Courage and November the 10th

Corporal Jason Lee Dunham, USMC

“Sir, the age of the Corps is 236 years!”  This cry  will ring out on posts and ships around the world as  Marines celebrate the 236^th anniversary of the Corps’ origin on November 10, 1775.  The Marines were founded as a naval service and share many traditions with their nautical parent. When we fall out of our racks (not bunks), our boots hit the deck (not floor) and we scramble out the hatch (not door) and down the ladder (not stairs).  While the Marines have perfected the art of assault from the sea, they are also a formidable land-based expeditionary force, performing “such duties as the President may direct.”  Which explains why Marines were deployed in 2003 to bring order to landlocked Al Anbar province in Iraq.

The simply stated values of the Marine Corps – honor, courage, and commitment – attract young men and women from all over the country. Nautical familiarity is not a prerequisite, but honesty, fidelity, and a staunch nature are. Marines are relentlessly determined to serve country, Corps, and community. If you ask a Marine what motivates him, the most likely answer you’ll hear is to support and protect his fellow Marines.  But in the end, they support and protect all of us, and our Constitution, and our way of life.

Scio, New York (pronounced sigh-o), is a small farming community (pop. ~1900) in southwestern New York State.  Only two and a half hours from Ohio, Scio has far more in common with Midwestern values than the bustle and glamour of Manhattan.  One thing that Scio could produce, however, was a true American hero.  Jason Lee Dunham was born on November 10, 1981, the exact day of the Marine Corp’s 216^th birthday.  Too much of a coincidence, he was destined to become a Marine.  After playing basketball and graduating from Scio High, Dunham signed up in July 2000. Upon successful completion of boot camp, he was awarded the title of United States Marine. 

By 2004, Jason had been promoted to the rank of corporal and was a squad leader with the 7^th Marines in Al-Karābilah, Al Anbar province.  On April 14^th of that year, Jason’s platoon was dispatched to investigate an attack on the battalion commander’s convoy.  As his squad approached a suspicious vehicle, an enemy combatant tossed a live hand grenade at the Marines.  Jason, seeing the threat to his squad, shouted a warning and deliberately threw himself on the grenade. 

His squad survived, but Jason, grievously wounded, passed away several days later on April 22^nd.  Based on accounts of his valor, Corporal Dunham was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first Marine to be so honored since Vietnam.  In 2007, the Navy announced that a new guided missile destroyer would be named the USS Jason Dunham.  That ship was commissioned on November 13, 2010.

On this November 10^th, Jason would have been 30 years old.  As the “Occupy” protestors decry their college loan debts, please remember those like Corporal Dunham who form the sharp tip of our spear and fight for our right to exist as a country.  I never knew Jason, but as a Marine, he is my brother and I honor him. Semper fidelis, Jason.

Our nautical heritage

"Breezing up" - Winslow Homer

Massachusetts has a long, proud, maritime tradition going back nearly four hundred years.  The early European settlers arriving on our shores were mariners extraordinaire and we have been a seagoing folk ever since.  We have utilized the bounty of the sea for sustenance and trade and to this day have some of the nation’s busiest fishery ports.  And it’s no wonder.  The coastline of Massachusetts is over 300 miles, thanks largely to the enormous proboscis of Cape Cod.  And when you include inlets, salt marshes, and islands, the overall tidal shoreline is in excess of 1,500 miles.

It is not surprising that we have contributed greatly to nautical terminology and continue to use it idiomatically in our vernacular. Words and phrases with nautical roots permeate our language.

Here is a quite realistic example – “The project had run afoul of local regulations and quickly lost headway.  It didn’t help that the chairman was acting groggy, seeming three sheets to the wind.  But after arguing to the bitter end, the committee voted to take a different tack.  Now we are running on an even keel.”

These phrases are familiar and we know their intended meanings, but it is interesting to understand their nautical origins.  Let’s explore a few of them.

“Run afoul” now means to contravene, or go against laws, regulations, or popular sentiment; to clash.  The original gist of “afoul” was for a ship to run aground or become entangled with lines or collide with another ship.  The sense of conflict is consistent in both definitions. 

“To lose headway” is to run out of steam, to fail to make forward progress.  In nautical usage, when a ship is making headway, it is making forward progress against a tide, current, or unfavorable winds.  When it loses headway, that progress is lost. Again, the definitions are congruent. 

Today, to be “groggy” is to be dazed, weak, or unsteady, most usually from lack of sleep.  Sailors in the olden days were issued a daily ration of grog (watered down rum) to maintain morale.  The effect of too much grog was to make one groggy, i.e., drunk.

