Steps to Greta

 Steps to Greta

Circa 1972 - 2007

 

 

When former wife Barbara and I went to the Boat Show after leaving a boring play back in l972, we wound up buying our first sailboat, "Echappee".  This has been related in a previous memoir story.  At that time we had thought primarily of the boat as a day-sailer; I suppose that I may have been the only one who anticipated boating trips that would last overnight, or maybe several nights in a row.  When I mentioned this to Barbara, I got the message loud and clear that she was not willing to rough it aboard for more than say half a day at a time.  

 

"Where would we wash our hair?" was the unanswerable question.  She and the two teen-age daughters would not, definitely not, be able to go overnight without at least the capability of washing their hair, it seemed.  Admittedly "Echappee" had limited resources (25 gal water tank) but it seemed to me that they could have made it for twenty-four hours.  So except for one neat single handed trip all the way to the end of Hood Canal, the boat was a day-sailer.

 

When Barbara left me, I thought that if she were going to live her own life, I would do the same, buy a bigger boat and not only go on overnight trips, but live aboard.  So after some delay I bought "Echappee II" and it was meant to be my hermit dwelling for the rest of my life.  It had some of the amenities that could have made this possible.  The water tank had a capacity of 70 gallons, and there was an electric water heater for the pressure water shower.  Sure it was crowded, but fun; the only disappointment was that there was no hot water from engine heat.  You had to be connected to electricity for hot water, the little l2-horse Yanmar diesel was raw-water cooled and it had no possibility of heating water from the fresh water tank.  There was a kerosene stove which smelled bad, but was a good bit hotter than the alcohol stove on "E-1."  "E-1" had no cabin heat; "E-II" had a wood-burning heater which was effective.

 

I hardly know when Margaret entered my life.  This was during the time I was choir director at the Congregational church of Everett, and like the usual church choir director, was frantically looking for more men to match the strong women of the choir.  The most audacious thing I could think of was to start a separate men's choir, hoping to have after-church rehearsals that would allow men who could not get to Thursday night regular rehearsals to attend.  I arranged several hymns for them, and they performed a few times, so it was reasonably successful.  One of my singers was a young fellow named Jack Scott.  

 

I thought he was an OK guy, and he sang baritone adequately.  I'm not sure of the time-frame of all these developments, but I slowly became aware that he had a wife who had started singing in the regular choir, and I was informed by the organist, who seemed to know everything, that Jack and his wife Margaret were not getting along at all.  Jack gradually disappeared from the men's choir, and Margaret became more evident at the mixed choir.  But then her attendance became noticeably less and I found that she and Jack were splitting.  Little did I suspect at the time that my own marriage had only a few months to go. 

 

So as has been related in another of these stories, Margaret, after a prolonged absence from the Everett church came back specifically to attend a class that I had been asked to give, in church music.  It was at this first meeting of the class that she gave me her phone number, and since we were both living north of Everett it seemed OK for her to ride with me to the Thursday night rehearsals.  One thing led to another, and another, and another.  One of these "anothers" was an invitation to go out on the boat with me for a Saturday day-sail.  I was surprised that she accepted so readily but it turned out that she really liked sailing and for the most part was absolutely fearless.  I believe that she went out with me on "E-1" only twice.  By that time Barbara was long gone and I had made up my mind to buy a boat that I could live aboard and never ever look at another woman.  What a foolish thing to think, as Margaret was already in the picture, breaking down my resolve without even trying.

 

Since I was trying to live aboard, according to The Plan, I spent much of my time in Everett at the dock, and this would have made a lot of sense, except that I was falling more and more in love and did not want to be apart from Margaret.  She was living on Camano Island, by this time, in an old, but fairly comfortable trailer that I had been occupying after Barbara left.  But after every three days or less, I would get lonesome and take the boat over to Camano Island's Madrona Beach which was only a block or so from the trailer, but was a rather poor place to anchor, too shallow and too open.  And so I would get anxious every time I left the boat at anchor by itself, and after a day or two, back to Everett.  Luckily, it was only about 12 or 15 miles.  Then, finally in the fall, October 2, the wonderful day came, and Margaret and I were married in the Everett Congregational Church.

 

The wedding was meant to be a low-key event, and the church marriage consultant did not approve of what we proposed.  What we wanted was to have the wedding performed as a part of a regular Sunday morning worship service, and the wedding would take place before the final benediction, rather similar to how infant baptisms are performed in many Protestant churches.  Ultimately, we beat down the resistance of the marriage consultant, and the wedding took place as we had planned.  Margaret sang in the choir, I conducted it as usual; the anthem was "Thou Art Jesus," the music by Heinrich Schutz.  Just before the wedding was to take place, we took off our choir robes and took our places in front as we would have if it had been a formal ceremony.  Daughter Ginny played the second movement of the Poulenc flute sonata as a special treat for us and the congregation, we said the vows, were pronounced man and wife, and a lot of people who had no idea that this wedding was going to take place on an ordinary Sunday, were amazed.  Wedding cake and coffee were served for the usual after-church social hour.

 

By early fall, Margaret had moved from the Camano Island trailer back into the house she usually occupied in Stanwood.  This house belonged to an older couple who spent winters in the South, and short summers in the Stanwood house.  So after the marriage, I moved in with Margaret at this house, abandoning the notion of ever living aboard the boat.   But time passes, and summer rolled around; the people wanted to come back from the South and take possession of their house in the summer as usual.  That meant the Margaret and I had to get out.  Where to go?  I was convinced that Echappee II, even at thirty feet was too small to consider living aboard, and Margaret's daughter Holly had to be considered.  I have to admit that up to this time I had not had to be much concerned about Holly, as she was little and cute, and spent much time at her grandparents anyhow.  But Margaret, to my surprise, insisted that it could be done, and we were just the ones who could do it, at least for the summer.  So that is how we spent the first summer as a family.  

 

Back to the Stanwood house the following fall, and back onto the boat the following summer.  As with every new marriage, there were ups and downs, and of course it was crowded, as Holly was given the entire V-berth area for herself and some forty dolls and toy animals.  But, as Margaret pointed out so often, most of the days were very pleasant, and we had the whole outdoors to expand in.  Also we did not stay in one place, as we had all of Puget Sound to explore, plus parts of Georgia Strait.

 

I have to admit that I never liked the Stanwood house.  It was leaky and cold, we had to be very careful of all the owner's possessions that they had left in the house, it just never seemed like home to me.  When we had the opportunity to buy a condominium apartment on North Camano Island, we left the Stanwood house for good, and I supposed that now my dream of living aboard year 'round was extinguished for good.  What truly put the kibosh on the whole notion was after living in the condo for a couple of years, and having baby John show up, we then bought a house on the island.  I was pretty well resigned to living a conventional life in a house, just like anyone else.

