Memories of Mother

One’s Life is an Awakening and a Becoming

 

 

These brief memoirs span some of the early years just prior to

kindergarten and through my high school graduation in 1970

 

 

I remember the Christmas presents she chose: a chemistry set, a microscope, a stamp collecting set, a rock collecting set, a soap sculpture set, and books: Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone stories, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and others.

 

Then there were the encyclopedia sets she bought: the children’s Golden Book volumes purchased once a week at the grocery store… I was thrilled, and spent hours and hours skimming their contents.

 

Every six weeks we could purchase a few paperback Scholastic books offered through the school, and when I was older, she bought a much bigger set of World Book encyclopedias.

 

And then trips to the public library. So much to take home from there…

 

Somewhere along the line, when I was about 8 years old she gave me a very special book explaining where babies come from. I called a neighborhood meeting and discovered I was the very first kid in the neighborhood to know. But I was the very last to know what “screwing” was. Apparently all the neighborhood kids knew about screwing, but were very surprised to learn about the connection to babies, and a couple flat out would not believe me.

 

And mother read a lot herself, receiving rave reviews from her adult Book Club presentations, especially the novel Hawaii by James Michener. Looked to me like 2,000 pages, though it was actually just 937.

 

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But life with mother was not all about books and such: there were children to feed and Dinner on the Farm (a weekday radio program) every day at noon, pretty much on the dot, with Campbell soup and a sandwich for dinner, at least until kindergarten. Once the school years arrived, our breakfast included toast, eggs, orange juice, cereal, and something else I remember not daily, and I distinctly remember a teacher teaching about the importance of breakfast, and when I was asked about our morning breakfast the teacher and the entire class were in awe.

 

Then there was the Buck Rogers Fan Club, wherein my mother played a commendable supporting role as my vice president and secretary for perhaps six weeks, while I was its President.

 

Come summertime there were excursions to the Eastside Park with her friends and their children (sometimes wearing long denim pants!), monthly Baptist basement potlucks, and her insistence that we attend the after-school Good News Club, where we recited and memorized Bible verses…

 

And there were always summer swimming pool passes, swimming lessons, tennis lessons, and the annual week-long Baptist Church Camps, which were great fun and somewhat formative.

 

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Nearly every week we could watch a movie at the Gala Theater and enjoy theater candy, but were absolutely forbidden to buy candy otherwise. Once I hid some candy in the garage rafters, but was caught and fined an additional purchase price. Otherwise movies were generally allowed… even horror movies, though I distinctly remember not being allowed to see Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello in Beach Blanket Bingo come 1965, when I was 13 years old.

 

Nor could I watch Dobie Gillis on the television: an absolutely innocuous show… the only reason I could ever imagine was the presence of the “beatnik” Maynard G Krebbs at a time when many people were genuinely alarmed by real beatniks... Nor did we watch any regular musical show except Lawrence Welk, and I knew that the McClures (our neighbors next door) were tainted by shows like Jackie Gleason, Dinah Shore, Perry Como, and CERTAINLY Ed Sullivan, who surfaced Elvis Presley and the Beatles to America!! But we didn’t care too terribly much, there was always Gilligan’s Island, Lucy, Andy Griffith, Leave it to Beaver, and Bat Man.

 

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Every new school year brought new clothes, and I was always allowed one cowboy shirt each year until perhaps the fifth grade, when they suddenly seemed childish. But I was never allowed to have “pegged” pants, no matter how skinny I was and how baggy my pants were. To this very day I do not really understand what pegged pants are, just that they are somehow tighter. She was indeed a prude.

 

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As the years rolled on she became more and more disappointed and frustrated. Dad had promised to bring her back to New Hampshire to live as a condition of marriage, but reneged long ago. It just wasn’t to be, though the ultimate consequences were a few years away.

 

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Mother was not learned and certainly not sophisticated, yet she very much valued education, and it was her influence, not dad’s, that shaped me. She was a Filiault, and so am I.

 

Once she said to me “Strive to understand before you judge… and then you will judge not.” The text came from “Dear Abby”, but she embraced it’s wisdom and passed it on to me.

 

Of one of my classmates, often called “Double Ugly” because of her family’s poverty and her extremely thick glasses, mother said “If you look aside from the glasses, you can see she actually has a pretty face”, and she was right. How many others do you imagine noticed?

 

One indirect but tremendous influence on me was her bringing Bruce to Garrett for a year. Dad was always consumed by work and relatively distant, but that one year when I was in the third grade and Bruce in the ninth was formative indeed.

 

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Overall there was little of note between my 1952 my birthdate and 1970 high school graduation. “Just” a good and loving mother doing her best, and doing so quite well, at least through my eyes.

