MEMORIES OF RAISING FOUR CHILDREN – PART III

Circa 1956 – 1984 – and beyond

By Dr. Robert E. Plucker

And now to John, who can't avoid being special because he became the first boy in a family collection of girls. There was Margaret, sister of Dorothy, only children of Marcel and Margaret Madsen. "Little" Margaret had Holly. Dorothy had Myra and Molly. I have two sisters, Dorothy and Jean, Barbara and I had Virginia and Dorothy Jean. Quite a proliferation of girls, and Dorothy’s. Amid all these females, John had to be a special event. John's first name came from my grandfather, John P. Plucker, and his middle name Marnin came from a list of baby names with meanings, plus the resemblance to Marcel, Margaret's father. I believe that the second meaning attached to "Marnin" was "Singer of Songs". Or something musical at least.

Margaret with baby John in 1984

John's birth story is partly in previous paragraphs, but some details need to be mentioned here. First was all my worries about his being conceived at all, as I had serious doubts about my willingness to take on fatherhood at my "mature" age. Margaret and I had agreed that there were to be no children in our marriage, as she had Holly, and I had Ginny and Dot. That was enough, we thought. But Margaret loves children, and after some seven years, she really wanted another child. I was scared. I was 55, and would be 56 before the required time would be up. I was sure I was far too old to care for another kid. Margaret was so determined, that one morning on the way to work I came close to panic, and upon arriving I asked, no, begged Father Bill Forbes, Episcopal priest, colleague and friend to counsel me. His wise words and the encouragement of a wise old lady, Violet Moen at the Stanwood Lutheran church gave me much comfort and some confidence. I was finally able to anticipate John's arrival with true enthusiasm, not apprehension and outright fear. I suspect the enthusiasm was cranked up some when the amniocentesis test indicated "boy."

It is only fair, however, to point out that daughter Dorothy already had broken the spell, and presented me with a grandson, named Robert. Later people would ask me if I intended to name our baby after me, and I would reply that I couldn't, as my grandson had gotten the name first.

Margaret's father's remarked when he came to visit in the hospital, "If only Paw could have seen this!" Evidently Margaret's grandfather had gotten a bit alarmed too, at the lack of boys.

When John was perhaps two years old, I had taken him with me in the truck to do some errand or other. We came back, stopped the truck in the driveway, set the hand-brake, and I went a few steps away to greet Margaret, Holly or for some other reason. All I remember is that I was close enough to watch with horror, as the truck rolled backward down the driveway, crossed the road, crossed the shallow ditch on the far side of the road, and finally came to a stop in the vacant lot across the street from us, hung up on some stubborn small stumps of alder that I had recently cut down to improve our view. The truck had good speed to have gone that distance over such obstacles; it was too far gone before I noticed what was happening for me to catch it and get it stopped.

We still have this good old Toyota (l985) truck and the hand-brake is still tricky and hard to release even when you know how to do it. I suppose I left the truck in gear (stick-shift) as well, as that was my habit, and it may be that not only did John somehow release the brake but also put the gears in neutral as well. Anyhow, the truck was stuck high and dry on the alder stumps and had to be pulled free with a tow truck. One of the stumps came near to penetrating the fuel tank, but the leak did not start until some years later. I put a temporary NAPA fix on it, and it was only last year that Bob Lowden here in Haines fixed it permanently.

John with Bob in 2012

There was another bicycle wreck that happened when John was older and rode faster. Holly was supposed to be watching him while Margaret and I were at a choir rehearsal, but John came flying down our street on his bicycle and crashed into the side of an innocent Pontiac. The police and fire trucks evidently came in response to neighbor's calls, and there was some excitement. But all this was unknown to Margaret and me until later. No serious injury; even the Pontiac survived with no significant damage.

John became a baseball player, starting with the T-ball league and progressing upward to the Little Leagues. Holly was responsible in part for this, because she had reminded me that real fathers always played ball with their boys. So John and I started playing ball on the driveway, the backstop being the garage door, using a short length of 2X2 for a bat, and a good-sized beach ball. Later I got John a genuine wood bat, and a left-hander's fielding glove.

Two truly outstanding plays that I remember the most vividly happened in Little League play. The first was a grand slam home run. John's face as he ran all the way around the bases was pure delight, probably the equal of Holly's face when she got to hold him as a new-born. The second was later, after he had become a "seasoned" player, and before he got serious about soccer. In this game, the opposing hitter slammed the ball a good bit further than anyone expected, right over centerfielder John's head. He turned and chased the ball down with his great speed, gathered it up and made a heroic left-handed throw to Adam Cook, the catcher, who very coolly caught it, bent down and put out the batter who had been sure he had a home run! Pandemonium from the spectators!

His soccer games were equally exciting because he could outrun everyone he played with, or against. But soccer, being a constantly moving game, did not present so many truly memorable single plays. However, Margaret and I were converted to being soccer fans.

And there was music. Since Margaret and I were both teachers of music, and since he was made to go to many of the concerts that I conducted, it was impossible for him to escape music. The Skagit Community Choir was performing the Handel Messiah when he was eight months old. He was in Margaret’s arms, sitting in the rear of the audience, and he decided to join the choir. I did not notice any sound from him at the time, as I was busy conducting, but Margaret said he was making convincing efforts to sing, not cry. I could hardly believe it, but when we played the tape recording of the concert, sure enough, there was the little voice, singing right through the rest in the score.

Young John with his horn.

When he was in school, he liked listening to Benjamin Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. He heard it many, many times and especially liked the trumpet parts. The big ending was a favorite and he could sing and pretend to play the trumpet along with the orchestra. The percussion parts were also a favorite. When he got the chance, he took up the trumpet in school. The next step was to borrow the school's (LaConner Public Schools) French horn, a single horn in F. He played it almost immediately, apparently because nobody had ever told him what a difficult and cranky instrument a horn is. When we moved to Alaska it appeared that there would be no school instruments to borrow, so we bought a new double horn for him. It has made world travels with him, and has played hundreds (probably) of concerts.

