Other Cultures, Other Ways

(continuing the thread from below)

Airline-issue eye masks -- travel never used to be part of my job (except for a short period of monthly one-day visits). And I was happy with that.

But in 1995 my employer asked me to become expert in a new technology and join its technical committees. I had no idea what was ahead.

It took almost a year before the travel began, with a 1-day meeting of the main committee in San Antonio. Three months later I attended the 2-day kickoff of my ISO committee in England. (It's funny to recall now and colleagues laugh at the story, but I was so very stressed about that: "OMG, I am going to a really foreign country!"*)

It began to pick up after that, with the main committee soon going from one to four meetings a year (and from the original 1 day to as many as 7-1/2, though we're back to 4-1/2 days) and the ISO meeting 2 days each year with a different member country playing host.

A bit of travel but manageable and the formation of a third committee in early 2000 with up to four more meetings a year (usually tacked on to the main committee's meetings) didn't change it much.

But for me that all changed late 2000 whenI flew to Beijing to speak at a Chinese government committee meeting during a conference there. (I even had to get a suit for the occasion.)

Arriving jetlagged, alone in a country where I couldn't speak or even read the language, completely in the hands of my hosts -- I so much just wanted to be back home. But when I left ten days later I was sad: I wanted to see more and I was leaving new friends behind. (The book in our hands was a brand-new translation of this technology into mainland Chinese.)

The annual international meetings continued, including Canberra, Seoul, Paris, Cairo and Key West among our venues. Kathy and her languages sometimes came with me; otherwise I was learning to manage on my own. (Herr Rose at Central Intermediate would not be pleased with my 30-years-rusty German.)

A few years later I started speaking at conferences domestic and international: New Delhi, Mexico City, Vienna... well, there's a lot more but you get the idea. I also wound up a member of a European manufacturer's association, thereby adding more travel and speaking engagements -- and more countries.


I think such travel unavoidably and irreversibly changes one.

In a comment to a previous posting girlsinger wrote, "Some told me they couldn't wait to leave [Midland] and some, like you, ... hoped to stay." Yes I did, and for a very long time, but I am not sure that's the case anymore.

Observing so many other cultures and learning a little of their ways, I started seeing the world, not to mention my own culture and home, differently. Today I might well be one of those who couldn't wait to leave Midland. And for all that I still feel most at home in the Midwest there are a few places abroad I would very much like to try to live, places to which I feel a significant affinity, even though they all require learning a new language. It is possible to do; Kathy knows Americans who "went native" abroad and remained.

"You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right." ~Maya Angelou

I thoroughly disagree. Though you can never go home again, you carry a bit of home with you forever. And if I were to go abroad to live in another culture and to learn new ways, a little bit of the Midland of old would go with me.

Sleepless in ABQ, part two

Crashed early last night after preparing the room so I could sleep in this morning: curtains tightly drawn, laptop charger unplugged (it has a very bright blue LED), clock-radio backlight off. All to no avail: the fire alarm sounded at 5 AM.

It cleared a couple of minutes later but the damage was done. So I dug in my backpack for the fabric eye mask (courtesy of Air France; other overseas carriers provide uncomfortable plastic eye masks) and tried unsuccessfully for a little more sleep.

(This will segue into the next posting...)

Sunrise over the Wasatch and the Albuquerque Convention Center: 6:17 AM

Sleepless in Albuquerque

I have been having a fair amount of difficulty getting enough sleep on this trip: no matter when I go to sleep I'm up before sunrise. It's as if I'd flown to the East coast instead of a single time zone away. This morning I woke up at 4 AM with some 1967-era pop tune or another playing annoyingly in my head, over and over and over.


In an attempt to drown it out with something good and pleasing, and go back to sleep, I pulled out the MP3 player, flipped to the "India" folder, queued up "Indian Sarangi Recitals" by Ustad Sabri Khan -- and realized that, much as K. said in private e-mail, had I remained cocooned in the Midland I remember there is much I would have missed. It's very likely I would not have had this recording, much less the extensive collection of ragas in the same folder.

