An Eternal Optimist

{Prompt: What was the hardest part of your childhood?}

The hardest part of my childhood, and my life, was undoubtedly the death of my father (which I write about in The End of the Innocence.)

It was followed by a period of shock, mourning, anger, and shame that lasted for one or two years. I don’t remember those years much, except for a few moments when my deeper emotions were brought to the surface by song.

I still relive those moments, for example, whenever I hear If you leave me now, by Chicago:

If you leave me now

you take away the biggest part of me

Ooh-ooh-ooh, no, baby, please don’t go

And if you leave me now

You’ll take away the very heart of me

Ooh-ooh-ooh, no, baby, please don’t go

Ooh-ooh-ooh… I just want you to stay….

Or Beth, by Kiss:

You say you feel so empty;

That our house just ain’t a home;

That I’m always somewhere else;

And you’re always there alone…

Although they were released in 1976, those two songs were still getting FM radio play in 1977, when my father died. The melancholy backing tracks, and the sentiment of the lyrics, made me feel, more fully, the pain of the separation that I was going through.

Chicago, on stage.

But there were joyful moments too, and I write about them a little in Waiting for my New Life to Begin.

There was no social media but there was lots of TV to enjoy, which I write about in Somewhere in the Ether.

I enjoyed my days at school (junior high school) where I played in the orchestra and band. I played soccer with a junior varsity team, and I played ultimate frisbee during recess. I had childhood friends to hang out with in the cafeteria and after school.

There were great movies to watch, and small theaters nearby. We lined up for Star Wars, when it first came out in Dolby Stereo. From the moment the massive Star Destroyer entered the screen (after the opening narrative crawl), we were blown away. So, we lined up to see it again and again.

Opening scene from Star Wars.

And we lined up again for Grease, with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, a musical with just enough edginess for a new generation. I even bought the soundtrack vinyl LP and many other records. I started buying 45s… a collection that, including the “Golden Oldies”, spans several decades.

But there was also new technology. There were arcade games and there was cable TV. There were home computers, Sony Walkmans, and boom boxes. We had mopeds and microwaves, for the first time. There was a whole shopping mall culture, before the dawn of the internet.

Of course, not everything was rosy. Out in the real world there were problems just like there are problems today. There was terrorism and war. There were political issues. There were gas shortages and nuclear plant disasters.

As I went to 10th grade, my life was pretty complicated. I was working hard at school, but delivering newspapers in the mornings. I was living like an academic during the day, but working like a blue collar worker at night. I write about this difficult time in These Dreams.

All in all, I consider the time between February 2nd, 1977 (my father’s death) and September 7th, 1980 (my first day at NCSSM), to be the hardest part of my life. There was a tragic death, a complicated period of adjustment, and then the decision to leave home and go to a boarding school.

September 7, 1980 - Opening Day at NCSSM.

No, I never felt like I had to grow up quickly or take care of my family. But I felt like I shouldn’t be a burden on my family either. By 1980, I was performing well academically at home, and I was involved in my community. Nevertheless, I was ready to start over in Durham, where my room and board were paid for — where I would be under the supervision of a dozen members of staff and faculty who had a vested interest in my success. My mother would be able to take care of herself.

I wasn’t completely healed emotionally, but I was coping. I was still immature, but I was growing up. I had been through a difficult period, but I was eager.

And I was optimistic.

The End of the Innocence

{Prompt: Describe your father’s death}

My father died right in front of me, suddenly and unexpectedly, on a cold winter day, in 1977. 

I was twelve years old at the time.

It was February second, a cold and bleak winter day. We lived in a tiny, drafty bungalow in west Raleigh, heated by an oil furnace, but on the coldest days we supplemented its all-too-intermittent output of warm air with an electric radiator, which could be moved from room to room. My father, mother, brother, and I were sitting in the living room, with throw blankets here and there, trying to warm our insides with a hot meal.

I was eating my dinner from a bowl, sitting on a handmade walnut stool, with my family sitting nearby.  My brother was sitting on my left.  My mother was sitting to my right.  My father was sitting in a chair across from me. We were just sitting in a circle, having a homemade dinner on a dark, cold winter evening.

Then my father stopped eating his dinner. He grimaced, and he looked down at the floor. He looked sick. I said, “It’s not that bad, is it?” meaning the food—it was sarcasm.

And then he collapsed.  My mother went to his side, helping him to the floor.  She asked him in a shaky voice, “Gerry, what’s wrong?” He didn’t answer.

She begged him to respond as he lay on the floor. He didn’t move. She pleaded. She prayed for God’s help.

My brother and I looked on in disbelief.  She told us to call 911.  So we ran to the phone in the kitchen, around the corner, a room away. 

And that’s the last time I ever saw my father.  Lying on the floor with my mother cradling his head, wailing in anguish.

My brother and I made the call for emergency services together. I don’t know who did the talking. I don’t like to think about it, because I was scared, and utterly helpless.

We gave them all the information that we could. One of us said, “My father is lying on the floor. Something’s wrong. We need help.”

“…We live at 2807 Wayland Drive.”

“…Gallup. G-A-L-L-U-P.”

“…The number is 919-787-9373.”

“…Please hurry.”

None of us knew CPR. 

None of us knew what to do. 

None of us knew what was happening.  

Someone on the phone told us to go to the bottom of our driveway to flag down EMS when they arrived, so the paramedics could get inside as quickly as possible.

So we ran to the bottom of the driveway, skittering gravel along the way.

We heard the sirens and saw the lights a block away. 

When they arrived, they grabbed their bags, colored with fluorescent orange and yellow reflective tape. They hurried up the driveway and through the screen door. The room filled up with rescue workers in uniform.

There were medical questions and bewildered answers.  “He just collapsed.”  “…He wasn’t feeling good today.  He left work early.”  “…He went to the doctor’s office this afternoon, but they didn’t find anything wrong.”

And before we knew it, he was in the ambulance.  And he was on the way to the hospital.  My mother went with them. My brother and I stayed home, stunned by the whirlwind of chaos and destruction that had just occurred.  

The shock was profound.  The next time the phone rang, I answered, hoping to hear that my dad had survived — hoping to hear that the rescue efforts were a success. 

Instead, it turned out to be an ordinary call — completely unrelated.  It was a call from a customer on my afternoon paper route who was calling to say that they hadn’t seen their paper. 

It wasn’t the call I was hoping for, but at least it gave me a purpose — a reason to leave the house, to try to set aside the anxiety that was roiling inside of me — to think of anything else — to do anything else.

So I grabbed a paper and told my brother, “I missed a house. I have to take them a paper.”

This is what I remember next.  

I remember the bitter cold air of the falling night as I pedaled my bike up Gordon Street and back home again.

I remember walking through the front screen door, and spotting my mother with a man in the hallway, inside our house. The hall was unlit. I walked closer. She was with the pastor and my brother.

My brother, his cheeks wet with tears, blurted out, “He’s DEAD,” like a kid screaming and weeping in rage in a schoolyard fight.

I don’t know what happened next. Nothing else mattered.

I remember lying in my bunk, in my bedroom, while people talked with my mother… in hushed voices… in another room.

I lay in my bed. I stayed in my bed, in a kind of delirium—alternately crying, sleeping, and remembering the things that I wanted to forget… the things that I wanted to be undone.

