Of Pigs and Shopping Malls

By Brian Rogers

In 1988 I flew to Switzerland to visit my son who was studying in Basel. The city is in the German-speaking part of the country and he’d spent the year before he left studying the language.
He’d reserved a room for me in the same house he stayed and we spent a pleasant week traveling and sight seeing.
Flying home it occurred to me that I’d been completely dependent on him while I was there. I didn’t speak the language, so I couldn’t order food. He’d gotten me a place to stay. He knew the geography so he could navigate and keep me from getting lost.
Our roles had reversed! When he was a baby he’d depended on my wife and me for shelter, food and comfort, and now the giver had become the receiver.
Maybe I could work these ideas into some sort of writing project, I thought. I’d written as an avocation since high school and a girl in my high school class was an editor at the local weekly paper.
In 1988 I still used a typewriter, so I clacked out a few pages and sent them to my former classmate now newspaper editor. The following week she phoned and asked if I could send more. “Send more” are the sweetest words any writer wants to hear.
The paper put me on a schedule with other writers and over the next ten years I wrote a column about me, my family, my jobs, etc., every six weeks.
In this book I’ve shared some of what I think are the best.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369400708

Brian Rogers

Author Brian Rogers, who is old enough to remember some of the old-time radio years from 1920 to 1960, describes in this book some of the people and events that made the medium the “Theater of the Mind” it became. He also shares his personal story of how radio provided friends for a boy who thought he had no friends.

Book preview

OF PIGS AND

SHOPPING MALLS

Some of My Favorite Columns

Brian Rogers

Copyright © 2023 by Brian Rogers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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.

Rev. date: 06/12/2023

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

853767

CONTENTS

Foreword

Part I Family

The First Column, a Trip to Switzerland

About My Daughter, My Favorite of the Favorites

Another Trip To Visit My Son

About another trip to Oregon, written on a yellow legal pad with a pencil at midnight lying on my belly on Dave and Nancy’s living room floor.

About my wife

My Wife’s Friend

On the Road to Bloomington

My Cousins

My Mother

My Grandmother

Grandparenthood I

Grandparenthood II

Our House

Christmas Column I

Christmas Column II

Part II Jobs and the Workplace

The Career Change

A Graduation Speech On Paper

Resume Writing 101

Interview Techniques 101

Secretaries Day Column I

Secretaries Day Column II

What I Do At Work

Working At Home

The Changing Workplace

Why We Work

Part III Kids and Schools

A Changing World

Childhood Speech Development

A Little Reading Material

Another School Year

What’s A Good School District

Part IV Other Stuff

Let Me Tell You About My Hobby

An Afternoon With A Pig

Graduation

Summer Band Concerts

Football Games

It’s Up, It’s Good

On Learning To Drive

Not Exactly an Olympics Finalist

Can Stomping

Thank You, Garry Moore

Farewell, Dasher School

Farewell, Kaier School

A Certain Band Director

Remember Pearl Harbor

A Teacher Who Taught Me a Lesson

How I Don’t Love Working In the Yard

A Guy On a Street Corner

John F. Kennedy

Walking

An Outdoor Friend

A Tough Test

My One and Only Investment Advice Column

Meet An Infojunkie

Car Trouble Time

Knowledge Is Priceless; Books Aren’t

More than one year passed between the preceeding column and this one. I guess I thought I’d run out of things to say. But news of the death of astronaut Alan Shepard moved me to write what follows.

FOREWORD

When I was 10 years old my mother decided I should have a pen pal.

She’d had a pen pal when she was 10 years old and thought having a pen pal should be part of every child’s development, like bedtime prayers and morning cod liver oil.

My mother’s pen pal had been a young French girl, but mine lived in England. I don’t remember his last name, but his first name was William; and he lived in Amble, Morpeth, Northumberland, England.

I loved saying all those English place names. Pronouncing them produced a rhythm that lent itself beautifully to such activities as walking down the street bouncing a ball. Sometimes I wrote to William just so I could experience yet again printing then reading all those neat words on an envelope.

I have no idea what became of William of Amble, Morpeth, Northumberland, England; but he was the first of many pen pals.

During the late 50s and early 60s I was a band director in a junior high school and several of my students served later in Vietnam. The local newspaper printed addresses of military personnel serving overseas, and I began corresponding with some of my former students.

Two were killed in action. In my mind’s eye I can still see their faces and picture them sitting in my band holding their instruments.

I wrote to other soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen just because I felt like it. Sometimes correspondence ceased after only one or two letters, but other times it continued for months and years.

