Acer Rubrum to Zyzyphus Jujuba: Stories & Adventures

By Dick Pellek

Volume II of Acer rubrum to Zyzyphus jujuba: Stories & Adventures completes an unintended trilogy of chronicles written by a gadfly forester. The author still possesses an urge to travel and share some of the more interesting stories and events of his 50 years On the road....again!!! during a too short career as a traveling forester. The self proclaimed Footloose Forester is an avid observer of people, places, and events; particularly in the natural world of plants and animals. He purposely chose to record his stories and adventures as undated chronicles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504985390

Dick Pellek

Author Dick Pellek spent five decades on the road—again—during his career as a forester. His interest in tropical and international forestry impelled him to keep notes and copies of records regarding his travels, observations, and experiences in many of the 106 countries and territories he visited or worked in. Volume I of Acer Rubrum to Zyzyphus Jujuba: Essays and Dreams is an attempt to dissociate his opinions and thoughts, including those emanating from dreams, from his stories based primarily on past travels and adventures. Chronicles relating primarily to anecdotes about places and events have been selected for inclusion in Volume II of Acer Rubrum to Zyzyphus Jujuba: Stories and Adventures. Dick Pellek currently resides in Greenbackville, Virginia, with his wife and soul mate of fifty-one years, who is a central figure in many of the chronicles by the author, who prefers to narrate in the third person tense, as the Footloose Forester. Till this day he and his wife are still celebrating their honeymoon.

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2016 Dick Pellek. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/09/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8538-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8539-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016904874

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Contents

Preface

Nostalgia Is Easier To Do These Days

Quinn’s Hill

Ronny Taught Me How To Throw A Curve Ball

Travels By Train

Backpackers

Forger and Grave Robber

The Katzenjammer Twins Lived in Venezuela

Footloose, Even In Army Uniform

Footprints Lead To Trouble

Scuba Diving In The Bubbles Of Jacques Cousteau

Talk About Your Low-Hanging Fruit

The First Time I Met Up With A …..

The Wild Horses Of Assateague Island

Remembering Elk City, Idaho

Whiskey Creek Brush Camp & Charlie Kidder

To Russia, With Gloves

The Survey Revealed A Misplaced Spring

Working As A Career

A Simple Math Problem

A Gift From a Samoan to a Vietnamese to a Dying American G.I.

Washoe Indian Encampment at Wrights Lake, California

Telling Stories With Pictures

Sleeping In Graveyards

Joe Wanted To Attend Mass At The Vatican

To The Job By Horseback

Spelunking In Calaveras County, California

Among The Redwoods In California

Those Untold Secrets

The Rhine Freezes Over

Camping At An Abandoned Gold Mine

Smelly Dog Stories

The Peace Corps Jocks

Hitting The Trail In The Northwest Frontier Provinces Of Pakistan

On The Road…..Again!!! In Thailand and Laos

Pretty Little Snake

Anecdotes About Flying

Anecdotes About Flying- Part II

Deadline On Guam

The Tiger and The Bear in Saigon

Mangoes For Elephants

Growing Bamboo

Ambush At An Khe Pass

Faithful Four-Footed Friends in Saigon

Return to Tuy Hoa (in Google Earth)

Regrets

The Quirkiness of Malaria

Heroes We Have Known

Let’s Go Shake The Mango Tree

Bittersweet Memories Of Cambodia

Fresh Tuna Steaks

Safari Along The Senegal River

Barbequed Wart Hog At Our Desert Camp

The Desperation of River Blindness

On the ground….again!

The Restaurants Had No Food

C is Cape Verde

25 Foot Waves Made The Passage Very Exciting

Fish Bait or Shark Bait?

From Cabo Verde To Coraopolis

Environmental Disasters

A Half-Bar of Soap

Bath Time…On the road…again!!!

