

MY LIFE BEFORE & WITHOUT BOOMERS & YUPPIES

by

Herb Blanchard

My Life Before & Without Boomers & Yuppies

by Herb Blanchard

Copyright 2011 Herb Blanchard

Smashword Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Book Description

First of all, this very short book is autobiographical. Written by a man who lived the title and to this day does not appreciate what these generations are doing to our society. Many others have expressed their opinions in much the same way so the author realizes that he is not alone in his negative opinions of them. He is not trying to change their ways. He realizes that that is impossible.

Defining the Creed of Boomers, Yuppies & their Offspring

I'm assuming that as you read of what life was like for a kid going through the throes of growing up and getting an education in the 1940s and 1950s you do think about and compare it to what it was like to be educated in the 1980s and now, the present time, ABY time, (After Boomers and Yuppies time. Generation X and the now Generation Y and E, [Entitlement] also known as Generation Me.) Because that is what this is all about.

The simplicity of BBY time, (Before Boomers and Yuppies time. The Greatest Generation followed by us, the Silent Generation.) against the complexities and loss of social values, as well as the dependency of technology that ABY time has brought us. A society in which members can hardly think for themselves, seldom if ever, accept responsibility for their own actions and are constantly assured of how great they are even when they screw-up. Their feeling of entitlement to EVERYTHING they want without earning it and never having anything withheld from them.

Teenagers and young adults who have no respect for their elders and think that they know everything because they have been told since the first day of their lives what a great job they are doing and how much they know even when they are ignorant as donkeys of the subject they are going around espousing about. My, we mustn't tell a child that they have to wait until their elders get served their coffee first, or that they fouled out of a basketball game because they weren't playing by the rules, or that they can't exceed the speed limit because the law sets the limit for that piece of road in the interest of people's safety. But no, it's okay to speed because mommy and daddy speed.

It isn't wrong to stretch the rules, break the laws, or to be condescending to an elder. Just don't get caught stretching the rules, breaking the law or being disrespectful. THAT IS THE WRONG THING TO DO, ----- GETTING CAUGHT!, That is.

GENERATIONS

1901 THRU 2004

G.I./Greatest Generation - 1901 - 1924

Silent Generation - 1925 - 1942

Baby Boomers - 1943 - 1960

Generation X - 1961 - 1981

Generation Y/E (entitlement)

Generation Me/Echo Boomers

Generation Millennial - all inclusive 1982 - 2004 & present time.

PREFACE

When I originally came up with the idea for writing about boomers and yuppies, I had the vision of a book of around 80,000 or so words. As it progressed, I began to realize that I really didn't have that much to say on the subject of LIFE BEFORE BOOMERS & YUPPIES, my first title. My thoughts and ideas also started to take on a life of their own as they always do when I write creatively. As my thought processes changed, so did the words flowing onto the paper. (On the monitor actually.) Consequently, the title no longer fit so it became MY LIFE BEFORE & WITHOUT BOOMERS & YUPPIES. A more fitting title and it made me happier because as I said, everything changed and it was now more about me and life as I experienced it.

NO! I am not becoming a member of the ME Generation. I just think the best way to get my ideas across is to tell it as it really was and how I, as one to be born into the middle of the Silent Generation (1925 to 1942, I was born in 1937.) sees and interprets what the boomers and yuppies have done to our society.

Please, do not get me wrong, I do not believe that all of the people born after 1943 are stupid,selfish, and/or greedy. But there are surely more of them than in any other generation that I know of, and more than society needs. Anybody with an open mind and anything beyond a sixth grade education, can see where the problem lies. You don't need to be a sociologist, or other overly educated person to see what is happening. We just have to stop being clueless and realize what is going on and how they are affecting our society. I know and have known some really great people in these generations. They are very nice people who have and in some cases, are still working hard to make this society a better place to live and their frustration of their generation mates is also obvious.

ONE

As I grow older I realize that the world I grew up in and inhabited for over seventy years no longer exists.

It was in a medium sized town south of the city of Boston where I was born. I was given the first name of an uncle, (by marriage), who I learned to know and understand, but for many years I resented being given the name of somebody whom I didn't particularly like or respect. The first of many people who I considered the nonentities in my life. A vain look at people? Probably.

I was the only kid in the first grade at Jefferson Elementary School in Weymouth, Mass. who had only a first and last name. No middle name because my mother thought that two long names were enough for me to deal with and why burden me with a longer name. Right away I was on uneven ground with my peers, though they had only middle names with a here or there Junior and an occasional II or III. No hyphens, slashes, or four part names. Plain old names like Joseph, Joe for short, William, Bill for short, and Charles, Chuck for a nickname. The girls were Mary, Ann or even Annie and an occasional Mary Beth. There were no Ridges, Orions, Birches, Paris or Plums. And definitely no weird spellings such as Kraig and Edouard. You see where I'm going, obviously.

Early in life I was a wanderer. On my first day of school I made my first school friend. He lived twice as far from Jefferson Elementary as I did, and his family owned a really neat house on a bay of Whitman's Pond. The big pond at the end of Charles Street where we lived. It should be called a lake since it is a relatively large body of water. He invited me to come to his house and go fishing. So off we went directly from school. It was amazing. His back yard was close cropped grass of the brightest shade of green which went right to a low bank above the lake and a huge weeping willow which grew draping out over the water next to a small dock. My new friend said we weren't allowed on the dock unless an adult was with us. So with kid sized fishing poles we stood on the grassy bank and tossed our worm baited hooks into the shallow water of the lake. I don't recall if we actually caught any fish and to this day I can't remember who my friend was or if we ever went fishing together again. I do recall that as we stood quietly fishing I heard my father's voice when he walked across the green lawn and asked me what I thought I was doing. He and my half brother had been searching the neighborhood for me since I didn't come home from school with my older sister.

I was late for supper.

There was huge area of woodland behind our house. It probably covered several blocks with an old road or two through it as well as some ill defined footpaths. I remember that one of the better roads led to an old granite quarry which was half full of the most greenish-blue water I had ever seen. It was probably where the granite for the foundations of most of the houses on Charles Street as well as the shoe factory across the street from our house came from. It was one of my favorite places to go and I spent countless hours sitting on a big granite shelf overhanging the water contemplating my young life, tossing pebbles into the water and as I grew older, reaching for a mature 9 years old, and my thinking turned towards the girls in my class.

Across the road leading to the quarry was our neighbor's big old farmhouse. They owned most of the land, and had their household dump right off of this old road. On my meanderings I would stop at the dump to chuck rocks at the numerous glass jars and bottles littering the area. One day after I had chucked my first rock a black creature wiggled through the grass and small bushes where I had thrown the rock. My heart sped up before skipping a beat or two. Remember, I was only about 6 or 7 years old. The critter's white stripes answered any question remaining in my mind as to its identity. I knew a skunk when I saw one and the faint odorous scent sent me back stepping away from the formable critter which was about the size of a medium sized house cat. I was startled further when I looked at the skunk's oversized, grotesque head with bulging eyes. It also had a sparkling glass collar around its neck. A second look revealed that the poor critter had stuck its head onto a mayonnaise jar in its quest for a gourmet snack and was going to meet a cruel and untimely death unless something was done for it.

I ran to the landowner's house and as luck would have it, their son was home on leave having just graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy. I remember him shooting bottles in the trash dump with his .22 rifle through out his high school years. Anyway, after figuring out what I was saying with my excited utterances, he got his .22 rifle and the whole family proceeded to follow me back to the disaster site. With the cool efficiency of a Merchant Marine Officer, he shot the jar, including the tightly fitting neck, off the poor skunk's head which was no longer distorted by the jar and revealed a normal skunk's nose and eyes.

Again, I cannot recall the officer's name nor his family name, but do know that within several months the young officer came home and a gold star replaced the blue star in the front window of their home.

Did I mention that this was during the middle of WWII?

I have only a vague recollection of who this GI was. He was a neighbor and his mother used to babysit me before I turned 5. Then we moved but visited these people after our move. I consider him as a survivor every time I look at this image.

I could keep on telling about incidents in my young life as I seem to have been saddled with the ability to recall even very vague moments in my life since I was about 5 years old. I realize the danger in this of boring you, the reader, to death with trivial facts. So I will only mention another tale or two that are outstanding and persistent in my thoughts of this time in my life.

I was pleased to discover the prints that I am able to include here. I do wish I had more. In my mind's eye I can see several more images that would fit right into the theme, but they are not available to me. They are lost some where in the greedy hands of other members of my dysfunctional family who seemed to think that they must have the photos that relate to me, my life and are no way connected to their lives.

Though I hesitate and am very reluctant to reveal this trait of mine, I have tried to be helpful and please people since early in my life and it sometimes brought me what I consider an unfair amount of grief.

The first such incident that I can recall is overhearing a discussion between my parents in regards to enlarging the family victory garden in our ample backyard. Dad had already built a henhouse where we gathered enough eggs so we could even supply my grandparents with a few every week. We also ate an occasional rooster who had to be boiled for a long, long time in order to be edible. Our pair of goats had produced twin kids as well as supplying us with a steady supply of goat's milk which I detest to this day. Besides, the billy, (male goat,) took great delight in chasing my young ass out of the range of his chain if I ventured too close. On at least one occasion, maybe more, I wasn't fast enough and felt his horns nail me in the butt and send me head over heels through the grass and brambles which covered the extreme back side of our yard. Back to my story. Dad was on the city fire department and was considering burning the briar patch but for some reason that I didn't understand was either hesitant to do it or was waiting for the weather to change. Undeterred in my way of thinking there was no time like the present and surely all I had to do was toss a match or two in to the briar patch and the problem would be taken care of.

When I strolled proudly across the backyard and into the kitchen where my parents where still talking, I heard my dad say, "I'll put the goats in the briar patch on my next days off."

Oh, so that was what he was waiting for.

That was said before the proverbial shit hit the fan.

"I burned the briar patch, Dad!" I stated proudly and stood patiently waiting for words of praise.

Enough said about that incident. After all I was only being helpful and my mother and father got the fire out without having to call on Dad's co-workers to help them. I guess that would have been embarrassing.

I guess I'm not recalling every little detail, because I have no recollection of the results of my helpful deed. Was I punished? Damned if I know. I guess that I do posses a selective memory of sorts.

Jefferson Elementary only had the first through fourth grades. So after five years in Jefferson, I got promoted and started to climb Humphrey Hill every morning to attend grade five in Humphrey Elementary. I had attended less than half my second school year. I caught every childhood disease that year and then some that nobody else had like an infected appendix. So when all my peers went on to the third grade, I trudged back to the second grade. A good part of this though was that Miss Chase, my second grade teacher was my favorite of all teachers. She had taught my father, my ten year older half brother and my 3 year older sister. Miss Chase was kind and made sure the other kids didn't think that I was a dummy for repeating the second grade. But again, disaster. After a month or so, Miss Chase, who was quite old by then, became sick and had to retire. Her replacement was probably nice enough, but I was counting on Miss Chase and felt let down when she left me.

I guess the fourth grade was the toughest and most embarrassing year for me at Jefferson. The school principal was also our fourth grade teacher and she was a no nonsense, rule-by-the-stick teacher. The terrible embarrassment of the year was when she had the whole class read to themselves from a special book which had the number of words in each sentence numbered. After a given length of time she told us to stop reading and tell her the number of words we had read. Quite innocently I read off 382 words, give or take a few words. The highest number in the class. Instead of a "Good Job" or "Very good," I was told to reread what I had just finished, only out loud this time. The number came out a bit lower this time, which stands to reason. But again, as I waited patiently, there was no "good job." Instead it was as I took it a sarcastic, "I guess you can read that fast."

I can't move onto the fifth grade without admitting to having the first of the 'many-loves-of-my life'. This mental affair lasted from part way through my second year in the second grade until I left Jefferson Elementary for the fifth grade. I do remember exactly what she looked like. Her complexion was olive, true to her Italian heritage. She had black or very dark brown,and very curly hair. Shoulder length. She was smaller than I, though I was one of the smallest kids in the class. Her smile was glorious. Warm and sincere and her very pretty dark brown eyes sparkled with every smile. Oh yes, I do remember those eyes. She really loved life, and she was a year younger than I was. From afar I admired her and dared myself to rush up to talk to her but never, in two and a half years, found the courage to do it. Finally, by a terrible act of fate in the fourth grade, I spoke to her and helped her as she bled and cried her way towards the school to seek help from a teacher.

