Chevy Chase 1961

When asked where I grew up, having been raised in a Navy family, I have fewer places to note than many, “Navy Juniors.” Chevy Chase, Maryland comes up last on my list. My year in Chevy Chase began while playing on the front lawn in Southern California. I was seven years old. My mother, Lethe, came out and proclaimed to me, “Your father has orders.”  Being concrete (still!) and a child of an officer, I dutifully responded, “What does he want me to do?”  I was rewarded with a smile that only a mother can give, and was told that she was referring to official Navy orders and we were moving to Washington DC.

My as-yet undeveloped mind was primed for experience and the next year would allow for dramatic growth and parenting done with a very long rope (as in with which to hang oneself). We began with a cross country trip with a first destination, Yuma Arizona. Being a fan of the Westerns on TV in the 1950’s I was thrilled by the desert and the notion that we would be going West. It took a few months to sort out that by living on the coast, I had been West but nonetheless,Interstate 8 and then 10 would take us to Wagon Train Country.  For years, I would proclaim my favorite city in the world as Yuma. There, I learned to jump head first into a swimming pool, experienced my first desert heat, and learned that I could finish a dinner that included mashed potatoes (remember, this was at a hotel in 1960 and they likely came out of a box)) if gravy was put on it. That meant dessert in the desert.

The trip cross country was perfect. We would get up at sunrise, eat cereal out of the boxes and fall asleep in the back seat—not a seat belt to be found. We experienced New Mexico and Texas before a two night stop in New Orleans. The routine was absolutely wonderful because typically by 2PM, we were checked into a motel and in the pool. New Orleans was no exception though I did see Bourbon Street and General Jackson’s statue. My father, a native  Iowan hated Southern Culture which was segregated in those days. His muttering and anger were experienced daily as we made our way through the deep South and then lastly, into the Smokeys for a last day (at a mountain resort I fantasized to be the Greenbriar for years) before coming to our new home.

The house that was to become home was where  Thornapple street and Maple Street intersect in Chevy Chase. The house—a typical two story brick house, was a little cramped but had a basement, a novelty, and my eyes lit up seeing sleds for the winter stored there. My brother and I had our beds up in the uninsulated attic. I don’t remember the heat troubling my sleep but during the day as I acquired new friends, I came to appreciate the advantages of living on the coast of Southern California. The heat and humidity of a Maryland summer has to be felt to be understood. On the other hand, I developed a love, still retained, for housing set in a forest. The smell of Eastern Forests in the Spring and summer will always be with me. Within days of moving in, we had a cadre of friends, mostly my brother’s age but in time, I too developed friendships with people in my school class that lived within walking and biking distances.

For the undeveloped mind, I made an advanced observation: people could be identified by archetypes. As I got to know my classmates in third grade, I was astounded at how appearances matched behavior of old acquaintances from Southern California. I would mix up the names!  My elementary school had a good reputation and was segregated. The Cold war was in the news, and Sputnik undoubtedly had something to do with focus in the classroom that year as did the centennial of the Civil War. A hundred years after Fort Sumter, and recess found us boys squaring off as Yanks and Rebs, occasionally with a pushing match. I identified as a Yankee.

I was behind in third grade especially regarding reading. With my brother in junior high, I was introduced to a number of subjects as he learned them and I channeled his love of reading and geography. We had a number of Landmark books which often had a historical theme and it was in Chevy Chase that I first learned and read about the conquest of Mexico and the French and Indian War. In fact, part of my education that year was my brother teaching me to shoplift--books. He made me his unwilling but passive accomplice when he put a new book while in a bookstore in the torn lining of my winter coat.

I love my brother and he was central to my development, having as much if not more influence over me in the day to day compared to that of my parents. They put controls in place but he guided me. Despite my mother being an “at home” mom, it was expected that after school, we would be outside playing with friends. On weekends, after chores were done, a quick verbal plan for the day was identified to my mother who accepted what I said at face value. Whether with my brother or friends, we explored widely on bikes, walking train tracks, and touching on parks (what I thought was Rock Creek Park would prove to be a very exclusive golf course).

