Stumbling Forward: A Life

By Michael J. Wagner

This is an autobiography, done as only the “first person singular” can do it. It’s not written for reasons of ego. God knows, if you read it you’ll see what an awkward, ambling, stumbling life story is told here. But so far, those stumbles have mostly been forward and interesting. Therein lies the story. This “in-between” generation rascal missed the “Beat Generation,” and was too old to be a “Baby Boomer.” There wasn’t a discernable movement or cultural attitude for those who lived in-between. They had to make it up as they went along. This is the meandering story of one of those “Betweeners.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Dec 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483477381

Book preview

WAGNER

Copyright © 2017 Michael J. Wagner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-7739-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-7738-1 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 12/04/2017

Dedication

To Mary Ann Frasier Wagner, without whom I could not have made this journey or lived this wonderful life. It is to her, my accompanist, my typist, my wife, my censor, my muse, that I confess my awe and love. She’s kept me honest, earnest, and dedicated.

I not only love you, I respect you, and in so many instances, I wish I had been more like you.

Reviews

Stumbling Forward presents crystal clear unabashed stories about Mike Wagner’s life inside and outside the classroom—occasionally grabbing the golden ring, sometimes dropping it, and often finding something else, entirely unexpected and wonderful. His words are funny, poignant, and meaningful. You don’t have to be a teacher to enjoy stumbling forward with Dr. Wagner on his journey from boy clarinetist to wise old sage.

I read much of Stumbling Forward hours after Mike committed it to paper and encouraged him to share his words. You’ll be happy that he’s decided to do so. What Mike might not realize is that in addition to helping me learn how to handle all shapes and sizes of music students, he’s also served as an inadvertent life coach, helping to guide the somewhat rudderless young man through the maze that is life and all its vexations.

Richard Rose, DMA - Senior Faculty member, Ruth Wolkowsky Greenfield Endowed Teaching Chair and the Sylvan Myers Endowed Teaching Chair. Miami Dade College Commercial Music Department, bassist and author.

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I have strongly recommended his INTRODUCTORY MUSICAL ACOUSTICS to dozens of enthusiasts as the finest tome on sound theory available, from basic, thru complex, tools of the trade and the electronic production of sound, all in the most readable form possible. Now Mike has been persuaded to commit to print those entertaining and informative stories of his life and wonderful career in Stumbling Forward.  A fascinating insight into a very talented man and much-loved teacher.

Brilliant.

Ted Scott - Senior sound director in commercial television for forty years. CONCH UK Screen Sound Lifetime Achievement Award, 2010.  After being chief engineer at RADIO LUXEMBOURG, Scott was sound director on over 60 episodes of THE MUPPET SHOW which were all made at the ATV Elstree studios, where he also worked on many AMERICAN MUSICAL SPECIALS - including several JULIE ANDREWS and Emmy winning STEVE & EYDIE television blockbusters. Ted’s credentials are sound.

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Stumbling Forward is the perfect title for Mike Wagner’s introspective, interesting, at times self-effacing and hilariously funny story of his life. Through the telling of his adventures, and misadventures, he captures the essence of the history and flavor of the times and places of each story, along with important life lessons that anyone can relate to. A truly enjoyable ride…

Malena Calle, 33-year music educator, Florida Bandmasters Association adjudicator, frequent guest conductor and clinician, Grammy Educator of the Year quarterfinalist, clarinetist with the Miami Wind Symphony.

Preface

Mike Wagner

An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory. Franklin P. Jones

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. George Santayana

Memory is the personal journalism of the soul. Richard Schickel

Memoir is the art of inventing the truth. William Zinsser

I’m a book. It’s quite likely that as an author I’m not terribly observant or even very perceptive. But this is an autobiography, done as only the first person singular can do it. It’s a retrospective narrative. It’s not written for reasons of ego. God knows, if you read it you’ll see what an awkward, ambling, stumbling life story is told here. But so far, those stumbles have mostly been forward and interesting. Therein lies my story.

At this writing this particular passenger on our noble blue marble, has taken 79 trips around Sol, our sun, and by having done so, I’m beginning to learn that there are people and events I thought I remembered vividly, but in actuality, my memory fades. So, to retain what’s left there will be my recollections anecdotally put down.

I’m already a writer. Since our doctoral studies days, (I say our because without Mary Ann, my life’s mate, I could not have and would not have achieved it. The doctorate’s always been ours; never just mine.), I’ve written and published a fair amount: Two college texts, with one in its 4th edition and in print continuously for more than 35 years. It’s required reading on hundreds of college campuses. Also, there are about 20 refereed accounts of my research efforts and quite a few professional articles for the music education profession all also chronicled in an ongoing Curriculum Vitae.

