The Bug That Marked History

Every time I spend an hour with Dr. Kuhl....I learn something fascinating!  He took the picture...Article was written by some other guy.... Enjoy! C

The Bug That Changed History    Surprise Valley. July. You’re running sweep on the Tapeats/Thunder River/Deer Creek hike. Conversation at the back of the pack is running something like this: “We’re surprised all right. We’re surprised how hot and dry and stupid it is up here!” Yep, they’re suffering from heat frustration, and you’re still miles away from the boats at Deer Creek. Resting at the Big Shade Rock, the glum crunching of a granola bar is the only sound. You think: “I need to divert attention away from blistered feet, achy joints, and sunburns. I need a long, entertaining story.” Tell them the tale of the cochineal insect, a bug that changed world history.    The cochineal is found in many Colorado River side canyons, appearing on prickly pear cactus pads inside matchhead-sized white fuzzballs. When you find some of these, carefully pull one off. Go ahead and mash it. The brilliant red insect bodies now staining your fingertips have been processed by New World cultures for thousands of years, and used to color everything from warriors’ shields to their own bodies. By the 14th century, the Incas and Aztecs both had whole agricultural systems based on cochineal, and apparently valued the dye as much as gold.    At the same time in Europe, the best red colorings were made from another insect, a pest of oak trees called kermes, which was dried, ground up and dissolved in water. Neolithic cave paintings in France, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the wrappings of Egyptian mummies were all tinted with this dye. Compared to cochineal however, kermes tints look dull and faded. So when Cortes invaded Mexico in 1519, he was amazed to find Montezuma and other nobles dressed in robes dyed a brilliant, vivid red. He was also amazed to see the native women’s hands and breasts painted the same intense color. In Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) he found bags of dried cochineal sent as tribute to Montezuma, which were promptly shipped back to Spain. The dye was so much brighter than kermes it was almost instantly in high demand. By 1600, cochineal was second only to silver as the most valuable import from Mexico.    Around 1630, it was discovered that treating cochineal with an acidic tin solution made it bind much better to fabric and even brighter in color, the first scarlet as we now know it. Because of its expense and scarcity, scarlet cloth quickly became associated with money and power. Roman Catholic Card Cardinals robes were made from it as were the jackets of the British military.    The Revolutionary War in which American colonists fought against these “Redcoats” was brought on not only by British taxes on tea, but also by heavy taxes on cochineal, which could easily have been imported directly from Mexico by the Colonies.    In addition to dye for fabric, cochineal became widely used as a food coloring. Cakes, cookies, beverages, jam, jelly, ice cream, sausages, pies, dried fish, yogurt, cider, maraschino cherries and tomato products were brightened with it as were chewing gum, pills and cough drops. Cosmetic rouge was developed with cochineal as the main ingredient. But while ever more diverse uses were found for cochineal, it’s origin remained a mystery.    Most Europeans thought it was extracted from berries or cereals because the dried insects looked like grains of wheat. This misconception was promoted by the Spanish, who had launched a brutal cover-up of the dye making process as soon as they realized cochineal’s potential. Many New World natives unfortunate enough to have chosen a career in red dye production were simply put to death. Access to cochineal farms was tightly controlled, but eventually French and Dutch adventurers succeeded in smuggling out live cactus pads covered with the insects. Cochineal “ranches” were started in dozens of countries in North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Prickly pear and cochineal did particularly well in the Canary Islands where whole farms and vineyards were cleared and converted to cactus plantations. In 1868, the Canaries exported six million pounds of cochineal, equivalent to 420 billion insects.    This time period proved to be the peak of the cochineal industry as new synthetic dyes in a variety of fade-resistant colors rapidly superseded it. By the 1880s cochineal production was in steep decline. A major crisis in Spanish financial markets ensued, as a key 250 year-old industry failed within the span of a couple of decades.    Though not in high demand today, cochineal is used in medical tracers, artists’ paints and microscopy stains. It is currently the only natural red food coloring authorized by the FDA. Unfortunately, workers harvesting cochineal now are not much safer than those laboring under the Spanish 200 years ago. The world’s primary growing area, Peru, is threatened by ongoing political instability and violence. Conditions are so sketchy that the insects are usually gathered at night. Revealing where his concerns lay, one cochineal importer noted: “There’s high mortality in working staff right now, so supplies are a bit tight.”    By now, if you’ve dragged the story out adequately, the boats should be in sight. If so, wrap up your tale on this note: as food producers continue to switch back to natural colorings, more and more of the stuff we eat and drink will be dyed with dead bugs. But at least the red color won t have originated as some awful synthetic brew in a General Foods chemistry lab. Jeff Behan

