Chapter 5: ►

_An Unusual Heritage_

“Getting it made” was very important to me, and always will be. The quest for perfection is a compulsion with me, and has been since boyhood. One reason may be my unusual heritage. Another, without doubt, was my father. Then, as always, it would seem, there were those twinges of adversity, and stern compressions of circumstance, in early life, which Winston Churchill writes “are needed to evoke that ruthless fixity of purpose and tenacious mother-wit” which drive men to unusual endeavor. There was, too, an element of denial, an important factor in a man’s motivation, I believe.

My family tree has always intrigued me. One reason may be that while I was growing up I was very conscious of it. There was a strong sense of “family” in our house, no matter how the luck ran. There was a Crossfield mold which we children--my two sisters and I--were expected to fit. We were constantly reminded that we were entrusted with a tradition that spanned almost the entire history of the New World. And because of the unusual mixture of our blood we were acutely aware of matters of race and prejudice. I know it is popular today to scoff, as decadent, at Southern traditions, and mock the proper Bostonians who cling to family ties, and to trumpet the dope-crazed sputterings of beatnik derelicts who, given complete head, would destroy all concept of God and family. Perhaps here, in this increasingly mobile society, this is one place we have failed. I cannot be held responsible for my family, but I am proud of it.

My mother, for example, fiercely proud and uncompromising, was half Mexican. The other half was pure Irish, and a more fearsome combination one is not often likely to encounter. She was a direct descendant of a Spaniard named Holguin, a Conquistadore who served under Cortés during the Conquest of Mexico. Every inch a lady in the most severe Spanish tradition, my mother demanded extreme standards of conduct and discipline in our home. These were seldom relaxed, no matter how low our material circumstances, which at their nadir were very low indeed. I inherited a great deal from my mother: jet-black hair, dark eyes, a swarthy complexion, an insatiable curiosity, a touch of the romantic, an appreciation of music, and a flair for drawing and working with my hands. I profited even more by her example.

My mother’s side of the family is a little complicated. What I know of it comes not from books and historical documents, but by word of mouth from my relatives. For this reason it is not precise but may be close. To describe it best I should begin with my maternal great-grandfather, Thomas Aloysius Dwyer, who from all accounts was an amazing character. Born in Ireland, he was one of the youthful cadets who figured in the great Irish insurrection of 1848. He married a Lady Crocker who was, so the family story goes, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria. Just how this politically incongruous match came about is lost in the mists of love and history, but no doubt it accounts, at least in part, for the somewhat adventurous, peripatetic aftermath. Thomas and Anne Dwyer immigrated to Boston. Soon thereafter they moved on to Corpus Christi and San Antonio, Texas, where Thomas Aloysius Dwyer, an educated man, became a judge and sired six children, including Thomas Aloysius, Junior.

Judge Dwyer, remembered as a distinguished-looking man with a carefully manicured beard and pince-nez, was evidently not totally dedicated to the law. He developed a good many side business interests, including the shipment of various goods and supplies by railroad from El Paso to small towns in Mexico. He sent his son, Thomas Junior, my maternal grandfather, then sixteen years old, to Mexico to oversee these shipments. Tom Junior was a curious blend of hard-headed businessman and romantic. He reported to his father in beautifully scripted letters (some of which I have seen), and sometimes enclosed drawings and sketches stroked with skill and talent. In Jimenez, Mexico, the youthful, talented Tom Junior branched out. He became, successively, a Wells Fargo agent, the proprietor of a general store, a streetcar magnate (the cars were pulled by mules), a lumberman, and a distributor for the ubiquitous Singer sewing machines.

In Mexico Tom Junior met, admired, and married a seventeen-year-old senorita named Paula Holguin, my maternal grandmother. Paula, both an artist and a musician, was truly gifted, stubborn, and proud. I enjoyed her piano-playing in later years, but communications between us were difficult: as a matter of personal pride she refused to speak any language except Spanish. In her ladylike way she was also quite fearless.

The marriage between Tom Dwyer and Paula Holguin produced fifteen offspring, ten of whom survived childhood. One of these was my mother, Lucia. For a while the large family lived in happiness on a great, prosperous ranch. My grandfather’s businesses expanded. As new mines were developed in Parrall and Terron, Mexico, he sent men to open general stores and to establish wagon-train routes.

Then in about 1910, the Mexican bandit Madero, who preceded Pancho Villa, rose up to strike down the prosperous. Americans especially suffered in this period of anarchy, and for a long while it was touch-and-go for my grandparents. As a child I listened in awe to the tales of how my mother stood off groups of marauding Mexican _banditos_ with a bull-whip. When the United States President declared he could no longer guarantee the safety of Americans in Mexico, Tom and Paula Dwyer sent the ten children by train to El Paso. My mother, Lucia, then 19, was one of the first to go. She was followed in time by the others, now virtually destitute, having lost everything in the retreat. Lucia, who was educated by nuns in a convent in Mexico, inherited much of her mother’s talent for music and art. She dabbled briefly at writing and then took a job teaching elementary Spanish in an American school in El Paso. A year or so later, in 1914, she went to the University of California at Berkeley to study for the summer. There she met my father.