Midland may have a bagpipe band now but the opportunities for exposure to "exotic" instruments then were limited. Sure, I have a 70s-era LP of Ravi Shankar ("East Meets West") so I was not unaware of the sitar, but it was hearing live performances in Seattle some years back that sparked my interest. I quickly discovered the masters such as Ustad Vilayat Khan; confirmed as such by my Indian colleagues, who note that the next generation is sadly not producing new masters. But Ravi Shankar and his daughter Ananda are far too "pop" for my liking.

But that's only part of my eclectic "international" collection. After I heard some Persian music my wife gave me a CD set of same. I took to it immediately. Our Iranian friends are amazed that I not only know of but like the masters, including Mohammed Reza Shajarian and Kayhan Kalhor. And other albums such as the Kurdish-Iranian ensemble The Kamkars' "Nightingale with a Broken Wing." (Kathy had to explain that one: "The nightingale only sings in flight; with a broken wing she can neither fly nor sing." How can you find a name more evocatively Persian than that?!)

And new areas and instruments keep opening up: the dan, koto, kora... so much wonderful music I might never have known. I just wonder whether today's Midland is musically more diverse than it seemed back then.

And no, after all that I did not get back to sleep.

Another Midland connection discovered

It's so strange. During our professional society's conferences my technical committee goes out for dinner together Saturday nights -- among other thing it builds comraderie between representatives from (often) competing companies.

Tonight the manager of standards joined us, and ended up sitting between the two former chairmen present, the committee's first chairman and me. In the course of our conversation I learned that she's a Michigander (now living elsewhere), her aunt (now passed away) lived in Midland, and they visited her there often!

A Time of Changes

In what seems like an eternity ago, though to my shock I find not much over two weeks have passed, on one of this blog's first postings I wrote: "I've often wondered whether it would have made a difference had we left Midland a year earlier or a year later -- but I have no good answer. "

In the very next posting about the time immediately after my departure I wrote, "But Midland itself had started changing, I learned from letters from my friend." But the letters back and forth with Andy ceased soon after and I heard little from my remaining correspondent.

(The next "datapoint" I had was an early '70s magazine article, don't know which one, that featured a Vietnam vet from Midland who had returned, though all I recall from it was his saying how boring he found the place now, cruising up and down Main Street. Sorry, guy, but I bet that activity was quite boring -- and not just in Midland!)

But it seems I have the answer to my question now, thanks to K., friend from way back, who has told me much more about the changes that hit soon after I left. It appears they were bigger than my correspondents told me, though I still have no concept of what that time of changes was like for those who were there. But at the very least I now have an answer to my decades-old question, and that is worth much to me.

Thank you, K!

The last map?

I've probably now exhausted what I can learn from satellite images. Three more changes:

"Nelson Park" used to be nothing more than a couple of empty lots where the neighborhood kids would play baseball, fly kites and other activities. Sometime in the earlier 60s the neighborhood parents got together and erected a backstop -- in the corner to the bottom in this photo instead of the original home plate in the left-hand corner, to keep the balls from landing in the gardens kept by the older couple to the south. (We knew them as grouchy people, but they really just didn't want us tramping down their flowers, as I learned one day when a pop fly landed in their garden. I went over to politely ask if I could retrieve it; they agreed but asked me to stay on the walkways, which I did, carefully, and they were always nice to me after that.) But the baseball diamond is now gone and Nelson Park is planted with trees.

The circle at the bottom shows the absence of a friend's home (the one I gave the TV to). No idea what happened. I wonder if their apple trees are still there.

The circle to the right shows big changes. Friend and classmate Jim Shaw used to live in that areas, when it was still residential. But the houses are all gone.

One of our classmates warned me a couple of days about getting turned around in one's own hometown. Seeing these changes, I can believe it. Thanks for the warning, K!

Then and now

As I mentioned in yesterday's post I am about to disappear into my summer week-chock-full-o'-meetings at a conference here in Albuquerque. But before I did I wanted to at least finish the posting I began work on yesterday.

