AMAZING RACE: PART VIII - BEAUTY IN MOTION

I suppose you thought she was just a model – I did - or an image without a reality. But she was a real person, a self made woman, and her own invention - a latter day Maria Sharapova in high button shoes; intelligent, talented, ambitious, an author, a dare devil, an adrenaline junkie and a hustler par excellence. You must always remember that she was a hustler to understand how she came to be the personification for a grape flavored syrup that, mixed with soda water, processed “a certain laxative effect”, and had a taste “You have to sneak up on, to get it down,”.

She was the official “Vin Fiz” girl, and that at the age of 36. And if that were her only claim to fame, then hers’ would be a mundane tale indeed. But she was so much more than just a girl on a poster. She was  Harriet Quimby; theatre critic, photojournalist, screenwriter, film actor, first licensed female pilot in America, the first woman to fly across the English Channel, and yes, she was even sexier in person than the girl on the poster. But who was she really?

The sexy leather outfit was born out of necessity. The Wright Brothers were Midwestern stick-in-the-muds who did not approve of teaching women to fly and who strongly disapproved of anybody who did. And there were darn few people in the flying business in 1911 who did not pay attention to what the Wright brothers disapproved of. So when Harriet Quimby convinced John Moisant to give her flight lessons, John  insisted on secrecy. Whenever they took off she wore a hooded leather suit to hide her femininity.

Of course it did no such thing. There was no way to hide her sex. But when the secret was out, instead of discarding the suit, the usually penurious Harriet turned it into a custom-made icon; “…thick wool-backed satin, without lining. It is all of one piece, including the hood”, as she described it.

Or as a friend noted, “She had the most beautiful blue eyes, and when she wore that long cape over her satin, plum-colored flying suit, she was a real head-turner.” Plumb colored, then; but who was Harriet Quimby, really?

Her family had owned a rock farm in upper Michigan in the 1870’s, and her mother, Ursula, had supplemented their income by selling “Quimby’s Liver Invigorator” by mail, complete with imaginary testimonials. In the 1880’s the farm went bust and the family moved to the central coast of California, and then in the 1890’s they had moved again to San Francisco. There her father, William, dispensed herbs and twenty-something Harriet invented herself as an “actress”, in the nineteenth century definition of that term, as a beautiful bobble on the arm of men who could afford her.

People asked her mother where Hariet had received her education. Ursula said Harriet had been college educated "back east". But no college had a record of her ever attending. Still people wanted to know because she was famous. Her nude portrait even hung in the sophisticated “Bohemian Club”, until it was destroyed in the San Fransico earthquake of 1906.

But by then Harriet had reinvented her self again; writing articles for the “San Francisco Bulletin”, and, in 1903, moving east to New York City to become a theatre critic, feature writer and photojournalist for “Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly”. But who was Harriet Quimby, really?

She wrote the odd and off-beat stories; “A Woman’s Moose Hunt” and “Hints to Stage Struck Girls”, and wrote on the habits of Chinatown, the life of acrobats and comics and the evils of childhood labor. In a decade she wrote more than 250 stories, many under nom de plumes. She even wrote screenplay melodramas  for D.W. Griffith’s “Biograph Studios” in New Jersey; “Sunshine Through the Dark” (a blind princess has her sight restored by a poet’s kiss), “His Mother’s Scarf” (Two brothers battle over a girl), “The Broken Cross” (boy finds girl, tramp tricks boy, boy goes back to girl) and “Fisher Folks” (a crippled girl marries a fisherman, and heartache ensues.) None of these were cinema masterpieces, or would make film history. But they paid the bills. And they gave Harriet a taste of the movie business. She even acted in one film for D.W. But who was Harriet Quimby, really?

She was vivacious, ambitious, alive and enchanting. Bonnie Ginger, a friend and fan, wrote, “Miss Quimby has…a low voice and a brilliant smile and she runs strongly to overhung bonnets and antique ornaments…She probably wears this sort of thing because she can do it so well”. Harriet lived in a suite at the Victoria Hotel in New York, and kept a suite for her parents there as well. She bought a powerful yellow sports car (her one ostentatious purchase) and sped around town in it.

