holing, we made our way to where the gully pinched shut to a waterfall.

This was great at first because we had all the water we could swallow. We sucked it up like camels after crossing the Sahara.

The next problem was finding a way to rap past the falls without getting soaking wet. I led a traverse pitch off to the left and found a couple of loose blocks that were big enough to hold our weight.

We rapped again and down climbed to a short chimney and down to another steep area with another waterfall off to the right. The ropes were by now sopping wet and weighed 3 or 4 times what they had started at. As you rapped down your rappel device wrung ice water into your lap as the rope passed through. Just re-coiling the heavy ropes to move down a bit was enough to fry the arm muscles.

We came to a section that was very cliffy, with snow patches. We rapped and down-climbed through this to a section where the snow underneath us was hollow where the water had formed a cavern along the gully.

Punching through this would put you in deep shit. You would fall down steep icy rock and be pummeled by ice cold melt water after you got wedged into a bottle neck under the snow. Not a pretty thought.

So we continued to use the ropes to rappel. Rick broke through at one point but the ropes saved his ass from falling too far down. I rapped down yet another section as it was getting dark and moved off to the right to a cliffy area that showed some promise of getting us off the snow and out of the gully.

I hoped that we could do a couple of raps down to the talus field and pick our way through the moraine to the way trail. I scouted a spot to rap and went back to wait for the others to catch up.

When we were back together Tom told me that he thought I should look at my rope. Rick had dislodged a big rock and it had nicked the rope up pretty good. Captain avalanche had struck again.

I looked at it closer and the sheath had been completely cut through almost all the way around the rope along with a number of the weight-bearing strands. This truly sucked. Now we couldn’t make full rope-length rappels.

It was by now about 10:30 Sunday night and was pretty dark. The others (who all had real jobs to be at Monday) said they were OK doing another bivy. This was the safest decision, since we were all beat and had eaten very little food all day.

We carried on a bit, down to a fairly level spot for three of us while Rick had his own little spot. It was warmer than the previous nights, but this brought its own problems.

Much lower in altitude and thus warmer, mosquitoes now plagued us all night. I cinched up my hood to a small opening and they still made their evil way in to assault me. Rick’s face got pretty chewed up. Tom and Nichole could stick their heads down in their bivy sacks for some relief.

The night seemed to take forever with the bugs sucking our faces and hands dry, with us thinking about all the food, clothing and sleeping bags that had now been down at base camp unattended for three days.

Dawn finally broke and we stiffly got moving and started pulling on boots and packing up.

Scan-130225-0009 — It was too dark to get any pics the night before, but here is bivy #2 in the morning

Scan-130225-0010 — There is a drop of several hundred feet on the other side of that tree

Scan-130225-0011 — Tom looking over what we didn’t want to go down in the dark

Rick getting ready

Nik putting her eyes in

Tom getting gaiters on

We then headed back into the gully for more snow and hollow ice bridges. Eventually we made it back down into trees and greenery after being up in snow and bare granite for so long.

We continued down to the stream and crossed it. We never found the way trail that was supposed to be there, so I led off cross-country back to our base camp.

This was a hoot also, the mountain was going to fuck with us all the way out. Crossing swollen creeks, devils club and alder thickets we made it back to our base camp.

We collapsed on our sleeping pads and proceeded to have a food orgy. We were eating all kinds of shit, cooking and drinking water for a couple of hours.

We slowly packed our remaining gear and now had heavier packs to hump back up to the pass. We moved cross-country again up towards the trail at Ingall’s pass.

There was plenty of soft snow to slog through and it was getting plenty hot in the big open bowl. Slog, slog, slog. Sweat, sweat, sweat.

Scan-130225-0015 — Off the mountain and slogging back up to the pass in soft snow

Finally, we were back on an actual trail with solid steps kicked into the snow. I made it over to Ingall’s Pass before the others and tossed my pack off to wait on them.

Scan-130225-0018 — Taking a pic of the mountain from the top of the pass when I heard a chopper…

Sitting there alone, I heard a helicopter over on the other side of the pass and wondered if it could be a rescue flight. About that time I saw the chopper flying low over the approach trail and thought “oh shit”.

The chopper flew right up and only about 30 feet over me. I waved and they waved back. “OK, maybe they are just sight seeing” I thought.

Scan-130225-0020 — Look close and you can see a white Bell Jet Ranger looking for us

They continued following the tracks in the snow and flew over the rest of our group, heading right over to the West Ridge of Stuart.

As soon as they did that I knew they were looking for us. The chopper circled back around, by that time the rest of the team had caught up to me on the pass.

The helicopter took another low pass over us and then circled back again.

This time they were coming in much slower and there was an arm holding something out of a window. As it passed over our heads the arm tossed down a spare blank log book.

I ran over to grab it and just as I got to it, the rotor blast hit it and blew the log book and my hat down the slope about 50 yards. I climbed down to get my hat and the log book.

Tom found a note that had been inside the log book that read “wave if you are Nicole G”.

Nicole was immediately shocked to find out that someone she knew had sent a helicopter to find us, but waved back at the chopper and off it went back to wherever it had come from.

Then she was all worried that she would have to pay for the cost of the rescue attempt and all that. Of course we helped by telling her that she would indeed have to pay and that it would cost around $15,000 or so because aviation fuel and pilots are expensive. We started cracking jokes about all the news teams waiting down at the parking lot to interview her and all that.

It turns out that Nicole’s dad Dale, who had been recently diagnosed with cancer and given less than 6 months to live, was worried about his daughter and had called the ranger station to report us being a day late.

The ranger stated that they wouldn’t send a helicopter that soon because the weather was good, that we were on a hard route and were probably just behind schedule. This was all well before cell phones were in everyone’s pockets and we were now a day overdue to those that cared back home. Anyone that knew me and Rick would only be mildly concerned, as this was not uncommon for us.

Dale then asked how much it would be if he paid for a chopper to go and check on us. The ranger told him $600 and Dale told him to go ahead…so the ranger got a free scenic flight over Mt. Stuart. He was still pretty excited about getting a free (to him) helicopter ride when we reported into him over the phone after we got back to civilization.

Scan-130225-0024 3 — Message left on our car by the ranger along with Chopper Girl’s note

We finished the last few miles down hill in the blast of heat and soaked our feet and washed off in the cold, clear creek that runs by the parking lot.

Scan-130225-0022 — The wild bunch cleaning up a bit in the ice water

We sucked down a couple of beers from the car and celebrated our awesome, epic climb.

Scan-130225-0023 — Cheers to another classic climb!

We then headed home to explain to all the worried people that we were not lost, just trying to be “safe”… if you can say that with a straight face about the route we had been on.

Altogether a very memorable time and yet another epic “classic” for the books… and Nicole had earned a new climber’s nickname…Chopper Girl.

Scan-130225-0021 — The route up follows the longest gully on the left up to the ridge, then traverses along the ridgeline to the summit block. Coming down route follows the bigger gully in the center under the summit block.

