Travels Through the Years: A Life Story

By James McGee

Adventures in 86 countries. Intelligence Officer in Germany during the Cold War. Vietnam-era U.S. Army veteran. Diplomat. Corporate President at age 40. Fatherhood. Grief after the death of his wife of 40 years and the death of his son at age 48 when he wrote, “Grief is a temporary insanity that the sane can barely imagine” and finding love again later in life, “I feel lucky that the magic of love could happen at my age and I marvel at the capricious nature of life”.
The 85-year old author remembers his life of adventure and personal accomplishment with humor and thought-provoking reflections on life and history. His inquisitive mind and descriptive writing provide an interesting reading experience.
This is an adventure story, it is a love story and it is a story of grief and loss. The book-ending “Thoughts of An Old Man” may be pondered long after you have finished reading.
Jim McGee is a graduate of UCLA, Wayne State University and Harvard University School of Business. This is his sixth book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796096989

James McGee

James McGee was born into an army family. He was educated in Gibraltar, Germany and Belfast. His career has encompassed banking, bookselling and thirteen years in the airline business. He has also presented book reviews for BBC local radio and several independent stations. In addition to the successful Hawkwood series, he has also written several thrillers. He lives in Somerset.

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Copyright © 2020 by James McGee.

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/08/2020

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

I A TWENTIETH CENTURY LIFE

1 The Early Years: The 1940’s

2 High School Years: The 1950’s

3 College Years: 1954 - 1956

4 Wanderjahr: 1956 - 1957

5 College Years (Again): 1957 - 1959

6 Army Years: 1960 - 1964

7 Marriage, Family and Career: The 1960’s

8 Harvard University, Overseas Travel and Attaining a Goal: The 1970’s

9 More Travel and Empty Nesters: The 1980’s

10 California and the Entrepreneurial Years: The 1990’s

II THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

11 A New Century: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times The 2000’s

12 A New Beginning and The Unthinkable: The 2010’s

III ANTECEDENTS

13 Scots - Irish Ancestry

14 American Ancestry, The First Generation: From the Old World to the New

15 The Second Generation: Westward Movement and Fighting the Civil War

16 The Third Generation: Saving a Nation and Developing a State

17 The Fourth Generation: On to the Pacific

18 The Fifth Generation: Approaching the Present

Postscript

Afterwords: Pensees d’un Homme Ancien (Thoughts of an Old Man)

Appendix 1: Travels Through the Years

Appendix 2: Jobs Held Through the Years

Appendix 3: Residences Through the Years

Book Reviews

This is a revised, up-dated and edited version of A 20th Century Life: Travels Through the Years, published 2008 (ISBN 978-1-4363-3847-9). This revision has deletions from the original that did not move the narrative forward, the text has been up-dated to include events that occurred in the twelve years after publication and I have added some introspection allowed by increasing age. This has been accomplished with a reduction of over 5% of the word count of the published book.

The cover illustration is Askeladden Eventyr (Ashlad’s Adventure) also known as The Search, a painting by Theodor Kittelsen, a Norwegian artist, 1857 - 1914.

Dedication

This book is for Peg, my late wife of 40-years and the co-author of my life. This book is also dedicated to my late son, Jim, whose life was tragically cut short at 48-years of age and to my daughter, Katy. Without these people in my life the pages of this story could not have been written.

This book is also for Amara who gladdened the last years of my life.

Preface

Who’ll buy my memories

Of things that used to be?

Willie Nelson

The world is a book and

those who do not travel

read only one page.

St. Augustine

396 - 430

The life which is unexamined

is not worth living.

Socrates

399 - 470

Introduction

To attempt to recapture a life in a reasonable number of pages strikes me as a conceit. Memories are forgotten, or become selective, and it is probably delusional to expect that others might have an interest in the details of someone else’s life as they live their own lives.

I have asked myself why do I want to write of my life? Maybe I have taken the time to write these memories because the urge to keep recollection alive beyond its natural span seems to be a pervasive human impulse: one need only look at the grand monuments in cemeteries to grasp this — the need to say to posterity: I was here. Here I am.

Or, maybe I have written this for my children in case they might want to know more of the lives of their parents, especially since I know so little of the lives of my own parents.

Or, perhaps I have simply chosen to write my story as a project in retirement, which is traditionally considered a time to reflect upon and sum up one’s life.

My life has included neither fame nor notoriety and although we all live under the same sun, all lives are lived differently. These pages are the story of one life lived mostly in the 20th century.

In the words of the song, Regrets, I’ve had a few... but there are parts of my life of which I am proud:

– Received Direct Field Commission in U.S. Army from Enlisted status

– U.S. Foreign Service Officer, becoming Assistant to the Secretary of State

– First McGee of my line to attain an advanced academic degree

– Graduate of UCLA (BA), Wayne State University (MA) and the Harvard University Graduate School of Business. Also attended Laval University, Quebec, Canada and Uppsala University, Sweden

– Youngest General Manager in a Fortune 60 Corporation

– Corporate President at age 40

– U.S. Patent holder

– Entrepreneur who started own company

– Traveled in 86 countries and all 50 U.S. States

– Multi-lingual

– Author of six books

– Husband of 40 years and father of two children of whom I was proud

– Endowed academic scholarships at UCLA, Wayne State University and in my son Jim’s memory at his alma mater, the University of Massachusetts

As I think about my life, I think it was only in post-World War II America that we could begin to know the opportunity to shape our lives not harnessed to a farm plow or tethered to a factory machine. We had been given the freedom to do new and different things and I believe the life I led mirrors that opportunity.

In writing the pages that follow, I echo the words of William Faulkner in his story, The Jail:

"Listen, stranger,

This was myself,

This was I."

