I Was Born an Adult

 

I Was Born an Adult:
My Early Years
by Dave Wright

Embryo 1952-1953

On the twenty-third of August, 1953, I was born an adult.

If I calculate my gestation properly, I was conceived the previous November while my dad was on leave from Fort Leonard Wood after he had been drafted into the army. It would have been blessedly cool in Missouri at that time of year so my parents would not have needed to find the rare hotel with air conditioning.

Marie never struck me as being particularly passionate, but John made up for it in his amorous persistence. Dad chased her from the moment he glimpsed her in the Dassel high school band. Dad was from Cokato and Mom was from Dassel, small towns in central Minnesota about ten miles apart. They both played clarinet and were playing in a concert that combined the two bands. As the concert ended, Dad had to futz with his multi-piece wood instrument while Mom threw her one-piece metal clarinet in its case in thirty seconds. Dad chased her out the door to introduce himself and never stopped. Seventy-five years later, three days after she died, he went so far as to chase her into the grave and beyond.

He was a year younger, so he had to pine for her throughout his senior year of high school. As soon as he graduated, he worked for Green Giant harvesting peas and corn, then joined Marie for a year at Gustavus. In 1950, when Dad turned twenty, he was still too young to legally get married, so he had his parents vouch for him and sign the marriage certificate. Dad continued his studies in agricultural education at the University of Minnesota and Mom went to work to pay the rent for a tiny two-bedroom apartment in what is now Uptown in Minneapolis.

The U.S. Army interrupted Dad’s studies in 1952. Mom took the bus to Fort Leonard Wood when Dad completed basic training. He prepared to ship out to Korea, but as luck would have it, his ability to type saved him from the trenches. Instead of pushing mud in Korea, he completed his two-year obligation pushing papers in Trieste, Italy.

As I was making my way from embryo to fetus, Dad was making his way across the ocean, barracked on a troop ship, the RE Callin. It departed from New York and endured rough seas the entire trip across the Atlantic. Dad spent a good share of the trip on deck to escape the hell below where his bunk mates could not hold their dinners for more than a few minutes. Once through the Straights of Gibraltar, he claimed the Mediterranean became “as calm as Lake Sylvia.” The ship stopped along the way to drop off troops at Naples and Pompei, continued around the boot of Italy, slipped through the Dardanelles Strait to Istanbul, and finally on to Trieste, Italy where he was part of a peace-keeping force.

Two years later, Dad returned on the same ship. They stopped in Venice where he bought a pocketknife as a souvenir. He used to give me a pocketknife every birthday until I was sixteen. He presented the one from Venice the week before he died. I have it in my pocket now.

Mom returned to Minneapolis after saying goodbye to Dad at Fort Leonard Wood. A couple of months later, she discovered that I would be her constant companion while Dad was gone. My Grandma Minnie Olson, Mom’s mother, moved into the apartment in Uptown with her.

Minneapolis 1953-1955

As I made it known it was time for me to leave the comfort of Mom’s belly, Minnie took Marie to Mount Sainai Hospital. I am a Baby Boomer, so making babies was in fashion at the time. Mom lay on a gurney in a hallway with a crowd of women, all who were in a similar predicament. Grandma Olson held her hand, confident that Marie’s number would be called as soon as a delivery room became available.

I imagine that there were few women who were as stoic as Marie as she quietly managed the spasms in her belly. The other women echoed screams off the bare corridor walls while Grandma Olson guided Mom’s gurney slowly over the gray and white tile to a recently vacated delivery room.

I was a curious child and often wondered about how babies were born. When I was about eight years old, I gathered the courage to ask Mom what it was like. Her response was more confusing than enlightening. She shrugged and said, “It’s a lot like having a really big B.M.”

A Bowel Movement? What the heck? How does that work? Having no sisters and never having had a glimpse of my mother without clothes, I had no clue about how a baby could find its way out. Thank God there was a tattered book tucked on the back shelf in our living room entitled The Human Body, which offered a little clarity. Regardless of my naivety, Mom didn’t seem to have had much of a problem delivering me.

I spent that first year doted on by Marie and Minnie. They paraded me around Lake of the Isles in an old-fashioned covered baby carriage. I can still hear the compliments: “Oh, isn’t he cute. He must be such comfort while your husband is away.”

I don’t know if I was a comfort during that year, but I’m certain I was a preoccupation—a role played by all babies who demand attention day and night.

Mom introduced me to Dad nearly a year later when we met him at the Minneapolis train station. As he was being discharged from the army, Dad waited impatiently at the door of the train as it pulled into the terminal. Mom dressed me in a blue suit and cap that she had sewn for the occasion. I had learned to walk while he was crossing the country and was unavailable to receive mail, so he watched me take my first steps from that train platform.

