Planet Paradise and the Law of the Jungle

By Morris Haimowitz

This is the memoir of 94 year old Morris Haimowitz, co-author of several books with his wife of 57 years, Dr. Natalie Reader. In these pages Dr. Haimowitz tells the story of his life, from the orange groves of Florida to witnessing the bombing of Iwo Jima, from selling shoes for five dollars a week to calming race riots in Chicago, from recycling army uniforms and airplane boxes in Hawaii to evaluating schools, economic, informational and medical systems.

Morris served in the US Airforce for four years where he received the bronze star medal. He taught community organization at the University of Chicago, was director of human relations at Chicago board of education during the race riot years of the 1960s, and taught on Chicago public television for 10 years. He served as board member of the international transactional analysis association for 11 years, while teaching transactional analysis internationally for 30 years.

Throughout his book, Dr. Haimowitz recounts the politics and dynamics he witnessed while working closely with students, teachers, parents, principals, superintendents, police, as well as patients, and colleagues.

Currently, Morris gardens, runs on his treadmill, studies nutrition, and writes poems for his three daughters and five grandchildren.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479723140

Morris Haimowitz

This is the memoir of 94 year old Morris Haimowitz, co-author of several books with his wife of 57 years, Dr. Natalie Reader. In these pages Dr. Haimowitz tells the story of his life, from the orange groves of Florida to witnessing the bombing of Iwo Jima, from selling shoes for five dollars a week to calming race riots in Chicago, from recycling army uniforms and airplane boxes in Hawaii to evaluating schools, economic, informational and medical systems. Morris served in the US Airforce for four years where he received the bronze star medal. He taught community organization at the University of Chicago, was director of human relations at Chicago board of education during the race riot years of the 1960’s, and taught on Chicago public television for 10 years. He served as board member of the international transactional analysis association for 11 years, while teaching transactional analysis internationally for 30 years. Throughout his book, Dr. Haimowitz recounts the politics and dynamics he witnessed while working closely with students, teachers, parents, principals, superintendents, police, as well as patients, and colleagues. Currently, Morris gardens, runs on his treadmill, studies nutrition, and writes poems for his three daughters and five grandchildren.

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Copyright © 2012 by Morris Haimowitz.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012918075

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4797-2313-3

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4797-2312-6

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4797-2314-0

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Contents

Introduction

Early Adventures

Not An Ordinary Student

The War and Me

Surviving the University of Chicago

Natalie and I Get Married

Teaching

Teaching at the University of Chicago and on TV

Human Relations and the Chicago Public Schools

The Quality of Education in Chicago

Adieu, Chicago Public Schools

Transactional Analysis

A Motivating Force in Human Behavior

Haimowoods

The System

Until The Parasite Kills The Host

Family and School

The Last Years

Acknowledgments

Appendix

This book is dedicated to Carla, Myrna and Louise who have experienced very difficult times, yet are bringing information, comfort and joy to me and their worlds.

Introduction

The Past, The Present, and The Future

Recording the past, observing the present, and dreaming of the future has helped me regain some of my sanity since the death of my wife, Natalie.

We had been married fifty seven years, the first forty seven having been normally unsettling, while the last ten were an expanding series of nightmares. Natalie, an exceptionally loving and lucid woman, gradually became deaf and dumb, a victim of temporal dementia, and in her final two years was in a semi-coma, in a hospital bed in our living room. So her death was a liberating event for her and for me. After she died, I sorted through my feelings, and through files and boxes of papers, looking through years of taped interviews and notes, and thought writing a book would keep me out of the pool hall. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this except for the sixty three hundred and seventy-three times I lost a chapter because I hit the wrong key on this computer. I have seen the glories of this planet, and the cruelties, the ridiculous actions of the government when congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act, in 1933, paying farmers to destroy crops, when millions of people were starving, helping some farmers, hurting everyone else. I wanted to find out how that could happen.

