Photos from my album “For My Babe’s Anniversary: The Continuation of the Story So Far” and Barb’s untitled albums covering the same period.
After leaving Hong Kong in August, 1976, and before heading to Georgetown, I went down to Miami to visit Laurie, David and their new daughter, Maggie. Barb was able to join us there for a time. It was a terrific opportunity to enjoy some time alone together, appreciate Laurie’s cooking (which was becoming more and more professional and diverse), David’s record collection, baby Maggie, and their pool. It was one of the best resorts we ever stayed at…and free! Thanks, Laurie!
While there, Barb and I learned a parenting lesson, or at least something not to do. Laurie and David had started the habit of dancing Maggie to sleep while listening to a record, most often James Taylor’s Gorilla. It got to where Maggie couldn’t go to sleep unless she was being danced in someone’s arms, usually her Dad’s. That meant many evenings where David would come back from medical school dead tired but still would have to waltz slowly with Maggie in his arms while the record played, sometimes several times each night. Barb and I thought the music at night was fine, but dancing with any future baby was not the way to go.
Later in August, Barb and I returned to Virginia and stayed briefly at the Fishers’ new townhome in Oakton before getting checked in and oriented at Georgetown University and University of Virginia. Mom and Dad were still in Hong Kong for another year and I don’t think they were on hand for my checking in (but it’s all a bit hazy). I remember the Fishers helped me get moved in and settled in my dorm at Georgetown. I also remember helping them get Barb settled into her Bonnycastle dorm room at UVA, driving down together in the morning and back the same day. Barb’s first-year roommate was Polly Glen, who I barely remember but then I didn’t spend much time at all down there that first year — it was hard to get there and I couldn’t stay in Barb’s dorm.
I also remember being appalled that Barb’s Bonnycastle dorm was not air conditioned (they’re very different now). Who could expect to live in the South without air conditioning? The girls survived with big box fans both in the windows and in the hallways. It gave Barb an extra incentive to come back to see her parents on weekends to cool off and do laundry.
For my freshman year, I had a room in the International Student House (ISH), then located on Georgetown’s East Campus, home to the School of Foreign Service, one block from the main campus. Georgetown was chronically short of dorms and only freshmen were guaranteed housing on campus. ISH was a small dorm with maybe 80 students overall, all male. It was primarily for foreign students, but being from Hong Kong, I qualified. My roommate, Ricardo Ros, was from Puerto Rico…so I guess technically he wasn’t foreign or international either. Our room was small and spartan, with room for our two single beds, a small desk and bureau for each of us, but at least there was air conditioning.
Ricardo and I got along well enough to begin with, but the relationship deteriorated as the year went along. I can’t really remember why, but for most of the second semester we barely spoke to each other. I can’t say I made any real friends at Georgetown, but at the time, I didn’t feel the need to. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy myself in college, but I tended to either do things on my own or head off to see Barb. I wasn’t eager to seek out parties, drinks or drugs (maybe vaguely interested but scared to do much of anything illicit), or hang out with a crowd. Starting in sophomore year, I lived off-campus in Arlington, a little further removed from campus and the goings-on there. Cumulatively, I guess it made for an odd college existence, but I didn’t really notice.
Barb and I enjoyed exploring the easy parts of DC, visiting the Mall and taking in the museums. Here are shots from several different visits in the fall of 1976. We also wandered Georgetown quite a lot and scouted out restaurants we could afford. Our favorite special occasion place was “Le Steak,” a steak frites place on M Street. More often, though, we’d find ourselves at Roy Rogers.
Very fortuitously, the Fishers moved after Barb’s graduation from Hong Kong to their new townhouse at 2846 Jermantown Road in Oakton, Virginia. It was a coincidence (or more likely he had arranged it) that Fred’s posting in Hong Kong came to an end and it was time to rotate back to DC just as Barb graduated high school. Fred worked at United States Information Agency offices near the White House, but there was no question they were going to live in Fairfax County, near where they’d lived before, and close to their various State Department friends.
