The Final Part

The end of a five-month long project to tell a man's life story. Without a doubt the most personally rewarding and satisfying thing that I have ever written. I hope others who may read it think it was a story worth telling.

The slow decline continued into 1976. There were good days where he felt and acted like his old self, usually when getting together with friends and relatives, but those days seemed to be dwindling. After yet another thoracic, or chest, surgery on February 20^th the good days were pretty much gone, reduced now to tolerable days, and even those were outnumbered by downright bad days, days in which it was all he could do to get out of bed and watch TV. Then early in the evening it was back to bed where he would pull the covers up tight around himself, as if trying to hide from it all.

When looked at with an unflinching eye, anyone’s life is bound to have its contradictions; and the idea that others see things in us we cannot see in ourselves is neither new nor unique. That being said, probably the biggest contradiction in C.J.’s life came to greater light when dealing with cancer and his own mortality.

Here was a man skilled at public speaking, a man who loved to converse on so many subjects, a man so outgoing he could tell a joke or funny story as well as anyone; but here also was a man whose innermost thoughts were almost impregnable. Long before he got sick, Carol and the kids could always sense when something was bothering him, but they knew better than to ask what the problem was. Money worries, health issues – Clarence would never say. One way or another he let it be known quite strongly that he didn’t want to talk about it. They were infrequent, but when he was in one of those tight, quiet, locked-down moods everybody kept their distance. Only Carol could get through, on occasion, and even she found it very difficult to do so.

Thus, it really is no surprise that now in the time of his greatest challenge, his greatest need, he was unable, or unwilling, to open up and express his feelings and his fears to anyone. Not even to himself, at least not in his private journals.

That periods of depression and sullen silence would set in at this point is hardly a surprise. Indeed, given the circumstances, who wouldn’t react that way, at least to some degree? Still, the questions remain: Why couldn’t he ever talk about it? Would it have helped ease the pain somehow? Was this all part of the silence-is-strength mindset that men of his generation were brought up in? The fear that any crack in the wall might spring a flood of emotions and sap his strength and purpose altogether? In C.J.’s case there are no sure answers anymore. The terrible, heavy thoughts had to be there – every morning when he woke up and then again every night before he drifted off to sleep. He was sick. In all likelihood, terminally so.  But as for how he was dealing with that fact, only he could say. And he wasn’t talking.

Of course recognizing his withdrawal made it no less frustrating to those closest to him – his wife and children. 

Back on February 18, 1975 Diane wrote him a direct and heartfelt letter of love and concern. In that letter she wrote: “I know there are communication barriers between us at times and I guess it’s hard for me to approach you, especially about the cancer….I want so much to know what’s going on in your thoughts. It will be such a mental relief off your shoulders, and ours too. Even though we carry on ‘business as usual,’ watching TV, laughing, talking as if everything is ok, it’s just an act really….[Your] state of mind is your worst enemy now and you can’t let it control you.”

Clarence did respond to Diane’s letter, but whatever he said is, unfortunately, long gone. The truth is he was putting up a bold front as best he could, as though everything was, more or less, “business as usual.” But, giving credit where it is truly due, he was at the same time carefully preparing for what now seemed to be the inevitable.

He had the foresight to sign a ‘living will,’ which instructed doctors to discontinue further treatment if and when they deemed it no longer viable. Back in the mid-70s that was not as common as it is today. He also began to sit down with Carol and go over in detail all the financial matters that would need tending to in the future.  More than ever, financial security for his family was of utmost concern to Clarence, and he decided that when the time came he wanted his body donated to the Medical College of Wisconsin Department of Anatomy in Madison. He did tell Carol he wasn’t going to waste any money on funeral home expenses, or for that matter, not even on a burial plot or headstone. That money, he figured, would be better spent on insuring his family’s future well-being.

Here the point must be made that other than Clarence himself it was Carol who bore the brunt of the illness. More than anyone else, she lived day in and day out with not only a lifetime of memories but the present reality as well. As she gradually grew stronger in her lead role within the family, she watched as her husband of nearly thirty years grew physically weaker and more dependent – a definite reversal of how things had always been between them. True to her own nature, Carol maintained throughout a quiet and faithful strength that certainly helped sustain everyone during these troubled times.

