Cruciverbalism

{Prompt: How did you get into crosswords?}

I was first introduced to 20th-century American crossword puzzles by my grandmother, Mary Cook Atkinson Whitesell. I was very young. I was wandering around the old farmhouse where my grandmother lived. She was doing a crossword. I was curious.

But wait. You really must understand more about the farmhouse — the place where I almost always saw my grandparents. That’s how important it was.

The Farmhouse

We often went to the “mountains” in the summer. We were really going to the little town of Stanley, in the Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia, and then a little bit further, to an even smaller place, called Ida, where there was an ancient farmhouse where my grandparents stayed. It was out past the bend in Highway 340 at D-R’s Quick Stop, past the little rise in the road at Graves’ Chapel, and past the turnoff to Hawksbill Park, where the pool was fed by a fresh mountain stream and the park-swings could swing at least 10 feet high.

My grandparents, back then, were also traveling back and forth. They went from Columbia, South Carolina, where they lived during the school year, to the “mountains”, where they went to escape the heat in the summers.

Eventually my grandfather retired from his job as a chemistry professor at the University of South Carolina, and he (Willard) and his wife (Mary) moved into his parents’ house in Ida, in the rural valley beneath Hawksbill Mountain. The farm house was a part of the tapestry of the countryside. You could see its red walls and green roof as you approached on the little country road, or you could see the whole panoramic vista from the overlooks on Skyline Drive, after a visit to Skyland Lodge or Big Meadows.

Spitler Knoll Overlook on Skyline Drive, near Stanley, VA.

They lived in a two-story, barn-red-brick house, with a tin roof that was painted hunter green. There were two big trees in the front yard (sometimes covered with cicadas), and in the back there was a long sloping hill leading down to a creek. It was fenced off for cattle, although they had long since been moved off to greener pastures. Halfway down the hill, the field contained a big, red barn with deep, squishy mud on the floor, and a scattering of dusty hay in the attic.

Above the field there was a little stone spring-house with a cast iron water pump, also covered with thick layers of hunter-green paint, with a swiveling handle that could be used, with strenuous effort, to suck up water into a trough that ran down to the cow pasture. With up-and-down movement of the mechanical arms, it produced deep hydraulic moans, and then gurgling sounds, before water eventually came gushing out of the spigot.

Spring House (water pump no longer in place)

The farmhouse was built around 1830, and had no bathrooms in the original building. As a matter of fact, if we spent the night in the bedrooms, we had to choose whether to use a bedside urinal, called a “chamber pot,” or make a long solitary journey to the outhouse.

The journey to the outhouse would entail going down the wide central staircase (usually by sliding down the banister); turning left and going through the room with the fireplace and the chairs, where the old folks had their conversations; then through the long room with the very long dining room table, where we had family dinners; then through the kitchen with the antique cast iron oven, and the wash basin, and the water ladle; then through the pantry with all the mason jars of pickled and jellied concoctions; out the door and down the rickety steps of the side entrance; and down the path that ran through the grape arbor, which had the sweet smell of crushed grapes on the flagstones. Finally you would arrive at the rustic wooden outhouse where fetid smells arose from the hole in the wooden toilet seat. Its door was secured by a swiveling wooden latch.

There may have been another bathroom in the farm house, when modern plumbing was installed, but I only remember the journey to the outhouse.

The Outhouse at “The Farm”*

The original house was a wonderful place to explore, and we did explore it, from the basement to the attic. We found the remnants of the slave quarters in the basement, though we didn’t know what they were, at the time. And we found all kinds of childhood goodies in the attic: vintage Batman figures, Wizard of Oz books with weak spines and profuse illustrations, and sliding wooden-lettered spelling toys. We sometimes rang the big farm bell on the back porch, and sometimes we ventured into the wood shed, where Granddaddy built his wooden frames, and stools, and miniature windmills.

The Reading Room

On one particular day, I found myself wandering through the house on my own. It must have been in the afternoon, when most of us were napping or trying to find a place to escape the heat of the summer sun. I found my grandmother idling, her feet curled up on a sofa, in a den filled with books and knickknacks.

It was a shady little parlor that had been built off to the side of the room with the dinner table — a place for a little privacy. She was doing something with a newspaper and a pencil, and it seemed to have her deep in thought. So naturally, I interrupted her, and asked her what she was doing.

Very kindly she put down her paper and pencil, and she showed me how someone had cleverly constructed a puzzle. It had two sets of clues (and two sets of answers), half of them running “across” horizontally, and half of them running “down” vertically. Every space in the puzzle was to be filled with a letter; and every space in the puzzle had two words passing through it, with two corresponding clues. It was a crossword puzzle.

And then she told me how the words in the puzzle were not ordinary words. Many of the words had an equal number of vowels and consonants. As a matter of fact, many of the words started with vowels — quite a lot more than you would ordinarily find in something like a storybook.

In addition, many of the words were relatively obscure: the name of a river that ran through a European valley, the name of a character from a Shakespearean play or a Wagnerian opera, or a portion of a Latin phrase from the legal profession.

There was no chance of my solving the puzzle that she was working; or even solving a single clue. After all, I was only five or six. She was seventy or seventy-one. She read newspapers. She knew how to solve crossword puzzles. Nevertheless, I became interested in her pastime. She seemed to enjoy solving crossword puzzles, and she was glad to pass along some secrets to its construction and its unique collection of words and clues.

That was when I first became interested in crosswords.

Grandma in a mock-serious pose

Duke Hospital South

Years later, I found myself in another dimly lit room on a regular basis. It was Page Auditorium, the medical school auditorium, deep within the wood-paneled halls of the historic Davison Building — Duke University’s South Hospital. In the first year of medical school, before clinical rotations began, we spent hours and hours in the lecture hall auditorium, in mildly uncomfortable cushioned seats, each with an oddly shaped writing surface, that could be pulled up from the armrest on one side and locked into place.

A typical auditorium desk chair.

A spiral bound notebook, or a binder with sheets of paper, could be placed on the makeshift desk, and used for recording the details of each and every lecture — each talk describing some vital but incredibly detailed and boring concept in biochemistry, physiology, microbiology, pharmacology, immunology, histology, or pathology.

Lecture notes were incredibly important, because the tests were based on the oral lecture material, not necessarily on text in the textbook. And so, medical students banded together to create lecture notes — detailed notes on the lecture material. In a sort of co-op, fifteen or twenty students would share the work, each one taking notes on a particular day. Before the exam, the notes would be organized into a packet, and copies would be distributed to each member of the study group. This way, each student could focus on a particular lecture, taking notes that would be more complete and more legible than normal.

The notes produced by this communal arrangement were invariably better than any notes an individual would normally take. They were certainly better than any of my abbreviated, hand-scrawled scribblings. The best notes of a given lecture even summarized the didactic material, and highlighted the most important concepts for the group.

