Know Bull

By Thomas Bullock

Bull is the nickname that Tom acquired after writing the “BULL” column for Motion Control magazine in the 90’s.  Tom explained to his readers that the “BULL” title was not a reflection of the content of his column, but due to his last name being BULLock.  One of 12 children, he left home at age 10 upon the death of his mother and was able to trade his labor for room and board.  Today, Social Services would have stepped in, but it was up to the family to find alternatives in those days.  After five years, mostly on a farm, he returned home for his last two years of high school before joining the Air Force.  His life had its ups and downs, including the tragic deaths of four of his siblings and his own near-death experiences with tuberculosis and kidney failure.  The upside was his very successful career as an engineer and manager in the automation field and his family and progeny of which he is most proud.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Bullock
• Release date: Jan 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386310747

Book preview

Chapter 1: Life Changing

––––––––

It was 4:00 am, two days before Christmas in 1942, when the knock came on the living room door that would change our lives forever.  My dad had been sitting in the Morris chair in the den.  We all loved that chair.  It was a dark stained oak and comfortably padded.  The back could be tilted by moving a crossbar up and down from behind the chair.  My dad had been drifting in and out of sleep.  He was certainly tired enough, but he was also worried.  There were still nine of us kids living at home.  Jim was 17, but mom and dad had allowed him to join the navy and he was in boot camp in Newport, Rhode Island.  The other two of the twelve had died.  It was tough to make ends meet on a mail carrier’s pay.  I remember how dad ate bread and gravy at almost every meal.  In my later years, my brother, Dick, explained that it was because he left the meat to be divided among the rest of the family.  And now that rap on the door would bring a whole lot of new problems for him to deal with.

Our sleeping arrangements had been all changed that night.  The house had only three bedrooms for the 11 that were living there at this time.  The main part of the house had 2 bedrooms upstairs and a living room and den downstairs.  The house faced east.  The third bedroom, for mom and dad, was built off the south side of the house.  On the west side down a short set of stairs was the dining room with an opening on its south side into the kitchen.  The front bedroom upstairs was the girl’s room and the back west bedroom was the boy’s room.  The boy’s room had the advantage that the stovepipe ran through it, but its disadvantage was that the top of the stairs opened on the northwest corner, so the girls had to walk through our room to get to theirs.  This gave the girls much more privacy, although there was only a curtain between the rooms where a door normally would have been.  We were a little warmer than the girls, though, because of the stovepipe.  The pot bellied stove was between the living room and the den and glowed bright red as it tried to supply the energy from the wood and coal to heat the house on this cold, crisp winter morning.

But, Dick and I had been sleeping downstairs in mom and dad’s room that night.  There was also a bed in the den that was full that night plus several asleep in the living room.  We were all awaiting some news.  And that news had to come through the living room door because we had no phone.  That was not uncommon in 1942 since we lived in town and it was only a five minute walk to Main Street in Middlebury, Vermont.  There was always somebody on Main Street who knew the latest local news.  It was hard to justify the cost of a phone when there were so many other needs.  My parents didn’t have a car either.  My dad was 43, but he would be well into his 50’s before owning his first automobile.  We had a radio, though, and it drew the family together to listen to Inner Sanctum, Lux Radio Theater, The Shadow, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, Stop the Music, Abbott and Costello plus all the latest music and news.  None of these could beat the stories my mother could tell, though.  I still remember as a very young boy sitting in my mothers lap with one of her arms holding me securely and the other holding my next older brother, Dick.  It would be on the front porch on a warm summer night with the rest of the family gathered around as well.  My mother would be telling stories from memory or making up new ones.  Her voice seemed magical.  I always felt so comfortable and safe and I would hope her stories would never end.  For me, they never did as my next awareness would be waking up in my bed the following morning.

And her voice was, indeed, magical.  My grandfather Smith wanted her to be an opera singer.  She was the one they called on to sing the Ave Maria solo at Midnight mass.  I remember my sister Mary nudging me at midnight mass and saying that’s our mother singing.  I wish I could remember more clearly how her voice sounded since I am now a vocal critic after having watched American Idol for the past several years.  But it must have been beautiful.  She apparently cast her spell on other ladies in the town as she had small groups visiting often for tea.  After the tea, she would tell their fortune from the tea leaves and the tarot cards.  The ladies would gasp and moan and laugh as the future was revealed to them.  It must be something in the genes as my youngest sister, Kathleen, would become a nationally recognized astrologist as we will later find out.

