Bench Grass is a blog about the history of technology by the former student of a student of Lynn White. The main focus is a month-by-month retrospective series, covering the technology news, broadly construed, of seventy years ago, framed by fictional narrators. The author is Erik Lund, an "independent scholar" in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last post will be 24 July 2039.
In a perfect world this would be a substantive post, as I left on my summer bike trip last Wednesday and arrived home yesterday. On the other hand, I'm owned one short, breezy, on-the-road post. Owed, man.
Anyway, my Dad died the winter before last of the slow and fading road to the west that my uncle is now following, removing the need to ride the Crowsnest to Grand Forks for my annual visit. I also accomplished my goal of riding (part) of the Okanagan last year, and was free to return to Highway 5A, "The Old Princeton-Kamloops Highway," which I last rode, in part, as a youth so many years ago, full of all the silly follies of youth that seem so absurd when you are possessed of the follies of old age.
I have no idea whether we'll actually be able to make a family tradition of Christmas in Nakusp, but it does seem like a more agreeably rural and reliably snowy place to celebrate my children's childhood than Vancouver, so I'm willing to give it a try if the roof doesn't fall off. For that I suppose we should consider the lodge, but Campbell River is even less likely to have a white Christmas than Vancouver!
I guess the day had to come when I wasn't done writing one of these until after I was snug in my room and waiting for whoever it comes on the Twenty-Eighth. The ghost of the Park Royal Boxing Day Sale? Anyway, I'm going to drop this in the courier box so that everyone else can see it. Now this is the part where I mention a winsome event in my life and that of your grandchildren. So did I mention that I saw Field-Marshal Montgomery on the plane? I did? In giddy tones when I got here a week ago? Drat. I've got nothing else.
Thank you for the tickets, which we received on Monday. I have no idea how you found out when James' leave began, as he swears that he didn't tell you. We are very happy to accept the invitation, I repeat, just in case our letter is, I don't know, eaten by the Purple People Eater whilst winging its way across the Atlantic. I feel as though I should be updating you with our plans, but I obviously don't have to tell you our schedule for a trip you paid for and arranged! I would tell you how much luggage we are bringing, but I haven't even begun to sort that out!
As this completely upends Christmas shopping, I would be happy to have an updated list of suggestions from Vancouver, if you could find the time to forward one. You'll also have to give some thought to gifts that will satisfy the little ones and still be small enough to pack back with us. Don't worry about space in the apartment, unless for some reason you decide to give them a pot!
So while I ordinarily don't work very much Christmas week because my contract guarantees me two stat days and my work place is closed on Christmas Day, it has not often been the case that my schedule is written to allow me to enjoy my holiday with holiday visits, and I have plenty of well-spaced time to write during the holiday week. That is not the case this year, and I am off to Vancouver Island tomorrow morning, back on Wednesday. Happy holidays to everybody! However, to satisfy my OCD and discuss an interesting thing which has come up, here is a somewhat culinary, somewhat technological/economic thing which has come up.
So, three things: i) There is no way that I am not posting this ad, especially the week I read Edith Outland on "the Effingham libels." Man, did Horace Greeley know how to stick in the knife! ii) I'm off on a bonus week of vacation to see my Mom, so I'm looking for a blog post that requires more wandering-around-the-Intenet-at-the-kitchen-table than blasting away at the keyboard whilst surrounded by ancient tomes. iii) Lameen has confirmed that "there was no North African Bronze Age" is something people say.
I have academic confirmation of the commonplace that makes it a bit less bizarre, but there is a deeper problem in that there seems to be a lack of communication between research silos. Something isn' t right in the prehistory of the Maghreb.
St. Nicholas, Washington Irving tells us, was first seen by a Dutch scouting party checking out Manhattan. Shipwrecked on its shores, they had a vision in which good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children." St. Nicholas becomes the founding father of New York, which is why he is the patron of he New-York Historical Society, founded in 1804, and to which Washington Irving belonged when, in 1809, he published this in an extended parody of Samuel L. Mitchell's Picture of New-York, the publishing sensastion that was Irving's History of New-York. The history of Santa Claus being a crowded field, especially at this time of the year, I'll leave the rest to silence except for the confusion of dates for St. Nicholas' advent, whether on the 6th of December, the 24th, 25th, or New Year's Eve, and the indigenous North American parallel that seems relevant here, Le canoe volant, or, as the Wikipedia entry more primly has it, La Chasse-galerie, which in the story carries voyageurs home to their loved ones on New Years Eve. And, as always, I should acknowledge the brilliant connection that Lauren Golf makes between the legend of the flying canoe and the Sullivan Expedition, or boats floating above the flooded countryside in general.
