Skipper B

Dear George, 

        Recently I was saddened to learn that one of my best childhood friends, Skipper B, died several years ago. Our parents were close friends, so Skipper and I became close friends too. Our family lived on Sheridan Road at the time, and Skipper’s family lived a block away on State Street. We cruised the neighborhood on our bikes, played softball and touch football at Triangle Park, got ice cream cones at the Producer’s Dairy, swam in the bay at the end of a neighborhood street, built snow forts, and played cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians in my back yard. 

         Skipper was seven months older than me but several years more worldly, and I learned a lot about life from him, including most of what I knew about the birds and the bees. In fourth grade I had a crush on one of our classmates named Louise. Skipper got tired of my talking about how beautiful Louise was, and one day he took me up to his parents’ bedroom, opened up one of his mother’s women’s magazines, and showed my a two-page Clairol ad with dozens of pictures of models who had hair dyed in different shades. He asked me if I thought these women were beautiful, and, when I agreed, he asked me to show him one model that looked like Louise. I looked and looked but couldn’t find a single one. Skipper explained that a girl named Maxine in our class was beautiful and looked most like these models and that Louise, in comparison, had a big nose, a square jaw, and a large Adam’s Apple. That ended my crush on Louise (but started my crush on Maxine). 

         My own family was pretty non-religious, so Skipper provided a lot of my spiritual education as well. His family were good Catholics, and he went to Sunday School and mass every week. Every Monday morning Skipper told me the story of a new saint he had learned about. I also learned a lot about the priest’s drinking indiscretions and which of the nuns were the meanest. 

         Both of us were comic book enthusiasts. I liked Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck the most, but Skipper owned a complete collection of Classic Comics, i.e., the comic book adaptations of literary classics (Moby Dick,The Three Musketeers, Hamlet, the Iliad, etc.). When we debated which superhero was best, I picked Superman, but Skipper liked Batman the best because his powers relied on human abilities rather than fantasy super-powers. 

         In fourth grade our teacher devised a competitive system by which students could move through the military ranks by accumulating points for various extracurricular activities — e.g., going to church, participation on sports teams, singing in the Glee Club, belonging to the Boy or Girl Scouts. All the children began the year as buck privates, and, as they accumulated points during the year, they could proceed through the ranks of sergeant, lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, etc. The highest possible rank was Gold Star General. It involved so many points that it seemed impossible that anyone could every achieve that rank. For the most part, that was true. However, one of our classmates did become a Gold Star General by the school year’s end. Skipper belonged to the most groups, participated in the most activities, went to the most events, and had the most interests. 

         After fourth grade Skipper transferred to parochial school, and two years later he and his family moved to Minneapolis. That was the last time I saw or heard from him until I ran across his obituary. It was amazing and gratifying to read about the rest of Skipper’s life. He attended a top private school in Minneapolis where he lettered in three varsity sports, then went on to Yale University where he continued to excel academically and starred in Yale dramatic productions. After law school at the University of Chicago, Skipper joined a top law firm in Minneapolis and became Chair of the Litigation Department. An avid athlete who enjoyed sailing and skiing, Skipper took up marathon running at age 41 and completed nearly 90 marathons and several 50 mile and 62 mile races. Married four times and mentor to many fellow members of AA, Skipper owned homes in Minneapolis, Colorado, and Wisconsin; was a foster parent to several children; opened and ran a gourmet health food restaurant; wrote several plays, one novella, and an autobiography; and created a successful art fair in Minneapolis.                                                       

        When I knew him, Skipper was an extraordinary kid, but that was only a precursor to his extraordinary adult life. It’s like Freud said — our basic character structure is firmly in place by age 6 or 7.  I’m sad that I lost touch with Skipper.

Love, Dave 

Growing Up in World War II

My Dad: Victor L., 2nd Lieutenant JG, U.S. Navy (circa 1943-45, approx. age 35-37)

Dear George,

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, I was four and a half and my brother Steven was one.  As with hundreds of millions of families, our lives were powerfully altered by World War II.  I started kindergarten at Boswell School in 1942.  A year later we moved to Sheridan Road, and I transferred to Washington School for first grade.  There was a lot of patriotic fervor throughout my grade school years.  We began each day reciting the Pledge of Allegiance; our Weekly Reader highlighted news reports about the war; and our teachers made continual reference to America’s role in battling Germany, Italy, and Japan and helping save the free world.  My school’s fourth grade teacher structured her entire classroom as a system of military ranks in which children could earn points through approved activities and progress from Buck Privates to a possible rank of Gold Star General by year’s end.  Though I didn’t enter fourth grade until a year after the war’s end, we still attained positions in the classroom army and it was highly involving.   I was a comic book addict at the time, and I spent a lot of school time drawing cartoon faces of Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini.  The culture as a whole was nationalistic, militaristic, xenophobic, and male-dominated, and all of that filtered down to us schoolchildren as well. 

The media in the 1940’s was saturated with war-time news and propaganda.  Kids from our neighborhood went en masse to matinees every Saturday afternoon at the Menominee Theater, located in the old Opera House.  We bought a season’s worth of twenty tickets for a dollar.  The matinee typically included a couple of cartoons, a news reel, a short (e.g., The Three Stooges), and a main feature.  Most of the features tailored to children centered upon violence in one form or another – either war movies, which were being churned out in Hollywood by the dozens, or westerns or crime/detective movies.  The newsreels featured war-time news clips from Europe, depicting cataclysmic events laden with tension for kids whose parents or other family members were fighting abroad.  Even the animated cartoons involved war-time themes, e.g., Superman battling the Nazis.  My friends and I became knowledgeable about the various symbols and artifacts of war – identification of enemy and allied planes and ships, symbols of rank in the various military branches, prominent generals and admirals, flags of the nations, weapons, and the various battles that appeared in the news.  I was probably more knowledgeable about international events in grade school than I was in the twenty years that followed. 

