Falling to Earth Read online

  My father’s electrical work earned the family a little money, and he enjoyed his machines and the slow, careful work of repairing. A bit of a dreamer, he had lots of ideas that he wanted to develop. He even designed and built a tape recorder and player long before they were commercially available, but because he tinkered away by himself, nothing ever came of it.

  Before I was born, Dad had helped to install the projectors and sound system in Jackson’s big movie theater downtown. While he worked as the projectionist, my parents lived in an apartment over the theater. This was the kind of life he enjoyed: studying electronics and taking exams. After he spooled up a projection reel, he had a precious half hour of undisturbed study time before he needed to change it over. But then came the Depression. People in Jackson gave up luxuries like movies. To my father’s despair, the movie theater shut down for many years, forcing him back into farming.

  My father didn’t ask too much of us kids. He would discipline me on occasion, but it wasn’t his nature. My mother was the strict one. She ran the family, while Dad worked in town. Short and dark-haired, she was a loving, supportive parent. Yet she could also be sharp edged, sharp tongued, and demanding. This wasn’t a bad thing. She had high expectations and she pushed us kids hard. When her dark eyes fixed on me, I immediately thought about what I might have done wrong.

  Considering her tough upbringing, I could hardly blame her. She was a farm girl, reared in the country with no modern amenities. She grew up a hardy pioneer. The Depression was just another kick in the teeth. No matter how much her life improved after that time, she always thought, dressed, and acted the same. Her hair was tied back or cut short, her clothes practical, and she met the world head on. Life is hard, she would tell us—it takes a lot of work to get someplace in life, and you kids will start right now.

  My mother was working in Jackson as a secretary when she met my father. I’m told my father was kind of a dandy. He strutted around in white suits and changed his shirt about three times a day. Why that pretty young woman chose him, I’ll never understand. I do know my mother thought she could change him into a hardworking farmer, pitching hay ten hours a day. That never happened because he never stopped being a city guy.

  When the movie theater reopened at long last and my father had steady paid work again, he gave his paycheck right to my mother. She took care of all the money. That arrangement worked well; otherwise he’d fritter it away on electronic playthings. She, on the other hand, squeezed every penny until it was paper, and we did very well by it.

  She’d frequently be annoyed when Dad wouldn’t do farm work and other chores. But he just breezed through it in his easygoing way and rarely lost his temper. Over time, however, the nitpicking would wear at him until he’d had enough, so about once a year he’d blow sky high. That blowup would end the nitpicking for six months or so. They never seemed like a particularly romantic couple; their marriage felt more like a business arrangement. But then again, those six kids had to come from somewhere.

  My sisters, Carolyn (left) and Sally, sit on each side of me around 1934, sheltered by our father.

  Every summer, whether my father liked it or not, the family would leave Jackson and go to live with our grandparents and work on their farm. Using the stones that once littered his fields, Grandpa had built a farmhouse. Without electricity, they relied on kerosene lanterns. For fresh water, they dug their own well and also captured rainwater. Vegetables were stored in their hand-dug root cellar. They truly lived off the land. And on a winter’s night when we were visiting, I had to think very hard—picturing the deep snowdrifts outside—about how badly I needed to visit the outhouse.

  The grandkids’ bedroom, summer and winter, was the attic. Our beds were tucked under the eaves, and the heat from the house furnace would rise up to us, cozy under piles of blankets. On stormy evenings we would drift asleep to the sound of rain on the metal roof, and awake in the mornings to the clatter of my grandmother lighting a fire in the wood-burning stove and, soon, the delicious aroma of baking bread.

  Grandpa Fred grew corn, oats, hay, and wheat, but those crops were mostly to feed the animals. He earned a little money growing potatoes, beans, and cucumbers, but basically he took care of his cows, and the cows took care of him. Most of the cash came from selling cream to a local dairy. I would ride with him in his ancient Chevrolet coupe when he needed to take his produce to town, and he would shut off the engine to coast down the last hill into town to save gas. Finances were that tight.

