the new horseless carriages.
Just before the turn of the century, he quit this job to open a new venture, selling petroleum products from what were called “gas stations.” With the growing number of automobiles on the road, he figured gas was a commodity that would be needed for years to come. He called his new venture Gold Gas Stations. Buying gas on the spot market from the few petroleum refiners on the east coast, he then had the fuel trucked to his stations. He was on the ground floor of a whole new industry. Dutch Eric Clarke was in the right place at the right time with the right idea.
Within a few years, Dutch had parlayed two outlets into thirty-five stations. After the turn of the century, Uncle Roy graduated from Harvard Business School (which Grandfather had paid for). Upon graduation, Roy started working for Grandfather. Some years later, they sold their gas stations to the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey for over $250,000 in cash and stock.
Taking some of this money, he and Roy bought one of the petroleum refineries that had once supplied them. Naming this second new venture Gold Coast Petroleum, they built a dynasty. By changing the way the oil was refined, they were soon producing not only gas, but also motor oil, diesel fuel, paint thinner, and kerosene.
Using Uncle Roy's expertise in business and accounting, Dutch acquired a dozen other refineries over the next thirty years. Because the company was without debt, when the Great Depression came in the 1930s and the market for petroleum products started to dry up, he hired guards to oversee and protect closed refineries. He then reopened the plants as the markets improved.
Grandfather was a smug businessman, always working at work. The only thing he had time for was business: it was his life. Grandfather became a very rich man and he measured all other people by the size of their wallets. He was, in fact, quite arrogant, starchy and a skinflint when it came to his money. But of all his accomplishments, it was his "mission," his year in the wilderness, which he liked to talk about the most. Those stories were told and retold, always with reverence. It was he "who went into the mountains a boy and returned a man... a better man.” The stories never seemed to change.
When the time came, my father had his own mission, although I didn't hear the stories from him. Instead, Grandfather loved to tell his tales to me. Dutch Clarke, Jr., was born into this austere and rigid family in 1892. His mother, my Grandmother Alice, was a generous and loving woman who could bring warmth to any home. For some untold reason, he would be her only child.
Grandmother made sure my father had a good education and a large family home in which to grow up, Fairview Manor. Dutch, Sr., built the house, at her insistence, on Long Island in 1901. Junior proved to be a very smart and talented son, and he went to the best schools Alice could find. At nineteen, he graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Geology. In September of 1911, he started his mission by traveling to the southwest territory of New Mexico, which was not yet a state. Here he would spend a year alone with a horse and two mules, doing a geologic survey of a large desert area.
He and my Grandfather had planned the trip well. Their objective was to find any oil deposits to which they might stake a claim after statehood. With the help of Uncle Roy, who knew one of the local rangers, my father had a base of operations for desert survival training and a point from which to start. Soon after his mission, New Mexico became the 47th state. In 1912, the Clarke’s, Senior and Junior, staked mineral claims on twenty sections of government land. Of these sections, six proved to be "commercial" oil producers, which added to the mounting family fortune. Junior now joined the petroleum business with Uncle Roy and Grandfather.
In 1918, my father married his college sweetheart, Mary Wallace Person, in Oklahoma City. I was born in New Mexico on May 31, 1920, as Eric Dutch Clarke III. Over the years, I came to hate all those names… with the exception, for some reason, of “Dutch.”
My mother and father were killed in an automobile accident in 1925. So it was then, at the age of five, I went to live at Fairview Manor with my grandparents. As I grew older, I deeply resented the fact that I’d lost both of my parents in a split second of squealing brakes and crashing metal. But, to tell the truth, I don't really remember either of them very well.
It was a time when there seemed to be a black cloud of death hanging over the Clarke family. Grandmother Alice died of pneumonia at age fifty-eight, just three years after I came to live with her and Grandfather. I have fond memories of that large, warm, and loving woman. Other than my mother, she was the only person I ever remember kissing or hugging me. In the few years we spent together, she tried her best to help me better understand and know about my parents, their lives and their tragic deaths.
Sad and shaken once again, I consoled myself that my beloved grandmother had joined my parents in heaven. From then on, I could only learn about my father and mother through the stories that Uncle Roy and Grandfather would occasionally tell. Most of all, Senior enjoyed recounting the details of my father's mission in the desert. He would take out old maps and point to the general areas of my father had traveled. Then he would rattle off stories about wild animals, Indians, survival, and finding just the right rock formations. He would always end the tale with his standard statement: "He went into the desert a boy and returned a man... a better man." As the years went by, it became an old sour story, told to deaf ears.
Green Sentinels
By mid-morning, I reached the forest line, where the logged landscape gave way to a rich and dense rain forest. The narrow game trail we’d ridden down eventually disappeared. From time to time, I’d find small creek beds that would lead my little party in the general direction I wanted to go. Other times, I’d dismount and use my hatchet and hunting knife to forge a trail. The forest was thick, and it made my work difficult and slow-going. The canopy of trees was so dense that at times I lost sight of the sun and seemed to be moving in a shroud of emerald-green twilight.
Most of the forest floor was littered with old trees and toppled snags, downed in many storms over the centuries. All trees—dead or growing—were covered with thick layers of green moss. The smell of damp and rotting vegetation permeated the forest floor. Growing through and around the downed trees was a crowd of green underbrush, and moving my horse and pack mules through these obstacles was taking much more time than I’d expected.
Every now and then, we’d come upon a small clearing where I could stop and fix my general position with compass and map. But these opportunities were few, as thick vegetation pushed through every nook and cranny in an attempt to reach an occasional ray of sun.
The animals and I strained through a patch of underbrush but soon broke through to a dry, rocky creek bed. The warm sun splashed my face. I looked up and over the large green sentinels and saw some patches of brilliant blue sky shining through. Many of these towering trees were hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, and at times made me feel like I was riding through a large cathedral, with the only light filtered by an immense green window from above.
Stopping every few hours, I’d give the mules and Blaze a rest and water. The mules each carried a heavy load of supplies. Blaze carried my 175-pound body, with an additional 100 pounds in my saddlebags, bedroll and backpack. Each time we stopped, I could see signs of the wildlife that inhabited the forest. There were tracks of deer, elk, raccoons, and cougar, but most of the tracks were from timber wolves, the most vocal citizens of this forest. Gus was having the time of his life, following all those smells.
At noon, I let my animals rest and drink while I ate a sandwich and an apple from my saddlebag. Having been in the saddle for almost six hours, I could tell by the feeling in my backside that it would be a long journey.
The