The reason I’m describing this note-taking system in such painstaking detail is to point out that (even though the material was complex and necessary) our full attention was only required once every week or two, on our assigned note-taking day. On all the other days, our minds were free to focus on the speaker or wander off into space, all according to our level of interest or disinterest. We could use the time as we pleased, just so long as we studiously reviewed the compiled notes and understood the material before the test was given.

Many days I found myself browsing a copy of the Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper. And each copy of the Chronicle contained a crossword puzzle. It wasn’t long before I found myself working the daily puzzle during class.

I would go into the lecture hall. I would sit two or three rows from the back. I would listen to the lecturer for 5 to 10 minutes, and I would size up their oratorical skills. If they could be heard and understood, and the topic was halfway interesting, I might wait another 5 to 10 minutes before working the crossword. If their microphone was ill-placed, or their speech was unintelligible, or if they were meandering and incoherent, I would go to the crossword clues without delay.

Solving a puzzle in ink.

Cruciverbalism

Over time, crosswords became a pleasant pastime — something to do while waiting in line, or while traveling, not just an escape from a world of exhaustive learning.

I became more adept at crossword solving. I stopped putting uncertain answers in the “fill.”. And I knew more of the crossword vernacular, so I routinely did the crosswords in ink. I would rarely look up an answer, mostly because, at that time, looking it up would have required an encyclopedia. It was simpler to ask others for help, but I needed help less and less. Sometimes, I would put the puzzle away for a while, and try to figure out the unfilled portions later. You’d be surprised how often that works.

For a while, I felt like it was “cheating” to look up an answer (and it became easy to look up answers in the age of the internet). But you won’t ever learn anything new, if you never look up the unknown answers. Over time, I’ve become less strict in that regard. The reality is that Friday and Saturday puzzles are so hard… the clues so obscure… that it only makes sense to look up the answers that are not part of my cultural zeitgeist.

Over time, the nature of the crosswords themselves also evolved. The current NY Times crossword puzzle editor has allowed more-than-one word answers to populate puzzles. That in turn has allowed for more recognizable answers to replace the really obscure foreign words and names of the past.

There are also other answers allowed now, that would have been unacceptable in the past: messaging abbreviations, slang, and informal (mis-spelled) words, for example. Even “rebuses” are allowed, meaning that a full word could be allocated to a single square. Puns and wordplay have become common.

In some ways, the earlier era, when I was discreetly solving crosswords during medical school, was more difficult than the solving required today. Clues and answers were more difficult, and I had a smaller cache of accumulated crossword knowledge and solving experience.

But neither era compares to the solving skills that my grandmother had to master. All the answers were real words (or names) and if the word fill required the answer to be a Russian mountain range, such as the “Urals”… or the opera character, “Aida”… or the phrase, “Caveat Emptor”… you just had to know it. I don’t know how she did it.

Rivers of particular significance to crossword solvers.

*Addendum: The Locust Grove Farmhouse

Today the property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as NRHP reference # 15000879. They say, “Locust Grove, constructed ca. 1830, is located in eastern Page County, approximately 7 miles southeast of Luray on 2.69 acres of land and situated on a slight knoll off Route 629 (Ida Road). The parcel includes a two-story, five-bay brick Federal style dwelling with a one-story service wing off the south elevation….”

It was formerly known as the Old Jacob Brubaker House.

We just called it “The Farm”.

Locust Grove house - Page County

Willard and Mary Whitesell - circa 1986.

James 1:17 (Every Good and Perfect Gift)

{Prompt: How would you describe your grandfather}

Retired Professor and Grandpa

By the time I was born, my grandfather was about to retire, or he had recently retired, from his job as a chemistry professor. I was born in 1964, at the beginning of the space age. He was born in 1897, at the beginning of the machine age. He was over 65 by the time I had any concept of the world around me — by the time I discovered that he was my grandpa.

Now that I am in my sixties, and recently retired myself (5 years ago at the time of this writing), I think I understand him a little better than I did during his lifetime.

I think he enjoyed his solitude and he enjoyed the quiet country life, but he needed to be productive and he enjoyed a challenge. After retirement, he moved back to his family’s farmhouse, and out of the city. He created a garden and a woodworking shop on the family farm to occupy his time.

For me the woodworking shop was a mysterious place. I only saw the dimly lit interior from the rustic, aging wooden porch, and even the interior was obscured by sawdust floating up into the rays of the summer sun, moving around in a gentle swirl, like the floating misdirection of a magician’s handkerchief. I was too young and timid to venture inside, and had probably been cautioned not to. I was too young, at that time, to be a carpenter’s apprentice.

He worked methodically on wooden frames, wooden stools, and miniature windmill-style wooden weather vanes. His woodworking shop became a replacement for his chemistry lab. Instead of chemistry beakers, condensers, burners, and flasks; he had woodworking saws, planes, lathes, sanders, and shellac.

In the garden, he worked just as steadfastly, to grow all the vegetables that he brought to the table. I imagine he spent a lot of time learning how to amend the soil, control the weeds and pests, and produce fruitful crops. Once he retired to Virginia, he had a lot more time and space for the wonderful vegetable garden than he had before while working as a chemistry professor in Columbia.

I imagine that those two hobbies (woodworking and gardening) were his new occupation, filling his time and stimulating his mind. And they yielded tangible rewards — wooden furniture that could be admired and gifted to family, and an abundance of foods that could become a source of sustenance and communion at dinner time.

Willard and Mary at their 50th anniversary in 1976.

My memories of my grandpa (as I called him), were of a no-nonsense, professorial man with small silver, wire-rimmed glasses and a bowtie. He wore short-sleeved, button-down shirts, and he had strong sun-tanned arms with visible veins.

I never knew him to joke around or play around with children, but from time to time he would enlist the grandchildren in helping with food preparation or helping in the garden; or I should say, I think he did, because I was among the youngest of the grandchildren, and was never very helpful.

On at least one occasion, he brought out a sizeable watermelon, and… whap, whap, whap… he sliced it up, lickety-split. There were fresh watermelon slices sitting outside the side door, between the canning room and the garden. I think he sat back and watched the bedlam that ensued, as we all tried to eat it down to the rind, getting pink watermelon juice all over our baby cheeks.

He must have been amused as we tried to nibble around and dribble out the black watermelon seeds without ingesting them. And someone had the idea of a seed-spitting contest. He probably set that affair in motion with an idle remark. “I wonder how far you could spit a watermelon seed…” I think that’s about when I first heard the expression, “within spittin’ distance,” meaning not very far.

