Exodus:  Leaving New York

I was just three years old when we moved from Buffalo to Santa Barbara so most of my memories of Buffalo are rather hazy and probably result more from hearing the histories repeated over the years than from any true memory process (nature or nurture?).

I don't know the hospital where I was born on 1 July 1954 and surprisingly the name of it has never really mattered to me, I am sure however that mom was most happy to be un-pregnant and not have to go through a summer in Buffalo during the final trimester. Whether it was planned or coincidence, mom did a great job with three pregnancies carrying four babies and never having to suffer through the dog days of August during those times!

It seems to me that the kitchen was to the rear of the house and adjoined the living room and that there was a covered patio outside of the kitchen that was perhaps damaged and removed due to a storm....which were plentiful with much lake effect snow during the winter and thunderstorms during the summer. I have never much cared for winter sports that involved snow, ice or multiple layers of extra clothing --I am sure that the long, cold, bleak winters during the first years of my life were a contributing factor to this unpreference!

I think there was a pretty noisy clock in the kitchen; I have a vague vision of sitting in a child size rocking chair, listening to the clock ticking and waiting for Pop to arrive home from work. I don't believe that this was a daily activity although I do remember Nancy being glued to the TV each afternoon for the Mickey Mouse Club, I may have watched occasionally but I didn't really develop an interest in Annette Funicello until the Beach Blanket movies were produced in the '60's... Lassie however was a very acceptable program for my tastes.

We had a reasonable size yard, fenced, with open space on the adjoining property to the rear that was farmed. I think one year it may have been planted in strawberries. I believe that the gentleman that farmed that property gave me a ride on his tractor or at least let me sit on it (the beginning my long term love affair with machinery and heavy equipment!) There was a sandbox for Nancy and I to play in and it seems that there may have been a cover for it to keep the cat from pooping there! It must have been during our last summer in Buffalo that I "helped" plant beans along one of the fence lines.

Roy and Nancy, Summer 1956

Nancy and I got along pretty well and I believe that I cried the first day that she got on the school bus for kindergarten because I didn't think she would be coming back.

When Joanne and Allison were born, I was still in diapers and mom cringed at the thought of THREE kids in diapers (I cringe at the thought of ANYTHING in diapers!). It seems that I was asked / told in that "special tone" that I should not need diapers anymore and much to everyone's surprise I became housebroken rather quickly!

While we were in Buffalo, Pop was working at Cornell Aeronautical Lab. A dear family friend, Harry Iddings had also worked at Cornell. I think that Harry Iddings was involved with Pop getting a new job at TEMPO, a think tank type company in Santa Barbara owned by General Electric Company. The Iddings had three children, slightly older than us kids (their two boys, Bruce and David, I held in highest esteem and they always made sure to pick on me as they would a younger brother!), and their family tradition was that for Easter all their children received new underwear!!! --remember this was Buffalo, N.Y., COLD, COAL BURNING, so if you were washing laundry and hang drying in the basement all winter long (as was the SOP at that point in time--1950's) your whites weren't so white come April, no matter how much bleach one used!

As one can imagine, a chance to move back to THE GOLDEN STATE, where both Mom and Pop had been raised was a GOD-SEND for the whole family!