L. Roy Wilcox, PhD - Autobiography, Part 8

E4: 1925-1929 (The New Trier Years)

My year at Howard school was a real spoiler: now I would have a daily, and very long, trip (of nearly a mile each way) to New Trier. True, one can ride on the North Shore (student fares for trips less than 5 miles: 50 for one dollar); but many Wilmette kids walked, West-Siders at any rate, and I was no exception – rain, shine, snow, or whatever. (I tried the bike one time, but someone damaged it there, and I never used it again to N. T. Bicycle use seemed to be out of style anyway.)

My course programs over the years fell into place more or less naturally: four years of English (required), two years of history (required), four years of mathematics (two required) two years of a Latin, three years of German, and one year of physics. The English turned out to be a dud (except for the senior year; drama and a snap course in journalism). Grammar, having presumably been learned by all was given virtually no attention; the extent of almost all the works were literature – poetry, which I find boring, essays, also mostly boring, and insipid romantic stuff. Except for the A’s in the last term, I got B’s in English. But history was worse: both teachers were terrible, making the subject as stilted and boring as possible. My efforts were minimal, and the payoff was too– straight D’s. Latin had a great appeal, especially because of the emphasis on grammar and language structure. Grades here: straight A. I stopped Latin after two years so that I could get as much German in as possible. Had I been very ambitious, I would have taken French as something new to me, but I was lazy and German promised to be easier, even though Spanish was taken by most kids because it was touted as the easiest language. Despite the German teacher’s short comings (a real battle axe, she), I did very well (probably because of my prior knowledge and the ease with which I handled the grammar and sentence structure). All grades in German were A’s, of course. And, since mathematics proved easy for me I did A work in it throughout, also.

It must be noted that I did not enter high school with expectations of being an outstanding scholar. After the freshman year, when my D’s and B’s kept me off the honor roll, my inferiority complex was still very much alive. As a sophomore I did make the honor roll, since history was absent, but I backslid as a junior. But I got a big boost by making straight A’s (there being no history and English being more [interesting?], and better taught than before). I had had the mathematics head for geometry (as a sophomore), and took to the subject well, probably because of the concise reasoning involved that appealed to me. After I had had solid geometry from him as a senior, he probably realized that I was one of his best students at least over a period of some time. This connection paid off well during my next era.

But the best of luck that I had occurred in my senior year, when a new German teacher, Mrs. Hilda Walker, took over. She was absolutely tops in every way and also highly perceptive, since she realized that I had an unmovedly good grasp of the language, with a “natural” affinity for it stemming from my early immersion in it, and of course a thorough mastery of the grammar, etc. This gave her some ideas about how I might put my German to good use, and these would figure in an essential way before the year was over.

Most students satisfied a science requirements by taking biology (easiest, it was said); most of the rest took chemistry. My program was too much along other lines for three years, and by then I realized that physics would probably be easy for me in view of my mathematical capabilities. And so it was. My teacher, Mr. Windoes, provided me a good view of the subject which I was able to use to good advantage later.

So much for academics. New Trier did have much more to offer of course. Although I had broken down some of my aversion to physical activities with the help of the baseball at Howard, my interest in athletics was still pretty low; there was no baseball, and I tended to shun new things. In the organized gym activities I went through the motions with little enthusiasm, until I discovered the mats. 

Here I could turn somersaults, and do them well, even with a running start and a springboard. My caddying had ended early in my freshman year, and so I played less golf (now on a public course for a fee). As a junior I developed a friendship with a boy who played tennis and offered to teach me. So I learned to play that game a bit. Of course, having learned to swim, I got a season ticket at Wilmette Beach each summer and made considerable use of it but [sic.] these activities were actually relatively sporty. Many boys got into varsity athletics (horribly time-consuming). Those who didn’t qualify and most other boys engaged in intramural programs, involving track, basketball, football, etc., etc.

