LET ‘ER BUCK!

This month marks the 104th Pendleton Round-Up, one of Oregon’s most notable events.  And thereby hangs a tale, though apparently there are some things that parents do not even tell their adult children.  I never learned the full story of how my parents hooked up, and since they’re both gone I guess I never will.  But it’s an intriguing story since it involves a rare combination of romance, hosses, airplanes, and stuff.

My hometown is Athena in Umatilla County, near Pendleton up in the northeast corner of the state.  (Athena’s 1940 population: 513.  Pendleton’s: 8,847.)  Before The War my paternal grandfather from Portland had purchased some ranch property near Athena, and Dad worked there during the summer.

In 1941 Dad left Oregon State College to gain experience as a draftsman with Douglas Aircraft in El Segundo, California.  After Pearl Harbor he became a naval aviation cadet and visited his father in Athena.  Mother later said that she saw J. H. Tillman, Jr. leaning against a lamp post and thought, “Hmmm…how did I miss that?”  (He was matinee-idol handsome if I say so myself.)  So she made the aviator’s acquaintance by the clever device of asking him to take her young nephew to the men’s room.  (Sidebar: the lad grew into a mathematics PhD.)

Some background: 

In 1941-42 Pendleton Army Air Field was home to the 17th Bombardment Group (Medium), the first to fly North American’s B-25 Mitchell.  While local lore has been warped to state that Jimmy Doolittle’s Tokyo raiders trained there, nonetheless they were based at PAAF before being selected for The First Special Aviation Project.

Meanwhile, massive violence was applied globally.  Italy capitulated.  Germany surrendered.  Aaaaand…

In August 1945 Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender, and on September 2 the papers were signed aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Two weeks later the World-Famous Pendleton Round-Up was held.  And folks, the lid was off.

Like many sporting events, the Round-Up was canceled in 1942 and ’43 but resumed in ’44.  Things returned full-scale in ’45 when future movie actor Ben Johnson set a record in calf roping.

Now, to understand the atmosphere in ’45, remember that it occurred immediately after the Second World War ended.  People were primed to party, and lordy-lordy, did they! 

My mother was on the round-up court that year.  A green-eyed brunette, at age 25 she’d grown up on horseback, and was a natural selection since her father (for whom I’m named) was a longtime supporter of the event.  Additionally, she had a maternal cousin who’d been a princess in ’38.

On the first day, the queen and four princesses had just ridden into the arena and were taking their seats when

ROOOAAARRRR….

A dark-blue airplane dipped into the bowl formed by the north and south grandstands, narrowly missing the flags ringing the arena.

The Navy had arrived, though it hadn’t landed yet.

Forty-five miles north-northwest of Pendleton, across the mighty Columbia, was Naval Air Station Pasco, Washington.  It was less than 20 minutes by tailhook aircraft, and the aviators were recently off an escort aircraft carrier, ready to party.  After beating up Umatilla County and alighting at Pendleton, they attached themselves to the court.  Dad had encountered some of them on Main Street, toting a 20 mm ammunition box full of beer and ice. 

One evening everybody was ready for dinner at the country club when someone noticed that a lieutenant (junior grade) called Mac was missing.  His squadronmates ran a sector search and found him out back on the green, asleep under the sprinkler with a St. Bernard.  Mother said he'd consumed 13 Alexanders, a sweet cocktail laced with gin.  Mac's reputation and his dress blues were ruined but what was the Navy gonna do--send him to a combat zone?  

(For a comparable cinematic version, look for the always suave Cary Grant and the eternally glorious Susie Parker in Kiss them For Me based on the Frederick Wakeman novel & play, Shore Leave.)

Moving on:

South of town was/is McKay Reservoir.  There were reports of a TBM-3 Avenger making a l-o-w torpedo run on a row boat, prompting the fishermen to abandon ship.  My father seemed to know a lot about it...always wondered if that inspired the opening PBY scene in Always.

After the Wildcats and Avengers finished ravaging the area (reportedly running a state police car off the road with a tractor or two severely buzzed), The Authorities called Pasco demanding that blue airplanes be grounded.  Done!  The golden wingers had to stay put until the dust settled.

