Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California University of California Source of Community Leaders Series Joel W. Hedgpeth MARINE BIOLOGIST AND ENVIRONMENTALIST: PYCNOGONIDS, PROGRESS, AND PRESERVING BAYS, SALMON, AND OTHER LIVING THINGS With an Introduction by John A. McGowan Interviews Conducted by Ann Lage in 1992 Copyright 1996 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well- informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ************************************ All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Joel W. Hedgpeth dated October 29, 1992. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with Joel W. Hedgpeth requires that he be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Joel W. Hedgpeth, "Marine Biologist and Environmentalist: Pycnogonids, Progress, and Preserving Bays, Salmon, and Other Living Things," an oral history conducted in 1992 by Ann Lage, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1996. Copy no. Joel W. Hedgpeth, Salt Point, Sonoma County, 1984. Photograph by Steven Obrebski Pity ddysg im, pa ddunies gain, Wir araitli i aru-yrain? The motto reads, "The squirrel against the world." The original Welsh is "The truth against the world." qwir-- truth qwiwer squirrel They sound very much alike. --JWH Cataloging Information Joel W. Hedgpeth (b. 1911) Marine Biologist Marine Biologist and Environmentalist; Pycnogonids. Progress, and Preserving Bays. Salmon, and Other Living Things. 1996, xiv, 329 pp. Hedgpeth and McGraw family history; childhood in Oakland and the Sierra foothills; studies in biology at UC Berkeley, University of Texas; comments on Monterey Bay marine biologist Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck character and ecologist; founding the Society for the Prevention of Progress, revising Between Pacific Tides; Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1950s; director, University of the Pacific's Pacific Marine Station, Dillon Beach, 1957-1965; discusses opposition to Pacific Gas & Electric Company's proposed nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay, CA, 1957-1964; director of Oregon State University's Marine Science Center, 1965-1973; pycnogonid (sea spider) research, lifelong and worldwide; research trips to Antarctica; estuarine studies; research and testifying on San Francisco Bay and Delta environmental issues. Introduction by John A. McGowan, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Interviewed 1992 by Ann Lage for the University of California, Source of Community Leaders Series. Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Bancroft Library, on behalf of future researchers, wishes to thank the University of California Class of 1931 Oral History Endowment and the following persons and organizations whose contributions made possible this oral history of Joel W. Hedgpeth. Special thanks are owed Michael Herz, the Baykeeper project of the San Francisco Bay-Delta Preservation Association, William T. Davoren, and Irwin Haydock for their leadership in organizing the funding. Foundations San Francisco Foundation Mar in Community Foundation David and Lucile Packard Foundation Individuals Carlo and Eleanor Anderson Bill Austin Karl Banse Dick Barber Mary Bergen Charles P. Berolzheimer Jerry and Faith Bertrand Harold Bissell Michael Black Thomas E. Bowman Margaret G. Bradbury Gray Brechin Richard C. Brusca Ralph Buchsbaum James T. Carlton Lloyd Carter James S. Clegg Peter and Carolyn Connors L. Eugene Cronin William T. Davoren Paul K. Dayton Douglas R. Diener Alyn C. Duxbury Evan C. Evans III Phyllis M. Faber Daphne Fautin Rimmon C. Fay Harold Gilliam Gordon Gunter Cadet Hand Irwin Haydock Alice Q. Howard Douglas L. Inman Ray B. Krone Kris Lindstrom Wesley Marx David T. Mason Mr. & Mrs. John A. McGowan John L. Mohr William A. Newman Frederic H. Nichols Larry C. Oglesby Barry Paine David E. Pesonen Joseph & Freda Reid Nancy J. Ricketts Michael Rozengurt Virginia Scardigli Doris Sloan Mr. & Mrs. Felix E. Smith Robert B. Spies Edgar M. Tainton Margery & Fred Tarp Eleanor S. Uhlinger B.E. & Toni Volcani Craig J. Wilson TABLE OF CONTENTS--Joel Hedgpeth PREFACE i INTRODUCTION- -by John A. McGowan ill INTERVIEW HISTORY xi BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION xiv I FAMILY HISTORY AND BOYHOOD INTERESTS 1 Mother's Familythe McGraws 1 Nellie Tichenor McGraw Hedgpeth- -Joel's Mother 9 Joel Hedgpeth, Mountain Blacksmith 10 Some Early Memories and a Traumatic Injury 13 A Family of AuntsFamily Stories 16 Early Interest in the Natural World: Ants, Seashells, and Childhood Reading 22 Book Collecting, Book Critiquing, and Music 28 Boyhood Wanderings in the Sierra Foothills, 1920-1921 34 Father's Tenuous Tie to the IWW 42 Solitary Time in Nature 45 II FORMAL EDUCATION, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY 47 Public Schools, Homes, and Family in Stockton and the Bay Area 47 Palo Alto Military Academy, 1922 56 Junior High and High School in Oakland 57 A Summer Idyll 61 San Mateo Junior College, 1929-1931 62 Studies at UC Berkeley, Class of 1933 65 English from George Stewart 67 Zoology Studies 70 Choosing Marine Biology, and Sea Spiders 71 Professors S. F. Light and Joseph Grinnell at Berkeley 77 The Controversial Professor Lund at the University of Texas 80 A Boyhood Interest in Shells and Sea Creatures 83 More on College Studies in Zoology and Biology 87 III ECOLOGICAL THINKING, ED RICKETTS, AND PROGRESS 90 The Concept of Ecological Communities in Marine Biology 90 Ed Ricketts, a Marine Biologist and Steinbeck Character 93 An Ecologist and Systematist 96 Revising Between Pacific Tides 97 Ethology: A Recent Development in Ecology 101 Ricketts and the Influence of Between Pacific Tides 104 "Philosophy on Cannery Row" --Ricketts, Steinbeck, Joseph Campbell 107 The Society for the Prevention of Progress 113 Various Articles and Papers Noted 117 Jinglebollix 120 Ed Ricketts' Innovative Work 122 IV BEGINNING A CAREER AS A PROFESSIONAL BIOLOGIST 127 An Introduction to Pycnogonid Studies 127 Evolution of the Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology 131 Research Biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Editor of the Big Red Book 135 Cold War Concerns of Naval Intelligence at Scripps 137 Responsibilities of Editing the Treatise on Marine Ecology 142 Association with College of the Pacific 149 More on Graduate Studies in Texas 151 V DILLON BEACH AND BODEGA BAY, 1957-1965 156 Director of the Pacific Marine Station at Dillon Beach 156 Alden Noble 156 Charles Berolzheimer's Contribution 158 Classes and Oceanographic Studies at the Station 160 National Science Foundation Program for Teachers 166 Other Studies and Researchers in Tomales Bay 169 Proposed Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) Nuclear Power Plant at Bodega Bay, 1957-1964 173 Potential Hazards of a Nuclear Plant 176 Public Involvement in the Controversy 178 University of California's Involvement 181 Opponents to the Power Plant 187 More Citizen Activists 191 Leaving Pacific Marine Station 194 VI MARINE SCIENCE CENTER AT OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY, 1965-1973, PYCNOGONID RESEARCH, AND ANTARCTICA 196 Program, People, and Problems at the Yaquina Biological Laboratory 196 Working with Bill Fry at Dillon Beach on Pycnogonid Research 204 A Research Program in Antarctica 207 Some Interesting Characteristics of Sea Spiders 208 Tourists at Palmer Station 213 Studying the Impact of Scientific Activity on the Antarctic Environment 216 Hedgpeth Heights 222 More on Oregon State University 224 "Steinbeck and the Sea" Conference 227 Retirement 230 VII ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH ISSUES OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY AND DELTA 231 Estuarine Studies 231 An Encounter with the Archdruid 233 Estuaries in Texas 235 The Sea of Azov 236 Research on San Francisco Bay- -Geological Survey, UC, and Stanford 238 Testimony Regarding Water Rights 243 Conflict between Agribusiness and Environmentalists over Water Distribution 244 Testifying for the Bay Institute, 1987-1990 247 The Sea of Azov Comparison 248 Problems with Water Diversion in Russia 250 Using Some Texas Estuarial Data 252 Measuring Water Conditions in the Bay 254 The Tule Hypothesis and the Oyster Shell Challenge 257 Striped Bass Population and the Flood of 1863 262 Outcome of the Bay-Delta Hearings 26A Testimony by Scientists on Public Policy Issues 265 Questions for Future Bay and Delta Research 269 The Roman versus Celtic View of Life 273 Recognition for Work to Save the Environment 274 TAPE GUIDE 276 APPENDICES 277 A. "A Boy's Life at Mather, 1921-1922" by Ted Wurm. 278 B. "Sea Spiders (Pycnogonida)", introduction to the proceedings of a meeting held in 1976 at the Linnean Society in honor of Joel Hedgpeth, and a listing of Hedgpeth entries in "A pycnogonid bibliography." 282 C. "Ed Ricketts, Marine Biologist" by Joel Hedgpeth, from the Steinbeck Newsletter. Fall 1995. 293 D. Letter from Aldo Leopold, 1947. 295 E. "ProgressThe Flower of the Poppy," by Joel Hedgpeth, in American Scientist, vol. 35 (3) 1947. 296 F. Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology, 1957, Foreward and Contents. 300 G. Family placenames: Tichenor Rock, Nellie's Cove, Nellie Lake, Hedgpeth Heights. 302 H. Statement on San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary--An Ecological System, 1969. 303 I. The Edward W. Browning Achievement Awards, 1976. 305 J. Curriculum Vitae of Joel W. Hedgpeth. 308 K. Commencement Speech to Class of 1970, Fresno State College 316 INDEX 326 PREFACE On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of our graduation from the University of California at Berkeley, the Class of 1931 made the decision to present its alma mater with an endowment for an oral history series to be titled "The University of California, Source of Community Leaders." The Class of 1931 Oral History Endowment provides a permanent source of funding for an ongoing series of interviews by the Regional Oral History Office of The Bancroft Library. The commitment of the endowment is to carry out interviews with persons related to the University who have made outstanding contributions to the community, by which is meant the state or the nation, or to a particular field of endeavor. The memoirists, selected by a committee set up by the class, are to come from Cal alumni, faculty, and administrators. The men and women chosen will comprise an historic honor list in the rolls of the University. To have the ability to make a major educational endowment is a privilege enjoyed by only a few individuals. Where a group joins together in a spirit of gratitude and admiration for their alma mater, dedicating their gift to one cause, they can affect the history of that institution greatly. The oral histories illustrate the strength and skills the University of California has given to its sons and daughters, and the diversity of ways that they have passed those gifts on to the wider community. We envision a lengthening list of University- inspired community leaders whose accounts, preserved in this University of California, Source of Community Leaders Series, will serve to guide students and scholars in the decades to come. Lois L. Swabel President, Class of 1931 William H. Holabird President, retired, Class of 1931 Harold Ray, M.D. , Chairman, Class of 1931 Gift Committee September 1993 Walnut Creek, California ii UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SOURCE OF COMMUNITY LEADERS SERIES Robert Gordon Sproul Oral History Project. Two volumes, 1986. Includes interviews with thirty- four persons who knew him well. Bennett, Mary Woods, class of '31, A Career in Higher Education; Mills College 1935-1974. 1987. Browne, Alan K. , class of '31, "Mr. Municipal Bond"; Bond Investment Management. Bank of America. 1929-1971. 1990. Dettner, Anne DeGruchy Low-Beer, class of '26, A Woman's Place in Science and Public Affairs: 1932-1973. 1996. Devlin, Marion, class of '31, Women's News Editor; Vallelo Times-Herald. 1931-1978. 1991. Hassard, H. Howard, class of '31, The California Medical Association. Medical Insurance, and the Law. 1935-1992. 1993. Hedgpeth, Joel W. , class of '33, Marine Biologist and Environmentalist; Pycnogonids. Progress, and Preserving Bays, Salmon, and Other Living Heilbron, Louis H., class of "28, Most of a Century; Law and Public Service. 1930s to 1990s. 1995. Kay, Harold, M.D. , class of '31, A Berkeley Boy's Service to the Medical Community of Alameda County. 