Actual recollections of the place where you spent years two through four are apt to be hazy and fragmentary, and it is difficult to separate the recollection of actual experience from the tales that comprise the family mythology.
The farm near Belmont, Ontario must have had the usual amount of "gingerbread"; that is, decorative shapes cut out of, or into, boards nailed here and there on the exteriors of the buildings. The gingerbread I remember, and often see in dreams, was a curlicue rising from each end of the roof-line. Perhaps there was no other ornamentation.
I remember chasing a tiny rabbit around the shrub-bordered lawn, stopping when I was out of breath, only to have the rabbit stop and catch its breath, too. Did I catch it? The first time through these memories, I simply said to the page, "Memory doesn't serve." Days later, going back over what I had written, I can remember a soft, warm, trembling, big eyed, translucent-eared, cottontail baby.
There is a photo of Doris, my black and white calf, posing with me on that same front lawn. In another photo my cousins are feeding half-grown White Leghorn chickens. These are both memories and photo-re-enforced tradition.
One real memory I have is of a neighbor or friend of my parents standing in the yard between the house and the barn with a young boston bull terrier. He spoke for a while with my father, and then turned to me and asked if I would like to have it. A pleasant memory, extended, often brought back, but always a little fuzzy. I can see the dog, but not my father or the visitor.
Intensely clear, sharp, and painful, and never willingly consulted, is the sight of a neighbor bringing the body of the little dog up to the yard, the appearance of the pup, the voice of the man, "...down by your mail-box, thought you should know...."
I remember the bottom shelf of one of those sectional free standing bookcases with the lift-up glass doors. I remember the space on the floor in front of it, with some of the books pulled out and scattered about.
From the mythology, I later learned that the books were my mother's notebooks and chemistry books from courses she had taken at Columbia, in New York City, that led to her appointment as Toronto's first supervisor of domestic science in the public schools.
I learned to read from these books, first letters, then words, then the organs and enzymes and adventures that food met with in the course of becoming organs and enzymes.
Years five through ten were spent in St. Thomas, Ontario, at 18 Roseberry Place, a house on the edge of a ravine. This ravine, or gully, was perhaps sixty feet deep and two hundred feet across at the top, wooded, with a small stream at the bottom. Reading took a back place to playing with the neighbor children, climbing trees, wandering the completely wild ravine, or damming the creek. Damming the creek was messy work, and my cohort in this had to share the title," Dirtiest boy in the neighborhood."
Out in front, there were large maples, climbable with the help of something to give access to the first branches; to be conquered, but not much fun to play in. There was, however, at the curb, a very useful object; a limestone block about eighteen inches high, which could be reached from a smaller block on the side away from the curb.
It was from this block that I was able to mount a full size bicycle that I inherited from cousin Don, or perhaps Hall, in Toronto. (I am sure the Toronto Hunters spelled it Hal, but that spelling always looks to me as if it should rhyme with pal.) Learning to ride was just a matter of longer and longer periods of pumping the pedals away from the block.
Stopping was another matter, but fortunately, the front yard sported a seven foot cedar hedge, dense enough to stop me and hold the bike upright while I dismounted. The bike was a Planet, with twenty-eight inch wood rim wheels.
The back yard, sloping gently to the brink of the ravine, contained trees that were much more entertaining. There was a tall crab-apple tree, its long, straight trunk patterned with sapsucker holes, where access was by shinnying only, but the other apple trees were like footpaths, two Snow-apple trees, a Greening, and a Red Astrachan
Wellington school was just a block away, and on my very first day of school someone had arranged for Dorothy Johns to accompany me; I suppose, to make sure I got there. Dorothy was about my size, plump, and pretty, with brown sausage shaped curls down to her shoulders. I thought she was the prettiest thing I had ever seen.
I remember only part of what we talked about on the way. I asked her if we could walk to school together every day. She answered, "No, if we did, everyone would think that I was your girl." I thought that would be just fine. However, I didn't at all understand what was involved in being someone's girl, so I didn't press the subject.
Miss Pye lived up to her name, and was a real sweetie. Years of teaching children coming to school for the first time had not eroded her disposition in the least. Miss Johnson, a younger and less patient woman, expected students to listen when she spoke, backing up her expectations with a six inch long section of a trace, the leather strap that takes the strain when a horse pulls a load.
