The Island Chronicles Part 4: Opening Day

Day 10

One of the innumerable sad realities of working in the public sector is the inflexibility of the organizational structure. To-wit: there is simply no way to recognize and/or reward high quality work and accumulated experience and expertise other than conveying supervisory status.  The problem is, of course, that there are innumerable accomplished folks who are more than deserving of a raise and recognition and who also have absolutely no aptitude for supervision. A good case example is our Chief.  The Chief is a frustrated academic archaeologist whose capacity for hard core research work is the stuff of legend. He has been known to refit and glue back together literally thousands of pieces of chipped flint and jasper to reconstruct the original pieces of raw material prehistoric craftsmen were fashioning into tools.

Think about that.  

Because of his research accomplishments, his boss, Queen B, promoted him to supervisor. The chief has publicly opined on a number of occasions (most of them involving beer) that he doesn’t think he is a very good supervisor because he really doesn’t like people all that much. So it is that hardly a day goes by when he doesn’t provide some evidence that this opinion is well founded.

 Opening day has arrived here on the Island. The press has gathered, the excavation is camera ready. Mr. Savage has arrived and set up his reenacted Native encampment along the west edge of the parking lot. A busload of 50 middle school kids and their teachers are in attendance. The volunteers and staff have assembled. A podium and P.A. have been set up. The dignitaries are on-site. The list of luminaries include the Commonwealth’s First Lady, the Mayor, the President of the state archaeological society,  the Executive Director (who apparently survived his annual review)  and all of the agency Commissioners, including the Prince.  At a few minutes to 9:00AM we are all milling about waiting for the speeches and formal opening ceremony to begin when the Prince spots the archaeology society President in the crowd. As it happens, this man used to work for the Prince, and they had an unfortunate and extremely acrimonious falling out a number of years ago. The Prince’s face darkens, and he glares at the Chief, who is standing in front of him, and snarls “If that shithead gets within five feet of me, I’ll snap his fucking neck!”  The Chief goes white as a sheet and begins blinking rapidly, then turns to FD and me and says “Take care of this.”  He then walks away and heads for his car.

FD and I look at each other, and engage in a brief conversation.

“What do you think that means?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you suppose we should do?”

“Beat’s me!”

…etc. 

Eventually FD gently walks the Prince over to one edge of the crowd, while I walk the President, now sweating in terror having glimpsed his former boss’s threatening glare, to the opposite edge. We adjust the speaking order so that they do not follow each other at the podium, and the opening remarks (the typical lengthy litany of banal and harmless inanities) go off without a hitch.  Soon we have packed the President safely into his car and sent him home.  It is time for the first tour of the project.

These begin with me or one of the other staff holding forth for 15 minutes on the Island’s formation and long history from inside the excavation block. I will give this talk approximately 40 or 50 times by the time the project closes in a couple weeks. There are small variations each time, but by the time we close up I will be able to give it in my sleep, or near delirious from exhaustion, or probably drunk.  Most of my crew can also do it, and they sometimes amuse themselves with devastating and spot-on impressions of me, often substituting some ribald, sidesplitting and unfortunate dialog in place of the scripted comments. They think I don’t know about this, and I never let on that I do.

Following the talk, the group proceeds to the west edge of the Island where they encounter the Savage in full regalia: handmade moccasins, wool and deer hide leggings, breech cloth and belt, a mid-thigh length gingham hunting shirt and beaded sash with a belt axe tucked in it, a red wool British officer’s coat if the weather is cold, with a handmade iron knife in a sheath around his neck, a brightly colored porcupine roach and turkey feathers in a carefully groomed scalplock (his head is otherwise shaved) and sometimes face paint if he’s feeling frisky. The overall effect, especially on kids, is just amazing. He demonstrates flint knapping, the plaiting of cordage and weaving of nets, and the manufacture of ceramics. There is also a native garden with heirloom varieties of maize, beans and pumpkins (planted by a volunteer in the previous spring) to interpret, and a log that is at the earliest stage of being burned and scraped into a dugout canoe. Educators from the State Museum take the kids through an exercise in grid mapping and artifact interpretation. Later in the week, Mr Savage and FD will be erecting a small storage or multi-purpose structure and a larger Eastern Woodland house from posts and poles, cordage and bark.  These demonstration projects really serve to put the artifacts and features encountered in the site into a more accessible context, and the kids and older visitors are always transfixed.

