Texas Conservation History: George Russell: Transcript

INTERVIEWEE: George Russell (GR)

INTERVIEWERS: David Todd (DT)

DATE: October 7, 1999

LOCATION: Huntsville, Texas

TRANSCRIBERS: Lacy Goldsmith and Robin Johnson<small

REELS: 44 and 45

Note: boldfaced numbers refer to time codes for the VHS tape copy of the interview

DT: My name is David Todd. I’m here for the Conservation History Association of Texas. And it’s October 7, 1999 and we’re in Huntsville, Texas and we’ve got the good fortune to be visiting with George Russell who’s a forest activist and conservationist in East Texas and we want to learn more about what he’s been doing and his concerns for the future. I wanted to thank you for spending this time with us.

0:02:06 - 44

GR: Well I’m glad that you were able to come and visit with me. It—it—hopefully my mind will work well enough that I can recall some of the myriad events that have taken place over the last nearly fifty years that I have called myself an environmentalist.

DT: Maybe we can start close to the beginning of those fifty years. Can you talk about some of your childhood experiences that might have kindled an interest in the outdoors and protection of nature?

0:02:38 - 44

GR: I was born in the Ozarks. My father was a vocational agriculture teacher so, you know, I was close to the soil anyway in those early days. And then I recall when I was about four years of age, I was very concerned about animals and I’d always make my daddy stop if there was a turtle in the road and I’d have to take the turtle and save the turtle. And—and my father, I guess, liked nature as well even though he was a farmer because he would catch these huge Indigo snakes and we’d keep them for pets for a while and then turn them loose. And one of my earliest experiences with a snake that would probably really have traumatized other children and made them snake haters was I had two older sisters and they would dress the snake up. And one of them was about a 6 ½ or 7 foot Indigo snake and they’d play with him in their doll house. Well one day I went to the window of the doll house and stuck my nose in to see if Mr. Snake was there. Mr. Snake thought my nose was a rat and attached his self to my nose. I did holler—holler a little bit but, you know, I never developed a fear of snakes and even, to this day, I’ll walk around where Copperheads and Water Moccasins and things are and, you know, in my bare toes and sandals and—and I’m just not afraid of them. I’m a little bit wary, you know, if I see a Copperhead or—or a Water Moccasin or something like that I’ll say, good day Mr. Snake and—and won’t you go out and look for a rat somewhere. But, even to this day, if I see a Copperhead in the evening on a highway, I’ll pull over and take a stick and chase him back into the woods so that a—a car won’t run over him. And I think people think I’m a little crazy for that. But they’ll just have to think it.

DT: Well do you think you’re just made that way? You’re hard-wired that way? Or do you think that there were early friends or relatives or teachers that helped you with that conservation interest?

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GR: I would say that basically I was hard-wired to care about nature and care about animals and care about animals and care about trees and flowers and that sort of thing. And that probably was intensified by what I just said about my father and picking up turtles and lizards and never being afraid of—of wildlife and—and always, always not liking hunters who would kill little Bambi or—or not liking Mr. McGregor who would, you know, hurt Peter Rabbit. And I have a next door neighbor right now out at our alligator ranch that I call Mr. McGregor because he doesn’t like armadillos because they dig little holes in his yard. Well I love armadillos. I’d much rather have a yard full of holes and a yard full of armadillos than just some ole pristine monoculture of grass and no armadillos. So his—his nickname is Mr. McGregor. I’m not sure he knows that, in fact, I’m sure he doesn’t. And then when I moved to Texas in 1950, I was so happy to find out that we moved to Sam Houston’s back yard because, as a child when I was like four years old, my mother bought a book about—biography of Sam Houston and I was impressed with the fact that he lived with the Indians and had a respect for nature. And when I moved to Texas in 1950, I was living in a remnant old-growth forest. Sam Houston was one of the few pioneers that didn’t just come in and hack down and totally mutilate and clear his land. And I—I have to believe that was because he gained respect for nature living with the Cherokees and made him a different sort of man. Well I grew up in Sam Houston Park and our house, which we built in 1951, is on part of Sam Houston’s yard. And I started acquiring, I have many acres of what was his old backyard now and there are still remnant old-growth trees. So I grew up in a remnant old-growth forest and in Sam Houston’s backyard which means that we went out and looked for frogs in his pond and we would—I would walk through the woods there and look for birds. And then my parents weren’t afraid of, you know, pedophiles and kidnappers and all that kind of stuff. It may have existed. I’m sure they did back then but nobody knew about it and so I was free to do almost anything I wanted to do. And this house where we’re filming was built in 1968 by my sister back in woods that I used to camp in over the weekend when I was like six and seven years of age. I’d say, "Bye mom, we’re going camping", and just head out the woods and there are things we did that I regret like take a BB gun and shoot sparrows or cardinals and things like that and cook them and eat them.

