Saturdays with Seniors: Keeping Up With Mel

I am pleased to introduce Mel Washburn as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Mel grew up in Kentucky in the 1950s and graduated from Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he met his wife Pam. He worked as a firefighter/paramedic in Wisconsin for ten years, taught English in various Midwestern colleges, graduated from law school, and then settled in Chicago.

My assignment asking writers to describe where they were fifty years ago prompted Mel to come up with this wonderful piece starring their bulldog Ambrose and their daughter Kristen.

Half a Century Ago

by Mel Washburn

Kristen the gingerbread eater.

In December 1970 Pam and I were living at the corner of 61st and Ingleside, which is one block south of the University of Chicago campus. Our apartment was a third-floor walkup in a decrepit old building. The windows were so loose that during the winter a border of ice collected inside on the windowsill. The washing machines in the basement were always coated with coal dust. Because we were south of the campus, cabs wouldn’t come to our address and the Hyde Park Co-op wouldn’t deliver food there.

Our car was a 1961 Chevy Bel Air that we’d bought third-hand from our friends, the Waggoners. During the two summers before we bought it, they had driven it to Mexico where John, an anthropologist, was doing field work in Yucatan.

Those trips had been rough on the car. It was scarred with bumps and dents and rust. And the clutch was very sensitive. If you didn’t feather it exactly right, it would stall on you.

One evening shortly after we moved into our apartment, Pam and I were sitting in our front room when we heard the whine and chug of a car starting up, then dying, starting up, then dying. I said to Pam, “Sounds like he has the same problem we have.” After half a beat, we both went to the window and looked down at the street.

Someone was trying to steal our car, but it died each time he tried to pull away from the curb.

At the time we owned a bulldog named Ambrose. I shouted out the window at the young man in our car and went running down the stairs. Pam was right behind me with Ambrose. As soon as we came out the front door, the young man jumped out of the car and ran away.

A few weeks later, we sent Ambrose to live with Pam’s sister in Indiana. City life simply did not suit him. Nevertheless, his aura continued to protect our home. For example, in the months after Ambrose’s departure, every apartment on our stairwell was burglarized — every apartment except ours.

Amidst these hazards, we were very happy. My schoolwork was going well. I’d been given a full scholarship and was teaching in the college as a “Danforth Tutor.” Pam worked part-time in the library at the medical school. Our daughter Kristen was healthy and happy, the joy of our lives. Pam and I took turns cooking dinner and doing the laundry. In the evenings we read The Complete Sherlock Holmes in six paperback volumes.

In December 1970, Kristen was a year and a half old. We put up a small Christmas tree. Pam baked gingerbread men and women, which we hung on the tree. Soon some of the gingerbread people were missing their feet. Then their legs. Then their hands. And arms. Some small person was snacking on them.

We never said a word to her about it. To this day, it’s our dearest Christmas memory.

Mel and his wife Pam now live in a 1920s high rise in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. Kristen lives with her family in Berkeley, California.