Reflections on Manzanar and America

I first met Denis Wolcott after I hired him straight from college to come to work at the Marietta Ohio Times, a small newspaper in a small town that must have seemed a million miles away from his home in Southern California.
He arrived in the Mid-West still wearing Southern California garb, for which he took an inordinate amount of kidding. Marietta's social norms were not quite the same as those of the University of Southern California.
He survived, prospered, did a good job as a reporter, and like the rest of us working for Gannett in the 1970s, moved on to bigger and better things.
He's back in Southern California where he began, a father and a grandfather, and made a recent trip to one of America's historical sites.

I copied this off his Facebook posting. I recommend it to you.



Tolerance?
By Denis Wolcott


A recent camping trip up to the Eastern Sierras in CA with my two youngest daughters meant an opportunity to stop on the way home at the Manzanar Historic Site. Set near the foot of Mt. Whitney, Manzanar was one of the 10 relocation camps where more than 100,000 Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were interned during World War II.

Seeing is much better than reading about it. The girls were at first reluctant to go. They were tired and needed a shower. And, they had both been to the Holocaust exhibit at Washington, D.C., and were not excited to see more examples of hate and ugliness. They also remembered the former instructions to not bring up this topic in front of their grandfather (my dad) because it would result in a long debate. You see, my dad was on the side of those who thought the government was doing Japanese Americans a favor to relocate them to "protect" them from the hatred and bigotry rising up in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

So, as we approached Manzanar, I persisted and they were thankful I suggested this stop. (If you want to check out this site with a virtual tour, go here: http://tinyurl.com/2ebc8sv). It is very easy to stop along Highway 395 and spend 30 minutes or longer at a place that could be the closest this country came to a concentration camp (of course, without the mass killings). As thousands of other motorists zipped by, we did the tour.

History provides a great platform for today's events. Mixed in with a very telling story about the bigotry and events that allowed our country to this horrific decision to inter U.S. citizens are other examples of where the the world made mistakes. From denying women the right to vote, to segregation to the 9/11 attacks.

At this point in the tour and as we left Manzanar (after the must-see stop at the cemetery), I told my two youngest that in spite of all the history lessons that should help guide us away from making the same mistake, we are witnessing two more similar events: the immigation battle in Arizona and the debate over an Islamic Center near the site of the World Trade Center.

We all hope our past is behind us, but, sadly, history has a way of repeating itself. This is why they teach history in school. This is why they erect monuments to help us remember.

What I've told my children, and any friends who can stand my occasional rants, is to avoid the trappings of being caught up in the heated debates on highly sensitive and politicized issues. The better course of action is to investigate the facts yourself - not let others feed you - and to make decisions with information, knowledge and a cooler head.

Thankfully, I'm beginning to see some of this in action with the debate over the proposed Islamic Center in lower Manhattan, just blocks from the former World Trade Center. Some of the facts are starting to gain more attention than the ill-informed rhetoric and "hate" radio (some call it "talk" radio). Bravery and rational thinking, like that demonstrated by New York City Mayor Bloomberg, are being commended.

I was glad to hear my children talk about our country's founding (people fleeing other countries because of religious persecution to find safe haven here), and why our first amendment was the first amendment.

So as my two youngest children settle back into their summertime routines and look to grab as much fun as they can before hitting the books (and my oldest begins to raise her own and offer life lessons to her daughter), I vow to still occasionally throw the lessons of rational thinking at them. I truly believe all bright, young minds are born without a prejudice gene. And my hope for them is that they use the power of their minds and convictions to help this country from repeating its ugly past. I see these strengths in them now.

I remain hopeful.

And, I hope their examples give pause to others. At first, reluctant to accept an ugly past exists or, at least, not wanting to see a depressing site. Sure, who wants to see this?! But, eventually, with a little coaxing, willing to peak inside the building and gain some additional perspective from a factual and very revealing display. The result? Thank you for showing this to us. It was educational and opened my mind to more things to contemplate.

John Muir Laws seminars

Press Release
FROM: Calaveras Big Trees Association
TO: Local and regional media
Subject: Field Journal Writing/Sketching Seminars
Date: July 12, 2010
*
Calaveras Big Trees State Park -- Naturalist, biologist, educator and artist John Muir "Jack" Laws will lead three seminars in the state park in mid-August, sessions designed to help young people start and keep a daily illustrated field journal.
Laws is the author and artist whose “Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada” is the standard for hikers and outdoor lovers. He is a wildlife biologist, and an associate at the California Academy of Sciences, and has won awards for environmental education. He has been a featured speaker at the Yosemite Association and at Calaveras Big Trees State Park and throughout the Sierra Nevada.
The emphasis in all three sessions will be on developing awareness and skills in young people.
The first two-hour session will be Friday, Aug. 13, at 6 p.m. Laws will hold a workshop designed for teachers, park docents and naturalists who work with children. He will teach techniques for educators and interpreters to help young people observe and to draw nature. A fee of $10 will be charged for the evening session for adults, and includes park admission (normally $8).
On Saturday, Aug. 14, Laws will lead two free sessions for children and youth at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Sketch pads and pencils will be provided for students. For those coming from outside the park for the sessions, the normal vehicle admission fee applies.
All sessions will begin inside Jack Knight Hall in the park, and seating is limited.

Reservations are required for all the sessions. To pre-register contact Sue or Tami at the park Visitors’ Center at 209-795-3840 Mon. - Fri. , 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., by August 6.