Moral development formally was taught in church—in Southern California --but not continued in Chevy Chase—and around the dinner table where my father, a Captain in the Navy ran a and tight ship. If only he knew! My informal education came from my brother who was in fact something of a Juvenile Delinquent which in Chevy Chase was not to be confused with that parodied in West Side Story which opened around this time. He knew the talk though, the weapons, and the attitude. I watched and learned.  We practiced knife fights with combs. With my friends, I came to swear like a sailor. School offered lessons: there were Reb and Yank fights to sort by teachers with attendant lessons on behavior as well as prods to do better in the classroom. I was the last student in my class to have my name taped to my desk with my cursive handwriting on display as it was and remains, poor. I came to have a love of folk dancing which for some reason, we practice all through the year.

The other practice was off-line. My brother taught me the finer aspects of building model ships, and how to conjure an alibi about how the ship was obtained in the case of it having been stolen. . I served him and not myself in this regard. He taught me to plan and think about “alibi’s.”  I am an intelligent person; with his blessing this sort of activity, my mind proved creative working the presentation of the world to my parents so as to be acceptable while giving me freedom.  I did not pursue a life of crime and would not shoplift on my own until mid adolescence and then, only to get it out of my system. I knew it was wrong and got no satisfaction doing it and so, stopped.

The freedom of learning about alibis and likely stories led to friends walking and biking with me far and wide. I explored forests, picking berries, searching for salamanders and crawfish while crossing innumerable city highways and busy streets. My parents had no clue. What they knew was my school work was improving. And it was! I developed a serious interest in the Smithsonian which the school class visited on one occasion in the school year. My brother and I would bike to it one long weekend, 16 miles round trip on busy roads. The Fort McHenry flag and the huge elephant are forever etched in memory and remembered when visiting the Smithsonian 40 years later.

My brother was my partner in crime sometimes and I was his partner on a paper route though not a full partner. More education: The Washington Star competed with the Washington Post. It was an evening paper and my brother secured a route near our home. I paired up to deliver the papers on foot and sled (depending on the winter weather) and helped with collections at the end of each month. Chip made between $25 and $30 a month depending on sales and my portion was $2.95 which initially seemed like a fortune given a monthly allowance of $1. After the snows of that winter (JFK was inaugurated in January of 1961 and if you watch his speech, you will know that it was a cold and snowy winter that year), I came to sense that I was being taken for granted if not taken advantage of. I took my case to my parents who rightfully, told me to negotiate with my brother. That got me nowhere. I never went on strike. We never shared a business relationship again. But that route was forever etched in my brain. In 1978, traveling with Kernie and using a AAA map, I got us to Thornapple street and within three blocks, put the map away. I was on the old route and could take it from there.

There were tensions in our household. My brother’s behavior and grades were a subject of concern to both parents. They had different parenting styles.  While there was conflict, there were moments. My parents were long-time Democrats of the FDR vintage. Military comportment back in 1960 was one that allowed for no politicking publicly. My brother and I found some Nixon - Lodge bumper stickers and put them on the family car. My father was unaware of them until at work and he gave us a nod, looking forcefully at my brother. “Nice one! Now get it off.”  They used really strong glue on bumper stickers, back in the day; it took hours to get it off completely.

My education was not complete: Safeway sold a set of encyclopedias for children. Each month found the next volume published. My parents, excited at my interest in reading bought these and a life-long habit of randomly opening an encyclopedia to read on any resulting topic became a life-long habit. My brother introduced me to religious controversies; Jackie Kennedy had a miscarriage/premature delivery and the baby lived a short time before dying. I was told that under the Catholic Church, that child would forever be in purgatory for never having been baptized. I was scandalized and took this to my mother who did not actually know if that was dogma or not. But the ensuing conversation found me learning that no Christian denomination finds space in heaven for our pets! My path to agnosticism lay before me for this dramatic moment in my introduction to organized religion.

Chevy Chase proved to be like my Southern California beach town. It was populated by white people.  My one visit to the Smithsonian in a school bus found us lined up two by two waiting for direction from the teacher when the bus next to us, filled with inner city black kids (Junior High) spilled out chaotically and I witnessed two girls going at it with intent to maim. I had never seen people fight with the intent of actually hurting the other person—ever.  So this piece of my education, which would be reinforced after my dad’s next orders, was to remind me that I lived in a sheltered pleasant environment with trusting people, and it wasn’t always so, much less to be relied upon, “out there.”

By fourth grade, I had the world by the tail buttressed by some confidence and a lot of naivete. I would leave Chevy Chase with some regret but first, a long train ride, just my brother and me, to visit a Connecticut Grandmother for a week before traveling to South America where my journey towards independence would proceed.