Growing up in the Sixties

It was the Spring of 1963, the year that I became old enough to attend Church Camp. In Indiana, as an Evangelical United Brethren or EUB, to qualify, you had to have logged 14 years on earth. Our church regularly sent 20 – 30 kids for a week every summer in an effort to broaden their horizons and hopefully to experience a spiritual awakening. I was unsure what the implication of all that meant but I did know that girls were going to be there, and I was in.

In my house, with three kids in residence and one on the way, expense was the first item on the agenda. It was decided that I would assume responsibility for one-third of the cost. The church would cover one-third and my parents would cover the remaining balance. This decision was based on my father’s natural Scottish heritage. He reasoned that if one or both of the other thirds defaulted on their liability, he was off the hook. You see living in a Scottish family is first and foremost intrinsically intertwined with the answer to “how much does it cost.”  Although, I never fully grasped the concept of how much was too much, my father was the sole decision maker when it came to that answer.  So, after establishing how much I needed to fund my trip of a lifetime, I doubled down on my need to save money.

I already was employed by the Muncie Newspapers as a route carrier. More commonly known in the sixties as a “delivery boy”. In fact, I carried both the Muncie Morning Star and the Muncie Evening Press. My routes were roughly the same territory bounded by Bethel Avenue on the North to Neely Avenue on the south. In those days Sunday was the largest circulation and I routinely delivered to around 300 homes. All in, I delivered around 350 newspapers a day during the week. After all of this commitment, I collected 35 cents a week for my labor. Of that I cleared about a nickel a day per customer. Now you don’t need to be Warren Buffet to figure out that I was going to start mowing yards if I was going to hold up my end of the bargain. The cool thing about being young is that you don’t know that you can’t do something. Besides that, there were going to be girls there.

Mom was the designated as the keeper of the funds and off I blundered into the world of desire vs affordability. Being raised in the depression Mom had never been able to afford Church Camp, and it had always been a regret, so she became my biggest cheerleader. Every week as I handed over my contributions, she let me know how close to my goal I was getting. My father, on the other hand, would regularly, at breakfast, downgrade my expectations by letting me know that he might need to use the family money for my brother’s dental work. I didn’t know if he was joking but I could care less about LB1’s overbite. Even with the repair work, he was still going to be lifelong ugly.

Due date for the funds arrived and my contributions were there, just barely, with a little help from Mom’s grocery money, I think. Dad wrote the check to the church and my date with destiny was secure. It was now time to get advice from the older boys at the Sunday night youth group meeting as to what to expect. Their experiences were as wide and varied as their individual personalities. One thing was clear, every single one was going again this year, and they were excited about the prospects. The primary reason mentioned by most as to motivation to return, “girls will be there.” Now at 14, I was not inexperienced in the world of coeducational cohabitation. I had done my fair share of handholding and had even been kissed on a front porch once. This, however, was going to be different, no parents lurking around.

As the warm summer days were being checked off my calendar daily, I realized, rather abruptly, that I was going to need new clothes. Last year’s school outfits were out of date and besides they didn’t fit well any longer. You have to love my mom, she announced at breakfast that next day that she was taking me school clothes shopping early.        With the last big hurdle checked off my list, I was ready to take the plunge into “teenagerhood” as my buddies called it.

A couple weeks later we met at the Church on Sunday afternoon to get our assignments for the carpools that were to take us to Camp INDICOSO church camp. As we loaded into the waiting car caravan and pulled out of the parking lot, I thought I saw a tear in my mom’s eye. I guess I hadn’t realized until that minute, that I was accomplishing something that she had always wanted to do. As emotional as that moment might have been, I didn’t hang on to the thought long because I was sitting right next to Judy, a cheerleader, and would be her companion, for the next two hours. This was going to be one great week.

Upon arrival the groups were billeted in cabins on opposite sides of the camp based on gender. Assignments were given out in each cabin as to responsibility for the upkeep of the area inside and out. Very soon after that, the dinner bell rang, and we followed in the direction of the smell of baked beans and chocolate cake. Upon arrival to the Mess Hall we were given the opportunity to be seated at our option, but mostly we separated ourselves, boys on one side and girls on the other. After eating, twilight was fast approaching, and we were given maps as to how get to the evening campfire. Soon we found the log benches arranged around the campfire and I noticed a girl that I had seen in the chow hall. She was looking in my direction and she motioned for me to come over and sit next to her.                                                                                Looking around to make sure she was waving to me, I turned toward her and with all the coolness a 14-year-old could muster I sat down on the log by her.  The next 30 minutes were a blur of singing and laughing and the warm tingly feeling of raging hormones. We had an evening prayer service and were dismissed to go back to our respective cabins. I walked her back to the girl’s sleeping quarters and we said goodnight. As I was leaving, she shouted over her shoulder that she would see me at breakfast.                                                                                                                            As I floated back to the boy’s cabin, I realized that we had not introduced ourselves. Not to worry, we had five more days. I had just barely made it to “lights out ” and climbed into my bunk when the guy above me, who was from my church, hung his head over the top of the bed and whispered, “I heard that the girl you were with was 16”.          Rolling over and burying my head in my pillow I said a quick prayer to God, “Dear Lord it’s ok if you want to take me now, because I know it’s never going to get any better than this. ”

The rest of the week was pretty much the way it started out, raging hormones, spiritual experiences, ego enhancing moments, and a lot of hand holding. And then the last night was at hand. I pretty much didn’t hear the sermon; my thoughts were a tangle of emotions and pleasure. Strangely I felt older, at least 15.  On the way back to “lights out”, we were able duck behind a large pine tree for a quick kiss and a hug. We made promises to call each other and write letters.                                     The next morning, we said our goodbyes and loaded up into our respective carpools and headed home to different cities.                    Again, I was paired up with Judy the cheerleader, after just a few minutes on the road, she whispered in my ear, “did you know that girl was 16 years old”?    “Really?”  I said to no one in particular.

We did call each other on the phone a few times and we exchanged a few letters, but our geographical challenges were evident. My mom was the first to notice that something was different.                                “Was it worth all the hard work that you put in to get there?” she wanted to know.                                                                                                             Yup” was all I said. Little did she know that I had just had the most exciting week of my young life.                                                                              Several years later when my daughter came to me with an inquiry about going to Church Camp and wanted to know if she should go. My immediate reply was “don’t miss it.”  I wanted to tell her about the experience, the feelings, the underpinning of spiritual awareness, the connection of being outdoors to feeling closer to God and the knowing that you were growing older. But all I could get out was ” I’ll pay for it”.

In later years, as I bumped down the road of life, that Church Camp experience floated back to my memory on many occasions and when it did, it never failed to bring a smile to my face and a tug to my heart.   It also always reaffirmed that growing up in the sixties was among the some of the greatest times of my life.

 

 

 

 

 

Most young men between the ages of twelve & sixteen, growing up in the sixties, toyed with the idea of becoming a musician. The number one instrument of choice was the guitar. To accomplish this dream, a Silvertone or Gibson acoustic flat top was available at most Western Auto stores for about $25.00. The biggest problem was that most boys this age did not have the $25.00. The two obvious ways to access the means were Mom & Dad or work. Mom & Dad were generally the easiest route; however, it meant waiting for a birthday or Christmas. “Money didn’t grow on trees you know”. The other avenues for acquiring this wealth were getting a paper route or mowing yards. For me, since I was the oldest, Mom & Dad were indeed the easiest approach to solve my debt crisis. The oldest kids, you see, were the trailblazers & the trend setters and for better or worse, parents of kids in the sixties wanted their children to have more than they had. After all, having grown up in the depression, and attending high school during World War Two was synonymous with “doing without”, and most of my buddies understood by the time they reached their teens that this was an opportunity to exploit.

So, on my way through puberty I reasoned that if I could get a guitar and learn to sing, I was just another undiscovered Elvis Presley. As it turned out I had a knack for singing and soon joined the church youth choir. My next move, while waiting for Christmas to arrive, was to buy all the 45 rpm records I could afford. Most dust jackets on the records in those days included the lyrics to the songs, so I would hole up in my bedroom during afternoons and evenings practicing my tone inflections. My Mom didn’t mind the wailing so much, but when my Dad arrived home from work, all bets were off on my budding career. “Turn that thing down” and “take that out to the garage” were the instructions that were shouted up the stairway in my direction. I wondered many times if Elvis had endured the same indignities before he hit the bigtime.

Christmas came and to no one’s surprise, a Silvertone Flat Top was propped against our family tree with a red bow around it’s neck and a note that Santa hoped that I would enjoy it. For the next week I picked and banged on that thing to my utter delight. What sounded like music to me was not permeating my household. I began to hear comments around the supper table like, “when do your lessons start” and “hope you learn something soon”. Even LB1 (Little Brother One), the staunchest ally on my trek to stardom, was expressing concerns about my progress. He had shared a bedroom with me since he was born and had become accustomed to my many whims. However, this one had necessitated his need to cover his head with pillows to get to sleep at night. I guess I should have gotten a clue when he no longer sang along on my 45^th rendition of Sea Cruise by Frankie Ford.

So, a phone call was placed to Muncie Music Center with an inquiry as to the cost of guitar lessons. Big time snag here, my mom could not rob enough from the weekly food budget and my dad told me we needed a new lawn mower instead. The only chance I would have was to find one of my buddies to teach me. I had plenty of wannabe teachers but mostly they were just a few chords away from the beginner stage. Primarily though the biggest obstacle that I needed to hurdle was genetics. I had fat fingers. No matter how hard I plucked or strummed the only sound I could replicate sounded most like an alley cat with it’s tail caught in the backyard gate on a Saturday night. I laid my dilemma at the feet of one of my best friends who had struggled though trying to give me lessons while simultaneously keeping my fingers uncaught from the guitar strings. His solution was simple, you can sing, we always need singers, the world is full of lousy guitar players. I was not sure if I was encouraged or disillusioned. Not wanting to go down without collaborative feedback I cornered LB1 while he was brushing his teeth the next morning. I indicated that I was considering retiring from my guitar lessons in favor of focusing on my signing career. Looking back at me through the bathroom mirror, “Thank God” he spluttered through his Crest ringed lips.

Plunging fast forward into my future, the next few weeks were spent looking for opportunities to put my abilities into practice while climbing toward my first million dollars. In those days, most of us had been banished to our garages to work on our fledgling careers. It was helpful if the room was heated but the best attribute was good wiring and several plug-in outlets. Because our amplifiers often overloaded the fuse boxes and plunged the whole house into darkness, we were always in need of backup practice locations. It was not uncommon to see drum kits, amplifiers and microphones loaded into wagons or wheelbarrows rolling down the street on the way to another garage that had a stronger fuse box. Thus, the term Garage Band was coined and is still being used today. At the time, it was a pain in the neck and ended more than one promising career, but for those who stuck it out, it became a badge of honor.

Overcoming all the logistical challenges was insignificant to the human element. The majority of these “bands” were male and most had girlfriends. Maintaining a girlfriend was hard work. Girls wanted attention; guys wanted stardom. Practices were canceled or postponed, arguments ensued about the issue of priorities and infighting was commonplace about the importance of “practice”.

Then, out of the blue, one of the guys got asked if the band could play somewhere on Friday night for a 30-minute intermission fill in. Suddenly, we need a name, outfits, shoes, hair styles and most of all permission from our parents to go. Our parents were amazed that someone, anyone, was interested in paying to hear what they had been wearing ear plugs to shut out. Mostly, we needed the parents because we were not old enough to drive and needed the family station wagon to haul our equipment to the venue. Most of these venues were church socials or sock hops or street fairs and the pay was minimal. The pay mattered not in the beginning, we knew it was only a matter of time, before we would be commanding the big money on Saturday night at the American legion.

Friday night came, we stood in the wings, wearing our new madras button-down shirts and waiting on our next step up the ladder to fame and fortune. With our hearts beating in our ears, we ascended those three steps to the stage as the main act retreated in the opposite direction. They smiled at us, seeing their own reflection from just last year. We assumed our positions, looked out at the audience, who mostly had left to go get popcorn, our drummer popped his cymbals and my life changed forever.

On the ride home my buddy’s dad told us he thought we did a great job and pointed out that the audience clapped afterward. We didn’t feel it necessary to tell him that our girlfriends had brought their girlfriends and hand clapping was obligatory. On the ride home the mood was mostly quiet and reflective. In some strange way, we had crossed over the Rubicon. We were on the other side; we had been paid for our talent. We were on our way. Sleep would not come this night easily. Flashes of the audience, watching in admiration, were embedded in my subconscious.

Mom was the first one to ask at the breakfast table about our “gib”. Correcting her gently with “Gig, mom” I told her it was cool, trying to withhold my enthusiasm. Dad looked up from the morning paper and inquired “oh was that last night?”, as he returned to the editorial page. I grabbed a banana and headed down the street to Dave’s garage, I felt strangely older.  He was there, the overhead door was open, and he was holding his guitar and staring at the clouds. I climbed up on a bar stool stared at the same clouds and asked how he felt. “Cool” he said. “Me too” I volunteered. “Do you see this as a future” he asked. “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for the way I feel right now” I said.

“Me neither” Dave replied.

That’s the way it was while I was growing up in the sixties.

I arrived in-country to Vietnam on 10 December 1969 having endured basic and advanced infantry training during the summer of that year in two of the hottest temperature states in the union, Kentucky and Louisiana. Nothing, however prepared me for weather conditions in South Vietnam. Routinely, temperatures would reach in excess of 110 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-day. To complicate matters, Fire Support Bases, from which I was based, were devoid of trees by necessity because of the need to be able to aim artillery and mortar weapons without obstruction. There were no such things like air conditioning or refrigerators. No shade except in Quonset type structures which were made of steel and aluminum and covered by sandbags in case of incoming enemy rounds. It was sometimes hotter in those home away from home substitutes. The only relief was the Jungle which covered 2/3 of this paradise that was located right on top of the Equator. Much of this area was known as triple canopy foliage, meaning three layers of dense growth and underbrush. This area did allow a break from the daily searing temperatures but presented a bigger problem. This is where the enemy was hiding, and their daily goal was to try to shoot as many GIs as possible. Unfortunately, this is where I was assigned being a member of a reconnaissance platoon. We got a break from the searing temperatures but operated in a far more dangerous situation. Presented with these obstacles one might consider this circumstance as about a dire as it could become.

