After a while I found that Latin was making Spanish easier and vice versa.
When Miss Hernandez, my Spanish teacher, found out I was studying Latin,
she began tutoring me. I not only worked my way through Virgil, I learned
to speak Spanish like a Mexicano.
Algebra and plane geometry were all the math our school offered; I went
ahead on my own with advanced algebra and solid geometry and trigonometry
and might have stopped so far as College Boards were concerned-but math is
worse than peanuts. Analytical geometry seems pure Greek until you see
what they're driving at-then, if you know algebra, it bursts on you and
you race through the rest of the book. Glorious!
I had to sample calculus and when I got interested in electronics I
needed vector analysis. General science was the only science course the
school had and pretty general it was, too-about Sunday supplement level.
But when you read about chemistry and physics you want to do it, too. The
barn was mine and I had a chem lab and a darkroom and an electronics bench
and, for a while, a ham station. Mother was perturbed when I blew out the
windows and set fire to the barn-just a small fire-but Dad was not. He
simply suggested that I not manufacture explosives in a frame building.
When I took the College Boards my senior year I passed them.
It was early March my senior year that I told Dad I wanted to go to the
Moon. The idea had been made acute by the announcement of commercial
flights but I had been "space happy" ever since the day they announced
that the Federation Space Corps had established a lunar base. Or earlier.
I told Dad about my decision because I felt that he would know the answer.
You see. Dad always found ways to do anything he decided to do.
When I was little we lived lots of places-Washington, New York/Los
Angeles, I don't know where-usually in hotel apartments. Dad was always
flying somewhere and when he was home there were visitors; I never saw him
much. Then we moved to Centerville and he was always home, his nose in a
book or working at his desk. When people wanted to see him they had to
come to him. I remember once, when the money basket was empty, Dad told
Mother that "a royalty was due." I hung around that day because I had
never seen a king (I was eight) and when a visitor showed up I was
disappointed because he didn't wear a crown. There was money in the basket
the next day so I decided that he had been incognito (I was reading The
Little Lame Prince) and had tossed Dad a purse of gold-it was at least a
year before I found out that a "royalty" could be money from a patent or a
book or business stock, and some of the glamour went out of life. But this
visitor, though not king, thought he could make Dad do what he wanted
rather than what Dad wanted:
"Dr. Russell, I concede that Washington has an atrocious climate. But
you will have air-conditioned offices."
"With clocks, no doubt. And secretaries. And soundproofing."
