Monthly Archives: March 2015

Old Sam Cole beats the rap

I got to know Jim Henderson when he served in the Maine Legislature. Later, he became Secretary of State and then State Archivist (if I remember correctly, Jim had a PhD in history).

As state archivist, Jim would occasionally call me to tell me about some interesting thing they had found while shuffling through old state records. In this case, he called me to tell me about a curious poem that had been found on the back of some papers from the York County Court of General Sessions, dated October 1734.

I love history and I absolutely loved this story. Unfortunately, UPI was on its last legs in the late 1980s and I’m not sure if this story was ever published.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

AUGUSTA, Maine (UPI) – It wasn’t much of a crime, not even for the town of Biddeford in 1734. Old Sam Cole got drunk one warm summer’s night and beat up his son, Sam. Jr.

Two days later, Cole was drunk again. And once again, Sam. Jr. was the object of his father’s rage. This time, Old Sam didn’t beat up his son; instead, he just threatened to shoot him dead.

All of this earned the elder Cole a Grand Jury indictment, and a visit to the Court of General Sessions in York.

sam cole paperwork 1

The actual court papers that contained the Sam Cole poem

Just as it wasn’t a big crime, it also wasn’t a big court case. The prosecutor looked over the charges, decided that a lot of people got belligerent when they drank too much, and asked that the charges be dismissed.

The court agreed, and Old Sam was off the hook.

sam cole paperwork 2

The actual court records containing the Sam Cole poem

Normally, the case of Sam Cole wouldn’t have created much interest among researchers at the Maine State Archives, where ancient court records from York County have been under review for the past two years.

What has the researchers wondering is the poem that someone scratched out on the back of Sam Cole’s court papers.

“The jurors of our lords the king
       On oath present, and here they bring
       Into this honorable court,
       This lamentable sad report.”

 If there was a closet poet in York’s Court of General Sessions in the 1730s, he or she apparently only struck once, at least publicly. And no one can figure why the routine assault case of an old, drunken millwright moved the poet to describe the case in verse. Continue reading →

The flight of L’Oiseau Blanc

Everyone remembers Charles Lindbergh and his flight from the US to Paris in 1927, in pursuit of history as well as a $25,000 prize. Not so well remembered, however, are Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli, two French aviators who disappeared just 12 days before Lindbergh’s flight, as they tried to make the same Atlantic crossing in reverse, from Paris to New York.

Some believe their big Lavasseur biplane, the L’Oiseau Blanc, or White Bird, crashed in Maine’s Washington County after they ran out of fuel in a heavy fog.

TIGHAR, a research group that specializes in historic aircraft recovery, came to Maine in April of 1987 to search the dense woods for L’Oiseau Blanc. I took part in that search and wrote about it.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

MACHIAS, Maine (UPI) – If a certain theory is correct, the big white biplane was nearly out of fuel when it flew low over the Atlantic and skimmed over the eastern coast of Maine in chilly, foggy weather on May 9, 1927.

According to the hypothesis, the French pilot flew inland and peered down through the fog, looking for a place to land. He finally sighted a small lake and began to descend in a slow circle.

Perhaps the pilot did not see a ridge in front until it was too late, or perhaps the big Lavasseur biplane simply ran out of fuel.

Whatever, a fisherman casting for pickerel on Round Lake heard an engine, a ripping sound, a crash, and then, once again, silence.

No one knows for sure, but the fisherman, Anson Berry, may have heard the tragic end of an historic attempt to link France with New York by two of the world’s most famous fliers of the day, pilot Charles Nungesser and navigator Francois Coli.

Coli and Nungesser were trying for the prize that lured Charles Lindbergh to attempt the same flight from west to east, just 12 days after the French plane is believed to have crashed.

Now, 60 years later, searchers are getting ready to head into the dense Maine woods, about 50 miles east of Bangor, in hopes of untangling the mystery once and for all.

white bird airplaneRichard Gillespie, an aviation historian who is heading the search for the White Bird, said the chances of finding the plane’s wreckage are fairly good if his theory about the end of the flight proves true. Previous searches have narrowed the area to be covered, he said, and some sophisticated equipment will be used for the first time, which may make it possible to locate the plane from the air.

Gillespie’s group, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, plans to send a crew to Maine today to lay down search grids. On Saturday, ground crews will begin searching the woods for the remains of the plane.

“On the 30th of April, an Aerospatiale helicopter will arrive, equipped with a special forward-looking infrared turret installed for this search,” Gillespie said. “The aircraft has every remote sending device they know of, and we will use it for aerial searching April 30 through May 2.”

nungesser et coli 2

Nungesser and Coli

The search will continue through the weekend of May 9-10, and Gillespie hopes that will be enough time to find the wreckage.

Continue reading →

Henry Kissinger in the nude

When I worked for UPI in Boston in the early 1970s, I found the Harvard Lampoon, across the Charles River in Cambridge’s Harvard Square, to be a great source of funny stories. We developed enough of a relationship that they would call me when they were planning something. In this case, they decided to do a parody of Cosmopolitan Magazine, which had recently published a nude centerfold picture of actor Burt Reynolds. In this case, however, the featured what would now be called a “photoshopped” version of a nude Henry Kissinger. Quite a few newspapers across the country ran this story.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (UPI) — The Cosmopolitan Man’s pearly teeth glitter above a freckled pot belly. Spindly, hairy legs reach demurely for the right side of the centerfold. Is that really Henry Kissinger, presidential adviser supreme?