Communication-Amsterdam

Communication is frequently very difficult between people.  ---Changing this to"peoples" makes it even more difficult and challenging.  The exact same words mean different things to different individuals, even in the same basic communities.  We each have different backgrounds, therefore different connotations may exist!  Differing languages brings the problem(s) to an unimanagined peak, at times.  A rather  quaint and, on introspection,  amusing happening occurred in Amsterdam to some of our family many years ago. Ruth, son John and I had been visiting son David in Germany. We took the Eurail to Amsterdam to "broaden our  scope". The evening after our first Amsterdam exploration we returned, tired and hungry to our current room.   After a brief toilet and deposit of the minimal souvenirs, we talked over the prospects for the evening meal.  We had spotted a neat appearing place a short distance away which our hosts said was good so we decided that was the place!    
     Linguistically, John had studied German for 2 yrs., Ruth had had Latin for 3 yrs., and French for 2 years, I had had German for 4 yrs., French for a year  and Latin for 3 years.  We had been living in South Texas for, -John his whole life and Ruth and myself for 15+ years, talking practical oral Spanish.
     So we walked confidently to the restaurant, ready to face the probable Indonesian-Chinese menu.  Fine. but the Menu was in 4 languages, none of them  French, German, English, or Latin!  So a series of noises, grunts and gestures was on the program next! (We were not going to leave!)
  After our satisfactory meal we discussed the procedure next on the program.  We decided the next thing was to help them learn English, as being potentially very useful in those days.
  So John drew a shrimp as being the one thing we really wanted, but were unable to get across to the waiter .  After a few pointings, gestures and sibilant sounds, etc, ,we were pleased to hear the successful(?) sound of "Shlimp!"  Knowing the problems of Orientals with the "r" and "w" sounds we nodded pleasantly and decided that was our accomplishment for "Today's English"!  
  So we paid our check, left a tip and some smiles and departed to the sounds of "shlimp", "shlimp", "shlimp!" in the environs of the dining room and passageways , in various tones- tenor, soprano, baritone and a few squawks in the far background.   Needless to say, after our departure there was an explosion of mirth , which has periodically helped us through the years!



 

Delivering

    As a youngster,the catastrophe of the "Depression" ruled my, and my family's lives.  My stepfather had a series of "childhood diseases" which resulted in his loss of work as a city clerk-deputy city clerk.  This, of course, led to a continual economic struggle.  There was probably the word "allowance" in vocabularies thereabouts, but no one in our family could define it. ( This, unfortunately, was reflected in the upbringing of our children.)  -To obtain money for anything outside of food and other basic necessities, we children had to resort to our own initiatives.
    My first "extensive operation" was the establishment of a magazine delivery route. -- This consisted in going door-to-door solicitation to deliver inexpensive magazines. At that time,Liberty, Collier's, and the Saturday Evening Post were the nickel weeklies. I established a regular delivery route of 30+ customers and added a few monthlies- Ladies Home Journal, Woman's Home Companion,  especially.  This phase lasted about 3 years and then my sisters took over, when I moved up to the daily morning papers.
     It might be well to add to my story that at least 3 people who became significant in my later life were first "magazine contacts".  A man who worked at the Mason Seal Factory was the father of the girl I took to the Junior Prom.  --The others were Ruth's Uncle Ray Brice and his daughter, Agnes Ann(Matla, now). Ray worked for the Batavia Laundry and Agnes Ann would frequently be the one at home to pay me, on delivery.
     Our next door neighbors had a son who was a year older than I who delivered morning papers in those days.  Smaller routes, $1.25- $1.50 per week!  Sounded good to me!  No collecting, pick up the money Sat p.m. at the News Store. Wow!
    At any rate, I became his readily available substitute!  So I went around with him and became familiar with the route.  Shortly after that I was called.  He had the mumps!  So on the coldest day in those parts in the records, 9 Feb 1934, yours truly delivered morning papers for the first time.  29 below zero!
   Shortly after that another route became available, for me, and I took it--- for the next 6 years, more or less. I delivered The Buffalo-Courier Express and the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
   