Family Bloodhound on the Scent…

This is a stream of consciousness blathering about family history and genealogy I have sat on for well over a year. It was conceived hoping to convince others to dip their toes in the research/family history pool. It rambles on incoherently at times, but it has a few good points and may help to tip the scale of someone already wanting to strap the family history feedbag on and take a big bite. Go ahead, it’s very satisfying and low in carbs!

At the time I started getting really serious about genealogy and family history, around 25 years ago or so, Jacob Floyd “Jake” Proffitt was as far back in the family that anyone could remember.

This was before Ancestry.com had even been created, so methods were the same as they had been for decades or even centuries…asking your relatives lots of annoying questions, checking old family bibles, visiting cemeteries, and researching local city and county tax records.

If you were lucky, a relative had at least started the documentation process and created a paper trail of the “John Smith begat John Smith Jr in 1902” variety. While I did have such a document on my mothers side for the her father’s Clemans family (thanks Aunt Donna!) and a very good start for the Egelston side, there was pretty much zero for the Proffitt line or any other line of my family, at least that I was aware of.

My dad had a few family stories, and even fewer photographs, as his grandfather Floyd was gone before he was even born, and great grandfather Jake died when he was just 13 in 1935…his great grandmother five years before that.

My mother’s mother had been adopted, which is still a major brick wall I research constantly, and mom was rather estranged from her father for many years before he moved back to Ohio later in life and reconnected with her, so very few real stories there either.

Most youngsters, of course, have other things on their mind (primarily themselves) besides digging through old dusty family archives. To be fair, I was well into my thirty’s before I calmed down enough from adrenaline filled adventures to start actually doing something serious about my family curiosity.

However, the curiosity has always been there…even as a young boy I would wonder if some coon-skin cap wearing Profitt had gone through Cumberland Gap with Daniel Boone, or floated down the Ohio River on a pioneer flatboat like we were learning about early settlers in history class.

I had (have) a very active imagination, and I remember coming across a French army officer in either the French and Indian or Revolutionary War, I can’t recall, with the same last name as me.

I then supposed we might be of French decent and wrote a fanciful story for a writing assignment of how my ancestor was an accomplished French fur trapper, that headed west into the wilderness of Kentucky to find fame and fortune with his traps, powder horn and Kentucky long rifle to fend off the Indians.

Little did I know at the time that the actual story of our Proffitt family’s arrival to the new world would be even more intriguing than that…involving political intrigue and rebellion against the English Crown in the misty lochs and hills of Scotland, with battles, trials, imprisonment in English dungeons and banishment on a sailing ship to the colonies as an indentured slave for many years. You can certainly make this stuff up…people have…it’s named Outlander and a very popular series of books and TV shows, but reality often is a much better story.

Our ancestor Silvester Proffitt actually lived it for real from 1698 to 1767, creating a family history in the new world beginning in 1716, that is over 300 years old…older than the United States itself.

Speaking of Indians, there was also a persistent family story that we had Native American blood in us…somehow…that somewhere down the line we had a full-blooded Cherokee in our line. This knowledge, of course, sent me as a youngster off to learn everything I could on native tribes, particularly those of Kentucky and Ohio.

This included immersing myself with making my own war clubs, bows and arrows with real feathers and flaked flint tips, head dresses, bead work, clothing, peace pipes and other Native American paraphernalia. I blame it on OCD, which still serves me well doing genealogy.

While I have found little evidence of Native American in any documented, direct family line, or in DNA evidence from most companies, a recent DNA test with 23 & Me shows a glimmer of hope, with .5% Native American showing for me, and my Aunt Jean shows a full 1% with AncestryDNA. These are low enough to potentially just be “genetic noise”, but we shall see as things evolve over time.

It can only take 4-5 generations for autosomnal DNA chromosome to be divided up and thinned out so far that it fades away, so if it was over 100 years ago it may not show at all. Y-DNA tests, for males only, can connect paternal ancestors thousands of years back, as MT-DNA testing can show maternal ancestor connections thousands of years back.

These types of tests from Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) are generally more expensive than the more ubiquitous autosomnal tests from the other major companies and are geared for more serious genomic research than the “family match” tests most take.

Please understand ethnicity estimates from DNA are just that, estimates based on base sets of people tested that have very documented families that show their linage. These estimates are updated all the time as an evolving science.

It amazed me, and drove me crazy, that this family information was seemingly lost to everyone I knew. I started making notes and assembling what I knew and could gather from family, but my genealogy affliction still hadn’t developed into full-on nose to the ground, relentless, bloodhounding madness yet.

I remember trying to find family with my original Ancestry account, 20 years ago when the company was brand new, and really couldn’t get anywhere as there simply wasn’t enough on-line records available yet…remember, these were the days of a very primitive World Wide Web with Compuserve and America Online (I had them both) and just logging in with a modem took 5 minutes of annoying noises.

So I let my Ancestry account lapse, and picked away with other web sites such as RootsWeb, which is where I got a great deal of early information, and other more manual sources.

Having much creative energy, I had begun restoring and color correcting our family photos and wanted to share these photos, which were in much better shape than the originals. So, I created a family web page to start sharing what photos I had, mostly from my parent’s collection. This was originally just to share photos and stories with my immediate family, and quickly developed into a place to share photos of our over-the top thematic Halloween parties and other family shenanigans.

I used to regularly pick the brain of my father’s youngest sister, Aunt Janice, when visiting family in Ohio, and she would recount what stories she knew and occasionally bring a few photos over to my sister’s house to show. After a few of years of this she brought a shoebox full of photos over and I convinced her I would protect them with my life if she would allow me to take them back to Washington so I could do high resolution scans and restore them.

She only gave me a handful at first, I don’t think she fully trusted me early on. This I fully understand…I have lost many photos over the years to friends and acquaintances “that just want to show them to someone” or “I’ll make copies, and give them back, really”…never to see them again.

If you haven’t already surmised, I am a very visual person, and I even decided almost 40 years ago to make photography and filmmaking my career, enjoying it immensely for over 30 years, before moving involuntarily into project management, which also serves me very well for organizing and documenting things.

As part of my fascination with capturing images and telling stories, I hold photos and documents, particularly old ones, with a reverence approaching religious fanaticism. If my house were to start on fire, my photo archives would be the first thing I would rescue.

I think Aunt Janice perceived this reverence and respect for the photos in her care that had managed to survive so many years…so after this first test batch, with her seeing how I restored them better than new, the floodgates were opened. For several years, on every trip I made back to Ohio, I would exchange the old batch from Aunt Janice with a new batch, never letting them out of my sight in my carry-on baggage, lest I be cut off from Janice the pic-pusher from my crack-photos.

As I scanned and restored them I added them to the family web page…the site became larger as now there were photos from other sides of the family, like the Egelston’s, McGlothen’s, Clemans and others. Many of these were images of people no one could now identify, which fills me with sadness.