But none of that appealed to me. There were activities much more attractive to me – in the (afterschool) clubs. In due course, I joined the Radio Club, the Chess Club, and the German Club, becoming quite active in each. These clubs provided a primary source of contact with other students having interests similar to mine. Here I developed some close friendships, not only with Wilmette kids, but with residents of the various villages. And, curiously, I tended to have less and less contact with my old classmates from Stolp and Howard. Never been much of a mixer, I always had a few friends, carefully selected, and with them I developed strong ties.

The strongest of these ties was with Morton Mergentheim of Winnetka, whom I met as a sophomore, and who taught me to play chess. I got reasonably good at this game though never as good as he was, and we played frequently. During the summers we often went swimming in Lake Michigan off Winnetka. Mort was one of the few N.T. classmates with whom I maintained contact for many years (actually until his death in 1979). More about that appears elsewhere. A strong tie through chess was developed also with Carlyle Duncan-Clark, son of a Chicago newspaper editor; he turned out (later) to be a public relations man – during WWII serving as General Eisenhower’s censor in Europe. In later years he often sought me out to discuss novel ideas which [he] had. The most interesting was a voting system he had invented in the early 1950s. It used cards and a punching machine for voters to specify their choices (instead of paper or machine balloting). He apparently initiated the system in California ultimately; later it became widely used all over. (He had offered me a piece of the proceeds, personally if I had promoted the system in the Chicago area, but that never materialized, and I did not hear from him again.)

Most of my other contacts came about through the radio club, for I had become a “ham” in my sophomore year, and I received much guidance from the club and fellow hams in it during the rest of my New Trier years. Although I was beginning to develop an interest in music of various kinds during my high school years, I did not get involved in any group, possibly because band, orchestra, and glee club clearly represented time-consuming activities, and I felt that I had no more time to spare.

It is noted elsewhere that I made a practice of listening to popular music on the radio. By far my favorite dance orchestra was Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. During this period “hambands”* played at the Granada Café on the south side of Chicago and his music was broadcast each night from about 10 PM until the wee hours. I found a couple of Winnetka boys who were similarly entranced by the Lombardo style and I developed friendships with them which lasted most of my college years.

It should be mentioned that I did not date girls while at New Trier. The main reason for this was that I was still pretty shy and afraid of being embarrassed by a likely refusal had I asked a girl for a date. But there were other reasons. I was forbidden to go to movies or to dances; hence there wasn’t any place for me to take a girl on an evening date. Furthermore, I didn’t have access to a car and public transportation was very limited, serving only a small part of N. T. Township. Finally, money was scarce, as I’ve indicated, I had plenty of other ways to spend my time, and I didn’t miss dating too much. Sundays were pretty well taken up by family and religious activities, discussed elsewhere.

Unfortunately, there was no college counseling in these years. I knew that I should make an effort to go to college after graduation, soon to occur, although I got no encouragement at home. My father undoubtedly expected me to go to work to enhance the family income. He had broken up with Art after a fight (in which Art claims to have been punched in the ear and permanently injured) and was working for one of Art’s competitors. My mother was no longer working, since Gertrude’s health was on the decline and she needed to be cared for. Still, I felt that a good field for me would be electrical engineering, because of aptitude in mathematics and physics. Northwestern was nearby and appropriate, but I didn’t take any steps in the matter, mostly because I really didn’t know what to do.

But the lady luck smiled during my final semester. My German teacher, Mrs. Walker, made a proposal to me, having learned that I had no college plans. She said that I should try for a U. of Chicago freshman scholarship in German, based on a competitive examination to be held in the late spring (of 1929). I agreed to try and she coached me, on the basis of her earlier experience with the U of C exams. These could be technical, trick grammatical questions, translations both ways, and it required an essay to be written in German, on a topic assigned then (not earlier). Anything but a top performance on the early parts would disqualify the examinee; of the few not so eliminated, the essay was definitive. She knew that I would have no trouble with the first parts and so concentrated on the essay. I could assume, she said, that the topic would have to do with German history, customs, and literary people (i.e., those whose works were in the usual high school curriculum). So I should prepare with her help, subsections on these subtopics, assuming that I could work much of what I had written in somehow, modifying here and there if need be to produce continuity and, of course volume to the actual topic assigned. This was a pretty big job, and required that I memorize all the stuff that had been prepared. Hooray for my early Bible verse days!

