'The Great Influenza' by John M. Berry

Imagine half a dozen ocean waves, emanating from different parts of the globe, converging on a coastal community in summer, a community whose residents are unaware of the impending danger.  Some waves are visible on the horizon; others are but deep swells, typical of the season.  What happens when all of the waves combine their amplitude the moment they reach shore and form a giant tidal wave, a tsunami of historic proportions?  This, or something like it, is what happened in 1918, when the influenza pandemic enveloped the globe in just a few months, resulting in the deaths of, by some estimates, one hundred million people.  Of course, one of the biggest waves was the war in Europe, now in its fourth year.  But this was not the deadliest.  There was also the long swell of medical history, only recently jolted out of a Hippocratic stupor lasting over two thousand years.  Then there was the wave set in motion by President Wilson, who unleashed a powerful political force determined to whip a fractious country to war.  This, along with the hastily passed a new Sedition Act and the Espionage Act of 1917, combined with a propaganda machine that brooked no dissent, made reporting actual conditions nearly impossible, criminal even.  Then there was biggest wave of all, the influenza virus itself.  Capable of slipping through all the body’s defenses and adapting to its hosts with increasing effectiveness – a virus, too small to see by conventional means – it infected and killed young adults to a disproportionate degree.   Compounding the devastation, most of the lifeguards – the doctors and nurses – were off tending to the troops in Europe, leaving communities begging for volunteers to nurse the sick and dying, and those few doctors and nurses left behind were overwhelmed and decimated by the disease.  And worse, public health officials, military and civilian, were overruled by the supreme urgency of war and made powerless to limit the influenza’s devastating effects.

War

For the first few years of the war in Europe, the United States tried to maintain its neutrality.  President Wilson himself was extremely reluctant to enter the fray.  However, in 1917, Germany outraged the nation when it announced unrestricted submarine warfare and tried to persuade Mexico to its side.  The President was forced to act.  As reluctant as he was, once the decision was made, Wilson pursued war with incredible single-mindedness, an almost religious fervor.  “To Wilson, this war was a crusade, he intended to wage total war.” 

“To fight,” Wilson declared, “you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of our national life….”  And it did.

“The government compelled conformity, controlled speech in ways… not known in America before or since....”  Wilson pushed the Espionage Act and a new Sedition Act through Congress, and established the FBI and a volunteer group called the American Protective League (destined to become the Secret Service) to enforce these new laws, and initiated a “voluntary” Liberty Bond drive, and other measures.  He created, by executive order, the Committee on Public Information headed by George Creel, who went on to produce “tens of thousands of press release and feature stories that were routinely run unedited by newspapers.” 

In many ways, as is the case with the Influenza epidemic itself, our nation’s memory of the “Great War” has been eclipsed by the depression, WW II and the wars fought since.  John Berry’s excellent account reminds us of the draconian measures begun under the guise of war.  (The 2001 USA Patriot Act seems mild in comparison.)  Regardless of the motive or justification, these two statements sum up conditions leading up to the outbreak of the influenza epidemic:

“… Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler said, ‘What had been folly was now treason.’”

And Berry himself says, “As an unintended consequence, the nation became a tinderbox for epidemic disease….”

Epidemic

In the summer of 1918, the influenza crashed along the Coasts of all the continents of the world, working its way inland along the rivers and roads of commerce, spreading suffering and death in its wake, then receding, as it ran out of hosts to infects.   It started at an Army base in Kansas as “LaGrippe,” quickly mutating to its most lethal form and “swarming” through the population, through the port cities of Boston, Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, Chicago and on and on, relentlessly infecting even remote inland outposts, then just as quickly running out of hosts and mutating again into a less dangerous form, infecting fewer and fewer, as it ebbed, but not before President Wilson was caught in its undertow while attending peace talks in Paris.  His encounter with influenza very likely resulted in a bout of depression that affected the course of history.  This strain of influenza would never disappear completely, it would just lie in wait for a new mutation or for new hosts whose lack of immunity would provide the opportunity to do it all again.

“It was influenza, only influenza,” yet it had mutated, exploded and “swarmed” into a disease more deadly than the Bubonic Plague, or any other in human memory. 

So widespread was the influenza that this morbid little ditty, sung by schoolgirls as they jumped rope in schoolyards across the country, spread like a virus too.

