My Life - Chapter One

Chapter One - Death Before Life

The long, tree-lined highway leading into the small farming town is so straight that you can see almost to the Canadian boarder -- some 20 miles beyond. As you approach the intersection leading to town is the Pioneer Cemetery on your right and mirrored on the other side is the Dutch Cemetery.
The Dutch Cemetery was always neater and tidier than the "white" cemetery. It was odd growing up in Lynden. Long before I knew of race tensions between blacks and whites, I knew of the tensions between the Dutch and "us".
When we moved about a hundred miles south to the milltown of Everett, I found myself in a fight one day with the neighbor kids. In a fit of anger and frustration, I called them the worst name I could.
Shortly thereafter, the other kid’s parents paid a visit to my parents to say they didn’t like me swearing at their kids. "And by the way, what did Greg mean when he said ‘you’re a damn Dutchman’?"
The Dutch in Lynden were more than descendants of immigrants from Holland. They were members of the Dutch Reformed Church. They didn’t drink or swear. Something particularly odd in a farming town. They kept some of their language and would talk in Dutch when us "whites" were around. They even had their own school system. That was another oddity. In a tiny little town, there were two school systems. One public. One private and Christian. Both were filled with big, athletic farm boys. It was common to have the two high schools face each other in state athletic play-offs.
My dad owned one of two taverns in this town. He knew the secrets about which Dutchmen came in for a beer or two.
In a strange circle of life, I became a father for the first time at the age of 42, the same age of my father when I was born.
My early recollections of my family mostly involved death and that cemetery entering Lynden. Most of my relatives were dead and buried in that cemetery. My mom was devoted to placing flowers on their graves. She would take me along for her duty. I remember how unique it was to use an old hand-pump to get water at the cemetery for the flower jars. Mom would show me different graves and explain the family relationship of each. Rather than being bounced on the knees of living relatives as a child, I was shown the final resting place in the Lynden Cemetery. Later I would bury first my father, then my mother in this place.

Chapter 2 -- Kindergarten

Chapter 2 – Kindergarten

Last night I lay in bed with my 3-year-old daughter. It was our usual nighttime ritual. I tried to get her to open the secrets of what she thought and saw during the day. She almost never tells. Meanwhile, she prods me to recall my childhood.
This night she wanted to know about my entrance to kindergarten. Now that my son was about to enter kindergarten, Catie wanted to know more about it. Both she and her brother had been in what I considered one of the areas best pre-schools since they were infants.
When I told Catie that I hadn’t gone to pre-school, she was incredulous. My kindergarten teacher was my first teacher. At 3, Catie has already known the love, direction, and instruction of a half dozen caring teachers.
For me, my pre-school years were spent at home, mostly alone. Dad worked, mom was there. My brother was ten years older than I was.
We moved from Lynden when I was four, so I know that memories of Lynden are the early years. I don’t remember much.
One of the more pleasant memories I have of that time involves picking flowers for my mom. I guess it was May Day. Mom must have told me about it. I remember taking a wooden box with a handle out to the yard to pick flowers. At that age, I didn’t appreciate property lines and my mom reacted with a small degree of alarm when I returned with several flowers from the neighbor’s yard.
After we moved, I prepared for kindergarten. The first few weeks went well enough. However, my teacher, Miss Baker, told mom she didn’t like boys – they were harder to teach than girls. She also wasn’t happy with the school board’s ruling that teachers could no longer take pencils out of the hands of left handed kids and move then to the right hand – as had long been the practice. I remember during "scissors instruction" Miss Baker held up a pair of scissors and said, "Here is how you hold scissors safely, except for Greg – who holds them backwards." I knew I was different, but it seemed different in a bad way.
Miss Baker told us about Eskimos and their sled dogs. She told us that the smartest dog was the lead dog. It was a memorable story. Each week, one student would be selected to take the milk money collected from students up to the school office. This was my week. I was proud of the duty. I headed up to the second floor and only then realized – I hadn’t been to the office before. Plus, being five years old, I couldn’t read any of the signs. I was frozen with this dilemma. Little Greg holding on to the bag of milk money and not sure what to do. Then I saw Debbie Fisher. She went to my church. "Debbie, could you help me find the office." Debbie was happy to show me the way.
Upon returning to the kindergarten room, I was excited to tell Miss Baker that I faced a problem and solved it – using relationships. Miss Baker looked at me and said, "well it doesn’t sound like you would be a ver good lead sled dog." I felt bad. Like somehow I had done something wrong.