This is a great way for kids of all ages to learn the appreciation of nature. Laws, who spent six years backpacking the Sierra Nevada to research and illustrate the "Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada", will share tricks and techniques for drawing birds, mammals, plants and landscapes. He will note signs of the season. He will also help attendees achieve the discipline and good habits that will help keep a journal going once begun.
Here is the chance to learn to observe and appreciate the natural world in a whole new way.
No drawing experience is necessary. Adults bring your own sketchpad and pencils.
(Photos of Laws are available the following web site:
www.johnmuirlaws.com/publicityphotos.html)

My Father - Louis Ernest LaMont

About 1930
In Coral Gables in 1952

Thoughts by his son 50 years after his death

My father’s 65-year life encompassed a lot of positive times: a comfortable childhood in a secure family which left him with a strong sense of home; an exciting youth including a good education; a love for books and poetry and music; a strong faith; a sense of optimism in a changing world; an active social life with a wide circle of friends as a young adult; the experience of travel and developing business skills and contacts throughout his native region; marriage and children, and living in a warm and comfortable place with beaches and fish. He always had people who loved him.

There were negatives times as well: the disruption of World War One and the Great Depression; the uncertainties of World War Two and the post-war recession; constant travel; the challenge of having a young family as an older man; ill health for at least 30 years of his life; divorce; maintaining the role as father from miles away, and economic uncertainties in the final years of his life.

But he lived and loved well.

Friends enjoyed his company and admired his contributions to any group he joined. He was an honest man. His work was meticulous, even when he was more interested in doing other things. He served his country well. His entire family -- grandparents, parents, numerous cousins and his children -- loved and respected him and enjoyed his company. He did what he felt was his duty, without complaint. He was never hesitant to express affection and gratitude and respect to the people around him. And he had very good manners.
Above all he was absolutely constant in loving his family, and showing that love through his actions.
His children, and in their turn the grandchildren and descendants he never knew, still benefit from his care and concern he expressed throughout his life.

