The Cape Cod Canal

  If you ever drive down to old Cape Cod, you'll have to have to cross one of two bridges that cross the Cape Cod Canal, unless of course you're driving a boat. That reminds me of the time Jerry and Marion Solom drove their boat Indian Summer to Cape Cod. Jerry planned to traverse the seven mile canal from west to east. 

  Storm clouds were gathering as Jerry and Marion approached the entrance to the canal. They had lowered the sails and were motoring along when Jerry sent Marion below to monitor the compass. Just then a blinding squall hit. A violent wind churned the waters as Jerry kept heading east. At least it felt like he was traveling in the same direction, till Marion called up "You're going west!"

  At first Jerry couldn't believe it.  He was sure he had been going the same direction all the time. The rain was so heavy he couldn't see shore. "Are you sure?" He asked. "Yes, the compass says you're going west, out of the canal." So Jerry did a 180 and when the rain slackened he could see they were now headed into the canal as planned.  Jerry realized the violent winds had turned Indian Summer completely around. After that Jerry liked to say "Always believe your compass," though he didn't add, "and your wife," but I'm sure he was thinking it.

  The Cape Cod Canal opened on this day in 1914, cutting 62 miles off the trip up or down the coast. People had been talking about a canal since colonial days. One settler in the 1700s found a way between a deep cove on one side of the Cape and a stream on the other. It was called Jeremiah's Gutter and Jeremiah collected a toll. 

  During the 1800s there were numerous attempts to build the present canal. These schemes all ran out of money until a New York financier took on the job. He had already financed the first subway in New York and he hired the leading engineer in the country to oversee the job.  

   In 1909 crews began digging at both ends of the proposed canal. They immediately ran into numerous 100 ton boulders the glaciers had left behind a few thousand years previously.  Divers had to set explosives under the boulders to clear the way. After great expense and five years of work, the financier blended the waters of Buzzard's and Cape Cod Bays and opened the final dam. Meanwhile down in Panama Another canal would open its gates for two weeks later.

  The first vessel through the canal was a rowboat manned by the financier's son.  A destroyer soon followed carrying assistant secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The financier planned to recover his expenses by charging a toll.  Because this canal was narrower than the present one, ships could only go in the direction of the tide, which changes every seven hours. Also, a series of accidents in the canal scared ships away. The financier tried to get the government to take the canal off his hands.

  In 1928 the government took over the canal and during the depression the improvement of the canal was made a Works Progress project. The canal was deepened and widened from 100' to 480'.  New and higher bridges were built so ships no longer had to wait for drawbridges to be raised. During WWII the canal was a way for ships to avoid German subs lurking off the coast.

   The canal continues to be a popular route for pleasure boats and commercial ships. There are bike and walking trails along both shores of the canal. During the 1990s some jokers made up bumper stickers which gave drivers access to a fictitious Cape Cod Canal Tunnel.  The stickers were a commentary on the horrendous traffic backups on the bridges during the tourist season. Smart people go by boat.

Fastest way to the Cape 

Tarcasso

 Every couple of years the highway department goes up and down the roads with a vat of hot tar to patch cracks.  They did our road last summer and after four seasons and thousands of vehicles, their work has taken on the beauty of an Old Master.

[Tap on the photos for full size.]

A Near-Death Experience

    You don't hear much about self-drive cars these days. All the talk now is about electric vehicles.  But I had a near death experience in a self-drive bus about twenty years ago. The administrator of the small rural hospital where I worked was fascinated with the self-drive concept as was the hospital's IT guy who was a true genius. The IT guy, Bryce, developed a self-drive apparatus for the hospital bus. He and the administrator, Mr. Jacobs, secretly tested their self-drive system on the gravel roads in the surrounding country.

   One Thursday morning in the early nineties I showed up early at the hospital. Several nurses and I were signed up for a two day conference in a city six hours away. We were all surprised to find Mr. Jacobs sitting in the driver's seat of the bus. This was most unusual because Mr. Jacobs always went to administrator's conferences in Florida or Hawaii. It was then he revealed that the bus was a self-driving vehicle. He said he and Bryce had made the trip to the city a half dozen times in the past year and had worked out all the bugs. This would be the first trial with passengers.

   We were waiting for Bryce to show up when Mr. Jacobs got a call on his bag phone. Bryce was sick and wouldn't be able to come with us.  Mr. Jacobs said we'd be fine without him. Mr. Jacobs sat in the driver's seat, but let the self-drive system control the bus. It worked perfectly. Once we got on the freeway closer to the city Mr. Jacobs came back and sat with us. "The freeway is the easy part," he said. The nurses and I looked at each other uneasily. One of the nurses said, "Mr. Jacobs, shouldn't someone stay in the driver's seat just in case?"

   Mr. Jacobs brushed her off. He was clearly elated with the bus's performance. "We plan to license Bryce's system and the hospital will be able to expand with the added income," he said. Right after saying  this, he clutched his chest and slumped to the floor. As soon as that happened, the bus slowed, pulled into the breakdown lane and stopped. The nurses started working on Mr. Jacobs. One of them knew how to use the bag phone and called 911.

