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| Forest Grove, Oregon, back in the day when everything was larger. |
My world had no endings when I
was 13 in that Oregon farming and logging town.
Only beginnings. Fields and
groves were endlessly green, streams flowed forever and asphalt roads led to
new sights. Life was a page of Dylan
Thomas’s poetry.
Mornings began at 6:00 when I pedaled
my Schwinn down to the Shell station for my pile of newspapers. But first, I dropped quarters in the machines
to extract a Milky Way and a Coke. Now
fortified, I gave each copy of the Portland Oregonian
two practiced folds and dropped it in the canvas bag draped over the
handlebars. For the next hour I’d pedal
miles to stuff them in paper boxes for my 50 customers. I was getting rich, at $20 a month, in spite
of having to hector customers who wouldn’t answer their doors when I went to
collect.
Life was good, and eighth grade
was a cinch with a really funny teacher who regaled us about his drinking
episodes in the Navy and a strange food called pizza.
But one April morning a headline
caught my eye as I folded papers. My
Dad’s name leaped from the Oregonian's front page. It
was a story about Pacific University that I couldn’t understand, a complicated
story about the faculty in rebellion.
Accusations. Hatred exposed.
Something had happened. The faculty had given my Dad, the college
president, a vote of no confidence. He
explained it to my two brothers and me over dinner as we sat in dumb
silence. Mom was trying to hold back her
tears. “I’m resigning,” he told us.
“We’ll have to think about moving.
Moving? But I was at the point of telling Judy
Bristow I loved her. Soon, I’d find the
courage to kiss my 11-year-old girlfriend.
Moving meant I’d never again see my pal, Frank Dunham, who double-dated at
the movies with his girlfriend and had actually kissed (he said).
Our house was emptied that summer
as boxes and furniture went into the Allied Moving Van. Accumulations of papers and magazines were
thrown from the attic window to the driveway.
Dad’s library and Mom’s manuscript of Oregon history were carefully
boxed. But my Red Ryder BB gun, Schwinn
Black Phantom and Erector Set disappeared.
Too soon our family and the cat
were piled into our used ’48 Cadillac sedan and we headed south. Too soon to properly say goodbye to Judy and
Frank or copy their addresses with promises to write.
* * *
Finding myself in South Pasadena
was a shock. I was a year behind
academically. There were curious
classmates — Mexican-Americans — who wore pegged pants and called themselves
Pachucos. And the girls in our church
youth group were all blonde and unapproachably sophisticated.
My two new friends were geeks who
read L. Ron Hubbard and J.R.R. Tolkien and wore clothes from J.C. Penney. My only achievement was writing my
autobiography by hand, pasting in Kodaks, then binding the single copy. I got an A from my 9th grade teacher.
My brothers and I, Mom and the
cat, crowded into our rented bungalow and took each day as it came. For some aberrant reason, I ate only
lunchtime sandwiches of Wonderbread and Kraft Sandwich Spread. But I didn’t die. Dad soon found work as a fund-raiser with the
Volunteers of America before landing a position with the headquarters of the
Congregational Church in New York City.
I didn’t write except for that
handwritten autobiography. I read. Science fiction, Reader’s Digest Condensed
Books, the Hardy Boys and other mysteries.
But two things became clear. One,
I was Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange
Land. Like Valentine Michael Smith,
newly sent to Earth after being raised on Mars. Among
different people for the first time, I struggled to understand the social practices
and prejudices of human nature that often still seem alien.
Second, an internal universe of
words appeared. Writing, absorbing new vocabulary
and explaining things articulately were easy.
Numbers came harder. This default
writing ability made me an English-Journalism major at Grinnell College in Iowa.
A career epiphany occurred the summer of
my junior year. I was invited to be a
staff reporter for a Chicago suburban weekly.
I covered fires, the police blotter, sports, rewrites, even weddings,
taking my own photos with a Speed Graphic.
At last, it seemed there was an escape into the real world.
* * *
My first job after graduation was
writing copy for new Mobil Travel Guides. Sure, it was a humdrum task — until I got an
unsolicited letter from a woman who said she was home-bound. She read the Guides to escape into a world that was out of her reach. At last I had an audience, and every piece I
wrote was directed to my secret spectator.
Then Uncle Sam called. Three years of serving as an Army
Security Agency analyst took me to Korea and Taiwan. Taiwan brought me a wife and some great
source material I filed away for 30 years.
For the next three decades I soldiered
on in corporate communications, creating, writing and editing employee publications;
writing press releases; managing exhibits; crafting senior management’s
speeches. I embraced it all. Each day at The Dun & Bradstreet Corp. was different. No one knew my job description, which allowed
me to define my position and interact with everyone from the CEO to the clerk
or bench worker. They were my audience
that I worked to reach on some level of understanding.
Upon early retirement I ruminated
on why I was drawn to write two anthologies, short stories and articles. It was simple: Somewhere there was a person who would read
my words and say, “Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I’ve felt the same way but wasn’t able to put
it into words.” I could help that person
leave his or her couch or bed and enter another world.
In the process, I would discover
meaning in the world that had turned me upside down. That’s why I write.
