* * *
We stayed over an extra day in Houston at Patricia White's [the widow of Ed White, who died on Apollo I] request—"some people who wanted to meet us." Ginny told you a bit about that party by phone . . . It was a big party in a big house and I don't know what all Ginny did—but I was followed around all evening by three tall beautiful blondes—Heinlein fans. (I managed to put up with it.) But the star of the evening was "the Honorable Jane." Jane is a BOAC hostess and looks just the way an airline stewardess should look—petite and pretty and shapely.
[She] was wearing an evening dress—but it was London mod. Micro skirt—and she had nice legs but nobody noticed because it was cut clear to the waistline in front. No question of a body stocking in this case. Un-possible! Nor any possibility of foam rubber. Silicone? A bare possibility, but I don't think so. Everyone got cross-eyed, including me, and Jane clearly enjoyed the sensation she was creating. (I should add that styles in Houston are much more conservative than those in New York.)
From there we went to New Orleans, with reservations at the St. Charles—and I was asked for identification as we were checking in . . . which I refused to give (this is not yet Russia) and we had our bags put back into a cab and went to the Pontchartrain where we wound up in the Mary Martin suite without being asked to produce IDs. I can see why Mary Martin stays in that suite; the Aga Khan would be quite comfortable in it. It was late, we were exhausted, so we had a bite from room service (soft shell crabs Amandine, oysters and bacon en brochette, parfait praline), bathed, and so to bed.
The next morning there was a bowl of fruit waiting for us, compliments of the manager, and enclosed with it was a little carton of personalized matches with my name spelled correctly. This was followed by a phone call from the manager asking us to have a drink with him that afternoon. (Heinlein fan? Not at all. He asked me what sort of writing I did.) The moral of this is: Don't stay in hotels that demand IDs.
I must now explain that I had avoided the Pontchartrain because Eberhard Deutsch [a New Orleans attorney] lives there and I had been trying to avoid moving into his place when I knew he was out of town. Having told his office that we would be at the St. Charles, I then had to phone again and tell them that we were at the Pontchartrain. Eberhard was returning from Europe by a plane that got in at just past noon the next day—so shortly after noon I received a call: "Young man, what are you doing downstairs? My housekeeper is expecting you."
So we moved up to the penthouse. He was not there but his housekeeper was indeed expecting us, and settled us in.
The penthouse makes the Mary Martin suite look like substandard housing—
—which I had known and which was a major reason why I was reluctant to stay in it with the owner away. Eberhard's little cabin in the pines occupies the entire roof of the hotel; that portion which is not house proper being terraces, gardens, "landscaping," and a spectacular (pump-driven) waterfall. It is, of course, surrounded on all sides by dazzling views of the city and of the Mississippi—and best of all, it is so high up it is quiet; we could sleep.
* * *
New Orleans was tiring fun and endless gourmet food . . . Bourbon Street in search of real Dixieland jazz, which we found.
ANTARCTICA
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Virginia Heinlein—report 1983
This is an enormous continent, barely known, but actually inhabited by mammals and birds, on the coastline at least. There could be almost anything there and we went to learn something about it.
We were outfitted with thermal underwear to outermost layers of waterproof clothing. Recommended (by those who know) is the "layer theory" of dressing for the cold weather to be expected. And it is COLD. The worst day we encountered, including the wind chill factor, was 45 degrees below Fahrenheit. Otherwise, we managed to keep relatively warm.
A few words about the Zodiacs, which will often be mentioned. They are rubber boats with outboard engines, very shallow in draft, drawing only inches, made of rubber-coated fabric glued together, descendants of the life rafts of WW II. They have lightweight wooden floors; seating space for passengers was on the float tubes, which were about fourteen to sixteen inches in diameter. One held onto ropes festooned along the sides of these craft. We could be taken into beaches with no jetties, where it was possible to mingle with the local wildlife. "Wet" landings meant that we had to step into a shallow surf onto rocky beaches.
Lindblad Explorer was a small ship, built with icebreaking prow. Once we toured through an ice pack, looking at the local fauna. Groups of seals lie around on the ice, soaking up the sun or just resting; sometimes they became a bit wary at our approach and slipped into the water, but many of them just looked up and stared at us.
We embarked in Lindblad Explorer in Punta Arenas on the Straits of Magellan. The first warning we had was about water conservation—the showers had "minutieres" on them, to time the flow of water, and we were warned about conservation, since the ship could not make up enough fresh water from salt water to keep up the supply, if we used too much. Water in the shower would run for only about a minute, then shut off. Eventually, we both found that about two minutes in a shower would cleanse, if we did it Japanese style, soaping down first, then washing off the soap.
The ship was a bit spartan, but after a period of adaptation, satisfactory.
Lindblad Explorer carried a number of lecturers. They are specialists in various disciplines and there are daily lectures about various aspects of the things which we were about to see, or had seen. Talks on the mechanics of glaciers, about sea mammals and birds, the history of Antarctica, from the first exploration to the latest are all parts of this tour.