Louis Ernest “Lep” LaMont

Louis Ernest LaMont was born at his grandparents’ home in Montgomery, Alabama, on Feb. 17, 1892.
Montgomery was the capitol of the state, and a major river shipping point for crops from the Black Belt region. The area was famous for rich dark soil and massive fields of cotton.
The South in this era was caught between painful memories of the Civil War, which all the adults in the family had lived through, and the extreme nationalistic and Jim Crow years that followed.
Ernest was christened in the Methodist Church where his grandfather was a lay leader. He wore a long white dress made by his mother from a pattern in a popular magazine.
The style of living was “old fashioned” even Victorian. The women of that era were trained in “womanly skills” such as sewing, music and painting. Entertainment centered around socials and theatrical and musical performances, often at church or in the home.
The men in the his extended family were printers and strong union supporters. Ernest’ grandfather had been a foreman at the Montgomery Advertiser since before the Civil War, and his uncles had worked there or at the Paragon Press, a local printing company.
Ernest’ parents, Roswell DeEstra LaMont and Mary “Mollie” Barry LaMont, met when Ernest’s father (known as R.D.) was working as a printer with his grandfather Barry.
The home Ernest he was born in was built before the Civil War. It was an oversized log cabin that had been added to over the years until it had a shaded porch on the front and was planked over. It looked like a frame house, rather than a cabin, and faced Whitman street. A garden was planted out front, and they had a milk cow in a shed.
The home was on a hill above downtown Montgomery, originally the edge of town.
Ernest’ parents were living In Birmingham at the time, where his father was working for the Birmingham News, but returned to the Barry home for the birth.
Roswell was a native of New York who had moved south from Michigan in the 1880s. Ernest’ mother Mollie was a native of Lowndes County southwest of Montgomery, where her grandparents still lived. She had moved with her parents to Montgomery in 1860.
Ernest always considered Montgomery his home.
His father Roswell lived and worked as a journeyman printer in different towns throughout Alabama. He owned print shops and newspapers in Geneva, in South Alabama, and in North Florida near Pensacola.
As an infant and young child, Ernest and his mother Mollie often accompanied Roswell and lived temporarily away from Montgomery. In 1900 they lived in Geneva long enough for him to take part in a Sunday School pageant.
Ernest attended schools in Montgomery and lived in the Barry family home most of his childhood.
The Barry family was reasonably prosperous. As tradesmen they lived in town, owned their own home and acquired some symbols of status: a large piano, massive furniture, a library of classic books, oil paintings and needlepoint on the wall, a Tiffany lamp in the parlor. They traveled to the Gulf Coast for fishing trips and vacations, and they owned property outside Montgomery at a place called Mountain Creek.
None of the LaMont relatives lived nearby, having scattered across New York, Michigan and Wisconsin in the 1800s. Most LaMonts were farmers or merchants.
Ernest was raised in town. He was never a farm boy. Social life centered on the family, church and school.
He was an only child, born relatively late in his parents’ lives, and was surrounded by Barry family members, particularly his aunts who remained single and at home.
Early photos of him show thin hair, a narrow face, a prominent nose, and stiff formal collar.
When he was a boy the United States was entering the industrialized 20th Century. His modern world included new marvels like radio, electricity and telephones, none of which were in his home when he was born.
Horse and buggy was the dominant transportation. People walked everywhere. Street cars were pulled by horses, and cotton bales were brought to the market in the heart of town by black men, many the sons of former slaves, in mule-draw wagons.
As a teenager he would have seen the first automobile drive through town, and watched his first airplane fly overhead.
At about 18 years old Ernest and another boy built a crystal receiver set from a mail-order house and were able to listen to wireless signals for the first time. The event was written up in the local newspaper.
While he was a student his parents and grandparents rebuilt the family home. The original log home sat at corner of Clayton, facing Whitman. They built a new Victorian-style house on the same lot but facing 508 Clayton Street. Builders incorporated the original log building into the back of the new house. Today the old log house serves as the kitchen of the home.
Family photo albums include pictures of what his mother called “the old home place” and the new home built around 1905. (She sold her home in the 1930s. The current owner discovered the old section and has stripped away the interior walls that hid the logs in the kitchen to reveal he history of the home.)
Ernest attended an all-male school called Boys High School. The curriculum included Latin and Greek and every student was trained in formal penmanship and studied classic literature.
In a school play he acted the part of a leopard, and was given the nickname “Lep.” His friends called him that for the rest of his life.
Around 1910 Ernest briefly attended college at Auburn University. There is no record of when he left or why.
At that time he and several friends plotted to get rich by going to Central America, then known as the Banana Republics, to make their fortunes. He claimed they saved enough money for passage, but spent it all when they got to New Orleans, and never got on the boat. They had to come home and go to work.
Ernest worked at a variety of jobs in Montgomery. He worked at a local florist shop, loaded gold and silver coins at the Fourth National Bank, and became an accounting clerk.
When World War One began he joined the Alabama National Guard. He worked two years as a civilian for the Adjutant General of the State of Alabama as disbursing officer for the state’s military department, responsible for delivering supplies and troops being moved to training posts and to ports bound for Europe. He was paid $4 a day.
He also went to work for the state draft board office while waiting to go on active duty in the Army, apparently holding down two jobs.
Ernest formally enlisted in the Army on July 4, 1917, and was assigned as a PFC in the Quartermaster Corps But he was not called up for training until December.
While waiting he ran the draft board office, replacing an Army officer who had been reassigned, and was named Draft Executive. He wore civilian clothes to work but was considered a member of the Army.
The appointment, the local newspaper noted, made him the youngest draft executive in the nation. He would have been 25 years old at the time.
Late in 1917 the Army sent him to train with the Quartermaster Corps at Camp Joseph E. Johnson in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was paid $30 a month.
Early in February 1918 Ernest was on a troop train heading for the port at Newport News, Virginia, to sail for Europe when the tracks were blocked by a derailment. His unit had been headed for the trenches but was pulled off the train and put to work cleaning up the mess left behind.
By the time his unit was ready to go again, new orders caught up with him.
The Army was advised by state officials that he was “irreplaceable” at the draft office in Montgomery, and he was released for reassignment back to his old job with the full title and a pending promotion to Major.
He went back to Montgomery a few days before his birthday in 1918 and took over as executive of the draft board.
That summer the Butler Alabama Choctaw Weekly Banner weekly newspaper blasted him in an editorial, “A Call to Americanism!!” and attacked “this Frenchman” for sending American boys off to war. The newspaper did not note my father was a Scots-Irish decent, his ancestors had fought in the Revolution, he had already enlisted in the Army and he was a native of Alabama.
He found the editorial amusing, though I suspect his mother did not.
That same summer a severe flu epidemic swept the nation, killing thousands. A photograph of Montgomery’s Fourth of July celebration shows crowds of people wearing protective face masks to avoid spreading infection.
Ernest stayed at the Draft Board job until Spring of 1919, closing out the office after the end of the war. His mementoes of the Army were a Colt 38 Special revolver which had been his sidearm in the service, and photos from the training camp in Jacksonville.
When the Roaring 20s began he was a 27 year-old bachelor from an “acceptable” local family and knew everybody in what was then a small town. He was a Mason and joined the American Legion. One of his classmates became Montgomery mayor. Another became a U.S. Senator. Another a judge. His best friend owned a jewelry store downtown.
He kept several photo albums from that time filled with pictures of social events, family musicals, summer camping outings at ”the creek” and fishing trips with his family to Perdido Bay and Pensacola, Florida.
He kept a notebook of poetry, some copied from things he liked and some apparently that he wrote. He shared poems with friends, and began to build a library including Dickens and the complete works of O. Henry.
Ernest was a charter member of Montgomery’s Beauvoir Country Club, though he never cared much for golf.
He attended, as did his family, the local Methodist-Episcopal church on Court Street that his grandfather Barry had helped establish in the 1800s.
He also was briefly arrested drinking from a flask underneath the grandstands at an Auburn Football game, his only run-in with the law. He laughed about it when he told the story as an incident from Prohibition Days.
His surviving papers don’t reveal details about what he did for a living at the time. A good friend chided him in a letter for a lack of ambition, but Ernest seemed always to be gainfully employed by a series of insurance companies.
In later years people who knew him in the 1920s and 1930s remembered him as a man with “perfect manners,” honest, a charming companion and good friend. He was “dapper” in a way that people understood in the 1920s and 1930s.
My mother (who married him later) said that that during the Roaring 20s he was acquainted with people like Zelda Sayre, whose family lived nearby She later married F. Scott Fitzgerald, a frequent Montgomery visitor during the war. There is a photo somewhere of Zelda, about age 16, along with young adults all in their 20s, at a creek side swimming party with his friends.
Ernest’ social life included a lot of social drinking-- he preferred Four Roses blended whiskey -- and at least two of his close friends died alcoholics.
Photos at the time show him to be neat and precise in appearance and dress, and unmarked by age. He was 5 foot 7 inches tall, and was thin or even skinny his entire life. Photographs of him from that era resemble similar photos of the dancer Fred Astair.
Ernest’ photos and letters to his mother indicate he enjoyed being single, traveling and working at different places throughout the South.
By 1927 he was living in Charlotte, N.C., working for an insurance company traveling the South. He wrote his mother regularly and visited Montgomery in a brand new 1927 Chevrolet Coupe which he bought for $540.
He left Charlotte briefly when his father, who had been working as a printer in Cuba and Miami, had a heart attack and died late that Spring. He corresponded the details of the burial and the small estate to his mother and then visited her by train before returning the Charlotte. He liked the climate and surroundings in the Miami area. He enjoyed the beaches, fishing and the horse races.
Around 1930 my father moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to live and work. Three of his best friends from a Montgomery family lived there -- Richard, Ed and Sanders Hickey. Ernest had been particularly close to Sanders, who died early, and he
eventually named me, his son, for him. He became good friends and roommate with Richard during the early 1930s, the last years of prohibition. (Richard later became my godfather.)
Ernest and Richard shared an apartment in a businessmen's hotel, the Cox-Carlton, near the corner of Ponce DeLeon and Peachtree streets. It is across the street from the movie theater where “Gone With The Wind” had its premier.
Friends stored kegs of illegal whiskey in the big cedar closet in their apartment, a service they were willing to render for a small “evaporation tax.”
Ernest traveled the South as an insurance auditor keeping track of claims and payments from firms, including the coal industry. A pattern of work was established that was followed for 25 years: traveling constantly by automobile throughout the South; staying in business-oriented hotels, and always keeping his roots in Montgomery. (When I was a child I thought my father knew every hotel manager and desk clerk in five states.)

