Untitled: The Story of My Life

By Daniel J. Adams

My life is one of multiple stories. It is a young man’s coming of age. It is moving from one way to the acceptance of many ways in philosophy and religion. It is transitioning from western thought to eastern thought. It is entering into an international and cross-cultural marriage. It is living in the East and in the West. It is taking road trips, climbing mountains, and sailing the seven seas. It is becoming a citizen of the world. And it is the story of survival, most recently in 2022. Truly my life is an example of the way that cannot be named, and thus must remain untitled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663248862

Daniel J. Adams

Daniel J. Adams, Professor of Theology Emeritus at Hanil University in Korea, is the author of 250 journal articles and twenty books. His books have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Czech, Indonesian, and Hungarian. In addition to these languages, his articles have appeared in Turkish and French translation. Currently he is preparing one manuscript for publication and working on the writing of another, both of which deal with theology and culture. An avid traveler, Dr. Adams has visited 149 countries and territories. With his wife, Carol, he especially enjoys hiking in the t, exploring archaeological sites, discovering the transcendent at places of religious devotion, and sailing to the lonely places of the world by cruise ship. In semi-retirement he and Carol are making plans for their third trip around the world.

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 Daniel J. Adams.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

844-349-9409

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4887-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4886-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022922691

iUniverse rev. date:  12/30/2022

CONTENTS

Preface

Part I

Childhood - 1943-1949

Chapter 1Ancestors Real and Imagined

Chapter 2Siblings Near and Far

Chapter 3Birth and Early Childhood

Part II

School Years - 1949-1961

Chapter 4Elementary School in Seattle - 1949-1955

Chapter 5Middle School in Bellevue - 1955-1958

Chapter 6High School in Renton - 1958-1961

Chapter 7Religion During My School Years

Part III

College Years - 1961-1965

Chapter 8Academic Life at Seattle Pacific College and the University of Washington

Chapter 9Skiing and Mountain Climbing During My College Years

Chapter 10Religious Development During My College Years

Part IV

The Seminary Years, Before Carol - 1965-1967

Chapter 11Deciding to Attend Seminary

Chapter 12Seminary—The First Year 1965-1966, Before Carol

Chapter 13Seminary—The Second Year 1966-1967, Before Carol

Chapter 14Summer Internship in Ohio

Part V

The Intern Year - Canada—New York—Europe -1967-1968

Chapter 15Across Canada

Chapter 16The Year in New York City

Chapter 17Europe…At Last

Part VI

Seminary, The Final Year, After Carol - 1968-1969

Chapter 18Academic Life

Chapter 19Courtship and Engagement

Part VII

Aquinas Institute of Theology—1969-1973

Chapter 20Doctoral Studies, Golden Congregational Church, and Ordination

Chapter 21Marriage as a Doctoral Student

Chapter 22Early Domestic Life and Selecting a Dissertation Topic in Rural Iowa

Chapter 23The Move to Potosi, Wisconsin

Chapter 24Writing the Dissertation, the Defense, and Graduation

Part VIII

The Taiwan Years - 1974-1979

Chapter 25From Potosi, Wisconsin to Montreat, North Carolina

Chapter 26California, Hawaii, and Japan

Chapter 27Taipei, Taiwan—First Impressions

Chapter 28Miaoli, Taiwan—First Impressions

Chapter 29Family Profiles

Chapter 30Academic Life—Housing, Faculty, and Students

Chapter 31Academic Life—An Epiphany at Soochow University

Chapter 32Rites of Passage

Chapter 33Festivals and Food

Chapter 34Journeys and Places and Miaoli

Chapter 35Church Life in Taiwan

Chapter 36Politics in Taiwan

Chapter 37The Taiwan Years in Retrospect

Chapter 38A Taiwanese Postscript in Canada

Part IX

Our First Trip Around the World - Summer 1977

Chapter 39Planning the Trip

Chapter 40Thailand

Chapter 41Europe

Chapter 42United States

Chapter 43Korea and Japan

Part X

The Year of Transition, Richmond, Virginia - 1979-1980

Chapter 44Life in Richmond, Virginia

Chapter 45Serving as a Visiting Scholar and Church Life

Chapter 46An Unexpected Visitor

Part XI

The Korea Years - 1980-2010

Chapter 47Apprehensions and First Impressions About Korea

Chapter 48Attending Church in Seoul and Other Examples of Culture Shock

Chapter 49The Royal Asiatic Society—Korea Branch

Chapter 50Some Interesting Experiences in Seoul

Chapter 51Leaving Seoul and the Move to Jeonju

Chapter 52Teaching at Hanil Women’s Seminary

Chapter 53Teaching at Hanil Theological College

Chapter 54An Atlanta Interlude

Chapter 55A Hong Kong Interlude

Chapter 56Hanil Theological College Becomes Hanil University

Chapter 57An Interlude at the University of Dubuque in Iowa

Chapter 58Teaching at Hanil University and Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Chapter 59International Travel Related to Hanil University

Chapter 60Involvement with the Business World

Chapter 61Our Spiritual Children

Chapter 62Two New Presidents at Hanil University and Retirement

Part XII

Korea Again - 2010-2011

Chapter 63Retirement from the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Return to Hanil University

Chapter 64The Presbyterian Theological College and Seminary in Seoul

Chapter 65Living in Seoul and Our Second Retirement

Part XIII

The Sabbatical Year - Decatur, Georgia- 2011-2012

Chapter 66Life at Columbia Theological Seminary

Chapter 67The Atlanta Taiwanese Presbyterian Church

Chapter 68Retirement Real and Imagined

Part XIV

Saint Johns, Florida - 2012-Ongoing

Chapter 69Life at Westminster Woods on Julington Creek

Chapter 70The Osher Life-Long Learning Institute at the University of North Florida

