Mom was......

My mother was young.　

She married my father when she was 16-½ years old. Birthed my eldest brother shortly before she turned 18, and had me, the youngest of three boys when she was still 20.

She spent the greatest part and focus of what most people think of as their “formative years” cooking, cleaning, sewing and washing clothes, caring for my father, birthing and raising my brothers and I, all the while keeping a wonderful, nurturing, growth environment.

 

And she was small.

Although mom stressed the “and a half”, Grandma Nellie contested it. But there was no contesting the 5’ 1” part. Tall was just not in the cards for mom. Grandma Nellie was 5’ 1” as well, and though Grandpa Mel was a powerfully built man, he didn’t have much more than a handful of inches on either one of them.

Grandpa Applebury was built like a plow horse. Broad in the chest, wide shoulders, large forearms, thick thighs, and big hands. Mom took after Nellie.

 

And she was smart

At thirty, she was a high school grad that had been completely consumed with being a world-class mother and housewife. At thirty, she got her first post high school job.

By thirty-five, she had started college nights,. After a full day as a secretary. While still keeping focused on cooking and cleaning and caring for my father, brothers, and I.

By Forty-two, she had completed her Masters Degree in Business administration with an accounting focus.

 

And she was someone you didn't mess with.

When she said jump, my brothers and I knew it was not time to sit around. I don’t ever remember her saying “Wait until your father gets home” to us. If we needed discipline, she was up to the task.

And that was no mean feat. The most flattering way my brothers and I could be described would be “high-energy”. Managing to control us was a job that would have challenged any half dozen Marine Corps Drill Instructors. But Mom had no problem with it.

And while I can’t tell you when it happened for either of my brothers, I can tell you when it happened for me. It was in the fifth grade when I grew taller than mom. Yep, she had to look uphill to discipline her youngest beginning when he was still ten.

But that didn’t deter her.

Long about when I was in the eighth grade I remember one particular occasion when she and I were at odds over some chores. By this time I don’t think mom even came up to my chin anymore, and I was feeling my independence being pretty well dug in until mom step right up to me and said; “If I have to get a step ladder to get high enough off the ground to paddle your fanny, don’t think I won’t do it”.

And while my young male pride caused me to retort; “You’ll look awfully foolish chasing me down the street dragging a ladder behind you”……..I had already started in on the chores....

- © 2013 Marty K Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

The Next One is Getting Further Away

Today is the 55^th anniversary of my first appearance here on earth.

Not really a noteworthy event to the world at large.  No congratulations are required or expected.  In fact, I have always figured that was pretty much backwards anyway. 

If any congratulations of gifts are deserved, they should be directed to my mother.

If you feel like passing on your wishes to her, please add your condolences for the last 55 years and 9 months, she’ll appreciate the thought.  And heaven only knows how thoroughly she deserves it.



Mostly I don’t pay much attention to birthdays.  Like I said, it’s really not like I had anything to do with the event other than to sit there and do nothing.  Come to think of it, now some 40 years into my work a day world; if I could get a job where all I did was sit around, be waited on hand and foot, and showered by congratulations and presents…heck, guess you’d have to call me President Vandermolen, huh?



All that said, there have been a few birthdays that I’ve looked forward to: 

• 16 years old – because I could get a driver’s license.  An early indicator that the State of      California had some unresolved issues, truth be told; at least based on the quality of some of my early driving decision-making.
• 18 years old – because I could register and vote.  For all the real good any of that has done over the past nine presidential and gubernatorial elections, the past 18 senatorial elections, and uncounted other federal, state, and local elections.
• 25 years old – Because that is when my car insurance rates dropped.  Heck, I am Dutch after all, and if “less money for the same thing” isn’t something to look forward to, I don’t know what is.
• Which leads me to this one, 55 years old – because I have been saving up company names and senior discount offers for several years now….and I finally get to start redeeming them.

Guess the next one is at 65, when Medicare coverage kicks in, or whatever age it changes to between now and then. 

That’s a long way off.

And probably getting further away with every legislative session.

 

-        © 2013 Marty K Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

The World is a Cold, Hard Place

We live amongst times of exceptional change; change in the laws of physics as we have known them, and I for one find it all most perplexing.


Once or twice a year my parents would drive my brothers and I to the beaches of the Santa Cruz area for a picnic.  We boys would swim joyfully in the ocean in ragged and worn jeans that had the lower legs cut off; for hours and hours.  Body surfing down the wave fronts, and diving under the breakers on the way back out to sea.  Time and again, until our parents would drag us out kicking and pleading, pack us up and head for home.

