Rep. Wayne Hayes (D-OH) / Elizabeth Hayes
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Rep. Wayne Hayes (D-OH) / Elizabeth Hayes
Image by dbking
The Summer House, a brick structure set into the sloping hillside of the West Front lawn among the paths that lead from Pennsylvania Avenue to the Senate side of the Capitol, has offered rest and shelter to travelers for over a century. Constructed to provide comfort for those who explore the area on foot, it is also a pleasant location from which to appreciate the Capitol’s classical architecture and the landscaping that surrounds it.
The Summer House is constructed in the form of an open hexagon. The red brick used for its walls is laid in geometric and artistic patterns, forming volutes and other shapes, and taking on a "basket-weave" texture on the exterior walls on either side of each doorway. Some of the bricks have been carved or shaped to contribute to the design’s overall effect. Arched doorways, each fitted with wrought-iron gates and flanked by small windows, occupy three of the building’s six walls.
Inside, stone benches with armrests alternate with the doorways and provide seating for 22 people; the benches are shaded and sheltered by projecting roofs of red Spanish mission tile. Above each bench is a large oval window flanked by decorative niches, each niche with a different design of intertwined scrollwork. Two of the three windows are filled by thick stone panels with octagonal perforations; the third, ornamented with a wrought-iron grille, affords a view into a small grotto, where a stream of water falls and splashes over the rocks. Each doorway offers a different view as well, one facing a tall hedge, one looking up at the Capitol, and one looking across the Capitol’s west lawn toward the Mall.
The fountain in the center of the building originally provided drinking water piped from a spring. The six small metal fittings around the fountain’s upper perimeter secured chains that are believed to have held drinking cups or ladles. Three individual drinking fountains connected to the filtered city water supply now provide drinking water, and the central fountain is used only for display.
The water supply for the grotto was originally provided by a runoff stream from a drinking fountain at the Capitol’s west entrance. Later, a city-water stream was made to flow over the rocks.
The Summer House was begun in 1879 and completed in late 1880 or early 1881 by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted had been appointed by Congress in 1874 to develop and improve the Capitol grounds, which had been enlarged in response to the addition of the north and south wings of the Capitol. He included the Summer House in response to complaints that visitors to the Capitol could find no water nor any place to rest on their journey. In addition, he designed it as a setting for decorative vegetation.
Olmsted devoted much thought to the Summer House. He was concerned that the structure not intrude upon the landscape, but he was also careful to ensure that it was sufficiently public to prevent its use for improper purposes. Several of his letters show his active interest in the progress of the building and its landscaping. Most of these were written to F.H. Cobb, the engineer in charge of the Capitol Grounds. They range in content from Olmsted’s attempts to secure the construction drawings from the draftsman, to his desire that progress be accelerated, to his instructions about mulching the shrubbery.
The letters also indicate areas in which the completed structure differed from his plans. For example, he intended that the overflow from the fountain should operate a small device called the "carillon" to produce soft musical chimes; however, the device could not be made to work properly and so was never installed.
Olmsted originally planned two Summer Houses for the Capitol Grounds (references in two of his letters identify a northern and a southern Summer House); however, congressional objections to the northern Summer House before its completion prevented the construction of the southern one.
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Springhouse with Capitol in background where sexual favors were exchanged between Representative Wayne Hayes and Elizabeth Ray in the mid-70′s.
Rep. Wayne Hays’ ,000-a-Year Clerk Says She’s His Mistress
By Marion Clark and Rudy Maxa
Washington Post Staff Writers
May 23, 1976
For nearly two years, Rep. Wayne L. Hays (D-Ohio), powerful chairman of the House Administration Committee, has kept a woman on his staff who says she is paid ,000 a year in public money to serve as his mistress.
Hays denies this, saying "Hell’s fire! I’m a very happily married man."
"I can’t type, I can’t file, I can’t even answer the phone," says Elizabeth Ray, 27, who began working for Hays in April 1974 as a clerk. Since then, Ray says she has not been asked to do any Congress-related work and appears at her Capitol Hill office once or twice a week for a few hours.
Currently, she is closeted in a luxuriously appointed office in the Longworth House Office Building behind a blank door. "Supposedly," she says, "I’m on the oversight committee. But I call it the Out-of-Sight Committee."
According to Ray, the 64-year-old congressman usually has visited her for sexual relations once or twice a week in their long-standing relationship.
Hays divorced his first wife of over 25 years last year. Five weeks ago he married his veteran Ohio office secretary, Pat Peak, who continues to live in Ohio.
As chairman of the Administration Committee, Hays quietly exercises enormous power over such Hill activities as congressional travel, payroll, staffing, parking and police. He also serves on the House International Relations Committee.
Last year Hays, who was first elected to Congress in 1948, survived a challenge from House freshmen to replace him as committee chairman.
