Howard and Pearl Williams/50th Wedding Anniversary/June 19, 2001

David's Talk at Parents 50th Wedding Anniversary Howard and Pearl Williams June 9, 2001 Note: Explanatory comments are in parenthesis. Paragraphs in italic were left out to shorten the speech.

Hello everyone. I’m glad you all could come to help us celebrate Mom and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary. You’ll have to bear with me. As the number three son, I don’t often get a chance to speak. How many of you here actually attended the wedding. I’m going to ask you to remember back and see if I have the story right. And correct me if I’m wrong. After the ceremony the reception was held at the Marney home on Tower Hill Road. Mom threw the bouquet and it landed on the roof. Steady young Uncle Arthur held the ladder while spry Uncle Ed nimbly dashed up to the roof. The beautiful women in their fancy dresses gathered around waiting for the flowers once again. And Ed threw them right to Sally (now his wife). She fell in love with him on the spot and has worshipped the ground he’s walked on since. (He really threw them to his oldest sister, Pauline.)	This is going to surprise you, but while we kids lived at home we never celebrated any of our parent’s previous anniversaries. It was only after college that I even started sending cards. As I recall while growing up we’d half remember and ask if they were going to have an anniversary and they’d always say something like, “Yes, but it was two days ago.” Or, “It was last week.” It seemed always to be a secret. Now Dad, I’ll put you on the spot because no woman would let this day pass with nothing. What did you guys do to celebrate? Did you put us to bed, bring out the champagne, and drink yourselves silly until 2 in the morning? (They claimed that they did nothing. They were too busy.) Well guess what. It may have taken 50 years but look around. The cat’s out of the bag!!	A month ago, I heard an interview on National Public Radio in which the author, Scott Carrier, was talking about his new book - Running After Antelope. And I thought Mom and Dad might enjoy reading it. So I bought it for them. I read it too so I guess technically it’s not a gift. So I’m not one-upping any of my brothers. Carrier’s a very unusual man. Lived in Utah. Almost went broke a couple years ago. Almost got divorced. Has always lived minimally. Besides being a writer he is an Independent Radio Producer who has worked for people like Paul Harvey and Charles Kuralt. Because he didn’t have much money, he oftentimes hitchhiked from story to story and got ideas from the people he met along the way. His style was to write about his experiences, the oddball people he met, and their strange experiences. It sounded fascinating.

Now here’s a story about Mom and Dad that will shed light on how they might enjoy the unusual. They visited me in Philly twelve years ago and we went to Tom Jones Restaurant. No, not some fancy restaurant named after the Welsh Singer, just an inexpensive diner owned by some guy named Tom Jones. They ordered the baked chicken platter. It came with a baked potato and vegetable. Well when their meals came they almost fell out of their seats because the potato they each got was bigger than any that we’d ever seen. It took up over half the plate. They laughed and laughed. They couldn’t get over the size of those potatoes or that anyone could serve such a potato. They doggy-bagged the bigger of the two, took it home to Virginia, and stored it in their freezer for years - showing their “nuclear potato” to anyone who visited. I think they even took it to the Cape when they retired.	Does anyone here remember that potato. By the way, whatever happened to it? (No one on the Cape had seen it and Mom and Dad couldn’t even remember how or when they got rid of it.) For some quick background on the title “Running After Antelope”. Carrier’s brother is a biologist, a Vertibrate Morphologist to be exact. He’s also an unusual man and bucks the establishment. His theory is that evolution is driven primarily by breathing and endurance. Our human ancestors went from walking on four legs to an upright position on two legs because an upright posture allows more freedom for our diaphragms. He had studied animals like horses and dogs and found that their breathing is limited while sprinting to exhaling on the out-stretch and inhaling on the in-stretch.	He believes human ancestors became bipedal a million years ago because it’s a more efficient way to breathe while running and gave us a competitive advantage. This goes contrary to the hunter/gatherer theory, the accepted theory, in which we walked upright to free our hands for wielding weapons (hunting) and carrying supplies (gathering.) He wanted to prove his theory but how to do it. He had heard stories about Australian Aborigines who could outlast and run down Kangaroos. Closer to home though was a story about the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico. They are the worlds best Ultra Marathoners and usually win these races of 100 miles or more. Until recently they supposedly hunted pronghorn antelope by running them down.