Ernest was 40 and living a happy bachelor life in booming Atlanta when he met Dorothy Strickland, a 20-year-old nurse from North Georgia. They met through a mutual friend who had a detective agency and whose girl friend ran the women’s boarding house where Dorothy and her sister lived, not far off Peachtree Street.
Dorothy described Ernest, whom she always called “Lep,” as “charming and good looking” and said he had almost courtly good manners. “Lep” and “Dot” had friends and interests in common.
They went back to the Barry home on Clayton in Montgomery for the wedding on April 8, 1933, the height of the Great Depression.
Times were difficult all over the country but they seemed to survive reasonably well. Dorothy always had work at local hospitals. Ernest changed jobs several times in the 1930s, but was able to work despite the bad economy. He continued to travel. They moved several times.
They rented an apartment on Peachtree Street, and moved to a rented house in Decatur in the late 1930s.
Money was an issue for Dorothy later in their married life, but the lack of it never seemed to bother Ernest. He once wrote a letter to his mother that he would come to visit here when he could get enough money for a train ticket, less than $5 at the time.
During the late 30s they dealt with big changes in their new lives together.
Dorothy’s much-admired older brother was killed while training pilots at the Atlanta Air Field south of town. Her father had an severe heart attack after hearing the news over the telephone, and ended up living with them temporarily during his recovery. He died within a year.
In February 1937 their first child, Mary Elizabeth LaMont, was born in Atlanta.
Shortly after that Ernest’s mother Mollie, in her 80s, was forced to sell her Montgomery home. She lived with Ernest and Dorothy in Atlanta until she died in their home in 1939.
Ernest’s close connections to Montgomery were weakened, but not broken. He stayed in close touch with his Barry cousins and visited often.
In 1939 he bought a Plymouth Coupe for business and family. That car stayed in the family through the war years and beyond and he called it “Old Betsy.”
In November 1940 I was born while the family was still living in Atlanta, living in a small house they had purchased from Richard Hickey just off the golf course near East Lake Country Club.
More changes were in store as World War Two began to reshape the country.
Ernest and Dorothy moved the family to Mobile, Alabama, in 1942. He continued to work and travel for Bituminous Casualty Company, but in a different territory. Dorothy took a job working as a nurse in the county welfare clinic.
The family lived in an area known as Spring Hill in a development built to handle the crowds of war workers that flooded the town. The rented house was small, wood-framed, in a hilly area covered by pine trees. Most of the neighbors were young couples who had come to town to work for war industries. Single men lived in dormitories near war plants, or rented rooms in homes downtown.
Mobile at that time was one of the fastest growing towns in the country. Brookley Air Force Base, shipbuilding and major port facilities, made it a hub of war-based activity.
The housing area the family lived in provided outdoor movies on summer nights, sitting on blankets under the trees swatting mosquitoes. Entertainment included going down to the shipyards for the launching of Liberty Ships. Mardi Gras, a weeks-long festival more family oriented than in neighboring New Orleans, was a major annual entertainment.
Around 1944 the family moved further into the city, to the downstairs of a house carved into a duplex on the main street of town. They lived at 1214 Government street, the east-west thoroughfare which also served as U.S. Highway 90. It was a big pale yellow house with a large front porch, giant oak trees, azaleas in the front yard and pecan trees and collapsing servant quarters in the back.
Ernest traveled constantly and was seldom at home. Money seemed to be an constant issue between husband and wife.
One day in 1948 my father came by my elementary school to tell me that he and mother were getting a divorce and he would not be living with the family anymore.
He was full of reassurances, but was clearly unhappy. The marriage was over, and a new chapter in my father’s life had begun.
Much later my mother said she was “too young and silly” to marry a man his age and background. Neither ever explained exactly what happened, if they understood it. The legal reasons for the divorce were “irreconcilable differences.” She acknowledged later that she had expectations he could not meet. He never talked about it.
He also never made much adjustment from traveling, living in hotels and eating in restaurants to being a homebody. He was caring, kind and loving, but as children we did not expect him to show up for scout outings, swimming lessons or baseball games. We got encouraging letters instead.
His health, which had not been good for a decade, was getting worse. He smoked Camel cigarettes constantly, and the years of constant travel were wearing on him. He was in pain much of the time.
He had rheumatoid arthritis, was underweight and he was almost completely bald.
In 1948 Ernest moved his few belongings, most in an Army trunk filled with family papers and photo albums, to the basement of his cousin John Barry’s house on Cherry Street in Montgomery 200 miles away. That was his base for travel and work for the next few years.
He visited Mobile frequently and wrote letters constantly, making sure my sister and I knew of his attention and affection. He and Dorothy were cordial but distant. Both insisted that my sister and I respect and obey the other parent. I never heard him speak an ill word about my mother.
The next few years were difficult for him, but he always worked hard to remain in close touch with my sister and me.
He wrote at least one letter every week to both of us children for almost a decade. He would often tell funny stories or relate small events from his life. He reported on a trip to the race track, where he lost on a two dollar bet, and he would tell us about fishing in the Florida Keys.
He made up bedtime stories for us, in which we played starring roles, all typed meticulously onto hotel stationary on his Royal portable he used for business. He planned trips we could make together to interesting places. He monitored our progress in school.
Sometimes he wrote lonely letters asking us to write more often, wanting to know what were we doing and why we didn’t let him know what was going on. Once in a while his frustration would show and he would threaten, gently, to withhold our allowance until he heard from us. (We were both poor letter writers.)
During the first few years after the divorce Ernest would travel to Mobile and stay at the Battle House Hotel, and we children would visit or stay with him there. He insisted on being filled on in details of my sister’s increasingly active social life, and approved of most of her boyfriends and all of her school activities. Once when he did not approve of a boyfriend he wrote her a long thoughtful letter acknowledging her right to choose her friends but firmly stating his reasons for concern.
He taught Mary how to drive, and showed me how to to shoot his Army pistol, and then bought me a shotgun for hunting and taught me how to use it safely. He rented a small boat so we could go fishing.
In the summer my sister and I took turns spending several weeks with him while he worked, and we got to see a lot of the South from his un-air-conditioned car. We would travel with him, sometimes piling up in the back seat of the car with comic books and a candy bar. We waited in the car outside the offices of coal mines near Birmingham, and plants in Tennessee and Georgia, while he did audits inside.
We would ride down the highways with the windows wide open, summer heat blasting through, loudly singing songs he had known from his youth. When we would approach a town he would suggest we quiet down a bit so we would not shock the local residents.
