Grumbles from the Grave (32 page)

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The 18th Century Brass Cannon was the inspiration for the original title of
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

December 11, 1964: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

All the various checks sent registered in two mailings arrived, of course, and Ginny is again complaining that it is backing up on her. It is her own fault; spending is her province and she returned from this last trip with more than a thousand in cash—she didn't even really
try
. Her largest purchase was three "pans" (or drums) for a steel band, purchased in Trinidad, and they weren't expensive; they were simply hard to get home—one medium-sized, eighteenth-century brass cannon purchased in New Orleans (so now we are in business for ourselves). The cannon helped a little—$275—but when a guide offered to have a jewelry shop opened for her on a Sunday in Caracas she turned him down. We simply will have to buy some more stock after we pay the income tax; she has lost her touch.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the trip was visiting a Bush Negro village far up in the jungle in Suriname, formerly Dutch Guiana-descendants of escaped slaves who continue to live Congo-style deep in the rainforest, up a side river by launch. My principal reaction was that bare breasts aren't necessarily sexy; the Zulus are much better equipped in that region. We also visited an Amerindian settlement—the Indians were polite and dirty, the Negroes were pushy and very clean. As for other matters—well, a flying fish with a 12-inch fin wing-spread flew into the lounge one evening through a port dogged open only 4 inches without damaging the fin wings. I couldn't ask him how he did it; the landing killed him. We got a royal tour of the Boeing plant in Louisiana (guests of the chief engineer and chief counsel), and I beg to report that the Saturn is the most monstrous big brute imaginable and I do not believe that the Russians can do things on the scale of our Apollo project. I do believe we will have a man on the moon this decade; progress looks good. Ginny visited a Negro whorehouse in Jamaica, and behaved with such aplomb and savoir faire that one would think she had spent her whole life in one. We arrived in Denver late at night to find our flight did not run that day, so I chartered a 2-engine Aero-Commander and we landed in a snowstorm in Colo. Spgs. by GCA. I watched it from the co-pilot's seat—much like a carrier landing. The ground is covered with white stuff but it is good to be home.

Editor's Note: That brass cannon still stands in the living room. It served as the working title for
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
; of course, the title was changed as the editors did not think it was a suitable title for a science fiction novel.

The cannon is a saluting gun from an eighteenth-century sailing vessel, but it still works. We used to fire it every Fourth of July.

December 28, 1964: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I behaved myself in Jamaica and all through the trip—first, because I was well chaperoned and, second, because I was never really tempted. The female passengers were all antiques and the chocolate items ashore were not tempting. No, I'm not racist about it—some of the Zulu gals I saw in South Africa were decidedly tempting. But not these. As for Ginny's savoir faire, here's how it came about: [someone from our ship] had a date with a mulatto gal, not bad looking but not too bright and quite notional. He . . . took Ginny and this gal and myself on a pub prowl through the lower depths of Kingston. About midnight this gal suddenly decided that we should all go to ---- and gave the address to a cabdriver—instead of a night club, it turned out to be a cathouse complete with red light, eight or ten colored gals in the parlor, and a bar and jukebox in a room behind the parlor, where the madam (somewhat annoyed but polite) received us. [The gal's date] was terribly embarrassed and explained behind his hand to me that he had not had the slightest idea where we were going. But Ginny was not embarrassed, spotted what the place was at once, and was delighted to have had a chance to see inside one. We bought a couple of rounds of drinks, played the jukebox, and left—much to the madam's relief. (I strongly suspect that [the woman] had worked in that house.)

CLASS REUNION AND RETURN

November 12, 1969: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

It was a wonderful trip for us, all the way through. I'm sorry that I arrived in New York so beaten down by my class reunion [in Annapolis] (some day we'll make a trip in which the
first
stop will be New York and arrive in prime condition)—I'm especially sorry that I missed the ballet in which the gals (did) (did not) wear body stockings . . . Jack Waite took an afternoon off to give us a personal tour of the Manned Spaceflight Center [in Houston]—high points: a view of Moon rock (swelp me, it looks to me like hundreds of little shiny golden spheroids embedded in a tannish gray matrix), a visit inside the mission control room during a computer-simulation of
Apollo 12
mission (the LEM was just "landing" on the Moon and you could follow it on the displays), and a long, detailed lecture on the Moon suits (for us alone) by the chief engineer of life support systems—who turned out to be Ted Hayes, whom I [had] hired as an undergraduate at U of Pittsburgh twenty-seven years ago to work at the Naval Aircraft Factory—and I lured him into signing with me rather than General Electric by promising him that he could help develop pressure suits for fighter planes and I kept my promise and it led directly to him developing the first suit used on the Moon.

* * *

We stayed over an extra day in Houston at Patricia White's [the widow of Ed White, who died on Apollo I] request—"some people who wanted to meet us." Ginny told you a bit about that party by phone . . . It was a big party in a big house and I don't know what all Ginny did—but I was followed around all evening by three tall beautiful blondes—Heinlein fans. (I managed to put up with it.) But the star of the evening was "the Honorable Jane." Jane is a BOAC hostess and looks just the way an airline stewardess should look—petite and pretty and shapely.

