Slides 20, 44, 45 and 64

The Top Photo: Mickey Mouse and me

The Date: Early July, 1965

The Photographer: My cousin Peter

I went with my Californian cousins to Disneyland. I may have been the first in my town to go there—maybe the first in all of Northern Pennsylvania. People from our parts didn’t travel much. A trip to Disneyland was a big deal in 1965. I suppose it still is but back then Disneyworld was six years from opening and Disneyland, Walt’s original dream, was still one of a kind. Walt himself kept a little apartment on the second floor of the fire station, just inside the main gate, and it was not unusual to see him strolling down Main Street greeting his guests. Like most American kids, I watched Walt Disney Presents every Sunday night so I was familiar with many scenes around the park. What I’d not seen I imagined well.

I was twelve years old, only days from turning thirteen as evidenced by the slides in the carousel. In one I stand in my madress hat with Mickey Mouse, shaking his white glove, feeling a little silly knowing I might be too old for my level of excitement. In another, two mermaids lay sunning on the rocks of a serene lagoon, apparently unaware that I am photographing their alluring, scaly forms from The Sky Ride gondola floating high above. I remember viewing the processed slide for the first time and being disappointed that the mermaids appear so far away. I recalled capturing them in my viewfinder. I remembered focusing the lens so carefully. Believe me, I had 'em! They were right there! I rode The Sky Ride a lot that day. The ticket taker knew my name.

On one of my flights I was stunned to find the mermaids gone. I peered deep into the coral green. A fleet of grey submarines followed a rail around the lagoon. There! Right beside a sub, I saw one swimming porpoise like only more attractive than any porpoise I’d envisioned. Even from so high I could see she was beautiful. I had to get on that sub for a closer look. My cousin Peter rode the gondola in the seat across from me. He was a year younger. He stretched his chubby frame to look over the hand rail dangling spit from his lips. It was a game he’d nearly perfected. The idea was to let the spit stretch toward the ground a few inches—maybe as many as four or five—and then suck it back in before it fell on the tourists below. Unsuccessful in his last attempt he jerked his head back in the gondola and slunk down as far as the safety bar would allow.

“Oh Sheesh,” he said, howling in laughter, “I think I got that lady bad.”

“Hey, you wanna try that submarine ride?” I said casually.

“Naw. Look at the line. It’s clear over to the Matterhorn. Let’s do this some more.”

So we took another ride across. This time from a distance I could see the creatures were back, tail fins flapping playfully, bodies glistening in the late afternoon sun. When we were directly above them, the gondola stopped for about a minute swinging slowly back and forth. I did not know for certain that it was an answer to prayer. It may have been a coincidence. Either way, I took the opportunity to snap a picture. I looked at my cousin. He was about year away from sharing my interest.

“I think I’ll try that sub,” I suggested again. “I always wanted to ride one. You comin’ or not?"

We stood for a little over an hour and as we neared the front of the line I peered toward the outcropping of rock where the mermaids lived. They were gone. This either meant they’d punched their time cards and blended into the mostly human park populace or perhaps they were back in the water. At the front of the line, we squeezed through the turn style and descended the stairs into one of the eight subs circling the lagoon. Ours was called Nautilus. I grabbed the first tiny seat, flipped it down and peered out my porthole into a coral reef possessing beauty only Disney and God could create. Slowly the sub began to move. We heard loud sonar pings and the voice of our captain. ”Let me be the first to welcome you to the port of Rainbow Ridge, the gateway to the wonderland of the sea. Please keep your hands and arms inside the submarine. The fish get mighty hungry!”

My cousin looking through his own window said, “Oh cool, look at that big fish. It looks almost real.”

I hardly heard their words. I shoved my nose against the tiny window and tried to look right or left, my breath condensing on the cold glass. Crabs, spiny lobster, a large grouper, a giant squid and then more sonar pings.

“Now ahead of us, folks, is a seaweed forest. The submarine’s pressurized atmosphere sometimes get to you, and makes tangles of seaweed take on strange shapes like fish and maybe even mermaids.” I shoved my face against the glass. No mermaids.

The captain droned on, “Now we’re going deep into the ocean to view a dazzling maritime graveyard.” A mournful sound filled the submarine echoing my fading hopes. “There my friends is the saddest sound of the ocean,” the captain said. “That is the song of the hump-backed whale.”

He talked the entire time but peering deeply into the ocean depths, beneath polar caps and past Neptune’s sputtering paint pots, I heard little. After seven or eight minutes he said, “Well I can see we’re once again approaching Rainbow Ridge and we’ll now begin our ascent. You may need to pop your ears.” I’d seen the subs from the sky so I knew we’d not descended but now my heart sunk deeply. This was our last day. My cousin would never agree to wait in line again and we couldn’t stay on for another ride. We’d tried that twice at Pirates of the Caribbean and been told by a human pirate that we ought not try it again if we hoped to live another day. He let out a laugh and a loud arghhh. Then leaning near our faces with a distinctly southern Californian accent he whispered menacingly, “You - really - do - not - want - to - mess - with - me. You understand don’t you?” That seemed a bit harsh for one of Walt’s employees but yes… we understood.

I was about to pull away from my porthole when I saw a splash of bubbles and something swimming toward me. I cupped my hands goggle like around my eyes and tight against the glass. Yes! It was a mermaid! She swam to my window, reoriented her body vertically, smiled and blew me a kiss. Graceful bubbles escaped her lovely lips as I felt my face flush. She was an exquisite specimen. Her scales, glimmering rainbow colors in the refracted coral light, modestly covered her partially human form. She ascended slowly toward the surface and I took her in fully—thick flowing hair, tanned human skin, dark eyes, two large frustratingly effective clamshells and luminescent scales flashing tiny dots of light on the palms of my hands. She was only inches beyond my face. Then with one flip of her impossibly long fin she was gone.

My camera hung around my neck but I never thought to take a picture. Instead I experienced the moment. The sub stopped and the captain thanked us. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your trip into the wonderland of the sea. Please lift your seat as a courtesy to our next guests.”

My cousin said, “Cool.” I looked at him and realized he not seen her. The portholes were too small, the glass too thick and of course there was that oddity of refracted light. Only I’d seen her smile, felt her kiss and gazed upon her lithe sparkling form. She was mine alone.

Twenty years later and three thousand miles away, I sat around a New England meal with my wife Judy and our closest friends. I shared my siren tale. Laughing, my buddy said, “What a great picture of that peculiar passage from boyhood to being a man. And… it sure rings true. Our son turned thirteen last week. I opened his dresser drawer the other day. On one side were his Legos and on the other side his shaving cream and razor.”

Ah yes. I suspect it was something like that for us all. For me it was Mickey on one slide and mermaids on the other.

Slides 95, 96, 97, 98 and 6

The Slide: Judy and me in Sweden

The Date: June of '75

The Photographer: My father

My paternal grandfather grew up in the province of Smaland in southern Sweden. It is to this day a beautiful land of misty white birch, fields of buttercups and stonewalls everywhere. The walls are not decorative like those in New England. The walls in Smaland are big, five feet tall, six feet across the top, stretching field after field and longer every year.

Each spring the fields yield an abundance of new boulders. The farmers gather this crop they did not sow and pile it higher along the walls preparing for a more fruitful harvest. This hard land was my grandfather's home.

Barely more than a boy, he embraced his mom and dad for the last time and left those rocky fields of tiny potatoes, dreaming of deeper, darker, American soil. The fields he envisioned were probably in Minnesota, where I now live, but he had no idea how vast his new country was. By the time he reached western Pennsylvania, years had passed. He now knew the love of a wife who spoke his language. He knew the joy and worrisome responsibility of young children. He knew the hopeless monotony of American factories and the sweat of the oil fields. And he knew the ache in an immigrant's heart—an ache for which there was no remedy.

One day he saw something that filled him with joy. A "For Sale" sign stood in a field by a farm nestled on a hillside. The farmhouse didn't look like much and was far too small for his growing family, but it was every bit as good as what he'd known in Sweden, maybe better. There was plenty of lumber to build a barn. The few fields were dark soil, and most wonderfully, there were boulders everywhere. He was finally "home" in America.

My father grew up on that poor farm, sharing the tiny house with his mom, his dad and five siblings. It was a tough life but joy nestled on that rocky hillside. My father's mother, my grandmother, had not met her husband's family in Sweden but she wrote to his sisters faithfully, for sixty years, nearly every week.