Preoccupation with violence carried over to our childhood play activities. Guns were our single most important playthings, at least for boys.  Through play and games, we were getting psychically prepared for a future in the military or other aggressive adult male roles.  We all owned six-shooter cap guns, and we made regular treks to the corner variety store to replenish our supply of caps for a dime a pack.  We owned toy military guns, cowboy guns, and police/detective weapons and paraphenalia.  Our personal armories also included water guns and rifles which shot ping pong balls or suction cup arrows.  We played cops and robbers, cowboys against Indians, and War (Americans against Nazis or Japs).  We had separate military games for the Army fighting in towns and forests and Marines storming the beaches.

My dad left for officer training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station outside Chicago some time around 1943.  My mother, my younger brother Steve, and I moved to a second floor apartment in a building in a less affluent section of town.  My mother had her hands full, keeping a household going and rearing two young boys.  She felt uneasy about some of the kids in our neighborhood and monitored and restricted my playtime activities outside the house.  It was hard to no longer have two parents at home.  According to family legend, I saved up several pennies and gave them to my mother to help my father come back.  Everything was rationed at the time – gasoline, rubber, clothing, sugar, coffee, food of all sorts, even bicycles – and there was a general sense of deprivation among civilians, though also a lot of commitment toward contributing to the war effort.    All in all, I think my mother was terrified for my father after he left for the Pacific theater, as were her female friends and relatives for their military spouses and family members.

The war came to an end, of course, in August 1945, within weeks of the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In the months and years that followed we schoolchildren learned details about the atomic bomb, as well as potential peacetime uses of atomic energy.  When news came later about the Russians development of nuclear weapons, rumors circulated in Menominee to the effect that Russian bombers could mistake our river and harbors from the air for the St. Lawrence seaway and drop atomic bombs on Menominee.  In school we had regular classroom drills in preparation for nuclear attacks which mainly consisted in bending over and putting our heads under our desks.  Tensions regarding the potential destruction of the human species became a chronic condition – the world had profoundly changed. 

On the day the Japanese surrendered, I was allowed to go out to the family automobile and honk the horn as long as I liked.  My dad came back from occupied Japan around six or seven months later, and I still have vivid recollections of my parents hosting a coming home party for the Steffke’s (Pat was in the Army) and the O’Hara’s (Mike was in the Marines).  Steve and I were exiled to our bedroom after the first hour or so, and we were bitter about being excluded.  Pat Steffke had married an Austrian opera singer (Martina) that he’d met in Europe, and we young boys thought she was the most beautiful woman to ever grace our home town. The postwar period was a time of great national pride.  My father and his friends shared strong bonds from their military experience that lasted throughout their lifetimes.  Years later my dad told one of my college friends that being in the Navy in the Pacific during the war was the most meaningful experience of his life.  In contrast to our country’s subsequent wars, there was no question whatsoever of the rightness or necessity of America’s involvement and the country’s crucial role in helping to save the world from Fascism.  Adults and kids wound up with unwavering patriotism and feelings of pre-eminence in the world.  America had emerged as a super-power, and there was little recognition of  possible downsides of that role.   Nowadays, following Korea, the Civil Rights revolution, political assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, the emergence of the counter-culture, 9-11, and Iraq and Afghanistan, that seems like an incredibly long time ago.

Love,

Dave

G-Mail Comments

-Terry O-S (9-2):  I think you meant  circa 1943-44, not  43-54.  I have long believed that the primary reason why our parents and  their friends were so exuberant in their social lives was because they were all so relieved that the men, at least in their immediate circle, had all survived the war.  Martina was the beautiful, indeed - and was also grateful to our Moms for befriending her.

Do the Flies Get a Bum Rap?

Musca Domestica, up-close view

Dear George,

It’s hard to believe that the flies are gaining control over our lives, but that’s what seems to be happening.  Katja was scheduled for shoulder replacement surgery shortly after we returned from our Lake Cumberland camping trip.  When we got to the hospital, she went through the intake procedure, changed into a hospital gown, got hooked up to IV tubes, and was ready to be wheeled into the operating room when the anaesthesiologist asked her a couple of last-minute screening questions.  One was whether she had any abrasions.  Katja said no, but she did have some fly bites from camping.  The anaesthesiologist looked over the dozens of fresh bites on her forearms and calves, then called in the surgeon for consultation.  The surgeon said it was probably safe to proceed, but there was a slightly increased risk of infection that could result from the bites.  He recounted one of his cases in which a patient had gotten an infection because of his chigger bites and had had to have his newly installed shoulder taken back out, a messy and painful complication.  Katja promptly decided to reschedule.  So, instead of three hours on the operating table, we had French Onion soup at Panera.  We didn’t know whether to thank our Lake Cumberland flies or be angry at them.   