When I checked with The Google about firstborns, it suggested that we tend to be “reliable, conscientious, high achievers, organized, and controlling.” I suppose I fit most of those descriptions but wanted to take issue with that part about “controlling.” Then I remembered my retirement party. My ex-partners from whom I had just extricated myself, gave me a T-shirt that read, “Go Ahead. Do It Your Own Wrong Way!”

Kerkhoven 1955-1960

Dad worked as a welder at Butler Manufacturing while he completed his bachelor’s degree in agricultural education at the University of Minnesota. Then he finished his student teaching at Ortonville before taking his first job in Kerkhoven, Minnesota.

We rented an older house that abutted the school playground. It was so dilapidated that we referred to it as “Valley Forge.” I mostly remember it for its pealing wallpaper, squeaky steps, and screened porch. I loved that porch. There, I learned to appreciate the smells and sounds of an approaching thunderstorm. Now, I seek those experiences in a tent with the flaps open, in our gazebo in the back yard, or most recently, sipping wine beneath the canopy of our Roadtrek camper van.

After a year of enduring cold drafts, mice, and bats, Mom and Dad decided it was time to put down roots. Not finding a suitable house on the market in Kerkhoven, they decided to build a new two-bedroom rambler on the edge of town. The day after the hole was dug for the basement, a rainstorm filled it up. It may have been a warning about the hazards of building in a small town, but they rented a pump and started over.

It became a comfortable home for the next several years, and it was where I was introduced to my next in line to the throne. Brother Jim arrived on October 3, 1955. I don’t remember him as being much of an inconvenience, and according to my parents, they claimed we “never fought.”

I’m certain that is not accurate. Who could possibly coexist with a sibling two years your junior without an occasional—if not regularly scheduled—spat. The proof is in a scar that I carry on the lower left side of my abdomen. I had been able to overpower Jim in any of our encounters until one day when I had him trapped beneath me with my belly covering his face. Suddenly, I felt an excruciating pain that made me give up my advantage. I looked down to see a bite mark dripping with blood. It was at that moment that I decided I’d better manage conflict with verbal negotiation rather than physical power. Now if I’m ever tempted to start a fight, a little voice chides me like I was a two-year-old: “David! Use your words.”

The Google further suggests that the oldest “may take on a caregiver role for younger siblings.” I don’t know that I was particularly caring, but I remember Jim relying on me for most of the details that came home from school. Why bother keeping track of a school schedule when your older brother is certain to have it in the notebook in his shirt pocket?

First Grade, 1959: Either my parents determined that I was a brilliant child, or they were tired of me competing for attention from Little Brother Jim. In any case, since the Kerkhoven school district did not offer kindergarten, they shuttled me off to first grade at the tender age of six years and one week.

It was a creaky old school within a few blocks of our house. My most vivid memories of that year are drinking bottled milk that tased like tinfoil and rarely making it home after school with dry pants. I couldn’t be blamed. The bathrooms were frightening. The high ceilings echoed with wheezing pipes, and the five-foot ceramic urinals stood like coffins at a mortuary ready to swallow any child silly enough to approach their grip. I’m certain the urinal would have wrapped its cold arms around me, pulled me into its smelly embrace, and sucked me into a drain that went straight to hell. No sir. That urinal won’t get me. I’d run home after school, my knees pinched together like a vice grip. Sometimes, I’d sneak into a flower bed and pee, but most of the time the vice grip released a block early, and I’d get home wet and embarrassed.

Miss Philips, my first-grade teacher, filled my report card with S’s and S+’s. She was a kind woman with the insight of a seer. At the bottom, she wrote, “David is a worrywart.”

My brother Dan, a long and lanky redhead, arrived on January 23, 1960. Mom had fully expected, and hoped for, a girl to round out her life surrounded by boys. When the doctor at the Benson hospital announced that she had delivered another son, she demanded, “Are you sure?”

Second Grade, 1960: By second grade, I had conquered my fear of the bathroom, and directed my attention to Judy Johnson, a curly-headed pixie with dimpled cheeks. I don’t remember ever working up the nerve to say hello, but like many of my girlfriends over the next decade, they remained trapped in my imagination. Despite this mental distraction, my greatest accomplishment that year was learning how to write in cursive. (More on this skill later.)

I learned to ride a bicycle at our new house in Kerkhoven. I had outgrown the eighteen-inch, hard-wheeled bike from my grandmother’s garage. For my seventh birthday, I got a brand new, twenty-four-incher with streamers flying out of both handles.

