Growing up in Brooklyn, traveling around the world, and becoming a research scientist and father

Interviewer: Could you tell me a little bit about any stories from your life that you think are interesting?

Sam: Well, I grew up in a working class environment in Brooklyn, New York. I moved to Pittsburgh and went to the University of Pittsburgh, graduated, and then went to graduate school at Berkeley.

I was a science major, chemistry, and then came to Boston, got married and eventually did basic biomedical research by running a small lab and did pretty well publishing research papers and surviving on government grants. 

Now, what's interesting is that in the time that I came back to Boston, my wife and I decided to switch fields.

At the same time, we thought we'd take a year off and travel around the world. We were 25. We worked for two years, got some money after graduate school, and then took off. 

We traveled wherever we wished, going from Boston to San Francisco, Hawaii, Japan, China, and kept going. 

This was unusual to do before raising a family. Just taking a year off and not having any responsibility, no rent to pay, no children to take care of. 

We lived on $5 a day, each of us. This was in 1962. We lived in government rest houses. We lived in student type things, or the cheapest room in a hotel, or something like that.

We had a lot of interesting things that happened during that time, because we met people and learned a lot of stories, some of which I've actually written. 

My retirement community has a literary journal here for residents, so some of the stories I've published are in there. 

And then, we went professional. We both had PhDs, and we decided to do a postdoc in different fields. We spent two or three years, each of us doing a postdoc in two different places before getting  grants  positions at a university and an institute. 

That's the story of the early part of our life, up to 35 or so, before children.

Interviewer: Could you talk a little bit about your travels? What were some of the more memorable experiences? 

Sam: I think the most exciting and interesting time was spent in Japan. The most pleasant times, the friendliest times, were spent in Thailand, Denmark and Greece.

The most unfriendly time was spent in Burma (now Myanmar).

Let’s see, which story should I tell? Well, all right, I'll tell two quick stories. 

One was in Kyoto, Japan. We met a French traveler. We got friendly with him.

He spoke English. So we went traveling with him, and he asked, “After Japan, where are you going?”

We said, “We’re traveling through Europe later in the year. We’ll probably be in France in May or April, springtime.”

 So he said, “Oh, why don't you look my sister up? My sister is in Paris, say hello to her.”

So part of our trip was picking up a VW Bug in Germany, and driving with that car through what was then Yugoslavia, and then Austria, into Greece, and then through Italy, Switzerland, Germany and into France. 

We bought a tent. It was getting to be summer. We stayed in some campgrounds and finally got to Paris with our little car. 

We looked up his sister; she was the head of a little museum in Paris. My wife lived in France as a child, so she spoke some French. I did a little bit.

 So they conversed, and the woman said, “I have a house that's empty. Why don't you stay in that house while you're here?”

She had a little garden house that was on the outskirts of Paris, which was unused, and she let us use it. 

So we stayed there for one or two weeks. It was fantastic. It was just a house in a little garden. We slept with open windows, and there was a cherry tree right next to us, ripe. We ate cherries and drove into Paris every day. Great time. 

That was one story.

Another story was when we drove into Denmark, and after spending some time in Copenhagen, we went to a small town in the countryside.

We camped out in this campground outside this little town, and we drove into town to a little office, where we asked what was interesting to see in town. 

And the lady said, “Oh, we're having a Viking festival.”

Apparently, this was the town where the men grow beards all year to look like Vikings. And they have a play that they produce. 

She said, “Oh, let me make a phone call.”

 So she made a phone call, and she found somebody who was going to host us to see the Viking play in the Viking festival that night.

We met this guy that ended up speaking perfect English. He had lived in the US. He was very nice to us. 

He brought us to this Viking festival. It ended up being the rehearsal, not the actual one—the actual one was the next day. 

We went and sat in the stalls, and we were given a bottle of Carlsberg beer, for it was traditional to drink while watching the play.

We didn't understand a word of what was going on, but this one couple said, “Why don't you come to our place after the play? We’re having a little party there.”

So we went there, and we had a nice time. 

And then our host said, “Why don't you come tomorrow night to the actual performance? This was only the rehearsal.”

So they picked us up the second night, and we went to the performance. That time we drank Tuborg beer. And then we went to the opening party. Everybody was dressed up fancy, and we managed, even though we didn't have fancy clothes. There was a lot of food and drink, and we ended up meeting one of the Princesses of Denmark.

We had a great time at this party, and we were ready to leave.

And another couple that we met said, “You have to come tomorrow morning, we're having breakfast at this special farm that we have.” 

So the next morning, we drove to this farm, and we had a great breakfast. 

You know, they liked us so much, so they finally said, “Why don't you stay a couple of days?”

We said, “Sorry, but we're on a schedule, so we have to leave.”

 That was quite a friendly time. We drove through the rest of Denmark to England and then had our car shipped back home, and we came back after a year. 

So those are two highlights. There were a lot of other things that happened. 

During this time, we took over 1500 photos, and working with them and photography in general occupies some of my time in retirement.