Tricker #10- Final Voyage

      So we continued with Tricker at 1200 LaVista, some, through the summer of 1977 and she reentered the cage(at times) and led a somewhat reformed life.  After all, even a slow raccoon picks up  on the fact that if you dig a hole through a roof, you get taken on a dove hunt of no return, fraught with rattlesnakes, highway travel, mean dogs,and the like. So there was a rosy time of boy and raccoon united, the two were inseparable, and could be seen wrestling playfully in the yard as birds chirped,  the papayas and limes swelled on the trees, the gentle Valley breezes blew through the din of chicharras(a variety of LOUD locusts in the Valley), and all was good.                                                                                                                  John's boyhood friend, Ralph, had a slew of little brothers and sisters  who thought John, the raccoon tamer,  was a rock star.  They were dying to see this coon, and John was eager to oblige. They  lived in a little farm on Rooth Road northwest of McAllen.  John had spent many a happy weekend there, hunting, fishing, helping with the farm chores, trying to ride calves, riding horses, milking cows and generally having a blast, so he really wanted to give the tykes a full Tricker experience.  John at this point in his life was not good at  event planning though, and never thought about the two or three farm dogs that always ran loose around the place.  As they approached the house, John did finally consider the dogs and made the decision to get out and walk from a distance, you know, sort of sneak up  on the situation and hope boys got the dogs tied up.  Sure enough as the car arrived about a quarter-mile from the place, John and Tricker had just left the car and here come the dogs "a-runnin"!  As the border collie and cur dog blurs came  tearing across the open field he knew there was only one option,---he pulled off Tricker's harness, and let her run! She made a bee line for a citrus grove that was right next to a canal and was never seen again. ---She escaped the dogs, but was never seen again by John, Ralph or the sad little brothers and sisters who had been SO looking forward to a couple days with a coon. So it was all so anticlimactic,  ---poof gone like that!  Ralph said there were many raccoon tracks around the canal and groves so they figured she was as happy as could be!  She never showed up in town either,  --that we know of.  I guess she received the message and decided, somewhat on her terms to kick Us to the Curb!  It was an interesting twist of fate but this time it really worked.   Tricker's cage went on to house some bob white quail and  few others, but there was never another mid-sized omnivorous pet at 1200 La Vista!

Tricker #8 -Homecoming

   So John, in case you didn't know, never let the lack of a driver's license keep him from getting around town.  He was long distance cyclist from way back and patrolled a beat among various convenience stores, sporting goods stores, raspa stands, and most of all pet stores.  He was well known at all these locales and especially the pet stores, as he kept an aquarium, chickens, doves, quail, iguanas, turtles, well ----you get the idea.   One fine day in the spring of the year following the release of Tricker, Ruth received a call from the pet store just south of Lamar School on 10th Street (one of John's favorite hangouts) that someone had a raccoon show up a their house in Edinburg, that seemed very tame(the raccoon, not the house).  They wondered if it was ours.  Apparently the dogs had been giving it a hard time, but they had managed to get it in a cage and had the insight to contact area pet stores.   I can only imagine Ruth's eagerness to retrieve a varmint that she and her lovely home and garden had just began to recover from.  True love for her son prevailed and they took the short trip to the pet store and retrieved the animal.   No one was sure it was Tricker---this animal was much larger, more filled out and a bit beat up from the "dog rassling" but home they went.  All uncertainty was erased when this fat little beat-up raccoon jumped out of the Delta 88 as soon as it his the driveway and ran straight to the screen door and immediately began trying to let itself in.  Thus began a bit of a hiatus, in troubled relations between Tricker and parental forces as they were stuck with a sort of "Incredible Journey" awe,----- yes, a detante of sorts.  Not a hero's welcome, not a prodigal daughter scenario but an uneasy sort of "Wow, now what?"period.  The boy was happy, the coon was happy---what was one to do?

Tricker-Sayonara at Citrus City--- #8

    Dove season was upon us-- probably September 1976, and a nice week-end of hunting was in store in an area known as Citrus City.  This area was obviously known for orange and grapefruit groves watered by a network of canals and drained by ditches like much of the Valley, at that time.  There were also grain fields aplenty and occasional brush fence lines forming corridors for wildlife in the general vicinity.  Citrus City is roughly 12 mi west of Edinburg and 12 mi north of McAllen.   This is foreshadowing!  So it was along one of these brushy fence lines along a grain field, where we parked to find a bit of shade to wait until doves began to fly--- a father, daughter, son, and an unsuspecting raccoon.  As was typical, not a whole lot was going on in the 3-5 pm time frame, but Tricker was in seventh heaven rummaging through the brush behind"the hunters" seated in the shade along the field by the road.  A mixed cacophony of crackling vegetation, earth moving and contented raccoon sounds could be heard behind the waiting group. ---Then suddenly came the punctuating sound of the afternoon,-- an electric buzzing-rattling, that any South Texan instantly recognizes; yes, a sizable western diamond back sounded off behind us!  Father, Kids and an obviously intelligent raccoon, bolted away from the brush and toward the center of the grain field. surprised  by the unexpected noise!!  Tricker, in particular moved away at  rather dignified pace- as if somewhat insulted by the latest development! However her directionality left no doubt as to her response!  Eventually, the frantic surprise was replaced by a humorous response(relief).  So the hunt continued, the raccoon returned to her own devices in an area we felt she would be able to take care of herself.  So the hunt progressed, and when it came time to go , father and kids drove off without the furry critter.  It was a somewhat melancholy drive out of the dove fields that day, but the "Humans" reassured each other that "It was a better way."  "She seemed quite at home ." "She has everything she needs there.etc.  "