1935-1994, 1994. Kragen, Adrian A., class of '31, A Law Professor's Career: Teaching, Private Practice, and Legislative Representative. 1934 to 1989. 1991. Peterson, Rudolph A., class of '25, A Career in International Banking with the Bank of America. 1936-1970. and the United Nations Development Program. 1971-1975. 1994. Stripp, Fred S., Jr., class of '32, University Debate Coach. Berkeley Civic Leader, and Pastor. 1990. Trefethen, Eugene E., class of '30, Kaiser Industries administrator, in process. ill INTRODUCTION by John McGowan I first met Joel Hedgpeth in the winter of 1951 when I was a beginning graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). I was very uncertain of his position at Scripps but soon discovered that here was a very interesting, knowledgeable, and accessible man whose outlook on biology and on many other topics appealed to me. Further, he was able to express these views brilliantly, wittily, and often. It took some time to discover that his role at SIO was "editing" Volume I of the great two part Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology to be published as Memoir 67 of the Geological Society of America. This Treatise became one of the great classics of marine ecology and paleoecology. Volume I alone has 1,296 pages. Joel wrote six of the chapters in this volume and they are among the best in this or any other book on this subject of the next two decades. One reason it was difficult for us young students to understand just what he was doing was his habit or arriving at 5:00 a.m., working hard at editing for maybe five hours, then spending the rest of the day visiting various offices and laboratories around Scripps. Typically, Joel would arrive unannounced, with a great, long complicated story which he began somewhere down the hall about events and situations that were frequently obscure, but always amusing. Some time into these monologues, it might turn out to be about a dispute between eminent Victorian naturalists that took place some 90 years earlier. It took me some time to realize that these were not pointless recitals but rather his way of introducing important, fundamental questions that had cropped up during his early morning editorial work. Joel was very democratic about these excursions, everyone's office was fair game, and I /suspect he used his visits to us students as sort of warm-ups for visits to the higher strata. This method of scientific interchange unfortunately did not go over well with some of the old mossbacks in white lab coats, especially since he had the habit of sitting on the corner of one's desk and sorting through the mail, interjecting parenthetical comments on it during the mostly one-way discourse. It is perhaps not well known that in addition to the six chapters in the Treatise which are clearly his, he did heroic editing jobs (practically rewrites) of several others so the term "editor" in this case involved considerably more than tinkering with, correcting, and arranging the work of others. The same is true of several editions of the equally famous textbook, Between Pacific Tides. But it is typical of Joel to be reticent about claiming credit where it is clearly due him. In those days, even at Scripps, we were aware of the "Molecular Wars" chiefly through the efforts of the geneticist Adriano Buzzati Traverse (whom Joel persisted in. calling transverse). Apparently Roger Revelle, the then director, had been convinced by Buzzati and others that the kind of "bug-counting" observational ecology we were doing was on its way out and iv that "a revolution was needed in marine biology." As a reaction to this, we bug counters formed the Neo-Victorian Biological Society, an evening seminar group that included plenty of home brew. Joel was one of the founding members and in many ways its mentor. Joel did manage to do some other writing while he was working on the Treatise. One effort was a lovely letter to the La Jolla Light, our local newspaper. He noticed that on the morning of certain days of the week there were large numbers of dead skunks on the streets of La Jolla; they had been hit by cars. He pointed out that not only was this very unseemly for patrician La Jolla, but that skunks were intrinsically valuable and beautiful. There followed a wonderful description of the sterling qualities of the skunk and a suggestion that everyone get up half an hour earlier on garbage days instead of setting out their cans the night before. Nothing came of this, of course. The letter was signed Jerome Tichenor, president (and sole member) of the Society for the Prevention of Progress. Many of us graduate students rushed to join the Society but were turned down; after all, additional members would have represented progress. In 1954 a major, five-month expedition set out from Scripps for the North Pacific. One of the many purposes of the trip was to dredge the deep ocean with the newly invented Isaacs deep sea dredge. But the operation was run by an exceedingly timid technician more concerned about losing the dredge than exploration of the depths, so rather few hauls were made. There was a total of three successful dredge hauls, one of which caught a single pycnogonid. Joel wrote a paper on this result where the purpose was "...to discuss the interesting capture and its significance to science and the welfare of mankind." [See page 120a] . In this one-page report with a grandiose title, he compares the Scripps Expedition (Trans-Pac) results with the Swedish Deep Sea Expedition (fourteen months at sea) results by means of a "detailed statistical analysis." He points out that the Swedes caught only one pycnogonid as well, but out of nine deep dredges, so that number of "pycs" per haul for Sweden was 0.11 while SIO caught 0.33, and the Swedes' number per month was 0.07 while SIO's was 0.20. Therefore as can be seen from the table of the results, the SIO expedition was three times as successful both in terms of catch per unit of effort and per unit of gear. "But the only justifiable conclusion, one that cannot offend any national sensibilities, is that the pycnogonid population of the world ocean has increased threefold since 19A8. At this rate it is estimated that the pycnogonids may support a major fishery sometime in the next millennium." My reprint is signed "compliments of the author and statistician." A few years later a very serious professor of statistics at UCLA told her class that this paper was a serious misuse of statistical strong inference and null hypotheses testing, which, of course, was exactly Joel's point. About the time his work on the Treatise was winding up, Scripps received a large grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, presumably to foment Revelle's "revolution" in marine biology. Buzzati-Traverso was in charge of a large symposium supported by this grant, one of the first with global representations. He sought Joel's help with the invitations. Joel wrote (in 1995) to me "I told him (Buzzati) also that the CIA had a ringer who would attend as a zoologist, although it was his fluency in Russian that they wanted him there because several Russian bigshots would be there (they never showed up). 1 knew also that the State Department was sending an official Russian speaker to tell them what it was all about. I told Buzzati that there would be both official and covert Russian speakers, but that we needed a Russian who was also a real zoologist, so he obligingly invited Gene Kozloff, and more Russian was spoken than if Zenkevich et al. (the invited Soviets) had appeared. The State Department's Russian was really someone from the East Side who knew Yiddish better than Russian, and one morning they let go comparing dirty words, and Dave (Joel's friend) apologized to Gene (Kozloff) who said he knew all those words, after all he was the son of a Czarist officer." This little story is rather typical of Joel for he not only remembered the darndest stuff (the above event took place around 1958) but he was a confirmed Russophile (also an Anglophile and a Germanophile) and delighted in deflating the pretentious (i.e. the CIA and State) . Part of the Rockefeller money allowed the appointment of some new research/ faculty, and Joel had quite a clique recommending him. He also had written a very fine and detailed memorandum to the director on a "Proposed Program in Marine Biology." That is what he would propose to do at Scripps. In it are three specific suggestions: (a) the establishment of a course in invertebrate zoology, and as part of this course "there would be assigned ecological exercises which would serve to accumulate repeated observations" in the same place throughout the years; (b) expansion of the activities of the museum to include research and reference collections; and (c) a chair in the history of oceanography might suitably be included in the museum building. He was particularly concerned about the matter of continuing observations: what we now know as time-series. What followed in the memo was a superb essay on the value and need of time-series. Without one bit of the statistical jargon which, in any event, he did not know or had not been invented yet, he clearly was talking about what we now know as frequency spectra, aliasing, correlation length scales, coherence and cross correlations. All this stuff is now on the verge of high fashion in marine biology. He went on to point out what dire straits the field of taxonomy was in and that a proper museum at Scripps would include taxonomic work and a study collection for ecologists and physiologists. This sort of argument is now high fashion also; it's called diversity studies and is one of the darlings of the National Science Foundation. Anyone at Scripps today, vi reading his words, would sincerely regret that none of this came to pass. Our science would have been greatly enhanced. After the last manuscript had been sent in for the Treatise (Revelle's, of course), Joel informed Revelle that he had a comfortable offer from somewhere else, but Roger informed Joel that all had been arranged for him at SIO, budget, supplies, equipment, etc. Hadn't anyone told him? No, nobody had told him. When he was finally shown the budget he discovered that one of the "eminent" mossbacks had already spent $5,000 of it. It was clear to Joel that he was to be part of someone else's department. The someone else in this case was well known to be arbitrary and self-important, characteristics that would not bode well for a productive, happy future for an unconstrained free thinker like Joel. This was a great loss to Scripps Institution as subsequent events were to prove, for Joel went on to become a distinguished leader in the environmental movement, a prolific author in the history of West Coast marine science, a much sought-after consultant and lecturer, and a highly successful director of two important marine biology stations. He was not bluffing Revelle when he told him of his other offer. He became director of the University of the Pacific's outstanding marine biology teaching and research laboratory, the Pacific Marine Station at Dillon Beach on Tomales Bay. Joel has said, "I think some of the best years of my life were spent at Dillon Beach." Certainly these were some of his most productive years, ones that firmly established him as one of the west coast's premier environmental scientists and a world reputation as a marine scientist. Many students look back on their experiences at Dillon Beach with great fondness for their time there and for their time with Joel. Many remember collecting specimens for class at 5:00 a.m. on the foggy > wet intertidal rocks, with Joel perched on one, serenading them with his Irish harp. Whether this happened more than once, I do not know, but it seems hundreds of former Dillon Beach students "remember" this. We all wish it happened to us. Along with the teaching program, a first-class research effort was going on, particularly that of Ralph Johnson of the University of Chicago who was stimulated by Joel's great knowledge of natural history and invertebrate zoology. Some very fine community ecology of mud flats was done at this time. But perhaps the most famous episode of these years was the Battle of Bodega Head. Bodega Head is a remarkable headland jutting out into the Pacific with Bodega and Tomales Bays to the south and a cold water, upwelling coast to the north. This was (and is) an ideal spot for a power