On one occasion, when I was older, he found me mesmerized by the flames of the wood in the fireplace, and he tried to draw me into a discussion about the chemistry of burning wood. Different elements in the wood create different colors of flame in the fireplace. I, unfortunately, had nothing to say. I was just enjoying the ephemeral movement of the flames, as they licked around the crisp, splintery split-pieces of firewood. Neither of us was very talkative. So the conversation died.

Thanksgiving Dinner and Church at the Farm House

But clearly he cared about the family. He made Thanksgiving dinners possible, placing an unbelievably long row of tables in the middle of the farmhouse addition, with stained, black walnut wooden stools pulled up at the corners for the littlest children.

Possibly my first conscious memory is of sitting in a baby seat at the corner of that Thanksgiving table, surrounded by family. As I got older, I learned to take a little food and pass it along. I’m pretty sure that grandpa was the one who encouraged the good table manners. I learned to politely ask for someone to “please pass the butter beans.” (You could never get enough of them.)

I loved the butter beans and the corn pudding, but I didn’t like the okra, even though I was encouraged to give it a try. And I did give it a try, but I had the sort of unpleasant, visceral reaction to okra that I’d never had before. Something about the slimy texture and the fuzzy surface was repulsive. Although I’ve heard that fried okra can be really delicious, I don’t think I will ever get past the smell and memory of the well prepared, but truly revolting, baked okra that I had in my childhood.

Unfortunately, my experience with okra at the farmhouse, made me fearful of the rhubarb pie, which I refused to even try. I had never, ever, heard of okra, much less rhubarb; so after my difficulty with okra, I was understandably cautious about rhubarb. I thought, “You won’t fool me again.” “Even if you put it into a pie, to feed it to me, I won’t be deceived.” There was no way I was going to eat a pie with cut-up stalks of a vegetable, even if it came with strawberries and whipped cream. It was a shame.

Dinner at the home of Cora and Rev. Wm. Whitesell (center).*

Grandpa (and Grandma) were very religious, and in the setting of a Methodist service, I felt more at home. I knew the Lord’s Prayer, and the Doxology. I even knew most of the Nicene Creed. I enjoyed attending the little church in Stanley — a change of pace from our big city church in Raleigh. It was a charming chapel, with dark wooden pews and lofty beams, sunlit stained glass windows, and a piano in front of the altar — all packed within a space the size of a classroom. It had a small vestibule at the entrance, below the bell tower, where there were people to greet you when you arrived, and the pastor would always wait to meet you as you departed.

Inside Stanley United Methodist Church.

I was somewhat versed in the parts of the Bible, and a number of passages, but I knew nothing compared to my cousins, the Minyards. Their father had insisted that they read the entire Bible. I don’t know if they read it from beginning to end, but I was more than content to get my biblical lessons abridged for me — from children’s Sunday school, from radio evangelists, from The Upper Room, from study aids, or, best of all, from allegorical series like The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis.

Whenever we went to church with Grandma and Grandpa, I would observe him preparing for Sunday School, like he must have prepared for chemistry class lectures in his past. He studied the Bible verses and referred to the cross-references in the Bible concordance. He put notes in the margins of his Bible, and created his own annotations. He led the senior Sunday school class, standing in front of the pews in one section of the tiny church to give the reading, solicit opinions, and steer the course of discussion.

It was clear, from his actions, that grandpa had had a whole other life before he retired, before his children, and his grandchildren. He was comfortable leading a group in study, even if only on Sundays. He owned a farm, but had no cattle. He had a garden in the front yard, but he tended it in the fashion of an organized researcher. He had a woodshop, but he didn’t make crafts for sale. He gave them away to his family.

Willard Whitesell - Circa 1923.

Grandpa’s Other Life

Today, through genealogical research, I know that my grandfather (Willard) lived in three or four different towns before he graduated high school. He was the son of a Methodist minister, whose job took him to different places in the Virginia mountains. Willard was the preacher’s kid, never staying very long in one place before moving to the next parish.

Willard was born at the end of the 19th century, and he was two and a half years old when the 20th century arrived. His family lost two children at a time when child mortality was high. Children frequently died from pneumonia, diphtheria, or other infections. (These were the days before the advent of vaccination or the discovery of antibiotics.)

Willard was two when his sister, Lucille, was born. She survived. He was four when his second sister was born, but she died less than 6 months later. Willard was five when a brother was born, but this brother died before he reached two years of age. Another brother, Edwin, was born when Willard was twelve, and Edwin lived a long, healthy life. But by age twelve, Willard had already lost two siblings, and must have been at least a little wounded by the misfortunes that he and his family had faced.

At age eighteen, Willard went off to college, first to Bridgewater College in Rockingham, VA, close to home, and then to Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, in central Virginia. (It was an all-boys school.) In October 1918, shortly before the end of World War I, he served in the US Army at Fort Washington, on the Potomac, near Alexandria, Virginia. Fortunately, he wasn’t required to serve active duty in the war, and he was able to leave the Army and re-enroll in college in 1919.

He went to Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, just a little bit further from his family in the Shenandoah mountains. He earned a Ph.D. in chemistry in the next four years. By the time he graduated in 1923, chemistry was a burgeoning but still developing field. This was before the development of modern methods of refining petroleum or the creation of plastic polymers. The nature of the atomic nucleus was only starting to be defined, and it was years before the structure of DNA would be worked out by Watson and Crick (and Rosalind Franklin).

Willard went even further from home, to work for the University of South Carolina (USC) in 1923. He became an associate professor of chemistry in a new USC department. That same year, Mary Atkinson, a recent graduate of Emory University (with a master’s degree in chemistry) also moved to South Carolina, to teach chemistry at Columbia College nearby. Mary also attended graduate school at USC from 1924 to 1925, when she and Willard must have met.**

Within two years, they were married in Mary’s hometown, Newnan, Georgia.

Mary and Willard - circa 1926

They must have enjoyed the roaring 20s together: radio broadcasts, telephone communications, moving pictures, and the advent of modern automobile transportation. They endured the Great Depression with their first two children, and by 1941, amid the years of World War II, they had a full contingent of four children in their family.

So far as I know, Willard and Mary were busy raising those four children — Billy, Mary Lou, Margaret Ann, and Frank — until Frank graduated from high school in 1958. Willard worked as a chemistry professor at the University of South Carolina, from 1923 to 1962 — almost forty years! I never heard much about those forty years, and the paper trail for those years is sadly lacking.

Memories of a Fruitful Life

By the time I had much interest in my family tree, my grandparents were quite old. My grandfather passed away in 1991, the same year I was married and completed my medical degree. Somehow, I was able to take time off and drive up for the burial at Graves’ Chapel during my medical rotations.

My grandmother passed away in 1993, a little less than a year before her great-grandchildren, Jasmine and Samantha, were born in Columbia, South Carolina, the same town she lived in with Willard for about 35 years.