Hays is running as a favorite-son candidate for President in the June 8 Ohio primary, and close associates say he is considering running for governor of Ohio in 1978.
Five days before his wedding to Pat Peak, Hays told Ray after a dinner date that his marriage would not change their relationship "if you behave yourself." Her position on the payroll would also remain secure, he added, but suggested she "start coming in two hours a day." Said Hays: "That Woodward [Bob Woodward of the Washington Post] is after me, and if he found out about you . . ."
In the same conversation, Hays told Ray, "I ought to be good for one week since I’m getting married."
"What about after?" asked Ray.
"If you behave yourself, we’ll see," said Hays.
"Well," said Ray, "what about my job?"
"Well, if you come in a little . . ." said Hays.
"Do I still have to s—- you?" asked Ray.
"Well, that never mattered," said Hays.
"Oh, I thought it did," said Ray.
Hays, when asked yesterday morning if he had ever asked Ray to "start coming in two hours a day," said, "I asked her to come it at 9 and stay until 5."
He also denied ever taking Ray to dinner and claimed he hadn’t seen her "all this week, or last week." However, two Post reporters were present when Hays dined with Ray both at the Hot Shoppes and the Chapparral restaurants in the Key Bridge Marriott Motor Hotel on different occasions, one last Monday night.
Ray, a native of Asheville, N.C., says she worked briefly as a stewardess, waitress and car rental clerk before beginning work on the Hill in the summer of 1972.
During a year and a half working as a clerk on the staff of former Rep. Kenneth J. Gray (D-Ill.), Ray says she was frequently given days off to prepare for evenings spent on a date with Gray or favored constituents. She says she often entertained Gray’s male friends aboard Gray’s houseboat, docked on the Potomac.
Gray, reached by phone, laughed when Ray’s name was mentioned. "Elizabeth Ray," he said, "that name always evokes a laugh."
He denied dating her, and said, "I never knew what my employees did after work. Liz was great at greeting people . . . I think she did a little typing."
He said he thought Ray had been on his houseboat, "maybe two times for big office parties."
Ray says it was Gray who introduced her to Hays; Hays says he can’t remember which congressman it was.
During the first year she worked for Hays, Ray was listed with the House clerk’s office as an assistant clerk earning more than ,000 a year. Last spring she quit and traveled to Hollywood to try to earn her living as an actress (I’d been giving the Academy Award performances once a week for two years," she said.) She returned to Hay’s office to ask for a job in late July, 1975.
Davis says he remembers Ray working for him for about a month last summer as a general typist. Told she could not type, Davis said:
"She’s not an expert 300-words-per-minute, but she could have addressed envelopes." He added "she wasn’t outstanding" and soon went to work for Hays "because she wanted to go over there. She knew more people over there."
Hays, who says he thinks "she’s still working on Mendel’s staff," said, "I did help her get a job with him."
When Ray asked for a raise several months ago, she says Hays transferred her back to the House Administration payroll, upped her salary to ,000 and let her keep her Longworth office.
When asked why he gave Ray a raise, Hays replied: "The landlord was after her, the credit union, she was heavily in debt. I felt sorry for her."
Ray’s office would be number 1506P (for Private) if the number had not been removed from the door. It is next to Rep. Bella S. Abzug’s (D-N.Y.) office, in which — in only a slightly larger space — a dozen or more Abzug staffers are shoehorned into as many desks piled with office work.
Ray’s office is serenely empty, except for her backgammon set and collection of framed signed photographs on the wall next to her desk, from entertainers and other famous persons.
On her polished wood desk is a copy of "Fear of Flying," two red telephones and a color-coordinated red Selectric typewriter with a smoked Plexiglas top. It is unplugged because, says Ray, she doesn’t know how to turn it on. Against one wall is a long black leather couch: on the floor, a thick wall-to-wall carpet.
Behind Ray’s desk is one occupied by Paul Panzarella, who lives with Hays’ niece, Susan Hays. He is listed as an assistant clerk on Hays’ Administration Committee.
The desk is bare, but for two books, and, according to Ray, Panzarella "comes in less than I do." Doug Frost, Hays’ staff director, says, "Panzarella is on the full committee, but he has been helping on the Oversight Subcommittee. He’s always there when I call, and he’s done excellent work."
During the last two months, repeated calls to both Panzarella and Ray at their office have not been answered, and on several visits to the office, Panzarella has not been seen.
Reached at home, and asked if it were true that neither he nor Ray ever came into work, Panzarella said: "I have no comment on anything."
The only other staffer on the Oversight Subcommittee is Trezavant Hane, a clerk, who works for Chairman Mendel Davis. Hane says he doesn’t know where Ray’s office is, acknowledges that she has never done any work with him or for him on subcommittee business and claims he would know if she had ever done any work related to the Oversight Subcommittee.