Not even close. The biggest hurdle to cross was the psycological trauma of being away from your loved ones with no ability to communicate other than a letter in the mail. U.S. Mail would generally arrive to soldiers in the forward areas about every three days by what was affectionately nicknamed the “Log Bird”. It came in a red nylon bag stamped US Mail on the cover. Even though food, ammunition and beer, arrived to us on that same chopper, it was the red bag we were looking for.  Eventually, one of my jobs was to “pass out the mail”. Some guys routinely received several pieces while some did not.  Occasionally, some expectant soldiers would not get that much needed lifeline from back home. While not being the recipient of a letter or postcard was rough to handle. Nothing was as hard to take as a “Dear John” letter.

The terminology “Dear John Letter” is generally believed to have appeared during World War Two sometime around 1944. From the beginning of the war until mid 1943 only unmarried men were accepted into the draft, but mid-way through the fighting it became apparent that the quotas were falling short, and married men started getting the call. Interestingly, from 1880 until 1923, the most popular name in America for boys was John. Consequently, the name John took on the generic moniker for all soldiers for this type of letter. Also, adding to the stress, many men having received their draft notice, decided to speed up the process of considering marriage. In many cases, girlfriends with only a few weeks of companionship with the prospective draftee, found the need to make the most important decision of their life, before he shipped out. Some became fiancés, but a great many became wives. While a great deal of these unions went on to flourish after the war, many did not. Many young women could not handle the pressures of their loved one’s absence without him being at home to reinforce their affections and feelings. Thus, the necessity of how to break off the relationship became an issue.  The only means at the time was the US Mail.

The “Dear John Letter” received by a soldier in the Vietnam war was the epidemy of despair for many soldiers. While the reasons for the letters were generally the same as the situations in the 1940’s, the opportunities to stray were much greater. Televison was now a staple in almost all homes and there was a plethora of more excuses to assuage the guilty party. Nonetheless, a “Dear John Letter” was for many young 19- and 20-year-old servicemen, the absolute bottom of the barrel of exasperation.

You see, in 1962, Luther Dixon the manager of the Shirelles a rock band girl-group wrote a song that they took to number one on the Billboard hot one hundred. Soldier Boy was a smash hit in the United States. The first two lines of the song are, “Soldier-Boy oh my little Soldier-Boy-I’ll be true to you.” Later in the song is the haunting lyric -“Take my love with you-to any port or foreign shore-I love you so-I’ll be true to you-“. It is impossible to gauge how important this song was to the sixty’s generation, but it cannot go without notice in connection with this situation.

When a young man is drafted in the United States military, his life as he knew it goes on hold, time stops for his world. He will grasp for anything that will get him through the night. Often times a popular song becomes his Holy Grail, a rock upon which his thoughts hang to keep from descending into despair. He repeats the lyrics to songs over and over in his head in his daily life. Soldier Boy is still an extremely popular song some 60 years later.

Most guys in Vietnam worked out a scenario in their mind as to how their homecoming was going to play out after the enlistment obligation was completed. Much of this was perpetuated by movies about World War Two servicemen returning home. Certainly, homecomings written by movie screen writers rarely ever mimicked the true circumstances. However, for the lonely GI in Vietnam this was all he had to cling to. So, when the “Dear John Letter” arrived he had little recourse. Many times, it came as a complete shock, but truth be told there were probably ‘cracks in the dam of fidelity for many months that had been overlooked in the daily business of fighting a war. Some men asked for and were granted emergency leave status to go home and sort things out. This rarely worked out well as many times the wife or fiancé had moved on to another relationship. For the combat soldier there were other more pressing matters to attend to, so a quick trip home was logistically and practically out of the question.

As it turned out, many young marriages, that may have weathered the trials of early matrimony, had the partners been able to work it out living under the same roof, dissolved and were lost to the ages. Soldiers did what soldiers have always done, picked up the pieces of their life and moved on. The United States government took no responsibility for these disasters and never even recognized the issue as an existing one. Servicemen came home to small towns and large cities with their emotional well-being in fragments for many reasons and by and large were looked upon as problems waiting to happen. It took many years for these guys to assimilate back into society and in some cases they never did.

“Soldier Boy.. you were my first love and you’ll be my last love-I will never make you blue-I’ll be true to you-In the whole world-You can love but one girl-Let me be that one girl-For I’ll be true to you!”

Reference: Wikipedia

So here we were one week away and my girlfriend had been asked to work the Kissing Booth at the Emerson Elementary School Ice Cream Social. I had multiple issues to deal with here. As a sixth grade member in good standing of the Basketball team I had a reputation to up uphold.

The way the Kissing Booth was supposed to work was pretty simple in theory. The booth was built usually out of old crates with a sign on top that advertised Kisses for 50 cents. There was a counter between the  customer and the girl donating the Kiss. The booth rotated Kiss givers about every hour so that there was what seemed like a parade of new opportunities. All transactions at the Emerson Ice Cream Social were strictly monitored by chaperones in the event a young man’s hormones were to surge and he lost all sense of propriety when he wanted to involve the use of his hands, which was strictly forbidden.

The girls were chosen from the student body and were presumably the most popular and the most desirable to kiss. The problem with this theory is that in practicality most of these girls had never been kissed, except by their little brother, which did not render any sense of expectancy. In other words, neither the Kissor nor the Kissee knew what to expect when two sets of lips collided in broad daylight, in front of a hundred or so people. Inexperience aside, there was the matter of coming up with the 50 cents and the inevitable delima of, did you want to get back in line as a repeat offender?

In my case there was another layer of complication. I had never been kissed by my girlfriend; in fact, I had never been kissed by anyone’s girlfriend. I had laid awake many nights wondering how I could make it happen, but life keep getting in the way. We both had curfews and had to be in on school nights by 8:00. I had finally worked up the nerve to hold her hand on the way home from school. That act itself came with its own set of problems. It takes coordination to hold books, while connected to another human being, and dodging uneven concrete and low hanging branches. It was more of a physical exercise than an act of romantic intent. Not to mention we would occasionally encounter some of our friends coming from the other direction. This added more depth of complication, in that some of my buddies would whistle or giggle and I would instinctively withdraw my hand to look for something in my pocket.

The other major obstacle was the biggest hurdle of all. I didn’t want the whole basketball team kissing my girlfriend. She, on the other hand, moved toward her Ice Cream Social debut like an actress in a starring role. She announced that it was an honor to be asked and confessed no problem with her lips coming in contact with big fat Tommy Tucker. I was in agony and decided it was time to make a philosophical stand. I would forbid her participation. However, like most life altering decisions when you are 12, it was not well thought out in the planning department. To make matters even worse, Mrs. Wampler, one of the school’s teacher/chaperones asked me to help build the Kissing Booth. Now I was at the corner of walk and don’t walk. If I helped build the booth, I was condoning the act, which I was actually ok with, just not with my girlfriend. I did what every self-respecting sixth grade male would do, I asked the guys on the basketball team what to do. Big mistake, I found out one of my best friends said he planned to be first in line and would spend all of his newspaper route receipts for that week for as many visits as possible. He would even forgo Cotton Candy for this opportunity.

I decided to help build the Kissing Booth with help from several fathers and a couple of my buddies. It was a work of art and included a very wide counter over which the Kissor would have to stretch to connect with the Kissee. It seems that one of the girls Father, who were participating, supervised the width of the counter. My girlfriend sailed along to her kissing destination with professed indignation at my misgivings and dismissed my concerns as thoughts grown out of immaturity on my part.

The opening day of the Emerson Ice Cream Social arrived and I was a nervous wreck.  I still had not specifically said how I felt about this whole social experiment and my girlfriend had her mom’s eye make up on for God’s sake! The booth stood empty waiting for its occupant to arrive to dispense momentary excitement at 50 cents a pop. A few guys were hanging out eating popcorn, but no one wanted to be first in line until they saw who they were going to get to kiss. Then she appeared, my girlfriend was going to be the first to bestow her charm on the masses. Up she stepped to the stool in the booth and turned the sign, hanging on a string, to open. She was open for business, and I did not want to watch was going to happen next, but I couldn’t help it. As fast as the sign flipped over, her mother stepped up behind her, crossed her arms and fixed a stare that melt that would melt chocolate off your M&M. All my potential rival kissers scattered like they had been shot with a BB Gun. Then her dad stepped up, plunked down his 50 cents to kiss his daughter and received a round of applause from everyone watching. All of a sudden it seemed like half of Muncie Indiana was looking in my direction. My hand was in my pocket squeezing my two quarters harder than I have ever squeezed anything. I stepped up to the booth, put down those two quarters, closed my eyes, (so I didn’t have to look at her mom) and puckered up. The next thing I remember was my girlfriend saying, loud enough for the whole school yard to hear. “Wow, these quarters are really hot.” At that moment I learned a lesson in life that I have never forgotten. Circumstances seldom work out as planned. I think I got a kiss, but I don’t really remember, I was busy heading for an ice cream cone.

As we learned later, the Kissing Both was one of the most profitable ventures of the evening. Largely, based on 5-dollar donations to the booth from fathers to make my buddies keep their distance.

I also learned, that when dealing with affairs of the heart, growing up in the sixties was going to be confusing and without a road map, but I could not wait to make the trip.

 

 

 

If you lived in Neely Addition in Muncie Indiana, in the early 1960s, summer break from school was an amazing time.  After breakfast the back door of the house opened onto a day with numerous opportunities. As it was with many 12-year-olds, my bicycle was the transportation to many of these opportunities. It was also important to have a sidekick to share the discoveries of the day with. On our favorite TV shows, The Cisco Kid had Pancho, Roy Rogers had Pat Brady and of course The Lone Ranger never went anywhere without Tonto. My sidekick for those long lazy days of summer was Kurt. He lived over two streets and just up the alley on Rex Street. I was usually at his back door by 9:00 in the morning and we were off to explore the world. Our domain at this time was bordered roughly by New York Ave on the west. Beyond that lay the ever-increasing campus of Ball State Teachers College. In my parents mind I, at the ripe old age of 12, had no business mixing with the academic crowd just a few blocks away. Fortunately , between us and the institution of higher learning lay a foreboding territory known as Shick’s Woods.

Today Kurt and I decided to go off the grid. The pond in the middle of the woods was our destination. We had actually snuck into this area before to explore and had decided that Shick’s pond was destined to be conquered. Today we were going to build a raft to float across the pond.

We came equipped with a saw, a hand axe, a hammer, some rope and a few nails.  We both had read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and were flush with the excitement of accomplishing the same sort of feat. Never mind the “No Trespassing ” signs, we were on a mission. In our youthful exuberance it did not occur to us that the trees that we were going to chop down didn’t belong to us and we certainly did not have permission to be in the woods, let alone on the pond.

After the first 45 minutes, the first tree was felled and the realization that this was a bigger project than we had planned had begun to creep into our minds. We needed to discuss our plan in greater detail. When in these types of situations in the past, a trip to Muphy’s Super Market on Wheeling Avenue to acquire a couple of bottles of RC Cola seemed to help rejuvenate our thinking process. Off we pedaled to our destination. Upon purchasing our Colas, our customary habit was to find some shade at the back of the store near the loading dock. In this location we had solved some of the most difficult problems that faced the world in which we lived. Today was no different. As soon as we sat down, we both saw the solution to our delima. Right there in front of us was a pile of wooden shipping pallets. The wood was already cut in the approximate size we needed and in the matter of just a few minutes we could remove the nails and fashion our raft without the laborious task of cutting down a bunch of trees. The first problem was that our hammer was back at Shick’s Woods. Back we pedaled to retrieve our tools, and on the way, we discussed our revised plan. We would use our hank of rope to measure the length of our newly designed watercraft, but we were still going to need a couple of logs to make it float. We also soon realized that those wooden pallets would probably not be in that location long. We spent most of the rest of the day acquiring the necessary makings for our raft.

After creating the proper inventory of wood, we now had to solve the transportation issue. Kurt and I were both experienced newspaper delivery boys and accustomed to balancing several hundred newspapers on our bikes while making deliveries. So up on the handle bars the wood was balanced and off to the pond we headed. After a couple of minor mishaps with a few slats slipping off, we arrived at the entrance to the woods. Also arriving at approximately the same time was my suppertime. Supper was served at 5:30 on the dot at my house and being late was not an option. I had to head home. Kurt had no such curfew but was ready to call it a day as well. We stacked the disassembled pallets at the edge of the water confident that we would be sailing around the pond by noon the next day.

Armed with another hammer and a lot more nails, we arrived back at Shick’s Woods the next morning. Excitement was in the air. I have always done my best thinking at night, while sleeping, and had come up with the idea that we needed a pole to maneuver our raft once we were seaworthy.  So, in the interest of expediency I had disassembled our leaf rake and brought the handle along. We felled another tree and laid out our design for the new raft on the ground. This was going to be easier than I thought.  We would be able to have our lunch aboard our raft while floating around the pond. We always came equipped with a couple of sandwiches and a package of Hostess Twinkies or Cupcakes for our mid-day nourishment.

With the logs positioned properly to ensure the correct buoyance and with the pallet slats nailed on to create the floor, we were ready to see if she would float. Into the water it went. So far so good, it stayed on top of the water. It was decided that we would both jump onboard at the same time and simultaneously push off from the bank to get a good launch. On the count of three we grabbed our sandwich bags and pushed off. Our momentum was enough to get us about four feet out from shore. Immediately we began to sink and in short order we were up to our waists in about three feet of water. I don’t know which disappointment was greater our imitation of the demise of the Titanic or our sandwich’s floating away.  In any case, we waded back to dry land and accessed our circumstance. We were wet, tired and hungry and to make matters worse, slats of wood were occasionally popping to the top of the pond. Without much discussion we picked up our tools mounted our bikes and set out in opposite directions for home. We had sworn each other to secrecy about this escapade and had hoped that no one had recognized us as we were coming or going.

When I returned home, I put on dry clothes and hid my wet ones in the bottom of the cloths hamper. I spent the rest of the day in my bedroom that I shared with LB1 (little brother one). He popped in and out inquiring if I was sick. Soon it was time for Supper, and nothing was out of the ordinary. Just when I thought I had escaped with nothing but a bad memory, my Dad asked “by the way does anyone know what happened to the rake handle?

