David,
This in turn is probably more than you want to read, and while this wasn’t on
my computer, I am still a fairly fast typist (70 plus words per minute).
Thanks for your descriptions of your father. I have thought similarly, but
more recently about how I will be perceived rather than how I perceived my
father. I think perhaps your father’s parents probably steered him toward the
bursary and engineering – or maybe it was simply toward a position where he was
eligible for that opportunity. In my case I was far too independent to listen
to my parents about anything. We lived in a small house a short distance from
where my father worked on the docks. I was the eldest of three children and my
father’s mother (whom I did listen to), Bertha Bristol, who lived with us and
had a great fondness for reading. I was her favorite for some reason and would
go with her to the local library where she turned her books in and selected new
ones (as would I). Having a library card was something I appreciated when I
got it and continued to cherish it as time went on. I was ten when my parents
divorced. My grandmother had to move away.
My mother went to work at the Foodman Market in Wilmington and was looking for
a new husband. I remember Ches who was still in the Army. He brought me some
books on military planes. He also started me on the idea of collecting stamps.
But without much explanation Ches was no longer in the picture and she married
Welker Williams from Kentucky who drove a company truck to deliver food to the
Foodman. Welk and I didn’t hit it off although in retrospect he did his best.
I loved reading about WWII, and when a new war started in Korea in 1950, I was
“dying” to get in it. I therefore lied about my age and enlisted in the Marine
Corps, but they found out I was only 16, and told me to come back when I was 17
if I could get my mother to sign for me. I was very independent back then and
had no trouble talking my mother into signing for me after I graduated from
High School.
I went through Boot Camp at MCRD, Combat training at Camp Pendleton, but when
they finished training me, they sent me to the LTA (Lighter than Air) station
in Tustin, a relatively short drive to Wilmington, and that is something I
couldn’t abide. I had told friends and family I was going into the Marine
Corps to fight in Korea and that is what I intended to do; so I switched with
someone who didn’t want to go to Korea and was thus there for the last two
combat seasons. While in Korea I sent money home asking my mother to save it
for me so I could buy a 1946 Mercury Coupe when I got home. Instead my mother
and Welk used the money to buy a truck so he could make more money. There was
no money left for my Mercury.
I was next stationed at 29 Palms in the 2nd 90s, didn’t like the weather and so
when the chance came to become a Rifle Instructor at Camp Pendleton, I went
there and was very good at it. The NCOs liked me and let me run the training
while they went off to the slop chute. I did like the duty there, but I also
took a long hard look at what the NCOs did with their time and decided I’d
rather get out and get an education.
Welk tried to talk me into studying engineering, but I had acquired the idea of
a Classical Education some place and tried to approximate it in my studies. I
had become convinced by something I read that with a Classical Education you
could do anything. I believed that, and while the purist would point out that
I learned neither Greek nor Latin, I did the best I could, and did a lot of
reading on my own when I saw a lack. I loved study and was encouraged to keep
on past my BA and did so for a while at night. The GI Bill was enough to live
in a garret and do nothing but study. Instead I had married and had to work
out of the Teamster’s Hiring Hall on the docks, loading and unloading trucks
part time while I went to college full time. After I graduated, the
Teamster’s work wasn’t going to provide enough for me to continue going to
school full time. Besides, I had a lot of bills to pay and so in 1959 after I
graduated from Long Beach State College with a degree in English, I went to
work at Douglas Aircraft Company in Engineering as “a temporary job” to pay
some bills while I continued my education at night.
In retrospect I doubt that I would have been better off struggling through a
PhD in night classes, but that was my direction for a while. My first wife
“struggled through” my fours of college and wanted me to earn a lot more money.
So my academic struggle lasted only about half-way through an MA. By that
time I was doing well in Engineering; although my wife didn’t think I was
earning nearly enough money.
I often wonder how my life would have turned out had I made some different
decisions. I did well in the Marine Corps and was well-liked, but I had joined
to fight in Korea and didn’t really see myself as a peace-time Marine. Years
later in McDonnell Douglas I worked with a retired Marine Corps Captain who
told me what would most likely have happened to me had I stayed in. I had been
promised one increase in rank (to Staff Sergeant) if I shipped over. The
Captain told me that if I had stayed in, I probably would have been sent to
Vietnam as an advisor in 1962. As it was, 1962 was the year I bought my first
house, a modest little thing in Torrance with a nice room behind the garage I
was able to use as a study, not nearly nice enough for my wife, but I liked it.
And of course I often thought that I should never have married until after I
completed my education. If I was not married I could have gotten the
California Bill (a smaller amount of money); which would had allowed me to
complete my MA full time. For my PhD I would have needed to transfer to UCLA;
which would have meant a fairly long drive back and forth from the dock area,
but, of course, that is not what I did.
