Little Known Lessons from History #329:
'For the Record!'

Dateline 1877. After the invention of the phonograph machine, a small retinue of scientists in the emerging field of Parental Abolition debates the new contraption's possible effectiveness as a raiser of infants. Most notably, at the 1886 meeting of the American Society for Industrial Spread and Parental Eradication, it is John Dwyer who first claims that you could take a newborn baby still wet from the womb, isolate it without an ounce of outside contact save a single, endlessly repeating, sound recording, and fifteen years later, that very same newborn (assuming, of course, the sound recording was just right) would stroll out of isolation utterly reared and transformed, a fit and talking, well–adjusted, financially–viable American adult.


"Gentlemen," Dwyer's peroration to ASISPE went, "imagine a future where the drawbacks of childrearing–the awkward ear boxings, the humiliating thrice–daily fecal swabs, the innumerable, precious adult hours wasted every year slaying monsters living in closets or beneath beds–will be nothing but quaint antiques. This future age will bear witness to a constant parade of infants, all of them no more cognizant than potato sacks, into desert warehouses divided into thousands upon thousands of efficient Infant Iso–Listening Booths. And there, nurtured solely at the teat of aural technology, America's new sons and daughters will emerge years later, not as the social drains we know them to be now, but as well–mannered, happy, articulate almost–adults ready to contribute to our ever–mounting household expenses. The shimmering new century dawning before us bears with it the promise of a new era of parental efficiency, one in which Mommy will be machine and Daddy will be the recordable disk!"


At this, the nine other members of ASISPE in attendance erupted with riotous applause, then headed to a nearby saloon to talk shop.


Armed with a dream, Dwyer devoted most of his post–'77 research to discovering what this perfect childrearing recording might be. The music library at his Brooklyn lab ballooned. Every recording that could be located was brought in, cataloged, and then subjected to an endless array of tests and conjectures. Each record's unique attributes–its moral compass, its probable scope of pragmatic effect, its sense of humor, its skill at imparting social decorum, its ability to breastfeed (if any)–were carefully noted, then reviewed, then reviewed again, and finally given a Comprehensive Nurturing Quotient between 1 and 42 on Dwyer's Continuum for Surrogate Parental Capacity.


1914, Dwyer was broke. And his ideal record remained ever elusive. Not a single recording in the lab had managed a CNQ higher than 27. Dwyer did his best to remain optimistic, but like his hero, Galileo, he was forced to bear the sufferings of a wildly misunderstood man. His position as a fringe figure in a fringe field came with extremely dear costs. His colleagues in mainstream science often berated him publicly, calling his theories pathetic and preposterous. At a symposium in Albany, his presentation was cut short by a barrage of rotten cabbage. Claiming he could replace all American mothers and fathers with a grooved piece of bisulfate phosphorous did not make him a favorite among America's conservative parents either. Chairwomen of local PTA's (one as far away as Eugene, Oregon) were seen going door to door, gathering signatures on a petition for Dwyer's official censure by the state. A Georgia senator submitted a motion to have him deported to the Philippines. If there was a lone bright spot in this long career of defeats, it arrived in 1910 when the Coalition of Exhausted Orphanage and Summer Camp Administrators issued Dwyer their Annual Medal of Service. But even these CEOSCA accolades were a nominal victory at best. They could do nothing permanent to ease Dwyer's mounting professional worries. And after years of intense listening and relentless persecution, the pressures of failure became too great, the pressures on his pocketbook too overwhelming, and when his wife of twenty–six years left him for a Soho fabric merchant, Dwyer knew in his heart he was finally finished. And so, a week later, his heart broken and his life's work incomplete, he found the heaviest phonograph player in his lab, tied it to his ankle, and leapt into the East River.


Sweet, vindicative history, however, tells us that oftentimes even the most unsung pioneer will garner his stray disciple, and when Dwyer descended into the murky waters that day, our story, luckily, did not go with him. The post–Dwyer era saw a startling resurgence in science's quest for the perfect parental recording. The archives reveal that by 1916, both the Comprehensive Parental Dissatisfaction Rate and the American Child Raisers' Obligation/Regret Percentage had reached all–time highs. And as the country found itself embedded in a deadly European conflict (and all of the adult things such conflicts demand), ASISPE's members not only threw themselves full–force into the efforts at the Brooklyn headquarters, but they also began giving serious thought to new ways of speeding up the overall process of discovery.


