Balto

Capital day for the National Democracy, eh? But I won’t be sidetracked by electoral politics except to say that I wish that the Democratic Party were still informally called the National Democracy or merely the Democracy. They’ve got that robust, Jacksonian ring to them.

A few more park details. Flushing Meadow Park has a couple of rockets. Rather, the New York Hall of Science, a museum at the edge of the park, has a Redstone and an Atlas rocket standing next to each other within its grounds, behind a fence but almost fully visible from the parking lot. They’re topped off with the appropriate capsules, a Mercury for the Redstone and a Gemini for the Atlas. I always enjoy a chance to see rockets.

All together the park was pleasant enough, green space with sidewalks here and there among trees, but hasn’t got the feeling of a great Olmstead-planned space like Central Park or Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, which I visited in ’02 and found to be a jewel seemingly disregarded by Manhattanites, but clearly enjoyed by Brooklynites.

I did visit Central Park this time around as well. The park is so large that it’s possible to make many visits, as I have, and still see new things each time. I have to like a place like that. This time I made it as far as the Great Lawn – which looked very familiar as the site of moviemaking, I think – and Turtle Pond, which, with its birds and cattails and such, is unremarkable except for the fact that it’s surrounded by millions of people.

Early in my amble through the Central Park I happened upon the bronze statue of Balto the Wonder Dog, which is perched on a bolder and gazes nobly into the distance. He’s also been rubbed shiny in spots. Dog and Kennel magazine has this to say about Balto:

“Fans of the Tonight Show may recall host Johnny Carson occasionally referring to Balto the Wonder Dog in his monologues. The real Balto, however, was no joke. In 1925, Nome, Alaska, was ravaged by a diphtheria epidemic. Curtis Welch, the only physician in Nome, radioed an appeal for lifesaving anti-toxin serum. By the time he did, several children had died and others were ill with the highly contagious disease.

“The hospital at Anchorage had fresh serum to spare, but the only dependable way of getting it to Nome in the heart of winter was by a dog-sled relay. The anchor leg of the relay was run by Gunnar Kaasen, who had a team of seven Siberian huskies led by a magnificent malamute named Balto. After taking the serum from the dog-sled team, Kaasen traveled the final 100 miles to Nome, blinded by snow with nothing but his dogs' sure-footed instincts and courage to guide him. The serum arrived in time to halt the epidemic.

“Two years later Balto and the rest of Kaasen's team were sold to the Cleveland Zoo. After Balto had died in 1933, he was stuffed, mounted and put on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He was also memorialized by a statue that stands in New York City's Central Park.”

Don’t know how I missed Balto all these years. But there he stands, in bronze, more than 80 years after his immortal deeds, though the plaque in Central Park doesn’t use his name, only referring to “the indomitable spirit of the Sled Dogs.” Still, it’s sobering to realize that the memory of a sled dog now bronzed in New York and stuffed in Cleveland will probably outlast you.