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[Assistant] Henry first began to think about building a fleet of seagoing ships when he was a young man helping his brothers fight in North Africa.


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[Assistant] Henry's father had sent them down to North Africa to capture an important Muslim trading city. Merchants from Africa came to this city with ivory, gold, silver, and salt. Merchants from India came with spices, pepper, cloves, and nutmeg. In the Middle Ages, there were no refrigerators, so people put a lot of spices in their meat.


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[Assistant] That way they could eat the meat even when it started to spoil. The spices covered up any bad tastes.


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[Assistant] Spices were so important that pepper was almost worth its weight in gold.


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[Assistant] But Muslim traders knew that the Portuguese were Christians who had driven the Muslims out of their country. And as soon as the Portuguese took control of the city, Muslim traders began to avoid it.


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[Assistant] Henry realized that if the Portuguese wanted gold and ivory from West Africa, they would do better to sail down the African coast and trade with the West African tribes face to face. So he hired shipbuilders to build new ships that were fast and light, perfect for exploring strange waters.


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[Assistant] He paid map makers to draw new maps of the coastlines so that sailors would know exactly where they were when they came ashore. And he built a school for navigation. Navigating


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[Assistant] Following a map to a certain destination is hard to do at sea because there aren't any roads, trees, or landmarks. So Henry sailors had to learn how to read star maps so that they could find the North Star and other important stars at different times during the year.


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[Assistant] They had to learn to use an astrolabe, a special measuring tool to measure how far the sun or the north star lay above the horizon.


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[Assistant] And then they had to be able to calculate a ship's position from this information.


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[Assistant] An instrument with a magnetic needle that always pointed north. And they had to be able to calculate a ship's speed.


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[Assistant] In the Middle Ages, sailors measured how fast a ship was moving by tying knots at regular intervals on a long rope.


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[Assistant] Then they would put a piece of wood weighted with metal on one end of the rope and wind the other end up onto a reel.


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[Assistant] As the ship sailed, the sailors would toss the wooden float


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[Assistant] Today, a boat is still said to be traveling at so many knots.


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[Assistant] Once Henry sailors learned how to navigate through unfamiliar waters, they were ready to head south to Africa. But they were frightened.


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[Assistant] No one had ever sailed down the coast of Africa before.


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[Assistant] They called the mysterious waters that lay down south the Sea of Darkness.


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[Assistant] They were sure that sea monsters and whirlpools lay in this sea of darkness.


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[Assistant] They were afraid that the ocean became so shallow that ships would wreck on the sea's bottom. They were certain that strong currents would pull them off into nowhere so that they could never return.


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[Assistant] And they thought that the sun down south was so hot that the sea water boiled and roasted man alive. Henry tried to convince his men to sail further south. He paid for expedition after expedition.


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[Assistant] But all of his sailors were too frightened to go very far.


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[Assistant] Finally, after 14 expeditions, a brave explorer named Gil Ennis dared to venture down into the sea of darkness.


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[Assistant] And he discovered that the water there was the same as the water closer to home.


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[Assistant] Slowly, the Portuguese began to follow the example set by Gil Ennis.


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[Assistant] They sailed further and further down the coast of West Africa to trade for ivory, salt, gold, jewels, ostrich eggs, sealskins, and slaves.


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[Assistant] But although Henry the Navigator had hoped that his ships would find their way to India, he died before this could happen.


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[Assistant] You see, maps in the middle ages didn't show how huge Africa was. No one had ever sailed all the way around the continent.


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[Assistant] So mapmakers couldn't draw an accurate picture of Africa.


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[Assistant] And no one knew exactly how far they would have to sail to get around the tip of Africa.


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[Assistant] Some sailors thought that Africa might stretch all the way down to the bottom of the world.


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[Assistant] Many, many bodies safe that live and feed upon your majesty. The single and peculiar life is bound with all the strength and armour of the mind to keep itself from annoyance, but much more that spirit upon whose will depends and rests the lives of many.


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[Assistant] The cess of majesty dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw what's near it with it.


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[Assistant] Autismacy wheel fixed on the summit of the highest mount, to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are mortized and adjoined, which, when it falls, each small annexment, petty consequence, attends the boisterous ruin.


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[Assistant] Never alone did the king sigh, but with a general groan.


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[Assistant] What will they do? They will not murder me! Help, Ho! What? Ho! Help!


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[Assistant] How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if to a cane's jawbone that did the first murder.


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[Assistant] Is this the fine of his fines? And the recovery of his recoveries? To have his fine paint full of fine dirt.


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[Assistant] By the Lord Horatio, this three years I have taken note of it, the age has grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kind. How long has that been a grave-maker?


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[Assistant] Does thou think Alexander looked to this fashion of the earth? He in so. And smelt so? He in so, my lord. To what base uses we may return, Horatio.


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[Assistant] Why, may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till I find it stopping a bunghole? To consider too curiously to consider, sir. No, faith, not a jot.


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[Assistant] And why of that loam whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer barrel?


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[Assistant] Read on this book that show of such an exercise may colour your loneliness. We are off to blame in this. It is too much brood.


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[Assistant] But yet do I believe the origin and commencement of his grief sprung from neglected love.


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[Assistant] My lord, do as you please, but if you hold it fit after the play, let his queen mother all alone entreat him to show his grief. Let her be round with him, and I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear of all their confluence. If she find him not, to England send him.


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[Assistant] Or confine him where your wisdom best shall think.


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[Assistant] Once when I was 6 years old, I saw a magnificent picture in a book called True Stories from Nature about a primeval forest.


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[Assistant] It was a picture of a boa constrictor and the act of swallowing animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.


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[Assistant] In the book it said bow constrictors swallow their prey whole without chewing it. After that, they're not able to move and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion. I pondered deeply then.


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[Assistant] Over the adventures of the jungle and after some work with a colored pencil, I succeeded in making my first drawing. My drawing number one. It looked like this. I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups and asked them whether the drawings frightened them. But they answered, frightened? Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?


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[Assistant] My drawing was not a picture of a hat, it was a picture of a bowl constrictor digesting an elephant. But, since the grownups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing. I drew the inside of a bowl constrictor, so that the grownups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My drawing number two looked like this.


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[Assistant] Which to advise me to lay aside my drawings of bold constructors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar.


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[Assistant] That is why, at the age of six, I give up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter.


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[Assistant] I had been disheartened by the failure of my drawing number one and my drawing number two.


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[Assistant] Renups never understand anything by themselves.


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[Assistant] And it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explain things to them.


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[Assistant] It is now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco. Ah, for this relief, much thanks. Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.


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[Assistant] Who has relieved you? Bernardo have my place. Give you good night.


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[Assistant] Chapter 38. England's greatest queen. The queen who almost wasn't. Do you remember Henry VIII? The English king who had six wives? He kept getting married because he wanted to have a son.


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[Assistant] And then when his third wife Jane Seymour finally gave birth to a baby boy, he hoped for another one.


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[Assistant] Back in the early days of the Renaissance, people often died of illnesses that wouldn't really be very serious today. So Henry VIII wanted another son in case anything happened to his oldest boy, little Prince Edward. But Henry VIII never had another son.


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[Assistant] When he died, Prince Edward became King Edward VI of England. Edward was only nine years old, so his uncles helped rule England for him.


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[Assistant] And Edward wasn't in very good health. He kept coughing and he was very thin. As Edward got older, he became even weaker. By the time he was 16, he was forced to stay in bed. Physicians tried every cure they knew.


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[Assistant] One cure was to put leeches on the young king to suck out some of his blood.


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[Assistant] Another was to have him swallow a live spider covered in molasses.


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[Assistant] But none of these cures worked. Soon everyone knew that the king was dying. But who would rule England next? Edward had no brothers, only two sisters.


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[Assistant] Mary the oldest sister was the daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine, the Princess of Aragon. Elizabeth, the younger sister,


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[Assistant] Was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, who had been beheaded.