I knew that my mother was prejudiced against the U of C, because Art had attended the Theological Seminary there briefly and had then lost whatever religious beliefs he had had. So when the time came to go to the U of C for the exam, I was so dubious about the whole thing, that any nervousness that I would normally have felt and that might have caused me to flub the exam was absent. How fortunate! A classmate, Connie (not too bright), went down with me, although Mrs. Walker had told him that he’d never have a chance, since I would be competing.

I breezed through the exam in the morning; luckily; was able to use a lot of the stuff I had prepared. We were given lunch, and then had to wait until late in the afternoon for the results. Connie and I discussed the exam, and he brought up questions on some of the tricky parts. It turned out that he had fallen into traps, and so clearly his chances were nil. The participants gathered in Mandel Hall on schedule and the presentation of results began. First, the runners-up were identified. (I wasn’t named!) Then there was a partial scholarship to go to the second place winner. (Not me!) Finally “a full scholarship will go to Roy Wilcox, from New Trier High School.” (Who dat?)

On the program at the commencement, my name was missing from the list of graduates who had received scholarships, it was also missing from the list of members of the “Honor Society.” (How come, since my average was 3.4 despite a couple of disastrous years?) But the kicker was this: a special announcement was made during the proceedings that Roy Wilcox had entered the competition at the U of C and had “brought home the bacon.” I was then asked to rise (for applause). Then, when attention was called to the list of the elite members of the Honor Society, an apology followed. Through a mix up the name Roy Wilcox, Society member, had been omitted; again I arose; again applause. (I was the only graduate who got any special mention!) Goodbye, now, to the inferiority complex.

The summer of 1929 was spent at Lake Harbor, Michigan newly acquired summer resort of the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle. My mother had an office job there and I was offered a job to repair or rebuild a telephone system which the property had had but apparently had been maintained badly. When we arrived, however, I learned that the management had wanted the telephone work done earlier; I had not been notified. No other suitable work was available, and so I was provided a room and board for the duration of the summer. This seemed a pretty good deal, and so I accepted. There were swimming, golf, a chance to develop some new friendships, some of which lasted a while, and, as noted elsewhere, a chance to learn to play the saxophone.

The summer break was good for me, since it wasn’t long before my scholarly experience was to begin; with little let up.

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* Radio frequencies on a ham radio set that allowed one to listen to special broadcasts.

L. Roy Wilcox, PhD - Autobiography, Part 7

E3: ELEMENTARY SCHOOL GRADES 7, 8; AGES 11-13; 1923-1925

The Wilmette house was a bungalow of one story (plus attic and basement) with but two bedrooms, in contrast to the Chicago house of two stories (plus basement) with three bedrooms. Yard space, fortunately, was quite adequate. My parents picked the front bedroom, and of course Grandmother Gertrude got the rear one. I was assigned the (heated) rear “sun-porch.” And, wonder of wonders, I had a private entrance from the outside (in addition to the interior entrance from the kitchen).

Roy at his private entrance

The neighborhood was far more attractive than anything I had seen in Chicago; and there was a park only a couple of blocks away. However, we were about as close (within a block) to the railroads – Northwestern (North Branch) and North Shore (interurban) Line – as we were in Chicago – Northwestern (Northwest Branch), but [sic.] we were used to the noise.

One of the first things we learned about Wilmette is that, like Caesar’s Gallia, it was divided into parts – however, not three but two: “East Side” and “West Side,” between which there existed considerable rivalry approaching animosity. The East Side contained large, expensive houses and the “snooty” Wilmettites; it lay between the shore of Lake Michigan and the Northwestern Railroad tracks. The West Side, which lay in the four block-wide region between the tracks and Ridge Road, contained smaller, less expensive houses and the common people (including, of course, us). (Now the West Side extends variously 1 to 3 miles farther west, the extension encompassing land, west of Ridge Road, which was mostly farmland at the time of our move.)

