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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1961-12-07, Page 2GOOD IDEA—Doing what comes naturally in the hot summer days, Charles Haase, 14, Wilkes a back flop into the waters of Coney Island beach. Spending Sunday In Caesarea To see Algeria, one has to leave Algiers, So, taking our example from a long line of Algerians which began with Saint Augus- tine and ended with Albert Camus, we left behind tbe city's troubled European boulevards and teeming Moslem quarters that climb its heights. We took the road to Cherchell; the Caesa- rea of the Romans. The worst drought in thirty years, though it had reduced and withered the hayfields and plac- ed the cattle on short rations, seemed scarcely to have touched the lush vineyards and melon patches that we passed in the Mitida, the rich plain that sur- rounds Algiers, and the apple of the eye of the Europeans whose farms and plantations cover it. What secrets of past and future rebellions, Putsches and other tumults could those neat, white houses of the Provence or the Auvergne transplanted to Africa conceal? Could a handful of seditious ex -generals and colonels, as rumor had it in Al- giers, really be hiding there? Possibly no one, and probably not we, would ever know the answer, s Picnickers, who like most French families when they are "roughing it" insist on portable tables, tablecloths and silverware brought from home, were al- teady comfortaiely installing themselves in the eked& aha- ilows et their tiny cars by the koadside, as though they had never heard of a plastic bomb or a terrorist greade. Only a lazy helicopter,its blades chop- ping the impossibly blue sky in desultory fashion, hovering near- by like a giant dragonfly, and truck -loads of soldiers passing by. recalled that this was a coun- try at war. Next came Blida and Boufarik, Their- Sunday outdoor markets were gay and colorful in the sun, their squares still adorned with the monuments to the French roldiers, planters, and parliamen- tarians that built the "Algeria of papa" which, General de Gaulle Ft ernly warned, is gone forever. Moslem countrywomen, a single eye regarding us quizzical- ly and with an occasional brief flash of humor from the swaths ef their white haiks, ate their husbands with faces crinkled and creased by the implacable sun milled around the markets. And then we were in the plain again, on the way to the sea, We passed El Afroun, Bourkika, Marengo; tiny islands of Europe in a cultivated but indifferent African countryside. From the top of a ridge our car came down toward the almost impalpable bay of Tipasa, the Phoenician reading post which in the time of Constantine became a centre of Mediterranean Christendom. As we drew near, a mass of bedsit vapor, darker and more dense thee the rest or the sea end sky, began to solidify into a great mountain SYstern, tee Dje. bel Chenotta. Albert Camts, who used to come here to relax with friends on Sundayswhen he edits ed Alger-Republicain in the hepeful thirties and did steels - company theatrical presentetions, called it a "brow -like mass, brown and green, the mussy old god which nettling would disc lodge, a refuge and gateway for Ma sons, one of which am I." Some of Tipasas indifferent stones awaited us in blinding noonday sunshine, on a headland that dreamed its way out into the bay, Saint Salsa, a young girl who embraced Chrtatianity in the fourth century, was sup- posed to have been condemned here for having destroyed an idol, Tipasa, one of Africa's very few Roman towns that still keeps its Roman name, looked like a Duty canvas still in the making, its little fishing port awash with haphazard color. Even the severe gray customs house with tri- color flag floating over It scarce- ly spoiled the impression of a village on a Greek island, or per- haps some tiny Italian port to the south of Naples, The red berets of one or two marine paratroopers, who only lately had been. pawns In the hands of ambitious generals, added extra dots a color to the discreet waterfront cafe, Barbed wire kept us out of Tipasa's most interesting Roman remains, its amphitheater, temples, lames. Cherchell still lay fifteen miles westward, beyond the mountain barrier. There was a narrow corniche road, winding round and round the mountain's shore side, and somewhere about halfway, a beach. The beach and its Sunday bathers had once been strafed by a phantom rebel band that emerged from somewhere in the