Life as Observed from the Middle Seat

Introduction

And the Winner is …

In July 2005, I was reading the morning newspaper on the balcony of my condo in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. I glanced down at the beautiful view of the lake and the park from time to time, thinking how lucky we had been to buy the condo when we did.

I saw a small item in the paper announcing that two studios were becoming available at the nearby Rotary Centre for the Performing Arts. Any artist of any venue was invited to submit their résumé for consideration and adjudication. I stopped reading and sat there, numb, remembering my past.

After my husband’s death in May 2005, I spent my days doing what every new widow does. I got copies of the official death certificate from the lawyer’s office. I sent them to Social Security, Medicare, all the airlines, and several banks, and updated the accounts to reflect just my name. I did the same for the credit card companies, insurance companies, utilities, subscriptions, club memberships—the list was endless. I wrote to the land title company, changing ownership of the condo to my name with our daughter as co-owner. I updated my will, gave her power of attorney, access to our saf-deposit box … it went on and on. Finally all the paperwork was finished and I began to wonder what to do with all those blank days facing me.

My thoughts returned to that day a few years earlier, when the Rotary Centre for the Performing Arts had opened. We had toured the building while we were out for a walk and were impressed with the new entertainment possibilities so close to our apartment. I remarked to Fritz how I would love to have a studio in the Centre, make my jewelry there and sell it instead of just doing the exhausting craft shows. He turned on me and vehemently said, Don’t even consider it! Your place is at home. He was so upset at the concept of me showing any sign of independence that he didn’t speak to me for a couple of days. I never mentioned it again.

But now, was it possible? At seventy-eight? To start a career? What would it entail? What would my family in Tucson think? How much would it cost? I had never worked for pay before. I had never run a business; heck, I didn’t even know how to write out a check! What was I thinking?

I had always wondered whether if I’d had an opportunity, could I have become a professional jeweler instead of just a kitchen-table hobbyist? Could I have had a career? Were my designs worthy of consideration? How did one write a résumé? What had I accomplished that counted for a résumé?

For fifty-nine years I had been a wife and a mother. Wife of a respected businessman. Absent mother to my daughter because of all the years spent living in foreign countries. She’d graduated from Stanford, earned her BA in Houston, gotten her doctorate in Tucson—all on her own—and was now an honored clinical psychologist.

Did anyone even think of me as being my own entity? Who was this seventy-eight-year-old Janice Fingado?

Doubts assailed me over the next few days, though the idea kept nagging. I began making lists, Pro and Con. Under Con, it was easy to come up with items: possible costs; figuring out how to learn to run a business, collect taxes, get insurance on the studio; rent to pay for the studio; having to turn up on time every day—it was a business. Possibility of failure. Loss of face. Sort of. Not having that much face to begin with, I could live with that. But what if my jewelry didn’t sell? What if I didn’t measure up to the other artists there? How could I overcome my lifelong shyness and talk to strangers every day?

What would I do in the studio if I did get chosen? Oh, forget it, I would never be chosen.

The Cons were many, the Pros only one: to be recognized. I decided to add stars to each item on the two lists: one star for least important, five stars for most important. The Con stars far outweighed the single Pro. But I placed ten stars in front of the Pro.

Then there was the alternative. It consisted of one sentence: I can sit back with my feet up and read every murder mystery on the shelves of the Kelowna Public Library. Hmmmm, that did sound attractive. But it also sounded a little pedantic. I had this gnawing feeling that I wanted to do something! To prove something.

Okay, back to the Cons. If I did it, if I won the studio, and then it didn’t succeed, what was the worst that could happen? Financially it would cost me $350 to pay some moving men to move all my machines and equipment back over to the second bedroom of the condo, where they would again compete for space with the computer. I had enough money in the bank, so that wasn’t a problem. I would just be back to square one: back to the murder mysteries.

Finally, the answer to all my questions was the one the little gremlin whispered in my ear: The only failure you can have is the failure to try. That settled it. The Pro won.

