A Science Project 15.
Before my fourteenth birthday, we’d moved to a rural-seeming neighborhood, yet within the Seattle City limits. A creek ran about a hundred yards from our house and we were four blocks from the northern shore of Lake Washington. The whole neighborhood had originally been part of a huge farm owned by the Matthews Family, who’d homesteaded this area sometime in the later 19th Century. An elder neighbor of ours knew where the various farm buildings had been and our house stood on the location of the chicken coop.
Our house was modern, with an open-concept interior, a big picture window taking up most of the front living room wall and three bedrooms across the back of the house. The yard was generous, with apple, pear, cherry and walnut trees. Soon after we moved in, my sister and I managed to accumulate two kittens, one Russian Blue named Smoky and a calico, misnamed George, later rechristened Georgia.
Late in my Eighth Grade year, Mom and I had made a trip to the Library For The Blind and I’d gotten a talking book machine. I’d decided to reread A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engel, I also got a book, written about 1922, about Daniel Boone, which furnished a lot of interesting information about the Kentucky Rifle and other tools of the early frontier. I also checked out Star Rangers by Andre Norton. Written in 1954, the story deals with the crew of a survey ship, crash-landed on a strange, yet somehow familiar planet. The story discussed bigotry against non-human sentients, at a time when most people weren’t yet concerned with racial issues on earth. Ms. Norton treated the group of tough space rangers, as sympathetically as any group of W.W.II. combat soldiers from Hollywood.
When I was settled down once more with a permanent address, I began receiving Braille Book Review, a BI-monthly catalog of new Braille and Talking Book releases. Early on I read an anthology edited by Isaac Asimov, Tomorrow’s Children and a book of stories by Zenna Henderson, full of warm and engaging stories about The People. There were many other books that summer; a reread of The Martian Chronicles, an adventure story about two children in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupation, a collection of stories from Amazing Magazine, the earliest going back to 1926. One of the Amazing stories was about a priestess in a far future, post-holocaust civilization, when Culture was female. Males were semi-idiotic breeding stock or wild beasts roaming the wilderness—so she thought--. Some interesting fantasy material here.
Probably the most significant books for me, were Prelude To Mars, an omnibus by Arthur C. Clarke and The Last Of The Wine by Mary Renault. The Clarke book contained his first Novel, Prelude To Space, about the first manned flight to the moon. There was also a short novel about a science fiction writer, sent to visit the human colony on Mars and his accidental discovery of a project to remake the planet. This was rather amazing stuff for late ‘60s-early ‘70s readers. Thirteen stories, both light and serious, rounded out the volume, including Clarke’s famous tales from The White Hart Tavern.
The last Of The Wine was probably the best book Mary Renault ever wrote and she wrote some good ones. This purported to be the autobiography of an Athenian man, Alexius, Son of Myron, from his earliest recollections to his middle age. At about age 17, Alexexius befriends Lycus, a man several years older than he and they become lovers. Though both men marry eventually, they remain very close until one of them eventually dies. Many years later I learned that Mary Renault was herself a Lesbian. She dealt very sympathetically with the pervasive homosexuality at the time of the Hellenic Golden Age. Alexius and his friend, though they called themselves lovers, embraced and even kissed, seemed not to be what we’d term today, sexually active with one another. Both valued the company of women. Still, they obviously had very deep feelings toward one another and I thought that perhaps they had a relationship like Paul and me.
I have no way of knowing how close Ms. Renault came in depicting the actuality of male-male relationships in ancient Athens. I’ve heard from other sources that a fair amount of physical contact was generally accepted between young men, though it was frowned upon between older men or between older men and young boys. I tend to think that the development of an art-loving social stratum in Athens, Corinth and Siracuse, coupled with societal mores which forbade women of good repute to be seen outside their homes or the market place, tended to make meaningful socializing problematic. Men with poetic, literate or artistic interests could only share these pursuits with other men, or with prostitutes, essentially the only class of educated women in this culture. (I’m not judging, just glad things are different today.)
The Last Of The Wine was not only a love story, but was full of action, battles of land and sea, the Olympian Games a visit to the Oracle at Delphi. The book was also laced with the philosophical discourse and debate so beloved by upper class Athenian men.
I had a dream loosely based on The Last Of The Wine, more specifically an unpleasant uncle of Alexius. In my dream I was in Ancient Greece, (though I probably didn’t know it was ancient!) I was working as a scribe or scholar or some such, on the upper floor of a temple-like building. The place was musty and had a strange odor about it. In my work I used a machine, something like a tape player, but it spoke in a sort of humming, mechanical voice. This wouldn’t fit in well with the Athens of Pericles, but dreams are anachronistic and Greek culture did produce greater technical wonders than most people realize. The phrase "Wonderful madness" occurred in the dream.
I was evidently married and had one child, a daughter, who may have been six to eight years old. I had to walk my daughter to school and she was concerned her schoolmaster would beat her for being late. I told her I wouldn’t allow this to happen. Even at the time, somewhere after my Fourteenth birthday, the dream was interesting and rather exciting. The dream didn’t seem to make much sense, though even an imaginary glimpse of a child of mine was fun. In the Chapter entitled Sisters In Spirit, I’ll relate the rest of this story, which coincidence or not, seems to me, nothing short of amazing.
I received a fair amount of money for my birthday, I believe $15 or so. Mom and I went to a model and hobby store and I bought a little airplane engine with fuel and battery, as well as a model kit of a spaceship from the then-popular Invaders TV show.
While listening to Tomorrow’s Children on talking book and working on newspapers spread across my bedroom floor, I glued the model together all by myself. It wasn’t an overly complex model but I worked entirely without instructions, fitting things together by touch and even getting the right amount of glue in place. This gave me a lot of satisfaction and I liked the design of the craft, essentially an inverted dish with a smaller dome atop, one of the stock flying saucer configurations.
The engine I’d intended to use in another kind of flying saucer model. For years I’d been intending to build a craft which flew like a Frisbee. A helicopter-like rotor would spin beneath a disc, rotating the craft and whirling the disc-wing through the air. I made a cardboard model with a spool glued to the bottom. By perching the spool on the end of a pencil, then pulling hard on a string wrapped about the spool, I spun the flying saucer like a toy gyroscope. It would take off, climb, and fly across the room. I thought a steady source of power could demonstrate the viability of a design of this sort. Since the craft spun, like a gyro, it would be very stable. Future models would have a counter-rotating dome on top so the pilot wouldn’t be spun around in flight. Bill Johnson cut me a ten-inch round of plywood and drilled it to accommodate my motor. He even gave me a set of nuts, bolts and washers to mount the engine. All I needed was a propeller. For some reason, the project never came together. I regret this. My aerodynamics Prof. in college told me that a circular-wing aircraft would not be particularly viable, but it would’ve been fun to try anyway.
Uncle Vick, Aunt Carol and their girls came to visit in July. Little Andrea, insisted that I carry her everywhere and got upset when I went to the bathroom, leaving her locked outside. She must’ve been about three. This would be the last time I’d see Aunt Carol. She and Vick wold divorce a few years later and both remarried. This summer, Aunt Carol and I had fun in the ocean. She’d walk in the shallows, looking for clams. When she spotted one, I’d dive, using her leg to guide me to the shellfish. (Rather sexy actually.)
At just about the same time, Aunt Margaret’s daughter Vivian, and her husband, Don visited form Billings. They were looking for a business opportunity of some sort. Don had become weary of his job with the Telephone Company. I’m not sure if they ever found a business in which to invest. All in all, it was fun having a houseful of relations, all of whom seemed to like one another.
I’d picked up a couple of new problems over the last few months. One was a sort of insomnia, which woke me up, typically at two or three in the morning. I’d be wide awake until about Fifth Period in school, at which time I’d start having more and more trouble staying awake. I’d tend to fall asleep in the afternoon, with my talking books playing. This infuriated Mom to no end. She’d slam my door open and scream at me to wake up! Eventually, I commented that falling asleep while listening to a recording, wasn’t exactly listed in The Bible as a major sin. She mulled that over for a couple of days then decided I was wasting electricity. Besides, my sleep problems were behavioral in nature. I’d gotten myself in the habit of sleeping at the wrong times and "the thought of sleep is drugging your mind."
I’d continue my struggle with insomnia for the next 30-odd years, fighting to stay awake, succumbing to long, unwanted naps when I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer. Sometimes I’d even lapse into narcolepsy. I’d toss and turn most of the night, or stay up till three or four in the morning, getting a lot of writing done, but feeling like crud most of the time. In college, my sleep disorder was as much of a handicap to my studies as my blindness ever was. Several times I feel asleep in class, still erect in my chair, my head still upright. I’d awaken just in time to haul down my hand which had gone up in response to some dreamed question of the professor, the question being irrelevant to anything actually going on in the real world.
