Happenstance by Lester Fisher

A bastard boomer negotiates the maze of postwar America. Wrenched from his working single mother, and brought to Camp Pondosa by his grandfather who was Woods Manager for McCloud Rv. Lumber Co. After his WAC mother became X-ray tech at the McCloud hospital, and acquired a husband, the new family moved to R. A. Long’s “planned city” of Longview, Washington. A shocking change for a country-bumpkin kid. He attended Catholic School in this pretentious mill town with its socially stratified culture of mill workers, overlords and timber barons. Catholic indoctrination led to the Franciscan Seminary. He survived into his 6th year at the college of San Luis Rey, CA, when love won out. This young man left the pursuit of the priestly vocation to pursue the woman he had dated since his fifteenth year.

First collegiate in his family, he and his girl entered the daunting halls of ivy at University of Washington. Engaged to his high school sweetheart, graduation approached in the turbulent years of 1969. A youth’s options were few during the Vietnam War. Having taken his Naval Officer Candidate School exam, he also applied for Peace Corps. The NOCS did not reply, but the Peace Corps invited him to Kenya. Parting with his xenophobic fiancé, he served in the idyllic Hills of Taita where began a romantic involvement with a Taita woman … and her 3 children. Their happy two years together ended when he was exiled from Taita by his military induction notice. By happenstance, Richard Nixon had changed the course of his life.

One young man’s account chronicles the most turbulent growth in United States history. These were expansions in technology, global influence, wealth, power, popular unrest, and human rights. These changed America from a isolationist, racist enclave, to the present confusing, liberating, imperialistic and ideologically-divided envy of the world.

---

His shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be

like the olive, and his fragrance like Lebanon.1

English Standard Version (2001) Hosea 14:8

My life is coming to a point where I must do some soul-searching.

I need to determine what useful thing(s) I can do with my remaining time

on earth. As in the movie Alfie, the questions of life are, “In the end, is Alfie

happy, and above all, what’s it all about, then?”2

These are two very difficult

questions. Am I happy? And what is it all about? Is there a plan? Is there

a reason? Is there meaning? Or is it all just Happenstance? Unbeknownst

to me, just before I wrote this, a paper was published on the theory of

happenstance.3

It pretty much reflects my life. Is that happenstance or

what?

Now it is two days after Christmas 2008. I am with Gretchen, my

first love and now, finally, my third wife. I have spent most of our free

time watching television except when we went to dinner with friends. On

Friday, after work, we went to a movie with the same couple. The movie

was Marley and Me, which puts some perspective on life. Even though it

was a dog’s life, it pointed out the importance of commitment on the part

of the dog to the family... and I suppose the reverse. Our lives have been

like that also. It’s all about family, but we are here in Hawaii, and the family

is all thousands of miles away, on what we islanders nostalgically call “the

mainland”. Gretchen’s daughter-in-law, Brandy, just gave birth to the newest

member of the family, Rylen Cooper, 8 lbs. 4 oz., 21 inches. He was born

in Portland, Oregon, on one of the coldest, snowiest winters, in over forty

years. The family brought Rylen home on Christmas Eve. All’s well, except

for the fact that the new parents don’t have jobs, and we just had to give

them money to cover two months’ mortgage payments so that, hopefully,

they will not lose their townhouse.

Gretchen and I have both been fortunate to have stay employed, and

so has Brandy’s father. He and her mother have been there for the whole

delivery. While it is bitter sweet for Gretchen to have missed the birth of

both grandchildren, we feel very fortunate in this time and place, since so

many people are losing their jobs in America as a whole. Times are uncertain

in 2008... we are perilously close to a recession the magnitude of the Great

Depression of 1929. We can only hope that the incoming administration

of Barack H. Obama will save us from international collapse. I actually had

to retire from the federal government where I worked for 8 years (with an

additional two years of service in the Peace Corps). And Gretchen was cut

back to three days per week at the law firm that employs her. Fortunately,

my boss at the USDA went to bat for me and managed to get me re-hired at

the University of Hawaii, working on the Varroa mite eradication project in

Hilo. This is on the Big Island of Hawaii where we live. Gretchen was also

able to get two days’ work with another lawyer, named Sandy. She was a

member of the law office for which Gretchen has worked since she married

me and moved to Hawaii. Sandy left the firm to take a job as a judge several

years ago, and had since retired and gone back into private practice.4

Sandy

was not able to employ Gretchen full-time but the extra hours help us make

ends meet, and give Gretchen some diversity in her job, which had become

quite routine. My return to working with honeybees has also been a new

challenge for me, especially given my age (sixty) and arthritic condition.

They say bee stings are good for arthritis... Lord, I hope that is true!

These are the mundane facts, but the circumstances, the strange chain of

events that led us to where we are now, are begging me to contemplate. They

are all part of what, at times, seems a random sequence of happenstance. Yet

how different our lives, and the lives of many others, would be if they had

not happened. There would not have been a Rylen Cooper (at least not this

Rylen Cooper), since his father, Cameron Peer, would not exist. Just as my

son, James, born of an African mother of the Taita tribe of Kenya, would

not be here in America to witness the inauguration of the first African

American President of the United States. Barack Obama himself was the

son of a Kenyan father and a Caucasian mother from our State of Hawaii.

