Simply Thoughts

After my family’s first visit to McDonalds in 1959, four years after the chain was founded, no one realized that we had become part of food history. McDonalds changed the meaning of “fast food” and eventually became a controversial symbol of America and American free enterprise. I have been a customer of the restaurant chain since that first visit, especially when I was young, low on cash and appreciated cheap food. I remember the opening of the first McDonalds in my struggling hometown. It was celebrated with greater enthusiasm than the opening of the first new factory in three decades. Today criticisms of McDonalds food have become almost as widespread as knowledge of the food itself. I am aware of the health issues of the chain’s offerings, and I doubt that McDonalds itself would argue that their burgers, fries and beverages meet most of the USDA Nutrition Standards. While justly acknowledging the criticisms, I still like the restaurants. Parking is easy, restrooms are almost always clean, service is efficient and the food is consistent at arches across the nation. I also like most of the food, have my favorites and sometimes try their new additions. When it comes to visiting McDonalds, however, I feel a litte spur under my Ronald McDonald saddle. That spur is my persuasive eight-year-old granddaughter. In her opinion the McDonalds fare is “not good for you PopPop”. She, of course, did not arrive at  that conclusion alone; she is the product of progressive parents. Her mother and father declared war on fast foods years ago and immediately added to their garbage sodas, processed meats, chips and white bread. At some point they drafted my grandchild to be a standard bearer for eating healthy. Nevertheless, even when I visit a McDonalds in secret I take that walk with no shame. Everyone deserves at least one guilty pleasure especially if that person has lived for over seven decades consistently eating healthy home cooked meals and being in relative good health. At this point in my life journey, I doubt that an occasional McDonalds hamburger will significantly affect my life expectancy. Ad libitum.

The family had settled into Dad’s 1955 Ford Fairlane for a mid-summer drive to visit with my sister in Charlotte and to eat out for a change. It was a two-hour drive west from our hometown on Route 74, not unlike most other highways that transversed the South in the late 1950s. It skirted larger towns and paved through their smaller cousins. In between there were patches of woods and struggling farms with an occasional gas station, fruit stand and trailer park. Nevertheless, the humdrum nature of the route did not dampen my two brothers’ enthusiasm. Judging by their joy one would have thought we were traveling on the yellow brick road instead of a long stretch of aging asphalt. I on the other hand shared some of their elation but with restraint, my usual childhood demeanor. It actually took only a short outing to kindle “journey proud” delight in my two brothers and solitary happiness in me because my family seldom took out-of-town trips and rarely had a restaurant lunch. As we approached the city the highway turned into four lanes; cars and trucks at times were bumper to bumper. We passed beehives of stores and a few churches that seemed lost in all the confusion. As planned, our first stop was at a new take-out restaurant amid this urban maze and within sight of Charlotte’s skyline. None of us recognized the drive-in’s name, but someday I would learn that eating at McDonalds was rapidly becoming a fad, and this specific one was the second in the state and among the first in the South. Of course we had our fast food joints back home. The best known and one that garnered fewer aspersions was the Honey Cone. It had been the teen hangout of choice for as long as I could remember but was gradually losing its luster and seemed to be in a permanent state of repairs. This new McDonalds on the other hand was a different species. It was sparkling new and reminded me of the Flash Gordon space serials shown at my Saturday afternoon movie outings. Huge yellow arches were so prominent they stuck in my memory and were associated with that first visit for years. Menu options posted proudly on the wall behind the young, paper-capped employees listed the short menu. Each of us ordered a hamburger and a soft drink, a meal costing 25 cents. The burger was as thin as a pancake and consisted of a cowering beef patty in a toasted bun under a layer of onion bits, mustard, ketchup, and one slice of dill pickle. My parents gave McDonalds high marks. My brothers and I felt that this eating out experience was interesting but far from good. The Honey Cone made better burgers in the opinion of us three young culinary judges. That 1959 summer trip with the memorable lunch is a miniscule moment in my life story, but unbeknownst to me at the time our meal was a piece of a growing wave that someday would swell into an enterprise that attained an iconic place in American history.