 

By the end of the sixties, just after my 20th birthday, I arrived in Vietnam in December of 1969. I was assigned to an infantry unit in the First Cav Division operating in Three Corps area near the Cambodian border. I was soon transferred to Echo Recon 1/5th. It was our job to walk jungle trails and report enemy activity and troop strength moving into our area. Theoretically we were to report and not engage. I guess on paper that plan looks plausible. In fact, we engaged the enemy much more often than we planned.

In the spring of 1970, we were part of the invading force into Cambodia. President Richard Nixon announced on national television in late April that the invasion had begun. He and his advisors had come up with the term “Incursion”, to make it sound less like an armed invasion of a neutral country. For those of us involved, it was a full-fledged invasion and the NVA fought back with great tenacity.

The following account is the description of my final week in the jungle and subsequent medivac to the hospital in Osaka, Japan. Ultimately, I ended up at Ft Gordon, Georgia US Army hospital where I convalesced for the next month.

It was late in the day, around 4:30 on June 11, 1970, and we had just been delivered ice cream by helicopter. Echo Recon had been pulled back to the LZ to pull security for the engineers. It was to be their task to blow up a huge arms cache that we had found, and they were busy wiring it for explosives. Our task, in pulling security, spread us out in 10-to-15-yard intervals along a path, up a slight incline that led to the cache. Within a few minutes hundreds of enemy rounds and ammunition that were collected in a 20 x 20 pit would be blown and the final wires were being checked. A re-supply chopper had just left, dropping the usual supplies of, food, ammo, water, and beer. But today was special, we were rewarded with ice cream for a job well done. One of my jobs was to pass out supplies, and today I was moving up the trail, from buddy to buddy with small buckets of ice cream and spoons. As each guy received his ice cream, he leaned his weapon against a tree to eat the rapidly melting treat.

 

 

 

At our high school one of the rites of passage into maturity was attending the Prom. This springtime dance was sponsored by the Junior Class and attended by both classes of the eleventh and twelfth grade. Its original purpose was to honor the Senior Class and say goodbye. By the time I was old enough to participate, its purpose had been smothered in the changes taking over our culture of the mid-sixties. It now had become a fashion show and an excuse to stay out most of the night going to endless parties.

Unless you lived in my house. Being the oldest child rarely had its advantages and this certainly was one of those times. My parents were 20 years older than me, but sometimes it seemed as if they were much older. They had been raised in the depression and were in high school during World War II so it was not possible for them to grasp my need to spend $50 on a tuxedo rental that was the premier fashion statement of the day for young men. My Mom had actually ridden a horse to her Prom so accoutrements were going to be at a minimum for this buckaroo. At a young age I had seized on the idea of a perfect appearance, hair, clothes, cologne, and shoes. It was important to me to look like I had a plan, when I left the house. Unfortunately, my folks who didn’t mind that I looked nice, were not going to finance my foray into sartorial splendor. At the beginning of the school year, I was given two pairs of shoes, Sunday good shoes and everyday other shoes. I didn’t mention to them that there was such a thing as rental dress shoes. They simply would not get the necessity. So here I was at the crossroads of want and need. My parents would supply the need I would have to finance the want.

My job at the local Pizza King paid $1.10 an hour and I could work as much as I wanted however it was spring and I was on the high school track team that required after school practices and meets. While, pondering my appearance dilemma, another monetary requirement dropped into this budgetary crisis. I was expected to purchase a corsage and it had to match her dress. When casually bringing up my latest challenge at the supper table one evening, my Dad issued his proclamation on my growing affordability concerns. “We will cover the cost of a Suit Jacket and you can wear a pair of your good slacks and make use of your Sunday shoes.” Are you kidding me? I didn’t want to look regular, I wanted to look cool! I looked at my Mom, who was generally my backup, to get what I wanted. She just smiled and gave me some more mashed potatoes. I was sunk. My chances of obtaining cool were slim and none and slim just left town.

Most of my buddies were suffering the same kind of misunderstandings with their parents. No one seemed to understand. Just because the Depression was in the rearview mirror didn’t mean the old habits of fiscal restraint were disappearing any time soon. It was time to take stock of my assets. Six bucks in my savings account, my brother owed me one dollar, and I had a paycheck coming for $15. It was time to have a serious discussion with my girlfriend as to our circumstance. She was sympathetic and assured me that she would go with me no matter what I looked like. Then, as an afterthought, she reminded me that my jacket needed to match her outfit.

As was the fashion of the day, most guys did not want to be the first guy at the Tuxedo shop and also did not want to be caught dead with their parents helping them pick out their evening wear. It was ok if they footed the bill, but way below cool if they got to insert their opinion. As it turned out, most of the guys showed up on a Saturday three weeks before the dance, at the same time. Through the chaos I was able to reserve a medium cool dark maroon jacket that would go with my Sunday black pants and shoes. While I was there, I realized that I was in the same boat as my buddies. As my Grandpa used to say “all hat and no cattle.” Big dreams and little money.

The Prom was a wonderful experience and most of the suit jackets came off after the first two or three dances anyway. My girlfriend said I looked splendid, which was not as good as cool but not far away. The memories made that night have lasted a lifetime, when each one of my four sons came to me with the need to be cool for Prom, I sat them down and recounted my first Prom story. Then I handed them my charge card. I always was a soft touch when it came to wanting to be cool.

Lisa Marie Presley died yesterday. She was born in 1968 and was 54 years old.  My daughter Cherish was born in 1968 and is 54.

I was 18 when my daughter came into the world. She entered into life in an unassuming way. Her Mom went into labor around 8:00 in the morning. Cherish was born around noon and I was home eating supper by 5:00. To say her birth had a profound impact on my life would underestimate the gravity of the times.

1968 became a pivotal year in America as a whole. President Johnson began the year thinking he would run for his third term in office and was defeated in his own early primary elections subsequently withdrawing his name from nomination by summer. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April and Bobby Kennedy in June. The Tet offensive in Vietnam in February showed the American army that the war was far from won.   Closer to home I dropped out of college to support my family which inadvertently made me eligible for the draft. Long hair on men and unkempt appearance ruled the fashion scene. The world as I knew it growing up, had ceased to exist. The idyllic lifestyle that I come to expect as a birthright was disappearing. Psychedelic drugs were being used in many social settings and the connections between parents and children were being broken with reckless abandon.

It was into this world that Elvis Presley and I brought babies. Pricilla said that upon Elvis’ first sight of Lisa Marie he gushed “I can’t believe I was a part of making something this beautiful.” I couldn’t have said that any better, Mr. Presley. That was exactly how I felt.  There is something special about your firstborn child. Some inexplicable bond that will always be there. So here we were, Elvis and I with our firstborn children and they were daughters to boot. He had fame and fortune but was short on family in that his mother had passed away and he had no siblings. I didn’t have fame or fortune, but I had family. Cherish was the first grandchild that had leafed out on our branch of the family tree, and my mother was thrilled. She had just recently had her own first daughter in 1964. Into this nest of love Cherish fell. It would be this way for the rest of my mom’s life. There was always something special about this first grandbaby.

The times were the problem. It was 1968 and the world had gone haywire. The “Summer of Love ” in 1967 had spawned a summer of drug use in 1968. Richard Nixon had been elected President and began his role of deceit and duplicity in our government. The Vietnam War was increasingly eating our male youth. Even my church, the Evangelical United Brethren, was absorbed by the much larger United Methodist denomination and our doctrine began to be altered. It seemed that everywhere I turned, change was on the march. From my smalltown view, all of this change was unsettling. I had already pushed my philosophical view of life to the edge of understanding. I wanted what everyone wants for their children, security, prosperity and happiness. How was this to be?

Two days before Cherish turned one, I left for the U.S Army having been snagged by the draft laws in our country at the time.  I was heartbroken, I had no control over my daughter’s life. My hopes and dreams and aspirations had disappeared into a blur of discipline and protocol. I knew I was going to Vietnam and was incapable of effecting any other outcome. By December I was on the other side of the world from my daughter and my family. I wrote to her as often as possible but was not there to watch her grow. In the meantime, my Mom & Dad absorbed my family into theirs. Cherish was safe and in a loving safe environment.

I made it back home in time for Cherish’s second birthday. We bought a pizza, put two candles on it, and sang “Happy Birthday” to her. We then loaded her up in the back of a VW and headed for Seatle Washington, my next duty assignment. For the next several years it was my habit to brush her hair and sing to her before she went to bed at night. I was content to watch this beautiful child embrace life.

Elvis died when Lisa Marie was 9 years old. One of life’s mysteries, why some people get to watch their children grow up and some don’t. Now Lisa Marie is gone. It appears that her life was an emotional roller coaster. Maybe she and her Dad can now have the life they always longed for.

As for Cherish and I, we are still bumping down the road of life. She is still as beautiful as the first time I saw her. She has assumed the role of Grandmother Extraordinaire in her family. She has a very deep spiritual compass and enjoys a loving and secure environment. She is everything I hoped she would become.

Thank you, God, for letting me hang around to be a part of her life!

 

When I was in the sixth grade there wasn’t anything much more important than the Friday afternoon sock hop after school. It was not important because I was looking forward to dancing. It was important because I had a brief opportunity to talk to a girl. During Sock Hops, all shoes were left at the School Gymnasium door and stocking feet were order of the day. It was, after all, Indiana, and no chances were to be taken with the care of the basketball court. So, the boys would deposit their shoes in one pile and the girls in another and we would line up based on gender to opposite sides of the gym. The custom of the day was for the boy to initiate the choosing of the dance partner for three songs in a row and the fourth song became the girl’s opportunity to choose. Thus, it became known as “Ladies Choice”. It was also the slow tempo song.

At my school, it was a good thing there was Ladies Choice, because most of my sixth-grade buddies did not know how to dance, therefore when the boys got to choose, they didn’t. We just watched as the girls, with no boy to dance with, danced with each other. But, when the fourth song was played, the girls headed across the dance floor to pick their partner. I must tell you, that there is no greater disappointment than not being chosen to dance when the herd had thinned out and the dancing began. It’s not that a boy wanted to dance, he just wanted to be chosen. The side benefit was that, to slow dance, the partners must touch. And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, was worth all the awkwardness of not knowing how to dance. For a brief 3 minutes all was right with the world. With heart pounding and sweat appearing, sixth grade boys all over America, on Friday afternoons at 3:30, were beginning their march toward puberty.

After several weeks of this heart stopping anticipation, every fourth dance, many guys were getting comfortable with the procedure and began to talk amongst each other about the “next step”. The next step was on every young man’s mind weather he admitted it or not. The next step was dreamt about at night, talked about on the playground at recess and hoped for after the first slow dance materialized. After the third time in a row being chosen by the same girl, the next step was on the minds of most everyone involved, boy or girl.

The next step for boys in the pubescent chain of events was the first kiss. Several stars had to line up in the romantic orbit and it took a while to get there, but it was what every boy in the sixth grade wanted. The boys who had already reached this mountaintop of manhood were revered in the grade school hallways. Their status achieved, pimples magically began to disappear, and chest hair sprouted overnight. The subject of how and where, was legendary in many sixth-grade locker rooms. The truth was, most times, it was accidental and awful. However, that did not slow down youthful ardor for one second. Once kissed, sixth grades boys could only think of one thing. How to do it again.

All sorts of things became obstacles in the pursuit a repeat performance. Generally, the biggest one was the young lady’s father. Somehow, most fathers developed a sixth sense when it came to protecting their daughters. Perhaps it was because they had once been a sixth-grade boy themselves. Most first kisses come on or near the girl’s house or yard. Maybe, because the security of disappearing into the front door, in case of over reaction by the perspective kiss-or, was a few steps away. Front porches were generally the last chance and the safest haven to launch your lips. Most times they were lighted and Pop was on the other side of the door. The hardest part of the first kiss was to find out if the prospective participant was on the same romantic trajectory as the boy was. The boy was always ready, sometime the girl was not. Smiles were always a good sign but not always a green light.

The timing had to be right, the telltale go ahead was most often a brief direct look followed by closed eyes by the girl. Many a girl has been left standing on the front porch, eyes closed tight, head upturned, by a boy who had chickened out and headed for the safety of his bedroom. However, once in a while, the stars are in line, Dad didn’t hear you walk up, and the dog isn’t barking. This is when the most magical thing happens. Lips collide for the first time. and for a long moment, you ain’t even mad at your little brother. That walk home is best experience you have had in a long while. You are alone in your thoughts, and you will never be the same again. The feeling doesn’t last forever, but it does last long enough to make you want to do it again. With any luck, she will smile at you the next time she sees you.

There will only be one first kiss and I still remember mine. Behind the oak tree in her front yard. It was quick and great and has lingered in my memory forever.

Thanks Anne

It stood, out the back door, waiting for any and all players. It was there in the rain, it was there in the snow, it was even there during an occasional heartbreak. Weather did not effect its outcome or ability to function. It was alternately a friend or an enemy, based on the way you approached its use. It could be could played individually or competitively. It caused many injuries over the years, some fairly serious. It was not a friend, but there was something magnetic about it’s presence. It was Tetherball.

When we moved to our new house in 1963, Dad was looking for something to install that three boys could play. I being the oldest, had the advantage of height and strength against LB1 (Little Brother One) and he generally came out on the losing end of the competition. Being two years shorter was a disadvantage, however he had just had eyeglasses installed on his nose, so he could now see the darn thing. His method of play was one of what we called “hide and wait” style. You see, the object was fairly simple. The two players faced each other on opposite sides of the pole. the object being to get the ball wound around your direction of the pole with no space left on the rope. The “game” was started by one player “serving” the ball in the direction of the other player. The ball was completely unwound from the pole and the server would hit the ball toward the opposing player. Various styles of serves developed over the years, but the ball pitched into the air and hit with the inside of an clenched fist was the most favored in our neighborhood. The other player then had to block the serve by hitting the ball back in the opposite direction. Few other rules were necessary. the person who finally got the ball wound down the pole in their direction was the winner. The manner in which the ball was served or returned was the genesis of many bad bruises or black eyes. If the server was strong enough the ball would sometimes bounce off the head of the opposing player rendering him stunned for a moment and giving the server a momentary advantage to achieve a couple of loops. LB1, being smaller, mastered the “hide and wait” approach. In this maneuverer, he would wait for an opening created by a miss, as the ball was returned, and helped it pick up speed as it sailed by heading back around the pole. If he kept his return close to the pole it was hard to return it with any sort of force. He thereby reduced the competition away from the brute force angle and more to the strategic placement game. Once a player “got ” a few loops on his competitor it was tough to get them unwound, thereby wearing down his opponent by waiting out their frustration.