I recall very clearly the sentence for talking in class after being warned once: two slaps on the palm of each hand. The girls always cried, the boys never. When one boy pulled his hand away at the last split second, and the strap connected with the teacher's palm, she didn't cry, either, although her eyes filled with tears. He still got the usual number of licks. Apparently, bearing the disgrace for flinching was castigation enough.
The fifteen minute recess was time for a game of marbles, mumble-ty-peg, or post. I didn't play marbles. I could understand how the winners came by a pocket full of marbles, but I didn't understand where the losers got theirs. I had a few marbles, I just didn't understand that grown-ups were a dependable source of supply for toys.
Mumble-ty-peg only required a knife. The usual tasks were to manage the knife in a series of prescribed ways so that it would stick in the ground. Of course, if it became known that you drove the peg too far into the ground, no one would play with you. The penalty was often waived. There were six swings, and a horizontal steel bar about four feet from the ground, but a game of tag or post didn't need waiting for a turn.
Post required those who wanted to play to divide up into two teams and deciding which would hold on to the post first. The captain of one team would then put his arms around a post, and his team would line up behind him, each boy with his arms around the hips of the one in front of him. The other team, one at a time, would leapfrog onto this line, with the idea of concentrating enough weight onto the team at the post to collapse it.
If any part of any member (or do I mean any member of any part) of the leapfrogging team touched the ground, they lost. If the line of boys with their feet on the ground could count to ten after the last member of the leapers had landed on them, they won.
Saint Thomas was a railroad center, where the London and Port Stanley line was crossed by one of the transcontinental lines, such as the Grand Trunk or Canadian National. My father worked on a railroad section gang, and my mother was a substitute high school teacher, usually teaching algebra.
When she taught, we would have lunch together at a restaurant on Talbot street. It was four or five blocks further from home than Wellington school, so meeting at the restaurant was quite an adventure.
My tenth year found us in Detroit, living on Elmhurst, near Twelfth Street. My father worked with cement pouring gangs on various projects for Albert Kahn, among them the downtown Detroit Hudson's store. I walked about a mile north to Longfellow school, which I remember vaguely as a white concrete or stucco building. I packed a lunch of tomato or banana sandwiches, and ate it on the top plank of a billboard across from the school.
I walked to Longfellow School because the bike survived the move to Detroit, but one of those wood wheels did not survive my first trial of the air hose at a gas station. The explosion of the tire shattered the rim, and the family finances did not rise to replacing it.
Within a year we had moved to 3005 Burlingame, halfway between Linwood and Dexter, which was to be my address until after Meg and I were married. The house was a long block and a half from a complex of schools comprising Roosevelt Elementary, Durfee Intermediate, and Central High. Compared to Longfellow School, the buildings in this complex were very elegant, and the grounds spacious.
My home room teacher, Miss Hurley, was so pleasant and good-looking that I created occasions to walk her home whenever I could. I certainly must have told her about the chemistry lab in my basement, because, when I came down with the mumps, she arranged with the class to send me a chemistry set.
Next door lived Howard Solomon, across the street lived Lee Redman, Robert Harbert, and James Hollingshead. In the first house to the east lived the neighborhood conscience, Mrs. Sherriffs, and her patient husband. Beyond them lived John and Jane Freeze, who looked like Leyendecker Saturday Evening Post cover people.
Farther west, on our side, there were George Cato and Bill Chun, while down the block to the east lived Dick and Buddy Miller, across the street from Ken Langdon, Marcia Connel and Walter Huzar. During the day, there might be a game of scrub baseball in the street, and summer evenings we often played kick the can.
Kick the can rules were simple. The game revolved around an empty tin can in the middle of the sidewalk in front of Connel's house. Everyone, except the person who was It, hid. Various strategies were used to encourage the hiders to run for the can and yet for the one who was It to beat them to it. "It" would put a foot on the can firmly enough to resist any attempt to kick it away. Anyone who failed to reach the can in time to kick it had to help round up the others, and be It for the next round.
At some time in the next few years, the remaining wheel of the Planet bike and some of the parts became a huge gyroscope, with a length of lead from phone cable insulation replacing the tire. The wheel was brought up to speed by holding a quarter horse power motor, running a six inch wooden wheel, circumference to circumference.
The axle was suspended from a ceiling joist in the basement by a rope, and could not be deflected downward by the weight of Howard or myself when it was horizontal.
