IN WHICH I INTRODUCE MYSELF AND MY FAMILY,
TALK ABOUT MY FIRST TEN YEARS,
AND SHED A LITTLE LIGHT ON THE STORK STORY
***
I'm going to be telling you a story about me, so it seems appropriate to formally introduce myself and my family. My name is Daniel Cleveland Alden. I was born in 1940 in Oakland, California, the son of Charles Alden and Patricia Cleveland. I have a sister, Abigail (Abbie), who was also born in Oakland a year and a half before me. Our parents were not born in Oakland, but they are both California natives. None of our grandparents are.
Like most early childhoods, I don't remember much from the first few years. I have some "memories," but I suspect that they are stories told me so often that I just eventually claimed them as my own. Abbie, being a little older than me, may have some real early memories of her own. I don't know.
We were both "war babies," Abbie being born well into what came to be known as World War Two, but before America had officially entered the fray in Europe. A year after I was born, Japan made their surprise (and horrendous) attack on Pearl Harbor, and suddenly we were full-fledged members of the Allied forces fighting against the Nazis in Europe, and against the Japanese in the Pacific.
Our upheavals and deprivations were minor, of course, compared to what our contemporaries across the Atlantic suffered, and in America we children were never in actual physical danger. Nevertheless, the years 194l thru 1945 took their toll on us, in confusion and disruption. When we were older, Abbie and I compared our remembrances of those years, and the main thing both of us recalled was that we didn't have any parents during that time. Oh, Mom and Dad were in Oakland, and were regularly in and out of our house, but their war work so completely filled their days that they barely had time to bestow a kiss or a hug on one of us. There were few meals eaten together at the kitchen table, there were no bedtimes stories read by parents; those and "tucking in" duties were performed by grandparents. In truth, for those years, Grandma and Grandpa Alden were our parents.
Dad was a meteorologist - a weatherman - for the U. S. Weather Bureau. He wasn't like one of those young women on the evening news, who stand in front of a chart and explain storm fronts, jet streams and weather anomalies. He was the one in the back room poring over maps, charts, photos, previous data, etc., to come up with the predictions that get covered on the news.
Being a meteorologist was the reason that Dad was in the United States, and not carrying a rifle somewhere in Europe. It may not come immediately to mind how important the weather is when planning and fighting wars. Were the skies clear enough for planes (ours or the enemies) to fly? How many miles was a convoy likely to advance with the weather and road conditions what they were? Would dense fog, snow, heavy rain, or strong winds impede our travel or that of our adversaries? Few people knew it for years after the event, but the famous D-Day invasion of Normandy had to be delayed for two days because people like Dad predicted extremely bad weather, and seas too rough for the planned landing of troops.
Mom was equally busy with war work. Even before the U. S. declared war, Mom was working long hours with the Red Cross, preparing bandages and medical supplies to send to treat the injured at the Front. She was also our neighborhood air raid warden, which involved patrolling the streets at night, making sure blackout curtains were in place, and no lights shone from the houses that might be spotted by enemy planes. She also gave plane-spotting instruction, teaching civilians how to distinguish American planes from others that might be German. (You might think that being on the west coast of America, and far from the European Theatre, such precautions weren't necessary. However, German submarines were spotted off the Pacific shores on several occasions, as were aircraft that might have been hostile. Late in the War, Japan established themselves on the Aleutian Islands, from which it would have been a pretty easy trip for Japanese bombers to make their way along the Alaskan coast to Seattle or Portland. Happily, nothing like that happened before the war ended.)
There haven't been any more world wars since the 1940s, but life is always full of various confusions and disruptions, and Abbie and I remained aware of our own conclusions about our "war baby" life. In raising our own kids, we always remained aware of how important it was to keep them constantly assured that they were valued and cherished.
By 1946, our lives had stabilized to the point that Abbie and I could start attending school. Two years later, we were gone from California forever (well, except for a few short vacations).
***
Our leaving California was because of Dad's occupation. As the weather services were reorganizing following the war year confusions, Dad was offered a promotion to a senior meteorologist position in Boston, Massachusetts. An increase in pay and a chance to be involved in higher level research were good incentives to move, but there were other considerations. Mom and Dad were Californians. They'd never lived anywhere else, and they liked it just fine. There were enough weather and climate issues in the Pacific States to keep Dad occupied and happy his whole career. Did they really want to move?