Chapter 71Attending Church in Northeast Florida

Chapter 72The Joy of Travel by Cruise Ship

Part XV

Our Second Trip Around the World - Spring 2018

Chapter 73Preparations and Part One: Atlanta - February 17-20, 2018

Chapter 74Part Two: Taiwan - February 22-March 8, 2018

Chapter 75Part Three: Grand World Voyage 2018—50-day Segment from Hong Kong to Ft. Lauderdale - March 9-April 28, 2018

Chapter 76Additional Comments and Essays on the World Voyage

Part XVI

Road Trips and Mountains

Chapter 77Post-Retirement Road Trips

Chapter 78Speaking of Mountains

Part XVII

The Pandemic - 2020-2022

Chapter 79Experiencing the Unthinkable

Chapter 80Adapting to the Unthinkable

Chapter 81An Interim Summation

Part XVIII

The Fall - March 9, 2022

Chapter 82The Fall

Chapter 83And Following

Chapter 84A Theological Discourse

Part XIX

The Great Road Trip to Alaska - June 8-August 5, 2022

Chapter 85To Go or Not to Go

Chapter 86Going West

Chapter 87Going North

Chapter 88Going East

Part XX

Between Two Worlds - 1943-2022

Chapter 89The Beginning of the End

Chapter 90The End of the Beginning

Part XXI

Travel Essays

Chapter 91Ghosts Along the Silkroad - 1997

Chapter 92Reflections on Mongolia - 2004

Chapter 93Who Really Won the Vietnam War? Reflections on a Trip to Hanoi, Ninh Binh, and Halong Bay - 2005

Chapter 94A Tibetan Journey - 2006

Chapter 95The Churches of Romania - 2011

Chapter 96The Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi in Havana—Then and Now - 2016

Chapter 97Off the Beaten Path in Antarctica and the Amazon – 2017

Chapter 98A Meditation on a Place in the Middle of Nowhere which is Out of Sight and Out of Mind - 2019

Part XXII

Appendixes

Chapter 99Curriculum Vitae of Daniel J. Adams

Chapter 100List of Publications by Daniel J. Adams

In memory of the

Teachers, Tutors, and Professors

who have guided me on

The Nameless Way

The way conceals itself in being nameless,

It is the way alone that excels in

bestowing and in accomplishing.

Lao Tzu

(Tao Te Ching, Bk. 2, Sec. XLI, Vs. 92)

PREFACE

Lions generally don’t know what to do with tents, so you should probably be OK if a lion comes near your tent said our guide as we prepared to bed down for the night at Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe on a warm night in December 1998. About an hour later I was suddenly awakened by heavy breathing accompanied by a deep guttural sound just outside the tent door. There was no mistaking that this sound was coming from a lion making its way through our safari camp. The words generally and probably immediately came to mind, and I hoped that our guide was right. As my wife and I lay motionless in our sleeping bags afraid to even breath, I was terrified that the pounding of my heart would be heard by the lion. The lion sniffed at the tent door and then slowly made its way to other areas of the camp. How, I wondered, did I ever find myself in such a situation?

It all started with my interest in theology in middle school, followed by graduate theological studies where I met numerous international students, one of whom became my wife. Together we served as professors in Taiwan and Korea where we renewed our relationship with students we had met in the US. Always interested in international relations and cross-cultural studies we attended a conference in Seoul on Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation. One of our Korean friends invited us to his home for dinner where we were introduced to people from the World Council of Churches, and before we knew it, we had registered as Accredited Visitors to the Eighth Assembly of the World Council of Churches held in Harare, Zimbabwe. Our special program included a safari and from that came our encounter with the wandering lion.

I suppose I could have entitled this autobiography The Lion Outside the Tent which would have been a catchy title. But an encounter with a lion is only one small part of the story of my life. There is little doubt in my mind that one of the most difficult tasks in writing a memoir or autobiography is choosing a title. I agonized over this for many weeks and finally came up with a list of twelve possible titles, all of which were eventually eliminated. It is not that they were poor titles, rather, it was that they did not do justice to the wide range of experiences that have characterized my life journey. Several titles focused on travel, but my life has been and is much more than travel. A couple of other titles dealt with the fact that I have lived in two geographical parts of the world—East and West. Several other titles brought in the cross-cultural aspects of my life. Geography and culture, however, only cover a part of my life. Allusions from Scripture were considered, especially from my favorite book of Ecclesiastes. They too were discarded as being too limiting. Examples from the natural world were deemed inadequate due to the possibility of misinterpretation.

In light of my studies of Chinese and Korean philosophy, I decided to look to the Asian sages of the past for inspiration. I took down from my bookshelf a well-worn and highly underlined and annotated copy of the Tao Te Ching by the philosopher Lao Tzu who lived in China in the sixth century before Christ. As I read, the following quote seemed to leap off the page into my consciousness. The way conceals itself in being nameless. It is the way alone that excels in bestowing and in accomplishing.

I knew then that I found the title for this memoir. The way is nameless. Therefore, the title is Untitled: The Story of My Life.

In John 14:6 Jesus said, I am the way… and although I am a Christian and follow the way of Jesus, I have also been influenced by other ways, including those of Asia which came into being centuries before the time of Jesus. These would include Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, and Confucius. Even later Asian philosophers such as the Chinese Hui-Neng (638-713) and Chu Hsi (1130-1200) and the Korean Yi T’oe-gye (1501-1570) lived and worked without any knowledge of Jesus or Christianity. Truly the way is nameless.

No title can do justice to the many facets of my life experience as I have sought to be guided in the way which has bestowed upon me so much and accomplished so much through my life.