Tetherball was not a favorite competition of many mothers. They were not witness to the physical activity in our back yard, but they certainly were the refuse when a split lip or busted nose was the result of a particularly active competition. In fact, several Moms banned the activity after their son received an injury that affected his daily chores. One kid was not allowed to play because his Mom felt it would interfere with his piano lessons. In fact LB1 was banned because of the casualty rate of his eyeglasses.

At one time, our tetherball “court” was the main hang out in our neighborhood. Access to the competition was to be had by our unfenced side yard. At our house, anyone was welcome, at any hour of the day. In fact, occasionally, as we were heading upstairs for bedtime, one could hear the constant “whop” of the ball as it was being returned. Once in a while Dad would slip out through the garage back door to remind my buddies that the sun had gone down and they needed to head for home. That fact seemed to escape a few of my older friends.

That tetherball pole and ball remained as a gathering place for many years in our yard. LB2 became the raining neighborhood champ for several years and my little sisters even got into the act. Looking back at the simplicity of the game and the versatility of the sport, I am surprised of it’s lack of diversity in the neighborhood. With reflection however, I guess, the noise and the boys were a problem for some folks. It never seem to bother my Mom & Dad. That’s the way it was at my house growing up in the sixties.

When I was 10 my Father left Chrysler Corporation and joined Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Corporation as an Industrial Engineer. This meant we were moving again. It also meant that I would be enrolling in my fourth school in six years. So, here I was, in a new city, in the middle of fifth grade and being introduced to my new classmates. I had seen this movie before. I’m on the outside looking in at what had now become an all too familiar scenario. Of course, I was seated in the front row of desks, while being introduced to my classmates while the Teacher butchered the pronunciation of my name. I had heard the snickers before. Then something unbelievable happened, the Principal walked into the room, walked over to my desk and while pronouncing my name perfectly, welcomed me to Emerson Elementary School. He then turned to the classroom and instructed it’s occupants to take good care of me. Just as I was getting used to the positive attention he smiled down at me and left the room. Wow, that had never happened before, he had made me feel very special in what was traditionally an awkward situation that I had been dreading.

It wasn’t long before I was being invited to play marbles on the playground during recess and a few cute girls were smiling at me from the safety of their gaggle. It was during this transition from new kid in school that I began to be aware of my surroundings.

The first thing that I noticed about Emerson was the size of the building. It was three stories tall made of brick and was huge. It was to date, the biggest building I had been inside of next to our Church. I think it had been built in the 1920’s which sounded very old to me in 1960. In each end of the structure were the stairways which were huge. The stairway on the east end was designated for those who were descending from the upper floors and the stairways on the west end were to be used for getting to the upper levels. The floors were marble and shined in the sunlight. The classroom entry doors had numbers painted on the glass window above and the window was on a hinge that could be opened in case of excessive heat. The control for that came in the form of a long pole with a hook on it that had taken up residence in a dusty corner near the door. Upon entry to the classroom, the height of the ceilings immediately captured my attention, they must have 12 feet high. Passing by the large wooden Teacher’s desk behind which was a chalk board that had been built for a lot of information, because it stretched the entire length of the front of the room. After seating myself in at my assigned wooden one piece desk I immediately became aware of the classroom heating system positioned under the windows. There was a series of huge iron radiators that circulated hot water through the system. As impressive as their appearance was, the function left much to be desired. They had one temperature it seemed, Hot. It was not an uncommon sight, in the winter, to see one of the huge swivel windows cranked open to help mediate the temperature in the classroom. These iron monstrosities were tended to by the Janitor, whose job was to get to school early and turn up the heat of the water in the pipes. The result was that for several hours in the early part of the day a series of hisses and clanks would escape into the learning environment. Occasionally, one of the pipes would sound remarkedly like my Grandpa after Sunday dinner. This inevitably would spark a round of snickers and snarks from the students. Once in a while it would cause our teacher to giggle and class room decorum would take a dive for a few minutes. Recess, weather permitting, was to be enjoyed on the playground. As a normal 5th grade boy, I was usually quite ready to hit the Jungle Jim a couple of times a day. Even then I would find myself staring back at the impressive brick architecture. Something about the environment drew me to the building.

It was several years later while attending the University which was right down the street from Emerson, that it dawned on me. The buildings were built just like my elementary school and it evoked the same feeling in me. It wasn’t the buildings so much as it was the environment. This is where my childhood dream to become a teacher had taken root. It was the learning environment, the dedication to education, the opportunity to pursue intellectual growth. I continued that pursuit of education and have perpetuated my life long love of books and the collection there of, much to my wife’s chagrin. I still love to learn new things and am fascinated by old buildings and architecture.

Little was I aware that at ten years old I would experience something that has become part of my inner core. Most of my teachers names at Emerson Elementary School are lost in the tangle of my memory. However they left me with precious memories that will be with me forever. There is one name I will never forget, the Principal that took the time to welcome me to a his school and showed me a kindness that I could never repay, Mr. James Zedekar..

Christmas was coming and we still did not have a Christmas Tree for our living room. It wasn’t that we hadn’t talked about it. In my opinion, we had talked about it too much. However, it was just over two weeks before Christmas and still no decision.

You see, our family voted on everything. We had even drawn my 9 months old sister’s name out of hat, in which everyone in the family got to contribute their suggestion. We even voted every week on our cereal choice at the grocery store. It was 1964 and we were nothing, if not democratic, in our way of solving family dispute. This decision however was spilt right down the middle. Three votes for a cut spruce that we bought from the Kiwanis’ Club every year and three votes for a real tree that could be planted in the yard after Christmas.

Little brothers LB1 and LB2 and I, wanted the Kiwanis tree, and Mom and Dad and our new little sister had voted for the “real tree”. How our little sister got to vote was a question that was on all the boy’s minds. It seems that Dad had come up with the explanation that he had always voted for us when we were too young to do so. Being too young to remember and getting the approval nod from Mom, there was no more discussion on the issue. So here we were, still no tree and Christmas was fast approaching.

My sixteen old imagination was in high gear. If we didn’t have a tree, did that mean we would have no gifts, because we have no where to put them? I didn’t want this to get out of hand and incur my Father’s famous Scottish temper. After all, I had asked for a guitar for Christmas and I didn’t want this to scratch the whole gift idea. There was however, a principal at stake. We had always had a cut tree. When we were younger, we lived in a huge woods on a lake. The weekend, after Thanksgiving, every year was the time that the whole family took a sled and an axe and headed into the woods to pick out our Christmas Tree. The Kiwanis Club lot was as close to that tradition as we could get. The cool part was we all did it together. It was the mid 1960’s and tradition was disappearing daily. I had always been interested in history and I guess I was a budding Traditionalist. I didn’t want to give up the memories.

The decision to make the decision was made. The decision was to be made during Sunday dinner after Church. Sunday arrived and Sunday dinner was served. Somewhere between saying grace and pass the fried chicken, the discussion began. LB1 and I shared the same bedroom and we had honed our argument for the cut tree the night before. Pure and simple, It was Tradition. Having moved to this new house and started a new school the year before, we had left the old neighborhood and a lot of history behind. We were sure we could sway Mom with this argument and all we needed was one vote. I stated our case with as much eloquence as I could muster. I thought I saw Mom tear up during the Tradition part of the argument. I looked at LB1 and he nodded in Mom’s direction. He too thought she was leaning our way. A quick glance at 8 year old LB2 showed he was more interested in mashed potatoes than Christmas trees. Silence ruled the table as all involved considered the issue.

Just as my Dad was about to speak, my Mom interrupted. She put her hand on Dad’s arm and said to him, “Go ahead, tell them”. He took a deep breath and his thoughts on the subject were then issued. “As you all know”, he began. “Your Mother and I very much miss the woods and lake on Acre Drive. So, this year with the birth of your little sister, we thought we would like to start a new tradition. We wanted to plant a live tree in the yard and start something new. Every year we would like to decorate the tree and remember when we started this new tradition, because that would be the year your sister was born.”

A quick look at Mom exposed the tears in her eyes. I didn’t have took look at LB1 for support because I knew how I was going to vote. It was done by a show of hands , fours ayes, a chicken leg in the air from LB2 and a handful of pudding from our little sister. The live tree idea was adopted and plans quickly turned to its acquisition. As it turned out The Kiwanis club sold live trees as well. We bought a 5 foot Spruce and brought it home in the station wagon. A huge galvanized bucket was filled with water and installed in the living room. The tree was lowered into the water and the decorating began. The side benefit of having a live tree was the fragrance that filled the whole house. Mom was extremely happy and our home was finally at peace.

Christmas came and went and the decision as to where to put the tree was put to a family vote. It was unanimous, the front yard, out near the street. All three boys took turns digging the hole, although the shovel was bigger than LB2.

For the next few years my Dad took extra special care of that tree as it began to grow. Every year the family decorated it with lights and ornaments, much to the delight of the neighborhood. It became the back drop for many family pictures during the different holidays and seasons. We still have several pictures of my sister standing next to that spruce tree which was now taller than her.

Our family had moved through other crisis with the curious habit of voting on things, when there was a family disagreement. It was not until I was an adult, with kids of my own, before I realized that voting to solve our disagreements was our own family tradition.

The Christmas of 1964 turned out to be a wonderful Christmas. I got my guitar, my Dad got his tree and the whole family got a new tradition. I drove by the old house the other day and to my surprise, the tree is still there. It’s now taller than the house. I wish my Mom and Dad were still around to see their Family Tradition.

It was the first warm day of Spring and storms were forecast. Because it was Sunday, going to Church was the order of the day. This particular Sunday was special because it was the Sunday before Easter, Palm Sunday. As was our fashion, all six members of the family loaded into the station wagon for the 15 minute drive. The weather was weird out. It was alternately blue sky then a haze of green would take over. By the time we arrived at our Church, the wind was beginning to gust. Many older men who wore hats found themselves chasing that hat between the parked cars. Mothers were asking to be dropped at the front door so as not to destroy their newest hairdo. Unbeknownst to us, one of the worst series of tornados to ever hit Indiana was heading straight for us.

Safely inside the 75 year old brick building we turned our attention toward worship. Something about the atmosphere helped us forget the worsening weather outside. There were no cell phones in which to sneak a peak at weather reports. Even if there were, my Mother would not have allowed such a diversion in the Church Sanctuary. It was all eyes straight ahead focused on the Pastor and the choir. After the sermon and Sunday school classes were over, the family gathered to head for home. Dad had brought the car to the back door of the church and we ran between raindrops for safety. On the way home the car radio was on but not much was being said about the weather. As we rounded the corner to our house there was some activity happening in our driveway. Dave, a college student who rented a room from us, was packing up his car. When we pulled up next to him, he looked worried. He was in the National Guard and he had been put on alert for potential deployment somewhere in the state due to bad weather.

We all hurried inside to turn on the television for more up to date news. Nothing out of the ordinary was being broadcast. Mom instructed us to go to our rooms to change out of our “good clothes”. While we were following her instructions she was turning on her police scanner that was on the kitchen counter. Mom had been a Civilian Defense Volunteer during the late fifties and early sixties. She was familiar with the codes and warnings routinely blaring out of the speakers. Suddenly the air raid siren on the scanner began to wail. Almost immediately, the wall phone began to ring. Tornados were touching down in western Indiana and already major damage was being reported. Dave was instructed by phone to head to a staging area for soldiers immediately. Mom fixed him a sandwich and he was gone. We were all now huddled around the scanner. It seems that there was some sort of a hullabaloo going on as to the explanation of the difference between the words Forecast and Warning. Apparently the words were being used interchangeably between the radio and television broadcasters. It was being explained that Warning meant seek cover, a tornado had been spotted. Forecast meant that a chance was ripe for an occurrence.

Little brother one (LB1) and I were dispatched to the upstairs for blankets and pillows and Dad began to check on anything not tied down outside. Palm Sunday dinner was now an after thought. Simultaneously, we listened to the now cranked up TV in the living room, the radio in the kitchen and the police scanner. We were beginning to put the pieces together. Series of tornado outbreaks were being reported in three different parts on the state. There were apparently clusters of tornados and they were on the ground and heading straight for us. For the next seven or eight hours, we were alternately huddling in the downstairs bathroom or listening to the warnings being issued.

Indiana, in my youth, was made up of a series of small towns. Most clustered around a grain mill or small manufacturing concern. Many communities existing of no more than a couple of hundred buildings. The reports we were getting was that whole communities were being flattened and there was major loss of life. It was being reported that there were as many as fifty tornados confirmed. Our major concern was were was the closest one to us? Finally, the television flashed a predicted touch down trajectory. Thank God, it looked like it had missed us as it swung just to our north. There was something different about these tornados. Most touch downs in our experience, hopped and skipped across the ground. Sometimes leveling a barn but leaving the house nearby untouched. These were different, they were staying on the ground and were as wide, in some places, as two miles. Massive damage reports were beginning to come from every form of communication. Now that we were safe, our fear was for Dave, were was he?

The following morning, most men stayed home from work and all schools in our area were suspended. Television was now on the ground in the aftermath and reporting. It was not good. There had been, as was theorized by the State Police, three separate paths of destruction. it would eventually be confirmed that there were between 50 and 150 touch downs. Many towns were without power. Electricity in those days was delivered by wires that were strung about 20 feet in the air on wooden poles. In most places the poles had disappeared. The phone communication was generally on the same pole, so there was no phone service and it would not return for months. Fatality numbers were beginning to come in. It appeared it would be in the hundreds. Neighbors now gathered in the street outdoors to share stories and count heads. We still had one head missing. Where was Dave?

As the days stretched into a week we heard that the President of the United States was coming to surveil the damage. Russiaville, it was being reported, was completely destroyed. Not one building in the city had been left untouched. Stories began to surface that the young men, 18 years and older, who had registered for the draft would be temporarily “drafted” to help in disaster clean up. It did not happen. Then in the midst of all the chaos, Air Force One touched down and Lyndon Johnson descended the stairway and was ushered out into the rubble. He appeared genuinely shocked. Somewhere near Kokomo, he climbed atop a pile of rubble and gave reassurances that The Federal Government was going to help. Several hours later, a body was found beneath the debris upon which the president had stood.

