My mother & father, Lois Allen Olds & Stuart Hutchings Chapman, started their life together in 1930 in the beginning years of our Great Depression. In 1932 they had a son, John, then in 1935, a daughter, Sarah, & another son, James, in 1937. Finally they had 'Pee-Wee' Joel in 1940. What with John, Jim & Joel, my father sometimes got tongue-tied with all those 'J's', so I became 'Charlie'.
At one point during those 8 years of childbearing my father lost his first job right out of college, the University of Maine, Orono, at Westinghouse where he was a designing engineer. But a year later the company, fortunately for us, hired him back. By the Time of Me, they were living in the tiny farming village of Lima, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, where we raised goats, chickens & lots of vegetables. There were few suburbs back then, so we were truly out in the sticks.
Other than photos, I still remember the time, even though I was only 2-1/2 years old, when I fell off my tricycle (how anybody can do that, I don't know.) & managed to slice open my head, a scar which is clearly visible today although thankfully up above my hairline. Of course, head wounds bleed like the very dickens, so my mother must've panicked just a tad. It is a big, long scar. I remember lying in the back seat of our 1940, 4-door, maroon, Ford sedan. Then, much worse, I still can see the dish at the doctor's office that I lost my cookies into, voluminously. Finally, I remember having to wear a thin, white, cloth cap, like a dumb animal, to prevent me from picking at the scab.
Our Lima house with me, my mother, brothers John & Jim, down front, & my sister Sarah, winter 1941.
In 1945 we moved a few miles in closer to Philadelphia to the suburban, college town of Swarthmore where we lived in a grey stone house on the corner of 200 Park Avenue.
This photo was taken in 2007, the only change being the black shutters are now blue. And the huge lawn to the left which was as big as half a football field had been sold off for construction of a new house. Booo. Even as big as the house seemed, I still had to share a bedroom with my brother Jim, while John & Sarah had private rooms of their very own. On the top floor there were 2 guest bedrooms, a bathroom & our enormous playroom that featured a wind-up Victrola & piles of thick records. It amazes me today to think that my parents could afford this place given that my mother never worked and my father's income wasn't large by any means. In fact, after spending 24 long years working for Westinghouse, he quit due to insider politics in his office. By not working just one more year, he would have received a retirement pension of some size, but as it was, I think he got a monthly check from the company in the amount of one, single dollar!
At one point during our 5-year stay there, my parents decided we should have a dog, so they bought a pedigreed St. Bernard puppy whom we called Sir Gibby. And Gibby soon fulfilled his genetic make-up by very soon weighing in at 150 lbs, my dad struggling to hold him in his arms while he stood on the bathroom scales!! One day when my Aunt Tutie Mott and her perhaps 2-year old son Peter were visiting, she looked out the 3rd storey bathroom window, having just stepped out of the tub, only to see Gibby on top of her little son! She was so incredibly panicked that she ran down all the staircases & out into the yard stark naked! Little Peter, whose face Gibby was happily licking, said the dog had asked him to let him out of his fenced yard! Another time, I had him on a leash, planning to lead the dog around the perimeter of our yard, but just as we exited the front door above, he espied a grey squirrel & took off like a shot. I cleared all 3 of the porch steps, holding on for dear life! But he was great fun as we usually spent the evenings wrestling on the foyer floor, and most days, my father and I took Gibby for a walk in the evening twilight of those tree-shaded avenues. Once my dad had to go into the drug store downtown, so he wound the leash around a drain pipe several times with me on the other end. It was a real tug of war, but I won! Finally, unhappily, Gibby started running away when he realized he could just leap over the 5' high wire fence. Off we would go with us all racing after him. Again unhappily, one early Sunday morning, still in my pajamas and bare feet, Gibby took off. Seeing me starting to run after him, my father, quite correctly, ordering me to get back in the house, but I didn't. So I ended up getting a thorough spanking for disobedience. Yep, my parents were pretty strict, but on the other hand I owe them for every good thing that has stood me in good stead throughout the rest of my adult life.
