Insadong gets me every time

It's July 1, and the day after tomorrow I'm boarding an airplane and flying back home. Not permanently, oh no. There's a family reunion in Iowa that I'll attend for five days, for to see all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. Then it'll be three weeks in the desert.

As so often happens, a multitude of emotions war within me. I feel excited by the thought of seeing my long-lost relations again (I haven't seen some of them in three years or more). I'm dreading the transcontinental flight (always a killer, that). I'm psyched for spending five days at a lakeside resort and the inevitable water sports that will ensue. I eagerly anticipate seeing that pack of reprobates (um, I mean my old pals) from the desert once more. Though flying is out of the question (I'm not current anymore and haven't the time or money to spend on a biennial flight review), I'd sure love to go shooting. I'm a tad forlorn at the thought of leaving Miss H here all alone while I'm gone, and doing without her for nearly a month. (Okay, I'm positively heartbroken.) But I'm pumped at the thought of seeing Japan (and possibly Mongolia, I haven't decided). Think about it: I'll finally be living like I've been meaning to live since I graduated high school. Footloose travel and all it entails. That warm, sunny, bubbly feeling of a dream being fulfilled—like sun tea brewing on a hot day—is welling up inside me.

But chief amongst those feelings warring for primacy in my innermost soul is...well, sheepishness.

Let me explain.

There's a particular street in a particular part of Seoul called Insadong. Insadong-gil, this street is called. Gil, as I understand it, means "lane" or "alley" (though some Korean alleys bear closer resemblance to the Snickelways of York).

Now, I'm not stupid.

Well, okay. Yes I am.

But I'm not a blithering idiot.

I can tell when someone's trying to fleece me.

But the merchants of Insadong-gil get me every time.

Here's the thing: Insadong is a tourist trap. It's a little neighborhood stuck somewhere east of Gwanghwamun (the main and largest gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace) and the Cheonggyecheon (a lovely low-lying landscaped stream that runs east-to-west through the downtown area) in the Jongno ward of Seoul. This street is filled with everything that is innately Korean—or rather, everything that foreigners think is innately Korean, and everything that savvy Koreans know that foreigners think is innately Korean. Catch my drift?

The winding lane is less than a quarter-mile long, but it's packed to bursting with quaint little tea houses filled with wood trim and farming equipment; one-room Korean restaurants tucked under latticed awnings or hidden in bamboo groves; and coffee shops and cafés that were probably avant-garde fifteen years ago. The lane's main feature, however, are the stores and street vendors peddling their multifarious wares: "traditional Korean snacks," jade necklaces and silver rings, handmade wooden puzzles (and other wood crafts like spoons, combs, toys, and statuettes), celadon pottery, metal works (such as bells, wind chimes and assorted sculptures), and oodles upon oodles of folding fans, pincushions, compacts, bookmarks, purses, clutches, handbags, letter openers, ballpoint pens, jewelry boxes, and figurines. Every item is decorated with customary and venerated Korean motifs: cranes, tigers, kings, cattails, women washing, scholars in their crenellated hats, children playing in hanbok, soldiers marching, misty mountains, red-gold suns and redoubtable warships.

                                                                                                       Not my photo, but a dang good one.

A lot of it's junk and I know it. It's touristy stuff. You'd never find it anywhere but here. No self-respecting Korean has a little pewter figure of Admiral Yi on his bookshelf. The stuff looks pretty, and it was probably made by hand, and it would look jolly good in a cupboard or on a mantlepiece. There are exceptions, of course. Some of the merchandise is drop-dead gorgeous, delicately made, and encapsulates Korean culture to a beguiling extent.

But is it worth the money they're asking? Noooooooooooooo.

Do tourists pay the money they're asking? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Do I know better than that? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Do I know how to bargain? Noooooooooooooooo.

Do the vendors know that I don't know how to haggle? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Has that ever stopped me from buying something pretty for myself? Nooooooooooooooo.

The merchants probably know me on sight by now. I'll heave into view, marching around the corner from the subway station, and they'll exchange a look and make the habitual remarks.

"Look, here comes that saphead."

"Hey, the palooka in the blue T-shirt is back."

"Whaddya know, it's that pigeon who always drops a boatload of cash!"

"Bust out the compacts and the jewelry-boxes, Marge! Our favorite schnook's comin' down the street!"

Honestly, I might as well just get the word "SUCKER" tattooed on my forehead. I was wearing a blue T-shirt today with the words Beginner in Korean, please speak slowly splashed across the front in Hangul. All the vendors loved it. They saw it, read it aloud, and burst into laughter. I knew why they were really laughing. They weren't charmed by my earnest attempt to learn their language and fit into their culture. They just knew they'd be able to snow me in two languages instead of just one.

If I was a bit better at Korean and knew how to haggle, I muttered to myself, things would be different, mark my words.

I mean, seriously: two thousand for a tarnished old Chinese coin the size of a silver dollar? Give me a break!

I shall cease my invective here. I'm sure you came here for other things, like my mouthwatering descriptions of food or the salaciously lovely photographs I put up. Tune in for more of that next time on...

THE (SWINDLED) VAUNTER

the ol' college try

So, says the storyteller, sitting on a chair on the back porch, a tumbler of Irish whiskey in his hand, did I ever tell you about the time my cousin and I went on a pub crawl one frozen December night in Fargo after I graduated college?

