I was born November 14, 1947, in Ft. Monmouth, NJ where my dad, Eli Victor Draggoo, was stationed for Officer Training School. During WWII he had been in the Army Signal Corps and when he got out there were few jobs available so he re-enlisted in the newly-created US Air Force, identified as someone with potential, and sent to OTS. In April 1949, we moved to Roseville CA where Roy was born at Mather AFB that November. When dad went to Korea in June 1950 we moved to Chelan where Jim was born that September. If you’re counting, Roy and Jim are only 10 months apart. Jim was premature, but still……..
To this day I’m amazed how Mom managed three boys under 3 years old while Dad was away. We lived in Chelan in a converted chicken coop and garage on an alley; Grandma Esther Kirwin Draggoo and Grandpa Eli Peter Draggoo lived at the front of the lot in a converted stage stop. Grandpa was a nurseryman, never very successful. If there’s a stereotypical picture of a sweet grandma with curly white hair and flour on her apron, that’d be Grandma Draggoo.
I remember getting printed letters from Dad, addressed to Master Tommy Draggoo, in which he reminded me that as the oldest son I was responsible to be the man of the family while he was overseas. No pressure there! When dad came back from Korea in Oct 1951 we moved back to Roseville where we stayed until Oct 1952 when we moved to Albany GA.
I started 1st grade approximately September 1953 when dad was stationed at Turner AFB. I had not turned 6 years old but the school determined I could handle the work. All I remember is that my school was off base and that several of my schoolmates were very poor. Edgar always came to school barefoot, and Mabel always wore hand-me-down dresses that were too big for her.
We moved to Seattle while Dad was in Okinawa for 18 months and Grandma Maude Trepus Cathey came to stay with us. I attended 2nd grade and part of 3rd grade 1954-1955 at B F Day Elementary School in the Fremont area off the north end of the Aurora Bridge.
Our next stop was Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque NM. We lived on base and I went to the Wherry Elementary School for 3rd, 4th and 5th grades, 1955-1958. My first girlfriend was Barbara Ann Rey; I still have a piece of her birthday piñata in my memory trunk. I became the school tetherball champion as well as the school Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee champion in 5th grade. I won the school championship by successfully spelling “pencil” and went down early in the citywide contest by misspelling “zephyr” as “zepher.” Lesson learned: I procrastinated and didn’t get to the Zs when I was reviewing the word list.
One of our assignments was to sketch the perimeter of the school building after walking around it. I was a perfectionist (report cards indicated I’d rather stay in at recess and study) and went home in tears when I couldn’t do as perfect a job as I wanted. Dad and I went back to the school that evening and paced the perimeter so I could draw the outline to scale and I proudly turned it in the next day, only to receive a B grade along with a note written by the teacher: “Very good, but how much of this is your own work?”
Sister Vicki was born December 22, 1957 at the Sandia Army Base hospital right next door to Kirtland AFB. We enjoyed a lot of camping and fishing while in New Mexico, usually up the Jemez River. On one of our trips to what we called The Box Canyon, we had to hike down to the river to get water and haul it back up to our campsite. Once on our way back up, Mom sat on a cactus and I got the job to pull the cactus needles out.
All this time Dad had been in various radar units but he was selected to attend the IBM school in Kingston NY, so in December 1958, shortly after I started 6th grade in Albuquerque, we moved across country to Mt. Marion, a hamlet in Saugerties, NY. We spent Christmas Eve in a motel in Montana or North Dakota; Mom cut some green doilies to fit around a green candle and that was our tree. In the morning, the three boys had received western belts with our names tooled on the back. I don’t remember what Vicki got. We arrived in Mt. Marion and I started a new school again. I remember going on a bike ride with a pretty girl classmate and her family, who all had Raleigh bikes made in England with three-speed shifters on the handlebars while I had a huge rusty red one-speed balloon tire bike with coaster brakes. I was exhausted when we got back. Mom wouldn’t allow us to have any of those fancy bikes because she’d heard the shifter would fall off the handlebars and get tangled up in the front spokes and you’d fall on your head and die. This was before bike helmets, of course.
Mom and Dad had never owned good furniture because all the moves were hard on household goods. So Mom took the opportunity while we were in New York to load up on furniture she found at antique barns. She found some amazing deals: a curved glass china hutch for $75.00; a small round table with rope legs and glass ball feet for 75 cents. The five-piece settee set (settee, 2 arm chairs, 2 side chairs) were part of that buying spree.
When Dad finished school we went back across country to Adair AFS, near Corvallis OR, where he oversaw the Distant Early Warning System (DEWS) for NORAD, watching for Russian ICBMs to come over the North Pole. The base housing wasn’t ready for occupancy so we found a short term rental in nearby Monmouth OR. I started junior high in Monmouth but there were too many students temporarily attending from Adair so after a few weeks many of us were bused to Independence OR, a few miles east of Monmouth. We were there a few more weeks, and when we finally moved into base housing we discovered we were in the Corvallis school district so we were bused into Highland View Junior High School and I started as a new student in school — again.
