J.D. Porter's Blog, page 13

Who was G. V. Gress and why was his name on Atlanta’s 1st zoo?

In late November 1889, the City of Atlanta’s first zoo building was being constructed in a brand-new zoological garden in Grant Park. According to news reports, it was “a handsome and substantial structure”, “an ornament to the park”, and it provided “comfortable housing for the animals”. The brick structure was more than two hundred feet long with “a continuous railroad track running through the center” and its cages “were constructed of iron”.

Atlanta was joining an exclusive 19th century club—a short list of North American cities that could boast their own zoo. But Atlanta’s case is curious because most of those cities started gradually and, as their animal collections grew, they constructed buildings to house them. Atlanta went from having no zoo to speak of, to needing a “substantial” building to house an entire collection. Where did those animals come from?

A clue might be in the headline of the newspaper article that announced the new building. The new zoo was not called the Grant Park zoo or even the Atlanta Zoo. The new building was being built in The Gress Zoo—named after G. V. Gress.

[image error]George Valentine Gress was a wealthy businessman and well-liked philanthropist. He was described by his contemporaries as “one of the most promising and progressive young men of the new south”. No one seemed to care that Mr. Gress was, in fact, a Yankee.

While still in his early twenties, Gress moved to Atlanta from Pennsylvania in 1870, few years after he served in the Union Army during the Civil War. But Gress was no carpetbagger. He found work at a lumber mill where he worked hard and rose through the ranks until he was able to purchase the company.

According to a newspaper notice in January 1885, Gress announced:

G. V. Gress, successor to A. B. Steele & Co., manufacturer of yellow pine lumber—having purchased entire interest of Mr. A. B. Steele in above firm, I will continue to serve our old patrons and friends who favor me with orders.

According to one report Gress was “a gentleman of whom any city might be proud. He is a young man, energetic, reliable, and respected”.

“Seven years ago,” the article goes on to state, “he was a poor boy working for three dollars a day. Now he is independently wealthy. That wealth was accumulated by industry and frugality and while it was being accumulated, he made a reputation for honesty and integrity, which are today the most prominent features of his character”.

As president of Gress Lumber Company, he controlled miles of railroad tracks along with locomotives and cars, several lumber mills, and thousands of acres of timber land all over Georgia. His personal real estate holdings in the Atlanta area were reportedly worth tens of thousands of dollars.

But why was the City of Atlanta’s zoo in Grant Park named after this wealthy lumber baron from the North? Was he a philanthropist who donated a pile of money for a zoo?

Well, yes and no—but that’s a story for another day.

Zoo Atlanta – A History Rediscovered

On a recent visit to Zoo Atlanta I recalled my first visit exactly 49 years ago. The famous gorilla Willie B had arrived at the zoo 9 years earlier. It was that visit that hooked me into the zoo business.

As I toured the zoo, I came across the old Reptile House. It is now vacant, replaced by a new home for reptiles and amphibians—something called Scaly Slimy Spectacular. When I visited in the spring of 1970, the old building was a brand new, state-of-the-art Reptile House that had opened a few years earlier. It featured relief sculptures at the front door. They are by well-known architect and sculptor Julian Hoke Harris and, though the building is closed, they are still visible.

The new building is spectacular, but I wonder if there is a way to incorporated these historic pieces of art when the old building goes away?

 

Since I am fascinated by history, I also stopped into the gift shop and asked if they had a book that documents the history of the zoo. They did not. So, I did a little online research and discovered from the zoo’s own website:

In March 1889, a traveling show bound for Marietta, Ga., stalled just south of its destination when cash flow problems forced its owner into bankruptcy. Left behind by defecting circus employees, the animals began to draw crowds of curious onlookers. Two weeks later, businessman George Valentine Gress purchased the collection at public auction and donated the animals to the city of Atlanta. City leaders relocated them to picturesque Grant Park, a favorite local picnic and promenade destination. Featuring a jaguar, a hyena, a black bear, a raccoon, an elk, a gazelle, a Mexican hog, lionesses, pumas, camels and snakes, Atlanta’s first zoological venue opened to the public that April. The following year, on August 10th, 1890, the Zoo’s first elephant, arrived. Clio was purchased was purchased through donations by the children of Atlanta.

Who was George Valentine Gress and why did he purchase a zoo? I might need to dig-in to this. There is an interesting story here!

The View from a Wagon

Now available in paperback or Kindle from amazon.com — and just in time for Fathers Day.

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From 8 articles in the newspaper to a series of popular blogs, the Five Lessons for Living Life in the Slow Lane will make a great gift to that hunter in your life/

The Tift Park Zoo’s Founding Father

[image error]Ask most Albanians about the first director of the Tift Park Zoo and they might assume you are referring to W. T. Hill. Technically, they would be correct, but Mr. Hill was hired as director of the zoo in the early 1970s. The zoo had already been in place for nearly forty years.

The person who deserves the credit for developing Albany’s zoo and guiding its progress for the first quarter of a century of its existence is the man who acquired some of the first animals and the man who oversaw the building of their cages. It was customary for early zoo directors to live on the property so they could tend to all manner of problems at all hours of the day and night. The first director of the Tift Park Zoo lived within easy walking distance. His home was a few blocks from the Park in a house on Jefferson Street where the Phoebe Putney parking lot now sits. Historical evidence points to W. Carl Smith, the city’s superintendent of parks and cemeteries, as the Tift Park Zoo’s first director.