From time to time, I heard the dial tone as my mother picked up the phone. I heard the spinning and clicking of the rotary dial as she made calls to friends and family.

The following day I heard the BRRRING-BRRRING of the phone as people called back, and people called with their condolences. And the doorbell rang, as people came to the house. People came and went, but I stayed in my room.

The next day — a Friday — I went back to school, trying to be brave. Trying to act normal again. Hoping to feel normal again. But I fell apart… I lost it completely… when a teacher pulled me aside to offer her support.  I started to cry… and I couldn’t stop.

The memorial service took place a day or two later. I remember sitting in the second pew of our church as the sanctuary filled with mourners, and the memorial service went on around me. 

And I remember the bitter cold during the small service on the side of a sloping hill in the memorial gardens, when his remains were buried.  Mike and me, my Mom, and her parents were there.

I remember these things like the end of a book about my childhood, like the page that you reach just before you clap the book closed for good.

(Photo of the surviving family at church - Mike, Steve, and Margaret Gallup;

 and grandparents, Mary & Willard Whitesell)

How Death Changes You

The death of a parent is a source of unspeakable pain… for anyone.  Whenever I tell someone, for the first time, in the course of a story about my past life, that my father died, invariably they say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” 

And truly, they are sorry!  They are sympathetic.  And I’m grateful for their sympathy.  But that doesn’t make me feel any more whole… any less wounded… any “better.”  The death changes you.  It hurts you. It takes away from you.  It never gives back.  

In a thousand ways, you might remember your happy childhood — your loving parent, and each time the bitterness of that absence grinds you down — it wears away the semblance of what you were — a “normal” person — into a depressed, distracted, morbid, and more cynical version of the normal person who no longer exists.

You feel completely changed.  Your mood is out of your control.  People who know you — your friends — don’t really know you the same way anymore.  So, you feel a little like a stranger to your friends.  

And among strangers, you feel like you have a hole in your heart.  You feel like something is missing. Something vital is gone, but it isn’t visible.  It’s an invisible affliction.   No one can tell that you have been mortally wounded — that your (broken) life and their (unbroken) life are fundamentally different.  The stranger can’t necessarily tell that your world view is so completely altered.  You feel like an imposter.

The Aftermath of Death

When someone dies… in a nuclear family… everyone is affected.  They say that children who lose a parent to death, lose not one parent, but two.  Although I lost my father to sudden death, I lost my mother in ways that were just as sudden.

For a week or two, we mourned with our community.  Our family came together with the church for the funeral and the burial.  My mother’s family assisted her in making arrangements and making decisions.  Her church family helped her find resources to deal with the legal requirements and provided emotional and spiritual support. 

My mother was wounded by her husband’s… my father’s… death, just as much as I was.  There were times when she sat in a chair with our pet dog in her lap, and she stared out the window. She just stared, off into space, seemingly forever.

But she didn’t have the luxury of time to process her grief.  She had to sell my father’s business — a hobby shop, settle his affairs, open new bank accounts, and find new sources of income.  

She had to apply for social security benefits to support her two children while looking for part-time work.  That part-time work came in the form of a morning newspaper route, originally run by my brother. (When he later went to college, she took over his route, with me as a helper.)  

Even with Social Security and a part-time job, money was tight.  We did some shopping at thrift shops.  We split wood for a wood burning fireplace in the winter.  We collected Green Stamps that we used to redeem for small rewards after shopping at the grocery store.

My mother had all of the responsibilities, now, that had been so judiciously divided before. She had to relearn how to pay all the bills that my father had been paying until then.  She had to cook the meals and clean the dishes. She had to encourage our good behavior and discourage the bad. She had to maintain the house, both inside and out. She had to make household decisions, all by herself, sometimes with no help at all.

I give her credit for what she accomplished.  I really do.  I’ve been told more than once that I should appreciate all she did for me and my brother.  She did what she could to raise her children, to maintain a normal family, to take on the role of both mother and father.

A happy occasion - possibly the purchase of a new car.

But still, it’s hard not to miss the time before that awful day — the day that my father died. We were a happy family. We watched TV and played games. We did our homework and our personal chores. We celebrated birthdays and holidays. We planted a garden. We went on summer vacations to the “farm”.

I was a happy kid. I loved to read and to learn. I enjoyed exploring the creek and riding my bike with my brother. I did arts and crafts with my Mom. I went camping and I joined the Boy Scouts, with my Dad’s encouragement.

I was twelve… turning thirteen in the May of ’77. My childhood was already coming to an end, but it ended prematurely… on the second of February 1977… on the day he died… on Groundhog’s Day.

Finding a New Normal

Although my grief was deep and wide, it didn’t last forever. I still had friends that I could hang out with at school, and we would go to movies, like the first episode of Star Wars and the wildly popular musical, Grease.

I had friends in the neighborhood, and we would go bowling, or play Avalon Hill board games while songs from Saturday Night Fever were playing over and over on the radio.

I took up soccer and practiced juggling for hours on the street. I did the morning paper route with my mother. And in 1980, I applied for the School of Science and Math.

Gradually I recovered from the grief of my father’s death, but of course it never left me. From time to time, the feelings returned — a sudden surge of emotion — or a vague sense of uneasiness, as if something was missing. The feelings of love and of loss.

Maybe a birthday for Dad (June 20) - with a CB radio.

A Life Trapped in Amber

{Prompt: What was your dad like? What do you remember most vividly about him?}

My father passed away 48 years ago, on February 2, 1977.  

I was 12 years old at the time.  

He left a lasting impression, but after 48 years, my memory of him has faded.

My memory of him is more like a dream.  There is a nugget of truth to the memory, a little bit of what might have been real. But the edges are fuzzy, and the full extent of the real life experience is missing.

I remember bouncing on his knee as a toddler.

I remember that he showed me how to draw calligraphy as a school child.  

I remember driving to the SPCA to pick out a puppy, and picking out the dog’s name from a street sign that we passed on the way back home.  

I remember that he created a painted-flower garden spanning at least four of the aluminum cabinet doors above the kitchen countertop, using little hand cut stamps and Testors model paint.

But none of those memories really capture the essence of the man.

I remember, more vividly perhaps, the unpleasant times — often a punishment for childhood misbehavior.

I recall being sent to the back yard to cut myself a switch, for some transgression that I was beginning to regret.  The switching itself was quite mild I’m sure, seeing as I don’t really remember that part.  I don’t recall ever suffering a bruise or welt from his punishment.

In fact, punishment was always dealt out as justice.  Mom would warn us (my brother and I) that if we didn’t listen, and behave, she would have to tell our Dad how we acted when he got home. And the repercussions (which were implied) were much to be feared. 

Only once can I recall my father losing his temper with me.  

I must have been about five, and I was having a complete meltdown, for reasons I can’t fathom. My mother was at the end of her wits, and sent my father to talk to me (to assess the nature of my grievances, I like to think).  

I completely lost my mind — yelling about my mom and calling her names.  I might have called her a bitch, or something like that. I can’t remember what curse words I had in my arsenal. But that was about the level of my venom, at the time.  

The next thing I knew I was on the ground, realizing that I just got slapped, good and hard — hard enough to knock me off my feet and leave me in a stunned silence.  