But this book is different.

In 2004, when retirement from teaching at Florida International University overtook my professional forward motion, it seemed likely that there were no more books in me. Then, I found that I needed to rant in writing about how really fouled up our American education system had become, and before taking stock of the essays that I was producing, about twenty Riffs and Rants had been created. They’re likely going to end up in book form as well. What interested me now however, was that after rereading what I’d put down in writing, it gave me a better idea of what my actual soul-searching prejudices were. I’ve discovered that I need to write about an issue, then read what I’ve written, before knowing how I actually think about it. Reading my own words and thoughts honestly gives me a special clarity that I didn’t possess before I took the time and energy to write about them. It’s also fun to no longer be restricted and fettered by formal publishing styles or political correctness. Others seem to like this latter-day style as well. I like it a lot.

My life falls between those who are members of the Beat generation; that is, those who broke down society’s rules and did their own thing, and the Baby Boomers; children generated by returning soldiers after our armed services people married, settled down and had families at the end of World War II. My predecessors, the beatniks were born mostly between 1930 and 1935, and my antecessors, the boomers, were born between 1945 and 1960. Each generation had its own culture and peculiarities. The Beat Generation was a group of American post-World War II writers, musicians, and artists who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired. The members of this generation developed a reputation as new Bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity. Baby boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values. However, some commentators have disputed the extent of that rejection, noting the widespread continuity of some values with both older and younger generations. My in between generation (1935 - 1944) still tried to cling to Victorian sexual morays and Christian values. But we began to observe as absurdities some of the ethical views held by our parents. Sexism, racism, awareness of the gay and lesbian communities, religious preferences and Protestant ethics in general began to be reformed by our own clandestinely held opinions, and we were conflicted about it. To say that we were in the closet with our more liberal views might best explain who we were. I was born a Northern, White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) on the outside, but as I aged, I engaged in a never-ending process of liberalizing what my parent’s views were. Trying to be a good son, and a good citizen wasn’t always easy. Sometimes their views and behaviors conflicted with my own beliefs. By the time college rolled around many of my personal views had to be withheld from my parents. I liked smoking, drinking, hanging with people who liked our popular music - the beginnings of rock & roll, messing around with girls, and thinking that maybe God didn’t exist. But, even as I knew what I liked, I tried ever harder to present myself to the older generation as a member of what became generally labeled later as The Establishment." In many ways, I was a beatnik disguised in a suit and tie. But that’s my view now. I didn’t have a clue as to my social position back then.

Mom and Dad sent me to elementary school when I was four years old. My birthday was in November and my folks thought I could keep up. I could and did intellectually, but physically, I was always a year behind most of my peer group. Little Mike Wagner was short, wore glasses and early on, didn’t belong socially with many, if not most, of his classmates. If I wanted to compete, I had to create ways in which I was on an even playing field with those in my class. A wry sense of humor developed, as did verbal skills that kept me in the game. . . most of the time. Without knowing it, my school years turned me very close to becoming the world’s first geek. I certainly could have been the poster child for geekdom. I was the short guy in glasses, in uniform, in the marching band - not on the football team. But, by God … I was at the game … always.

I started writing this autobiographical tome in the middle. It all started because I felt uncomfortable, and it seemed necessary to write about my SUNY Geneseo years to include in my collection of Riffs and Rants. I wanted - no, needed to go back and personally set a negative issue straight; i.e., my being released, fired, shit-canned, whatever … from my Band Director position there. I feel better about it now after writing about it, and reading what I’d just written. But then, that event needed to be put in perspective, i.e., how did I get there, why, and where did I go from there? And to that end, what was my life before our Miami years like? I also needed to review the beginnings of my teaching at FIU. All these happened to be a series of 3 or 4-year episodes and it seemed that they might present themselves as chapters, in book form, just relating my experiences as they were.

So, after writing about my 4-year stint in Geneseo, NY, my previous 3 years teaching in Churchville, NY, I thought that the events leading up to that epoch needed to be added. Before that, were my years in the West Point Band, a pretty colorful 3 years story, and of course, 4 years spent at SUNY Fredonia, 4 years in High school, etc. Once the first two essays were written each was about 10 or so pages long, the length and breadth of a normal chapter. So, from the center of my youth, that is, my 20’s and 30’s, the earlier and later stuff of my life got filled in. There are three chapters about my Tallahassee, Florida, doctoral study years, because they were so rich and full of events that have mattered since. They were a culmination of everything up to then, and they were the education, and stumbles, that set my professorial years at FIU in motion.