The East Side had three public schools – Laurel, for grades K – 4, Central for grades 5 and 6, and Stolp for grades 7 and 8. The West Side had but one public school – Logan for grades K – 6. Hence seventh-and eighth-graders on the West Side had to cross the tracks to attend Stolp. These trips were made on foot, since there were no buses. (Nowadays, no Wilmette children are required to walk to school if tracks have to be crossed.) For me as a seventh grader from the West Side, the trip was about ¾ miles each way, noticeably greater than what I had been accustomed to in Chicago!

Stolp was not called a junior high school; but it was in effect such. In fact, it was more of a junior high school than the Wilmette Junior High School of today. Each of grades seven and eight occupied one floor, with four rooms each. Every room served as a “homeroom,” the teacher in charge of which was also a special subject teacher. Mine taught arithmetic; the others taught respectively English, geography, and history. Each day had five periods, one for homeroom activities and one for each of the four academic subjects; in addition there was an hour for a round trip home for lunch, and a final period was devoted to such miscellany as gym, music, and “current events.” In general the four classes of a grade moved as a units, disjoint [sic.] from one another, from one location to another in each case. [1]

My penchant for getting lost on the first day of school came to the fore again. After school I had no idea how to get home and had to call my mother. Since she didn’t know how to steer me home, she called Mr. Abramson, our contractor, who then dashed to where I was and drove me home. No more trouble thereafter.

I soon became adjusted to the school program and in fact enjoyed it immensely. I was particularly impressed by the excellence of teaching (completely unmatched in Chicago, I thought). Curiously my best teacher was a Mrs. Vernon, who taught history – later the subject I came to dislike intensely. A close second was a Mrs. (?) Anderson, who taught English – later a subject that I didn’t care for. My homeroom teacher, a Mrs. Jones, taught arithmetic. She was quite good, but I didn’t care much for the subject, because as taught it was too routine and devoid of ideas; of course I did well because of the ease with which I had learned to handle rote processes.

It became clear almost immediately that English was the area most neglected at Belding School. In Wilmette the students had been taught grammar – parts of speech, sentence structure, proper usage, etc. – in sixth grade, and probably even earlier; in Chicago I had learned none of this. So I went to work, devoting extra time to grammar, if only to overcome my clear inferiority to my classmates. As a result, my big achievement in seventh grade was to learn, and learn well, what I had missed earlier, and indeed to come to enjoy this subject far more than any of the others. As it turned out, when I got to eighth grade, I had acquired the title “grammar expert”; even the English teacher, a rank beginner, often looked to me for help. (I recall setting her straight when she claimed that “the” was an article, not an adjective!)

In passing, it’s worth noting that in those days there was general acceptance of a vague authority on what is good grammar, usage, etc., and what is not. Dictionaries stated in no uncertain terms what is right and what is wrong; the big ones usually cited as authorities famous writers. (The 1889 addition of the Century Dictionary states under prove: “. . . proved, sometimes incorrectly proven,” and follows with two examples, both with proved.) The present widespread attitude that there should be no rules, that “anything goes” is a product of the growth of anti-intellectualism during this century; it contributes to a lessening of effectiveness of language as an instrument of communication.

Being something of a shrinking violet, I didn’t gain many friends during the year of grade 7. By avoiding normal athletic participation to the extent possible, I locked myself out of some social contacts. And the prejudices of East Siders against West Siders didn’t help. But I did find a few friends with whom I had something in common. One was even an East Sider – George Glover. My interest in him was partly due to the fact that he had a bicycle – a conveyance I had not traveled on. As it happened, George had a paper route. Since papers had to be placed on front steps, the bicycle didn’t help much. I offered to help him: he could ride the bike, skipping every other house, to which I would deliver a paper; in that way time would be saved. In return he offered me a lesson or two and the privilege of riding from time to time on his bike. Once I had learned, I could talk my parents into buying me a bike for Christmas. I was leery about riding it to Stolp School, but the next year I rode all over. Wilmette was kind to us riders: we could ride on the sidewalks, at corners the curbs were joined to raised inner edges of the street gutters with steel plates, thus making for pretty bump free rides.

