The Island Chronicles Part 8: At the Breaking Point

Day 20

We have now been working almost three weeks straight, and the strain is starting to show. People are churlish and crabby. The field techs are sniping at each other. The volunteers are feeling unappreciated. The Museum Educators are tired of busloads of schoolkids and sick of playing tour guide rather than actually teaching. FD and the Savage are mad at me, each other, the Chief and most everyone else.  We really needed something to lighten the mood this morning and Mr Savage was only too happy to oblige!

Around 8:00AM the service technician arrived in his distinctive red and white tank truck to pump and clean the port-o-jon. His timing was good because it was filthy and nearly full. Upon inspecting the crapper, he found it locked up with a heavy chain and a big padlock. He apparently looked around and, not seeing anyone who looked like they could let him in, got back in his truck and started to drive off. At this point, Mr. Savage spotted him. Since the Savage actually lives on the Island, the condition of the potty is of special concern to him. Realizing that the guy was leaving without cleaning and pumping his only bathroom, Mr Savage burst from his tent in full regalia, and sprinted after the honey wagon shouting “HEY! HEY!” at the top of his lungs. The service technician heard the shouting and glanced in his rear view mirror. He quite sensibly assumed that he was about to become the first victim of an Indian raid in the Susquehanna Valley since the 18^th century.  Terrified, he floored it and turned sharply toward the entrance ramp to the bridge. Mr Savage tried to cut him off, but it turns out that moccasins don’t provide much purchase on smooth asphalt.

So it is that this morning the Savage became the first Indian in history to sustain a fairly serious knee sprain while chasing a shit wagon through a parking lot.

Young Mr. J drove him to the Emergency Room, and managed to keep himself from giggling until they took Mr. Savage back for x-rays. He came back with an Ace wrap on the knee to hoots of derision which he couldn’t do much about. It speaks volumes about his dedication that he rallied to limp out and talk to three busloads of school kids, all of whom asked if the Ace bandage was authentic 18^th century swag, and all of whom wanted to know how he hurt himself. Who knows what he told them.

It so happens there have been other inquiries regarding Mr. Savage’s mode of dress.  He gives flint knapping demonstration while seated on a stump. Since he is wearing period dress, which includes a breechcloth, this can leave him somewhat exposed (as one of the technicians observed “Too much breech, not enough cloth.”).  I now have a letter in hand that was sent to the Executive Director from an incensed home-schooling mother who suggested Mr Savage should wear cotton briefs beneath his loincloth since “…his gentiles (sic) were visible!”  This has conjured up an image in my mind of John Smith exploring the Chesapeake in 1608 and tossing out three packs of Jockeys to the astonished Natives. Crafting a polite reply to this missive will probably have to wait until I have a day or two off.

Just after the last school kids have left the Island, about 2:00 PM, I am in the excavation block reviewing field notes, unit by unit. It’s tedious and painstaking, and best done with minimal disturbance. It’s also true that I’m tired and grouchy and need a few days off. . Thus when I hear a cheery voice call out “Hello Joe!” I don’t instantly acknowledge the greeting, which is unfortunate because it turns out to be the First Lady of the Commonwealth!  I recovered my aplomb as quickly as possible and return the greeting, but I needn’t have worried. She’s a genuinely nice person, and former teacher, who’s interested enough in this archaeology stuff that she makes at least one unannounced visit most years and knows FD, Mr Savage and I by our first names. She is accompanied by her security officer, a very pleasant, quiet and friendly State Cop who is about 6’8” and weighs about 300 pounds.  He was a stand out tackle at Penn State.  The First Lady is, I think, perfectly safe. 

Despite the fact that she and her husband are on the other end of the political spectrum from me, I can’t help liking her a lot.  Her interest in history and heritage is sincere and honestly come by. She is also aware that this program uses public money, and she’s been very vocal in her support for it. She’s also funny and smart and doesn’t hold with much formality, so you can forget that she’s an important person; a very rare trait in most of the political types I’ve known. I show her this year’s discoveries, and we talk about teaching six grade Pennsylvania history curriculum, and about our on-line field reports, and then she asks about FD and the Savage. I explain that they are in the living history area, and offer to walk her over.

