Photos from several untitled albums, the next in the series. Bill did one that covered 1978-1983; Barb did two over the same period.
In February of 1978, we decided to take another shot with a cat. Ziggy was an orange tabby with a very patient disposition who put up with my long learning curve. He was already four months old when we got him (from where, I’m not sure) so we avoided the more vulnerable kitten stages. Zig was a good buddy for a number of years.
Some shots below with Zig in my apartment in April 1978 and thereabouts. The apartment wasn’t air conditioned but my window opened onto the flat roof of the antique store. It was like a big porch for me and Zig, though neither of us were really supposed to be out there.
In a surprise move later in the year, Vas decided that he also wanted a cat, so he acquired a very small kitten that Barb named L.C., short for Little Cat. Zig and L.C. were buddies for the rest of that semester until I moved to a new place in August.
My adventures in learning to cook for myself continued. Most of what I experimented with either came from something I saw done at the Fishers or skimming through the “Joy of Cooking”. I figured out how to bake a chicken leg and did a lot of pasta. Sue gave me a hint at some point that putting a sprinkle of dried tarragon on baked chicken was a nice touch; that was an exotic move for me at that point. I also experimented with chilis and curries, every once in a while making them way too spicy even for me.
One of my most ambitious weekends was spent trying to make fried chicken. I wanted to make it like Otha, Susie and Pop Pop’s cook in Valdosta, used to do it. I put a huge amount of oil in a wok, battered up an enormous amount of chicken, and cooked for what seemed like hours. It ended up being OK, but nowhere near Otha’s. I had enough chicken to last for a couple of weeks and had to throw out a whole lot of oil once it finally cooled. I never made fried chicken again. Some things are just easier to buy.
During 1978, Dad retired and he and Mom departed Hong Kong. They got a condo in the Sugar Sands development at Riviera Beach, a few blocks from their property on Powell Drive where they would build a house. Dad also got his dream fishing boat, a 28-foot Bertram that he christened “Por Fin”. I always admired the double entendre of that name, combining “For Fish” with “At Last” in Spanish; it was one of the cleverest things Dad came up with, in my estimation. He loved that boat and spent an inordinate amount of time tinkering with it to make it just the way he wanted, then an inordinate amount of more time to keep it that way.
Mom saved this June 1978 letter from Ah Chen giving a poignant update on their circumstances, dictated through their son, Fung. Mom and Dad’s successors, the Smiths, moved to a new house that somehow had five stories and too many stairs for Ah Chen and Ah Ying. They shifted to working for an Australian couple in the mid-levels. I think they missed Mom and Dad, and we certainly missed them.
In September, 1978, Mom and Dad were invited back to Hong Kong (first class, I believe) by the Kadoories for the opening of a new power plant in Castle Peak. Dad had been closely involved in planning and construction of the plant. The opening ceremony was a big enough deal for Margaret Thatcher to show up. Coincidentally, on the same trip Thatcher was traveling to Beijing to continue negotiations on the final agreement for turning Hong Kong back to China. Mom and Dad loved being treated like VIPs and appreciated the recognition.
Getting back to me and Barb, in April 1978 at Cherry Blossom time it so happened that Milos Forman and the cast of the movie “Hair” were filming a big scene on the Mall in DC. To attract a crowd, they held a free concert featuring Bonnie Raitt and invited folks to come dressed in late-60’s hippie attire. Barb and I went down and I enjoyed the concert, even if Barb didn’t so much. See a fan’s home movie of the festive day — we skipped most of the filming at the Lincoln Memorial but were in the rush of people running to where the stage was set for the concert.
It took a year for the film to come out to find we were in the crowd scene at the finale of the film. In fact, Barb is in the very last frame, on my shoulders near the American flag, which is frozen for the credits. I’m in there too, but obscured by a sign. It’s our big-screen debut, and entire career (see it at about 2:20 in the clip). We were in the paper, too, at least the very top of Barb’s head. Our brush with stardom.