A couple of years ago, I heard from my daughter, about an over-the-counter drug called Melatonin. This, according to my dictionary, is a hormone produced by the pineal gland of the brain, which causes color changes in the epidermises of amphibians and reptiles. It also helps many insomnia sufferers to fall asleep more easily. Melatonin isn’t a perfect solution. I still go through my mid mornings in a bit of a fog and look eagerly forward to a short nap at lunchtime, propped against my office wall in my desk chair. I don’t have to go through those gritty grinding days, constantly trying to force myself awake, knowing that I’ve come to work with only two or three hours of sleep and that this evening will be just one more extended, pre-bed trance.
The other problem I was now having, I hadn’t noticed it before returning from Vancouver, was a distinct problem with urination. I think I first experienced it while out camping with my family. It was customary, and had been for some time, for my dad to take me to a spot in the woods, or behind a tree, then stand waiting for me to finish. More and more often now, I wasn’t even getting started. The same was true in public restrooms, where I’d stand at a urinal, feeling conspicuous and stupid. I was having increasing trouble using the restroom at school and would often wait till Gym where I could use a closable stall. This strategy worked somewhat while I was out in public with my parents too, but if I asked for a toilet stall twice running, I’d be questioned about my regularity. Using a urinal was an obligation it seemed, and to not do so was some sort of malingering. Out of doors, there was no recourse at all.
It wasn’t long before Dad was saying things like "Good God, we’re going to take you to a Doctor!" This brought back the specter of Paul’s warnings about how medical people handled The Disease. If I’d been slow starting before, now I was clamping down entirely.
Mom tried to help, saying that she’d take me out somewhere in the woods and come back at some long interval, say every fifteen minutes. This was very nice, but at age 13 or fourteen, it seemed abhorrent, even to me that a boy should be having that much trouble peeing in public. Dad, who’d been a Marine and in the Army, felt that a real man should be able to do anything at all in front of an entire regiment if necessary.
My immediate response to the problem was to refrain from visiting the bathroom when I could, or pretending I’d gone when I clearly should be making the trip. I spent well over 48 hours without urinating at one stretch of a camping trip, limiting liquid intake, but otherwise living in a reasonably normal fashion. I knew this was well beyond what one should reasonably require of his bladder. I started avoiding trips away from home with my parents, though not entirely for that reason.
In school, I tried to reach the restroom before the majority of students had entered the building, or I went during study time. Later, in college, I asked women to show me where the restroom door was, if I didn’t know a given building. Men would often want to stand by and wait, in order to assist me leaving again. (In only one case did I have a woman come in and want to show me around.) She was obviously fulfilling a girlhood curiosity while possessed, seemingly, of an airtight alibi for invading the men’s room.)
The problem went away at home, when I married and started a family, but it persisted in public. When in my Forties, I was briefly hospitalized; I found the difficulty to be surely something with which to reckon.
This was the first summer in my school career that I was actually looking forward to going back to school. If my most unusual dream that summer was the one about Ancient Greece, it was by no means the only compelling dream. I’d been having dreams about Roseana, who’d sat behind me in U.S. History, most of the year. She’d fiddled with my collars and said things alternately sweet and obnoxious. I’d made no effort to form an understanding with her as yet; thinking I’d have a chance to call her after school let out. Summer came and went though and we still had no phone, yet I dreamed.
In one dream I entered the classroom on the first day of school, walked unerringly to where Roseana sat, putting my arm around her neck. In another, somewhat stranger dream, I showed up to school in a dress. My mother had bought it for Roseana, but for some reason I needed to try it on, to see if it was the right size. (A bit of a nonsequitor here, because for once, I had a lady love who was quite a bit smaller than me.) There was even one of those nifty, no-pants dreams in which I was trying to convince our bus driver, Mary Barton, that I simply could not go to school in my underwear. Mary kept retorting that we were too close to Queen Anne Hill for her to turn around now!
I did get a chance to call Roseana’s home, if not to talk with her. Again Lois and Bruce provided the opportunity. I was babysitting one Saturday night and after the girls were in bed, (hopefully asleep,) I called the number on the little square of Braille paper which I still wore next to my heart, though I’d memorized it’s contents months ago. A beautiful voice answered and there was soft music playing in the background. It made me think of wine and candlelight. Roseana was not home as it happened, but it was almost as much fun to talk with her Mom. Mrs. Bartok had an accent of some kind, which I later learned was Dutch. She was from Rotterdam.
After this brave attempt, I called Pam Kenny. We talked for a long time about things, school, the girl I was in love with, Paul. Pam had been hinting for a while now that she liked girls herself, but this hadn’t gotten through to me yet. It wasn’t any real big deal. She and I were just friends and her parents didn’t care how late she stayed on the phone. I don’t know though, what I’d have done if she’d wanted to talk over her own love life with me. That’d be a couple of years in the future.
Checking to make sure I had pants on, I got into the car and let Mom drive me to school the first day of Ninth Grade. She stuck around long enough to get a look at Mrs. Swanson, who had returned from her year off and would be our roll-room teacher this year.
I’d signed up for German this year, but the text hadn’t been Brailled, so it turned out I’d be taking French this year. Roseana was in this class with me, First Period. This was both good and bad. I also had Math Lab, basically dumb kids’ remedial class, English, World Geography and Gym. Mrs. Swanson, at least at first, was surprisingly congenial for a teacher I’d been terrified of a handful of years ago. All around, the year looked to be a potentially good one. In many ways it really was, but trouble started brewing around lunchtime of the first day.
Roseana’s best friend, Denise Randall, asked me if I’d called Roseana’s home a few weeks before. Everyone had been curious about this mysterious phone call her mother’d received. I admitted that I had. A bit later, I met Fred Kenutsen, one of my informants on things social, and asked him why did he suppose Roseana hadn’t come by to say hello? Fred told me she didn’t like me anymore. Roseana liked a kid named Jerry Vici now. In Junior High parlance, the verb To Like was semantically equivalent To Love. Nobody used the word love, except for me of course. Characteristically, I wouldn’t accept the fact that Roseana had moved on. I spent over half the year waiting for her to change her mind or for her relationship with Vici to break up. Even when it did, and the Next day Roseana had a new Steady Boyfriend, I still kept waiting around.
By then, Roseana was having a lot of fun with the idea that someone was so devoted to her and she was playing some games with me, which she doubtless found quite amusing. Shortly thereafter I learned to play too and wish to hell I’d learned months earlier, or had just made a fresh start myself. Several girls in my class had indicated that they liked me and owing to the relative shortness of 13-14 year olds’ relationships, I wish I’d learned to unbend more and sooner.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, down at Vancouver, going steady was quite a serious thing. A couple might stay together for years. In public school, things appeared pretty serious too, but in fact, tended to be more transitory.
I don’t really know what my problem with French was. It was the only class in which I had serious academic difficulty that year. I’d wanted to learn German for a couple of reasons. My family had a German background and Dad had even spoken of going to Germany someday. We had a neighbor who’d been a war bride in World War Two. She’d offered to help me with my German assignments. I also knew that German and Russian were the preferred scientific and technical languages in College.
Mrs. Swanson happened to believe that all blind students should speak French, play a musical instrument and have a number of other accomplishments to sufficiently demonstrate the unique, life-changing influence she had on each and every one of us. If this sounds unduly harsh, I'll mention that on the first day of Ninth Grade, Mrs. Swanson told some of us, (reminded others,) that she was working on her Doctorate in Psychology, and "" might bring some of you in and put you through the mill this year.""
The lack of texts in German and Spanish was another example of her work. There were Braille resources available. She chose not to use them, perhaps for good economic reasons, but without consulting anyone. This may have given me a poor attitude about French in the first place, but the presence of Roseana either gave me a sort of stage-fright, or a predisposition to defocus, possibly both.
Our teacher, Monsieur Mackay, (pronounced Mac-kye) was a Scots-Bostonian who taught French, German, and understood Latin, Spanish and possibly some other languages. He was perhaps the most demanding teacher I’d ever had and I showed no great aptitude for Languages, though I’ve been able to use what I’ve learned of French and German to decipher English roots a fair amount of the time when necessary or interesting.