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[Assistant] Even though England had never had a woman on the throne before, one of these two sisters would have to become queen. Their followers argued over who should have the throne. Mary's powerful supporters won the argument. Mary was declared the first queen of England.


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[Assistant] She rode through the streets of London to the Tower of London to be crowned, and her little sister Elizabeth


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[Assistant] Nelk down and promise to be faithful to the new queen.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth was very careful to say only kind things about her sister.


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[Assistant] In public, Elizabeth acted humble and loving to Mary. But the truth was that Elizabeth was frightened. She and Mary had never been good friends.


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[Assistant] Mary had been declared Princess of Wales heir to the English throne when she was born.


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[Assistant] Until she was a teenager, Mary had been treated like a queen in waiting.


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[Assistant] She had her own coat of arms, her own private apartments and 160 servants to wait on her.


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[Assistant] A herald announced to all the people that Elizabeth not marry.


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[Assistant] Was now Princess of Wales and heir to the throne.


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[Assistant] Henry VIII ordered Mary's coat of arms to be stripped from all her clothes and given to Elizabeth. He sent all of her servants away.


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[Assistant] Now the baby Elizabeth was carried around on the velvet litter. Mary had to ride or walk behind her.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth was given the household of servants, the special place to eat, and beautiful clothes made out of satin and silk.


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[Assistant] It would be hard to love your little sister if your parents took everything that belonged to you and gave it to her and then told you that you had to be her servant.


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[Assistant] Mary refused to admit that Elizabeth was now the princess.


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[Assistant] This is a title that belongs only to me, she told her father.


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[Assistant] But he ordered her to accept her new place. Elizabeth was the Princess of Wales. Mary was just a lady in waiting.


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[Assistant] Little Prince Edward was born. Immediately the herald announced that Edward, not Elizabeth, was now the heir to the throne.


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[Assistant] Henry took away Elizabeth's coat of arms, her servants, her velvet litter, and her special place to eat. She was sent to live in a house away from the castle.


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[Assistant] Her governess wrote a letter to the palace complaining that the little girl hadn't been given enough money to live on.


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[Assistant] She doesn't even have a decent nightgown or handkerchiefs, the governor subjected.


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[Assistant] Now that Elizabeth and Mary had both lost their positions as princesses, Mary was kinder to her little sister.


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[Assistant] But she never forgot how Elizabeth had taken her place. When she became queen


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[Assistant] She passed a law saying that Elizabeth had never really been the Princess of Wales.


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[Assistant] Then she accused Elizabeth of plotting against her.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth was afraid that she would be killed. She cried out, give me a minute to write my sister a letter. And then she scrawled on a piece of paper, I never talked or thought about any such thing as taking your throne away. May I die a shameful death if I did such a thing. Do not condemn me. But Mary refused to even read the letter.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth spent months in the Tower of London, expecting every morning that soldiers would drag her away and behead her.


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[Assistant] Mary couldn't find any evidence that Elizabeth had plotted against her.


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[Assistant] So finally, Mary let her sister go and live in a small dingy house in the country.


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[Assistant] Here, Elizabeth was surrounded by servants chosen by Mary and by soldiers who searched her house constantly for any signs of treason.


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[Assistant] She wasn't even allowed to go for a walk without special permission from Mary.


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[Assistant] Four years after Elizabeth's arrest, she was sitting under a tree reading the Bible in Greek. A soldier nearby watched her every move.


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[Assistant] Was he coming to tell her jailers that Mary had finally condemned her to death?


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[Assistant] Elizabeth stood up and watched the man dismount from his horse. But instead of speaking to the soldier behind her,


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[Assistant] The messenger fell on his knees in front of Elizabeth. Mary Queen of England is dead, he said.


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[Assistant] You are now Queen of England. God save the Queen!


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[Assistant] Imagine that you and your family live in Pennsylvania, in the eastern United States, not long before the Spanish-American War. You've always lived in Pennsylvania. It's the only home you know.


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[Assistant] But your father is having trouble finding work. And your parents have heard that out in the vast western territories of the United States, settlers can begin a new life. So they decide to pack up and head out to Oregon, all the way on the other side of North America.


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[Assistant] You'll travel to Oregon in a wagon pulled by oxen.


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[Assistant] Horses can't live on the prairie grass out west, but oxen can.


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[Assistant] Most of the wagon will be filled with food for your family instead.


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[Assistant] In order for you, your parents, and your older brother to reach Oregon safely, you'll need to take a thousand pounds of food with you. More than will fit in the back of a large pickup truck today.


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[Assistant] If you're like most families heading to Oregon, you'll soon discover that you've brought too much stuff. The more belongings you pack into your wagon, the heavier the wagon is, and the slower your oxen walk.


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[Assistant] As you ride along, you see that the families traveling ahead of you have begun to toss things out of the wagons as they go. Clothes. Toys. Books.


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[Assistant] Today you can still see marks in the ground with thousands of wagon wheels rattled through the trail. The trip was hard.


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[Assistant] In large families, not everyone could fit into the wagon, so family members took turns walking beside the oxen.


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[Assistant] Often they walked barefoot on scraped and blistered feet in the rain.


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[Assistant] Some pioneers, people traveling west in the 1800s, died when they were struck by lightning.


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[Assistant] If they caught the mysterious, deadly illness called cholera, they might die in just a few short hours.


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[Assistant] Their families would bury the dead by the side of the trail and move on.


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[Assistant] Every night the pioneers camped by the side of the trail. Every morning they got up before sunrise and made a fire.


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[Assistant] Without a fire, there would be no hot breakfast.


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[Assistant] But by the time the wagons reached the vast western plains, there were few trees and branches to make a fire with. Sometimes, pioneers might find a chair or a table that another wagon had tossed out and build a fire with the furniture. But more often, they had to collect dried buffalo dung.


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[Assistant] Which the settlers called buffalo chips. The dung burned almost as well as wood. Sometimes even buffalo chips couldn't be found.


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[Assistant] A minister named Samuel Parker, who followed the Oregon Trail out west, wrote,


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[Assistant] Dry bread and bacon consist of our breakfast, dinner, and supper.


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[Assistant] The bacon we cooked when we could obtain wood for fire, but when nothing but green grass could be seen, we ate our bacon without cooking.


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[Assistant] The trip out west took six months, but despite the long, hard journey, thousands and thousands of Americans decided to take the Oregon Trail. The eastern cities and states, from Atlanta, Georgia to Boston, Massachusetts, were filling up.


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[Assistant] In many cities it was hard for workers to find jobs, and in the countryside it was hard for young farmers to find land to buy.


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[Assistant] People from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston, and a dozen other cities began to move west.


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[Assistant] The U.S. government wanted these American settlers to claim the West for the United States. So as people went West, government officials went with them and divided the huge Western lands into areas called


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[Assistant] Once the territory became a state, the settlers who lived there could elect representatives to congress and have a voice in their own government.


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[Assistant] After Texas, which had been claimed by the United States from the Spanish, the first western territory to become a state was Iowa in 1846, long before the Civil War.


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[Assistant] The last was Arizona, which became a state in February of 1912. But there was a problem.


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[Assistant] The western territories to which the settlers were traveling weren't empty. Native Americans, nicknamed Indians, had been living there for centuries.


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[Assistant] As a matter of fact, many of the names of western states and towns come from Indian words. Nebraska, for example, comes from a word used by the Oto tribe, meaning flat water.


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[Assistant] Minnesota comes from a word used by the Dakota tribe that means sky-tinted water. At first, Native Americans were mostly friendly to the settlers. But as more and more pioneers arrived, the Native Americans began to see that this huge invasion would deprive them of their land.


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[Assistant] Skirmishes and battles were fought all over the West, but the sheer size of the U.S. Army eventually drove the Native Americans out of the lands where they had always lived.


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[Assistant] Instead, the United States marked off certain areas of land called reservations and told the Native American tribes that they could only live in these reserved places.


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[Assistant] Even after the reservations were set up, Native Americans continued to resist.