Though flies have rarely affected our daily lives as much as changing a scheduled operation, we’ve had many thousands – maybe millions -- of human-fly encounters over the years.  Except for other human beings, I’d say we’ve had more contact with flies than any other species.  Certainly more than snakes, mice, worms, ducks, squirrels, opossums, moles, etc.  One memorable experience was when we were young marrieds spending the summer working on a research project in Maine’s White Mountains.  To save money, we decided to live in our pup tent at a free National Forest campsite.  We had to drive five miles over a rocky one-lane road to get to the campground, and we never saw another camper during our entire stay.  The site was idyllic, perched on the bank of a small mountain lake in the midst of a primal pine forest.  The only terrible thing was the nightly invasion of the Maine black flies, tiny vampire-like creatures that seek out and thrive on warm blood.  After days of nonstop swatting, itching, and scratching, we went to the hardware store and purchased an electric bug zapper.  The bug zapper contained a bright light that was astonishingly effective in attracting flies, moths, and other insects as soon as the sun went down.  Each time a bug entered the zapper’s innards, the machine would give off a loud ZAPPPP as it vaporized the intruder.  We’d sit at the campfire each evening, clapping and cheering every time another bug was electrified.  It was so absorbing that, when we returned to Cincinnati, we installed the bug zapper on our back porch, even though we had no real need for it, and spent many evening hours raptly watching the action.

I got pretty obsessive about trying to kill the flies on our most recent trip, and, in retrospect, I think this was an overly harsh and even immoral approach.  The more time I spent hunting the flies, the more I came to respect them as adversaries.  They seemed to have fabulous sense organs and perhaps great communication skills as well since they would descend from all directions in a matter of seconds as soon as we opened a jar or can at the kitchen table.  And they were so speedy and deceptive it was next to impossible to swat them.   I thought back to my father ‘s reverence for nature and all its living creatures.  When Katja screamed upon coming across a large brown spider in his bathroom sink, he explained that the spider was a welcome dweller in his house and every bit as much a guest as we were.  I think he probably regarded flies as equally worthy of respect and consideration.  Perhaps, I thought to myself, people are simply prejudiced toward flies.  Certainly we wouldn’t been so distraught if we’d been visited by flitting butterflies at our campsite.  

The common housefly

Confused and worried, I decided to explore the true facts about flies, using my most sophisticated technological skills (i.e., googling the word “fly”).  I soon discovered that flies have whole bunches of positive traits that I didn’t know about.  First, as the photo above illustrates, flies are handsome little devils.  We normally don’t get to appreciate this because they are too small and too quick to examine in detail.  They have fantastic eyes, their wings are elegant, and they often have aesthetically pleasing coloration.  Flies, it turns out, help to clean up the natural environment by gobbling up decaying waste, and they help keep the bird and spider populations healthy by offering their own precious bodies as food.  Flies are also terrific pollinators, pollinating more plants and flowers than almost any other creature except bumblebees.  Without flies, the birds and plants and flowers would be in serious trouble.  In fact, a contributor to wiki.answers.com asserts: “if flies become instinct who knows what could happen.  we could all die…”  That’s such a profound insight.  I think the author might have meant “extinct”, but his or her meaning is clear.

While flies’ attributes are undoubtedly natural and sensible to their fellow flies, not all of them are appealing to humans.  Flies breed, lay their eggs, and are born in feces, garbage, or rotting animal flesh (a practice that the more delicate among us would find offensive).  I never realized it, but flies lack teeth and can’t chew.  So when they’re eating human food, they vomit or defecate on it first to liquefy it so they can slurp it up with their little straw-like tongues.  Flies also have sticky pads on their feet, so when they walk around or land on something they leave behind little traces of dog poop or rotting filth.  Because a single fly carries about a million bacteria on its body and its hairy legs, flies have an impressive capacity for spreading illness.  Some favorite fly diseases are dysentery, diarrhea, typhoid fever, E. coli infections, and cholera.  

On the whole, then, we can conclude that flies are our good friends and allies, and we shouldn’t be trying to hurt them.  If you’re going to be scheduled for surgery, you should just avoid mingling with them for the time being.  Even when you’re perfectly healthy, of course, there is a risk of typhoid fever, cholera, etc.  However, since we would all be dead if our friends the flies didn’t exist, I’d definitely rather risk cholera than be instinct myself.

Love,

Dave

      

Sources: 

“Common Housefly (Musca domestica)”, http://www.enchangtedlearning.com

“Flies in the home,” lancaster.unl.edu/pest/resources/flies015.shtml

“Insects – Flies”, http://www.uen.org

“What good are flies?”, http://wiki.answers.com

G-mail Comments

-Linda K-C (9-10): David, even it causes me to become instinct I don't care, you can not convince me they should be allowed to live, they sit on shit and sit on our foot. I hate flies, good advocating on their behalf. 

-David L (9-11): Hey Linda,  You have a really clear attitude.  Hard to argue with your reasoning.  Dave

-Linda K-C (9-11): Personally I would jail them. Also foot was to be food which only enhances my argument.

-Jennifer M (9-9): This is a good one. I like the photos of the flies and your fly facts. I am also glad that we are not instinct! :-)

Washington School Days: 11. After School

Dave and Steve at Washington Grade School (1948; photo by VAL)

Dear George,

From fifth grade on, I was best friends with Marvin F, and we played together every day after school. We’d go over to the railroad yards and sneak into empty boxcars, fantasizing about traveling to North Dakota or Alabama. Or we’d walk up Sheridan Road to the Silver Cream brewery where we’d collect pieces of broken beer bottle glass from the Green Bay shore which had polished edges from being ground by the sand and waves. In the summer Marvin, Tommy H., and I formed a club that met underneath the sidewalk in front of our apartment building on Quimby Ave. We’d discovered a room-like space about 4 or 5 feet in height under the sidewalk, accessible through a semi-circular opening at the base of the building’s brick wall. The roof was concrete, i.e., the bottom side of the sidewalk, and the floor was dirt. We brought candles and matches down into our hideout and met there daily. We made sure no passersby were in sight, and we recited a secret password before we let ourselves through the opening. A small door led into the apartment building’s cellar, and there we discovered a shelf filled with homemade cans of jams and jellies. At each meeting Tommy or Marvin would steal a jar, and we would eat it with our fingers. I refused to do the stealing, but I was happy to share the loot.

