Lumps and Bumps on Your Pet: What Could They Be?

If you have an aging pet, you may periodically find some kind of lump or bump on its skin, or maybe even deeper. If you’re like me, your mind probably jumps first to the thought–is it cancer?

According to Dr. Laura Garrett, veterinary oncologist at the University of Illinois Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Urbana, dogs and cats get cancer at the same rate that people do. But, she says, finding a lump or bump doesn’t automatically mean something malignant or fatal.

A lump that you may find on your pet could be one of several things: an infection, such as an abscess from a dog or cat bite; inflammation, like a small, localized reaction to a vaccine or a bug bite; or a tumor, meaning an abnormal growth of cells, which could be either benign (harmless) or malignant (invasive and potentially harmful to your pet’s health). The best way to determine the origin of the lump, and the best thing for your pet’s health, would be to have it examined by your veterinarian.

Typically, a veterinarian will measure the lump and then take a fine-needle aspirate. This is a process in which a small needle is used to take a sample of the cells in the lump. The veterinarian will then view the cells under a microscope to get an initial idea of what is causing this mass (another word for “tumor”). In most cases, the sample is then sent off to a lab of experts for a final evaluation.

“No doctor can determine if a mass is ‘safe’ just by looking at the lump itself or by feeling it,” Dr. Garrett says. That means that neither you nor your veterinarian can be certain that a mass is harmless without getting a microscopic look at the cells within via a fine needle aspirate or a biopsy.

If you do find a mass on your pet, you should be prepared to answer a few questions for your veterinarian: Have any changes occurred since you first noticed the mass? Does the mass seem to bother your pet? Has it been oozing any fluid or blood? If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, it might be a cause of increased concern, but answering “no” does not eliminate the possibility that the lump is a health risk.

Fortunately for middle-aged to older dogs, the most common lump they get is a lipoma–a benign, fatty growth. Most lipomas never become a problem, and also have nothing to do with the weight of the animal. Dr. Garrett recommends, “Lipomas usually need to be removed only if they are in a spot that bothers the pet or the owner or if the lump begins to change quickly.”

If the lump is not a lipoma, your veterinarian will try to determine what type of tumor is. If this can’t be done at your clinic, a cell sample or larger biopsy may need to be sent to a specialty diagnostic lab for examination.

If a tumor is malignant, your veterinarian will determine whether it has spread to other parts of the body by taking a fine-needle aspirate of lymph nodes, taking chest X-rays, or sometimes doing an ultrasound of the animal’s abdomen. A specialty oncologist such as Dr. Garrett has the knowledge of what tumors commonly spread, where they spread to, and how to treat them. Your veterinarian may refer you to a specialist if testing or treatment can’t be done at your regular clinic.

Treatment for malignant tumors depends on what type of cancer it is, but the range of options is very similar to what is available for human cancer patients. If the location of the tumor permits, surgery may be performed to remove it. Other tumors may be treated with various forms of chemotherapy. Luckily, dogs and cats usually tolerate chemotherapy much better than people.

“About 20 percent of pets have mild gastrointestinal upset, such as vomiting, diarrhea, or decreased appetite. A similar percent of pets may have low white blood cell counts that can predispose to infections, but a count so low that it can be life-threatening happens less than 3 percent of the time. Hair loss may be seen in dogs whose hair coats grow continuously (like poodles), but most dog breeds do not experience hair loss. Cats may lose their whiskers and guard hairs, making their coats more of a fluffy texture,” Dr. Garrett says.

Many cancers in cats and dogs can be cured if caught early and treated appropriately, according to Dr. Garrett. Getting new lumps and bumps examined by your veterinarian may prevent a disease from becoming more severe. Be sure to check with your local veterinarian if you have questions or concerns about your pet’s lumps and bumps.

Julia Disney is an Information Specialist at University of Illinois’ College of Veterinary Medicine.

Cartoons: Medical Merriment

 “You have a pretty good constitution, but take it easy with the pursuit of happiness,” from Nov/Dec 1996

"You have a pretty good constitution,
but take it easy with the pursuit of happiness."
from Nov/Dec 1996

“Sorry about my handwriting, Mrs. Trumbull. That should read ‘topical,’ not ‘tropical,’ application." from Jul/Aug 2008

"Sorry about my handwriting, Mrs. Trumbull.
That should read ‘topical,’ not ‘tropical,’ application."
from Jul/Aug 2008

 “Herbert, you should have been suspicious when they said it was a big semi-private room.” from Mar/Apr 1997

"Herbert, you should have been suspicious when they
said it was a big semi-private room."
from Mar/Apr 1997

“Good heavens, nurse, I wonder how long this has been here! This isn’t my diploma—it’s the guarantee on my wife’s vacuum cleaner!” from July/Aug 2005

"Good heavens, nurse,
I wonder how long this has been here! This isn’t my diploma
—it’s the guarantee on my wife’s vacuum cleaner!"
from July/Aug 2005

  “This sort of thing can become a real problem if it’s not treated in time.” from Mar/Apr 1998

"This sort of thing can become a real problem
if it’s not treated in time."
from Mar/Apr 1998

 “Heart Research Center." from Sept/Oct 2010

"Heart Research Center."
from Sept/Oct 2010

“Mr. Peabody is here for his annual exam.” from Jan/Feb 98

"Mr. Peabody is here for his annual exam."
from Jan/Feb 98

Searching for Silence

In what might be the quietest place in the continental United States, I hear only the squeak of boots and water slapping against my hat. I can’t tell if it’s fresh rain or drips from the canopy overhead where old-growth branches lace together and turn the sky spruce-needle green.

Winter storms knocked down trees a hundred feet tall, eight feet in diameter at the base. Already lichen, shelf-fungus, and flowers the size of pinheads punctuate these fallen logs. A dozen kinds of fern twirl around scatters of bark, and soon entire new glades will be springing up. In my acoustically sensitive state, I wonder, what is the sound of leaves stretching very far to find open sunshine?

The Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park in the northwest corner of Washington state—if Washington is shaped like a mitten, the park’s at the tip of the thumb—is my first stop on a listening tour. I’m hoping that if I pay close enough attention, I’ll learn what the world sounds like when it’s only talking to itself.

I need that, because modern life bludgeons us with sound. Cheap car stereos have more amplification than the Beatles used at Shea Stadium. Thanks to the endless hiss of traffic, 6 a.m. lawnmowers, the clang of construction, that annoying cell phone jangle, we live inside noise. Even when we think we’re in a silent place, we’re not. Tests show that if you ask relaxed people in this country to hum, the note they’ll most likely produce is a B natural—the same as the electricity roaring through the wires everywhere surrounding us.

Olympic National Park
A silence-seeker savors the unparalleled quiet of the Olympic National Park. Photo courtesy Edward Readicker-Henderson.

And in the quietest place in the continental United States, no matter how determined I am not to make a sound, my heartbeat thrums in my ears, almost drowning out the birdsong. I shift my weight, inadvertently bump my walking stick; it falls, clattering against a tree trunk like a wind-up drumming monkey before it finally comes to rest in a patch of moss.

In 1995, Gordon Hempton, an Emmy-winning natural sounds recording artist who was recovering from a bout of temporary deafness and horrified by the noise around him, chose this tiny spot of land in the Hoh Rainforest—47º 51.959N, 123º 52.221W, to be exact—and declared it a sanctuary of quiet. The One Square Inch project was born.

Gordon’s idea is simple, lovely, hopeful: Just as waves ripple out from a dropped pebble in a pond, silence will radiate from a spot that’s kept beautifully still. “One Square Inch is exactly that, an inch I’m defending from noise,” he says at the trailhead, looking over the three of us—me and two young women, a soaking-wet trio of sound pilgrims. “And can one square inch of quiet manage a thousand square miles around it? So far, every indication is that it can.”

Along the three-mile hike in, we stop for slugs, for snails the color of beach sand, for snakes sure they’re doing a remarkable impression of tree roots. The Hoh River, cloudy with glacial silt, parallels us, turning gravity into music, the ever-downhill rush to the ocean.

Then, as we cross a low ridge, the entire soundscape changes. The river drops away, and this tiny valley, Mt. Tom Meadow, seems to hold quiet like a whispering secret. With a meter the size of a paperback book, Gordon checks noise levels. The forest—wind, trees, river, two or three unseen birds calling from the underbrush—comes in at 27 A-weighted decibels (dBA) about half as loud as normal conversation level. Or, to put it more simply, the ringing in my ears is the loudest thing I hear.

We cross under a tree shaped like an upside down wishbone, tramp through mud that grabs at my boots, and then into the deeper forest along an old elk trail. And there, without any fanfare but a tiny marker placed there by Gordon himself, is the Inch.

We scatter, each staking out a bit of territory, each listening eagerly, and just as eagerly hoping to hear very little. What does true silence sound like? At first, there is only the soft noises of the three other people, all boots and Gore-tex, all trying hard not to move, not to breathe loudly, but then the longer I sit, the more I hear. The river rumbles the bass line of the landscape’s music. Birds provide the treble. A woodpecker offers percussion while I watch a translucent spider, no bigger than a match-head, work a triangular fern leaf, and mosquitoes, one of nature’s only drone sounds, zero in on my exposed skin. My breathing stills, my heartbeat slows, and I feel as if I am unfolding, becoming a part of the quietest spot in the United States.

Then the noise comes. “A big fat airplane!” in the disappointed words of a fellow hiker. The plane more than doubled the ambient sound of the Inch, and we reacted to it as a threat: drawing in, tracking the source of the sound, hunching down for cover until the last traces of engine noise finally died away and the landscape’s quiet slowly reasserted itself.

I wonder what we lose when we lose the last bit of country where our sounds—motors and electricity and the unnatural twist of sound through plastic—don’t reach, and we have no respite at all. Surely that would be a failure of national imagination, a blight on that great American dream of room for everything.

Everything, it seems, but the perfect quiet of nature.

When I leave the Inch I think about what I’ve heard in the only place where I’ve ever been that the works of man weren’t always in some way a dominant sound: rain; the river muffled by distance; wind striking notes on trees with leaves, trees with needles, or the dead-end sound of it crashing against one of the giant Sitka spruce trunks. Although the line of sight in the forest is almost nothing—every view is blocked by old-growth—I hear at distances I’m simply not accustomed to, hearing too many things I can’t identify. I’m sure that was an owl a mile or so off, but I can’t begin to name the other half-dozen species of birds that chirped and hooted and harrumphed. We have somehow turned into strictly visual creatures, forgetting that animals define their home by knowing its every sound.

But maybe even worse than the airplane is the simple fact that the entire time I was at the Inch, trying to listen to the world, what I really heard were the noises inside my own head. “When you’re in a really quiet place,” Gordon had said, “it forces you to see who you are.” Apparently who I am is someone whose mind resembles nothing so much as a bunch of clowns at a pie fight, a scene of constant noise and bustle, thoughts spewing like whipped cream.