It had now been seven days and we had not heard from Dave and were beginning to worry that he was among the missing. It was Sunday morning and we loaded into the station wagon and headed for Church. Slowly, our world was returning to normal. There was a lot of talk during the Church Service about donations needed both of money and time to help the neighboring communities. Everyone agreed to participate and signed up on the sheets on display in the vestibule. We lit a candle in Dave’s memory and prayed for his well being. Secretly, we all were beginning to fear the worst. That fear was also being displayed on our congregation’s faces. It was a quiet ride home while we all grappled with our worst fear.

As we came around the last curve on the way to the house, Dad saw it first and yelled, look. All eyes followed the finger on his hand. Dave was sitting on the bumper of his car that he parked in front of the house. A collective yell went up and my mom had tears in her eyes. The station wagon screeched to a stop and we jumped out and ran in the direction of Dave’s old car. He had the look of a man who had seen things that he never wanted to see again. As we hugged him and welcomed him home we began to realize that he had not had the benefit of bath in over a week. Dad had one question, “what are you doing out here? I forgot my key in all the excitement” he blushed. Mom dispatched him to the shower and instructed LB1 and I to carry in his duffel bag. Soon we were all sitting down to Easter dinner. Stories were exchanged and Dad and Dave took “a walk”.

Over one hundred people lost their lives and many cities were completely wiped out. It would take years to rebuild and reclaim a future. Thousands of Hoosiers were touched by the disaster and some schools were never rebuilt. The terms Forecast and Warning were explained time and time again on the nightly news broadcasts. Warning sirens were planned for all Indiana towns and communication cables began to be buried instead of elevated. The National Guard members were recognized in the newspapers and thanked on the streets and in the coffee shops. Considering all the damage, the loss of life was considered small. Speculation began to explain why so few had been killed. It was Sunday and folks were at home and the kids were not in school was the most predominate explanation. Also, the Church goers claimed that it happened on one of the holiest days, Palm Sunday,(that explanation could go either way).Whatever the reason, I don’t ever want to experience it again. Natural disasters would touch my life again in the future, but for now this would be the worst while growing up in the sixties.

In the winter of my eight grade year, my High School won the State Basketball championship. Now, in Indiana, that is an accomplishment that cements your future as successful for ever. Many a young man has entered politics in Indiana with little more than his membership on the Team on his resume. Fifty years later I can still recite the names of the guys that were on that team. I remember that night like it was yesterday. I was on the eighth grade basketball team that shared the same court and locker room with these guys. So by extension, we were caught in some of the glory shower that came with all the publicity. In a couple of years we were going to get an opportunity to repeat this feat and carry on the tradition. This team had just won the State Championship for the fifth time in 53 years. They were the first ones to accomplish this feat and their mortal standing on earth ascended straight up, to free pass into Heaven.

Let me tell you how it was done in 1963 in Muncie Indiana. To begin the story , you must understand that the Indiana High School State Athletic Association was a winner take all, non class tournament. All sizes and populations played in these tournaments. There was one prerequisite to advancement, you had to win the previous game. There was no classification based on school size and no restriction based on population. Just 11 years before, a school with a population of a few hundred had beaten Muncie Central, a school with a population of several thousand. The popular movie “Hoosiers” was spawned by that feat several years later. Friday and Saturday night High School basketball games, in the sixties, were so popular in Indiana that many small towns closed their business’ because everyone was attending the game. Most games were broadcast by radio and even if you were able to find a business to patronize you were subjected to game on the public address system when you entered.

So, here it was March 30, 1963 a Saturday night. The location was Butler Fieldhouse on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis. Fifteen Thousand people were on hand to watch the game and it was standing room only. Muncie Central had lost only one game during the regular playing season and was coming into the game with 27 wins. South Bend Central had won 25 games during the year and was an even match for Muncie. When whistle blew to start the game Mike Rolf, Muncie’s Center tipped the ball to Rick Jones and within three seconds Muncie scored. The rest is history and the entire game can still be watched on You Tube today. The final score was 65 Muncie, 61 South Bend. Within minutes in our normally very quiet neighborhood, shotguns were being fired in the air outside, automobile horns were being honked and firecrackers were exploding from all directions. It was New Year’s Eve all over again. A few minutes later you could hear it, cars were starting up all down the block. It wasn’t long before a parade had formed leaving our neighborhood to go escort the team home from Indianapolis. There were young kids in pajamas, teenagers in the back of pick up trucks and Moms and Dads sitting next to each other on the front seat, joining in the excitement. My buddy swung by the house in his 55 Chevy and I jumped in as he rolled down my street. I can not remember being more excited in my young life. We headed out to the highway to wait. As cars were arriving, they were forming a line to follow the team into town. The police had begun to arrive and they were excited as well. The air seemed to crackle. Eventually, the team arrived on the back of a fire truck. Somewhere along the line the City had dispatched their biggest truck to meet the school bus, the team was on. Behind them was a caravan of fans who had attended the game. As they rolled past we pulled into the lines following the now siren wailing fire truck. The police had been stationed along the route to block any intersection in which traffic could be a problem. There was no problem, we were all going the same way, to the Fieldhouse. The Fieldhouse was the Muncie Central home court and was equipped to handle about 7000 people. The closer we got, there were more people outside. They were on porches, standing on cars and hanging out of second story windows, they were all doing the same thing, waving ecstatically.

Upon arrival to the Fieldhouse gym, it was a madhouse. There was pandemonium because everyone wanted a seat in the Gymnasium. The fire truck discharged the team and they headed for the Gym floor. We found a seat in the upper rung of stadium seats and joined in the celebrations. There were old Muncie Central letter jackets everywhere. It was almost midnight and this place was a beehive of people all looking for a seat. Finally the Coach got everyone’s attention and place grew completely silent in a matter of seconds. This coach who at this moment could have been elected Mayor, was in his first year as the Coach for Muncie Central. The fear and concern about his coaching tactics were all gone now. He had just taken his team straight into the history books. Perfunctory speeches were made, ball players were kissed by the cheerleaders and everyone had their say. One by one we drifted out to the Bon Fire that had been lighted on the football field.

As I watched the crowd mill about and slap each other on the back and shake hands, I was unaware that I was experiencing something that would never happen again in my life. I think the older folks had a sense of the brevity of the situation, but I certainly didn’t. It would be 15 years before Muncie Central would win another State Basketball Championship. Within 20 years Class Basketball would wreck most of the tradition involved with winning the State Tournament. But as I stood there this night, soaking up the excitement and breathing in the tradition, I was never more proud to be a Muncie Central Bearcat.

“Last year when he was 18, he was an Eagle Scout, this year at 19 he is an expert marksman in the Army. Who’s watching the transition of America’s best and brightest? Mothers are. Last year a prom date was the most important thing in his life, this year it’s letters from home. He always thought white picket fences were in his future, now it’s white phosphorous hand grenades. Who’s keeping score of the dreams?. Mothers are. A job at the factory was a given now it’s a wish. A future seemed certain, now it is doubt. Who watches for the outcome? Mothers do. Wars are waged by youth, but Mothers have the most to lose.”

July 2000 Terry M Fauquher

When children are born, Mothers begin their lives with hope. After World War Two, babies were being born in record numbers. Hope and optimism was in the air. During the Fifties, while those babies were growing up, America was experiencing unbridled prosperity. In 1960, a 43 year old , sandy haired youth with a million dollar smile, became President of the United States. Mothers were beginning to sense that their children were going to have a much better life than their own. The dream in most households was a better education for their children than they were able to obtain. More and more homes had a car and a garage. The new interstate system was beginning to take shape and vacations by automobile were now becoming a reality. Davy Crockett was the new hero for young men and his exploits were being delivered into living rooms by this new fangled contraption called television. Outdoor Bar-B-Que ovens were the new rage for everyone’s back yard. America was smiling.

Then, on November 22 1963, the new President was assassinated and almost overnight the dreams began to die. Hope was no longer in the air. Within a matter of months, American combat troops were landing in Vietnam. Now in an instant, the dreams that most Mothers had allowed themselves to accumulate, began to vanish. In their place, the old nagging fears that they had grown up with, returned to haunt their thoughts. Their sons, their first-borns, were now being solicited to register for selective service and for the first time in a long time, it came with consequence.

Fathers still went off to work every day and continued their lives. Mothers, by and large, were left at home to worry. They had experienced World War Two and they knew what was coming next. And then, there it was, the scroll of names on the nightly news broadcasts, the eighteen and nineteen year-olds who would never hold their Mothers hand again.

Mothers were worried this would happen and they were left to grieve as the relentless political excuses demanded more cannon fodder for the war machine.

Before any young person is sent to war, the individual in charge should be made to look a Mother in the eye and ask permission. Clearly it’s the Mothers that have the most Lose.

The wonderful thing about growing up in the sixties was, you always knew where you stood in the bigger scheme of things. There were rules and as a kid, you were expected to obey them. Not ask for clarification, not lobby for a family group decision or ignore them in hopes of a more favorable decision by a different parent. We were raised with rules, and we were expected to instantly accept the rule and move in the direction of its conclusion. And, there were a lot of rules. Family rules, moral obligations, socially accepted norms, but most of all were the common sense rules.

The common sense rules were vague and covered most of the things that our parents had not discussed with us individually. These rules were expected to have as much consequence as anything already covered. Should you come to the intersection of do or don’t do in your daily experience, you were expected to know what your parents expected you to do. Often times these intersections gave a teenager great pause. From the viewpoint of a 13 year old, it was difficult to discern exactly how your parents would react. Or so, that’s how our pubescent thought process would decide the journey.

My family lived about 30 blocks from the municipal swimming pool. Most days we were there when it opened for business. We were allowed to eat lunch there, but under no circumstances were we to be late for Supper which was served at our house promptly at 5:30 pm. On a good day we could cover a block a minute on our walk, meaning we were about 30 minutes away from our house via the shoe leather express. One day my new battery operated watch ceased telling time.

Reaching one of those intersections in life and wanting to continue another few minutes with my buddies, I reasoned that this would serve as the perfect excuse to grab a few more minutes of uninterrupted pleasure. On the way home I rehearsed my speech, that was to be presented to my parents. I practiced the look of astonishment on my face when I realized that my watch was no longer keeping me out of trouble. I arrived at the back door of our home about the time my little brother (lb1) was heading out to the backyard to use up the last couple of hours of daylight. The look in his eye and the smirk on his face telegraphed the mood that I was about to encounter. Arriving into the kitchen and noticing that the supper table had been cleared, I began, what was now, a well rehearsed soliloquy on the unreliability of these new battery operated watches.

The look of astonishment that I had mastered bounced right off my mother’s back because she was washing dishes. Half way through my dissertation about watches and their unreliability my Mom, without turning around, calmly instructed me to go see my father. It was beginning to dawn on me that I had moved up to level two of my house rules infraction. You see Mom usually handled the light discipline. Inadvertent curse words, yelling at lb1, or forgetting to take out the trash were in Mom’s bailiwick. However, if the discipline had elevated it’s self to level two punishment, Dad was tasked with the implementation of the deed.

My Dad was an emotional punisher. He took the whole event personally. It was if I had jumped out of bed that morning with the express intention of offending him. Having committed level two infractions before, I knew better than to waste a lot of words. When I arrived into the living room my Dad was reading the newspaper. Without waiting for his attention, I began my 30 block rehearsal. He continued reading and I continued with the explanation of what had caused this dasterdly deed. He lowered the newspaper as I was coming to my closing argument. It was the watch’s fault. I could see his face was getting red but he was remaining remarkably calm when he asked the one simple question that I had not been prepared for. “Why didn’t you ask someone what time it was?”

I had 30 blocks to prepare my excuse but the answer to this one simple question had not been factored in during my preparation. My answer came out much quicker than I expected, ” I didn’t think of it”. “Well”, he thundered, “that’s the only thing that I have heard so far that brushes anywhere near the truth”. I was then instructed to go to bed without supper. Knowing when to leave a bad thing alone I started up the steps, when he instructed me to give the watch to him; since I was unaware of how to work it. Surrendering the watch and moving toward the steps before his famous back hand that ended all disagreements, presented itself, I was in bed in record time.

I had all night to think about whether my extra fifteen minutes in the swimming pool was worth it, having missed Mom’s Fried Chicken. The next morning I was the first one to breakfast and nothing was mentioned about the drama of the evening before. Mom was customarily cheerful and Dad was reading the Morning newspaper. I ate quickly and tried to get outside before anything else was mentioned. Just as I was hitting back door, my Dad announced that he really liked his new watch. I caught the look on my Mom’s face and I thought she was going to laugh out loud. I didn’t act like I heard anything and hit the back yard in full stride.

As I have aged, I realize that old habits die hard, as such, I am seldom late for our supper hour even today. Also, I do remember that the punishment that was actually more annoying than anything, was the explanation I had to give every time one of my buddies asked why I wasn’t wearing my new Timex.

One of the biggest hoax’s perpetuated on the American eating habit was the introduction of the “TV Dinner”. Wikipedia describes it as such; “A TV Dinner is a packaged frozen meal that usually comes portioned as an individual meal….it requires very little preparation and may contain a number of separate elements that comprise a single serving meal”. It’s popularity burst into Supermarket aisles and onto American dining tables just as the new decade of the sixties was dawning. By 1960, nine out of ten households had a television comprising an astounding number of 52 million sold. Programing at that point only lasted until about nine o’clock in the evening before signing off. So every minute it was on , Americans were mesmerized by it. TV dinners were invented, as marketed in advertising, ” to get Mom out of the kitchen, to spend more time watching her favorite entertainment”.

Well, my Mom didn’t want out of the kitchen. She took her responsibility of raising three young boys very seriously. When she planned a meal, nutrition was very much on her mind. She planned three meals a day many days in advance and seldom deviated from the plan. To her way of thinking TV Dinners were an assault on Motherhood. So while other kids were getting to try turkey and sweet potatoes cooked in minutes in aluminum foil, we still had to wait an hour or so for our meals. Her opinion was so strong and deeply rooted that TV Dinners were OUTLAWED in our house. As a matter of fact, it kind of had a boomerang affect on her meal choices. Ham & Beans which took all day to cook began to appear more often on the nightly supper table. It was a kind of subliminal response to the instant meals being served next door at my buddies house. It seemed, the longer it took to prepare a meal, the more sustained we were.