In 1966, my grandfather died. My father felt terribly sad that Grandpa never made it back to Sweden. "I should have taken him for a visit," he said. "I could have made it happen." So for his mom, he did make it happen. In June of '75, my father, mother and younger sister Ingrid drove to the farm, picked up my grandmother and began a long journey back to the homeland. There she would meet her beloved sisters in law, Anna and Ruth, to whom she had written most of her life.

During the same weeks, Judy and I traveled back from Africa where we spent our first year of marriage. The chance to meet my family in Sweden was serendipitous. We had planned to spend another year in Zaire but due to Judy's continual struggle with tropical disease, we decided to come home early. She'd had a tough time. From the moment we stepped off the plane, she suffered from the heat and humidity, which by comparison made most American cities—Miami for example—seem brisk and invigorating. It's safe to say her first year of marriage was less romantic than she'd anticipated.

Within three weeks of our arrival I was flat on my back with malaria. It's a scary disease. As the missionaries say, "The first week you hurt so bad you're afraid you might die. But by the second week, you feel so much worse you're afraid you might not." Judy was just nineteen and spent the first month of marriage playing nurse to a delirious husband, crawling on all fours to and from the bathroom and eating through a straw. To make things worse, most of our new friends were missionaries who had long ago made the tough cultural adjustments and didn't seem to remember our novice fears. I believe missionaries are the most forgetful people I've ever known. Let me explain.

The first week we were there, the deacons at our church organized seven consecutive suppers in missionary homes. Each evening the stories began over salads and fresh garden vegetables and continued through chicken mwamba (a delicious combination of chicken, palm oil and peanut butter gravy over white rice). The dish is surprisingly tasty, though not recommended for seven consecutive evenings. At some point during the meal, our host would say, "So, are you starting to learn your way around?"

"Well, no," I'd reply. "Actually, we're still waiting for our drivers' licenses. Until they come, we're stuck at home."

"Well, praise God for that!" our hostess would say. Then with a little laugh, "Believe me, the longer you're stuck at home, the safer you are. Most of the drivers out there are little kids! Arthur, tell them what happened to Mary."

Each evening the names changed, but the stories remained much the same. Mary was back-ended by a ten-year-old cabby whose uncle, a government official, demanded a payoff or Mary's family would be kicked out of the country.

A guy named Jim stopped his car with the front bumper two inches over the crosswalk and was thrown in jail. Of course the phones didn't work, so no one in the church knew where he was. It took three days to find him. In Africa, prisoners are fed by their families, but Jim was single, so Jim "fasted".

The name Verner Pauls remained consistent through all seven evenings. Poor Verner's car was slammed from the side and shoved into a crowd of people. Verner wasn't hurt, but apparently someone in the crowd was. When he attempted to help them, a mob over turned his Fiat, set it on fire, and beat Verner within a breath of his life. He flew back to Goshen, Indiana, and no one expected him to return very soon. Usually, following a fairly detailed description of Verner's battered body, someone sensitively noticed Judy's tension. Trying to steer the conversation in a more pleasant direction they'd ask, "Seen any big snakes yet?"

This would lead us into Green Mamba territory.

"Oh, yeah, deadliest snake in the world," our host would warn. "Why, they can kill a horse in three minutes!" Since I'd seen no horses, I was surprised everybody seemed so fixated on that three-minute equestrian statistic. " 'Course, if it bit you, you'd be lucky to last thirty seconds. Did you hear 'bout that Bower girl who got bit last Christmas?"

Well… yes. We had heard but that didn't matter. They'd tell us anyway about little Lori, who would have been dead if she hadn't been bit in the fatty part of her bum and if her dad hadn't had serum right in the fridge and if the houseboy hadn't chopped the Mamba's long green head off in mid-flight just before it bit her again. The conversation usually ended with our hostess saying, "More dessert anyone?"

I don't know why this behavior surprised me. I suppose it did because one would expect loving Christian people to be more sensitive. On the other hand these were not just loving Christian people. These were missionaries and they are a different breed. I remember their type coming to our church when I was a kid. I endured many long slide shows. Most of the pictures were of church buildings, hospitals, maybe a baptismal service in some muddy river—fairly calm stuff. But always mixed in the middle was a shot of the smiling missionary standing with a painted tribal chief, mud red, holding a long spear, sporting a belt of monkey skulls and always… always someone's femur bone stuck through his nose.

"This is my dear friend Chief Bonsongungu," they'd say. "He comes Wednesdays for tea."

In truth, I believe missionaries are remarkable people. And, who knows, we might have joined their ranks had Judy not contracted malaria, typhoid fever, shigellosis, amoebic dysentery and a lovely orphaned family of tapeworms—all in the first six months. On our way home, stopping in Sweden to meet our family, Judy was down twenty ill affordable pounds and I didn't look too beefy myself.

We made our way to my parent's hotel having not seen them in a year. Needless to say they were shocked by our appearance. Their daughter in law was still beautiful but rail thin and their son looked like an indigent. I'd not touched my hair or beard since our wedding day.

For the next week we traveled with the family and my grandmother nearly wore us out. She was the first one up in the morning—ready to go. Stockholm, Goteborg, Malmo and then over to Copenhagen for a day or two at Tivoli Gardens and an evening with the Danish Circus—my grandmother's first circus. She loved it all. Finally the big day arrived, the reason for her journey, the day she would meet Ruth and Anna.

It was a sunny summer morning. We drove our van to the small village of Nybro and then headed out of town into the countryside. My grandmother translated aloud the directions she'd received from Anna while my mother compared each tiny farm to a black and white photo she held in her hand. "Okay, I think we may have found it," my mother said glancing back and forth between picture and landscape. "Bob," she said to my father, "turn here. This is it."

For a hundred yards, we followed a dirt drive—a high wall of boulders on the right, white birch and pine on the left and at the end a farmhouse the color of dandelions. As we approached, an old man rose from a porch swing yelling to those inside. We pulled up in front of the house. I slid the van door open. Two old women shuffled through the screen door. My grandmother saw them and uttered a soft sound. I helped her step from the van as the women made their way down from the porch. All three laughed aloud with outstretched arms before meeting in the middle of the dusty drive where they wrapped themselves together and wept.

Other distant cousins quietly appeared standing with us in a circle around the old women. No one spoke. It was a holy moment. Later formal introductions were made in a joyous blend of languages.

Over the next couple days more cousins arrived, many meals were prepared and eaten, hundreds of photo snapped and then sadly it was time to go. Of course there were more tears. For my grandmother, Anna and Ruth this was a final goodbye. "Okay ladies," my father said, "one more shot." They stood together—Anna, my little grandmother Gerda and Ruth. My father snapped their picture.

The reunion was the highlight of our trip but not the highlight of the eventual slide show. My father had taken most every picture. My mother made it clear that unless my father was in the shot, he would be taking it. Judy and I didn't help much because we used our own camera—a tiny Kodak 110 that we'd carried through Africa. I bought it because I loved its' compact size and because the salesman assured me that everything was going that way. "In the next ten years," he said, "the 110 will become the camera of choice. " Unfortunately, that meant I had no choice about buying the tiny 110 projector since the slides were half the size of my father's more common, supposedly soon to be obsolete 35mm.

Several weeks later, back in the States, all our relatives gathered at my parent's for an evening of slides. They were excited to hear all about Grandma's trip and vicariously meet their Swedish family. Judy and I were there too. Earlier in the day I had organized the slides, discarding the really bad ones and placing the others chronologically in the carousels. My father had returned to work that week so he appreciated my help never questioning my motive. But I had one. Though he did know, he had not taken all the slides. I took one.

We were in a Swedish village. My mother needed something in the drugstore so while my father ran into to get it, my mother stayed in the van with my grandmother. My sister and Judy and I got out to stretch our legs and it was then we saw the advertisement. It was on a large column right in the center of the street. It was unlike any ad I'd seen in modern 1970s America. For that matter, it was unlike any ad I'd seen anywhere. Ingrid commented first, "Sheesh! You won't see that back home."

"No kidding," Judy said. And then laughing, "In fact Bob, I don't think I want you even looking at it."

But I did look at it and I thought to myself, "This advertisement is quite beautiful. It is quintessentially Swedish and I think Dad needs to share it with the family back home."

"Mom," I said through her open window, "give me the camera." I removed the cover, set the shutter speed as quickly as I could and snapped the picture. My father exited the store. We climbed in the van and drove away.