I am an American, veteran of world war II. While in the bar mitzvah process, I attended boy scout meetings in an Episcopal church and directed traffic on Sundays for the Presbyterian Church for my good deed. I went to the public schools in Orlando, Florida and counted the days before summer vacation. In first grade I was given a chart with some gold stars to paste each time I brushed my teeth. I did not waste time brushing my teeth, and quickly pasted all the gold stars as soon as I got home. If my parents noticed, they did not comment. Now, eighty eight years later, I could fill that chart with extracted teeth.

So this book will describe my growing awareness, from selling shoes for five dollars a week, to teaching classes in leadership at the University of Chicago, my ten years teaching psychology and sociology on Chicago Public Television, my surprises as Director of the human relations bureau at the Chicago Public Schools during the 1960’s race riots, a selection of vignettes from thirty years as a therapist, and what I discovered as the System operating in planet paradise following the law of the jungle.

Early Adventures

I’m standing on the edge of a cliff

Feeling a little stiff

Preparing to publish a book

Those with courage can take a look

Learning The System

Learning The System requires learning how to navigate the work world. Early on I wasn’t very good at it. My first job was selling the Saturday Evening Post. I was eight years old. A man came by our house and gave me ten magazines and a soft ball. I peddled the magazines around Orlando and tossed the softball with neighborhood kids. Every week or two the man brought me more magazines. I gave some to friends and then went over to the shuffleboard courts, where the old people played, and showed them the magazines. I even stood on a busy corner, but I never sold one. One time a paper boy came by shouting, Extra, extra, read all about it! Tunney beats Dempsey! Did he sell more papers than I sold magazines? I did not shout.

No College For Me

After I graduated from Orlando High School in 1934 I didn’t go to college;

I had no money and I didn’t think I was smart enough. My friend, Morton Levy, did go and sent me examples of college assignments. They were too hard for me and I didn’t understand them. Nonetheless, he kept writing me, telling me to come to college. Instead, I was glad to get a job working at the Baker Shoe Store, on Church Street in Orlando, for $5.00 a week. Mr. Baker lived across the street from us. The Baker family included Mister and Misses, two sons, Sidney and Joel, and two daughters, Dorothy and Lucille. Joel and Sidney were older than I and sometimes I would fight with Sidney. One day he was taking a shower and all his hair fell out. I felt sorry for him.

Most of the time there were no customers in the shoe store, but Saturday night was very busy and I sold white leather shoes with high heels for a dollar a pair as fast as I could, mostly to black women. When I saved up $50.00 I opened a bank account.

The bank stole my money

When I went to get my money, the doors of the bank were locked. I went back several times and the doors were still locked. I never got my money. Later I found out that banks all over the country were closed.

Various jobs

While I was working at Baker’s, the principal of the vocational high school where I was learning typing and bookkeeping came by to let me know I could get a job as a stenographer if I learned shorthand. He referred me to a teacher who held a class of three students in her home. She charged us $20.00 each and I learned Gregg shorthand, which helped me get jobs, helped me record the lectures in my college classes, and helped me finish my bachelor’s degree at the University of Florida with high honors in two and a half years. Ten years later, shorthand saved my life.

Sure enough, the vocational high school principal was right. One day a man came into the shoe store looking for a secretary. He had probably gone to the school and someone there told him I worked at the shoe store. He asked me to come to his office and interview for the job. So I went to the office of Phillips Packing Company, where Howard Phillips asked me what I was interested in and how much money I paid for rent to my parents. I told him I was curious about how things worked and I paid no rent. He dictated a letter and asked me to type it, which I did perfectly. He offered me $12.00 a week, quite a boost from the $5.00 a week I was getting at the shoe store.

I worked in the traffic and purchasing department with Mr. Brinkman, who received presents from railroad agents who wanted him to ship carloads of oranges on their trains. The agents would come in, tell some jokes, give Brinkman a watch or something, and say. Don’t forget Atlantic Coast Line, or Sioux Line or Burlington.