The Fisher townhouse became a base for Barb and I to meet and visit, and do laundry. For me, it was a long bus ride from Georgetown to Oakton or Tyson’s Corner (the bus didn’t go all the way to Oakton on the weekends). For Barb, it was a matter of getting a ride off the ride board in Charlottesville. We weren’t there every weekend, but probably saw each other 2-3 times each month, one way or another.
It was great to get to know Fred and Louise better. I was welcomed into the house and family, staying in the basement on a sleep sofa that was thankfully a little more comfortable than most. I enjoyed the meals that Fred and sometimes Louise cooked and eventually learned a good deal about how to prepare them. Neither of them were great cooks, though they had some “greatest hits” like spaghetti sauce, beef strogonoff from a packet, carbonara, vongole, roast pork chops and holiday mashed potatoes (via Autie Haya).
The Fishers had a commendable habit of eating meals together, turning the TV off, and having conversations. Fred would often lead the way with topics of the day, sparking debate on multiple sides of an argument. It was not anything I was used to in my family; our meals were mostly silent and quick. With the Fishers, the discussions often lingered over multiple glasses of cheap wine and a pipe for Fred. I was never in the lead of a conversation, but I became better about listening and offering a comment to pop tension or get a laugh. I think I eventually scored some points with Fred on that front; it was fun to get him to ring out with his exclamatory laugh.
We all enjoyed spending time with the Fishers’ new dog, Bourbon, a very cute Shelty mixed with Golden Retriever that they got shortly after arriving. Louise doted on Bourbie, putting weights on her ears as a puppy so they would bend just so, and squirting her with perfume most days.
Bourbie was a great dog to play with. Here are a few shots of us on several outings to the field across the street from the Fishers’ townhouse, a vacant lot that would shortly become a big AT&T building, and a playground nearby.
Turning back to Georgetown, the School of Foreign Service curriculum was pretty tightly structured for the first two years. One of the things that most appealed to me was the lack of any requirements for math or science classes. Irony noted that I would eventually spend most of my career in technology and STEM organizations. My courses covered literature, history, economics, religious studies and current events/politics.
Even though it’s a Jesuit institution, I didn’t find the general atmosphere or religion courses overbearing. On the contrary, the required religion courses were mostly comparative studies and I learned quite a bit about Hindu and Buddhist principles. Islam, not so much at that point and no great emphasis on Christianity or Catholicism. Some of my favorite professors were Jesuits, including Father Joseph Sebes who was a specialist in East Asian history, with particular interests in China, Mongolia, and Brunei, for some reason. He may as well have been a prototype for Yoda, a wizened old man with sparkling eyes and an encyclopedic knowledge of the most obscure things. He had a long academic career and I believe had once headed up the School, but I can’t find a good online summary of his achievements; he deserves to be better remembered.
Another professor I enjoyed was George Viksnins, an economics specialist and proud Latvian. As it came time in my junior year to declare an area of emphasis, Dr. Viksnins helped point me toward a dual path of economics and East Asian studies. He wrapped up each lecture with “Questions? Comments? Violent dissent?” There were rarely any. Even though in 1976 we were barely a decade from the radical student events of the 1960s, Georgetown was a quiet, insulated campus seemingly filled with earnest students intent on careers, some rich kids who couldn’t get into Harvard, and a bunch professors of intimidating intelligence.
Probably the biggest academic choice I made in the first two years was to take Chinese for my foreign language. I never took it in Hong Kong, sticking with Spanish which was much easier. I imagine I was partly inspired by Barb, who took Mandarin for two years in high school and all four years at UVA, and by Fred, Louise and their group of old China hands. At Georgetown, Chinese was an intensive class, requiring twice as much class and lab time as other classes, and its grade was worth twice as much as well. I struggled for the two years I took it, and it severely impacted my overall grade point average. I scraped by the proficiency test after two years, meeting the minimum requirement for language studies. Nevertheless, I greatly appreciated the cultural insight it offered — you can’t begin to know China without understanding at least the rudiments of the language and the history behind it. I ended up actually using the language and getting a bit better with my work at Bei Jing-Washington, but it was never a strength for me. Barb would say I never spent enough time with flash cards.