It was 2007. I was 22, and a newly-minted college graduate. And I do mean new: I'd been handed my diploma only two hours earlier. It was bitterly cold. December isn't even the coldest month in North Dakota, but that night was a frozen hell. My grandparents and my eldest cousin B had graciously driven eight hours from northwestern Illinois to be at my graduation ceremony. Along the way, they'd had a flat tire. It was the dark of night, somewhere in the vicinity of Wahpeton, one of the loneliest stretches of Interstate 29. The wind was howling. Snow caked the landscape and filled the air. It was easily -30 degrees Fahrenheit. The wind was something corrosive, like acid. Any exposed skin was instantaneously stung by the icy blast, and then numbed, deadened. Changing that tire was an exercise in the same kind of agony that's buggered everyone from Neanderthal man to the Donner Party. Grandpa could only stand to be outside the car for a few seconds at a time. Dad and Mom (who were themselves driving up from their home in Wyoming, and had joined my grandparents in their mutual trek along I-29) stood outside in the midst of Valhalla and changed the tire. They spent the remaining hour to Fargo trying to prevent their hands from turning black and falling off. My cousin B is tough. He's a Marine, for crying out loud—that should tell you something right there. He's four years older than I am, lean as a rail, every ounce of him either muscle or bone or sprung steel. Gimlet eyes, square jaw, warrior's courage. Even he said he'd never been anywhere so cold in his life. He couldn't figure out how I stood being up there for three winters straight.

Not even that, however, could stop me from having myself a drink on graduation night. The ceremony went well. I didn't trip leaving the stage. I waved modestly to Mom and Pop, sitting in the stands, misty-eyed. I found them in the lobby after it was all over. I shook hands with some of my classmates, and humbly accepted the congratulations of my proud parents and grandparents. We all (somehow) made our way through the blizzard to our cars parked outside the Fargodome, and got back to the Radisson Hotel.

Then we had a celebratory dinner. B and I each had a tall glass of the Michelob Amber Bock, and without even realizing it, the night's drinking had commenced. The folks and grand-folks hit the hay after dinner, leaving B and myself at the hotel bar for what we assured them would be "just a few drinks." He had a Heineken. In complete defiance of the weather, I had a Corona. With lime. That's how I roll.
Blizzard, you can go take a running jump, I thought to myself.
"So, you know anybody in town who might like to come out?" B asked me.
I did, as a matter of fact. Brad and Arthur, two fellows I'd had the privilege to share some general education classes with, and who I'd been bumming around with ever since. (Without them, I'd have spent most of my college career sober.) I couldn't think of a better pair of drinking buddies, so I gave 'em a ring and before long they were coming in, shaking the cold out of their coats.

It seemed only natural, after B & A had had their opening beers, to transition into shots. This is where my memory starts to get fuzzy. Only starts, mind you. There were three drinking establishments that we hit, all situated along Broadway in midtown Fargo. Well, there were three drinking establishments that we hit, at the time of this particular slice of debauchery at least: Dempsey's Irish Pub, Rooters, and the Old Broadway. These varied in style and patronage from dive bar to as-hip-as-North-Dakota-can-possibly-get, which ain't much.

We hit Dempsey's first. Good crowd. Standing room only. The joint's only about as wide as a walk-in closet, but somehow we fought our way to the bar and got some beers. The night was in full swing. Smoke filled the air. (Yes, real cigarette smoke; you can still smoke in bars in ND. Quaint, right?) The yells of happy drunken people, most of them in our age bracket, resounded up and down the long, low room, drowning out the jukebox. Up at the bar, teams of four were challenging the "Shot Ski," an old wooden ski slotted with four round holes. Four friends would simultaneously lift the ski and tilt it, each thereby imbibing the shots thoughtfully inserted into the aforementioned holes by the willing staff. My single greatest regret about that night is that B, Brad, Arthur and I didn't try it.

Finding Dempsey's a little packed and smoky for our taste, we ventured out into the dark, slippery streets, back into the chill wind, to sample another venue. I remember there being no shortage of other people out walking around that night, even despite the blasphemous weather. We walked and walked and walked, down to the southern boundary of Fargo nightlife, the Old Broadway. Colloquially known as the "Slut Factory," the OB was eastern North Dakota's number-one producer of freak-dancing blondes. The production line was running at full capacity that night. Blinded by strobes, deafened by insidious music, wowed by beer brands we didn't recognize, elbowing our way past members of both sexes, all clamped tightly together on the tiny dance floor, we made our way to the back corner. Flippant to the last, we sat down and ordered some Jell-O shooters. This was my first and (so far) only experience with Jell-O shots of any kind. I was too far gone by this point to remember much of anything about them. I must've found them rather forgettable, even with a BAC of 0.2%. Attempts at conversation proved futile, what with people like Usher and Ludacris exploding from the sound system. Brad's Lutheran sensibilities, admirably ingrained even after two pitchers and six shots, were offended by the number of wannabe lesbians out on the floor.