For me, every photo has meaning. Someone loved and thought enough of that person to take a photo to save that moment…in these modern times where everyone has a camera on their phone and we are flooded with endless selfies and a barrage of what was for lunch, it is all too easy to dismiss the cost of owning a camera, buying film and paying to get it processed into prints in the good old days.

Even in my immediate family, it was not unusual to snap one or two photos for a major life event and then take another year or more to complete that roll of film. Just ask my brother Paul, who swears he only has a total of 7 photos of the first 20 years his life.

Over time, the Apple Webpage infrastructure I was using became obsolete and decommissioned by Apple, so I created a new stand-alone web site with my own family domain name on Go Daddy.com, named profittfamily.com, and created personal email accounts for the whole family to help share photos, stories and family interaction.

About this time, a little over 10 years ago, Facebook started becoming a big thing, and the family took less notice of the web site as Facebook became the latest and greatest shiny bit of distraction. I still pay to keep the name and web page up, but it’s life may be limited with no one actively using the email accounts anymore.

I tend to get more inquiries from unknown distant cousins looking for family information related to some stories still on the website. Lately, I have even seen people uploading edited versions of this as documentation on Ancestry. I guess I should update it or take it down before some of my attempts at humor become fact.

Trying to stay current and keep everyone invested in the family, I then created separate private Facebook Groups for my maternal and paternal sides, and continue scanning, restoring and sharing.

Initially, this again was associated primarily to my grandparents, Nannie and John M Profitt and their children…my aunts and uncles, but this has happily snowballed to include even more extended family, all cousins related by blood, marriage or circumstance (I stopped judging a long time ago). It is fantastic to learn of and meet new family, even if it is only virtually.

Seeing so much disinformation on the internet, I also created a separate Facebook Group named “Descendants of Sylvester Proffitt”, which includes a lot of the documentation I have found relating to our ancestor Sylvester that brought the Proffitt name to the Americas from Scotland, as well as photos of areas where he may have lived from my pilgrimage to Scotland. It’s a work in progress, but still growing every year.

DNA – One genome to rule them all

When DNA testing became available and a bit less cost prohibitive a few years ago, I paid what seemed like a king’s ransom of $160 to dive in and get tested with AncestryDNA. Today, I have accounts with all the major genealogy companies: Ancestry.com, 23 & Me, My Heritage, Family Tree DNA, GEDMatch, WikiTree, Genetic Affairs, FamilySearch, DNA Painter, WeGene, Prometheus, and so on.

In searching for the big clue for the solid brick wall on my mother’s side (her mother was adopted as an infant from a Catholic children’s asylum), I have spent a small fortune on DNA testing and subscriptions with all these companies to get the broadest swath of matches possible. I am fortunate to be able to afford it, and love sharing it with family.

These days you can get great discounts (under $50) on tests at certain times of the year, and most of my family has now done DNA testing…in fact I manage over 20 DNA accounts for family and friends that connects their DNA results to my well-developed family tree for better matching results. It is not unusual for results to vary enough to have some siblings match cousins that others do not.

I believe I have taken the family convincingly back to our roots in Scotland, England and Western Europe in the 1600’s…growing DNA research suggests we came from the Viking stock of Norway and the Celts of Ireland before that…our rich family history is so much more personal, exciting and endlessly fascinating to me than a novel or movie about others and I hope some of that rubs off on y’all.

Ultimately, I hope to leave a rich, well-worn path of photos, stories and documentation for future family bloodhounds, so they know where they came from and are able to pick up the scent on the trail of other long-lost family members and build an even greater, more accurate story.

So please, dig in your closets, attics and basements, especially for those boxes of fading photos with people you may never have known or even recognize. Get them in front of as many family as possible to tickle memories long lost to us, there is a good chance they will be better than gold to someone.

20 Years On…

9/11. A date that has become a proper noun for an unspeakable act. Like many others today, I feel compelled to reminisce memories of that surreal day 20 years ago, that seems like yesterday.

I was on my way back from the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend aboard Tango, my twenty foot wooden sailboat. The trip back from PT was always rather lonely after the hyperactive activity of the festival and sailing with crew, but good for doing a lot of thinking while sailing or motoring along for so many hours. It’s typically 2 long days either way in my boat.

Having left crew behind, I was sailing solo and made my way to Blake Island, a state park in the middle of Puget Sound. I picked up a mooring and spent the night at the south end of the island. I remember it as a pleasant evening.

Listening to the rhythmic throbbing hum of the Fauntleroy-Southworth ferry coming through the hull as it went by, I’d wait for the ferry’s wake to rock the boat a few minutes later. It came and went every thirty minutes, a reassuring pulse of life on the sound.

The ferries run until after midnight, then shut down and resume around 4:00 AM…so I awoke to the familiar thrumming and rocking from the wake. I stuck my head out of the hatch and it was a beautiful, late summer day, clear and calm except for the ferry wakes. I went about getting breakfast together and started brewing coffee on my small stove.

I was up early to catch a favorable tide and currents to help speed up my trip back home to the south. Along with the gulls and crows I heard the distinctive piercing call of a Bald Eagle from the trees nearby and spied him perched high on a snag. He sat calling for a while and then jumped off his perch and flew right over the boat, heading west.

– The first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46 in New York…5:46 west coast time. I’ll continue using Pacific Time as I experienced it. The second plane hit the South Tower 17 minutes later at 6:03.

At the time I was oblivious to all of this, listening to Jimmy Buffett CD’s on my stereo and sipping my freshly brewed coffee. I got a call on my cell from my friend Terri. She sounded frantic…saying that it looked like someone had declared war on us and was bombing New York. She tried to tell me what was being shown on the news and it all sounded incredulous to me on my little boat, all alone.

As we were talking, the 3rd plane crashed into the Pentagon at 6:37. The world had gone crazy and there was all kinds of wild speculation that there was a massive attack across the country.

At 6:42 my time, the FAA grounded all civilian aircraft within the continental U.S., and civilian aircraft already in flight were told to land immediately. All international civilian aircraft were either turned back or redirected to airports in Canada or Mexico, and were banned from landing on US territory for three days.

The attacks created widespread confusion among news organizations and air traffic controllers. Among the unconfirmed and often contradictory news reports aired throughout the day, one of the most prevalent said a car bomb had been detonated at the U.S. State Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Another jet was suspected of having been hijacked, but the aircraft responded to controllers and landed safely in Cleveland, Ohio.

Everyone was wondering where the next crash or explosion would happen. Then a 4^th plane went down in a field in Pennsylvania at 7:03, the passengers having led an uprising to overpower the hijackers.

At 7:59 the 1^st tower collapsed and the descriptions of the mayhem caused my imagination to go crazy with no reference from television pictures.

All flights were shutdown. All ferry traffic was shut down. The normally busy sound was suddenly silent. No ship or ferry traffic…no planes coming and going from nearby SeaTac Airport. Contradictory news reports were all over the place.