Ray is not listed in the Congressional Directory as a staffer on either the Administration Committee or its obscure arm, the ad hoc Oversight Subcommittee.
She says Evelyn Wilson, office manager of the Administration Committee, told her recently that details of her employment were "confidential."
A call to the House Finance Office, however, confirmed that Ray’s checks are currently issued from the Administration Committee account. Asked whether she had ever told Ray her employment details were confidential, Wilson said, "I’m trying to recall. We’ve had many conversations. I don’t believe that I told her details of her employment were confidential, but Jesus Christ, I can’t remember everything I say."
Hays’ staff director, Frost, said he did not know where Ray’s Oversight Subcommittee office was or what her duties were, and referred inquiries to Hays.
After hurried dinner dates, which typically begin in one of the Key Marriott restaurants around 7 p.m., Hays and Ray usually adjourn to her Arlington apartment.
"He never stops in the living room," she says. "He walks right into the bedroom and he watches the digital clock. He’s home by 9:30."
Ray’s apartment, furnished totally in mass-produced Mediterranean, is in a high-rise building with colored fountains banking its entrance. Her living room and dining cove are done in red — red, unusually thick wall-to-wall carpeting, heavy, always-drawn red draperies, plush red velvet chairs and couch. The bedroom is in white with the same thick shag rug, a white Mediterranean bed, and a baby blue fake fern tree in one corner.
"I don’t hate him, I’m a nervous wreck," says Ray in explanation of why she is now confirming her role. "I’m afraid of him. There are 10 or 15 offices [on the Hill] that I know girls have had to do this to get a job. Only mine is so cruel; the other congressmen at least treat them like a date. I used to go into depression, but I had to tell myself that it’s a job I have to do right now."
Rep. Phillip Burton (D-Calif.) was once quoted as calling Hays "the meanest man in Congress." Adds Ray, "He’s also the most powerful. Everyone is afraid of him."
"Hays likes to brag a lot," she says, "about how he’s such a good friend of Henry Kissinger’s and he’s flying here on Air Force One and getting all this security protection when he goes to Europe."
And once, during the height of the Fanne Foxe-Wilbur Mills publicity, atop the Marriott in the restaurant, Hays bragged to her about what he would do in a similar situation.
"He told me," says Ray, "that if any of his women ‘ever did that to me, they’d be down there.’ He pointed out the window to the Potomac. ‘What do you mean, down there?’ I said, and he looked at me and said, ‘Down there, six feet under.’"
Hays denies saying this, claiming "It is a figment of her imagination."
Hays is scheduled to leave today for London on a Bicentennial congressional trip to bring back the Magna Carta.
© The Washington Post Co.
unpacking our stinky gear at Fitz’s house in Oxford
Image by Greenway Guide
photo by Gary Bridgman*
Here is my account of this canoe trip, published in Oxford Town and the the Wolf River Conservancy’s newsletter in the summer of 1998.
A River Creeps Through It
by Gary Bridgman
OT editor’s note: On May 1, 1998, Ole Miss graduate student, William "Fitz" FitzGerald, became the first person in recorded history to travel the entire length of the Wolf River. WRC board member and Oxford, MS, resident, Gary Bridgman, became the second person to do this…about three seconds later (he was in the back of the canoe), as the two completed the "Wolf River Survey." Gary and Fitz hiked and paddled from Baker’s Pond to the foot of Union Avenue to help raise awareness about the river as a whole. Sponsors included the Wolf River Conservancy, Outdoors Inc., Ghost River Canoe Rentals, and BellSouth Mobility. What follows is Gary’s rather unscientific, non-chronological account of the trip.
There’s a distinction between being drunk on a river and being drunk with a river. One does not need alcohol or drugs to have mind altering (or life changing) experiences in a canoe. Fast moving streams like the Nantahala and the Ocoee are what I call "adrenaline rivers," while the Wolf is an "endorphin river." It offers canoeists a priceless glimpse of what all other rivers’ headwaters in this region looked like before the Corps of Engineers channelized them.
William Faulkner described such swampy, untamed rivers as "the thick, slow, black, unsunned streams almost without current, which once each year ceased to flow at all and then reversed, spreading, drowning the rich land and subsiding again, leaving it still richer." They are intoxicating, to say the least.
The Wolf River is teeming with wildlife and wetland vegetation, but my favorite part about our recent "expedition" was not its biodiversity, but its psychodiversity: all the interesting people I met in the process — interesting people like the two cops who almost busted us for vagrancy.
"Good Cop/Bad Cop"
Memphis, May 1, 8 miles from the Mississippi River: "Hey! Get up! MPD!" shouts a Memphis police officer.