 

In mother’s case, her awakening and becoming were yet a few years away.

 

And throughout, my very dearest family memories always centered around our Keene summer vacations and relatives. How very, very happy we all were then, including dad, throughout those too few times.

Remembering the Good Things (on my Father)

Who was Basil Rowe?

 

Or was he Charlie, And did it matter?

 
I knew the man well, or so I once believed, having been born his eldest child and only son… But he passed in 2005 and I am now sixty-six: wise enough these days to know that one’s child might know relatively little of one’s sire, and vice versa. After all, there is so little that he knew of me, and I regret that. But isn’t that often how it is?

Beginnings

 Dad was born on November 7, 1931, in Garrett’s Sacred Heart hospital, and his name was heralded in the Garrett Clipper as Basil Charles Rowe. From that day on, at least until he left Garrett for the Air Force, Dad was known by all of his schoolmates as Basil, or more affectionately as “Bay.”  Yet by the time Dad enlisted in the Air Force and began courting Gloria Filiault, his wife to be, Basil was going by Charles or Charlie.


Of course many people choose to use more or less formal names as they come into their own, and I have done much the same. Not always terribly significant, though obviously a name change does signify something important, and in Dad’s case the change from Basil to Charles harbored profound meaning. More on this to come, but for now let’s return to the very beginning: his father Perry Rowe and the Great Depression.
 

These years (1929 throughout the thirties) were formative and shaped long-term attitudes and behavior profoundly, well beyond those years throughout which Basil, born in 1931 came to be… And while there was generally enough hardship and uncertainty throughout the depression, father Perry died as Basil, now “the man of the house” turned ten. Years later Dad attributed his father’s death to alcohol.

 
Perry seems to have been, at least at some point, a cruel and violent man. Grandma told me he was apt to fly into a rage and break a dish should his supper plate not be warm… frightening, but no one has told me that Perry otherwise abused his own family.

 
However, when I happened to be selling carpet circa 1980, I was told by a retired railroader that Perry was a brutal man who relished beating hobos riding the trains. I don’t remember any details, but was shaken, as the man seemed very sincere and credible. And I do recall that for some time Dad kept Perry’s brass knuckles and a blackjack (used for beating people) in a box. Not that Dad ever used them, I am certain he never did any such thing, but those discoveries do corroborate that railroader’s take on Perry.

 
And then when I was about twelve I noticed a large, mysterious, locked, very intriguing and very strong trunk in the garage while mowing Grandma’s lawn. I asked Dad what was in it, but he never said, except that the contents were sensitive, related to Railroad personnel, and could cause a lot of trouble if the box were opened.

Many years later, he told me:

You see, there had been a big union strike, and Perry, who had been a union man, became an informer. Once the strike ended, Perry emerged as the top dog for B&O security between Chicago and Toledo, and that is how Perry came to own so much land (before it was subdivided following his passing).

 

This history I learned directly from Dad.

 

His Earliest Years

 

Perry’s passing required Grandma to work at Garrett’s Creek Chub factory, a job she hated, and observing her unhappiness in that factory was formative for Dad. Despite his youth, or perhaps due to Perry’s general attitudes, young Basil felt a duty to work as soon as he could- a duty that he quickly came to enjoy.

 

I remember Dad and Grandma both telling me at different times how much gratification Basil found in work, and I distinctly remember Dad telling me he loved to work as a child because he could do a good job. My guess is that his employers were generally quite pleased, thus reinforcing perhaps an innate impulse. In any case, his life-long calling seems to have been WORK spelled in capitals.
 

Earliest Photographs and Memories

Some of my very earliest photos and memories of Dad center about work. In one photo I am sitting in a wheel barrow which he had been using, and in another you can see he had been wearing work boots. These photos were very early, and I cannot recall any of them except per the photos.
 

Perhaps my first true memory of Dad was when he was he was constructing a house on land subdivided by Grandma and ultimately purchased by the Nistles (misspelled). Dad was well up the ladder when it toppled over… very memorable and frightening.

 
But the memory most disturbing to me centers on Mom’s short-lived system of gold and black stars. Behaviorism was the rage those days, and she had read that rewarding good behavior with gold stars and punishing bad behavior with black stars would improve family dynamics. But apparently this approach did not work with everyone. I do not remember the details, but Mom later recalled, and I have a vague but definite memory of, sneaking into the box of stars and pasting inordinate numbers of black stars on Dad’s chart.
 

Why? I have no recollection at all. But sadly, it was a harbinger.