A key part of this is a map of Midland, dated 1967, that has been in my last MHS yearbook for decades. (Somehow it's become a little bit of a time capsule including such unrelated things such as my U.C. Santa Barbara student ID --and yes, I had the beard then too, but that's a story unrelated to this blog.) That map has been something of a reference for Midland, though it inevitably has become well out of date. How much, I began to see when looking at the Google Maps satellite photos.


This is the reference for this posting. Examining it more closely I realized this map is actually older than 1967 -- it doesn't show the extensions to Central Intermediate that included the cafeteria and I have forgotten else. It has to be older than 1964. It also shows the poolhouse in Central Park, now gone. And I don't know what the dot below Ashman Circle is. Nevertheless, this is Midland in the 60s.


So imagine my surprise then I looked at this map/photo. I'd already been told by one of the Midlanders I've met here in the Seattle area that Ashman Circle had changed completely, and it has. It used to be a sort of park in the middle of the circle. In winter the fire department would create (memory says) a sort of crude ice "sculpture" or fountain, and I think with colored lights shining on it. I am betting they aren't doing that now, with that circle carved into through streets.

But the other surprise is that court in the lower left. It would seem the nursery that used to be there is long gone.


But the biggest surprise is to the east of the (now clearly larger) Community Center. There's a ring of buildings in what I recall used to be a residential area. Not sure what it is, but I am guessing it's a medical center of some sort.

So, with that, I am turning my focus to work for the coming week. I will post more if I can in the interim.

Pause

I had intended another topical posting tonight, especially after reconnecting with an old friend: so long ago it required a "full" name and yearbook photo to establish the connections, but maybe this is what happens when you've been away too long -- all sorts of long-lost memories are beginning to flood back.

In any event there will be no "significant" posting tonight and I don't know how much there will be for the next week or so. As my work blog notes, I am off to Albuquerque for a week or so of technical standards committee meetings and my experience of such over the past decade and a half is that there will be little time for other activities -- although I do have a blog post halfway lined up and ready.

But I have to rise quite early for my flight out of Seattle, so I'll bid you readers adieu for the night.

Midland Daily News

One of the nice things about the Internet is how much news & information is available from a distance, usually on a pretty timely basis. It's a long ways from my occasional jaunt for a time so many years ago to a particular shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market to pick up the latest newspaper from New Zealand.

The just-rediscovered availability of the Midland Daily News online is informative... and yet... it isn't. What does it all mean? A deli in the Community Center (CC)? I'm guessing this isn't the snack stand where we kids bought chips and sodas while watching (free) cartoon films or playing various games in the CC on Saturday afternoons back in the 60s.

Overlooking the "Oasis" pool? Does this mean the deli is in the spectator area a floor above the pool I remember? Have they rebuilt the interior? Are there two pools now?

Just what am I going to find there? I cannot tell.

"When you've had your fun..."

In Midland I spent a lot of time, and money, at this great used-book store, filling what out here we call a "rambler"-style house, and it did seem to ramble.

I spent a lot of time with a quarter (or more) in my pocket, poring over all the options before me, whether it was the science fiction rack on the back wall, the military history in the front left room (I think), or sometimes just through other areas of the house. Usually I'd ride away with a paperback, once in a while a hardback.

I built up a pretty sizable base of what became a 3000-volume collection of science fiction -- all but 300 of which went away in the '80s Great Downsizing (books are SO heavy!) But there are still a number of books bearing this stamp downstairs in the library.

I am sure the business and the house are long since gone, though I cannot tell for the latter because I don't remember exactly where it was, things around that end of Rodd have changed greatly (no surprise), and there must have been a street renaming because the Internet map services turn "319 E. Rodd St" into "319 Rodd Street" and give me a location near the other end of Rodd.

But anyway, thank you, Mr. Harris. It was truly a joy doing business with you.


But I still wonder about that book I passed over for so many years because of its cover art. Of course it couldn't be any good -- though if I'd known about Philip K. Dick at the time things might have been different.

