Hey Camden!

You turning10 brought back a flood of memories, including what life was like when I was your age.  Climb into the way-back time machine with me to get a taste of what life was like in 1963 and 1964.

I was born September 21, 1953 in Rochester, NH but grew up in Somersworth, NH.  Here’s a photo of my parents, Rita and Donald. This photo was taken the day they were married (in Berlin, NH) in 1951.  My Mom grew up in Berlin and my Dad in Somersworth.

After living in Peabody, MA and some apartments in Somersorth, my parents bought a house at the end of a dead-end street called “Lord’s Court,” close to downtown, but still off the beaten path.  Somersworth was (and still is, now more than ever) a bare bones blue collar town where it would be hard, maybe impossible, to find one pretty scene to photograph. It was a meat and potatoes place … simple, unassuming, nothing special, and yet my entire universe.

We lived in a duplex, rented out the upstairs and kept the first floor and basement for ourselves.  It was a basic house:  two bedrooms, a kitchen, small living room and one bathroom.  My sister had the biggest bedroom but mine was a hallway between the kitchen and my parent’s bedroom, with barely enough room for a single bed and built in desk.  My parents had to walk through my “bedroom” to get to theirs.  Privacy?  Ha!  That was something I didn’t have growing up.  My bedroom was a hallway.   I finally got my own room when my parents built a new house, but that was 1974 and I was 20. I only lived there one year, then got married.

My elementary school was called “Academie St. Martin” and Catholic.  Every kid was white and most, like me, were from French Canadian descent.  We never had a Hispanic, African American, Latino or Indian student in our school over eight years.  Heck, there probably wasn’t one in the entire city of 10,000.

This is what my school looked like.  Behind it is the church where I did my altar boy thing.

My house was about a half mile to school; I walked there every day, in good weather and bad.  My favorite subjects were reading and history.  I struggled with math.  Religion was a mystery and a bore.  I don’t remember learning much about science or the arts.  In those days they taught the basics, “the three R’s,” as they used to say,  Readin’, Ritin’ & Rithmetic.

Religion was the big thing; we were taught by nuns, who we called “crows,” because of their black and white outfits.  Most of them were crazy scary to me and my classmates.  A few of them were nice, but many couldn’t speak English well (they came from the Quebec region of Canada) and a few were downright mean.  They would resort to mild physical violence, pulling cheeks, slapping wrists with metal rulers and screaming when kids got out of line.

Grammy went to a different school where there also were nuns; she remembers one nun telling a kid who had misbehaved to go under her desk.  He should have run away – but he did what he was told.  The nun spent most of the class kicking him under the desk.

The worst nun I ever had was “Big Bertha.”  I was terrified of her.  When Big Bertha got angry her face turned beet red and eyes bulged out.  Sometimes she’d verbally explode, pushing the words out so fast and hard the spit would fly on my wooden desktop.  Look out!  I was scared to death and that no doubt contributed to my good grades.

This is what the Sisters of the Holy Cross (the nuns who taught me) looked like. Scary huh?  They spoke french, stuffed handkerchiefs up their sleeves and had no use for small talk or making any kid feel better about anything.

I was an altar boy at church.  My job was to help the priest as he said “mass,” which is a celebration of Jesus Christ with prayers and preaching.  Catholics went to mass at the big old church off Green Street called St. Martin’s.  The priest said the mass in Latin, not English, so I never knew what was being said.  MEA CULPA!  Some of the things I had to do included giving the priest oil and wine, ringing the bell and holding the cross.  Before mass, I had to light the incense charcoal with a match, but they were tiny paper matches and I often burned the tips of my fingers. I hated that.  Once the priest added incense to the charcoal, all kinds of smoke would come out and it would stink-up the church!

