May 6, 1997, last letter April 6, 1997
Gentle Readers,
Is There Life After Antarctica? It would seem so. As Jack Parr once said --There must be a better way of making a living than this.
He looked and came back. I am still looking.
My truck is finally a proper Texas truck. Well, almost anyhow. I never did find any barbed wire in the residential neighborhood, there were a lot of barbed cactus tho. But on this last day in the Lone Star State, in the last mile before the border a big truck passed my little truck and threw a rock at me so now my windscreen has a proper lone star. The bluebonnets and other Texas wild flowers seem to be bigger and thicker the closer I get to Louisiana but as soon as I cross the border they stop altogether.
About eight feet below sea level behind a floodgate in the French Quarter of Nawlins there is a square sort of like Cathedral Square in Christchurch; except that Jackson Square has no Wizard. There were instead three palm readers reaching for my hand. Two were rather portly palm readers with great turbans, flowing beards, and long robes. They looked like they'd been there a while. The third had no turban, no beard, and a newly pressed tunic, he must have been a prentice palm reader.
I'm visiting OAE Bill and he is showing me around his city. New Orleans has several casinos; we went to one Saturday and practiced reading the palm of a one-armed bandit.
We went to a casino in New Orleans. I can see how that can be very addictive.
I'll bet they look at how much you deposit in the slots and adjust the
odds just to keep you baited on the hook. Then there is always the feeling
that the next coin you drop could be the one that wins. Well I nearly broke
even--spent twenty, won seventeen.
Did you know that this entire city is right now about fifteen feet below the surface of the Mississippi River? 747's landing at MSY don't bother lowering their landing gear, they inflate their escape chutes for flotation instead.
Along ... Canal Street? I learn that here the strip of earth, grass,
gravel, that divides this way of the street from that way on the other
side often separates one neighborhood from another. From long 
ago what is called the median in most other places is called the neutral
ground here. Everybody got along until somebody came along and started
telling them they had to; now New Orleans has a higher murder rate than
Miami. But then I heard on the radio that Florida has been under-reporting
its crimes recently...
On Sunday morning Bill ran in the 5k Hale Boggs Bridge Run. Seventeen
hundred folks ranging in age from seven to seventy showed up for this end
of the running season race across a bridge normally closed to pedestrian
traffic. After the race we went on down US 90 and SR 1 and 
across the Big Bridge at the intersection of the Bayou Lafourche and the
Intracoastal Water Way to Larose and visited North American Shipyard where
the newest NSF icebreaker, Lawrence M. Gould, is under construction in
a huge barn where it sits on some sort of moveable keel-way with flanged
wheels on steel rails that lead out to a dry dock. The super structure
is waiting outside. When the hull is complete it will be moved outside
and mated with the super structure. She looks a far way from being ready
for the opening Palmer station cruise in October or November.
One of the islands is named Cat Island. The town was founded in 1699
by the French and in the War of 1812 (there have been several recordings
of the overture to that war) the French employed a Spaniard named Juan
De Cuevas on Cat Island to interfere with British ships trying to get through
Pass Christian to New Orleans. But the sun was climbing into the morning
sky and I wanted to find a more sandy and less populated beach for my afternoon
nap so I said good day to this historical sheriff and went on. 
Along side the road an antenna farm crops up between the trees and I execute a two point U-turn to go back and check it out. I've never seen such an extensive collection of towers and aerials of all sorts. Radio station W L O, a little south of Bayou La Batre, has 102 aerials and uses most of them all at the same time with ship to shore communications on frequencies from "marine VHF down to 438 kilocycles". You can see the guy who was telling me that was an old- timer. I told him I remembered kilocycles.
Fort Gaines is on Dauphin Island and with Fort Morgan guards the entrance
to Mobile Bay. This is one of the best such locations I have ever visited.