I really don’t remember what happened after that, but I certainly felt ashamed of my behavior. I started to realize that my rage had real consequences.

At any rate, the argument — the altercation — was over.  I think my father was a little ashamed himself, too.  Maybe he apologized later… or maybe I did.

Though my father was the disciplinarian, he may have been in need of a little discipline, himself.  He often did things that were impetuous.  I took it for granted then, but I think he really was still young and impulsive.  (I don’t know if this is proof, but he did join the Marine Corps at age 20, leaving his home in New York and moving to South Carolina.)  

He bought a motorcycle once. It kind of showed up out of the blue.  I don’t know if there was any discussion prior to the purchase, but I do remember many a night when our parents argued after we had been sent to bed.

My father opened a hobby shop while he was still working a steady job as a draftsman for an electronic switch-making company, called Stackpole.  

I don’t know if it was meant to be a side hustle or a sort of private getaway, away from home. What it became was a way for him to run a business, hang out with friends and customers, and do the things that he really enjoyed.  He built a “sand table” — something bigger than a pool table, with sand that could be molded into a landscape and modeled to look like a battleground.  At a time when role-playing games were in their infancy, he and his friends were playing out simulated war scenarios in the basement of a small business building in Glenwood South.

I would describe my father as vulnerable, flawed, and human; but always trying… aspiring to be good… aspiring to be a good role model.  

I don’t think I really knew him. I don’t think any child really knows their parents, at least not fully.

It’s painful to be so close to someone — to have loved them and to know that they loved you, and yet not to know them — to know them less than you know a friend or a classmate.

With the benefit of time… and age… and experience, I feel like I understand my father now, as a person, much more than I did 48 years ago… or even 10 years ago.  For example, I know now that my father was a real, invested member of our church — that he didn’t only attend church to make my mother happy, but he was fully committed — teaching Sunday School and making friends in the congregation.  

My mother told me recently that when he died, she thought that the funeral could be held in the church chapel, but the preacher said that the chapel would be too small.  And he was right. When the funeral was held, the church was as full as it ever was at an 11 o’clock service.  

I didn’t understand, really, why it should be so full. I guess I had such a private and personal relationship with my father, and such a limited insight into his interpersonal relationships at work and with friends that I didn’t grasp the extent of his life outside the home.

On the whole, I would describe my father, Gerald Fredric Gallup (Gerry) as a wonderful father, who loved and cherished his children: a strict disciplinarian and dispenser of justice, with the military experience to back it up; an artist and a free spirit, who enjoyed painting, design, creative play, and adventure; a married man, trying to be a supportive and equal partner in the marriage, while carving out time and space for his own enjoyment; a responsible member of the community, at work, and at church, who was…

…who was… I don’t know. I don’t know what were his thoughts… his cares… his ambitions. His worries… his concerns… his fears.

And I will never know.

Ever.

For me his life was trapped in amber — like a hazy dream.

I only knew him as a son knows his father. I can only imagine the rest.

Gerald and Margaret Gallup in the mid-70s.

The Gallup Family in an early 70s photo for Hayes Barton United Methodist Church. (from left to right: Mike, Gerry, Steve, Meg)

Typical 1968 black-and-white photo of Gerald Gallup (age 32), with sons, Steve (age 4), and Mike (age 6).

Be Prepared

{Prompt: What was it like, being a boy? Is it challenging, being a man?}

Becoming a “Man” - The Stages

I probably know more than the average person about child development and gender roles. Believe it or not, I took both Child Psychology (at NC State University), and Child Psychiatry (at Duke University Medical School), during my academic career (a long and tedious stage of my life when I accepted both trivia and tutelage for my efforts instead of money). I even learned the stages of childhood cognitive development as defined by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget.

Jean Piaget— an eminent child psychologist

I should know a lot about childhood from my “edumacation” (as they say ’round here) but I think I learned just a little bit… and maybe more… from my personal experiences as a boy and as a man. I’m no Jean Piaget; but here are my stages of boyhood/manhood:

Stage 1 - Blissful ignorance: The first three or four years of life when there are no expectations, and all behavior is acceptable, except for flinging yourself into a busy road or walking barefoot into Church. Those actions will get you put into time-out. (And if you sass back your Momma or your Daddy, you might even earn yourself a whuppin’.)

Stage 2 - Social consciousness: The whole prepubescent time frame when you begin to realize that you must embrace heteronormative behavior or risk being called things like “sweet”, “shy”, “sissy”, or, worst of all, “gay”. (At least, that’s how it was in the ’60s. You tell me if it’s changed.) Boys were expected to be good at football, dodgeball, and tag, but not good at skipping-rope or clapping-games. Boys were expected to play with little green soldiers, Hot Wheels, cap guns, and Tonka trucks, but not Barbie dolls, Lite-Brite, or the Easy-Bake Oven. Boys were expected to use hand tools, get dirty, and strike out on adventures. Girls were expected to use kitchen tools, look pretty, and take care of babies. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. That’s just how it was when I was a kid.

Stage 3 - Finding a mate: the agonizing period between the full embrace of gender roles, at the onset of puberty, and marriage (the happenstance pairing of two people who have a mutual attraction and more than a passing acquaintance). For men, most of this stage is spent learning to anticipate and deal with rejection, learning to act with impunity (and to hell with the consequences), and learning to “control” (or hide) emotions (and desires).

Stage 4 - Married life: the period (if all goes well) when you unlearn all those self-destructive habits associated with toxic masculinity (or — if things do not go so well — you find a mate who can abide all of your bad habits, who is happily subservient to your whims and caprices).

Of course, marriage could include all sorts of dysfunctional relationships (and frequently does), but much of my marriage involved a good deal of negotiation and compromise as to the proper, best, or at least acceptable way of doing things. It included an ongoing effort to learn how to communicate (out loud and with civility); learn how to spend less money on fast food (and eat more homemade food and leftovers); learn how to clean the kitchen before cleaning any other part of the house (or yard); and learn how to reflexively say, “Yes, dear” instead of “You must be kidding!” to every spousal request.

I could spend days deconstructing the dynamics of couplehood and marriage. And it might be truly therapeutic. But this story is about boyhood, so let’s focus on that stage — stage 2 in my fanciful model above.

Let’s go back to the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, when blacks (and whites) were engaged in peaceful resistance, and the Counterculture Era, when hippies were listening to rock ’n’ roll (and Folk) music and protesting the Vietnam War. Let’s go back to my childhood in the late ’60s and the early ’70s.

My fifth grade class - I am at the bottom left.

School and Sunday School

Of course, I was in elementary school in the seventies. I was at Sherwood Bates Elementary as a boy. I was learning to write in cursive and to multiply using multiplication tables.

We checked books out of the library (by punching a date stamp on the checkout card), ran all over the field at recess (playing games or watching the bees buzzing around the clover), held assemblies to sing “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” to our parents, and stared out the big classroom windows during lessons at the chalkboard.

My elementary school was a conglomerate of Black and white children and Black and white teachers all living in harmony. (Desegregation began in earnest in 1971–72 in Raleigh, when I would have been in second grade. The song Black and White, by Three Dog Night, came out in 1972 and pretty well captures the feeling of the time.)