depths of the mountain, and, al- most as quickly, ducked back into Its recesses. But that had been long, long ago, and we were surprisee when he saw the barbed wire and the sentry box that said "halt." A gendarme, hatless and wear- ing loose American fatigues, waved us down. "Where did you want to go?" he asked, as though we might just possibly have been heading for Timbuctoo and tak- en the wrong turn somewhere. "This road is closed. Didn't you hear about what happened at the beach? You must take the back road to Cherchell." "But that beach business was long ago," we demonstrated. "Surely there's nothing wrong now?" "You can't use the road," shrugged tee gendarme, almost apologetically. Obediently we swung arpund an, eetteed Deck lox the foil to take the bac road. Could. there be, after all, rebel fellagha still lurking in the mountain's depths? We looked up at the Djebel Chenotta with new respect. After all the smug - sounding communiques issued in Algiers about the success every- where of the "pacification," could there be a pocket of "unpacified" territory only 30 miles from Algiers? Any doubts we had on this score were soon ended when we rounded a bend and saw that the telegraph poles had been neatly cut—sawed through, cleanly and efficiently, with saws—for about a quarter of a mile. It had been done recently. An emergency line had been strung from near- by trees. In Desaix, another thriving town of the Mitida, where the ruins of a Roman fortified farm complete with oil -press stood by the road, a sign warned that the road was closed every evening after 7:30 p.m. Then, scarcely realizing it, we had come around the mountain and were driving into Cherchell or Caesarea, where Juba II, a Numidian King with a Roman education, ruled most of North Africa with the daughter of Cleopatra as his queen. had last visited Cherchell just after the French referendum of September, 1958, when Algerie ete eler • se DESTRUCTION IN KOBE — Flood waters race through the streets of the Japanese port city of Kobe • following a 40,4nch rainfall. had dutifully voted "yes" to General de Gaulle, "The rebels will be all cleared out of those hills in no time," the local mili- tary commander had predicted then, gesturing back over the backroad we had taken today. Just as in 1958, and probably as in the time of King Juba and his queen as well, Cherchell was still an armed camp. There were about two soldiers for every civilian visible. Its villas were set among gardens where frag- ments of Roman statues, capitals and other bric-a-brac stood only a short distance away from a newish church. We lunched at a seaside res- taurant then took in the treas- ures of Cherchell's richly -stock- ed Roman museum once again, forgetting the war for a time. Outside the archway of the town's eastern gate, where the Roman legions had. once depart- ed on their missions of pacifica- tioe in the eastern marches of the province there was a new sign: "A cordial welcome to Cher- chell. But we must remind our guests that the roads to X., Y„ and Z. (various neighboring vil- lages) are closed at 5:30 pen, each evening and we ask you to plan 'your day accordingly." We could take a hint. We join- ed the stream of Sunday traffic leaving the beaches, the lush countryside of the Mitida and raced back to Algiers before the dusk brought back the shadows of war, When Father Lost His Rain Barrel I Every Friend's Corner house had at least one ram barrel be- cause, during July and August, our shallow wells often became so low that rain water caught in the barrels was a necessary addition to our water supply. 'Uncle Arthur had two such barrels, both large hogsheads that had been stained a dark brown. One stood by the shed door and was under the gutter that drained that side of the shed roof. The second was by the dining room door and got a par- tial run-off o/ water from the roof of the main houee. In June, after the hogsheads had been emptied, scrubbed, and dried, we children were instructed to keep away front them until fall. For the remainder of the year, we played with the barrels as much as we wished. In fall, we tossed horsechest- nuts into them, and, after a rain storm had filled the barrels, we sailed a fleet of chips on the placid circle of water. During the winter months some snow accumulated in the barrels but there was always room for OUT up - ended snowshoes. When spring came, Uncle sometimes rolled the barrels to the sunny side of his shop, filled them with