Chapters from "TIME TRIALS"
• 6 •
Adolescence Interrupted
Over the summer of 1950, I evolved from a vigorous, somewhat reasonable boy to a pre-adolescent with all the dysfunction of an emerging teenager. This I somewhat realized at a time when self-awareness and sensibility were underdeveloped.
On a sultry summer day being bored, Billy Langley pilfered a couple packs of Chesterfields from behind the counter of his family’s restaurant. One would have been sufficient, but either way we committed a misdemeanor. In a poor imitation of grownups, the two of us camped under the bleachers at Harris Field and smoked both packs. This was a new take on “chain smoking.”
​
I arrived home later nauseated, throwing myself onto the bed too sick for dinner. When Don came to inquire, he could tell what transpired. Only years later I confessed to the misadventure, well after it slipped from his memory. I never forgot. Chalk it off to the “adolescent brain.”
​
No excuse intended, but this was some years before the health dangers of tobacco smoke were understood. Yet, Ruth Dunbar, Bill’s mother and our school nurse, was ahead of the time. Her sister who lived in Chicago, near the friendly confines of Wrigley Field, would occasionally visit Elkhorn. “Aunt Ora”was a chain smoker, who Ruth forbade lighting up in Dunbar home. My mother was accommodating, and we enjoyed the baseball banter of Aunt Ora, who attended many Cub games, and stories of living in Chicago. Our lungs survived the abuse, but I’ve never been interested in lighting up having witnessed ubiquitous additive behavior in my youth.
​
From an academic perspective, 7th grade was a disaster, as I acquired well-deserved Fs in the language arts and social studies. My deportment wasn’t much better, but I was socially popular.
​
What a bizarre coincidence, as 20 years later, I earned a Ph.D. in the social sciences and would become a prodigious writer. As a youngster, I must admit that I was an athlete first with all else secondary or tertiary.
​
My active life, however, was interrupted, when diagnosed with rheumatic fever on the final day of seventh grade at age 12. Two months earlier I had started my first job delivering The Milwaukee Journal to 60 households and was thrilled to be earning money. My one-speed bicycle, outfitted with a large wire basket on the front handlebars, could accommodate Sunday editions with as many as 100 pages. On Sunday mornings, however, it would take more than one trip from the distribution garage on North Washington Street to transport all the newspapers.
At the time on weekdays, Milwaukee had both a morning paper the Sentinel and the evening Journal. The two merged in 1995. The latter included a larger sweep of the metro region and was the popular publication on Sunday’s. My first delivery of the Sunday version, on an early Spring morning, was a formidable challenge. As all 75 pounds of me attempted to negotiate a sidewalk curb on South Wisconsin Street, my bicycle catapulted head-over-heel with me doing a back-flip over the handlebars. I was totally exhausted.
​
Unfortunately, it would be another 20 years before Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) law in 1971 with curb cuts and other measures to make life more hospitable for bicyclists and pedestrians to traverse stairs, walkways and streets.
​
Likewise, my heroic somersault was accomplished without a bicycle helmet that had yet to be invented, or at least were not omnipresent nor fashionable. If parents and other adults were to be fearful for children’s well-being, this was the era to do so. I merely got up, dusted myself off, stacked the newspapers back in the basket and carried on with my job. One tough kid, maybe!
​
For this semi-skilled labor, I earned one cent and a half for a daily paper and three cents for the Sunday delivery. This came to $7.20 a week plus tips and was a good gig for a kid to earn over $30 a month in 1951. We also collected once a week from patrons, which could be time-consuming but instructive. The Milwaukee paper was a coveted job, because those who delivered the Beloit Daily News and Janesville Gazette didn’t make the big money from Sunday papers.
​
The price of The Journal for my customers was five cents (daily) and 15 cents on Sunday. It didn’t take much to figure that given the cost of office space, utilities, reporters, writers, editors, paper, printing, maintenance, truck delivery to dozens of communities in the metro area, and payment to local distributors, newspapers’ major revenue came from advertisers. And they thrived in the 1950s, when people actually read and received their news from print.