 

Holly graduated from Stanwood High School after not many years; John started his first couple of grades in the elementary school.  But then Holly wanted to attend college in the East, and ultimately decided on Bryn Mawr.  I was skeptical (and still am, I guess) about the advantages of attending a prestigious Eastern liberal arts college, but it turned out to be financially feasible for her to go.  It was probably Margaret who first began to speak wistfully about living aboard again, now that we were down to only one kid again, and he didn't take up all that much space, it seemed.  So the idea of living on Echappee II began to stir around again in our brains, but there were some problems with that, other than the smallish size of the boat.

 

Echappee II had been ill-used in some ways, having been run aground by me a couple of times, and having been betrayed by its "permanent" anchor in Utsalady Bay twice, and having had serious damage hitting a rock in the LaConner channel.  The engine had been overheated severely at least once, the water heater had been tossed out, and the kerosene stove was too smelly to live with.  The rudder was loose, and I was never really confident that the fin keel was going to stay in place after having hit the rock in the channel.  The result of all that was to consider selling the house, trying to find someone who would take Echappee II in trade, and get a boat that was totally trustworthy, large enough for Margaret, John, and me, and had hot water, a decent head, and, as a bonus, a roller furling jib.

 

Bainbridge Island, across from the city of Seattle, is a charming place, having a history-filled Blake Harbor, the ferry landing and a truly fine coffee house at Winslow, and perhaps one of the finest small completely sheltered coves in the world, Port Madison.  Margaret and I used to anchor there several times a year, in part because it was not crowded like Shilshole Bay, almost directly across the channel. 

 

One evening after we were comfortably anchored, we were sitting in the cockpit enjoying the air when a man came in with a sailboat under power, an Ericson 34.  Margaret and I had seen the E-34 a couple of times previously at boat shows or at Seacraft, on Lake Union.  We had been much attracted by it, and were much disappointed when we heard that the Ericson boat company was going out of business.  We yelled out a greeting to the fellow with the Ericson and told him that we loved his boat.  "Yes," said he, "This is the very last boat that Ericson built, and I was lucky to get it."  We could hardly be heart-broken at this news, because we were still not serious about the whole live-aboard notion, but now that the Ericson was to be scarce, or even unavailable, of course our longing for it increased by a couple of hundred percent.  Not so long after that, we heard that the highly respected boat builder, Pacific Seacraft, was going to resume production on the Ericson 34s and 38s.  We dashed down to Lake Union to look at the Ericson 34 they had there, and of course it turned out to be the boat of our dreams. It is, I believe, Hull #2, built by Pacific Seacraft.

 

We looked at Beneteau, we looked at Catalina, we looked at several boats in Bellingham, but all of them seemed to us to be cheap, and in the case of the Beneteau, even approaching ugly.  We always came back to that beautiful Ericson 34.  There was a 38 there too, but it seemed to have little advantage over the 34 except for a bit more closet (pardon me, locker) space.  So we advertised the Camano Island house and three or four days later believed we had it sold for the price we had asked.  Actually, we did have it sold, but there were long delays because of FHA loan requirements by the buyer.  So although all this looking, and boat-shopping started in the summer, it was not until January that we were able to move aboard, spending a week in Lake Union, but winding up at the LaConner North Basin.

 

We lived there at LaConnor for four years, spent three great summers sailing up the Inside Passage, and when we were able to get permanent moorage in Haines, Alaska, we moved there.  After some seven years living in an apartment, we decided to move aboard again in the Haines Small Boat Harbor, and possibly it would have worked out well if Margaret had not become severely injured in a fall (near the Catholic church), and about the time she got well enough to resume living aboard, I came down with excruciating sciatic pain.  We were forced to move ashore into a tiny but nice apartment abutting a lumber and hardware store. 

 

We still sleep aboard now and then, for old time’s sake, but we have not yet taken the step of trying it again.  But, as Margaret says, "The boat is our real home."

Some Marine-Type Definitions

by Bob Plucker

 

These are mostly original, but some are well-known

 

 

 

BIKINI:                       A tiny Pacific Island, also a tiny article of clothing never seen on the foredeck of a sailboat north of Lat. 48 N.

 

BOAT:                        A vessel small enough to be carried aboard a ship.

 

CHIMNEY:                Also has the archaic name of Charley Noble, a vertical pipe leading from a heating device located forward in the cabin of a live-aboard sailboat, which inevitably fouls the sheets when coming about. 

 

COME ABOUT:         A sudden scary turning maneuver that results in wildly flapping sails, yelling, yanking on ropes (oops, sheets) finishing with all the passengers sitting on the wrong (or low) side.

 

COMPASS:                A crude, low-tech instrument that will indicate the general direction of North, but never true north, and only if there is no metal near it, and it must have been properly swung, adjusted, compensated, and the incantation about True Virgins Make Dull Companions has been recited.

 

DEPTH SOUNDER:  A gadget that explains to the skipper that the reason his boat is no longer moving is because the water is too shallow to float the boat.

 

ETA:                           A question asked late in the trip by uneasy passengers who belatedly mention to the skipper that they have an appointment ashore (or wish they had) in fifteen minutes. . .

 

FISHERMAN:           Someone who can't understand why sailboats exist.

 

GPS:                           A nearly miraculous method of electronic navigation that will let your boat run over a gill-net while you are watching the tiny screen for the next way-point, speed, direction, compass heading, etc.

 

GPS 2:                         Same miraculous gadget that will set your course as the shortest possible distance to the next way-point, quite probably over very shallow water, rocks and other dangers the skipper would see if he stopped watching the GPS screen.

 

HEEL:                         A tilt to one side. This is good because it means the sails are filling properly and you have enough wind to move the boat instead of just drifting.

 

JIBE:                           A noisy, scary turning maneuver with the wind at your back, involving the main boom unexpectedly swooping across the cockpit, coming to a sudden stop on the opposite side with a loud BANG, leaving all those who failed to duck, unconscious.

 

LIAR:                          Anyone who claims never to have gone aground.

 

LIAR 2:                       Anyone who claims to have never experienced the slightest sign of sea-sickness.

 

LIST:                           A bad tilt to one side resulting from bad load distribution. It can also mean your vessel is sinking.

 

MARINE HEAD:       A complicated floor fixture meant to carry off  human bodily wastes. Skipper's nightmare when stuff inserted in head fails to go through the too small hoses.