Dauphin Island was first named Massacre Island by Pierre Le Moyne de'Iberville
in 1699. The fort, in various evolutions, has seen action from pirate raids
in 1711, through World War I when a Coastal Artillery unit garrison manned
the disappearing guns. It is well preserved and restored by the Dauphin
Island Park and Beach Board but its not been sanitised like so many similar
places. You can actually fall down a narrow circular stair well that has
no hand rail. You can bump your head in the low dark tunnels of exquisite
early 1800's brick work or twist your ankle on the uneven granite blocks
that floor the ammunition room under the northwest bastion. 
One of these tunnels leads under the gun platform and earthworks to the latrine on the sea side of the fort. Some of you may appreciate my fascination with the subject of toilettes--This was not your usual outhouse. There were ten holes lined up along the foundation of the outer wall and twice a day the tide would slosh in through culverts under the rocky shore and wash the waste to the sea.
I don't see no beach! There are beach "front" houses lined up three and four deep (driveways have passing lanes). Some of the larger ones have merged into condos and then they grow into hi-rise hotels and then they merge into urban sprawl...
Then there is a line in the sand. I never thought I'd have anything
good to say about the National Park Service after what I saw them do to
the sand dunes of Cape Cod at Provincetown. They use to be such a great
place to play in the warm spring sun after the long winter of northern
New Hampster--then the National Park Service came along and turned this
little known area into the Cape Cod National Seashore Park to protect it.
Their protection meant installing the kind of wooden slat and twisted wire
snow fence things you often see along highways to keep the snow from drifting
onto the pavement. The sand dunes promptly abraded the wooden slats into
punji sticks and the twisted wire into fishhooks and no sooner had the
National Park Service finished installing porta-potties on their newly
paved parking lots then they put chains across the entrance that said Closed
For Spring Vacation Due To Over Use. But the real reason wasn't over use,
it was cos it was no longer safe to run barefoot in the sand with all those
sharp pointed sticks just waiting to impale you. Here at the east end of
the Gulf Islands National Seashore there are no dunes to attract that sort
of mismanagement. The boundary of the park is well defined by the distinct
lack of construction and clutter. The place is surprisingly clean and austere--not
a porta- potty in sight. This time of tight budgets may be a blessing in
disguise. Well Done NPS! 
But now we leave this land of sand and sea and venture into the orange
groves of F L O R I D A ... The first point of interest is Way Down Upon
The Suwannee River at the rest area at Fanning Springs. I've been through
here before, several times, by car and motorcycle, and never found my way
beyond the bridge span that memorialises Stephen Foster's melody. Maybe
its this Isuzu pickup, or maybe its Oso con Migo riding shotgun, all tangled
up in his seatbelt, that has a better nose for the woods, but I went down
a side road off the side road in Levy County and found a Conservation and
Recreation Area that provides a home for Trichechus manatus latirostris
(also known as West Indian Manatee). Manatees are an endangered species,
not unlike Humans, who are often killed in collisions with power boats
and from living in polluted waters among other things. I didn't see any
manatees, they're probly all down river at Manatee Springs State Park or
over to Homosassa Springs where tourists can look at them through glass
bottomed boats. 
Beyond Homosassa, out towards the end of Yulee Road there is the Yulee
Sugar Mill Ruins. David Levy Yulee (1820-1886) built Florida's first cross
state railroad and served as the states first senator. In 1849 he operated
a mill here that supplied confederates sugar, syrop, and molasses. The
sugar was moist, coarse, light brown, it says on the sign, unlike the white
fine sugar we use today. Cane was grown locally and since it was not practical
to ship cane long distances to processing plants each plantation had its
own mill. The cane was crushed by large steel rollers driven by a horizontal
cylinder steam engine. The watery sap, like maple sap, was collected in
large iron kettles and heated by the same fire that drove the engine. As
the sap thickened it was ladled by hand through several kettles and then
the raw sugar was packed into hogsheads and left to settle until the molasses
drained. In the meantime the crushed cane, bereft of its sweetness, was
fed to the boiler. 
