Fear

As a 10 year old in this small town, I don't remember being particularly fearful and I can't imagine a safer place than 1950's Lowry. I didn't suffer from any of the "boogey man" type fears. But danger is exciting, although we largely imagined it or discovered it through our own stupidity. But there were some things that unnerved me that I couldn’t admit, convinced it was only I the cowardly lion.  

Sunday School Program

I think Sunday School teachers had a little “since I had to do it, you do too” venom in them. Every year about Thanksgiving time, the St. Pauli Sunday School teachers handed each of us a slim strip of paper imprinted with a bible verse or a poem or a stanza from a hymn and told us we would recite this from memory at the Christmas program. It was pretty easy in your own living room, but up in front of a full church with all the expectant adults looking only at you and the other kids expecting - and most surely hoping for - a crash and burn, it was another thing altogether. Some of the fastest, most unintelligible sentences ever spoken happen at Sunday School programs. Later, I didn’t really take to speech class either. Over time, with progressively less quavering, I was able to conquer this phobia.

Heights

The schoolhouse had four classrooms, home for eight grades. The 7th & 8th grades had the best room of course and it was on the second floor next to the cloakroom and had egress to a fire escape. You went out the fire escape door to the south onto a small landing and then made two right turns to get to the stairs that followed the west outside wall of the school house. It scared me senseless. Even a trip up a ladder to paint the side of the house had me wobbly.

The school playground had a couple sets of swings with a 2” pipe supporting framework.  As a demonstration of strength, I think, every boy at some time or other had to sling those swings over the top support so they wrapped around like a roll of chain. To undo the swings, you had to shinny up the angled supports, slide across the top support to get to the swings and unloop them. It scared me senseless. I generally decided I didn’t really want to swing that bad.

Another test of courage was to climb to the top of the water tower. There was an enclosed ladder leading to a walkway circling the base of the tank - about 75’ off the ground.  It scared me senseless. I think I made it to the second cross beam once and retreated. Most every Halloween, the fire department guys would climb up and cut down the effigy that the braver sorts hauled up there, thinking they were the first to think of the joke. My problem wasn't genetic. My dad had the job of changing the light bulb at the very tip top of the tower.

The Thompson boys lived in the “Lowry Flats” east of the post office and they kept pigeons in the loft of a garage just to the south. Once in a while, each time to my chagrin, I climbed that ladder to check out the pigeons. A steep ladder, pecking birds, dusty straw, bird shit and feathers. What fun.

Swimming

Some wise person said “swimming is staying alive in the water”. So it was for me. Each summer we were bussed to the Starbuck beach on the west shore of Lake Minnewaska for two weeks of torture called swimming lessons. Is “anti-buoyant” a word? I had about 12 oz of fat and while everyone else seemed to take to the “dead man float” like an actual, I sunk directly to the bottom, what was, I suspected, really what happens. Dog paddling to the diving tower was a near death experience each time. I was positive I would drown and this forced me to learn the back float, although it required furious tread water movements to keep my nose above water. But swimming was like school, no matter what, every year a promotion - from beginner to advanced beginner to intermediate - and that’s about it for me. No life guard ambitions whatsoever. Maybe I wasn't the only one with the aversion. Once a few of us decided to bug out of lessons and walk the 6 miles home on 114. Really bright, hiding in the ditch when the bus came by. A half-dozen boys with a "great idea" maps roughly to the same IQ level as one guy with a baseball cap on backwards. Some memorable retribution from that escapade.

Bible Camp

Luther Crest Bible Camp on Lake Carlos doesn’t sound like it should strike terror but .. my mother volunteered as the camp nurse for the week and took me along as a camper. The problem was: I was a just a kid and the camp week was for teens. First night initiation was a pillow fight which sent my glasses flying to the far corner of the cabin with me crawling along the floor in desperate search, gripping my de-feathered pillow. For the rest of the week I felt like a batboy or perhaps more aptly, a blocking dummy. Future years' camping was with kids my own age and was more fun - except for the swimming part (see above).

Girls

Girls were a strange unknown species to me and until Peggy came to town I managed to ignore them. But Peggy was dazzling. The fact that her name was spelled with an accent mark made her even more exotic. With half the people in town having a name ending in “son”, this was like having Bridget Bardot in town. Of course I could never talk to her. Fear of the opposite sex was even higher on the aversion scale than that verse in the Sunday School program. But I suddenly came up with lots of reasons to bike the 3 blocks to Bobby’s whose house just happened to be across the street from Peggy’s. Then suddenly she was gone. It seems her noble father was an embezzler and the FBI had dropped by to cart him away. Bye bye Peggy Sue. I was sure it was my fault. I was in mourning for a week or more and swore off girls forever.  

Failure
I am a first born and thus the "practice child". There is no manual for parenting so the first kid is a training ground. Lots of trial and error. The result is a kid who strives to meet parental expectations and to achieve perfection and (so I'm told) bossy. This is a life-long incurable affliction and NASA's "failure is not an option" motto is ingrained. The 2nd kid benefits from the mistakes made on the first and is well-adjusted, cheerful, generous and trusted. e.g. with the first born, everything is compulsively sterilized; for the 2nd, eating from the dog dish warrants a "cut that out"; the 3rd gets lost in the shuffle - I defy you thirders to find a picture of you, yourself alone in your family album. The youngest is of course spoiled, carefree, easy going and the family comedian - and will answer to most any name. You get to 4 and parents understandably get mixed up. If you're an only child, you have all the bad characteristics of a first born in addition to those of the baby of the family.

The Bomb

I was aware of the Cold War, the Berlin crisis, the Hungarian revolution, Sputnik and all that but I don't really remember obsessing about the atom bomb*. Fear of the Russians & Khrushchev's bluster was at its height in the late 50's and Popular Mechanics even published plans for fallout shelters. I always thought that concrete cave beneath our back steps on the southwest was a bomb shelter, but I guess it was more suited as a tornado shelter, where it had an outside chance of success. I do remember "emergency drill instructions" at school, perhaps in the Weekly Reader: get under your desk, kneel down with your head between your knees and with your arms over your head - and, there's a slightly off-color punchline you probably know.

Hell

Pastor Schey was not the fire and brimstone type but a few Sunday School teachers were. I didn't like my chances.

*I just read "Ike's Bluff" by Evan Thomas, and I should have been worried. President Eisenhower's warning against the "Military Industrial Complex" was/is well-founded. He actually termed it the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, but dropped the Congressional for political reasons.

And Loathing

A fear episode demands a companion "and Loathing" episode. But at 10, I don't remember loathing anything, except for perhaps the New York Yankees.