In the summer of 1924, my mother and I, and for a couple of weeks my father, spent most of the time in Henderson, Michigan with the family we had visited several times earlier. 

Gertrude on the Mueller Farm, Henderson, Michigan

(The mother – Mrs. Mueller – and mine had been friends in Chicago in earlier days before her marriage.) While I wasn’t capable physically of being involved in all types of the farm work, I did help with some chores, even to the point of carrying bags of grain after threshing. But I learned much about farming of the time.

The Mueller farm was essentially 100% primitive. No electricity, no running water, no bathroom (outhouse 50 feet from the home), no refrigeration, no radio, no mechanization (except for a model T Ford for transportation to town). The Muellers had had six children, four older than I, one my age, and one younger (children in those days were a source of cheap labor; the result was that most home as soon as possible and did not go into farming.) I learned a lot and got along well. I rode a horse bareback and fell off; I learned how to milk a cow, even squirting the product into my mouth, warm as it was. I engaged with my playmates in a stupid game – climbing a ladder and jumping into a pile of hay – and jumped far too great a height, missing the hay. The result was two broken (foot) arches [requiring arch] supports to be worn for decades.

Eighth grade was a distinct improvement over seven in many ways. I learned before school started that a new school called “Howard” (on the West Side) had been completed and was ready to take upper grade West Siders. Though it was closer than Stolp (about a half mile away), my tendency to avoid the new led me to go back to Stolp. But when I was discovered, I was promptly sent over to Howard. In a short time I had a pretty good circle of friends (no more East-West prejudices afoot), and I took an interest in baseball (soft, of course) to the extent that I normally bolted down my lunch to get back to school and into the new game.

Among my newly found friends were a few who caddied and had learned to play golf. They persuaded me to go with them to the Indian Hill Club (shortly west of Kenilworth) and to become a caddy. The pay was $.25 an hour ($.50 when caddying double), more on Sundays. (There I was ruled out for religious reasons.) No tips, unless one caddied for a guest (who didn’t know the rule). After a time I became an “honor caddy” with a 20% increase in pay! Since caddies could play (except weekends and Wednesdays), I bought four clubs and a bag and learned the game. I never quite made par but did make some holes in 2. In the summer of 1925 there was a caddy tournament of 9-hole matchings. I was adjudged right for the third flight (next to lowest) and proceeded to reach the final match. My opponent and I were even up after our nine holes and so we replayed hole 9, 160 yards, par three. My first shot was off the green, but fairly near and his was on the other side of the green. It was agreed that I shoot while he walked toward his ball. I did so, sinking the approach for a 2, he failed on his, but claimed I had cheated by placing the ball in the hole by hand behind his back. There were no witnesses and it was his word against mine. The caddy master accepted my story and gave me the prize – a club to round out my set (now of five).

Eighth grade and graduation went off without a hitch. During the summer of 1925 my father took me and two other boys – Roy and Bob – on a camping trip to Crystal Lake, Illinois. Roy was older than I by about two years and was able to drive a car. So my father bought (for something like $30) a 1917 model T Ford. Roads were awful and very hard on the tires. We must have stopped 15 or 20 times to remove and repair damage to them. (Wheels were not removable – the tire rims were part of them.) The trip of about 40 miles took a day.

rare photo of Roy with his father Lee, shortly before the camping trip

Since my father had been to Crystal Lake in connection with Scout camping when he was at Galewood, he knew the woman who owned the land along the lake suitable for a campsite. Perhaps he had written her earlier. In any case, we located near the beach, put up our tent, and prepared to spend a week or 10 days. My father was the cook and we boys the dishwashers. In all, this was a good experience all around. For one thing, I learned (all by myself) to swim and, of course, to get badly sunburned. I also learned that a father may well boss his own son around more than other boys. I had one important first experience. We boys one evening heard musical sounds which invited investigation: what we found was a dance pavilion complete with a dance orchestra and dancers. I might have heard orchestras on the radio, but I’d never heard or seen a dance orchestra live. A song that was played stuck in my mind long enough for me to recall it much later and find sheet music for it (which I still have). It was “Going Home.” A day trip (with more car repairs) got us home.

