I have recently read a very interesting book with which I first became acquainted through reviews in the NY Times and the NY Review of Books – Robert J. Gordon’s “The Rise and Fall of American Growth: the US Standard of Living Since the Civil War”.

Mr. Gordon’s book is a fascinating mixture of economics and history which describes in great detail through prose, numbers and graphs the growth of the economy and the corresponding improvement in the standard of living in mainly what he calls the “special century” from 1870 to 1970. The main point of the book is to demonstrate that the improvement in the standard of living since the Civil War until about 1970 was huge and, despite our faith in continued progress through the benefits of technology, neither can nor will ever happen again. Gordon names “five great inventions” of this particular century – electricity, urban sanitation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine and modern communication – any one of which, he asserts, had a far greater impact on our standard of living than the recent IT revolution.

Professor Gordon sketches for us what life was like right after the civil war and compares this to life in 1970. By that year homes had central heating, electric lighting, toilets and electrical appliances to assist with household chores. We had automobiles, paved roads and telephones and performed our work in comfortable environments. We dressed in clothing that we bought from stores and ate fresh or well preserved food from supermarkets. If you could take people living then back to 1870, they would find city streets knee deep in horse manure, extensive travel very difficult or almost impossible, homes dark and cold. If you were a man you did backbreaking manual labor for a living; if a woman, you worked dawn to dusk washing clothes with a washboard in water you carried and cooked over a wood or coal stove. You had no fruit or vegetables in the winter and the meat and milk you bought could be bad. Your children were often ill or died of disease because there were no medicines to make them well. You carried in water to be heated for bathing in a tub. Your bathroom was a cold outhouse or a chamber pots emptied outside into the streets or fields. The contrast between 1870 and 1970 was quite stark, almost black and white, in terms of how people lived.

In reading this fascinating book and its descriptions of what life was like before the “five great inventions”, I couldn’t help but think of my parents and grandparents and what they experienced growing up. My Dad and Mom were both born in 1915, pretty much right in the middle of this “special century”, both into large farming families – Dad one of six children in Missouri and Colorado and Mom one of seven in North Dakota. I certainly wish Dad and Mom were alive today so that I could develop a more complete picture of what their lives were like as children and through them, what their parents’ lives had been like growing up.

Ralph and Ida Friedly wedding day, both  21

I remember my father telling us children that he walked three miles to school every day when he was young. I’d like to know – on what kind of roads? Did anyone have automobiles or were his neighbors limited to horses and carriages? I do know that as a boy on the farm in Versailles, Missouri, he plowed fields and planted and cultivated crops with teams of horses or mules. Also I remember visiting the Missouri farm as a child and, looking back, I don’t remember the house having bathrooms. There was a primitive outhouse with an old Sears catalogue hanging on the wall from which you could rip a few pages to clean yourself up. Instead of a bath or shower, you cleaned up with a sponge bath in a protected area of the kitchen.

Audra Frances (Arnold) 15 and Conrad Adam Friedly 26 in 1913

I wonder when my father’s family got electricity and how they lived without it when he was a child. I presume kerosene lamps provided the light and a wood cooking stove or a pot bellied stove provided some heat in the wintertime. And I presume that one’s body on top of and beneath a featherbed, with the bodies of brothers and sisters close by, was enough to keep warm in the unheated bedrooms of that day.

My grandfather, Conrad Adam Friedly, lost his farm in Versailles, Missouri in 1927 and moved the family to a farm on the plains of Colorado, east of Denver where the family tried again to make a go of it. I know little of these circumstances – if the farm in Missouri was lost, what means did the family have to buy a farm in Colorado? Or did they rent the farm or just work on a farm? My grandfather later moved back to Missouri with what remained of his family to the farm he used to own. How and when did that happen?

Friedly family circa 1926 Dad second from right

More to the point and considering the book I read which raised all the questions, what was life like for them in Missouri, then Colorado, then Missouri again? Professor Gordon stresses that even while cities and towns across the country were making progress with electric lighting, bathrooms, sewage and running water, farms, especially in the rural south, lagged far behind the rest of the country. Looking at my father’s situation, I would have to assume that outhouses, carrying cooking and cleaning water, bathing in the kitchen, kerosene lamps, wood or coal stoves for cooking and heating were exactly what he had in his youth.

Dad at Belleview, Pillar of Fire church,  15 or so

Gordon points out that there were differences between rural areas and suburban/city areas in how quickly these modern conveniences were provided. I would have liked to compare Dad’s primitive, hard-scrabble farm life in Missouri, which indeed was the south, to Mom’s prairie farming life in North Dakota, on the northern plains when they were both little children in the 1920’s. What do they remember about how their houses were heated, about bathing? Going to the bathroom? Running water? When did their families obtain their first tractor and put the mules and horses out to pasture? When did each family obtain their first automobile? How were their crops harvested? What were their dietary staples and how was most of their food preserved? I do remember Dad talking about butchering hogs and hams hanging in the smokehouse. And I know that farm families at that time “canned” food in the summer for consumption in the winter, filling and sealing mason jars, then “cooking” the sealed jars in huge pots of boiling water on top of a wood stove. Wait a minute, there was no wood on the treeless prairie plains of North Dakota. What was the fuel they used for heating and cooking?

Four generations 1941: Standing Dad, Mom and Dad’s parents, Audra and Conrad; seated George and Ida Arnold, Fred and Donnie Friedly with Barbara, 3 years old.

What was school like for Mom and Dad when they were children? What memorable teachers did they have? Did they obtain their respective love of reading and desire for learning from them or from their parents? Mom’s parents were not educated but nevertheless obviously instilled a love of learning in their children. I know Uncle Arnold had a college degree and of course Uncle Emil, and finally Mom. Who else?

Nels and Anna Baxstrom, Mom’s parents

I would love to ask the same questions of my father, were he still alive today. What do you remember of your teachers when you were a child? Does any one remain in your mind as a special inspiration? I suspect that Dad would claim that his love of learning began when, as a youth of 14, he left his family home and cast his lot with the Pillar of Fire church. And I know that Dad would eagerly tell me about one teacher in his Pillar of Fire experience as a high school student who inspired him – Agnes Kubitz, whom I remember too as a gentle, soft spoken, dignified, white haired teacher. I believe that she may have still been teaching at Zarephath when our sister Barbara was in high school.

Gordon makes a point of describing how clothing was sewn by hand in many families. Did both my Dad’s and Mom’s families have to purchase cloth from local stores and then sew their own clothing? Mom was an accomplished seamstress, perhaps this is why. When exactly did they begin to buy ready made clothing from department stores or from mail order catalogs? I certainly wish Mom and Dad were alive so that I could better understand this and so many other aspects of their childhoods and through that knowledge better understand them and  myself.