   An ambulance from St. Bonaventure Hospital soon arrived and took Mr. Jacobs away. Our conference was at this same hospital so we planned to drive the bus there. Suddenly, the bus door closed and the bus pulled out into traffic. I got in the driver's seat but the bus was under the control of the self-drive system. The bus cruised past the exit to St. Bonaventure, keeping up with traffic.

  None of the nurses' suggestions to shut off the bus worked. I couldn't even get the four way flashers to come on. One of the nurses called 911 again and explained our situation. Soon highway patrol cruisers were in front and behind us. The one in front gradually slowed and the bus slowed as well. Soon cruisers were in all four lanes, gradually slowing until all traffic on the freeway was stopped.

   A trooper told me to pop the hood and he disconnected the battery. Soon a wrecker arrived to haul the bus away and the troopers dropped us off at the hospital. Mr. Jacobs was doing ok but did not want any visitors. I went to my conference, but didn't get anything out of it which was not atypical. 

   Next day we rented a van and drove home. I kept badgering Bryce in his lair until he came clean. He was proud that the bus pulled over when Mr. Jacobs lost consciousness, but admitted the GPS in the bus had been mistakenly set for the St. Bonaventure Rollerdrome in another city. 

  The hospital paid a hefty fine to the state which agreed to keep the self-drive fiasco quiet. The nurses and I received nice "bonuses" to keep mum and no more was heard about licensing Bryce's system. Everyone involved in the bus ride is now either dead or retired so I see no harm in releasing my story in this remote corner of the web. According to google stats, my blog only has four regular readers, one of whom I know because he always leaves a comment. The other three I suspect are bots.

It was an OJ kind of day. 

 

Sunday Squibs

 Men will go to a wedding to party, to a funeral for lunch, while giving the baby shower a miss to play golf.

If my guest wants to discuss politics or religion that’s fine, but he won’t learn my opinion unless it jibes with his own, which discussion will then be mere valium. 

The WASP smiles when the LBGT group adds another letter, but what sorrow and pain is within each of those little letters.

My role as grand puppeteer I think I’ll let go. 

It’s gotten too much for my fingers and toes

We must tie up this strong man Satan in order to plunder his goods. Better let Jesus to do the tying and let the plunder go to charity. 

Our eyes adjust naturally to the darkness. We need new eyes to see in the light. 

The hierarchy ranges from self to family, to country, to God. We must chose which we’re most loyal to without worshipping the idea of hierarchy itself

Life is a puzzle with unwritten clues. 

Life gives us a pencil. The answers, we choose. 

Negotiating old age is like flying through a field is asteroids. No matter how good we are, we’re eventually going to crash and burn. 

St. Paul says the wages of sin is death. The sinner counters: then let’s eat, drink and be merry. 

The revolutionary has bullets, the diplomat only bullet points. 

If love is the answer, the question remains how to let go of hate. 

Intelligent Design comes from a God created by man. Science uncovers the design of a God free enough to look random to us.

The church advises looking at others as though they were Jesus. The virtue of patience is available on request. 

Marriage is a testing ground for sainthood. You’re making progress when you realize your spouse is having a rougher time of it than you are. 

Conservative dystopia: a world without guns. 

Some people no matter how much they love a book will never read it again. They feel a reread would delay their goal of reading every book ever written. 

We’re all in favor of a clean environment so long as it doesn’t affect our comfort, our income, and we don’t have to kiss any rabbits. 

Mackenzie

  In Canada they call them First Nations. Them being the people living there in various tribes before the Europeans arrived. The First Nations were happy to exchange beaver pelts for steel knives, guns and glass beads, but were leery of the downsides. Disease seemed to follow these newcomers and they had strange notions about property. They thought a person could own land for himself.

   The newcomers propagated like the beaver themselves. But they wanted so many pelts that when the beaver were wiped out in one place, they had to push further west for fresh pelts. If the newcomers got too pushy perhaps they too could be exterminated.

  One of the pushiest of the newcomers was Alexander Mackenzie from the country of Scotland. His mother died when he was ten and his father took him to New York. When the American Revolution broke out, his father fought for the British. Alexander was sent to Montreal for safety. Soon he was working as an apprentice for the North West Company.

   The Company sent Mackenzie on a mission to find a northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean. He made his way to Lake Athabasca in northern Saskatchewan. The First Nations people told Makenzie the rivers all flowed northwest. Perfect. Except the river flowed more north than west and on July 14, 1789 he arrived at the Arctic Ocean. Even this would have made a decent route to the Pacific if Alaska hadn’t been in the way. The river was later named in his honor. It has the second largest drainage system in North America after the Mississippi.

