On the Wings of a Plastic Dove

Foreword: Given the impending end of the election season, it seemed appropriate to tell another story about what can happen on the campaign trail.

Each of the three Congressional campaign I helped coordinate -- 1962, 1964, and 1966 -- had high and low points.   The most outlandish situation occurred in the last of the three, occasioned by the opening of a short stretch of highway on Milwaukee’s South Side.  The roadway was just a final small piece in the local interstate network.  The big celebrations had taken place months before when most of the roadway opened.

A group of tinhorn South Side Milwaukee politicians, however, decided that there should a ribbon cutting anyway.  They invited  Zablocki.   I advised him against going that morning on the grounds that there would be no other dignitaries above the rank of alderman attending.  Never one to duck an occasion,  he ignored me and went anyway.

About two o’clock that afternoon,  the phone rang.  “Was Congressman Zablocki at the ribbon-cutting this morning?” the male caller asked.   We confirmed it.   “Were there flowers in the ribbon?”  he wanted to know.   Unsure,  I asked Clem who was working next door in his office.  Yes, there had been flowers in the ribbon. 

“Those flowers,” the caller shouted into the phone, “were stolen from my mother’s grave.   We don’t care so much about the flowers,  but we want the plastic dove back!   If it is not returned immediately,  we’re going to the newspapers.”

As Zablocki later reconstructed events,  the cemetery was adjacent to the ribbon-cutting site. One of the politicians apparently decided that no one would miss some flowers from a grave,  jumped the cemetery fence and snatched them.  How the plastic dove got involved was never adequately explained.

It took little imagination to see the headline in the Milwaukee Journal the next day:  “Politicians Purloin Poseys and Plastic Pigeon.”  The tinhorns would get what they deserved but Zablocki also would be implicated. 

“Ask the family to come over here this evening,” sighed a weary Clem.

In the meantime we got in touch with the  organizers of the ribbon-cutting.  They stoutly denied having stolen the flowers and feigned no knowledge of the whereabouts of the highly treasured plastic dove.  They later delivered us a copy of a flower shop receipt that was a patent phony, then cleared out before the irate family arrived.

I can still remember the son of the deceased, a 30-something man about six-six and weighing a good 270 pounds. He refused to sit down, instead kept striding back and forth in Zablocki’s small office, waving his arms and shouting repeatedly about how he was “going to the papers.”   It took all of the Congressman’s ample diplomatic skills to calm the situation but after a time and multiple apologies he succeeded. The family shook his hand warmly as they left.  We exhaled and poured double martinis.

The press never knew. The plastic dove, alas, was never recovered. 

The Joys of a Political Advance man

Foreword:  As the Presidential election season winds down, I was brought back in memory to an earlier time when I was a participant in those hi-jinks.  Here is one vivid remembrance.

After John Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the 1964 Presidential election pitted Lyndon Johnson against Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona.     My chance to meet Johnson came early that year when as Vice President he was preparing to make a speech in Milwaukee.   He called together the entire Wisconsin Democratic congressional delegation and their aides -- in an earlier day Johnson had been a staffer -- to discuss his visit.  In the course of the confab he went from person to person, asking their ideas.   When he got to me, unaccustomed as I was to advising Vice Presidents of the United States, I stammered that all the ideas that had been vetted earlier seem good to me.  Johnson passed on quickly, clearly convinced that Congressman Zablocki’s aide likely was retarded.

Nevertheless, the Johnson Presidential campaign in 1964 saw fit to call on me.   Local politicos without serious races, like Zablocki, were asked to second their people to help elect the Texan.  I was offered up and made part of the advance group on Lyndon’s campaign stop in Milwaukee.   Two jobs were assigned:  I was named “Bands Chairman” with the responsibility for lining up local high school marching bands to be stationed at strategic points along the President’s motorcade route from Billy Mitchell Field to Kosciuzko Park on Milwaukee’s South Side, a distance of 7.5 miles.   They were to be kept playing suitable patriotic airs for the waiting throngs.

My second assignment was to arrange a place for the President to urinate before going to the podium.  That proved more difficult since the ordinary construction site john was deemed 1) too ignominious for the Commander in Chief of the Free World, and 2) too tempting for the commoners to employ as their own bladders dictated.  Instead I rented a small oval house trailer that featured a bathroom and stationed it strategically behind the speaker’s platform.  A staffer from the Mayor’s Office, George Simos, was enlisted to intercept Johnson as he stepped from his limo and direct him to the trailer.

On the day of the President’s visit,  two large banners announcing “Bands Chairman” were affixed to each side of my small Ford and I was sent forth to make sure sweet music entertained the crowds.  On my first pass I found bands on corners a block off the route or barely assembled.  One was playing “The Eyes of Texas” out of tune.  The President’s plane was more than an hour late.   

On my second pass, not knowing whether Johnson was five minutes or five hours behind me (no cell phones in those days),  I drove around a corner onto the route.  All cars had been cleared off for blocks ahead.  Thousands of onlookers turned as one in anticipation.  A cheer echoed and reechoed.  I waved feebly.

Once back at the park it was clear that, having landed,  Johnson was in no hurry to get to the rostrum.  Along the route he stopped to talk to onlookers and even dropped into a grocery store.  He brought a large salami, hacked off pieces with his pen knife, wolfed it down, and threw the rind out the car window.  (We feared the next day headline:  “Lyndon the Litter Bug.”)