I was also going to Sunday school at Hayes Barton United Methodist Church, as a boy — learning about the Bible, and especially about Jesus. Jesus was, and always has been (and always will be) the paragon of virtue. I’m sure you knew that.

He was most certainly my earliest role model, outside of my family. He would turn the other cheek to avoid conflict. He would give the shirt off his back to help others. He would talk to a prostitute, even when she had been shunned by the whole town.

He was held forth as a model of peaceful coexistence, back then, both inside and outside the Church sanctuary. Jesus Christ Superstar, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, premiered in October 1971. I think I saw a version of it at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, with my family, within a year or two of its premiere.

When I wasn’t in church school, learning all the stories about Jesus and the parables he taught, I was learning to sing (and play music) as a member of the children’s choir, and then the youth choir, and then the handbell choir.

We also had religious “fun” by going to a variety of Christian events. We went to an old-fashioned revival, out in a field with a tent, way out in the country, in some place like Garner. Or Benson! They served barbecue with baked beans and Brunswick stew (Yuck), and instead of hush puppies they had strange fried bread sticks the length of a pencil. They had a quartet singing spirituals in four-part harmony. They sounded just like the Oak Ridge Boys. Maybe it was the Oak Ridge Boys.

We went on religious retreats to places like Lake Junaluska and Wrightsville Beach. We once stayed at a high-rise hotel on the beach called the Blockade Runner, named for the ships that would run through the blockade around Wilmington during the Civil War.

We once went to a service where folks were encouraged to come up front and be filled with the Holy Spirit by speaking in tongues. I’ve since learned that’s something that’s often done in the Pentecostal churches. Of course I couldn’t understand what they were doing or saying, so I’m pretty sure I asked my mom what they were saying, and she explained the whole phenomenon of speaking in tongues to me in a way I could understand.

By the time we went to the Billy Graham crusade in September of 1973, I was prepared. I knew just about everything I know today about Jesus and the Bible.

But in all seriousness, the Billy Graham crusade was an amazing event, led by a truly charismatic preacher. Billy Graham held his crusade at Carter (now Carter-Finley) Stadium, in Raleigh, near the fairgrounds, for seven nights in a row; and most accounts agree that the stadium was filled every night. I had never been to a place so big, or as filled with reverence, as the stadium was that night, when I was still just a 9-year-old boy.

There were hymns sung by George Beverly Shea, who probably sang How Great Thou Art. And there were hymns sung in unison by the 40,000 people in the stadium! They probably including He Leadeth Me, and Just As I Am, the latter serving as the altar call — the call to come to the (football) field below the preacher’s podium to make a public commitment “to take God as your savior” and dedicate, or rededicate, your life to Christianity— to “be reborn. Thousands of people were reborn in Carter Finley stadium in Raleigh that week, including myself.

Evangelist Billy Graham inspiring Faith

Gaining Merit (Badges)

Outside of school and religion I was just an ordinary boy. I liked to explore the neighborhood creek. I liked to climb the dogwood and magnolia trees. I liked to ride my bike. I liked reading books (The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, etc.), and I liked watching TV.

But in two activities, in fact, I must have been a boy by definition— I was a newspaper “boy” for the Raleigh Times (which I write about in another story), and I was a member of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA, now called Scouting USA).

Looking back on those times, when I was in elementary school and 6th grade — from age 5 to 11 — it’s surprising how much the things that I did in the Boy Scouts match the things that I enjoy as an adult. My love of hiking and being outdoors undoubtedly started with the backpacking and camping excursions in Boy Scouts. And my first introduction to medicine probably began with the first aid skills that I learned back in the ‘70s with my Boy Scout troop.

Besides first aid, scouts were expected to learn certain basic skills — skills that I can boast a bit of familiarity with when called upon, albeit rarely — tying a knot, pounding in a tent stake, pitching a tent, chopping wood, gathering kindling, starting a fire, preparing a dehydrated meal from a package, filtering water, cleaning the dishes, packing a backpack, hiking, and not getting lost.

Chopping a log, in uniform - circa 1976

Boy Scouts must always “be prepared” — the scouting motto. Some would say that I’ve embraced preparedness to an unhealthy degree.

I blame the scouts.

Scouts must swear, “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”

That’s quite a proclamation, if you think about it.

Boy Scout Oath, Salute, and Logo

I think in my life, I’ve gone four for four:

- Help people at all times. Check. Well… partial check. “At all times” is a pretty high bar.

- Physically strong. Tentative check. Strength is kind of relative, I’ve learned.

- Mentally awake. Double check.

- Morally straight. Well… I met the moral requisites of the NC Medical Board for almost 30 years, so I think that’s a check, also.

Do you know the twelve principles of Scout law?

I do — or rather, I did. I used to have them memorized.

They are:

Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful…

…Friendly, Courteous, Kind…

…Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty…

…Brave, Clean, and Reverent.

Those last three are the hardest.

Did I mention the uniform? Scouts wore a khaki shirt and pants, with a U.S. flag patch on the right shoulder and the Scout council, unit, and troop number on the left shoulder.

With a little research (and photo confirmation), I can state that our troop was a part of the Occoneechee Council, in the North Star district. I was in troop 348, which met in the basement of the Hayes Barton Methodist church. (Troop 325 met at the Hayes Barton Baptist church about three blocks away.)

The khaki shirt came with epaulettes on the shoulder, sorta like in the military. The shirts had a collar of course, but not the pointed collar of a disco shirt. It was just an ordinary collar, but we could wear a tie or a neckerchief with the collar. It seems like the neckerchief was for the Cub Scouts or the Webelos, but I have no idea, anymore. I just remember that at some point in my life I was rolling up a dark blue scarf diagonally, to proudly hang around my neck (see below).

There was an olive green web belt with an adjustable metal buckle, embossed with the BSA logo, to be worn around the waist. In Cub Scouts, we could earn belt-slide metal clips, decorated with enamel icons, for certain “Skill Awards.” Those metal loops were fantastic. I loved them.

I think that in Cub Scouts we also wore a sash for the merit badges that we earned. (They had to be sewn on.) But in Boy Scouts I think that the sash was only worn on ceremonial occasions, and your most ‘meritorious’ badges could be sewn onto your shirt.

A truly unbelievable collection of patches

Or maybe it was the patch for the “rank” of the Boy Scout that was sewn onto the shirt.

I know now that the ranks of Scout are Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, Star, Life, and Eagle. I’m fairly sure I only made it as far as Second Class.

As much as I loved earning merit badges, I can’t imagine why I didn’t achieve a higher rank. Maybe the higher ranks required more time, loyalty, and obedience than I could muster. Maybe academics took precedence. Maybe our troop was too much in disarray.

Or maybe I was in disarray.

I always knew that Eagle Scout was unachievable for me. Eagle Scouts were seemingly in it for life. They had to be tenacious and they had to complete an insanely laborious community project, which seemed impossible to me at the time.

But I have to give them kudos for such an accomplishment. I think my Uncle Bill was an Eagle Scout. (And a Physics professor.) At least someone in the family made it.

Mike Gallup, in BSA uniform, with an impressive backpack.

A Cautionary Tale

Most stories about the Boy Scouts are stories about disaster. I mean, what else can you expect when you put a bunch of preadolescent boys in one place.