I have dedicated this story of my life to the memory of teachers, tutors, and professors who have been my guides along the nameless way. I have been on the receiving end of formal education for well over a quarter of a century. That includes twelve years of primary, middle, and high school; four years of college and university; four years of theological seminary including an intern year; three years of doctoral studies including summer school; and two years of study for a masters in Chinese studies in Taiwan. Then there was a year of language study in Taiwan and two years of full-time language study in Korea. Countless teachers and professors taught me in classes and seminars and tutorials. Tutors also made certain that I passed math courses and language exams when my abilities seemed to flag in these areas. They all have bestowed upon me knowledge and wisdom which have made it possible to accomplish what I have done in my life. Lao Tzu would have been proud of them all, for they exemplified the nameless way.

The subtitle is the Story of My Life. My life has taken many twists and turns from childhood until retirement. I have been nurtured through family and a strong faith tradition. I have received an excellent education. I have lived and worked in Asia as well as the West, and I have experienced Asian culture in ways almost no one else has. As if this were not enough, I have had the opportunity travel throughout the world. The story of my life is really the intersection of multiple stories, each of which makes up the whole.

Of course, once Carol became a part of my life, she also became a part of the story. This memoir is not only about my life, but her life as well, or perhaps more correctly, our life together. She has read the entire manuscript, corrected my English, refreshed my memory at key points, provided helpful editorial assistance, and been a keen and perceptive critic. But she is not the author of the story. I am. All errors of fact, misjudgments of others and their intentions, and controversial interpretations of cultural, political, and religious events and ideas are mine alone. There is no doubt in my mind that this story would have never been told, and certainly never been put into writing, without Carol’s full participation. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic it was she who suggested that I write my life story and was she who would not let me rest until the task was complete.

Many people have had a hand in the process of turning this manuscript into a published book. I am especially grateful to Joanne Chase for doing the formatting and to Larry Chase for taking the final photo of me waving to my readers from Ocean Shores. Larry and Joanne have not only been life-long friends, but were among our most faithful supporters during our years of mission service in Korea. Larry also managed to make an appearance at important points in the story, thus keeping me in contact with my childhood roots. And as always, whenever we are in the Seattle area, Larry has taken Carol and I to see my childhood home. So far, with each visit, the house still stands occupied and in good repair, even though it is surrounded by progress in the form of an elementary school and a large housing development.

Untitled: The Story of My Life reads like a story, or perhaps a series of stories. Since everyone enjoys a good story, especially when it is a true story, I have decided to share it with you, the reader. I thoroughly enjoyed living this story and writing this story. I hope that you will enjoy reading it as well.

Daniel J. Adams

Saint Johns, Florida

August 28, 2022

Feast Day of St. Augustine (354-430)

PART I

Childhood - 1943-1949

CHAPTER 1

Ancestors Real and Imagined

I was born on April 15, 1943 in a private clinic in Bothell, Washington which was then a small town northeast of Seattle near the northern end of Lake Washington. My birth certificate lists James Bushnell Adams as my father and Elva Melvina Adams as my mother. My father was originally from Saginaw, Michigan but early on his family moved out to Seattle which was then a bustling, growing city of opportunity. I never met either of my grandparents on my father’s side as they both died before my birth. However, I have seen a photo of my grandfather posing with a rifle and wearing the badge of a county marshal. Whether on a full-time basis or a part-time basis he did serve as a law officer in what was a largely lawless part of the country at the time. My grandfather was a poet and I have in my possession notebooks as well as typescripts of many of his poems. They deal with life in Seattle in those early days. My father never spoke of his siblings. There were numerous relatives in the Seattle area so I assume that he did have at least one brother or sister.

My father worked most of his life with ships. As a young man he traveled around the world on tramp steamers and brought back several mementos of his travels. One of these, a beautiful hand-carved teakwood chest from China graces the living room of our home in Florida. He brought it out of Shanghai less than a week before World War II closed that port to commercial shipping.

From Asia he ended up in Alaska where he tried his hand at panning for gold. He was reasonably successful, and two sizeable gold nuggets which we have in our possession testify to his success. When he got gold fever out of his system, he started sailing on ships plying the routes between Alaskan ports. At first, he sailed on at least three ships related to the Northland Transportation Company, the North Haven, the North Star, and the North Sea. A photo of the North Sea sailing in the waters of Alaksa hangs on the wall of my study room. In the dining room of my childhood home there were two color paintings from Alaska both from near the port of Haines.

Then my father started working for the Alaska Steamship Company. Eventually he moved to Seattle and worked at their main port Pier 2. He no longer sailed but worked as a longshoreman and eventually worked his way up to the position of foreman. This meant he no longer did heavy physical work, but rather administrative and supervisory tasks. I remember my mother used to be incensed when he insisted on wearing a suit to work.

Two items from his seafaring days rest atop a bookcase in my study. One is a metal ashtray which incorporates a ship’s wheel, propeller, and anchor in the design and is embossed with the name Northland Transportation Co.—Alaska Service. The other is a ceramic white and blue ashtray/match strike/match holder with the name Apollinaris on it. This refers not to a ship but to a European mineral water. My father was a smoker his entire life and both ashtrays were well-used and came off ships. Although I am a nonsmoker, I treasure these two ashtrays as a physical connection with my father.

Two other tangible memories of my father in my possession are his social security card and his work identity card. The social security card is metal and the identity card has his photograph on it.

