Another Harvest!

To go out fishing in the bay was an expensive event, as you had to charter a private fishing boat for at least half a day. Generally, we tried to go out at least once in a season. This was an event for "men" only, most the time. Sometimes, a few ladies would join the group. From the pictures below, you can see that we had a pretty good havest this year, too. Janice was never a fish-eater, but she was usually very good about cooking for everyone else. I do not know when or how we ate all this catch, but they usually were all gone by the end of the season.

Portraits painted

The only time we had our children's portraits painted was in the summer of 1979. As you may know, every place with a lot of tourists usually has a lot of artists painting portraits. Provincetown was such a place. We ran into an artist, Beth Moore, who told us that she was originally from Tennessee and had settled in this resort town to make a living. I am not sure that we chose her because of that, but we were in the mood to have our children's pictures painted. So we asked her to paint both of them right then. It took quite a while. Janice and I stayed there patiently to watch her work. I took some pictures while she was painting them. Over the years, the two paintings were very much appreciated and they hung on the wall above our stairway in our Johnson City home. And they are now on the wall in the front entrance hall in our Delaware home.

Again on the Cape!

Janice spent her summers on the Cape every summer since she was five or six. We tried to go there at least every other year. Summer was a long season. People came and went at different times. It was not always easy to have all the visitors take one picture together. In 1979, we had one picture taken of ALL the regular visitors. These included all three generations of the Fernald Clan, as well as our close friends the Pauls. Clearly it was a golden year! Many were even in their fancy costumes, which were used for performances during the summer evenings. That was just one regular activity. Others were swiming, clam digging, fishing, whale watching, taking a trip to Provincetown, climbing the sand dunes, and certainly taking walks on the beach!

Martha and Charlie Montgomery

When I started the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Choir in the early seventies, both Martha and Charlie were among the first members. We became close friends right away. Martha was an alto and Charlie sang base. We did quite a number cantatas during both the Christmas season and at Easter time. Both of them sang several fun solos in those cantatas, which involved a great deal of practice time. We certainly had a lot of laughs and fun together. Charlie was working at the Kingsport Press in Kingsport. In 1979, he moved to a company in south Boston. We went to visit them in the summer before we went to Cape Cod. It was a wonderful get-together as we renewed our friendship. The smiles in the following two slides show you what I mean. We were clearly very young then!

Summer Trip

When you had a teaching job at a university, the summer was your time to plan. You could teach, of couse, which would allow you to earn some extra salary. You could do research and get support from a summer research grant. Or you could arrange some personal activities, such as travel to visit relatives, as our family did every three years when we went to visit my parents in Taiwan. In 1979, we started our travel soon after Steven's birthday party. The first stop was Washington DC. We went to every visitor's place possible, including the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, Capital Hill, the Air-and-Space museum, and the Natural History museun. We also visited Janice's college friend Liz, and went to visit the National Zoo with her. And, finally, we watched a July 4th parade!

Birthday Party

Before we started our summer travel, Steven's birthday was celebrated at home in Johnson City. Of couse, we had our birthday cake and gift opening as usual. The year 1979 was a bit unusual, as by that time I had already been informed that the search committee had decided that I would be taking over Nicholson's position as the next Chair of the Chemistry Department. This, in intself, was a bit unusual as I had not yet been promoted to the full professor rank. Furthermore, Nicholson's hand-picked successor was still in the Department, although he had been prevented by the administration from taking the position because of his personal behavoir toward students and other personnel in the Department. For my family, this meant that our lives would be very stable after this year and this stability would depend solely on my ability to handle the situation properly in the future, both personally as well as regards to the whole department.

ACS Bumper Stickers

In the 1970’s, the ACS (American Chemical Society) put out quite a number of bumper stickers which were quite popular. As I mentioned in my last blog, “Honk if you passed P-Chem” was one of them. I went through a pile of stuff which I have collected over the years and, believe it or not, I still have one! I scanned it into my computer and here it is so that you can see what I am talking about:

Certainly, you had to be one of the “in” guys or gals to appreciate this kind of humor!
Other bumper stickers of the time included:
“Chemists have Solutions”
“Heisenberg may have slept here”
“Love a chemist, they react better!”
I have not seen any bumper stickers better than these!

Master Mind

Every year when I taught Physical Chemistry, we usually had a party to celebrate the students’ accomplishments as they finished the course. Janice would cook some desserts and other refreshments and I would present each of them with a bumper sticker saying ” Honk if you passed P-Chem”. Physical Chemistry was, by far, the most challenging course in the curriculum and I felt that they deserved recognition when they completed it! The students would also be challenged by our two children to play a game of Master-mind, which had just became popular. We had a great time together. Since we considered Boris and Betty to be part of our family, they participated in most of the parties.

T-Ball Competition!

I had never played T-ball before, so I had no idea what it was until someone told me that it was a variation of baseball for players who were too young to play with the regular settings. They put a ball on a stick (that is the "T") and, since the ball is stationary, it is much easier to hit for the young boys. This perhaps is only played in the US, as the parents here could not wait for their boys to play their favorite game and thus they invented a variation so their sons could start to play. Of course, Steven started to play as soon as he was of the age he could join. Steven was the fourth from left in the top picture and seventh from left in the second top picture.  We had all the equipment and uniforms, I had no idea if they would win or lose, but they had a ball!

 

Chinese Students

Over the years we had quite a number of foreign students coming to the Chemistry Department and other Departments at ETSU to study. In the early years, from 1971 and lasting for a little more than a decade, we had many Taiwanese students on campus. They usually used our home as their their gathering center. They came to play at our place or to hike with me on the weekends. We had cook-outs for them sometimes, and they enjoyed playing games with our kids. And of course, they came to our home to introduce us to their relatives when they came for their graduation. In the picture below, it was Shireley and her mother coming to visit us after the ceremony. Shireley had often baby-sat with our kids, so they knew her very well!