Early records are hard to find but by April 11, 1937, according to an Albany Herald article, Carl Smith was supervising the construction of a new home for “Albany’s monkeys”. The article described it as a large cage, 28 feet by 10 feet.

When completed it will house all the monkeys in one cage where visitors to the zoo can enjoy them. One section of the cage, 12 x 10 feet, will be open and in it will be a large cedar tree with sturdy limbs in which the monkeys can swing and play. The other section, 16 x 10 feet, will be covered and will have in it a small house for the monkeys. The concrete floor, which can be cleaned easily, has been poured. The cage is enclosed with heavy cyclone wire. It is so placed that visitors to the zoo can see and feed the monkeys better than in their present location and yet the monkeys cannot reach out and touch the visitors. The cage will be completed in about ten days.

 Carl Smith sounds like a typical zoo director when he is quoted as saying, “By moving the monkeys we are getting all of our zoo in one location. Visitors at the zoo will derive more pleasure if the exhibits are all together.”

The article goes on to note that the zoo had fifty-four alligators in its collection, a bear that required some cage modifications, and a young owl “that was brought to the zoo when it was only a few days old”.

“When the owl gets larger,” Smith said, “it will have to be caged, but at present it has the freedom of the park”.

How Smith acquired the original animals for his zoo is not known, but I suspect that few, if any, were purchased. The bear, alligators, and owl were probably orphans or nuisance animals. The monkeys were most likely former pets. One typical circumstance was reported by the Herald on June 10th, 1939 when a “Coatimundi bear” was donated to the zoo at Tift Park by Mr. & Mrs. C. E. Kenner. [Note: A coati mundi is not a bear. It is a member of the raccoon family native to the Americas.]

Two years after Carl Smith constructed the monkey cages, he described Tift Park in a 1939 Albany Herald article as the largest of the City’s parks at thirty-four acres. By that time, it contained tennis courts, a swimming pool, playgrounds, a softball diamond, and a large picnic pavilion.

“Another popular attraction at this park,” Smith declared, “is a small zoo containing alligators, raccoons, monkeys, pigeons, rabbits, and other small animals”.

A decade later, in July 1950, a Lee County Journal article suggested that Albany city officials were hoping to build a new zoo. This intriguing but unverified account said:

Provision for the construction of a new zoo has been made in the City’s budget for the next fiscal year beginning Sept 1st, according to City Manager Donald P. Wolfer.

  The amount needed to construct the new zoo has been estimated in the suggested budget at $10,000, Mr. Wolfer said. Some work has been done toward the plans for the zoo, but the city manager said the plans will not be completed until and unless the city commissioners place their stamp of approval on the project.

  Meanwhile, W. Carl Smith, Superintendent of Parks, in search of new ideas for the zoo, has been inspecting zoos in other towns, one of them in Washington, D.C.

Carl Smith’s “new ideas for the zoo” in Albany never materialized. He died a few years later in January 1956 at the age of sixty-six.

His friend and co-worker, retired city engineer John Sperry, remembers Carl Smith as a salt-of-the-earth type of guy—a good man who knew everybody and everybody knew him.

One of Carl Smith’s grandsons, Carlos Phillips, remembers his granddaddy as a quiet, unassuming man who rode around town with a monkey in the front seat of his car and who, when planning a new monkey island exhibit, traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to study the monkey island exhibit at their zoo. According to family lore, granddaddy was responsible for the planting of the iconic oak trees that line Albany’s avenues.

On January 9th, 1956 the Albany City Commission passed a posthumous resolution honoring W. Carl Smith for his years of service as Superintendent of Parks and Cemeteries.

Smith’s obituary noted that he was the secretary of his Masonic lodge and he was a leader at Albany’s First Methodist Church, as the plaque in the church hallway attests:

Dedicated to the memory of W. Carl Smith who served faithfully for 36 years as teacher and superintendent of our church school. 1920 – 1956.

 But something is missing in all these tributes. W. Carl Smith was, as far as I can tell, the father of Albany’s park system and most notably, the Tift Park Zoo. Those people who remember the lion’s roars that once reverberated across the city, can thank Carl Smith. My friends who recall riding the train from Sylvester on field trips to the Tift Park Zoo can thank Carl Smith. And those who admit to sneaking into the zoo at night to cause mischief—well you get the idea.

The Tift Park Zoo, Albany Georgia’s extinct zoo

[image error]Most long-time residents of Albany, Georgia remember the day that Lasca the elephant walked from the Tift Park Zoo to her new home at Chehaw Park. The elephant was led on her three mile march by a city dump truck, followed by a zoo vehicle, and had traffic stopped to let her pass by the Albany Police Department.

According to Albany Herald staff writer Gary McElroy, who covered the October 26th, 1977 event in considerable detail, “People gathered in their yards and places of business along the route to watch a sight never before seen in Albany.”

But a recent thread of conversation on social media about Lasca’s walk to Chehaw Park illustrates how unreliable peoples’ memories can be. Two people remembered that the elephant died during the move—a detail that apparently escaped McElroy’s attention. Someone suggested that she balked “at the bridge and swam across the Kinchafoonee creek”. A number of people thought the walk was a bad idea and proved to be so stressful that Lasca died shortly after the move while others were glad she lived out her last few years in a more humane environment.