There were a number of my father’s relatives living in the Seattle area. I believe that most of them were cousins and one whom I called Uncle may have been a brother but I don’t know if his last name was Adams or not. Back in those days it was common for children to refer to adults who were family members or close friends as Uncle or Aunt. I remember Uncle Wilbur for three things. First, he was an elderly man and walked with a cane. He was the only elderly man I knew in those days who looked and acted like what I thought an elderly man should. Second, once when he and other family members were visiting us, Uncle Wilbur was waiting by the car for the other family members to come and take him home. He felt the call of nature, and when they still didn’t come, he unzipped his pants and proceeded to pee in our front yard. Back then I was shocked, but now that I am an elderly man myself, I can fully understand his actions. Third, eventually Uncle Wilbur moved to a retirement home near Portland, Oregon. One weekend another relative, a bubbly woman who always seemed to be full of energy, drove my mother and I down to visit Uncle Wilbur. Just after crossing the Columbia River into Oregon, we stopped for hamburgers at a place called Waddles which had as its icon a waddling duck. This was, I believe, the first hamburger I had ever eaten in a restaurant. Uncle Wilbur lived in a retirement facility that looked like an old mansion on the outskirts of Portland. His two major activities of each day were to light up his pipe after breakfast and have a leisurely smoke, and following lunch, to walk across the street to a tavern for a pint of beer before returning to his room for a long afternoon nap.

Several other relatives also made an impression on me, but for very different reasons. They were all were members of the Hill family and I they were cousins of my father. They ran a grocery store, or perhaps even a chain of grocery stores, and were reasonably wealthy. The Hills owned a beautiful home on Seattle’s Magnolia Bluff overlooking Puget Sound and we often visited them on holidays. I loved crossing the street in front of their home and watching the ships in the harbor with the snow-capped Olympic Mountains in the background. One Thanksgiving while visiting them their two sons were playing with me and one of them, nicknamed Socko, got hold of my teddy bear. Every time I tried to grab it, he tossed it in the air and stepped back away from me toward the blazing fireplace. On the last toss he accidently sent my teddy bear directly into the flames. He immediately pulled it out of fire but the damage was already done. My beloved yellow teddy bear was forever singed a smoky brown. I don’t think I ever forgave Socko for burning my teddy bear.

The Hill family had several tragedies that made a deep impression upon me as a child. W. the husband, committed suicide by shooting himself in his car while parked near a secluded gravel pit. He had planned to rent an airplane as he was a licensed pilot, but the rental agency refused to rent him a plane because he appeared to be emotionally unstable. That is when he got his gun and drove to the gravel pit. W.’s wife, R., turned to religion following her husband’s untimely death and became a leading supporter of a large independent church in Seattle.

Another member of the family, N., lived on a houseboat on Seattle’s Lake Union. He was a bachelor and lived alone. One autumn night he was returning home and slipped on the frosty decking and fell off the dock into the water. He was wearing a heavy naval pea jacket which quickly became waterlogged. When found the next morning by the police, he had embraced one of the pilings in an effort to pull himself up out of the water. My parents heard about the incident on the morning news, and I recall quite clearly my father’s phone call to R. Hill. He said, We were just listening to the morning news. Did we hear bad news about N.? Her answer was yes and that meant another funeral for my parents to attend related to the Hill family.

The last time I met any members of father’s family was in 1955 following my father’s death from a heart attack early in the year. My mother drove to Michigan to visit members of my father’s family and share with them the details of his passing. I recall that they lived on a farm about midway between Saginaw and Midland. It was early spring and the fields had recently been plowed. While my mother talked family business with the relatives, one of the members of the family said, Dan, why don’t you go out and look for Indian arrowheads. You never know what you might find. I did, and following about thirty minutes of searching I found a beautiful grey flint arrowhead among the newly plowed furrows. I still have it among a few remaining items from what used to be an extensive collection of rocks, minerals, fossils, and Native American artifacts.

Relatives on my mother’s side all hailed from New Brunswick, Canada. As was the case with my father, I never met my grandparents on my mother’s side although I have seen their photos. Mother was born on a farm located on the South Tetagouche River east of Bathurst, the main port on the Bay of Chaleur. Because of her rural roots, she was, like my father, relatively uneducated by modern standards, completing her education at the end of middle school. This meant that as a young woman her opportunities were limited to either an early marriage to a farmer or menial work as a maid, housekeeper, or waitress. None of these alternatives appealed to my mother as New Brunswick and the other Maritime Provinces of Canada were relatively undeveloped at that time with farming and fishing being the mainstay of the economy.

She had a friend, named Grace, also from the Bathurst area, who was in a similar situation. My mother—Elva Melvina Smith—and Grace decided to go west and seek their fortunes. This was at the time an extremely unusual thing to do, and both women demonstrated incredible independence. It took almost two years for these two women to make their way across Canada working at odd jobs, mostly as waitresses. They moved westward from New Brunswick to Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa and Sault Ste Marie, Ontario; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Regina and Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan; Medicine Hat and Calgary, Alberta; and Hope and eventually Vancouver, British Columbia. What they lacked in formal education, both women gained in practical education during those two years. And of course, as single women, they were on the lookout for suitable candidates for husbands.

After a couple of years in Vancouver, Grace and Elva decided to head south to Seattle in the United States and try their luck. Both women were extremely lucky. Grace soon found a husband named Larry and my mother found a husband named James or Jim as she always called him. As my mother told it, both she and Aunt Grace met their future husbands at a community dance. Aunt Grace and Uncle Larry Johnson became two of the closest persons during my childhood as the two couples soon bonded just like family. We were always visiting Aunt Grace and Uncle Larry for lunch or dinner and they were always visiting us. Aunt Grace and Uncle Larry had two sons and my mother and father had three sons and one daughter.

Once Grace and Elva settled in Seattle a number of other relatives made a similar journey from the Bathurst area to the west, but some of them settled elsewhere in Canada such as Ottawa and Toronto. Most, however, ended up in Vancouver where they settled in and founded a small community of folks from the Bathurst area. Every year there would be a Bathurst Do held in the Jericho Beach neighborhood not far from the campus of the University of British Columbia.