Monsieur Mackay insisted that we’d all do fine in his class if we read our assignment aloud each day for twenty minutes. For some reason, I never made myself do that. Perhaps I felt peculiar about sitting in my room, talking to myself. Perhaps I was just stubborn. It wasn’t as if I never studied. I just never did the 20 minutes aloud.
The first term, (we’d gone to trimesters this year instead of semesters and quarters,) I got a D. in French. This was too bad, because I got three A.s and a B. in my other classes, for a term G.P.A. of 3.2. As it happened, I avoided trouble with my parents by the fairly simple expedient of not bringing my report card home. We were going to computerized report cards just then and it took a long time for cards to be processed, (learning curve on the part of the office staff no doubt.) I avoided handing over my fall grades. By winter’s end, my marks weren’t quite so good, but no damning grades. By spring, things had improved all around.
Fall term I had a youngish teacher, Mr. Kniebel, recently arrived from Omaha, Nebraska. Math Lab contained mostly the hoodlum element of the school. There were only five girls, interestingly enough, since girls are often thought of having disproportionate difficult with Math. Mr. Kindle tried to present a course on relevant calculation, for students who might never see another Math course. He spent time talking about automobiles and household electrical problems. He brought copies of an arithmetic test given as part of a job application by several department stores. He brought in articles about Math and nonmath-related subjects.
Once we spent most of a class session discussing the extreme dangers of glue sniffing. Extreme even in comparison with many of the more hip drugs. Mr. Kniebel also encouraged us to bring articles of personal interest, if they had something to do with Math.
Around this time there was a proposal making the rounds at NASA, to move up the anticipated first manned moon landing. It was suspected that the Russians were building a booster twice as powerful as our own Saturn V. The intended landing date of July 4, 1969 might not be soon enough.
The proposal was to send a single astronaut to the moon, almost immediately, I.E. circa Oct.-Nov. ’68. I’d recently become a subscriber to Current Science Magazine, the publication I’d enjoyed so much in Michigan and one of my Braille issues contained an article describing the daring plan.
Two One-way earth-to-moon rockets would be assembled from readily available Saturn booster components. One rocket would carry a twelve-month food water and air supply for the single astronaut. The other rocket would carry a Mercury Capsule in which the astronaut would travel and live for several months after reaching the moon. In July, a two-man Saturn 11 mission would bring back the solo pathfinder to the earth. I read the article in class, interesting perhaps two or three kids besides myself.
Mr. Kniebel and I agreed this class was too easy for me. Winter Term I transferred into a pre-Algebra class, in which I got a C. but stayed out of trouble.
My World Geography class was taught by a very young woman, Miss Veil, who’d have been just a cadet had it not been for the unfortunate illness of the regular teacher. Miss Veil’s class was embarrassingly easy. I got credit for reading The Last Of The Mohicans as a text on North America!
The third A. I received was in Gym. Mr. Tucker had been hired the year previous, to organize a special PE program for all of the three schools in Seattle, then admitting blind students. I used to bug Mr. Tucker by calling him Dave all of the time and making less than Subtle remarks about his girth. "Okay, punishments laps around Mr. Tucker!" Mr. Tucker had visited Vancouver and observed the athletic program there. His classes were a fair compromise between the lackadaisical substitutions for real gym with which blind students were supposed to satisfy themselves and the fanatical regimens of State School.
Mr. Tucker taught us to shoot baskets by hitting the rim of the hoop so we could line up on the sound. We also had a modified game of baseball, less demanding than that at Vancouver, but involving batting, pitching and running to base. A sound locator or beeper was used to help us head for the base. We also practiced dribbling, wrestled, worked out with weights and climbed ropes. I found I was o longer quite at the bottom of the Gym class.
In order to let me run sufficiently long without having to go along with me, Dave Tucker we stand at the center of the gym, with a 50-foot rope in his hands. I’d get out at the end of the rope, and by maintaining tension, would circle him, building up to a mile, then two. This added to the legend. "I ran around Mr. Tucker 32 times today. Man was I Tired!"
We had a regulation gym at Worth McClure, big enough for professional basketball practice. The Seattle Supersonics and other teams would often practice there. The Special Ed. class often shared the locker room with the players. One of the Sonics once showed me how he dribbled a basketball. The team trainer took a special interest in our class. He arranged for all of us to attend a game between the Sonics and the Boston Celtics, free of charge. I invited Dad to come along and we had a great time. The team bought each one of us kids a low-cost but serviceable transistor radio with which to follow the game. Now I understood why attending a game was really different from merely watching of listening at home. I can’t resist relating one more basketball anecdote, which occurred the next year, when I was no longer at McClure. Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ,) was practicing one day in our gym, with his teammates, the Milwaukee Bucks. Lew Alcindor was in the shower when Mr. Tucker, always eager to let one of us meet a sports celebrity, walked in with a retarded boy named Doug MacClenahan. "Hey, Lew," he said, "would you please come out and shake hands with one of our blind students?" Lew complied and Doug reached out his hand, but misjudging Lew’s height, got him in a place not intended for casual shaking. (I know it’s true! Mr. Tucker wouldn’t have dared to make up a story like that.)
Our Language Arts Department must have been the haven for eccentric women. I heard stories about others and experienced two of them directly. Mrs. Herald was rather shrill and was given to hyperbolae. "I told you about a hundred hours ago to do that!" when the command had been issued perhaps fifteen minutes before. She frequently threatened to squeeze someone’s head and make it pop. She was reputed to have lost her husband for refusing to have intercourse with him. How that information may have been apprehended and dispersed, who would know?
We read Julius Caesar in Mrs. Herald’s class. There was also The Most Dangerous Game, about hunting humans and a story called The Indian Swing, about a father who quit his job to play with his kids and his loving reason for doing this. There was much else, but that’s about what I remember. Marty and I were in the class together. One day Marty forgot his book. Mrs. Herald told us to share my text. The more Marty and I thought about that, the harder we laughed, picturing two Braille readers trying to feel the same page. (There was a girl in our class named Crystal Bouk. More about her later.)
Winter Term, Marty, Jane Pedden and myself had English with Mrs. Weisler. She could also be volatile and sometimes made snap judgements, but I liked her very much. It was over Mrs. Weisler that I had my first serious tiff with Mrs. Swanson.
Mrs. Swanson and Mrs. Weisler didn’t particularly like one another, though of course, they would never say so. At the beginning of Winter Term, Mrs. Swanson took my schedule and just as a matter of course, started rescheduling me with teachers she liked. There was an issue about which Gym period I should be in, but not a serious one. Mrs. Swanson asked me what I thought about the changes she proposed. I said I’d rather keep what I had. She wanted to know why it was so important to me to stay in my originally assigned classes. I said for one thing, I wanted to work on the school paper, which Mrs. Weisler oversaw and edited. Mrs. Swanson said, "I think our boys are too much influenced by women." Mr. Guieresbach, the English teacher she preferred "would be doing things much more significant than the school newspaper." Since writing was one of my paramount interests and had been for years now, I obviously felt otherwise.
I said, "I’ll just keep my schedule, thanks."
"Oh, I don’t care what you think," Mrs. Swanson said in frustration, "I’m going to make these changes anyway." I told her she’d have to check with my parents first. She said she wasn’t getting involved with parents over registration this quarter. I told her she’d better leave my schedule alone in that case.
At the end of the day, Mrs. Swanson presented me with a letter to take home. She of course trivialized all of my reasons for wanting my original schedule, while highlighting her own and claimed I’d insulted her. I’d said "No offense to you, Mrs. Swanson," which she heard as To heck with you. (I had my sister Chris read the letter to me before our parents got home.)
After a bit of talk, Mom and Dad decided that we’d go with the original plan. Mrs. Swanson still wasn’t going to give up and suggested that hers was The Original Plan. I’d been quite clear with Mom however that I wanted to work on the school paper, so I told Mrs. Swanson I’d be going to the classes originally assigned.
In Mrs. Weisler’s class we read The Odyssey by Homer and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. We had the theme of War throughout the term and read short stories and poems, (such as The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy) in class. We also had a term assignment, which could be based on either of our literary/historical epochs, Ancient Greece or Dickens’ England.
Based on Mary Renault and a couple of encyclopedia researches, assisted by Mom and Ruth Johnson, I made a suit of Athenian, cavalryman’s armor, of cardboard faced with aluminum foil. I worked for a number of afternoons and evenings on the high-crested helmet, corselet or breastplate; and greeves, coverings for the lower legs.