 

MIRACLE:                 Somehow freeing the propeller from a line or net fouled on it without having to go overboard and cut it off.

 

RULES OF THE ROAD: A hopelessly complicated system of preventing collisions and other accidents at sea which will explain to you why you do NOT have the right of way all the time, even though your vessel is a sailboat.

 

SHIP:                          Any vessel large enough to carry a boat on board.

 

Is Southeast Alaska Cold?

Circa 1995

 

We had not lived aboard the boat at LaConner very long before I got the notion to try going up the Inside Passage.  I had thought about it before, but now with the new boat and quite a lot more experience sailing behind us, I thought that I could persuade Margaret that we should at least try to spend a summer, or part of a summer in Southeast Alaska.  That was all I wanted, I thought, just one trip up the Passage; and then we could come back and live happily ever afterward at the dock in LaConner.  I never expected that Alaska would get such a strong grip on us.

 

We got under way one May morning, Margaret, John and I, in near-perfect weather, motoring up narrow Swinomish Channel to Anacortes and beyond.  Far beyond.  John, at nine years of age, was totally "into" sailboat travel.  The trip was eventful, and fun, but we decided to stop at Petersburg.  This is well inside the Southeast panhandle, and gave us the experience of navigating Wrangell Narrows.  Somehow, before reaching Petersburg, we found that the Alaska Marine Highway system was offering a very generous special rate to seniors that year, only five dollars going northerly as far as Skagway and another five to return.  John was still young enough for half-fare, so Margaret was the only "adult" among us.  She would have to pay the full fare. But what a bargain, and how could we not take advantage of it!  To Skagway and back!

 

Margaret was full of enthusiasm for the project; she made a number of phone calls, finding out that the ferry had already left from Petersburg, but that we could catch it at the village of Kake. There was a special flight of a LAB plane leaving for there in about three hours, so we would have to hurry to catch it.  I did not think there would be much frenzy about catching the plane, but it turned out that we needed food (Margaret always has food on hand when she goes nearly anywhere), extra clothes, books, toys, toothbrushes, "stuff", all sorts of things.  But we got it all done and caught the plane, a single-engine DeHavilland Beaver.  Our boat, "Greta", was locked up, and safely tied up at the visitor's dock in Petersburg.

 

The Alaska Marine Highway ferry "LeConte" was to be at the ferry dock in Kake early in the morning, and so we would have to spend the night there.  Of course we thought there surely would be at least one motel or B&B that could put us up for the night on short notice.  The LAB people were incredibly kind to us, driving us to a few places they thought might have a room for us.  But no, Kake is a very small Native village, and they were not set up to take in very many people; it turned out there were a few lumber-people there already, and had already taken the few rooms available in private homes.  The only choice then, was to stay at the ferry terminal, sleeping on the floor, no real problem.

 

So, off to the dock, where reality set in.  The "ferry terminal building" was a kind of picnic shelter, completely open to the mosquitoes, "no-see-ums", and the cold.  We huddled there for a short while, perhaps thirty minutes, until a local man took pity on us.  He had a Pepsi van that was to be taken back to Sitka on the same ferry we were waiting for, and we could sleep in the van. Sleeping in that van was one of the horrifyingly bad experiences of my sixty-five years of life.  No seats, except for the driver's perch; the rest was corrugated steel floor.  There were some flattened paper cartons spread on the floor which was supposed to keep out some of the cold and straighten out the corrugations of the floor, but there seemed to be no effect.  No comfort to my frozen old bones, but at least we were out of the range of the mosquitoes and other bugs.  But yes, it can get COLD in early June in Southeast Alaska. 

 

Kids somehow seem to have the ability to withstand cold.  Think of the number of mothers the world over, who have to compel their youngsters to put on a coat when going out in the cold.  John was not bothered by the cold, and for some reason, Margaret didn't seem to be badly chilled either.  That rascally John spent a good part of the early evening laughing and chortling over how funny his father was, grumbling, shivering, scratching, and complaining.  All this discomfort was magnified by us having overheard a conversation earlier that expressed some doubt as to whether the ferry would be very late, or if it would stop at all.

 

When morning came, at about 5:30, LeConte came into view, tied up at the dock, and allowed us to come aboard perhaps by 6 o’clock.  LeConte is one of the smallest and least luxurious of the ferry fleet, but to me it looked like the Queen Mary.  And after all, who needs luxury, when you can get warmth.  The two luxuries aboard were the hot showers and the 24-hour hot coffee, free during the night hours.  There were probably fewer than two dozen passengers on the northward leg of the trip, and not many more on the return.  

 

LeConte could just as well have been our private yacht.  There are no cabins on that ship, so one sleeps on the floor, or in a chair, or on a sort of plastic cot in the solarium on the upper after-deck.  To me it was all super deluxe accommodation.  If you have spent a cold, cold night on the corrugated steel floor of a Pepsi van, you appreciate sleeping on a warm carpeted floor, as we did.

 

The rest of the trip was good, Sitka was great, there's a fine bookstore/coffee shop near the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, the villages of Angoon, Hoonah and Tenakee were all quick stops, the ferry terminals at Juneau and Haines were so far from downtown that we never left the ship.  The big turnaround is at Skagway, the end of the Inside Passage.  All the huge Cruise Ships stop there, making Skagway a candidate for America's largest retail center for T-shirts and cheap jewelry.   John and I had an ice cream cone, but were glad to escape the crowds of tourists and re-board the ship.

 

So returning to our beloved "Greta" in Petersburg and finally back to LaConner, our "summer in Alaska" came to an end.  I still had no idea that we would make three more trips up the Passage in Greta, and finally on the fourth trip, back, to stay.

A Near-Fatal Jibe

Circa 2000/2001

 

 

      Joey was in our son John's high school class, and had the reputation which he still has, of being an adventurer.  He also was, and is quite skillful working with wood.  Joey had been sailing with us quite often, and since his father owned a workboat, it seemed fore-ordained that Joey would try his hand at building a boat, a sailboat.  I don't know how much help, if any, Joey had in building the boat, but it turned out to be a beautiful work of art.  It was a small enough boat to not require a weighted keel, but the ballast of the passengers shifting their weight from side to side would keep the boat upright in conditions where sailing a boat this small is at all practicable.

 

      Joey came over one day to pick up John and Lee; they were to go sailing in Joey's new boat.  "Good luck", I thought to myself, as there seemed to be zero wind on Lynn Canal.  I went down to the dock to see them off.  As predicted, there was virtually no wind, and they had to row out a fair distance before catching the slightest hint of a breeze.  I got bored watching them, and walked back home.

