Background

Now begins the ticklish part of the blog, where I explain why this place is so special. It looks like I need to do this in three postings I will tentatively title Background, Departure, and Arrival. Then I can get on to the real matters as well as the incidentals.

I am not a native Midlander. I don't think many Midlanders are; we seem come to and go from the city at a very high rate. I will never forget a line in the last letter from one friend, years after I was already gone: "We have now become a typical Midland family, as we leave it." (More on this later.)

But in any case, when I was young my family moved a lot. In part this was due to my physicist father's work for the Navy. The frequent moves continued until we arrived in Midland, where my father had been hired by Dow Chemical.

Soon after arrival I shuffled off to Eastlawn Elementary, once again the stranger in class. But after two or three years in the same place, in the same school, with the same friends and no moves on the horizon, I put down roots. Very firmly. In such situations people can become more native than the natives.

But there was much more than that.

I recall the Brinewell (I think; is Dow still publishing that?) stating that Midland was very different from other cities: an unusual percentage of the population had college degrees, the center of town was preferable to the periphery, and more. A highly educated scientific city, and big on the arts as well (the Vienna Boys' Choir performing in my school's auditorium?! Yes!!). I learned about electronics, computers, "fluidonics" (anyone remember that? My father took me to a lecture at Dow one evening; imagine, computing without electricity!), chess and, oh yes, chemistry... This was all good.

So, I had lived way too many places for short stays and now found myself in a most agreeable city, apparently permanently. So maybe I became more native than the others.