Author: Alexander (Green Mac) McKenzie II (1908-1997)
Observer and Radioman, 1932 - 1937
Copyright: Kenneth McKenzie, 2012


PROLOGUE


This is a story written by Alexander A. McKenzie during the winter of 1934-35 on Mount Washington. It may have been retyped and edited since, but the author could not remember that detail at the time of keyboarding, July 7, 1990. At that time he did not believe that it has been read by anyone and certainly not published. But can anyone be sure, after 55 years?


GENESIS


As I sit beside the soft coal stove in the room in which we eat, work, and sometimes sleep, there is audible, even above the insistent click of recording instruments and the low-pitched rumble of the gas-electric plant, the hiss of granular snow crystals, swirling against the storm door. Despite a temperature of only six above zero, our insulated quarters are so well heated by the little pot-bellied stove, it is necessary to have the inside front door ajar lest we stifle. Into the vestibule, through cracks around the storm door, blows a small but steady stream of snow, forced in by a mile-a-minute breeze.
Outside, everything is whitely opaque. Snow and fog are everywhere. It is the sort of day in which one finds his way about the summit mainly by intuition. A face exposed is one stung by sharp, icy snow pellets. An occasional glance through narrowly compressed lids is instantly regretted, for the wind has ways of swirling at least one granule against an eyeball, to the exquisite agony of the looker. Although it is not really a bad day, we are just as well pleased that there is no pressing work to be done outside in this Spring weather.
Across the room, upon the couch that the man on duty sometimes occupies for fitful naps on the stormiest nights, sits Bayard, busily engaged in mending his storm clothing. Although he has a brand-new suit, he prefers to patch up my old parka with strips of adhesive tape sewed onto the old fabric. Almost every excursion into the relentless wind means the necessity for a repair job that By does cheerfully. This is one of his ways of defying the Mountain.
Beyond the stove, Wendell is quietly setting down figures in a large book. Now and again, our human silence is broken by the shuffling of ski boots, the creak of a dried-out chair, or the mild report of a large needle puncturing the taut-stretched section of tape and airplane fabric. Above it all, but not consciously heard, is the click of recorders, the rumble of the power plant, and the constant hiss of the snow.
On such an afternoon, it is often slothfully easy to sit by the opiate stove and dream of the future, of the past; pleasant dreams. Hopes of the future are invariably bright, while the past leaves us the rosy sunsets of dark and cloudy days. What matter that the light of Spring filters through snow, fog and our own rime-encrusted windows to offer weak competition to our man-made illumination. There are plans, thoughts, and indoor work for dark days as there is outside activity and the sun’s blessed warmth for bright days. At such times, after man has tired of petty introspection and reverie, he starts wondering about the greater and less-well-known forces that squeeze life into such odd and fantastic shapes. It may be, more often than not, that his thinking is very mediocre and drab indeed. At least, he is obliged to think from within. There is no cinema on Mount Washington. But, today, our thoughts are light. Whenever they revert to the active present, we are necessarily brought up face to face with our recent past. Nearly every move we now make is directed according to our experience of the last three years.
The easiest way to explain the Mount Washington Observatory is by way of Joe Dodge. Joseph Brooks Dodge is Manager of the Appalachian Mountain Club Huts system that operates its summer chain of huts for hikers in the White Mountain territory between Franconia Notch and Pinkham Notch. These camps are spaced a fair day’s trail journey apart, offering at the finish of an exhilarating trip, hot food, a quiet evening among people who love the mountains and then a comfortable bunk with all the blankets necessary for a cool night. A good breakfast the next morning and you resume your trip feeling fit. All this is made possible, at a minimum cost, by a small group of fellows, most of them college students, who have had a certain spirit instilled in them by that remarkable character, Joe Dodge.
In a single summer, a new hutman must learn to be a jack-of-all-trades and a specialist in several. Cooking and baking are of primary importance, for the gustatory requirements are filled, not from the shelves of a delicatessen, but from fabrications of flour and powdered milk; from cans that contain food, to be sure, but food in its elemental and least attractive form. Although baker’s bread is packed in, often from a base camp as far as seven miles away, hot breads and muffins are smiled upon by management and guest alike. Similarly, fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables may be brought in from outside, but lack of refrigeration puts a constant supply of fresh food in the luxury class.
Kerosene, gas (for the mantle lamps) and boxes of canned goods slow down the hutman’s pace on the way back to the hut after a trip to meet the truck or a visit to the storehouse near the main road. His pace is not killing, but he will probably carry on the burden of the conversation while you puff behind him.