After reading Mark Twain’s autobiography - I discovered that it’s not, in the strictest sense, a linear retelling of his life. He relates anecdotes as he remembers them and it reads way more interestingly that way. Consequently, during the span of this writing, this new style of relating experiences changed the way I recorded things. My story is still chronological, but now, more anecdotes illustrate its temporality and there’s way less proselytizing. I also went back to my early years and tried to fit myself somewhat, into the fabric of 20th century history. That was the section written after completing The Middle Years.

The Miami Years chapters were composed last. Those are my career years after completing a Ph.D. I taught, wrote, consulted and helped raise two children here in Miami. I made local friends and we began to travel. There were stories to tell here as well. And because my 31-year career and the years following were so fertile here in Miami, I’m including some letters I’ve written and some other anecdotal stories as well. I’ve been on my after career path since 2004. Now, I produce videos and consult about music at a magnet middle school here in town - for one of my former graduate students. Who knew? Certainly not me. I made it up as I went along.

I’ve added a summary at the beginning of each chapter. It’s a bit like looking into the pool before you dive in. I’ve also added some quotes that preface each chapter. They’re there to challenge the reader to see why those quotable words seemed appropriate to me while I was reminiscing about those particular years. If they make some sense to you, you’ve grown closer to me, and have insight into this author’s thoughts and emotions. But, you don’t have to have those insights to unfurl and enjoy my story.

There’s been both humor and irony in the stumblings of my life, and I hope both will show through in these chapters. It turns out I that was born into history. That is to say, a fair portion of 20th century American history has affected me, and … in a small way, some of it might have actually been twisted or tweaked by me.

Enjoy my life. I have.

Mike Wagner, November 2014.

PART I

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Getting Up to Speed

Beginnings (1938 - 1943)

Awakenings (1943 - 1952)

To Be a Man (1952 - 1956)

To Hear the Music (1956 - 1960)

Chapter 1

Beginnings: I was born at a very early age! (1938 - 1943)

Anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.

Flanery O’Connor

My parents, Doris and Harry Wagner came to love each other despite a large social chasm created because of the differences in their upbringing. Harry, at Syracuse University, originally in pre-med, had been raised in the upper class and had been bred as such by his socialite, virtuoso-musician mother and father. He was of the American privileged class until the fateful day in 1929 when the stock market crashed, and his family no longer had wealth. It was a long way down and Dad left pre-med and entered the Education program to get a degree as soon as possible. He met my Mom who was there, at Syracuse University for a summer nursing program. She was of sturdy, Swedish laborer stock. Her dad was a maker of wooden furniture in Jamestown, NY, a city known for its wood craftsmanship. Edward Samuelson, her father, was a fine craftsman, but not an academic. His schooling and that of his wife Emily was finished before the end of their elementary school years. Mom came from basic working stock; practical, frugal and tenacious people.

The marriage of Doris and Harry, almost miraculously, didn’t suffer from a clash of sensibilities. Both of my folks put their heads down during the crushing great depression, moved ahead slowly, and persevered. There is no doubt however that Dad had to suffer the lower-class life style and endure the political sermons of the labor loving George Samuelson, Mom’s brother. In retrospect, Dad must have bit and chewed his tongue, lip and cheek often during visits to Jamestown to see my Mom’s parents and her brother’s family.

My parents created an idyllic childhood for me by honestly believing in the work ethic and providing opportunity to me rather than giving me things. They had to be financially creative, coming, as they were, out of the great depression, and soon, into the menacing maw of the next great war. Again, it was worse for Dad because of his Teutonic roots and his ease with the language of the enemy, that was his second language. Not only were the Wagners now solidly middle class, by most standards, they were also considered by some, German. Dad could not show his patriotism by enlisting in the American Army because he was a school teacher, and he was, by then, also a father. He would be needed at home. He had to find ways to be creative as to how to show his loyalty to his community.

In many ways, I entered, simply as a footnote to a very hard-scrabble young married couple’s life. One simply adapts to the life that’s presented. What a lucky fellow I was. But of course, one doesn’t ever know it. You simply become within the bounds that are available.