Nowhere is this clearer than in the work of Dwyer's most talented apprentice, Emiril Jensen. Of the most prominent Parental Abolitionists, Jensen, a Bowdoin graduate known for an obsessive and distinguished palate for cheeses, was the only member of ASISPE to suggest moving his teacher's theoretical abstractions into the concrete setting of a physical experiment. Threatening times call for a reappraisal of even our most cherished scientific methods, Jensen suggested, and as the Kraut menace grows more ominous by the hour, Americans are doing their country a grand disservice by teaching their children to walk, read, and properly hold a fork, when the right phonograph record could easily do such things for them. Moreover, Jensen continued, ASISPE wasn't doing itself any favors by relying on outdated methods when, say, perhaps, and Jensen was just speaking hypothetically here, the performance of maybe a small–scale, minimally–intrusive case study on an actual human infant, if he could just get his hands on one of them, would no doubt yield more information in six months than ASISPE could gather in a decade with the old techniques.


Jensen's suggestion pressed sinisterly at the bounds of professional ethics, and when he announced his plans initially, his closest friends and colleagues took the news as a misguided attempt at professional humor. A few of them re–checked Jensen's medical records or gossiped about previous episodes of erratic behavior. At one point, a request for an official inquiry was submitted anonymously to the ASISPE Board. By this time, though, Jensen had built up a substantial history as a level–headed man and an innovative, dependable worker. His record as a researcher was pristine, and, more importantly, he seemed harmless enough, so when it came time to make a decision concerning his status with the Society, the Board chose to do nothing and ASISPE allowed his work to go on undisturbed.


This collegial reticence (as reticence is wont to do) would bear disastrous results, culminating in the infamous Terrance Cases of 1923. On the evening of June 12, in Bedminster, Massachusetts, two police officers apprehended a frothy–mouthed Jensen standing outside a burning orphanage. Found on his person at the time of the arrest were an empty jug smelling of kerosene, a box of phosphorous matches, a clipboard, and seven burlap sacks. After initially being charged with arson and criminal mischief, the counts against Jensen soon included kidnapping and aggravated endangerment when police searched his home three days later. There, amid stacks of records, crumpled mounds of graph paper, scrawled charts, and the stench of poorly stored Limburger, detectives heard muted music coming from the apartment's two bedrooms. The doors were locked, and when Sergeant McNamara, the lead detective on the case, gave the order to kick them in, the investigators made a discovery that shook them all to their adult cores. Behind the first door, a boy was lying on a bed, listening to George Washington Johnson's "Listen to the Mockingbird." In the next room, another boy, sitting at a desk with his arms crossed, was humming along to Johnson's "The Laughing Coon." Both of them looked to be about six or seven years old. They were completely emaciated, their eyes sunken and glazed over, and neither one of them had seen a human being before. When McNamara asked them who they were, they both replied by saying the name Terrance four times in a row. Then the two boys began screeching like cornered opossums.


"I've seen my share of horrific crimes and despicable sins, but I'm pretty damn sure it'll be a long, long time before I witness a sick, blasphemous mania like this again," McNamara growled, donning his heavy leather gloves and stepping with resolve toward one of the feral boys.


The Terrance discoveries hit the newspapers the next morning and the parents of Bedminster grew appalled and violent. On the day of Jensen's arraignment, they attacked his police escort and attempted to lynch him. A week later, deacons from the Methodist church confiscated every phonograph player and record in the county and burned them in a field across from the library. Public parental dedication ceremonies experienced a renaissance. Throughout New England, church sanctuaries were booked months in advance as parents rushed to profess (always in the presence of a notary public) a renewed, heartfelt desire to raise their children traditionally, the right way, with the old–fashioned tools of personal involvement and loving discipline. To this day, Bedminister's law books prohibit any form of parenting by electronic device.


Jensen was eventually ordered to serve three hundred seventy–six years in the Massachusetts penitentiary. It was only a month before his notoriety caught up to him, and another inmate, apparently with a soft spot for children, stabbed him to death. The account from the warden, himself a father of four, claimed Jensen was killed in a freak accident when he tripped while carrying his cafeteria tray and impaled himself on a butter knife. No one appealed the veracity of the warden's report, and the next day, guards dumped Jensen's body into an unmarked plot in the cemetery behind the prison.


