The Book of Ecclesiastes examines themes as the vicissitudes of life, that the swift do not always have the race, nor the strong the battle. This implies a certain “vanity” should one gloat too much over one’s accomplishments, as well as a certain “futility” brought on by the relative brevity of life. On a trip to the Pocono hills of Pennsylvania, I explored these themes in connection with some power players of long ago. It also appears in a book I wrote, Go Where Tom Goes. (billed as a travelogue for those who aren’t fussy):
Down where the widened street and its narrow companion end in two tees onto route 209, beyond is the train station, the tracks, the Lehigh River, the walkway, and another steep mountain. You are in the town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. An odd name for a town, don’t you think? But when you consider the original name, Mauch Chunk, perhaps you will think Jim Thorpe an improvement. Mauch Chunk is the Lenni Lenape word for sleeping bear; a native American term that no one except the Lenni Lenape will understand. Jim Thorpe is a native American term that everyone will understand. Descendant of a chief of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe attended the nearby Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where he mastered every sport he attempted: basketball, lacrosse, tennis, handball, bowling, swimming, hockey, boxing, and gymnastics. “Show them what an Indian can do,” his father charged him when he went off to represent the United States at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. There, he won so many metals in such a variety of events that Sweden’s King Gustav V gushed, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world!” “Thanks, King,” the unassuming man replied. For years thereafter, he played major league baseball and football concurrently. ABC’s Wide World of Sports, in 2001, named him the greatest athlete of the 20th century.
Just behind and well above that aforementioned train station, up the steep hill, is the 1860 home built for Asa Packer. It is an ornate, three-story mansion open for tours, so of course, Mrs. Harley and I took one. Asa Packer came from Connecticut (on foot) in 1833 and made his fortune, first as a canal boat operator, and then as the founder of the Lehigh railroad. The idea was to transport the area’s coal to the great cities on the East Coast. It made him the third wealthiest man in the country. From his front porch, peer over the inn to see the courthouse he built, where he served as a judge, the church he built where he served as a vestryman, and the sandstone buildings where he housed his employees. Today, those sandstone buildings contain eateries, studios, and trendy stores. At one time, nineteen of the country’s twenty-six millionaires maintained seasonal homes in Mauch Chunk. Asa Packer’s words are on display just in front of his house: “There is no distinction to which any young man may not aspire, and with energy, diligence, intelligence, and virtue, obtain.”
The Asa Packer mansion at Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
Mrs. Harley and I didn’t stay in his town during our Poconos trip, however. We stayed twenty miles upstream in Stoddartsville, the town of a would-be industrialist to whom fortune was not so kind. Stoddartsville appears on the map but if you go there you will find only the foundations of a few 200-year-old buildings—and simple signs erected by the Stoddartsville Historical Society labeling what once stood on each foundation. And a graveyard whose worn tombstones reveal that several Stoddarts are buried there. And a few private residences were built on some of those ancient foundations. And a small rustic cabin overlooking the Lehigh—that is where we stayed.
John Stoddart was ambitious, too, just like Asa Packer. He also sought to harness the Lehigh, to ship grain downstream to Philadelphia, hoping to divert commerce from a neighboring system that sent it to Baltimore—this was to be a “win-lose” situation, not a “win-win,” with him the winner. He built a community straddling the Lehigh along the Wilkes-Barre Turnpike (which he controlled) with a grist mill, sawmill, and boat-building capacity. It flourished in the early 1800s, a bit before Packer’s time, but alas, Stoddart was too far upstream. The best he could do with his river was provide one-way traffic, utilizing a series of dams that held back waters until they reached flood stage, and then, releasing them all at once, his barges could ride the crest downstream to the next dam! Boats were constructed in Stoddartsville and dismantled at the destination; the timber sold along with the cargo. It was not cost-effective enough to compete with later two-way systems. John Stoddart eventually went bankrupt and his town faded from prominence. He spent the final thirty years of his life as a clerk in Philadelphia.
There is a third character, a Quaker businessman by the name of Josiah White, who touches on the fortunes of both Packer and Stoddart. To Packer, he brought success, but to Stoddart, ruin. Stoddart might have gone under in any case, but White sealed his fate. White’s endeavor was canal-building, and it was canal piloting that enabled Asa Packer to amass capital sufficient to build his railroad. Back in Mauch Chunk, just before the railroad station (which is now a tourist information center) lies a town square named after Josiah White. It was he who founded the town before Packer ever traipsed in from Connecticut.
Ironically, Josiah White’s canal ventures owe a lot to John Stoddart’s initial support. In the early days of the Lehigh Navigation Company, White tried in vain to raise money from comfortable, conservative, downstream Philadelphia merchants. They were loath to part with it. White realized he needed the backing of one man, John Stoddart, who (per White’s memoirs)
“was then a leading man among the Mound characters, being esteemed Luckey [sic] and to never mis’d in his Speculations, carried a strong influence with his actions, he being of an open and accessible habit, gave us frequent opportunities with him, & his large Estates at the head of our Navigation, authorized our beseaging [sic] him, which we did frequently.”
