Episodes in a Rich Life

By Raymond Wentworth

Whats this about Episodes in a Rich Life? asked my Imaginary Friend.

Im always embarrassed when my IF speaks up, but glad that this time we werethat is, that I wasalone. If I ever admitted to the world my IF exists, some would doubt my sanity. Others would have their opinions confirmed.

I cant remember a time, my IF continued, when youve had enough in your pocket to talk about being rich.

I looked around, saw no one in earshot, and broke my rule against replying to my IF. There are ways of being rich without having much cash, I explained. You can have friends, enjoy experiences, learn much about a multitude of things . . . all of that, and more. And you can properly consider yourself rich.

When you put it like that, my IF admitted, I can see your point. One more thing you mustnt forget.

And whats that? I wondered. Maybe I should have put it in my book.

You always have me, said my IF.

This conversation is over, I said. In fact, it never happened.

. . .

Not long after I retired, I joined a Journal Writers group of senior citizens. Each week, I had to write (and read to the group) a page or so, telling what had happened to me, either during the week previous or sometime in the past.

I have bundled many of these Episodes into more-or-less related groups that I call Chapters, but the reader may call them AggregationsI sincerely hope not Aggravations.

The point is, I have experienced these Episodes and enjoyed most of them, and I hope the Reader enjoys them, too, whether reading straight through the book, or doing random sampling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781449018344

Raymond Wentworth

Raymond Wentworth was born in Worcester, Mass., the son of two schoolteachers, both of whom were from old New England families.  Imitating his older brother and sister, he was singing before he was talking, so it was natural for him to become, at age 10, a soprano in a professional choir.  He has sung in church choirs and various choruses ever since.  As his family was a highly verbal one, he developed a life-long love affair with the English language in early childhood; as an adult, he followed a career in newspaper, magazine and book publishing—but with some interesting detours.  During a 23-year marriage, he and his wife raised two fine children, and joined actively in community affairs. During his retirement, Raymond sings, reads, writes—and enjoys recalling the richness of life.

Book preview

© 2011 Raymond Wentworth. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 2/24/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4490-1832-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-1833-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-1834-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009911623

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Cover painting by Sharon Barbara Koehnke Wanner. Used by permission.

Back cover photo by Tunwa Yee/Edward Fox Photography.

Acknowledgments

My thanks must go first to God the Father, who created me, the Son, who redeemed me, and the Holy Spirit, who continually sanctifies and renews me. The Trinity that undergirds all generally is unacknowledged, but fortunately never fails, regardless of our disregard.

Next, of course, are my parents, who loved, nurtured, trained and put up with me, and managed often to make me believe they were proud of me. Thanks also to my sister, Eleanor Wentworth Hilton, and to my brother, John P. Basil Wentworth, who tried to pour into me much of the plentiful content of their own minds.

I am perpetually grateful to many teachers, from Miss Matson of first grade, who asked the favor of my mother: Please let me have the pleasure of teaching him to read, and Mrs. Bowen of third grade, whose many thrilling experiences just happened to illustrate lessons vividly, and whose understanding of visual aids caused her to wear a bracelet with three parallel lines of beads when we were learning our multiplication table of threes. Especially, in junior high school, was Gladys Hale, teacher of English, drama and clear thinking, and there were many others, both at that level and in high school.

Singularly important in my early years was William Self, organist and choirmaster at All Saints Episcopal Church, Worcester, Massachusetts, who introduced me to choral singing at an early age and served as a friend and role model long beyond that time.

There were many childhood contemporaries, some described in this book. And there were Gilbert Slone, who treated me as a fellow adult and acted as a mentor, and his wife, Dorothy, who seconded the motion; as well as the Rev. Robert H. Throop, rector of St. Michael’s on-the-Heights Episcopal Church, and his long-suffering wife, Elizabeth. And there were Kim and Betty Woodbury, and my fellow workers, whose friendship I treasure.

Profoundest thanks go to the Rev. Dr. Edward Heffner, Col., USAFR (ret.), and his wife, Christine Fleming Heffner, always staunch friends in fine weather and foul.