With that in mind, we adjourned to our final stop: Rooters, right in between Dempsey's and the OB, on the east side of Broadway. This place must've been around since the pioneer days. It looked exactly like one of those enormous saloon halls from the movies: a wide room with a high ceiling, and a bar a mile long. Excuse me, I mean two wide rooms with high ceilings, and bars a mile long. This was what kind of freaked me out. It was as if two bars were built right next to each other, and the proprietor's minds were connected by some strange psionic link, causing them to make their respective establishments exact mirror images of each other. And then, after discovering this salient fact, both owners just said "screw it" and knocked out the wall between the two bars, rendering them two connected rooms displaying bilateral symmetry. The bar in the southernmost room was on the south side; the bar in the northern room was on the north side. Both rooms had their mirrors, bar stools, tables, and even lights in exactly the same place, only diametrically opposed to each other. And in case you're wondering, no, I was not seeing double. We picked a table in the southernmost room after deciding the atmosphere in the northernmost wasn't quite right. (It's anyone's guess as to how we decided that.) We sat down, ordered up a few more pitchers, and just sat and talked as best we could over the noise of hundreds. I caught up with B, and he and Brad and I had some entertaining discussions about life, the universe and everything, booze-fueled. Arthur, bless him, who had remained Brad's designated driver by some Herculean effort, indulgently sat and listened to the doggerel we spouted for hours on end. It was a fine, relaxing cap to an end-all evening.

At something approaching 2:00 a.m., we staggered out of Rooters and turned our steps to the Radisson. We slithered over slush piles and ice puddles, wantonly weaving through the now-empty street. B and I took fond leave of Brad and Arthur in the lobby, called for the elevator, entered our shared room, and promptly passed out. Little did either of us realize that we would be woken up at 5:30 to go drive home. I'd rather not remember anything about that morning. I remember B raising an emphatic fist and bringing it down with all his might upon the shrieking alarm clock; I remember Mom and Dad finally jolting us out of bed at six with a thunderous knock; I remember trying to pack my clothes into my suitcase, still drunk, wondering how in the world I was going to drive my car 13 hours back home; I remember saying goodbye to Gramp and Gran and ashen-faced B in the freezing hotel parking complex in the snowy gray light of dawn; I remember the hangover kicking in somewhere between Main and 13th Avenue; I remember begging my mother to kill me and hurl my abused corpse into the icy Red River; I remember my sweet, sympathetic mother buying me some hot chocolate at the gas station; and I remember slowly, ever so slowly reviving as I downed the scalding beverage and cranked up the radio in my Ford Taurus, as our little two-car convoy clambered onto I-29 and headed south, bound for Wyoming.

It was a good night: fun, booze-filled, freezing-ass cold, and it made for some rather fond memories. B and I agreed (via e-mail, much later) that we would make it a tradition. We'd visit every one of our remaining five cousins when they graduated college and treat them to something similar. My cousin Dirk and my brother H both graduate in the spring of 2011. Oh boy, won't that be interesting...

back to the family

Continuing from yesterday... Most of my father's family has been in the New World a looooooooooooong time. I'm talking mid- to late-1600s, here. That was before they even invented the word "revolution."

Let us now go back to my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Panwell Van Der Poest, born in 1550 in Arnhem, Gelderland, the Netherlands. Yessir. According to Ancestry.com, I'm Dutch. And Pop always thought he was all German! He is on his mother's side, perhaps (the High side...his mother's maiden name was Margaret Louise High). But not the Post line! We're from the Netherlands, it seems. At some point, Panwell emigrated from Gelderland to England and married an Englishwoman, Susannah Van Gelder (from the sound of her name, she might've been descended from Dutch immigrants too). They had a son, Arthur, in 1580. It was either Arthur or his father Panwell who changed their surname to Post, more likely to fit in better in English culture. This means, then, that I could be a wee bit English now as well as Dutch, German and Norwegian. I didn't see that coming (if it's true).

Arthur's son Richard Post (b. 1617) did something very naughty. I found a story, a written account on Ancestry, which stated that Richard committed some heinous religious act that made his father disinherit him. Given the time frame we're looking at here, I'd say Richard probably converted to Protestantism. Possibly he did it for love. I can just see it now: Richard's wandering down the streets of Kent with the foolish dreams of a young man in his head, when suddenly he sees a beautiful woman. She's calm, demure, strong, and absolutely gorgeous. She seems to float over the ground rather than walk. Her eyes could charm the beasts and her voice could soothe the swelling seas. She's everything he's ever wanted and more. He's smitten, consumed. He must have her. But she's a Protestant. No problem-o, says Richard to himself. I'll just convert to Protestantism. YOU'LL DO WHAT?! Arthur hollers, grabbing Richard by the ear and shaking him.

