In the following chapters, I continue my attempts at writing my memoirs. For their critical reading, I thank Erin Koppel, Tony Summers, and Merry Youle, and Risa Stiegler. They helped me greatly. I also thank Risa for skillfully carrying out the layout and posting and her caring advice.
Chapter 13: A Quito Kid in Kansas
I’m from Kansas, good old Kansas
Where the great big sunflow'rs grow…
“Eck bin oyz Kenzs, den gitn altn Kenzs …..” Soon after I arrived in Lawrence in 1950, I thought it worthwhile to translate University of Kansas college songs into Yiddish. How else was I to affirm that I was the only Jew in Kansas? But I wasn’t. In fact, there was more than a handful, and I soon met some of them. My introduction was through Mary Dean and John Howieson, my two non-Jewish but New Yorker friends, whom I had known in Ecuador. They were the main reason I went to the University of Kansas. In Lawrence, they belonged to a circle of kids from New York City. The reason these expats found themselves in these unfamiliar surroundings was the GI Bill, which enabled so many veterans to go to college. Campuses became overcrowded, and prospective students grabbed a place wherever they could, leading even sophisticated New Yorkers to the heart of the Midwest, Lawrence, Kansas.
Leaving Quito.
My life-long pattern of non-belonging continued. I had been a Polish Jew in Italy, a “gringo” and a Polish Jew in Ecuador, now a foreigner in Kansas. So I had to try to fit into yet another social environment. But my East Coast group of friends provided something akin to the feeling of community I had in Ecuador. Thus, the transition had its soft spots, complete with juicy absurdities. Just as in the shadow of the Andes I had learned ditties from prewar Vienna (e.g., “Di Leyte vos yodeln, di zan vom Gebirg, di Leyte vos yidln, vom zweiten Bezirk, “the people who yodel, they come from the mountains, the ones who “yidl”, from the second district), now on the banks of the Kaw, I learned samples of New York humor (e.g., “The Cloakmakers’ Union is a no good union…,” or the commercial “Planters Peanut oil is good for frying latkes” set to Russian Army music.). Here, I also heard: “Feed your hogs Nutrena, Nutrena, the best feed that money can buy.”
Of course, I didn’t know a great deal about Midwesterners, other than what I had gleaned from reading novels by Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, and Theodore Dreiser. Not much, but better than nothing. Having read Lewis’ Babbitt, I expected some kinds of conformity in the population at large but I imagined that students and faculty would be part of an intellectual elite. This, after all, was a serious university with a goodly number of notable professors in the sciences and humanities. By the standards of Ecuador, I was making a huge step into the modern-day world. But how would this manifest itself? Would people go around advertising their intellectual worth? On the contrary, an unfamiliar experience to me was that few people readily admitted to being intellectuals. In the familiar world of Quito, such worthies would snobbishly wear their intellectuality on their sleeve, quoting Goethe and Schiller whenever possible, which ensured a clear separation between themselves and “those plebeians.” But in Lawrence, being an intellectual was something to be kept secret, to be revealed only after common interests became established. So, if they didn’t flaunt it, how was I to know? I wouldn’t want to generalize about this being a difference in attitude between the pre-World War II Europeans and the Americans, but for all I knew, there might be something to this. Garrison Keillor often points out how reticent Midwesterners are to bare themselves.
The University
It was the middle of a wintry January when I arrived in Lawrence. Although I was clad in an overcoat suitable for cold Andean nights in Quito, mamenyu, was I cold! But it was novel, dramatic, exciting. The university is on a hill, Mount Oread, one of the few hills in Kansas. Soon after I arrived, a freezing rain rendered the normally inconsequential hill too treacherous for walking. Appropriately, the authorities placed ropes along the sidewalks. We clung to them as we scaled the daunting heights, hand over hand. Strange, how I came closer to the fierceness of nature here than I had in “wild” Ecuador.
Adapting to my new home had, of course, its wacky moments. The joke was often on me, tripped up by language or otherwise. For instance, I had never shopped in a supermarket, as they didn’t yet exist in Quito. I recall my excitement when I found a can on a store shelf with a label showing both meat and vegetables for about 20 cents. My friend John, with whom I roomed, explained that what I had bought was a can of “Pork and Beans,” but that the picture on the label promising a nice piece of meat swimming in a rich bed of beans was misleading. Sure enough, the “meat” turned out to be just a piece of lard. Truth in advertising… One learns.
Let me add one occurrence. The old man in KU’s Bacteriology Department, who had run it for decades, stopped me in the hall one day and asked me: ”Are you an Israelite?” Somewhat startled, I thought he meant an Israeli, then realized that he meant a Jew and that this was his idea of being polite.
"Don’t know ‘bout everything, but I’m fine…” was the answer I got from my Kansas-born and bred lab-mate. I had walked in that morning proud of a newly acquired colloquialism: "How’s everything?" I had said. My ear was not tuned enough to nuances to recognize that his response was in jest. Back then, I chalked it up to what I reckoned was the tendency of people in Kansas to take things literally.
