A few days ago I received a pleasant surprise gift from my father in the mail. It was a nicely printed 140 page book “From Away” by John McMurray. It collects his poems & stories about his life that he’s been writing for years. I had received many of these stories in the mail or via e-mail over the years, but it’s very nice to have them all collected into a real book.
There are great stories about him growing up in the Congo, farming in West Virginia, teaching art at Phillips Academy in Andover, & finally retiring to Maine.
If any of you are interested in obtaining a copy of this book after reading some of these stories contact me via this website. The books are $10 each & payments go directly to my Dad in form of check, money order, or cash.
Below are some of my favorite excerpts from the book.
FLYING
I was five. I had this burning desire to fly. When my sister found out, she offered a very simple solution. Kiss my elbow and I’d grow wings! How elegant! Why hadn’t more people done this?
Someone was knocking at the bathroom door, in dire need of satisfying a call of nature. I was sitting in a cooling tub of water, still trying to kiss my elbow.
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Good grief! You’ve been in there for hours!”
“Okay, okay.”
It was obvious that either I simply didn’t have the flexibility to kiss my elbow or my sister had pulled one on me. I suspected the latter and never quite trusted her ever again.
But I wasn’t going to let that little setback discourage me on my mission. Thinking of the incredible power steam engines displayed pulling a whole string of railcars, I determined that I could use steam to power an airplane!
I found two old planks of wood and crossed them, one for the wing and one for the body of the plane. Then I went to the kitchen and got the kettle used for my father’s morning coffee. I gathered some twigs and carefully piled them up on the tail of my plane and lit a small fire. Then I put the kettle on the fire with the spout aimed carefully aft and climbed onto the plane, hanging on to the wings in preparation for the moment when the steam propelled me suddenly into the air.
Where would I fly? Maybe over the house to start with. Mustn’t push things too fast. Got to get used to controlling the thing first. After a couple practice flights, I could then start exploring the neighborhood from the air. Boy! Wait until Lucyanne sees me flying over her house! Will she ever be surprised! Then she’ll realize I’m much better than stupid Gordon!
My wonderful dreams were suddenly interrupted by the smell of burning cloth. I turned to find my shirttail was on fire and quickly abandoned ship to put it out. How was I going to explain this to my mother? And the stupid kettle hadn’t even come close to boiling yet!
Oh well, if I sat back down and closed my eyes, I could get back into my daydream and keep flying around amazing everyone I knew! I spent the morning in total bliss, flying out over the countryside and even as far as the nearest town! I’d be famous! Wow, what fun!
I crash-landed right where I’d started in the back yard when my mother called me to lunch. I went running in with my wonderful news.
“Mom, Mom! I just flew over the house!”
“John, I told you a dozen times it’s not good to lie!”
So she hadn’t seen me. She wouldn’t understand anyway. She hadn’t been there. Grownups were funny that way. They miss an awful lot because they’re too busy to close their eyes once in a while.
I never got over that first flight. I spent my time in school drawing P51s and P38s fighting German and Japanese planes in mortal combat, the way Life Magazine pictured it in every issue. Of course I was an ace by then.
Even as an adult I was drawn to an ad for a Benson Gyrocopter kit in Popular Mechanics. I could build that thing and I wouldn’t even need a pilot’s license, it said. I even went to a local airport and asked an FAA official if it was really true that I could fly the Benson without a license. He gave me a weary smile and looked away as he said, “So far Benson is the only one who is still alive after flying one.” But, yes, I could go out and kill myself if I wanted as long as I didn’t take anyone else with me. Well, that was a bit discouraging, to say the least.
Years later, the ultra light craze had started up and there were people flying out there hanging from motorized kites and actually living to tell about it. So I signed up for a $75 ground school in flying ultra lights. It was at a small airport where the mechanical birds were taking off and landing constantly and my mouth was drooling so that I could hardly pay attention to the teacher. But I did catch a couple phrases. The only equipment you need on the plane was a rearview mirror as everything else up there was going faster than you. And you were limited to flying over unpopulated areas like swamps. And lessons in flying started at $500. Planes started at $5,000, and those were kits! Well beyond my budget.
