Getting In Shape 10.

Stanley McGovern had disciplinary resistance as well as poor academic performance so he was told by his mother and grandmother that in the Fall after our Fourth Grade year, he’d be going down to Vancouver for schooling. It was perceived that teachers down there were stricter and the regimented boarding school life tended to instill more discipline than a working mother with a part time babysitter could manage. I’d say in a broad way this was essentially true.

I’d grown up with a quite dismal perception of life at Vancouver. It had been used as a sort of hobgoblin to scare performance out of we who were so privileged as to attend public school and live at home. Down at Vancouver you don’t get plates. You eat out of soup dishes until you’re in Third Grade. You live in a barracks-like sleeping hall with retarded children! Many children sleep in cribs. Many wet the bed. You wouldn’t have your own room or your own things. You’ve got matrons ordering you around instead of your own mother!

Most of the scare messages about the State School for the Blind were directly attributable to Mrs. Swanson, who seemed to feel a personal enmity against the school in Vancouver. To be fair though, at least one student, Tommy Robertson, who’d spent time in Vancouver, made life at the school sound pretty bleak. When Stan told us rather sadly, toward the end of Fourth Grade, that he wouldn’t be seeing us next year since he was going down there, I was taking a considerable risk when I said "If they send you away Stan, they’ve got to send me too!"

I didn’t breach the idea to my parents right away. There was still some time remaining in the school year. So far as I know, I’d never seriously contemplated going to school away from home. The idea seemed unnatural. It seemed an amazing coincidence therefore, when one afternoon Mom suggested that just as a crazy idea, I might consider spending one and only one year at Vancouver.

Mom’s argument had to do with physical fitness. The last half of our Fourth Grade year, we blind students had been restricted to a strip of playground between the school fence and the library portable, an area perhaps the size of a double classroom. This was to prevent us from being victimized by sighted students evidently, which it didn’t quite accomplish and didn’t do much for our physical activity either. Mom had grown increasingly bitter toward Miss Larson, who was making no effort to provide us with physical education. Though she’d previously included some calisthenics and even an occasional trip to the school gym in our curriculum, these had of late, tapered off to nonexistence.

Mom had visited the State school the year previous, with a group of other mothers and had seen the wonderful PE facilities they had down there. Vancouver suggested itself as a way for me to build up my body, after which I could be involved with the Y or some other health-oriented group. Mom’s suggestion seemed very opportune and I said I’d been meaning to talk to her about that. My good friend Stan was going to Vancouver next year and I’d thought I’d like to go too.

For the last four years or so, Mom and Dad had been involved with an organization called The Seattle League for Blind Children. Dad had been the president when I was in Third Grade. This group planned Christmas and Easter parties for blind children and their siblings, bought materials and equipment for the school program and provided information to new parents of blind children and to the community. Army Sergeant Neil Sharp, a member and also past president, had a daughter at the State School and visited there frequently. Mom and I talked over with him the prospect of me attending the following year and a tour was arranged.

On a Friday morning in May, Mom and I took the train from King Street Station in Seattle. Mr. Burhow, the Superintendent, met us in Vancouver and drove us to the campus. We had a get-acquainted talk in his office, then a walk-around tour, focusing mostly on the gymnasium. Mrs. Osland, the Fourth Grade teacher, who also taught Gym in the afternoon, took me for a short run on the hardwood skating/dance floor. We had a look at the Olympic-sized swimming pool and the 20-foot wading pool. I felt balls four feet in diameter, weightlifting equipment and climbing ropes.

Mr. Burhow then took us over to Cottage 3. The intermediate boy’s residence introduced us to Mrs. Pettit, the houseparent on duty and left us there. Mrs. Pettit took us down the hall, showing us the bathroom, (one urinal, three stalls, five sinks, a drinking fountain, two shower stalls, two tubs.) Then we examined a single occupancy room. I noted happily that there was a Braille book about Chemistry on the desk. She remarked that the boys often did experiments in the cottage, which was okay, as long as they didn’t blow anything up. She said one of the Boys was an electrical genius!

I was given into the care of a Boy named Larry, who took me on a tour of the play equipment; the school library and music department while Mom talked with the house parent.

We had dinner with the boys and I met Gary Campbell, (the electrical genius,) who afterward, took me to his room and showed me his HAM radio. We listened for a time to the voice of America and discussed getting licensed to talk on the radio.

The head of house parents drove Mom and I to the hotel where we’d be spending the night. Mom and I sat in the lobby, waiting for Dad and Chris who had started the drive down from Seattle after Dad got home from work. Mom kept pumping me as to what I thought about attending next year. I said I liked all of the people I’d met, but had a Feeling about the place. Of course Mom said this was ridiculous. If I couldn’t name the thing that was bothering me, there wasn’t anything wrong.

Saturday morning Mr. Burhow met the four of us on Campus and we toured the classroom building. Mrs. Osland came over, opened her classroom and gave me a reading test. She told my parents that I was better than any of her students this year that I read rapidly, accurately and with great expression.

Passing through Campus, we met Cheryl Nelson, with whom I’d been in love back in second Grade, playing with another girl. Cheryl said she didn’t remember me.

Mr. Burhow said I could have till about the middle of August to make up my mind whether I wanted to come to Vancouver next fall. He’d been doing a rather good sales job all along but left the ball in my court.

Mrs. McMahon, my Contact teacher called one evening to ask Mom if it was really true I was going to Vancouver next year? Mom said that was very likely so. Mrs. McMahon said it just made her sick to think of me going there. She said I was such a good student, and my hand always went up when she asked a question in class. Mom pointed out that Vancouver offered excellent academic opportunities also. Mrs. McMahon said that she’d been told the State School was for the blind-retarded only.

Mom evidently voiced her dissatisfaction with Miss Larson. Mrs. McMahon said Miss Larson wasn’t going to be there next year. Mr. Haus was taking over her position.

I wish Mr. Haus could have been part of this story. I met him once or twice and he was a fascinating person, and by all subsequent accounts, an excellent teacher. He had a background in science and math and was working to develop new math aids for the blind. Over the objections of Mrs. Swanson, Mr. Haus introduced the abacus to the blind program in Seattle. Before the advent of the talking calculator, the abacus was probably the most common calculating device for the blind.

Miss Larson had presented me to Mr. Haus as "Junior Scientist." He’d shown me a magnetic peg with a Braille number on the end of it. I’m not sure what its precise purpose was. All of Mr. Haus’ students were saddened when in 1967, he died, quite young and quite suddenly.

Since there’d obviously been a lot of hard talk around home about Miss Larson and I knew Mom had been having talks with Joyce Hurd and other mothers, I’d gotten the notion naturally enough, there was a general effort on to get rid of our teacher. I mentioned this to Shannon; saying part of the reason I was going to Vancouver was that nobody liked Miss Larson. Shannon was quite disturbed because she especially liked Miss Larson and she went home to tell her mother what I’d said. Joyce called Mom, complaining that I’d attributed such attitudes to her. This embarrassed Mom and though she’d given the impression to me at least that Joyce Hurd felt that way there seemed to be a rapid reshuffling of facts and the entire misunderstanding landed on me. I was ordered not to discuss Vancouver with other kids at school. Since I was leaving most of the friends I had to travel nearly two hundred miles away from home next fall, the prospect of me not talking about it was silly.

In point of fact, Miss Larson’s enlisting in the peace Corps that Summer and Mr. Haus’ observing of our class, coupled with a rumor that Miss Gourder might even be taking Fourth and Fifth Grades, made it apparent Miss Larson had been planning to leave for some time. There was no need for a vendetta of mothers to dislodge her from her position.

Mom’s tendency to exert doctrinaire control over others increased with an end-of-year party. We went to the Woodland Park Zoo where Mr. Alexander, the head zookeeper, always arranged an interesting hands-on experience for the blind kids. Before the days of petting zoos, Mr. Alexander let us pet baby lions and tigers, yes and bears, Oh my! We then felt a huge bullfrog, which frankly stank, then were allowed to wash our hands before sitting down to lunch.

We were about to bite into our sandwiches when a photographer from one of the Seattle papers showed up, demanding that we get up, and crowd around with our hands on the stinky frog, looking happy and interested while he jerked us into place, taking picture after picture. I was told a number of times to smile, but frowned as hard as I could. It was too much trouble to take us to wash our hands again so I had to eat my sandwich with the frog smell on my fingers. I’d committed a flagrant breech of authority, newsmen being by definition, Important People.

Mom was angry about how I looked in the paper but I never regretted spoiling the picture, if I did. I was beginning to resent more and more, the fact that I’d frequently show up in newspapers, or even on TV just because I happened to be blind.

Mom got a good deal angrier with Stanley. Stan was a kid who loved to climb on things, jump on things, drum on things, and pretend to blow things up. This was the last day of school. We were all excited. I think the rest of us had a pretty good time all in all, smelly frog notwithstanding. I believe Stanley climbed on the table once or twice, made noises, didn’t immediately obey when told to sit down and be quiet. To listen to Mom, Stan had all but gone swinging through the trees and vaulting into the lion’s cage! Drawing on her vast knowledge of such matters, she declared Stan mentally retarded and said I wasn’t to associate with him at Vancouver.