Two sides and the back of the schoolyard was surrounded by a chain link fence barely four feet tall. It wasn't finished as the fences of today are. The cut-off ends of the wire it was made of stuck up in sharp pointed barbs just waiting for the unfortunate kid who slipped while going over the fence. Though it was a major 'No-No' and definitely 'off limits', I climbed over the fence almost daily to reach a short cut trail home. Other kids also climbed over it for unknown reasons. Why Claudette, the love of my life, was climbing the fence during morning recess that unfortunate day I never found out. She was with two or three other girls playing in a back corner of the school yard. I don't remember what I was doing except I was with my friend Jimmie Peterson part way across the yard from Claudette. I looked her way in time to watch her climbing on the fence. She was part way up reaching over the sharp pointed barbs when her foot slipped and her left arm came down onto one of those barbs. She had not finished screaming when I was on my way to her. I could see her blood flowing down her arm onto her hand. When I reached her I saw the jagged rip the barb had gouged about a third of the length of the inside of her forearm. Now she was looking at her arm and crying softly. Her girl friends, as well as any kid within 50' of her, were frozen into statues of shock and inaction.

I remembering placing my arm around her waist and saying "Come on. We have to find a teacher." We got to the side stairs to the school when the second grade teacher hurriedly, almost running, came down the stairs towards us. She had heard Claudette's scream and concerned, ran outside to see what had happened. She took one look, scooped a now very white faced Claudette up in her arms and took her inside, dripping blood as she went.

Several days later I went to the new grocery store around the corner from the school with my father. Pupillo's new store was the biggest and newest in the area owned by Claudette's father and grandfather. When I started into the store I saw her standing with her mother near the store's office. Her left arm was in a sling and she was moving gingerly protecting it from any bumps or even touching her mother's side.

I started to turn away. Pretending that I hadn't seen her, but she had seen me and quickly made eye contact. She smiled that beautiful smile which lit up her face as she started walking to me.

That was the last time in my life that I saw her, Claudette my first infatuation. She lived in a different, more affluent part of town so while I went up the hill to Humphrey School, she went down the hill to a school closer to her neighborhood.

As luck would have it, my new teacher at Humphrey Elementary had family connections to us. WWII was over and my half brother had been discharged from the Coast Guard. He came back to live with us and had a new girl friend. Who I learned later had an apartment near us. I had looked at her photo on his dresser and wondered where he was on the two or three nights a week that he didn't come home from work. Being the idiot and braggart that he was, he couldn't tell a fib but had to brag when I asked him with all the innocences of a nine year old where he stayed those many nights. He went into more detail about their relationship than I needed to know.

So consider my reaction when I walked into the fifth grade classroom on my first day and came face to face with the pretty woman on my half brother's dresser.

Christmas vacation came. That is what we called it. Not Christmas or winter break, but Christmas vacation. I was about to turn ten shortly and we were moving to New Hampshire where my dad had found work on a dairy farm outside of a small town in the southern part of the state.

A new school, new friends, and one particular friend who I was to renew a friendship with again and again. First in the late 50s and again in the mid 60s on Okinawa and again in Vietnam. Russ Colby was about two years older than I was but a very caring person who took the new kid under his wing. At recess we would meet at the swings and he would push me higher than I had ever been on a swing. For fifteen minutes twice a day, every school day, and often at lunchtime. I had a friend who was kinder and closer to me than anyone, even members of my own family were.

It was the first of many cold winters I was to experience in my life. I remember storms and deep snows before we moved to New Hampshire but never the biting cold of that year. A house had come with Dad's new job. It was not insulated, had no storm windows and was heated with kerosene space heaters. My bed was so weighted down with blankets that I had trouble rolling over during the night. I soon learned to get on my side and stay there almost all night, a thing I still do, since it was too hard to roll over under all the blankets and if I exposed my face to the room air my nose would get so cold that I swore the snot would freeze in it. You would think that winter would have cured me of ever wanting to endure such extremes of temperatures. No, it took many years for that to happened and even now I sometimes go back for more. Just a slow learner I guess.

After school got out in June, Russ would ride his bike the two miles out to where we lived and we would mess around. He wanted to take me swimming in one of the old granite quarries that had been made into a park with a fence to keep the non-swimmers separated and safe from the deep dark waters of the main quarry. It never happened. I would not see Russ again until 1959.

Before I knew what was going on we moved again. This time to an even smaller town where my parents had bought a roadside lunch counter with a single Mobile gas pump in front. To me it became heaven. I was surrounded by many square miles of trees and mountains. Fresh, clean running streams and lakes only a few steps away from the front door.

Thinking back on the summers that I spent in the shadow of Winn Mountain I find that I cannot always differentiate one summer from another. I did many similar things, went to similar places, and talked to the same people.

That first summer I chummed with two brothers who were our nearest neighbors. I didn't know anybody else my age until I started school in September. I do know that I learned to swim that summer. Our neighbors had a farm pond which was great for swimming but had no real beach, just a muddy shore line at the shallow end and a rock and dirt dam on the deep end which was 5 or 6 feet at the least. A concrete overflow and spillway was the best place to swim and was about 8 feet deep. Too deep for a 4'4'' ten year old to wade in. The boys' father said he would help me learn to swim and since I was not afraid of the water and could swim like a fish underwater for several yards, but was so skinny that I sank like a rock when I tried to even dog paddle, I was all for it. Joe wrapped a partially inflated bicycle inner tube around my waist and tossed me off the spillway. I found myself popping to the surface several feet from shore. I started to breast stroke the best I could with the inner tube about my chest and after four or five strokes I climbed up on the rocks and onto the dam. I dropped the tube and dove back into the water with background shouts of. "What took you so long?" "That was a lousy dive." No "good job, atta boy!"

Even so, I felt proud and great and I never used the tube again.

We also had our favorite skinny dipping hole. Though this one was right on what we called Stoney Brook Road, it was great. The remains of an old millpond. (You can see the remains of the stone dam upstream from the pond.) Stained so dark from the tannic acid coming from the hardwood tree's leaves that fall into the stream every year. It was impossible to see down into the dark water more than two feet so after a lot of touch and feel exploration, we decided that it was deep enough to dive from the rocks on the shore and we even hung an old rope that we had pilfered from my neighbor's equipment garage to use as a swing.

Upstream, above the dam, the millpond itself was full of over a 100 years collection of silt so was useless as a swimming hole even though it was unseen from the road.

I also caught some nice brook trout out of this hole over the years.

TWO

The yellow school bus took us southeast about 4 miles to the center of town. That was where the church, post office and general store all were. The driver turned left at the church and across the street from the store. Went about a quarter of a mile further before stopping in front of a small white house. Right away I detected something different about this house. I was an observant kid. It had only two small front windows, and the front door centered between them. When I followed the other kids from the bus through the door I spotted the rows of school desks and chairs. On a shelf in one corner of the back wall was a tall insulated metal water jug and next to it a tin wash basin about 12 inches around. Under the counter which held the water jug and basin was a plain old galvanized bucket full of clean water. I would soon find out that it was the sixth grade boys' job to take the bucket down the road to Mr. Schmidt's spring. Fill it and bring it back to fill the water jug. In the other corner was a big black iron wood stove and on the floor next to it a galvanized washtub with several pieces of split firewood in it.

Over the years I have tried to recall where, if any, the blackboards were. The conclusion that I finally reached was that it had two small ones . One on each side of the small front windows. I believe the school was built before wall sized blackboards were common. Small handheld slates were the norm so later the blackboards were hung where ever there was space for them.

My nose twitched at a strange odor that was drifting almost undetectable, through the room. It seemed to be coming from the plain unpainted door centered in the back wall between the water cooler and stove. I knew that I had smelled it before and knew that I didn't like it, but couldn't recall what it was.

Her voice sounded old and had a squeaky, unsure-of-herself quality about it. Standing at the back left corner of the room, behind the last row of desks, was Mrs. Smith. Matronly the adults would call her. We kids called her fat and old. Her hair was all gray, but I don't have a clue to how she wore it. I guess a best forgotten detail. She wore thick, frame less glasses which were coming into fashion. A flowered cotton dress which hung to just above her ankles and hang it did, like an old grain sack. On her feet she wore a pair of medium heel, plain black lace shoes. Practical my mother would say.

The squeaks started again as she repeated herself. "These two rows," She pointed to the two rows of desks closest to her ample stomach, "are for the first and second graders. This row will stay empty" She pointed at the third row of desks. "The next row," She moved behind the rows of desks to the fourth row, " will be for the third graders and the fourth graders will share the next row with them." She moved to her left and stood behind the last row. "This last row will be for the sixth grade with the fifth grade sharing this row as well as having the row before it . We will leave two empty rows between the fifth grade and the fourth grade."

A one room school house? With nine rows of desks? I had never heard of such a thing. As we scrambled for our seats, each tagged with a neat name tag with our name arranged in alphabetical order, I counted the sixth graders. My grade. There were five of us.

"If anybody needs to use the toilet, the girls will go first, then the boys. You won't have another chance until recess which will be at 10 o'clock.

And be sure to wash your hands when you finish. There is a bar of soap and towel next to the wash basin."

One of the girls, maybe a third grader, shyly raised her hand and with small unsure steps she went to the unpainted door at the back of the room.

An outhouse in the school? I could now put a name and source on the not so nice smell. For the first time I also saw the cake of soap next to the water jug and hanging neatly from a nail under the jug was a clean white hand towel. More of a rag than a towel, but clean and dry. Along the back wall, taking every available inch on each side of the toilet door, were many coat hooks. Empty now, but would be heavily used when the mild weather of early September departed to be replaced by the frosty mornings of fall followed by snowy winter days.

I had to hand it to Mrs. Smith. She had the system down pat. In each of our desks were the books we would need to start the year and she immediately assigned reading to grades three through six so she could turn her attention to the first and second graders.

For the next hour and some minutes until recess, I listened to her reading to and helping the youngest of her students get used to the regimen of school. She was kind and patient with them.

Ten o'clock on the original Regulator school clock came, and as promised the instant the clock's sweep second hand met the minute hand on the twelve her squeaky voice, which no longer sounded quite so squeaky, said one word, "Recess."

The veteran students who had been in Mrs. Smith school during prior years broke for the door but were brought to an abrupt halt when she spoke up with command in her voice. "You will not go so far from school that you can not hear the bell at 10:15. Stay away from Mr. Schmidt's spring and out of his barnyard." Having said that she said "Go now!"

The school did have electric lights. All installed as an addition with open wiring running up in the corners of the walls and across the ceiling. I don't remember any plug type receptacles though. I guess the school didn't need them since there was nothing to plug in.

The only kids I knew were my neighbors and they were in the fifth and fourth grades and this would be their third year with Mrs. Smith. It didn't matter though since everybody, including the girls, played together or in my case explored the fields and woodland surrounding the school. I remember there were four or five kids, boys and girls, tagging along behind me as I wandered about.

The fifteen minutes seemed to have galloped by. The faint tinkle of a bell reached us and one of the girls in a flurry of guilt hollered, "The bell, Mrs. Smith is ringing the bell."

Everyone turned and in an instant were on the run back to the school leaving me standing in a patch of red berried sumac bushes wondering where they were all going. I heard the tinkling of the bell again as the last girl in line stopped and turned. She was really cute. She wore a red and green plaid dress. A matching ribbon made a bow to hold her slightly curly hair away from her face. With a shy smile she motioned for me to follow her then asked, "Are you coming? That's the bell. I know that it isn't very loud. It's a small bell."

She stood still. Waiting for me to catch up to her and together we ran for the front door. To my surprise she never got more than a step behind me and when we did reach the door, Mrs. Smith was still standing on the granite front step ringing the bell vigorously and seemed a bit upset. Though I yet didn't know her, I immediately assumed that I was in deep trouble. The girl didn't seem to be bothered by Mrs. Smith's expression and posture and together we successfully slipped under the bell and into the school with hardly a glance from the bell ringer. The cute little girl went to the row of fifth graders while I sat in the second seat of the last row next to the windows.

