Going South with the 9999th U. S. Air Force

Foreword:   Occasionally on this blog I take the opportunity to “wander down memory lane.”  This post is one of those times.  By actual count (for security clearance purposes) I took eighty trips abroad during my working career spanning fifty-four years.  Only one — my first abroad — was an out and out boondoggle. It is chronicled here.

While still in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, in 1962 I went to Washington, D.C., as the chief of staff for a Wisconsin congressman named Clem Zablocki.   There I became acquainted with the 9999th, an Air Force Reserve unit on Capitol Hill, composed of members of Congress and congressional staffers.  The commanding general of the 9999th was was future Republican nominee for President, Senator Barry Goldwater.  I was allowed to participate as the only enlisted man (turning off the lights for the slide briefings) and promised a captain’s rank.   I also was allowed to join the group on a 1962 “study mission” to Mexico, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, and Panama.

Our plane was a C-118, a Douglas Aircraft cargo plane with four propeller-driven engines, a kind of lumbering workhorse of the Air Force that had been around since before the Korean War.  Shown here, it had been modified into a passenger plane called the “Liftmaster.”  Between 1947 and 1959, Douglas built a total of 704 DC-6s, 167 of them military versions.

We had six members of Congress on board the C-118, five representatives and one senator.  Among them, shown here from left, are Zablocki, second;  Rep. William Scranton of Pennsylvania, later a presidential candidate, fourth; and Senator Peter Dominick of Arizona, fifth. A large group of male staff members rounded out the contingent.

While flying across the Caribbean to Mexico City, we encountered a fierce squall line.  The C-118 was tossed around, lightening was striking all around us, and ice  built up on the wings.  There was absolute silence in the cabin and sweat trickled down my side as I prayed.  After we had made it through the storm and landed safely in Mexico City, I ate with the co-pilot, who confessed to being scared, but noted that our pilot, called “Lobby,” shown here, kept cool but ducked his head at every lightening strike.

Mexico City proved a revelation.  Here was a huge city bustling with energy on the scale of New York City.  As a Midwest kid I had never imagined such a place existed “south of the border.”  Our group was treated to a bullfight, my first, one in which the matador made a tactical error, was severely gored in the groin, and according to next day’s newspaper, remained hanging to life by a thread.  I never saw another bullfight.

Every stop was an excuse for the group to go shopping.  Zablocki often was leading the way with me tagging along.  When he asked me to examine a piece of jewelry he had picked out, I was effusive about it.  He took me aside, explained that one haggled for price outside the U.S. and that my response hereafter was to be:  “Looks like rough work.”  Have used that line many times since.

Our next stop was the Panama Canal Zone where our group was taken by boat half-way up the canal by the operating authority to the town of Gamboa.  Along the way we saw American troop ships going home after being deployed during the recently-ended Cuban Crisis.  I had in mind going the rest of the way by train to Colon, on the Pacific side.  The train left Gamboa just as I got to the station and I was forced to hitchhike back.  My luck was to be picked up and taken back to Panama City by Hula Sanchez, our lovely hostess on the boat.  She refused my dinner invitation, however.

Our next stop was Puerto Rico where the military duties of the day included a fishing trip in the northern Caribbean.  That is me, the handsome devil catching some rays while deep sea fishing off San Juan.  Then there was a quick side trip to St. Thomas where our hosts were Gen. Donald Dawson, former aide to President Truman, and film star, Ilona Massey.  She had been an idol of my youth and now she was right there to talk to.

Our final stop was Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba where Fidel Castro had tried to get Russian nukes only a short time before.  Although we traveled mostly in civvies, on Gitmo, as the Marines call it, we were in uniform and my meager two stripes there for all to see.  They emboldened the enlisted Marines to ask me who this high-powered delegation might be.  Shown here is Tom Hughes, my airplane seatmate as we look from the base boundary line down into Cuba itself.

Upon return to the United States, I never received captain’s bars and ended my Air Force affiliation as an airman 2nd class several years later.  Before I could be commissioned, President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, took aim at the 9999th and like units on the Hill sponsored by the Army and Navy, disbanding them all.  My first boondoggle, in effect, turned out to be my last.

Doc! I Keep Seeing White Elephants at Saloons

 

No, the doctor replies, “You have been drinking;  you are supposed to see PINK elephants.  A WHITE elephant is defined as something that is useless or troublesome.” But Doc, I reply, these are saloons named “White Elephant” and they are all over the pre-Prohibition landscape.  Why?