Weeks later, our living room was filled with extended family and a few close church friends. About 9:30, we all agreed it was dark enough and I began the show. My grandmother commented throughout, particularly delighting in the shots of Tivoli and the Danish Circus. "I couldn't believe it," she said, "These crazy elephants sat on stools and this young lady drove her motorcycle on a tight wire right over my head. It was so loud. Oy yoy yoy!" Then she added,

"The lady wasn't wearing very much either." Everyone laughed.

Toward the end of the evening came the slides of the reunion, the moment the three "sisters" met and the litany of relatives—who was who and how we were all related. Finally the three old women appeared on the screen posing at their final goodbye.

The room fell quiet.

The projector fan hummed.

No one spoke.

"You know Dad, " I said, "these are beautiful slides."

"Well… thanks," he said softly.

I turned to my uncle. "Don't you agree Carl?"

"I sure do Bobby," he said, "I think they're really something. Makes me so sad I couldn't be there too. They're beautiful. Really great."

I turned back to my father. "I mean it Dad. You really did capture the experience through these images. We can see your heart.

More silent agreement…

Oh look," I said, pretending to fuss with the projector. "I think there's one more." I pushed "forward" on the remote and an image appeared. It was taken in the center of a tiny Swedish village. There was a moment of quiet and then laughter—loud and long laughter. When my father was able to breathe he offered his stammering disclaimer but no one accepted it.

My uncle Glenn, beautifully dead pan said, "I'm disgusted. Come on Martha we're going home."

More laughter.

I had anticipated this moment for over three weeks. It was worth the wait.

Slides 16 and 71

Slide 71: Me on the couch

The Date: December 1971

The Photographer: Unknown

The photo shows me at age twenty, home from college for the Christmas holiday. It could be Easter but camouflaged in the lower right hand corner is one red Poinsettia. It's Christmas time.

I'm slouching comfortably in the corner of our old sofa having found my sweet spot. The soft fabric is printed with early Americana but the design screams 1970s, as does the orange wall behind. The wall wasn't always orange. The previous summer it was a lovely understated mossy green that my family enjoyed for years… so I painted it orange.

For several winters we had ice problems on our roof and the resultant leaking caused cracks in the living room ceiling. I had a couple free weeks between the end of my freshman year and my summer job so my father hired me to Spackle and repaint the ceiling. "And while you're at it," he said, "you might as well go ahead and repaint the walls."

"Yeah, I could do that," I said, "but you know Dad you might want to change it up a bit—maybe paint one of the walls in a complementary color."

"What exactly does that mean?" he asked.

I had just decided to major in art and was anxious to answer the question. "Complementary colors are colors that complement one another," I explained. "They are two parts that create a whole. One color makes the other appear more vibrant. Red with green. Blue with orange. Purple with yellow. With this particular green I say we go with a bright yet soothing reddish orange. What do you say?"

"Well," he said tentatively, "I don't know. I wouldn't want a big change. I've always liked how calm and peaceful this room feels."

"Calm and peaceful are good," I said, "but I've learned some things in my art classes that could really improve the design of this room. I think we could make it pop a bit." My father didn't respond which seemed oddly condescending and I felt an unfamiliar irritation rising in my chest—maybe because this was the first time that I thought I knew something he didn't. I shrugged defensively. "Hey, it's your room Dad. You want green, I'll paint it green. No big deal to me. I don't live here anymore."

He seemed uncertain. "I don't want to be closed to something more attractive," he said. "It's just… I wouldn't want to… I'm just a little concerned that… Explain to me again what you were envisioning."

"Well Dad," I said, "I know you love the autumn and that's all about complementary colors. If the leaves were all red or all orange it would be beautiful but when you mix in that touch of green pine and that blue sky it really pops. Doesn’t it? That's the power of complementary colors."

My father stared at his wall. He seemed to not be getting it. "And you're thinking that would work in our living room?" he asked.

"Yes I am," I said passionately. "Dad, if my college courses have taught me anything it's that complementary colors work. One color makes the other even more beautiful. That's why we say they complement each other."

"I don't know," he said. "I think we'll stay with the green."

"And I agree," I shot back. "I think you should stay with the green… on one wall. But why not complement it with another wall of subtle orange?"

"Because I don't know if I've ever seen a subtle orange," he said. "It seems to me that orange is sort of an unsubtle color."

I threw my arms upward gesturing in wild frustration. "Hey that's fine Dad! We should probably forget about it then. Jeesh!" My father, surprised by my reaction, stared at me saying nothing so I continued gaining speed and volume. "Your lack of confidence is irritating because I just studied this stuff for an entire ten week trimester and as you know I got an A plus for the first time in my life which is why Stu Carlson my Art professor told me I'm good at this so I think I know how complementary colors are suppose to work but if you want to stay with peaceful calm soothing subtle mossy green boredom I'm fine with that… really."

He was smiling—maybe on the edge of laughter though I couldn't be sure. "You okay?" he asked.

"Of course I'm okay," I said way too loudly.

He paused staring at the wall, then at me, then back at the wall.

I waited.

"Okay," he said. "You go buy the paint tomorrow and I'll see you after work."

The next morning I stood in the hardware store seconds after the clerk unlocked the front door. I was determined to prove to my father that I could deliver on my promise. I would create a calm yet vibrant living space. This was important to me because I was at the age when I needed to choose a potential career.

A year earlier, when I went off to college, I knew I wanted to be some kind of performer. I was writing music, playing guitar and singing songs. I was telling stories. I was trying to make people laugh whenever I had the chance and often when I didn't. None of it applied to my college curriculum. I could have chosen to study music but I'd never learned to read notes and it was a tough major. Coming off a less than exemplary high school career I was afraid to attempt that tract.

The next and most logical choice was theater. My freshman year, I auditioned and was chosen for a play. I enjoyed it and thought I did well. Unfortunately the director did not share my feelings and worse yet never thought to tell me his. So one day I stood excitedly outside his opened office door and rapped a knuckle on the glass. He glanced up wincing and waved me in. He sat behind his desk piled high with scripts and blue book essays. He slouched nearly horizontally in his chair with one hand flayed across his brow massaging his temples— headache. With his other hand, he pointed toward a stool and mumbled, "Mr. Stromberg what can I do for you?"

"My advisor told me I should stop by and tell you that I'd like to major in theater," I said.

"Oh she did huh? And why would she advice that?"

"Well, I told her I’d like to become some type of performer and we thought the theater program might be a good place to start." He leaned further back and turned slightly toward the wall. Both hands massaged his eyes now. He had a bad headache.

Then he said slowly, "You don't have it Bob."

"I beg your pardon."

"You don't… have… it."

I was confused. "I don't have what?"

"You don't have the temperament to make it in the arts. This is no place for fun and games. Honestly, I think you should go into nursing. Hospitals need happy guys like you but we don't need you here. And furthermore…”

I don't remember everything he said though he didn’t say much. He had a really bad headache. It was clear he didn’t know me well and the little he knew he didn’t like. I left his office confused, red faced—so embarrassed. I stood in the hallway for a long time staring at an audition board knowing my name was not welcome there. He could not technically keep me out of the program but he directed every play. My chances of getting on stage were not good.

Spring term I enrolled in Art 101 and met Professor Stu Carlson. He saw something in me. He appreciated my work and that changed my life. I knew someday I'd find a way on to a stage but until then I was an art major.

A few weeks later I stood at the counter in the hardware store back in my hometown. "What can I do for you?" the clerk asked.

"I need a gallon of orange paint," I said.

He reached beneath the counter retrieving a large book of tiny color samples. "What color orange are you lookin' for?" he said. "Do you have a name or a number?

I was unprepared for the question. Staring at two pages of orange squares, one barely discernable from the next I said, "I need an orange that will complement a wall and go with a couch."

"We can mix pretty much any shade you need," he said. "Maybe you could bring in something and we could match the color for you."

And that's what I did. I ran home and got a couch cushion. I figured that way I'd tie the couch color into the orange wall, which would then complement the green wall and carpet creating a well integrated, calm yet vibrant design.