Chapter 2 - I fall in love with my 1st grade teacher

Chapter 2 – In love with my first grade teacher

When I was five years old, my mom and most of her friends were in their mid-40s or older. My kindergarten teacher was an old bat. When I walked into my first grade room, I fell in love. Here was Mrs. Martinis. She was cute. She was young – younger than any professional or frankly, any other woman in my life. She smiled at me. She was affirming. She talked in warm tones to me. She was beauty and nurture wrapped into one.
Mrs. Martinis became pregnant that year. I watched her body grow wonderfully rounder and fuller. And then she was gone. And then she was back.
Near the end of my first grade year, I was playing with Steve Hogland in my bedroom. We were tossing beanbags at the ceiling. The light fixture broke and a chard of glass fell on my face and cut it.
It was painful. I remember the doctor sticking a needle into my wound.
There remains a scar to this day.
At the time, I was more concerned about my last day of school.
I showed up with a huge bandage across my face.
It was embarrassing.
To make it the worst possible day – Mrs. Martinis was saying goodbye to the class for the last time.
She said, before saying goodbye, she wanted everyone to kiss her goodbye – on the lips.
Such was the innocence of those pre-bodily fluid-concerned days.
I was flushed with passion and excitement.
Today was the day I would kiss her on the mouth!
But then my heart fell.
I remembered the bandage.
As I approached her, she smiled.
And said – here, try here – and pointed to the side of her face.
I pushed my little lips out as far as I could to reach beyond the bandage.
It was a frustrating moment.

Medford/Ashland

On my 25th birthday, I celebrated with my brother, his wife Kitsie and my beloved "aunt" Adaline and her husband Kernie in Portland.
The next day, I moved to Ashland.
I had vacationed there earlier in the summer and fell in love with it.
I moved there with no job and not knowing anyone there.

After a few months, I got my first paid job in radio, KMED.
Then, after 2 years, I moved to another radio station, KBOY.
On the local TV station, a friend and my former morning DJ Jim was doing a noon show called Meridian. His co-host was Ann Curry.
One day I visited Jim at the station -- and stuck around to talk with Ann.
I think I called her later that week with some lame invite -- but she said she was busy.
The next week, Ann called me.
She was eating a carrot and said bluntly into the phone, "so what's the deal with you anyway?"
I figured the carrot eating was an effort to appear like she was still busy (eating) and barely had enough time to talk.
I could see through it -- she was curious about me.
After all, I was short, skinny, had a mustache and didn't dress very well.
So I told her I was interested in taking her out.
We went to the Applegate River.
Hung out, drank some beer.
And then I pulled out of my bag a diving mask and pair of flippers.
I put them on and went into the river.
It was cold and I didn't swim well -- so I spent less than 5 minutes there.
Much later -- Ann told me she thought I must really be into diving since I came so prepared.
But she was puzzled -- and thought I was a little odd -- when I only spent a few minutes in the water.

We became close friends. Ann was promoted to the newsroom as a reporter. I remember her first day as an anchor. It was a Saturday. Normally, the Saturday anchor had to gather all the news, film themselves and deliver the news. No one had cameramen.
I went along that first day to help and film her.
The newscast went fine.
And that was the start of an amazing career.

I remember one time Ann invited me to join her father and her father's folk dancing class in Ashland's Lithia Park. I wince at that memory. I was so shy and insecure about my ability to dance -- I pulled away when Ann's dad sought to bring me in.
That's something I've learned over the years -- how to push myself out of my comfort zone.

I recall when I got news of my father's death.
I sought out Ann. She was with our friend Mary. Mary had another friend there. I remember Ann explaining to the new person, "Greg's father just died -- but he is a strong person."

I remember where I was when JFK was shot

I was in sixth grade. We were coming down the south stairs at Everett's Washington Grade School. About three steps down the landing, Mr. Stivala, the 5th grade teacher was coming up with his class.
"The President has been shot," he said.
We returned to our room.
My teacher, Mr. Cardle, was beloved by his class for his humor. Today was the first time I saw him quiet.
We all sat quiet, not sure how to act.
Mr. Cardle took a black strip of paper and taped it to the flag. This, I was told, how you treated a flag that couldn't be lowered to half staff.
We stayed in school until the normal ending time.
I remember at recess seeing girls from the junior high school coming home early -- crying.
Was crying the more adult thing to do.
Was this worse than I knew.
How could a young man be dead?
What would happen to us.

I went home and mom asked, have you heard?
Like the entire nation, we grieved in front of the TV.
We were watching as Lyndon Johnson landed in DC.
He walked up to the microphones.
He had a huge nose and big dog-like ears.
When he spoke, he spoke with a thick southern drawl.
"Ihhhhhhh, aaaahhssk fur God's help and yurs."

My mother looked at our newly sworn in president and said aloud, "God help us."