I

A Twentieth Century Life

1

The Early Years: A Small Town and Last Rites

The 1940’s

Ego te absolvo . . . were the words I heard from a Catholic priest as a Doctor’s hands were in my mouth attempting to stop the hemorrhage of blood resulting from a botched tonsillectomy. I did not understand the Latin words nor at age 7 did I understand the meaning behind the Last Rites of the Church.

In 1943 I was in a Catholic hospital in Long Beach, California and when the priest came into the room he asked if I was Catholic. I was afraid to say No and so answered his question with a Yes and heard the above words.

Broken shards of imperfect memory, such as these, aspire to tell of the joys and sorrows experienced by one man as he lived his only life.

I am the sixth generation of descent from the first McGee of my line who arrived in America in 1816 from Ulster (Northern Ireland) and my family’s history (See Section III) mirrored the history of the westward expansion of our country.

Hugh McGee (1792 - 1838) had enough courage to leave behind everything he knew and gambled on a better life in America. The ancestral home of Island Magee (about 20 miles northeast of Belfast) was owned by an English Lord and as a tenant farmer Hugh may have balked at increasing rents on his wheat farm. Or he may have left because of the discrimination faced by Protestant non-conformers to the established Church of England. (Island Magee was the location of the first Presbyterian sermon preached in Ireland). We’ll not know why Hugh left Ulster but he settled in Jefferson County, NY where he farmed wheat for the rest of his life. (See Chapter 14).

The second generation, my great-great-grandfather, Edward McGee (1819 - 1899) moved from New York to Wisconsin only four years after it became a state. Like his father he farmed wheat. At age 43 he joined the 27th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War where his unit fought in the Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Campaign for Little Rock and the Campaign for Mobile Bay, among others. (See Chapter 15).

The third generation, my great-grandfather, James Edward McGee (1842 - 1931) enlisted in the 10th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry at age 18 and fought in numerous Civil War battles including the Battle of Perryville, KY, Battle of Stones River, TN and the Battle of Chickamauga, GA where he was captured by the Confederates. He was a prisoner-of-war for eight months before he escaped and then spent 30-days walking back to Union lines through the country of the enemy. After the war he continued our family’s westward movement and moved to Colorado where there were still battles with the indigenous Ute’s. He started a freighting business which helped develop the state and he established the town of McGee’s, CO (also known as McGee’s Station). He appears in several books of CO history. (See Chapter 16).

The fourth generation, my grandfather, William Henry (1875 - 1961) moved onward to the Pacific settling in California in 1922. (See Chapter 17).

My father, James Elmer McGee (1903 - 1962), was the fifth generation. He met my mother and remained in California where he started his family. (See Chapter 18).

I was born 27 October 1936 and grew up in the small, then-agricultural, town of Lomita in Los Angeles County.

Our house was on a main road, Pacific Coast Highway, and among early memories I remember hobo’s coming to the kitchen door asking for food and Mother making them a sandwich. This was during the Depression when many people were riding the rails seeking employment. Much later I learned that hobo’s left marks for others indicating which houses might be generous to them. I suspect there was a mark somewhere for our house since there seemed to be a number who stopped.

Another early memory is the horse-drawn ice delivery wagons of the Union Ice Company. When the wagon stopped at our house my sister and I ran out to pet the horses and watch the driver use an ice pick to reduce the size of the large chunks of ice. The driver impaled tongs into the ice and walked to the back door with the ice resting on a leather shield over his shoulder. While the driver was bringing the ice to our icebox we scavenged and sucked the chips of ice left on the sodden and splintered wooden floor of the wagon. After I had started school it was always a pleasure to come upon the ice wagon as it made its rounds because then I could suck the ice as I walked the mile between elementary school and home with school friends on a hot afternoon.

An interesting pastime when I walked home from elementary school with friends was the annual resurfacing of the tarred streets. We would smell the tar pots and watch the men for a while and when there was a warm chunk of tar on the pot we peeled it off when the workmen weren’t looking and walked home chewing the jet-black substance with its rubbery taste. Schoolboy myth was that this was good for the teeth!

On hot afternoons when we heard the bells of the white Good Humor ice cream truck as it cruised the streets of our town my sister and I occasionally bought an ice cream from the truck’s driver who wore a white uniform and cap. My favorite was a Creamsicle, a vanilla ice cream interior enrobed by an orange popsicle exterior on a stick.

I was sickly in my early years with frequent sinus infections which required a trip to a Doctor in Long Beach to have my sinuses flushed. This was not a pleasant experience: warm salt water was forced up my nostrils and while I held my mouth open a flood of mucus was washed out. This may have stemmed from diseased tonsils since in 1943 I had tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy surgery in a Long Beach hospital when I was seven years old. This is when I received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church as described above. I was later told that the Doctor who performed the tonsillectomy had cut too deep.

Our property in Lomita was in excess of an acre and we had four apricot trees, two fig, three peach and orange, lemon, avocado and walnut trees as well as grapes. It was a nice place to grow up and I enjoyed sitting in the shade of one of the trees reading a book on a summer afternoon when it was too hot to want to do much else.

During World War II we, like many others, had a Victory Garden which provided most of our produce. It was my job to weed the garden. Mother canned the vegetables and kept the glass jars in a cupboard in the garage. I always liked opening the cupboard door to look at the glass jars which seemed so pretty with their colorful contents of tomatoes, string beans, pickles and other comestibles.

Mother and Dad raised chickens and rabbits and for some reason, unknown to me today, had a large desert tortoise in a pen at the back of the property. I didn’t see much redeeming value to the tortoise although it was an intriguing pre-historic-like animal to watch. But my sister, Marlene (born in 1938), and I were cautioned not to get our fingers near its beak-like mouth when we fed it lettuce and other vegetables.

