Bethlehem Steel – The Pull Of The Land

The Guide

November 1, 2023November 1, 2023 Richard Barnes

In the prior post I quoted Philip Jaffe, one of many American operatives, agents, or otherwise “true believers” who, although they did incalculable harm to the United States and her allies, that harm was nothing compared to the tens of millions who were tortured, starved, and murdered plus the hundreds of millions who were enslaved under the Communist utopias they helped usher in and maintain in power.

Let us read again part of what Jaffe wrote:

“It was through Chi Chao-ting, a cousin of mine by marriage, that I accepted the Communist version of Marxism as a guide to the contemporary world … For a period of more than fifteen years, Chi Chao-ting and I were intimate personal friends and close personal associates…. (emphasis mine)”

Like Jaffe, many 20th Century Americans and Europeans had lost the “Guide” that previous generations had taken for granted: Christianity.

For example, a Wall Street Journal survey, published in March, of this year found that “America Pulls Back From Values That Once Defined It: Patriotism, religion, and hard work hold less importance”.

“Since 1998”, it found drastic declines in importance of patriotism (70% to 38%), religion (62% to 39%), childbearing (59% to 30%), and more. What is truly alarming is that these categories had already suffered steep downturns throughout the 20th Century, especially from the late 1950s onward. To experience such additional declines “since 1998” is indicative of a country that has been transformed more deeply than most of us care to acknowledge.

I believe that all men are religious; we are religious because we are made in the image of God. Even atheists such as Jaffe concede the religious need for a “guide” through which to see the world. Of course, he would have denied that need to have been “religious”, but it most certainly is. His bible was Communism and he acted upon it. His gods were Marx and Engels and Chi Chao-ting, his cousin by marriage.

In the 1990s during business trips to Belgium, Switzerland, France, and Italy, I would seek opportunities to talk about American history with professionals in financial and general management executive positions of power and influence. They all had higher education and above average intelligence. Without exception, not one of them mentioned Christianity or religion when I’d ask them what they knew or had learned about the history of the United States. Instead, their confident, matter-of-fact replies would go into great depth on issues such as autonomy, material wealth, distrust of monarchy, hatred of taxation, with the Boston Tea Party thrown in for good measure.

They were genuinely surprised when I would steer the discussion to historical facts such as the Mayflower Compact; the great Puritan migration; the “Presbyterian rebellion”; the Great Awakening; the influence of Puritan, John Winthrop in the colonial era, which was the foundation of the constitutional republic, founded over a century later; the pervasive role of Calvinist Presbyterian, John Witherspoon, in the founding of the republic and his influence on our Founders; and much more.

The distressing thing about the ignorance about the true causes of liberty and our love thereof was that much of their learning had come from American sources taught in their European schools. It is a false teaching, which has had profound, baleful effects on Europe to this day.

So now, in both Europe and the United States, individual rights and personal autonomy are glorified and idolatrously exalted. All forms of collective identity — family, church, community, “mom and pop” commercial or agrarian entrepreneurship — are mocked, downplayed, and, where possible, destroyed. Did you notice that during the recent years of “crisis”, the “Big Boys” — Walmart, Sam’s, Costco, etc. — were deemed “essential” but small businesses, homes, farms, and church were not?

By seeking to supposedly unshackle ourselves from any religious guidance, we end up pursuing freedom from even biological certainties — men and women denying their physical realities and actually harming their bodies in doing so; mothers doing the same to their own children(!). We now hear about “transhumanism” where some seek to take us beyond the reality of being human.

In my boyhood, I had the privilege of being in the presence of general managers and even high executives of Bethlehem Steel. They saw themselves as “belonging” to their country; as leading a company that was “an American company”. They were not perfect, but at least they had an identity you could sink your teeth into. Movies such as 1954’s Executive Suite with William Holden merely reflected the reality on the street in that era.

But now, we hear of CEO’s and President’s who consider themselves to be “citizens of the world”. They pay more attention to Xi Jinping than to Middle America.

Their pragmatic, cold, decisions tell us they are uncaring because they are unmoored.

