Frances Hunter

blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth

 

Frances Hunter's Journal
June 2007

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June 27, 2007: Riverboats

One of the huge differences between the world of Lewis and Clark and our world is transportation. Today, most people travel either by car or by plane, and in a few big cities by rail. Almost no one has really experienced river travel, the main means by which people got around in Lewis & Clark's day. A variety of boats plied the nation's inland waterways, powered by sail, oar, paddle, and tow rope.

When Meriwether Lewis left St. Louis for the last time on September 4, 1809, he probably left on a keelboat. Keelboats seem to have been the most commonly used boats for passenger transportation and freight, though passengers also tagged along on flatboats and barges, the crafts used to move heavier freight.

A keelboat could be anywhere from 40-80 feet long and 7-10 feet wide. They were long and pointed at both ends, with a rounded bottom and a mast from which a sail could be erected. They had a keel for easier steering, which I take to mean the bottom of the boat was pointy like so ^.

Unlike flatboats, which were typically broken up for lumber when they floated to their destinations, keelboats were capable of going up river as well as down. Keelboats that made regularly scheduled round trips were known as "packet boats." Downstream, they typically made about 15 miles an hour; upstream they made only 1 mile an hour. On the Expedition, Lewis & Clark and their men hauled a custom-built keelboat from St. Louis to Fort Mandan, North Dakota -- a distance of 1800 miles.

The deck of a keelboat was partially roofed over so that the passengers could get out of the sun or rain. Aside from that, there were no amenities and no privacy. During Lewis's last journey, whatever illness or anguish he endured during the ten days between his departure from St. Louis and his arrival at Chickasaw Bluffs (Memphis) 11 days later, he would have suffered in full view of "Mike Fink," God, and anyone else who chose to stop and stare.

Small wonder that rumors of Lewis's problems were the talk of the entire Mississippi River Valley within days of his departure.

Tennessee Encyclopedia article on early river transportation

Great article about the custom keelboat Lewis had built for the Expedition

Photographic essay on Lewis & Clark's keelboat

June 20, 2007: The Dangerous Book for Girls

The Dangerous Book for Boys, a fun and nostalgic handbook about all things adventurous, has been a blockbuster bestseller in Britain and the United States. Predictably, the book has also drawn criticism from those who don't like the focus on male-oriented risk-taking.

What would a dangerous book for girls look like? Maybe something like Mud Pies and Other Recipes, by Marjorie Winslow (1961). Ever since The Dangerous Book came out, I've been racking my brain to remember the name of this book, which I played with constantly as a kid. I found it last week in my old room at my parent's house, and it was just as delightful as I remembered.

Mud Pies is a cookbook for dolls; as the Foreword notes, "It is an outdoor cookbook, because dolls dote on mud, properly prepared. They love the crunch of pine needles and the sweet feel of seawood on the tongue. The market place, then, will be a forest or a sand dune or your own back yard."

The book tells you how to make utensils from things like milk cartons, egg cartons, and orange juice cans and then goes into sections on Appetizers (Stuffed Sea Shells), Soups (Boiled Buttons), Main Dishes (Roast Rocks), and of course Mud Pies (both for serving and for throwing at boys).

Is it politically incorrect to suggest a play cookbook for girls? I hope not, because this book is FUN and a treasured favorite of all four girls in my family (my copy is missing the spine and is wavy from getting wet). If you love a little girl and want to give her hours of fun in the great outdoors as only a girl can have, track down this book. As for me, I'll be outside making crabgrass gumbo. Calling all dolls!

June 13, 2007: Abe Lincoln's Duel

In To the Ends of the Earth, there's some palaver about a potential duel between Meriwether Lewis and his political archenemy, Frederick Bates. The two men loathed one another and a duel between them was only narrowly averted by the intervention of the sensible William Clark. Many historians think that if Lewis had lived, it was almost inevitable that the two men would have met on the field of honor.

In our book, the animosity between Lewis and Bates is played mostly for laughs at Bates's expense. Indeed, though people tragically lost their lives in duels of honor all the time in those days, it's pretty hard in the 21st century to take seriously the huffing and puffing that led up to these encounters.

There's a great story about a duel that involves none other than Abraham Lincoln. It seems that in 1842, before she married Lincoln, Mary Todd wrote a paper that was critical of the State Auditor of Illinois, James Shields. When Shields confronted Lincoln about the article, Lincoln accepted responsibility for Mary's words (he had egged her on). Shields challenged him to a duel. Lincoln, as the challenged, chose broadswords for the weapons.