Lemurs And Thieves

Rwanda Will Forever Evoke Sad Memories

The Drunkard Mouse of Joburg

Snackin’ On Crocodile At The Carnivore

Blue Rose of Kenya

African Wildlife….Up Close And Friendly

The Serendipity Of Katherine’s Statue

Softball Overseas Part I

Softball Overseas

Golf Is Sometimes About Things Other Than Tee To Green

A Hundred People In A Banyan Tree?

Bobbing Like A Cork In The Dead Sea

Affinity With Tigers

Picking Magic Mushrooms With Jaelyn

The Tiger and The Bear

On Mathematics and Nightmares

Different Island, Different Story

Five Languages At Lunch

Escape From Laos

Gifts of Finest Wine

Dogs Of War Coup Master, A Real Mercenary

France Revisited

A Shared Legacy

These Stones Will Never Wilt

Sharing My Legacy Story

Subject: Rutgers Classmates, the loop closes

Dedication

A toast to my faithful soul mate and wife of 48 years, Thu; a toast of celebration for our continuing honeymoon; and a tribute to her for sharing our happiness together.

This Volume II of Stories and Adventures is also dedicated to our daughter Lucy Pellek for her perseverance in the face of many challenges; and to our Grand Daughter Jaelyn Alexis Hunt for being an inspiration for several stories and adventures together.

PREFACE

Volume I of Acer rubrum to Zyzyphus jujuba: Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams was a selective compilation of personal chronicles described primarily as Essays and Dreams of the author who calls himself the Footloose Forester. This Volume II continues in that mode of selecting various chronicles and stitching them together in a loosely related anthology being described as Stories and Adventures.

Acer rubrum To Zyzyphus jujuba

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams

Chronicles of a Footloose Forester

By Dick Pellek

Nostalgia Is Easier To Do These Days

As computer technology advances, month by month, it becomes easier for everyone to capture and then ultimately re-live many things from the past. Photographs and videos make it easier to describe and then recall people, places, and things from the past that are more accurately recalled than if we attempt to use mere words to describe them. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video with a voice track included is even more evocative.

More than 30 years have passed since the Footloose Forester and his Bengal Tiger of a wife Thu first lived in Hawaii. Although we have many, many fond memories of those idyllic times in that island paradise, it is still too early to say that nostalgia has set in. But it will, especially for the Bengal Tiger.

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Rainbows appeared very often

Our pleasant sessions of viewing old photos is somewhat limited, however; because we didn’t have a camera handy at those times and in those places where a picture would have told a story so much better than we could. Thanks to computer files and targeted word searches, we can sometimes find photos that help us to describe things better than our own photos show. In any case, they can supplement our own photo record and allow us to incorporate the whole suite of mix-and-match images into a single slide show, if we so wish. Having the right tools allows us to assemble dissimilar images into an album. Producing slide shows by subject matter is another option.

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We never got tired of Diamond Head

It is so exciting hunting for those old photos and finding other appropriate snapshots taken by complete strangers that are then posted on the Internet, that the prospects for doing a decent job of making passable slide shows are much improved. For those with a printer having a scan mode function, the added prospects for producing albums are ever better. When all the photos are digitized and saved in either .JPG or .PDF format, the resultant files become the equivalent of digital photo albums.

Today, we are too busy looking to the future to lapse into a melancholy episode of nostalgia. When we do, however; one of the most pleasant ones might be about the time we lived in Hawaii…and saw rainbows from our small balcony nearly every day. We don’t have a single photograph of our own to make that point, but the photos above that were taken by our rental agent are convincing enough. Since he was our very own rental agent and personal friend, he took the entire suite of photos from our apartment. Now the whole Internet world can see what we saw.

Acer rubrum To Zyzyphus jujuba

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams

Chronicles of a Footloose Forester

By Dick Pellek

Quinn’s Hill

Mrs. Anna Quinn was old and frail. We youngsters who lived on Church Street in Netcong, New Jersey remember her as tiny and wrinkled; and she walked slowly and deliberately. Maybe she was 85, maybe 90. But she was a sweetheart. She was always kind and considerate. Mrs. Quinn lived alone in a large house up at the top of Church Street, not far from where we lived, but far enough away that we could not see her house up the hill, just before the street bent right and ended at the gate where Caesar Passanante lived. We felt welcome there, anytime…summer or winter. She often asked one of us to fetch her a bucket of coal from her shed; or run to the store for a loaf or bread, but she always offered me a dime in payment. She was a proud woman and I always accepted it. It was a privilege to know that I was one of her favorites.