It is refreshing to read about Poland and Hungary who, seeing the devastation such rootless atheism has wreaked on their countries, have openly questioned the wisdom of modern liberal democracy, so called, and have called instead for a return to the old paths. In 2012, Hungary passed the Fundamental Law, a way of law based on Christianity. The liberal Guardian, practically beside itself, promptly went on the attack, mocking Hungary’s appeal to “values such as family, nation, fidelity, faith, love, and labor,” and its recognition of marriage and childbearing as foundational to society, and Christianity as inseparable from nationhood.

Hungary simply announced that a Christian democratic model entails the separation of church and state but not that of church and society. She rejects the compulsory atheism now prevalent in America and Europe. And for that she has been attacked to this very day. I wish them the very best and hope we take a page from her gutsy valor. Because it is a page from our own founding.

We all need a Guide. We all need a framework, or spectacles through which we see and measure our lives and the world we inhabit and in which we act. Jaffe was honest in admitting this and his guide led him to embrace the antithesis of the principles which formed our founding and our liberty and in so doing, it led him to a very real, palpable, costly, and bloody betrayal of those principles and of the very real people who believed in those principles. People not only in America, but in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

What is most distressing is that Jaffe’s guide is what has been being inculcated in America’s universities and in her elementary and high schools since the early and the mid 20th Century, respectively.

It is an Erastian indoctrination, one that insists on giving the state (government) all power and authority, even above the church. That is not our heritage. Our founding, which includes the century and a half colonial era, presupposed a Triune God under Whom all else lives and has its being. The state is merely one sphere of several, which include the family and the church. But all are under God, our Guide.

Any sphere which rejects this ends up usurping what belong to God alone. And the results are not pretty.

“Between 1629 and 1640, no fewer than twenty thousand Puritans fled from England to America. This was an astonishing number, considering the distances and the hazards of the journey (M. Stanton Evans).”

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) and Karl Marx (1818-1883). Engels was a wealthy industrialist who pretended to tell the rest of us what was good for us; Marx was a truly despicable, hateful character (see Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals) whose personality is rampant in all Communist regimes. Their apologists have a very tough row to hoe: they must overturn the words of Jesus: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Mayflower Compact (1620) — America’s history, including the constitutions of the 13 colonies, the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the constitutions of the states simply cannot be understood if we ignore the covenantal nature of our founding.

John Winthrop (1588-1649), first governor of Massachussets, whose sermon, known as “The City Upon A Hill” resonates even today.

John Witherspoon (1723-1794) was a very influential Founding Father of the United States. He was a minister of the Gospel and the president of Presbyterian College of New Jersey, now Princeton.

Viktor Orbán (born 1963), Prime Minister of Hungary. Having lived under Soviet Communism, he now refuses to live under EU totalitarianism.

Iconic view of the “stacks” in Bethlehem, PA. Bethlehem Steel Company no longer exists (1857-2003)

The cast of 1954’s classic movie, Executive Suite

Something Lost

April 12, 2022April 12, 2022 Richard Barnes

This being Easter Week, I thought it good to re-publish the post below, “Something Lost”, especially considering the comments by the old schoolteacher towards the end of the post.

I do not doubt that he was right: “I feel there was something lost, truly I do.”

Since I also remember the days he refers to — when the Bible was read and prayer made in class — that marks me as a Troglodyte. Maybe so, but my sense is similar: there was something lost.

I wish you all a good Easter Week.

Something Lost

A few years ago, I visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on a personal matter, after an absence of close to four decades.

To drive and walk around was to invite affecting memories, not only of Bethlehem, but of family, of childhood friends, of the steel company, of Venezuela, of what could have been. I was offered the opportunity to visit my uncle’s old former apartment site on Market Street, from which the Bethlehem Steel stacks are clearly, and augustly, visible decades after her bankruptcy in 2001 and dissolution in 2003.

While in town, I came across the transcript of an interview of the late Earl J. Bauman, a teacher in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania high schools for 30 years, who also worked for several years at Bethlehem Steel during World War II, and who otherwise led an eventful life.

Our teachers in El Pao were recruited in Bethlehem, although not all were from there. For instance, one of my teachers, Mrs. Miller, was from New Mexico and boy did she resent Florida being named “The Sunshine State”! She firmly believed, and could “prove”, that New Mexico was the true Sunshine State.