My Christmases during the Swarthmore years were probably the best. On Christmas Eve we 4 kids, having wrapped our presents, (I always got cash on my December 12th birthday so I could finance the purchase of my presents) carried them downstairs to place under the beautifully decorated and lit, 8 foot, fir tree. The scant scattering of our presents didn't look like too much at that point, but once we were all tucked into bed, our parents proceeded to work half the night wrapping and placing an avalanche of presents on top of ours. A real mountain! Of course, I asked for at least 6 more pillows as I was determined to "sit up" for Santa. In the morning, bright & early, we all dressed in our "Sunday best" proceeding directly into the dining room where our mother placed a full-course breakfast before each of us: orange juice, fried eggs, bacon, toast and milk (my parents drank Postum!!). Then, of course, we kids washed, dried & shelved all the dishes, leaving the kitchen spic n span. In the meantime, our father had taken away the screens that had hidden the tree from our greedy eyes. Still in the kitchen, we stood in line in precise order: Dad, Mom, John, Sarah, Jim & finally me. Then we marched into the parlor with outrageous looks of surprise, excitement, you name it! What a totally glorious moment!
Then my father, Santa, took ONE present at a time and gave it to its recipient who proceeded to carefully open it (my mother reused the wrapping paper next year). Everyone got to ooooh and aaaaah over whatever it was. And so it went for hours of anticipation and delight. Looking back it was mostly necessary clothing purchased from Monkey Wards or Sears & Roebuck. But there were toys too, for sure! I remember getting a big Erector Set once, promptly making the hardest contraption in the accompanying manual, then having nothing more to do with it. I think my dad wasn't too pleased....
Late in the afternoon, we sat down to a huge turkey dinner that left all of us boys truly bloated, lying on the couch or out flat on the living room floor. The End.
I started off kindergarten clinging to my mother's skirts, bawling my eyes out. Unfortunately I never did like going to school that year or the 4 that came afterwards. Just an unduly shy, little kid. I remember in kindergarten all of us having to paint on big easels from 1 to 100 in light blue watercolors. Try my best, I just couldn't do it. See, I hated math from the get-go! Right up through 16 years later! Years later my mother told me my teacher had sent her a formal letter stating that I was retarded!!!!! I wish she'd kept that letter. I'd have it framed & hung in my den! I remember my mother having to "attend" school with me, she sitting next to me on our tiny chairs. I assume that did the trick as I was in 1st grade the next year.
Another "funny" school calamity happened during lunch period perhaps in the 4th grade. During recess I was chasing 2 boys down the stairs which had wrought iron, ornamental banisters. As I made the sharp turn on the landing I grazed my noggin on a projecting piece of that banister and man, how the blood did flow. I was terrified of the school nurse, and having cut my head a few times before, I knew what to do. I ran into the boys bathroom, put my head under the faucet and ran cold water over the wound. Thinking I had staunched the flow, I held several paper towels up against my sopping head and proceeded back to my classroom. Well, my teacher took one look at me and demanded to know what had happened. Because being inside was against recess rules, I lied to her, telling her that I'd gone home for lunch, fallen down our staircase, and my mother sent me back to school!!! She told me to put my coat on and go home right then and there. Well, it was just after Christmas and I had a brand new tan winter coat on. As I ran lickity-split, of course, the blood began to flow and pretty soon my tan coat was stained up pretty good. Then, on arriving home, my mother, seeing the ruined coat, scolded me rather than sympathizing with me. Oh boy, what a day!
One of those earlier cuts came as a result of my cheating at "Blindman's Bluff" in which we threw a ball into our big side yard, all having bandannas over our eyes. So yeah, I peaked, saw the ball and proceeded on all fours willy-nilly right straight into a steel post that used to carry a carousel, now long gone. I have a perfectly delightful scar to this day right on the top of my head, right in the center!
One winter there I remember the snow being very high, so my eldest brother John built a real igloo with a 10 foot long tunnel leading into it. He must have worked for days and days, then pouring water over it all to turn it to ice. And summers I remember sitting on the side porch steps with my buddy from across the street with a big mixing bowl filled with ice cubes. Crunch, crunch, air-conditioning! My mother was so cost-conscious too. We had tiny black Westinghouse fans that were turned on low when we got into bed, but as soon as we were asleep, she'd turn them off. And, I still can't imagine how we must have stunk sd we all bathed just once a week, on Saturday evenings, in exactly one inch of water in the bottom of the tub, even having to get into "used" water. Yuck!
Then, in 1950, my dad quit Westinghouse after 24 years, and we headed out West in a brand new Buick!