Rochester, New York had one more resident on Wednesday, the 9th of November 1938. Exactly ten days earlier, my parents had the proverbial shit scared out of them after listening to H.G. Wells’, War of the Worlds, broadcast on the radio; a national Halloween deception orchestrated by Orson Wells, and now folk history. My birth, November 9th happened on the anniversary of the day Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his crumbling German throne in 1918, and exactly twenty years after that, the night I was making my entrance, it was Kristallnacht, or Crystal Night. The Night of Broken Glass; a pogrom (a series of coordinated attacks) against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria. Kristallnacht was carried out by the youthful Brown Shirts and civilians as German authorities looked on without intervening. The attacks left the streets covered with broken glass from the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues. It was an ominous prelude to World War II. Was my birth also an ominous harbinger? That world, into which this newborn was thrust, was not a peaceful place, but no one asked me if I wanted to show up. Harry Anton Wagner and the former Doris Louise Samuelson were my architects. I was, at that moment of my birth, and still am, Michael Jon Wagner.

My insignificant entry and those first breaths were heralded only by the immediate family. As the firstborn I was, never-the-less, a proud icon for both sets of grandparents and for my own parents. Our country was slowly and heroically working its way out of the great depression and nearing another world war. Goods were still hard to come by. My father was of Austrian lineage, a first-generation American, and, at the time of my birth, a high school German language teacher. With trepidation, he read daily about the slow, creeping blight of Nazism moving across Germany, Austria, and Poland. It was just a few months after I was born that my Dad went to his school district’s superintendent, and asked that they allow him to change his teaching focus and create an alternative to the more and more politically and socially incorrect German language classes he was teaching. He established a course that evolved into following the progress of America as it fought to remain free and grow. It was called, Problems in Democracy. Dad stopped teaching German, and the Irondequoit High School faculty had a newly minted American patriot in their midst. However, world circumstances were such that his first-born son, me, was never taught the language of the Teutons. Under other circumstances, German should and would have been my second language.

We lived at 379 Walzer Road in Irondequoit, Rochester’s northern suburb between the city and Lake Ontario. The Rochester-based Eastman Kodak Company was the leading industry; a camera and photographic enterprise formed just after World War I by George Eastman. By way of background, after he’d made his fortune in the early 1920’s, Mr. Eastman, to promote and support the new moving picture industry, built a formidable showcase for Rochesterians to go and see movies. It was called, as you might expect, The Eastman Theater. When it opened, it would show first-run, silent motion pictures accompanied by a full orchestra. In the summer of 1922, after listening to many people who advised him in such matters, George Eastman called upon an Austrian immigrant who was making a name for himself scoring music to those new, silent moving picture shows. This fellow was conducting three movie theater orchestras that accompanied those movies, near the Great White Way in New York City. That conductor, a former cellist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, had married the piano coach at that very same opera house. The couple … Victor and Cecile Wagner … were my paternal grandparents … the parents of Harry, my Dad, and his sister, my aunt, Lilly Wagner. They all lived in Harlem on 123rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue; at that time, the very posh and fashionable West Side. George Eastman hired my grandfather and moved the Victor Wagner family to Rochester, where on September 14, 1922, to great fanfare, he opened the Eastman Theater with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture by the newly formed Rochester Eastman Orchestra, whose members he had auditioned and hired. The movie shown was The Prisoner of Zenda at 2:15, 7:00 and 9:00 PM. Victor Wagner became a household name in Rochester, a world-famous scorer of silent motion pictures. He was well paid for his efforts and his expertise. My Dad, Harry and his sister grew up in a family of quite wealthy and entitled people, who lived well, traveled, and were in Rochester’s elite, social circle. When it was time to have the Wagner’s son off to college, he began a course of pre-med studies at Syracuse University in preparation for becoming a medical doctor. That was in 1928. In 1929, when the stock market tanked, so did the Wagner family fortune. Like many others, my Dad quickly switched to a field in which he could become a college grad and a bread winner as fast as possible. He chose education, and more specifically, teaching. Among other jobs, my famous grandfather, after losing his conducting gig and investments, was reduced to selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.

This meant that later, in 1938, I was going to be born into a generation where there were less children than generations before, because families didn’t have much income. Frugality meant keeping everything small, including the number of children they could afford to raise. Schools were still being built but the numbers of children going into them was on a decade and a half decline. America’s birthrate would not again begin an increase until after the Second World War. Classroom student to teacher ratios were smaller, and consequently - better; more intense. Teachers entering the field were those rerouted from other, more prestigious fields. They and their families were now short of money and in need of more immediate work. They’d left their dreams of training for high paying, conspicuous professions and instead, became teachers; my generation’s teachers. Later, during my childhood, this would translate into noticeably better public-school education, openings for college and university students, and loan monies for higher education that would directly result in more opportunities in the world of work. I would be born late in the depression but into a time where our country was primed with opportunity.

