The Incidental Tourist Read online

Unlike a fast-moving squash ball, which fits very neatly into the eye socket and can blind you, there’s little chance of being badly hurt as a consequence of a high-speed encounter with a shuttlecock. That, though, isn’t the case for these Kansas City shuttlecocks, which are of sufficient magnitude and heft to cause some damage to anything, or anyone, that runs head-on into them. Still, they are made of aluminium and fiberglass so it wouldn’t be like hitting bronze or marble. Where did they come from? It seemed unlikely these feathered follies were just sporting equipment left lying around after a game by juvenile giants from Jonathan Swift’s Brobdingnag (could his 1726 Gulliver’s Travels be regarded as a precursor of The Wizard of Oz?) or the ever-playful gods of Mt Olympus! The answer is, of course, more prosaic, human and interesting.

  My immediate thought was Claes Oldenburg. Implicating him as the creator of these shuttlecocks reflected my familiarity with his 14-metre-high clothespin (clothes peg) from an earlier 1970s’ life in Philadelphia. I was only half-right. The four big shuttlecocks are joint works with Oldenburg’s second wife, Coosje van Bruggen. Now in his late eighties, Oldenburg has long outlived the much younger van Bruggen. They were partners in life and work for more than thirty-two years, but she died too young, as many women still do, of breast cancer. Commissioned by the directors of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which stands in the background of these lively pieces, Oldenburg and van Bruggen evidently visited and envisaged the grassy surrounds here in Kansas as a giant’s playground. And it really is a spectacular and pleasing prospect.

  My walk was before the museum’s opening hours and time was limited, and so I missed seeing inside. But the shuttlecocks were just one of the two great sculpture discoveries I made that day. The other was an encounter with a charming, larger-than-life bronze of two elderly people seated on a garden bench, he looking forward and composed, she smiling, turned towards him and, perhaps, speaking. The ‘he’ was Winston S Churchill, the ‘she’ his wife Clementine. In a small courtyard with flowerbeds and pine trees behind, it’s a charming treatment of them, but why was this bronze by Oscar Nemon (who did many sculptures of Churchill) in Kansas City?

  My immediate thought was that it must be something to do with Churchill’s contemporary, the Missouri-born Harry S Truman, the thirty-third president of the United States. Though what follows is largely from reading I’ve done recently to find out more about the connection (if any) between Churchill and Kansas City, I was well aware that ‘Give ’em hell Harry’ Truman (his version: ‘I just told the truth!’) was from Independence, Missouri. I also recall discussing with friend and St Jude colleague, paediatric immunologist Mary Ellen Conley, how pleasantly surprised I was by her hometown. Mary Ellen’s father, who was in the clothing business, evidently referred to Truman as a ‘failed haberdasher’ and, indeed, the men’s store Truman and Eddie Jacobsen (they saw action together in the First World War Meuse–Argonne Offensive) established in Kansas City did not survive a 1922 economic downturn. Eddie, who was Jewish, evidently nudged the down-the-line Baptist Truman towards a much broader worldview, and we should all be thankful for that.

  Later, Truman was endorsed as a candidate for the US Senate by the notorious Kansas City democratic machine controlled by Thomas J Pendergast. Truman was not, however, close to Pendergast, and retained his good reputation when the ‘Boss’ was tried and convicted for tax evasion in 1939. As Vice President in the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Truman assumed the presidency in 1945 with Roosevelt’s death on 14 April. Through the 1939–45 conflict Churchill, as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, dealt principally with Roosevelt, then Truman for a short time towards the end of the hostilities. That formal association ended with the defeat of Churchill’s Conservative party on 5 July 1945, when Clement Attlee formed the first post-World War Two Labour government.

