Category: Reflections in General

Before the Internet and its social connections such as YouTube, even before television – live or streaming – there was radio. Many Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons or evenings, I had the time to listen to distant sounds and, with a vivid imagination, see them come alive. Although I’ve forgotten a program’s content, the theme songs which introduced each one are still able to activate a synapse or two.

Programs in the afternoon were usually produced for teenage listeners. This was the time for Superman and Mark Trail. Saturday mornings was dedicated to Let’s Pretend and, for some strange reason, Grand Central Station. Evenings were for variety shows like Fred Allen and Your Hit Parade. Of course there were also comedies like Jimmy Durante and Fibber McGee and Molly. My evening favorites, however, were playhouse productions with real drama or mysteries with fake drama. Do you remember the short walk to the Little Theater Off Times Square?

There is no reason to include a listing of all of the theme songs from the forties and early fifties. If you click on the link below, you should be able to hear some of them. If you’re too young to remember them, I hope you might find them amusing, anyway. Welcome to being surprised!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d8Pj36RuR0&ab_channel=PatCamerino

It depends upon when you were born as to what you think of when you hear the term “Moon Walk.” If you were a teenager, or older, in the 1960’s, you may very well recall the dance steps executed in place by Michael Jackson. However, for those who were a youngster or an adult living in the summer of 1969, the words “moon walk” might induce a reflection on Neil Armstrong walking on the real moon, itself. That event occurred a few minutes before 3:00 a.m. on Sunday, July 20, 1969.

We wanted our daughter, Deb, who had been born ten years earlier in 1959, to remember the date. It might even be possible for Ken, born in 1963, to remember that something special happened in the world when he was six years old. It would be unlikely for our four-year-old Chris to remember anything about his being forced to stay up very late on that adventurous night in the summer of 1969.

At the time, we were living in Rockville, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and could not avoid being inundated by reports of rocket blasts and space efforts. It was a very sleepy family that had gathered in our family room around a small black and white television. Games and jigsaw puzzles kept us involved and on the verge of doziness, until it was announced that Neil Armstrong was about to exit through the Eagle’s hatch, climb slowly down the ladder and place a foot on the dust of the moon. We were more or less awake to hear the words: “One small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind.”

The words were more exciting than the mere “beep … beep … beep” I had heard some dozen years previously coming from a radio in the DU fraternity house in Ithaca, New York where I was eating dinner on October 4, 1957. Back then I was a graduate student at Cornell University, when the evening-news-broadcast included the sounds being emitted from the Russian Sputnik, an artificial satellite circumnavigating the earth for the first time. A month later, on November 3, we learned that the Soviet Union had launched Laika, a Moscow mongrel, as the first living creature to orbit the planet.

It was a time to be amazed; science-fiction was becoming science-reality. Four years later, as I was completing my doctoral degree, I heard about Yuri Gagarin orbiting in Vostok 1 following his lift off on April 12, 1961. Seventeen months later, the US-USSR space race was announced by JFK in his speech, at Rice University in Houston, with the words: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

President Kennedy was no longer around to see the completion of the race he had announced. Over the intervening years, I followed each step taken by the Mercury Project of 1958 – 1963, my years at Cornell, and by the Gemini Project of 1964 – 67, when we lived in New Hampshire and Oregon. The Apollo years occurred during our days when I was with the National Institutes of Health. The politics of the moon race ended with my years in Amherst.

Over these periods, the nation’s discussions, about funds for science-in-general and for reaching and exploring the moon, have been instrumental in their effects on my own professional life. Discussions relating to the merits of basic and of applied research and development were important with respect to federal funds available for biochemistry and all the other competing “Big Science” endeavors demanding governmental support.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin may have touched down at Tranquility Base, but planet earth was far from tranquil. Perhaps more realistic words were to be found in that other moon-related quotation: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” These words were heard around the world, as I discovered several years ago during a visit to Croatia! Grand Circle Travel, the agency we used for many of our foreign journeys, arranged for brief visits in local homes, often for a native dinner. The GCT also encouraged visitors to give a small gift to the host. We presented our Croatian farm family with a tea-towel from “Houston, Texas.” When their young son read the message, his spontaneous response was, “Houston, we have a problem.”

Although that particular problem was resolved and the Apollo flights were brought to successful conclusions, we have diminished our efforts to try to accomplish deeds that are “hard” and have avoided those in which the solutions are “not easy.”

It has been more than fifty years since a human walked on the moon, itself. There is a possibility that the next feet to touch its surface will be those from China, a nation which landed its own exploration vehicle on the lunar “dark side” on January 3, 2019, a year before we heard about that other “Chinese landing”; this time, one in the United States from a base in Wuhan, China, one which has led to worldwide chaos.

Meanwhile, we have looked into space, itself, and through eons of time, with both the Hubble and the James Webb telescopes. There are renewed discussions about another lunar voyage as well as one to Mars, a planet we’ve seen up-close through our own space satellites and electronic explorers.

We continue to engage in a “moon walk” in which only time will tell if we have been remaining in place, like a Michael Jackson dance-step, or entering a new adventure, one like Neil Armstrong’s step for man, leap for mankind.

