The Island Chronicles: A Slightly Obfuscated Memoir

First Installment

To the Reader: Between 1994 and 2000 I ran an annual public archaeology program on City Island, a municipal park in downtown Harrisburg Pa., for the State Historic Preservation Office where I worked as an archaeologist for over a decade. The project was part of Pennsylvania’s annual October Archaeology Month celebration, and involved a smattering of dignitaries and administrators, dozens of seasonal and permanent SHPO and Museum staff, many more citizen volunteers, and thousands of visitors.  The visitors viewed a substantial block excavation into the deep guts of a river island that had been visited and sometimes occupied by our predecessors for millennia. They also saw artifacts being processed and cataloged, attended lectures and films, took in living history and traditional skills demonstrations, and generally had first hand encounters with their own heritage. We were blogging from City Island by 1996, although we didn’t call it that because the term “blog” was either not in common usage or hadn’t been invented yet. It was a stupendous undertaking, requiring a full 10 days in late September just to set up. The project then opened for school tours and to the general public for two weeks, then required another week to dismantle.  It was not unusual for some of us to work upwards of twenty straight days, and one year a few of us worked thirty without a day off.   

Now as anyone will tell you, archaeologists are a pretty eccentric outfit on the face of it.  Overly educated, and immersed in the same rugged outdoor ethic that produces field geologists, biologists, and foresters, there are lots of cowboys and cowgirls in this very small profession.  The goal of archaeology is the reconstruction of human behavior from the often scant durable evidence available millennia after the fact. It is very hard and complicated. The complexity of archaeology puts a premium on intellectual confidence, which can produce egos of immense and insufferable proportions (for example, my own). There is plenty of very heavy drinking and very poor judgment, although less of it than there used to be. The conversations can be ferociously obtuse and jargon-infused, but also fascinating and smart. Many archaeologists are loquacious and witty, but they sometimes have trouble succinctly explaining their passions or even relating to non-archaeologists, perhaps proving the old adage that a lot of archaeologists chose their profession because they did better with dead folks than live ones. It’s not a racket people go into to become rich, and the best of us always retain a belief in the magic of recapturing a lost world, long past.   

As you might imagine, if you mix a crowd like this with too much work, not enough sleep, an eccentric cadre of volunteers, exposure to the elements, a complicated and sometimes inscrutable archaeological site, a healthy dose of bureaucratic ineptitude, and thousands of school kids, their teachers, and other visitors, you are going to get some stories.  For a decade now I’ve been entertaining my colleagues, friends and family around countless dinner tables, on bar stools, and on long drives with excerpts from the rich oral history of the City Island project.  For that same decade, I’ve been threatening to write them down, and now it seems, I have carried out the threat. Before this gets out of hand and you plunge into this memoir, allow me to clarify a couple points.

I’ve chosen to record these tales in journal or diary format, as though they all took place in the same year. They didn’t. It’s a device that compresses the “best of” the City Island stories into a single narrative and leaves out many weeks of less remarkable occurrences. It also helped me collect and organize the stories into a simple chronological format that flows as well as my limited skills will allow.

I’ve also chosen not to name names. Most of these characters are thinly disguised, and will be instantly recognizable to themselves and others that know them.  For those that don’t know them, the anonymity won’t hurt anything. Many of these folks are friends and colleagues, and they didn’t always behave well because they are not saints.  If my depictions upset any of them, I’m sure I’ll hear about it, and I apologize in advance. 

That said, my intentions here are not to ridicule, but to entertain, and intentions matter.  City Island was a great undertaking for a good cause. We all went into battle together, and even if you get mad at me, I’ve still got your back.

……………………………………………………………………………..

Day 1: A Beginning

Miss E and I back in next to the job trailer on City Island’s North Parking Lot in an ancient Ford crewcab that is damn near my age and about 20 years older than her and the other field technicians. The equipment allocated to a public history agency is, of course, bottom of the barrel, and while this gem of a vehicle has four bald tires and rust spots, burns oil, pulls to the right, and needs brakes, it does have a spinning yellow bubblegum light atop the cab.  On occasion some of us have been known to turn the light on, pull up to a project field view at high speed in front of a bunch of astonished onlookers, squeal the brakes, jump out and yell, “Stand back! We’re scientists!”

Waiting for us is the Field Director, FD.  FD is in his fifties, and has been doing fieldwork in a variety of places in North America since he was 17.  Despite his lack of any university degree, he has forgotten more about field archaeology than most PhD’s will ever know. Sometime in high school, perhaps in response to the normal hazing and related crap that takes place in every rural school district, he started weight training.  I would guess that the idiots soon learned to leave him be, and he continues his training to this day.  He is of middling height, a solid 200 pounds or so, swarthy, square headed, and dangerously strong.  He is pig headed beyond imagining, opinionated, impatient and cantankerous. He is also smart and very funny, and there is a kind disposition beneath all the crust. He is a devoted reactionary who listens to Rush Limbaugh on the radio all day. Despite my own decidedly lefty politics we have been friends for years. We long ago decided to quit arguing about politics when we discovered that taking either of our political perspectives out to a logical terminus deposited one more or less in the same place; a grim and terrifying internment camp. He was in mine and I was in his.

The truck is loaded with many carefully duct taped bundles of inch and a half steel pipes two to four feet long, the exoskeleton of a huge temporary shelter known as a weatherport.  The weatherports are 100 feet long and 30 feet wide, and of arched construction maybe 15 feet tall at the crown, with opaque and heavy polyethylene skins that keep the elements at bay.  The frame and skin weigh many hundreds of pounds, and we must transport three of them down to the Island from their stored location at the State Museum, and set them up. Transporting them and the many tools and mountains of equipment and supplies we’ll need for this year’s public excavation will take dozens of trips and occupy the next two days.

Miss E hops out of the passenger side and quickly drops the tailgate. She grew up on a farm, and despite her petite size she is used to moving heavy things quickly, so before any of the half dozen field technicians and volunteers gathered at the truck can move, she’s squatting on the tailgate and preparing to move the first bundle. That’s when the whole load shifts.

All 8 of E’s fingertips are pinned beneath the load for the split second it takes FD to get his paws on the pipes and lift them off her. She tucks her hands between her legs, hunches over, rocks back and forth and silently weeps from the shock and pain. I rush up behind her trying to remember where the first aid kit is, and put my hand on her shoulder.

“E!!! Let me see your hands!”

“Nooooooooo!!!!”

“E! You have to let me look at them!!”

“Don’t you fucking touch me!!!!”

“ Goddammit E! Let me see your hands!!!”

…and so on. Following a prolonged screaming match, she lets me take a look.  They do not appear to be fractured, but all eight fingertips are bruised and throbbing. She declines a trip to the hospital, opting instead for an icebag, four Advil, and a cup of coffee.  By noon she is unloading trucks, and within a few days, all of her nails turn black and fall off.

After all the bawling and shouting are over, the crew begins unloading the weatherport, E takes a seat in the job trailer with her ice bag, and I lean against the trailer to recover my breath and my wits. FD looks at me and in his best Arnold-as-Conan voice announces,

“It has begun.”

To be continued...