0:07:59 - 44

GR: And—but I always thought there must be something wrong with me because in East Texas, in the 1950’s, everybody killed everything that they could and it horrified me but, you know, unless you liked blood and liked to watch little feathered creatures and little warm, furry things die, then you weren’t a real man. So I had to always wonder am I a real man if I don’t enjoy killing things? So I did get a pellet gun when I was about twelve, I guess, and I decided I’ve got to prove that I’m a real man and go out in the woods and kill some things. And I went out and I killed a couple of birds and I killed a squirrel and that haunts me to this day. I just—I really regret trying to be a big, macho, blood-thirsty man, you know, I—I can still right now see the image of that poor squirrel dying. So I’ve always had an affinity toward my fellow creatures on this planet and I have attempted to inspire in others some sort of sensitivity towards nature and toward the planet. And I, you know, I can recall even as a small child sitting down in the dirt or in the grass and just getting down an inch or so away and looking at every little bug and every little worm and every little living thing. And so even today I—if a big old ant comes in the house, I’ll say hello Mr. Ant, how are you? And—and, you know, I—I’ve even saved a cockroach before. Now that’s pretty pitiful. So—but, on the other hand, I have learned to—to squash cockroaches if their population gets over-abundant. But my father having been a vocational agriculture teacher and growing up in agriculture would always be enamored with the next discovery and back I think around World War II, DDT was invented and everybody used to almost bathe in DDT because that was going to save the world from pests. And so, in the early ‘50’s, my father would always want to spray the lawn or spray the bushes or spray the vines and what I noticed, even when I was

0:10:21 - 44

seven, eight years old, was after he sprayed my lizards would die and my toads wouldn’t be as healthy looking and—and so I had huge wars with my father. And he’d always want to hack down trees and plant gardens and be a farmer and I would have these—these, I wouldn’t call them philosophical debates. It would be, "Dad, don’t you ever spray again. You’re killing my lizards!" And over a period of decades, I think that I have built into him a certain sensitivity toward nature that he was not raised to have. This is his yard that you’re looking at right now and you probably won’t find many yards any more natural in an urban environment. So I don’t let him cut down anything really. And he doesn’t mow and he doesn’t spray. I don’t think he’s sprayed anything in twenty years. And, of course, I corrupted him by, and my mother, by telling them that wine was good for them. And so now they—they have not only become good environmentalists with my training by they’ve also become winos like their son.

DT: I understood that your parents were pretty self reliant, that they grew their food, they made their clothes and yours, of course. I’m wondering if you think that had any influence on your confidence that nature can take care of you, you don’t need as much commercial support as we’ve come to assume?

0:12:01

GR: Well I think so. I mean, I remember even in 1950 going out into the woods, we needed a lamp and there was a pine tree that a vine had grown around and it had strangled this pine tree and—and put it in a very interesting shape so we cut down that—that funny little pine tree that was about to be strangled to death anyway and I remember taking a—a drill bit about that long and I was only five or six or something, and drilling a hole all the way through this and building a lamp. So we—we built our own furniture and we didn’t go to the lumber yard and buy new lumber unless we had to. In fact, the house I live in, my father built basically by himself. And we would go to the sawmills and they would throw out scraps and so we would get the scraps and use them in the construction of this house and—and in other items. And I remember recycling nails. I would sit, when I was five or six years old, and I would pound out crooked nails that had been used, you know, in other old buildings and salvaging them. And, to this day, what I do—I’m—I’m very actively involved in real estate but I do not believe in developing even one square inch of new land. Nowhere on planet Earth do we need to develop or touch any untouched area. We do not need to pave over anything more. There is—what we tend to do, as Americans, is build for the short-term, soil our nest, blight—allow blight to creep in and then abandon that property. So I’ve been actively involved in—in rehabilitating and recycling houses and collecting antique houses and I suppose a lot of that stems from a desire to use what is there and create as little negative impact on the planet as possible in whatever pursuit I follow, including my career of—of producing educational materials for—for school children. I feel like that has probably one of the least negative impacts. I know how to make money and—but I don’t make much because I refuse to do anything—I—I have—there’s no price that—that you could pay me to destroy any part of the planet more than I destroy just by bringing—here and breathing the air and—and flushing the toilet, you know, or eating the food I—and—and consuming actually more than I do consume. And I’m not a—I’m not so much a purist that I live in a cave and—