Olympic Mountain range
Purple lupine frame spectacular views of the Olympic Mountain range.

Maybe my next stop, Rialto Beach, will help. Olympic National Park includes not only the mountainous interior, but also nearly the entire Pacific coastline of the state of Washington, fronting more than 3,000 square miles of open sea. Rialto is, according to Gordon, “the most musical beach in the world,” and the ocean always soothes.

From the Hoh to Rialto is less than 50 miles, but in what seems to be a recurring pattern, I make half a dozen wrong turns and get very lost. Finally, on the western edge of the continent, I am there. In front of me, a line of driftwood, from small branches to entire tree trunks, shields waves from the inland world. The dominant note is a low-pitch hum, almost industrial and constant, like a factory very far off running impossibly large machines. Wave patterns overlay the hum: three small waves followed by a larger wave that comes nearly to where my feet are dug into the sand. Finally, a sound almost too fragile for me to pick up until I’ve sat and listened for more than an hour: the purr of water pulling back over rocks like a particularly delicate wind chime.

“There’s nothing you need to learn about listening,” Gordon had said. “We’re all animals. We all know how. We’re all good listeners when we’re at our most natural.” I think about times when I have been utterly entranced by sound: listening to a musician practice a Bach suite, cello echoing; the roo-roo bark my dog makes when she’s indignant; wind howling across Iceland. And my favorite sound of all, the nearly complete silence of the woman I love sleeping.

“To listen for something is one of the worst things a person can do,” Gordon had continued. “Just open up.” And it’s true; in all of those moments, every highlight of sound I can recall from my past, I wasn’t listening, I was simply there, and that was enough.

A gull flies overhead, low enough that the thump of its wings alone seems strong enough to keep it aloft. Never mind the aerodynamics, flight must have started with this sound, the sheer muscle of wind in feather.

And taking that as a sign of hope, I head to Hurricane Ridge, about 50 miles as the crow flies northeast of Rialto but three times that distance by car. Just past Port Angeles the road turns its back on the ocean and into a different season; from the sea to the ridge the car climbs over 5,000 feet, and the temperature drops 20 degrees.

When at last I get out of the car and walk onto the ridge, a landscape covered with alpine plants only inches tall, the sound is what I hope birds experience, wind unimpeded and on its own errands occasionally deigning to come to earth and lift a raven into the air.

I don’t listen for any of it. I hike to where I see nothing but the bruise blue of distant mountains and simply hear. At least for a little while. Longer than yesterday. Longer than the day before. And that’s a hopeful thing because what the world is telling me in these sounds is that any time I remember to pay attention it will be there, singing to itself and to anybody else who wants to listen.


SHHH! 5 More of America’s Loveliest Noise-Free Zones

Olympic National Park’s Hoh Rainforest, site of Gordon Hempton’s One Square Inch project (onesquareinch.org), may be the quietest place in the Lower 48, but if you care to plunge into a silent spot or a place where only nature makes noise, here are five other wonderful places to visit:

1. Cape Cod is known as home to the rich and famous, but it still has some spots of nearly untouched wilderness. Marconi Beach (just below Wellfleet) is “amazingly quiet—you wouldn’t figure,” says Hempton. Show up just before sunrise.

2. Voyageurs National Park lies along Minnesota’s border with Canada. Hempton calls it “sonically inspiring, surprisingly quiet.” Voyageurs’ prime listening attraction is Lake Astrid. On a summer evening, sit back and enjoy that quintessential sound of the north: the loon’s warbling cry.

3. The Everglades are full of wildlife, but the landscape is threatened because of water depletion, and the soundscape is under attack by airline overflights. Hempton suggests spending a night at Big Cypress for a sonic environment of songbirds and the increasingly rare growl of frogs.

4. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island is technically the quietest spot in the United States; inside some of the volcanic cones, researchers have gotten sound readings at a fraction of that of human breath. However, the park is also one of the nation’s most popular for air tours. Bad weather is the key; low clouds keep the helicopters grounded, and a hike into one of the volcanoes will likely be near silent.

5. The Grand Canyon, like Hawaii Volcanoes, is under tremendous sonic threat from air tours, but the National Park Service maintains a no-fly zone over the rim-to-rim trail. For drivers, the North Rim is less frantic than the South; for hikers, stay overnight at Havasupai Falls on the canyon’s bottom then head into the box canyons nearby (some registering as low as 3 dBA). Mike Buchheit, director of the Grand Canyon Field Institute, says the best time for silence-seekers to come is in January or February when fresh snowfall muffles the soundscape. He adds, “The canyon wren is the sound of the backcountry here. It’s your ticket to heaven.”

The Surprising and Familiar Mark Twain

He was America’s best known author when he died, as he is today. But in the 101 years since his death, Mark Twain’s reputation has been so polished by admiring generations that it’s taken on a rich, unnatural luster. It’s hard to distinguish the man from the legend.

Fortunately we have contemporary accounts of Twain, which give a touch of human dimension to the Great Man. One of these contemporaries was the drama critic Brander Matthews. In 1920, he wrote his “Memories of Mark Twain” for the Post, which told of their 30-year friendship.

Much of his account agrees with the popular image of the man. For example, there is his ready wit in public speaking:

A score of American men of letters were invited [to a dinner with Andrew Carnegie] and half a dozen of us were summoned to stand and deliver. When Mark’s turn came, he soared aloft in whimsical exaggeration, casually dropping a reference to the time when he had lent Carnegie a million dollars.

Our smiling host promptly interjected: “That had slipped my memory!”

And Mark looked down on him solemnly, and retorted, “Then, the next time, I’ll take a receipt.”

He referred to Twain’s love of tobacco:

He was an incessant smoker, yet he was wont to say that he never smoked to excess— that is, he never smoked two cigars at once and he never smoked when he was asleep. But [William Dean] Howells has recorded that when Mark came to visit him, he used to go into Mark’s room at night to remove the still lighted cigar from the lips of his sleeping guest.

But Matthews also saw aspects of Twain that are less well known, such as his desire to be taken seriously.

Many of those who have written about him have dealt with him solely as a humorist, overlooking the important fact that a large part of his work is not laughter-provoking and not intended to be.

[He once told me] “I’m glad that you…have been telling people that I am serious. When I make a speech now, I find that they are a little disappointed if I don’t say some things that are serious; and that just suits me—for I have so many serious things I want to say!”

And there was a surprisingly resentful side to Twain, which nearly ended his friendship with Matthews. After Matthews had publicly taken a position different from Twain’s—

I soon heard from more than one of our common friends that Mark was acutely dissatisfied; and when I next met him, he was distant in his manner—and I might even describe it as chilly. Of course, I regretted this; but I could only hope that his fundamental friendliness would warm him up sooner or later.

Twain with Brander Matthews and the editor of Harper's Magazine, Laurence Hutton

I knew that Mark had a hair-trigger temper and that he was swift to let loose all the artillery of heaven to blow a foe from off the face of the earth. I was aware moreover that a professional humorist is not infrequently a little deficient in that element of the sense-of-humor which guards a man against taking himself too seriously. I had been told also that Mark, genial as he was, and long suffering as he often was, could be a good hater, superbly exaggerating the exuberance of his ill-will. His old friend, Twitchell, once wrote him about a piece of bad luck which had befallen a man who had been one of Mark’s special antipathies; and Mark wrote back:

“I am more than charmed to hear of it; still, it doesn’t do me half the good it would have done if it had come sooner. My malignity has so worn out and wasted away with time and the exercise of charity that even his death would not afford me anything more than a mere fleeting ecstasy, a sort of momentary, pleasurable titillation, now—unless of course, it happened in some particularly radiant way, like burning or boiling or something like that. Joys that come to us after the capacity for enjoyment is dead are but an affront.”

But this was Twain being outrageous—something he did well and something he was encouraged to do. In fact, Twain could barely manage to hold a grudge very long. Not a year passed before Twain put aside his resentment when he met Matthews again at an artist’s retreat.

Within a week after our arrival Mark stepped up on our porch, as pleasantly as if there had never been a cloud on our friendship,

“I hear you play a French game called piquet,” he began. “I wish you would teach me.” And we taught him, although it was no easy task, since he was forever wanting to make over the rules of the game to suit his whim of the moment—a boyish trait which I soon discovered to be entirely characteristic.

Sweet Potatoes for All

Let’s give a big shout-out to the sensational sweet potato! This versatile veggie is widely available, inexpensive, and delicious. But here’s even more to love: sweet potatoes also deliver a big dose of healthy eating for just pennies per serving.

The nutritional numbers speak for themselves: one medium sweet potato provides 40 percent of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C to fight off colds and flu viruses and vitamin D for bones and a healthy immune system. Plus, when eaten with the skin, it has more fiber than oatmeal. The colorful and creamy food is also low in fat and a good source of protein and calcium.

One Medium Sweet Potato

Calories: 120

Percent Daily Value:
Fat 0%

Cholesterol: 0%

Protein: 4%

Total Carbs: 10%

Dietary Fiber:10%

Sodium: 0%

Vitamin: A 500%

Calcium: 4%

Vitamin C: 45%

Vitamin D: 60%



Thanksgiving Safety for Your Pets

“Honey, where’d the turkey go?” And then you realize that the dog is also mysteriously missing in action. Expecting your dog to pass up an unattended roast turkey is like expecting you’ll eat just one bite of that pumpkin pie.

The Thanksgiving feast is a treat for people, but a potential threat for our furry friends. All too often the dog gets a stomach ache—or worse, life-threatening pancreatitis—thanks to your brother, sister, niece, and cousin each sneaking him a portion of that delicious gravy-laden turkey. According to Dr. Thandeka Ngwenyama, a veterinarian at the University of Illinois Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Urbana who is pursuing board certification in emergency and critical care, “A small piece of skinless turkey, with no gravy should not cause a problem, but the fatty sauces that go along with our traditional meal can, because pets’ digestive system is not designed to handle a high-fat meal.

“The best treat owners can give their pet is attention,” says Dr. Ngwenyama. Your dog will probably be even more grateful for a good belly rub, or being allowed to tag along on your after-dinner walk.

While you are refraining from offering people food, you should be aware that four-legged food snatchers could wind up in medical trouble if they down any of these foods that are toxic to pets: onions, garlic, raisins, grapes, macadamia nuts, and avocadoes. By now, most pet owners know that chocolate is also very toxic to pets, and the more and darker the chocolate the greater the toxic effect. If you think your pet may have eaten something she shouldn’t have, contact your local veterinary emergency clinic or call the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center Hotline at 888-426-4435.

A final food warning: as you stand at the sink scraping the plates for the dishwasher, do not be tempted to give Fido that turkey bone, no matter how hard he tries to win you over. Many holidays have been ruined when foreign objects, such as turkey bones, become stuck in the pet’s throat. This can become a very serious problem if not treated promptly. Dr. Ngwenyama says, “Unfortunately, it may take a few days before owners realize that their dog has something lodged in his esophagus.”