I finished painting in the late afternoon and had just enough time to pick up the drop cloths, wash my hands and return the furniture before my parents pulled in the driveway. I was excited. I thought the room looked great though optically the color created a slight tickling sensation. I grabbed a magazine and sat casually on the couch. I heard my folks pull into the basement garage... then footsteps and conversation up the stairs. The door opened. They looked toward me and their jaws dropped. For a moment, speechless, they did not move. Then my mother said, "My glory!!! That's really… orange!!!" And then, "I hope it's not too bright. Do you think it might be a little bright? Maybe?"

"No, no, I don't think so," I said quickly, "These are complementary colors that's why they seem to kind of….."

My father completed my sentence. "They vibrate don't they? Is that an optical illusion or is the room bouncing around a bit? And Lucielle," he said to my mother, "Look at you. You almost look like you're tipping."

"I am tipping," she said sitting awkwardly on the ottoman. "I feel little queasy too. Do you guys feel that?"

"No," my father said, "doesn't really bother my stomach but I am a little short of breath."

I tried to remain calm, which was difficult with the room pulsing so. "Well," I said, "autumn can take your breath away too. Let's give it a few hours. It may dry a little calmer."

And it did…but not by much. It was a terrible color choice that really only looked somewhat natural from mid October through Halloween. The rest of the year, the orange was far too dominant to integrate with seasonal décor like red Poinsettias. Christmas time was an interior designer's nightmare.

I look now at the photo of myself sitting against the orange wall. I remember my clothes—the favorite brown buckle shoes that I bought for a high school dance and still wore two and a half years later. I loved those shoes. I loved them so much that I bought them a half size too big mistakenly thinking my feet were still growing. I wore two pairs of socks. I remember my favorite light grey denims with the dark pinstripe that I got at the Jeans Boutique on Lawrence Avenue in Chicago. I remember my favorite sweater, my hairstyle and my beard that was finally coming in fully. This was a good time in my life.

And there I sat at Christmas time, my skin reflecting that awful orange. The wall was a failure. But, and here's the point, I was not. I was not a failure or at least never felt like one because for a decade my parents delighted in that awful wall. I'm not suggesting they liked it but they delighted in it decorating it with my equally amateurish paintings. They delighted in the wall simply because it was mine.

Slide 16 on the carousel shows my folks around 1967. They're standing together by the kitchen sink in my grandparent's home. My mom washes. My father dries. At that time my grandparents lived next door and we shared all our evening meals—one day at our house, the next at theirs.

In the photo they are smiling.

This is what I saw most everyday of my life. Oh, I remember many other expressions but if I had to choose one that exemplified who they were and how they looked upon their children, this is the one. We were loved unconditionally which meant we could fail without being a failure.

I remember a conversation. My wife Judy and I had just returned from Africa. We spent our first year of marriage there on the Christian mission field. It was during this time that we decided I had to give performing a try and we formulated a plan. Back home again we sat around the kitchen table with my folks.

"Okay you two," my mother said excitedly, "we are dying to know. What are your plans?"

I was a little nervous to answer. It's not as if we'd been able to calculate our risks but clearly the stakes were high. We had no money and owned little more than our clothes. But… my mother asked so I answered. I said, "I have decided to become a mime."

My mother said, "What's a mime?"

"Well," I said, "It's a kind of actor that usually doesn't talk but that probably won't work so well for me. Still I want to learn how to move like they do. I want to understand the power of gesture. I want to add that to my stories and songs and comedy just to see what happens."

My father looked serious. "Where do you go for something like that?" he said. "And how do you make a living?"

I knew these questions were coming and answered with my rehearsed response. "I found a little theater school in the state of Maine," I said. "We thought we'd move to New England—somewhere near the middle. There are lots of people there and I figure where there are lots of people there are lots of schools. I was thinking I could go to those schools and ask them if they need an assembly program. If they do, they can pay me some money and then we'll pay our bills."

Even as I spoke I felt my confidence waning. "Why?" I thought. "Why had I not chosen graduate school like my friends? I considered seminary. Why didn't I stay with that? Would any schools hire me? Could I find enough work to pay our bills? Could we ever buy a car let alone a house? And we want to start a family! Am I out of my mind? " It was a crazy idea like the bright orange wall right behind me in the other room.

I looked at my hands. I played with my cup. My finger traced a pattern on the tablecloth. No one spoke. I looked at Judy for help. She sat to my left her expression mirroring my own. We looked across the table at my parents.

They were smiling.

They were both smiling that smile.

"Oh you two," my mother said, "it's perfect."

As it turns out, it was. It was perfect, or nearly so, and it began an adventure continuing to this day—an adventure I might have feared, perhaps fled, had I not known the freedom to fail. What a gift that is.

I am not my parent’s only child so I will not speak for my sisters—though I doubt they disagree. They can tell the stories of their lives and are more than welcome to a carousel or ten of their own. As for me…

My parents smiled on my orange wall.

They smiled on me.

They are smiling still.

Those smiles have, in a big way, empowered and sweetened every step of the journey.

Slide 43

The Slide: My cousin and my great uncle and aunt. I’m in the background.

The Date: October 1964

The Photographer: Unknown

My relatives drove all the way from California to our little town in Pennsylvania. At the time, we were living in State College while my father finished his doctoral studies at Penn State but we drove back “home” on the weekend for a visit. I’d never before met my second cousin Tom and I was impressed. He was only eighteen but had chauffeured his grand parents, Ralph and Julia, across the entire country. The picture shows them standing in front of my grand parent’s home on a late October day. In the background I’m riding a bike. It has big tires, wide handlebars, and a broad seat with long springs. It might be mistaken for a classic vintage beach cruiser. By today’s standards (and at a distance) it almost looks cool. It’s not though.

A closer look reveals that only the front tire is a whitewall. I ran out of paint before I got to the back. The handlebars, spokes and sprocket are not chrome but silver painted. The bike is impossibly difficult to pedal and, most embarrassingly… it’s a girl’s. My mother and aunt rode it when they were kids and then it hung in my grandfather’s barn for twenty years. It is the very kind one would expect to see ridden by a witch in a tornado.

A few months before the slide was taken, I was staying with my grandparents for several weeks while my folks found a place for us to live in State College. It was during that time that I asked my grandfather if I could restore the bike. I wanted to create something different—unlike any other bike in town—and I might have succeeded had I money, skills or tools.

Bikes were important in my town. Nearly every school-aged kid had one. Between the months of May and October it was difficult to open your eyes without seeing a bike. They were parked in driveways, on front walks or porches, inside opened garage doors, lying in ditches, leaning against storefronts and strewn across front lawns. I knew most every bike in town or at least those belonging to kids near my age. On hot summer days there were perhaps a hundred in the racks by the community pool and not a chain or lock in sight. Flying into the parking lot, I’d swing my left leg over the back tire, stand on one pedal and glide up the sidewalk before slamming into the rack. Then I had only to scan the other bikes to know which of my friends were waiting for me in the deep end.

Like most kids my first real bike was a twenty inch. It was bright red—probably from Sears. The natural bicycle progression through childhood was as follows.

1. Ride a twenty inch between kindergarten and third grade. The seat and the handlebars were raised as the legs grew longer.

2. Begin riding a twenty-four inch around fourth grade. The seat was lowered back down on the cross bar to resume it’s slow ascent.

3. A few years later, if one’s genes were tallish, begin riding a twenty-six inch and enter puberty.

I skipped #2, which was preferable to skipping puberty. I kept my little twenty inch far longer than it fit my body. I managed to do so by adding an extra long stem for the seat and adjusting the handlebars straight up. I did it because bike styles were changing right about that time.

For several decades bike designers espoused a “more is more” philosophy. Every bike had fenders with big reflectors. Most had lights both front and rear. There were baskets for the front and wire saddlebags for the back. There were rack carriers with spring clips above each tire. There was a tank between the double cross bars serving no purpose other than looking pretty and adding weight to an already unwieldy design. I don’t know who did it first—don’t know who came up with the idea but about fourth grade we started stripping our bikes down to the essentials. Everything came off right down to the chain guards.

My parents were not thrilled with my modifications. My father said, “I think you’re gonna be unhappy without those fenders.”

“Nah,” I said, “It’ll be fine.”

He almost started to laugh but then held back. “Okay,” he said smiling and walked away.

A couple evenings later, during a Little League game, it started to rain hard—real hard. Our parents sprinted for their cars as we kids scrambled for our bikes and all headed for home. A deluge backed up the storm drains as mud and gravel washed onto the paved streets. My parents passed me on Arnold Ave and gave a greeting beep as they drove by. I would have waved had I been able to see. A shower of muddy water flew off my tires plastering a streak of brown from my butt to the base of my neck. A similar one shot into my face and up my nose. Ten minutes later I pulled my bike into our basement garage.