One member of the Harvard Lampoon staff says it is, because Kissinger “was the only person to call us up and volunteer for the centerfold.”

Somebody else says it’s only Kissinger’s face “on the body of a cab driver we met near Central Park.”

kissingerThe Harvard Lampoon has struck again, after a three-year silence. Monday, the Lampoon released advanced copies of its latest parody – Cosmopolitan magazine, which recently published a centerfold picture of actor Burt Reynolds.

For the past 98 years, the Lampoon has been poking fun at various publications, printing absurdly funny articles and pictures in an exaggeration of the style and format the publications use. The last parody was of TIME magazine in 1969.

In the present issue, the centerfold subject brandishes a cigar in the right hand, covers his privates with the left arm, and leans back, grinning, on the skin of a giant panda.

“The American public wanted Henry Kissinger,” said James Downey, a Lampoonster. “We were thinking along the lines of Ralph Nader.”

The cover promised such articles as “10 Ways to Decorate Your Uterine Wall,” “How to Tell if your Man is Dead,” and “For a Good Time Call Lola, 555-5493.” (That turned out to be a non-working number.)

Lampoon President Eric Rayman said the choices of Kissinger and Cosmopolitan were “ideas whose time had come.” President Nixon had been in the running, he said.

The parody calls Kissinger a “bewitching Berliner” who “cuts a dashing political figure that would make Tallyrand turn in his codpiece.”

The White House said it makes no comment on such matters. One source said, however, “Henry doesn’t smoke cigars.”

The ugly side of business reporting

Not sure whether to categorize this story, that I did for the Tampa Bay Business Journal in 1997, as business journalism or investigatory journalism. Maybe a little of both. I don’t recall very much about it, but I think what happened was this: The Business Journal did an annual Book of Lists, categorizing different businesses according to size. Fort example, ad agencies would be listed on the Ad Agency List page according to their size. I believe this business wanted to be listed in the Book of Lists, and submitted an application. But the numbers in the application resulted in the paper taking a closer look at the business, and this story resulted.

By Arthur Frederick
Staff Writer

A self-described sports promoter who served a federal prison sentence for tax fraud in Hawaii has established a number of businesses in Lakeland in ways that echo his days in the Aloha State.

Elijah Jackson Jr., a one-time Lakeland High School basketball star, was convicted in the late 1980s for trying to gain illicit refunds from the IRS.

He also illegally tried to sell several million dollars’ worth of stock in businesses he owned, an act that elicited fines and two cease-and-desist orders — including one issued this spring — from Hawaii’s Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

Jackson closed his Hawaii business in 1995, and now operates several Lakeland-based businesses under the name JBS Inc. The businesses include JBS Management Corp., which allegedly provides everything from sports promotions to an escort service; and JBS-Jackson Real Estate Investment Trust, which claims to provide real estate investor services and property management services.

Efforts to reach Jackson were unsuccessful. Calls to his office were picked up by an answering machine.

Continue reading →

White bird

whitebird 3

This picture is kind of interesting to me because it happened on a day when I had left my camera at home. This guy came and landed on a railing about a foot or two from my table when I was having lunch on a deck at the Bayport Inn, about 50 miles north of my home. I shot the picture with my old Iphone 4, the only thing I had with me. The picture came out pretty good for two reasons — he let me get real close to him (I guess he was used to begging for food) , and the sun was really bright and lit him up nicely.

Tampa Bay’s seawall master

Back in the late 1990s, I worked as a writer for the Tampa Bay Business Journal, covering the business of sports, commercial real estate and the local advertising and marketing business. It was a good place to work and I enjoyed my time there. I don’t really remember doing this story, but I do dimly remember that I used to drive by this place of business on my way to and from work.

By ARTHUR FREDERICK
Staff Writer

Bill McNamara wasn’t thinking much about docks and seawalls when he was installing chain link fences around schools and prisons in Philadelphia. But when he moved to the Bay Area in the early 1970s, he found there wasn’t much of a market for chain link fences here.

“There was no money in it, no volume, and it was too competitive,” McNamara recalled of his Florida chain link fence prospects. “It got old.”

He needed something else to do, but he didn’t know what. To fill in the time, he started doing some work for a Clearwater-based company that installed boat lifts.

“I just started putting in boat lifts,” said McNamara, whose McNamara & Son is now the biggest dock builder in the Bay Area. “We made one connection after another, and things started to grow for us, just like things were starting to grow for Tampa. I had to hire help, and soon we were doing everything. Before long, we were all the way at the top. We are bigger than anyone as far as residential stuff is concerned.”

“We” is really McNamara, his 36-year-old son Kevin, and a group of employees and subcontractors that right now stands at around 15 people. The 60-year-old McNamara usually stays close to the company’s offices on West Hillsborough Avenue. The younger McNamara can usually be found on one of the company’s barges, placing seawall material or overseeing dock construction.

Continue reading →