All of this added to a huge sense of isolation and frustration to know just what the Hell was going on. Terri would call back with updates whenever something new would happen to let me know as best she could. I tried to find a radio station that had news, but without an FM antenna I couldn’t tune much in.

Adding to the surrealness, the only thing I found on the radio was the Howard Stern show. Being based in New York, he was at least broadcasting a play by play of what he was seeing and hearing in the city. The whole thing was insane with the wild reports coming in from his wacky non-professional sources.

I got everything ready for a speedy departure from Blake…tossed the dirty dishes in a trashbag , filled the fuel tank, checked the tide and slipped the mooring lines. As I motored south, I was the only one on the water…madly rushing to get home as fast as possible while everyone else was glued to their TV sets. I still had many miles and a whole day of motoring to get back to my marina in Olympia.

Trying to piece together what was going on from the chaotic Stern broadcast was maddening…his typical outlandishness was made even worse with the added frenzy of the plane crashes. I felt like a crazy character in Alice in Wonderland.

I was pushing the Honda 6HP outboard as hard as possible, but still only moving maybe 5 knots, much less when bucking the current. Motoring through Colvos Passage, out into the much wider Dalco Passage, was when I became hyper-aware of the lack of boat traffic and no planes in the sky. I still had to make it through the Tacoma Narrows before the tide switched or I would be pushed backwards. This of course added more stress to an already over the top situation.

Making it through the Narrows, I plugged away seemingly endlessly, hour after hour, listening to the insanity of Howard Stern for as long as he was on the air. The sense of frustration of being out on the water with so far to go when I wanted to see what was actually going on was overwhelming.

The reports of firemen and police rushing into the towers only to have them crumble down, human beings falling from the heights of the sky scrapers, clouds of smoke and dust from the vaporized buildings all created a sense of doom that was hard to comprehend.

After an entire day of motoring south, I finally rounded Boston Harbor and made it back home where I parked myself in front of the news to catch up on what I had missed. The TV stations were replaying the planes crashing and towers coming down with people covered in dust endlessly and would for days.

This memory is firmly embedded in my mind, at least for these past 20 years. I have visited Blake Island many times since, and every time I am there the feelings of that day so long ago always come flooding back.

A Three Hour Tour

With apologies to Gilligan’s Island…

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this Northwest port
Aboard this tiny ship.

The mate was a brand-new sailing man,
The skipper brave and sure.
One passenger set sail that day
For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Tango would be lost, the Tango would be lost.

The first mate and his Skipper too,
Will do their very best,
To make the others comfortable,
In their maritime distress.

No food, no phone, no PFD’s,
Just a bottle of whiskey,
Like Robinson Crusoe,
It’s primitive as can be.

Now this is the tale of our castaways,
They’re here for at least half a day,
They’ll have to make the best of things,
All for zero pay.

The first mate and his Skipper too,
Will do their very best,
To make the others comfortable,
During this nautical mess.

It all started innocently enough…I just wanted to take my new to me boat out for a quick shakedown cruise. I had just bought a used 6 horse outboard and wanted to see how well it pushed the boat. A short trip out into Budd Bay, my back-yard body of water…motor out of the marina, sail up to the Oly shoal and back. Easy-peasy.

The little boat had been mostly spontaneous purchase. We had Diane’s wooden boat in the haul-out yard at West Bay doing some bottom work and painting when I noticed a salty looking little boat out in the marina with a “For Sale” sign on it. I’d glance over at it and soon started day dreaming about sailing a sloop rig while scraping barnacles and old paint off the boat’s bottom.

It wasn’t exactly like working on the old 1959 carvel-hulled 26-foot wooden folk boat wasn’t enough work already so that I needed a new project, but it was a modified into a junk rig, not a typical Marconi style sloop rig. Very different than western style sail rigs.

The Japanese-built folkboat had been very professionally modified by a fellow taking a boat building class with intentions of single-handing it around the world. He had torn the deck and cabin off and rebuilt it with a flush deck, solid fir mast and with acrylic bubble hatches to be able to see everything from safely below in a blow.

He was going for something similar to “Jester”, which was also a modified junk-rigged Folkboat sailed by Herbert “Blondie” Hasler, a single-handed sailor that wrote the modern bible on Junk rig sailing, “Practical Junk Rig”. I read this book from start to finish many times until I had a good understanding of everything junk-rig.

Junk rig sailing is a very different method of sailing, with a large sail with full wooden battens and different running rigging than that of sloop rigged sailboats.

Modified folk boat showing furled junk rig sail and acrylic bubble hatches

I had enjoyed the junk rig and spent a lot of time tweaking the rig, building custom blocks, gear and rigging unique to junk rig sailing, but I still had a longing to sail a “normal” boat.

As the days passed working in the boatyard I kept stealing glances at the little boat, imagining having 2 sails to play with, just like everyone else. I was keen to develop my sailing skills beyond the junk rig, tacking back and forth, grinding on winches and learning the nuance of sailing a sloop.

The little boat kept calling my name and eventually I causally strolled out to take a closer look. It had a handwritten price of $800 scrawled on it with a phone number. I looked it over from behind the locked marina gate and it was a little rough around the edges.

It was obviously a home-built boat. Fiberglass and epoxy over marine plywood. But it looked pretty stout and I loved the traditional looking lines, with wooden toe rails, transom hung rudder, squared off cabin, large cockpit and salty looking bow spirit. A little pirate ship.

A few more days went by, with me still ruminating over sailing the sloop rig. I decided to call the number and find out more about the boat. I chatted with a woman on the other end of the line and it turns out she wanted to get rid of the boat because she thought it was dangerous. They apparently had taken it out once and scared themselves silly with it heeling over.

Her ex-husband had bought it off an older fellow that had built it from plans from Glen-L Designs. It was 18.5 feet long on deck, 20’ 4” overall with the bow spirit. You could buy the hardware kit, rigging, sails etc. all ready to install.

I told her I was interested and would like to check out what it was like inside. She agreed and I met her at the dock to take a closer look. I clambered down into the boat and it was actually very roomy for an 18-foot boat. I couldn’t stand up inside, but I couldn’t stand up in the folk boat either, so I was used to that.

I proceeded to point out any shortcoming I could, hoping to reduce the price a bit. I was doing freelance work at the time and every penny counted. I listened to her story, and apparently her ex had moved off to Colorado or somewhere, it had been his boat, and she just wanted to be rid of it. She didn’t want her kids to have anything to do with the “dangerous boat”.

This was all music to my ears. I ticked off my list of things wrong with the boat and told her I could maybe do $600. She didn’t bat an eye and said “sold”. I thought, crap, I should have gone lower, but I had a new boat.

I came to find out later that the original builder was an older fellow that as I recall, had a stroke and couldn’t get around well enough to finish the boat or do anything else with it so he sold it.