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[Assistant] In the territory that is now Montana, the Native American leader Crazy Horse, head of the Lakota Indians, refused to allow his people to be driven into the reservations. Instead,


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[Assistant] He called his warriors to join him near the Little Bighorn River and fight back.


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[Assistant] The U.S. soldiers who were sent to attack Crazy Horse and his men were commanded by a famous general named George Custer. Custer had fought in the Civil War.


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[Assistant] He was the youngest man to ever be made a general in the United States Army.


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[Assistant] But he had fewer than 700 men under his command, and he did not know.


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[Assistant] That almost four thousand Native American warriors had answered Crazy Horse's call.


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[Assistant] When Custer led his men into the battle of Little Bighorn, he was killed, along with hundreds of his men.


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[Assistant] Another famous Native American warrior, an Apache chief named Geronimo, actually led a band of Apaches in an escape from their reservation.


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[Assistant] I was born on the prairies, where the wind blew free, and there was nothing to break the light of the sun, he told his followers. I was born where there were no enclosures. Instead of accepting imprisonment on a reservation, Geronimo and his band broke out.


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[Assistant] For a whole year, they fought a guerilla war against the U.S. soldiers in the territories that now belong to the states of New Mexico and Arizona. But finally, Geronimo was taken prisoner.


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[Assistant] The western part of the United States no longer belonged to the Native Americans.


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[Assistant] Instead, the new western states became home not only to Americans from the east, but also to people who came from all over the world.


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[Assistant] People from Sweden moved to North and South Dakota. People from Ireland moved to Montana. People from China came to California.


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[Assistant] America was now a huge country, spreading over a vast continent.


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[Assistant] Farmers and cattle ranchers who raised grain and cows on the western plains needed a way to get their wheat.


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[Assistant] The buffalo that had once roamed through the plains began to disappear. Western settlers killed thousands of them.


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[Assistant] Sometimes shooting buffalo from railroad cars is the trains puffed by the herds.


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[Assistant] Buffalo Bill Cody, a famous frontiersman and scout for the army, earned his nickname because he shot more than 4,000 buffalo in a little over a year.


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[Assistant] The buffalo became an endangered species, a kind of animal that is in danger of disappearing from the earth. The American West had changed forever.


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[Assistant] In the United States, after World War I, life just seemed to get better and better.


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[Assistant] The doughboys had come home victorious. The stores were full of food. And everyone seemed to have plenty of money.


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[Assistant] Architects were designing triumphant new buildings called skyscrapers that rose up high above the roofs of America's cities.


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[Assistant] Schools were packed with students. For the first time in American history, almost everyone could read. And authors like William Faulkner, author of The Sound and the Fury, and Hendrik Willem van Loon, author of The Story of Mankind, were publishing books that made them famous.


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[Assistant] Almost three hundred plays were performed in New York City alone.


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[Assistant] Musicians sang silly, light-hearted songs like, Yes, we have no bananas. And, I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate.


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[Assistant] Dance marathons, all night contests where the contestants had to keep moving without once stopping or falling asleep were held all over the country.


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[Assistant] Everywhere new things were happening. The first Miss America pageant was held. A 16-year-old girl from Washington, D.C., Margaret Gorman, won. The first Oscar awards for the movies were handed out.


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[Assistant] In his little plane, the spirit of St. Louis, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly alone without stopping across the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing seemed impossible.


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[Assistant] During the 1920s, hundreds of thousands of people were spending money on something called the stock market.


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[Assistant] A market is a place where people go to buy and sell. Many cities have a farmer's market where people with gardens come with their extra vegetables and sell them to others who don't have gardens. The stock market is a place where people buy stock, and stock is a small portion of a company.


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[Assistant] We learned about stocks in Chapter 16, when the chocolate factory owner took money from his friends to improve his factory and promised them that


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[Assistant] In return, they would get some of the profits at the end of the year. He was selling them stock.


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[Assistant] Each friend now owned part of the company and would get part of the money that the company made. They had become stockholders.


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[Assistant] If the chocolate factory did well, each stockholder would make money at the end of the year.


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[Assistant] But, if the chocolate factory didn't make any profit, the money that each stockholder gave to the factory owner would be gone.


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[Assistant] As a matter of fact, if the factory was really doing poorly,


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[Assistant] The stockholders might even have to chip in some more money to help pay salaries and keep the factory open.


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[Assistant] In the United States, people who wanted to sell parts of their companies, and people who wanted to buy those stocks because they hoped to share in the year-end profits, all met together in an area of New York City called Wall Street.


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[Assistant] The name comes from a real wall that was built along the street in the 17th century to protect the original Dutch settlers of the city from the attacks of Native Americans and hostile Englishmen.


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[Assistant] In the early 1800s, a group of businessmen decided to open a stock exchange on Wall Street.


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[Assistant] There, company owners and company buyers could come to buy and sell stocks. This place of business was called the New York Stock Exchange.


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[Assistant] In the 1920s, after the end of World War I, factories and companies were making wagonloads of money. People who bought stock in those companies were making lots of money too, sharing in the company profits. If they spent a hundred dollars, they got a thousand dollars back.


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[Assistant] Buying stocks seemed like the easiest way in the world to earn money.


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[Assistant] People were so excited about this easy money that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on stocks. Sometimes they even borrowed money to buy stocks. After all, they were sure they would make enough profit to pay back the loan.


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[Assistant] But when factories and companies are raking in money, more factories get built and more companies get started. More sellers compete for the same buyers. The buying starts to slow down. Money gets a little tighter and a little scarcer.


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[Assistant] On October 24th, 1929, people began to sell off their stock. As they sold their stock, others began to think that it might be a good idea to sell as well.


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[Assistant] With so many people selling, and not too many people wanting to buy, the prices of the stocks had to go down, and down, and down.


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[Assistant] Think of it this way. If twenty people want a candy bar, and one person has five candy bars to sell, the person with the candy bars can probably charge two dollars per candy bar, and at least five of the twenty people will be willing to pay it.


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[Assistant] But if twenty people have candy bars that they really want to sell, and only one person wants to buy a candy bar, all twenty people will charge as little as possible for their candy bars, hoping that the hungry person will pick their five-cent candy bar instead of another seller's fifteen-cent bar.


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[Assistant] The prices of stocks kept going down and down and down. More people sold their stock, hoping to get some money back for it, before the prices dropped even more.


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[Assistant] The value of the stocks went down even more. A man who owned $50,000 worth of stock on the morning of October 24th found, at the end of the day, that his stock was worth less than $100. This selling went on for a week. It was known as the Wall Street Crash.


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[Assistant] The worst day of the whole crash was Tuesday, October 29, 1929.


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[Assistant] On that day, which became known as Black Tuesday, 14 billion dollars worth of stock lost so much of its value that it was worth almost nothing.


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[Assistant] Stockholders who had put most of their money into buying stocks now had no money at all.


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[Assistant] Many owed loans to banks that they couldn't possibly pay. The banks couldn't get their money back, so the banks themselves had to close. Some businessmen were plunged so deeply into great debt that they killed themselves.


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[Assistant] Buyers and sellers lost so much money that for the next ten years most Americans had very little to spend. They didn't buy new clothes. They didn't buy new cars.


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[Assistant] They didn't buy a lot of food. And they certainly didn't buy Christmas presents. If you got an orange for Christmas, you were a very lucky child. This time, the 1930s, was called the Great Depression.


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[Assistant] To make matters worse, the weather turned bad.


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[Assistant] Tremendous droughts killed off hundreds of thousands of acres of crops. The Great Plains of the United States had so little rain that winds picked up the dust and blew it back and forth in huge dust storms.


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[Assistant] During a dust storm, people locked themselves in their houses, put towels under the doors and around the windows, and still found an inch of dirt all over their floors, beds, and furniture at the end of the storm. The middle of America became known as the Dust Bowl.


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[Assistant] Unable to make a living on their dry farms, thousands of Americans left the Dust Bowl states and headed to California. These emigrants were called Okies.


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[Assistant] Because although many hailed from Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas, one out of every five came from Oklahoma.