When she completed her flight training, Harriet wrote that she “…walked over to one of the officials, looked him in the eye, and said ‘Well, I guess I get my license”.  And she did, Number 37. It was, she said, “Easier than voting”, which was quite a joke since women did not yet have the vote. “Was it worth the effort?”, she would write for Leslies, “Absolutely. I didn’t want to make myself conspicuous, I just wanted to be first, that’s all, and I am honestly and frankly delighted.” Was this who Harriet Quimby really was?

As for the romance of flight, Harriet was brutally honest in describing the experience to her Lesilie’s readers… “Not only the chassis of the machine, but all the fixtures are slippery with lubricating oil, and when the engine is speeded a shower of this oil is thrown back directly into the driver’s face.”

Harriet plotted carefully to be the first woman to fly the English Channel, but on the morning after her flight word of the Titanic sinking drove her adventure out of the headlines. So she came home to participate in an air show in Boston, and it was there she took a passenger for a ride in her new French built two seat monoplane.

Near the end if their flight for some reason the passanger stood up and leaned forward in his seat (seat belts being frowned upon as too restrictive). The plane hit an air pocket and the passanger was pitched out of the plane.

Harriet was unaware of this, as he had been sitting behind her. But suddenly she found the planes’ center of gravity had been drastically altered. She fought for control, and for a few seconds she almost succeded. And then the plane pitched forward and she too was thrown out. The horrified crowd watched as the two bodies tumbled into the mudflats of Dorchester Bay, one in a plum colored flying suit. The passenger died of drowning, face down in the mud of Dorchester Bay. But the girl, the slender, tiny girl...

A man ran into the water, pulled her broken body from the mud flats, and ran ashore. But it was too late. Harriet had died on impact; July 1, 1912. The Vin Fiz girl was dead, five months after the plane that had  immortalized her image ended its endeavor. But who had she been, really?

We will probably never know. She and her mother had concocted so many stories over so many years that they left the real Harriet in their shadow. And that seems to have been the way that the real Harriet Quimby wanted it.

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GIVING HUMANS THE BIRD

I have a horrible feeling that somehow we’ve gotten this whole endangered species thing wrong. Yes, we continue to carelessly destroy habitats, introduce alien species, and randomly dump industrial waste and spill oil, and that’s all bad and we should stop it. But I’ve been eating dolphin safe tuna for almost fifty years now and the darn dolphins are still not safe. I thought these aquatic mammels were supposed to be so smart! Meanwhile, nobody tried to protect the Northern Pike of Lake Davis, California: Quite the opposite.

Some idiot released a couple of Northern Pike into the small and until then very placid Lake Davis back in 1991, because they thought Pike would be fun to catch. Unfortunately Lake Davis already had a stocked population of game fish, Rainbow Trout, which are not only a popular game fish amongst tourists but are also an easy meal for the voracious Northern Pike.

To the California Fish and Game Department the worry was, that once these piscatorial carnivores had finished off the trout in Lake Davis, they would swim downstream into the Feather River, into the Sacramento and then upstream to devour the Delta Salmon fry populations, which Fish and Game had just spent tens of millions of dollars re-introducing. So, beginning in 1997 California Fish and Game declared war on the Pike. They began by dumping 16,000 gallons of liquid poison and 60,000 pounds of powdered poison into the lake. They posioned the water supply of the little lake side community of Portola.  But the Pike...not so much. Next the humans ropped off sections of the lake where the Pike tended to congregate, and tried to electrocute them. Shockingly, that didn't work either. Over ten years California Fish and Game spent well in excess of $30 million trying to kill off these finned invaders, and that effort didn't prove to be fun for anybody, except possibly the Pike.

The Northern Pike of Lake Davis were poisoned. They were electrocuted. They were shot, netted, hooked, cornered, dynamited, starved and suffocated. The state even drained the lake. For over a year the nearby human population couldn’t drink the water, it was so full of piperonyl butoxide. It was like trying to control flys with a fly swatter. 