One day my mom was out, and Marvin discovered a large box of kitchen matches in our kitchen. He brought the box into the living room, put it on the floor near a window, set one match upright in the box, and lit it. The match slowly burned down, and suddenly the entire box exploded in flame. We watched transfixed as the whole box burned down to a pile of ashes. Marvin poured a glass of water on the remains, and we cleaned the mess up as best we could. A large, charred circle, however, remained in the hardwood floor.

I got pretty nervous. Marvin or I, I forget whom, covered the burnt black circle with a piece of white paper. I waited for my mother to come home (my dad was overseas in the Navy). She did, and, though I feared the worse, nothing happened. The paper was partly concealed behind an upholstered chair, and my mom didn’t notice it. Each day I came home from school, anticipating the worst. But nothing ever happened. Weeks and weeks went by. I began to wonder about my mother’s housekeeping habits. Finally I forgot about the paper and the burnt floor myself. Then one day, seven or eight weeks later, I came home and the paper was gone.

My mother was livid. She pulled me over to the corner and demanded an explanation. Fortunately I had prepared this in my mind for some time. It was brief and to the point: “Marvin did it.”

That was the end of Marvin’s welcome in our household. We were still best friends, but he never came to our house again. A short time later I learned that arrangements had been made for me to stay after school each day to help Miss Guimond. I was never told exactly why, but I suspected it had to do with keeping me away from “bad influences”.

Every day at 3 p.m. I cleaned the blackboards and banged the dust out of the erasers and helped Miss Guimond straighten up the room. Then I would work on an art project that Miss Guimond would help me with. She explained that I was going to get to use Poster Paints (which nobody else in the sixth grade would be getting to do). On the one hand, I was sort of excited. But I was also intimidated. Poster paints were simply jars of powder. How can you paint with those? How do you mix them? What if you put too much water in? Etc. I finally decided to do my painting of a caveman and his family. Miss Guimond gave me the largest piece of paper available, about two by three feet, and I proceeded to sketch in the picture in pencil. As days went by and the time approached to do the actual poster painting, I became increasingly nervous. Miss Guimond asked if I were ready. No, I said, I needed more time for sketching. I began to draw little tiny stones on the ground and hundreds of pieces of grass. Then tiny leaves on the trees. Finally I’d managed to stall my way all the way to the end of the school year. I never did start painting my picture with poster paints, though I had sketched it in astonishing detail. Miss Guimond and I had a serious talk about lessons from this experience. Then sixth grade was all over, and I left Washington Grade School forever.

Love,

Dave

G-Mail Comments

-Jennifer M (6-29-10): I can think of some lessons, but what did your teacher think you should have learned?

-DCL to JM (7-4): Probably several lessons, e.g., Don't avoid tasks just because they are new; Don't let unrealistic anxieties stop you from acting; etc. (These are lessons I'm still working on.)

Washington School Days: 10. The Safety Patrol*

                         Steven L, Safety Patrol Captain

Dear George,

Like at all schools, kids at Washington Grade School enjoyed differing levels of social status among their peers.  However, one of the few formal social positions available was that of Captain of the Safety Patrol.  There was a girls’ Captain and a boy’s Captain, both appointed by Miss Guimond.  Safety Patrol members – all sixth-graders – staffed the main street corner before and after school and at lunch, watching for cars and holding out a flag to escort the smaller children across the street.  Helen O. was the Captain of the girls’ patrol, and I had the honor of heading up the boys.

 

Safety patrol members wore a badge and a white belt and chest band to make them more visible to motorists.  The Captain had a special badge, larger than the others.  Captains made up all of the assignments for the traffic guards, kept records of who did what, and kept the ship running smoothly.

 

Like most positions of authority, being the Safety Patrol Captain was not all peaches and cream.  Though Captains enjoyed special recognition on the part of the establishment (i.e., Miss Guimond), peers treated it less deferentially.  Helen’s girls were cooperative for the most part, but I felt I was dealing with a pack of fledgling criminals.  In particular, after the first week of patrol duty in September, the novelty of guiding first-graders across the street wore off, and most of the boys under my authority decided that it was more fun to play football than to stand at attention on the street corner.  Since I enjoyed the glory of being Captain, they decided, I ought to be the one to do the work as well.  Jerry D. was the first to abandon his sacred duties, and he warned me not to tell Miss Guimond or else.  I began covering Jerry’s shift.  His chums shortly followed suit.  Within a matter of days I was doing one hundred percent of the boys’ guard duty. 

This seemed unfair to me since it was my football that everybody else was playing with.  I threatened to leave it at home, but, since nobody else’s parents would buy one, this proved to be an idle threat.  Might makes right on the playground, and I acceded to my classmates.

 

Late in the fall Miss Guimond asked to review my records of the Safety Patrol assignments.  Since I’d been the only one on duty most of the time, I hadn’t kept any records.  Miss Guimond scolded me for shirking my duties, and I vowed to improve.  From then on, I made up fake records, inserting the names of the various football players while I covered their assignments.  Being in charge of things, I learned at this early stage of life, isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Love,

Dave

*Pseudonyms used in this story

G-Mail Comments:

-Linda C (5-19): Love descriptive blog. Sorry to say I would have been one of the children to have left you in the lurch.  maybe Jayme can tell you her safety patrol story.  Was picture you or your bro? 