But "the first Christmas" in North America was at the second permanent European colony in North America, Port Royal, Nova Scotia. It was celebrated by Samuel de Champlain, Membertou, the sachem of the Micmacs, and Champlain's Order of Good Cheer, more than two centuries before in 1605.
In the end, Reggie did decide to go to the memorial, so your phone call did some good, after all. I hardly knew the 124283 crew, so I was sentimental for a completely different reason. Wong Lee came down to drive us to the club, and not only did we catch up, I got to watch him practice his "evasionary driving!" I have no idea what ONI makes of the crash at this point, but I have to note that they haven't released a flight number, so it was probably best to make sure we didn't lead the Examiner to the ceremony! I don't think it would be good for anyone's career to have a Hearstling crash the memorial! the memorial! Reggie was pretty blue until the band struck up "Ghost Riders in the Sky," which really broke the ice! In the morning, well, no, in the afternoon, by which time he'd finally begun to shake his hangover, he went down to see Bill and Dave. (I think they're cooking up something in the electric guitar way.)
So I think we are over the hump as long as the Hungarians are nice and release their Dakota. (And, no, I have absolutely nothing on the grapevine about that. There's talk it might have been dropping spies for Tito? Which would be a bit of a hot tamale, let me tell you!)
Looking forward to seeing you on Christmas Eve, and also to handing this to you in person, which is why I am being a dreadful security risk and writing it in English.
Here I am, back at my comfortable computer station in Vancouver, as from 9:40 last night. With the ergonomic issues --and the fatigue that comes from riding six hour+ stages-- I could write something more substantial, but I'm not going to, because I have a very small but personal matter in my teeth, and I am going to get it out!
A large part of high school Canadian history, at least in my day, was dedicated to the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. I am not even sure that it is possible to argue that this is wrong, and offer a revisionist "People's History of Canada." It's not that there's not counter-narratives --that is, in fact, what I'll be writing about today-- but there is a very strong case that there would not be a Canada without the "iron road from the sea to the sea." I'm going to waffle all over that claim (I think it's wrong but am utterly unprepared to do the work needed to sustain a counterargument), but it's hard to argue against the economic and geographical logic.
Hardrock miners on the porch of the Deadwood Store, Greenwood, BC, c. 1900. It's hard to understate how strong the completely unexamined notion that white Britons were the first "outsiders" in this province
The old-time historians and commentators were not modest about our ancestral achievement. Firm that the "natural" lines of North American communication ran north-south, so that the railway realigned the geopolitics of a continent in line with the sociopolitical preferences of the infant nation. It was even, at least by the 1970s, the fashion to acknowledge some non-White participation, with dutiful Chinese labourers and misunderstood Metis, as well as the usual lot of "Indian guides."
Leaving everything else aside, there was a strong British Columbia connection to the generation that gave us this history, starting with Pierre Berton himself. For them, much of this argument was intuitive. It is hard to get from Vancouver to the interior of the province of British Columbia, and, more specifically, to travel between the Okanagan Valley and the Coast. For my grandfather's generation, you could take either I-95 or I-97 south until they joined away down south, at which point San Francisco --heck, Tijuana-- were as close as the other part of your native province, or the arduous but patriotic alternative of wagon road down the Fraser Canyon.
The Crow's Nest Highway, Number 3, along which I stumbled and bumbled on my vacation last summer presents the Hope-Princeton as the first challenge for the avid bicyclist out of Vancouver, and it is a pretty meaty one.
The way mountain roads are supposed to be, the road ascends a watercourse on one side, reaches the water parting at a "pass," and descends the other side. You might not know that the St. Bernard Pass is reached from a tributary of the Rhone that runs into Lake Geneva, on the one side, and a tributary of the Po on the other, but you know that's how it works.