Now FD is as tired as everyone else, and he recently had words with the Chief, so I know he’s not in a great mood.  As we walk up, we find him buzzing up some additional firewood with a chainsaw. His back is to us. Over the din of the saw I shout “FD!”, but he keeps going.  I shout again, louder, but either he can’t hear me, or won’t acknowledge me. The big cop starts to emanate an air of concern. I acknowledge him, hold up a finger to ask for his patience, and then walk up behind FD and poke him with a finger in the back of the shoulder. He pivots suddenly, the saw still running, and glares ferociously at me, then notices our visitor.

He instantly switches off the saw, smiles warmly, and becomes the very picture of graciousness. He shows off the two structures he and Mr. Savage have built, a roughly 20 foot square native house of poles and bark, and a smaller “keyhole structure”. The keyhole is shaped just like it sounds: a small round building about 8 feet in diameter, with a roughly two foot wide projection extending from it about 8 feet. The projection covers a small ditch.  FD explains that Native people may have used these as smokehouses and storage buildings, and that we’ve been using this one as a sweat lodge the last week or so. We then take her over to visit the injured Savage, who is also kind and funny, and gives the First Lady and her formidable companion each a projectile point he recently made.  The visit ends around 4:00, and the First Lady and her companion wave happily at us as they drive away. 

Before I walk back over to the excavation block to button it up for the evening, I turn to AD and point out that he’s been a little testy. He feigns surprise at my opinion, until I pointed out that the First Lady’s personal torpedo nearly stalled the chainsaw out in his skull. He finally sighed and looked at me, then opined,

“I guess I need a day or two off!”

“Me too! It’s a good thing we’re closing up in a couple days.”

Next week, closing ceremonies!    

The Island Chronicles Part 7: A Tough Morning and a Trip to the Market

Day 18

This has not been a good morning.

There was a hard rain last night that I knew would likely flood the excavation block and possibly the tiger trap.  We are equipped with pumps and a generator, and we are all used to working on a river island, so we are prepared for this eventuality. But we weren’t quite prepared for everything, as it turned out.

I arrived before anyone else, and found a damp and surly Mr Savage shaking his head and dripping water from his feathers and finery. He’s mad at me because I “fired” his Delaware brother Dave from Dillsburg a couple days ago. While he wore more clothing when the weather cooled, and was very helpful in the dugout canoe construction, he rolled his own cigarettes and smoked them in front of visiting school children while lacing his home-spun interpretive talks with F-bombs. The kids, of course, loved it, but he had to go. The dugout work then largely fell to Dirty Dick.

 As it happened, Dirty Dick had decided late yesterday afternoon that the hard rain, predicted to last all night, would extinguish the fire going in the hull of the 18 foot long White Pine log that was beginning to look like a dugout canoe, so he didn’t extinguish it before he went home. The rain did extinguish the surface fire, but the hot coals beneath continued smoldering. By daylight we had a steaming and asymmetrical surfboard, the sidewalls having completely burned away, and all of our hard work with it! When Dick arrived he was inconsolable, and a lot of people were mad at him, but it was an honest mistake. Besides, that’s potentially not the worst thing that happened overnight.

The huge suspended tarp over the tiger trap filled with water like an immense balloon, and collapsed the wooden frame that held it. This bag of many hundreds of gallons of water was now suspended over the trench by a network of fixed lines. They were now so taut that they were, literally, singing. Miraculously, it didn’t burst, the trench beneath it was still pretty dry, and the lines hadn’t broken…yet!

More help arrived. As my field crew and FD filed in we reviewed the various messes the storm has created. The excavation block was in surprisingly good shape, requiring only a little pumping and the placement of some large electric fans to help dry it out. That was good because yesterday afternoon, FD and the crew completed removing an old, buried plowed horizon from the entire block, leaving intact beneath it the fossilized furrow marks of the last plowing of that part of the Island lined up in neat southwest to northeast rows like standing waves.  These plow bights reflect in the most concrete way the Island’s history as a farm in 19^th and 18^th centuries.

The excavation block looks like perfect, geometric art, without even a crumb of dirt out of place. It looks that way because after the painstaking excavation of the plowed horizon was complete, FD padded out into the excavation block in his socks yesterday afternoon with a shop vac and vacuumed up every last loose crumb of soil.

I’m not kidding.

After drying , the gameplan was to photograph it, and complete our mapping before proceeding into the next, and older plowed horizon below it.