"And I don't know if I'm ever coming home"

Title from an old (ca 1967) Monkees song, but we *are* coming to visit...

We just booked our flights to/from DTW for the reunion. We'll arrive in DTW Thursday evening, with plenty of time to visit my short-stay homes (if I can find them) near Detroit before heading up to Midland for the Friday evening gathering, and plenty of time Sunday before we head to a h/motel Sunday evening for the flight home Monday morning.

A perfect gift

In an e-mail exchange with one of my Midland friends (and classmate) last night, she reminded me that there were two of us who left Midland High School that year. She had thought this might have been his blog.

Sure enough, Keith lived across the street and we were friends. We both started playing the baritone horn in Eastlawn; my mother thought it was funny to walk down the street when we were practicing, to hear our horns hooting at each other.

And it was funny later that year when he showed up at my high school. It turns out his parents bought a house on the other side of the block from ours!

I don't know what has happened to him. In California we went off in different directions with different crowds; his experience was clearly not like mine. With one less session per day, and with exciting new electives available, I dropped band and orchestra in favor of chemistry and electronics. He took off towards art and architecture.

The last time I saw him was at my wife's and my wedding reception in California, 31 years ago. We still have the lovely stained-glass rose he made for us -- he did not know it but my wife, like the Persian people she loves to this day (she lived in Iran and includes Farsi among her many languages), came to love roses. A perfect gift, Keith!

(And thank you for the reminder, L.)

Crash!

The red X marks a spot I'll never forget as long as I live.

The beginning of lunchtime was always a madhouse around Eastlawn Elementary with all the kids let out at once to race home for lunch. I was in a crowd of bikes that had just crossed Jefferson, racing up E Nelson. As soon as we came around the curve I saw our way was impeded by a parked car -- and I was trapped on the inside of the crowd, against the curb. I couldn't get the others to move left for room, the frontage between the sidewalk was blocked by a tree and the sidewalk was filled with kids who'd crossed in the previous group across Jefferson, so I jammed on the brakes hard and... nothing much happened. I slammed into the car.

Next I know I'm on the ground, pretty banged up, my bike is a twisted wreck, and the owner of the car comes out to check that I'm okay. Then he drives me and my bike home, and makes sure I'm safely in my mother's care before leaving. (Are Midlanders still like that? That's the kind of people I remember them being.)

I don't remember much after that though I'm sure it included a trip to the doctor. (Hm. I may mention him later.) But I had told my father the day before that the brakes weren't working right. He hadn't checked them then and felt so bad about it he took me right away to buy a brand new bicycle.

My cycling days are over, unless we buy a house where I can start cycle-commuting again, but ever since then I've always tried to keep an exit route in case something goes wrong. I will visit the spot.

One rule I've learned...

...is that at launch you simply cannot predict where a blog is going to go.

I have had a (mostly anonymous) church blog for some years now and, because I am a bit well-known in my industry, at company request I started a work-related blog more recently. Three blogs are rather a bit much; this one will likely terminate after the reunion. So now, dear classmates, is a chance for you to acquire a wee bit o' Internet fame if you show up, though if you do and you're inherently shy like me, upon request I will respect your request and avoid names & photos.

(Photography is another hobby, one to which my father introduced me in Midland where we had a darkroom in the basement, but now I generally prefer the less temperamental digital photography over chemical film. I also prefer to be behind the camera, not in front of it.)

But getting back to blogs, if one is not careful the first posts can be a little embarrassing, though on this one I've only given the bare minimum to explain my perspective with regards to Midland -- quite different from my perspectives on Dahlgren, Alamagordo, Ann Arbor, Arlington, Lake Orion, [insert long stay in Midland here], Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Isla Vista, Mountain View, Lompico, Woodinville and the various other places I've lived, whether or not I have any memories of them.

So. I had a direction in mind for this blog but given that the very first commenter identified me instantly, as will most of you who knew me (and those who don't, well, won't unless you're dogged detectives), the profile on this blog will be filled out over time.

