My Life in a Changing America

By William Elihu Palmer

This book “My Life in a Changing America” is autobiographical and relates the episodes that changed my life. Rather than a time line of continuity, the book is divided into stories of events, people and unseen forces that were important at different times in the grand adventure of life and the pursuit of the American Dream. In my lifetime I was fortunate enough to go from growing up as a poor farm boy to traveling the world as an educator and a university professor. I have lived much of my life during the period of what might have been the Golden Age of America.

As a youngster growing up in an isolated village in the middle of the peninsula that separates the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic Ocean, I had naively believed that I was invulnerable to the fates of others around me. Now at age 88, I have come to the realization that the adventure of life is much like the trajectory of a shooting star flashing across the night sky. No matter how high it may fly nor how bright the trail it leaves behind, it soon vanishes into the unseen depths of space and time. .

I have written this autobiography to leave a trace of my shooting star.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796053579

William Elihu Palmer

William Elihu Palmer grew up on a farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland during the Great Depression. He enlisted in the Army at the age of 17 and served n Occupied Japan and fought in the Korean War. He married Angeles Palmer in Madrid, Spain in 1960. They have four children. He spent his career as an educator, teaching at universities in the USA and abroad, including Ohio University, the University of Salamanca, Spain, and at Salisbury University in Maryland. He and Angeles moved to Coronado, California in 2017.

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Copyright © 2019 by William Elihu Palmer.

ISBN:                    Softcover                                    978-1-7960-5356-2

                              eBook                                         978-1-7960-5357-9

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.

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

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Rev. date: 08/19/2019

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CONTENTS

Fate

Introduction

Where Did My America Go? A Bout of Nostalgia

The Farmer

Determining Destiny

No Escape

The Glory Days of Powellville, Maryland

My People

Country Boy

Powellville: The Town That Died

Wi-Hi 1948: A Shooting Star No Longer Visible in the Night Sky

The Soldier

The Summer of 1959

Kismet

Letter to Joe Banks

Our house in Salisbury, Maryland

Le Sel: Interior Design

My Neighbor

The Tourist

Life Story: The Nun and the Priest

Great Teachers

O America! My America!

Dedication: "My Life

in a Changing America"

To Angeles:

Fate smiled upon me

when I met you!

               Willy

Fate

In reflecting upon the course of my life, I have come to believe that Fate controls absolutely the direction and destiny of every life. There is no escape nor avoidance of the control that Fate exerts. The simplest and most vivid description of Fate and how it controls life is found, in my opinion, in two quatrains or rubaiyat found in the book written by the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. The book is entitled Rubaiyat and it offers many truths about the life we live. Below are the two verses from an illustrated translation of the book entitled The Rubaiyat of Naishapur.

One

With Earth’s first Clay they did the Last Man’s Knead

And then of the Last Harvest sow’d the seed.

Yes, the first Morning of Creation wrote

What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

Two

The Moving Finger writes; and having writ

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line

Nor all Thy Tears wash out a word of it.

Introduction

This book My Life in a Changing America is autobiographical and relates the episodes that changed my life. Rather than a time line of continuity, the book is divided into stories of events, people and unseen forces that were important at different times in the grand adventure of life and the pursuit of the American Dream. In my lifetime I was fortunate enough to go from growing up as a poor farm boy to traveling the world as an educator and a university professor. I have lived much of my life during the period of what might have been the Golden Age of America.

As a youngster growing up in an isolated village in the middle of the peninsula that separates the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic Ocean, I had naively believed that I was invulnerable to the fates of others around me. Now at age 88, I have come to the realization that the adventure of life is much like the trajectory of a shooting star flashing across the night sky. No matter how high it may fly nor how bright the trail it leaves behind, it soon vanishes into the unseen depths of space and time.

I have written this autobiography to leave a trace of my shooting star.

Where Did My America

Go? A Bout of Nostalgia

Long ago, in this land where I now live and have lived since birth, at that time long ago I heard praises sung to America, My America. Where did my America go? It is not here anymore. This land is not my land. Other hands have shaped the mountains and streams and all the fields and forests in between. The America I knew looked up at the sky and saw the Great White Way, the Milky Way. The America I knew looked at the sea and saw waves lapping on smooth white sand, umtrampled and unspoiled, gleaming bright in the sun. Where did all the villages go, the hamlets and crossroads? Where the untraveled roads, the forest paths, and all the solitary glens and dales? They are not here anymore. Where the song of the nightingale, the call of the whipporwill, and men whistling at their work? Where the women in their bonnets hanging clothes on the line to dry? They are not here anymore. The long, lazy days of summer and the soft evenings uncluttered by noisy images fleeting across a bright screen. Those days when neighbor knew neighbor and all the neighbors made a neighborhood. Those days are not here anymore.

Who took away all who saw what is true and right and good? Who brought new ways of living to the country which invented the best way of living long ago—long ago, when the day was separated from the night and time was measured not by how long we last but by how well we live? Where did my America go?

The Farmer

Those who lived during the Great Depression in the 1930’s may remember life on the family farm. Many family farms were located near an isolated country village where the General Store was a gathering place for farmers and their wives on Saturday night. The General Store and the Church formed the center of life in the village. The rush of activities to prepare for an approaching thunderstorm gives a sense of life on the farm and the importance of the General Store to the local people. The trees told him when it was safe to venture outside again,when it was safe to open the windows, and when to release the barnyard denizens from the confines of their shelter. Before he attended to any of his chores, however, he fetched his stick and measured the depth of the water in the rain bucket. There would be a lot of discussion about the storm down at the store tonight.

The Storm

In the chicken yard the farmer and his two sons were yelping and slapping their hands among the scurrying chickens. Up near the farm house the farmer’s wife was hurriedly gathering in the clothes which she had hung on the line to dry. After going inside she placed basins and buckets to catch the rain from the leaky roof. Just outside near the doorstep the hound dog with drooping tail left the shady spot and was making his way to the barn. The empty rain bucket was set there in the barnyard, waiting to catch the rain. It wouldn’t be long now. The menacing black cloud brewing in the west was about to erupt. The thunder was rumbling louder and nearer, and the wind was beginning to rustle the withered blades of corn stalks.

Yup, the crops can do with the rain, but I’m still afraid the wind will blow all the corn down, The old farmer was well acquainted with