An Unconventional Upbringing

I have a friend, someone who has been my friend for almost 25 years, who has recently take n to repeating something his wife recently observed about me—that I am unconventional. The last time he repeated it I reminded him that he knows my father (and that should explain a lot). Whatever unconventional tendencies I may have, I lay squarely at the feet of my father.  In honor of Father’s Day, I will relate a few stories that help explain this unconventionality.

When I was about 5, my parents moved my brother and me from the suburbs of Philadelphia to rural New Hampshire. I never really pressed them as to why we did it, but I am pretty sure it is because they (probably mostly my dad) wanted to blend into the woods and be earth-loving hippies—you know, grow a garden, raise chickens and pigs, hunt and fish. My dad was (and still is) an unconventional hippie, though. Both my parents always railed against the establishment, organized religion, etc. but neither ever hated on our country the way some did at that time. My dad was (and is) something of a patriotic hippie, if that makes any sense. Growing up, every Fourth of July he would wake the entire family by playing Three Cheers for the Red, White, and Blue on the record player as loud as he could and lighting off a pack of firecrackers. That would be followed by a loudly stated, “Happy Birthday, America!” Every Fourth of July, after being awakened in that manner, we would roast meats, shoot guns, and light off fireworks.

Anyway, back to New Hampshire and my unconventional upbringing. We had pigs and chickens and eventually a horse, all of which my brother and I had to help care for. The pigs were a hoot because we used to climb over the fence into the pen and try to ride them. It seemed like we had the pigs forever, but it was probably just part of a year—long enough to fatten them up. Then it came time to butcher one. My dad shot it, gutted it and hung it from a tree. I can remember that giant pig carcass hanging from the tree dripping blood. When it had drained sufficiently, my dad used our sledding saucers to haul cut up pig carcass to the house. The blood got all over the saucers and on the fabric straps that served as handles. While the blood washed off the saucers, it never came off the handles. It was a lasting reminder of the slaughtered pig.

While we lived in New Hampshire my dad was a general contractor: plumber, electrician, and carpenter. One of his regular gigs was closing down a summer camp, getting it ready for the winter. My brother and I would go with him and help shut off water valves and dump antifreeze in toilets. The camp was like an abandoned city with roads, cabins, a lake, etc., and we had a little (gas-powered) minibike that I rode all around. It was a blast. And every minute was like a scavenger hunt because the campers left all sorts of stuff behind—sports equipment, clothes, and sometimes even money. My brother and I would scramble over each other to be the first to get into the cabins. I remember raiding the chocolate chip stash in the camp kitchen and taking the camp’s kayaks out on the lake. It was our own private camp. I loved closing down Camp Merrimack.

It seems like I went to work with my dad a lot. I remember one job where he was doing something on a house. I went with him and ended up in the basement of that house. I found a cat with a litter of kittens down there and decided I wanted one of the kittens. I told my dad and he said if I could catch one I could have it. I am sure that was a throw-away response—he didn’t really expect me to catch one of those wild kittens. The next day I went back to work with him and took a bird cage we had with me. In that birdcage I put some cat food and stuck it in the basement…then I waited. When a kitten went in to get the food, I pulled the door closed with a string I had tied to it. True to his word, my dad let me take the kitten home and it became one of our pets. I think its name was Puff.

Later we moved back to Pennsylvania and ended up on a mostly wooded 120 ac tract—in the woods again. We had our usual assortment of animals: chickens, sheep, ducks, etc. On a whim, my dad decided he wanted to try to incubate and hatch an egg laid by one of our ducks. He took one and put it in an electric frying pan. Using a thermometer, he made sure the temperature remained the proper, constant temperature and low and behold a duckling was hatched. After he hatched, he lived in our house for a little while and during that time imprinted on my dad and the rest of us as his family. When he got big enough we put him outside with the rest of the ducks. He didn’t really think he was a duck, though, and spent most of his life right outside of our kitchen door. Whenever we opened the door, he tried to bust into the house. Eventually some animal ate him.

Speaking of the sheep, we had one particularly old ewe named Emma who got very sick. We actually moved her from the barn into an unfinished bedroom in the back of the house to convalesce. As I remember, Emma stayed back there a long time but eventually died.

It was a great way to grow up because there was always some adventure, big or small, just around the corner. Looking back on it, I am not sure how my mom handled it as well as she did. I learned more important stuff from that unconventional childhood than I ever learned in school or could have ever learned in suburbia. I learned a lot about independence and self-sufficiency and I learned a lot about living things, human and otherwise. So, thanks Pop for your gift of an unconventional life.