It was on one of the trips from Seattle to Vancouver that I first became aware that Canada was another country. Back in those days it was a two-day trip and we stayed overnight in a motel on the outskirts of Vancouver. I looked out the window of our room and saw the British flag flying instead of the American flag. I asked my father, What it is that strange flag? I have never seen it before. He explained to me that it was the Canadian flag and since Canada was a member of the British Commonwealth, they used the British flag as their national flag. This was many years before Canada adopted the red maple leaf as their national flag. My father went on to tell me, Dan, you are now in a different country. I was absolutely amazed. And then my mother told me, Dan, I was born in Canada and I am a Canadian citizen. This was my first knowledge that my parents were partners in an international marriage.

My mother had three sisters and she never mentioned any brothers, although I believe that there was a brother who died young. My mother was the youngest sister. The sister closest to my mother’s age was Aunt Becky. Although I have a photo of her, she passed away before I got to know her but my mother referred to her often in conversation. The middle sister, Aunt Elsie, was married to Uncle George, and they lived in Bathurst. Uncle George had worked for the major industry in the city, Bathurst Power and Paper as did his son. I met them on two occasions when visiting Canada with my mother. They were staunch Protestants and members of the United Church of Canada. One of the biggest scandals that took place in the family was when Uncle George’s and Aunt Elsie’s high school age son played for the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) baseball team in the city league. He was seen as a traitor to the Protestant cause and lasted only one season on the CYO team due to family pressure.

The eldest sister was Aunt Jessie. She was trained as a nurse and during World War I served as a nursing-sister for Canadian/British forces on the front in Europe. When the war ended, she returned to Canada with what was then known as shell shock, now called PTSD. For reasons that were never made clear to me, she settled in Seattle and moved in with my parents. She never married, was at that time a heavy smoker (she later quit), and was not at all similar to my mother in temperament. Since she was never able to hold a job, she was on public assistance due to medical disability.

Needless to say, there were frequent conflicts especially when it came to child rearing. When I was very young it all came to head, and my father said, Enough is enough. He took an old garage, moved it about one-hundred yards from the main house, and completely remodeled it into a comfortable one-bedroom bungalow. Aunt Jessie and all of her possessions were moved into the new house and peace in the family was restored. She was close enough for family get-togethers and special meals and far enough away to keep her nose out of family business. As I grew up, I mowed Aunt Jessie’s lawn and was always rewarded with a Hershey chocolate bar with almonds in addition to my regular payment. She had a sophisticated taste in books and I always enjoyed visiting her and perusing her many classics such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, William Durant’s The Story of Philosophy, and Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. At Christmas I always knew that my gift from Aunt Jessie would be a book. When Aunt Jessie died of complications from diabetes, Carol and I drove from Iowa to Seattle for the funeral in the middle of winter.

Nieces and nephews and assorted cousins on my mother’s side were scattered across Canada from Bathurst, New Brunswick; Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario; to Vancouver and Burnaby, British Columbia. From time to time, they would make their appearance, especially when mother and I drove east for occasional family visits. My mother enjoyed cross-country driving and made numerous trips from the west coast to the east coast and back either alone or with me.

CHAPTER 2

Siblings Near and Far

I was the youngest of four children. My oldest brother was Cecil and he had left home and married by the time I became aware that I had any siblings. However, he did return home from time to time with his wife Anne and his two children Kathleen and Jimmy. He was the wanderer of the family and worked at many different jobs including construction and fisheries. He eventually moved to Alaska and finally settled in Homer where he lived with his wife Anne, until his death. Since he lived in Alaska, he and I were never close, and rarely saw each other. When my mother died, I contacted the Alaska State Police in order to locate him and notify him of mother’s passing.

The next in line was my brother Jack who lived in eastern Washington. He spent many years near Cheney, then moved to Colfax, and finally, after his marriage, settled in Spokane until his death. Every year we visited him in eastern Washington around July 4th. Every summer he would come to visit us for several weeks. It was during a visit with Jack when he lived in Colfax that I got my driver’s license. My learner’s permit had expired and I decided to take the test. The police officer who gave me the test had only one arm, and since Colfax was a small farming town, I had no difficulty in passing the test and getting my driver’s license. Jack eventually worked in the janitorial department for a large hospital in Spokane, and when he died in 2013, Carol and I flew from Jacksonville to Spokane to attend his funeral. It was winter and there was snow on the ground in Spokane. I remember it well as it was the first snow we had experienced since moving to Florida.

My sister, Betty Jo, was still living at home during my youngest years, and my memories of her are quite vivid. According to her, she gave me my name Daniel after the popular song Danny Boy. She always called me Danny as did her second husband Bob. She was considerably older than I. She was studying music at the Cornish School of Allied Arts in Seattle and always said that she wanted to be on Broadway. In order to drive from our home in suburban Renton to the Cornish School we drove along Broadway in Seattle and I never could figure out why this ordinary street fascinated my sister so much. Of course, she was talking about Broadway in New York, but I did not know that.

My sister was the only one of my siblings to receive a college education, but she did so later in life after her second marriage. Eventually she received an MA in drama and became an instructor in dramatic arts at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas. For most of her married life she lived in California and later in Texas and passed away in 2018.

This means that of four children I am the only one left. For the record let it be said that I am, supposedly, on my father’s side, a member of a branch of the family that can trace its ancestry back to the year 1066 and includes as members of the family US presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. How much of this is actual fact and how much is legend and how much is just plain wistful thinking is beyond my knowledge.