The mothers gave Miss Larson a bouquet of flowers as a going away present. She was not heard from in Seattle for quite some time. I’d dream about her occasionally when I was homesick for the old school. In one of these dreams she said "David, you’re crying." I told her that was all right. I heard she was in Seattle around 1970 but did not see her then or since.

It was again time to plan for my birthday. I wanted to invite some of the boys from my neighborhood, some of whom were thirteen or fourteen, as well as Randy Alan and Korey Ward and of course, Jim Magnus. I didn’t invite any of the blind kids that year. Transportation may have been an issue. I wanted to have Darnel and Bradley from my cab, both of whom were partially sighted. Both of them were also black, and Mom said she didn’t want a yardful of Negroes. Presumably two Negro children constituted a yardful.

Mom said quite wisely, that if I wanted the older boys to come and actually make the party work, I’d need to decide on some activity, which would interest my guests. My vacuform, which allowed me to make cars, boats and plane models from plastic, suggested such an activity. We decided to have a plastic party with hamburgers and hotdogs on the backyard barbecue, cupcakes and rootbeer.

Amazingly, pretty much everybody I invited showed up. Most of my guests gave me money, about eight bucks in total, a tidy sum in those days. Mom bought me three car models, which could be assembled without glue. Two brothers, Tony and Jeff Edwards, neighbors of Lois and Bruce, gave me a card with a plastic skull and crossed bones on it, to go with a long-playing record containing an excellent dramatization of Treasure Island. I must have listened to that a hundred times or more in the year or so that followed.

Ruth Johnson came over to help with the cooking. My sisters and niece were present but otherwise this was the only all-boy party I ever had.

After the party proper, I went home with Jim to spend the night. We sat up late at the kitchen bar, talking about The Outer Limits and other space fiction shows, and putting together one of my models, an Edsel.

Next day was pretty wet but we slogged our way through the soggy woods anyhow, to reach the Safeway store at the other end of the Forest and to visit the neighboring dime store as well. I’d brought a dollar of my birthday money with me and I spent forty-one cents, buying a roll of assorted sweet and sour candies, a can of strawberry soda, a bag of cotton candy, (something I’d not seen before nor have since,) and two boxes of roll caps. These were for smacking with bricks or hammers, we being a bit old for capguns. Jim and I also bought a jawbreaker apiece for his sister Mary. This was the first time I’d ever shopped in a Safeway Store or a dime store without an adult present. My marketing experience had been pretty much limited up till now to the corner store where I walked with my sister each Saturday, and the lunch counter at school.

Jim and I came home, dried out our socks, drank pop and ate candy; made noise with our caps. I don’t recall what we talked about, but I remember a warm glow from the day. It was the last really good time we ever had together.

It was about this time I think that Dad’s drinking was becoming a more frequent issue between him and Mom, one not unknown to Chris and me. There’d been some incidents when he’d come home from Pinochle intoxicated, insisting on driving, no matter how many he’d had. To do him credit, Dad drove reasonably well under most conditions including total inebriation. There had also been an incident at a gathering of friends, originally intended as a pre-thanksgiving party. It was also the day after President Kennedy was shot and Dads Forty-first birthday. In spite of the subdued mood, Dad demanded that everyone celebrate his birthday with him. He poured whiskey into Bruce’s coffee cup, nearly provoking a fight with others present.

Probably his crowning achievement to date, was a time during the summer of ’64, when Aunt Margaret was visiting. Dad and Mom got into some kind of a verbal Melee; I’ve no idea over what. It didn’t take much. Dad had been drinking heavily and Mom suggested she and Margaret go sleep in the trailer. Dad announced loudly "Now I know what’s wrong with you and your sister. You’re both queers!" I’m not aware of Dad’s having any real problem with Margaret, either then or later, but as Mom put it, Dad always misbehaved when her relatives were around, not when his own were present.

The whole idea of drinking and being drunk was rather fascinating to me. In most of the books I liked people drank rum or brandy or ale or whiskey. Even in C.S. Lewis books, young people had wine with meals. I’d had small amounts of beer and other alcoholic beverages from time to time and drinking, like smoking was just one of those things people did when they grew up. It would be years before I understood that alcohol was a significant problem for most of the population rather than merely one more thing for Mom to complain about.

Sometime before school’s end, we’d all been given applications and informational packets for Camp Easter Seal, a summer camp for handicapped kids. I talked to some guys who’d been there and it sounded like a lot of fun. My parents were asked to pay forty dollars for my tuition and the Seattle Lions would pay the other half. Mom thought camp would be a good idea so we could see how I handled being away from home.

My session was starting in early July. The camp was on Lake Coeur d’Alene, near the town of the same name and about an hour’s drive from Spokane. We decided to drive over a couple of days early and visit Aunt Winnie. As it happened, Uncle Tick would be there too, he being on leave presently.

Chris, Mom and I drove to Spokane on a Friday. Aunt Winnie was still at work when we arrived. Uncle Tick, who was preparing dinner, met us at the door, wearing one of Winnie’s aprons, with roses on it. Uncle Tick was about six feet tall, quite skinny, with knobby knees and elbows. He wore a clipped mustache and was fond of saying that the girls didn’t mind going through the brush to find a picnic. Tick never ate breakfast, not even in the Army. When on leave, he drank strong, black coffee till noon. Beer thereafter.

Uncle Tick loved to cook and to keep house. Aunt Helen, from whom he’d been divorced a couple of years by now, said Tick would make somebody a great wife someday.

Tick had picked up his daughter Leslie, in Ephrata, where she lived with Aunt Helen. Leslie was very shrill and in the habit of talking to her dad as she’d heard her mother do. She was nine, and carried a cosmetic bag around with her. That wouldn’t be any big deal today, but then, cosmetics were teenager territory and usually preceded by church confirmation.

I’ve not described Aunt Winnie much previously. She was definitely a product of the Depression. She was thrifty to the point of miserliness, suspicious, resistant to all change and apprehensive about most everything. She was profane, gossipy, and sometimes downright mean, (where adults were concerned.) She was unfailingly generous and loving to kids and would shell out her last dollar for a birthday gift or to buy treats. She never got over thinking of me as a kid and I loved her dearly.

Winnie was my favorite aunt, once I grew up enough to understand how funny she was! I laughed myself sick at about Eight when I overheard her saying it’d been cold enough to free the ass off a brass monkey.

Aunt Winnie used to save up her pennies for Chris and I and by the time we’d get to her house, there’d be several dollars accumulated since the last visit. This visit there were four dollars and ninety-seven cents. She also gave me a pocketknife. I’d been wanting one for a long time. She gave Chris a ring, which was evidently of some value, being more than a mere piece of costume jewelry.

During this trip we visited the park near Winnie’s house. Leslie lay down on a bee and screamed for a solid hour, making her daddy carry her the two blocks back to the house. We also went to the Hutton Settlement where Mom had gone when her dad had died and where Tick and his brother Harry had also been. We met some of the kids and Uncle Tick had a rather long chat with a teenage girl, comparing life then with life now. Tick said there were only ten states in which he hadn’t been and he named the countries he’d visited. They included France, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Canada, England and others I can’t remember.

On Monday afternoon we drove up to Camp. I thought my stay would be a bit like being in the army since the brochure used words like Reveille, Taps and Canteen. I saw it at least as a male bonding experience like Scouts. I was very concerned that I should have a male counselor and Mom had said, "Don’t worry. You’re not going to have a woman counselor at summer camp."

It was surely an oversight, though amusing, when Mom observed from the literature that a camper confined to a wheelchair could bring along a helper, providing the person was mature and of the same sex. Though she’d read this to me aloud, she said, "Oh, if you were in a wheelchair, I could come along with you."

Imagine my consternation then, when upon stepping from the car, I learned I was in the only boy’s cabin that had a female counselor! Mary Stewart, (Nicknamed Sagebrush since she hailed from Spearfish , South Dakota,) announced that she’d told the camp director that she thought girls were boring and she wanted to work with the boys. Mary grabbed me, declaring we were going to have a whale of a time together. We set off toward the cabin, upon reaching which; she slammed me into an open screen door. Mom said Chris begged all the way back to Winnie’s house for her to turn around and bring me home. She was sure that crazy woman was going to kill her brother!

In spite of our ignominious beginning, Mary turned out to be a good friend and supporter, if actually a bit overprotective. She and I toured the camp and I spent much of my first evening practicing archery with a group of other boys, under the direction of one of the male counselors.