We had an upright piano in the living room and mother would gather us around it at times as she played and we all sang.  What fun times.  You wouldn’t know that we were poor.  One year when I was in about the fourth grade, my mother taught me to sing Did your mother come from Ireland? for the St Patrick’s Day program at St. Mary’s Grade School in Middlebury.  I memorized it OK, but there was one line that I had trouble with, but I was getting it when I practiced at home with her.  On the day of the performance, she dressed me in a green outfit and made sure that my flaming red hair had a long, round curl hanging down the middle of my forehead.  I remember people saying to me: There was a little boy who had a little curl, right in the middle of his forehead.  When he was good, he was very, very good, but when he was bad, he was horrid.  Originally, that poem was about a girl in which case it would have rhymed better.  When I got on the stage to sing it, I was a bit nervous, but thinking clearly.  As I approached the line that I knew I was having trouble with, I panicked a bit and decided it would be safer to simply repeat the previous line and no one would know the difference, except for my sister, Betty, who was sitting in the audience near Father Leonard, the parish priest.  She had practiced some with me and knew how it went.  So, as I was repeating the line, I winked real hard at her so she would know that I was doing this on purpose.  Needless to say, everyone saw me do it and the place burst out in laughter.  Afterward, Father Leonard came up to me and exclaimed how proud he was that I noticed him in the audience and winked at him during the performance.  I didn’t have the courage to tell him that I was really winking at my sister.  I told Betty and my mother, though.

My mother, born Margaret Florence Smith on April 27, 1902, was the disciplinarian.  My dad was much too gentle and kind to perform that task effectively.  Her preferred method was to have us go outside and pick a stick.  That would mean a thin branch from a bush or a sapling.  She would use it to strike us across the legs as we danced in front of her in anticipation of the sting.  The sting wasn’t that bad.  The anticipation and dread while picking the stick were the worst parts.  Later in life, I realized that this method also gave my mother a cooling off period so that when she finally delivered the punishment, it was not in anger, but to impress on our minds that we had done something wrong.  With so many kids to discipline, she must have had a great deal of patience and restraint.  One time, I thought that there was so much on her mind that she would forget about it if I didn’t come back right away.  Instead of picking a stick, I went to visit one of my friends and didn’t return until supper time.  As soon as I walked in the house for supper, she asked where is the stick?  It turned out to be my most remembered discipline as I had spent the whole afternoon anticipating what would happen if she didn’t forget.  The lengthy anticipation was worse than the short-lived sting.

J:\PapasPics\006.jpg

Having 12 full-term pregnancies took its toll on my mom’s body.  She was overweight, had diabetes and was worried because her eyesight was failing.  And then there was the bronchial weakness that many of us would inherit.  When mom began developing the bronchial infection that would turn into pneumonia, she slept in the den.  Dad arranged for someone to take the three youngest for the day while the rest went to school and Betty, the oldest, to work.  Mom could get good rest that way.  Dad would walk home at noon to check on her and we kids would start showing up later in the afternoon.  This went on for only a couple of days before it became necessary to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital.  It must have been a Saturday because we were not in school.  I was playing with a neighbor when the ambulance came.  My sister yelled for me to come home, but I finished the game we were playing before doing so.  When I got home, the ambulance had left and my sister scolded me because my mom had asked Where is Tommy?...Where is Tommy?"  They said she had hugged everyone else.

We had been ready for Christmas because my mother had to order our presents from the Sears catalog, so it had to be done well ahead of time.  We each were told to go through the catalog and select gifts that totaled $1.00.  In 1942, one could get two or three things for $1.00, so we were happy with it.  My brother, Dick, wanted just one thing, but it was $1.39.  He refused to choose anything else, so I warned him that he may end up with nothing if he didn’t cooperate.  His choice was a little battlefield with a couple of guns mounted on it which shot small wooden projectiles.  Dick was very well liked and easy to get along with.  He was also optimistic with a good sense of humor so he figured these attributes would carry the day and he would get his choice. 