You’ve heard of Boy Scouts, right?  Well, I was active from an early age, progressing from Cub Scout to Scout to Explorer.  I eventually became a Life Scout which is the second highest achievement level below Eagle Scout.  I went on overnight camping expeditions, participated in winter “Klondike Derbies,” and earned new merit badges.  Every summer I went to a week-long Boy Scout summer camp in Manchester, NH called Camp Carpenter. My biggest achievement was swimming one mile in an open lake and learning how to light a fire with a flint stone.

I was fairly popular at your age, confident and fearless (this changed as I got a little older).  Every day at morning recess, a bunch of us boys would go in the empty car garages behind the school and have boxing matches, usually me against Maurice Houde.  Despite being smaller than “Moe,” I’d beat him every time.  I took no mercy.  We’d always have one or two kids watching out for the nuns to give us a heads up in case they came our way.

I loved boxing because my Dad loved boxing.  He bought me gold gloves at a young age, and one time I gave him a bloody nose.  My Dad couldn’t stand the sight of blood, so he passed out.  Ding, Ding, Ding, Knock-Out!  I thought I was awesome.  I remember staying up late watching boxing matches on TV.  I thought I was a tough guy, but really was just a skinny kid with a big head, big ears and a dose of spunk.  Here’s a photo my Dad took of me when I was a little kid:

My parents both worked at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard so I had to go to my grandmother’s after school. Later on, we had babysitters.  I hated going to the babysitter because they never paid any attention to me and generally weren’t friendly.

One summer we got lucky and had a young,  fun babysitter who stayed with us at our house; my sister and I liked her a lot.  Unfortunately, she didn’t keep the job long.  She filled a metal bucket with water and spun it around and around her head in big loops to demonstrate how water will stay in a bucket through all the motion. My sister Fran and I watched in awe for awhile, but her arms got tired and the bucket – and water – landed on her head!  It was hilarious!  When my parents found out, they fired her.

I loved to ride my red Schwinn bike (with red and white handlebar streamers, a rear metal basket and baseball cards making cool sounds in the wheel spokes).  Ditto for my blue metal scooter which I pushed up and down the steep hills of Somersworth which is nicknamed “the Hilltop City.”

I’d fly on that bike and scooter…  going straight down the steepest hills in town.  It was amazing I never got hurt.  In those days no one wore a helmet.  This is what it looked like:

A favorite haunt was “the Pines,” our town’s biggest park and recreation area.  I’d play with friends on the swings, cross the monkey bars and hit wiffle balls against the giant water tower.  Hitting the ball up at the bottom first row was a single, second row a double, third row a triple, etc.

Highland Street, right off Lord Court, was one of the steepest hills in Somersworth. At the top, it connected with Grand Street which led directly to the Pines.  For 10 years or so, I walked or rode by 31 Grand Street, never meeting,  noticing or bumping into a girl who lived there: Karen St. Laurent.  I finally met her in 1969, in high school.  She became my wife in 1975. And your Grammy.

My parents had no idea where I was most of the time, as it was for most kids in 1963 and 1964.  America was a safer place back then, and parents didn’t worry as much.  It was common for kids (during the summer or on a day off) to leave in the morning after breakfast, come back for lunch and not be seen again until suppertime.

One year I went trick or treating – with a pillow case for candy – walking miles around Somersworth at night with my Mom and Dad at home.  By comparison, when your Dad was the same age, Grammy and I only let him (and Auntie Nicole) ride his bike on the street where we lived (Laurel Lane, Somersworth).  The world had changed that much in a couple decades.

Speaking of suppertime, we always ate at home.  The bad news is that my Mom wasn’t a very good cook!  She’d serve us all kinds of yucky food from dried out lima beans to disgusting blood sausage to smelly turnip. Once in awhile she’d make a pea soup, which was horrible.  Sometimes I’d try to hide my food, like under my mashed potatoes.  If I was bad, they’d make me kneel in the corner by the stove.  It was better than eating blood sausage which tasted even worse than it looked:

I don’t remember our family ever getting takeout, not even a sub or pizza.  I was in High School the first time I ate at Villa Pizza in downtown Somersworth; that pizza tasted like heaven.  My parents went out to dinner once in awhile, but they never brought us.  My Dad would bring a packet of sugar home from each restaurant they visited.  Big deal!  That always made me a little angry.  Later on, when I was older and was dating Grammy, her Mom and Dad took us all kinds of places and always picked up the tab.  I gained 30 pounds between high school and college and couldn’t believe my good fortune. I’d eat two giant cheeseburgers and drink chocolate frappes for dinner, then have a tuna sub as a snack three hours later.