Baxstrom family circa 1928, Ida (mom) second from left

I miss my parents for other reasons as well. Charles Ralph Friedly, my father, and Ida Marie Baxstrom, my mother, were not perfect people by any means. As noted in my article about him, Dad was rarely home when I was little. He fled family responsibilities by being busy teaching school in the Pillar of Fire Church’s Alma Preparatory School, or taking taking courses at Alma White College, both at nearby Zarephath. As noted in that article, Dad also pursued several part time vocations – such as serving as the community barber, with his faithful Oster hair clipper at hand, by serving as pastor at other nearby Pillar of Fire churches, like the one in Brooklyn, New York and by farming and selling his produce. But Dad had an awesome intellect that I never properly appreciated, my perception being clouded by my bitterness and resentment caused by his frequent absences. I wish he were here now so I could get his take on for example, today’s Republican Party. Even though a faithful member and supporter of the Republican Party (he even attended the 1952 Republican Convention in Chicago), I would fancy that Dad had a great deal of sympathy for the less fortunate and for the common working man. What would he think of the Republican Party today compared to that of his day, exemplified by these provisions in the Republican platform of 1956:

1. Provide federal assistance to low-income communities;
2. Protect Social Security;
3. Provide asylum for refugees;
4. Extend minimum wage;
5. Improve unemployment benefit system so it covers more people;
6. Strengthen labor laws so workers can more easily join a union;
7. Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex.

What would he think about the perennial Republican tax cuts for the wealthy and attacks on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? I know that he was constantly surprised and pleased by his own Social Security check which, though small, arrived faithfully every month, from that same Federal government that his political party liked to condemn.

Emil, Elma and Ida Baxstrom circa 1932

I would love to ask my mother more about how her family came to send virtually all of its children at one time or another to the Pillar of Fire schools in Denver, where Mom and Dad eventually met in high school. I know that Mr. Clarence Yoder, somehow a church member, owned a quarter of land adjacent to the Baxstrom farm in North Dakota. But why and how exactly did Mr. Yoder wield such influence on Mom’s family? And who was primarily responsible for the final decision – her mother or her father? I know one brother, her youngest, Uncle Emil, left the Pillar of Fire in disgust after a few months there, calling the church a “cult”. How did the others feel? How did my mom really feel about the church? I do know that Dad’s parents adamantly disagreed about the church – his mother embracing it and backing Dad’s decision to leave his family for the church at 14. I wonder if Mom’s parents had conflicting opinions as well.

Baxstrom women Ruth, Elma, Ida (mom) and their mother Anna, maybe 1930

And I would like to ask my mother about how she developed her affinity for music which exerted such a pervasive influence on all of us children? Did they sing a lot in her little Mylo school? In her Lutheran church when she was a child? Did her parents also enjoy music at home? Did they have a piano in the house? Who played it? How did she learn “Star of the East”, that song on the piano which became her trademark? Incidentally, thanks to the magic of Google, I was surprised to learn that this song was actually a Christmas carol, has beautiful lyrics and was recorded on the B-side of a Christmas record by Judy Garland.

And Dad, too, enjoyed music, enjoyed singing, which surely influenced all of us as well. Where did that come from? What church did he and his family attend when he was a child in Missouri and in Colorado? I know I could have asked many of these questions to some of Dad’s siblings when they were alive. But they are all gone now too and I didn’t ask. So I will never find out.

All the questions outlined above could have been extended to what Mom and Dad knew of their own parents’ childhood. What Mom knew about the difficulties of everyday life faced by her Swedish parents, Nels Baxstrom and Anna Jonsson, when they were children would have been very interesting. Also, I would like to have known what Dad knew of the daily challenges faced by his parents, Conrad Adam Friedly and Audra Arnold and their respective families when they were growing up. I just didn’t ask Mom and Dad these questions and regret it very much today.

So I miss my parents more than ever and at age 75 I’m wondering why. Right now I’m attempting to prepare a huge page of the Friedly Family with Mom and Dad, their birthdates and birthplaces on top and their children and progeny listed in order below, replete with birth dates, occupations and so on. Ralph and Ida Friedly would have been so pleased and proud to see this extensive list of individuals who, with an assist from the infusion of other rich blood, descended directly from them, and have pursued such a huge variety of careers and vocations.

It hit me the other day, during one of my early morning reveries, during which I seem to think most clearly and write most fluently, that perhaps the reason I miss my parents so much now, is that I’m getting on in years myself and have a clearer sense of my own mortality. Mom and Dad did indeed pass away but they continue to live richly in my mind.  With the inevitable end of my consciousness, they will finally fade away completely for me. So along with a final goodby to my own loved ones, it will be a final farewell to Mom and Dad as well. They are missed.

Over the past year or so, I have been consumed with thoughts of death. These have not been fearful thoughts, nor necessarily sad thoughts, although life has to be sweeter by far than death. But we all live and die. This is the way of living things – we are born, we live and we die. From the simplest of life forms to the most complex, this is the inevitable progression. And if life is a continuum, a straight line from birth to death, I hope mine is reasonably long, I don’t want it cut short. And if life is a course between two points, birth and death, I am thankfully still on the minus side of that course, still alive, though headed inexorably toward that end point.

I guess that these thoughts hit me for the first time when I was reading “Colossus” a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father” of the atomic bomb last year. Halfway though the book I was struck by the thought that these remarkable people – the brilliant theoreticians and scientists, the skilled administrators, the talented fabricators, the president who made it all happen, are not with us anymore. Their lives, if notable, have been chronicled, their material achievements are listed for us to see, but they themselves are gone…forever. 

I have been reading biographies of famous people for many years but I have not necessarily thought of them as dying, or dead and gone. I was content to read about them and their lives and achievements but never was struck by the obvious fact that they are no longer with us. Why? I don’t know – maybe because I rarely thought about death itself – for me it was still such a long way off. I suppose that this change relates to my own old age and the now perceptible finiteness of my life. I was born, I grew, I was educated by school and experience. I lived and loved and became a father myself. But I will die – maybe sooner, maybe later…but I will die. In my younger days these thoughts rarely crossed my mind.

Another source for these thoughts and this piece of writing is the passing of a very close friend of ours, whose remarkable intellect, loving manner and vibrant personality are unforgettable. Even now, many months later, it is hard to imagine her gone. But is she really gone? Her appearance, her voice and her mannerisms are so alive in our memories, the memories of our children, who had the good fortune to know her, and in the memories of everyone else who knew her, that her absence is impossible to realize or accept.

In my mid-seventies now, I am grateful for my health. I am a trifle overweight, true, but I do still faithfully exercise on most mornings of the week. I watch what I eat, minimize the sugar and maximize the eggs and fresh (or frozen) vegetables and fruit. Foolishly, to treat a persistent sweet tooth, I still occasionally mix up and bake my favorite cookies, but amend the recipe by reducing the sugar and making it all dark brown, cancelling the chocolate bar and reducing the chocolate chips, using whole wheat flour and increasing the chopped nuts, while including almonds and hazelnuts. Then I ration my consumption by baking them small and keeping them frozen. Or if I’m feeling wiser, I’ll have an apple or some dried fruit if I am craving something sweet. And of course, likely not good for my health, l still have that scotch or red wine in the late afternoon.