* * * * *

The Crossfields came from England; I have never been able to determine just when, but it was probably seven or eight generations ago. They settled in New England. There is a court record noting the marriage of a Crossfield before the Revolution. One branch of the family moved to Kentucky. The Scott in the name comes from the same family as does General Winfield Scott, who was, I’m told, a distant relative. Scott has been a middle name on the Crossfield side of the family for generations.

My paternal grandfather, Amasa Scott Crossfield, was a lawyer from New England who married Louise Brown, a direct descendant of Governor William Bradford. I am certain of the latter point, because some of the Governor’s furniture was passed along in the family. It was traced to us and later asked for by a museum. We still have a highboy which I believe is authentic Governor Bradford.

About 1885 someone conceived a plan to build a canal in Minnesota connecting Big Stone and Traverse Lakes to provide a direct water route between the Hudson Bay and the headwaters of the Mississippi. Somehow my grandfather Crossfield became interested in that project and moved from Boston to Browns Valley, Minnesota. (The Brown was no kin to my grandmother.) When the canal project fell through, my grandfather entered local politics. He was an Indian Reservation Agent and later he ran for and won a seat in the state legislature. I’m told that he won his first election when he bested his political opponent at knuckle-bending before a large crowd of voters. My father, Albert Scott Crossfield, one of three children, was born in Browns Valley.

From all the family stories I’ve heard, I surmise that my grandfather Crossfield was a rugged, pioneering type, a two-fisted drinker with a restless soul, seeking new frontiers to conquer. In any case, he didn’t stay in Browns Valley long. Soon he turned up in the Philippine Islands as Chief of the Customs Department under the colonial administration of Governor William Howard Taft. My father, his brother, who later died, and a sister were raised in the Philippines. My father’s sister, Ruth, married Peter A. Drakeford, a brother of Sir Arthur Drakeford, Australia’s Air Minister in World War II.

The move to the Philippines brought prosperity and success to my grandfather. He built up a coconut and hemp plantation, the Kumassie Plantation Company, on the Bay of Davao on Mindanao, which still exists, I believe. In time he became a pillar of the Philippines. He was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court in the Philippines. Contemporary with him was a woman journalist, Bessie Dwyer, an editor of the Manila newspaper, a daughter of Judge Dwyer of San Antonio, Texas, and my great-aunt on my mother’s side. Judge Crossfield and Bessie Dwyer were close friends in the Philippines.

My father was a conscientious young man who took his schooling seriously. He was a scientist by nature, especially interested in chemistry. He took most of his secondary education in the Philippines, then graduated from high school in Berkeley, California, where he lived with his mother, who had temporarily returned to the States to give the children a U. S. education. Later he studied chemistry at the University of California and was a graduate Fellow at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh.

Bessie Dwyer wrote to her niece, Lucia, then studying at the University of California, suggesting that she get in touch with the family of her good friend Judge Crossfield, then residing in Berkeley. By then my father was a graduate student taking advanced work in chemistry. When the two met, love bloomed and they were married in 1916. One chemical result of this union was me, Albert Scott Crossfield, Junior, one-quarter Mexican, with a sprinkling of pure English, Irish, Boston Brown, and the good Lord only knows what else.

My father was slow and deliberate, a man who patiently looked at all sides of an issue and was forgiving, yet in his quiet, detached way quite demanding. As I think about it, he was a very unusual person. I have a lasting and profound respect for him.

He was basically a chemist, a scientist, if you please, one whose natural bent leaned to theory but whose life led him into the practical application of science, or as we call it today, development, as opposed to pure research. When World War I broke out, he took a commission in the army and worked for the Chemical Warfare Department trying to perfect bizarre new weapons. After the war he turned to the petroleum industry. He was a pioneer in the then new field of extracting oil deposits from shale. This work ultimately led to an executive position with the Union Oil Refinery in Wilmington, at that time a small waterfront and refinery town in Southern California.

Outwardly my father was the coolest man I have ever known. He used to tell me: “A gentleman never laughs, but he may chuckle. Nor does he cry.” When he punished me, he never displayed anger or emotion. He was completely detached about it, as though analyzing some chemical compound. I don’t think I ever heard him raise his voice. He was not altogether without personal fear, but I never saw any signs of it and, believe me, I searched diligently.

He took great pains to disguise his courage. During the first World War, he was a leader of a small group of chemists who developed a new and effective gas mask, an urgently needed item in those days. My father was one of those who entered gas chambers to test the mask. The tests apparently were not always successful; the repeated exposures to gas in the chamber robbed him of much of his hair--my earliest recollection is that he was bald--and left a grim reminder on his body--white splotches where the gas had discolored his skin. I was quite old before I was able to worm out of him the fact that he had taken part in this hazardous experimental work.

