Diary of a Land Surveyor

Copyright © 2014 by WG Vanderhorst, PLS.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014913845

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-5812-3

                Softcover        978-1-4990-5813-0

                eBook             978-1-4990-5811-6

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Rev. date: 08/12/2014

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Contents

Dedication

Preface

Canton I

Birth

Father

Grandfather

Mother

Olean II

Mother and Father

School

Swimming

Clinton III

History

Divisions

Coaches

Water

Green

Careers

Family Dogs

Water Polo

Incentive

Colorado IV

Hotels

Oversight

Food Service

Depravation

Svobota

Screwy

Loose Ruck

Single Payer

Tuskegee

Thelma and Louise

Bottled Water

Washington V

Beef

Chuck

Cesareans

Johnny Appleseed

Lockheed

Homestead

Sawdust

Ka-Boom!

Paul Smith’s VI

Applications

Re-introduction

Snowy One

Induction

Interview

Grasshopper Pie

Stumping

Fee

Squaring

Lessons

Missing 315

Article II

Essex VII

Gertrude

Black Cherry

Harlow

California VIII

Mercedes

Preambles

Death Valley

Addison

Catalina

E-9

Phone Booth

Jokes

Rangers

Humankind

Skates

Whitey

Motorcycles

Leadership

Sisyphus

Grant

Toenails

Conspiratorial Locomotives

Dedication

This work is dedicated to Elizabeth Diane McDermott, my only child, a mom, Atascadero, CA, a long-distance runner.

The difference between fact and fiction is that fiction actually needs to make sense.

The late Tom Clancy, a man I have read.

WGV, PLS, Eureka, California, USA.

Preface

One may pick up my rudimentary stories as an honest, sincere, somewhat perturbed Adirondack surveyor currently practicing at California. It may be to learn my wit, my wisdom, my life. Or it may be a glimpse into what men may become from good families, cradle to grave, at these United States without subsidy. My thoughts. My stories.

I may live as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, adventurer. Or, like Sam, let me be bookended with Halley’s Comet or with other ice balls with modern subscript—not by marking twains on the Mississippi but instead by marking the land and events across the Lower 48. We all have one pass at life.

For me, make me a cue ball; hand me a Cuban cigar, Ohio Blue tips, or a good julep; read aloud at my presence the Old Man and the Ram, or Chaucer with Brogue. If old-fashioned, make me a double, layered into humanity, then send me to Lonesome Bay naked where I belong. That is the Adirondacks. Black water. Loons are there. We eat bark, chew ice. Iroquois stuff, duh.

My idea is the umbrella in your drink so that we drink together. Pull up a chair. I like the dense rocks. I am stolid like Adirondack granite. Very well then, Vermont marble, dense. Yes, I am.

For a while now, I considered writing in the first or third person—chose the former as I believe personal a better read. The first person has lived life, the third sees life then reports. For all my years, my mother the English teacher, where the hell is the second? The second, el segundo, so mysterious.

Whenever tenses changed, Mom corrected. I never learned but listened. I made some requisite adjustment. Some. Often the past imperfect tense using nouns like one or your imperfectly, even inconsistently.

Duh, and duh means stuff at the Adirondacks, you as reader are the second.

And thank God I am not a junior, Dad, as I could never live up to you and your honor, only try. My way. Your training.

WGV, of the upper left-hand corner of words and works in the field as surveyor, USA.

Canton I

Birth

Worse yet, I could not breathe. August 17, 1956, Mom and Daddy making out at the Canton drive-in, her water broke, I just wanted to breathe. The movie was?

It is the folklore, the Institution. It is Canton, NY, the home of Saint Lawrence University; a baby born, August 18, 1956. My name is the first-born child of Wesley and Jessie-Lou Vanderhorst, Wesley Gerrit. The hospital burned down that year, after my birth—my records, my footprints, as never born. At four years old inoculated, Utica, NY, then Albany, NY; vital statistics, my record as US citizen.

Were it not for my mother birthing three more children in five years after me, I would probably have earned bubonic plague, polio, smallpox, and measles in one fell swoop. My mother did not know infants are at risk for those diseases because she studied English instead of science.

Between 1956 and 1961, my mom and dad birthed some of the best Americans these United States has known. I am the first. I am the black sheep, the cruel Dutch uncle.

My mother had ideas. The steering wheel, while pregnant, that she as English teacher would not control her body, as others were in need—a metaphor on ice, dear Mother, as we skate later after first sliding upon ice.

While a fetus, my mom, driving to her high school teaching job, hit a nasty patch of ice; and since ABS breaking was a shadowy invention of the future at the time, she locked them up. In weird irony, she rear-ended a school bus. Thanks to her condition and mine, we enjoyed cushioning, uh, amniotic fluid.