Most sincere thanks also to the quondam Donna Bruns Wentworth, now again Donna Rae Bruns after more than two decades as my wife, Dede. She set free within me potentialities I had never suspected. Thanks also to her children and mine, Marian Wentworth and Edward Wentworth, who gave me the pleasures and responsibilities of fatherhood—and now, through Marian’s daughters, Prairie Elizabeth and Mercedes Alexandra Wentworth-Nice, the magnificently irresponsible pleasures of grandparenthood. Thanks, too, to Susan Lane Callahan, who chose me as godfather to four sons and, unofficially, a daughter.

And thanks, as well, to Eleanor Balaban-Perry, who as a teacher set me loose in the world as a journal writer.

Contents

Preface

Forming a Life

Early Times

Meet My Parents

Home Remedies

Early Food Supplements

A Verbal Family

How Gilbert & Sullivan Changed My Life

Child Control

Stony Ground

Lawrence

Billy White

Barry Skillen

Unlucky Horseshoe

Gordon Clem

Misplaced Frugality

Finding My Way

Death in the Family

Man of the House

The Grimshaws

Busy Teen

First Pay Envelope

Odyssey

Homing

An Ill Wind

Downhill Slide

Archer

Rufus

Hard at Work

Bishop Bob

Father Pete

‘I Don’t Believe in Toledo’

Mad Moments

Overload

Parishfield

Mountain Man

Salmon

Bishop Rhea

Communicating

Ministry

Ecumenism

Lemhi Encounters

Missouri Interlude

Roanridge

Kansas City …

Platte County

… Here I Come—Again

St. Mary’s Church

Close Shaves

A New Career

Journalist

Milwaukee

Revelations

Magazine

Lila

Daily News Reporter

A Tale of Two Trees

Patches

Photographers

The Big Picture

The McCarthy Taxi

A Drive in the River

Life in the Big City

Mr. President

The Bigger City

The Bus Train

City Children

Dining Out

Butting In

Closet Competitor

Activist

Apartment Dwellers

Landlord Troubles

Mister Feex

Out of Commission

Tough Break

Hospital Visitors

Many Changes

Getting My Feet Under Me

A Venture In Business

Taking Care of Business

The Lensman

Varied Talents

Business Contacts

The Store’s Open

Drive Time Radio

Snow

The Big Yellow Bus

Gene’s Idea

Three Campers

Emptying Nest

My Hardest Task

A Time of Rage

A Fine Afternoon

Inch by Inch

The Godfather

Padrino Ray

Bonding

A Father Again

Rockwell Moments

Regularity

Monica Grows Up

A Godfatherly Letter

Basic Training

Liberty Call

Illusory Precision

Collegiates

Branching Out

A New Direction

Recognition

The Composer

What I Did During the Holidays

Instrumentalist

The Deed Undone

Northern Wisconsin

Eagle River

The Other Shoe

Staring at the Monitor

Getting Connected

Faster and Faster

Dumb and Dumber

Cleaning Up My Act

So What Could Happen?

Witness

An Early Carol

Death of William Self

Eulogy

History in Procession

Keep On Travelin’

The Plane Truth

Dinner for Two—Twice

All Aboard Amtrak

A Picnic in Princeton

A Commission

Two Episcopal Churches

Kids on the Coach

Miscellaneous Memories

The Beat Goes On

Old Friends

Back with the Chorus

Last Trip Down the Aisle

Manliness and Related Issues

On Stage

The Face of Time

Holidays With Family

Off at Last

Methuen

Deluge

Cape Ann

Christmas 2000

Friends in Passing

A Visit to Maine—and to My Past

New Year Snow

End of the Year and of My Journey

Sometimes, You Can Go Home Again

Hometown Contacts

Busy Day in Worcester

Down to Business

Tea and Evensong

All Saints’ Organ

Monday Morn

On the Rails Again

Doylestown and the Girls

Westward Home

My Children Intervene

Enthroned

Time To Move On

Chapter Eleven

Cars & Cogitations

Beast, Belle and Tanya

Pal and Pax

Lucifer’s Playground

Why the Mess Is Ours

Election Day

Money, Money, Money

Murder Most Fowl

My Rant

As My Whimsy Takes Me

Appendix 1

My Writing Devices

The Crayon

The Pencil

The Hectograph

Infernal Machine (The Pen)

The Mimeograph

The Typewriter

The Crayon (Revisited)