Most Americans, even those who are neither Christians nor “Nones” (and mark “None of the Above” when asked for a religious preference), associate December 25 with “Christmas.” An equal number probably recognizes that the “Fourth of July” is a national holiday, even if they don’t know it’s the date on which we celebrate the signing of our Declaration of Independence – whatever that is. A smaller percentage might link “December 7” with a foreign attack on Pearl Harbor and the resulting Second World War. On the other hand, the term “Nine-Eleven” is probably known by the highest percentage of Americans who have heard about that “second day of infamy” – without knowing anything about the one sixty years previously.

Have you ever noticed that for the first three events, we tend to vocalize the name of the month and the day on which the event occurred? Yet somehow, we usually omit the word “September” when we recall the day on which the continental United States, the “lower 48,” was attacked by aircraft under foreign control. Although some might inquire: “Where were you on September 11th?” – most people throughout our nation would ask: “Where were you on 9-11?”

What imagery do we impose by using these numbers for this horrible tragedy?

Do we associate them with the 9-1-1 we use to reach assistance when an emergency occurs? Are there those who, in their mind’s eye, see those twin towers we once beheld with pride in New York City – the Towers which stood as solidly as those parallel number ones? Do we prefer to recall “September” within the context of “September Song,” when the days “dwindle down to a precious few?”

In September of 2001, I was enjoying the beginning of my second year of retirement. My life was a very happy and contented one – a time without worries, a time when Karen and I were looking forward to resuming our foreign travel. In August, we had completed a cruise from Anchorage to Seattle. Although we had enjoyed our vacation in the Northwest, we longed to return to the land of castles and cathedrals. On the evening of September 10, we were looking forward to the celebration, on the next day, of the sixth birthday of our granddaughter, Christina.

The only nuisance in our lives on that particular Tuesday morning of Christina’s birthday, was a sink clogged by some indigestible vegetable peelings which necessitated our call for a plumber to do something with the drain. When he arrived, the first thing he asked was: “Did you see the TV of that plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York? It’s all over the news.” We turned on our television. It remained on for most of the next several days.

The images we saw were totally unreal. There was a recycling of the video of American Flight 11 crashing into the North Tower shortly before 10:00 that morning. Surely this must be part of a horror-adventure movie being shown on early morning TV. But unlike the Orson Wells radio program of a previous decade, the words of this announcer were real; he was describing an event that was happening at that very moment.

As we watched, the image of another plane was being broadcast. United Flight 175 erupted in black smoke as it penetrated the North Tower. The plumber fixed our drain and left. Karen and I continued to be mesmerized as we saw the twin towers crumble, with agonizing slowness, enveloped with thick, roiling clouds. Only moments before, we had seen several people leaping from the windows. We saw the crowds streaming away from this site of total destruction. The two of us prayed for my cousin Donna who lived in an apartment building near 16th Street and Sixth Avenue, there in lower Manhattan, not far from where those images were originating, live.

The news coverage shifted to Washington, D.C. and scenes at the Pentagon where another plane had crashed. The newscasters tried to speak coherently about a fourth plane downed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Had it been headed for the White House, as some claimed?

Real-life was exceeding anything that could have been imagined in any grade C horror-adventure produced by Hollywood. We saw it. Our minds and souls did not readily accept what we were seeing. When telephone service was once more available throughout the country, we learned that Donna was safe in her apartment. Later she told us that the major change in her own life was her decision not to take a subway anywhere in the City; she now preferred aboveground buses and cabs.

Our house in Cypress, Texas, was on the flightpath for Houston Intercontinental. During the days following the tragedy, I sat on the swing I had placed on our back patio, over which I had devoted the loving care of a dedicated gardener. The trellis above my head still had its vines to block out the warm autumn sun. But there was an even greater blockage in my thoughts. As I sat there, pondering, I realized there were no sounds of airplanes arriving or leaving Houston’s major terminal. I found it was disturbing to hear “nothing.” Life, itself, had become muffled. The days passed and commercial flights were again allowed to fly over the United States. However, flights of fancy continued to be grounded. They no longer flew in happy memories which had become outdated by that one, infamous date: 9/11/2001.

If you forget something, how can it still be a memory? Perhaps the term “half-remembered memory” would be more logical. Then again, is there really any greater “logic” about memories that are more completely remembered than others buried deeply within misty clouds?

What has prompted this strange reflection? The recollection of a railroad trip. It was a trip from someplace I really can’t recall to a destination about which I am equally unsure. The train-ride, itself, is the prompt for the memory.

It was a Pullman sleeping car. I remember that the facing seats I occupied when awake were somehow joined together to form a bed for the evening hours, thanks to the efforts of the attending porter. I don’t recall if the arrangement was part of a compartment. I seem to envision curtains separating the sleeping section from the aisle and another curtained sleeping area on the opposite side.

I remember watching the dark countryside and occasional bright streetlights passing by the window, and seeing the station platforms when the train stopped, and I pulled back the window curtain. So, it must not have been an upper berth I was using. On the other hand, I do not remember much more about the experience, itself. For instance, how did I change into pajamas before getting into bed? There must not have been any place to stand. Did I accomplish the task while sitting on the bed, itself? Getting dressed in the morning must have been very awkward.

