Читать книгу The American College of Switzerland Zoo - James E. Henderson - Страница 1

I started this book one evening while I was taking a course about explosives for my current job. I was sitting in a Spartan dorm room with a glass of wine that I had just carried back from a nearby bar thinking about my son. It was the summer before his senior year in high school, and he had just started college-hunting trips. I began reminiscing about my years in college, especially one year I spent in a small school perched on the side of a mountain in Switzerland. For me, that year was very strange, almost surreal, compared to the life I had led before.

My father was an army colonel, which had made him the black sheep of an Ohio Quaker family. I grew up as an army brat and, before I entered high school, had lived in a dozen different homes, including a few on military bases, in several different states. In a way, the army was my life, too. The only friends I kept longer than a couple of years were army brats whose dads happened to get stationed on the same base.

That’s not quite true. My relatives also played an important role in my life. We visited my Quaker grandparents at Christmas and on vacations. My cousins often came in for the holidays, and they were friends that I would keep for life. I can remember eavesdropping on several conversations between my father and his family about how he could justify working in the army despite having been raised to reject war. Voices were never raised, and the dialog included lots of quiet time for listening and attempting to understand each other. However, my impression was that while they listened and accepted, there was little agreement. In fact, my grandmother even stood in protest outside the biological warfare center in Fort Detrick when we were stationed there. Then again, her protesting did not affect the fact that she was nearby, and we picked her up at the line each evening and took her to dinner in Frederick, Maryland.

When I was old enough to start high school, dad found out that we would have to move twice over the next four years so he offered me a chance to attend Olney, a small Quaker boarding school in Ohio. It was the school that he, my grandparents, and many other relatives had attended. So, at fourteen, I went to Olney, and spent the next four years with several of my cousins learning about my Quaker roots.

I learned how my father and his parents had kept their cool during their talks as I grew up in this school run by a caring and nurturing staff and surrounded by peaceful rolling hills. Like many students, it took me a while to get used to sitting for an hour in silent meetings for worship, but over the years I found it provided time for inner reflection.

I liked this simple, peaceful life so well that I went to Earlham, a Quaker college in Indiana. The heavy trees and open green areas of the campus also appealed to my love of nature. However, this college took academics to a new level, and I found it difficult to maintain my grades while being involved with the rest of campus life. By spring term, I was on academic probation and spent all my waking hours on my studies.

Then, in 1966, as my sophomore year approached, my father was offered an assignment in Germany as a reward for his service and to keep him in the army after he was eligible for retirement. To me, it seemed like a great chance to escape my current predicament and to spend a year in Europe. This story begins then as I found myself transported to another continent and in a third reality.