It took two to three days of running but eventually the antelope dropped from exhaustion (I think they wouldn’t let it sleep) and they could pick up a nearby stone and club it to death. If this story could be proven or demonstrated it would add credibility to his breathing theory of evolution. The reasoning: humans are the most advanced AND we have the greatest endurance. But what a demonstration. Antelope easily can run 40 mph, up and down hills, for an hour, without stopping. To make an already long story less long, Carrier and a couple runner friends tried to duplicate the experience of chasing down pronghorn antelope - and they failed miserably. But it was a funny story in the description of how they tried.	When they could get close enough they’d study the antelope for signs of worry or fatigue. Nothing. The animals ran effortlessly. And if they allowed the animal to get out of site and merge with the herd then they were lost because antelope all look pretty much the same. After chasing one of them for 3 hours you don’t want to start up again with the chase unless you’re absolutely sure it’s the same one - and not a fresh one. And the animal they’d culled from the pack eluded them time and again to rejoin the pack and thus escape. Their one saving grace though is that antelope have a thing for running in arcs so they could anticipate where the quarry would be and they’d fan out to head him off.	What attracted me to this book about unusual people and unusual events as a 50th anniversary gift is that it highlights how society can thrive with a combination of good soldier conformists, like most of us, and the individualists, like the author and his brother. Same thing with marriages. The partners have a lot in common which provides the initial bonding but the differences probably enhance the relationship and prevent boredom setting in so that people like Mom and Dad can stay together for 50 years. Fifty years. Daunting just to think about it and how times have changed since then. Just look at one small area that I’m very familiar with having two small boys: cartoons, and see how they’ve changed.

Does anyone remember a cartoon that was introduced each time with a moose who would try to pull a rabbit out of his hat. He’d rip off his shirt cuffs saying “Nothing up my sleeve” then reach in a hat and pull out a wild boar. Anyone 40 to 55 years old probably would know what cartoon it came from. Can anyone under 35 name the cartoon? (No one could or would.) The Rocky and Bullwinkle show. How about “The Fickle Finger of Fate.” I’ll bet no one under 35 knows where that came from either. How about people my generation. (No one could or would. Kevin would have known but missed my talk because he was off on a wild goose chase with Ricky Marney.) The answer is Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. My generation grew up on this, and Buggs Bunny, Captain Kangaroo, Tom Terrific, and Beanie and Cecil.	My younger brothers grew up on the Hanna Barbera cartoons like Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, and Snaggle Puss. They had some new cartoons too like “The Groovy Goolies”. This was Wayne’s favorite. (He denied it.) You may ask at this point why I’m spending so much time on cartoons. Well cartoons were so important to Craig and Wayne that they insisted all through high school that their friends call them Yogi and Boo-Boo. (I made this up.) Craig and Wayne, do your friends still call you that. (Wayne, in a huff, immediately exclaimed, "Of course not!") What did you teenagers out there watch as children. Sesame Street? Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood? H&R Puff’nStuff? You people out there may not even have heard about the latest cartoons. My kids are growing up on Teletubbies, the Power Puff Girls, Dragon Tales, and Pokemon.	Now what did you 60 plusers grow up on. Your childhoods were before TV. Vaudeville was gone by then, done in by radio. Did old time radio have children’s programming. Do you remember Milton Berle cracking jokes while walking on the sides of his shoes. When you got older, did you ever go to a sock hop, whatever that is. Times have changed. Yet inwardly I think each age group enjoys these small things that make our experiences different. It’s something that each generation has that the others can never have. You either lived it or you didn’t. Fifty years ago today, Mom and Dad were married right here in Osterville. And 3 years and 1 month later they had 3 boys. Almost instantly they were a family of five. I wonder if my mother knew what she was getting into when she married a Catholic.