Howard Phillips would call me into his office every day to take his dictations. Phillips was one of the richest men in Florida. He often wore high boots, with his pants tucked in. If he had carried a little walking stick, he could have passed for an English country baron. His brother, Walter, usually worked in the orange groves, so when he came into the office he was dressed as a farmer. Walter died soon after I quit working there, probably from exposure to pesticides used in sprayings the groves. (One of the grove workers sued the company while I worked there, saying he got sick from the chemicals).

At times Phillips dictated in such a low voice I couldn’t hear him, so, instead of asking him to speak louder, I tried to guess what he said. As a result, when I returned the letter to him, he told me, That’s not what I said. At 16 years old I was afraid to ask him to speak up.

One of my other jobs at Phillips Packing was to record the harvest. I’d get on an open truck with the pickers at 5:00 AM, stand on the truck for an hour as we drove to the orange grove, and record the harvest of each picker. We’d return to the office about 6:00 PM. At the end of the week the pickers, all large, strong black men, would receive $7.00 for picking so many boxes of fruit—less $1.00 for gloves, $1.00 for clippers, $1.00 for the truck ride—so they ended with $3-4.00, while I got $12.00 a week and a free ride.

I made some mistakes during my employment at Phillips. In 1936 my father needed some glass shelves, which cost about $6.00. Since I was in the purchasing department at Phillips, I thought I could order them for him through the company because I could get a lower price, so I charged them to the Phillips Canning Division. That was a mistake, because I didn’t clear it with Brinkman.

One day the phone in the next office rang and I answered it because no one else was in the office, which was another mistake. A man in South Florida was shipping three carloads of fruit and wanted me to write down the inventory.

I could not keep up with him as he rattled off so many boxes of Valencias, so many of Duncans, so many of Marshes, and I got it wrong. I didn’t know there was a form where I could just enter the numbers. After that I was told not to answer that phone any more. One day the office manager’s son came in asking for money. His daddy threw a five dollar bill on the floor and the kid bent down and picked it up. What a mean father, I thought. My father never gave me a penny but he was never mean to me like that.

After working at Phillips for two years, I was fired. I had written hundreds of perfect letters, gotten estimates, and ordered hundreds of items, but Phillips was mumbling and whispering more and more, and I couldn’t hear him. I was not about to tell him to wake up and speak louder, so I continued to imagine what he said. When I got fired I felt terrible, and ended up retracing my steps to the Baker Shoe Store. A few years later I heard that Phillips was murdered in California. He left money to create the Howard Phillips Hospital in Orlando. The little wooden shack by the railroad tracks where I worked was still there when I visited my home town in 1999, sixty years later.

Two weeks after I was back at the shoe store, a redheaded man came by to ask me to work for Cudahy Packing Company for $15.00 a week. The boss was J.C. Young. I sat in a tiny cubicle, four feet by six feet, with typewriter. There was a glass window between J.C. and me, and he would dictate through the window. Four of the guys in my high school class worked there as truck drivers. One of them, Hal, was very quick at unloading, but was also a fast driver, and J.C. was afraid he would get in accidents with the truck. Nevertheless, one day he dictated a letter to me raising Hal’s salary to $17.00 a week. Was I jealous!

On Mondays the four truck drivers and I would unload a boxcar filled with beef, lamb, pork, and eggs, hang the beef on hooks and roll the beef into the freezer. Also into the freezer went an eight to twelve pound slab of bacon to be covered with a shovel full of salt, watered with a hose, and another slab put on top until ten slabs were stacked up. The salt and water increased the weight of each slab, to make it more valuable since it was sold by the pound.

Four Cudahy salesmen drove around the city and the countryside taking orders from grocers. The orders were filled by the butcher, Pop Ackerman, a big man. He gave me the sales slips to do the arithmetic: 23-1/2 pounds spareribs, at 6 cents a pound, so many pounds of this and so many pounds of that, and then add up the slip and give it to the bookkeeper, Mr. Gilchrist. I did the math in my head—no adding machine—and I became pretty fast.

The floors at Cudahy were covered with sawdust to catch the accumulated scraps from the meat trimming. Rats and cats were busy all day long, grazing on goodies. Every morning J.C. would phone the manager at Swift Packing Company, our competitor, to discuss prices. I thought this was against the law, but several years later I read Adam Smith, who said tradesmen did that all the time, in order to raise prices.