But, before we could have Christmas, that knock on the living room door this cold, dark December 23rd morning had to be answered.  My dad opened the door and exchanged some mumbled words, then closed the door.  He turned and, in a trembling and barely audible voice, announced: your mother has passed away. 

Chapter 2: Aftershock

––––––––

We all assembled in the living room and cried, not realizing that there was an aftershock coming, especially for my dad, before the day was out.  The two youngest, Patricia and Kathleen, were totally unaware of what was going on and at times seemed amused and at other times bewildered.  I was 2 months past my 10th birthday and didn’t fully comprehend what this would mean to our family.  My dad had indicated that during the night, he had seen my mother walk up the short flight of stairs leading from the dining room to the den with the Morris chair where he had been dozing.  Several to whom he told this story gasped in amazement.  I didn’t understand the significance of this, so I asked my dad several times during the day what it meant without getting an answer that made sense.  Finally, when I bugged him for about the fifth time, he said it means that she is coming home in a voice that was on the verge of breaking up.  He immediately headed for the door with the trash can in his hand.  That was something that my dad did every day.  He would go around the house with the largest trash can in his arms and dump the others into it.  He would then take it to the back yard where he had a burning barrel and burn the contents.  It wasn’t until I became a burner myself in my adult years that I understood the therapeutic value of burning trash.  Not only are you getting rid of the trash from the house and the dead limbs and trees from the nearby woods, but you are also able to stare at the flickering flames and contemplate the issues facing you, your family, and the world.  And I am sure that my dad needed this kind of therapy at that time with all the problems that must have been on his mind that day.  My sisters scolded me for bugging dad about the meaning of my mother’s appearance on the steps.  I never brought it up again, but it still didn’t make sense to me because she is not coming home again except for the wake which was to be held in our living room.  That was where the wake for my two brothers, Robert and Francis John had also taken place.  Francis John died as a three-month old baby before I was born.  He probably died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), although the doctors couldn’t explain it at the time, but several of my siblings would be diagnosed with sleep apnea later in life.  Apnea and SIDS seem to be related. Robert died at 10 years of age from rheumatic fever, a disease that often follows a throat infection..  I was only 21 months old when Robert died, but I still remember it because there was a significant emotional event which was imprinted on my mind.  I remember Robert being laid out in a small coffin in our living room.  Robert had been sickly with rheumatic fever and had been confined to a wheel chair, although I don’t remember that part.  My sister was holding me in her arms when she brought me over to the coffin, leaned over it and told me to kiss Robert goodbye.  When my lips touched his forehead, I was shocked.  His forehead was cold and hard.  This was not my warm and affectionate brother.  I started to cry, not out of sympathy, but of disappointment. 

Later in life, the meaning of my mother coming up the stairs finally made sense.  It is not uncommon for a person passing away to appear to one he or she loves dearly.  And such was certainly the case with my mom and dad.  There are many cases where thoughts have been transferred from one person to another, especially when there is a strong connection between the two.  In our later teen years, my brother Dick and I would have the same thought so often that we thought we had some kind of ESP connection.  Many times, when we went to bed for the night, we would lay there trying to communicate nonverbally.  One of us would think of a number or word and try to convey it to the other.  We just couldn’t do it with any kind of consistency.  If I ask you to think of a number between 1 and 10 and I get it right 10% of the time, that doesn’t prove anything.  And yet, with my brother Dick, there were times when I felt I could get through to him, but it was always when he was unaware that I was trying to do so.  One time in particular was during a pinochle card game.  We were opponents.  Several times Dick took the bid and as he was contemplating what suit to call trump, I had the feeling that I could influence his decision if I concentrated on a suit that I preferred.  Each time he called the suit that I preferred and we set him.  When I realized how well it was working, I stopped doing it as I felt I was taking unfair advantage of him and the situation.

Later in life, at a trade show, I would see a demonstration of a man turning a light on and off through brain waves.  He had a gadget tied to his head that could sense waves emanating from the brain.  When he let himself relax, the light would turn off and when he stimulated his brain with thoughts, the light would come back on.  This precipitated a discussion of the long term possibilities if the brain could be connected to electrical devices in some way.  Some 21st century scientists predict that electronic chips will someday be embedded in one’s head to assist with memory, computation skills and encyclopedic information that one will be able to directly access.  An even scarier thought is that artificial intelligence will become so sophisticated that robots will be able perform everything that a human can do including building other robots as a way to reproduce themselves.  Should a serious disease wipe out the human race, these robots will continue to thrive and reproduce and keep the world going, but to what end?