That day my pregnant mom hit the bus, me, her welfare, my womb obviously perhaps well bruised, my father asked the stupidest question of all life as a husband: How is the car?

Wait! I understand my dad liked the landlady earlier the previous year, 1955, he as a handsome garbage collector and a sophomore at Saint Lawrence University. But he and Mom married September 1 that year. How could my father, a man, my daddy, ever not adore my mother and notice another sexy woman? How could this be? Why would he ask about a car instead of feelings and well-being? He was married!

What becomes, is, and always shall be men are men, not pigs. We are slightly askew and hardwired for sex, and arguably, for war. It is how we behave that makes men great—like my father, Wesley Vanderhorst, of Albany, NY, a native son.

To answer one question, he owed his soul to the car his wife, my mother, smashed by her operations—all father’s money, as it were; and there are consequences, consequences higher than a student garbage collector may cash. My dad’s borrowed monies would have endangered the entire planet, perhaps his planet, if not paid back. Back then there was no bankruptcy, merely broken kneecaps. All were good; he knew it came lost in translation. He knew we were good, good enough for ordinary wear for mother and child.

My mom and dad loved one another with dichotomous pedigree, curiously allowed me to breathe as other alumni at Saint Lawrence University, Canton, NY.

I was an infant once.

Father

It happens that a young sailor shows up on the grounds at Saint Lawrence University, Canton, NY, in 1954 on a GI bill. There’s a sexy gal named Jessie-Lou Futch of Poughkeepsie, NY—a fugitive. She is a senior, he a sophomore. Mom of German/Scots background, dad a Dutch barbarian from somewhere off the coast of Korea. Dutch/Scots background originally Netherlanders, dad’s side at least. They are Caucasian, even if dubious of these great United States of America. Mom and Dad were ordinary, of no consequence, merely Anglo-Saxons heritage who built the Western world.

Mom liked the dentists graduating from Saint Lawrence University; the geologists there got muddy (as if dentists and geologists differ except in medium).

One day at Canton, NY, my birthplace, before the drive-in-theatre amniotic event in 1956, before during 1954, my dad recently let go of the USN, honorably, and watched a field hockey team. My dad asks friends, You’ve got to be kidding me do girls do that? I mean run around the field, hockey sticks knickers and breasts abloom playing a man’s game on ice on the football field?

Fifty of dad’s friends quietly agreed, then one spoke: And it is for free.

Just as his boys say yep, my mom smacks a hockey ball right into a golden retriever’s head as it ran across the field.

My dad asks: Whose dog is that and the crying girl on knees kneeling with hockey stick? Is she is crying because she thinks she killed the dog?

Pretty much, let’s drink! Even then drinking was a lifestyle.

No, dad said. I want to find out why that girl is crying she is swell-looking.

It is a hockey ball and a golden retriever, and maiden bent over for a splayed-out dog on a modern 1950s field of womankind sports. Field hockey is a window of opportunity—intriguing, very intriguing indeed. Wes Vanderhorst, knowing this from great USN training (like the depravity of women on a ship fighting wars), slowly saunters by.

Hey, how is the dog? he asked. Not so good, cowering in her knickers, on her knees, hockey stick in hand, sobbing, Jessie-Lou, mother-to-be, answered.

So dad, sticking his first and pinky fingers in his mouth, blew a big hailing signal and about six guys came out of the bushes. Hey, Van.

Dad instructs: See that vat of ice water over there and the shaved ice? Bring it!

Then while attending to the dog, Wes and Jessie met eyes. It is not so bad, see the dog is still breathing, well just barely, Dad said. Wes grabs some ice chips, opens the dog’s flews, then packs them up with shaved ice chips. Dad checked the eyes for death. Nothing! Something? Jessie subsides to another desperate wail of Oh my god I killed him. Then my dad nods his head as if to say hit it.

His impromptu crew dumped the entire five gallons of ice water on the golden at once. Then like Great Saint Lawrence Grass Valley stick fights on ice with men, up pops the dog! Bark, bark, the hockey ball, bark.

So my dad revived that golden with ice, and Jessie-Lou gave him her number at Saint Lawrence University, in 1954. Dad knew she knocked the dog out. My hero, the dog survived, and Wes and Jessie met. A year and a half later, I am golden and born because of a dog. Indeed I remain golden and a son.

Too, a black sheep, a cruel Dutch uncle. The dichotomy thing.

Around that time, my mom quit the dentist’s, my dad shooed out the landlady, and Mom made revolutions for Wes, my daddy … and Wes, my soon-to-be father, skated by that landlady, the elder, the one who pulled the rents, and was made available for my mom; they were married at Scarsdale, NY, under great ceremony on September 1, 1955.