And where was I going? And why? And where did I start?

I know I never road an overnight train between Ohio and Ithaca. I always drove the New York Throughway from one place to the other. Besides, why would I have been in a sleeping car if that had been the route for this excursion? It would have been much too short a journey for a sleeper.

I also know it was not for a trip between Oregon and Washington, D.C. I made my first airplane ride for that occasion. When we lived in the area of Bethesda, Maryland, and I worked for the federal government, all of my travel was out of the National Airport (now called the Reagan National Airport.)

Life in Amherst introduced me to Peter Pan, the bus system used throughout New England. I often rode with Tinker Bell to Bradley Field in Windsor Locks, Connecticut.

Logic would, therefore, suggest that my strange nighttime train was from Hanover, New Hampshire. Actually, it would have been White River Junction, which was the only place large enough to have public transportation out of the region.

My destination, tucked in some corner of my memory, might have been Louisville, Kentucky, the home of the University of Louisville School of Medicine. I vaguely recall I applied for a professional position there, near the completion of my postdoctoral work at Dartmouth Med. The results of the trip were so non-apparent that the surrounding events have made no permanent impact on my memory. In response to a job application, I probably gave a seminar presentation of my research, the usual requisite for an academic appointment at the time. No doubt the Biochemistry faculty in Louisville were unimpressed with whatever they heard and saw from me.

Getting a teaching position at the college level was not easy at the time. I really did not want to venture back to the Academic Auction block I had mounted when seeking that postdoctoral position at Dartmouth. Most opportunities resulted from word-of-mouth with friends and colleagues. Lucile Smith, my mentor at the time, favored my going to Amsterdam in The Netherlands, with her friend, E.C. (Bill) Slater, an internationally known biochemist. Karen and I thought a lot about the value of undertaking European postdoctoral research for my career development, but when I mentioned the possibility to my mother, she strongly suggested that her death would have been imminent, had I made that choice. In the long run, she found Oregon more acceptable, at 2500 miles, than The Netherlands, at 4000 miles.

So, we went to the Pacific Northwest for two years. The outcome of my life would have been very different if my employment locations had been different. The path from Ohio to New York, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, D.C., Amherst and, finally, Houston has been an exciting one. Perhaps, if the choices had been slightly different, I would have a deeper memory of that Pullman sleeper from somewhere to somewhere else. Instead, it remains a half-forgotten memory.

Since I mentioned, in A Bilious Time, that my two sons made fun of my lightening-shaped scar, resulting from compound surgery involving the removal of my gall bladder and appendix, with a reference to “Shazam” and Captain Marvel, it’s only reasonable I elaborate on my comic book hero of my childhood and young-teenage years.

Captain Marvel was my personal hero. I preferred him to either Batman or Superman, even if Superman’s real-life lawyers managed to get rid of Captain Marvel in a copyright infringement battle that ended in 1953, the year I graduated from high school.

After all, Captain Marvel’s alter-ego was Billy Batson, an orphan who was a preteen when he met the wizard Shazam, the one who enabled the boy to become the adult, red-costumed hero when Billy would shout out: “Shazam!” A bolt of lightning, as depicted on his uniform, would give him the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury. It never bothered me how Solomon of the Hebrew scriptures became friends with all those Greek and Roman pagan gods.

I also was not concerned with how this young kid could be employed as a radiobroadcaster during the day. This employment was better than the one pursued by another orphan Billy had once saved, Freddy Freeman. This youngster was a crippled newsboy during the day and became the blue-suited Captain Marvel Junior when he, in turn, would cry out “Captain Marvel!” I was not sure what daily occupation kept Billy’s twin sister, Mary, employed before she became Mary Marvel in her fight against injustice. Although I enjoyed the adventures of all three characters, my favorite was Captain Marvel, himself. I was greatly disappointed, years later, when the movie version came out; CM was a completely different character. In fact, in the movie, “he” became a “she” as the hero turned into a heroine.

If I was not able to buy a ten-cent copy of Whiz comics featuring the red-suited, real Captain Marvel, I would settle for Superman or Batman, who – during the day – lived as either a newspaper reporter at The Daily Planet or a wealthy tycoon in Gotham City. If I wanted someone more realistic there was always Joe Palooka, the boxer who fought his own out-of-the-ring criminals. On the other hand, if I wanted age-appropriate characters, there were always Archie Andrews and his friends: Jughead, Betty and Veronica. Occasionally I would but a copy of the comics about the only true female hero (heroine) of the day: Wonder Woman.

As the years past and I matured from preteen to real-teen reading interests, I advanced to buying copies of Mad Magazine and Tales from the Crypt, which became popular in the early 1950’s. They, too, originally sold for ten cents an issue. I finally stopped buying Mad when the price became close to a dollar a copy.

I maintained my comic-book collection in “mint condition.” Unlike my friends, I would not share my own copies with other kids, because of a concern that these colorful objects would become tattered and torn. I stored them in a brown, wooden box in the back of my closet. They were safe there when I went off to college. But only on a temporary basis.