At this point I am in decent health and so may well live as long as your father
did, but I have no idea what my kids, or grandkids (or great-grandkids) would
say about me after I’m gone. I tended to struggle competitively in every role
in which I found myself. In Aerospace, for example, my coworkers would
sometimes sarcastically ask me if I’d ever lost an argument. When they were
feeling only a little sarcastic, and someone had a question, they would say
“ask Helm, he knows everything.” My independent manner and decisions were
often referred to as being made by “the Helm Aircraft Company.” Thus, there
was probably nothing I did that seemed worthy of being emulated.
As a former USMC Sergeant in college, I seem to have influenced a classmate and
a friend who stopped studying to join the Marine Corps. Neither got very far.
Years later a nephew went into the Army but didn’t get very far either. All
three received something like Medical discharges. I don’t know what that means.
As to the poetry, I don’t admire the current state of it in the Western world
and never had any serious ambitions to make a mark in it. But I continue to
write, why? To paraphrase something from the Old Testament, “whatever thy hand
finds to do, do it with all thy might.”
And from the New Testament, “when the Lord comes for you, let him find you
about His Father’s business.” Neither passage makes one responsible for
results, and while I have always sought to become as good an artisan as
possible. I am currently reading in the Romantic period. You said that
neither you nor your father appreciated Lord Byron, and while I would have to
agree, the idea of him and why he was so highly thought of after the Napoleonic
War is very interesting to me. I went through a period years ago when I
appreciated Shelley. I never appreciated Keats for some reason and was
impatient with Blake for creating his own language, but now that I find I may
have more time available than I previously thought, perhaps there might be some
merit it learning a bit more about his language. Harold Bloom is very
interesting on him in The Visionary Company.
Apologies to Ed Farrell if he happens to read this far. I never managed to
become as interested in Giacomo Leopardi as I ought to – or maybe it would be
more accurate to say that I couldn’t appreciate his frame of mind enough to
spend very much time with him. Maybe during a mourning period he was
appropriate, but now perhaps the pugnacious Blake is more so. I make no
promises, but I have developed some ideas for a slightly different sort of
poetry.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of david ritchie
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2018 2:45 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Hereabouts
On Oct 14, 2018, at 11:52 AM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
David,
Many of us benefitted from a war in some way. I’m 84 and therefore 9 years
younger than your father was when he died. I was born in 1934 so he must have
been born about 1925. When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, he would
have been about 14. It sounds as though your father didn’t complete his
education until after the war was over.
Probably more than you want to read, but it’s on my computer so, “Why not?"
Born in a house called “Strawberry Farm,” in Isleworth, West London, my father
grew up first in Cambuslang and then an area between Burnside and
Rutherglen—parts of Glasgow— and then to Primrose Bank road, two streets in
from the Firth of the Forth in Edinburgh. From Trinity Academy in the summer
of 1942 he was offered a wartime bursary at the University of Edinburgh, on
condition that he study Engineering and accept, “such service in the Armed
Forces or elsewhere as might be required by the Ministry of Labour and National
Service.” The alternatives to this course of study were few and
dangerous—service in the armed forces or in the Coal Industry—but as the war
and his studies and his nights spent defending the Physics building against the
might of the Luftwaffe drew to a close, a new possibility emerged—a graduate
apprenticeship at the English Electric Company. In June of 1945 he was
directed to work in Steam Turbine design and assigned a seat in an office
immediately behind my mother’s brother. He and my father played field hockey
for the same team. It was at this point in his life that my father won his
first golf trophy and decided to look around for new opportunities, which were
found in Trinidad, where he learned to inspect machinery for wear and
corrosion, work hard and play hard, drive a Chevrolet Jitney, escape a beach
undertow, write speeches for the Refinery Manager, put out fires both
metaphorical and real, address a haggis, fish, and drink a rum frappe.
It was on his first home leave that he met and soon proposed to my mother.
They were married in a small church in Pointe a Pierre. Though he had less
time for golf his handicap sank from ten to four. Home on leave, he
interviewed with Shell but chose to take a job in Grangemouth, near Polmont,
where favorite aunts still lived. And the golf? He won the “Thomson medal”
twice (no idea what that was) beating an opponent with a lower handicap. One
final was held at Gleneagles.
He was offered a two year secondment to London, so they moved in with his
in-laws. Half way through that period, in 1959 he joined the Royal Blackheath
Golf Club. They stayed in London, buying his in-laws'house.