I had seen the Salvation Army bell ringers in Boston using bells that were not too much smaller than Mrs. Smith's brass bell. It explained why it was so hard to hear. I'm sure it was an intentional ploy to keep us within hearing, therefore close to the school.

Deanna and I weren't late or the subject of Mrs. Smith's wrath. A new kid from a west suburb of Boston had decided to go to the general store for a candy bar and as yet was nowhere to be seen. In fact two more sixth graders ducked through the door right after us.

There was much to explore around town and in close proximity of the school. A small group of boys, myself included, regularly set off on safari during lunch time to see what we could find.

At lunchtime on one drizzly October day, a group of us boys were exploring around town when we spotted a cloud of heavy gray smoke that appeared to be coming from a barn on the other side of town. Thinking the barn was on fire we became excited school boys and ran down the street. Past Ed Schmidt's house. We were approaching the church when one of the group, I swear I don't recall who it was said, "if there's a fire in town, you're supposed to ring the church bell and the volunteer fireman will get the firetruck, (note the singular.) and go to the fire."

Of course we changed direction, climbed the stairs and ran through the church's front door. We all skidded to a halt when we reached the heavy manila rope hanging from a hole in the ceiling. I do admit breaking from the crowd. I grabbed the rope and swung on it with all my small weight and strength. Low and behold the church bell started to peal out its call for attention and help. After several pulls we all ran back out the door and looking about for the courageous fire fighters to come screaming down the road the quarter mile from the barn where the fire truck was kept. With no help in sight we ran for the source of the smoke. Still no roar of engine or screaming siren. Topping the small hill we gazed upon a stately white barn with a cloud of dense dark gray smoke arising from the apple orchard next to it. A few yellowish flames were starting to work their way up from the bottom of the huge pile of tree branches and cut brush. Standing next to it and using a steel rake every so often to poke or pull a branch or a bit of brush into the path of the slowly heating up fire was the owner of the barn and orchard.

I don't remember his name, but he was old, like 50 years old, fat, must have weighed half a ton, and had a ferocious frown on his clean shaven face when he turned towards the group of loud mouth boys running up the hill towards him. Fear took over the group of heros. It ran through the would be heros like a dose of mineral oil. As one, we spun on our heels and ran for the safety of the school and Mrs. Smith.

Ne'er a word was ever mentioned to any of us about the ringing of the church bell which at the time seemed strange and I felt guilty and stupid for weeks after. I believe that I actually blushed in embarrassment every time that I passed the church for months after. Thinking about it as an older, (read senior), adult, I believe that I have come up with the answer. The town was full of watchers and knowers. The man with the fire had told everybody who needed to know that he was going to burn his piles of brush that day. But most importantly, Pop Jones, the owner and keeper of the store had a clear view of the church and figured that we were just a bunch of boys rabble rousing as we were known to do on occasion and passed the word that it wouldn't be necessary for the fire truck to respond. Also, the Postmistress was ditto. A nice lady who wouldn't get any of the kids in trouble.

Pop Jones was also know to be kind and gentle under his gruff, growling façade. Rather than turn us in to our parents, or other authority at Halloween, he would coat the store windows with kerosene so that any wax we tried to apply to them would not stick. As we tried desperately to wax the windows with paraffin wax we had liberated from our mothers' pantries. We would see him standing back in the store watching us. Now I believe that he was smiling and at times actually laughing at our feeble window waxing attempts.

At lunchtime on halloween day we had a visitor. A very nice looking older woman entered as we were finishing up our sandwiches. She was dressed country. Like all mothers wore in those days, blue woman dungarees with a zipper on the side. . A blue and green plaid cotton blouse and over it a heavy cotton work jacket like many of the local farmer's wives wore. Her shoes were heavy duty, ankle high leather with rawhide laces. The only jewelry she wore was an expensive gold wrist watch. Not a tiny stylish one, but one big enough to read. She wore glasses which were full framed and silver colored.

To me she was too old to be the mother of any of my school mates. Very shortly my mind was changed and although I didn't know it at the time, I was about to meet the woman whom I was to call my second Mom, "Ma", for many years to come.

A strange quiet slid across the single room schoolhouse. All eyes were turned to the woman as she moved across the room to the small counter next to the water jug. The only sounds were her soft steps, even in her heavy duty shoes her steps were almost soundless, then the soft whisper of the cotton bag she set on the counter.

"Who is she?" I whispered over my shoulder in the general direction of Miles, my new buddy who sat behind me.

"She's Deanna's mother. Mrs. Center."

"Why is everybody afraid of her? She seems nice to me."

"My mom says that she's a real terror. She's been coming to the school for years. Deanna has two brothers who are really old, and they went to school here. For the last three years she has been giving speeches at Town Meeting about needing a new school. My mom and dad said that we didn't need to spend the money. They went to school here and said that if it was good enough them it was good enough for her daughter.

Mrs. Center was smiling as she took a huge tin of halloween decorated cupcakes from the bag. "There are enough so everybody can have one. But . . . , but you have to finish your lunch first and show me an empty lunch box."

I sought Deanna's eyes which was not hard to do in a single room school with only 18 kids in the room. We made eye contact. I smiled and nodded with my best, most appreciative look. I was rewarded by a shy smile and tiny wave of the fingers on her right hand.

We all straggled up to Mrs. Center, in order, youngest first, to get our halloween treat. When my turn came I tried to be as worldly as I could. This was before Fonzie and 'cool'. The city boy moved to the country cool. That was me. But she looked me right in the eye.

"I met your mother yesterday when I was helping Mr. Center with his mail route." She spoke softly. I am sure nobody else but I could hear her. Or maybe Deanna who was directly behind me could also hear her. "She said that you don't have many friends since you moved here. When your folks come to our house to visit on Friday night you're welcome to come with them. I hope you do."

At a lose for words from her direct invitation I murmured a "Thank you," when I took the cupcake from her hand and found that I couldn't break eye contact with her. The feel of her work hardened, but warm hand lingered as I turned and came face to face with Deanna who was going to claim the last cupcake from her mom. I felt the heat of my embarrassment flash up my neck and across my face. I was so close to Deanna that I could feel her body heat and the warmth of her breath on the hand that I had raised to fend off colliding with her.

I hurried out of the school and headed down the road to Mr. Schmidt's barnyard and spring. I had already claimed this spot on his stonewall as my place of refuge. I often came here to eat my lunch, to enjoy the quiet and solitude. I climbed up on the stonewall and slowly nibbled on Mrs. Center's cupcake trying to make it last as long as I could. I knew that it was the best thing I had eaten in my life. When I finished my fingers were sticky so I went over the hogshead ( a wooden barrel cut in half.) which was overflowing with cold spring water. I plunged my hands into the freezing cold water then with pure impulse, stuck my face into the sparkling clear water. I opened my eyes and watched the three horned pout,(brown bullhead catfish) that Mr. Schmidt kept in the hogshead until he was ready to eat them. The cold water shocked my body and sent a chill through me like sticking my finger into a light socket. With water streaming off my face, I sat down on the granite wall again and thought about the kind woman who had made me feel so good. It wasn't for many years, maybe ten or twelve years later, when I recalled that on the day of my introduction to Winona Center what I had seen in her eyes as I accepted her cupcake, was compassion and maternal love. I had never been given looks like that before.

Shortly after Christmas vacation of that year in the sixth grade we moved from our little one room, wooden school house to the new brick consolidated school. The kids from the two, 1-room schoolhouses were moved into the new building. Mrs. Smith kept grades one through three and we, the fourth, fifth and sixth grades, got the coolest teacher, Miss Herrick, from the other one room school on the far side of town. She was what was called and 'old maid lady', but was far from it. First she lived with and took care of her mother who was very old. Miss Herrick didn't spend every night in her mother's house. It seemed to be common knowledge even amongst us kids that she spent four or five nights a week with a gentleman friend who lived just down the road to where she supposedly resided with her mother.

Very early on a Saturday morning while hunting when I was still in junior high, I ended up walking down the road in front of this guy's little house when the front door opened and still in her nighty, Miss Herrick stepped out on the tiny front porch. With one of her very pleasant smiles that lit up her whole face and a slow gentle handed wave the middle aged teacher made eye contact with me. Then asked,"any luck this morning, Herb." before stepping back into the house.

The new building had running water, with real flushing toilets and sinks with hot water. Fluorescent lights and an electric recess bell. And much to the dismay of many of us boys, a fenced in playground. No more running all over town at lunch time, or sneaking into the bushes behind the school with your current girl friend to play kissy face. At one time before leaving the new school and Deanna behind for junior high in the next bigger town, I was disappointed that I had never been brave enough to take Deanna into the bushes for some kissy face. By the time we were in the new school, with the addition of several new kids, Deanna had a new boy friend whom she went with for a couple years and we kind of reverted back to two tongue-tied teenagers. The easy banter that we had developed slowly over that fall season in the one room school slipped away from us.

I remember the next summer very well. I started working part time at the poultry farm up the road. Don & Jon Egg Farm. We didn't have any chicken ranches, but we did have range chickens. Never heard the 'free range' describer though. Each spring the young chickens, just a few weeks old and barely feathered out, were put out to range in an enclosure that any bird would think he had died and gone to chicken heaven. They would stay there until the hens started to lay full size eggs. It was several acres of woodland and meadow fenced in with feeders scattered about and 'A'-frame shaped roosting shelters that were rat, skunk and weasel proof. We closed up the chickens in these shelters every night at dusk and let them out just after first light. I gathered eggs from the range shelters, helped give the young chickens their vaccinations and I learned to tell their sex. The roosters would be put in pens with the hens that were to produce fertile eggs or into separate pens where they would sold off as fryers. I also began helping out on a friend's dairy farm. I learned to drive his tractor to plow and harrow fields, rake hay and to ride a horse. He had a huge old chestnut mare which I would ride from field to field when we used her to pull the hay rake or the hay wagon.

Since I started to make a little bit of money, I began saving up for my first .22 rifle. It cost something about $10.95 in the Sears, Roebuck catalog, plus shipping. I became a member of the hunting society. Though I don't think that I actually killed any game for at least another year. I did learn to shoot and started reading every outdoor and hunting and fishing magazine that I could get my hands on.

I vividly remember during my first deer season, Charlie, my friend who I worked for, put me on a deer stand while he made a circle through an area we knew deer would lay up during the day. Charlie and I traded guns. I took his full length 30-30 Winchester lever action and he took the 16 gage shotgun that I usually carried. I heard the deer coming before it was in view. When it trotted into the clearing, I was ready for it with the rifle on my shoulder and lined the sights up on the deer's front shoulder as I had been taught. Carefully I kept the sights on its shoulder and just as carefully worked the rifle's lever to eject five rounds from the chamber. The deer never flinched and all the time I was conscious of hearing the birds still singing. I looked around me on the ground and located five shiny, brand new 30-30 rounds off to my right. I had forgot to pull the trigger before I had carefully worked the lever to put a fresh shell into the rifle.

When September rolled around and we went back to school, I was now in junior high so it was off to the next mill town down the road. (It is now called Forest Road. I guess because it has a few residences on it and wanders through the trees. Then we just called it the Lyndeboro-Greenfield Road.) This was a major change for me. No longer a "top dog" sixth grader, I again resided on the bottom of the food chain as a lowlife seventh grader.

It was a three story brick school house built in 1895. It housed grades one through twelve with the junior high and high school classes sharing the same teacher's, rooms and study halls mostly on the second story. The toilets were in the sub-basement with the boiler room and janitorial supplies. (It stills stands to this day though the name has changed and no longer has any kids below the seventh or eighth grade in it.) What a big deal. Now we had a home room and went from one room to another for each class. There was also a huge,unattached brick gymnasium, circa WPA. It had a newly refinished hardwood basketball floor which we couldn't walk on with our shoes, but we held our weekly assemblies sitting on double wooden chairs every Friday afternoon and everyone walked on the floor with their street shoes on. Let's not forget all of the school dances which were held in the gym. The Sadie Hawkins, the Junior Prom, the Senior Prom, Senior Commencement dance, the sock hops. Oops! I guess they don't count since nobody wore their shoes at a sock hop. For the dances corn meal was spread liberally over the basketball floor providing a very slippery surface and somewhat protecting the finish on the hardwood floor.