These Franken-Pike refused to die. They weren't on any endangered species list, they’re on the ten most wanted list. They’ve had more people gunning for them than Osama bin Laden, and with about as much luck. When nothing else worked Fish and Game tried stocking Lake Davis with oversized Trout fry, thinking they would be too big for the young Pike fry to eat and the Pike would then starve to death or be eaten by the baby giganto-trout . In response the Pike began growing nine to fourteen times faster than normal. They became super-Pike fry-enator babies: big nasty Pike babies that had no trouble swallowing the Trout babies of unusual size.

Six hundred Pike were caught in Fish and Game sample nets the year after the lake was poisoned. In 2004, after the electrocution and draining and the shooting,  the catch was 17,635. In all, something over 65,000 Pike have been pulled from Lake Davis since humans began trying to eradicating them, and God knows how many sacrificial trout. But however many it was, it wasn't enough.

In May of 2005 the Pike were caught trying to find a way around the Pike screens on the spillway. When stopped the Pike explained, "Somebody told me I could us this exit." And in 2006, after a winter of heavy snow pack and spring rains, Lake Davis came within inches of overflowing the spillway entirely, and releasing the un-eradicated Pike directly into the Sacramento River system. That year, still not willing to admit he had been beaten by a mere fish, Steve Martarano of California Fish and Game gamely insisted, “We’ve gotten better at knowing where the Pike are.” Yeah, Steve: they’re in the water.

Well, in January of 2007, Fish and Game announced plans to try it one more time. In the fall of 2007, as part of yet another $12 million "new" program, about 48,000 acre feet of “rotenone”, a commonly used and “safe” pesticide, were dumped into the lake and, this time, upstream as well,, in the lake's tributaries. And this,  Fish and Game assured everyone, would finally kill off "the-Pike-that- wouldn't-die" without killing the people or the local economy...again. Nobody would know for certain if it worked until spring. The ice over Lake Davis was still 12 to 24 inches thick, but under that ice 31,000 new Eagle Lake Trout were re-stocked, ranging in size from 8 oz.to 3 lbs. And down there, in the dark water, unseen by human eyes, the battles were occuring that would decide the fate of many a naturalist at Fish and Game. As spring of 2009  approached they poured in another one million trout. And every human in California had their fingers crossed. The last word (as of 2010), on the Fish and Game web page for Lake Davis containes this cautiously hopeful message; "Currently, the reservoir area is open and restocking with rainbow trout has begun." But I've got to tell you, that to me the tale of Lake Davis reads a lot like Mary Shelly's monster story.

Meanwhile, a the same time the Pike were swiming rings around biologists in Northen California, other biologists raising endangered California Condor chicks in Sourthern California, were using hand puppets to feed baby Condors, so they would have no positive human interaction before they are released into the wild. But despite these efforts about a half dozen of the first juvenile Condors freed in the wild chose to hang out at the Pine Mountain Club, a condo resort village down the road from Fraser Park, at the Western end of the Tehachapi mountain range between Central and Southern California. And what the Pine Mountain Club Condors seemed to have figured out on their own, is that their razor sharp beaks and talons designed to rip open animal carcasses worked even better on plastic trash bags and kitchen window screens.

One  “naturalist” studying the Condor-condo interaction, returned home after a hard day of remote Condor observing via powerful binoculars only to discover three of the 30 pound birds with their 10’ wingspans, gallivanting about his bedroom, using it as a sort of playroom and free toilet. They had entered via a slit they made in his window screen. One was in his underwear drawer shredding his shorts while the other two were slowly dissecting his mattress with all the abandon of adolescences free from parental oversight. It is tempting to suggest that the birds picked out this guy personally to deliver a message, and maybe they had; "Stop watching us, you eco-papparazi!" Now, the average citizen, like say maybe Russel Crowe, would have gone into that room with a broom and defended his privacy, and he would driven those feathered gangbangers out the way they had come in!

But this guy was a “naturalist”, and he lived by a differernt code. In order to avoid "human interaction" with the feathered truants, this guy retreated until the birds got bored and left on their own. Or maybe they just ran out of poop. The “naturalists” then convinced local politicians that the problem was not the errent juvanile avian trouble makers, but humans. Dutifully the Condo board voted to require residets to hold all trash inside until the morning of collection, and then to place it in locking containers. And at the landfill a bulldozer was kept standing by so the the garbage bags could be immediately covered with dirt.