Before I was even a twinkle in my father’s eye, in 1932, just after graduation from Syracuse University, he was hired by A. C. Hamilton, superintendent of the Irondequoit School District as a teacher of the German language at Irondequoit High School. Irondequoit was the small community just north of Rochester. His eventual career spanned 37 years at the same high school. His starting salary was $1200.00 per year, and there was a voluntary 10% pay return to the system, because of our country’s financial woes. On the strength of that meager salary and a hell-of-a-lot of faith, he married my Mom and together, they mortgaged the house on Walzer Road.

I have a pretty fair memory … likely better than most. Episodic memories from when I was about 2 or two and a half years old are still with me. This puts my recollections back during the winter of 1940. Our house was a small, two-bedroom bungalow over a basement that was crammed full of an old octopus coal-burning furnace. One walked into the house through the front door and directly into the living room. Straight ahead was a small dining room and behind that, through a thick, swinging door was the kitchen. In the dining room, there was a door on the left that took one down a short corridor to the bathroom at the end of the hall and two bedrooms on either side. Mom and Dad bedroom was in the front, and mine was in the back of the house. There was an entrance to the garage through the kitchen. If you were to come out of the house into the garage and peel the sheet rock back on the right side of the garage, you’d find my bubble pipe, enshrined there due to my carelessness and my Dad’s not seeing it when he installed weatherproofing. It would now be a 75-year-old antique.

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Mike – about 9 months old

I distinctly remember how cold the house got in the winter of 1940. During the night, the fire would die down in our coal-burning furnace and about 5:30 AM Dad would have to bundle up and go down to stir the coal fire’s dying embers back to life and shovel more coal into its ever-hungry maw. Then he’d trudge back upstairs and return to bed. Often, that routine woke me and I can remember crawling out of my bed, going to the window as the sun came up and idly scratching designs in the snowy ice that had collected on the inside of that frozen pane. Sometimes I crawled into my folks’ bed with them. They’d clean up my always messy backside and put me back in their bed, earning me the nickname, Mr. Icy Ass. Yes, I still remember some of those warm, cozy times.

As with many of us young folks, times were hard. Britain was being bombed and Europe was being overrun with the Nazi military. Just three years and one month after my birth, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked the United States Congress to declare war on Japan after their attack on our Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii the morning of December 7, 1941. Four days later, we declared war on Germany as well, scarcely hours after they had declared war on us. My America was at war on two fronts. I remember the general excitement was occurring that Christmas of 1941. There were hushed, earnest conversations with neighbors and between my Mom and Dad. Even at that early age I knew that there was something important happening, but I didn’t know what. Dad became an air raid warden in our neighborhood. He was not eligible for conscription into the armed services for two reasons … he was a new father, and he was a school teacher. But, after he’d taught high school all day, to further the war effort, he did an entire B shift (4 PM till midnight) at Hawkeye, the lens-making subsidiary of Eastman Kodak. I don’t know if he was paid for that work. It was simply assumed at the time that he would do so as a part of the war effort. I don’t remember him ever complaining about it.

Childhood weekends were sometimes spent traveling to Jamestown in southwestern New York State, where Mom’s family lived. In high school, she had been a classmate of Lucille Ball, of I Love Lucy fame. Her older brother George Samuelson and his family lived there and so did her Mom and Dad, Emily and Edward Samuelson; both Swedish immigrants. We would drive to Jamestown regularly. There were no expressways then and top speed on those high-crowned roads was only about 50 mph. I remember passing through small town after small town and traveling through farms on two-lane country roads. The 120-mile trip took better than four hours. Both Mom and Dad smoked and in the winter, with the car windows rolled tightly up, the smoke in the car would get so thick that at times it made it hard for me to breathe. I suspect that I was a second hand smoker from the time I was about three, or maybe younger. Did I crave their smoke? I don’t know; but I did like the smell of their unfiltered Pall Mall king-sized cigarettes. Those came in a distinctive red package with a royal crest on it. Our car was a 1940 Hudson. There was no radio, and there were no seatbelts, bucket seats, or electric windows. All cars had a clutch and one used the left foot to depress it before manually changing gears. My Mom never learned to drive.

