The Between Period

The Davis History between 1960 and 1966 was a time of completing education, the military and getting married with the first jobs for both of us and getting ready for the next set of adventures seeing the world around us. From 1960 graduation for both Barb and me (Tom), Barb from High School and me from University. Remember that 1960 saw the US with no major war going on but many risks with the cold war well under way since the 1940’s and the end of WWII. Funny how our whole history is defined by skirmishes both minor and major. Conflict is our middle name if not our last, our surname.

I spent the summer of 1960 in Chicago working for a company that was manufacturing a plastic lining for industrial boilers, “Plibrico,” a Chicago Company. I was able to make some money (but not to hold onto it) and after an experience of friend Frank Moreno’s family in the Polish neighborhood of Chicago, I returned to the University. That summer introduced me to ethnicity of which I knew nothing from the Polish Daily newspaper “Sgoda Chicagoski”, to a “streun” dog with all the trimmings served from a street cart and named after a Yiddish word for “turd.” I saw it all from the “Baby Doll” Polka Club, to late evenings spent with fellow students who would come to our central city digs to consume beer together, to a great party in Frank’s family’s home, a three-story house with a raised street level with stairs coming up the front to the first floor to buying Japanese stuff from the Toguri store near downtown (Togouri was the family name for “Tokyo Rose” of WWll fame and she was there in person). For me it was a summer of my eyes being opened and I developed an ability to see all around me. A bit scary, but necessary in my maturation process.

I finished with a BA from Southern Illinois University with a major in “product and shelter design”, essentially industrial design. In the summer of 1959 I was privileged to work for GM at the Tech Center in Warren, Michigan. With this experience working among the designers of cars I found myself at the pinnacle of something (I’m to this day not sure what it was the pinnacle of) and saw “how the other half” (at least in design) lived. I also saw how some factions of design was based totally on “how it looks” versus “how it works”. We had studied Louis Sullivan of “form follows function” fame and the many “Bauhaus” designers of the turn of the century until the 1930’s (until the jews were run out of Germany) with their very plain designs and strong emphasis on functionality and combining the craftsman with the artist. It was nowhere more apparent to me than at GM about who I was and how things were. As we worked that summer I saw that we at the design department (SIU) were pretty much at cross purposes with the rest of the design world. I believe that we were trained to be thinkers and the rest were trained to be lookers. What “it” looked like was paramount and how it functioned was of lesser consequence. The great awakening! I started grad school in the same department not knowing what else to do and hoped that something would emerge. Something with I could make a living and hopefully in the design field as to date the prospects in 1960 were not too high. I was somewhat downtrodden at this point and felt rejected.

Early on the emerging didn’t occur and some personal issues began to float up and I felt like I should try something else. Well as soon as I did this “they came after me.” In a young man’s life the latent military training was always there staring you in the face and there was little one could do to get around it. It came down to the best approach for me as I couldn’t get into Air Force ROTC because of my eyes so my alternative was to enlist (for three years), be drafted for two years or join a reserve unit of national Guard unit for six months of active duty (in essence for me as a young College grad, the lesser of evils). I tried to get into the Coast Guard but there was a two year wait to do this. Not much in the way of alternatives so I jumped into the USAR and they placed me into the infantry. At the time the worst of all worlds but remember, there were no wars on at that moment. That was my perception at the time, however waiting around the corner was the “Berlin Crisis” and the construction of the “Berlin Wall.” This occurred while I was in the military and we all thought that WW lll was imminent!  It wasn’t and although the government extended the active commitment of many in my group, they didn’t for me and I returned to Illinois at the end of my time. I went to work.

Work for me became a stint for a year with the Federal Government with the Housing and Home Finance Agency in Chicago with an emphasis on the then emerging Urban Renewal program as an intern in the planning section reviewing projects and the steps involved in getting involved in this program. These were the early Kennedy years and all were upbeat about the emerging new society being created. I was surrounded by liberal thinking into which I had a difficult buy in. My objective was to return to school for an advanced degree in urban planning which it turned out was at Illinois in Urbana, Illinois. So I did my post military reserve duty at the Museum of Science and Industry and on lunch break during the monthly meetings explored the museum thoroughly. This took place during the fall, winter and spring of 1961-2. By fall of 1962 I had put together entry into the U of I grad program in Urban planning which was completed in June 1964. I spent these two years in the USAR in Urbana but didn’t attend summer camp as I had an internship in Wichita, Kansas for that summer. The military for me was a wheel spinning operation s I tried on occasions to become an officer but was unsuccessful is doing so. I should have persisted as I couldn’t pass the eye physical for the Air Force back as an undergrad and put in my required two years in ROTC. Too bad. I tried for the Coast Guard Reserve in the midwest but there was a Two year waiting period and the draft was breathing down my back after leaving grad school at SIU. I was stuck with the Army and so I was in an infantry unit. I had a six month serving of “humble pie” during 1961 and learned a lot, mostly what not to do with many other graduates with bachelors degrees.

While in my last semester at U of I, I met Barb who soon thereafter became my wife and long term companion through many adventures. We were quite different to say the least but we are still together after these 50 years banging around the globe and settling like many other retirees in warmer Florida.

Barb started U of I in 1960 and was really an engineering type (not suitable for a girl she was told), so she entered Home Ec which fit a “girl much better. Maybe but not this one as she became a math major and slid into the newly emerging field of computers. She became a programmer and later in her degree path became employed by the computer lab at Illinois the home of the “Iliac Computer,” then the largest in the world. We were introduced by my roommate Jim Ague, an electrical engineering grad student who worked with her at the computer lab. It was blind date which had a rough beginning where I was kept waiting at the girl’s dorm for over an hour. I thought that there must be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for this kind of “pain”. Indeed there was as I can say after 50 years with her.