I walked over to the Rotary Centre, which was just across the large parking lot of the Skyreach Arena, home of hockey games and big-name concerts. From my living-room window on the fifteenth floor I had watched the limousines disgorging Elton John, the Three Tenors, Michael Bublé. It would be a three-minute walk to work every day; hey, a second Pro! I told the receptionist that I was thinking about applying for the studio opening but had never made a résumé, and how did you write a good one?

That is when I made an important discovery: If you admit right from the start that you don’t know how to do something, people are kind and helpful. She handed me the list of requirements and encouraged me to apply. They had never had a jeweler in one of the studios, and she thought it would be wonderful. I toured the studios already in operation: two painters, a sculpture co-op, a studio for the spinners and weavers, a large potter’s studio, the dance studio and music room, plus the two vacant studios. The tenants were all so friendly and welcoming—perhaps because I did not represent any competition to any of them, but I preferred to think it was because they actually saw me as a plus to the arts building. They told me how much rent they paid and promised to answer my questions. The ceramic artist next door to studio 203 showed me the ceramic beads and the batik fabric she made, and indicated she would love to have me as her neighbor. I went home feeling more confident and excited, but realized that my age and inexperience would probably count against me. I felt I needed a hook.

I took those two negatives and turned them into a positive. I wrote my résumé describing the jewelry courses I had taken in Switzerland, Brazil, England, and Tucson. I mentioned the craft shows I had competed in. I added some photos of my work. Then I threw in the last paragraph:

I admitted frankly that I was seventy-eight and had never held a job but was willing to teach classes in the studio. Because I’d lived in various countries, I had learned to speak conversational German, Portuguese, and Spanish and would not be afraid to speak to international tourists visiting the Centre. (Kelowna was considered a tourist destination due to its many wineries and four-season sporting activities.) I would be willing to hold the studio open nights when there were concerts or plays taking place in the theater auditorium so that the guests could tour the studio during intermission. I intended to hang a large world map on the wall with pins showing all our travels and residencies. I would give out free semiprecious stones to the school groups that went through on Career Day and show the students on the map where the stones came from. My punch line was: Don’t you think it would set a good example to older women like myself for the Rotary Centre to show that dreams don’t have to die, that you are never too old to start a new venture, a possible career?

They agreed.

There were twenty-four applicants for the two studios. Over the next two months they winnowed it down to three, of which I was one. We were called in before the entire board of directors and interviewed. I was nervous but was one of the two winners. The other winner was a sixty-eight-year-old digital photography artist, so apparently the idea of having older artists appealed to the directors.

I was over the moon and scared to death.

I was also imbued with enthusiasm.

My mantra became the poem by Jenny Joseph.

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple.

(She goes on to say all the funny things she will start doing once she’s an old woman. Then she says that maybe she should practice a little now, so that people who know her won’t be shocked when she starts wearing purple.)

I installed shelves and lighting to spotlight my jewelry. I bought a heavy, solid desk to use as my teaching table for the students, and moved my workbench, a couch, a coffee table, and bookshelves over from my apartment. A sink, small refrigerator, and microwave completed the back wall. I painted the walls purple.

On October 1, 2005, I opened Studio 203 at the end of the second-floor corridor. I stood outside and gazed at it in awe; it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

The service manager hung a simple stainless-steel sign over the glass door at the entrance.

JFDESIGNS 203

The most exciting, fulfilling four years of my life started that day.

But I was born seventy-eight years earlier on a cold, snowy January 13, 1927, in Ithaca, New York.

I made friends of all my students and loved the camaraderie of my fellow artists. I learned to write manuals for my courses. I learned to take clear photos of each piece of custom-made jewelry and write up concise descriptions for my website. I enjoyed greeting Swiss tourists with Gruezi, miteinand! and seeing their faces light up. I was the subject of three magazine articles on artists in the Okanagan. There were two full-page newspaper interviews (one headline in bold letters proclaimed Janice gets her first job at seventy-eight.) Since the interior decorating of several of my houses had resulted in their being published in Sunset, Better Homes and Garden, Architectural Digest, etcetera, I added that as well. The director of the Rotary Centre admired my dedication and long hours in the studio and the fact that I contributed so freely of my time to civic activities held at the Centre. The happiest moments came when I would be walking a student out at 8:30 p.m., after a class, and she would turn and say, I can’t wait until next week!