Eventually I did find a fellow in Maine who offered flights for $50. They were supposed to be training flights, as the only ultra lights allowed to carry two people were trainers. My wife kindly gave me a flight for my birthday after making sure I was up to date on my life insurance. Well, I had a wonderful flight – in spite of the fact that the thing was earsplitting with the engine pressed against my back, we were hanging, swinging, under a parachute that would barely cover a king-size bed, and the pilot’s helmet was right in my face so that I could barely see anything. But I’ll never forget flying over the bays that I sailed often and watching the sun set over Mt. Cadillac. And waving at friends and neighbors as we flew a few feet over their houses at the lightening speed of 25mph.
A few weeks later, the pilot hit an air pocket with his parachute and fell straight down into a tree, seriously injuring himself.
I realized then that I had forgotten the best way of flying. So I went back to closing my eyes. Now I can fly anywhere in complete safety, as blissfully as I had when I was five.
NTOMBOLO
I had been asked by the local villagers to kill the monkeys raiding their cornfields. They were not allowed guns and it was hard to get close enough to the pests to get them with bow and arrow. I was glad to do it as I enjoyed hunting and I was able to provide the villagers with much needed meat, the whites having killed all the wild game for sport.
The most devastating of the monkeys was the Ntombolo as it could tie several ears of corn around its waist and retreat to the forest to feed. You couldn’t get the monkeys in the fields for fear of hitting someone in the tall corn, so I had to go into the forest to hunt.
It was pointless to go after the monkeys as they could fly through the canopy faster than you could run, and of course you couldn’t track something that wasn’t leaving tracks on your level. So I studied their habits long enough to know when they would be near the fields and ready to launch their attack. I hid myself in the underbrush and simply waited for them to come to me.
While waiting for a good shot, I watched the young tease each other and particularly their poor mothers. They would sneak up and try to scare their victims or yank out some fur, throwing themselves through the branches in a squealing retreat after a successful attack. The mothers would never fall for the bait but simply scolded their young with fangs bared. I couldn’t shoot the mothers as the young still depended on them. So I had to wait for a mature male. The villagers didn’t understand this as they felt the only good monkey was a dead one, and if you killed a mother you could capture the baby and sell it to some white person as a pet. They didn’t understand the concept of keeping an animal as a pet rather than eating it, but if they could sell it to someone who didn’t know any better, then fine.
I finally spotted a big male, pitch black with a white beard and a white tipped tail.
He was the size of a little old man but had the energy and strength of a young man in his prime. I patiently waited until I had a clear shot, trying to ignore the insects crawling all over me and biting my exposed skin. If I swatted at them I’d alarm the whole troop and lose my opportunity.
At the report of the rifle, the forest exploded with screams and crashing branches as the troop vanished back into their world of thick vegetation. The big male fell with a sickening thump. I was glad that this time the monkey had not gotten a death grip on a branch as it was very difficult to climb up huge, tall trees whose branches only formed at the canopy. I went over to find my victim still alive and very ready to defend himself.
Ntombolos have fierce fangs and have been known to kill people in their own defense. So I shot again from a safe distance, but the beast refused to die. It lay there in a helpless state, gurgling blood and staring at me in defiance. Another shot was out of the question as ammunition was hard to come by. But I couldn’t stand to watch it die slowly so I put aside my rifle and grabbed the victim by its neck to strangle it to death. I couldn’t look into its face as I did it, except to keep checking to see if I had succeeded. As I choked the monkey with all my strength, I began to think of all the people I’d wanted to do this to in the past. I’d always imagined it as a pleasurable thing to do, venting my anger and teaching them a lesson or two. But as the muscles in my hands began to ache and burn and the monkey showed no sign of giving up its life, I realized this was not a very good way to kill something. It was much too personal and it certainly didn’t help that the poor creature looked so much like a helpless little old man. Images of the mothers and their young playing in the canopy flooded my mind.
When I got to the village, I dropped the limp form in front of the chief’s hut and walked on home without saying a word. I never hunted again. This the villagers never understood.
People prefer to kill each other from a distance now.
STILL
Ntolo, the night watchman at this boarding school for white children in Africa, was popular with the boys because he was the town crier, absorbing all the local gossip as if he were omnipresent. He lived behind the school in a hut built for him, never seeming to sleep, but always smoking his pipe. A scrawny little fellow with a very crooked jaw, as unique as his talent.
We, the older boys, used to sneak out back and share his pipe with him. The pipe consisted of a gourd with an insert to hold a cigarette and a hole at the small end for sucking the smoke through the water that filled it. The local cigarettes needed whatever filtering one could get. These pipes were communal instruments, usually passed around a circle of men and women in the village. Since the water was never changed, the smoke wafting through it gained character with age, as a fine wine does.
