A big piece of pipe—maybe 3 feet in diameter. Something to cap the ends off so water couldn’t get in. Cut a hole and put in a hatch for a way to get in and out. Same with a porthole or two. Some vaguely understood (emphasis on vaguely) inner workings to get the thing to submerge and surface, stay upright, and have a means of propulsion. This was the combination of clarity of mind and certainty that made me think it would be possible as an 8-year-old to build my very own submarine. I needed a submarine so I could explore the watery reaches of the drainage ditch behind the trailer park where we lived. Who knew what kinds of treasures, monsters, and adventures lurked in those murky depths?
I don’t recall ever sharing my brilliant plans with my parents, only with a friend who lived across the lane and several lots down in the trailer park on McCorkle Avenue in Charleston, West Virginia. Our family had lived there for about a year, having moved there from Handsboro, Mississippi, when the U.S. Air Force transferred my dad from Keesler AFB to a radar installation on top of a mountain in West Virginia. When not planning the submarine, I spent a lot of time playing softball, king of the mountain, and making boats out of scrap pieces of lumber to float in the ditches when there as a heavy rain. And reading. A lot.
I attended the second half of second grade and all of third grade at Owens Grade School; I read a couple of grade levels ahead and particularly liked science. For Christmas in 1960, when I was 8-years old, my parents gave me a set of three science books–on geology, astronomy, and chemistry–which I devoured. Once when we had company my parents had me read aloud, head bowed over the book, pronouncing without pausing igneous, metamorphosis, sedimentary. My third grade year in school (1960-1961) had been a good one for me. Mrs. Hamilton ran a tight classroom and taught us well. We learned our multiplication tables, reading, spelling, social studies, art, music, civics, hygiene, and citizenship.
We basically had three groups of kids in the school. Most came from the middle-class neighborhood across the street. Then there were those of us kids who lived in the trailer park, not as well off as the first group. Last, there were some kids from up in the hills nearby—some of them were really poor. Charleston, the capitol city of West Virginia, was situated in a narrow valley, strung along both sides of the Kanawha River. McCorkle Avenue ran along the south-west side of the narrow valley, a few blocks from the river. To the west of the trailer park rose the steep sided mountains that are West Virginia’s prime feature. We were told that if the state could be flattened out it would be bigger than Texas.
Mrs. Hamilton insisted we come to school clean and did not leave that to chance. She would inspect us to be sure our hands were clean. One of my memories is of her holding a girl by the arms with her wrists turned to us so we could all see how dirty they were. I felt sorry for the little girl, who was thoroughly shamed, and thought Mrs. Hamilton was mean—at least on that occasion. Yet, on picture day, a boy from up in the hills came to school wearing a ragged shirt and she asked if I would run home and get a better shirt for him to wear—which I did quickly, as the trailer park was right across the fence from the school yard. My mother was surprised when I came running in to ask for a shirt, but she seemed pleased and even proud to be able to help out.
I could not have explained it then, but there was something exceptional about Mrs. Hamilton calling on me in that way. I lacked the insight to question why she would do so. She knew our humble means—for she could see our tiny trailer from the school yard, looking through the chain-link fence. Yet she was confident I would come back with a suitable shirt. She also favored me with the chore of taking the erasers out to whack them on the side of the schoolhouse to get the chalk dust out of them. While some might see that as a distasteful chore, perhaps even a means of punishment, anything that got a kid out of class was a prize highly cherished. Maybe she had a soft spot for me because I was from Mississippi, or maybe because I was often among the last ones standing in the spelling and multiplication bees. She would have seen too that on the playground I got along with all the other kids and was always in the middle of whatever game or activity was going on.
An incident on the playground might have made me stand out in her mind. I was cutting across in front of the swings just as a girl in the first swing in the line was swooping forward. The metal corner of the wooden seat caught me above my right eye—sending me flying and knocking me out cold with blood streaming everywhere. Next I remember, I was at the doctor’s office being stitched up. I don’t recall how my mother got me there—she did not have a car at home because my dad drove it to work—but I think one of the principals took us. Anyway, an accident like that tends to interrupt the routines of a school and maybe put me more strongly in Mrs. Hamilton’s thoughts than I might have been before.
All in all, life was good for me there. In the fall we visited one of my mom’s friends who had moved from Mississippi to a farm up in the mountains east of Charleston. We picked apples in their orchard and my sister Debbie and I were entertained by their teenage daughter, who played with us in their hay barn and showed off her record player. In particular I remember her playing Alley Oop, one of the hit rock-n-roll singles of that season.
Across McCorkle Avenue from the school was the neighborhood where the somewhat better off families lived in homes along tree-lined streets with sidewalks. At Halloween, there was a backyard carnival complete with apple bobbing, a spook house, and a zipline that ran down from a treehouse. And the several square block area that stretched down to the Kanawha River was a prime location for trick-or-treating. That was also where my friend, Karen Freeman, lived—my first girlfriend.