For some unknown reason, while I was away at Kent State, my mother threw all of them away! She, as had many other parents, thought that such materials were not only useless but probably “bad” for impressionable teens. Why should they continue to clutter up the back of my closet? Fortunately, I had retained the first two issues of Mad Magazine with me at college. They have continued to exist, for the last sixty-plus years, in the bottom of my current closet. They are still in mint condition.

What is the difference between a pack rat and a collector? Both are scavengers; both believe that what they gather is “pretty” or “useful.” My first collection was, as usual for preteens, comic books. That lasted until I left for college and their demise due to my mother’s cleaning up what I had left behind. Fortunately, she did not dispose of my stamp collection, my second attempt of gathering what might be “pretty” and even, at times, “useful.”

I collected both US stamps along with a “topical” collection of sports stamps, i.e., stamps from around the world that included athletics in their design. Although I still possess those sports stamps, I stopped adding to them when I left high school. I did continue to collect postage stamps issued by the United States.

My US albums, with unused or “mint” stamps, date back to 1924. However, my personal trips to the post-office for the earliest issues I have, began about 1950 when I entered high school and could easily walk between the two sites during my lunchtime break. Back then, regular stamps sold for a mere three-cents. I managed to stop by the post-offices in each town where I lived after that, even though it was difficult to find the time during my eight years of higher education. Nevertheless, I persisted. When we lived in New Hampshire, my collecting stamps became an excuse for Karen and me to go for drives up and down the Connecticut Valley. At that time, I was interested in collecting “plate blocks.”

Each pane of stamps had a unique number, a plate number, printed on one of the four corners of each “plate.” There might be as many as four or five different numbers for each design that was issued. As a result, there could be more than a dozen different combinations of plate number positions. Each post-office had different numbers for the panes it sold. The challenge was to purchase as many different plate blocks (consisting of four stamps adjoining the plate number) as I could possibly find.

This effort required that I had to travel to many post-offices in order to complete a set. It was a great excuse to drive to a different village in Vermont or New Hampshire to find the desired stamps and stop for a cup of coffee and a donut, as well. I finally gave up this addiction when the cost of a single stamp exceeded ten cents. By then, the price of trying to find each different plate block became as ridiculous as the idea, itself, of collecting plate block numbers. I sold my plate block collection to a shop which would pay me only face value for them. Stamp collecting is not a good method for long-term investments, no matter what philatelists say.

In fact, collecting as an investment strategy is probably not worthwhile for any of my so-called “collectibles.”

For a limited time, I collected porcelain plates with illustrations from a Chinese literary classic: The Dream of the Red Chamber. Currently on E-Bay they can be purchased at half the price I paid for them fifty years ago. My brief collections of other plates from the Bradford Exchange have probably not done any better. However, they “disappeared” over the years, although those of The Dream of the Red Chamber still occupy a dish-collection rack on one of our walls.

A much cuter collection than Chinese plates was that of Tom Clark gnomes. Each figurine was molded from a mixture of clay and ground-up pecan shells. Originally, Karen and I were interested in images connected in some way with an “edible” (such as oranges or potatoes) as part of the figurine. Each molding had a small gnome-like person along with representations of nuts and leaves. Somewhere on it, there would also be a replica of a half-hidden coin. A gift from our daughter initiated our collection. When we finally stopped actively adding to it, we gave her all of the figures we owned, except for a pair consisting of an old man and lady surrounded by peanut butter cups and Hershey kisses. We also could not part with a third piece: an elderly bride and groom we had added to celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary.

Another of our collections was begun when we lived in New England and had ready access to antique sales. They were ink wells. When we began to tramp through outdoor stalls during an autumn visit to antique dealers, it was more fun to focus on a particular item for the search. Most of them are figurines concealing an ink jar somewhere in the design. The container for the ink may be in a gondola compartment of a Venetian boat or the hump of a camel. In another piece, a music-stand for a violinist hides the actual inkwell. Figures with hidden ink wells were more of a challenge to identify among all of the other non-opening images on display. It was a joy to discover a figurine that did open to reveal the hidden ink-jar. After we had moved from New England, we discovered that New Orleans had a particular role in providing additions to our collection. We finally discontinued our inkwell hunts when we moved on to our nativities collection.

Items for our major, ongoing collection have been purchased from all around the world, especially on our many visits to Europe. We enjoy finding nativities. The holy family comes in a variety of costumes and materials. There are olive-wood carvings from Israel and pine carvings from Germany. There are figures dressed in 18th century Austrian garb or South American ponchos. The creche, itself, might be a coconut from a Latin source, or a garish, multicolored church from Poland. Our curio cabinet holds over three-dozen representations of Mary, Joseph and Jesus along with accompanying sheep, shepherds and magi.

A pack rat might keep something shiny or soft. I prefer to believe that our keepsakes represent memories of places and events that brought us joy.