For whatever reason, Richard and his new wife Dorothy (née Johnson) packed up and headed for the New World soon after Richard was disinherited. After arriving in New York, they welcomed little John into their life in 1646. John sired another son named Richard, in 1684. Richard then begot Joseph Post in 1720. Joseph was the first Post who had the stones to leave New York. He didn't go far, though. He went to Pennsylvania, married Mary Smith, and had a mess of kids. One of these was named Jeremiah, born in 1769. Yep, one of my ancestors was named "Jeremiah Post." (Don't worry, the Post family name game gets even better.) As if that wasn't good enough, he lived at about the same time that Jedediah Smith was exploring the West. I wonder if Jeremiah's mother and Jedediah were related...? Anyhow, Jeremiah married a woman named Martha Craycraft (born 1776, incidentally) and sired Charles G. Post on her in 1800. Charles G. married Elizabeth Bryant (who was the daughter of David Bryant, a private in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War). And in 1832, Charles and Elizabeth had a son named— [SIDENOTE: Don't get the impression that my ancestors were only children. Most of the Post men were randy buggers, and had oodles of kids, just like Joseph did. Jeremiah, Richard, John, all of 'em had at least 7 kids or something. Joseph, however, appears to be "the Post with the most," if you take my meaning.] —Leonidas Hamline Post. You can't beat that name with a stick.
In 1875, Leonidas Hamline fathered a little junior Leonidas (with a mysterious woman named "Althea" whom I haven't been able to find any information on at all). It was Leo Junior who fathered my grandfather, Edward Post, in 1917. Edward went on to marry Margaret Louise High and have my dad, Timothy Post, born 1953. Tim met Beth Ann Fritz in Nevada, married her, and welcomed yours truly into the family in 1986. All other things being equal, my kids should start popping into existence in the 2020s. That's nearly 500 years of Posts. We went from the Netherlands to central England, to New England, to Ohio (Charles G. moved from Pennsylvania to Spencerville, Ohio), to Florida (where Grandpa Ed relocated) to Nevada (Dad loves it there) and then California (I was born in Auburn, up in Placer County).

Some of the information I've uncovered is almost too fantastic to be true: another Dutch ancestor on Dad's side was born in China. I surmised he might've been the son of a crewman on a trading vessel. The link between us is unreliably rickety, though. I do know that I have at least two relatives, one on each side of the family, who fought in World War I. Add in David Bryant and my grandfather, Harlan Fritz (who fought in the Korean War), and my family tree is starting to look rather illustrious, isn't it? (And I haven't even factored in the accomplishments of my female relations yet; who knows but that some were suffragettes, or revolutionaries, or entrepreneurs, or scientists? I have yet to find out.)

As I said before, I don't know how much of this is true and how much isn't. I'm relying on work that others have done, based on sketchy sources and vague census records. (By "vague census records" I mean "census records with names that are often flagrantly misspelled, and were probably collected by buck-toothed yokels.") But it's fun to believe that it might be true. It's the ultimate kick in the pants to muse on the nature of my family tree. The thought of who and what I might have sprung from dazzles me. I wonder what Panwell Van Der Poest looked like. Which ale he preferred. Where he liked to hang out after he got off work. What kind of father and husband he was. What made him decide to move across the English Channel. I wonder what kind of voyage Richard and Dorothy had going over the Atlantic in the mid 1600s, and what went through their heads when they saw the New World on the horizon. I wonder who that mysterious woman Althea was, what her family was like, and what possessed her to marry a man named "Leonidas." I wonder if Joseph Post whistled while he built his family a house in Pennsylvania a hundred years later, and if he did, what tune it was. I wonder if Martha Craycraft was proud that she was born the same year the Declaration of Independence was signed. I wonder if Jeremiah Post liked to proselytize, if Charles G. ever went exploring, how many other kids young Leonidas beat up for making fun of his name. It boggles the imagination, to say the least.

My work has only just begun. I've added so many relatives in such a mad frenzy that I shall have to go back and comb through them once again. I need to weed out the discrepancies (who were born, say, after their fathers and mothers died). That's only half the task, though. I should like to begin going back the other way and fleshing out the branches of my family. I want to expand my family tree sideways and forward now instead of back, and find out if I have any illustrious relatives in American (or even European) history. You want to know the real reason I began doing this? You'll laugh when you do. I want to find out if I'm related to Wiley Post. You know, the famous pilot. First man to fly solo around the world. Set a bunch of altitude and long-distance records. Died in 1935 with humorist Will Rogers when their plane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. I just want to know, one way or the other. That's all. But the stuff I've found out since then is pretty neat, too.

Your turn, Ian.

immigrant song

Just so you know, I'm unsure how much of the following is true. Once I got back beyond the 1800s, I was cross-referencing other people's research instead of using our own recorded family history. But if what I found is true, then...

Well, let me tell you about it first.

This turned out to be a lot longer tale than I thought, so I've split it into two parts. This is the first, and will concern my mother's side of the family. I'll do Pop's side tomorrow.

It never seemed wise to shell out good money to Genealogy.com or Ancestry.com merely to determine the nature of my family tree. But I desperately wanted to know. Was it a poor, malnourished wisp? Or was it an oak, a mighty, spreading growth with roots which plunged deep into Old World soil and sprouts which soared across the waters? How illustrious were the branches? Were there any famous leaves, celebrated buds? To which twigs may I claim relation? Which blossoms have awed the world, if any? What blooms have made their mark on humanity, broken molds, shattered records, defeated obscurity, ground mediocrity into the dust of ages? Who, exactly, am I? And who am I related to?

I had almost no idea. Dad was under the impression that he was 100% German, and that his ancestors (formerly called the "Von Posts") came over on the boat in the 1840s. Whispered rumor suggests I'm distantly related to the folks at Post cereals, but not closely enough to warrant an inheritance. (Bummer.)

I knew even less about my mom's family. The word on the street was that one branch emigrated from Prussia, also in the 1800s. The rest of the family was already in the States by then. That's as far back as our written genealogy goes, so it was impossible for me to know exactly where the rest of my family came from. Or it was until Ancestry.com came along.