The Hope-Princeton, on the other hand, ascends a left bank tributary of the Fraser, then switches to climb a significant hill to Sunshine Valley, of which I would have a vacation picture if my motel wireless were up to it.
Stealing from Wikipedia is faster, and hardly a crime at all.
The Valley in the Sunshine is carved by the Sumallo River, a tributary of the Skagit and of little consequence unless you live in Bellingham, Washington, where the Skagit enters Puget Sound.
From the end of the Sumallo/Skagit uplands, the highway ascends rapidly to the valley of the Similkameen, a tributary of the Okanagan, which falls into the Columbia far to the south in Washington State. Mount Allison summit, the highest on the route, marks the entry in the Columbia's enormous watershed, and since Princeton is on the Vermilion forks of the Similkameen, it's all downhill from there.
Or would be if the highway didn't depart the Similkameen and climb its merry way up Sugarloaf Sumnit in order to avoid some unspecified hold up in the valley of the river.
While I was not intellectually unaware of the existence of Sugarloaf Sunmit, I encountered it at 7:30 on Friday night, after departing Hope at 7:30 that morning. I summited, and made the hair raising glide down into Princeton in the dark (barring a few mild climbs that had me cursing the perversities of our sublunary world, but I only arrived at the Sandman Motel in Princeton at 9:45, after more than fourteen hours on the road.
Which is why this week's blog post is just me checking in to say that Keremeos is a very night place to catch 11 hours of sleep.
(Swapped for "Blue Christmas" below, because I have a legit excuse to lead off with Lead Belly.)
R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy, Vancouver,
Canada.
Dear Father:
Once again I find myself writing a Christmas letter that, given the terror of First Year Law final exams, I'm more likely to be handing to you at the door as I stumble through!
Be gentle, and say nothing about my hair. NOTHING.
. . . Or so I said at the head in the long-ago time before Contracts final. (It's okay. I did fine, down in the mush middle of the "As," a little short of the high flyers, but good enough to probably make moot court.)
Ahem. Allow me to dig myself out of multiple digressions and back to where I am. I started writing this letter way back on the 16th, pending the arrival of my subscriptions. And Contracts, next day. I was feeling a little self-conscious about my hair, but all ended well when Uncle George paid for an appointment on the 20th. I know I say that I don't like to take family charity, but I make an exception for new cars and my hair.
St. Botolph. Fascinating. No word on central heating.
To continue this convoluted chronology that only some learned medieval monk could unravel, I am writing this now, and bringing you up to date, on the train on the 23rd. Allowing that I pull into Pacific Station on time, you will have it in your hands by 7. HOWEVER, one of my magazines is bringing out an issue on the 30th.
It is, of course, Engineering, which exists solely to crush my soul. I am PROPOSING to give it whatever brief due it is worth on my return to campus. I will send that, as an addendum, to you, by the start of classes. You will be charged with assembling the whole, reading it, if you are so inclined, and then forwarding it to the Earl.
And now that I've explained all of that, Reggie's in the Pullman, so Merry New Year, Jolly Epiphany, or whatever's right by the time you read this.
Yours Sincerely,
Ronnie
(And that's how you deal with a contagious case of mumps)
That's the spirit. Now for something whitebread. CBC Radio's old time stable of local Can-Con did a Christmas album together!
Christmas is a time for being nostalgic and remembering old-timey things. The problem here is that British Columbia is such a young province, that, apart from some generic big-band music, I'm digging into the Nineties here. Does that even count for nostalgia yet? If it does, Canada's Metal Queen has some seasonal stuff. "Peace on Earth," And, yes, Michael Buble has a Christmas album, because of course he does. I'd honestly rather a tribute to the ancient concrete barn to which I will say goodbye on 16 January:
A Youtube search for a "Vancouver Christmas" does turn up something. It's tongue-in-cheek, but it is this year's Christmas in Vancouver.
(Bike lanes are funny.)
Speaking of old-time British Columbia, here's the picture I've been pushing down the page with gratuitous video inserts so that I can post it in its glorious original size.
