[Second in a series of recollections about living in Blacksburg as a child from 1952 through most of 1954. Part I is here.]
When I was a boy in Blacksburg, the ’50s were just getting underway. During the years I was there, Eisenhower was elected president, the Rosenbergs were executed for espionage, Rock Marciano won the heavyweight championship, and Howdy Doody became a household name.
The NBC (?) station in Roanoke was one of the first local TV stations in the country to start regular broadcasting, and it didn’t take us long to do like the neighbors and get ourselves a set. I watched Howdy Doody fanatically, and sometimes Pinky Lee. His show came on just before the Howdy Doody Show, but everybody hated him because it only meant that Howdy Doody wasn’t on yet, and poor Pinky couldn’t cut it with a puppet. Sometimes on Sunday nights I got to watch Spike Jones. The show was like a combination of the Bowery Boys and the Three Stooges, only with musical instruments. It must have been really funny, because just thinking of it makes me smile. Howdy Doody wasn’t always funny, though, except for Clarabelle, who went on to become Captain Kangaroo. No, Howdy Doody was mostly serious, a soap opera for marionettes. There was usually some nefarious plotting going on or waiting to be discovered, and the underlying dramatic tension and unresolved dilemmas kept me riveted in front of the black and white screen every weekday afternoon.
Oddly, the only commercials I remember were ones with Gabby Hayes (?) for Quaker Puffed Rice (“Shot From GUNS!”). There was this big old cannon that fired and “popped” all the rice, which was where they got the motto. None of that makes any sense at all to my 61-year-old brain, but at the time Puffed Rice (and Wheat) cereals were the only kind to have. Puffed Rice simply disappeared in milk. The only way to eat it was to weight it down with lots of sugar, so that when you dug your spoon in deep, there would still be something there to lift into your mouth. Sugar, mostly, but that was fine.
When I remember Blacksburg though, I think about my father. He probably enjoyed teaching ROTC at V.P.I. (now Virginia Tech). For all the years he spent in the Air Force, he seemed happiest when he was farthest from the military — on a college campus in the Blue Ridge Mountains, say. He still had time to be a person then, and for a while was halfway decent as a father. Halfway, I say. When there was tension in his life, he had nothing for his children. When he was feeling good, there was someone to relate to.
One of the best things he ever did was teach me how to fish. It all happened right there on campus, at a place we called “the duckpond.” I remember the duckpond as a lake in a park-like setting, surrounded by grassy lawns that sloped down to the water. He patiently showed me how to push a worm onto a hook so that part of it was left free to wiggle and attract the fish. I learned the difference between a nibble and a bite, and how to wait until the bobber actually went under before setting the hook. All this instruction was for cane pole and a fixed length of sturdy fishing line. The duckpond — where there were also ducks — was stocked with bluegills, which he also taught me how to clean and even cook. Eventually I think he must have brought me with him when he came to campus and let me go fishing by myself when he was teaching. I do remember spending many hours there alone but happily occupied, and I never completely lost my love of fishing, though I don’t do it any more. (I hate to hurt the fish!)
But this is fascinating to me. Of all the things a father can do by way of teaching a son, he probably did fishing best. I think it was because in this, he was still close enough to his own boyhood to share something that he loved without it being layered over, hidden, and concealed for fear of ridicule or criticism. Forty-some years later, on a visit to the Eastern Shore of Maryland where my wife and I were living, I drove with him past one of the two old houses where he grew up outside of Millington. Looking for a shortcut, he had me go down a long, quiet road through a stretch of woods between the old homestead and the Chester River. As we cruised along, he told me that he used to walk that road almost every summer day to a favorite spot where he’d go fishing all alone.
Jesus, why didn’t he tell me sooner? I hope you’re keeping track of this. Those numbers mean that I was almost 50 years old before my father ever told me anything like that about himself.
Oh, and the “duckpond”? Back in ’75, after I’d moved from Texas to Maine and down to Maryland in a turbulent six months, I had a chance to sell my welded steel sculptures (mostly giant bats and insects) at a craft fair on the campus there in Blacksburg. Being intensely curious, I drove around intuitively and found the second house we lived in 25 years before. I couldn’t believe how small it was, but that was to be expected, and mild compared to what I learned when I went looking for the duckpond. I found it, of course, but it wasn’t a lake. It was hardly even a pond, and I couldn’t imagine that I had ever fished there. The water was soupy green with algae, and there were McDonald’s cartons floating along the bank.
This isn’t how it was! I wanted to shout, but no one would have understood. How strange it is to revisit a scene of such elemental importance in one’s early life and see strangers walking by without a clue. That was over 30 years ago… 30 years since I was last in Blacksburg, 55 years since I carried my bamboo pole and tin can of worms to a tiny little pond to catch bluegills in the sun.
More on Blacksburg soon…
[To be continued]
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Each of us has only the one life. As I get older, memories of it are an endless source of delight – more intensely, strange to say, when the thing remembered was excruciatingly painful at the time. Actually, one of the few benefits of getting older is that you can be a bit detached from but also forgiving of your stupid younger self. In essence most of us still ARE our early selves – but without the pain and with less constant derangement of our ability to function. This is due to the ballast of memory. Unlike us oldsters, no kid ever thinks the bad stuff will pass or dare to dream he might some day remember it with affection. –Is this the way memory works for you, my friend? Or anyone else?
More or less, I guess. But memories seem to have less to do with my identity these days. Perhaps that’s why it’s easier to look at them.
The one life thing doesn’t work with me, though. I mean, there’s more inside than fits. The rest of it must be somewhere.
As A. Einstein said, God does not play dice with the universe. Many a day I have sort of regretted this: the place might have been more cheerful. If that were so, there might have been millions of JHF’s and millions of KJW’s to take in all that manifold experience, and everything would be lovely for all of us, but, like poor doubting Thomas (one of our Lord’s most underrated disciples), I need to feel the wound in order to believe in the resurrection.
well, i’d never be able to say it so well, and my daddy only took me fishing a few times, though i desperately wanted him to teach me (i taught myself), which was probably better anyway. we weren’t so close, but obviously connected.
it took me a few days to realize Va. Tech was formerly V.P.I. he was a grad. in 49. my sister managed the estate, the only thing i wanted was his V.P.I. ring, he was most proud of that ring. which i took out and looked at the other day.
i don’t have a point, you just sparked a memory.