Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1928-04-19
The Noble Order of Those Who Go
Down to See Ships Dock and Sail
A GOOdiy Company. With No
Ritual. Only a Love for R0atS
and the Tang Of the Sea. the
Able Throw of HawSefS. the
Whistles Call.
Christian Science Monitor

Vancouver, B. c. Special Core
spondence.-We have taken no oath of
loyalty; We have no password; we
have no recognition sign; we have no
regalia; we pay no dues; there is no
initiation fee but we are Grand Mas
tiers of the Pole Star Lodge of the
Noble Order of Those Who Go Down
to the Wharf to See the Ships Come
In and Go Out.
We are a goodly company, from
early morning until midnight, but
mostly at noon; our meeting place is
anywhere along the wharves and piers
of the inlet; from where the grain
ships lay under the elevator spouts.
where they load on huge piles of lum-
Der, where they take rich loads of
mixed cargOes, to where the liners
wait by the pier heads, taking aboard
rich passengers.
There being no dues to pay and no
initiation fees, the members rub
shoulders with every class of society.
The bank manager 1--WE know him
welD steals down for ten minutes and
perhaps communes with the out-of-
work in Overalls ON the question of
the tonnage of the Japanese freighter.
The clerk from the insurance office
is brother with the man who is dish
washer at the big hotel up the street,
and the little girl from the 5 and 10
cent store can talk with remarkable
intelligence on the rigging of a rare
sailing vessel which has just come in
from trip to the Hudson Bay posts
in the arctic circle.
Some of them have lived by the
waterside all their lives and have
been members of the lodge since they
were knee high to a grasshopper.
Others of us have just recently
Joined but it makes no difference in
the matter of being in good standing.
We all have read Kingston and
Gordon Stables, Clark Russell and
Joseph Conrad, Frank Bullen and Cap
tain Dingle, Charles Dana and Will
liam McFee and others of that ilk;
at least, this member assumes we
have, else why are we there.
Sometimes our numbers are aug
mented to the browning point, when
one of the big liners sails; but those
others are merely visitors, and we
tolerate them, because there is no
ritual for them to observe, and the
lodge room is not ours, for all who
love the ships and the sea are free
to come and 60 So We all stand and
lean on the railing, and hear the
bos'un's whistle blow, and see the
gangway swing off the ship, and the
ropes cast off one by one, and watch
the ship slowly glide into midstream,
breaking the colored paper streamers
as she goes, her last links with the
shore for awhile. And if it is an
Australian boat, the third-class pas
sengers nearly always sing, and We all
join in, with outthrust chests, and
swelling Threats, warbling God be
with you till We meet again" or
There's long, long trail awinding.
into the land of our dreams"
And what do we do in our lodge
room, when the big crowd is not
there? Nothing. Just nothing at all.
Only stand and look, and dream. That
is our only vice. l think we all
dream. We stand and see some bat
tered. old freighter come in, some old
Bolivar and We know, intuitively, that
she has, some place, weathered a
mighty storm and overcome the sea.
We know that somewhere, between
the squalls, lying head to SWELL" they
oh hJy
like a grand hotel"
So we stand and watch the sailor
men, unloading their argosies, and
know they are men who know the
sight of salt water unbounded.' They
know the immense and contemptu-
Gus surges; the shudder the stumble,
the swerve, as the star-stabbing bow
spirit energies"
And in our dreams we travel out
far beyond the wharves to the en-
chanted isles. On the wings of fancy
we are waited to those fairy shores
where nature smiles in changeless
youth. We hear the soft soothing
murmur of the gliding swell upon
slumbering shore, and sometimes we
hear deep calling unto deep, and the
terrible laundering of the untram-
meled ocean in harmony with the ut
termOst diapason Of the wind
But the whistle is blowing, and the
siren has given three mighty boots,
the Blue Peter is slowly coming down
and the vessel is gliding slowly out
into midStream, breaking her cOlOred
streamers as she goes.
And we've break the colored
streamers that hold us to the lands
and seas of our dreams, and go slowly
loo1r - @ho of6oo Wy