Nor would there be James’s daughter, Taita, named for her grandmother’s

tribe, and Gretchen’s granddaughter, Kayla (five), to be the two firstborn

of that next generation. Nor would my now seventeen-year-old daughter be

born to my second wife, Mary, who married me at graduate school. When

I returned to UC Davis to pursue a master’s degree, it led to the breakup of

my marriage to James’ mother, Charity. Later my daughter’s mother left me

to marry one of her employees, whom, by the way, I believed to have been

my friend. Nor would their son, Daniel, have been born a developmentally

disabled child. Six children, all born of this strange sequence of events that

started when Gretchen and I were in high school.

I was in a Franciscan minor seminary, and she was the student body

historian of the local high school in our hometown. How then did I, the

potential future priest, meet Gretchen, eventually my last wife of three?

Our fathers worked at the post office together, and her father asked my

stepfather if he wanted to bring our family to a musical comedy, for which

Gretchen’s father was buying tickets. It was a simple request that would lead

to such a long sequence of events and consequences.

Actually I should set the record straight since the reader will have long

since been lost in the confusion if I do not explain. I met Gretchen when I

was fifteen. Going to musical plays became a regular summertime activity

of the Klungness and the Huffhines families. To be frank my lanky six

foot two inch self was somewhat smitten with the perky, five-foot two,

fifteen-year-old blond, when first she flitted down the stairs of the house her

father had built. Nor was my mother unaware of the spark. In those high

school years, she was more than willing to present this potential incendiary

in my path to test the mettle of my vocation. She went so far as to bring

Gretchen to Visiting Days at the seminary during the school year. This

happened whenever we were planning an outing to some play or concert. I

think she enjoyed Gretchen’s company and liked mothering her, since she

had to give away her only daughters for adoption. But I am sure she was

not unaware of the obvious chemistry between her surrogate daughter and

her also-illegitimate son. In our junior and senior years during summer

vacation, Gretchen and I often went on dates together; all innocently, of

course. The rationalization was that it is better to test the waters to be

surer of one’s intentions when embarking on such a permanent decision as

the priesthood. By the time I had entered college, my mother had given up

the concept of grandchildren and resigned herself to the fact that I was on

the road to the Franciscan priesthood. To this day, I hope that my decision

to leave the seminary and become engaged to Gretchen was not affected

by the very strong influence of my mother.... if so, the influence obviously

had the reverse effect of my mother’s intentions. Of course, there was plenty

of communication going on between Gretchen and me before the fateful

decision was made. The late Fr. Benedict, the Dean of Students at San Luis

Rey seminary, could have attested to our communication because he was

reading and commenting. This included spelling corrections and advice, in

my letters to and from Gretchen. Like a teacher grading papers he would

fit his precise script in the margins in bold red. She likes to remember that

Fr. Ben once wrote, “You didn’t answer her question. She deserves an honest

answer”.

I have to beg some tolerance from you, the reader, at this point. As

you may have noticed, my thoughts are rather free flowing as I gather

the threads of history from my mind. In this first chapter, you may find

the linkages confusing, and the connections thin. Try to understand that

dredging up a life from 60 years of synapses is not always an orderly stream

of consciousness. I can promise one thing, I will try to make it entertaining.

Well, Gretchen got her answer in the winter of 1967. She had

already enrolled in the University of Washington, but she was home on

Christmas vacation when I came home from San Luis Rey for the last time.

Unbeknownst to Gretchen, I had previously broached the subject with her

father by asking if I could marry her,

There was already tension in my parents’ little cottage on the Toutle

River. But the sparks flew when I stayed out until 2 AM with Gretchen in

my parents’ only car. It was before cell phones, and my parents were worried

sick. My dilemma was that Gretchen was bawling because she didn’t want

to go back to the University of Washington without me. Needless to say,she did. Equally obvious was the reaction of my parents.... perhaps a bit

severe, but very effective.

The next day, my parents took me and my baggage to a boarding house

in the mill district of the logging town built by R. A. Long (Longview). I am

sure the boarding house was one of the first structures built in the 1920’s,

and some of its residents were probably some of the first workers hired at

Long Bell mill. One could not call it a flop house, but then it was not an

upscale retirement residence either. The price was certainly manageable,

even though I had neither job nor transportation. After one week, I moved

to a boarding house more in the center of town, about half way in between

Lower Columbia College, where I enrolled, and Pietro’s Pizza Parlor, where

I had managed to land a job. Those were long cold walks in the wet winter

of ‘67, but definitely character building and enhancing to the long lean look

that I had acquired from the Spartan meals at the minor seminary. My only

paid meal of the day was a $1.00 breakfast at the Longview Café. I took my

dinner at Pietro’s Pizza Parlor, where Jack Troupe would let each of the crew

make his own “medium pizza” for their lunch break. Needless to say, these

pizzas would more properly be called montagna. My toppings were often

three cheeses, peperoni, sausage, salami, Canadian bacon, olives, sliced bell

pepper and tomato, topped with pineapple. Definitely all the food groups!

I think I ate all of one meal at the boarding house; I believe it was stuffed

bell peppers. Because of my classes and work schedule, I could never make

the meal hours at the boarding house again.