  He saved more money by fixing everything himself. Grandpa had his own little blacksmith’s forge in a separate shed down by his barn. If he needed a new implement, or to replace steel rims on his horse-drawn mower, he’d crank up the fire and make it himself.

  He used that mower to cut hay; all the work was done by animal power or by hand. As the horses pulled the mower, the wheels turned a gear and moved blades that cut the grass. I loved to help him, and frequently did it on my own. After we’d cut the grass, we’d hitch the horses to a large hay rake and pull the rake across the field again, time after time, shaping the hay into long parallel lines called windrows. Then it was time to go back down the lines with a pitchfork, making bigger piles. Finally, while the horses slowly pulled, we’d use the pitchforks to shovel the hay up into a wagon.

  The backbreaking work wasn’t done yet. Every time the wagon was full, the horses would amble back to the barn. There, we’d use a large, spiked hay fork on a block-and-tackle pulley to lift clumps of hay up to the top. The worst job of the day was to be up in the top of the stifling hot barn, moving the hay to form a level pile. I often had that chore. We worked through the process time after time, until the field was cleared. Hard work, but cheap—the only cost was food and water for the horses, and for us.

  At harvesttime in August, we would quit all other work and pick cherries at other farms for two or three weeks straight. As a kid, it took forever to fill the huge wooden boxes, called lugs, but we’d get ten cents for each one. We picked mostly sour cherries, used to make jam and pies, so we weren’t tempted to eat too many of them. Most were picked by itinerant workers, who traveled from farm to farm, and they made us look like amateurs; they could pick ten times faster than we ever could. Still, ten cents a lug, it was money we needed.

  When we weren’t with my grandparents, we lived on our own tiny ten-acre farm along a steep dirt road at the top of a hill, just outside Jackson. The house was small, flat topped, and I suspect it was constructed as a garage for a home that was never built, then converted into a living space. We were half a mile from the nearest paved road. We had electricity and an oil-fired furnace to stay warm, but I don’t remember a telephone. We drew much of our water from a well.

  The countryside was dotted with hundreds of little lakes; I was never far from water. In the summertime, we could go boating and swimming. In the winter, there was ice-skating and ice fishing. The pastimes changed with the very distinct seasons. It could be miserably hot in the summertime and numbingly cold in the winter.

  As a little kid, I had a lot of freedom. I’d walk down to the nearby railroad track and watch the steam trains go by. I’d look for deer in the woods. During the winter, the dirt road froze solid, and I’d love to slide down to the bottom or down another hillside into a frozen marsh. I did my own thing, followed my own interests, and didn’t rely on others. I wasn’t socially awkward. In fact, I was popular. Yet I never really needed anyone else. From an early age, I could look after myself, and I knew it.

  I used to go off with the older kids on adventures, even when I was small. I remember a neighbor kid named Walter who was like a big brother to me, and on weekends in the winter we’d walk his muskrat trapline. He had a line of traps fifteen miles long, and yet we waded through deep snow to check them all, and earned a little money selling the hides.

  Best of all, I would head alone for the rope swing hanging from a huge oak tree on the side of our hill. I could swing out fifty feet over the edge of that slope. The fee
ling of flying through the air, and the brief moment of weightlessness at the end, was exhilarating.

  When I was eight years old, we moved into town for about three years before returning to the country again, where my parents found another farm less than a mile from where we had lived before. It was a much bigger, nicer house with two stories, five bedrooms, and a screened-in porch. The house needed some repairs, so we set to work remodeling. And my father finally had a basement, where he could hide away and tinker with his ham radio.

  Everything in that house happened around the big dining table in the kitchen. I don’t even remember going into the living room, which was the formal room for visiting guests. We were outdoors all day long, so when we came home it was to eat. Anytime I was at home, my mother was bustling around in the kitchen, and the house smelled of wonderful meals being prepared. When my sisters were old enough, they started helping her in the kitchen as well as watching over the younger kids and squeezing newly washed clothes through the rollers of a mangle.