And thank God, most of my body still works like it should. Yes the threat of personal embarrassment does rush me to the bathroom once in awhile and accordingly on long drives I consciously keep myself a bit dehydrated to minimize stops. I seem to be treating my hypothyroidism successfully and also treat a previously unknown bone density problem caused by that lazy thyroid gland with the necessary doses of minerals. I also am experiencing some lower back pain resulting from, I am told, deterioration of several vertebrae and a disc or two and some arthritis. Arthritis has also singled out a few key hand joints so I have tried to control inflammation by choosing certain foods and avoiding others. But on the whole, I think I’m doing ok. Those  organs and functions without which I cannot live – my brain, heart, lungs and digestive system, seem to be functioning quite well.

I have a  good friend back in our Arizona community who is about ten years older than I who tells me that while his seventies were okay, his 80’s have been quite different. He can really feel his  body giving out and maintaining this aging machine has become much more time and energy intensive in terms of doctor visits, scheduled medications, painstaking food shopping and preparation, and pursuit of required exercise. 

One thing that bothers me a great deal as I have grown old is that time passes so much more quickly than I thought it would. When I was young, it seemed that Christmas or the end of the school year and summer would never come. My high school and college years dragged on interminably as did my twenties and thirties. And now since I am retired I thought time would really drag and these ”golden years” would really stretch out, but surprisingly it been just the opposite. I have never experienced the hours turning into days, the days to weeks, the weeks into months and then years more quickly than now, exactly when I want things to slow down. 

I did a little research on this phenomenon and surprisingly the passage of time apparently speeds up with routine and sameness and slows down during growth and the acquisition of new experiences and learning. When you’re young every day brings something new and time stretches out. For example, think of how time seemed extended on that special vacation when you encountered new cultures, people, places and activities. And now during retirement when every day is more or less the same time passes more quickly. The new understandings, growth and learning acquired vicariously through movies and books, don’t have the same effect as real ones. I guess if I were wealthy enough to spend my retirement traveling and having those new experiences, these so-called “golden years” might pass much more slowly. But I’m not so I can’t and they don’t.

Some other thoughts and questions about my inexorable drift toward that final point on the continuum of life have occurred to me. What will I leave behind? Who will know that I’m gone? Who will grieve? What’s it all for? Will I be born again or just sleep forever, like I did before I was born and became conscious. 

One thing for sure, I don’t want to leave a mess behind me. I don’t want a spouse, child, sibling or friend sifting through a pile of my possessions rolling their eyes and saying – “Why did he keep this? What in hell was he planning to do with these? Why so many books – did he really read them all or just collect them thinking he would eventually find the time? And these jeans and sneakers – did he really think he would live long enough to wear them out? Why didn’t he get rid of things instead of just letting  them accumulate?” 

I really want to clean up my life like my Swedish kinsfolk recommend and make things easier for those I leave behind. Margareta Magnusson’s book, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter”, tells us what we need to do. I just hope that I can summon the energy and willpower sufficient to accomplish these recommended tasks when the time comes. But until then, I still have dreams of utilizing lots of my “stuff”, even now. But it’s so true – in recent months I am looking at certain possessions  and asking myself why I keep them. I’m never going to use them so why are they here? Having moved so many times we took advantage of each move to thin out our possessions and make ourselves a little lighter and more portable. But here we are – two houses, Vermont and Arizona, both full to overflowing. So clearly there is work to be done before I reach the end of that line.

And what am I leaving behind in terms of a legacy of some sort? I don’t mean money or wealth – there’s precious little of either to leave to anyone anyhow. What I mean is a legacy of good works, good deeds that some people will remember, at least for a little while. I hope my career in education has enhanced many lives – I’ll never really know.  But I hope that somewhere, somebody still remembers me and that my work on their behalf meant something in their lives. I was overjoyed to find that a few of my students from my first teaching job stumbled onto my article about them  and still remembered me fondly, but surely there are many more from subsequent experiences, at least I hope so. And once in a great while I hear of someone I once supervised saying some good things about me as a school principal or superintendent. Well, as the Mac Wiseman song says, “’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered”

And then there’s the question of who will grieve my passing. In addition to my wife and son and my brothers and remaining sister, whom I hope will have retained at least a few fond memories and perhaps mourn my absence, there may be a treasured friend or two who may feel the same. Because of bouncing around the world and the country so much and thus scattering my friends and acquaintances, I don’t think that my survivors will have to worry about an overflow crowd at the funeral, if they even bother to schedule one. And I have requested that my body be cremated and my ashes thrown to the breeze from Yaki Point at the Grand Canyon. So that part of the end promises to be simple and quick as well.

And as it winds down, I cannot escape wondering what it was all for – life I mean. What is our purpose here, other than survival and procreation? What happens when I stop breathing and lose consciousness forever? Will I be “born again” or will I just sleep forever. It certainly is difficult to accept that my life will end – bang, just like that – and there is nothing afterward. But in fact there was nothing before it so why should there be something after? Jim Holt, who pondered the question of “why does the world exist” in his book of the same name, wonders why there is “something rather than nothing”, and suggests that “the life of the universe, like each of our lives, may be a mere interlude between two nothings.”

I envy my sister and brothers and my loving wife, who because of their religious faith, do not have to ponder these questions. They are secure in the knowledge and conviction that our purpose here on earth is to “glorify God” and that they will joyfully be greeted by loved ones on the “other side” after their death. Yes, Mom and Dad, and sister Barbara will be there, healthy and whole – I would love to believe this, but simply cannot. My religious faith has never been that strong. I mean will our loved and treasured pets be there too? And how about that rotten, worthless relative or that duplicitous subordinate who stabbed me in the back? Do I have to put up with them again on the “other side”? No, I think life might indeed just be a lovely experience with nothing before birth and nothing after seath. 

Well actually there is a little  built-in immortality associated with my life. Because I have a son, parts of me, my DNA, my genes will go on living. I won’t know it but parts of me already present in my son will go on living in him and his children and in their children. This is wonderful to contemplate, but is this the purpose of life? 

My parents are gone, their parents are gone . They live on my my life now and the lives of my brothers and surviving sister. But after we are gone, do our children remember them and keep them alive in their minds? My dear sister Barbara is gone  but I can see her mannerisms and hear her voice in the movements and voices of her children. But how much of Barb will be left in her children’s children and in their children? And ineed, my wife’s recent addiction to discovering a multitude of previously unknown ancestors does make us wonder what fragments of their appearance and personality we display in our own.

I know I will die but I don’t know when or how. One often hears regarding someone’s sudden death – maybe a sudden fatal heart attack, perhaps a fatal auto accident or some type of dreadful explosion – “well, at least he didn’t suffer…” This I have taken to heart. I really don’t want to suffer. I’d like to die suddenly, instantaneously or perhaps in my sleep. I’ve gone to sleep, I’ve lost consciousness, I just don’t ever wake up. Easy and painless. But I don’t want to suffer the pain of illness and slow inexorable deterioration of my body or my mind. If I’m in pain, let me float into death on the soft clouds of psychotropic drugs. Or if I have my wits about me, please let me decide when I should die and allow those I love to do me this favor. They can hold my hand and kiss my cheek when I expire and before I go I can imagine them doing it. Also, I can tell them goodbye and tell them I love them. This is dying in dignity, enveloped by love and sweet memory: This is the way it should be.

