Looking Back
I’m an old man, and so I can afford to pause and look back. My parents loved me and influenced me, I’m sure – but I remember no rules except not to play cards with strangers on the train. I had no discipline, no long-term plans, no hopes and no inspirations. I was never told that I could or should be the President of the United States or a lawyer or a doctor or even a candlestick maker.
I didn’t seem to be interested in school. My mother was a teacher, and I never ever went to kindergarten, nor did I enter first grade on time, perhaps never. In the only essay that I remember I wrote, I stated that “I liked school, but not all the teachers.” By second grade I was firmly in the New York City School system, and remained there until I completed high school. By the time I was 10 years old, I discovered that I had not taken my books home – ever! This was not a deliberate, conscious effort on my part. It just evolved, and eventually I realized it. My grades were better than just passing, but I did not do any homework.
In high school I was very active in the Theatre Club and was usually the stage manager. I joined no other clubs save theatre. I did nothing in any athletics or student government. Nothing.
After school, except for the stage, all time was mine. I probably read all of the twenty or so volumes of the Book of Knowledge and would sometimes dip into my father’s set of the Eleventh Edition of Britannica Encyclopedia. I read travel, exploration, natural history, a few novels, no poetry, no foreign language and no religion. I did visit zoos and museums.
During the daylight hours, I looked, listened, walked, cycled, rowed, collected small creatures, fished and mucked about on mud flats in Jamaica Bay and on Atlantic beaches. I almost always had a boat.
When I came near to graduating high school, my father asked me what I wanted to study in college. I responded that I would prefer to go into the fishery and he said that fishing was for Sunday afternoon. He was in the glass business, so I ended up in the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University. There I earned a degree in Glass Technology and learned to shoe a horse, milk a cow, poach deer and run a stage. I took post graduate courses in liberal arts subjects. In biology, the professor told me that in a year he could have me at the Medical School of Strong Memorial, Rochester, New York preparing for a career in medicine. I thanked him with a “No, I don’t want to work for a living.” As a matter of fact, I quit working for others when I was about forty-five years old.
How did I manage without taking books home, without doing homework? Simple – in class I listened carefully and I watched intently. I paid strict attention, not only to what the teachers said, but to them as people. I didn’t just know the periodic table, I understood it. Also I never did the same thing in the same way twice. Whatever it was, whatever I did, it was not the same the second time. I never repeated what I had done – perhaps I forgot? Generally the change was an improvement. Someone else could make an exact copy. Not I. For me a prototype was obsolete the day it worked. I photographed a shot string, a jumping frog and invented a water pump – just one and then I went on to something else. It worked. Obviously this is not the way to manufacture, and by and large invention governed the choices I made and things I achieved.
M F Roberts