Washington School Days: 9. Sixth Grade -- Big Shots

          Steve & Dave going to Washington School (VAL photo)

Dear George,

A significant feature of one’s school career is starting out at the bottom, then gradually ascending to the top, then starting out at the bottom all over again.  At Washington Grade School, sixth grade was the temporary top, and, once there, we enjoyed being the biggest and oldest kids, reveling in the admiration of our underlings.

 

Miss Elsie Guimond taught the sixth grade at Washington, and she was the school principal as well.  I remember her as being pretty old with gray hair and glasses, though she was probably about forty when I was in her class.  Miss Guimond was regarded by our parents as the best teacher in the school.  She was serious and strict, but she cared a lot about her students and got the best out of them.

 

One day one of the kids in the class, who I will call “K” for the sake of anonymity, was up at the blackboard doing an arithmetic problem as the class watched.  As K struggled with the problem a pool of yellowish liquid began to form on the floor, and soon it was a couple of feet in diameter.  Somebody noticed, whispered and pointed to his neighbor, and soon the entire class was watching in total absorption.  Miss Guimond realized what was happening, took K by the hand, and hurried from the room.

 

The class collapsed in hysteria.  Oblivious to K’s feelings in the matter, we thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened.  “How could K not feel it?” everyone wondered.  “Who is going to clean it up?”

 

Miss Guimond returned.  She had taken K to the rest room, then sent K home for the day.  She had a lengthy discussion with the class.  We learned some physiology – what the bladder is and how it can betray you.  We learned how you can do certain things and not even know you are doing them.  We learned a lot about unkind remarks and how ridicule can hurt people.  We learned that we were responsible for helping one another feel o.k. about oneself.  Miss Guimond was clear and to the point.  I doubt if anyone every said anything to K about the incident and maybe not even to one another.  But, I must say, the whole episode made for one of our important lessons in the sixth grade.

 

Later in the year I began drawing cartoon pictures of my classmates.  I loved comic books, and all I wanted to be in life was a cartoonist.  I made a “picture map” of the classroom, drawing a caricature of each of my classmates accompanied by some sarcastic or insulting name.  I didn’t show it to anybody, but I found it was pretty amusing.  At first Miss Guimond was missing from the picture, so I put her at her desk at the back of the room and named her “Old Miss Busybody.”  I felt a little guilty about this since I admired Miss Guimond, but I didn’t want to be a wimp, even to myself.

 

As luck would have it, the picture fell out of my pocket at recess.  Later in the day I learned that Jackie P. had found it and given it to Miss Guimond.  I couldn’t believe it.  Jackie claimed he wanted to get the picture returned to its rightful owner, but I knew a vicious act when I saw one.

 

I don’t know how offended Miss Guimond was, but she did bring the picture to the class’s attention.  First she read off people’s derogatory names, and at the end she revealed that I was the author of this travesty.  She pointed out that the only person I’d given a positive name to was Mary Beebo (“Teeny Tiny”), and she wondered if, perhaps, I might be in love with Mary Beebo.  Everybody laughed, even Mary.  Then she asked me who “Old Miss Busybody” was.  I tried to joke my way out of it, claiming it was Dick J’s new baby sister, but Miss Guimond wouldn’t let me off the hook.  After sufficient public humiliation, she did finally add that it was a creative effort, but I still felt totally embarrassed.  From then on, I confined my cartooning to portraits of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito.

 

Love,

Dave

  

*This story employs pseudonyms.

Washington School Days: 8. March Madness*

Dear George,

My parents had no interest in sports, but my grandfather, V.A. Sr., decided that they were vital for a growing young man.  He forced me to go to the YMCA for swimming lessons, and, when he learned in my sixth grade year that my school had a basketball team, he insisted that I join.  I was resistant to the point of screaming and crying, but my grandfather simply took me by the hand to the first practice.

 

Washington had a powerhouse team.  Dick J., our center, was the second tallest sixth-grader in Menominee.  Bobby G. and Tommy H. were forwards.  Bobby was tall and strong, and Tommy was an excellent outside shooter.  Jimmy B. and Bobby H. were the starting guards, both speedy and good ball-handlers.  The second string included Kenny S., Roger D., Bob C., Dicky M., and myself.  I was the shortest kid and judged myself to be the worst player on the team.  I always sat at the end of the bench and prayed that the coach wouldn’t send me into the game.  Usually he didn’t, or, at worst, I would only have to play for a minute or two.

 

Our guys thought we had a good chance of winning the city championship.  Only two other teams were serious contenders.  Roosevelt had Arthur (“Woz”) Woznicki, who seemed about eight feet tall and who could take on any other team in the city all by himself.  Fortunately, his supporting cast was terrible, and we felt we could assign three players to guard Woz and consequently limit that team’s scoring.  In fact, we did beat Roosevelt handily. 

 

Our scarier nemesis was St. John’s parochial school whose star player was Dermot Finnegan.  Dermot was already a legend in Menominee.  He was not only the best grade school athlete in town, but he was the meanest and toughest kid as well.  He headed up a gang of poor kids – the Rudden’s, the O’Connor’s, and others – who were known for stealing, smoking, drinking, and fighting.  Dermot, it was rumored, could destroy people with his fists, and we all believed it was only a matter of time before he would wind up on Death Row.   His team had a couple of other good players as well, and we had serious questions about whether we could defeat them.

 

St. John’s was our last game of the season, and, as the game approached, both teams were undefeated.  A week before the game, a couple of our first-string players took me aside on the playground.  They wanted to talk about a plan they had which would guarantee our victory.  Dermot, it turned out, had a history of hernias.  One good knee to the groin, they said, and he would be finished.  The team, they said, had gotten together and decided that I should go into the game, guard Dermot, and “accidentally” knee him in his vulnerable area.  They showed me how to do it.

