There is one word that is not in my Father’s vocabulary, Can’t. He just will not believe that something can not be done. Into his eighties he continues to find new challenges and reinvent himself. His example has enabled me to face changes in my life as well.

My earliest memories include waiting for the film of Queen Elisabeth’s Coronation to be flown to the United States. My father and Uncle sitting at the kitchen table in a small apartment in Quincy, Massachusetts. A coal truck seemingly sliding tons of coal into a basement window (actually going into a coal bin). My sister yelling, "Cross me", meaning she wanted me to help her cross the street in our development.

My father had gone from the service into a job with then fledgling Airlines. About the time I was to be born he was working in Venezuela helping to start up VARIG Airlines. With my imminent arrival he came to work for Easter Airlines so he could be home more often. In spite of all his experience with airplanes and mechanics he soon took a job as a salesman for an abrasives company and helped companies find uses for various processes from finishing furniture to cement blocks and aircraft parts.

Like so many veterans he soon took advantage of one of the benefits of the G.I. Bill and purchased our first home. It was a typical home of the period in it’s own development in South Weymouth, Massachusetts. The development was off the main street with dozens of similar homes on good size lots that gave everyone the feeling that they really owned their own of the country they had fought so hard for. It was even equipped with all the modern conveniences including kitchen appliances and the safety of Asbestos shingles.

I remember my Grandmother Lloyd working as the dietician at the local hospital and one of my Uncles living with us for a while. He had rabbits in a pen in the yard. I was pretty much allowed to roam the neighborhood and visit with friends, as long as I staid in the development. My sister, however, needed to be escorted when she wanted to cross the streets, thus the "cross me". Since our games of cowboys and Indians would wander around the development this call became most memorable.

In 1950 another post war dream became a reality for the family, a summer home. Well, almost, our first cottage was a single room shelter with a hand pumped well and an icebox. Literally, an icebox using large blocks of ice to keep a limited food supply cool. We had no electricity so we used kerosene lamps but we had a summer place on Cape Cod. At first it was used for weekends and the annual two-week vacation. Gradually improvements were made, and after we were able to get electricity we eventually had an electric water pump, indoor toilet facilities complete with hand-dug cesspool, and even a small refrigerator.

I have few memories about my schooling at this stage. I do remember very scary air raid drills that were done on a regular basis. I remember all of us getting away from the windows and using our desks to protect us as much as possible. Polio was something that we were all very much aware of and everyone knew of someone who had a family member living in an ‘iron lung’ a large can shaped device that a person would lay in with just the head sticking out. When the Polio vaccine was made available on a test basis my folks were among the first to sign up. I just remember standing in a long line and the Doctor with this big black gun like machine with hoses coming out of it saying there is no needle. He held it against my upper arm and there was a noise followed by a bit of swelling and a sore arm for a day. We went through this procedure three times, I believe. Then we were each presented with a Polio Pioneer Certificate.

We moved to Melrose Massachusetts where I began first grade at age five. Somehow I just missed out on kindergarten. I can remember waking up one Saturday morning, not realizing that it was Saturday, getting dressed, grabbing one of the dog’s milk bones for breakfast, and walking off to school. I got all the way to school before I realized what I had done. When I returned home I found that everyone had been searching the neighborhood looking for me.

They routinely flooded the area behind the school for ice-skating and one day I had gone to the skating area on my own. At one point I fell and hit the back of my head. When I got up I realized that my vision had been cut in half, it was like a diagonal line had been drawn across my eyes and I could see nothing to the left and below that line. As a can do first or second grader I told no one at the rink. I just removed my skates, somehow found my shoes and headed home. Everything was ok until I came to the railroad tracks I had to cross to get home. My friends and I had played on the tracks before, and I had crossed them at this crossing many times, but the lack of vision and the tracks were just too much for me. I burst into tears and just didn’t dare cross the tracks on my own. It was a different world in the early 1950’s and it wasn’t that unusual for a 5 or 6 year old to be walking back and forth to school. When one broke into tears for some reason, there was no end of help. I was soon home and in the safe hands of my Mom. I don’t remember any follow up, but I was probably treated for a headache and when I woke up everything was back to normal.

Dad was always good to schedule his weekends on the Cape and usually managed to bring loads of things that we had forgotten or just couldn’t squeeze in the car. He tried to spend time on the beach with us, and did well, it just wasn’t his style to sit around all day. He got involved in boating, a hobby which still occupies part of his life.

He built his first boat in the attic of our house in Melrose. It was an eight-foot, flat-ended pram or rowboat. When it was finished it was too large to get down the stairs. The window in the gable wasn’t quite big enough. As a last resort he removed the entire frame and had just enough room to squeeze the boat out.

One other thing comes to mind, my first date. I was in the second grade and one of my classmates had caught my eye. My Mom wasn’t going to stand in my way, but she wasn’t going to help in any way either. The carnival was coming to town with rides of every imaginable description. I had saved money I had earned by collecting bottles and doing odd jobs around the neighborhood and had accumulated almost $3. I figured this would be enough for us both to have all the rides we wanted and each of us to have a coke. Now all I had to do was ask her. I got her phone number and made the call. I was scared to death she would turn me down. Luck was with me when I asked she asked her Mother and her Mother said yes. The time was set and on that faithful date I walked to her house and we proceeded to the carnival. I even had a wallet to keep my money safe in. When we arrived we decided to try the roller coaster (more likely a wild mouse or something similar) and I proceeded to buy two tickets. It was a great ride and when we went to go on our next ride my wallet wasn’t there. Evidently I didn’t get my Roy Rogers wallet firmly in my pocket. We searched, but to no avail. I was crushed. All my hard work and planning had been wrapped up in that wallet. My ‘date’, however, had never expected me to pay for her day and she had come with money. In spite of my disaster we made an afternoon of it. As I walked her home I told her that I would pay her back every penny. She said, no, she had had a good time. I did earn the money to pay her back, but that turned out to be our last date.