The we in this memory of growing up was the small gang of kids all about the same age; boys and girls who might have gone to different grammar schools and even different high schools; but we all lived on Church Street and we identified ourselves as the Pigeon Hill Gang. Yes, Church Street was on a hill and Quinn’s Hill was at the very top from where everything else flowed down hill. That was the reason we were keen to start on top of Quinn’s Hill with our sleds and go all the way to the bottom of the run on Church Street where it met Route 46. It was a dangerous proposition to sled all the way down Church Street because Route 46 had a lot of traffic.

In those days there was a lot more snow in the winter, but it took a heavy snow fall and other circumstances to make the run from Quinn’s Hill all the way to the bottom of the hill. First of all, it had to be deep enough to minimize the drag under the sleds’ runners to be able to clear the lower edge of Mrs. Quinn’s property and then hit the hard road surface of Church Street. Next, there had to be enough packed snow that was not yet melted; to allow for continuous momentum unto and down Church Street. Often the snow formed in bands, as whipping winds cleared it from some places and mounded it in other places. Also, if the snow was too soft, there was too much friction even when we got as far as Church Street. Auto traffic on the road helped to pack the snow and make it a faster surface for sleds. That is, if the snow plows didn’t get there first and scrape most of it away; or if the plows didn’t lay down broad bands of sand. Although we tried to steer away from the sanded road, the sand itself slowed our sleds or stopped them completely. So, we kids were always on the lookout for the right conditions to sled down Church Street as far as we could. And it didn’t get any better than when we knew we could start at Quinn’s Hill.

The greatest sledding challenge came when my father came home one day with a bobsled, complete with a steering wheel taken from an automobile. We three oldest boys could all fit, sitting upright on the sled, thus adding to the momentum once we got started. Ronnie was the oldest by two years, and Joe was a year older than me. But none of us were older than nine or ten, so it took a lot of trust for my father to let us to sled down Church Street in the deep snow brought about by the occasional blizzard. There was even enough room on the bobsled for a fourth person, and someone from the Pigeon Hill Gang was always around. That meant even more momentum and less friction. It was usually Hank Schubert, who lived only two doors up the street. Perhaps he can verify for me the details about the ultimate bobsled runs we made, maybe 63-64 years ago.

The snow was so deep from a previous snowstorm that not even the snow plows could clear it all. What was left got packed down for the entire length of Church Street. Yes, the roads were sanded in the interim; but additional snowfalls blanketed the sanded layers to form a sandwich of packed snow. When the next heavy snowfall came, it made for a slippery surface with plenty of base. There was little or no traffic moving, even on Route 46. We were ready to make our move. Starting on top of Quinn’s Hill and moving continuously unto and down Church Street we waived off thoughts of stopping at our regular bail out point at the bottom, at the intersection with Route 46. Our spotter was standing on the other side of the highway and signaled that we could shoot across without stopping. That was the day our bobsled made its longest run, across Route 46 unto Church Street Extension; and all the way to the brow of the hill overlooking the railroad tracks.

Acer rubrum To Zyzyphus jujuba

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams

Chronicles of a Footloose Forester

By Dick Pellek

Ronny Taught Me How To Throw A Curve Ball

Ronny was the oldest of the children in the family. He was the quiet type. His actions spoke louder than his words. Whereas there are some personality types who talk loudly and proclaim their talents to the world, Ron went about his business and challenged only himself while keeping his ego in check. Somewhere along the way, he also found the time to teach the Footloose Forester how to throw a curve ball.

