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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