Sure enough, as soon as word got out that Stoddart had invested $5000.00 (with the stipulation that the navigation system begin in Stoddartsville) everyone jumped on board, and the entire hoped-for sum of $100,000 was raised in 24 hours! White began building two-way locks on the Lehigh, but that summer (1819) was unusually dry, and the river proved too shallow for transport. The following winter, ice damaged the locks to the point that White replaced them with the aforementioned one-way bear-trap locks—the locks in no way resembled bear traps, but White’s workmen named them such to dispose of pesky, “Whatcha building?” passerby—the economics of which ultimately sealed John Stoddart’s doom, not to mention, destroying the fishing upon which various Native Americans and missionaries depended.
Roaming the Pennsylvania hills where these long-dead men once maneuvered, it is hard to escape the feeling that had you switched them, put Stoddart where Packer was and vice versa, the results would have been the same. Both were subject to time and unforeseen circumstances, which might have easily gone the other way. If the Lehigh had behaved that first year of Stoddart’s transport system, or if Packer, who went way out on a limb financially building his railroad, had been subject to a clobbering winter or two, it might be Stoddart’s name that is remembered instead of Packer’s—that is, as much as any person is remembered. For, successful as he was, I knew nothing about Packer before stumbling upon his hometown. Did you? Even though he was the third richest man in the country. Doesn’t matter. We all end up in the grave, where the memory of us quickly fades.
For whatever reason, I vividly remember Brother Benner, the District Overseer, playing devil’s advocate with his own argument, an argument drawn from Ecclesiastes about the brevity of life, and its consequent “futility.” Build as you may, you are not around to reap too much benefit from your work. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon reflects upon “all that I had worked so hard for under the sun because I must leave it behind for the man coming after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or foolish? Yet he will take control over all the things I spent great effort and wisdom to acquire under the sun.” (2:18-19)
This nearly happened in the case of Packer’s enormous wealth after the untimely deaths of his sons. Business associates threatened to squander it all, so Asa’s daughter Mary maneuvered to gain control of the family fortune. To that end, she had to marry, since unmarried women from that era were never left the estate. The fact that Mary had nursed both parents through their deaths did not matter. She married some obliging business fellow, secured the fortune, and the marriage ended soon thereafter. Was that the plan from the start? At any rate, as we toured the Packer mansion, the guide pointed to a prominently displayed plaque of Saint Fabiola, the patron saint of divorced women. (No, I didn’t know there was such a saint, either.)
Anyhow, back to Benner, he was discussing verse eleven of chapter 1, a recurring theme of Ecclesiastes: No one remembers people of former times; Nor will anyone remember those who come later; Nor will they be remembered by those who come still later. We, who were initially created to live forever on earth, are now subject to that sad reality. He spoke of how someone might attempt to counter the verse, for example, pointing to some musician or other: “Yes, so-and-so may have died,” people would gush, “but his music lives on and on.” “Give me a break!” Benner responded. “Who was the most famous singer in George Washington’s day?” Exactly.
Same thing with Mauch Chunk. Who were the other eighteen millionaires who made their home there? Or, for that matter, what about Jim Thorpe, the town’s later namesake? What became of him after his athletic days? (Alas, for all his fame, he fell upon very hard times.) You will remember imperfectly a few of the generation before you and perhaps even a handful of the generation before that, but everyone else is, at best, a name in a statistics book, like Packer or Stoddart. Some won. Some lost. But you don’t know anything about them.
The brevity of our life is what defines it. You do not get too many shots. There is a built-in frustration since every door we open represents several we have closed. Pathways take time to trod. The more ambitious the pathway, the longer it will take, and the fewer you will tread. Each pathway we go down represents a multitude we do not go down. And yet, we want to go down them all. Is this what Solomon meant about life being “calamity?” Today’s age of specialization makes the calamity even more pronounced. Increase your wisdom or wealth, as Solomon did, and you increase the pathways you can pursue. But, alas, you increase your perception of the many more you will not pursue before the clock runs out.
It was not meant to be so and it will not be so one day in the future. Humans, created to live forever but now relegated to a few scores of years, are yet to have the opportunity for everlasting life. And all these characters of the past, not to mention our own family members, are they to be among the “righteous and the unrighteous” who come out of the memorial tombs, per Acts 24:15 and John 5:28? It is the Bible’s hope. It intrigued me from the beginning. It still does, though one must stoke the hope occasionally so that static from this present system of things does not drown it out. As Jesus said: “When the Son of man arrives, will he really find the faith on the earth?”
From: Go Where Tom Goes: https://mybook.to/GoWhereTomGoes