Meanwhile, young Mr. R approached the collapsed tarp full of water on tip toes, a sump pump in his hand.  With incredible delicacy and dexterity, he lowered the pump a foot or so into the water without touching the tarp or any of the lines. He nodded his head, and one of the other kids threw a switch. The little pump sprang to life and water began to drain out of the outlet hose. With amazing care, R slowly lowered the pump every 10 minutes or so, carefully suspending it from a makeshift wooden arm he made from part of the collapsed frame. In a couple hours, the tarp was empty, and not a drop spilled into the tiger trap. The only long term consequence seems to have been that young Mr. R walked around on his tiptoes the rest of the morning, and was pretty jumpy whenever there were any loud sounds. While this project may lack funding, it doesn’t lack guile and talent.

Regrettably, while Mr. R has saved the tiger trap from the storm, no one can save the excavation block from the Chief.

Around 10:00 AM, right after a bus load of school kids came through the excavation area, and right after FD and I completed our photography, the Chief showed up. While we are all down here on the Island, the Chief is running interference for us back at the office, which means he is fielding angry and impatient phone calls and e-mails from surly developers, bureaucrats and political staffers.  They are all rather pointedly wondering when we’ll be getting to their projects so they can proceed with the permitting process and get on with the important work of paving the entire state. This is the sort of thing that would piss off a saint, and the Chief, as anyone will tell you, is not Mother Theresa! So he is a little testy and rash.

The Chief is a prehistorian.  As a consequence, he is only interested in the various Stone Age occupations of the Island, and has very little use for or understanding of the Island’s Euro-American history.  The sixth graders who were just here were amazed by and interested in the Island’s agricultural history. The Chief is not. 

“Look! There’s still pottery and glass and stuff in here! You’re not deep enough!”

“That’s because there’s a second plowzone in here. We’ll get through it.”

“Not in less that a week you won’t! Gimme a shovel!”

“But…”

He’s the boss, so we couldn’t really do much about it. He selected a one meter square in the middle of the block, tramped across FD’s vacuumed surface in his boots, and started digging furiously. FD looked like he was going to murder someone, and stormed off to the Savage’s encampment before he did.  A visitor stopped by and asked if archaeologists are supposed to dig like that, because it didn’t look like the archaeology shows he’s seen on Public TV where they use trowels and dental picks.  In about an hour the Chief has filled 8 five gallon buckets with shovel loads of the second plowzone. Suddenly he glanced at his watch and remembered that one of his kids had a school activity he’s supposed to be at. He ran off to his car leaving behind no field notes, 8 unscreened buckets of soil, a shovel, boot prints, and what looked like a bomb crater about a half meter deep.

I sighed very deeply, and asked four volunteers to start screening the dirt. I then asked young Mr. J to pull together some field notes, grab a trowel, and try to get this horrible mess sorted out. 

Ten minutes later, I found him holding a clipboard and just staring at the bomb crater. I finally lost my temper, although it was hardly J’s fault.

“Goddammit J, what are you doing!!!???”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not sure where to start or what to do!”

“Jesus H Christ J…It DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU DO!!! It’s bound to be an improvement over THAT!  JUST DO SOMETHING!!!”

The poor kid. 

We have all been working now for over two weeks straight, and everyone is getting punchy. I’ll apologize to Mr J later after I cool off. In the interim, I declare lunch hour and grab him, FD, and a few others and head to the farmer’s market for a bite to eat.

After a fine lunch at the market, I found myself standing at a green grocer’s display admiring all the wonderful produce that appears in the Susquehanna Valley in autumn. This included a bin of large purple bulbs of garlic and fresh Hawaiian ginger of the best quality. I had a generous fistful of each in my hands, and was already imagining the evening’s fabulous stir fry. Suddenly FD’s large square head appeared over my shoulder.

While FD is possibly the healthiest person I’ve ever known, it turns out he cannot successfully boil water. Staring suspiciously at the goodies in my hands he blurted out “What the hell’s that good for?”

Now FD had recently parted ways with a long-term girlfriend, so I figured I might pull his chain a bit. I glared back at him and replied

“This will put lead in your pencil!”

I got a blank stare in response.  Presently he replied

“But I don’t have anybody to write to!”

A sensible response! I suggested he could perhaps start keeping a diary.

Of course the field tech’s thought this exchange was the funniest thing they had ever heard. We all burst into loud howling like schoolkids and the green grocer made us leave because we were disturbing the other shoppers. Still hooting, we piled into the rig and headed back to the Island.

To be continued…

The Island Chronicles Part 6: Great Excitement

Day 15

I arrived this morning to find two squad cars parked in front of Mr. Savage’s encampment. To my surprise and relief, they are not there to arrest him. It turns out there was some excitement during the night.

