”Tales From The Underbrush” documents, with occasional hyperbole, the experiences of the artist over a lifetime of interaction with what used to be called nature, now reinvented as the environment for reasons apparently best known by just about everyone in the world excepting the artist-writer. These wilderness interactions have come mainly while working as a geologist, briefly as a forester, but sometimes as just a guy whose principal happiness in life has been derived from being outdoors. Not that life in the wilderness, be it at work or at play has been without pain, discomfort, deprivation and even danger. Fortunately, the passage of time more often then not artfully blots out or at least dims the recollections that wound, substituting instead a recall that if perhaps not substantiating the aging athlete’s jest of “the older I get, the better I was”, at least allows tales to unfold that warm the memory and give substance to the life that experienced them.
The artist proposes to post monthly herein a chapter from his book “Tales From The Underbrush” in the hope that his adventures may be shared and enjoyed by those who might stumble onto this blog. This month’s entry continues the tale.
THE FRANKLIN EXECUTION
“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler”.
Albert Einstein
You may possibly have heard of the Franklin Expedition, that ill-fated journey to the Canadian Arctic in 1845 which was meant to map the Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia, but which turned into a journey of survival, tragically ending in death and possible cannibalism. It is extremely doubtful however that you have ever heard of the Franklin Execution, an unlikely event where nobody died but some few people suffered and one man had to pay the price.
The Franklin in my tale of execution refers not to Sir John Franklin of the Expedition but rather to a guy named Ben, who although he should have known better, once embarked upon his own Voyage of Discovery by dressing up as a lightening rod and lived to tell the tale. In point of fact the Franklin Execution had only a vague and as it turns out probably incorrect connection to Benjamin Franklin. In reality it might have more accurately been called the Rittenhouse Execution, which is not a bad name either but not one that is tied to any famous mapping expeditions or feats of scientific wizardry. Sadly, that is what often happens when you get your oar in the water first and are famous to boot. You can sometimes extract credit for something you either never did, or if you did, did a lousy a job at until someone else came along and bailed you out but never got the credit. Life’s a bitch and then you die. But I digress.
Way back when, meaning in this instance the 1700’s (in case any youth of today might be reading this and think I was referring to something like the Dark Ages of say, the 1950’s), someone, allegedly Ben, got the idea of moving the fireplace out of the wall and into the middle of the room. The basic premise behind this idea was the intent to change the dissipation of heat that was heretofore confined to directly in front of the hearth, or more often than not mainly up the chimney in a poorly designed fireplace. Initially one might think that this change just meant building a fire in the middle of the room, sort of like a boy scouts’ campfire, only indoors. While this development might have had some aesthetic attractions, the fire hazard aspect would frighten all but the most determined pyromaniac, and the inevitable problem of smoke dispersal and potential asphyxiation was recognized by even the most dim-witted. The premise of this new device therefore was to have a free-standing, enclosed fireplace that could be situated away from the wall, thus radiating more heat in all directions around the room. After a naming contest, which due to the nature of the postal delivery service at the time, took nearly a decade to complete, it was decided to call this new fangled invention a circulating stove. The metallurgical science of the day necessitated that said stove be made of cast iron, which unfortunately had the undesirable feature of cracking when fired. The consequence of this misfortune permitted prodigious volumes of smoke to pass through these cracks and billow into the room. For those that survived this impediment however, there was little doubt that the more widespread dissemination of heat was a vast improvement over the classic fireplace, especially for very, very, very short people who only had to stoop just slightly below the smoke horizon in order to breath. It took until the invention of the basement furnace several hundred years later for people to start growing again and to have a posture that looked even just a little bit straighter than a right angle. Also, these early circulating stoves provided a side benefit for those inhabitants whose principal source of food was fish and game. Not restricted to smoking only a small quantity of trout, cod, venison or whatever within the restricted area of a fireplace, people could now leave their entire catch draped over the sofa, chairs, beds and any other furniture, and expect to have an entire winter’s food supply secured within days.
From that early version of the rectangular circulating stove that temporarily flattened the growth in population, one of two things is alleged to have happened according to conflicting reports. On one hand it is said that Franklin himself, using more advanced metallurgy, satisfactorily re-designed the stove that has come to be in use to this day. Others argue that one David R. Rittenhouse redesigned the original health hazard, and that this successor came into wide use by the late 18th century. Unfortunately, Dave was not as famous as Ben and in the end, Ben’s faulty invention miraculously survived Dave’s successful modifications to become the infamous Franklin stove. As perhaps an unnecessary but interesting aside, it should also be noted that unlike Ben, Mr. Rittenhouse did not become a Founding Father of the American Revolution either. Poor Dave.