As for that memoir project Clarence wanted to write, he was able to complete a lengthy synopsis of his journal entries for the years 1950 – 1973. (With this he deliberately stopped short of the time that cancer took hold.) At the conclusion of that family memoir he added this final, prophetic note:

The kids may eventually want to read this and, if so, I hope they get a few laughs reminiscing over the many events. We had a lot of fun as a family and since the fortunes decreed that I was to get kicked out of shape I’m so glad it happened after I retired and we have a reasonable degree of security, come what may.

The final stage began to set in around March of ’76. Confusion seemed to be seeping into his day-to-day living, enough so that at one point he was examined to see if he might have a brain tumor. That test proved to be negative. Finally, in late April, it was clear he needed more assistance than could be provided at home. He was taken to the VA Hospital and assigned a bed in one of their wards.

For several weeks he stayed there comfortably as possible, welcoming visits from old friends and family. Near the end he was given a private room, and then a curious thing happened. While what was left of his physical strength continued to slip away, so, too, did the pain. Maybe it was the medication, maybe the shutting down of his body. Maybe it was something else. Because more and more his thoughts during those last days started going back to simpler times. With a weak but genuine smile he would see visitors and in conversation make reference to past times and places as if they were happening right now: train schedules to Prescott, his dad working the night shift on the bridge, old baseball games and bands he used to listen to in his youth.

He was going back home for one last time.

It was when the cancer basically began shutting down his digestive system that doctors knew there was nothing left to do. Adhering to the agreement of the Living Will, they stopped administering any more cancer-fighting drugs, employing only what they could to help dull the pain. On June 3^rd – Carol’s 54^th birthday – members of the immediate family gathered at his bedside and waited, with an overriding sense of relief, for the end to finally come.

With a last audible breath Clarence John Stolt’s life ended peacefully at 9:04 P.M. on Thursday, June 3, 1976. 

On the outskirts of Prescott just south of town lies Pine Glen Cemetery. Dedicated in 1856, twenty-some years after Philander Prescott first staked his riverfront claim, the grounds have weathered many a harsh season since and held up quite well. In a corner of the cemetery, not far from the bluffs that overlook the fabled Mississippi, sits the STOLT headstone, the final resting place of Francis and Fay and other loved ones.  

From this spot one can look over and see the wide swath of water that carves out the landscape. Where once paddle-wheel steamers and wooden flatboats roamed the water, now it is sleek pleasure boats and the occasional industrial barge lumbering along. The traffic may have changed, but the river has been, and always will be, a constant in these parts.

It was not far from that river that C.J. Stolt was born on a September morning in 1916 and grew to be a man with a caring heart, a good laugh, and a writer’s instinct. That instinct and innate creativity weaved in and out of a life that may have been shortened but was, to all who knew him, certainly well-lived. His was a meaningful part of the whole. Perhaps now some who didn’t know him might agree.

Looking back on it all brings out different things: smiles and recollections, maybe a what-if question or two, and yes, a twinge of longing and sadness for those who knew him and wish he was here to read these words. But in the end this is not a sad story. Quite the contrary. Time, like life itself, moves on. And while the details of his story now come to an end, it is the warm memories that linger, and the rich legacy that stays here with us.

Which brings to mind the poem Clarence wrote when he was 11 years old, the one in which he fancied his young life being like a flowing river:

A river ran on and on

Day and night and night and day.

Going and going and never gone.

Longing to flow to the far away

Staying and staying and never still.

Going but staying, as I would say

River go the sea.

And another river might say

Stay with me,

And the river would answer

I go and I stay.                               

The memoir of Clarence Stolt (cont'd)

I'm still working on the memoir of my father - almost finished now. I'm still learning more and more about him and his life with every new page, and in the process learning more about my own life. That's a pretty neat thing in my book, and perhaps the main reason why I undertook this project in the first place. We all learn from our past.

The high temperature in Milwaukee on January 1, 1974 was -4 degrees. For whatever reason, Clarence often liked to make note of the weather in his journal. This day was cold, but no different from past winter days. The night before he and Carol had once again hosted their New Year’s Eve party, another well-attended, if slightly tamer, affair. Clarence was 57 years old now and adjusting to retired life. Wendy had graduated from UW-Madison and moved out on her own, beginning her career as a social worker at Luther Manor Senior Retirement Community in Wauwatosa. Diane, too, had moved on. She was a flight attendant with Delta Airlines and was stationed out in Boston. Kent still had a ways to go before leaving the nest – he had just turned 13, officially becoming a teenager. The beginning of a new year seemed a good time to take stock of things.