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[Assistant] In 1932, President Hoover and the United States Congress set up something called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The RFC was like a bank that would lend money to banks, businesses and farms so that they could keep going until times got a little better. The RFC was a good start, but it wasn't enough.


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[Assistant] Another American leader, a New Yorker named Franklin Delano Roosevelt, promised Americans that if he were elected president instead of Herbert Hoover, he would give America a New Deal that would reverse the Great Depression. Roosevelt


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[Assistant] Nicknamed FDR, had suffered from a disease called polio as a child.


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[Assistant] He was in a wheelchair because he couldn't walk, but even from his wheelchair he seemed more energetic and more full of ideas than Herbert Hoover.


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[Assistant] And Americans were desperate for an answer to their poverty.


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[Assistant] Now that he was president, FDR wanted to get immediate help to people who were homeless and hungry. He wanted to provide jobs for people who were out of work. And he wanted to change the stock market and the banks so that a great crash could never happen again.


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[Assistant] Along with Congress, FDR created new so-called companies that would give Americans jobs and salaries. The Civilian Conservation Corps, nicknamed the CCC, hired men to plant forests


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[Assistant] Fight fires and control floods. The Works Progress Administration, or WPA, hired even more men to build roads and bridges. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, or AAA, helped farmers rebuild their herds and get their fields back.


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[Assistant] FDR created so many programs with abbreviations like CCC, WPA, and AAA that Americans said,


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[Assistant] FDR is making alphabet soup for the USA.


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[Assistant] FDR's alphabet soup put real soup into the bellies of millions of hungry Americans, and his New Deal would slowly bring the United States out of the Great Depression.


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[Assistant] The country of Spain hadn't taken part in World War I.


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[Assistant] It hadn't fought against Russia or Great Britain or Japan. It hadn't been divided up during the Peace of Versailles or lost thousands of soldiers in the battles of the Great War. Despite that,


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[Assistant] Spain was no more peaceful than any other part of the world.


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[Assistant] The king of Spain, Alfonso XIII, had inherited the throne even before his birth. His father had died when his mother was still pregnant, so the unborn Alfonso became king.


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[Assistant] Alfonso's mother ruled for him as regent until 1902. In that year, the 16-year-old Alfonso was coronated, crowned, in the Great Cathedral in Seville.


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[Assistant] He was the youngest crowned king in the world at that time.


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[Assistant] While Alfonso XIII was being coronated in an elaborate ceremony that lasted for hours, a little boy named Francisco Franco Bahamonde was sitting on the doorstep of his house, tossing rocks into a puddle, and wondering what he would be when he grew up.


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[Assistant] Francisco's father had left their family years before. His mother struggled to feed her family and raise her children. Francisco didn't want to spend the rest of his life struggling to survive.


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[Assistant] He decided that the life of a soldier was a good one for him.


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[Assistant] When he grew old enough, Francisco Franco entered the Spanish army and became an officer.


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[Assistant] He fought well and always obeyed orders. He won medals for bravery and was promoted again and again.


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[Assistant] Even gave the attention of King Alfonso XIII.


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[Assistant] When Franco was only 28, Alfonso put him in charge of the Spanish Foreign Legion.


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[Assistant] A Spanish fighting force commanded by Spanish officers, but mostly made up of soldiers from other countries.


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[Assistant] When World War I began, Spain remained neutral. Instead of fighting, Spain made a lot of money by selling steel, machines, and engines to the countries who were fighting.


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[Assistant] But when the war ended, so did the sales. Spanish factories closed. Ships sat idle. Many Spanish workers lost their jobs.


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[Assistant] Three years after the Great War ended, Spain had to fight a smaller war.


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[Assistant] A Spanish territory called Morocco, a small strip of northern Africa just across the Mediterranean Sea from Spain, rebelled.


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[Assistant] Spain sent its army across the Straits of Gibraltar, the small neck of the Mediterranean Sea, between Spain and North Africa, to stop the revolt. Over 10,000 Spanish soldiers were killed by the much smaller army of Moroccan rebels. The slaughter humiliated Spain and angered the Spanish people.


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[Assistant] Spain was poorer than ever, and unhappy over the loss of its men.


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[Assistant] As in so many countries, hard times gave revolutionaries a chance to call for change.


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[Assistant] These revolutionaries were known as Red Spain.


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[Assistant] For many years, Spanish rebels had been insisting that Spain needed to get rid of its king and to become a republic with a constitution, like so many other countries in Europe.


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[Assistant] These red Spanish wanted to see the end of the monarchy and the beginning of rule by the common people.


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[Assistant] As a matter of fact, Red Spain had tried more than once to get rid of the king. Alfonso XIII had almost been assassinated on his wedding day.


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[Assistant] Wealthy aristocratic Spaniards who wanted Spain to stay a monarchy were called citizens of Black Spain.


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[Assistant] In this traditional Spain, the king and his noblemen had most of the power. The army, which had many Spanish noblemen as officers, tended to be on the side of Black Spain. In the five years after the Moroccan War, Red Spain and Black Spain quarreled with each other and threatened violence.


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[Assistant] Alfonso XIII became less and less popular.


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[Assistant] He was blamed for the Spanish losses in the Moroccan War, for ignoring the needs of his people, and for having too much power.


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[Assistant] By 1931, Alfonso XIII could see that, if he kept holding on to his power as King, Spain would break apart into civil war between Reds and Blacks. So he composed a public statement to be read to the Spanish people.


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[Assistant] It is clear that I no longer enjoy the love of my people, he wrote.


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[Assistant] I could very easily find means to support my royal powers against all comers, but I am determined to have nothing to do with setting one of my countrymen against another in a fratricidal civil war.


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[Assistant] Then Alfonso XIII left Spain and went to Rome.


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[Assistant] While he was gone, Spain held an election for an assembly, a Spanish parliament.


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[Assistant] Spanish voters elected a president. The assembly wrote out a constitution. Spain had become a republic. And it looked as though red Spain had triumphed over black Spain for good.


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[Assistant] But although Alfonso XIII had told his people that he didn't want civil war, he also refused to give up his throne.


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[Assistant] Even in exile, he claimed to be the rightful ruler of Spain. And the new Republican government wasn't supported by all of Spain.


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[Assistant] Some Spaniards wanted Alfonso XIII to come back to his country. Others wanted the Roman Catholic Church to have more power than it was allowed under the new constitution of Spain.


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[Assistant] One area of Spain, called Catalonia, started to insist that Catalonia should be a free country in its own right, independent of Spain.


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[Assistant] And independence fighters took up weapons and started battles in the streets. Spain was full of political groups, each wanting something slightly different. Leaders of each group were assassinated by others.


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[Assistant] Down in Morocco, Spanish soldiers who were supposed to be keeping order in this restless Spanish territory declared that they would no longer obey the republican government of Spain.


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[Assistant] They were soon joined by army soldiers in Spain itself.


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[Assistant] By now, Franco had become a general in the Spanish army.


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[Assistant] He was the youngest general in Europe, just as Alfonso had been Europe's youngest king.


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[Assistant] The Spanish army, calling itself the Nationalist Party of Spain, made Franco their leader.


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[Assistant] After the army rebelled, the fighting in Spain settled down into two opposing sides.


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[Assistant] The nationalists, the army, under Francisco Franco, didn't want Alfonso XIII back. But they did believe that Spain needed a strong, decisive leader, like Mussolini of Italy.


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[Assistant] The other side, called the Popular Front, were the Spaniards who wanted Spain to keep its constitution. The Spanish Civil War, between the Nationalists, who had adopted fascist ideas about the need for a strong leader, and the Popular Front, who wanted Spain to be a republic, went on for three years.


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[Assistant] Many Spanish were killed in the battles between the Popular Front and the Nationalists. The rest of the world got involved.


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[Assistant] Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were on the side of the nationalists.


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[Assistant] Communist Russia, on the other hand, sent money and weapons to the Popular Front, because the Soviets thought that the Popular Front might be sympathetic to communism.