Eventually, the owner agreed to charge me only for the room. It was

a little room, but it was clean and it was near the bathroom with shower

down the hall. The second story window looked out on the bare branches

of an apple tree, and my writing table looked out on the gray streets of the

gray town of Longview with lingering odor of the several pulp mills that

fired the engines of commerce in that berg. It was a nostalgic, painful, yet

hopeful time for me. I had no diversions, so I resorted to writing things like:

Shoo-splash round rubber wheels roll

While reminiscing I squat sit

Upon this chair within my niche

And wondering, wish and watch below

Wet wandering rubber wheels go.

“I do dearly!” dread I say it,

Heard by her who might waylay it.

Yet ‘tis true, nor can be altered;

Hope, I do, it bloomed and altar-ed!

My fondest memory of that winter was when I was writing a letter

to Gretchen one day. I realized that flower buds on the apple tree were

beginning to break open. It was probably my most profound realization of

the promise of spring in my lifetime. I might have actually penned a poem,

but I have no idea whether it still exists. The memory, however, has never

left me. I ran across something I had written in my freshman year at the

major Seminary, which may reflect the feelings I felt at seeing the buds

bursting:

There’s something in the new growth,

That’s greater that the full growth.

The hope in sunlit new growth

Is seven times profound.

Nature saw them kind and gentle

Her do I see might unsettled.

To them t’was beauty fair and bright.

To me ‘n’august and powerful sight.

Later I wrote something in a similar vein:

Seasons

When silver dew upon the green grass glitters

When hoary frost the spires of sunlight splinters

When wet mist massed on weeping oak trees

trickle

When warm wind’s breath through rocky

rapids ripples.

It really did represent a turning point for me. I had done reasonably

well in my coursework at Lower Columbia College. I think by that time

I had advanced to a job at the Weyerhaeuser plywood plant making a

whopping $3 per hour. I had previously made a few cents more in my

summer jobs at the pulp mill. I was scheming to get back to that mill for

the summer, particularly because they offered overtime. The dehumanizing

monotony of being a drier sheet-feeder definitely did not hold the “glamour

and adventure” of being a Lime Kiln Helper. One might be called from

one’s regular rounds of cleaning stacks and mud spills, to help open a stack

washer which had just been shut down. Or even more glorious, double-time

pay for mining the lime rings out of the kiln that had been shut down for

Independence Day weekend. Although the dust was hot, dry and caustic,

it was far superior to hosing out a liquor tank where every drop of alkaline

water dripping from your nor’wester could burn your skin.

I wrote a description of my pulp mill experience for a freshman English

class at San Luis Rey Seminary. May I take the liberty to include it, since

Fr. Benedict seemed to appreciate it enough to read it aloud in class?

Sounds of Summer

The contents of this composition may strike you as somewhat

sensual, and indeed they are, because the theme, the topic, and

the concern of this paper are the realm of sensible noise. As a

sort of reaction against the attempt of this school to abolish all

forms of clatter, I would like to lose myself, and you, in a short

contemplation of the whole wonderfully various world of sound,

especially the one which I will re-enter this summer.

[The composition included descriptions of the sound of the

bus, and the woods, but I leave these out and proceed to the sounds

of the mill]

The Mill

The digesters’ whoosh shatters the hum and grind and clatter

and clunk of the pulp log chipper with a rushing stream of steam.

A hissing shroud of steam softens the factory’s loud pounding roar.

But it’s still deafening thunder throbs with the rush of red blood,

as I pass on my way to work.

At the door of the kiln room, the sputter of small valves give

way to the sonorous symphony of intoning electrical drones set to

the beat of laboriously slow rolling ovens of cylindrical brick.

From the rear comes the monotonous scrape of the slaker-

trough rake; there where the gyro-pumps rhythm-less whir runs

in on the strident clang of the grinding trunnions that work their

way up, then hammer fall, bang!

Farther still, at the five hundred foot length of the kiln, the

hollow roar of a draft-tunnel blower rattles its bolts on a rapid

unbalanced vibration.

And at the extreme, screams of steam, sprayed on the white-

hot walls of the liquor-solution furnace, reinforces this acoustical

combat.

San Luis Rey Seminary 1966

Still these jobs paid the bills.... Gretchen was coming home for the

summer... The campus was in bloom... hope for the future was in the very

sun-warmed air. I was so inspired that spring that I wrote a poem to Gretchen,

To one so fair her will-wisp hair

Can greet gold sun without regret;

Nor blush, but billow bubbling joy

And belle bright blue-eyed beauty blessed.

Light heart that’s heaven’s helpless coal

Whose warmly tender radiant glow

Un-nights the God-light. Gretchen grow!

How Gret the wonders where God blows

Te, tinder-fire of all-in-compass kindled love.

If I had to give a musical background to this picture of my youth, I think

it would have to be Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances.

The wistful, hopeful reveries of youth often have to give way to the

realities of life. The debate of the summer was whether I would follow my

original plan of going to Washington State College to pursue agriculture, or

meld into Gretchen’s plan and attend the University of Washington. With

me pursuing... oh, I don’t know, maybe microbiology. Dr. Helms had made

the subject seem quite palatable, albeit not within the genetic inclination of

my Irish “sodbuster” heritage. Needless to say, Gretchen won! Fall quarter

would find me lost in Padelford Hall trying to apply for my classes.