…but back to our three-hour tour:

I had this brand-new-to-me boat but no motor or anything else for that matter. I went to Tom’s Outboards and looked at a few motors available on consignment. There was an old green Johnson at a decent price and they fired it up in a 55-gallon drum full of water to show me it worked. It was a smelly old 2 stroke, but it seemed to be OK. Another $350.

So, outboard in hand and itching to get Tango out on the water, I asked my friends Rick and Diane if they wanted to go out on a test sail, just a quick trip to test the motor, hoist the sails and see how things went. Sure, sounds great they said.

It started off as a beautiful day, sunny and warm with blue skies and just a hint of wind. We hopped aboard, got the motor mounted and cranked it up. Everything looks great. We cast off the lines and pulled out of the marina and headed out on Budd Bay. The motor was performing well…a little smelly with the 2 stroke, but plenty of power to push the small boat at hull speed.

There was just enough wind to try sailing, so sails were hoisted up. Main and jib, it was exciting to have more than one sail to play with! We were all feeling really good about zipping around the bay on such a nice day.

Now, my buddy Rick doesn’t go anywhere without a flask of bourbon, so out it came for a celebratory toast to my new boat, christened Tango simply due to the fact that it was the name of the Glen-L design and printed on the sail. We tacked back and forth for a while having a good old time.

“Little Buddy” 1st mate Rick with his ever-present bottle of bourbon

I had picked up a used Danforth anchor at a consignment shop in town and with the light winds I decided to pass the helm over to Rick and Diane and go below to splice an eye into an anchor line in case we wanted to throw the anchor over to take a break. It took a while to build the splice and melt the loose ends back into the rode.

I had noticed the boat had started wobbling back and forth all over the place, but figured this was just due to inexperienced crew at the helm. I was just about done with the splicing when the boat heeled way over, knocking everything, including me, over. I jumped up and stuck my head out of the companionway hatch to see a crazed look on Rick’s face and ink-black skies coming in rapidly from the west.

The wind had picked up considerably, so I came back up and decided to drop the sails and head back in. As I lowered the main, the halyard jammed at the masthead. This was not good, as the sail was just a big bag catching all the wind. I tried to get it loose, but to no avail.

I went back to get the motor started and motor back to the marina. The still warm motor started right up and I turned the boat towards home with the still wildly flapping mainsail. After 15-20 minutes of full power, the motor suddenly quit. Not good. The wind had increased to maybe 25-30 knots and the wind waves were building.

The main still had a lot of windage and was blowing us quickly towards the old oil dock on the east side of the bay. I spent some time pulling the cowling off the motor to see if I could fix whatever was wrong, but nothing I did made any difference when I tried to start the motor. Dead.

The blue sky was gone…above us was an almost black sky and the winds were howling. About this time Rick started singing the Gilligan’s Island theme song. “The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was lost…a three-hour tour…”.

Meanwhile, we were getting blasted towards the concrete bulkhead by the old oil dock. I’m leaning over the stern rail trying to work on the outboard with the boat kicking like a bucking bronco in the wind waves. My hands are covered in oil and grease and salt water, but nothing is working. Time to figure out Plan C.

Taking stock of the situation, there is no VHF radio. This is before everyone had a cell phone. There are no life jackets, fire extinguishers, flares or any of the required boating safety equipment on board…after all, it was just a short jaunt to see if the engine worked. The rain starts coming down and now we are cold and wet with no jackets or rain gear. We have no food, no water… just one bottle of whiskey. The wave bashed shore is getting closer. Things are looking grim.

I jumped back down below and grabbed the anchor and line and rushed back up to tie off the end of the line to the boat cleat and shackle the new eye spice to the anchor. Maybe 100 yards offshore, I toss the anchor windward as far as I can to get as much scope out as possible to let the anchor dig in. I let out all 100 feet of the anchor line and hoped it was enough to stop the boat as the wind continued blasting us towards the shore.

As we got about 50 yards from shore, the anchor snagged the bottom and jerked the bow of the boat into the wind. It was on the bottom, but still dragging and not set. We slowed down and then about 40 feet from the concrete wall the boat stopped. The anchor had finally hooked and set in the Budd Bay mud.

Looking towards shore, the dark waves were smashing high over the wall and nearby oil dock. The old creosote-piling dock was more or less abandoned, having been used to bring bulk oil for storage in the large tank on shore.

These days the oil tank and dock have been long removed and the dock is managed by DNR as a research station. But back then it was just a skeleton of black creosoted timber to our north and a concrete wall being beaten by the maelstrom to our east. Our luck held as the boat didn’t seem to be getting any closer to the shore.

The old oil dock on the Eastern shore of Budd Bay

We were cold, wet and getting dehydrated with no water to drink. So, we did the only thing we could…we sipped more whiskey. The boat was head into the wind at east, and still bucking up and down in the steep wind waves that had the entire fetch of the bay to build.

Rick looked at the deceptively close shore and said “I think I can make it”. I quickly killed that idea and said “we will at least wait until the storm calmed down”. The wall was getting pummeled by the big waves and I could just see Rick’s head getting split like a melon.

I continued to try and work on the motor, pulling and checking the spark plug, checking to see if there was water in the carb, etc., but with my head down over the rail I eventually got dizzy in the bucking seas.

So, we sat there in the gusting winds, telling jokes and stories, singing “a three hour tour”, and each offering possible solutions to our distress. The tide was going out, and I started worrying about how close to shore we would come as the water level went down, allowing us to be pushed closer to shore.

I gradually took in line as the tide went out. The tides can vary 15-20 feet here during the summer minus tides. Thankfully, the anchor was holding admirably…at least one thing was working right. Sitting on the boat with little else to do, I started making a mental list (there was no pencil and paper of course) of things that needed remediation before the next time the boat went out:

Get the motor fixed.
Take the main to a sailmaker to replace the bolt rope on the main with slides and have add tack, clew and reefing lines so I could reef the main.
Install oar locks and buy oars long enough to be able to row the boat.
Install a downhaul on the jib to pull the jib down much easier in bad weather.
Route running rigging to the cockpit to reduce going forward in bad weather.
Purchase a small electric trolling motor to use until the outboard was repaired and as a backup.
Purchase PFD’s, fire extinguisher, flares, signal devices etc., as required by Coast Guard and state regs.
Purchase and install a marine VHF radio and antenna.
Store water and snacks/emergency rations on board.

I was well aware of all of these safety requirements as I had been sailing for several years by then, but it was all too easy to not pay much attention to them on what seemed like a short sail on a nice calm day in my home waters.

Current Washington Boat Equipment Safety Requirements

We were marooned on the boat for around 6 or 7 hours, killing the bottle of whiskey to pass the time and becoming even more dehydrated. But eventually, the wind and waves calmed down and I was able to focus on the outboard again.