So now I know for sure that my dad saw my mother walking up those steps while he dozed in the Morris chair.  And I know that it meant that she loved him dearly  She used the final moments of her spirit on this earth to remind him of that.  And their special connection for each other made it possible.

My dad never said much about his youth.  His birth certificate showed him as being born as Frank Louis Bullock on February 9, 1899 in Rutland, Vermont.  His mother was listed as Miss Grace M. Bullock, 18 years old and his father as Louis N. Cole, 17 years old and a marble worker.  Grace later married Thomas (Tobey) Oney and they had several children who were dad’s half brothers and sisters.  Grace died in 1936 and Tobey ended up as a vagrant, living under the bandstand in the summer in the park in Middlebury.  Dad never told us of how he was connected with Tobey until one day my brother Dick saw him taking a sandwich to Tobey under the bandstand.  When Dick asked dad why he did that, my dad replied: he’s the closest thing to a father that I ever knew.  I don’t think that my dad’s growing up years brought back many good memories for him.  Maude, my dad’s half-sister was the oldest of the Oneys and the one with whom my dad had the most rapport.  My dad and mom got married on January 15, 1921 and Maud married Orville Kitchell about 2 years later.  Maud and Orville eventually bought a home next door to us on High Street in Middlebury.  Maud became my mother’s best friend and was also my godmother.  That was why the aftershock was so bad for my dad.

My dad was devastated by the death of my mom, but he was also consumed with worry.  Here he had 9 kids still living at home.  How could he take care of them and still keep his postman’s job?  The job was essential as it was the only source of income for the family.  I still remember seeing my dad walking the streets of Middlebury with the heavy leather bag hanging from a strap over his shoulder.  In the dead of summer with the sweat pouring from his brow and the top three buttons of his shirt open to release the heat or on those freezing winter days when the snow collected on his bushy eyebrows and tiny icicles hung from the hairs that always stuck out from his nostrils. 

C:\Users\Tom\Desktop\PapaPics\Mailman.jpg

I don’t recall him complaining about it, though.  He would tell about the more pleasant side of the job like about the lady who would occasionally fix a peanut butter and catsup sandwich which he claimed was quite tasty.  Or those who would offer hot chocolate or coffee on the nastiest of winter days.  He collected stamps as a hobby, so he would ask for the stamp when he saw a good one.  The postman was like a town crier as he often carried news from one end of town to the other.  Needless to say, there were postcards that did not get delivered unread, especially when the walk between houses was on the long side.  When he arrived home late in the day, he always had news to share with my mom.

My Dad was generous and thoughtful.  When he was 17, he got a job at the Middlebury Register newspaper as a copy boy, typesetter, and furnace stoker.  He saved his money and used it to purchase an Edison cylinder player for his mother.  The player is strictly mechanical.  There is no electricity or electronics involved.  The recording is on a cylindrical shell which slips over a solid cylinder on the player.  The power source is a spring which is hand cranked and spins the cylinder.  A needle rides the grooves in the cylinder to pick up the vibrations which are enhanced through a horn that delivers the final sound.  The fidelity leaves much to be desired, but the unit is still operational and in the family along with about 200 different cylinders from the early 1900’s.  My grandmother must have given it back to my dad sometime after he married Margaret Smith, my mother, on January 15, 1921.

C:\Users\Tom\Desktop\PapaPics\014-BlackandWhite.jpg C:\Users\Tom\Desktop\PapaPics\015-BW.jpg

––––––––

People in the community recognized that my dad was a responsible and hard-working young man.  In the late 1920s, he and mom found a house at 19 High Street that they wanted to buy, but the bank would not lend him the money.  He told Joe Calvi about it.  Joe owned Calvi’s, a store best known for its soda fountain bar.  Joe said: Go back to the bank tomorrow and talk with them again.  Sure enough, they granted him the loan the next day.  Dad didn’t know what strings Joe pulled, but he knew the value of a true friend and what it means to live in a small town.