During my junior high years 1959-1962 at Highland View, I made great friends both at school and on base. The school was large enough so that I found like-minded scholarly friends (okay, we were nerds with plastic pocket protectors and slide rules) who enjoyed math and science. We even invented a game we called Chrummy which involved using cards of each of the periodic table elements (known at the time) and creating legitimate compounds based on their valences. For example, you had to have two Hydrogen cards and one Oxygen card to create the compound H2O (water).
Unfortunately, I was unable to participate in after-school athletics due to distance from the base. However, I got involved in the Boy Scouts of America on base and put my family-learned camping experiences to good use. I was working on my Life Scout merit badges and received the God and Country award. At Camp Melakwa, the summer camp in the Cascades, I became the camp song leader at age 14.
Corvallis was a great place to live, I thought, so it was with some shock to hear that Dad was retiring from the Air Force and moving the family back to Chelan in the summer of 1962. My friends threw me a going-away party and it was a difficult move for me. Many years later I learned that Dad retired from the Air Force because of our government’s role in Vietnam, and he couldn’t in good conscience work for an organization whose policies he so strongly disagreed with. I’m very proud of my dad, not only for his personal stand, but because he retired as a Lt. Colonel having accomplished so much with only a high school education and hard work. Likewise I’m proud of my mom; being a military wife is a real commitment and she rolled with the punches.
I began Chelan High School as a sophomore in September 1962. Since Highland View was such an advanced school (Corvallis is a college town: Oregon State University) and with a much larger student body, my classes at CHS were problematic schedule-wise, but we made it work. There were no nerd groups at CHS so I made my own way. I went on two dates in high school: 1) I accepted a date to a Sadie Hawkins dance (girls asked the boys); and 2) the senior class advisor gave me a list of senior girls who had not yet been asked to the Senior Prom and told me to pick one. I did (Jeanne Harris) and years later at a class reunion she thanked me for asking her.
I had my tonsils taken out April 4, 1963 by Dr. Wham (pronounced W-ah-m). He said my tonsils were so spectacularly large that he preserved them in a jar. The total bill – which I still have – was $62.50, including anesthesia.
Another lesson from my parents: After dad retired from the USAF he thought he’d just fish and hunt the rest of his life but got bored after about 6 months and got a job with the Chelan Police Department. One very early morning he and mom woke all three of us boys up to tell us he’d had to shoot a man that evening. The man was drunk and went crazy with a knife; Dad tried to use his flashlight to keep the man down but had to resort to shooting him. The reason he woke us was so that we’d hear it from him first before we got to school the next day and heard all the gossip and nasty remarks that we’d likely get. Sure enough, we got some heat the next day but since we already knew the facts, we tolerated it pretty well. I will always admire my Dad and Mom for that approach. Of course there was a hearing and Dad was emphatically cleared of any blame, though we don’t think Dad ever really got over it, understandably.
In the summer of 1963 I took a Greyhound bus from Chelan down to Corvallis, OR to attend the National Science Foundation Math Institute at Oregon State University. The bus ride took forever; I somehow got into a discussion with a man who had a bottle of booze in a paper bag. He told me he had been a telephone engineer but became an alcoholic and had lost his job, and he warned me to learn from his bad experience! Attendees at the Math Institute came from all over the country, many from highly specialized polytechnic high schools. I was pretty good at math but way out of my league with these guys. We had to write a term paper and while many wrote fascinating articles about obscure (to me, anyway) mathematics, I developed a paper called “Analytic Geometric Figures” in which I crafted specific equations to graph into pictures. For example, I graphed a martini including olive with a hyperbola, parabola, two ovals, and a circle. I remember also graphing a giant snowball rolling down a hill into a small cabin, and a female torso. I was in high school, after all, and the summer school coeds sunning on the lawns were a distraction.
I never participated in high school athletics outside of PE class. As I mentioned earlier, when we lived at Adair AFS so far from Corvallis, we couldn’t make transportation work for extracurricular activities in junior high. When I got to high school, the other guys had already been playing organized sports for several years and I felt I was just too far behind to benefit anyone. So my senior year I turned out for Pep Club – the only boy. All the girls wore red Pep Club vests made from the same pattern, which of course didn’t suit me well, so my Grandma Maude found a pattern for a men’s vest and she made it with brass buttons. My high school annual picture of the Pep Club shows me smack dab in the middle where the photographer put me.
I didn’t play an instrument but I did sing in the choir. At one of the vocal contests I sang my piece and celebrated by going out for a big milkshake. I was just about finished when my classmates found me and said I’d tied for Top Male Vocalist and had to come back for a sing-off. You can’t sing well with a throat coated with chocolate shake. In 1964 I was chosen to attend Washington State All-State Choir.