My English was pretty rudimentary when I arrived, but it improved steadily. Later, when I was drafted into the Army, I spent eight weeks of basic training in Georgia, in a company which was about half African-Americans from Alabama. My vocabulary soon included choice terms that I rarely have the occasion to use nowadays. But I coped, even in the early days, having studied English and having practiced it in Quito with Mary and John. An old letter of mine to John says: “I am sick at my bellies.” I’m sorry to have left such colorful expressions behind. My halting English of those days surely included other such sayings that embellished my language to the delight of my friends. But now I am quite comfortable with English, which leads me to joke: “I shpik five landgwages, but English isst mine best!” Indeed, English is the only language over which I can claim moderate mastery, and yet it is the only one that I speak with an accent. This comes from having learned the others before the key period, around puberty, after which newly acquired languages become unforgiving.
Choices in the supermarket.
The food. I came to the States before the culinary revolution that brought us artisan bread and Starbucks’ coffee. Not to belittle my new and welcoming country, but the food was awful and the expectations of most people amazingly low. They willingly ate totally bland dishes of meat and potatoes, plus overcooked vegetables and gravies that looked and tasted like wallpaper paste. The only cheeses to be found in the stores were American, Swiss, and Velveeta. Times sure have changed, and at a rapid and delicious pace. But that was then. Imagine a campus town without a pizza place! We had to go to Kansas City to find one. The surprise was that everything was supposed to be better in God’s country. Not that I ate a gourmet dinner every night in Quito, far from it. It’s just that we had a more sophisticated idea of good food back there. In my new homeland, the use of herbs or condiments seemed downright alien. I remember that when I mentioned garlic to a girl, she recoiled in horror, as if I had suggested drinking hemlock.
NYC in the prairie.
On one Passover, I had a welcome break. Jack, one of the New Yorkers in my group, and I had a sudden attack of nostalgia. Neither of us were in the least observant, but the tradition of the Seder brought back childhood memories. So, we decided to hitchhike to Kansas City, look for a synagogue, and get ourselves invited to a Seder. This we did successfully. We found a synagogue, looked for the shamus (sexton), and explained our situation. He quickly paired us with a well-to-do family who took us to their home. We endured the ritual and eventually settled down to a fine meal. As we were chomping away, enjoying the feast, the grandmother of the family looked at us and with a twinkle in her eye and a finger wagging said: “Eh, boys, you see, it pays to be frum!” (Frum means being observant).
Barbara
Barbara and me.
We met accidentally. I was living in a Co-op and so was she. Co-ops were not only cheap places to sleep and eat, but also the left-wing answer to fraternities and sororities, so the odds of finding someone with whom I had an affinity were pretty good. On that occasion I was actually looking for another girl, who, as it happened, had gone out. But here was this gal, sitting in the corner of the living room of her Co-op. Following the “any port in a storm” idea, I approached her, and we started to chat. Not a Kansan, but an Oklahoman, she was nonetheless a solid Midwesterner and I felt that this was not likely to work. But when I got around to ask her what she was studying, she said: “The piano.” Interesting and unexpected. I noticed an old battered spinet in the corner of the room, so I asked if she would play something. “No, no, no…,” followed eventually by her going to the piano and playing, of all things, Bach’s Italian Concerto. It happens that this was just about my favorite piece of music, and she played it very well. Oops, what was going on here? I decided that I had better listen to what she had to say, and the rest is indeed history.
“You’re going to sleep in the bunkhouse,” I was told by my future father-in-law when, about a year later, I arrived in Nowata, a small town in northeastern Oklahoma for my first meeting with Barbara’s family. I had no idea what a bunkhouse was, since my English at that time was insufficient to encompass terms from Western ranching. What did matter was that it was wintertime, and it got plenty cold at night in Oklahoma. The bunkhouse had no heating, and I was expected to fend for myself with the help of a few extra blankets. I couldn’t tell if I was put out there to keep me a safe distance from Barbara, or if there was a less moralistic reason. I suspect the former. Oklahoma, Oy Vey!
Chapter 14: Philadelphia
Pennsyl-Pennsyl-Pennsylvania!
Pennsyl-Pennsyl-Pennsylvania!
Pennsyl-Pennsyl-Pennsylvania!
Oh Pennsylvan-i-a!
(Chant from "The Battle Cry of Penn")
I spent only two years at the University of Pennsylvania because the faculty of my department had the curious notion that fast turnover was good for them. As a result, they literally pushed their graduate students out the door. They gave me credit for my 2 ½ years of grad school in Kansas. I was still taking courses and writing term papers as I was finishing my doctoral thesis! As it turned out, the shortness of my stay there was a lifesaver.
Barbara in a friend's car (we didn't own one).