 

      I noticed later in the afternoon that there was a bit of a breeze.  I did not know that the boys had come back to pick up Lucinda, also in their high school class.  That made four adult-sized people aboard, and Lee is no lightweight. There would be plenty of ballast, but the boat would be fairly low in the water.  Later in the afternoon I was out for a walk and glanced out over the water as I so often do.  I thought I might be able to glimpse the small white sails of Joey's boat.  What I saw was the Chilkat Cruises fast ferry coming back from Skagway roaring back to their Haines dock as usual, but with a major difference.  It slowed dramatically, turned around, and seemed to drift in one spot for a while.  Eventually I got tired of trying to figure out why they didn't stick to their usual rush to the dock and went home.

 

      In perhaps forty-five minutes or so, Lucinda, Lee, Joey and John came to our door, looking harried, bedraggled and damp, trying to act super-cool.  After all, that's what teen-agers do, they act cool.  They wanted to know if it would be OK for Joey to take a shower now, in our bathroom.  "We will explain everything later", they said.  So Joey spent some time in the shower while the other three were lined up on the couch, trying to huddle together under a blanket.  They assured us they would tell everything only after Joey got out of the shower.

 

      Joey had been very cold, the coldest of the four. They tried to make light of their adventure, but the further they got into the story the more I was convinced that they were alive only by the grace of God.  The wind had increased significantly, and Lucinda suggested they turn back.  Lucinda knew the wind on Lynn Canal perhaps better than the boys, as she had had a good bit of sea-time on her father's fish-boat.  Eventually even fearless Joey agreed to head back to the Haines Boat Harbor.  They had been sailing with the wind on the starboard quarter, nearly directly ahead of the wind.  They were probably deceived as to the strength of the wind as the boat speed subtracted from the actual wind velocity gives an apparent wind that seems much less than it is. Of course the wind always feels better if it is blowing on your back instead of having to face into it.

 

      What they attempted to do was to turn to the starboard, as the mainsail was on the port side, and they could have easily come up into the wind, tightened up the main and jib sheets, built up a little speed, and then come about through the eye of the wind and be headed straight for home.  From what I gathered from their account of it, Joey had attempted to do the whole maneuver in one step. Turn to starboard, leave the sheets slack, go through the eye of the wind, wind up on the port tack and be headed for home.  For some reason it did not work; the boat did not have momentum enough to go all that distance through the eye of the wind, finally catching the wind on the port side.  Apparently a 270 degree turn was just too much; they fell back on the original course, wind on the starboard quarter, and were sailing full speed away from shelter.

 

      Next they tried jibing.  This is a tricky maneuver in a strong wind, and is usually a bad idea.  It involves turning the boat in the direction of the mainsail.  That is, if the sail is spread out on the left, turn to the left. Eventually the wind will catch the back side of the sail and will blow sail and boom across to the other side at great speed and with devastating effect if some person happens to be standing in the way.  There are ways to limit this danger, but Joey and company were not experienced enough to know much about them.  When Joey's boat was broadside to the wind, evidently two bad things happened: the main sheet did not freely run out as it should have, and the ballast/passengers were too slow about shifting their weight to the windward side.  With the mainsail catching the full side force of the wind and the ballast on the wrong side, the boat had to suffer a severe knock-down, ending up with the mast and sails floating in the water, the hull floating on its side.  Being wood, the boat would not sink, and they had a fighting chance to right the boat. 

 

      According to their accounts, they did succeed in getting the boat upright, temporarily, but it was full of water, and they couldn't bail the water out as fast as the waves filled it.  Miraculously, they were all wearing life jackets, which is not usually the cool teen-age thing to do.  Lee, Lucinda and John managed to get out of the coldest water, somehow climbing onto the side-ways floating hull.  Joey could perhaps have done the same, but he was too engaged in trying to save his oars, and was hanging onto the mast with one hand and holding onto the oars with the other.  This seems irrational, but people do unexpected things when under extreme pressure sometimes.  This was why he was so much colder than the others, probably he was close to serious hypothermia. It should be noted that in the cold waters of the Lynn Canal, the average survival time has been estimated at ten to twenty minutes.

 

      So there they were, adrift in a very precarious position, but still not aware they could all be dead in a very short time.  It may have been Lee who pointed out with confidence that the Chilkat Cruise’s last ferry trip of the day would be due soon, and they would be rescued.  Sure enough, here came the fast ferry, hell-bent-for-election as usual.  Captain Molly and the crew saw neither the capsized sailboat nor the three miserable creatures perched on the side.  Joey and the sail in the water would have been virtually invisible.  By great good fortune, or by the guidance of a guardian angel, one of the ferry passengers happened to see them, rushed to Captain Molly and the rescue operation was started.  If I had had my binoculars with me on that walk, I could have watched the whole procedure.  Remember, I had wondered why the ferry had turned around and stopped.

 

      John was not impressed by the rescue operation.  He said the crew kept throwing things at them in the water.  Life jackets, which they already were wearing, and other flotation devices which they didn't need at that point.  Finally, after a lot of yelling John said he got them to throw just a plain old line, which he caught and hauled himself aboard.  He was a little ashamed to be the first to be rescued, but with the line in his hand it made more sense to use it, and then help to get the rest aboard, especially Joey who must have been in real trouble by this time.

 

      So they arrived at the Chilkat Cruises dock where some kind soul gave them a ride to the Senior Village apartment where we were living at that time.  Joey's boat was left drifting in the water, sails still set, but floating waterlogged in their horizontal state.  A fish-boat was dispatched to tow it in, but where the oars were at that point I do not know.  They were eventually saved by someone.

 

`Since the kids were so cool-acting when they first got to our home, I think I did not appreciate the gravity of what had happened until much later. Lucinda's mother was angry over the whole episode, I was sorry I had ever let them leave the dock (in a dead calm), and Margaret was upset later because of strong language John had used when being interviewed for a story in the Chilkat Valley News.  On the radio interview which was broadcast not only over KHNS, but the Alaska Public Radio, John did comment, "I am now a believer in wearing life jackets!"