Mr. Bauman’s comments seem to be coming from my own Bethlehem Steel teachers in El Pao, Venezuela.

I believe the reader will appreciate the commentary by Mr. Bauman (1910-January 12, 2000), born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He was the son of George and Matilda Bauman née Shearer. He was married to Grace E. Bauman, née Shoenberger.

Mr. Bauman taught history, government, and economics. A full transcript is linked below for those readers who would appreciate reading more of what he had to say.

Excerpts:

Well, I was born here in Fountain Hill [now a suburb of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania] in 1910. We’ve been residing here ever since that time.

I attended the Fountain Hill School, and then went to Liberty High and then I quit. I was making more money than my dad was playing with a dance orchestra. We used to make as much one night as he made in a week just playing with the big bands. And then one thing led to another, and the Depression hit. And finally, there was no music market. I went to South America in one summer playing with a band, and come back, and then it was difficult to find any kind of work, because the Depression hit. It hit pretty hard. And then I had an opportunity to go back to school, then I went to Moravian Prep. And I finished up my high school work there.

Then I went to Moravian College and earned my Bachelor’s. And then, of course, it was still difficult to get work. I worked at the steel company as a clerk in the beam yard offices, and on their police force during the early period of the World War II. And then finally a teaching job.

….

And then I taught until I guess it was about the late Forties [1948] when I decided to go back to Lehigh for my Master’s degree in history, and I finished that, I believe it was 1954, somewhere around in there. Men like Dr. Harmon was the head of the history department, Dr. Gipson, Dr. Brown, and I don’t think any of them are there anymore. Some may have died, passed on, retired. And then I kept on teaching.

….

Teaching wasn’t quite the pleasure it used to be. Yeah, that changed quite considerably.

….

That’s the flu epidemic you’re talking about, yes. I remember because, and I can even take you where the hospitals were and they died like flies [emphasis mine, RMB]. It would have been right across the street from where I did my undergraduate practice teaching where this junior high school is now, right across the street in that area there, they had built these temporary wards. The hospital up here couldn’t handle it. It was too small. I remember that, yes. I remember a lot of— You’ll see in the pictures, see at that time I would have been nine years old, and I did get around and my parents talked, but that wasn’t the only thing, we had a lot of things like there was scarlet fever, and diphtheria, and polio. So many of my classmates were afflicted….

…. You had to put on your porch, your house would be quarantined, that’s the word, diphtheria here and scarlet fever there, and measles here, measles there, and today it’s wonderful how all these youngsters have been protected against these physical ailments, which make them more competitive in their life today.

[Note: the sick were quarantined. The rest went on with their work and lives. For discussions on quarantine and the current approach in most states and countries, see here, here, here, here, and here. Mr. Bauman’s allusion to the “flu epidemic” where “they died like flies” is a reference to the Spanish Flu, or The Great Influenza. See here for more.]

[Was crime a big problem?] No. No. You had nothing like—I can remember, we used to— I don’t think any of the neighbors really did much in the way of locking doors, no such thing. (chuckles) As a matter of fact, maybe this is something we should have kept in Fountain Hill here. In those days when I was a youngster, we had a curfew. When that whistle blew, you got off the street, you better not be out on the street unless you were with a parent.

….

So they said to me, ‘Well, would you do it?’ I said, ‘You’re asking me?’ I said, ‘I know that you squeeze a trigger somewhere and the projectile comes out the front, that’s all I know.’ I said, ‘I don’t think I can do much for them.’ Somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t you try it?’ One person suggested that I call the Marine barracks and get help. So I did, and you’d be surprised how much fun I had over the years teaching safety and all this and that and I can’t hit the broadside part of a barn, and I coached for 15 years and one of my teams went to the state finals, so we won (inaudible) of the division title after I got to Liberty where we got a large student body. Two southern divisions and we had a District 11 and a Northeastern regional championship and we went to the state finals. Now my youngster has, he picked it up, but we wouldn’t let him have any rifles here at home until he became, I thought qualified. I hate to put material like that in the hands of kids. Now of course, he’s a specialist. He loads his own ammunition. He has guns and pistols. He’s in a pistol league and he can shoot. He stands 75 feet away and he’ll knock your ears off. He has terrific scores, close to 300, shooting at 75 feet with high-caliber pistol. He (inaudible) shoots better than a lot of the policemen. He says, one of the faults of the policeman, he said the policeman doesn’t know his tool that well. He said they misuse it.