There is nothing a real hutman will not do. The construction of a lemon meringue pie or the repair of a refractory automobile are as nothing to him. If his success is only relative, it is still a measure of success. Besides washing tremendous piles of dishes each day, folding countless blankets just so each morning, sweeping and polishing, he still finds time to acquaint himself with the flora and fauna in the region of his hut. He will spend a quarter of an hour before supper playing ping-pong with Little Sister. He’ll find a dry shirt for Father to wear while the latter’s is drying above the stove. He will bandage Mother’s weak ankle, discuss trails with Brother; and after dark, he is quite capable of showing Big Sister the moon from just the right rock.
Self-reliant, capable, friendly, the hutman is what he has been since boys who love the mountains first started to man the huts. Joe Dodge, greatest of them all, has nurtured the spirit and preserved it.
Man being of an acquisitive nature, desirous of annexing anything that is not readily attainable, it is not strange that the extremely virile Joe Dodge should have aspired some day to occupy the most strategic battleground of the mountains, the peak of Washington.
To be sure, it was too late to pioneer the winter occupation of the Mountain. That had been done by a little group in 1870 under the aegis of Professor C. H. Hitchcock of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire State Geologist, in an effort to learn more about New England’s weather. They soon proved to the unsympathetic public of their day that weather forecasting was not a matter of looking for storms through a powerful telescope, especially when the Mountain was in clouds about fifty-percent of the time, but they did create enough interest in the problem to cause the establishment there of a station by the Signal Service (forerunner of the present Weather Bureau). As a matter of fact, the Chief Signal Officer had contributed heavily in equipment besides furnishing an observer for the winter of 1870-71. From the spring of 1871, until 1887, the Signal Service operated the Mount Washington station continuously during the year, after which it was put on a summer schedule until its final closing in 1892.
The history of the Signal Service occupation must be dug out of the Boston Public Library and pieced together with the thread of imagination, but anyone who cares at all has somehow managed to acquire “Mount Washington in Winter,” the story of the so-called “Hitchcock-Huntington Expedition” of 1870-71. While the book is written in a style that should have given no offense to modest young ladies of the day, it contains highly inflammatory subject matter, especially for young men who have experienced a bit of Mount Washington’s winter spell. Just how or why Joe Dodge had set his heart on one day reoccupying the summit is not important. It suffices that his heart was set. He had read the book, and he had tramped the hills.
With one man intensely interested in living on the mountain, another was beginning to wonder if it might not be possible to persuade someone to live there. Dr. Charles Franklin Brooks, newly appointed Director of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory of Harvard University, had attended meetings of the International Polar Year Commission at Innsbruck in the fall of 1931, where a fuller realization of the need for mountain observatories had crystallized all his former thinking on the subject. A lover of the mountains, he had frequently climbed Washington, making observations with simple instruments on many of his summer trips. Desirous of maintaining Blue Hill’s high standard of usefulness to Meteorology along modern lines, Dr. Brooks had discussed with Dr. T. Bergeron, air-mass meteorological authority in Norway, the idea of fostering an observation post upon New England’s highest peak. He saw the heated anemometers developed by Dr. Sverre Pettersen, after which he would have to model a similar instrument in order to measure wind velocities at this, as yet, visionary station. On his return to this country, Dr. Brooks reiterated the necessity for mountain observatories during the Second Polar Year (August 1932-August 1933), in both the “Monthly Weather Review” and the “Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.”
Joe Dodge’s mental vision of a winter on Washington was by no means one of pure romance; he wanted to do worthwhile work in the field of meteorology. Indeed, he had already started his fifth year as a Cooperative Observer at Pinkham Notch for the United states Weather Bureau, demonstrating his sincere interest in the science. In his meteorological reading, he noticed the pleas for mountain stations, including that of Dr. Brooks. Why, here was a very good reason for satisfying that ambition to spend a winter on “The Mountain!” The work of building the Mount Washington Observatory was two-thirds begun!
Two-thirds is not a whole. No matter how good the idea is or how great the enthusiasm, money was a necessary lubricant, not only for smooth running of the project, but for its initial send-off. Joe knew some firms would supply materials for the advertising value received in their use at such an unusual location, newspapers could be counted upon for small amounts of cash, but the great bulk of support must be assured before work could be started. Accordingly, he contacted some of his fellow members of the New Hampshire Academy of Science who considered the idea previous to the spring meeting in 1932. Mr. Henry Southworth Shaw, a member of the Academy and a great friend to the Blue Hill Observatory, consulted with Dr. Brooks as to the practicability of the scheme. The latter agreed that it was feasible and suggested that some spare equipment to be constructed for observations during the total eclipse of the sun in August 1932, would be available in the fall for use at the proposed station.
