Christmas 2013
Tag Archives: Arthur Frederick
Sailors need love, too
Museums are great sources of news stories. This exhibit at the Bath Marine Museum resulted in a United Press International story that was carried in newspaper nationwide in 1988.
By ARTHUR FREDERICK
BATH, Maine (UPI) — The old photograph of a woman holding a stuffed bird to her breast is not the sort of fare usually found at the Maine Maritime Museum, a showcase of memorabilia from the golden age of sail.
The museum, normally a hushed place of artifacts from the days when commercial sailing ships were king, is offering a bold and slightly bawdy look at the sex lives of 19th-Century sailors.
“Sin, Sailors and Salvation: Seaport Seductions and Social Reform in the Age of Sail,” includes drawings and descriptions of waterfront bordellos and barrooms, as well as warnings on the dangers of vice in port.
The exhibit – a mixture of artwork, clothing, books and even a set of brass knuckles – paints a picture of a raucous lifestyle but also seeks to portray how sailors of the time were ravaged by alcohol and sexually transmitted disease.
Cut Off for Weeks at a Time
Dr. Charles Burden, a founder and trustee of the museum, said sailors would go to sea for weeks at a time, cut off from friends, family and stable relationships. As voyages drew to a close, sailors became obsessed with spending their pay on the sex and liquor they would find in port.
One drawing shows sailors on a sandy tropical beach with women dressed only in grass skirts.
“The average voyage was anywhere from two weeks to four months, so by the time they got to shore they were very excited about the prospect of wine, women and song,” said Burden, a pediatrician. “There were prostitutes and salesmen and barkeeps, and the sailors might get drunk and spend all their money in a couple of days. Then they would have to go to sea again just to be able to have a place to live.”
For many sailors, it was a cycle that would end in poor health, Burden said. Sailors eager to spend their money in a hurry would often end up beaten, robbed or jailed.
Many times, Burden said, the debauchery would end only when the sailor’s money ran out, and he signed on for another voyage. Then the pattern would begin again.
Syphilis and other venereal diseases were rampant among the sailors. Because there was no cure at that time for syphilis, infection generally meant deterioration and death.
“Ships would carry so-called `gonorrhea medicine,’ but it wouldn’t do any good,” he said.
Sailors spent their free time at sea practicing scrimshaw, the elaborate carving of bones and tusks. Some of the artwork got a little off-color. Several examples of pornographic scrimshaw were left out of the exhibit because they were considered too explicit.
“There were some objections,” Burden said. “There were concerns that if we were more explicit than we have been, we might have some problems, since we do have school children that come through here.”
Bordellos prospered in the last century, which prompted sailors’ aid societies to warn crewmen about dangers lurking ashore. One booklet in the museum’s display, entitled “Advice to Sailors,” warned of dishonest shopkeepers, landlords and grog shop operators.
“But there is still another danger on land against which I must warn you,” the booklet said. “It is that which arises from bad women. It is difficult to say which ruins most sailors, drunkenness or badness.”
Travel writing; A motorcycle trip up the Pacific Coast Highway
I’ve done a fair amount of travel writing over the years, some of it in such motorcycle magazines as American Iron and Easy Rider. This story was written for a motorcycle club blog after a beautiful 600-mile bike ride up the Pacific Coast Highway. Note the byline change — any writing I’ve done for motorcycle publications has been under my “Bill Frederick” bylines. Bikers who know me wouldn’t know who Arthur Frederick was.
By BILL FREDERICK
Back in the 1980s, Beth and I went out to Santa Barbara, Calif. to visit my mother and her husband. We borrowed their Dodge camper van and drove it up to San Francisco via the Pacific Coast Highway. It was a beautiful trip, and I’ve always wanted to do it again on a motorcycle. But I just don’t ever get out that way, and riding my bike from Florida to California seems less and less appealing as I get older.
But, this year, my uncle Bernard died. He lived in Fortuna, Calif., way up the coast in redwood country. I have a big crowd of first cousins on the West Coast, people I have only seen a few times in my life, and some of them decided to put together a memorial service so the family could celebrate Bernard’s life together. Things came together for me this time, and I was able to get away and spend a few days in California.