And during that same period in time I began backpacking, camping, and hunting in the foothills and mountains of California.  End of day would come, friendship around the campfire while supper cooked, and then off to sleep on the ground next to the fire.

I am 55 years old now, and I have lived a significant percentage of each year since I was 8 experiencing all of the wonders of the wilds.  Touching, tasting, and living immersed in the reality of nature.



My father is a well read and educated man.  He maintains that he hasn’t read a single work of fiction since he left school, and I believe him.  But he reads voraciously.  He reads about history and nature, geology and astronomy, physics and chemistry, biology and every other thing that you can possibly imagine.  He worked his entire adult life testing materials and designs to determine how and why they failed.  And that has encouraged his native desire to learn more, constantly.

Growing up as a young man I read a lot of Isaac Asimov, both his fiction and his science.  He wrote hundreds of books and thousands of papers.  He explained physics and astronomy, mathematics and chemistry in terms that everyman could readily understand.  And history, all of his explanation works seemed to include a great understanding of history and how our understanding of any issue has changed over time.

And then there’s the works and reasoning of Sagan and Darwin, Newton and Copernicus, Einstein and Hypatia of Alexandria; and all of the other remarkable minds that have studied the laws of physics, and nature, and man, and the planet.

As a group, the best understanding available is that this ball of metals, minerals, organics, and gases that we ride round and round the sun has been spinning along happily for some 4 Billion, 600 million years now.  And like my father before my, and as an extension of my youth, I read voraciously.  I read to stay current with discovery and advancement and learning.



And I still hunt, and camp, and hike, but I sleep on a cot these days.  And I swim in the ocean, and rivers and lakes, though often in a wetsuit now.

For try as I might, and read what I will, I have yet to find one of these learned men and women who can successfully explain to me how it is that in just these past 35 years the ground has gotten so much harder, and the ocean so very much colder.

-        © Marty K Vandermolen 2013 All rights Reserved

Seventh Grade Math

I like to think I was more aware of macro-social interactions than most young boys; most adults just called me opinionated.  

No matter which term was correct, I was conscious of who I was, how I thought, and how that impacted my own relationships beginning when I was in elementary school.  So, the first day of seventh grade math really shouldn’t have been  a surprise.

Seventh Grade.  New school, new people to meet and new things to learn.  The first day was all about following the class assignment sheet that had been mailed to the house just in time to ruin the last couple of weeks of summer vacation.    

As I walked into my assigned math classroom I immediately noticed that the rest of the kids in the classroom were the brainiac nerds.  At least those I knew were, and the ones I didn’t know sure looked the part.  I really didn’t fit in with that stereotype, at least I was trying hard not to.  

By seventh grade I was an accomplished backpacker, sailor, and outdoorsman.  I hunted and fished, rode bikes, go-carts, and mostly ran pretty wild all things considered.  I could toss a pretty mean lasso loop, and wore tee-shirts, wrangler boot cut jeans, and cowboy boots for heaven’s sake.

The teacher wasn’t in the room yet, and as I looked around at the rest of the kids in the class, I really was feeling that this was going to be a tough year for me.  Now, it’s not that I had anything particular against any of these other little geniuses, it was just that they weren’t the people that I wanted to be hanging out with.  But even with that I was thinking that it was only a single class, and it wasn‘t like I had to make friends or anything, just had to do the math, and take the tests, and it would be alright.

Just about then, the door opened and in walked the teacher,.  The scale had tipped, and not in my favor.

He wore tie dye, and a peace sign on beads around his neck, holey jeans, and Birkenstock sandals, no socks, and had his hair pulled back in a ponytail.   Now that I am older, I understand that it should have been all about the education, but back then, I didn’t see that and all I could do was wonder how I could get out of that class.

Thankfully, the educator is always the smartest person in the room.

Don‘t believe it?  Just ask, they‘ll be happy to tell you.  

So Mister whoever he was immediately set in to tell us that we had been “tentatively” placed in this most advanced math class based on the input of our 6th grade teachers.  But, he had to confirm we really belonged there before we would be allowed to stay.  

My ears perked up.

Then he passed out a test that we had to take and pass to stay in the class.

I smelled my ticket out.  

Looking back on it I screwed up.  

No, I don’t mean that I screwed up by ducking out of that class; but you know, if the educator was as bright as they wanted me to believe, you would think they would have asked themselves how it was that a boy who had been placed in the most advanced math class, couldn’t answer a single question right out of a hundred multiple choice questions.    Hell, statistics should have told them something was fishy.

