A Fork in the Road – To Be or Not to Be – 9-8-2013
Personal Stuff
My intent to go ahead with graduate work, perhaps, at MIT or XX concerned
many side issues in my life. The year 1961 still rocked with our fear and
concerns over Sputnik, the Cold War crisis boiling over again in Berlin and the spread of world wide Communism in Cuba and in Vietnam.
My color blindness had been discovered by an ROTC medical technician
during my sophomore year at LTI, Lowell Technological Institute, disqualified me from a possible career as a fighter jet pilot in the Air Force. Since my own interests were clearly focused on an R&D position analogous, but more intense than the positions that I had already experienced in previous summers at the Air
Force Cambridge Research Labs in Bedford, MA, my acceptance of non-
qualification as a fighter pilot candidate did not set me back emotionally.
Fortunately, my exposure to the ROTC programs at LTI only helped to confirm in me the belief that the national security of the nation might best be ensured through my deep interest in physics, chemistry and mathematics. Maybe, I could make a contribution as a researcher? Of course, as a nearly minted, young graduate from a yet-to-be-recognized technical institute, my national ranking as the proud holder of a Bachelor of Science, B.S., might have appeared rather modest, and truly unimpressive in the critical eyes of admissions officers at MIT and elsewhere.
My grades as a junior and a senior had gradually improved over those in my previous years. As a junior in the Department of Physics, I had managed a
respectable GPA of 3.4, but in my senior year, that GPA count went straight
up to the vaunted 4.0 that most college students dream of attaining. Perhaps, for the first time in my life, I felt that I had achieved something of value and importance – a medal of merit to pin onto the rather shabby garments of the scruffy kid from that poor, Franco-American neighborhood where
personal aspirations are usually tainted by many parochial, ethnic limitations,
and bruising failures. Often, that meant a job in the mills with a pregnant wife at home and two young ones already there to nurture and raise.
In early September of 1961 – my dad had now been dead for eight and one-
half years – thoughts of colorful, autumn leaves and new surroundings in
central Pennsylvania assumed a nurturing sense of reality. Mom and the rest of the family, Bob, Michelle and Denise, were safe at home in Centralville.
Aunt Lida, Aunt Florence plus Uncle Gerry and Uncle Albert represented the
family tree of common history, shared concerns and warm moments of
laughter, religious celebrations and sips of brandy, a beer toast plus a Sunday roast beef and tapioca pudding. Not ever having experienced a true separation from this familial ambiance, uncertainty and, yes, a little bit of anxiety entered my sub-conscious being.
“How will I react in a world not totally permeated with a peculiar, working-
class, French-Canadian, Catholic set of opinions and ideas? Is there a comfortable place in the larger world for a hesitant, but curious and willing young man with my many illusions and uncertain hopes, dreams and aspirations?”
These are serious issues for which I have no easy answers. Except for Uncle Lucien, Colonel Lucien Bolduc of the U.S. Army, no one in my immediate family ever dared to venture very far from their familiar neighborhood of birth. This
may be a chance for me to set out some new ground. Certainly, Lewis and Clark must have sensed similar uncertainties when they first ventured off through the vast, unchartered territories to the west of St-Louis, Missouri, in the early 1800s. However, my tests and trials will surely be challenging but in comparison to these national heroes, there seems to be no authentic reason for my curious questions and hesitations.
LTI, with its many students coming from nearby Massachusetts and New Hampshire townships, offered me an opportunity to better see and accept
the outside world through the broader vision of non-local eyeballs. The daily
students’ viewpoints expressed at convocations and in the various
classrooms clearly were not simply carbon copies of those seen and felt in the
Acre, Little Canada or in Centralville neighborhoods.
Students coming from New York City and others from Brazil and India are
even more unique and unusual to my naive, parochial eyes. Clearly, we don’t all see the world with the same set of values, behaviors and aspirations. Yet, it is quite exciting to enjoy these cultural differences that shake and mold our individual personalities. Everyone seems to be a unique product, an amalgam of his or her combined, early influences. Such a curious world we are asked to inhabit!
