McHenry County Blog

I got into a conversation at the First United Methodist Church about Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad heroine from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, from when my family and I come.

It bought back all sorts of memories of walking to the three-story brick Easton Elementary School 3-4 blocks from our home at 212 S. Aurora Street.  No kindergarten there.  No Velcro either. (Guess who didn’t learn to tie his shoe laces until the day before the first day of first grade.)

There were several routes to school.

The one I took most was straight north on Aurora Street for four blocks, then left for a block and, where the Talbot County Health Department parking lot is now, was the asphalt playground of Easton Elementary School.

That route took me past the edge of a black neighborhood (to the right on the map.)

I wondered why those who lived closer to the school than I didn’t go to school there.

We moved to lily white Salt Lake City as I was entering sixth grade.  Before leaving I attended a couple of days of class with my old classmates at the old high school, which was converted for lower grades.

The only black (I guess it was “colored” then) child I knew was the daughter of our cleaning lady.

We used to play on the concrete-anchored, two-inch pipe swing set my father constructed.  Most of the “colored” section of town was west of the courthouse and library.  And the only time I visited it was when the carnival came.

“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” was a movie I saw in Easton.

It wasn’t showing at the Avalon Theatre where I usually went to the movies.  It was at the Easton Theater a couple of blocks away.

When we went to the Avalon we liked to sit in the balcony.  I remember being bored by some tap dancer and a magician entertaining on the stage, probably the last gasp of vaudeville.

So, imagine my surprise when I was told only blacks could sit in the balcony.  What a disappointment.

“Weren’t they lucky?” I thought.

That building is gone, but in its place I think there is a museum about local history.  I didn’t see any reference to the predecessor theater and how blacks had not been allowed to sit on the main floor.

Although there were not blacks at Easton Elementary, there was a Chinese boy whose family ran the dry cleaners.  I went over to his family’s apartment one day after school.

One other race-related experience made an impression.  My parents took me to a minstrel show held in the armory.  White guys dressed up in black face.  It was sponsored by some civil organization as a fundraiser.  I remember lots of physical comedy, but nothing specific.

After we moved to Salt Lake City, I was reading Life Magazine one afternoon and saw a picture of the front of my old grade school.  Besides the cut line, it was easily recognizable from the two granite banisters beside the front entrance.

And the reporting was about how someone had blown up a little bomb at the back entrance of the school.

Why?

The Talbot County Board (or Board of Education if there was a sub-board) had decided to implement Brown v. Board of Education by integrating one grade at a time, starting with the first grade.

Some resident obviously did not approve and took extreme action.

More tomorrow.

Earlier segments of this biography of my father can be found below on McHenry County Blog.

In 1952, my youngest sister Ellen was born.

That was also the year Dad switched his registration from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in order to be able to vote for Dwight Eisenhower for president. (Maryland has a closed primary, unlike Illinois’.)

And the state was as Democratic then as it is now.

To understand how Democratic the area was and how significant it was for the President of the Easton Town Council to switch parties, let me tell you about the 1952 Halloween paintings I helped put on the barber shop’s front window.

It was a parade to a haunted house. On a wagon was a sign that said,

A day or so after we painted it, my 5rh grade teacher, Miss Ornett, suggested that I should change the sign to

Compliant child that I was, I did.

The Eastern Shore had always been conservative. Today my birth place is firmly in Republican Party control.

But I remember in 1948 when I was six asking my mother why she and Dad weren’t in favor of President Truman. I am not sure of the answer, but that’s the first political thought I remember…unless watching my mother cry when she heard the news that President Roosevelt had died in 1945 when I was two years and ten months counts.

Just as Dad may have been the first to get a student loan, he certainly was one of the first Democratic Party office holders to switch to the Republican Party—all the rage while Ronald Reagan was in office.

My mother, who was the daughter of a Queen Anne County, Maryland, Democratic Party county board member James Clayland Stevens didn’t follow suit until 1954.

Her father was the swing vote who tried to keep the county’s two Democratic Party factions honest after he was recruited by one to run on its slate.

In 1953, the family moved to Salt Lake City.
Dad found that he could not get a job at the National Canners Association because the national association did not want to offend its regional affiliate.

So, he looked outside of the food industry.

He found the National Chinchilla Breeders and Marketing Associations in Salt Lake City. It had lots of employees, but was looking to modernize and downsize. Dad did both. The association keep voluminous records of the genealogy of the little animals with the softest fur on earth. He implemented a pre-computer filing and sorting system using cards about the size of 4 by 6 inches with places to punch out indicators around all four edges.

That must have meant there needed to be many, many fewer employees, because by the time he moved the office to Middletown, New York, in 1956, the association did not need very many people.