On the other hand, some plausible information emerged. One person, for example, recalled that zoo officials built a trailer to transport her, but the trailer would not support her weight. Perhaps that is what necessitated the weeks of short walks that someone else remembers—walks that were intended to get her prepared for the journey.

I was particularly interested in the details of the walk—how her handler, zoo director W. T. Hill, let her stop and rest, how he fed her treats from time to time and, most particularly, how she was spooked briefly by banging railroad cars nearby.

As a zookeeper at Busch Gardens in the early 1970s, the first task on my evening shift was to help walk five African elephants from their exhibit yard to their night-barn at the end of the day. They walked trunk-to-tail through a pasture occupied by zebra, giraffe, and other hoofed stock without incident—except on those occasions when the nine-year-old bull, Bwana, was spooked by something and broke out of line. His usual tactic was to run a few yards away, turn toward his handlers with his ears fanned out in a threat display, and dare us to approach him. On those evenings when I was the lead handler, it was my job to walk slowly toward him, calming him with the command “Bwana steady”, grab the six thousand pound animal by the tusk, and tell him to “move up” and “come in line”. I was taught to show no fear and be firm and commanding, but my hands trembled and my heart thumped as I considered what I would do if he refused my orders. He never did. It was only later in my career, after numerous reports of elephants killing their handlers, that I came to appreciate just how dangerous that situation was.

Even though W. T. Hill had Lasca secured by chains on her left front and left rear feet, her stroll down Jefferson Street and the Old Leesburg Road provided some tense moments. So why, I can’t help but wonder, was Lasca’s walk not front page news?  Why was it buried on page eight, giving up the front page to a warning about the hazards of skateboards and an oil well explosion in California? What could be more symbolic of the end of an era than the last animal literally walking away from the Tift Park Zoo before it closed forever?

But for me, this begs a larger question. Why is so little documented about the history of the Tift Park Zoo? Everybody seems to remember Lasca the elephant; Joe the cigar smoking, poop-slinging chimpanzee; and the lion whose roars washed over Albany from the Flint River to the other side of Slappey Drive. But where did these animals come from and what happened to them? Most zoos have an origin story—that legendary first animal or the larger-than-life zoo director who defined the early zoo—but not, as far as I can tell, the Tift Park Zoo.

According to the National Register of Historic Places, Tift Park was founded in 1909, land was purchased in 1910 and 1911, and the layout was designed in 1912 by Atlanta-based architect Otto Kratzenstein. That is pretty specific. But when it comes to the zoo, the narrative becomes vague.

During the 1930s, according to the Registry, a small zoo was established, destroying one of the original carriage trails in the northeast section of the park. The next mention of the zoo in the Registry is the zoo’s move to Chehaw Park in 1977. What happened during the forty years in between? Were people so ashamed of the old zoo they just wanted to see it bulldozed into oblivion?

In his recent book Palaces for the People, author Eric Klinenberg suggests that parks—and, I would argue, zoos—are part of a community’s social infrastructure. They are the glue that binds communities together and the spaces that shape the way we interact. The Tift Park Zoo was an element of Albany’s social infrastructure for more than forty years. It was a place that allowed Albanians to interact with one another while building relationships and memories.

In the coming weeks, I will explore the obscure history of Albany’s Tift Park Zoo. When was the zoo founded? Who were some of the people that oversaw its development? And how did a sea cow come to inhabit a small concrete pool in Albany, Georgia?

 

5 Lessons: Conclusion

[image error]I don’t want to go back to the good old days. I like my automobile, my air-conditioned house, and my indoor plumbing. But I have learned from driving the wagon how beneficial it has been for me to slow down, seize the day, and enjoy the kindness of strangers. I have been blessed by moments of Zen-like solitude. I have been connected to the natural world and been alone with my thoughts while I talked to a dog and swore at my mules.

But these are lessons for my own life. What are your life lessons? Perhaps you should ponder this bonus lesson—something I learned from Thelma the wayward mule.

 

There’s one in every crowd—even a crowd of mules. I’m talking about that individual who marches to her own drummer. The one who heeds the advice of poet Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail.”

I witnessed such an individual one weekend when we hosted the annual meeting of the Georgia chapter of a prominent women’s club. The event was a historic preservation tour that brought them to view the plantation home designed by a world-famous architect.

It is worth noting that when quail hunting season ends at the end of February, the animals take the summer off while the property managers are hard at work burning fields, clearing brush, and maintaining equipment. Since it is a private residence and a members-only facility, nobody comes on the property unless they have business there. When I arrived on the property that day, the horses and mules were grazing peacefully in their fifty acre pasture, peacefully that is, until three large white tour buses followed by a small caravan of cars trundled down the dirt road in front of their pasture

I can only imagine what was going through their minds as the vehicles disgorged a hundred or so passengers. Maybe they thought all of these people had come to see them—perhaps bringing food. It was quite a sight to see six mules and a dozen horses sprinting across the pasture to gather along the white wooden fence. It reminded me of when I was a kid and we heard the bells of the ice cream truck jingling through the neighborhood.

The guests, of course, ambled over to the pasture fence but I paid little notice, assuming they would lose interest in a bunch of animals in favor of the historic house they had come to see. Imagine my surprise when I looked back and discovered that the guests had gathered around a mule that was grazing peacefully outside the pasture in the middle of the lawn. How had that happened? Had she jumped the fence? Not likely. Had someone left the gate open? Not according to a quick survey of the fence line.