And speaking of boilers, just down the road from there is the Crystal River Energy Complex. One of the largest generating sites in the United States, producing up to 3,000 megawatts of electricity from four coal fired plants and one nuke plant. This site is one of nine operated by Florida Power but it represents about half of the utility's generating capacity. At the visitor's center I learn that the nuclear containment structure is built to withstand the impact of a 727 aircraft, a 300 mph wind, a 30 foot tidal wave, internal pressure of 55 pounds per square inch. (All at once? I wonder?) I also learn that the coolant water is discharged into the Crystal River at a temperature only slightly warmed, perfect for the manatee who are often spotted in the warm water of the discharge canal during the winter months.
We went to dinner at Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish in Saint Petersburg. On the place mats it explains--The raw fish are laid on racks over a smouldering fire of red oak. Red oak, a native of Florida, is very similar to the northern hickory. The fish cook and smoke from four to six hours." See if you can find this place, its worth the trip.
Unlike the beach of several kilometers of unoccupied sand in Christchurch the one at Marco Island off Naples was wall to wall people. From beachfront to surf, except for the areas demarcated as Nesting Area for Endangered Birds, there was hardly space to lay down and certainly not enough room for proper sunning. Nancy said that all those people would go away north in a couple (probly to Revere, eh?)
Marci, who was the baker one recent winter in McMurdo, writes from Rome: ...we've spent a week in utter amazement. never have i experienced history in such a way ... perhaps it is because history itself takes on such a physical presence in Rome ...
I had a great visit with my cousin David over this past weekend. David is a month or so older than me and a grandfather recently. His grandson then is my first cousin twice removed. And I also found recently that the Joan, of Roger and Joan, my sort of adopted parents from Conway, Hiram, and now across the street here in Z'hills, shares a common ancestor with me. Joan and me are ninth cousins through Andrew Newcomb b.1640. Fascinating!
This just in from various news services, quoted here out of context for the purpose of review and editorial comment...
> "Ozone depletion has previously been shown to harm one-celled >marine plants in Antarctica," Detrich said. "We've now documented >significant damage at a higher level of the food chain."I wonder if any research is being funded to determine the damage caused to man in that environment. Certainly there is enough research on the damage caused by man.
> "This is the product of many years of hard work," said Vice >President Al Gore. "Antarctica is a jewel and a unique resource for >all people of the world. I am proud that the United States >continues to be a leader in global efforts to protect the AntarcticHow is it that Gore can consider the United States a "leader" when...
>statement that of the 26 nations that must ratify the treaty before >it becomes international, only Japan and Russia have yet to approve...she is 24th of 26 in the club?
This week I'm reading a short novel about Antarctica: _At The Mountains of Madness_ by H.P.Lovecraft, ISBN 0-345-32945-7 that I recommend to all interested in this subject.
\||/ | @___oo /\ /\ / (__,,,,| * * * * Gardyloo /\ ) /^\) ^\/ _) < > ) /^\/ _) || ) _ / / _) | \ )/\/ || | )_) Happy Saint George's Day \_____ |(,,) )__) / \)___)\ ___( )___) )___ _(_______;;; __;;;Happy Big Wind Day passed with nary a ripple on the water, without the usual flurry of greetings between OO's who mark it. I let it go.
