Reflections on a Life

Forward 

Final - 9/30/2019

This is probably a good time to deflate expectations about this agglomeration of reflections.  It is little more than a chronological recitation of certain events in my life as I remember them.  A few were fork-in-the-road, life-changing, most are trivial at best but lodged in memory and somehow available for recall these many years later. A few are sad, most are upbeat.

Occasionally self-observations are shared, an indulgence that seems to increase in direct proportion to one’s advancing age.  Be forewarned however, advancing age adds no particular accuracy, insight or perspicacity to the observations.

The incentive for these reflections evolved as I thought of our daughter, Sara, her husband Wayen and her children.  I thought it would be both interesting and pleasant for Sara and her children to have as they mature and perhaps ponder their ancestors.  I benefited from  a mother who collected and preserved a number of family photographs (going back to my great-grandfather), an annual recollection of her own observations of my own childhood and an unbelievable number of trivial items about me.  In stark counterpoint, there is nothing about my father; only brief notations inside the cover in a family bible (Norwegian, published in 1881).

These notations covered the births and deaths of my father and his siblings long ago.  From his birth until his marriage to my mother, there is no information or photographs about my father before his marriage.  It’s ease to conclude, after a very few talks with mother, that she didn’t know much about his earlier life.

In occasional discussions with my mother later in her own life, I marveled at how she had lived through a period of dramatic and fast-evolving times.  Born in 1908, at perhaps the apex of the industrial revolution, she saw life-altering changes in transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, social culture, communications, the workplace and the early evolution of electricity, to mention only a few.

And as I look back at my own life now, I realize there have been big changes in my lifespan too: education, labor, transportation, social safety nets, evolution of the middle class, scientific research, astronomy and housing, again, to touch upon just a few.  Perhaps the most pervasively influential change has been the evolution of basic electricity, from early lamps and the party-line telephones to the ubiquitous digital devices that permeate our lives today.  There are other things as well, unimaginable when I was young, now commonplace today.

It is probable to imagine that the future will bring yet more and more dramatic changes; some of benefit to man and some not so much.

If the patient reader persists in perusing these reflections, please note that the gist of each recollection is based on the truth only as I remember it, though dates and details may occasionally suffer from the enshrouding mist of long-ago memories

Bob Anderson, Spring, 2019

Marlboro, Vermont

________________________

Reflections on a Life 

Bob Anderson

(Winter/Spring of 2018/2019)

There is a modest, lingering confusion in my mind with regard to why I was born.  Isabel, my mother, had always told me that she wanted children.  But my father, she said, didn’t.  And I didn’t get to ask him about it as he passed on in 1952, aged 63 when I was but nine years of age.  Underscoring the mystery in later years my mother, who remarried in 1958, also mentioned that her husband Jack, was significantly older than she thought when they were first together.  He was in fact, virtually 23 years older and approaching his mid-fifties when I was born.  

So I ruminate upon rare occasion; was I a plan; an accident; or a connubial deceit by a 35 year old woman with an eye on the “clock”.  In the end I don’t really think it mattered.  I was here, loved, and lacked for little of importance.  In fact I felt pretty happy up to my somewhat “turbulent teens”.  I was perhaps, short on ambition though that recognition was manifest prior to my teens, at least to me.  Mother noted it even earlier on, as she dutifully recorded in her annual observations of me in a thumbnail “biography” until I left home at 17.

Paperwork points to my birth on Oct 18, 1943 in New York City to Isabel Benney Anderson and John Lewis Anderson though everyone called him “Jack”.  Father was a native born Norwegian, originally named Johannes Ludwig Andersen who came to this country at around the age of three, Mother said.  A bible inscription opposite the flyleaf shows his birth on July 11, 1886.  I don’t know how he got here or where he grew up in this country, presumably around New York City.

Untroubled by whatever the circumstances of my arrival, I remember living on the East side of New York, later confirmed to be East 57th St, a couple of blocks from a small park on the East River.  I’m not sure why but I think I remember a nanny who often wheeled me down to a small, nearby park by the river.  Still in New York but a little older and certainly before the impending ubiquity of television, I remember my anticipation at being invited over occasionally to a neighboring  apartment to watch Howdy Doody with Dukie Oursler, who was about my age.

And that was my introduction to television.

Father was the an art director at Stern’s, a New York department store. And that’s how I, in an instant of raw and blatant nepotismt, became a “clothing model” around the age of three.  I think there are a couple of photos still around, me looking quite spiffy in shorts, jacket and a cap and some other outfits as well.

Another memory of New York and my father was of an airplane; an aluminum toy I could sit in and pedal around the apartment.  This aircraft fit through apartment doorways only because my father cleverly sawed off each wing halfway down, installing hinges so the wings could be folded up to fit through those doorways.  That feature markedly enhanced the “flying experience” for a six year old.

I don’t remember any special affinity between Father and myself, perhaps a result of his declining health, or memories of my own, smudged by time.  I cannot say.  Some of the sparse knowledge of who he was derives from items I inherited: a fancy watch band, monogrammed personal items and, memorably, a dinner set of silverware I still have.  Encased in a wooden box, the utensils were made of stainless steel with wooden handles of black walnut.  The design of this set is modern and the set shines as if new, even today after some 75 years.  I suspect this propensity for the finer things passed to me, bedeviled as I’ve been at times by my own predilection for new and nice over mere serviceability and thrift.

At our rustic cabin at Lost Lake my Father had a small collection of good tools and parts neatly confined to a set of wooden drawers he probably made.  I still have one of the famous “Yankee”, (modeI nr. 30A”) ratcheting screwdrivers.  I’m certain he liked to tinker.  He also had a nice collection of fresh water fishing gear he shared with me.  As I think back, perhaps most telling was the family car we had in the 40’s: a yellowish Plymouth convertible coupe purchased new, I believe.  Certainly not the average family car in post-war America.

We remained in New York through most of 1950.  Mother’s “October Summary” notes that it was a year of change for the family.  Because of a dearth of suitable “sitters” for me, my father apparently took over my daily supervision while mother was at work, even picking me up from school at P.S. 59 and making lunch, mother noted.  But the big change was a family move in the fall of 1950, to a large house in suburban Mamaroneck, N.Y.  The move was apparently made to be close to a small frozen food business just purchased by my parents in partnership with an aunt and uncle.

Winterhill and Mamaroneck

The development of stand-alone home freezers for the home in the 1940’s made frozen foods  popular, practical and affordable for consumers.  In 1950 my parents, along with my Uncle Trevose and Aunt Joan Benney bought a small frozen-food business in Mamaroneck, N.Y.  called Winterhill Foods.  That was followed by a move out of New York for both families and into a three story house in Mamaroneck, N.Y., a 23 mile train-ride away from New York city.  I suspect the frozen food business at Winterhill didn’t do as well as hoped.  It quietly disappeared and I never heard much talk about it later, unfortunately.

But the move itself, to Mamaroneck from New York was considerably more successful, certainly for me.  I was now seven.  If ever a suburb typified an early middle-class suburban dream, Mamaroneck was it; seven blocks to a good public school, a modest downtown in the other direction with a movie theatre, a train station, a library and best of all for me, Harbor Island, a sizable public park bordered on there side by the waters of Long Island Sound.  All the amenities were within walking distance. Mamaroneck wasn’t a luxury enclave by any means, but certainly reasonably attractive and certainly comfortable.  I could go places around town on my own, walking and bicycling, and I made some friends in the neighborhood.

The Harbor Island park bifurcated Mamaroneck Harbor with space for a beach and a baseball field, among other recreational spaces.  Even better for me, it was surrounded on two sides by boat slips, an early and evolving obsession of mine and an affinity that ultimately played out over my lifetime.  In my adult years, my wife Nancy and I sailed the waters from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas and all the waters in between.  The patient reader will learn more about that in succeeding pages.

Our rented house seemed large and was in fact, three stories high surrounded by lawn.  A  driveway bordered one side.  It even included a ‘white picket” fence and had three covered porches.

I enjoyed a sizable room of my own with a bed under which indeterminate but frightening animals lay hidden at night, silently waiting to gnaw at my tender young ankles, should they droop down to the floor.  By daytime they were gone as quietly as they appeared at night and it was safe to slip out of bed.  They never seemed to leave a mess or need feeding either.  But that simple logic often can often elude a young boy in the dark.

I also remember an early little experiment with electricity in my new room, sticking a pin into a wall socket.  Pop, crackle, there were a few sparks and a most uncomfortable shock.  No one was around to explain this unexpected flow of electrons. Nonetheless I intuited the main point and didn’t repeat that experiment.

We shared the house with my mother’s brother Trevose Benney and family.  He, his wife Joan and their two children, Diane (Didi) and Trevose (Tree) inhabited rooms on the third floor. (A third child, Bruce, was born some years later.)  On the second floor my father and mother each had a bedroom with a little connecting alleyway.  Downstairs I remember a humongous eat-in kitchen, a separate dining room and a large living room with handy pocket doors that separated the large room into two smaller rooms.