William FitzGerald ("Fitz") and I are stumbling out of the tent into the glare of their Mag-Lites, my left leg is still tangled in my sleeping bag.
"What are you doing here?" the other officer calmly asks.
It’s 3 a.m. We are camped illegally in a city park located on the Wolf, having built an equally illegal campfire. I’ve explained that we aren’t vagrants and that there is a canoe hidden in the tall grass over there and that we’re paddling the entire length of this river on behalf of the Wolf River Conservancy.
Now the policemen are more relaxed. They’re even giving me pointers on how to delay being raped or murdered in case some of the local toughs come by. (It didn’t look like a rough neighborhood from the river.)
We had been at it for six days by the time the police woke us up in Kennedy Park: hiking and paddling (and wading) some 90 miles by that point. Just a few more miles to go to reach the Mississippi River . . . .
"Thirteen Weeks Earlier"
Moscow, Tenn., January 24: The whole thing started when my friend Chris Stahl, who runs a canoe rental service on the Wolf River, asked me how he could attract more people to the river. "Canoe the whole thing in one lick, man," I said, not very helpfully.
Chris was asking me for ideas about popular day trips for families and church groups, not about some kind of pilgrimage out of the heart of darkness into the middle of industrial North Memphis. There were remote sections of that river no one had navigated in decades — too shallow, too narrow, too overgrown, too full of fallen trees. We could count on crawling out of the canoe to lift it over logs several hundred times in the process.
Chris liked my thinking anyhow, but business commitments and common sense kept him on the shore for most of the trip. So I enlisted Fitz to make the trip with me instead. From January onward, one or both of us spent nearly every weekend scouting different sections of the river and meeting peculiar people.
Walnut, Miss., February 8: "You can put this in the Bible if you want to, but I like snakes more than I like most people," said one man we met while scouting a swamp. "You can trust a cottonmouth; all you have to do is know how his mind works." He viewed our "People’s Republic of Oxford" Lafayette County license tags with suspicion, wondering if we were more "dope smoking a__holes" trespassing on his land, but we’ve since developed an interesting friendship.
"Gary, so far I think you’re a decent person, but if you ever cross me, I can give away one of my motorcycles to someone in Memphis who’ll do anything to you that I ask!" Great. I gave up being a Republican for this?
"The Trip Begins"
Baker’s Pond, Holly Springs National Forest, April 25, 98 miles from the Mississippi River: We had to hike around and wade through 18 miles of swampy bottomland this first day of the actual trip. (Our canoes were waiting for us downstream).
When we scrambled up to the first dirt road that crossed the Wolf, a nice lady in curlers skidded her old pickup truck to a halt beside us. "Are y’all the canoe people?" she asked with a disbelieving smile. We were now 30 seconds into our 15 minutes of fame.
Canaan, Mississippi, April 26, 80 miles from the Mississippi River: This was the hardest day of canoeing in my short life. Fitz and I were joined by Ray Skinner (pictured above) and Bill Lawrence, who is something of a Yoda or Ben Kenobe figure in the uppermost Wolf and an invaluable guide to us for this section. We pulled our gear-heavy canoe out of the shallow water and over fallen trees almost every 150 feet of river channel. We only made five miles that day. It rained its butt off that night, which was good. Come Hell or high water, I’ll take the latter.
"More Cops, Three Mayors, and a Waitress"
LaGrange, Tenn., April 27, 60 miles from the Mississippi River: I was driven up to town from the river bottom by a Fayette County sheriff’s deputy at the end of a long, but very productive day — triple the mileage of the day before. The deputy had been dispatched at the request of Mayor John Huffman of nearby Piperton, Tennessee.
John, who is also the president of the Wolf River Conservancy, was having a lot of fun keeping track of us via walkie-talkies. Here’s an excerpt from and e-mail he copied to dozens of people two hours later: "Who would like to bet that this was the only time in young Bridgman’s life that he was happy to find out that the Law was looking for him? With the lightning and heavy rain present in Fayette County, they are no doubt thinking about how it might of been if they had not made it to LaGrange and been forced to camp along the river."
Actually — at that very moment — I was thinking about pouring another glass of cabernet while that massive thunderstorm was making the lights flicker. Fitz and I were holed up in a bed & breakfast two miles upland, owned by a Conservancy member. I refilled the glass of LaGrange’s mayor, Lucy Cogbill, who stopped by to check on us and enjoy a dry view of the passing monsoon from the back porch.
But I was also thinking about how the mayor of Rossville, Tennessee (25 miles downstream) didn’t give a crap about our expedition because he was having to supervise the partial evacuation of his town due to flash flooding.