I didn’t really know much about Willard or Mary, although I knew I had their love and support. I imagine that they knew all about me and my brother, since my mother (Margaret) lived with them during the twilight of their years, staying with them from 1986 until the day that each of them passed away. Then she stayed in Stanley, Virginia, and took their place.

My memories of my Grandpa, Willard, are relatively few, but they are beautiful, nonetheless. For me, he is that shadowy figure inside a woodshed, working on a thick wooden stool, while sawdust swirls in the doorway, and a farm cat looks for shade in the crawlspace underneath.

He is that slightly bent-over fellow out in the garden, with the suntanned arms, putting a watermelon into a wheelbarrow, and bringing it back to a shady spot where he and the grandkids can cool off and enjoy the fruit of his labors.

He is that fellow with the small round glasses and bow tie, standing in the prismatic, colored light of the church’s stained glass windows, with a Bible in his hands, holding forth on the blessings we are given by God.

****************************************

*Also pictured - Mary, Frank, Willard, Virginia, Jim, Carolyn, Cora, William, Margaret, Bill, Mary Lou, Lucille, (picture possibly taken by Edwin)

** Mary Atkinson also attended graduate school at Bryn Mawr in 1923, and the University of California in 1925. 

My Dream Car

{Prompt: What car did you dream of having one day?}

Growing up in the 60s and 70s, the roads were filled with station wagons, VW bugs, muscle cars, and Cadillacs.  We had a Plymouth Barracuda when we were young. It was jet black, had chrome barracuda logos on both sides, a sizable sloping rear windshield and a sporty tail — its distinguishing feature.

A 1969 Barracuda with the “fastback” roofline.

It was one of the first cars to have back seats that could lay flat with an opening to access the trunk space. If you were small and you put down the back seats — on a trip to Virginia, for example — you could lie flat and fall asleep. I don’t think we ever really did that, but I think we might have pulled over once, on the side of a dark country road, and put down the seats, to lie down and look up at the stars through the rear windshield.

Mike and I in front of the barracuda - circa 1970.

The barracuda had manual windows and manual door locks, which were just fun to play with. But you could also get fresh air by opening these little triangular windows/vents that were right behind the windshield and next to the side mirrors. I would ride shotgun whenever I could just to play with these swiveling vents. I don’t think the car had AC. I don’t think we could afford it.

Iconic side mirror and window vent of a Barracuda

Once I rode in the back of a big, expensive sedan, when I was in middle school. It was some other parent’s car — maybe a Cadillac, like the Cadillac Seville. All I know is that when we got inside — three or four of us in the rear leather seats, it made so little road noise, and had such an amazing shock-absorbing system, that it felt like riding in an airplane… at least I imagined that’s what it felt like.

I think my dream car at that time would have been anything with a hood ornament.  Rolls Royce was the gold standard, but a Mercedes was much more likely to be seen in the real world.  I think my favorite, though — my favorite car with a hood ornament — was probably a Jaguar.  There was nothing quite like a leaping jungle cat made of shiny, silvery chrome to inspire my adolescent imagination.

My favorite hood ornament.

I also held out hope, for many years, of owning a Jeep — ideally, an army-issue Jeep, but I would have settled for a Wrangler. Of course, I didn’t know what notorious gas guzzlers they were, and I had no concerns about their service record when ownership was just a pipe dream.

When the time came when I was actually old enough to drive, and I had enough money (from working at Arby’s or the Pullen Park pool) to pay for gas and repairs, my mother bought me a small, used, Honda Civic. Not nearly as sporty as a Civic today, but this Honda Civic — my first car — had the great advantage of being a beautiful shade of lemon yellow.

My first car - a yellow Honda Civic.

Back then, the Iran Contra hostage crisis and the gasoline shortage of 1977 were affecting gasoline prices, and fuel efficiency was the deciding factor in many a purchase. The American market was seeing an influx of far more fuel efficient cars from Japan, including the one that I got.

I’d still love to have a Jeep or a Land Rover; a Jaguar or a Mercedes, but these days I find myself dreaming about vintage cars from the ’40s or ’50s. Maybe something that suits my age.

Or maybe I should get a souped-up 1969 Plymouth Barracuda… this time with air-conditioning.

Or maybe I’ll just keep dreaming, while I drive around in my Subaru Outback — the station wagon of the 21st century.

My Agent

{Prompt: What early memories do you have of your brother}

There is a ripple in the water. It isn’t an eddy — a water current. It is a ripple… from a critter.

“It’s a crayfish!”, my brother says, excitedly.

My brother is looking in the creek intensely, to see which way it goes. I’m not watching ’cause I didn’t even know there was a critter in there.

He’s focused on a good-sized, slimy, moss-covered rock.

“We gotta turn it over,” he says.

“Why?” I ask.

“Cuz it’s under there!”

A sizeable crayfish, in plain sight.

He Knew Things

I realize now that this is when… more or less, this is when I discovered that my brother had a store of knowledge… advanced knowledge… superior knowledge… that I could not imagine. He knew how to find a crayfish in a creek. He knew how to climb up into a tree house. He knew how to ride a bike, and more importantly, how to use the brakes.

He knew how to take a piece of unmown, seeding grass, in the Spring, bend the stem back on itself, and shoot the seedhead into the air. He knew how to take a rubber band, wrap it over the tip of his thumb and shoot it across the room. He knew how to shoot a BB gun. I guess he knew how to shoot just about anything. He was the ultimate source for practical knowledge.

Backyard (top). Front yard (bottom).

Of course, I had my parents, to teach me right from wrong. I guess they had practical knowledge, too. And I had TV, where I could watch the Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau to learn about creatures in the sea, and I could watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom to learn about creatures on the land. And we had umpteen volumes of the World Book encyclopedia, the Bible, and the Dictionary. We had a ton of written reference material.

But my brother knew things, and he was always around. He was like my handler… my agent. Or my personal bodyguard. He would walk with me to school, to the end of Wayland Drive, and across the crosswalk. He would take me along (or maybe he just tolerated me), when we went up the road to hang out with his friends. He was there to go to the swimming pool with me in the summer. If I ever went anywhere in the world besides my home and my school classrooms, it seemed like Mike was there to secure the ‘scene’.

When there was nothing else to do, Mike was in charge of the entertainment. He would come up with a game for every surface in the world. We played marbles on the patio, which was made out of cement. We played “World War III” with green, plastic army men on the oak tree roots and pine straw covered clay, in the back yard. And when there was nothing better to do, we went exploring the creek at the bottom of our neighborhood, after school.

Me, Mike and Grandmother, Emily Gallup - May 1971

Exploring the Creek

Let me tell you how water got to the creek, and what we would do, along the way. If it rained at our house, the water would wash down the gravel drive into the street. (The gravel driveway was one of the few places that we weren’t allowed to play. At least, I think we weren’t allowed. I just don’t remember ever playing there.)