In retrospect, it is difficult to see how the plans could have failed to go through after reaching this pinnacle of optimism. It still remained, however, for Joe Dodge, mountaineer, amateur meteorologist, and radioman, “Mayor”of all versatile hutmen, to present his case before the Academy. This he did, with such a display of enthusiasm and good sense that the New Hampshire Academy of Science voted practically its entire financial resources, $400, to the initiation of the new project. The Observatory was now three-thirds launched!
While the barren hull of an idea is being fitted out with workable cruising equipment, we might digress a moment to discover just why there seemed to be such a need for mountain observatories, and even more important, to find out what sort of thing a “Polar Year” might be.
To get more at the root of things, let us consider Meteorology, which deals not at all with “shooting stars,” but, phrasing it crudely, with hydrometers," rain, snow and fogs, and with warm and cold bodies of air, which, in their moving about, interacting with each other, cause these hydro-meteoric phenomena. Meteorology is concerned with the clouds, with temperatures of air and large bodies of water, with atmospheric pressures and wind directions, and, to be sure, many other phenomena.
Although man has harnessed Meteorology to office routine, even as he has electricity, and has dignified the study as a Science, there is still much of the mumbo-jumbo about it. Whereas air masses have depth as well as breadth and length, that is to say, they are three-dimensional, Mrs. Jones, who plans a garden party tomorrow, demands of an overworked, underpaid government employee that he tell her, principally on the basis of some two-dimensional data, what the weather will be in twenty-four hours. He tells her, and he usually tells her correctly. His failures live after him. To be honest, man has, long ago met the challenge of this third dimension, sending up kites, balloons, airplanes, and now, tiny radio transmitting devices to glean what knowledge he can of conditions aloft. But often, when this knowledge is most needed, it is least accessible. Some of the means of sounding the upper air are of no immediate practical use although their findings are of immense value to research. Aviation has made exacting demands upon meteorology, even as it has aided man in meeting these demands. And although we mention glibly a “two-dimensional” system of observations, that is “surface” observations, we very often have a very imperfect picture here, too. There are so many far corners of the earth of which we know little, from which a yearly report of weather would be a lot of information compared to the nothing we now receive.
It was to supply these lacks that the Second Polar Year was organized on the fiftieth anniversary of the first. Despite the unfortunate economic condition of the world, scientists went bravely ahead with their plans to get, for the year beginning August 1932, as many simultaneous meteorological observations as they could from existing stations, to equip as many stations as possible in “polar” regions and to study terrestrial magnetism, atmospheric electricity, and the aurora at a large number of these stations for the duration of those precious 365 days. Efforts to measure that difficult third dimension would be made by detailed cloud studies, pilot balloon ascensions, airplane and radiometeorograph soundings, and by mountain observatories.
A mountain station can be operated on some convenient, strategically located peak, with the very minimum of expense. To be sure, the third-dimensional sounding is limited to one level, but it has the advantage over all other aerological soundings of being inexpensively continuous. Although an adequately equipped and competently operated base station is a requisite for any mountain observatory, and careful research into the effect of the mountain itself upon the weather is necessary before observed conditions can be corrected to their “free-air” equivalent, these are not insuperable obstacles.
Mount Washington, highest peak in the northeastern part of the United States, in the track of coastal storms as well as those from the west, is readily accessible by cog railroad or by automobile from about the middle of May until the middle of October. Four sturdy buildings and a large water tank crown its summit. In Pinkham Notch, at the eastern foot of the mountain, Joe Dodge has maintained a “base station” for a number of years. In view of past occupations, it would have been an everlasting shame if the renascence of this station had not taken place.
And now, after our brief introduction to the meteorological aspect, let us return to the concrete problems of making an observatory. Of the four buildings mentioned above, only one was really suitable for our purposes. The Tip Top, of stone and concrete, would have been impossible without the steam heat that makes it habitable for hikers in summer. Considerable remodeling of some portion of the summit hotel would have been necessary to turn a part of that large structure into an observatory. Camden Cottage, built in 1922, and maintained by the Cog Railroad for winter climbers, could not have served the purpose for which it was intended if we were to have done any worthwhile work there. Obviously, then, the Stage Office of the Summit Road Company, a one-and-a-half story frame building across the tracks from the hotel was the place we needed. Our good friend, Elliot Libby, and the other members of the road company readily acceded to our request for the use of the building during the Polar Year.