CHAPTER 3

Birth and Early Childhood

What I do know, from my birth certificate, is that I came into the world around 2:40 in the afternoon of April 15, 1943. I was a problem child right from the beginning as I was, as the old saying goes, from the womb untimely ripped. I was born three months premature and was, what is now referred to as an e-preemie. By all accounts I should have died or at the very least suffered from severe birth defects. Aside from an impaired left-brain development and minor dyslexia, I turned out to be, relatively speaking, normal. But at birth I was far from normal. My mother told me that when she first saw me, I looked like a piece of raw meat. I was immediately placed in an incubator where I remained for the next three months. When I was finally brought home I was so tiny that I was carried in a shoe box. Since I was so tiny and my early growth was so slow, I never did develop good muscle coordination. Perhaps this contributed to my first recorded act of naughtiness. It seems that my father was changing my diaper and as he bent over me to carry out this task, I peed straight into his face. I was told about this years later by my mother. It seems that my father came out of the bedroom, his face dripping wet, and laughing loudly. When my mother asked what happened, he told her what I had done. So, you see, right from the beginning I was someone who did not do things inside the box, or at least did not always pee inside my diaper.

My first memories go back to when I was about two years old. I had a hernia and was operated on at Seattle’s Harborview Hospital. I can still remember my mother holding me in her arms and looking out the window at night and seeing bright city lights and the lights on the ships in the harbor. I was back in the same hospital again when I was four years old for another hernia surgery. For the record I have been troubled by hernias all of my life until the present. This is probably due to an underdevelopment of the abdominal wall because of my premature birth. Following this second hernia surgery relatives came to see me and I remember winking at one of the visitors, a lady by the name of Vivian. Everyone said that I was flirting, but at age four I had no idea what they were talking about. All I knew was that every time I winked, I became the center of attention.

My earliest memories at home were probably from between the ages of three and four. I had a number of wooden toy cars and trucks and I would place them in a straight line on the living room carpet. Sometimes my father would walk into the room, and not seeing my arrangement, knock them out of alignment. I would cry out and he would immediately bend down and put everything back in its place. My sister, however, would deliberately kick my toys knocking them all over the floor. Then she would laugh and run away. One time we got into a fight over this and I hit her and gave her a bloody nose. I counted this a victory over my big, bad, mean older sister.

Another memory from early childhood was sitting on Santa Claus’s lap at the Bon Marche Department Store in downtown Seattle. There were four department stores located close together and my mother would always park in the Four Stores Garage. She had me all dressed up with a white shirt and dress pants and even a tie. We stood in line until it was my turn to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what I wanted for Christmas. I have completely forgotten what I asked for, but I do remember posing for the photograph with Santa.

Although my father was not a regular church goer at that time, my mother attended church every Sunday and it was expected that my sister and I go with her. My sister being older, went to Sunday school and junior church. I sat with my mother in the pew and contented myself with scribbling with a crayon on a piece of paper placed on a hymnbook. One of the cardinal rules was that I was supposed to go to the toilet before the service, and I was not allowed to leave the service to go to the toilet. Sometimes it was all I could do to hold it until the service was over and then I would run to the restroom.

When I was probably five years old, I had another experience involving holding it when I went with my sister and her boyfriend (who later became her first husband) to visit the Woodland Park Zoo on a Sunday afternoon. I remember that it was pouring down rain, which was common in the Seattle area, so common in fact that planned outings took place rain or shine. As young lovers do, they were totally absorbed in each other, and ignored my pleas for them to take me to one of the public toilets at the zoo. I pleaded with them again and again and they said, Yeah, don’t worry in a few minutes. I held it as long as possible and finally wet my pants. Of course, they scolded me but I was terribly embarrassed. We had to take a city bus back to the church where my sister’s boyfriend had parked his car, and I was mortified during the entire bus ride. I was five years old and therefore too old to wet my pants. I do not think that I ever experienced a sense of shame like I did on that Sunday afternoon bus ride. Needless to say, I never went anywhere with my sister and her boyfriend again. In fact, I never went anywhere with her and her first husband after that experience.

One of the happiest days in our family was Mother’s Day. By this time my sister had married and left home. Several days prior to Mother’s Day my father would buy my mother a floral corsage and for me he bought a red boutonniere. He wore a white boutonniere since his mother was no longer living. These were placed in the refrigerator to keep them fresh until Sunday. After church we would then go to Rosie’s Diner out on Highway 99 between Seattle and Tacoma for a special Sunday dinner. In those days this was the most prestigious restaurant in the area and reservations had to be made weeks in advance. I recall that one time we were eating there and my father pointed out a nearby table and said, Do you see that man there? He is the governor of the State of Washington. I was really impressed especially when I saw the governor’s nice new Packard in the parking lot.

During the winter months my mother wore a real mink fur coat and when summer came, we always made a drive to Kirkland where the coat was put into cold storage until the cold weather came again in the fall. Kirkland was also the location of a large cannery. Since my father worked on the waterfront, he was always being given fresh seafood, including more fresh wild Alaska salmon than we could possibly eat. So, every year my mother would spend several days at the Kirkland cannery canning up to a hundred cans of salmon which was enough to last the entire year. While she was busy canning, I would read or pick blackberries which grew profusely on some vacant property next to the cannery.

Just for your information the Kirkland brand name used by Costco, which was founded in Seattle, is named after this town of Kirkland.

I grew up to love seafood, especially salmon. My father would also bring home fresh halibut, red snapper, oysters, and sole. I, and the neighborhood kids, would often go fishing in nearby May Creek and bring home freshly caught rainbow trout. As I grew older, we would also fish in a nearby lake called Lake Boren, and catch fresh water perch. I could honestly say as a young boy there was nothing from the sea and freshwater creeks and lakes that I did not like to eat.

I believe that I had a normal, happy childhood. One Christmas, when I was about eight or nine, I received a nice new French-made bicycle that enabled me to go faster than all of the other neighbor kids since they had American-made bicycles with wider tires. The neighbor boys and I would ride up into the hills to explore around the old coal mines. Sometimes we would dig for fossils. In fact, as I write these words, I can look up on the windowsill above my desk and see two fossils from those childhood days, a fossil tree leaf and a large petrified clam. We were cautioned never to enter any of the old mine shafts, many of which were wide open and totally unprotected. One mine had an explosion many years earlier and was still burning underground. It was near this mine that I found the fossilized clam. Our two dogs would always accompany us when we rode into the hills, and when the dogs returned home, my mother knew that within thirty minutes I would soon follow on my bike.