My friend Naomi visited briefly, then drove west back into Memphis along the length of the river’s floodplain. "Driving out of LaGrange," Naomi wrote in her own mass e-mail report, "the radio was reporting: flood advisories for Collierville; tornadoes in northern Mississippi; and flash flooding, evacuations, and possible road closure at Rossville. This should make for a speedy and exhilarating ride for Gary and Fitz tomorrow."
Rossville, Tenn., April 28, 45 miles from the Mississippi River: Exhilarating. Right. More like "intimidating," as we constantly ducked under tree limbs that were coming at us at twice their normal speed. I took the only unplanned swim of the trip after being swept out of the canoe by one of those passing limbs.
Fitz is a very even-tempered First Lieutenant in the National Guard, but he sounded more like a drill sergeant as he coached me up onto a half-submerged tree. "Get up on that tree, Bridgman! Let’s get some adrenaline flowing!" he shouted. I obeyed both commands. Fitz carefully maneuvered the canoe underneath my unsteady perch, enabling me to flop down into the boat like a stunned raccoon.
That night, near Rossville, we stayed in a hotel after stuffing ourselves at the Wolf River Cafe. Our waitress, Dorene, was the first of many people to give us the once-over, trying to figure out why we were wearing two-way radios and carrying cell phones while our shabby personal appearance suggested that we lived in an abandoned station wagon.
Earlier that morning, Fitz and I floated through the most amazing stretch of the river, known popularly as the Ghost River section.
Keith Kirkland once described it this way: "About halfway through the trip, small braids of river begin to split off the main channel, disappearing into a dense, standing-water Cypress-Tupelo Gum swamp just before the river abruptly hits a dead end. Only one among the dozens of narrow, twisting corridors splitting off to the left of your canoe will lead you through the full mile of swamp. The rest dissolve into a forest of impassable knees and floating islands of Itea and Buttonbush. The river seems to be everywhere, but nowhere – like a disorienting funhouse hall of mirrors."
April 28 was my 35th float through the Ghost River section and in our haste we paddled it in near-record time, but it’s never, ever a "routine" trip for me. I see something new and wonderful every time!
Germantown, Tenn., April 29, 15 miles from the Mississippi: The next mayor on our itinerary was Germantown’s Sharon Goldsworthy, who fed us her prized beef stew and corn muffins while hearing about our progress.
The next cop on our itinerary was at Germantown Centre, the city’s sprawling performing arts and recreation complex.
"Hello, Mayor!" he said in a cheerful-yet-bewildered tone as Sharon walked us through the health club on the way to the showers. It was fun watching his eyes dart back and forth between his commander-in-chief and the two muddy hoboes trailing her.
"The Voyage Home"
Memphis, May 1, 0.5 miles from the Mississippi: The journey began where the Wolf River is three feet wide, in a county that hasn’t a single traffic light. On this last day, in the shadow of the Pyramid, it was nearly 300 yards wide.
I was glad to see that Wood Ducks and Great Blue Heron were thriving on the river all the way downtown.
As we passed under the Hernando DeSoto Bridge (which also spans the Mississippi) and then the monorail bridge leading to Mud Island, within sight of the mouth of the river, we heard a terrible racket: screaming school children.
"Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Gary and Fitz! Yeahhhhh!" they chanted, having been tipped off about us earlier.
This "endorphin river" was becoming more of a hallucinogenic river. Speaking of which . . .
The night after my first float through the Ghost River section, in 1992, I had a weird dream. No plot to it really, just an image of the water slowly flowing in the darkness, beneath the canopy of trees and dense shrub and rotten logs, while I lay safe in my Midtown Memphis home.
I remember feeling strangely guilty that I wasn’t still out there with the current, but also relieved to no longer be in that stygian gloom. I’ve since come to love that gloom, and all the surrounding light that defines it. And as Fitz and I neared the Mississippi River, I knew that I had finally accompanied that current all the way to its home.
Gary Bridgman is a WRC board member whose devotion to the Wolf River’s protection is only equalled by his penchant for getting gloriously lost in its swamps.
Copyright 1998, Oxford Town, Wolf River Conservancy, Gary Bridgman
* the photographer has granted the use of this image for the purpose of promoting water or greenspace conservation under a Creative Commons license whereby the photographer must be credited by name.
Ray Skinner at the provisional head of navigation on the Wolf River
Image by Greenway Guide
photo by Gary Bridgman*
Beginning of day 2 (April 26, 1998) of our full descent of the Wolf, Raymond Skinner prepares his canoe at the head of navigation of the Wolf River. This is in the upper part of the Holly Springs National Forest in Benton County, Mississippi. The river flows north from there into West Tennessee’s Fayette County and into Memphis, where it spills into the Mississippi.
Here is my account of this canoe trip, published in Oxford Town and the the Wolf River Conservancy’s newsletter in the summer of 1998.