Later we had a campfire, an everyday event, for which each cabin would be called upon in turn, to provide a skit of some kind for the camp’s entertainment. This first evening, the camp counselors performed. A 20-year-old man named George, who came from Hawaii and was quite popular with the women, came out on stage dressed as a girl. "Hi girls!" he said, then "Go to bed boys." We responded with hoots of raucous negation. Then we started learning the interminably round of camp songs and received some briefing on what tomorrow would hold.

Our cabins were somewhat rustic but very nice. We slept in two large rooms, each with several sets of bunk beds in them. There were a couple of smaller rooms for our live-in counselors, John and Jim. Boring or not, Mary slept in the girl’s cabin. Rest rooms and showers were in a separate building as was the dining hall and cook shack.

Each night after we were in bed, Mary read to us from Rascal, about the author, Sterling North’s Wisconsin boyhood and his pet raccoon. The first night I went to sleep in good spirits but when I awoke I had a cold, a headache and a bad case of homesickness. I’d never known before what being homesick was, even at Shannon’s house. The concept had been treated like a kind of joke. Jimmy Magnus used to say he was homesick sometimes, but then he’d lie down in the back of the car on his way home so it seemed like he mostly just didn’t feel like playing anymore. What I was feeling now was very intense, even frightening. The prospect of being away from home for another eleven days seemed an eternity!

On our second morning at camp we held cabin elections. In spite of my cold and tendency to quiver my chin, I was elected president of our cabin. I was also chosen as our representative to the Camper’s Council, a youth organization that allegedly helped run the camp. Against my better judgement, we adopted The Beatles as our cabin name. Like most everyone else, I’d seen the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show the previous fall and was among those who’d decided not to like them.

The camp included kids of about 9-12, with all sorts of handicaps and disabilities. Doug, my vice-president had an artificial leg. He let me feel his stump once. A boy named Butch had one arm and one leg paralyzed from polio. A girl named Debby, whom I befriended, was in a body cast and used a wheelchair. Debby could see though, so I sometimes pushed her wheelchair and with her piloting, we got around together just fine.

The camp had a small library with regular and large print books, even a few Braille volumes. I checked out a book entitled Lone Hunter’s Gray Pony, concerning a boy of the Ugalalla tribe of the Great Plains. By the time I left camp, I’d finished his adventure in quest of his beloved gray pony who’d been stolen by a Kiowa raiding party.

I had scoffed at the idea of taking a nap every afternoon as the itinerary indicated but they were keeping us pretty busy. I never fell asleep during Rascal, but it was hard to stay awake long enough to get much else read some days.

I did some swimming, boating and canoeing, went on some hikes and one snake hunt. I even got bamboozled into being in the camp glee club! I caught several fish, including a couple of cats. I spent most of my free time though, in the craft shop.

Mary helped me make a tiled hot board for Mom to put pans on. I made a tooled key chain holder for Dad. For Chris and Deb. my niece, I made pig banks from plastic Purex bottles. Mary spent a lot of time with me, partly because she thought I could use the help and support I’m sure, but partly because she thought I worked well with my hands.

Mary liked to say, "I’m an old maid schoolteacher from Spearfish, South Dakota and glad of it!" She still resided in Spearfish. She was also aware of her royal Scottish heritage. I’d just been hearing about the Stewarts in Kidnapped and a Child’s History of the World. We talked a lot, sometimes about things like that, sometimes just about stuff generally.

After dinner we’d gather up leftovers and table scraps to feed the ducks and geese another counselor had brought with her from home for the camp session. The birds would hang around the waters edge waiting for Mary and I to chuck bread and potatoes at them.

One evening we were asked to dress for the campfire program as our favorite TV star. That’s sort of problematic when you’ve only got camp clothes. Mary took me down to the girl’s cabin and made me put on a flannel nightie, then gave me a candle so I could be Wee Willie Winky.

One of the boys in my bunkroom had a problem with wetting and messing his bed. After two or three episodes, John, our counselor, went to Spokane and bought diapers and plastic pants. Originally this was supposed to scare Gary out of soiling his bed, but the next night, he wet and told the counselors he hadn’t so on being discovered he was required to wear the items each night for the rest of the session. I don’t know if Gary’s parents knew what was going on, though I assume so, since diapers and pants large enough to fit a ten-year-old would not have been a trivial expense. I’ve mentioned this incident partly because it was so close to another situation at the State School, that I wondered how common this sort of thing was in residential settings generally, or did it happen mostly to the handicapped population?

For our cabin’s performance night, we sang first a number of Beatles songs we’d been learning for the last week, dressed in Beatles wigs supplied by Roger the camp director. The next few numbers were supposedly Indian songs, delivered in feathers and war paint, as we claimed to be South Dakota Sioux. For the second set I was Chief and M.C. For the first set I was Ringo Starr, pounding a large drum with a huge soup ladle.

On our final full day at camp we had a field and water day with games and races. I rowed next to another blind boy, with a leg less boy sitting in the stern of the boat directing us. Our boat came in third, but how many there were in all I don’t know. Mary spent much of our free time that day trying to finish Rascal with us, but we ran out of time and she told me how the story ended. Fifteen years later my wife and I read the book together and I finally got to hear the ending!

Mary gave me a hug and kiss when we parted at the camp bus. The other campers and I were driven to Spokane where we boarded the Greyhound for Seattle. We obtained permission from the other passengers to sing camp songs on our way across the state.

I was probably home about three weeks when the four of us pulled out of the driveway, heading East, but this time toward a destination more distant than ever before. I’d made my decision by now and I’d be heading for Vancouver in less than a month. First though, we were going back to Ohio to meet Dad’s family and see where he’d grown up. This was something he’d been promising us for years but hadn’t happened since I was born.

Chris and I had been saving half of our allowance, which totaled a dime per week, through most of the school year. I’d amassed about a dollar sixty in my half-pint Lucerne milk carton bank by the time my birthday arrived and after my spending spree with Jim, had ended with $8.03.

It took us three days to get from Seattle across Montana, with an overnight stop in Billings and frequent side trips to interesting places, souvenir shops and whenever possible, shady parks for Mom. I was interested in scooters these days. Both Jim and Robby Forthoffer had motor scooters and I talked about them with Uncle Jerry when I saw him now after almost four years absence.

Sleeping in our trailer through the wee hours, and taking afternoon rests in cool places when we could find them, we traveled across a corner of North Dakota, on across South Dakota, then across Minnesota and Wisconsin. On the seventh day we made it across Illinois, with a stop for lunch in Chicago, then through Indiana. By mid-evening we pulled into Holgate, Ohio, where Uncle Willis lived with Phoebe his wife and six-year-old son Charles.

Uncle Willy was the brother whom Grandpa had beaten senseless as a boy, after Dad had left home. The family generally agreed that Willy had sustained brain damage as a result of this repeated treatment. He tended to be rather simple, slow of speech and I’d heard he could be quite stubborn. Aunt Phoebe was a schoolteacher who had been a nurse in an Army hospital during the Korean War. Willy had been one of her patients. Aunt Phoebe was glad to let anyone know who’d listen, that Willis had disappointed her mightily, failing to go to college and become a minister as she’d planned for him. Willy was a hard worker who did auto assembly for General Motors. He never seemed to lack money and had been working since he was a kid, but a scholar he wasn’t. He was very good to Chris and me. He talked with me about being in the Army Artillery and his work at GM. He let me sit in on poker games with him.

In Ohio, children were allowed to go into taverns when accompanied by an adult, though they couldn’t drink beer of course. This was a heavily German community in which we were staying and the attitude was that kids were better off where their parents were. Taverns were required to serve some kind of food, even if only bread and sausages.

Grandma and Grandpa Plassman came to eat with us in Westhope, (Dad’s old stompin’ grounds,) and to play cards. Uncle Vick, Dad’s youngest brother, had driven down from Benton Harbor Michigan to be with us too. Stories about Dad’s exploits in his younger days started to circulate. Vick and Dad tried speaking German to each other, sending Grandma and Grandpa into hysterics.

When we’d originally planned the trip, Mom and I were going to spend about three days in Ohio then drive to the East Coast, to visit D.C. perhaps spend a day at the New York World Fair, which had been open for some time now, and drive through Virginia to visit Revolutionary and Civil War historical sites. Once we got to Ohio though, we sort of stuck and I learned we weren’t going east at all but were driving to Michigan instead. I protested this lapse in our plans and an older female person said "Oh honey, you’ll have another chance to travel." It’s interesting to note that my only other chance so far to travel in the East allowed me to meet some interesting people but was significantly marred by a traffic jam, a city workers’ strike and a bomb threat.

While in Ohio I began to have some notion of how many relatives I had on Dad’s side of the family. We met Uncle Herman and Aunt Henrietta, with whom he’d lived as a boy. We also met Uncle Adolph and Aunt Mary who was bald and wore a long, red wig. There was also a complex web of cousins in varying degrees, which I never did manage to figure out. Notable among these was Eddie Middleton, cousin by marriage to my second or third gal cousin, Bernadine. Eddie liked me partly because I was British like him.