After sitting for several hours, it started right up, but I noticed there was no telltale stream of water coming from the impeller. The motor had simply overheated and quit. When I pulled the motor apart later, there was almost nothing left of the rubber impeller fins that pumped cool seawater through the motor.

With no wind wrapping the sail around the mast, I was able to work the sail up and down and eventually free the halyard. I determined it was best to sail back close to the marina and only fire up the motor to get us back into the marina slip…we should have a good 15 minutes before it overheated again.

Still singing the tune to Gilligan’s Island, we set the sails, retrieved the by now deeply-set anchor and then sailed back to the marina with no further issues. We would live to sail another day… with lessons that have served me well for almost 30 years.

Burning Down the Bogachiel

Over the years Rick and I had been steadily ticking off the trails on the Olympic Peninsula one by one. Generally, main trails follow the various major rivers into the heart of the Olympics and branch off into side trails. One of the major rivers we had our eye on for some time was the Bogachiel. There always seemed to be a washout along the Bogachiel River trail that made the Park Service close the trail down, but finally there was a spell when it was repaired for the time being so I decided it was time to check it off the list. I believe this was around 1990.

We drove several hours from Olympia to the trail head to find it was pouring down rain…not the usual Northwest drizzle-rain, but full-on, get-you-sopping-ass-wet-even-with-raingear on raining. This should not come as a surprise as the Bogachiel is in the heartland of the rainforest and averages 14 feet of rain per year. The name Bogachiel comes from the Quileute tribe, which loosely translates to “gets muddy after rain.”

As a comparison, Forks, the place everyone thinks of as the wettest place in Washington, averages 10 feet per year. This region averages over 200 rainy days per year, which is why it was chosen as the dark, gloomy place where vampires live in the Twilight books and movies. Rick and I were seldom intimidated by weather and saddled up our packs, fortified with the thought of plenty of whiskey even if we were tent–bound the entire weekend.

Even though it was wet, chilly fall weather, I opted to hike only in shorts and t-shirt to minimize the amount of clothing that got wet and keep my rain gear from getting saturated. Yeah, it only makes sense if you’re a well seasoned wet weather camper. I can’t remember if Rick followed suit or put his raingear on. In any case, off we went down the trail and it was a muddy, flooded mess.

They say misery loves company, so Rick and I plowed on up the river trail, cursing the rain, sipping whiskey and laughing about how stupid we were to be out in that monsoon. Our “waterproof” boots were soon filled with water and spurting little geysers with every step. Every minor trickle along the trail was now rushing with water, which made every stream crossing, and there were many, a moss covered slippery mess.

We had gone about 6 squishy miles in, just past the Indian Pass trail junction, when we came across the Indian Creek Guard Station cabin. It was closed-up for the winter and was now being threatened by the raging Bogachiel River, which had changed course.

The cabin had originally been about 40 feet from the riverbank, but when we arrived on the scene the river had undercut the front porch to the point where we had to grab a pillar and swing ourselves around over the river to get under the covered porch.

Still pouring down rain, we debated whether park rangers would be upset if we used the cabin for a shelter but with another sip of whiskey decided that this was the perfect perch to make camp and not have to deal with a soggy tent and the chance of even seeing a ranger was remote during the off-season. We swung around onto the porch with our packs still on and enjoyed the feeling of not getting pummeled by the rain.

We stripped off our soggy clothes and changed into some dry clothing. Unpacking our gear and setting up our camp for the weekend was suddenly much less glum than we had been anticipating. There was even a small wall on the porch to keep us from rolling off into the wildly thrashing rapids beneath us.

I got the MSR white gas stove put together and fired it up so we could dry our boots out a bit. We pulled the liners out and propped them and the boots strategically around the stove and commenced trying to dry them out.

We continued sipping whiskey, joking around, telling tales, snacking on trail food and congratulating ourselves on the lucky fortune of finding the shelter porch. It came time to cook dinner so Rick re-fueled the bottle for the stove and pumped it up to re-prime it. We tied up a space blanket on one side of the porch to function as a windscreen to help keep the stove lit. He fired the stove back up and put water on to boil.

A few minutes later I looked around to see the entire cooking area on fire! Rick had somehow cross-threaded the fuel bottle and the pressure in the bottle had been spewing white gas all over the porch, including my boots and liners!

We hopped into fireman mode and quickly had the blaze extinguished by lowering a cook pot down into the river below us with some cord. I held my scorched and melted boot liners up and showed Rick the damage he had done. He shrugged and giggled and handed me the bottle of whiskey with a look like, have a drink, what else can I do about it?

I fixed the stove and continued cooking dinner. It was getting darker so we set out a few candles around the porch to give us some light, creating a cozy ambiance. We sipped more whiskey, ate our meal of tuna-noodle surprise and again patted ourselves on the back for such a change of fate of being out of the weather.

After a while I again glance around the porch and see my space blanket windscreen is now ablaze! Rick throws his cup of whiskey on it and quickly douses it out. I accuse him of trying to burn the entire rain forest down in a monsoon as well as whiskey abuse and he pleads guilty due to extenuating circumstances, pours himself another cup and again giggles that silly-ass “I’m buzzed” giggle of his.

I used that space blanket with the scorch mark for many more years. I have it to this day and could never throw it away.

The next day we pack our gear and head back down the trail to the truck. We quickly become soaking wet, and the trickles and creeks are all fully charged now. We get to one that is at least knee deep and roaring. It is too wide to jump across so I go off trail a bit, closer to the river and find some mossy boulders to hop, skip and jump across. The packs are by now much heavier and I barely hop across without busting my ass.

Rick sees this and moves farther down to a small, moss-covered log that crosses the stream. This is only about 20-30 feet from the fully raging Bogachiel River. The log is rather small, maybe 10-12 inches wide, so he is gingerly inching his way across. As he reaches the middle, the entire center section of the log, from both ends, breaks off and plunges him, like an elevator, into the stream up to his chest pack and all!

I of course start laughing and start trying to get to my 35mm camera but then quickly get worried as he is now being carried along to the raging river. I yell at him to grab something as he is grasping for anything he can, eventually grabbing a bush along the stream.

Still laughing, I help him out of the creek and as he stands there looking like a drowned rat I just reach for the pocket of his pack where the whiskey is kept and hand it to him. If only the iPhone or GoPro had been invented when I really needed it!

Bits and Pieces

I was digging around in my old pics and came by this single shot taken with a cheap disposable camera I had clipped to my harness. It shows Tom rapping off of “Bits & Pieces” back about 1990-something. It was a butt-puckering 2 pitch 5.7 X route. It was notable only because of the X designation, due to it having only 2 bent, rusty 1/4″ bolts for the whole 1st pitch, with likelihood of death or serious injury if you fell and took a grounder. It is located well off the beaten path on the backside of the most popular climbs at Smith Rock, Oregon.

I led the 1st pitch, clipping the 2 ancient 1/4″ bolts up to a decent size ledge. Unfortunately, there were no anchor bolts or cracks to get any cams or other protection in so I had to bring Tom up without a real anchor. There were a couple of rocky knobs to brace my feet against… so I told him not to fall.