Grandma and Grandpa’s upstairs apartment at 70 Sturges Street had, as its source of water, a hand pump next to a galvanized sheet-metal-over-wood, makeshift sink. Hot water was made on the stove. My Samuelson grandparents were one of the first in that area to have natural gas piped in for their stove, so they no longer had to burn wood to cook. Their house was warm and always smelled of something I thought of at the time, as comforting. I now know that what I smelled was old people sweat. It was a combination of old food, sweat and rotten, sloughed off skin. But it was grandma and grandpa’s smell. Out back, in a hallway, there was an ice box. Blocks of ice were delivered twice a week. Butter and milk were stored on the ice. Sundays, the meal was always at Grandma and Grandpa’s. We ate, and then bundled up to go home. Mom always cried in the car as we all left.

During the War, there was national rationing of food staples such as sugar, flour and coffee. Also, we saved any tin cans that had been emptied of the food that was once contained in them. Those were collected and sent back to the war effort. Tires, as well as gasoline were rationed. I never knew how close to poverty’s edge we of the middle class were, due to the war. Food scarcity and the rationing of many commodities meant that we got used to having a hard life. Interestingly, I think, we were always fed, and told to eat what was put in front of us, we felt and were comfortable in our suburban cocoon. That eat what’s put on your plate. was a survival technique. I’m still always flummoxed when I hear a child say, I don’t like that. Food wasn’t a treat or treated as such. Looking back, I must say that Mom wasn’t a very creative cook either. It’s more than likely that there were few available spices and honestly, we ate from the oven or the frying pan. Great gobs of unseasoned lard were used to fry everything imaginable. Butter was also rationed, and margarine had not yet been invented. There were damned few fat people. Why? It was mainly because there was hardly enough food to go ‘round. And although we never thought of ourselves as poor, we had damned little income. We were thankful for what we had, and made do with what there was. Dad was working, we were eating steadily, lived in a single-family dwelling and owned a car. That made us middle class. There was even more to being middle class. My Dad was a high school teacher and it was to all, a noble profession. He was a leader at his school, in the community, and we not only loved him, but we respected what he represented to others. He was looked up to by the people we met. There was a kind of quiet pride in the air when I was with him - out in the community. His was considered a white collar job.

Once when I was about three years old, and Mom was opening a loaf of bread, I blurted, I want the heel, meaning the end piece of the loaf. Dad who was sitting at the kitchen table (a clue – it was a Saturday or Sunday, because he was home about noon), put his foot up and pointed at the heel of his left shoe. We all laughed, and in my young mind, I thought, that’s funny, and I’ll remember that. Here it is seventy some years later and it’s like it just happened yesterday. It was my introduction to humor. Episodic memories. Who knows how learning happens? I can quite vividly remember the wooden kitchen table with its enameled off-white metal top, pale green around its perimeter, and the dents, chips, gouges and scratches that were a part of it. Another time I’d climbed up on the counter from a kitchen chair and found a pill that looked exactly like a red M&M … although I don’t know if, at the time, that I knew what an M&M looked or tasted like. I swallowed the pill just as Mom came in. She was horrified. I remember her running to my Dad, telling him and then calling the doctor. It was a laxative. I don’t remember any more; and I’ll bet you’re glad I don’t. Yeah, I survived … a very small stumble.

One day early in June 1942, a lady named Mrs. Edgerton came to stay with me, and my parents went away. When they returned, they had a baby with them - my brother Tom. Do I remember my Mom being pregnant, or her talking with me about a baby? No. But having a baby around was kind of fun. I remember that Thomas Joel smelled of sour milk and he pooped and peed a lot. I remember being asked to help do all manner of chores within my limited skills, and feeling quite important while doing them. When Tom came home with my parents to live with us, I was four years old. America had entered the war six months before, and our skies were full of airplanes. I remember thinking … by my reckoning and their silhouette … that all planes flew backward. I assumed that the big fin had to be in the front. It’s my first recollection of having to change my thinking; my concept, my reality. Geez! Those big fins were tail fins and were in the back; not at the front. Why was that?

Early in the 1942 school year, I was walked to kindergarten at Ridgewood Elementary near Culver Road by some nice neighborhood children for just a few months because that fall Mom and Dad had purchased a bigger house at 338 Winona Blvd. (It was never spelled boulevard). I think that they mortgaged $750.00 for the sale. I don’t know what they put down in cash … but it wouldn’t have been much by today’s standards. That move put me in a new school district, and since Mom was home, they decided that I didn’t need to go to the new kindergarten. I was still five years old and they thought I could handle first grade because I’d be the tender age of six in November. So, in the fall of 1943, I entered first grade at Hosea Rogers Elementary School that sat at the end of Northfield Drive. In our new neighborhood, most of the kids my age were one grade behind me. However, way up at the end of the block, lived a classmate, Larry Wangerin, with whom I would become good friends in high school. But entering school a bit earlier than most set up a never- ending chain of events during my schooling that formed my environment for sixteen years or so. I was always younger and somewhat less socially mature than my peers. That shaped many or most of my circumstances.