The stormwater would run down the curb on the side of Wayland Drive. That’s where we sometimes would float a makeshift raft after a summer thunderstorm, and sometimes even during a summer thunderstorm, water coming down in buckets.

The water would wash into the opening of a heavy iron street gutter on the lowest part of Wayland Drive. If you were small enough, you could crawl into the street gutter, through the 2-foot round cement drain pipes, and out into the empty lot at the corner of the neighborhood. (Crawling into a street gutter is easy as pie when you’re a little kid. It gets harder as you get bigger.)

From the empty lot you had to walk through a probably tick-infested acre of brush before you got to the creek. After sunset, on the return journey, it got a little harder to find your way back through the empty lot to civilization. You had to look for the street lamps or listen for the sound of Daddy’s whistle, or his yelling, if he was getting impatient.

When we got to the creek, we always headed upstream. I guess the most interesting “rapids” were upstream, as the creek passed through a bed of limestone. The back of the shopping center — Glenwood Village shopping center — was also upstream, and if you went far enough (and started early enough) you could even trace the creek up to the cultivated lawns of the Raleigh Country Club Golf Course. (I felt like kids weren’t truly welcome on the golf course. Or maybe I just didn’t like to be so out in the open, in the middle of “fine” society.)

But we usually turned around well before we were out of earshot of our house. We mostly spent time looking for crayfish, or watching the water spiders, as they skittered across the surface. We kept a lookout for water moccasins, especially in deep water, but there wasn’t much deep water — really, practically none, in the heat of the summer.

We dug around in the pea gravel, or we poked around in the tree roots. At least once, we blew up a Hot Wheels car with the gunpowder from a cap gun… or with a firecracker… or something. I was only an innocent observer. It wasn’t me.

Naturally, we got into trouble, but mostly there was a policy of “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” Our parents didn’t ask, and we didn’t tell. At least it seemed that way. Whether or not our behavior was condoned, I’ll never know.

I fell into the creek once or twice. Usually I just got my shoe or my socks wet, but once I fell in completely, and I had to walk back home with my t-shirt and my shorts sopping wet. Mom thought it was hilarious.

Making Mischief

As we got older, we went exploring the city, and we got into different kinds of trouble.

One time we got run off from Glenwood Village shopping center, because we were peeking into the back of a strip club, trying to look at the strippers through the spinning blades of a ventilation fan. Someone saw or heard us and came out to chase us off, and we ran for cover, back to the woods. We were too slippery. At least I like to think of us that way.

We broke into my elementary school once. But it was entirely for a good reason. We were playing basketball on their basketball courts, which were open to the public. We got hot… and sweaty… and thirsty. So the logical thing was to go get some water from the water fountain in the hallway. I guess we were able to jimmy open the locked door, walk down the vacant school hallway, and have a sip of water. But we were caught, and we were detained.

I think Mike was forced to call our Mom by the administrator. Either that was our punishment, or he thought that we were hoodlums and vandals. It was all very innocent, and it got blown way out of proportion. I was just thirsty.

Mike took most of the blame. I reckon that was the cost of being the leader. Although in this case, I guess it was really my idea. But still… Mike should have known better. Why would he listen to me, a little kid? And why didn’t we have water in the first place? Sometimes I wonder if my brother was properly qualified to be my handler.

Another time, we got caught sneaking into the back door of a theater in broad daylight. We wanted to see the R-rated movie, Amityville Horror. Mike was old enough, but I wasn’t. So we hatched this simple plan. Mike would buy himself a ticket, and I would go around to the back of the theater. Then I would sneak in when he opened the fire exit door. As it turns out, opening a door in a dimly lit theater in the middle of the day is like shining a searchlight on an escaped convict at night. It was obvious to everyone in the theater what was happening. Although we sat down, only a minute or two passed before an usher came and escorted us out the door and off of the premises. Maybe a manager was involved. I don’t know. I was only an innocent pawn.

Getting Along

As we got still older, and a little bit wiser, we did a lot of things together that we couldn’t do as equals in the past. I was still new to the game in most cases, but I became a fast learner.

We started to play Avalon Hill strategy board games (like Blitzkrieg and Formula One). We were among the first wave of gamers to play this new game, called Dungeons & Dragons. My brother played in actual games with other players, while I mostly spent time creating characters, character names, and dungeon prototypes. I went on only one or two campaigns. I remember that the subtle downward slope of the dungeon walkways had a disproportionate importance, and every brick of a wall had to be inspected for secret doors or magical treasures.

We were in the Boy Scouts together. We learned to camp and set up a tent, split wood and start a fire, hike down a trail, and never, ever, take a turn that wasn’t clearly marked or found on the trail map. We learned to march stoically, for hours if necessary, to reach the top of the trail and reach the viewpoint. There was no turning back on a trail until we reached the lookout. At least that’s the way it seemed.

And the stuff in our backpacks. It was all so bizarre. A pack of aluminum eatingware, with an aluminum mug, that all fit together in a small metallic bundle. Rolled-up, blue foam bed mats and rolled-up sleeping-bags, wrestled into a bundle of fabric, above or below the central storage of the pack.

We developed an interest in medicine and veterinary medicine from our shared experience with pets at home, and visits to the Shenandoah Valley, to see our grandparents at “The Farm”. Mike expanded his understanding of animals, from the cats and dogs of our house, and the newts and the crayfish of our creek; to the raptors and livestock of the “Valley”. He went on to attend NC State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and became a veterinarian.

I ended up studying human anatomy, physiology, and pathology. I went to Duke University Medical School and became a family doctor.

We experienced the unimaginable; the death of our father together. We made the phone call to 911 together. We waited for the paramedics together. We grieved together.

We sat in the front pew at the funeral service. We stood out on the cold hillside at Raleigh Memorial Gardens for the burial. We spent our fury at the loss by splitting wood in our front yard.

A cringeworthy picture of our “family” in the early 80s

Everything Changes

That’s about the time that we went our separate ways. Shortly after his death, Mike went off to college in Louisburg, North Carolina, and I went off to a public residential high school, newly established by the state of North Carolina, the NC School of Science and Math.

We were back in Raleigh together briefly, when I transferred back to NC State University from Vanderbilt (where I had considered, and reconsidered, a major in Engineering.) We were both at NC State University in the Spring of 1983, when the Men’s basketball team went on a miraculous run to win the NCAA tournament. We watched some of the games together — I’m pretty sure that we watched the final together (when the “Cardiac Pack” faced the “Phi Slamma Jamma” team of Houston.) When the game ended in the perfect alley-oop “pass” from Whittenburg to Charles, we had a few minutes of unbridled celebration and then we headed for Hillsborough Street together, to be a part of the city’s biggest unsanctioned crowd of troublemaking youngsters to ever assemble.