My father routinely worked seven days a week and eventually he rose to be superintendent of the Union Oil Company in Wilmington. On Sundays, when there was no school, he sometimes took me to the plant with him. In those days, as in these, the men kept a careful watch for fires; a refinery fire is a vicious and terrible catastrophe. One Sunday while we were walking through the “cracking plant” a fire broke out. My father ordered everyone to keep back. As I looked on, he draped a blanket over his head and asked the firemen who had answered the alarm to douse him thoroughly with water. Then, quietly and calmly he walked into that roaring inferno and closed off some valves in order to keep the fire from spreading. His burns were severe and he was confined to a hospital for days. Not a word about the fire ever was mentioned in our house.

Dad was infinitely polite and proper. He was neither aloof nor snobbish, yet I think it is a fact that he was little understood by his friends and co-workers, perhaps because of his studied emotional detachment. Perhaps it was because of his granite-like principles about right and wrong. He was unyielding in this respect. On one occasion he clung to his principles so tenaciously that it cost him his position at the refinery and changed the whole course of his life and ours as well.

The oil refinery in those days, around 1930, imported many Mexican laborers for the dirty work. They were paid, I believe, fifty cents a day, and they lived in shacks around Wilmington; the area soon became pretty much of a Mexican community. My parents had a natural sympathy and pity for these people and my father was outspoken at the refinery about this “exploitation” of alien labor. With time these feelings grew deeper and more pointed.

When the depression struck Southern California, these imported workers were the first to lose their jobs at the plant. It was my father’s duty to fire them. A number were shipped back to Mexico, but a good many remained, out of work and penniless and, because they were aliens, not entitled to the usual governmental or community relief. Feeling responsible to some degree for the distress of these people, my father set aside a good deal of his own money for their support. My mother spent the money for food, scouring the markets for day-old bread and rejected vegetables which she cooked and passed out to the Mexicans. She was running a soup kitchen, really, and at times it seemed as though we fed half the population of Wilmington.

As the depression worsened, the firing went on at a more rapid and ruthless pace. One day one of my father’s bosses pointed out to him that there were still people on the roster with Spanish and Italian names. That was true, my father replied, but those people were not aliens: they were Americans, born on the soil of the United States, and many of them excellent workers. Never mind that, they must be fired before the ones with Anglo-Saxon names, was the order from the boss. This my father refused to do, and he was thus forced to resign. He left the oil industry entirely. I do not believe there are very many men who would have given up a top position at the height of the depression for the sake of a principle.

Our family was not destitute--far from it. Dad was not frugal, but he was not a spendthrift either, and during his years at the refinery he had managed to lay aside a healthy nest egg. He used most of this money to buy a small creamery. Like many chemists he was fascinated by the challenge of producing some unusual substance--a plastic, for example--from the waste-products of milk. I think his plan was to operate the milk company as a livelihood and spend his evening hours experimenting with the casein waste-products in a laboratory.

He never realized this goal. Not long after he bought the creamery, a vicious price war erupted in Southern California, and in time it wiped us out completely. The trucks were overturned and the men were beaten up. When Dad began in the business, he bought the raw milk for six cents a quart and after it was processed sold it for about eleven cents a quart delivered to the home. At the peak of the milk war the raw-milk cost remained fixed by the NRA but the price on delivery fell as low as one and a half cents a quart. Caught in the squeeze, Dad trimmed the business to the bare bones, but his capital dwindled rapidly.

The final days were grim. The whole family rushed to the rescue. My mother collected money on the milk routes, then being served by several trucks which were driven by my father and a man named Harold Babb. I often rode the trucks and ran up to the houses with the milk bottles. Later in the day I ran the bottle-washing machine, which cleaned about 7,500 bottles a day, all of which had then to be put into crates and stacked. I was not in the best of health. Often, in the midst of the grueling work, I was so tired that I hid behind the crates--where my father, who never seemed to tire, couldn’t see me--and bawled. Typically, my father refused to give up on that milk business until he ran through his last dime. When the business finally collapsed, he must have been hurt deeply, but he showed no outward signs of his feelings.

There was one noteworthy facet of Dad’s character, which in retrospect seems important, and perhaps contradictory. Although he certainly held a tight rein on us children, at the same time he allowed us great individual responsibility. We were given complete freedom, for example, in our choice of courses in school. “What you make of your schooling is your own business,” he said. On the question of learning, he was not didactic, but had what was probably a shrewdly calculated way of spurring us on. At the dinner table, where we had the closest contact with him, he would never say, “Well, why don’t you know that?” about some subject. Instead he would say, “That’s strange. I thought you _knew_ that.” This, of course, made us feel like idiots and soon after dinner we were all flying to the encyclopedia.

My father’s unusually severe and unyielding spirit dominated our home, where I can remember no emotional scenes. Every family problem was discussed with judicial calm, and the solution arrived at was not an expeditious one, but a just one as my father saw it. Mother was a full and enthusiastic partner in these discussions. She was treated by my father, and by us children as well, with regal respect. This atmosphere might have seemed to some outsiders as oppressively dull. I am certain it had a profound impact on me, a pint-sized kid who might otherwise have grown up to fear his own shadow.