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Ron Pellek, one of my heroes

As very young children, the seven Pellek kids had to share things; and we did. Ron and the Footloose Forester shared the same bedroom and even the same bed for quite a while. There was no discussion about it, when Mom said something there was no complaining and no back talk about it. But that was OK, he was my hero and we never fought over anything. After all, he taught me how to hold a shotgun, where to look for squirrels, tips on how to locate ruff grouse; and where we could find the biggest of the swamp rabbits. And we hunted together a number of times before we drifted apart, due to age differences and not due to disagreements.

Ronny was my hero when he scored the only touchdown against Newton High during a night game in which Netcong High School lost. The year was probably 1953 but the year is less clear than the moment when half-back Ron Pellek slashed left of tackle and broke through the Newton backfield to dash 23 yards to the end zone.

Ron was my hero when he confronted the trap thief named Fred K. as we were patrolling our trap line on a late winter day. Fred K. was a scoundrel who didn’t have any friends other than the Green Mountain Boys, who themselves had pretty savory reputations around town. One of them was with Fred K. the day we heard them coming through the woods. Ron had lost traps to theft before, and that day Fred K. had one of Ron’s muskrat traps in his hands as proof that he was the thief that we thought he was. Ron told his younger brother to hide behind a tree until they got close; then when they started to pass by, Ron jumped out from behind his tree and grabbed Fred’s arms and pinned them behind his back. Fred’s eyes bugged out and the Green Mountain Boy stood there, frozen with inaction. Footloose Forester looked on as Ron imparted a stern warning that there wasn’t going to be a next time. There may have been a little twisting of Fred’s arm, because he was immobilized with a half-nelson. But Ron Pellek didn’t have a mean bone in his body; so Footloose Forester kind of knew that Fred K. wouldn’t get the beating he deserved.

After Ron graduated high school and left the teenaged years behind, he had less and less time for his younger brother. A lot of his time after work at Hercules Powder Company in Kenville was spent playing semi-pro baseball. He was a pitcher with the team from Mine Hill. It was during that time that he taught the Footloose Forester how to throw a curve ball. Not that his younger brother had many opportunities to play baseball; softball provided nearly all of the pleasures to come, without the space requirements that are demanded in baseball. It was also during that period when Ron met his future wife.

Nancy Arthur lived in another town, closer to where Ron travelled during baseball road trips. Shortly after the Footloose Forester met her for the first time, she told him that she was, at that time, dating another boy….until she met Ronny. Sometime shortly after they were married, Nancy also confided that after she met Ronny, she broke off the previous relationship because she had just met the man she was going to marry. They stayed together for over 50 years, until death did them part, with the kind of marriage that everyone longs for. Ron Pellek was a sportsman who always challenged himself. Sometimes he was on a team, and sometimes not. He played varsity baseball and football in high school; but also loved to hunt, and to play golf. On a hunting trip to Maine one year, he came back with a black bear. As a golfer, he had three hole-in-one moments to his credit. And as a bowler, Ron carried an average well over 210 for a number of years running. That included two perfect games of 300. Above all, Ron Pellek will be remembered in Netcong, New Jersey as a quiet unassuming man of guileless character, steadfast devotion to his wife and family; and as a well loved citizen in his community. Above all, he was my hero.

Acer rubrum To Zyzyphus jujuba

Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams

Chronicles of a Footloose Forester

By Dick Pellek

Travels By Train

On his first travels west of the Rocky Mountains, the Footloose Forester had a premonition that he would never again be as happy as he was in the mountains. Seeing the Rockies for the first time was from the window of a train as the Northern Pacific diesel began to lumber up grade toward the Wind River Range in Wyoming. Footloose Forester was lucky enough to have a round-trip rail pass to travel anywhere in the United States, thanks to the employment status of his father. His dad was a switchman on the Delaware Lackawanna and Western Railroad in New Jersey and he had the privilege of obtaining a pass for any member of his family to travel free, once a year, to anywhere in the country. As far as he remembers, however, no other family member ever availed themselves of the privilege of traveling to see the country by train.