I certainly don’t want to die struggling for life – fighting madly for a breath of air as I am drowning somewhere, or straining for oxygen as my lungs fail. Nor do I want to contend with the indignity of incontinence as I stumble toward death. When those senses and controls fail, I want my whole body, my heart, breathing apparatus and brain to fail as well. I certainly hope that our entire country permits assisted suicide eventually, as do most western European countries and several of our states. As our bodies deteriorate and we are engulfed in dreadful pain or our minds fail us, I think that we or our loved ones should be able to decide when we die. 

I suppose that it will be difficult for someone who has thrived on strength, order and “being in control” to relinquish control to someone else, even a loved one. But we all do, I guess, as we drift toward the inevitable end of our lives. Yet there may be some comfort in finally admitting that I can no longer continue being strong and in control. At some point it will be impossible and perhaps it will be a relief and a comfort to turn myself over to someone who is younger and stronger and can care for me. But I dread the day that they take the keys to the car away from me. I hope I have the good sense to realize that I can no longer drive safely and relinquish them voluntarily.

Hopes and dreams are necessary to life so no matter how old we get so we need to keep them alive. We should always have a must-read book at our side and a must-do project in front of us. When we stop striving and stop dreaming, we’re done. We dream all our lives – we dream of perfect love and perfect happiness; we dream of having enough money to do anything we want; we dream of the perfect house, that perfect place; we dream of  finding answers to life’s eternal questions – why are we here? Where do we go when we die? And I hope at age 76 that I can and will still dream. I think when we stop dreaming, stop hoping, stop trying, then we are really finished, even if our bodies keep going.

I have had my little set of dreams, yes. And I am happy to say that some have been realized, but so many have not and I know now, will not. I’ve hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim to rim (see upcoming article “The Grand Canyon and Me”); I’ve stood on the highest mountain in Arizona – Mount Humphries in the San Francisco Peaks; I’ve traveled to Ireland twice, Germany several times, driven from Frankfurt to Vienna…and back, seen so many historical sites in Turkey, seen the pyramids, the sphinx, Luxor and the Valley of Kings in Egypt, been on a safari in Africa, walked the streets of Dublin, London, Paris, Prague, Budapest, Cairo, Isdtanbul, Delhi, Bangkok and Katmandu. Thank God, thank God for all this. But many dreams still remain.

Some of those dreams yet unfulfilled – camping for weeks among the red rocks of Canyonlands, Sedona and southern Utah; camping in a wheat field in Kansas or North Dakota on a windy night; taking a “blue cruise” – sailing on the beautiful warm blue Aegean off the coasts of Turkey and Greece; traveling to certain other countries that have fascinated me – like Russia or the country of my kin, Sweden; art museums that I’ve missed – the Prado in Madrid, the Hermitage in St Petersburg, to name a couple. I’ve seen virtually nothing of other countries in my own hemisphere – I would love to explore Mexico and Central and South America. I’ve never seen the Redwoods, Seattle, or Yellowstone. I have never lived by the sea, even for a little while, not even in a trailer. To listen to the waves constantly, have them wake you up and put you to sleep would be such a thrill. And to daily see the water stretching out to the horizon to meet the sky would be so liberating and inspiring. 

One of the tragedies of death is the disappearance forever of the knowledge and experience accumulated. We indeed are lifelong learners, absorbing new information, new facts and valuable lessons our whole life. And then when we die it’s all gone. So I guess that’s what all this is – a legacy of some kind, certainly not one as rich and as lasting as those left by many a scientist, novelist, poet or composer but the best I can do – some reflections on family, life, politics, and the world. I write so that some of my experiences and therefore some of me might live on. My son, who’s very busy and involved in his own life and career, reads little of this now. But I hope when I am gone, that he will hold me close once in awhile by choosing to read some more of what I’ve written. And perhaps he will choose to share it with his children.

In spite of accounts of “near death” experiences, death itself continues to be a mystery. Perhaps reviewing Socrates’ opinion on death would be an appropriate way to end this piece: ”To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?”

Today I noted in the NYTimes that two of my heroes have passed away. One of my favorite novelists, Philip Roth, author of so many great novels, including my favorite of his, “The Human Stain”, died yesterday. And Richard Goodwin, liberal speechwriter extraordinaire, whose golden words spoken by the Kennedys, Johnson and so many others also passed away. Yes, we all die, but what a legacy both of these people left. Read their work and you will agree.

“What’s the difference between males and females?” Kenneth inquired of his wife Barbara one evening.

“What kind of a question is that?” Barbara responded. “Everyone knows the difference. Men have equipment that women don’t have, women have what men don’t have. Women are smaller, rounder, more delicate, softer. Men are bigger, stronger, faster, more angular. Men act rashly and impulsively. Women are more thoughtful and contemplative. Men are loud, women are quiet. Men are on time, women are late. Men never ask directions, women do. I like most of these things about men and I assume you feel the same about women. Okay, does that answer your question? What else is there?”

“Well,” Kenneth replied, “Those differences are obvious although some might be arguable. But what strikes me, what provokes the question, was thinking of more subtle differences. Take our granddaughter for instance. Even at four years old, she walks like a girl – a sweet, mincing gait, occasionally carrying her weight on her toes. She could be shorn of her long locks and dressed as a boy, but she would still very obviously be a girl. A little boy her age generally has a distinctly different gait and physical presence. Even disguised with long hair and a dress, that child would still walk like a boy, handle things like a boy and simply behave like a boy.”

“Boy (pardon the pun), you’re really getting into it, really figuring things out. Tell me more about your observations.”

“Okay, something else – even at the tender age of four, our little granddaughter holds her little tea cup differently, more delicately, with her little finger out. Her mother did not teach her to hold her cup this way, she simply does because something deep inside her tells her this is the way she should hold a cup. I don’t hold a cup this way, neither does our son, nor did he when he was four. Most fingers were utilized and that little finger was tucked in, touching the heal of the hand with the rest of them. Nobody taught him how to hold a cup either. Something deep inside him told him to hold a cup the way he did and our granddaughter does not.”

“How interesting, how analytical”, Barbara responded. “But I think you are behaving like a man – rather than simply accepting things, you have to analyze them, figure them out. I have observed these behaviors too I am sure, but never stopped to think about them, just accepted them and went on. Let’s hear some more analysis, professor. What else, what other behaviors, have you catalogued in that compartmentalized list of things that you call your mind?”

“Well, now that you asked”, Kenneth replied. “I do have a few more observations about males and females, men and women. How about the enunciation of the ’s’ sound? There is usually a distinct difference between the genders in the production of this common sound in our speech. The male ’s’ sound is rendered with the tongue farther back on the roof of the mouth behind the front teeth allowing more air to pass through for the ’s’ while the woman’s enunciation is made with the tongue closer to the front teeth and more pursed to let less air through. Try it – you’ll see what I mean. Hearing a man say his s’s more like a woman heightens the listener’s attention and awareness and immediately the man’s essential “maleness” becomes somewhat suspect and less complete. And when a woman’s enunciation of the ’s’ is male, her femaleness becomes somewhat reduced. And interestingly, I have noticed that this distinction of the pronunciation of the ’s’ sound as a sign of maleness or femaleness applies across many other languages and cultures.”