generating plant from an engineering standpoint because of the availability of cooling water, so Pacific Gas and Electric began, apparently in the mid- 1950s, to discuss acquisition with various state and county agencies and probably the University of California, Berkeley, who had plans for a marine laboratory on the head. None of this "gray labyrinth of maneuvering in the vii back hallways of power" was made public and not until 1957 did Joel hear some vague allusions to it in a casual conversation at Berkeley. Since Dillon Beach was very near Bodega Head and Joel has a great fondness for the local landscape, he tried to learn more and he did. PG&E did indeed plan to build a large nuclear-fueled power-generating plant on Bodega Head, and negotiations were well underway with no public announcement, let alone hearings, but with the full cognizance of the administration at UC Berkeley. The news broke in a local paper (Joel's secretary at Pacific Marine Station was a local correspondent) . At that time Joel wrote the president of PG&E questioning the wisdom of siting a reactor near the San Andreas Fault. This turned out to be a very prescient question. He wrote many letters and recruited many allies to oppose this venture, but the iron-pants management of PG&E, the bureaucrats from the county, and the studied ambiguity of the UC Berkeley administration formed a solid phalanx of orthodoxy against which the nobodies of the opposition were supposed to shatter themselves. This did not happen. Opposition, both well reasoned and semi- hysterical, grew and grew to PG&E and its plan. One inspired public relations stunt in 1963 engineered by Lu Watters, the great Dixieland jazz musician, was to release 1,000 balloons at Bodega Head, each with the message "This could be a radioactive molecule," to the jazz tune specially written for the occasion, "Blues over Bodega." Joel wrote in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, March, 1965, "The battle was finally won on the basis of geological uncertainty," (a research vessel from Scripps Institution of Oceanography had done a seismic reflection study near Bodega Head and discovered a new complex of faults), "yet it [the battle] has become part of the growing movement in California to prevent the destruction of California as a livable environment by freeway builders, subdividers, and developers." It is not clear to me which of the principles in this affair Joel was most angry with. He was certainly hurt by the attitude of the university for somewhere within the university administration there was a willingness to oblige outside interests. He has written "...it seemed to me at the outset that the university should serve the highest interest of the people of the state and that such interest should be above that of a mere gas and electric company no matter how large it was. It was this conviction that committed me to fight for Bodega Head." But sometime around 1963 or so, I asked him why he spent so much of his time and effort on the fight. As near as I can remember he said, "I just don't like the way those sons-o 1 - bitches do business." [See "The Battle of Bodega Head," p. 177a.] Jerome Tichenor memorialized in 1965 the affair in a thin book of poetry, "Poems in Contempt of Progress," published under the auspices of the Society for the Prevention of Progress, by the Clandestine Press. On the last page is the colophon, "We regret to inform the reader that this book has been printed with the aid of electricity." viii Of course he did many other things while fighting the Battle of Bodega Head. Teaching and running the highly successful marine station occupied much of this time, but as his fame grew he became a very popular lecturer on environmental issues, especially among the "don't trust anyone over thirty" crew. They saw immediately that this man was not about to pander to them nor indulge their many biases, but rather was one who had a great store of information in his head and the social and historical perspective to make sense of it. At the same time he was a frequently invited keynote speaker at national and international conferences and workshops . He was so well connected with European scientists that most of them made a special effort to visit Pacific Marine Station to see Joel, and he was always a wonderful host to them. One special incident was his entertainment of a group of Soviet scientists and their political shadow. Joel crammed the group together in a small car for a trip up the coast to Fort Ross, the former Russian colony (now a park). The countryside was quite rural, but Joel kept up his usual rapid fire and erudite commentary on all manner of thingsespecially the not-very-interesting local history. In the middle of this monologue he said, "See that circular barn over there? A hired hand went mad there looking for a corner to piss in." How much of this the dignified and rather puritanical Russians got I do not know, but perhaps they missed it all together, for Joel's conversations were (and are) so full of parenthetical cracks that one tends to evolve a sort of low-pass filter. I know little of Joel's spell as director of the Marine Science center at Oregon State University, but I have the suspicion that the administration who hired him thought they were getting a big Grant Swinger. In this they were surely disappointed, for although he surely could have played the right sort of footsy games with program managers in Washington (he'd seen enough of them to be an expert), this not only was not his style, but was repugnant to him, I am sure. But it was during this time that a renewal of interest in John Steinbeck's early years was occurring among the literati. Joel had already written on the Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts collaboration on the book, The Sea of Cortez , and knew them both from his own early days on Cannery Row. His marvelous editing of several editions of Between Pacific Tides was also linked to those times. I believe it was then he began his historical research on Ed Ricketts 1 life and his late relationship with Steinbeck. This culminated years later (1978) with an extraordinary history of, chiefly, Ed Ricketts and his philosophical interweaving of ecology and society. The ecology, of course, was marine intertidal ecology. This history appeared as a two-volume set called The Outer Shore, and was published by the Mad River Press. I asked him why them, since it could have been Oxford or Chicago (but not Stanford) . I got only a very ambiguous answer. My theory is that he liked their name--Mad River further they did a very good job of printing it. ix Once again there is much of Joel in these two volumes and the term "editor" does not fully describe his contribution. His introduction to Volume One is a pocket history of Monterey in the 1920s and 1930s and of the philosophical backdrop of marine ecology. This was very important in those days of the beginnings of experimental embryology (which relied chiefly on the eggs and larvae of marine organisms) and the "Organismal Conception"-- especially the study of colonial organisms such as ascidians. Part of Joel's fascination with Ricketts had to do with their shared fondness for poetry. These two volumes are history in the best sense of the word and are important contributions to our understanding of the development of marine science on the west coast of North America. Like most of Joel's publications, The Outer Shore will have a long intellectual and scientific half-life. Surely one of his most famous papers is "Models and Muddles," (1977, Helgolander wiss. Meeresunters, 30, 92-104). Subtitled "some philosophical observations," it is often thought of as another Joel joke but it is anything but that. It is a sophisticated and witty dismemberment of mathematical ecosystem models. The practitioners of this field rank only slightly below molecular biologists in their messianic manner and their "I'm smarter than you are" tone. Joel could never resist deflating the pompous. He shows two box model diagrams of impossible complexity and a set of equations (all three from published sources) with so many parameters that no numerical "solutions" are remotely possible. He goes on in two beautifully written pages to describe the work of Karl Moebius on the oyster banks of the North Sea, from which Moebius derived the concept of the biocoenosis. . .what we now call communities. He compares Moebius' descriptions to the amount of information it is possible to include in modern mathematical ecosystem models. But he does not damn models categorically, after all. Moebius had a conceptual and verbal model of oyster reefs which Joel suspects is quite incorrect or at least "to proceed upon them [Moebius' ideas] for the management of the oyster beds would have been unsuccessful." I think what generated this paper was Joel's experience with various workshops and public hearings on environmental matters. He says himself that this paper is a sequel to an earlier paper on "The Impact of Impact Studies." I'm sure he heard many models presented which were grossly oversimplified abstractions but which appealed to managers who needed "answers" and needed them quickly. He says, "There is of course no inherent evil in attempting to simplify what we know or suspect of nature. . . . Unfortunately, however, many, and for the most part those not directly concerned with modeling activity, see in equations facts rather than ideas." This paper was reprinted in Russian and perhaps other languages. The question he raises is, what, after all, do we really know? Joel in retirement has accomplished more than some do in entire academic careers, and he continues to be a much sought-after speaker and advisor. He continues to be an unusually alert environmental watchdog (and advisor. He continues to be an unusually alert environmental watchdog (and attack dog). He still plays the harp, sings, and writes poetry. He still calls his friends around midnight with animated and zealous orations of events and persons they are only dimly aware of, but are soon made to understand. So take a good look at Joel Hedgpeth everyone, for when he's gone there will never be another! John A. McGowan Professor, Marine Life Research Group Scripps Institution of Oceanography August, 1996 San Diego, California xi INTERVIEW HISTORY The Bancroft Library has an ongoing collection emphasis on the environmental history of California and the West, and its Regional Oral History Office since its founding in 1954 has interviewed major figures in the development of the environmental movement, forest and park policies, and California water issues. So we were very receptive and pleased in August of 1990 when we received a call from Michael Herz, then executive director of Baykeeper, the watchdog project of the San Francisco Bay-Delta Preservation Association. Mr. Herz urged us to undertake an oral history with Joel W. Hedgpeth, marine biologist and environmentalist. He knew Joel through their joint efforts to preserve the San Francisco Bay environment and knew from their many conversations that Joel's memory bank contained an irreplaceable record of coastal and estuarine scientific research, as well as memories of California history dating to his early childhood. When we consulted with some of Joel's colleagues and collaborators for more information, he was described variously as "a character, irascible, bristling with opinions"; "widely educated, with an archivist's instincts, has a tremendous amount to say and will say it"; "a true Renaissance man--a respected marine biologist, a poet, an incisive commentator on the human condition, a raconteur of wonderful talents, friend to hundreds of people in the arts and in science who revere him." David Pesonen, who led the citizen battle to defeat a PG&E nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay, spoke for Joel's environmental credentials: "Joel's trenchant correspondence, his enormous energy, his knowledge of many subjects, and his unflagging determination kept a flickering opposition alive [in Bodega Bay]. I am convinced that were it not for his determination there would be today a menacing nuclear power facility sitting on the San Andreas fault a few miles upwind from San Francisco." It was clear that Joel Hedgpeth was an ideal candidate for an oral history memoir. Since all of our work is funded by outside gifts and grants, we turned to Mr. Herz for help. He was able to obtain initial