Sarah and the Inclinometer

Circa 2000

 

 

Those people who are not accustomed to sailboats are often amazed and alarmed when the boat leans over to one side.   This is heeling, and it is a part of being propelled by wind.  One explanation that I have heard is that every other kind of boat will tilt to one side when hit by a wave, and then will tend to tilt to the other side before coming to an equilibrium.  A sailboat heeled over will not do that; it will lean over away from the wind; its motion is dependent on the wind, and to a much lesser extent, on the wave action.  Sailboats larger than tiny day-sailers will have weight below the hull to counterbalance the sideways thrust of the mast and its sails.  This weight, whether a fixed keel or moveable centerboard, can be nearly half the entire weight of the boat, causing it to pop up after you have knocked it down like a child's toy.  Many sailboats are capable of righting themselves automatically even if they were entirely capsized.  And the force of heeling has to become less as the boat leans further and further over, spilling the wind out of the top of the sail.

 

Another aspect of boat stability is the shape of the hull.  In general, a flatter bottomed hull will want to stay upright and will tend to sail poorly under extreme heeling.  A more round bottomed boat will heel more under the same strength of wind, but will sail effectively in that condition.  The Newport 30 that we enjoyed so much for sixteen years was rather flat; Greta, the Ericson 34 that we have loved so well for fourteen years is rather rounded.  I bought a cheap little inclinometer, similar to a carpenter's level to check on just how far the boat actually heeled over.  Incidentally, any boat will "list" if it is out of balance; a poorly distributed load is usually the cause.  Sailboats "heel", and their skippers tend to get upset if landlubbers keep insisting that the boat is listing.

 

I enjoy taking young people out sailing, and years ago I would take my college students out on Saturday day trips.  With son John in high school, I took many of his friends out.  So on one of these expeditions with John and his high school friends I had two new-comers to sailing aboard, Sarah and Soren.  (No, they are not related to each other at all.)  Soren took to the sailboat motion with little trouble, but Sarah seemed a bit apprehensive.  She caught sight of the inclinometer, mounted right where everyone could see it.  What was that for, she wanted to know.  I told her it was to let me know how many degrees the boat was leaning over from the vertical. 

 

We got out from the shelter of the inner harbor a bit further, and the heeling increased to about fifteen degrees.  As you get further out, in the Haines harbor, you can expect stronger winds.  We got them, and the heeling increased to perhaps twenty degrees, but varying with the small gusts of wind that one usually encounters in this mountainous country.  By the time we got to thirty degrees of heel, Sarah got nervous.  She wanted to know how far the boat would tip to one side before it would refuse to come back upright.  I explained to her approximately what you have read in the first paragraph of this essay.  Since we were now in the middle of Lynn Canal where the wind could be expected to be the strongest, I felt safe in telling her that if she wanted to get really concerned, she could start worrying at about forty degrees.

 

Where there are gusts of wind, there are sometimes GUSTS.  Wouldn't you know, within seconds of having said that, one of these GUSTS came along and gave us a real “knockdown.”  I didn't take time to look at the inclinometer, but I know from experience that we heeled a good bit more than forty degrees.  We didn't have just the lee rail under water; we actually took in a few gallons over the coaming of the cockpit.  This is one of the times you listen to the screaming and rather wish you had reefed the sails a while back when you had the chance.  But even these strong gusts are only gusts, and the weighted keel did its job very well indeed, and we popped right back up to our former position.  

 

But Sarah must have had her eye on the inclinometer, because all four or five of us aboard could see that she was terrified.  Perhaps if I had just stuck to the explanation in the aforementioned first paragraph she would have been less scared, but no, I had to mention forty degrees.

 

After this GUST, we did not experience any more, but to reduce chances of more terror, I turned downwind a bit more, slackened the main and the jib a bit, and the wind cooperated by moderating.  This experience was scary for Sarah, but not long after that she begged and pleaded to come along with me and several others to go all the way to Juneau to a Cross Country run.  Lest we forget about Soren, he was cool; I don't think I have ever seen him flustered.

Life on Memory Court

1960’s

 

 

Memory Court is an arch-shaped street in Allouez, a suburb of Green Bay, Wisconsin, which as every one knows, is Packer Football Country.  Former wife Barbara and our two pre-school daughters lived at 401 Memory Court for only four years, 1960 to l964.  Those were very good years.  “401” is at the top of the arch, and we had neighbors mostly of our own age and financial condition.  Every house was mortgaged (I think).  Directly across the street from us in the inside of the arch lived Doug and Carol Small.  Next door to them and on their right was the house of Bob and Patsy Weich.  Across the street from them, and outside the arch lived Stu and Liz Morris.  All the people on Memory Court were wonderful people, but these were the people I was most drawn to.  There were young children of various ages on the Court, except for Stu and Liz.  Their youngest was very young indeed, and the rest weren't even born yet.

 

These families were not near-clones of each other, but there were some strong similarities.  Morrises and Smalls were Catholic; Weichs were Methodist, as we were.  This split was close to being the same all over the Green Bay area, but the Catholics outnumbered the Protestants just enough so that they kept us on our toes.  We may have gone to different churches, but we were all united in being Packer fans.  Barbara and I acquired this Packer lust very soon after we moved in, and were able to talk "red dog" , "blitz", "keeper play", "audible" and "shotgun formation" about as well as the next one.  Sunday afternoons when the Packers were on television was the time for partying.  The gang rotated houses from game to game.  Packer home games were blacked out of TV for the most part, and so we felt disconnected.  Why not simply go to the home games?  Tickets to a single game? Unthinkable except from scalpers.  Season tickets?  Only if you had some kind of influence with someone.  These were the beginning of the Lombardi years!

 

The Packer parties were great fun; beer was served, after all, this is Wisconsin, and snacks went along with the beer, usually a chip-and-dip tray. One party at Doug and Carol's was noteworthy because of the dip for the chips. None of us could figure out what went into the peculiar reddish stuff that resembled no dip we had ever seen or tasted before.  After adroit questioning, Carol told us it was equal parts of peanut butter and ketchup.  I don't remember if the Packers won or lost that day.

 

Doug and Carol drove a 1961 Ford sedan.  When Doug drove it, it seemed to start OK, but Carol had a difficult time getting it going even when the weather was not severely cold.  She called a towing service one day when she was required to go somewhere.  The guy came out, got in the car, turned the switch and started the car.  No hesitation.  Carol asked him why she couldn't start it like that.  "It's your attitude", said the guy, "you have to get in with the idea that you are the boss over this mere machine and that it is unthinkable that it shouldn't start."  An unusual kind of advice, but it worked after a fashion until Doug traded it for a new 1964 Ford station wagon.  (Possibly she was releasing the starter before the engine had had a chance to catch?)

 

The Memory Court neighborhood was quite close, and everybody there probably knew within a day of the purchase, how much was the asking price, how much the agreed-upon price, the amount given in trade for the old car, and how much was owed on the new one.  The Memory Court residents somehow knew how to draw out this sort of information with the speed of a Packer running back.