 

I couldn’t believe what they were asking.  I totally rejected it, of course, but they brought it up over and over, sometimes with an accompanying threat of physical harm.  “Dermot would kill me” was my primary retort.  “We’ll protect you,” they replied.  “Dermot’s gang isn’t that big.”  I argued, pretty logically I thought, that any of our main players could injure Dermot because, once he was out, we were certain to win.  My teammates rejected this.  They wanted to run up the score as high as possible, they said, and they needed all the first-stringers in the game to do that.

 

The game day came, but unfortunately I can’t report the end of the story.  The game was filled with so much danger and anxiety that I’ve completely blotted the whole event from my mind.  I considered later that my teammates might have been putting me on, but I don’t think so.  Anyway, the coach never did put me into the St. John’s game.  Maybe they won, maybe we won.  The main thing of importance is that both Dermot and I were spared catastrophes of different sorts.

 

Love,

Dave

 

*Pseudoynms used in this story  

E-mail comments:

-Phyllis SS (12-17): Dave,  I'm so glad you wouldn't do it.  You were so right  - he would have FOUND YOU.  Plus, it was wrong.  Even though teams do play that way.  Have a merry xmas. Phyllis

 

Washington School Days: 7. The Playground

            Peter L. (center) on the Washington School playground (VAL photo)

Dear George,

 

I asked fifth-grade acquaintance Martha what her favorite subject in school was this year, and she promptly replied “recess”.  That brought back memories.  At Washington Grade School we spent a lot of time on the playground at morning and afternoon recesses, and I’d say recess was my favorite too.  Like nowadays, play was mostly sex-segregated.  The girls spent a lot of time at hopscotch and jumping rope.  While boys would occasionally join in, they were less skilled, and they mostly did it for a joke.  The boys specialized in marbles which we bought at the candy store down the block and brought to school in a cloth bag we carried in our pants pocket.  To play, you would scoop out a circular depression in the dirt and use your shooter to knock marbles into the hole.  Kids would decide first whether they were playing for funsies or for keepsies.  Keepsies was more serious – the winner kept the other guy’s marbles.  Funsies were for practice or when you knew you were out-matched and bound to lose.

 

Every once in a while the division of the sexes would be temporarily halted, and all the kids would join together to play one or another of two games: (a) boys chase the girls; or (b) girls chase the boys.  The idea was pretty much the same.  All the girls lined up in a row along the fence on the east side of the playground, and the boys formed a row on the west side.  For “boys chase the girls,” the girls had to run across the playground to the west side fence without being grabbed by a boy.  If a girl was captured, the boy took her over to a holding area at the playground’s corner, then returned to grab somebody else.  “Girls chase the boys”, of course, was the identical game, only in reverse.  These were the most exciting games at Washington School and were accompanied by a lot of yelling and squealing, excitement, and embarrassment.  The other boys would tease you for chasing after whoever it was you were chasing, and likewise for the girls.  The boys caught the girls more often than the girls caught the boys.  This could have been because the boys were faster runners, or it could be that the boys were more highly motivated to escape.  In fact, some complained that, in “boys chase the girls,” girls would run toward certain popular boys rather than trying to escape from them. 

 

Whenever we got a heavy snow in the winter the boys would play “Tackle”.  We needed at least two inches of snow because of the hard cinder playground.  An individual kid was designated the runner, given a football and a headstart, and the crowd of 20 or 30 other boys chased after him in an effort to tackle him.  Whoever tackled the runner then got to be the runner himself.  Tommy Hannon was the fastest kid in the school, and it would sometimes take ten minutes for the mob to bring him down.  One time Tommy ran straight at me.  I dove down and grabbed his ankles and down he went.  I don’t know who was more surprised, Tommy or me.  But I did get to be the next runner.  It was exhilarating to have the whole school chasing you, but I only stayed on my feet for thirty seconds, if that.

 

There was a big hickory tree at the southeast corner of the schoolyard, and it produced an abundant supply of nuts every fall.  A kid named Arnold, who was reputed to be a little socially backward, lived directly across the street.  After kids came back from lunch, Arnold would come out in his back yard, give a yell, and the rest of the boys would gather on the playground across the street next to the hickory tree.  Then we would start throwing nuts at Arnold while he would dodge back and forth.  He could do pretty well dodging single throws, but when we coordinated efforts and threw 15 or 20 hickory nuts simultaneously we would be bound to hit him.  This was met with loud cheers.  Shortly before the afternoon school bell rang, Arnold would pick up all the nuts from his yard so his parents wouldn’t notice and bring them back to the playground so we could use them again the next day.  This was a lot of fun for all concerned, and it was Arnold’s daily moment in the limelight, even though he got a few bumps and bruises in the process.

 

Love,

Dave

Gmail Comments:  Phyllis S-S (10-30-09):

Dear Dave,
This letter brought back so many memories.  Among them the same, exact games from my recesses untile the teacher police took over and organized recess.  That's correct.  Organized play.  None of boys chasing girls, vice versa and tackling.  They were deemed too dangerous and not socially acceptable.  Well, you can imagine what happened - the aggression was not repressed but went directly into the classroom.  The teachers prevailed with the organized play though.  It was a huge loss that I still mourn.
Phyllis-

Washington School Days: 6. The Famous Drugstore Incident

Dear George,

 

My grandfather, V.A. Sr., owned and operated drugstores in Menominee and Marinette.  When he retired, he gave the Marinette store to my dad and the Menominee store to my Uncle Kent who was a pharmacist.  The Menominee drugstore was on Electric Square at the northwest corner of the intersection of Ogden Avenue and Sheridan Road in the heart of downtown Menominee.  If you were to go there today, it’s the building occupied by the Subway Sandwich Shop, but back then it was a bustling drugstore with a full-scale pharmacy, a soda fountain and lunch counter, a perfume department, and all the various items which a respectable Rexall store would carry.