This is the Kemano high-voltage ("high-tension") line. It runs from Kemano Powe House 75 kilometers to the Alcan plant in Kitimat, British Columbia. Kemano generates 890 MW from eight turbines that receive water from the twenty-six and a half million acre foot Nechako Reservoir on the high upper reaches of the Fraser River. The water is diverted through a 16km tunnel carved through the Coastal Range, falling 800m from the heights of the Interior Plateau to sea level. Built from 1951 to 1954 by the province and Alcan, working together, because the provincial government could not be persuaded that such a project was feasible in such a small and remote province, the power lines are less interesting than most other aspects of the project. Nevertheless, the twin 300kV lines carried fully 35% of the power generated in the province in 1956. (And a super-imposed telephone voice channel, if you remember that bit of mid-century technology from earlier installments.)
Kemano I would not have been built without Alcan. There was no point in generating electricity so far from a major market. It would also not have been built for a plant at Kitimat much earlier than it was. Even a 75 mile high voltage (tension) line would have been too much. Nowadays, the Kemano project is controversial because Alcan would like to go through with Phase II, which is controversial both because of environmental reasons and because Alcan is suspected of wanting to shut the aluminum smelter down and selling all the power into the continental grid.
That's where this digression gets me to Engineering this month, and a vague awareness that we are getting an opening-night ticket to the Ferrite Age.
(When Suzy was due to come back from pregnancy leave in '53, her boss told her that "they'd decided to go in a different direction," and that's how Frosty's career was born.)
R_. C_.,
Falett's,
Lahore, Pakistan
Dear Father:
I hope this finds you well after your long flight. We have a telegraph from Rangoon. Wong Lee is going on to Shigatse, while Mrs. C. remains in seclusion at the Benevolent Association for coordination until we decide how to move a white woman across the frontier. A Sakya guide is being sought. You will be coordinating things at your end, but, if not, Wong Lee thinks he may have a way of getting you across the border in Ladakh. It's a formality by now, but we have definitive confirmation that the new American Oriental secret service fund is prepared to pay out if the Panchen Lama does not go to Shigatse. We are working on an angle where challenging Lhasa is "objectively" anti-communist. I have no idea how we're going to sell that, but I sure will be impressed when we do! Nothing like a share of seventy-five million dollars to get the blood flowing!
As for San Francisco, well, it's boring by comparison, that's all I can say. I'm enjoying law school and we took the Jeep up into Sonoma over the weekend, which was great fun. But driving a Jeep, even a brand new Jeep around in tamed American hills isn't nearly as exciting as visiting the Tashilhunpo Monastery on yak-back. (They do ride yaks, don't they?)
Edgar Dewdney's bid for an 1861 contract to link (Fort) Hope with Fort Steele (Cranbrook) via a 720km road running over the Allison Summit to join gold strikes along the Similkameen, at Rock Creek, and in the East Kootenays, amounted to less than $100,000 all found. It was completed in five years (by a subcontractor --I would bet that there is more to Dewdney's story than the official narrative suggests), and required a crew of fewer than 70 men.
Now, things were different, one era from another. The trail was specified as 1.5m, and, with the beginning of the Iron Age in mind in this post, it is worth noting that it was built with iron tools and intended for mule trains.
Dewdney's team built up Anarchist Mountain, so that they could strike down from the top towards Rock Creek on the Kettle while avoiding the United States, which starts roughly at that ridge to the left in this picture. I doubt that the mules thanked them for their service to the Crown. Masochistic bicyclists, on the other hand, are grateful.
Speaking of, in preparation for tackling the Anarchist, I took last Wednesday off, about which in general I will say no more except that Keremeos is a nice town; Osoyoos Taxi is good people; and the Adriatic Motel needs better internet. However, the motel is nicely located for a quick tour of the beaches on the west side of Osoyoos Lake, and I do need to say this: There are a fuck of a lot of people on the beaches of the Okanagan as I write. They will be returning tomorrow for the new school year. Due to the way that our landlord is tearing up all road access to the Oakridge Mall to reroute the stream that the builders of 1959 saw fit to erect the mall over, it is not clear how many of the returning hoards will be shopping at my labour-starved store, but it is not unreasonable to fear a retail apocalypse, beginning this afternoon.
So, anyway,trade, trails, iron, apocalypses: Welcome to the 19th year of Ramesses XI (r. 1107-- 1077.)