Philadelphia, as expected, felt much more like what I had sought when coming to the US. Mainly, people’s mindsets were familiar to me and I started to feel at home. I quickly took advantage of museums, concerts (mainly free ones in churches that I could reach by bus), the coveted food (at delis especially), and of the rest. My old sense of non-belonging abated. No more an Italian, Ecuadorian, or Kansan: I was fitting in. Most significant, Barbara joined me after my first year in Philadelphia and we were married shortly thereafter. I was drafted a couple of months after graduation and was stationed in Washington D.C. Barbara stayed in Philadelphia and went on to get an MSW at Penn, while I commuted from DC to Philly almost weekly, but that’s a story for later.
Barbara and I, newlyweds.
I believe that I tend towards an upbeat outlook, yet I don’t feel that way regarding my Philadelphia sojourn. My experience as a student in the Penn microbiology department was mixed at best. Disillusionment started with my arrival at the beginning of the academic year 1952-53. Before that, I had gone back to Ecuador for the summer and on the way, made a detour to Philly to visit my future department, where I had been formally accepted. I met the chairman, Prof. M., who, after some discussion about the research I was to do, suggested that I apply for a scholarship to work under his tutelage. I wrote the application while in Quito (alas, I didn’t get the scholarship).
Professor M., the department chair.
Returning to Philadelphia in September, there I was, ready to embark in my new phase of life. I was ushered into the chairman’s office. He peered at me over his glasses and blurted out: “You look familiar!” Glad to hear it, but next he said that he had taken on several other students and didn’t have room or funds for me. Sorry. What now, I asked? He told me to go see Prof. D., who supposedly had both room in his lab and funds. An aside: I am not telling all the names of these people because they are long departed and I have little good to say about them (yet, a modest amount of research would readily identify them.. Anyhow, ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum.’)
I knew that the person to whom I had been assigned, Prof. D., had made some outlandish microbiological proposals and was generally seen as being outlandish himself. But what was I to do? I had maybe $100 in my pocket, plus my draft board would pounce on me if I didn’t keep my student status. So, I prayed for the best and became Prof. D.’s student. As it turned out, I was spared the worst because he assigned to me a thesis topic that was not within the area of his dubious claims to fame. As it was, I carried out a fairly pedestrian piece of work that taught me little.
I soon got the idea that the department was pretty funky. Although the senior faculty included some well-known people, several of them were involved in what was seen as weird research, such as proposing that bacteria contain mitochondria and nuclei (they have neither) or that all mutations are induced by the environment. Even though a part of an outstanding university, the microbiology department was known for its eccentricities. I recall walking on campus with another student who asked me what I did. When I told him that I was in the microbiology department, he said: “Fancy admitting it!”
Picnic with colleagues and friends.
Nonetheless, I did find some lovely people in the department. One of them, Phil Hartman, a fellow student, went on to become a famous bacterial geneticist at Johns Hopkins. We were roommates for more than a year. Of course, Penn provided a lot of other great experiences, especially outside the department, where people taught some fabulous courses. One of the faculty members to whom I gravitated was John Preer, a lovely person and a famed paramecium geneticist. I visited his lab in the Zoology department whenever I needed to come up for air.
The worst was that my advisor, Prof. D., was hardly a nice person, possibly because he was so intensely involved in fighting his scientific wars. He treated his students, me included, as his labor force, and not only with regard to our research. I remember having to repeatedly move heavy lab furniture to a new lab that he had abruptly appropriated and, on one occasion, being told to come to his house to paint the walls. These imperious ways extended to my work, where he sought no input from me, made few proposals, and proffered almost no critical ideas. I was powerless to do anything about it, but I felt humiliated. Combine this with the shallowness of my research, and you can see why I told Barbara that I felt unsuited for academic research and, that when the time came, I ought to look for a teaching job at a non-research institution.
Fellow student Len Hayflick and wife Ruth.
Regardless, one kind of experience made a large difference: attending the yearly Cold Spring Harbor Symposia, which I did both my years while a student at Penn. These symposia, held at the labs on the North shore of Long Island, were a quasi-religious pilgrimage for the founders of Molecular Biology, ergo modern Biology, and their acolytes. For a week, all that had recently been discovered in this field was laid bare, to be shared by all alike. The atmosphere was more than electrifying, with true luminaries in attendance, including, among many others, Max Delbrück, Al Hershey, Salva Luria, André Lwoff, Leo Szilard, and Jim Watson. In fact, there I witnessed Watson’s first explication on American soil of the helical structure of DNA. What a high! I was quite aware that this was the real stuff, the unveiling of the inner mysteries of Biology in the making. One small vignette: Lunch was eaten out of doors. No sooner had I plunked down my tray that the famous and enormously influential physicist Leo Szilard sat by me. Next, he said: “Young man, are you doing something important?” The contrast between the real world of Biology and what was going on back on the campus in Philly exacerbated the situation and made me feel even more awful.
But then the Cavalry came to the rescue…
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