The mule turned out to be my dependable pulling mule, Thelma. She gave me little trouble as I herded her back up the lane and through a gate that led back to the pasture. She even seemed—if I care to be anthropomorphic—glad to see me.

So, how did she get out? Well, that’s the interesting bit. According to several guests who witnessed it, when the other animals were trotting to the fence, Thelma separated herself and turned ninety degrees from the herd. She proceeded with purpose down the fence line away from the action and entered a grove of trees where the sturdy wooden fence becomes a tangle of metal posts and barbed wire—a section of fence that is apparently less than secure. Guests reported that she when she emerged from the trees she was no longer in the pasture. She had decided to join the party.

How, I wonder, did she figure that out? How did she have the presence of mind to zig when the rest of the herd zagged? I can’t say, but it sure did make for some good theater. I wonder what made the greater impression on our guests from around the state, the majestic architecture of a stately mansion or the ingenuity of Thelma the wayward mule who reminds us of the words of Albert Einstein:

 

“The one who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find themselves in places no one has ever been before.”

Lesson #5: Appreciate Nature

The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.                         Zeno (335 – 263 B. C.)

 

[image error]“It looks like you’ve had a fire come through here,” guests on my wagon often observe. They are noticing the blackened trunks of all the mature pine trees that dot the landscape.

“We burn this property every year,” I reply, much to their surprise.

This is where I give a very brief summary of a very complicated concept. Without the regular destruction by fire, this ideal bobwhite quail habitat would not exist. Fire is a natural phenomenon that some ecosystems require. If we suppress it, those ecosystems will cease to exist.

Pine trees have evolved to withstand fire. Everything else pretty much burns to the ground. But within days, a miracle happens. Shoots of green begin to appear from the blackened soil. In a few weeks the ground is a carpet of greenery and in a few months, evidence of the fire has been replaced by lush, wildlife-supporting vegetation.

I often wonder as I sit on my wagon and watch the hunters stalk the broomsedge and wiregrass hoping to flush another covey what this landscape would look like without quail hunters paying for its preservation. My guess is that the wide open, pine-wiregrass habitat would be swallowed up in a scrub oak forest. The quail, gopher tortoise, and other savanna-loving creatures would disappear.

The longleaf pine savanna—the signature ecosystem of the American Southeast—is said to have once covered more than fifty percent of the land across thousands of miles of nine states, from Virginia to East Texas. In the Sierra Club Magazine’s January 2016 issue, the famed biologist E. O. Wilson wrote an essay titled It’s Time to Strike a Fair Deal with Wild Nature. In it, he identifies twelve of the “best places in the biosphere”—places like the Amazon River basin and the Serengeti grasslands. These places, Wilson suggests, are some of the best places to see a living natural environment. Wilson listed the longleaf pine savanna of the American Southeast as one of the twelve. It is, I believe, quail hunting that has preserved enough habitat to make this list.

 

For those who seriously and actively care about animals there are, I believe, several types of animal lovers. They include animal activists, animal care professionals, and sportsmen. It is the sportsmen—hunters and fishermen—who are usually left out of the conversation when it comes to a love of animals because they express their respect by harvesting and consuming the very things they love and seek to protect.

Much of society, it seems, is disconnected from the source of our food. Deep down we know that if we eat meat, some animal had to provide that meat—but it is not something to be talked about in polite society.

This was illustrated recently when my wife, an elementary school librarian, was speaking to a first-grade class after reading a story about what animals eat. She explained the differences between carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores but when my wife asked the kids what category humans fall into, they became confused. Many did not realize that humans eat other animals—that when eating hamburger they are eating a cow or when consuming bacon they are eating a pig. This urban generation is being raised on shrink-wrapped food from the grocery store. I wondered if some parents might be upset that their children were being told otherwise.

Why the disconnect? Perhaps it is because we don’t want to think about the fact that animals are killed to supply our meat. We are content with an illusion.

This reminds me of the story (probably untrue, but a good story none-the-less) about a display presented by showman P. T. Barnum early in his career. It was called The Happy Family, and it is said to have featured a lion, a tiger, a panther, and a lamb—all in the same cage. After the exhibition had been running for a while, a friend asked the showman how everything was going. “Oh, fairly well,” Barnum replied. “I’m going to make a permanent feature out of it, if the supply of lambs holds out.”

The guests I meet on my wagon are, for the most part, enthusiastic sportsmen. They love shooting the way some people love golf, even to the point of cheering the well-placed shot. Most of them are more like me than I ever suspected. They are naturalists at heart. They may fly-in on private jets and carry shotguns that cost more than a new car, but they still marvel at the vultures that soar overhead, ask about the prescribed fire that maintains quail habitat, and get excited when a cooper’s hawk swoops in to steal one of their birds.

They are as knowledgeable about what quail eat as they are what size shotgun shell will bring them down and they believe in giving the birds a sporting chance to get away. Most will not shoot unless their target is well into the air and flapping madly in the opposite direction.

Author, Temple Grandin, uses her autism and her expertise as an animal science professor at Colorado State University as a platform to advocate for the humane treatment of the livestock we slaughter for food. In her 2009 book Animals Make Us human, she suggests that our relationship with the animals we use for food should be mutually beneficial. If we are going to take animals for food, then we should provide those animals a good quality of life prior to that use.