My brother taught me back in the ’60s or ’70s, before the 1974 NC State national championship, that I needed to choose a college to root for, NC State or UNC. He knew that I should be an NC State fan, and he seemed to know all the reasons that State was historically the superior team. I took him at his word. And it finally paid off.

Somewhere in the Ether

{Prompt: What television programs did you watch in your childhood?}

Broadcast Television

In the sixties, we had exactly four TV channels on our TV set. Well… that’s not exactly right. We had a channel knob with about 13 channels, but only four of the channels had an actual broadcast.  The other 9 channels were grayscale versions of two-dimensional static.  I think that we got TV broadcasts on channels 2, 4, 5, and 13. Channel 4 was WUNC; the PBS station. Channel 13 was NBC; and the other two were WRAL and WRDU, the ABC and CBS channels. At some point WRAL changed their network affiliation, but that’s another story.

Some time in the seventies or eighties, it became possible to get a cable attachment, and then you could get 25 to 50 channels.  I don’t know how many there were exactly, but there were so, so many, that you couldn’t remember which channel was which any more.  Newspapers started publishing daily TV channel program guides, and the “TV Guide” digest was in its heyday.

Now we had more interesting TV static, because some R-rated channels, like HBO and Showtime, were intentionally scrambled to keep the little ones safe from profanity and nudity and adult content.  However… if you were lucky… and you adjusted the antennae just right, you could sort of make out the moving pictures within the static, and you could hear the dialogue.  But I digress.

When I was Very Young

Some of the most inspiring TV of my young existence occurred during the race for the moon. We all watched and listened on Christmas Day in 1968 as the crew of Apollo 8 — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders — circled the moon, reading from the book of Genesis. It was an unforgettable moment. I was only four.

A photo of the “Earthrise” — William Anders, Dec. 24, 1968.

I was five; six and a half months later, when Neil Armstrong took the first step on the moon, proclaiming it “one small step for man… one giant leap for mankind.” Just for a moment, the whole country was united by wonder and pride.

Neil Armstrong’s footprint on the moon—July 20, 1969

That feeling of pride and solidarity faded, with the U.S. entrenchment in combat in Vietnam. Though the conflict and the counterculture movement were graphically filmed and featured on the nightly news, my brother and I were quietly discouraged from watching that television content. We probably would have had too many questions — questions that would have been hard to answer.

Instead, we watched shows on PBS, and we watched the Saturday morning cartoons.  I would watch Sesame Street, which was “brought to you”, that day, by the letter “P” and the number “4”, or some similar combination.  The Muppets started appearing on Sesame Street in 1969, when I was five, and they became so popular that there were spin-offs — a prime time Muppet Show (from 1976 to 1981) and several Muppet movies.

Kermit singing Rainbow Connection in the first Muppet Movie.

I watched Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood often, each show starting with a rendition of It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, as Fred Rogers removed his jacket and his church shoes, putting on a sweater and some slippers. Looking back, I realize that I learned (and accepted on faith) so much about the world from Mr. Rogers — about the essential worthiness of all people, and the essential goodness of mankind — that it is practically a fundamental part of my character today.

At the time, I acquired a stuffed animal that was Daniel the Tiger. Daniel, on the show, was essentially an avatar for the scared child in each of the preschool viewers, and he helped to dissipate the fear each child had from witnessing the world of adults. My stuffed tiger, created, curled up in a circle, was so loved, that he was smushed nearly as flat as a pancake by the time I entered kindergarten. I had all but forgotten his television origins when I donated him to Goodwill thirty years later.

Mister Rogers and Daniel, the tiger.

On Saturday morning TV, we had all the Hanna Barbera cartoons (too numerous to list), the Looney Tunes, and Scooby Doo, to name a few.  At some point in the 70s, the cartoons were augmented with little infomercials by “School House Rock”. These tunes were widely disseminated, quickly memorized, and often regurgitated at the lunch break or free play at elementary school.  (I’m Just a Bill and Conjunction Junction being the classics.)  I could quote the preamble to the Constitution thanks to these little music videos. Possibly this was my first exposure to the power of pop culture.

Two beloved characters from Schoolhouse Rock.

The Age of Great Opening Title Sequences

Cartoons were also available after school on the weekdays. I’m pretty sure that The Flintstones and The Jetsons were on in the early afternoon. (I just had to get mom to turn off Julia Child or the Galloping Gourmet, and let me have the TV.  There was only one TV, you know.) The cartoons led into some equally cartoonish family shows, like Gilligan’s Island and the Brady Bunch.  Those title songs will be stuck in my head until I croak! I guess a good opening was the key to capturing audience share in the 70s. Maybe this is where my love of opening credit shots began.

“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…”

As I grew older I preferred more masculine adventures like the Wild Wild West and Star Trek.  On the Wild Wild West, Jim and Artemus (yes, Artemus) would routinely find themselves held hostage and in really deep doo-doo, and that’s exactly when the image on the screen was “captured” and added to the title shot just before the commercial break. After the ad break, Jim or Artemis would come up with some clever trick, or use a hidden piece of gadgetry to extricate themselves from danger.  Cue another commercial break. And then there would be a nice epilogue, in which they give themselves a pat on the back for a job well done, and President Ulysses Grant would send them off to another adventure.

Screengrab of a part of the opening for The Wild Wild West

The original Star Trek was fantastic theater, with the impetuous but clever Captain Kirk; the logical half-Vulcan, Mr. Spock; and the perpetually exasperated but faithful, Doctor McCoy.  The special effects were campy, by today’s standards, but the real drama was the character development (within the constraints of their various prototypes) and the interpersonal dynamics.  The plot and the effects were somewhat secondary. Although… there probably is no better opening theme and monologue ever, in TV history, then the opening audio track of Star Trek.

You always could depend on a few things from the original series: The characters getting into a jam, and then out of it again. An ensign with a red shirt, unfortunately, lost, before the crew became aware of their peril. Scotty pushing the dilithium crystals to the limit. Phasers or shields lost during deep space combat. Monsters popping up where you least expect them. And Spock and Jim locked in a verbal battle over the merits of logic versus instinct.

“…To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

In the evenings, we would often watch TV shows as a family. Remember, there was only one TV.  So we usually had to agree on something that everyone could enjoy.  Some of the most memorable were Room 222, The Flying Nun, Mission: Impossible, and All in the Family. My dad loved to watch The Rockford Files with James Garner — a tough but perpetually abused and misused private eye. He was usually getting the short end of the stick, even when he solved the case. My mom loved to watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show, back to back — dry comedies with ensemble casts.

Just before the group hug in the season finale.

