The only thing I remember about the Cuban Missile Crisis was it’s the first time I ever felt that my life could end tomorrow. It was October 1962 and Kennedy was on TV just basically saying to everyone, I’m not backing down and we need to be prepared to face the consequences no matter what they are. We were all aware of what the consequences might be. We had a bomb shelter in our school. We had taken part in the classroom drills in the event of a nuclear attack. Get under your desks and put your head between your legs. We saw the training films. The night before I went to bed I looked up at the peaceful sky and wondered what’s going to happen tonight and tomorrow. Am I going to see my tenth birthday? My parents put on a brave face, as did the rest of America. Needless to say, it worked out okay. But it was a terrifying experience and a real wake-up call for all of us. Immediately after the crisis was over, the most popular home improvement project was building a family bomb shelter and stocking it with survival supplies and food. There were several built in our neighborhood. It was on the cover of Popular Mechanics magazine and Life Magazine – Build your own fall-out shelter for less than $500!

When we went into our new house for the first time, I was surprised how big the red U-shaped ranch-style house was – ten and a half rooms including five bedrooms, three full baths, a study, a den, living room, 2 dining rooms, and a kitchen. The house was only nine years old and was originally designed for two families with common areas to beat zoning restrictions. The bedrooms were separated by the living areas and the kitchen. So there were three bedrooms and two baths on one side, this is where all three boys slept — and two bedrooms and one full bath on the other side for Lisa and my parents. You could literally have a rock band playing on one side of the house and not hear it on the other side. This was tested many times. Kent was given the bedroom at the end with his own bathroom. Brad picked the large bedroom on the front of the house, but was told he’d have to have the player piano in there. I was given the small bedroom in the middle, which I was delighted with. I had my own door, my own closet, and my own built in desk and shelves – a giant quality of life leap for me. So Brad and I shared the bathroom down the hall. I noticed something different about the phones in the house — there were no dials. Curious, I picked up the handset and heard a voice on the other end, “number please?” I quickly hung up. We were told when we moved in, there were many unique things about this house that we would eventually love and abhor. It was built as a pre-fab home. In other words, the house walls, roof, and kitchen and were built in a factory, and after a crawl space foundation was laid, the house was assembled, not built, on the site in less than three days. This made for some very strange features. Because there was no basement, the furnace was located in the attic with forced hot-air heating, and a pink GE refrigerator hung on the wall in the kitchen like a kitchen cabinet. Since all the cabinets in the kitchen were pink metal, we would stump first time visitors by asking them to get something out of the fridge. They would just walk into the kitchen and spin around with a puzzled look on their faces. The space below allowed a washer and dryer to be in the kitchen too. There was a dishwasher installed as well, but it never worked. I really liked living in a one-of-a-kind house. I think it contributed to my ability to be comfortable with new places, new innovations, and new surroundings.

NEXT UP – New kid in school

This is a photo composite of Robin and me in 1963. She is seven and I am nine. We had never met, but because we were in the same school district, the same photographer shot the same style portrait. At this point in my memoir I want to share my viewpoint regarding finding one’s soul mate, life partner, or whomever you choose to share your love life with. I believe there is such a thing as Kismet, meaning two lives destined to be intertwined, and every experience, mistake, accident, and relationship is geared to get you to meet, communicate, and finally fall in love with that person. I don’t believe everyone gets to marry or even meet their soul mate in their lives, but I fervently feel every close, positive relationship you have is meant to be. I feel that the seemingly “out of the blue” bends and turns in life’s road lead you to a person that understands you, loves you, and wants to spend as much time as they can with you — and you with them. Call it “chemistry” or being “in sync,” but whatever it is, the relationship feels comfortable, it feels right. For instance I’ve bought and lived in many houses in my life. When you’re searching for a new place to live, there are some houses that are very nice, but you can’t see yourself living in them. Then you walk into a house you’ve never set foot in that immediately feels like home. It’s just like that. So if I’m right, every move, every relationship, every day that went by when I was growing up, brought me closer to my Robin. Going back through this memoir, there were a lot of strangers that helped us come together, Harry Truman and his bomb, Roger Babson and his dart, the Governor of Maryland who allowed women to enroll in the University of Maryland, and dozens of relatives. In New England I was about 300 miles away, now in Pennington we are just six miles apart. But it will still be another eight years before we talk to each other for the first time, and another forteen years before we both make a public commitment to be together forever at our wedding. I realize not everybody has the good fortune I have, and I make sure to count my blessings every day.

NEXT UP – 11 Baldwin Street

The early to mid-sixties was a time of transition. From the solid Eisenhower era when the average middle class family looked forward to buying their first home and a new car, to a time of racial unrest, an unpopular war, and increasing influence of rock music. My generation of baby boomers started to assert their independence and their opinions. The space race and the red scare continued. Polio, one of the greatest fears of all families, was eradicated. I lived in Pennington from ages eight through eighteen. The small borough with a population of about 2,000 is located right at New Jersey’s waist, between the urban capital city of Trenton and the upscale college town of Princeton Borough in Mercer County. It is located inside beautiful and rural Hopewell Township, which is famous for being the location along the Delaware River where George Washington and his troops crossed in the early morning hours of December 25, 1776 and where Charles Lindberg lived when his son was kidnapped and murdered in March, 1932. It is located forty miles from Philadelphia, sixty miles to New York City, and fifty miles to Point Pleasant Beach at the Jersey Shore. At the time, unbeknownst to either of us, the future love of my life was only six years old and living only six miles away in Titusville, N.J. When I first laid eyes on downtown Pennington I was puzzled and frankly a little disappointed. Coming from New England, I was looking for a town green, a park-like area that was usually surrounded by churches and a town hall. There was nothing like that there. Just a few small stores, a bank, a post-office, and a church at a cross street. It did however, have a neat trolly that went through town linked to bustling Trenton.