We didn’t like Ntolo’s pipe because it must have been as old as he was. But it was forbidden for us to smoke, so we had to do it, like it or not.
One day, a couple of us decided that the foul water in his pipe must have magical powers after all these years. So, to test the theory for science, we caught a lizard and poured a few drops of the thick brown soup onto the poor creatures back. He never knew what hit him! He curled backwards into a tight knot and never moved again. We looked at each other in shock. It was no longer cool to smoke Ntolo’s pipe.
Having lost that tradition, I figured it was about time to find another one. Thinking of the high-test poison in that gourd, my mind wandered to another powerful poison that I could make – an alcoholic drink! The Africans would put some corn in a Coke (yes, even Coke found its way into the bush), let it ferment, and have a much better drink. I’d heard of moonshine made from corn. There must be something special about corn.
I found a coil of copper pipe from an old refrigerator, fashioned it to a gallon tin can, filled it with water and corn and set it on a pump-up kerosene cooking stove. Since the thing made noise, I had to hide it in a little shed where I fixed bikes for people. Between classes, I would run to the shed and pump up the stove some more.
Finally, at the end of day, the can had boiled almost dry and the glass bottle at the end of the copper tubing was almost full of something akin to Ntolo’s pipe poison. I’d done it! To test the proof of my scientific experiment, I lit a match to a drop coming out of the tubing, and much to my surprise and delight, it exploded into a bright blue flame! Alcohol! Pure enough to burn! Wow!
The only drawback was that the stuff smelled almost as bad as the pipe poison. Not one of us was brave or fool enough to even taste it, thinking back to that shriveled lizard. But, by golly, we’d made moonshine! We let it go at that and went on to search for something else illegal to do.
Perhaps if I hadn’t put the cobs in with the corn?
BEES
The sun was about to rise. In central Africa, near the equator, there is no dawn or dusk. Light suddenly comes with the sun and just as suddenly night replaces it when it sets.
I was waiting for Ntumba to go hunting. I knew it was something that required patience, as an African’s sense of time is very different from what I was taught. Where mine was broken up into minutes and hours, his followed the sun and the seasons. I have never known any people who could suspend time entirely when waiting for something as well as the Africans can. I had not acquired this skill and was growing impatient.
Eventually he showed up without apology. The point was to show up.
We set out with no baggage except the small rifle I carried and a sheathed knife. We knew we could find fresh water anywhere there was a stream, food wherever there were animals and shelter anywhere in the forest. We had no agenda, not where we would go or even why. Except I was interested in exploring new territory. He’d seen it all and so there was nothing new to him.
After a morning of walking across plains and through forests we came on a stream I hadn’t crossed before. When I jumped over to the other side he failed to follow.
“Let’s go!” I said impatiently, eager to find out what lay ahead.
“No!” he said firmly.
This was not like him. We had always done things together without question and even often without speaking.
“Why not?”
“The people over there eat people. The chief has never had anything to drink but human blood. I am not of that tribe and I can’t go there.”
I didn’t believe it, but if he thought it was true then for him it was true and there was no point in trying to change his mind. So we turned and followed the stream without crossing.
We walked into the end of day without finding a single thing to shoot for supper, the only meal eaten in these parts. So we found a nice level place in the woods to bed down – actually an elephant path compressed and kept flat by years and years of heavy footprints. Since the nights were warm this time of year, we needed no cover, just sleep. But in the dead of night Ntumba shook me awake and said, “Listen!” There was an ominous sound of breaking branches getting nearer and nearer. We scrambled off deeper into the forest and waited for the elephant herd to pass on its way without having to trip over us.
Come daylight we were tired and hungry from interrupted sleep and no food the previous day. So our first order of business was to get some food. It wasn’t long before breakfast was offered in the shape of a large, lone monkey high up in the canopy. Ntumba’s gods had heard him.
I fired and the form collapsed onto a large branch but did not come down to our level. There were no branches between our breakfast and us. Sixty some feet of smooth bark! But at least there were some vines hanging down from the canopy and I determined that I could climb these and eventually work my way over to where the monkey was. Though I could walk all day and not tire, my upper arms had not had as much exercise and thus I had to rest frequently while pulling myself up the vines.
Eventually I was able to pop my head up through the green forest roof, as a hippo suddenly appears above water.
