Jan Michael Vincent Returns

When I worked on Ellis Island, I had about 12 guys who were union movers reporting to me. They were making four times what I was making as a GS-4 and there was this one guy who was the laziest motherfucker I had ever seen. I've seen worse since then. Oddly enough, in NYC as well but I don't think PR has unionized yet...

We all ate lunch together, wherever on the island we might be, and I told this guy, while eating my can of tuna fish,  he was what we called in the Army a "Buddy Fucker," since he wasn't carrying his weight… which was significant. I'd have added he could lose some weight by only eating a can of tuna fish at lunch but he was furious and all six foot three and 300 odd pounds of him stood up and said, "No fucking Yuppie (this was 1985) calls me a Buddy Fucker."

I stood up and said, "Yuppie?! I make $12,600 a year." His face went from anger to pity in a half second and he said, "Shit man, I thought you were a big deal around here. Hey, if you want, I can get you in the union." And then he said, "You look just like that mother fucker Hawk on Airwolfe." So, I had that going for me. Although, Jan Michael Vincent's Twitter shows him doing far better than I am...

Watch Man's Auction

$40,000 - $60,000 Estimate

$10,000 - $15,000 Estimate

$20,000 - $30,000 Estimate

$6,000 - $8,000 Estimate

$2,500 - $3,500 Estimate

Doyle in NYC has a jewelry auction coming up tomorrow. From a Palm Beach collector, it strikes me as very South Florida looking.  I remember working in the Castillo de San Marcos fee both.  As park rangers, no one liked working in the fee booth but it was required duty for a least an hour a day.

Entry fee was .50 cents - A true bargain in the National Park Service but one day I heard this guy complain, " Geez, I pay my taxes and the government's hitting me up for fifty cents?"  He stood in  sock-less alligator Gucci loafers with the red and green canvas under the bit.  Bleach blonde hair and over sized Porsche sunglasses on his head with a Corum signal flag watch on his wrist.

He and his wife get to the fee booth window where he throws a dollar at me.  I push it back to him, "That's alright, sir.  No charge."  He cocks his head, "No charge."  "That's right, sir.  I heard you complaining and so I figure you're having some tough times.  Not to worry -- I'll pick it up."  What unfolded is another story but I do believe it was documented in the Ranger Log.

Michael Bastian said in an interview that it was important nowadays to wear a nice watch since everyone dressed so poorly or how else could you judge a man. That seemed pretty shallow to me -- Until I remembered that day in the fee booth. 

Seasonal Ranger

Castillo de San Marcos Ranger Log Book Summer 1982

Castillo de San Marcos Ranger Log Book Summer 1983

You had to work as as 'Seasonal' ranger in order to get a full time position. These were usually at parks where visitation was heavy during Summer. I did three seasons during college at the Castillo de San Marcos in St Augustine. After the Army, it was the only job I had where time off was spent with the people I worked with. Odd that the two lowest paying jobs were the happiest jobs -- The soundtrack of that Summer of 1983 didn't hurt.

A Connoisseur of Impending Doom

I'd get off at Wall Street even though Bowling Green was closer to the park service work boat.  One reason was an addiction to the balls-to-wall energy on Wall Street.  People moving with an expressed purpose, laser focused determination and guts full of cranky anxiety. You know, how most of us commute home.  In 1985, working women wore little silk blossom ties with navy flannel suits and white leather running shoes, their heels sticking out of LL Bean canvas totes. I wonder where they all went.

The other reason was food. There was a Greek coffee stand run by George. There's always a guy named George in a Greek coffee stand.  A regular coffee, three fast spoons of sugar, and too much cream.  Like melted Hagen Daaz coffee ice cream... only sweeter.

If I was flush, there was a small diner in an office building on Broad Street where two, huge breasted Puerto Rican waitresses, in turtlenecks and rainbow clip-on suspenders, served the only grits south of 125th Street.