May I digress slightly to describe my emotional state at this juncture?

Padelford was a very modern building; a confusing labyrinth that I am

sure was designed to weed out the inferior mice that could not negotiate

the maze. Needless to say, I ended up in the ladies’ restroom. There were

so many letters and numbers on the door that only three letters registered

in my mind, “men”. I only realized I had entered forbidden territory when a

woman entered the rest room only to quickly dart out the door again upon

seeing me there. This then explained why there were no urinals. Briefly I

had thought that perhaps the educated male intelligencia were required to

urinate while sitting down (which does, in fact, make microbiological sense

since science has discovered how messy the process of vertical urination is).

Amazing to myself, I did actually manage to register at the University of

Washington. And no, science has not yet convinced the male population to

pee sitting down. Even though, as I had learned in later years, Gretchen’s

mother had convinced her husband to sit when relieving himself in the family

bathroom. Considering that most wives cannot convince their husbands to

put the toilet lid down, this power that Jana had over her husband, Bob,

may have explained why they were married for 48 years. And they would

have made 50 plus if he had not succumbed to Parkinson’s disease. Which

is another ironic twist of fate, because there was no one man who had more

joie de vivre than Robert Huffhines.

My discussion with my advisor was equally daunting. Some child genius

in the newly exploding field of genetic engineering, he was sure that I

needed to quickly get “up to speed”. So he enrolled me in classes of genetics,

bacteriology, organic chemistry and algebra. One of the Teaching Assistants

in Bacteriology Lab was herself only 17; the next generation of whiz kids

in that department. With labs, I had a total of 24 classroom hours. This

was a lot for liberal-arts major, whose chemistry background at the major

seminary consisted largely of a study of the cosmology of Teilhard de

Chardin. Needless to say, in addition to maintaining a job and a girlfriend,

I got a 1.8 GPA that quarter. Interestingly, Gretchen did exceptionally

well that quarter. Better than she had in previous quarters, when she was

alone in the daunting world of higher education. Subsequently I changed

departments to Botany, a gentile old school, and made sure to soften my

science-class load each quarter with a philosophy class.

That summer I had also purchased, with all my overtime pay, my first

car. Four hundred hard-earned dollars for a 1960 aqua blue Chevrolet

Corvair. I was so proud of it, and it rode like a dream. There was a reason

for that... the independent suspension, before they learned about torsion

bars, allowed the wheels to splay in and out with every bump... thus

efficiently wearing the tire into a round donut in record time. I quickly

learned the price of mobility... in tires, ball joints, shocks, clutches and

eventually a complete engine overhaul. The mechanic assured me, when

he had finished the overhaul, that there were a number of pieces of metal

and a small pyramid of nuts and bolts that were absolutely unnecessary to

the performance of this aeronautic engineering marvel. Strangely enough,

I did not have any major problems with the Corvair after that. If I had the

good sense to have put it into storage when I left for the Peace Corps, I

might have owned a valuable piece of automotive history. Instead I signed

the Corvair over to a Christian half way house in Ballard. As it turned out,

I received a subpoena from the Chicago Court while I was in Kenya, because

the Corvair had been used in a crime. The Judge let me off the hook with

my lame explanation of being half way around the world in Peace Corps

at the time of the crime. I don’t know if the registration of the car was ever

changed. Maybe my blue baby died in the crime? I’ll never know.

But I fear that I have digressed again. The Peace Corps gig requires

considerable explanation, especially since it was such a seminal event to my

relationship with Gretchen.

Rather than pursue the details of ancient history at this early juncture,

let’s return to the contemplation of the curious and unfathomable fact of

where we find ourselves today. On New Year’s Day 2009, my daughter (then

17) called to say that she had a marginally enjoyable time with her Facebook

friend from Wisconsin. He had driven all the way to Maryland in rather

inclement weather to bring in the New Year with her. Of course, when I

had called New Year’s Eve, only to find that her stepfather did not know

where she was, and that her mother was still visiting her own mother in San

Francisco, my 20th century brain (raised on “Father Knows Best”5

) went

wild! I maintained my sardonic calm while discussing with my alter ego

and former friend (Colleen’s stepfather). My forced composure was because

my alarm at the way Colleen has been raised in Maryland has caused

considerable consternation in previous worrisome incidents. In spite of my

restrained demeanor, it must have started some wheels turning, because my

daughter admitted, in her recent phone call that she was probably in serious

trouble with her custodial parents. I tried lamely to explain that any parent

would be concerned! A “web-cam pal” can have a lot of connotations in the

21st century. The Badger had taken a hotel room in Maryland (but, in fact,

they ended up staying with Colleen’s parents) of course, I did not know that

at the time. This is coming from a 17 year old talking about a 20 year old

that she only knew from a year-long conversation by web-cam. “O brave new

world, that has such people in ‘t!” (The Tempest by William Shakespeare).