One rainy afternoon a few weeks ago, Mom and I finally broke down, bought an account, and started poking around. The rest of what follows was gleaned using Ancestry's records. Though I made use of official records as much as possible, I had to rely on other people's family trees for the most part. I have no idea how accurate this information is, if at all. But some of the things I found were rather amazing, regardless.

My mom's family hasn't been in the country too long. Her mother's maiden name was Leitzen, and by all accounts, the Leitzens were big-boned, no-nonsense Illinois farmer folk. I don't know much about the family line beyond that. Mom's mom's mother's maiden name was Rhodes; I'm actually named after my great-great-grandmother's father, Andrew Rhodes. After him and the Leitzens, Ancestry just petered out on me. No hints, no records, nothing. Same thing with my grandpa's father's line, the Fritzes. That's about as German a surname as you can get. I can only assume that they were all emigres, early 20th or late 19th centuries, as assumed.

On mom's dad's mother's side, however, I got a little farther. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand introducing, Anders Hansen! Born in Gjerpen, Norway, June 24, eighteen-hundred and thirty-three! (P.S. WOW.) I don't know what the situation was like in Norway in 1833, nor what warranted his emigration. Maybe Anders was sick of freezing his butt off every winter. Whatever the case, he took his wife Mariah and split for the States. Upon arrival, Anders and Mariah changed their names. I'm not sure why they did this. "Hansen" seems perfectly easy to pronounce. But they changed their names anyway. They became the Sandleys. Anders also changed his name to given name to Andrew. Maybe he did it to fit in; maybe it was "fixed" by whatever passed for Ellis Island back then.

Either way, Andrew and Mariah Sandley entered the country sometime in the 1850s or 60s. Anders Hansen became the other grandfather I'm named for, Andrew Sandley. He and Mariah settled in Wisconsin and gave birth to a son, Ole Sandley, in 1870. Ole and his wife Amy (originally Amy Van Voorhis) gave birth to my great-grandmother, Ruth Sandley, in 1908. NINETEEN-OH-EIGHT. (P.S. DOUBLE-WOW.)
I actually knew her, too. She lived to the ripe old age of 99. She got that gene from her father; Ole died in 1964, at the age of 94. I can remember going to visit Ruth in Freeport, Illinois, many a time. First at her home; then at a nursing home; then at one of those rather sad places where the extremely elderly wait around to die, peeing their pants and losing their memories. She barely recognized us by the end. The last time I saw her was when I and all of my Fritz-side cousins had a big reunion at Grandpa Fritz's place. She was frail, wispy, thin as a stick, her voice faint and scratchy as an old phonograph record. Her hands were gnarled and wrinkled. But that didn't matter. I was always struck by some ineffable awe in her presence. It was the same of awe I felt in museums when I looked at well-preserved artifacts. This woman had lived almost an entire century. She had been born in 1908, the same year as Rex Harrison, Louis L'Amour, David Lean, Edward R. Murrow, Tex Avery, Ian Fleming, Mel Blanc, Milton Berle, and William Saroyan. The same year a massive asteroid exploded over Siberia. The same year Robert Peary set sail for the North Pole. The same year Henry Ford manufactured his first Model T. The same year Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were supposedly killed in Bolivia. My great-grandma Ruth was four years old when the Titanic sank. Six when World War I broke out. Twenty-one when the stock market crashed. Thirty-three when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Thirty-nine when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. Sixty-one when man walked on the moon. Sixty-two when the Beatles broke up. Eighty-one when the Berlin Wall fell. Ninety-three when the Twin Towers were destroyed. This woman witnessed history. What impressed me the most about her, though, was how lucid she remained, until the very end. Her body was withering, but her mind was hale and healthy. Her voice quavered, but she spoke with conviction, intelligence, and wisdom always. I miss her a lot for only having seen her three times. And oh, the stories she told... I'll bet old Ole could have told a story or two himself.

That's your cue, Robert.

in the Pima Air Museum

...I found my destiny.

Well, nothing that corny, really. But I did get to fondle some of my favorite airplanes.

This is the entry I've been waiting for. Cowboy shooting, Apache hideouts, and coatimundis are all well and good, but in my book, vintage warbirds take the cake. Writing about this also gives me the chance to unload a great many gorgeous pictures on you poor suckers my lovely readers, too. So here we go.

After rising early yet again, and packing up the Hummer, and returning the bedding to Uncle Bob and Aunt Barb's trailer, and bidding them a warm goodbye, we got back on I-10 and headed back west. Forty miles later we were rolling into Tuscon. Neither Dad nor I forgot that we were going to the Pima Air Museum; we just neglected to keep a sharp eye out for the sign. So we missed the exit. A long detour and quite a few expletives later, we were pulling into the museum parking lot. Though the day was warm by my standards (probably in the high 60s), a vicious wind had leaped up. Fortunately I had my brand-new Tombstone hoodie on.
Admission was steep—$15.50 per person—but as soon as we'd stepped through the next set of doors and onto the gallery floor, I knew it was worth it. You should've seen the double-take I did when I saw this baby.
Waitaminnit, by brain said, tripping over itself, yanking open file cabinets and rifling through desk drawers. A Curtiss O-52 Owl? How long have those been around? I haven't got any documentation on 'em! This is the first I've heard of it!