 
Nevertheless, Dad continued to try in his own way. Once he took me to work with him at a construction site, I must have been five, and still remember those eight or so hours as the most dreadfully boring time in my entire life. Or, a couple years later he would take me with him now and then to Fort Wayne, where he would spend hours buying electrical supplies for his side-business while I learned patience and manners. Again, hours and hours of unimaginable boredom, or so it seemed. But he caught on pretty well and it wasn’t long before he knew we had little to say…




Or so it seemed, but I know it wasn’t really that bad. Just a serious mismatch in sensibilities and interests. After all, I was just a kid and he was an alpha-adult…


 And definitely finding more and more to do in the way of serious work.
 

The Young and Intermediate Years

Circa 1960 on, Dad’s life was a whirlwind of work and civic engagement:

• An electrical side business
• An insulating side business
• A small suite of apartments on Franklin Street
• A BIG building that half-way burned down, creating huge stress: the first time I ever observed him drinking and somewhat drunk at the house
• Very active in the Jaycees and Chamber of Commerce
• Volunteer Fireman
• The Shake Shop
• And throughout ALL of the above endeavors, full-time work as an electrician at International Harvester…

• Then Garrett Plumbing and Heating
• Garrett Hardware
• The Warfield Apartments (in cahoots with Henning)
• And somewhere along the line, successful Zoning Board and School Board elections

 

It Wasn’t ALL Work

In his the younger years, Dad was able to enjoy a great deal along the way. He loved practical jokes, Halloween, Maverick on Sunday night TV before driving to his third trick Harvester job, and especially Garrett football and basketball… But more than anything, he profoundly enjoyed the company of a great many men who strode through the wake of Garrett:

• Charley Davis
• Melvin Dietrich
• Joe McCorkle
• Bill Murley
• Phil Conrad
• Virgil Thomas (a colorful antique dealer)
• Jerry Mellot
• Ernie Yoder
• Don Heupel
• Walt Fuller
• Henning Sorenson
• And there were surely others beyond my memory
• Not to mention a wide range of genuine second-rank friends and well-wishers in Dad’s constellation.

A Dark Side

 
Dad did harbor a dark side driven by social class resentments and privilege. While that face did not appear often, when it did erupt, the intensity could be ugly. Once he was very angry about something with Walt Fuller, whom I know he deeply admired and even loved… Yet he once lashed out telling Walt “I’m not your nigger!!”

To be fair, the time was post-1970, when he was very stressed and drinking heavily, but I have heard enough other slams against various educated and socially privileged Garrett figures and Steuben County Lakers to understand some elements of the problem: Fancy Pants!

Dad despised on sight those he took to be “Fancy Pants”… And there were plenty enough to resent.

I will mention only one other name relating to this topic, because it was somewhat amusing and much unexpected:

Aaron once told me he was trying to sell a big air conditioning package to Mrs. Judy Morrill, a very wealthy and much noted philanthropist. Hoping to ingratiate himself with Judy, Aaron mentioned that his grandfather was from Garrett, and Judy, who had known Dad as Basil (they were high school classmates), said “Well, he wasn’t a very nice man!” Nevertheless, she did buy the air conditioning. 

Dad’s Children

 
The Rowe children indeed seemed secondary in many respects, but Dad did do his part as, at least as he and many others raised in those times understood it. Foremost, he was a provider.

We were never in genuine need or want, not even close.

Our clothes were decent, if not from Sterns.

We had season tickets for sporting events and could go to any Gala film that was not salacious.

We had swimming pool privileges, and could play outside at will.

Dad got us to and from Church Camp no matter what (thanks to Mom, but still, he took the time to get us there and back.)

He got Mom and the kids to New Hampshire most years, even by train and once airplane.

He constructed monkey bars, a Tarzan rope, and a paddle ball set-up for our fun, and kids were allowed to play outside in our yard.

Our childhood Christmas was always GRAND!

We had a regular allowance, and opportunity to earn much more if we were willing to work for it.

We were certainly not abused in any meaningful way.

And I know there were many, many Garrett kids who, for many reasons, could not say the same.

For this alone, thank you Dad.

  

Was Dad a “Success?”
 

In some significant conventional respects, the Dad I knew, while admired by many, was not a conventional “success” at all.

Think about it. He worked for years to ultimately hit on the Shake Shop, a small-size restaurant with the bathroom in a basement, but do you imagine “successful” people saw real success there? Remember, he was still working night shift at Harvester until at least 1970, whence finally he was able to sell the Shake Shop, abandon Harvester, and buy Garrett Plumbing and Heating and the Garrett Hardware store.

Maybe this would bring the success he strove so hard to earn… But no, look what happened: The hardware store created little or no more income beyond what he might have made as a wage-earner (so he told me), and Garrett Plumbing and Heating unraveled in bankruptcy!

Then he married JoAnn.