In a year or so the Benneys moved out to Syosset, L. I. to a house of their own.  They were replaced by a German woman, Hannah (I cannot spell her last name), who would continue my supervision.  Her son, Peter, my senior by 2-3 years, became a good friend and we both shared an interest in model making. (Mired in youthful indifference to most things useful, I ignored an easy opportunity to learn German from two native speakers who also spoke virtually flawless English.)

In sum, the Mamaroneck years (ca. 1950-1954), passed in a cloud of pre-adolescent self-absorption.  Drum and saxophone lessons at school,  a few piano lessons at home, horseback riding lessons and a membership in the Cub Scouts replete with uniform, hat and accessories (my favorite part).   These are  some of the remaining memories of those suburban years, now some 65 years back.

I walked to school through a leafy neighborhood of single family homes, mostly with other friends.  We lived across the street from a family of eleven kids, spaced from a toddler to the teens, the oldest probably in or just out of high school. There was little enough traffic on our street that we could roller skate nearly at will using those all-metal skates that clasped your shoe sole, made lots of noise and left your feet feeling unpleasantly tingly when you stopped.  There was a large horse chestnut tree in the yard next door.  Large and easy to climb, we had to keep an eye out for the caretaker who would chase us away if he saw us.  I went to a small party when I was about 10 and learned to play “spin the bottle” - perhaps my first innocent realization that girls were more than something to be teased relentlessly.

As I read mother’s notes and think back over the years I came to realize she was an unusually strong and energetic woman with a forceful personality.  Growing up she was just “mom” to me though in truth she was always the family breadwinner, daily commuting  25 miles into New York City, overseeing my care, and managing two households that included our summer cabin at Lost Lake and looking after my father and his failing health.  (Father had stopped working by the time I was 5 due to his poor health.).  

In those Mamaroneck years Mother continued her daily commute to the city as chief of research at Henry Luce’s Fortune magazine.  She usually didn’t arrive home until after 5:00 PM, a long and arduous day though I don’t remember her complaining.  

Looking back now from a longer perspective, she was the leader in our family, probably right from the beginning.  Though not a party to family discussions in my earliest years, it’s now evident that the ideas and all the family’s forward motion emanated from her.

She started at Smith College at age 16, graduating in 1928 perhaps a year or so before the Depression began to smother the country.  I remember her outlining some of the the jobs she’d had in those lean years; store detective, small eatery, etc.  I wish I had talked to her more about those years.

Father’s death

In December 1952 my father passed away from heart failure at around age 66.  I was nine.  While obviously saddened, I don’t remember being particularly disconsolate as much as feeling oddly disconnected, (maybe even a little embarrassed) from other families who had more active dads. I don’t remember doing much together with my father after school or weekends, except for learning to fish at Lost Lake.  Perhaps memory fails me but my usual routine after school sometimes included a quick stop in his bedroom where he had a small worktable.  He might be working on a small project, we’d talk a little and then I’d usually head outdoors to see my friends.  An emotional imprint that remains with me from his passing to this day, was an enduring dislike of the cloying smell of cut flowers.

Lost Lake 

I should interject here that as far back as memory takes me, my parents, I and a nanny spent summers at Lost Lake, a beautiful, woodsy lake of about 35 acres with twenty-some simple rustic cabins lining the shore.  The lake was bifurcated (there’s that verb again) by a small peninsula of land that rose gently to perhaps 25 or 35 feet above the lake level; a knoll.  Every July 4th, families from the cabins surrounding the lake gathered there to have a cookout, shoot off fireworks and sing songs - often the social highlight of the season for both kids and adults.  It could have been a scene from a 50’s-style Disney movie - no retouching needed.  Harold Kline, the Lake’s owner (and hands-on builder of all the lake’s “infrastructure”), played a cheap guitar, sang with gusto and seemed in command of a limitless supply of folk songs.  He was heartily accompanied by anyone who might know some of the words.

Each cabin around the lake had its own primitive dock and a flat-bottomed rowboat all built by the aforementioned Harold.  No outboard motors were permitted so the lake was unusually quiet at all times and quite pristine for swimming.  In the middle of the lake there was an anchored raft that served as an auxiliary social center on warm summer days.  The same families rented their cabins year after year allowing strong friendships to grow over those years.

Parts of some days  were spent on the lake fishing for bass and pickerel.  Occasional rainy days for kids were usually spent inside playing cards and games.  Late afternoons on sunny days, the adults might gather informally outdoors for “cocktails”.  I remember those afternoons as a choice opportunity to wheedle some ordinarily impermissible favor from mother.  Distracted by the party’s hubbub and a late afternoon’s modest imbibition of alcohol, permission was usually forthcoming, usually without bothersome stipulations.

The cabins were simple to a fault.  The building form, repeated for each cabin around the lake, had 3 small bedrooms, a galley-like kitchen with a hand pump for water and a real “ice-box” to maintain cold perishables.  These were all centered about a cozy living room with stone fireplace.  I shouldn’t forget the suspended bucket outside for showering and....... an outhouse a little farther away.  And we loved it.  Kerosene furnished both the lighting and a limited amount of heat until electricity arrived during the fifties.

Summer for me at Lost Lake was an unending profusion of youthful, innocent fun.  An innumerable number of pleasant memories remain bright and clear in my rear-view mirror, even through a misted memory of 65 years.  There always seemed to be things to do and people to do them with.  At that age the negative influences were largely and fortunately absent among my cohort.  I do remember trying to learn to smoke with marginal success.   I didn’t like beer and the smell of alcohol was abhorrent.  My preferred libation was milk shakes.  And I never met an ice cream cone or donut I couldn’t eat.  Fortunately for my health, those treats then  were nearly as rare as an afternoon rainbow.

An Excursion to Europe

In 1952, when my father passed, Mother booked a passage to England for a month-long trip through four countries starting in England.  From there it was travel by rented car to Scotland, Ireland and France and thence a return home.  We “sailed” over on the R.M.S  Queen Elizabeth, the largest motor ship in the world at the time, over 1000 feet long.  We returned from France on the S.S. United States, the very fastest ocean liner at the time.  In truth the ocean voyages were even more exciting for me than traveling on shore.  In a most unlikely event, a crewman aboard the Queen Elizabeth befriended me, offering a tour of nearly the entire ship.  His name was Alex and upon arrival in England he gave me a beautiful coffee-table book about the ship. While amazed at my good fortune in this brief but welcome friendship I cannot avoid a wee suspicion that this unlikely meeting had somehow been arranged by Mother.  Either way it didn’t diminish the pleasure of my friendship with this Scottish crewman.  And its genesis remains a wee but pleasant mystery.

Ashore, I certainly enjoyed sites we saw: the castles, the museums with their suits of armor, ancient weapons and so much more.  While traveling the remote roads through the Scottish moors, a singular duty fell to me to each morning to remind Mother to drive our rented Morris Minor on the customary, left-hand side of the road.  

Our last stay in Europe was Paris.  After a month’s travel through four countries things were gradually dissolving into a bit of a blur, at least in my recall 65 years later.  I do vaguely remember Notre Dame Cathedral and the bookstalls along the Seine in Paris.  Another small memory sticks out as well.  Continuing to tick the boxes of well known tourist sites on our “tour”, my mother chose the famous cabaret music hall, Les Folies Bergeres for an evening visit.  I don’t think Mother was fully prepared for the level of nudity on display in a show in 1950’s Paris - more than a dozen showgirls cheerfully doffing most of their colorful costumes yet dancing with grace and aplomb.  At some point Mother turned to me and asked if I’d like to leave.  I, trying to seem neither titillated nor eager, replied that we should probably stay and get our money’s worth from the tickets.  I cannot really remember the rationale I offered but it was sufficient to remain for the balance of the show, though Mother was clearly ready to leave.  Curiously we never discussed the evening again, though spotty images of the evening remain for me all these years later.

A final comment on overseas travel by boat.  In the 50’s, ocean going ships offered a fancy way to travel abroad redolent of the pictures one might have seen in the movie “Titanic”.  Table cloths on the table, dressing for dinner and comfortable accommodations were the norm for those with the means or perhaps like us, to mark a life-changing event.

Hidden Lake

In 1954 we moved to Vermont though at the time I couldn’t say why.  The countryside shared remarkable similarities with Lost Lake, a place both I and my mother loved.  I imagine Mother, then in her mid-forties, was possibly caught up in what we now call a mid-life crisis, perhaps touched by some Norman Rockwell image depicting a cozy, country inn.  There was also a popular book at the time about a running a country inn (Blueberry Hill in Goshen, Vt.)  she had read that perhaps further embellished the dream.  My own long-time fondness for the woods and country style living certainly didn’t dampen her enthusiasm.  There were probably other background influences as well to which I was not privy at age eleven.

We did acquire a new “family” member just in time for the move; a Lost Lake neighbor named Charles Hartenbach and of an age similar to my mother’s.  He was a Swiss-born chemist by training who moved to the U.S. after college, arriving just in time for the Depression.  I remembered him from Lost Lake where he, his then-wife, Betty, and step-daughter, Diana, spent summers in a cabin across the lake from ours.  I have have no memory of the transactions that brought him from his previous family to ours.  