My father provided rewards for us for accompanying him. We got to see Rock City, Ruby Falls, Civil War battlefields and large public swimming pools all over the South. He showed us the Confederate flag his aunts had sewn for the burial casket for Jefferson Davis in a museum.
If there was a beach nearby, we would detour for a quick visit.
He introduced us to his friends along the way, people he had known from decades of travel, or family friends from Montgomery and Atlanta.
He was lonely outside the summers, and his health grew steadily worse.
Even in the South the winters and wet seasons were brutal on his arthritis. Doctors kept trying different treatments and medicines that did not ease the increasing pain. One doctor told my father the source of his pain was his teeth, and so he had all of his teeth pulled. He got no relief.
He tried numerous strong medications, some of which made him ill.
In 1952 he announced to us in a letter that his “prayers had been answered” and he had been able to find a job in Miami, Florida, where it was warm, he had friends and little travel would be required.
He wrote hopeful cheerful letters about finding an apartment in Coral Gables that was near his work, close to fun things to do when we visited, and not too expensive.
By this time, primarily because of his health, he had been working on a “piece work” basis. The insurance company would send him payroll audits to accomplish by a certain date, and he was paid based on how many he completed.
The Florida job provided a regular salary, with a company car and benefits.
For a while.
The winters were mild, he had good friends who lived nearby, and he had a place to call home after living out of hotels for several years.
During the years he lived in South Florida my sister and I spent summers with him and would see him on some holidays during the school year. He could not see us often because of the distance and expense. But he kept up the steady stream of letters reporting on his life, asking about ours, and being supportive .
Long distance telephone phone calls were used only in emergencies in the early 1950s, and travel by airplane was a luxury affordable to few.
My father would drive 800 miles to see us, or we would take an overnight train trip to Miami via Jacksonville for our summer trips.
Letters were our primary connection, and my father was faithful and consistent. Every week brought a personal letter, often detailed. Every accomplishment or concern brought a quick response, by mail.
My sister and I were not good letter writers despite encouragement from our mother, but our father never stopped writing to us no matter where he was. I have more than 200 letters from those years, just a sampling of his constant efforts.
Summers together in Florida were fun for us children and for him. The beaches were not far way. A large ice skating rink was within walking distance. The public library was within two blocks, and the bus system was cheap, safe and efficient. We explored the Everglades and the Florida Keys, places my father had been with his father in the 1920s, and much of the rest of Florida. He knew how to catch fish.
He took us to the Methodist Church near the University of Miami on Sundays.
He read a Bible chapter aloud to us every night at bedtime, and marked each chapter off with a Number Two yellow pencil. He had read through the entire book several times, and the marks were adding up.
He took us to every big tourist attraction in the state: Silver Springs, Monkey Jungle, Gatorland and his favorite, Ross Allen’s Reptile Institute where we watched “explorers” milk rattlesnakes for venom.
Every Fourth of July we vacationed at a motel on the north end of Miami Beach, where the rooms were less expensive, and we spent the long weekend in beach-front luxury.
My sister and I were able to help my father with household tasks during the summers, as his health continued to fail.
In the Spring of 1955, while we were back in school in Mobile, my father wrote my sister and me and our mother asking for help. His health was getting worse, and he could barely work part-time. His arthritis was crippling him to the point it was very difficult to dress or shave or bathe.
My sister, a senior in high school, decided that she should attend college at the University of Miami and help our father manage. She became his caregiver, and both parents came up with the money for her tuition.
I spent that summer in Florida with my father, and my sister arrived and enrolled as a college freshman at the beginning of Fall semester.
By the time my sister moved to Florida to help our father’s health was so poor he was no longer able to work much. He had little or no savings.
I joined them in Florida in January of 1956, transferring to Coral Gables High School for the second semester that year. The three of us got along well except for occasional brother-sister disagreements which my father refereed.
Late that Spring my father decided he wanted to move back to Montgomery.
He was 64 years old, unemployed, emaciated, crippled to the point he could no longer type or put a shirt on by himself. He needed medical care and felt he could get it easier at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Montgomery.
He was stooped, frail, and tired. He looked 20 years older than he was.
He was not maudlin about it, but he told us frankly that he wanted to go back to Montgomery “to die at home.”
Our mother, his ex-wife, who had divorced him almost a decade earlier and had since remarried, jumped in to help do whatever was necessary for her children and their father.
My sister Mary gave up college after one year and started looking for work in Montgomery.
Our father -- we always called him Daddy -- accepted what he could not change, and looked forward to getting back to his home ground.
Our mother came to Coral Gables and picked us all up in May, and drove the 900 miles to Montgomery. My father and sister moved into an apartment a few blocks from where he had been born. She went to work.
Daddy’s health never improved. Every two or three months his doctor would put him into the Veteran’s hospital. The staff would build up his strength and send him home.
By late fall he had been in the hospital multiple times, but was unable to regain his health. It was painful to walk. He was sick most of the time, and his weight dropped to 100 pounds, sometimes less. He would add a few pounds in the hospital, then lose it immediately.
He was no longer able to drive. That Fall he stayed inside the apartment most of the time, and was unable to reconnect with the remaining friends from his youth.
My sister had a job, kept house, and did what she could to make him comfortable.
He went back into the hospital for the last time on Christmas Eve 1956.
By this time our mother had moved close to Montgomery to help, and I was newly enrolled in a military school not far away. She and I spent a cold wet holiday in an old house at Mount Meigs, not far from the hospital.
January was spent waiting, and I visited every weekend. Daddy did not get better.
In January 1957 he wrote a list of items he needed on the back of an envelope, and reminded himself of questions to ask my sister: “When I am going to get out of here?”
He died during the early morning hours February 25, one week after his 65th birthday.
The cause of death on the death certificate was listed as “general debility.” He had developed tuberculosis and his weight had dropped to 80 pounds.
He didn’t leave a lot of material possessions.
Most of the things he owned were contained in one small suitcase-- he called it his “ditty bag.” He also left behind a few items of furniture that remained from the Barry home, and a life insurance policy that eventually helped pay my way through college.
He was buried at Montgomery’s old Oakwood Cemetery in the family plot. A Methodist minister was assisted by a military honor guard and representatives of the local Masonic Lodge. The pall bearers were Barry relatives and old friends. The small crowd was mostly made up of cousins, and a few old friends from the early days in Montgomery.
Within a hundred yards of his grave is a hillside covered with graves of unknown soldiers from the Civil War. Across the railroad tracks on the next hill is the popular grave of country music star Hank Williams.

