Jim Hollinshead and I, and at various times others on the street, had "skate-mobiles." These were a length of two-by-four with the front end of a roller skate nailed to the front, and the other half nailed to the back, Skatemobiles began life with an orange crate nailed to the front end, but on the day the front wheels hit a crack in the pavement exactly the same width as the diameter of the wheels, the tendency was to get along without replacing the crate.
One use for the skatemobiles was a run north for about a mile or so to a salvage yard, where Ford spark coils were available for fifteen cents each. With a doorbell transformer, sparks like the ones the movie mad scientists had in their laboratories could be produced. Combined with Tesla coils made from the tubes that wrapping paper came on, we created sparks six or eight inches long.
Experiments like this led Jim and I into searches for broken plate glass windows, which, nibbled or smashed to the right size, with shellac and tinfoil, could be used to make condensers for the Tesla coils. We also wanted to make Wimshurst or Holtz-Topler static machines, but we hadn't the skills or the tools to cut plate glass or drill holes in it.
One Wimshurst machine, made with twelve inch phono records, tinfoil, string, tinfoil, much shellac, and scrap wood from smashed orange crates, looked like the real thing, but instead of generating high voltages, the phono records lit up like a sky full of summer lightning.
This sort of play requires technical support, and it doesn't take long to exhaust the school library or the local branch. At a very early age, I found the technology room at the main library. In some nooks and crannies on the third floor were books like The Discovery of the Elements by Mary Elvira Weeks, or a book of tables for a number system with base twelve. There were several books for young experimenters in chemistry, physics, and mathematics.
Stories about people who do things you find extremely difficult are responsible for much hero worship, and I had a pantheon of famous people who became close and dear. I especially liked Faraday, brilliant but humble, Berzelius, for discovering six elements and never letting the sand bath get cold, and Sir Humphrey Davy, for making the alkali metals and the alkaline earths.
And, there was Nicolai Tesla, for the fun we had with Tesla coils, Lavoisier, for seeing through the phlogiston theory of combustion, and Marie Curie, for endurance.
Jim and I collaborated on things electrical, and Howard Solomon and I on chemistry. George Cato and I outfitted a coaster wagon with a large corrugated box, and made safaris to his grandmother's house a mile or so away. One person hauled the rig while the other rode in style, peeking out the windows. George's grandmother referred to our rig as a caravan, an expression I was later to meet as standard UK English for towable homes.
Support for the experiments came from a number of directions. I sold papers and peddled baked goods. A pharmacist would carry a wide variety of materials in small packages, and most would sell the materials to any large enough to open the door. Neighbors bought my home-made anti-perspirant.
In answer to a letter asking Selenium Corporation of America about how to go about getting selenium to make photo cells, I received a tattered envelope with a finger-sized stick of selenium almost coming out through a hole in the bottom.
Mr. Schaeffer, who roomed with my Aunt Monte, was an electrical engineer, and was much interested in my plans to make the alkali metals and alkaline earth metals after the methods used by Sir Humphrey Davies. When he heard of the methods used to get direct current, he came up with an entire coaster wagon full of transformers, chokes, and Tungar bulbs and sockets.
We had been using rectifiers made of aluminum and lead sheets in washing soda solution in four cut-off gallon jugs, with coils from some large dynamic loud speakers for chokes, and condensers from Ford spark coils.
Perhaps the fondest recollection I have of the support young hobby chemists could receive is of the relationship I had with Frank W. Kerr company. This kind firm had a sales office cum warehouse downtown in Detroit, on Fort Street or Michigan, not far from Woodward.
Although actual recollection fails me, my first visit can be reconstructed with some accuracy, if not great precision. I was in knee pants, about twelve years old, and probably wearing my favorite Argyle sweater, which, when last worn, was worn, and reached halfway from my elbow to my wrist.
I faced a huge door with a semicircular window above it bearing the firm name in gold letters. Inside, there was only one way to go: down a long, plastered, buff-painted, narrow board wainscotted hall, finally giving access to a tiny waiting room with a couple of wooden benches. Open to the waiting room, and separated from it by a low railing, was an office with a few desks.
The two desks nearest the rail were occupied by people I came to regard as good friends. Looking up and noticing me, a man about twenty-five or thirty years old, in shirt-sleeves, with an eye-shade on his forehead, came over and asked, "Can I help you?"
"Yes", I said, "How much is cobalt chloride?"