A River Creeps Through It
by Gary Bridgman
OT editor’s note: On May 1, 1998, Ole Miss graduate student, William "Fitz" FitzGerald, became the first person in recorded history to travel the entire length of the Wolf River. WRC board member and Oxford, MS, resident, Gary Bridgman, became the second person to do this…about three seconds later (he was in the back of the canoe), as the two completed the "Wolf River Survey." Gary and Fitz hiked and paddled from Baker’s Pond to the foot of Union Avenue to help raise awareness about the river as a whole. Sponsors included the Wolf River Conservancy, Outdoors Inc., Ghost River Canoe Rentals, and BellSouth Mobility. What follows is Gary’s rather unscientific, non-chronological account of the trip.
There’s a distinction between being drunk on a river and being drunk with a river. One does not need alcohol or drugs to have mind altering (or life changing) experiences in a canoe. Fast moving streams like the Nantahala and the Ocoee are what I call "adrenaline rivers," while the Wolf is an "endorphin river." It offers canoeists a priceless glimpse of what all other rivers’ headwaters in this region looked like before the Corps of Engineers channelized them.
William Faulkner described such swampy, untamed rivers as "the thick, slow, black, unsunned streams almost without current, which once each year ceased to flow at all and then reversed, spreading, drowning the rich land and subsiding again, leaving it still richer." They are intoxicating, to say the least.
The Wolf River is teeming with wildlife and wetland vegetation, but my favorite part about our recent "expedition" was not its biodiversity, but its psychodiversity: all the interesting people I met in the process — interesting people like the two cops who almost busted us for vagrancy.
"Good Cop/Bad Cop"
Memphis, May 1, 8 miles from the Mississippi River: "Hey! Get up! MPD!" shouts a Memphis police officer.
William FitzGerald ("Fitz") and I are stumbling out of the tent into the glare of their Mag-Lites, my left leg is still tangled in my sleeping bag.
"What are you doing here?" the other officer calmly asks.
It’s 3 a.m. We are camped illegally in a city park located on the Wolf, having built an equally illegal campfire. I’ve explained that we aren’t vagrants and that there is a canoe hidden in the tall grass over there and that we’re paddling the entire length of this river on behalf of the Wolf River Conservancy.
Now the policemen are more relaxed. They’re even giving me pointers on how to delay being raped or murdered in case some of the local toughs come by. (It didn’t look like a rough neighborhood from the river.)
We had been at it for six days by the time the police woke us up in Kennedy Park: hiking and paddling (and wading) some 90 miles by that point. Just a few more miles to go to reach the Mississippi River . . . .
"Thirteen Weeks Earlier"
Moscow, Tenn., January 24: The whole thing started when my friend Chris Stahl, who runs a canoe rental service on the Wolf River, asked me how he could attract more people to the river. "Canoe the whole thing in one lick, man," I said, not very helpfully.
Chris was asking me for ideas about popular day trips for families and church groups, not about some kind of pilgrimage out of the heart of darkness into the middle of industrial North Memphis. There were remote sections of that river no one had navigated in decades — too shallow, too narrow, too overgrown, too full of fallen trees. We could count on crawling out of the canoe to lift it over logs several hundred times in the process.
Chris liked my thinking anyhow, but business commitments and common sense kept him on the shore for most of the trip. So I enlisted Fitz to make the trip with me instead. From January onward, one or both of us spent nearly every weekend scouting different sections of the river and meeting peculiar people.
Walnut, Miss., February 8: "You can put this in the Bible if you want to, but I like snakes more than I like most people," said one man we met while scouting a swamp. "You can trust a cottonmouth; all you have to do is know how his mind works." He viewed our "People’s Republic of Oxford" Lafayette County license tags with suspicion, wondering if we were more "dope smoking a__holes" trespassing on his land, but we’ve since developed an interesting friendship.
"Gary, so far I think you’re a decent person, but if you ever cross me, I can give away one of my motorcycles to someone in Memphis who’ll do anything to you that I ask!" Great. I gave up being a Republican for this?
"The Trip Begins"
Baker’s Pond, Holly Springs National Forest, April 25, 98 miles from the Mississippi River: We had to hike around and wade through 18 miles of swampy bottomland this first day of the actual trip. (Our canoes were waiting for us downstream).
When we scrambled up to the first dirt road that crossed the Wolf, a nice lady in curlers skidded her old pickup truck to a halt beside us. "Are y’all the canoe people?" she asked with a disbelieving smile. We were now 30 seconds into our 15 minutes of fame.
Canaan, Mississippi, April 26, 80 miles from the Mississippi River: This was the hardest day of canoeing in my short life. Fitz and I were joined by Ray Skinner (pictured above) and Bill Lawrence, who is something of a Yoda or Ben Kenobe figure in the uppermost Wolf and an invaluable guide to us for this section. We pulled our gear-heavy canoe out of the shallow water and over fallen trees almost every 150 feet of river channel. We only made five miles that day. It rained its butt off that night, which was good. Come Hell or high water, I’ll take the latter.