These days I was rising at 5:30 when Buck Richie came on the air, and was out of the house by 6:40. I made my own breakfast and lunch, as well as coffee in the 20-cup percolator; before anyone else was up. I had time to put on my suit of armor and leave the house undetected, before the school bus showed up. I caused a sensation when I reached school and had a crowd about me everywhere I went throughout the day.
I strode into English Class shouting "Hail Zeus!" and introduced myself to all and sundry as Alexius, son of Myron, Lieutenant of Marines on the War Galley Siren of Athens. It was several months before I let Mom in on that escapade, but I’ve seldom had more fun than I had that day.
In my capacity as a journalist for which I’d fought so hard, I wrote a couple of editorials and a speculative science feature entitled The First Starship. The later I wrote under my penname, Joseph Parker.
The article had its genesis while I was watching Trouble With Tribbles on Star Trek. I fell to thinking what a 5-year-mission might be like if we were restricted to speeds less than that of light and to propulsion systems, which could be reasonably anticipated from 1969. Since the nearest star was Proxima Centauri, about four and a quarter light-years of around 22 Million miles away, there wouldn’t be a five-year-mission of consequence. I knew however, that the closer to the speed of light one traveled, the less the crew would actually experience the transit time. If a ship traveled to Proxima Centauri at 75% of the speed of light, the trip one way would last about 5 and 2/3 years as observed by a tracking station back on earth. Aboard ship however, the time trip time experienced by the crew and their clocks would be about 2/3 or this, or about three years and nine months. A five-year-mission still wasn’t in the cards, but an eight-year-mission, subjective time wasn’t out of the question, with about twelve years total elapsed round-trip time from the standpoint of home base.
I wrote the article on that set of assumptions, postulating a ship powered by hydrogen fusion, the process, which powers the sun. The ship would carry a crew of eight, four men and four women. When the mission reached Proxima Centauri, the crew would use a shuttle craft with a smaller atomic engine for achieving orbit around the most desirable planet. A reusable hydrogen-oxygen fuelled rocket would make trips to and from the planet’s surface. Perhaps the rocket could replenish its fuel supply from the planet’s lakes or oceans. This was my first science publication of note, note aided by my connections with the El Paso Lubbock Line or the Alamogordo Daily News.
At about this time I also wrote a short story called The Routine. It was about a clandestine space run from earth to moon orbit, to bring back a thousand-gallon tank of whiskey brewed on the moon and much in demand among the residents of earth-circling space stations. Shipments up from earth were closely monitored and rigidly controlled. The story featured a Casanova-like astronaut and a bantering female passenger (off-duty space officer) who helps him bring the booze to L.E.O. It was a silly story and probably irritating to read. There had been a time though when any science fiction story about alcohol seemed to be a candidate for cheap laughter, in the same way that a glimpse of someone’s underwear can turn a clumsy tumble into a humorous pratfall. I recorded The Routine on a three-inch reel of tape and gave it to Roseana to review—or thought I had.
Roseana was in English with me this term and though she’d ignored me through the fall, now she was talking to me in class sometimes. I talked to her mom several more times from Lois’s house, while babysitting, but Roseana seemed never to be home on a Friday or Saturday evening. Now for the first time since last Spring, Roseana was actually addressing sentences to me. This was sort of haphazard though. One day she’d be friendly, another, she’d act as if I were bothering her. I guess I was bothering her.
At one point Mrs. Weisler kept me after class to tell me I needed to lay off Roseana because I’d had her in tears. I don’t know what I said that might’ve caused this. Roseana was the kind of girl who did a lot of whining and even weeping to gain male sympathy and she had another love interest who happened also to be in our English Class. While in class, Roseana tended to speak in a soft, rather subdued voice. Outside of class, the noise that came out of her tended to expand, but I’d seldom seen her out of class lately.
Things got quite confusing about midway through Winter Term because I was supposedly making Roseana cry in class. She was coming to see me every day at lunch and we’d talk-sort of, with me trying to build some kind of agreement with her, as to our relationship and her saying she needed more time to think. It was then that I gave her my story to read, and she evidently listened to it, and said she liked it and "It wasn’t even boring."
Right about then, things went all to pieces with a series of happenings which were to me at least, plain unbelievable because the whole thing was so strange! I’d always assumed that I’d be treated more or less like everybody else, if I got out with other kids and showed them I was essentially like everybody else and not somebody who anyone needed to feel sorry for. What happened now, could have hardly befallen anyone who wasn’t blind. Even though I had a partial excuse for being gullible, it was the most hurtful and humiliating thing I think that’s ever happened to me.
One afternoon, Roseana and her entourage of girlfriends were later than usual in showing up. Presently a new voice said, "David, Roseana is going to come and talk to you." I said that was okay with me. Roseana came over shortly there after. She was reading a note I’d earlier that day, passed off via Ruth Mestle; one of Roseana’s supposed friends. It was addressed to Roseana and was one more in a long line of professions of my undying affection. Now, the Roseana who stood before me, was reading my note and there was something in it that made her giggle. She folded the note and said, "You’re writing to the wrong person."
Of course I asked her to clarify and she said "A girl named Crystal has been talking to you, saying she was me, so you should like her instead of me. I’ve already got a boyfriend."
This was very hard for me to credit, largely because I didn’t want to, and we recall I’d had little enough opportunity to hear the real Roseana in her natural environment of late. I as much as called her a liar. Ruth, Crystal and several other girls came on scene trying to talk to me. I behaved quite badly, swearing some and saying I didn’t want to live anymore. I’m especially sorry about saying the later, but I’m afraid I’d gotten into rather a rut over the last couple of years. I’d been so used to getting suicide threats from Paul every time things got moderately bad.
The girls were concerned and I think they went and had a talk with Mrs. Herald, my Fall-term English teacher.
When I reported to Mrs. Swanson’s resource room for Fifth Period Study Hall, Mrs. S. called me out into the corridor and said she’d heard some of my conversations at lunch. She knew that I’d use profane language sometimes, since I was a man. Girls would sometimes lead me on and let me think that behavior like that was cute, but privately, girls took a dim view of that sort of talk.
Mrs. Swanson went on to say that she was aware something was bothering me and had been for some time. She asked if things were okay at home. I didn’t really see that as being any of her business and I knew how my parents would react if I discussed my home life with Mrs. Swanson, so I said things were fine at home.
She said "Yeah?" obviously not believing me. Then she told me she’d found out about the trouble I’d been in the year previous. Was that bugging me? I said no. She said there was obviously something bugging me and she was going to find out what it was. I wished her luck.
Later in the period, she interrupted my studies to tell me she’d found out what was wrong. I asked her what that might be. She said, "it’s about this girl named Roseana you’ve been infatuated with. Now some other girls have put together a plan to make you think another girl named Crystal is Roseana and now everybody’s laughing at you." I didn’t know that quite everyone was laughing at me, but her information was essentially correct. I suspect she got it directly from Mrs. Herald.
Now Mrs. Swanson told me that Mr. Duransoe, our Vice-Principal, was going to have me come down for a little chat. I thought this was a bit extreme. It seemed I was being treated as if I’d committed some sort of atrocity, rather than just being gullible, and frankly I was scared. I went calmly enough though, and shook hands firmly with Mr. D. when I entered his office.
Mr. Duransoe asked some questions about the recent events and told me that girls like Crystal shouldn’t be doing things like this "to fool our boys." He said from what he’d heard, my love letters were "quite something," he presumably meant overly ardent. Mr. D. said I’d be best advised not to fall quite so hard for any girl just now, since there was plenty of time before the age of 23 when young men, on average, tended to marry. (It’s interesting to note that I got married at twenty-four and a half, though we’d lived together about a year and a half previously.)
Nothing Mr. Duransoe said to me was at all threatening, but he did seem quite angry with Crystal. I asked him not to be too hard on Crystal, saying she hadn’t really hurt me that much. He seemed quite surprised at that, but I assured him I was fine.
Crystal was waiting outside the office as I was leaving. She said hello to me and I returned the greeting. I never found out how her interview went. My purpose in asking Mr. Duransoe to go easy on Crystal was not as kindly intended as it may have seemed. I was actually feeling quite vengeful. I also felt that enough of my personal life had been dragged through the mud and I wanted the school faculty out of my business.
I never complained about Crystal officially, nor did I say anything unkind or threatening to her. I simply refused to talk to her. She tried several times to talk with me, identifying herself when she arrived. I behaved as if she were merely a small irritant.