“So,” I thought to myself, “why not fly to San Francisco, rent a bike, and make the final leg of the trip by motorcycle?”
This meant a ride up Highway One, the part of the Pacific Coast Highway that starts just north of San Francisco and ends around 250 miles to the north in Fort Bragg. And just because Highway One comes to an end, that doesn’t mean the great riding and beautiful scenery stops. A quick jog to the west on Rte. 20 comes out at Rte. 101, the Redwood Highway. Another 120 miles to the north gets me to Fortuna, Uncle Bernard’s hometown.
I booked a room at the Holiday Inn Express in South San Francisco, just north of the San Francisco airport and just a few steps from Dudley Perkins Harley-Davidson. Once my plane landed and I got to the motel, I just walked over to Dudley Perkins and did up the paperwork for my rental Harley, which I was to pick up first thing the next day.
Great guys at Dudley Perkins, and they made it all very easy. My HOG membership provided me a $10 per day discount on the sizable $150 per day rental fee; they told me that as a returning customer, the next time I rent from Dudley Perkins means another $10 per day off the rental.
Next morning, I made my way back to Dudley Perkins to pick up my 2013 Road Glide, an exact doppleganger of my own Road Glide, right down to the black paint. I did a couple of tight laps around the Dudley Perkins parking lot to demonstrate that I could ride, and then I was off toward the Golden Gate Bridge.
The bike was familiar and comfortable, but I did quickly realize how the changes I had made to my own bike made it much more comfortable than this rental. My bike has two-inch pullback bars, which allows me to sit up straighter, and highway pegs so I can stretch out my legs.
Also, mechanic Bill Billings had talked me into a different brand of transmission oil that makes shifting silky-smooth, nothing like the clunky bangs that accompanied every shift on the rent-a-bike.
Ibises
Magazine writing: The last Studebaker dealership
Back in the early 70s I bumped into an editor for Boston Magazine at a party. We chatted, and by the time we parted company he had asked me to do a story for him. I had been telling him about an idea I had for a story about one of the nation’s last Studebaker dealerships, which was still operating in Revere Beach, near Boston, years after Studebaker had stopped producing automobiles. I wrote this story and they sent me a check. As far as I know, they never published it.
By ARTHUR FREDERICK
The Revere Beach Parkway is a windy road, and Feldman Motors squats on the apex of one of the curves, so small that the line of rusty cars nosed up to the sidewalk is only a dull blur in the corner of your eye as you drive past.
If you turn your head and slow down a little, you can pick them out; a Studebaker Lark and a couple of Hawks. There’s a Packard, one of the last models built, and it looks like it might have been red.
It is dark inside Feldman Motors, but there is some noise in the back of the shop and in a few minutes Irving Feldman shuffles out to the front, peering through think glasses. He is 65, and he’s been here for 20 years.
Feldman had chuckled on the phone and hedged suspiciously about being interviewed. “Oh, well, I can’t afford it right now,” he said. No charge, he was told, but he’s still not sure.
“Who do you work for? No bullshit?” He examines the press cards, turning them over to read the back.
He moves to the back of the shop to talk to a customer. The shop is full of yesterday’s cars. Packard Clippers, Studebaker Hawks and Cruisers. A white Hawk stands near the door, and the street noise disappears when you shut the door and squirm into the red leather seat. The clock is ticking, and automobile clocks never work. The odometer says 9,000 miles, but Feldman says it’s probably 109,000.
“In 1955, the best days of my life I had here, we were selling, servicing, we had a group of 12 men. Then, 10 years later, the bottom dropped out of it.”
The bottom began to crumble when the Studebaker Packard Corp. decided to drop the Packard line in the late 1950s. Feldman Motors and Studebaker-Packard dealers across the country found themselves dealing in nothing but Studebakers. It was a worrisome time for the dealers, but Studebaker was showing signs of resuscitation; they redesigned the Lark and came out with the Avanti, a beautiful four-seater with a fiberglass body and an optional supercharger.