Never a big fan of Ham and Beans, I lobbied long and hard on behalf of Swanson instant dinners. My ten year old argument that every body I knew was enjoying them. This argument was instantly dismissed with the age old response, “if everyone else was jumping off a cliff, would you do that too?”. She felt so strongly about this new fad that we were even forbidden to eat a TV Dinner at someone else’s house. With that ringing in my ears, I began to invite myself to supper at some of my friends houses. That didn’t work because we had a rule that we were to phone home to ask permission to miss a meal. During the permission call, Mom would ask to speak to my buddies Mom to see if it was ok. During that conversation it was conveyed that I was to be sent home if TV Dinners were being served.

Mom did get more creative with her meal choices and we began to see fantastic desserts show up at the end of the meal. Because my Mom was a great cook and her meals were usually worth the sacrifice, the TV Dinner ban was upheld for several years at our house. Dad thought the whole fiasco was hilarious. He always watched the fifteen minute news broadcast at six pm and every time a Swanson commercial aired, he would wonder aloud, to know one in particular, about the taste of that item. To which my mother would respond, “you’ll never find out in this house”, which would illicit a loud chuckle.

I eventually did sneak a forbidden dinner at a friends house and had to admit, it wasn’t worth the trouble. It sure didn’t taste like Mom’s cooking. Mom’s ban on frozen ready to eat meals lasted well in to the decade. In 1964 my sister was born and having a baby around kind of took time away from meal preparation. She still, however, insisted that we were home and at the supper table at 5:30 in the evening. Most nights everything was from scratch, but once in a while, something thawed, was served. We never mentioned it and I never saw a TV Dinner at our house until I was almost a senior in High School. By then so much of the current culture had changed, TV Dinners seemed insignificant.

I never did develop a taste for frozen meals and rarely eat them now, but I would give anything for a plate of my Mom’s Ham and Beans today.

I grew up in Muncie Indiana, in an area known as Neely Addition. It was bordered roughly on the east by the County Fairgrounds and on the west by Ball State Teacher’s College. The southern boundary was Neely Ave and stretched to Bethel Ave on the North. My family moved there in 1959 and bought a house from Mr. & Mrs. Ernie Pifer, located on Bethel Ave between New York and Virginia Avenues. Mr. Pifer was the General Manager of Indiana & Michigan Electric Company in Muncie. I didn’t know it then but I was to be in one of the most fortunate set of circumstances of my life. My education was to be continued at Emerson Elementary School and James Zedekar was the School Principal. Our next door Neighbors were Clarence and Nancy Chalfant who had three boys, just like our family. Clarence was employed as a salesman for Champlin Dodge. Their next door neighbors were the Lanks. Skip was their son and a couple of years older than I and his dad Doyle Lank Sr was a Officer at Marsh Supermarkets. On the same side of the street, the south side, across Virginia Avenue lived Judge Mario Peroni who was blind. His family had a home with a white picket fence. Directly across the street from us lived The Collins Family. Dad, Henry was the Delaware County Accessor and they had three girls in residence all with beautiful red hair. Their older brother Mike was away at college and Susan was exactly my age and just about the cutest girl I had ever seen. I didn’t get around to telling her that until a few years later. To their east lived the Marion “Gibby” Gibson family. Gibby was a Muncie policeman who became the City Police Chief while we lived there. Mom Gibson, was Evelyn and they had three boys the oldest being Johnny who became one of my best buds. Right next door to them lived Mr. & Mrs. Marion Gibson Sr who were Johnny’s grandparents. On the west side of the Collins house lived the Maidlows. Dad, Jim Maidlow was a partner in Lehman’s Heating and Air Conditioning and Mom Evelyn was the Organist at our Church, Riverside Evangelical United Brethren. Their family consisted of three boys, the oldest being Jimmy who became another best bud. Next door to them lived Paul Able and his wife who owned Paul Able Buick Sales and Service on East Jackson Street.

So here I was, living within spitting distance of 15 kids whose parents were all intricate members of the Muncie Community. Of course when you are eleven years old, the most important need, was the availability of enough guys to get up a baseball game, and that we had. A few years later, I realized that having three beautiful red heads living across the street was not so bad either.

Like most families, we had one car. So on the mornings that my mom needed to use it, my Dad would get a ride with George Windmiller, who lived down the street. They both worked at Ball Brothers in the Engineering department. Now I’m not saying my Mom was a bad driver, but it suffices to say that my brother and I would just as soon walk to school. After we took off down the alley on our shortcut in the morning, Mom would install my littlest brother in the back seat and lurch down the hill and on to the street. She had not yet mastered the three speed on the column but she didn’t let that stop her. Occasionally she would pass us and wave while shifting from first to third gear while bypassing second altogether. She often complained that it’s location was in a stupid place, too close to reverse. As she bumped by, my little brother’s head would often disappear from view depending on the gear of her choice. It didn’t seem to bother him. He would just climb back up on the rear seat and wait for the next round of excitement. Back then seat belts were not an option.

After school on Wednesday’s we were required by our parents to attend activities offered by our Church. We would walk there after classes and head for home around five o’clock. We called the last meal of the day Supper at our house. It was served promptly at 5:30 and every one was required to attend. no exceptions and no exemptions. My Dad was usually home by 5:15. His daily routine was to shower and change clothes upon returning home. He was not a smoker but most of his co-workers were, so this necessitated him to “clean up” before supper, as he called it. One was never sure how many folks would be at our supper table based on my mother’s never ending invitation to anyone who looked like they needed a good meal in her estimation. It never seemed to bother my Dad, that we were having a perfect stranger over for fried chicken. In later years my brother and I would show up with a couple of the guys from the team and stretch the mashed potato servings a little. So a rule was implemented, if you are bringing more than one person with you, notification was necessary.

Neely Addition was an amazing place to spend summer vacation when school was out. Murphy’s Supermarket was on Wheeling just south of Bethel Avenue. It’s back door trash pile offered an endless supply of material for fort building or kite flying. Our parents had grown up during the Depression and Word War II and making something out of discarded material is the way we were taught to amuse ourselves. If we wanted to build a go cart, we were off to Jack Brammer’s Texaco Station to check out his trash pile. If we had a problem with our bicycles, we would end up at Becky Beckman’s Pure Oil Station at Rex Street and Wheeling, where he would help us with a patch and some free air to get us on our way. If we wanted to build a raft and put it on a pond, off we went to Shick’s Wood’s at the corner of New York and Neely Avenues. We wandered the neighborhood’s alley’s looking for treasures discarded in the burn piles and trash cans that were the ever present evidence of growing families.

With the advent of my parents expecting my little sister in 1963, they decided to build a house in Yorktown School district. So the transition from my Cocoon of Neely Addition, began. I began school year number nine and my sixth school enrollment in the fall of that year. I was not aware until many years later as to how lucky I had been to have landed in Neely addition in 1959. It’s security and safety and acceptance was instrumental in the foundation of my teen age years. Every once in a while when I am back in town , I turn left on to Linden Avenue and cruise through memory lane. If I am feeling adventurous, I drive down an alley or two looking for lost treasures.

It started in August of 1964. I should have known that it would eventually engulf me, because it’s official start date in the history books now, was my 16th birthday. In the beginning I didn’t pay too much attention to the noise being generated by it.

There was a lot going on in August of 1964. As a nation we were just nine months out from the assassination of JFK. The shock of which had “knocked the wind” out of the psyche of American youth. For me personally, I was still numb, I felt like my dreams were on hold. I had just started a new school and was busy trying to fit in. Clashes between Blacks and Whites were happening in the some of the major cities, even though Rev Martin Luther King was speaking out against violence. There were no black students attending my school, so for the moment I could escape the inevitable decisions that were being called for by many pastors, from their pulpits. A since of dred and uncertainty hung over our community like a thick fog that would not dissipate. Just a year ago, President Kennedy was on TV challenging people my age, to think for ourselves, sacrifice for the common good, and believe in something deeper than self gratification. Now, it all seemed like a collective national train wreck that had no end.

Just as I was driving home from getting my driver’s license, I heard on the car radio that It had happened. We had been attacked by North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin and the United States may be going to war. It didn’t come like World War II, where we were minding our own business as a country and the Japanese attacked us. It came through the back door, after months of sending US Army advisors and Naval Ships for support, to the area around South Vietnam.

I wasn’t really bothered by the news, I was only sixteen and I was not required to register for the Selective Service until my 18th Birthday, 2 years away. It would be over by then, I had assumed. However, I was concerned with the general mood of most of my friends. It was like the collective switch had been turned off on our optimism. Slowly our attention began to be diverted from the fun of going to the prom and buying our first used car, to thinking about our future.

Now, looming in the back of most young men’s mind, was the nagging fear that getting drafted to go to War, was a very real possibility. Just like it was for most of our parents, when they were growing up. It was in their minds too, especially the Moms. For the last ten years America had enjoyed un-mitigated peace and prosperity. Moms and Dads had just began to dream as well. They had dreamed that that seriousness that had pervaded their lives when they were teenagers, would not invade their children’s lives. Most parents, had lived virtually their whole formative years with either a World Depression or a World War. Now here it was, back again, a “National Fear”. The potential for disaster was not lost on newspaper columnists and TV news anchors. For some reason some of them had taken the responsibility upon themselves to predict the worst. All of a sudden growing up in the sixties had taken a serious turn.

For me, I didn’t really pay attention to the news. I was more interested in the shorter hemlines on teenage girl’s skirts and the longer hair being sported by the rock and roll group from London, The Beatles. Typically sixteen, I was avoiding for the moment, any responsibility that made me think toward the future. I had a job after school at Pizza King, a girlfriend who loved the same things I did and I was vice president of the Spanish Club. Things were looking up for me at my new school and I was not really interested in getting serious about anything.

Looking back at August of 1964, I guess I was in the majority, when it came to the attitude of most 16 year old boys that summer. But, I also realize that it was the last carefree summer of my life. By Spring, guys that I had gone to my high school had been killed in Vietnam. Their names were being displayed on a scroll on the CBS Nightly News on television. It had invaded my life and would never again leave. Within three years, I would be on my way to Vietnam involuntarily, while leaving my wife and baby daughter back at home trying to exist on my Army paycheck of $75.00 per month. For the rest of my life, the concept of “fair” would not be in my vocabulary. I did develop a saying which I still employ today. “The Good News is…. but the Bad news is….” while I was trying to minimize the unfortunate circumstances, that I often found myself in. In the summer of 1964, I was just one of 2.7 million young men and women who would eventually serve in The Republic of South Vietnam. The experience would never be far from my thoughts. It defined who I am today.

The Good News is… I lived through Vietnam, ….but The Bad News is… I lived through Vietnam.

I went to Betty’s funeral yesterday. She probably didn’t realize it but she had a profound impact on my teenage years. That’s the problem with funerals, they make you remember all the things you should have said, when they would have mattered. Betty was a very disciplined lady and could come straight to the point faster than an Army Drill Sergeant. She liked me and I liked her, but we didn’t ever tell each other. We just sort of, bantered. She was my best friend’s Mom and was not always convinced that my presence was good for her son. Especially when she wanted him to practice his piano lessons and I wanted him to play basketball.

My Mom would give my a list of things she wanted done that day and if I completed those tasks eventually, she was satisfied. His Mom gave him instructions she wanted done that hour and the order in which to do them. I found humor in the necessity to empty all the trash cans immediately upon arriving home after school. After all, trash pick up was not scheduled until the following day. I smiled when she presented the demand that all record albums would have to be returned to the closet shelf before we left the bed room. I was not so tickled when she suggested that were I to join in the performance of the task, it could be completed in half the time.

She also began to suggest to me, her idea of what would make me a better person. “You may not realize it, but I know what is best for you and you will thank me when you become an adult”, still rings in my ears fifty five years later. Her opinions weighed in, from time to time, on subjects as far ranging as my taste in clothing, to my choice of girlfriends. Since I was at their house almost daily I was used to the casual suggestions like ” does your Mom know you are wearing that?” Eventually, I realized that the sarcasm was an invitation to intellectual discourse of which I was almost always the loser. She was always one step ahead of me no matter where the conversation went. My intentions came from the impulsiveness of a 15 year old teenager, the depth of her viewpoint came from being a Mom.

Since we lived in the same neighborhood, it was not uncommon to eat dinner at my buddies house. I wanted to eat there as often as I could, not because of the quality of the cuisine, although it was great, but because it would get me out of doing dishes at my house, which was one of my assigned daily chores. Somehow, my secret was discovered and she began to invite me to share in the washing of the dishes after my customary second helping of dessert. To decide where to eat, I began to ask what was on the menu when I would smell the preparations. I would say something like “Betty, what’s for dinner?” “What would you like?” she would ask. “Steak and French Fries, I would answer.” “We’re not having that” she would respond. She was always one step ahead.

Eventually, girls, cars, and part time jobs came between my buddy and I. But, for some reason the thought of his Mom would come to me at the most odd of times. In my mind’s eye I would see her looking up at me and saying “you will thank me when you are an adult”. I came to realize that she had helped shape my decision making. Her integrity and mother’s intuition helped get me through some decisions later in life. My Mom, loved me and accepted me, his Mom expected more of me. The combination of those two factors helped give me a strong foundation upon which to build my life.

My buddy buried his Mom yesterday at the age of 90 years. In her hand she was clutching a wooden cross. As I said good bye to her, I wanted her to know how much she meant to me a long time ago. Most importantly, I wanted her know that I did become an adult and I do thank her.

On January 1, 1960, when the sixties became a decade, I was ten years old. I was unaware of how fast the decade would mature or how fast I would grow up. Before the decade was over I would be married, become a father, and been wounded in Vietnam

The sixties started as innocuous as it did for most midwestern boys. I carried a newspaper route in the morning, belonged to a Boy Scout Troop and was annoyed that I shared a bedroom with my little brother. I enjoyed school, but not math class, and was beginning to “tall up” as my grandpa called it. Girls were not yet on my radar, but basketball was and I played whenever and wherever I could find a goal. I sang in the youth choir at Church and practiced being Elvis Presley in the mirror in bedroom, playing the radio as loud as it would play, until my Mother yelled up the stairway that the neighbors were complaining. I was never sure that was entirely accurate. In short, I lived a pretty idyllic life.