Suddenly I was hit by something that blinded me immediately. It attacked every surface of my body all at once. My skin was on fire. After the first bewildered shock, I realized I had intruded, uninvited, into the territory of killer bees. As they were very unforgiving and I knew they would continue their attack relentlessly, I had no choice but to feel my way back down the vines as best I could. Ntumba was beside himself, yelling directions as to where to reach for the next vine, as I could see nothing. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally felt the firm ground under my feet.
I suddenly had an obsessive thirst for water and asked Ntumba to lead me to the nearest stream. When I felt the cool liquid, I plunged into it and drank as if I’d been lost in the desert. As fast as I swallowed, I vomited. This went on for a while and I guessed it was nature’s way of letting me get the poison out.
When I finally collapsed, exhausted, Ntumba kindly spent a couple hours extracting stingers from every surface of my body. Clothes had offered no protection.
Eventually I was strong enough to hobble home, leaning on my friend. He was a bit dour because he had no meat for his wife. And I was chagrined that I had stupidly ventured where I was not welcome. Ntumba had known better.
I still haven’t figured out how the monkey had gotten that close to the bees and avoided being attacked. I’ll never know because he can’t tell me now.
GARTH
I was playing in the backyard with my two-year-old, Garth, when he fell, hit his head and started crying. When his head started swelling up alarmingly, I rushed him to his pediatrician. “Bee bite.” Okay. But when the swelling only got worse later, I rushed him to Children’s Hospital in Boston.
Hemophilia! Bleeder’s disease. Say what? No history of that in either of our families. Not related to the royals in Russia. “Can just happen on its own.” Comforting. Why wasn’t this spotted when he was born? No answer.
Treatment at the time was whole plasma. Whenever he had a bad bleed, mostly internally, I had to rush him to the local ER and do the usual interminable wait for attention while he continued to swell up. When he was finally seen, most often in the middle of the night, it took several nurses to hold him down while some incompetent intern tried to find a vein. Needless to say, this became extremely traumatic for him. And for me. To watch your son suffer for hours only to have things get worse before it could get better is very painful. I can still hear him screaming and fighting off the medical team.
Eventually, we found an innovative doctor in Boston who was training parents to infuse Factor VIII, the blood factor Garth was missing. This made a huge difference – no more eight hour waits in ERs. No more forceful constraints. No more screams.
By age eight, Garth could infuse himself when needed and he became his own best doctor in terms of knowing when to infuse. However, early neglect of his problem by the local pediatrician, left him crippled in one knee for life. That meant wearing a big brace and crutches in elementary school. As embarrassing as this was for him, he managed to make the best of his situation by out-running his friends, swinging on his crutches. He adapted to his problem much better than I did!
In 1984, when he was 16, he was diagnosed to be HIV positive – from tainted blood products. At that time, the expected survival for people thus diagnosed was ten years. Just as he had learned to cope with his hemophilia well, he was threatened with another deadly illness! “This is not fair!” still runs through my mind. But he wasn’t alone. Most hemophiliacs were infected this way. As he watched his friends succumb to AIDS, he hung in there hoping to be spared. While many people in his position turned to drugs, alcohol and tobacco to ease their pain, Garth never did! I am still totally amazed by that! I certainly don’t have that kind of strength, but thank God he does!
Due to the debilitating effects of hemophilia and the cocktails he has to take for HIV, he can not get a steady job as he is very honest about his limitations. Even when he got a job as a computer technician at the school where I taught, they eventually laid him off because he was ill too often. So much for “Equal Opportunity Employer”. Now that record stands in the way of every job he applies for. Needless to say, I never got along with the Human Resources woman at the school who blackballed Garth. That HR title speaks for itself. Humans are just resources like water and electricity.
As if he did not have enough counts against him, again from tainted blood, he eventually got Hepatitis C. Now he has three life-threatening illnesses, two of them from careless pharmaceutical companies. Congress eventually awarded people poisoned by tainted blood products $100, 000, but the guilty companies made sure they were not implicated. Just the Factor VIII for a hemophiliac costs $200,000 a year. And there is still no guarantee that it’s not tainted.
When companies caught selling poisoned blood products were ordered to dispose of them, they simply sold them to third world countries. Even the American Red Cross was involved in this.
So I am still wondering, “Where’s the justice?” In spite of all the counts against him, Garth continues to hang in there and make the best of what he has left. My blood, however, continues to boil whenever I think of the hand he was dealt. Why does God let bad things happen to good people? Preachers tell us it’s to strengthen them. I think Job won his contest with God when he pointed out that it wasn’t a fair match to begin with. Amen.