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[Assistant] So the United States decided to support the fascist nationalists and General Franco.


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[Assistant] So that the Communist Party wouldn't have the chance to gain more power. The Nationalists slowly won the upper hand.


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[Assistant] Nationalist soldiers took over the west of the country and began to march north and east.


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[Assistant] The two largest cities of Spain, Barcelona and Madrid, remained under the control of the Popular Front. But after months and months of fighting, the Soviet Union saw that the Popular Front cause was doomed, and stopped sending help.


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[Assistant] Now the Popular Front had lost its steady supply of weapons and supplies.


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[Assistant] Nationalists took over Barcelona and then surrounded Madrid. A siege began and went on for months. Madrid is a hungry city.


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[Assistant] In the districts of Madrid that have been most heavily bombed, it is a common sight to see men, women, and children foraging among the ruins of houses for parts of beams, pieces of flooring, broken furniture, anything so long as it is wood and will burn.


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[Assistant] Finally, the Popular Front was forced to give up the last city that they still controlled. On March 1st, 1939, Madrid surrendered.


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[Assistant] Francisco Franco and his army now controlled Spain.


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[Assistant] Another New York Times reporter described his experiences driving through Spain and seeing peasants and school children everywhere giving a straight armed fascist salute. The country, he wrote, was orderly, subdued, if not unified.


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[Assistant] There are no books on sale, but there are newspapers, cigarettes, large loaves of bread, coffee, and wine.


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[Assistant] In the train soldiers fill the compartments and aisles, sit or lie on the platforms, overflow into the vestibules.


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[Assistant] Like Mussolini, he would control his country with his army.


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[Assistant] Franco earned a reputation as a ruthless, intolerant dictator.


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[Assistant] Those who opposed him were taken prisoner and often died of starvation if they weren't put to death.


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[Assistant] Later, historians estimated that as many as 200,000 Spaniards died because of Franco's rule.


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[Assistant] Two years after the surrender of Madrid, Alfonso XIII died in Rome on the last day of February 1941. He left the throne of Spain to his son, Prince Juan Carlos, who had been born in Rome just three years before.


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[Assistant] It seems that the worries and wants of a young boy never cease.


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[Assistant] Now that I had my pups, another obstacle had cropped up. This one looked absolutely impossible.


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[Assistant] I had to have a coon skin so I could train them.


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[Assistant] With my three little traps and the bulldog determination, I set out to trap Mr. Ringtail. For three solid weeks, I practically lived on the river. I tried every trick I knew.


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[Assistant] It was no use. I just couldn't catch the wily old coons. In desperation I went to my grandfather. He smiled as he listened to my tale of woe. Well, we're gonna have to do something about that, he said.


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[Assistant] Now you watch the store while I go over to my tool shed. I'll be right back.


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[Assistant] You wouldn't think a fella could catch a coon with this brace in bed, would ya? I thought he was kidding me and it made me feel bad.


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[Assistant] Why, Grandpa, I said, you couldn't catch a coon in a jillion years with that thing. You just don't have any idea how smart they are. Yes, you can, he said. You bet your boots you can. Why, when I was a boy I caught coons on top of coons with one of these things. I saw Grandpa was serious, and I got interested.


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[Assistant] He laid the braids down on the counter, picked up a small paper sack and filled it about half full of horseshoe nails.


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[Assistant] Now, you do everything exactly as I tell you, he said, and you'll catch that coon.


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[Assistant] Yes sir, Grandpa. I said, I will. I'll do anything to catch one of them.


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[Assistant] Now, the first thing you'll need is some bright objects, he said. The best thing is bright shiny tin.


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[Assistant] You go down along the river where there are a lot of coon tracks. Find a good solid log close by and bore a hole down about six inches.


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[Assistant] Drop one of the bright pieces of tin down in the hole and be sure it's laying right on the bottom.


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[Assistant] I was all ears. I didn't wanna miss one word my grandfather said. Now and then I would glance at him as if he was kidding me. In a serious voice he went on talking.


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[Assistant] Now pay close attention, he said, because this is the main part of the trap. He took four of the horseshoe nails from the sack.


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[Assistant] With the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he made a small O about the size of the bit, which was an inch and a half in diameter.


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[Assistant] Drive these nails in on a slant opposite each other. Holding one of the nails in his right hand, he showed me the right angle.


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[Assistant] The ends of the nails will enter the hole by halfway between the top and the piece of tin, he continued.


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[Assistant] Leave an opening between the sharp points big enough for a coon to get his paw through. He asked me if I understood. Again, I nodded my head and moved a little closer to him. How is that going to catch a coon, Grandpa? I asked. It'll catch him all right, he said, and it won't fail. You see, a coon is a curious little animal.


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[Assistant] Anything that is bright and shiny attracts him. He will reach in and pick it up.


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[Assistant] When his paw closes on the bright object, it balls up, and when he starts to pull it from the hole, the sharp ends of the nails will gouge into his paw, and he's caught. He looked over at me. Well, what do you think of it? He asked.


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[Assistant] I closed my eyes and in my mind I could see the funnel-like entrance of the hole and the sharp, slanting points of the nails.


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[Assistant] I could see the cone reaching in for the shiny piece of metal.


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[Assistant] Naturally, his paw would be much larger when enclosed than it was when he reached in. It would be impossible for it to pass the sharp nails.


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[Assistant] It was all looking pretty good to me, and I was on the point of saying so, when it hit me.


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[Assistant] By all the coon had to do was open his paw, drop the object, and he was free.


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[Assistant] This did make me feel bad. With tears in my eyes, I started for the door. Wait a minute, Grandpa said. I'm not kidding you.


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[Assistant] Oh, I know I like to have my jokes same as any man, but I meant every word I said. I turned around and looked at him.


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[Assistant] He had stopped laughing and there was a hurt expression on his face.


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[Assistant] You know, he said, a coon has more than one peculiarity about him. When I was a boy I had a pet coon. By watching him I saw and learned a lot of things.


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[Assistant] He had a den in an old holla tree in our front yard.


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[Assistant] I don't know the number of times I'd have to climb that tree and get my mother's scissors, buttons, needles, and thimble from his den. Why he'd even carry out our knives, forks, and spoons. Anything that was bright and shiny, he took to his den. Grandpa stopped talking for a few minutes. I could see a faraway look in his eyes.


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[Assistant] Once again, he was living in those long ago days. I waited in silence for him to go on with his story.


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[Assistant] One of the most peculiar things about that coon, he said, was his front feet.


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[Assistant] Once he wrapped those little paws around something he would never let go. My mother had an old churn.


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[Assistant] It was one of those cans with a small hole in the lid for the Dasher.


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[Assistant] When she would get through churning, she would take the Dasha out to wash it.


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[Assistant] That crazy coon would climb up on top of the chair and poke his little grump paw through the hole and get a fistful of butter.


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[Assistant] The hole was small, and when he closed his paw, he couldn't get it back out. All he had to do was open it, drop the butter, and he would be free. But do you think he would? No, sir.


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[Assistant] Once he reaches in and gets hold of that tin, he's caught because he will never open his paw. With my confidence restored, it all sounded pretty good to me, and I was anxious to try out this wonderful plan. I thanked him, and taking the brace to nails, I left the store.


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[Assistant] By the time I reached home, it was too late in the day to start making my traps. That night, I talked the idea over with Papa.


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[Assistant] I've heard of coons being caught that way, he said, but I never paid much attention to it. Your grandfather should know, though, for he was quite a coon hunter when he was a boy. What he told me, I said, it never fails. Papa asked if I wanted him to help make my trap. No, I said, I think I can do it myself. I didn't sleep too well that night.


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[Assistant] I've bored holes, drove nails and fought coons practically all night. Early the next morning, I went to the trash pile.


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[Assistant] As I stirred around in the rusty old cans, I thought of another time I had searched for a can. Finally, I found the one I wanted. It was bright and shiny.


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[Assistant] Everything was going along just fine until mama caught me cutting out the circles of tin with her scissors.