It seems no one really knows.  For example, in the late 1800s White Elephant saloons proliferated in Texas.  They could be found in Austin, San Antonio, Denison, Mobeetie, Panhandle, Fredericksburg, El Paso, and Lampasas — with the most infamous one in Fort Worth, represented here by its logo. 

The history of the White Elephant Saloon in Ft. Worth spans from 1884 to about 1914. It was located at two different spots on Main Street during that time, first at 308-310 Main St. and later at 606-608 Main St.  After a series of owners, about 1886 it fell into the hands of Bill Ward, a man who knew the saloon could prosper by expanding into gambling and hiring as his concessionaire a gunslinger named Luke Short.  One night Short was confronted by “Longhaired Jim” Courtright.  They dueled it out in front of the White Elephant where Short got five shots off before Courtright could fire and killed him.  Short was put in jail overnight, then released and never brought to trial.

While the White Elephant Saloon of San Antonio has no dramatic shoot on premises, it has been described as a “rough and rowdy” premier drinking establishment in town.  It was located on San Antonio’s main plaza, close to city hall and the stockyards.  Popular at night, the saloon was adjacent to the north side of the plaza where “scuffles, skirmishes and shootings were commonplace.”

Only several years after it opened, this White Elephant was forced to close by a  crackdown on gambling in San Antonio.  The local newspaper commented: “When the boys to San Antone, they can not milk the elephant any more.”

The White Elephant in Bryan, Texas, has not been as prominent as the other two Texas saloons.  Represented here by a jug that indicates it sold whiskey — “pure liquor — at retail as well as over the bar.  Part of a land grant by the Spanish to Stephen A. Austin and named for his nephew, Bryan was the seat of Brazos County in west central Texas.   Its history seems less identified with violence and thus not as elaborately recorded.

As noted here on an ad, the White Elephant Saloon of Dennison regarded itself as “The largest and most elegant resort in North Texas.”  Founded in 1884 this “watering hole” was in business under a series of owners.  The saloon, billards and restaurant were on the first floor of the building on Dennison’s West Main Street.  Gambling and sleeping rooms were on the second floor.  In 1884 the establishment harbored a man named Jim McIntire, wanted for murdering two French squatter on ranch land in New Mexico.  When the law came to get McIntire in Bryan, he was tipped off and hired a horse from the White Elephant livery stables and escaped to New Orleans.

Not only Texas harbored saloons under the sign of the white elephant.  They could be found throughout the West and South.  W. R. Monroe owned one in Kansas City, Missouri.   As many saloonkeepers of the times did, Monroe issued bar tokens good for drinks at his bar.  The one shown here for his White Elephant Saloon was worth five cents in trade.  This token is distinguished among representations of the pachyderm by the predominance given to one (unmentionable) physical attribute.

I am still puzzling over why Wichman would name a saloon White Elephant and then represent it with a ceramic pig big bottle.  As it turns out Wichman in addition to selling whiskey over the bar also was retailing liquor to customers in glass and ceramic containers.   Obviously a figural elephant likely would have held more booze than the proprietor might have wanted to give away, so Wichman chose a pig to convey a slug or two of his whiskey.

Another Tennessee White Elephant saloon artifact is a stoneware jug covered in dark Albany slip glaze into which has been scratched a rather primitive elephant.  The crudeness of the design indicates that it was created relatively early in the 1800s.  The saloon apparently belonged to Querna Clerk, about whom I can find nothing.   Nor does the jug given any clue as to the city or town in which the White Elephant was located.

Two cities named Richmond, one in Virginia and one in Kentucky both harbored White Elephant Saloons.  The Virginia example is unusual since this establishment was owned and operated by a woman, Mrs. Mary Enright.  Directories show her in business at 420 Louisiana during the early 1900s.  In addition to serving drinks at the bar she was blending her own whiskeys and selling them at both wholesale and retail.  Like the prior jug, this one too is scratched into brown Albany slip, but is legible. 

Called a “scratch jug” when it was offered at auction, the Albany slip covered beehive-shaped container shown here actually was covered by a stencil that masked the glaze from the body to create the letters.  It appears to be quart size.  Details about this White Elephant Saloon are similarly masked in history.

In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the White Elephant  was selling whiskey in a wide variety of ceramic jugs.  The one shown here offered a discount of ten cents on a refill of the jug when brought back to the saloon.  This was a popular Tuscaloosa watering hole.  Locals are said to have ridden horseback up to the place at Sixth Street and 24th Avenue of a morning to get cold glass of beer.  In 1932, workmen excavating at a construction site unearthed 75 brown and white jugs that bore the name of the White Elephant.