“Really, tell me more”, implored Barbara.

“Well, here’s an example – I have enjoyed seeing actress Jody Foster in many movies, among them, a couple of my all time favorites – “Silence of the Lambs” and “Contact”. And while Ms. Foster is small, delicate, shapely and beautiful, really quite feminine, there were always her ’s’ sounds, which made me wince and wonder. And then, sure enough, just in the last couple of years, Ms. Foster emerges from the closet and confirms my long standing suspicion. And then there is tennis announcer Mary Carillo, whose very masculine s-sound is quite striking and whose sexual orientation consequently has been a source of media speculation.”

“Come on now. That observation about the s-sound is quite interesting, but I wouldn’t paint everybody with that brush – the rule doesn’t always apply”, Barbara retorted.

“I agree”, Ken continued. “Certainly there are scores of gay females who are feminine in every respect, from their general overall appearance to the feminine pronunciation of the s-sound. And there are certainly many gay men who are masculine in every respect, including their s’s. A perfect example is Thomas Roberts, the MSNBC anchor, over whose incredible good looks and perfectly matched attire you have always swooned. I must say – I was surprised too when I read his interview account of love at first sight – falling in love with a man he met at a party, and later married. For Mr. Roberts appears heterosexual in every respect, including the pronunciation of his s’s.”

“Well,” Barbara admitted. “You’re right about that. I actually was a bit crushed and deflated when I learned that Mr. Roberts was gay. But in relation to what you mentioned before about females’ s-sounds, isn’t the pitch of a female voice more important, I mean doesn’t a low female voice sound masculine?”

“Hmmm, interesting question….I would say no. Some examples are the low voices of actresses like Marlene Dietrich or Lauren Bacall. Yes, low voices but distinctly feminine because of the feminine s-sound. Also some low female voices from popular music. Listen to Swedish singer Monica Tornell’s voice singing the Dylan classic “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, or Marianne Faithfull, her voice lowered significantly over the years by illness and lifestyle, sing “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”. Both voices as low as a man’s yet clearly feminine – the old s-sound again.”

“Yes”, Barbara replied. “I have heard both of those songs by those artists and you’re right – voices pitched much more like a man’s yet I never doubted that they were women’s voices. What other examples have you taken note of?”

“Well then there are female athletes, especially tennis players, whose exhibition of these characteristics is quite striking. I don’t happen to have knowledge of the sexual orientation of any of them, save the long-public same-sex orientation of Billie Jean King and of Martina Navratalova. But there are female tennis players who, despite their height, strength, speed and hitting power, are still very feminine. Chris Evert comes to mind as a prime example, Martina Hingis is another. Some female players who are otherwise feminine in every respect, have a very masculine gait, almost a swagger, which to me calls their orientation into question. The very beautiful and otherwise feminine Canadian professional, Eugenie Bouchard, is an example – beautiful face, lovely blond hair, slim shapely body, even a spread in the annual Sports Illustrated bathing suit issue, but when she walks and talks (yes, listen to those s’s) I begin to wonder.”

“OK, if what you are saying is true…but it does seem to be a bit stretched and twisted to fit your preconceptions – how did we get this way?”

“Well, again, these characteristics seem to be innate”, Kenneth responded. “I don’t think that mothers teach their little girls how to walk daintily or to crook their little fingers when holding a teacup or that dads teach their sons to grip a cup handle or to walk a certain way. And I certainly don’t think that mothers or fathers ever correct their little girls’ or little boys’ enunciation of the “s” sound. In short, I know that parents can’t and therefore don’t teach their children how to behave to reflect their gender. It just naturally happens.”

“My God, your analysis is so detailed. And it’s so weird that you take the time to think about all this? What else is on your list?”

“Well, I’m so glad you asked. You’re a teacher and I’m a teacher. I’ve graded lots of writing papers – not as many as you, I admit, but certainly enough to notice that generally speaking, boys have different handwriting than girls. I can look back at those goodbye letters my kids at Irwin School wrote for me back in 1968, cover the names and still tell whether they were written by boys or girls. And I still have many handwritten letters from my father and from my mother. Both wrote very legibly but there’s a difference – Mom’s handwriting is more delicate and artistic – more curves and swirls; Dad’s is more harsh, linear and definite. Also, take a look at our writing – both quite different. When I’ve been in a bind and I’ve had to forge your signature on something – it’s been really difficult – I’ve had to hold the pen more loosely and concentrate on the swirls, the wider verticals in the l’s, h’s and g’s. And I am sure when you’ve had to forge mine, you’ve done just the opposite – really grip that pen, press more firmly, write more heavily and jaggedly. So think about it – you can’t deny that there are gender differences in handwriting. And our moms and dads or teachers didn’t teach us to write differently, we just did, because something deep inside us was guiding those pens and pencils.”

“OK so there’s handwriting differences. I can’t disagree but perhaps girls’ and women’s hands are not as strong as a boy’s or a man’s hands are, so of course the writing is different.”

“Nonsense, even if a woman’s hands are bigger, stronger, more mature than any given man’s or boy’s hands, you still get this swirly, circular, artistic and expansive kind of writing from females and a much more thrifty, spare, choppy and angular writing from a male hand. Strength, age, maturity and coordination have little to do with writing style. Gender has everything to do with it.”

“My God, anything else?”

“Indeed there is. Surely you’ve noticed how women and girls, even little girls, punctuate their conversation and provide emphasis with their hands. Think about it. And most of that hand and finger flavor for a conversation is done daintily and delicately with a flexible wrist. Yes, there are boys and men that often use their hands when they talk but this activity is much more limited and the wrist is usually rigid. And rather than two hands, a man might use the fist or a finger for emphasis. Remember the incredible job that the late Philip Seymour Hoffman did in portraying Truman Capote in the 2005 movie “Capote”? Let me tell you, he had those s-sounds and the flexible wrist and delicate hand and finger movements down perfectly”.

“Well, ok, maybe you’re right. I’m not going to argue with you about your observations. But where does all this get us? What’s the point? And don’t you think that you’re being quite sexist, pasting these kinds of labels on people? People simply are who they are and they are the way they are through no fault of their own. They didn’t choose their parents or the genes that determine and regulate the way they behave? I mean who cares about the masculine or feminine qualities of men and woman? Why do you spend your time cogitating about such things?”

“Well, there’s no point really. Maybe in my need to organize and categorize to better understand, I just loosely divide people, men and women, boys and girls, into groups, actually continua – one for females and one for males. At end of one are clustered all the characteristics that we commonly accept for extreme femininity and on the other are those that represent extreme masculinity. And along these continua are males with greater or lesser of the characteristics described and females with more or less of the characters defined as female. Also somewhere along those continua are gay men and gay women who perhaps exhibit some characteristics of the opposite sex, like that key s-sound or a distinctive gait. And I don’t really think that noticing things about people and thinking about them is at all sexist. I think that I’m just interested in those things and find that maybe I notice them more than other people. There’s nothing wrong with that – I’m not making a value judgement, just an observation.”