One of my first trips on my new wheels was to the dime store, one of a handful of small shops that we called “downtown.” I was in search of a bag of marbles to replace the ones I had lost in our recess playground games. Each boy (Girls were never allowed to play marbles) brought a bag of marbles to the competition and dropped a marble into the pea gravel. We took turns launching our marble with a snap of a thumb in an attempt to hit another boy’s marble. If we hit the marble, we could collect it as a prize and add it to our bag. If we missed, we might be left in a precarious position to be attacked and lose our shooter.

I was hoping to find a bag of steelies, but they were never in the dime store. I suppose the steelies came from a kid whose dad was a mechanic. He could have gotten them by taking a sledge hammer to a wheel bearing. The remnants of the destruction would be a windfall of steelies. The owner of a steelie would have had a thumb like Atlas. He could smash a glassie to smithereens with a well-paced shot.

The only marbles in stock were common old cat eyes. I looked hard at each bag hoping to find a prized glassie—precious because it was rare. It was like a glass eye without an iris. I imagined pouring my newly purchased marbles into the cloth bag sewn by my mom, taking out an expendable cat eye, and flicking it onto a large steelie with the precision of modern missile. That steelie would be too valuable to place with a bag of commoners. It would spend its life in the safety of my front pocket.

I carry fleeting images of those early years in Kerkhoven: playing cowboys and Indians with a toy pistol strapped to my waist; sleeping out in the back yard in a tent made with a bedspread; building a lean-to fort in the woods, which would be littered with cow pies the next day; letting a couple of goats tied in our back yard suck on my fingers, (Having arrived as a surprise in Dad’s trunk, the goats were returned to wherever they came from a week later at my mom’s insistence); and romping with my closest friend and neighbor, Audrey Stottler, who lived across the street.

Kerkhoven must have had an amazing music department for a small school.  Audrey became a renowned opera singer, and Brad Hagen, a friendly giant who made us look like a Mutt and Jeff duo when we played together, returned to my adult life as the choir director in the neighboring town of Delano.

On Halloween, my parents drove us across town to trick or treat at the banker’s home. He handed out dimes instead of candy, which we thought was a financial windfall. I pinched that dime for months before deciding how best to spend it.

In the summer between second and third grade, Dad learned that his skill as an ag teacher was valued more in Worthington than it had been in Kerkhoven, and we planned to move. The banker that dropped dimes in our Halloween bags probably held the mortgage on my parents’ new house, which now was as underwater as the basement had been the first week they built it.

The Kerkhoven house taught my parents a brutal lesson in investing: When you buy high and sell low, you lose your rear. My rear end is so small that I can’t keep my pants up.

Worthington 1961-1966

Mom and Dad took their loss in stride and moved the family to a rental house at 1024 Fredrick Ave. It was a tiny, two-bedroom rambler. We three boys crowded into one small bedroom with bunks on one side, a single on the other, and a gap between so narrow that an adult had to walk sideways to get through. I settled into the upper bunk so I could more easily fend off my younger brothers.

The house had no basement, but it had a huge garage. Dad, still eager to instill a love of animal husbandry in his sons, brought home a crate of pigeons for us to raise. We were assigned to do “the chores.” After several weeks of neglect, it was agreed that we should abandon the poultry operation and have the pigeons for dinner.

We took them to the backyard beyond the lilac hedge that separated our lawn from the penny-smashing railroad tracks. Assuring us that it would be a quick and painless death, Dad chopped off the pigeons’ heads. The headless birds fluttered from the chopping block into the lilac bushes, found a branch to cling to, and roosted there until they were retrieved for plucking. We presented the tiny breasts to Mom and asked her to cook them. Always a good sport, she agreed, but even a can of cream of mushroom soup failed to moisten the birds’ stringy texture.

The winters on Fredrick Avenue were marked with huge snowfalls. One winter, the snow covered the front entry and drifted to the eaves of our little rambler. Had we been allowed, we could have hiked up the drift to the roof and used it as a toboggan slide. Instead, we dug snow forts in the drifts and spent the weekends housebound. Dad drew a checkerboard on a piece of cardboard, and we had family tournaments using pennies and buttons for checkers.

One weekend, in a desperate attempt to stave off the winter blues, Mom and Dad brought home an umbrella tent—an orange, canvass, Ted Williams special from Sears. Too impatient to wait for spring, we spread it out in the living room, draped it over the couch, two rocking chairs, and the RCA black and white television set. As a blizzard raged and rattled the windows, we dreamed of setting it up in a campground as soon as the snow disappeared.