Settling in Vermont, I was enrolled at Marlboro Elementary School (MES) on Route 9 and near Roy Sheldon’s sculpture and table-making barn.  It was an extremely rustic structure from which he also sold those artful items. It also provided his living quarters, modest and rustic in the extreme.  

1954 was the school’s first year in operation and a brand new building. It would have real indoor plumbing unlike earlier town schools which offered only outdoor privies.  With the small size of our town (pop. about 600 ), the school population numbered about 35 and included two teachers: one for grades one through four and a second teacher for grades five through eight.

This school been built to replace an old wooden one with one classroom and inconveniently situated on the far side of town.  In our new school there was no kindergarten, no pre-school, no cafeteria, no gym, no sports program nor any of the other amenities in schools today.  But nice indoor bathrooms were a central feature; one for the girls and one for the boys.  A small van called a mobile book wagon visited perhaps once a week and we were free to take out a book or two and keep them until the return of the van.  I enjoyed reading but can’t say I selected books of educational note, mostly just novels for young folks.  The book I remember most was a story about a young man who lived in Alaska and was finally able to buy Caterpillar D2 bulldozer to go logging with.  It spoke to my (lifelong, as it turned out) fascination with bulldozers and earthmoving equipment in general.  

That was possibly another subtle hint of my own future career interests but who’s thinking of a career at 13 or 14?  While still at MES, I remember writing a one-page paper on torque converters, a component of Caterpillar bulldozer transmissions.  My research was remarkably thin, mostly gleaned from Caterpillar advertising brochures.  Out of possible topics for a twelve-year old to pick, that probably qualified as a bit bizarre.

In retrospect, my random interests throughout the adolescent years were probable breadcrumbs leading to a varied pool of interests, mostly out of doors.  My parents and all the aunts and uncle had office jobs - a part of the entrenched middle-class dream at the time.  However, at no point did any of my breadcrumbs suggest a future career as an office minion. Unfortunately for me, I think, no one seemed to pick up on the clues, least of all myself.  For example, as a teenager and by choice, I worked two summers on a small, local farm for $0.50 cents hour.  Three summers following, I worked for Marlboro’s very tiny town highway department at a handsome pay increase to $1.25 the hour.  Note:  As a counterpoint, when I first went to work at the farm  at $0.50 I had a standing offer from Mother to continue waiting tables at Hidden Lake at $1.25 the hour plus tips.

At both the farm and on town roads I loved driving tractors.  Working for the highway department I also taught myself how to pilot a large road grader.  Pleased with that new skill, I remember dragging mother out to watch me grade a road one afternoon.  These periods were dotted by occasional stints of shovel work and stone masonry.  I enjoyed it all.  In time I learned to wield a scythe, cutting light brush and weeds along the roadsides. I also wanted to sharpen this tool as the old timers did.  They simply whipped out a carborundum stick, alternately sharpening each side of the blade to a razor’s edge all in a blur so fast that my eye couldn’t actually see how they were holding the stick .  The trick, of course, was to end up with a very sharp edge without nicking a finger.  Enjoying all this outdoor work, the summer workdays passed quickly.

Beginning my first year of high school I urged mother to let me take an available course in agriculture.  She agreed as long as it was understood that I would buckle down on college prep courses afterward.  The Ag course was effectively an opportunity to learn some of the many chores typically done on farms, i.e. dehorning cows, evaluating hay and eqg quality, even braiding rope.  I loved it.

Outside of school hours I spent a lot of free time outdoors, mostly by myself.  I taught myself to ride and manage a horse.  I learned how to tap a few maple trees and boil the resulting syrup.  (Tediously, in a cookie pan over a small fire.).  I later worked after school assisting a local farmer gathering sap at his farm where he used oxen to pull the sap-gathering tub around from tree to tree.

Winter in Vermont in the fifties offered few organized outdoor activities but skiing had started to become popular in Vermont.  Around age 12 or so I acquired some well-used rental skis and boots and began to teach myself skiing.  Starting on a couple of small hills around town and later moving up to nearby Hogback Mountain Ski Area, I spent an increasing amount of time skiing during the winter.  I later joined the ski team at the high school.  This meant winter weekends might be spent competing at ski races at ski areas in other towns.  We typically stayed in the homes of local competitors’ families for the weekend.  Very social, I thought.  

I certainly wasn’t among the best skiers but found I could sometimes snag a ribbon if I added a combined Nordic (cross-country and ski jumping) to my alpine efforts.  A combined score for skiing both Alpine and Nordic events allowed me to occasionally climb into the upper ranks, point-wise, as Nordic events weren’t generally popular with the best Alpine skiers.   In high school, I capped my Nordic career jumping off Harris Hill, a local 65 meter ski jump, during Winter Carnival.  I placed near the bottom of the competition at about 100 feet when older and far better skiers were jumping over 200 feet.  I was content with my progress though and “retired” from ski jumping at age 17.  

was perhaps nudged by a new after-school interest; playing in a rock and roll band.  I was invited to join as a saxophone player (of marginal skill), but the only player available. In time I also became the alternate drummer, a skill for which I showed more ability.  The band itself was quite talented and popular, playing covers of the time at various venues in the area.

In school that freshman year I struggled with math and language and did only moderately well in my other courses.  Frustrated with my lackadaisical efforts, Mother suggested a private boarding school nearby for my sophomore year.  We negotiated, mother and I;  I would try it for a year and if I didn’t like it, I could return to the local high school in Brattleboro.   Well, against expectations, my academic results improved significantly throughout that sophomore year and I earned the highest class grade on the final exam in geometry.  Enforced evening study hours, small classes and good teachers together provided a needed discipline and support base that helped substantially with my grades.  On the other hand, I felt a lack of connection with many of the students there, many from wealthy families farther south.  Feeling a little like a rube, I lacked a sense of belonging at the school.  I was perhaps, also disquieted by the subtle whiff of elitism there.

Social life at all an boys school was pretty stunted in the fifties and I’m know the cost of attending was difficult for my mother.  I opted to return to Brattleboro High School for my junior year.  Sadly, my newly formed study habits abandoned me and I resumed a mediocre scholastic career, another and serious wrong turn for me.  One I recognized but was insufficiently motivated to do something about.

My SAT scores were somewhere between underperforming and abysmal and as junior year rolled by I found myself behind the eight ball applying to colleges.  I wasn’t accepted by the University of Vermont and Dartmouth was a snicker on the horizon.  By good fortune and no small amount of Mother’s nudging I found myself accepted at the University of Colorado - but not into their engineering program where I believed my interests lay;  my math scores were simply too poor.  Accepted into the liberal arts division, however, I went out in the fall of ‘61 aboard my first airplane ride.  Another wrong turn here.  Not the airplane - my misguided academic path.

My limited tenure at the University was initially defined by the school’s size, a totally new and unfamiliar school life and an unfettered freedom with which I was unaccustomed.  The unfettered freedom crashed directly into unfamiliar school life.

The school policy for freshmen had previously limited them to living in dorms but was suspended temporarily for lack of sufficient houseing ccommodations due to increasing enrollment.  I and many other freshmen soon joined campus fraternities that first year.  I was pleased to be accepted at my fraternity of choice and was later elected pledge class president; perhaps in part due to antics later dreamed up as I settled into the fraternity.  Looking back, I probably underestimated my “likability quotient” as my election was a total surprise to me.  It was an aspect of personality I later found fortunate where my lack of credentials might have derailed some aspirations. for me. I also underestimated my ability to keep up my grades with the minimum effort I was putting into it.

Tradition suggested that the pledges play some trick on the fraternity upperclassmen.  

As such, I found myself renting a small moving van and parking it in front of the fraternity quite late one night.  We, the pledge class, quietly removed all of the furniture from the fraternity’s common area, loaded it and took it to a warehouse.  Social interaction for everyone in the fraternity as well as visitors was significantly inconvenienced for several days.  There were no chairs.

Skiing in the Colorado mountains was fabulous, unlike anything back east, and I spent rather too much time at it, even skipping classes.  Looking back I realize some of this excess was probably motivated by an increasing dread of schoolwork in which I was getting increasingly behind.  This unfortunate cycle of procrastination and fitful bouts of schoolwork inevitably caused me to fall farther behind as the semester wore on. 

Barely passing grades and nearly a year of wasting time and mother’s very limited funds, found me in a serious funk.  So in the spring of my freshman year I abruptly left college.  My self esteem had sunk over the winter and colluded with a sustaining insecurity.  That emotional combination compelled me to consider significant change.  Out of the blue I thought perhaps thought partial redemption beckoned if I joined the Marine Corps where a long-time friend had joined.  I did so without consulting my parents or anyone else.  Mother was not happy.  Nor was I at first.

The Marine Corp

In a matter of days I found myself in the Marine Corps getting my head shaved at the Marines’ west coast boot camp in San Diego, California at 3 AM in the morning.  The rigor of boot camp quickly asserted itself, though the stifling commitment of a four year enlistment sometimes intruded at night.  Luckily an active schedule of training and exercise minimized time spent dwelling on my new status.