We delivered our boys to Chicago, where they lived, and it was then my job to drive to Wilmette. (I’d had no experience up to that time.) I didn’t know that the clutch pedal had three positions – down for low, up for high, and middle for neutral (no gear shift, of course). (Because I knew – clutch in neutral, middle pedal down.) So when my father cranked up (hand start), I’d forget to keep the clutch in neutral and would let it out. Of course this killed the engine. He cursed (words I’ve never heard him use before), and cranked again. Somehow I eventually got the hang of it and we proceeded home via Sheridan Road. The car was parked in the yard you’re the alley, used a few times, and soon sold to one of my classmates for $15!

I was now ready for New Trier.

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[1] The departmentalized instruction used here was evidently copied verbatim from that in use in high schools; I shall return to this subject later.

L. Roy Wilcox, PhD - Autobiography, Part 6

E2: ELEMENTARY SCHOOL GRADES 1-6; AGES 6-11; 1918-1925

In September 1918 I entered the first grade at Hiram Belding School, located one block east and nearly a block north of our home. (Convenient!) In those days, children, even young ones, were expected to fend for themselves. Probably I was taken to school the first day, no doubt by my mother, since her certification of opposition to (smallpox) vaccination was needed before I could be enrolled. However, I cannot remember ever being taken to (or called for at) school after that. In fact, a neighbor boy, Billy, and I became friends and agreed to meet after school to go home together each day. The first time, instead of going south or west as was required, we went east for a long distance before we realized that something was wrong. So we backtracked to school and tried the opposite direction. This couldn’t fail to get us into familiar territory and hence home. I can’t recall that Gertrude, my grandmother, in whose charge I was during most of these years, was even worried or upset at the lateness of my return from school.

I guess the school was pretty well run; my dim memory of the teachers doesn’t suggest much that I would take serious issue with. (This may seem strange, but it must be remembered that educational standards were much higher in those days than they are today, even, surprisingly, in Chicago.) For some reason, perhaps because in those days it was not customary to compliment children upon their accomplishments, I lived through this period with an inferiority complex, despite the existence of small bits of evidence which should have worked against it. For example, I always won the “spelldowns” in school. Also, my early Sunday School experiences with learning and accurately reciting Bible verses, and my similar performances (in German) at the German Church Ladies Aid Society, to which I was dragged from time to time, should have made clear to me that I had some ability, at least in rote learning.

A small indicator that I might not be exactly dummy emerged in a curious way. My first or second grade teacher had the class doing an exercise: she would speak a word, wait briefly while we wrote on paper our respective versions of the word and then repeat the process with another word. Somehow it occurred to me that an easy way to handle this matter was to peek over the shoulder of the person in front of me, and then write what he had written. (So I was a bit stupid; I probably didn’t know whether I could rely on the correctness of that person’s work.) Soon the teacher noticed what was going on. I don’t remember what she did the time, but she did shortly afterward contact my mother, indicating her disappointment in me for “cheating” and emphasizing that I was quite capable of doing the exercise on my own.[1]

As time went on, there were other indicators that I might have some ability. For example, I had no trouble with arithmetic processes, but these, involving only mechanical skills, didn’t seem indicative of any special traits on my part, since, as I’ve indicated, rote learning was “old hat” to me. Since so much of my learning in these grades was of this type, I didn’t feel especially complimented when I was “double promoted.” (Chicago schools had a sensible “semester” system: children enter school in September or February, depending on birthdate. This made possible the skipping of one semester at a time (rather than an entire year, which today’s Educationists frown upon) if a child is deemed capable of doing the (slightly) more advanced work. Since this skipping happened to me twice, I ended up one year ahead of where I normally would have been. This condition was to last throughout all the years of my formal education. Never once did I feel myself to be a “social misfit” (as the Educationists would have claimed it to be necessary consequence); indeed, I always felt at home with my classmates, although most of them were a year older than I. As it turned out, the condition had many unforeseen positive consequences.