The Fountain Pen

The Pencil (Revisited)

The Mechanical Pencil

The Howard Hughes ‘Rocket’

Typesetting and the Letterpress

The California Job Case

The Composing Stick, and the Galley Tray

The Proofing (or Proving) Press

Cutting to ‘The Chase’

Furniture, and Quoins

The Perilous Power Press

The Offset Press, and the Engraved Press

Copies by Photogrametry

A Reinvented Process

The Mimeograph, Again

Into the Electronic Age

The Computer/Word Processor

Appendix 2

Praising God in Verse

Expectant we stand

Come and Adore Him

I sing the Mighty Acts of God

The Praises of God

Singing in Tune to the Glory of God

In the Grey Light of Dawn

Our Jesus Is Here

The Foxes Have Holes

Give Praises to the Living God

End Notes

Preface

Only when I started to set down my varied experiences in this life did I begin to understand how very rich my life has been.

A few months after my retirement (at age 62) in 1995, I joined the central Seniors’ Center maintained by the City of Chicago, called Renaissance Court and located in the city’s Cultural Center at Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue. A wise and energetic young woman named Patricia O’Malley tended her flock of superannuated men and women and managed a formidable array of activities for them. Creativity was the currency of the place—some were writers (of prose or poetry), some visual artists, some musicians, some dancers, and all were active and kept their minds alert to the best of their ability.

A friend, Stacy Myatt—poet, playwright, painter and sculptor—introduced me to the nicest people in the City of Chicago, the Journal Writer’s group at the Center. I joined and, guided by the teacher, Eleanor Balaban-Perry, began putting my reminiscences on paper.

I found that the more I wrote, the more I remembered. After a few years, having written a page or two almost every week, I had a large collection of stories in hand. Mindful of the fact I had two granddaughters who someday might be interested in finding out what made their old granddad—their Pop-Pop Ray—tick, and gently urged by my daughter and my son, I began to impose some organization on these stories. They are here, between these covers.

The reader will find most of the stories (I call them Episodes) are self-contained and can be read independently of one another. However, there are some that mutually relate more closely than others, and I’ve tried to edit them to remove some repetition of facts.

Regardless, the reader may find (for instance) a similarity in accounts of train trips to the East Coast, even though details differ. The reader’s solution is obvious—when boredom sets in, try another Episode!

There are many Episodes to choose from. It has, after all, been a Rich Life.

—Raymond Wentworth

Forming a Life

Early Times[1]

Early Times

Memory gets a little tricky these days. Where was I going to go when I got up from my chair? What’s the adjective I thought was right there on my tongue? When did I forget my best friend’s first name? Who’s the composer of one of my favorite pieces of music, the one that’s being played on WFMT right now?

I’ve heard it said, jokingly, that the worst time is when you are interrupted on a stairway, then can’t remember whether you were going up or going down. My response is that you most likely were going to whichever floor has the bathroom.

Ah, but looking back to earlier days shows a clearer view. I have several early memories that are essentially undated, but there is one clear memory from the time I was two—and just barely that—and one I know dates back to when I was three. Would you believe food is a central element in both of them?

My father was what was known as a good provider, even though he was a schoolteacher. For one thing, for as long as I can remember he always maintained a garden and produced lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and flowers, for the family. For another, he always taught, for extra money, in the summer school offered by the YMCA in our home city of Worcester, Massachusetts. The school was for those students who couldn’t hack it during the school year, or who wanted to get ahead on required subjects so they could take electives dear to their hearts in the regular school term.

But when late August came around, the family always headed for the Atlantic Ocean beaches for a one- or two-week holiday at a tourist court, usually a semicircle of small, detached cabins that served roughly the same purpose motels do today. Some summers we went to Cape Cod, and some we went to the Maine coast, where the weather was likely to be colder and the beaches were likely to have a larger stone or pebble content.

The summer I turned two, in 1935, was one of the years we went to Maine. It was a cold year, and the week we spent there was grey and foggy, and all of us were rather miserable, by the end of our stay. I remember one morning, when I was really cold, we went to the nearby coffee shop and had breakfast. I sat between my two parents, being warmed by their proximity on either side, and ate hot oatmeal. What a comfortable experience!