Though fully immersed in Marine Corp training activities I continued to think about my weaknesses and failed to recognize any substantive strengths.  In high school I realized I wasn’t the brightest light on the porch and now feared the bulb yet dimmer.

Three months later, boot camp concluded, allowing for a small measure of pride at its successful completion.  After a brief visit home I flew back out to Camp Pendleton, California, a huge Marine Corp. base (over 200 square miles) in Southern California.  A month or so there provided an introduction to firearms, marksmanship and infantry training.  

Results from an earlier aptitude test propelled me into a technical course in aviation electronics back at San Diego.  I was subsequently assigned to Cherry Point, N.C., an isolated Marine air base near the coast.  I began training there as an air traffic controller.  I was neither happy nor unhappy; the days filled with Marine Corps activities but after hours were largely empty.  There was no town nearby and I had no car and little money for anything farther away.  

Among the newly acquired skills was the plotting of aircraft movement by radar and trading flight information with pilots flying the military aircraft,  And there was one more arcane skill I now had to offer - learning to write backwards.

In those days prior to the later development of sophisticated electronic displays of today, we plotted flight information on very large plexiglass displays.  And so, not to block the vision of those reading the displays, several of us would stand behind the plexiglass wall and write out updates in block letters fed to us by headphone, writing right to left.  With a little practice it became quite easy and was kind of fun.  A knack for spelling was a big help.

In time I did think I could stand to improve my social life and recalled a girl who worked in Marlboro earlier one summer, whom I had dated several times when she was in Marlboro.

Through letters exchanged, I re-acquainted myself with Shelley Jacobs, living in a small apartment in Washington, D.C.  I wrote to her and thus began a slowly evolving relationship though courtship was limited by the eight hours it took me to drive from North Carolina to Washington for a visit.  In time she moved to Morehead City, N.C., only several miles from the Cherry Point air base.  We had a small apartment together and I was happier than I’d been since high school.  Life was pretty good, the beaches grand and fresh shrimp could be had from returning shrimp boats, a dollar the pound.

In military service in those days, there was little control over one’s immediate future except, perhaps, by negotiating some new training and possibly a new duty station if an opportunity arose.  This was particularly attractive if it offered a more desirable location.  So, looking to get out of the backwaters of North Carolina, I applied for language training in Washington, D.C.  A language aptitude test was part of the pre-qualification.  I passed and was accepted to the language school; a welcome boost to my still fragile ego. However, it was a Faustian bargain of sorts, as I was required  to spend two more years in the Marine Corps (now a six-year commitment) as part of the program qualification.   

I soon found myself in Washington, D.C. with a new wife (we had just recently been married in a bare-bones wedding) and little money, renting a drab and tiny two-room basement apartment with no air conditioning.

We were to spend nine months here and I can’t say we were at all pleased about our location, a severely downtrodden section of Washington near the Anacostia Naval Base and the Defense Language Institute.  Here I was to spend 6-7 hours a day in class with a couple hours of homework in the evening, five days a week.  A well-used 1958 Ford Fairlane purchased in North Carolina ate up a significant amount of my meager funds to keep running.  So I actually considered it good fortune to have it stolen shortly after we arrived in D.C.  While the insurance payout didn’t cover my costs it provided enough for a deposit on a replacement, a used Volkswagen bus. It was a much more practical and reliable vehicle with far better mileage.  And so cool to pilot around.

After nine months of study, more rigorous than my earlier endeavors, I graduated with the four others in class; 3 Army lieutenants fresh out of West Point and a Marine staff sergeant.  Another Marine sergeant had washed out during the year.  (I was surely motivated by the realization I would still have the extra two year service commitment even if I failed).  I both enjoyed and took significant pride in the course and its successful completion.  On one occasion our little class was invited for an evening visit at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington; an amazing early glimpse at a vastly different world for this country boy from rural Vermont.

The “final exam” found me standing between my native Vietnamese teacher of these past nine months and the commandant of the school.  The teacher read a Vietnamese newspaper article out loud as I simultaneously interpreted it into English for the commandant.  The process was then reversed and I interpreted another article from English to Vietnamese for my teacher. 

Editorial note:  to translate usually signifies written text that is translated, in writing, into another language.  Interpreting suggests listening to one party speak and sequentially or simultaneously offering a translation from the first speaker to a second party.  The most skilled interpreters are often found at places like the U.N or State Department.  I never really mastered the simultaneous interpreting concept.  It’s a lot like carrying on two different dialogs with two different people at the same time.

Successfully passing this class (and continuing to improve my mental perspective, too) I was now finished with my nine months of language training.  New orders transferred Shelley and myself back west to Camp Pendleton, California where I was assigned to the “Interrogation of Prisoners of War (IPW) unit for training in the rules and techniques of interrogation.

Supported by my new unit commanding officer at the time, I also made plans to apply to become a Marine warrant officer.  Unfortunately those plans were interrupted by orders to go to Vietnam (no real surprise) which was just heating up in 1965.  Several weeks later, in June of 1965, my plane landed at Danang air base, South Vietnam just south of the demarcation line between communist North Vietnam and the Republic of South Vietnam.  My wife, Shelley would remain in California while I was overseas, eventually moving up to San Francisco.

The U.S military command organized all of South Vietnam into 4 military zones;  I Corps through IV Corps running north to south.   I Corp was the area of responsibility assigned to the Marine Corp hence my assignment at Danang, South Vietnam.

Assigned to the Marines’ Interrogation of Prisoners of War, (IPW) unit I moved into a large, olive-drab tent near  the airbase runways.  The roar of fighter jets landing and taking off permeated the relative quiet both day and night.  Frequent, billowing aerial flares at night were yet another reminder that this was a combat zone. The tent was absolutely stifling with daytime temps that reached a very humid 100 degrees or more.  Evenings were cooler but remained humid.  An nearby elevated bucket of water with a shower spout on a rope provided a welcome, al fresco relief.

I reflect back now on a life so markedly changed: from rural life in Vermont and high school graduation; to about severn months of college in Colorado; joining the Marine Corps in California for infantry and aeronautics training; later assigned back east in North Carolina, getting married, moving to D.C. to learn Vietnamese, then back out west for more training and thence flying to a combat zone in Vietnam.  All in a head-spinning four years.

My new unit was a very small group (a dozen or so men) trained in the interrogation of prisoners-of-war.  Prisoners were brought in for intelligence questioning.  These POW’s were usually youngish men living in rural areas outside Danang. They were picked up in periodic village sweeps by Marine units looking for enemy combatants.  Of the personnel in our unit, I was the only one trained in Vietnamese.  Others had learned other languages and so used native Vietnamese soldiers who could speak some English, to interpret for them.

It was less interesting than it might have seemed and ultimately saddening too.  The prisoners were mostly peasant farmers who spent most of their time working the rice paddies.  When help was needed the Viet Cong (VC) would come in at night to conscript, under threat, needed personnel and supplies.  Captured prisoners routinely denied connection with the VC.  Even if they did finally talk, it yielded little useful intelligence since, (as in typical guerrilla warfare) combatants were organized in tiny units and purposely kept ignorant of the larger picture and the whereabouts of the chain of command.

Operation Starlite

My first field experience occurred a few weeks after I arrived in Danang.  I was temporarily assigned  to accompany a battalion-sized unit taking part in the Marines’ first large scale field operation code-named Operation Starlite.  My job would be to interrogate prisoners taken right in the field as the operation unfolded.  I boarded a transport ship in Danang the evening before.  I slept fitfully on a temporary canvas cot literally stacked ten high in the ship’s cargo hold as the ship eased south along the coast a few miles, to anchor near a large and isolated beach.

Very early the next morning I boarded an AMTRAC (a tracked amphibious vehicle that sits low in the water and is designed to carry equipment or a dozen or so troops) for deployment on a beach-head suspected of having enemy combatants.  A first wave of combat marines had just landed and cleared the beach area.  Shortly thereafter I landed ashore, not unlike some of the war movies depicting WWII, but less drama.  Moving inland to an open-air “command post”, I took up a fox-hole to begin POW interrogations).  The fighting was sporadic in keeping with the hit and run strategy employed by North Vietnamese at the time.

A modest stream of captured, local men were deposited in my foxhole one by one, by a Marine guard.  At one point I was finishing my short report on a previous prisoner when I looked up and nearly jumped out of my foxhole.  This prisoner was significantly deformed, a sad victim of leprosy.  Unaware at the time that leprosy is not particularly contagious, I needn’t have worried.  And I felt somewhat embarrassed for my abrupt reaction.  I don’t believe my reports yielded any significant intelligence on that particular operation.