            “I was never much of a sentimental cuss,” Clarence wrote, “but I was pretty darn proud of my entire family. Guess I was always too tied up with the VA and neglected some of the more little intimate thoughts I should have mentioned.”

            The next day he had an appointment at the VA clinic to get a cortisone shot for an ailing knee. Like with everyone, the years had crept up and taken their toll with aggravating little aches and pains. Still, he felt plenty strong enough to get around town or enjoy his hikes in the neighborhood or the nearby park. Now, too, he had the time to resume correspondence with old friends, and “putter around” in the basement with his home movies, stamps and civil war records. At least one project he wanted to start was the writing of a family memoir based on the journals he had kept over the years. It was going to be an active retirement.

                In February C.J., Carol and Kent flew down to Atlanta to attend the wedding of their cousin Gail McDaniell. It was the same festive and happy gathering that it always was when a trip to Georgia was involved. However, on Monday, February 18, while still in Georgia, he had a tough, uncomfortable night trying to sleep. In his journal the next day he noted: “Just didn’t feel right.”

Two days later, on the 20^th, Clarence, Carol and Kent arrived back home and that’s when he first noticed blood in his urine. On the 21^st he was admitted to the VA hospital. While in the hospital on the 23^rd he wrote: “Feeling OK, but there’s something wrong.” And indeed there was. A malignant tumor was found on one of his kidneys. On the 27^th he was admitted for surgery and the kidney was removed. In the span of ten days everything in his life was turned upside down.

Initial reports after the surgery were good, and doctors spoke guardedly yet optimistically that all cancerous cells had been removed. Such was not the case, however, and on April 24^th Clarence underwent another operation to remove malignant cells growing on the outside of his lungs.

The cancer was spreading.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint exactly where C.J. was in terms of his diagnosis and his thoughts on June 16, 1974, but a telling sign might well be the passage he quoted that day in his journal. It came from political journalist Stewart Alsop’s memoir, A Stay of Execution, a detailed, if not gloomy, account of his final battle with leukemia.

“A dying man needs to die,” wrote Alsop, “as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong as well as useless to resist.”

When it comes to cancer there are fine and delicate lines one must walk. The balancing act between optimism, pessimism and reality is a tricky one. Clarence still had fight left in him in June of 1974, and reason for hope. But clearly he knew what was at stake.

From there things only got worse. His chest was still hurting from the April surgery. In July he started suffering severe stomach pains. On August 13^th  he was spitting up bits of blood and having his side incision drained again. His elbow was causing a lot of pain, too. By this time he was taking up to 30 pills and vitamins a day. Then on October 24^, 1974 a Dr. Lawinka from the VA staff laid the cards on the table and told him there may be “bad trouble” ahead. The word ‘cancer’ is never once mentioned in his journals, and was hardly spoken of around the house, but the finality of what he was dealing with was coming more into focus with every passing month.

By the beginning of 1975 Clarence was feeling increasingly anemic and listless. “Just don’t have any zip,” is how he succinctly put it. His red cell blood count was falling. Almost daily trips to the VA clinic meant more x-rays, more prescription refills, even blood transfusions. Radiation and chemotherapy, advanced as they were at the time, were the decided forms of treatment. In between the pain and discomfort the significant dates rolled by. On April 9^th he underwent another chest surgery. In July the problem was his intestines. On the 31^st of that month he had several polyps removed. October 10 marked the thirty-sixth straight weekday he had bussed down to the clinic for treatment.

Somewhere about this time he came home one day and shook his head. “Carol,” he said softly, “I’m not going to make it.”

The good ol' days

Just continuing with another bit of the story:

For Clarence these were truly good times. In June of ‘51 he and Carol bought their first house, a small Cape Cod style advertised as “the perfect starter home,” at 435 S 68^th  Street in West Allis for $12,500. Then on Feb 11, 1952 a second daughter, Diane Margaret, was born, immediately adding more energy to an already active household. Meanwhile, the job kept him on the go, often requiring travel throughout the state in support of veteran’s job training and financial assistance programs. And as if that wasn’t enough, about this time he started what would become a ten-year stretch of taking night classes in the areas of insurance, business law, accounting, public speaking, even a Spanish class, though by his own account that last one didn’t go so well.