But before I stop talking, I have to mention one more thing, Barbara, please don’t roll your eyes, about the s-sound in one’s speech. Have you ever noticed the peculiar ’s’ sound that is exhibited primarily by some men from the southwest, especially Texas, that is more an ‘sh’ sound than an ’s’, like an exaggerated or ultra masculine male s-sound? They tend to pronounce the name of their state “Tekshesh”, pretty much like President Johnson did. Do you know what I mean? “Yesh, we live in the United Shtaytsh of America”. I mean it’s not a complete ‘sh’ sound but it’s close and definitely not really the commonly heard s-sound. You hear it from some of those retired generals that serve as the “military experts” or “ekshpertsh” as they would “shay” it, on cable news, excuse me, cable “newsh”

“Ken, really, that quite enough”, Barbara said. “You’ve ’s’ sounded me to death. I’m going to miss important words and phrases in conversations and newscasts now because I’ll be focused on peoples’ s-sounds. And don’t you think you’ve missed lots of important information yourself as your ears have strained to focus on these distinctions? Enough already.”

“Barbara, you’re really shomething elsh.”

Barbara shakes her head, rolls her eyes and goes back to the book she was reading before this conversation began.

Hardly a week passes without a negative Obamacare headline staring at me from the New York Times. The Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare” was passed with great fanfare in March 2010 and was variously labeled as “the greatest advance in healthcare since Medicare and Medicaid” and as the “the most positive thing that this country has done since the civil rights legislation that was passed back in the ’60s.”

The Republican House has voted dozens of times to repeal Obamacare without ever offering a viable alternative. However, it certainly appears that the Affordable Care Act is dying a slow death all by itself without Republican assistance. Look at a few headlines from the last couple of years:

Big Changes in Fine Print of Some 2015 Health Plans

Seeking Rate Increases, Insurers Use Guesswork

Data Shows Large Rise in List Prices at Hospitals

Double Digit Rate Hikes Loom for Obamacare 2016

Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare

Think Your Obamacare Plan Will Be Like Employer Coverage? Think Again

Health Insurers Use Process Intended to Curb Rate Increases to Justify Them

Aetna will leave most Obamacare exchanges, projecting losses

Health-care exchange sign-ups fall far short of forecasts

Obamacare Marketplaces Are in Trouble. What Can Be Done?

These news headlines illustrate exactly why I think that the Affordable Care Act cannot continue to exist in its present state: a medical care system intended to ultimately cover everyone and reduce medical costs while relying on corporations whose sole reason for existence is profit.

Michael Moore’s brilliant and prescient film “Sicko”, released almost 10 years ago, made this abundantly clear (by the way, while he is dismissed as a kook by the right, Mr. Moore to me is a sage, prophet and patriot). “Sicko” pointed out that anything less than a single payer program, like “Medicare for all”, any program involving corporations and profit contains the seeds of its own destruction. The medical insurance companies must show a profit and must, like all capitalist enterprises, increase profit and grow. Stasis and balance are not part of the capitalist system. And how does a health insurance company grow and increase profit? By gaining more customers, paying less in benefits or charging more for premiums, a recipe for the failure of any corporate-run effort toward providing universal coverage.

Health care is a public issue and should be a public service like education, highways, water, and electrical service. It should not be viewed as a commodity to be bought and sold. One should not have to buy a health insurance “policy”, as if buying car insurance. Access to affordable healthcare should be a right and should be enshrined among all of our other rights, as it is in European countries. It is interesting to glance back at the “Second Bill of Rights”, proposed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945 and which surely would have been enshrined in the constitution had he lived. One of the articles in this wonderful document is: “The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health”.

It might be useful to consider what health insurance companies do to earn their massive revenue and profits. Well they do essentially what the state bureaucracies operating the Canadian National Health program or the British National Health Service do. They take money from government or private sources and, based on the nature and level of service provided, pass it along to doctors, hospitals and drug distributors. Not very complicated is it? In countries with national health systems, this process is conducted very efficiently and economically. In the US, with United Healthcare, Cigna, Humana, Aetna and a host of other companies performing this simple function, it becomes very expensive because these companies have to make a profit to pay shareholders and to pay their CEOs’ multi-million dollar salaries. Something is indeed wrong with this picture.

So what do you suppose happens at Board meetings or at high level executive meetings in these companies? How do the highly paid “big guns” of United Healthcare or Humana or Aetna sit around their big shiny tables and brainstorm corporate strategy or new products or new markets for future growth? Well, considering what they actually do, they’re embarrassingly limited. A “new product” has to be a new “policy” which provides less service to the consumer or less compensation to the doctor or hospital. A new growth strategy is “how do we get more people or companies to sign up and buy our “product” or “how can we discourage the sick and chronically ill from signing up and encourage more young and healthy people to sign up? Or maybe the best and most simple strategy of all – let’s raise the prices of the health insurance policies we sell. Or better yet, let’s disguise an increase by having the consumer pay a higher deductible and keep the price the same. Or, let’s make the language describing the benefits we provide really confusing and deceptive, surreptitiously raising the deductible or the copay. Or, best of all, since we’re an integral part of Obamacare, how can we squeeze the government for more customers, for bigger subsidies, more money so we can increase profit? These are corporate strategies like none other – no investment in research, invention, engineering, design improvement, raw materials selection, creativity or test marketing. These healthcare corporations must be the envy of all other corporations – my God, they make profit, pay their shareholders, pay millions to their CEO’s for merely performing a simple bureaucratic function and with massive government assistance.

The history of providing healthcare in the US is depressing. While European countries and our neighbor to the north moved inexorably toward government funded universal coverage, effort after effort in the United States failed miserably. Proposals were condemned as “socialist” or “communist” or labeled as “interfering with doctor – patient relationships” or a making doctors “slaves”. President Truman’s valiant 1949 effort to provide a national program failed because of powerful conservative opposition from the likes of Senator Robert Taft who claimed it was “right out of the Soviet constitution”. The American Medical Association opposed the program also, with one of their pamphlets reading, “Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of life? Lenin thought so. He declared that socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.”

President Johnson’s “Great Society” efforts in the 1960’s led to Medicare and Medicaid for the elderly and the poor, both supported by the medical establishment, but not to universal coverage for everyone else. President Clinton’s efforts to provide universal coverage, led by then first lady Hillary Clinton, also met with failure because of opposition from health insurance companies and the entire rest of the healthcare industry, exerted through intense lobbying of members of congress.

Another important reason that national healthcare efforts failed over the years was because of the growth of employer-provided health insurance and the companies that administered such plans. During World War II when competition for workers was fierce and employers were not allowed to raise wages, expanding employee benefits was the only way to attract workers so companies began to offer health insurance as one of those benefits. Also of course, companies could deduct the cost of employee health insurance coverage as a cost of doing business. So it’s no surprise that over the years employer provided insurance dampened the demand for universal coverage. The provision of employer provided medical insurance also gave health insurance companies the opportunity to become firmly planted in America’s corporate landscape.

