Pilgrim's Progress

Johnny cakes on a wood-fired griddle.

After landing at Plymouth in 1620 and surviving that first terrible winter, the Pilgrims set about repaying their debts.  While the voyage to the New World was undertaken to escape religious persecution, it was an expensive venture and required backing.  The congregation obtained funding from the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London, a for-profit group of overseas trading merchants. They fully expected a return on their investment.

Due to the hardships of the colony’s early years and some mismanagement, the rate of repayment was slow and the Merchant Adventurers pressed for redoubled efforts.  By 1625, the Pilgrims concluded that the fur trade would offer the most viable means to retire their debt.  They were able to obtain a charter from the King granting them rights on the Kennebec River in what is today the state of Maine.

So the Pilgrims built a shallop, a sailing vessel designed for coastal navigation, and set out for Merrymeeting Bay, 200 miles to the north, then up into the Kennebec River.  Twenty five miles upriver, at the head of the tide where current and tides mark the extreme of navigable water, they established a trading post at Cushnoc, the site of modern-day Augusta.

The indigenous tribe, the Abenaki, were anxious to trade.  They had abundant furs to offer in exchange for corn, of which the Pilgrims were producing a surplus, and other goods. As Governor Bradford put it, “not only with corn, but also with such other commodities as the fishermen had traded with them, as coats, shirts, rugs and blankets, biscuit, pease [sic], prunes, etc.”  In exchange for a shallop-load of corn sailed up the river, 700 pounds of beaver pelts came back down.  With beaver fur in great demand in London, the Pilgrims were able to satisfy their debts by 1636.

What industry, skill, and self-reliance.  Within several years of carving the Plymouth colony out of the wilderness, the Pilgrims were producing a surplus of corn in large quantities.  They downed timber, hewed planks, and built a sturdy coastal sailing vessel without power tools.  They sailed over 200 miles and established a mutually beneficial trading relationship with the Abenakis. They paid off their debts.

Today in Augusta, at the site of the Cushnoc trading post on the banks of the Kennebec, stands Old Fort Western.  The fort was built in 1754 to provide security and encourage settlement of the area.  It has been restored and operates as a living museum, with docents dressed in period clothing demonstrating daily activities such as cooking, gardening, soap making, quilting, and blacksmithy. 

One spunky, 80 year-old docent, dressed in a heavy ankle-length woolen dress, showed us how to make Johnny cakes on a wood fired griddle.  She explained that early cooks toasted bread over the coals using tongs, and how pleased they were to get the new-fangled toaster which held two slices of bread upright, facing the coals to be toasted.  And how the whole contraption could be flipped around to toast the other side… modern miracles!

She told us of a bright, inquisitive 8 year-old who she asked to participate by placing bread into the toaster.  He indicated that he didn’t know how.  “Just like your toaster at home,” she explained.  “I’m not allowed to touch the toaster at home,” he replied, embarrassed.  “It’s electric,” his mother clarified.

Our docent contrasted this to another young man who she asked to hang a pot of water from a hook over the coals.  He did so, handily, and she didn’t notice till later that he had a withered arm.  He had compensated with no fuss by using his forearm.

“Just which of these boys is truly handicapped?” she mused.

I think we know what the Pilgrims would say.

Waves of change

Railroad trestle in Spartansburg, PA

The first wave of prosperity to lift New Bedford, Massachusetts, was whaling and related nautical industries.  Through most of the nineteenth century, we lit our homes, streets, and factories with whale oil lamps.  Fortunes were made and New Bedford flourished.  Then, an innocuous event occurred in northwestern Pennsylvania just south of the small town of Titusville.   In the summer of 1859, Col. Edwin Drake drilled the country’s first commercially viable oil well, sealing the fate of the whaling industry.  A spur railway was quickly built from the nearest railhead in Corry, through the Amish village of Spartansburg, and on to Titusville.  Soon, tanker cars steamed eastward carrying petroleum to be processed at former whale oil refineries, at much less cost, risk, and greater profits.  Consumers and the country benefited, but the world’s whaling ports began to wither. 

New Bedford faltered, actually losing population according to the 1870 census, but quickly recovered on a new wave of textile manufacturing.  By the 1880s, the city was growing again, buoyed by robust, expanding textile manufacturing.  It was no secret, however, that former able bodied seamen and harpooners were not necessarily the best loom operators.  A new set of skills was required to become gainfully employed. 

Then, another wave.  By the 1940s, textile manufacturing moved to the southern United States where wages were lower and business burdens lighter.  New Bedford again faltered, but quickly rebounded on the wartime demand for manufacturing.  Tool and die operations sustained the city through the post war years but began to ebb in the 1970s as these products were increasingly supplied by Japan and other countries.

Today, New Bedford’s unemployment rate averages about 10%.  Still a robust fishing port, the employment offered by this industry cannot support the city’s population.  Health care and some limited manufacturing round out the employers, but many of the city’s workers lack the skills for these jobs.

