Where's Armand?

Rara Avis

 

From the Armand Diaries:

Tonopah, Nevada. August 1, 1946. Thursday evening. Staying in some funny, run down cabins here, reminiscent in their screened porch, shaded alley entrance, etc., etc., of something in Mexico or New Orleans.

 
Been a screwy day. Got up early, ready to go by 7:15a.m., noticed carburetor was leaking and then that a nut was missing off manifold. Took it to garage - said carburetor O.K., replaced the nut, then noticed that he could fix exhaust pipe collar so as to stop the miss when engine idles.

I suggested he check universal bolts I tightened in Yellowstone. This led to his noticing that tie bar from transmission to rear wheel loose. Then I suggested he tighten brakes. This he did, also tightening steering bar. End product: 1 1/2 hours work, 3$, and a 9 A.M. start.

Across over 100 mile stretch without even a house. Hit pavement, pulled off road in a juniper patch for lunch, noticed right rear wheel had an almost flat tire. Jacked it up, jack fell off, ditto, then jack broke. Flagged a car. The guy had 3 jacks. Used them all to get car jacked up, since it was lying with axle in dirt, wheel clear off.

The morning's mechanic, by the way, a first rate man, was a teacher of mechanics to soldiers and high school boys, very well spoken, quite educated. A rara avis.



Photo of a man and his car in 1946: Picasa Web Albums

Denmark in 1957

From The Armand Diaries:

Park Hotel, Copenhagen, Denmark, Sunday, July 28, 1957.

Another day, another country. Trouble with airplanes is that it's difficult to feel you've moved. At 1 P.M., it was called Sweden. By 3 P.M., we were across a piece of land and 3 or 4 minutes of water, and it's Denmark.

For dinner, I walked over to the famous Oskar Davidsen. Had a thin soup and a rich hunter stew. All very rich and slurpy, even the thin soup, which had a brown stock. Horrible U.S. diners all around me, very uncouth, almost caricatures.

Pretty good, lots of it and reasonably priced for such places. He makes over 200 different kinds of the open type sandwich, 9/10's of them impossible combinations of shredded raw meat, raw egg yolk, etc., but some look (or sound) good, and they are supposed to be very famous. Oh, well.

In eve went to a movie The Paradise of the Nudists rather nicely done paean to virtually (and entirely at times) no clothes - filmed at Ile du Levant near Nice in southern France at famous nudist colony. The rules say must wear a minimum something (but they often didn't). Not dirty but shallow worship of the sun and body beautiful. A swell idea while it lasts, but it's so empty.

 


Photo: Cycle Chic

The Fourth of July in 1954

Eureka, Nevada, Monday, July 4 (bang, bang). 387 miles (= 5319), along Lake Tahoe in A.M.- pretty but too large; puts mountains too far off. Lake colors fine. In afternoon visited Virginia City (shades of Errol Flynn), some old time flavor but touristy.

It was a tasteless era, 1865 - 1900.Must have been exciting to live through but trashy to look at. Rest of day along the barren but picturesque plains and bare mountains of Nevada, especially lovely in late afternoon and early moon rise.

Signs today told us to watch for rocks, sheep, cattle (sometimes "livestock") and deer. Lots of signs plugging Harold's Club in Reno, but no signs saying watch out for him! Pretty fireworks exploding in the air for some time as we approached here.

 
Photo: kiat.net

London, 1956

June 13, 8:30, aboard the Castel Felice, some 6 hours above Quebec City. Clear and sunny. Farms, hillside, and the Laurentians coming right down to the water in places very lovely. The boat isn't half bad. Food ok if not very distinguished. I have a cabin on deck 1  #338, small, with 5 other guys - decent enough New York college boys.

...If only Polly and Ann could have gone. It pulled some heartstrings to leave them Monday.

Armand taught Spanish to the college kids on the cruise, watched a number of movies and observed his shipmates:

God how they drink and carouse on this boat - all night long, though quiet enough in our cabin because boat has so many isolated wings and we're down on C deck (next to bottom). Slept yesterday till lunch - but stayed up to 3 - this time wrapped up in a blanket up on deck, chewing more fat, this time with 2 girls from Mt. Holyoke and guy from Dartmouth.

By the time they crossed the Atlantic, the professor in his early 40s had loosened up enough to enjoy a champagne party thrown in their honor.

Thursday late, June 21 - Lancaster Court Hotel. Well, we finished the trip without rough weather. The Holyoke girls, my roommates and I, some 8 or 9 of us, knocked off 4 bottles of champagne, which = several glasses (4) apiece. Made some of them a mite silly, but I really felt nothing much. A bit dizzy and fuzzy tongued when AYA representative came aboard and I had to meet him and discuss trip details with him, unexpectedly, but it wore off in a second or so.