Our next stop was Benton Harbor, where Uncle Vick took me on a tour of his dry-cleaning plant. While Dad had gone back in the Service and Willy had stayed in Ohio, Uncles Bob and Vern, later Vick, had gone into the one-hour Martinizing franchise business. Uncle Bob would probably have been satisfied with his hardware store in a Detroit suburb had Verne, the mover and shaker of the family, not drawn first his elder than youngest brother into the enterprise.

Uncle Verne told me many years later that he’d been faced with accepting a commission to command a Coast Guard Cutter or the financing on his first Drycleaners which he was sure would be a moneymaker. With about 24 hours to make up his mind one way or the other, Verne was right in his assessment of the business. Soon he was getting Bob to invest, then reinvest his money to buy more and more plants. Now the boys owned 32 Drycleaning establishments throughout Ohio and Michigan, part interest in three oil wells and one or two insurance companies.

Uncle Vick, now only 27, had only one plant and was still somewhat in training under Vern. Vick would eventually move to Las Vegas to get out from under his brother’s heavy thumb.

At this time Vick, his wife Carol, daughters Angela and Andrea and son Vick Jr. lived in a very nice one-story house, within easy walking distance of both work and the barbershop. Vick introduced me to his barbers Willy and Maurice and Eddie, who gave me a shoeshine. Vick had told me on the way over that these were colored men, but very nice. I’d been hearing the last year or so about the civil rights movement and was very upset about black people being treated unkindly. The South of course, came in for most of the criticism but I can attest that the Midwest wasn’t exactly a hotbed of liberal sentiment racially, either. I mentioned to the crowd at the barbershop that I intended to go to Law School then enter politics and was very happy when several of the men said they’d vote for me.

At the drycleaners Vick introduced me to his employees and showed me some of the machinery, the big dryer and the steam gun used for taking spots out of clothes. When I asked him to put me to work, he showed me how to put cardboard pants guards on hangers. This was a fairly uninspiring task perhaps but I’d turn a considerable amount of change over the next couple of years doing just that.

That Evening Uncle Bob and Uncle Vern came to visit us at Vick’s house and I met my cousin Don, a year older than me and about the only other one of the Plassman kid’s whom I’d call studious. Don and I had a long talk about the Spanish Armada and other historical events. We also had fun with an Etchisketch, seeing how well I could draw without sight.

Uncle Bob and his wife Marilyn, whom I didn’t meet till later, had three boys. Bob Jr. (for years known as Tyke), Don and John. Tyke and Johnny were hellions, more my sister’s speed than mine. Marilyn liked to say that Donny was her little girl. There was nothing feminine about Don but he did take after his father who was known as the gentleman of the family.

Chris and I stayed with a sitter and Vick’s kids the second night while Vick and Carol, Mom and Dad drove to Chicago to watch a Big League game between the Twins and the Red Socks. Uncle Vick, who knew Jerry Fosneau of the Minnesota Twins, got me the baseball with Jerry’s autograph on it. Though I’d never been much of a sports fan, I understood the excitement Uncle Vick felt in presenting this to me and tried to act as enthusiastic as a Normal American boy should.

Our last stop on the way West was in Albion, at Uncle Verne and Aunt Marlene’s house. Marlene was and is a delightful lady, the same being true of her three daughters, Jennifer, Julie and Amy. At some point Uncle Verne told us, rather than asking, that we were moving back here.

Verne said he had it all figured out. He had a plant in Ann Arbor that we could buy on an easy contract. I could go to school in Lansing, about 40 miles away, and come home every weekend.

As we were leaving, Verne gave me a dollar as well as one of the new Kennedy Half-dollars. Jim had shown me the coin before but it was the first time I’d owned one. He also gave me money for Chris.

"Well" asked Mom as we pulled out of Albion on our long return trip, "how would you kids feel about living back here?" I think I said it’d be okay. Michigan was an older part of the country than Washington and it was a lot closer to the East Coast, which was my main area of interest in the U.S. just then. Chris was against the idea from the beginning. I didn’t really know that Mom and Dad were serious about the move until a number of weeks had gone by and by then I was enrolled at the State School in Vancouver.

We’d left ourselves a bit short on return time. The baseball game was putting us at least a day late. Dad called his boss and told him we’d blown a tire and lost the day getting it fixed. We didn’t hurry particularly although we didn’t take so many side trips as before.

We spent the next to the last night at Margaret and Jerry’s in Billings. We spent the afternoon and evening previous as well as much of the morning after too. In the living room waiting for me, was a scooter Uncle Jerry had built for me from wood and recycled bike-training wheels. There was no steering mechanism but I could lift the front by its broomstick handlebars and turn to right or left almost without stopping.

It had been hard for me to ride pedal-conveyances in the five years since losing my sight. With the scooter, one foot was frequently in contact with the sidewalk or the dirt or grass along the edge. I could easily follow along the length of a block with little or no supervision. Christine developed a strategy whereby we rode down the hill in front of our house together, then back up again. On the way down she’d ride the rather massive pedal tractor while I had the light scooter. On the way back up of course, we’d switch with Chris on the scooter, able to supply lots of helpful advice.

That was the last thing Jerry ever made for me and the last time I saw Jerry, though I would see Margaret and Dave again. I don’t think there was any real break with Jerry, but things change a lot over a handful of years and our travels would not take us to Billings again for many years and Jerry wasn’t much for travel.

As with my dad, I started hearing a great deal more about Jerry’s drinking and his abuse of Margaret and Dave. The Jerry I was now hearing about wasn’t recognizable as the kind uncle I’d known but he’d always had a drinking problem evidently. Mom had seen him go through three six-packs in an evening then drink straight vodka by the water glass full. She’d heard him verbally abusing his wife when they thought nobody was listening. Mom and Margaret had gone to the Greyhound station for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. According to Jerry, that made them both streetwalkers. Jerry whipped Dave ritualistically with a belt, adding three strokes for each new infraction, until at thirteen lashes Dave had begun fighting back.

Jerry died about the time I got married in ’78. Like so many others, he was someone of whom I was privileged to see the best.

We spent our last night on the road at Aunt Winnie’s. Winnie had bought Chris and I darling little transistor radios with leatherette cases and earphones. I used mine for the next fifteen years and Winnie said it was the best $9.95 she ever spent.

Winnie had gotten up before we’d awakened and she’d put out a dollar apiece for Chris and me, with a note telling us to buy our own lunches. That was the first time I’d priced my own lunch, item by item. I bought a bowl of chicken noodle soup for a quarter and milk for a dime. Seeing I had a lot of money left, I spent another 35-cents to buy Dad a beer, one of three he had with lunch, with a hundred miles left to drive.

I never thought I’d be in any great hurry to get home, but the closer we got to Seattle, the more I missed my niece Debby. We made a beeline straight to Lois and Bruce’s. Lois was at this time about six months pregnant with a third child. This one would be born safely and raised within the family.

Mom drove me to Vancouver on September 8, 1964. Parting wasn’t too difficult, because I already knew some of the kids and was soon outside, playing on the teeter-totter. Mom had a heart to heart with the head houseparent, Mrs. Howgan, about Stan. Of course, when Mom left, Stan and I started having a great time together. Mrs. Howgan asked us wouldn’t it be nice to get to know some of the other boys, rather than being together all of the time? I murmured to Stan that there were evil spirits about and I’d have to tell him about them later.

When I had the chance to talk privately with Stan he was surprised and hurt that my mother disliked him so. Both of us did meet plenty of other kids, but we spent a lot of time together too, especially in the first couple of weeks.

The first evening I was okay until sometime after dinner when I sat down to watch some TV and the homesickness struck with a vengeance. I guess I thought having come through camp would make me immune. Eventually Mrs. Howgan came around and told several of us we should go to bed. I was small for my age and often treated as younger than I was, by people who didn’t know me. This evening I didn’t care. I went to bed and cried myself to sleep.

The bell sounded at 6:30 in the morning and it would keep sounding at intervals through the day until 8:45 P.M. I dressed and queued in the bathroom and soon the breakfast bell was rung a hand-held version this time. We embarked upon stewed prunes and hot cereal. I was still a fairly picky eater, but didn’t find anything objectionable about the food that I can remember. Somebody else did though and the school nurse somehow materialized, threatening to spank anybody who didn’t eat his cereal. I would hear much more about the School Nurse before my career in boarding school was ended.

After breakfast we trooped back to the bathroom to brush our teeth and wash up and around Eight twenty, Larry Dizatelle, the boy who had befriended me on my initial visit, took Stan and I over to our classroom.

Mrs. Rinquist was our teacher for Fifth Grade. She was nearing retirement and could tell stories about teaching in a one-room Montana schoolhouse. Mabel Rinkydink as some of us later came to call her when she was well out of earshot, was really a very kind-hearted lady, but very doctrinaire and took pains to impress on one how stern she was.

