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Noel Siverston from Peachtree Village Retirement Community

Writer's picture: Samantha AlcarazSamantha Alcaraz


Noel Siverston at Peachtree Village Retirement Community on January 31, 2025 in Roswell, New Mexico.
Noel Siverston at Peachtree Village Retirement Community on January 31, 2025 in Roswell, New Mexico.

Noel Siverston- My First Love

"I was in about the 7th grade. It was after school and I was going to a friend's house along Van Ness Avenue, the street that all the automobile dealerships were on. I was almost to the corner of Sacramento Street when I saw her. I think it was the Studebaker dealership but there she was standing to one side of the floor. I went inside and walked right up to her and put my hand on her side. A dealer walked up to me and said, "How do you like her kid? Do you want to sit in her?" 


I didn't say a word, I just nodded and stepped into the cockpit of a Luscombe 8A. It was beautiful. I had no idea then what the instruments on panel were for or any idea how one might fly in her. But I gently put my hand on the stick and curled my fingers around it. I moved it back and forth sideways and fore and aft. I luxuriated in the smell of her. I noticed the rudder pedals and scrunched down a bit and moved then forward and back with the toes of my shoes. 


After a while I got out of her and just walked around her touching her here and there. I had never seen a real airplane this close before, but suddenly I was in love. As I started towards the door of the dealership one of the salesmen yelled, "Come back anytime kid!" The next afternoon I went to the library and picked up some books on airplanes and how they worked. 


I went to the dealership every day after school. I would sit in the airplane and walk around her for a while and then go home and read my airplane books. I learned how an airplane flies. How the controls worked. 


One day after school when I was loving my beloved Luscombe, a man in an elegant suit and tie came over and said, "What's your name kid?" I told him, "Noel." 


"Well, Noel, climb in and I'll show you how it works." He told me he had flown P-47s in the war. Then he proceeded to demonstrate the controls for me. He told me what all of the instruments were for. We climbed out of the cockpit, and he walked around the aircraft while I followed, and he moved the ailerons and rudder and elevator and explained what the aircraft did when those controls moved. I just got my first flying lesson. 


The next afternoon I went to the dealership and my beloved Luscombe was gone! I went inside and one of the salesmen told me the boss had taken the wings off and moved it to an airport on the Peninsula so he could start flying. My heart was broken but I still have my books. I started buying flying magazines with my allowance and eventually found a picture of a Luscombe I cut out and taped to the wall beside my bed. 


As time went on, I graduated from the 8th grade and went to high school. Then after a summer working high up in the Rocky Mountains in Glacier National Park I came back home and joined the Marine Corps. 


Four years later, after I got out, I got a job as a file clerk for the Southern Pacific Railroad in their claims department. I was still living at home with my parents in Mill Valley. I took the bus to San Francisco every morning and when it went through the underpass of Highway 101 on the way to the Sausalito bus stop, I could see Commodore Center across the road. And next to the dock on floats was a beloved Luscombe. Not the yellow one I had seen when I was in the 7th grade but a blue one.


One Saturday I borrowed my dad’s car and went over there. I found out I could learn to fly that Luscombe on the GI Bill. I signed up and they helped with the GI Bill paperwork and in two weeks they called me to schedule my first lesson. My introduction to flying was in a Luscombe 8E on floats. Side-by-side seating and the stick instead of a yoke were familiar since I already had several hours sitting in one a decade earlier. And the instruments that that gentleman had explained to mere still etched in my mine. 


I had about eight hours of flying time with my instructor. Then one day after my lesson we taxied to the dock. My instructor told me to keep the engine running. He opened his door and stepped out onto the pier. Then he pushed the aircraft away from the dock and said, "Give me three circuits." I taxied out to the middle of the bay lined up with the wind. In front of me I could see the Bay Bridge, Treasure Island and downtown San Francisco. 


I pushed the throttle to firewall and soon gained enough speed to roll onto the step. A half minute later I was off the water and gaining altitude. I was scared to death. My fate was in my own hands. I was alone and it was up to me to get that airplane safely back on the water. And that I did...three times. I taxied back to the dock where my instructor was waiting for me. He grabbed the wing strut and then tied the aircraft to the dock. I cut the engine, opened the door, and climbed out (onto the dock). 


My instructor shook hands with me and told me I was now a pilot. I was so proud I thought I was going to bust! We went into the building and the office where everyone congratulated me, and my instructor pull my shirt out of my pants and cut off the shirt tail. Then he proceeded to tack it up on the wall along with the shirttails of all the others who had soloed before me. I was so proud. I went home and told mom and dad I had soloed. They might not have realized what a big deal it was. But I knew… that day I became a pilot. 