support from the San Francisco Foundation and the Marin Community Foundation to enable us to begin research and interviewing. The UC Class of 1931 was happy to include the Joel Hedgpeth memoir in the University of California, Source of Community Leaders series funded in part by their endowment for the Regional Oral History Office. Additional funding came from more than sixty friends and admirers of Joel Hedgpeth, who responded generously to a request from Mr. Herz, William T. Davoren (founder and former director of the Bay Institute of San Francisco) and Irwin Haydock (a former student of Joel's at Pacific Marine Station). The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, through the efforts of Mr. Davoren, supplied the final gift that allowed us to complete the processing of the oral history. xii Not surprisingly, given his interest in history, Mr. Hedgpeth responded positively to the idea of working with ROHO to produce an oral history memoir. At the age of eighty, he still was leading an active life, attending conferences, giving keynote addresses, editing papers, and no doubt keeping up a steady barrage of letters-to-the-editor on issues of concern. But he was willing to set aside time for the oral history project. Preparation and planning for interviews included research in the papers Joel Hedgpeth had placed in the Bancroft Library, which consist largely of documentation of the Bodega Bay controversy; reading a variety of Hedgpeth publications on Ricketts, Steinbeck, and marine biology; perusing poems (written under his psuedonym Jerome Tichenor) , letters-to- the-editor, hearing testimony, book reviews, and reports written by Joel; and conferring with Hedgpeth colleagues in his many enterprises. We began interviewing in June 1992 at his home in Santa Rosa, California. In July he underwent open heart surgery, but bounced back quickly, and we resumed our interview schedule in September, with the seventh and final session (a total of fifteen recorded hours) on November 19, 1992. Joel's wife, Florence, was quietly present during many of the interview sessions and a supportive ally in the editing process, as well as an active figure in her own right. She was most often busy reading prodigiously to help select appropriate titles for her large and well- organized book club. Taking Joel Hedgpeth from tape to type was challenging: his speaking style was idiosyncratic; the interviews were filled with allusions to people and works known only to Joel; his comments were sometimes elliptic; his progression not necessarily linear. The transcript, filled with more than the usual requests for clarification and elaboration, was sent for his review in June 1994. Joel's review of the transcript took some time; his schedule continued to be full. Finally, when we enlisted Mrs. Hedgpeth to encourage him, he set himself to the task. He went over the transcript carefully, responded to our queries, made a number of additions which are noted in brackets in the text, and returned the corrected transcript in March 1995. After we had entered his corrections and prepared the text in final format, he again read the entire oral history and made a few more additions and corrections. Initial interview sessions dealt with Hedgpeth/Tichenor family history, with Joel commenting on photos and memorabilia in a family scrapbook. He described the roots of his interest in marine biology--the childhood books in his grandfather's study and the seashell collection of an Oakland neighbor. He had vivid memories of his childhood stay in 1920- 1921 in the small town of Mather in the Sierra foothills, where he witnessed the building of the dam that flooded Hetch Hetchy Valley and where he incurred permanent injury to his hand while playing with a blasting cap. In a later unrecorded conversation Joel recalled that even at that early age he viewed the damming of the Yosemite National Park xiii valley as an act of destruction, and as he talked I had the impression that in some way the simultaneous injury to his hand was connected in his youthful mind to the environmental destruction he was witnessing. These correspondences might help explain his fierce lifelong opposition to environmental devastation. Other discussions of his early life, complete with colorful anecdotes and characterizations, indicate landmarks in the development of Joel Hedgpeth, ecological thinker and founder of the Society for the Prevention of Progress. These influences include his education, both formal and informal, in grade school, junior college, at UC Berkeley, and the University of Texas; his youthful contact with Monterey Bay biologist Ed Ricketts and his later work revising and updating Ricketts* Between Pacific Tides', his field work in 1938-1940 on the Shasta Dam and its potential to destroy the salmon runs. And, of course, the interviews covered the major epochs of his career as a marine biologist: editing and writing significant sections of the monumental Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology (known as the Big Red Book) ; directing the Pacific Marine Station at Dillon Beach and the Marine Science Center at Oregon State University; research far and wide on pycnogonids (sea spiders); and his contributions to estuarine studies, from Texas to Russia to the San Francisco Bay. An interview with Joel Hedgpeth is bound to be accompanied by appendices, because he liberally refers to his many writings as he speaks and then produces copies of letters, reports, articles, poems, and illustrations from his copious files and the extensive library in his home office. Nine appendices are included in this volume, along with numerous illustrative pages inserted in the text. Additional supplementary papers have been placed in the Bancroft Library, where tapes of these interview sessions are also available. When the oral history was nearing completion, Joel suggested that we ask John McGowan, professor of marine science at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, to write the introduction to this volume, and a felicitous suggestion it was. Professor McGowan has produced an introduction that not only captures Joel and his unique personality but makes very clear his contributions over more than fifty years to marine science and protection of the marine environment. This is especially important because our narrator was sufficiently reluctant to claim credit for his accomplishments that it is difficult to access his contributions from his own words alone. We thank Professor McGowan for his comprehensive introduction and recommend it as a first stop for readers of this volume. Ann Lage Interviewer September 1996 Berkeley, California xiv Regional Oral History Office Room 486 The Bancroft Library University of California Berkeley. California 94720 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION (Please write clearly. Use black ink.) Your full name Joel XX/dlkflY h ftd (TV &"bV> Date of birth be/ r 19 U Birthplace 929 5-t Father's full name vi ov N\ Occupation Your spouse (ivar G> f IXVA> { Vwfo>t) Birthplace 0,0 AX r y Occupation Vi /v Birthplace nf. Cgle . Mpd oc Co Your children V)e/dpe-t/V> 13o Joe/1 Where did you grow up? Present community j_ Education qyvv> u <**** S*"f K O50- Occupation(s) \vw Areas of expertise v Y)*/ U"f I FAMILY HISTORY AND BOYHOOD INTERESTS [Interview 1: June 25, 1992] ft 1 Mother's Family the McGraws Lage: As sort of a rationale for what we are doing, I want to read something I found that you had written. You wrote it in talking about Ed Ricketts, I guess. You said, "Boys do wander about the cities they live in. And the little events during such wanderings that may have had a large part in shaping their way of looking at the world are seldom remembered and even less often recorded for the benefit of those who come later." That's what I want to get at, the little things that shaped your way of looking at the world. I think some of that is your parents' experience too so maybe that can be in the back of our minds as we start up. Hedgpeth: Yes. Lage: Do you want to start telling about what you consider the most important in shaping you, in terms of your parents and their past? Hedgpeth: There is a problem there. My parents weren't too well matched. They probably shouldn't have married. My father was a blacksmith, and he didn't belong to my mother's social class. He never really made enough money to support us, so he lived apart from us a great deal. He worked off in the ranches and small towns that needed blacksmiths. About the time I got to college, he had a pretty good job rebuilding some of the very fancy ironwork on the big estates on the Peninsula because he was a master blacksmith. He had about 'If This symbol indicates that a tape or tape segment has begun or ended. A guide to the tapes follows the transcript. la Grandfather McGraw's Home 929 Chestnut Street, Oakland, California o g 4J W CM o o a fifth-grade education but somewhere along the line he learned to read plans very well. You would just lay a diagram out for what you wanted and he would do it. So [he would be] reconstructing all those fancy iron gates which I suppose subsequently were taken down and sent in for bullets later on. A couple of them are maybe still around down there. So we really didn't have much family life until--. Lage: So your father was away while you were living in Oakland? Hedgpeth: Yes, or in other places. Well, we lived together when we were in Stockton. Lage: Where were you born? Let's start with that, the most fundamental kind of question. Hedgpeth: I was born [September 29, 1911] in a very large house. It had three floors. The third floor was really an attic but my mother's girlhood room was in a little room there under the eaves of that house. It was in Oakland, West Oakland. It was built by Dr. Cole, who was a dentist. Cole School in West Oakland is named for him, of course; that was in the neighborhood. I went there for a period. Then the house was purchased by Governor Perkins, who lived there several years. Then my grandfather bought it in 1889 and moved his family from San Francisco. Lage: Do you know why he moved from San Francisco to Oakland? Hedgpeth: Not really, except that I think the climate was considered better, though the house my mother was born in in San Francisco is still standing on 21st Street between Valencia and Guerrero. The fire stopped at 20th Street. They say the climate is better in the Mission. It's sunny in the Mission, they used to say. For one thing, the family was simply too large for the house. A total of thirteen children were born, and nine or ten survived into adulthood. My mother was the fourth born. Lage: She was Nellie? Hedgpeth: She was Nellie. She was named for her mother who was called Nellie, though her given name was Sarah Ellen. But apparently Nellie was a fairly common version of Ellen in those days. The first daughter, the first girl, was named Ellen Isadore. Sarah Ellen was the youngest girl in southern Oregon in 1850. She was brought over from Ohio, I think by way of ship, and then crossed the Isthmus [of Panama] rather than in a wagon across the plains. Lage: So the family didn't stop at San Francisco. Oregon. They went on up to Hedgpeth: The other way around. They probably stopped over briefly at San Francisco. My great-grandfather William Tichenor was a coastal sailing master who founded the town of Port Or ford, Oregon in 1850-51. Then my grandfather met my grandmother, apparently as part of his legal business. He was the first city attorney for Portland, Oregon. He got his law degree in about 1859 or 1860 and he came to Portland. At that time there was hardly anybody in that town. Portland until our time was considered a suburb of San Francisco. Lage: What was the attraction of Portland for your grandfather? Hedgpeth: Well, he thought there might be a future there because there wasn't anything around. Everything was up for grabs, I guess, including a law practice. He apparently had a very good knowledge of law. I still have one of his law notebooks; he went to the Albany School of Law in New York after graduating from Michigan. He met my grandmother in Port Or ford, Oregon. Then he moved on to San Francisco; it was about 1867, I think. Edward Walker McGraw and Sarah Ellen Tichenor were married at Port Orford, Oregon, on June A, 1869. All the children were born in San Francisco or Oakland. They came over to a hospital or something on the Oakland side. What did I do with that darn