The first challenge with the new horn was when the LaConner school decided to perform "Bye Bye Birdie". John was recruited to play in the small orchestra, the only horn, and the only seventh grader amongst adult players. He said he had been scared at the performances, but of course Margaret and I thought he was perfect.
 

When John was in sixth grade, he began to complain of a pain and a swelling in his right ankle. He tried valiantly to ignore it and kept up his usual very active life until one night he was to stay overnight with his friend Jonathan Windle. When Jonathan's mother saw the hurting ankle and the large knob that appeared to have grown significantly since we last saw it, she said we had jolly well better come and pick up John and bring him directly to the emergency room at Skagit Valley Hospital. We did so, and the emergency crew started taking care of him immediately.

He had a bone scan plus all the other kinds of tests that they give. The frightening news was that they would have to operate on this ankle to remove the growth, or this "thing" would grow and cause the ankle bone itself to stop growing. John had by no means attained his full growth, and an athletic fellow like him should not have to deal with a lame leg for the rest of his life.

Dr. West did the operation/procedure on John, and that went well, but managing the dressing on the wound was another sickening affair. For a change, I was able to watch without feeling faint while Dr. West examined the result of his work, and changed the dressing over the next couple of days. Then came what seemed like quarts of antibiotics that we were to administer at home. Home, at that time, was sailboat Greta, I-dock at LaConner Marina. This went on for several weeks, and ultimately, John was as good as new, playing baseball, soccer, running very fast, and enjoying playing catch with me. It was not very long before he could throw much harder than I could.



John

His horn playing somehow seemed to keep on improving in spite of having virtually no formal lessons. He "turned pro" not long before we left LaConner for Haines. St. Paul's Episcopal Church choir was working on an anthem that had an optional cello or horn obbligato. I volunteered John to play, and he played it to everyone's enthusiastic approval. If memory serves, I think they gave him some money for that, so I could claim that at that point he turned professional.

Holly

Present-day thinking has it that children today have difficulty in school partly because their parents move around so much that they rarely spend much time in one school. The four kids of this essay either are exceptions to this thinking, or perhaps they did stay long enough to establish themselves. Ginny started at Alllouez kindergarten, first grade at Jackson School, Green Bay, Dot joined her there, and together they progressed to Ft. Howard school, Sandpoint School in Seattle, then junior high and high school in Everett. Neither graduated in the usual standard way.

Ginny and Dottie with Bob's mother, Dena

        Holly was more conventional, going through kindergarten to high school graduation in Stanwood, Washington. As it turned out, she was the only one of the four to spend four full years in high school. John also went to kindergarten and the first three grades in Stanwood, then to LaConner, and then to Haines where he graduated but took only three years to do it.

Colleges? Oh yes indeed.

Ginny: Seattle U., Everett Community, Edmonds Community, U. of Washington, Seattle Pacific U.

Dot: ITT technical school, U. of Washington over a long period of time.

Holly: Bryn Mawr College and U. of Alaska Southeast.

John: U. of Alaska Fairbanks, Victoria U. at Wellington NZ, and Norway Academy of Music in Oslo Norway.

A regret of my later life is that these four children, now grown up, live so far apart from each other. The first two hardly know the second two. Virginia is in Charleston, South Carolina; Dorothy is in Bothell, Washington; Holly is in Haines, Alaska; John is in Oslo, Norway. How scattered can you get?
 

What are the influences that largely shaped the lives of these four? There is no way of knowing, of course, but these are a few of the people that I respected most, and whose teaching, I suppose, had at least some effect on the lives of my children.

My mother's mother, Grandma Thaden: she had raised eleven children, she knew how to keep order, and had various rules for living in her house that could not be flouted.

My Grandfather, John Plucker: a kind, patient, caring person.

Both my mother and father, Dena and M E J Plucker, who forgave me for entirely too many "episodes" when I was in high school. My dad imparted invaluable wisdom to me, mostly when we were in the cow barn milking the cows by hand.

The music streak that runs through our extended family goes back a considerable distance as well. One of my mother's great-uncles was said to have been a cathedral organist in southern Germany. All the Thadens were singers of a sort, and some were very good. I have already written about Dad's influence as a member of the Johnson quartet. He was also a music director at Germantown Presbyterian Church for many years, founding a Men's Chorus that would continue for many years past his death. Mom was church pianist for a while, and there was a time when Dad was directing the choir, Mom was accompanying, and my sister Dorothy and I were singing in the choir. Jeanie was still too young, or she would have been there too, I am sure.

 

John, Virginia, Dorothy, Bob, Holly

 

 

Photos by Jean E. Straatmeyer and Matt Davis

Also, some scanned photos from Jean's collection.

 MEMORIES OF RAISING FOUR CHILDREN – PART II

Circa 1956 – 1984 – and beyond

By Dr. Robert E. Plucker

Now we come to Holly, who became Daughter #3 when Margaret and I got married in 1977. Due to the fact that I had never even met her mother before Holly was born, it deprived me of the honor of being her biological father. Still, at the age of not-quite 4, when Margaret and I got married, I feel secure in claiming her as Number Three Daughter. Oddly enough, I never wanted to adopt her formally; my reason being that the name Holly Plucker just didn't sound right, and I figured she'd get along better on school playgrounds as Holly Scott, and not with some name that kids could easily make fun of. She remained as Holly Scott until she took her husband's name and became famous as Holly Davis.

I have to admit that I felt rather like an interloper when she was little, and ruled over her empire that consisted of herself, her mother and her grandmother. On a boat trip one day she and my grandson Rob were having a heart-to-heart discussion on the foredeck. Margaret chanced to overhear Holly telling Rob that her mother and I had gotten married in the nick of time, or she would have been hopelessly spoiled.