[She] was wearing an evening dress—but it was London mod. Micro skirt—and she had nice legs but nobody noticed because it was cut clear to the waistline in front. No question of a body stocking in this case. Un-possible! Nor any possibility of foam rubber. Silicone? A bare possibility, but I don't think so. Everyone got cross-eyed, including me, and Jane clearly enjoyed the sensation she was creating. (I should add that styles in Houston are much more conservative than those in New York.)

From there we went to New Orleans, with reservations at the St. Charles—and I was asked for identification as we were checking in . . . which I refused to give (this is not yet Russia) and we had our bags put back into a cab and went to the Pontchartrain where we wound up in the Mary Martin suite without being asked to produce IDs. I can see why Mary Martin stays in that suite; the Aga Khan would be quite comfortable in it. It was late, we were exhausted, so we had a bite from room service (soft shell crabs Amandine, oysters and bacon en brochette, parfait praline), bathed, and so to bed.

The next morning there was a bowl of fruit waiting for us, compliments of the manager, and enclosed with it was a little carton of personalized matches with my name spelled correctly. This was followed by a phone call from the manager asking us to have a drink with him that afternoon. (Heinlein fan? Not at all. He asked me what sort of writing I did.) The moral of this is: Don't stay in hotels that demand IDs.

I must now explain that I had avoided the Pontchartrain because Eberhard Deutsch [a New Orleans attorney] lives there and I had been trying to avoid moving into his place when I knew he was out of town. Having told his office that we would be at the St. Charles, I then had to phone again and tell them that we were at the Pontchartrain. Eberhard was returning from Europe by a plane that got in at just past noon the next day—so shortly after noon I received a call: "Young man, what are you doing downstairs? My housekeeper is expecting you."

So we moved up to the penthouse. He was not there but his housekeeper was indeed expecting us, and settled us in.

The penthouse makes the Mary Martin suite look like substandard housing—

—which I had known and which was a major reason why I was reluctant to stay in it with the owner away. Eberhard's little cabin in the pines occupies the entire roof of the hotel; that portion which is not house proper being terraces, gardens, "landscaping," and a spectacular (pump-driven) waterfall. It is, of course, surrounded on all sides by dazzling views of the city and of the Mississippi—and best of all, it is so high up it is quiet; we could sleep.

* * *

New Orleans was tiring fun and endless gourmet food . . . Bourbon Street in search of real Dixieland jazz, which we found.

ANTARCTICA

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Virginia Heinlein—report 1983

This is an enormous continent, barely known, but actually inhabited by mammals and birds, on the coastline at least. There could be almost anything there and we went to learn something about it.

We were outfitted with thermal underwear to outermost layers of waterproof clothing. Recommended (by those who know) is the "layer theory" of dressing for the cold weather to be expected. And it is COLD. The worst day we encountered, including the wind chill factor, was 45 degrees
below
Fahrenheit. Otherwise, we managed to keep relatively warm.

A few words about the Zodiacs, which will often be mentioned. They are rubber boats with outboard engines, very shallow in draft, drawing only inches, made of rubber-coated fabric glued together, descendants of the life rafts of WW II. They have lightweight wooden floors; seating space for passengers was on the float tubes, which were about fourteen to sixteen inches in diameter. One held onto ropes festooned along the sides of these craft. We could be taken into beaches with no jetties, where it was possible to mingle with the local wildlife. "Wet" landings meant that we had to step into a shallow surf onto rocky beaches.

Lindblad Explorer
was a small ship, built with icebreaking prow. Once we toured through an ice pack, looking at the local fauna. Groups of seals lie around on the ice, soaking up the sun or just resting; sometimes they became a bit wary at our approach and slipped into the water, but many of them just looked up and stared at us.

We embarked in
Lindblad Explorer
in Punta Arenas on the Straits of Magellan. The first warning we had was about water conservation—the showers had "minutieres" on them, to time the flow of water, and we were warned about conservation, since the ship could not make up enough fresh water from salt water to keep up the supply, if we used too much. Water in the shower would run for only about a minute, then shut off. Eventually, we both found that about two minutes in a shower would cleanse, if we did it Japanese style, soaping down first, then washing off the soap.

The ship was a bit spartan, but after a period of adaptation, satisfactory.

Lindblad Explorer
carried a number of lecturers. They are specialists in various disciplines and there are daily lectures about various aspects of the things which we were about to see, or had seen. Talks on the mechanics of glaciers, about sea mammals and birds, the history of Antarctica, from the first exploration to the latest are all parts of this tour.

Getting into all those pieces of clothing in a small space was quite interesting, but we learned. The boots were the most difficult, as they had to be donned after the trousers, and the waistline bulk made it difficult to lean over to lace them up. We looked like teddy bears.

The first beach we landed on had penguins galore, of the chinstrap variety. They have one marking which gives them their name, a black strap of feathers which goes under their bills. Think of a dark sandy beach with small surf breaking on it, rocks on each side, and several harems of seals lying around, and dozens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of penguins and you have the picture. Penguins walking into the surf, penguins returning from their fishing expeditions, walking around and paying little or no attention to us as we walked up to see the rookery. If you got down to something approaching their level (about knee height) they might just walk right up to you, inspect you, turn their backs, and walk off. One inspected us, first with one eye, then with the other, turned his (her) back, waggled its tail, and stalked off.

(I got too close to one of the seals and was chased off by the master of the harem. It must have been quite a spectacle, me flying off in those heavy boots and clothing—very slowly, as it was impossible to move very fast—chased by a seal.)