“I had a little bird,

Her name was Enza

Opened the window

And In-flu-enza”

My advice for those who think the H1N1 influenza scare a few years ago was overblown is to read this book.  The reason the medical community was so concerned about this particular virus in 2008 is that H1N1 is the same flu virus that affected millions in 1918[1].  John Berry’s well-researched, comprehensive book tells the story of this devastating pandemic; about the men and women who worked to contain and defeat it; about its spread from Kansas to virtually every corner of the globe; about our state of war that placed the need to mobilize forces above everything else, ignoring even the Army Surgeon General pleas and suppressing news reports that might have saved lives—reports about the virus itself.  John Berry takes it even further, and describes, in elegant detail, how the virus worked in the body and why it became so lethal; and how the epidemic spread, and about how this pandemic accelerated scientific research to an unprecedented degree, eventually leading, in one instance, to an understanding of DNA, that most essential building block of life.

Why was this influenza so much worse than ordinary flu?  It affected people in two ways.  For some, the luckier ones, it did act like regular flu from which most people recovered.  However, as is frequently the case with influenza, as symptoms subside and the patient starts to feel better, secondary infections take hold, often resulting in pneumonia.  Think of it this way:  The flu breaks down the body’s defenses—the natural mechanisms that work to keep the lungs sterile.  Enter pneumococcus, streptococcus and other bacterial pathogens.  These are the sources of bacterial pneumonia.  Today, as these secondary symptoms emerge, doctors typically prescribe antibiotics.  Antibiotics are effective against bacterial infections, but not viral infections.  In 1918, antibiotics had not been invented and pneumonia frequently resulted in death.

With the so-called Spanish Flu[2], however, the disease frequently took a more lethal turn.  After ravaging the respiratory track and defeating the body’s normal defenses, it penetrated the deepest recesses of the lungs, infecting those tiny cells responsible for oxygenating the blood, and, literally, choking them off by filling them with fluids[3].   This was the course the flu took in many, if not most, of the young adults who died quickly[4].   Often, symptoms progressed so rapidly that a person could wake up in the morning feeling fine and be dead within twelve hours.   Symptoms included intense headaches, bones that felt like they would break, hallucinations, high fever – all typical of flu, but much more intense.  What was new this time was that blood literally pored from eye sockets, nose, ears, mouth, and victims coughed up blood, even, as was frequently reported, projecting a stream of blood across the room, and in the final stages, “cyanosis”—victims turning such a dark shade of blue from lack of oxygen, it was hard to tell “Caucasians from Negroes.”  So fast did influenza spread, and so overwhelmed were the few medical staff available that “…nurses wrapped more than one living patient in winding sheets and put toe tags on the boys’ left big toe.  It saved time…” 

This was no ordinary “grippe,” this mutation managed to break down all the body’s defenses and confound public health official.  Facemasks – which became ubiquitous, were as useless as a window screen in a dust storm.  People were advised to avoid crowds (virtually impossible) and, as one health board advised, “…stay warm, keep the feet dry and the bowels open—this last piece of advice a remnant of the Hippocratic tradition.”  The problem was, and still is today, that “men could appear healthy while incubating influenza themselves, and they could also infect others before symptoms appeared.”  One patient could infect thousands without knowing it.

So devastating and so quickly did it spread, that there was a breakdown in civil society.  Indeed, at one point, so dire did the situation appear, Victor Vaughan, the acting Army Surgeon General, wrote, “If the epidemic continues its mathematical rate of acceleration, civilization could easily disappear … from the face of the earth within a matter of a few more weeks.”

People avoided people, many refusing to go to work or even to the store.  People were dying at such a fast rate that caskets were in short supply.  Sometimes entire families were infected, with nobody to even dispose of bodies.  Some were so ill, they were forced to sleep in the same bed with the dead.  Unable to buy and prepare food, many adults and children starved, and orphans roamed the streets, and many people collapsed and died in the street.  Horse carts roamed the city, collecting bodies and stacking them like cordwood.  But gravediggers were in short supply and, inevitably, after weeks of paralysis, officials organized to deal with the crisis by digging mass graves.  But public officials were powerless to prevent or slow its progress; chaos reigned.