It was a scout plane, one of the largest reconnaissance designs ever accepted by the Army Air Corps, developed in 1939. It had a .50-caliber machine gun in the back to help ward off fighters, but that was the last resort. This thing was no dogfighter. The Owl was mainly good for droning around all innocent-like and sneaking peeks at the enemy. I knew I was in for some good stuff now. I hadn't taken ten steps into this museum and already I'd bumped into a plane whose mere existence I hadn't even begun to suspect when I woke up that morning. Bubbling with anticipation, I pushed on. Say hello to my little friend! This is the Starr Bumble Bee, the absolute ding-dang smallest airplane ever thunk up. Its wingspan is a meager six feet six inches, and its range is just 20 miles. But it did what it was intended to do: break records. This thing is down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest biplane ever built. (A year or so after Mr. Starr built it, somebody went and built a monoplane that was even smaller. I'd love to know how that thing stayed up.)

We saw Learjets...
...and autogyros...
...even a Hoppicopter (behind the autogryo in the previous photo)!
Now yer talkin'. Flying boats!
I love these things. Airplanes that can land on water. How cool is that?

This one here is a Grumman Widgeon. Grumman had a thing for naming its products after animals. Its line of propeller-driven fighter planes were all named after cats: Wildcat, Hellcat, Tigercat, Bearcat, etc. Its seaplanes were all named after (what else?) waterfowl. There's the Widgeon, the Mallard, the Goose, and finally, the coolest one of them all, the almighty, one-and-only, never-to-be-outdone Albatross.

Widgeons were widely used. One of them scored the very first Coast Guard submarine kill of World War II. Another was employed by an Arab king as his personal transport. Not a bad reference list for a little plane like this, eh? (Can you read the name on the side? Petulant Porpoise? Ha!)

Or how about this big boy, a Martin Mariner?
Not as handsome as the Consolidated Catalina, and not as sleek as the Dornier 111, but this mother got the job done: submarine hunting, reconnaissance, search-and-rescue, even nocturnal ship-sinking.
I want one of these. Badly. Oh, the things I could do with it. Imagine sitting up there in the cockpit, glass panels all around, high above the water, coasting along at a ridiculous speed, the hold full of something exotic and exciting, the gigantic bulk just lifting clear of the water, sun sparkling on the spray, those huge piston engines roaring, me in my leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, with a three-day beard and a fiendish grin, happy as a pig in you-know-what.

There's only one problem with that delicious daydream. This is the only surviving Mariner. The only one. The rest of them have all been destroyed, or scrapped, or have pieces missing. There is one other complete Mariner, but it's currently upside-down at the bottom of Lake Washington. It crashed there 50 years ago and, after several unsuccessful salvage attempts, it is now used as a training site for divers. (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

I was learning fast that the Pima Air & Space Museum is a veritable treasure trove of aviation history. Some of the rarest planes were there. A lot of them can't be found anywhere else in the entire world. It was easily the largest air museum I'd ever been in. Suddenly I understood why. I mean, what other air museum has both a B-18 and an SR-71, huh? I ask you, what other museum?
And if I thought the inside was sick, I was whistlin' Dixie. The outside was even better.
Recognize this plane? If you don't, don't worry. I didn't either. Most people who aren't retired Air Force probably wouldn't. This is a Boeing YC-14. It was conceived and constructed during the 1970s, and was intended to replace the C-130 Hercules. But it never caught on. It wasn't even mass-produced. The project got shut down. Weird plane, isn't it? You can see one of the two huge engine nacelles in the photo. Instead of four ordinary-size jet engines, the YC-14 apparently had two humongous big ones. Wikipedia says they were General Electric CF6-50D turbofans, each of which developed 51,000 pounds of thrust each. Whew, that's a quite a bit of thrust. (That's what she said.)
Those big engines make sense, though. The YC-14 was developed as an STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) aircraft. Big engines meant it could take off and land in tight quarters. Helpful thing for a cargo plane that needs to deliver its goodies and get out in a hurry. Only two of these things now remain. And I got a shot of one of them. Go me.

I didn't notice the YC-14 at first, though. The real reason I turned in its direction was that this little honey was parked across from it.
This is a Fairchild C-119 Boxcar. The paint job's a bit faded and the plane's a bit beat-up, but you still might recognize it. One of these was used in the recent remake of the Jimmy Stewart film, Flight of the Phoenix. (The only reason I went to see that movie—and later bought it—was because it had a C-119 in it. The movie turned out to be marginally good, though.)

I like these things even more than Mariners, if possible. There are still lots of 'em around, for one thing. Many are doing duty for small airlines and businesses, I hear. They're even (now imagine how this excites my fancy) being used to ship goods into the Alaskan bush, according to rumor. Long story short, my fantasy of owning one (and using it to pursue my international cargo business idea) isn't a pipe dream. Wouldn't say no to a C-123 Provider, either. One of these was used in the film Con Air.
Now, this next one really threw me for a loop. I hadn't realized, as I stood in the museum, that I was looking at the last intact Martin Mariner on the planet. The placard in front of the YC-14 told me that there were only two left. But I didn't need any help to know that to actually see an Avro Shackleton in the flesh was a very rare thing indeed.
 A postwar British maritime patrol bomber, the Shackleton was unique in having engines with two propellers each. (You can sort of see that in the photo I took, above, or in this next photo, borrowed from Wikimedia Commons. Those are two 20-millimeter cannons poking out of the nose, by the way.)
Each engine's propellers rotated in different directions, which helped to eliminate torque, but put aircrews at risk for high-tone deafness, or so I've read. 'Twas a rather awesome airplane to see in person or in photographs, I thought. Recognize this picture?
It's just like the one I used to have up at the top of this blog. It's a different airplane, but the same make and model, and taken from the same angle. Those are the engines of a Lockheed Constellation. And here's the Connie itself.
Beautiful plane, isn't it? With that graceful convex fuselage, it reminds me of a great silver swan. These Constellations (under the designation C-69) were used in World War II as heavy transports. General MacArthur used a C-121, named Bataan, as his personal aerial command vehicle during the Korean War...check it out.
After the war many found service in airlines, like this one, formerly of TWA. By the bye, these Constellations are a lot bigger than they look. They're so slender that they belie their true size. My head didn't even come up to the belly of the plane, and wouldn't have even if I had stood on tip-toe beneath it.