Here a few more shots of Barb from spring 1978, at the Fishers’ to visit Bourbie, and on some steps, probably in DC (Lincoln Memorial?).
I spent most of the summer of 1978 in Clarendon, working a couple of jobs as an audit clerk at Sears and a warehouse assistant at a mattress shop. I was eager to finally earn some money to save up for a car, among other things. I think Barb worked that summer as a teller for First Virginia Bank, a step up from McDonald’s though with less fringe benefits.
I stayed in the Clarendon apartment with Vas for my junior year at Georgetown, so no move was necessary. Barb settled into her third year dorm on Monroe Hill with a new roommate, Mary Marshall.
On October 13, 1978, Barb received an Intermediate Honors Award at UVA for being in the top 20% of her class. It was a very nice ceremony on the historic Lawn at UVA, basically a mini-graduation. In fact, we have better pictures from it than the real graduation. And it was a lovely fall afternoon. Mary Dean joined Louise and me in celebrating the event.
Also on hand for the festivities were Barb’s school friends Patti, Amy and Sherry.
Our photo story continues with Barb’s 20th birthday, celebrated at her folks’ home in Oakton, this time with an appearance (barely) by Betsy who was in her senior year at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg.
Some glamour shots of Bourbie. She was the best.
From then it was a short hop until Halloween, celebrated partly with pumpkin carving at the Fishers. Barb was a very serious pumpkin carver for a number of years. Bourbie got in on the act.
Halloween continued at UVA with Barb’s 2nd-year roommate Amy Sanders and her boyfriend, Jim. We don’t know what became of Jim, but we have a nice blackmail photo of him, just in case. Amy went on to a career with IBM and lives in Westchester County, NY. For a while we stayed in touch and visited, but not so much lately.
In November 1978, I sent the following letter home to Mom. She saved a handful of my letters, even though there’s not a lot of earthshaking news.
I think I split Christmas 1978 between Oakton with the Fishers and Riviera Beach with Mom and Dad in their apartment at Sugar Sands.
Looks like that same trip there was also a fishing expedition with Tom Fitzgerald who had retired in nearby Jupiter. It was maybe a few years later that Tom got in a bad fishing accident with Dad. The two of them were out in the Gulf Stream when a wave sloshed Tom overboard. Tom nearly lost his leg when his pants got caught in the propeller. Dad dove in to save him, got them both back onboard, fashioned a tourniquet and called the Coast Guard. Dad saved Tom’s life, but I think Dad felt some responsibility and it chilled his appetite for fishing somewhat. Tom took a long time to recover and didn’t fish much after that. Dad had a hard time getting comfortable with any other regular fishing buddy. He kept the boat for many more years but went out less and less frequently.
In January 1979, just after New Years, Barb came down to Riviera Beach and we took a trip with Mom and Dad up to Disney World for a day (or two?) at Epcot and the Magic Kingdom. I believe this was Barb’s first exposure to Disney World.
For the President’s Day weekend in February 1979, I went to Charlottesville to be with Barb. We were caught by a large, not-well-forecasted blizzard that hit the DC area especially hard, shutting down roads and interstates. After having a good time playing in the snow in Charlottesville, I was able to get a Greyhound bus back to DC on Monday evening, one of the first vehicles moving. There was barely one lane plowed on Rt. 29 and I-66, and in DC there was almost no one on the streets except for farmer’s tractors there for a strike. The bus dropped me at the old Greyhound terminal on New York Avenue, which was not a great part of town at that time, at about 11pm. There were no taxis, no Metro, and no alternative but to walk the 4+ miles back to my apartment in Clarendon. It was frigid, scary, silent and beautiful all at the same time. Virtually the only vehicles I saw moving were the farm tractors, either taking people to hospitals or doing doughnut spins for fun on Pennsylvania Avenue. The next day cleared up nicely, making for a famous poster scene of Georgetown. I think school stayed closed most of the week.