Sanders Hickey LaMont, Camp Connell, CA, March 2009
----------------------------

The Evolution of LaMonts

Camp Connell, CA - Remember all those dull seminars, usually entitled "Managing Change," or "Planning for Success in 2020" or something like that.
Our retired lifestyle in the mountains is exempt from the business-world platitudes, but not from change.
We hiked. We read lots of books. We traveled. We enjoyed our nearby children and grandchildren. We volunteered, each according to our skill set: Pat taught children at church and in the nearby state park, and I led guided walks and worked on the trail maintenance in the forest.
It was as comfortable as an AARP magazine article.
Starting last year we began to notice cosmic shifts in our universe. Pat tripped (chasing a 12-year-old) and ended up having minor surgery on her nose, which didn't work.
Son Zack found employment at a nearby ski resort, and came to live with us to be near his job.
I took a hard fall on icy snow the first day of ski season and had to lay off a month while my ribs healed. Then on a routine visit to the skin doctor he found a skin cancer which required minor surgery -- you guessed it -- on my nose. The surgery turned out to be a bit more extensive than I expected and required a graft, which did not improve my semi-rugged looks. I ended up with a notched nose, decided the pirate look was okay, but was grounded for two months during the healing process.
Then Cabin Fever set in.
Just as the endless winter seemed to be over (it snowed again this week) Zack's 12-year-old daughter Katelynn came to live with him, and us.
The empty nest is not so empty any more.
Katie's a joy and a blessing. Zack is a help, and a blessing.
And we are all very busy.
As you might imagine, the empty nest quiet has been replaced by Justin Beiber music, home schooling, and discussions about appropriate wear for an almost-teen.
We also have a new dog named Rusty. He's technically Katie's dog but she lets us share him.
Pat is principal of our "school," and carries most of the workload. A good friend Jim Lashbrook volunteered to teach her math class, which has been a blessing. For those who know anything about our family's math abilities, we can do math but don't really remember why.
I teach spelling and grammar, and Zack (who is working) works on reading.
Pat has learned a lot about home school requirements and resources, and the public school system here has been a great help.
So here we are, with both our children and their families nearby, and two of them living with us.
That's a blessing few people have in this modern world of scattered families, though we certainly know several.
Years ago Pat and I moved 3,000 miles away from our families to take a California job, leaving our parents and all our kinfolk back East.
We now feel a bit like the Waltons, with three generations under one roof, particularly at bedtime when voices from within the house call out:
"Goodnight Grandma. Goodnight Papa."
And then Zack chips in "Goodnight Mom. Goodnight Dad."

