For some high school students, extracurricular activities are more attractive and meaningful than school classes. Some students prefer playing a clarinet in the school band or playing shortstop in the baseball team than learning how to multiply and divide or about the cause and effect of the Civil War. In my high school days, I was active in both curricular and extracurricular activities, including sports and dramatics. Looking at my scrapbook, I am reminded of many events that influenced my life. During the summer vacation time, I was free to spend my time as I desired and one summer, encouraged by my mother, I took piano lessons. I was told by the instructor that I needed to make a clear decision whether to use my spare time to practice piano or baseball and that was the last piano lesson I took from that teacher. One curricular activity I enjoyed was dramatics. Looking at a snapshot and an adult admission ticket for 40 cents in my scrapbook, I recall that I played the part of “Sambo” in the play “Little Black Sambo & the Tigers” when I was 9 years old. In high school and college, I regularly participated in dramatic productions including Shakespearean dramas. From the time when I was ten years old until I entered university, I played various parts in the Zion Passion Play, a 3-hour presentation 3 times a week at my home church from April to June, since 1935. The script is composed of quotations from the Gospels in the King James Version. Hearing the quotations repeatedly for a long period makes memorization quite simple. By the time I went to college, I had memorized the whole play, which has been called “the Oberammagau of America.” (1336)
In my high school days, preparation for college involved not only scholastic requirements but financial preparations as well. I tried to find a high-paying job at a time that was convenient for me. As a result, I became a common laborer for a construction company. The company was involved in a number of building projects, including the erection of private homes in residential areas. As a common laborer, I had different jobs depending on the particular situation, but most of my jobs were related to the delivery of material to the more professional workers, such as bricklayers. To build a sturdy, attractive house, bricks held together with mortar were used. It was often my job to transport the bricks from the place where they had been unloaded and the thick liquid mortar, which is spread with a spatula to hold the bricks together. The mortar was made by a gasoline-powered concrete mixer, which was usually near the pile of bricks. A large wheelbarrow was used to deliver both the bricks and the mortar separately. The delivery route was sometimes very complex and narrow. Usually there was a plank for the wheel of the wheelbarrow to move on, but frequently the delivery required ascent by way of a narrow scaffold to the 2nd or 3rd floor. However, a different kind of experience remains in my mind. The construction company had dug out a large area where the basement of a building was to be made and wide concrete walls had been constructed. Subsequently, heavy rain resulted in the toppling of one of the walls. One morning, another laborer and I were each given a heavy sledgehammer and spent the time hammering the concrete wall into smaller pieces which we could lift and throw out of the hole. As the first job for me following only brainwork the previous week, it was a tiring introduction to a different way of life. (1337)
To “go on a hike” and to “go for a walk” have similar meanings. Both “hiking” and “walking” are advised for older people to keep their bodies in good condition. “Hitch” means “connect” or “attach” and the hikers along a road who “attached” themselves to cars that stopped to give them a ride became known as “hitchhikers.” “Hitchhiking” is defined as “soliciting free rides along a road” and “hitchhiking” has been an important activity in my life since I was a teenager. Although I could have taken a bus from my hometown to the neighboring city just a few kilometers away where I worked in a factory or for a construction company, in order to save money, I hitchhiked instead. Sometimes, a driver gave me a ride because he recognized me, but that was not usually the case. As a result of my experience as a high school student, hitchhiking became my regular mode of transportation to the university (over 250 kilometers away) I attended in the neighboring state of Iowa and to the seminary (over 1400 kilometers away) I attended in New York City. It was also the kind of transportation used in my trip to Mexico City, where I attended summer school at the University of Mexico following my first year at the University of Dubuque and returned by way of California and Oregon. Hitchhiking not only saved me much money which I was able to use for my college expenses, it also brought me into contact with many people from a variety of backgrounds with whom talking was very interesting. Both of my sons also did more hitchhiking than simply hiking—even in Japan. (1338)
Although neither of my parents went to college, all six of their children did.