The chickens were raised for their eggs and meat for which Mother and Dad had developed a clientele in those days of food rationing. Dad killed the chickens by chopping off their heads with a hatchet on a chopping block. Their feet were then tied to a branch of the walnut tree to let the blood drain. Mother heated water in a big laundry tub and immersed the chicken carcass to more easily remove the feathers and pinfeathers. I remember the awful smell when the chicken feathers were burned in our incinerator. I wasn’t too squeamish to watch the process but I was unable to watch the end of the rabbits and I remember the sadness of Marlene and me when Topsy or Mopsy were served up for Sunday dinner. After the rabbits were skinned Dad put the pelts on a frame to dry. After he had accumulated a pile they were sold (I don’t remember to who or for what purpose).

I shoveled the chicken poop (lots of it!) and the rabbit pellets into a wheelbarrow and brought them to a manure pile at the back of the yard. Much later in life when I saw the movie Patton I could relate to his comments to the troops that you don’t have to say that in this war you shoveled chicken shit. I did.

I was also tasked with mowing the front and back lawns with a hand mower and putting the clippings into the manure pile which every other month I would turn to make next season’s garden fertilizer.

Early in the war an Army Air Corps training field was built about four miles west of our house on what had been agricultural fields and citrus orchards. The field was built by Sikhs probably imported from India because of the wartime manpower shortage. The dark-hued turban-topped Sikhs always intrigued Marlene and me as they walked into town from the construction site.

The field, known as the Lomita Air Strip, was used for pilot training. We frequently had low-flying planes over our house: twin-tailed P-38 fighters sounded like angry mosquitoes as they passed overhead, the large four-engine B-17 bombers were an eye-filling sight and, later, the large lumbering B-29’s caused me to wonder how such a big plane could ever remain aloft. The field still exists as an airport for private planes, known today as Torrance Airport.

During the War Dad had gone halfsies with a friend to buy a young pig which they fattened to what seemed to me an immense size. In my eyes, it was to Dad’s credit that when it came time to kill the hog he was unable to do so and his friend laughed at Dad and took the rifle. I was made to turn my back when the hog was shot. Dad seemed to have no difficulties butchering the hog and I wonder if this came from exposure to his father’s occupation?

On especially hot summer weekends Mother would pack a picnic lunch and we would drive to Redondo Beach for an afternoon at the cooling ocean. Marlene and I played in the surf and we learned to avoid the tar globules that were on the beach. Dad said they were from ships sunk in the war. Occasionally we found an olive-drab can of military rations on the beach that had crossed the Pacific from sunken ships.

Dad painted white lime stripes, perhaps a foot high, around the tree trunks to deter ants from reaching the fruit and when the apricots and peaches were ripe I climbed into the trees and enjoyed the taste of the juicy, sun-warm, just-picked fruit as an after-school treat. I also climbed into the trees with a cloth sack over my shoulder and picked the fruit that Mother canned. When she had canned all the fruit and preserves she needed Marlene and I sold the harvest to passing drivers from a stand in front of the house which Dad had made. We didn’t mind doing this since we were allowed to keep the money from our sale of the fruits and eggs. We saved some of the earnings for rides when the traveling carnival made its annual visit to Lomita and to buy movie tickets to the Lomita Theater. I remember the pleasure of laughing at Abbot and Costello and being thrilled by the Phantom of the Opera and by the Perils of Pauline a weekly serial.

With money earned we bought a wagon. This allowed Marlene and me to expand our customer base and we went door-to-door on weekends offering the fresh produce. Our sales proceeds bought each of us a bicycle. Once we had wheels we were much less interested in continuing our sales activity.

The closest intersection to our house was Cypress Street and the road climbed Cypress Hill. This very steep hill — probably a 30-degree incline — was challenging and the first time I rode down it on my new bicycle it was a white-knuckle, hold-on-for-your-life, experience. But, as with so much in life, familiarity led to cockiness and it wasn’t long before I rode the bike downhill with my hands at my side and feet on the handlebars unable to brake or even accurately steer if that was required. Today I shudder as I recall the stupidities of youth. Cypress Street remains but at some point the steep road up Cypress Hill was blocked from use — maybe because of antics like mine.

Mother was a strict disciplinarian and we were often treated to lickings with a wooden spoon. I expect the lickings were a result of her German childhood where spare the rod and spoil the child was a parental maxim. The lickings were not merciful and I suppose that today they would be considered child abuse but they seemed to have left no permanent damage and, it must be said, they did modify our behavior!

Orange Street Elementary School (now Eshelman Avenue School) was about a mile away from our home and I do not recall feeling that walking there was a hardship since there always seemed something to see — in particular the Witz Brothers Automotive Repair shop. The Witz’s were from Poland and I have never before, nor ever since, seen such dirty people in such a dirty building. The grease from who knows how many cars had never been washed either from their bodies or their property. The brothers’ heavy-set, kerchief-topped, mother worked with them as cashier and I recall her black clothing being as shiny as silk with all the grease. It was always intriguing to walk by their business hoping to see the family.

Some of the houses I walked by en route to school had small red and white flags in their windows with one, or more, blue stars meaning a family member was in military service. Others had gold stars meaning a family member had died in service to their country. I was ignorant of what that meant to those behind the drawn curtains of the windows that displayed a gold star.

Mother made sauerkraut from the cabbages grown in our garden and after preparing and salting the cabbage it was packed into a large earthenware container to ferment. Coming home from school I would go to the crock and dig out a handful of sauerkraut. It was cool and deliciously briny after a hot walk.

Mother also baked bread and cakes and pies and I remember the aroma of fresh-baked bread with butter melting all over a slice as it was removed from the oven and then topped with Mother’s home-made jam as an after-school snack.