Back in public school it had been pretty much customary when you had your assignments done, to bug your neighbors or sit and daydream at which, as has been made abundantly clear, I was quite adept. Mrs. Rinquist saw me sitting idle during study time, (I’d finished my work,) and she told me I could find something to do or she’d be glad to help. During our reading class, when she was explaining something to us and she evidently thought I wasn’t looking properly attentive, Mrs. Rinquist, having to be reminded of my name, said she hoped I wouldn’t be asking her later what she’d said, because I was expected to pay attention in her class. By now I was feeling properly persecuted.

Thank the Goddess I enjoyed reading! Mrs. Rinquist took us to the school library the first day of class and let us browse a while to chose a book to fill our free time.

The prospect of living with in a short walk from a real library was for me, one of the school’s chief selling points. For a few minutes I nearly forgot how sad I was as I began my reaquaintance with old friends and new friendships with titles yet to be read. I was looking for something on Colonial History and wasn’t all that successful right off. I did find several old favorites though, never seen in Braille before. There was a story about a boy with polio back in the 1400s, a book about Chief Cochise and even a Braille version of Kidnapped.

I must have been too slow for Mrs. Rinquist. She thrust a volume into my hands, "Here, David, Son of Black Stallion, a book about a horse." I suppose by then even the thought of refuting Anne Grant would have sent me into paroxysms of homesickness, but for the record, I understood the book easily enough. I just wasn’t all that interested in it though. What I’d liked about Black Stallion, the first book of the series, was Alec’s sojourn on the island where he and the Black had refuged and became friends after the shipwreck. About a fourth of the way through Son of B.S. I switched to an Eighth-grade textbook on American History, then read a book on the Adventures of Marco Polo.

When I began Robinson Crusoe, Mrs. Rinquist took my measure once more and found me to be quite acceptable. The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe had been here favorite book while growing up, she said. She had read it about fourteen times. When we had free time now, she’d sometimes come over, ask me where I was in the story and talk over details of the island experience.

In our class we had, in no particular order, Larry Dizatelle, Llana Oler, Donna Bodington, Cheryl Walker, Ellen (Candy) Keyes, Steve Baines, Audrey Jacques, Charles Shortridge, Earl Writsma, Diana Smith, Stan and myself. Steve and Audrey were about Sixteen; Earl, Charles and Ellen were perhaps Fourteen. Stan and Larry were their only other student members of our class who were also in my cottage.

On Friday of our first partial week, we celebrated an annual event know as the WaterMelon Feed. Local farmers donated melons to the school and various games or activities were organized for younger and older students. Since we were in Fifth Grade, my classmates and I were included among the younger students. Our game was a water melon treasure hunt for which we were organized into four teams, each with partially sighted members and members able to read Braille. Braille clues were hidden along each of four routes and it was the Braille reader’s job to read the clues when found, directing the team toward the next patch of bushes or expanse of flower bed where the next clue might be found. It was the sighted members’ job to get everyone to the next spot as quickly as possible. I was partnered with Audrey, from my class, a girl more than a foot taller than me and much faster. Immediately I was in trouble for not being able to keep up. It was a pretty dismal capper for an already bad evening.

Earlier I’d called home, having decided that to remain longer in Vancouver would likely be fatal. I’d determined to contribute my savings of $20.00, accrued over my years of school banking, to help our move to Michigan grow closer. Mom said twenty dollars was a lot of money, but to move, we’d need about $500. She said we’d be moving sometime in November and I couldn’t possibly leave the school until the first quarter was over. This wasn’t true, but perhaps Mom believed it. At the time I did.

Mom asked me what it was I was afraid would happen if I stayed at Vancouver. I didn’t have the nerve to say I thought I’d die, so I said I was afraid I’d break down and cry out loud. Mom said it was okay to cry. Dad said that when he was in the Marines, he saw big men sitting on their bunks, crying because they were so homesick. That made me feel a little better. If Marines could cry, so can I! (A song title here, which I offer free to the aspiring lyricist.)

Early in the second week at school I met I met a boy about a year younger than me, named Terry Atwater. Somehow we got into a discussion about weaponry and military events in centuries past. We discovered in each other a number of common interests, chiefly history and reading generally. We were soon good friends. Terry had even read some of the Narnian books as well as the Wizard and the Land of Oz. He encouraged me to read Treasure Island, as I encouraged him to read Kidnapped. We spent hours listening to Mystery Theatre on KGO San Francisco in Terry’s room. I met Harry Lime and, Johnny Dollar and other new series.

There were eighteen of us living in our cottage. None us were younger than Nine. Most boys were transitioned to the older cottage at around age thirteen. This might be delayed a year or two in the case of retarded boys, of which we had several, but it was unusual for anyone to be in Cottage Three much past fourteen.

The cottage was essentially a large, one-story brick home, with dining and rec.-rooms, office, laundry and minimal kitchen. A long sleeping hall extended off the back of the cottage, with nine single rooms on the right as one headed rearward, two more singles, two double rooms and the bathroom on the left. That meant the cottage was designed for fifteen residents the three extra were accommodated by putting up bunk beds in the double rooms. This turned these rooms into three and four bed wards. These were generally occupied by retarded residents who needed extra help dressing and undressing and could be assisted severally by one attendant per room.

My room was a single, first on the right. My next door neighbor was Bobby Mahoney, about as likely as me to cry from homesickness, though this was his third or fourth year in residential school. The singles were about eight by ten, with twin-size bed, built-in desk, and dresser, closet and overhead cupboard. There was one window, screened and openable and one sliding door. This was the first time I’d had a room to myself since age Five.

Our house parents that year were generally pleasant. Mrs. Petit, whom I’d met the year previous, came on duty about Six A.M. and worked till 2:30. Then Mrs. Howgan took over and worked till Eleven. P.M. We theoretically had a house parent on duty at night, but that person had to spend part of the shift in our cottage and part in the older boys’ cottage.

Actually this is only an approximate schedule since Mrs. Howgan got a night off by having Mrs. Petit relieve her on Thursday, and Mrs. Petit had Wednesday off, so a fill-in house parent, Mrs. Erdin was there during the day on Wednesday and Thursday. I was rather scared of Mrs. Erdin at first because she always sounded angry but I later learned to like her quite a bit and appreciated her forthrightness in the face of veiled innuendo and circumlocution so common among others of the house parents.

It seems funny that I should remember so many details of our schedule and daily regimen, but these were the pulses that ordered our lives back then. Ones quality of life on a given day could be seriously affected by whomever was on deck. For example, bedtimes were rather arbitrary that year, ranging from Eight P.M. for "little boys," more than likely referring to retarded residents who might be anywhere from ten to fifteen years of age; to Nine or Nine-thirty, depending on how well-disposed the house parent felt that evening. Thursday was a fun night because Mrs. Petit liked the new show Bewitched and let some of us (not in the "little" category,) stay up and watch it. That gave us a Nine-thirty bedtime. Later we coaxed Mrs. Howgan into letting us stay up till ten on Sunday to watch Bonanza.

Our meals were mostly prepared in the central kitchen and brought over to the cottages in steam carts. There was bread, condiments, milk, cold cereal and the like in the cottages, but in general, anything more ambitious than toast, was brought in. Saturday morning we had pancakes, waffles or French Toast. Saturday dinner was usually hotdogs, hamburgers or sloppy joes with salad and chips. Sunday dinner was served in the early afternoon, following church services and was usually something like baked chicken, ham or turkey, with the fixin’s then we’d have a light supper, usually sandwiches or some such in the evening.

Our coursework wasn’t all that different from public school so far as general academics went. We used the Braillewriter for all work, including math, which Miss Larson thought to be a punishment, but I got used to it. We also used only press Braille books rather than thermoformed ones, which bears some explaining.

Braille books such as those ordered from the Library for the Blind, were hardcover volumes produced on printing presslike machines, via a process called Interpunch. This meant that dots were punched in such a way as to allow text to appear on both sides of the page. Between two lines on page 1. a line of page 2. could be punched in the blank space. Each side of the page showed but dots and craters, which was visually confusing but it paged more pages in a book in the same way that printing on both sides makes print books require fewer leaves.

In Seattle, we had professionally interpunched books for Reading, and English typically. Spelling, Math and Social Studies books were generally brailled by volunteers, on one side of the page, using Braillewriters like mine. These books were reproduced via a method called Thermoforming, in which a thin sheet of plastic was heated and drawn down over a paper master to make a copy. These plastic pages tended to make ones fingers sweat and built up static electricity as it was read. When my daughter was little I used to entertain her and her mother by turning out the lights and running my hands over a plastic page, causing visible sparks to snap in the dark and making the radio sputter with each discharge. Throughout Fourth Grade in public school we didn’t have Braille science books at all, but relied on televised science classes on the educational channel.

At the State School we used hard-back, professionally produced textbooks exclusively. This meant that our material wasn’t as up-to-date as that in public school since we used the most recent text book available from the American Printing House for the Blind even if it wasn’t that used by our sighted contemporaries. Our books however were of more uniform quality and generally freer of errors and irregularities. Reel-to-reel tapes were sometimes used in both the state and local programs for the blind, but the relative scarcity of machines made that mode of reading more suitable for individual rather than classroom studies. It would be some time yet before the National Library Service would issue tape players to all patrons.