The thinking was that without an easy food supply the condors would leave. They did not take the hint. Instead in this Condor version of "West Side Story", the plot was much more simple. The Condor "Sharks"  loomed about on the roof of a local restaurant, depressing the hell out of all potential customers. Who wants to eat at restaurant with vultures looming about on the roof? The condors may have looked like comment on the cuisine, but they were actually just waiting for the trash trucks to arrive. They would then use their extraordinary skills at gliding to follow behind the trucks all way to the dump, where they quickly descended on the plastic bags, ripping them open with great vigor. Then they dinned on all the leftover meat, empty soup cans and macaroni and cheese containers, as if they were a dining on a dieing wooly mammoth. The front loaders couldn’t cover the trash bags without the risk of burying a condor at the same time, so the meals could now be eaten at leisure in a sort of Condor outdoor olfactory buffet. Game, set, and match to the Condors.

The biologists and naturalists were horrified because this behavior didn’t fit their image of noble Condors sailing in an empty sky above an untouched wilderness - which is where the Condors almost became extinct in the first place. Need I point out that not a single condor died at the Pine Mountain Club? They ate too many french fries, but none of them died!

The happy ending to this story of rebellious Condors is that once they matured and mated the adult condors didn’t want their offspring growing up in an urban environment anymore than Republicans do. Today, the Pine Mountain Club is condor free, except for a few weeks every summer when the newly adolescent vultures fly in for a sort of avian spring break, a condor rumsringa. They eat spicy food, taunt the humans and stage panty raids on the naturalists. And then they leave. And even the humans have adapted. The Pine Mountain Club now calls their newsletter "The Condor", and guests can drink themselves into oblivian in the "Condor Room" at the club bar. And wouldn't you like to see one of these drunks come staggering out into the morning light to be confonted by a feathered omen of impending death?

Now, I’m not suggesting we try protecting endangered species with dynamite or by raising their cholesterol levels, but it does seem that the animals we’re protecting are all in trouble while the ones we’re trying to exterminate are experiencing population booms. What can we learn from this? Well, first, that there are six billion humans on this planet at present and more on the way. And baring a natural disaster or WMD we are not going anywhere. And if we do, so are the Condors and most of the Pike and Trout. Modern Condors, searching for dinner while soaring above the wilderness are going to see a lot more humans than dead deer. And Pike and Trout are going to meet a lot of little fish with hooks in them. So why not “humanize” them, teach them what every mentally retarded urban pigeon already knows; the fries are better at Burger King, don’t drink the yellow water, never trust a politician in an election year and don’t go swimming in Lake Davis unless you want your talons bitten off.

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BUYING SWAMPLAND

“Politics have no relation to morals”
Niccolo Machiavelli - “The Prince” - 1513

I would say that 1835 was, like most years, a revolutionary year in America. Inspired by gringo emigrants, Texas rebelled against Mexico. In Boston, five thousand bigots broke into a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, and dragged abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison through the streets at the end of a rope. In South Carolina 36 slaves and one 60 year old free-black carpenter were hanged for trying to organize a slave revolt. Down in Florida the Second Seminole War broke out when Native Americans refused to surrender their freedom and their homes. And along the shores of Lake Erie, free whites did their very best to start a war over possession of 268 square miles of swamp and prairie, known as “The Toledo Strip”.

In truth, the Great Black Swamp was what filmaker Alfred Hitchcock would call a Magoffin. It was not what people were fighting over, even tho it was what people were fighting over. It was not even much of a swamp by Louisiana standards. It was great only because it occupied a swath of land, 40 miles wide and 120 miles long, in the northwest corner Ohio – which was a little far north for a swamp.

It was really a collection of ponds and marshes interspersed with hillocks, filled and drained by the 130 mile long Maumee River, which fed into Lake Erie. It's only claim to fame was that it formed a natural barrier between the state of Ohio and the territory of Michigan. The Black Swamp was certainly not desirable  farmland, but it provided a bumper crop of mosquitoes each summer, and they, and the malaria they carried, made life difficult for any intrepid surveyors who might set up their theolodite upon such soggy ground.

“Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.”

Niccolo Machiavelli – “The Prince” – 1513

The first real attempt to draw the border was made in 1817, when Michigan Territory hired surveyor William Harris. According to the “Harris Line” the mouth of the Maumee River was in Michigan, below the swamp. In 1818 Ohio responded by hiring John Fulton to survey the border, which he found five miles further north, avoiding the swamp by going above it. Taken together the two lines bracketed the Great Black Swamp. And while the desire of a surveyor to avoid all those mosquitoes was understandable, the residents of Ohio and Michigan were confused. They appealed to Washington. But abiding by the political rule that whatever you do will make somebody angry with you, the politicians decided to do nothing. After all, nobody would fight for ownership of a swamp.

Then in 1825 the Erie Canal opened, connecting the port of New York with the Great Lakes. It proved to be such an economic revolution that plans were immediately drawn up for a port at the mouth of the Maumee River, and a canal up the river to Fort Wayne, Indiana (statehood granted in 1816), where it would connect to another canal down the Wabash River, to the Ohio and thence to the Mississippi. Those canals would make the port of Toledo (which was established by Ohio in 1832) the hub of transportation for the entire center of the continent. A Toledo lawyer, John Fitch, noted that already it was the general opinion that “no place on the lake except Buffalo will rival it.” The politically active residents of Michigan Territory became convinced that Ohio politicians were trying to steal Toledo from them.

The politics finally solidified when hot headed 23 year old Stephen Mason became Territorial Governor of Michigan. He was a gift from President Andrew Jackson, a man who appreciated hot heads. And under pressure from other hot heads in the territory, Governor Mason issued the “Pains and Penalities Act” of February 12, 1835, making it illegal for a non-Michigan resident to enforce the law in Toledo, Michigan Territory.

The Cleveland, Ohio newspapers called the Michigan claim to Toledo “as absurd as it is ridiculous.” And on February 23, the defiant Ohio General Assembly, playing to their own base, voted to “run the border” of the Fulton Line, meaning to mark it again as Toledo, Ohio, with stone posts that clearly said so. On April Fool’s day Michigan held local elections in the Toledo Strip. On April 6th Ohio held competing local elections in the Toledo Strip. Somebody was going to have to disappoint their supporters..

“Before all else be armed.”
Niccolo Machiavelli – “The Prince” – 1513

Two days later a Michigan Country sheriff and an armed posse of 40 men rode into Toledo to enforce the Penalities Act. Several men snuck into the home of Benjamin Stickney, who was an “Ohio patriot” and a major in the Ohio militia. Now, even allowing for how little humanity knew at the time about dysfunctional parenting, the level of strangeness displayed by Benjamin Stickney is staggering. This respected member of the community named his eldest son “Number One” and his younger son “Number Two”. Stickney also had a daughter, but for some reason we don’t know what he called her. I suspect it might have been “Light Sleeper”.

When the girl was awakened by a noise that night, she stepped into the hall to investigate. A creeping Michigan deputy clamped a hand over the startled child’s mouth, and held her silent, lest she shout a warning to her father. Alas, Benjamin Stickney was not at home. So two of his house guests were arrested and taken north for arraingment. Two days later they were released on bail.

In handbills and letters to Ohio newspapers Major Stickney inflated the posse to 300 men “armed with muskets and bayonetts”, claimed that the deputies had tried to goug out his eyes and had “throttled” his daughter. He urged his fellow buckeyes to “turn out en masse to protect their northern border and restrain the savage barbarity of the hordes of the north.” Ohio Govenor Robert Lucas, aother Jackson Democrat, sent 40 men to guard his surveyors and ordered the 100,000 members of the state milita to assemble in the tiny town of Perryville, Ohio, just down the Maumee River from Toledo. Only 10,000 actually turned up and most of them never got to Perryville, because they got lost in the swamp.