​
These were the “good old days.” Little to no “fake news” then. Today’s distorted, truncated news comes not from first-rate newspapers, such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, but tabloids and cable outlets, e.g., Fox News, Sinclair Broadcast, Breitbart News, Newsmax, One American News (OAN), and the National Enquirer. It spreads like wildfire via Facebook, Twitter, and specious social media. This is a deep threat to our republic and can only be controlled by what Ernest Hemmingway called “crap detecting”—an earthy term for critical and reflective thinking based on research, evidence gathering, logic, and skepticism.
​
It was a trying summer to be bedridden, and I did my devious best to masquerade the seriousness of the illness. It may have been a miracle that I recovered sufficiently to attend school the next fall. I attribute the recovery to a vigilant mother, who whisked me to the medical clinic downtown when I eventually mentioned aching joints. First, an elbow, then wrist, and finally a knee, upon which I reported it to my mother.
​
Rheumatic fever was an ever-present disease for children during the 1950s and earlier. Suddenly, a few years later, it disappeared. Strep throat is a precursor to rheumatic fever, as streptococcus virus enters the bloodstream and becomes lodged around heart valves causing murmurs. To counteract the virus, I was administered sulfa drugs.
​
When not detected early, the malady can be long-lasting, even debilitating. Although I was in denial, erasing the thought from my mind, this could have resulted in a damaged heart with no high school, college, or even lifetime athletic activity. Such would have been a depressing existential consequence.
​
Children, several decades later, have been spared the illness with the advent of penicillin that virtually eliminated the strep virus. In the meantime, for the next couple years, sports in my life were put on hold. Still, wanting to be close to the action, I served from the sidelines in a student managerial role, as younger brother Roger and classmates played on the junior high basketball team that winter.
​
When I returned from the clinic and informed Roger that he would have to assume the paper route for “two weeks,” being ever hopeful and self-deceiving. He was obliging. We got a good laugh from the transition that was to last two years. The boy was pleased to have ample spending money throughout his junior high years, and I hustled to make ends meet.
​
While World War II served to boost the U.S. economy, it led to inflation—an increase in the price of commodities. Many families had ample spending money, but it took industry time to retool and catch-up producing goods and services. The interlude from 1947-49 saw inflationary pressure increase. Too much money chasing too few goods and services to cite the textbook adage.
​
Much the same is happening now with coronavirus disruptions. In March 2020, U.S lawmakers passed a $2.3 trillion stimulus bill called the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act to blunt the impact of the downturn caused by the global coronavirus pandemic. A year later, in March 2021, the President signed a $1.9 trillion COVID Relief Bill.
​
This injected an unprecedented amount of money into the economy for understandable reasons. Global supply chain problems then reduced the flow of goods with resulting inflation. “Too many dollars chasing too little production.” This too will end when the manufacture and distribution of products returns to normal.
​
In the meantime, consumers can do their part by being parsimonious and buying only what they need not want. Consider it a form of self-imposed, patriotic rationing.
​
After WWII, the production of tanks and jeeps gave way to automobiles and trucks rolling off assembly lines, and department stores stocked with refrigerators, wash machines, dryers, and furniture. Eventually, the supply of goods satisfied pent-up demand. Stores carried stylish dresses, suits, and casual wear. The ’40s look was in.
We remember our nation’s immense sacrifice, soldiers lost in combat, and the pain families suffered. The United States’ casualties totaled 405,000, hardly a trivial number. Russian deaths, including civilians, were more than 20 million or nearly 15 percent of its 1940 population. Likewise, the deaths among allies Poland, Yugoslavia, and France were multiples more than that of the United States. The defeat of Germany on the Western Front was a united effort.
​
The United States’ use of nuclear weapons on Japan to end the war struck fear in nations. After the war, Russia fortified its borders with a ring of satellites to help prevent more invasions from the West and had begun developing the atomic bomb. The Cold War was on.
With Japan’s occupation of the Korean peninsula ended, the vacuum filled. The Chinese communist revolution in 1949 led by Mao Zedong heightened America’s fears, and Korea arbitrarily was divided at the 38th parallel. The North sought to unite the country, but the American military, fearing a communist takeover aided by China, installed exiled Syngman Rhee as President.