I am sitting inside our home in Pennsylvania. Snowdrifts are above the sills of our first floor windows. Although officially we received two feet of frozen precipitation, in our rear courtyard snow is more than four feet deep. Cars along the street look like small white mountains with sparkles coming from ice crystals instead of paint and chrome. There is a ghost-like quality to the landscape because anything smaller than a hen house is no longer discernible. People have worked all day to clear vehicles anticipating the need to travel to work although snow that is moved to clear cars and paths simply creates larger and larger waste piles nearby that may not disappear until spring. Children are the only people out on the street. They of course are consumed with joy and laughter and will never think that this might be the largest snowfall in their lives. Our dog loved romping in what must have been her very strange stuff. She also had countess snowflake snacks. All that came to a halt when the snow’s depth was greater than her height. She did have a finale: leaping out the backdoor and literally disappearing into the white powder. Everyone is being inconvenienced, and more people than usual are complaining about a landscape that would have been called beautiful if we had a less severe sprinkling of snow. Nevertheless, the snowstorm of 2016 could have been worse.  I recall reading about the Great Blizzard of 1888, which was considered the worse snowstorm in the history of the United States. Snow began falling shortly after midnight in mid March and hit all the northeastern states like a boxer’s blow. In some areas as much as 40 inches of snow fell and drifts in places covered two- and three-story houses. People were trapped in their homes for over a week, and most wire communication ended since telegraph poles fell like toothpicks. Fire equipment was stranded, and the fires that consequently could not be controlled resulted in loss of lives and extensive damage. Sadly, deaths as a result of the blizzard totaled over four hundred people. The snowstorm of 2016 was bad but could have been worse for most people.

Material culture, such as architecture, clothing and tools are useful resources in learning about the past. Though not as readily recognized, the same is true of botanical material. As a child I was uncommonly interested in underfoot plants that grew in lots and fields that were my play domains. That interest was not at all sophisticated; my fledgling inquisitive mind was driven by a simple love for things botanical. As an adult I have always been a Saturday flower gardener whose interests focused on unusual plants and those with histories that cradled compelling stories. In my professional life I was involved for more than two decades in restoring the landscape of a historical town—vegetable and flower gardens, fields, fencing, orchards, etc. Plants traditionally have been at the core of people’s lives and were key factors in the development and organization of early human societies.  Plants in the New World were an especially significant part of the botanical story. News of the discovery of a distant land spread across Europe as quickly as word of mouth could travel at a time of greatly limited communication. Upper classes dreamed of abundant natural riches and a huge potential for trade. Thousands of men, women and children in the lower classes hoped the New World would mean jobs and eventual freedom from ruthless European sovereigns and members of the genteel class. Groups of scholars, often members of scientific societies, were intrigued by the potential discovery of new species of flora. Most of them also possessed enough wealth to dispatch their agents to collect specimens and/or make detailed watercolors of their discoveries. Over time, plants from the New World, such as coffee, corn, potatoes and tomatoes, found their way onto European dining tables.  Europeans in turn shared cabbages, peaches, lettuce, peas and other plants with their American cousins. I remember clearly from my Southern childhood that every spring in our yard amid the Bermuda grass, sandspurs, dandelions and rabbit tobacco there was a scattering of onion-like plants with small, white star-shaped flowers, which too soon disappeared under the blades of my Dad’s mower. I now know that those small plants were called Star of Bethlehem and arrived in the New World in the 1700s carefully packed in wet paper or damp moss. Brought here by a few settlers from Southern Europe as a cultivated garden flower, it eventually escaped from garden walls and fences. Today Star of Bethlehem grows as a weed over much of the United States as it did at my boyhood home. Surprisingly, however, more than two centuries after arrival on American shores they are once again available in nurseries to plant in American flowerbeds.

It was not a bookish home, probably like most American lower middle class households in the mid-20th century. In our modest house in a small Southern town there were two Bibles--not read--and two bound sets of books--spines unbroken: the novels of Zane Gray and The Modern Library collection of non-fiction. The Bibles seemed confortable in their locations. The sets of books found their way into our house somehow at a point long forgotten and had become nothing more than collectors of dust. I know without reservation, however, that measuring the number of books my family owned was not a gauge of my parent’s interest in education for their four children nor was it an accurate measure of the hopes and aspirations that Mom and Dad had for us. Even though each of my parents received only basic schooling, they believed that an education was critical in the rearing of healthy, happy and productive adults. Looking back on my childhood and thinking about my siblings and me a half century later I am impressed by Mom and Dad’s intuitive perspectives about academics and other child rearing practices. They, for example, set broad limits on behavior and allowed us to learn about responsible decision-making within those perimeters. In our household rules were fluid enough to be instruments for teaching responsibility. Mom and Dad also recognized that each of their children was unique even though we were products of the same union. My siblings and I were allowed to follow our inclinations and aspirations without parental prodding to shape us in their image or in what they dreamed would be our futures. Further, my parents believed that there should be more praise than criticism while rearing us four. That was not an easy task because we were neither angels nor were we miniature adults. Each of us was occasionally guilty of straying from the accepted norm, but Mom and Dad knew somehow that growth comes when one is willing to take risks and accept the consequences. My mother had her own effective brand of corporeal discipline; a privet switch was readily available and usually successful. I do not remember my parents ever using sarcasm or humiliation with us to rectify a problem or punish some wrongdoing. Verbal abuse simply was not their style. The source of their wisdom I do not know.  But they were good people whose insights and practices came from somewhere beyond words printed on pages. How they treated us was the result of infallible love and relentless hope that our lives would be easier than their own. Two generations had to pass before I could articulate their parenting skills that were so commonplace in my childhood, but I know my own children benefited from their grandparents’ wisdom. Mom and Dad’s intuitive legacy has been a lasting force.