"More Cops, Three Mayors, and a Waitress"
LaGrange, Tenn., April 27, 60 miles from the Mississippi River: I was driven up to town from the river bottom by a Fayette County sheriff’s deputy at the end of a long, but very productive day — triple the mileage of the day before. The deputy had been dispatched at the request of Mayor John Huffman of nearby Piperton, Tennessee.
John, who is also the president of the Wolf River Conservancy, was having a lot of fun keeping track of us via walkie-talkies. Here’s an excerpt from and e-mail he copied to dozens of people two hours later: "Who would like to bet that this was the only time in young Bridgman’s life that he was happy to find out that the Law was looking for him? With the lightning and heavy rain present in Fayette County, they are no doubt thinking about how it might of been if they had not made it to LaGrange and been forced to camp along the river."
Actually — at that very moment — I was thinking about pouring another glass of cabernet while that massive thunderstorm was making the lights flicker. Fitz and I were holed up in a bed & breakfast two miles upland, owned by a Conservancy member. I refilled the glass of LaGrange’s mayor, Lucy Cogbill, who stopped by to check on us and enjoy a dry view of the passing monsoon from the back porch.
But I was also thinking about how the mayor of Rossville, Tennessee (25 miles downstream) didn’t give a crap about our expedition because he was having to supervise the partial evacuation of his town due to flash flooding.
My friend Naomi visited briefly, then drove west back into Memphis along the length of the river’s floodplain. "Driving out of LaGrange," Naomi wrote in her own mass e-mail report, "the radio was reporting: flood advisories for Collierville; tornadoes in northern Mississippi; and flash flooding, evacuations, and possible road closure at Rossville. This should make for a speedy and exhilarating ride for Gary and Fitz tomorrow."
Rossville, Tenn., April 28, 45 miles from the Mississippi River: Exhilarating. Right. More like "intimidating," as we constantly ducked under tree limbs that were coming at us at twice their normal speed. I took the only unplanned swim of the trip after being swept out of the canoe by one of those passing limbs.
Fitz is a very even-tempered First Lieutenant in the National Guard, but he sounded more like a drill sergeant as he coached me up onto a half-submerged tree. "Get up on that tree, Bridgman! Let’s get some adrenaline flowing!" he shouted. I obeyed both commands. Fitz carefully maneuvered the canoe underneath my unsteady perch, enabling me to flop down into the boat like a stunned raccoon.
That night, near Rossville, we stayed in a hotel after stuffing ourselves at the Wolf River Cafe. Our waitress, Dorene, was the first of many people to give us the once-over, trying to figure out why we were wearing two-way radios and carrying cell phones while our shabby personal appearance suggested that we lived in an abandoned station wagon.
Earlier that morning, Fitz and I floated through the most amazing stretch of the river, known popularly as the Ghost River section.
Keith Kirkland once described it this way: "About halfway through the trip, small braids of river begin to split off the main channel, disappearing into a dense, standing-water Cypress-Tupelo Gum swamp just before the river abruptly hits a dead end. Only one among the dozens of narrow, twisting corridors splitting off to the left of your canoe will lead you through the full mile of swamp. The rest dissolve into a forest of impassable knees and floating islands of Itea and Buttonbush. The river seems to be everywhere, but nowhere – like a disorienting funhouse hall of mirrors."
April 28 was my 35th float through the Ghost River section and in our haste we paddled it in near-record time, but it’s never, ever a "routine" trip for me. I see something new and wonderful every time!
Germantown, Tenn., April 29, 15 miles from the Mississippi: The next mayor on our itinerary was Germantown’s Sharon Goldsworthy, who fed us her prized beef stew and corn muffins while hearing about our progress.
The next cop on our itinerary was at Germantown Centre, the city’s sprawling performing arts and recreation complex.
"Hello, Mayor!" he said in a cheerful-yet-bewildered tone as Sharon walked us through the health club on the way to the showers. It was fun watching his eyes dart back and forth between his commander-in-chief and the two muddy hoboes trailing her.
"The Voyage Home"
Memphis, May 1, 0.5 miles from the Mississippi: The journey began where the Wolf River is three feet wide, in a county that hasn’t a single traffic light. On this last day, in the shadow of the Pyramid, it was nearly 300 yards wide.
I was glad to see that Wood Ducks and Great Blue Heron were thriving on the river all the way downtown.
As we passed under the Hernando DeSoto Bridge (which also spans the Mississippi) and then the monorail bridge leading to Mud Island, within sight of the mouth of the river, we heard a terrible racket: screaming school children.
"Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Gary and Fitz! Yeahhhhh!" they chanted, having been tipped off about us earlier.
This "endorphin river" was becoming more of a hallucinogenic river. Speaking of which . . .
The night after my first float through the Ghost River section, in 1992, I had a weird dream. No plot to it really, just an image of the water slowly flowing in the darkness, beneath the canopy of trees and dense shrub and rotten logs, while I lay safe in my Midtown Memphis home.
I remember feeling strangely guilty that I wasn’t still out there with the current, but also relieved to no longer be in that stygian gloom. I’ve since come to love that gloom, and all the surrounding light that defines it. And as Fitz and I neared the Mississippi River, I knew that I had finally accompanied that current all the way to its home.
Gary Bridgman is a WRC board member whose devotion to the Wolf River’s protection is only equalled by his penchant for getting gloriously lost in its swamps.
text copyright 1998, Oxford Town, Wolf River Conservancy, Gary Bridgman
* the photographer, Gary Bridgman, has granted the use of this image for the purpose of promoting water or greenspace conservation under a Creative Commons license whereby the photographer must be credited by name.
Categories: Business Checking Account Credit Union Tags: Elizabeth, Hayes, Rep., Wayne
Can Credit Unions refuse to open a business checking account for my business based on what I’m selling?
Problem by WonderinginCA: Can Credit score Unions refuse to open a enterprise checking account for my organization centered on what I am marketing?
I went to my credit union to open up a organization account for an online organization I have that sells grownup novelties, nothing you cannot locate in your neighborhood Spencers present store. After opening the account, they then named me the up coming day and said that I couldn’t have an account with them simply because of what I sold. That feels like some sort of discrimination to me.
Greatest answer:
Solution by Other Man
A organization can refuse to company with whoever they want unless of course they are discriminating centered on the regular interpetation of discrimination. Even so, they selected not to do company with you based on your company and what it does, not because you are any kind of secured class. That would be like stating a financial institution is discriminating against mobsters by refusing to company with them.
Add your personal reply in the comments!
Categories: Business Checking Account Credit Union Tags: Account, based, business, Checking, Credit, open, refuse, Selling, Unions
Utah Central Credit Union – Price Branch
www.dexknows.com The Utah Central Credit Union Price Branch is dedicated to handling your business quickly and efficiently. We offer a free checking account with a 4 percent APY interest rate. We also offer loans, savings accounts and credit and debit cards. Use Utah Central Credit Union Price Branch to optimize your bank account!
Categories: Business Checking Account Credit Union Tags: Branch, Central, Credit, Price, union, Utah
Texas Trust Credit Union Takes Part in the Planking Craze
Texas Trust Credit Union Takes Part in the Planking Craze
Mansfield, TX (PRWEB) July 22, 2011
Employees at Texas Trust Credit Union, one of the largest credit unions in North Texas, now have their own planking team. These 33 TXTCU employees started their morning off right when they ‘planked’ on the side of their headquarters lawn in Mansfield Wednesday.
Planking — also known as the Lying Down Game — is the trend of lying face down, perfectly stiff, on various structures in public. While the game apparently originated in 1997, and became known as “planking” in Australia, it has become more of a fad recently. .
“This planking phenomenon is taking off, and we thought it would be fun to join in,” said Jim Minge, one of the plankers and also the President/CEO of Texas Trust Credit Union. “With this being our 75th anniversary year, Texas Trust is celebrating and creating memorable moments for members. We thought this would be one of those moments.”
Watch the TXTCU Planking team in action on YouTube. A static photo of the TXTCU plank is available upon request.
About Texas Trust Credit Union
Marking its 75th year in business in 2011, Texas Trust is one of the largest credit unions in North Texas and the 21st largest in Texas. It is a full-service financial institution offering checking, savings, mortgages, credit cards, CDs, Money Market accounts, IRAs, and investment and insurance services. Its business services include SBA and conventional loans, electronic payment cards, checking and money market accounts, merchant card processing, online banking, insurance, and the Employee Solutions Network. With 58,000 members and assets of more than $ 680 million, Texas Trust operates in Dallas, Tarrant, and Henderson counties, as well as parts of Ellis and Johnson counties. Texas Trust branches are located in Mansfield, Grand Prairie, Arlington, Cedar Hill, and Athens. For more information, visit http://www.TexasTrustCU.org.
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Categories: Business Checking Account Credit Union Tags: Craze, Credit, Part, Planking, Takes, Texas, Trust, union
Old Hickory Credit Union TN Bank Lenders Financial Services
Say goodbye to the big banks and say hello to Old Hickory Credit Union. Serving their community (greater Nashville) sincer 1934, they offer a full range of financial services including savings and checking accounts, debit cards, as well as business personal loans. Visit them today. Visit us www.yellowpages.com
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