Another time—I know that I was three because I’ve had occasion to tell the story many times since—I was in the little backyard on a warm spring day, and my mother decided to feed me outside. Through the back door she handed me a bowl of bread and milk, telling me she knew I would like it. I did. I sat down on the back steps and really enjoyed the treat. Afterward, I lay down on my back in the grass and looked up at the beautiful, blue sky, watching the fleecy clouds form magical shapes.

I was a little older, probably five or six, when the jelly roll incident took place. My brother, then 13 or 14, had added several inches to his height and an octave to the lower end of his voice range at the onset of puberty, and his appetite kept up with his stature. Breakfast for him might consist of a box of cereal and a quart of milk. He also was a lean, energetic type, and it was during that period that my parents bought 40 acres of field and woodlot in East Princeton, 13 miles from our house, using as an excuse John’s need to have a place to burn off excess energy. Actually, though, what attracted my father probably was the chance to put in a really serious garden, which soon was producing so much food that I peddled it among our neighbors. The woods yielded firewood that kept us warm during the spring and summer—in cold weather we burned coke.

In any case, one night John, as usual, finished supper long before the rest of us, and a jelly roll was put in front of him. Slice after slice went into his mouth. I am told that my face fell when the last piece disappeared, and when my father saw I had given up any hope of having dessert, he quickly went out to the kitchen to get the other jelly roll, the one intended for the rest of the family.

Meet My Parents[2]

Meet My Parents

My mother, Willa Wentworth, was at a disadvantage during my early childhood. Her pregnancy left her with a persistent kidney infection (this in the days before antibiotics, and even before sulfa drugs) and she had to spend a great deal of her time flat on her back, in bed. She did prepare my lunch and dinner for the family, but grocery shopping, floor washing, laundry and other chores fell to my father. Willa did spend a great deal of time with her younger son, and I have wonderful memories of her teaching me such things as the names of the colors, and how to make a pie crust (the scraps of dough were delicious, even raw, but especially when sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon and baked for a while).

By the time I was in school, however, the infection seemed to have cleared up, and Willa was able to take on an active role in the household and in the community. She and Everett both were ARP (Air Raid Precaution) precinct wardens, she specializing in watch and first-aid duties, and he in fire fighting preparations. Willa also served several years as precinct captain for the local American Red Cross fund drive. She often would make use of my legs to deliver collected funds to the ward captain, one Mrs. Hoyt. (Funny how these names stick in the mind. I even remember the name of the fund drive chairman for many years for the entire city—Wat Tyler Cluverius. But then, who could forget a name like that?)

My father, Everett Wentworth, served for many years as an officer of the Worcester Education Association, and was treasurer of a local Boy Scout troop. He worked hard at his job and had the respect of all the faculty at Grafton Street Junior High School, and the affectionate (usually!) respect of the students. Unless he had hall or cafeteria duty, he always ate lunch at his desk, with students—not necessarily his own students—surrounding him, asking questions, or working out problems on the board, during lunch period, for the extra help he would give.

As I rode to school with him during my seventh, eighth and ninth grade years, I can vouch for the fact that he always was in the classroom very early and washed his own blackboards before the first of the early students came in for extra help. Meanwhile, I would read the comics in the Worcester Telegram and the Boston Post, which my father always would buy on the way to school. He also stayed for a while after school whenever his help was needed.

The extra time I had to spend in school as a result of my father’s love of teaching didn’t gall me too much—I really enjoyed the rides with him and the chance to talk with him. I think he enjoyed the rides too, for the same reason. I always felt proud to have him as my father.

Everett Lawrence Wentworth and Willa Page Wentworth both were Vermonters of old New England stock, my mother having been raised in the northern part and my father in the southern part of the Green Mountain State. Willa had graduated from [Peter Bent] Brigham Academy at the age of 15, and Everett, whose home was in East Dover, a hamlet without a high school, had worked his way through Brattleboro High School by working in—and living in—a plant nursery.

I think if my father had had his real druthers he would have been a farmer. Instead, he established a fine academic record at what was to become the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and on graduation immediately became the principal (and an athletic coach) of a small-town high school. Subsequently, he would take similar positions in increasingly large high schools, until he decided to go back to the relatively less stressful position of junior high school mathematics teacher. The early onset of angina had been a warning.