 

Washington School was only a half block away.  Washington was a neighborhood school, and nearly all the kids walked home for lunch at noon.  Our family, though, had moved out of town to Riverside Boulevard when I was in the fourth grade.  As a result, my dad made arrangements with Uncle Kent for Steven and I to eat lunch at the drugstore each day.  Our lunches included a sandwich and a drink, sometimes soup or potato chips.  When things were quiet, we were allowed to eat at the lunch counter.  But to maximize seating for paying customers, we nearly always ate in Uncle Kent’s office, a small, dark, dingy room adjacent to the pharmacy space at the back of the store.

                   The Menominee Drugstore (photo by VAL)

The drugstore provided one of the great joys of my childhood because its magazine rack offered a plentiful and ever-changing supply of the latest comic books.  Kent allowed us to read these as long as we didn’t put a single wrinkle in the pages.  We carefully followed his instructions.  I loved comic books.  Superheroes were my favorite, and Skipper Burke, Frankie St. Peter, and I would have endless discussions of who was best: Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, The Green Lantern, etc.  Frankie and I always voted for Superman and felt confident in our choice because he had the greatest powers.  Skipper, though, made a strong case for Batman, namely that he was a regular human being of extraordinary strength and intelligence who didn’t have to rely on supernatural powers.  We all poked fun at Captain Marvel as a sort of antiquated superhero with his magical incantation, “Shazam”.  Inspired by the comics, I spent a lot of time drawing cartoons, copying images of Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck or making up characters of my own.

 

Uncle Kent had been a military leader and war hero, and he carried these attitudes over into his civilian life.  While I later became exposed as a young adult to his very caring side as a family member, Uncle Kent was very much in charge, and we were nervous and obedient when in his domain.  His main employee and coworker in the drugstore was fellow pharmacist, Lucien P.  Lucien was an older, thin, white-haired man with a rather depressed disposition. What I remember most about Lucien is his telling me each time I came in that I’d better enjoy life right now as a ten-year-old, because it was sure to get worse and worse as you went along.  This made a great impression upon me, probably because I was pretty unhappy already and it was hard for me to imagine that now was the best that life would ever be.

 

Kent was very active in the American Legion, and one year he ran for the position of Michigan State Commander.  His identical twin brother, Karl, accompanied him to the state convention in the Lower Peninsula.  Though very similar in appearance, Kent and Karl were strikingly different in personality.  If Kent tended to be gruff and serious, Karl was outgoing, full of laughs, and the prototypical life of the party.  As they’d done throughout their life, they engaged in some trickery at the state Legion convention.  There were many cocktail parties going on simultaneously, and Kent and Karl divided them up between the two of them, with Karl pretending to be Kent and campaigning at half the locations.  The two brothers covered double the territory of any other candidate, and, undoubtedly in part because of Karl’s geniality, Kent wound up winning by a landslide.

 

Kent wasn’t around the drugstore nearly as much.  But when he was there, he became very upset about the growing rat problem in the building.  Kent and Lucien tried setting traps, but with only limited success.  It seemed probable that the rat problem was somehow connected to the lunch counter, but the foodstuffs were all kept in metal containers, the refrigerator was inaccessible, and the garbage cans were tightly sealed.  This went on for many months with no resolution and was obviously an embarrassment for an establishment whose very identity rested an image of health and cleanliness.  Finally, one day the mystery was solved.  Somebody, perhaps in the act of cleaning, had pushed Kent’s office desk back away from the wall.  There they discovered a three foot high mound of moldy white bread crusts which apparently had been accumulating for up to two years and had filled the entire space behind the desk.  It was my brother Steven’s creation.  Steve hated bread crusts, and, after eating the innards of his sandwiches, he had been secretly disposing of the crusts behind Kent’s desk since the first day we had eaten there.  My father informed us of our transgression and said we wouldn’t be eating at the drugstore for a while.  I didn’t mind not eating at the drugstore.  I just didn’t want to be murdered.  Things did work themselves out though.  We finally were required to meet with Uncle Kent, and he was surprisingly gentle.    He gave us a lengthy lecture on social responsibility and some detailed orders to follow.  As good soldiers, we followed them to the letter.

 

Love,

Dave

 

Gmail Comments:

From Phyllis S-S (9-13): Dave,  What did Karl do for a living?  I loved the bread crust story.

Washington School Days: 5. The Glee Club

Dear George,

 At Washington Grade School, the fourth graders made up the Glee Club, and Miss Hunnefeld* was the  director.  We practiced after school on Tuesdays, and everybody in the class was encouraged to join.  Miss Hunnefeld gave us points which counted in our progress toward becoming Gold Star Generals, so participation was high.  Our efforts for the entire school year were focused upon our scheduled Spring Concert for the Lion’s Club at the Menominee Hotel.  In appreciation for our performance, the Lions Club offered the children free movie tickets to the Menominee theater, and that only added to our already high motivation.

Midway in our second rehearsal in September, Miss Hunnefeld got a strange look on her face.  She stepped in closer to the group, cocked her ear, and began moving down the row.  Finally, she stopped squarely in front of me.  She told us to keep singing.  Then she told us to stop.  She looked at me and said, “You’re out of key, David.”  The whole glee club looked at me.  Miss Hunnefeld pulled out her pitchpipe and tooted the key of C.  I tried to duplicate the tone, but my voice cracked, and I made an unworldly, breathless sound.  Miss Hunnefeld tooted again.  I tried my best, but I could barely make a noise.

