Memory and History

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Contents

Preface...................................................vii1 The Irasburg Affair, 1967-1968..........................12 Back to Graduate School, 1969-1970......................283 Burlington, Vermont, 1970-1971..........................544 Amherst, Massachusetts, 1972-1974.......................835 San Diego, 1974-1976....................................1006 Eugene, Oregon, 1976-1977...............................1167 Vermillion, South Dakota, 1977-1978.....................1358 At Home in Spokane? 1978-1980...........................1439 The Struggle for Tenure, 1981-1982......................158Epilogue..................................................173

Chapter One

Steffi, the baby Trina, and I docked in New York on July 1st, 1967, almost exactly 21 years after my first arrival in New York as an eleven-year old after the war. Another new beginning for me, now aged 32 with a German wife, a one-year-old daughter, and badly frayed literary ambitions. At times it seemed to me I was repeating as farce what Mama had experienced as tragedy! Unconsciously I had heeded Pete Seeger's call, "The time for exiles is over." I got a far warmer dockside reception from my family than I expected – or probably deserved. Mama met us at the boat as promised, as did Olaf and Tempy, who was now working for a brokerage firm on Wall Street. Olaf drove us to Vermont in his VW bus, stopping for the night in Middletown, Connecticut, where he was teaching in the summer session at Wesleyan University. Driving by a power plant near Hartford, I could not help but think of similar installations that were—perhaps at that very moment—the targets of American bombs in Vietnam. The war hung like an invisible shroud over everything I saw, giving all the familiar scenes a peculiar unreality, as if normalcy were merely being faked.

And yet the summer of 1967 lingers in my memory as the most idyllic summer of my life. Mama's ramshackle, hand-built hut had few comforts (one of them being a toilet that could be flushed with a pail of water), but it was cozy and snug. Situated on 150 acres of rolling farmland, surrounded by forested hills, and with no other human habitation within our range of vision (Connie's farm, where Mama now resided, was just beyond the horizon), Mama's place perfectly embodied Vermont's lush green beauty and stark natural solitude. Sunrise in Albany, Vermont in July 1967 was as close to Paradise—or at least its earthly representation—as I have come in my life. We had great luck with the weather: July and August were clear, sunny, and warm. The landscape and the climate formed the perfect backdrop for the honeymoon we never had. In San Francisco they were celebrating the "summer of love." Steffi and I had our own summer of love in rural Vermont.

We also had more than our share of good luck in finding a three-story, four-bedroom farmhouse on the common in the center of the neighboring village of Irasburg for sale for only $6,000. Having squirreled away 6,000 DM in our savings account in Berlin, just enough to convert into a 25 percent $1,500 down payment, we could actually afford to buy.

Remarkably, the house came fully furnished as well. Its owner, Annie Mae Fisher, in her early 80s and immobilized by arthritis, lived in an adult-care home in the nearby village of Barton. With no living heirs, she had turned over responsibility for the upkeep and eventual sale of the property to Homer Sheltra, who had run the Irasburg general store for decades, but had recently undergone a laryngectomy for cancer and was anxious to leave for his new home in Connecticut as soon as possible. His health failing, he did not want to go through the trouble of organizing an estate sale. We were the beneficiaries of his impatience. We also benefitted from the prevailing disdain for "old junk." Natives of this isolated corner of Vermont were just beginning to understand the potential value of antiques.

We paid a visit to Annie Mae Fisher in Barton, determined as we were to maintain the home in the spirit of her family's long tradition in Irasburg. The house was built in 1881 with Victorian dimensions (though without most of the frills of that architectural style) after the original house on that site had burned down. Her father had lived in Irasburg since returning from the Civil War in 1865, in which he had been severely wounded. Besides the farm he ran a livery stable as well. Annie was completely under his spell.

"I had the most wonderful father there ever was."

She told us about a man she had met in an ice cream parlor at York Beach in Maine, where she had worked summers as a young woman. When he wrote her and asked if he might visit her in Irasburg, her mother did not give her permission. Her father said, "Well, Nannie, you've got to ask yourself whether you want to marry him." Annie said, he hadn't asked her, but she wrote him and told him not to come. Twenty years later she read in the Boston Post that he had become Boston police chief and was happily married with two children. She rushed home and showed her father the clipping. "See what I might have been?"— "Well, Annie, I hope I didn't keep you from getting a husband." But Annie told him she had no regrets. She had preferred to make her father a good home. "They say opportunity comes only once in a lifetime. I think our lives are predestined, don't you? It's all governed by fate."