Third grade, 1961: I had just gotten glasses, which allowed me to see the chalk board for the first time. Glasses made me look like an intellectual until the bow broke loose from the frame. My spectacles lived most of their early life with a wad of white adhesive tape stuck above my right eyebrow.

Miss Eichmeier, a thin woman with cat-eye glasses was a determined teacher, and I was determined to make an early impression on her. Having learned to print and write in cursive while a second grader in Kerkhoven, I became that obnoxious child who, at each assignment, waved his hand high in the air. Each time I was called on, I asked if I should write or print the assignment…Insufferable! I didn’t make many friends that year.

Fourth Grade, 1962-63: On the first day of school, my classmates exacted their revenge on the playground. I was an uncoordinated wimp, a perfect target and a sitting duck for dodge ball—or bomb-bomb-bardament, as we called it. This is a game where sides are picked (I was generally picked last, right after the fat girl who was a big, slow-moving target) and each team took up positions on either side of a line drawn in the gravel playground. A rubber kickball, slightly smaller than a basketball, is thrown at the other team. If no one is hit, the first one to the ball gets to throw it back at the other team. If you are hit by the ball, you move to the sideline and wait for the next game. If you catch the ball, the person who threw it has to move to the sideline.  

Ricky G, tall for his age and honing his bullying skills, took aim with me in his sights. I saw the ball rocket in my direction and sidestepped to avoid a blow that would have knocked the wind out of me. But my right hand was slow to respond. The ball caught the end of my thumb. I looked down to find my thumb at a wretched angle. I screamed and ran to the teacher on playground duty who took me directly to the nurse’s office. They called Mom and the doctor who arrived at the same time.

The doctor took a quick look and said matter-of-factly, “dislocated.” He told me to hold out my hand. While I watched in horror, he took my thumb in one hand and my hand in the other and pulled. My thumb looked like it doubled in length before it snapped back in place. “There you go,” said the doc. “Good as new.” No X-rays. No follow up. “It’ll be sore for a while,” he said as he packed his bag and left. “A while” turned out to be a couple of years of weakness before my grip returned. I’m left with a boney bump at the base of my thumb. It doesn’t bother me anymore so it probably did not involve the joint, but it was another affirmation that I was not cut out to be an athlete and should direct my attention to academics instead.

Fourth grade was not the place to nurture academic excellence. Our teacher, Miss Hendricks, was a scatter-brained redhead who obtained a teaching certificate without taking the kid-control class. One day, Mr. Fish, the school counselor, came into the class to find his son, Tom, and another student swimming down the aisle between the desks in stocking feet. I expect both teacher and students got a reprimand, but nothing changed the persistent chaos in that classroom.

That year we were invited to select a band instrument. I took up the cornet. My parents bought me a dull, silver-tarnished instrument that had been dropped from the bleachers several times by its previous owner. The day I got it, as I learned how to buzz my lips into the mouthpiece, I serenaded the family on a four-hour trip from Worthington to Minneapolis. My brothers should have demanded that my parents drop me off at the rendering plant on the outskirts of town.

Chuck Kerberg was a surprising choice of band directors for beginner musicians—unless the goal was to cull students from the program. He had a volatile temper and once threw his baton at Jeffrey Taylor, another cornet player who could not stop voicing his opinion during rehearsal. The baton got his attention all right, but it missed Jeffrey and was swallowed by a tuba in the back row.

I survived the culling process and met Mr. Kerberg again in junior high where I was placed in the lower-level Cadet band. I eventually squeaked into the upper-level Spartan band after an intimidating audition where I played a personalized rendition of Leroy Anderson’s “Bugler’s Holiday.” I could double tongue well but had to be forgiven for not getting the rhythm right—not until I played it as an adult in the Mid-Minnesota Band years later.

1963 was a year of trauma and loss. The year had barely begun when Grandpa Tib, my Dad’s father died at the age of 63. He had congestive heart failure at a time when they didn’t even have Lasix, a diuretic to remove excessive fluid from the body. The alternative was to have his belly “tapped,” a process where they stuck a trochar (a large-gauge needle) into his abdomen to drain the accumulated fluid. I had to have a couple of cardiac stents surgically implanted at the ripe old age of 57, so I could have followed his path to an early grave had it not been for medical advancements.

A few weeks after Grandpa died, I suffered a second loss that felt even more traumatic to me. Tippy, our tiny black and white chihuahua puppy, named for the tip of white on her tail, died. She had become listless and had a distended abdomen, so Dad took her to the veterinarian. He returned an hour later. Still warm, Tippy sagged over the palm of his hand like a limp bean bag.

“Why did she die?” I blurted between sobs.