….

Well, I remember, you wouldn’t remember this, but I remember when the Lord’s Prayer was banned from school and that was like—I don’t know, I can’t see it because of that, but I think the morale tone of the school began to decline. The mode of dress became careless. The mode of conduct became care— Not by all the students. Some students still come from a home that’s still a home and that insists on certain moral standards.

And I guess a lot of it came from the aftermath of the wars and there would be a lot of things that influenced it, but I think the dropping of that in school was one thing that wasn’t good, because I remember we always had—I used to have my youngsters, and I never had one refuse, and I had Catholics, Protestants, Jewish students in my class, and I always used to read our schedule. And I think once a week we got a guidance period and I used to plan, I felt the kids should take part in opening exercises. It exposes them a little bit into leadership. I used to have them all read passages, and I didn’t insist that anybody read any specific passage, but they were allowed to read from the Old Testament, the New Testament, whatever they would like to read, and then they would lead the Lord’s Prayer, and then we’d have the salute to the flag. It was sort of starting the day off in a sort of moral tone in a way.

Then from then on, things would go from one thing to the other. But I missed that, and I thought it was something that was lost through it. I can’t prove it. I’m not sure. Maybe it were the other factors that made this moral tone of dress and carelessness go down, because as soon as kids start coming in my classes with jeans on and patched—And it wasn’t that they came from poor parents because they had money, because the kid had more money in his pocket as spending money than his new pair of pants and shirt would cost, and they had weeds galore in them. If they weren’t smoking Chesterfields20, it was something else. They were loaded with money. And that may have had something to do with it, the income of the families.

So, I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of factors and the fact that we dropped the reading of the Bible and the Lord’s Prayer and all that sort of thing sort of took something out of the classroom. I don’t know. I felt something was lost.

After it was gone, well, then what could you do? I mean, the law said you didn’t dare do it, so you didn’t do it. You still had the salute to the flag, and then oh, in the beginning I didn’t stop altogether, but I didn’t break the law. I asked them to have a moment of silence, soft prayer to themselves. I don’t recall ever anybody objecting to that, and then we turn around then and had the salute to the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance and that sort of thing.

But I feel there was something lost, truly I do.

….

For those interested in reading further, the full transcript is linked below.

Microsoft Word – bauman_95_101.doc (lehigh.edu)

Bethlehem Steel main plant, Bethlehem Pennsylvania

The stacks as seen from Fountain Hill borough.

Mrs. Miller never forgave Florida for “stealing” New Mexico’s logo. Above is a 1932 license tag proving her case. The logo was first used by New Mexico in the 1880’s. Florida was known as “The Citrus State”. But they cleverly adopted their current logo by formal resolution, something New Mexico had failed to do. And the rest is history.

Bethlehem steelmaker headquarters imploded | Fox News Video

The demolition of the former World Headquarters of Bethlehem Steel.

Something Lost

July 11, 2020July 11, 2020 Richard Barnes

A few years ago I visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on a personal matter, after an absence of close to four decades.

To drive and walk around was to invite affecting memories, not only of Bethlehem, but of family, of childhood friends, of the steel company, of Venezuela, of what could have been. I was offered the opportunity to visit my Uncle’s old former apartment site on Market Street, from which the Bethlehem Steel stacks are clearly, and augustly, visible decades after her bankruptcy in 2001 and dissolution in 2003.

Mr. Bauman’s comments seem to be coming from my own Bethlehem Steel teachers in El Pao, Venezuela.

Mr. Bauman taught history, government, and economics. A full transcript is linked below for those readers who would appreciate reading more of what he had to say.

Excerpts:

Well, I was born here in Fountain Hill [now a suburb of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania] in 1910. We’ve been residing here ever since that time.