Getting started was easy enough; the station where he boarded was only half a mile from where they lived in New Jersey. The DLW tracks led first to Buffalo, New York where he had to change trains for Chicago. There, he needed to change again to the Santa Fe line to Omaha, Nebraska and then to the Union Pacific route to Boise. That was as far as he would get by rail. His destination was Elk City, Idaho, a few hundred miles north. The next leg was going to be an adventure and one he was looking forward to. Many people consider being thousands of miles away from home and without transportation as being stranded. Footloose Forester considered it a privilege and an opportunity to explore. There was little hesitation as he turned his eyes north and began his first hitch to the presumptive rendezvous town of Grangeville, headquarters of the Nez Perce National Forest. "On the Road…Again!" might become a letterhead logo in decades yet to come, but getting on the road with his duffel bag strapped to his back was a passion that always yearned to surface.

Memories of the details are now quite dim after 50 years, but the brightness of his first long adventure as a lone wolf is a pleasant episode with many, many fond gems of reverie that he wishes to remember. In the following year there would be another adventure or two while riding the trains.

Having a railroad pass to travel anywhere in the United States was part of the plan to make a summer adventure in a new state after his sophomore year at Rutgers. He thoroughly enjoyed the previous summer working on the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho, but something deep inside him always wanted to see what was beyond the next mountain, rather than to return to the place he already knew. Some folks take vacations to the same place, year after year. The Footloose Forester knew that such a choice was something he would not want for himself. When he got the offer of a job on the Kootenai National Forest through the Forestry Department at Rutgers, he eagerly took it. Getting there or close by, on a train, was going to be another adventure.

The first couple of legs were the same as the previous year: Netcong to Buffalo; then Buffalo to Chicago. At Chicago he had to change to the Burlington Northern line to Minneapolis; and part of the way was along the west bank of the Mississippi River. He delighted in recognizing the deep loess banks at Council Bluffs, Iowa. They were described during his geology class as Aeolian deposits transported by wind from more than a thousand miles away. Such morphological features were always somewhat mysterious to him and required a visual interpretation to gain an appreciation of them. If he recalls correctly, their probable source was in the Yakima River Valley of Washington, an area of gouged landscapes with volcanic soils. That is to say, the loess gouged out of the Yakima Valley was transported by wind and re-deposited along the banks of the Mississippi River at Council Bluffs, Iowa. Proving such things is what some geologists are routinely expected to do. Also along the way, he finished the last of the sandwiches he had packed from home. Coping as a Footloose Forester often meant carrying the kinds of supplies most likely to be needed, so having food in his duffel bag was an essential item.

From Minneapolis west all the way to Montana was on the Northern Pacific Railroad. Along the way, he remembers meeting a Montana cowboy who was returning from an enlistment in the US Army in Germany, and a young girl who was taking a summer job at Glacier National Park. The reason he remembers them both is because of the conversation they shared before the cowboy disembarked at Big Sandy, Montana, his home town. She was from New Hampshire and her naiveté was unmistakable. She asked us where we were from, and when the cowboy said he hailed from Big Sandy, Montana, she then asked him where that was. He explained that it was a little place on the high plains. She then asked him what he did there. He replied that he was a cow puncher. She asked again, a what? He again replied, a cow puncher. Then, with a blush on her pretty face, she once again asked, What’s that? Footloose Forester could not help but chuckle when he said, Shucks, ma’am, I’m a cowboy. You just can’t make this stuff up.

The cowboy got off a few stops later at Big Sandy and she got off at the West Glacier stop, a little further on. Footloose Forester disembarked at Libby, Montana; but for the life of him cannot remember the slightest thing about the station or how he went the final miles to his duty post. It’s funny how one remembers some things in great detail, but cannot remember other things, at all.

The assignment at Warland Ranger Station was 25 miles north of the National Forest headquarters at Libby. He was supposed to be assigned as a Timber Management Aide, which meant that he would be marking timber for sale and would likely be given a pick-up truck to get him to the timber sales. It was a job he was looking forward to, but alas, he did not pass the depth perception test for a Montana Driver’s License. He is still puzzled about that test because he never before had