 

Existential Success

 
As a Korean War airplane mechanic, Dad’s aptitudes were sufficiently high that he could have re-enlisted as jet mechanic with terrific opportunities, yet he declined in order to go back to his railroad town of Garrett… BUT no matter what his parents had called him, or his teachers, or siblings, or classmates throughout his first twenty years, this man now knew his true identity, and that name was not Basil, but Charlie!

Dad was born to DO. I remember some 35 years ago Sonny telling me “Your Dad is a Hell of a guy! He can do anything!” And “do” he did, throughout his entire life! All KINDS of doing. This and that and another thing, and yet another and another and another!!  

Really, I don’t know anyone who has done so much doing in so many different endeavors, with so much enthusiasm, and often for no other reason but to help someone else do something that needed doing… And to my mind, his was a very great existential success.
 

Remembering the Good Things

 

It was too late for us in most ways

We could never really connect

Just superficially, forced and hollow

 

Neither of us knowing the other

At least not very well

 

Still my last words to him

As he was passing

Were sincere:

 

I will remember the good things

 

And indeed I often have remembered

Throughout these past ten years

And now

Finally writing this memoir

Has brought complete

Peace and Love

WHY IS EASTER CALLED EASTER?

I remember long ago, perhaps the fifth or sixth grade on an Easter Sunday, wondering as the preacher spoke, “Why is Easter called Easter?” Of course I had no clue, and with so many other mysteries in my young life, I never did know… until yesterday! And then, in a flash, it dawned on me: 

Just as the East resurrects dawn every day, so was the Son resurrected in Easter.

Pagan or Christian, that had to be the answer, and what an luminous and beautiful revelation it was!

 This self-discovered explanation was sufficient for me, but still I was intrigued to consult Wiki, and delighted to discover that Ēostre (wherein you can clearly hear Easter) was a Pagan goddess of the dawn.

 

Ostara or Ēostre, (1884) by Johannes Gehrts.
The goddess flies through the heavens surrounded
by Roman-inspired putti, beams of light,
 and animals. Germanic people look up
at the goddess from the realm below.

So it took fifty-some years to uncover a simple riddle

And how many more hundreds or thousands of mysteries still lurk in the shadows?

More and more time to discover these days...

Yet more and more mysteries

And now a race as the synapses wane…

And such is life!!

Walking In The Sun

What will you do now you’re retired?

 

Walk in the Sun every day

 

But what will you do on days when it rains?

 

Walk in the Sun on those days

 

 

 

Of course it’s more an aspiration than a reality, but every time I give it an honest try, it really does help…

Impressions: Our Cave of Hands

So many cultural influences and icons throughout our long history, far to many to name... But on a more personal level, which have distinctly moved you in a meaningful and abiding way, even if you can't say exactly why, or would find the explanation too tedious or time-consuming to explain?

An interesting exercise, to construct such a list... And perhaps to share with others?  

Who knows what one might learn by perusing and exploring such lists? And who knows what one might discover, or rediscover about one's self!

So here is my alphabetized list, and whether or not you care about mine, I genuinely hope that some will learn at least a few interesting things from at least a few people.

Albert Camus

Albert Einstein

Allen Ginsberg (Howl)

André Breton (surrealist)

Archie Comics

Aristotle

Batman Comics

Bob Dylan

Bram Stoker (Dracula)

Buddha (Bodhi Day)

Carol Lewis (Alice in Wonderland)

Cave of Hands

Chicago Cultural Center

Conan Doyle

Edger Allan Poe

Edvard Munch (The Scream)

Edward Hopper (Night Hawks)

Folk Music (Harry Smith, Pete Seger, etc)

Francisco Goya

Franz Kafka

Galileo Galilei

Garrett Library

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm)

Grace Slick (White Rabbit)

H G Wells

H P Lovecraft

Henri Rousseau

Henry David Thoreau

Herman Melville ( (Moby Dick)

Howl

Isaac Newton

Jack Kerouac

James Joyce

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jimi Hendrix

John William Polidori (first literary vampire book)

Ken Kesey

Kingsmen (Louie, Louie)

Lao Tzu

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Leo Tolstoy

Louie Armstrong

Mahatma Gandhi

Martin Luther

Martin Luther King

Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)

Marylyn Monroe

Metropolis (Fritz Lang film) German Expressionism

Paul Goguin (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?)

Paul Simon

Plato

Preachers

Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self Reliance)

Robert A Heinlein

Rod Serling

Rumi

Salvador Dali

Samuel Barclay Beckett (Waiting for Godot)

Science Fiction Writers

Sherlock Holmes

Socrates

Stonehenge

Teachers

The Art Institute of Chicago

Timothy Leary

Vincent van Gogh

Walt Whitman

William Blake

Woody Guthrie