book? It will tell us. Here, the Walker book. This was my grandmother's personal copy. She entered all the family one by one. My mother carried it on, so I've carried it on too, only I don't have the one from my last cousin who died a few years ago now. So we have them all listed here exactly as they arrived, except for one slightly amusing note. My mother put down the wrong year of the marriage of one of her sisters, making one of my cousins look illegitimate, [laughter] We had a laugh over that one. My mother, Nellie Tichenor McGraw, was the fourth girl, then fifth was Susie Lois Sue. She was the tomboy of the family. Then a boy finally occurs, Edward Walker McGraw, Jr., San Francisco, January 31, 1877. And Aldyth McGraw. Lage: The boy didn't live long. Hedgpeth: 1877, January, 31, to February. No, he did live just over a year. I was often told that he died of lead poisoning from poor plumbing. That always kept me from drinking water from bathroom taps. Lage: But none of the rest of the children were affected? Hedgpeth: No. So I don't know what it was. Probably just a convenient diagnosis in those days. So we go down through Aldyth. She died of exposure. She was about four years old. My grandfather laid her out on the marble-topped table and couldn't bear to see her go for several days. She was apparently a beautiful little girl. Then Aunt Elva Brinkerhoff McGraw; that is another old family line from New York State that comes in. You know the old ferry Brinkerhoff? They are mainly in New Jersey. We go right on down the line. Hazel, born in San Francisco, July 1882. Rena Geraldine--! think she was named after some character in a popular novel at the time, Geraldine. I've seldom seen the name Rena. The first name she never used. Lage: Those aren't traditional names of the time, it doesn't seem. Hedgpeth: I think this was, as I say, a novel of some sort. At least I was given to understand that. We all called her Spud. Why, I don't know. Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Was she another tomboy? No. She was the beauty of the family, as a matter of fact. She was born in 1884. Then Alexander Tichenor. He didn't live very long either. There was a problem with the boys. Two of them died. The last born child was a boy. Was this Frederick here? Yes. Frederick. 1930. He was killed in an automobile accident in But he survived into adulthood. My grandmother became ill before all the children were born, from rheumatoid arthritis we think. So Isadore raised most of the younger children. She was the little mother of the family. When she died in '94 or so, it was very sad. Was that traditional that the grandchildren were born there in Oakland at the family home? No. You see, Aunt Edith was having trouble. The Bigelow she married, he ran off with another woman or something. He said she wasn't exciting enough, so she got divorced, and she came to live in the big house. I don't know why my Aunt Sue did. I guess she just came home to give birth because it was near a doctor. They lived out in Moraga then. That family owned what is now the big reservoir there in Moraga, the one that extends from Moraga down to near Richmond. Lage: The San Pablo Reservoir? Hedgpeth: Yes. They were sworn to deep, dark secrecy what they had been paid. They owned the key property in the middle of the valley that had to be had if you were going to have it at all. So they lived off of that the rest of their lives. The Rowlands were pretty sharp. Lage: Was your family of some means? Hedgpeth: My grandfather was a very successful attorney. I only have two items of my grandfather's professional practice. Of course, they lost so much in 1906. He was completely burned out then. That [indicates document] is probably one of the dullest things ever written. I can't get anywhere with it. Lage: This is a petition of the San Marino Company and a brief in support of said petition in the Supreme Court of the United States in 1918. Hedgpeth: I don't know if he had any other cases before the court there or not. Anyway, that's all I have. I don't know about always, but sometimes he would read Alice in Wonderland before going into court. It put him in the right mood for what was coming up, I guess. [laughter] Lage: He must have had a good sense of humor. Do you remember him? Hedgpeth: I remember him pretty well. He was going blind. He would come home in the evenings. He would commute to San Francisco. We lived on Chestnut. That part of Chestnut no longer exists; that's the middle of the Acorn redevelopment thing. So they tore all those big houses down and built that pseudo something or another. So anyway, that's the kind of family my mother came from. I have pictures here of the whole lot of them. Lage: Was that your mother who put this scrapbook together? Hedgpeth: No, I did this. [Mrs. Hedgpeth enters and comments] Mrs. H.: Lage: Mrs. H.: Hedgpeth: Mrs. H.: Lage: Hedgpeth: Mrs. H.: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: His grandfather was an authority on maritime law and Spanish land grants. He was a famous attorney. He sent his underlings to most of the hearings but when it was a big one, he would hop on a train to wherever. But at that time Spanish land grants were being contested and marine rights. So many ships had been abandoned in San Francisco Bay. He had a famous lawyer- grandfather who practiced . He's not giving me a straight story? I'm going to stand here and cue you. [laughter] That's all right. For fifty years he practiced on Pine Street. He was known far and wide as Judge McGraw. He had this huge house [at 929 Chestnut in Oakland], twenty-one rooms. He had installed an elevator for his invalid wife, and these ten girls grew up, you see, in it, what he bought. There we go. Look at those pictures of those girls. That's wonderful. This is the one that I never knew. That was Isadore. She died; maybe from TB or maybe something else. She was twenty-nine and she had something in the bowels that bothered her. She dined out at restaurants and they gave pork and eggs . But they said later that now all they have to do is open it up and let the air hit it and it cures them. She is the one who had raised the younger ones. This is my mother. My mother had copper red hair, strawberry blond types. These were So this is the house? Yes. That was a big festive place. This is Spud in her young days. So she really was--. Very pretty. Her problem was that my grandfather never brought any young men home for dinner. He built a fourteen- foot fence to keep them Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: all in when they were young and skittish. meet very many men. Did most of them not marry? So they just didn't Yes, four of them married out of all of these girls. Their father didn't go about trying to find them good matches? No, and of course he met all the best men in town. The curious thing though, the F-2 generation- -this is F-l of course in the genealogical slangout of these four marriages there were six children. My father had a single sister and I have the same number of first cousins, all from one marriage. Six. My Aunt Carrie, my father's sister, had six children. Four of my mother's side had a total of six. So the population hasn't really grown, you see. anyway . It's shrunk a bit. Our share of it Very interesting. Now tell me about your mother's going into missionary work. Was that something her father encouraged or allowed? Well, I think by that timeit was the 1890s of course she was heading on into her twenties I presume. She was twenty years old when he gave her that big book on China. She was a very devout member of the First Presbyterian Church in Oakland. It was the largest church in northern California. You mean the actual, physical--? In members of the congregation. She got inspired by one of her teachers there, Julia Fraser, the owner of that fancy chair which she finally claimed--. When these ladies get old, they start promising things to everybody. Sometimes they forget and promise something to somebody else at the same time, then the inevitable bickering comes from that. So you had a chair that she later reclaimed? No, what happened was that my mother decided that she had better hurry up before dear Julia lost her mind and gave it away to somebody else. So she went over there with my aunt in her car and persuaded her that she might as well give it up now since she was hardly ever using it anyway. I don't know why my mother wanted that particular chair. It's a very nice chair. It's down in the other room here. You see, all this furniture in here came from the old house. Not all of it, not the coffee table. The chairs and that great, big, overstuffed thing are modern. So anyway, this is the way the family name ended. Lage: You're saying that with the death of your uncle . Hedgpeth: Yes. You see, he had no children. So that branch of my [grand] father's family ended with him, that is, the name. On the other hand, my [grand] father's brother Theodore lived in Grosse Pointe, and there is still a Theodore McGraw there. The old Alexander, my great-grandfather, made a great pile of money. I think he outfitted shoes and boots for a good part of the Union Army or something like that to make all that kind of money. He was a manufacturer of shoes. Hedgpeth: We have all these family records from the McGraw side. They were stuffed in a lap desk. Lage: When you were a little boy, did this kind of thing interest you? Hedgpeth: I got interested right then and there not so much in what was in the letters but--. It was a coolish night. My Aunt Jane had appeared on the scene with this box. She opened it up and started to pull these papers out one by one and was starting to throw them in the fireplace. Evidently my grandfather brought the box over from his law offices. Somebody said, "What are you doing there?" I don't remember which of my several aunts were around there at the time. My mother was there. They started picking them up and looking them over. They said, "Look here, this is a letter dated 1837. It's our grandfather's proposal of marriage to our grandmother." They found the reply too. Fortunately nothing particularly serious had burned. There was a very nice letter offering my great -grandmother her first Job as a teacher in upstate New York. She got $136 for the year plus living privileges with the chairman of the school board. Of course, I gather that in those days, if the chairman of the school board had eligible young sons, that was a fringe benefit not to be scorned. [laughter] Lage: What happened to these letters? Where are these letters now? Hedgpeth: I've got some of them. Those letters which were specifically referring to matters of the University of Michigan, I sent to the Michigan people, because two of my great-grandmother's brothers were regents of the University of Michigan. The letter that started me off on that years later when 1 was looking them over said, "President Tappan (the guy who was president of the University of Michigan at the time) visited me yesterday. I gave him $100 for a new telescope for the university and a pair of boots for himself." I sent that back to the archivist and said, "You ought to hang this up in a frame as an early example of fringe benefits." Nellie Tichenor McGraw Hedgpeth Joel's Mother 1 Hedgpeth: Anyway, my mother was the saving one. I think it had something to do with the fact that she had gotten burned out when she had been teaching missionary school in North Fork, California. Then she was asked to go on speaking tours; she left a lot of her notes and a lot of her books with some friends who stored them in a cabin, and it burned down. She always lamented that loss. She was kind of conditioned. Lage: So when she became a teacher, basically, was it? Or a missionary. Hedgpeth: Right. She was teaching missionary school. Lage: Did she travel in northern California then? Hedgpeth: No. She was based first in the Hoopa Valley, the Hupa Indians there. Before that, she had gotten interested in taking pictures in a very casual way. So she had a big box Brownie to start with. Lage: Wonderful. Did she do her own developing? Hedgpeth: Yes, she did. There were a couple of notes in some of her journals that survived, indicating that. I had quite a few of these pictures here. There's some kind of a picnic going on, obviously. I sent them to Anne [Bus] 'See Nellie McGraw Hedgpeth, My Early Days in San Francisco (San Francisco: Victorian Alliance, 1974) and Nellie Hedgpeth papers, San Francisco Theological Seminary Library. Also published in two installments in Pacific Historian. 