There were also some procedural dramas that would alternate within the same time slot — McCloud, Columbo, and McMillan & Wife. All three were about various characters — one with a cowboy hat, one with a trench coat, and one with his wife — who were a lot smarter than they appeared.

Sunday evening was the night for us to enjoy Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, and The Wonderful World of Disney.  We would all gather to watch shows inspired by the environmental movement, and than one or two hours of pure fantasy. I always loved to hear… and watch… Jiminy Cricket singing When You Wish Upon a Star. I guess that’s why I’m the eternal optimist, today.

Tinkerbell, opening The Wonderful World of Disney

Back then, there were still Westerns, like Ponderosa and Big Valley (which made me a fan of Barbara Stanwyck) — shows that had conflict, dialogue, and conflict resolution. There were other “wholesome” family dramas, with less life threatening conflicts, like Little House on the Prairie and the Waltons, and yes, I think we saw every episode.

Changing Times

Networks didn’t realize, initially, that they could air a rerun and people would watch it.  Early on, TV series had a new show practically every week and no reruns.  I don’t know when, but maybe around the time that cable channels started competing for viewers, the shows started airing reruns. Gradually, the number of new episodes per season began to shrink.

Nielsen ratings were a thing back then, too. They were gathered from a sampling of American viewers to determine the ranking of the various shows. I think that our family was chosen, once, to complete the form for the Nielsen ratings, and we took our viewing responsibilities seriously. We carefully completed, in pencil, the ledger of the shows that we watched, and returned it in the self-addressed, sealed envelope. It was on a par with the completion of the US census form.

Back in those days, people worried that children (and parents) would become addicted to TV, that TV would destroy the fabric of society, and that violence on TV would lead to unfettered and unhinged violence in the young and susceptible viewers.  They had all the same fears that we have about the internet today.  I can’t say that they were wrong, but for all the mindless TV and the morally bankrupt programming, I can think of an equal number of shows at the other end of the spectrum — compelling and life affirming — such as One Day at a Time, Good Times, and M*A*S*H.

Naturally TV has evolved. Cable TV allowed an increase in sports-related and political programming.  Pay-per-view and cable accounts allowed increased adult-themed programming (both good and bad).  

Flat screen technology allowed huge TVs to dominate, and even usurp the hearth and fireplace in the living room.  MTV changed the entire musical landscape, and reality TV made “real people” the focus.

Now we find ourselves in a transition to streaming services, and the changing boundaries of our viewing domain are a source of consternation and ire. We can bond in our shared angst and confusion, but we can also talk, with our friends and family, about what we’ve discovered, somewhere in the ether that excites and touches us—that makes us think—that makes us imagine another world.  Just like those shows we saw when we were kids.

The Yelling in the Other Room

{Prompt: What things did your parents argue about when you were little?}

What did my parents argue about when I was little? That’s a great question. It’s harder to answer than you might imagine.

Undoubtedly, they did argue. Many times my brother and I heard yelling in the other room. But what was it about? That is hard to say.

Usually the other room was the master bedroom, in the corner of the house, across the hall from the bedroom that we slept in. The substance of the altercation was hard to make out from that distance when the door was closed.

Let me explain. The size and layout of our house is important. Our house was pretty small. It had two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. There was a square-shaped hall in the middle of those four rooms, with access to the furnace below and the fold-down attic stairs above. And there was a one-room addition on one side, that my father used for a workroom, which had a connecting door to the kitchen and our bedroom.

My dad, at his enormous desk in the “office.”

If you wanted to run in circles in our house, you could do it by running through the kitchen (avoiding the linoleum-covered countertops and the dangling cord of the phone on the wall)… running through my Dad’s man-cave (scooting around the sizable vintage wooden desk)… taking a hard right into the children’s bedroom, and straight through to the next door (watching out for Legos, Hot Wheels cars, or unsorted clothing)… another hard right into the central hallway (being careful not to slip, or stub your toe on the 3-by-5-foot metal grille of the floor furnace grate)… then through the slatted, folding doors to the living room (where it was best to pass slowly beside the TV set, or risk the retribution of the parents)… one last hard right at the front door, and back into the kitchen. Clockwise always seemed like the best way to run this route.

It’s even better when you are being chased.

(Credit: Getty Images/istockphoto)

But notice that the parents’ master bedroom was never a part of the circuit. In fact the master bedroom had a single door (to the central hallway), and it was usually closed. At night, if there was yelling, it most likely came from that mysterious chamber — untouched by the scampering feet of circling scoundrels.

But what was the yelling about? I honestly don’t know. It was muffled and inaudible. And as the youngest child, I wasn’t really trying to find out. I guess I took a better-off-not-knowing approach to family arguments.

And I don’t think that we were meant to know. I think if an argument was brewing, it either took place in our absence, or it was put off to the evening, after our bedtime.

I would guess that most arguments were along these lines:

Mom - “You play with them too much. They need to do their chores.”

Dad - “Aw… come on. I’m tired. I just want to relax.”

Or this:

Mom - “Why did you have to spank him?”

Dad - “What? I barely touched him. He needs to behave.”

But I really don’t know. Usually the argument sounded like the teacher on a Charlie Brown special:

Mom - “Whaa whaa whaa-whaa?”

Dad - (in a lower pitch) “Well, Whaa whaa whaa-whaa-whaa.”

Clearly they agreed, at least on one thing; which was to keep the arguments out of earshot.

There were disagreements, of course. For example, my mother didn’t like to be around my father’s cigarette smoke. Consequently, I only saw him smoking at his hobby shop or in his car. He had that talent for flicking a lighter and holding it to the end of the cigarette, while shielding the flame from the wind. It’s not easy to do. At least not without a bit of practice. And he could roll down the car window a crack and flick the end of a cigarette so that the ashes fell out the window. So, even though he didn’t smoke in the house, he smoked enough to know what he was doing.

Perhaps they argued about his smoking.

Close up of a cigarette break.

My father probably wanted some time on his own. Of course my mom probably did too. But my mom had gone to college to be a teacher, and she had experience with children in elementary school. She expected to take care of the children.

My father, I think, had less experience with young children, in comparison. Don’t get me wrong. He was there to help with Boy Scouts and other activities. He enjoyed drawing (calligraphy, in particular), leathercrafting, model-building, car-mechanics, and home-repair, and he was happy to share those things with us.

But he also found ways to be away from home. Besides his regular job, as a draftsman at Stackpole Electrical, he opened a military-themed hobby shop (The Armoury) as a side gig, probably to spend a little time out of the house.

Perhaps they argued about how much time to spend together… or alone… or with the kids.

The Yamaha— a great way to get away.

My parents came from different backgrounds. My Mom grew up in the South, in Columbia, South Carolina. She enjoyed grits. She cooked with plenty of salt and butter.