Puh-leez don' th'ow me in dat briar patch!

Long ago I thought that I identified the Navy squadron--wrote the likely suspects' reunion group seeking confirmation but never got a reply.

That seemed to confirm my suspicion.

After Henry Barrett died in 1962, his family sponsored the Pony Express Race.  It was always one of the most dramatic events—a relay with each team passing a baton from one rider to another.  Bounding starts, pounding hooves, flying dirt, occasional collisions—a terrific spectator sport.  First team around the track took home the silver-plated trophy.  For obscure reasons apparently related to parking, the Round-Up ended the PER in 1991 in favor of team roping, though we never got the courtesy of a notification.

Some local lore:

In the 1940s, when the annual Westward Ho Parade passed some entertainment establishments, one of them (officially the Cozy Rooms) set out a sign: “The Westward Ho House.”  The bordello and Chinese opium dens draw tourists from around the Northwest who enjoy Pendleton’s underground tours.

Under the south grand stand is an emporium called The Let 'Er Buck Room.  For decades a long-standing tradition was ringing the cowbell when a cowgirl removed her shirt. They used to post signs saying Keep Your Clothes On but patrons kept stealing them—especially dudes seeking mementos of The Wild West.  Finally the binary problem was solved by stashing the cowbell and removing the signs.

I knew an east coast magazine editor who visited one year--a short Filipino guy who was All American and one of the biggest rednecks I ever met.  When he walked in, a Cowgirl laid a big juicy one on him and said "I want you."  He couldn't think of anything to say so she wandered off.....

Probably not into the sunset, but definitely into the land of Happy Trails.

HOW WE WON THE WAR

We won World War II 70 years ago this month, and I'm finally revealing The Ultimate Weapon.  Just remember: you saw it here first.

Never mind the world's greatest industrial base


or the 15-million-man force structure 


or the 90-division army


or the two-ocean navy


or the globe-spanning logistics 

or the atom bomb.

THIS is how we won the war:

http://www.hnsa.org/resources/manuals-documents/single-topic/typewriter-maintenance/

The booklet is dated November 1944, a crucial period in WW II history.  To quote my friend and colleague Richard B. Frank, author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, “This manual was published just as we were bogged down fighting on Leyte and about to face the Battle of the Bulge.  After it was published: (1) we finally overcame resistance on rain soaked Leyte and (2) contained and then threw back the last great German offensive of the war.

“Obviously, there is a connection between the timely publication of this manual and these pivotal events that historians shamefully have overlooked for decades.  No snickering please.”

Actually, the greatest war in history could not have been fought without legions of typists.  Somewhere deep in the cavernous labyrinth of government warehouses—perhaps alongside the missing Ark of the Covenant—is a rusty, moldy file cabinet with the strategic information on Typewriter Proliferation.  However many machines the U.S. Government (in all its permutations) possessed in 1941, the figure surely exploded over the next four years.

The manual is thorough, providing details on Remington, Royal, Woodstock, Underwood, and L.C. Smith models.  Royal is particularly relevant to me because I learned to type on a Royal Standard my father bought before I was born (in the first half of the previous century).  Eventually I wrote my first six books and about 100 articles on that valiant machine, which I used until most of the vowels wore thin.  At length I was dragged into the computer age with a doorknob in each hand and skid marks on the floor.

Some context:

In 1940 Congress passed the Draft Act by one vote, activating the Selective Service bureaucracy to conscript millions of young men.  Some were more perceptive than others.  Knowing that military service probably was unavoidable, thousands figured on their own, or benefited from the experience of others, that pounding a typewriter was infinitely preferable to pounding the tundra in the Aleutians, swamps on a godforsaken Pacific isle, or ankle-deep African sand.  Straight out of basic training, a soldier or sailor who demonstrated 40 words per minute had his ticket out of combat.

In the sweltering Alabama summer of 1941 the Air Corps Tactical School produced the basic plan for the air war against Germany and Japan.  It was amazingly prescient, predicting with exceptional clarity the force necessary to bomb the Axis into submission.  Furthermore, it was completed by just nine officers and a small clerical staff in nine days.  The document, AWPD-1, was produced on manual typewriters with carbon paper for duplicates.  No word processors; no computers.