A chatty and communicative ruler, Ramesses has a great deal to share with us, which seems like an unusual hobby for a Dark Age. Hence, letters from the apocalypse.
In a spirit of pure academic inquiry, I am going to note here that I rode up Anarchist Summit Thursday morning with my bike badly out of whack for various reasons. It was in much the same condition on Monday when I summitted the Alison Pass on the Hope-Princeton less the last hill before Sunshine Valley. All of this is important research, and in no way humble bragging.
In the same spirit of data collection, a shout out to the Alpine Motel of Keremeos for having good internet and pretty much good everything considering that it is a family-run small motel, your only option in the other Windy City. Ramada Inns are also nice, although you'd expect that. At the price, any complaints I have about the Boundary Creek in Greenwood have to be set aside considering the effort the new owners are putting into it. It must be something to show up to do a painting contract and end up owning a motel, instead. On the other hand, one thumb down to the Adriatic in Osoyoos, which could have viable Internet at the price, but which is in a late stage of dissolution due to the decrepitude of the owners, and two down for the Manning Park Lodge, which hasn't a shadow of an excuse.
So Alex turns us up an Independentarticle on ongoing excavations at the islet of Dhaskalio in the Cyclades, which turns out to be a semi-retirement project for the indomitable Colin Renfrew. The Independent makes the point, not brought out in at least the extract of the World Archaeologyarticle, that a monumental building phase at Dhaskalio, a so-called Greek pyramid, in fact rising tiers of marble buildings on a pyramid-shaped islet, occurred within a century of the Pyramids, Stonehenge, "first Mesopotamian kingdoms," and the cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation. I have reservations about the Mesopotamian angle and can't even begin with the IVC, but they do seem to buttress a case that checks out for Stonehenge, the Pyramids and Dhaskalio.
Since Renfrew has a monopoly on explanation/interpretation of the site, I'll start with Dhaskalio, whttps://www.world-archaeology.com/features/dhaskalio/here he adduces a two-stage history. In the first, about 2700BC, people began travelling to Dhaskalio's parent islet of Keros and depositing broken statuary and other durable artefacts at what was probably then an isthmus between Keros and Dhaskalio. Renfrew's account rests heavily on the presumed lack of everyday reason to travel to these barren islets, at which I bristle slightly. I assume that archaeozoology has ruled out a nesting area or a seal rookery, but would like that confirmed somewhere. Beginning slightly later, copper ore was brought to a windblasted beach on Dhaskalio for smelting, and about 2500 the political landscape of tiered marble buildings had emerged, while deposit activity at the isthmus tailed off and came to an end.
There are obvious parallels to the Stonehenge 3, II stage besides the Independent calling our attention to it. (If you'r wondering, I am absolutely begging off any attempt to delve into the Giza site. That's way too much work for the ninety minutes I have to kill before it is time to start getting ready for the road again.) Deposit activity doesn't come to an end, nor does building begin in 3, II; but the scale of the latter is immensely increased.
Synchronicity across vast distances speaks to something more than coincidence, and, of course, the Stone Age/Bronze Age has been an important transition between eras for as long as we've had eras. I know that it is fashionable to denounce it as an artefact, but it is such an enduring explanatory mechanism that I am inclined to promote it to the status of Something That Actually Happened. Maybe that's just the prejudice of the historian of technology, but I think I have more than insulated myself from accusations of androcentric focus by singling out the role of jewelry, detergents, textiles,. You know. Girl stuff.
So let's specific some kind of techno-cultural transformation that's sweeping the planet. (Wool textiles, I say.) Where do we go from here? Well, to the eve-of-Brexit anxiety that is sweeping the new field of genetic archaeology, with a "population replacement" model of social and cultural change taking hold of efforts to explain the British scene.
The dominant picture of Europe's genetic history (Y-group) is that everyone looks more-or-less like their neighbours, and the Scandinavians look a bit inbred.
More detail only refines that. However, if you look at the scanty remains of ancient Britons (and, to be fair, we have a lot of them. It's not like basing the "Ancient North Eurasian" ancestry that can be traced from Ireland to South America, and, so far as I know, Chad as well, on a single boy who died near Lake Baikal 24,000 years ago.) it turns out that some kind of population replacement, to include genocide perpetuated by trans-Channel foreigners, occurred in Britain at both the beginning of the Neolithic and of the Bronze Age.