Access to good health insurance is a prominent and consuming concern for most Americans. If your employer covered you and you switched jobs, you might lose your coverage. Employers could change the levels of coverage, requiring larger deductibles or copays to maintain the profit margins for the companies administering the insurance. And buying affordable coverage became almost impossible for the self-employed. I will never forget a statement made by one of my favorite nonfiction authors, Susan Jacoby, remarking in her book “Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age”, what an incredible relief it was for her to turn 65 and finally be covered by Medicare. Thank God, the struggles were over – no more worries about medical insurance. One of my brothers, self employed, pays about $25,000 per year to insure him and his spouse and is counting the days to age 65 and Medicare. Another, who receives his medical insurance from his employer, has seen his costs and deductibles rise while his coverage has diminished. And I myself, despite having always worked for employers who covered me and, for an additional charge, the children and the spouse if necessary, the size of deductibles and/or copays was always a concern, as was the cost of drugs required by a family member. And I could still have lost everything I owned if stricken by a catastrophic illness. What a relief for me when I turned 65 and for my spouse when she too became eligible for Medicare, that our worries were over. This is the way it should be for all Americans at all phases of their lives. A Canadian, a Dane, a German, a Frenchman, is simply and logically covered – for everything – no limits or exclusions, from the moment of birth to the moment of death.

The powerful influence of corporations has colored and flavored all recent “advances” in healthcare. First was the intrusion of health insurance corporations into Medicare with “Medicare Advantage” programs, through which they received funds directly from the government to administer and profit from their own enhanced versions of Medicare, further solidifying their positions on the corporate landscape. And the George W. Bush Medicare expansion to provide drug benefits was virtually written by the pharmaceutical corporations, guaranteeing huge profits for themselves through the disallowance of negotiated drug prices. And finally, Obamacare itself was written by the medical insurance companies with the complicity of their congressional lackeys. Retention of private corporations in the program and the exclusion of a “public option” were ways to radically increase the number of their customers at government expense. Like charter schools, the Affordable Care Act became simply another way to shovel public money into corporate coffers.

Obamacare’s invitation to “Come, compare policies and select the one that’s best for you and your family” rings hollow. These “policies” are extremely complex. Who is really prepared to weigh and compare deductibles, exclusions, copays, benefits, networks, costs and the many other variables in a typical health insurance company policy? This complexity is designed to result in one thing – concealment of gradual and incremental cost shifting from the insurer to the patient in order to increase profit, not improve healthcare.

Obamacare’s reliance on the fabled capitalist “market” and “competition” is also chimerical. With insurers now leaving the exchange markets in droves, there will soon be little or no competition. Also, the reduction of insurers into fewer and fewer players through buyouts and mergers will undoubtedly result in market collusion to maintain or improve profit, not competition to improve service or gain customers.

Another problem with Obamacare is administering the mandate requiring individuals to buy insurance and providing the subsidy for those qualified to receive assistance. The “punishment” for not buying insurance, imposed in end-of-year tax returns, is not immediate and therefore not effective. And the subsidies are “tax credits” and whether paid up front or at the end of the year are needlessly complex and confusing. All this complexity is the result of retaining the needless role of private corporations in providing health insurance. And many individuals are opting to remain uninsured and simply pay the penalty.

Many individuals covered by employers or purchasing private insurance prior to the ACA have seen their plans change dramatically, rendering President Obama’s assertion that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s claim that “you can keep your family’s doctor or keep your health care plan if you like it” totally fallacious. What actually happened is that insurers administering employer plans sometimes reduced benefits to match the minimums required under Obamacare or sometimes increased deductibles and/or increased copays. Individual plans also changed shape and size after Obamacare. Many self-employed people or people not covered by employers found plans they had purchased before Obamacare increase in price or reduce benefits.

The claim by Obamacare advocates that “market forces” and “competition” would work to keep prices down and benefits up is also false. When maintaining certain levels of benefits or a low price cuts into profit, those efforts are abandoned. This is why the biggest insurer, United Healthcare, has withdrawn from most state insurance marketplaces and why another healthcare giant, Aetna, has abandoned them altogether.

Obamacare has been reduced to the level that in order to maintain the involvement of private insurers, more government money has to be given to them. And to involve private insurers in the first place, Obamacare is incredibly complex and unwieldy. Just go to the website and take a look at what is offered, how subsidies are offered and so on. Your eyes will glaze over, your heart rate will increase, you will perspire and you will need a dose of healthcare yourself, then and there. And even though you hate your job, you will stick with your present employer because your insurance, no matter how meager, is provided for you. And even though your deteriorating physical condition dictates that you should retire now, you will stagger into work until you are 65 just so you can finally stop worrying about medical insurance. And when you finally do have Medicare, you will realize once and for all how important it is to provide health insurance as a right to everyone, regardless of age, employment, health or income.

Also, another important part of Obamacare, the expansion of Medicaid to cover the poor, was foolishly left up to the discretion of the states. Thus, states whose governors or legislators opposed Obamacare, or likely more accurate, disliked the skin color of our president, rejected Medicaid expansion.

So what to do now? When and how can we look at the provision of healthcare like a grownup nation instead of like an immature teenager, pandering to health insurance companies, and spending twice as much on healthcare as necessary? I am sure that the present difficulties will be handled for now by injecting more government money into the program to prop up insurers’ profits. But only a truly national program, arbitrarily enrolling every American of every age and of every measure of health, will provide a pool large enough that everyone can be covered at a reasonable cost. And the modest tax increase necessary to do this will be more than compensated for by reduced personal costs for each American.

The most recent headline in the Times about Obamacare’s problems, today October 3, 2016, reads, “Ailing Obama Health Care Act May Have to Change to Survive”, introducing an article rehashing much of what I have written above and concluding that inclusion of a public option, dropped during the writing of the law at the behest of private insurers, may now be necessary.

So Obamacare cannot survive as written and surely will die, unless changed completely from what was planned by corporations and their congressional servants. Above I have offered its obituary. Below I suggest an appropriate epitaph:

HERE LIES OBAMACARE
BORN 2010 LIVED BRIEFLY THEN DIED CIRCA 2016
CONCEIVED TO SERVE A PUBLIC NEED
KILLED BY PRIVATE CORPORATE GREED

I love to drive. When I appear at a destination, east or west, and am asked, “Did you fly?” I have often answered proudly, “No, I drove”. Why do I still prefer driving cross country when, at a time of cut rate airlines and expensive gasoline, it may be cheaper to fly? Well I simply love the feeling of sitting behind the wheel with my foot on the gas pedal, in full control of my vehicle and my fate, with some good music or recorded books to listen to, some dried fruit and nuts to munch on, heading down the highway toward some distant destination.

I have often defended this preference with the rationale – I can leave when I want, stop when I want, take as much time as I wish, pause to see the sights or to visit friends, and so on – all of which are impossible to do when traveling by air. But…I have to admit that I rarely do any of these things and seem to be consumed instead with a desire to “make time” –  travel as many miles in a day as I can, and try to get to my destination as quickly as possible.

