‘String Bean’ Fireman Rescues 16-Month-Old
I noticed a four-column picture of a handsome, smiling fireman, holding a solemn little 16-month-old boy. It was in the Aug. 25 New York Daily News, under the title, “Baby’s Narrow Escape.”
The Westfield, N.J., article praised the fireman, and deservedly. He has been called a bean pole and a string bean, but his build certainly worked in this occasion.
The horrified mother, in Tamaquas Park, pointed to a crevasse in which her son had fallen. The hole had just been dug that day for the park’s tennis-court floodlights. Workers were taking a break after setting a concrete pole in the hole, without filling in the gap around it.
Jim Pfeiffer to the rescue! The child was about 12 feet down, with his face against the dirt wall and his back against the concrete pole.
Two brawny firefighters, about 6’5″ tall, tied a rope around Pfeiffer’s legs and waist and lowered him head first into the hole. As soon as he called “I got him,” they pulled the man and boy up. The boy was covered in dirt and had scrapes over his left eye and forearm, but otherwise was in good shape.
No wonder the little blond youngster, who just began walking four months ago, wasn’t smiling – how fortunate he was to be rescued so quickly!
“Never A Dull Moment”
My Portland friend and classmate, Alden S. Bennett, whom I’ve written about before, and who subscribes to the American Journal, is now retired and living in Pennsylvania with his wife, Ellie. He has sent me a copy of notes he has written about trips to many foreign countries he has taken when working for Booz, Allen & Hamilton, managing consulting firm, from 1950 to 1966, and then for International Utilities (“IU”), the conglomerate, from 1966 to 1972. He has traveled thousands of miles by plane. I have chosen a few highlights from his writings.
He spoke in 1970 or 1971 in the White Horse High School at a convention of corporate executives and investors in Yukon enterprises. His subject was “A Proper Investment Climate,” and he spoke to a large audience. His excellent description of the White Horse area follows:
“White Horse is the northern terminus of the White Pass & Yukon Railroad, which has its sea-level beginning in Skagway, Alaska. During the Yukon gold rush of the late 1890s, the only reasonable route for a would-be miner into the gold fields was, first by sea to Skagway, more or less at the end of the Inland Passage, and then by foot, up White Pass, with a horse or mule to carry his supplies and equipment. The route up White Pass was truly tortuous – a very steep, rough, twisting path which gained two or three thousand feet over a horizontal distance of only two or three miles. There were too many opportunities to slip and fall several hundred feet. And the weather could be life-threatening, just by itself. At the height of the rush, the route was littered, it was said, by dead animals, dead humans and rusting equipment.
“Some entrepreneurial railroad man decided that it would be possible to build a track, winding up that impossible pass, from Skagway and on to White Horse. The road was financed, built and put into use in time to take many of the miners up and to bring the survivors and their gold back down to Skagway. And there has been enough traffic for the road, even after the rush was over, to justify its continuing use to the present time.
“It is one of the most spectacular railroads in the world, hanging on to the side of the pass, bridging over torrents of water coming from the cliffs above and making some turns so sharp that the cars appear to bend in the middle.”
Alden says that when he and Ellie took an Alaskan cruise, 20 years later, he made sure that they were the first passengers in line for the extra excursion from Juneau to Skagway. They went to Skagway by air, then to the top of White Pass by bus, and back down to Skagway on the White Pass & Yukon.
When he and Ellie were in Austria, he wrote, “From Vienna we drove down to Salzburg for the day, after arranging with the concierge to get us tickets for that evening’s ballet performance by Rudolf Nureyev at the Vienna Opera House. We ran out of time in Salzburg, but managed to dump the car, get a plane back to Vienna, and arrive at the hotel about 15 minutes before the ballet curtain time. The well-meaning concierge had sold our tickets, being sure, he said, that we’d never get home in time.
“It was small consolation to get our money back. But we did run into Nureyev, in person, coming out of the opera house after his performance.”
Alden was in Havana, Cuba, on an assignment in 1957 or 1958, and three or four of his group decided to make a late afternoon visit to “La Floridita.” He wrote, “That was, and may still be, a downtown bar, popular among both tourists and Cubans. It was at that time, sort of a second home for Ernest Hemingway. He could be found there almost every afternoon and evening and, sure enough, he was there when we arrived, seated with three or four other men.