Marty Lancer suggested that if a girl liked a boy well enough to be willing to impersonate someone else, just to be with him, she’d probably be worth having around. Looking back, I’ve often regretted that I couldn’t find some way of unbending somewhat. Spending some time with Crystal would have at least given me someone to do fun things with. That would’ve been nice. Heaven knew I was going nowhere fast with Rosie. I think I was just too much hurt and humiliated to laugh the whole thing off, but I wish I had. This wasn’t the only hoax that was perpetrated on me during my time in school, because I was blind but it was the most distressing.
Not too long after the Crystal-Roseana incident I think I confronted myself with the stark fact that I just wasn’t very happy and wasn’t having hardly any fun at school anymore. This was largely due to my slavish devotion to a girl who had little regard for me. I still liked Roseana, but decided if she could play and have fun, why shouldn’t I?
In the same way that I’d when young, suddenly change the age and century in which I’d dwell for the next few months, I got up one morning and had a sense of paradigm shift. I’ve mentioned how seriously I’d taken all relationships with girls, whether with Ellen at Vancouver or Sunset Wrongway or Roseana. Now, I was sick of being serious and isolated.
For the past year there’d been a show on TV called Laugh-In. My favorite part of the show was a weekly sketch with Artie Johnson and Joanne Worley. It usually took place on a park bench. Artie, speaking in a gravelly, lustful voice would make improper remarks, suggestions or requests to innocent-acting Joanne, who’d whack him over the head with her purse. "Do you want to play Post Office?" (Whack!) "Do you want to play Spin The Bottle?" (Whack!!) "Do you want to play Doctor?" (Whack!!!) Artie falls off the bench.
The Dirty Old Man was cool! I took him as my school role model and things changed just about immediately. One morning on arriving at school, I stood in front of my locker and made remarks to girls, as they passed, nothing obscene or overly personal. I think I told various of them how pretty they were, offered rides in my car, asked if they’d run away to Mexico with me or some such, all delivered in the dirty old man voice.
In French Class I directed my attentions to Patty Arnold, one of Roseana’s close friends. She had a wicked sense of humor herself and enjoyed hamming. I asked Patty, very publicly, if she loved me. She said she did. I asked her if she’d marry me. She said she would. The whole thing was conducted in a campish, outrageous fashion that showed it to be obviously a joke. Kids thought it was funny. We carried on the engagement bit for weeks. When Patty got tired of it, there were always other girls. I was still lonely, but I had a lot more company than before and others didn’t think me so corny.
With the turn of Winter Term into Spring, I accumulated three new classes. There was Business Principles, Washington State History and Independent Study Science. Recently our school had made it possible for students to pursue an area of special interest, through an elective self-directed class, under the sponsorship of a teacher who taught within that subject area. Winter Term, I’d taken the Ninth-grade science course with Mrs. Oliver, whom I’d admired so much the year previous. It was interesting working with her again. Though I was not then, overly interested in Behavior which formed the content of the class; there were always specific topics, which were fascinating.
Besides behavioral and psychological phenomena, we also discussed hormones, drugs, brain washing and VD. I guess we must have talked some about sex and gender because I recall asking Mrs. Oliver if there was anything wrong with a male preferring to spend most of his time with females. She said there wasn’t. There were other issues I’d have liked to discuss as well, such as my tendency to wear girl’s clothes, but with Mrs. Swanson residing in the resource room, I wanted to be careful about potential runaway rumors. Mrs. Herald had helped get me sent to the Vice-Principal’s office over Crystal’s little scheme.
Nothing we were doing in Science Class this year were really along the lines of my own special interests, which were more important to me than anything in the school curriculum. When I found out about the independent study option I asked Mrs. Oliver if she’d sponsor me. She said she’d be delighted, providing I submit a proposal for what I wanted to do.
My project idea was Space based and went clear back to a conversation I’d had with a boy named Lloyd, the summer I turned Ten. (Chapter 9.) Lloyd had told me that it was very difficult to break water apart to yield hydrogen and oxygen. I knew however, that fuels such as methane ammonia, sugar, alcohol and cellulose all contained a good deal of hydrogen and could be manufactured by green plants. Plants also gave off free oxygen, so they’d mastered the trick of breaking apart water, as well as carbon dioxide to yield energy-rich fuels and free oxygen to burn them.
What, I asked myself if a largely self-sufficient domed moon base were set up, in which plants were grown to provide fresh air and food for the base residents? Could plant byproducts or some part of the interactive growth chemistry of the base Eco-system, be harness to produce rocket fuel? The fuel would be useful in sending small shipments back to earth or possibly in refueling landing craft. Mrs. Oliver thought it sounded interesting and gave the go-ahead, so I went to work on a two-pronged basis.
First I called up Mrs. Finceth, the Braille and talking Book librarian, explaining to her that I was doing a report having to do with space. I’d like eight or ten titles on the subject, plus some science fiction books. I asked for two books by Heinlein, one about a future moon colony and the other a novel I’d read previously, in which life support issues were discussed. Mrs. Finceth sent me a number of excellent books about the planets, the space program and speculations about the future.
At school I read from the World Book Encyclopedia, a multitude of articles which might bear somewhat on my project. I read about corn, legumes, sugars, alcohols, cellulose, photosynthesis, fermentation, metabolism, manure, hydroponics, hydrogen, nitrogen, combustion. I documented and annotated each article I read in a notebook, making both print and Braille copies.
At home I was finding out what I could about life support systems aboard spaceships and design concepts for anticipated lunar colonies. One of the more interesting ideas I encountered was Arthur Clarke’s notion of using an electromagnetic catapult on the moon, to launch tanks full of fuel into orbits around earth, or any other planet. If fuel could be manufactured on the moon, and Clarke thought it was highly likely we’d find water there, either frozen as ice, or chemically combined in the moon’s crust, space operations could be made much less costly than current projections based on ferrying fuel up from earth.
If a rocket climbing into earth orbit could be refueled from the moon, it could proceed to anywhere else in the solar system and find other tanks full of lunar fuel waiting there for the return trip. A lunar catapult, even a small one, could also get the maximum bang for buck out of my green house generated fuels and oxidizer, once I’d decided what they would be.
After three weeks or so of data gathering I summed things up rather like this.
Alcohol can be made in several ways; by the action of yeast upon sugary solutions, by cooking wood or other plant material under controlled conditions, by combining carbon monoxide with hydrogen. Both ethyl and methyl alcohol’s appeared to be attractive fuels. One of the alcohol-producing methods, or a combination of them, should be applicable to the lunar greenhouse.
Since sufficient plants must be grown to take care of all of the exhalations of the base residents, since most plants were not a hundred percent edible there should always be a surplus of matter, what we later called biomass. This would need to be burned or composted, if not processed into rocket fuel. Of course, turning biomass into fuel and sending it off in the fuel tanks of outbound rockets would rapidly decrease the base’s supply of carbon. Perhaps carbon could in some way, be obtained from the lunar soil, or perhaps shipments to the moon could be encased in paper, plastic or even wood, which in burned in pure oxygen, extracted from moon rock, would contribute to the carbon and hydrogen balance of the base ecosystem.
In the end, it looked like the proposition depended on the discovery of water on the moon and the processing of some carbon-containing mineral. I realized that if the moon base were small, and I envisioned six to ten permanent residents, the alcohol yield would not be large. In the end I probably had discovered more problems than I’d solved, but I taught myself some basic chemistry and this project led me in due course to plans for earth-based energy systems as well as a rather novel plan for interplanetary propulsion.
As is so often the case, my reading for this project broadened my horizons in unexpected directions. In The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, I became acquainted with the Robert A. Heinlein who also wrote for adults. In Heinlein’s short story, Coventry, I became acquainted with the notion that people might be free to do anything at all, unless their actions visited physical or economic harm on others. I had cherished the concept of Freedom through all my reading life, but as taught in school, freedom seemed to consist of not allowing England, Germany or Russia to rule us.
I also read a more extensive biography of Robert H. Goddard than I’d seen before, in This High Man by Lehman. I became better acquainted with Isaac Asimov through some of his story collections and a group of essays on science, called The View From A Height. This was a survey of biology, chemistry, physics and astronomy wherein the Good Dr. demonstrated his breadth of interest. A couple of years later, this book would, on rereading, initiate an alteration of my life.
Mrs. Oliver was happy with my project, which I completed well before the end of the term, after which I sat in on her Spring Behavior class. I now had Roseana in three of my classes. When teachers weren’t listening, she alternately flirted with and abused me, usually with a group of her girlfriends to back her up. That was okay. I had plenty of friends too, and some of the girls I knew, told me I shouldn’t take the crap Roseana dished out.
