Tallulah
The first summer on the mound at Panacea we dug with George Percy.
The
second summer, the summer the XO and I had our unfortunate contretemps, George
wasn't there. He was surveying with Bob Newman, the State Archeologist, in Louisiana.
Bob was a Korean War veteran who had lost both legs in the war. He had artificial
limbs.
Bob got a salvage grant to dig a Coles Creek temple mound in the path
of I-20, in Tallulah, Louisiana, in September, October, and November, possibly December,
and let George do it for his dissertation research project. George was a PhD candidate
at Tulane University.
He needed people to help him.
He called Tallahassee
and asked me if Brenda and I would be able to come and dig with him.
Chief
had just taken us under his wing. The Fall semester was just starting.
I
had a University Fellowship, to FSU. As a graduate student in anthropology. I could
draw it in addition to the GI Bill. I had nine months of GI Bill left.
George
would pay us minimum wage, plus room and board, in lieu of per diem.
We signed
up for Directed Individual Study (DIS), under Chief, who directed us to go and dig
with George, for the semester. George would supervise our field work.
Three
months in the gumbo mud, also known as buckshot mud. In the cold. It got cold in
Tallulah, that time of year.
The wind came down from the North Pole with
nothing between it and you but a barbed wire fence with two strands down.
What an adventure. It was like George Schaller sitting around the lab at Penn and
someone calling him and asking him if he wanted to go to Africa and study mountain
gorillas. A stroke of good luck.
If we had still been in the PI's good graces,
this would not have been possible. He would have had us stay at FSU and take classes
from him. Do scut work for him in the lab, classifying and sorting potsherds.
He'd have kept us under his thumb. Under the XO's thumb. The XO under his thumb.
He'd have wanted a pecking order.
Chief wanted to do what was best for us.
Not for him.
Chief didn't need to bust anybody's chops, for his self-esteem.
Chief didn't need no stinking badges, man. Chief hated badges.
The PI was
the very model of a modern major general.
Chief was the trickster, the joker,
Br'er Rabbit, please don't throw me in that briar patch, Br'er Fox.
What
fun. A dig was supposed to be fun. Not an ordeal. Not punishment.
What
kind of Calvinistic horseshit was that? What kind of anal-retentive horseshit?