Idyllic as it was, life’s harsh realities could not go unnoticed, even by a third-grader. This was the height of the cold war, and at school we had frequent duck-and-cover drills. Later I would appreciate that huddling under a school desk would give little actual protection in the event of a nuclear blast. But I guess part of a civil defense strategy is to give people something to do so they will feel safer. Even more significant was that my dad was one of the watchers at Guthrie Air Force Radar Station constantly on the lookout for “unknown aircraft in controlled areas.” But it was an exciting time too, with a new, young president in the White House who wanted to ramp up the space race with the Soviet Union and who would eventually announce plans to go to the moon.
A nuclear arms race, space race, and cold war between democratic / capitalist and totalitarian / communist superpowers might seem a distant backdrop for the life of an 8-year old, but not so. My parents grew up a quarter-mile from each other in rural south Mississippi. Coming of age in post-World War II America, my dad found the opportunities in South Mississippi few to none. With a young family, his best career option was to join the Air Force, which he did, soon leaving a very young wife with one baby (me) and another on the way (my sister) so he could go off and serve in the Korean War (I should say police action). And now, some 8 years later he was in the midst of a career in the service that would see him bounced around from coast to coast and north to south, and three times overseas. As a non-commissioned officer in the Air Force, he was doing his duty as a citizen in a country working hard to maintain dominance and support the cause of freedom around the world.
By the way, as a Staff Sergeant (Grade E-5) his pay then would have been $210 per month plus $96.90 quarters allowance.[1] That came to $306.90 or an annual income of $3,682.80, which would be approximately $32,372 in 2020 dollars.[2] The U.S. Poverty level in 1960 for a family of 5 was $3,560,[3] so we were above the poverty line, but just barely. The median family income in the U.S. In 1960 was $5,620.[4] However, in Mississippi in 1960 the median family income was $2,884[5]—only half as much as the national amount. By pursuing a career in the Air Force, my dad was able to provide a steady income for his family, at perhaps a higher level than had he stayed in Mississippi, but not by much.
However, there were costs—tangible and intangible—associated with military service, particularly those resulting from the itinerant lifestyle. While my dad was in the Air Force, our family lived in 9 states, and had (that I know of) 21 domiciles (counting 4 trailer parks in 3 states). Before I was in the ninth grade, the longest we had lived in one place was 1 and 3/4 years (which was in West Virginia). Between fifth grade and seventh grade, we moved five times and lived in four states; in sixth grade I attended three schools, in California, Minnesota, and California again. Added to the migrations of the family, Daddy had numerous TDYs (Temporary Duty Assignments) for training purposes as well as 3 tours of duty overseas—in Korea, Johnson Island, and Thailand.
I had already accepted the pattern, that sooner probably rather than later we were going to move again, and sure enough in that summer of 1961, Daddy announced one day that we would be moving to New York—by way of Madison, Wisconsin. The Air Force was transferring him to Truax AFB in Madison, but then immediately posting him for training at a Control Data plant in Kingston, New York, so he could learn computers—seeing that he had a high aptitude for electronics. So we spent the fall and winter of 1960 in the artist colony and beatnik community of Woodstock, New York, because that was the closest place he could find housing for us. Life in Woodstock has stories for another day, but for now there is more to say about submarines and life in the trailer park.
As a child I did not understand how difficult life as a military family was on my parents—especially on my mother.[6] Our home in the trailer park, hard by Owens Elementary School measured 8 X 40 feet—that was hardly 300 square feet of living space. I know people with recreational vehicles larger than that. In that space, she cooked, cleaned, and cared for a family of five, for by that time in addition to my sister Deborah (who was 8 months old by the time my dad first saw her upon his return from Korea), my second sister Sondra had been born. Though 3-years-old in the summer of ‘61, Sondra had Down syndrome and while thriving beyond what doctors predicted when she was born, she was very much a handful. She was an escape artist and would disappear in a heartbeat—her favorite game. My mother was home with the three of us—as I mentioned, without a car—while Daddy was at work.
Anyway, back to submarine building, the way I see it now is that being able to think of such a plan meant something in terms of my development. I had enough grasp of the rudiments of science and technology to know the basic obstacles to overcome in designing a submarine. I also could project myself beyond the realities of my life into an imagined scenario that was nevertheless attached to reality. I mean, there were submarines, they really existed; it was just that no 8-year-old kid had ever built one in the backyard. My primary orientation in life was to do the best I could at what was put before me. When it was my time at bat, I intended to get a hit; when the ball came my way (usually right field), I intended to catch it; and when called upon to go to the blackboard and solve a math problem, I was ready to do so. I saw none of that as extraordinary or less than what was expected of me, but it was also what I wanted to do.