In the midst of all this, newspapers were reporting, “This is only the grip, nothing to be concerned about,” or complete fictions such as this: “Scientific Nursing Halting Epidemic.”   “On a single day of October 10,” Berry tells us, “the epidemic alone killed 759 people in Philadelphia” and, “During the week of October 16 alone, 4,597 Philadelphians died….” And this was in just one city.  Yet, referring to people not yet infected, a public official is quoted as saying, “There is no question that by a right attitude of the mind these people have kept themselves from illness.  I have no doubt that many persons have contracted the disease through fear… Fear is the first thing to be over come, the first step in conquering this epidemic,” and “The weak and timid succumb first.”  These sentiments, propagated by Washington in the midst of war, appeared in papers across the country.  Of course, people could see what was happening all around them, so these admonitions had just the opposite effect as was intended, magnifying fear and distrust.

Medical History

I was most impressed with how well Berry put the medical history in context.  In just a few chapters, Berry covers a sweep of history from Hippocrates (460-370 BC) (and those who wrote under his name), up to the outbreak of the influenza, and beyond, rendered so expertly, you quickly understand the frustrations and challenges with which the medical community had to contend as the disease spread.

In the course of telling this story, Berry writes about dozens of scientists and health professionals.  I’ll just mention a few.  Most notable was William Henry Walsh, the “impresario” who “intended to precipitate a revolution” in medicine, and did.  He is described as “the glue that cemented together the entire American Medical establishment,” as he dragged the science and practice of medicine out of the dark ages and into the 20^th Century.  He was instrumental in establishing Johns Hopkins as a world-class medical institute, starting in the 1880s, and, from his position there, permanently altered medical research, education and its practice throughout the United States.  Along with his protégé Simon Flexner, who would lead the Rockefeller Institute, and Simon’s brother, Abraham, and dozens of others that he inspired, Walsh completed “the reform of all medical education” in the US, and directed “the flow of tens of millions of dollars into laboratory research.” 

To me, the most surprising revelation was the state of medical education and practice before 1900.  Even schools like Harvard, Penn and Columbia did not require students to have a college degree and, what’s worse, many schools admitted anyone who could pay.  Some could hardly read or write!  “The whole system of medical education … is something horrible to contemplate,” complained Harvard’s president Eliot in 1869.  When he urged the adoption of written exams, Harvard’s Professor of Surgery, Henry Bigelow, complained, “…[Eliot] actually proposes to have written examinations for a degree of doctor of medicine.  I had to tell him that he knows nothing about the quality of the Harvard medical students.   More than half of them can barely write.” (Judging from the handwriting on prescription forms, this still may be the case.)

Simon Flexner’s story is illustrative of the state of medical education in the late-19^th Century.   It begins from “his growing up the black sheep in an immigrant Jewish family in Louisville, Kentucky.  Older and younger brothers were brilliant students, but he quit school in the sixth grade.”   Described as “sullen and flirting with delinquency,” he worked and was fired from several jobs before getting a job at nineteen with a druggist who had a microscope.  While forbidden to use it, he did anyway and, “Abruptly his mind was engaged.”  He attended the Louisville College of Pharmacy, graduated at the top of his class, and attended medical school, at night, while working in a brother’s pharmacy.  About his medical school experience, “Flexner later recalled, ‘I never made a physical examination.  I never a heard a lung sound.”  Nevertheless, he was then free to hang his shingle and practice medicine.  This is where his story takes another turn.  Flexner was of exceptional intelligence and it was obvious to him just how ill prepared he was.  “His younger brother Abraham had graduated from the Hopkins. … Simon sent some of his microscopic observations to Walsh.  Soon Simon was studying at the Hopkins himself.”  Walsh was so impressed with Flexner that he “arranged a fellowship for him in Germany.”  Four years later, he returned to become a professor of pathology at Hopkins.  A true autodidact, Flexner made up for the gaps in his education by reading and studying widely.  Not only was he well prepared to become a professor, soon afterwards, with Walsh’s whole-hearted endorsement, he became the head of the new Rockefeller Institute, which he led with distinction for many years.  Flexner’s story is just one of dozens of compelling stories John Berry tells. 