Yesterday almost 300 sixth graders (two schools, 6 school buses) visited the Island, and Mr Savage spent considerable time with all of them. There was also heavy walk-on visitation as well. By day’s end he was understandably exhausted. Mr Savage is the sole actual resident of the Island. He has a canvas marquis tent erected near the job trailer that contains his cot and sleeping bag, a folding table and chairs, and his trunk and travelling bag.  It’s rough but comfortable.  Last evening just after sunset he found himself sitting in one of the folding chairs exhausted, sipping a beer and trying to muster up the energy to change out of his costume and warpaint and into jeans and a sweater. The tent flaps were closed, and he had just lit a small kerosene lamp. That’s when he heard the voices. There were apparently several people out skulking around the now empty parking lot.

Since he was entirely alone, he was of course concerned about the intentions of these clandestine visitors. He heard them enter the weatherport and look at the excavation. He heard them check the locked doors of the job trailer. Then he heard whispering voices right in front of his tent flaps! By this point Mr. Savage had devised a plan.

To fully appreciate what happened next, you must recall his appearance in reenactment regalia; last night that included the usual belt axe and large knife prominently displayed, as well as the breechcloth, fringed leggings, red hunting shirt, beaded sash, brass gorget, hair roach, feathers, scalp lock, etc. So it was that when Mr. Savage heard a voice say “I wonder what’s in here?” as a hand grasped the tent flap and jerked it aside, he leapt to his feet, extended his hands in the air above his head and shrieked

 “AIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!”

at the very top of his lungs!

Now, whatever the nocturnal visitors may have imagined might lay behind the closed tent flaps (even if they possessed very healthy imaginations) THAT was not on the list of possibilities.  Mr Savage never got a good look at them, but he did hear running feet in the parking lot. He made out several shadowy figures sprinting toward the Market Street Bridge, and he found a shoe that one young fellow had apparently run right out of.   

The cops and staff members were thoroughly amused by this picaresque tale, and one cop opined that they were probably looking for someone with one shoe. Another suggested they might also be looking for someone who had suffered an explosive and substantial bout of incontinence. At any rate, it would not require Dick Tracy to identify the perpetrators.

 All agreed that a return visit seemed unlikely.

One of our school visits today was from a large urban high school. It was a very sad visit. There’s nearly a hundred kids on two school buses, and there were a total of three adults (the two bus drivers and one teacher) accompanying them. Consequently most of the kids simply wandered away from the project and hung out near the baseball stadium concessions, or wandered over the bridge and into downtown. A small contingent, maybe 20 kids, took the tour.  Most of these were the “smart kids”, and one really stuck out. He was good looking, articulate, and a serious smart ass.  Lots of brains and lots of attitude were in evidence. He wore a football letter jacket, and a couple young ladies hung around him, showing great interest in him but none in archaeology. 

I was down in the tiger trap, interpreting a visible horizon that contained fire cracked rock, flakes of chert and rhyolite, and a projectile point, when this kid blurted out “But how do you know the river didn’t just wash those things in? You just said the whole island is a product of flooding. Why wouldn’t the flood also bring in those rocks and stuff?” There followed a prolonged and detailed discussion of kinetic energy, particle size, erosion and particle shape, and other aspects of hydrology and fluvial geomorphology. The kid considers and challenges every concept and statement. His girlfriends get bored and wander away. He comes down into the tiger trap and I show him the change in particle size (fining upward) that can help define individual flood events. He keeps questioning, postulating, probing. The conversation turns to radiometric dating, to artifact typology and ceramic seriation, to feature identification and interpretation, to the mechanics of culture change. The exchange is challenging, enervating, gratifying. It is why I do this.

I later discuss this kid with Mr. Savage, FD, and several other staffers, all of whom had similar encounters.  This young man in some way moved all of us, but our encounters were tinged with pathos. He could be the next truly brilliant archaeologist, or the next Einstein, or the President of the United States, or whatever. He is extremely bright, intellectually curious, and suspicious of convention. He is full of energy and promise. But his school is badly underfunded, does not challenge or nurture him or his classmates, and is sometimes dangerous. His neighborhood is poor, and drug traffic and violence are not uncommon.  A shocking percentage of young men from his world wind up in prison or in an early grave. Despite his obvious and formidable intellect, the odds are stacked against him and all of his classmates.