For Spring Break, 1979, Barb had her wisdom teeth taken out. Lucky girl. At the clinic, where I think Louise also worked part time, she found a pair of kittens. We picked one, named him Clyde, and brought him back to be the Fishers’ cat and Bourbie’s friend. We all stayed at the Fishers’ while Barb recuperated. Unfortunately, Clyde did not adjust well to his new home (or Bourbie) and before long Louise had to find him a new family.
In summer of 1979, I worked as an intern at the IRS and moved into an apartment in Arlington on 16th Street near the Court House Metro station. My roommate was Bill Englehart, who had been a friend of the Fishers in Dusseldorf and was a year ahead of me at Georgetown. The apartment was a two-bedroom place in an old shared house. The most notable event in our year there was when the ceiling in Bill’s bedroom collapsed from a leak in the roof, covering everything he owned in soggy drywall and insulation. Fortunately, at that point he didn’t own very much. Here’s a letter I wrote to Mom and Dad from around that time.
We were visited again that summer by Anne Banwell and took in the DC sights, including the National Gallery East Wing which opened the year before and quickly became one of our favorite spots for its quirky architecture.
Also in the summer of 1979, I got my first car, a blue Chevy Chevette, and a haircut for the purposes of my working life. Here are some shots with Barb on one of our first auto journeys, making a proper suburban shopping visit to the Tyson’s Corner mall.
In the fall semester of my senior year of 1979, I interned on Capitol Hill in the office of Rep. Berkeley Bedell of Iowa where I worked on topics like gasohol. Then in the spring, I started interning with two related consulting firms, Washington International and Bei Jing-Washington in Chevy Chase.
Christmas 1979 was again split between the Fishers and Mom and Dad.
By this time, Mom and Dad were in their new home at 1080 Powell Drive in Riviera Beach. They enjoyed that home for many years, with its pool in the backyard, boat dock on the canal, and space for Mom’s treasures from Hong Kong.
Dad particularly loved the canal and opportunities for fishing.
Mom and Dad entertained lots of visiting friends at this house. Here are photos with Wilfred Chan (I believe), Dad’s Exxon colleague from Hong Kong. The family room was also Dad’s entertainment center, with his stereo and TV setup, meticulously wired together and constantly changing with new gadgets.
In my final semester at Georgetown, I started interning for Washington International, a small consulting firm that was also starting to work in China. This would end up leading to my first real job after college.
Submitted as evidence that I was pretty much always a smartass, here are two Mother’s Day cards from my college years that Mom saved.
I attended Barb’s graduation in Charlottesville on May 18, 1980 with the Fisher clan but can’t recall much other than it was a lovely day. I can’t find any photos of it, either (how do we not have pictures?), so I’ll repeat the one from Barb’s Intermediate Honors ceremony.
We do, however, have Barb’s diploma framed on our wall, along with her well-earned Phi Beta Kappa certificate and her Award in Asian History. Let there be no doubt that Barb was a star student. She worked hard and is rightly proud.
On the other hand…Mom and Dad came up for my graduation in May 1980. Georgetown alum and at that time former Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, was my graduation speaker. Can’t remember a word he said, but I was impressed that he was so young.
My Georgetown diploma got rolled up and stayed in our basement for a few years until our cat, Bert, peed on it in an act of metaphorical justice. I’m pretty sure the diploma is still rolled up in my trunk in the attic, appropriately aged, though I’m reluctant to check.
While I was graduating, Barb’s friends from UVA, Patti Ballantine and Lee Bowman, got married. Who gets married the week after they graduate (other than my own Mom and Dad)? Barb was Patti’s Maid of Honor and traveled down to the wedding in Chesapeake, VA, skipping my graduation and missing a nice meal afterward. It was a close call. Not pictured below is the evening before the wedding where Barb helped Patti’s Mom and family make hundreds and hundreds of pecan tarts for the reception. The Ballantines were the source of what has become Barb’s pecan tart recipe, which Barb notes she has improved.
To honor Barb’s graduation, Fred and Louise gave her a University of Virginia rocking chair that I proudly sit on nearly every day in our bedroom. My Mom and Dad got me a nice Georgetown watch that I almost never wore, but still have sitting in my drawer.
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