NEXT UP – Kizmet

How to confidently spell Massachusetts.
Don’t steal. It will hurt you in the long run.
Being teased and tickled is very stressful.
Bullies are horrible, horrible people, and need to be stopped.
Advertising can be misleading or be an outright lie.
Watch out for yourself, you can’t always rely on others.
My parents and brothers don’t always make good decisions.
The future will have a lot to offer.
Some friends come and go.
Laugh off your mistakes, don’t take yourself too seriously.
Creativity and using my imagination is fun and can be a terrific time-filler.
Television is great.
Cars are cool.
Girls are a mystery.
You may be good at some things, like music, but not at all things, like sports.
Never hurt an animal, particularly a defenseless, innocent one.
I am living in the greatest country on earth.

NEXT UP – Pennington, NJ 1962-1967

About a year after my sister was born we learned that Dad got a promotion and we would soon be moving to New Jersey. Mom valiantly tried to get us excited about the move by saying New Jersey was the Garden State. It had great beaches, fantastic farms, and we would be close to exciting New York City. Once they found a place, they brought home some black and white photos of the house. Mom mentioned that the house was right next door to a nursery. I said that would be convenient for baby Lisa. She laughed and said it was not a baby nursery, it was a tree nursery. You could only imagine the picture in my mind of a sapling in a crib??? I remember after I went in front of my third grade class to let them know I was moving, I cried and hugged the teacher, Mrs. Trask. I don’t’ remember being particularly depressed or sad about the move. I guess I was just overwhelmed with the upcoming changes ahead — which would prove to be prophetic. We put the house on the market for $17,000, and because of the low price there was a bidding war and we finally sold it for $21,000 to a Mr. Webster who wanted to buy an historic house he could pass down to his heirs someday. On Wednesday afternoon, June 11, 1962, leaving Upton was tough for me. I remember wanting to say goodbye to my best friend Johnny Page, but not having the time. Just before we drove away though, he came up with John Kelly playing with squirt guns. We never really said goodbye to one another even then. I just recall telling him I’d write, which I did just one time. The 250 mile move to Pennington, New Jersey in mid-June 1962 for me was uneventful. We stayed at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge on Route 1 in Lawrenceville for one night, and the next day met the moving van at the new house. It was Mom’s idea to move right before the end of school so we would have a week to meet kids and build some early friendships. Good plan, but it didn’t quite work. The move would be just one of many moves I’d experience in my life. In every case, I met new people, had new experiences, and learned a great deal about things I’d have never known otherwise. I learned at a very early age to embrace change. It allowed me to grow as a person by discovering new opportunities and challenges.

NEXT UP – Things I learned between zero and eight years old

My sister Lisa Cheryl Orton was born Saturday, March 25, 1961 at Worcester General Hospital – ironically the same hospital our Grandfather Lyman Orton was associated with before he died 28 years earlier. I remember my father and mother both being very excited about her birth. Her siblings were all excited as well. She was very cute and, like all Orton babies, was as bald as a ping pong ball. It was great learning experience for me. At seven-years-old, I didn’t know anything about babies and all of their strange things, like diapers, clothes, smells, sounds, and food. I had never seen a bassinet or a cradle, had never experienced baby powder, shampoo, or bottles. Mom, always looking for ways to expose us to new things, made sure she answered every question, including the inevitable inquiry about how girls are different than boys anatomically. I watched Mom change Lisa’s diapers, burp her, and feed her every day. She was very trusting to allow me to hold baby Lisa from time to time, particularly with my well-deserved reputation as a milk spilling, stair tumbling geek. I suppose I secretly liked the fact there was another “pig to poke,” but also was eager to be the big brother for once in my life. But girls were a mystery to me, and would continue to be for a long time to come. And I would later find that Lisa’s attention and approval became a competition between her brothers. Lisa coming into the world was a blessing for all of us. Unbeknownst to us, her birth was the catalyst for a whole host of dramatic changes that altered everything about our lives.

NEXT UP – Big changes

I vividly recall the space race. In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev’s USSR put a man in space and the US wanted to be the first to do something, so we tried to be the first to orbit the earth. John Glenn, one the seven original Mercury Astronauts, was chosen to do it. Although he was the third American to actually go into space, he was hailed as the hero who would put us ahead of the Soviet Union, whom we all feared and hated at the time. There was a small 20 inch black and white TV in the first grade classroom at the George S. Ball School. The entire school went into that room around 9:30 Tuesday, February 20, 1962 to see the launch. We all cheered when the huge Atlas rocket roared up into the air at Cape Canaveral, Florida. We reconvened around 2:30 when they confirmed they found the spacecraft and John Glenn was safe. Back in those days, one-man Mercury capsules entered the atmosphere by themselves. Once the spacecraft safety fell to a certain altitude, a parachute would drop them safely into the water where a helicopter would spot them, pluck them out of the water, and take them to a nearby ship. I loved watching events like this. The boats, the copters, the space suits, the news broadcasts, the countdown, but most importantly the bravery these young men had is still unfathomable to me. The Right Stuff and Apollo 13 are still some of my favorite films. So John Glenn was probably my very first hero figure. I sent him a fan letter, the only one I ever sent in my life, and received an autographed picture in the mail. On Thursday, March 1st, we went into the same room to see his ticker tape parade from Manhatten. It was a great time to be an American!

NEXT UP – Boston Bob, part 2