 

Holly accepted me gradually. The first time Margaret ever left her alone with me as baby-sitter was before we were married. She had to do an errand quickly, and could not take the time to drive all the way from Madrona Beach, Camano Island, to Grandma in Stanwood. I was handy, and it would be for only a short time. Oh, but there was weeping and wailing and outright yelling when Margaret drove off in her Plymouth. Holly stood by the couch; hands clenched at her sides and had a great time howling. After a few minutes she began to suspect that there weren't going to be any sudden changes in her prospects, and she was getting tired. There was getting to be a little space between howls. I took the opportunity, and when I thought she might be able to hear what I said, I asked her calmly if she would like to walk along when I went to the fire-station to get a couple of big jugs of drinking water. The tap water was said to be too polluted to drink. She stood silent, for a beat or two, considering, and then said yes. We went off quite happily together, hand in hand. I have often marveled at the resilience of this young lady. She always springs back from adversity. On the other hand, perhaps she just wanted to play in the water. Every time she "helped" me wash my Fiat, or Margaret's Plymouth, I got at least as wet as the car.

Margaret and I took several long trips on our boat "Echappee" with Holly, of course. We were fond of going ashore somewhere and taking long walks. On one occasion we were anchored at Blakely Harbor on Bainbridge Island, and decided to walk to Winslow, not realizing what a mind-boggling distance this was for a little kid. We kept her going with promises of lemonade just around the next corner, but no corner turned out to be the right one. We did eventually get all the way to Winslow where we thought we would be able to deliver on the lemonade promise. Not a cupful in town! We must have gotten back to our boat somehow, but the disaster of not finding any lemonade destroyed my memory of the return trip.

Holly got to play the heroine's role on a boat trip to Nanaimo British Colombia. Newcastle Island is just across from the town, and looks small on the chart. We thought we could easily walk the trail all the way around the perimeter in what was left of the afternoon. The sun was quite bright and Margaret and I were both wearing our prescription sun-glasses. If we had realized how late it was, and if we had been much more careful in estimating the distance, and if we had known how obscure the trail on the far side of the island was, we could have avoided a lot of stumbling around in the brush. As I remember it, the side of this oval shaped island that faces Georgia Strait is well-marked and well-traveled. As you round the north end and start looking at the rather drab and grubby part of the city, hikers tend to be less interested. Also there is more brush and steep climbs and cliffs to navigate. About the time we got through the worst of the steep parts the sun was going down and it was getting dark fast. Margaret and I depended heavily on our glasses to see beyond our own noses, and these sun-glasses were the only ones we had with us. We were close to being blind, but Holly, bless her soul, was our seeing eye. "And a little child shall lead them."

Holly got stuck with accompanying many long walks. She would occupy herself by picking up a stick, which by its mere selection from amongst gazillions of sticks, would acquire great value to her. She would carry it, guard it, defend it against all comers, and would not drop it. A number of times, walking on Stewart Island (in the San Juan’s) over some steep narrow trail, I would worry that she would sacrifice herself to save her stick. Now, it seems to me that both of her little boys show the same tendencies, but I guess all kids do that.

One of the truly memorable moments with Holly was at Everett General Hospital, waiting for John to be born. Margaret thought she was ready on the afternoon of the 9th of April (1984), and so we went to Everett from Camano Island for the blessed event to occur. As it turned out, we waited all night in the hospital until after 9 o’clock the next morning. Most of that time Holly was by herself in a waiting room being extremely patient. I was with Margaret (things being totally different from 1956 and 1958), but would go down to check on Holly several times. She was awake, I think, most of the time, but there was no whining from her, not at the advanced and enlightened age of 10. She was ready and determined to wait for that baby no matter how long it took.

The birthing business was entirely new to me of course, not having been allowed to have the slightest part in the births of Daughters #1 and #2. I took it fairly well, having been prepared by attending classes in the preceding weeks. But this was a long and fairly difficult process, and my admiration for all mothers can hardly be stated. The only time I felt faint was when they got out a needle and stuck it in Margaret's arm!

After Margaret got the first chance to hold little John, I got the second. I asked Dr. Patton if I could take the baby to show to Holly in the waiting room, and to my amazement, she said yes, I could. I went down into this obscure waiting room carrying John; Holly was either asleep, or had just waked up. I showed her the baby and then asked her if she would like to hold him. Would she!! She couldn't have shown more excitement and delight than if she had hit a grand slam home run. (I was to see this kind of excitement and delight some years later on John's face, when he actually hit a grand slam home run.)

            This was certainly a great moment in both of our lives, but it was not just a brief flash in the pan. Holly and I went out to eat and celebrate together at Taylor's Landing, and of course Holly and John had many happy moments together in spite of their ten year age difference. I believe that John was never the pesky little brother in her eyes.
 

When John was perhaps six years old, he had a small bicycle which he learned to ride. (I might brag here, that I was the guy who ran behind the two-wheelers for all four kids when they learned to ride their bicycles, puff-puff.) I watched him come down a fairly steep hill one fall day, when a pickup truck started to back out of a driveway just below where he was barreling down the hill. John saw the truck, back-pedaled to brake, but there were wet slippery leaves on the road. He lost control and fell with his chin hitting some sharp object that put a nasty cut in it. The fellow in the truck had seen John, and had stopped backing, but by then John was out of control, and I was helplessly watching all this from maybe one hundred yards distance.

Anyhow, the truck driver took the bike, John, and me the short distance to our Camano Island house. Holly and I then rushed John to the Stanwood Clinic, with John well wrapped up in towels and things to stop bleeding. In the doctor's treatment room Dr. Minella set about cleaning up the cut, scraping out the gravel and dirt and so on. Holly held John's hand and comforted him while he was being sewed up. I attempted to help with the comforting, but sure enough, I couldn't stand the sight of it and had to go sit down. Holly bravely stuck to her job. John still has a small scar under his chin nearly 20 years later.