Relative to aromas, a neighbor, Mrs. Miller, had a small shop in front of her house where she made and sold angel food cakes. She used our eggs and delivering them to her shop was a real treat because of its wonderfully overpowering aroma. Marlene and I always made a point to do a joint delivery of the eggs since if a cake had not turned out perfect Mrs. Miller treated us to a slice.

In first grade I apparently had some difficulty learning to read and I was placed in a remedial class while my friend, Billy, went to the regular class. This was such a goad to me that I quickly joined the regular class and my still-retained report card shows an A in reading. Although I did not know it, at age 6 I had learned that if you set a goal and work toward it you would probably attain it. I have never wavered in my practice of setting personal goals nor in my love of reading: a fire had been lit that has not yet been extinguished.

The only industry in Lomita was a sand-and-gravel pit and the exhausted pits had filled with water and were used as swimming holes by the daring until company guards chased us out. I was under severe sanction from Mother not to go near the swimming pits. I obeyed because I didn’t want another licking if I disobeyed but when one of my school friends drowned there at age 8 it made her sanctions seem less odious. When his father arrived it was the first time I had seen a man cry.

I remember my grammar school years with pleasure (except the lickings). I liked school — especially recess, when we would play tetherball and kickball and dodge ball — and my grades as seen from report cards were generally good with the exception of arithmetic.

Midway between our house and Mrs. Miller’s angel food shop was the home of Dolly C., a friend of Marlene. Mr. C. had a Ford Model A runabout and when he had to go somewhere in town he let us ride in the car’s open rumble seat which was a real treat. The C.’s had built cabins on their property for the war-time workers who had come to work in the airplane factories, shipyards and refineries in the area. Mr. C. developed a lengthy, lingering illness (I think it may have been cancer) and after he died the local gossip was that Mrs. C. provided other services to the male tenants of her cabins.

In April 1945 while walking home from school I saw a crowd of people gathered around a car that had pulled to the curb in front of one of the stores that I passed daily. It was unusual to see a crowd in our little town and as I approached I saw the people were listening to the car radio that had the volume turned up. I asked what was going on and was told, President Roosevelt has died. I stood with the others for a bit and listened to the tinny sound of the radio before proceeding home where Mother was crying at the news.

Mother and Dad did not go to church but Marlene and I had to attend Sunday School where I liked the endless Sunday’s we spent reading of the progress of Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, written in the 1600’s, and I liked hearing the Old Testament stories of Samson destroying the Temple and Daniel in the lion’s den and Jonah surviving in the belly of a whale for three days. I thought these might be fairy tales but since the stories were told us by earnest adults could they be true?

I began to feel uneasy with religion when faced with the story of Abraham preparing to slay his son Isaac on the command of his God who stopped the murder at the last minute. I wondered what kind of God would play this April Fool’s charade on one who believed in Him and I wondered if a God this capricious (although I didn’t know that word then) was deserving of worship? However could someone who demands murder from his believer be a heavenly father? I was quite sure my Dad would not do this to his only son.

My nascent free-thought began to jell in 1946 when I was 10 years old and my Sunday School class was taken to Los Angeles for a Crusade for Christ led by Billy Graham. Even at that age I was appalled at his fire-and-brimstone preaching that we were all sinners in the sight of God and that we were damned unless we accepted Jesus Christ as our personal savior. I thought Graham’s God was a depraved God as he lovingly described the torments of Hell and I knew that I wanted no part of Him. The arrogance of Graham’s certainty was repellent to me and I thought I would take my chances without being tyrannized by hell-fire.

Later, in a Sunday School discussion about Heaven, my teacher said only people could go to Heaven because only people could accept Jesus Christ — the way to Heaven. I made up my mind that if Butch, my dog, couldn’t go to Heaven with me then I didn’t want to go either.

Over time I became interested in the different religions of the world and read their holy books as I sought to answer questions about God, faith, the role of reason but as I learned of the terrible history of religion and those acting in the name of their God I never again thought that I should reconsider my lack of belief. Later life experiences have not convinced me otherwise.

A poem by A. E. Housman became a favorite and encapsulated my feelings raised by Billy Graham and his Crusade and which reads, in part:

"The laws of God, the laws of Man,

He may keep that will and can;

Not I, let God and Man decree

Laws for themselves and not for me".

At age 12 I joined the Boy Scouts and enjoyed the various activities and camping trips. The local Kiwanis Club supported my Scout troop and in order to raise funds they held an annual community pancake breakfast. A Longines wristwatch would be awarded to the Scout who sold the most tickets. I wanted that watch pretty bad and spent every afternoon and weekend going door-to-door to sell tickets. About 2,000 tickets were sold for the breakfast and I accounted for almost 500 of them. I won the watch before I lost interest in Scouting and turned to other activities.

During summer vacations I haunted the Lomita Library, a storefront with an older woman librarian, Irene Davenport. She drove a Model A Ford which I serviced when she came to Dad’s gas station. I had discovered the shelves of boy’s adventure books but Miss Davenport guided me in my reading choices by asking, Mike (my nickname) have you read . . .? She introduced me to the classics of European and American authors: Charles Dickens, Jonathan Swift, the Bronte’s, Stephen Crane, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather and others. I owe this long-gone woman thanks that she will never hear for introducing me to meaningful literature. In this connection I think of an anonymous fragment that I once read: I have been warmed by fires I did not build".

2

High School Years: Pleasant Memories, McCarthyism and Butch

The 1950’s

As I listened to the long-forgotten commencement speaker at my graduation from Narbonne High School in 1954 I was uncertain about what I should do next. I liked high school and wanted to continue learning but also wondered how I could pay college tuition since I didn’t want to be a financial burden on the parents? I toyed with the idea of going into the Army after graduating high school so that I could attend college on the GI Bill but as I listened to the speaker there was one thing of which I was certain: the whole world was out there to be discovered and I couldn’t wait to shake the dust of small-town Lomita from my shoes.