Even as late as 1870, at a time when European schools taught the use of microscopes, stethoscopes, ophthalmoscopes and thermometers, doctors in the United States seldom used them.  Indeed, few American medical schools had them available.  While there were “two hundred endowed chairs on Theology at American colleges, there were only five endowed chairs in Medicine.”  Several states didn’t even license doctors, and “the titles ‘Professor’ and ‘Doctor’ went to anyone who claimed them.”  By in large, nurses were more knowledgeable and better trained than many of the doctors with whom they worked.  This infuriated some doctors, who resorted to using numeric codes when prescribing medicine so that nurses could not tell what the Doctors were prescribing, and object.  Traditional “heroic measures” such as bleeding, cupping, blistering, purging (with caustic purgatives) and so on were the methods employed for hundreds of years and, even though many doctors where aware of advances in medical knowledge and knew these techniques did little good, they were frustrated since “little of this new science could be translated into curing or preventing disease.”  

For a time, doing nothing beyond comforting the afflicted was the best medicine.  More often than not, “Do no harm,” meant, “do nothing.”  Not until Walsh and his generation of European-trained doctors began to address the inadequacies of research and education in the United States, would things change.  (Europe was decades ahead of the US until around 1910 or so.)

And change it did, first, with the establishment of the Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1893, followed by the Rockefeller Institute and, quickly thereafter, at other universities and institutions across the country.  An important development that served to precipitate this change was what became known as the “Flexner Report” – a comprehensive survey of medical education in the United States conducted by Samuel Flexner’s brother, Abraham.  This study brought to light the sorry state of medical education throughout the country.  Out of more than one hundred and fifty medical schools nationwide, one hundred and twenty were judged substandard, in fact, abysmal.  With the publicity that followed – publicity very much resisted by the American Medical Association – most schools closed, and those that survived now had a clear set of standards to meet; Abraham Flexner provided the model.  For over 2000 years, medical understanding and practice were frozen in Hippocratic stasis—in theories based on the “four humours[5]” and in practices that included bleeding, cupping, purging and so on; still performed by country doctors even as late as 1918.  But, thanks to Walsh and his protégés, medicine in the U.S. was turned on its head in just a few decades.  By 1918, there were vaccines to prevent bacterial diseases such as smallpox, cholera, typhoid, diphtheria and tetanus, and even cures for diphtheria, the first “cure … entirely the result of laboratory work.”

There is much more here about medical history and science and the men and woman who pursued it that is fascinating to read.  The lives of men and woman like Paul Lewis, William Park and Anna Wessel Williams, to name just a few, are probably deserving of books of their own, but Oswald Avery story deserves special mention.  Initially in pursuit of the cause and prevention of influenza during the pandemic, Avery spent decades in his laboratory, not emerging until 1943 at the age of 67, with a paper describing the function of DNA.  As luck would have it, that year, as he was being considered for a Nobel Prize for an earlier discovery, this new paper (the first he published in a dozen years) was so revolutionary and startling that the Nobel committee hesitated.  Even though Avery was first to publish, he never did get the recognition for his brilliant work on DNA by the Nobel committee that he deserved.  “Tenacious and persistent” don’t even come close to describing Avery.  My favorite Avery quote is, “Disappointment is my daily bread.  I thrive on it.”  Until his death ten years or so later, he never let up.

Researching and writing ‘The Great Influenza’ took John Berry seven years.  Perhaps he was inspired by Avery’s example.  It is surprising to me that, outside of some fictional accounts and memoirs, so little had been written about this pandemic.  It’s almost as though the country developed collective amnesia about an event that cost more lives than all the wars in the 20^th Century.   All I can say is, “It’s about time!’  This book is truly a monumental achievement, one that deserves to sit alongside ‘The Microbe Hunters’ and other classics of science.  It should be required reading for every medical student.

During a recent appointment with my doctor, I mentioned that I was reading ‘The Great Influenza,” and asked if he had heard of it.   I was delighted to hear him say he read it last year and express enthusiasm for the book.   I mentioned how surprised I was that even in the last half of the 19^th Century, most doctors didn’t use stethoscopes and other instruments we take for granted, and then pointed to the computer attached to the wall (which, I hasten to say, me doctor used) and said, “in fifty years, will we be as surprised and horrified to learn that most doctors didn’t use computers in 2010, and failed to understand the accumulated benefit it provides, for example, in epidemiology and reduction of medical errors?”  He laughed and said to me, “As I was reading the book, I wondered how many of the things I’m doing now I’ll be embarrassed about in fifty years.”