             So after all these adventures and experiences, I feel that I successfully overcame the feeling of being the interloper in the Holly-Grandma-Mom Corporation. This actually started early on, I think, when Holly stopped calling me Bob, and I became "Dad." This was a proud moment, as I had not asked her to do this.

*** Stay tuned to this blog for Part III of “Memories of Raising Four Children.”

 

Photos are all scanned from the files of

Jean E. Straatmeyer

MEMORIES OF RAISING FOUR CHILDREN – PART I

Circa 1956 – 1984 – and beyond

 By Dr. Robert E. Plucker

After having read through many other pages of this set of memoir stories, our son John suggested that I write about the four children, their various childhood experiences and how all this had affected me. Parents, at least in theory, are not supposed to have favorites, and fortunately for me, all four of these people are equally blessed in talent, charm, personality, beauty, intelligence, and all other good things. Daughter Virginia would jokingly remark that they all have good posture too. This makes it much easier to write this essay. They all have very different special qualities, however, as will be shown in the following pages.

Virginia's arrival was auspicious in more than one way. There had been a prolonged cold winter in Minnesota l955-56, and everyone was more than ready for spring. At the end of April, one should be able to expect some promise of spring, but instead of the promise, we got some 22 inches of snow on the 26th of April; heavy, wet, discouraging stuff. Threatening weather continued for the next several days until the 10th of May. On that day God smiled on us, Ginny was born and glorious spring weather appeared.  

Other events of that spring were: l.) I quit smoking. This was fairly easy, as I had never smoked heavily, I didn't want my first child to have to breathe all my smoke, and the Surgeon General's first warnings of cigarettes causing lung cancer had appeared. 2.) Barbara and I had gone into debt for a new 1956 Plymouth. 3.) We had also acquired an impossibly cute cocker spaniel puppy. The puppy had to be shut up in the car while I was on some errand or other, while Barbara was in labor in Winona General Hospital. I was having a fit worrying about her, the coming baby, and the new car with the untrained puppy shut up inside it. I should never have had to divide my worrying capacity that much, with being concerned about the unimportant things. In those days, the fathers were never, absolutely never allowed near the delivery rooms. I should have acted like the other expectant fathers, pacing about in the hospital waiting room, smoking furiously, worrying only about news of the birth. Nope, I wasn't even smoking. As a 1950s first-time expectant father and worrier, I was a failure.  

So in spite of my failings Barbara gave birth to a beautiful child. She took pride too, in never having missed a Sunday singing in the church choir during the entire nine-month process. I must have been an awfully demanding choir director in those days. (When Daughter #2, Dorothy, was born, the birth took place on a Sunday afternoon, so Barbara was not able to repeat this remarkable feat.) 

Barbara and I made the somewhat rueful discovery that once you get home with the little one, it takes probably less than half an hour for the kid to wise up, and start demanding constant service. It became impossible to do anything at home, without somehow deferring to the wants of Her Majesty, the Baby.  

After some fifty years, there are some events in Ginny's early years that I remember quite well. Since she was the oldest grandchild, Barbara's mother and father bought her a lot of "stuff" including a sand-box with white sand. The sand had to be white. For all I know, they had to send to the French Riviera to get the sand. There was also a swing set with a slide. Virginia loved to be pushed on the swing, and I remember one late afternoon when I was pushing her, she seemed utterly fearless, swinging higher and higher.  

Next morning was the first day of teaching for me, at Jefferson Junior High School, and I was all excited, as usual, as I would be on any first day of teaching. But Barbara came rushing out of the kids' bedroom in a state of near-shock. "Ginny can't walk!" was all I could understand. We didn't know if she could not, or would not walk, and of course I was very disturbed. Dr. Boardman was consulted over the telephone, and he must have said something comforting, as I went to school, even in my agitated state of mind. Ginny did not seem to be in any pain. Polio was our first concern in those pre-vaccine days. I had had a cousin who was permanently crippled by it; also the son of my best teacher friend in Winona was affected by it enough so that he had a bad limp from then on.  

I seem to remember that Barbara gave Ginny lots of massage, and after a week or two, she began to improve gradually, eventually having no lasting effects from whatever it was she had. Barbara and I were sure that her mysterious ailment actually was a very light touch of that crippling disease. Perhaps the one lasting effect was that she was never again willing to swing high on the swing.  

Ginny and Dot both had to have tonsillectomies; they seemed never to be able to shake colds and sore throats. Dr. Rose recommended that their tonsils come out. Both of them had the operation at the Methodist hospital, stayed until they were discharged as OK, and Dot was indeed OK. Ginny was not, as she woke up one night and coughed up what looked like gallons of blood all over the bathroom. It was very cold that night in Green Bay, probably somewhere around a minus 10. The 1960 Rambler started all right, and I had time to warm it up a bit while Barbara was wrapping up the kids for a hasty trip to Dr. Rose's office. Ginny was wrapped up very warmly in blankets, the whole bundle enclosed by the warmest quilt we had, a slippery satin comforter.  

We quickly got into the car and roared off to Dr. Rose's office where he had agreed to meet us. As we got out of the car, I was carrying Ginny, blankets, quilt and all, Barbara and Dot following. Dr. Rose was there and as he was holding the door for me, I said in a kind of agitated voice that she was slipping. Well, she was slipping because of the dratted slippery quilt and I was afraid I was going to drop her, but Dr. Rose thought I meant she was dying. I had some quick explaining to do. But Dr. Rose recovered his composure in a hurry and did his magic with the bleeding. So this time she was back in the hospital for observation, but not the Methodist hospital. This was St. Vincent's, the Catholic hospital where Liz Morris was a nurse. After all this tonsil hassle was over, both kids had significantly greater resistance to colds and things. 