A small digression on Barb’s Chinese name. Her Chinese teacher in Hong Kong gave her the name “Fu Ba Ru,” which is why I call her “Fu”. Fu is the Chinese symbol for Good Luck or Good Fortune, so I’ve always thought that was very appropriate. However, it did not align with the family name Fred and Louise had been given back in Taiwan, “Fei”. When Barb got to college, her teacher declared her name was “Fei Bi Wa,” which was more proper but not as much fun, in my opinion. For the record, my Chinese name was “Deng Wei Li” which does not have a very resonant appeal, “Deng” being pronounced “dung”. Fortunately, Barb has generally refrained from calling me “Deng”.
One of the highlights of my freshman year at Georgetown was going to the Bruce Springsteen concert on campus. October 18, 1976, at the sweaty old McDonough Gymnasium. Bruce and the E Street band were great, displaying unbelievable energy and weaving long stories into and between songs (set list).
A lowlight of the year was trying out for the Georgetown tennis team. I thought I was doing pretty well for the couple of days they let me and the other wannabes practice with the team. The actual tryout, though, was a single 5-game set, no-ad scoring against one of the other scrubs. I had never played that format and lost in about 20 minutes. And that was it. There were no JV or intramural opportunities and with that I hardly picked up a tennis racket for years other than to occasionally play with Fred and his buddies. As it turned out, I never would have had time to play competitive tennis and carry my course load, especially with Chinese, but I wish I’d had a fairer shot at making the team and deciding for myself.
The autumn of freshman year, we were visited by our Hong Kong friend, Anne Banwell. Anne was at Smith College in Massachusetts; she was also on her own as the rest of her family were still in Hong Kong. We made the rounds of Georgetown and snapped some photos.
I’d gotten a new camera and tried taking some artistic shots, now and then.
In the good old days of learning about camera exposures and timers, I tried some experiments.
Usually it was more fun to take pictures of Barb.
To round out the photos in the album, we were able to go back to Miami to see Laurie for Spring Break of our freshman year. It was a treat to have a free room someplace warm, and it was good to get to know Laurie, David and Maggie a bit better.
Barb and I finished our freshman (or first year, in UVA-speak) years without further incidents. Barb got great grades. I got mediocre ones, particularly because of Chinese. But we each survived.
I spent much of the summer in Key West with Len where I worked as a busboy for a while and learned to drive in Len’s Corvette. Some memories are recounted in my “College Jobs” post, but others include going out some evenings with Len and Mike to places where Len performed as a lounge singer. She was good in a sort of Peggy Lee mold and had a small following of sorts. At think at that point Len was working as an events manager at the Casa Marina Resort, one of the biggest and oldest hotels in town, though I don’t remember spending any time there.
Len’s husband, Mike Horne, was a character (the photo below may or may not be him, but it’s an accurate enough representation from a 1999 article mentioning him). He owned a Harley Davidson shop in Key West and was every bit a man’s man which I was not. He was friendly, nevertheless, and tolerated me bumming around for the summer. We didn’t have a whole lot of interactions — each of us were willing to let each other alone for the time I was there. He and Len didn’t stay together too much longer, though. I kept some of Mike’s t-shirts (which still linger on the Internet) for a lot longer than Len kept Mike.
Baby Carey (before she became Keri) was born in May, 1977, while Sue and Tom lived on Grassy Key. We would visit them, go out on Tom’s boat to check his traps for stone crabs and dive for lobster, then grill them at Sue’s house for some of the most delicious meals I’ve ever had.
Barb stayed with her folks in Oakton for the summer and worked at a McDonald’s in Vienna. She learned important life skills like working the cash register and doing math in her head in the days before there were pictures for everything. She worked her way up the McDonald’s hierarchy to where she would close the shop in the evenings and could bring home extra food. Bourbie and Fred often got burger snacks and both put on several pounds. Barb remembers having to throw away her shoes at the end of the summer because they reeked of grease. Good times.
