TRANSITIONS NANCY WHITWORTH
 
The summer of 1961 was a time of self examination. I questioned why I had selected this family, this environment, this period of time to be born. What lessons was I here to learn? How were the decisions that faced me going to impact my future? Did “I” matter – was it selfish to want a “me”? Northern Maine, a geographically isolated agrarian environment, shaped my youth. The harsh winters and short growing season demanded initiative, hard work, perseverance, and love of the land. I was the oldest of eight in an Irish-Catholic family. Religion formed the backbone for survival , spiritually. The priest’s dogmatic sermons had most of us going to hell. Who didn’t associate with divorced people? Why were only Catholics going to heaven? This religion was not one that I had consciously chosen. It came with the family. The boundaries we were all to follow were specific, as were the consequences if we strayed from the commandments. In the family, my father made all the decisions. We never discussed anything around the supper table. We never questioned him in fear of a slap across the face. We did what we were told. By 1961 financial standards, set by the government, we were living below the the poverty level. This was below $3000 per year for a family of four. The rhythm of family life and structure reflected the times. Music, fashion, institutions, and television extolled virtue, conformity, and the status quo. Debbie Reynolds, Patti Page, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como crooned slow music about love, marriage, happiness. Television gave us black and white images of Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, The Ozzie and Harriet Show. Mothers in cotton housedresses were homemakers waiting for the man of the house to arrive home and set everything right. Fashion included skirts and dresses for the girls, crew cuts and tucked in shirts for the boys, hats and white gloves for church service, sports for the boys, home economics for the girls. In cold weather, girls were allowed to wear pants underneath their skirts to school but had to remove them before classes began. As a teenager, it seemed as if old, white men made all the decisions and controlled all positions of authority. Structure and rules were the norm. Feelings were contained. Demonstrative behavior was frowned upon. Like many of my generation, there were no hugs and kisses at home and I never heard the words “I love you”. It was a time of fear with the ‘cold war’ fueling civil defense drills at school. Inside, we were to get under our desks. Outside, we were to head to the nearest ditch and lay down. The radiation cloud would sweep over the ditch and limit our exposure. We were shown Geiger counters and taught to read how many roentgens of radiation might be present. The 50’s was a time of acceptance, of sameness, and of relative peace. The 60’s started out with excitement. The printed word was not the only source of news. We had television and Walter Cronkite. The first Presidential debates allowed us to see and hear the candidates instead of just reading about the men and the issues. We had the first Roman Catholic running for President. Excitement was in the air. In the fall of 1960, the Democratic Candidate visited Presque Isle, Maine, about 13 miles from my home. A friend invited me to go with her family to the hear Kennedy speak. Afterward he shook hands with many in the crowd and I was able to get a scribbled partial autograph. Unlike my view of President Eisenhower, Kennedy was much younger, full of energy, and a dynamic speaker. The air of confidence with which he carried himself and his message of change created hope and enthusiasm. This heralded in a new decade, not only in politics, but in the impact of institutional dominance in society. Acceptance of everything as fact was questioned and a backlash reverberated. Like a pendulum, or a tug of war, the harder the push to maintain the status quo, the harder the pull in the opposite direction. It was a decade of paradoxes and a decade of extremes. It was a time of change and a time of sameness. A time of institutional control versus individual expression. Fashion, music, and television began to slowly reflect individual expressionism. Skirts got shorter. We had mini’s and hot pants. The more social unrest, the shorter the clothing and the longer the hair. Television telecast in color and brought us Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In and the Smother’s Brothers, which questioned societies values and mores, the government’s decision to step up the Vietnamese War, and the control that the church, educational institutions and big business had on our daily lives. Television brought war into our living rooms every night along with the violence erupting over civil rights. Music reflected the mood: Rock and Roll, Psyedelic Rock, Protest songs, Beatlemania, and Motown. It was uplifting and energizing. We were a nation fighting for the status quo at home while fighting for radical change abroad. A nation fighting to survive unrest and division within while promoting unrest in Vietnam. It was this decade that I attended high school and college. Decisions had to be made that would affect my future. In 1961, I was fourteen. I had graduated from the eighth grade. My anxiety over the transition to high school was heightened by the decision over the course of study I would pursue. I spent time alone with my thoughts, fears, and lots of tears. The pale blue paint on the bedroom wall was marred by peeling wallpaper. The damaged plaster exposed the wooden lathes used in the farmhouse’s wall construction. Unable to sleep, I gazed at the damage caused by rain trickling through faulty flashing where roof met the chimney. Moonlight, millers and mosquitoes entered through the hole in the upper pane of the left front window. The millers and mosquitoes circled the ceiling light bulb. The large room had a walk in closet with a rod that held a few summer clothes along with a trunk filled with winter woolens and moth balls. A dressing table with a large mirror sat between the two windows. The bed my sister and I shared faced the two windows above the porch, overlooking the dirt roadway. My side of the bed faced the door. My sister’s fear of the dark allowed me to be the buffer from any outside intrusion. For me, that summed up one of my roles in the family. The porch had been enclosed in the 1930s when my oldest paternal aunt had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. It served as her bedroom in the summer with the windows raised for fresh air. She died at the age of thirteen. The porch now served as a playroom in the summer and closed off in the winter. On the rare occasion that we had a few weeks of heat and humidity, my parents would use it as a bedroom. The entrance outside was secured with a large butcher knife wedged into a space in