dual personalities

Tag: family

June 15, 2012

Bunker Hill Day

by chuckofish

June 17 is Bunker Hill Day which commemorates the battle fought in 1775 mostly on and around Breed’s Hill, during the Siege of Boston early in the American Revolutionary War. The battle is named after the adjacent Bunker Hill, which was peripherally involved in the battle and was the original objective of both colonial and British troops.

Our grandfather, Daniel Hilton Cameron was born on June 17, 1900 and was always from that day forward called Bunker or Bunk.

He was the 4th child of Daniel and Susie Taylor Cameron of Burlington, Vermont.

I have blogged about Bunker and his baseball playing prowess previously here. School never agreed with him, but he was, by all accounts, a highly intelligent child who was talented in many areas. Rumor has it that he could pick up a musical instrument and play it by ear. Another story has him and a friend taking a car apart at night and putting it back together on top of a porte-cochère as a prank.

A porte-cochère, in case you’d forgotten

Clearly he had other talents as he convinced our strait-laced, deeply religious grandmother to run away and elope with him.

His own deeply religious father had had enough at that point (even though he and Bunker’s mother totally approved of his choice of wife) and disowned him, so he and his new bride were forced to go home to her father in Chicago. (No doubt, he hoped this would teach Bunker a lesson, something he had been trying to do for twenty years.) He worked at odd jobs and for awhile was a taxi driver. Eventually his father relented and they returned to the east where he went into his father’s lumber business. He and Catherine had three girls, our mother the middle and his favorite child. (They were the most alike.)

Funnily enough, when our mother decided against his wishes to marry our father in Savannah, Georgia, where he was stationed in the army, instead of waiting and getting married at home, he refused to come to the wedding, echoing his own stubborn father’s behavior. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He also eventually forgave her, but think of her getting married far from home without her “daddy” there to give her his blessing.

Rest in peace, Bunker. I hardly knew ye, but I remember when our mother returned from Massachusetts after her own mother died and she wept because she knew she would never see you again. And she was right. You died within the year.

Daughter #1 at the Cameron plot in Lakeview Cemetery in Burlington, Vermont

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June 1, 2012

It’s not easy being green

by chuckofish

Daughter #2 and I just spent 36 hours in College Park, Maryland scouting the environs for an apartment and checking in with the English Department at the University of Maryland. And guess who we ran into on the campus?


Yes, Kermit the Frog and Jim Henson (class of 1960). What a small world!

We also found this fellow in the Student Union.

That’s Kermit as a terrapin. To me he looks more like a Ninja turtle, but whatever. At the University of Maryland they really do love their terrapins.

More specifically, they love Testudo, their fighting Terp:

I think daughter #2 will enjoy her upcoming years at the U. of MD. The campus is really lovely–large and green and full of handsome brick buildings. She will be spending most of her time here:

This is Tawes Hall which houses the English Department. Not bad, eh? The people in the department were nice too. Kermit, terps, nice people, and Georgian architecture–what more does one need?

Well, the crabcakes were tasty, but it’s a relief to be back in my flyover state. Sigh. Airports, rental cars, hotels, GPS devices, I95, and all that goes with modern travel make for a very stressful 2 days! And now it’s back to the salt mines…

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May 25, 2012

Knights and squires

by chuckofish

The boy (right) and the boyfriend (left) helped daughter #2 move her big stuff out of her college apartment yesterday.

“Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes, Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commoners; bear me out in it, O God!” (Moby-Dick, of course)

Thanks, guys! (For a more detailed post on the day see the boy’s blog.)

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May 18, 2012

And they call the wind Mariah

by chuckofish

Yesterday at the “Recognition Ceremony for Graduates of the College of Arts & Sciences” they read daughter #2’s name as “Samantha”. Hello. They couldn’t get ol’ Susanna right? Annoying. Well, at least she didn’t trip!

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May 16, 2012

This and that

by chuckofish

How cute is this? And speaking of the queen and her diamond jubilee…I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Elizabeth.

This is in large part because ever since I was a child she reminded me of my mother. They were born the same year (1926) within a few months of each other. And they really do look a lot alike.

Even as an old lady the queen still looks like Mary C.

It’s funny because, while people remind me of my father all the time, the only other person besides the queen who has ever reminded me of my mother is this lady:

They certainly dressed alike.

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May 14, 2012

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

by chuckofish

A happy belated mother’s day to all! Here’s hoping you got to go to Ted Drewes (or the equivalent) too!

And flowers are nice too!

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May 9, 2012

Let the wild rumpus start!

by chuckofish

Maurice Sendak died yesterday at the age of 83. Sendak wrote and illustrated more than 50 children’s books–including “Where the Wild Things Are,” his most famous, published in 1963. This book was a great favorite of my children.

Daughter #1’s Wild Thing and Max dolls

As a parent who had to read it many, many times, I appreciated that it was great fun to read aloud (with feeling):

“And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.”