The boys would gather around the Coke machine that was brought in specifically for each dance. Somebody always had a small tin of Bayer aspirin which we would surreptitiously slip into our bottles of Coke. Some older kids told us that we could get drunk on aspirin and Coke. Guess what? It just nauseated you.

If a chaperon were to watch the exit door near the Coke machine, he or she would see two or three boys slip out into the parking lot to sneak hasty puffs on a shared, stolen cigarette that one of the boys had liberated from their mom's purse or dad's unguarded pack in the bedroom.

I hated the required phys ed classes. For both junior high years by state law we were required to attend X hours every week of physical education. I don't have a clue to how many times in the afternoon, every week, we tromped across to the gym, rain, snow or shine. (Selective memory at work again. Who really cares how often or when? I sure don't.) We goofed around playing silly games or running around in our stocking feet. It all depended on who was teaching phys ed that period. The phys ed teachers were also the coaches of our basketball and baseball teams as well as teaching history, civics, manual arts, or math. Even the principal filled in if he had to. The girls were lucky, their only coach and phys ed teacher was Ruth Lang the business teacher. You know, typing, shorthand,and bookkeeping. She was great. I still remember her fondly.

And this was all before Jack Kennedy.

THREE

As I write this, I realize that almost all of my life flashes before my eyes at one time or another, but I don't think that I'm dying. In fact, it happens so often that I am absolutely certain that I'm not even near death. There is very little rhyme or reason to these flashes of life, but chaotic as they are, these flashes do verify my premise that I have almost total recall of my life since I was five years old or so. At least memories of what I want to remember. A great thing about my life flashing before my eyes in this manner is that I can pick and choose what I want to commit to on paper. We all have our secrets, embarrassing events, and just weird thoughts that we never want to admit existed or happened, much less put on paper.

A perfect example of these intermittent and chaotic recalls was as I was writing about sneaking out of the dance to catch a drag or so off somebody else's cigarette, the image of the first time I swiped a whole pack of Wing cigarettes from my parents' store flashed into view. This happened about three years before the dances, yet it jumped foremost into my mind and brought with it all the embarrassing details of a week full of misadventures which I have no intention of revealing. Except the fact that I did indeed get punished. Embarrassingly so. The worst kind of punishment., I had to stay home and in the yard. Pure torture for me.

The first, real important date with a girl that I can vividly recall was with a very nice girl in my sister's class which made her almost three years older than I. She invited me to a school sponsored hay ride. This was a real hay ride. A team of draft horses, their breath visible in the crisp cold air, a hay wagon stacked high with soft, sweet smelling hay and a brisk cold fall night with an almost full moon. We had hot apple cider and fresh out of the pan doughnuts at a stop halfway through the night. It was the kind of night that you can also see every breath that you and your date exhale. Elizabeth, (not Betty or Liz), was a small, well shaped girl who had ambitions of being a nurse and would graduate from high school in the coming June. Elizabeth and I snuggled against the cold November air under the two pairs of watchful eyes of our chaperons as the horses picked their way along the gravel back roads of the rural area that encircled all the towns in this part of the country. The chaperons were really cool. A barely thirty something couple who were friendly and fun for us teenagers to be around. The male half was our Civics teacher and the other half, his wife.

Many times over my life I have thought about Elizabeth and asked myself why she picked me to be her date on the hay ride. I heard by way of the grapevine that she had in fact gone through nurse's training in a Boston hospital and stayed in Boston where she married and raised a family. My conclusions were that there were very few quiet males available in the school, and then a flash from the past as I reread what I had just written brought forth a very probable answer.

The winter before the hay ride, late winter maybe even spring to be exact, one afternoon as school was letting out, Elizabeth was just ahead of me on the front walk of the school headed for the bordering town street. A bunch of juvenile male rabble rousers were having a rather aggressive snowball fight in the street just off of school property. An ice loaded snowball, thrown with the power and speed of a baseball pitch, found its way onto the school grounds and zeroed in on Elizabeth's left eye. I watched the blur of the snowball going towards her yet I could do nothing about it. It hit her with such force that she was actually knocked to the ground. It only took me three steps to reach her. Her eye was already starting to swell and she was gasping for breath and trying to cry. I couldn't see any blood but was scared that she could be badly hurt.

"Can you get up?

I'll take you to the office. Somebody should look at your eye and maybe take you to the clinic."

She couldn't speak, but nodded slightly and her right eye made contact with me as she reached for the hand and arm that I offered her and pulled herself up leaning her slight body against me for several seconds.

"Can you walk?"

I heard a small "yes" through her soft sobs and knew that she was in pain.

"If you can stand for a minute, I'll pick up your books and get them out of the snow."

Another small nod. So I let go of her and collected our books out of the snowbank. While I was facing the street, I looked in the direction the snowball had come from. The street was empty, not a soul in sight and certainly no male teenagers who had been involved in the snowball fight.

I never thought anymore about the incident. Elizabeth and I had always been friendly and if she was any more friendly after that incident, I never picked up on it. I guess that I was very naïve when it came to girls and so I would never make such a connection nor would I have ever thought that any girl would be particularly interested in me.

On January 6th of my sophomore year, I turned sixteen and got my driver's license that very day. This was almost mandatory. Without a car or regular access to one, a social life could be very difficult. Getting back and forth to school was no problem. I hitchhiked the seven miles each way every day with people I knew who were going to or coming from work. After school and weekend activities could be very limited without wheels. We double dated whenever I or another kid could get the family car. I preferred to go solo as my date and I could go parking, or stop off at a local diner after the movies to eat and visit with other kids from the surrounding towns.

Sitting here at my desk quietly thinking and trying to come up with the details of my first solo date using the family car, I find my thoughts drifting between several such nights and wondering which was first and which was the most memorable. This was a major step in the social world of a 1950's teenage male. Yes, I had a condom in my wallet like every guy my age. Did I use it? No. That's right, no! I believe that I threw away several that the leather of my wallet had worn out the package rendering the contents useless before the right time arrived to use it. Am I going to write about that right time? Hell no!

I had a severe crush on one of my classmates, but I don't think that the feelings were ever reciprocated. She regularly destroyed my fragile ego each time I asked her out. Unfortunately that was too often and it probably reduced my chances of acquiring a real girl friend during the two years of junior high and first year of high school.

Early fall of my junior year, I remember vividly since it was unusually cold and rainy and I was waiting for the wind and rain to remove the leaves from the deciduous trees to improve bird hunting. I had free use of the family car since my mother had been in California with my older sister for several months and my dad and I were making like bachelors. Coming through town after school on Friday, I saw that a small carnival was being set up. An advertising sign said that it would be ready to fleece the locals that night .

After supper I told my dad that I'd like to ride into town to see what was going on even though it was raining. With the windshield wipers lazily swiping across the mist covered glass, I drove by the carnival until I came to an empty lot where several other people had parked and then walked the block and a half back to the carnival. Not really bothered by the drizzle, I made my way to the row of tents. There I meandered up and down several rows of sucker games looking for a friend or two to hang out with. At a horse racing booth were two ninth graders and a "forever couple" from my class. They were throwing their 50 cents-a-race away as they competed. The male half of the "forever couple" was vocal as usual, but this time he was correct. The Carny running the booth kept adjusting the horses so nobody except the booth could win. My definition of a "forever couple" is like this couple. They started going together in the seventh grade, junior high. The girl was a classmate of mine in the sixth grade. The one who sat in front of me. The first seat in the last row next to the windows. That is before we moved into the new brick school. So the two lovers-to-be met when we entered junior high. All through high school they were joined at the hip and 50 years after our high school graduation they were still together. In 2003 there they were. The happily wed "forever couple". I'd have thought that she would have got tired of him long before then.

One of the freshman, Sandy, came over to me as I stood talking to the female of the "forever couple". Sandy asked if I would go on some of the rides with her. "I'll pay for the first one. I'm scared to ride the swings by myself." She said.

Remember the big mechanical swings that hung from chains and whipped around in a huge circle? If you were ever susceptible to vertigo this thing would bring it to your attention quick. Anyway, Sandy took my hand and we walked off leaving the "forever couple" to fend for themselves and Sandy's girl friend to follow in our wake. Sandy bought 10 cent tickets for the three of us and when we picked a swing to sit on she made sure that she was next to me. Before the mechanical monster started to turn I felt her hands sliding down my forearm as it searched for my hand. I helped. I turned my hand and grasped her small cold hand and pulled her swing closer to me as the monster started to spiral rapidly picking up speed. Finally reaching terminal velocity.

This is as technical as we got in that era. Using words like terminal and velocity was a stretch.

I heard her giggle then laugh out loud. That should have told me that all was not as it appeared, but as I said before, I was very naïve when it came to girls. When I felt her pull on my hand and my swing started to spiral independent of the main swing mechanism I got a fleeting glance at her joyful, devil may care expression. Oh my, I thought, she's an expert swing rider and fun ride addict.

I couldn't help but enjoy the ride. With her reaching for my hand and the touch of her now warm hand was exciting as the adrenaline flowed through our arteries. Even so, when the ride slowed to a stop and I realized the ground under my feet was still in motion though the monster machine was no longer moving, I would relive this feeling again in the Air Force when I went through physiological training and got a ride in a vertigo chair. I bravely jumped off the swing still hanging on to one chain as I reached for Sandy's offered hand and hoped the ground would stop spinning before I had to take another step. Luckily it did. It was also a great help when Sandy leaned against me and together we held each other upright as we took our first steps away from the monster.

"I think that I'm drunk. Are you drunk? Hold me up." She pulled my hand and arm around her waist and she leaned into me. We walked slowly across the tiny carnival midway not speaking and not swaying too much.

"I'm going over there." Sandy's girl friend said and pointed to where a group of ninth and tenth graders were hanging out. "You guys are boring." She added and walked away.

We looked at each other, both shrugged, smiled shyly, continued holding each other and kept walking towards the street.

"I'm cold." Sandy said and snuggled closer. I realized that I was also a bit chilly. The wind was still blowing the fine drizzle around and I felt the dampness penetrating through my light jacket. I could feel her chill and her hands were now colder than before we took our adventurous swing ride.

"My car is across from the apartments. We can get warm there. Do you want to get something to eat? Or a cup of coffee?"

Later that same night I realized that I now had a steady girl friend even though she was younger than I. At least until she and her family moved shortly after my Senior Prom in the spring of 1955. This left me without a date for our Commencement Dance. I would have like to have taken her to that one. In fact I enjoyed her company whenever we did something together. And yes, the condom was still in my wallet.

I wasn't going to write anymore about dances, but recalling Sandy I want to tell about the most enjoyable dance in my short teen years.

Sandy and I never really went "steady" as some of our peers did. We didn't hangout together in school, nor hang all over each other downtown. The way it was we were both comfortable with. At least once a week we took in a movie. Usually out of town someplace like Nashua, or in warm weather at the drive-in in Hudson. I took her to all the school dances between September of 1954 and when she moved shortly after my Senior prom in 1955. There was never any question of who we were going to these dances with. I think that she dated other guys, but that wasn't any of my business. I was too busy doing my own thing hunting, fishing, skiing and working to have time to be concerned about it. I knew when a dance was drawing near I would call her at home and we would make our date.

I liked Sandy's mom the first time I went to pickup Sandy for a date. She was a smaller, younger version of her mom. Nice shaped bodies. Of course, I was a teenage boy so I noticed things like that. Dark, almost black, fine, curly hair. Her mom was still a bit taller than Sandy who was only fifteen years old on our first date. A friendly, sweet smile that many teenagers now could learn something from. I knew her family didn't have any extra money and her dad worked hard to make ends meet. I can't remember for sure, but I kind of recall that she had two or three younger brothers and a babe-in-arms sister. I had never been invited any further into the house than just inside the front door, but the impression I always went away with was that the house was too small. Short of extra furnishings but very clean and neat.