The soundtrack came from Madonna's, Like A Virgin on a beat up Radio Shack walkman.  WNBC's,  Don Imus thought she sounded like Minnie Mouse on helium.  Young suits on park benches snorted cocaine with the Journal or NY Post on their lap and Ray Bans covering their eyes. But mostly I remember him and the smell.  A ripe and rotting  BO. 

He was tucked half way into a bright blue sleeping bag at the end of a park bench.  Long silver hair streaked in black fell onto a long grey beard that fell onto a signal yellow shirt. He looked up and pointed at me like he was gonna hit a fly ball my direction.  But he didn't. Instead, he yelled, "This could happen to you!" Fellow pedestrians peel away as his eyes lock on me. Too lazy to detour, I approach the bench as he follows me with his pointing finger, extended for emphasis, by a long yellow nail with a thick black crescent of crud underneath.

"Yeah, you.  Fucking, Stacy Keach! This could happen to you!"

I walk by looking straight ahead.  "Fuck you, Stacy Keach!  Fuck  youuuuuu..." slowly ebbs away under Minnie Mouse's, Dress You Up.  "Stacy Keach?" I wondered. I don't look like Stacy Keach.  Don't get me wrong.  I like Stacy Keach.  He's amazing in 'The Traveling Executioner' and 'Doc.'  27 years later I still don't get Stacy Keach -- That it could happen to me?  A day doesn't go by that I know it can and probably will.

¡Firmes! El Gaitero

I meet this college kid from Spain on the gun deck of the Castillo de San Marcos almost 30 Summers ago. St Augustine had been a Spanish colony, on and off, from 1565 to 1821, and was a popular destination for Spanish tourists, especially ustedes from Barcelona and northern Spain.

I remember it was about a hundred degrees with matching humidity on the gun deck. What we called a thermal inversion. No breeze whatsoever. I'm wearing an eight pound wool coat based on the Spanish artillery uniform of 1740 with a black felt cocked hat, linen breeches and blouse, red stockings and reproduction 18th century buckle shoes.




The kid, blonde hair and blue eyed, is from Barcelona and tells me he plays the bag pipes. The heat is getting to me. "Sorry, you play the what?" "The bag pipes," he tells me. "You know, northern Spain is very Celtic." "No shit," I'm thinking to myself as the gun deck tilts to a 45 degree list and I see mortars and canon sliding through the embrasures into Matanzas Bay.



Heat exhaustion is no laughing matter but the National Park Service didn't think it fell under Worker's Compensation. Today, I know better... and yesterday, I found this odd bottle of Spanish Cider, in an even odder wine store (PJ's Wine) way the hell up in the Bronx where God left his shoes. El Gaitero or The Piper, is $5.50 for a 23 oz bottle. The colder it gets -- the dryer it gets.



Pretty nice with Gazpacho soup when there's a thermal inversion outside. I don't have to sweat the eight pound wool coat anymore but drink enough El Gaitero and I can watch the buildings slide off Manhattan. It might even be work related.

43rd Earl of Crosse and Blackwell

"Tinseth- I was walking past the Philadelphia Union League and thought of a story line. Park Ranger, assigned to kiosk in a historical re-enactment of Ben Franklin’s niece’s haberdashery and snuff shop, is actually the Forty Third Earl of Crosse and Blackwell.

But he’s trapped in the states, virtually penniless, due to gambling debts and the machinations of slick lawyers with truncated eastern European names. He is torn between his contempt for the general public and his love of the only uniform he can wear in public without being laughed at... too much." M. Walsh of Chicago

Holy Week: R100

Ruff Hewn - 1987


An Object of Desire


Far from the Ramrod



Somewhere in Chelsea - back in '85 - six vintage BMW motorcycles in front of a bar on Tenth Avenue. Five black. One white. Stopped - dead in my tracks. I ask Herbst to hold up, "Geez, man. Look at these! They're beautiful!" Herbst whines, "Tinseth. Lets go." "Hold on. What's your rush?" I lean over a speedometer to check the miles. "Tin-seth! Come on!"