Three years later, as I sat in the audience of the auditorium of the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, British Columbia, in February 2008, listening to the familiar Oscar-style awards for the First Annual Okanagan Arts Awards’ eight winners, the joy and pleasure of the past three years culminated.

Best Actor, Best Musician, Best Teacher, Best Dancer, Best Performance …

… and when they came to the seventh category I heard, And the winner of Best Designer of the Year is … Janice Fingado. One of my students had nominated me, and the director had seconded it. A video began playing on the huge screen at the back of the stage, showing me working in my studio and describing how I had started a career at the age of seventy-eight. As I shakily made my way up the steps to the lectern to accept the large bronze trophy, I thought back on all the questions that had assailed me three years earlier. I gave a little speech of gratitude to the judges and, holding the trophy high, told the audience, Never give up your dreams!

When I drove home alone that night, I sat in the car in the parking garage for a few minutes, gathering my thoughts. I reflected on how lucky that young girl from Ithaca, New York, was, and how far I had come.

All the many experiences that had formed me, molded me into the woman I was, ran by in a lightning-flash scenario.

On the day I was born, my mother wrote a nursery rhyme in my baby album. It was to teach children the days of the week while forecasting their future:

Monday’s child is fair of face.

Tuesday’s child is full of grace.

Wednesday’s child is full of woe,

Thursday’s child has far to go …

Come, take my hand. Join me on the journey. We’ve a long way to go.

Part 1

1

Auburn, the Prison City?

Auburn has had to live under the moniker of the Prison City ever since the monstrous stone fortress was built in 1816. Strangely, it was built right in the center of downtown, although it was probably on the outskirts at the time.

In the early nineteenth century, many Americans believed that industrialization and dramatic demographic, economic, and political upheavals had conspired against the traditional controls of family, church, and community. From their perspective, these moral guardians could no longer adequately control disorder. They saw crime as the product of social chaos. Necessary to its eradication was a structured environment in which deviants could be separated from the disorder of society and the contagion of one another. Their solution was to create the penitentiary—a new institution for reforming offenders and, ultimately, restoring social stability. That is why the Auburn System became so popular and was adopted by many other prisons across the nation.

The Auburn System was introduced by the Quakers, who modified the schedule of prayer, contemplation (penitentiary comes from the Latin penitent, to feel repentance), and humane conditions with hard labor. Over the years, the plan grew lax and corrupt. The prisoners were compelled to work during the day, and the profit of their labor helped to support the prison. Prisoners were segregated by offense; additionally, they were issued clothing that identified their crime. The traditional American prison uniform, consisting of horizontal black and white stripes, originated at the Auburn prison. The prisoners had their heads closely cropped and walked in lockstep, keeping step, with their heads bowed. Females (first committed to Auburn in 1825) were relegated to an attic and excluded from regular work and exercise. Later, they did become part of the workforce in a large sewing machine workshop.

There was a communal dining room so that the prisoners could gather together for meals, but a code of silence was enforced harshly at all times by the guards; the inmates worked and ate together, but in complete silence.

Letters were banned, and the chaplain was the only occasional visitor. Flogging and other corporal punishment enforced the rules. Such regimentation was thought necessary to restrain the rebellious nature of the offenders. After numerous suicides, instances of mental illness, and attempted escapes, the governor of New York terminated the classification system and the experiment in solitary confinement. Eventually, overcrowding made the silence system unenforceable.

The Auburn prison was the first prison in the United States to receive the electric chair. Many executions were performed in Auburn; the first one took place in 1890. The most important one was Leon Czolgosz, American laborer and anarchist, who fatally shot President William McKinley on September 6, 1901, and was executed in Auburn on October 29, 1901. No long, drawn-out appeals back then!