Willa, meanwhile, started teaching (a few days before her 16th birthday; it wasn’t really legal) in a two-room schoolhouse in the north. Later, she took two years off and went through North Adams (Massachusetts) Normal School, then went back to teaching, stopping only when mothering demands made it necessary.

The two of them met one summer when they were employed at neighboring resorts on Lake Champlain. The story is that my father and a couple of the other hired hands amused themselves one sunny afternoon by turning a large mirror into a heliograph, and shining sunlight into the windows of the waitresses’ rooms in the neighboring resort. That got the ladies’ attention.

The First World War saw my father, as an army corporal, being gassed at Verdun. Convalescence was long, and the psychological effects lingered; Willa said that for a long time afterward, if a Klaxon horn sounded from a passing car during the night, Everett would wake up screaming and dive under the bed, searching for his gas mask.

Other things also caused Everett, a high strung individual, to lose sleep. Dearly as he loved the game of chess, he had to give up playing it, because he couldn’t stop replaying a game in his mind all through the night, leaving him hardly fit for teaching in the morning. He took up the game again, and then in a modest way, only after he was 50. At that time I, as a choirboy of 10 with choir pay in my pocket, found a sort of chess set at the downtown Woolworth’s and brought it home, expecting my father to teach me how to play.

That set, as I remember, was an improvisation, like many of the toys available during those World War II years. It was entirely of cardboard: a printed chess/checker board, and a card full of punch-out circles printed with the symbols of chess pieces on one side, red or black, and solid colors (for checkers) on the other. They weren’t very elegant, but they got the job done. I remember my delight when, about the fourth time we played, I caught my father in a fool’s mate, winning the game. It was a long time before I won another game, and I sweated for every rare victory!

Home Remedies

Medicines were less complex when I was a child than in later days. Many improvements came about during the World War II years, starting with the sulfa drugs, and the development of penicillin and other antibiotics turned the medical world virtually upside down.

In the 1990s, the development of genetically engineered medicines and work on the regeneration of tissues added another dimension to healing.

But there were some effective, though simple, home remedies in use during my childhood, too.

When I had a cold, and my nose was stuffed up, one of the finest and most comforting things was hot, lemon-flavored flaxseed tea. It was soothing to the throat, and the warmth of the drink seemed to open up the nasal passages. It really helped produce a good night’s sleep.

If I had a persistent and uncomfortable cough, a drop of peppermint extract on a sugar cube worked wonders. Besides, it tasted good! If there was a fever, there might be a one-time-only dose of sweet spirits of nitre—a very weak solution. One result was hyperactivity of the kidneys.

And, speaking of weak solutions, I was occasionally given a bit of tincture of iodine in a glass of water. It was just the amount of iodine that would cling to the glass applicator rod, and the idea was to supply a trace amount of iodine to the thyroid. Iodized salt, after all, hadn’t been around very long, and wasn’t always available. People who grew up in inland areas that were short of seafood, such as the state of Vermont, birthplace to both my parents, tended in adult years to develop unsightly and sometimes dangerous goiters. My mother, in fact, had to have such a goiter removed when she was about 50 years old; it had started to restrict blood circulation to the head.

One of the more interesting home remedies was called into play when I was three or four, and developed a ringworm infection on the back of my hand. My mother diagnosed the problem, then got out a saucer and poured a little vinegar into it. Then she placed a penny in the puddle of vinegar, and put the whole thing away for 24 hours, while it imparted a vinegar tang to the whole kitchen area.

The next day, the surface of the penny was covered with a greenish blue substance, I suppose some sort of cuprous acetate, which she rubbed onto my afflicted hand, covering the area with a bandage so that I wouldn’t rub off the healing material. She repeated the application the following day. By the time another day had passed, there was no more ringworm.

There were also, of course, medicines prescribed by doctors. One such was a red, cherry-flavored cough syrup that had been prescribed by a doctor years before I was born and had to be formulated by a pharmacist. I don’t know what was in it, but it was so effective that I suspect today it would be considered a restricted substance.

I well remember the time when I, a boy of three or so, was in my crib nursing an uncomfortable cough and was given the cherry cough medicine. The bottle was put on a dresser by the crib so I could be given another dose later, if needed. With my mother out of the room, I was enterprising enough to climb up on the end of crib and help myself to the bottle, taking one or two mouthfuls of the delicious stuff.