I'm thinking, "What's his fucking problem?" Another voice. Deeper -- Closer. "You like bikes?" I look up to see three men covered in black leather and - for the first time - I see the name on the bar. 'The Ramrod.' "Yeah, I like BMWs," I say and turn to see Herbst a quarter of a block away with a smirk on his face.

"Why don't you come on inside and join us?" The invitation grunted by a man with a ring in his nose, a braided beard and a tattooed head. He takes a swig from a long neck Miller and holds a cigarette between two fingers -- his thumb hooked on black leather chaps. I stand and walk, not too quickly, towards Herbst. "Thanks. I better catch up with my buddy." "He can come too," says the tall one... and they all laugh.

Herbst was a free lance archeologist (Have Trowel- Will Travel) working a dig for the NPS under the Main Immigration Building at Ellis Island. I was loaned to him during renovations at the Statue of Liberty and most days it was just the two of us digging through oysters and mud.

Ellis was a garbage dump for Indians living on Manhattan going back five or eight hundred years - give or take a few hundred - based on the carbon date of a femur we found. In addition to throwing away oyster shells and refuse on the island, the Indians also left their dead there.

We had time to talk - looking for dead Indians. Herbst had a thing for Jeremiah Johnson and early trappers. He told me they'd eat once a day but dinner was five pounds of buffalo. There was a moment of silence as trowels scraped. Exposed light bulbs strung above us cast a honey yellow light on the dark dig. Herbst broke the silence, "Jesus, Tinseth...just imagine the huge piles of petrified shit all over the West."

Herbst had a Tudor Submariner and admired my Rolex Sub until he discovered it wasn't a chronograph. I don't think he ever like me after that. Still, he invited me to the wildest Manhattan party. All apartments on one floor were opened up. Jazz band in one. Bar in another. Food in another and so on. Herbst introduced me to a numerologist. She was pushing 40 in tight Guess jeans and a silk blouse.

Necking on her sofa later that night, she breaks away and stares at me. "I'm sorry," I said. I think I've gone too ..." She stands up, takes me by the hand and pulls me to her bedroom. She cut through a lot of bs.

It rained the next morning and we stayed in bed until late that afternoon. I treat her to a cheap brunch of French Toast and Bloodies at J. Melons then make tracks back to her bedroom. Grateful, I thank Herbst the next day. He points his trowel at my head and berates me under the honey yellow light, "Tinseth, she's the older woman. Don't you get that? She's supposed to fucking pay not you." This pissed him off more than my watch.

I haven't talked to Herbst in 12 years but called yesterday to fact check and catch up. He told me he had laryngitis and couldn't talk long. I finished fact checking and he promised to call back. I doubt I'll hear from him again. That's okay. I'm amazed by the trip I went on with a motorcycle I never owned.

Update: So much for fact checking. The bar was the Rawhide ( 8th Ave bet. 20th & 21st) and not the Ramrod. Apologies for my lack of leather bar knowledge.

Kodachrome & Not Knowing

Ellis Island, 1985, Canon F-1 and Kodachrome 64 (photo by B. Feeney)

When the Park Service closed the Statue of Liberty for repairs in 1984, I was lucky enough to be given a few weeks to wander Ellis Island and photograph whatever I wanted. It was one of the best times of my life. I recently purchased Tri -X, Ilford and Fujichrome, in the hope that I might be able to relive some of those Kodachrome days.

Don't get me wrong. I love digital. The idea of firing off five shots in one second with minimal grain and no worries about focusing, shutter speeds and f/stops...that's a beautiful thing. But I miss film and contact sheets and I think, most importantly, not knowing until the film comes back from lab. I even found a lab in NYC that still does Cibachrome, but the owner tells me not for long.

That's all I needed to hear.

Manhattan Morning Commute

Ranger Boat to Statue of Liberty, NYC, Winter 1985

Identity is not bought but earned...

1886


1984

Coming To New York: Madras & Popped

Castillo de San Marcos Ranger Log: Sept 1, 1984 Dr T. (John Tinseth) last day at the Castillo (old fort). Tomorrow he's off to the 'Big Apple" N.Y. Good luck Dr T from the gang.