In August 1977, starting my sophomore year, I found an apartment off-campus in Clarendon, a neighborhood in Arlington up Wilson Boulevard from Rosslyn, at the corner with Garfield Street. It was a little two-bedroom place upstairs from what at the time was an antique store. Surprisingly, the ratty little building is still there, though the antique store has become a Mexican restaurant. In general, the whole neighborhood has gentrified and is much nicer. When I lived there it was a quiet, run-down area but with conveniences like a Grand Union grocery store and a decent pizza place nearby. The Clarendon Metro station was still under construction and a burgeoning cluster of Vietnamese shops and restaurants was just starting to sprout a couple of blocks away. The apartment was a long 2.3-mile walk to school which was often quicker than waiting for the little Georgetown GUTS (Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle) bus that circulated sporadically through the neighborhood.
I sublet the apartment from a fellow Georgetown student named Vas (short for Waclaw, but I can’t remember his last name). He was from Michigan but was of strong Polish descent. He was virulently anti-Communist and a right wing nut case before such things were common. He used to build his own bullets and was an expert on thermonuclear missile throw weights. We didn’t have much in common, but he mostly stayed in his room, I in mine, and we negotiated reasonable use of the one bathroom and kitchen. The arrangement worked well enough that I stayed through my junior year.
I again helped the Fishers move Barb into her sophomore dorm at UVA, Gwathmy, another of the “Old Dorms” dorms near Bonnycastle…still not air conditioned. It was another down-in-the-morning and back that evening event, but this time, with my newly minted driver’s license, Fred let me drive a little bit of the way back. His Barracuda had a lot of “play” in the steering wheel, meaning you could move the wheel an inch or two either way and nothing would happen…but that next quarter-inch would make the car lurch in one direction on the other. It was the way Fred liked it but very different from Len’s Corvette with its very tight steering. I nervously white-knuckled along Route 29 north of Charlottesville for about 30 miles before pulling over and giving the driving duties back to Fred, relieved not to have killed us all. I never did get comfortable driving that Barracuda.
Barb’s second year roommate was Amy Sanders, a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey. Amy and her mother thought that someone with the name Barbara Fisher might also be a nice Jewish girl and were mighty surprised when Barb showed up at the door. They ended up getting along pretty well and Amy stayed a friend for many years, but it was a little bit of an awkward start.
Beginning in my sophomore year when I was in the apartment and off the Georgetown meal plan, I started learning the basics of getting decent food on the table. I had hardly spent any time in the kitchen in Hong Kong or with Mom before then, so had a lot to learn about cooking. I began by leaning into the Fisher family recipes of spaghetti sauce, carbonara, and baked chicken or pork chops. I also did quite a lot of Kraft mac and cheese and began to get the hang of making chili.
Barb started visiting the apartment on weekends and we quickly fell into a ritual of Friday night pizzas at the place just around the corner from the apartment. Half mushroom, half pepperoni, extra cheese all around. The place also had excellent cheesy garlic bread and cheap beer. A sophomore’s heaven.
In October, celebrated Barb’s 19th birthday at her parents’ house, along with our new and very first kitten, Ralph. Since I now had my own apartment, Barb convinced me to get a cat. I’m not sure where we got Ralph, but she was a fine little lady. She enjoyed the party and meeting Bourbie.
Very unfortunately, Ralph died only a month or so after this party. It was a traumatic experience to find her cold little body curled up under my bed one evening. We think she maybe died from lead poisoning because she had a habit of eating the paint chips that flaked off various surfaces in the apartment. Or maybe it was the insecticides we used on the infestation of roaches that were our constant companions. We prefer to think it was lead chips.
For Christmas Eve, 1977, we went to the O’Neill’s, as evidenced by this photo. It was a long tradition for Auntie Jessie to throw a large Christmas Eve party. The photo captures the scene for me in those years pretty well, waiting to have a nice meal with a lot of people I barely knew. I can’t name anyone in this photo other than Barb, Jessie (on the far left, back to the camera, probably fussing over the food) and I think that’s Fred’s Mom, Helen, on the lower right.
On Christmas Day, the Fishers would alternate with the Babcocks for a traditional dinner consisting of roast beef, Haya’s mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and popovers. That’s a menu we have been happy to continue with a rotating cast of characters over the years.
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