I love America. It is one of the greatest democracies in history and by choice my home. America, however, is not without past transgressions when dealing with racial, ethnic and religious groups. It took a civil war between northern and southern states to end the enslavement of Africans and African Americans. It took civil disobedience, presidential orders and Supreme Court rulings to overturn laws that violated the rights of Blacks in America. Our shameful treatment of Native Americans created bitterness in the hearts and minds of these proud people that remains today. Decades had to past before Americans of Italian and Irish descent could live without facing hatred and discrimination. We forced over 100,000 Japanese families into internment camps during World War II. Never in our history have we seen the need to incarcerate that many American citizens in time of war. We knew the plight of European Jews in the 1930s, yet we turned away boatloads of men, women and children to face atrocious treatment in the deadly claws of fascists. In the post World War I era we helped fuel today’s problems in the Middle East by rushing in, supporting corrupt governments and making shady oil deals without understanding or respecting Islam and Arab tribal groups. Now many us are painting Hispanics, who form a vital segment of our labor force, with broad strokes of stereotypes, innuendoes and untruths. Today we have the audacity to condemn 1.6 billion members of the second largest religion in the world, Islam, for the actions of few of their number. We proclaim that all Muslims, including our friends and neighbors, are inferior to Christians, and the followers of Mohammed are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. All these actions form a long, historical trail of travesties in our history and in my opinion have their roots in the ignorance of the American populace and their elected leaders. One of the reasons for studying history is to help prevent repeating the mistakes of the past. In the words of Pete Seeger, “When will we ever learn?”

Most Westerners have Christmas tree memories. Thankfully, I have many. My Grandmother never wanted a tree at Christmas. When I was young her rejection of that holiday tradition and her many other quirks seemed odd and even a little crazy. I now know that peculiar non-conformity reflected her being born and growing up in the late 1800s before decorated trees became widely popular in America. Grandma was a creature of habit and any change would have been a stranger in her small world. When a child my family always had a decorated tree. Dad purchased cedars even thought they grew abundantly in local pastures and fields and were easily poachable. Our cedars came from a makeshift tree lot just inside town limits on South Main Street. It was an enterprise operated for decades by an elderly man whose appearance and temperament gave the impression that he actually had stolen his inventory in the dark of night. In hindsight, I know all the cedars Dad hauled home in the trunk of his Ford were basically ugly. They were always tall and skinny with green and rust finger-like needles that scratched your hand every time you hung an ornament. When it was covered with large multi-colored light bulbs, glass ornaments and silver tinsel, however, the monster was transformed into a glorious sight. I thought it surely was one of the most beautiful things in the world next to the huge lighted tree in the yard of the First Methodist Church and the slightly smaller one in the front circle of Pine Acres tourist court. Over the years I remember finding bird nests in several of those cedars. Unbeknownst to me at the time, in some cultures finding a nest in a yuletide tree meant good fortune. Mom and Dad would have viewed that belief as pure nonsense just as they did not believe that luck came with a rabbit’s foot, a four-leaf clover or a rainbow. To them we were not a good luck family. My children always wanted the largest (and most expensive) tree on the lot, not realizing it would fill half the living room and require a hole in the ceiling. At the time it seemed that they would never comprehend basic spatial concepts, and I remember hoping that for the sake of civilization we were not rearing a builder, engineer or architect.  My family likes a star atop our tree and traditionally it is always placed after the other decorations have been hung. To attach the star required my clearing several hurdles, the most worrisome being placing it eight feet off the floor onto the distant treetop. That was challenging enough, but I also had to reach over dozens of fragile glass ornaments that had expanded the once slender green giant into obese proportions. A recent Christmas tree experience was more memorable than others. Having concluded the decorating, I tried to place the star while standing on an unstable kitchen chair. Bending over, my pants and shirt scraping precariously against ornaments, I began to tumble. Seeing that a catastrophe was immediate, I nodded to the inevitable and came face to face with glass, needles and limbs. A broken arm was my badge of stupidity, and that became another Christmas tree memory.