I attended the Fountain Hill School, and then went to Liberty High and then I quit. I was making more money than my dad was playing with a dance orchestra. We used to make as much one night as he made in a week just playing with the big bands. And then one thing led to another and the Depression hit. And finally, there was no music market. I went to South America in one summer playing with a band, and come back, and then it was difficult to find any kind of work, because the Depression hit. It hit pretty hard. And then I had an opportunity to go back to school, then I went to Moravian Prep. And I finished up my high school work there.

….

Teaching wasn’t quite the pleasure it used to be. Yeah, that changed quite considerably.

….

[Was crime a big problem?] No. No. You had nothing like—I can remember, we used to— I don’t think any of the neighbors really did much in the way of locking doors, no such thing. (chuckles) As a matter of fact, maybe this is something we should have kept in Fountain Hill here. In those days when I was a youngster we had a curfew. When that whistle blew, you got off the street, you better not be out on the street unless you were with a parent.

….

So I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of factors and the fact that we dropped the reading of the Bible and the Lord’s Prayer and all that sort of thing sort of took something out of the classroom. I don’t know. I felt something was lost.

But I feel there was something lost, truly I do.

….

For those interested in reading further, the full transcript is linked below.

http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/beyondsteel/pdf/bauman_95_101.pdf

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6038557472001

The demolition of the former World Headquarters of Bethlehem Steel.

“Venezuela’s Magnetic Mountain”, Harry Chapin Plummer, Popular Mechanics, July, 1949

January 29, 2020January 29, 2020 Richard Barnes

Prep time for this blog has had me looking through old journals and publications partly because I get a kick out of the more un-self-conscious, optimistic (exuberant?) mid-20th century reporting compared to today’s dour, blame-America-first, Chicken Little iterations.

Something else that impresses me upon reading this over 70 years after its publication, is how accurate it was in reflecting the plans being made in 1949. There were, of course, some changes to the plans, as there are in all good plans. However, these great American companies were pretty thorough in their operations.

Enjoy:

When the Conquistadores of old Spain explored the jungle country of eastern Venezuela four centuries ago, the native Indians told them tales of a strange mountain which attracted lightning. Later the Spaniards saw for themselves this magic mound which, when struck by a lightning bolt, game forth a spray of flashes. The Spaniards dubbed the mountain “El Florero” — the Flower Pot — because the lightning flashes looked like flowers growing from the peak.

Today that mound has been found to hold one of the world’s richest iron-ore deposits.

Credit for that discovery goes to an alert Venezuelan mining inspector, Eduardo Boccardo. In 1926 he determined to penetrate beyond the superstitions of the natives and to find out why the mountain was one of the spots most frequently struck by lightning on the South American continent. What he discovered was a fabulously rich lode of iron ore which, by magnetic attraction, drew lightning to the mountain. The Spaniards, intent upon their quest for gold and silver, had passed up a deposit so valuable that even now its riches can be only estimated.

Surveys of that part of the mountain granted to Boccardo show that about 35,000,000 tons of mineral rich in iron underlay his concession. Assays have proved that this ore actually is 55 to 68 percent iron. Absolutely pure iron ore is made up of 72 percent iron and 28 percent oxygen. The iron content of Minnesota’s famous Mesabi range is about 57 to 63 percent. On this basis, the Flower Pot represents one of the most important discoveries of the century in the field of metallurgy.

Naturally, it didn’t take industry long to jump into this whopping mountain of ore. Today the Iron Mines Company of Venezuela, organized as a subsidiary of the Bethlehem Steel Company of the United States, already has a small army of employees in the jungles near the Orinoco. Their task is to form a modern mining industry in the heart of the forests. They are at work between El Pao, the ore site, and Palua, the loading point on the Orinoco.

The task of these workers is staggering. They must build the mines and the port, highway and railway — even their own homes in the wilderness. Already they have completed a highway more than 14 miles long which eventually will serve as the right-of-way for a standard-gauge railway, the vital artery from the mines to the river. This railroad will have a steep grade from sea level to the mines.

When the harbor and dock installations, the roads and railways finally are completed, the ore will move by truck and train from the mines to the ships on the Orinoco. It then will travel aboard a fleet of ore carriers, especially built for the purpose, to the blast furnaces at Baltimore, Md.

It is estimated that production will rise to 3,000,000 tons of ore annually from ore reserves that will last a quarter of a century.