I thought, “now there’s a healthy, self-critical way to look at it—no matter what we’re doing now, how will we view it fifty years later?”  We could apply that to life as well as medicine.  In an instant, my respect for my doctor grew.

…

“I had a little bird,

Her name was Enza

Opened the window

And In-flu-enza”

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[1] Thanks to the Army, which preserved lung tissue from autopsies performed in 1918, this was confirmed by RNA analysis in the 1990s.

[2] Spain was one of the few nations not at war and therefore free to report the spread of the disease without interference by the censors.  Since Spain reported it first, people thought that that was where it started, hence the misnomer, Spanish Flu.  Kansas flu would have been more accurate.

[3] What’s going on here is a bit more complicated.  In some ways, the younger and healthier the victim, the greater the danger, since a healthy immune system mounts a more robust counteroffensive.  Ultimately, what killed many patients was the immune response, which flooded the lungs with white blood cells and antigens, which, together with a stew of dead lung cells, clogged up the lungs so completely that the body could not eliminate the congestion fast enough.  Some victims coughed so hard they tore cartilage and broke ribs trying to clear respiratory passages.  Many died and many others suffered brain damage, depression and other long-term disabilities.

[4] One theory for why this virus affected a higher proportion of young adults as compared to people over forty-five, besides the close-quarters imposed by war, is that older people who lived through the “Russian flu” of 1889-90 were more likely to have an immunity.  That flu was similar enough to offer some protection to this newer strain of the disease.  Also see previous note.

[5] Blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm.

How I Came By My Chris Craft by Paul Schlieben

Yahoo!

I

t was one of those lovely summer days in the Adirondack Mountains, comfortably hot, with a few cumulus clouds and a light southerly breeze shuttling in slightly humid air from the east, but not unbearable or unpleasant.  My wife, Joan and I decided to hike to Jabe’s Pond, about a mile and a half west of Lake George and our rental cottage.  Jabe’s is isolated and pristine and about a mile long by a half mile wide.  Every year we look forward to this hike, which has become an annual event.  For the most part, the trail is a gentle climb, following a brook on a shady trail.  While much of the area had been logged over more than once, there are a lot of tall pines, oaks, birch, maple and beech along the trail.

Invariable, in seems hotter and much more humid under the canopy of trees than out in the open.  Whether this is due to our exertions or the fact that a breeze doesn’t penetrate the trees, I don’t know.  But, insects like shade and still air and they didn’t waste any time finding us.  I regretted not bringing insecticide.   My arms were in continuous motion around my head to warn off the insects for most of the hike.  Joan, with her dark hair, usually attracts insects more than I do, but this day I was there chosen quarry.  Eventually, I broke off a cluster of leaves from a sapling and rhythmically struck first one side of my neck and then the other – sort of like a self-flagellation ritual.  Up to a point, this worked well.

We made it to Jabe’s Pond, swam, and watch and listened to the melodic calls of a family of loons as they dove in the pond and resurfaced many yards away, again and again. We also watched transfixed as the tiniest fish I’ve ever seen navigated the pebbles in the shallows, whether in search of microscopic meals or a passage to deeper water, I couldn’t tell.  I wondered at its chances of survival.

But, it is the story of our trip back to Silver Bay that I mean to relate to you now.  Just as we were drying our feet and pulling on our walking shoes, a giant, prehistoric pterodactyl-sized mosquito – call it mosquito-dactyl or whatever you like – swooped down and grabbed Joan with its right foreleg and wrapped me tightly with its left, and off it went, with Joan and me dangling helplessly, looking up, able to see only the tip of its proboscis, the size of a Gatling gun and varnished with a dark sheen of dried blood from its last victim.  At first, we struggled, but as we climbed above the treetops, we stopped struggling and held on for dear life.   At first, it was hard to discern our direction of flight, but years of flying experience came in handy and I quickly picked out some landmarks and got my bearings.  I could see that we were headed for Lake George and would, in fact, be flying right over our cabin.  At first, I thought the giant mosquito was going to pass over the lake to the other side, but, whether due to fatigue or distracted by the glare of the sun reflecting off the windscreen of a speedboat making its way down the lake; and due to the fact that I weigh considerably more than Joan, the giant mosquito dropped me.  As I slipped from its hoary grasp, I just managed to snag Joan leg and held tight.  As luck would have it, the weight of both of us was just too much for the giant mosquito and it dropped us about a hundred feet above the lake, and we went hurtling through the air into the lake, making a tremendous splash.