There was a 7-yr gap before Craig was born. And one and a half years later Wayne. Being curious about the 7-yr gap, I asked Mom a couple years ago why they had so many kids. Were they trying for a girl. Did they get frustrated after me and wait a while before trying again. Her answer, I think verbatim, "No, all you kids were accidents - Damn Catholics." All of us want to thank Mom and Dad for the care they took in raising us and the help they’ve provided in our adult lives. (The audience was VERY restless at this point and they all thought I was finishing here. I thought it was hilarious - because I knew I was only halfway through. I could hear comments from the crowd. “My anniversary’s coming up shortly too. Please don’t invite him.” And “Now I know why they don’t let him speak.”)	For their first 30 years they had boys in the house. I think they took one vacation by themselves in their first 7 years. Grammy came to care for Kevin, Bruce and I in Concord for that week. Where did you guys go. You must remember your one vacation. (Dad said they went to Miami.) Now I’d like to talk very briefly about Grammy. (Mom’s mother) All the grandchildren loved her dearly. I’ve often thought about her and tried to learn her secret. She didn’t really play with us that much or engage us in animated talk. Her secret I believe was that she enjoyed our visits and enjoyed watching the energy and fun we displayed. AND she always showed support. Now one quick story about Grammy. Although we visited her frequently when I was a child, she visited us only a very few times.	On her first visit, I joined my parents in bed and she took my bed in with Kevin and Bruce. But afterwards I seemed to remember Kevin saying that Grammy snored and that on her next visit he wasn’t sure he wanted to sleep in the same room with her. Well on the next visit Kevin left and I stayed in the room with Grammy. Now Grammy has one trait identical to Mom. She goes to sleep almost at the same time as her head hits the pillow. So if she did snore, there was no way I could beat her to sleep to avoid the snoring! Well she did snore - sort of. It was very soft. You really couldn’t even call it a snore. But it was just loud enough that if I strained my ears, I could hear it. And this kept me awake. Thinking about it though, isn’t it a wonderful thought. We should all be so well loved as Grammy that after we’re gone, the worst that can be said of us is what I’ll say of her now: “She almost snored.” Dear old Grammy.

Now back to Mom and Dad. They had their one early vacation. Dad supported all of us, played with us, went to graduate school at nights in the early years, and somehow found time to make Mom feel good about herself while tied down with all us kids. And Mom. She cut our hair, did all the shopping for the seven of us, prepared all our meals, washed all the dishes and did all the cleanup. We never helped. Plus the laundry. My kids are going to do their own laundry as soon as I can teach them how to use the washer and dryer. Even when Mom went back to work she continued doing all the homemaker chores. I’d come home from college and all of us men would be sitting in the family room after one of Mom’s dinners and watching TV while she cleaned up the dishes. There was never a “Thank You.”	In fact oftentimes when she’d be putting the dishes and pots away they’d rattle and we’d look at one another and think. What the hell is wrong with her. Does she have to be that noisy. During one cleanup, I raised the question to Dad and he just threw up his hands, as if saying, “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with her.” We were clueless. In fairness to Dad, he may never have heard my question so he may have thrown up his hands because of that. Regardless, he was still clueless - maybe just not as much as the rest of us, especially me. I can remember coming back from college for a visit and after Mom prepared dinner thinking to myself with annoyance, “Why doesn’t she set the damn table.” It’s been a long time but I’ll say it now for all of us. Thanks, Mom! That was a lot of work.	As my kids grow up I actually think to myself if I'm doing them justice because I compare their happiness with what I had. We had true childhoods - a time that every kid should have when there isn't a worry in the world. Much of that is due to Mom and Dad. It’s my theory that a happy childhood is the basis for the general feelings of “the good old days.” Many people talk about “the good old days.” It’s a time when people were kinder and Government was wiser. In actuality, the Good Old Days has been proven to be nothing more than a myth. Each adult generation has said the young people have no respect or no manners. For my generation, the baby boomers, a lot of us wondered “Why” when younger men took to wearing earrings.