The barn had collapsed some years ago under the weight of a Vermont winter snowfall, but the house was structurally sound. It needed only cosmetic work, most of which we were able to do ourselves. After weeks of painting, laying tile, repairing, and cleaning, we finally moved in just before the beginning of the school year in September. Heat was the major problem we had to confront that first year. The wood-burning furnace in the cellar was beyond repair. We were forced to rely on a centrally located pot-bellied stove and a wood-burning kitchen range. It was not until the following year that we could afford to install an oil-burning central heating system (which since has been replaced by another wood-burning furnace). We got some indication of what we could expect from a Vermont winter when returning from a day trip to Expo 67 in Montreal at the beginning of October we found that the temperature had already dipped well below freezing at dusk. Our babysitter, Paulette Beaudry, had been forced to take refuge with Trina in her own heated home across the common.

Teaching high school in northern Vermont required some adjustment on my part. Although the dairy-farming economy was in severe decline in Orleans County, much of the local farming population still regarded secondary schooling as unwelcome competition for the time and services of the young people whose labor was needed on the farms. Having had little experience with reluctant students, I had to adjust to the unanticipated reality that many of my students simply regarded school as a waste of time. I thought I could use the techniques I learned in the army to enforce discipline, but soon realized my mistake. Military-style threats and commands just provoked laughter and scorn. I had no trouble controlling my own classes, where I knew that the secret of success was to keep students busy. Most of my preparatory time was spent devising interesting assignments, exercises, and activities. The more difficult challenge was to enforce silence in the school library, which served as the "study hall" for students between classes. Teachers took turns in monitoring the study hall. I finally decided to allow talking as long as it was not disruptive. This was not a decision with which everyone agreed. How best to cope with potential insubordination was the main topic of discussion at the first few faculty meetings of the year. Some older members of the faculty, in particular, viewed relations between students and teachers as inherently antagonistic. To them nothing less than control of the new school was at stake in the fall of 1967. The former principal of Orleans High School, now in his sixties and still smarting from having been passed over as principal of the new Lake Region Union High School, advocated imposing one-way traffic on the stairways as a way to regiment the student body. He warned that any relaxation of discipline or concession to student autonomy would only encourage rebellion. Another older faculty member complained, "What I don't like is that long hair and those mustaches that some of them are growing." Even one or two of the younger faculty members were scornful of my permissive attitude. "You just want to be liked. You're not tough enough. This morning I found 'SHAW SUCKS' written across the board. That shows I'm getting somewhere." However, under the leadership of our new principal Millard Harrison, still in his thirties, less confrontational attitudes and practices prevailed. The times they were a-changing, to my great delight. In my journal I noted that

discussion with [math teacher] Fred May on enforcement of a code on dress and grooming got stuck when I could not "draw the line" between permissible and impermissible. Now I can: the line is each individual's sense of shame or embarrassment (insofar as health standards can't be invoked, or standards of "public disturbance.")

Weighing on everyone's mind was the Vietnam War. Increasingly one could feel that opinion on the war was shifting. Some of our younger faculty members had gone into teaching to gain deferment from the draft, greatly adding, in most cases, to the quality of instruction. Most young people, whether liable to the draft or not, were overwhelmingly critical of the war. It was a relief not to have to hide my own thoughts and feelings for fear of social opprobrium. At first I was reluctant to openly express my opposition to the war for fear of antagonizing my colleagues and jeopardizing my job. I soon discovered, however, that my colleagues, not knowing where I stood, were equally wary about freely expressing their anti-war opinions to me! Most took refuge in a non-committal avowal of the magnitude of the problem and the absence of any easy solution. At lunch in the faculty dining room in September 1967 our dynamic music and band teacher Chuck Milazzo empathized with the quandary in which President Johnson found himself: "What can he do?" Chuck asked, rhetorically. "He can stop making war," I said. It may have been the stark simplicity of this proposal that stunned everyone into silence, but I interpreted it as a sign of agreement. In my homeroom I tacked up an over-sized placard Steffi had drawn for me on the theme of "make love, not war." Word got around, and students, faculty, and even administrators stopped by to admire it. Nobody asked me to take it down.