“She had a bad bellyache, David,” explained my dad through tears of his own. “The vet said there was nothing he could do.”

I glanced at the dog dish that she would never use again. I had dropped a kibble of dog food into her water dish to tempt her to eat. It had turned to mush. I’ll bet it turned to poison, I thought. Was I responsible for Tippy’s death? I never posed the question to anyone else, but I suppose Lutheran guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.

Fifth grade, 1963-64: Miss Gordon, a motherly woman with round features, welcomed us to fifth grade math. I was shocked to find that we had been expected to learn the multiplication tables in fourth grade. So began a two-week crash course to catch up. I found that I only had to learn half of the table if I memorized them in one order. For example, four times eight is the same as eight times four, both equaling thirty-two. I still find myself rearranging the numbers in my head to “eight times four equals thirty-two.” It’s never four times eight—and so on through the multiplication table. Maybe it’s not efficient, but I’m a lazy learner.

The afternoon of November 22, 1963, found me sitting in the back row of Miss Gordon’s class scrawling on a worksheet when startling news came over the loudspeaker: “The president has been shot!”

My mind was racing to think, Who are they talking about? It couldn’t be John F. Kennedy.

Without a moment’s hesitation, a girl sitting in front of me murmured, “Good for that N__-lover.”

It was my first exposure to overt racism.

Fifth-grade boys were invited to become “patrol boys.” Our job was to observe traffic at the school crosswalks before and after school, walk into the crosswalk when the coast was clear, and hold a flag while our classmates crossed the street. I was selected to be a patrol captain for the following year, which earned me a one-week trip to Legionville, a camp near Brainerd. It was my first summer camp experience away from home.

I was a poor swimmer. My swimming lessons at Lake Okabena beach entailed standing waist-deep by the dock while the ever-present prairie winds stirred the waves into a muddy froth. My instructor said, “Put your face into the water and hold your breath.”

As soon as my nose got within six inches of the water, a white-cap (In Lake Okabena, it was a brown-cap) washed over my head, causing me to pull my head out of the water sputtering. I walked away from lessons with one message: Always keep your head above water.

Open swim was scheduled for an hour every morning at Legionville. Everyone was supposed to pair up with a buddy, and Bobby Plucker was the only kid I knew from my grade school. We stood side-by-side on the beach, arguing as we waited for the lifeguard to blow the whistle.

“Let’s swim to the raft!” shouted Bobby.

“No,” I pleaded. “I can’t swim, and without my glasses I won’t be able to see you.”

The whistle blew.

“I’m goin’,” shouted Bobby. “See you at the raft.”

“Wait. Hold up!”

There was a thrash of bodies as the kids ran into the water. I made it as far as the beginner’s rope when the whistle blew again.

“Buddy check!” shouted the lifeguard who was standing on a platform between the beginner’s rope and the raft.

I strained my eyes to find Bobby among the kids splashing near the raft. Everything was a blur. I dog-paddled my way to the platform. A half-dozen other sorry swimmers struggled along with me.

“I can’t find my buddy,” I cried.

“Me neither,” sobbed another dog paddler.

“I told him not to go out there,” I explained to the lifeguard, “but he wouldn’t listen.”

No pity. Another whistle. “Everybody out!” shouted the irritated lifeguard. “Pair up with your buddies on the beach.”

I went to bed that night praying for rain.

The following morning dawned with brilliant sunshine. Darn. I stood on the beach squishing my toes in the sand waiting to resume my argument with Bobby when a low, slow voice behind me said, “You care to stay in the beginner’s area? I’m looking for a buddy to splash around in the shallow water.”

What a relief.

“I’d like that,” I said. I pointed into the lake. “Yesterday, my buddy swam out to the raft without me.”

“Same thing happened to me. My name is Dave Sasse.”

Dave became my swimming buddy for the rest of the week and a friend for life.

Sixth grade, 1964: Mrs. Faulkner, a stern, square-jawed woman with a shroud of freckles was determined to prepare us for seventh grade when we would be moving from class to class. The first day of school, hoping to finish a geography worksheet, I remained in my back-row seat after the final bell rang at 3:10 p.m. I was coloring Germany on a map of Europe when I heard a cold voice: “David, when the bell rings, it is time to go!”

A chill ran through my body with the reprimand. I looked up, terrified. I stuffed the worksheet and colored pencil in the book bin beneath the desktop and ran from the room.

I couldn’t believe my teacher had chased me out of the room. As intelligent as I was, I was a slow learner. I wonder, I thought, if she’d mind if I came in early to finish it tomorrow.

Brother Jim was in the fourth grade at the time and came down with a severe bellyache one evening. Mom called the doctor and was assured that it was probably a minor upset stomach, and he could wait until morning to be seen. Jim writhed in agony all night.