Narbonne High School (which is now Alexander Fleming Junior High) was about a mile-and-a-half from home. The school was named for an early settler of the area, Nathaniel Narbonne, whose ancestral home was allegedly Narbonne, France. My walk to school took me past a trailer park and I was always intrigued by the different license plates on the trailers. I thought that when I was able I, too, would travel to other states.

In my freshman year at Narbonne my friend, Jerry, and I would ride our bikes on a Saturday to Redondo Beach to body surf in the waves. It was about a 10-mile round trip and I have no idea now how long it took but the attraction of the beach always made the going seem faster than the returning.

Most weekends, however, I worked at Dad’s gas station. This was in the long-ago days of service and I pumped gas, checked oil, water and battery levels, inflated tires and washed windshield and rear window — all for 25 cents per gallon. I learned to repair punctures, change tires, clean sparkplugs, change oil and lubricate cars. I didn’t mind doing this except that I didn’t like that my hands got so greasy. The grease was hard to scrub off and I feared dirty hands would impede my efforts to get to know girls.

Our 7th grade teacher of Social Studies and Geography was Lois McDonald, an almost painfully thin, extremely bow-legged woman whose head bobbed up and down when she laughed. Miss McDonald was nearing retirement age and presented an almost stereotypical picture of a spinster schoolmarm with her glasses, graying hair pulled into a bun at the back of her head and navy-blue dresses but she made her classes interesting and I looked forward to them unlike Chemistry where we had to memorize the Periodic Table of Elements (but I still remember what the never-used Au, Ag and Pb mean!). There were wall-mounted racks of maps at the front of the classroom that were pulled down for Geography class. I tended to day-dream about locations on the maps especially one for Central Asia where there was a large white spot (meaning unexplored — they must have been old maps!) labeled Tannu Tuva. On the Mercator-projection world maps it seemed obvious to me that with their shapes the continents must have been conjoined at some point even though the theory of Plate Tectonics was not developed until many years later.

In 1949 a bedraggled, worn-out, black-and-white mongrel, long and built low-to-the ground, comprised of who knows how many breeds, came to the gas station and just flopped down. This abandoned dog, who bore evidence of mistreatment, decided that this was his last stop. I wanted give the pooch some food and water. Dad advised that the dog would never leave if I did that. I was successful in convincing Dad that the dog could be a watchdog sleeping inside the gas station at night. And so Butch joined us. Once Butch knew he had a home he became quite a fixture at the gas station seducing more than one customer into bringing him treats when they stopped for a fill-up. He also wandered into the nearby town center and managed to cajole the meat market butchers to give him bones. I remember him one time dragging back to the gas station a leg bone almost as long as he was. He gnawed on that one for days.

I liked high school and did well, receiving academic honors and graduating with a 3.8 GPA, being voted to various positions by my peers and being active in extra-curricular activities but Dad’s interest in sports did not reach his son although I played on the school basketball teams. I tended to begrudge the time I spent practicing with the team since I felt that I could be reading!

In 1952, when I turned 16, I got my first real job working after-school and weekends as a bag-boy at the Safeway market not far from our home. I was annoyed that as a condition of employment I had to join the Retail Clerks International Union and pay monthly dues from my part-time, low-income, job.

These were the days of Cold War hysteria with backyard atomic bomb shelters and regular duck and cover exercises in school where we lunged under our desks as doubtful protection against a Soviet nuclear weapon. Nearby San Pedro with its’ shipyards and oil refineries certainly had to be a target and I felt that if the bomb was to arrive please let it be before I was called on in algebra class.

The parents of my friend Billy had a trailer parked on the beach in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. Billy would invite me to spend weekends with them and from Billy’s dad I learned how to find clams with my toes and we caught grunion during their runs. Grunion are very small fish that come ashore to lay their eggs and then return to the water. During the grunion runs they could only be caught with hands, no scoops or other tools were allowed. Billy’s mother made a fire on the beach and the freshly caught fish went into a frying pan and we ate the entire fish with a little fresh lemon and much gusto.

On one of our visits to Ensenada Billy’s parents returned to Lomita for their jobs and Billy and I remained behind until their return the following weekend. In their absence, we frequented Hussong’s Cantina where we drank beer unfettered by California’s age requirements. On one occasion we experimented with tequila and the bartender showed us the Mexican ritual of drinking it. One makes a loose fist of the left hand and salt is poured on the skin between the thumb and forefinger, you take a lick of the salt, throw back the shot of tequila and follow that with a suck of a lime quarter. Repeat until you don’t know what you are doing — or even who you are. I have never since had such a hangover and I have been unable to even consider tasting tequila since that experience.

In 1953 the witch hunt of Senator Joseph McCarthy hit the Los Angeles School District and one of my favorite teachers, Jack Chasson, who taught us Literature and Drama was fired. This middle-aged man was charged with participating in a Communist organization when he was a student at UCLA several decades earlier. It is difficult today to understand the fear that was engendered by McCarthy and his scabrous minions. I worked in the school library as one of my electives and the librarian culled the shelves and placed books that might be considered controversial in a back room. She advised me where to find the books if I wanted to read them but she was fearful of having them on the open shelves. (Naturally, these were the books I wanted to read!)

About this time a drive-in restaurant, the Hot-N-Tot, opened not far from our house and this became the high school hangout. (Think of the now-defunct TV series Happy Days and The Fonz). After I had finished my homework I would walk to the Hot-N-Tot for a cherry Coke and to see who was around. It was so not-cool to walk to the Hot-N-Tot but because I took my classes seriously I was not part of the cool in crowd who seemed to have a much more casual attitude toward their education than did I.