Here’s one example.

On one of our trips we traveled to the “far off” wilds of western North Carolina (possibly in the Uwharrie mountains—which, by the way, are more like foothills than mountains. None of them are over 1,200 feet high.)

After the mayhem of arriving, pitching tents, gathering kindling, cooking some beans, and poking at the fire, we went to bed, trying to find a comfortable way to sleep on the uneven, knobby ground of the real outdoors in our poofy nylon sleeping bags.

The next day we spent an hour or so in preparation to navigate our way, a mile or two down the trail to a lake. It must have been a well marked or an isolated trail, because no one got lost and no one took a wrong turn—which is a rarity in my experience. In fact, we did the entire trail without adult supervision.

Be that as it may, we ended up at the lake as planned, with no misadventures upon the trail.

However, no one had really planned what to do at the lake. There were no boats. There was no swimming area. There was no fishing gear. There was only a short pier and a rocky beach and about eight pre-adolescent boys from the city, dressed up in Boy Scout garb.

Well, one of this intrepid bunch decided to take off his shoes, roll up his pants cuffs, and wade out into the muckety-muck.

Not having anything better to do, and by nature willing to imitate the actions of anyone with assertiveness, some of the others began to take off their shoes and socks, and dip their toes into the placid water. One or two of us had waded out into the lake, where the shore was littered with moss-covered stones, driftwood, and mud.

Unfortunately, one of the troop discovered there was also broken glass beneath the surface… he cut his foot, and with a cry of alarm he limped his way back to the shore.

With images of an underwater minefield of glass in our heads, all the rest of us carefully retraced our steps, hoping to avoid the fate of our fallen comrade.

Safely back at shore, we inspected his cut for embedded glass, which was thankfully absent, and we applied a bandage, probably wrapped from a sock, a T-shirt, or a blue Boy Scout bandana. The bleeding was minimal but undoubtedly painful.

Then we debated how best to go back for proper treatment — whether to prepare a cot with which to drag the hobbled child, or attempt a fireman’s carry, or send a runner up the trail for assistance. In the end, we decided upon the “Four-handed Seat Carry”, a lesser-known rescue carry, possibly one known only to army medics, paramedics, and Boy Scouts in training.

The Four-handed Seat Carry

I had never seen this rescue technique before, and I’ve never seen it since, but I saw it implemented that day with an incredible amount of conviction.

In theory, two people form a sturdy place to sit by grasping each other’s forearms, while the conscious or semi-conscious victim sits with their arms around the necks of the rescuers. And in practice, it looks pretty much like the picture above — at least until the rescuers start to get tired.

And it doesn’t take long for some ten-year-old boys to get tired when lugging a 75 pound scout up a forest trail.

And its awfully hard for this assembly of three to walk sideways up a trail that’s only wide enough for one or two hikers.

Still, we made some progress, using our overly engineered, merit-badge worthy carry, but it was slow progress — painfully slow.

In the end, I think that the boy with the laceration chose to dismount this humiliating makeshift seat, and limp, hopping on one leg, with one person for support — football-injury style.

Upon our return, the scoutmasters reacted with alarm to the whole situation. They had little regard for the ingenuity of our rescue or our chivalrous behavior. (I think they were probably sweating bullets for letting the boys go off and hurt themselves, while they were completely unsupervised.)

Conclusion – The Mantle of Manhood

Before my time in the scouts came to an end, I was lucky enough to have my Dad participate in a day of gun safety and shooting at a gun range, with the troop. I don’t know how it came to fruition, but my Dad spent a few hours talking to us about guns and letting us actually shoot some guns under proper supervision.

He had a rifle that we learned to fire in the standing… kneeling… and prone positions. (I think most of our firing was allowed only in the prone position, where we were least likely to dangerously swing the rifle from side to side.)

We learned to load the chamber, line up the sights, and slowly — very slowly — squeeze the trigger.

I hardly ever touched a gun after that day, but for one day at least, I was a “deadly weapon.” I would hazard to say that the other kids took my dad pretty seriously too, when he gave this session on the use of firearms. It wasn’t playtime anymore.

Gerry Gallup with his .22 rifle in August 1971

My dad died unexpectedly in the winter of 1977, when I was still only twelve years old. Even so, I was lucky to have a pretty good male role model, for the entirety of my boyhood.

After his death, I still enjoyed the rambunctious ramblings of a teenager in the days before internet and smartphones.

I went to movies at the Rialto, rode a moped around to see my friends, chopped up wood for our fireplace, saw the orthodontist for braces, and played basketball up at the courts outside of Sherwood Bates Elementary School.

The halcyon days of childhood — playing kickball and picking buttercups , were gone forever.

I became less involved in Boy Scouts and in Methodist Church activities, and more or less withdrew to hang out with a stable group of childhood friends who supported me (along with my family’s support) for the next three years, until I went off to school at the School of Science and Math.

It’s been many years since the boyhood I fondly remember. Many years learning to be a good man. And many years learning to be a good husband.

I’m still learning, but now that I’m married and retired, the mantle of manhood seems a little bit lighter than it did before.

Redbuds in bloom at Sherwood Bates school

Appendix I - “The Seven Ages of Man”

From As You Like It by William Shakespeare

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything

Appendix II - Lyrics to “A Man I’ll Never Be”

from Boston’s Don’t Look Back album by Tom Scholz. 1978

If I said what’s on my mind
You’d turn and walk away
Disappearing way back in your dreams
It’s so hard to be unkind
So easy just to say
That everything is just the way it seems
You look up at me
And somewhere in your mind, you see
A man I’ll never be
If only I could find a way
I’d feel like I’m the man you believe I am
It’s getting harder every day for me
To hide behind this dream you see
A man I’ll never be
I can’t get any stronger
And I can’t climb any higher
You’ll never know just how hard I’ve tried
Cry a little longer
And hold a little tighter
Emotions can’t be satisfied…

Appendix III -List of Fictional Role Models on TV in the ‘70s

TV dads

Mike Brady (Robert Reed) on The Brady Bunch

Pa (Michael Landon) on Little House on the Prairie

John Walton (Ralph Waite) on The Waltons

James Evans (John Amos) on Good Times (Seasons 1-3)

Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) on the Andy Griffith Show

TV families without (suitable) Dads

All in the Family

One Day at a Time

Good Times (Seasons 4-6)

The Partridge Family

Not Dads at All, (but role-models, nonetheless)

Gabe Kotter (Gabe Kaplan) on Welcome Back Kotter

Hawkeye (Alan Alda) on M*A*S*H

Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and McCoy (DeForest Kelley) on Star Trek

James West (Robert Conrad) and Artemis Gordon (Ross Martin) on Wild, Wild West

Mr. Grant (Ed Asner) and Murray (Gavin Mcleod) on the Mary Tyler Moore show

James Rockford (James Garner) on The Rockford Files

When I Grow Up

{Prompt: If you had to go back in time and start a brand new career, what would it be?}

Fire Station Six

When I was five or six, I remember going with a gaggle of children to Raleigh Fire Department, Station 6, at the corner of Fairview and Oberlin.