When J.C. was promoted and sent to be manager of the Atlanta plant the new manager soon gave me a promotion and I felt pretty good.

Our biggest customer at Cudahy was A&P. The grocery chain bought many carloads of beef from the Chicago office for their hundreds of stores around the country, so we had to sell beef to A&P at prices lower than the Chicago office charged us.

While I was working at Cudahy, the wooden freezer we used was rotting away. A young engineer came from Chicago to oversee construction of a new one. The old engineer, who had been in charge for years, told me this young engineer was no good. His assessment was correct; the new engineer hired a number of people, but they quit. So the new engineer went back to Chicago and the old engineer built the new freezer. He told me that a new plant in Albany, Georgia, had just been completed. Their freezer was made of glass bricks and would never rot. I wanted to see it, so he arranged for me to accompany a customer who was driving there in a truck. We drove all night, for some reason with a pistol on the seat. At one point the driver put his hand on my knee. It felt like an electric shock, and I gently pushed his hand away.

Not An Ordinary Student

What my brother said

Changed the image in my head

From a no-count peasant boy

On to college, full of joy

Thoughts of College

I worked at Cudahy for two years, and spent as little of the money I made as possible. When I got two raises, I felt a big boost in my morale. I thought, Maybe I could go to college. Maybe I could understand this crazy System.

People were starving. Thousands of young men were riding the rails, trying to get away from their hungry bellies. Ruth Beck came to our house to give my brother, Ely, a piano lesson, also to get two slices of bread with a slice of cheese inside. Unpicked oranges rotted in the groves. Farmers were spilling their milk on the ground. The government was paying farmers not to grow wheat. Millions of people lost money in banks. I lost $50.00 in the banks, twice, so after that I kept my salaries in the closet. Maybe in college they would explain this mixed up System.

You are not an ordinary student

When I told my family I’d decided to go, the only comment came from my brother, Ely. He said, Remember, you are not an ordinary student. My school grades were mostly B’s and C’s until my final year. I think he said that because I made all A grades my last year in high school, graduating at age fifteen. I had not mentioned college to my parents before, and they never mentioned college to me.

I took Ely’s comment as a great compliment and a challenge. For the previous two years Ely had been going to Rollins College, in Winter Park, on a piano scholarship where he waited on tables for his food. His friend, Walter Dandliker, also went to Rollins. Walter had a car and drove Ely to Rollins every morning. The reason I remember him is that in 1937 Walter had a physics lab in his garage. He told us that with nuclear energy a bomb could be made that would blow up a whole city. Nine years later, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it happened. How did Walter know? When Ely graduated from Rollins he received a scholarship to Julliard. A lady in Orlando, who heard him play, paid his room and board in New York.

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Ely, 1949

Four years after I graduated from high school, my father drove me to the University of Florida, at Gainesville, where I took the entrance exams. The year was 1938. A few weeks later I packed a suitcase with some socks, my new$15.00 suit, two shirts, two ties, and a sweater, and entered the University of Florida with $200. I found a rooming house which provided a room and meals for $7.00 a week. When I missed a couple of meals, the landlady charged me for them, so I decided to quit eating with her. I bought bread, oranges, carrots, celery, Pet milk, and peanut butter, and that was my diet for the year. My rent was $2.00 a week; my food cost $2.50.

My roommate was Bob Sauer, a big football player. He ate across the street with the team. After football practice, Bob came home and went to sleep, too tired to study. He didn’t return the next semester. Soon the $200 I had saved over the past four years was gone, having been spent for books, food, rent, and registration fees. I went to the dean and told him I needed a job. I said my qualifications included shorthand, typing, and bookkeeping. He dictated a letter, which I typed for him, and he got me a job through the National Youth Administration, for $15.00 a month, working part-time in the Humanities Department.