In addition to food-related illnesses, “hit by car” is another frequent and tragic emergency seen over the holidays. Owners usually tell the same sad story: their guests, not used to having a pet around, accidentally let the dog or cat out of the house, and the animal ran into the street.

Keep your pets healthy and your holiday happy by remaining watchful and restricting the people food to people.

Ashley Mitek is an Information Specialist at University of Illinois’ College of Veterinary Medicine.

Favorite Holiday Recipes from the Staff of the Post

We challenged the staff of The Saturday Evening Post to a no-holds-barred cook off of classic holiday dishes. Here are the top four recipes as chosen by our panel of all too willing editors turned tasters.


Lemon Rosemary Chicken

Lemon Rosemary Chicken
Lemon Rosemary Chicken

(Makes 8 3-ounce servings)

“Thanksgiving for a few? Give the gobbler a break with this simple and flavorful baked chicken recipe. It’s perfect when you’re only feeding part of the clan!” —Elise Lindstrom, Dietitian

Ingredients

  • 1 3-pound chicken
  • 4 sprigs fresh rosemary
  • Salt (optional)
  • Pepper
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 small lemon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Chop two sprigs of rosemary and toss in olive oil with pepper and optional salt. Brush oil mixture all over chicken, including inside.
2. Pierce lemon several times with fork then place inside chicken cavity with two whole sprigs of rosemary. Loosely tie bird closed with string.
3. Place chicken in pan, breast down. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes, then turn chicken over and cook for another 30 to 35 minutes. Increase temperature to 400° and cook for 20 minutes more.
4. Remove from oven and let stand 10 minutes before serving.


Per serving
Calories: 140
Total Fat: 8 g (Sat. Fat: 2.5 g)
Sodium: 330 mg
Carbohydrate: 0 g
Fiber: 0 g
Protein: 17 g
Diabetic Exchanges: 2 medium-fat


Minnesota Wild Rice Stuffing

Minnesota Wild Rice Stuffing. Photo by Elise Lindstrom.
Minnesota Wild Rice Stuffing. Photo by Elise Lindstrom.

(Makes 10 ½-cup servings)

“Because my family is from Minnesota, our Christmas always includes this Midwest take on a traditional side dish. Made with long-grain, wild rice, this stuffing will keep you warm even on the coldest winter day.” —Brittany Seaburg, Circulation Coordinator

Ingredients

  • ⅟₂ cup chopped celery
  • ⅟₃ cup chopped onion
  • 3 tablespoons butter or margarine
  • 1 egg
  • 1 ⅟₂ cup chicken broth
  • 1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
  • ⅛ teaspoon pepper
  • ⅟₄ teaspoon salt (optional)
  • 3 cups torn whole-wheat artisan bread
  • 1 ⅟₂ cups cooked wild rice

Directions

In skillet, sauté celery and onion in butter until tender. In large bowl, combine egg, broth, parsley, pepper, and optional salt. Mix in celery/onion, torn bread, and rice. Spoon mixture into greased 1-1/2-quart baking dish. Cover with foil and bake at 350°F for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake 15 to 20 minutes more or until set.


Per serving
Calories: 142
Total Fat: 5.6 g (Sat. Fat: 2.3 g)
Sodium: 278 mg
Carbohydrate: 30 g
Fiber: 3.7 g
Protein: 8.1 g
Diabetic Exchanges: 2 carbohydrate


Pancetta & Parm Brussels Sprouts

Pancetta and Parmesan Brussels Sprouts. Photo by Elise Lindstrom.
Pancetta and Parmesan Brussels Sprouts. Photo by Elise Lindstrom.

(Makes 6 ½-cup servings.)

“My siblings never thought they liked Brussels sprouts—until I introduced them to this recipe last Thanksgiving. Now they want sprouts for Christmas and New Year’s, too!” —Corey Michael Dalton, Associate Editor

Ingredients

  • 1 pound Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
  • ⅟₂ teaspoon kosher salt
  • ⅟₄ cup finely chopped pancetta (about 1 ounce)
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • 3 minced garlic cloves
  • 2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

Boil 2 quarts of water. Add kosher salt and halved Brussels sprouts to water. Boil sprouts for 4 or 5 minutes until bright green. Drain and set aside. In pan, cook pancetta over medium heat until it releases its juices, then add olive oil. Sauté garlic and pancetta in olive oil for several minutes. Add sprouts and cook for 5-6 minutes, stirring often. Serve sprouts with Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.


Per serving
Calories: 65
Total Fat: 1.9 g (Sat. Fat: 0.7 g)
Sodium: 302 mg
Carbohydrate: 7.9 g
Fiber: 3 g
Protein: 6 g
Diabetic Exchanges: 1.5 nonstarchy vegetable


Lemon Pound Cake with Raspberry Sauce

Lemon Pound Cake with Raspberry Sauce. Photo by Elise Lindstrom.
Lemon Pound Cake with Raspberry Sauce. Photo by Elise Lindstrom.

(Makes 12 servings.)

“The sweet yet tart flavor of the lemon cake paired with the red raspberry drizzle makes this the perfect dessert for any holiday meal. Add a dollop of whipped cream to really push it over the edge.” —Jeff Slavens, Special Projects Coordinator

Ingredients

  • 1 ⅟₂ cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • ⅟₂ teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 cup plain Greek yogurt
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 extra-large eggs
  • 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
  • ⅟₂ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • ⅟₂ cup canola oil
  • 12 ounces frozen raspberries
  • ⅟₄ cup sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8 1/2-inch loaf pan. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt into medium bowl. In large bowl, whisk together yogurt, sugar, eggs, lemon zest, and vanilla. Slowly whisk dry ingredients into wet ingredients. With rubber spatula, fold canola oil into batter until all incorporated. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 50 minutes or until a toothpick stuck into the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and slice.
2. To make raspberry sauce, place raspberries and sugar in saucepan and bring to boil. Pour through sieve to remove seeds. Drizzle sauce over cake slices.


Per serving (cake)
Calories: 247
Total Fat: 10.6 g (Sat. Fat: 1 g)
Sodium: 197 mg
Carbohydrate: 36 g
Fiber: 0.5 g
Protein: 4.3 g
Diabetic Exchanges: 2 carbohydrate, 2 fat

Per serving (sauce)
Calories: 30
Total Fat: 0.2 g (Sat. Fat 0 g)
Sodium: 0 mg
Carbohydrate: 7.5 g
Fiber: 2 g
Protein: 0.3 g
Diabetic Exchanges: ⅟₂ carbohydrate

For more holiday recipes from the Post staff, go here.

Feeding the Hungry Can be a True Holiday Blessing

In the gathering dusk, men and women in dark parkas and shaggy wool caps slowly begin to emerge from the neighborhood’s side streets and move haltingly down Winooski Avenue. Heads down, hands shoved in their pockets against the cold, they silently pass windows lit for the holidays and move toward a huge warehouse.

The warehouse is located 10 or 11 blocks north of the Victorian homes and upscale shops for which the city of Burlington, Vermont, has, time and again, been rated as one of the ten best places to live in America by a slew of national media. But here there are no houses trimmed in lacy gingerbread and no chic shops. Instead, sagging homes line the street surrounding the warehouse, which—along with a small kitchen—is home to the Chittenden County Emergency Food Shelf.

A freezing rain pelts the 60 or so men and women gathering outside. Inside, eight volunteer students from the University of Vermont (UVM) dressed in jeans and khakis are working furiously to bake chicken, warm up Tater-Tots, re-heat donated pizza, chop vegetables, make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and put bananas and beverages within easy reach of anyone who comes through the door.

Six nights a week, the Salvation Army makes dinner for those who have fallen through the safety nets of the city, state, and nation. But on Sunday, the Army’s day of rest, the UVM kids take over and make sure that anyone who’s hungry gets fed.

The students are more than just short-order cooks. With $85 from UVM, the group has spent the afternoon shopping for bargains at PriceChopper; scavenging for pizza seconds at American Flatbread, Uno’s, and Domino’s; and sweeping up not-quite-stale pastries at Starbucks. They arrive here at the Food Shelf by 4:30 p.m.

This year the program is headed by a tall, blonde chemistry major from Ohio. At age 22, senior Carly Hodgins has been a part of this group for four years and is a masterful organizer. She bursts through the door loaded with bags of bread, boxes of pizza, and a carful of fellow students. Within minutes every hand is scrubbed, chicken is in the oven, salad is being tossed, pizza is warming on the stovetop, and this observer is put to work too, chopping what seem to be a zillion carrots.

Here are the stark facts about hunger in this plentiful nation. While 96,000,000,000 pounds of food are thrown away every year by the food industry—that’s 96 billion pounds—someone in 1 out of every 10 households in the United States is either hungry today or at risk of being so tomorrow.

Why they are is a matter for sociologists and politicians to debate. But for these kids, it’s beyond politics: When people are hungry you feed them.

“Time to open up!” Carly yells.

The door swings open. Men and women who’ve been waiting outside silently flow into the building, single file. There’s no pushing or shoving, just focused intent. Ten steps inside the door each man or woman picks up a waiting plate and the students start piling it with food. Every person gets a portion of meat, vegetables, salad, potatoes, and pizza. When the last person heads for a table, those who’ve been through the line can come back for seconds. The kids will serve until they run out of food.

Carly stands at the end of the food line and offers a beverage. “Apple juice?” she asks, looking straight into the eyes of each diner. “Orange juice?” Her smile is a flash of sunshine, her warmth a benediction.

As she reaches out to steady someone’s hand, I remember words buried long ago in my heart: “I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

When the last meal has been served and the last diner has gone back into the darkness, I wipe down a steel table in the kitchen and think about what these kids have accomplished: Tonight, no one in Burlington will go hungry.

To contribute to a food bank, please contact Feeding America (feedingamerica.org). Excerpted with permission from Blessed: Living a Grateful Life, © 2011 G. Ellen Michaud, published by The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., rd.com.

Edited on Dec 8, 2011: Blessed was named 2011’s “Best Inspirational Spiritual Book” by USA Book News.

A Look Back at Our Attitudes toward Domestic Workers

“You can’t find decent help these days”: the complaint echoed through the generations of the last century. It seems there were never enough cooks, maids, or nannies. And the available few were usually unskilled and hard to work with.

Things had been different in the 1880s, when every other wage-earning woman was a servant. But domestic service quickly lost its attraction and American women took other jobs. By 1900, the number of servants dropped 25%; by 1920, 60%.

Many Americans wondered why housework had become such an unpopular job. in 1943, Edna Tollman told them in her article, “So You Can’t Keep A Maid!’

It is my forthright opinion that most women have a mean streak in them when dealing with maids—a small, mean streak that makes them domineering, callous, grasping, unbelievably inconsiderate and arrogantly demanding.