Finally there is the book sales and information tent where a variety of archaeological and historical books and periodicals, as well as Mr. Savage’s beadwork, can be purchased. At one point we had actually asked if a more formal kiosk could be constructed for this purpose by the good folks in the museum exhibits shop. Unfortunately they handed the project to an exhibit designer who was newly divorced and had much on his mind. He modeled his design on the Pennsylvania State Museum which is of concrete and light colored stone masonry, round and domed.  The resulting design was a pale eight foot tall domed and elongated cylinder which bore a shocking and unmistakable resemblance to a gigantic marital aid. A prominent feature of this distinctive design was a pair of doors that opened in the middle of it to reveal a sales desk. Mr. Savage, on viewing a scale drawing, offered to sit inside with a sign hanging in front offering “Kisses: $2.00”.  Mercifully, we caught it before it went to construction.

Following the tour, I am standing in the excavation block with the Prince, discussing the fine points of site stratigraphy when we hear an engine start. We look up and out the open end of the weatherport to see a large white passenger van, with the Executive Director at the wheel, pulling out of the parking lot with all of the commissioners on board save one; the one standing next to me in the excavation.  The State Museum is a mile and a half away. The Prince is stranded on the Island and none too happy about it.

“That BASTARD! He’s stranded me here! And he’s taken my things!!!”

He looked like he was ready to tear someone to pieces, maybe me.  What to do!? Then I remembered that AW, one of the other staff archaeologists, had his truck in the parking lot.  AW was living the bachelor life at the time. One of the results was disdain for certain civilized conventions. For example, whenever he traveled somewhere in his truck, and happened to finish a pack of smokes, a cup of coffee, a soda, a sandwich, etc., the trash simply went on the passenger side floor. 

As I mentioned before, the Prince has a profound-going-on-pathological dislike of dirt (he literally did white glove inspections of department field vehicles). When he opened the passenger side door of AW’s vehicle, he was greeted with a cascade of garbage that soiled his trouser cuffs. AW somewhat sheepishly noted that he was sorry but that his rig had “…become a bit of a pigsty.” As he entered the vehicle the Prince glared pointedly at me and while replying to AW in a dangerous sounding growl “Indeed!”

I had the camera trained on him and clicked the shutter as AW put her in gear and drove off toward the museum.  Must have been some ride…

To be continued...

The Island Chronicles Part 3: Desperate Times and Desperate Measures

Day 8

I begin my day doing something incredibly risky. We are erecting the last weatherport over the open excavation block. The arch tops are held together with pin connecting spanners that must be linked together at the top of the arch, 15 feet in the air. I am perched atop a 12 foot folding ladder, with two of its feet placed on planks that span the excavation block, which is a meter or so deep in most places, deeper in others. OSHA would, without a doubt, put me in prison, but somebody has to do it. As I concentrate on slipping two of the members together I feel a shudder in the ladder. Looking down, I see that the legs are now firmly supported by none other than Beelzebub…The Prince of Darkness himself has arrived! I scramble swiftly down the ladder.

The Prince is one of the most well known figures in American Archaeology. With primary research interests in Ice Age archaeology and in textiles and basketry, he runs a substantial archaeological consultancy out of a small private university. The nickname is based partly on appearance and partly on behavior. Like FD, he is of middling height, has spent a lifetime lifting weights, and looks like it. He adorns this overwrought physique with black jeans, black t-shirt, black jacket, black crosstrainers, black shades, formerly black and now salt and pepper beard and hair. His preternaturally deep and growling voice quite literally sounds like Darth Vader.  Intimidating doesn’t begin to adequately describe the complete effect.  While he is famous for terrorizing grad students and colleagues, he is also a wonderful public speaker, a gifted teacher, and a brilliant and funny conversationalist. He serves as one of the Commissioners of the agency I work for, and will be participating in our opening ceremony in two days time. He’s also here to give our poor, dumb and bumbling Executive Director his annual performance review.  I get the impression that this will be something like a slow and bitter execution, and that the Prince is going to enjoy it. In the meantime, he’s down here to help.

I’m glad he is.  We still have to put the gigantic skin on this weatherport, finish setting up the demonstration area that Mr. W will occupy, set the lab up, and most importantly, complete the preparation of the Tiger Trap.  The north wall of this huge, triangular hole in the parking lot is set up for profiling.  Perpendicular to the river and nearly 7 meters across and four deep, the wall profile depicts the complete alluvial history of the island, a landform built entirely of roughly 10 millennia of flood deposits. The wall profile is as plumb as the wall of a building.  FD strung a series of plumb bobs along the top of the profile, then using the plumblines and some tape measures as his guides, he and several volunteers and crewmembers shaved the profile with sharp trowels and shovels.   The many layers of flood deposits, buried landscapes, and Native American artifacts now clearly visible form a dramatic public exhibit and an invaluable source of hard data.  Unfortunately, the process of shaving down the profile has left many cubic yards of waste material that will have to be removed from the tiger trap before opening day.

