Author: patcamerino

Immediately following Thanksgiving in 1970, I moved to Amherst; Karen and the kids remained behind until we were able to sell our house in Rockville. They joined me a few days after Christmas. The month of December was very interesting for all of us.

We had purchased a new house on Sheerman Lane overlooking the fields and pastures of UMA, the agricultural land-grant institution for the Bay State. There were only three houses on the street. The Kilmers lived next door, the Sardis, on the opposite side of the lane. Although we lived in town, the three houses were isolated enough so that we had no mail delivery. We did have a box at the post office downtown and went there daily over the next few years, until the addition of a fourth house allowed for home delivery to all of us.

From our front yard we had picturesque views of the Pelham Hills, alive with color, particularly during the autumn foliage season. New England scenery must be seen in person in order to consume it and be consumed by it. Two-dimensional photographs are limited in scope; the viewer must be able to see the reds, golds, yellows and browns in all directions for complete encompassment.

We lived on Sheerman Lane at the right time; the view changed dramatically after we moved. When we returned to Amherst for a summer vacation, several years after having left it, an entire neighborhood now existed on the valley we once beheld as open country. No matter what color trimming their shutters and doors may have, they do not replace the vibrant tones of fall foliage.

Back then, Karen and I had seen our new home in early Fall. During our first winter there, we had an ongoing debate whether we had pine-shrubs growing in front of our house. When the snows finally melted in March, we learned we did. The low-growing junipers slowly reappeared.

Another challenge, albeit a very personal one, occurred during that first December of employment by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It concerned my paycheck. State employees received a check each Friday. I did not. In order to begin receiving a salary, the employee had to have passed a routine TB test. Having lived for five years in Washington, D.C., I had been sufficiently exposed, as most city residents were, to the bacillus so that my results came back positive. I had to take an in-depth test, which precluded a paycheck for several weeks.

Meanwhile, I lived in a single room in a home owned by one of the University’s wrestling coaches. A Korean couple lived in a basement apartment. The three of us shared the kitchen. On the way home each evening, I bought a frozen dinner at the local grocery store for dinner. Occasionally, I tasted what the other couple had prepared. It was my first exposure to fried seaweed. During that December, I learned to live on P&J sandwiches. I realized what it was like to live in poverty, but unlike those who really existed this way, I did know it would end within the month and my life would return to normal.

Evenings and weekends were spent in my bedroom, reading and learning about the University, while listening to the radio. Sammy Davis, Jr. sang Mr. Bojangels every 15 minutes.

The weather also resulted in another challenge, in addition to the shrubbery discussion. Karen and the kids arrived a week before the moving van did. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, we spent the nights with air mattresses and sleeping bags kindly provided by a faculty member from the Biochemistry Department in which I held an academic appointment in addition to my administrative one in the dean’s office. Dick and Carol Louttit offered food and their dishes. We survived well in New England, a far different locale than the one we had found in our nation’s Capital, and one to which we had joyfully returned.

Amherst, Mass, was a special place for living a peaceful life. On the north side of the town’s two traffic lights was the University. Around the southern speed guardian was the College and the Town Common, which was the heart of the community. The maple tree on the edge of The Commons was costumed each autumn with red and gold leaves placed there, no doubt, by the same fashion designer who created the wardrobe for the court of the King of Siam. In cold December, the foliage was replaced by the white diamonds of Christmas lights. During the holiday season, carolers gathered around the merry maple. On each weekend of every month, the edge of The Commons held an assembly of silent protestors against war.

The east side of the Commons was hemmed by the old bricks and brownstone of the Town Hall with its clock tower, and by the white planks and green shutters of the Lord Jeff, the hotel named after the colonial general who, it was alleged, pacified the area by distributing smallpox infected blankets to the local native Americans.

The College library, named in honor of the town poet who spoke of walls, flanked the south side of the Commons. The remaining buildings around The Commons held shops, including the Amherst Bookstore and the Peter Pan Bus Station, with their small-pane windows, often rimmed with ice. The grave of another poet, the one who spoke of hope and bird feathers, was only a couple blocks away. The house where the author of the Uncle Wiggly stories had lived in the early ‘50’s was near the Town Library with its ancient floors creaking under its own load of poetry and fiction. This was where anyone could find books for entertainment and pleasure. For local history, there were the documents housed on the second floor, protected from the rest of the building by a dark, narrow, oaken staircase.