For the purposes of this post, that means that incoming "Beaker" people arrived, exterminated (not really; the share of Neolithic ancestry rises over time, indicating that a population survived and intermixed gradually, but don't tell Nigel! [pdf]), took over Stonehenge, and promptly dressed the place up a bit --in a way that seems pretty respectful of existing henge and cursus traditions. From tumuli to roundabouts, the Brits seem to love their circles. If that's not weird enough, the cattle barbecued at the adjacent work/party site of Durrington Wells includes a significant number of animals --pigs as well as cattle-- from the Scottish Highlands.
Skepticism about long distance trade and transhumant pastoralism aside, this is pretty striking evidence of the power of cult to unite the island of Britain, and of the ability of incomers to assimilate into and improve upon existing cultural practices.
Ain't no politics round here any more than there's tourism promotion. Try the steak next time you're in the Thyme And Plate in Grand Forks, B.C.
I'm on vacation in the third week of August, because that's what vacation is for. The schedule of my life therefore calls for the second part of postblogging May this week, followed by some harvesting of low-hanging fruit via the Technological Appendix series over the rest of the month, any book-writing being additional to a long-anticipated bike tour of the Kettle Valley railway right of way, now the Trans-Canada Designated Trans-Canada Bike Holiday For That-Kind-Of-Middle-Class-Person Route. I brunch, therefore I am. Own my authentic self, I say.
Unfortunately, all of this rational planning reckoned without my employer's grand plan to deal with the fallout of its mass buyout of "high cost" labour. After twenty-one years of complete failure of "low cost" labour to materialise, it might be a bit much to expect trends to change during the worst labour shortage yet, but . . . Well, let's let Wile E. demonstrate:
Other jokes about my employer's labour situation involve the "everything's fine" dog, cars driving off cliffs, General Custer and the Titanic. The upshot is that, because our dairy manager decided to betray the company by having a baby this week, I'll be doing his job tonight and making the big overtime money instead of, I don't know, writing.
Or sleeping. Sleeping's good, too. So here's some low-hanging fruit., beginning with HMS Amethyst, courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.
Since this post is about Wassily Leontif's Project SCOOP and IBM's SSEC, that is, two obscure bits of the early history of computing that could benefit from a bit of light, talking about the Yangzi Incident is a bit of a stretch. Not, however, an impossible one, because there is some early computing history to the Black Swan-class, too, and also something to be said about communist revolutions and Fortune deciding to publish Louis Ridenour in May of 1949.
(A little early, but Fortune follows up on the home heating industry this month.)
R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada.
Dear Father:
Bet you didn't expect to hear from me! Don't worry, Ronnie will be back next week. I've been delayed in Arcata for an extra week. The Institute knows that I am on urgent Navy business.
Now if I could only convince myself! I know that I have to share some of the blame, but this whole landing-with-radar thing is Not Working Out. This last week of flying is simply to find out if the radar can spot torpedo boats inshore, because Admiral Burke has nightmares about Guadalcanal. Whatever. It means I'm out on the field at all hours, making sure that the damn gadget doesn't catch fire from not working for too long.
Ronnie is back to Stanford this week. She'll be living at the hall again, as she says her budget will just support it, if she can keep up her tips. Last year for her, then we have to figure out law school somehow. I'll be out, but tuition will be tough to scrape up on a lieutenant's pay. There might be scholarship help, or we have to face up to family facts. Somehow. Do not read that as saying that I have any idea how to bring her parents around!
So, a few more days of flying, and then it is "Gaudemus Igitur" and two more semesters, then goodbye to old college days, and say hello to your son the Dashing Aviator. (I promise, no actual dashing.)
I am sorry I missed you in your flying trip to San Francisco, and look forward to seeing you in Boston next month.
I promised you a full report on my travels, and I wish I could supply it, but,somehow, in spite of it all, I managed to fall asleep on the plane, and was still asleep, it seems, when I made my train connection; and, somehow, did not wake up when I changed trains in Cleveland. So wafted on the sweet arms of Morpheus (it's a Classics reference), I was carried across the continent to San Francisco, at least awake enough to pick up the Lincoln, which, blessed fortune, carried me to Santa Clara, as promised, before (late) supper on New Year's Eve.