While it is difficult, if not downright puerile, to attempt to ascribe the correct degree of importance to each tooth of a gear wheel, it is still patent that one of the first requisites of an observatory is an observer.
Joe Dodge was realist enough to understand that his old plan of “spending a winter on Mount Washington” would have to be modified to some extent. He held a responsible seven-day-a-week position with the Appalachian Mountain Club, and, moreover, there was an extremely charming Mrs. Dodge — not to mention Anne and Brooks. It was eventually decided that Joe should spend the greater part of his winter at Pinkham Notch, maintaining his base station, managing the multitudinous details of our venture, handling radio traffic from the mountain and acting only as emergency relief for the summit crew.
Although a less thrilling role than he had originally hoped to play, it fitted in better with a smooth running of the work. Besides, Joe has a way of projecting himself into any subject or activity in which he is interested so that by “empathy” he is able to enjoy it without necessarily being at the scene of operations. His few weeks on the mountain during the construction period gave him such an insight into things and his keen memory took in facts so well that he later would direct us by radiophone, as if he were in the same room, to some article for which we had searched high and low.. The illusion of Joe’s physical presence was intensified by his faithful adherence to our radiophone schedules. Three times each day during the whole first winter, he, or Mrs. Dodge, or some member of the hut crew was on the air to assure us that we had friends close at hand. We shall probably never quite realize our tremendous psychological advantage over our predecessors by [having] the modern means of communication.
At any time, it would be easy to recruit volunteers for such a romantic adventure as living on a mountain peak all winter long. It is never such a simple matter to pick a crew whose enthusiasm is genuine, for people are so easily misled by their own emotions. After narrowing down the group to those who will stick, who are physically and mentally capable of “taking it,” we must choose the few who have some accomplishments along specifically useful lines. The final choice, then, will include a minimum number of men (for economic reasons) so balanced both in respect to disposition and vocation that the work will be most easily accomplished and the general level of good humor will never fall below the “limit of tolerability” for the least gregarious member.
To assert that the Mount Washington Observatory crew consisted of such a group of paragons would be to admit that we are all egotistical prevaricators. At the same time, without a reasonable supply of the virtues we have predicted for success, the Observatory could never have attained its present age and prestige. Probably what has been lacking in ability has been compensated for in sheer enthusiasm. While even common love of the mountains may not always have been sufficient grounds for the suppression of animosities, the observers are civilized beings with too many cultural inoculations to contract the “cabin fever” of illiterate and brutish lumbermen about whom are written the romantic stories by which we are [sometimes] judged. Anyway, we are too busy to fight!
Among Joe Dodge’s many friends were two of whom he naturally thought first when the project of “spending a winter on Mount Washington” began to take form. They were Bob Monahan and Al Sise.
Robert Scott Monahan of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Dartmouth ‘29, a graduate of Yale School of Forestry, had spent many summers in the White Mountains as a hutman and in temporary Forest Service work. Winter days often found him trotting up and down The Mountain. During the summer of 1932, he accompanied Bradford Washburn on the latter’s reconnoitering of Mt. Crillon in Alaska.
Having previously capitalized upon his journalistic ability, Bob was confident that his chief contribution toward the Observatory work, writing paid press dispatches and giving lectures, would go far toward defraying the inevitable cash expenditures on the venture. He had long shared Joe Dodge’s romantic desire to be a member of the group that would eventually reoccupy the summit. He became an inevitable member of the crew.
Joe Dodge’s short guffaw and his remark, “That damned clown, Sise,” hint at only the obvious side of Al, which anyone can see in the way he skis, in his enthusiasm for boat trips and parties. Sise thoroughly enjoys life and lives it fully. As an amateur radioman, he has probably done more wrong things with excellent results than any other living person. With his equipment looking like a pile of junk metal and old wire, he has hung up records that will long be remembered. If Al should be castaway with nothing but a barrel, it is certain that he would immediately turn the wire hoops into some sort of radio. With the fleets of many nations headed for his isle, He would make the staves into skis and run the dunes until help arrived. What an unbeatable combination for a radioman at Mount Washington!