Back, then, to the party till 2:30a.m., singing songs and having a high old time, pretending for a moment that I was 20 years younger. Since I am as zippy and strong (in fitness, at least), it isn't too hard, if I put aside intellect for the time being. And it is fun.

Today up at 5:45, early breakfast, through interminable customs and on to boat train to London, arriving soon after noon. Busy with all sorts of registration, checking, getting together passports, etc. and visa cards to take to Yugoslav office....Letter from Polly (with scribble from Ann)...Sometimes (whenever I'm not running around, or when I see a woman with a pretty little girl), I miss them so terribly.

Photo: Sitmar Cruises

I'll Be Thinking of Him...

I went on a cruise to Alaska in August 2001 with Armand, his wife Mary and daughter Ann. That was when Armand, then 86, and Mary 89, drove about 5,500 miles from Morgantown, WV all the way to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska! Let me add some more exclamation marks: !!!!!!!

From there, they drove to Banff, Alberta, to join Ann's husband's family reunion and then motored on to Vancouver,B.C. where Ann and I met up with them. I'm the "lady friend" that he refers to in his 2001 Christmas letter to friends:

Rejoined Ann in Vancouver, this time with a lady friend (Tomas stayed home to tend to business), board the Seven Seas Mariner for a round trip week's cruise to Alaska - as far as Skagway, all places in southwestern Alaska which we had missed. More great experiences, including a hike into the Tongass National Forest to hunt for bears (goal: get as close as possible, but not to close). We saw two, one a big fellow just up the trail from us, with a salmon in his mouth.

I was not writing about Armand at the time, but the experience certainly added to my decision to start the Where's Armand? blog. He was constantly on the go, from morning to late at night. I overheard other passengers as they pointed out the "older couple" holding hands as they walked on deck, "Look, there they are, isn't that so sweet?" That sweet couple logged in a total of 13,850 miles by the time they returned to Morgantown.

Now that I've read his diary entries about Mary (see "Looking For Love In All The right Places"), my memories of the older couple walking hand in hand on deck, will always be prefaced by images of them as young and in love. This weekend, I'll be boarding another cruise to Alaska with Ann, her husband Tomas and members of Tomas' family. It'll be a mixture of the beauty that sits waiting to be seen, and that which begs to be remembered.

Read:
Prudhoe Bay, Alaska - July 2001

Photo: Cruise Ship Vacations

Making a Connection: Mount Everest

A few days ago, this question got my attention on Twitter: Are there dead bodies on Mount Everest? Apparently over 2,000 people have reached the summit (as of 2004) and of the 189 who died attempting the climb, 120 bodies still remain on the mountain.

I remembered a conversation I had with Armand about a man named George Mallory and as Armand talked, my Google search resulted in a photo of Mallory's frozen remains. You may recall that Google was my way to keep up with Armand as he often talked about people and places I had never heard about.

He (understandably) dismissed my exclamations with a "nothing's private in this world anymore". He had just introduced me to the subject of George Mallory and his fellow climber and alleged lover, Andrew Irvine, not more than three minutes earlier and here I was claiming to have found a picture of his remains!

Mallory disappeared on Everest in 1924, when Armand was ten years old and he was discovered in 1999 when Armand was 85! I responded to the Twitter post by Guy Kawasaki and answered a few resulting comments from a man in Hawaii. A few days later I received a response from a man named Jake Norton:

@BarbaraUechi @GuyKawasaki Yes, Mallory was one of the famous ones. Helped find him in 1999. Amazing. See my site: http://bit.ly/9bFCjT

Armand would have loved to have met Jake, who was 25 when he made his first Everest climb in '99. George Mallory was an Everest mystery to Armand for most of his life but a defining discovery for Jake Norton.