Hostilities between the South and North ensued between U.S-backed anti-communist forces and Chinese support in north. Armed battle was fierce with villages destroyed and civilian casualties also inflicted. Americans were bewildered. Only five years after the big war, the United States, along with UN forces, were engaged in combat.
​
President Harry S. Truman, fearful of a Communist takeover, supported South Korea. The North, however, was well fortified, and General Douglas MacArthur’s promise for the troops to be “home by Christmas” 1950 was an illusion. But the Truman Doctrine, as it was called, led to a belief in the “domino theory:” If one nation in Southeast Asia were to become communist, others were bound to follow.
​
In the meantime, Don enlisted in the Army in January 1951. He completed basic training at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin then qualified for Officers Candidate School (OCS) at Fort Riley, Kansas, graduating as a 2nd Lieutenant in July 1952. After medical training in San Antonio and duty in the states, he was assigned to a medical battalion in Korea. He served in Korea from February 1953 until returning and being discharged that December.
General Douglas MacArthur
Don - Korean War 1953
He spoke little of the war and appeared unmoved to what might have been witnessed. Although, I suspect the idea of Communism as an evil ideology was a factor in shaping his political views.
​
Such was not the case with friend Bob Morrissey, EHS ‘47, who after college with an army commission served in the Korean Conflict and Vietnam War. Bob was a good athlete in high school and at St. Norbert College. As platoon commander, he witnessed brutal combat and became addicted to nicotine. When smoking led to throat damage, he turned to alcohol. Bob committed suicide in his early sixties having retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.
​
Colonel Morrissey likely was afflicted with battle fatigue, or what we now refer to as PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). During World War I, this was called being shell shocked, from which our neighbor and venerable Elkhorn judge, Roscoe Luce, suffered.
​
When peace talks began in early 1951, the sides became entrenched in a stalemate, and the war dragged on for a couple more years. While a truce was reached in July 1953 to end the combat, it was an uneasy stalemate and Korea remained divided.
The politics of this had little effect on our lifestyles. I was more intrigued with my mother’s put-down of President Harry “Ass” Truman, who dramatically fired General Douglas MacArthur in 1951. The General wanted to bomb China, which the President argued was irresponsible and would lead to a bigger war. The general was “trigger happy,” and the President was right.
​
Yes, occasionally mom could be crude. This certainly didn’t come from her mother, who was somber, proper, and quick to “hark, hark” at a hint of “potty mouth” talk from her grandchildren. Mom’s brother, Perry had a way with foul language timely expressed to make a point in the workplace and at the country club. Mom’s vulgarity, however, lacked such class and style.
​
As I grew older, she also had a way of seeing through or putting me down, if I was too self-confident and arrogant. Busted! She was right but expressed it in terms of my being “just like Perry MaGill.” More than a little inferiority came through though her point was effectively made.
I do have sweet memories of autumn and falling leaves from the early 1950s. On crisp fall weekends, we would intermittently rake the foliage and pass the pigskin, while listening to Wisconsin football. These were epoch years for Badgers who were a Big Ten powerhouse consistently ranking in the top-tier nationally from 1950 through 1954.
​
The ‘52 team made its first trip to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena ranked number 11 nationally against No. 5 USC. This squad included eventual Heisman Trophy winner Alan “the Horse” Ameche (Kenosha) along with speedsters Harlan Carl (Greenwood), Jerry Witt (Marshfield) and quarterback Jim Haluska (Racine), all Wisconsin guys. At linebacker those years was Naperville, Illinois native Roger Dornburg, older brother of my Beloit classmate and teammate Jared.
​
The early early Fifties’ Badgers included interior lineman Art Perchlik, whose brother Richard was a colleague for a summer in Boca Raton, Florida. He had been an offensive tackle at Ohio State in his college days and a mayor of Greeley, Colorado. At the time, he was a political science professor at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC). We formed a wonderful collegial relationship.
​
While he worked writing a government book for citizens, I crafted an economics book. “Dick” was a giant of a man, congenial scholar and admirable human being. As mayor, he was referred to as the “Conscience of Greeley.”