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[Assistant] I always swore she could find the biggest witches of any woman in the Ozarks. That time she overdid it. I was almost to the river before the stinging stopped. It wasn't hard to find places for my traps.


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[Assistant] All along the river, large sycamore logs lay partly submerged in the clear blue water.


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[Assistant] On one where I could see the muddy little tracks of the ringtails, I bored a hole, dropped in a piece of tin, and drove my nails. On down the river, I went making my traps. I stopped when I ran out of nails. Altogether, I had fourteen traps. That night, Papa asked me how I was making out. Oh, all right, I said. I've got fourteen of them made.


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[Assistant] The next morning I was up with the chickens. I took my pups with me as I just knew I'd have a big reentail trap and I wanted them to see it.


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[Assistant] I was a disappointed boy when I peeked out of a cane break at my last trap and didn't see a coon all the way home. I tried to figure out what I had done wrong. I went to Papa.


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[Assistant] He put his thinking cap on and thought the situation over.


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[Assistant] Maybe you left too much sense around when you made those traps, he said.


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[Assistant] If you did, it'll take a while for it to go away.


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[Assistant] Now I wouldn't get too impatient. I'm pretty sure you'll catch one sooner or later.


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[Assistant] Papa's words perked me up just like air does deflated in a tube. He was right. I had simply left too much scent around my traps. All I had to do was wait until it disappeared, and I'd have my coon hide.


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[Assistant] Morning after morning, it was the same old disappointment. No coo.


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[Assistant] When a week had gone by and still no results from my traps, I gave up.


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[Assistant] What little patience I had was completely gone.


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[Assistant] I didn't get up to run my trap line. I stayed in bed. What was the use? It was just a waste of time.


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[Assistant] When the family sat down to breakfast, I heard my oldest sister say, mama, isn't Billy going to get up for breakfast? Why is he in his room? Mama asked. I didn't know. I thought he was down looking at his traps. I heard Papa say, I'll go wake him up. He came to the door and said, you better get up, Billy. Breakfast is ready. I don't want any breakfast. I said, I'm not hungry.


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[Assistant] Papa took one look at me and saw I had a bad case of the ring-tailed blues. He came over and sat down on the bed. What's the matter? He asked. You having coon trouble?


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[Assistant] Grandpa lied to me, Papa, I said. I should have known better. Whoever heard of anyone catching a coon with a brace and a bit and a few horseshoe nails? I wouldn't say that, Papa said.


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[Assistant] I don't think your grandpa deliberately lied to you. Besides, I've heard of coons being caught that way.


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[Assistant] Well I don't think I've done anything wrong, I said. I've done everything exactly as he said and I haven't caught one yet. I still think it's that scent, Papa said.


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[Assistant] You know, someone told me or I read it somewhere that it takes about a week for scent to die away. How long has it been since you made those traps? It's been over a week, I said. Well, the way I figure it's about time for you to catch one.


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[Assistant] Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if you came in with one any day now. After Papa had left the room, I lay thinking of what he had said. Any day now. I got up and hurried into my clothes.


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[Assistant] As soon as I was finished with breakfast, I called my pups and lit out for the river. The first trap was empty. So was the second one.


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[Assistant] It's no use, I'll never catch one, and I so need the skin to train my pup.


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[Assistant] On the way to my third trap I had to walk through a thick stand of wild cane. It was tough going and my pups started whimpering. I stopped and picked them up.


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[Assistant] I came plowing out of the matted mass and was right on the trap before I realized it.


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[Assistant] I was met by a loud squall. I was so surprised, I dropped the pups. There he was. My first coon.


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[Assistant] He was humped up on the stickamore log, growling and showing his teeth. He kept jerking his front paw, which was jammed deep in the hole I had bored. He was trapped by his own curiosity.


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[Assistant] I couldn't move and I felt like my wind had been cut off. I kept hearing a noise but couldn't make out what it was. The movement of the boy pup shook me from my trance.


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[Assistant] The unidentified sound was his bawling. He was trying to climb up on the log and get to the coon. I yelled at him and darted in to get hold of his collar. On seeing my movement, the coon let out another squall. It scared me half to death. I froze in my tracks and started yelling again at my pup.


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[Assistant] The girl pup worked around behind the coon and climbed up on the log. I screamed at her. She paid no attention to me.


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[Assistant] Digging his sharp little claws in the bark, the boy pup made it to the top. He didn't hesitate, straight down that sycamore log he charged. With teeth bared, the coon waited. When my pup was about two feet from him, he made a lunge.


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[Assistant] The coon just seemed to pull my pup up under his stomach and went to work with tooth and claw.


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[Assistant] The girl pup saved him. Like a cat in a corn crib she sneaked in from behind and sank her needle-sharp teeth in the coon's back.


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[Assistant] She came running to me, yelping her head off. I grabbed her up in my arms and looked for the boy pop.


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[Assistant] With the pup under each arm and running as fast as I could, I lit out for the house. Coming out of the bottoms into a fresh plowed field, I set my pups down so I could get a little more speed. I started yelling as soon as I came inside of the house.


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[Assistant] Mama came flying out with my sisters right behind her. Papa was out by the barn harnessing his team. Mama yelled something to him about a snake. He dropped the harness.


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[Assistant] Jumped over the rail fence and in a long lope started for me.


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[Assistant] Mama reached me first. She grabbed me and shouted, Where did it bite you?


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[Assistant] Got what? Mama asked. A big toon, I said. The biggest one in the river bottoms. He's this big, Mama.


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[Assistant] My sister's seeing mama crying, puckered up and started bawling.


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[Assistant] Something busted loose inside me and I cried a little too.


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[Assistant] Up until this time, Papa hadn't said a word. He just stood looking on. Yeaah now, he said.


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[Assistant] Let's have none of this crying, he didn't mean to scare anyone.


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[Assistant] Taking his handkerchief from his pocket, he stepped over to Mama, put his arm around her, and started drying her eyes. Mama poked her head around him and glared at me.


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[Assistant] Everyone's mad at me, I said, and I haven't done anything but catch the biggest coon on the river. Mama came over. I'm sorry, she said. I didn't mean to be cross, but you did scare me. I thought a rattlesnake had bitten you.


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[Assistant] Now that that's all settled, Papa said, we had better go get that coon. Looking at Mama, he said,


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[Assistant] On the way, mama noticed some blood on my shirt. She stopped me and started looking me over.


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[Assistant] Where did that come from, she asked. Did that coon bite you? No mama, I said. I didn't get close enough for him to bite me. With a worried look on her face, she jerked out my shirt. You don't seem to be scratched anywhere, she said. Maybe this is where it came from, papa said. He reached down and picked up my boy pup.


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[Assistant] His little black nose was split wide open and was bleeding. I saw a relieved look come over mama's face. Looking at me, she started shaking her head. I don't know, she said. I just don't know.


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[Assistant] Did that coon get hold of this pup? Papa asked. He sure did, Papa, I said. But it wasn't the coon's fault. If it hadn't been for little Anne, he'd have eaten him up. I told how my dogs had tied into the coon. Papa laughed as he fondled my pup.


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[Assistant] This dog is gonna be a coon hound, he said, and I mean a good one. The coon started squalling as soon as we came in sight.


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[Assistant] My goodness, Mama said, you wouldn't think anything so small would be so vicious. Papa picked up a club.


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[Assistant] Now, everybody stand back out of the way, he said. This won't take long.


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[Assistant] My pups were wanting to get to the coon so badly that they were hard to hold I had to squeeze them up tight to keep them from jumping right out of my arms.


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[Assistant] My sisters, with eyes as big as blue marbles, got behind Mama and peeked around her. Papa whacked the coon a good one across the head. He let out a loud squall, growled and showed his teeth. He tried hard to get to Papa, but the trap held him. The girls buried their faces in Mama's dress.


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[Assistant] I heard the tall cane rattling as they ran for the house.


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[Assistant] After the coon was killed, I walked over. Papa was trying to get the coon's paw from the trap. He couldn't do it. Taking a pair of pliers from his pocket, he said,


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[Assistant] It's a good thing I had these along or we would have had to cut his foot off.