But, it worked.

They promptly pulled me out of that class and dumped in in the “bonehead” math class.

Best year in math I ever had.

My new teacher was Don Immel, and Don and I got into great discussions.  

We talked/argued about whether alternate dimensions could exist.

And  base 5 math systems.

And how gravity impacted planet rotation and orbits.  

Day after day, all through the seventh grade I looked forward to math, knowing that it was going to be interesting, engaging, and exciting.  

The other kids in class got into it too.  They got excited, and argued their ideas too, paying more attention and working harder for all of it.  Years later, Don was to tell me that year was the most rewarding year he had ever taught.  Having me in class got the rest of the kids involved and he moved more kids onto higher level classes at the end of the year than any other year.

Unfortunately Don Immel’s mom didn’t raise no dummies.

Walking into my math class on the first day of the eighth-grade, I immediately noticed that I was back in the class with all those brainiacs…..only this year, not only would there be no getting out of it, but I was going to have to complete with them without the preparation year that they had had.  I actually had to pay attention in the eighth grade. 

 - © Marty k Vandermolen 2013 - All Rights Reserved

Playing Hard

I grew up working.  Ask anyone.  Well, maybe anyone other than my dad. 

 

Chores at home; push the mower, edge and water the lawn, pull weeds, water the garden, feed the dog, wash the dishes, dig holes, fix fences.

 

Up at 5 am; roll over a hundred papers, on rainy days put them all in plastic bags too, pedal the bike over much of town throwing them onto porches, well most of them at least, then back out evenings and weekends to collect.

 

After school, more work; scrubbing floors and washing bowls and pans at the bakery, folding towels and shirts at the dry cleaners, pushing a broom and carrying out the trash at the local mechanics.

 

And, truth be told, though I am sure some Vandermolen somewhere will swear I whined and moaned about it, I really kind of enjoyed using a two man saw to cut up trees, glazing new window glass into frames, setting fence posts, and such. 

 

But, and maybe it is cause I worked so much….when I got a chance to play….I played hard.  Not saying I was special at all, heck, both my brothers worked just as hard, just as much, and played with a passion too.

 

 

 

Used to play capture the flag in scouts.  Not your everyday “your team has that half of the football field, our team has this half” kind.  Nope, real, serious, capture the flag.

 

It usually started around 7:30 at night, and it often was well after 2 am before a flag was captured.  Sometimes the “wide rangers” didn’t even figure out the game was over until almost dawn.  We would all wear dark clothes, and dark knit caps.  Our version of camo back in the day, long before it was “in” to wear.  Which really didn‘t matter much cause we couldn‘t have afforded camo back then if even if it had been stylish.

 

Didn’t matter what the temperature was, 60, 70, 80….whatever. 

 

Standard “battle dress” was long dark sleeves, black pants, and stocking caps, most often with the face part pulled down.  Dark of the moon were the best nights.  Dark of the moon and dark clothes and unless the other team just happened to be downwind, they didn’t have a chance to find us.

 

See, we played big.  Usually we would find a valley, preferably with a river running through the middle.  The river was “No-man’s land”.  Everything as far back and wide as one team wanted to defend on one side of the river was theirs, everything on the other side was ours.  The game always began with a team huddle on each side.  The mission brief usually went something like this:

 

“Bob, you, Dave, and Warren as soon as the game starts, you all head back over the ridge into the next valley, north a mile or two, cross the river in three spots.  Make sure you’re at least a quarter mile apart when you do; go back the far side a couple-three ridges, then come on south a mile or so and start angling back towards the river looking for their flag.”

 

“John, Bill, Harry, same thing, only you guys start out south.”

 

“Rest of you, sneak across if you can, or just fake like you’re gonna.  Keep them watching this away.  Nobody guards our flag.  If no one is standing by it, they‘ll never find it.”

 

 

 

Yep, we thought in terms of square miles, not acres.  Area so big it was a miracle anyone ever found the other team’s flag.  Not to mention no one ever fell off a cliff, or ended up on a road in the next county.  Heck, we never even had to call out the Civil Air Patrol.  Downright amazing all things considered

 

 

 

I got lucky one time when I was about 15.  I found the other team‘s flag.  Still got the scar to prove it.

 

That night after a two or three ridgeline sneak, I spotted a place that was obviously the opposition’s “jail“.  Right next to a big old tree there was a whole bunch of my teammates dancing around making a real racket trying to draw attention.  You see, we all knew that in the size area we played, the flag was just naturally going to be hard to find, and most often, the opposition hid it close to the jail.  That way one guy could guard both.