The electric chair was moved to Sing Sing, another prison in Ossining, New York, and used until the Supreme Court decided in 1972 that its use was unconstitutional. By that time, 614 men and women had been executed, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on June 19, 1953, for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to Russia. They were the first Americans to be executed for espionage. Although the ideas of the Auburn System have been abandoned, the prison continues to serve as a maximum security facility and is one of the most secure prisons in the continental United States

I’m glad I lived a life of conventional purity. That code of silence would have killed me.

Auburn, the Rest of the Story …

Auburn is at the north end of Owasco Lake, the index finger of the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. It was only a few miles from the Erie Canal, which opened in 1825 and allowed local factories to inexpensively ship goods north or south. Auburn was destined to grow.

Auburn’s climate could differ considerably: very hot, humid summers and severely cold winters. The inhabitants claim they have only two seasons: winter and the Fourth of July. Growing up there, I never gave it a thought. Our boots squeaked in the snow as we walked to school in the winter, and we lived in our bathing suits as soon as school let out the end of June. In researching Auburn, I became aware of the famous places in Auburn notoriety (aside from the infamous prison) as well as many very famous people who came from there. There is the key word. They mostly became famous after leaving, but I would like to think that Auburn left its mark on their psyche.

The two best-known historical figures associated with Auburn are William H. Seward and Harriet Tubman. Seward served as a New York state senator, the governor of New York, a United States senator, and a presidential candidate, and then he was secretary of state under presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Gosh, you can’t really get more famous than that, can you? As secretary of state, he negotiated the 1867 purchase from Russia of Alaska—which became known as Seward’s Folly, but I believe he has been exonerated for that craziness. He lived in Auburn from 1823 until his death in 1872.

The Seward Mansion, at 33 South Street, is one of Auburn’s earliest surviving examples of the Federal style. William Seward was the son-in-law of Judge Elijah Miller, who built the house. Seward lived in it all the years he worked in government. Brigham Young, noted leader of the Mormon faith, was one of the carpenters to work on the home’s original interior. It includes two carriage houses and a horse stable on its property.

Seward was deeply opposed to slavery; the abolitionist party was strongly supported in Auburn. In the 1850s, the Seward family opened their Auburn home as a safe house to fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad.

In 1859 Seward sold a plot of land to abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who used it to create a safe haven for her family and other black Americans seeking a better life in the North. Harriet Tubman’s house was a couple of blocks south of where my mother lived after my father died. Tubman moved to Auburn in 1859, where she fulfilled her dream of opening a home for elderly African Americans, and lived there herself until her death in 1913.

Seward’s house is now a historical museum, and both it and Tubman’s house are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Behind the Cayuga Museum stands the Case Research Lab, the birthplace of talking movies. Yes, indeed; the talkies were invented in Auburn. Willard and Theodore Case converted a greenhouse into a scientific laboratory and invented a very sensitive light bulb that could react to variations in sound waves. They invented a sound film system, recording test film in the carriage house behind the mansion, and called it Movietone. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris was the first sound film and caused a sensation.

Could Shirley Temple be far behind?

Auburn has had a long association with professional baseball; a general in the military, Abner Doubleday, was credited for creating baseball. In late 1901, Auburn became the headquarters of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, which is now known simply as Minor League Baseball. The next time you’re sitting in the bleachers enjoying a game, give a moment’s thought to Auburn.

On the walk to high school every day, I would pass the large metal statue of Thomas Mott Osborne on his marble pedestal, set in a semicircle of trees. He was known to Auburnans as a prison reformer. But to me he stood for the Morse code. His name was the example given when in the Girl Scouts I had to learn the entire Morse code and be able to tap messages out on the sender in order to achieve my badge in communication. Thomas Mott Osborne was T — (one dash), M — — (two dashes), and O — — — (three dashes). E, I, S, H were the four dots. Now, years later, I still do the Morse code: I make necklaces in code with secret messages. Round silver beads for the dots and silver tube beads for the dashes. They spell out You are loved or Forever yours.

In 1936, Theodore Case sold his sound system to Fox, and the Willard-Case Mansion to a group organizing a museum headed by Walter Long for $5 and a box of cigars. And shortly after, a young girl by the name of Janice Lucy Tutton began studying art under Dr. Long, as we called him. Every Saturday, I would go to the carriage house behind the Case Museum and learn how to sketch with charcoal or soft pencil. It was there that I made the sketches of my grandparents which I still have today—a bit yellowed with age, but every line a true likeness of two wonderful people.