10 Lage: Did Anne Brower know your mother? Hedgpeth: Her mother and my mother were very good friends. Her mother is also named Anne. Her maiden name is Bus. As we were waiting in the rain for Clem Miller's funeral, she said, "You don't know who I am." I said, "I'm afraid I don't." "Does the name Anne Bus mean anything to you?" I said, "I have heard that name fairly often." That's the way she introduced herself. Lage: These are your mother's pictures of her missionary days? Hedgpeth: These were taken in North Fork. My mother had some very dear friends she made in North Fork she never gave up all her life. I stayed with them one time or another, a thing I don't remember at all. It's funny about memories because every time I would see one of the girls, the one nearest my age, a few months younger, she would point at me and say, "Frogs." Apparently, when we were about four years old, I had dropped frogs down her dress. [chuckling] Lage: She didn't forget. Hedgpeth: She didn't but I did completely. I don't know why. Lage: I can understand that it would be more vivid to her. Hedgpeth: I suppose, but there were a whole lot of other things. Even being there, I have no clear memory except of eating a lot of olives one time. I guess I ate a whole small barrel of olives in the course of our stay there. Lage: These are pictures of the Indians. Hedgpeth: There were just a few selections I put in here [the photo album] . The negatives of all the Indian places are on file in the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Joel Hedgpeth. Mountain Blacksmith Lage: Now we're coming to you. How did your parents meet? Did your mother meet your father out in this country? Hedgpeth: Yes, he was in North Fork. He had a blacksmith shop there. Lage: It does seem like an unlikely match now that you have described your mother's background. 11 Hedgpeth: Yes, it was. Of course, these were hill people really, Methodists. Lage: This is your father's family? Hedgpeth: Yes. Lage: So they were not urban or educated? Hedgpeth: They were all pretty well educated one way or another. Of course, most of them were men of the Book. Four of my father's uncles were ministers. Lage: I see. Hedgpeth: And cousins. Lewis, the one who settled in Arizona, apparently founded the Methodist Church in Phoenix, Arizona. There is a place called Hedgpeth Hills near Phoenix. I saw a picture of it in an engineer's display down at the Bay model, of all places, a while back. Lage: Hedgpeth Hill at the Bay Model? Hedgpeth: Well, they had a picture of something they were doing in the middle of Arizona. They had a series of big posters of their projects all over the western district, which included Arizona. Lage: So your father was in a family of parsons but he didn't take up the call? Hedgpeth: I had a copy of a letter was sent to me from Sheridan, Wyoming, out of the blue. I didn't know my great-uncle Thomas Riley who was one of the senior members of the family. He was writing to my grandfather and saying, "I'm getting on. Barely enough strength to chop enough wood for breakfast. Praise be to God I can preach as loud and as long as I ever could." [laughter] They were circuit riders of course, most of them. One of them got burned out in the troubles in Missouri in 1859, I think it was. I always thought that was why they came West. They packed up in 1858, manumitted their slaves and came across the plains. Lage: Where did they settle? Or did they settle? Hedgpeth: They settled in the valley around first, I think, Visalia, then up in Millerton. Then my grandfather moved up to the high lands a bit, to North Fork, to get out of the malaria. You may know that malaria was endemic in the Central Valley until fairly recently. So it was a very different group of people, yes. 12 Lage: Did the Methodists and Presbyterians fit well together or did that present any problems? Hedgpeth: I don't think there was any quarrel about that. Lage: Not that much doctrinal difference? Hedgpeth: I think some quarrel arose somewhere along the line when my father and I argued over who was going to bless the food, so finally my parents decided to give that up rather than struggle with me. [laughter] Lage: When your parents married, did they live in North Fork? Hedgpeth: They went back to North Fork first. They weren't making enough in the winter time so they had to move on out. A number of places I have been told that I've been to but I have no memory of, like Purissima down south near Half Moon Bay, and Fort Bragg, to one shop or place or another. They borrowed money against the estate and it didn't pan out. Lage: You had kind of a traveling childhood it sounds like? Hedgpeth: Well, in my school record--. Lage: A year in each school. Hedgpeth: Yes. Lage: Was your mother a predominant influence, would you say? Hedgpeth: Yes. Well, that and the house. Of course, it was a big house. We stayed there. It was probably my generation that spent more time--. We called the house 929 [street address]. Lage: This is the one in Oakland. Hedgpeth: Yes. Lage: Hedgpeth How much time were you there? Several years in the twenties. For a while, we lived in Berkeley and I took the streetcar to 929. My father was working in shipyards during the war. First he started out in Stockton. We moved down from Clipper Gap to Stockton. That was around 1917 or so. He got a job at the Holt manufacturing plant. They had the contract to make tanks for the British army. He worked on the big steam-powered hammer, bending armor plates, curved ones that fit in the front of the tank. Once in a while, I used 13 to take his lunch over there to him. We lived about two blocks away. That house is still standing; it was a cheap little cottage, but it's still there. At least it was the last time I was in Stockton and I went by there. It is on Pilgrim Street. So then we moved up to the mountains, up to Mather. Lage: Do you remember that pretty vividly? Hedgpeth: Yes. 1 was ten years old. Lage: You were in Oakland in between. Hedgpeth: Yes, or actually, we lived also in South Berkeley. That was where we lived when he was working in the shipyard. Of course, in 1919, the contracts ended and work wound up by 1920. In the summer of 1920, we spent a couple of weeks near the Big Basin in a rented cabin on the San Lorenzo River. The train stop was Brackney. It was our family's happiest memory. Some Early Memories and a Traumatic Injury Lage: You told me, before we turned the recorder on, your earliest memory was being reintroduced to your mother. Do you really remember this? Hedgpeth: That's what bugs me. I have this memory, very distinct, of about three men and a woman. I was in a crib. One of the men was wearing a head mirror, like those used by doctors. I was just coming into consciousness. I had been here unconscious or asleep or something. I don't know which. I don't know whether he said, "Don't be frightened," or anything, but anyway I do remember he said, "This is your mother." That 1 ! all. Lage: This was when you were ill at about age six months and went to the hospital for several weeks? Hedgpeth: Yes. Lage: Isn't that strange. Did you ever talk to your mother about it to see if she remembered that? "Sierra Bill" at Mather, Yosemite National Park, July, 1921, [About a month before my accident.] 14 Hedgpeth: No. In fact, I'm not sure it occurred to me until afterwards. It's not the kind of thing you would make up as something you wished had happened or anything. Lage: No, not at all. But it seems so young to really have a memory. Hedgpeth: True. Well, I don't know. I see by his latest book [Let the /fountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run, 1995] that Dave Brower can also remember from the same age. Lage: What about this note [in the photo album]? "It's a long story why I remember these flowers." You have a drawing which I assume is your drawing. Hedgpeth: Yes. Well, what happened was my father, of course, being a blacksmith, didn't quite understand what an automobile was. It works by explosions, and the force is transmitted by gears, and the thing is controlled by electricity. These three different things were all a little much for him to figure out. We had some great big old Haynes automobile, we were heading out one afternoon for an excursion, slid off the road and wound up against a tree about six or seven feet off the road. Nothing spectacular or unsafe or anything, but I think he had put the steering gear back with baling wire or something, which he shouldn't have done. So anyhow, while they were arguing and waiting for rescue, I sat in the middle of this beautiful patch of these little owl clover, the yellow ones. Very nice little flowers. Orthocarpus. Cream sacs is the English name. Lage: This must have been about age four? Hedgpeth: No, a little older than that. Lage: What would you say your parents encouraged in you as you were growing up? Maybe not the same thing from each parent. Hedgpeth: That's true. My mother definitely didn't want me to go into a trade or become a blacksmith. She hoped I would become a lawyer or doctor, something like that, go to college, that sort of thing, which I eventually did. Lage: Did your father think that was a good future for you or did he want you to work with your hands? Hedgpeth: No. He didn't offer to teach me his trade, though he asked me to help him now and then when he needed somebody to hold the other end of a large piece of iron or something. I never asked. 15 Of course, after I hurt my hand it was impossible for me to do that anyway. Lage: That happened at Mather? Hedgpeth: Yes. Lage: What were the circumstances? Hedgpeth: There was a fulminate of mercury cap that I found in a shack I was putting on the end of a stick. Lage: What kind of mercury cap? Hedgpeth: A blasting cap. They are mean things. Lage: You were just playing? Hedgpeth: I was working it onto this stick and it went off. Lage: Did you know what it was that you had in your hand? Hedgpeth: No, I didn't know what it was. Lage: You were just playing. That must have been pretty traumatic. Hedgpeth: Yes, it was. [I should have thought to remember that I was playing at blacksmithing at a small forge my daddy had made for me. Every trace of it was gone when I returned from the hospital. --JWH] Lage: How long were you in the hospital then? Hedgpeth: What was it? Six weeks or something? No, it wasn't that long. Lage: We had the bill we were looking at. Six weeks and the bill came to $90. Hedgpeth: $90.11 does it say? Three weeks? August 17-September 9, 1921. About three weeks. It was shock and everything. Lage: Your mother's shock must have been great also. Hedgpeth: Oh yes. She accompanied me to the hospital of course. They just put us on an empty boxcar and that was that. Lage: You took a boxcar down ? 