And so the news, such as it is, is that I had a wild fight with Reggie about Henry Wallace that continued in the privacy of your grandfather's old sitting room in the north wing until he put his hand to me, and . . . well. WELL. Needless to say, as intimate as this correspondence has become . . . Besides, you will have heard the details from Grace, who is far too nosy for our own good.
I do not know yet if I have finally thrown away my freedom here in California; but right now I cannot say that I regret it, as I sign myself,
It seems to be a habit for me to open these letters with a "Thank you," as you are so infallibly good to me, and I can only wonder why. The brochures and applications are most interesting. Except for the one for the University of Chicago Law School, which seems to be someone's idea of a bad joke. I feel a little faint to be told that if I genuinely want to go to law school in 1949, I should be starting to make my plans now! It seemed so much safer and less frightening when it was just a lark and a dream!
Not a lark, and not a dream, is the fact that I am over the North Atlantic right now, just out of Idlewild and headed for Gander. I have a seatmate, after all, because of the DC-6 grounding, but I have firmly insisted on enough space for notes, writing paper, and cypher book. My seatmate is sleeping off what smells like more than a few brandies too many, so I don't need to explain anything to him, at least until we are well past the point of no return. I am hoping to be done by then, as while this project tends to drag on every week, I have used my train time to do something never seen before in these letters. I've read my magazines in advance, and know what the stories are about! That wahy, I don't have to read with one eye and write with the other, and revise halfway through when I realise that I don't know what the story is about.
We'll see if that saves any time! Not this time, but next, there'll be another deviation from past practice, as I follow The Economist through to the end of the month, for the simple reason that it doesn't get around to explaining l'Affaire Odeon until Christmas week, and future generations reading these letters won't otherwise have a clue as to why I am making this flight.
Okay, sure, if they have any sense, they'll probably guess why my Mother is making me make this flight (and agree with me that she's off her rocker); but they won't know the business story. Which is fair enough, as I hardly know the business story. Didn't we just buy an interest in that studio as a way of getting into the silver smuggling craze? Now that the financial authorities have cracked down on that business, can't we just cut them loose? Surely it can't be financially complicated, or no-one would think that I was the person who needed to be sent over!
Again, thank you for all that you have done. In your reply to my telegraph, you ask why I veto Miss B., but am fine with Miss M. Yes, Miss M. is an eccentric. I know that a man isn't expected to notice these things, but If you look closely at the photograph, you will see that her "odd" dress is actually a safety-pinned window curtain! It would be one thing if her shoes were not so expensive, but as they are, I'm left to conclude that she thinks that she is being "creative." Which you could read between the lines in her letters of recommendation, anyway.
I'm sorry, I can't explain, but my instincts are warning me about Miss B., while Miss M. strikes me as perfectly satisfactory as a physiotherapist. We're not hiring her as a lady's maid! (Although she'd be much more economical if we did. Hmm. . . No, never mind.) Actually, I am confident that she is the best of the lot --even better than the highly recommended Miss J. I look forward to meeting them both at the train on Wednesday.
Vickie is doing well. She longs for more of her mother's touch than the iron lung will allow, although it is a very nice iron lung (something I need to remind myself of, whenever I fume about Uncle Henry's latest adventures), with room enough for me to crawl in with her for short periods. Fanny, with her girlish figure, is positively comfortable in there.
You write that you have been getting nowhere in the matter of Mr. and Mrs. Easton, and neither has the Earl. We simply must do better than that. Perhaps the civil war is all over but the shouting, but I cannot for the life of me believe that anything the Soongs put their hand to would ever turn out so well. If and when the Communists do advance across the Yang-tse, the Eastons must be able to enter Hong Kong, and I cannot believe that we have not made enough money for that side of the family for them not to bend on this matter.
If Uncle George reads this, do please find some way of reminding him that he is only human. He has been so full of himself about his friend and Philco!
"GRACE."
"GRACE."
PS: Speaking of, Uncle George is off to the new Western capital of sin for a weekend in the company of his friend --and to have a look at this matter of the hotel.
Las Vegas has no idea how to advertise itself. Fishing? Cowboys? Girls? (Gambling?)