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[Assistant] After Papa had pulled the nails, he lifted the coon's paw from the hole. There, clamped firmly in it, was the bright piece of tin. In a low voice, Papa said, Well, I'll be darned. All he had to do was open it up, and he was free. But he wouldn't do it. Your grandfather was right.


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[Assistant] A sorrowful look came over Papa's face as he ran his fingers through the soft yellow hair. Billy, he said, I want you to take a hammer and pull the nails from every one of those traps. It's summertime now and their fur isn't any good. Besides, I don't think this is very sportsmanlike. The coon doesn't have a chance.


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[Assistant] It's alright this time, you needed this one, but from now on, I want you to catch them with your dogs. That way they have a 50-50 chance. I will, Papa, I said. That's what I intended to do.


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[Assistant] While we were skinning the coon, Papa asked me when I was going to start training my dogs. I don't know, I said. Do you think they're too young? No, I don't think so, he said. I've heard that the younger they are, the better it is. Well, in that case, I said, I'll start tomorrow.


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[Assistant] With the help of my oldest sister, we started giving my pups their first lessons.


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[Assistant] She would hold their collars while I made trails with the hide for them to follow.


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[Assistant] I'd climb trees that leaned out over the river, jump out into the water, swim to the other side and make trails up and down the bank.


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[Assistant] With a long pole and wire, I'd drag the hide on top of rail fences, swing it through the air, and let it touch the ground 20 or 30 feet away. I did everything with that hide a coon would do, and probably a lot of things a coon couldn't do. It was a beautiful sight to see my pups work those trails.


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[Assistant] At first they were awkward and didn't know what to do, but they would never quit trying.


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[Assistant] Old Dan would get so eager and excited he would overrun a trail. Where it twisted or turned he would run straight on balling up a storm.


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[Assistant] It didn't take him long to realize that a smart old coon didn't always run in a straight line. Little Anne never overran a trail.


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[Assistant] She would wiggle and twist, cry and whine and pretty soon she would figure it out. At first they were afraid of water.


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[Assistant] I never would admit it even to myself. I always said that they just didn't like to get wet. They would follow the trail to the stream and stop. Sitting down on their rears, they would cry and beg for help.


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[Assistant] With a pop bun to each arm, I'd wade out into the stream and set them down in the cool water.


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[Assistant] Nine times out of ten, one pup would swim one way and the other one would go just the opposite way. I had a time with this part of their training, but my persistence had no bounds. Wasn't long until they loved the water.


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[Assistant] Old Dan would jump as far out as he could and practically knock the river dry.


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[Assistant] Little Anne would ease herself in and swim like a muskrat for the opposite shore.


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[Assistant] I taught my dogs every trick I knew and any new ones I heard about.


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[Assistant] I taught them how to split up on a riverbank to search for the hidden trail.


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[Assistant] Because it was impossible to tell where a coon would come out of the water.


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[Assistant] Sometimes he might swim downstream and other times he might swim upstream. Maybe he would come back to the bank he had just left.


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[Assistant] Or he would cross over to the other side. Perhaps he would stop in the middle of the stream on an old drift.


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[Assistant] Sometimes he would come out of the water by catching the dangling limbs of a leaning birch and climbing up, never touching the bank.


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[Assistant] Or he could come out on the same trail he used to go in and backtrack.


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[Assistant] He would sometimes crawl up under an undermined bank or into an old muskrat den.


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[Assistant] One of the favorite tricks of a smart old ringtail is the tree barking trick.


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[Assistant] This he accomplished by running far up on the side of a tree and using his stout legs for leverage, springing 20 or 30 feet away before touching the ground.


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[Assistant] Dumb hounds trail up to the tree and start bawling treed.


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[Assistant] I taught my dogs to circle for a good hundred yards to be sure he was still in the tree before bawling.


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[Assistant] In order to learn more about coon hunting, I'd hang around my grandfather's store and listen to the stories told by the coon hunters. Some of the tales I heard were long and tall, but I believed them all.


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[Assistant] I could always tell when grandpa was kidding me by the twinkle in his eyes.


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[Assistant] He told me how a coon could climb right up the fog and disappear in the stars.


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[Assistant] And how he could leap on a horse's back and run him over your dogs.


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[Assistant] I didn't care, for I love to hear the tall tales. Anything that had a coon hair in it, I believed completely.


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[Assistant] All through that summer and into the late fall the training went on.


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[Assistant] Although I was worn down to a frazzle, I was a happy boy. I figured I was ready for the ringtails.


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[Assistant] And I'm gonna let you rest. I want you to be in good shape the night it opens.


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[Assistant] It was wonderful indeed how I could have heart to heart talks with my dogs and they always seemed to understand.


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[Assistant] Each question I asked was answered in their own doggish way, although they couldn't talk in my terms.


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[Assistant] Other times I could hear the answer in a low whine or feel it in the soft caress of a warm flicking tongue. In some way, they would always answer it.


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[Assistant] It transpired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard Gatsby's name around his office in a connection which he either wouldn't reveal or didn't fully understand.


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[Assistant] This was his day off, and with laudable initiative he had hurried out to sea. It was a random shot, and yet the reporter's instinct was right.


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[Assistant] Gatsby's notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities upon his past,


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[Assistant] Such as the underground pipeline to Canada attached themselves to him.


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[Assistant] And there was one persistent story that he didn't live in a house at all.


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[Assistant] But in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore,


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[Assistant] Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota isn't easy to say. James Gatz. That was really, or at least legally, his name.


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[Assistant] He had changed it at the age of 17 and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career.


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[Assistant] When he saw Dan Cody's yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior.


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[Assistant] But it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the two alumni,


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[Assistant] An informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.


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[Assistant] I suppose we'd had the name ready for a long time, even then.


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[Assistant] His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people. His imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.


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[Assistant] The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg Long Island sprang from his platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God.


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[Assistant] A phrase which, if it means anything, means just that, and it must be about his father's business.


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[Assistant] The service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.


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[Assistant] So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a 17 year old boy would be likely to invent. And to this conception, he was faithful to the end.


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[Assistant] For over a year he had been beading his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam digger and a salmon fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed.


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[Assistant] His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy work of the bracing days. He knew women early.


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[Assistant] And since they spoiled him, he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant.


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[Assistant] Of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted.


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[Assistant] But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night.


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[Assistant] A universe of ineffable guardiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor.


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[Assistant] Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace.


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[Assistant] For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination.


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[Assistant] There were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing.


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[Assistant] An instinct toward his future glory had led him some months before to the small Lutheran college of Saint Olaf in southern Minnesota. He stayed there two weeks


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[Assistant] This made its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself.


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[Assistant] And despising the janitor's work with which he was to pay his way through.


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[Assistant] A product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since 75.


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[Assistant] The transactions in Montana Copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust, but on the verge of soft-mindedness.


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[Assistant] And suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money.


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[Assistant] The none-too-savory ramifications by which Ella Kay, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Manteinon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht.


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[Assistant] More common knowledge in the turgid sub-journalism of 1902.


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[Assistant] He had been coasting along all two hospitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz's destiny in Little Girl Bay.


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[Assistant] To young gats resting on his oars and looking up at the rail deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world.


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[Assistant] I suppose he smiled at Cody. He had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled.


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[Assistant] At any rate, Cody asked him a few questions, one of them elicited the brand new name, and found that he was quick and extravagantly ambitious.


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[Assistant] A few days later we took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white duck trousers, and a yachting cap.


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[Assistant] And when the two alumni left for the West Indies in the Barbary Coast, Gatsby left, too.


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[Assistant] He was employed in a vague personal capacity. While he remained with Cody, he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailer, for Dan Cody's sober knew what laughish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about.


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[Assistant] And he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby.


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[Assistant] The arrangement lasted five years, during which the boat went three times around the continent.