Also in 1964 I was selected to attend American Legion Boys State, a politics-oriented summer camp where the boys run for office and you learn about civics and government. I learned I didn’t like politics and didn’t have the personality or drive to run for office.
Since I wasn’t in sports, I started working summers, weekends and after school for the local J. C. Penney store in downtown Chelan. Mr. Gordon Cogburn was the store manager and he was patient with me. I started working downstairs in the stock room, checking in freight (sometimes I had to trundle a cart down the alley to the post office and pick up freight there) and creating and attaching price tags. I also cleaned up after closing, including the public bathrooms. After a while I started selling on the retail floor, beginning in the men’s and shoe departments. This old store had a system of little wooden cups on pulleys that went to the cashier’s office in the balcony over the store entrance. We would send checks and large bills up to Betty, the office manager, and she would send change down.
I learned five important things while I worked there:
1. If I didn’t want to have jobs that involved cleaning bathrooms, I’d better go to college.
2. Systems can always be improved. I started getting behind on checking in the new stock and boxes were stacking up the basement ramp. I asked Dad to take a look and he pointed out some inefficiencies in the work flow patterns. We rearranged some equipment and task stations and I was soon caught up.
3. In a retail environment, there is always something to do to keep busy. Restocking, folding shirts, putting stock back in the right place after shoppers had just laid it down somewhere convenient, etc.
4. Treat everyone with respect; you can’t tell anything about them by what they look like. I once was asked by the ladies to assist a man in buying some socks. He hadn’t bathed in days – or weeks – and I literally had to take a big breath some distance away before approaching him, directing him to the socks, then backing away for another breath. We all literally breathed a sigh of relief when he left, but he was a happy customer. Another day, before we were officially open, I answered a knock on the freight door on the alley and an older gentlemen was standing there, small, somewhat crippled, old pants and long-sleeved shirt, and asked if he could buy some sheets. I said sure, and he came in and bought all the sheets, pillowcases and blankets we had in stock. Turned out he was Ernie Darnell, owner of Darnell’s Resort on the north side of Lake Chelan.
5. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. I was helping a lady with some general merchandise when she said she also needed some lingerie. As a 16 year-old, that was not in my comfort zone but I asked for help and got comfortable with the situation so I had no further issues with it. It’s just people shopping for stuff they need.
Since I hadn’t been a part of any group, it was a big shock when the Class of ’65 voted me to be the Class Speaker at graduation,. I wrote a great speech filled with humor and insight, I thought, but the senior class advisor informed me it wasn’t somber enough for a dignified event like high school graduation so I had to start over. It turned out fine, but was not my style.
A curious side note: I did not get my driver’s license until after high school graduation. Chelan was (still is) a small town and I walked everywhere I needed to go, or hitched a ride. I should also thank my mom; we have a running joke that when I was in high school and stuck on some problem, I’d go to her and talk it out, then realize the solution and thank her for her help, though she never said a word.
Growing up in the 50s and early 60s was simpler than growing up today, certainly. We walked to school or took the bus, no parents hovering over us. We played anywhere, the only rule being to be back in the house before the streetlights came on. Only three channels on the television, if you had one. No cellphones, no computers, no video games, not even an electronic calculator. No in-case-of-active-shooter lockdown drills, either. On the other hand, we grew up during the Cold War with Russia (USSR) so we worried about ICBMs being launched over the North Pole with targets in the US. We practiced Air Raid drills and we all knew where the nearest bomb shelter was. Every now and then the TV show would stop and a test pattern was displayed with an announcement that the channels were testing the Emergency Broadcast System but would assure us that “This is a test – this is only a test” so we wouldn’t freak out. The Civil Defense was a big deal and published booklets about atomic bomb survival. I have in my files somewhere some Civil Defense info that featured the wind patterns in Oregon and projected how long it would take nuclear fallout to drift down the Willamette Valley to Adair AFS should the Russians attack Portland.
A few months after I started my sophomore year in Chelan, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. To say the country was in shock would be an understatement. To this day, conspiracy theories abound regarding JFK’s assassination.
In early 1964 The Beatles made their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, and the British (Music) Invasion began. Like Elvis before them, they thrilled teens and traumatized adults. Beatlemania was a real thing, and one of my regrets is that when they did a concert in Seattle in August 1964 (ticket price: $5) I wasn’t about to go all the way to Seattle to see a stupid band. Stupid me.
Besides the music, The Beatles had a devastating effect on boys’ hairstyles. Boys started growing “mop tops” like the Beatles and school administrators went nuts. Amazingly, almost 60 years later, school boards and administrators still haven’t figured out that hairstyles have diddly-squat to do with academic effort and performance.