The two men, along with their seconds, rowed out to a small island in the Mississippi, a typical "neutral ground" for dueling. Once there, Shields, who was a very small man, became upset when Lincoln removed his coat and began brandishing his sword to limber up. The sight of the six-foot-four-inch Lincoln swinging the broadsword and shouting was just too much for Shields. Their seconds conversed and agreed on a formal statement from Lincoln whereby he would state that the paper written by Mary Todd was not aimed at "injuring the personal or private character or standing of Mr. Shields."

There is a good article on dueling in early Texas in the Handbook of Texas. Rifles at 40 paces? Leave it to us Texans. How about assault rifles at 10 paces?

June 6, 2007: Polio

I can't remember ever actually learning who Jonas Salk was. Somehow I always just knew. To my parents, especially my mom, Salk was something very close to a saint. My mom would tear up even at the mention of his name and speak in a trembling voice about the dreadful time before Salk's vaccine erased the scourge of polio from the lives of American children and their parents.

Salk's race for the vaccine is just of the many fascinating angles covered by David M. Oshinsky in Polio: An American Story. This book is a must-read for anyone who like medical history or enjoys a good historical drama.

I was amazed to learn that for most of human history, polio was endemic and relatively mild. Most everyone contacted the polio virus in early childhood, had few or no symptoms, and then picked up a lifelong immunity to the disease. All that started to change in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The reason was a shocking paradox. As people became more aware of sanitation and disease prevention, they eliminated germs from the environment. With few kids exposed to polio as infants, they were more susceptible to contracting the virus later in childhood or as adults, when the effects were likely to be much worse.

The result was a spiral of epidemics, worsening in severity every few years as the disease found new generations of never-exposed victims. Though it was still true that most people who contracted polio never had any of the terrifying symptoms, those that did died or were horribly afflicted with paralysis affecting the limbs, spine, and even the autonomic nervous system, resulting in confinement to an "iron lung." It was every parent's worst nightmare.

The future course of polio took an historic turn in 1921, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, a former vice-presidential candidate and scion of one of the nation's most famous families, contracted the disease and became permanently paralyzed from the waist down. FDR developed a passionate interest in the treatment and prevention of polio and devoted the next seven years of his life to finding a cure, eventually buying and renovating a resort in Georgia called Warm Springs as a rehabilitation center. When Roosevelt went back into politics, he persuaded his law partner, Basil O'Connor, to take over management of his National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

At first reluctant, O'Connor ended up devoting the rest of his life to the foundation. O'Connor's revolutionary idea was to depart from fundraising among wealthy individuals and go directly to the people to collect millions of micro-donations to fund polio treatment and research. O'Connor's innovations included "birthday balls" in honor of FDR, collections at movie theaters and other public gatherings, and the March of Dimes.

As a result, polio became the first public health crusade funded by the American people themselves, and they felt a fierce devotion to the cause. Many of the fundraising techniques that O'Connor and the Foundation developed are still in use today. I particularly noticed the parallels with the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer research, right down to the upbeat emphasis on smiling, plucky survivors rather than depressing sick people.

The story of the research into the disease and the development of the vaccine is a compelling story. Oshinsky has a telling eye for detail and character that makes it very easy to read about the pioneer medical researchers who, little by little, began to unlock the secrets of the disease. It was interesting to read how Salk--a soft-spoken but driven man with contradictory impulses toward selfishness and humility--was never highly regarded by the scientific establishment, embodied by the curmudgeonly Albert Sabin.

Instead, Salk was O'Connor's boy. With foundation dollars pouring into his operation at the University of Pittsburgh, Salk created a vaccine from killed viruses that absolutely prevented the disease but required a complicated regimen to administer. The initial ectasy over the Salk vaccine was tempered by heart-breaking mistakes in the early manufacturing. In a few years it was replaced by Sabin's vaccine, a one-dose of weakened viruses that also worked well but occasionally produced cases of polio in those vaccinated.

Salk remained the public's hero, which was just fine with Sabin. (I laughed out loud when I read how Sabin dutifully answered all his public mail, only to berate his correspondents with retorts such as "I received your moronic suggestion today.") Today, with polio eradicated in most of the world but stubbornly hanging on in parts of Asia and Africa, the Salk vaccine is once again on the ascendance as the only sure-fire means of preventing any further suffering from polio.

One of Oshinsky's great achievements is making a wealth of scientific detail and disparate threads into a cohesive story that is exciting to read. Polio: An American Story is a satisfying book that brings one of the great crusades of American history to vivid life.

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