During most of my childhood we had two dogs. Trixie was the inside house dog and was a Boston Terrier. Peaches was the outside dog and was an English Setter. They became my constant companions. We had a number of cats, two of which I especially remember. Herman was a grey cat with six toes on each foot. Pretty Face was black with a white face and she would come into my bedroom each morning and lick my face to wake me up. I had a succession of other pets including a guinea pig, a parakeet, gold fish, and guppies.

The Marshall family were longtime residents of the area and were our closest neighbors. All of the neighborhood kids called them Grandpa and Grandma Marshall. They had two sons, Kenny and Clifford. Cliff’s sons Dick and Danny became like family to us, and they would often invite themselves for meals, especially breakfast and lunch. We took the boys to church with us every Sunday, and of course we always rode our bicycles together. Grandma Marshall would often invite us for tea, and it would be about nine parts milk and one part tea, but it made me feel like a grown-up.

My childhood was defined by three mountains. Tiger Mountain, located near Issaquah, could be seen from our kitchen window. Today it is still heavily forested but can be climbed via a network of hiking trails. The closest mountain was Goat Mountain. It got its name from an old prospector named Stephen Jacey who used to raise goats. When Stephen Jacey died the goats were set free and, as goats are prone to do, they multiplied and soon ran free all over the mountain. It was here that most of the abandoned coal mines were located and where we found the fossils. Today much of Goat Mountain has been subdivided and turned into expensive housing developments. Cougar Mountain was the furthest away. It was here that more coal mines were located. Today the entire mountain has become an incorporated city appropriately named Newcastle. Many of the old miner’s cabins located between Couger Mountain and Goat Mountain have been restored into a State Historical Area. Roaming free among these mountains was a delightful aspect of my childhood.

Another delightful aspect of my childhood was a cabinet in our basement filled with hundreds of National Geographic magazines. I would spend hours poring over these journals and dreaming all kinds of dreams. Some were impossible childhood dreams, like constructing Roman and Greek cities in my backyard. Others were dreams that later came true, like visiting the forbidden mountain world of Tibet and seeing the human skull and thighbone that were converted into religious items used in esoteric ceremonies. My love of travel came both from these magazines in our basement and stories from my father’s years at sea.

This basement played a significant role in one of two of the most memorable examples of my childhood naughtiness. My mother used to invite neighborhood women from local churches to our house for what she called missionary meetings. This was actually a quilting bee and lunch, and the quilts were sold to raise money for missionaries. While our mothers were occupied with quilting we kids found other things to do. One of these other things was playing with matches in the basement. We had a wood stove in the basement and there were plenty of matches available. I found an old broken mirror and we would build small fires on the mirror and carry the burning fires around the basement. I think we pretended to be ancient Egyptian priests or something like that. When done we would stuff all of the evidence behind an old wooden trunk that was placed against the wall. There was plenty of evidence there to see such as burned bits of paper, stubs of burned matches, and of course, the fire-blackened mirror. As the weeks went on the evidence continued to pile up.

As a child I took piano lessons and one day while I was practicing my mother went down to the basement. Unbeknown to me, for some reason she moved that trunk away from the wall and saw all of the evidence. She came upstairs to where I was practicing on the piano and said, Dan, have you been playing with matches in the basement? Of course, I replied, No. Mom disappeared and soon reappeared with the burned mirror. Are you sure you have not been playing with matches? I am sure. Whack! I felt the pain of the mirror on the palm of one hand. That is for playing with matches, Mom said. Whack! I felt the mirror on the palm of the other hand. And that is for telling a lie, Mom said. Now bend over and get what you deserve. Whack! Whack! Whack! Needless to say, that ended playing with matches in the basement.

But these missionary meetings still continued, and we kids still had to look for something to amuse us. And that led to my second example of naughtiness. As usual we went to the basement and were looking through some old National Geographic magazines and came across an article about ancient Greek athletes. My mother had a vegetable garden and had strung up a number of poles with strings for the pea vines to grow up on. We all decided to pretend that we were athletes, specifically high jumpers. Well, you know what happened, we didn’t jump high enough and most of the pea vines ended up on the ground. Unfortunately, it was lunch time, and when my mother came to the backdoor to call us in for lunch she caught us red-handed. I don’t know what the other kids got as punishment, but I ended up having to reposition the poles, put the strings back up, and carefully replace every pea vine back in its original position. This was done under the watchful eye of my mother who was holding the burned mirror in her hand ready to give me a Whack! If I failed in my task.

One other act of naughtiness which neither of my parents ever discovered took place in the woods just behind our property. My father was a lifetime smoker and most of the men as well as some of the women in neighboring families smoked. So of course, the kids all had to try smoking. I was taught, however, that smoking was a cardinal sin so I never tried actual cigarettes. What several of us did try one day, was taking dried fern stems, breaking them off to an approximate cigarette length, and then lighting them up. We took a couple puffs on what we called fernerettes and almost choked to death on the smoke. That ended the experiment with smoking. We were lucky we didn’t burn the woods down. My good friend Bill Chase was not so lucky. His father and mother both smoked so he went into the woods behind his house to try a real cigarette. He put the cigarette out, got on his bicycle and rode over to my house so we could play together. My mother received a phone call from his mother telling him to get on his bicycle and come home NOW! When Bill arrived home, the woods were ablaze and the fire department was putting out the flames. Apparently, the cigarette he thought he put out was not out and the result was a fire. That ended his experiment with smoking.