The next day having no more prisoners to interrogate, I was assigned to a squad of about a dozen men for a patrol through several small, isolated villages.  Before embarking, we paused for a naval ship to “soften up” the area through which we would be patrolling.  Large shells were fired from Naval gunships several miles offshore.  The shells were aimed to land perhaps 1/2 mile in front of us.  This was an unforgettable and frightening experience and I will say that the exploding shells as they hit were significantly louder than any noise or explosion I’ve ever encountered since.  Fortunately it was over after a half hour or so and we embarked on our patrol armed with rifles.  Nothing eventful occurred and we stopped just before dusk.  Feeling a little exposed I was surprised that we were to spend the night right where we stopped.  It was so hot I was wearing only my flak jacket, boots and trousers.  C-rations had been dropped off by helicopter and after eating we settled in for the night.   Each of us in the group took turns at guard lookout while the others slept.  Sleeping in a flak jacket permeated with sweat and aware of our isolated exposure I remember it as one the worst nights I ever spent anywhere.  I was quite grateful not to have been assigned to an infantry unit whose days in Vietnam were often spent like this.

The operation Starlite never really engaged in significant combat and the next day or so this battalion to which I had been temporarily assigned embarked on a long trek back home. A battalion, perhaps a 1000 men strung out in single file, made for an incredible sight but fortunately an uneventful field exercise.  We hiked for perhaps 10 hours, finally boarding AMTRACs for a short trip across a river and back to the base in Danang.

MEDCAPS.

After several months I became increasingly uncomfortable being part of this IPW unit and requested a transfer.  Soon thereafter I was attached to an even smaller group of men called a “Civil Affairs” unit.  It’s purpose was to facilitate friendly interactions between the Marine Corps and the local civilian population.  It was non-combatant in nature and I found the work there both enjoyable and varied in nature.  As the only American marine available who spoke Vietnamese, I enjoyed a wide variety of assignments.

Among the most enjoyable was the MEDCAP program.  A navy corpsman (the Marine Corps relied on the Navy for all medical needs and a corpsman was the trained Navy equivalent of an Army medic) would set up for the morning accompanied by an interpreter (me) and offer basic medical assistance to the local community.  We treated mostly women and children and the clinic was quite popular and, of course, free.  I would ask what someone’s symptoms might be and relay that information in English to the corpsman, a career Navy chief and quite friendly, even avuncular.  The corpsman in turn, would examine the person, suggest a remedy and offer whatever simple meds were appropriate, all free.  I also interpreted the corpsman’s response back to the “patient”.  The task was small but most rewarding for me.

One particular MEDCAP I remember had it’s comic moment.  The corpsman I accompanied needed to ascertain if diarrhea was symptomatic of this woman’s malady.  I didn’t know the Vietnamese word for diarrhea.  Embarrassed discussing this intimate symptom I tried to think how to explain it.  The corpsman, quickly understanding my dilemma, finally just pointed to his butt while emitting a prolonged raspberry sound.  The entire room full of women cracked up and so did I, though ruefully.  More than 50 years later I haven’t forgotten the Vietnamese word for diarrhea.

On another occasion the Navy corpsman and I were sent out in the small town of Danang to inoculate all the “bargirls” we could find, with a penicillin shot.  All military personnel in the Danang area had been confined to the base because of an increasing rate of STD’s among the troops.  The troops weren’t happy and the local economy suffered significantly as a result.  As incredible as it seems, I found myself and the Chief wandering from house to house at the edge of town looking for “clients”.

The girls weren’t hard to find; they lived together in groups of six to eight under the “supervision’ of an older “Mama-San”,  As we went from group to group, my job was to explain the situation to the women and ask for their cooperation.  The carrot was that the troops would soon be able to come to town for the usual evening libations and entertainment.  Everyone was totally cooperative and the Chief moved from girl to girl inoculating each girl’s buttock. Once again this was an out of body experience for this country boy from Vermont - especially in the 1960’s.

There were other activities whose recall seems arcane, even today.  There was an incident wherein the upper levels of the Government of South Vietnam were in political turmoil; driven by multiple coups and much disorganization. There had just been another recent coup within the South Vietnamese government and the U.S. command was concerned about possible social turmoil in the Danang area.  My instructions were to be flown around the Danang area at low altitudes in a HUEY helicopter.  Using a powerful amplifier I would, in Vietnamese, urge the population to remain calm and stay at home.  Again, a little bizarre for this boy from rural Vermont and I’m not sure it did any good, but everything stayed calm down on the ground.

During the war there were various projects throughout the country to build trust among the Vietnamese, some more beneficial than others.   On one of those more fruitless endeavors, I was assigned to spread leaflets throughout a large area along the coastal area of I Corps.  We would do this by the air.  

I climbed aboard a C-47 air transport, a small, two-engine plane developed during WWII.  Though old, they were sturdy, simple propeller-driven aircraft that could fly slowly, perhaps at 100-125 mph or so and useful for our little mission.  There were no seats as the plane was normally used for transport of materiel.  Aside from the pilots flying the plane there was only an aircrewman and myself sitting on the cabin floor along with a pile of cardboard boxes filled with  propaganda leaflets (in Vietnamese) and my job was to lie on the floor and slide the boxes out the doorway where they would burst open as they hit the airstream.  The boxes were specially cut to burst open, by the crewman who slid them to me.  As thousands of leaflets trickled down like confetti, a part of me felt like I was littering.  As I realized we were flying along at over 100 mph and perhaps 500 to 1000 feet in altitude I concluded that probably wasn’t really a major concern.

As I reflect back, of more concern I should have realized, I was lying on the floor next to an open door without any safety strap, only my boot hooked around an airframe member for stability.  What was I thinking!

Thirteen months after arriving in Vietnam I returned to the U.S. in July 1966.  As a measure of how a year in a combat zone affected me, I remember standing quietly alongside a dusty runway awaiting my flight out of Vietnam on a huge C-130 cargo plane that would take me to Okinawa. Next to myself and five or six other Marines on the tarmac, several body bags were laid out also awaiting the plane and their own return home.  I didn’t think much about it at the time.  I felt very fortunate to be returning home uninjured.  But 55 years later that graphically sad image and my inurement to death at that time, remains stamped in my mind.  It’s joined by others, forming a mental collage of the gruesome images of war and its absolute tragedy and stunning senselessness.

Another example of the waste of human life: on occasion I needed to walk through local Vietnamese-run hospitals where Vietnamese patients, mostly innocent civilian women and children lay two to a bed, the air permeated with an overpowering sickroom stench that lingers in my mind even now.  Many suffered burns from napalm bombs dropped from U.S. aircraft in a defoliation effort, graphically called “Rolling Thunder”. 

In yet another incident a month before my departure, I was summoned very early one morning to go over to the other side of the airfield.  There I was confronted by 8 or 9 “sappers” lying on stretchers; not all of them alive as I soon discovered.  (Sappers were enemy combatants tasked to breach our perimeter to inflict whatever damage they could.)  These sappers had been shot by marine perimeter guards and brought inside the airbase.  My task was to interrogate those still clinging to life, for intelligence information.  A marine general, standing over me dictated questions he wanted answered.  In my recall in later times, I was probably afflicted with a form of “combat disassociation”, as I can only remember focusing on my translation accuracy at the time.

As it turned out I don’t think I totally escaped the impact of war emotially.  My eyes still water up occasionally recalling these and other tragic incidents from 50 years ago.

In sum, the war was a hideous waste of human lives as are most wars.  History has unambiguously underscored the fact that nothing was achieved in the Vietnam war.  It was driven by both arrogant government naïveté and ignorance and fueled mostly by the political machinations of ambition of the most senior government leaders.  It cost 58,000 American lives and damaged countless more, not to mention the even higher cost in lives to the Vietnamese on both sides of the conflict.  If in any doubt at all, watch Ken Burn’s and Lynn Novick’s documentary film, “The Vietnam War” if you can.  I couldn’t, stopping after the second episode.

Back home

I landed home at the Marine air base at El Toro airfield in California and took a cab to reunite with my wife Shelley living nearby.  In a muted reunion Shelley indicated that she wasn’t happy and was thinking about divorce.  I can’t say I was totally shocked.  We had written only a few cursory letters to each other during my absence. (No internet in those days).  She agreed to accompany me to my next duty station in Maryland and see if things improved.  We moved there, only a few miles from Washington, D.C. and found a cozy cottage in Annapolis.  After a few weeks we agreed that it wasn’t working and that she would return to a life in California while I would move on to a new temporary duty station in Massachusetts.  It was a cordial parting but nonetheless painful for me.  It took a full four years before I was able to seriously confront the Idea of getting married again.  

I still had time remaining on my service obligation which passed otherwise uneventfully.  During this time I was promoted to sergeant; a minor event,  more significant at the time than in retrospect.

After an honorable discharge in April of 1968 mother invited me to spend the summer at Marlboro House, a country inn not far from Hidden Lake lodge and also owned by my parents.  I would be their “manager” for the summer.  It was an overly-generous offer that gave me a chance to think about my future, entirely on my own for the first time, after 6 years in the Marine Corps.  I was twenty four, recently divorced, nearly broke and confused about my future.  Bummer.  