We wandered on, past the delightfully evil-looking WWII-Vietnam attack plane, the Douglas B-26 Invader... ...the surprisingly skinny Grumman F7F Tigercat...
...and the perfectly wacky heavy lifter, the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane.
If you haven't guessed by now, the outdoor portion of this museum was massive. Acre after acre we traversed, never seeming to find the end of the maze. Entire squadrons of airplanes were parked in the dust, reflecting the sun in their faded glory. If I'd had some mechanics and a few good pirates with me, I could've started a war. I was wandering down one wide lane, idly snapping some pictures of a C-82 Packet, when on a whim I glanced right.

And then I saw it. My guts promptly evaporated. My eyeballs froze. My heart stumbled like a man treading on marbles. It was an Albatross. A Grumman Albatross. My very favorite airplane of any kind, ever. Right there. Parked not 100 yards from me. Before my very eyes.
As though in a trance, I waded over to the big silver bird. Lord, it was beautiful.
I'd never seen one in person, let alone this close. I didn't even touch it at first, but simply devoured it with my eyes. It was better than I could've ever dreamed: big, but not awkwardly so; chunky, but not fat or ungainly-looking; out of commission, but still proud. Oh, how I wanted one. With that plane alone, I thought, I could do great things. Hell, I could die a happy man only having had the satisfaction of flying it, even just once. If I ever actually acquired one, and rigged it out with a cargo hold, and weather radar, and secret smuggling compartments, and gun cabinets, and a wet bar, and a concealed missile launcher in the tail...well, I think I might die of happiness.
Needless to say, this was one of the very few aircraft I chose to get a picture with. I didn't want to bother Dad too much. He'd had a bad toothache all day. He was even quieter than normal, but heroically trooped about the dusty grounds with me, observing machines and making pertinent commentary.

And so we meandered on, past a menagerie of ever-increasing wonderfulness and rarity. A B-50 Superfortress, modified for air tanker duty...
...a Guppy heavy-lifter, formerly in the employ of NASA...
...and even this, the jewel of the museum's collection, a Convair B-36 Peacemaker!

It was the largest bomber of any type or nationality ever built. The thing was ginormous.

Everything about it was awe-inspiring, even the power plant. Here, take a look at the wing:

You're seeing that correctly: six rearward-facing propeller engines and two jet engines. And that's just one wing. That's enough to make my little 150-horsepower Cessna froth at the mouth with engine envy.
The Peacemaker was 162 feet long, with a 230-foot wingspan. Designed specifically to carry nukes, they were part of America's insurance plan against Russian aggression. They sent a subtle message to the Reds, something to the tune of "Hey man, don't you mess with us, or we'll send a gigantic-ass airplane with six propellers and four jet engines over there and nuke your shit." And the Peacemaker worked darn well in that capacity. We haven't had a nuclear war yet, have we?

One quick stroll down a long aisle of fighter jets, back through the museum doors, and we'd met Mom and Harlan in the gift shop. (They weren't interested in standing outside in the wind and dust looking at derelict air superiority, unfortunately for them.) We pored over the whimsical gewgaws and knick-knacks, everything from airplane models to museum T-shirts to toddlers' bomber jackets to space food. Harlan got a freeze-dried ice cream sandwich and crunched noisily on it as we left the museum. I cradled my deck of warbird playing cards to my chest and thanked Mom heartily for stumping up.

Back into the Hummer we went, and spent the next six hours on the road for home, being treated to sights like these:
We passed acre after acre loaded with the infamous "jumping cholla" cacti. Dad just shook his head as we drove by. Dad loves cacti, but hates jumping chollas. In his own words, "they're the only cacti who actually come after you instead of staying put." And they do, too. A cholla's limbs can snap off very easily, leaving the ground near them littered with spiky booby-traps. And no matter how wide a berth you give a jumping cholla, it always seems to reach out and grab you nonetheless. The spines are hooked, making them difficult and painful to remove. They're just an all-around nasty specimen.

We pulled into the Coachella Valley just as the last blue-green glow drained from the evening sky. The lights of Indio, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, and La Quinta (plus the outlying districts, which Dad lumped together under the name of "East Jesus") were all on and glowing.

We got home about an hour and a half later, unloaded the car, had a snack, and went to bed, our minds whirling and our hearts content.