I have commented elsewhere about my “Bad Habits,” including cigarette smoking, and my ultimately giving up this damaging habit. On the other hand, there is a related topic I would mention. This topic involves lighters, specifically cigarette lighters. They were once very popular gifts to buy for yourself or friends, almost all of whom were fellow smokers. They could also serve as “collectibles,” given the variety of possible designs they had.

One of the earliest markers of my adulthood was a thin, gold lighter, which was a surprise gift from my mother. It was her acknowledgment that she was on to me! She never approved of my smoking; it was my secret habit until sometime during my junior year in college. Of course, given the tobacco odor which infests all of the clothing of every smoker, my habit was not very secret. However, in the fifties and sixties, few recognized, or complained, about cigarette smoke. Second-hand inhalation existed only in the future. It was not until our daughter reached talking age that I heard complaints about cigarette smoke and had to roll down the car windows when she was being transported anywhere with me.

As for that golden lighter, it was probably preceded by the usual Zippo. That form of snap-topped lighter claimed to be wind-proof. Its manufacture dates to the mid-1930’s, about the time of my own birth. Zippos certainly became popular during the Second World War, no doubt because of the claim of their being wind-proof. It was during the First World War that the unlucky statement of “three on a match” became common. It was the belief that the third smoker lighting his cigarette from a singular wooden match would surely be shot and killed by an enemy sniper. Lighting a cigarette as quickly as possible, regardless of wind conditions, might be the difference between life and death.

My own Zippo was, no doubt, preceded by wooden matches. I can still recall the unique sulfur-phosphorus fragrance of a blown-out wooden match. Much of the time, I found it to be a comforting experience. Paper matches did not have the same association. Lighting them was a mere convenience, not a ritual in and of itself.

On the other hand, collecting matchbooks was a hobby for many young men. I was included in this group for several years during the sixties and seventies, when I kept matchbooks associated with a special memory of a place or event. It was not uncommon for a bachelor’s apartment to include a bowl of matchbooks, with or without matches attached to each cover. Nearby, would be a fist-sized cigarette lighter.

For decorative purposes, pocket-size Zippo lighters and matchbooks were insufficient. Every smoker owned at least one lighter built for placement on a coffee table, which also held an oversized ashtray or two. And yes, even if our daughter objected to the odor of cigarette smoke, she and many other young offspring formed an ashtray as an elementary school project. Often, they seemed to be in the shape of the child’s hand.

Throughout the years, Zippo lighters, which required almost weekly recharging with lighter fluid poured from a small can into the cotton-wad inside of the lighter, were replaced by disposable, butane lighters. These plastic lighters came in a spectrum of colors and designs. Few unwanted fires erupted from these pocket lighters as they jostled in a pants-pocket. This spontaneous result, however, has occurred in recent years, with the introduction of vaporized smoking and poorly designed e-cigarettes.

Obviously, back-in-the-day, lighting a cigarette required the use of a Zippo, or alternate brand, as well as wooden and paper matches. A fire for a wiener-roast picnic or for a backyard grill for hamburgers, could be started with them as well. It was best to have a very long wooden match in order to ignite either a grill or a fireplace. The user also had to be careful of the amount of auxiliary fluid-fuel added to the briquettes before the match was applied.

Of course, ancient man had flints and hard rocks to work with. I tried this procedure on very few accessions, with only a very limited success. Carefully blowing on a smoldering ember induced by a sparking flint did not yield reliable results. Young boys also learned about magnifying glasses. These optical instruments not only enlarged images; they could also start a leaf to burn. I consider myself to be lucky if I could get a crisp-edged hole in the ones I tried to ignite.

There were also candles. I have found their fires to be comforting and mesmerizing. I do miss not being able to light them in our apartment at Eagle’s Trace. Candles may be made with diverse fragrances; it’s not the same to spray a similar scent from a bottle. Non-ignitable infused sticks are the only sources of fragrance management allows.

Throughout the ages, humans have been awed by fires, especially those initiated by lightening strikes. The residents of our western states, today, find such fires to be awesome in very negative ways. When hundreds of forest fires and thousands of acres burn at the same time, great destruction occurs. The words of Smokey-the-Bear do not always have the result he describes.

Nevertheless, the death of individual humans, one at a time, can result from the striking of a flame – when its aim is to light a cigarette. I’m pleased I stopped doing that some twenty years ago. I really don’t miss my Zippo.

I refuse to be a number. Living in the retirement community of Eagle’s Trace I am supposed to give my ID number for each meal I consume in the café or restaurant. I have refused to memorize it. Fortunately, Karen and I eat together, and she gives both of our numbers to the cashier or to the inquiring member of the wait-staff. In the rare event that I eat alone, or pick up a carry-out meal, I show the cashier my community-issued resident’s tag. I’ve survived for fifteen years under these conditions.

Almost everyone is able to repeat his social security number on demand. I cannot. My refusal to be identified as a number has been consistent for eight decades. Reluctantly I remember the last four digits of my SS number, at least most of the time. However, I usually confirm my memory by glancing at the information card in my wallet; it has every number I need for modern living. No doubt it’s a good thing I was never part of the military, where I would have been forced to be known as a number. Perhaps this is the reason I have refused to become one. Human beings, whether or not they are civilians, should continue to be persons and not mere numbers.

