of the travels of the Billy Goats Gruff
Here’s something that, if you read it in a book, or saw it in a movie, would be rejected as too unbelievable.
We now live some 200 miles from where my wife Carol grew up.
The other day she went into a local antique store and picked up this old book, thinking it looked familiar. When she opened the cover, she found her own signature from some 55+ years ago!
The intervening circumstances are a complete mystery! She bought the book for $1.60. Believe it or not!
the life and death of the last great gold rush
This fascinating book about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1899 was written by Pierre Barton, the son of parents who were there at the time, although they found no gold themselves. It is both first-rate history and first-rate entertainment. So frenzied was the dash for gold and so scant the information about the rugged mountain wilderness and its immobilizing winter cold, that the rush for richness became a kind of fabulous, entrepreneurial madness.
In his conclusion, Barton writes, “The great majority of those who took part in the stampede were young mean in their mid-twenties. It is this youth that helps explain the impetuosity of the gold rush. The Argonauts were still young enough to want to search for something even though they did not exactly know what is was they were searching for. They were still young enough to be gullible, young enough to be foolhardy, young enough to be optimistic, young enough to be carefree. They were young enough to see a mountain and climb it, though they had never climbed a mountain before; to see a glacier and cross it without a second thought; to build a boat and tempt a rapid, though they had never wielded an ax or paddle in their lives. The Klondike was their Everest; they sought to reach it because it was there.”
So many fascinating, incredible, one-of-a-kind tales of endurance, foolishness, perseverance, luck, agony, hardship, honor, and deceit you’ll never find anywhere else. I highly recommend it!
a uniquely memorable experience
You would never know it, because I’m really a whole lot older than I look, but I’m one of very few people living anymore who can boast of surviving a horse and buggy accident.
See, a long, long time ago—back when a camera, clock, calculator, phone, music player and video recorder were all separate devices—I harnessed my family into an adventure in the 19th Century.
It was Labor Day and our first visit to the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania. We had come to Old Bedford Village, a living history hamlet where the colonial period was full on display for the education and entertainment of its guests.
It was there we innocently boarded a wooden-wheeled carriage for a short, horse-drawn tour through the late summer countryside. Our full company included my wife Carol and me, our four children ages 3½ – 8, a young couple expecting their first child very soon, and our 80-year-old driver. Off we started at a lazy, laid-back pace.
But soon, the clip-clopped cadence of Queenie’s hooves rose from walk, to trot, to canter, to gallop. From the driver’s seat came a few, low and feeble, pleading commands—apparently so as to not startle either the passengers OR the horse: “Whoa, Queenie… whoa, Queenie…!”
But Queenie didn’t whoa. In fact, she paid no attention to the increasing cries of the little old driver or to her increasingly alarmed passengers. I aimed my bouncing head out the side window to witness the horsepower boost coming from a gray-dappled rump. The driver’s reins led to no effect on her front end, where, despite wearing blinders, her wide, wild eyes stared upward and to the right. As I followed skyward, a large colorful kite swooped into view.
Now, knowing what your problem is doesn’t always lead to an immediate solution! Oh, we understood the arithmetic all right: 1 large kite + 1 spooked horse = 1 runaway buggy filled with tender, bruisable people! But our difference-making resources from the back of the carriage were, sadly, quite limited.
Oblivious to all dangers but the kite, Queenie galloped straight ahead with her neck craned far to the right. Soon we entered an area with many people who were quickly discovering they’d better run or get run over. (Run… away! It’s a Runaway!)
Queenie slammed her neck into the corner of a building and collapsed. The buggy mounted the porch, separating spokes from rims from axles, and splintered apart. All of us hapless riders careened into the front, left corner of the buggy, piling up, as it happened, on my wife Carol.
With Queenie down and front wheels broken, our vehicle slumped on its side, making it even harder to distinguish each other’s tangled body parts in the messy heap of human cargo. Now to the rescue came the formerly fleeing refugees, who held up our fractured fairy tale of a coach long enough for us to hand the children through the side window to willing hands and helpers.
After we had all clambered from the wreck, and were gratefully awaiting minor medical attention, I realized that the camera around my neck was responsible for the gash on my forehead, and—hey!—still had one last picture left on my roll of Kodak slide film. It shows Carol on the ground holding her aching leg and knee with one hand while the other reined in our excitable 8-year-old from further unrestrained exploits.
A horse-and-buggy accident in 1989, I daresay, was a unique experience even then. Yet, like most catastrophes from which you survive, can be interpreted for a life lesson or two:
1. No matter where we are or what we’re doing, trouble can suddenly swoop out of the clear blue on us. And though it may pursue or even lead us for a while, remember that it does come, eventually, to a conclusion; and:
2. Consider yourself forewarned whenever you find yourself following a horse’s rear end!
