Len's Memory Blog

Pins (entry for 10/30/24) It was 1945. We still lived in Denver. The war was almost over, and they had stopped rationing gasoline and tires, so instead of taking the streetcar everywhere, we started driving a lot. That is, my dad started driving a lot, and the rest of us rode with him a lot. (He never allowed my mother to drive any car we owned, if he was in it too.) Now there were some things about life in 1945 that seem almost unbelievable now. One of those unbelievable things is that there was no such thing as a two-piece bathing suit, let alone a bikini. (The bikini wouldn’t be invented for another eleven years.) Another unbelievable thing was that women were not allowed to wear any skirt that showed their knees. Floor length was fine, mid-calf was fine, even something right below the knees was fine, provided she was careful. No bare shoulders, either. (There was no such thing as a sleeveless dress or blouse.) The only time that a woman, or a girl of nine or more years, was allowed...

Orchard Mesa (entry for 10/23/24) During the summer of 1953, we moved from Montrose, Colorado, to Grand Junction, so that I could attend the Adventist Junior Academy there. Public schools were never an option for us, as they were too ‘worldly,’ and since the Adventist Elementary in Montrose stopped at eighth grade, which I had just graduated from in May, there was really only one option, unless I was going to go to a boarding school. I was willing to try that, but my mom was not, so that was the end of that discussion. (I looked extremely young for my age, about nine or ten although I was actually thirteen, and she was sure I would be bullied, which indeed I would have been.) My mom had been running a health food store featuring Adventist canned meatless products out of our back porch for a year or so, to help add some desperately needed income to our very poor family budget (we were always strapped in spite of my dad having two jobs at the time), and this moderately successful activit...

The Collector (entry for 10/16/24) I had turned ten in March and that summer I went to Junior Camp for the first time, at a place called Glacier View, though the only glacier within view, then or now, was a tiny one far to the west. (It was in Eastern Colorado, near Boulder, and while it still belongs to the SDA church, it is no longer a youth camp, and the dormitories are long gone.) Having attended there for three years in a row, I have many fond memories of the place, especially the enormous campfires every night, but that first summer is still the strongest in my memory banks. I was in the first bunk, just inside the front door, on a bunk that was open to the ceiling though it was not a ‘top bunk.’ While most bunks in the dorm were double-decker, mine was not. Mine was one of only two single-deck beds in the entire place, which was huge. How I lucked out and got one by myself, I have no idea, but I know I enjoyed it. (Both of the next two years I was on the bottom bunk of a double-...

78 (entry for 10/9/24) When I was ten years old, my dad decided it was time for me to become musically sophisticated. He knew that he himself wasn’t, and that none of my ancestors or other relatives were, but that I should be. I had been playing the piano for five years already (typical music-lesson stuff), and had heard recordings of things like Sousa Marches and Pipe Organ renditions of popular songs, but while those kinds of things were a bit above the average level of music appreciation, they weren’t quite as high-falutin’ as he thought I should be. So he went to the only music store in town (Montrose, Colorado), where he had bought me a small beginner’s accordion a few months previously, and he asked the owner there if he had any recordings of classical music. The guy grinned and said, “Yes, I have four 78rpm albums of classical music on hand. All brand new and in perfect condition, except one disc that is cracked. They’re outside the back door, waiting to be picked up by the garb...

  Other Mother (entry for 10/2/24) Before I was even born yet, I had two mothers. My actual birth mother, named Helen. And her one-year-older sister, Eda. This unusual arrangement was made very clear to me, as soon as I was old enough to understand the concept, and probably even before that, truth be told. The primary reason for this situation was an event that had happened a couple of years earlier. Aunt Eda had fallen in love with a young man named John, and when she told her mom, Emma, about it, Emma put her foot down. “No,” she said. “You can’t marry him. Your brother, Sammy, died before you were born, and your sister, Louise, died when you were a teenager, and your sister, Helen, has married and lives with her husband, and you are all I have left. So ‘No.’” And that was that. Eda told John the bad news, and he eventually married a young woman named Dorothy, and Eda never looked at another guy the rest of her life. (Interestingly, after John died, Eda and Dorothy became best fr...