It's been 48 years since my great, great, great uncle took his last breath. But now that the highly fictionalized movie has come out based on his life, I find myself compelled to tell the real truth about Calistoga Jones.
Contrary to popular belief, he was not human, but feline -- a common house cat from Wisconsin who felt the tug of adventure. Upon graduation from high school, Calistoga made his way to New York City to make his fortune in the basement of the American Museum of Natural History. There, using a combination of "forceful coercion, subterfuge and firepower (!!!!!!!!), he was able to rise from rodent abatement to explorer.
"I was born to be an explorer. There was never any decision to make," he wrote in his first book entitled The Business of Exploring published in 1935. "Killing as a profession did not really hold any excitement for me. I preferred dried kibble to dead animals. I had the desire to see new places, to discover new facts. Curiosity has always been a driving force for me."
He was a cat of the world, equally at ease stowing away on a merchant ship to Japan or China or entering the living rooms of Wall Street millionaires. He got along famously in the salons of Park Avenue. He fit right in when sailing with hard-bitten whalers. He was able to languish in a Japanese brothel with aplomb. When he walked into a yurt, he looked like he belonged."
Uncle Calistoga was a master fundraiser. Almost all his expeditions were funded by some of American's greatest businessmen. "I met with Rockefeller, Morgan, Frick, Vanderbilt, Astor, Dodge, Warburg, Baker, Phelps and Jessup. They all believed I would find the missing link between the smilodon and the common house cat."
After raising more than $250,000 in 1920, Uncle Calistoga set out for the Gobi Desert to test his hypothesis that this was the birthplace of the common house cat. That deep in the desert he would find the missing link between the saber tooth tiger and the Siamese Cat. He struck upon this theory one night during his night shift at the American Museum of Natural History.
One of his colleagues described the scene: "Calistoga was lying on his back with bag of catnip over his face. He lay there quietly for about 15 minutes and then jumped up and said 'I've got it!' We all laughed at him. But he was resourceful. He sold the idea like a box of corn flakes to those millionaires. I mean, a cat heading an expedition to find the link between the prehistoric cat and the self-righteous Siamese? Come on! But he was a smart kitty, he knew those financiers couldn't resist taking a chance on an expedition into an area where there was liable to be oil. He got all the oil barons on board and he didn't need anybody else!"
Following in the footsteps of Marco Polo, his expedition traveled into the Gobi's overpowering vastness. "The landscape was awesome and empty with rocky outcroppings, sand dunes, escarpments, barren mountain peaks and gravel-covered plains. It was a virtual cat box," he wrote.
One day in the midst of a blinding sand storm, the expedition lost its way and wandered, lost into an unusual outcropping. "After walking a few yards, I found myself looking into a sweeping basin filled with spectacular formations cut by erosion into massive walls of reddish-orange sandstone," Calistoga wrote. He named it the Flaming Cliffs. Below these red cliffs he made feline history.
Almost immediately the discoveries began. The first day "everyone was gathered for lunch, and Calistoga walked up with his paws outstretched," wrote one of his colleagues. "He had found a nest of dinosaur eggs -- the first eggs discovered that were not laid by birds."
The next day Calistoga found another clutch of dinosaur eggs that included the skulls of several infants. On the third day he made his greatest discovery. It was a cluster of five eggs, each about eight inches long, reddish-brown in color. They were elongated and slightly flat.
"When I cleared away all the debris, I exposed a fragment of a skeleton of a quadrapedal mammal. It appeared to have died in the act of raiding the nest. I knew I had found what I had been looking for. This was the great meezadon velociraptor (toothy Siamese who is a swift thief). I had found the missing link. I imagined I could see his blue eyes flashing when I lifted pieces of his skull and his 12-inch-long teeth and placed these carefully in my bag. I could feel what the meezadon felt when he discovered the eggs so very long ago. I imagined him thinking 'Quick! Dinner!' I could almost taste the egg as the shell was broached by his hideously long teeth."
When news of the discovery of the missing link hit the newspapers around the world, the reaction to the announcement was phenomenal. The press, felines and the cat fancying public devoured the discovery with a frenzy that even Calistoga found difficult to fathom. Minutes after his ship docked in San Francisco, reporters from every major West Coast city swarmed aboard.
I have pictures of him holding the skull as though it was a relative, tentatively, tenderly with a sweet, sweet smile of astonishment as he descended the gangplank of the ship.
The press accounts and photos of Uncle Calistoga show him surrounded by hordes of adoring fans at his first lecture at the American Museum. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. wrote about the scene: "We were cheek by jowl. A lot of hissing could be heard. I got cat scratched several times. It was impossible to hear Calistoga's speech. It was impossible to get to the case that held the eggs and the predatory meezadon. It was such a sensation...... I returned several times over the next month to look the missing link in the eye and to contemplate how it used its imposing teeth. I still shudder when I think of it today," wrote Rockefeller in his memoirs.
Yet the missing link was not the only attraction the public had for the man behind the discovery. Equally riveting was the swashbuckling image that was created by the media. Uncle Calistoga was the pioneering adventurer who forced the forbidding Gobi to give up its age-old secrets. Stories, whether true or not, were told of his facing down bandits armed only with a bullwhip. "I was surrounded by Chinese bandits. I had to protect the bones of the ancients that were in my possession. I pulled out the bullwhip and by some fortunate happenstance I managed to wrap it around the neck of the nearest robber. I pulled with all my might and his head came off with a big gush of blood," reports the New York Times of June 3, 1923.
His fame now soared to extraordinary heights and, like Nelson after the Battle of the Nile, crowds flocked to him whenever he appeared in public. He was offered the directorship of the museum. His visage appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. He was put forward as the choice for the vice presidency with 'Fighting Bob' La Follette, Sr. who ran under the banner of the Progressive Party. Both were from Wisconsin and were soundly beaten by the incumbent Republican Calvin Coolidge, although they garnered 17 percent of the popular vote in 1924.
Despite his fame, Uncle Calistoga found public life wearing. After defeat during the general election he retreated to the spa town of Calistoga in Northern California. He so identified with the rustic and wild place that it eventually became a part of his nickname.
There he found solace and a semblance of privacy. Local paper cuttings report that he was seen walking the hills above the tiny city to the summit of Mount St. Helena. There were rumors that he was secretly working on a big dig in the Palisades that grace the eastern edge of the hills above the city. He worked briefly for Giuseppe Musante, an ice cream and soda fountain owner who founded the Calistoga Sparkling Mineral Water Company.
Wars in Asia made it hard for Calistoga to arrange for another expedition to the Gobi, much to his great disappointment. He never went back, although he was offered money to mount other expeditions on three separate occasions. His exploring days over, he settled in Calistoga and proceeded to write his magnum opus The New Conquest of Central Asia. Under the banner headline 'In Search of the Meezadon in Mongolia,' the book was praised in New York Daily News as an "absorbing chronicle, a triumph and an enthralling blend of science and adventure that remains one of the most captivating narratives of exploration ever written."
Great uncle Calistoga spent the rest of his life writing about his discoveries and hosting parties at his country house just outside town. There were reported stories of love affairs later in life, but as a neutered male he was to live his life out alone, in the company of a small replica of the meezdon skull and teeth. He was discovered dead of a heart attack at age 93, clutching the bones of the missing link in one hand, a smile on his face.
Of his discoveries, my great uncle was reported to have said late in his life that "Man is an ape with possibilities, but there are many intelligent species in the universe -- and they are all owned by cats."
This story is based on Dragon Hunter by Charles Ballenkamp his biography of Roy Chapman Andrews.