In 1945 a late friend, Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper, was a Marine Corps major on the staff of III Amphibious Corps, planning the invasion of Japan.  Operation Olympic was due to seize the southern island of Kyushu that November, and he recalled that mountains of paper were consumed with all the minutae of so great an undertaking: available shipping; routes and timing; tides and weather; logistics; supplies; casualty estimates; time-tables; on and on.  Every aspect required multiple copies of clean typescript: naval gunfire support, air support, and landing craft to name a few.

But the typewriter produced papers well beyond the theaters of operation.  Remember the scene in Saving Private Ryan?  In Washington a large roomful of typists—all female—earnestly batter away at their keyboards, typing form letters of bereavement to families across the nation, filling in the blanks according to the format of the time:

“The (War-Navy) Department regrets to inform you that your (son, husband, relative) was (killed, wounded, missing) in the performance of his duty on (date) in the (European, Mediterranean, Pacific, China-Burma-India) Theater of Operations.

“The department extends to you its sincerest sympathy in our great loss. On account of existing conditions, the body, if recovered cannot be returned at present. If further details are received you will be informed. To prevent possible aid to our enemies, please do not divulge the name of his (ship-station).”

“You will be informed of additional details as they become available.”

“Signed:

(General-Admiral)

Chief of Staff/Personnel”

The verbiage was transmitted by telegram, prompting a generation of Americans to dread the appearance of the local Western Union courier.

However, the typewriter’s importance was not limited to America.  One of the most fascinating epics to emerge from the war involved a German soldier captured by the Soviets and sent to perish in a slave-labor camp.  In 1946 word came down that a typewriter repairman was needed in the gulag commandant’s office, and the emaciated Soldat grasped the opportunity.  Though he neither repaired office machines nor read Cyrilic, he bluffed his way into the office where a goon said in fractured Deutsch, “You fix, one hour.  Or else.”

The desperate young German searched the office for something useful and came up with a broken piece of furniture.  When the turnkey reappeared, the German bashed him stoutly and fatally, then took his uniform and rifle.  Wrapping a muffler about his face, he trudged through the gate, waving to the guards, and disappeared into the Russian vastness. 

He took 18 months to get home, but he made it.

Best-selling historian Rick Atkinson has written an epic account of the U.S. Army in WW II.  His Liberation Trilogy accessed enormous amounts of wartime documents, reckoned at 17,000 tons of paper.  Most will decompose before anyone can copy them, but they represent the enormity of the irreplaceable contribution that the manual typewriter made to victory in the Second World War.

AMAZING ANIMALS

I was a Northeastern Oregon ranch kid so I grew up with animals.  Some were pets, some were livestock.  We had cattle, horses, mules, llamas, and bison plus the usual cats and dogs plus rabbits and a baby alligator that found a new home after it bit my mother.  (The folks brought it home from a party one night when I was in grade school, complete with red ribbon around its neck.  Only with some retrospective did I begin to infer the circumstances of that acquisition.)

A few critters stand out in my memory.

Gotta start with a two-year-old bull bison I named Brewster.  Aviation fans will appreciate the reference to Brewster (the) Buffalo.  Everybody else can Google it.

Brewster was athletic.  Flat-footed he could clear almost any fence on the ranch, and then he’d head in whatever of 360 degrees his Pleistocene instincts dictated.  Now, buffs are not especially fast but they can run all…day…long.  Their trachea resembles a three-inch fire hose.  That’s why the plains Indians ran them in circles—or over a cliff.  No horse can keep pace with them for long.

As you may imagine, Brewster could cover ground, and it became a Challenge to find him.  After the second or third episode people asked, “How do you find a runaway buffalo?”

I said, “It’s easy.  You go home and you sit by the phone.”

My youngest brother graduated from college with a degree in English and minor in philosophy.  When he declared the latter, Dad asked, “Have you checked the yellow pages lately?  There’s no listings for philosophers.”

