Summary
Chapter 6 begins in January as the crew team returned to Seattle and began to prepare for their race against their primary rival, the University of California at Berkeley. Their workouts increased in intensity, even as the weather worsened. While the freshmen continued to progress, the varsity team had stagnated and was having more disparate results. Berkeley, and their coach, Ky Ebright, were having similar issues. Ky began as a coxswain with the University of Washington before ultimately taking the job at Berkeley. While the relationship between the two schools was healthy in the beginning, it slowly began to deteriorate. Ebright was resentful that Washington had the boat builder Pocock within their boathouse, and he began to send accusatory letters saying that Pocock was giving Washington an unfair advantage. Ebright even tried to undermine Pocock's business and integrity. The relationship was sour.
Some of Washington's freshmen were slumping, which affected the entire boat. One of the problems that Bolles saw was Joe Rantz, and he removed him from the first boat for a section of practice. The first boat slowed down perceptibly, and sped up when Joe was put back in the boat. For Joe, it was a reminder of how precarious things could be and that nothing was certain. Finally, the slump ended for the freshmen boat, and they even beat the varsity and junior varsity crews in a head to head race. Fortunately for the Washington team, their streak continued and led them to a close victory against Cal in their big race. In Germany, the ideology of the Nazi party was also continuing to gain traction and have success.
Chapter 7 begins with a recounting of the epic race between the varsity crews, which Washington won at the last second. When they returned to practice, the freshmen fell back into a slump. When it came time to depart for the regatta in Poughkeepsie, fans gathered in the streets while the crews boarded the trains for New York. They had a grand time on board, even filling balloons with water and lobbing them at easy targets while they passed across the country. Emboldened by the sense of camaraderie, Joe retrieved his guitar and began to play. He was promptly made fun of and called "Cowboy Joe."
Once in New York, the boys found the east coast humidity oppressive and rowed well off their best pace during practice. The Intercollegiate Rowing Association's regatta at Poughkeepsie was a race steeped in history, and it was considered once of the most prestigious races in the world. It rivaled the Kentucky Derby, the Rose Bowl, and the World Series as a major national sporting event. At first, western teams were met with curiosity as they were filled with the sons of lumberjacks rather than senators, but in 1923, Washington was the first western team to win the Poughkeepsie regatta. This was the first time that the east coast schools had seen Pocock's racing shells, and within a decade, every shell that raced in Poughkeepsie was made by Pocock.
Going in to the race, Syracuse was favored to win the race, and they immediately jumped to a slight lead. Washington was close behind in second, and when Syracuse caught a crab in the middle of the race, that was it. Washington was in the lead and winning by 2 1/2 lengths. They won handily and were ecstatic. At the end of the race, they followed the customary dunking of the coxswain and threw him into the Hudson. The varsity, however, were not as lucky, and they lost to California with a second place finish. The press went on to speculate that the win would launch California to another gold medal at the Olympics.
On Joe's train ride home, he witnessed the Midwest succumbing to the head and drought of the Dust Bowl. The temperatures had not risen in Seattle, but tempers had with the longshoremen's strike. The strike was extremely violent, and eventually eight people were dead. In early August, an event brought many Seattleites together in a more positive way: the arrival of FDR to discuss the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam and the economic development opportunities it would bring. People cheered eagerly and felt hopeful for the first time in a long time.
Over the summer, Joe worked a variety of jobs but most notably learned how to read wood that had been left behind by less knowledgeable workers. He mastered the skill quickly after learning from his friend Charlie, and soon he realized that "there seemed to . . . be some kind of connection between what he was doing here among a pile of freshly split shakes, what Pocock was doing in his shop, and what he was trying to do himself in the racing shells Pocock built—something about the deliberate application of strength, the careful coordination of mind and muscle, the sudden unfolding of mystery and beauty" (127). Joe and his teammates returned to the boathouse in October for the new season, and while the surroundings were the same, they had much more confidence and ego than they did a year before.
Later in his sophomore year, Joe learned from his brother Fred that his parents were living in Seattle and had been since they last drove away from him. They were living in poverty. When Joe and Joyce went to visit and check-in on them, just Thula answered the door. Joe asked if they could come back and visit at a time when his father was home, and she responded, "No. Make your own life, Joe. Stay out of ours."
Analysis
"A notable element of all these East-West rivalries was that the western representatives nearly always seemed to embody certain attributes that stood in stark contrast to those of their eastern counterparts. They seemed, as a rule, self-made, rough hewn, wild, native, brawny, simple, and perhaps, in the eyes of some, a bit coarse; their eastern counterparts seemed, as a rule, well bred, sophisticated, moneyed, refined, and perhaps, in their own eyes at least, a bit superior" (113).
Brown's style is once again on display in this section of the book. He moves from the individual story (that of the boys on Washington's team) to the broader context (the Dust Bowl, labor strikes, the Grand Coulee Dam) effortlessly. Additionally, he is able to weave the spirit of rowing and the spirit of the American common-person together while he does that. For example, when writing about the Grand Coulee Dam, he says, "Many of them would never forget the day. For them, it was a dawning, the first real hint of hope. If there was little they could do individually to turn the situation around, perhaps there was something they could do collectively. Perhaps the seeds of redemption lay not just in perseverance, hard work, and rugged individualism. Perhaps they lay in something more fundamental—the simple notion of everyone pitching in and pulling together" (123). This is not unlike the ethos of rowing as a team and being several parts that come together and work as one human machine.
Ulbrickson both compliments the boys and tries to instill humility. Of the five varsity boats, four are new combinations of old rowers, but one is the exact same as it was last year: Joe's freshmen first boat. While this signifies that they have promise and there is merit to them being a special boat for the future, they are listed as the fifth boat. The position of the fifth boat is typically for the worst boat, so there are mixed signals. Ulbrickson's coaching goes beyond drills or fitness regimes—he is clearly focused on the mental aspects of rowing just as much as the physical.