But, Maude was my dad’s hope for helping him come up with a solution for taking care of the family.  Perhaps she would have some ideas when she came home from the hospital where she, like my mother, was being treated for bronchial pneumonia.  Maude had four children of her own, so his expectations weren’t high, but having your closest family member at your side would be very helpful in a crisis like this.  But a second knock on the door on the afternoon of my mom’s death brought the aftershock that dashed the hopes of Maude’s help.  She, too, had passed away. 

Chapter 3: What To Do?

––––––––

What was my dad to do now?  Since we were in the middle of a school year as we moved into 1943, it was decided that we would keep everyone together until June when the school year was over.  The following chart summarizes the family as we entered 1943.

C:\Users\Tom\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Outlook\HS4B0F53\Chart1 (5).png

Betty (Elizabeth) was to accept some of the household responsibilities that my mother had .  Jim was in the navy.  The rest of us had to pitch in as best we could.  It wasn’t an ideal situation because we had difficulty taking orders from our oldest sister.  In my own case, there was quite a change.  About 2 years before, when I was 8, a man pulled his car to the side of the road where several of us boys were playing.  He wanted to know if any of us had an interest in setting up a magazine route and making a little money.  I decided to give it a try.  He gave me a stack of Saturday Evening Posts and a white sack with a shoulder strap to hold them.  I spent the after-school time for the next week walking from door to door trying to get the mothers to commit to buying the magazine from me every week.  All that effort produced only one customer and that was my great aunt Teresa Breen.  She and her husband John had come directly from Ireland as had my grandmother on my mother’s side, Anna Breen Smith who died in 1934.  Anna Breen’s dad was Thomas Breen which accounted for my first and middle names.  Aunt Teresa had a hard time dealing with having left her dear Ireland and became unstable after a while.  When Uncle John died a few years later, Aunt Teresa simply kept him in their house until neighbors noticed that he was no longer to be seen outside.

C:\Users\Tom\Desktop\PapaPics\012.jpg This photo of my mother with my grandmother, Anna Breen Smith, was taken circa 1932, about the time I was born.  Anna was a tough-minded Irish immigrant who would never have done well in a beauty pageant.  She ran a tight ship, but was well respected.  I don't remember her.

The magazine guy encouraged me to keep trying and I hit upon a scheme that worked pretty well.  I would walk the mile home from school, pick up my magazine sack and head back to Main Street and Merchant’s Row as the evening diners started assembling.  I would go from restaurant to restaurant and approach each table to ask if they would buy my magazine.  I guess that my curly red hair and innocent look had people feeling sorry for this poor little waif who was scratching out a few cents by selling magazines on the street.  I built it up to 50 magazines a week at 5 cents each out of which I got to keep a penny.  Considering that movies were 10 cents at the time and a big candy bar was only 5 cents, I could see movies three times a week, have a candy bar at each, and still have 5 cents left.  Some of the restaurants would give me a hard time for bothering their customers, but Lockwood’s was always willing to put up with me.  That was where Frances Van Buren, the lady who would become my stepmother in 1953, worked.  She claims that I would go around with one magazine in my hand as if it were my last one and then go back for another when that one sold.

I remember one time when a couple came in to Lockwood’s with several of their children.  He talked about my anemic condition to his wife and ordered me a steak dinner.  I don’t ever remember having steak at home and I wasn’t enjoying it.  I was just picking at it.  I remember him commenting to his wife something about my system not being able to tolerate fine food; as if I had been grubbing in garbage cans to sustain myself.  I couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about because my life was just fine.

My biggest regret at the time was that I had committed to delivering the Post to my aunt Teresa and it was about a half-mile walk for which I only cleared one cent.  I tried to skip it once and she got angry, so I was stuck with it.  She also wanted me to locate a copy of the magazine that I had skipped, but I wasn’t able to do it.  That didn’t help matters either.

The magazine people knew that they had to keep my mother happy as well, so they gave us green coupons based on how many magazines were sold.  They gave her a catalog showing the great things that she could redeem the coupons for.  Pot, pans, towels, linens, kitchen gadgets...you name it.  She kept the coupons and her catalog in her dresser drawer.  She also had an envelope in that drawer