Dad purchased a new Ford in 1953 and he gave me the family car, a battle-ship gray, 1936 Dodge four-door sedan. The car was far from being a babe magnet but it made dating a lot easier and allowed me to cruise the Hot-N-Tot. Although I didn’t pursue the social schedule of some of my peers I did enjoy the sock hop dances at the school gym. This was when slow dancing was the norm and you knew that you were dancing with someone rather than the frenetic, isolated, moves that now go by the name of dancing.

Lomita backs up to the Palos Verdes Hills and since I had a car I would double date with friends who did not. We would go up to PV driving to a road on the crest of the 1,500-foot hills and park under the eucalyptus trees at the side of the road and look over the endless sea of twinkling evening lights in the Los Angeles Basin that seemed a reflection of the endless twinkling stars in the clear night sky above us. (Today the area is completely covered with houses). I knew the liquor store owner in Lomita since I served him at Dad’s gas station and he was willing to sell an underage student a six-pack of Brew 102 — the cheapest available. So we drank beer and listened to the velvet voice of Johnny Otis, a local R & B disc jockey, and the gravelly tones of Wolfman Jack and made out. Double dating was safer since the presence of others served as a brake on youthful passion — this was, after all, the 1950’s!

The most incredibly beautiful — and beautifully-shaped — girl in school was in our class and we adolescent boys could only stare at her in open-mouthed admiration. Shirley C. was expelled from school when she became pregnant. All of the boys — well, obviously not all — had been intimidated by her beauty and her figure and after her expulsion we were in grief: who knew? Another stunning beauty, the actress Bo Derek, attended Narbonne but, regrettably, I had already graduated.

My friend Joey and I frequently drove to an all-night diner in Redondo Beach where we spent countless night-time hours with coffee and talk. On reflection, I wonder how, since we knew so little, we could talk so much?

Our uniform in school and at the Hot-N-Tot consisted of starched and creased peg pants with the cuffs so narrow it was difficult to get one’s foot through. This was complemented with a white crew-neck T-shirt and a high school letterman’s sweater, either pullover or cardigan. To vary the uniform the sweater was replaced with a leather jacket. My hairdo was a DA, a crew-cut on the top and long hair on the sides that were combed back into a duck’s tail. I wonder if our attire was as annoying to our elders as I now find the gangsta-rap attire worn by today’s youth?

While in high school I had determined that I would become a Foreign Service Officer. I have often wondered where this idea came from in a small town where most of my peers aspired to follow their fathers into refinery or municipal jobs or dreamed of becoming Police Officers or Firemen (as many of them did). I believe I was introduced to this as a career choice by my History teacher, Chester Dean, who was demanding of his students and who had a reputation as a tough teacher. His classes always started with oral quizzes about the previous night’s homework and his hyperactive, impatient, manner made it difficult for him to remember names when he called on us in rapid-fire succession to answer his questions so in his class we were either Boy or Girl as he pointed his finger. (This was one teacher for whom you had better have done your homework!) In his gruff manner he was inspiring since we could recognize his passion for, and commitment to, his profession and to us.

After graduation I corresponded with him and he encouraged my Foreign Service dream. He died while I was in the Army at what I remember to have been in his 50’s. In 2004 I attended our 50th class reunion and was surprised, and pleased, to learn that most of my classmates who had filled out a questionnaire identified Chester Dean as their favorite teacher. In a sense I think teachers affect eternity: they can never know when their influence stops.

It was at this reunion that I commented to a former classmate that we were now in our Golden Years. She responded, Our Golden Years were our high school years. I thought I might agree but that totally forgets the angst and turmoil of adolescence.

Following graduation in summer 1954, Butch wandered into the fields behind our house and was caught in a leg trap. I no longer recall what the neighbor was attempting to trap (probably gophers) but in escaping the trap Butch essentially amputated his foot before somehow getting back to the house. Butch and I sat together in the back seat of the car while Marlene drove us to the Humane Society in near-by San Pedro. They advised that Butch was unlikely to survive. I watched as he was put into a vacuum chamber for euthanasia and he scrambled up to look at us from the small round window as he died in the stainless cylinder. I had met death and I sobbed uncontrollably about the loss of my pal as Marlene drove us back home.

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High School Graduation

June 1954

3

College Years: Expanding Horizons

1954 - 1956

I applied to and was accepted to Stanford University with a partial scholarship but I received full tuition scholarship offers from Whittier College and Palos Verdes College (PVC) both small liberal arts schools in Southern California. Stanford was expensively out of question without a full scholarship and if I went to Whittier I would need to pay for a dorm but if I went to near-by Palos Verdes I could live at home and commute to the college.

Another attraction of Palos Verdes was that a key part of the curriculum was a Travel-Study Program when the entire student body went on an educational trip: in 1953 they went to Mexico City and studied the life and the culture, in 1954 they went to Sacramento to study state governance. In 1955 the trip was to be to Chicago, Washington, D.C. and New York City so with that attraction I chose PVC for my freshman year.

Because PVC was small and the student-faculty ratio was low, l954 was a year of real academic challenge for me. I thought the study habits of high school would carry me through but I learned in my mid-term grades that they wouldn’t. Dr. John Howard, the college president, summoned me to his office where I squirmed through a meeting as he expressed his disappointment at a scholarship student’s performance. I ramped up my study activity in hope that I might return for my sophomore year. I worked to earn money and in that year I was a gate guard at the affluent community of Rolling Hills Estates. Identifying the people who came to the gate and then lifting the barrier was boring but provided time for study.

The students of PVC filled up most of a prop plane in Spring 1955 as we flew to Chicago where we learned about commodities at the Board of Trade, attended lectures at the University of Chicago and visited the Chicago Art Institute with its magnificent collection. We met with Adlai Stevenson, former Governor of Illinois and two-time Presidential candidate, who discussed national politics and with Mayor Daley to learn of municipal governance. We met with black community leaders and the publisher of Ebony magazine to learn of urban racial difficulties and we had a walking tour of Chicago to learn of the innovations in architecture developed there.