On Thursday I climbed aboard the belly of a great fire-breathing cousin
of Saint George's bane and rode off into the sunrise. Puerto Rico was a
lot like Singapore, I never left the secure area of the aeropuerto. In
one gate and out the other. Change from the big plane to the little plane
between Tampa and Saint Thomas. At the snack bar there was no salsa for
my nachos but at least they had some respectable beer. San Juan was a place
to transfer to a smaller cousin, the wailing of the former replaced by
the screeching of the latter, smokes of vapour emanate from the cabin air
vents as the AC does battle with the ambient humidity as my magic carpet
returns to earth on the cusp of the windward islands, this New York of
the 
Caribbean,
a cute point of the Bermuda Triangle. It was after two days of being taxi'd
about by friends of my hosts Cindy and Steven (their car is incapacitated
at the moment requiring a radiator to be delivered from the mainland) when
I realised as I sat in the front passenger seat of a car with no rear brakes
that I was on the wrong side of the yellow line. Actually the yellow line
was weaving from side to side under me as the driver deftly straightened
the curves of suicide hill while he watched carefully for oncoming traffic
on my side and oncoming rocks on his side. Get the picture yet? Suddenly
I did. Denizens of this thirty-two square mile surrounded by sailin' solution
tourist paradise drive under rules handed down from its Danish ancestry
in vehicles of its American present. 
Marilyn visited Saint Thomas two years ago and took King Burger to sea. He's not returned, much to the delight of the clown, and many of the residents who thought his edifice rather ugly on the waterfront. This is Carnival Week on Saint Thomas, the thirteen mile long island is celebrating the sparkling beauty and deeply-felt cultural traditions of the lively mix of humanity that make up the community here with parades, food fairs, and other activities in Charlotte Amalie.
Friday I spent my day with Steven in the cool dry environment of the
Network Operations Center of the U.S. Virgin Islands Freenet and made occasional
forays out to bask in the sight and sounds of the Parade of the Children.
One steel band after another drumming along the line of march tho march
is hardly the right word in this case. Between the bands there were troupes
of costumed children representing the Mocko Jumbi spirits and all sorts
of other sprites and characters. Tomorrow 
is the adult's parade and the wedding of my hosts, Wizards of the USVInet.
Their home overlooks Dorethea Bay and the Atlantic Ocean on the north side
of the mountainous backbone ridge of this island. While the folks of Grand
Forks wish the water in their basements would go away the folks here wish
there would be more rain to fill the basement cisterns they depend upon
for their potable water needs. Downtown some toilets are flushed with sea
water and some places have wells but most depend upon the catchment systems
of their roofs. 
Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
The kids sidled through the family group to turn their attention to
the fireworks over the bay below our vantage in the hills. The padre pronounced
Cindy and Steven man and wife and later someone hollered --Hassel Island's
on fire! Sparks from the fireworks had ignited the drought-dry grass and
underbrush. Hassel Island, in Charlotte Amalie harbour, once a fort and
then a signal station, is to be developed as a U.S. National Park. The
fire burned up from the seaward side, into the wind, to the ridge extending
east-west and by late the following morning had been contained by firefighters
and volunteers who had to barge and ferry their apparatus across the harbour. 
Sunday was a day of sailing. The islands and the beaches are a lot like the Bay of Islands off the North Island of New Zealand. Great snorkeling until I was attacked by a large rock. I was concerned for a while that the blood might attract a snark or something worse, like maybe a barracuda.
Now its Monday. Carnival is over, workers are tearing down the rides
and rolling the tents; the kids are back to school and the adults are back
to work. But the streets are still filled with tourists--in fact today
there were three huge tourboats tied up at the West Indian Company dock.
Across from the Virgin Islands Legislature (which building use to be a
Danish school) is the Fort Christian Museum, named after King Christian
V of Denmark. In 1917 America purchased the Danish West Indies for twenty-five
million dollars in gold. Utilising the cell-like rooms of the fort to good
advantage the museum traces the islands' history from Columbus to Clinton.
At about the same time David Levy Yulee was using iron and steam to crush
cane in Homosassa the folks here were using wood and draught animals. 
I've been walking around all day participating in the tourist experience, helping to improve the cash flow of the island, economy now my ankle is swollen and red--there might have been some coral on the rock, some of them are nasty.
The eve of the first of May is Walpurgis Night but the town is quiet, everyone seems partied-out after Carnival Week; at Zorba's, where Clinton had lunch a few weeks ago, the oven has been turned off for the night and we choose from among the leftovers to make a meal so I can take my antibiotic.