So there you unknowingly have it; the beginnings of the Franklin Execution. Jump to the late 1950’s to an area north of Lac Mistassini, a large, chili pepper shaped lake hacked out of the glaciated, swamp-ridden ancient Precambrian terrain of northwestern Quebec, Canada, a landscape so barren of nutrition and appeal that most animals and fish, in a rare show of unity, have largely chosen not to inhabit it, leaving it instead for cutthroat gangs of flies to prey on the few birds that dwell there for reasons that defy common logic. Perhaps that is from where the term ”bird brain” emanated. Cut to a typical Quebec Department of Mines summer geological mapping party bush camp. Such a party, on which I was a member, usually consisted of the party chief, normally a geological Ph.D. candidate or a full time geologist with the Department, a senior geologist (which in this my first summer I had miraculously become, but not on my merits as will be recounted in the chapter “The Reality of Theory”), two junior geologists, two canoe men/bush men, and the supreme Deity of the camp, The Cook. While within the framework of the official hierarchy of command, the party chief headed up this motley crew of bushwhackers, even he was reduced to buck private when it came to camp life. The Cook was in effect the Supreme Commander of what passed for the Universe as we knew it.
I cannot remember the name of The Cook that summer although he was a French Canadian, as were most cooks in Quebec bush camps. I think his name might have been René, but I am going to call him by the good French name of Roch, as in Rock. That way I don’t have to hunt around the computer all the time trying to find that little accent that goes over the second “e” in René. Damn! I had to do it again. The other reason is that, if these tales ever get published, it might save me some money on the printing, although I doubt it. I think printers charge you by the letter even when it comes to punctuation and accents, which they seem to treat as letters. I mean, take the comma for example. What is it after all but a little dot with a tiny tail on it? But the printers charge you like it’s a capital “W” in Old Gothic script.
Anyway, back to Roch and the Franklin stove. Unlike the former, the portable bush version of the latter came both unassembled and with no assembly instructions. On second thought, some bush cooks I have known came similarly unequipped for their initial labours. The Franklin bush stove was however, a simple enough device that, having been slid out of a float plane, had a reasonable chance of being assembled to working order by nightfall by even the greenest of junior geologists whose entire life mechanical experience to that time may have been restricted to flushing the toilet. Not that any junior geologist would ever be entrusted to assemble such a precious item as the Franklin stove, no matter how drunk or hung over an entrance the cook had made. No, tent assembly and crapper construction remained the principal duties of the junior geologist in a new camp, and once those were up and running, colouring maps took over as his principal camp duty, serving as an ongoing test of the recollection and accuracy of his kindergarten skills.
Brand new from its inaugural (and last!) trip to the bush, the unassembled Franklin stove was a neat, folded, portable package of sheet metal, its parts snugged into each other in a trim, compact fashion never again to be experienced. Perched on a cradle of logs filled with sand or earth, its sides unfolded from its base, the top surface fitting onto the sides, the assembled Franklin stove was a deceptively simple, innocuous looking rectangular box about three feet wide, two feet deep and little more than a foot high. It was vertically divided into two equal compartments, one to serve as the firebox while the other was intended for use as an oven. Such is the stellar separation between theory and application. On the stove top and in one corner over the firebox, was a hole whereon fitted the stove pipe that depending on the configuration of the cook tent, usually had at least one elbow bend in it as it snaked its way up from the stove and through the reinforced hole in the tent roof meant for that purpose.
Starting the stove was simplicity in itself. Load up the firebox with wood and tinder, apply a match, and voila!................apply another match and voila!......................put in some newspaper, apply a match and voila!.........................put in some more newspaper, leave the door open, apply a match and voila!...................throw in half the box of lighted matches and voila!.................light up a rolled newspaper until it blazed like a torch threatening to burn down the tent, throw in the firebox and voila!........................add more newspaper, maybe some wood shavings, leave the door open, apply any matches that are left, resist the temptation to prod the beast with a little gasoline or naptha gas, blow long and gently, very gently on the smoldering cinders and maybe then, depending on both the state of the stove pipe and its ability to draft, a little life was breathed into the stove and the wood would begin to burn.
With fuel burning merrily in the one chamber, the operation of the stove became deceptively simple, or so one would think. To boil water or cook over high heat, pile in the firewood; to simmer let the fire die to embers; to keep food warm, place it on the stove top away from the firebox; to bake, open door, place items in oven. What could be simpler except what to do when you needed to simmer and the fire was roaring? What to do when you needed to boil and the embers were dying? How do you fry meat and simmer soup at the same time? What to do when you are to bake in an oven where one side of the oven is blazing hot and the other relatively cool. Have you ever seen a cake that looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa? What do you do when the stovepipe aperture starts to narrow and does not draw well, or worse still plugs and smoke seeks other avenues of escape back through the firebox door or stove top lids?