My Dad used to own his own photography business – BEAU STUDIO –  in the 1950’s (before I was born) on High Street.   He had a dark room in the basement of our Lord Street house where he’d “develop” the photographs he took.  In those days cameras all used film – there was no such thing as digital anything.  It was my job to swish the blank photo paper (containing invisible images) in a special chemical bath in a sink until the images revealed themselves.  It was a magical thing; one minute I was staring at a blank sheet of paper… the next minute, a picture slowly started to appear.  That’s where my interest in photography began.

One of the weird fads that swept America in 1963 was the Troll doll.  My sister and I both had trolls – they came with different outfits and hair color.  They were ugly, but cute at the same time. Millions were sold:

I fell in love with music when I was 10, buying my first record in a little store called Kinsman’s on High Street.  My sister Fran was with me.  We’d walk down to Kinsman’s together, buy penny candy and look through a box of 45 rpm records. “45’s” were pressed on black vinyl and were 7 inches in diameter.  There was one song on each side – Side A was always the hit, Side B was an extra song.  Every once in a great while a Side B song became a surprise hit.

My first record was “My Boy Lollipop” by Millie Small.  It became the first reggae hit in America, but in those days I had never heard of reggae.  My sister bought “Chapel of Love” by the Dixie Cups.  I still have those records, and plenty of others.  My Boy Lollipop climbed to #2 on the Billboard charts and Chapel of Love made it to #1.

I owned a little transistor radio, and listened to rock and roll music on radio stations like WRKO in Boston.  FM hadn’t been invented yet, so we listened to AM radio which sounded scratchy and came in lousy most of the time, especially during a storm.  Sometimes I’d put it under my pilllow at night so I could hear the DJ’s talk and play songs. My transistor radio looked something like this:

My favorite song in 1963 was an instrumental hit called “Wipe Out” by the Surfaris.  I used to play the drum beat made famous in that song with my fingers on the side of a desk.  I still do that from time to time!

in February 1964, the Beatles came to America for the first time and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.  “Beatlemania” swept our country and all the kids went crazy for John, Paul, George and Ringo.  My sister and I loved them, collected their bubblegum cards and endlessly played their 45’s.  They were called “the mop tops” because of their long hair – nearly every man and boy in America at that time had crew cuts.  Many parents hated them, including mine, because they were so different and “dangerous.”  The Beatles changed music forever, rocked my world, and remain my favorite musical act.

Music became an important part of my life from those days forward. I couldn’t get enough of it, and still can’t!  I continue to buy music, listen to it daily and still go to rock and roll concerts every year.  I’ve seen nearly 200.  Someday soon I’ll bring you to your first.

Grammy and I brought your Dad to a lot concerts, starting when he was about your age.  His first concert was Bon Jovi, one of the biggest groups of the 1980’s.  A group called Skid Row opened up.  When he was in high school, we saw a TON of concerts together, he and I and sometimes Aunt Nicole.  This was during the 1990’s, the last great decade of rock and roll.   It was the time of “grunge,” with  groups like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Live, Smashing Pumpkins and Green Day.  That’s why he was so excited to take you to your first concert this summer – The Foo Fighters at Fenway Park!  Being together, the three of us, with rock & roll as our “glue” – was a triple generational milestone:

Like you, I was a reader and tackled several books a month.  At school, we got paper flyers every month selling paperback books – similar to what you and your sisters get at your schools.  My parents let me buy a few – hooray!  Picking new books was always a highlight, like having Christmas nine months a year.  My favorite book was:

My Dad built a small log cabin for me.  It fit about four kids and had split logs on the outside and a brown blanket for a front door.  I had fun with that log cabin because of my  passion for cowboys, indians, soldiers and pioneers , and an active imagination.  I loved the French & Indian War, the American Revolution and Civil War.  I’d take my hundreds of little toy “men” and spend hours staging battles.  One of my buddies was Paul Martin, a cousin of mine who lived two hills over on Mt. Vernon Street. When I got a bit older (12, maybe 13), I gave my entire collection of toy men to him, except for one hand painted Indian with a tomahawk.  I kept that figurine on my bookshelf until two years ago when I brought him to my cousin in Philadelphia, completing the cycle of a full and complete gift.  He died earlier this year at the age of 57, so sad.

My favorite war story was The Alamo where Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie fought to their death battling Mexicans in San Antonio, Texas.  I finally got to see the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas a few years ago; it was a lifelong “bucket list” goal of mine. Here’s one of the photos I took:

We had a graveyard right next to our house – it was the oldest cemetery in Somersworth, always scary at night.  There were chestnut trees in that old graveyard, and in the fall, when the nuts fell from the trees – encased in a hard green shell with prickly spines –  we’d have chestnut battles in the cemetery with other kids, throwing them at each other or launching them from slingshots carved from branches. It hurt if you got hit!

(end part one)

(Hey Camden – you’ll probably never read these two blogs because they’re so long… or you may wait a long time before you do.  At any rate, you’ll have your grandfather’s “early days” history – just in case you ever need it.)

Here’s Part 2 of “Papa @ 10 years old.”

By now you’re probably getting a good idea what kind of kid I was at 10 years old.  Looking back now, I see there was a pattern:  lots of interest in many different things, master of none.  I’m still like that today.

Yes, today I love photography and running, but if that’s all I did, I’d be quickly bored.  I never liked doing the same thing over and over again – it was the variety that turned me on.  This doesn’t mean I jumped from one thing to another through a typical day, unable to focus.  That’s not the case.   I may have played in the woods for several days, climbing trees and fighting imaginary battles, but soon it was time to move onto something else.  The next day I might focus on drawing.  As another day dawned, it might feature board games, music listening or basketball. Or playing with my slot car racing set. You get the idea.  Change it up, keep variety in my life.

Winter lasted forever, but I kept busy.  I’d often go skiing with my Mom, Dad and sister.  I learned to ski at the age of five.  My parents liked it, so we went a lot.  (In those days, most parents did what they wanted to do and didn’t care much about what kids wanted. Very different from today).  Fortunately I liked skiing.  I did okay, but wasn’t confident going down steep trails. I’m still the same way.

In those days you went up a ski hill holding onto a rope which pulled you up the hill.  They called it a “rope tow.”  The tricky part was not holding the rope tight when you first grabbed it at the bottom of the hill. If you did, you’d fall flat on your face onto the cold, wet snow.  I must have done that 10 times when I first started.  Just couldn’t figure it out.  It was embarrassing and stressful because people were waiting in line for their turn.  Finally, I learned to  s-l-o-w-l-y grip the rope and gradually tighten down on it. It got real heavy toward the top when it was time to let go.  Skiing was a lot more work back then; today there are high speed chairlifts and little conveyer belts for kids just starting out.

I went skating at the Lion’s Rink in Somersworth, but was the worst skater in the history of 10 year old Somersworth boys.  Possibly America.   I had weak ankles and they’d always flop over and my feet were sideways most of the time. It was really ankle skating, not ice skating.  I stunk.  The part I liked best was listening to the rock and roll music over the outside loudspeakers and going inside for hot chocolate.  I remember listening to the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride” and “We Can Work It Out” one of the best A and B side 45’s ever.

I always enjoyed making snow forts and having snowball fights.  Building tunnels through the snow and having a space inside to call my own was a blast.  I’d do that for hours.