The office was moved because Dad convinced his board that if the industry was going to survive they needed to sell some pelts for coats and stoles. Since the fur market was in New York City, being fifty miles up the Hudson was close enough to make sales pitches in the city and far enough to avoid the high cost of labor there. The pelt is pretty poor, but the black and gray fur you see above is the natural color. The marketers experimented with dying the pelts blue, among other colors.

After about a year, my father was let go. The board figured his two top assistants earning $5,000 each could do the job he was doing earning $10,000. (My sister Jan covers this much better than I.)

So, Dad was looking for a job while I was a sophomore at Middletown High School. What he found paid less than the NCBA, but it was a job. He was the natural resources man for the National Association of Manufacturers dealing with the big lumber companies, among others.

I suspect he immediately starting looking for a job that paid more and would allow him to see his family more than Wednesday night and weekend. (While Middletown was fifty miles from New York, the same distance as Crystal Lake is from Chicago, the train trip was at least an hour and a half. The track was so bad, the commuters called it the Eire and Lackadaisical.)

He stayed in a single room occupancy hotel in NYC, meeting all sorts of interesting people, as he did in Chicago when he preceded us to take his new job as Manager of the Barley and Malt Institute.

“Tell Grandmom—his mother—it’s about malt, like malted milk,” he told me by phone. (You see Addie Watlin-Skinner in her mid-nineties here.)

Addie Skinner was not one who favored alcohol or cards. She and her husband left the Methodist Church about 1944 because it was getting too liberal. My grandfather Skinner built a Holiness Church near Crumpton, Maryland, where they retired.

Dad came to Chicago while us kids finished the school year. He lived in a single room occupancy hotel.

Dad and Mom decided on Crystal Lake as the place they wanted to live. It had a lake that seemed safer than Lake Michigan.

= = = = =
Here are the links to the other stories in this series:

Biography of Calvin L Skinner – Part 1 – Second Son, School Years

Biography of Calvin L. Skinner – Part 2 – College, Marriage, First Jobs

Biography of Cal Skinner, Sr. – Part 3 – First House, Elected President of the Easton, Maryland, Town Council

Biography of Cal Skinner, Sr. – Part 4 – Storm Sewer Grates, Miles River Yacht Club, Slot Machines, Chesapeake Bay Bridge

Biography of Cal Skinner, Sr. – Part 5 – Switching Parties, Moving to Salt Lake City, Middletown and Crystal Lake

Biography of Cal L Skinner – Part 6 – The Early Crystal Lake Days, Dipping Feet Slowly into Political Arena

Biography of Cal Skinner, Sr. – Part 7 – Running for County Auditor, Precinct Committeeman, Calling the Meeting that Led to McHenry County College

Biography of Cal Skinner – Part 8 – The Star Reporter, Daughter Ellen Bored in High School, Prohibited from Attending MCC Classes

Biography of Cal L Skinner – Part 9 – Responsible Republicans’ Slate, County Board Reapportionment

Biography of Cal Skinner, Sr. – Part 10 – Unsuccessful County Clerk Try, County Airport Fight, Wife’s Death

I got a request for a biography of my father and worked on it well into two nights.

It isn’t finished yet, but my younger sister Jan, a special ed teacher near Baltimore, has come up with some memories that I want to share on our father’s birthday, which is today, June 8th. Dad was born in 1916 and died in 1989. Jan wrote this Sunday.Thanks for the opportunity of reflecting on what a great Dad we had.

Jan

I was in church this morning and the minister was talking about how unusual it is in the Bible to talk about God as our Father.

So, I was remembering Dad and how having a dependable father made it easy for me to trust in God the Father. (Baby Jan and her father to the left.)

I remember in 8th grade Dad lost his job because the company, National Chinchilla Breeders of America, a trade association, was having some financial troubles and decided to lop off the highest paid person, the executive secretary, Dad.

I have often recently marveled that I never felt like this was a tragedy or that my life would change because of this. I just assumed he would get more work and that life would go on, which it did.

But I am pretty sure that today kids in the 8th grade are suffering anxiety if their fathers lose their jobs.

I realize it isn’t the same economy as it was in 1957, but I am so grateful that Mom and Dad didn’t put that adult worry on us kids. Thanks, Dad.

My brother-in-law Denny Desmond did my father’s taxes. He has often marveled that Dad didn’t make that much money, but managed to send us three kids through college without burdening us with college loans, keep a boat, etc. etc. on a modest income with one family earner.

Dad was frugal.

I remember him buying milk at the gas station to save money.

I remember him always eating hot dogs and baked beans at Howard Johnson’s on trips.

I think he did like them, but I also think that his main motivation was to save money.

The rest of us had clams or something else. I am frugal myself, probably because of his example.