“Hey you,” my mother shouted down the stairs. “You take those clothes off and throw them by the washing machine. Do you hear?”

I did. I took off my uniform, climbed the stairs and walked naked, shivering through the living room to my bedroom. My father, delighting in the moment, smiled as I walked by but never said a word.

It didn’t matter. I loved that bike. It took me anywhere I needed to go in my little world and it took me there fast. My house was at the top of a steep curving road. It was my launch pad. If I didn’t slow down at the intersections—and I seldom did—I could shoot out my driveway and halfway through town before stepping on a pedal. I had a few close calls but unbelievably was never hurt. None of us were—almost seems like a miracle.

The summer following sixth grade, during those weeks I stayed with my grandparents, I finally outgrew the little bike and asked my grandfather about the old one hanging in the barn. It might seem like an odd request but there were some strange bikes coming on the scene. An older kid in town welded two bikes together, one on top of the other. The seat was six feet off the ground. It took him a month to figure out how to get on. Schwinn came out with The Stingray that same year. It was the coolest bike…ever. During the winter months we all looked at the pictures in the Sears and Roebuck catalogue and by spring a few Stingrays started to pop up around town. It had the distinctive banana seat and the high handlebars and it was the first bike I’d seen with multiple speeds.

I worked on the old bike for two weeks—mostly painting. I also took apart the sprocket and laid all the parts on a newspaper. Then I held my grandfather’s long stemmed oilcan and boink boinked some lubricant on the metal pieces. I put things back together but I think not very well. I didn’t really know what I was doing. Then one evening I rode my creation to the Tastee Freeze to show my friends. I was excited. They were unimpressed—thought it looked stupid. I acted like I agreed with them—like it was all just a joke—but I was disappointed. A couple months later, during my relatives visit, I took it out for a quick spin and realized that my friends were right. By that time I was okay with the truth though. By that time I had a new bike and it was beauty.

My father and I had talked it through. That road in front of our house was great for shooting down but very difficult to climb back up so I hoped to get a bike with three speeds. I wanted The Stingray. My dad had a better idea and he showed me the picture in a brochure. It was what we commonly called an English bike though a company called J.C. Higgins made this one in Austria. A twenty-six inch, it had fenders but it was sleek and clean, painted black with a little white trim and, best of all, it had three speeds. My parents bought it for me. It wasn’t my birthday or anything and I knew they had very little money but they bought it. When I sat on the seat for the first time, stretching my legs to reach the pedals, holding those gummy rubber handgrips, I knew it was perfect.

Like the little red twenty inch, the J.C. Higgins became part of me. For five months out of the year I was on it nearly everyday. Other big “three speeds” began to appear and some may have been better than mine but, for what it’s worth, mine was the only J.C. Higgins in town. I loved that bike.

I remember one August day—a week before tenth grade—my memory seared with detail. It was very hot and my bloodshot eyes stung badly from swimming all afternoon with my friends. Approaching dinnertime, someone’s smoky barbecue mixing with sun and chlorine called me home. I stepped into my flip-flops, threw my wet towel around my neck and headed toward the bike racks. Half a dozen transistor radios, tuned to the same station, blared The Grass Roots through tinny speakers.

Sha- la- la- la- la- la

Live for today

And don’t worry ‘bout tomorrow

Hey eeee ey eeee ey

By that time most of the kids had already pedaled home and the rack was nearly empty. Even from a distance I could see that my bike was gone. I was confused. There was no chance it was stolen. That kind of thing never happened in my town—couldn’t happen. You couldn’t steal my bike and ever hope to ride it. Everyone knew it belonged to me. I heard a friend shouting my name and turned to see him running toward me.

“Strom,” he shouted. “Your bike’s out behind the bleachers by the football field. It’s all smashed up. Somebody threw it from the top.”

“They what?”

“I’m just tellin’ you what I heard,” he said. “Someone threw your bike off the top of the bleachers.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, I mean who told you? “

“Hey, I’d rather not say. I don’t want to get in the middle of…”

I was in his face. “What do you mean you’d rather not say? Do you know who did this?”

He paused. His shoulders slumped. He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I think I know.”

As we walked together past the pool, around the gymnasium building and up toward the football field, he told me what he’d heard. By the time we found my bike, we were pretty sure who had destroyed it. Both wheels were pretzeled, fenders smashed, seat ripped, and hand brakes hung from their cables. The bike was ruined.

My buddy helped me carry it back to the rack. We walked past the pool’s chain linked fence where people stood gaping and some spoke soft condolences. My face burned with anger, hurt and deep embarrassment. Everyone stared and I didn’t know what to do. It made no sense. I didn’t have an enemy in the world. “Why?” I wondered. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”

We lay the crippled bike by the rack and I considered what I should do next. “I guess I’ll just leave it here for now and walk home.” I said.

My buddy climbed on his bike. “Yeah…sorry.” He pedaled off.

I stood staring at the bent frame. The J.C. Higgins emblem had sheered a rivet and hung upside down. I heard stifled laughter. Turning to see the backs of two older boys passing by I spoke loudly, “I can’t believe you did this.” The words were not aggressive but filled with hurt and confusion.

The bigger of the two turned and shot back. “Did what?”

“Did this!” I said pointing at my bike—anger rising in my voice. “I can’t believe you threw my bike off the bleachers.”

His smaller friend spoke to him. “Come on,” he said under his breath. “Let’s go.”

“Look me in the eye,” I said. “Tell me you didn’t do this.”

The big kid took one step toward me looking me in the eye—but only for a moment. Then quickly turning away and walking off he said, “We didn’t do it.”

At home I told my parents. They were angry and asked me who it was. I said I didn’t know which was mostly true. After all, I couldn’t know for sure. Only the vandals saw my bike flying through the air. I could have told my parents the whole truth but then phone calls would be made and other parents would get involved and I knew I couldn’t prove anything.

It took a long time to get parts to fix my bike but eventually I had it running almost like new. I saw those older guys every day at school. Surprisingly perhaps, I became a close teammate with the big kid—both football and basketball. I actually grew to like him and I admired him as an athlete. He moved away before my junior year. We never spoke about the bike.

Twenty years later I sat at a restaurant table in Orlando, Florida, preparing to entertain a few thousand pastors at their national convention. I heard someone speak my name. I looked from my notes and into the smiling face of my old teammate. Laughing in surprise I stood reaching out my hand but he ignored it and wrapped me in a bear hug.

‘Please join me, “ I said, gesturing toward a seat. “I can’t believe this. What are you doing at a pastor’s conference?” We laughed again.

Then he said, “I threw your bike off the bleachers. It was me.”

I was stunned—not because he’d done it but because the confession came so suddenly after so many years. We sat in silence and he did not look away. “I don’t know why we did it,” he said. “We were just lookin’ for trouble I guess—just lookin’ for something to do. It’s bothered me ever since.” His gaze did not leave mine. Then he said very slowly, “Please, will you forgive me?”

“Of course,” I said. “I think I probably forgave you long ago but yes… I forgive you.” Then he told me the miraculous story about how Life had thrown him off the bleachers but Love picked him up and with new parts put him back together. With that our real friendship began.

I think there is something so right about natural life progressions—you learn to crawl, then walk and eventually—Woah!—you are running! You mess up, then ask for forgiveness, then are restored and set free from regret. You learn to ride a twenty-inch, then a twenty-four and eventually you stretch your body out on a big twenty-six and it feels so good. At that moment, who can say where those two wheels will take you?

Slides 7 and 48

The Top Slide: My sister Sally and me at a wedding.

The Date: August 22, 1959

The Photographer: My father

I am seven years old and I am sharp! “Sharp” is a word I’ve just learned in this context and never before used to describe myself. A couple hours ago, before the wedding, my mother pinned a flower on my jacket. Then licking her fingers and flattening down my eyebrows she said, “Young man you are dapper dandy.” I understand why she said it. After all, she’d never seen me in a tuxedo before—what my new uncle Ted calls a “Penguin Suit”. She was surprised and quite impressed with my appearance so she called me dapper dandy. It means that I am very handsome and indeed I am—particularly today as I am wearing white dress shoes… Unscuffed!