My sister Fran and I would occasionally melt caramel on the stove and pour it over fresh white snow.  The snow instantly hardened the caramel, making it a cold, delightful treat.  Never do that with yellow snow Ben – ha!

Sledding was a big favorite.  My friends and I would link our feet together onto each other’s sleds and make a “snake” that went down the hill by my house, all the way to Kinsman’s.  We were lucky we didn’t get run over on High Street (the Main drag in town) when we occasionally went out that far.   Here’s a photo of me and my sister; I was seven, she was eight. (that’s a play gun, not a real one!)  You can see my sled in the background:

I was never an athlete, but the two sports I liked best were basketball and baseball.  I loved to shoot baskets.  My Dad installed an orange metal rim on a wooden backboard above the garage door.  I’d shoot hoops for hours, often needing to jump over the chain link fence and run down the hill by the big white church before the basketball reached High Street far below.  I wasn’t very good so the ball often bounced off the rim over the fence.

In those days the Boston Celtics were the greatest basketball team of all time. Bill Russell was their center, an incredible defenseman, able to effortlessly block shots.  He had legendary battles against his seven foot rival Wilt Chamberlain (“Wilt the Stilt”) who played for the Philadelphia 76ers.  I watched those games on our black and white TV.

Drawing was a favorite pastime of mine.  I still have some of my sketch books. I took art lessons, learning pastels, pen and ink and oil techniques.

My Mom introduced me to stamp collecting and I did it for several years. I also collected coins, especially buffalo nickels and Indian head pennies. I still have these collections, along with my Mom’s stamp book and mine.

Unlike you, I was never mechanically inclined. One Christmas I got an Erector set which is a box full of metal parts that were connected with screws, washers and bolts. It’s a perfect gift for a kid with a mathematical and engineering mind who imagines something and builds it.  That wasn’t me. I actually tried to connect the holes in the metal parts with string, never understanding the screw, washer, bolt thing.  I was pathetic!

Making models was an exception to the rule. They came with directions (well, so did the Erector set, I just didn’t care about it) and I could figure things out.   My favorites were cars and movie monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  It was cool getting a box of plastic parts, reading the directions, assembling the model by gluing parts together and then painting it.  Here’s an example of a Phantom of the Opera model I made:

I spent many summer hours playing chess and Stratego, a board game I introduced you to.  Mouse Trap was a favorite, as was Monopoly.  I enjoyed reading comic books; my favorite was (and still is) The Incredible Hulk.

I caught bugs in glass jars, made slingshots and swam in our above-ground pool.  I read Mad magazine; it was weird and funny, an unbeatable combination.  They still publish it, thank God.

A cool character called Rat Fink made his debut in 1963.  He was great!  R.F. was a green, depraved-looking creature with bulging, bloodshot eyes, an oversize mouth with yellowed, narrow teeth, and a red T-shirt with yellow “R.F.” on it.  He always drove smoking hot rods.  Years later I learned Rat Fink was created as an anti-hero answer to Mickey Mouse!  I liked to draw Rat Fink and made Rat Fink models.

One of the popular hobbies of the early 60’s was slot car racing.  My Dad built a special table in the basement for my figure eight oval track which fit my 1/32 scale Strombecker cars, similar to the ones seen above.  We set up a lawn and made miniature trees from lichen. The whole set-up was cool and I’d play for hours, often racing against friends.

I always liked going for rides in cars.  We went up North to Berlin, White Lake and Echo Lake for family reunions on my Mom’s side.  Every few years we’d go on long excursions by car to visit my Aunt Fern in states like Indianapolis and New Jersey.  My sister and I played on the floor of the back seat of the car, never wearing seat belts (they hadn’t been invented yet).

The longest ride we ever took was to Florida to visit my Aunt, Uncle and cousins on my Dad’s side.  It was summer and stifling hot… cars didn’t have air conditioning.  I saw a scorpion walk across a driveway and a tarantula crawl up my Aunt’s living room wall.  We never went to Disney World because it didn’t open until 1970 – no such thing!