Already rolling along the uncompleted rail line is a 1500-horsepower diesel locomotive. When the track is completed, the railroad will have four locomotives, 100 ore cars with a capacity of 70 tons each, eight boxcars, four tank cars and a crane.

Before the end of this year the ore will begin to flow from the mines atop the magnetic mountain. There crews especially trained for the job will perforate and excavate the rock and earth, which will be picked up by four gigantic electric shovels each capable of taking a huge bite out of the ground. The shovels will load the ore into trailer-trucks hauled by tractors. From there it will be taken to big ore crushers — one of them said to be the largest in the world. The fragments of crushed ore will be carried by an aerial cable arrangement to the waiting ore cars on the railway.

It is estimated that about 10,000 tons of the rich earth will be hauled down the mountainside every working day.

When the ore reaches the harbor, it will be dumped into a huge storage area. An ingenious series of chutes at the base of the area will drop each load into an underground conveyor installed in a tunnel. After passing through the earth, it will climb up a huge loading bridge which extends like a pointing finger over the waters of the Orinoco. The load will slide by toboggan into 4000-ton lighters. Tugs then will pick up six of the lighters form them into a train and haul them downriver to the Gulf of Paria. From there the new 24,000-ton ore carriers will take the ore by ocean to Baltimore.

This modern industrial system in the heart of the jungle is within the orbit of Ciudad Bolivar, the principal river port of the Orinoco and the administrative and financial center of the region watered by the river.

Almost due south of Ciudad Bolivar the United States Steel Corporation has been conducting explorations of another area that appears to have huge ore deposits. it seems likely that the same vein which crops out atop the magnetic mountain also appears in this new area [the author was correct: that ‘new area’ became known as Cerro Bolivar, one of the greatest ore finds ever].

Reports state that the mineral deposits found in this second area are of a high quality, satisfactory for smelting in open hearth furnaces.

These two ore strikes are the second great boon to Venezuelan national within the past half-century. The first was the discovery of petroleum around Lake Maracaibo. Huge investments in drilling and pumping equipment, pipe lines, railways, bridges, community settlements, hospitals, and schools have been made by the participating oil companies.

Venezuela has enacted a law which requires the oil companies, both foreign and national, to refine within the country a percentage of the crude oil that is recovered. The purpose, of course, is to have a supply of domestic oil. It is anticipated that similar legislation will apply to recoveries of iron ore, and that eventually there will be smelting operations within Venezuela [a major understatement, of course].

Such a development would place Venezuela in the forefront of South American nations which at the turn of the century were dependent upon agriculture — cattle, coffee, sugar, cacao, tobacco, and rubber growing.

Thus the magic mountain that attracts lightning may revolutionize the economy of a nation.

Ore Crusher (one of the largest, if not the largest at the time, in the world) in El Pao. Note the administrative (American) camp in the background.

Bocón, Caribe, Anchor Chain

September 14, 2019September 14, 2019 Richard Barnes

Having caught only one fish, and after trying for hours and catching nothing else, the boy set his bamboo rod on the barge and climbed down the iron ladder to the third or fourth rung from the ground from which he jumped to the shore where he scrambled to the large saltines can holding the lonely fish.

His father had placed the large “Nabisco La Favorita” can beneath what seemed to the boy to be the largest anchor chain in the world. It was fastened to a giant anchor screwed to the hill just beyond the shore, from whence it held the barge from floating away into the Orinoco current.

The cans I recall were red, but the shape and branding were as above. My father would use a large hand forged iron nail to punch holes into the can to allow air to circulate and thus lengthen the life of the fishes used for bait.

The nail looked something like this, only it was larger (as recalled by me as a young child). The head was large enough for my mother or father to hit it with the palm or fist to open cans or punch holes

The chain was large enough to provide shade for the fish as well as for the boy, who now crouched beneath it, watching the fish swim to and fro or at times just remain stationary.

He recalled the occasion when he had caught a piranha and his father had placed it in a can all by itself. They had taken it home to show his mother. Seeing the fish refused to move, his father, who did indeed know better, stuck his finger in the water to move it a bit only to see blood. He quickly pulled out and saw that the cannibalistic fish, having moved faster than sound, had bitten off the tip of his finger. They all had had a good surprise followed by hearty laughter.