Fortunately I secured a government job and moved back down to Maryland in the early fall.  I had a one-room apartment in Washington D.C. just off East Capitol street and only three blocks up from the U.S. capitol.  

I worked for the National Security Agency in Maryland and settled into civilian life as a “responsible adult”.  With my new job and a small but comfortable apartment, I settled in and my non-existent social life improved significantly. I quickly made friends with folks at work and in time, acquired a beautiful 27 foot sloop with  fiberglass hull, teak decks and cabin sides and a wooden mast.  I was hopelessly entranced by it and found a slip in Annapolis where I could keep it.  I was ecstatic: a sailboat had been a long-time dream for me.

It was 1968 and at this point in my life I had shed much of the emotional turmoil that had dogged me since leaving college.  In fact life was becoming throughly enjoyable for perhaps the first time since high school.  Even more changes were in the wind.  First I decided to buy a modest town house in Washington as an investment.  I say “modest” and so it was.  It was an old townhouse in a very modest, black neighborhood.  The townhouse extended the full width (13 ft) of the lot upon which it sat yet it was a mere three blocks from the Senate Office Building.  The previous owner had started substantial renovations but much detail work remained in finishing it.  I had no building experience but thought, how hard could it be, right?  Well, I learned to hang doors, pour a cement floor in the basement, all mixed and poured by hand, repair rotting sills, hang sheetrock, install (cheap) w/w carpeting and so on.

Across the street in my new home, lived a man Nancy and I will never forget.  He was the other white guy in the neighborhood named Manning Moore or Father Moore as everyone called him.  He was a priest, ordained later in life after a career as a court reporter and and as selfless as anyone I’ve ever met.  He worked and more significantly, lived right in the neighborhood among the people he wanted to serve.  He organized a some of the locals into a neighborhood support group, several of whom lived right in his townhouse building.  Nancy and I joined and through that got to meet a few of the neighbors.  

Living where I did also offered an up-close look at some of the racial problems festering in America.  In particular it was also a vivid illustration of the paradox of urban renewal.  On the one hand people, mostly white, were moving into Washington, D.C. for good jobs, affordable properties and a resurgent urban life.  Unfortunately, ownership and rental prices moved up as the town houses were handsomely rehabbed, providing a good return on property ownership.  Sadly the renewal process pushed out the poor, black inhabitants who could no longer afford to stay in these “renewed” neighborhoods and there was no formal program to assist them elsewhere.  That was a pattern, repeating itself in urban areas across the country as it continues to do today.

Somewhat abruptly, at the end of two years I decided to move to Annapolis, Maryland and put the townhouse up for sale.  I had become disheartened by the continuing plight of the poor black community in which I lived.  Despite large amounts of resources available for community improvement, nothing seemed to change.  I gradually concluded that the problems facing the black community were complex and far deeper than simple money issues could resolve.  I was emotionally fatigued and sought to find a quiet middle class community.  The excitement of living sequentially in two rented apartments and then my own house in D.C. had been tempered by events surrounding me.  I had been burglarized in each of those places I lived.  Understanding the risk of theft, I didn’t own much of value, not even one of the hi-fi’ systems so popular then.  But aside from loss of possessions there is a sense of personal violation when one’s property has been broken into.  As a larger issue there were the D.C. riots in 1968 following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  These riots burned a significant portion of northeast D.C. and singed my youthful optimism as well.     

The dispiriting experience of living in D.C. together with a growing desire to be a little closer to my recently acquired boat and the sailing community in Annapolis, easily combined to nurture the idea of moving.

Expecting several weeks or even months to sell the house, I was totally unprepared for a firm offer at the end of the first week’s listing and at my asking price, no less.  The only stipulation required that the would-be owner wanted an immediate closing in two weeks.  I had to scramble for a place to live.  I ended up moving in with friends nearby for some period of time, still in Washington, until I could find a rental.  

In time I found an old, small third floor walk up with a two room apartment, no air conditioning and a laughably tiny kitchen - one person could maintain mobility so long as no one else entered.  A modest bath off the hallway housed an ancient clawfoot tub; shared with another small apartment on the floor.  The main attraction was the low cost of rental: it was incredibly cheap and yet only three blocks from the capitol.  I encouraged a couple with whom we were very friendly, to rent the other apartment so I was set for the moment and wouldn’t have to share a bath with strangers.  

Modest circumstances sometimes foretell a splendid occurrence.  And it did then as Nancy and I got married during this period after our protracted courtship.

Much earlier I had met this terrific woman at work named Nancy McGinnis.  I was absolutely smitten even before I had been discharged from the service and a very comfortable relationship with her developed.  However, the relationship moved slowly in large part because I remained anguished by the collapse of my earlier marriage.  I had cold feet, beset by self-doubt at the thought of a potential second marital dissolution.  I had yet to even fully understand what happened with the first marriage.

I was looking for long term surety which, of course, isn’t really possible in any long term relationship.  The reasons one gets married slowly evolve to a whole other set of reasons for remaining married, as time progresses.  Logic has little place early in a relationship. Luck, circumstance and an affectionately persistent effort largely determine the marital outcome, it seems to me.  Much of this effort hinges on successfully navigating the inevitable currents of change that evolve over a lifetime.  Today, fifty years later, I feel incredibly fortunate that’s where Nancy and I find ourselves today.

In 1971, after a four-year “courtship” Nancy and I got married in the beautiful courtyard of a nearby hotel in downtown Washington D.C.  The hotel would work out well and provide accommodations for the 75 or so family and friends who would be attending, mostly from out of town.  Everyone would simply go downstairs for the courtyard ceremony, attend a reception followed by dinner and dancing, all in the hotel ballroom.  With rooms right there, folks could fall into right bed, all without having to navigate a strange city.  Our beloved Father Moore presided handsomely over the ceremony.

The following day Nancy and I sailed out of Annapolis harbor for a weeklong honeymoon on Chesapeake Bay.  Many years and six boats later, Nancy quietly arranged (that is, she didn’t tell me) for us to retrace the earlier honeymoon trip on the Bay in our latest boat, Puffin.)  Often, a little behind Nancy’s thinking, I didn’t catch onto the plan until we were well into day two.  It was pleasantly nostalgic to re-run a trip some 35 years later that had been so memorable the first time.

Soon after, we purchased a modest, new house near the Bay in Annapolis, not far from where we kept the boat.  Life continued at a near perfect pitch: both of us working, we commuted together and spent most of our free time sailing on the Bay during the warmer months and making new sailing friends.  In winter, time was spent in pleasant pursuit of a newly developed interest in woodworking.

Change is coming

In time we began to think seriously about having a child.  That dream was fulfilled in Aug 1979 with the birth of our beautiful daughter, Sara.  She was a joy then and it’s been an unmitigated pleasure watching her grow into the person she is today.

Another topic Nancy and I eventually discussed was making a move to a new home and perhaps even new jobs.  The tedium and bureaucracy of work pressed increasingly with the prospect of continuing for 30 more years.

All of our family and most of our friends lived in the Northeast so moving out west or farther south didn’t become part of the plan.  It came down instead to a choice of moving to the Eastern shore of Maryland (a longtime favorite area of ours) or back up to Vermont.

Nancy had recently steeped herself in accounting courses at a nearby community college.  She already had a four year degree in economics from Emmanuel College prior to working at the Agency and meeting me.  She too, felt it was time for her to change jobs.  An intensive three year course of study in computers at the Agency had given me a certification in computer science.  So we both felt reasonably prepared to set out in search off new jobs.

Moreover, I had long been intrigued by having a business of my own.  I thought it might be based on the woodworking skills which I had been developing in my basement shop ever since moving to Annapolis.

While thinking through these changes we embarked on another new venture; a business offering hand-made crafts, that Nancy and I set up in a partnership with my mother.   We had become quite enamored with the resurgence of attractive, handmade furniture and household items. We planned to run this business in Marlboro, Vermont using local help to mind the store.  We principals would attend wholesale craft shows purchasing items we found attractive for re-sale at the store.  We would also sell items that I produced in my shop.  

We rented a modest, log cabin style building about 1/2 miles away from our house and filled it with lots of items purchased at craft shows.  What we lacked in experience resurfaced as enthusiasm.

During this period, Nancy and I had a “retirement home” built and to use as a “second home”,  in Marlboro, the town where I had grown up.  My parents still lived in Marlboro and Nancy’s parents lived an easy car-trip away in Massachusetts.  My parents sold us some of their land to us for an extremely reasonable price. I developed a house plan, unbridled by inexperience and  propelled by enthusiasm.  Using a builder who had done work for my parents over the years, we embarked on this new adventure with excitement.   Some months later, a fine 1,800 square foot house emerged on about 65 acres.  It included room for a small woodworking shop in the basement.

After a couple of short vacation stays in the new house we concluded we didn’t want to wait until a more distant time to move up permanently.  We both set about looking for local jobs;  Nancy in finance and myself in computing.  Nancy’s usual diligence quickly turned up a job offer at Marlboro College, a short commute from the house.  The drawback was that they wanted her within two weeks.  I didn’t find any offers, in large part because computing really hadn’t hit rural areas in 1980.  So, moving to plan B, I would stay in Maryland until our house sold and then join my family in Vermont and try my hand at self-employment.  Unfortunately the Maryland house failed to sell right away.  I really missed my family so I rented the Annapolis house out and drove up to Vermont after a couple of months.