And then I say: "Did someone take the dog out?"

And it gets very quiet.

Read the fine print

Camp Connell, CA -- California voters are always being asked to vote for or against a long list of initiatives. The subjects are often obscure, and the meaning unclear.

Be sure and read the fine print. Better yet, do some research.

A good example is the mailing I just received at home from something called the "California Jobs Initiative." It is a request to sign a petition, but it is misleading and masks the real purpose.

It is a corporate-paid campaign to fool you and me. The have a legal right to try and change existing law this way, even if it is essentially dishonest. There is no law against lying to the public when politics are involved.

The mailing/petition claims to represent "working families and small businesses."

But in reality, it's just a sham for massive corporations that want to avoid being responsible citizens. There are no working families or small businesses paying for the expensive political campaign.

Guess what. It's the big oil companies and corporate representatives trying to avoid paying their fair share to help clean up the air they have been fouling for years with old equipment in refineries and bad practices.

There are no new taxes involved. This law was passed and approved by voters some time ago, but is just now coming into play because the corporations lobbied a big delay in implementation.
The list of "supporters" reads like a Who's Who of organizations that want to protect us: Chambers of Commerce and so-called Taxpayer Associations lead the list.

They claim energy rates will go through the roof if this "new" tax is passed, with no evidence to back the claim.

They do not point out that new jobs will be created, and some economists (not paid by oil corporations) believe it will actually stimulate the economy and bring major financial benefits.

If you are inclined to believe the mail, I encourage you to do more homework. Several independent news organizations in the state have reported on the financing and the reality of this campaign.

Even our Republican governor thinks this is a misleading campaign.

Find out for yourself. The back of the envelop gives you a clue when it says "major funding by Valero Energy..." That's the billion-dollar oil company.

Or, you can join me in tearing up the petition and returning it in the mail to the corporate sponsors.

Send them a message.

A Head Case

A temporary solution to serious problem

Alameda, Ca- People take toilets for granted.
They sit, usually shiny and quiet, until needed. Then they work.

We don't have to think about them, fortunately, and we assume they will always be there, working, playing their part in modern America's disposal systems.

But not on a boat.

First off, and toilet is not a toilet on a boat. It is a head.

I do not know why.
It just is.

Sailors don't say words like "left" and "right." It's "port" and "starboard." "Up" and "down" become "topside" and "belowdecks." And "front" and "back" are "fore" and "aft."

And even though lots of ropes are all over the place, we never call a rope a rope. It is a line or a sheet.

That's probably why everything on a boat cost more. We have to pay someone to think up different names.

So a toilet on a boat is a marine head.

And the electric marine head on our boat "Good News" died.

Marine heads are so complicated they come with written instructions and warning labels. The boat will sink and "death or dying will result" if you do not follow instructions.

You can't put hardly anything in a marine head without breaking the rules.
We are people who always obey the rules, but the old head still broke.

I will never take the head on our boat for granted again after spending the better part of a week replacing it.

Unlike normal toilets, heads get old. The corrosion associated with salt water and other stuff destroys whatever it is that makes a head work. We had a ten-year-old electric head on our boat, and the signs had been more and more obvious in the past few months that it was dying.

Instead of a satisfying and steady WHIRRRRRR when you pushed the button, it tended to sound more like Whir-WHIR whir-whir WHIR-whir.

Then it stopped whirring completely.

Push the button, and the lights dimmed.

But nothing went away.

Fortunately we spotted this tendency before it became a crisis.

So I did what any sailor would do: I got my credit card out and went to the marine supply store (a hardware store for the incredibly wealthy) and bought a repair kit for only $65.

Shopping by Internet only works sometimes

Question: Why to they call it a boat?
Answer: That is an abbreviation for "Bring Out Another Thousand."

I went back to the boat, read the instructions, and discovered I had the wrong repair kit.

It turned out, after a day or so of wrestling with nuts and bolts and non-flexing flexible pipes, that hidden next to the head was a pump. A dead pump. A pump without which the electric marine head would not work.

No problem. I took the pump to several experts who know how to repair pumps. The first one told me he would charge $105 an hour to look at the pump, though he didn't want to. And it probably was dead anyway.
The second one said buy a new pump; old pumps rarely can be repaired. His advice was free, but the replacement pumps I found in the Internet cost around $400. For a lousy little pump.

Consensus was quickly reached: buy a brand new complete head, including pump. They are cheaper than the pumps alone.