There is no way to automate this process, since a backhoe would jeopardize all of FD’s careful work.  This does not stop FD from trying. Returning from a trip up to the museum, I catch him grasping the handles of a full wheelbarrow with several hundred pounds of soil that has a rope attached to the front bracket. As I watch in fascination and horror, he gives a signal and a crewmember guns the engine of the work truck.  The rope is tied to the bumper. The wheel barrow springs forward and FD sprints up the dirt ramp guiding the fishtailing wheelbarrow up to the parking lot. This is plainly so dangerous that even FD gets scared, so we don’t have to have a shouting match about it.  The decision is made to form a bucket brigade. Fortunately we have a large cadre of volunteers. There are the two Charlies, one in his thirties and one in his sixties, unrelated, who are known as the Charles the Younger and Charles the Elder. There is Charles the Younger’s wife Nurse Deborah. There is Santa (no explanation for this moniker required). There is Frank from the adjoining county historical society. There is Richard, now working on wife number five, who my female technicians have baptized Dirty Dick. There are half a dozen others.  Most of these folks volunteer every year, and some of them have hundreds of hours logged out here. They do almost everything the paid staff does simply for the love of learning and to satisfy their interest in the past. We couldn’t do this without them!

Among the volunteers detailed to help with the bucket brigade is a high school senior named Miss J, who has volunteered for this project for the last two years.  J lives with her mom in a very rural county two hours north, and has been bitten very badly by the archaeology bug.  Although they are pretty poor, her mom always finds a way to get her down to Harrisburg for the project for at least a week every year, and her teachers and school principal agree that the educational value is high enough to excuse the absence.  This year, Miss J’s mom, Mrs. D has arrived with a gift for FD. 

Among FD’s many archaeological interests is the identification of animal bone from archaeological sites (AKA faunal analysis).  Faunal analysis requires a good comparative collection of modern animal bone to use for the identification of archaeological examples.  It is also worth noting at this point that among FD’s numerous personality quirks is something of a cleanliness fetish (a quirk he seems to share, oddly enough, with the Prince; maybe it’s the weightlifting).  His home, vehicle and office are always absolutely spotless.  Mrs D appears to have something of a crush on FD, and perhaps hoping to win his favor, pulls a substantial Rubbermaid container out of her truck.  She explains that it’s a gift just for him.  He politely accepts it, and with a curious grin peels open the lid.  Mrs D declares “I got him right between the eyes from the back porch of the trailer; I figured you could add it to your comparative collection.” Inside the container is a coyote, entire, that was dispatched with a 30-30 about a week or ten days back and stored in an unrefrigerated shed.  Upon encountering this “gift” FD’s hair almost literally stands on end.  With a breathtaking display of willpower, he keeps it together, and thanks Mrs D graciously for her kindness.  As soon as she is out of sight, he hands the container and its grisly contents to one of the field technicians and instructs him to dig a deep hole over on the West edge of the island and inter it there. Maybe someday, somebody will find it.

 The bucket brigade for the tiger trap begins at 3:00 in the afternoon. We line up staff and volunteers four or five in a row passing 5 gallon buckets from the huge pile of soil in the bottom of the trench up the packed dirt ramp to the parking lot where they are dumped in a wheelbarrow and hauled off to the back dirt pile. The buckets are tossed back into the trench and filled again. We all rotate from shoveling to passing buckets to pushing wheelbarrows.  It is brutal, mind numbing, backbreaking work, but it has to be done if we’re to be ready for opening day. The dinner hour passes. Eventually we bring out lights and a generator, and keep going. At a certain point Miss J finds herself in the bucket line next to one of my very best and most long suffering field technicians, Mr. R.  J is now 17 years old, and has blossomed into a very attractive young lady, and she clearly finds the 20-something R fascinating. Despite the filth, sweat, and exhaustion, she flirts shamelessly with him, and his discomfort is palpable. Eventually she blurts out “OOOO, you have such beautiful dark hair and eyes! Are you Italian? You know what they say about those Italian guys!”

R, who is of Polish extraction, looks desperately at me, and I decide to come to his rescue, perhaps because I am genetically qualified.

“J!!! My mom was born in Italy!!! What ‘they’ say about Italian guys is horseshit! Go back to work and leave him alone!”

J blushes scarlet, the Prince of Darkness, who is shoving wheelbarrows and is also of Italian ancestry, howls with laughter, and everyone else does too. The laughter peels out from the floodlit backhoe trench, into the autumn night and across the water.

To be continued...

The Island Chronicles Part 2: Something You Don’t See Everyday

Day 5:

 Mr. L has spent the last six months or so in FD’s doghouse, which is no place for a field tech to be. L is a good and smart young man, but he is tentative and deliberate, and FD is a man of action.  The kid is starting to bridle under the constant criticism, so I snag him and move to the west side of the parking lot where he can help me set up a small weatherport we use as a place to sell publications and distribute Archaeology Month posters and literature. He glares eastward at FD, several hundred yards away, and growls under his breath “I ought to kick his ass!”