Miss Hunnefeld took me to the cloakroom.  She told me, quite apologetically, that she was very sorry, but I wouldn’t be able to continue in the Glee Club.  I did not seem to be able to sing on key, and I would ruin the class’s performance at the Lions Club.  I may have started crying at that point.  In any case, I made a fuss.  I said that I wanted the points so badly.  And I wanted the movie tickets.  Most of all, I would be the only fourth grader who wasn’t a member of the Glee Club.  Miss Hunnefeld didn’t know what to do.  I begged her some more.  Finally she decided that I could remain in the Glee Club as long as I did not sing out loud.  She said that I should move my lips and pretend that I was singing, but I should not utter a single note.

Our class practiced every week after school, and twice a week as our spring concert approached.  I went faithfully, but it was very boring.  I carefully mouthed the words to each number, trying to look like an authentic singer.  Every once in a while, I would even  toss in a note out loud.  However, only one note, out of fear that Miss Hunnefeld would hear and expel me.  My favorite song was “Centa, Sweet Centa.”  It went like this:

Centa, Sweet Centa,

Refuses her polenta.

Don’t scold her, don’t hold her.

She’ll eat never a bite today.

 

Gather buds yellow and red and blue,

Twist a knot yellow and blue and red.

Patience, lads, cheerily bide your time.

Girlish moods are quickly fled.

A couple of years ago I did a Google search on “Centa”, and I ran across a psychoanalytic interpretation which said that the folk song’s lyrics are instructions to males on how to successfully seduce women.  This, of course, never entered our minds as  fourth graders, nor I’m sure did Miss Hunnefeld think about it that way, but now it makes a lot of sense.

The Spring Concert finally came around, and the Lions applauded us with great enthusiasm at the end.  I sang two notes out loud, no more, no less.  I did get my free tickets to the movie theater.  I was really happy when Glee Club came to an end.  It was a good life lesson though.  Sometimes you have to put in a lot of effort and then fake the whole thing.  What I learned is that success occurs when you manage to get away with it.

Love,

Dave

 

*Pseudonym used in this story.

 

 

Washington School Days: 4. The Fusion of Church and State

Dear George,

 

My father was a spiritual man but not religious.  Some years ago, he told us a family story about his own father who had owned and operated drugstores in Menominee and Marinette.  My grandfather was a devout Swedish Lutheran.  However, local doctors insisted that his pharmacies be open 7 days a week, including Sunday mornings, if they were to refer patients to him.   The Lutheran pastor objected strenuously to my grandfather’s business being open on Sunday morning.  Ultimately, my grandfather left his beloved Lutheran church.  My dad, who was a child at the time, remained bitter about this many years later.  While our family did belong to the Presbyterian Church, I think this was mainly because my father was  an elected public official and it was politic to do so.  We only went to church on Easter.  Vic sang louder than anybody else, and we  offspring all were humiliated.

 

In contrast to my father, my fourth grade teacher, Miss Hunnefeld*, was an ardent supporter of organized religion.  She awarded points to her students for various religious activities, and attending Sunday school was one of the important ways in which we could progress toward being Gold Star Generals.  I mentioned this fact to my parents several times, hoping that they would take me to Sunday School, but my pleas were ignored.  We had moved to a new house in the country on the Menominee River that year, nearly three miles away from downtown and the Presbyterian Church.  My father had no intention of driving me to town and back on Sunday mornings, whether for religious reasons or simply to get points from Miss Hunnefeld. 

 

In addition to her point system, Miss Hunnefeld had another incentive to encourage religious devotion.  Each Monday morning she asked the children who had attended Sunday school the day before to raise their hands.  Then she instructed the attenders to go up and stand at the blackboard.  The few children who had not raised their hands were instructed to remain in their seats, while the majority circled the room and stared at them.  Miss Hunnefeld questioned the non-attenders about their reasons for not attending church that week, although the little heathens never had much to say.

 

Miss Hunnefeld’s Monday morning ritual was very successful.  After a few Mondays, there were only two children who were regularly left sitting in their seats:  Marcus Peterson* and me.  In a way, Marcus had an excuse.  His family was so poor and downtrodden that nobody expected much of anything from him.  His childhood responsibilities included stealing large chunks of coal from the nearby coalyard and lugging them home to keep the family from freezing during the winter.  His family didn’t go to church, belong to the country club, or do much else of civic virtue.   I didn’t have as good an excuse as Marcus, though I did privately tell Miss Hunnefeld several times that we lived out in the country and it was too far for my father to drive.

 

After a couple of months, Miss Hunnefeld either gave up trying to convert us or got nervous.  One day she announced that there were “some children” who were unable to attend Sunday School.  Rather than denying them military points, she was going to make available an alternative religious experience.  If such anonymous children would listen to one hour of specified religious programs on the radio on Sunday morning and if such children would take notes on the programs and hand them in on Monday, they too could get points and stand at the blackboard.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  The next  Sunday I listened to the assigned radio programs plus a few additional programs for good measure.  I took detailed notes.  Miss Hunnefeld was pleased to receive my report and she read part of it to the class.  I joined my classmates at the blackboard that Monday, and some of them smiled at me.  Marcus’ family couldn’t afford a radio, so he wound up being the only child left in his seat.  I felt guilty about abandoning Marcus, but I went ahead and completed my Sunday radio assignments for the rest of the year.

 

Love,

Dave

 

*This story uses pseudonyms.