All of my reading hadn’t been about space. I’d also read a book called Plain Talk For Men Under Twenty-one, by Alan Ludden, the host of the game show, Password. This book offered excellent advice for boys on grooming, etiquette, and relationships, dating. Mr. Ludden advised that if your hearts desire wasn’t available at present, you shouldn’t hang around begging for crumbs, but should find someone else with whom to spend your time. I started talking to a girl named Nora and decided I could afford to wait.
Going to and from school I was now sharing a bus with Marty, John, Pandy, Pam and several other kids, including a girl named Kori, who had thought of herself as Paul’s girlfriend. Toward the end of 8th Grade, Paul had told me about somebody named (Kori) but hadn’t specified a gender. Kori was about 17 or so and I’d judge, she’d lived a fairly rough life. Her self-esteem was negligible. She freely admitted to having at one time, slept with any boy who wanted her. She seemed pretty unhappy at home and had been doing drugs for quite some time. Kori was a pretty nice person really, but just the sort of person who would be easy prey for Paul. She seemed to have cared about him quite a bit. He cared less for her, but that would not be surprising.
I was in some conflict with Kori, Pam and Pandy on the bus, as well as a number of kids at school because though I had some curiosity about Marijuana, speed and some of the other popular drugs, something, (I think an effort to impress Roseana,) had made me set myself staunchly against drug use. Why I imagined Roseana would care if I used drugs or not, I have no idea. All the same, I took a self-administered oath, never to try anything but alcohol. Aside from dosages prescribed by a physician, I’ve stuck to that, though at some parties I’ve attended I’ve certainly ingested second-hand smoke from joints and hash pipes.
To the girls and John Zimmerman, drugs were Real Cool and they talked a lot about getting high. Pam Kenny had a variety of ailments, real and imagined. Her parents hired a secretary to type her homework for her, because her back couldn’t handle the time at the typewriter. Never mind that she had no trouble sitting on a straight chair in a study cubicle at school to listen to records with her friends, or sitting on a curb to smoke cigarettes and other things. Pam couldn’t eat the sandwiches her mom packed for her, but she could eat Doritos and drink Dr. Pepper. Not too surprisingly, Pam was on a variety of medications, some of them quite yummy. Pandy was constantly hassling Pam to sell her prescription refills. I’m not entirely sure where Cori got her own drugs, but she hinted at several sources of money.
Though I got pretty irritated with Pam, Pandy and Kori, I generally got along with them pretty well. John at this time, was a big-mouthed kid with a weight problem, who’d say whatever he thought would sound cool, but generally fell short. Once to show off for a couple of sighted kids, John blew in my face, which he knew would turn me livid. It worked real well too. John said, "Look what I can do," and blew. I knocked him on his ass, so the whole thing looked like a demonstration of his landing ability.
Though there was a lot of potential for conflict on our bus, we had a great time most trips. Pandy played the guitar and several other instruments. We all sang, after a fashion. I was good at making up parodies of songs, as were Marty and John. It didn’t take us long to create enough song rip offs to fill an album. They were primarily about teachers, fellow students, the school bus—that sort of thing. There were recurring themes; overweightness, suspected gayness, stupidity, body odor. One was about our rotund gym teacher, Old Dave Tucker. Another was about a rather short but very heavy classmate, Big Terry. Probably the best line in that song was
Some people said he came from New Orleans
Where he got in a fight over a bowl of baked beans.
A big explosion from the back of his pants
Sent a Louisiana feller to the second chance.
Big Terry.
We spent a fair amount of time telling stories to each other. We’d all grown up listening to talking books and probably with more need to amuse ourselves than most kids did. We all had fairly good imaginations. We’d tell hyperbolae-laden accounts of other kids, neighbors, bus drivers, pretty much anything that entered our heads.
One of our favorite topics was The Tonners Club. This term had actually come from a school paper drive. The students collecting a ton or more of newsprint were The Tonners. We changed that, to include anyone Weighing a ton or more, Terry Lindsay, Rick Angel, John Zimmerman, our principal, Mr. Arnhardt and of course Old Dave Tucker. Tonners generally went around demanding food from people. If refused, they’d sit on people. We had a Dragnet episode, ("My name’s Arnhardt, I carry the weight.") in which our principal sat on several kids to break up a food fight, then ate their lunches. There was another story involving Marshall Matt Dillon and Festis, in which, because of the Tonners, the OK Corral became the OK Valley. It was all extremely juvenile and probably would have bored most sighted kids, but except for being highly unkind, wasn’t a bad way to spend three hours total we spent on the bus each day.
Some sighted kids enjoyed the bizarrely silly manner in which we spent much of our leisure time. One was Berry Durane, with whom Marty and I had Washington State History Spring Term. One day we saw a film about Northwest Indians smoking salmon and we told salmon jokes for years. "You smoke’um filtered or regular salmon?" "Don’t put’um head in mouth. Salmon bite’um tongue!" We were a club of three, with our own theme song, based on a cigarette commercial, (remember those?) and an extensive, wholly imaginary lore.
Our bus driver, Mary Barton, was not over bright, but was kindly. She was quite a bit different from Gwen, who’d arranged to have Paul and I separated near the beginning of the previous year. Mary sometimes got irritated at John and myself because our imaginations ran too wild for her taste. Someday, we might colonize other planets for instance. Mary had a loud, rather raspy voice, which I found very easy to imitate. We gave Mary a rough time, but I thought the world of her. A school bus driver’s lot is never easy. At Christmas though and end of year, we always exchanged gifts and cards.
One morning, about a half-hour before school, out in the hall, the resource room not being yet open, I received a fist in the jaw. The fist belonged to Steve Harrison, whom I’d known since third Grade, when he, then a First Grader, had insisted he was Adolph Hitler. I’d made him cry several times in the taxi that year, with fairly moderate punches. I’d met Steve again in Eighth Grade. We’d had a lot of fun talking about blasters, antigravity and hyper space. Steve still had a temper though, and still cried easily.
So far as I know, I had not recently done anything to deserve a punch from Steve. The matter went a little deeper. In Eighth Grade, I’d become friends with Isaac Pough. He and I talked about gangs, knives, science fiction books, spaceships, atomic death rays, stuff like that. I’d asked my parents if Isaac could come home for dinner. Mom had asked if there wasn’t somebody else I could invite. Isaac was black, but even in the wake of Dr. King’s death, he’d remained a pretty good friend to me.
At the beginning of my Ninth-Grade year, Darnell Hamlet, whom I’d known in 3rd and 4th grades, had entered Worth McClure as a Seventh Grader. Darnell was also black. He was angry as well as arrogant and resented my friendship with Isaac. He also resented, for some reason, things I’d told him years before when I was nine and he about seven, that one day we’d all run away and be pirates together. I guess he had believed me or something. Whatever the reason he resented me generally.
Accidents had happened in Gym, notably a basketball slamming into my groin. Darnell had sufficiently limited vision to be excused for an accidental misshot of this kind. He also could see well enough to make the genuineness of The Accident questionable. I still have considerable pain in one of my testicles.
I think I insulted Darnell for telling him off one day. He’d been consistently insulting a girl whose locker was next to mine, calling her ugly and other names.
Steve Harrison may have had a grudge against me, but it was helped out by Darnell’s malevolence. Steve by the way, was white. I heard the two of them whispering to one another just before the blow landed on my jaw.
I let the blow pass. It wasn’t very hard and it was only Steve. He came back and hit me again. On about the fourth pass, I decided I’d satisfied any possible condition of restraint. I went after him. I caught Steve and hit him a couple of times, knocking his glasses off. A teacher came out of her office and broke up the fight. She went back behind closed doors and we resumed.
Steve came after me again. I grabbed him, and used a wrestling double-leg takedown to put him on the floor. I started hitting him, rather rhythmically with my fist, telling him with each blow that that I’d stop hitting him if he’d break off the fight and shake hands. I evidently hit him harder than I’d intended. Steve claimed to have been unconscious for a while that morning. Darnell and Isaac had broken us up when they figured Steve had enough and took him down to the nurse’s office. Steve lay there for the first four hours of the school day and his dad came to get him at lunchtime.
Darnell was unable to accept that I’d won the fight, so he put it out that I’d kicked Steve in the head, which I had not. My feet were nowhere near his head. If anything, Steve had tried to kick me. Darnell demanded that I admit I kicked Steve, or he’d fight me himself. The principal got involved, warning Darnell and Isaac to leave me alone, on pain of being suspended. Darnell must pursue his vendetta behind the backs of teachers and administrators.
