My Family (1940's-1960's)

These are some family experiences I had growing up in Burlington, Vermont, and Lafayette, Indiana. Many of the Burlington memories come from stories my older brother Warren shared with me over the years.  

In the late 1940s and early 1950s in Burlington, my dad didn’t think he made enough money at the University of Vermont to buy coal to burn in our home furnace, except during the coldest months. The rest of the time he burned wood, which was like throwing newspaper in the furnace- it burned quickly. My grandfather Smith came to stay with us in winter months and I think he spent a large amount of that time throwing wood in the furnace.

It would be early on a fall Saturday morning when we would hear my dad yell up the stairs "Boys get up we need to go get slabs”. My older brothers Steve, around 9 years old, Warren, 8, and I, 5, would shutter awake and drag ourselves out of bed to join my dad to go get slabs. A slab is the outer curved portion of a log removed at a sawmill.  It was inexpensive firewood, and my dad bought truckloads of it because coal cost much more. 

 Slabs

The first stop was the University of Vermont experimental arm near Burlington to borrow a University-staked bed truck. We would all squeeze in the front seat and off we would go to the nearest sawmill. One of the sawmills had the slabs already cut and sitting in a hopper. You could drive under it, pull a chain that would open up the bottom, and drop the cut slabs filling the truck. It cost a dollar more to get the slabs this way and Dad figured he got more slab lengths by packing them into the truck by hand from the big uncut pile. When we got the truck loaded, it was a return trip back to the experimental farm where they had a makeshift circular saw with a cradle powered by a leather belt off a tractor power takeoff.

Firewood Saw 1940’s

All the slabs had to be unloaded and piled by the saw and one of us had to hand them to Dad. On the other end was another son to pick up the cut-offs and throw them up into the truck to be stacked again by the third son. We were off to home where we threw them down a coal chute window into the coal bin. Grandpa Smith was down there piling them up. By this time our hands were full of splinters and covered with fresh sticky pitch. We would keep watching the clock as it would be getting close to the downtown movie start time. Dad would finally give us our 25 cents each, then a quick wash up and a sandwich, and a race to the theater so we could also catch the cartoon before the movie.

Steve and Warren seemed to argue and fight a lot while we grew up. One time my dad had enough of the quarreling and went to a second-hand store and bought two sets of boxing gloves. He moved the furniture to the sides of the living room and let my older brothers box each other. Steve was taller with a longer reach so got in the early jabs. Warren was shorter but more athletic and got to Steve with some early body punches up close when all of a sudden my Mom came home, saw the spectacle, and started screaming. That was the end of my dad’s boxing parenting experiment.

We moved to Lafayette in 1953 and Steve and Warren were both in the 7th grade and still had not made peace. One day when Steve was in the bathroom for, in Warren’s view, too long, Warren went in and they started fighting. I was in the hallway and heard the fight. They mostly wrestled in a very confined space, cracking some tiles and furniture, until finally they stopped. My brother Warren told me they said to each other that the fighting wasn’t resolving anything and that was the last fight they ever had. They got along after that.

During this growing-up period, my brothers Steve, Warren, and Greg and my sister Laurie, and I looked forward to family slideshows. In the 1940s into the 1970s, my Dad took thousands of photos, most of which were slides for work. He always saved the last 4 or 5 photos on a film roll for family photos capturing our life as a family- holidays, activities around the home, the Camp, trips visiting family. It was our life in Burlington and Lafayette.

It is hard for us now to imagine the significance of the family slide show. It became a way to gather the family together. Since my childhood, we’ve evolved through TVs, VHS/DVD/Blu-ray players, and now streaming to watch whatever we want on TV with whoever is around. So the novelty of “gathering around” is gone. And with a smartphone in hand, most people look at photos quietly, in isolation- sometimes sharing them with friends and family via text messages or social media.

But the 1950s/60s slide show was more than just a way for a family to gather to look at photos. There was something magical about it. It started with everyone viewing one image at a time- together. When you are by yourself and look at a photo, it triggers memories, you think of things, but you stay quiet. On the other hand, when you are watching a slideshow with others, you still think about those memories, but it is out loud. Reactions are together, triggering other comments and stories - making the moment much richer and often more satisfying. That is something that cannot happen with a set of prints or even showing photos to more than one person using your smartphone.

Every couple of months my dad on a Saturday night would say, “I have a new box of slides. After dinner, let’s set everything up.” The anticipation, the excitement!  I loved the things we did to get the slide show gear set up and ready to go like unfolding the tripod-legged screen, getting chairs ready, closing drapes, and telling everyone to come in.

When it was set up and the family was assembled (as they all wanted to be a part of it), the room lights went off, and the projector came on.

My dad operated the projector and was in control of how the show would go. He knew the order of the slides and what photo was next and often would provide a brief preamble about what we were all about to see. And then when the photo appeared we would react with laughter or sometimes sighs, shock, or even awe. Here is a favorite-

         One-legged Mom, 1944

The point is that everyone was focused on that one image and the conversation that followed dove deeper into what it was that the photo had captured. This conversation often cascaded into other connecting memories and stories. Everyone was participating and loving it. What made it so neat was there was no sound in the photos. Instead, we were providing the sound- the commentary. During this time I never heard Dad say I love you. Looking back I don’t feel his lack of emotional words meant no love. His way of showing his love for us was through his acts like the slideshows that showed his care for us. The memories are now almost visceral.

Growing up there were some family days of hard, dirty work, some intense arguments, and some immersive bonding. We worked together, played together, argued, laughed, and shared experiences that became family stories told over and over again.  All in all, it was a childhood with memories I treasure and ones that have helped sustain our family cohesion and they remain part of the glue that still connects our family today. 