Like all archaeologists, I view the world through an historical and evolutionary lens. I know that cultural change and adaptation to evolving conditions are driven by need and circumstance, and shaped by tradition and social organization.  Critical adaptations have always been ignited by talented and forward thinking young folks who build on the experience and traditions of their elders and use their energy and smarts to innovate and lead.  Societies that don’t innovate and adapt collapse and die, sometimes abruptly. The archaeological record is full of them.

We live in a world that is changing at frightening speed and is fraught with ample opportunities for catastrophe. We need the energy and potential of youth to ensure our survival. When we allow our young folks to languish in poverty, ignore their education, limit their potential for growth, and subject them to violence, we do so at all of our peril.

I still think about that kid all the time and I frequently wonder what happened to him.

To be continued....

The Island Chronicles Part 5: Job Trailer Triptych

Day 13

I am hiding in the office, a five foot square divided corner of the job trailer that contains a small desk and a chair. There is electric service and I have plugged in my laptop computer. By mid-afternoon I must complete a two paragraph daily report to the World Wide Web from the Island (in the next millennium, these will come to be called blogs). I must also oversee the excavation block (7 by 5 meters), speak to 200 middle school kids in four groups of fifty at twenty to thirty minute intervals, and try to keep an eye on everything else down here.  Today it’s not going well due to interruptions. As it happens, like Scrooge, I am to be visited three times.

First it’s the Savage and FD. Being a pair of large and polar opposite personalities, they’re usually like oil and water, but today they have made common cause and have come to see me together.

“Sorry to bother you, but we have something important to ask.”

“I see…and what is it?”

“We would like to go to the hardware store and buy a length of heavy chain and a padlock.”

“Because…?”

“We want to lock up the port-a-jon.”

“Because…?”

“Well, if we don’t lock it up…people will use it!”

I try just sitting there and not saying anything, but this is a pair that can have a half-ton chunk of irony whiz right past their heads and shatter on the ground behind them without either of them noticing anything untoward.

One of them finally blurts out, “By people, we mean non-staff and volunteers.”

“You don’t think that folks other than us ever have to pee?”

“But they’ll make the port-o-jon dirty for the rest of us! People are pigs!’

…and so on. In the end, my calculus is that I have much to do, and the quickest way to get them to leave is to say yes. I extract a promise that they will leave the key in a place known to the staff so we can relieve ourselves. They finally go away, to begin constructing the replica Eastern Woodlands house and to send one of the technicians to the hardware store.

I type another two sentences and there is another knock. It’s Miss E…

“Yes?”

“Look, I know you’re busy, but I just thought I should tell you that if Mr. Savage puts his hand on me one more time, I’m going to punch his teeth straight down his throat! Are you OK with that?”

I am looking at this lovely and fiery young woman, and my head is full of twitching synapses that are making mostly incomplete connections. I point out that what she has proposed is rash and is not the approved procedure for dealing with an incidence of sexual harassment in government service. She replies that she is confident that her plan of action will get results, and less so about following the prescribed procedures.  In the end, after sitting there and blinking at her for a full minute, I decide that she’s probably correct.

“Alright.”

“Alright then!” She spins on her heel and walks out. I never hear anything else about it.

Back to my diary entry. If I can just get a couple more sentences down in the next five minutes, I can dump it onto a disk and go check everyone’s field notes before the next busload of kids arrives.  Donald, the photographer and web master from the museum, who has been wandering around the Island all morning taking pictures, will then take the disk to his office, and by evening there’ll be an entry about today’s efforts on the Island for the whole world to share.

But it ain’t to be.  There is another knock at the office door. Without waiting for a “come in” Mr. Savage flings the door open. He is livid…slobbering mad!  In full regalia and bristling as he is with weapons, he requires attention.

“What’s the matter?”

“You know what HE’s doing?”

“No…?”

“HE’s using a metal knife and a saw on those poles and the bark!  HE’s ruining the house!”

Clearly FD and Mr. Savage have reverted to the warm and fraternal bon ami that has characterized their relationship over the years.

“Come on now…Ruining it? How so?”

I have ignited the powder keg! He is now red as a tomato, his eyes bug out, his chest expands, and this loudest of men, screams in my face: “HE’S BUILDING IT LIKE…LIKE…LIKE A FUCKING WHITE MAN!!!!!!”

It’s of course unhelpful to point out that the reason for this may be that FD is as manifestly Caucasian as they get, but I can’t help myself.

Mr Savage storms out, and I throw in the towel on my little diary entry and grab my clipboard. It’s time to look in on the excavation, and get ready for some sixth graders…  

To be continued...