Most notably different from our coursework in public school, Stan and I were now taking Wood Shot and Gym. In shop we were learning to use hand tools, creating simple but useful projects. Older students could learn power tools if they chose, including the bandsaw, table saw, electric drill, planer and power sander. Girls had some shop classes in starting in Seventh Grade, while boys had some home EC.

I’d been working with wood in fairly simple ways for most of my life and was eager to learn more. Mr. Olson, our shop teacher was a loud, sarcastic and often obnoxious guy with the manners of a bully. I’d never had a man teacher before and hoped Mr. O. wasn’t representative of the breed.

Our PE classes were arranged in a series of three, 3-week blocks which were repeated four times during the year. The students in Grades 4-6 were divided into three groups each of which were at a given time doing either Swimming, Tumbling or Rhythms, (essentially folk and square dancing.) I started with tumbling, an ominous-sounding class, made even more obnoxious by the requirement that we must undress in the locker room and don elastic-waist shorts and T-shirts, each with W.S.B. decaled on their fronts. Girls were allowed to keep their own underwear but boys were expected to wear an improbable contraption referred to as a "jockey strap." The whole idea of having to remove my underwear at school felt very intrusive in the first place and more than anything else, pointed up the difference between being home and being Here! I had difficulty putting on the jock, partly because the smallest size was way too big for me.

I asked why I had to wear such a thing anyway, and Charles Shortridge told me "It protects you."

I said, "Hell, if I need protecting I’m not going out there!"

We started with simple exercises, summersaults, forward then backward, and attempts to stand on our heads. I didn’t care much for Gym and found I wasn’t alone in that feeling, but this was the major reason I was here, at least in Mom’s view. Gym was Eighth Period, which after showering and resuming our clothes, put us back to the Cottage about 4:20. With an Eight-thirty start and only one recess, in the morning between Second and Third periods, during which we were required to go back to the cottage and quaff juice, by order of the Nurse, this made for a long day. Long especially when compared to the Nine to Three-ten schedule we had at John Hay.

Stan and I rode the 5:36 train out of Vancouver Station on the evening of September 18, just ten days after we’d come, but if felt like forever! The trip was about four hours. Railroad workers helped us detrain in Seattle and sat us down in the depot. Mom, Dad and Chris had all come to meet me. Soon I was answering questions about school in the most positive way possible. I’d been intending to pour out my woes and dissatisfactions but found myself instead, extolling the education I was getting. I knew Mom and Dad wanted Vancouver to work for me, at least for the year. We were still talking about Michigan, but we also talked as if I’d be there for the year, sometimes people making new plans tend to do that.

I had a craving for pop and candy. Bobby Mahoney and I had been given a chocolate apiece one afternoon by Mrs. Howgan who told us she didn’t have enough for everyone, but she loved us especially, but I’d not made a candy run to the store in two weekends now.

Saturday I got Mom to take me first to the Johnson’s then to the Magnuses. Ruth was eager to hear about what I was doing in PE. She said our uniforms and classes were like the ones Ronny was doing in High School, except they didn’t have a swimming pool.

I admitted to Jim that I’d been homesick the first few days I was at Vancouver and he joked that if I got homesick we’d have trouble taking a Trip next summer. "We wouldn’t get five miles down the road before we’d have to turn around and come home!" This encouraged me that Jim still intended running away with me in less than a year now. With the greatly strengthened body I expected to have by then, I was sure I’d be well suited for a career at piracy.

The Johnsons came over for an early dinner before I was to board the train back to school. I hadn’t let myself think about actually going back and I found myself crying again as the time to leave approached. I did this every time I went back to Vancouver this first few weeks, though Monday morning would generally see me doing just fine.

The second time I went home, on October 2^nd, Mom and Dad drove me back to Vancouver and I was able to bring along my Braillewriter, my talking book machine as well as my notebook from John Hay. I started a Diary, just a couple of lines each day. Mrs. Rinquist had discussed how nice it was to have a record of ones thoughts and activities. She and my house parents were quite impressed that I actually kept one.

Like Miss Larson, Mrs. Rinquist read us a chapter of a book each day. We began with Miracles on Maple Hill, about ten-year-old Marlie and syrup making in Pennsylvania. I’d already read this a number of times, but it was loaded with details about stoves, old houses, woodscraft, plants and trees.

We moved on to Little House on the Prairie by Laura Engels Wilder, and other books, usually historical novels or traditional folkways.

I also enjoyed our reading and Social Studies books. This year was American History and the reading book also supplied a lot of stories about pioneers, colonial life and early inventors.

We were also learning to type this year. I’d been doing this for nearly two years, but as Mom put it, "It’d probably do you good to just start all over again." I was a bit ahead of the rest of the class though and Mrs. Flansburg let me work out of the typing book before the others and even let me type letters.

In Gym I was enjoying Swimming much more than Tumbling and I was swimming now with more confidence and skill than before. After Mr. Olson tried to drown me by ordering me to swim across the pool at a place over my head, Mrs. Osland had taken me in hand at the shallow end and showed me how to stay reliably at the top of the water.

One afternoon following Lunch Period, Stanley hadn’t returned to our class. Mrs. Rinquist told us in quiet tones that he had been put back in Fourth Grade. She spoke as if Stan had died or something and wouldn’t allow his name to be mentioned in class after that. Of course, I went to Stan as soon as I could and tried delicately to express my sadness that he wasn’t in my grade anymore. He said "Well Dave, like my Uncle Don says, the more times you do it it’s just that much better you learn it."

Stan was in trouble in the cottage too. Though Vancouver was seen as a remedy for discipline problems at home and in school being one kid among eighteen and having a room down toward the end of the hallway, didn’t make for intensive supervision on the house parents’ part. Besides taking care of us, the house parent on duty, with the help of a part time assistant, was responsible for cleaning, laundering, helping to prepare and serve food, as well as keeping track of paperwork, such as student quarterly evaluations, weekly allowances, addressing and reading mail. Down in room #7, Stan was having fun with a younger and rather troublesome kid named Billy, tearing radio components apart, breaking open batteries, sticking wires into light switches and plugging strange things into wall sockets. Stan was also good at concocting mixtures from everything imaginable and sometimes managed to smell up the entire cottage.

Stan always had good reasons for the things he did such as wishing to preserve flowers in a miraculous solution, or creating a knockout gas to put enemies to sleep. House parents weren’t interested in the details though. They switched Stan and me so he was in the nearest room now, in which Mrs. Howgan taped over all of the electrical plug-ins.

Our school day didn’t end when we returned to the cottage in the afternoon. Monday through Friday we had a 45-minute study period in the library after dinner. That was more of a joy for me than anything else, since I habitually did my homework directly on coming home from classes, and sometimes even during lunch period after we’d eaten. That left me with Study Hall free, to read what I wanted or to browse the bookshelves.

On Tuesdays, after Gym, we had a co-ed recreational swim, and then after Study Hall boys had Wrestling for 45 minutes. Thursday afternoon, after regular Gym, was a special swim for totally blind boys, (why, I’m not entirely sure,) and on Thursday night, again after study Hall, still another swim. That meant if you were in the swim class in your PE rotation, you’d be in the pool three periods on Thursday if you also happened to be male and Total. On Friday we had no Study Hall, but we had a non-optional, recreational Gym period. On Saturday morning, about 11:15, we had another recreational swim and about Two in the afternoon, another recreational Gym, which might involve skating, ball games of various types, working out in the tumbling or weight rooms.

I generally loved the swims, dreaded the Gyms. Girls, who didn’t have wrestling, were required to take fitness and modern dance on Wednesday evenings. They said they hated that as well. Mr. Anderson, our tumbling and wrestling coach, also taught the girl’s classes and the ones who could see, said he looked freaky moving and exercising like a girl. (It’s only fair to note that Richard Anderson went quite far in the try-outs for the ’64 Olympics and was one of the movers behind the initial organizing of Special Olympics.)

In Cottage Four, where the older boys lived, there was a candy store down in the basement, supervised by Mr. Gustavson, (Gus), the head house parent, and in which a number of the boys worked to earn Christmas money and gain some job experience. Each of us in Cottage Three got a dime on the weekend, drawn by the house parent from small individual accounts maintained at about a $15 level by our parents. We could use this allowance money for candy, pop or ice cream. I’d been used to getting by with just a nickel at home. One evening Stan and I made a point of going over to Cottage Four together, each of us buying a bottle of pop with his dime. We sat together then, drinking and talking about stuff generally, a friendly, relaxing thing and something that felt grown-up too. At home, soda pop was generally controlled by parents and consumed at the dinner table.