hay, and, in each, set a hen on a clutch of eggs. Uncle's rain barrels were indeed objects of both entertainment and utility. One. spring, Uncle decided that a third reel barrel was desirable DIRTY FIGHTER — Strange -looking contraption, left, may prove to be an important weapon in man's constant fight against forest fires. les collect a. sander:Ming Machine, and throws dirt or sand on a fire while cutting its own fire lane. The machine is shown in action, right, during tests at Waycross State Forest in Georgie by the Southern Forest Fire Laboratory and the Georgia Forestry Commission, The machine can throw a heavy spray of three to flys cubic yards of sand a minute onto flame* to ti distance of 100 feet. since the 014 Farmer's Almanac prophesied a dry summer, He secured an emptied molasses barrel from his friend Mr. Long, Who kept the Grange Store at Mel -lard's. When he brought the barrel home, we children dis- covered to our joy- that the con- tainer had in the bottom several inches of molasses -sugar. At no little labor and with much smacking of lips, we scraped the sugar from the barrel into tin pie plates which Aunt Nellie had provided for us. Our labors gave us delicious topping for our breakfast buckwheat cakes. Our harvest was indeed so bountiful that no neighborhood family was without its pan of molasses - sugar. • Because Dan and Annie lived in a small house they found that one ram barrel was sufficient to catch the water from the eaves. Dan whitewashed the ex- terior of his barrel every spring. One May when Olive and I were watching him whitewash, he said, "This whitewash dries quickly. Why don't you girls run home for your crayons and put some fancy decorations on my rain barrel?" The result was that the decorating of Dan's rein bar- rel became a yearly chore, one that we continued after we be- came academy students, Cousin Herman, who had two rain barrels, one by the back- door and the other by the front door, gave strict orders that we children were not to play with the barrels during the summer months, In October, after he had turned each barrel bottom up, it was understood that the barrels r were ours and we made good use of them. The one by the front door Austin called "the snowman barrel" became it was his habit, after every snow storm, to fashion a snow figure to stand on the barrel -pedestal. Austin was a boy who enjoyed history, and so it was that Col - =bus, Napoleon, Lincoln, Bry- an, and Teddy Roosevelt, at one time or another, guarded Ethel's front door. The barrel at Ethel's back door was our goal when we play- ed tag in the back yard, and it became a drum, which, beaten with the clothes pole, summoned "Indians" to the warpath. At our house we had only one ram barrel, and Father was very proud of it because it had once been the water cask on Grand- father's schooner, The Meridian. It was nearly as large as a hogs- head and had a brass fauceb about three inches from the bot- tom. It had been made some fifty years earlier by Roscoe Grindle, a wet cooper who made barrels and casks to hold water and molasses. Father painted the barrel every spring and, in Octo ber, rolled it into the barn. There it would be protected from the winter storms. Actually, the one ram barrel did not catch all the ram water that we needed. When a sudden summer shower came, the cry always was, "Boys, put out the wash tubs," Otis and Ben would run to the shed for Mother's tin wash tubs, which they hurriedly put in place under the 'gutter drains, We children liked to listen to the drumming of the water in the tin tubs and to watch their filling with welcome water. Mother often remarked that we , needed another ram barrel and suggested that Father secure a molasses barrel from Mr, Long. Father's reply was always the same: "No molasses barrel is good enough to pair up with Captain Wood's water cask." Father placed such high value on his barrel that at no season did. we children play with it. One. April, as ,was his custom, Father painted the water cask and placed it at the end of the piazza with his usual congratula- tory remarks. A few days later when Mother noticed that the barrel was not in its usual place, she said to Father "Did you de- cide to give the ram barrel a second coat of paint and so take it back into the barn?" Father's answer was a positive "No." When he discovered that the barrel was missing, he was com- pletely mystified. As soon as supper was over, Otis was sent to ask Cousin Her- man about the missing