Over the years this idiosyncrasy has expanded so that I fail to recall other so-called “important numbers” – such as telephone numbers. As I said, the information card in my wallet has every number I need for modern living. If I must give someone my telephone number, I often resort to confirming it from that ever-present card.

On the other hand, there is one telephone number I am sure about. It may be the only identification number I really remember. It is OL2-9758. That was the first telephone number assigned to my parent’s home phone when I was in my junior year in high school. That’s when my father finally allowed us to have a telephone in our house. Previously, I had the limited use of one for the few months we lived with relatives either in Mineral Ridge or “up-the-hill.” At other times, if my father had to make an important call, he would use the telephone owned by Mrs. Andrews, our landlady who lived next door to us on both Cedar Street and Seneca Street in Niles. Obviously, no one else in the family, that is, neither my mother nor I, ever had a need to make a telephone call to anyone.

However, when I was a junior in high school, my mother and I were, somehow, able to convince my father that a more direct access to a telephone might be needed – for homework, of course. And that was, actually, the only time I ever used it: to confirm a class assignment or to help another student who called me. This may be the reason why my personal, non-business telephone calls have always been limited. I never learned how to use a telephone for mere pleasure but only for required communication. When the line was finally installed, it had to be listed under my mother’s name, Victoria; my father did not want it known that he had direct access to a telephone. Strangers were not expected to call us. This was, of course, decades before the phenomenon of “robo-calls!”

I do remember that our telephone, with its “OLympic 2″ number, was the usual black, rotary instrument residing on its own personal, small table. Back then, this was the standard model; in fact it was the only model. Telephones, like the original model T Ford, were always black. It was also necessary to actually “dial” a telephone number. I’m not sure modern kids know how to use a rotary phone with a requirement that an index finger be inserted into the round opening on the dial, which was then turned clockwise to its stopped position and then released to complete the action. The sequence was repeated for each required number. It actually took time to dial someone’s number, even if it had only seven digits.

The first telephonic advancement arrived when black was no longer the only color. I remember a beige telephone my mother acquired sometime after I left home for college. At various intervals in my life, the black telephone of my youth was replaced by pale greens and whites (especially for the wall phone in the kitchen.) There may even have been a “Princess” model or two along the way.

The first “Princess” telephone had a rotary dial in the “handle” which was placed back on the cradle when it was not in use. At some point, the rotary dial was exchanged for one with pushbuttons, so that the instruction for reaching an “operator” became “press zero” instead of “dial zero.” Yes, back then if you had a problem or a question about a telephone number, a human “operator” was readily available to help out.

It was not until we moved to Houston in the late seventies that I saw my first “mobile” phone. A friend of ours had a new job selling these telephones you could use without them being connected by cords to telephone wires coming into your house (or business.) They looked like small shoeboxes, with an antenna protruding out of one end. I had my doubts, at the time, just how long this friend’s new career would last. After all, who would buy a “mobile” telephone – other than a doctor or someone who had to be aware of emergency conditions.

As the general public became interested in this new form of mobile communication, the instrument became smaller. The newer models looked like clamshells that folded in half to make them even smaller. The antenna disappeared. Next, the clamshell became an open-faced Apple cell phone. Each succeeding generation, with its increasing G number, offered more functions demanded for everyday life. Telephones used only for voice communication morphed into cameras and minicomputers. Dick Tracey’s wrist-radio became a reality, not as a mere radio, but as the basic requirement for an individual’s daily existence.

Once upon a time, if you saw someone talking to himself, that is without a visible companion nearby, you could be sure the muttering walker was insane, or on the verge of being in some fantasy world. Now, if someone is speaking loudly to an invisible companion, you can be positive he’s well into modern society with its 24/7 electronic communication with every person living on the planet – including the dinner companion sitting opposite. On the other hand, they both may be texting one another in order to keep their separate conversation private. It’s also possible that each one is communicating with someone who is not present across the table.

I said, at the outset, I refuse to become a mere number. I also refuse to be tethered to an object plugged into my ear (except for a hearing-aid, of course.) I do not own an iPhone, iPad or iPod. Someday I may need to purchase a smart-phone merely to exist in the modern world. The time is already here wherein a smart-phone is required to access electronic accounts.

Meanwhile, when I currently drive somewhere, I often carry an old clamshell which is never turned on unless I need to call someone or definitely know someone plans to call me. If you see my lips moving, you can be positive a live person is standing nearby.

Postscript: two years after writing these comments, I did purchase a smart phone! I do not engage with it to the extent made by my children and grandchildren, but I do agree it has its usefulness. Given my distaste for remembering numbers, the contact listing is helpful for the calls I make. I have also found it helpful in allowing me to participate in the daily liturgy-of-the-hours. However, I really have not been involved with game-playing. I refuse to photograph my food!