"We have only the chemically pure grade. How much do you need?"
"Well, I'd like to get about one ounce, if I can afford it"
"I'll have to look that up," he said, and returned to his desk.
After talking to someone on his telephone, he looked up and said, "An ounce will cost fifty cents. Will there be anything else?"
"I will have sixty cents left. How much are test tubes?"
"You could get half a dozen soft glass six inch test tubes, with lip, for that amount"
"That's fine, I really need that many. I use the glass shells of electric fuses now, but of course, you can't heat things in them"
"All right, we'll have your order down in a few minutes. Please sit down right here and I'll call you when your order is ready."
A few minutes later, my order was wrapped and paid for, and the man who had taken care of me said, "If you need anything else, ask for me or Sandy. My name is Bob." He looked toward Sandy's desk, and she looked up and gave me a friendly wave.
It took visits every two or three months for a couple of years for me to realize what very kind people these two, and the company they worked for, really were. They would break any package for me, without a whimper, and always seemed glad to see me.
By the time I realized what they were doing, I was buying chemicals in standard quantities and repackaging them for my friends and customers, but I still enjoyed calling on Bob and Sandy and telling them a little about what was going on in my basement.
There were two benches in the waiting room, and on one occasion, a tall, forty-ish man with a very pleasant expression, in appearance reminding me, as I look back, of Robert Morley, came in and placed an order. Sitting down on the other bench, he looked over at me and said, "I've seen you here before, haven't I?"
"Yes, this where I buy all my chemicals and glass-ware."
"Well, well, you have a laboratory? What do you do in your laboratory?"
I cast about in my mind for the most interesting thing I had done in the last few months, and decided to tell him about my experiments with Liesegang rings. Not only did I assume that he already knew how to make gunpowder, or some of the more common exotic explosives, but I didn't think talk about explosives would do my stock at Frank Kerr any good.
Because they must be seen to be appreciated, Liesegang rings are made in glass columns or test tubes by making a jelly containing a solution of a material that can form a very insoluble precipitate. The material needed to form the precipitate is poured onto the jelly and the test tube or column set aside for days or weeks.
With luck, the precipitate will form in repeated layers in the tube. With foresight, precipitates are chosen that are colorful, and very nice effects are achieved. A very nice jelly is silica gel, made by mixing acid and sodium silicate, and I was buying sodium silicate solution on this visit.
"I'm having fun. It's my hobby. One thing I'm doing lately is making Liesegang rings, and I'm here to get some sodium silicate solution to use for my experiments."
"Oh? And what are Liesegang rings?"
I suspected him of just being polite, but I couldn't think of anything to do but launch into an explanation.
He listened attentively, asked questions about my experiments with gelatin and Certo gels, and asked, "Why does this occur?"
"The best explanation I've seen is that, as one of the materials diffuses into the gel, the concentration of the compound that will precipitate out gets over its solubility limit enough to make it precipitate out even if there are no crystals of the material already present to grow on.
"Then, when it does start to form crystals, both ions diffuse toward the crystals and precipitate on them, lowering the amount present both below and above the ring (really a disk-shaped volume). Then nothing happens until some more material diffuses in from the top."
"That must be what happens. It sounds very reasonable. I too, have a laboratory, where I make new fragrances."
"How do you do that? What do you mean by a fragrance?"
"A fragrance is something that will give a special smell to something. I make fragrances to add to soaps and cosmetics, and to sell as perfumes and toilet waters. Fragrances are very expensive, so I can spend a lot of work making good ones."
"What do you make them out of?"
"Sometimes from chemicals that I can buy right here, and sometimes from essential oils and extracts, or special fats and waxes.
"People all over the world gather materials that are useful in my business, and I buy them from dealers who know where and when to get them, and sometimes I buy them directly from the people who extract them from flowers."
"What do you buy from Frank Kerr Co.?"
"Oh, solvents like specially denatured alcohol, many essential oils, esters, commercial flavorings, supplies and equipment for my laboratory."
"It sure sounds like interesting work. I want to be a chemist, although I like electrical experiments, also."
"Well, people don't think of me as a chemist. They call what I do being a Nose"
"A Nose?"
"Yes, I don't even try to work if I have a cold, and I don't smoke or drink, or eat certain things that spoil my ability to make fine distinctions between materials that I work with."
"Well, there's my order. Perhaps I'll see you here again."