the door frame. This deterrent against outside intruders was as effective as I was in protecting my sister. The other porch exit was into the back hall where stairs led up to the front bedroom and the entrance to the apartment where my grandmother lived, and downstairs through a door to the only bathroom in the house. The bathroom served as a corridor that inhibited its true purpose. Neither door was ever locked. This public access way mirrored the lack of personal privacy and boundaries within the family. The transition from grammar school to high school involved selecting a course of study. In preparation, English and Algebra aptitude tests were given to all students during the spring. The principal, Larry Gardner, called me to his office to discuss the test results. My Algebra score was very high and he encouraged me to enroll in college preparatory classes. Mr. Gardner had attended high school with my mother. He telephoned her with his recommendation. She stated the decision for my studies had already been made by my father—Secretarial— so I could get a job and support myself. As a potato farmer in Northern Maine, times were a struggle financially. The farm house was owned by my paternal grandmother so we did not have to pay rent. Regardless, some summers my Dad would collect $35 a week in unemployment benefits and work under the table in a potato house six days a week at $9 a day. In the winter, he worked at Loring Air Force Base plowing snow to keep the runways cleared. Dad knew they could not afford to send me on for further education after high school. I begged to no avail with no support from my mother. This was not a battle she wanted to wage. My parents were a product of the Great Depression and World War II. Their decisions were based on the limited financial resources available and on the need for me to support myself. I knew that at eighteen I would be on my own. My eighth grade English teacher, known to students as “Hawkeye,” was a strict disciplinarian who seemed to see everything happening in the classroom. She rarely smiled. When she spoke, students listened. Her hair was always done in a severe bun and she wore little makeup. Old fashioned clothing made her look older than her fifty years. As she and I discussed college one day, I announced that regardless of how my father felt, it was my life and I wanted to go to college. Mrs. Hutchins did not verbally encourage me but her smile and silence gave me the courage to disobey my father for the first time I discussed my decision with Mr. Gardner. My parents had to sign off on the courses I enrolled in. My father would not relent so I did not bring the papers home for his signature. At the end of the school year, I met again with Mr. Gardner. We picked out my courses and he approved them without my parents’ signatures. Neither did he call them and discuss his action. I had broken a basic commandment to honor my parents. Out of guilt and shame, I finally told my parents what I had done. My father threatened to send me up French Country, fifty miles north on the Canadian border, to be boarded with Catholic nuns and schooled there away from the family. I cried many nights. I feared being separated from my family. I had no cause not to believe my father. When he made up his mind, he stuck to his word. As summer ended my father declared that I would be allowed to go to the local high school, but he would go with me on the first day to meet with the principal, Mr. Hackett, and change my course of study to Secretarial. For me, this made the anxiety go even higher – the humiliation of having my father attend my first day of ninth grade with me. The week before school started, I reviewed my courses with my parents to show them that the first year of classes coincided with what I had to take for Secretarial. In the end, my mother convinced my father to give me a year’s reprieve. One source of anxiety ended and another began with the feeling that I needed to get all As to prove myself worthy to continue in the direction I had chosen. My actions had disrupted the family structure, but I felt an inner strength that mirrored the natural landscape around me. My exterior, like the fallow fields, presented a veneer to the outside world. Only when the surface of the soil was disrupted did its complexity, depth, and natural character reveal itself. The deeper the layers exposed, the richer the soil becomes. In preparing the soil to receive the seed, the plow cuts deeply into the surface, dislodging clumps of soil. The harrow smooths out the crevices and brings the loose rocks up to be picked and discarded. The soil is manipulated to present a smooth, even landscape ready for planting. In the process, large slices of ledge do not yield to man’s attempts to control them. These sheets of rock could not be dislodged. The farm equipment worked its way around these outcroppings. It was never a question of completing college but what steps had to be accomplished to achieve my goal. I received a $100 scholarship at high school graduation. The higher scholarships went to students who were financially better off. A teacher told me that when the decisions were made, it was decided that since my family was below the poverty level, I had a better chance at government scholarships and loans. From the University of Maine, I did receive a $300 Mariana Hill scholarship and a $700 government loan. I worked 15 hours a week on campus through the work study program. In addition, one dorm on campus, Colvin Hall, was set aside for 48 disadvantaged girls from the State of Maine. The room and board was cut fifty per cent in exchange for which we all worked at chores inside the dorm. My freshman year I was assigned to kitchen duty after supper, cleaning pots and pans. This didn’t leave much time for the social, college experience. But I was not there for the college experience. I was there for the education to better my life: the knowledge to provide financial stability, the strength to overcome obstacles, the drive to succeed, and the tools and spirit to question the basic tenets of society. Like the land, I felt the buffeting of outside forces, the internal upheavals from change and the disruptions imposed by man. The land provided a feeling of oneness, a calmness within, a womb encompassing me, a non judgmental acceptance. Tethered to the land and to those who came before, I felt a strength and spirit guiding me on my journey. Nancy Whitworth was born and raised in Fort Fairfield, Maine. She received a BA from the University of Maine in International Affairs and an MBA from the Whittemore Business School at the University of New Hampshire. Nancy works for Marine Corps Community Services aboard Marine Corps Air Station, Beaufort, SC. She and her husband reside in Beaufort. “Transitions” is one of series of memoir pieces Nancy is weaving into a longer work.

Nancy, front, pictured with Stacy and Keith