Please feel free to chime in. Or send a note, in public comments or private e-mail: I'm sensitive about posting e-mail addresses in cleartext, but I do check on "former . midlander @ gmail . com" daily. At least when I'm home, which should be most of the time until the reunion.

Frank Lloyd Wright

About 20 years ago, while helping a small library set up a computerized check-out system, I came across an old book about Frank Lloyd Wright. One chapter covered Midland and I was amazed (it also mentioned Arlen Dow, as I recall).

St. John's with its nautical theme I had long known. But the surprise was in the photos (all black&white) of the houses that looked familiar, because (I think) I had pushed my ice-cream cart past them. I never knew.

I've been trying to find that book without success (I am sure it is LONG out of print!). I am sure I wrote the information down, but if I did it's stored where it will take a LOT of time to find; at the time I thought I'd never go back -- I am not a traveler by nature.

Neither have I found a definitive list of his buildings in Midland, though I came across a page yesterday that says there are two of his Midland houses on the market.

The skating rink

The skating rink is also gone, replaced by the building on E Collins Street, whatever it is, next to the Community Center. Another pity -- in summer I spent a lot of time in the pool, in winter on the rink. Or in the blockhouse, drinking hot Vernor's (says memory).

Hot Vernor's: haven't tried it since, though after some decades Vernor's suddenly showed up in the stores here -- and believe me, THAT was a happy day! A little while later I was buying some and made remark about it at check-out, and the guy behind me said, "Uh, huh. I'm from Michigan too!"

Lots of memories of that rink. Playing crack-the-whip. The figure-skater who spun out of control across the icel driving one blade into my leg. The girl who nearly got brained (or killed) when a puck slammed hard into a wall a foot or two from her head.

I tried ice skating in California, but it just seemed wrong to skate indoors. I didn't like it.

Central Park pool

Internet map services are sometimes a good way to check out a location before traveliing, such as figuring out walking routes (if one will be without a car) and such like. So I decided to start taking a look around Midland -- and quickly discovered that the pool is gone! It should have been in the middle of that loop in the center of the photo, but there's no sign of it.


That's a pity; I spent a lot of time in that pool! I think it was octagonal, quite large and lot of fun to swim in. The diving boards were in a fenced deeper area near the middle, and I seem to recall a shallow pool with a slide next to it. All I can guess is that the pool was too old and too expensive to repair.

But it looks like the bandshell is still there (the blue-white thing in the lower left), judging by the benches, but based on its color I suspect something's changed. Spent a lot of time there too, listening to summer evening concerts (one summer selling ice cream from a cart), and even performing there with "Up With People."

WMDN gone????

Well maybe not, though the stations with those call letters now serves distant relatives near Meridian MS instead of Midlanders. Now it's WMPX 1490 AM / WMRX 97.7 FM, and apparently so since about 1971; wow, for 39 years I never knew it was "gone." I expected to see changes, but... my old radio station?

I used to listen to WMDN on my two-transistor radio; I had no choice, it wouldn't receive anything else. Lightfoot's "Steel Rail Blues" and "Early Morning Rain" (IMHO so much better than the Peter, Paul & Mary version done later), "Listen To The Rhythm Of The Falling Rain," and so much more, first heard on WMDN.

Come to think of it, when President Kennedy was assassinated I was probably the first in Eastlawn Elementary to know something was wrong. Against the rules I had my (new) radio in my desk and sneaked the earplug to my ear while we were working on some classwork. It was strange; the station was playing very doleful dirges. Our teacher was called to the office and came back a few minutes later in tears: "The President's been shot!" I vaguely remember an assembly in the gym and then we were sent home. WMDN was still playing the same music.

And years later, after I built a short-wave radio (Knight-Kit's "Star Roamer" -- how 60s a name was that?) and had broader range, I still listened to WMDN.

Won a contest once: they asked some question and I knew the answer -- rushed home, called in and won. Got a ticket to see "Fantastic Voyage". In Bay City because we had no theaters in Midland. So the whole family got dragged off to this somewhat weird movie.