Even when they have an urge to be kind, they are so wrapped up in their own lives and so lacking in understanding of the woman who serves them that the reward seldom jells.

Her years of being cook and maid to households from Philadelphia to Hollywood had acquainted her with

the hot resentment, the cold contempt, the bitterness, the animosity that the average woman’s attitude builds up in the heart of the servant she employs.

Somewhere there must be decent, considerate employers of servants. That is a sort of faith I have, but it isn’t based on personal experience.

Her bitter experiences, which she relates in her article, led to question the whole business of domestic help.

For one complacent, able-bodied, indolent woman to demand so much of the weary

"You're not talking to your wife now, chum!"
—The maid in popular culture: indomitable Hazel, from 1946.

flesh of another, as if she were some superior being, is not quite decent.

There is something un-American about…the dozens of other personal services [the employer] demands as her right, simply because she happens to be able to pay for them.

The American girl likes to think she is as good as anybody. That’s the way she has been brought up. But she isn’t allowed to think that in somebody’s kitchen; not, at least, in the kitchens I have known.

Gradually it gets under your skin. And after a while you say to yourself: “This is a helluva life. I’m going out and get a job at the dime store.”

I am off to a defense-plant job in the morning. I don’t expect to find riches at the factory…And I shan’t like the setting as much as I like a nice clean kitchen. But I shall have self-respect.

I hope you have to get up in the morning and get your own breakfast. Chin up. A little practical democracy won’t hurt you.

The article provoked an unprecedented flood of letter to the Post editors. Some writers were outraged:

“It seems incredible that your magazine, noted for its outstanding and sane articles and editorials, could allow to be published such a nasty, poison-minded thing.”

and some concurred:

A Beverly Hills husband plaintively writes, “Every word is true, and I’ve wondered how in hell my own wife could be so nice and lovely, and treat help like I’ve seen her treat our maids.” This gentleman admits he is “too big a coward” to tell his wife this, but adds—rather pathetically, we think—that he served in World War 1.

Many women submitted rebuttal articles, but the editors chose just one, which appeared the following January. Rita Halle Kleeman’s “So It’s The Housewife’s Fault, Is It?” showed that employers felt equally outraged. Ms. Kleeman said she didn’t want to hear any more about downtrodden maids—

who, though competent, willing and noble, are underpaid, overworked and generally abused by ruthless, inconsiderate or slave-driving employers. Most women who read such tales wonder where these paragons have been all their lives. There is probably not one among them who has not had at least one of the following experiences:

Having a maid dawdle for maddening hours over work that could be done in a quarter of the time, and then complain to anyone who would listen that she was overworked.

Having a maid take for granted her right to the family perfume and cigarettes, or worse, discovering…that she had been systematically collecting a trousseau from the family possessions during that time.

Or having her, after marvelous references…turn out to be dirty, disagreeable, intemperate, lazy, or all of these.

The problem with domestic service wasn’t the employer’s fault, Ms. Kleeman concluded.  It was the employees’ basic dislike of housework.

Now, if they don’t like housework, that is their privilege. But in all fairness, so long as they are unwilling to do it on any terms, let them stop blaming their distaste on housewives or on unacceptable conditions and wages.

Yet Kleeman conceded that women could be inconsiderate and unreasonable as employers. So she proposed a system that encouraged domestic workers and employers to trade information before hire.

The considerate housewife would be better off if references were given as well as asked.

If it is a serious business to take a stranger into your home, it is equally serious for her to enter it. It recognizes that maid is justified in ascertaining in advance what sort of household she is getting into and what she will be expected to do there.

Does the servant problem still exist? Are there enough maids, cooks, and nannies? And what are they paid? We don’t know. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has no statistics on the domestic work force or its wages.

If the labor problem has been solved, perhaps we can now address the legal problem of illegal workers and tax evasion. According to one estimate, though, there are about 2 million domestic workers in the U.S. Although their employers must pay half their Social Security and Medicare taxes, less than a third of them do.

Shaved Brussels Sprouts with Frizzled Ham

This refreshing twist on the usual steamed or roasted Brussels sprouts makes a scrumptious addition to any holiday meal. The inclusion of orange zest and orange juice really turns the flavor dial up to 11! (Recipe courtesy the National Pork Board.)

Shaved Brussels Sprouts with Frizzled Ham

(Makes 8 servings.)

Ingredients
  • 6 slices ham (about 3 ounces), cut in half then cut crosswise into 1/4-inch strips
  • 1 3/4 pounds Brussels sprouts, ends trimmed, outer leaves removed
  • 1 large orange
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 2 cups thinly sliced shallots (8 to 10)
  • 6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
  • 1/4 cup pine nuts
  • 2 teaspoons white balsamic or white wine vinegar
  • Salt and pepper
Directions

Thinly slice the Brussels sprouts (using a food processor with a thin slicing disk or by hand). Zest the orange, then squeeze 1/4 cup of orange juice. Set Brussels sprouts, orange zest, and orange juice aside.

In a large saucepan or small stockpot over medium heat warm the olive oil. Add the ham and cook, stirring occasionally, until crisped and golden, 3 to 4 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer ham to a plate and set aside.

Add the butter to the pan and melt over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook, stirring occasionally, until almost translucent, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, for 1 minute. Stir in the Brussels sprouts. Stir in the orange zest and orange juice and cook, stirring occasionally, until Brussels sprouts are tender, about 8 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the pine nuts and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.

Transfer the mixture to a serving bowl, top with ham, and serve.


Nutrition per serving:

Calories: 240

Protein: 11 g

Total fat: 9 g (3 g saturated fat)

Sodium: 45 mg

Cholesterol: 20 mg

Total carbohydrates: 34 g

Classic Covers: Paul Bransom’s Animals

“Mice Hiding from Fox” by Paul Bransom
"Mice Hiding from Fox" by Paul Bransom from February 3, 1923
“Mice Hiding from Fox”
by Paul Bransom
From February 3, 1923

Wildlife artist Paul Branson not only did sixteen Saturday Evening Post covers, but thirty-five remarkable covers for The Country Gentleman—among them this February 1923 painting depicting mice hiding from a beautiful, but hungry, fox.

“Fancy Rooster in Mirror” by Paul Bransom
Fancy Rooster in Mirror by Paul Bransom from April 21, 1923
“Fancy Rooster in Mirror”
by Paul Bransom
From April 21, 1923

Also from 1923, this preening rooster is irresistible. One wonders if he knows what a handsome devil he is. And one gets the feeling he does.

Bransom (1885-1979) had a propensity for drawing at a very young age. Born in Washington, D.C., he left school at 13 for an apprenticeship drawing detailed images of mechanical devices for patents. Good training, perhaps, but not as interesting as his varied creatures.

“Work Horses Pulling Plow” by Paul Bransom
Work Horses Pulling Plow -Paul Bransom From July 26, 1924
“Work Horses Pulling Plow”
by Paul Bransom
From July 26, 1924
From 1924, these handsome plow horses have a high-spirited collie to distract them while they work.

The artist later traveled to New York City and took a job as a comic strip artist. Although this sounds perhaps more fun than detailed draftsman drawings, his heart was with nature, and he spent his spare time sketching animals at the Bronx Zoo. So much time, in fact, that the zookeeper allowed him to set up a studio in the area adjacent to the lions.

“Tom Turkey and Black Cat” by Paul Bransom
Tom Turkey and Black Cat by Paul Bransom From November 25, 1916
“Tom Turkey and Black Cat”
by Paul Bransom
From November 25, 1916

We think Mr. Tom Turkey is rather handsome, but the farm cat has no patience with his fowl play.

Bransom finally tucked a portfolio under his arm and began visiting the publishing houses. The Saturday Evening Post launched his career with the purchase of several of his illustrations in 1907. The word was out on this young depicter of wildlife. By the time of this 1916 cover, he was in high demand.

“Duck Hunter and Dog” by Paul Bransom
Duck Hunter and Dog by Paul Bransom From October 1, 1929
“Duck Hunter and Dog”
by Paul Bransom
From October 1, 1929
Bransom and his wife had a retreat in the Adirondacks where many of the creatures he loved to draw were readily available.

He illustrated for as many as 35 magazines and almost 50 books. If you see a copy of The Wind in the Willows with original illustrations, they are by Paul Bransom (there is even an electronic version of it out there). He also did original illustrations for Jack London’s Call of the Wild.

“Bear and Robin Welcome Spring” by Paul Bransom
Bear and Robin Welcome Spring By Paul Bransom From March 14, 1925
“Bear and Robin Welcome Spring”
by Paul Bransom
From March 14, 1925
Speaking of Call of the Wild! This bear is joining Robin Redbreast in attempting to hurry the upcoming spring season along.

Nature is nature, and many of the illustrations Bransom did were a far cry from the cute little mole in Wind in the Willows exclaiming, “oh, bother!” One Country Gentleman cover depicts a weasel with a goose he killed on a snowy bank and another an owl with a field mouse in his beak. Possibly some of these observations were made at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Bransom painted and taught summer classes.

If you would like to see more covers by this artist, or if there is a Post or Country Gentleman artist you would like to learn more about, feel free to let us know.

Famous Contributors: Jack London

In this edition of The Saturday Evening Post’s Famous Contributors column, we take a look at Jack London, whose tales of adventure and survival made him one of the world’s first widely celebrated fiction writers, and whose popularity holds to this day.

To read London’s short story “South of the Slot,” which first appeared in the May 22, 1909 edition of the Post, click here or scroll down.

Born in 1876, San Francisco native Jack London so captured the public’s interest with his short stories and novels that he was one of the first fiction writers to gain international celebrity status. His most well-known book, The Call of the Wild, first ran as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post, and is often deemed one of the top 100 novels of all time. Meanwhile, some of his lesser-known works greatly influenced later writers. For instance, London’s dystopian novel The Iron Heel inspired George Orwell’s 1984.

By the time he enrolled at UC Berkeley at age 19, London had personally experienced much of the adventure that greatly influenced his writing. He had already sailed the Pacific on a sealing ship, pirated oysters in the San Francisco Bay, journeyed the country as a train-hopping hobo, and joined Coxey’s Army of unemployed workers to march on Washington, D.C. London dropped out of college after just six months, and, in winter 1897, journeyed to the setting of his most famous stories—the Klondike.

Although London did not prove successful as a gold prospector—a severe case of scurvy forced him to leave within months—he did hone a skill in the Yukon that brought considerably more wealth: storytelling. Inspired by the popularity of his fireside stories among fellow prospectors, London began to submit fiction to various publications on his return to the Bay Area. His first stories were published in 1899 and, in 1903, his serial The Call of the Wild was published in the Post. London’s prolific work (as a rule the disciplined novelist wrote at least 1,000 words a day for 18 years) and immense popularity netted him unprecedented wealth and recognition before his death in 1916.