  Still, Churchill and Truman remained good friends. The President was in the audience at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946 when Churchill delivered one of the most memorable public addresses of the twentieth century, his Sinews of Peace speech (quoted in my reflections on Berlin in chapter 22, ‘Walled city’), where Churchill first uses the term ‘Iron Curtain’ to describe the division of Europe that persisted long after (till the late 1980s) the 1953 death of its instigator, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

  How did Churchill come to be speaking in Middle America? Revered in the United States for the way he had held the line against the Nazis in the Second World War, I expect most Americans found Churchill’s 1945 political defeat as incomprehensible today as most non-Americans (and many US citizens) regard the election of President Trump. The British were, though, tired of war and Churchill was undoubtedly a warrior! A graduate of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, he served in India and the Sudan where, as illustrated in the 1972 movie Young Winston, he took part in a cavalry charge at the Battle of Omdurman.

  Leaving the army during the Second Boer War, he became a public figure by writing as a war correspondent for the conservative Morning Post. Then, as the political head of the Royal Navy (First Lord of the Admiralty) in the First World War, Churchill pushed for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign and, when it failed, resigned to serve as a brave battalion commander on the Western Front. Back in the cabinet as First Lord, the equivalent of the US Secretary of the Navy, (the sailors simply announced, ‘He’s back!’) in the Second World War, he soon succeeded ‘Peace in our time’ Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister. Anyone who, as I did, grew up during the years immediately following the Second World War understands how different the history of the world could have been without Churchill’s dogged tenacity and capacity to inspire. We continue to be fascinated by him, along with his many contradictions.

  Westminster College in Missouri evidently had access to the President via an alumnus, Major General Harry Vaughan, who, as a consequence of being friends in France while fellow officers in the 129th Field Artillery, served as a military aide throughout the Truman administration. Truman recognised a political opportunity to showcase Churchill in his home state and, when the elder statesman agreed, took him there in his heavily armoured Pullman rail car, the Ferdinand Magellan. Attached to a special train carrying press, aides and a communications unit operated by the US Army Signals Corps, US railcar number one was the Air Force One of its day. Built in 1948, the original Air Force One (a piston engine Lockheed Constellation) would carry Truman’s successor, Dwight D Eisenhower, around the world.

  On the eve of the Westminster College speech, a group including Harry Truman, Harry Vaughan and Winston Churchill played poker on the Ferdinand Magellan until 2.30 in the morning, when Churchill quit US$250 down. The ex-Prime Minister had evidently downed five scotches before the game began. But that likely left him relatively unimpaired as, particularly addicted to Champagne and brandy, he normally drank (at least) the equivalent of a full bottle of whisky (750 millilitres) each day. Few of us would, or could tolerate such a regime. Winston clearly had a well-trained, and functional, alcohol dehydrogenase. He lived to be ninety, though his last decade or so was not that great from the health aspect.

  At the time of the Fulton speech, Churchill was head of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the British Parliament. Truman served out the remainder of Roosevelt’s term, defeated moderate republican Thomas E Dewey in the 1948 presidential election, then retired in 1953 to private life, while Churchill returned as Prime Minister in 1951 to leave office for the last time four years later. It was Truman, of course, who made the fateful decision to end the Second World War by dropping two atom bombs, first on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki. Back then, there was no consciousness in the Western powers that the Soviets might also soon have nuclear weapons. That changed in August 1948 when, helped by spies like Klaus Fuchs, the Russians tested their first fission bomb.

  Reading this history makes me think about what could have happened if Churchill had won the 1945 election and, with the knowledge that the West had the bomb while the Russians did not, insisted tha
t the primary need was to contain Stalin. Would the Allies have pressed ahead in an attempt to limit the dangers identified in his Sinews of Peace speech? My personal guess is no, but it was probably better that he gave his Sinews of Peace address in Fulton, Missouri, rather than from a position of real power at the dispatch box in Westminster! As it is, Winston and Clemmie look very much at peace in Kansas City.

