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Son of (Entropy)
Personal Memories of a Son of a Chemist, Joseph E. Mayer, and a Nobel Prize Winning Physicist, Maria Goeppert Mayer
By Peter C. Mayer
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Peter C. Mayer
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-2069-7
Chapter One
The Beginning, Göttingen Pre-WWII
The Hollisters
My father, while dining in the Göttingen Ratskeller ...
Oh! For those who are unfamiliar with German towns, the translation for Rathaus is city hall, but various characteristics give the Rathaus a different meaning. As an example, the Rathaus is usually a grand old building, often only second in grandeur to the cathedral. Usually, the Rathaus cellar contains the Ratskeller, a quality restaurant, often the best in town. Joe spent enough time in the Ratskeller to acquire a favorite waiter. As late as 1950, Joe had this waiter serve us.
While dining in the Göttingen Ratskeller, my father noticed an American couple enjoying themselves and speaking German. (My mother would correct the story with, "you said 'a California couple.'" Dad tended to avoid Americans; they interfered with his goal of learning German, and he didn't like chronic complainers. He approached the couple and was given ice cold shoulders. His thoughts: "What a nice looking couple, but they are most unpleasant," or something less kind. Later, the couple, Joe and Kay Hollister, approached my father and asked him to join them. They, too, did not like chronic complainers.
Kay would party with her husband and Joe in bars where no respectable German lady would go. My mother said she would never have gone to these bars. Kay would walk home, sometimes singing and at times with a Joe on each arm.
Later, while my father was introducing my mother to the American West, they wrote every Hollister in the Santa Barbara phone book. Each put their letter in Joe Hollister's box at the Hollister Estate Company—a pretentious name for Hollister Ranch—office. My parents received a letter from Kay that included the instruction to stop at the Gaviota Store for directions on how to get to the ranch house. At the Gaviota Store, the response to the request for instructions to the Hollister Ranch was, "You came from the North? You have been on the ranch for the last one hundred miles."
There were several exchanges similar to, "We would like to have instructions to go the ranch house."
"Why do you want to go to the ranch house? It is on a long, narrow, difficult dirt road. Besides, the road is private."
In exasperation, my father said, "We were told by Joe and Kay Hollister to ask you for instructions."
"Oh yes," the store owner said, taking a deep breath, "Mrs. Kay told me about you."
Later, when showing their children the American West, my parents often stopped to see the Hollisters. As children, both my sister and I liked the couple, and as an adult I would often visit the widow, Kay. While in high school, I worked one summer for Joe Hollister's brother on the Ranch and two years, while in college, I spent Thanksgiving with his brother.
A tale about the lad, Joe Hollister, was the major component of a Joe Mayer this-is-the-way-to-behave lecture.
"When Joe Hollister was about your age, he walked through an open gate that was usually kept closed. He decided to close the gate. Later, his father and other cowboys tried to drive a herd of cattle through the closed gate."
As a lad, I required that the instructional point be explained, "Leave things, in particular doors and gates, the way you found them."
My Father, That American
I was dating the daughter of a fellow student of Maria's at the University of Göttingen. The first thing the daughter said to me after Christmas vacation was "I know who you are!"
"What do you know about me that you did not know before?"
"Well, I know who your father is!"
"Okay Nickie, what's the story?"
"My father said, 'There were few women students at the University of Göttingen and only one really feminine student. That American,'" Joe Mayer, "'came and purchased a car and took her away.'" At one point, she suggested that it was a sports car. I corrected her. The car was an Opal—at the time the cheapest German car—with a bad clutch. As a postdoctoral fellow, my father had a little more money than the graduate students, but more significantly, he had more gumption.
Later Nickie said, "My father said, 'Be sure to tell Maria's son that Joe had an American directness that charmed all of us.'"
Background
Being feminine results from my mother's upbringing. Some biographies credit my grandfather with telling Maria, "I do not want you to be a woman." This claim is garbage. He said, "I want you to be more than a woman." Too many university women at my mother's time chose not to be women, as was often the case among science and engineering majors even a generation and more later.
My grandfather was a pediatrician. To show that he wanted Maria to also be a woman, he had her attend his lectures on child rearing. Further, all his female patients, including my mother, were vaccinated for small pox high on the thigh so the ugly scar—at that time three scars—would not be visible when wearing sleeveless dresses. Surely, he wished—but did not expect—all his female patients to have interests outside the house as well.