As I prepare for this new adventure, the accumulated impressions of 22
years of life experience along the Merrimack River in Middlesex County are
projected as onto a movie screen for me to review. “Who will I be leaving
behind as central Pennsylvania engulfs me with its verdant woods, fields,
farmers’ pastures and rocky valley?”
George, Roger, Herbert and Richard are starting their working lives and responsible roles as husbands. My four years spent as an undergraduate at LTI took me away from Polish picnics,
local dances, Canobie Lake Park amusements, summer downtown festivals, historical events and more. My years at this technical institute were regularly marked by a self-imposed, austere approach of intense efforts and concentration.
Some other students arrived with a solid year of prep school training while
others attended as GI Bill veterans with several years of practical
electronics experience that is so essential in the military. These fortunate few were the competitors against whom my efforts were to be measured.
Fortunately, my previous four years of high school at the College Saint-Joseph on Merrimack Street held me in good steed, but it would be way off the mark to
think of that training as technically thorough as that offered, for instance,
at Brooklyn Polytechnical High School. Frankly, I felt under the gun and
outclassed when the dean of the school welcomed us, the 500 freshmen, to
our initial convocation.
Although I had achieved excellent grades in math and science in high school, maybe, I was more suited for an advanced education in foreign languages – Latin, German, French, etc. – and the humanities. But in 1961, the trend
in education as promoted by the theater newsreels and TV news was in math and science, or applied technological strides.
The Russians threatened to “bury us” with their advances in space and rocketry. The U.S. was, perhaps, also under the gun so educational funding for a local lad like myself opened up new vistas that I might never have been available otherwise.
“The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!”
That oft-repeated phrase sent shivers of fear down the spines of all listeners. Then, there were added other tidbits of apprehension when Cold War buried bunkers were advertised on TV as an essential, underground, backyard shelter for every well-prepared, loving family that hoped to avoid nuclear annihilation. Of course, the ingenuous, turtle, cartoon, TV character screaming,
“Duck and cover. Duck and cover.”
greatly heightened the public’s awareness of imminent danger from a potential nuclear holocaust.
Nikita Khrushchev’s warlike demeanor and thunderous antics at the United Nations helped solidify my choice of a career along the lines of math and science. One might even conclude, rather ironically, that this Russian Communist boss made my career possible. At least, I tip my hat to him. One ought to give him due credit for scaring the begeebers out of Americans.
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“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” – H.D. Thoreau
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– that is from all those activities that we four friends enjoyed together
during our high school days.
Who would I be leaving behind except for my family members if I go
through with my plans? My high school friends, George, Roger and
Richard, all have girls and romance in their inspirational future. They will
probably get hitched up in the coming years and start a little family of their
own with apartment rents, baby bottles, crying youngsters in diapers, and
all the usual daily rewards and troubles of being responsible parents.
For me, though, an attractive girl, a pretty smile, an intelligent face, a frilly
blouse and a dance in her step is a flashing sign of major trouble.
“Caution! Danger ahead! Beware of losing yourself to Nature’s lovely
snares all leading to financial despair and that sucking sound of quiet
desperation!”
Of course, I exaggerate, but my concerns do run very deep. Most working
men living on Dana and Ludlam Streets don’t have the buying power to
support and enjoy a family, even a small family of wife and child. Beautiful
girls and women will always require a healthy bankroll of bucks to be safe
and secure in Lowell’s rough, industrial, gritty and sooty reality, the
grinding machinery of America, the Beautiful . A solid job and a healthy
bankroll certainly does not seem to be even a remote possibility for me,
right now. Such is life in the Big City, or so it seems to this naive, young
man filled with fuzzy dreams of eventually not always being scared of life’s
constant, unpredictable misfortunes that giggle inside my stomach like tiny
shards of broken glass.
&&&
Communism on the March
- a) Berlin Airlift – 1948 to 1949
- b) East German Workers’ Revolt, the VoPos – 1953
- b) Hungarian Revolution – 1956
- c) Fidel Castro in Cuba – 1959
- d) GDR – Berlin Wall – August 1961
&&&
I did not feel certain that my new adventures in graduate physics studies
would provide me with that elemental sense of okayness
had been made aided by encouragements from Uncle Lucien and Aunt
Antoinette in State College , Pennsylvania.