Didn't expect my favorite programs to still be on the air (oddly then, as now, later on Sunday), though I haven't found a program guide for WMPX. I think WMDN had the "Great Hour of Music" first, or maybe "Hour of Great Music" because even the announcer couldn't decide, but an hour of classical music. This was followed, or preceded, by a program I only remember for its theme, the hymn "How Great Thou Art," which remains a favorite even though it's not in our hymnal.

I still had that little two-transistor radio when we moved to California. Somehow it got lost along the way.

Ouch!

Started pricing flights for the MHS 1970 reunion. I was warned last week by a colleague that booking "award" travel this summer is difficult. And it is: this evening my preferred carrier wants 50k miles per person for this trip, though if we take a redeye (overnight) flight with a bad connection we can push it down to 40k each.

I don't do redeyes well. I took one last year (meetings on east coast starting the morning after west coast meeting's end) and I was, as I expected, completely worthless the first day.

None of the flight times are good and they'll burn lots of frequent-flyer miles, but... I anticipate earning that much again between now and the end of the year. (For one who just wants to stay at home this is Not Good!) We know how fares change over time as flight time gets closer.

I just hope my wife doesn't back out on this trip!

Alumnus

I find etymology, the history of words, often fascinating. But there was one today that caught me completely by surprise:

alumnus

According to Wikipedia, ''The Latin noun alumnus means "foster son, pupil" and is derived from the verb alere "to nourish."''

I guess one year of Latin wasn't enough to encounter that word.

Midland Highlanders Pipe Band!

While looking up things Midland, I was startled to come across the Midland Highlanders Pipe Band website: bagpipes in Midland, who would have thought of such a thing!

They sound like an interesting bunch. To begin with "Midland" and "highlands" just don't seem to fit. (One of the things I disliked about California was the mountain range to the west -- you could not see the incoming weather until it was right on top of you.)

But they've gone a different route from most bands with their focus on ca. 1700 piping and drumming and the semi-ancient uniform -- it's hard to tell from their photo, but it looks like one or two may be dressed in breacan feilean or great-kilts (think Braveheart).

For my part I didn't take up the piob mhor until '82, in a little mountain town with a VERY Scottish name, under the misapprehension that piping was a dying art because I'd never heard pipes live before. A year or so after I moved to a locale where piping was fairly big and joined a band that, like the MHPB say, sounded just like all the rest -- though our uniforms were ca. 1900, spats to feather bonnets, and expensive as all get out!


But we were a show band, after all; I never got to Cancun with them but did travel to other places. And sometimes we'd pipe ABOARD the plane -- I am in this photo, but not really visible.

It's a pity the MHPB don't have anything going the weekend I'll be there. I'm not playing these days anyway -- I'm away too often. But to any members who might chance across this posting, I'll just say, "Math ga riribh!" You sound like a group with whom I'd really enjoy playing.

No longer with us

A shock to learn that 39 of my classmates are no longer with us, and who they are: So many names and faces still familiar, even after so many years, and especially old friends Tom Bywater, David Grosberg, Bruce Hampton, Bruce Sanford and Chuck Schartow.

And others: Jean Wolf, the quiet brainy one. Kathy Hanley, who always had that haunted look. The unnamed two who were definitely not part of my crowd. And the pretty girls who always stood out.

We brought nothing into this world, and
it is certain we can carry nothing out.
The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken
away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

Reconstructing dates

Dr. Michael Frazee (aka "Mike Frazee" in his e-mail to me), current principal of MHS, graciously responded to my inquiry about the graduation date for the class of 1968, mentioned in an earlier post.

Not that it matters to anyone but me, myself and I, but the "Departure" timetable seems to be off by a day. It seems now that my youth group went to the lake Monday (fits my memory of a day-long outing in which I could get a BAD sunburn), the first weekday of summer recess, with the aforementioned bit of business and graduation-related activity Tuesday (6/11), and my departure to California Wednesday the 12th.

No, I am not putting any of it in my Outlook Calendar. That's way too full of Teleconferences, Travel and inTerminable inhouse meetings as it is.