Getting into all those pieces of clothing in a small space was quite interesting, but we learned. The boots were the most difficult, as they had to be donned after the trousers, and the waistline bulk made it difficult to lean over to lace them up. We looked like teddy bears.
The first beach we landed on had penguins galore, of the chinstrap variety. They have one marking which gives them their name, a black strap of feathers which goes under their bills. Think of a dark sandy beach with small surf breaking on it, rocks on each side, and several harems of seals lying around, and dozens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of penguins and you have the picture. Penguins walking into the surf, penguins returning from their fishing expeditions, walking around and paying little or no attention to us as we walked up to see the rookery. If you got down to something approaching their level (about knee height) they might just walk right up to you, inspect you, turn their backs, and walk off. One inspected us, first with one eye, then with the other, turned his (her) back, waggled its tail, and stalked off.
(I got too close to one of the seals and was chased off by the master of the harem. It must have been quite a spectacle, me flying off in those heavy boots and clothing—very slowly, as it was impossible to move very fast—chased by a seal.)
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The Antarctic was heavily populated by friendly penguins.
We hiked back into the rookery, through a small stream of very cold water, just barely melted, accompanied by penguins. Those poor little creatures walk about a mile to go fishing, for the purpose of feeding their young.
The penguin walk is quite clumsy, but they have another method of locomotion on snow. They flop down on their bellies and toboggan, which is relatively fast.
They sometimes cluster in groups on rocks at the water's edge, trying to decide whether to go into that water at all. When the cluster reaches a certain size, one brave individual will dive into the water, then most of the others follow. Then another group congregates, and they go through it all again. When returning, they get smashed against rocks, eventually mount them, and proceed awkwardly to their young.
Locomotion in water is by means of porpoising. Up and down, each time garnering some krill for their food, then presently they return to feed the young.
Their white fronts are often dirty with the pink color of the krill,
but mostly the white is spotlessly clean. Penguin nests are built of small stones, which they shamelessly steal from each other. One experimenter put a stack of small stones painted red in one corner of a colony, and when he returned, the red stones were scattered all over the colony. One mating habit is for the male to give his chosen a small stone. Another is for two birds to stretch their necks straight upward, making mating sounds.
Rookeries are quite noisy and rather dirty with guano. (And smelly, as well.) However, we found ourselves quite taken with those birds and their ways. After hatching from the egg, the baby penguin is covered with down, which it keeps for some time, shedding it in favor of the fancy dress. Some varieties leave the young with a nursemaid when they are off fishing, and you can see aggregations of those very young birds together. I watched one of the nurseries—the "nursemaid" kept after any stragglers, chivvying them back into the group, where they stayed until the parents returned.
Leopard seals eat penguins, when they catch them swimming. So one encounters orphaned baby birds. Skuas will eventually eat those. Rookeries can be vast; one we saw was estimated by experts to have about a million birds in it.
We looked on penguins as little people. They manage to endear themselves to anyone who comes into contact with them. Perhaps it is their upright posture, perhaps it is their clumsy locomotion on their feet—or possibly the "academic processions" going to and from the shore.
There were many Adelies, chinstraps, gentoos, and some of the larger species, as there were royals and the emperors, which are about four feet tall when standing upright. They look for all the world like elderly professors.
We were taken on Zodiac cruises, which didn't land at all, but simply watched for wildlife from the boats. During one such, whales appeared on the water surface. Humpback whales, weighing thirty tons, we were told. They were playing around during and after feeding. What an amount of krill such creatures must eat. (Krill are tiny shrimplike things—pale pink and almost transparent, with great black eyes. One figure I recall is that it takes thirty krill to make a gram.) Those large whales take in a great gulp of sea water, full of krill, and strain it through the baleen. Their throats pouch out with each gulp, and the water comes cascading out as they strain out the krill.
Several whales came swimming over to the boat and swam under it. We could see their flippers in the water under the boat. Then one breached and we could see its back and finally the flukes, which had barnacles on it in a pattern. Everyone was a bit scared by these demonstrations . . . with those flimsy boats being so close to those huge animals.
Most Weddell seals have scars from contact with killer whales—we saw them. Seals slide into the water without any splash, swim away with a gliding motion. In the water, they sometimes allow their curiosity to overtake them, and they stick up their heads and watch.
Cormorants (skuas) nest on sheer cliffs—there were many nests clinging to those cliffs—all of them with young cormorants watching.
There was a barbecue dinner at the Argentine station in Paradise Bay. It was about to close for the winter, when the scientists would go home. Unfortunately for us, the ship had had a batch of hand-knitted watch caps for sale, each of us had one. Knitted into them was the motto "Falklands War, 1982." We had forgotten about that, and went in with those caps on our heads. I told Robert about it, and he turned his backwards, but hairpins anchored mine in place. I felt apologetic toward our hosts.
Leaving, our boat driver was a fanatic whale chaser, and we spent an hour and a half chasing some fin whales which we never got close to.
The ship stopped at Paulet Island in the Weddell Sea, Deception Island, which is supposed to have the only Antarctic swimming pool-water in that area is warm enough for people to swim in, because of some underground heating (thermal activity). Antarctica has some working volcanoes, such as Mount Erebus, which is where there was a fatal New Zealand airline crash several years ago. Mount Erebus normally has a plume of smoke coming out of it.