There was something a bit magic about where our new house was located. We were very near a Rochester public park. If you went across the street into the back yard of our neighbors and then went either over or under the wire fence that ran through there, you were in Seneca Park … one of Monroe County’s nice green wooded parks. Through it ran the Genesee River, emptying a couple of miles further into Lake Ontario. And better for us, and to my parent’s chagrin, there ran a railroad track parallel to our street, from the coal loading docks at Lake Ontario to the coal dealers in the city of Rochester. Trains loaded with car after car lumbered daily and through the night, up a slight upgrade past our neighborhood. The trains in Seneca Park only ran toward the city. Although I never thought about it, I suppose they had to get back there to the lake somehow! I can still hear, in my mind’s ear, that southbound chug … chug … chug of the steam engine and then dggggt as the drive wheels lost traction. Then the chug would start again. Later, in high school Larry Wangerin and I would walk down those tracks toward the lake on Saturdays, knowing that a coal train was on its way toward us. When we met it, a mile or two down the way, we’d hide in the bushes as the engine went by and then, before the caboose came in sight, we’d run alongside, and climb on the ladder attached to the side of each car. We’d just stay on that ladder until we got to our stop, and hop off. This was not the kind of behavior one went home bragging about. My folks didn’t learn about those Saturday rail excursions until I was well into my college years.

But to live near the park was great. In the summer, later, as we grew, we’d walk to the zoo, and beyond, to the Seneca Park swimming pool, with life guards and swimming classes. Up past Larry Wangerin’s house we found a descending dirt path into the park that became the childhood road to fun and devilment. We walked up and down it, sometimes many times a day. Later, in our teens, we’d use it to ride our bikes into the park. Just down and to the right, past the merry-go-round and girl scout house was pine tree hill. In the winter, it had great sledding. First, the hill, and then, with great practiced skill - and if the snow and ice was just right, you could turn your sled slightly to the left and continue sliding down a three-tiered set of iced-over stone steps. That would become the perfect ride, and a source of bragging rights if accomplished - on the perfect day.

Once, in the summer, it seemed like a good idea to try to ride (well, coast) my bike down Pine Tree Hill; the very same path taken many times by my sled in the winter. Not a great idea as I now recall - the pain! I hit a bump early on and slid forward off my bike’s seat and pounded my gonads on the bike’s cross member all the way down. I spent the entire trip inhaling. One thinks that one always has to exhale after inhaling. Not so when pain is eminent. I was alone and about then I realized that crying wasn’t any fun if there was no one there with whom to commiserate. I just sat for a while and hurt. I’ll bet I limped a little too. Thank goodness, I do not have a clear episodic memory of that. As for the park’s carousel, one night it burned down. I remember walking down the next morning with my folks and seeing its smoldering embers. As I look back, what a treasure of a bygone era was lost that night. It wasn’t too much longer that the Girl Scout House went up in smoke as well. Honestly, we had some really seriously bad kids in our area (one is now doing life in prison for murder, if he isn’t already dead), and it is seriously possible that one of those kids was attracted to those edifices by the possibility of arson.

Oh hell, let me confess – no, not that – my gang (an only slightly better class of kids) weren’t lily-white either. We’d often divide ourselves up, and throw rocks at each other. Once, a stone hit me right in the right lens of my glasses and broke it. I told Mom I’d fallen. Another time, about ten of us decided that we’d barricade the railroad tracks. We did, and left the scene – and honestly forgot about it. Well the railroad folk didn’t think it was funny and sent detectives through our neighborhood, looking for those who’d done the barricading. When they got to my house, my Mom, who knew nothing of the incident, cheerfully told the railroad dick that I’d been home, kind of sick that whole week. Then … she came to me and extracted the story. I don’t think anyone ever told. Yeah, I was punished. How? I don’t remember. Episodic what?

We played intensely, fought intensely with each other and honestly had a rough and tumble, outdoorsy childhood. Go out and play, could be heard routinely. On the street behind our house there was a small triangle of land in the Y of one road becoming two. One summer, in that triangle, we dug a hole. No, not a one-day job, but we dug, kept digging, and imagined our way through an entire summer vacation from school. In that three foot deep hole we imagined all manner of things with burning passion! It became a cockpit of a fighter plane, a church, where we exchanged our ideas, prejudices, teachings, and just plain wrong information about religion. We told each other family secrets, dirty jokes, how babies were born (we sure got that one wrong too!), and all matter of things of interest to elementary school kids in the ‘40’s.