My Paper Route

During my second year at the university I lived at the Cooperative Living Organization house. A retired professor had given his house to provide a co-op for students with little money. I paid $15.00 a month for a room, shared with three roommates, and meals.

My roommates were Ardney Boland, Beverley Brown, and Sam Davis. Ardney was from the backwoods of Florida and spoke in a fascinating ancient English tongue. Beverley studied agriculture. One night he took me to the milk house for a cup of delicious milk. When he turned on the light a million roaches scampered away. He drank a quart of that milk every day. I didn’t see Sam very much because he was busy with his paper route.

One day Sam asked me to take it over on Sundays. I needed money, so I said yes. I would put the papers in the basket on his bike and ride down unpaved dirt roads, far from the paved Gainesville, Florida, streets. My route took me past one-room unpainted houses, some occupied by whites and some by blacks. Inside these one room houses I would glimpse jumbles of beds, clothes, tables, and chairs. The privy was outside. There was no electricity and no running water along my route. About 50 yards behind a tenant farmer’s house would be a sharecropper’s hut, about 12 feet square, with a tin roof and dirt floor. This was in 1939. I sold seven papers for 5¢ each on a five hour ride, not one to a sharecropper.

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Sharecropper’s Child Suffering from Rickets and Malnutrition Wilson Cotton Plantation, Mississippi County, Arkansas. Photo by Arthur Rothstein, August 1935

I saw many little kids who looked like the one in the photo.

Since there were four of us in our room there was no place to study, so I spent my spare time in the library, picking out books here and there. One night I found a book with pictures of dinosaur bones and mammoths, and a tiny horse, and a saber tooth cat. Wow, what were these things? I thought they were made up stories, not real. I started reading. I saw gradual changes in the size of the horse. I read about the Cetacean age, about Darwin. Where had I been all these years? I’d never heard of such things. Orlando High had great classes in literature, math, physics, and chemistry, but all I remember about my biology class was trying to draw a picture of a grasshopper. I had also spent hours in the Orlando Public Library, but never stumbled on Darwin or pictures of dinosaurs. This University of Florida was an eye opener! We read Mendel and Malthus, but no Darwin. I found more books: Locke, Hobbes, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Rousseau, Plato—books not on my reading lists. I was so glad I decided to quit my job and come to the university.

To find out what I was supposed to be when I grew up, I went to the counseling office for a vocational guidance test. The counselor assured me that I would be a lawyer. I had never seen a lawyer, but I had heard the word shyster. So I told him no thanks, I wouldn’t do that. Interesting how a word can change a life. The counselor then said, Doctor? I thought I wasn’t good enough for that. Doctors were way out of my class. My mother’s words, Sassy good for nothing! came through loud and clear. So my uncertain future remained wide open.

My parents were not deferential to anyone, but one day when I was sick in bed and a doctor came to see me, they were very polite to him. He was a big black man, wearing a black suit and a tie and a black hat. My parents never said anything nice about black people, or anyone, but their behavior to this man led me to believe doctors must be very important people.

My Dictionary

The freshmen English course required students to learn a list of 1,000 words. I found it difficult because I didn’t have a dictionary. Thinking this would be a problem for many freshmen, I decided to write a dictionary that contained those 1,000 words. I proposed this to my English teacher, who I admired, but he responded, You’ll do that over my dead body. I really liked him before that. He would lean back in his chair and give interesting talks. But when he rejected my plan, I left his class and joined another one. This teacher was boring: You must learn these ten words this week and write a paragraph about each word. Boring. So I quit that class too, and just took the exam at the end of the semester, for which I received an A, a 98 percentile which means two students did better than I. I got A’s in all my classes except psychology, in which I received a B. I had not bought the books for that class because I was short of money.

I was determined to go ahead with the idea of writing the dictionary. I would use the library dictionary to write a short definition of each word. I needed fifty sheets of mimeograph paper, a mimeo machine, and several reams of plain paper. While working at Cudahy and Phillips, I often used mimeograph machines. In order to get the supplies, I went to the stationery store in downtown Gainesville and told them my plan. They allowed me to use their mimeo machine after the store closed on Saturday night and all day Sunday. After I typed up the mimeo sheets, I worked all night Saturday and all day and night Sunday to complete a hundred copies of my dictionary, which I called Words.