Of course, I was too young to know anything about what they were thinking. From later events, I get the feeling that both parents were restless after the strains of the previous five or six years, and really needed some kind of a change. A move 3,500 miles to a place they'd never been before would certainly qualify as a "change!"
I think what eventually made the decision to move fairly easy was Dad's growing fascination with the amazing variation in weather and climate in the northeastern states. This relatively small area was affected all year by winds sweeping from the Arctic down over Maritime Canada. "Nor'easters" - wild storms generated in the Atlantic Ocean - could bring major wind, rain, and temperature changes. Massive "lake effect" blizzards generated over the Great Lakes could pile up amazing amounts of snow across northern New York, while turbulent conditions in the Midwest could bring excessive heat, humidity, thunderstorms and occasional tornadoes to the area in spring and summer. Finally, hurricanes generated in the fall near the southern Atlantic states and in the Gulf of Mexico could sometimes still pack torrential rains and damaging winds before they died out over New England or eastern Canada. Such a potpourri of weather events proved irresistible.
A move that at first glance looked difficult proved otherwise. Dad's new boss would have a furnished rental house ready for us to move into, and a rental car for as long as we wanted it. Our Oakland home was actually owned by Grandpa and Grandma Cleveland, so we didn't have to clear our things out of it, or get it ready to sell. We could take with us only what we thought we'd need in the first month or so, then the grandparents would ship whatever we wanted whenever we wanted it.
Abbie and I didn't get to vote on the move, of course, but Mom and Dad made sure we understood all that was understandable. Obviously, we liked our home, but our real attachment was to Dad and Mom, not the place. It had been hard to play with other kids during the war years, and we hadn't been in school long enough to form any strong new attachments. Abbie got a little upset (so did I) when she realized that our grandparents wouldn't be coming with us, but they assured us they would visit regularly. (They did pretty well, all things considered.)
Within just a couple of weeks of Dad's accepting the job, we were at the Oakland train station, saying good bye to grandparents, before the train sped us east into the nighttime darkness.
***
I remember the train trip as being a lot of fun for Abbie and me. It wasn't crowded until we reached some of the bigger cities in the Midwest, so we allowed to wander the aisles just as much we wanted. When we weren't wandering, we had books to read. The chairs were quite comfortable; in fact, they reclined enough that a lot people (particularly those traveling shorter distances) slept in them rather than paying for beds. Mom thought a good night's sleep was important on our longer trip, so we each got our own funny little bunk, with a curtain in front of it.
Among the first people we talked to were a very lovey-dovey couple, who were on their way to Reno to get married. Nevada marriage rules were more liberal than California's. Their trip didn't end up at the altar, however. Abbie and I were asleep when the train stopped in Reno, but Mom reported to us what happened. As the couple left the train, they walked right into the grasp of the girl's father, accompanied by a large policeman. The young man protested that they were legal in Nevada, but the girl's dad was apparently operating on California rules. He bundled her off, apparently for a return trip to the Golden State. Mom didn't know what happened to the prospective groom.
Someone else we met was a young man, presentable enough but with holes in his jeans, and no apparent belongings but an old guitar. He may have boarded the train at Reno, because I think we would have seen him if he'd been present before then. He sat by himself all day, occasionally looking at the passing scenery, but mostly just strumming quietly on his guitar. When we got to know him, he would play and sing especially for us - "songs like Blue-tailed Fly," "Jimmy Crack Corn," and "Down in the Valley, Valley so Low." One song he sang that I'd never heard before was Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." I loved it. I didn't know anything about many of the places he mentioned, but it just seemed to me a portent of things to come, when he talked about going "from California to the New York islands" - pretty much what we were doing, right then. I must have nearly worn him out, requesting the song over and over again, but he never seemed to mind.
He got off the train at an almost deserted station in Nebraska. I've always maintained the impression that getting off there wasn't part of any plan of his, and maybe getting on at Reno was also arbitrary. He was just wandering. We missed him after he was gone.
***
When we finally reached Boston, Dad's new boss and his wife were waiting for us. They drove with us north out of the city for about a half-hour to a smaller community, Andover, stopping on the way at a nice roadside diner for lunch. (I don't remember all these details, but Abbie did.) "You don't want to have to worry about supper the first thing you get home," the boss's wife observed.