My own father came to manhood under General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander and president of the USA. It is a faraway place known as Americans in history and in my diary. It was December in Canton, NY, 1955, Saint Lawrence University, NYS, mere months away from a crash.

Grandfather

Accounting for spring 1954, my dad was discharged honorably from USN after duty at the USS Wisconsin in Korea. Dad had scholarship in Cornell at Ithaca, NY, in 1950 as a freshman, as football player, as he was a good student at Albany Academy HS and was the son of a Dutch immigrant. My dad’s father, Gerrit, naturally named George because of his status in these United States, was an immigrant fitting in. Dad’s father, a strong Dutchman, gymnast, an iron cross guy, a gymnasium term, walked through a broom, rode the big bicycles’ big wheels, and was very tough as father.

My father, Wesley Vanderhorst (his full name, today deceased), in the 1940s, after WWII, was a rather good athlete. He made varsity at a triple A at Albany Academy School at age fifteen in 1946. He was taunted as liverwurst, rhymed with Vanderhorst, and they would put dead squirrels in his jockstrap and so on. Dad strapped on a leather helmet and played football. My dad was a great student of the English language—knew all the prepositions, adverbs, tenses, the definition of is—and wrote essays, then would shake it off. My father was an immigrant’s kid (through Ellis Island 1929 legally), and his father would pronounce the word well as vell, and young Wes was very embarrassed about the fact his father had the Dutch brogue and was very strict.

His father, when spoken to, would move his lips as if translating Dutch to English and vice versa. Then he vood remark, Vell.

At my father’s basketball games in the late 1940s, my dad started against a center from Schenectady, a big rival and a formidable center named …

As others from that neck of the woods, he was named Riley. That’s right, Pat Riley, Los Angeles Lakers coach, is from that part of the world.

My grandfather, Gerrit, would go to those basketball games after dad’s football season and scream from the seats, Cooch vim down! or Crikey vem Vell, whatever that meant. My dad naturally made excuses; as an immigrant’s son from Holland, his dad was the same generation as the Nazis—Germans also conquered low-lying Holland.

Gerrit, my grandfather, was honorable, able to bend sheet metal with his hands, rather short in stature, thick through the chest, a railroad pipefitter, in the USA was a mechanic, artist, accountant, and a holder of US patents. Gerrit never cooked the books too, never made a mistake at accountancy in any language, nor had it in him to be neither unknowing nor dishonorable. Gerrit graduated eighth grade in Holland in 1915, before his term with the merchant marines—better than a master’s degree today. My grandfather would not be bought. Grandfather Van der Horst was a man of five-foot-eight, tough as nails, and decent. His bride, Mary Baumer of the Scots, was nearly slaughtered by Irish better than he. We are the folks of that Statue of Liberty in these United States of America!

At seven years old in 1909, my grandfather mined coal at Holland—no hard hats, no air, only dung and rails with no bathroom breaks; seventy-hour weeks for ten guilders. Put the coin in the box for fuel or power, then allowed broken cookies only because the whole ones cost more. My white Grandfather is black by coal. We earn our way, right? We take care of Mom and Dad, right? It is family, never social security, never socialism. I barely trust you. I earn freedom, including consequences!

If I moved back a century to Gerrit, merely two generations ago, OGD (Old Grand Dad), a mischievous boy forced to hard labor to pay the rent at Rotterdam, was barely old enough to understand a wage at age eight. He was the second oldest of nine children after Estelle, a female (much of his family remained at Holland during the WWII resistance, including Ronnie Tober, a famous European cousin at entertainment)—the man of the house at any age. We may find the name Vanderhorst means low-lying dwellers by the bush—or Vanderhorst at USA, at Holland Van der Horst.

My grandfather instilled in me, as a young boy at Albany, NY, stories of the old country. Gerrit had a huge comb at his davenport, probably two feet long hanging on the wall, and would remind me and my siblings that his hair blew off on the ship he sailed to New York from Rotterdam in 1929. His proof was his polished bald head, which seemed credible for a five-year-old. Though granddad was ancient when I was a boy, if sixty years old is ancient, he taught us kids some tricks he claimed to have learned at Holland. Gerrit, vood you like to fly? Yes, OGD. Vell, stand in dis doorvay, put vour hands like so (back of hands against door jamb) and try vit all vour might to raise vour hands abunk vour hedcht. After a thirty-second struggle, he instructs, Now come over and flap vwour vings. For a five-year-old it was impressive, the innocent hope of flight. It vwerks!

A parlor trick really, now that I reflect.

There were other European style exercises as well. Gerrit, let me teach valk vroom a broom. He presents a broom horizontally, palms down in front of him. Vwon may never let go put behind vwoor back. At sixty, Gerrit then demonstrates the art of stepping through the broom one leg at a time, twisting the stick here and there like tying a pretzel until indeed the broom was behind his back while never