  Dinner was at six o’clock. With eight people to feed, my mother needed to keep a regular time. If our farm chores weren’t finished by suppertime, we went out again after eating and worked until they were done. Even my father, who worked unusual hours because of the movie theater, would be there whenever he could. He always worked holidays, because it was the theater’s busiest time, but he made sure to spend time with his kids somewhere in the day.

  Sometimes there were more than eight at the kitchen table. My parents didn’t have many friends over—other than for their monthly Pedro card game—but there were always other kids around our farm. Our house was big, open, and friendly: everyone was welcome. It didn’t make a difference who you were. If my friends were over, and it was mealtime, they joined in.

  My mother was good at making food last. Many Sundays we’d kill a chicken and eat it for dinner, but that kind of meal was a luxury. Otherwise, we passed a large bowl around the table and ate whatever we were given. If we didn’t like whatever it was, tough luck, we would go hungry. If it was the first time we’d ever seen a certain food, such as the fresh Canadian oysters my father loved, he’d gently insist that we give it a try at least once. If we were reluctant, his gentle tone became a little firmer.

  After we cleaned up the kitchen, it was time to study, or go to bed. We didn’t have a TV. We had a radio, but I was more interested in building my own crystal set radio than I ever was in listening to it. I loved to read, too, and devoured all the adventure books I could get my hands on.

  During the day, I was at school, beginning in a one-room country school at the bottom of the hill, close to our farm. There was only one other student my age, Betty, but I didn’t hang out with her much. I absorbed a lot of learning from the older kids. There were thirty-five students in that room, all different ages. The teacher was strict, quick to use a paddle and banish one of us to the corner. The parents were completely behind her; most of us earned another whack when word of misbehaving reached home.

  America declared war on Japan when I was nine years old. I was in my father’s movie theater when the news broke, and the mood was grim. Yet the conflict didn’t seem to affect a remote place like Jackson much, at least for a young kid. My father was too old to serve, and all I recall is the gas rationing for our tractor. But Walter, my close friend who laid the muskrat traplines, did join the navy, along with others I knew, and served on a destroyer. Something happened to him in the war—I never knew what—but he returned from the war strangely quiet and withdrawn.

  I grew up fast. From the age of twelve, in addition to attending school, I basically ran the farm myself. I was the oldest son, but it wasn’t a family expectation. No one asked me to. I just did it.

  We had ten acres, and I could easily have left it at that. Owned a couple of cows, let them graze, bought some hay for them in the winter—it would have been easy. But I imagined bigger things. I was assertive, and all the pieces soon fell into place. I grew the farm inventory until we had four cows, some goats, chickens, and ducks. I worked out a deal with the farmer next door to lease ten more acres, which I planted with corn. Then I negotiated a deal with another farmer up the hill who had an open twenty-acre field he was doing nothing with. I used the acreage to grow and cut hay, then bale it and bring it back to the farm. Goat milk was in demand back then. It is rich, doesn’t trigger the same kind of allergies as cow’s milk, and doctors recommended it to pregnant women. I didn’t make much money selling it, but every dollar helped. We soon bought a tractor, which became my favorite ride, although I had to hand-crank the engine to get it started.

  I loved all of our animals, but I didn’t get attached to them. I learned at an early age that you can be as friendly as you like with animals, but you had to know that cute calf with big brown eyes would end up on your dinner plate some day. My grandfather, the softest soul I knew, adored his animals, but when it was time to butcher one, he did it himself. The only animal I grew close to was my farm dog, Tippy. He was a mutt—mostly German shepherd, we guessed—and he followed me everywhere. The animals didn’t mind him, and I did all the farm work with him padding along at my side.