16 Hedgpeth: It was a regular running train, anything . There was no special run or A Family of Aunts Family Stories Lage: Then you moved back to the Bay Area. Hedgpeth: Yes. My mother bought this place over in San Leandro and set up a drygoods business, emulating her sister, my Aunt Edith, who had become a very successful merchant in Walnut Creek. Lage: So the sisters did go into business? Hedgpeth: She was the only one who really went into business. My Aunt Elva was a probation officer. She worked with Earl Warren when he was D.A. for Alameda County. Then of course, my Aunt Geraldine was a school teacher. She had been asked by a chum to go over with her when the friend was trying to enroll in the normal school in San Francisco. I don't know what she had with her. My impression is she didn't have anything except she wrote her name on a piece of paper along with her friend and got in there. The superintendent came out and said, "Yes, you are both accepted." My Aunt Geraldine was too flustered, I guess, to say no, so she entered normal school and became a teacher, [laughter] At least that's the story. But she became a very good teacher. She was held up as a national model for her handling of retarded and disadvantaged students. Lage: So she went into special education? Hedgpeth: Yes, but she had never had any training in this. Some of her methods are now, of course, illegal. She went around and got written permission from all the parents to thump the kiddies with a ruler or whatever other corporal punishment might be necessary. She told most of them, "You're not stupid. You just haven't got the advantage. You're trying to speak a foreign language. Your folks don't seem to know anything at home. You'll just have to do it by yourself." For years later, her students used to come around to see her. They had gotten jobs as waiters and bellhops and similar levels of employment. Just a few years before she died, quite a delegation there were a couple of dozen of them I thinkcame around on an occasion, her birthday or something, I don't know what at this point. There is a piece in the paper about that. 17 Lage: Was she teaching in Oakland? Hedgpeth: Yes. She taught what is called Z-section. They are the same kind of people they have too many of now. There is nothing done at home to help them out. Their parents may not even speak English. She once got into quite a fight. She was taking a course teachers are always taking courses to get more units to get another raise in pay or keep their salary status in Berkeley, or starting to. Anyway, she got into an argument with an instructor and said, "You don't know what you are talking about." The instructor got annoyed and said, "Madam, there is not room for both of us in this room. Either you or I are going to have to leave." She said, "That's all right. I'll leave." The other teachers said, "No, we want to find out what this is all about." The poor guy had to back off a bit. Finally, she had gotten him tamed down, I guess. He was afraid to say anything serious, I presume. Then he said that he wanted to obtain some returns from the students on their reading. He handed her a bundle of forms. She said, "This is a waste of time." Lage: She said, "This is a waste of time"? Hedgpeth: Yes. "They will sit down and write something about a book they have never read just to satisfy you." Lage: She was pretty outspoken. Hedgpeth: I think you should knew that this whole crew of ladies had very strong opinions of what they were going to say. They seldom if ever spared you their opinions. Lage: Is this true of your mother also? Hedgpeth: I had a feeling she was a bit more diplomatic, but not too much. Lage: They all should have been lawyers, probably. Hedgpeth: Probably. They missed their calling. Of course, in those days women lawyers were just beyond the pale. It was a thing ladies didn't do. Don't ask me why. My mother loved to tell stories about her adventures, mostly involving my father's misfortunes or something or another like that. He used to leave the room. But when she got together with this Mrs. [Constance Bigelow] Mainwaring, the friend she had made in the mountains, they really could spin them. 18 Lage: Were these told at the expense of your father more or less? Hedgpeth: No. These were just stories about everything, about adventures in the mountains or snakes and robbers and so forth. In fact, I have memories now of wild days in Clovis and Samson's Flats and other places in the Sierra--. ft Hedgpeth: I still see Dan's [Mainwaring] professional name and credit line. He wrote a lot of the scripts for Errol Flynn under the name of Geoffrey Homes, his two middle names. The Bigelows had some genes for writing, and one of my cousin's boys, Michael Bigelow, is on the Chronicle staff today. Lage: Did you know him from Clovis and Samson Flats? Hedgpeth: Oh yes. He was one of the kids whose little sister I favored with the frogs. Lage: I see. [Laughter] Hedgpeth: Dan wrote a novel. His first novel [One Against the Earth] is very much like In Dubious Battle [by John Steinbeck] . A piece got written about that by a friend of mine. [Richard Astro, "Steinbeck and Mainwaring: Two Calif ornians for the Earth." Steinbeck Quarterly vol. 3, no. 1: 3-11, 1970.] Lage: About the similarity? Hedgpeth: Yes. The piece was partly my doing. Lage: When did he write the book? Hedgpeth: The book was published in 1933, which was three years before In Dubious Battle was written. Lage: Was it enough alike that you assumed it was an influence on Steinbeck? Hedgpeth: Well, nobody knows. His mother thought that Steinbeck stole Dan's thunder. It was talking about the same things. They both had the same ability for describing scenery. I have a copy of that I loaned to Gerald Haslam, to see if he could do something with it. I told James Hart once, "You left him out of your book of California writers." Dan was writing detective stories by the bushel under the name Geoffrey Homes for years. Hart said, "Go ahead and write him up." About that time, Dan's sister 19 Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Nell, named for my mother, began to lose her mind. It was probably Alzheimer's. I've been talking about this with other people, that Alzheimer's seems so common now and yet, looking back, do you remember a lot of older people that had similar symptoms but just no real diagnosis? It never happened in our family. Everybody kept a clear mind. Did they all live to a pretty good age? My Aunt Doll lived to be ninety-nine. Most of the others lived to their eighties except Isadore, who died young, and Elva who had bone cancer. My Aunt Jane was run over by an automobile in what is now the Haight Ashbury District. She wore dark clothing and was attending various evening classes for self -improvement. She was into everything like this at one time or another. She once had a soldering iron and did burn work on nice new pine. It was called xylography. They sound like very independent women. Yes, they were all different, to say the least. My Aunt Elva was the domineering one. She was the one who arranged things after my grandfather's death. I was looking at his will yesterday. When did he die? He died in 1921. [shows will] He wrote this will on the 6th day of June, 1921. Since it is typed, I assume he dictated it to his secretary. He was almost completely blind; he could barely find his way home. He goes right down the list and he specifies, being an attorney, some material object from the house for each and every one specifically. There is a legal reason for this, you see. What's the legal reason? So that they not be neglected in anything. [Reads from will] "I give and bequeath to my daughter Nellie T. Hedgpeth of Berkeley two water colors frames hung in the front of my house." These happened to be pastels. I don't have them here on the wall anymore. "A framed agate piece made by her grandmother Elizabeth Tichenor, now hanging in the sitting room, and my library table now at the library at my house." That's the table there [indicates]. I got the agate thing. It was a box with a glass cover and the agates are all glued up in designs. After a 20 Mrs. H.: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: Lage: Hedgpeth: few years, it began to fall apart. Finally, the whole thing fell apart. So I don't have that anymore. Then you go down here. "Painting and frame representing school examination. Woodpath Library of University Literature in twenty- five volumes to my daughter Susie. To my daughter Elva, the picture of the old harbor and my marble-topped rosewood table." My cousin has that now. That's the one they laid out the babies on when they died. "Aunt Hazel [Doll] Nasburg, sailboat on the beach." Each cousin in Then he even includes me in this thing, the next generation, we each get $100. Seventy years ago that was a lot of money. I got two framed "water color" pictures, each of a single bird, now hanging in the library. Those turned out to be chromos of magazine covers. I had to take the glass off one once. They That's all I got are not paintings but they are nice frames, out of it except, of course, the $100. Was his money--? He was a lawyer. I know, but what did he do with the--. Okay, that's complicated, because the money borrowed by Edith he cancelled, because she was divorced. That was not approved of? Yes. He disapproved of him. He cancelled for her. The one successful one, Hazel--he called her Doll--had married a merchant in Coos Bay, Oregon. It used to be known as Marshfield. They ran a stationery store there. Paying back, some of it he cancelled. He had made a loan to her also? Yes. "I nominate and appoint my daughters Elizabeth McGraw, Edna McGraw and Elva B. McGraw the executrixes in my last will," and so forth. He had given all his money in sections. I think each got about $20,000. Lage: So he divided that rather evenly? 21 Hedgpeth: Here we go. "Section 21, I give and divide and bequeath all the rest, residue and remainder of my property whatsoever situated in equal proportion to my daughters," listed all by names, "or the survivors at the time of my death provided either of said children should die before I do leaving a child or children surviving. Such children will receive that share. I make no other provision for my son Frederick B. McGraw for the reason that he has already all of that portion of my estate to which I think he is entitled." He did give him his gold watch. Lage: He had given him a considerable portion earlier? Hedgpeth: He was borrowing money all the time. He was in all kinds of little things that didn't amount to anything. You can follow it through the city directories. I went down to Bill Sturm, his little parlor down there in the Oakland Public Library. Incidentally I made a file about the old house, photos of the interior (by my mother), floor plans and all for his collection about old Oakland houses. Lage: Did Edith, the one who had been divorced, get an equal share? Hedgpeth: Who? Lage: Was it Edith who had been divorced? Hedgpeth: Yes. Lage: Did she get an equal share? Hedgpeth: Yes. It calculated out. "Whereat and Whereabout, April 4th, I purchased my daughter Nellie some lots of land and so forth, at the expense of $2,650." He took that out. Of course, she sold the property at Clipper Gap later anyway, so that isn't quite as bad as it looks there. A loan and so forth, $500. "Said sum of $2,000 ought to be considered an advancement to my daughter Nellie and shall bear interest from the 24th of April until my death 3 percent per annum. The distribution of my estate, 7/8ths of said sum and interest earned shall be deducted I/ 8th share," and so forth. You won't follow all that stuff. But anyway, they were all cared for and I think they each got about $20K. He would have had a lot more money if he hadn't invested in mines and similar schemes. Lage: Did this make your mother secure then? Would that have been a sum of money that would have left her in a secure position? Hedgpeth: Little enough to get along with. The story of all this--. He wrote this will on the 6th of June. He died on the 3rd of 22 August, 1921, two months afterwards. He came home, said, "Well daughters, girls, I've given up. I'm not going to work anymore." He went to bed and died, several days later, of course. The reason the family lived there was because he couldn't get around too easily. He knew the way, the trains in San Francisco. His office was on Pine Street. It was only about a quarter of a mile from the Ferry Building, I thinkthe 300 block. There is something here about his law. He had a junior partner at the time. There we are. Barry. Yes. The number is 35A Pine Street. "I here bequeath to my friend, Joseph E. Barry--" all his legal library. Of course, he had built up quite a heap of that too by that time, and he must have replaced most of his loss from 1906. Early Interest in the Natural World; Childhood Reading Ants. Seashells, and Lage: Did any of these early experiences, any of them, bring you in the direction of your interest in the natural world? That hasn't come out. Hedgpeth: No. Lage: Were you a budding naturalist as a boy? Hedgpeth: My mother said she could always find me if she knew where the nearest ant hill was. When I was very small, she would visit people, especially out in the mountains and so forth, I would wander off, so she just kept looking out for the ant hills and she would find me watching the bugs crawl around. It was more than ants quite often. Lage: Are these vivid memories for you? Hedgpeth: Well, I do remember looking at ant hills and just looking at things moving and wiggling around. That's where the natural history aspect became serious. Lage: When did your interest in natural history become serious? 23 Hedgpeth: Well, see, next door-- [shows picture] Next door to my grandfather lived Henry Hemphill, who was a very famous shell collector and a pretty good student of mollusks. He didn't just gather them. He arranged a lot of his shells on cards to show all these evolutionary sequences or relationships in a rather interesting way. But the whole house was full of stuff. It was sort of like the pictures of the grand salon of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. They had a parrot that was quite often aired out in the backyard. 