By morning, his appendix had ruptured. He was rushed to surgery and was lucky to have survived. Dr. Ray Minge, a surgeon who was a member of our church, was disgusted that Jim hadn’t been seen on emergency. He operated on him three times to remove his appendix, to patch up his ruptured bowel, and to lavage his abdomen and control his life-threatening peritonitis.

That was the year I became a firm believer in the power of prayer. One would have thought I would have been praying for Jim’s recovery. No. I had more important concerns at the time. I had given up praying for a palomino pony and directed my fervent prayers to a new go-cart—one to replace the slow-moving vehicle my dad made from a discarded lawn mower engine that puttered around our back yard perpetually locked in low gear.

To celebrate Jim’s recovery, Mom and Dad splurged on a new go-cart. We picked it up on the way to visit the Wessman’s, our aunt and uncle who lived in the woods on the outskirts of Brainerd. We pulled into their driveway, and as our three cousins raced from the house to greet us, Dad and Uncle Elwood lifted the go-cart from the trunk of our Chevy sedan. The moment the go-cart was filled with gas, Jim took the first spin around the yard. By the end of the week, we had worn a dirt racetrack around the perimeter of their spacious lawn.

When we returned home, Dad took us to the county fairgrounds to drive Jim’s go-cart. Gravel roads snaked between the barns and buildings, which made it an ideal place to practice our driving skills.

One time when we were at the fairgrounds with a group of friends, the go-cart developed a glitch in the centrifugal clutch. Rather than wait for the engine to rev up when we pushed on the throttle, the clutch engaged as soon as the engine started. We didn’t want to waste the day, so we got around the problem by having the driver in the seat ready to take off. As soon as someone pulled the starter rope from behind the go-cart, the thing blasted off like a shot. All the kids took their turn and returned to the starting point. When they pushed on the brake to stop, the engine died. Next driver, please.

The arrangement worked well until it was my turn. I settled into the seat and was off to the races. At the far end of the fairgrounds, I turned hard and did a Louie in the dirt. The engine killed. I looked around and saw that my pit crew was fifty yards away. Being impatient as usual, I thought, I’ll be able to pull the rope and jump in the seat before the go-cart takes off. That way, I won’t have to wait for someone to plod the whole way here to help me.

I pulled the starter cord. The go-cart spun away without me. I chased it in fast pursuit. It turned one way, hit a bump, and turned in the other direction. Its zigzag escape was like a Green Beret avoiding enemy fire. It eventually found safety at the foot of a telephone pole. I would have awarded it a Purple Heart for the wounded steering linkage it received during the chase.

Dad had never heard me swear before, but he heard it then. On the way home, he asked me where I learned to cuss. “Sorry,” I said. “I heard kids at school use that kind of language.”

I prudently refrained from telling him the truth. Dad didn’t realize that he taught more than high school agriculture. In our woodshop at home, whenever he sawed off a board too short, he couldn’t help but become my foul-mouthed mentor.

The summer of 1965, between sixth and seventh grade, we moved again. I moved from West Elementary grade school to the creaky-floored junior high, and the family moved from our rental home on Fredrick Avenue to 311 Lakehill Drive. The neighborhood was perched on the only hill in town and bordered the golf course. My parents called this area of town “Snob Nob.”

Imagine the irony. Here we were, a family with a teacher’s income, living among the snobs of Worthington society…Maybe they weren’t snobs after all.

While we were living on Lakehill Drive, I honed my leadership skills as a Boy Scout. Troop 132’s scoutmaster, Ben Hanson, a jolly and generous man, gave up his vacation time to take us to every camporee and an annual week at scout camp. We met every Monday evening in the basement of our church annex, an old clapboard home that used to house the pastor and his family. It was no longer a suitable residence, and the upstairs was mainly used for ladies’ aid meetings and Sunday school. The basement, with its crumbling rock walls and its floor of maroon chipped paint, was reserved for the scouts.

We spent one winter building a canoe from a kit. Ben had us lay out the frame and each week we added a few more cedar strips. By early spring we were ready to stretch fabric over the frame and begin applying multiple coats of fiberglass. There was no ventilation in the basement, so it must have made the entire house stink—lucky no one used the building until Sunday morning. Finally, one Saturday in late May we hauled the dark blue watercraft to the edge of Lake Okabena and slid it in the water. I recall that it was really heavy—nothing close to the forty-five-pound Kevlars available today—and it listed to one side. But it did float! Ben sat proudly in the stern as each scout took a turn in the bow. I don’t know if it ever graced the northern waters of canoe country, but it’s probably still gathering dust in a garage somewhere.