Pic I found on the internet of the route today, with several shiny new bolts for pro.

He got up to the ledge and we looked at the next pitch with no bolts, still thinking this was our escape route… we saw no way to get pro in on the loose tufa of Smith Rock on the route above us and saw no other bolts. Hence the X rating.

We decided to bravely run away…but there being no way to anchor off for the rappel, I had to become the anchor…not the best situation to be in.

He was super excited to rap down with nothing but me holding him up but we didn’t have any other choice since we didn’t bring my bolt kit. Tom rappelled off using only me with my feet braced and a “see you at the bottom, one way or another”.

Tom nervously begins rapping off, using me as his only anchor.

I had him clip a sling back in to the top bolt as he passed it (there were only 2 remember?) so I would have at least a bit of psychological protection. He let out a big sigh of relief when he got to the bottom

The bolt he clipped the sling back into was about 20 feet below the lip so I could down climb with at least the illusion of protection since there was no way for me to rappel down. At least if I fell, and the bolt held, I’d only have a 40-50 foot whipper

The climb was in a mossy groove in the shade, well worn by water running down the cliff that becomes a waterfall when it rains. Since it got very little traffic due to the danger rating, all of the little pebbles and knobs used for holds are subject to freezing and thawing and popping loose over time.

The upper section of the cliff was very vertical, so I couldn’t see the footholds below me at all as I slowly backed and eased over the edge… Tom had to talk me to the knob holds, as I used my feet them to feel all over the cliff to find a big enough pebble to hold my weight. Once I had both feet on something, I could look down and plan my next moves.

To the uninitiated, down climbing is much more difficult than climbing up. Often it is hard to see footholds and you have to resist the natural urge to press yourself into the rock and lean back to see better.

Slowly inching my way down, Tom still offering advice from below, I made my way to the sling. That 20 feet of loose, mossy pebbles with a single manky bolt from when the climb was established in 1977 switched me into Wildman mode… smooshing my feet through the soles of my climbing shoes and onto the holds to make them stick to the rock.

I can’t honestly remember if I left the upper sling in place and continued down climbing or, being a cheap dirt bag climber, snagged my gear and just free climbed the rest of the way down with a puckered butt hole. Probably the latter…I hated leaving gear behind.

Having had so much fun with Bits and Pieces, Tom and I decided to conspire to have our buddy Jim lead the climb next time we were there, but alas, it never happened.

Looking at photos of the climb these days, it has been re-bolted with nice fat modern bolts and proper anchors at the top to rap down, making it a much tamer, relatively easy sport climb. Part of me is sad because it was one of our scary “classics” we always seemed to get ourselves into, but it would make it a nice, shady climb for folks trying to get away from the crowded cliffs at the main part of Smith. Time moves on, and those old bolts only grew more dangerous every year.

Rusty old bolt very common in my heyday…

This Oughta Do

I had one of those “sponsored” ads on Facebook pop up…the kind that seem to materialize magically after you have had a vague thought or clicked on something that triggers a Zuckerberg algorithm to crunch numbers like they were connected right into your brain. As my buddy Rick’s birthday approaches, I couldn’t help but think he had something to do with it from the great beyond.

This one happened to be a T-Shirt for sale that had “It’s All In The Reflexes – Burton’s Gym” with a picture of Jack Burton himself in the center holding a dumbbell in each hand. Of course I had to buy it…and then explain why.

If you knew Rick you knew his two favorite movies of all time were “Big Trouble in Little China” and “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man”. Throw in Silverado and you had Rick’s complete movie collection.

Now, Rick was no Siskel or Ebert. He could barely make it through a movie in a dark theater without passing out. If he wasn’t dozing off and snoring, he was trying to catch-up with what was going on in the plot by asking in a too-loud voice and getting hushed by both the other viewers and his friends.

The first two are both terrible films in a critical cinematic sense, but great fun with a drink or three and right up Rick’s alley. For some reason they tickled his funny bone and he became almost evangelistic in trying to convince other folks that they absolutely had to watch them both.

Big Trouble In Little China

Big Trouble is a 1986 John Carpenter martial arts action-comedy starring Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun and James Hong. The film tells the story of Jack Burton, who helps his friend Wang Chi rescue Wang’s green-eyed fiancée from bandits in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

They go into the mysterious underworld beneath Chinatown, where they face an ancient sorcerer named David Lo Pan, who requires a woman with green eyes to marry him in order to release him from a centuries-old curse. Along the way they fight The White Tigers, Lords of Death, The Three Storms, assorted wild monsters and ultimately have a show down with Lo Pan.

It was a commercial failure when it came out, grossing $11.1 million in North America, below its estimated $19 to $25 million budget. It received mixed reviews that left Carpenter disillusioned with Hollywood and influenced his decision to return to independent filmmaking. But, it has since become a cult classic, and Rick was a part of that cult, and by association, so am I.

Lo Pan’s henchmen, The Three Storms – Thunder, Rain, and Lightning

Now, I’m a big Kurt Russell fan to begin with, so it wasn’t too hard to get onboard with this one. Maybe it has something to do with him being a carpenter named Dean Proffitt in Overboard…woodworking, last name and boating being three things that agree with my vibe. Captain Ron also happens to be one of my favorite not-so-guilty pleasures. But I have enjoyed Kurt’s movies since his young Disney days. I mean, Snake Pliskin, come on.

In Big Trouble, his character has a combination of arrogance, self-confidence and brawn that is balanced by him continually getting in over his head and screwing up as much or more than he comes through as a hero. All of this is blended into a loose mixture of the history of Chinatown in San Francisco, mixed with Chinese legend and plenty of martial arts, that makes it an excellent dick flick.

It is full of craziness and outrageous characters that induced much laughter from us sitting around sipping whiskey. It doesn’t hurt that it is full of goofy-ass quotes and one-liners so great they filled our vocabulary for decades. These include:

“You just listen to the old Pork Chop Express here now and take his advice on a dark and stormy night when the lightning’s crashin’ and the thunder’s rollin’ and the rain’s coming down in sheets thick as lead. Just remember what old Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big old storm right square in the eye and he says, “Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.”

“When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, looks you crooked in the eye, and asks you if you paid your dues; you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that: “Have you paid your dues, Jack? Yes sir, the check is in the mail.”

“Okay. You people sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning. And if we’re not back by dawn… call the president.”

“I’m a reasonable guy. But, I’ve just experienced some very unreasonable things.”

“May the Wings of Liberty never lose a feather”

“It’s all in the reflexes.”

For Rick and I, these quotes would pop up at any moment in time, in any conversation, and release a cavalcade of quotes and Jack Burton mannerisms sure to induce eye rolls and embarrassment to those around us.