It was at this moment that the speedboat – an enormous, beautiful mahogany job called the Black Arrow pulling a water skier – sped by.   The skier, performing an intricate sweeping move to the outside of the speedboat’s wake, fell and cart wheeled off into the shallows adjacent a small island.  As the tow rope came skittering by Joan and me, I grabbed the tow bar with my right hand and Joan with my left hand and – pop – we were up and out of the water, moving about sixty miles an hour – so fast, in fact, that we didn’t need skis; our hiking shoes were sufficient to stay upright and glide across the surface like water bugs.  This was quite exhilarating and fun, although I think Joan suffered from a bit of whiplash from being jerked up so quickly.  Anyway, as luck would have it, the boat circled across the lake right behind Slim Point and I was able to let go of the tow bar and glide smoothly into about a foot of water, where I sunk to my ankles but managed to stay upright.  “Wow!” I said.

Joan wasn’t as thrilled.  She looked at me and, with some irritation, due to the frequency of my losing my glasses, said, “Paul, what happened to your glasses?”  

I reached up to my face and, sure enough, they were gone.  “They must have come off when that mosquito-dactyl dropped us in the lake!”  I said.

“Well,” she said, “they were brand new and cost a small fortune. You better go back out there and find them, and don’t come back until you do!”

I agreed.  The idea of spending the second week of our vacation without glasses would have put a real crimp in my activities.  In fact, I’m really lost without them.  So I flew out to the middle of the lake.  I know, I know.  This is where I lose you.  “What does he mean?” your thinking.  Figuratively, he “flew out?” as in “hurried”?  No, I’m being literal here.  I’m sure you’ve believed everything I’ve told you so far, but “flying?  Come on!” Well, I can assure you, its true.  I’ve had lots of experience flying in dreams.  In fact, I fly quite regularly.  I learned when I was quite young, flying from chair to couch, eventually to the dining room table and then taking it outdoors to the park that had a nice gentle slope of grass that would cushion my falls.  I got quite good at reading the winds, particularly the updrafts, and I managed to soar great distances.  It’s the most fun I’ve ever had.  The toughest part is learning to keep you feet together like a rudder.  That’s the secret to maintaining a delicate balance.  A helicopter pilot once told me that when flying a helicopter, “you don’t move the controls, you just think about moving the controls,” the touch is that sensitive.  Well, human flight is much the same and it takes a lot of practice to learn how to do it right.  I guess that’s why so few human beings fly.   What with various mechanical means of flight available and the bad experience that some have had, like Icarus flying too high and depending on artificial wax wings that melted in the sun – what a dope!  A lot of people just turned away from human flight entirely.  But, I can assure you, it just takes patience.  Any boy with a dream can do it.

So, I flew out to the middle of the lake and, when I thought I was just about to the place where the giant mosquito dropped us, I plunged into the water like a pelican diving for dinner.  About ten or fifteen feet down, something quite extraordinary happen.  The biggest lake trout I’ve ever seen came swimming by and, remarkable – are you with me here? – my glasses were draped across his occiput, just behind its eyes.  I grabbed him by his tailfin as he swam by and demanded that he fin over my glasses.  (Well, they don’t have hands.)  I have to hand it to him, he tried.  But fins a pretty slimy and the glasses slipped off and started to fall deeper and deeper, spinning as they fell, like a seedpod in the wind.  Short of breath, I went back to the surface, took a deep gulp of air and then dove down after my glasses, which were slowing receding into the gloom.   I dove and dove.  Fifty feet, then a hundred feet, then two hundred feet, and on and on.  I knew the lake wasn’t more than a few hundred feet deep, so I was really puzzled as to how it was that I was able to descend, deeper and deeper.  Just as I was about to give up, the glasses snagged on a rocky outcropping and I was able to grab them and put them on.  What a relief.  But, as you can imagine, I was fairly out of breath and fearful that I might not be able to make it back to the surface! 