Lewis and Clark Scout Reservation bordered the muddy Missouri River near Yankton, South Dakota and hosted our annual week at camp. I was still petrified of the water, but the swimming merit badge was a prerequisite for Eagle Scout. I decided to buck up and try to earn it at camp.

Lacking an ounce of fat on my scrawny arms and legs, I shivered on the bank with my toes in the mud as I waited for instructions. I had learned the basic strokes during previous swimming lessons, but one of the requirements for the merit badge was to surface-dive to retrieve an item—in this case, a three-pound Folger’s coffee can filled with concrete—from the bottom of the lake.

“Okay, you Tenderfoots,” chided our counselor and lifeguard. “Swim to the raft and wait for me there.”

I left my glasses in my shoes on shore, so the raft was a blurry image. I took a breath of more stubbornness than courage and dove into the dark water. Not wanting to lose sight of my goal, I paddled the distance with my head above water. The top eight inches of water were warm and welcoming, but when my feet dropped below my waist, they were met with a dark chill. As I joined my fellow scouts on the raft, I resumed my shivering and watched the more confident swimmers complete the assignment.

The counselor threw the weight from the raft and the first scout slipped into the water, swam to the site of the splash, and dove. He returned carrying the coffee can by the metal eyebolt that stuck from the cement. The next three scouts did the same thing, leaving me as the last boy on deck.

I got into the water and waited for the can to be flung into the water. I saw the blurry splash and quickly made my way to the ripples. I took a deep breath and dove. The light vanished a foot beneath the surface. The temperature dropped. I found the bottom, and my hands stirred the mud. No coffee can! I’m out of breath! Head for the surface.

The counselor sat on the edge of the raft with his feet in the water. He said in a soft, encouraging voice, “Try again, Dave. You can do it.”

I dove, searched the silty bottom, and came up empty handed again. I paddled to the raft and sputtered, “I can’t do it.”

The counselor remained seated and asked, “How long can you hold your breath?”

“I don’t know. Maybe twenty or thirty seconds.”

“Do you know how long you were under the water?”

“No.”

“Both times you dove, you were only under water for three seconds. I counted. You can do this.”

Once again, I pushed off from the raft. The coffee can was in only eight feet of water and about the same distance from the raft, but the cold, dark depths waited to swallow me.

I sucked in three or four huge gulps of air, kicked my legs in the air, and dove to the bottom. Both hands swept the mud. There it was! I grabbed the handle and pushed. Both feet sunk in the river-bottom silt. I flexed my legs and pushed again. The mud grudgingly released me. I kicked to the surface and gasped for breath. The weight of the coffee can drug me under again. I should drop it and breathe. No way! I’m not doing this again. I floundered my way to the raft and pushed the coffee can to the waiting hands of the counselor.

He was grinning ear to ear. “Congratulations, Dave! You passed. You’ve earned your swimming merit badge.”

The following year at camp I hoped to obtain the “Order of the Arrow,” a special award given to scouts who excelled at camping. Those eligible to be considered for this prestigious honor were selected at a “tapping out” ceremony around the evening campfire.

Soon after stars replaced the fading light of dusk, all the scouts in camp gathered around a pile of dry wood. We sat quietly waiting for the fire to be lit. A torch that appeared out of nowhere burst the wood into flames—I expect with the help of a generous dose of lighter fluid.

After a few camp songs and a solemn explanation of the requirements for obtaining the “Order of the Arrow,” we all waited to see which of us would be “tapped” for the honor. We were instructed to remain quiet. No talking, teasing or laughing was allowed.

If selected, I expected it would have been a gentle tap on the shoulder. As I stood in the back row waiting anxiously to see if I would feel the tap, a couple of strong arms suddenly grabbed me by the armpits and lifted my eighty pounds right out of my seat. Holy shit!

I was hauled away, stumbling along with my captors to a secluded clearing away from the main gathering. Eight of us had been tapped. We stood quietly with our hearts racing while we were given initial instructions. “From now until tomorrow evening, you are not to say a word. You are to go to your tents and retrieve your sleeping bags and a cup. That’s all you will need.”

We found our way to our tents and returned to the clearing a few minutes later. Our instructions continued: “One of the requirements for Order of the Arrow is to sleep by yourself in the woods overnight. Follow the counselor assigned to you, and he will point to a place where you will spend the night. Say nothing. We will retrieve you in the morning.”

There was no moon that night. We were blindfolded and led through the woods in a maze of misdirection. After a half-hour of silent wandering, the counselor pointed to a grassy spot and whispered, “Remove your blindfold. This is where you will spend the night. Do not speak. I will find you in the morning.”