  CHAPTER 20

  Snowed inn

  GROWING UP IN BRISBANE, we celebrated Christmas in the full heat of the subtropical summer with images of fireplaces, snows-capes, reindeers, sleds and Santa dressed for the Arctic Circle. Exotic for the red-meat (mutton/beef) eating culture of my Australian childhood, Christmas dinner could be chicken, duck or goose, served hot with baked potatoes, of course, and there’d be a heavy pudding with cream. Now that’s all changed. The country is much more ethnically diverse and, though we still harbour a subset who think of themselves as British monarchists, even those of the Anglo/Scots/Irish heritage that predominated way back then no longer look to the far north of the world for their traditional observances. Australian Christmas cards now feature eucalypts and native birds, not pine trees, and Christmas dinner is as likely to be cooked outside on a barbecue and served by the pool, or at a campsite.

  After the end of the Second World War, most families had little money to spare and people travelled much less than today, especially by air, as flying was very expensive. I first saw snow in my late teens, when we drove south to the Australian Alps specifically for that purpose. Living later in Edinburgh, Canberra close to the ski-fields and then Philadelphia, snow remained something of a novelty that we certainly appreciated more than many of the locals. I learned to ski late, and I could make it down most black runs but there was never much in the way of style or finesse. Waking up after a big snowfall still elicits a sense of peace, and wonderment.

  In the big cities, the streets are incredibly quiet after snow, until the ploughs come along, and even the least attractive streetscape or landscape looks so much better under a fresh blanket of white. Over the past decade, though, as the climate changes, even the most avid snow lovers of the north-eastern and Midwestern United States have had some of their enthusiasm dimmed. Many regions have suffered repeated, massive snowfalls. New York City, for example, recorded storm events that dumped more than 50 centimetres of snow in 1805, 1888, 1947, 1996, 2003, 2006, 2010 (February and December) and 2016. Even so, further north in Boston, the worst snowstorm on record was the blizzard of 1978, which dumped some 70 centimetres of the white stuff seventeen days after an earlier 60 centimetres fall, a good part of which still remained on the ground. That’s when I found myself snowed in at Boston’s Children’s Inn.

  Apart from the snowstorm, my memory is hazy. But the records show that it hit hard on Monday, 6 February, and by evening Boston was effectively paralysed. I recall arriving that afternoon to deliver a research seminar the next day at the Medical School, or at one or other of Harvard’s affiliated hospitals or research institutes. Clearly, I failed to check the weather report before travelling, as there must have been plenty of evidence that a severe storm system was due to hit the north east. Back then, though, it wasn’t a matter of just accessing the appropriate app on your iPhone, or Googling on your laptop. If you used any of those terms in 1978 people would have thought you were crazy – it may be hard now to realise that such a world ever existed!

  What I do remember quite vividly is that, heading down to the Children’s Inn restaurant to grab a quick dinner, I learned that non-essential staff members were being sent home and service was curtailed. The TV back in the room soon confirmed that all roads were cut and that Logan Airport looked as though it would likely be closed for days. News programs love to beat-up a potential weather disaster, but this was for real! There was no way I would be using the return half of my air ticket anytime soon, and I faced the prospect of being stuck in Boston for days.

  Looking out the window the next morning I wondered whether the trains could be running. The north-east corridor from Washington via Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York to Boston is the most profitable service for the Amtrak system, and I was accustomed to taking the train from Philadelphia to New York (for work or recreation) or from Philadelphia to Washington (generally for work). So I called the Amtrak office. Yes, the train would leave as scheduled and, yes, I could get a ticket, if I could get myself to the station. I think it was an uncomplicated walk to the station, as the streets near the Inn, being an adjunct of the Children’s Hospital and other major hospitals nearby, were ploughed early and regularly as the snow kept falling.

  Apart from snowploughs and a few emergency vehicles, the train seemed to be the only thing moving in the whole north-east corridor. Stopping at every station as it progressed through a white world, it headed slowly south. People came in wearing heavy boots – I had winter clothes, but wasn’t that prepared – and on cross-country skis. Unusually for the sometimes buttoned-up New Englanders, there were no strangers on that particular train and the atmosphere was relaxed, and more than a little excited. There was the sense of participating in an unplanned, and once-in-a-lifetime event. We were fortunate travellers. The train had come in from the north, and it was going through to Washington, so I didn’t even have to change. Arriving pretty much on time at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, I took the suburban rail Paoli Local to our house in Rosemont, just next to Villanova University, and was, as I recall, home for dinner.