During my five years at Belding school I had only one failing grade. That was in “manual training” (now called something like “related arts” or “industrial arts”) – nothing more than a basic introduction to woodworking. The first project was to learn how to plane a piece of wood. instructions were given along with a hand-plane, a place at a bench with a vice and a piece of wood about 8” x 3” x ¾”. The long edge ran with the grain, and that was to be planed “square.” When one completed planing and thought the job done right, one was to check the edge with an L-square. If any light showed between wood and square as the square was moved along in any direction, one was to try again and continue trying as necessary until no light ever showed. Then one could get an OK from the teacher and start another project. It is of course clear that a condition of “no light” is unattainable, certainly with hand tools; yet I took the instructions literally and continued planing. When one piece of wood got too small, I started on another. I suppose most of my classmates got by with nearly perfect jobs. As I think about the ineptness of my teacher I wonder why he never investigated my never asking for a check of my work. (Many years later I recounted this experience to my colleague and co-author Richard Kershner; by that time we had both acquired more knowledge of and experience with woodworking than my teacher very probably had possessed. To my amazement, Kershner replied that he had the identical experience in grade school!)

Several events worth noting occurred during this period. In about 1920 my father quit working at Sears Roebuck and became a kind of general manager in my Uncle Art Miller’s food materials distributing business, dealing in such items as sugars, flours, oils, flavorings, etc. 

Since alcohol was in common use in certain foods, e.g., vanilla, and since Prohibition was in effect, Art saw certain opportunities. Although he wasn’t exactly a “bootlegger” he did stock and sell more alcohol than would (probably) have normally been used by his customers. My father told about some narrow escapes. On one occasion he sat on cartons of alcohol while Government agents came to “check out” such establishments, and simply lied about the cartons’ contents.

Uncle Art, ca 1900

Art had earlier agreed to reimburse my mother for most of the cost of the Kildare house and of his college education, and to help support their mother. He had never done any of this; now his excuse could be that his hiring my father would cancel his obligations, especially since my mother managed finances so well that no contributions from him would be needed. My father’s employability was declining gradually because of his increasing deafness. (Hearing aids of any value had not yet been developed.)

Belding School covered grades K – 8. But my move there from grade 6 into grade 7 was not to be. By this time my parents had given much thought to moving to a suburb. Motivation was simple: the corner lot next to our house was to be occupied (probably completely covered) by an apartment building; the neighborhood was deteriorating; and schools were said to be much better in the suburbs. So they bought a lot in Winnetka with the intention of building on it. But a more practical deal presented itself in the spring of 1923: a house had been built at 1511 Elmwood Ave., Wilmette, by a contractor (Mr. Abramson) for his son; but for some reason the son wasn’t going to use it, and so the house went on the market. In short order, the Wilmette house was acquired, the Winnetka lot sold, and the Kildare house sold (to a Dr. Wheat, to whom the negatives seemed not to bother); the order of events is unknown to me. Also it is unclear how my parents, who were basically poor, could have handled the finances involved. I do know that the Wilmette house cost $12,500, and my parents ended up with a $5000 mortgage against the property. We moved in summer 1923.

Many children no doubt have sad feelings when facing a move. As I recall, anticipation of a new location was exciting. True, I had a few friends in the neighborhood, but none were close, and I felt no sorrow in contemplating leaving them. Being introverted as I was, I knew that my toys and books would accompany me and so fill any void. Even the two cats that Art had given us, because they didn’t serve well as mousers in his warehouse, would move with us to help provide continuity. (As it turned out, we didn’t keep them long after the move, because we really felt no great attachment to them. Indeed, pets other than those cats played no role in my life until I became a parent.) In summary, I can say that I looked forward with great excitement to a new life.

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[1] The fact that I had seen nothing "wrong" with my system suggests that (at least in my case) the difference between "rights" and "wrong," or better, between "acceptable" and "unacceptable," has to be learned; moreover, it may have to be learned in a variety of contexts rather than as a single universal moral guide. This subject will receive attention later.