My Dad grew up in the North; in Baldwinsville, New York. He enjoyed bagels and Dunkin’ Donuts. He put pepper on his eggs. Perhaps they argued about their food preferences. Or the merits of the different regions where they were raised. Perhaps they argued about the reasons for the Civil War!

You see, they met in Wilmington, North Carolina; while my father was serving in the Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune, and my mother was working as a teacher for the schools in Wilmington. My father, the ‘Yankee’. My mother, the ‘Southern Belle’.

They were married in 1959, and had their two children in the next five years. North Carolina is famous for welcoming folks from both north and south of the Mason-Dixon line, so when they bought a home it was in Raleigh, the capital city.

Their families were quite different in social class, as well. My mother’s parents both had a college education. Her father was a college professor and a lifelong Methodist Sunday school teacher. He could tell you what elements made the colors of a wood fire as it burned. Her mother had a degree in chemistry and enjoyed crossword puzzles. She knew the names of all the rivers in Europe and Asia that could be found in a crossword puzzle.

A grainy photo of Willard & Mary Whitesell and their first son.

My father’s parents both simply finished high school. His father was a foreman in the test and maintenance department of General Electric, and he was working in a studio called “Designs for Listening.”. He enjoyed recording vinyl records in his free time. He died in 1953, when my father was only 17. My father’s mother worked for the New York State Department of Civil Service, and she had received awards for her stamp collecting skills. She died when he was 40.

A grainy photo of Emily and Leonard Gallup

So my mother and father were really from different places, geographically and socio-culturally. Somehow they made it work.

They probably agreed on most matters, far more than they disagreed. They kept the arguments (mostly) under wraps, out of sight, and (usually) out of earshot. To be fair, the arguments were really quite few, and far between.

They were obviously in love when they married (after a relatively short period of courting). They were in love when they had two children. And they loved one another enough… cared enough… to argue over a problem until they reached an agreement.

They showed their love, too, in hugs and kisses, in conversations at the family dinner, in participation in games and activities, and in child rearing.

So, even though I remember the muffled sounds of angry parents on a few occasions, I don’t really remember what the fighting was about. And for me, it didn’t matter. It always seemed like a part of the process; a brief tempest in a season of sunny Spring weather.

The fighting always ended; and my happy parents returned to their jobs with sanity and normalcy. My pleasant childhood would continue, unperturbed.

Photo in front of the fireplace of (L-R) Gerry, Mike, Steve, Meg.

(Photo of Mike in our living room, which had cabinets with honey-colored sliding wood-paneled doors, with the TV and World Book Encyclopedia volumes on top, and pottery, speakers, and record albums on the shelves above. But look at that backpack.)

Not So Solitary Confinement

{Prompt: How would you describe your childhood bedroom?}

There is little that I remember about my bedroom. Only two things really. I remember the bunk bed that I shared with my brother — my older brother — and I remember the window to the backyard — the translucent portal to the outdoor world and the insufferable heat of summer in the North Carolina Piedmont.

The bunk bed was nothing special. It was a bunk of two twin beds, built with wood too thin to withstand a modern Consumer Product Safety inspection — wood smoothly finished with a light honey-colored stain that perfectly reflected the warm amber glow of the incandescent lighting of the ‘60s.

Both of us on the top bunk - circa 1968

The bed rails held only 3 or 4 bare wooden slats. And they in turn supported a thin bed mattress with springs that showed from the underside. It was great sport, at night, to stick your feet up, from the bunk below to the bunk above, and poke the mattress springs firmly, or kick the wooden slats provocatively, to see what effect all this might have on the occupant of the upper bunk.

And I was the occupant of the upper bunk for some time — maybe more than one span of time. You see, our parents may have switched us around once or twice, hoping to find a harmonious arrangement. I think that they erred on the side of safety, by putting the smaller child in the lower bunk. Less chance of a mishap — of having the younger child roll over and off of the bed in the middle of the night. And less likelihood that a small child could reach the bunk above with his feet.

But I could. Of course I had to lift up my hips, and push my butt up at least 6 inches, to get my feet onto the slats, but once I got my feet up there, it was just a matter of leverage to keep myself inverted for quite some time. Long enough to create a disturbance. This was how a lot of pillow fights began.

Eventually rules were laid down — a decree was issued — that we should lie quietly in bed, at least long enough to give our weariness a fighting chance to overwhelm us with sleep.

No actual photos exist of the hijinks. (Credit: Xanthe Berkeley)

But sleep was so difficult when temperatures at night were in the 90s. You see, there was no air conditioning during the summers. We couldn’t sleep in pajamas, because of the heat. Even a t-shirt was too hot at times. We often slept in our underwear — “tighty-whities” — half covered, with a sheet over one leg, on those hot summer nights. We were sweaty when we went to bed, and lucky if we fell asleep at all.

The window was opened as far as possible, and a box fan was placed somewhere, elsewhere in the house, in another window, with the direction of airflow pointing outward. The reasoning was, “The fan blows the hot air out of the house, and the cool air comes in the other windows… including yours.” This seemed like highly dubious reasoning to me at the time, and I think that we successfully lobbied to have the fan placed in our window, and the direction of airflow reversed, so that the hypothetically cooler air would flow into our room, and the hot air would subsequently be pushed out of the other windows. If there was any cool air to be had, we wanted access to that cool breeze to begin in our bedroom. The condition of the rest of the house be damned!

Two particularly decorative vintage box fans.

Later, a rotating fan (instead of the accursed box fan), was introduced to the center of our room. It stood about 3 feet off the floor, and for a few seconds the fan created a lukewarm, or perhaps a cool, breeze, before the airflow passed by with the rotation of the fan.

Winters were little better, as the bulk of the heat came from a central furnace in the hallway in the middle of the house. As a matter of fact, a folding wooden drying rack was placed above the grille of the furnace on the floor at least once a week to dry the laundry! There were many mornings when I unabashedly straddled that floor grate after the morning shower, wrapped in a terry cloth bathrobe, to dry myself off and warm myself up.

Although it was toasty warm in that chamber, where all the warm air was discharged from the furnace, there was blessed little circulation of the heat from one room to another. No radiators and no floor or ceiling vents that I can recall. The door to the hallway had to be opened, at the sacrifice of your privacy, if the heat was to be enjoyed.

It looked a little like this.

Besides the bunk bed and the window, nothing memorable was found in the bedroom. I’m sure there was a dresser of clothes, and a child-sized desk. There was certainly a set of the Chronicles of Narnia, and perhaps a few other books. There was probably a children’s record player, with some 45s of children’s music and stories, and some record albums (33s), as I got older.

There must have been some games and some toys, but I think for the most part the bedroom was designed to be slept in, and for dressing. Nothing more. Play… and especially horseplay… was not in keeping with the primary purpose of our confinement, at bedtime.

A rare moment of fraternity (circa 1969)