            He was now a busy, family man and clearly family life sat well with him from the beginning. In the coming years, as the girls began to grow up, he would be only too happy to take them skating or hiking at nearby Greenfield Park on the weekends. He himself was almost childlike in his enthusiasm for anything having to do with Christmas time.

            And along with a very understanding wife he had his sense of humor. Unfortunately here is where the written record falls short. But anyone who ever knew C.J. remembered how he could laugh – and make others laugh. One quick example was a line he wrote in a letter to his brother-in-law, Hugh McDaniell, in 1959. Recalling Carol’s first attempts at learning how to drive a car he joked about “how nice it was having fresh meat on the table every night.”

            For fun he still had his monthly poker parties with some of the boys from the office. And whenever he got the chance he liked to take in a Packer game at State Fair Park in Milwaukee, or a Badger football game in Madison.

Then there was baseball. When the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953 it introduced the city to major league baseball, and vice versa. The Braves became tenants of the newly built County Stadium and C.J. quickly became a frequent visitor. It would prove to be a brief, star-crossed love affair between Milwaukee and the Braves. Within four years of their arrival the Braves put the city on center stage, winning the World Series in ‘57 and almost winning it again in ‘58. Future Hall of Fame players like Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews became, in those less cynical times, true sports heroes, men who were looked up to as a matter of civic pride. And County Stadium itself became a sports fan’s paradise, where every home game was an event, a packed house full of boisterous fans. In May of ’54 Time magazine went so far as to call the stadium “an insane asylum with bases.”

But the joy, while intense, didn’t last. By the beginning of the ‘Sixties the fortunes of the team began to fade and the support dwindled. In 1965 the Braves played before smaller and smaller crowds, and it was after that season that the team quietly left town and became the Atlanta Braves. For local sports fans it was a painful divorce. Still, no one who experienced firsthand the heyday of the Milwaukee Braves in the 1950s, and C.J. was in that crowd, would ever forget what it once was like.

How They Met

In looking back at the past one finds answers to the present. Here, for example, is how my mother met my father:

During that fall of ’44 a young woman from Black River Falls, Wisconsin was looking to move on with her life as well. After graduating high school and attending nearby Sparta Business College, Carol Thompson, and her sister Marian both found jobs as civilian secretaries at Camp McCoy, a military training facility in west central Wisconsin. (Camp McCoy also served as a German and Japanese Prisoner of War Camp during the war – in fact, in early 1945 three Japanese prisoners escaped from McCoy and were on the loose in the Wisconsin countryside for two weeks before being recaptured at a golf course near La Crosse.)

For three years Carol and Marian had been commuting the 27 miles from Black River Falls to Camp McCoy every workday, and they considered themselves lucky to do so. For two small town gals born and raised on a farm, working on an army base in the midst of the war effort was like a door opening out to the rest of the world. It didn’t take them long to start wondering what else might be out there.  So on October 23, 1944 they boarded a train in Black River Halls and moved down to Milwaukee. Having never before been in a city the size of Milwaukee, having no contacts or job leads, not even a place to stay, it was a gutsy move.

Indeed, arriving in a city full of rumbling streetcars, anxious war news and standing lines for rationed nylons was quite the eye-opener. But energy, determination and good fortune won out, and within a few days the girls had found an affordable apartment. However, the difference between making it in the big city and going back home defeated depended on their finding a job. Here fortune smiled again as their previous Civil Service training and experience at Camp McCoy fit in well with the needs of the Veterans Administration. They were hired on as clerk-stenographers. Carol gladly accepted her assignment - secretarial duty reporting to one Clarence Stolt in the Vocational Rehabilitation Department.

On August 15, 1945 radios and news services flashed the much anticipated word that Japan had surrendered. In what came to be known as Victory Over Japan Day, or V-J Day, factories and offices everywhere simply shut down. In downtown Milwaukee, as in major cities across the country, everyone stopped what they were doing and poured out into the streets on that summer day for a celebration the likes of which had not been seen before, and likely never will be again. Confetti and paper flew out of office windows. Cars and trolleys were nowhere to be found because every avenue was packed full of people dancing, strangers kissing, everyone walking around with smiles on their faces. World War II was finally over.