Our family, with the exception of my father, who after all worked on ships, was strictly forbidden by my mother from using any kind of foul language. The strongest language used around the house was Gosh and Darn it. And whenever my father did swear, I was quickly banished to the basement and told to read the National Geographic magazines until his fit of anger had abated. One time, however, I innocently slipped up. I was looking at something and made the remark, That is black as hell! It was at the dinner table. My mother got up, grabbed me by my right ear and marched me off to the bathroom. She picked up a bar of Lava soap and lathered it up and literally washed my mouth out with soap and water. I never used anything remotely related to foul language in the house ever again. With due apologies to my dear mother—may she rest in peace—the Lava soap was black and it tasted like hell!

My one other childhood experience with swearing took place one afternoon when I was watching Grandpa Marshall working on his boat in his basement. He did something wrong and suddenly let out with the words son of bitch. I had no idea what those words meant, but the tone in which he used them made me certain that they were words I should never use. Since I dared not repeat them, I could not ask my mother or father what they meant. It was many years until I learned what they actually meant. As an aside, when the Marshalls completed their boat, the boat was bigger than the door leading into the basement garage and they had to dismantle an entire wall in order to get the boat out of the basement. I am certain that Grandpa Marshall used many more examples of foul language when that happened. He was a retired coal miner after all.

My friends growing up were three families who were our immediate neighbors. The Marshalls (who were not religious at all), and the Briers and the Morrows (who were devout Catholics). Dick and Greg (Danny) Marshall (the grandsons of Grandpa and Grandma Marshall), Michael (Micky) and Pete Morrow, and all of the Briers (there were six of them) would ride our bikes together into the hills, hunt for fossils, filch apples from another neighbor’s orchard, playfully argue about religion, enjoy each other’s dogs and cats, and climb up into the Morrow’s hay loft and eat grapes to our hearts content.

Our house was located at the top of a hill, and since it was a rural area in those days the traffic on the road was light. We kids took advantage of the situation to race homemade boxcars down the hill in the summer and go sledding on the hill during the winter. It was undoubtedly illegal and certainly dangerous, but we never had any accidents. Considering that the Renton chief of police lived at the bottom of the hill, we never got caught either.

Two other friends were Bill and Larry Chase who lived on the same road but about a fifteen-minute bicycle ride away. They moved from Montana and the license plate on their car had the motto Treasure State on it. I kept looking for all the gold and the diamonds but I never saw any of the treasure. Bill and Larry have remained lifetime friends. Bill and Judy live in South Carolina and Larry and Joanne live on Lake Tapps south of Seattle in Washington.

Since the Chases attended the Presbyterian Church, we soon became close friends and took annual summer trips together to eastern Washington along the Columbia River where we camped out and searched for Native American artifacts. On several occasions we killed rattlesnakes which invaded our campsite. One time, when I was a bit older, I shot a wild jackrabbit with my 22 rifle and we cooked it over a fire but it was so tough we couldn’t eat it. Ace Chase, Bill and Larrys’ father, discovered an ancient Native American campsite and we would work the area each summer finding brightly colored beads made out of bone, blue glass beads of Russian origin which the natives got via trade, and of course flint scrapers and arrowheads and the occasional stone ax head. The Chases raised rabbits and a special treat on these trips was eating rabbit meat which was cooked over a fire and eaten with homemade bread smothered in melted butter. Packrat nests and ant hills were great places to find the colored beads. Since my mother provided mosquitos with a banquet, and she was terrified of rattlesnakes, she often opted to sleep in the car, but one night a packrat somehow got into the car and kept her awake all night long. And Larry who was—and still is—a lover of water, always managed to fall into the river on multiple occasions.

Another person whom I remember well was a bachelor named L. He was also a distant relative on my father’s side. In retrospect I am certain that he was gay, but such relationships were never openly discussed in our household, and had they been discussed, I in my innocence probably would not have understood what was being discussed. L. owned an exquisite home on the east side of Lake Sammamish. It was decorated with cut glass chandeliers, stained glass windows, hundreds of sculptures and artistic items from around the world, and ornate oriental carpets. L. used his home for private luncheons and dinner parties. On several occasions we ate in his home along with Aunt Grace and Uncle Larry or in the company of Aunt Jessie. And of course, he always had his partner with him on such occasions who served as a co-host. L. was genteel, knowledgeable, and sophisticated in every way, and visits to his home were always a treat to be savored, as he genuinely enjoyed talking with me and took my childhood opinions seriously. He made me feel like a grown-up.

Although my father had a full-time job as a longshoreman, he was also a gentleman farmer. We had an old orchard consisting of three apple trees and two cherry trees, plus a raspberry patch, a large garden, and a young orchard which my father planted. It included peaches, plums, crab apples, and pears. We also raised chickens and had a large chicken house that was home to about two hundred birds. To top it off we kept a dairy cow named Bossie and I used to go with my mother to the barn when she milked Bossie every morning and evening. When she used the separator, the cats would appear with their tails straight up hoping for some of the cream. I enjoyed taking hold of one of Bossie’s teats and squirting the milk into the cat’s mouths. Our collie dog in those early days was named Rover and he would block the barn door to keep me from wandering off while my mother was occupied with the milking.

We also kept pigs and these pigs played a significant role in my education. Sometimes the pigs would get out and then all of the neighbors would come over to help recapture the pigs. According to my mother, my father, and my sister, the first words that I learned to speak were Pigs out!

There was one traumatic event that took place during these early childhood years and it was directly related to my father’s role as a gentleman farmer. We had five acres which he plowed and planted in strawberries. I loved eating strawberries and would eat so many at a time that I often got hives. But no matter. My mother would put medicine on the hives and I would go out and eat too many strawberries again the next day. We had so many strawberries during the season that we would hire workers to come and pick them for us. One of my tasks was to help nail the wooden flats together into which the individual boxes of strawberries were placed before being taken to the market. My father would then sell