When the Century Was Young : A Writer's Notebook (9781453274217) by Brown Dee

Author:Brown, Dee [Brown, Dee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453274217
Publisher: OpenRoad
Published: 2012-09-25T21:15:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

The Greatest Sheep Dog in the World

JUST AS I WAS beginning to devise a plot and develop the characters for my untitled satirical novel of New Deal Washington, I received a promotion and was transferred to the Beltsville Research Center. My assignment was to build a library from scratch to serve several different research stations and laboratories spread across a wide expanse of Maryland countryside. This new responsibility, of course, slowed down my literary endeavors.

The four years that I worked in the Beltsville library were the most interesting of the various periods I spent in federal agencies. Scientists in the biological, chemical, and medicinal fields were on the verge of discoveries that would bring immense changes not only to American agriculture but in many other areas of American life. A sense of exciting discovery was evident among many of the people I worked with, and this acted as a spur for us to furnish them with the best informational service that we could.

Because they expected to be kept up to date in their various endeavors, we circulated a large number of current scientific journals and newly published books. To keep these publications moving about the research center, we first tried a motorcycle. In order to keep in touch with the scientists that I was serving, I frequently joined our motorcycle driver in his reckless deliveries to the scattered laboratory buildings. Hunkered down in the sidecar with heaps of books and journals piled around and on me, I more than once thought as we sped along, What a hell of a way to run a library. But I met several fascinating researchers, some of whom were making their marks in the world of scientific agriculture.

There were also frequent visitors from everywhere around the world, as well as magazine writers and photographers in search of stories. The most famous columnist who came occasionally was Eleanor Roosevelt, looking for interesting things at Beltsville to put into her syndicated column, “My Day.” Mrs. Roosevelt did not always get the correct spin on the research that was revealed to her, and the Beltsville administrators who were always eager for good publicity that might bring additional appropriations from Congress were sometimes uneasy about her comments.

For a year or so, one research project was kept off limits to Mrs. Roosevelt and to almost everyone else. I would probably have known very little about the Sheep Dog Project had I not taken a sidecar journey over there one day and won the confidence of Dr. Morton, the chief, and his animal psychologist, Dr. Katz.

A few weeks later, I learned about the Turkish sheep dogs that came very near creating an international incident in the critical days just before our entry into World War II. My first awareness of these Turkish dogs came one morning when Dr. Morton swept suddenly into my office in the Beltsville library. Morton’s specialty had been sheep breeding, but he had been drafted into the Dog Project by the Secretary of Agriculture, Henry A.

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