Interestingly, my impression was that Colleen was not as pleased with

this Badger as she had hoped, and that she perhaps had learned lessons from

her previous youthful romances. Perhaps the “Tao of Steve”6

had sunk in

after my repeated reference to the importance of maintaining objectivity

(translation: playing hard to get). Of course, I speculated that the Badger

may not have been as satisfied with his marathon trip to the heart beat

of the country, particularly since they didn’t even find a decent fireworks

display... and by implication, it was not “party on” in Maryland. Of course,

I am interpreting this all from Colleen’s telephone tone of voice, and I will

be the first to admit that I am not the most astute father in history. I may

be deluding myself. Perhaps there will be the tearful phone call next week...

you know, the “woe is me, will I ever find love?” conversation. At least there

has not been the “Do you know what your daughter has done now?” phone

call from my Ex. I think the latter has given up threatening to try to send

Colleen to live with me if she doesn’t straighten up and fly right. Not that I

would be displeased to have Colleen come back to Hawaii to go to College.

But Mary, her mother, has made Colleen what she is, and one thing she has

become is determined to stay with her friends and her life in Maryland.

Maybe young people really are more mature at a younger age these

days. Maybe they have to grow up sooner, because they certainly can’t rely

on their parents to teach them good sense. Lord knows, we have screwed up

our lives enough, and the kids are generally the collateral damage. Yet, here

they are, trying to struggle through life, just as we did. Somehow, if we look

hard enough, we can see a pattern, a hope, a determination, a will to survive.

Albeit so, that survival instinct seems more tenuous in today’s youth than

we remember from our youth. We had our worries and our problems, but

the prospects of life were not nearly as formidable as what young people

face today. Maybe if we went back two or three generations to war time

or depression, those young people may have had as much to be concerned

about as our kids do. But they did not have the speed and the pressure and

the technology that have made living so much more tenuous. I sometimes

like to watch the old movies, because they let us peer into the trappings of

a more innocent age. Of course, there have always been the Mr. Potter’s of

It’s a Wonderful Life, but there was also the community and the connections

that sustained the working class in spite of the difficult times. You knew

your neighbors, and your boss might have been nice enough to keep you on

the payroll in spite of the difficult times. My mother remembered that the

logging company kept her father and the other employees on the payroll

even when the demand for lumber was depressed. Then you managed the

hard times by reducing the work hours, not firing all the unessential staff.

Of course, many did lose their jobs, but I don’t think it was as cold hearted

as it is today. Or was it? There are a few bright lights, like FEDEX, whose

management had, by this date of writing, determined to cut back hours,

not employees. But in light of the financial crisis of 2008, and seeing that is

largely the fault of greed in high places, it is not hard to understand that the

young people wish they could just step out of this world and form a different

world that moves to a different drum... a slower, more thought provoking,

more civil beat.... that of a heart and not a machine.

Still, as a father, I have to pray that another unexpected addition to

the generations of my seed is not conceived. It may happen, in due time,

but hopefully with a good foundation and love. My daughter is beautiful

(which reminds me I failed to take advantage of the New Year’s Day sale of

her lovely graduation pictures), but she does not realize just how much she

makes me proud. She is also talented, and I fully expect that she will come

around to realizing that her ability to create in pencil, ink and paint could

make her future. She had received an inordinate amount of encouragement

towards education, to which her reaction has been contrary. Still, I cannot

let myself think that she will “not figure it out” and find her niche in this

highly competitive, but talent-loving society.

Likewise, my son James, who has lived a much more challenging life

than Colleen, is also finding his love of knowledge and books. He realizes

that he is underutilized in his un-chosen profession, even though he is very

skilled at what he does. He fights fire for the forest service, which he came to

as a consequence of happenstance. The school of hard knocks, so to speak,

and 10 years of fire fighting has only recently earned him a permanent

seasonal position on the Olympic National Forest. But his supervisors

have used his talent, his ability to work with and lead diverse and sometime

devious personalities. And he is a good teacher. Master Sawyer at age 33,

he wields the power of good training like he wields a 32 inch bar, always

spiced with anecdotes from a life of unsought adventures. I would go into

more details about my rather impressive son, but I reserve for him the right

to tell his own story. And I think someday he will. He certainly has no

trouble maintaining my attention when we have the rare opportunity to

share a starlight evening and a beer. I think he has a similar bard-like effect

on a lot of people he has encountered in his exploits.

I received another phone call this New Year’s Eve. It lasted for 2 hours!

We were waiting to go to the homecoming party of Mae Kaler, a Native

American friend, who had been the daycare giver for my daughter, and,

in my opinion, the person who had the most positive influence on my

daughter’s development. How different my daughter’s life would have been

if her mother had not taken her to Maryland. If, instead, she had let Colleen

grow up in “Mae land” with a circle of friends and a community culture that

has produced a generation of balanced, happy, hopeful young people with

none of the angst of most of this urban generation. Those preschoolers are

now respectively a veterinary professor at Cornell, a dolphin protector, an

architect, a Natural Foods store manager, a US marine/cowboy (paniolo

style), and more good things to come. And at the center of that loving

community was, and still is Mae. I haven’t even mentioned the many

exchange students that she introduced to life in Hawaii. If I think about

my limited sphere of influence on the lives of generations, by comparison,

she is a tidal wave of the Great Spirit.

Still, this pre-party phone call was from the oldest son of my first wife.

Edward was the son of Charity Mshoi and a father whom Ed never knew.

He was not yet a teenager, living with his grandmother, when Charity came

to work for me at the County Council Hotel and Dance Hall in Taita Hills.