Nancy started work as the assistant comptroller at the College while I set up a woodworking shop in the basement of our new house.  I made items for our “craft shop” but soon found myself at a crossroads.  I could continue making a variety of household goods and furniture or I could move in the direction of “one-off” custom or “art” pieces, mostly furniture.  Making household items by hand had no future without mechanization which would include employees and I doubted my abilities to move into the art world where prices were much more determined by artistic ability than simply man-hours required to make a product.

A nudge in a new direction came from a neighbor friend who wondered if I could clean up a recently logged woodlot of his.  Other construction work seemed possible.  All I needed was a bulldozer.  I already had a small farm tractor with a backhoe attachment so I went into egregious debt and purchased a used ‘dozer in the spring. Here was an endeavor that truly excited me.  And that’s how I entered into a business I didn’t know very much about:  excavation and house construction.  I soon narrowed the operating scope of the business to simply excavating.

It was a significant struggle for about 5 years during which time I had one employee and frequently worked weekends as well.  At that point my first employee parted company and I picked up two other employees.  They were good workers and one stayed with me for 20 years and remains a close friend today.  As the business grew so did my crew (9 employees in summer, shrinking to four in winter) plus Nancy and myself year round.  As the business grew I accumulated a significant amount of equipment including trucks, excavators, loaders and most everything in between.

After four years of running the Marlboro Craft Center we decided to close the business in 1982 as the return didn’t really align well with  the costs and time invested in running it.  None of us had had retail experience and we all had other “day” jobs; Nancy as the assistant comptroller at nearby Marlboro College, my mother at her successful business at Hidden Lake Lodge and myself plunging into house construction and excavating.

Nancy joined me in the business full-time in 1989 relinquishing her job of 8 years at the college.  She had been helping me all along anyway, doing taxes and sundry paperwork after her work hours and on weekends.

Over time Nancy and I each settled into our own areas of responsibility.  Nancy managed the office with its increasing burden of paper work and phone calls when I was in the field.  My principal responsibility lay in garnering business, job estimates, crew coordination and most importantly, dealing with customers which turned out to be the best part of the job.  I’m also pleased to add that the business relationship between Nancy and myself was quite successful and didn’t disrupt our family life.  Unequivocally, Nancy, as my business partner, was in large part responsible for the eventual success of the business. 

Anderson Excavating did a wide variety of residential work related to earthmoving: land clearing, road-building, house foundations, septic systems and ponds.  In time an opportunity to lease a nearby gravel pit presented itself.  We ran the gravel pit for 17 years until Anderson Excavating closed so that Nancy and I could retire in the fall of 2009.  At the pit we screened or crushed the gravel, made screened loam and in later years, we began a composting side business using leaves, manure and other assorted organic materials to mix and ferment.

On the family side of things, Sara finished Marlboro Elementary School (MES), the very same elementary school I attended in the fifties.  She went on to Brattleboro High School.  In between school obligations she did the things that teenagers do which included learning  to ski extremely well and getting her driver’s license.  And she found her first, real summer job.  In a move that surprises me even today, she found a job in Wyoming at the Hatchet Motel, through a library book, no less.  She pursued it entirely on her own, interviewed over the phone and when school broke for the summer, flew off to Wyoming. She was 15.  An early and bright indicator of a young woman with an amazing mind, a strong will of her own, and a uncommon tenacity to follow through on whatever she started.  We were extremely proud of her then as we are today.

Over the years as business grew we built a barn for storage of supplies and equipment and soon thereafter a larger separate heated shop building.  What started as one bay grew over time to two sizable workbays and a modest machine shop with offices and a conference room upstairs.

As with woodworking, I’ve also been fascinated with metalworking as well.  And so it was quite easy to conclude some metalworking equipment would be useful for the business while giving me a chance to expand my own skills.

We started with basic welding equipment which grew to include MIG and TIG welders and a plasma cutter.  A lathe and Bridgeport style milling machine were also added.  Then of course there was sandblasting and metal forming equipment needed, not to mention a lengthy list of hand and power tools.  At the risk of immodesty I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that our shop was the best equipped shop in the area in terms of the broad variety of work that could be turned out.  Over the years the shop reconditioned some earthmoving equipment for other folk and repaired, maintained or built attachments for our own earthmoving machines.  I also enjoyed fabricating ironwork such as ornamental railings, brackets and supports.  During our regular winter slowdown I built a couple of machines from scratch including a log-splitter and a hydraulically operated metal bending machine of my own design which worked quite well, bending a variety of metal into shapes, particularly useful in ornamental as well as structural fabrication.

The business environment in the late eighties and nineties was thriving in Vermont and many folks from out of state were building primary or second homes in Vermont.  Others were doing upgrades on property they already owned.  Anderson Excavating easily found more than enough work to keep busy, even with additional hired help.

Life after hours

Daytime life settled into a routine that kept Nancy and I busy yet still enthusiastic about our business.  Early on,I was elected as one of three town selectman and served at two different periods in my life for a total service of ten years.  The Selectboard met twice monthly in the evening and provided me a  great way to meet folks in town as I  had been away for nearly 20 years since high school.  A number of new folks had moved to Marlboro in those intervening years.

In addition to working full-time, Nancy worked as treasurer for a couple of local daycare groups.  Combined with driving Sara to music lessons and other activities in Brattleboro and to “play dates” with friends around town, Nancy remained a very busy woman.

After a few years and a work schedule that now allowed for weekends off, Nancy and I started taking  short vacations to the southern Maine coast, an area I had liked since taking a schooner cruise as a teenager.  Sara was an easy traveling companion and particularly enjoyed places that offered swimming pools.

In time, my mind began to dream about boats again.  While we didn’t live close to a boating area we did have several top notch sailing areas each within a 3 hour drive or so and we found the drive a useful decompression period.    

Lake Champlain turned out to be an excellent first choice, with great winds and snug anchorages.   We bought a new 31 foot Island Packet, a cutter-rigged sloop with a forward stateroom for Nancy and I and a separate sleeping area for Sara.  A bunch of new sailing friends and going to the Lake for summer weekends provided great family time together and a needed respite from our business.  Five years after the first boat and another trip to the boat dealer in Boston, we came home with a new 40 ft Island Packet.  I can’t say the justification was as strong as the urge but the new boat certainly had more room.

After nine years at the lake we had mostly seen all there was to see and do around the lake.  It was time to look for new cruising grounds and adventures somewhere else.  Since we planned to buy a still-larger Island Packet (45 ft) sailboat, again from the same dealer in Boston, I thought it might be nice to visit the Maine coast for a year or so since we could sail directly there along the coast to one of the most beautiful sailing areas in the the world.  

There was some reluctance from Nancy, underscored by a long, squinty-eyed look as I mentioned this plan,  I promised her if we spent a season in Maine and she wasn’t happy, we would return to Lake Champlain the following season.  That first season in Maine turned into nine years and brought us to both to retirement.  Along the way we acquired a trawler style, diesel-powered boat, 39 ft in length: a great boat for poking up the many bays and rivers in Maine though significantly different in handling.

Retirement and boating full time

Nancy and I had decided to retire in 2009.  I had turned 66 with Nancy not far behind, but the decision was made less because of age and more because a deep recession threatened and I thought my business would be significantly affected.  Surprisingly, I was able to sell all the equipment locally in a short period of time.  Now, virtually free of significant encumbrances, Nancy and I decided to spend a year thinking about our next chapter together before making any major life decisions.  And we planned to spend a good part of that year living on the boat and cruising down the East coast to the Bahamas, another long-time dream.

2010 became quite a busy year.  Sara announced she and Wayne, a schoolteacher at the time, planned to get married in July of the following year.  Sara wanted the ceremony at our home, where she had grown up.  I was totally tickled with her choice since it suggested to me that her youthful memories of life here in Vermont were good ones.  Between getting the place in shape for a wedding, closing out the business the year before and moving forward with our own plans to move aboard the boat in Maine for a year’s cruise all made 2010 a very busy year indeed.

The July wedding ceremony turned out extremely well; the weather was perfect and the wedding itself was even more so, out on the lawn while two bays of our shop were turned into a reception area with seating for about 125 people.  A friend built a temporary floor under a tent just outside, a proper floor for the dancing that lasted through midnight.  Sunday afternoon saw the bride and groom off on their desired honeymoon through Vermont - on bicycles with a tiny trailer for luggage.

Now it was off to the boat for Nancy and I, to get ready for a planned departure around the first of September.  Poor weather held us up for several days.  Feeling restless, I decided we should depart despite reported higher seas than we usually traveled on.  Wrong decision.  After two hours on the open water with seas abeam at six feet and both of us feeling seasick, we pulled into a cove to recover and nap.  An inauspicious beginning to our 1500 mile trip to the  Bahamas.  But we were soon off, firmly deciding that we only travel when the weather was assuredly calm.  That made for smooth sailing for the rest of the trip and the trips that followed.