Since a triumvirate had been decided upon for the winter’s stay, there was still another name in the front of Joe Dodge’s memory; that of Salvatore Pagliuca. Sal had been a frequenter of the mountain trails over a period of many years, but until shortly before the Polar Year, he had not been such a dyed-in-the-wool habitue as Sise and Monahan. By virtue of a leave of absence from one of the nation’s large electrical concerns at the crest of the prosperity wave, he found, on returning from his native Italy, that many of his former superiors had been “retired” on the advent of the Depression, while no small number of this former associates were trying their hand at door-to-door salesmanship. Sal himself was still on leave. He shrugged his eloquent Italian shoulders and hit for the hills where Joe Dodge was building two new huts to complete the chain from Franconia Notch to Crawford Notch. Joe was glad to sign him on as carpenter.
With touching faith in the popular conception of a carpenter as someone who works in wood, Sal perused all the books available on wood carpentry. There are no formalities to go through when you start working for Joe. Simply take off your shirt, spit on your hands, and lo, you are an employee. Sal shoveled his way, from the moment he reached the hills, to a hammer. He drove some nails and then went to work selecting rocks for foundations. If he did not distinguish himself for overproduction, in competition with the “Polacks” (Joe’s generic term for the French and Irish huskies of Berlin and Gorham who do the heavy work on construction), he won their admiration for the cheerful way he attacked every job assigned to him.
Suddenly the cook quit. Sal was handed an old cook book and was told that he was now a cook. Even if the previous incumbent had not been the world’s worst cook, Sal would have shone just as brightly in his new capacity. A white-collar engineer, a construction cook, and a mountaineer with a disposition like the sunshine upon his own Bay of Naples — this was the man Joe Dodge chose wisely as the third member of the Observatory staff.
As time went on, it became increasingly evident that despite Al Sise’s interest and willingness to help the project in every way, he did not consider it advisable to accept the post that he might have filled so admirably. While he could survive nicely on a desert isle, if need be, the idea of living as a hermit for many months did not appeal to his imagination. Wisely, he declined Joe’s offer. In so doing, he automatically made himself available for service to the Observatory in Boston. In that capacity, he proved himself invaluable.
The warm friendship the writer feels for Al Sise is undoubtedly increased by the fact that his decision launched me upon a very new and wonderful experience. Joe Dodge, in August 1932, gave me a definite invitation to join the Observatory staff. I accepted with alacrity, having been on the summit of Mount Washington a couple of weeks earlier for the first time in my life.
With one member of the staff in Alaska and the other two cracking cans for patrons of the A.M.C. huts, the future Observatory a shelter for city goofers (a goofer is, probably, anyone who does not work in an A.M.C. hut) who were worn out by the exertion of driving a car up the eight miles of good dirt road, there wasn’t much that could be done toward starting the Mount Washington Observatory until the closing of the huts and the cessation of traffic on the Summit Road.
At the time of the total solar eclipse in August, the hut system was permeated with a pseudo-scientific atmosphere. Armed with meteorological equipment furnished by Dr. Brooks of Blue Hill, most of Joe’s hut boys got a speaking acquaintance with the tools of weather observing as they whirled sling psychrometers, read temperatures, and watched the sky become increasingly darker. During the summer, and especially at the time of the eclipse, Joe Dodge talked Observatory to anyone who would listen. As a result, many good friends were made for our cause among the many scientists and amateurs who observed the phenomenon in its totality in the North Country.
The sun crept earlier to bed each September day until at last, near the middle of the month, it sank in the west just as a heavily laden pack train approached the summit of Mount Washington from the Lakes of the Clouds. That night was Sal’s[?] and my first in our new home. The “Lakes” hut was now buttoned up, but it was too late to drive the truck down to Pinkham. We would bunk overnight in the Stage Office. Despite a wood fire in the front room, a sixty-mile-an-hour wind spent a surprising amount of energy getting in through the windows and around their casings. The very floor leaked cold air. So this was where the next few months of our lives were to be spent!
Just before we tumbled sleepily into the assorted beds and cots in the attic, with all the Lakes blankets we had packed up as bedding, I shrugged my shoulders mentally and consoled myself with the thought that a single damp woolen shirt against one’s back might be the cause of such a chilly sensation. Joe and I made a good bed that banished all thoughts of chill. The wind, however, has a psychological as well as a physical effect. The secondary effect became apparent as soon as we had ceased yelling at each other. While the rattling of the roof and its creaking were not fearsome, I cannot deny that it was a disquieting sound.
Leaving behind us those of our effects that were not at the moment necessary, we descended the mountain the next morning, in order to visit Blue Hill and to obtain equipment and supplies from Boston.
