Frances Hunter

blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth

 

Frances Hunter's Journal
May 2008

Winner, Violet Crown Award for Fiction

Silver Medal Winner, Independent Publisher Book Awards

Finalist, Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Awards

 

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May 22, 2008: The Education of Edward Kennedy

Like many Americans, I was stunned to hear the news this week about Ted Kennedy's inoperable brain tumor.

Although I'm very interested in politics, I never write about politics on this site. I figure that people come here wanting to read something about writing, or Lewis & Clark, or historical fiction, or early America. If they want to read about politics, there are hundreds of great writers out there with much more original things to say than I could ever dream up. Besides, "Frances Hunter" is two people, and we don't always agree!

But today I'm going to make something of an exception, because it just so happens that I can't imagine what my life would have been like without Ted Kennedy. You see, in 1980, when I was 14, Kennedy challenged incumbent president Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination for president. My mom, though never a big fan of the Kennedys, was a big political buff, and one day she brought home the book that you see here: The Education of Edward Kennedy, by Burton Hersh.

If I had to name the books I've read that have had the biggest impact on my life, The Education of Edward Kennedy would have to be in the top 5. First published in 1972, Hersh's work is a stunning, sensitive, even-handed, and highly literary account of the life of Edward Kennedy to that date. Don't ask me what possessed a 14-year-old to throw herself headlong into a 600-page biography of Ted Kennedy, but I did. Mary read it too, and she was only 12. Eventually, the book was read so many times that the cover fell off, and it even acquired its own nickname: The Ed of Ed.

Later that year, Kennedy in defeat addressed and electrified the Democratic Convention with an incredible flight of oratory, where he fully embraced his role as the keeper of the flame. Mary and I undertook a massive and passionate study of the Kennedys. We made regular pilgrimages to the big old Half-Price Books at 15th and Lavaca, where you could buy old Life and Look magazines for a song and "time-travel" back to the 1960s (not so very long ago, then). We collected dozens of books and magazines. I can't even begin to count up the number of hours in my life I've spent reading, thinking, wondering, and looking at pictures of the Kennedys.

You might say that we became historical novelists in training. There were so many tragedies in the Kennedy family, so many points at which it all might have been so different, that we began to make up stories in which it was different. In those days, we thought we were the only ones who ever did anything like that. Much, much later we found out that we weren't (and by the way, if the cover of this book doesn't make you scream with laughter, then you aren't the audience).

Our study of the Kennedys went on for years, and as these things do, grew and spread to other topics of American history. But Ted Kennedy wasn't just part of history. He was a living, breathing, and deeply flawed human being. It may have been Ted Kennedy who made me realize, in fact, that all history was once current events, and that the so-called "heroes" of the past were just stumbling, uncertain, and often distinctly unadmirable real people. As The Ed of Ed so vividly portrayed, Kennedy was a relentless master of the legislative craft. Intelligent, gregarious, and pragmatic in the Senate, he was also selfish and almost mind-bogglingly irresponsible in his personal life.

What other human being who ever lived on this earth lived a life like that of Ted Kennedy? Inexorably drafted into political life by his strong-willed and overwhelming father, he made several attempts early in his life to break free, to leave Massachusetts and start a new life for himself. But as we all know, he never did. When his brothers were killed, he seemed to feel that he never could. In their golden light--stripped by grief of their own human frailties and consigned to the airy realm of Camelot--Ted soldiered on, seemingly doomed to forever play the role of Mordred. Finally, at age 50, he rejected presidential politics for good and gave himself over to the legislative craft that he had always loved.

A lot has changed since 1980, for me and Ted Kennedy and the nation. For now I'll just say that I can't imagine what my life might have been like if he hadn't run for president all those years ago. I wish very much that he didn't have to face such suffering as seems to lie ahead, and hope that God may be merciful to him and his family.