On the evening of my Senior Prom I picked up a corsage which was supposed to go with the light green that Sandy had said was the color of her dress. Her mom answered the door with a friendly smile. Sandy was standing next to her and we were out the door before I could give her the corsage. We had plenty of time to meet the other kids at the restaurant where Sandy and I and three other couples were going to have dinner together.

"Do you want to stop by the river?"

"Please. I want to put my corsage on.

Thank you. It's really pretty and goes with my blouse."

I had pulled into a favorite spot of ours. It was off on a side road along the river south of town. Seldom did we see anybody else here and usually if a car was parked there nobody else would stop.

Since I had picked her up this was my first chance to really look at Sandy. Her naturally curly hair looked really nice brushed out softly and framing her face. Her lips had just a touch of a soft pink lipstick on them. Her deep brown eyes didn't need anything. Her lashes were naturally dark, long and full.

"My mom fixed my hair and eyebrows. I wanted to look my best for your Prom.

This is her blouse and she made my skirt."

"I thought it was a dress. It's looks really nice.

Here, let me help you." I held the corsage while she fought the pin that would hold it on. The back of my hand pressed against her left breast and I jerked it back in embarrassment. Our eyes met and she smiled her gentle smile.

"It's all right." She took my guilty hand in hers and drew it to her cheek. Speaking into our hands she was difficult to understand. "We're moving in two weeks.

"What! You're leaving? Very far away?"

"To Ossipee Lake. My dad has a job with a hunting and fishing lodge up there. He's leaving tomorrow to start work this week. Then in two weeks he's coming back to move us there."

She was still holding my hand. As she talked I became the holder. I drew her to me and she nestled under my right arm. My left hand and her right hand were together, folded between us. I could feel the beating of her heart through the back of my hand that she held nestled between her breasts. Her face was sad and in the corner of each eye was a tiny tear.

"My mom told me not to tell you tonight that it would ruin the dance for us. But I had to. I can't keep secrets from you. I'll try to be happy so we will have a good time."

I held her tighter and she snuggled closer and raised her face and lips to me.

We had been sitting in easy quiet for several minutes. I sat up and felt her adjusting herself on the seat next to me.

"Damn".

I heard Sandy mutter under her breath.

"What's the matter."

"This button keeps coming undone." She was trying to slip the third button down from the top of her lace trimmed blouse back into the button hole. Her blouse had been fitted to her small size and there was no doubt that it had been worn many times before and that her mother had dyed it a light green to match the green in the material she had used to make her skirt. She had done a very good job. It had fooled an almost eighteen year old boy. I still thought that it was a dress not a skirt and blouse.

I guess the whole button incident struck me as a bit funny and I laughed softly. "I didn't undo it. Honest,"

"Maybe you did." She retorted and pulled open the narrow gap created by the offending button. "I do have a woman's breasts. Don't you think about feeling me up?" She said with a smile and continued to hold her blouse open.

She looked me in the eye and knew me well enough to know that she was embarrassing me. "I was kidding, I know that even if you did think it, you would never do it." Her soft lips touched my cheek in two places then with a finger tip turned my face back to her and I felt the warmth and firmness of her sweet lips on mine.

At this point it is a bit embarrassing to admit that I cannot remember who I ended up taking to my Commencement dance. I remember going. Talking and dancing with Jeannie Baker, my favorite teacher and spending time with her and Joe Pollack her boyfriend and husband-to-be who was also a good friend. Going to dinner and being in the diner after the dance. But who did I take? So much for total recall. More like a selective memory.

FOUR

I do realize that no matter how anal I get, it is impossible to keep a strict chronological order in relating how we lived and grew up during those years. So many different things unrelated to each other seemed to have been going on in the same span of time that I, as the writer, get confused. I can just image how it is for you, the two or three readers of this epic, would get if I were to intermingle unrelated, random happenings amongst tales and descriptions of the happenings related to school dances and boy/girl relationships.

Sure I was a country kid. Most of the boys growing up in these small rural towns in this era were. We hunted, fished the streams and lakes. Skied in the winter and skinny dipped in the rivers and quarries in the summer. There were no REI or Cabela's where a guy could spend an outrageous amount of money on unnecessary and fancy outdoor clothing, backpacks, stuff like hydration packs, or a fancy new rifle that would kill a rhinoceros, so he could hunt a 200 pound Whitetail buck with it. This didn't really matter as few of the people that I knew could have afforded to shop in either place anyway.

By the time we entered our teen years we had upgraded our skis to new technology. Wooden skis with stainless steel edges screwed onto the wood. Cable bindings that fit our leather, ankle high, stiff soled ski boots which we wore over two pair of heavy wool socks.

I had the latest in snowshoe wear. White ash frames with rawhide lacing and heavy leather bindings which actually had buckles on them instead of being tied on with rawhide laces.

Snowshoeing up the trails and old logging roads through the sugar maple orchards that surrounded the base of my mountain. Then higher through the mixed beech, oak and evergreen forest. Reaching the upper ridge, I would step over a hand made stonewall which was almost completely covered with snow and entered the more open terrain of blueberry bushes, stunted alder and willow bushes. Here I took the wooden skis off my back where I had carried them up the mountain. Replaced the skis on my back with my snowshoes. Then I would traverse the upper reaches, almost a mile of ridge. Follow a faint trail that was barely visible in the summer, now covered with three feet or more of powdery snow barely findable, until I reached the main trail. This trail was very narrow, steep and full of switchbacks making a great 10 minute ski run down the face of the mountain. The total trip time from starting in my neighbor's backyard till I slid to a stop on top of their pond's dam, usually took two to two and a half hours. A great morning run and if conditions were right one I would make again after lunch.

Before I had my driver's license I would almost always have to depend on an older person to take me south about twelve miles to the ski hill with a rope tow to haul us up the hill. Though it hurts to admit it, the most generous guys to take me skiing with them were the first couple of boy friends my sister had. She was a real couch potato, but these guys were typical country kids and loved a Sunday afternoon on the ski hill. For 50 cents we could use the tow all day. It wasn't really much of a ski hill. It took probably three times longer to get pulled up the hill on the rope tow than it did to come back down on your skis. Leather palmed mittens were a requirement and if you could, wool mitten liners were added. No matter the outside temperature, by your second or third tow up the hill the mittens were soaked through from melted snow and after two or three more runs you had no feeling in your hands. Trying to hang onto the slippery manilla rope became a major challenge. We all experimented and tried different ways to assure that you didn't lose your grip. It was hilarious to stand at the bottom of the hill and watch people trying to preserve their dignity and stay cool at all costs. One technique that I tried was to get on the left side of the rope, grip the rope with my right hand, twist around to the left and grab the rope behind me with my left. Then kind of sat on my left wrist and forearm and prayed to the Ski-Lift God that I didn't lose my grip. When you did lose your grip, (and I mean did, because eventually it would happen,) you were sure to end up topsy-turvy on you nose over the tips of your skis and onto the hard packed snow. A really funny sight was when a skier, especially a girl, got off to a good start at the bottom of the hill and did fine until the hill became steeper and it became progressively more difficult to hang onto the rope. Slowly their butt would get closer to the ground as their grip on the rope became weaker and their upward motion slowed down as the rope slipped through their hands. By the time the unfortunate skier's butt hit the ground at least five skiers behind the unfortunate one would stack up in a pile. Skis and ski poles going in all directions looking like the makings of a good bonfire.

A great afternoon of fun. A chance to show off in front of your friends, classmates and all the local girls who happen to be there. And to go home tired, with wet, freezing hands and feet and hungry enough to eat the south end of a north bound skunk.

Being basically a loner, I enjoyed hunting with just my German Shepard-Collie mix mongrel dog, Rusty, for a companion. We climbed all over Winn Mountain and as I grew older and bolder our range expanded, but Winn Mountain always remained my favorite place. I knew where the deer drank, where they laid up on a hot day and fed on tender brush shoots when the weather turned sub-zero and the snow deep. I could almost always find a grouse feeding though it was years before I could shoot one on the wing. Squirrels were abundant in the numerous stands of oak trees especially when the acorn crop was really plentiful.

Bobcats were another matter. Though I knew from their tracks in the snows of winter, where they lived and had their kittens, to actually see one was a very rare occurrence.

When Rusty started barking and jumped over a typical New England stonewall, I had no idea what I would find when I clambered over the wall and ran to the base of the tree she was excitedly, and bravely barking under. Imagine my shock when I looked up and saw crouched on the oak's lowest branch, maybe 10 or 12 feet up, this snarling, spitting bobcat. It looked huge and very vicious as it looked down at Rusty. It was not paying any attention to me. The dog was holding its interest.

During our junior year Earl, Bill and I along with half a dozen others decided to form a fish and game club in school. Every Friday afternoon the school had a period of club activities. I believe that there was a chess club, photography club. and others. There is no way in hell that I can remember them all. As a club, we did various projects to help the populations of the local fish and game. Late in the fall of that first year we took on the job of cleaning out and repairing a group of wood duck nesting boxes as well as building a few new ones. The local adult club had built and placed the boxes a few years before and thought it was a great idea if the kids took over the cleaning of them each year after the woodies had raised their broods of ducklings and had departed the area for the winter.

Our advisor got permission from the school principal for the club members to take a Friday afternoon off so that we could have time enough to clean all the boxes in one afternoon. We would end up on the opposite side of the mountain from my house.

After we finished with cleaning the duck boxes I separated from the rest of club so I could hunt while traveling over the mountain to get home. I didn't mention that I had taken my .22 rifle to school with me that morning. Upon arriving in town I carried the rifle into the drug store for my usual morning coffee. Just before first bell I walked up the hill to school carrying my rifle. When I entered the school, I went to the principal's office to deposit the rifle behind his desk where it would stay until after lunch when we would go on the duck box cleaning field trip. During hunting season it was not unusual to hear the jingle of brass rifle cartridges in somebody's pocket as they walked to their next class. Or to see some kid's rifle or shotgun, including mine, stashed behind the principal's desk. Even a kid walking along a downtown sidewalk with a gun under his arm didn't attracted the attention of any of the local citizenry. A kid with a gun was too common of a sight.

My family owned a 1939 Chevrolet four door when I got my license. It was only two years younger than I was but had not aged as well. The interior had a musty, damp smell like an old burlap bag and the appetite depressing odor of hot motor oil drifted into the car until in self preservation you would open a window even if it was zero degrees out and the inefficient heater was laboring to keep the windshield free of frost. My dad had added a small vacuum operated fan on the dash to help the heater with this task. One day I had tried to shred a piece of paper just to see if it would do it. This kind of bent the fan's blades. Never did work too well after that and my dad furrowed his brow in deep thought several times trying to figure out what had happened to the fan blades. It was not a malicious act, just teenage curiosity to see what would happen.

For two years before I could drive it on the road, I would sit in the car when it was parked in the driveway to practice driving in my imagination. Though I was already driving tractors and farm trucks on the road, it seemed much more fun to be in a real car. I have visions of us owning that car for years and years, but the following summer, after I got my license, we upgraded to a big, straight 8, 1949 Pontiac. It was a powerful car which also loved to drink gas. At about 24 or 26 cents a gallon, getting only 9 or 10 miles to a gallon, I had to be frugal unless I could talk Dad into filling the huge gas tank about once a week. At this time my mother was in California and as I mentioned before, we males were on our own. I had full use of the Pontiac to go to school and work. I only had to drop dad off at work in the morning and pick him up at 4 when he got off.

My boss and friend, Charlie, had a 1952 Ford 4 door. Whenever I couldn't use the family car, or if I wanted to really put on-the-dog to show-off, I would ask and he would let me take the Ford on a date. Sandy loved the Ford so whenever we went to a dance I would ask Charlie for it. Besides it had an automatic transmission. The first that I had seen or driven and at that time it was a step up if you were going to buy a new car.

The spring of my freshman year at the University of New Hampshire I started to think about a job away from home and would need a car. I had no extra money left after paying my freshman year bills so obviously I found myself in a bind. Earl, my buddy from the sixth grade, and I lived in the same dorm and traveled back and forth to home on weekends and holidays. One night when we were playing cards in his room with his roommate, a Korean war vet and his buddy, another vet. We were shooting the bull over the cards and drinking a beer or two, which was prohibited in the dorm. I brought up my situation thinking that of all the guys I knew, these were the ones who could come up with an idea or two. It was Earl who solved my problem.