My undoing came later. I was playing in the dining room and was intrigued to find I was big enough to fit a yardstick between the floor and my chin. When the yardstick pressed against the underside of my chin, my stomach rebelled and rid itself of the dangerous medicine. I made it to the bathroom before the stomach contents were ejected, but the color of the jetsam betrayed the reason for my performance. My mother moved the medicine out of my reach.

There was also a serious discussion about the dangers of self-dosing, which I understood well enough for one of my age. Now, of course, I shudder to think of what could have happened if my stomach hadn’t had more sense than my mouth.

Early Food Supplements

In my home, my mother was Mama to me until I was securely in the grade-school horde, probably about third grade. Then she became Mom. My father, originally Papa to me, became Pop perhaps a year or two earlier than that, as I recall. It all had to do with custom of that time and place.

When I was talking about them to others, though, they always (as I remember) were my mother or my father. Nothing fancy, like the mater and pater of some upper class English children, and of course nothing disrespectful like my old man or the old lady, and certainly nothing like the ’rents of some New Millennium youth. Although that appellation may have passed into oblivion by this time.

We always had plenty of good food in the family, partly because my father had a passion for gardening, and my mother did a great deal of canning of peas, tomatoes, green beans and other goodies that came into the house too quickly for immediate eating. That says a lot, as the family comprised two adults, a small child (me), an older brother (by eight years) and an older sister (by 10 years).

Other than for homegrown vegetables, my father generally was a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. He had grown accustomed to a bland diet during a sickly childhood, and his preferences didn’t give my mother much scope for adventurous cuisine.

This diet kept the family healthy from spring until, perhaps, Christmas, but the declining sun and reduced nutritional value of foods probably made our health more precarious during the winter season.

My mother, who had grown up in northern Vermont, was aware of this. I don’t know how she coped with my father’s, or my siblings’, nutritional needs, but I can remember that once or twice a week she encouraged me to drink a glass of milk into which she had beaten an egg. Later she took to lacing the drink with unbleached molasses, to add iron to the mix. It tasted better, too.

But taste is a sometime thing. From the time I was two, I got an occasional dose—not of castor oil, which in some families had a specific curative role, but of Cod Liver Oil, meant to add Vitamins A and D to my developing bod.

Now Cod Liver Oil has a distinctive mouth feel (oily), and a distinctive flavor. Most children don’t like it. But I developed a real taste for it.

(Fortunately, I didn’t try to self-dose on the cod extract. When I was five, my mother tried to curb my fingernail biting by rubbing garlic on the nails. I quickly learned where she kept the garlic, and took to raiding the supply.)

My father, too, just after Christmas, would proudly bring into the house a large supply of oranges. These were small navel oranges, incredibly sweet and tangy, packaged in net sacks and costing (as I recall) about a dollar for three pounds. Or perhaps it was a dollar for three dozen. Anyway, by that time of year my system was craving Vitamin C, and I ate these oranges hungrily. I even learned the inside of the skin was tasty, and to this day I am likely (when eating alone) to scrape this cream-colored inner layer off with my teeth, and enjoy it.

My mother, from time to time, would prepare an iodine dose for me. A glass of water was drawn from the tap. Into that she would dip the glass applicator rod from a bottle of tincture of iodine, and present me with the result. It tasted faintly medicinal, but not too bad. Its purpose was to keep my thyroid nourished. My mother had learned from her inland bringing-up, away from seafood, and it was the time before iodized table salt was common.

She herself from time to time would feel the need for a nutritional supplement. Sometime in the gray days of January or February she would go downtown and come back with a pint, or perhaps a half pint, of oysters, packed in a round cardboard container with a tightly fitting lid. With these she would make an oyster stew.

Besides benefiting from the marine minerals and vitamins, my mother relished the stew as a treat. As for me, I found the flavor tolerable, but I detested the feel of my teeth bouncing off the rubbery pieces of oyster.

A Verbal Family

It isn’t easy being green, observed that lovable Muppet, Kermit the Frog. Well, it wasn’t easy being the youngest Wentworth around the family dinner table, either.

