January 2011

If journalism is, as has been said, the first draft of history, a foreign correspondent has many professional brushes with history. But I won’t bore American Heritage readers with mine. In fact, I won’t even mention how as a reporter for a newsmagazine, living in Paris and later in London, I shared a urologist with Charles de Gaulle and my wife a gynecologist with Queen Elizabeth. No state secrets escaped from either. But I did learn something when I was sharing a guitar teacher with the future emperor of Japan.

The time was the mid-1950s, the place Tokyo, where Crown Prince Akihito, as he then was, and I were taking classical guitar lessons from the same teacher—obviously, not together. One day, after I’d gone through another fumbling bout with Bach, I asked my teacher, by way of conversation, how the prince was as a musician. There was a pause. Loyalty to the Son of Heaven was clearly competing with candor in the teacher’s mind. “Saaa—” he began, sucking in his breath and letting it out in that long Japanese sigh of deep thought. Then, brightly, “He’s just as good as you are.”

In 1971, when I was fifteen years old, my family moved to the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in the pine barrens of New Jersey. Once the home of giant airships, Lakehurst was known to history as the spot where the Hindenburg exploded into a ball of flame as the world looked on. I set out at once to read anything I could find about the place.

Lakehurst had once teemed with activity. In the 1920s and 1930s, the U.S. Navy maintained a squadron of rigid airships there; the Shenandoah, the Los Angeles, and the Akron—all were familiar sights to the residents of central New Jersey. And what magnificent sights they were! Each was more than six hundred feet long, as large and as graceful as an ocean liner and held aloft by a vast expanse of helium gas. Sometimes the Germans landed their airships there as well; but with the explosive hydrogen that buoyed them, the zeppelins were a dangerous novelty in the sky.

In November of 1944 I was a plebe—a freshman—at the Naval Academy. We sat at attention at mealtimes, spoke only when spoken to by an upper classman, and obeyed orders. All orders.

At lunch one day a youngster, a third classman, addressed me. I’ve forgotten his name; it wasn’t Midshipman 3c. Jimmy Carter (who nailed me one day for not having my shoes properly shined), although it might have been Midshipman 3c. Stansfield Turner, who was in my company.

“Morris!”

“Sir.”

“Whom have you asked to the Army-Navy game?”

“No one, sir.”

“Ask Mae West.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Miss West, I found, was appearing in a Broadway play, Catherine Was Great (which she had written herself). I dutifully wrote her a polite note inviting her to the game.

In reading “America and Russia, Americans and Russians,” by John Lukacs in the February/March 1992 issue, I noted his statement that the two countries had never fought a war. It’s true enough, but I happened to be a bystander when America and Russia went toe to toe in a series of air battles during the Korean War.

In this unpublicized campaign both the Soviet and United States air forces threw in their best, and the U.S. Air Force won hands down. Even the official The United States Air Force in Korea: 1950–1953 by Robert F. Furtrell is scanty on the subject, referring to unconfirmed reports of Russian pilots flying from time to time. But I know that this was a full-fledged Russian-American battle, directed by Russians, flown by Russians in Russian aircraft. I heard it all.

Between 1934 and 1952 the second floor of the world-famous Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, housed the Edison Institute High School. I was lucky enough to go to school there.

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Joyride “Attack the Sabres” “Why Don’t You Come Up and … ?” Airship Archeology Celestial Tact

The saddle at right was made by Edward L. Gallatin in Denver, Colorado, and presented to Col. Jesse H. Leavenworth in 1862 by friends and fellow officers of the 2d Colorado Volunteers. The rich black, hand-tooled leather, the bright gold and silver trim fashioned into stars and eagles, and the classic military accessories animate the sturdy soul of a cowboy’s day-to-day rig. It is a saddle intended to be worked in as well as admired.

When settlers and adventurers began to move West, they found that Eastern saddles of the English model were ill adapted to managing livestock on the open range or to riding long distances over rugged terrain. They found, too, that the Mexican vaquero saddle already in use in parts of Texas and California was far better suited to life on the frontier. While American saddlemakers mostly ignored traditional Spanish decorations, they were quick to adopt the more practical aspects of the Mexican design.

While the warmer months have traditionally been the peninsula’s “high season,” winter carnivals or ski and dogsled races are now attracting crowds all year. A four-season Upper Peninsula Travel Planner is available through the Upper Peninsula Travel & Recreation Association (1-800-562-7134). An outfit named Michigan Magic (1-800-468-6542) produces a series of half-hour videos, designed to introduce visitors to the area’s many attractions. We were comfortable at the Best Western Colonial Inn, three miles south of the town center. But for those who can’t get enough of the locks, many motels closer to town offer full views of their activity day and night.

The sunlight on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has an amazing clarity. It skids over the steely blue of Lake Superior, penetrates the endless forests that run along the southern coast, and renders the pebble beaches with a precise, silvery light. Eighty percent of the UP., as it’s called, is wilderness. And the landscape is so quiet, so remote, so primeval that it seems impervious to time. In fact, for the most part, modernity has flowed by this region without splashing onto its borders.

Sault Sainte Marie is both an exception and a case in point. Poised at the eastern end of the peninsula, where Lake Superior spills down the St. Mary’s River into Lake Huron, this modest city is home to the world’s busiest canal system: the Soo Locks. It accommodates a staggering volume of international commerce. Yet, remarkably, the place retains the cozy character of an old fishing town. It’s a wonderful combination.

Right now, of course, it is the coming election that provides most of the material on which this column casts its regular history-conscious eye. But not this time. September is the month of pennant races, and I’ve got baseball as well as Presidents on my mind. I phrase the question of the hour not as “Will George Bush be re-elected?” but rather as “Will George Bush or his opponent toss out the first ball of the 1993 season?”

The presidential opening-day pitch was one of the standard photo opportunities of April until some twenty years ago. Whether he liked the game or not, the Chief Executive showed up to make the toss from his field box to the catcher standing a few feet in front of him. The game would begin, and the president would stay for a couple of innings and even eat a hot dog before the limousine whisked him back to the burdens of leadership. It was good politics, indisputable proof that the First Citizen was a “regular” American.