The birds that are killed in our operation are dropped in a box on the wagon and placed on ice after each hunt. They are then cleaned, packaged, and frozen—ready for consumption by our guests. They are harvested at least as humanely as the billions of chickens who are slaughtered every year to provide our chicken nuggets and many more quail escape than are shot. I know because I see them fly into the distance and later hear them mock us with their calls as we drive in at the end of the day..

Perhaps the people who oppose hunting as cruel and barbaric might see the end of hunting as a victory but, from where I sit on the wagon, it would be a hollow victory indeed.

 

My own affinity for the land began as a boy growing up in Florida dodging rattlesnakes as I wandered among the palmettos and pine trees in the woods behind my house. My adult adventures have seen me slogging through northern hardwood forests in knee-deep snow, sleeping in a tent on the Serengeti grasslands where hippos brushed the side of my tent at night, and searching for the elusive resplendent quetzal in the cloud forests of Costa Rica. I have been blessed to observe thousands of wildebeest crossing a river in Africa, to swim with fur seals in the Galapagos Islands, and to hear the calls of Beluga whales in the Arctic.

In his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods, author Richard Louv coins the term Nature-Deficit Disorder to link the lack of nature in the lives of today’s wired generation to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as rises in obesity, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and depression. He claims that by the 1990s the radius around the home where children were allowed to roam on their own had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970. Today, Louv says, average eight-year-olds are better able to identify cartoon characters than native species, such as beetles and oak trees, in their own community. Environment-based education dramatically improves standardized test scores and grade point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making.

There is, I believe, no substitute for being in nature and no reason we can’t find nature—even in the most urban environments. Whether it is in a park, a hunting lodge, or our own backyard, nature is in our genes and we need nature as much as it needs us to save it.

Lesson #4: Take some time to disconnect from the world

Cell phone reception is unreliable on our remote property, especially inside the house. So it is not unusual, when we arrive to pick up our guests for the morning hunt to see some of them wandering aimlessly in the front yard talking on their phones, oblivious to the canopy of century-old live oak trees overhead and the beauty of the historic house before them. Even the bustle of activity that surrounds the loading of the wagons often doesn’t deter them.  What, I wonder, can be so important? Are they talking to their offices about some big business deal? Perhaps they are encouraging children to have a good day at school.

I am not a hater of technology.  My phone is with me on the wagon—set to vibrate—and I occasionally check it when my guests are off hunting. But cell phones are, I believe, both a blessing and a curse. They can be put to good use by our guests on the wagon.  I have seen, for example, numerous guests face-time with a son or daughter in order to share the experience of the hunt. On the other hand, I see too many guests who just can’t let go.  Plenty of them are tied to their phones, often getting off the wagon and wandering around for privacy while the other hunters admonished them and try to get them reengaged in the hunt. I even had one guest suggest that we make the wagon a “mobile hotspot” so he would have better phone reception. There are, it seems to me, times and places where we ought to be able to disconnect—places where technology is simply out of place. Places where we need to undergo a Digital Detox.

 

Digital detox is a new term that, according to Wikipedia, refers to a period of time during which a person refrains from using electronic devices such as smart-phones and computers. It is regarded as an opportunity to reduce stress, focus more on social interaction and connection with the physical world.

Potential benefits include increased mindfulness, lowered anxiety, and an overall better appreciation of one’s environment. Studies point to moods improving after subjects put down their phones to spend time outside—changing from depressed and stressed, to calm and balanced. Cell phones, laptops and tablets allow technology users to be continually connected to the digital world, which leads to another new term—Internet Addiction Disorder.

One report says that in some Asian countries, putting a phone on the table before a meeting shows that you are a lower-class individual. You are demonstrating through this small act that you are constantly at the beck and call of others and not significant enough to be fully present in the room. I also see this in the person in the checkout line at the store who can’t stop talking long enough to acknowledge the cashier. This is not only low class, it’s just plain rude.

There are also health issues related to excessive cell phone use. The blog at Psychology Today suggests that technology can contribute to high levels of stress, place a strain on relationships and family, and even contribute to health problems—possibly including cancer. And if cancer doesn’t get your attention, how about something called death while walking? That’s how the National Safety Council refers to the nearly six thousand pedestrians who are killed every year in distracted walking incidents. The Council warns that people need to stop using phones while walking—and not just in crosswalks and intersections. Over half of distracted walking injuries occur in our own homes.

 

There is little doubt that technology can be addicting, as any parent of a 21st century teenager knows. Ironically, as more and more technologies exist to help us do our jobs, the concept of technical detoxing is gaining ground. Some hotel chains have offered promotions to guests willing to give up their devices and go “off the grid” during their stay, offering discounts and a menu of rewards if their guests agree to lock their phones away for the weekend.

My parents had a place in the mountains of Western North Carolina where we gathered for family reunions for years. Although the cabin had rural high-speed fiber-optic internet, there was no cell phone service. I always found it refreshing to sit on the porch swing and watch the hummingbirds fight over the feeder while hearing to the roar of the creek across the road—without needing to listen for my cell phone.