   Makenzie went to Great Britain to study longitude, then returned to Canada to try again for the Pacific. In October, 1792 he headed west with two native guides, his cousin Alex, six voyageurs, and a dog unimaginatively named Dog. They made it as far as the Peace River in Alberta where they built a fort to wait out the winter.

  When the snow melted in early May, Mackenzie wanted to head down the Fraser River to the Pacific but was warned that the First Nations people that way were hostile. He was directed over the mountains on a grease trail, so named because it was used to haul smelt oil to the interior. Smelt oil was a valuable commodity among the tribes.

  On this day in 1793 Mackenzie and his group arrived at North Bentinct Arm, an inlet of the Pacific about 300 miles northwest of Vancouver, British Columbia. Mackenzie wanted to continue west another seventy miles for a clear view of the ocean, but the local First Nation tribe brandishing spears in their war canoes blocked his way. It’s unclear what their problem was. Perhaps they had an omen Mackenzie and his ilk portended bad medicine for their descendants.

   Mackenzie mixed up bear grease and vermilion and wrote “Mackenzie was here” on a rock then headed for home. He and his group had completed the first recorded crossing of North America north of Mexico and they did it twelve years ahead of Lewis and Clark. 

  Back east, Mackenzie published his journals, got knighted, and served in the Ontario legislature. In 1812 at the age of 48 he returned to Scotland and married the 14 year old Geddes Mackenzie (same clan, no blood relationship). They had three children and were apparently happy, until Mackenzie died of Bright's Disease at the age of 55 or 56. No one knows the exact date of his birth c.1764.

Alexander Mackenzie, at the age of 35 or 36

  

   

Pizza Repair

   It's good to have occasional accidents and disasters as long as no one gets hurt. The other night we had a couple of guests in the Shêdeau for pizza. Normally I would prepare and bake the pizza in the Shêdeau so I could chat with our guests. But I was on the final chapter of an audio book and my loan was ending that evening.

   I left Teresa to entertain our guests in the Shêdeau while I retreated to the big house and put my ears on. When the pizza was done I picked the pan up with hot pads and headed out the door. 

  The mosquitoes have been bad and as I hastened to shut the door behind me the pan leapt out of my hand and fell face down, half on the welcome mat and half on the wooden porch floor. It made a clanging noise which I thought would alert the others 137 paces away, but the noise of the river rapids covered my boo-boo.

  I got our largest spatula and turned the pie face up. The half that had been on the floor looked ok. The part that landed on the mat looked like a fresh lava flow. I tried smooshing the ridge of cheese back in place while scraping the toppings off the mat and spreading them on the cheese.

  I knew I couldn’t  present this mess to our guests. Then I got the insight that would turn this evil into a good. I turned the oven to broil and slipped the pie onto the top shelf for a couple of minutes.  Except for the dent in one part of the perimeter, it looked like new.

  As our guests munched on their slices I held my breath waiting for someone to bite into a pebble. I was prepared to apologize for the stray olive stone even though I hadn’t used any olives.

  A person may tell him or herself they are never going to drop their freshly baked pizza on the floor. What I say to that person is you haven’t made many pizzas.

Galileo discovered gravity by dropping a cheese lovers and a personal pan pizza off the Tower of Punza.

Sunday Squibs

 

It’s good to avoid evil, but we should not automatically dump everyone we happen not to like into that sulphuric bin. 

We’re so busy inflating our our portfolio, we don’t notice our betrothed is doing the same. 

For the retiree, hump day has been flattened into the never ending weekend. 

Don't brag about your skills. People will be constantly asking for help with things they could do just as well themselves. From the meek and humble no one expects much.

Which is better? Too much time or too much money? You can spend time to making money but money can’t buy you time. 

People pity the shy and the bashful for all the fun they’re missing. But the shy are like the deer, inhabiting an austere secret world the boisterous cannot know.

I give ten percent of my income to the poor and ninety percent to the rich. 

Without the promise of coffee there are many who would stay in bed all day. 

The world is full of messes. Some are benign, such as the constant construction around hospitals. 

If you’re able to come up with two or three facts about the historical figures everyone has heard of, people will call you a genius. And pay for your coffee. But not your beer. 

Sleep is a kind of dementia with this difference: we can’t recall the earliest, the youngest dreams of the night but only those closest to our awakening. 

A person gets rids of all his bad habits only to make smugness his new poison. 

Wealth can build a road across the swamp or it can be content with simply owning the swamp.

By taking care of number one and number two at the same time, even the slothful can be multitaskers. 

Not content with loving a girl

The poet insists on describing each curl

In exchange for wearing a hair shirt composed of his neighbor’s foibles, the saint is granted an occasional view of God’s back. 

The honey do list is an acknowledgment that men are poor multitaskers. 

We screw up in life about as often as we screw up in typing. A back space key is more needful than a forward delete. 

Though both feelings are off the mark, it’s better to live life feeling it’s too early rather than feeling it’s too late. 

We wash up on this shore like a message in a bottle, to be read by whoever finds us, while we read the message in them.