To understand “three sheets to the wind,” we must first know that a sheet is a line connected to a sail and is used to control that sail.  A typical sloop has a headsail which needs two sheets, one for each tack. The main sail has a only single sheet, giving a total of three. When a sheet is “to the wind,” it is unattached and the sail flaps aimlessly.  So with three sheets to the wind, the boat has no motive force and simply heaves about in the waves, much like a wandering drunkard. 

“To the bitter end” colloquially means that one will continue to a conclusion irrespective of difficulties or obstacles.  This one takes some explaining.  On an old sailing vessel, there existed posts, called bitts, to which lines were tied off (most often the anchor bitts).  The loose end of the line, after being secured to a bitt, is the bitter end.  To pursue something to the bitter end is to continue to the very end.

To “take a different tack” is to try another fundamentally different course of action.  In sailing, a boat makes her way upwind by tacking alternately to port and starboard of the wind. Sometimes it is misstated as to “take a different tact” which is just plain nonsensical, as “tact” has to do with gentile social graces, not direction of action.  Taking a different tack implies trying a different course of action against some resistance, hopefully to result in making headway.

A ship floating on an “even keel” is properly level and not listing, remaining upright and stable.  If badly loaded, or laden with water from leaks, a ship may list to the side and be swamped by the waves.  In the vernacular, to “run on an even keel” is a very desirable state of affairs.

There are many more such phrases but we’ll save them for another time.  Perhaps in the dead of winter when dreams of sun and waves and wind and getting back on the water become acute, another dose of nautical phrases may prove animating. 

Harvesting the grapes

View from the escarpment.  Photo by Andrew Dufresne.

Of course, it’s all different now.

Fifty years ago, the 32,000 acres of grapes spread across Chautauqua County, NY, and Erie County, PA, were all harvested by hand.  Vineyards  stretched across the Lake Erie plain and undulated up the escarpment to the Allegheny Plateau.  By October, the grape leaves turned golden and deep purple clusters hung heavily, emitting the delicious scent of ripe, sweet grapes.  Crews of pickers worked their way down the rows, snipping off the ripe bunches and placing them in wooden crates emblazoned with “Welch’s” or “Bedford Fruit,” signifying their destination.

The crews were made up of entire farm families, some of the neighbors, and a few  townies as well.  We  kids helped out on the weekends and school holidays, earning the princely sum of 50 cents per hour and eating our ration of delectable grapes.   It was a community affair to get the harvest in before a killing frost, flocks of wild turkeys, or roaming herds of deer decimated the crop.  The adults made an astronomical dollar per hour, picking in all kinds of weather.  Sometimes sunny and warm, it was often grey, rainy, or even snowing at this time of year. After a full day spent working outdoors, one felt a deep sense of accomplishment and even deeper relief of getting back to the shelter, warmth, and conviviality of hearth and home.

The pickers slowly made their way down the long rows leaving a dotted stream of crates behind. The loading crew consisted of a tractor driver, a stacker on the trailer, and a loader walking behind.  The tractor and trailer were tall enough to pass over the crates and, while passing down the row, the loader would swing each 25 pound crate up onto the trailer where the stacker lifted it neatly into place.  Even a small ten acre vineyard could produce seventy tons of grapes, so the workout was significant, 140,000 pounds of lifting being nothing to sneeze at.  And even then the work was not done, as the crates were restacked onto trucks taking the harvest to be processed.

Today, mechanized harvesters rumble through the rows, frightening rabbits and depriving  school kids of their weekend jobs.  But by working quickly, day and night, the harvest is much more successful in avoiding the vicissitudes of killing frost and ravenous critters.  The grapes are trucked to plants which press them into juice, most arriving on supermarket shelves but some diverted to local winemakers.  The most common grape from this region is the Concord, not by accident sharing the name with Concord, Massachusetts.

Horticulturist and Boston native Ephraim Wales Bull, evaluating over 22,000 seedlings, worked to develop a sweet, tasty, hardy grape on his farm in Concord.  Finally after years of attempts, he succeeded in 1849.  The toponymous Concord grape quickly spread to New York, Pennsylvania, and beyond.

Then in 1893, Charles Bramwell Welch founded the company bearing his name in Westfield, NY.   Dr. Welch, a teetotalling physician and dentist from New Jersey, was looking for a wine replacement to use in communion services.  His “unfermented wine” pressed from Concord grapes turned out to be very successful, with demand extending well beyond the church.   It made sense to base his juice company in Chautauqua County, the heart of Concord grape country.  Completing the circle, Welch’s has in recent years moved its headquarters to Concord MA, though still sourcing many tons of grapes from the Lake Erie region.

As  October passes and November approaches, with the winds swinging down from Canada promising frosts to come, the machines toil in the vineyards, racing the coming of the snow.  Now, as I enjoy that fresh glass of sweet grape juice and savor a PBJ sandwich, I consider for a moment the arduously tended vineyards which yield these simple pleasures.