On Sunday, we were given another nickel and loaded aboard the school’s bus, Petunia, which stopped at a dozen or so churches in the Vancouver area. I went with several other boys and girls to Trinity Lutheran, where Pastor Johnson delivered a brief message to Sunday schoolers before we went to our respective classes.

My Sunday School teacher was named Mrs. Ordd. I didn’t have a Braille Sunday School book that year though I would in Sixth Grade, but I don’t recall having trouble participating in the class. Mrs. Ordd discussed the differences between some Lutheran beliefs and some Roman Catholic beliefs with me. She said Catholics believed in a Purgatory in which people who weren’t good enough to get into Heaven but not quite bad enough to be in Hell went. Catholics believed that you could help move someone out of Purgatory by praying for him or her after death, but, she warned, Lutherans believed in only two places so you’d better do your praying before someone died, not after. This was the first time I’d ever been able to attend Sunday school for more than three or four weeks running.

On Sunday Afternoons our cottage often took walks or picnicked, weather permitting, sometimes with Cottage Two, the girl’s cottage, accompanying us. Once we took the school bus over to Portland, then walked across the bridge over the Columbia River, back to the Campus, about a three-mile distance.

One Sunday we had gone to a nearby park for lunch and the girl’s were with us. Sitting on a swing, I heard two girls rough-housing. One of them hit the other accidentally in the wrong place and the other said "Ouch, you got me right in the wiener." They laughed, then discussed the fact that they didn’t have wieners.

"Ours is round isn’t it?" said the second girl. Her friend agreed. The exchange let me know that girls discussed such things just as boys did and it reinforced an erroneous assumption of mine that girls lacked a penis, but probably had testicles. Since I had no idea whatsoever what mine were for, there seemed no reason why girls shouldn’t have them too.

Early one morning I awoke to distressed crying and the night house parent’s voice saying sternly "Slide up on that diaper, David." David Peck had wet his bed again and the house parents had decided on remedial action. David was thirteen and afflicted with a variety of physical, mental and emotional problems; including Dwarfism, stammering, mental retardism, deformity and additional speech impediments. He also appeared to have an emotional difficulty which caused him to wet or mess himself when stressed or upset. Dave had gone through bouts of this off and on for years evidently and the house parents, in the Draconian fashion acceptable there and then, ascribed stubborn willfulness as the cause of this problem and responded by first spanking, then diapering him.

This time a new wrinkle was introduced. Mrs. Howgan decreed that David must wear only a diaper, T-shirt, shoes and socks while walking to school, attending class and even on outings. We were all encouraged to make fun of Dave and he was even made to sit in the front window of the cottage, so girls passing by, could see him if they were able, or if not, hear from their friends.

Once I was confronted by two girls who started making fun of me for wearing diapers. I made some protest or counter-insult in return and one of the girls who was in my class said, "This is Plassman, not Peck." "Yeah," I said, "I’m Plassman." I’m ashamed to say that I took gleeful part in making fun of Dave with all the rest. Ashamed, yes but angry too. I must’ve known that I was being unkind but I also believed I was being virtuous in helping Dave to overcome his stubborn behavior. Weren’t the house parents making cruel fun of him every time they dressed him in the morning? Unsurprisingly the therapy didn’t work. Later that year David was dismissed from school until such time that he should "be potty trained." So far as I know, he never returned to Vancouver.

I got in some mild trouble with Mrs. Rinquist from time to time and spent some time in the hall, mostly for talking out or making funny voices in class. She commented once that when I first arrived I was always very quiet and very meek but now I was getting quite noisy. "I think it’s because you like us," she concluded. On one sojourn in the hall I was greeted by an unfamiliar by hearty voice,

"What are you doing out here kid, resting?!"

"I got send out in the hall," I answered sheepishly.

"Oh," she said, "as long as you’re out here you might as well have a Rest!" This was my first meeting with Mrs. Barns, who never sent kids out in the hall. She didn’t need to!

I was still popular in class and at the cottage. One House parent’s report described me as "A ray of sunshine." This of course made my little sister gag and declare they were spoiling me down there. I was doing something else to which I was tending to impress my elders.

My first serious writing effort since the King Henry Scroll, was entitled Seventeenth Century American Pirates. It was based on Howard Pyle and a few other sources, being a general information on piracy and how it developed in the New World, descriptions of weapons used and some brief narratives about the doings of individual pirates. I think it was 16 Braille pages long, perhaps 5 in print. Mrs. Howgan gave me needle and thread to try my hand at bookbinding, in exchange for my drying of glasses and silverware for her that evening.

My second "book" was a story called The Castle at London, set in the year 1600, near the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Sir John Alexander lived in a fortified manorhouse at the outskirts of Londontown. He is a defender of the Realm and of course, very noble.

Sir John is awakened one night by ominous sounds. Intruders in the house! He seizes a saber and runs out of his bedchamber, prepared to do battle. The burglars flee. Subsequent searching reveals they have made off with a certain packet of maps and sailing instructions to a South Atlantic island which is a private holding of the Alexander Family. Treasure is rumored to reside there.

Sir John boards his yacht and gives chase, engaging the villains in a sea fight near the destination island and is rewarded by the Queen because these were really bad guys anyway who already had a price on their heads.

Why the burglars have waited till just now to steal the maps and why the treasure on the island had been ignored so far by Sir John’s family, are issues lightly passed over in the narrative. Terry Atwater said the story was "sort of like Treasure Island."

Halloween was a rather eventful time this year, spanning several events actually. The previous Monday we’d had a Halloween assembly in which several of us read original poems about ghosts and witches. Thursday evening I carved a pumpkin brought from home, using Aunt Winnie’s knife and a spoon from the cottage. I have made better efforts since but for a first independent production it wasn’t bad.

On Friday Afternoon, we had a Halloween party in Mrs. Rinquist’s class, with refreshments, apple bobbing, stories, and a spelling Bee in which I was one of the last three or four standing.

That evening we had another party in the girl’s cottage, with more refreshments, games and prizes. I remember rolling a peanut with my nose and winning a tube of rubbery bubble-blowing compound, but can’t remember what else we did. I think this was the first time I’d ever been in the girl’s residence.

Saturday was actually Halloween and girls from the Y Teens or Jr. YWCA, came to take us trick-or-treating. I’d joined the school Cub Scout Troop of which the 3^rd Grade teacher Mrs. Brose was the den-leader, about two weeks before and had been just issued my uniform. I wore that at the house parent’s suggestion, having no other costume but found out I had broken the rules in doing so. I was new though and wasn’t sanctioned after the fact.

Stan and I had a very pleasant fall evening walking around the neighborhood with two girls of about sixteen or seventeen, collecting candy, walnuts and pennies. The girl I was with, told me on our return that I had a "real cool pad." I told her that I was born on a launching pad, which I thought sounded cute and clever. She put her pennies in my bag, saying she didn’t need them, (though I noticed she kept her candy.) Looking back, I suppose that was the most I’ve ever been paid for stand-up comedy.

As has been previously mentioned, Lois had been pregnant through all this time. "Hasn’t she had that baby Yet?!" Mrs. Howgan expostulated when I returned from a going-home weekend on October 18. On the day before Halloween, I came to the dinner table with everyone else and Mrs. Howgan said

"David, a letter came for you today and I thought the others would like to hear it, if you don’t mind." I agreed and she read a birth announcement for Kelly Christine Brown, Born October 28, 1964.

October was exciting for other reasons as well. The ’64 presidential election between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater would be held on November 3. A couple weeks previous, Senator Henry Jackson, Democrat from Washington, came to officially dedicate our recently completed gymnasium as The John F. Kennedy Athletic Center. We went through our paces for the Senator, I was in the pool part of the time and I believe playing some sort of ball tag during another phase. At the end of our performance, we clustered in the lobby, sweaty in our gym clothes, while Senator (called Scoop because he’d been a newspaperman once,) Jackson made a speech about the importance of physical education. He said they had a gym and swimming pool in the Capitol building, or perhaps nearby.

Scoop Jackson had a rather special significance to my family, since he’d been a childhood friend of Ruth Johnson. Ruth and Scoop’s sister played house and pretended to be grown-up ladies writing letters to one another. This was before they could read, but they’d scribble missives back and forth to one another anyhow and younger brother Scoop was their mailman. In later years, Senator Jackson was a very powerful representative of Washington State and a staunch friend to his constituency. On more than one occasion he helped me when I was getting bureaucratic runaround from State or Federal agencies.

On election day we were voting. Not for real of course, but as a school wide Social Studies exercise. We were given large print or Braille ballots which we marked with pencils and the votes were tallied. Mrs. Rinquist tried to impress us with how personal ones vote was, but most of us were pretty loud about whom we supported. I kept whispering Goldwater’s going down the toilet! until Earl Writsma ran over and pinched me!. In later years I had cause to wish more people had taken Senator Goldwater, Republican from Arizona, more seriously. This year I voted the straight Democratic ticket. I thought Dad would be pleased. He was a staunch union man and had been heard to say "Pee on the Republican Party!" President Johnson won reelection in our school as in the actual polls.