I had not been in Taita long when one of the women, who worked at the

hotel, told me that she had a friend that wanted to take English lessons. She

had 5 children and had no job except to help her mother farm their small

plot of land. That land was the legacy of the Kiwinda family. Reverend

Jeremiah Kiwinda was the famous link in this family, because he was the

first African to be ordained to the Anglican priesthood, and had gone on

to become the bishop of his people. Edward was regaling me, in this phone

call, with stories of the family. One story was that Desmond Tutu, as well

as many important Africans from all over the world had come to the funeral

of his 104 year old grandmother. That was all because of the century of

connections between the Kiwinda family and the development of Taita

and Kenya, as a whole. Because the Taita people had influence throughout

Kenya, being early converts to Christianity, they had proven themselves

to be an agreeable and hard-working people who moved into important

positions of government and education during and after independence

from Britain.

What Edward was trying to tell me was this. The daring step that his

mother had taken to fall in love with me, and later follow me to America

and marry me, had itself had a profound impact on Taita. I was thinking

only of the impact on the 5 children and one grandchild that I had somehow

managed to bring to Washington State. He was talking about all the people

in Taita who followed suit. Cousins, acquaintances and sometimes strangers

who knew that uneducated Charity had gone to America; if she could make

it, perhaps others could succeed outside Taita as well. Ed was calling from

the home of a cousin who had followed their lead, came to Washington,

found employment and was even able to buy a house. He was telling me

of Africans who had gone to Europe and Russia, and elsewhere. This was

rather a surprise to me. I have worried a lot about the 5 children and James’

nephew, Teddy (more like James’ brother than his nephew). This is because

after Charity and I broke up, I really wasn’t sure what was happening with

the kids. As it turns out, Ed has done quite well in business, and the next

oldest brother earned an accountant degree and is working at Sylvania Co.

Ed’s nephew, Teddy, had worked for years with Ross, Inc. but has recently

enrolled in that US Army and is posted to Bahrain. His niece has worked

as a missionary teacher in Kenya, but her mother, who was a trained nurse

when she came to America, has left that profession, and married and gave

birth to several more children. Charity’s youngest daughter and her three

children have struggled with the hardships of Hilltop life, as did my own

son, James. Fortunately James has come out of the Afro-American enclave

of Tacoma. In fact, only one of Charity’s sons has not had financial success.

But that son started with a physical disadvantage. When I met Charity he

could not walk. Between his oldest sister’s and my efforts, we managed to

get Sam to a hospital and to a point where he could walk. Nevertheless

he has remained partially disabled. Fortunately, he is apparently a fairly

content individual now. He lives with his mother, and, according to Ed, has

become like the philosopher of the family. I also think the other sons are

also happy that he is there to help Charity (who has never remarried). The

brothers all contribute what they can to supporting Charity and Sam. After

all, this is the African way, and although life in America has strained the

bonds of family, for the most part they have not broken completely. Charity,

of course, remains the main glue that holds them with that mystical power

of Mau (‘mother’ in the language of the Wadawida). That is one thing that

can only be understood by living with the people of Africa.

So I come away, from the conversation with Ed, believing that perhaps

it has all been for the good... or, at least, more good than bad. Speaking to

my daughter again the day after New Year’s, also confirms my sometimes

tenuous belief that, somehow, things may work out for the better. She and

her friend from Wisconsin were enjoying their trips through the museums

of DC, and she sounded happier than she has for some time. I also called

her mother, who confirmed that the Badger seems like a nice guy, although

she also suspects that the friendship is just that. Not a thing to be feared,

but an indication that there is a certain measure of maturity in my daughter

who marches to the beat of her own proverbial drummer.

My son James also called, and made me feel very comfortable about the

New Year. He had spent it with his daughter in the chalet of his firefighter-

brother and his professor wife. James made it sound as though they all

enjoyed themselves, even though my son faces financial difficulties and does

not really have a home in which to lie his head or entertain his daughter. I

guess the whole group went back to visit my granddaughter’s grandmother,

which in itself is a positive sign after the unsettled breakup between James

and Tammy. Yes, perhaps things will work out... perhaps we have a future

in this world. After all, we all have our health, we are all sensible people and

we can weather the storms that are certain to come our way.

I see that I have covered a lot of territory and a lot of years in these few

pages. There is much filling-in to be done. So, I am taking that advice that

I have given my children for so many years, “write it down”. Surprisingly,

Gretchen’s mother and my grandfather were journalists. No, not the type

that work for newspapers. They were journalists in the old fashioned sense

of those who kept a journal all of their lives. I only have a fragment of my

grandfather’s journal, although my aunt and cousins still have his logs that

date back to before the First World War. Gretchen’s mother’s journals go

back to, at least, her teen years and Gretchen does have those. Ironically,

both journals are the most un-emotive and manner-of-factual record of their

two lives. Jana’s entry upon the day of Gretchen’s birth was “Gretchen was

born. She weighed 6 lb. 8 oz.” My grandfather’s journal always contained

the weather and other mundane details, although he would record visits

of and to people and places. The most emotive thing that I could find

in the volumes of his journal (that I possess) is about me. I visited him

just before departing for the Peace Corps. I was hitch hiking with two

Christian acquaintances of mine ... we were headed to California, where I

was planning to visit my mother for the last time before I went to Africa.