Parallel experience

My wife read this blog for the first time last night and learned about reading serial blog entries: you start at the bottom and work up.

While driving me to the airport this morning she told me she fully understood what I'd been through in leaving Midland because she had been through much the same. When she was 6 her family moved from the U.S. to Antwerp where she started school (a French convent school: she had to learn French, Latin and Vlaams/Flemish). Antwerp soon became home, very firmly so.

Then, at the same age I was when I left Midland, she was uprooted from everything she knew, friends and all, to move to Stockholm. My one advantage, I guess, was that I didn't have to learn a new foreign language. But it was equally a bad time for her.

When she finally returned to the U.S. to stay, she was effectively a foreigner. She says that was one of the common grounds we had when we met in California.

We visited Antwerp in 1998 (after my meetings in Brussels), and it wasn't just her love for the place that infected me. Nor was it that her old neighborhood looked a lot like Midland -- except for the thatched roofs. It was the people there.

Her family are New England Yankee from way back; she's never been to Michigan. But I know she is going to love the people here.

Mobile Midlanders

Okay. So I'm past all that messiness now. One of the big things I've noted over the years is how Michiganders (yes, that's the word!) and especially Midlanders get about.

For the former, standing in a LONG line to buy a ticket to ascend the Eiffel Tower about four years ago, I learned the couple in front of us lived only a few blocks from my old elementary school in Ferndale, MI. (I am guessing the economic situation in Michigan is pretty bad, with such old buildings still in use -- when the Salk-Sabine polio oral vaccine came out, I received mine in that very same building. )

But I keep running into Midlanders, wherever I go.

Soon after we arrived in California I joined Junior Achievement. (Even, or especially, in 1968 it seemed to be on its way out -- outside of the investor and entrepreneur classes, Capitalism was a Bad Thing.) Among my first acquaintances was... somebody from Midland. Who had moved away about the time we arrived, we'd attended the same church, many of my friends had been his friends, and so on.

A few years later I met a couple at church who had lived in Midland for a few years after I'd left. I seem to recall he taught there, but what and where I have forgotten; in any case, they were now in Mountain View, California.

About three years ago we had a temporary receptionist who... turned out to be from Midland. My guess is she was born three to four years after I left, but I am not sure. She still has family in Midland, out on the east side that my 1960s map says was not developed back then. (It also does not show the then-unbuilt now-mothballed nuclear plant that might sit atop an old girlfriend's former home to the southwest.)

And a professional society colleague here also turns out to be a Midlander. Though he attended Dow HS, not MHS. (They were still building Dow HS when I left; I have never seen it.)

I am not sure why I sometimes have this sense of "Michigander" or even "Midlander" when I meet folks, but the sense generates very few false positives (and few false negatives). Maybe it's part of having been "more native than the natives," as well as the proclivity of Michiganders to move about. I don't know.

But we seem to be everywhere.

Arrival

...and that's where the trouble started. Yes, I think the timing of the move could have made a difference.

After a half-hour or so we exited a freeway and started driving through an area with small, enclosed homes. (Sunnyvale, if you're familiar with it.) Okay, I thought, we're taking a shortcut -- until we pulled into a driveway and I started to learn about California's inflation of terminology.

A "ranch-style" house was just that: "style." Single floor and small. Ours was an Eichler. They say Eichlers came in two models, 5 and 10 second. That's how long it took them to build them. and that's how long they take to burn down. (Saw one go, once, and that's not too far off.)

There was a swimming pool in the backyard, sure enough, but it WAS the backyard. And all surrounded by a fence to screen off the neighbors -- no running through backyards the way we did in Midland (Except for the houses with such carefully-tended gardens).

"Avenue"? "Street" might have been generous, but at least it was wider than an "alley."

(Here I am kicking myself, because two weeks ago I was back there for a conference. I had time to go take a photo and didn't. Oh well.)