When my wife and I visited Africa in the 1980s, we were struck—and a little unnerved—by the isolation. When we were on safari, we were truly disconnected from the world. Today, there are few places left on the planet that are not connected to the rest of the world, whether through cell phones, Wi-Fi, or the internet. When friends recently travel to Africa, they shared their experiences with live updates from the Serengeti and we saw their day’s photos uploaded to the internet through the Wi-Fi at the lodge. When we were in Africa, we considered ourselves fortunate if the lodge had a two-way radio. We had cameras and surely wanted to catch that perfect shot, but when a pair of female lions ambushed an antelope at a waterhole, we just stood in awe of the moment. We did not have a cell phone up trying to catch the whole thing for a video post.

In 1994, when I traveled to the Amazon, we flew in an airplane for thirty minutes, transferred to a bus for an hour-long drive through the jungle, and piled into motorized canoes for a three-hour ride up an uninhabited river to a large houseboat moored along the bank. I doubt they had any communication with the outside world at all. I’ll bet they do now. I’m not sure I consider that progress.

 

To be fair, I find that most of the guests on my wagon are happy to let technology go. They get caught up in the experience and are quite accepting of the isolation. The slow pace of a wagon hunt affords plenty of time for a variety of activities. Old friends catch up on personal conversations. People enjoy their surroundings, talk about the hunt, and even engage in small talk with the wagon driver. And when technology is used, it can have some remarkably positive results.

Since Joy the retriever is aging and near of her hunting days, we have been bringing young cockers on the wagon to train for the hunt. A six-month-old solid black puppy named Cash was such a dog. He was supposed to ride on the front seat with Joy and me to observe the hunt and, perhaps, begin to learn his job as a retriever. But there’s nothing cuter than an enthusiastic cocker spaniel puppy and one of the guests on the wagon seat behind us took a shine to Cash. The man stood and reached over the seat to pet Cash, letting the little dog nuzzle and lick him. Soon the guest was talking to his seat mate about how much he’d like to take Cash home. After consulting with our guide about whether the dog might be for sale, the man had me hold Cash up for a photo. He texted it to his wife and at the end of the hunt flew the dog home in his private airplane.

On another occasion, I had a guest on my wagon who was deeply engaged in a conversation on his cell phone. When his turn came to hunt, he waved off his partner and had him hunt with someone else. Everyone’s annoyance was palpable. What could possibly be so important? The man walked behind the wagon until we stopped at the next covey and the men on horseback took their turn to hunt. He climbed back on the wagon, sat next to his partner and announced that he had just concluded a half-a-billion dollar business deal.  His partner was impressed, and all was forgiven. That man sure did enjoy the rest of his hunt.

The people who hunt with us are not hesitant about using their technology when necessary, but a remarkable thing happens on the ride to the house at the end of the day. The phones stay in their pockets as their conversations steer away from business and toward family, good times, and the beauty that surrounds them. This is what life in the slow lane can do for us. It has certainly taught me how to better focus on other people, even as I learn how to disconnect from my fast-paced digital world.

Lesson #3: Show kindness to the people around you

When the wagon arrives at the big house in the morning to load guests and guns, there are handshakes all around as we introduce ourselves with smiles and laughter. Who will be hunting together? Will they be on wagon number one or wagon number two? Who wants to ride a horse and who wants to sit in the wagon? How have you been? Good to see you again.  We humans do love our rituals. If we were dogs, we’d be wagging our tails and smelling each others’ butts.

Humans, like dogs, are social creatures by nature. We live in packs that rely on visual cues and olfactory scents to keep order. Is the tail up like a flag or tucked down between the back legs? Are the teeth bared or is he trying to lick you in the face? In every group there is an alpha male. Sometimes it’s the guy in charge, Sometimes it’s just that guy—the one with the endless supply of jokes, stories, and anecdotes. And every group comes with its own unique make-up. Family groups are different from business colleagues, which are different from old college buddies. Family groups might include children. Business colleagues might need time to make deals. College buddies are often hung over from last night’s party.

For the guests on my wagon, I try to cheerfully provide for their needs—water and soft drinks in the cooler and plenty of ammunition in the box at my feet. If it is cold, I’ll have blankets and coffee. If rain is in the forecast, I’ll have rain gear available. As we are moving about the property, I try to maintain the right balance of respectful silence and cheerful banter. My goal is to be a good host—to offer hospitality or, in our case, southern hospitality.

 

Southern hospitality refers to the particularly warm and welcoming manner in which southerners welcome visitors to their homes or to the South in general. Southern hospitality is an institution that, according to humorist Roy Blount, Jr., goes back to the days before air conditioning. When folks showed up, Blount suggests, “You couldn’t pretend not to be home when there you were, sitting on the porch. You could pretend to be dead, but then you couldn’t fan yourself”.

I was born and raised in the south where children are taught that when they say yes or no to a grown up, it had better be followed by Sir or Mam. My family’s roots go back generations. So it should not have come as a surprise when, after a decade and a half living in the north, I moved back to Georgia and people seemed so friendly. When I passed strangers on the street, they would actually make eye contact and say hello. Acquaintances would see me in the grocery store and stop to ask about my family. And, after I got to know someone a little better, I’d better be ready for a hug when I see them. People can claim what they want about race relations in the south, but this old white guy has had some of the world’s best hugs from my African-American lady friends. I have known some people from the north to be offended by being called sweetie or sugar, and don’t even think about getting near enough to a northerner for a hug!

The late Southern journalist Lewis Grizzard said that “Yankees still ain’t real sure how smart we are”. When he lived in Chicago, people used to ask him, “Do you people read?”.