A true college town also had places to feed the body as well as the mind. The Gaslight was the site for breakfast at any hour, for both faculty and students. Lunch for faculty was offered by The Pub, located among quaint boutiques such as The Dangling Conversation. For special dinners and parties, faculty went to The Rusty Scupper on the edge of town.

Routinely, meals were consumed on campus, at one of the eateries in the Student Union or The Top of the Campus restaurant crowning this structure, which also housed the university’s hotel where students could earn a degree in hotel and entertainment management.

However, on a daily basis, I usually went with the other deans to dine at the Faculty Club hidden in another historic site in the middle of the campus. When Karen was a graduate student in her Speech and Communications Program, she found that the café in the basement of the Newman Center was a relatively quiet place to study with a cup of coffee.

My first office on campus was located in another ancient brick and granite building, Munson Hall, near the central administration offices found in Whitmore Hall. During my second year at UMA, the Graduate Research Center was opened, and my quarters moved into the multistoried tower designated for the sciences and the newly created program in Computer Studies. I now had a five-minute commute, with Karen dropping me off in the morning or picking me up in the evening. This new location had only one significant problem. It was close enough to our house that I could, too easily, go back to the office in the evening or on weekends. On the other hand, it was also the place for me to find my “alone time.”

Originally, one of the second-floor rooms of our colonial style home was to have been my study. However, Ken and Chris, who had always shared a bedroom, now were at an argumentative age that required separate spaces for a relatively peaceful coexistence. The result was that my study was moved to one end of our large living room. My campus office was the only place I could find for my own personal needs for quietness. It was, also, where I resumed the practice of my journaling. Officially, the workday ended at 5:00 p.m. However, Karen would pick me up at six o’clock, giving me an hour alone, to meditate and to write in my diary.

I have found, in re-reading those pages, which I transferred many years ago to an electronic version, that I had a deep need to be alone with my thoughts, ones that became highly personal, about my married life and our family lives. Those entries do not serve as a source for these current reflections, but rather remind me of the difference of being “alone” and of being “lonely.” They also give a detailed, but boring, account of academic politics in which I came to realize that administrative differences are more deadly within the university than within the bureaucracies of the federal government. A college town may be the place for a peaceful life, but the same is not true for the college, itself.

Munson Hall could have been part of a movie set for an American campus at the turn of the last century. Its brownstone foundation supported ancient bricks bound together by ivy, red in the fall and green in the summer months. The medium-sized classrooms had been converted into large offices. Mine was in a back corner, complete with a boarded-up fireplace and windows that rattled with the seasonal winds. Just outside my door was the entrance to the building’s single water closet, a place with a very appropriate name. Every day I waved to most of the staff for the Graduate School and for the University Press, located in the basement level, who routinely passed my door on their way to this nearby facility.

Since my office was across the dark-oak paneled foyer and at a distance from the classrooms now serving the administrative needs of the rest of the Graduate School, I did not have direct access to my secretary, Linda, who was part of the pool in the School’s general office. This positioning did lead to a problem in the first week of my being the new Associate Graduate Dean for Research. I had met Linda on the first day; on the second day I could not find her. I thought I recalled what she looked like but was very uncertain about which secretary was assigned to me. It was not until several days later, when Linda changed back to the wig she had worn on my first day, that I realized what was happening. Yes, this was the time when young ladies changed their hair as frequently as they did their dresses. However, this action should be avoided by a pooled secretary with a new boss.

Another surprise was the lifestyle of academic administrators in comparison with those who worked according to the rules of federal service employees. At the end of the day, once the office staff had left the premises at 5:00 p.m., the deans gathered in Mort Appley’s office. He was the Graduate Dean. Gene Piedmont was the Associate Dean for Graduate Student Affairs. The three of us would meet for a small glass of sherry and conversation. Although the campus license covered only drinks served in the Faculty Club and in the bar associated with The Top of the Campus restaurant, it was deemed to be acceptable that collegial conversations were somehow exempt from such mundane restrictions. Occasionally, we would be joined by a financial executive officer, another academic dean or a departmental chairman. Academic life was, indeed, very civilized. At least on the surface. Politics in Academe was another matter.