Meeting up with friends aboard their sailboat in Annapolis, we continued our way south down Chesapeake Bay and on through the magnificent low country of the Carolinas and Georgia.

We arrived in Florida several weeks later.  Our jumping off point to cross the Gulf stream to the Bahamas would be near Ft. Lauderdale awaiting propitious  cruising weather.  The right weather soon arrived and we were off, crossing the Gulf Stream as we did so.  It was a long day and we finally arrived in Cat Cay, Bahamas only to find that our refrigerator had died.  I knew there are effectively no supplies in the Bahamas so I spent the following day calling the stateside manufacturer for advice while pulling the refrigerator apart.  I would have much rather been swimming off the boat in the bluest, clearest water I’d ever seen.  I did a makeshift repair to get the fridge working so that it would at least food cool if not keep it cold.

After a couple of splendid months swimming and snorkeling in the Bahamas we motored back across the Gulf stream to Charleston, North Carolina with 3 other boats.  We spent two uneventful nights and days on the open waters of the Atlantic. We took a slip for awhile in Charleston, our favorite city, and then puddle-jumped back up the intra-coastal waterway.  We stopped halfway up Chesapeake Bay  and decided to leave the boat in Solomon’s Island rather than return to Maine.

The trip down the coast and out to the Bahamas had been both exciting and captivating: enough so that we repeated that pattern for the next two years except for cruising out to the Bahamas.  We chose instead to motor across Florida to its west coast and the Gulf of Mexico.

About mid-way down the Florida coast, at Stuart, lies the entrance to the Okeechobee Canal, a modest but amazing waterway through which small boats can cross the entire state; from east coast to west coast and the Gulf of Mexico.  And it’s all protected from winds and seas.

The canal is a delightfully different Florida and surprisingly rural; a throwback to the fifties.  Part way across it passes through a large and magnificent wildlife preserve in which alligators freely swim and feed.  The array of shorebirds is stunning; sufficiently habituated that occasional passing boats don’t disturb them.  That made for close observations and splendid pictures.  It’s a two day trip across in our boat and we found two small, rural and “family-style” marinas at which to overnight.  Each was  both delightfully “local”, run by the families that owned them.  We stayed at one crossing west to the Gulf and the other as we a month later, returned east.

At the western terminus of the canal lies the city of Ft. Meyer with the Gulf of Mexico just beyond.  From Ft. Meyers we cruised north up the inland waterway to Sarasota and St. Petersburg; lovely cities with much to do and see, so we went back again in our third year on the boat.  Living on board at the docks while visiting these coastal cities was delightfully casual and made for an easy walk into town.  It was a very pleasant experience for both us to spend the winter comfortably clad in shorts, sandals and t-shirt.

Returning home after our third trip in 2013, Nancy and I decided to sell the boat.  Over the years we had boated over the the entire east coast, Nova Scotia to the Bahamas; farther than we ever imagined years back.  Many good friends were met during boating activities: without boating we would miss many of those friends.  But we felt it was time to simplify life.

Hogback Mountain

Hogback Mountain

Retirement also gave Nancy and myself more time for another activity that the two of us “dreamed up” in 2006.  A former local ski area  at Hogback Mountain was up for sale.  Despite earlier attempts by conservation organizations to buy the mountain for conservation purposes nothing had succeeded.  After a town-wide discussion, a broad level of support became apparent, but no actions were taken.

A few days later, after some consequential rumination,  Nancy and I looked at each other and said to ourselves, “we should organize an endeavor to do something”.  It was an impulse both idealogical and assuredly naive.  Neither of us had experience fundraising.  Nor had we ever organized a non-profit.  Nonetheless we plowed ahead and readily cajoled a dozen other folks around town to form a committee to explore the possibility of conserving Hogback Mountain.

Our committee, soon to be known as the Hogback Mountain Conservation Association, started monthly meetings.  Our own lack of experience showed itself as our committee tentatively formulated plans to acquire this area.  The project cost was just over $1.7 million dollars.  Further discussion with the owner soon revealed a disagreeable and intransigent attitude (among other things he raised the price by $30,000 dollars despite already establishing a purchase price.)  Nor would he sell us a purchase option.  For us it was all or nothing, so we decided to seek out a small group of people who could personally lend HMCA the money to buy Hogback, the property effectively providing collateral. Buying the property would allow us to secure the property and provide a fixed and reliable target for which to fundraise and repay the conservation buyers.   Formulating a very small list of significant donors and an outline of a plan, we set about meeting several prospective “lenders”.  In honesty, we told each potential lender that if HMCA couldn’t raise the money then that small group would actually own the mountain and it would be up to them to decide what to do.  Amazingly, these public-spirited and conservation-minded folks agreed, with generous faith, to assist our endeavor.   The needed amount was raised in a relatively short time.

The next step was to actually buy the property from the owner and immediately start fundraising.  That effort was to stretch out for the next three plus years.  There was a lot of paperwork and footwork involved.  And in the middle of this time-frame, the Recession of ‘08 crashed down.  I decided to suspend fundraising until a better time.  We resumed about six month’s later.  In time HMCA effectively raised the needed funds from over 300 people and twenty or so public and private agencies.

By 2010 we had successfully completed fundraising and paid off our conservation lenders in the entirety.  And in short order HMCA set up a permanet conservation agreement and donated the mountain to the Town of Marlboro, along with $120k in unencumbered funds for mountain maintenance.

Selling Puffin in 2013, partly to simplify scheduling requirements, Nancy and I began life in Vermont year-round.  Soon thereafter, in March of 2014, we met our new granddaughter Madelyn, yet more reason to stay near the “kids” on a year-round basis.  We soon found ourselves quite busy with some babysitting and as well as volunteer work both in town and at Hogback.  In July of 2016 twin boys arrived to everyone’s surprise and happiness.  

In 2019, the kids completed a needed addition to their house and Nancy and I have enjoyed immensely, ten years of retirement.  While we seem as busy as before retirement, the endeavors, large and small remain enjoyable, in large measure, because we no longer are focused (obsessed?) on scheduling concerns and budgets.

Time has passed quickly with a variety of local activities though we did  squeeze in a trip to Tennessee to visit friends and a short trip to Montreal a couple of years ago.  And a couple of short trips to Maine to see old friends.  For us there’s no better place to be in summer than Vermont.

Retirement also gave Nancy and myself more time for another activity that the two of us “dreamed up” in 2006.  A former local ski area  at Hogback Mountain was up for sale.  Despite earlier attempts by conservation organizations to buy the mountain for conservation purposes nothing had succeeded.  After a town-wide discussion, a broad level of support became apparent, but no actions were taken.

A few days later, after some consequential rumination,  Nancy and I looked at each other and said to ourselves, “we should organize an endeavor to do something”.  It was an impulse both idealogical and assuredly naive.  Neither of us had experience fundraising.  Nor had we ever organized a non-profit.  Nonetheless we plowed ahead and readily cajoled a dozen other folks around town to form a committee to explore the possibility of conserving Hogback Mountain.

Our committee, soon to be known as the Hogback Mountain Conservation Association, started monthly meetings.  Our own lack of experience showed itself as our committee tentatively formulated plans to acquire this area.  The project cost was just over $1.7 million dollars.  Further discussion with the owner soon revealed a disagreeable and intransigent attitude (among other things he raised the price by $30,000 dollars despite already establishing a purchase price.)  Nor would he sell us a purchase option.  For us it was all or nothing, so we decided to seek out a small group of people who could personally lend HMCA the money to buy Hogback, the property effectively providing collateral. Buying the property would allow us to secure the property and provide a fixed and reliable target for which to fundraise and repay the conservation buyers.   Formulating a very small list of significant donors and an outline of a plan, we set about meeting several prospective “lenders”.  In honesty, we told each potential lender that if HMCA couldn’t raise the money then that small group would actually own the mountain and it would be up to them to decide what to do.  Amazingly, these public-spirited and conservation-minded folks agreed, with generous faith, to assist our endeavor.   The needed amount was raised in a relatively short time.

The next step was to actually buy the property from the owner and immediately start fundraising.  That effort was to stretch out for the next three plus years.  There was a lot of paperwork and footwork involved.  And in the middle of this time-frame, the Recession of ‘08 crashed down.  I decided to suspend fundraising until a better time.  We resumed about six month’s later.  In time HMCA effectively raised the needed funds from over 300 people and twenty or so public and private agencies.

By 2010 we had successfully completed fundraising and paid off our conservation lenders in the entirety.  And in short order HMCA set up a permanet conservation agreement and donated the mountain to the Town of Marlboro, along with $120k in unencumbered funds for mountain maintenance.

Selling Puffin in 2013, partly to simplify scheduling requirements, Nancy and I began life in Vermont year-round.  Soon thereafter, in March of 2014, we met our new granddaughter Madelyn, yet more reason to stay near the “kids” on a year-round basis.  We soon found