Now, how to sell them? I put up signs which contained spaces for people to leave their names and addresses. Three people left their information, but after walking around for two hours trying to find the addresses, I found none of them home. I tried again the next day, but still no one answered their door. So I decided to take my stock to the university book store. It agreed to sell Words for one dollar each, and give me fifty cents. My initial hundred copies soon sold out, so I ran off two more batches of a hundred and made one hundred-fifty dollars. My supplies cost me eight dollars. When I left for the army two years later, I gave the mimeo sheets to my roommate Sam, who was still in school. He was killed fighting in Europe in 1943.

When I revisited the CLO house at the university fifty years later, Words was still selling in the book store.

Speaking of Money . . .

My father’s youngest brother, Morris, was a partner with Ben Stein, who had the Budweiser franchise in Orlando. One day he brought his big beautiful horses to town pulling the Budweiser wagon. During my freshman year Ben Stein and his wife, Ruth, invited me to their house. I was one of the two members of the family ever to attend college, the other one being my younger brother, Ely. When I saw him, Ben said, My three year old boy took out my pistol and wanted to kill me. What should we do?

I had just spent two months in college, and apparently was the wizard who could solve such problems. I had no idea in 1938 about psychiatrists or social workers; I had never heard such words. I told him I hoped they’d got rid of the pistol. I asked, Do you love your son, play with him, tell him stories, read to him, sing him songs, do you take him to the park?

My parents never played with us—although Dad did make us a swing—and never sang or told us stories. He did take us on trips, swimming in Rock Lake, a few blocks away, took me fishing on Lake Apopka. Although he never read to us, when I lived with my grandparents, every night I heard my grandfather reading to his wife who was crying at the sad stories. I thought that would be wonderful, having someone read to me. It was especially exciting that my grandfather read with great passion, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting, like a great actor. I was so impressed with my grandfather’s reading that I asked Ben if he read to his son.

Uncle Morris and his family lived in Fort Pierce. He and wife, Theresa, had three handsome sons, Ralph, Harold, and Charles, and a pretty daughter, Joy. When we entered their house they always sprayed us to kill the mosquitoes, which were thick on the screened windows and doors. Later Morris and his family moved to Jacksonville to go into the liquor business with Ben. Subsequently they went into the hamburger business, Burger King. Eventually Ben bought out Uncle Morris. In 2002, Goldman Sachs bought a part of Burger King for two billion dollars. A few years ago I met one of Ben’s sons at a wedding in Jacksonville. He told me he owned Burger Kings in Florida, in addition to several hotels. I don’t know if he was the son with the pistol and I didn’t ask.

The University of Florida permitted students to take the final exams even though they had not registered for the course. I had four years experience typing letters, so I knew how to spell and to write, so I took the English final exam, and also the math and others and graduated in two years and one summer school.

I was called to the Dean’s office and found four Deans there, asking me to stay, to participate in the various clubs, saying You have been here only two years. You should also take part in all the clubs. I did not tell them that I went to a debating club where they made fun of my speech so I did not return. A teacher phoned me that I was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. I asked what that was, and what did I have to do? He told me I had to pay $15.00 for the gold key. I went to the book store to get the money.

An Apology

I stayed another year at the university to write a master’s thesis titled Population Trends in Florida. It was a detailed statistical analysis with many graphs and charts. I thought it was a good history of the Florida population and should be published some day.

Even though I was an expert typist, I paid a student to type the thesis—three hundred pages of statistics, population pyramids and other graphs. She typed it flawlessly except for two places where she made erasures. Later I saw the typist standing in a line in front of me and told her I noticed she had erased some typing errors in my thesis. When I saw her again she said I had humiliated her because I had criticized her in front of other people. I felt like a damn fool. I owe that lady an apology and a vote of thanks for her rebuke—and her almost perfect typing job. My mother was right, If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything—especially in front of other people.