My Christmases during the Swarthmore years were probably the best. On Christmas Eve we 4 kids, having wrapped our presents, (I always got cash on my December 12th birthday so I could finance the purchase of my presents) carried them downstairs to place under the beautifully decorated and lit, 8 foot, fir tree. The scant scattering of our presents didn't look like too much at that point, but once we were all tucked into bed, our parents proceeded to work half the night wrapping and placing an avalanche of presents on top of ours. A real mountain! Of course, I asked for at least 6 more pillows as I was determined to "sit up" for Santa. In the morning, bright & early, we all dressed in our "Sunday best" proceeding directly into the dining room where our mother placed a full-course breakfast before each of us: orange juice, fried eggs, bacon, toast and milk (my parents drank Postum!!). Then, of course, we kids washed, dried & shelved all the dishes, leaving the kitchen spic n span. In the meantime, our father had taken away the screens that had hidden the tree from our greedy eyes. Still in the kitchen, we stood in line in precise order: Dad, Mom, John, Sarah, Jim & finally me. Then we marched into the parlor with outrageous looks of surprise, excitement, you name it! What a totally glorious moment!
Then my father, Santa, took ONE present at a time and gave it to its recipient who proceeded to carefully open it (my mother reused the wrapping paper next year). Everyone got to ooooh and aaaaah over whatever it was. And so it went for hours of anticipation and delight. Looking back it was mostly necessary clothing purchased from Monkey Wards or Sears & Roebuck. But there were toys too, for sure! I remember getting a big Erector Set once, promptly making the hardest contraption in the accompanying manual, then having nothing more to do with it. I think my dad wasn't too pleased....
Late in the afternoon, we sat down to a huge turkey dinner that left all of us boys truly bloated, lying on the couch or out flat on the living room floor. The End.
I started off kindergarten clinging to my mother's skirts, bawling my eyes out. Unfortunately I never did like going to school that year or the 4 that came afterwards. Just an unduly shy, little kid. I remember in kindergarten all of us having to paint on big easels from 1 to 100 in light blue watercolors. Try my best, I just couldn't do it. See, I hated math from the get-go! Right up through 16 years later! Years later my mother told me my teacher had sent her a formal letter stating that I was retarded!!!!! I wish she'd kept that letter. I'd have it framed & hung in my den! I remember my mother having to "attend" school with me, she sitting next to me on our tiny chairs. I assume that did the trick as I was in 1st grade the next year.
Another "funny" school calamity happened during lunch period perhaps in the 4th grade. During recess I was chasing 2 boys down the stairs which had wrought iron, ornamental banisters. As I made the sharp turn on the landing I grazed my noggin on a projecting piece of that banister and man, how the blood did flow. I was terrified of the school nurse, and having cut my head a few times before, I knew what to do. I ran into the boys bathroom, put my head under the faucet and ran cold water over the wound. Thinking I had staunched the flow, I held several paper towels up against my sopping head and proceeded back to my classroom. Well, my teacher took one look at me and demanded to know what had happened. Because being inside was against recess rules, I lied to her, telling her that I'd gone home for lunch, fallen down our staircase, and my mother sent me back to school!!! She told me to put my coat on and go home right then and there. Well, it was just after Christmas and I had a brand new tan winter coat on. As I ran lickity-split, of course, the blood began to flow and pretty soon my tan coat was stained up pretty good. Then, on arriving home, my mother, seeing the ruined coat, scolded me rather than sympathizing with me. Oh boy, what a day!
One of those earlier cuts came as a result of my cheating at "Blindman's Bluff" in which we threw a ball into our big side yard, all having bandannas over our eyes. So yeah, I peaked, saw the ball and proceeded on all fours willy-nilly right straight into a steel post that used to carry a carousel, now long gone. I have a perfectly delightful scar to this day right on the top of my head, right in the center!
One winter there I remember the snow being very high, so my eldest brother John built a real igloo with a 10 foot long tunnel leading into it. He must have worked for days and days, then pouring water over it all to turn it to ice. And summers I remember sitting on the side porch steps with my buddy from across the street with a big mixing bowl filled with ice cubes. Crunch, crunch, air-conditioning! My mother was so cost-conscious too. We had tiny black Westinghouse fans that were turned on low when we got into bed, but as soon as we were asleep, she'd turn them off. And, I still can't imagine how we must have stunk sd we all bathed just once a week, on Saturday evenings, in exactly one inch of water in the bottom of the tub, even having to get into "used" water. Yuck!
Then, in 1950, my dad quit Westinghouse after 24 years, and we headed out West in a brand new Buick!