Dot was doomed to get an early start in school. Ginny should have been two grades ahead of her, but as soon as Ginny was taught something in first grade, she would come home and play school with Dot. Dot was taught everything that Ginny had learned. Ginny's teaching was largely responsible, I am sure, for Dot's getting through kindergarten and first grade in one school year.  

When Ginny was at Everett High School she had a friend named Eleanor. Eleanor was a telephone addict and could talk about anything or nothing for great lengths of time, needing only an occasional "yes" or "no", or "you can't mean it", or perhaps not even that. Ginny would sometimes actually lay the phone down and walk off to do something else. Coming back, she would find Eleanor still happily yakking away into thin air not knowing her audience was taking a break. 

This telephone time could be irritating to Ginny as it often interfered with her flute practice. Ginny was extremely organized in those high school days, her room was always in perfect order, clothes hung to perfection, and she even hated to walk into her room after doing a perfect job of vacuuming her shag carpeting. What if her footprints should show? Listening to her flute practice was a pleasure to me, as she was an excellent high school player and eventually wound up with a degree in music with emphasis on flute performance.  

Another rather silly thing to remember is that for a time, Ginny and Dot were both taking instrumental lessons at the University of Washington. Ginny was studying flute with Jerry Pritchard, a grad student, and Dot with his wife, Virginia Yorke, another grad student in piano. The Music Building was at the top of a steep hill, almost a cliff, with a parking lot halfway down the hill. Coming from our house in Everett, we would park there, and then take the escalator (a parking lot with an escalator?) to Padelford Hall, then walk across the street to the Music Building. Now and then all three of us would be feeling frisky and run up the down escalator, or down the up escalator. I think many people would like to do this at least once or twice in their lives, but are afraid to try it in a department store or other public place.

My life was very busy with teaching, the church choir, the Civic Choir, the "Kilowatt Choraliers" (power company employees) in Green Bay, and later I was just as busy with teaching at Skagit Valley College in Washington, church choir every Thursday night and Sunday morning. I had the Skagit Community Choir on Tuesday nights, now and then taught night school classes at the college, and took every chance I got to make an extra dollar. The house mortgage, payments for a car, for furniture, for remodeling the old house in Everett, all came due every month. This was typical, I think, of the 1950s-1960s young father and we all became participants in the "rat race", an expression which came into vogue about that time. I truly wanted to spend more time with the family, but we had to keep up with the rats in the rat race.   

Dot was born in 1958, not long after my 30th birthday. Since it was January in Minnesota, one could expect it to be cold and nasty outside. On the 19th, it was actually a nice day, temperatures well above freezing and a bit of sunlight off and on. Winona General Hospital still made expectant fathers wait and smoke somewhere distant from the delivery room; besides, Barbara was not willing to have me anywhere near the place. I finally gave up; feeling left out, and accepted an invitation to lunch with Dave and Nancy Wynne. Barbara was at the hospital and had missed singing in the choir; I directed it as usual, a difficult anthem that had required a lot of rehearsal. The choir was being "difficult" at this time as well; I wrote about this in "Church Choirs." 

About 2:30 in the afternoon the phone call came from the hospital saying that we had a little girl. I actually don't remember my first sight of her (through a glass window looking into the hospital nursery) but I do know that she had dark hair, dark eyes, and a kind of a worried look on her face. Several days after we brought her home, she caught a cold, and it seemed to me that she never completely got over it until after the tonsillectomy. Then, like Ginny, her health improved.  

Present-day thinking has it that breast-feeding a baby gives it immunity to disease that cow's milk, or baby formula cannot give. Barbara did not breast-feed either of our kids. It simply was not the thing to do in those days. It was considered low-class. I suppose that Barbara's mother, who thought herself to be high-class, would have been horribly mortified to have her daughter do such a "common" thing.  

Just before we moved to Green Bay from Winona, a terrible thing happened to Dot. We were just saying good-bye to some company that we had been entertaining when Ginny and Dot both came in crying really hard. They were both so young, Dot not really able to talk in sentences yet, and Ginny not very articulate either when she was so upset.  

From what we could figure out later, she must have caught her tiny little finger in a closing door somehow, and literally tore off the end of it without breaking the bone. You could actually see a tiny bit of the bone sticking up through the stump of the finger, but fortunately, there was still a small strip of skin holding the nearly-severed tip.            

We wrapped up her hand in clean towels to soak up the blood, called Dr. Wilson, and met him in his office in a hurry. I thought I was being brave, not losing my head and running around in circles, or fainting. But Dr. Wilson took his needle and plunged it right into the stump of her finger while I was watching. It was then that Dr. Wilson told me I had better leave the room. He had relieved the pain, and then took a few stitches to fix the finger. Ginny and Dot got some pleasure out of showing Dot's "ishy finger" to their friends. I believe there is still a faint scar from that injury some forty-plus years later. 

The result of Ginny's teaching of her young sister became apparent immediately upon her entry into kindergarten. It was not long before we heard that the Jackson School (Green Bay) teachers had taken her to visit some of the other grades including the fifth, to show off her reading ability. Since Ginny was such a good reader and a good teacher, Dot became a kind of phenomenon. I believe they kept her (nominally) in kindergarten for a semester, and then put her in first grade to finish the year.

             In Green Bay, Mrs. Seifert, who lived two doors away, occasionally babysat Dot when her daughter was not available. The first time this happened, we picked up Dot, and asked Mrs. Seifert how things had gone. Her reply, "Does she always concentrate so hard?"  

About 1938 or 1939, in the spring we had experienced a terrific wind, rain and hailstorm in South Dakota. My dad lost a horse and several cattle. We never were sure whether the poor horse had been struck by one of the monster hailstones, or simply drowned in air so full of rain that it was impossible to breathe. Dad and my grandfather attempted to bury the horse where she fell, but the ground was so rocky it was too hard to get the hole deep enough. So after a long time, horse bones began to appear in that remote corner of the pasture. 
 