When Mike (Peters) was in seminary I made a corduroy jacket for my eldest girl (Newborn Elizabeth above in her grandfather’s arms) out of an old red robe. It felt good to “make do.”

I am still using his 1960′s something riding lawn mower.

He would be too.

He went through college as an agricultural major in 3 1/2 years at the University of Maryland and that included a semester off to go work his father’s farm when his dad got sick.

He survived on skim milk (which was going to be thrown away), oatmeal, baked beans (again) and I don’t know what else.

He worked several jobs.

He got a “loan” of sorts from the bank in Sudlersville, MD. One of the directors had noticed that he had potential (and no money) and told Dad that he needed to go to college.

He gave him checks and said to write them when he needed money–that he could pay it back later. Thanks to that person who saw the specialness of Dad and helped him to get ahead.

He started to date my mother again (they were in high school together) after she had graduated from college.

Pop Pop Stevens told him that Eleanor was home and that he should stop by.

Time passed.

When he asked Mother if she would marry him, she said that she would have to think about it. I guess he asked sooner than she had expected.

Anyway, he never brought it up again.

So one day, a week or so later, she said, “Do you remember that question you asked me a while ago?”

He responded that he did not remember it.

“Well,” she said, “the answer is yes.”

He said, “I’d hoped you would have forgotten.”

I don’t know what happened after that.

Mom should have punched him one, but I always tell the grandkids that the scene faded out into a kiss.

(The wedding certificate is above right and a wedding day photo is to the left.)

He never called my Grandmother Stevens anything.

If you are getting married, don’t do this.

Somehow it was never settled what to call her, and so he always waited for eye contact and then talked. I guess Mrs. Stevens was too formal and “Mom” was reserved for his mother.

Anyway, I made sure I got it straight what I was going to call Mike’s parents before the wedding. (Jan and Mike Peters cutting their wedding cake.)

I called them Mom and Dad and never felt that my loyalty to my birth parents was in any danger by sharing the name. I felt close to my in-laws and they to me.

Maybe he called her Mom Mom after the grandkids came. I’m not sure.

I only applied for one job after college.

I just knew that Fort Logan Mental Health Center was going to hire me as a special ed teacher. I felt I was in the will of God.

He said that perhaps I should apply somewhere else, to hedge my bets (reasonable request for a parent who did not want to continue to support me after college).

But I didn’t and I did get hired. He drove out to Denver, Colorado with me to help me get set up in an apartment after I graduated from Michigan State. (Jan with Eleanor and Cal Skinner above.)

I left my contacts in the motel somewhere in Kansas. More were ordered and he didn’t make a big deal out of it.

I was grateful.

Dad told me once that he was useful on the County Board because he knew how to ask questions.

When he was on the County Board, I remember that the board had people come to present their proposals.

One was about a landfill, I think.

Well, you can have people come before a board, but if the people on the board haven’t done their homework, they won’t know what to ask.

Dad did his homework. He worked hard.

One summer after Mike had moved to Hawaii for the Navy (we were to come in August), I took 11 hours at Northern Illinois towards my Masters in Special Ed.

Mom and Dad watched my girls.

I was really working hard and Dad told me that I was probably doing too much. I really valued that compliment because I knew I was working hard if Dad thought so.

(Below you see Cal and Eleanor Skinner with their granddaughters. Elizabeth and Sarah, Jan’s daughters have the long hair. Ellen’s three are Lissa, bottom right with the pigtails, Heather, bottom left in pigtails, Kelly being held by her grandmother’s right arm. Cal’s daughter Alexandra is being held by her left arm.)

After Mom died Dad went to her grave in Church Hill to “talk” with her.

He was going to drive back to Crystal Lake alone and his eyes were not the best.

I told him that if he had just talked with Mom he knew she would not be in favor of this.

He responded,

“I talk things over with her, but I don’t always agree with her.”

He had a great sense of humor.

When Mom’s casket went to Dover instead of Baltimore, we talked about how Mom liked to travel. He never lost the twinkle in his eye.

I got to know him more after Mom died than before.

As with many families, the mother was the hub.

But after my husband Mike died and after Mom died, Dad and I discussed things more as peers.

We talked about when to take off the wedding rings.

We talked about moving on in relationships.

It was a precious time.

We discussed what should be on the family tombstone bench (in Church Hill, Maryland) that Mike and I and Mom and Dad would share.

He was fine with Mike’s request,

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel.”

The other side said,

“Sit Awhile Rest and Reflect.”

As we near Father’s Day and Dad’s birthday, June 8, it has been good to reflect up a father who lead by example and was always there for us.

Thanks to Jan’s husband Sudhir Patel for sending most of the photos while Jan was in school.