Trials and Transformations: Memoir Ii

By James A. Chisman PhD

This memoir is a domestic follow-up to my book Travels and
Tribulations: A Memoir, which is a collection of short stories based on my adventures and observations from extensive foreign travel. This book is a collection of short stories about domestic adventures and observations in the process of growing up in the Midwest. Some people think my growing up has yet to happen.

These stories are true, some with a few minor embellishments to
improve the flow. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty. They are in chronological order but are not tied to a theme nor do they cover year-to-year happenings. They are memorable events that I think a reader might find interesting or humorous. These are the kinds of events that make life what it is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465376121

James A. Chisman PhD

Dr. James Chisman is a retired industrial engineering professor from Clemson University. His publications include a biography of an obscure Irish poet, Johnny Tom Gleeson, a Civil War memoir, 76th Regiment, Keystone Zouaves, two textbooks on simulation modeling, one published by Prentice Hall, and many articles in technical and nontechnical magazines. He wrote and produced in Cork, Ireland a narrated musical song and dance revue based on Victor Herbert’s life and music. He also has done productivity consulting work here and abroad. He has travelled to 78 countries and has lived in six of them. This book was researched and written while he was a Fulbright Fellow to Ireland. He recently published a children’s book through Xlibris : “Bullette and Jessica” and “ Travels and Tribulations.”

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by James A. Chisman, PhD.

ISBN:               Ebook                   978-1-4653-7612-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Other Xlibris books published by the author:

Travels and Tribulations: A Memoir

Bullette and Jessica

Johnny Tom Gleeson: The Author of the Bould Thady Quill (Ebook only)

Industrial Cases in Simulation Modeling (Ebook only)

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

106006

Contents

Prologue

Preface

My Earliest Recollections

Halcyon Summers: Oh, Canada*

I Was Japanese For A Month

Monsters

Soaring

Batboy

Train Envy

I Shook The Hand That Shook The Hand

A Really Young Nation

Achtung!

The Day The Cleveland Browns Came To Town

Show-Down, USA

The Reluctant Debutante

John Proctor: Black Actor

Quack, Quack, Quack

I Got No Respect

Das Boat

The Great White Hunter

Danish Delight

Mr. Jones

Movie Madness

Suit Yourself

Jessica’s Puzzlement

Ants In My Pants

But He’s Our SOB!

Buttering Up The Executive’s Wife

Waving Good-Bye

A Look Back

Biography

Dedication

To my mother and father,

Marthalee W. and Wallace F. Chisman

Prologue

I am born. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

—David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

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Preface

This memoir is a domestic follow-up to my book Travels and Tribulations: A Memoir, which is a collection of short stories based on my adventures and observations from extensive foreign travel. This book is a collection of short stories about domestic adventures and observations in the process of growing up in the Midwest. Some people think my growing up has yet to happen.

These stories are true, some with a few minor embellishments to improve the flow. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty. They are in chronological order but are not tied to a theme nor do they cover year-to-year happenings. They are memorable events that I think a reader might find interesting or humorous. These are the kinds of events that make life what it is.

My Earliest Recollections

My dad, Wallace F. Chisman, who dropped out of high school to support his siblings, was fortunate to get a job with Ohio Edison in Akron, Ohio, in substation construction at the start of the Great Depression. To advance himself, he took a few night courses in electrical engineering at The University of Akron. By the time I was born in the middle of the depression, he’d worked himself up to substation maintenance.

I was born in a second floor bedroom of my maternal grandparents, Vinton and Mabel Wood’s house at 1072 W. Main Street in Ravenna, Ohio. At that time, my parents were renting a house on 2861 Vincent Street at the eastern edge of the town of Cuyahoga Falls, which is east of Akron. The next street east is Vincent Drive, which started the elite village of Silver Lake—a bedroom community for executives and professionals many from the rubber companies that headquartered in Akron, then Rubber Capital of the World.

Even the word drive sounded more elegant than street, which the kids on the drive made abundantly clear. I had to remind those brats that in the 1800s Silver Lake was called Stow Pond, a part of Stow Village east of the Pond. Stow Pond got its reputation as an amusement park and a boating and ice skating lake. My grandmother remembered as a teenager (c. 1902) taking a street car on Route 5 from Ravenna to Stow Pond to enjoy the amusement park. (To complete the geography lesson for Route 5, Kent is east of Stow and Ravenna is east of Kent.)

In reality, Vincent Street was no great shakes—it was a short street only paved halfway and dead-ended on the dirt end. It started at a Route 5 where Harvey Stein had his Gulf gas station, which I frequented and made a pest of myself asking all kinds of questions of the mechanics.

On entering Vincent Street, the right side was made up of small old two-story houses, one of which was ours about halfway along. On either side of us lived two nice old couples. The one on the right took in laundry. At the end of the street lived the Timms in a small bungalow. They had three kids; Raymond, Virginia and Sara. Sara, the youngest, was a couple of years older than me but was willing to play games with me. Every day I could be heard banging on their door yelling, Open the door, Sara’s mommy. Let me in.

They had two goats tethered in their yard—they were mean. I got butted more than once.

Between me and the gas station lived another pretty girl, Betty Baughman, who was a few years older than me and fun to play games with.

At the end of the street and opposite the Timms’ lived a boy—Jacky Wagner. As a three-year-old, I could only pronounce it as Wanger. Jacky Wanger was a few years older and had no interest in playing with a toddler, but I did admire his hotdogging on his bicycle. Years later when he came out of the service (he had tattoos), he was an accomplished high diver with which he impressed the girls at the local waterworks.

On the opposite side of the street was a metal fabrication company and machine shop. Every nice day, I would trot across the street to see through an open door what was going on. They would never let me go inside.

Beside the shops was a lone house in which lived my parent’s best friends, schoolmates Cy and Edna Thompson and their three kids; Francie, Jack and Elaine who were near my age. We got together with them quite often, even when they