But what of the pair of Terrances rescued from Jensen's apartment? After searching unsuccessfully for the boys' biological parents, police officially placed Terrance Master and Terrance Guest (last names were given according to the respective bedrooms where they were found) in the care of the state. Americans following the story in the press wondered collectively if the effects of seven isolated years in Jensen's dungeon could be reversed. Many thought it was too late. There were some, however, who refused to lose hope in the American system, and they did everything they could to personally help the boys along in the process of cultural acclimation. Greeting cards, Bibles, blue jeans, and toothbrushes flooded in from all over the country to the Emmanuel Memorial Boy's Home in Yonkers, and America held its breath.


And here's where our historical account hits one final curve. After the first few months at the Boy's Home, which were understandably rough and rife with biting, the boys' caretakers began to notice a definite split in the Terrances' progress. Terrance Master, the boy isolated to "Listen to the Mockingbird," continued to shun all human contact. Workers at the home used restraints when they fed him and he developed a bad habit of shitting on the floor. On the other hand, Terrance Guest, the boy who had been isolated to the "The Laughing Coon," was soon mingling naturally with the other orphans at the home. His progress reports described him as a verbose and athletic child, possessing an almost preternatural understanding of altruistic behavior. Also (and no one at the Boy's Home could explain this), by his ninth birthday, Guest was comfortably reading at a seventh grade level, having grown especially fond of the adventure stories of Rudyard Kipling.


The schism between the two boys only increased in the coming years. For the rest of his life, Master was in and out of mental wards for schizophrenia, manic depression, and paranoia. More than once, doctors subjected him to electro–convulsive therapy. It did no good. By the time he was twenty–five, Master's discomfort in the world was too deep–seated, too fundamental, and the only thing left for him to do was to suitably punctuate such an unhappy life by hanging himself in a rented room at the Philadelphia YMCA.


Terrance Guest went on to graduate with honors from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He flew one hundred and eleven missions during the Second World War and earned a special commendation from a commanding Rear Admiral for his accuracy as a bomber during the Allied invasion of Saipan. After the war, he settled down in the small Dutch community of Solvang, California, and served eight terms on the school board. He never married and never spoke of his childhood. But by that time, his moment of celebrity had long since faded and even the citizens of Solvang who were old enough to remember it felt it was a story that was best left untold. Fittingly, though, when Guest passed away from a brain aneurysm at the age of sixty, it was the young children of the Solvang Preparatory School choir who provided the music at his memorial service.


The efforts of Dwyer and Jensen, for the most part, have been erased from the canonical accounts of history passed down to us today. From our privileged perch of hindsight, their "scientific" forays into the field of Parental Eradication by Phonograph may seem nothing more than negligible blips in the inevitable march of real science. Perhaps, to some, these men serve as reminders that even our most enlightened times will harbor the stray quack or mad scientist. To others, men like Dwyer and Jensen are the ominous precursors to the human experiments directed by Dr. Josef Mengele in the labs of Auschwitz–Birkenau (cf. Lesson #149: "What Fences Will Oftentimes Make Us Forget!"). Whatever their fate might be in the hands of history, however, it is hard not to admit that their research into the intersections of phonographs and children somehow speaks to a fundamental human need. For while it's virtually undeniable that children are necessary (Who will one day take over our vital office positions? Who will keep our grass mowed, our flowerbeds weeded, our hedges pristine?) the question of exactly when children are necessary still perplexes today's adults to no end. Are not children, when viewed as a whole, problematic? Do they not, when they misbehave or fail to understand plain, adult logic, naturally cause grown–ups to wonder if they're worth all the effort? Could the world, in many ways, run more smoothly without them? Until science provides definite answers to questions like these, we should not rush to condemn Dwyer and Jensen as insane men who failed. Instead, they should be honored as pioneers, albeit misguided ones, who braved ridicule, persecution, and even death for the hope of something greater, courageous men who dared to venture forth and explore the as yet untapped regions of potential adult happiness.

Ekleksographia:
Wave 4.1.c

August, 2010

Fiction

Michael Jauchen

Michael Jauchen's work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Sentence, Quarter after Eight, and Keyhole. He currently lives and teaches in New Hampshire.