 

Doug belonged to the National Guard and sometimes had to endure some gentle razzing from Barbara and me as he drove out of the driveway on his way to a drill.  We would stand on either side of the road with raised broomsticks or shovels and proclaim the current Guard slogan, "Sleep well, your National Guard is awake!"

 

Bob and Patsy Weich, on the inside of the arch and next-door to Doug and Carol, had children about the same age as the Smalls.  They liked to spend time outdoors and would arrange elaborate outings and picnics for the children together in the summer.  It seemed to take them a long, long time to get everything loaded in the cars, children all accounted for (including their shoes), and the dashes back into the house to get forgotten items.  Barbara and I used to marvel at their patience and determination to have "jolly family parties."  They would come back all sunburned, dead tired, but their efforts were surely worth whatever trouble they were. This was truly an example of the “Togetherness" that at least one of the women's magazines was promoting in those years.

 

Bob and Patsy were among the few people of my generation that knew how to play "500", a card game that resembles bridge.  Barbara and I would play with them occasionally, Patsy and I would be partners facing Bob and Barbara.  Bob and Barbara always played the conservative game, not often winning the bid, but when they did, they were reasonably sure of taking the required tricks. Patsy and I were the diametric opposite, sometimes taking huge losses, but coming back by making very large bids.  If you know 500, you know about 10 no-trump and double nula.

 

I was amused the first time I was in their house to see some of the furniture that Patsy prized as "antique".  One piece was a spring seat like the ones we used on the farm some years ago on farm wagons.  Normally the farm wagon of my day, pulled by two horses, had wooden spoke wheels and iron tires.  There was no springing, and so if you had to go over rough ground you could set this wide wooden seat on the box and get some relief from the jouncing.  There were leaf springs at the sides that would absorb some of the shock.  For me, this was no antique; I had gone out many times with my Grandpa to fix fence with horses and wagon, spring seat in place.  Sitting alongside my Grandpa on that wide seat made me proud as could be.

 

Patsy also had an old-fashioned kitchen sink and a matching hand pump for water.  It was only a "decoration" in her house, but when I was a kid, this was what we had in one corner of our huge kitchen on the farm.  I must protest! Antique?

 

And then we come to Stew and Liz Morris directly across the street from Bob and Patsy.  I don't really remember if Jane, their oldest daughter was born by the time we moved onto the Court, but what impressed me soon after was that Stew, who had the finest lawn in Wisconsin, would push his hand lawn-mower through his lush grass carrying Janey in one arm.  He had endurance to spare, apparently, because I had the impression that he spent a lot of time mowing and cross-mowing that incredible grass, and that as hard as it must have been to push, he never put Janey down.  He just kept at it.

 

Stew was/is a physical type, as he was/is one of the most knowledgeable and respected physical therapists in the country.  He was the chief organizer of the Memory Court softball games; ice skating, picnics and so on.  Barbara and I were invited to play in one of the softball games before we even moved into 401.  I don't know how he got our names or how he got in touch with us.

 

I had been envious of Stew for a while because he had nerve enough to own a very bright red Ford convertible car.  Barbara and I had an uninteresting green Rambler station wagon.  Useful, but dull.  Stew's example made it possible for old Stick-in-the-Mud me to think about following suit.  I figured if he 

Could drive a flashy red car with a cloth top in cold Wisconsin weather, so could I.  I shopped around for a small Falcon convertible, but Barbara was not enthusiastic.  We wound up with a super-flashy red Ford Galaxie convertible, bought right off the showroom floor.  As I mentioned in another of these essays, this car made me the hero of West High School faculty as far as the students were concerned.

 

When I first arrived in Green Bay I had been limping around with some painful plantar warts on the bottom of my right foot.  The biggest of these warts was especially painful because a Winona doctor had tried to burn it off with X-ray.  Something burned all right, but the wart itself seemed to be untouchable.  The wart hurt, and now the burn hurt too.  After Stew had noticed the limping he asked me if I would be a kind of guinea pig in a new treatment he was thinking about.  I figured he couldn't make it any worse, and so Stew had me in for three sessions of rubbing the warts with an ultra-sound generator.  The notion of ultra-sound was still fairly new in l960, I guess, and after the third treatment Stew thought it would be good to call a halt.  But the wart began to feel much better right away with the first treatment, and evidently continued to heal after the end of the third one.  It was not long before the wart was just an unpleasant painful memory.  Thanks again, Stew!!

 

Liz, who was a nurse at St. Vincent's hospital, was often busy; I believe she worked at several different shifts, and I don't remember seeing her very much except at the great pot-luck dinners we had with Weichs, Smalls, and Davises. The dinners were all terrific, with the wives in a friendly (?) competition of course, and we had a great time eating. But the best times for me were the discussions after dinner.  We talked Packers, of course, and sometimes about the Braves who had not yet moved to Atlanta, and politics.  This gave me the chance to argue that we should never have been in the Viet-Nam conflict, it was their business, not ours, and the "domino theory" was a lot of bunk.  After all, we had already suffered one stalemate in Korea, fighting an Asian war that was not supported by the public and was too costly in lives and money to attempt to win.   Now, of course we have the same problem in Iraq.

 

About a year before we left Memory Court I bought a bicycle.  The bike I had ridden as a kid was a (shudder) girl's bike, a hand-me-down from our rich cousins.  Now I was going to have the bicycle of my boyhood dreams.  It turned out to be a shiny black Schwinn, with big tires and shiny chrome fenders, just the bike I had wanted when I was about ten or twelve.  But this bike even had a Bendix two-speed rear hub.  The modern system of throwing the chain from different sized sprockets was not yet widely on the market.  I mention this because Stew may have been the only guy on the Court who did not laugh at this "little bald guy riding a bicycle".  I suppose I could have been the only person over thirty in Green Bay who rode one.  Kids would point and laugh, dogs chased me.  The bike served me well until the move to Seattle where the hills took their toll on the "back-pedal" brake on the rear wheel, and the Bendix two-speed system fell apart at about the same time.  It was finally replaced with a Gitane ten-speed.