The War and Me

A friendly invite from the president

To go

Across the Atlantic blue

And then the Pacific

Grateful, oh so grateful, when it was all over

To fly home with a Bronze Star

Feeling just terrific

We were at war

We were at war. Germany and Japan were taking over the world. Dr. Spivey, one of my master’s thesis sponsors, said, Morrie, let’s go join the Navy. So we went to see the naval recruiter. We took a whole battery of tests. We were asked, What organizations do you belong to? I answered Phi Beta Kappa. They asked, Chamber of Commerce? No. Other organizations? I said, Phi Beta Sigma," an honorary, like PBK.

A couple of weeks later we received letters from the Navy telling us our papers had been sent to Atlanta. A month later I got another letter saying, The Navy does not need you.

But the Army did. I had just about finished my master’s degree when I received a telegram from someone at the University of Chicago named Joe Lohman, who asked me what my draft status was. I telegraphed him it was1-A. Shortly thereafter I received a letter from President Roosevelt inviting me into the U.S. Army. I did not hear from Lohman again until four years later. It was a warm summer day when my dad drove me from Miami Beach, where he and my mother lived, to Miami to catch the bus to Camp Blanding, near Jacksonville. I boarded the bus with a small suitcase.

My initiation into Army life started immediately. While walking toward the bus, I saw a young man walking in the same direction and carrying a pair of old pants and a bottle of beer. You being drafted? I asked. He said, Yes, but before I get on the bus I want to pawn these pants. I walked to the pawnshop with him and watched while he offered up the pants. The owner held them up to the light. He could see through the seat and said, No thanks.

We got on the bus with fifty other recruits, while my new friend, Robin, started drinking his beer. A half hour into the trip to Camp Blanding, he called out to the driver, I need to go to the bathroom. So the bus stopped at a filling station and, when Robin boarded the bus again, he had a new supply of beer. The drive from Miami to Camp Blanding was eight hours and Robin drank all the way. After three stops to let him out, the driver refused to stop again, so Robin peed on the floor of the bus.

The next day we stood naked before the medical examiners as we were weighed and interviewed. When Robin was asked, Do you drink? He said, All the time. He was sent home. They did not ask me if I drank.

The first night I slept in a tent that had four cots. I was alone in the tent, and woke up to the bugle without an erection, which was unusual for me.

I don’t remember the evening meal, but I do remember my first break-fast. There was a table fifty feet long loaded with oranges, grapefruit, apples, grapes, pears, oatmeal, cornmeal, grits, boiled eggs, fried eggs, ham, bacon, toast, muffins, cakes, milk, cheese, orange juice, and apple juice. I was 6.2", I weighed 120 pounds, and I think I must have eaten ten pounds of that food for breakfast. There were 500 men at breakfast and I was the last one to leave. My breakfast at the University co-op was toast, apple butter, and cocoa. This Army breakfast was a feast. Why did I spend all that time at the university, working on the census of Florida 18 hours a day, and getting toast and cocoa for breakfast, when I could have been in the Army, picking up cigarette butts, washing pots, and gorging like a king?

I stayed in Camp Blanding for six weeks, waiting for a pair of boots that would fit my 12-13 AAA feet. Most of my time there was spent picking up cigarette butts and cleaning pots and pans. But I also helped with the new recruits. Some of the African Americans had heart beats of 190 and high blood pressure. Some of the white guys could not wear shoes; they had worked barefoot in the marshes, harvesting crabs, barnacles and other crustaceans, and could not read or write. They asked me to write letters for them. Another job I had at Blanding was to translate French letters for an officer.

The beautiful new mattresses at camp stunk of chemicals. My eyes began twitching and my gums started bleeding. I didn’t know what caused the bleeding; I had never had that before. So I went to see a dentist and he put some purple liquid on my gums. It might have been Gentian Violet, an antifungal. My gums still bled. When I went to basic training at Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis, I went to see another dentist. I got the same useless treatment. Later, when I went to cryptography school, a different dentist offered the same treatment.

