Falling Through the Ice. John D. Hiestand

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      “Had our neighbors been paying attention, they might have noticed a non-descript automobile entering our driveway in the spring of 1966, when I was ten years old. After it entered the driveway it would have disappeared from their view into the plum and cedar trees growing wild to the left, and the chrysanthemum bushes lining the right side of the short driveway that gave our rural/suburban home a great deal of privacy. The neighbors would have had to walk to the head of driveway and peer down the asphalt lane to see where the automobile had parked. Hardly an unusual experience, but they might have been a bit more surprised when the driver emerged from the car. The diminutive oriental man had a shaved head and was wearing flowing maroon robes and traditional Japanese sandals. Such a sight might have startled our nosy neighbors, and even twenty years after the end of World War II the sight of a Japanese man in a California suburban neighborhood might have been alarming. They might have guessed from his attire that the man was a Buddhist monk, but what our neighbors would not have known is that a visit from Shunryu Suzuki to our home was somewhat unusual, but not surprising or alarming. Suzuki-roshi—roshi means teacher or master—was indeed a Zen Buddhist monk, and he had been invited for dinner in our home by my mother. His presence in California during the 1960s changed my mother’s life profoundly, and unknowingly laid the foundations of my own spiritual development.

      “We lived northwest of San Jose, California, in the small community of Los Altos. In the mid-1950s Los Altos represented the ideal suburban community. Land and homes were inexpensive, lots were large, and my father, Norm Hiestand Jr., was able to purchase a home big enough for his growing family on a large lot near the golf course. He had married my mother, Barbara Johnston, in 1947, and in 1949 my oldest brother Norm was born, followed in 1951 by my sister Harriet, whom we called Hattie Lou in those days. A few years later Dad added an addition on to the home, a swimming pool, and two more kids: my other brother Charlie in 1955, and me in 1956. For the first nineteen years of my life, I never knew anything except the security and freedom of semi-rural suburban living. Surrounded by vacant lots, yet close to the Rancho Shopping center, which I remember fondly as having a world class bakery that created the best chocolate chip cookies a kid could possibly want. Life seemed to have a veneer of predictability, security and conventionality that was the hallmark of a white, middle class family in those times. It was not until I was older that I came to see the rips in that veneer, or that my definition of conventionality was not completely in sync with popular conceptions.

      “All of these material privileges were made possible because my father had gotten in on the ground floor of the high-tech industry, which later came to be known as Silicon Valley. In the fifties, high tech pioneering companies like Hewlett Packard were gathered around Stanford University in Palo Alto. My father had received an Electrical Engineering degree from Stanford, and became employee number nine for a new start-up called Varian Associates. When Dad started with them, they were making klystron tubes, an obscure but necessary component of microwave communications equipment. Because this equipment was used by the government, Dad had to travel a lot, including internationally, which later became a problematic lifestyle for him. But in the beginning, it was exciting to be in a cutting edge industry, and Dad used his success to purchase the American dream for his family.

      “Dad had started this American dream by wooing and marrying a beautiful and intelligent grad student named Barbara Johnston. My mom had acquired a Master’s Degree in Art from Claremont University in Pasadena and married СКАЧАТЬ