How the girls, Dot, Ginny and their cousin Faye, knew the horse bones were there I don't know, but they carried a few of these big bones to the grove of small trees at the far end of the farmyard. This became their "laboratory." By the time any grown-ups found out about any of this, they had scrounged up more bones, chicken bones, crow bones, whatever they could find. It was quite a bone laboratory for seven or eight-year-olds. Of course Barbara and my mother were horrified. 

On one of these South Dakota trips, I made the serious mistake of giving the kids a ride in the back of my dad's 1937 Chevy pickup truck. It was foolish of me to do this, but I thought that on these country roads where you wait all day for a car to come past, if I drove slowly they would be safe enough. Nope. I must have gone too fast and probably swerved the truck in some way, so sure enough; Dot fell out on the road. She was not hurt, but scared. But not as scared as I was of reporting the accident to Barbara. Should I tell her, or should I keep quiet and swear the girls to secrecy? Would I have to take the well-deserved dressing-down that would surely come? At this much later date, I truly cannot remember if I did the honorable thing and told her, or had I been the craven coward I was tempted to be?  

Ken Heiret became my first son-in-law. My first meeting with him was when Dot invited him to come along for a Saturday afternoon sail. He was not dressed very well, his hair came down to there, and I thought that Dot had picked a genuine loser. How wrong I was! This guy was to become the father of my first (brilliant) grandson, and was to work his way up from menial custodial work to a position of responsibility in a high tech job at Microsoft. At the time, I could not tell what Dot possibly could have seen in him. And he is a fine golf-player plus being a genius at the Rubik’s Cube.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to keep up with house, boat, car and furniture payments, feeling caught in the rat race. When Barbara returned to working full time, and especially after we left Green Bay for Washington, I was able to relax a bit more and enjoy the music I was always working on.

*** Stay tuned to this blog for Part II of “Memories of Raising Four Children.”

Photos in this section scanned from

the files of Jean E. Straatmeyer

MEMORIES OF CHANCELLOR, SOUTH DAKOTA

By Dr. Robert E. Plucker 

            The first thing that enters my head about Chancellor some seventy-five years ago was the fact that hitching rails for horses were still in place along the outside of the concrete sidewalks. In the 1930’s, one could expect now and then to see a team of horses and a farm wagon hitched to the rail. It may be that the reason I was so impressed with them is because kids could play on them, hanging by their knees, or doing turnovers, or whatever kids think up. These rails were removed, probably for some scrap metal drive during World War II.

            The city of Chancellor is located in Turner County in south-eastern South Dakota. It has a fast-growing population now, but was down to about 300 in those early years. It was settled in the late 19^th century largely by German farmers who streamed in, not directly from New York, but many of these stayed for a brief time in Illinois or Iowa, moving to South Dakota possibly because of homestead possibilities. My great-grandparents Plucker were examples of this; their homestead farm is located on a creek some tow and a half miles north and one mile east from town. Turner County is divided up into townships, chancellor being located in Germantown Township.

            The story goes that the settlers wanted to name their town “Bismarck” after Germany’s “Iron Chancellor,” just like Bismarck, the capitol of North Dakota. That would have been confusing enough, but there were other objections to naming the place after this German war-maker. The railroad folks thought “Calumet” would be a good substitute. “Nope,” said the citizens, “We’ll call it ‘Chancellor’ and still honor the tough old German.

            Some of the great old businesses and stores stand out in my memory. First would be Rabenberg’s blacksmith shop. Rabenberg probably started the business with shoeing horses, his original main work. I remember him at his hand-turned forge, whipping up a fiercely hot charcoal fire to heat plowshares red hot; I believe this heating had something to do with tempering the cutting edge of the plowshare. Farmers could still bring in their horses for shoes, but that was not the main part of his business now.

            After I got a bit older I began to be aware of a funny old car, covered with dust, parked back in the dark innermost parts of this barn-like building. Since the forge with all its excitement was practically in the barn door entrance, I had scarcely noticed it before. My dad said it was a 1921 Studebaker, and he thought it probably had fewer than 15,000 miles on it. He had no idea why old Rabenberg had preserved it for twenty or more years. It was sold to some collector or perhaps a museum when the blacksmith shop closed down, some time probably in the early 1950’s.

            Across the highway was Enno’s gas station, part of the Farmer’s Coop which owned the station and the grain elevator standing behind and a bit to the side. Enno Johnson was my dad’s cousin and sang in the Johnson Quartet, the group that influenced me into singing. The Haines “Men of Note” have their earliest roots in this quartet.

            The Gas station itself was ordinary enough, with several pumps out in front, an office and store where you could buy antifreeze, quarts of oil, tire patches and the like. Beside the office/store were three stalls, big enough for cars and small trucks. There was a hoist, where repairs could take place, oil changes, tires repaired, but during the war, almost no new tires were sold. Tires were strictly rationed, but that meant nothing, if there were no new tires to be had. Tubes, patches, boots, all were used until you could nearly see the air through the fabric of the pitifully thin tire.

            The most interesting part was the continuous camaraderie that took place in the office. There were a few regular participants who were always there, gossiping away, in Low German, of course. My dad said that these fellows would do their farming from the breakfast table, telling the older sons, and sometimes the daughters, too, what had to be done that day in the fields and around the farmyard. Then they would jump into their Model A’s, and Chevy’s and spend the morning at the station. Home for noon dinner, and then they could spend the afternoons pottering about the farm, or napping, or another visit to the gas station. Saturday nights were important because then more men, not regulars, who could natter together in Low German, or not, would come in.

            Low German is claimed to be a language of its own, not just a dialect or corruption of High German, the German of Martin Luther. I think the Low German spoken in Germantown was adulterated by a few English words. There was a Low German newspaper printed somewhere in Iowa that I got to see once or twice, and the written language looked to me like a strange mixture of German, Dutch and English. It had/has a word order similar to High German, but was not understood by Germans or Americans.