We walked or rode our bikes to school, a mile and a half, each way. While it wasn’t uphill both ways as in the joke, in the winter with the snow and ice, it could be a treacherous trip. I don’t remember the cold or the wet mittens, although they must have been a part of life … just as galoshes were … those tall rubber boots with metal snaps. They kept the snow from your shoes, but they let the cold right in. Why mittens instead of the more sensible gloves? Mom could knit mittens. She didn’t know how to knit gloves.

Speaking of winter gear, let me take some time here to reminisce and to complain about kids clothing – well, at least boy’s clothing in the 1940’s. Pants were made of wool, or of corduroy. The former itched until the insides of one’s thighs were red and raw. Then one switched to the comfortable pants; the corduroys. You know cord-o-roy – or roi (cords for the king). Trust me. There was nothing royal about them. The material was so thick that when you got them off, you could stand them in the corner on their own. They made a scraping noise when you walked. People could hear you coming for quite a way … and oh God … don’t get you penis caught in those frequently too short zippers.

Shoes were another pain. All boys’ shoes were made of some sort of leather … but sure-as-hell not soft leather. Shoes were bought big, so you’d grow into them. They were big and so stiff that they hurt until two things happened: 1) you got blisters, and/or 2) until the leather gave up and either got a bit softer, or wore out and you had to start again. We didn’t complain. Want to know why? It’s because as far as we knew, there were no alternatives. I don’t remember thinking about the suffering as pain; or the pain, as suffering. It was something you didn’t think about. It was a part of one’s daily routine. Socks got holes, and were darned. From then on, there were lumps where the darning was. Shirts didn’t seem to be too bad, but there were two choices there as well … you could wear flannel or you could wear cotton. Rarely, if ever, was I consulted as to color, design, or style. Consequently, every mother’s child looked pretty much like what their Mom thought they should look like – if looks mattered, which, incidentally, they didn’t. The words, It fits, covered a wide variety of sizes. It could have arms that hung two inches beyond your hands, or be so small that buttoning it was a chore. Oh, and in that case, don’t try to take a deep breath, or you could blow your buttons off. The gym shoes that we all wore, sometimes called sneakers, stored our old sweat in them almost from the time they were new. These were rubber-soled, high-topped canvas shoes, used for sweaty activities, having an ankle-length upper part and long, often too long, laces. They offered no support to the ankles, and little padding to the soles. What they were good for was rotting, and giving off a strange rubbery, sour smell. Either the sole would come loose in the front, or the cloth would finally rot and tear. Then … if your family had some money, you got another pair.

I really should say more about my brother and my relationship with him as well. Poor Tom was four years younger than me, so he didn’t ever fit into my social circle. I say poor Tom, because he couldn’t share my life with me. Maybe he was downright lucky for exactly the same reason. As his older brother, I was frequently admonished to be a good role model for him. Honestly, nobody told me what being a role model meant … so I didn’t think much about it. How often do you think about being an altruistic person to others, as you go about your daily life? Yeah, that’s right. It’s like that. But Tom was also lucky that he was young enough that he never had to wear any of my hand-me-down clothes. Our age difference helped there. I think we each had what passed as Sunday clothes, but mostly those were simply the newest of what you had.

Sunday. Oh yeah … church. At some point, I was told that we were Methodists. We knew we weren’t Catholic. Those mackerel snappers, as we called them went to St. Margaret Mary’s Catholic Church and they had their own parochial school. Some of our neighborhood kids went there, and that made for some great discussions. For instance, why do you Catholic guys have to eat fish every Friday? Do you guys pray to the same God we do? Periodically, my family would go to a Sunday service at the Seneca Methodist Church and dress us up in our finest finery, or, more properly, the best of what we had. Off we’d go, feeling high on good thoughts, I guess. My folks would go to the general service, and we’d go to our age group with someone’s Mom or Dad, who’d somehow just for today, become a kind of teacher. Sunday school was kind of weird because it didn’t feel like real school. We sang songs and they talked about Jesus and the Holy Ghost. For me, that was a bit like combining science fiction with ancient history. I was conflicted, but compliant. We listened politely, but back in the dirt hole on the next block, there were plenty of discussions about what all that stuff meant. We were smart enough to not ask grownups questions about God and stuff, because the answers would be long, convoluted, incoherent (by our reckoning) and sometimes it would get downright embarrassing. They might even ask you to pray with them. In church, praying,