So…the lad decided to raise llamas.  That was in the mid-70s, and exotics were still a growth industry.  Actually, he gave some thought to camels but our father said, in monosyllables, “Not just No but hell No.”

The New World camelids are llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicunas.  The latter are easily identified by the silky ruffs on their chests, contributing luxurious fibers to really spendy coats.

Have you ever seen Salmon P. Chase on a greenback?  Me neither.  But at the height of the llama market a cria was worth $10,000 when it hit the ground.  My brother had impeccable timing—got in early and got out at the right time, even married his very astute veterinarian. 

Llamas are worth a separate blog, and I’ll keep that in mind.  Suffice to say that they can be warm and cuddly or cranky and spiteful, which often means spit-ful.  You devoutly do not want to get caught in a llama crossfire.  They’re called “modified ruminants,” meaning they have three stomachs and regurgitate a bilious green slime to express their displeasure.  Think: high-pressure fire hose for starters.

In the 1980s I knew a lady who volunteered at a wildlife park.  Michelle was, to employ an overworked phrase, drop-dead gorgeous—married twice in the time I knew her—but we became friends.  She mentioned that occasionally she tended giraffe and asked if I’d like some face time.  Done deal!  She convinced me (very little convincing required) to accompany her on a feeding detail—a rare opportunity to meet arguably the most fascinating animals on Planet Earth. 

When I say “face time,” I mean face-to-face time.  There are eight or nine varieties of giraffe, but the Rothschild’s I met were curious and friendly as long as I had something munchable.  Their long, rough tongues were darkish colored and amazingly agile.  If there’s such a thing as a prehensile tongue, giraffe have it.

However, meeting giraffe even in a large enclosure was not the same as seeing them in nature.  In 2000 I went to Zimbabwe on a magazine assignment with some hunting included.  Riding the Land Rover onto the reserve, I noticed three long-necked creatures peering at us over the top of acacia trees.  That was an unforgettable moment—a small yet tangible sensation: We’re really in Africa.

A few days later I was out early with my hunting guide when we crossed a dry creek bed.  He pointed to some fresh tracks.  “Leopard.  Passed here last night.”

The hair on the back of my neck actually stood up, accompanied by a prickling-tingling sensation.  Only much later did I mention it to a friend who’d treated himself to a safari upon assuming command of an aircraft carrier.  He said, “That was your DNA talking to you.”

He was right.  It’s hard for most humans to realize it today, but there was a time when it was uncertain whether leopards or hominids would finish atop the food chain.  (There’s archeological evidence indicating a prehistoric contest: Leopards 1, Humans 0.)

At the opposite end of the Fascinating Animal Scale from giraffe are hummingbirds.

There are more than 300 species of hummers, with 19 historically recorded here in Arizona, mostly in the southeastern part of the state.  However, several species are considered Rare (migratory) and five Accidental.  The Phoenix area hosts three or four varieties, with Anna’s mostly patronizing the feeders outside my office and the dining room.

Anna’s are especially colorful.  They display almost iridescent green bodies while males sport brilliant red or reddish throats.

I never get tired of watching them.  Like every other aviator, I find them absolutely enchanting.  Their ability to change direction and velocity in an instant make them the envy of every Harrier pilot—“viffing” is part of the VSTOL aviator’s inventory, but Mom Nature imparted unmatched virtuosity to the tiny masters of vector in forward flight.

Then woodpeckers discovered the feeders in April.  Damn poachers.

The other day I was typing away when I heard a tap-tap-tapping sound.  Looked to my right about four feet and saw a Gamble’s Quail on my window ledge.  The little guy was persistent—kept at it though I have no idea what he wanted.  A day or so later a lady Gamble’s repeated the process at the kitchen window.  I guess The Word got around.

So did the word on the porcine grapevine.  My wife’s flower pots have drawn attention of javelina, which regard the decorations as an open-air salad bar.  But know what?  We don’t mind too much.  It’s a pleasure to share our environment with wildlife, even including coyotes, bobcat, and at least one cougar which a friend calls the “mountainous lion.”

After all, they were here first.  But we really could’ve done without the diamondback rattler in the garage.