            For the whole town, Saturday night was the highlight of the week, when Tjaden’s General Store, Felix’s barber shop, the drug store, nearly every business in town would be open for customers. There were benches in front of many of these places, and in good weather you could count on them being filled with husbands, waiting for their wives, who were in the stores shopping and gossiping. Since this was before the day of the supermarket where you load your cart yourself and pay at the check stand, you had to wait for a store employee to get what you wanted, then pay that same clerk at the hand-operated cash register. An important part of the equipment was the big roll of stiff wrapping paper, and the huge ball of string. In a general store like Tjaden’s where you could buy groceries, men’s overalls, shoes, women’s clothing, denim “chores jackets,” thimbles, thread, “material” to sew anything, whatever, the paper and string had to wrap up many different kinds of purchases. (No plastic grocery bags or paper grocery sacks available.) This took a lot of time, and people like my parents, who had no phone, were able to keep up with the local news.

When the weather was bad, a good gathering place, for the men at least, was Felix’s barber shop. There were two chairs, but seldom was there any barber but Felix. There was usually about a half-dozen or so men waiting, but not all were waiting for the barber’s services. They simply came to talk and socialize primarily about farming and “How much rain did you get at your place?”

            The haircuts were not all that interesting to watch, but the shaves were. Not many of these gruff old German farmers wanted a lot of fuss on their faces, but two or three shaves on a Saturday night could happen. Felix used very hot towels on the face, lather mixed up in a big cup-like container and a straight razor. Felix would make a big production out of stropping the razor on a wide leather strap that he had hanging from the back of the barber chair. I have never known what made the four-inch blade get so sharp, rubbing it against leather. He would then shave off the lather and the beard with great flourishes like the barber in the movie, “The Great Dictator.” No one applauded, but I suspect some felt like it. After the shave or a haircut, there would be a deluge of perfumed lotions with more hot towels applied to the face and neck, finally a spectacular brushing of the hair off the shoulders. The anointed person would get up, pay his sixty cents (yes, 25 for a haircut, 35 for a shave) and leave, or maybe stay and gossip. Felix would holler “Next!” I don’t think Felix ever learned to speak Low German, but I’ll bet he understood 90% of it.

            Kortemeyer’s Hardware store was a largish (by 1930’s standards) building. Freddie Kortemeyer sold every kind of hardware including Case farm implements in a lot behind the store. Very probably you could have equipped yourself, even as late as 1940, with all you would ever need for horse farming. Harnesses, wagons, horse-drawn plows, discs, drags, cultivators, all of it. Antique hunters these days would go bonkers.

            The drug store, with its wrought-iron ice-cream parlor chairs and tables was more of an attraction for younger folks. In spite of the ice cream and soft drinks, the drug store was not the hang-out that the gas station or the barber shop were. Of course, I was not very interested in the collection of Bayer aspirin, Ipana tooth-paste, and different cough medicines, so I can only guess at the old-fashioned remedies that were on sale.

            The ball park, used mostly for softball, was the centerpiece of the Chancellor city park. Other than the ball diamond, there was not much beyond a few swings and maybe a children’s slide. For me, the amazing and memorable part was the public address system. In the days when radios were still rare, a gadget that could make your voice sound over most of the town was astounding, and as a small boy, I was easily astounded. Rupert Fowler was the voice that described and commented on the playing. Rupert Fowler? What kind of a name was that? Not German, for sure.

            For a “churchy” kind of town, Chancellor had only the Baptist and Dutch Reformed churches. No Lutherans, surprisingly enough. [Editor’s note: First Reformed Church of Lennox was originally located east of town with its own cemetery alongside. When another Reformed Church was started in Lennox, as Second Reformed Church, First Reformed moved to Chancellor, becoming the First Reformed Church of Chancellor.]

The Presbyterians were out in the country on land donated by my great-grandfather Plucker. One of my other “greats,” one Philip Witte, became the first pastor. Previous to any of my memories, the Baptists had been out in the country, too, next to the cemetery which is still in the same place. You could see signs of where the church had been when I was a boy. The Reformed Church struggled on with few members until after World War II when a number of new people moved into town, and a wonderful new building was built. The Catholic people, if there were any, (I didn’t know of any) would have had to attend in Lennox or Parker.

 Oh yes, and there was a saloon. We kids always walked fast past it, and thought it was quite daring to glance in the door which might have been open on a summer Saturday evening. It is strange to think, that if I had looked, more than glanced, I might have seen my very own great uncle, my Sunday School teacher, Uncle Folkert Poppens, having a beer. I shall never forget that once he stated in Sunday School, that he thought it was all right for a hard-working man to have a beer on a Saturday night.

HOME-MADE BREAD

            Barbara and I were married in 1953. She had been quick to inform me that her mother, though a good cook in a 1950’s way, had not been inclined to allow her only daughter to mess around much in the kitchen. So Barbara, who believed that anybody who could read could cook, relied on recipes. After several successful years, she began to experiment with baking, including baking bread.

            In the 50’s and 60’s, I believe baking bread was considered a lost art, especially by the young home-makers. Baking bread was something that was done by mothers and grandmothers. Barbara’s generation relied heavily on white wonder Bread. But her essays in baking were quite successful and we had bread from the grocery store less and less often.

            In about 1964 we had moved to the house on Loch Drive in Green Bay, which had a completely open kitchen-dining-living room. I was sitting in my comfortable chair reading something when I heard this short cry of pain and then sounds of strong annoyance. Barbara had somehow cut her finger while kneading bread dough. How she could cut her finger in dough I have never understood, but she was bleeding a fair amount. The annoyance was that if she continued with the bread, it would be ruined with her blood. She could not just throw out what she had, so the only logical solution was to call on me to finish the kneading, forming loaves, and putting them into pans. She said it could be fun. “Take out all your stress and frustrations on the bread,” she said. “Punch it hard. Take that, Richard Nixon, take that, John Mitchell, and here’s a punch for you (fill in the blanks)!” So I took over the kneading and had a jolly time of it, subduing all the bad guys.