 

So I settled in to watch.  After a bit the guard just couldn’t help but go check on the flag, so he headed over to a stump and reached down between a couple branches.  After assuring himself that it was still there, he headed back to watch the prisoners. 

 

I sneaked in slow and quiet. 

 

Got up close and grabbed the flag and lit out.  Was a grand thing it was, the flag had been hid up on a hillside, up high close to the ridge.  It was downhill all the way to no-man’s land.  It was a flat out sprint to get back across to our side.

 

Well that jail guard up and starts yelling that “someone’s got the flag, someone’s got the flag” and he gave chase.  There wasn’t a moon that night.  Plenty of stars that you could see shapes and shadows, but not enough to really tell where the ground was.  Some steps were pretty jarring headed down that hill.  

 

My feet fairly flew through the knee high grass, I was free, and out front, racing away from the guard and the others trying to close in from the sides, but too far away to make it.  Yep I was feeling home free, racing downhill so fast that my feet were wind milling; they almost couldn’t keep up with my body….until I met that tee-post.

 

It was painted dark.  There wasn't another tee-post in sight.  Just rooted there, kinda off from the herd you might say. 

 

Never saw it.

 

To this day can’t understand why the heck it was out in the middle of that field all by itself.

 

Top edge of that tee-post was just about bottom of the sternum high on me.  Thankfully, I took that thing just off-center.  Sliced right through the coat I was wearing; though my flannel shirt; and undershirt too.

 

Laid open a rib on my left side it did.

 

Yep, that tee post sure enough took its best shot at me.

 

Now I ain’t ashamed to say that collision hurt a bit.  That tee-post was tough.  It brought it’s “a-game” to the fight I tell you what. 

 

And I ain’t ashamed to say that I barely won that fight. 

 

But I did.

 

I know what you’re thinking; “He tore up his clothes ripped open his hide, and still thinks he won?”

 

Indeed I do.

 

You see, as bad as it hurt, I got back up and crossed the creek with that flag in my right hand.  

 

That tee post….well, it never got up again. 

 

Nope, it just lay there, bent flat down to the ground and kind of form fitted to every rise and fall of the field.

 

And heck, by that age, I knew for certain that hide heals.

 

I only really have one regret from that night, I didn’t get to keep the flag as a souvenir.  Nope; I had to use it as a bandage to staunch the flow of blood.

 

© 2013 M. Vandermolen All rights Reserved

Smalltown California

I was born and grew up in Smalltown Califronia; midway through 1958. The Livermore valley at that time had two towns, and maybe 20,000 residents. As I grew, so did it. In 1979 I moved on, leaving behind 4 towns, and some 120,000 residents or so.

Fall, Winter, and Spring was up at 5, roll papers, load the bike and ride a route of several miles throwing the morning news, then back home in time for breakfast, and off to school. After school it was off to the Nursery, the Drycleaners, the Bakery, or Garage for our second job, then home to chores and dinner. Push mower the lawn, feed and water the animals, holes to be dug to improve the soil, dishes to wash, weeds to pull, and vegetables to water.

 

 Summer was up at 5, roll papers, load the bike and ride a route of several miles throwing the morning news, then back home to rush through the chores. The list was always longer; including the usual chores as well as painting the fence, trenching for a new waterline, tearing down an old bird cage, digging out an old stump, straightening nails, and sorting bolts.

 

 We had many chores, and many responsibilities, and because of that, we valued each moment of free time that we got. We learned to help each other with our chores so that we could get them done faster, and have more free time to play and explore.

 

 And unlike today, when most youth have mostly free time, we knew exactly how we spent it. Back then, you could ask us if we had done anything special on Tuesday three weeks earlier, and you would get in exacting detail a story of having carried our shotguns out to the edge of town and knocking on the door of the vineyard owner to ask permission to hunt rabbits, or biking out to the arroyo to catch crawfish, or whatever it is that we had done.

 

 Those free time activities stuck in our minds because we had worked hard to earn them. And they never, ever consisted of just sitting around doing the “same old thing”.

 

 Society has taken all of that away for kids these days.

 

 It has created laws and regulations, and rules, and pressure. It has stopped boys from owning guns or having after school jobs. It has fenced in the growing kids, protected them from experiencing life. It has protected them from being able to earn their own respect. 

 

 And they are the more vulnerable because of it.

Copyright © 2013 - Marty Vandermolen -　All Rights Reserved