 

No account of Memory Court can omit the fellow who built many of the houses on the Court.  Francis Rentmeester, probably of Belgian extraction, was a kind of round-looking guy of medium height who rarely wore a shirt in summer, but never seemed to sun-burn.  He had settled on three or four house designs, all of which he carried in his head, and somehow was able to build them faster than anyone else, and with a smaller crew.  I worked for him for about ten days until I smashed my thumb with a hammer, and it never occurred to me that he pushed his employees to move faster.  He put up these three or four bedroom split-level houses with blinding speed; he promised George Seifert that he would have his house finished in a month.  Sure enough, he broke ground (next to Stew and Liz) on the 23rd of May, and the Seiferts were able to move in on the 23rd of June.   I am convinced that the houses were well-built and that no corners were cut that affected the quality of the houses.  And still the prices were exceptionally low.

 

Now and then some of the neighbors to the right of us would have a driveway beer party, a “kegger.”  I don't believe anyone was excluded from these events but the real hard-line participators all wound up playing a card game called Schafskopf.  In English: sheep's head.  Sometimes I would watch these games for a short time, but it seemed to me that the most important rules of the game were lots of very loud talk, shouting and laughter, with violent slamming of cards down on the table.  Fortunately, the game was usually played on a picnic table outside in the summer.  A regular card table would never have held up under slams of that weight and frequency.

 

Beer, again this is Wisconsin, was a part of life on Memory Court.  I remember coming home from a choir rehearsal at First Methodist Church (I was the choir director there) with Barbara and discovering five or six of the neighbors sitting on the curb in front of our house drinking beer.  They weren't particularly loud or rowdy, but they were right under our bedroom window and I didn't see much possibility of sleep, even though I was plenty tired after a day of teaching at West High School, and a night of church choir.  Well, if you can't lick 'em, join 'em, as the saying goes.  So we did, and were not really any worse off the next morning.

 

This was certainly a jolly, good-hearted and helpful bunch of people on the Court.  When I made the mistake of praising Milt Nero's house on Loch Drive (Milt was an architect and had designed the house) and also mentioning that Milt wanted to sell it, Barbara glommed onto the notion of buying it.  No power on earth could dissuade her, it seemed, least of all me.  So in a short time we sold 401 Memory Court and moved to 1129 Loch Drive.  When we moved, we had the loan of the Davis' VW van, many pairs of strong hands, and lots of good will. All the move cost us was some pizza and beer.

 

One thing I discovered in that move was that a convertible car (remember the Ford Galaxie?) with the top down is almost as good as a truck for a short-distance move.  You can pile all sorts of things, one on top the other with no restricting roof.  On a later subsequent move, I also found out that in sub-zero weather, you may be able to stand the cold for a mile or two with the top down, but your wife's house plants can't.

 

401 Memory Court was still under construction when we bought it, and of course it was a mess, as all construction sites are.   There is mud, no trees or grass, bits and pieces of wood, a raw look to everything.  I remember the incredible plague of crickets we had in the garage before the door was hung, or anytime afterward when the door was left open.  The floor would be black with them, and you would not be able to step without crushing a cricket.

 

Of course we had to landscape the place.  We planted a nice lawn, we planted fast-growing poplar trees at the edges of the lot except directly in front, and we had a couple of maples in the back yard and a mountain ash in front.  There were lots of flowers too.  The lawn, though not anywhere near as nice as Stew's, turned out well, as did the trees, in part because we watered them a lot.  But after we moved to Loch Drive, it seemed to take only weeks before the trees at 401 Memory Court began to die, the lawn turned brown and patchy, and there were abandoned kid's toys all over the place.  Several years later when I returned to Green Bay for a visit, the house was barely recognizable to me.  By that time the Smalls, Weichs, Morrises and Pluckers had all moved away. The Davises may still be there for all I know.  I hope new generations of folks are having the same fun and fellowship that Barbara and I were lucky enough to experience there in the early 60s.

Memories of Raising Four Children

Circa 1956 – 1984 – and beyond

 

 

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. 

 

 

GINNY & DOT

 

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 l956 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. 

 

HOLLY & JOHN

 

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. 

 

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. 

 

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.

 

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. 

 

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. 

 

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.

 

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. 

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. 

 

The Minnesota Musical Show

Circa 1960

 

 

Classroom teachers have to be truly outstanding in either a positive or negative way to attract much public attention, but those teachers whose work is on prominent display may become well-known in a relatively short time. Athletic coaches probably get the most attention, followed by the music, art, shop, and speech teachers. I had taught junior high school music in Winona Minnesota for several years and had been the choir director at one of the city's larger churches. I had also sung in the Winona Civic Chorus, and people began to know who I was. Nevertheless, I was surprised to receive a phone call from a local lady "organizer" one day. 

 

Minnesota was celebrating its one hundredth year of statehood that year, and one of the local events was the presentation of a new musical show depicting the state's history. So this "organizer" lady called and went into rhapsodies about what a wonderful show this would be, and how local citizens were practically clamoring to work on the show, on stage or off. She emphasized over and over again the generosity of all these people who were volunteering their time to work on the show, all the donated help they were getting from various people and businesses. This entire pitch was to get me softened up to recruit and rehearse a chorus, plus work with the soloists for the show. 

 

I had seen a bit of the music score and a bit of the spoken dialogue and I was not particularly impressed. It was obvious that it was nowhere near the show that "Oklahoma" was. But the enthusiasm of this lady, and her continued repetitions that all of this was to be done by unpaid volunteer workers began to pay off for her. I knew she was unaware of the difficulties and time it would take to recruit, train, and rehearse a balanced and disciplined group of men and women so that they would not sound as if they were just a collection of passers-by on the street. Still, if all these others were willing to do all this work, I supposed that I should too, and was on the point of agreeing to at least try to get the job done. It was only much later that I began to wonder why me? There were seven music teachers in the public school system alone, and I was the newest guy on the block. How many of them had already refused the job? 

 

She went on to explain that the head of the Winona State Teachers College music department was going to lead the orchestra, and presumably conduct the musical parts of the show. "Of course," said she brightly, "we will pay the musicians." I was shocked. "Wait," said I, "am I not a musician?" But she must not have heard me, I guess, and went on happily chattering about all the wonderful unpaid work people were doing. 

 

Here I was, a choral director with several years of experience in church choir work, director of the choir of one of be biggest churches in town, at least four years of experience in public school music, and with a newly awarded Master of Arts in music literature from the University of Minnesota. This woman did not consider me to be a musician. I felt insulted and refused to have anything further to do with the project, even though the current Miss Minnesota was to be the leading lady in the show.

History of a Tenor

 

 

There are certain mildly humorous jokes about choral singers. All altos are said to be disappointed sopranos, but they are sopranos who can read notes. And there is the conductor who always addresses the men in the choir as "men and tenors". Some people claim that tenors are as haughty and class-conscious as the sopranos, each of whom thinks she is the prima diva. Basses are considered to be the most solid and reliable, the least temperamental, and are the foundation of the choir. Altos believe themselves to be under-appreciated. The tenors, because they are few in number, move to the top of the pecking order.