The cynic in me wonders if Southern hospitality is genuine. I remember the deep divisions in the south of my childhood—the racism, the class distinction, and the bitter fight for civil rights. I also know that people are nice everywhere. I have experienced hospitality in Africa, South America, Europe, and even—dare I say it—in the North. The question that remains, however, is whether my experiences were of people offering genuine, from-the-heart kindness or were they being nice because it was their job?

 

Hospitality is also a business—an industry includes hotels, restaurants, and tourism. Colleges teach courses for students who want to work in the hospitality industry. The community college in my home town even provides the students with a simulated hotel room, a small restaurant, and a culinary program for them to hone their skills. I hope they are also teaching a course in how to treat guests, because judging by how I am received at many businesses and fast food places, good customer service is becoming a lost art. How many times have we felt invisible to a cashier who was more absorbed in talking to a colleague than making eye contact with us, the customers? The standard joke between my wife and me when we walk away from such an encounter is to say to each other, “Have a nice day.” Followed by, “Thank you for shopping with us.”

Quail hunting is part of the hospitality industry in the south. My job as a wagon driver places me on the front line and I have learned that I truly enjoy making people happy. Being a wagon driver forces me into intimate contact with a variety of people. One of the tricks I have learned from my experience is to ask questions and, if appropriate, follow-up questions. I try to show interest without getting too personal. People like being listened to.

The secret to good hospitality, I have come to believe, is to be truly interested in others. It is the opposite of being self-absorbed. And it is encouraged by the proximity of animals, nature, and guns. That’s right; guns can be an object of positive human interaction.

Guns—or more particularly shotguns—are central to a hunting operation. They are the tools with which hunters operate. But they are also objects of respect and subjects of safety. They come in different calibers. Some cycle their shells automatically and some must be operated manually. And they can be expensive. Some are worth more than my car—actually worth more than both of my cars.

[image error]In addition to the guns, I’ve also come to appreciate the art of shooting—especially with the break-down double-barreled gun. Two shots, that’s all you get. Shoot, break, eject, reload, and shoot. It’s like an exquisitely choreographed dance. I’ve seen it a thousand times, and it never gets old. I love the thrill of a double (when a person hits a bird with each of his two shots). Even more special is when someone hits two birds with one shot—probably just luck, but fun to watch, none-the-less. Once in a while we will host a guy who hunts with a small caliber, 410 shotgun. Some of these guys knock down bird after bird. For them, shooting quail looks like instinct not aim.

The other extreme is the novice hunter who endures miss after miss. I never laugh at these guys since I couldn’t hit the side of a barn if I was standing inside it. I always feel for the novice. While the experienced hunter will grab his ammo before we leave the house in the morning, the novice hunter is often like the elderly lady in the checkout line at the grocery store who digs around in her purse looking for her checkbook after the cashier has rung up her groceries. The novice is the guy who waits until the dogs are on point and everyone has dismounted to hunt before he pats his vest pockets and realizes he needs something to put in his gun.

 

The wagon makes for a very pleasant way to slow down your life and focus on those around you. Being on a mule wagon with other people is like going for a leisurely stroll together. It is an intimate setting unlike other modern forms of conveyance. In a car, we can turn on a radio or watch the scenery whiz past. In a train or airplane, we tend to keep to ourselves, often with headphones in place to ensure privacy. But on a wagon, the scenery is not whizzing by, we are immersed in it. Silence can be nice, but conversation is also encouraged. Most of my guests will engage in conversation and I always enjoy hearing about their lives. I enjoy their enjoyment. Their happiness is infectious. It makes me happy.

Life in the south tends to move at a slower pace than other parts of the world. We talk real slow, we walk real slow, and we even think real slow. Maybe that’s the secret to southern hospitality. When we’re moving slowly, we can take the time to show genuine kindness to the people around us.

Zimbabwean author Alexander McCall Smith in his book The Double Comfort Safari Club had his South African character Precious Ramotswe say that her father had taught her everything she knew about how to lead a good life. Her father’s lessons included a Golden Rule-like admonition to do whatever you can to bring to others the same contentment, joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself. Perhaps that is the secret to our own America brand of southern hospitality. We bring contentment, joy and understanding to others—only we do it real slow.

Lesson #2: Seize the Day

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A quail hunt, at least on the property where I work, is filled with pageantry. We arrive under the ancient live-oaks surrounding the big house at nine o’clock in the morning—two mule-drawn wagons with six or eight horses led by hunting guides in white vests. It is such an impressive sight that first time guests often stand on the porch and video the procession with their cell phones.

In all this pageantry—mules, horses, wagons, and guides—one individual is often singled out. She stands on the seat of the first wagon, as she has done for nearly a decade, and is clearly the star of the show. She is a thirty pound, chocolate brown English cocker named Joy.

To say I love dogs would be an understatement. Dogs have been a part of my life since the day I was born. My childhood dogs were yard-dogs that never came in the house but in those days children seldom went in the house either, except to eat or sleep. Dogs ran with us—or we ran with them.

In my adult life, my wife and I have always shared our home with one or two dogs as part of the family, and I still grieve for those that have passed. Maybe that is why I have such an affinity for the dogs in our hunting operation and why I love spending the workday with Joy on my lap.