It is no exaggeration to say the war had, in one way or another, affected the life of every single American. Now, more than three-and-a-half years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the victory announcement let loose a torrent of pride, joy and relief. Little doubt that same euphoria extended to every desk and every office in the VA building at 342 North Water Street in Milwaukee.

Office romance was not all that uncommon or frowned upon in those days, as long as it didn’t interfere with getting the job done. Clarence and Carol had been working side by side for a while in a professional manner, but inevitably they started taking notice of one another. More and more she came to admire his intellect and sense of humor. He admired her shy ways and warm smile. “Very nice!” he wrote of her for the first time in the August 30^th entry of his daily journal, this after an office party of the same day – in all likelihood a formal celebration of V-J day.  One day soon after that he slipped a note into the ‘incoming’ basket on her desk - would she like to go out to dinner with him?

Memorial Day Message

Like most people I spent a leisurely holiday weekend - yard work, cooking out, attending a high school graduation - all very relaxing and enjoyable.

In doing research on my father's biography I recently came across a speech he wrote and delivered at Riverside Cemetary in Black River Falls, WI on May 30, 1961 to commemorate the ultimate sacrifice given by a few local soldiers. Fifty-one years later the words bear repeating.

An excerpt:

America is great because of the sacrifices these martyred dead have made on the altar of battle. America is great because we - the living - know well and know deeply our obligation to our dead. These boys sacrificed their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations for the good of America. We must do as much in our daily life…to bury intolerance, to bury pride, to bury ignorance, to bury hate.  We must bury these emotions of war, so that the feeling and force of peace can flower. Just as the poppies grow on Flanders field, so, too, can an era of peace and prosperity and happiness grow on the buried passions of dissension.

And now, 93 years after our first Memorial Day, we are holding services here as they are being held all over the world. For our American soldiers have transformed little plots of ground in all corners of this globe into America. Where they fought and bled and died, there is America.

The battlefields resound like a ghostly cannonade: St. Lo…Omaha Beach…Iwo Jima…Okinawa…Manila…Bloody Ridge…Chateau-Thierry.

Some other places bear no names, but only latitude and longitude. Such a remote spot in India has a final thought for us this morning. In this distant place is an Allied cemetery, where lie the bodies of many of our American soldiers who fought in India and Burma during World War II. Over the portals of this sacred grove are written these words: “TELL THEM THAT WE GAVE OUR TODAYS FOR THEIR TOMORROWS.”

This is the spirit of America speaking. This is the greatness of our Nation. Soldiers like your Mitchell Red Cloud, your Frank Miles, your Tommy Hagen, your William Moore gave their todays for our tomorrows. Just as our Lord gave the life of His son for us.

Very well said, I think.

Moving On With the Story

Still enjoying my biography project re: my father's life. I'm learning more about him, and trying, in my mind at least, to connect any dots I can between my life and his. Perhaps that is the essence of what a good biography should do.

Another excerpt:

"As he grew older and his thoughts turned toward choosing a career, the lure of words and writing started taking hold. After graduating from Prescott High Class of ’34 he was able to look beyond the bluffs of Prescott for his next step. At a time when college education was more privilege than expectation, Clarence was fortunate to attend the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where he chose to study journalism.

During the years 1937 and 1938, as part of his course work, he wrote and submitted articles to Hunting & Fishing magazine, and newspapers such as The Milwaukee Journal, The Milwaukee Sentinel and The St. Paul Daily News. As a college senior in 1938 he wrote a comprehensive 83-page analysis of the history and practices of The Washington D.C. Herald Times, a major publication in its day. Just how sincerely he took on this project is evidenced by a thank you note he sent to the newspaper which The Herald Times subsequently published in their editorial pages under a heading of Happy To Help:

May I take this opportunity to thank several members of the Herald Times staff for the fine cooperation and willing help they have given me in regard to a newspaper study course I have just completed.

I am a senior in journalism at the University of Minnesota, and as one of our requirements we must analyze and study some metropolitan newspaper situation. I selected the Herald Times and received an abundance of material from your various departments. Special thanks are due Mr. Titus of the promotion department.