And as a parent I appreciated that its message to misbehaving children who are sent to their room without supper is, ultimately, that home is best:

“And [he] sailed back over a year
and in and out of weeks
and through a day
and into the night of his very own room
where he found his supper waiting for him
and it was still hot.”

AND IT WAS STILL HOT!

Rest in peace, Maurice.

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May 8, 2012

The great bright dream–part 2

by chuckofish

In answer to yesterday’s question (in the comments): why wasn’t your sister there bothering you? She was right there at the end of the sofa, practicing her cheer routine.

(This blogger’s scanning/cropping/editing talents are amazing, n’est-ce pas?)

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May 1, 2012

Among the dust and cobwebs

by chuckofish

True to my routine, on Saturday I went to a couple of estate sales. One was in a lovely home on a street down by my old church, a neighborhood I am very familiar with and which is one of my favorites. It was the home of a former professor and his wife, the home they raised their three children in. The children are my age and went to the other private school (the co-educational one) in this flyover town.

(Not the house I visited, but similar)

It was a beautiful three-story house, probably built in the 1920s, with a wide front-to-back front hall, a lovely staircase, and back stairs from the basement to the third floor. The kitchen looked virtually untouched with an old-fashioned pantry. The basement, although not “finished” to today’s standard, had terrazzo floors and a fireplace. Such a wide and airy house, full of lovely things, and books, and evocative testaments to lives well lived–canoe paddles, skates, skiis, pictures taken out west. All I could think, however, was how the next family to buy this house would undoubtedly feel the need to gut-rehab it, ripping out walls to make a huge kitchen with granite counters, and all the rest. Sigh.

I also could not help wondering why the three children did not want all their parents’ stuff! No room for their childhood twin beds? Trunks from dad’s days at summer camp? Their mother’s St. John suits? Her sewing baskets? There were even some family pictures and engraved teaching awards! I suppose things are never what they seem.

I bought a couple of books. Mostly this outing made me very sad. It was a little too personal I guess. Much as I love estate sales, I hope my own children do not have one. The idea of people pawing through my things! Just give it away!  Or throw it away! Have a big bonfire and burn it (probably not legal, but somehow preferable)!

Time marches on; obviously some people have a much easier time moving with it than I do.  The past is prelude and all that. So true, Will Shakespeare, but for some of us, the past is always with us.

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April 26, 2012

Far be it from me

by chuckofish

The birthday on April 4 of our pater familias caught me off guard and I only had time to throw together a short post. I have been giving it (and him) some more thought.

My father was very old school. He carried a Dunhill lighter and wore a fedora and a Burberry Balmacan raincoat. He wore Brooks Brothers suits; two for summer (one khaki and one olive green–a color they no longer seem to carry) and two for winter (gray). He wore Brooks Brothers button-down shirts (14 1/2/32) and shoes. Even in our hot, muggy flyover summers, he never wore sportshirts. (Sometimes he rolled his sleeves.) Jazzy for him meant madras. He wore boxers. He never changed the style of eyewear he wore. Ever. (See above in 1952 with my brother Chris in our grandparents backyard.)

He loved small leather goods. And the Georg Jensen store in NYC.

He was a proud veteran of WWII and Korea. He was the first man in his family not to serve as an officer.

He loved bookstores and books. He read mysteries. As my dual personality noted earlier, no one read Winnie the Pooh aloud like my father. He liked war movies and John Wayne. He met Charlton Heston once in London. (They both collected lead soldiers.)

He never lifted so much as a finger to help in the yard or the house. Ever. He did not barbeque.

When we had a dog, he never walked it. I think he liked small animals. He would have liked a cat. I remember he hit a rabbit once on Ladue Road and it was the only time I ever heard him use a four-letter word (sober). I think it really bothered him. (This is not to say that he didn’t blaspheme regularly–“God damn it!” being a favorite exclamation.)

He could get sunburned driving a car with the window open.

He liked cities, especially Boston and San Francisco. Nature was not his thing. Exercise? Please. He did once ride his bike as a teenager from Worcester, MA up to Montpelier, VT to visit his cousins, but I think that was probably because he was desperate to get out of his house (and away from his mother?) His cousin told me years later that when he arrived, he was terribly sunburned.

He always bought me a candy bar when we stopped for gas on the way home from school, even if dinner was in half an hour and he knew my mother would accuse him of “ruining my appetite”. I blame him for my candy addiction.

He cut the fat off his meat and hated butter. He liked Jordan Almonds.

He was a collector and hobbyist. Lead soldiers (Britains), model trains, medals, military prints and Dresden soldiers, Napoleana.

He was kind and quiet and gentlemanly. He was not a snob. He treated everyone the same. People of lower social orders always respected and admired him. He was ill-at-ease around business executives. He had a few friends, but like the rest of our family, he was an introvert who enjoyed his own company.

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