I did my solo cross countries to San Luis Reservoir and Clear Lake. San Luis Reservoir was fun because I flew by the San Francisco and Oakland airport and would sometimes see a DC-3 or DC-6 landing or taking of. And I felt a kinship to the pilots who were flying them. 

The hours I have flown Cessnas 152s and 172s and Piper Cherokees and even a Piper Aztec have not diminished my love for my beloved Luscombe. I think our first loves remain in our hearts forever. People ask me what it feels like to fly. To be up a few thousand feet above the ground in a small airplane alone…by yourself. I don't think any pilot can explain that to someone who has never done it. 


The closest I have ever read or heard along those lines is the poem 'High Flight' by John Gillespie Magee Jr. and no matter how many times I've read it, it always kind of chokes me up when I get to the end."


High Flight by John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air ....

 

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.



Story note from Noel, “This story happened later than the rest of the collection. It happened during the summer between my junior and senior year of high school. But to me it is important to include it here.”

 

Noel Siverston- My Dad

“It was hot. The trail was dusty, and the pack was getting heavier with every step up that long, steep trail that followed French Creek up the mountain. I began to wonder if this had been a bad idea. It was the summer of 1949, and I was fifteen years old, skinny, and weighed 120 pounds soaking wet. The previous Fall I had read two books, 'Waters of the Golden Trout Country' and 'Sequoia and Kings Canyon Trout' by a man named Charles McDermand. 

 

Charles McDermand was also the head of the sports department at a downtown department store called The Emporium. I went there to talk to him about his book. Probably twice a month I would visit him, and he would tell me about the High Sierras and the Golden Trout country. I told my dad we should take a backpacking trip into the Sierras the next summer and we started to plan it. I did the planning, and he did the listening. 

It would take some money to buy equipment and for the bus tickets to Huntington Lake.

 

We could improvise some of the gear from what we had around the house and dad bought some strips of wood and began making our pack frames. He also hired me to do the janitorial work around his print shop to earn money for the trip. Meanwhile every Saturday I made my way the Emporium to talk to Mr. McDermand and from there I would go to Smilie's Outfitters on Mission Street where they sold camping and wilderness and expedition supplies. I talked to the proprietors and gleaned as much information as I could and priced things I thought we should have. Things were coming together.

 

Dad had the pack frames made. I had earned enough money for our bus tickets and two rather large canvas tarps. We had selected a pot and skillet and coffee pot from mom's kitchen and a couple of mason jars. Large safety pins held together extra blankets from the linen closet that would be our 'sleeping bags'. On the weekend before we left, I took dad to the Emporium and introduced him to Mr. McDermand.

 

They talked for a while. Then I took him to Smilie’s, and we shopped for some essentials liked dehydrated apples and a waterproof match case. On the evening, we were supposed to leave dad came home with a five-pound slab of bacon and a sack of beans. Those would be our staples for a week. We laid out pack frames on the living room floor and spread our tarps over them.

 

Dad divided up our gear and then wrapped the tarp around everything and lashed the bundles to the pack frames. We were ready to go. After saying goodbye to mom and my brother we hefted our packs, walked up to Hyde Street and took the cable car downtown. At the end of the line, we walked to the Greyhound bus depot and waited until it was time for the Fresno bus to leave. We arrived in Fresno early in the morning and sat around the depot having breakfast and waited for the Huntington Stage that would take us to Huntington Lake. 

 

The stage was simply a station wagon that delivered mail and small packages to the small towns and farms and ranches along the way to Huntington Lake. At Huntington Lake we walked to the public campground at the edge of town and set up for our first night of the trip. It was a chance to check out our gear and the routine we would follow for the rest of the week. When dad took his pack out of the back of the stationed wagon, he found it was broken. Tomorrow was Sunday and the little hardware store at Huntington Lake would be closed so our trip would be delayed a day until dad could get the material he needed to repair his pack frame. 

 

The man in the campsite next to ours came over to talk to us. He had just come back from the high country and was telling dad about it. Dad told him about the busted pack frame he had to repair, and the man went back to his car and bought a store-bought pack and frame and told dad he could borrow it. He lived in Los Angeles and gave dad the address to ship it to him after we got back. That was a different world and a different country so long ago (1949). People trusted one another. 

 

The next morning the man in the next campsite waved to us and wished us luck as he pulled out to drive back home. We packed up and started hiking down the highway to Florence Lake where the trailhead to the high country was. About 30 minutes, later a man in a pickup truck stopped and asked us if wanted a ride to the lake. Dad accepted and we put our packs in the bed of the truck next to his boat. When we got the lake, he offered to take us across in his boat. 

 

It didn't take us long to find the trail and we started hiking up the Kern River valley. It's pretty level and I thought this was going to pretty easy. We were in the wilderness, nobody else was around. Whenever we stopped to rest, we could hear the rushing waters of the Kern River. It was paradise. 