For readers who have not had a small pox vaccination, you might ask an older person to show you their now faded vaccination scar. A small pox vaccination is usually given on the outside of the arm below the shoulder. To vaccinate for small pox, one puts a viscous liquid containing the cowpox virus on the skin. Then the inoculator takes a pin or needle and makes numerous pricks or small cuts within a circle under the liquid. The pricks and the reaction leave a nasty pox as a scar. To minimize total scarring, revaccinations were made on top of the old scar. Among most people alive today, the vaccination left a single scar the size of a dime (US ten-cent piece). However, in earlier times the pinpricks were done within three circles, leaving an unattractive triangle of three scars, each about the size of a nickel (a US five-cent piece). Having seen such a triangle of scares on a Palauan lovely, I know they stand out. Palau was a Japanese trust until the end of World War II and Japanese still made a triangle of scars with small pox vaccinations.
Maria's Influence on Men
Confirming Maria's fellow student's observation, a friend of my father's from graduate school told me the following. "I saw Joe with your mother when she was pregnant with one of you (I have a sister). As I approached them, she looked like a German hausfrau, not at all the kind of woman Joe would marry. At a later time, I saw Joe with a lovely woman and wondered if Joe had a mistress. As I approached, Joe said, 'I believe you have met my wife,' and Maria said, 'Oh yes, we have met.'"
A biographer credits my sister as saying men were putty under my mother's influence. I believe my sister would agree that the limits of language make this assessment an understatement. After all, she witnessed, more often than I did, my mother (or a driver in a car in which my mother was riding) being let go by a policeman intending to issue a traffic citation. I never claim that observing my mother's ability to mold men has made me immune to feminine manipulation, but I will claim that, unlike most men, it never happens without my knowing it.
Women have reported that men would gravitate towards my mother whenever she entered the room. I never noticed, perhaps due to my own gravitation.
There was a very rude visiting professor at the University of Chicago who eventually was rude to my mother. My mother's reaction was to be glad to be included among those to whom he was rude. At least some of the male professors' reaction was special anger with his behavior towards my mother because he acted his rude way to a woman, spoken in a tone I would use for a woman I found womanly.
Small Tales
Meeting the Awful Flirt
A biographer credits my father when meeting Maria as finding her an awful flirt. An observation from my mother's side may explain why. After meeting Joe asking to board at her mother's house, Maria told her mother, "He is an American." The response was, "Is he like Stanley?" (a former American boarder who recommended that Joe inquire about boarding at the Göppert's). "Yes, but I believe he is much nicer.
Remember Middle School Humor and Watch Your Language
One evening, Joe fully cooperated with a competitor for Maria insisting on speaking English. When arguing who would take Maria home, the competitor agreed to my father's proposition of "heads I win, tails you lose." Mother seemed to enjoy the antics. I am unsure if she fully understood the bet Joe proposed".
If You Hiccup ...
"Maria, if you hiccup one more time, I will give you a pineapple!"
My mother really enjoyed even unripe pineapples. (Until at least 1955, the pineapples that shipped as fresh were those rejected for canning because they were not yet ripe.) Having already bought the pineapple, Joe gave it to her even though Maria failed to perform the act. I hope that at least once in her life she had a pineapple as good as the local one that reminded me of this story. As children, neither my sister nor I received the nickel (US five cent piece) offered for hiccupping one more time.
The Opal
The Opal was an automobile, not a gem, although it may have been a gem for courting. It had a bad, noisy clutch. In the Opal, on the back roads around Göttingen, my father taught my mother how to drive. "Auch, Maria, you have to have the right relaxed attitude. Have a cigarette." She let the cigarette burn until she had burns between her fingers.
At the time in Germany, the driving test not only included driving around and parallel parking but also backing around a town square and knowledge of the workings of a car. At the time cars were much simpler, much less reliable, and parts more visible than presently.
When my mother took the test in the Opal, she started driving around and was instructed to return and park.
"Aren't you going to have me back around the square?"
"No, anyone who can drive a car with that clutch knows how to drive. You pass."
The next day, the car was taken to have the clutch repaired.
Der Schwan and the Ferry
My father took my mother to, Der Schwan, a classy restaurant in Einbeck am Weser. (The restaurant still had its good reputation in tact in 1957, and it currently has a website.) During dinner he told her, "I went to the American consulate to inquire about sponsoring your immigration."
"Under what status?"
"As my wife."