  Unlike the situation in Europe, US politicians seem to have little liking for trains and they don’t receive a whole lot of government support. But they are obsessed with national security and it seems to me that, if you can have a situation where both air and road travel can be effectively paralysed for days, the rail system should be thought of as an essential component of that security mix. Maybe it reflects that my grandfather was a railway man, but I like trains and I do think that they are massively undervalued in some societies.

  Since 1978, of course, we’ve seen the emergence of the bullet trains in Japan, the TGV in France and a building network of high-speed rail in China. The Amtrak Acela running on tracks in the north-east corridor has hit speeds in excess of 200 kilometres per hour, so the perception that trains are not the way to go does seem to be changing for at least some in the United States. Of course, there’s been a long discussion concerning possible investment in high-speed rail in Australia, though the distances between the major cities are a problem, with Sydney–Canberra–Melbourne being the most likely route. The big advantage that trains have over planes is that they use electricity and don’t burn fossil fuels but, until we put a proper price on carbon and are able to generate most of our electric power from renewables and/or (if we can ever make it work) nuclear fusion, extending high-speed rail across long distances in the big countries like the United States, Canada and Australia doesn’t seem a likely eventuality anytime soon.

  Back to Boston in 1978, the train extracted me, but Bostonians had to stay and face the severe weather event. Surprisingly, though many lost their heat and/or water supplies for a time and garbage could not be cleared, there were no outbreaks of infectious disease and no discernable increase in fatalities (excess deaths), but some were killed early on in traffic accidents. My St Jude Children’s Research Hospital colleague, immunologist Doug Green, was then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which remained closed for three weeks. He remembers that the liquor outlets were the first to open, followed by the food stores and, progressively, more and more restaurants. So they had the necessities of life! But the working ethic of that most intense of all American cities was effectively suspended. Another of Green’s recollections is of being in a big snowball fight at the Harvard Yard with a bunch of fellow researchers, including Nobel laureate (Medicine 1975) David Baltimore. Green and Baltimore are both very competitive, and Harvard is a haven for Type A personalities, so it could have been quite a battle!

  As the world warms, it may seem counterintuitive that
climate change is giving us major, unpredicted blizzard events in, for example, Japan, eastern United States and Western Europe. Regional cooling may result if, for example, currents like the Atlantic Conveyer, which delivers warmer water to the US north east and the west coast of England (Gulf Stream), cease to ‘overturn’ and drive colder waters to the ocean depths. Those recurring big snow events in the United States and Europe may be a consequence of combining high (plus 3 degrees Centigrade) Atlantic water temperatures with extremely cold atmospheric output from the Arctic. That mix of evaporation, more water in the atmosphere and very cold air can evidently lead to massive snow dumps.

  At the same time, of course, the Arctic is melting rapidly, and massive cracks in several of the Antarctic ice shelves have resulted in the recent calving off of enormous icebergs. Snow pack in the American Rockies is down and, if that trend continues, there’s the likelihood of extreme problems for the snowmelt-fed water supply of the western and southern US states. That, along with the rapid disappearance of mountain glaciers, is also a major threat to the water security of some South American nations, especially Bolivia. Though human beings will still experience snow falls, perhaps more commonly as extreme weather events, and see the beauty of naturally formed snowflakes for a very long time, our sense and experience of snow will inevitably change.

  CHAPTER 21

  Biting the big apple

  I WAS DUE TO travel from Memphis to Washington DC. The plan was to spend a couple of hours in my office at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, then leave the car at the airport, fly to Washington Reagan/National Airport and take a cab to the campus of the Walter Reed Army Hospital, where I was to give a talk at the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP). Founded in 1862, the AFIP closed in 2011, though the associated National Museum of Health and Medicine continues and is open to the public. For those with a more macabre mindset, apart from distressing human remains in bottles, you can see the surgical kit used at the autopsy of assassinated US President Abe Lincoln, bits of his skull and the bullet that killed him.