Caveboy Johnson Turns 90

By Karl and Sarah Johnson

[This article first appeared in The Republican (Springfield, Mass.) on 2 February 2018]

Almost one century ago, some Springfield-area explorers set out to map the mostly unknown caves of New England. Today, the youngest of those adventurers turns 90.

Charles M. "Charlie" Johnson, who resides at Loomis Lakeside at Reeds Landing, is known to many as former president of Johnson's Bookstore in downtown Springfield. But before he followed his father into the family business, he followed him into holes in the ground all over the Northeast.

Roger Johnson began exploring caves in the Berkshires around 1928, the year his son was born. The elder Johnson was a collector - he had many antique bicycles at his home in Hockanum in Hadley - and, according to the Springfield Union, he liked collecting caves "because they require no dusting."

What began as a hobby soon became something much more. He recruited photographer Arthur Palme and journalist Clay Perry to form the first caving club in America. In 1936, along with Roger's sons Steve and Charlie, the three men guided Harvard student Donald Griffin to the Chester emery mine to study and band bats. The Springfield Union and Republican covered the expedition in an article entitled "Banding the Bats in the Battiest Burrow in the Berkshires." Griffin became the first person to conclusively demonstrate that bats navigate by sonar and coined the word "echolocation."

Caving caught on, and, when the National Speleological Society was founded a few years later, Perry credited that organization's "pioneer impulse" to the men and boys of New England. To Perry, Roger Johnson was "undoubtedly Massachusetts' original caveman" and "the champion caveman of New England."

Roger Johnson did not appreciate being called a caveman, so he coined a new word - "spelunker." Derived from the Latin word for cave, a spelunker is "one who explores caves for the fun of it." The word first appeared in area newspapers in the 1930s, then in a book by Perry in 1939, and by 1946 in Merriam-Webster's dictionary.

That spelunking was all about fun is apparent from Roger Johnson's several practical jokes. "Super-caveman Roger Johnson of Springfield," one paper reported, discovered an invisible snake. "The photograph shows him holding the snake's tail under his thumb which is at the 29-inch mark." When friends asked where the snake was, he responded, "It doesn't show in the picture because it is an invisible snake."

Roger Johnson excelled at extracting the tallest of tales from the smallest of holes. Upon discovering a waterfall in a cave under Mount Everett that gave off quite a roar, he named the place Growling Bear Cave. Charlie Johnson, who once gashed and badly scarred a finger on one of their outings, fondly recalls his father telling everyone he had been bitten by a bear. 

When a newspaper editor noted that Roger Johnson specialized in "black nasty caves," he responded by sending "proof of the pleasant joy I had Sunday adding a splendid cave to my collection." The "proof" consisted of his unwashed caving clothes. The editor then took "the muddiest and dampest khaki shirts and trousers ever to go through the local post office" to Johnson's Bookstore where he attempted, without success, to sell them to the antique department.

But the New England Spelunkers Club’s masterpiece came in 1939. When Connecticut residents claimed their pets had been attacked by an unknown animal, Roger Johnson and Clay Perry took justice into their own hands. They speculated it was the work of the last remaining Glastonbury Glawackus - a cave-dwelling creature described as a cross between a bear and a lynx with long tusks and suction cups on its feet - and determined to capture it.

Their first Glawackus hunts caught sight of the creature but not the creature itself. The drama increased, and one hunt drew reporters from the Associated Press and United Press International. Finally, on April 23, club members cornered the Glawackus in the longest cave in New England - Bashful Lady Cave in Salisbury, Connecticut. Roger Johnson exercised his prerogative as club president and entered first with a borrowed pistol. He emerged with the prey, which was then stuffed and displayed at the New York World's Fair.

Charlie Johnson was 11 years old. Looking back through his father's scrapbook almost 80 years later, which features hundreds of articles published from Boston to New York City, he can't help but laugh. "We had such fun with it," he says.

The Glawackus spent decades in the basement of the Johnson family's Hockanum home, and, in 1979, was displayed at the National Speleological Society convention.