In Washington, D. C. we met with Senators and Congressmen, attended Committee hearings and watched Congress in session. We toured the Capitol and the White House, visited the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art and the Islamic Center to learn of that religion. We met with a Justice of the Supreme Court to learn of that institution and attended lectures at Georgetown University.

In New York we visited the United Nations and met with diplomats from Israel and Arab countries to learn of the complex geopolitics of the Middle East. At the New York Stock Exchange we learned of equity investment and at the Museum of Modern Art I was stunned by the emotional strength of Picasso’s Guernica — a visual representation of the destruction of a Spanish town by German bombers in that country’s Civil War — and I was intrigued by the sculptures of the Romanian artist Brancusi. We studied medieval art at the Cloisters, attended a Broadway play and lectures at Columbia University.

We had to write reports on all of these activities, synthesizing our experiences and reactions, and I found that the Travel-Study trip proved a real eye-opener for a boy from a small town. This indelible experience provided motivation to expand my horizons — to see more, to learn more. From this trip I derived a life-long interest in architecture and continuing pleasure from visits to art museums. Learning the workings of our government proved valuable when I entered sophomore year (detailed below).

My second semester grades had improved enough that I was accepted for my sophomore year on a work-study program. I would run the Student Canteen in exchange for full tuition, room and board. But before the school year started PVC announced its closure. There had been funding problems at the small, inadequately endowed, school and the decision was taken to close it. The close-knit student body banded together in an effort to raise funds to keep the school open but we encountered the world of financial reality.

PVC had arranged for our admission to what is now California State University - Long Beach. It was late in the year to locate an alternative and I enrolled for my sophomore year in September 1955. Another PVC student and I rented a room and I found a job as Circulation Manager of the Long Beach Pacific News, a neighborhood newspaper. The circulation of the paper was 7,000, mostly from shops and stands, and the publisher wanted to double the circulation to 14,000 by starting home delivery. I would need to find carriers to make door-to-door deliveries but all the income that was left after paying the carriers would be mine. (The publisher’s income would come from increased ad revenue). This was a nice incentive and not only did I get the circulation to 14,000 I earned what seemed to me a lot of money and I learned the beginnings of how to motivate and reward others.

In classes at Long Beach State I applied the challenging, questioning, interactive approach to studies that was the required norm at PVC. This was not the case at Long Beach where the professors lectured in large halls to an essentially passive student body. My classroom challenges came to the attention of the head of the Political Science department and he offered me a position as Professor’s Assistant. My job was to grade tests and tutor those who had difficulties and I became an employee of the State of California with a regular paycheck. This income complemented my Circulation Manager income (which job I kept). The academic demands at the school were not great and although I was doing well financially after experiencing the intellectual demands at PVC I felt unchallenged and unhappy at the school.

4

Wanderjahr: An Innocent Abroad

1956 - 1957

I’m not serving you loudly yelled a red neck behind a lunch counter at a bus stop somewhere in segregated Oklahoma as he pointed at a middle-aged black woman. I was angered by this personal humiliation and to Mother’s discomfort I went to the black woman and offered to buy her something to eat. She declined.

Mother and I were on a cross-country Greyhound bus trip in 1956 to New York City from where I would fly to Europe to enroll in a French language program at L’Universite d’Aix in the south of France.

Because of my interest in the Foreign Service I thought that I should learn French, the language of diplomacy and I advised my parents that with all the money I had saved from my two jobs in my sophomore year I wanted to go to France for a semester and learn French.

I do not now recall how much conversation there was with Mother and Dad about this but they must not have had too many objections perhaps recognizing that their independent-minded 19-year-old son would probably do what he wanted to do anyway. Mother said she had always wanted to see the country and visit New York City and we embarked on our cross-country bus trip.

Sixty-four years later I don’t recall much of the cross-country trip other than that it was long and hot and uncomfortable but I do recall my shock upon first seeing segregated facilities in Texas. There were colored and white drinking fountains and restrooms and this viscerally offended me since several of my high school friends were Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans). Would they be white or colored? The Oklahoma experience noted above contrasted with the more-accepting California culture.

Mother and I walked extensively around New York City and saw much in our several days there before I went to Idyllwild Airport (now JFK) for a Lufthansa flight to Germany.

My plan was to visit German relatives and see Scandinavia before going to school in France in early October. In Europe it is traditional for students to take a year off from study to travel around the Continent and learn from other cultures. In Germany the term for that year is Wanderjahr or travel year. In England it is known as the gap year.

I kept a diary on the trip which I found in a box that contained letters I had written which Mother had saved. I appear to have been a dutiful son since it seems that I wrote weekly letters home. Because I regard my Wanderjahr as a seminal year of education and self-discovery and maturation, I am extracting from those notes and letters that could easily be entitled: Adventures (and Misadventures) in Europe.

The flight to Paris (where I would change planes for Duesseldorf, Germany) was airborne at 5:20 p.m. on 21 August 1956 and when dinner was served the propellers were reflecting the last rays of the setting sun behind us as we flew forward into the night. I was too excited to sleep and looked out the window into a beautiful night with clouds below and a brilliant moon and stars above.

I was eagerly anticipating Europe but there was also concern. I wondered what mad thing had I gotten myself into? What on earth possessed me to strike off on my own at 19-years of age to land as a stranger in a continent whose people I did not know, whose languages I did not speak? I wondered if I had what it took to land as though from another planet? I didn’t want to be disappointed — either by Europe or by myself.