Skip many years...And then…a posting to Iran and, as Robert called it, “a front
seat at a revolution.” And then came one final project and, at sixty,
retirement.
They joined the Byron society. There was more golf. He won the Summer Medal
during his year as Captain, with a scratch score of 75. That had last happened
at Blackheath in…1912. In 1991 he became a Freeman of the City of London. and
subsequently joined the Engineers Livery Company. He enjoyed the Bromley
Camera Club. But the most enduring pleasure came from an informal walking
group, a “Last of the Summer Wine” group. Four men—as with the television
program, the cast changed over time— getting together to talk and wander and
drink coffee.
They would walk round the Tate Modern. He’d tell me he couldn't undestandwhat
he was seeing, explain that it wasn’t “his style,” and then go back…and reject
it again! Like most of us he was happiest when in familiar territory,
pontificating as I do, but willing to stretch. When he liked a joke he would
hang onto it, tell it over and over, seemingly enjoying it afresh each time.
In our childhood I think he only had one joke, which I believe is from the
Music Hall era; it certainly has an Edwardian shape—what is the difference
between a man who has seen Niagara Falls, a man who hasn’t seen Niagara Falls
and a bee? A man who has seen Niagara Falls has seen the mist. A man who
hasn’t seen Niagara Falls has missed the scene.
And what about the bee?
That’s where you get stung.
He will be remembered by his Livery for loyalty, by the Kent Captains and all
he played golf with for being serious about trying to win but never at the
expense of good sportsmanship or a breach of decorum. After a win he’d say on
the phone, “Ask me how I did!”
“How was the golf, Dad?”
“The others weren’t as fortunate as I was."
When we were young we spent several holidays on a dairy farm. One time the
farmer asked for help building a barn. Not managerial or engineering help, but
"would you be an extra pair of hands" kind of help. Of course. He no doubt
ensured that it was all done properly, for he abhored shoddy workmanship. He
loved a well-turned bowl or any other indication of craft. He was fascinated
by ingenuity, bringing back “toys” from the Science Museum that demonstrated
this or that principle with the aid of magnets and bits of bent wire. He
criticised the Wankel engine’s inefficient design, thought that the Prius would
have battery problems…then bought one…loved the brickwork of his own house.
"You can’t see where one day’s work finished and another began." Hard work,
craft, elegance of design, these were his passions. Get him on the subject of
turbines or sleeve valve engines and you had to expect a moneysworth. Though
he grew up in a near tea-total household, he enjoyed wines or tasty food in
moderation. The grandchildren remember a particular lip smacking sound he used
to indicate enjoyment of either. He was very strict with himself about things
that were “bad for you,” chocolate and so on and enjoyed lots that is good for
you: fruit, salads, exercise, conversation. His life advice when we were
teenage boys, “Stay away from drugs and motor bikes.” After the war he had a
half share of ownership in a motor bike, so he knew what he was talking about.
Like his mother, he was tactile when he came to wooden surfaces; he liked not
just to look at a table or sculpture but—if permitted-- to run his hand across
the surface. He liked his garden to be tidy and his tools to be sharp and
well-oiled. He never put his golf clubs away without washing them. Last
winter, one time when I phoned he had just finished oiling the teak garden
bench…so it lasts. He was forward-looking like that, wondering at the end of
his life about what Brexit would bring and whether electric cars will succeed.
For the record, he was against both.
He was proud of being the first in his family to earn a degree and to make a
little money. Part of the reason he read so much about warfare, I think, is
because he could so easily have been sucked into the Second World War. At one
point he had an argument with his father, wanting to sign up for the Fleet Air
Arm and learn to fly the Swordfish biplane he’d recently been up in. Instead
he kept going with his studies, spent his “holidays” sawing logs in the
Highlands, graduated and did what the Government asked. No doubt there were
moments when people looked at a fit young man and wondered why he wasn’t in
uniform, but he had no anecdotes about this beyond spending nights trying to
sleep on a hard bench between shifts on the roof of the Physics building,
tasked with watching for fires and bombs while armed with an unloaded rifle and
wearing a tin helmet. Maybe this and the Edinburgh weather contributed to him
taking his final exams while suffering from a fever? And passing. To say that
he was strong willed would be to understate the case.
He divided memories of his grandparents into the good ones and those who
thought children should be seen and not heard. He tried hard to be a good one,
and succeeded. Praise was not his thing and he reserved little for himself
when he assesses his parental role in the memoir he wrote; he thought that he
was gone from home too often. Whether he was or not, the fact that when he
needed help his children and grandchildren were there for him is testament to
the love that he generated. In his final days he expressed his happiness with
this time and again. It was his peaceful lodestone, a guide at the end.
David