Oh, and the beaches? Soon after arrival I joined my cousins on an outing to the beach. Interesting drive up and over the mountains, then the long slow descent towards the coast. Accompanied by fog -- but in June? And a stench that just got worse as we grew closer and I realized was the Pacific itself. Oh, how I missed the gentle, warm waters of Lake Michigan, and even the fishier waters of Huron.

But all of that paled by comparison to the culture shock. The hippie/drug scene was in full force there, as I discovered that September, and there were huge cultural differences.

Folks regularly wore jeans to school! (Only the poor wore jeans to school in Midland.)

The whole teenage scene, pretended or otherwise ("Like I'm so absolutely cool in my counter-cultural paraphernalia, baby and I might even be doing drugs"), was not unlike winding up in an inner-city ghetto. Even my friends never quite understood me -- I came from the 50s, naive/innocent and or a hick. (Perhaps guilty as charged.)

But Midland itself had started changing, I learned from letters from my friend. It had gone from having the lone "weirdo" with long hair to a marijuana bust that amplified and implicated (memory says) many other students.

The "70s" tsunami had arrived from California, diluted, but I had skipped over it all to wind up stranded. California could never be "home" (I eventually left), but there was no home to which I could return.

So Midland remains a place of special affection, though I know it has changed too.

Departure

I've often wondered whether it would have made a difference had we left Midland a year earlier or a year later -- but I have no good answer.

In any case, it started with my father's announcement in very early January, 1968, that we were going to move to California. Normally this might have been welcome --I had cousins out there-- but right at this point in time it left me in shock. I did not want to go, but was not told I had been given a veto.

Then the packing started, except for me because I was going to live with a friend's family across the street until semester's end. In March the family drove off.

The rest is a blur until June grew close. My classmates knew I was moving to California and the yearbook shows it; so many were envious. But one of my teachers, Miss Riley I think, understood. "You will be leaving someone very special behind, won't you?" she asked quietly as I said goodbye.

As the appointed day grew close I started packing, with the electronics and some of the chemical bench into shipping boxes, the rest into the trash, and my rescued-from-trash TV (its controls were mis-adjusted!) to my best friend.

Saturday, or more likely Sunday afternoon, the church's high school youth group (including that someone special) went to the lake -- Houghton Lake? A fun time but I came back with an extremely bad sunburn on my back.

Monday I had ride downtown to close out my MDN paper route; on the way back a cloudburst caused me great pain. Then it was off to MHS to play for graduation and turn in my instrument. The youth group leader had invited me over for dinner and the evening after, but he quickly realized the situation and took me way across town to her house instead. (Thank you again, Mr. Fairweather!) At the appointed hour he picked me up, and here I draw the curtain.

Tuesday my hosts and I were up early to make the long drive to the Detroit airport, with mental farewells to everything familiar we passed. I departed, for my first time on an airplane, through the green glass terminal that I still see from time to time when making connections in DTW.

The flight to San Francisco (SFO) was agonizing what with my badly sunburned back, grief, and service so bad that I didn't fly that carrier again for over three decades. The only solace then, as before, were the reports from family that they were in a ranch-style house, that there was a swimming pool (such luxury!) in the back yard, and that the street name ended in Avenue; this was going to be so much bigger, grander and fancier than our house in Midland.

My mother met me at the gate, and drove me to my new home.

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.

A Midlander Returns

It's been 42 years, give or take a week, since that unhappy day I departed Midland, Michigan, to join my family already in California. I left behind a special someone, all my friends, and a world I in which I fit and belonged. And a kind of people that in all my travels around the country and the globe I've only glimpsed on my rare visits to the Midwest.

But my travels never took me to Michigan, much less Midland.

Oh, I've thought back on it a lot over the years. And a long time ago I learned that certain flights between the East and West Coast even took me over, or near Midland. Once, in the days when I was still a window-seat traveler, I not only saw it from the air but I was even able to take pictures. This is Midland from the air (the whitish spot).

But all that's about to change. In just under two months I plan to return for a visit. Situations dictate that it will be a short visit but I will get to visit many old and familiar places, lament others that are gone, and see some of the new.