The plans were set. I’d be leaving school on the 20^th of November. Dad would work his last day at Safeway and Mom would come down to get me. She and I would be flying to Michigan on the 23^rd, while Dad and Chris traveled overland in the station wagon, with most of our possessions, except the furniture which would come by moving van.

Things had changed a good deal for me since I’d arrived in Vancouver, just a few weeks before. Terry and I had one fight but had become friends again. Stan had taught me that you might love some one to pieces from recess to recess, but he could become irksome Fast if you were required to live with him. I never did really stop liking Stan, but we were never best friends again.

Gary Thomas, one of the biggest and surely the strongest boy in our cottage had been my chief tormentor since about the 3^rd day, when he began smacking me around on my way back from school and harassing me when I was sitting quietly in the rec room. He told Terry, while standing right in my room, that Bobby Mahoney and I were like girls. Eventually Mrs. Petit called a meeting of all the boys on whom Gary had been picking, (which included Bob and me!) and somehow, managed to turn Gary around. By the time I was ready to leave school, Gary couldn’t get enough of shaking my hand and wishing me well.

Larry Dizatelle, the first boy I’d met on my initial visit, had introduced me to the pitfalls of sharp trading and as the Scots say, given me a fine distaste of it. Larry had traded me three dry cell batteries for my crystal set radio. Two of the batteries mysteriously disappeared from my drawer, the other one didn’t work. Trades with Larry always seemed to go like that. He was good at presenting one with something of poor quality or just plain useless, stale candy for example or a badly scratched record, then returning later to ask something of value from his victim in consideration of Larry’s previous generosity. I soon learned why Larry was so willing to walk me to the store and was so generous in his advice concerning the best kinds of candy to buy.

Bob Mahoney, who’d commiserated with me through the lonely evenings when I’d been cursing myself for deciding to leave home, remained pretty much the same throughout. Bob had a pleasant demeanor and was rather girlish in a fairly nice way. He seemed to have little power of his own but enjoyed wielding that which could be borrowed from the house parents whom he followed about assisted whenever he could whether with the dusting or keeping order at table.

Gary Campbell, the Electrical Genius, was two years ahead of me. His credentials from Mrs. Petit had made me expect this place to be a hotbed of scientific inquiry and innovation. Gary did actually provide much stimulating conversation at the table or in occasional chats in his room or mine. We discussed lasers, ultrasonics, robotics and a time saving machine which would store Boring Time wasted sitting in class and would then disgorge extra minutes to be used sleeping in or reading a good book.

On my last visit home, Friday, November 6, I was told on reaching my house by Dad that I was to call John Zimmerman and tell him about Vancouver. John had been having tantrums and his mother felt he might do better away from home for a while. I was told sternly that I must paint only the bright side of the picture, leaving out minor details like home sickness and crabby nurses. Feeling a bit like a Judas goat, I called John and talked up the place as well as I could. Homesickness wasn’t really an issue for me at the moment since I had so little time to go and Lansing seemed years away.

I think for some reason or other, I’d been forbidden to talk with my Seattle friends about moving to Michigan too, private family business no doubt. To my surprise, John was aware we were moving and he said he wished he could meet me down there before I moved. He asked me didn’t we get homesick down there and I told him that yes, at first that was a problem, but there was so much to do and Stan was there, and etc.

During the last chance I’d have to talk to John for quite some while, I wanted his technical advice on a perplexing problem of space flight. What sort of a bathroom would one use aboard a cramped space ship which must maintain internal pressure and could carry only a limited amount of water? John guffawed at my question, offering no germ of an idea. NASA never seemed to discuss such things either.

John did go down to Vancouver in December and had one disastrous week before returning home. That’s how I found one didn’t have to stay there for an entire quarter. I wouldn’t find out about this however for most of a year.

One more dramatic event would occur before I left school. While I was mending fences with most of my former enemies, Stan seemed to be losing popularity. Whether this was because he was feeling frustrated, having been put back and being identified as the chief bad actor in the cottage or whether it was just due to a stubborn cussed streak he sometimes showed, Stan was offending and angering some of the bigger boys in our PE classes.

Things came to a head in Tuesday night Wrestling when Mr. Anderson with applaudably poor timing, organized a Battle Royal in which the last person left of the mat would be declared Champion. It didn’t take me long to get tossed off onto the side floor covering, but I was unhurt. I could hear though, that somebody had gone after Stanley quite forcefully and Stan was starting to cry. I didn’t know exactly what was happening but when Stan reached the side of the mat, he was thrown and down, screaming as he hit then continued to cry, more loudly now. Mr. Anderson did nothing. This was toughening up stuff, boys becoming men, nonconformists being brought into line.

We were dismissed at last to the locker room, I having spent most of the period on the sidelines. I’d tried talking to Stan but he was mostly too busy being humiliated and hurt. In the locker room it began again. I think Stan refused to shower which gave his abusers an excuse to pummel him some more. I knew I couldn’t help Stan all by myself, but I hurried to get dressed, left the locker room as quickly as I could, the sounds of many fists striking flesh, ringing in my ears and found Mr. Anderson. I told him everybody was ganging up on Stan and he needed help, Fast!

That night, we had a long meeting in the House parent’s room during which Mrs. Howgan lectured us on the unfareness and downright cowardice of several or many, setting on one. Fighting itself was okay, one understood, but it needed to be done according to at least rudimentary rules of fair conduct.

She had of course begun the meeting by asking what had happened and was not too surprisingly getting back a resounding silence from the perpetrators. I told her exactly what happened at least to the extent I had been able to observe it, which was well enough I thought. In doing so, I won praise from her to my mother concerning the courage I’d shown in blowing the whistle on boys much bigger than myself.

On my last day, Mrs. Rinquist gave me extra time to finish my most recent library book, Wyatt Earp. She gave me a going away party in class, with cookies and dixie cups. The Saturday previous I’d had a party in the cottage, with a cake baked by Mrs. Howgan and a sweet card signed by all of the house parents.

I’d just about finished a bulletin board in shop. It was made of four boards, cut at 45-degrees on either end so they’d fit to make a square frame. I’d cut fancy curves into the outer edges of the intended frame, using a cutting guide and a coping saw. After we glued it together, Mr. Olson painted the frame orange for me and installed the corkboard within the frame.

I was called out of Gym amid a chorus of good byes from boys and girls alike. Mom and I got a ride to the station and we made the last trip I ever expected to have from Vancouver to Seattle. Our house had sold and we’d be spending the weekend at Lois’s.

I met my new niece to which I’d been looking forward to for nearly a month. I’d been hearing a lot about Lois nursing the baby, but didn’t know what that meant. On one occasion when this was going on, I reached over as I often did to kiss Kelly on the cheek. Mom asked me what did I think I was doing!?

"I’m kissing the baby," I said.

"Your sister is nursing her," Mom said. "You nearly kissed her breast!" (So that’s what nursing meant!) One more thing about the female body concerning which I’d managed to remain ignorant. I think I’d heard that human women could produce milk. After all, we were mammals, but I’d assumed it was merely vestigial, like people wiggling their ears and not really used for anything.

Beowolf was the last talking book I finished before our move to Michigan. It was a young person’s version but when I read the story in college, I seemed to recall most of its details. Though episodic and not exactly heavy on plot, Beowolf nevertheless resonated with me. I’d had a dream about a year before which in some ways I was like the final episode of the tale, in which the hero slays a dragon and meets his own end.

In my dream I was a warrior king who must wage battle against a sort of serpent with a wolf’s head. I would undertake the combat myself, but had supporters who were to hand me new weapons when needed. The monster appeared. I entered into combat with it. When I needed help though, my vassals had all deserted me.

I managed to overcome the beast, and unlike Beowolf, I was not seriously injured. Also unlike the saga, my monster turned suddenly into a sad old man who’d been under an evil spell which had made him into something fearful and from which death was his only means of rescue. He was standing before me with his wife and his daughter was nearby. The old man told me his wife and he were going to Heaven now and I was to marry his daughter.

I asked him if I had killed him and he said "yes." I was sorry now that I had hurt him and I fell to weeping.

In the next couple of years there would be monsters and some who seemed to change their forms, as well as a maiden bereft and new reasons to feel lonely, to cry. I’d left Vancouver seemingly for the last time with a warm feeling about the place. Two and a half years later, when I’d finally had my last childhood glimpse of the place, my feelings were very different.

The night before our departure, my brother-in-law was having trouble closing my Braille writer case. It had my two manuscripts in it, as well as a rewrite of my Henry VIII scroll and assorted notes. "Just take them out," Mom said and Bruce did so. I never saw any of those stories or notes again. This wouldn’t be the only time this sort of thing happened. We shipped phonograph records I didn’t even like, because they had been gifts from friends and relatives. My writings, immature and amateurish though they were, yet products of my imagination and sincere effort, weren’t sufficiently important to save or even consider.