I sez "Chiricahua"

Can you say it? Geronimo could. So could Cochise, Geronimo's subaltern. Chiricahua was his hideout. The Chiricahua National Monument sits just southeast of Willcox, Arizona, on the other side of the Dragoon Mountains from Benson. Oh, and before we go any farther, I should tell you that it's pronounced "chee-ree-CAH-wha." Once the stronghold of the last belligerent remnant of the Apache tribe, it is now a park, loaded to the brim with mountains, fir trees, trails, and assorted wicked-cool wildlife. We set out at about 9:30. I volunteered to ride with Uncle Bob and Aunt Barb, in their minivan. It was a comfortable ride, with the added bonus of guidance. Barb, a veteran snowbird, was up-to-date on all relevant historical and geographical information. I sat in the backseat and took copious notes as we passed power plants, and dairy farms, and mountains, and ranches, and all manner of unlikely landmarks (including a herd of mule deer). After an hour and a half of scenic Arizona, we were pulling up to the monument gates. The ticket booth was closed—there was a sign that read PAY WHEN YOU LEAVE instead—so we drove on through and up into the mountains. It was a disorienting sensation to see yucca plants poking out of the rocky ground beneath fir trees and a scanty blanket of week-old snow. We ducked into the visitor's center, grabbed a map, and then drove a few miles (and a few thousand feet) up into the mountains to Massai Lookout, 6800 feet above sea level. Man, you could see everything from up there. And by "everything" I mean the remains of the volcanic caldera which formed the mountains in the first place (background)... ..."Cochise Head," a gigantic rock outcrop that eerily resembled an upturned face... ...the San Simon Valley and the distant Dragoon Mountains... ...and bunches and bunches of rhyolite pillars. (And you could see ME.) We hiked a strenuous quarter-mile to the observation station and learned a little about Chiricahua's rich historical and geological tradition. Massai Point, it seemed, had been named after an Apache tribesman, "Big Foot" Massai. He stole a horse from a nearby farmhouse way back in the 1880s. He was pursued to the present-day lookout point, whereupon he vanished. He escaped completely. They never caught him. The settlers must've named the area after him out of sheer admiration. We paused for a snack at the parking lot below Sugarloaf... ...pausing to take a few opportunistic snapshots... ("We've got to show the folks back in Ohio that there's snow in Arizona," Barb said in wonder.) Then we piled back into the cars and headed for town. The only regret I had upon leaving was that I hadn't seen so much as one coatimundi. But I did see this on the way out, almost as good: Uncle Bob spent 10 minutes at the exit gate, trying to pay for both his car and our Hummer behind. He had to buy two senior National Park Service passes (for $20 each) to do it. And he had to dig his driver's license out of his back pocket, which was a laugh and a half. But he managed it. Then we were rolling down Arizona State Highway 181, angling for the town of Sunsites, wherein lay a mighty good café that Bob and Barb recommended. Along the way, Barb spotted a bobcat lurking by the road, which promptly darted back into the scrub as the minivan approached. Dang, I wish I had seen that. Bobcats! In Arizona! In January! In the wild! This is another reason I love Arizona. I dig these long, straight patches of highway. They're intoxicating. They truly are. There's nothing like driving for miles and miles along a perfectly straight road, through some of the prettiest desert you've ever seen. The deserted, dilapidated quality of that road is an added bonus. After a long-yet-short drive, we got to Sunsites (pronounced just like it's spelled). Barb's Postulate proved correct: the popularity of an Arizona diner is directly proportional to the number of pickup trucks parked outside. Feast your eyes upon the Sunsites Country Café. The inside was plainly decorated (a gas-station tile floor and some lovely watercolor prints on the walls), but the food was undeniably savory. I had a bomber sandwich: roast beef, red onions, pepper jack cheese, and Cajun mayonnaise. Lip-smackin' good. On the way back, we made a quick stop by the Triple T Ranch (just off I-10), where the desert rocks have gotten to be a tad invasive. The ranch contained such oddities as a bar with a rock in the middle... ...and a rock with a tree growing around it. Weird. We witnessed these wonders thanks to the lone caretaker-lady who thoughtfully unlocked the bar and ushered us around back to look at the aforementioned mutant tree. Thanks, whoever you were. Anyway, we finally saddled up again and headed back to Benson. But not before we'd had a look at the airport. Uncle Bob and Aunt Barb are mighty pleased with my flying ambitions, it seems; for they insisted on taking me to this airport, letting me take a gander, and hobnobbing with the fellow in charge of the FBO. I chatted with him a while, during which I learned that it was possible to get from Benson to Los Angeles on one tank of gas (in a Cessna 172). I also learned that the fellow at the FBO (who spoke with a British accent) had once flown a Robinson R-22 helicopter all the way from Bend, Oregon to L.A. Whew, what a flight that must've been. He told me that they got stuck on the top of Mount Shasta one night during some bad weather and slept in some kind-hearted folks' cabin before flying out the next morning. Whoa, cool. Not much was going on. The Benson airfield was quiet. They didn't get much traffic, I gathered. Still, I liked the place. It was small, quiet, and unassuming, and smack dab in the middle of some kick-ass scenery. What more could you want out of an airport? We hit up the Apple Farm Country Restaurant for dinner (speaking of lip-smacking good). I had a difficult conversation with Uncle Bob; difficult because the restaurant was noisy, and Uncle Bob speaks quietly and without aspirating his consonants. Then the company adjourned back to the trailers for a lazy evening and a restful night's sleep. For on the morrow, we would depart.