“I am not proud of my behavior shortly thereafter. Like too many tourists in the presence of a celebrity. I acted on a rude impulse. I walked over to his table, extended my hand and said, ‘I want to thank you for many hours of pleasant reading.’
(I had rehearsed it, mentally, on the way to his table.) Hemingway had no choice, I suppose, but to take my hand. But he did give it a cordial shake and thanked me for my kind words, or something like that. I went away with a mixed feeling of success and embarrassment.”
Well, I see no reason to feel embarrassed. I think that any author would be pleased to be recognized and thanked. You should be proud of that encounter, Alden.
Another meeting with a celebrity was after Alden had made partner at BAH, and worked with the “Save Carnegie Hall Association,” which was headed by Isaac Stern, the renowned concert violinist. He wrote,
“I have no idea how I became involved. I certainly was not the source of the prospective assignment. But the originating partner included me in the preliminary, get-acquainted meeting with Mr. Stern, which was held at Carnegie Hall. Isaac Stern turned out to be a delightful, unassuming, unpretentious genial guy, probably pretty close to my age then, at about 41 or 42. If I had had no prior knowledge of him, I might have guessed that he was a salesman from the nearby garment district. I’m sorry that we didn’t work out some basis for collaboration with him and his group; he would have been fun to work with. But the areas in which we might possibly be helpful seemed to be few and very wispy indeed.
“I felt guilty about our declining to go further with him, and so was ultimately quite relieved when he and his group were able to keep the wrecking ball away from Carnegie Hall.”
I wish I could include more of Alden’s business trips, and thank him for his pamphlets of “Never A Dull Moment.” He writes so well, in full detail, and has had some fascinating experiences.
A Celebrity At The Lakes Of The Clouds Hut
In the late 1930s Ted Johnson, our Deering High School English teacher and ski coach, my sister Sally, and I climbed Mt. Washington via the Tuckerman Ravine trail and stayed overnight at the Lakes of the Clouds hut.
After dinner Ted and one of the guests had a chat, including the subject of China.
Sally and I, in the ladies’ bunkroom, were chatting with a lady whose climbing boots we admired. “I bought them at Abercrombie’s,” she told us. We were quite impressed that she shopped in that elegant store in New York City.
The next day, before breakfast, I walked out in the front yard and saw the man Ted had been talking with, sitting on the steps, and shaving. That impressed me, and I complimented him on taking his shaving utensils, way up there. “Oh, I shave every morning at home, so why not here?” he said.
As we started our descent, after breakfast, Ted told Sal and me that he had learned that the man was John Marquant, the famous novelist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, “The Late George Apley.” The lady in the Abercrombie boots was his wife. They lived in Newburyport, Mass.
So that was our encounter with a celebrity, and his wife!
RECIPE
Nancy Storey Dacar has given us a recipe for muffins, and there is quite a story about the restaurant where they were served.
When Nancy was a freshman at Scarborough High School, her home economics teacher was Doris E. Baker, who had taught there for many years. At the end of Nancy’s freshman year, Mrs. Baker retired, and she and her husband, Fred T. Baker, opened the Pinedale-In-Scarborough restaurant, in the summer of 1948. Nancy served as a waitress there, working for breakfasts and lunches and also on banquets at night.
The business card, with the name of the restaurant in all capital letters, also said:
Route 1 – Opposite Scarborough Downs
Breakfast, 7-11:30 a.m., Dinner: 4:30 – 9 p.m.
Sundays and Holidays 7 a.m. – 9 p.m.
SMALL PARTIES ON RESERVATION
Nancy said that Mrs. Baker also made after-dinner white mints, which are placed on saucers, at each table.
The muffin recipe was on the Pinedale’s business card.
PINEDALE MUFFINS
1/4 cup Lard
1/4 cup Sugar
1 Medium Egg
5 tsp. Baking Powder
(Double Acting)
1 tsp. Salt
3/4 cup Milk
2 cups Pastry Flour
(Sifted once)
1. Cream lard, add sugar, and cream together well.
2. Add egg and beat together
3. Add baking powder and salt, and mix.
4. Add all the milk, then all the flour and mix only until blended.
5. Bake in well-greased muffin tins at 425 degrees
Makes 16 small muffins.
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