Though I appreciate my mother’s comment, my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that she also made a terrible fuss over how beautiful my sister Sally looks in her flower girl dress. Please don’t misunderstand me. I too am impressed with the dress. It’s pretty big—much like Cinderella’s gown at the ball, and the outfit includes a stylish little crown with a table doily. It is an impressive ensemble though I must say I think Sally herself looks much like she always does. But hey… if Mom thinks that she is beautiful… well… fine.

I am not beautiful though and I’m not dapper dandy either. I am sharp. I know this because before the wedding my new uncle Ted (whose outfit is just like mine only much bigger) looked at me and said, “Whoa Bobby.” He grabbed me by the shoulders and squared me off for a good look. “I gotta say it. You my man are sharp.”

What was I suppose to say? “Oh no, I’m not sharp. I’m dapper dandy.” No… I’m happy to be sharp and proud to be a ring bearer.

I remember well when our Aunt Audrey and her boyfriend Ted asked Sally and me if we would be in their wedding party. By the way, don’t be fooled by the term wedding party. It might sound fun but that’s just so the two people getting married can get someone to come. It’s no party at all. For one thing it doesn’t just take a night. It takes practically a whole weekend. When you join a wedding party you are committing yourself to an evening without friends, sitting in a church and rehearsing for the actual party that happens the next day. And even that one is more like going to church than a party. The whole deal is pretty serious—not a lot of fun. Anyway, Audrey and Ted came to dinner and afterwards they hung out with our family in the front room.

Audrey is our favorite aunt. She is quite beautiful. She has eyeglasses with real gems glued in the corners. She used to be a majorette in high school and wore white cowboy boots with a short skirt while twirling a baton. I don’t think I could ever do that. I could still show you the boots and baton because I know right where they are in her old bedroom closet at my grandparent’s house. I really liked her boy friend Ted a lot too. He has curly hair and is what is called a giant. I knew he’d make a great uncle.

Audrey asked if Sally would be her flower girl and then went on to explain what the job entailed. Sally went crazy with excitement, probably because all she had to do is walk in with a bunch of flowers, stand there for three or four hours and then walk back out again. As long as she didn’t have to pee or pass out she could hardly fail.

Then Ted asked me if I would be his ring bearer. My job description was a bit more ominous. I would be given the actual wedding ring in the ‘best of view” at the back of the church. The “best of view” is a small entry area that my grandpa called the “vestibule”. I think that’s the Swedish. I would need to carry the ring clear to the pulpit in the front of the church—a distance of nearly four hundred yards. To make matters worse, I would not be permitted to touch the ring with my hands but would balance it upon a tiny satin pillow. I am only seven. My knowledge of fabrics is limited but even I know that satin is slippery. I asked for a rationale concerning the pillow but was given none. I sat upon the couch in our living room. Ted sat in a chair on the other side of the coffee table and waited for my answer. “I’m wondering about the material on that pillow,” I said. “Why does it have to be satin?”

“I’m not really sure,” he said. “It’s just always satin.”

“Yeah, I understand that,” I said, “but I was wondering if we could maybe use a scratchy wool or burlap.”

“Nope,” he said laughing, “I’m pretty sure Audrey wants the pillow to be satin.”

“Rubber might be nice,” I countered.

“No,” he said, “I think we’ll stick with Satin. It’s already been ordered.”

“How big is the ring?” I asked.

From the other side of the room Audrey held up her hand flashing a band with a diamond setting. “Just a little bigger than this one,” she said.

I didn’t want to say it but I was concerned about the heating registers in the floor just inside the “best of view”. If I tripped, that ring could slide on that slippery satin and fall down in the register. If that happened it would be lost forever like one of my mother’s ear rings and several of my peppermint candies.

“How much did the ring cost?” I asked nervously.

The adults laughed and my mother said, “Bobby, it’s not polite to ask how much things cost.”

“How much do you think it cost?” Ted said.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe a million dollars?” I said. More laughter from the adults.

My father spoke up, “I’ll tell you something. That ring is worth far more than a million. That ring is gonna cost Ted every bit of freedom he ever had.”

More laughter.

I never did find out for sure how much it cost but I’m guessing it was about a million and one hundred dollars.

Ted waited for an answer.

“Yes,” I said finally. “I will do it. I will bear your ring.”

Now I’m standing next to Sally on the steps of the church following the wedding. She is still holding her flowers. She did fine considering the little that was required. I on the other hand performed excellently. Before we walked out the door a lady said to me, “You did a great job young man.” Then reaching for a basket on the back pew she said, “Oh wait… I have something just for you.“ I was excited as I’d not been expecting payment for my services. The lady turned toward me and emptied a napkin full of rice into my hands. I have no idea why.

“Gee thanks,” I said. “You shouldn’t have.”

Sally looks a bit miffed.

We walk out the door. Our dad is standing on the sidewalk with his camera. “Wait you two. Hold it right there,” he shouts. So we do and a bunch of other people start snapping pictures too. I’m feeling a bit awkward, trying hard not to spill any rice. It’s okay though. I can handle it because I am sharp.

Slides 89 and 92

The Slide:  Me wearing my basketball uniform in our living room

The Date:  November, 1967

The Photographer:  My mother

            It’s a November afternoon. I’m two weeks into the basketball preseason.  I’m a pretty good small town athlete and a starting forward on my Junior Varsity team.  Following practice we received our new uniforms though to call them new would not be entirely accurate.  The uniforms had been passed from the Varsity to the JV several years before and they were old even then.  I got #44 and I’m happy about it.  I know every player who ever wore that very jersey. Now the jersey is mine.

            I’m sporting white canvas Chuck Taylor basketball shoes.  Though they offer little support, “Chucks” have been the shoe of choice for at least a dozen years.  I remember looking in old yearbooks where my father stood with his team wearing dark shoes—what he called “leather uppers”.  They looked ugly to me and I wondered, “Who would wear leather shoes on a basketball court?”  Answering my own question I thought, “No one. That’s who.”  A couple years later some guys at adidas and Nike asked themselves the same question but came up with a different answer.

            My socks are high and my shorts are…well… very much so. Both are the style of the day.

            The previous year I’d been the high scorer on my team and was proud that the statistic was recorded in the yearbook next to a picture of me. 

 The caption read, “Bob Stromberg, high scorer on the Jr. High team tries for two in a game with Bradford.” I scored one hundred twelve points for the season.  The yearbook failed to note that my teammate, Tom Huffman, scored one hundred and eleven.  The omission didn’t surprise me. Why would it be mentioned? He was, after all, only second highest scorer.  I’d clearly beat him and won the title for myself.  That’s why the yearbook called me, “Bob Stromberg, high scorer…” 

Following our last game (a game in which I’d scored two points and Huffman scored fourteen), he said to me, “I almost beat you Strom!  I measly point!  One little foul shot!”

            To which I said, “No you didn’t Huff.  You almost tied me.  You would have needed two points to beat me.“  I felt bad for him but hey… the bragging rights were mine.  It’s now nine months later and I’m hoping to once again excel. 

            I came home after practice and shouted, “Hey Mom.  We got our new uniforms.”

            “Oh good,” she said.  “What’s your number?”

            “Forty-four,” I said.

            “Well put it on and we’ll get a picture.” Minutes later I stood in the corner in front of the TV.  “Stand up straight,” she said. I did and the flashbulb lit up the room.

            At first glance what appears odd is the picture’s context.  One cannot imagine why I would be standing in the living room in a basketball uniform.  If it were a little league baseball uniform, having just put it on, I might be ready to hop on my bike and peddle to the game.  But there is no natural scenario in which I would wear a basketball uniform in the corner of the living room.  The reason, of course, is because my mother said, “Well put it on. Let’s get a picture.”  I didn’t argue with her because I’d been waiting eight or nine years to put it on.

            Through my elementary years, my father taught at the high school and later became the principal.  Very often, as a little boy, I tagged along with him to ball games.  Even as a kindergartener I knew every player’s name, number and position.  Sitting in the bleachers I watched pretty cheer leaders line up near the locker room doors.  I rose with the crowd as the players burst out, dribbling single file past center court in their satin warm up suits.  I dreamt of being one of them.

            During football season on cold autumn nights, outside under the lights at “away” games, I huddled next to my father.  The smell of hot dogs and cigars mingled in the cold air as the cheerleaders in stretch pants and varsity jackets lined up by the goalpost.  I rose with the crowd as our players in orange and black roared on to the field.  I wanted to be like one of them.  Oddly, even then, I imagined how it would feel if others wanted to be like me.