            I don’t remember what impelled me to ask her to show me how to do the whole job, but having once proved that I could, bread making began to fall more and more into my hands. It turned out to be fun for me, and gave me the opportunity to make raisin bread whenever I wanted to, putting in lots more raisins than Barbara ever did.

            So there was plain white bread, whole wheat bread, cracked wheat bread and raisin bread using white and/or whole wheat flour. A friend of ours gave me a huge crockery bowl, big enough to make eight standard loaves, so that became the accepted quantity. Why not? We had a deep freeze, and the bread could keep for a while.

            So we moved to Ridge Road, then to Washington and the University housing, then to Everett and north Seattle. Even later there were different places in Stanwood and Camano Island. Every single one of these moves required learning about the idiosyncrasies of each oven. I am now positive that every home oven had a hot spot.

            During the short while we lived in north Seattle, Barbara left me to live on her own. I was not at all happy that she left, and a small part of the reason for that was that I had invited the Seattle chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) to have their next meeting at our largish condominium. I had thought it to be an honor to be accepted as a member of this NATS chapter, and had actually served as a board member for a couple of years. I figured it was about time for me to host the meeting. But with Barbara gone, I did not see how I could handle this, especially the after-meeting coffee and goodies. Probably there would be at least twenty people there, made up mainly of fussy women (how could it be otherwise, as teaching singing requires fussiness?).

            My first thought, of course, was to dis-invite the group. They would still have about two weeks to find another place, but I did not want to back out, and it became a kind of matter of honor with me, to be able to function without Barbara.

            There is a wonderful Grimm brother’s fairy tale called “The Valliant Little Tailor.” At the beginning, the tailor has bought some fine jam from a passing peddler, takes a loan of bread, cuts it lengthwise and spreads a lot of jam on the big long slice of bread. This always seemed to me to be a daring thing to do, something that my mother or Barbara would never have allowed. So as a kid, this turned out to be one of my life’s dreams, to cut a loaf longitudinally, instead of slicing off the end.

            I knew my home-made bread was good; I had some years of experience making it. The smell of bread in the oven, or just coming out would be enough to bring tears to the eyes of anyone whose mother or grandmother had baked bread. That was the happy solution. I would serve absolutely fresh-baked bread for the NATS meeting.

            Now the rules and conditions for the bread party, as I made them up, were to have some loaves of white bread finished and an equal number of whole wheat still in the oven. These should be taken out at exactly the time the business meeting was over. I would then ceremoniously, in the presence of the guests, take the bread out, and against all rules, cut into it immediately. Bread is supposed to stand cooling for a time before slicing, but of course, I cut into it anyway – the long way – and the guests could then break it into pieces if they wanted, but only the long slices would come off the loaf. Plenty of real butter and jam would be on hand, and each could take, or leave what they wanted. I told them the “Little Tailor” source; all entered into the spirit of it, and the bread party was a success. Lest I take too much credit, I had the help of a couple of my voice students to make and pour the coffee and tea. Of late, bread making seems to have become much more common, and the bread machine does a pretty good job too, one loaf at a time. This party scheme turned out well enough so that I did the same thing for other small groups of my friends.

            But making bread turned out to be something much more significant in my life than mere party food. As I have written in others of these essays, in spite of my resolution to live out my life as a bachelor, Margaret changed all that. Our “association” was proceeding well, with her riding to choir rehearsal with me, going out in the sailboat, and having tea and cookies after choir at her house. I thought I could make some good points with her by bringing her an unusual present, a loaf of bread, of course. So I did that, but was taken somewhat aback when I learned that she baked bread, too. But her daughter, Holly, came to my rescue. At age three and a half, she told her mother that she should take me, “because he brings us bread.” Thank you, Holly!

            I mentioned the bread machine a paragraph back. When Margaret and I had been living on the boat, Greta, At LaConner for a couple of years, I discovered a good sale on bread machines at a local store. On the boat it is possible to bake bread, two loaves in the oven at one time, but the oven is hard to regulate and the success rate varies. There was electric power at the dock, so a bread machine seemed like a good solution. It virtually guaranteed success with every loaf.

            Actually, I was a bit disappointed with the result. I kept on trying to get better bread with the machine, so one day when Margaret was at work ashore, I decided to try again. I had a new recipe, special bread machine flour, and high hopes. Now, on a boat it is necessary to store things in containers other than the bulky box or bags they come in. I looked in the usual places for the flour, years, powdered milk, oil, honey and so on, put it in the machine, turned it on, and waited for the effortless miracle of automatic machine bread.

            When the time was up, I peered in to see a dispirited lump on grayish hard clay about the size of a tennis ball. I was shocked! Margaret came home after work; I told her about my dismal failure; I showed her the ingredients I had used. When she was able to stop laughing, she explained to me that the white stuff I had used as powdered milk was laundry detergent. Next time we would clearly label whatever was in a plastic container. But this episode with the machine was the final discouragement for me, and the machine was given away. I didn’t like the cylindrical shaped loaf anyway.

            My good friend, Wally, had been an arm chair sailor for years, and finally bought a sailboat of his own, a Cal 34. This was a beautiful boat, shipped straight from the builder, not a blemish on it. He invited me aboard for his second trip away from the dock. To contribute something for the occasion, I brought along a loaf of bread, still hot from the oven.

            When some time had passed and I had been sufficiently impressed with the boat under power, I brought out the bread and a bread-knife. Super-fussy and proud new boat owner, Wally, said, “Would you hold that over the side when you cut it so you won’t get crumbs all over the deck?” Was he serious, you ask? Yes, he was.

            One last comment (brag) about my bread. I have two little grandsons, Mark and Luke, ages five and two and a half, who love Grandpa’s bread. No butter, peanut butter, jam or anything. Just plain bread that Grandpa made.