Constant battles were waged between the Office of the Chancellor of the Amherst campus and that of the President located in Boston. Warfare concerning who was really in control was also waged among the faculty, through its “Faculty Senate,” and the “Administration” – either campus-wide or within the various Colleges. Each Department Chairmen added to the daily salvos. My own engagements primarily involved Warren Gulko, the golden boy of Chancellor Bill Bromery. Warren was the Budget Director for the campus. I was never certain about the reasons for my ongoing feuds with him, but they did occur routinely. They prompted me, finally, to look elsewhere for the continuation of my career.

My professional role was to assist the faculty in obtaining external grant support for their research projects. I had a very modest budget which I could use to stimulate scholarly work in all of the university’s efforts, from the Arts through the Sciences, as well as in the Business School and in the School of Education. I chose to have a Faculty Research Council help me decide who should receive funding for the individual research applications they submitted to my office. It was a challenge to encourage biological scientists to support the work of visual artists who needed funds for their paints and other materials, as well as to obtain the cooperation of social, behavioral and physical scholars.

Since my signature provided the official approval before any application could be submitted for external support from federal agencies as well as from private foundations, I did have an opportunity to learn something about almost everything being studied in the university. Most of the time, I had fun: learning about the interests of the human mind and spirit. It was not fun to learn, first-hand, about the foibles of human nature. However, the events and the results for both instances were usually: “merely academic.”

The main reason for an in-the-ground swimming pool in New England was an unsatisfying week on Cape Cod. At least this was true for us. During our first summer back in the northeast, we decided we should take a week’s vacation on the Cape. After a long wait in lines of traffic, we finally completed our journey across the canal at Bourne and arrived on the extended arm of the Bay State. We had rented two rooms in a motel in one of the quaint towns along the southern, ocean side coast. That was the first problem.

Brochures and word-of-mouth made the villages picturesque, and they did live up to this reputation, most of the time, but the motels on this side of the Cape were tourist traps. The one at which we stayed was far from any private beach. All of the ocean side town beaches were make-believe beaches. They held only a few grains of sand, unlike the beaches of the mid-Atlantic states. Here the New England coastline consisted primarily of pebbles and larger rocks, which did not accommodate our tender, non-Yankee feet. And the water was cold. Only natives of the Commonwealth could venture into the water at more than an ankle-deep level. The Bayside was somewhat better. There, a visitor could find a few more grains of sand, a few less pebbles, and warmer water, albeit with a surf that was actually only knee-deep for some distance from the shore.

And then there were the rains, daily showers, for seven days. Summer had disappeared from the Cape and stranded us there, enclosed for much of the time by the walls of the motel, a refuge where we and our kids could argue without interruption. The five of us tried to escape in our station-wagon to drive to tourist attractions between Falmouth and Provincetown and back again to Sandwich. Being isolated in the multiple seats of a slowly moving vehicle (the traffic reappeared despite the showers) offered a slightly better environment than the confines of the motel. We returned, finally, to Amherst and vowed not to endure another family-vacation on Cape Cod.

Instead, during the second summer we lived in Amherst, we decided to have a swimming pool dug in our backyard. After all, many of our faculty friends had such facilities behind their own homes. I was never certain if they, too, had the construction problems we discovered.

We had not realized our house had a small underground river flowing beneath it. For several weeks our sons enjoyed sitting on the bulldozer and the trench-digger residing there, as our contractor attempted to empty out the hole he had started at my request. Later, I, myself, put in the French drains around the pool and planted the willow tree in the lowest part of the yard to provide a way to keep the chlorinated water and the natural fluids in separate locations.

And then came the bricks. With some encouragement, our boys helped Karen and me lay pavement blocks in the packed sand which we had wheel-barreled into place and tamped down as the foundation. I lost count of the number of bricks we put into position around the pool, but there was enough left over to make interesting piles and short fences in appropriate, nearby sites. At least, I did develop a magnificent tan while working in the yard that summer.

Then came the fall, and the time to “close” the pool, a process followed by other transplanted Yankees who had decided that swimming from June through August was worth the effort of closing and opening their pools every late September and early May.