Like I said, it is a boat. Logic does not apply.

The options ranged from a simple non-electric hand-pumped model for less than $200, to the whiz-bang super-duper electronic/vacuum model for somewhere around $800. Installation extra.

After two weeks of research and looking I bought a nice new electric head for about $400.

I considered briefly paying a professional to install it, but thought to myself, "Self, how hard can it be?"
Besides, it would probably cost $105 an hour plus travel time to get a specialist to deal with a marine head. A mere plumber would never do.

Fortunately, because I own a boat I have enough tools to rebuild the Space Shuttle so I did not have to buy new tools. I am somewhat limited in the skill area, however.

I began taking out the old plumbing on Monday. I finished the job on Friday, or at least I think I did. My wife requires at least one more series of leak tests when we get back to the boat.

Between Monday and Friday I found old pipes, theoretically flexible, needed replacing. A disgusting but manageable job, if you have a week to spend on it. (Note to do-it-your-selfers: when you remove an old pipe connected to a head, very quickly cap the pipe to avoid the dreaded septic scent pervading the atmosphere.)

That simple job required every tool I own, including a heat gun and a kitchen knife, plus more strength than I have.

The old head came out easily except for scrubbing down the entire area with chemicals and disinfectants. Several times. The pipes were not so simple.

More trips were required to to marine supply store where I bought the world's most expensive pipes and clamps. Did you know that a flexible pipe can cost as much as $3.99 a foot, and simple clamps can be almost $5 a pop?

I thought I would be done on the third day, but everything took longer and required more trips back to the store.

On Thursday, the fourth day, I thought I was done. Time for the fresh water test.

The head leaked. As if it had never been connected.
Fortunately, it was clean water pouring onto the floorboards (nautical term: "the deck.").

It turned out that the brand new fittings to connect various pipes, provided thoughtfully by the manufacturer, did not fit at all. Totally worthless, even when I tried my patented repair method of applying mountains of goopy stuff on them. I keep large quantities of goopy stuff, and duct tape, in my tool kit.

But every problem has an answer. Undaunted, I rescued an old pipe with good fittings from the trash, made sure they were thoroughly cleaned, and after several hours of ripping and sawing out the brand new expensive fittings and reinstalling the old, had the problem fixed.

It passed the leak test, and so we went sailing. Which is what sailing is actually supposed to be about.
A beautiful Spring day on San Francisco Bay
The reward for a job well done: a lovely afternoon on San Francisco Bay, and a good Mexican dinner with a cold Negra Modelo that night.

As we were getting ready to leave the boat for home the next morning, my wife pointed out as gently as possible that she detected a tiny bit of a fresh water had leaked around the base.

I thought about that briefly.

Then I decided to use what my generation knows as the "Vietnam Solution" adopted by Lyndon Johnson: I declared victory and left for home.

It'll be there when I get back.



The new head: it works, I think

But I may rename the boat.

Spring is trying real hard....

Camp Connell, Ca -- That's a Black-capped Oregon Junco pecking away at out bird feeder outside the kitchen window,
The bird, and his flock of friends, have begun swarming around the house in the last week or so as the weather is trying to decide what season we are in. We are at 5,000 feet elevation so Winter is still toying with us.
We have had a wave of Spring storms, mostly cold and wet, move in from the North Pacific.
So we have rain, then it gets colder, and we get a new layer of snow, then the sun comes out and it starts melting. Then the cycle starts again.
The icicles on the bird feeder are a result of those cycles, but the birds don't seem to mind.
The Grey Squirrels are moving around a lot too, as are the Stellar's Jays. The deer have not yet returned, waiting on the ground-covering snow to melt any day now.

Just down the mountain, the grass is a brilliant green and other critters are on the move. This beautiful skunk was getting a drink of cool water from a ditch near the Ironstone Vineyard near Murphys. I kept a respectful distance and he waddled away, only slightly irritated. but not spinning around and aiming his artillery in my direction as he will do when really threatened.



At Murphys' elevation, somewhere around 2,000 feet, the oak trees are not yet ready but the grasses are.

When you hear about the beautiful rolling hills of California, this is the place. It is spectacular in Spring as the plants awaken and the animals return to warm-weather patterns. The grass looks like the scenes we saw in Ireland last Fall. Almost hurts your eyes.

Or makes you sing for joy.
The old hymn "How Great Thou Art"expresses it perfectly:

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

I did not try to sing to the birds and skunks and squirrels. Didn't want to scare them off.




Earlier in the week I was driving on the highway near Calaveras Big Trees State Park and a coyote started to cross the road in front of me. He saw me coming, stopped, and backed up to the edge of the road and sat down to wait for me to pass, completely adapted to passing cars even here on the edge of the wilderness. Smart critters. No wonder they are the source of many legends among native people.



I missed a lot of good animal pictures because I was too busy looking, my mouth hanging open.

As I was standing beside a dirt road admiring the green grasses, a Red-Tailed Hawk soared overhead, intently watching the grass for a sign of a careless mouse.

One of the Scottish folk songs I love has a line in it about a hawk. He captures and eats only what he needs, the songwriter says, "not one mouse more."

Would that we were that conscious of what we do to the earth.



Back at our house, the snow plow came this morning around 7 a.m., scraping and blowing away the snow and ice from the drive so we could get out to work in the park's warming hut.

By late afternoon the icicles were gone from the bird feeder. The forecast for the next few days is warmer and sunny.

But you never know.