I have had the great good fortune to work with and mentor young professionals and students most of my professional life. One of the most enjoyable aspects of that good fortune is continuous exposure to the guileless confidence of youth.  L is more than 30 years younger than FD, and is a big strapping lad, so why not just “kick his ass” and be done with it?  I smile at the kid from the bed of the truck I am now unloading and tell him, “Go ahead, but give me a minute to grab the video camera.”  I explain to L that he’d probably get a couple punches in, but in short order FD would tear off one of his arms and beat him to death with it.  I also tell him that I’ll speak to FD about lightening up on him if he’ll agree to just hustle a little more. It’s all good.

A lot has happened in the last few days. A 10 by 5 meter hole has been sawed in the parking lot, the gravel and sand placed at the end of last year’s project has been removed and the block excavation cleaned up and reopened.  Next to it, about five meters away, a deep back hoe trench has been excavated to the very bottom the Island, encountering there the cobbles left by the Ice Age Susquehanna. This trench, roughly triangular in shape, between three and four meters deep, and nicknamed the Tiger Trap, will have its north wall shaved perfectly plumb with hand tools and plumb bobs, providing a complete stratigraphic history of the Island’s formation.  A weatherport will be erected over the block excavation, a tarp shelter has been put over the Tiger Trap, and two more large weatherports are being erected, one for use as a lab and another for a classroom. Prior to their setup, all the weatherports were powerwashed and dried.  Uncountable numbers of round trips with many vehicles between the museum and the island have been made, and the job trailer is filling with tools, supplies and equipment of all kinds. All this work has been done by about a dozen or so young field technicians and volunteers, assisted by City Parks staff and State Museum staff, and the huge compound now appearing here is a testament to their hard work and ingenuity over the last several days.

Earlier this morning, I took a call from “The Savage”.  The Savage is many things. He is a Native American (part Shawnee) reenactor and educator who handles some of our educational programs from a campsite het sets up and occupies on the west edge of the Island. He is an accomplished flint knapper and is also expert in a number of other traditional technologies such as cordage plaiting, net and fabric weaving, beading and quill work, the making of ceramics, and sundry other skills. He is a brilliant and gifted teacher who can connect with kids as young as 5 and retirees as old as Methuselah, and with people from the lowest and highest socioeconomic groups and every ethnic and cultural background. He is the greatest purveyor of filthy jokes I have ever met. He can drink, swear and lie like a sailor on shore leave. He is capable of absolutely brilliant insights and spectacularly bad behavior, examples of each sometimes appearing within minutes of each other. He is a purveyor of trade beads and gunflints. He is a flim-flam man without peer. He is an expert in the identification of freshwater mollusks.  He is a hell of a lot of fun and a gigantic pain in the ass.

He is something else!

In the course of our phone chat, Mr. Savage informs me he’ll be arriving in a few days time from his home in Tennessee. He also mentions that his “Delaware Brother” name of Dave, who lives in Dillsburg, will be helping him out this year with the school groups, and with the construction of a dugout canoe.  We are of course very busy right now, and a bit behind schedule, and I must admit that this last little bit of information sort of goes in one ear and out the other.  

While standing in the bed of the pickup, I take a break from handing boxes down to L and stretch my back, taking a sip of Gatorade on this unusually hot September afternoon. As I gaze toward the job trailer a couple hundred yards east of me, I see a small compact car pull up near it.  Miss E walks over to the car and engages someone in brief conversation through the passenger side window. She quickly stands erect and points toward me, and the car heads my way.  This could be a newspaper reporter, someone from the Museum, a City employee, or any of a number of suppliers trying to arrange a delivery of something.  I don’t recognize the car. 

The car pulls up right behind the truck and the door opens. A 50ish Caucasian man steps out. He’s about 5’6”, 150 pounds or so, very tan, mostly skinny but with a bit of a beer paunch. He has a large and toothy smile.  He has close cropped hair, a small moustache, and thick glasses and is wearing a braided leather headband.  He has on a very nice pair of hand-made beaded moccasins. He has a remarkably abbreviated deerskin breechcloth on, secured with a thin rawhide thong.  He has a bone (chicken?) through his nose. He is otherwise completely undressed.

 “Hi! Are you Joe Baker?”

I am remembering something the Savage said about a “Delaware Brother” from Dillsburg.  I am having a hallucinatory out-of-body experience, floating in the air meters above myself and Mr L and this strange and almost naked man.  I watch detached and bemused, as I open my mouth in reply.

“No, I’m not.”

To be continued...