Depending upon which season was approaching, I had to either lower or raise the level of the water in the pool by using its pumps accordingly. Then I floated (or removed) the log or two needed to prevent the water from freezing during the winter months. A blue, plastic tarpaulin covering the pool added to its protection. This cover was sufficiently porous to allow melting snow to pass through it when the winter sun made its way slightly above the horizon in December and January.

Each spring called for the ritual of “shocking” the pool. A mixture of salts and other chemicals killed the dark-green algae which had reproduced, even in the cold weather, throughout the pool. In some magical way, the green coloration vanished, and the blue tints returned. Once more we could jump into the chilled water that ultimately provided daily comfort for us in midsummer when the humidity in the Connecticut Valley became high enough to allow tobacco leaves to be harvested for the outer covering for some of the best cigars manufactured in the States.

In the end, the entire annual effort was worth the anxiety of wondering what a week-long vacation might be like on Cape Cod. Besides, there were some pool-less friends and their kids who did enjoy coming over for a swim and hotdogs during July.

Every spring there was a race in our front yard. The crocus was the usual winner. Stretching toward this seasonal goal line, their blue, purple and yellow hands would open wide. Accompanying thin blades of green pierced the melting snow, which attempted to thwart them. Quickly following the ground display, came the sky-thrust branches of the forsythia covered with four-petaled blooms in yellows of various tints. Yellow is not merely yellow; it shouts with a variety of tones.

The first tree I planted in the middle of our front yard was a cherry which, each spring, poured forth its pink-white blossoms a bit later than did the forsythia and its companion pussy willows with their grey-fur puffs on leafless branches. The Japanese cherry yielded no fruit, but only its colorful petals, which quickly blanketed the ground beneath it. The wild apple trees in the vacant field next to our front-yard did not bear fruit either, but their white-pink blossoms complemented those of the cherry tree as they, too, blew away on the spring breeze.

Meanwhile, red Emperor tulips and Dutch daffodils, with their golden corona surrounding darker crowns, burst from bulbs planted the previous fall and allowed to cool naturally in the ground. Years later, in Houston, I learned that a refrigerator had to replace nature in order to grow anything from bulbs. It was such foolishness as this that sidetracked my gardening instincts when we moved to Texas. Near the Gulf Coast, I needed to forget those plants I had loved but which refused to grow in my newly discovered semi-tropics. In Texas I had to learn about plants that might survive if they were covered by sheets and towels when the temperatures dropped in January.

The purple, violet and red rhododendrons concealing the foundations for our house in Amherst had to be forgotten. I learned to accept azaleas of a similar color and function in a misnamed Spring, Texas. The perennial mountain laurel, which existed through New England snows and released pink, white and variegated blooms in late spring and early summer, could no longer be grown along the side of our house.

And then there were the lilacs, standing guard in a row along the chain-link fence in our Northeastern backyard. To my surprise these bushes became the home, one year, for a swarm of passing bees. Fortunately, a local beekeeper quickly arrived and was pleased to add to his own hives the thousands accompanying their queen to a new realm. Evidently, she liked a lilac fragrance as much as I did, and for which I continue to long.

Unlike transient honeybees, our Japanese beetles came each summer to take up residence with our hybrid tea roses, majestic in their hues of pink, apricot, yellow and red. Although magnificent in color, the teas had no fragrance. But if I got close enough, I could make out the odor of the red geraniums planted among them as a hoped-for natural protection from the beetles, which enjoyed munching on the roses every chance they had. On the other hand, my primroses were not attacked by the beetles who preferred the real thing. I had planted these small, colorful mounds in a rock garden near the willow tree in our back yard.

Yes, the willow was there to draw up water which, otherwise, would have accumulated in the lower regions of the yard. I was distressed to observe, when we visited Amherst years later, that the willow was gone. I don’t know why the new owners engaged in such a crime. At least the blue spruce I had planted at the side of the house was still there, albeit at a height I could not believe achievable. Fortunately, I had planted this pine tree far enough from the side of the house to allow for such an event. The cherry tree was also of an appropriate size, as was the mountain ash I had planted near the driveway.

Of course, there were also the annuals and semi-annuals I replaced each year, in an attempt to learn what I liked and what would grow during the short New England summer and fall. There were bleeding hearts with their bright pink puffs and white drops. Red coxcomb added interesting shapes. I also planted blue lupine to give their unique color to the beds. The gladioli, which were tall enough to require staking, offered their own bright colors. The chrysanthemums planted for display in the autumn had hues that were deeper in the red, yellow, orange and bronze part of the spectrum. They looked regal near the red brick patio surrounding the swimming pool.