What are the points that may be gleaned from this?  There are several.  First, it seems that waves of change are inevitable, and government can be of little help in assisting us.  We could subsidize whalers, and loom operators, and buggy whip assemblers, but to what effect?  The best that we can do for ourselves, and that government can do for us, is to provide training and skills enhancement.  In our increasingly knowledge-based economy, it is important to be agile, adaptable, and engaged in order to be employable.

Far be it from me to be an expert, but long observation gives me a few suggestions on how to achieve this goal of maximizing employability in an ever-changing economy:

• Be literate in spoken and written English.  While it may be comforting to press 2 for Spanish, that will not help your employability.
• Likewise, be literate with basic mathematics.  Math has to do with logic and reasoning, and will serve you well in many fields.
• Become comfortable with computers and the Internet.  They are the fabric of our information economy. 

How to accomplish these goals?  First, use your local public library.  In addition to supplying books and periodicals, they also provide computers, internet access, and often classes in English proficiency.  Many local high schools offer adult continuing education classes ranging from Photoshop to woodworking to welding.  Potential employers want to see that you have solid, basic skills and are capable of learning new ones.  This is what sets you apart from the permanent minimum wage crowd, who may well be comfortable where they are (which is largely unemployable). 

Titusville, Pennsylvania, suffered the same fate as New Bedford.  Multiple waves of change have washed over her, and her citizens are dumfounded.  Even the few manufacturing jobs that remain require the ability to operate sophisticated CNC milling machines.  The only cure is to rise to your potential, to learn basic English, mathematical, and computer skills, and to mentor those who are struggling.  We are all in this together.   

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. 

Yankee serendipity

Who knows from where good fortune flows, whether heaven, or someone in it is smiling down on us, or what? A very early start to the day for a business meeting in the Hartford CT area, I leave with an hour to spare, the sun not yet risen. The plan is to take mostly secondary roads and avoid the hectic stress of the morning commute. Into Rhode Island, I head west on US Route 6, then take the scenic Hartford Pike (RI 101) which diverges in Scituate.

Having lived in the area for 26 years, I had never driven the Hartford Pike. I am rewarded in Foster, near the Connecticut border, by signs announcing Jerimoth Hill which, at 812 feet, is the highest point in Rhode Island. Note to self – a likely place to explore on some sunny, autumn Saturday.

The Hartford Pike soon becomes Connecticut 101, wending through forested hills, small villages, and the occasional farm. Continuing on US 44, Connecticut 74, and I-84 for a bit, finally ending up in Tolland, a peaceful community outside of Hartford. A stop for coffee, still running an hour early. Then a phone call – the meeting has been unexpectedly rescheduled.

Nothing to do but return home, but by which route? I could return the way I came, but something pulls me to explore. The Mass Pike is the quickest but clearly hectic and the most boring. Exiting I-84 in Sturbridge, I turn east onto US Route 20, hungry for breakfast. But franchise restaurants and fast food joints hold little charm. No, I am looking for a locally owned outfit, preferably an old fashioned diner.

Headed east, I enter Charlton and suddenly the vision of a classic “Worcester diner” appears on my right, nearly flashing by, but as no one is on my tail I am able to brake sharply and swing into the parking lot. It looks perfect, and promises to satisfy my jonesing for hot coffee and sunny-side-up eggs. Entering, I find my expectations wildly exceeded.

The Yankee Diner was manufactured by the Worcester Lunch Car Company in the late 1930s and wandered about central Massachusetts a bit before settling in this spot on US 20 in Charlton. The interior boasts a long counter populated with stools, several booths along the windows, a business-like hot grill, and a smiling, friendly staff.

The proprietor, Mike Plouffe, is himself of hearty Yankee stock, hailing from nearby Oxford. Mike has a long love affair with the culinary arts, starting with an eight year hitch as a cook in the US Army followed by classical training at the Virginia Culinary Institute. Mike has held several posts at top restaurants and, interestingly, a stint in Dry Tortugas cooking for Uncle Sam again, but always wanted his own place and jumped at the chance when the Yankee became available.

This combination of classic diner with culinary excellence is the wonderful surprise. Imagine homemade corned beef hash prepared daily from whole briskets, buttermilk pancakes made from scratch, and freshly baked biscuits. When a customer requests Hollandaise sauce for his omelet, Mike does not reach for a jar, but rather breaks two eggs, separates the yolks, adds freshly squeezed lemon juice and melted butter, and whisks over an impromptu double boiler. Voila, Hollandaise!

After a wonderful breakfast of eggs and home fries supplemented by a bottomless cup of coffee and engaging, friendly conversation, I continue east on US 20 to Massachusetts Route 146, then south to Rhode Island and shortly after, home. This day which could have been frustrating has instead offered new experiences, new sights, good food, and intriguing conversation with new acquaintances.

Good fortune may be subject to heavenly intercession, but we can lend a helping hand. If we shuffle our routines a bit, travel a slightly different path, and keep our minds open, even a mundane business journey can yield a day of surprise and contentment.