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My vision of Thanksgiving was shaped during childhood by lessons learned in school and church. That image of the Pilgrims and their Native American neighbors, though filled with fallacies, is probably imbedded in most Americans’ memories. This year following my family’s traditional Thanksgiving dinner I stole a few minutes alone to give thanks for the blessings that have provided us with healthy, happy and purposeful lives. I also though about my parents, now deceased, who literally lived for their children. Their primary goal was to give my three siblings and me better lives than their own. To accomplish that goal they worked long hours at arduous jobs for low wages over more than four decades. Dad and Mom blundered as parents occasionally, but parenting is not a science, and whatever they did, right or wrong, I know it was heartfelt. There is a long string of personal regrets behind me, but I am particularly sorry that while my parents were alive I never expressed my appreciation as often or as deeply as I should. There were cursory “thank yous” that came more from habit than heart, but I did not take time to sit with Dad and Mom to talk about things beyond peripheral subjects like the weather and television. I am disappointed that we never earnestly discussed their lives, their memories, our time together and most important my gratitude for what they gave me. Home, health and education, of course, would have been on my gratitude list, but I also would have included less tangle but important gifts such as a strong work ethic, the importance of being humane, unconditional love, and the value of self-respect. I missed that opportunity, and I deeply regret that loss.

Aunt Milly was my mother’s oldest sister and of her nine siblings the one who consistently marched to a different drummer. Though we seldom met in person, over the years simply hearing tales about her larger than life personality was enough to make her a part of my life story. Aunt Milly’s appearance was not unlike a character in a Victorian novel, and she seemed to cultivate that persona like a favorite rose. She was plump with prideful breasts appropriate to her well-rounded body. The crimson on her cheeks was applied as part of every morning’s routine, and her curls were shaped with bobby pins at bedtime and after breakfast so casually combed each individual curl remained well defined. Aunty Milly seemed to be perpetually jolly, unlike most in her family, and when she laughed her entire body from head to toes seemed to respond in kind. On my first visit to her Old Place in 1953 I remember her wearing a blue cotton dress printed with small flowers and a white apron attached to a practical bib. I was told that the other perquisite pieces of her uniform were sandals that were worn every season, rain, ice or snow. There were two characteristics of Aunt Milly’s personality, however, that were particularly engrained in family lore: she meddled and was an unapologetic gossipmonger. Aunt Milly never hesitated to express displeasure and give advice on how to remedy what she saw as a problem, especially those relating to her nieces’ and nephews’ love lives. She knew no barriers when it came to choosing her victims; whatever someone’s age, gender and marital status she quickly moved over the niceties and delivered point-blank advice or criticisms. Aunt Milly’s conversations were so dominated by a continual flow of questions she sounded like a country lawyer in a murder trial. Usually the questions, according to my mom, were designed to gather information about relatives, friends or even strangers that she could freely “share” with her own embellishments. Aunt Milly lived in the Old Place until Uncle Ted died and her children moved out. With funds from the sale of the farm and dollars secretly stashed away for decades, at the age of seventy-five she had enough money to build a small brick house a stones throw from suburbia. For the first time in her life she would have electricity, a telephone, running water, an indoor toilet, a washing machine, an electric stove and central heating. I was told that Aunt Milly cried when she moved from her family’s home, and I guess those were tears of both happiness and apprehension because in just one day she was thrust not only into a new place but also into another time, the 20th century.