Darnell and Isaac had both been in trouble at school. The previous year, Isaac and two other boys from our resource room, The Stevens twins, had been largely responsible for the nervous breakdown of our teacher, Mrs. Joiner. Mrs. Joiner was excitable, but Isaac really pushed things with her, insulting her to her face, picking fights, writing on other kids, running a very realistic mechanical rat across the classroom floor, refusing to do his work. He’d run past the room, stick in his head and say, " Joiner eats raw sardines," or something like that. Nobody did all that much to support Mrs. Joiner. I’m not saying I was any angel either, but my misbehavior was mostly limited to smart alec remarks, quacking, thumping in my desk to simulate a heartbeat and imitation Mrs. Joiner’s frantic way of saying "There is entirely too much noise in here!!"
Darnell had evidently been identified as a problem student in grade school. He and a couple of other kids, (boys,) were now a sort of special project with Mrs. Swanson. We recall that she was working on her Ph.D. in Psychology and was very anxious to put her text book learning into practice. She was fond of a technique called Behavior Modification. This is a behavioral approach to undesirable behavior consisting of rewarding desirable actions and largely ignoring the less than desirable. Mrs. Swanson would identify behaviors which she wished to encourage, (or cause to exist in the first place,) attention in class, turning in homework, friendly interactions with other students. If she observed this behavior in the Improving Student, or if other teachers reported it, the student would receive a sum of money on Friday. It was obvious that students were going up to Mrs. Swanson each week for their rewards, so Marty and I asked if we could get some money too. Mrs. Swanson said we weren’t behaving in a manner that particularly suggested the need for modification. We said this could change!
Quite obviously to just about everyone but Mrs. Swanson and perhaps some of the school administrators, Darnell and Isaac were moderating their activities during class hours and taking it outside afterward. While Isaac was collecting money from Mrs. Swanson, (likely billed to his parents,) he was shaking kids down after school for protection money. I was invited to purchase protection, but did not. Our bus loading area was relatively unsupervised, so Darnell made a practice of harassing me there, knocking me down and the like, after school. He also started hitting me when unobserved in Gym, pushing me in the slippery shower room. He lamed me for several days by slamming a wooden scooter board into the back of my ankle.
Mr. Tucker, the Gym teacher chose to see everything as an accident or not to see it at all. Mrs. Swanson stayed snug in her classroom giving herself favorable marks for her behavioral expertise. I switched into another Gym class. Marty said he’d mix in if Darnell tried to attack me, but Darnell was sneaky, vicious and without principle, except that of revenge, essentially a coward.
Mrs. Swanson tried amateurishly to heal things by asking me to tutor Darnell. It became obvious even to her that something was wrong. He wouldn’t accept help from me. The rest of the year went along reasonably well, if a bit tensely. I generally managed to be where Darnell wasn’t. He wasn’t a problem in class for me, because he was only a Seventh-Grader.
This was my first really thorough exposure to the timid manner in which the Seattle school system was dealing with the harassment of white students by black schoolmates. White students could be hauled to the office or suspended for making inappropriate remarks to or picking on a minority student. Crystal and I were hauled into the office over an incident of some girls teasing a blind student. No effort was made to follow up Mr. Arnhardt’s directive to Darnell and Isaac to leave me alone. My little sister had already suffered this kind of treatment both in Ann Arbor and now in Seattle.
I’m not saying for a moment that blacks and other minority students weren’t suffering discrimination, often fairly subtle sorts in the north, or that this hadn’t been a problem throughout our history. Racial discrimination during my lifetime though, has been a two-sided affair. I can well understand why essentially educated, law-abiding white persons during the ‘70s and ‘80s were attracted to Rightwing groups with white supremacist overtones. I had not at age 14 given up on Blacks and Whites living amicably together. I had however formed a distinct bias against black militancy.
I told Christine about my fight with Steve, but did not mention it to our parents. The matter came out a couple weeks later as a result of a childish squabble. Mom was once again suffering from her control issues and during a backyard picnic this being late spring now and quite warm, she started yelling at me for eating garlic bread before my steak. "Put that piece of bread down and eat that steak that we took the trouble to barbecue for you, while its still Hot!" I ate the steak, then the bread, excusing myself as soon as I could to go to my room and read.
Since I’d evidently left the table with a snotty look on my face or something, Mom slammed her way into my room and said that the reason I had so much trouble taking criticism was that nobody was ever unkind to me or gave me a bad time at school. Whenever anyone tried to correct me at home, I blew my stack. (All of this over a damned piece of garlic bread!) I let her know then about the trouble at school and the fact that it was racially-related added to it’s gravity in her mind. I heard her talking to Uncle Frank and Aunt Wilma on their next visit, saying that what she’d assumed about me was just the opposite of the reality at school. The issue of me lacking criticism anywhere but home, kept resurfacing through all the way through college, but at this particular time I felt I was beginning to be established as a somewhat more mature person.
As before, I’d continued to write and to work on my space speculations. During a dry spell I happened to receive a book called Asimov’s mysteries. These stories sparked several ideas in me, which started as plots for stories of my own. Soon though, I realized I had ten chapters in a short novel. I don’t recall anymore, exactly what The Space Patrol was about, except that it had to do with a plot by some sinister organization to sabotage a scientific space mission and the efforts of Good Guys, (scientific police) to set things right again. It was about four times as long as any single piece I’d written previously and had to be bound into two Braille volumes.
I dedicated The Space Patrol to 30 different girls, none of whom ever read the book. A highlight of the novel was the first Space Jacking I’d ever encountered in print or Braille.
That year, Sky Jackings had first hit the news. Usually it was one or more dissidents, demanding to be flown to Cuba. Later it evolved into a means for extorting money or bargaining for other sorts of gain. The Country singer, Tex Ritter, recorded a song called A Funny Thing Happened To Me On The Way To Miami.
My Space Jacking occurred on a moon to earth run. The enemy agent wanted the shuttle and its cargo for some dastardly purpose. He threatened the pilot with an energy gun, demanding that he change landing approach, (several hours before reentry) and land in some alternate area. Fortunately, my heroes had anticipated something like this, months or years before. Each pilot was equipped with a knockout gas cartridge, hidden in his microphone. When approach was being arranged with ground base, the pilot need only aim his mike over his shoulder and shoot the bastard in the face. (It’s interesting to note that in the wake of the September 11th events, about the time I was writing Chapter 9, people finally began talking seriously about equipping pilots with stunguns or similar weapons for self and ship defense.
Through this school year, I’d been focussing a lot on a first voyage to Mars. I’d pretty much come to the conclusion that I’d need a Doctorate in physics before tackling a project like this. I saw no reason though, why by 1980 or so myself and a small team of dedicated designer-builders, financed by Company Money, couldn’t build a Martian spacecraft. Paul had mentioned once that an astronomer, whose name slipped his mind, had been studying UFOs for quite a while, and for a fee, was prepared to certify our rocket takeoff as such a phenomenon, helping us avoid government interference.
I’d been following roughly the design for a Mars bound spacecraft described in the last chapter. My command module was intended to be a saucer design, designed for reentry into atmosphere, hovering on water if necessary, collecting solar energy and presenting a large target for communications transmissions. I intended to use surplus boosters from NASA for the lower stages of the rocket ship.
I of course, had little idea of how to produce a good, preliminary spacecraft design. I’d read books by reputable authors in which a space mission was designed by a few friends over sandwiches. I was starting to realize though, that there was a science of design, through which I might learn to plan and analyze complex systems. Since Sixth Grade I’d been intending to become a physicist and I still felt that a person with a Ph.D. in Physics would have the best chance of running a rocket company or custom designing space ships. I was also aware that in my hometown resided one of the world’s foremost aircraft manufacturers. Werner Von Braun had said that a student might not be able to find many courses in rocketry per se, but a background in aircraft design was about as good as any for someone wishing to be a rocket man. I knew that Boeing hired a lot of engineers, so I asked Bruce, who was a cost estimator for the company, what sorts of engineers worked on planes?
Bruce said aeronautical engineers designed the wings, fuselages and the like. Electrical engineers did the wiring, communications and radar. Mechanical engineers designed the controls, which moved the rudder ailerons, elevators and the like. I’d had an interest in robotics since I’d known there was such a field and the idea of building control systems appealed to me. Bruce also thought this would be a good idea and even mentioned to Mom that I might be "Mechanical Engineering Material."