All five of my sisters became teachers in elementary or high schools and my brother became a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois. All of my siblings attended Illinois state universities, which are less expensive. I was the only one who attended a university in another state; it was across the Mississippi River in the state of Iowa. The University of Dubuque, a Presbyterian college and seminary was founded in 1852 to train Christian ministers. When I entered the university in 1945, I lived in a dormitory and was given various jobs to do to earn money for my expenses. One job was to work in the kitchen of the dining room to wash and dry the china and silverware that was used. At all three meals, those of us who worked in the kitchen were served early. Another job was to go into the women’s dormitory and empty the trash containers in the stairways on all four floors. Before I entered each floor, I called out “Man on the floor” to inform the girls of my presence. Often there was some reaction, such as doors being slammed shut or screams or invitations to “come in.” In the evening, on certain days of the week, I sat at the librarians desk in the library and checked out books for the students. And, finally, since I had taken two years of Spanish in high school and could understand and speak Spanish to a certain degree, I was asked to meet regularly with three students from Central American countries and help them improve their language ability. It was the result of that job that I was invited by the son of a wealthy lawyer in Mexico City to spend the summer at his home there. So I invited another student, whose home was in a city north of Chicago who also knew Spanish, to join me in my hitchhiking trip to Mexico City to attend summer school at the University of Mexico. (1339)
As noted in a previous message, I was born and raised in a small town in the northeastern corner of the American State of Illinois. Less than one kilometer to the north there was a straight east-west stateline road, which separated the state of Wisconsin from the state of Illinois. The eastern boundary of the state was determined by a short shoreline of Lake Michigan followed by a straight north-south stateline road between Illinois and Indiana. This boundary was also regularly crossed without a conscious recognition of a difference between north and south or east and west. The western state boundary, however, was very obvious. It was the Mississippi River, which needed to be crossed by boat, plane or bridge. I never saw that river until 1946, when I was considering the possibility of attending the University of Dubuque, located in the city of Dubuque, Iowa, named after Julien Dubuque, a French-Canadian, who was an early settler there and highly respected by the native inhabitants. In my thinking, the “western” area of the country began at the Mississippi, so choosing to attend the University of Dubuque on the western coast of the Mississippi implied something more than what was obvious to others: a new beginning. Even now, to emphasize the difference our prejudicial viewpoints can make, when I give talks on Japan, I state clearly that Japan is located in the “far west.” It is only in the “far east” when Europe is in the center of the world map. When North America is in the center, Japan is in the “far west.” In maps with Japan in the center, the U.S.A. is in the “far east.” So how we view the world depends on our particular viewpoint. We need to remember that there are different views of life, the world, etc. depending on what is put at the center. (1340)
Regular readers of these “Timely Words” messages have been informed of the meaning of “hitchhiking” and why I hitchhiked to Mexico City and back following my first year in a university. Scouring my old documents, I found written records of that hitchhiking experience, noting when and where I was given a ride and how far I was taken. I realize that not all readers will be interested in this account. But even those readers who do not know me personally may be interested in some of the experiences recorded there. As I write messages related to my hitchhiking to and from Mexico City and my time there, I am also thinking of my children and grandchildren who should be interested in them—even after my demise. I apologize to those who are not interested, but I think that even readers who do not know me personally may also find them stimulating. My college friend, Bob, and I began our hitchhiking trip to Mexico City on Monday morning, June 24, 1946. We had spent the night in Bob’s house in Wilmette, Illinois, about 20 kilometers north of Chicago and about the same distance south of my hometown of Zion. After breakfast, Bob’s mother drove us to the highway, about 7 o’clock. There we stood with our thumbs protruding from our right fists and a smile on our faces as we solicited a ride. Both of us had a suitcase by our side. The elderly driver of the first car that stopped for us suggested that it would be better for us to take a bus through the city rather than hitchhiking on a street of busy morning traffic. In fact, the kind, young driver of an empty city bus then stopped and took us a few blocks while instructing us where to get a streetcar that would take us to a better place to solicit a ride and we gratefully followed his instructions. And so our trip began. (1341)
While hitchhiking to Mexico, we met different kinds of people and rode in a variety of automobiles. Some drivers were very talkative, others were quite quiet. One young man, recently discharged from the navy, was on his way to the city of Bloomington, about 80 kilometers away. We were happy that he stopped to pick us up to take us there with him. However, for some reason, his car did not function well. It ran very slowly and he stopped at a repair shop in a small town to have it checked. We remained there with him for half-an-hour and then returned to the roadside to find another car and driver. Before long, a fast-moving car screeched to a stop in front of us. The driver informed us that he was connected to a travel bureau and would charge us one cent a mile if we rode in his car. About 8 hours after we began our hitchhiking, we arrived in Springfield, the capital city of the state of Illinois, located in the central area of the state. “Spring” may denote a source of water, a season of the year, or an elastic device and a city named “Springfield” is found in most of the American states, but the city in Illinois is particularly associated with Abraham Lincoln, whose remains are buried there. For me, it was the first time I had been in the capital city of my “home-state.” The young man who drove us into Springfield was kind enough to drive us around the city on a kind of sightseeing tour. During our moving around Springfield, the car was stopped by the police and checked to see if the lights, brakes, etc. were functioning as required. (1342)
After leaving the Illinois capital of Springfield, the next major city on the route to Mexico was St. Louis, the largest city in the state of Missouri. St. Louis is located on the west side of the Mississippi River, but there is a smaller city on the east side of the river in the state of Illinois named East St. Louis. It is surprising how many cities, towns and villages in the United States of America begin with the word “Saint.” In the English New Testament, the word “saint,” meaning “holy one,” is used for all “Christians,” who are believers in and followers of Christ. Most Protestant churches recognize this. In the Roman Catholic Church tradition, however, “saints” are those who have been specially designated by the church because of their spiritual power and example. In French history, there are many leaders, or kings, that were given the name “Louis” and when the site of the present city was chosen (in 1763) by a Frenchman, “to honor Louis XV of France, it was named for his ‘name’ saint, Louis IX of France.” When a baseball fan hears the name of the city of St. Louis, he will think of the St. Louis Cardinals, which reminds me of an interesting article in a Japanese newspaper years ago describing a conversation between an American Catholic and a Japanese baseball fan in which the words used had completely different meanings. The Catholic Cardinals were meeting in Rome to choose a new pope when the St. Louis Cardinals were playing baseball in Tokyo. “Giants,” “Red Socks,” “strikes,” “St.Louis,” and other terms with their peculiar implications came to mind as I prepared to enter St. Louis for the first time. (1343)