I fell in love with gardening in New England. Each Saturday Karen would take the boys to the stadium to watch the UMA Minutemen play football, while I listened to a radio broadcast of the game so I knew when I should stop working in the yard and take my shower before I met her and our friends for the usual after-game gathering at someone’s home.

Making decisions on what to plant and how to prune those beautiful beings was much healthier for me than worrying about the next problem the faculty would bring to my attention. If I could have taken a whack at some of them, my life would have been very different. It was for our mutual welfare that whacking weeds and de-heading spent blossoms was of benefit to both humans and non-humans in this New England college town with its bulbs, buds, beetles and bees.

Phoebe did not like fireworks. She, also, did not like green peas. I suppose her dislike, even fear, of the explosions in the sky was the result of her coming to us as a very young puppy on the Fourth of July in 1971. She also did not like thunder. The kids, especially Deb, tried to calm her with each rumble, but she would continue to shake long after the sound had gone away. Fortunately, in New England, unlike in Texas, the New Year’s celebration was devoid of firecrackers; there she needed to endure only one day a year for celebratory explosions.

As for the peas, I was never sure why she refused to eat them when they were part of her daily meal of Alpo. Although Phoebe grew into a large dog carrying the genes of both a black Labrador and a German Shepherd, her tongue was able to push aside each pea so that they remained in the bottom of her bowl after she had licked everything else clean. In later years, she was also able to separate pills from real food when dog-medicine had to be administered. Many times, she would even unwrap the cheese in which we had embedded the pill and leave the offending particle behind, to be forced down, later, by throat stroking.

Phoebe was a bright canine, or at least one who was willing to be trained easily. She learned that her inside-the-house domain consisted of the kitchen and adjoining family room. When she was merely a small, cuddly pup, we placed boards across the doorways into the living room, hallway, and dining room. In her mind, they remained present as a barrier long after they were physically removed. Of course, scooching didn’t count. If we were in the living room, usually when friends came to visit, Phoebe would stretch out in the hallway with her front legs extending forward while half of her body reclined on the carpet. She might wriggle a little in order to gain a few additional inches of carpet-softness, but she knew there were limitations and would be reprimanded if she overlapped too much into the living room.

Being a German Labrador, she preferred existence as an outdoor dog, most of the time. She roamed the fields around our house and probably went, on occasion, to visit Tilson Farm, the Umass agricultural area bordering our backyard. She often accompanied Deb on her own visits to the horses stabled there.

Phoebe also enjoyed frolicking in the snow during half the time we lived in Amherst. On the other hand, Houston is where she immediately became an indoor dog. Although she had the short, brown-black hair of her ancestors, she did not like either the humidity or the temperature when she was forced, several times a day, to attend to outdoor matters. However, in Amherst she spent most of her spring, summer and fall days in our large, enclosed backyard.

At the same time, she did like to know about those who passed by. She was able to mount the woodpile by the front fence and peer over the seven-foot-high boards. To a passing observer her head either floated in the air or was attached to a giraffe-legged dog!

During her aging days in Houston, Phoebe developed several problems being an indoor creature. There were the fleas which followed her everywhere and loved to alternate between her body and the shag carpet of her newly confined family room (the board trick worked as well in Texas as it did in Massachusetts.) No treatment we tried seemed to separate her from the very small critters that accompanied her.

Phoebe, toward the end of her fourteen years with us, began to develop the usual problems of large dogs. Her hip joints no longer held up as well as they had when she was younger. She was more content to spend the days sleeping than roaming. She remained a friend with family members but was uncertain around strangers whom she might nip.

Finally, one day Karen coaxed her into the car, an event that Phoebe had once enjoyed except when she seemed to know that the office for our veterinarian was the destination. On that particular day, only Karen returned home. Since then, we have never had another canine friend living with us.

“Honor your partner; honor your corner. And do-si-do.” It took a while to expand the series of commands our caller gave us, but we learned them so we would not “break down the square,” a terrible offense unless you were a raw beginner. We could laugh about our errors for the first few sessions, but if we wanted to continue with the weekly gatherings of the College Town Twirlers, we had to take the calls seriously, maybe even arrive a little early for practice before the other couples appeared. And they would all be there on time.