Sidebar: The corner of Fairview and Oberlin was near the edge of my known world, at the time; across the street from Johnson’s Pharmacy, where we could go for shakes and burgers, and spin on the bar stools after school, when I was older.

And it was on the way to Hayes Barton Methodist Church, where I would struggle to stay awake, on Sunday mornings, during the interminable oratory of the 11 o’clock service. (I spent most of the service looking through the pages of the hymnal or entering a slightly hypnotic state, by gazing at the stained glass windows of the chapel.) But I digress. Back to our story….

I knew it was Fire Station Six, because it said so in big blocky, aluminum letters on the front of the red brick building — so big and so legible that even a preschooler could read them. As we milled around the concrete driveway of the fire station garage, firemen in faded yellow canvas outfits with indefinable gear (indefinable for a little kid), gave us pep talks on the civic virtues of the fire department, showed off their impressively clean and bright, metallic red fire trucks, and showed how the shiny poles inside the garage led up into the living quarters above.

I think it was about that time that I wrote “Fireman” on a little piece of lined elementary school writing paper, carefully printed in graphite, in answer to the question of “What would you like to be when you grow up?”

Shiny Ladder & Pump Truck at Station 6 (Credit: Mike Legeros).

Our Backyard Brick Patio

As a child, I remember my father being pretty handy with tools, and taking on many small projects inside and outside the house. I’m pretty sure he built a storage shed in the very back of our backyard, beneath the oak tree that had held our treehouse the year before.

And he had planted a garden on one side of our backyard, with rows of corn, tomatoes, and something called “Dill”. I remember that clearly.

And we had a sturdy clothesline running at a jaunty angle from one pine tree on one side of the backyard to another one way down at the other end. Pulling in the laundry was a way I “helped” my Mom from time to time.

But I was about 12 when my father decided to undertake a project in our backyard unlike any he had done before. He decided to build a curved brick patio, serving as a transition from the 10 by 10 foot concrete slab (our de facto backyard terrace) to the previously unimproved lot, of trampled pine straw, clay, and tree roots. This patio was to serve no useful purpose for a child or a teen — it couldn’t be drawn on with chalk or used for playing marbles. It wouldn’t be good for rolling around on a bike or a scooter, or root-filled enough to serve as an imaginary WWII landscape for our little green army men. As a matter of fact, it was planned to have a gently flowing border with a short retaining wall, a bench, and a small pond for keeping fish. It was built purely to be a place for relaxation and to be aesthetically pleasing.

Over the span of several weeks, my dad leveled the ground, laid out the bricks, spread out sand to fill the spaces, and constructed a small sitting wall and pond using bricks and mortar. I don’t recall any celebration or party, but to me, at the time, the undertaking seemed Herculean… the result, somewhat mythical. (Years later, my brother and I built an addition to the patio — a wooden deck that I like to think my father would have approved of.)

A photo of the patio (taken by Gerald Gallup).

It was about that time that I entertained the idea of becoming a Landscape Architect when I grew up.

A typical illustration of a landscape architect.

Vocational Planning

In junior high school, back in the day, we all were given a reprieve from our lessons for an hour or two, to take a vocational aptitude test. Sometime in the 70s, I think I took the Strong Interest Inventory. It was designed to match our expressed interests and our personalities with those of people in various careers. Based on our responses, our interests were graded and categorized as “Realistic”, “Investigative”, “Artistic”, “Social”, “Enterprising”, or “Conventional”. I’m pretty sure that I was told on the computer-generated report (something new, at the time), that my scores highly matched those of people in “adventure” careers, and in “science” careers. My scores poorly matched those of people in “clerical” or “service” careers. Consequently, the top matches for me were careers like “Airline Pilot” and “Medical Doctor”.

An array of workers from various vocations.

I think it was less than a year later that I entered the School of Science and Math. Although the school took pains to be sure that we had a complete education, including the humanities, I think that we all felt an unspoken (or thinly veiled) pressure to succeed in our future endeavors — or, at least, not to fail and bring disgrace to the school — a publicly funded experiment of a residential school for students gifted in science and math. So I guess, I drank the Kool-aid, as it were, and I found myself applying to colleges in the School of Mathematics or the School of Engineering. Mind you, it wasn’t a wrong choice. I was quite good at math, and I had an interest in design and problem-solving. Engineering was a solid, logical choice.

However, when I took the Intro to Engineering course at Vanderbilt University, I found out that Engineers are frequently beholden to corporate entities, working at the behest of others, with what I perceived to be limited autonomy. Something about the experience turned me off, and when I transferred back to NC State University (due to tuition costs), I entered the Department of Agriculture and Life Sciences as a Pre-med major.

I honestly think that was the best decision I ever made, although it was really only the first of many decisions to be made in choosing a medical career.

Patterson Hall - at NC State University (Credit: Bryan Pollard)

Medical School and Residency

Later I narrowed my medical ambitions to either Emergency Medicine or Family Practice. Ironically, those are the two specialties that treat the widest variety of medical conditions, so I hadn’t narrowed my focus by much.

I matched to a Transitional Year - Medicine Internship at Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city where there were several highly regarded residency programs in Emergency Medicine — the direction I was leaning at the time. I even interviewed for Emergency Medicine residency programs, traveling as far as Worcester, Massachusetts, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, to explore the options.

But when it came time for me to rank my residency programs for “The Match”, I had serious doubts about how much I wanted to subject myself to critical level scenarios on a daily basis. I tried to pivot to a match in family medicine where continuity of care and bedside manner were more important. Unfortunately, by the time I realized that family practice is a perfectly respectable specialty (contrary to Duke Medical School’s culture), I failed to match with any program at all.

At this time, I was married, and I had already taken my wife from the warm Southern weather of North Carolina, to the Arctic winter and sunless skies of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now I had to tell her that we were moving again. And mainly because of my lack of foresight regarding my career aspirations.

Luckily, Dianne has a job that relies on medical data, and a job that would be in great demand at nearly any institution that I chose. Together, we looked at the options for programs that had unmatched openings for second-year residents, and one location sort of popped off the page — Columbia, South Carolina, the city in which my mother had been born and raised.

Columbia— the capital of South Carolina.

Would I Do It All Again?

So I went to residency in South Carolina, and following residency, I practiced family medicine for 26 years. I retired in 2019. I think I can honestly say that I never regretted my choice of career. I’m not saying I wasn’t exhausted, overwhelmed, or unprepared. I just knew, when I went through medical school, that I was in the right place. I was in a field of study where there was—and still is—so much to be discovered. A field of study that would allow me to exercise my independent streak, by opening a private practice, and yet allow me to give advice and comfort to people in all walks of life, while enjoying just a little bit of small talk with each encounter.

When I retired, I made a list of jobs I would consider, if I had to return to work (if our financial resources were insufficient). The jobs I had listed included Teacher, Surveyor, Ecologist, Landscape Architect, Writer, Park Ranger, and Bookstore owner. I even entertained returning for a residency in Pathology, or serving as a Medical Director for a Hospice program or a nursing home, or working as a Medical Examiner (for disability determination), or keeping my hand in the medical field by serving as a Scribe.

But I have little interest in returning to medicine after 30 years of medical school and practice. I would prefer to feed my hunger for the outdoors, or strike out into the world of the arts. Neither of those fields are likely to bring me much profit or acclaim, but they might bring me a measure of mindfulness and satisfaction.