The Early Years

In retrospect, Auburn was the perfect place to be brought up, Prison City or not. Back in 1927 it had a population of 35,000, a large library in a mansion, enough doctors and dentists, a good hospital, and friendly neighbors who, like you, left their doors unlocked. Good schools; you could walk to everything, and banks gave you bonuses of glasses and dishes for every deposit of $100 or more. I have a complete set of wine glasses with silver rims, thanks to the Genesee Bank and my mother’s faithful deposits. People sat on each other’s porches and talked of an evening while kids played on their swing sets and trapezes and held circuses for the indulgent parents. All of the lakes had state parks, waterfalls, hiking trails, and idyllic picnic spots. Right on the water’s edge was the large Enna Jettick Park, which was the amusement park. It boasted a large carousel of magnificent carved horses, a clubhouse, changing rooms, a picnic area, a roped-off swimming area with a high diving board for diving exhibitions. There was a ballroom for dancing. The ballroom had one of those large crystal revolving balls that sent sparkles all over the walls and floor. With the live orchestra, it was a romantic way to spend a Saturday evening, even for high school students. The miniature paper umbrellas they put in our cokes added to the sophistication.

The Cottage

My grandparents (Dad’s parents) owned a camp right on the lake near the park. We could watch the park’s fireworks every Fourth of July from our seawall. We would move, lock, stock, and barrel, to the camp the day after school ended in June and remain there all summer. The house was two stories, with four bedrooms and a sleeping balcony on the second floor and a living room, dining room, bedroom, and kitchen on the ground floor. Many of our out-of-town visitors chose the outdoor sleeping balcony so they could sleep under the stars on a soft warm night. The camp had a nice flat lawn all the way down to the seawall, a natural for a croquet court. My sister and I had to pull up the wickets every night as dusk settled so no one would trip over them in the dark on the way to the deck chairs waiting on the cement seawall at the lake’s edge. Phyl and I became adept at replacing the wickets the next day, flipping the croquet mallets the required lengths of the pole handles to determine the correct distances between the wickets. What? You didn’t know there was a mathematical rule to the layout of croquet? Mercy.

There was nothing more peaceful than sitting on the seawall after supper and watching the lights on the other side of the long, narrow lake blink on.

I discovered clay areas in the shallow pools near the shoreline and loved digging up the gooey mess of clay to shape them into shallow bowls, decorated with carvings or layered decorations, left to dry in the warm sun on the seawall. If I had had a ceramic oven, I could have had quite a business.

Sounds incredibly beautiful, doesn’t it? I’d better throw in a but here so you don’t get completely carried away. The house had no plumbing, so it truly was a camp. To get water in the house, we had an old-fashioned pump in the kitchen. You had to pump the handle up and down and prime with water to get it to draw water out of the lake, which was clean enough to drink. We bathed from porcelain bowls in each bedroom, which also came furnished with chamber pots for use during the night. There was an outhouse at the end of the backyard. A luxurious one: it was a two-seater. (I never did figure that one out!) I’ll never forget the summer when wasps decided the outhouse was the ideal location for a very large nest, which I discovered when they began to attack me and I made a screaming run back to the cottage without any panties on.

The Garden

The family Grandpa worked for, as the head gardener, had an estate at 63 and 65 South Street, now called King’s and Queen’s Court. It was built in 1913 for Frederick and Flora Ward Fay. The Fay Mansion had nineteen fireplaces, marble pavement, family and separate freight elevators, gas lights in all the rooms, seven baths, steam heat, a full bath, washing sinks, indoor gasoline pumps, electric lights, and bays for four touring cars. There were cottages for the staff who maintained the mansion. It now houses twenty apartments.

My grandfather was in his element and proceeded to grow prizewinning roses, delphiniums, and cucumbers three feet long. He won blue ribbons at every flower show he entered.