6:00 PM Labor Day 1984- Big shot, Statue of Liberty Foundation contributor, offers yacht to NPS employees for a tour of the Hudson and East River. Third day working at the Statue and I figured this would happen many times -- hence my smile. It never happened again. Maybe because of my trousers.



How embarrassing. I 'popped' until meeting a nice girl from Chicago. She told me it was affected. I never 'popped' again.

Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot!

Ranger Log - Castillo de San Marcos, St Augustine, FL - 4 August 1984

Night 1964 by John Koch

My Fridge - 22 July 2011

It seems extreme heat has been a companion most of my life. Born in a record breaking August, the early wonder years were spent in the Southwest and Southeast. Basic, Infantry and Jump School were poorly timed and placed over a single cruel Summer at Ft Jackson and Ft Benning.

I saw heat index temps north of 107 as a Summer seasonal park ranger in Florida. Thermal inversions were commonplace with days of 100% humidity and no breeze. Adding to the misery was a paper mill north of town that cranked out a smell so ripe you could walk on it.

Still, truth be told, I'd rather deal with Summer than Winter. It's hard to lose an ear or finger because of the heat. Yesterday, I saw a young couple in their late teens French kissing on the sidewalk at the corner of 56th St and 8th Avenue. I was thinking it's too damned hot until I saw they were wearing jeans and black tee shirts -- Then they were just too damned stupid.

I'm old enough to remember sleeping without A/C and I can feel that John Koch painting like a trickle of sweat sliding down the crack of my ass. Rumors of a black out in NYC this weekend give me serious pause as I wonder if I have enough ice and talc. I'm pretty sure I have enough beer. I hope it ain't warm beer.

A Sweatshirt of a Certain Age

I've dragged this hooded sweat shirt around since 1985. I haven't been able to wear it since 1992. It's not that I've gained weight. I have. And like the weight I've packed on -- this sweatshirt is witness to years of change -- In myself and in my closet.

I wore this sweatshirt on a date in Philadelphia one night. Under a leather flight jacket with skin tight 501s and Timberland work boots. I complained to my date, later my wife, later my ex-wife, that I had been hit on by two gay men on my way to pick her up. She looked me up and down, arched an eyebrow and said, "Maybe it's the way you're dressing."

A lotta oxford has flowed through the closet since 1986. What I swore I would never wear: bow ties, double breasted blazers, suede shoes, club collars...not only reside in my closet but fit as well. My sweatshirt looks on. No longer worn. Not because it's too small, but because it isn't who I am anymore. A medium.

Back in the Summer of '82...and '83 and '84.

One of the few parks who kept log books


Documenting the best days of my life


Entries by full time staff ran a little dry

But the journals show a more festive attitude once the seasonal staff arrived.


Even the photography was festive

It wasn't a Summer internship at The New Yorker but it beat waiting on tables. Three mind frying Summers are documented in Ranger Logs archived in climate controlled and acid free storage somewhere in Northeastern Florida. An NPS curator was kind enough to scan what turned out to be the best days of my life.

Buried in some of the most god awful handwriting are the frustrations of dealing with thousands of visitors a day in a very small space with temps as high as 107. Mr Carlson from TV's, WKRP is afforded VIP coverage but, as always happens, it is the everyday that stands out with each ranger contributing his or her own point of view and penmanship.

A ranger nicknamed, Whitey is addressed as such by a black ranger to the astonishment of a southern Georgia family. A Japanese father asks a ranger for directions to I-95. A pig tailed man in a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt walks by and offers, "Y'all didn't have no trouble finding Pearl Harbor."

It was like working in a giant fish bowl with visitors from all over the world converging with Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia day trippers. All of it captured in a beautiful three volume set complete with photographs and illustrations. Contact me for a limited edition copy or screenplay.

'Going Commando'

from The History of Underwear by Shaun Cole

I don't have a kilt but the idea of wearing wool next to bare skin leaves me slightly...anxious. Like the first time I climbed a rope. There's that odd feeling near the top...Anyway, the old kilt story has been kicked aside by a better American story.