            Through elementary school and jr. high my greatest goal was to play football and basketball.  It’s all I thought of.  In the autumn we played back yard football every day rain or shine—particularly rain. All summer long we shot baskets on any hoop we could find.

            I began to suspect, early on, that I would never be a great athlete. I didn’t allow myself to think about it much but the truth is, I wasn’t fast, quick, or strong.  Nor did I possess a competitive drive.  These were prized athletic qualities and three out of the four could not be faked.  What I did possess was adequate size for a small town athlete and I had what coaches called “good hands”.   “Good hands” meant I could catch a football if it was close enough to hit me in the head and I could make a basket if I was wide open.  These attributes were good enough to gain a little notoriety.  Following a successful freshman football season I was one of a handful picked to play varsity the next year.  Of course I didn’t play much, but playing on varsity was not as important to me as being on varsity. 

           In basketball, following a good year on JVs, I was the only junior with important varsity minutes.  It was during this junior season that I experienced for the first and last time what if felt like to a star.  In the din of an important game, I sat on the bench with fourteen seconds remaining and heard my coach shout, “Strommy!”  My knees went weak.  We were down by four points with no time-outs and no three-point line. In the final seconds, thanks to my teammates defense and my opponent’s ineptitude, I scored six points.  In slow motion from some inner world, deep in the corner with 0:01 left on the clock, I launched the last shot from my hip… nothing but net!  The following year as a diminishing senior, I experienced what it felt like to know that others wanted to be like me.  

           I was picky about my shoes.  I didn’t like high top sneakers.  They felt clunky.  Unfortunately, due to the threat of ankle injuries, our coaches would not allow us to wear low cuts.  Improvising, I wore two pairs of socks and folded the outer pair down around the ankles giving the shoes the appearance of low cuts.  I took a little razzing from my teammates but I liked the way they looked and felt.  Halfway through the season I went to a freshman game. All our young players sported my sock styling.  I was a basketball fashion trendsetter.

I competed in athletics from as young an age as possible.  Early on I was one of the best in my grade but kids mature at different rates.  Some of the big kids, who were dominant in jr. high, stopped growing and were left behind.  One of my classmates barely made the teams year after year.  Following our junior year, he finally grew into his awkward body and won the coveted “Athlete of the Year” award at graduation.  Another basketball teammate—a year older than I—competed with me for a starting position his entire senior year.  He went on to a big university, made the team as a “walk on” and had an outstanding college career.

I just got a little better each year and held my own.  I wanted to be the star but the thing about athletics is… you can’t fake it.  You either are or you’re not.  And no one needs to wonder.  You just look at the stats.   Mine were just good enough to be lauded by the younger kids.  I was, however, fortunate to play on a football team that won twenty-three games in a row.  A number of my teammates and I received letters from interested college recruiters. The truth is I didn't have the desire or the talent to play college football. However several colleges couldn't tell that from my game films. I should have gotten out when I had the opportunity but I didn't even know how to quit when I had the chance.

I’d invested such a large part of my identity in athletics that I didn’t know who I would be without a ball in my hand.  To make matters more difficult, in my family you just didn't quit.  You didn’t quit anything! You didn't start a game of monopoly unless you planned to finish it. You didn't quit just because the game went six hours. Quitting wasn't fair to the other players. No, you toughed it out. In the first eighteen years of my life (all the years I lived at home), the only thing I remember quitting was Cub Scouts. Even then I'd stuck it out for a whole year.

 I somehow grew up believing that quitters were bad, unambitious people who never amounted to anything, vagrants not worth the cardboard they slept beneath. Take Old Dicky, for example.  Old Dicky our town drunk (who wasn’t all that old), slouched against the town square World War II monument, snoozing away hot summer afternoons.  He was the quintessential quitter.

My grandpa said he remembered Dicky when he was younger.  “Well, I’ll tell you, Bobby, he wasn’t the brightest kid I’d ever met, but he was a nice little boy till he started quittin’.  Quit Little League.  Quit Junior Firemen.  Quit high school.  He even quit work at the bottle plant.  And for what?  Just look at ‘im now.  If that’s not the saddest excuse for a man I’ve ever seen.  Just makes your heart ache.”

And of course I knew you didn’t have to look too far to find other examples.  There was Al Capone and Oswald and that crazy guy who killed the nurses in Chicago.  They probably all quit junior high choir or something.  Quitting revealed a basic flaw in one's character. Quitters didn't have the stuff to stick it out when the going got tough.

I'd wanted to quit a bunch of things, as a kid, but I didn't.  Now I think I should have. In high school I took geometry, trigonometry and calculus. I started to get lost about three weeks into my first freshman term and never found my way out of the confusion. This caused tremendous stress and made me feel intellectually inept. I've never completely recovered. In college I took Math 101 pass-fail, passed by a hair (I have no idea what that is in metrics), and have not opened a math book since. 

And Spanish! Mi Gloria! Why did I have to take four years of Spanish? Why couldn't I have taken two years like some of the other kids? No one spoke Spanish within three hundred miles of my town except maybe my Spanish teacher, and I don't think he spoke it very well. I know I couldn't understand a word he said—which was, for him, a continual irritant.

“So Senor Stromberg.  Apparently you do not think that the Spanish language is worthy of your time. Is this not so?”

I could have said, “No”.  This would have been proper usage in either Spanish or English but I thought it best to remain silent and look straight ahead. 

“Well Rrrrrrrroberto,” he said with a long rolling R—a sound I was unable to even approximate,  “I want you to know that I do not care.  Do you hear me? Look at me Roberto.” 

I thought it best to follow his instruction.

“Mi amigo,” he said, his eyes red, anger seething just beneath the service of his otherwise calm demeanor,  “if you would like to quit this class it is fine with me.  And do you know why Roberto?  Do you know why it is fine with me?”  

I felt uncertain.

“Because,” he said.“ I… really… could… care… less.” 

At this point I wanted very much to ask what the whole class was thinking. I wanted to ask, “Senor Mullins, do you mean that you could care less?  Or do you mean that you couldn’t care less?  You said that you really could care less. I’m concerned that you are perhaps not saying what you mean to say.  If you mean that you really could care less then you still must really care.  If that is the case I would like to ask… por  que?”   If I’d had any fighting, competitive spirit I’d have said it but intimidated and embarrassed I remained silent.

Looking back I realize I probably should have quit Spanish.  I’m embarrassed to say that I sat in that class for four years and still can’t speak a complete sentence.  It’s inexcusable.  After graduation, I should have quit football too.  And I would have, had my coach not said, “Hey we could send some game films out to your college.  You never know.” I would have quit had my hometown paper not written a story about several of us who were seeking scholarships.  I should have quit. But I didn’t know how to let go and move on with my life.  It was too scary at the time. There were too many unanswered questions like; if I quit will I end up sleeping over a heating vent or killing a cop? Will I snooze away summer afternoons against the WWII monument?  Will I have to marry someone in the eighth grade?  Well, yes, probably. Those are the kinds of things that happen to quitters.

My college football experience turned out to be worse than I could have imagined. My first-year-coach, Coach Vader (no relation), was a maniac. You remember Woody Hayes when he went nuts on national TV and beat up one of his young players? Remember Bobby Knight and his folding chairs? Remember Jack Nicholson in The Shining? Remember Anthony Hopkins with his mask and fava beans?  Then you get the idea.  Coach Vader berated us in practice, screaming at us nonstop even during meals, his face only inches from the side of our heads. We awakened in the dark each morning to his voice taunting us over the dormitory intercom. Actually many of us were so nervous we’d never gotten to sleep.

It was so bad that two tri-captains, with distinguished college careers, quit on Friday, five days into the preseason. I only made it to Thursday. I didn't even have the guts to talk to the coach. At 5:30 in the morning, on the way to the field house for ankle taping, I turned around, hopped a Chicago cab, and rode off in the sunrise. The cabby said, "A donde vas?" Of course I didn't understand.

"Take me to my aunts in Brookfield," I said extra loudly presuming that the louder I spoke the better he might comprendo.

We drove for an hour and I began to wonder if my cabby was taking me to my aunt's or taking me for a ride. It seemed as though we passed the same Laundromat quite a few times, though perhaps there was a chain called Ronnie's One and Only Cleaners. Several hours later, he collected a good portion of my summer saving with a big smile and a "Muchas gracias, senor!"