In Venezuela, Piranhas are called “Caribe(s)”, after the Caribe Indians who ravaged Venezuela at the time of Columbus. As usual, current “scholarship” tends to preface their cannibalism with “allegedly”. However, contemporary accounts leave no room for doubt. One reason no Mayan or Aztec-like civilizations are found in Venezuela was the unrelenting warfare of the savage Caribes. Their tortures included holding subjugated peoples and biting (yes, biting) them to death, while also slicing them with sharp shells. It is no secret why the Piranha is known as the Caribe in Venezuela.

Piranha (Caribe). Not a fish to take home to mother.

The fish in the can under the chain was a Bocón, a “big mouth.” These were in great abundance in the Orinoco but usually during a certain time of the year. Clearly this day was not during that certain time of year, else the can would have been teeming with the fish, not just one.

He crouched in the shadow of the chain and contemplated the Bocón as it balanced itself lazily near the center of the can; his father remained on the barge, patiently waiting for the big one.

The barge was big, rusty, and seemingly abandoned. At least it was “always” there when father and son went fishing in or about that spot. Halfway across the wide Orinoco a dredging vessel and crew did its work. In 1952 U.S. Steel Corporation undertook the dredging of the Orinoco to allow deep water shipping which would eliminate the need to transfer ore from river boats to ocean going vessels. Once the dredging was done a few years later, the Bethlehem Steel closed its ocean port, Puerto de Hierro, and shipped ore from its Orinoco port, Palúa, directly to its massive steel works in Sparrows Point, Maryland. Puerto de Hierro was transformed into a Venezuelan navy base.

For years, Bethlehem Steel, and others, paid tolls to U.S. Steel for using the dredged river channels as its ships came to load and returned to the United States, laden with ore. After expropriation, the maintenance and usage of the channels continued, but by 2005, maintenance had suffered and deep sea shipping had become more intermittent, usually limited to high water seasons.

Dredging the Orinoco River. This photo was taken in the year 2000. Maintenance had to be kept up, otherwise the mighty river would soon render the channels unseaworthy. By 2005, shipping was limited to high water seasons.

The boy felt someone pushing down on him below the shoulders. He looked to his right, towards the barge and fleetingly saw his father holding the fishing line, facing the river, away from the boy. Fleetingly, because what was pushing him down unremittingly was the giant chain. The river’s undulation was bringing the barge down and that action was lowering the chain onto the boy. He yelled, but by then was crushed so tightly that no sound escaped his mouth. Not even a whisper.

From the corner of his eye he saw the shadow of his father jump from the barge to the shore and rushing up behind him. He saw that shadow grab the chain and seek to lift it. Lift it. Lift it.

He lost consciousness.

He opened his eyes as his father carried him running up the steep cement steps that led from the river back up to the camp. Then he lost consciousness again only to awaken in the camp hospital with the doctor saying that he was going to be OK.

We returned to the river to pick up our stuff and then headed for home. My father explained that he had heard nothing until a guard standing atop the stairs yelled at him, “Oiga! Su hijo le necesita!” (Hey! Your son needs you!”). That’s when my father looked to the chain and saw me, seemingly being flattened. I did not hear anyone saying anything, but I might have been passing out by then.

What surprised my father was that, in a day when everybody knew everybody, he had never seen that guard before, nor did he ever see him again. Not even when he finally reached the top of the stairs. There was no one around. In addition, of course, no man could have raised that barge from the river either.

When my father grabbed that chain and sought to lift it, it just kept bearing down, down. But Someone made the river swell. And the water rose. And so did the chain. He told me that, once the chain lifted from my back, I just fell to the side, doubled over like a clam. He thought for sure my back was broken, which I’m glad it wasn’t. Else carrying me up the stairs, although perfectly understandable, would not have been a good idea!

God lifted the tide and preserved my back from breaking. He also sent an angel to minister. I believe that if my back had been broken, that “guard” would have told my father and he would have called for an ambulance instead.

“Take heed that ye despise not [look down on] one of these little ones; for I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.”

That’s as good an explanation as any.