And yet, even then, I knew the pull of a something more, something that would stretch my knowledge and abilities. Building a submarine was never more than a childhood fantasy, but conceiving of such a plan was a sign of a developing intellect and ethic. I guess this would make I better story had I gone on to be Captain of a U-boat or at least an engineer of some sort, but that would not be my story. When I turned 9, at the end of third grade, I was half-way to 18 (see, I told you I was good at math)–halfway to the time I would step from high school and home to college and career. Half-way to being old enough to vote for leaders of government and at the same time old enough to be drafted into service for a war those same leaders could send me to. But that wasn’t my story either.[7]
So, at 9 years old, I was a kid from the poorest state—Mississippi–in a family with an itinerant lifestyle, half-way through a childhood that would see me living in states ranging across all five income groupings of the US Census Bureau (Lowest Fifth—Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee; Second Fifth– West Virginia; Third Fifth—Florida and Minnesota; Fourth Fifth—Wisconsin; Highest Fifth—New York and California).[8] Yet if you had asked me, is your family poor, I would have denied it, because I did not know better. I had never gone hungry. Okay there was that one time when about all we had to eat was tomato soup and eggs, but hey, I liked tomato soup and eggs, so eating them for a month was not exactly terrible. I am sure it was more difficult for my dad, who was doing the cooking at that time because my mother was in the hospital having surgery and then at home convalescing.
What clues might there be about a person’s future from that slice of life in the third grade? By some measures, by age 8 or 9 a child’s brain reaches a level of maturation that allows more abstract thought and thinking about the future. I spent little time dwelling on the past—there was more than enough to challenge and interest me in the present. Neither did I invest the future with expectations, I preferred to wait and see what would happen.
While I could envision building and piloting a submarine, I clearly lacked any capacity to carry out such a plan. However, I did have the mental capacity and the practical support to plan ahead for Valentine’s Day in February by showing up in class with a stack of Valentine cards, one for each classmate—and special ones for Mrs. Hamilton and Karen Freeman.
How the idea of a submarine came to my 9-year-old mind in the first place probably was from seeing a stack of 3’ diameter pipe stacked by the drainage ditch and thinking one would make a nice hull for a submarine. About all I knew about submarines came from watching movies like Run Silent Run Deep, with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster, and the TV show Sea Hunt, which featured Mike Nelson as a Coast Guard S.C.U.B.A. diver. The actor who played Mike Nelson was Lloyd Bridges– that’s Jeff and Beau Bridges’ father, for younger readers. Anyway, combine escapist popular entertainment featuring American military and technological superiority and a young boy’s brain with more synapses than he knew what to do with, and all of a sudden an aspiration to build a submarine is not so far-fetched after all.
Fortunately (at least I suppose it is fortunate), our culture has ways of structuring young lives so kids’ brains are encouraged to grow in directions that are thought to be for the good of society. That is, kids are subjected to a regular school curriculum that regiments their learning and development. So regularized was it that I could transfer from Florida to Mississippi in mid-year in the first grade and still get all the first-grade learning I was supposed to have. Same with transferring from Mississippi to West Virginia mid-way through second grade, and New York to Wisconsin halfway through fourth grade, from school to school in Wisconsin in fifth grade and three interstate transfers in sixth grade. I won’t say I never missed a beat, but I had no disruption severe enough to make me have to repeat a grade or even have a bad report card. The American school systems kept me humming right along.
In third grade, an important layer was formed in my education in a curriculum that in time would follow a track called “college prep.” There is a reason each year of school is called a grade, for we were being graded, in the sense of sorted—and not just for the sake of notations on a report card—but to eventually shunt us toward either an academic or a vocational-technical program of study. Yet, even in that small school in West Virginia, an Air Force brat from the poorest state in the Union could get the educational foundation that would serve me through high school, college, graduate school, and a career in higher education.
In 1960-61 (that’s 60 years ago from this year of 2020), there was much we did not know about how the next six decades would unfold. As an 8-9-year-old kid, my thoughts of the future were bounded by very close horizons, extending no further than months—when school would be out for the summer, or start in the fall, or Christmas–like that. Speaking of Christmas, one of the highlights of Christmas was receiving the box of presents my grandparents would send us. These were my mother’s parents. We would open that box Christmas morning and discover what delights it contained. My sister Debbie and I could count on getting coloring books and boxes of Crayola crayons. How would a kid who received such treasures ever think of himself as poor?
And now I have 5 grandchildren: one is a sophomore in college, one a freshman in high school, one in fourth grade, and two in second grade. All of them have attended online or virtually for most of this year so far. I pray that 60 years from now they can tell stories about their lives including this memorable year of 2020. And especially the Christmas of 2020, when our usual visit will be a virtual visit by Zoom instead. Merry Christmas, from across the miles and across the years!
[1] https://www.dfas.mil/Portals/98/MilPayTable1958.pdf
[2] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1960?amount=1
[3] weighted average poverty thresholds since 1959 (census.gov)
[4] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs98/yi/yi16.pdf
[5] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1965/dec/population-pc-s1-48.html
[6] Living far away from her parents was extremely difficult for my mother. Writing her own life story, she said she would be homesick even if she lived a mile away from her folks if she didn’t see them every day.
[7] Though I registered with Selective Service when I turned 18, my number never came up—as they say. Because I attended college I was designated 1-H, that is “not currently subject to processing for induction or alternate service.” Attending college was no guarantee of a “not subject” status, but it was the common practice followed by Local Board No. 71 of the Selective Service System in Wiggins, Mississippi. Of course, at 9, I could not imagine being 12, let alone 18.
Garry Breland 