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[Assistant] It might have lasted indefinitely, except for the fact that Ella Kay came on board one night in Boston, and a week later Dan Colby inhospitably died.


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[Assistant] The pioneer de Bochey, who during one phase of American life brought back to the eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little.


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[Assistant] Sometimes in the course of gay parties, women used to rub champagne into his hair.


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[Assistant] For himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone. And it was from Cody that he inherited money, a legacy of $25,000. He didn't get it.


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[Assistant] The vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man.


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[Assistant] He told me all this very much later, but I put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumors about his antecedents, which weren't even faintly true.


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[Assistant] Moreover, he told it to me at a time of confusion when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him.


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[Assistant] So I take advantage of this short halt while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath to clear this set of misconceptions away.


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[Assistant] It was a halt too, in my association with his affairs.


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[Assistant] For several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone. Mostly I was in New York.


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[Assistant] Trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her's phenile aunt. But finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon.


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[Assistant] I hadn't been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. I was startled naturally.


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[Assistant] But the really surprising thing was that it hadn't happened before. There were a party of three on horseback.


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[Assistant] Tom and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman in a brown riding habit who had been there previously.


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[Assistant] I'm delighted to see you," said Gatsby, standing on his porch. I'm delighted that you dropped in. As though they cared. Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar. He walked around the room quickly, ringing bells. I'll have something for you to drink in just a minute. He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there.


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[Assistant] But it would be uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that that was all they came for.


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[Assistant] Mr. Sloan wanted nothing, a lemonade, no thanks, a little champagne, nothing at all, thanks, I'm sorry. Did you have a nice ride? Very good roads around here. I suppose the automobile, yeaah.


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[Assistant] Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom, who had accepted the introduction as a stranger. I believe we've met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan. Oh, yes, said Tom, gruffly polite, but obviously not remembering. So we did. I remember very well. About two weeks ago. That's right, you were with Nick here. I know your wife, continued Gatsby, almost aggressively. That's how Tom turned to me. You live near here, Nick? Next door.


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[Assistant] That's so. Mr. Sloan didn't enter into the conversation.


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[Assistant] But lounged back haughtily in his chair, the woman said nothing either, until, unexpectedly, after two high balls, she became cordial. We'll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby, she suggested. What do you say? Certainly, I'd be delighted to have you. Be very nice, said Mr. Sloane without gratitude. Well, thank God to be starting home. Please, don't hurry, Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now, and he wanted to see more of Tom. Why don't you, why don't you stay for supper?


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[Assistant] You come to supper with me, said the lady enthusiastically, both of you. This included me. Mr. Sloan got to his feet. Come along, he said, but to her only.


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[Assistant] I mean it, she insisted. I'd love to have you. Lots of room.


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[Assistant] So Gatsby, I used to ride in the army, but I've never bought a horse. I'll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me for just a minute.


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[Assistant] The rest of us walked out on the porch where Sloane and the lady began an impassioned conversation aside. My God, I believe the man's coming, said Tom. Doesn't he know she doesn't want him? She says she does want him. She has a big dinner party and he won't know what's sold there, he frowned.


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[Assistant] I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days, excuse me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.


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[Assistant] Suddenly Mr. Sloan and the lady walked down the steps and mounted their horses.


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[Assistant] Come on, said Mr. Sloan to Tom, we're late, we've got to go, and then to me. Tell him we couldn't wait, will you?


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[Assistant] Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a cool nod.


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[Assistant] And they trotted quickly down the drive disappearing under the august foliage just as Gatsby with hat and light overcoat in hand came out the front door.


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[Assistant] Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party.


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[Assistant] Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness that stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that summer.


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[Assistant] There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion. But I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before.


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[Assistant] Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so. And now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes.


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[Assistant] Daisy's voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat. These things excite me.


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[Assistant] She whispered, if you want to kiss me at any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know, and I'll be glad to arrange it for you. Just mention my name, or present a green card, and giving out green, look around, suggested Gatsby.


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[Assistant] I'm looking around, I'm having a marvelous, you must see the faces of many people you've heard about. Tom's arrogant eyes roam the crowd. We don't go around very much, he said. In fact, I was just thinking I don't know a soul here.


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[Assistant] Perhaps you know that lady. Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree.


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[Assistant] Tom and Daisy stared with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies. She's lovely, said Daisy, the man bending over her as her director. He took them ceremoniously from group to group.


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[Assistant] Mrs. Buchanan and Mr. Buchanan. After an instant's hesitation, he added the polo player. Oh no! Objected Tom quickly. Not me.


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[Assistant] But evidently the sound of it pleased Catspeed, for Tom remained the polo player for the rest of the evening.


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[Assistant] I've never met so many celebrities, Daisy exclaimed. I liked that man. What was his name? With a sort of blue nose. Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer. Well, I liked him anyhow.


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[Assistant] I'd a little rather not be the polo player, said Tom pleasantly, and rather look at all these famous people in, in oblivion. Daisy and Gatsby dance.


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[Assistant] I remember being surprised by his graceful conservative foxtrot. I had never seen him dance before.


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[Assistant] Then they scantered over to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour. While at her request I remained watchfully in the garden, in case there is a fire or a flood, she explained, or any act of God.


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[Assistant] Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper together.


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[Assistant] And if you want to take down any addresses, here's my little gold pencil.


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[Assistant] She looked around after a moment and told me the girl was common but pretty.


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[Assistant] And I knew that except for the half hour she'd been alone with Gatsby, she wasn't having a good time. We were at a particularly tipsy table.


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[Assistant] But what had amused me then turned sceptic on the air now. How do you feel, Miss Betteker?


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[Assistant] The girl I dressed was trying unsuccessfully to slump against my shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes. What?


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[Assistant] A massive and lethargic woman who had been urging Daisy to play golf with her at the local club tomorrow spoke in Miss Dedica's defense.


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[Assistant] Oh, she's all right now. When she's had five or six cocktails, she always starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it alone. I do leave it alone, affirmed the accused hollily.


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[Assistant] We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here, there's somebody that needs your help, Doc.


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[Assistant] She's much obliged, I'm sure, said another friend without gratitude. But you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in the pool.


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[Assistant] Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool, mumbled Miss Beddicker. They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey. Then you ought to leave it alone, countered Dr. Sivit.


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[Assistant] Betray yourself, cried Ms. Betteker violently. Your handshakes, I wouldn't let you operate on me. It was like that.


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[Assistant] Almost the last thing I remember was standing with Daisy and watching the moving picture director in his star.


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[Assistant] They were still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale thin ray of moonlight between.


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[Assistant] It occurred to me that he had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this proximity.


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[Assistant] And even while I watched, I saw him stoop one ultimate degree and kiss at her cheek. I like her, said Daisy. I think she's lovely. But the rest offended her, and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but an emotion.


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[Assistant] She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented place that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village.


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[Assistant] Appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms, and by the too-obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a shortcut from nothing to nothing.


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[Assistant] It was dark here in front, only the bright door sent ten square feet of light volleying out into the soft black morning.


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[Assistant] Sometimes a shadow moved against the dressing room blind above, gave way to another shadow, an indefinite procession of shadows that rouged and powdered in an invisible glass.


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[Assistant] Who is this Gatsby anyhow? demanded Tom suddenly. Some big bootlegger. Where'd you hear that? I inquired.


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[Assistant] Well, he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie together.


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[Assistant] A breeze stirred the gray haze of Daisy's fur collar.


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[Assistant] At least they're more interesting than the people we know, she said with an effort. You didn't look so interested? Well, I was. Tom laughed and turned to me.


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[Assistant] Did you notice Daisy's face when that girl asked her to put her under a cold shower?


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[Assistant] Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again.


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[Assistant] When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it in a way contralto voices have.


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[Assistant] Lots of people come who haven't been invited, she said suddenly. That girl hadn't been invited. They simply forced their way in, and he's too polite to object.


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[Assistant] I'd like to know who he is and what he does, insisted Tom, and I think I'll make a point of finding out.


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[Assistant] Bad little waltz of that year was drifting out the open door.