Being as close to Boston as we were, Andover wasn't quite the New England village we've all seen on calendars, but parts of it were pretty close. Dad's boss drove us into an area of wide streets lined with giant maples and other shade trees. The houses we passed were obviously old, but were very well cared for. When we pulled into the driveway of one of these homes (behind what turned out to be our rental car), I'm sure none of us could believe that this was home. When we went inside, and Mom found that the refrigerator had been stocked with everything we could possibly need for a few days, she cried and hugged the other woman. Any feelings of anxiety about the trip, or getting settled, were being dispelled at an amazing rate. When our greeters and rescuers left, we all just collapsed on various beds and chairs for the next several hours.
(I don't want to get too far ahead in my story, but just let me say that we loved that rental house from the very first day. We loved it so much that, a couple of years later, Dad and Mom bought it, and it became our lifelong home. They lived there until they died, and now Abbie and her clan hold the fort.)
***
To his pleasure, and great relief, Dad found that there were half a dozen ways to easily get from Andover to Boston on public transportation. I don't think in all the years we lived there, he ever once drove a car into the city.
Doing things from home wasn't quite that simple, but wasn't terrible. It's just that, to preserve those neighborhoods that look like they were just lifted off a calendar, you can't clutter them up with supermarkets, drug stores, doctors' offices, schools, etc. These amenities were all nearby, but not close enough that you could walk to everywhere you wanted to get, particularly if you had to lug home a couple bags of groceries. The rental car was a definite asset.
Our first car chore was to get Abbie and me registered for school, the fall term beginning in just another week. That turned out to be quite easy, and we learned that we had door-to-door bus service between home and school. Next, we found a grocery store, and spent a small fortune (but had a lot of fun) adding to our refrigerator supplies all the other things one needs to feed a family - bread, peanut butter, cereal, pasta, tomato sauce, etc., etc., etc. We got home poorer, tired, and happy, and didn't do anything important the rest of the day. When Dad got home from work, Mom confessed that their wallet was empty, but that there was a pretty good meal cooking on the stove.
As the days passed, we came to realize that we were a whole family, maybe for the first time. Our "parents" were really our parents, not loving and devoted grandparent stand-ins. (We demoted our grandparents back to their original status, but that didn't mean we loved or treasured them any less.) Dad was home almost every night, and always on the weekends. Mom flitted around town, learning everything and deciding how she wanted to spend her time, but she was always home when we were home. We had meals together at the kitchen table. We told each other all about what we'd done that day. We made plans, played games, laughed and giggled (a lot of giggling). Sometimes - although we were officially too old for bedtime stories - Dad or Mom would read a little to us, or (more often) just sit on the edge of our beds, and talk. There were still real "tuckings in." We were finding out that we were amazingly happy.
Probably the biggest lesson Abbie and I learned that first year was about seasons. Much of California, we learned, didn't have the traditional four seasons. In the San Francisco Bay area, where we had lived, you could barely claim even two. From about May to October, it was very dry, usually sunny, and only moderately hot. The rest of the year was a little cooler, a little wetter, and a little grayer. Thunderstorms were rare, we didn't have any tornadoes or hurricanes, and neither of us had ever seen snow. (We'd barely seen frost on the lawns!)
When we arrived in Massachusetts, it was unpleasantly hot and humid. That particular summer was fairly dry, but sometimes storms out of the Midwest or the remnants of hurricanes could make the season pretty wet. Thankfully, summer didn't last long, and was gradually replaced by somewhat cooler temperatures, considerably lower humidity, and the glorious autumn leaves that we all have seen - and been astonished by - in "National Geographic" and in the movies. (You really have to live there to understand just how amazing a New England autumn is!) Winter comes gradually with bare trees, gray skies, cold, and some snow (but not a lot, most winters, in Boston). Winter seems to last longer than the other seasons (at least, for me it does), but spring gradually pushes through with crocuses and daffodils in the gardens, leaves appearing on trees, and bluer skies.
The first winter was very hard on me. I didn't like the bare trees, the gray skies, and the quietness. Although we didn't get a lot of snow that winter, I didn't like the feel of it under my feet. Worst of all is that I was always cold, No matter how many shirts, sweaters, and coats I put on, I couldn't seem to get rid of the chill.
Abbie, on the other hand, took to winter like the proverbial water off a duck's back. Oh, I'm not sure she liked the cold, but she loved the frozen ponds. Within an hour of seeing her first one, this girl who had never even been on roller skates, was skimming across the surface on the blades of her ice skates like she'd been born on them. That first winter went better for her than for me.
(My feelings about winter changed completely in later years. Once I tried ice skater, there was no stopping me. I got so good that, by my junior and senior years in high school, I was a starter on our Varsity ice hockey team.)