"You know my gramps collects model A Fords and parts? I'll bet we could make a deal with him for one of them. It would be cheap transportation for you and easy to fix and maintain.

"Do you really think so. I haven't got any money right now."

I'll ask him on Saturday and tell him that he may have to wait for a while to get paid."

Riding back to the UNH campus on Sunday evening, Earl said that he had talked to his grandfather and got his okay for me to buy a Model A from him.

"The only problem is that it's in pieces. Has no engine or transmission in it."

I know that I must have looked at him strangely. He laughingly gave me the details.

"Gramps has several engines and transmissions laying around in the barn. He showed me which ones that he believes are the best. He said that you can pick whichever parts that you need or want. He also said that you can pay him the $50 anytime after you go to work."

"Really? Only 50 bucks? But how can I get it together?

"I'll help you get the parts and we can put it together in Gramps' barn. I'll help you do it."

"How about a body?"

"His best one is yours. A 1929, 4 door. Original paint, no big scratches or any dents at all. You can have the original 21" wheels and tires or he'll give you 16" wheels and tires that will fit."

"What do you think that I should take, Earl?"

"I'd wait to see what we can find. He has all kinds of parts all over the farm and we'll pick the best of the wheels and tires no matter what size they are. In fact, take a set of each size wheels. Gramps won't care. Then you can buy tires yourself later if you have to."

The next weekend, starting on Friday night as soon as we got back in town from school, and in a drizzling rain, Earl and I pushed the Model A body into the barn. We spent quite a bit of time and used a couple of flashlight batteries finding the rest of the parts that we needed to make a whole car.

About midnight we were starting to get groggy and a little foolish after a long day and splitting a 6 pax of Pabst Blue Ribbon. We decided to call it a day, but were sure that we had accomplished a lot. All the pieces, generator, starter, water pump, carburetor, exhaust system and clutch, were all bolted in place and the engine was ready to drop into place. By Sunday afternoon the Model A would be running and we could head back to the UNH campus.

Sunday morning at 8 o'clock, wide awake and raring to go, Earl and I opened the big wooden barn doors and took inventory of our project.

At around 2 in the afternoon, not having stopped for lunch, I turned the ignition key and stepped on the starter. The new 6 volt battery turned the engine over with an effort.

"Try a little more gas in the carb, Earl." I hollered over the grinding starter motor and at the same time pumped the gas petal and jerked out the choke handle for the third or fourth time.

With a roar and belch of thick black smoke the engine which had stood quiet for several years burst into life.

"All right!" We both hollered and I gently pumped the gas pedal as I eased in the choke. The black smoke diminished and the little four cylinder engine settle down into the typical Model A clattering rumble. They always sounded as if all the valves were loose and about to fall out on the ground.

" I think that we should leave it here until Saturday. Then give it a good road test.

What do you think Earl?"

The following Saturday morning the sun came up in a brilliant blue spring sky. The air smelled fresh with the feeling of a mellow May morning when we walked across Earl's gramps' barnyard heading for the barn and my waiting Model A Ford.

The Model A started when the second cylinder fired though it took several minutes to warm up enough to run smoothly. Earl and I took her out on the road with a set of his Gramps' registration plates. I think that they belonged to another Model A not that it really mattered. I ran it with those plates for about six months. We ran around some of the gravel roads near his place until our confidence built up and we were congratulating each other on what great mechanics we were. I pulled onto the paved road and headed for town thinking we would cruise down main street to show off as teenagers are inclined to do.

About a mile out of town, just up the hill from the high school, was a long flat. Coming around the last curve and onto the flat I started to really give it the gas. A glance at the speedometer told me we had reached an amazing 40 miles an hour. A third of the way along the flat we both heard a sharp bang and what we both thought was a piece of tin bouncing on the road. The hood, the only removable piece of metal on the car was still securely in place. Another screech and the engine noise became an ear shattering roar. If there were any other noises the engine noise did a great job of covering them up. I looked into the rearview mirror and watched as the Model A's muffler and tailpipe bounced onto the shoulder of the road and disappeared into the borrow ditch.

The damage was actually very slight. In ten minutes we had jury rigged the muffler and tailpipe in place with some baling wire. Our intent of getting a couple of bolts to replace the two that I obviously had not tightened good enough never came about. Six months later, when I sold the car, the jury rigged repair was still on the exhaust system.

A week after college was out for the summer, I headed north towards the Canadian border. The Brown Paper Company had major timber holdings along the US/Canadian border and had hired me to be a timber scaler in their Parmachenee operation. It was a salaried job that started at $50 a week for a 50 hour week. Ten hours a day for five days. The jobs were held down mostly by college students and young men who wanted to work their way up in the logging industry.

It was a long trip, almost two hundred miles to the company gate going into the Parmachenee area. So it was decided that my father would drive me to Berlin, NH where the companies offices were. From there I would catch a ride with one of the scaling supervisors. In a couple of weeks after I got settled in, I would catch a Boston and Maine bus from Berlin to home then return with my Model A. It was about a 6 hour bus trip counting several stops on the way.

Before the end of my first week in Parmachenee I was moved from the main camp at Long Pond, which was about 19 miles from the paved road and gate to Camp 36 which was about another 20 miles from the gate. For several weeks I would be marking select yellow birch trees. Ones that were straight enough and limb free to be used to make birch veneer. I had to stay ahead of the tree fellers so I was working in the roadless, trail-less areas surrounding the camp. I felt that it was a great start to a new job and chance to prove that I knew my way around the woods and knew a thing or two about trees.

On my third Friday in Parmachenee I caught a ride into Berlin with a supervisor. Bright and early Saturday morning I caught the south bound Boston & Maine bus and by mid-afternoon was sitting at my mother's table eating lunch.

About lunchtime on Sunday I had the model A fired up and was headed back to Parmachenee.

It wasn't yet suppertime, but I was hungry so I was munching on a sandwich as I drove through Conway, NH. We were starting to climb into the White Mountains and enter the White Mountain National Forest, the model A and I. We were about halfway to the Parmachenee gate, but running over two hours or so later than I had planned.

The Ford's engine was ticking along as she should and I was now used to its strange noises. My jury patched exhaust system was still in place, all four tires were still full of air and the gas tank was almost half full. I did worry about the engine overheating as I started to climb some of the steeper, longer and higher hills going into Jackson, N.H.. Just a slight increase in the engine's temperature, but the outside air got cooler as we climbed and traveled north, so I stopped worrying and wondering about it. Too much, anyway. I did sneak a look at the gauge once or twice when I felt and heard the engine lug down on a hill.

It was late, late afternoon when I rolled through Berlin. Passed by the quiet company offices before picking up speed on Highway 16 heading towards Errol, NH. I was dreading the notorious Thirteen Mile Woods which lay ahead and hoped that I would be through it and beyond before dark. There was only a small, one pump gas station just before entering the Woods, then nothing, not a driveway, house or store for 13 miles on a narrow, twisting two lane road that followed the Androscoggan River. I stopped in Milan, the last town until Errol. I was lucky and found a gas station open and topped up the tank. Plenty of gas to get me into Parmachenee where I could buy gas at any of the company gas pumps.

I couldn't hold off any longer. Though I had met very few cars, I felt that I should turn on the Model A's headlights to be sure any oncoming cars I met would see the black Ford. I still hadn't quite reached the Thirteen Mile Woods. The lights cast their pale yellow glow much like big, oversized candles. Even the model A was fast enough to over-drive the yellow glow of about 2 candle power put out by the headlamp bulbs. I now knew why they used candlepower to measure the amount of light produced by a bulb. Until I saw with my own eyes this yellow glow, I had never understood the correlation between an electric bulb and the flame of a candle.

I'm admitting that I had a huge amount of trepidation as I finally passed the sign telling me I was entering the Thirteen Mile Woods and that there was no civilization for the next 13 miles. Many a hunter had got themselves in trouble in this isolated piece of forest in Coos County. So many in fact that the local search and rescue people had invested in a huge air-horn mounted on a trailer. They would travel up and down the road blowing this monstrosity until the luckless hunter staggered out of the woods. That of course wasn't my worry. I was just worried about the model A letting me down in the middle of nowhere. Actually it wasn't that big a deal. It was the start of the last week of June. The nights were reasonably warm and I had plenty of outside clothing packed into the back seat as well as a sleeping bag and 30-30 rifle. Also I had all kinds of snacks that I had pilfered from my mother's kitchen cupboards before I had departed earlier in the day.

I missed the sign saying that I had left the Thirteen Mile Woods and about to enter the town limits of Errol. I couldn't help but smile to myself when the lights of the first couple of houses north of the Woods appeared flickering through the trees. The lights of the Hollis family's combination gas station and restaurant were now in full view at the intersection of Hwy. 16 that I was on and Hwy. 26 which ran east and west across this part of the state. I was tempted to stop and get a hamburger but decided to press on. I would have to stop at the Parmachenee gate anyway and there was a small snack bar there where I could grab a sandwich and Coke.

I turned to the right, drove the quarter mile down Errol's main street to Eames' Garage and the turn off from Hwy. 26. Turned left back onto 16 and headed north.

It was really dark when I crossed the state line and entered Wilson's Mills, Maine. The gravel road on my left leading down to the Brown Company's Parmachenee gate was almost invisible if you didn't know where it was. This was the first time I had driven to the gate and almost passed it by. I stomped really hard on the Model A's weak mechanical brakes when I spotted the snack bar's lights shining up towards the road.

Good, Jerry the gatekeeper is still open. I was thinking before I cramped the steering wheel hard to the left so I could maneuver the Ford down the short steep pitch into the parking lot in front of the snack bar/gate house combination.

FIVE

I remember that this, my first trip and at night no less, driving up the Parmachenee road was a bit of an adventure. The road was gravel but graded regularly for the logging trucks. It was more than wide enough for two loaded logging trucks to easily pass each other. Under the dim, yellow glow of the model A's headlights, I was more or less following the yellow gravel road. When the yellow on the right side of the headlights beam started to get darker, I would steer a bit to the left away from the brush or road embankment that appeared darker than the yellow color of the gravel road.

I traveled the 19 miles to Long Pond camp in just a bit over an hour. A few lights were still on. The scalers' shack was still lit up. I was sorely tempted to stop and spend the night there and go on to Camp 36 early Monday morning. I had been on the road since shortly after noon and it was close to 10 P.M. with another 20 or so miles to go but I decided to press on.

When I got to Camp 36 the buildings were all dark except for the washroom/toilet night lights. It was after 11, the midnight hour in close pursuit. The door to the scalers' shack was locked, but I knew where the key was hidden. The other two scalers would show up sometime between now and 7 in the morning.

At 630 A.M. I packed a lunch and put it into a side pocket of my backpack before I filled the main part of the pack with as many cans of yellow paint as I could get in it. I wanted to be sure to have enough paint to last all day. By 7 I was headed down the road towards the trail that led into the area where I had left off painting birch trees on Friday afternoon. The trail was in sight when Lyle, a fellow scaler, came speeding up the road. He had gone home to Vermont for the weekend and was trying to start work on time though he was already 20 minutes late. He slowed to a stop as he came along side and with his perpetual smile rolled down his window.

"What's your hurry? You're already late."

"I know. I stayed in Long Pond last night instead of coming straight through. Nobody else was there until this morning so I overslept.

"When did you get in? Bring your model A?"

"Got in after 11 sometime. Took me forever to get the old girl here. But she ran great all the way. Slow, but sure.

I saw your car at Long Pond when I came through, but didn't recognize it in the dark. Sorry about that. I almost stayed there too."

"No big deal. Thanks anyway.

Think Pete will say anything about me being late?"