Despite his mainstream success, London held personal beliefs that some in today’s world would consider unusual. His youthful experience with Coxey’s Army inspired his lifelong membership of the Socialist Party, and people referred to him as the “Boy Socialist of Oakland” after his nightly, impassioned street corner speeches. He even unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Oakland several times on the Socialist Party ticket.

His first marriage to Bess Maddern was based on the Victorian-era ideal of “good breeding.” Both said that they were not marrying for love but out of the belief that they “would produce sturdy children.” Nevertheless, in 1905, London divorced Maddern to marry Charmian Kittredge, whom he called his “Mate Woman,” a term that might be considered pejorative in modern times but was likely meant by London to mean “soul mate.”

Below is the short story “South of the Slot,” which is based in the San Francisco neighborhood where London was born (that we might call “the wrong side of the tracks” today).



South of the Slot

By Jack London

Old San Francisco, which is the San Francisco of only the other day, the day before the Earthquake, was divided midway by the Slot. The Slot was an iron crack that ran along the center of Market street, and from the Slot arose the burr of the ceaseless, endless cable that was hitched at will to the cars it dragged up and down. In truth, there were two slots, but in the quick grammar of the West time was saved by calling them, and much more that they stood for, “The Slot.” North of the Slot were the theaters, hotels, and shopping district, the banks and the staid, respectable business houses. South of the Slot were the factories, slums, laundries, machine-shops, boiler works, and the abodes of the working class.

The Slot was the metaphor that expressed the class cleavage of Society, and no man crossed this metaphor, back and forth, more successfully than Freddie Drummond. He made a practice of living in both worlds, and in both worlds he lived signally well. Freddie Drummond was a professor in the Sociology Department of the University of California, and it was as a professor of sociology that he first crossed over the Slot, lived for six months in the great labor-ghetto, and wrote “The Unskilled Laborer” — a book that was hailed everywhere as an able contribution to the literature of progress, and as a splendid reply to the literature of discontent. Politically and economically it was nothing if not orthodox. Presidents of great railway systems bought whole editions of it to give to their employees. The Manufacturers’ Association alone distributed fifty thousand copies of it. In a way, it was almost as immoral as the far-famed and notorious “Message to Garcia,” while in its pernicious preachment of thrift and content it ran “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch” a close second.

At first, Freddie Drummond found it monstrously difficult to get along among the working people. He was not used to their ways, and they certainly were not used to his. They were suspicious. He had no antecedents. He could talk of no previous jobs. His hands were soft. His extraordinary politeness was ominous. His first idea of the role he would play was that of a free and independent American who chose to work with his hands and no explanations given. But it wouldn’t do, as he quickly discovered. At the beginning they accepted him, very provisionally, as a freak. A little later, as he began to know his way about better, he insensibly drifted into the role that would work — namely, he was a man who had seen better days, very much better days, but who was down in his luck, though, to be sure, only temporarily.

He learned many things, and generalized much and often erroneously, all of which can be found in the pages of “The Unskilled Laborer.” He saved himself, however, after the sane and conservative manner of his kind, by labeling his generalizations as “tentative.” One of his first experiences was in the great Wilmax Cannery, where he was put on piece-work making small packing cases. A box factory supplied the parts, and all Freddie Drummond had to do was to fit the parts into a form and drive in the wire nails with a light hammer.

It was not skilled labor, but it was piece-work. The ordinary laborers in the cannery got a dollar and a half per day. Freddie Drummond found the other men on the same job with him jogging along and earning a dollar and seventy-five cents a day. By the third day he was able to earn the same. But he was ambitious. He did not care to jog along and, being unusually able and fit, on the fourth day earned two dollars. The next day, having keyed himself up to an exhausting high-tension, he earned two dollars and a half. His fellow workers favored him with scowls and black looks, and made remarks, slangily witty and which he did not understand, about sucking up to the boss and pace-making and holding her down when the rains set in. He was astonished at their malingering on piece-work, generalized about the inherent laziness of the unskilled laborer, and proceeded next day to hammer out three dollars’ worth of boxes.

And that night, coming out of the cannery, he was interviewed by his fellow workmen, who were very angry and incoherently slangy. He failed to comprehend the motive behind their action. The action itself was strenuous. When he refused to ease down his pace and bleated about freedom of contract, independent Americanism, and the dignity of toil, they proceeded to spoil his pace-making ability. It was a fierce battle, for Drummond was a large man and an athlete, but the crowd finally jumped on his ribs, walked on his face, and stamped on his fingers, so that it was only after lying in bed for a week that he was able to get up and look for another job. All of which is duly narrated in that first book of his, in the chapter entitled “The Tyranny of Labor.”

A little later, in another department of the Wilmax Cannery, lumping as a fruit-distributor among the women, he essayed to carry two boxes of fruit at a time, and was promptly reproached by the other fruit-lumpers. It was palpable malingering; but he was there, he decided, not to change conditions, but to observe. So he lumped one box thereafter, and so well did he study the art of shirking that he wrote a special chapter on it, with the last several paragraphs devoted to tentative generalizations.

In those six months he worked at many jobs and developed into a very good imitation of a genuine worker. He was a natural linguist, and he kept notebooks, making a scientific study of the workers’ slang or argot, until he could talk quite intelligibly. This language also enabled him more intimately to follow their mental processes, and thereby to gather much data for a projected chapter in some future book which he planned to entitle “Synthesis of Working-Class Psychology.”

Before he arose to the surface from that first plunge into the underworld he discovered that he was a good actor and demonstrated the plasticity of his nature. He was himself astonished at his own fluidity. Once having mastered the language and conquered numerous fastidious qualms, he found that he could flow into any nook of working-class life and fit it so snugly as to feel comfortably at home. As he said, in the preface to his second book, “The Toiler,” he endeavored really to know the working people, and the only possible way to achieve this was to work beside them, eat their food, sleep in their beds, be amused with their amusements, think their thoughts, and feel their feelings.

He was not a deep thinker. He had no faith in new theories. All his norms and criteria were conventional. His Thesis, on the French Revolution, was noteworthy in college annals, not merely for its painstaking and voluminous accuracy, but for the fact that it was the dryest, deadest, most formal, and most orthodox screed ever written on the subject. He was a very reserved man, and his natural inhibition was large in quantity and steel-like in quality. He had but few friends. He was too undemonstrative, too frigid. He had no vices, nor had anyone ever discovered any temptations. Tobacco he detested, beer he abhorred, and he was never known to drink anything stronger than an occasional light wine at dinner.

When a freshman he had been baptized “Ice-Box” by his warmer-blooded fellows. As a member of the faculty he was known as “Cold-Storage.” He had but one grief, and that was “Freddie.” He had earned it when he played full-back on the `Varsity eleven’, and his formal soul had never succeeded in living it down. “Freddie” he would ever be, except officially, and through nightmare vistas he looked into a future when his world would speak of him as “Old Freddie.”

For he was very young to be a Doctor of Sociology, only twenty-seven, and he looked younger. In appearance and atmosphere he was a strapping big college man, smooth-faced and easy-mannered, clean and simple and wholesome, with a known record of being a splendid athlete and an implied vast possession of cold culture of the inhibited sort. He never talked shop out of class and committee rooms, except later on, when his books showered him with distasteful public notice and he yielded to the extent of reading occasional papers before certain literary and economic societies. He did everything right–too right; and in dress and comportment was inevitably correct. Not that he was a dandy. Far from it. He was a college man, in dress and carriage as like as a pea to the type that of late years is being so generously turned out of our institutions of higher learning. His handshake was satisfyingly strong and stiff. His blue eyes were coldly blue and convincingly sincere. His voice, firm and masculine, clean and crisp of enunciation, was pleasant to the ear. The one drawback to Freddie Drummond was his inhibition. He never unbent. In his football days, the higher the tension of the game, the cooler he grew. He was noted as a boxer, but he was regarded as an automaton, with the inhuman precision of a machine judging distance and timing blows, guarding, blocking, and stalling. He was rarely punished himself, while he rarely punished an opponent. He was too clever and too controlled to permit himself to put a pound more weight into a punch than he intended. With him it was a matter of exercise. It kept him fit.

As time went by, Freddie Drummond found himself more frequently crossing the Slot and losing himself in South of Market. His summer and winter holidays were spent there, and, whether it was a week or a week-end, he found the time spent there to be valuable and enjoyable. And there was so much material to be gathered. His third book, “Mass and Master,” became a text-book in the American universities; and almost before he knew it, he was at work on a fourth one, “The Fallacy of the Inefficient.”

Somewhere in his make-up there was a strange twist or quirk. Perhaps it was a recoil from his environment and training, or from the tempered seed of his ancestors, who had been bookmen generation preceding generation; but at any rate, he found enjoyment in being down in the working-class world. In his own world he was “Cold-Storage,” but down below he was “Big” Bill Totts, who could drink and smoke, and slang and fight, and be an all-around favorite. Everybody liked Bill, and more than one working girl made love to him. At first he had been merely a good actor, but as time went on, simulation became second nature. He no longer played a part, and he loved sausages, sausages and bacon, than which, in his own proper sphere, there was nothing more loathsome in the way of food.

From doing the thing for the need’s sake, he came to doing the thing for the thing’s sake. He found himself regretting as the time drew near for him to go back to his lecture-room and his inhibition. And he often found himself waiting with anticipation for the dreamy time to pass when he could cross the Slot and cut loose and play the devil. He was not wicked, but as “Big” Bill Totts he did a myriad things that Freddie Drummond would never have been permitted to do. Moreover, Freddie Drummond never would have wanted to do them. That was the strangest part of his discovery. Freddie Drummond and Bill Totts were two totally different creatures. The desires and tastes and impulses of each ran counter to the other’s. Bill Totts could shirk at a job with clear conscience, while Freddie Drummond condemned shirking as vicious, criminal, and un-American, and devoted whole chapters to condemnation of the vice. Freddie Drummond did not care for dancing, but Bill Totts never missed the nights at the various dancing clubs, such as The Magnolia, The Western Star, and The Elite; while he won a massive silver cup, standing thirty inches high, for being the best-sustained character at the Butchers and Meat Workers’ annual grand masked ball. And Bill Totts liked the girls and the girls liked him, while Freddie Drummond enjoyed playing the ascetic in this particular, was open in his opposition to equal suffrage, and cynically bitter in his secret condemnation of coeducation.

Freddie Drummond changed his manners with his dress, and without effort. When he entered the obscure little room used for his transformation scenes, he carried himself just a bit too stiffly. He was too erect, his shoulders were an inch too far back, while his face was grave, almost harsh, and practically expressionless. But when he emerged in Bill Totts’s clothes he was another creature. Bill Totts did not slouch, but somehow his whole form limbered up and became graceful. The very sound of the voice was changed, and the laugh was loud and hearty, while loose speech and an occasional oath were as a matter of course on his lips. Also, Bill Totts was a trifle inclined to later hours, and at times, in saloons, to be good-naturedly bellicose with other workmen. Then, too, at Sunday picnics or when coming home from the show, either arm betrayed a practiced familiarity in stealing around girls’ waists, while he displayed a wit keen and delightful in the flirtatious badinage that was expected of a good fellow in his class.