When the President finally arrived, George signaled as delicately as possible to the waiting rest station.  Johnson ignored him.   After his speech he hustled back to his car -- once again ignoring George and the potty stop.  I noted to George later that it was a shame we had spent so much money on the toilet and it had not been used. “I used it,”  he volunteered. 

I was shocked:  “What if Johnson had walked in just at that moment?”  

“I would have said, ‘Be through in a minute, Mr. President.’”

Postscript:  Spear carriers in politics also are fair game for unpaid bills.  They started rolling in, addressed to me, a week after the event -- for the trailer, sound system, the overweight Polish lady who sang the Star Spangled Banner.  I sweated. It took some fancy footwork but eventually the Democratic Mayor declared the occasion a “civic welcome” and City coffers were tapped instead of mine.

The Historic Lake Erie Steamship Race

The recent release of the motion picture “Ford vs. Ferrari,” based on the race car rivalry of the two automotive companies at Le Mans in 1966, has reminded me of the intense excitement races between two major competitors can engender with the public.  The “Great Steamship Race” on Lake Erie in 1901 between the “City of Erie” and “Tashmoo”  furnishes a prime example. 

The initial irony of this race is that both ships were the brainchild of a single marine engineer, architect and designer.  He was Frank E. Kirby, born in Cleveland, who migrated to Detroit where he became a major figure in shipbuilding. Said an effusive contemporary biography:  “Nearly one hundred of the largest craft upon our grand rivers and noble rivers are of his architecture and design, marvels of their kind and monuments to his ingenuity and skills.” 

Shown in a postcard view plying Lake Erie, City of Erie was launched in 1898 by the Detroit Dry Dock Company for the Cleveland Buffalo Transit Company. The City of Erie's usual route was from Cleveland to Erie, Pennsylvania, and on to Buffalo, New York.  It was nicknamed the "Honeymoon Special" from the number of newlyweds who travelled to Buffalo, bound for Niagara Falls.

Tashmoo, shown above, was built two years later at a Michigan shipyard for Detroit’s White Star Line and launched on December 31, 1899. The Tashmoo was nicknamed the "White Flyer" and, because of the number of windows on the ship, the "Glass Hack.”  As shown here on a flyer, the Tashmoo's regular route was the sixty miles from Detroit to Pprt Huron, Michigan, making several stops along the way.  Note that roundtrip tickets cost only 75 cents.

The idea for a race arose in 1900 when two steamships based on Lake Michigan engaged in a friendly race and a Chicago newspaper hailed them as “fastest on the Great Lakes, a claim that was disputed vigorously by other steamship owners.  The president of Detroit's White Star Line offered $1,000 to any ship that could beat the Tashmoo in a race. J. W. Wescott, who company owned City of Erie accepted the challenge. The course agreed on was 82 nautical miles (152 km; 94 mi) long, following the City of Erie's regular route from Cleveland to Erie.

News of the race engendered tremendous excitement, not only around the Great Lakes but nationwide.  The Detroit Free Press branded it the “greatest steamboat contest in the history of American navigation.”  The amount of money bet on the race was estimated to reach $100,000 — equivalent to at least $2.2 million today.  Which steamer Frank Kirby might have favored has gone unrecorded.

On the day of the race in June 1901 thousands of people lined the shores of Lake Erie from Cleveland to Erie.  Thousands more watched from boats anchored on the water along the race path.  A photo shows the ships facing off as crews anticipated the gunshot signaling the start.  The Tashmoo is at far left, City of Erie next to it.

The race was timed with the City of Erie moving first.  But the faster Tashmoo soon overtook its rival steamer and passed it.  The Detroit Free Press described the scene below decks on both ships:  “It was an awful strain on the crews of both boats,  For five hours the engine room crews were shut in a hell hole….The heat was terrific….Strong men, subjected to the intense heat, became weak as babies, yet when told to surrender their shovels to others, refusing as they struggled gamely on.”

As the race progressed and the ships were out of sight of the shore, however, Tashmoo slowed, reputedly because the wheelman was not accustomed to steering only by compass.  The City of Erie took the lead.  With the shoreline visible again, the Tashmoo rapidly gained ground until an overheating condenser slowed it a second time.  In the end, the City of Erie won the race by a mere 45 seconds.  Tashmoo, however, was reckoned the faster.  Some blamed its loss as a jinks for being named for the doomed harpooner in Melville’s “Moby Dick.”

There was no return match although the Michigan owners asked for one.  Cleveland’s Wescott refused, clearly understanding what the outcome might be.  Both steamers went back to their usual routes, serving on the lakes for decades.  In December 1927, Tashmoo snapped its moorings during a storm and headed up the Detroit River.  Damaged and repaired, it later hit a submerged rock in the St. Marys River as it was leaving Sugar Island, Michigan.  After evacuating all passengers, the ship sank in eighteen feet of water and, as shown below, was towed to the scrapyard.  In 1985 Tashmoo was named to the National Maritime Hall of Fame.  A glass paperweight memorializes the vessel.

City of Erie also had its travails.  In September 1909, it collided with and sank a schooner, the T. Vance Straubenstein. Three persons drowned.  The steamer was retired from service in 1938 and scrapped in Cleveland in 1941.

Described in the press as “Two Freshwater Greyhounds,” City of Erie and Tashmoo represented the historical apex of steamship travel — and witnessed its decline. The coming of the automobile opened up new and more flexible travel options for millions of Americans.  The steamers had taken almost five hours at top speed to go 94 miles.  Soon automobiles could make it in two. Never again would a steamship race attract national attention.  As “Ford vs. Ferrari” reminds us, gasoline-powered races would prevail.