Pete was the camp foreman. A French-Canadian woodsman who could layout a logging job in the dark. Knew every inch of his camp but couldn't tell you how to find point A from point C. We took great pleasure in talking to Pete and unfair as it was, couldn't resist trying to get him to tell us were a particular cutting crew was or a certain stand of birch that needed to be marked. When we could stand it no longer, we would escape before doubling over in laughter. If we really needed to know, we would go to Maurice, the camp's Straw Boss (next man in line below the camp foreman)and get the information that we needed. Maurice was the only one that could understand Pete's directions and was capable of translating them into terms that the common man could follow.

"He likes you. There's no way that he would say anything."

"Yeah. I think you're right. Is Theodore there?"

Theodore was the other scaler and this was his last week. He was a senior at some Liberal Arts college and had been working at camp 36 for two years. Neither Lyle nor I trusted him not to make a production out of Lyle being late. Lyle also suspected Teddy of being gay and was more than a little homophobic about it. Theodore hated to be called "Teddy", so Lyle did it constantly to see if he could solicit some kind of reaction. Which never happened except for slight increase in the red of Teddy's normally very pale freckled skin.

"He was getting his scale book together and pacing around the shack waiting for you so he can tell you which crews he was going to scale today. I'm sure he hasn't left for the woods yet."

"Okay, thanks. I brought my fly rod back with me. I also have one you can use if you want to go fishing after supper."

"I would Lyle. Thanks. I'll see you about 3 or 3:30. I've got my lunch with me so I won't have to hike an extra three miles out and three miles back in after lunch.

I'll help you with figuring your day's scale before supper."

After that night Lyle and I fished for trout and landlocked salmon every chance that we got. Evenings we would charge down the gravel to where the road crossed the dam on the south end of Parmachenee Lake. Just a short way downstream the river ran into Azicohos Lake. At the dam the river had incredible landlocked Atlantic salmon fishing. It was not unheard of for somebody to catch a ten or twelve pound salmon above the dam every year. The average fish that we caught was between 3 and 4 pounds.

My favorite fishing holes were north of Parmachenee Lake on the Magalloway River. They were too far to reach after supper in an evening, but a great place to go on Saturday and Sunday. The elite Parmachenee Club was located on an island in the lake. It was an exclusive club for the top management of Brown Company, the shareholders and guests. In the mid-1950s then President Eisenhower spent several days at the club, the Company built boardwalks along the lake and where the Magalloway River entered Parmachenee Lake. They also planted squaretail trout which we enjoyed catching a couple of years later. By then they averaged between a half pound and a pound.

The club had a permanent hunting and fishing guide who had cached several Old Town canoes up and down the Magalloway River for the use of people from the club. Lyle and I were tipped off to the location of the canoes by other scalers and camp clerks who had been working in Parmachenee for years. The canoes were chained to large trees to discourage pilfering, but for some reason the chains were wrapped around one of the canoe's struts which was attached to the canoes' hulls with wingnuts. We could spin off the nut, slip the chain off and have use of the canoe for the day. It was made very clear to us that we were to be careful with the canoes, always return them to the same spot undamaged. And never, ever, use a club canoe when there were guests at the club.

The majority of the men and women who lived and worked in the extreme north reaches of New England were friendly, helpful people and didn't expect much in the way of amenities that the more populated parts of New England had. Even in the late 1950s and early 60s telephone service was still a bit primitive. A hand cranked phone system was still the norm. A long spin of the crank handle, wait a while and eventually an operator would ask who you wanted. No numbers usually given, just a family name.

Some of the more affluent families, older people whose kids had grown and left home, childless couples or those families where the breadwinner was in a supervisory or managerial position with the Company, had a small black and white television. You had to really use a lot of imagination to form a mental image of how terrible the TV picture was in this area. A major blizzard in the middle of the night with no lights at all in viewing distance is how I would describe it. A good deal of concentration was needed to keep a running mental image of what was transpiring on the screen. It was difficult at times to tell the difference between a horse and cow, or a person and a bush. More often than not part of the audio was hissed out which didn't help you keep up with the drift of the program. All of this would be made worse when the wind started to blow and the roof top antenna, usually strapped to a brick chimney, would start vibrating and swaying. I learned to think fast and come up with a reason why I couldn't stop in to visit, have a beer or two and watch the TV for the evening. The reception was obviously better in some places than in others. In Wilson's Mills, near the Parmachenee gate, reception was almost nil, but the TV owners would still sit in front of their sets and religiously watch Ed Sullivan, or one of the popular westerns that were on in that era. Maverick (nothing to do with John McCain and Sad Sack Palin.) Cheyenne, and Gunsmoke. One logging camp which was located further north than Wilson's Mills, and high up on the side of Bosebuck Mountain, had reception on par with a Boston viewing area. I think that the signal was coming off Mount Washington which was quite a ways south, but the highest spot anywhere on the East coast. They could also get a station out of Canada which was in French.

The Brown Company had its own private phone system and from even the most remote camp we could call the main office in Berlin, southern New Hampshire or even Boston. Although the most efficient way to make a long distance call was to go to Wentworth's Location to the site of the Brown Farm where the company exchange was located. There would be less static and less chance of a disconnect if you called from the exchange office. The exchange was run by Joe Mooney. Joe had run the phone system for a century or two. He had been blind since birth and ran the system by touch. He was friendly, never forgot a voice, footstep or phone number. A widower, he lived alone in a company owned bungalow that was built for him and the phone system by the company many years before. He married and raised his family there. You were always welcome to stop in to make a phone call or just to say "Hello". I got to know Joe well and never missed a chance to stop by and listen to his stories of the happenings in the North Country. There were also some private phones hooked into Joe's switchboard and it was entertaining to sit with Joe and listen to the evening chit-chat that was going on across the system.

After I had left the Company to return to school, with Russ Colby I made a trip up to visit with friends and go deer hunting. Joe's son and daughter-in-law were visiting with him at the same time. Along with Maurice and Phyllis Parsons, my long time friends, we had a November barbecue and beer fest at Joe's. A great time was had by all and though everyone went to bed with a well earned glow, nobody was really passing out drunk when the group broke up just after midnight.

Some history of the Brown Farm. The farm was the main river drive camp. For many years pulp and logs were put into Azicohos Lake and the Magalloway River to be driven downstream to the Androscoggan River then on to the mill in Berlin. At the Brown Farm were bunk houses, a large cook house and dining room for the river drivers. In the dining room was also a large library full of interesting novels from the 1920s, 30s and 40s. In years past the company horses had been kept at the farm when they weren't being worked in the woods. The farm had been self sufficient with stables, hay barns, large hay fields that were later used for log and pulp storage in the '50s.

Besides Joe Mooney's bungalow across the road, there was another bungalow which had been and was still used by an area supervisor and his family. A large farm house was next to the road and separated from the drive camp. This had been the Parmachenee area and Brown Farm supervisor's abode and was now occupied by my friends the Parsons. Before Maurice and Phyllis moved in, Maurice's brother Larry and his family lived there. Larry was and had been the top Parmachenee boss for many years. When his kids reached school age he moved his family into Berlin so the kids could attend school there. (All the local kids traveled the 50 miles one way to attend junior high and high school in Berlin or Milan, NH. Some travelled every day, but others boarded or stayed with relatives through these years.). The company supplied Larry with a Jeep station wagon and gas so the distant was no big deal. The general practice of most married men, including Larry and Maurice, was to go home on Wednesday night and to return early Thursday morning.

During the winter of 1957-58, Lyle and I moved into the Brown Farm drive camp cook-shack to scale the pulpwood that was being hauled out of the Parmachenee area and stock piled in a couple fields at and close to the Farm. We set up a bachelor pad and during the day shared the shack with another scaler and the crane operator who unloaded the trucks and stock piled the pulpwood. Both of these guys lived just down the road from the farm and commuted everyday. The trucks came in fast enough at times to keep the four of us busy.

Though I had always been an outside guy, I was in for an education that winter. My first lesson came after I had gone to Southern New Hampshire for Christmas and was returning north. I left later than maybe I should have, but I was used to the roads and felt secure in driving them at night. The weather promised to be fair, cold, but no snow. I had replaced the model A with a 1950 2 door Studabaker Champion. The Studie was in really good shape with new snow tires all around. Its engine was small, but got great gas mileage and had no trouble taking on the mountain roads coming north through the White Mountains. The temperature was hanging about 20 degrees above zero in Southern NH when I started north. I stopped for a cup of coffee about halfway north in the outskirts of Conway. Outside the coffee shop the thermometer read just a hair above zero. I figured it was wrong but had noticed the upper 2 or 3 inch area of my windshield, where the defroster couldn't keep up, was starting to frost up. Coming through Berlin the frost covered the inside of the windshield except for a hole directly above the defroster outlet about the size of my hat. The heater was running full blast on full defrost. All the warm air the heater could produce was going onto the windshield.

This was long before the days of electronic bank signs with the time and temperature flashing across it every few seconds. My hands were cold even though I had wool liners in my leather gloves. My feet were warm though. I had on a pair of insulated military boots such as was issued to the troops in Korea. When I reached the notorious Thirteen Mile Woods I was using a frost scraper on the inside of the windshield every few minutes and then could only keep a baseball sized hole in the frost.

Good thing that I'm only going to the Brown Farm and not all the way into Parmachenee. I thought while I wiggled one hand at a time in my tight gloves in an attempt to keep my fingers flexible and somewhat warm.

The light in Joe's office told me he was still up and a friendly spiral of smoke was slowing drifting up from his chimney. I parked in front of the drive camp cook-shack and turned out the headlights. Stepping out onto the freshly plowed driveway I heard the crunch of my boots on the snow. Light was reflecting all around and I wondered, Did I leave the headlights on? Sure is bright.

Looking back at the front of the car and then into the sky, I realized that I had indeed turned out the headlights. An almost full moon was directly overhead, huge and glowing a pure luminous whitish blue surrounded by the most and brightest stars I had ever seen. Out of the sky was drifting what I first thought were tiny snow flakes. It was frost. The first time in my short life I had seen frost drifting like snow out of a perfectly clear sky. For a long time I just stood and looked. I was enjoying this incredible, unforgettable event.

I have no idea how long I had stood enjoying this amazing sight. I guess until I started to feel the cold creeping into my upper body and hands. I had taken off my right hand glove before taking the key for the cook-shack from its hiding place, then stood there looking in a state of mute rapture. With cold stiffened fingers I unlocked the padlock and forced the door open. The frost had built up around the inside of the door opening making it a bit difficult to push open. Before going in I looked at the big thermometer nailed onto a front porch support. Stepping through the door it started to register. Was my mind that cold numbed? Minus 25 degrees? 25 degrees below zero? Never, never in my life had I been in temperatures so low. No wonder my nose was turning numb. I flipped the lights on then went directly to the big, black cast iron stove to throw some newspaper and kindling into it. Making sure the paper was burning before I went out to bring in my backpack and boxes of food that I had left in the car. On the way out the door, I looked at the inside temperature thermometer. It read minus 5 degrees.

My God! Inside the building!

For the next two weeks the temperatures never went above 5 or 6 degrees below zero at mid-day. Every night there was clear sky like none that I had ever seen. The bright moonlight reflected off of the frost covered snow making the night glow in a shimmering blueish-white light. The frost continued to drift out of the moonlit sky while the nighttime temperature continued to hover between 20 and 25 below zero. My faithful Studabaker would not start. It was too cold. The engine oil was so thick that the starter could barely turn the engine over, let alone fast enough to start. Lyle's Chevy continued to start because he had installed an engine water heater when he spent the previous winter in Utah. So we weren't in trouble for getting around. The locals said not to worry about it. In two or three weeks it would warm up and my Studabaker would start.

We started scaling trucks at about 8 every morning. We would have on our heavy wool parkas over sweaters and wool shirts. Heavy wool stocking hats were pulled down over our ears and our upper foreheads. About ten in the morning as the sun got higher in the sky, we would leave our coats in the cook-shack and the stocking caps got pushed back off of our foreheads and just covered our ears. By lunchtime the sweaters would come off and we would work in stocking caps, just barely covering our ears, heavy gloves to protect our fingers from the cold metal parts on the trucks, a wool shirt and pants over long johns and cold weather boots. The sun actually felt warm and was enjoyable until about three in the afternoon. Gradually the sweaters and parkas would go back on layer by layer.