Conversation sparkled, puns crackled. What could the runt of the litter do, except hold on tight and fight like crazy to keep up?

When I was born, in Hahnemann Hospital, Worcester, Massachusetts, in July of 1933, Eleanor was already a ten-year-old, and John was eight. The two of them had been growing up together for so long that they were a solid pair—I was with them, but not really of them. I formed a separate child-unit, all my own.

Not that this was all negative. Eleanor turned herself into an apprentice mother. John took it upon himself to further my education, sometimes, I think, giving me credit for cerebral grasp that I didn’t really have. But one thing I did have, for as long as I can remember, was a love of the English language, and a natural feel for its use. It was in the genes.

Everett and Willa Wentworth, my parents, both were schoolteachers, and Everett remained with his junior high school mathematics classes until he died. Both were interested in me as the unexpected child of their more mature years (they were 42 when I was born), and both spent a lot of time, and a lot of patience, helping me understand things.

My father had a great love of literature and often would spend a Saturday morning combing through a used book store, coming home with treasures. He had a large collection of books by G. A. Henty. He also loved, when I was small, to hold me in his lap and read to me from the My Bookhouse series, which I think he had bought from a door-to-door salesman. It was the Great Depression, and my father seemed to feel obliged, as an employed man, to patronize them … and, of course, it was an excuse to expand the library.

Eleanor, as I mentioned, was training to be a mother (she later had seven children of her own), and took delight in showing me how to do things, and especially in teaching me songs. As for John, I remember one time, when I was five and he was 13, when he taught me the difference between singular and plural, using the two-bulb lamp on my bedroom ceiling as a teaching device.

Given these influences, an anecdote from my kindergarten years may be found credible—it is, in fact, completely true.

One afternoon, after I had eaten my lunch, I found myself walking back to school, back to the kindergarten room, for a test. Kindergarten was a morning-only class in those days, and there weren’t enough Depression babies to have an afternoon session. But my teacher was there to meet me, and we sat down on opposite sides of a small table in the center of the room.

There was a visitor, seated quietly in an alcove at one end of the room. He wasn’t mentioned by my teacher and didn’t try to take any part in the proceedings, so I didn’t pay much attention to him. Later, I found out by listening to my father and mother talk that the visitor was the superintendent of the Worcester schools; apparently the testing process was a new one, and he wanted to observe it personally.

There were questions such as Which of these pictures is wrong? in which there was a series of line drawings of doors, in one of which the door handle was on the same side as the hinges. In one case a picture showed a door with the handle in the exact center, and this was a wrong picture. (Some years later I saw such a door in the flesh, so to speak; it was the exterior door to the chapel at All Saints Church, Worcester, where I was a choirboy. The center-mounted handle tripped the latch through a long rod.)

Then came some definition questions: What is a knife, Raymond?

No problem there! I promptly answered, It’s an implement for eating with a handle on one end and a blade on the other. A perfectly natural response, it seemed to me—until several years later.

Then: What is a spoon?

It’s an implement for eating with a handle on one end and a bowl on the other. These questions were easy.

And what is a fawk?

She had me there. I had no idea was a fawk was. When I got home, I asked my mother what a fawk was. She made me repeat the word, then asked what other questions I had been asked. When I told about the knife and spoon questions, the light dawned for my mother.

Miss Bacon, my fine, experienced kindergarten teacher, was from Boston. I may have known English, but I hadn’t any experience in dialects. A pity, too, because I actually would have used the word tines to describe the second end of that implement for eating.

How Gilbert & Sullivan Changed My Life[3]

How Gilbert & Sullivan Changed My Life

As a bright and relatively docile kindergarten student, not much was expected of me but to obey the teacher and do my best to please her. In spite of the fact both my parents were schoolteachers, I didn’t know much about the importance of grades, or the matter of self-fulfilling expectations. I did know that, if a bad conduct report reached home, I would get my bottom smacked by my father. But I didn’t waste time thinking about that—I was content to ride along with the program. I was learning things, and that was fun.

My first report card day did come around, however, and I was the bearer of a mysterious envelope, carefully pinned to my shirt. My mother relieved me of the burden and opened the envelope. A strange look came over my mother’s face; it wasn’t disapproval, it was more of a questioning look. She gave me my lunch, and the afternoon went along in serene fashion.