If you came late, there might not be three other couples to complete a square, and you would need to wait until someone got tired and wanted to take a time-out. That did not happen very frequently; square dancers seemed to have an inexhaustible energy for two or three hours of swinging a partner.

The Twirlers came from several towns around Amherst. Since all of them were, in some way, a college town, the group’s name was highly appropriate when we joined with others for expanded sessions throughout the Connecticut valley. During the day, the Twirlers were faculty members, staff in an academic department or even employees from dining services.

One of the more active Twirlers was the chief glassblower for the University. He had a lot of wind and great endurance during all of the sets. If you were a close friend, he might give you a special, handmade ornament to hang on your Christmas tree. Being his boss, I received several designs over the years. He was so well known for the scientific glass-apparatuses he fabricated that five executives from several Japanese commercial glass companies visited Amherst when they were at an international meeting in Boston, not realizing, at the time, that Amherst was not a suburb of Boston. They gave him a miniature Shogun warrior; he gave them unique glass-blown artifacts.

Those who were active square-dancers were as conspicuously dressed as any Shogun warrior or kimonoed geisha performer. Yards and yards of crinoline were essential underpinnings for the dresses Karen wore to the dances we attended. Her skirts consumed a significant space in our closet. Men, however, wore simple plaid shirts and carried a large red handkerchief in a back pocket. It is only in the West that men wear cowboy shirts and bandanas around their necks. And boots. Up north, for square dances held in gyms rather than barns, the men had to wear tennis shoes or sneakers to protect the polished floorboards on which they moved.

Square dancing was not our only activity for social pleasure. It might be considered as the countermeasure for our other hobby, gourmet dining. Faculty wives, and occasionally faculty husbands, would prepare dinners we would share with one another on a rotational basis in our homes. Multiple groups belonging to the Faculty Wives Club would be responsible for a particular dish created from recipes given out to all of its members. Since faculty often lived within local neighborhoods, it was common for the appetizer to be eaten at one home, the entree at another and the dessert at a third location. The cuisine of a unique country would be chosen for the monthly gatherings. Karen and I usually enjoyed the selections given to the group, except for the Indonesian evening which seemed to have peanut butter in every offering, including the soup and main course.

Along with square dancing and gourmet dinners for interactive social gatherings, there were the usual cocktail parties for holidays. One of the more memorable gatherings was the Spinelli May Wine Pig Roast. Actually, few attendees really remembered it, or at least, how it ended. One magnificent spring day, Franco Spinelli and his Hawaiian wife hosted a true pig roast in their back yard. The pit had been dug early in the morning, and a small hog was anchored on a spit above it. May wine with flower blossoms and greenery was served while we waited for the roasting to be finished. However, no one knew exactly how to determine that finale. So, the many guests continued to consume the marvelous May wine, until the pork was ultimately served and all of the guests, themselves, were equally “porked.” Later, it was very difficult to recall the names of those whom you met at the Spinellis.

Other significant social gatherings were for card parties. Couples-bridge or party-bridge was the form which Karen and I enjoyed most. Both of us found duplicate bridge to be sufficiently competitive. However, she was also part of a woman’s bridge group that apparently was held mainly for gossip, with only a few hands played throughout a session.

At the same time, a college town such as Amherst provided a spectrum of choices for us to enjoy as a couple. The University offered theater in the form of dramas and comedies as well as music by visiting or local orchestras and chamber groups. I, myself, developed an interest in modern dance performances. Of course, there were also traveling and permanent exhibits in the art galleries.

Very good friends of ours, Bill and Sally Venmen, were leaders of the local Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera Company. Each year Bill directed (and Sally did everything else) a different G&S performance. Karen sometimes had a part in the supporting cast. One year, she was a young fairy in Iolanthe. It gave her a one-time-only excuse to die her hair and go flitting about in a diaphanous costume. Deb, on the other hand, expressed her dramatic interests by being a junior assistant (director) for Bill while still in high school.

A college town might be small in geographic size and with a limited population of faculty and students, but its cultural environment can be equal to any city in the country, from New York to Houston to Los Angeles. Here one can twirl in a variety of patterns and not be limited to square dancing all of the time.