It wasn’t enough. Studebaker moved its car-making operations to Canada for two years before the Studebaker joined that Big Hudson Hornet in the Sky in 1966.
“I had four Studebakers on order when we got the news from the company,” Feldman said. “I called the customers and told them they didn’t have to take the cars if they didn’t want to. But I told them I would stay here and carry parts, and service the cars if they bought them. They all bought the cars.”
It’s hard to forget the good days, the mid-1950s, when Feldman Motors was selling cars, when 12 men in the back were repairing the Packard Clippers amd Patricians and Studebaker Hawks. And the fall – the decline of Studebaker-Packard – is hard to forget, too.
“They (Packard) went out of business and for a few years we were doing wonderful. We just took all Studebakers, then, even they lasted less than 10 years on their own and then they’re out.
“We work, we make a living, but it is a hard living now.”
It’s not hard to take yourself back to 1955 and imagine Irving Feldman tooling a big Packard Patrician with dealer plates into his dealership, walking into his showroom in a blue suit to talk to a customer. Today, he wears baggy pants and a faded blue sport shirt open at the neck. Today, his showroom is empty.
Cowsnatching and other Maine tales
I’ve been looking through the Google News Archive and I’ve found a number of my old stories from my days with United Press International. This is a valuable find for me because these stories illustrate the wire service style of writing — tight, short and bright. I spent a lot of my days with UPI in Maine covering government and politics, but when I wasn’t doing that I was looking for features stories, like this one about cowsnatching.
By ARTHUR FREDERICK
AUGUSTA, Maine – There’s a lady in Levant who won’t let her cows out of the barn. Rustlers got one of her heifers and she doesn’t want it to happen again.
In Mount Vernon, Milton Hall noticed three heifers missing. After checking his pastures, he called the sheriff. The cows had been rustled.
Rustling isn’t limited to the Western bad guy type. It’s been reported in the Maine counties of Kennebec, Aroostook, Sagadahoc, York and Penobscot. The incidents range from the theft of a single grazing cow to daring cowsnatching right from the farmer’s barn.
In Belgrade, someone made off with a single Hereford after cutting a tether rope. But in Albion, one ambitious fellow made off with six milking cows.
“The guy drove a truck right into the barn and drove out with six of them,” said Kennebec County Sheriff Stanley Jordan.
Sheriff Darrell Crandall of Aroostook County said there have been three incidents in recent weeks, but he said he wasn’t sure if two of them were the real thing or not. The third incident was rustling, all right, he said, but the farmer didn’t know whether he lost two cows or four.
“The guy drove right in with a vehicle and took off with the cows,” Crandall said. “But the owner didn’t know whether he got two or maybe four. Now, just how he came up with those figures I don’t know.”
Most of the cases are one-shot, or one-cow, deals. But a couple of years ago some enterprising rustlers used a bit of local technology in bagging their bovines.
The thieves used a “pulp truck,” a big stake truck with a huge hydraulic claw which is used to pick up logs and place them on the truck bed.
“These guys used to get a cow near the pasture fence, bop it over the head with a hammer, then move the claw over the fence and pick the carcass right over,” said Sheriff Jordan. “We never got ‘em.”
Jordan thinks the increase in rustling is a result of the increase in beef prices. And he thinks it’s going to get worse.
“See, a friend of mine said they’re selling beef cattle for 80 cents a pound on the hoof,” Jordan said. “Now if a guy can go out and knock one off that’s 200 or 300 pounds or so dressed out, he’s got it made.”
Bringing a conference back home
In 2010 I attended the annual convention of the National Council for Marketing & Public Relations in Albuquerque on behalf of my then-employer, St. Petersburg College. Rather than simply soak up four days of seminars and conferences, I put together a WordPress blog (a bit like the one you are reading) and reported on each of the conference sessions so my colleagues back in St. Pete could benefit from them. (That blog is still up and you can see it if you want to). The following is one of the stories I produced at that conference. This isn’t an example of great writing, but rather an illustration of how journalism can contribute to institutional knowledge and expand the value of things like conferences and seminars.