 

In the "Church Choir" essay, earlier in this series, I told how I became a tenor, converting from comfortable bass, in part because I got paid as a tenor. After this "conversion" I sang tenor in the Winona Civic Chorus and landed a leading tenor role in two Gilbert and Sullivan operas presented there. It was nice to sing opposite the pretty girls, and I hardly gave a thought to the rest of the men in the opera chorus. Later still, in Green Bay, I sang with the Chorale there, and was selected for solo parts now and then in the major works performed there. So I learned that it is great to be a tenor; one is always in demand, and it is possible to build up an ego of noticeable size.

 

The composers of early Christian chant (plain-song, Gregorian chant) were aware that the average man's voice is a medium-range baritone. Not high enough to be a tenor, and not low enough to be a genuine bass. Since this early chant is sung by unison men's voices, there was no need to have the men strain for a high note, or growl for a low one; everyone could sing in a relaxed pleasant voice, with the sound greatly enhanced by the size and resonance of the building. My guess is that from this pool of baritones there are many men who could, by using just a bit more energy, sing in the choral tenor range. Operatic tenor is a different thing. The easy way to go, would be to relax and sing bass, at least on the medium notes, and let the really low notes fade out. Choral tenors do not usually have to sing any note higher than G above middle C. These baritones should be reminded that there are advantages to being a tenor. In opera, at least, the tenor nearly always gets the girl.

 

In my choral music teaching in the public schools I never had much trouble finding tenors; among these young boys true basses are scarce. I never taught in a small public school, so there were plenty of young guys to work with. But ultimately, I got into directing community choirs myself; and of course I had been directing church choirs since I was a senior in college, and that meant a relentless search for tenors. Community choirs are not often found as a completely formed and organized group. Chances are that there will be a number of sopranos and altos on hand, who truly enjoy singing major works that are not usually done by church choirs. With luck, the director/organizer of the choir will be able to snare some of the husbands of these ladies, some of whom will be very good. But chances are also, that they will be the usual baritone not-quite-bass, and hardly anyone will be willing to admit to being a tenor. This may be because they think, "I might be the only one." So every possible means, including money if you have it, may have to be employed to balance the choir. Of course you ask the ones who are already in the fold for help. A brother-in-law, a cousin, a friend, a friend of a friend, all of these personal connections worked better for me than newspaper or radio advertisements. If the prospective tenor can actually read notes and has a decent ear, what bliss! 

 

A maneuver that I have used more than once is to sing the Handel "Messiah" at Christmas time, starting rehearsals early enough so that there is time to sneak in a short rehearsal of the major work planned for the spring. Nearly everyone wants to sing "Messiah", even tenors, and so you get hold of a few in the fall. If your spring piece is an absolute winner and you hook the choir on it, including the tenors, you are on your way. The tenors themselves might exert themselves to find others of similar voice range. 

On one occasion, working with the Stanwood-Camano Community Choir, we were rehearsing with a group of perhaps thirty-five or forty people, sopranos, altos and basses. Not one tenor. I believe the piece we were working on was the D major Vivaldi "Gloria". The tenor part is extremely important, especially in the "Et in terra pax" movement, and it was becoming more and more painful to rehearse without tenors. We worked for a while, until I announced to the group that we would work for ten more minutes, and if a tenor did not walk in the door by that time, I would cancel the performance.

 

Unbelievably, in the next few seconds, a tenor walked in. This boost to the morale of all led to a few more tenors being found (or drafted) and the performance was saved. This sort of happening can result in tenors getting an "attitude". 

 

All this fussing and worrying about finding tenors for amateur choirs irked me. I could not imagine why more baritones such as I had been all through college, did not convert to tenor, thus becoming the darlings of all such choirs. I used to think that one day I would walk into a community choir rehearsal, unannounced and reveal that I was a tenor who could read notes and had a decent ear. I would be gracious and modest, asking the choristers not to genuflect or kiss the hem of my garments. In point of fact, it did not happen that way. 

 

One day I had been whining to Margaret about a lost opportunity back in 1953 when I had spent a year in Minneapolis as a grad student. I had looked forward to singing in the Westminster Presbyterian Church choir, one of the best in town. But my newly-acquired father-in-law pressured me into taking on a church choir of my own, one that would pay me. Westminster would not have paid me, of course, but the experience of singing with this superior group would have been of considerable value to me. Any small church choir that would hire me, a mere grad student and temporarily in town at that, would have the usual tenor problems. I wound up at a small Lutheran church with, yes, the usual tenor shortage. Margaret listened to my whining sympathetically, and suggested that I try out for the Seattle Chorale, which was soon to become an arm of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. She had seen a notice of auditions in the newspaper.

 

This struck me as a wonderful notion, and I went to the auditions thinking it would be easy. I joined a number of people waiting outside the studio of Dr. Scandrett, the director, and when my turn came I was surprised that Scandrett remembered me from years ago when I had been a grad student at the University of Washington. This gave me more confidence. But the audition went on, and it was a tough one. There was simple sight-reading, there were tests of identifying and singing various odd intervals, but the hardest was to repeat, vocally, a strange, meandering, a-tonal tune that Scandrett played on the piano. That was scary. But I passed the audition, and was relieved when Scandrett said I was "in".

 

Walking into the first rehearsal, I was beginning to get the feeling that I would not be anywhere near the hero I had anticipated being. The first shock was in sheer numbers. There were some 170 singers there, and approximately a quarter of them were tenors. Mein Gott! That would be nearly 40 tenors and probably all of them had the same inflated feeling of self-importance that I had. But they all turned out to be nice guys and I quickly became friends with many of them. Presumably all of them had passed the same audition I did, so that meant they were rather good sight-readers and had good ears. Many had great voices to go along with that.

 

Then followed eight glorious years rehearsing and performing with the Chorale at least twice a year singing a major work with the Seattle Symphony. Some of the highlights of those performances, at least for me, were singing Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloe" suite, Brahms' "A German Requiem", Ernest Bloch's "Sacred Service", Howard Hanson's "Lament for Beowulf", Penderecki's "Agnus Dei" and making a Christmas CD of fine but unfamiliar music. The Chorale was expected to be able to sing in English, French, German, Latin, and Italian. We had special help singing a short piece in Chinese, and much more help singing a long work in Russian. 

 

So, come on, all you passive baritones, choose tenor! It's an exciting life!