Social media likes to provide checkoff lists. One I saw on a recent computer feed is entitled: “40 things your parent had in their house that you never see today!” First of all, I have a problem with “parent had in their house.” It’s more than the grammatical problem of using a singular noun with the plural possessive pronoun, “their.” Even though I usually object to this modern construction – which avoids the genderized possessives “his” or “her” as not being “inclusive” – my real problem is: who is the parent? I’m an octogenarian. Many of the items in that listing are still found in my own home as they were in the house of my long-deceased parents. It’s also true that my wife and I owned some of them at one time in our life, but no longer have them in our current, retirement apartment.

For instance, there was the “shag carpeting.” We had the off-green version in the family room of the first home we owned in Houston, more than thirty years ago. We finally had to replace it because it became infested with fleas from our elderly dog, Phoebe. When it became uncomfortable to watch them jump onto the ankles of visitors, the shag carpet was replaced with a room-sized, braided rug, one seldom found in a current family room. Of course, the shag carpet, as well as most of the other ones found in my parents’ house or in our own early apartments, was covered by throw rugs, especially in front of almost every upholstered chair or sofa. There might even be several covering the linoleum found on the kitchen floor. The linoleum was often accompanied by a vinyl tablecloth to protect the kitchen table.

Meanwhile, in our living room, we had a floral sofa, one which could readily seat four visitors. That social media listing included this piece of furniture as outdated. On the other hand, there was no mention of sofa covers, either cloth or plastic, like the ones on all of the stuffed furniture in my own parents’ livingroom. Since everything was supposed to last for decades, almost every place that one could touch had to be protected.

With or without slipcovers, a sofa or couch might have a crocheted blanket resting on it, since such decorations were found in every parent’s house. Today, the granny-square-blanket my mother made covers the back of the daybed in my own study. However, the many doilies she created have long disappeared from tables and armrests. These doilies served as the foundations for strangely contoured lamps with their linen shades, still covered with protective transparent sheaths of cellophane. I’m not sure if we ever had a lava lamp on one of them.

The furniture of my own parents’ house was usually of a nondescript, late-depression or World War II style. Without the protective covering, the stuffed pieces would have been uncomfortably scratchy. Our own furniture followed a “colonial” style – solid, heavy, dark wood – most of which came from the local Ethan Allen store, managed by a middle-easterner named Kamil Hassen! It was not until we had moved to Houston that I learned there was also “Spanish colonial furniture.” I’m also not sure if, during the early collegiate years of our marriage, we did – or did not – own a beanbag chair, another item said to be found in houses of that period.

Of course, every home had its own supply of knickknacks. My Aunt Mary’s house had a generous collection, one I vowed Karen and I would never accumulate. Of course, I was wrong. I’m sure that someday our own kids will require a large trash-container to accommodate those collectibles which are not passed on to the Eagle’s Trace “Treasure Chest” or to the local Goodwill store.

Since I have given up smoking, the ashtrays scattered throughout the house have vanished – except for a large one, containing paperclips and a souvenir cup, from San Francisco, crammed with pencils, that resides in my study. My hand-cranked pencil sharpener has been replaced with an electric one, albeit it is seldom used. The Rolodex has also been replaced with a computerized database used at Christmas time.

Tie-racks were not mentioned in the social media listing, although handkerchiefs were. I’ve not bought a new tie during the past twenty years following my retirement. On the other hand, I could not, recently, purchase a handkerchief in any Houston department store. A clerk I questioned said she had not had any other inquires for months. Fortunately, Amazon.com still sells them!

The use of smart phones accounts for the lack, in modern homes, of wall clocks and alarm clocks as well as answering machines, fax machines and, of course, rotary telephones. The modern home, according to that social media list, also has no encyclopedia. I doubt if there is even a dictionary in most of them! (We did give our Britannica to a local community college when we moved into our retirement community. A four-inch-thick volume of our Random House Dictionary still resides on top of my four-drawer, oak filing cabinet.)

Modern residences are also devoid of miscellaneous items such as trays displaying perfume bottles, jewelry boxes and vases with plastic flowers; our apartment still exhibits them. We are not supposed to have tucked away in closets and cabinets such items as V.S. video tapes, but we, ourselves, do. Not too long ago, I finally disposed of the turntable for my collection of seventy-eights, thirty-three-and-a-thirds, and forty-fives, along with all of our audio-cassette tapes. However, before getting rid of the original recordings, I did convert the music they held to a collection of CDs. At least, I did not have to copy any of the eight-tracks I once owned!

When we downsized upon moving to Eagle’s Trace, we also disposed of kitchen items identified in the social media list – things like a hand-mixer (we called it an eggbeater!), our teapots (along with accompanying tea balls), and our fondue pot, although I really enjoyed vegetables and bread cubes dipped in melted cheese. We kept the popup toaster but gave up the bread warmer-oven and our electric can-opener.

As part of our downsizing, we eliminated the dining room table and chairs but kept the hutch for storage of our never-used crystal and silverware. We agreed that the wedding China should now be used daily, rather than stored away, unseen. Most of the Melmac, along with diverse pots and pans, was given to young relatives. I doubt that any of our Pyrex kitchenware still exists.