Several times every summer, we’d pile in the car and drive to Wells Beach in Maine to visit my grandmother, “Memere,” my Dad’s Mom.  She had a cottage there.  Sometimes we’d stay overnight. That’s where I developed my love for the beach and got used to the cold Atlantic.

My favorite vacation was the time we drove to Fort Ticonderoga, the site of many battles during the French & Indian War and Revolutionary War.  I went to see it again a few years ago; it’s the best fort ever, nestled on Lake Champlain on the New York and Vermont state border.  I’d like to take you there someday.

I was terrified of heights and never went on rides like roller coasters or anything that spun around. Bumper cars were about it.  Even when my friends went on these rides (at Canobie Lake Park), I’d stay behind by myself.  I was often sick in the big metal garbage cans, despite my holding back.  Gross, but true. I had a queasy stomach.  I overcame this fear of  rides when I was in my twenties.

One thing that never made sense is how I’d get queasy at Canobie Lake Park but didn’t have a problem being around vomit.  In elementary school, the nuns came to get me whenever a kid puked in a classroom, on the staircases or hallways.  I’d get a bucket and mop and clean the mess up.  It stunk, but it never bothered me.  I was “little boy vomit cleaner.”  It was a “free pass” to get out of class for a little while!  This served me well later in life when I was a young Dad.  One time when your Aunt Nicole was three, she woke us up crying at night.  I rushed up to get her, dressed only in my underwear.  As I brought her downstairs, she vomited all over me.  Not a problem!

My Dad liked movies and took us to a lot of them, including Drive-In movies in the summer and to Boston where I’d see adventure movies like “How the West Was Won” and “The Longest Day” in the super-curved-widescreen “Cinerama” format.

Some of my favorite TV shows at your age were The Beverly Hillbillies (a funny show about country “hicks” who became millionaires and moved to California), Bonanza (a western), the Flintstones (the first cartoon to air at night in “prime time”) and Mister Ed, (a talking horse).

My heroes Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone had TV shows about them.  Davy Crockett’s theme song (which opened the show) was “Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!”  Daniel Boone’s was “Daniel Boone was a man, yes a BIG man.”  I had a coonskin cap and a leather fringe jacket.  Sad, but true.

In 1963, John F. Kennedy was President of the United States.  He was the youngest president in our history and the first Catholic.  “JFK” was a special man with a great smile, sense of humor, keen intellect and a vision for making America better – including giving equal rights to “negroes” as African Americans were called then.  I remember watching him on TV, being impressed by his speaking ability and magnetism.  He made everyone feel better.

On November 22 that year, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.  Our country was in shock.  No one expected someone so special, so young, so inspiring to be murdered in cold blood as his convertible drove through Dealey Plaza.  His funeral was on TV – millions watched around the world – and I was one of them.  I remember lying in bed at night, crying my eyes out.  In my 59 years on earth, the two saddest news events for me were JFK’s assassination and the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center.

Five years later, JFK’s brother Robert was assassinated when he ran for President.  That was the same year Martin Luther King (MLK) was assassinated.  It was a dark, troubling, confusing time for America, with no answers.

As you learned in school, 2013 marked the 50th anniversary of MLK’s famous “I have a dream” speech.  That was August, 1963, one month before I turned 10.  It’s so gratifying seeing the progress we’ve made over half a century.  MLK is now one of our most famous American icons, and with Barack Obama we have our first African American President.  What a transformation.

Here’s a photo I took this year of the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Thankfully, you’ll never experience dark days of bigotry.  You’re growing up in a better America, at a time when people are more tolerant, kind and open-minded.  I couldn’t ask for more.  Believe in yourself Camden, follow your own path, and don’t let the turkeys get you down, no matter what they say or do.  Remember to help others and make a difference along the way.

I hope you write stories for your grandchildren, telling them what makes you tick, including what life was like when you were 10.  Keep the tradition going, you’re a good story teller Camden!