But when the rest of the family came home, that report card was of even more interest to everyone than those my sister and brother had received. My sister, especially, was incredulous. The only unexpected mark was totally out of the blue—my mark in music was a C.

In those days, the schools of Worcester, Massachusetts, used an ABCD system, with D as failure, and C as average. In terms of percentages, for subjects where more precise values could be assigned, A represented an average grade of 90 to 100, B was 80-89, C was the broad span of 65-79, and D, a failing grade, was anything below 65.

Now, by the time I was five, I was regarded within my family as something of a Wunderkind in music. As an imitator of my older brother and sister, I was a singer before I was a talker. I had a repertoire covering many of the folk tunes popularized by Burl Ives, and (reflecting my father’s interests) many of the ballads of Blue Grass Roy. The latter’s early morning radio program came on just after the Department of Agriculture Extension reports. My father listened to these while he was preparing breakfast for the family.

It was the consensus (I had no opinion, and was only peripherally interested in the discussion) that the kindergarten teacher probably had never actually heard me singing. My voice was not loud, as were the voices of some of my classmates, I sang with nicely placed head tones, and I was precisely on pitch, also unlike many of my classmates.

My sister, Eleanor, took it upon herself to correct the situation. After supper, she took me over by the piano and taught me a song from her Gilbert & Sullivan collection, then suggested that I ask my teacher the next day if she would like to hear me sing something I had just learned.

Of course, Miss Bacon would be very pleased to listen to me. I stood up straight, as I had been taught, put my hands by my side, and began:

"On a tree by a river, a little Tom-Tit

Sang Willow, tit-Willow, tit-Willow."

Miss Bacon was all ears. I continued until I had sung all three stanzas, never losing my audience, which also included most of my classmates.

Strange to say, for the rest of my school career I never received anything less than an A in Music.

Child Control

Those younger friends who read these memory episodes grew up in a world different from the one in which I grew up. I won’t say mine was a better world … yes, I will say it was a better world, but only in some ways. In other ways, later editions were improvements. Certainly in many ways the later editions were much expanded! But a few of these readers may not quite grasp the realities that existed for me as a child.

I expect that some, having read of my experiences as a five-year-old kindergartner, would express sympathy for me as a child living under the shadow of physical punishment.

It must have been awful, they might say, always to know the terror that your father might at any time inflict pain upon you for doing something wrong.

I can see that there might be a sense of terror in those cases—and I know there are such cases, and I’m sure there were when I was growing up—when the pain is the result of a parent’s uncontrolled rage, or where a child never knows whether any specific action will result in punishment. Or, I think most terrible of all, in those cases where the penalty really is inflicted for the convenience of the parent, rather than the correction of the child. There is such a thing as child abuse, and I think these things qualify.

But for me, and for all of the children I knew, it wasn’t that way at all.

The prevailing thought was that adults generally knew more about life than children did, and that adults therefore had a duty to instruct children in what they had to know and, insofar as possible, prevent them from forming habits that would prove harmful to them or to others. Especially, it was desirable to keep children out of reform school until they were old enough to have some sense, or at least to make their own decision not to have sense. If it took a sharp but temporary pain in the rump to accomplish the job, then that was what was used.

Community standards of child behavior, in my neighborhood at least, were remarkably uniform. If an adult spotted a child getting out of hand on the way to or from school, he (or she) spoke sharply to the child, whether he knew the child or not. And if the reprimand didn’t bring the right response, the adult made it his business to find out the child’s identity and to telephone the parent (or the school, with the same result). The child later had to deal with a parent who was in full agreement with the community standards and quite willing to enforce them.

The system worked well. There were few troublemakers in the neighborhood, there was very little truancy, and there was a confidence on the part of the children that all was right with their world. Once in great a while, though, a child—or group of children—would kick over the traces.

The Christmas I was in sixth grade, a group of my classmates and their brothers and sisters hit upon a profitable scam. They went from house to house on one street, stealing Christmas wreaths from front doors, then went a street or two away and peddled the wreaths for attractive prices to the homeowners there. The activity, of course, came to a halt very quickly—too many of the potential customers knew too many of the thieving children, and outraged parents came to reestablish order. (I hasten