I said the only Spanish that came to mind, "Que sera, sera." At least it was true.  I stayed with my aunt for a couple of weeks until school began. I was a quitter.

In retrospect, I think I did the right thing.  My mistake was to begin in the first place. One plays college football for the love of the game, or at least for the love of the scholarship money, but I played for neither.  I played—if only for four days—because I didn't know how to stop. I didn’t know how to move on with my life.  I didn't know that I could be me without a helmet in the autumn.

Surprisingly, when I quit what I was doing I discovered who I was.  I saw that I could do lots of things and still be me.  I joined the college choir.  I played intramural ball. I studied hard—a new experience.  I even began to understand what I might ultimately do with my life.  Most importantly I figured out that what I am is less important than who.

I do not advocate frequent quitting.  There are things we should stick with—hold on to and never let go.  But sometimes the best thing is to quit what we’re doing, take who we are and move on.

I was a pretty good small town athlete.  One day I put on my basketball uniform and stood in the corner in front of the TV while my mom snapped a picture.  I did it because I thought the picture would represent who I was. I didn’t realize that basketball was just something I did.

           Flash forward four decades.  I haven’t held a football in twenty years—unless it said Nerf on the side.  When we moved into a new home I didn’t even bother to put up a ball hoop.  The boys were grown and gone by then and I didn’t feel like shooting around by myself.  When I was a kid I could not have imagined behaving like this but… here I am—more myself than ever. 

Slides 79, 91 and 50

The Slide: My mother , Sally, Johnny, Ingrid and Me on Old Baldy

The Date: October, 1965

The Photographer: My Father

When people ask me where I come from I tell them I’m from a little place in north centrallish Pennsylvania. If they say, “Oh really, what’s it’s near?” I tell them it’s near south westernish, NY.  I do so because, really, it’s not near anywhere. The nearest big city (Buffalo) is about a hundred miles away but I never knew anyone who had actually been there and I knew I never wanted to go.  The only three TV stations we received in my little town were broadcast from Buffalo, so I had watched the local news enough to know I was better off staying right where I was.  Every night I’d hear about the killer fires in suburban Cheektowaga or the four-alarm blazes in lower Lackawanna.  When, as a junior in high school, I finally did drive with my family to the city for the Ice Capades, I was surprised there were any buildings left. 

We were pretty isolated in my little town, but we liked it that way.  On the radio dial all I could get during the day was WFRM (The Farm and Home Broadcasting Company).  But on cold, clear nights, if I tuned my Sears Silvertone very carefully—I can still smell the hot tubes—I might pick up ABC in New York, CKLW in Detroit and my favorite WLS in Chicago.

          “Radar weather, eye-eeeee-iiiii-eeeee-iiiii,” the weatherman’s choir sang in four-part harmony. “Radar weather, eye-eeeee-iiiii-eeeee-iiiii.”

“Hey Chicago, It’s cold out there,” the announcer would say. “Radar weather has forty-one in Des Plaines, thirty-nine on the North Shore and it’s a chilly thirty-seven in the loop.”

Tucked in my bed, I lay in the dark night after night and wondered what the heck a Loop was.  I thought it was probably something like the circular drive at our high school though maybe even longer. We didn’t have the bright lights, subways, fancy restaurants, or a Loop, but what we had was beautiful.  Nestled in the rolling Allegheny Mountains, everywhere you looked it was just so beautiful. All the little towns around were nice too but none more so than mine because we had Old Baldy.

Old Baldy was a big piece of hillside, stripped clean of trees, jutting out into the center of town. I asked my grandfather how it got so bald.  He told me that it was originally clear cut by turn of the century lumber barons.  The forest would have grown back like it did on the surrounding hills but, for several generations, it became a common pasture where town folks grazed their milk cows. The cows kept it bald. 

From my house I could run out the back door, across the creek, and up through the pine grove at the base of the hill. Fifteen minutes later, I’d be standing at the most magnificent spot in my world.  From here the town looked exactly like the postcards at the Five and Dime, but you didn’t have to pay even a nickel for the view.  From here tiny cars drove slowly on rolling country roads.  From here the Pennsylvania Railroad, like a Lionell model, snaked its’ path along the river to unload at the glass factory.  From here on hot summer afternoons, barely discernible from so high, you could spot kids on their bikes weaving their way to the pool.

It was a magical place and from the age of five I climbed there often. On summer nights I’d go up there with a whole pack of buddies.  We carried our sleeping bags and little blue boxes of Camp Fire Marshmallows.  As the sun dropped over the far hill, we’d watch the street lamps blinking on below, only to be outdone an hour later by the blazing stars above.

In the winter we tobogganed down Old Baldy’s icy face, six little blue-lipped buddies, laced together holding on to one another’s frozen buckled boots, screaming at the top of our lungs. In the late summer lying on sleds of flattened cardboard boxes we careened down it’s grassy front.

Old Baldy was just a big piece of hillside in the center of my little town, but it played an important part in my growing up.  I took my first solo hike there as a five year old.  I had my first campout there at eight—pretty big deal.   I met my first girlfriend up there once when we were thirteen. I’ll call her Denise because…well… that was her name. I recall it was exciting but a bit awkward.  We sat up there, side by side, on a log and looked at the town for a few minutes.

I said, “Pretty huh?”

She said, “Yup”.  And that was about it. 

Then she stood up, smiled and kind of waved. She went down her side and I went down mine. Okay it wasn’t a hot date but it was better than having my dad drive us somewhere. 

When I was twenty, I took another girl up there. She was very impressed. For years, every time we visited “home” we climbed there with our kids. 

But the most special times on Old Baldy were the times I spent with my dad—many of them when I was very young.  Dad always pulled on black artics over his shining dress shoes. Then he'd  pull on a scratchy school letter jacket, and a wool hat.  My mother would help me put on every imaginable piece of warm winter clothing that a child could legally be required to wear and off we'd go.

As hard as the climb was, stumbling over my own feet, sliding on the nearly frozen ground, sweating through several sweaters and a winter coat, I plodded upward, I wanted to get to the top.  To me, the whole idea of climbing Old Baldy was to get to the top.  But apparently my dad knew better. He’d stop and say, “Shhhh Listen,” We’d be by the creek or by a stand of pines or under a rusty old oak still clinging to its dry leaves.  “Listen!” he’d whisper so softly I could hardly hear.

I was never sure what I was supposed to be listening for. Then, very faintly at first, I would hear it.  The complaint of a maple gently moving in a breeze. The flourish of a black squirrel running a tightrope from tree to tree.  Maybe the mournful chorus of a thousand geese flying far too high to be seen. And once, I remember, it was the plinking burble sound of trickling water flowing between layers of melting ice.  To my dad it was all beautiful music.  Eventually we would reach the top where we’d rest a while and enjoy the beauty. Then all too soon we’d have to head back down. My dad taught me to experience the climb and I grew to love it.  As a young man though, it became increasingly difficult to be quiet—to be still. I still struggle with the urge to just get to the top. Then I hear my father’s voice, “Shhh. Listen!”

         Old Baldy is gone now.   The hill is still there but it’s no longer bald.  Each year, the pine grove and the leafy seedlings crept higher and higher toward the top.  Sadly, the last time I climbed Old Baldy I stood, surrounded by a deep forest, unable to see the town below.

 

         It’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon in mid October.  The leaves are just beyond peak.  My cousin Johnny went with my father and me to the football game.  We returned home, to find my mother packing a picnic basket. “Thought we might take a hike up Old Baldy,” she said.  “It’s just so beautiful this evening.”  My sister Sally helped little Ingrid into her sweater. “Don’t forget her hat,” my mother said,

         Sally rolled her eyes. “Mom,” she said, “it’s hot out there.”

         “But it might get breezy on top,” my mother said, “and who knows, maybe we’ll want to stay a little while.”

         My father grabbed the camera. 

         An hour later, as the sun was setting, we gathered around a campfire and roasted our hot dogs. My father said, “Hey Johnny, do me a favor and snap a family picture for us. Will you?”

         Johnny grabbed the camera, looked through the view finder and said, “Ingrid! Hey! Hey!  Hey Ingrid! Look this way!” Ingrid, a perfectionist even then, was intently focusing on her hot dog and the job at hand. She never heard his voice. The rest of us looked toward the camera and Johnny snapped a picture forever preserving the memory of a beautiful place.