Four culprits contribute to stalled growth
This session was presented by Steve McKee, a partner in an Albuquerque-based ad agency, McKee Wallwork Cleveland, and author of “When Growth Stalls,”a book that examines the hows and whys of a business phenomenon that many businesses, even successful ones, run into.
That sudden slowdown is just what happened to McKee’s own business just a few years after launch. The new company went through rapid growth and was even cited by a national magazine as being one of the fastest-growing new companies in America. But just a few years later, much of the air seemed to escape from the balloon, and McKee Wallwork entered a period of the blahs. McKee Wallwork remained busy, but the previously steep growth curve went flat.
As a marketer, McKee was not only worried about the sudden negative turn; he also was curious about the reasons for the sudden change, and he wondered whether other companies experienced the same slowdown after steep initial growth. He decided to do some research.
Here’s lookin’ at you…
Writing in the first person
I think most journalists will tell you that writing in the first person is difficult and even a bit unpleasant. It’s hard to lift the curtain on your own life and let people see you — it’s much easier to write about others. This is the only story I can recall that I ever wrote about myself, except perhaps for things like travel pieces. I wrote it to acknowledge National Birth Defects Prevention Month, and to commemorate the 40th birthday (and day of death) of my first child. Three newspapers — in Salt Lake City, Norfolk, Va. and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. — ran this on their op-ed pages.
By Arthur Frederick
Dear Baby Boy:
On a day in the not-to-distant future, I’ll pause to quietly take note of your 40th birthday. It is unimaginable that you, my first-born child, was born so long ago.
Things were different back then, in the early 1970s. For one thing, sonograms were not a regular part of a doctor’s tool kit, as they are today. If they were, your birth defect would have been noted very early in your mom’s pregnancy. As it was, your undeveloped skull and brain were not discovered until a number of hours after your mother went into labor.
“When I examined your wife, I felt soft tissue rather than a hard skull,” the doctor told me as we huddled outside your mother’s hospital room.
Today, because of that ability to diagnose anencephaly at somewhere between the 11th and 14th week, around 95 percent of families elect to terminate such pregnancies. That means that only about 1,000 anencephalic babies are now born in the U.S. each year; back around the time of your birth, that number was more like 20,000.
We didn’t have that option. But, to be honest with you, it’s a decision we probably would have made. Not because we didn’t already love you, but because I believe we would have accepted the inevitability of what was about to happen to you, and to us.
Those who end their pregnancies early avoid the indescribable pain of their child’s certain death. About half of anencephalic babies are stillborn; others, like you, are born alive, but are destined to die in as little as a few minutes or as much as a few days.
No babies born with anencephaly survive.
You died in an incubator in the hospital nursery, surrounded by a half-dozen healthy babies. I stood and watched through the big viewing window during the 20 minutes or so that it took you to go.
I’ll tell you a few things that have happened since then:
Your mom and I didn’t stay together very long after you were born. We were both devastated by what happened to you, and to us. But our parting wasn’t your fault.
You have three half-siblings, all girls. One is a doctor; another is a drug addict. Their lives, as well as your very short one, have taught me that having children, while joyful, is a risky business with unpredictable outcomes.
Both your mom and I are grandparents. Since you would be 40, you might well have had children of your own by now who would be approaching college age. I feel sad at having missed that, and even sadder when I think about all the things you missed.
You may have noticed that I opened this letter by referring to you as Baby Boy. You were going to be Matthew, but under the circumstances, we decided not to name you, and Baby Boy is how you are listed on your birth and death certificates. It was a decision, among many others, that we had to make in a hurry and under great stress. I hope it was the right one, but I don’t know.
Not naming you may leave the impression that we simply hoped to avoid the pain of your death by not acknowledging your life. That was not the case. Not at all.
Forty years after your brief time here, your dad still loves you very much.
Arthur Frederick is a journalist and a public relations consultant. He lives in Palm Harbor, Fla.
Bill Frederick's portfolio 