Watch a brief video of the actual discovery here :
http://www.mountainworldproductions.com/lost_on_everest.htm
(tip:use the scroll bar to the right of the photo)

~~~~~~~
Photo: SummitPost.org

Related Posts:

Now that he's famous...about our conversation regarding Mallory (9/06).

Armand's 1968 Himalayan Trek

In Search of Variety

Back in 1946, it wasn't that easy to find a full set of tires or competent mechanics.  Armand found three tires for his Ford in Brantford, Ontario and the fourth and final one in "monkey wards".

On the drive back from Brantford, he and Mary had a three hour delay because  the left front wheel bolts came loose as a result of a careless tire installation by "the Dunlap guy". Then the Ford suffered carburetor problems in Buffalo where a mechanic "fixed" it but the car acted up in Durham but got them home "hitting on 2 -3 cylinders".

Armand then wrote: "On our arrival, got a new mechanic (private- Mac Neman on Green Street) to check it; he said Ford valves almost never stick (i.e., my 10$ previous job unnecessary!), found that points had been put back wrong on distributor - fixed it in a 75 cent jiffy."


Armand had better luck with the arts and on that same day, July 9, 1946, wrote: "Our watercolor from the Costa RIcan artist Amighetti came and is very lovely."

That's the painting that hangs on my wall today so you can imagine my excitement when I found that sentence. I hope to find more written references to the painting, the artist, and the conversation that took place between Armand, Mary and Mr. Amighetti. Until then, I know that it arrived in Morgantown, West Virginia, nearly sixty-four years ago as Armand and Mary came sputtering into town in a Ford, hitting on only two to three cylinders.

Artwork: Francisco Amighetti (watercolor), my iPhone.

Mama Don't Take My Kodachrome

From the Armand Diaries:
September 15, 1947:

Hmm, may as well tell it: after the shots I took at Rainbow Bridge, just before the new reel jammed, not one picture will I get - none of Florida, Acoma, Haiti, plane trip, or Cuba. Something happened to shatter and it never opened.

Just found it out last evening when I found several rolls returned unexposed - 3 or 4 not yet in, but will make no difference, unless shutter had  a spell of working: I doubt it. Was about flattened when I saw results last eve.

Toying with idea of returning alone at Xmas for about a week, repeating the job. Loss in film and money for trip to return in neighborhood of $300 or more. Stathers suggested maybe the university would help a little with expenses of a return trip. Maybe! 

My first 3 rolls of 36 Kodachromes all turned out fine.

[1992: i.e., as against the rest, which were ruined.]

~~~
This must have been a devastating experience, enough for Armand to read and make note of it again some 45 years later.

For those of you still wondering where the title for this post came from, here is Paul Simon via Lala Song Player.


Photo: Public Radio.org

 

On Hawaiian Airlines

From the Armand Diaries:

Hilo, Island of Hawaii ("The Big Island", so called), Friday, September 6, 1957. Hotel Hukilau ($5.00 a day, ranch style, swimming pool and very nice). Lovely sunsets and sunrises here....Today up early for Hawaiian Airlines Douglas Viewmaster (converted DC-6's with 2 picture window sized ports, wonderful for views)....This airline, by the way, has perfect record since started in 1929, said to be world's best. OK, then, let's keep up the good work and no passenger or crew fatality is way they put it.


Armand would happy to hear that the record still holds:
Hawaiian continues to build on an unbroken 79-year record of safety and to date has transported more than 145 million passengers.Source Hawaiian Airlines History.

Photo: Historic Aircraft

1969: Writing a Christmas Letter

I once compiled some of the opening and closing paragraphs of a few of Armand's Christmas letters to give you an idea of his sense of humor. His 1969 letter which follows, hints at the number of trips and projects that were compacted into a mere twelve months of his life:


Been the usual busy year. Armand and daughter Ann drove out to West Coast in May, returning in early June, visiting national parks, friends, and relatives. Good snow climbs in Rocky Mt., Yosemite, and Grand Tetons National Parks, and a hot one in Zion. Canyonlands, a new park, is spectacular. The big trees are awesomely beautiful as ever, but (to end on a note of sadness) a storm has blown down the Wawona tunnel tree in Yosemite.

Armand then took a Humanities tour group to Europe. Very exclusive: just five signed up, but it was like a family and great fun. Included a week in Greece, where he saw Delphi and Olympia for the first time. He and Mary had planned several weeks in England at the end of the first half of the tour, when he left the group in the hands of another leader, but had to take a rain check until this coming summer. Another European trip planned for May 18 to June 29, but the family get-together will be after then.

At home, nothing much to chronicle. We set out a big batch of twelve to fifteen foot evergreens beside our house in an effort to create our own little national forest. We may stock it with deer and bear, if only to be neighborly.

Mary continues the hopeless task of making future Dickenses out of semi-illiterate freshman composition students, earning their undying enmity along the way, but, she hopes, the gratitude of the English Department.

Ann is coming along swimmingly as a Political Science major about half way through her career at West Va. Univ. She's even taking a swimming course.

Armand has written some travel articles, compiled a long supplement to his Don Juan bibliography, done some book reviews, and edited a new volume of the West Va. Univ. Philological Papers. The basic Humanities course is being revamped, and out-of-state language meetings, talks, committees, use up their share of vanishing leisure.

As of this writing, we are all well, including the black poodle monster, Noiraud, who has just raised a ruckus on hearing the arrival of the morning mail. And he should. More unanswered Christmas cards.

Our warmest seasonal greetings.



Image: Ahoy - Mac's Web Log