I rolled out my sleeping bag and crawled in. The best way to get through a terrifying night is to fall asleep.

I was awake at dawn. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, found my glasses, and peaked out to greet the world. Seven other scouts were climbing out of their sleeping bags in the same grassy field. We were separated by no more than thirty feet from one another. Two counselors who had stood watch for the entire night were whispering to each other.

“Okay, boys,” said one aloud. “You’ve made it through the first requirement.”

He opened a cardboard egg carton. “You will be issued one raw egg, which will be your only meal until tonight.”

The other counselor moved among the group handing out a short stick and some string. “Whittle this into an arrow and hang it around your neck. If anyone is caught speaking or eating during the day, a notch will be carved in your arrow. Three notches and you will be disqualified from the Order of the Arrow.”

The one who distributed the eggs said, “Teamwork is an important part of Scouting. Your next assignment will be to build a fire with the aid of flint and steel.”

I gathered bits of dry grass and offered it to a couple of scouts hunched over a fire pit. One of the boys chipped at a shard of flint with a steel bar. An occasional spark flew harmlessly away from the grass clippings. Another scout offered a small handful of dried moss. The chipping continued. As hungry as I was becoming, I really didn’t want to eat my egg raw.

Finally, a spark flew into the moss. A curl of smoke rose. A boy shouted, “Don’t smother it with too much wood!”

“Sorry, son,” said the counselor. “Hand me your arrow.” He cut a small notch on the arrow.”

Lucky to have remained silent, I offered a few more small sticks to the fire-building effort.

Once the flames generated enough heat to cook, I cracked my egg into the tin cup I had taken from my mess kit and set it on the edge of the fire. I watched as the egg white solidified. I pushed the cup with a stick to cook the other side of the egg. Once the egg looked solid, I pulled the cup from the fire and waited for it to cool. I used my Boy Scout knife to scoop the egg from the cup and spoon it into my mouth. There was no oil in the cup, so the egg stuck firmly to the bottom and needed to be scraped free. It was an unsatisfying meal but better than some of the scouts who simply cracked their eggs into their cups and swallowed them raw.

I only did that once when I was at a party in Duluth with Sue’s high school classmates. The beer had been flowing freely and the first “Rocky” movie starring Sylvester Stallone was showing in theaters. The guys were cracking an egg into their beer mugs and slurping it in one gulp. Not to be outdone, I cracked two eggs into my mug, raised it to my lips, emptied the contents, and chewed. Only after the slurry was totally masticated did I swallow. That night I became a legend.

I survived the Order of the Arrow initiation with a clean arrow. I should have had one demerit for sneaking a sweaty, lint-covered Christmas candy in my mouth when I felt weak-kneed. It had been stuck to the bottom of my pocket all week, and temptation got the best of me.

That evening after a celebratory dinner of hamburgers, I was awarded a white felt sash with a red arrow stenciled on it. It was a proud addition worn next to my sash of merit badges.

Scoutmaster Ben noticed that I had been developing some reasonable leadership skills and gave me more responsibilities at our weekly meetings. We fell into a routine where after the Pledge of Allegiance, he turned the meeting over to me. I was thrilled with the responsibility and came prepared to lead the meetings week after week. We worked our way through the Boy Scout Handbook, following the Scouts’ advancement of rank from Tenderfoot to First Class to Star to Life. It was then left to us to earn enough merit badges to reach the magic number of 21, which led us to Eagle, the highest rank in scouting.

Then one Monday night in an act of juvenile rebellion, I felt as though the weekly demands were too much to ask, and the scoutmaster should be planning and running the meetings instead of me. Without telling Ben in advance, when he turned to me and asked what I had planned for the meeting, I just shrugged and said I had nothing planned. Ben’s face got red, but he quickly adjusted and spent the evening reviewing Morse Code. That passive aggressive move on my part embarrassed Ben in front of the whole troop. I regret the incident to this day and doubt that I ever apologized, but Ben must have forgiven me because within a couple of years he proudly pinned the Eagle Scout badge on my uniform.

Childhood 2025

I was born an adult, and through my years of high school, college, and veterinary career, I thought and behaved (for the most part) like an adult.

I write this essay on the eve of my seventy-second birthday and can feel myself slipping, ever so slowly, into that of a child: I search for words. I seek the comfort of family and friends. I nap when I get cranky. I am easily preoccupied with the wonder of a Calla Lilly. And although I no longer have the retentive memory of a child, I believe I am capable of learning new things.

I fear the day when someone else must change my diaper, but until then I embrace my approaching childhood.

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