Poetry Prose and Other Words
by Ken Ingham
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Autobiography
Feet in the Country, Heart on the Farm
A memoir of my approach to adolescence, growing up in the suburbs of Detroit,
spending summers on my uncle's farm near Shelbyville Michigan, barging through adolescence, going to college, marrying my highschool sweetheart, attending graduate school, carreer at NIH and as a blood researcher for the American Red Cross, family, parenthood, grandparent hood . . . . available at Amazon.com
Preface
This project began as a collection of Kenny on the Farm stories aimed at children. My twin daughters were 11 years old. For most of their lives I had been regaling them with third person stories of my childhood summers on my uncle's farm in southwest Michigan. They never tired of hearing about my true-to-life shenanigans and predicaments. Telling those stories, and even more so writing them, was not just fun, it was therapeutic. Reflecting on that period of my life helped me to better understand myself, how those rural experiences had affected my values, my love of animals and plants, my need for outdoor solitude, my concern for the environment and my desire to conserve open space, clean air and clean water.
Gradually I began to think of the project as more of an autobiography than a collection of stories for children. In 1995 I completed a draft of what eventually became Part I of the present book, covering the pre-adolescent years. I distributed several photocopies to aging relatives who I feared might not live to see the finished product. They passed those copies on to others. The feedback was positive enough to keep me motivated. I had already drafted several stories about my teen years and was trying to decide how to include them. Meanwhile, I was living whole new chapters and recording some of them in a journal. I was writing the book at both ends, forward from the beginning and backward from the ever-shifting present. The only hope for continuity was to fill in the middle: college, marriage, graduate school, family and career. That took another 15 years, in part because finishing my first book of poetry, Ecoepic & other Poems, gained higher priority.
But who am I to write an autobiography? I am neither famous nor infamous. I lost my father at a young age, but I had plenty of help to overcome that. There were no tragedies, no holocausts to survive, no molestations, no harrowing or heroic war experiences, no sex change operations. And yet, in retrospect—the second time around—you have before you an inside look at the life of a man of those times, his growing up and coming of age, his intellectual and spiritual development, his evolution from a wannabe country boy to a scientist conducting health research for the National Institutes of Health and the American Red Cross. Part history, part science, part philosophy and travelogue, this is the story of my odyssey through the last half of the 20th century and into the third millennium. It is a privilege to share it with you.
Ken Ingham's biography
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Poetry Prose and Other Wordsby Ken Inghamhome
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AutobiographyFeet in the Country, Heart on the Farm PrefaceThis project began as a collection of Kenny on the Farm stories aimed at children. My twin daughters were 11 years old. For most of their lives I had been regaling them with third person stories of my childhood summers on my uncle's farm in southwest Michigan. They never tired of hearing about my true-to-life shenanigans and predicaments. Telling those stories, and even more so writing them, was not just fun, it was therapeutic. Reflecting on that period of my life helped me to better understand myself, how those rural experiences had affected my values, my love of animals and plants, my need for outdoor solitude, my concern for the environment and my desire to conserve open space, clean air and clean water.
Table of Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 I. Motown vs No Town: Growing Up in Two Places . . . . . 9 1. The Heavy Front Door . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2. Up Home in Shelbyville . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3. Welcome to Grammar School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 4. Every Child Deserves a Good Thrashing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 5. MacArthur Undefeated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 6. Dogs I Have Known . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 7. Roomers and Boarders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 8. A Room of My Own . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 9. I Had a Mom Like That . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 10. Three Reasons To Cry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 11. Undergoing a Hurdle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 12. Horse Barn Memorabilia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 13. Heath Bars Lead to Harder Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 14. Huckleberry Tavern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84 15. Return to Petersburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 16. Bully's First Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95 17. Gladys the Frugal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 18. Macho Rooster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 19. Carlene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 20. Seven Come Eleven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 21. Miracles and Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125 II. Affections and Affectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 22. The First Thing I Should've Done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 23. Yard Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 24. Fat Lip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140 25. Skip Run Sing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146 26. Hoops and High Hopes for a Hy Phi . . . . . . . . . . . . . .154 27. Driving Me Mad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .160 28. Transition to Normal School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 29. Fraternity Fatuities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172 30. Adrift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 31. Big Guy's Demise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 32. Becoming Engaged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 33. Staying Engaged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 34. Helpmates of One Flesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 III. Much Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 35. Heat and Light in Colorado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .212 36. Hindered Internal Rotation in the Rockies . . . . . . . . . . 220 37. Finishing Up and Moving On . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 38. MSU and Infants Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 39. East Coast Almost: Garrett Park, Maryland . . . . . . . . 248 40. Two Good Years at NIH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .254 41. Bright White Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .261 IV. Blood Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 42. My First (and only) Permanent Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268 43. Two Texans and a Yugoslav . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .276 44. Becoming the Trunk of My Family Tree . . . . . . . . . . . 287 45. Physical Chemistry of Plasma Proteins . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 46. Nuclear Free Zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .294 47. Slaughter Beach, Delaware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .299 48. Briary Bottom, West Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 49. Ein Jahr in der Schweiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313 50. Final Promotions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .319 51. Hunting Island, South Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .327 52. California Ramble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 53. Little Irene and Sonny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 V. Soviet Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .341 54. A Collaborative Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .342 55. Comradery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .349 56. Coming and Going Between Boondoggles . . . . . . . . . . .363 57. Draining the Brain of Sovereign Ukraine . . . . . . . . . . . . .372 VI. Overlapping Slices of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 58. Have Pain , Will Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 59. What Became of My Family's Farms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .389 60. Getting Greener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .399 61. My Good Friend Was A Therapist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .402 62. American Red Cross Disaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .408 63. Briary Bottom Forever Wild . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .412 64. Becoming Nana and Bapoo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 Portions of Family Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .428 Index of People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
Extracurriculum Vitae (in progress)
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