By 5 o'clock we were getting ready to scale the last truck and call it a day as we watched the sun, with the thermometer, dipping down until the sun was gone and temperature reached 20 or 25 degrees below zero.

February arrived and it warmed up all right. And along came the second snow season for the winter. Over two feet of snowfall in two days to bring the total to somewhere around 70 inches not measuring the drifts.

As spring breakup came closer and more of a reality, things in the woods started to slow down. Warmer weather started to soften the truck roads and rather than destroy them, trucking pulp and logs ceased. I think that everybody took a sigh of relief. I know that I did. I was tired and looking forward to a slow down and break from the dawn until after sunset work schedule we had been on since the previous June.

The Studabaker was starting every morning now and I could depend on her to get me around on the weekends. She could smell the spring in the air as well as I could. It wouldn't be much longer and the spring rains would start. They were in the air. Water laden clouds became more common and drops of rain instead of snow, drizzled down a little harder every day.

It was time to head south .

SIX

I want to regress to my college years. When I entered UNH almost half of my forestry class was made up of Korean War vets attending on the GI Bill. All whom I knew opted for one reason or another to live in the dorms with us masses of the lower food chain. I won't pretend to know whether the vets had an option of living elsewhere or not. From what I saw I know that they were not treated the same as the rest of the lowly freshman. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. These guys became my friends and drinking buddies and they deserved every break that they could get.

My first year I roomed with Granville, (Guppy, a nickname his sister gave him early in life) Knox. We lived in a dorm that had been built as barracks during World War II for the ROTC. The barracks were two story, roach infested, wooden firetraps. Our room was on the low side of the hill that the barracks had been built on. I guess that the powers-to-be figured that they could squeeze another half dozen or so rooms in this sub-basement. All the rooms had normal house sized casement windows, the window sill on our window was only 5 or 6 inches above ground level. Below the window the outside wall was the concrete foundation. The rooms were two man rooms and big enough for two metal framed beds, two small dressers of three drawers each, two small closets about 3' wide by 3' deep and two small desks. As I remember Guppy had brought a 36" by maybe 60" area rug from home to place on the asphalt tile floor between our bunks. The rug went under the edge of each of our bunks by a couple of inches. We had a small, about 8" tall, stool that we would place on the floor each night where we put his old fashioned,(even then it was old fashioned.) wind-up alarm clock. Whoever had the earliest class was responsible for setting it and being sure it went off at the correct time in the morning and was turned off promptly so as not to awaken the other anymore than was necessary. The job always seemed to fall on me. I had an 8 o'clock class almost every morning. Freshman year was all basics. English, math courses, botany. Anyway you get the drift.

It was late March and it had been raining hard for a couple of days. The foot or so of late winter snow had melted a few days before and the ground was really saturated with water. We had to go up one flight of stairs to the main floor to use the showers and toilets. I was coming back down after brushing my teeth and noticed a fair sized puddle of water at the foot of the stairs leading up to the outside door. Having seen the same thing after a heavy snow when the outside door had got left part way open during the night and melting snow had dripped down the stairs. I thought nothing of it and crawled into bed after setting up our beloved clock for my morning class.

We never pulled our window shade down and when I peeked out from under my blankets I could see the faint blush of the rising sun. I was struggling to identify the strange noise that had woke me. It sounded kind of like our beloved clock, but then on the other hand, had a very strange, almost gurgling sound. I rolled over onto my side and looked for the clock. My eyes had not yet focused on any specific thing but the rug caught my eye. It seemed closer to me than I remembered it should be.

Oh, well, got to get up. Damn I need a cup of coffee. I thought as I swung my feet off the bed and stepped on the rug.

What the hell? My feet were wet and no longer could I see them or the rug. The rug had literally sunk beneath me.

"Will you kindly shut off that obscene clock?" Guppy complained in his early morning gravely voice. "Why does it sound so weird?"

"I can't find the damn thing, and my feet are all wet. Besides, your rug has sunk."

He sat straight up, swung both feet off his bunk and down into the water.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Almost my exact words. I think we've been flooded out."

Oh shit. Did I leave any books on the floor last night?"

My roomy would study in bed almost every night until he got sleepy. Then he would drop the textbook on the floor next to his bunk, turn out his light and in an instant be sound asleep. He lucked out that night, he had been typing a paper until he got sleepy. The paper was still in his typewriter, safe on his desk.

As I sat in lecture hall listening to a 70 year old female professor educate us on the finer points of plant identification in Botany 101. I was struggling with my note taking trying to keep up with her perpetual monologue of Latin names, scientific description of plant life which I had never imagined existed. Next to me, on my right, sat a cute and friendly female. She was one of only two female forestry students in UNH's forestry program. She seemed to be relaxed and with a petite left hand, which seemed to be sporadically making writing motions, forced me to skip my own notes to see what she was up to. I had talked to her in other classes that we shared as freshman forestry students. I thought that I would like to date her. Take her to the downtown Durham movie, but was too chicken to ask her. So I was also shy about checking out her note taking. But not being a complete dummy about the various classes offered in our educational system I immediately recognized the gibberish on the pages of her notebook as being a hybrid version of shorthand with a scattering of her own secret code words intermingling. I would learn over time that she had codes for each of the subjects she needed to take notes in. I also would learn that she was very proficient, bordering on being a bit anal. Every weekend she would sit down at her typewriter and translate the notes that she had taken all week into a readable English.

At the moment as I contemplated what she was doing and how well her system seemed to be working, I mentally kicked myself for not taking shorthand in high school. So what if it was considered a girl's class even more so than Home Economics. This was a very temporary train of thought and was replaced by thinking that maybe we could workout some kind of trade so I could use her notes to supplement my own.

With an occasional assist from her and other people when I really needed to get notes from somebody, I struggled through using my own longhand note taking abilities, as primitive as they were, right up until I took my last college credit class as an older adult in about 1998 or 1999.

SEVEN

Here I am, in my seventies, I just finished reading Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show, for the third or fourth time. I do that a lot. Reread books I like or admire the author of. It was a real printed copy that I could hold in my hand, place a bookmark on the page where I left off. Even make notes in the page margins with a pencil if I wanted to. You know, one of those wooden sticks with a strip of graphite in it. You hold it in one hand and write with it. Though the copyright is from 1962, this particular edition was printed in about 1998 or so and has been in my bookcase since I bought it new about then. In paperback, not the small pocket sized, but the newer approximately 5 1/2" by about 8" which obviously would not slip into a normal sized pocket. These books don't beep, have a dirty LCD screen, nor force you to recharge the batteries half way through reading the book in order to finish a great read.

Image a real paper and ink printed book that if I wish I can place on a bookshelf amongst the rest of my collection of what I consider to be classics. One that I just like to read for the fun of it, to enjoy the plot of a great story teller's tale. Some are paperbacks, some hardbacks of fabric and a few, mind you, just a few, leather bound editions that were gifts from my son, or I found on sale in some small out of the way bookstore and just had to have. There are even a few first editions and first printings in my James Michener collection. Not so prized or rare to bring an exorbitant price if I was ever, (not hardly), incline to sell or part with under any circumstances.

Just before my first wife and I split the sheets, (in case you are too young to know, that's a common term from an older generation for divorce), we had a huge yard sale. We were going to make a major move and were cutting down on the stuff we were going to be required to move. My point is that I'm still in mourning for the many books that were sold on that awful day. Luckily I gave many of these treasures of paper and black ink to my son and was able to retrieve some of the ones which I really missed like old friends. Some I had regretted not having because they were such great books for future excursions into the world of the printed word. Some of these I was also able to recover or at least borrow from my son. He will end up owning them sometime in the future anyway.

EIGHT

The years have sped by. Yes, sped by and with each year their speed increases. Soon a month passes like a couple days and a year is more like a month.

I know that I have survived a long ways beyond when I expected my end to appear. What accounts for my extended life span? It is partly due to the speed of time and probably the fact that only 'the good die young'.

My years of being in the military, working various types of construction and finally in law enforcement kept me in the dark as to the true direction that society was taking. I was only vaguely aware of the strides, inroads and invasions of our privacy, of our way of life, that technology was taking. I used word processing on a computer doing my job for the sheriff's department. I had my own word processor for many years in my home office where I practiced writing fiction and typed out freelance emergency services reports. The Brownie Hawkeye is long gone with the dusts of the past and even my beloved Pentax 1000 SLR developed a major malfunction and now puts a vertical red streak on every third or fourth image . It served me well over the years. Took hundreds of crime scene and surveillance photos and took great fun in capturing the images of marijuana grower's pride and joy before we harvested their plants, "before their time". (Twisting around a quote from Orson Welles in his famous wine commercials.) It also shot many irreplaceable images of NW scenes and wildlife.

Why, I even have an electronic calculator which is just a bit larger than a credit card and it runs on solar power. Yes, I still have it. It must be going on 20 years old and has its own dedicated spot in the top drawer of my desk under the MAC-Mini, LaCie 500 gigabit hard drive and 23" Samsung LCD, graphics, wide screen monitor all of which take up any usable space on the top of my desk. I shoot digital images with my Sony 9.1 megapixel camera which I record on 4GB memory cards and have over 20,000 images on my computer hard drive along with Adobe Photoshop.

I'm still capable of telling somebody off the top of my head that three quarters of a pound of something is .75 on an electronic digital scale. How many high schoolers or even college students except maybe an engineer or math major can do that? I struggled through probably the fourth and fifth grades under the tutelage of a dictatorial teacher learning my times tables, fractions and learning to read, write and absorb the written word.

Arthritis is becoming more pronounced in most of my joints. Especially my fingers, wrists and elbows all of which felt the bite of subzero temperatures and the horrific pain of being thawed out. But you can still read my cursive writing except for an occasional flinch in my swirling "Ds" on a cold day. I never told you that the same dictators who pounded times tables and fractions into my juvenile but curious mind, forced me to write book reports and history lessons out on lined white composition paper. MY GOD!, it had to be written in cursive! Not to mention those terrible geography maps we had to draw by hand. No computer assisted maps here.

I no longer run. Gave it up 15 or more years ago but still can get in and out of my kayak by myself and will be long gone before I ever consider phony joints of stainless steel and titanium. Actually my knees still feel and function as they did in the late 1990s. Because I knew when to quit doing a thing that was bad for my body.

Unlike later (than mine) and the "Now" generations I have always realized and faced life with the knowledge that I am not going to live to be a hundred and fifty years old and things can happen to me. I am not infallible, nor as far as I know has anybody found the 'Fountain of Youth' that Ponce de Le'on searched for so diligently. In fact, many times in the last few years I have contemplated the issue of having really pushed my life expectancy and it makes me marvel at the fact that I'm still here. Also I'm still in one piece. A bit weary and achy at times, but all my pieces are still in the correct locations. I have had great fun, gained a world of experiences and having intimately seen parts of the world and its people that a greater share of the people of the US will never see or having been there, experience them the way I have. I always tried to be open minded so I could absorb the sights, sounds and smells of the cultures I was residing in. I know that sounds as if I'm bragging. In a way I am. I'm proud of the knowledge I have accumulated in my travels. Not just passing through, though temporary as it may have been, I was residing where ever I lay my head down to sleep that night. I didn't pass through like a tourist.

I wanted to and did become a part of the culture. I ate their food, visited their homes, slept in their beds and made love to their women.

Excerpt and quote from John Hamamura's COLOR of the SEA. ©2006

Chapter DR. JOE

July 1941

"I want my children to know the world. People who've lived all their lives in one country never understand how much they share with people from other nations. They don't understand humanity. They judge others according to their own cultural beliefs, and they're blind to their own flaws. One must leave home in order to fully understand the meaning of home and the kinship of all peoples of the earth."

I would like to add to this on my own. 'After country and nations I would put in town, city, or county.' It all fits and promotes a tunnel vision of life.

Herb Blanchard

###

Author's Bio

Herb Blanchard is retired and living in the Puget Sound area. He has lived in the Pacific Northwest for over thirty years after serving ten years in the military with several tours in Vietnam. He has been a flight instructor, worked for The US Forest Service in Northeast Washington State. He was a search and rescue instructor and coordinator and deputy sheriff also in Northeast Washington.