>[29 April] "We had the last sunset. The Navy held the traditional >flag lowering, in -85f windchill I might add, and promptly put the >flag right back up again and will leave it there all winter I am >sure. [They usually do that--there is a large spotlight on the roof >of the Admin/Comms building that illuminates the flagstaff.] >The [Sunset] swim [at Scott Base] was supposed to happen Sunday but >was cancelled because of too much water. High tide put a foot or two >of water around the hole. It would have been a wading/swimming party. >I can see people frozen into the sea ice, resembling Lots wife >looking back... >[30 April] Big news. Chuck Gallagher is sick with some form of >pneumonia and the doctors want to get him outta here. Can you spell >MEDEVAC? > >Friday May 2 may see the first C-141 landing during the winter months! > >Pegasus is the intended site. And the three or four equipment ops >guys are working themselves silly trying to get it done by then. >[1st May] I have somber news. Chuck Gallagher passed away today. They >called a quick town meeting at 3:30pm to tell us...Chuck Gallagher was recently one of many Navy personnel assigned to McMurdo who took retirement amidst all the cutbacks to move over to the civilian side and continue working in Antarctica.
What's the difference? Keith writes from Austin that the Texas Separatists don't represent anyone in Texas. They came from somewhere else "...to beat on their chests and say how free they were. They filed thousands of bogus liens against property they wanted or that belonged to people who opposed their philosophical slant. Then last week they took a neigbor and his wife hostage at gunpoint because he wanted them to abide by the rules of the community. They had built bunkers all over and trained with automatic weapons. They didn't pay their bills and filed liens if questioned. Kidnapping at gunpoint is a felony. The Texas Rangers had no choice but to arrest them." Interesting that none of that detail was in the in-depth reporting I've been hearing on the news. Thanks Keith.
Back from Saint Thomas. Somewhat fewer dollars, traded for more memories; and somewhat worse for the wear. My snorkling banged up leg still hurts and the swelling comes and goes--antibiotics are now a large part of my diet, more so than vegemite...
No news on the AT&T site there; it is harder to contact and get into than my host and I expected. Other than that Saint Thomas could be a nice place to live except for the hills and the traffic.
And the lack of water.
But the beaches are great! and the weather is ok. 
However my return to CONUS was not without flaw. To start with the flight was overbooked and the gate attendents asked for volunteers stay over for the next flight in return for a flight voucher and overnight accomodations. It was touch and go at the gate with attendents vascillating about who and how many would go. For a while they could not agree on the amount of the voucher either. $400 or $500. So I played the game for the voucher it offered but when all was said and done all ticketed PAX were accommodated and a few stand- bys went as well. Not only that but there were easily fifteen empty seats in the cattle cabin. I don't understand.
Nonetheless, once underway the flight went smooth, no hassels with customs
or lost baggage. The weather in Tampa was comfortable upon arrival and
the roads not too crowded for driving back to my temporary retirement hooch.
Then when barely a half a mile from docking, only five minutes around two
more corners, I am stopped by the blinking blue lights for a missing lowbeam
headlamp. That results in a shudder to my automotive house of cards and
a nine dollar ticket for driving at night with faulty equipment. Once again
I don't understand: why is it my fault that my headlamp has gone out and
there is no store open for me to buy a new one? I have no quarrel with
the constable, he "cut me a break" with regard to the title-bill of sale-indeterminate-status-of-insurance.
Seeing that a headlamp is out is a lot easier to quantify. 
Long storey run, bigger he grow, worse he smell. This Sojourn In America continues. See me or see me not, expect me.
Stay Gold, bcnu, Love, ajo
A.J.Oxton, OA, OO, OAE, k1oIq
Back to ajo
Copyright © 2003, A.J.Oxton, The Cat Drag'd Inn , 03813-0144.