My bicycle was my conduit to the outside world. I would fly down the alley’s behind the houses on my street pretending to be Roy Rogers astride his horse Trigger. Trash cans were bad guys and were routinely dispatched with my imaginary six gun. There were no boundaries for me, I was only limited by endurance and daylight. In 1960, a ten year old was safe to roam to his heart’s content. Safe to explore the trash bins behind Murphy’s Supermarket. Safe to poke around the junk behind Brammer’s Texaco Gas station. Safe to slide through a hole in the fence at the fairgrounds, to watch the horses being trained. I guess, carefree would describe the environment of my pre teen years. I never thought about how fast things could change or how those changes would affect me for years to come.

I was always pretty content to spend my days alone but I did have a few close friends, that were always available should I be in need of a companion. If you like to play basketball a companion is a necessity. Playing alone is just practice, but when playing with someone, it becomes a game.

Roy, lived about five blocks from my house and had a great basketball court. It came equipped with a new goal that was attached to a bank board above the garage door and even had a net on the rim. The building was out by the alley and had a night light attached to a nearby phone pole. No matter what time of day, Roy was always “shooting baskets”. He and I spent many summer time hours solving the problems of the world while playing HORSE or practicing our free throws. Most of our discussions were about music or school or making the basketball team next year. Over the course of a couple of years, we became pretty close friends, we were the same age, went to the same school, but he was Catholic, so we went to different churches. Our time under that basketball goal was something that I looked forward to almost every day. I was there so often that my Mom would call Roy’s mom on the phone to remind me to come home for supper. We were on the alley basket ball court so often that other guys in the neighborhood would come by on their bikes to shoot the breeze. His house and that court had become a vital part of my life.

One hot summer day while were perfecting our jump shots, Roy mentioned that he would be gone for a couple of weeks. He explained that his Father was taking the family to Port Canaveral Beach Florida for a vacation. He assured me that access to the court was not a problem, his ball would be right inside the garage door , in case mine went flat. While he was gone, I kept the court swept off and practiced my hook shot, but it was not the same. I came to realize that I missed my friend and could not wait for his return, so that we could return my life to normal. I rode by the house every day to see if they had returned.

Finally, one Sunday afternoon, I turned into the alley on my bike and there was Roy “shooting baskets”. I told him it was about time he returned, kidded him about his tan and our lives took up where we had left it. Except, something seemed to be bothering him. With typical 12 year old diplomacy I demanded to know what was wrong with him. He stopped shooting the ball and turned to me and said, “we are moving to Florida”. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. I didn’t have the life experience to understand the gravity of what he was saying. “My Dad got a job working at the Cape Canaveral Space Center, and are moving there before school starts next month.” I just kept shooting my ball, I didn’t know what to say. Latter that night, while laying in bed trying process what had happened, I began to realize that my life was about to change.

Everyone in the neighborhood was happy for Roy and his family. He was moving to Florida and he was going to be living on the beach. They put a For Sale sign in the front yard and Roy’s Mom asked us not to play basketball out by the alley any more, in case someone would like to stop by and see the house. We saw each other a few times in the next few weeks but he was pretty busy packing and helping his family get ready for the move. The house sold and a moving day was established and Roy and I made plans to meet up and say goodbye. On the appointed day , I grabbed my basketball and jumped on my bike determined to get our last “few shots” in. Roy was waiting for me out on the basketball court, where a moving van was parked under the rim. We talked a little and passed the ball back and forth and he promised to write a letter once he got settled. I promised to write back and ask my parents if we could ever visit Florida. I got on my bike and headed into my future. I don’t remember if we ever wrote to each other, but I would occasionally ride by the house and noticed that the basketball goal had moved to Florida too.

I drove by the old house the other day while I was back in town. I turned down the alley and parked in front of the garage. The buildings are still there and for a moment I let my mind drift back to when I was growing up in the sixties.

Very few things lingered in a teenage boy’s mind, in the sixties, like the obsession with the opposite sex. Although I was not aware of it at the time, subliminal suggestions were everywhere. Magazine covers, clothing displays in departments stores and television advertisements saturated our daily thoughts constantly with permissive guidance and sexual overtones. However, nothing was more persuasive than the lyrics to our most popular music. Most of us had been introduced to The Beatles music through our transistor radios. All of a sudden their music was everywhere and their lyrics were all about what teenage boys and girls were thinking , sex. Or, at least, how to get close to one another in a private setting.

For me, looking was one thing, but touching was hard to accomplish. My buddies and I joked about how to be cool around girls, but no one really knew what to do. Then, here came The Beatles, with songs that gave us instructions as to how to do it. I Want to Hold Your Hand was a song that verbalized my inner most thoughts. “Oh yeah, I tell you somethin’, I think you’ll understand, When I say that somethin’, I want to hold your hand. ….. And when I touch you, I feel happy inside, it’s such a feeling that my love, I can’t hide.” It’s like they were reading my mail. They were saying what I was thinking and apparently the girls were thinking it too, because every time the song came on the radio, the girls went crazy.

Apparently my Mom & Dad were reading my mail too. It wasn’t long after next Beatle hit came out, Love Me Do, that my Father took me to the garage for a talk. The garage was the only place at our house with any sort of privacy, considering that I had three younger siblings, who were always hanging around when someone in the family was about to get a lecture. Besides, the garage was sort of manly, with our car and tools and sports equipment taking up most of the room. I don’t remember the exact words spoken by my Dad that night, but I remember something about hot blood and red blooded and trouble if you get too close to girls. I nodded my head when he asked me if I understood, but the truth was I just wanted to get the conversation over.

Later the next day, I told my buddy who was a year older than me, about the conversation in our garage. “Oh yeah, I got that conversation from my dad last year.” he said. When I inquired if the substance was the same, he said “I’m not sure, my ole man just told me to keep my Buick in my own garage”. Comfortable with notion that garages had something to do with being a man, I dropped the inquiry.

My journey toward getting to touch the opposite sex, continued at break neck speed, as I clumsily worked out scenarios in mind as to circumstances of opportunity. It didn’t dawn on me at the time, that it took two people to mutually achieve this goal. I guess I thought, if I wanted to hold someone’s hand, surely they would want to hold mine. As I would eventually find out, circumstances of the heart, as my Grandpa called them, rarely work out as imagined. Generally, they were presented by happenstance, with very little planning. One thing I did find out during my pursuit, asking permission, rather than expecting compliance, resulted in much better results.

I continued listening to the instructions from the Beatles until I became experienced at achieving my goals. Generally, when asked occasionally what my goal for the evening was from my date. My response was always the same, I want to hold your hand.

He will be 100 years old in a couple of months. His memory is good and his sense of humor is intact. He was a track star in high school and set school records in the 100 yard dash.   A Marine Corps Flag flies in the wind outside his window. He is confined to his living room armchair most days because it is too difficult to move about attached to his oxygen tank. The picture window by which he sits most days, is his window to the world. He is a small town guy, living on a small town street, in the middle of America, and even though he is slight in stature, he is anything but small. He is a true American Hero. 

As a Marine assigned to the Pacific during World War II he saw and experienced the worst that humanity had to offer in the 20th Century. However, it didn’t temper his sense of humor. He once described his job in the war, was to walk backward. Explaining that one of his responsibilities was to lay down communication line, from a big spool, connecting one position to another. Often times he was out in front and an easy target for snipers. When asked why he got to have all the fun, he explained through that ever present smile, that he could run faster than anyone in the company. His legs bear the scars of the volcanic cinder that cover the islands of Iwo Jima and Peleliu in the Pacific Ocean. His memory is anything but faded, like most combat veterans he can recall the smallest detail, often remembering odd things about the weather on a particular day.

Remembrance is what his life consists of now,  returning to his hometown, the job at the factory, raising the kids, the parades honoring him and his high school friends. Saturday nights at the VFW and church on Sunday Morning were part of the protocol and linger in his mind almost every day. He did what everyone his age did when he returned from the War. He got on with life.

There will be a celebration at the Fairgrounds in March to honor his 100th birthday. The kids and grandkids and neighbors will be there. So will the few WW II veterans in the area, that are still capable of travel. His wife will be there, sitting just off to his right, as she does most days now. She still smiles when she hears that story again for perhaps the 100th time. She knows what he went through. She knows that fitting back in to a small town wasn’t as easy as he made it look. She knows that the nightmares never completely went away. She has memories too.

For now, they are looking forward  to the Birthday party. When the family comes to get them for the celebration, he will see them coming, from his armchair in the living room, through the big picture window, beneath the Marine Corps flag flying in the breeze.

A Tribute to Larry Woods

It was 15 days before Christmas 1969 and I was about to land in Bien Hoa, Vietnam. My wife and daughter were going to wait out my tour,  living with my Folks. Like thousands of other young married couples, we did not have the resources to be independent after I was drafted in July. My first paycheck after one month in the US Army had been $79.00.   I was replaying the last memory of my family in my mind. I could see the fear and uncertainty through their tears as I climbed the steps to the plane. They had no idea what was to happen next and neither did I. Now here I was, in the hottest, dirtiest, busiest place I had ever imagined.

In-country processing was a blur of instructions, warnings and hot beer. I was unknown to anyone in a sea of uncaring humanity. I had become a number, a replacement, a fricking new guy. Assignments were handed out and with obedience of a teenager I accepted my orders and boarded the nearest helicopter for the ‘bush”. Upon arrival I became the newest piece of fresh meat in the jungle of Southeast Asia.

I had gone to church my whole life and sort of believed in God, at least in the concept of a higher being. Now I was beginning to witness things that my mind thought was necessary, but my soul would not accept. And so began the tug of war for my spiritual well-being, that was to last for many years to come. In the weeks and months to come I witnessed humanities inexplicable march toward disaster. Much like the passenger on the train that sees that up ahead, the bridge is out, but is incapable of disembarking in time. The only thing to do was to hang on.  In fact, hanging on, became the day-to-day goal for everyone I knew. To contemplate the chaos and attempt to maintain any type of control was not possible. Confusion was everywhere I turned. My hope was that after a few months, some sense of purpose would emerge, but it was not to be.  

It had been my habit to pray every night as I was drifting off to sleep. I had done this as my Mother had taught me, since I was old enough to speak. Now it seemed senseless. How could a benevolent God allow this insanity to happen. So for the first time in my life, I stopped talking to God. I was raised In the Evangelical United Brethren Church and we were big on tradition and prayer. We read  the Red Letter version of the King James Bible out loud in Sunday School class, we believed we had it figured out. It was about this time, after a few weeks in Vietnam that I started to get mad, really mad. I was mad at anything that I could not control, which was everything.

For some people, anger is a destructive force that stands in the way of their purpose.  For me, it was a reason to get my act in order. Slowly, I began to take charge and be responsible for my small corner of the world. In that world I found others who were doing the same thing. One guy read letters from home to a guy who never received any mail. Another would write poetry at night in a notebook. Yet another would brush his teeth three times a day. I began to realize that these small acts of responsibility were their attempts to rise above the insanity. As I looked closer,  I began to realize that almost everyone had adopted a habit that would bring them back to a little piece of humanity. I was still very angry but now I could see that using that emotion as a springboard to getting back some control of my life. 

I didn’t resume talking to God for several years and I am still angry about the situation in which I found myself. However, with the wisdom of age, I understand that God was right there in those seemingly insignificant acts of independence. With minor acts of daily tasks , while in the face of chaos, we began to take our lives back. We unknowingly were becoming the best humanity has to offer, in the worst of times. It was slow and not always successful , but those of us who were able to accomplish those small daily tasks began to realize that it was possible to have purpose in the light of destruction. 

I lived through Vietnam and came home to my family and was confused and angry for many years. My Dad never talked to me about my experiences. I don’t think he wanted to unleash the anger. My Mom did what all Mom’s do, she just loved me. Occasionally, when she didn’t think I was looking, I would catch her looking at me, with a tear in her eye. My wife endured the erratic behavior and the anger and the confusion that was a Vietnam Veteran’s legacy in the 1970’s. Eventually, I began to talk to God again and to my amazement found out he had not gone anywhere.
There is just one question I would like answered if I ever get God on the phone. Why?

My Mom was a volunteer. It was a way of life for her. I suppose it came from being raised during World War II. As early as I can remember, she was involved in some community activity. My earliest memory was her service in the Ground Observer Corps at Dress Memorial Airport  in Evansville , Indiana where we lived.

The program  was administered by the Army Air Force during the war and in 1952 recruited 800,000 volunteers across the country to man watch towers to scan the sky for enemy aircraft approaching. Radar was still in it’s infancy and had holes in its coverage. So my mom  would don her steel helmet, hang her binoculars around her neck, a couple of nights a week, and Dad would drive her to the airport to spend the night. This went on for a few years even though my little brother and I were quite young. It was kind of weird cool to explain to the neighbor kids what Mom’s helmet in the coat closet was used for. The program was disbanded in the late 50’s and by that time there were already three small children in the house. 

One would assume that would have slowed down her volunteering somewhat. This was not the case, she immediately became a Cub Scout Den Mother and very active in our church. It is appropriate to remember the daily obligations of a Mother and Housewife with three children in the late 50’s and early 60’s. For one thing most meals were made from scratch. Which generally meant that when one meal was over and the dishes were washed and dried (no dishwashers), it was often time to start the next meal. This was at a time when  most meals were at least three course affairs, plus bread and dessert. Clothes were always in need of repair with three small boys. Not to mention the washing of those clothes and then hanging them on a clothes line in the back yard to dry. This is just to mention some of the chores that were so time consuming.

Volunteering however, was in Mom’s blood. Over the years despite raising five children, she managed to be involved with or Chairwomen of, over 15 different volunteer civic organizations. She also held several volunteer positions in our church. For several summers she taught English to migrant workers children in the camps south of the city. In her obituary there 14 lines dedicated to just her volunteer activities alone, and we missed a few.

What happened to Volunteering? Did we become so self absorbed when Television took over our life that living became Me, not We? It seems that once our homes became air-conditioned and we stopped neighboring on our front porches,  community responsibility became obsolete. It didn’t happen all at once, it was a slow deterioration.