Aunt Milly was my mother’s oldest sister and of her nine siblings the one who consistently marched by a different drummer. Our first meeting in the summer of 1953 was the beginning of a long and enjoyable relationship. Though we seldom met in person, over the years simply hearing tales about Aunt Milly and her larger than life personality was enough for her to hold a special place in my life story.  In 1953 I was ten years old when the family traveled in scorching heat to Eastern North Carolina for a day with “The Aunt Milly” and “Poor Uncle Ted”. Dad had driven for what felt like hundreds of miles on a gray, unmarked highway flanked on both sides by scrub pine forests edged with tangled grapevines, honeysuckle and blackberry bushes. Occasionally we passed acres of corn and tobacco and an isolated farmhouse marked on the road by a tin mailbox with a makeshift post. Just as Dad exclaimed that any more complaining from the backseat would result in retribution, he turned finally onto a narrow road with worn parallel tire tracks divided by patches of dried weeds. After fording a creek that evidently was undeserving of even a crude bridge, we were in sight of Aunt Milly’s and Uncle Ted’s house on a slight rise almost a hundred yards away. It was unlike any of the previously seen dull white farmhouses that were distinguished by their similarities. Sprawled across a neatly kept yard, the house was showing signs of age with its unpainted exterior the color of toast, a sagging porch and a rusted tin roof. Additions added over decades looked like appendages attached to the mother ship: an extra bedroom, a large back porch, a kitchen pantry and a room for the long promised toilet. The Old Place had been built in the late 1800s by Uncle Ted’s family, but there was no doubt my aunt now ruled the house and ruled Uncle Ted equally well. It did not take long to realize that Aunt Milly was the heart and soul of the house, and indeed she was partially defined by the relic and her adopted way of life, a life in 1953 that was from another century. No electricity, a relatively new two-seat privy, no running water, no telephone nor a refrigerator. Oil lamps gave light. Wood stoves provided heat. Cooking was done with wood. Clothes were washed by hand. Water was carried with buckets from a spring, and a springhouse kept perishables cool while a black snake kept them safe. A big slice of Aunt Milly’s appeal to inquisitive little me was that she lived on that nineteenth century stage with tireless energy, tight control and admirable grace. It was her world and she tackled what others would consider inconveniences as if that was her duty as a conscientious wife and a loving mother. Continued.

A good farmer has farming in his blood. Experience and study build a foundation of knowledge, but with the uncertainties of farm life a farmer must also have an innate feeling about when and how to plant, cultivate and harvest. That quality is called by some intuition or making gut decisions.  I would not be a good farmer. Farming is not in my blood even though my ancestors have farmed for well over two centuries. My dad was not a good farmer. I can make that declaration honestly without maligning his name because he viewed himself as a mediocre man of the soil. Nevertheless, at the age of forty-five with few cultivation skills he decided to lease several acres of land and begin that age-old profession. It was a curious move. The post-war boom had been a bust for Dad and he needed more income to better care for our large family. That decision to tackle farming revealed much about his bravery and selflessness, but the foolhardy nature of the risk was very much unlike him. He was a reasonable and methodical man who would have been a good banker in another life. I can imagine his saying, “this might be foolish but there’s little to loose.” Dad’s other full-time job as a supervisor in a textile mill was exhausting; a man or woman with lesser energy and patience would have lasted a few weeks instead of his decades. Maintaining a farm also required endless hours of backbreaking work, and Dad knew what jobs lay ahead; he had spent his childhood on a farm, married a farmer’s daughter and had worked a small track of land when he was newly married and unemployed. When the shaky decision was finally official with his signature on a makeshift contract, the future experiences for him and the family were the threads with which stories are written. Almost like magic the four-year farming chapter in my family’s history began. One day we were living in a rented four-room house on a dirt street in a small Southern town near schools, friends and stores. The next day we were dropped into a weathered old farmhouse sitting in the middle of acres of barren land and close to nothing but five dilapidated farm buildings. In the months and years ahead Dad demonstrated that he was not an accomplished farmer but what he lacked in knowledge and skills he supplemented with muscle, grit and sweat. As much as many other living memories I can see with clarity Dad driving home from the mill up our long rutted road, quickly changing into his other work clothes and climbing onto his tractor. If necessary, he would plow into the night using the lights on his tractor to navigate fields. With a few hours sleep, like clockwork he was up the next morning at sunrise beginning his routine again. This story regrettably does not have a fairy tale ending. Those challenging years produced more worries for Dad than dollars, and I know it took a heavy toll on his health. It was not a subject he wanted to discuss, but the farming adventure, which had been driven by his heart, embarrassed and saddened him because he had not been triumphant. There was one bright spot in that part of our family history, however; my brothers and I had countless enjoyable and valuable experiences that laid fresh memories and helped to shape our identities. In addition, those years on the farm enabled me later in life to refer to myself as a farm boy once, a proud mantra in my judgment.