1 used to go over there quite often to see the seashells, and ask Bee [Jennie Hosmer], who was Hemphill 's granddaughter, to open it up so that I could see them. In fact, it all started one day when she offered to show me and my cousins the seashells. They never came back, but I kept coming back and looking at them. Lage: So it really kind of entranced you. Hedgpeth: Yes. Lage: You say that it was all organized and displayed in such a way that it made some sort of--? Hedgpeth: Well, all these displays were not in view. They were in drawers and things. They had very fancy cabinets of course. [The remains of the collection are now in the possession of Dennis Murphy at Stanford, a descendent of Hemphill. --JWH] For a while, my Uncle Fred was trying to collect shells. He started to build up a collection. He had a cabinet but it was relegated to the attic in my time and there was hardly anything in it. Lage: You didn't build on that. Hedgpeth: Right. The other thing of course was that my grandfather had a library. My education may be mid-Victorian rather than post- World War I influences because the attic had a good stock of old children's magazines, serials and things. Harper's Roundtable. How they happened to subscribe to that instead of St. Nicholas I don't know. This man Kirk Munroe was a very good writer. He edited the magazine. Lage: Was this writing for boys or for adults? Hedgpeth: Primarily for boys and/or girls. One of the best ones he wrote was called The Flamingo Feather. It was in print as late as 1940. He moved down to Florida and became very friendly with the Seminoles. I looked him up in the Cyclopedia of American Biography. 24 Lage: What was his name? Hedgpeth: Kirk Munroe. Apparently, he was the person who introduced organized cycling in this country. Those were the days when you had wheels about six feet in diameter. How you managed I don't know. Lage: But he wrote natural history? Hedgpeth: No, he wrote stories and they had quite a lot of natural history. Actually, in reading about him I find that one of the things that he did is that he never wrote about an environment that he hadn't seen. So he was going out on all kinds of field trips casing up these places. He wrote one about the Painted Desert, which I remember very well. Then I remember something else. [retrieves book] In one of these books is a little German song. For about seventy years I've tried to find that song. Anytime I saw a book of German folk songs I would flip it open. The last trip to the local library sales about two or three months ago here, I found it in this book. The reason I hadn't found it was because it was Swiss. This book is brand new, obviously never been sung out of, not been squashed flat on a book rack or anything. It's got nice little color plates in it. The first line of the song is "Wohlauf in Gottes schdne Welt." My Aunt Edith translated it for me. It was the first time I had ever become aware of the German language. This was a story about people coming West in the wagon train and they were singing this song. 1 Lage: That's why the song appeared in the story. Hedgpeth: It appeared, and I had been looking for it ever since. Then all of a sudden. . . Lage: You really had vivid memories of these books that you read. Hedgpeth: Yes. Well, I had one--. It was a nice big book. I can get it for you if I had to. It's very easy; I know exactly where it is. That's why I wish I had been there, because this copy is not very good binding; it's secondhand. Lage: You mean, you wish you had been there when they divided up your grandfather's things. Hedgpeth: Yes. "'Wohlauf in Gottes schone Welt," Schweizer Singbuch. Mittelstufe, Ausgabe fiir den Kanton Zurich, Verlag Hug & Co., Zurich, 1960. 25 Lage: Did you get much of the library? Hedgpeth: My mother grabbed a lot of stuff. He had a big library. [Wanders off to get the book and sings] Lage: What was that you were singing in the distance? Hedgpeth: That was "Deutschland iiber Alles." [laughter] It's a very pretty tune. Do you have this thing on again? Lage: Yes. Hedgpeth: I've been to Helgoland and the words to "Deutschland iiber Alles" were written by Hoffman von Fallersleben during a weekend at Helgoland. He deliberately wrote the words to fit Haydn's tune. The tune that Haydn wrote of course is the national anthem for Austria. The story goes that he once heard "God Save the King" and tried to write a similar tune for his own country. Haydn of all people knew how to write singable music as you may have noticed. Have you ever been in a choir? Lage: No, I haven't, unfortunately. Hedgpeth: Anyway, I thought it was kind of treason to a take a tune like that, the so-called "Emperor Quartet" or "Emperor Waltz," or anyway, Haydn's name for it. "Deutschland iiber Alles" is essentially a bunch of corn. I took some satisfaction in learning that this publisher had paid him 30 Kroner for it. [laughter] . Anyway, this is one of the principal influences. This is Sea and Land [Sea and Land: A Natural History of the Sea, by J. W. Buel] . [shows book] ft Lage: Was this a book of your grandfather's? Hedgpeth: Yes, it was in his library. Not this particular copy; I bought this one at a book store later for I think seventy- five cents. It was sitting in his library; it looked like a law book. Same old calf -colored thing, about four inches thick. This is a subscription-only thing, by a man named J. W. Buel. "A wonderful curious thing of nature existing before and since the deluge. An illustrated history." Lage: I can see how this picture, this frontispiece, would capture the imagination of a young boy though. 26 Hedgpeth: Yes, it looks like a circus billboard, a little bit of everything. It's got all these pictures. Some of them are not very well--. Lage: [Reads] "Mysteries of the deep sea." Hedgpeth: Yes. This copy, alas, is falling apart. Lage: How old would you have been when you discovered this? Hedgpeth: It was right down on the lower shelf. I discovered it as soon as I could read, somehow. Lage: You had to read pretty well to plow through this. Hedgpeth: The second half is about land. Obviously all these animals do not occur on the same continent. You have an anaconda, a crocodile, lions and tigers all mixed up in a glorious mess. Here are South American Macaws sitting there. Lage: Is there an evolutionary approach? Hedgpeth: Not really. It's a rather primitive evolution to say the least. Lage: It refers to the deluge, "Shall the earth be again destroyed?" Hedgpeth: Some of the facts in here are not exactly facts. One of the most notorious is of the nautilus flying in the air. This of course is an octopus, the argonaut. They build a little shell for the egg case. There is a picture in here somewhere showing it getting up and flying around. That is something we know can't be. Here are serpents: sea serpents! Lage: There is the octopus, battle with the octopus. Hedgpeth: This is from 20,000 Leagues; that's the picture. Doing a hatchet job on the octopus, or the great Kraken or whatever. Now, here we are. It shows this thing flying, which it can't do. These are specialized surfaces for building this egg case. It didn't walk around carrying it like a hermit crab either. Here there are sails, holding up the sails, the sail on the surface. It doesn't do any of those things in those three positions. Lage: There are probably a lot of mistakes like that in there I would guess. Hedgpeth: But in the middle of the book, there is something that is very fascinating. My first introduction to poetry. The pictures are 27 a bit small, but here is the entire text of the Ancient Mariner. Tossed in the middle there just to separate sea from land. Lage: Did you like this book a lot as a child? Hedgpeth: Oh yes. I read it over and over again. Lage: Is this something you shared with your mother and aunts, or was this solitary? Hedgpeth: No, just all by myself. In fact, my Aunt Edna unlocked the cases for me and that was about it. Lage: Did the sea part interest you more than the land part of this book, do you remember? Hedgpeth: I think it is accidental because it begins with the sea. By the time you've gotten all the way through and read the Ancient Mariner, there is nothing left of the day to go on. So you start all over again. I got into some of this: the troubles of Paul du Chaillu, a Belgian explorer in Africa in the 1860s who was alleged to have carried on improperly with gorillas, [laughter] Lage: This is in this book too? Hedgpeth: I don't think that is. I picked that up somewhere else. So anyhow, I'm fond of the Ancient Mariner, to say the least. Lage: Did your grandfather have a pretty extensive library? Hedgpeth: He had a lot, because he had some personal experience, I think, so it was the year 1876 that he had gone back to Detroit for some purpose or another. Anyway, he had been pursued by Indians and barely got to a boat in some river like the Platte or a fork of the Missouri, or some place. So he had a lot of the classical books about exploring the West. He had some pretty rare stuff, I gather. [After he died,] they called in the dealers. First came Paul Elder, the biggest second-hand antiquarian- type dealer in the area. He picked out what he wanted and then they moved on to Harold Holmes. My mother decided she wanted the encyclopedia. She put her name in the first volume so he took volumes 2-24. I argued with him ever after, but never got anywhere. [Holmes was a bookseller long before the store on 14th Street in Oakland was built in 1924, and was called in to bid on parts of Grandfather's library. In fact, my mother knew the 27a Title Page, SEA and LAND. - R indicates lines printed in red. SEA ^5 LAND: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF flic Wonderful and Canons Tilings of Nature Existing More and since the Deluge. EMBODYING. DESCRIPTIONS OF THE MIGHTY WORLD OF WATERS. AND OF THE MARVEL OUS CREATURES WHICH COMPRISE ITS INHABITANTS. BEING A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SEA. R Illmtratod by Stirring Adnturt wHh WkUi, Deil-F,th, Giant Polypi, Sharks, Sword-FitK, Dog-Fnh, 3tingitf-Fiih, Crocodile*, etc. ; to which are added DcriptioM of ill ttve PVeaonttuI Crturt -epd Thing* that r Found in tta D*ep 8, togther with Full Account of the RemarkabU Legdt and Sapontition* *o Prrlent among S*ilor. INCLUDING A HISTORY OF THE WORLD ASHORE. THE SURPRISES THAT ARE TO BE MET WITH IN ALL THE REGIONS OF THE EARTH. IN THE KINGDOMS OF ANIMAL. INSECT AND VEGETABLE CREATION. ALSO, A NATURAL HISTORY OF LAND-CREATURES R Such M Lioni, Tigert, Elephant*, Rh!noeri, Hippopotami, Gorilla*, Cfiimpanzeet, Mandrill*, Brt, W7W Dogt, ic. with Hundradi of Thrilling Ctcapade* illuttnting their Character and Oifpotition. TO WHICH IS APPENDED A DESCRIPTION OP THE CANNIBALS AND WILD RACES OF THE WORLD, R Their Customs, Habita, Ferocity and Curious Ways. BY J. TAT. BXTEI-, Author of "Th World'* Wonders," "Heroes of the Plains," "Exfl* Life b 8rt>erla," etc., etc. ILLUSTRATED WITH JOO EN<;RAVINGS, REPRESENTING THE WONDERFUL CREATURF.S OF THK WORLD IN THEIR NATURAL CONDITION, AND SUPERB EMBLEMATIC COLORED PLATES. R SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY. Printed on verso: Copyright, 1887, by J. \v. BUF.I- I PUBLISHED BY HISTORICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA.. PA-, AND ST. LOUIS. MO. Original page size: 6.5 x 8.5 inches. .SKA AMI I.ANU. 27 b MYSTERIES OK THE DEEP SEA. This ponderous book. ^ whose outer appearance jf was that of a forgotten law book, not only in troduced me to the won ders of the sea, but also the beauties of poetry by including as sort of divider between the creatures of sea and land, the complete text of The Ancient Mariner, with the woodcuts by Gustave Dore. When I ventured to ask our local ancient mariner an opinion about the art ist's acccuracy, he put me properly in my place. THE ANCIENT MARINER. |T is an ancient mariner, J. And he Ktoppfth one !' three. " By thy loiu; grey Ix-anl and glittering eye, Now wherefore ti>|i|i'sl (him me! 1 The bridegroom's doors arc ..|K>iied wide, And I am next of kin; The guest* nrc met. the (east is et : ilnyst hear the merry ilin." He hold* him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," <|imlh lit-. Hold off! unhand me, gn-y-l>eard loon ! " KllMMiiix his hand dmpl hr. Ho holds him with his glittering eye The. wedding-guest S|