Moving (1945-2016)

                                                                

As I reflect on events that changed my life, there is a recurring event that I keep coming back to- moving.  I have moved about 40 times in my life and I focus here on moves that had a big impact on how I see and experience the world.  Overall, moving meant parting with stuff that was not essential, leaving friends and familiar surroundings and routines.  Over time, I developed a minimalist attitude toward stuff and generally avoided deep emotional attachments. But I was always pursuing answers to the questions- what to do, where to live, and who to live with- on a deeper level.

These general attitudes and feelings caused by moving probably began subconsciously after I was born in 1945.   My dad was moving the family each year from Burlington, Vermont to Lake Champlain for the summer months to save money by subletting our rented school year house for the summer to University of Vermont students.  Moving just became a normal part of my life.  Each move taught me how to start over. What I did not realize until much later was that constantly starting over made it easier to leave people behind emotionally.

 In 1953 my dad moved the family to Madison, Wisconsin to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin.  He sublet a house from Dr. William Hesseltine, a noted civil war history professor at the University and mentor to many famous historians like Stephen Ambrose.  I remember spending time in his study looking through scholarly books about the Civil War and thinking about American history and history in general.  This move I remember well because it exposed me to a fascination with American history and was what motivated me to my college major and lifelong interest in history. 

A move a year later in 1954 turned my general interest in sports to a passion to play in sports.  My dad moved the family to Lafayette, Indiana where I entered the fourth grade.  I was behind my class, not knowing how to write, and had to teach myself and overcome the feeling of being an outsider and not measuring up.  I learned to blend in quickly by playing baseball, basketball, and football.  Sports provided instant friends through a team and acceptance by my peers as most kids my age and a lot of their parents and school officials admired athletes.  Through sports, I gained confidence in handling uncertainty and new situations, and, thanks to the move, adapting.

A move back to Madison in 1960 jump-started my focus on academic performance and college.  My dad moved us to Madison in 1960 to finish his Ph.D.  I enrolled as a sophomore at Madison West High School.  Most of the kids there were from families connected to the university and I soon learned they were very academically motivated.  I had spent my 9th-grade year in Lafayette focused mostly on sports and was maybe a C+ student at best.  During my first month at Madison West, I remember noticing all my classmates studying hard and being prepared for each class.  I realized I was behind academically and not working hard enough and I changed my focus and attitude toward academic work. I became more organized and efficient academically, adopting my peers’ attitudes, while still playing sports.  The move and resulting attitude change toward academic performance stuck with me when I returned to Lafayette the next year and changed my perspective and motivated me to pursue higher academic achievement.

My move from home to college in Bloomington, Indiana at 17 forced me to adapt alone without my family and I felt like I was in flow.  I knew how to make friends quickly and intentionally connect with others.  I stayed away from my dorm room most of the time studying, playing for the IU freshman baseball team, pledging a fraternity, and throwing myself into student activities.  The move to college opened my mind and nudged me to the world.

The move with the broadest impact on my life was in 1967 when I moved from college to the Army at Ft. Lee, Virginia. My mindset changed to embrace the adventure.  I had a desire to travel, to see the Orient, and idealistically, to be part of the defining experience of my generation- the Vietnam War.  My move to Vietnam turned my idealism into reality.  Besides the fear and chaos of the war, I felt personally, I altered how I saw the world and more importantly humanity.  Coming out of college I was an idealist, dealing with thoughts, not emotions and experiences.  In Vietnam, while not in combat, I still saw, and in a few cases knew, civilians and soldiers wounded and killed.  I was assigned as officer in charge of military field depot operations of 8 warehouses.  I liked the feel and experience of what I did with the warehouses and this motivated me to study for an MBA when I left the Army.  

But the move to Asia was more than a spark to career interest.  Seeing and experiencing Asia and the Vietnam War firsthand was a shock immediately.   I had no exposure to Asian culture- food, clothing, religious practices, dining habits, and language.  My cultural exposure in America was limited predominantly to white Anglo-Saxon people. The culture shock helped me grow as a person and to develop empathy, understanding, and respect for Asian people and their culture.  Our Asian enemy was winning the war against the greatest military power in the world, using guerilla tactics that took away our technological superiority.  From that point on I felt a lot of my focus and interest move to Asia. 

My next move, from Vietnam to Ft. Lewis, Washington in late 1968, was key in motivating me to go to law school.  As a newly arrived lieutenant, I was assigned extra duty as special court-martial defense counsel. The experience of defending the legal rights of soldiers sparked my interest in a legal career.  If not for the move to Ft. Lewis and the legal experience, I may have become a history professor.

My moves after law school were to St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Atlanta for a 30-year career in big corporate America where I learned not to fall in love with your company and always look for your next job.  The career moves helped me focus and rely on my capabilities, not those of the organization.

Following a divorce in Atlanta, I began moving in 2010 to find a home- from St. Louis to Tucson to Los Angeles until finally getting married and settling in Cypress, California.

What did all those moves teach me?  They taught me adaptability, self-reliance, and how to connect quickly with new people and sourrandings. They also taught me something less obvious. Constantly moving made it easier to avoid deep emotional attachments because I knew that sooner or later I would likely move again.

I am grateful for the freedom to move and the opportunities those moves created. They broadened my horizons, shaped my education and career. and exposed me to people and cultures I otherwise never would have known. I eventually realized that what I wanted most was not another move, another job, another adventure. I wanted a home, enduring friendships, and deeper relationships.

When I arrived in Cypress, California, I made a conscious decision that this move would be different. I wanted to stay, put down roots, and invest deeply in the people around me. The greatest lesson from a lifetime of moving may be that life's deepest meaning comes not from constantly beginning again, but from staying long enough to build lasting connections.