We are all captives of our emotions. That is especially true of me since I contend with an emotional illness, depression. As a child no one would have called me an over-the-top happy kid. In fact, my parents sometimes expressed concern when I did not react with childlike joy to what normally would have been joyful situations. Really dark periods of sadness from those early years are not memories that I recall, however.  Any reticent behavior that might have been different from that of my siblings and friends was rooted I believe in my introversion. Later in the young adult summer of my life I was consumed with schooling, marriage, children, home, jobs, paying bills, etc. Those were busy, building and exciting times when my emotional energy was consumed by a demanding world that swirled around me. Naturally there were sad moments, but at the time they were not any more obvious to me than other normal human emotions and certainly did not warrant seeking a diagnosis or attaching a label. Then in my fifties at a time when people experience a so-called mid-life crisis dark clouds began to intermittently punctuate what had been a satisfied life. Bouts of depression became a regular and disturbing part of my emotional reality. I did not know their origin or recognize their complexity, but there was one overriding truth: my depressed moods not only affected me; they also impacted the lives of others. Eventually when those ominous clouds occasionally led to thoughts of suicide, I immediately sought medical help and going against societal norms did so without feelings of embarrassment or guilt. That was the beginning of a long path managing my illness. Luckily I was referred to an excellent psychiatrist who diagnosed my having a recurring depressive disorder caused by a corporal chemical imbalance and probably inherited from the matrilineal branches of my family tree. Since it was determined that my disorder was physiologically based, the doctor treated it with medications selected after several months of trials and evaluations. My “cocktail” contained four prescription drugs that I have taken daily for over twenty years with no detrimental side affects.  Seeking medical help changed (and possibly saved) me by providing a course of treatment for an invisible illness that was neither a sign of weakness nor a cause for shame. In so doing my quality of life was greatly improved during these, my fall and winter years.

Bad acts have been committed in the name of religion just as religious people have been treated badly by those professing to be doing good. This month marks the 65th anniversary of China’s illegal incorporation of Tibet into the People’s Republic and the beginning of the systematic destruction of Tibetan life and culture. A fundamental goal of that campaign was to remove the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, who ultimately was forced to flee his country fearing imminent death at the hands of Communist guards. This 14th Dali Lama was born in a stable to a poor Tibetan farm family, and when a toddler was ceremoniously selected by divine intervention from males his age all over the country. When a boy of five the Dalai Lama was enthroned as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the religious leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the temporal head of Tibet. As significant as his being divinely chosen, it is believed by his followers that the Dalai Lama is the embodiment of great compassion and love. Now living in exile in India, the Dalia Lama remains head of Tibetan Buddhism and is a prolific writer and teacher and believed by many to be the most revered leader in the world today. I have a colleague who met the Dalai Lama. In his former position with the federal government he came into direct contact with countless heads of state, monarchs, religious leaders, scientists and artists. After hearing his stories about those experiences, I once asked him which of those renowned personalities impressed him the most. Without hesitation he replied the Dalai Lama. According to him when His Holiness entered the reception room a wave of surreal silence washed across the space; something ordinary became extraordinary. My colleague stated emphatically that he could actually feel the presence of this holy man. China drove the Dalia Lama from Tibet but in so doing gave his voice to the world.

My brothers and I were latchkey boys. Problems associated with children like us who regularly returned to empty homes were being discussed even when I was growing up in the decade following World War II. My family knew nothing about so-called latchkey children and would not have been concerned even if they were so informed. Finding our house empty after school and being home by ourselves in the summer were commonplace in our lives. I had two brothers, one five years older and one five years younger. Sometimes I was the one being supervised, but more often I found myself solely responsible for my younger brother. Because that sibling had been born late in my parents’ lives they had given him a princely crown, and that coronation symbol was his royal pass to do much of what he chose. Partly because of that status, caring for him was not an easy task. And the challenge was more complicated because he was bright and adventurous, usually good qualities but a source of mischief in his hands. In a typical contest, in one corner stood my brother thinking he had royal blood in his veins; in another corner I stood like deputy sheriff Barney Fife with only one good bullet. I had suffered under my little brother’s tyranny for months until I discovered that bullet: He was afraid of being left alone in our old, isolated house. After that epiphany, whenever I needed to control his behavior, I packed my brown and beige cardboard suitcase, said goodbye and started walking out the backdoor toward the nearest highway. Usually I only had to reach the back steps before he, in panic mode, promised to correct his ways. In retrospect sixty plus years later I feel a pang of guilt because today I would consider such discipline as cruel and unusual punishment, but at the time it seemed like a logical method of control for me, a young, weak-kneed deputy sheriff.