Puberty

WWF and my kids and my childhood

To my kids: about those WWF action figures
Reflections on an ad for toys in the Sunday paper

OK, so let me get this part out in the open from the start. I got into this parenting thing later in the game than most of my friends.
My first child was born when I was 41 and a second came along less than two years later.
So, now my kids are 5 and 6 and look at commercials and advertisements for toys the same way I did as a kid.
I understand the passion, the all-consuming lust of a toy that appears in a well-designed ad.
“Daddy, can I have that right now?!!!”
And then the magic of our ancestors fills my mouth. I sound like my parents.
“Is that what you want for Christmas?” I ask in the hopes this toy will be long-forgotten by then.
But my children are either smarter (likely) or more sophisticated (certainly) than I was as a child. For me, such a question as a child put me into a ponderous mood and it quelled the need for immediate gratification as I weighed the various options of what the perfect Christmas gift should be.
Not my children.
“No Daddy, not for Christmas – right now I said.”
The battle between the marketers and the parents begins anew for yet another generation.

I try to remember that the world has changed since I was a child. I try not to be the old-fogies that I viewed my parents when they saw mass merchandising thinly veiled as cultural icons. When I was a kid, I wanted spy stuff. The cold war was at its height. James Bond was getting cool techno gizmos from Q to fight the bad guys. My parents didn’t get it.
When I am a parent, I thought, I will understand my children and the world they live in.
Which brings us to Sunday’s newspaper.
There – looking much more inviting than the gray newsprint surrounding it – were the inserts. You know what I mean. The eight or ten page inserts of colorful images of consumer goods being offered by the major retailers.
Thumbing through one of the inserts, I stopped on the toy page.
I wanted to know what we being marketed to my kids this year.
Sure, I was ready for the blood and gore of the video games. Our kids weren’t into that anyway – thankfully. Yes, there was that kid-size Barbie car that the little girl down the street has. (“No, honey, we are not buying one of those.”)
But there it was.
I stopped and stared.
World Wrestling Federation Action Toys.
Yes, I know wresting is a big deal for some (Heck, I pause for a few seconds on wrestling shows as I surf through the rarified air of the upper cable channels.)
What caught my eye and my heart was the action figure in the middle of the ring with a folding chair raised above his head.
Hmmmm.
Now what is the message for our kids in this one?
Let’s get this action figure and toss a chair at someone?
It left me with an uneasy feeling.
Sure, my mom went through a phase when I was a kid where she enjoyed watching Northwest Wrestling on TV.
We even went to a few wrestling events.
In my vanilla town in northwest Washington State (where cultural diversity was being Norwegian and having a Swede for a friend), wrestling actually was a venue for my first cross-cultural heroes.
There was an “Arab” with a long beard who was one of the good guys. I liked his strength and virtue and willingness to hop into the ring to help another good guy if one of the bad guys was cheating.
I remember asking him for his autograph as he wiped a quart of sweat off his brow and signed his name in a wonderful swirl that I remember to this day.
And there was Pago Pago, the first Samoan I ever meet.
He was kind and fair and often got beat up. I admired his courage in the face of bad guys.
I asked mom if wrestling was fake and she would smile and say, “what do you think?”
It seemed theatrical but I really couldn’t figure out what was real and what wasn’t.
Did it influence me to see the bad guys cheat and have two of them beat up one good guy in the ring?
Yes and no.
It did influence me.
I still remember Pago Pago playing by the rules. His courage and refusal to be one of the bad guys is still a memory and to some extent, a role model for us all.
I guess the difference is that we did not celebrate the anti-hero. Our hearts were with the good guys.
Tough Tony Bourne was a favorite. He was sometimes a good guy who sometimes broke the rules. Perhaps he was the transitional hero. Like Dirty Harry. Our heroes would never be without the struggle of the dark side.
I remind my wife that as kids my friends and I played with pretend guns (sometimes even sticks) and imagine we were in war. But the reason we were doing it (to the extent that there was a reason beyond fun) was to win for the good guy. This was before ambiguous wars. This was post-World War II when US soldiers fought for unambiguous virtue. By carrying a pretend gun, we were protecting our country, our mothers, and Superman.
When he stepped into a ring, Pago Pago was fighting by the rules, even in the face of bad guys who didn’t.
But an action figure who picks up a chair? I worry that his message is that uncontrolled rage under the banner of alleged athletic competition is something to be celebrated in an action figure – and worse, in human behavior.
Then, I put down the paper and look at my son. “Have you thought about what you would like for your birthday this year?” I ask.
He grins and says, “a rocket,” and then returns to his fantasy play with Legos.
I pause and relax knowing that the moral questions of a birthday gift have eluded me, for now at least.
###

My parenthood is rooted in my childhood

Here I am. Little Greg with my big brother.

Notably -- with my brother, rather than my father.

It's hard to explain my relationship to my father.