One of our early experiences was hurricane Carol. In 1954 we were on the Cape as hurricane Carol scraped along the East Coast or the United States. As it approached the cape we heeded the warnings and went to the bank building in down town Falmouth. It was the only all brick structure around and well inland, we thought. The eye of the storm passed over and I tagged along as my father braved a short trip out of the confines of the bank. The destruction was awesome. Fortunately, we didn’t venture far and soon the second half of the storm arrived with a vengeance. After she departed we went back to find that our cottage had been physically moved two inches from where it had stood on its cement blocks. We were lucky in that it still stood on all of the blocks. The places nearer to the water were not so fortunate. Cottages along the strand of sand that made up the south shore of Falmouth were washed off their mountings and swept all the way to behind the buildings in downtown Falmouth. Major structures were destroyed totally. The Chanticlair Inn near the beach we had chosen as our own was totally destroyed and never was rebuilt.

Then came Dad’s first foray into construction. They were dismantling and selling some of the barracks that were used during the war. Dad picked out part of one he figured could be added to the back of our cottage. It was delivered to our property in large pieces that had to be moved and positioned in the correct order. Then it had to be interfaced with the existing structure. When an opening was cut in the original structure our square footage had almost tripled. We now had a bedroom for my parents and a bunkroom for our growing family.

My mother, along with my three sisters and myself were now spending the whole summer on the Cape. Dad would come down on the weekends and for his vacation. We spent all day, every day we could on the beach. Those days we didn’t go to the beach we would spend rounding up wild blueberries, raspberries, and, it turned out, ticks and poison ivy. It was a great life.

In the meantime, my father had been transferred to a more northern sales territory that included northern New England and parts of Canada. Our winter home was moved to Manchester New Hampshire. This time he decided to build a home, keeping close watch on the way the process came together. We moved into an apartment complex that was full of families like ours. The baby boom was in full swing and there was no end of kids our age. After school was filled with all kind of group games. Fall and spring evenings of flashlight tag, winters with sledding on a farm out back.

The farm was a dairy farm and had a great sloping pasture that faced our apartment complex. There was one minor problem, at the bottom of the hill was a standard New England farm fence, stones piled upon stones. There was a narrow opening, probably 10 to 16 feet wide that lead to a small wooden bridge over a small creek. We would trek to the top of the hill and using everything from cardboard boxes to toboggans to Flexible-Flyers. The goal was to make it through the fence and across the bridge. This was not usually a problem. Many would never make it down the slope, others would bail out because they did not aim properly, and generally we would all be starting at different times. Occasionally the farmer would fire a shotgun to scare us off. We never actually saw it but legend had it that it was loaded with salt pellets and aimed at the slowest of us. When we heard the gun go off we all launched towards the gate either on our sleds or pulling them as fast as possible behind us. In later years I realized that the pasture had been posted and the shotgun fired to keep us from hurting ourselves on the rocks. Unfortunately, the gun shot lead to a frantic race to the gate, only increasing the possibility of injury.

Our desks at school actually had functional inkwells and when not using a pencil we used fountain pens. I can remember when I got my first Cartridge Pen. The ink came in sealed cartridges that were pierced when you put the pen together after installing it. The ink seemed to last longer than the standard fountain pen and you didn’t have to deal with opening and closing a bottle of ink every time you needed a refill. It didn’t, however, address the problem of the pen leaking in your pocket.

Our major past time was trading football and baseball cards. Football cards seemed to be the favorite and the Packers were my favorite. We would spend recess pitching pennies against the brick wall of the school for cards. The one who’s penny ended up closest to the wall won the other one’s card.

Once our house was finished we changed neighbors, but stayed at the same school so our circle of friends only shifted slightly. It was a beautiful house with a large double garage and a huge wooded lot that fell steeply away from the back of the house. The bedrooms were up stairs and the living room, dining room, and kitchen on the first floor. It had a large basement that would be finished at a later time.

My past times also took a major shift as I grew up. We were now close to a great skating lake. There was a large warming house with a great fireplace open on two sides, the snow was cleared by the city after each snowfall, once the ice was thick enough to drive the tractor on the ice. There was also a hockey rink next to the warming house.

I had both hockey skates and figure skates, but it was always hard to get time on hockey rink so I spent a lot more time in figure skates. It was a big pond that even had an island towards the end away from the warming house. The whole pond was maintained beautifully and lit at night.

My income came from shoveling driveways and mowing lawns when it wasn’t snowing. It was a regular income in Manchester. Often I would get up early to shovel our driveway, go to school, come home to shovel ours again (getting paid for both) then do someone else’s before the pond was cleared for skating.

We continued to summer on the Cape. It was a major event getting there and back each year. We got used to having summer friends and winter friends. Thankfully the 50’s and 60’s were years when station wagons were popular. Crowding two parents, four kids, a dog, and enough of our ‘things’ to get by for a summer into a single station wagon was always a challenge. Tires were not as reliable as they are now and many times we would find ourselves half emptying the back to get to a spare tire. Luckily, my father’s business was driving and he always managed to bring the car to a safe stop.