barrel, while Father himself went to see Dan and Uncle Arthur on the same errand. The results were everywhere the same. No one had seen the missing rain barrel. Father recalled that Austin and his friend Harold Bisset loved a practical joke, and he sought them out to inquire if they hadhidden his prized cask. The vehemence ce their denial convinced him of their innocence. The missing ram barrel was for a number of days the chief topic of conversation at Friend's Corner. Father recalled that it had been in place on Saturday when a Surest Iarmer had deliv- ered a load of hay.' Father was especially positiveof this fact because he had pointed out the cask to his Surry friend, . Mr. Kane, whose grandfather had been a wet cooper in the previ- ous century. Mother remembered that on Monday a wagonload of furni- ture had gone by the house and she wondered if the movers had taken the barrel to hold some of their possessions. Uncle Arthur reminded us that we had spent Tuesday evening at his house so that it would have been possi- ble for someone to have taken the barrel in our -absence. But who would take a ram barrel? Did someone recognize it as a water cask? Was the old con- tainer Once more going to sea? No one knew the answersto the questions Father's mystification and re- , gret over bit Missing barrel in - Creased as the days went by, One day Uncle Pearl grew weary of Father's reeretrul remarks about his missing water cask and he gave us the first else when he said, 'John, 1 wouldn't worry any more if I were you. I keel sure that per barrel has gone for a visit and will eturn in due time." Thai was all that Uncle Pearl would say in spite of Father'a questioning. Nevertheless, Un- cle's comment reassured Father, though it at the same time in- ‘ereased his wonderment at the disappearance of his barrel. Who heard of a rain barrel going away for a visit? Where would it go? How would it return home? Within a week, all of the ques- tions were answered. One Sat- urdey, when Father and Mother and Otis returned from an, all - day session of the Pomona Grange, they drove home to find only Shep and Joe there to meet them because Ben and T were visiting with Aunt Harriet. As they drove into the dooryard, Mother erclaimed, "Look, John, your rain barrel has returned and brought, a companion with it!" Father reined Prince to a stop and with amazement gazed at the two white rain barrels, one at the either end of the piazza. "Well, I declare," he said, "This is a happy end to a mystery but I would like to have an explanation." After the chores were done and supper was eaten, Father harnessed Prince, who, after his long trip to and from the Grange, made it clear that he considered an evening call all nonsense. Father paid a call an Uncle Pearl and made a statement and a demand: "The ram barrel is back and brought a second bar- rel with it, Now I believe that You can explain. the mystery. I demand an explanation." The explanation was a simple one, When Mr. Kane, the Surry farmer, had delivered the hay, Father had expressed his desire for another water cask. Mr. Kane's departure was a hurried one and he left Father on the scaffold stowing away the hay. As Mr. Kane drove out of the yard, he noticed Father's rain barrel and thought of all the water casks made by his grand- father that were still stored in the old shop. On the spur of the moment, he lifted Father's bar- rel into the hay rack and said to himself, "I'll take this along to match up with one of Grand- father's casks. The next time I deliver hay in this neighborhood ril return John's barrel and make him a present of another." On his trip home to Surry he had met Uncle Pearl, who thus was able to guess the secret of the barrel's disappearance. Father was so delighted with the gift of the rain barrel that he took the next day off from work in order to drive to Surry to thank Mr. Kane for his pre- sent. He was as proud ,of his second barrel as he was of the original seagoing one. We chil- dren frequently heard his cau- tion, "Do stay away from my ram barrels." It was no wonder that, when I heard Colby girls sing "Play in my rain barrel," I always said to myself, "Not Father's ram barrele." — By Esther E. Wood in the Christian Science Monitor. NO VISIBLE MEANS OF SUPPORT — Bell Laboratories- engineer Harold .Graharri becomes the first man to fly a backpack rocket, He rose 30 feet into the air in Buffalo, and wooshed over the ground for about the distance of 4;) football wee