Regarding the stovepipe problem, you should understand that the principal source of fuel for Quebec bush camps at that time was something known as eastern spruce, a complete misnomer for a type of tree that appears to be made up mainly of a sappy, resinous, sticky goop that clings to you forever and that even the flies avoid, being much smarter than humans in the bush. After you manage to light the stove and the fire burns merrily on, the sap in the firewood is vapourized in the heat, traveling up the stovepipe to then conveniently precipitate out along the cooler inner surfaces of the pipe, particularly favouring those parts that bend at right angles to form “elbows”. Like cars at speed, the sap must slow down to navigate around the bend, a fact that in turn serves to ultimately drive cooks around the proverbial bend. At some point in time therefore, and seemingly more often than frequently, this gummy residue so constricts the inner pipe passage as to a) lessen the withdrawal of smoke from the stove; b) reverse the smoke so that it exits out through the stove doors into the tent; or c) causes the fire to go out. These developments of course necessitate the dismantling of the stove pipe and the removal of the goop from its insides, a process of accelerating violence that increasingly deforms the pipe and results in an ever lengthening process to put it together and link it to the stove top again.
As the summer wears on and the camp is moved a number of times, the dismantling and reassembling of the stove tends to occupy a greater and greater time and effort, and the original snug fitting, pristine condition and basic operability of both stove and pipe become an increasingly distant memory. By now you will have correctly surmised that after months of use and a number of camp relocations, the Franklin stove was in a shape that both Ben and Dave would themselves agree to disown. Bent, battered, twisted, bulging, leaning, doors ajar, lids ill-fitting, stove pipe askew, the Franklin began to look like it had been hit by lightening during one of Ben’s experiments.
Which brings me back to the cook, Roch in this case, but generic by example. He would invariably be a man of indeterminate age and circumstance but probably in his 50’s, with a rural background and limited formal education. I stress the formality of the latter because life’s education in living in the bush was often more formidable and valuable than that from years of schooling. Often using a summer in the bush as a means to finance a winter of unemployment or as a refuge from a bad relationship, too much alcohol or some other unpleasantness, and with their jobs requiring long hours of solitary work in camp, bush cooks were invariably of unique, sometimes complex and often incendiary character. As this particular summer wore on and the Franklin stove became more unpredictable and unstable in its operations, Roch’s behaviour came to closely parallel the state of Ben’s contraption, and “hair trigger” was but a slothful description of his temper. This increasingly erratic behaviour was in no small way exacerbated by several unrelated situations that arose. In our “dry” camp, alcohol deprivation was beginning to set in and the vanilla extract used for baking had to be put under lock and key. A long spell of very bad weather had delayed the arrival of a supply plane, and while no one was suffering badly, the cook’s supply of cigarettes had run out and a state of emergency was declared. Those of the geological team who smoked were forced to hand over their complete supplies to Roch, and when those were gone, he was reduced to smoking coffee grounds, tea leaves and even pine needles wrapped in newspaper. I can tell you it was no fun city until new supplies finally made it into camp.
It was therefore with perhaps no great surprise that stumbling out of the bush one day after a long traverse, I was to observe on the ground outside the cook tent the barely recognizable, smoldering wreckage of what had been the Franklin stove. Pierced with innumerable ax cuts from which smoke trickled in poetic wisps, the stove had been savaged by someone having considerable homicidal intent. In its shredded condition, it would have made Ben’s cracked cast iron version look positively air tight by comparison. The perpetrator of this crime sat close nearby, sullen, unrepentant and guilty as sin but with a gleam in his eye that signaled both immeasurable satisfaction and a challenge for reprimand. There was of course no point in the latter and while commiseration might have been an exaggeration, great care was taken by the camp’s population not to make matters worse, which of course and inevitably, they did indeed become.
The government’s inflexible policy was one Franklin stove per field party per field season. If you lost it, dropped it in a lake, trashed it or otherwise removed it from service that was your tough luck. Get out your Boy Scout manual. Needless to say, camp life over the balance of that field season, thankfully short, was nonetheless challenging. A resurrection of the stove to even sub-appliance grade standards was attempted with considerable effort but not much result. Sand was placed inside the firebox and oven to provide stability to the base so that the stove would not fall over. Considerable lengths of baling wire were required to hold it together. Attempts to hammer shut the myriad of ax wounds met with little success and only further deformed an already mangled mess of metal. In any event these remnant apertures still required sealing with a combination of mud and sphagnum moss, leaving a device that looked like a cross between a tool box overgrown with algae and a clay oven with hair on it.
Further complicating matters was the fact that the state of the stove notwithstanding, several more camp moves were required before the end of the field season when it could be finally interred in a garbage pit. Because of its condition however, the stove could no longer be folded and consequently its transported volume had swollen considerably to the point where it occupied a major portion of the float plane’s hold.
It is no exaggeration to say that the balance of the field season would not be fondly remembered for its epicurean delights. Baked goods became but a cherished memory and meals tended to the extreme, either considerably over or under cooked. But, as was earlier stated, no lives were lost, bitching and complaining were rampant but real suffering was minimal, and one man, Roch, did indeed have to pay the price of hardship and inconvenience. Secretly however, I believe he was triumphantly unrepentant, and while Ben and Dave might not have been particularly proud, I think they would have understood.
“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”
Thomas A. Edison
Copyright © 2008 Ian de W. Semple