Then again, is it too late to become a firefighter?

(Credit: Cosumnes FD)

Time Everlasting

{Prompt: What do you remember of your relatives?}

My Aunts and Uncles

As I grew up, around age four or five, I became aware that my mother had two brothers and a sister, and I had numerous cousins. They just didn’t live nearby. Her brothers were Bill and Frank (Whitesell). Her sister was Mary Lou (Minyard).

Uncle Bill and Aunt Corinne lived in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with their children. They were “The Whitesells”. Aunt Corinne had two children from a previous marriage who were adopted by Uncle Bill when they married. They were part of the family. But Aunt Corinne also lived a long time in Anchorage, Alaska, without Uncle Bill, for reasons unknown. That was just the arrangement.

Uncle Bill was a physics professor at Antioch College for years upon years, and he was an avid runner, even running up forest roads into the mountains from my grandparents’ farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Uncle Bill was a boy scout (probably an Eagle scout) as a kid, and I’ve seen pictures of him with a violin. It seems like he was good at everything he did. He was probably the pride of the family.

Uncle Jim and Aunt Mary Lou lived in Starkville, Mississippi with their family. They were “The Minyards”. Uncle Jim was a chemistry professor at Mississippi State University. Uncle Jim was probably a Baptist, judging by his fervor for the Bible and his zeal for spreading the Word. Aunt Mary Lou became his wife, and the mother of five children. She must have been a wonderful mother, judging from the happy disposition and affection of her children. Whether Uncle Jim was a wonderful father or not, I can’t say for sure. Uncle Jim had strong opinions and seemed to see the world in terms of right and wrong. I felt like his expectations might have been hard to live up to — a feeling that was confirmed at his funeral, when my cousin Tommy said as much.

Uncle Frank lived in another part of Mississippi. He lived in Hattiesburg, where he was an Economics professor. Although he was married to a woman named Dixie, they were divorced after 7 years, and he never married again. I don’t know why. If he had other relationships down in Mississippi, they were never discussed.

The few times that we met, he always had a gentle smile, treating me with kindness, and treating me as if I was an adult. Possibly he had learned how to treat young men with kindness and ease, from his experience as a college instructor. He had no children, and left all of his retirement savings to his sister — my mother, Margaret — when he passed away. He died from cancer in 2017.

Frank, Margaret, Mary Lou, and Bill - circa 1990.

My Cousins

My cousins, the Whitesells of Ohio, included David, Selwa, Betty, Janet, and Danny. My cousins, the Minyards of Mississippi, included Susan, Tom, Barbara, Carol, and Billy. I always think of my cousins as the children that they were in the ’70s, because that’s when we saw each other the most—wandering around the farmhouse (“The Farm”) in the Shenandoah Valley, near Stanley, Virginia.

David and Selwa Whitesell were the oldest, and were sometimes absent at family get-togethers (possibly doing things with their mother, Corinne, or possibly doing things that older children would enjoy.) When they did show up for a get-together, I had to be reminded that they were my cousins. They just didn’t hang out with us much. I thought they were already all grown up, but in reality, they were only six or seven years older than me and my brother.

Susan and Tommy Minyard were only a little bit older than my brother, Mike (three and one year older, respectively), and they were naturally expected to come up with fun things to do whenever there was nothing to do. And that was most of the time, since the adults were usually engaged in boring conversation, and we never had access to a TV at the farm.

Betty Whitesell and Barbara Minyard (the middle children) were closer to Mike’s age (maybe just a little bit younger), but I think that he spent more time hanging out with Tommy. He and Tommy were both little mischief-makers, looking for ways to get themselves in trouble, and then trying to keep word of the mischief from reaching our dads, who might very well have given them a whuppin’ if they felt it was justified.

Janet Whitesell and Carol Minyard were just about the same age as I was. I had never had a sister; so when I met a female relative — a cousin — that was my age, in my family, I studied them with a great deal of curiosity, as if they were extraterrestrials or body snatchers.

Danny Whitesell was about my age, and Billy Minyard was just a little bit younger. Now they call themselves, Daniel and Bill, respectively, but back in the 70s, they were still Danny and Billy. They were along for the ride. And so was I, most of the time.

Most of us at my grandparents’ 50th anniversary – July 1976

The Farm

Most of the time, we met each other at the farm in the summer, or sometimes, at Thanksgiving. I think that once we met for Christmas at my grandparents’ first home, in Columbia, South Carolina. I vividly remember a small decorative sculpted metal tree with colorful jellied gumdrops at Christmas time, and a rendition of O Little Town of Bethlehem, by Uncle Jim, at bedtime, in an unabashedly mellifluous, baritone singing-voice.

Christmas in Columbia, South Carolina with the Minyards

And once we went to Hattiesburg, because I remember going to the Mississippi State University student center and playing some improvised game (without pool sticks) at a pool table. That might have been the same time that I went exploring with somebody near my age in the belly of a church, behind or under the altar, and I got a reprimand from my mother, because the congregation could hear us screaming in glee while we were playing hide and seek, or tag, or some other ad hoc children’s game.

But every other time, we were at the farm, the historic farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley that had been built around 1830 by my ancestors. It was built in pioneer times. Now it is listed as the Locust Grove property in Page County, by the National Register of Historic Places, but once it was simply known as the Old Jacob Brubaker house.

“The Farm” in Page County in the Shenandoah Valley

Most of the time, while we were at the farm, we were exploring. We would go back, past the lawn of the backyard… and down, into the cow pasture, dodging Frisbee-sized cow-patties, and avoiding thorny thistle plants that were as tall as a rake.

We would wander down the two ruts of the dirt road that led to the cow barn, and look into the big barn doors, opening on their rusty hinges — looking at the bits of hay suspended in the air above the upper floor where there was a hay loft. Or we would wander a little further down, to the lower floor where the mud was impressively deep, having once been gouged into deep hoof prints by cattle during the rainy season.

We wandered sometimes all the way to the creek at the bottom of the sloping pasture, and we would attempt some feat of hydraulic engineering with whatever objects we could find to use as building materials (mostly big rocks and mud).

Usually I was distracted by dragonflies, with their metallic sheen and iridescent bodies, perching imperiously on a blade of tall grass… or hovering over the water in a perfect state of suspended animation… or gliding through the air in lines as straight as vectors… completely unlike the circuitous paths of the houseflies, moths, and butterflies.

On one occasion, we walked down to the creek by way of the country road, the one that headed north towards Ida and Luray. At the bottom of the hill, where the road crossed the creek, we turned onto a flat metal, grated structure, sort of like a pier, that extended away from the road about 10 feet out over the brook. I have no idea what it was for.

As we went out onto this lookout point, we stirred up a nest of bees or hornets. I think it might have been Tommy, Mike, me, and Billy. There was a lot of screaming as one of us got stung, and the prospects of more stinging seemed assured as a small swarm of buzzing vespids started flying all around us, chasing us up - at least halfway up - the hill, back to the farmhouse. I think that Billy suffered several stings. I ran the fastest, when the alarm was raised, and came away mostly unscathed.