Gretchen and I had ended our engagement, and I was getting very involved

with the Pentecostal movement. My grandfather was not a religious man,

but he was not an agnostic or an atheist. He was not inclined to attach

himself to any religion although he generally respected the belief of others.

However, in this instance, he wrote, “I think Mike is on the wrong track”.

He would never have said anything to me, of course, but given all the things

that have happened since, perhaps he should have.

But such disclosiveness was not the way of either my grandfather or

Gretchen’s mother, Jana. In fact, if they might have had time to know each

other, they probably would have liked each other. They were sort of kindred

souls. Both were thoughtful, relatively quiet, slow to judge, but usually

right-on with their judgments. Perhaps Gretchen and I would do well to go

back to their rather dry journals, since they are both deceased.... we might

find out some things we had missed in our youth.. Gretchen says her parents

were both opposed to her first marriage (not to me), but had concluded it

was better not to interfere, lest Gretchen might later blame them. Albeit,

her father did go around before the wedding singing a most telling song

from the musical I Do! I Do! The chorus was, “my daughter is marrying an

idiot! How can she stoop so low?”

My Grandfather liked Gretchen, and it was probably his advice that

brought me out of the seminary, although I am sure he would not have

wanted to be responsible. As he said, “I don’t give advice”. When I asked him

what he thought about my growing affection for Gretchen in my senior year

of high school, he said “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen”.

I find myself delivering such tried-and-true proverbial jewels of wisdom to

my children all the time. Although, at that time, I thought it was pretty

cryptic “non-advice”. I am sure his approval of Gretchen is also why he

wrote that in his journal. I was off course (Gretchen and I had separated by

then). He did not come to my first wedding to Charity, probably because his

second wife, Eva, was in advancing stages of Alzheimer’s disease. However,

he and his last wife, Josephine (we called her Josie), did come to my second

marriage to Mary. He gave no indication of displeasure with Mary, but he

nearly died on the spot. The Unitarian Church we had rented was built

with a one story meeting hall and a sanctuary with a high ceiling that was

shaped like the inside of Noah’s ark. The ceremony was delayed and the

temperature was rising rapidly in the 100+ degree heat of the Central

Valley. The sanctuary was cool, but the windows would not open in the

meeting hall. So everyone was sweltering, and Pat, Mary’s father, himself

an alcoholic of many years, had busted open the many cases of Champagne.

He was pouring glasses liberally. My grandfather had only tasted his first

wine that spring, on the Princess Marguerite cruise to Victoria, Canada,

where Josephine and he were celebrating their honeymoon. Being a jovial

and loveable pair, the captain had insisted that they dine with him at every

supper, and, of course, to refuse the wine would have been impolite. But

this wedding to Mary was no cruise, and there was no water to drink, as

the wedding caterers had not arrived. So my grandfather, in his late 80’s,

in a full suit, was trying to quench his thirst with Champagne, with near

lethal consequences. But being of sturdy lumberjack stock, he managed to

make it through the day.

My mother, on the other hand, was not so quiet, having had a few too

many bubblies at the behest of Mary’s father. She was rather obnoxious;

if not to Mary, certainly to her parents, and particularly to my swarthy

Best Man from Bangalore. When Jairus tried to deliver the toast, she

kept interrupting him. Still, how can you expect to tell a young... well

not so young... couple that they should call the whole thing off, when

20

Lester Fisher

you really don’t approve of this secular wedding to your once-to-be-priest

son? Of course, Fr. Carl, the priest for whom my mother was the rectory

housekeeper, and who had baptized both my mother and me, had the good

sense to stay home that day!

Nevertheless, had it not been for my second marriage, there would not

be a Colleen Malia, born on the Island of Kauai in December of 1991. And

now she is a few months away from graduating from High School, and all

ready to enroll in college. Although her mother moved her away from me

when she was only five, I am probably more attached to her than to any of

my children by birth and marriage. My son and I are becoming closer as he

has matured, but our relationship had to heal the wound of a six year old

child, who believed that he was abandoned by his father. Whereas, in the

case of Colleen, I don’t think she has ever thought that I had abandoned

her. Perhaps as she becomes an adult, she will realize that I have been less

than a pillar of support, but I think she knows that I love her. James, I

believe, has forgiven me for not being there. Actually, I think James has

some appreciation for the effort my second wife, Mary, and I made to bring

him to Davis and expose him to the world of “educated white folk”. He

particularly appreciated the advice and interest of Mary’s professor father,

Pat Purcell. Colleen, on the other hand, always knew that she was wanted

for summers in Hawaii, and it has only been in her late teens that she has

found the concept of summers in Hawaii as an obstacle to her life and

friendships in Maryland.

So that is a passing overview of my life. I think I have mentioned

most of the critically important people in my life. Admittedly, from the

reader’s perspective, at this point, it is like looking at the pieces of a jigsaw

puzzle that was just poured out on the table. As I said at the beginning of

the chapter, happenstance describes my life. I suppose you could say that

about anyone’s life. Even a life as “directed” as our newly elected President

Obama. Had his father not returned to Kenya, had his mother not moved

to Indonesia, had he not applied to Harvard, had he not interned at the law

firm where Michelle Vaughn Robinson worked, would he have become the

President of the United States?