So thoroughly was Bill Totts himself, so thoroughly a workman, a genuine denizen of South of the Slot, that he was as class-conscious as the average of his kind, and his hatred for a scab even exceeded that of the average loyal union man. During the Water Front Strike, Freddie Drummond was somehow able to stand apart from the unique combination, and, coldly critical, watch Bill Totts hilariously slug scab long-shoremen. For Bill Totts was a dues-paying member of the Longshoremen Union and had a right to be indignant with the usurpers of his job. “Big” Bill Totts was so very big, and so very able, that it was “Big” Bill to the front when trouble was brewing. From acting outraged feelings, Freddie Drummond, in the role of his other self, came to experience genuine outrage, and it was only when he returned to the classic atmosphere of the university that he was able, sanely and conservatively, to generalize upon his underworld experiences and put them down on paper as a trained sociologist should. That Bill Totts lacked the perspective to raise him above class-consciousness, Freddie Drummond clearly saw. But Bill Totts could not see it. When he saw a scab taking his job away, he saw red at the same time, and little else did he see. It was Freddie Drummond, irreproachably clothed and comported, seated at his study desk or facing his class in “Sociology 17,” who saw Bill Totts, and all around Bill Totts, and all around the whole scab and union-labor problem and its relation to the economic welfare of the United States in the struggle for the world market. Bill Totts really wasn’t able to see beyond the next meal and the prize-fight the following night at the Gaiety Athletic Club.

It was while gathering material for “Women and Work” that Freddie received his first warning of the danger he was in. He was too successful at living in both worlds. This strange dualism he had developed was after all very unstable, and, as he sat in his study and meditated, he saw that it could not endure. It was really a transition stage, and if he persisted he saw that he would inevitably have to drop one world or the other. He could not continue in both. And as he looked at the row of volumes that graced the upper shelf of his revolving book-case, his volumes, beginning with his Thesis and ending with “Women and Work,” he decided that that was the world he would hold to and stick by. Bill Totts had served his purpose, but he had become a too dangerous accomplice. Bill Totts would have to cease.

Freddie Drummond’s fright was due to Mary Condon, President of the International Glove Workers’ Union No. 974. He had seen her, first, from the spectators’ gallery, at the annual convention of the Northwest Federation of Labor, and he had seen her through Bill Totts’ eyes, and that individual had been most favorably impressed by her. She was not Freddie Drummond’s sort at all. What if she were a royal-bodied woman, graceful and sinewy as a panther, with amazing black eyes that could fill with fire or laughter-love, as the mood might dictate? He detested women with a too exuberant vitality and a lack of . . . well, of inhibition. Freddie Drummond accepted the doctrine of evolution because it was quite universally accepted by college men, and he flatly believed that man had climbed up the ladder of life out of the weltering muck and mess of lower and monstrous organic things. But he was a trifle ashamed of this genealogy, and preferred not to think of it. Wherefore, probably, he practiced his iron inhibition and preached it to others, and preferred women of his own type, who could shake free of this bestial and regrettable ancestral line and by discipline and control emphasize the wideness of the gulf that separated them from what their dim forbears had been.

Bill Totts had none of these considerations. He had liked Mary Condon from the moment his eyes first rested on her in the convention hall, and he had made it a point, then and there, to find out who she was. The next time he met her, and quite by accident, was when he was driving an express wagon for Pat Morrissey. It was in a lodging house in Mission Street, where he had been called to take a trunk into storage. The landlady’s daughter had called him and led him to the little bedroom, the occupant of which, a glove-maker, had just been removed to hospital. But Bill did not know this. He stooped, up-ended the trunk, which was a large one, got it on his shoulder, and struggled to his feet with his back toward the open door. At that moment he heard a woman’s voice.

“Belong to the union?” was the question asked.

“Aw, what’s it to you?” he retorted. “Run along now, an’ git outa my way. I wanta turn round.”

The next he knew, big as he was, he was whirled half around and sent reeling backward, the trunk overbalancing him, till he fetched up with a crash against the wall. He started to swear, but at the same instant found himself looking into Mary Condon’s flashing, angry eyes.

“Of course I b’long to the union,” he said. “I was only kiddin’ you.”

“Where’s your card?” she demanded in business-like tones.

“In my pocket. But I can’t git it out now. This trunk’s too damn heavy. Come on down to the wagon an’ I’ll show it to you.”

“Put that trunk down,” was the command.

“What for? I got a card, I’m tellin’ you.”

“Put it down, that’s all. No scab’s going to handle that trunk. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you big coward, scabbing on honest men. Why don’t you join the union and be a man?”

Mary Condon’s color had left her face, and it was apparent that she was in a rage.

“To think of a big man like you turning traitor to his class. I suppose you’re aching to join the militia for a chance to shoot down union drivers the next strike. You may belong to the militia already, for that matter. You’re the sort —”

“Hold on, now, that’s too much!” Bill dropped the trunk to the floor with a bang, straightened up, and thrust his hand into his inside coat pocket. “I told you I was only kiddin’. There, look at that.”

It was a union card properly enough.

“All right, take it along,” Mary Condon said. “And the next time don’t kid.”

Her face relaxed as she noticed the ease with which he got the big trunk to his shoulder, and her eyes glowed as they glanced over the graceful massiveness of the man. But Bill did not see that. He was too busy with the trunk.

The next time he saw Mary Condon was during the Laundry Strike. The Laundry Workers, but recently organized, were green at the business, and had petitioned Mary Condon to engineer the strike. Freddie Drummond had had an inkling of what was coming, and had sent Bill Totts to join the union and investigate. Bill’s job was in the wash-room, and the men had been called out first, that morning, in order to stiffen the courage of the girls; and Bill chanced to be near the door to the mangle-room when Mary Condon started to enter. The superintendent, who was both large and stout, barred her way. He wasn’t going to have his girls called out, and he’d teach her a lesson to mind her own business. And as Mary tried to squeeze past him he thrust her back with a fat hand on her shoulder. She glanced around and saw Bill.

“Here you, Mr. Totts,” she called. “Lend a hand. I want to get in.”

Bill experienced a startle of warm surprise. She had remembered his name from his union card. The next moment the superintendent had been plucked from the doorway raving about rights under the law, and the girls were deserting their machines. During the rest of that short and successful strike, Bill constituted himself Mary Condon’s henchman and messenger, and when it was over returned to the University to be Freddie Drummond and to wonder what Bill Totts could see in such a woman.

Freddie Drummond was entirely safe, but Bill had fallen in love. There was no getting away from the fact of it, and it was this fact that had given Freddie Drummond his warning. Well, he had done his work, and his adventures could cease. There was no need for him to cross the Slot again. All but the last three chapters of his latest, “Labor Tactics and Strategy,” was finished, and he had sufficient material on hand adequately to supply those chapters.

Another conclusion he arrived at, was that in order to sheet-anchor himself as Freddie Drummond, closer ties and relations in his own social nook were necessary. It was time that he was married, anyway, and he was fully aware that if Freddie Drummond didn’t get married, Bill Totts assuredly would, and the complications were too awful to contemplate. And so, enters Catherine Van Vorst. She was a college woman herself, and her father, the one wealthy member of the faculty, was the head of the Philosophy Department as well. It would be a wise marriage from every standpoint, Freddie Drummond concluded when the engagement was consummated and announced. In appearance cold and reserved, aristocratic and wholesomely conservative, Catherine Van Vorst, though warm in her way, possessed an inhibition equal to Drummond’s.

All seemed well with him, but Freddie Drummond could not quite shake off the call of the underworld, the lure of the free and open, of the unhampered, irresponsible life South of the Slot. As the time of his marriage approached, he felt that he had indeed sowed wild oats, and he felt, moreover, what a good thing it would be if he could have but one wild fling more, play the good fellow and the wastrel one last time, ere he settled down to gray lecture-rooms and sober matrimony. And, further to tempt him, the very last chapter of “Labor Tactics and Strategy” remained unwritten for lack of a trifle more of essential data which he had neglected to gather.

So Freddie Drummond went down for the last time as Bill Totts, got his data, and, unfortunately, encountered Mary Condon. Once more installed in his study, it was not a pleasant thing to look back upon. It made his warning doubly imperative. Bill Totts had behaved abominably. Not only had he met Mary Condon at the Central Labor Council, but he had stopped in at a chop-house with her, on the way home, and treated her to oysters. And before they parted at her door, his arms had been about her, and he had kissed her on the lips and kissed her repeatedly. And her last words in his ear, words uttered softly with a catchy sob in the throat that was nothing more nor less than a love cry, were “Bill . . . dear, dear Bill.”

Freddie Drummond shuddered at the recollection. He saw the pit yawning for him. He was not by nature a polygamist, and he was appalled at the possibilities of the situation. It would have to be put an end to, and it would end in one only of two ways: either he must become wholly Bill Totts and be married to Mary Condon, or he must remain wholly Freddie Drummond and be married to Catherine Van Vorst. Otherwise, his conduct would be beneath contempt and horrible.

In the several months that followed, San Francisco was torn with labor strife. The unions and the employers’ associations had locked horns with a determination that looked as if they intended to settle the matter, one way or the other, for all time. But Freddie Drummond corrected proofs, lectured classes, and did not budge. He devoted himself to Catherine Van Vorst, and day by day found more to respect and admire in her — nay, even to love in her. The Street Car Strike tempted him, but not so severely as he would have expected; and the great Meat Strike came on and left him cold. The ghost of Bill Totts had been successfully laid, and Freddie Drummond with rejuvenescent zeal tackled a brochure, long-planned, on the topic of “diminishing returns.”

The wedding was two weeks off, when, one afternoon, in San Francisco, Catherine Van Vorst picked him up and whisked him away to see a Boys’ Club, recently instituted by the settlement workers with whom she was interested. It was her brother’s machine, but they were alone with the exception of the chauffeur. At the junction with Kearny Street, Market and Geary Streets intersect like the sides of a sharp-angled letter “V.” They, in the auto, were coming down Market with the intention of negotiating the sharp apex and going up Geary. But they did not know what was coming down Geary, timed by fate to meet them at the apex. While aware from the papers that the Meat Strike was on and that it was an exceedingly bitter one, all thought of it at that moment was farthest from Freddie Drummond’s mind. Was he not seated beside Catherine? And, besides, he was carefully expositing to her his views on settlement work — views that Bill Totts’ adventures had played a part in formulating.

