VL-IV 1: The Cucumber Lounge, pgs 9/10

[Mark Kohut]

One Van Meter:

Who is Solomon Lee Van Meter, Jr.?


Solomon Lee Van Meter Jr. (1888-1937)
 In 1483, in Milan, Italy, Leonardo da Vinci sketched a device that would enable a man “to throw himself down from any great height without sustaining any injury.” In the centuries that followed, many people offered designs for making this imagined device a reality, with varying degrees of success. But in 1910, in Lexington, KY, Solomon Van Meter had an insight while dreaming in front of the fire that would finally bring da Vinci’s idea to life: the first practical backpack parachute. 

Solomon Lee Van Meter Jr. was born on April 8, 1888 on a farm near Lexington. He was educated at Miss Collier’s Private School, at Transylvania University, at the University of Iowa, and in England at Oxford University’s Exeter College. 

In 1910, a fatal airplane crash caught the young man’s attention. The pilot of the slowly descending disabled craft apparently had climbed onto the wing to attempt repairs. Parachutes, rare in those days, were attached to the plane itself and probably wouldn’t have helped. Many pilots had died when their chutes became entangled with the very machines they were trying to escape. But as he pondered the death of this particular pilot, Van Meter wondered whether a parachute could be folded and packed for the pilot to wear. He began working on the question, and by the following year had completed his invention. 

His self-contained device featured a revolutionary quick-release mechanism—the ripcord—that allowed a falling aviator to expand the canopy only when safely away from the disabled aircraft. In 1916, based on drawings and models, Van Meter was granted two patents on “inventions for saving the lives of aviators by the use of parachutes.” 

Van Meter joined the Army in 1917 and became one of only three members of his class to be commissioned a first lieutenant in the Corps of Aviation. At Kelly Field in Texas, his instructor wrote four words any pilot would want in his Air Corps logbook: “Cool, consistent, good judgment.” 





--- On Fri, 12/5/08, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: VL-IV 1: The Cucumber Lounge, pgs 9/10
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, December 5, 2008, 11:40 AM
> The Cucumber Lounge echos the Echo Courts, simultaneously
> pushing up to the edges of sexual taboo while being
> throughly commercial at the same time.  The details of place
> and time—
> 
> 	“ . . Dwarfed and overshadowed by the towering dim red
> trees
> 	were two dozen motel cabins, with woodstoves, porches,
> 	barbecues, waterbeds, and cable TV. . .”
> 
> — are spot-on. When thinking of “Vineland” the image
> of snaking cable in a Television studio also comes to mind.
> All the small details of preparations at the Cucumber Lounge
> echo Hollywood and Hollywood deal making as well. The
> unpaved parking lot is covered in gullies from the
> local—frequently rainy— weather, also echoing visuals of
> the paths of creeping vines. If this place we live in is
> “Vineland” it is by virtue of the creeping network of
> cables and other webbed infrastructures that make up the
> “information/entertainment ["infotainment?"]
> industry.” Van Meter—a name filled with multiple
> possible interpretations as regards Zoyd and Van’s “Rock
> & Roll Lifestyle”—is still stage-managing the SSI
> scam of Zoyd’s upcoming annual act of transfenestration.
> 
> But Van's worried demeanor has everything to do with
> the presence of Zoyd’s ole frenemy DEA field agent Hector
> Zuniga. Going back to the 1998 VLVL p-list archives starting
> in September of 1998 [once the page is loaded, it’s about
> 2/3’s the way down]:
> 
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9809&sort=thread
> 
> 
> . . . I found some fine pointers about Hector Zuniga. In
> the opera “Carmen”, Zuniga, Captain of the Dragoons
> (bass) is obsessed with the bohemian and untamable
> protagonist of the tale, much like Hector’s obsession with
> the “technical virgin” Zoyd. “Hector”, of course,
> means to harass. And Zoyd [as we soon find out] has been
> plenty harassed by oily Tubaholic Hector:
> 
> 	“ Zoyd went sweaty and had one of those gotta-shit
> 	throbs of fear. Was it ESP, was he only reacting to
> 	something in his friend's voice? Somehow he knew
> 	who it would be.”