***
School went fine for both Abbie and me. Once we learned that 2 + 2 = 4 on both coasts, and that most words were spelled the same (although I didn't think the locals always pronounced them correctly), school just became school. Well, except for one thing. Our first teachers introduced us to the class as newly-arrived Californians.
Why would they do that? I'm not sure - and of course it wasn't something that I was analyzing when I was nine years old - but I think it was just a well-meaning gesture to include us in the group. Actually, I've come to believe it does more to separate and alienate than it does to bring together. Kids like novelty, but they like it as something curious to experience and talk about. When they're looking for real friends, they are looking for similarities, not differences - for comfort, probably the way many adults select a church. I think (and I admit I'm no psychologist) that, although I made a lot of good friends during my school years, there was always just a little bit of distance caused by that early emphasis on our different beginnings.
The problem for me, as a 9-year old, is that I was subjected to a continuous barrage of questions, some of which a lifelong Californian probably couldn't answer: what was Death Valley like? Were redwood trees really as tall as they looked on calendars? What did it feel like to be on top of a 14,000 foot mountain? (Mt. Whitney, at 14,495 feet, was the tallest mountain in the United States, outside of Alaska.)
The obvious, honest answer to almost all of those kinds of questions was that I didn't know, but that just made me feel stupid. I decided to retaliate with the most outlandish stories I could come up with. (They were probably more satisfying to my listeners than the real facts would have been, anyway.) I couldn't think of anything to say about redwood trees but yes, they really were that tall. Just the name of Death Valley opened up all kinds of possibilities. I usually settled for something like, being there in the daytime was as safe as being in Andover, but that nobody who got stranded there between dusk and dawn was ever heard from, again. However, I think my greatest triumph came in my description of the slopes of Mt. Whitney strewn with generations of bodies of climbers (there was no way to bury them) who hadn't taken enough oxygen with them to sustain life at those elevations. (That one even gave me the shivers!)
References to my California origins lessened during middle years, but surfaced again when in high school. Every teenage boy wanted to know if California girls were as beautiful and "friendly" (easy) as legend depicted them. Never having seen a teenage California girl, it would have been difficult to report anything. I couldn't even give the guys the details they really want; first, because I didn't know any those kinds of details, and second, I didn't want to besmirch the reputation of any girl, real or imagined. This made some of the guys mad at me, because they felt I was purposely withholding vital information from them. What could I do?
All this business ended at high school graduation because, in college or out in the world, nobody knew or cared who came from where. However, there was one last jab at me that, in some ways, was one of the worst of all. I've mentioned that I became a good enough ice skater to play on the varsity ice hockey team. In my Senior year, our team went all the way to the championship, playing for the Massachusetts state trophy. The game was rough and tough and close - as a good final game should be. Almost at the final bell, I put together a brilliant shot with a great deal of luck, and scored the winning point. The headline in both the school and local newspapers read: "California boy wins trophy for the Pilgrims" (our team name).
I guess all sports news (maybe, all news) needs a hero or a villain. I probably would have objected to being singled out - even if California hadn't been mentioned - because it made it sound like that one shot "won the game." What won the trophy was several years of increasingly great teamwork. My objection went farther, however, because it made it seem (to me, anyway) that the Pilgrims had to call outside help (me) to pull off the victory.
I should say that I never heard any of my team members - or anybody else - complain about the headline. We won, and that was all that mattered to them. How it was reported seemed to be my problem, only. I should also say something about Abbie's reaction to all this California business, but she didn't seem to have any. I don't know if girls didn't ask the same questions that boys did, or if Abbie was just in her usual "water off a duck's back" mode. In any event, I seemed to be the sensitive one in the family.
I've probably spent way too much time on this, but I did want to mention one other thing that makes the whole situation even sillier. If you know your New England colonial history, you will probably recognize our family names (Dad's Alden, and Mom's Cleveland) as among those first European settlers who arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630s. We can positively trace both Dad's and Mom's back through thirteen generations of Massachusetts pioneers, and all of them continued to live and die in New England until the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Then, several families - including those of our Alden and Cleveland grandparents - came west, and arrived in California just in time to produce the first Californians on the family tree, Dad and Mom. Now, with over 250 years of living in New England, and less than 50 in California, it may be that Abbie and I have more claim of New England Yankees than did some of our Massachusetts schoolmates!
Well, enough of this foolishness. Let's get on with the story.
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