We also explored the crawl space and the basement underneath the house. But they were cold and dank compared to the area beneath the porch. The back porch of the old farmhouse was covered by lattice, and the space beneath was relatively cool and comfortable on a summer day. We could stay hidden beneath the back porch for hours. I rarely ventured farther back into the darkened basement beneath the house. I only learned later that there were rooms and cots under the house that had once belonged to domestic servants or slaves.

We loved to go down to the pump house where a 3 or 4 foot tall, heavy hunter green, cast-iron water pump stood, right above a trough, where the water from the well could be pumped into the cow pasture. On the antique pump there was a long curving pump handle that with the proper ministrations — a long sweep of up-and-down pushing and pulling — could be persuaded to suck water up from far below, and send it gurgling out of the sizable spigot. That was the best mechanical creation I had ever played with!

The Pump House on “The Farm” (without the pump)

There was also a large farm bell placed atop a 4x4 post, right outside the back door to the kitchen. There were no cattle and no farm hands at the farm in my lifetime, but the bell was still there, and once or twice it was used to beckon us children back to the house. I thank grandma let us use it once to call grandpa in from his woodshed.

The woodshed — in the back, off to one side — was the place where granddad crafted his black walnut stools, side tables, picture frames, and weather vanes. It was a thinly clad wooden structure with a very small, open crawlspace — a crawlspace only big enough for cats and vermin to crawl beneath — too small even for preschoolers. On the stoop, at the door to the shop, I recall the smell of varnish and the swirl of sawdust in the air — the interior mostly hidden in shadow. Children were not generally welcomed amongst the cutting tools or the finished wooden projects, which were waiting for the glue and varnish to dry.

There was also an ancient graveyard on a small hill between the farmhouse and the mountains. It contained the graves of a few of the Brubaker ancestors that once lived on the farm — some of them, infants. The graves were out past the outhouse — well past — at the edge of the yard, where the woods began.

The outhouse itself was at the end of a flagstone path that ran beneath an arbor of grapes. Night and day the rickety wooden door was secured by a swiveling wooden latch, which could easily be dislodged, allowing the door to accidentally open. Someone had added a cabin hook on the inside, allowing the occupant to keep the door closed more securely — a small concession to privacy. Still, there was little comfort in using the outhouse, as the stench of it was certainly far greater than a modern bathroom — more nearly in line with the overwhelming odor of urine and feces in a Porta John.

The Outhouse on the Farm.

The House

We also spent many summer hours enjoying the cool interior of the old farmhouse. The best part of it all (inside or out) was the wide banister rail of the grand flight of hallway stairs in the middle of the house. The rail was at least six inches wide, securely fastened, and as slippery-smooth as a water slide. A child with even the least amount of balance could easily slide five to ten feet down the banister rail, slip off to the side, and land on their feet. If there were any fear of sliding across the curlicue of the rail at the bottom of the stairs, one could make an easier slide above the turn in the stairs, at the landing near the top.

In the attic could be found vintage toys from a bygone era — dilapidated editions of The Marvelous Land of Oz, wooden spelling toys, and toys loosely associated with the old TV Batman series. “Wham! Pow!”

In the kitchen, there were other vestiges of life in the past. Water from the outdoor pump was brought to the kitchen and ladled into a basin, and there we would wash our hands for dinner. A tank-sized antique oven had been decommissioned, and now adorned the corner of the dining room — replaced in the kitchen by a less primitive version from the ‘60s or ‘70s.

Next to the kitchen, there was a small screen porch with dozens of shelves holding pickled vegetables and canned fruits. Sometimes, not far from the canning room, we would assist the elders in shucking the corn (they preferred white corn), snapping green beans, or peeling potatoes. Granddaddy kept a vegetable garden with ten to twenty rows of produce off to one side of the front yard, between the carport and the grape arbor. Sometimes we would see him out in the garden, working away.

Grandmother confined her preparations to the kitchen, and, when she was ready, she had a tiny silver bell to summon family to the dining room in the farmhouse addition. When the bell began to tinkle, lazy readers and napping cousins, from all over the house, began to assemble around the boardroom-size table, filling up the the entire dining room, and then some.

We found seats or stools all around the table, sometimes a baker’s dozen, or more of us, drawn up elbow to elbow. Platters and bowls of steaming food sat, equally crowded, across the table, from end to end.

We gave thanks for our blessings, hands cupped in prayer, or we peeked out at the relatives, heads reverently bowed. Then we began to pick and choose, from the bountiful options, what buttery-delicious cooked vegetables to consume, whether to take a biscuit or a roll, and how much meat to fork over.

Slowly the food was passed around — sometimes getting more distant, sometimes closing in. When the meal was finished, we asked to be excused, or we waited for dessert.

Time Slips By

When we went to the farm, we took a step back in time, and time seemed to lose its meaning — the magic of a simple life.

Talking… playing… gathering… eating… sleeping. We communed with the family — doing all things together.

We communed with our ancestors — sepia portraits on the walls and ghosts in the graveyard.

We communed with the valley:

—Dragonflies whizzing over the brook and the field at midday.

—Fireflies twinkling across the lawn at dusk.

—Crickets chirping at night.

Time slid by seamlessly, as life on the farm moved from season to season, and the people came and went.

Comings and Goings

My family — my father, Gerry; my mother, Meg; my brother, Mike, and I — went to the farm many times, driving up from North Carolina and across the mountains of Virginia so often — once on the way up, and again on the way back — that I know every gap in the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Sometimes we went to see a Civil War battlefield. Sometimes we went to see the historic Natural Bridge. Several times we saw the Caverns in Luray, or the Johnny Appleseed Restaurant in New Market.

We also swam at the Hawksbill pool, when the asphalt on the roads was hot enough to fry an egg. We attended service at Stanley United Methodist Church, crowding into a small partitioned annex for the Sunday School lesson. We drove along the narrow roller coaster roads of the back country, bouncing out of our seats when the car hit a dip or a hump in the road.

I’ve seen my cousins as adults since then, visiting Barbara (and Ron) in Maryland for a lobster boil, visiting Tom (and Liz) in Golden, Colorado before hiking in the Rocky Mountains, visiting Carol (and Jim) in Petaluma, California, before touring the wine country.

And I’ve seen them at weddings and anniversaries and funerals. Betty (and Mark) came, wearing full Roaring ‘20s attire, to Mike’s costume wedding. The entire Whitesell clan was in attendance for the 50th anniversary of Bill and Corinne. (Selwa showed us the quirky shops of Yellow Springs, a progressive enclave, overflowing with arts and crafts.) ‘Most everyone was there, that could be there, at Graves Chapel, to sing The Old Rugged Cross when Granddad passed away in 1991, and when Grandma died, about two years later.

Whitesells (clockwise) - Selwa, David, Bill, Betty, husband Mark

The Farm has been sold once or twice since then, passing out of the family, and into the caring hands of other members of the community.

The water pump has been removed and the well has been covered.

The woodshed is empty of sawdust and varnish. The pantry, empty of pickles and jam.

The graves on the hillside are hidden by brambles and overgrowth.

The children that played capture the flag around the venerable house have all grown up, and have children (and grand-children) of their own.

Still….

The dragonflies hover and whizz.

The crickets’ wings twitch and chirp.

The fireflies twinkle and glow.

Time stands still.

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.