0:14:41 - 44

and don’t enjoy air conditioning in this climate but—but I think that if everyone were concerned about having as little impact, negative impact as possible, on the planet that we could probably survive as a species much longer than we will survive at our current rate of destroying the life support system of the human species by destroying the life support system of our fellow species. And I don’t mean to diverge but since we’re on that track, I think one of the questions that you normally ask is what do you see the future to be? And unfortunately I’ve had to become very cynical because I’ve spent the good part of my life attempting to educate even educated people, people with Ph.D. degrees and scientists. And I have a hard time communicating even with so-called ecologists. I talked to a forest ecologist the other day that works for the Nature Conservancy and he is working on a project with the Forest Service and working with the Forest Service. He has almost become a spokesperson for the Forest Service and the last issue of the Texas Nature Conservancy magazine, for example, just regurgitated Forest Service propaganda and—and lies. So even our scientists are becoming corrupted. And there’s so much corruption in science and on our universities and with the Forest Service that I feel like we are heading toward imminent world ecological disaster. I wish I knew what the solution was. We’re going to, at some point, as a species have to change our focus and our attitudes and our outlook toward the planet and not view every living thing as a commodity or as a dollar bill. And I’m a capitalist myself but you can have capitalism and environmental ethics at the same time. And I fear that the dollar—as long as the dollar always rules and as long as there are evil people on this planet and there are many evil people in—in positions of power that we’re going to see a continual erosion of our total life support systems and the human species ultimately will be doomed to a very, very low quality of life, along with those other species that can survive with—with humans in a—in a deteriorated, decimated planet.

DT: You said before that you’ve had difficulty teaching even educated people about these problems. How did you learn yourself? Were there teachers in high school or college or in your later life that helped you learn about the outdoors and environmental protection?

0:17:56 – 44

Well I think—I think on the contrary, somehow there is some—and I don’t want to get off into some sort of spiritual thing but it is sort of interesting that if—if religion does not learn to respect and appreciate the spirituality of the planet and of all living things, then we are doomed. And I suppose that there may have been a—a religious mentor. I used to have to go to a—a vacation Bible school and there was a woman by the name of Mrs. C. C. Springfield and she—this—I guess I was about seven and we were down in Sam Houston Park where I just lived anyway, camped out and caught little fish and let them go and all those things, and she was really focused on—on nature and on, you know, God’s world or God’s creation and—and how every living creature had a place. Well I already knew that but that, at least, gave a religious justification for, you know, having an appreciation for whatever one has a belief in, whether it’s—you know, there are the creationists who think, you know, that tree wasn’t there until 4004 B.C. or something like that and you weren’t here and all that sort of stuff. But regardless of whether you believe that or you believe science or you have a belief of your own, that tree is still an extremely imp—important part of an ecosystem that is so complex that we will probably never understand it. Keep in mind we are basically a primitive people still to this day, living in an advanced technology. In other words, we have created a technology that allows us, without even knowing what we’re doing, to destroy the product of millions of years of evolution or 4004 B.C. years of—of creation. But regardless, you can take a person right now who’s illiterate, doesn’t have a junior high education and put him behind a D10 bulldozer and that person can destroy the life support system of every creature and there might be tens of thousands of species of microorganisms that we don’t know the life history of. In fact, we know that there are. So we’re destroying the items of infinite value, creatures of infinite value, plants of infinite value, to our own survival through gross ignorance and greed and total lack of respect for our planet and for our own homes. It’s no different to—to go out and clearcut a National Forest or an old-growth forest, is no different, in my mind, than going to the National Gallery of Art or to the Louve and bombing the paintings, destroying it. Those paintings that at least could be recreated, and all – and the images have been recreated. But you can’t recreate an old-growth forest. It’s basically gone forever, once it’s gone. So, our whole focus as a nation and as a world, actually, is based on punishing people for crimes, for example. Texas Department