All this began with family trips when I was a child in New Jersey. Most summers, Mom and Dad, or sometimes just Mom, would load the car with a few suitcases and some food, then load it with us kids and off we would go, toward North Dakota to see Mom’s parents, the Baxstroms, or to Missouri to see the Friedly grandparents, or both. These trips usually included a stop at the church headquarters in Westminster, Colorado, north of Denver, where we had many church friends and where Mom and Dad met as high school students. As Dad got more committed to farming during the summer it became mostly Mom who took us, leaving Dad to stay at home and cultivate his crops.

When traveling with the family as a child, we never stopped at motels. We would instead stop and stay overnight at relatives’ homes, if convenient, or at church “missionary homes”, both of which were scattered at convenient intervals across the country. Thus planning a day’s drive did not include stopping to see any of the sights, but just to get to the next place to stay overnight. There were some exceptions to this rule – on one trip I can recall visiting some Native American areas in Minnesota and the Dells of Wisconsin, seeing Bagnell Dam and boating on the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, seeing Mount Rushmore and buffalo herds in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the “Geographic Center of North America” in Rugby, North Dakota and visiting the “International Peace Garden” on the North Dakota – Canada border. But usually we whizzed right by these kinds of places to get to where we were headed.

Usually the main thing for either Dad or Mom, whoever was the driver in charge for that given trip, was to “make time”. Many times, I can remember Dad or Mom just stopping along the road somewhere late at night, when whoever was driving simply could go no further, and sleeping. This was done perhaps behind a church in a small town (churches were deemed to be safe areas) or simply driving off the highway out into the middle of fields on a section or quarter road. I can remember so well Mom or Dad slumped over the wheel to sleep or leaning their heads between the seat back and the window while us kids in the rear seat flopped wherever we could, draped all over one another trying to get into a position where we could get some sleep.

When leaving New Jersey, our first stop was always at Uncle Emil’s in Wooster, Ohio, a very convenient 500 mile trip, mostly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. “The Turnpike”, then so called because it was the first such big toll road, was to us was one of the wonders of the world. To travel unimpeded by intersections or traffic lights, on a four lane highway with wide shoulders, through tunnels flattening out the  high ridges of the Appalachian mountains, was an incredible experience for drivers in the 1950’s, many of whom could doubtless recall how slow and difficult it was previously to travel east or west through Pennsylvania. So stage one of any trip west was this 500 mile jaunt, a good day’s drive and no sightseeing, just the regular stops at the Howard Johnson’s rest stops to go to the bathroom and buy some gas.

The next stop could be a church missionary home in Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis, Missouri, or in Omaha, Nebraska. Or if you left early and drove fast and didn’t stop much, it was possible to get to Versailles, Missouri and Grandma and Grandpa Friedly’s on the very next evening. From there, it was possible to drive through Kansas and eastern Colorado and get to the church headquarters in Westminster on the third day. I remember the competition among us kids as we crossed the plains of eastern Colorado, all desperately craning our necks from the back seat to see who would be the first to spot Pike’s Peak, the first sign of the Colorado Rocky Mountains from US 36, 24 or 40. 

 Traveling America’s highways was quite different in the 1950’s. Before the Interstate Highway network you traveled east or west, once you left the Pennsylvania Turnpike, on US 40, US 24, US 30 or US 36. These highways were mostly two lanes and of course went through countless little towns. And on these highways you actually saw much of the country, got close to the local stores and markets, could stop and get fresh vegetables at a roadside stand, or stop at a little picnic table under a tree along the highway to make and eat sandwiches. Today, as John Steinbeck mentioned in “Travels with Charley” you can go coast to coast on the Interstates and not see much of anything.

On these long trips we children got used to playing a variety of games. One such activity was counting the cars of the railroad trains we saw. Another was to try to form the whole alphabet from license plate letters we saw on cars we passed or which passed us. Or we would form the alphabet from letters on signs and billboards along the highway. X’s and Z’s were very hard to come by, which added to the challenge and competition of the game.

Another pleasure of the open road back in the 1950’s was reading Burma-Shave signs, which were a series of six or so red signs positioned about 200 feet apart along the shoulder with white lettering containing a clever jingle and ending with “Burma-Shave”. We eagerly looked for the next set of signs and recited the jingles in unison as each sign neared and became readable. A variety of nostalgia websites contain many of these jingles. Some examples: DRINKING DRIVERS…NOTHING WORSE…THEY PUT THE QUART…BEFORE THE HEARSE…Burma-Shave”, “DINAH DOESN’T… TREAT HIM RIGHT…BUT IF HE’D SHAVE…DINAH MITE!…Burma-Shave”, “DON’T LOSE… YOUR HEAD…TO GAIN A MINUTE…YOU NEED YOUR HEAD…YOUR BRAINS ARE IN IT…Berma-Shave”, and “BEFORE I TRIED IT…THE KISSES …I MISSED…BUT AFTERWARD-BOY…THE MISSES I KISSED…Burma-Shave”.

Another common sight while traveling by car in the 1950’s was the canvas water container hanging from car mirrors or radiators. These containers allowed the water inside to dampen the canvas, which then kept the water cold from evaporating surface moisture. You would see these bags mainly in the west of course since the more humid eastern air was not an effective evaporator/cooler.

Since the major east-west highways at that time often paralleled railroads, I also remember another dramatic sight – long rows of telegraph poles, laden with multiple cross pieces which in turn bore dozens of glittering glass insulators carrying scores of wires. These poles and wires undulated in a picturesque and dramatic wave pattern for as far as you could see.

On these trips our diet was very basic. We opened cans of Van Camps pork and beans and ate spoonfuls directly out of the cans or maybe if we stopped, used paper plates and spoons we brought with us. We also bought loaves of bread, bologna and mustard and ate bologna sandwiches as we traveled. I can remember one time when Mom stopped in a little Midwestern town at a Red Owl supermarket where creamed corn was on sale at ten cans for a dollar. We ate nothing but creamed corn directly out of cans for the next couple of days.

 We usually went to the bathroom when we stopped for gas. But if there was an emergency, we simply pulled over onto the shoulder and opened the two right side car doors on the ’49 Chevy or the ’54 Chevy wagon, and the child who needed to go went on the shoulder, the doors providing some privacy.

So “making time” on the big open American highway has been a huge part of my life. But it seemed that when traveling by car I was always pressured by time or circumstance to get someplace as quickly as possible. Even now, having the joy and privilege of homes in Vermont and Arizona and looking forward to some leisurely trips between them, it still seems that there is always something that makes speed essential – a couple of times the advancing winter weather when we returned to Arizona later than we wished, or family social events and home maintenance needs in other cases. Hopefully a leisurely trip during which I could drive through the south or through Canada, or through the Midwest to again see where my parents grew up, is right around the corner.

But up to now it’s mostly been driving as fast and as far in a day as I can because some deadline or other is staring me in the face. I did break my own record a couple of years ago when we had to get back to Arizona from Vermont (again, by a certain time) and drove from Paragould, Arkansas, where we had visited the last of Dad’s siblings, Aunt Burton, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, approximately 1100 miles in a day. A great drive to be sure, and I hope the last of them. I must slow down. I have passed so many roses in my life without getting even a whiff and at this point I should not care anymore about “making time”.