May I also congratulate you on the fine job of publishing you are doing. Thanking you again, I am,

Clarence J. Stolt.

A few other notes of interest concerning his years as a Golden Gopher of Minnesota: alumni records confirm that C.J. played saxophone as a member of the University Marching Band in 1934 and ’35, possibly in 1936 as well. What a thrill it must have been performing on the field in front of thousands of fans in Memorial Stadium on those crisp autumn Saturday afternoons. And oh yes, a quick look at the NCAA record books shows that the school’s football team during that time happened to be the best in the nation. Minnesota was crowned National Champion in 1934, ’35 and ’36.

Also, attending several of C.J,’s political science courses was a notably bright classmate by the name of Hubert Humphrey, the man who would go on to become a Senator, Vice President and, in 1968, very nearly President of the United States.

The only other thing known about Clarence’s time at the University of Minnesota was that he graduated in 1938 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism."

Oh, how I wish I had more information about what his college years were really like. Something tells me he had a lot of fun back then. Just like I did.

A Life Story Begins

Here is the beginning of my father's biography:

Clarence John Stolt’s life began at 10:15 AM on Wednesday, September 20, 1916. He was born at home in the small, riverfront town of Prescott, Wisconsin, located in the western part of the state on the border with Minnesota. The town’s roots go back to the 1830s when a fur trapper and Indian translator by the name of Philander Prescott decided to build a trading post at the junction of the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers. Riverboat pilots going up and down the two rivers began calling it “Prescott’s Landing,” and from there a town came to be.  Those waterways, peaceful yet dangerous, were the lifeblood of the growing settlement, with logging, commerce and steamboat travel making it a convenient stopover for many a prospector and frontiersman. Life along the river in those times was not for the faint of heart.

Years later Francis and Fay Stolt came to live in Prescott where they raised three children. Francis was born in Sweden in 1877 and emigrated from that country to America in 1889. He served in the Armed Forces during the Spanish-American war. His wife, Fay Tyler, was born in Bay City, Wisconsin in 1886. Her family lineage could be traced back to John Tyler, the 10^th President of the United States.

Their wedding portrait from 1905 shows them not with the hard and stern faces so often seen in people of that time period, but rather the grace and confidence of a distinctly handsome couple. Dressed in black suit and white bow tie, he stands tall and looks every bit the strong, sturdy immigrant type, but with a dash of new world sophistication. Seated in front of him, the bride shows the calm demeanor of a pretty and proper lady in white.

Official documents list Francis’ occupation as a Stationary Engineer, meaning he manned the railroad bridge that spanned the rivers and connected the line between Wisconsin and Minnesota. Fay’s occupation was that of housewife. They proudly had two daughters, Gwendolyn, born in 1906, and Eileen, born in 1908, before that early autumn morning in 1916 when Fay, at age 30, gave birth to a son and named him Clarence.

Just as one can see those strong, wide waters of the Mississippi forever rolling along in the summer sun, it is easy to imagine how safe and carefree it must have been growing up in a place like Prescott in those days. There was fishing and pheasant hunting with his father, hiking and exploring with his friends below the bluffs carved out by the river. In the winter there was skating, sledding and skiing. In spring and summer it was baseball, football and bike riding. Certainly for a young boy, life in Prescott must have seemed well insulated from the turmoil of the rest of the world. Even in the midst of the Great Depression life in Prescott went on.

By 1932 Clarence, or C.J., as he preferred to be called, was sixteen years old and a busy sophomore in high school. He played on the Prescott baseball and basketball teams, played saxophone in the school band. In 1934, in addition to those activities, he got up on stage to perform the title role of Rodney Rochester, vagabond turned star football player in the Senior Class Play, “The College Hobo.” The play, described in a program as a four-act comedy-drama, was published in 1930 but is today so obscure as to make it virtually impossible to find any plot synopsis or summary. Suffice it to say that C.J. and Rodney Rochester probably saved the day somehow.

In between all that school participation he did find time to have other fun: an occasional game of poker with his buddies, “messing around” with the girls, and now and then sneaking in a drink of wine or something a little harder with the guys. In other words, high school kids weren’t all that different back in those days.