I looked around and realized that I was in a deep cave at the bottom of the lake.  It had been rumored for years that such a cave existed, but since no one had ever discovered it, we all discounted the likelihood of such a cavern.  You can imagine how excited I was to confirm its existence now!  I turned around quickly and bumped my elbow on something strange and turned to examine it more closely.  I backed up in a fright, for it was a skeleton!  And, attached to the skeleton was an aqua-lung of a style perhaps twenty or thirty years old.  I examined the pressure gauge – I had to rub some of the algae off it first – and, as luck would have it, discovered that there was still air in it, just enough to get me to the surface!  Quickly I unwrapped the aqua-lung from the tangle of bones that slipped away, one by one, as I worked it free, and managed to strap it to my back and take a big breath.  You can’t imagine how relieved I was.  I started for the surface.  Half way up, perhaps at a depth of three hundred feet, the air ran out, so I had to hold my breath and hurry to the surface as fast as I could, all the while knowing that I risked getting the bends.  But I had no choice.  I breached the surface like a whale and took a big, grateful breath of air. 

Nearby, an old man was sitting in a boat, quietly fishing.  He had the crumpled look of someone who had stopped thinking about his appearance years ago, bringing to mind an unmade bed.  His straggly grey hair stuck out from under his hat like clumps of dank straw, and he had sprouts of hair growing in the strangest places – from his ears, behind is jaw, under his chin.  And, as if a time-traveler from of bygone era, he held a pipe clenched tightly in his jaws.

He startled some when I breached, more hopeful than frightened I suppose, then he resumed his solipsistic attitude of indifference, although I must have been a surprising sight, even to an old man who had probably seen everything.

Fatigued, it was all I could do to swim over to his boat – an old wooden craft with a high transom that for some reason reminded me of a Pogo comic – and, holding on to the gunnels, said, “Mister.  I need to get to a decompression chamber, A.S.A.P.!” 

I went on to explain about Jabe’s Pond and the giant mosquito-dactyl and my glasses and lake trout and the cave and the bones and acqua-lung.  Taking his pipe from his mouth and stabbing the air with it, as though to spear that lake trout, he said, “that damn trout… I’ bin tryin’ t’snag him for better part of forty year, and wouldn’t ya knowd it, you had him in your grasp, by the finny fin fin!  Then ya let him go!” Shaking his head, he spits a gob to leeward in exasperation.  “Jezz!  I give up.  He-yer, climb in, mista.   I’ll take ya back to my cabin and we can have a few beers.  That’s the best way I know to decompress, and I sure could uses some decompressin’ meself!”

Well, I was bushed and that sounded pretty good to me.  So I climbed in and he yanked the starter cord and off we went to a secluded little cove I had never noticed before, and pulled up to the most rickety string of docks you’ve ever seen; docks that looked like they had been tacked together with timber fall.   Tied there were maybe a dozen or more boats of every description – Boston Whalers, an old Chris Craft, a few Grumman canoes, a perfect Century speedboat, an aluminum Aristocraft, a couple classic Lyman runabouts, and more.  We tied up and strolled up to his cabin, just a few yards from the docks.  He told me to have a seat in a wicker chair on the porch and went in to the cabin, returning a few moments later with as many beers as he could hold, six or eight maybe, and an old-fashioned beer can opener known as a churchkey.  I studied the cans a moment.  “Piels!” I said, “Where did you get them?  They haven’t made Piels beer in years!” 

“Yep, that’s so.  Bought a whole boxcar when they closed up down-state and been drinkin’ it ever since, goin’ on thirty year or so.”   He took a long pull on his can and belched quietly.  “Perty good, ain’t it?”

I looked down at the can; its top pitted with rust, and wiped it on my shirt.  Warily, I took a sip, then a longer pull and agreed.  “But doesn’t it go stale after a while?”

“Suppose, but after a few cans, never noticed much.  Decompresses just the same as them new fancy Rocky Mountain suds they try to pass off as beer nowdays.  And don’t get me sta-ted.  Lite beer is like sayin’ ‘buy fou-a cans where two might a done the job just fine’.  No thanks, mista.” 