To get to Der Schwan from Göttingen, they used a single operator ferry, probably a ferry driven by the river's current. They inquired when the ferry would close that evening. As it was their engagement night, they stayed at the restaurant until after the ferry was scheduled to shut down. So they returned to Göttingen by a longer route.
Sometime right after World War II, Dad visited Germany, I suspect as a consultant for Ballistics Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Grounds. He met the ferry master, who scolded him, saying he had been kept up all night waiting for the two of them to return.
"Sorry," my father replied, probably in a manner that anyone who knew Joe Mayer would recognize as sheepish and contrite. "It was the night that my wife and I got engaged. When we chose to return, it was late, and we thought you were closed, so we took the long way."
About seventeen years of anger melted.
The Dinner
Following Der Schwan, of course there was a dinner at Maria's mother's house—where Joe was a boarder—to celebrate my parents' engagement. By mistake, it was scheduled on the maid's day off. There are somewhat different versions of the rest of the story. I choose the one I find most plausible.
Mother was in tears, helpless in the kitchen while my father was doing most of the cooking and some of the other work, such as setting the table. My father's response to my mother's helplessness was, "As expensive as maids are in the United States, I promise to hire one, ... as long as you remain a physicist!"
And Many Dinners to Come
Years later, on Thursday, a maid's day off in my parents' house, mother and dad would have cocktails.
"Peter," mother would say, "preheat the oven to 350 degrees, put the meatloaf in the oven, and set the timer for one hour. Be sure that the potatoes are around the meatloaf." When getting older, the instructions became less complete, "Put the string beans in the pressure cooker with a half cup of water. Heat the pressure cooker to cook and cook for two minutes—oh, by now you know the rest. The platter and serving bowl are not yet on the kitchen table."
Another night, "Broil the steak fourteen minutes on each side." My parents would purchase two-inch thick of thicker steaks. "Rub both sides of the steak with garlic if you like."
The responsibilities expanded and the instructions shrank over time.
Earlier, it was the same way for my older sister and for a while, on alternating Thursdays, with my sister and me. My mother saw to it that neither of her children would have her experience of being helpless in the kitchen!
The Wedding
In Germany, as in many other countries, only civil weddings have legal status. A church or other religious wedding is a frill. My parents accommodated the demands from their mothers—both my grandfathers were deceased when my parents married—and agreed to the inclusion of a religious wedding. However, the wedding must be held in the house, not in a church, and there must not be a sermon.
My father, with mother's agreement, stated that the civil ceremony was much more impressive and appropriate than a church wedding. It took place in a room in the Rathaus. My father described the ceremony as solemn and unemotional. The mood was set by the question, "Are you sure you want to take this major step in your life?" My father was awed by the old men in legal robes officiating. Men in religious robes would never have the same effect on my father. Mother described a mural wrapped around the wall, representing the stages in a person's life from birth through marriage to death.
An aunt of my mother was familiar with church law and knew a Lutheran wedding was not permitted for those who had not been christened. The idea that my father would require an emergency christening before the wedding produced considerable amusement. The minister asked my mother's aunt whether Joe had been christened. Her response was, "I suppose so."
No sermon! No such luck! My father recalled observing Alois, a ceramic lion cub, looking as skeptical as he felt. (Later, the cub to me had the benign look you would expect of Alois, the storied lion who was brought up by sheep and eventually married one named Shelastika.)
Aftermath
A relative of my mother named his son after Joe. In the German Lutheran church, the names for christening were limited to a list of saints. To the minister performing the christening of the son, this relative insisted that the name of his son's namesake was Joe and that Joe was a good American name. The minister asked if he was sure that Joe was not an abbreviation for Joseph.
"It is not. His name is Joe."
"Is it a Christian name?"
"Well, Joe was married in the Lutheran Church."
"The Scenery Is Still Beautiful"
Before the outbreak of World War II, the two would return to Germany. With the gradual establishment of a totalitarian regime, people may forget the implications of freedom, or at least of a free press. During an after-dinner conversation, in response to a statement, my father was asked, "How do you know?"
He replied, "There have been many articles on the subject in our newspapers."
The reaction was a skeptical. "But this makes Roosevelt look good."
There was a sigh of acknowledgement with my father's rejoinder, "Don't you remember when there was a free press in Germany? Roosevelt is not popular in the American press."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Son of (Entropy) by Peter C. Mayer Copyright © 2011 by Peter C. Mayer. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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