From the operating table to college

As a child, I suffered from hay fever. At one point, I took a battery

of tests to find out what I was allergic to. The results suggested I

should go live at the North Pole because I was allergic to just about

everything but frozen water.

To this day, I never venture from the house without a handkerchief

in my pocket because I never know when a sneezing attack will strike.

I once grew a beard, and that was one of the reasons I finally shaved

it. The other was that everyone grimaced when they caught sight of

me.

More serious to my health, at least as a child, were my tonsils

and adenoids. I spent a lot of time in bed with throat and sinus

infections. Finally, it was determined that the offending organs

should be removed.

I went in for the surgery, was put under -- they used ether in

those days -- but unfortunately, the anesthesiologist, or whatever

that position was termed at that time, misjudged the amount, and I

came out of the ether cloud way too soon. I announced my return to

consciousness by some healthy wails.

At that point my mother put her hand firmly on my wrist and said,

“Robert, Gardners never cry.”

With that, my tears stopped, and I haven’t cried since.

As you might gather, my mother was a strong-minded woman. How she

and my father ever got together is a puzzle. I guess opposites really

do attract, because they couldn’t have been more different.

My father was a man’s man, happiest when hunting or hiking or even

fighting. At one point, he went from town to town as a bare knuckles

fighter.

His idea of an ideal job was something that kept him out of doors

and on the move. When he was young he was a lumberjack, noted for

taking the riskiest jobs -- topping trees and breaking up logjams. He

was also a cowboy in the twilight of the Wild West, but those weren’t

the best jobs for a family man, so he eventually ended up as a

carpenter.

He always lived up to his responsibilities as a father, but

looking back, I don’t know how much satisfaction either his work or

his family provided.

Like other families, we were hard hit by the Depression. Some

public works programs were eventually instituted to help the millions

of unemployed, but not only did Gardners not cry, they didn’t take

charity.

As a carpenter, my father managed to find odd jobs that kept us

going, not easy when we had another mouth to feed. Grandmother

Hamilton had come to live with us.

To say I disliked my grandmother would be an understatement. My

mother and I were very close, and I didn’t like this old woman

upsetting our comfy relationship. I also didn’t like her manners. She

looked on children as little better than slaves and was constantly

demanding I fetch things for her on the double. She once threw a cup

of tea at me -- the cup as well as the tea -- because I didn’t move

fast enough to suit her.

The final blow was when she persuaded my mother that they could

add to the family income by making quilts to sell. A harmless enough

idea except -- and I’m sure she did this maliciously -- she

commandeered my bedroom as a workroom, forcing me to sleep in the

garage. It was not hard to be a Gardner when she died.

We had markets in those days, of course, but they were nothing

like the supermarkets of today. My mother, like many of her peers,

did a lot of canning and particularly a lot of baking. It seems to me

we had pie every night, and I remember that after I married, my wife

spent many hours with my mother in the kitchen, trying to learn to

roll a pie crust.

My mother would put out a little ball of dough. With a few quick

flicks of the rolling pin she produced a perfect circle. Katie would

put out a little ball of dough, and with a few quick flicks she made

something that looked like an amoeba. A few more flicks, and the

amoebas divided. I switched to ice cream for dessert.

My mother had resolved at a very early point in my life that I

would graduate from college. My father didn’t particularly care. He

couldn’t wait to get out of school and its confinements, so when my

mother brought the subject up, he would shrug indifferently. He

didn’t see why I shouldn’t be a carpenter like him.

At least, that’s the way he felt until he asked me to help him

with a job.

I was in high school at the time. He was putting on a new roof for

a neighbor. I remember how cleanly he could hammer a nail. A tap to

set it, a blow to drive it -- a straight nail every time.

He set me to hammering, but after watching me cripple a dozen

nails, he pulled me off that task and had me carrying things for him.

That went all right until I somehow slipped and fell off the roof.

At that point, he looked at my mother and said, “I think you’re

right. He should go to college.”

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.