If, like some of our newly retired friends, we had lived in one home for thirty or forty years, we would have had more to downsize, more to give to reluctant, but accepting, relatives. However, with our frequent moves during the first twenty-five years of our marriage, we maintained only the smaller furnishings that might have once been found in the home of our parents, defined by either a current or previous generation. It will be interesting to read a future listing of the possessions held by our grandchildren, that are no longer fashionable in the year 2050.

No one throws old clothes into the trash can. Instead, they are donated to a social service agency for use by some, unknown “deserving person.” A half century ago, my donations were made to the St Vincent de Paul Society, a missionary group which, no doubt, made sure the items were sent to poor people in China. Now days, we buy new clothes made by low-paid people in China!

Along that line, the first suit I remember buying, when I was a senior in high school, came from a different source. Back then, teenagers usually bought clothing either from Sears or Montgomery-Wards. I did neither. The first suit I owned was made by a tailor in Youngstown, Ohio. My mother knew this was the only option, if you wanted an outfit that would last. I remember riding the bus from Niles into Youngstown for several fittings and the final pickup. The suit was a brown one; it was double breasted. A couple of years later, it was replaced by a suit I really liked, one designed for a young collegian: charcoal-gray and single breasted. The shade was not really black, although this was its most apparent color; it had a grayish cast, not unlike the coating on a briquette found around the edge of a backyard grill. I wore that suit for years, as both an undergraduate and a postgraduate student.

The style of men’s clothing has changed only slightly over the years, unlike women’s fashions which change for every season. My charcoal-gray uniform could have been replaced, ultimately, by either a Nehru, or a Mao, jacket – depending upon whether you liked the twin breast-pockets of the latter jacket. Although my young adult friends wore them, I waited for the later versions called “leisure suits.” I owned two: one was powder blue; the other had a brown-checked pattern. I never felt casual enough to wear a leisure suit with flowery prints or other, gaudier, designs.

I also avoided bell-bottomed pants, although several pairs I owned did have more material than usually found in classical versions. Living in the northeast, I had no need for blue jeans or Levi’s – items more common in the western states, at the time. There were also khaki pants, which almost all the guys wore daily, along with a white T-shirt with a rolled up short sleeve wrapped around a pack of cigarettes.

Bermuda shorts were not worn often, although, during my undergraduate days in the fifties, the boys in Delta Tau Delta did wear them, with long black stockings, to proms. My own fraternity brothers would not be caught dead in such a silly outfit. For formal occasions, we wore white dinner jackets and long, black pants.

I never owned my own tuxedo but relied on rentals, even for the weddings, much later, of our three children. If I had known that these events would occur annually, I would have bought one earlier. It was not until friends invited us to a Beverly Hills wedding, where tuxes were mandatory for the three-day event, that I finally purchased a black, velvet-collared suit and a fancy dress-shirt as well as a brightly colored cummerbund and matching bow tie. By then, I had joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine, which held multiple, fund-raising events where such attire was required. If Jerry Lewis, Al Hurt or Princess Lilian of Belgium were in attendance, it would not be appropriate to wear an ordinary suit to a party at the Petroleum Club of Houston.

I recall other male fashion statements I encountered over the years. There was the period for turtleneck sweaters, which were not really sweaters but long-sleeve jerseys. True sweaters were either cardigans with long sleeves or vests without them. Of course, real suits always came with their own matching vests.

Although other men might have worn brightly colored suits, I stayed with the basic blacks, grays and blues. My only colors came in shirts, especially paisleys which are almost impossible to find today. For making fashion statements, men wore ties. Every few years they changed not only in color preferences and designs, but also in width. There were years when it was difficult to distinguish a tie from a small bib. Other years they narrowed down to less than two inches across. These were usually rep ties with stripes of every conceivable color-combination.

The ultimate decision about ties, however, was not determining their width and length but rather what kind of knot to use. I learned how to obtain a perfect Windsor knot from a very unlikely source: Carl Oglesby, a college roommate who later became a leader within the Students for a Democratic Society, a radical, left-leaning, political-action group.

There also came a time, for some guys, that the concept of a “tie” was associated not with a piece of cloth around the neck, but with splashed colors resulting from the tie-dyed process for decorating T-shirts and other wearing apparel. I, myself, never wore a tie-died T-shirt. I grew up with ones that were always white. It was only in the last decades that I have turned to colored Tees.

The only fad I wore was a caftan, a blue and white paisley-patterned robe long enough to touch my feet. It was very comfortable leisure attire for a cold New England winter. Karen made it. She also created another outfit I made use of by our backyard pool. She sewed together two large Turkish towels, except for holes for my head and arms. It was great to wear while drying off and lounging near the pool on a cool day in September.

In the current decade, my wardrobe has grown more consolidated, although I should still give away seldom-used clothing. Over the years, the Goodwill Society replaced St Vincent de Paul as a donation repository. When we moved to Houston, it became NAM, the Northwest Assistance Ministry. It seems that the recipients of disposables have changed, over the last seventy years, from the “poor Chinese” to our own poor and then, to those with low-paying jobs in own neighborhoods. Now with increased unemployment and economic problems resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, donations remain closer to home. We continue to avoid tossing hand-me-downs into the trash can. Everything still has a useful life, even our clothing.