Multiple vehicles  gave us the opportunity to split the families directions and fast food restaurants helped us perpetuate that life style. When you leave early in the morning and do not arrive home until late in the evening its easy to be oblivious to the neighborhood in which you live. Over the years we have calloused our feeling of responsibility for our own neighborhoods. It seems to me that volunteering for civic responsibility is one way to reverse the course. It may not be the most glamorous duty but it’s probably the most needed. One thing is for sure, it would reconnect us with our neighbors. Generally, the reason most often given for not volunteering is,   “I don’t have time”. 

If that is the roadblock to your participation, I would invite you to read my Mom’s obituary and get back to me with that excuse.

 

My parents didn’t smoke, but both my Grandpas did. There is something magnetic about being told not to  do something. The story is as old as the Bible. When you are a teenage boy and your parents specifically tell you not to do something, often times the result is the opposite. My parents were very clear in their opposition to me smoking cigarettes. So naturally, I was drawn straight toward the inevitable, smoking cigarettes. It started as just being curious.

Actually. I can blame it on LB1 my little brother. He had noticed that the neighbor next to us at the lake cottage we were staying in for the summer, often went to bed leaving his cigarettes outside on the umbrella table on their patio. So one night we snuck over there and swiped a couple of cigarettes. We hid them in our sock drawer for safe keeping until morning. After breakfast we headed for the old garage on the back of the property, with our contraband in tow. We couldn’t wait to light up and see what the big deal was, that had captivated our Grandpa’s attention for  years . With the first puff, I was hooked. Part of it, was the excitement of doing something forbidden, part of it, was appropriating the feeling of being grown up, but the best part for me, was the way it made me feel. As I sat on the ground with my back to the garage wall I suddenly felt 5 years older. LB1, on the other hand, was not having the euphoric experience that I had encountered. Actually, it was quite the opposite, he was turning a weird shade of green. His appearance took on a look of confusion and disappointment all at once. I urged him to take a bigger drag thinking that he could also experience the artificial growth spurt that I was having. It was not to be, he had begun to cough and could not stop. Positioning the cigarette in the corner of my mouth, like I had seen my Grandpa do hundreds of times, I began to pound on his back, which only increased his coughing. If he didn’t stop soon, Mom was going to hear us and come to investigate. I was seriously considering throwing an old boat tarp over his head when his lungs got a burst of fresh air. With the coughing abated and his cigarette extinguished, he just laid flat out on the ground like he was exhausted.  With his composure regained, he stated to no one in particular, that he didn’t see what the big deal was in smoking cigarettes. I tried to regain the  pleasure from my experience but the ambiance was gone.  After talking later in the day about our adventure, it was clear that LB1 was not interested in repeating our foray into forbidden territory. I was not so sure. I was intrigued.

A couple of days later, I swiped a couple of more cigarettes and snuck off to the old garage to enjoy them. I repeated this process a couple of more times in the next week, until one day when after my Dad got home from work.  We were setting down to supper when our neighbor knocked on the front door and asked my Dad if he could step outside. After several minutes he returned to the table obviously upset. It seems the neighbor had noticed that his cigarette package was regularly coming up a few short and he decided to investigate. One night after turning off the light on his patio he stood in the dark and watched me sneak over from next door.    Why he didn’t bust me in the act is one of those mysteries of life. What he did however, was  much more effective punishment. I was grounded for a week sent to bed without supper and restricted to my room. After supper when Dad came to my room for the inevitable lecture, I learned something that I have never forgotten. You see, his anger was not that I had smoked cigarettes, he had assumed that was coming eventually. It was that I had stolen something that was not mine. He was so disappointed in me that I would steal someone else’s property that I thought he was going to cry. I correctly assumed, that this was not the time to debate the difference between swiping and stealing. After extracting from me a confession of heartfelt guilt, he left me alone in my room to consider my actions. LB1 stopped by to make sure I hadn’t rolled over on him, which I had not, and assured me that he had never seen Dad that mad.

Those things were not a priority in mind at that point. How was I going to get another cigarette? At twelve years old I was hooked. I bought into the advertising gimmicks that highlighted the glamour. As it turned out, buying them out of machines that sat in the front of grocery stores and gas stations was the simplest access. If I was ever questioned by an authority figure, I just told them I was buying them for my Dad. In those days, that was good enough.

As that summer was coming to a close I was already growing weary of the deceit that came with cigarette smoking at twelve years old. Where to get the money to buy them, hiding them from my parents, sneaking off to a place to smoke them were all habits of which I was tiring. The one thing that I didn’t tire of, and to this day can not get out of my system, is the excitement that comes from doing something that is forbidden to do. Squaring that excitement with doing the morally correct thing is a challenge that I have continually struggled with most of my life. Fortunately as I have gotten older the need for that excitement has abated and the need to have a cigarette is one habit that I never did seem to acquire.

 

Few folks, who have never lived in Indiana, will ever know how important a basket ball goal, is to a adolescent male. That solitary goal standing in the driveway, alley or backyard became either the escape from or entrance  to, social acceptance.  A simple game of Horse could turn in to a full fledged three on three , depending on the number of available young men passing by. Just as well, practicing one’s free throw shots could become hours of alone time.

In the area I grew up in Indiana, teenage boys, fell in to two groups. The ones that played on the school basketball team and the ones that did not. This is not to say that if you didn’t make the team one year, you would not aspire to make the cut for the upcoming season. Practice was always on the mind of either of these groups. So, shooting a basketball at a metal hoop attached to a stationary object was the main pastime of most boys in my neighborhood. It was a pastime that could be done alone or added to, as the day progressed.  By the time we reached our Freshman year in High School it was pretty apparent who would be on the team and who would not. This did not diminish the hours that most guys spent at their goal just for fun.

“Getting up a game” was accomplished by grabbing a basketball and mounting your bike for a ride up and down the nearby streets. It didn’t take long for a group a guys riding down the street carrying basketballs to attract a following. In those days most of my friends hung out on their front or back porch when at home. The simple process of riding by and yelling “getting up a game”  was generally enough to illicit immediate response to a few dedicated hoopsters. Occasionally, these inquiries attracted more than a few participants, in which case, we redirected our efforts to one of the schools nearby, that always had a court waiting patiently to be used.

Playing basketball in Indiana was a given, for athletically inclined boys.  Even for those who chose not to participate, the loosely organized outing ,  was a social gathering. Some guys just came to watch and talk.  The group playing never included girls, and as well,  the group watching, rarely ever did. There was something uniquely male about this activity. The issues of the day, like the latest 45 record or teachers at school, were some of the interests that we discussed as the game progressed.

Only now, as I reflect on those times, do I realize how important those social building blocks were in my upbringing.  Without being aware of it, we were learning things like team building, entrance into a hierarchy, pier approval, athletic stamina and social acceptance. It was not so important who won or lost, there was always another game tomorrow, it was how we all interacted at that moment to accomplish a collective goal.

Much has been written about the obsession with basketball in Indiana. I think it is not so much an obsession as it is an ingrained characteristic. Hoosiers are universally known as good and decent folks with a tolerance for other ways of life. I think some  of that can be traced back to our experiences on the basketball court. Something  like a round rubber orange ball and a metal hoop and a collective goal, could it be that simple?

Growing up in the early sixties I was exposed to the every day threat the Cold War brought to us via the nightly news. As I think about it, it seems that 1962 was a very scary year internationally. It was more that a little scary In Muncie, Indiana because that was the year my parents decided to build a bomb shelter in our house. In the context of the time, I guess it made sense but now it appears laughable.

You see, at school we were used to Air Raid Drills. On the first day of the new school year in 1962 all the kids in the class were giving a block of instructions as to what to do, in the event the Air Raid Siren was sounded. Intermittently, during the year , a loud siren whose speakers were located  in the hallway of the old brick school building, would be activated.  Just the sound of the siren blast, with no warning, was enough to make your bladder  forget all of it’s training.  At the inception of the warning we were to drop to our knees and crawl under our old wooden desks covering our heads with our arms; remaining there until the teacher called for an “All Clear”. At that point we were to returned to a seated position and resume our studies. All of this was protect us in the event a bomb was dropped on our school by the Russians.

Even at eleven years old, I had a few questions. Not the least of which was, why would the Russians want to bomb our school? Another was , how is the desk top going to protect me on the top floor of a three story building? When asking my parents for answers I was told , “do what the teachers tell you to do”. That was code in the sixties for, I don’t know the answer either.

Returning to any semblance of learning  experience was pretty much out of the question when we had all been crawling around on the floor. That and the fact that we all needed a trip to the bathroom. The teachers did what they could to maintain some sort of decorum but mostly we were just told to read quietly until the bell rang for class dismissal.

Enter into this insanity the recommendation, from some office of the Federal Government, that it was a good idea to build a bomb shelter in our backyard in case the bombers were to fly over at night. Construction of a properly built “Bomb Shelter” ten feet below ground with a ventilator shaft and concrete cover was cost prohibitive for most of the folks on my block. However, most homes had converted from coal to gas heat in the last few years. What we did have were unused coal bins in the basement. They were concrete reinforced and about the right size to house a family of five in the event of a nuclear war. So down to the basement we descended. Cleaning the coal dust out was no small feat. Once cleanliness was pseudo accomplished, survival preparations were next in order.

My Dad built 2 sets of bunk beds on opposing walls and Mom set about equipping the shelves with the summer’s vegetables and fruits that she and Grandma had canned. No survival stone was left unturned. We warehoused water, matches, flashlights, toilet paper (although we had no toilet) and a whole lot of reading material. It seems that if the television station would be bombed we were to wait out the catastrophe catching up on back issues of Field & Stream and Look magazines.

Next came the family practice drills. They were usually on Sunday evening, right after Supper and before the Ed Sullivan show on TV.  My father would announce in a very concerned voice that this was an air raid drill. We all gathered up our favorite toys and scampered down the stairs to the coal bin to wait out the drill by the light of a kerosene lamp. Once sufficient time (usually about 15 minutes) for the bombers to fly over, we would gather up our things and head back upstairs to return to normal life in the sixties. This practice was not the exception in our neighborhood, it was very much the normal way of doing things. Eventually, the Cold War threat cooled off and we stopped gathering in the coal bin on Sunday nights.  My brother LB1 and I had begun to use the shelter as a secret club house , where no girls were allowed. And few years later when we moved to a new house we found several jars of canned goods waiting patiently on the shelves in the now little used room in the basement.

As I look back into my memory, I can still see my Mother’s smiling face sitting on a bunk bed, in a coal bin, on a Sunday night while trying to organize a board game to pass the time. I feel like these times made us closer as a family because we were forced to rely on each other for entertainment. I do wonder, occasionally, what idiot from the federal government persuaded Americans to huddle underground and in basements all over the US for years in the interest of personal safety. Probably the same guy that convinced us,  if we send a few advisors to Vietnam it would all be over in a matter of a few months.

When I was growing up in the sixties, going swimming was an integral part of my summer enjoyment. My town had a municipal swimming pool and it’s season began on Memorial Day and closed on Labor day. In the summer of my sixth grade year my mom determined that I was old enough to ride my bike to  the pool without parental guidance. This was an amazingly liberating feeling for a 12 year old boy. Looking back on the feeling I’m not sure why it was any different from delivering newspapers at 5:30 in the morning alone, which I had been doing since I was eleven. Oh, now I remember, there were girls at the pool.

There was a lot of preparation to look casual when getting ready to go swimming. First, your hair had to look good. Next the fashion of the day for young men was to wear a button up top  that matched one’s swimming trunks. If the top had a design on it that matched your trunks, it was the epitome of style. Following that, arrival time and with whom you arrived was quite important. Showing up with more than one buddy made you look like the neighborhood gang was descending on the scene. Riding up alone signaled that you were not popular and left you destined to swim alone. Also, when you got there was factored in to your achievement of coolness. No guy ever wanted to be the first to arrive. That’s when the girls were staking out where they were going to put their towels for sunbathing. Those towels were also strategically placed to watch the arrival of the guys. The girls rarely ever moved except to turn over or to apply more sun tan lotion. Swimming was out of the question. Swimming caps were required for females at the city pool and most girls my age would not be caught dead with one on.

So, once the girls had achieved their desired location, the boys began to trickle in. Bikes were parked in the racks, locks for the wheels were not yet a necessity, and a causal stroll up to the concession stand began the proceedings. Once outfitted with the obligatory soda and straw, the guys headed to the far end of the pool, ignoring the girls all together. Well, not all together, a sideways glance to see who had dared to wear a two piece suit was definitely in order.  Now, as the guys started arriving in pairs and dropping their towels indiscriminately, the mating dance began. Guys had come to swim and look and girls had come to be seen. In to the pool, the guys jumped, to discuss what girl had on the skimpiest bathing suit. Inevitably this conversation led to a dare that including leaving the pool and talking to the aforementioned young lady.

To achieve the culmination of this dare, a guy exited the pool, retrieved his drink and towel then casually sauntered up to his intended target. Upon arrival, he asked for permission to put his towel down and for a few seconds became the object of attention for everyone at the pool. If the young lady gave her permission then a transistor radio was placed on the ground between the towels and a conversation began. However, if the invitation were declined the boy had to retrace his steps, drop off his soda and towel and re-enter the pool. Asking another girl was forbidden because the second invitation was viewed by the recipient as if she were the booby prize and she was not interested in that designation. Once back in the pool the boy who had just his private life play out in public, was accepted back into the pack as if he had just had an unsuccessful ride on a bucking bronco. Success was not in the ride it was in the courage to make the attempt. Generally, one attempt per pool visit was the most a guy could muster up enough courage for that one day.

 As this adolescent practice played out during the day, the guys began to realize something that became much more apparent , the older they became. They had very little control over the agenda when it came to dealing with opposite sex. Some guys were quicker to realize this fact and most often were the ones that had longer and more successful relationships with their girlfriends.

Soon the sun began to signal late afternoon and most young people were required to be home, for supper, at a designated time. Towels were retrieved , one last walk by the girls was accomplished and bicycles were mounted for the ride home. Many serious discussions, about how we were going to approach the girls tomorrow, echoed down the streets and alleys as we made our way to our houses. The sunburn that we earned had already began to hurt , but our minds were working on our next twelve year old approach to the perils of manhood. Little did we know it then, but the art of social interaction was getting a good start at the local swimming pool, while we were growing up in the sixties.