Meanwhile a Michigan posse, 30 strong, caught the Ohio “line runners” relaxing in camp on Sunday, April 21st . Most of the buckeyes broke for the woods, but nine of the protecting milita were caught in the open. When the Michigan posse fired a volley over their heads they wisely surrendered. All seven were arrested for violating the “Pains and Penalities Act”, and on Monday morning six were granted bail and two were released after a warning to behave. The only Ohioian who remained in jail was Jonathan Fletcher, a hot head who refused to post bail “on principle.” In the annals of Michigan this encounter was memorialized as the “Battle of Phillip’s Corner”, since the encounter had occurred in a field owned by Eli Phillips, who supported Michigan.

“The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.”
Niccolo Machiavelli – “The Prince” – 1513

The smell of gunpowder had brought a degree of sanity back to Governor Mason, and in the spirit of good will he suspended enforcement of his Pains and Penalities Act. But now it was the Ohio legislature’s turn to appease their base. Kidnapping was already illegal in Ohio, but buckeye politicians felt it necessary to pass a new law providing hard labor for kidnapping anyone from Ohio. And they made Toledo the capital of a new county.

In Toledo one observer noted “Men (were) galloping about – guns getting ready – wagons being filled with people and hurrying off, and everybody in commotion “ The little town of just 1,250 citizens had become a magnet for every nut case, political hot head and pugnacious drifter in the midwest. In July, two Michigan deputies tried to hold an auction of property siezed for non payment of Michigan taxes, and a gang of Ohio “patriots”, led by Number Two Strikney, broke up the auction. So, on July 12th a Michicgan arrest warrant was issued for the son-of-a-patriot, for disturbing the peace. Number Two, upon learning of the warrent, sent a message to the Michigan sherriff to stay out of Toledo, if he wanted to live.

That threat set Governor Mason off again. He ordered 250 men into Toledo, under Deputy Sheriff Joseph Wood, to arrest Number Two and his gang. Most of the Ohio “patriots” ran safely for the river, but Number Two didn’t make it. Sheriff Wood physicaly grabbed him and Number Two pulled what in Ohio was called a pen knife and in Michigan became a “dirk”. “Two” stabbed the sheriff in the leg and dissappeared across the Maumee. The wound was minor and the sheriff was able to ride back across the border that night, having paused to arrest Number Two’s father, Major Stickney, and drag him back to Michigan, tied to the back of a horse. But before leaving town the Michiganders also smashed the offices of the pro-Ohio Toledo Gazette, behaving, claimed the paper, worse than an “Algerian robbery or Turkish persecution.” It seemed the residents were even running short of hyperbole. What was left but gunpowder?

“A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his insterests.”
Niccolo Machiavelli – “The Prince” – 1513.

It was at this point that Andrew Jackson finally stepped in and on August 29th , 1835 removed Mason as governor of Michigan Territory. Jackson also let it be known that Michigan would only be allowed to become a state after they accepted that Toledo was a town in Ohio. It was a hard pill for the rabble to swallow, particularly after all that rabble rousing, but as a sop for hurt feelings, the federal government granted Michigan the additional territory known as the Northern Pennisula. Michigan was finally admitted into the union, sans Toledo, on January 26, 1837.

So Ohio won. The canals were dug, and the buckeyes benefited from the taxes paid by the port at the mouth of the Maumee River. In 1842 1,578 barrels of flour and 12,976 bushels of wheat were shipped through Toledo, Ohio. By 1852 the totals were a quarter million barrels flour and almost two million bushels of wheat. But Toledo did not become the transportation hub for the region, because canal technology was superseded by railroads, and Chicago superseded Toledo; none of which the Ohio patriots predicted in 1835.

Meanwhile, in 1844, a party of surveyors was marking out the second place prize for Michigan, the Upper Peninsula,  when they found their compasses spinning wildly. This was caused by one of the largest concentrations of iron ore ever found on the planet, the Marquette Range, which was surrounded by one of the largest concentrations of copper ore ever found on earth. Beginning in 1847 and continuing over the next one hundred years and fifty years, over a billion tons of iron and several billion tons of copper were removed from those hills. None of the Michigan patriots could have predicted that, either.

The truth was the future contained a bounty beyond the imagination of the patriots who willing to kill each other in 1835, all for possession of a swamp – and not a great swamp at that. Does that make any sense?

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