Bootstrap Geologist: My Life in Science

1. Beginnings and Early Years

1 Beginnings and EarlyYears Birth of a Conch EK, that’s my father, dropped ether on the cotton pad over Mom’s nose while Dr. DePoo brought me into what would become the Conch Republic. Being born in Key West automatically makes me a “saltwater conch” as opposed to those who move there. They are called “freshwater conchs.” This conch’s birth happened November 7, 1933, on Von Phister Street in Key West, Florida. The Great Depression was at its deepest, and the western Dust Bowl days were at full throttle. Only a week earlier, hurricane winds had sloshed a foot of Atlantic waters through our home. My mother, Olivia Allen, was born in Columbus, Georgia, the eldest of eight. It sounds trite, but as in the song, she met my father in the five-anddime store. He was a private stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. Dad, formally named Ellsworth Kellogg Shinn, disliked his first name and for that reason became known to his friends as EK. Seventy years later he would be known in the family as Papa-San. EK was born on Valentine’s Day in Rolla, Missouri, in 1910, but at age fourteen moved to Slidell, Louisiana, to be raised by his schoolteacher aunt. He graduated from Slidell High School in 1927 and joined the Army to further his study of radio and communications . Radio and any form of electronics were his first loves. Shooting squirrels for food and trapping muskrats for pelts along the Pearl River were close seconds. After the Army and its radio school, his first job was for the Lighthouse Service in Key West. That was 1930. He was radio operator on Bootstrap Geologist: My Life in Science 2 the lighthouse tender Ivy under Captain Cosgrove. His job—the crew called him Sparks—included installing and repairing two-way radios in lighthouses on both Florida coasts. Key West was known for its high rate of tuberculosis, and because EK was so thin—119 pounds and six feet tall—the service required that he have a chest X-ray. Only one person in Key West had an X-ray machine. He was an interesting German doctor named Karl Tanzler Von Cosel. Just how interesting Von Cosel was would become apparent several years later. Depression times being what they were, the Lighthouse Service soon tightened its belt and reduced services and personnel. There was a general reduction in force in 1933, known in government service as a “RIF.” Fortunately , there was another government job involving radio available, but it was in Phoenix, Arizona. The job was a radio-communications position with the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), later to become the Federal Aviation Administration. The only problem was getting there. An automobile had not been needed in Key West. EK and Olivia went everywhere on bicycles. Life was easy and shoes were optional. Most Key Wester conchs lived on “grits and grunts.” Grunts are ubiquitous little reef fish that could be caught under any dock or seawall with a simple hand line. Lobsters, known to conchs as crawfish, were abundant. Grits, as every southerner knows, is ground corn. Sometimes people jokingly called it Georgia ice cream. To reach Phoenix, Dad bought an English-made Ford sedan from Ernest Hemingway. The emerging writer lived just down the street. The car was different—not the standard Ford black, but tan. It had a plaque on the dashboard that said, “Specially made for Ernest Hemingway.” Ernest, as many readers know, was a notorious, self-absorbed, hard-drinking fellow. During the early days, Key West remained more closely allied to Cuba than to the United States. Hemingway was, and remains, a hero in Cuba. Every schoolchild in Cuba knows of Hemingway and The Old Man and the Sea. Cuba’s largest marina, still open for American yachts, is called the Hemingway Marina. Financier Henry Morrison Flagler’s railroad had reached Key West in 1912. It connected, via ferryboats, to the rail system in Cuba. The original reason for the railroad was to bring coal to Key West so that cargo and military ships could refuel while cruising to and from Beginnings and Early Years 3 the Gulf of Mexico or beyond. By the time Flagler’s railroad reached Key West, most ships had converted to fuel oil, so instead of coal the railroad transported fruit and tourists from Florida and Cuba. Remains of the loading dock still exist...