Special Forces bunker in Vietnam circa 1966-67

My father (on your far left) told me the heat and humidity of the jungle created biblical cases of crotch rot. Preventive maintenance consisted of sitting around in your underwear in air conditioning (they had it) while applying liberal shakes of talc. It's a lesson I ignored while training in Panama.

The expression 'Going Commando' comes from the Vietnam War. According to journalist Daniel Engber in Shaun Cole's, The History of Underwear, "...troops spent extended periods of time in hot, damp conditions, when it was more comfortable not to wear underwear."

Even Tom Ford has used the expression, "I always go commando; I never wear underwear...My mother keeps saying, 'Please stop telling people you don't wear underwear.'" I don't have a problem with Tom not wearing underwear although his use of 'Go Commando' is not without some irony.

Castillo de San Marcos NHS, St Augustine - 1984

Today I limit commando to jeans but there was a time when authenticity and the N.P.S. demanded commando. 18th century 'small clothes' consisted of a knee length shirt and breeches made of linen. The small clothes alone acted as underwear. Once the linen went through the wash 20 or so times, the result was amazingly soft and comfortable. Enough to go commando or, as they might say at the Castillo de San Marcos, "Andar a lo gringo."

The Two Georges

George's Madras -O'Connell's, Buffalo, NY



George's Headquarters - Valley Forge NHP, PA

He appeared, it seemed by magic, in a madras button down, khakis and Timberland boat shoes. George McGovern had a tan and a son standing next to him. But I didn't know who they were. The son wore a beard, t-shirt, jeans and 20 extra pounds. He smiled warmly but not like his father. I'll never forget the smile of George McGovern in Washington's Headquarters at Valley Forge.

His smile was white but not too bright. He asked me questions about General Washington. "Were there any other headquarter locations at VF?" No. "How were the colors of the bedroom walls researched?" Extensively. "How long had I worked there?" Two months. Not normal questions but you knew this guy was no normal visitor. Still, I had no idea.

It was hot on the second floor and my straw Stetson hung by the chin strap on top of a radio belted to my waist. I had no idea the radio was off. A man came up the stairs using the same banister we told visitors George Washington used. He saw McGovern and sang out, "Senator McGovern! What a surprise." McGovern turned from me, half smiled and almost whispered, " Jim...what's a lobbyist like you doing at Valley Forge."

McGovern and the lobbyist made some small talk while I wondered what to say as sweat trickled down the small of my back and into the crack of my butt. I was staring at McGovern now and forgetting everything. That I was born in South Dakota. That I hated Nixon. Wondering how things would have been different if only...if only...he had been elected president. This man who was not just some well heeled lawyer from the Main Line... but, George-fucking-McGovern.

George-fucking-McGovern turned from the lobbyist to me, held out his hand and said, "I'm George McGovern. " I shook a hand who had shaken so many others and said, "I'm John." He smiled and said, "Nice to meet you, John. " He introduced me to his son in the t-shirt and in less than a second the stairway was filled with 80 Girl Scouts.

McGovern looked at me with concern and as a good federal employee I showed him the escape. A 200 year old secret staircase by the fireplace. I showed the senator and his son the exit and closed the door behind them just as the Girl Scouts reached the landing.

Later at the Visitor Center, a ranger working behind the information desk asked, "Did you see him? We tried to call you." "Yes," I said. I had no idea how much he knew about history." The ranger laughed, "He has a doctorate in history you idiot." And I thought to myself, "Isn't it odd how we short change the most important people."

Timberland - 25 Years Later

Ellis Island- April 1985

Timberland, NYC- October 2010

National Park Service - Parting Shots

Ellis Island New Immigration Building

Ellis Island The Liberty II Work Boat from New Immigration Building

Ellis Island My Mouton on top of New Immigration

Ellis Island The Great Hall

Most of these were taken using my Olympus OM-1 with Kodachrome. Although, I was known to bum a Canon F-1 every now and then. My parting shots to a week of Park Service memories.