  I loved to work alone out in the fields. It was a great kind of freedom. Nobody bothered me, and my family was happy because I stayed busy. What else could they ask me to do? I was already doing it. I loved being by myself, plowing a field, planting corn, cutting and baling hay, and looking after the animals. I would focus completely on making an absolutely straight furrow when plowing, and the rest of the world shrank away.

  Springtime was my favorite time of year, when the snow finally melted and the days grew warmer. I would make some sandwiches, head out into the forest, find a tree to sit under, and just enjoy feeling completely disconnected from everything and everyone. No one knew where I was or could bother me, and I was as isolated from other people as if I had been on the other side of the moon.

  Despite the heat, I loved the summers. I would work on the farm all day, and nearly every night our family would pile into a car, head to a favorite lake, and swim. Those nighttime swims after a long, hot day of work were magical.

  It was not unusual for me to work ten hours a day in the hot summer sun. One day I was carrying hay into a barn, and I passed out. I learned that if I didn’t keep myself well hydrated my blood pressure fell dangerously low. From then on I always took a gallon jug of farmer’s lemonade with me when I went out to the fields. It was a special kind with salt added, sold door to door by traveling sales folk. I never fainted again.

  Farming occupied most of my time out of school, but I knew my mother expected me to aspire to more. She knew the life and she knew its limits. Unable to go to college herself, she created opportunities for her kids that she had lacked when growing up. First, she enrolled us all in tap-dancing classes, which I took for about a year. After that I began piano lessons. To pay for these extras, my mother had to take in neighbors’ laundry, but it was worth it to her to broaden our horizons.

  My piano lessons were hellish. My teacher was strict and would really crack the whip and push me, but I stuck with those lessons for almost a decade. I stayed with them because it helped me feel closer to my Grandpa Fred. He was musical and played the fiddle at monthly potluck dinners and dances at his local meeting hall. I learned how to square dance to the music he played and absorbed a huge amount of musical knowledge just being around him.

  After a while, I could perform a range of classical music well and played at school functions. But I also performed in a local band, and our music was very different. In that part of Michigan, more than half the people were of Polish descent. The Polish-American club in town had their own hall, and every weekend they held a dance. In the tenth grade, a friend of mine who performed there in a polka band asked me to substitute for another piano player. I think I was the only member who wasn’t Polish. Soon, our farmhouse walls were frequently shaken by the sound of our practicing group.

  We played at these dances all the time an
d performed all night long. There were five of us in the band—all in high school, all good buddies—and over time we became pretty good. We wrote music, played on a radio station down in Toledo, Ohio, a couple of times, and even recorded a song, called Chew Gum Polka. We were once hired to go to Flint, Michigan, for a huge Polish wedding and played around the clock. Polish weddings were three-day affairs. We had a good time, and it put a little money in my pocket. At that time, I thought I might earn a living as a jazz pianist. If you’d have told me I’d soon be flying airplanes instead, I wouldn’t have believed you.

  My first memory of airplanes comes from when I was about four years old. One day, a twin-engine aircraft from a little nearby airport had an engine problem and made an emergency landing in the pasture below our house. It hit a fence and skidded to a stop in the grass right next to the railroad track. They had a hell of a job hauling that airplane out of the field, and I remember running down to watch them in wonder. The experience made quite an impression on me. Yet I never thought about aircraft again until I was at West Point.

  Similarly, although I ended up in a career that required engineering skill, I don’t think my father’s work as an electrician steered me in that direction. When I was a kid, I never understood the work he did.

  I never spent time with my father while he repaired things in his little shop in town, but I did spend a lot of time with him when he ran the movie projection machine. “The Michigan,” as it was called, was one of the most impressive theaters I have ever seen. It looked more like a Spanish church than a movie theater and was a wonderfully atmospheric place. Built in a baroque style, with ornate plasterwork, marble and walnut paneling, it had a hydraulic lift by the stage that elevated a guy playing the organ back in the days when movies had no sound.