For instance, if we both happened to get in an elevator that had a sign…any sign, it might go like this:

Les: [pointing to sign in elevator] What does that say?
Rick: Hell of Boiling Oil.
Les: You’re kidding.
Rick: Yeah, I am. It says “Keep Out.”

Les: “The Chinese have so many Hells, how should I know”

When sipping whiskey:

Les: What’s in the flask, Rick? Magic potion?

Rick: Yeah.

Les: Thought so, good. What do we do, drink it?

Rick: Yeah!

Les: Good! Thought so.

After a sip of potion (whiskey)…

Les: Feel pretty good. I’m not, uh, I’m not scared at all. I just feel kind of… I feel kind of invincible.

Rick: Yeah, me, too. I got a very positive attitude about this!

Once we got all wound-up, we sounded like Abbott and Costello or other corny comedic team that had been around each other for decades. Friends that had heard it all a million times just rolled their eyes and ignored us or sighed that “here they go again” sigh. But it had no real effect on us, we had the magic potion…we were invincible.

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man

On the other hand, there was Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, a 1991 science fiction Western biker heist buddy movie with Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson.

This was a movie Rick embraced for who knows what reasons. Maybe it was because it was an interpretation of the age-old “buddy movie” that he synced with. Perhaps it is because Harley and Marlboro are the type of guys who live their lives one day at a time with little thought about the future. Unlike Big Trouble, it took me years to warm up to this one…more like Rick just wore me down with it.

These reviews from movie critics are priceless, and generally right on the money:

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it “a mindless cobbling from countless buddy movies”.

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly rated it C+ and called it “a kinetic formula shoot-’em-up” that is “engagingly junky entertainment with a healthy sense of its own ludicrousness.”

Variety called it “a dopey, almost poignantly bad actioner about two legends-in-their-own-minds”.

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Rourke and Mr. Johnson handle their roles with more ease and humor than can be accommodated by a movie so stuffed with mindless fistfights, gunfights, helicopter chases, explosions and leaps from tall buildings.”

Time Out London called it “utter rubbish, and badly dressed at that.”

Kim Newman of Empire wrote, “For a while, its crassness is amusing, but as the plot sets in, it gradually turns into a stultifying bore.”

Both Johnson and Rourke have spoken negatively of the film. Rourke cited the film as the beginning of his decline in mainstream Hollywood. Johnson, while promoting the film, gave a tongue-in-cheek interview where he was quoted as saying “If you’re a fan of mindless action, if you don’t have a single brain cell in your head, this is the film for you.”

Perhaps this last quote sums it up well enough for Rick, who never liked movies with deep, twisted subplots that you had to really pay attention to. “Mindless action” was just perfect for him, so he could chatter away with no one hushing him up…after all, no one really minded missing a part of this flick. After a few requisite sips of whiskey to prime us for the show, we would be pursing our lips like Mickey Rourke and speaking in well-rehearsed, gravelly Don Johnson voices.

This flick is chock full of cliches and absurdities. Take the villians. It’s not enough that Daniel Baldwin is the leader of the henchmen, with Tom Sizemore as their evil bank executive bossman…they have to dress them up in floor length black leather trench coats like they got teleported from the Matrix…which wouldn’t be filmed for another 8 years. Maybe they were simply ahead of their time.

You know you’re in for it when one of the Baldwin brothers is involved…

The main quote I really remember from this one is from the Marlboro Man (Don Johnson)…he was always quoting his dead father with sayings that started with: “My old man told me before he left this shitty world” then waxing eloquent with some wise words like “never chase buses or women, you’ll always be left behind.” or “… there would be blue-bellied chicken shit bastards like you out there.” So, naturally, we just started our own sayings off with “My old man told me before he left this shitty world” and making up whatever fit the situation. Yes, we were comedic geniuses.

As mentioned, it took me a while to get onboard with this tasteless, trashy film with no real redeeming value. But, gradually, I came to appreciate the pure entertainment value of its mindlessness, and it wasn’t too difficult to replace Harley and Marlboro with me and Rick…if one of us was a biker and the other a cowboy, and one of us was going to lose our bar and thought it a good idea to pull a heist on an evil bank.

Silverado

I’ll mention one more movie that Rick thoroughly enjoyed, particularly after we invented “Silverado Night”. This was where we would watch the movie Silverado, a now classic 1985 American Western starring Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover and Kevin Costner. The supporting cast features the likes of Brian Dennehy, Rosanna Arquette, John Cleese, Jeff Goldblum and Linda Hunt. How can you go wrong with a cast like that.

The whole point of our Silverado Night was to try and keep up with the whiskey drinking in the film shot for shot, which is a considerable undertaking. We would even switch between drinking regular rotgut when in a saloon and then switch to “the good stuff” when saloon owner Stella (Linda Hunt) offers Paden some of her secret stash from behind the bar. Of course he develops a taste for it, so did we.

At first it’s not too bad, and it seems like it will be a cruise since everyone is out in the backcountry and it’s dry as a popcorn fart in church. Then Mal (Danny Glover) makes it into town and heads to the saloon to quench his considerable thirst and all bets are off.

In our younger days we would use full shots, but after a few dances with the devil, we learned to pour lighter shots if we planned on making it all the way through the end of the movie.

And what would a memorable movie be without notable quotes to toss around? Well used favorites with this one include:

Cobb: “I was hoping you’d changed your mind about the job.
Paden: You didn’t tell me you owned a saloon.
Cobb: Oh, that ain’t the half of it, friend. Welcome to heaven.”

Paden: “What’s this?”

Stella: “That’s the good stuff.”

Paden: “Yeah? How good?”

Paden: “Here’s to the good stuff.”

Stella: “May it last a long time.”

Mal: “I don’t wanna kill you, and you don’t wanna be dead.”

Sherriff: “We’re gonna give you a fair trial, followed by a first class hanging.”

Cattle Rustler: “I think there’s only two guys up there and this asshole’s one of them.”

And easily the most used quote by Rick and I: From when Emmett (Scott Glenn) and Mal (Danny Glover) are preparing to kill some bad guys, holds up a pistol and asks Mal if he wants to use it… Mal holds up a big Henry rifle in each hand and simply states “This oughta do”. This is a classic and can be used in almost any situation. If we said it once, we said it a million times.

We would, or could, only do a Silverado Night every few years…it was not for the inexperienced or faint of heart. As we got older and wiser, we tended to tap out sooner…you can really be put on your lips if you keep up with the shot count.

So to sum it up…if Rick had been banished to a desert island, these are the three movies he would be perfectly happy watching over and over.

Very few would agree with this particular assortment and Rick’s favorite story of comparison was that he was incredulous that a movie about an old guy just driving around an old lady (Driving Miss Daisy) could win multiple Academy Awards, when stellar material like his favorites won absolutely nothing. The would is just not fair.

While Silverado was nominated for Best Sound and Best Original Score, alas, they all went unrecognized by the big award ceremonies…but Mr. Ricky Baker loved them enough for everyone. Happy birthday buddy.