Meanwhile, I was expecting to get my master’s degree in August, and asked the captain if I could take a weekend furlough to Gainesville to graduate. He said, Sure. So I took a bus to Gainesville and got my master’s degree, with distinction. Uncle Pete, my father’s brother, came in from Tampa for my graduation and gave me a streamlined Parker fountain pen with a gold point. It was the kind with a rubber tube that you filled with ink. This was before ballpoint pens. My parents were not present.

My size 12-13 AAA boots arrived in September and I was shipped by train from Camp Blanding to the Jefferson, Missouri, barracks for basic training. There I ran obstacle courses, set up tents, and learned to use rifles and carbines After two months I was in the best physical shape of my life. One of my buddies there was a 200 pound prize fighter who had much trouble assembling his carbine. He could do four chin-ups, and I could do four chin-ups, but he could lift my 6 foot long, 120 pounds over his head with one hand.

After taking exams in history, math, algebra, chemistry, English, and physics, the Army asked me to select from a list of preferences. The list included signal corps, cryptography, mechanics, engineering, and a few others. I selected cryptography, so I was sent to Chanute Field in Indiana. I got off the train at 5:00 a.m. at a desolate spot. It was freezing cold and I was wearing my summer clothes. There I waited for several hours for someone to pick me up and take me to crypto school.

In Indiana I got my first look at snow. I had never seen it before, but I’d be seeing more of it soon. Learning cryptography took a few months and, after I completed the class, I needed new glasses. When our class graduated, we were sent to Presque Isle, Maine, to be cryptographers.

In the winter, Maine is cold; 20 below is common. Ten of us privates worked in the crypto room at Presque Isle, coding and decoding messages on secret machines.

Shorthand to the Rescue—Again

One day the Colonel came into the crypto room and asked if anyone could take shorthand. I told him I could. So he asked me to work in his office. Why he wanted someone who could take shorthand I don’t know. He never dictated a letter to me. Instead, he asked me to file papers. I don’t think anyone ever read those papers I so carefully filed. Meanwhile, the other nine men were promoted to Sergeant while I remained a Private, and I was really steamed about that. It was not until many years later that I realized I was just a speck of light in this glorious universe. So much for promotion to Sergeant.

I learn something important

One night at the U.S.O. in Presque Isle, where they had girls, free cokes and cup cakes, I met Bette Slavin, who invited me to walk her home. It was five below zero and moonlight on the snow brightened the fields as we walked to her house. It was a beautiful walk, the trees lovely with snow, and the road, sidewalks, and houses shining white. Bette’s mother offered us tea and cookies, and I told her my sad story about still being a Private, while those guys who couldn’t take shorthand, were promoted to Sergeant. After whining for maybe three minutes, Bette’s mother said You just want to complain. I felt so ashamed I could have sunk through the floor. But the truth is I did not just want to complain; I wanted Bette and her mother to say, You poor little darling, you have been mistreated; you should ask for your money back. I did not see Bette again, but I remember her, and the lesson I learned. If I complained to Bette and her mother, were they going to make me a Sergeant? So why did I do that? Indeed, Why so wan and pale fair lover? Why so pale? If looking well won’t win her, will looking ill prevail? This off—duty Army life was teaching me lessons.

A few days later, all the newly minted Sergeants were sent on the S.S. Dorchester, to Greenland. I was returned to the crypto room. I was the only one left to do the work. Indeed, it was my job to decode the first message that the Dorchester had been torpedoed, 150 miles off the coast of Greenland, with all my buddies aboard. I felt sick. It was February 3, 1943. Ed Reynolds, one of the survivors, told me later that there had been many warnings of submarines, but when the torpedo hit, and the power cut off, escort vessels, unaware of the tragedy, continued in the pitch dark. Of the 904 men aboard, 672 of them perished.

There were four clergymen on board, Methodist minister George Fox, Rabbi Alexander Goode, Catholic priest John Washington, and Reformed Church minister Clark Poling. Instead of jumping into a lifeboat themselves, they helped the stampeding