Summers, the U.S. has about 1,200 people down in Antarctica, most of them at McMurdo Sound, our chief base there. But we also have Palmer Station, which we visited, Siple Base, and bases at the South Pole.
Probably the visit to McMurdo was the coldest day we encountered—going ashore in the Zodiac, our cheeks almost froze. We struggled up the hill to the base, finding it necessary to sit down for a rest several times. Then I finally commandeered a bus to take us to headquarters.
Robert found many fans among the people in Antarctica. At Palmer Station, one man was sleeping at the time of the ship's visit. When he heard that Robert had been among the tourists, he phoned the ship, and they talked.
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Heinlein met a fan of his at Palmer Station, a U.S. base in Antartica.
On one Zodiac cruise, there were sea lions which played games with our boat. Their heads would come up above water and they would watch us, but when we steered toward them they would go under and pop up in a different place. Sea lions differ from seals in their gait, being able to walk in a fashion with their hindquarters.
One cruise was among icebergs, to see the sculpturing done by the winds, freezing and thawing and melting. Some of the bergs might be as much as a hundred years old, they told us. Bergs come in various shapes—tabular (squared off—just calved from the Ross Ice Shelf), which, after some melting, became castles, medieval monsters and all sorts of imaginative shapes. One evening, while we were at dinner, the captain spotted two huge bergs, and toured the ship all around them. At one point, it was estimated that we were in a field which contained sixty of the monster bergs.
A champagne party was held on a glacier. Ice is a marvelous substance, ice sculpture beautiful, but it's difficult to describe.
There were albatrosses of various sorts, including the wandering albatross—probably the largest bird known. We also saw petrels, and could go up to the nests and look at the young.
On approach and departure, there is a sea area called the Antarctic Convergence, where the water is quite rough. Many of the passengers had to use seasickness remedies, but at most times during these passages, lifelines were rigged permanently around the ship.
Editor's Note: Robert and I took one further trip in the Lindblad Explorer through the North-west Passage to the Orient. Although thirty-three other ships had managed to reach the Bering Strait, this was the first ship to go all the way to Japan, having navigated the Northwest Passage.
CHAPTER XIII
POTPOURRI
March 30, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I am acquiring sunburn and backaches putting in a completely new and very complicated irrigation system. When I get that and some [Colorado Springs] house repairs completed I'll tackle a new story. My intention is to try to turn out some short stories this summer and not start another novel until about Labor Day.
April 14, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
We are still gardening like mad and I ache in every bone from days and days of pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow work. I've just finished an enormous irrigation project. Well, it felt enormous to me, but it does not look like much now that the pipes are covered up. Today we have rain, snow, sleet, hail, and gropple, and I am catching up on paperwork. I expect to resume writing two weeks from Monday and plan to turn out several shorts and short-shorts before tackling another novel.
July 25, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
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Lurton Blassingame, Heinlein's agent, was an expert hunter.
Ginny has worked out a shenanigan with [a friend] to let you shoot on a resident permit if I don't get one . . . Ginny put in for a license, too—if you shoot on her license all that will be necessary is for you to convince the warden that you are female and redheaded.
P.S. I did my first pistol shooting (aside from one tomcat) in twenty-two years last Saturday. Three 10's and two 9's for a 48 on my first group. I should have stopped there, for I dropped as low as 42 for 5 shots later—averaging
around 45.
August 20, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Take it easy on the stone masonry; it can make you old before your time. But I enjoy it more than any other form of mechanics, except that it half kills me.
October 3, 1958: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Thanks for the pic of Socrates, the super-giraffe. He is not here yet: he is still in quarantine in Hoboken and in the meantime they are trying to plan a route to Colorado Springs which will not involve bridges or tunnels too low for him—if it were up to me, I'd shoot him full of barbiturate, stretch him out flat, and fly him here in a Flying Boxcar. They'll kill him getting him here—if not from bridges, then from pneumonia. In the meantime, two widowed lady giraffes are awaiting him here; their deceased husband managed to hang himself—quite a trick for a giraffe. [This is in response to Lurton Blassingame's sending a picture of the giraffe that was to come to the zoo at Colorado Springs.]
July 14, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I'm in good health but Ginny is not. We've been having atrocious weather, which led to a set of cracked ribs for her. Like this—I've been building an irrigation dam for her garden and designed it to be a large ornamental pool as well as useful. We had been pointing towards a big fourth of July party and, since I had installed an electric pump for irrigation, I also rigged it to operate as a recirculating fountain—a jet thirty feet in the air with spotlights on the jet and floodlights on the sea green pool—very pretty and just right for a garden dinner party. The rains came.
Golly, how the rains came! And on 2 July the pond silted up with brown slime. Ginny helped me clean it out—and slipped in the slime and fell against a boulder and cracked her ribs. Now she is strapped like a mummy and won't hold still and isn't getting well and everything hurts her—and I am finding out how really useful a wife is when she is well.