I dozed and woke to the light of a beautiful pink dawn as the plane entered France. Far below, Brittany presented a vision of hedged fields, tree-lined roads and small villages but it was cloudy and rainy as we approached Paris and it was not possible to see anything of the city. My heart seemed in the vicinity of my throat as the plane landed at Orly Airport where I awaited my flight to Germany.

Germany: Becoming Acquainted

As I left the plane in Duesseldorf I wondered at the newness of what I was seeing:

There were signs reading: "Eingang, Zoll".

The Customs officer asked, "Haben Sie etwas zu erklaren?"

"I’m sorry, I don’t speak German".

Have you anything to declare: Cigars, cigarettes, liquor?

No, I have none of those.

"Sehr Gut" and he motioned me into his country.

Exiting Customs there was a tug on my sleeve and there stood two people I had seen in photographs. Mother had arranged with her sister, Marie, and her husband Heinie to meet me at the airport and with me not speaking a word of German and they not a word of English we took a bus to the Duesseldorf train station looking at each other out of the corners of our eyes. As the bus drove by destroyed buildings I asked War?. They responded, Ja, Krieg. Hmm, I would have to look up that word Krieg in my dictionary. (Krieg means war).

The bus stopped at the Bahnhof and as we walked inside I discovered that this was a train station. As we waited for a train to their home in Hagen we went into a Wirtschaft where Onkel Heinie ordered Sprudel Wasser. How odd, I thought, to just order soda water in a restaurant. Our waiter sported a Hitler mustache: he’s obviously an unrepentant Nazi I thought to myself.

In trying to communicate with Marie and Heinie and looking around at the strange sights and at the people it was almost too much for the senses. A big man dressed in an unusual black outfit, the pants with bell-bottoms, a black jacket, white shirt and a huge black hat strode into the room. Wow, what a picture: medievalism did still exist! My aunt explained he was ein Hamburger. It was all I could do to keep from snickering: a hamburger?

We boarded an old wooden-carriage train for the journey of about two hours to their home. The train was divided into compartments for six people, three to a side and each compartment had a door opening to the outside. As on the bus ride, the train trip showed substantial evidence of war damage eleven years after the war.

Entering the smoky Ruhr Valley we passed steel mills with belching chimneys and at the train station in Hagen we walked down a flight of stairs into a tunnel under the tracks and then up stairs into the train station itself where we surrendered our tickets and boarded a streetcar to their home. The buildings along the street were old four-story brick buildings built flush to the sidewalk and people were leaning on the windowsills of their open windows watching the world go by.

Heinie and Marie’s apartment consisted of two spic-and-span rooms of about equal size on the third floor of a four-floor walk-up building. One room was the kitchen, dining and living room shared with a parakeet in a cage, the other the bedroom. Marie said that I would share the bedroom with Heinie and that she would be with a neighbor. I later learned that she slept on the couch and would not allow her sister’s son to sleep there. The toilet and cold water tap were shared facilities down the hall. Marie heated a pot on the stove for washing dishes and shaving. With liberal use of my dictionary and mutual good intentions we began to communicate with one another.

Onkel Heinie had been drafted into the Wehrmacht and was captured on the Russian Front. He spent many years in Soviet prison camps and only returned to Germany in 1952. He worked at the municipal power plant in Hagen and once a week Marie and I went to the power plant to meet him when he got off work at 10:00 p.m. We took showers in the employee’s changing room — this beat washing from a tub on Marie’s kitchen table!

On my first day with them we took a tram to the suburb of Vorhalle and walked and walked along the Ruhr River on a tree-lined single-lane road where we disturbed a flock of geese. I learned they could be malevolent as they chased us hissing and flapping their wings as we ran from them, laughing.

Our destination from all the walking was a visit with Mother’s sister, my aunt Lena. I met cousins Edelgard and Doris but because Lena seemed overcome by emotion at Mother’s help for them after the war the visit was short and we agreed that I would return. Lena’s husband had been in the German military and was killed during the war.

I met other relatives including Dieter, my cousin, who was a couple of years older than I. Dieter’s father, Fritz, owned an upholstery shop in town. He had served on the Western Front in World War II and had been captured by Americans.

On several evenings I joined Dieter and his friends for beer at the local pub and one Saturday Fritz rented a car and we drove to Cologne to visit the massive cathedral, started in the 1200’s, where much of the interior was roped off because of danger of falling stones loosened by bombings. In Bonn we saw the modern government buildings of West Germany and drove up the Rhine River to Drachenfels mountain were there are castle ruins from the 1200’s and where we enjoyed Rhine wine on a terrace with views of the busy river and its heavy barge traffic.

During my time with Marie and Heinie I was taken around to meet the other residents of the building who wanted to meet the nephew aus Amerika. These were evening visits with cognac or beer as I responded to questions about life in America. The people were all very hospitable including an SS veteran who tried to persuade me that the SS was not as bad as described. I was ignorant of much but thought I should be skeptical of this conversation.

After ten days in Hagen I went to the train station on a rainy morning to travel north to the old Hanseatic city of Bremen en route to Scandinavia. The train traversed rolling farm country with much evidence of war destruction not only in the cities but also bomb craters in the farm fields.

In Bremen I walked around the open-air market seeing farmers bringing produce on horse-drawn wagons. The market square was bordered by the 900-year old cathedral, the old Rathaus (City Hall) and other old buildings. There is also a very large statue of Roland, a knight who served Charlemagne, erected in 1400. I probably saw all of the major attractions of the city on my marathon walk including the sight of broken glass set atop garden walls in a residential area to deter trespassers.

I traveled on to Hamburg, founded in 810 by Charlemagne, and explored the large, busy, city: the immense Rathaus is a beautiful Renaissance building and I saw ancient Hanseatic buildings on old canals. There are two lakes right in the center of the city and I rested on a bench beside one watching sailboats before walking to the Church of St. Michael dating from 1751. As I climbed