“You got a point there.  What are you going to drink when you run out of this?”

“Oh, that ain’t likely.  See that shippin’ containa they-er back in the wood?  Stock full it is.”

“Wow!”

So, we sat there on his porch drinking his ancient Piels, chewing the fat – literally, moose jerky he made himself, which oozed grease with every bite – delicious! – and sat there overlooking the prettiest, shady little cove that no one even knows exists.

Being a solitary sort, and not inclined to small talk, it didn’t take long for him to run out of conversation.  Then we just sat quietly, drinking and enjoying the view.  Eventually, it occurred to me that Joan was probably still waiting for me on Slim Point and would be getting pretty annoyed.

“Well,” I said, “I guess I better get back to the other side of the lake.  My wife’s probably getting a little worried by now.  I really thank you for your hospitality.  Decompressing like this really works.  I’m amazed!”

“Sho-wer.  Beats the hell out of bein’ stuck in some kind of pressah cooka for hours,” he said.  “Say, mista.  Just take one of them boats they-er.  I’ll swing by and pick it up sometime, or,” and then, almost inaudibly to himself, “oh hell, I don’t know, maybe I won’t.”

“Where did you get all those boats, anyway”?

“All them fools that come lookin’ for that cave down there.  Once I started that rumor years ago, they just keep comin’.  Lord.  They strap all that heavy stuff on, dive down and then just never surface agin.  It was just meant to be a joke, really,” he added, (a little defensively, I thought.)  “I never even knowed it was they-er; not until today when you popped up and told that yarn about losing your eye-specs.  I wouldn’t have believed it myself.  But there must be a dozen fools down there still, lookin’ for a way out.  Not until you told your yarn, did I believe it meself.  Nobody knew.”

“Hmm….   Don’t you feel a little bad, given all the people been lost down there?”

“Nope.  Never occurred to me to feel bad… fools all of ‘em,” his voice trailing off, wistful and quiet, as though the thought was new to him.

“Hmm.  Well, OK then.  I’ll be off.  I’ll tie the boat up on the other side, at the Silver Bay dock.  I’ll fill the gas; that’s the least I can do.”

“Oh, hell.  Don’t botha.  You can keep it if you want.  Look around.  I got dozens of boats.  Don’t need ‘em all.  Take that Chris-Craft they-er.  It’s a ’54 or so.  Needs a slap’a varnish but the engine tics sweet as a parlor clock.  Them ol’ flathead eights; you just can’t beat ‘em.  But she’s been sitting here at the dock for a goin’ on two years now.  Won’t last if she ain’t tended to.  High maintenance ladies, them varnish boats are.”

Then, as an afterthought, almost sheepishly, I thought, “Hmm.  Aah,” clearing his throat,  “Ahem. I’d be much obliged if you didn’t mention the cave to anyone, or my little cove he-yer, for that matta, if you don’t mind.  See, I make a pretty good livin’  sellin’ them boats and I wouldn’t want to spoil a good thing.  That Century they-er should see me through five years or mo-wer.”

“Wow! … Really?  Must be worth a lot!” I said.  “OK, I guess.  I’ll be sure to keep your little secret.  Hell!  Who would believe my crazy story anyhow?  It’s just too farfetched.”  

“That’s so.   That’s so,” he said.

With that, before he could change his mind, I leaped the gunnels of the Chris Craft, hit the starter, untied it from the dock and sped off, waving my farewell. 

On the trip back across the lake, it occurred to me that someone might recognize this boat someday, but I was willing to take a chance.  If anyone claimed it, I’d give it over.  But nobody’s ever even hinted at it.  Briefly, I wondered if he offered up the Chris-Craft as a sort a bribe, to keep me quite.  But I quickly put that out of my head.  “Yahoo,” I said, as I pushed the throttle forward.

And you know the craziest thing?  I’ve tried to find that cove many times since then but I’ve never been able to locate that narrow little inlet.  But I’ll keep trying. 

Anyway, that’s the story of how I come by this classic Chris Craft here. And, come to think of it, she’s the only proof I have that my story is true!

Oh yes.  For dinner, we had corn on the cob, grilled chicken and fresh peas, and that’s the whole truth, so help me god.

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