Coming down Geary Street were six meat wagons. Beside each scab driver sat a policeman. Front and rear, and along each side of this procession, marched a protecting escort of one hundred police. Behind the police rear guard, at a respectful distance, was an orderly but vociferous mob, several blocks in length, that congested the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. The Beef Trust was making an effort to supply the hotels, and, incidentally, to begin the breaking of the strike. The St. Francis had already been supplied, at a cost of many broken windows and broken heads, and the expedition was marching to the relief of the Palace Hotel.

All unwitting, Drummond sat beside Catherine, talking settlement work, as the auto, honking methodically and dodging traffic, swung in a wide curve to get around the apex. A big coal wagon, loaded with lump coal and drawn by four huge horses, just debouching from Kearny Street as though to turn down Market, blocked their way. The driver of the wagon seemed undecided, and the chauffeur, running slow but disregarding some shouted warning from the crossing policemen, swerved the auto to the left, violating the traffic rules, in order to pass in front of the wagon.

At that moment Freddie Drummond discontinued his conversation. Nor did he resume it again, for the situation was developing with the rapidity of a transformation scene. He heard the roar of the mob at the rear, and caught a glimpse of the helmeted police and the lurching meat wagons. At the same moment, laying on his whip and standing up to his task, the coal driver rushed horses and wagon squarely in front of the advancing procession, pulled the horses up sharply, and put on the big brake. Then he made his lines fast to the brake-handle and sat down with the air of one who had stopped to stay. The auto had been brought to a stop, too, by his big panting leaders which had jammed against it.

Before the chauffeur could back clear, an old Irishman, driving a rickety express wagon and lashing his one horse to a gallop, had locked wheels with the auto. Drummond recognized both horse and wagon, for he had driven them often himself. The Irishman was Pat Morrissey. On the other side a brewery wagon was locking with the coal wagon, and an east-bound Kearny-Street car, wildly clanging its gong, the motorman shouting defiance at the crossing policeman, was dashing forward to complete the blockade. And wagon after wagon was locking and blocking and adding to the confusion. The meat wagons halted. The police were trapped. The roar at the rear increased as the mob came on to the attack, while the vanguard of the police charged the obstructing wagons.

“We’re in for it,” Drummond remarked coolly to Catherine.

“Yes,” she nodded, with equal coolness. “What savages they are.”

His admiration for her doubled on itself. She was indeed his sort. He would have been satisfied with her even if she had screamed and clung to him, but this — this was magnificent. She sat in that storm center as calmly as if it had been no more than a block of carriages at the opera.

The police were struggling to clear a passage. The driver of the coal wagon, a big man in shirt sleeves, lighted a pipe and sat smoking. He glanced down complacently at a captain of police who was raving and cursing at him, and his only acknowledgment was a shrug of the shoulders. From the rear arose the rat-tat-tat of clubs on heads and a pandemonium of cursing, yelling, and shouting. A violent accession of noise proclaimed that the mob had broken through and was dragging a scab from a wagon. The police captain reinforced from his vanguard, and the mob at the rear was repelled. Meanwhile, window after window in the high office building on the right had been opened, and the class-conscious clerks were raining a shower of office furniture down on the heads of police and scabs. Waste-baskets, ink-bottles, paper-weights, typewriters — anything and everything that came to hand was filling the air.

A policeman, under orders from his captain, clambered to the lofty seat of the coal wagon to arrest the driver. And the driver, rising leisurely and peacefully to meet him, suddenly crumpled him in his arms and threw him down on top of the captain. The driver was a young giant, and when he climbed on top his load and poised a lump of coal in both hands, a policeman, who was just scaling the wagon from the side, let go and dropped back to earth. The captain ordered half a dozen of his men to take the wagon. The teamster, scrambling over the load from side to side, beat them down with huge lumps of coal.

The crowd on the sidewalks and the teamsters on the locked wagons roared encouragement and their own delight. The motorman, smashing helmets with his controller bar, was beaten into insensibility and dragged from his platform. The captain of police, beside himself at the repulse of his men, led the next assault on the coal wagon. A score of police were swarming up the tall-sided fortress. But the teamster multiplied himself. At times there were six or eight policemen rolling on the pavement and under the wagon. Engaged in repulsing an attack on the rear end of his fortress, the teamster turned about to see the captain just in the act of stepping on to the seat from the front end. He was still in the air and in most unstable equilibrium, when the teamster hurled a thirty-pound lump of coal. It caught the captain fairly on the chest, and he went over backward, striking on a wheeler’s back, tumbling on to the ground, and jamming against the rear wheel of the auto.

Catherine thought he was dead, but he picked himself up and charged back. She reached out her gloved hand and patted the flank of the snorting, quivering horse. But Drummond did not notice the action. He had eyes for nothing save the battle of the coal wagon, while somewhere in his complicated psychology, one Bill Totts was heaving and straining in an effort to come to life. Drummond believed in law and order and the maintenance of the established, but this riotous savage within him would have none of it. Then, if ever, did Freddie Drummond call upon his iron inhibition to save him. But it is written that the house divided against itself must fall. And Freddie Drummond found that he had divided all the will and force of him with Bill Totts, and between them the entity that constituted the pair of them was being wrenched in twain.

Freddie Drummond sat in the auto, quite composed, alongside Catherine Van Vorst; but looking out of Freddie Drummond’s eyes was Bill Totts, and somewhere behind those eyes, battling for the control of their mutual body, were Freddie Drummond, the sane and conservative sociologist, and Bill Totts, the class-conscious and bellicose union workingman. It was Bill Totts, looking out of those eyes, who saw the inevitable end of the battle on the coal wagon. He saw a policeman gain the top of the load, a second, and a third. They lurched clumsily on the loose footing, but their long riot-clubs were out and winging. One blow caught the teamster on the head. A second he dodged, receiving it on the shoulder. For him the game was plainly up. He dashed in suddenly, clutched two policemen in his arms, and hurled himself a prisoner to the pavement, his hold never relaxing on his two captors.

Catherine Van Vorst was sick and faint at sight of the blood and brutal fighting. But her qualms were vanquished by the sensational and most unexpected happening that followed. The man beside her emitted an unearthly and uncultured yell and rose to his feet. She saw him spring over the front seat, leap to the broad rump of the wheeler, and from there gain the wagon. His onslaught was like a whirlwind. Before the bewildered officer on top the load could guess the errand of this conventionally clad but excited-seeming gentleman, he was the recipient of a punch that arched him back through the air to the pavement. A kick in the face led an ascending policeman to follow his example. A rush of three more gained the top and locked with Bill Totts in a gigantic clinch, during which his scalp was opened up by a club, and coat, vest, and half his starched shirt were torn from him. But the three policemen were flung wide and far, and Bill Totts, raining down lumps of coal, held the fort.

The captain led gallantly to the attack, but was bowled over by a chunk of coal that burst on his head in black baptism. The need of the police was to break the blockade in front before the mob could break in at the rear, and Bill Totts’ need was to hold the wagon till the mob did break through. So the battle of the coal went on.

The crowd had recognized its champion. “Big” Bill, as usual, had come to the front, and Catherine Van Vorst was bewildered by the cries of “Bill! O you Bill!” that arose on every hand. Pat Morrissey, on his wagon seat, was jumping and screaming in an ecstasy, “Eat ’em, Bill! Eat ’em! Eat ’em alive!” From the sidewalk she heard a woman’s voice cry out, “Look out, Bill — front end!” Bill took the warning and with well-directed coal cleaned the front end of the wagon of assailants. Catherine Van Vorst turned her head and saw on the curb of the sidewalk a woman with vivid coloring and flashing black eyes who was staring with all her soul at the man who had been Freddie Drummond a few minutes before.

The windows of the office building became vociferous with applause. A fresh shower of office chairs and filing cabinets descended. The mob had broken through on one side the line of wagons, and was advancing, each segregated policeman the center of a fighting group. The scabs were torn from their seats, the traces of the horses cut, and the frightened animals put in flight. Many policemen crawled under the coal wagon for safety, while the loose horses, with here and there a policeman on their backs or struggling at their heads to hold them, surged across the sidewalk opposite the jam and broke into Market Street.

Catherine Van Vorst heard the woman’s voice calling in warning. She was back on the curb again, and crying out:

“Beat it, Bill! Now’s your time! Beat it!”

The police for the moment had been swept away. Bill Totts leaped to the pavement and made his way to the woman on the sidewalk. Catherine Van Vorst saw her throw her arms around him and kiss him on the lips; and Catherine Van Vorst watched him curiously as he went on down the sidewalk, one arm around the woman, both talking and laughing, and he with a volubility and abandon she could never have dreamed possible.

The police were back again and clearing the jam while waiting for reinforcements and new drivers and horses. The mob had done its work and was scattering, and Catherine Van Vorst, still watching, could see the man she had known as Freddie Drummond. He towered a head above the crowd. His arm was still about the woman. And she in the motorcar, watching, saw the pair cross Market Street, cross the Slot, and disappear down Third Street into the labor ghetto.

The Forgotten Heroes of Korea

Sixty years ago, the United States was just beginning its long course in global geography. Thanks to our involvement in the Korean War, Americans were learning about places like Osan, Pusan, and Inchon.

The country was also learning the difficulty of waging war where there would be no clear victory or immediate benefit to the U.S. In a pattern that was to be repeated in many of our foreign conflicts,  popular enthusiasm quickly faded, and the war seemed almost forgotten.

Certainly this is how James Michener saw it. Writing for the Post in 1952, he said that even among Americans who knew better—

American men are dying… in the barren wastes of Korea, with a heroism never surpassed in our history. Be­cause they are so few, we forget that they contribute so much.

They seem to fight in a vacuum, as if America didn’t care a damn.

The Post had commissioned Michener, who was already a nationally recognized novelist at the time, to write about the war. So, in 1952, he sailed aboard the carriers USS Essex and Valley Forge. In his article, Michener introduced readers to the pilots who were flying the Navy’s fighter jets and rescue helicopters.

One of these extraordinary men was Lieutenant Sam Murphey, whose plane was shot down over enemy territory. Murphey was determined not to become one of the North Koreans’ prisoners of war. So he decided to fly to the coast, “even if I cracked up doing so.”

He cracked up all right. A mile inland, his plane roared down through trees, high-tension wires, and into a rice paddy. It burst into flame, but by that time Murphey was walking away. He was at the edge of a communist village. And he was much worse off than he knew. For his mates aloft, watching the amazing landing and the flaming wreckage, were sure he was dead. They headed home.

Lt. Sam Murphey after his escape from North Korea.

Seeing the villagers starting toward him over the frozen fields, Murphey lay down in an irrigation ditch, “resting on one elbow, trying to survey the situation. I believed I had been seen by the men of my squadron. I believed they would come back to rescue me pretty soon, and that my job was to evade the communists for, say, ten minutes. So I got up and started to run.”