His employers later bought the estate next door: 91 South Street. Built in 1849, Roselawn is one of the few remaining intact estates in the city. It had servants’ quarters which are now townhouses, and the mansion was converted to apartments in 1939. Grandpa managed and maintained the fabulous gardens at Roselawn for many years.

The Family

It was during these years that their children came along: first William (Uncle Bill), then (Aunt) Ada, and finally Gordon Nekrews Tutton, my father.

Grandpa must have retired around 1929 because I don’t remember visiting those estates on South Street, just walking past them and peeping in.

I was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1927 while my dad was in his last year at Cornell University studying mechanical engineering. He and my mother, Lucy Heffron Tutton, moved back to Auburn when he graduated.

A Humble Man

Grandma and Grandpa led a Rockwellian life: They sat glued to the Emerson radio in the front room; it held pride of place, with their chairs placed on each side of it and a little table in front of it to hold their cups of tea.

Grandma made their own beer, and batches were always fermenting in the cellar with the aroma of hops wafting up the stairwell whenever the door was opened. Grandpa lived to within three weeks of a century, and he always claimed it was Grandma’s daily bottle of beer that kept him so healthy. I maintain it was the gardening. They were simple people who took every day as it came with equanimity, measured only by the growth of the cucumbers in the backyard. Grandma cooked on a monstrous coal stove where you kept the coals glowing, lifting the round plates with a hooked handle to add more coals into its belly for the baking. Every Christmas Eve, the entire family gathered at Grandma and Grandpa’s house; all the aunts, uncles, and cousins scattered around the Finger Lakes. We enjoyed a lavish English feast with roast beef, Yorkshire Pudding, mince pies, and plum pudding, steamed many hours and served with a hard sauce. (Lots of brandy, for those of you unfamiliar with the typical holiday dessert.) With so many little kids running around, opening presents was festive and good fun.

Grandpa never relinquished his heritage. He was an Englishman first, foremost, and forever. He paid homage to Queen Elizabeth when she came to the throne in 1952. He would sit for hours in front of the radio listening to the news, especially during the war, and you could feel his pride when something royal was reported, or his concern when the Germans were bombing London. When Grandma died in 1950, he moved in with my mother and father, who had moved to the lake by then. He passed the days serenely, looking at the beautiful view of the lake with the boats passing by. Rocking contentedly in his chair, his eternal pipe in his fingers, he was the image of a Norman Rockwell painting.

In 1952, on our first trip to Europe after the war, my husband and I dropped off our five-year-old daughter with my parents in Auburn and flew to Europe. We visited my husband’s relatives in Germany and then on to Spain, where he had grown up.

At the end of the trip, we had three extra days. We decided spontaneously to fly over to England to squeeze that in, too. Luckily, the first day we were in London, the queen opened Parliament, and I made sure I was standing on the curb as her entourage went by in the gilded carriages. So impressive to see: the Horse Guards with their high fur hats and red coats, on their satiny black horses. It was the first official act after her coronation. She had ascended the throne on February 6, 1952, upon King George’s death.

We arrived back in Auburn a couple of days later to pick up our daughter, by now completely spoiled. After giving her some gifts from the places we had visited, I went to greet Grandpa and said, Hold out your hand, Grandpa. When he did, looking curious, I dropped some English coins into it. I smiled enigmatically, saying, Guess where I was yesterday, Grandpa. He looked at the coins and then it dawned on him that they were English. He looked up and in an awed whisper he said, M’gawd. Jan, didja see the queen? I gleefully told him that indeed I had. She was in the golden carriage, wearing her crown. I was six feet away as she waved her backward-hand wave and smiled. At me.

You would have thought I had given this simple, decent, humble man the world. It was the equivalent of kissing the Pope’s ring. His granddaughter had been blessed by his queen.

Our House

My sister and I were brought up in Auburn in a beautiful Federal style house at 147 Franklin Street, which is listed in the Registry of Heritage Houses in the United States. My mother and father bought the house in 1928, the year after I was born.

John Cogswell, a farmer, built the house and lived in it from 1813 to 1835, when his daughter Harriet married William P. Brown and took up residence until 1842. The house was typical of that era: red brick and white