Not surprisingly, my best friends among the faculty were also the strongest opponents of the war. Young David LaRoche, a tough and brawny former football player at Boston University now teaching social studies at Lake Region, made me feel almost "moderate" by comparison, although I shared his hope that the Viet Cong would not cave in to the fearsome firepower of the American military. "I hope the North Vietnamese don't back down," David said. "I hope they'll stand firm. It would be a blow to all of us if they didn't." We understood that there was much more at stake in this war than merely control of South Vietnam. More important in the long run was the domestic conflict between the "hawks" and the "doves," the "right" and the "left," the "cold warriors" and the "peaceniks," the "establishment" and the "counter-culture," two schools of thought with very different conceptions of American interests and the policies needed to achieve them. My journal entries give some indication of the centrality of the war in our thoughts and the bitterness of the debate it generated.

Sep. 10, 1967 The matter-of-factness with which deaths in Viet Nam are accepted (except insofar as they represent signs of weakness or loss in battle) makes me no longer wonder how, for a number of years, people [in Nazi Germany] could proudly publish: "Gefallen für Führer, Volk und Vaterland."

The archbishop of San Antonio says force is necessary in the world because of the existence of evil. Another proof, as if any more were needed, that it is the "good" and the "just" from whom the greatest danger emanates (because they will always have the most power). Why does it never occur to them that the evil, the existence of which they are so sure of, may just as well be lodged in themselves?

Oct. 15 Rusk on Vietnam: "Now let's not be children." This is the argument against the hippies, artists—everything that challenges the artifact. What he means is, "Now let's not bring morality into this. Let's be grown-up and regard the war as merely a geopolitical problem."

The New York Times: Rusk appealing to fear in the masses: "Escalation of American involvement that now induces the administration to evoke objectives that will appear large enough to justify a half-million American troops ..."

The bad conscience behind our intervention in Vietnam—the feeling of needing an enemy—of deserving an enemy.

Nov. 14 Vietnam makes everything everywhere seem immoral: every activity that is not concerned with Vietnam seems deliberately and perversely indifferent to it—amoral, leaving a worse taste than the actively immoral, the military, for instance ...

Nov. 30 An interesting aspect of "limited" war: perhaps it is a partial admission that the degree of right in the war is also limited: the U.S. does not feel right enough to use all its power. Each side is not only battling the other, but fighting for a share of right, which, paradoxically, can only be maintained by being on the defensive (both militarily and psychologically).

The respect for the enemy implicit in Mama's hawkish attitude: war is a part of life; do it well.

Mama's attitude on Vietnam is a concession of gratitude and loyalty to Vermont.

Dec. 4 The Vietnam War offers the same sort of false relief [of the body-politic] as blood-letting in the medical treatment of the last century: It crystallizes the general malaise and it mobilizes the body's forces against a specific injury.

Dec. 10 Why [W. H.] Auden and aware persons of that sort are not vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War (why Wordsworth turned conservative): The same thing that makes us oppose the war-makers—the feeling that the "establishment" is not checking its conduct through conscience—makes them oppose us. They recognize and distrust our motives just as much as we do theirs: they carry our feeling a step further—they recognize that we are even more destructive by nature, even more immodest in our aims ...

Dec. 16 The Vietnam War will change the meaning of the word "pacification" to include the idea of force.

Dec. 19 The Vietnam War: like a general inflammation that has finally come out in a boil. The pus is dripping out. In that sense I greet it: we will have a period of relative health thereafter.

Dec. 20 Three-quarters of Americans believe anti-war demonstrations "encourage Communists to fight all the harder": and what effect does the fact of their believing this (or saying that they do) have on the Communists?

Dec. 22 "More is at stake in Vietnam than just the 15 million people [of South Vietnam]," say the Asian scholars (Reischauer, et al.), perfectly willing to sacrifice these 15 million to their higher stakes.

Jan. 6, 1968 Question for a news conference: "What would you do, Mr. President, if you were head of the North Vietnamese state?"

Jan. 12 One good thing about a situation like Vietnam: it exposes people. They have got to show their true colors. Bob Hope and John Steinbeck get "burned off" about the guys who are always "anti." You don't hear so much about "destructive criticism" anymore, though; the irony would be too apparent.

Feb. 3 I know when they are shooting the Viet Cong, in their hearts they are shooting me and my kind. But in one sense the U.S. involvement will bear long-range fruit: it will legitimize Vietnamese independence and their regime, whatever form it takes. Both [independence and form of government] will be well-deserved and hard-earned. It would almost have been unfair of the U.S. not to remain true to historical laws and give Vietnamese national history this tremendous challenge. A quote at the right time (Dr. Johnson, quoted by W. H. Auden in the N.Y. Times): "I am afraid there is no other way of ascertaining the truth than by persecution on the one hand and enduring it on the other."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Memory and Historyby Roderick Stackelberg Copyright © 2011 by Roderick Stackelberg. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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