And what’s with the 60 plusers. Can anyone explain black nylon knee socks with shorts and shoes. I see these old guys all the time at the shore with their bird legs and no tans. It’s not attractive. (No one could explain it though one person offered that it was the Jews that do this.) But maybe it looks right to them. Everyone conforms to their own crowd. Anyway, there were no good old days. Here I have to plug my favorite book and urge everyone to read it: The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. Its title comes from the fact that there are really only two species of chimp. But humans share 98% of our genetic makeup with chimps. We easily could be considered a 3rd species of Chimpanzee. This book explodes the myth of the good old days, other myths, and the myth of the “Noble Indian” or noble early man. Early man did not live one with nature as we’d like to believe.	In fact the earliest people hunted nearly all the North American large game to extinction. Does that sound like living with nature to you? Before humans crossed the Alaskan Ice Bridge from Asia to North America at the tail end of the last ice age in 11,000 BC, this continent was home to herds of elephantlike Mammoths and Mastadonts, 3-ton Ground Sloths, bear-sized Beaver, Sabertooth Cats, American Lions, Cheetas, Camels, Horses, and others. Man’s migration into North America and down through South America took about a thousand years. It was the greatest range expansion in the history of the human race and can never be repeated - at least not on this planet. But in that thousand-year period nearly all the species of large mammals, who had existed for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years, became extinct. Can you imagine the zoos we’d have today if early man really was as we were taught - noble and living one with nature.	Now I’d like to talk about my own childhood. It’ll probably spark similar memories to your own. We were made to feel special growing up in that small one-bathroom ranch house on the outskirts of Concord. Looking at it now you couldn't imagine the fun we had growing up there. Busy street in front. Small front and back yards. Sloping ground behind the back yard to a thick forest. It was too secluded to go anywhere really without a car. But we had a great time. And we were there so much and my parents took so few vacations that whenever we did leave - like for two weeks to the Cape in the summer - Mom always said "Goodbye House" as we left. And we'd all join in saying it too. We were very active - just like my two boys - except there were five of us. What did we do? In the less cold months (because the warm months only lasted about 2 1/2 weeks back then) we played Combat and Cowboys and Indians all through the back woods. We tromped it down to make paths everywhere.

There were neighborhood kids that came to play too. Dad built a rough fort for us out of fallen trees and branches. Looked pretty professional. Called it Fort Apache. Imagine a gang of 10-year olds with stick rifles chasing after each other whooping and hollering making gunshot sounds. We had a trapeze that we'd swing on like Tarzan too. Nothing fancy, just a rope tied to a high branch halfway up the hill with a thick stick for the seat. And in the Winter, we sledded down the wooded hill in back for hours and chased each other back up - again and again. We'd come back inside exhausted, overheated, wet, and cold and Mom would always be there to give us fresh dry clothes and something to drink. I visited that house for the first time in years the summer before last and met the woman living there. About Wayne’s age, she grew up in Concord and had attended the same schools that I had. She was holding her baby while another young child was playing in the front yard.	I introduced myself and she was kind enough to show me around both inside and outside. Upon entering the porch I noticed on the wall a big 2-page color newspaper spread of a smiling Bill and Hillary Clinton. I won’t get into politics but I liked her more and more. I’m sure she’s very happy and feeling a lot better about the Government now that the Democrats have retaken control of the Senate. We walked through each room. We came to the Master Bedroom first where my parents had slept. I was surprised when I saw that this room was now a home office - and a small one at that. But then I had expected the place to look small. She looked at me and said, "That's not the master bedroom. My husband and I sleep there!" And she pointed to the big room at the end of the house - where Kevin, Bruce and I had slept. They had given us the master bedroom. Good old Mom and Dad. One more unspoken sacrifice they had made in raising five kids.	I told her that we were the original owners and about the additions we had put on: like the enclosed breezeway with the knotty pine paneling, the basement bedroom, and the patio. But the most striking thing I found was that the forest in back had grown into a jungle. You couldn't see 30 feet into it, it was so overgrown. She'd never even walked back there. I told her about the big hollow just halfway down the slope. I couldn’t see it through the growth and I knew exactly where to look. There was a swamp 300 feet back and connected to the river. It was stagnant water where we all learned to ice skate in safety. I looked into that overgrowth with no small amount of pride and realized that we had conquered that back yard. We had tromped it down and settled it with hours and hours of play. You couldn't pay someone to condition that land now but we did it back then for free and had fun doing it.

