SINCE I HAD RETIRED FROM MY JOB as Industrial Research Chemist, it was necessary that summer between semesters, that I find some kind of gainful employment. As they say. As Pop said. (Grin!).
A time-honored employment in Greenwich in those days for strong backs and weak minds was to work as pick-and-shovel man on the local roads for a prominent Italian construction company: Peter Mitchell (I guess from Mitchellenni it was. Whatever). Many of my buddies had from time to time, gone to work to "dig-a da ditch wid Peter da Mitch..." as was the folklore of the taprooms we frequented. (These latter I recall even yet... there was the Old Post Grill at the "split" in the road going west from Greenwich down to Port Chester - many years later nationally famous as a then-nite club called Gulliver's, where a number of celebrants were burned to death in an untoward accident there - there was Terry Lodge, and The Seven Pines, and North Castle Inn, The Rye Hotel where Buster played "Mississippi Mud on his jazz piano and my new girlfriend and I danced on the vestpocket size dance floor - and one known to only few alive today I know: Paddy Roach's Working Man's Bar, dug back under a hill that wound up to the beginning of Glenbrook Road in Stamford. Even longtime Stamford natives won't know Paddy Roach's: the bars - two as I remember - lined both walls and were just heavy planks, and only your hardcore day laborers ever stopped in (mostly Irish too, as you might infer...) LOL! Vry inspiriting company you may rest assurred...
Phil Youngman was a friend of mine. We all called him the "Bird Man." Birds were it, far as Phil was concerned. He was a self-made ornithologist before he was 20 - and generally interested in the Natural Sciences. He had a talking crow - Jimmy - who usually accompanied Phil on his ventures. So one day, as I was building yet another rock wall out back on my Pop's place (piling up rocks on one another is one of the oldest New England pastimes known), Phil (and Jimmy) dropped by. He asked what I was going to do for employment that summer - and I replied I didn't really know - guessed it was maybe 'Peter da Mitch' for me. What about him?
"Well," he said, "that's why I came by to see you! I got a job as a research assistant for a private oceanographic venture! On a sailboat!" he added.
My ears pricked up. "Gee," I said. "That's sounds really neat. How'd you do that?" Well, it seems there was this rich guy (his name forgotten now), who owned an ocean-going vessel out of Greenwich, and this guy was also a Marine Scientist of some note, and was financing this special cruise down to the Caribbean that summer to do some original research. (Phil had some cachet already too, as an icthylologist: he was a sort of a "natural" Naturalist). "Well, man!," I said. "This sure sound like it would be fun and I envy you!" Peter da Mitch and his ditch were fast losing their appeal...
"Well, that is why I came to see you," said Phil. "I know you don't have much Science background (I was a late bloomer here as might be said). But thing is, there is still one slot open, and they need a guy who knows sailing! And I told them, I got just the guy! You!"
Now this seemed real interesting and suddenly the thought of sailing around in the summery seas of the Caribbean seemed ever so much more attractive than working locally. "Jeezul, Phil," I said. "I'm your man! Put my name in the hat!"
Well, to make long story short, he did. And it seemed I might have a job opening into Oceanography - whatever that was. Things were really looking up! Phil kind of critiqued my general understanding of Geology (which now stood me in good stead,) and gave me a crash course in Caribbean fishes and reef lore, and so on. But, alas, it was not to be. At the eleventh hour, some dude showed up who had credentials both in oceanography and in sailing - so I was bounced and he was signed on instead. Several days later the group sailed out of Greenwich and off to high adventures on the Spanish Main.
I was somewhat down, and went back to moping and rock-wall building. At this point, my Dad, who never had the slightest interest in or clue about what "science" was in any form whatsoever, was reading his New York Times one morning, and he blurted out - "Why I see here that an old schoolmate of mine - Frank Henry Hanna Roberts - from Denver - is mentioned in the paper today. Seems he is Head of some Bureau or something- Bureau of American Ethnology down at the Smithsonian in Washington, and this Bureau is hiring college kids this year to - it says here - "...to dig on archeological sites" -whatever that might mean... Something abut saving remains of America's Indians..." (Pop and this guy, Roberts, and no less than the famed Lowell Thomas, Sr. (he's name-dropping again, Martha!) had been school chums back in East Denver High eons before).Frank H.H. Roberts, the BAE, and Other Calls To Action.
He said to me, "There's an address here. You always liked bugs and things. Why not write and ask if you couldn't go dig with them? All the same as roadwork and wall building and might even be more fun..." Then he turned to the financial pages, as always.
And I did! For once, I did something positive. I put my name in Roberts' hat, and believe it or not, a week or so later I got back a cryptic note that said I had been hired (!), and that I was to get a "shot for typhus" and one other; I would get $20 or $30 a week; I was to "outfit myself for a summer on the High Plains," and bring my own bedroll. I was to report to the University of Nebraska Anthropology Offices in Lincoln, Nebraska on such and such a date and would receive further assignment there.
It all happened so fast. A turn-around in just a matter of days! From a contemplated summer upon the billows of the Caribbean Sea, I had suddenly done a true 180 - and was now headed for one of the most inhospitable areas in the bone-dry heart of our Continent: the breaks of the Big Muddy!
It remains but to add that with my diminished funds, I managed to purchase an economy airline ticket. these were the days when serius air travel was just really beginning and was crude beyond measure. You will know (if you remember these days) when I mention the "Flying Irishman" - one of the first mass ticket scammers to serve this industry - buying and overselling blocks of tickets to anywhere all the time - and then you usually had to go down and duke it out at the airport when you got there to get aboard the plane he had booked for you! What a scene! My best friend, Anton Nowak and my girl friend, Jean (we were to wed two years later) drove me down to the old La Guardia Airport on Long Island and it must have been about an eight hour flight (really!) to Chicago in wild weather and storms that night in an old prop-drive - I will never forget! We lay over there I remember the better part of a long, hot summer day - and seeing as how some yahoo who was my seat companion had never been west of Trenton, and I was a world traveller and general bon vivant (recall my long ago residency at the age of four in the Windy City...), I suggested a trip out to the Shedd Aquarium. Which we did. It stirred powerful memories for me; my companion thought it was just a lot of fish in glass tanks...
From Chicago we took a bus down to Lincoln and in due course I reported to the University. I did not know it then, but one of the great passions of my life was about to ignite: American Archaeology - "Indians" to you (or Native Persons, if you are under 35). A passion which has been a second career.