It was a long ten minutes. From the crowd of villagers, two soldiers ran forward with rifles and started firing. Murphey continued running across the rice paddies. He ran for an hour. After the first few minutes, he thought his lungs would explode, but whenever he looked back, there were the two communist soldiers. His big boots cracked through the ice at every step. When he fell, he pitched his face into manure. And the rifle fire kept getting more accurate. Finally one of the bullets passed clean through Murphey’s neck. But by one of those unbelievable miracles of war, this bullet, although passing right through his neck, had hit only loose skin.

He took time out to look back, and there were the two communists, coming steadily.

Suddenly it occurred to Murphey to set off a flare.

“Don’t ask me why I didn’t do it sooner”… his fellow pilots saw him, an aston­ishing four miles away from his burning plane. But Murphey’s run had taken him into a terribly dan­gerous spot. He was now pretty well surrounded by antiaircraft guns. When our people back on board the Antietam plotted Murphey’s position, they could not command any helicopter pilot to fly in there to get the pilot. That would be suicide. But one helicopter man, Jack Stultz, of San Diego, radioed back: “All you have to do is give me cover. I’m going in.”

For any kind of gun, a helicopter is an absolutely dead duck. But somehow Jack Stultz pushed his ‘copter down into the rice paddy where Murphey was still running away from the two communist soldiers. The rescue was made. A few days later, with a patch about his neck, Murphey was flying again.

Michener declared these pilots—

as heroic as any men who have ever fought for the United States. They are as brave as the marines on Guadalcanal or the tank crews in Nor­mandy.

I hold their heroism to be great… for [those soldiers] could feel that his entire nation was behind him, dedicated to the job to which he was dedicated… today the fighter in Korea cannot feel this sense of identification with his own nation.

What kept these pilots aloft and fighting, Michener believed, was their own sense of integrity, their mutual support, and their patriotism.

It is difficult in these cynical days to state in simple words that young men fly dangerous missions to sometimes certain death because they believe that what their country is doing is right. But that is the simple truth.

[In one fighter] group every pilot wears a wed­ding ring, every one has children. Most of them were recalled unwillingly from civilian jobs they had built up painfully after long years in service last time. I doubt if you could find men less eager for war—more acutely aware of what they have surrendered to participate. But they go out day after day over the icy seas, over the high mountains.

They still go out these days, flying or marching into distant, hostile countries. And they continue fighting our wars, even when the public enthusiasm fades.

Coffee-Cured Chicken

The coffee and spice dry cure in this recipe penetrates the chicken overnight, seasoning every morsel. You’ll love the resulting thick, juicy cuts of chicken flavored with a gentle sweetness and the background flavor of coffee—plus just a little heat. 

Recipe Courtesy of FoodiePrints.com.

Coffee-Cured Chicken

Ingredients

  • 1 frozen broiler fryer chicken
  • 1 tablespoon ground coffee (freshly ground from beans is better)
  • 4 teaspoons brown sugar
  • 4 teaspoons whole black peppercorns
  • 1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
  • 1 tablespoon kosher salt
  • 1-2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions

Defrost and spatchcock the chicken so the chicken opens up like a book and can lie flat. (Note: Spatchcocking, or butterflying, is a method by which a chicken’s backbone is removed by cutting through its rib bones.)

To make the dry cure, grind all of the other ingredients except the olive oil together with a mortar and pestle, making sure the peppercorns, coriander seeds, and celery seeds are at least cracked.
 Mix thoroughly and apply liberally to the chicken, breast side up.

With the cure applied, cover the chicken in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 24 hours. (Overnight, at least!)

The next day, wash off the cure with some water. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels and apply a tablespoon or two of olive oil to the chicken skin. 
Now, broil the chicken breast-side down on the middle oven rack for 20-25 minutes. Flip the chicken over and broil it breast-side up for 20-25 minutes or until the internal temperature of the white meat reaches 150°F and the dark meat reaches 165°F. 
Optionally, turn the broiler all the way up to max to color and crisp the skin as necessary.

Vonnegut Lives!

Kurt Vonnegut will never die.

Oh, he’s dead, all right; Vonnegut, the author of 14 novels and numerous short stories, passed away in 2007. But like Billy Pilgrim—the World War II soldier and protagonist of Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five—the writer has come “unstuck in time,” popping on and off the world stage, influencing culture from beyond the grave.

Take this summer’s book banning, for instance. The school board in Republic, Missouri, voted unanimously to remove Slaughterhouse-Five from its high school library for allegedly teaching principles contrary to the Bible. The move backfired, prompting protests and a surge in demand for the novel at the town’s public library.

“To hell with the censors!” Vonnegut once said. “Give me knowledge or give me death!”

Seeing the developing situation in Missouri, volunteers at the not-for-profit Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in his hometown of Indianapolis offered to send every student at the high school a free copy of the writer’s science fiction novel.

No, Kurt Vonnegut isn’t going to go away so easily. This year has also seen the opening of the Vonnegut Library, paperback reissues of his books, and two new biographies in celebration of what would have been his 89th birthday on November 11.

But why do people still care about Vonnegut’s writing? What makes him still relevant? According to Charles J. Shields, author of And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, one of the two biographies, it comes down to the universality of his message: “His writings, which come from the center of the most violent century in human history, simply ask, ‘Why are we here?’”

For Vonnegut, that was always a loaded question. In The Sirens of Titan he wrote, “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” But this love was tempered by random obstacles thrown in man’s way. Vonnegut viewed man’s struggle as the attempt to find (and give) kindness and love in an otherwise uncaring universe—a world-view shaped by his life experiences.

Born in 1922, Vonnegut was part of a prominent German-American family—until the stock market crash in 1929 forced them to scale back. After struggling for years to come to grips with the family’s reduced circumstances, Vonnegut’s mother committed suicide on Mother’s Day, 1944. The writer later confessed that his greatest fear was that he, too, would commit suicide; indeed, the chronically depressed author would attempt to kill himself 40 years after his mother’s death.

Around the time of his mother’s suicide, a fresh-out-of-college Vonnegut went to Europe to fight in World War II. Captured almost immediately during the Battle of the Bulge, he was held as a prisoner of war in Dresden, a German city known for its art, culture, and architecture. On the night of February 13, 1945, the Allies firebombed Dresden, destroying the historic city and killing between 25,000 and 35,000 people, primarily civilians. Although Vonnegut and his fellow POWs survived the bombing holed up in an underground meat locker-turned-prison nicknamed “Slaughterhouse Five,” they were devastated by the experience. The soldiers were forced to spend the next several weeks collecting the remains of the dead while the local people threw rocks at them.

“Both the Depression and the war taught Vonnegut that we are not nearly as in control of our destinies as our egos and the mythology of the ‘American Dream’ would have us believe,” says Gregory D. Sumner, author of the second recent biography, Unstuck in Time: A Journey Through Kurt Vonnegut’s Life and Novels.

After the war, Vonnegut began writing for magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post. “The No-Talent Kid” (reprinted in our Mar/Apr 2011 issue and available online) was the first of nearly a dozen short stories that he wrote for the Post. Although Vonnegut’s magazine short stories were primarily melodramas and romances, he was also drawn to science fiction. “Vonnegut was convinced he couldn’t write about the issues facing Americans during the Cold War—hydrogen bombs, conformity, materialism—in conventional ways,” Shields says. “But in science fiction, a writer can ask, ‘What if?’ and take a concept to the limit of credibility.”

In the early 1960s, Vonnegut decided to write about his experiences in World War II. But he faced a problem. “When he took shelter in the slaughterhouse, there was a city,” Shields explains. “When he came up again, the city was gone. How could he write a war novel with no middle? The solution, he discovered, was time travel.”

In Slaughterhouse-Five, the main character, Billy Pilgrim, finds himself bouncing uncontrollably through time, living his life out of sequence—including his experience as a POW during World War II and his time as an exhibit in an alien zoo on another planet. Despite the conceits of the sci-fi genre, the book grapples with the very notion of war. Released in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War, Slaughterhouse-Five resonated profoundly with the American public, reaching number one on The New York Times best-seller list and pushing Vonnegut to the forefront of pop culture.

“Young people in particular embraced its deglorification of war and experimental style,” Sumner says. “But its universal themes transcend period or place. The book is very popular, for example, with solders and veterans of the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Vonnegut used his newfound fame to transform himself into what he called a “responsible elder,” speaking at peace rallies and becoming an opponent of war in all its forms. In an age where the U.S. is still embroiled in conflicts across the globe, his message remains relevant, especially with the young; a new crop of Vonnegut fans enters college each fall.

Again, why do people—young and old—still read Vonnegut?

“Because of his honesty, wit, and faith in people, despite their flaws and the tragedies of life,” Sumner replies. “Because the seemingly ‘childish’ questions he asked, the apparently ‘simple’ style of expression he used, hold a profundity that the critics often missed.”

When released, some prominent critics did, indeed, mistake Slaughterhouse-Five’s simple prose style for plain simpleness, but history sides with Vonnegut’s legion of fans; the book is included in both Time magazine’s and Modern Library’s lists of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.

Not that Vonnegut would have been concerned about his legacy, mind you. “I don’t console myself with the idea that my descendents and my books and all that will live on,” he told a Post reporter in 1986. “I honestly believe, though, that we are wrong to think that moments go away, never to be seen again. This moment and every moment last forever.”

Kurt Vonnegut is dead.

Long live Kurt Vonnegut.

Click here to read “Miss Temptation,” one of the 11 stories that Vonnegut wrote for the Post. To view the writer’s personal artifacts on display at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, go here.

Cartoons: World War II

World War II brought scrap metal drives, regulation haircuts, and many other major life adjustments—both in the military and at home. Nevertheless, Post cartoonists during the war years still managed to find humor in the situation.

“One thing I can’t understand about this sentry business. Can you imagine anybody answering ‘Foe’?”
From December 6, 1941
"Why, it was like everyone else's." from September 13, 1941
“Why, it was like everyone else’s.”
From September 13, 1941
"I'll get onto it in a minute. Everything is so darn steady." From November 14, 1942
“I’ll get onto it in a minute. Everything is so darn steady.”
From November 14, 1942
"I feel like an important island in the Pacific." From November 5, 1943
“I feel like an important island in the Pacific.”
From November 5, 1943
"Regulation cut, please." From November 28, 1942
“Regulation cut, please.”
From November 28, 1942
“I put the scrap iron to be collected right by the furnace, why do you ask?” From October 31, 1942
“I put the scrap iron to be collected right by the furnace. Why do you ask?”
From October 31, 1942
"The draft hasn't touched our team, but it certainly played hob with the band." From October 31, 1942
“The draft hasn’t touched our team, but it certainly played hob with the band.”
From October 31, 1942
"Couple years out of the country and—ZOWIE—address book to blazes!" From February 26, 1944
“Couple years out of the country and—ZOWIE—address book to blazes!”
From February 26, 1944

Click here for more World War II cartoons.