Every morning, after we load guests and guns and we ride out to the hunting ground, the first order of business is to stop and get two dogs out of the wagon. They are English pointers, muscular little short-haired dogs with names like Buck and Gabby, Bud and Pearl, and Ike and Dot.

They are taken out of the wagon in a male-female pair and positioned side by side in the middle of the road, with a gentle tug on their collars and an equally gentle command to “whoa”. The control of the dog handler is impressive and must be the result of hours, weeks, and even years of training. The dogs stand still and look at their handler as he mounts his horse. They are listening for their release—a low whistle, not unlike the whistle of the bobwhite quail.

Once released, they run up and down the dirt roads and in and out of the grassy lanes. By all outward appearances, they are running aimlessly at a brisk lope—aimlessly, that is, until one of them catches the scent of quail in the thick grass. Then it looks like the dog has come to the end of some invisible leash. His head snaps toward the birds and his body jerks sideways. He remains immobile with head down and tail up.

Our guide says “we’ve got a point up here.”

The other dog is usually not nearby but when she sees her partner’s point, she stops and falls into a less serious point, essentially honoring her partner.

It’s still a bit of a mystery to me, especially from my vantage point on the wagon, how the dog handler interprets the actions of the dogs. Is the dog pointing a covey or a single bird or a bird that was the morning meal for a hawk? Are both dogs on the same covey or are there in fact two coveys? This is the heart of the hunt—the dogs on point and the guide positioning the hunters; followed by the moment of truth when the birds fly, the guns boom, and the birds fall. This is when Joy, the little English cocker on the wagon seat next to me, stops whining and jumping around. She stands at full-alert and goes silent awaiting the dog handler’s call.

[image error]Most of the birds fall in an open area where they are easily picked up. Occasionally, however, a bird falls into the deep grass. That takes a little more looking, even when the hunter knows where his bird fell. After a few moments of fruitless searching, the call goes up from the guide as he looks back to the wagon and hollers, “JOY!”

Joy scrambles down the steps at the side of the wagon and navigates the lanes to where the hunters and guides await. The guide points and says “dead bird in here”, and Joy goes to work. She scrambles back-and-forth nose to the ground in ever shrinking circles until she homes-in on her target. Finally, she dives in and emerges with a bird in her mouth. She looks to the guide who says “wagon” and back she comes to deliver the bird to me and turn her attention back to the action in the field.

This is clearly a highlight for the hunters and is the reason that after ten seasons Joy is the star of the show. She is the enthusiastic magician pulling an invisible bird out the deep grass and bounding back to the wagon with her treasure. That is, I suppose, why Joy is the first one the hunters greet when they come out on the porch of the house in the morning and the last one to be touched with an affectionate pat on the head before they head in for drinks after the hunt. Who could blame her for reveling in her position as the center of attention and who could blame her for resenting it when a young male cocker named Dimi joined our wagon?

At eleven years of age, Joy has not simply lost a step or two. On some hot days she returns to the wagon too exhausted to climb the steps. She has to stop and catch her breath before clambering up to deliver her bird and flop down on the seat beside me. That is why Dimi has joined our team—to take some of the pressure off of Joy. She doesn’t appear to appreciate his assistance. She snaps at him when he hops around on the wagon and she watches his every move from the wagon seat when he is called down to find a bird.

 

In the 1989 film Dead Poets Society, actor Robin Williams sensationalized the Latin phrase, Carpe Diem. It is taken from the Roman poet, Horace who said in about 65B. C., seize the day; put no trust in the morrow.

But even Horace was not the first philosopher to recognize the importance of living in the present. Lao Tzu who lived in China nearly five hundred years before Horace said, if you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.

I have always thought the story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit was a metaphor for what makes us distinct from the animals. In the middle of God’s garden were two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, suggesting that if he does he “will surely die”. When Adam and Eve did eat of that tree, they separated themselves from the animal kingdom. They knew what it was to be naked and afraid (Hmm—sounds like the title of a television show). That is, I suppose, when we humans began to worry.

I am a world-class worrier. I don’t dwell on the past too much and I am largely content with the present, but when it comes to the future I worry. I just can’t help myself. Maybe that’s why I have such an affinity for animals. They don’t worry about the future. In fact, I should heed this advice I recently saw on a sign somewhere for how a dog handles worry: If you can’t eat it, play with it then pee on it and walk away.

A final word about living in the present moment comes from another Latin phrase. Memento Mori means ‘remember you must die’. Its origins go all the way back to Plato and it is not used in a morbid sense. Memento Mori is meant to remind us of the transient nature of life and that we need to live in the present moment.

Joy, like most dogs, has a way of squeezing the most out of every moment. When the hunters are stalking and shooting, she whines and moves around in anticipation of being called down to find birds. But when the shooting stops and the guides and hunters are picking up their harvest she stands still, barely breathing in anticipation of hearing her name called to find a bird. This cycle repeats until the end of the hunt and we are riding in to deposit the guests. That is when she lays down on the seat next to me fully relaxed.

That, I suppose, is why I have such an affinity for dogs. I envy them. With a dog, there is no discussion of how the day went; no complaining about the weather; no worries about what’s for dinner. With a dog, there is just the contentment of the moment.

At the end of the day, Joy does not appear to be worried about going back to the kennel. She doesn’t seem to dread spending another night alone. She doesn’t wish the wagon would slow down or speed up. She is lost in the moment—seizing the day—practicing Carpe Diem.