What followed is a jumble of memories. Blue Hill was a mysterious castle full of instruments, charts, pilot balloons, and friendliness. Mrs. Dodge’s Aunt Hilda and Al Sise’s mother were ever helpful and charming hostesses to our group. There were telephone calls, telegrams, letters to be written, friends to be seen. Plans held in abeyance until the whole crew should be assembled were finally considered. The first evening’s conclave dealt in matters of how many cans of peas, of beets; how many pounds of sugar; fig jam versus raspberry jam (we got both!). As we draped ourselves around Al’s shack (any enclosure surrounding amateur radio equipment is a “shack”) in the garage, Joe suggested, listened respectfully to counter suggestions and arguments, but eventually wrote down pretty much the sort of list he had had in mind for months. The next day, various members of the group scurried about Greater Boston for this and that. Sal was able to report a gift of flour and spaghetti from his friends. Joe became enthusiastic over secondhand meters and radio tubes, while Sise and Monahan bought silk gloves and arranged a tasty letterhead.
While these days and the ensuing ones at Pinkham Notch were very important, they were not so filled with the feeling of urgency as the following ones we spent on the Mountain in preparation for winter — with winter arriving in small doses every few days. Golden hours, not of ease, but of hard work, lay before us. We can never again recapture the entire spirit of them. Into the old “Stage Office” one foggy October day we moved all our remaining bags and baggage. As we unloaded the two trucks of their assortment of personal belongings, meteorological instruments, radio equipment and food, we were continually dodging other boxes and cartons that had been sent up earlier. The heavy 1- 1/2 kilowatt gas-electric plant was bumped over the pile of lumber that was soon to be a new floor. Through the open door (there was no use shutting it between trips) was blown the cold, rime-forming fog of a typical Mount Washington winter day. Across the railroad tracks (the Summit House was dimly visible) lay 14 tons of soft coal to keep us warm. Between thaws and the final freeze, that heap would have to be bagged in 200-pound sacks and transported down to the garage for storage.
However, our first job was to remove the newly placed wall board downstairs so that Cabot QuiltCabot Quilt, an insulating material composed of eel grass sewed between two layers of heavy paper, might be placed between the outer and inner walls. In addition, the attic above the front room was thoroughly insulated, and partially sound-proofed in the same manner. A new floor was laid upon heavy roofing paper over the old one. Work was begun on the coal pile and a preliminary radiophone circuit was established with Pinkham Notch, whither the writer was sent for that purpose. After the storm windows had been placed, the chains over the roof tightened, and all the work of making the place livable had been finished, we were free to start making our Observatory, installing instruments, wiring the house for electricity, building and setting up radio equipment. Joe had enlisted Itchy Mills, chief of the Polacks, Ralph Batchelder, mule skinner and hutmaster par excellence, and Wen Stephenson, prospective hermit of Carter Notch, to help the Observatory crew at the start. In Joe’s right rear pants pocket was his badge of office, the six-foot folding rule with which he had bossed many a construction job.
Despite all his other activities, Sal always managed to organize a meal for us at an appropriate time. We all found a box and a plate somehow when his “Come-and-get-it-or-we’ll-heave-it-out” resounded from the kitchen.
Then, relaxed, Joe would begin his playful banter, poking fun at anyone he might choose as goat for that meal, usually picking Itchy who worshiped him in a profanely argumentative manner. Or, Joe might be loquacious rather than boisterous. Say, did I ever tell you fellas about those big snowshoe rabbits Ross and I shot?"
“Oh, you mean the nine-foot rabbit who kicked you, Joe?”
“Nine feet — NINE feet! Say, he was, he was (and that same sheepish grin Joe uses whether he is telling the truth or not) Jeezus, he was all of twelve feet. Yes sir, fella, when that rabbit was shot and hung around my neck — see, like this — his FEET were draggin’ on the ground!”
“Well, Joe, was that the one who kicked you...?”
“Did he kick me? Say, let me tell you mister...” And so on until Joe felt it was time to go back to work. Then, everything was sober industry again.
While each day of the Observatory’s building was a series of adventures for those who took part in it, our purpose now is simply to tell that it was built and why. Suffice it to say that one day, the last Polack hit the trail. We had appreciated, and needed, all the help we could get. We should have enjoyed the company of our friends for as long as they might care to stay. But when we were finally alone, there came a feeling of exhilaration. Joe and the six-foot rule were gone now. We were the bosses. There was the sense, though, of responsibility and dependence upon ourselves that we had not had until now. The exhilaration was tempered with sobriety. At the moment our last remaining friend had disappeared into the fog, we became men rather than boys.
“Winter on Mount Washington!!”