I’d like to show you a picture that Spencer drew on the computer a month ago. He drew himself and two neighborhood kids. They’re all smiling. I was happy to see that because it indicates that he may look back on his early years as “The Good Old Days” too. But looking at this picture, I couldn’t help but think back on that dense jungle that exists behind the Concord house now. We were happy too. But we drew our picture in the woods and our smiles were all those paths. I’ll always have a special feeling for that small house in Concord where we grew up. The people there may be very happy but I know that the house died a little bit when our family of seven gathered up our memories and left - when we said "Goodbye House" for the last time. Even now I remember that moment as we drove away. Growing up our holidays were always warm and cheery. Halloween was great fun. We'd dress up in rude costumes and come back with grocery bags full of candy.

Thanksgiving, we always had a big turkey meal and a special treat - apple cider. Dad'd put it outside overnight and it'd get ice cold. The little things mattered so much more back then before today's age of instant gratification. We had cider twice a year: Thanksgiving and Christmas. Today, our kids drink cider - three gallons a week, rain or shine, Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall. Of course Christmas was the pinnacle of the year for us. Excitement would build for months - and Santa was always very good to us. Concord itself had its benefits with its rich history and added to our feelings of being special. As cubscouts we'd get up at dawn and gather with the troop at the Old North Bridge to reenact with cannon the shot heard round the world that symbolized the start of the Revolutionary War. We'd visit the "Bullet Hole House." Years later I'd come to appreciate this history. Henry David Thoreau spent his well-known time in solitude in the woods of Walden.	Does anyone know what book he wrote afterwards? "Self Reliance." It comes up in conversation every so often and I enjoy telling people that I had swimming lessons there, at Walden Pond. Cape Cod was magical too when we'd come here visiting the relatives in the Summer. Grammy Marney had an open door policy and we'd all come and go as we pleased. Some people might see it as a chore - watching kids. But she truly enjoyed us and the fun that we had. Nana Williams was very nice too. She provided for us without complaint, took us blueberry picking, and took us on long rides. She used to braid rugs and spent hours at it. We’d see her hunched over on her knees stitching the braids together. I have one of her colorful rugs in my bedroom. Every now and then I’ll look down on it and think of her. Swimming in Joshua's pond, fishing in Mike's pond, Craigville and Dowses Beaches, movies at the Osterville Theater for 50 cents, Uncle Kenny’s packing all of	us kids in his jeep and taking us to the Four Seas for ice cream. All these made for wonderful memories. We moved a couple times after Concord. After 8th Grade we moved to Clearwater, Florida. Upon graduating High School, my parents moved to McLean, Virginia. The last of the kids flew the coop around 1981. Only 10 more years of outside work remained. Then Mom and Dad retired: "No more homework, no more books, no more bosses dirty looks." That was in 1991 and they've enjoyed 10 years retirement so far. Is life really that short? It didn’t seem that way when we were living it. My brothers and I want to thank Mom and Dad for the wonderful childhoods they gave us and for the help they've given us afterwards. Those early years and their working years were full, busy, happy, stressful - everything. We've very happy that you finally retired and have had 10 years so far to do whatever you’ve wanted to do - and to relax. Happy Anniversary!