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May 14, 2008: Pigeon Roost Road

On his last journey, Meriwether Lewis stopped to recuperate from a serious bout of illness, and perhaps a mental breakdown, at Fort Pickering, a small army fort at the site of Chickasaw Bluffs (present-day Memphis, Tennessee). Lewis was on his way to Washington to answer serious allegations that had been made against him as Governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory. At some point, he decided not to go to New Orleans and catch a ship to the federal city. Instead, he would go east overland, via the Natchez Trace.

To get to the Natchez Trace, Lewis and his traveling companions followed an old Chickasaw trail called the Short-Cut Trail or Pigeon Roost Road. Today's Highway 78, which runs from Memphis to Tupelo (the site of the main Chickasaw town) to Birmingham roughly follows this old route.

The countryside, however, was completely different from the pleasant rolling farmland you see when traveling Highway 78 today. Pigeon Roost Road was a winding, turning trail that crossed many creeks, lagoons, and rough cypress breaks. Like the Natchez Trace, it was infested with outlaws. The dense stands of old-growth cypress (standing as high as 170 feet and spanning a massive 10-15 feet in diameter) provided cover not only for outlaws, but for vast numbers of birds, especially passenger pigeons. It was said that millions of pigeons roosted there to breed, so many that their weight would break the limbs of these great trees.

Lewis might have imagined that the land would be cleared and deforested, but he certainly never have imagined that the passenger pigeon could ever go extinct. As late as the 1860s, they existed literally in the billions, one of the most numerous animals that has ever existed on earth. When a flock of passenger pigeons took flight, it could take two hours for it to pass overhead.

But like the vast army of buffalo in the west, these birds were hunted relentlessly, especially after the advent of the railroad made it possible to ship them by the boxcar in time to reach the eastern markets before spoiling. Retailing at one cent a bird, the passenger pigeons provided cheap protein for the poor in America's growing cities.

The details of the bird's demise are a heart-breaking commentary on the greed and short-sightedness of the human race. For example, an 1878 hunt at one nesting site in Michigan resulted in the killing of 50,000 birds per day for a solid five months until every individual had been tracked down and killed.

The result of the overhunting was a complete and catastrophic collapse of the pigeon population. The bird's entire biology relied on its high population density. Conservationists trapped as many birds as they could and tried to reestablish the species in captivity, but the task proved impossible. The remaining birds would not reproduce under artificial conditions.

In the meantime, the slaughter of the wild birds continued until 1896, when the final 250,000-member flock of passenger pigeons was deliberately annihilated by sportsmen. The last verified sighting of a wild passenger pigeon came in Ohio in 1900. In 1914, the last passenger pigeon on earth, a bird named Martha, died alone at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her body is preserved at the Smithsonian.

The Passenger Pigeon: Once There Were Billions is a good essay that imagines what it must have been like to experience the arrival of a flock of passenger pigeons and talks about why the passenger pigeon died while its closest relative, the mourning dove, continues to prosper.

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May 8, 2008: Crackers

On Meriwether Lewis's last journey, he was accompanied by a servant named John Pernia. Not much is known about the real-life Pernia, not even his age or his race--he's referred to as Creole, Spanish, or mulatto. For the purposes of our novel, we wanted to set up a conflict with York, the African-American slave of William Clark, so we made Pernia a free black from New Orleans who lords his status over poor York.

One word we wanted Pernia to be able to use was "cracker" to refer to whites. It turns out "cracker" has a long history dating back for centuries, before the United States or even the Thirteen Colonies were dreamed of. According to the always-outstanding Word Detective, "cracker" is derived from old British slang in which "to crack" means to brag or boast. A cracker was a braggart. The word was in use in this sense way back in Elizabethan times and appears in Shakespeare's King John. It survives today in the phrase "crack a joke."

By 1766, the word was morphing into its present meaning. A man named Gavin Cochrane reports in a letter that outlaws called crackers were operating in the southern colonies. "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." These crackers arose from the Scots-Irish pioneers and former indentured servants who had been pushed out to the frontier by lack of opportunity along the seaboard.

By the early 19th century, the nickname "cracker" had become generalized to southern whites in general, especially those of low social status.

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