Mom and I went to see a presentation by a blind mechanical engineer, then working at M.I.T. He headed a development group, which was building assistive aids for blind persons. They had developed an improved collapsible cane, which could fit into purse or coat pocket. They were now working on a system to store brailled information on tape and to retrieve it later by means of Refreshable Braille. This was a series of braille cells, perhaps a whole line or even lines, composed of little pins which popped up and down to refresh a line with new information, simulating a person reading a page, essentially what happens on an L.E.D. display when one is reading a lot of numbers or words in succession.
Though I thought I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do after college, I had no very clear ideas about finding a job. Mr. Misener, our Business Principles teacher, would show us organizational charts of businesses, factories, and schools. "Where do you fit in?" he’d ask. I didn’t see that I fit in anywhere. We never talked about Physics labs or rocket test facilities.
Though many fifteen-year-olds have no clear idea of how they’ll someday make their living, I think that blind students suffer especially from the process which postpones any serious thought of paid employment till some remote future date, which seems to get remoter the more future ward they tend. "Get your education first," people told me, "then you’ll be ready to have a job." When I did hit the job market at about age 23, employers asked me "Why didn’t you get some summer work or work study while you were in college?!" "I was told not to," I replied candidly, though it didn’t help me much.
Though I wouldn’t say that any fifteen-year-old, blind or sighted, should have to know exactly what job s/he will have after high school, trade school or college, I do think it’s important to encourage students to develop some of what engineering Profs. call Functional Techniques. This is basically the skills and knowledge to perform some fairly complex, finished tasks, be it sewing, cooking, woodworking, auto repair, building electrical circuits, writing, computer programming, conducting chemical analyzes. To know exactly how to do some demonstrably useful tasks or procedures is especially important for blind students. "What can you do?" is probably the most frequently asked question of an employer about a blind person and it’s often not asked out loud.
For my own part, I wish I’d spent more time building working mechanical models of things—any thing! At this time I was still building cardboard models of rockets and spacecraft. I’d made a model layout for a moon base in clay. I farmed beans in a milk carton on my windowsill and did a fair number of chemical experiments. I was forever designing mechanical systems though. One concept might be for changing one spacecraft configuration into another to accomplish more than one task with the same set of modules. I might be trying to simplify a propulsion system. I might be designing a robotic system to do assembly work or to do language translations. Both were quite a bit on my mind, as I recall. Some of my designs may have been theoretically sound but I knew very little about fabrication techniques, friction, material deformation, how moving parts did or didn’t work with one another. Even if I had built a controllable vinigar and baking soda rocket, or a jet-powered car, even a robotic hand with rigid, movable parts, I’d have learned a great deal about measuring, fittings, trouble-shooting, or at least have identified a lot of areas in which I needed improvement. As things turned out, I was in college nearly two years before I learned to use a wrench. My daughter was in Junior High before I had my first power saw.
Again, I was suffering from a lack of appropriate mentorship. I’m not sure how this might have been remedied in my case but I know there wasn’t a great deal of effort made. Everybody expected that I’d go to college. On emerging from college I’d know how to do whatever I needed to do. For anyone out there who is in the position of counseling a teenager, especially a blind teenager, but Anyone! College doesn’t in particular teach work techniques. It teaches one how to learn. I’ll have more to say in later chapters.
At school, Mrs. Swanson continued to mentor us, or tried too. She had conceived a phenomenon called The Friday Night Program. This usually consisted of spaghetti dinner or burgers at the high school field house, followed by an activity, swimming, skating, perhaps a sports event. I attended an aerospace exhibit at the Seattle center, complete with tactile models and diagrams. This was the most notable of the Friday Night events and one of the very few I did attend. I very much enjoyed a hovercraft chair, which really did ride on a cushion of air, the model of Dr. Goddard’s first liquid-fuelled rocket, a collection of Boeing airplanes and the various components of the upcoming Apollo 11 mission.
In general though, I didn’t attend Friday events. I disliked being pushed in with a bunch of other blind kids, with whom I generally felt little in common. Marty Lancer was one of my best friends at this point, but I had fairly few close associations within the blind group. Mrs. Swanson was unhappy with me for not being more of a joiner in these activities. Planned social events were part of her master plan for turning out a group of exemplary blind adolescents and adults. Her perceptions though, were often naive.
I knew through several sources, about an all-male group which had gotten together for a party, under the Friday night auspice. Under the direction of a 19-year-old, partially-sighted boy named Ed, who was an activity director, working for The Seattle Parks Department, a group of teens, a couple of them my friends, had engaged in an evening of masturbation and theory about intercourse. Ed did the masturbating for everyone, using Vaseline and a feather duster. The theory was that blind guys needed to know what to do, in case a girl ever did show up. I’d heard this sort of line before and Ed didn’t even have a disease to cure. I generally steered clear of The Friday Evening Program. I had my books and my poetry—"No man is an island," I said, "but I am a fortified peninsula."
All in all though, Mrs. Swanson and I ended our year pretty amicably. One morning, during roll-room, she came over suddenly and kissed me on my right ear. "That’s just for being you," she said. "God," I retorted. "This is the first time I’ve ever wished I was somebody else!" When she’d say something like
"We did that when I was a kid," Marty or I would say
"I didn’t know the Pilgrims did that."
Mrs. Swanson leant me the two dollars for my school annual. My parents were forever complaining about the lack of money. I had only two pair of pants that year and things were fairly tight, though there was always money for beer and cigarettes. I skipped lunch several days to pay Mrs. Swanson back. Mom was astounded when she found out I’d borrowed the money. Why hadn’t I asked for the two dollars? I guess I just hadn’t felt like it. I was tired of hearing how bad things were when they were kids, when there really wasn’t anything I could do to make their child hoods better. I didn’t notice anyone reimbursing me for the outlay either.
Shortly before school ended, I had the opportunity to speak with our Principal, Mr. Arnhardt. He was sitting in the lunchroom as I recall and I approached him, not otherwise. Mom had thought he was an ugly, fat, sarcastic man with a nasty look on his face. I’d come to view him differently. During one of our recent assemblies, some kids were goofing off during the pledge of Allegiance and the singing of the National Anthem. This was the time when America was moving into the epoch of flag burnings and protests, which seemed to go so much beyond well-ordered dissent. It was becoming Cool for many to disrespect their country, president and flag. Mr. Arnhardt had come on deck like a Marine Drill Instructor.
"From the time the color guard comes on stage till the time you are asked to be seated, you will freeze at attention!" he had shouted. Mr. Arnhardt had said that he realized that none truly meant disrespect to our country and flag, but nonetheless we must behave appropriately when called upon to salute our nation’s banner. He told us how his father and his grand father had fought in World War I, and he had been proud to serve in World War II, as most of our fathers had. It was for me at least, quite stirring.
"I wanted to thank you," I told him. "I was very proud that our principal would require respect for the flag and I hope you’ll keep it up."
"Thank you, Dave," Mr. Arnhardt said. "I’ll keep doing that as long as I’m able." He shook hands then. I’d see Mr. Arnhardt a number of times over the next few years and we always had some friendly words for one another.
The day before school ended, we had a student-run assembly for ninth-graders, sort of a humorous commencement. Several dozen awards were handed out. Included were most popular boy and girl, best dressed boy and girl, most likely to end up in the movies, that sort of thing. Somewhere along the line, Dennis Montzingel, who was reading the awards, announced "Biggest flirt, Sue Gaston and Dave Plassman!" I was presented with a construction paper ribbon with my name and title written on it. Marty, who was sitting some way off from me, was laughing himself silly. Even though he’d won a very credible and official music award at an earlier, faculty-run assembly, Marty envied my award.
A girl sitting just behind me, was laughing so hard at the various quips and sillinesses that she’d started crying. I turned and gallantly presented her with a Kleenex. She asked if it was clean. I said Of course. She took it and blew her nose.
Mrs. Swanson was delighted that one of her own had won a popularity token. When I came through the door of room 113 she announced "The winner!" grabbing my arm and holding it out like an Olympian making a victory salute.
"I suppose you’re proud of that?" Mom asked when I came walking in that afternoon, about two feet above the ground, to announce my award.
"Sure," I said.
The last day of school was largely devoted to getting annuals signed, or so it seemed. I got a great many funny and complimentary comments, including Love Roseana. Mrs. Swanson wrote that I was a great guy.
I graduated Ninth Grade with a 3.43 G.P.A. overall and a 3.6 for the quarter. I’d pulled my French grade up to a B. I had a B. in Washington State History and had As in Science, Gym and Business Principles, even if I hadn’t figured out yet where I fit in. I was surprised but Mom and I were both delighted. Maybe there was some hope for me in High School.