We still have not unraveled the prevalence of the name.  Several explanations have emerged as possibilities.  After the Civil War, a cliche’ was common in the U.S. referring to a neophyte having traveled afar and bragging about seeing something common to experienced travelers. Such was called “seeing the elephant.”  It also has been suggested that white paint was readily available and a pachyderm painted on a portico would have been an eye-catching graphic.  

The name might also have had a racial connotation.  In states with “Jim Crow”  laws the word “white” would warn blacks away from the establishment.  Those would include Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.  Notably, Ft. Worth had a Black Elephant Saloon whose clientele was limited to those of African origin.

Brewery Trade Cards Salute (Presumably) Opera

In this post, the third on brewery trade cards devoted to opera and the theater, the focus is on Adolphus Busch, the businessman behind Anheuser Busch Brewery of St. Louis and Budweiser beer.  While clearly a fan of opera, Busch — shown here on a beer stein — was not above poking fun at the stories while marketing his beer.

The first card here, for example, is a scene from the opera Siegfried by Richard Wagner.  The hero, Siegfried tangles with a fearsome dragon named Fafner and with the help of an enchanted sword, slays him.  In the beer version, Fafner asks the young man “who stirred up thy childish mind to the murderous deed?”  Siegfried replies that “…T’was Anhauser Beer that gave me courage.”

“The Chimes of Normandy” was the English translation of a French comic opera in three acts composed by Robert Planquette with a libretto from a play by Charles Gabet.  The third act is a mishmash of mistaken identities that ends happily for all concerned.  Busch’s trade card would appear to have little to do with the actual text.

Spelled incorrectly on the card as “Fiesco,” the actual title of this French opera is “Fiesque” or “The Genoese Conspiracy.”  By composer Edouard Lalo with libretto by Charles Beauquier, the piece comes to a tragic ending with a friend killing a friend.  The character shown on the card, Gianettino, is the ruler of Genoa.  He declares himself of good humor and wants it published that “everyone may enjoy himself and drink Anhauser Beer.”

The next card, “Nanon” is something of a puzzle since I can find no opera or theater piece that corresponds to it.  An opera called “Manon” is frequently performed but there is no character named “Anna” in it.   The picture is of a cavalry solder and minstrel wooing a young tavern wench named Anna.  Most interesting, while hold her hand with his left hand, he is pouring a beer with his right and missing the glass badly.  He intones:  “Anna, for Anheuser Beer I sing my praise, I love it as I do thee all my days.”  The back of these cards usually depicted a bottle of the beer.

Tony Faust was a well known St. Louis restauranteur who not only was a great friend of Adolphus, but married his daughter.  Busch is said to have had lunch most days at Faust’s eatery,  but reportedly drank wine, disdaining his own beer.  Because of their closeness,  Adolphus named a beer for him, advertising it in multiple ways related to the Faust legend.  Naturally opera cards would be among the advertisements.   

The card at left is from the first act of Gounod’s opera in which the aging Faust has been tempted to sell his soul to the devil Méphistophélès in return for restored youth.  Rather than drinking the devil’s elixir, Faust has his hand on a glass of Tony Faust Beer, but it still trembles in his  grasp.  The Faust card a right is from the opera’s second act when Mephistopheles in the guise of a soldier is in a tavern regaling a group of soldiers and flirting with the barmaids.

While earlier trade cards extolled Anhauser and Tony Faust beers,  the card celebrating “Stradella” specifically mentions Budweiser.  Stradella was a melodramatic grand opera in five acts composed by Louis Niedermeyer.  It premiered at the Paris Opera in March 1837.  The card presumably shows the hero, Stradella, with the heroine, Leonor, somewhere in Italy contemplating a glass of Budweiser Beer and bears little or no resemblance to the opera dialogue. 

Although Adolphus Busch set the standard for issuing opera-related trade cards, he was not the only brewer.  In Louisville, Kentucky, the Schaefer-Meyer Brewing Co., as illustrated above, knew a good promotion when they saw one and set about to replicate the marketing ploy.  They selected “La Belle Helene” as their target, a farce based on the story of Helen of Troy.  In effect Schaefer-Meyer were spoofing a spoof.  In their version,  Paris is holding out a goblet of company beer to one of three scantily dressed women and speaking to an offstage “Calchas,”  a high priest of Venus.  None of it makes a lot of sense but the picture has its own appeal.

Note:   For anyone interested in opera and theater trade cards, I have devoted two prior posts to the subject,  “Budweiser Goes to the Opera,” April 13, 2013, and “Off to the Opera on the Wings of Commerce,”  October 24, 2014.  The beer stein bearing the likeness of Adolphus Busch recently sold at an online auction for $2,125.00.