For example, I met a man in Kenya who was catching honeybee swarms

in Taita Hills. He was a retired agriculture extension agent from Colorado

who had been invited by the Near East Foundation to work on a grant in

Mombasa. He turned down the first invitation he received, because his

wife Mary said, “You just retired! Then why would you want to run off to a

foreign country to work?” However, when the Foundation invited him again

one year later, he told his wife, “Mary, we have been married for 40 years,

but I am going to Kenya. You are welcome to come.” And she did, and found

useful work at the Coast Province. He built two rice irrigation schemes on

the Tana River. He also decided that they didn’t have enough honeybees to

pollinate the fruit trees at the Mtwapa Coastal Research Station. That is

why he was catching swarms in Taita Hills. If I had never met him at the

public market in Wundanyi, I probably would have never become interested

in honeybees. As it happened, I began to help the white haired powerhouse

of a man, Floyde Moon, and that led to the development of a course for

beekeepers in Taita. It is also what led to my attending Univ. of California

at Davis, which had been recommended highly by Dr. Gordon Townsend,

Chairman of the Bee Biology Department at the Univ. of Guelf, Canada.

Because of my work with Mr. Moon, I volunteered to help Dr. M. V. Smith

collect pollen samples for the Canadian International Development Agency

(CIDA). Dr. Townsend headed the CIDA project and had sent Dr. Smith

to Kenya to start a beekeeping development project.

I would probably have continued to help the project, but I received

a draft notice from the military and had to leave Kenya. On my journey,

returning from Kenya, I visited Dr. Townsend at Guelf, thinking that I

might be re-enlisting to work for the Peace Corps at the Mtwapa Research

station. When I failed my military induction physical, and tried to reenlist

in the Peace Corps, I was not allowed to return to PC Kenya because the

Nixon administration chopped the Peace Corps budget. So I did pursue apiculture studies at UC Davis, after I worked five months for a bee breeder

in California. Eventually I obtained a master’s degree in International

Agricultural Development. My later employment took me into other

areas of science, although I never got closer to “overseas” than Hawaii.

Unfortunately, I did nothing with honeybees for the next 36 years. Now,

at age 61, I am again working on a government project trying to stop the

spread of varroa mites in the honeybee population of the Island of Hawaii.

The strategy was to kill all the colonies of honeybees within a 5 mile radius

of the spot where mites were first detected. Equally unfortunate, the first

thing that I did on the project was to recommend that they stop using a

micro-encapsulated pesticide to try to bait and kill the honeybee colonies

infested with Varroa mite. As it turned out, my master’s thesis topic was the

digestion of pollen in the intestine of honeybees. This was consequential,

because bees have an organ in their stomach called the proventriculus.

It is basically a valve that moves in and out of the honey crop (the bee’s

stomach) and its function is to move pollen from the crop into the lower

intestine of the bee. Microencapsulated pesticides are about the same size

as small pollen grains, Therefore, instead of being regurgitated at the hive

and passed around the colony, the pesticide was being concentrated in the

bowels of the foraging bees. Of course, the foragers eventually died, but

the poison did not have much impact on the colony itself. My apiculture

training finally came into play thirty-five years later... killing bees. Was it

pure happenstance? Unfortunately, I also discovered the mite infestation in

four hives, outside the eradication zone radius of 5 miles. That may be the

straw that broke the camel’s back. The State Department of Agriculture

decided to stop the eradication program. The opportunity to be the first

people in the United States to stop the spread of Varroa mite disappeared

in a puff of my smoker.

This is the story of my life... one serendipitous or unpropitious twist

after another; to what end I will probably never know until I lie on my

deathbed... if even then?

Author Bio

Born Lester Michael Fisher on Feb. 1 1947, he later took the surname of his step-father, James G. Klungness. His education, after Catholic school and seminary, included a Bachelors in Botany from the Univ. of Washington. After 2 years of Peace Corps as Youth Extension Officer in Taita, Kenya, he began a career with Weyerhaeuser Co., serving in the Wood Morphology and the Genetics Research Divisions. After 5 years, he returned to finish his Master’s degree in International Agricultural Development from Univ. of Cal. Davis. His thesis on honeybee digestion was published in three scientific papers. After 6 years of service in the Dept. of Pomology, he worked for the University of Hawaii for 10 yrs., performing research on fruit fly parasitoids. He then transferred to the US Dept. of Agriculture to pursue research on fruit fly suppression and management for 8 years. He retired back to the Univ. of Hawaii to assist on a program to protect the honey bee industry in Hawaii from invasive species such as the vorroa mite and small hive beetle. Health issues forced him into full retirement in 2010. He had authored or co-authored 21 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and many presentations to scientific and public meetings. He developed microscopic techniques, and invented the augmentorium for disposal of infested fruit and augmentation of parasitoids. The author is married to his high school sweetheart and has a son and a daughter, a step-son, one grandchild, and two step-grandchildren. “I decided to write the book because I am amazed how many twists and turns my very ordinary life has taken during what must be considered an extraordinary period in human history. This was a life which profoundly impacted or begat the lives of three wives, six African children, an Afro-American son, and a Caucasian American daughter. I will always wonder what other impacts I had during a 40 year career in public service.

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