Not all my pen pals have been military people. Some have been civilians living in such diverse places as Latvia; the Shetland Islands; Saskatchewan; and Guiana, South America.

With your pen pals, you share on paper the experiences of your life: the births of children and grandchildren; finding, keeping, and enjoying or hating jobs; family holidays; trips; hobbies. I think the newspaper columns I wrote became a natural extension of my writing to pen pals.

After 25 years of teaching I left that profession, went to business school, and for the next ten years was employed as a word processor operator in various Detroit area job settings.

In a law office one summer morning in 1988, just after returning from a trip to Switzerland to visit my son who was studying there, I felt an urge to write about the trip and express in printed words some of the feelings I’d had.

No attorneys were in the office yet to give me stuff to type, so I fired up the computer and wrote what is the first column in this collection. I mailed it to the editor of our local newspaper, the News-Herald, part of the Heritage Newspapers chain, whose offices are in nearby Southgate, Michigan.

The paper printed the article just the way I’d written it, and the next day an editor called and asked me to send more. I was thrilled!

At first I couldn’t think of anything further to write about; but, gradually, as the weeks went on, ideas came to me. Most of the ideas concerned things I’d been writing about to pen pals for many years.

Sometimes I’d go weeks without finding any subject matter. But in other weeks I’d write three or four complete columns.

I’ve grouped them in four sections. The first is family; the second, jobs and the workplace; the third, kids and schools; and the fourth I’ve just called other stuff.

From time to time you’ll notice the place name Downriver. Downriver is an umbrella term for a cluster of suburbs of Detroit, Michigan that are south of that city on the Detroit River. I’ve lived Downriver for nearly 50 years.

Thanks for reading the columns. And thanks for being my pen pal.

Allen Park, Michigan

September 1998

PART I

Family

The First Column, a Trip to Switzerland

Summer 1988

For weeks I’d wondered what I’d do the moment he left, and when they called his flight, I clasped him to me suddenly. I hadn’t hugged my son in 10 years, but it seemed like a good time to do it again. After a moment he backed away, turned, and entered a walkway whose other end snuggled against a DC-10.

My wife and I watched the plane push back from the gate and taxi majestically toward a runway at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Through the shimmering haze of a late summer afternoon we saw the aircraft gain speed for takeoff. Its nosewheel lifted and soon it was only a speck against the blue sky.

Even after it was out of sight, we studied the spot we had last seen it in a fruitless attempt to catch another glimpse of it. Finally we sought an exit.

Maybe the hardest part about our kids’ leaving isn’t the departure of their physical presence, but the evidence it presents of their no longer needing us. Part of our identities when our children are young is related to our satisfying their physical needs; providing food and a place to sleep, communicating to them that we care about where they are and what they’re doing.

When that part of our identity is no longer necessary, some of our reason for living goes away and never returns. A chasm is left in our lives that only time and adjustment can fill.

Eleven months and a few thousand miles later I got off a train in Basel, Switzerland, where Dave had been studying at a music academy. He walked toward me from the other end of the station platform, and in no time we were talking as easily as ever.

We walked to the street where he put some coins in a ticket-dispensing machine. He extracted two tickets from a slot and handed one to me.

Just hang on to this until we get on the tram, he said. You can throw it away when we get off. Basel’s public transportation runs on an honor system, he explained. No one routinely collects tickets, but once a month or so authorities ride the trams and demand tickets. Those not having them are fined.

When we reached his rooming house he handed me the key to the room he’d rented for me. I had to give the landlord 50 francs for the week, Dave said. It’s a lot, but not nearly as much as a hotel would have cost. My suitcase and backpack bounced when I tossed them on the bed, and we left in search of food.

Basel, Switzerland is an old town and has many narrow winding streets; but Dave knew them well, and I just followed him.

We reached a restaurant, and I tried fumbling my way through the German-language menu; but found it much easier just to let him order for me. He had studied German before leaving for Basel and was now quite fluent in the tongue.

When my stay in Switzerland was over, we said goodbye at the Zurich airport. Thanks for everything, I said. If it hadn’t been for you I not only would have starved to death, but I wouldn’t have had a place to sleep.

That’s OK, Dave said. I didn’t mind taking care of my old man for a week.

*     *     *

About My Daughter, My Favorite of the Favorites

July 1989

When my daughter was four days old, we brought her home from the hospital and I got to hold her for the first time. My training as a speech therapist had taught me that talking out loud to infants can accelerate their language development; so I told her that I loved her and that I thought she was beautiful.

I also told her I knew that in 20 years or so some guy would come along and take her away from me, but I’d be happy then if she was happy.

It’s easy to recall events in her childhood and adolescence. I