We finally got to the side trail that led up to Hutchinson Meadow, our destination. We camped there and took out the Mason Jar of beans that had been soaking in water all day and poured the contents into mom's pot. Dad scraped out a fire pit and started a small fire. I was assigned to gather firewood. When the fire had burned down to just coals dad put the pot of beans on to boil and sliced a couple pieces of bacon from the slab and put them into mom's skillet. 

 

The bacon started frying and the beans were boiling. The pine smoke smelled wonderful, and our beds were laid out just waiting for us. Soon the bacon had fried up and the beans were semi-cooked. We sat around and ate out of the pot and the skillet and dad talked to me about when he was a boy. He had some wonderful stories to tell.

 

We had never talked like this before. I learned more about him that night than in all my 15 years. Before long, it was dark, and we climbed into our bedrolls and went to sleep. The hike and lack of sleep the night before caught up with me and I dozed off quickly. Then sometime in the middle of the night I woke with a start, and it sounded like a thousand dogs had surrounded us barking and yelping and carrying on like they were going to attack us. Dad laughed and said they were just coyotes to ignore them and go back to sleep. Eventually I did and woke up to the smell of hot coffee. 

 

Dad had breakfast ready. Not much, just the cold left-over bacon and beans from last night and some fresh coffee. We had to get back on the trail because it was a long hike to Hutchinson Meadows. I cleaned up the dishes on the banks of the Kern River while dad began to repack our gear and lash my bundle and my pack frames and stuffed his gear into the borrowed pack. 

 

The trail to Hutchinson Meadows was long and steep. This was not going to be the walk in the woods yesterday was. My steps grew shorter, and the pack grew heavier. I just plodded along behind dad. Periodically we stopped whenever French Creek was close enough to the trail for us to get some cool water and drink. Then dad would say, "We're wasting time, time to go."

 

We finally made it up to Hutchinson Meadows, the place we would call home for the next three days. I gathered firewood and dad started cutting down pine boughs for our bed. He stuck them into the ground at a forty-five-degree angle, one beside the other, until he had a nice, comfortable, pallet made. We would sleep on those for the next three nights. He placed one tarp over the boughs and our bedrolls on top of it.

 

The other tarp would be our cover in case it rained but it never did. We had extra beans and bacon that night and did a lot more talking. My dad and I were becoming friends. We sat around the fire, each of us poking the coals with a stick. The night was quiet. And I learned how people could just sit quietly with each other without the need to speak and not be awkward. Just being together was comfortable.


The next morning dad made the apple sauce and pancakes. That was it. In the days before freeze dried breakfasts and dinners meager rations were the order of the day. After breakfast I cleaned up the dishes. Dad filled the mason jars with water and put in the beans on to soak all day. He wrapped the food in one of the bedroll blankets and tied it off with a rope.

 

Then he swung the rope over a high limb of the pine tree and hoisted it up and tied it off so the bears couldn't get to it. Then we went fishing. We climbed over the boulders up to the benches above the meadow where the little lakes were, and we caught Golden Trout. Canary yellow Golden Trout. Creatures of beauty and they would supplement dinner tonight. Dad would also salt some to take home with us.

 

He knew how to do those things he was kind of a mountain man, but I never knew it. We spent three days at Hutchinson Meadows. Three days that would map out the rest of my life. We never saw another soul up there. The world belonged to dad and I alone.

 

Wilderness camping got into my blood and dad, and I became a lot more than father and son. I felt I could talk to him like I could talk to my friends at home, and I learned a lot about him. About when he ran away from home in Michigan when he was fourteen and wound up in Oklahoma during the oil boom. He linked up with a guy who had a truck and at night they could go out and steal drilling rod from one outfit and the next day sell it to another outfit. 

 

How he worked on the highway gang building the road along the Klamath River in Northern California. He was the cook; he told me he had wounded a deer one day and had to cut its throat because he had no bullets left. That deer fed the highway gang for two days. When winter came and worked on the roads and stopped, he stayed up there and hooked up with a miner and they panned for gold on Indian Creek. They didn't get much gold. 

 

He was arrested by the sheriff in Yreka because they thought he might be a train robber. It was a case of mistaken identity. I don't know how he became a printer and a graphic artist. But he designed the original Safeway logo, the round one before they squared it off to look modern. My dad was also a gardener and when we lived in Mill Valley, and he grew mushrooms in a dark corner of the basement. 

 

He was a quiet man; I never saw him get excited. Mom used to get angry with him from time to time, but I never saw him get angry with her. He was not a religious man. He was a reader. He read lots of book, our living room was stacked with books. And from time to time, he would sneak a book to me that was banned by the church and tell me not let my mother see it. Like Mark Twain's 'Letters from Earth' and Anatole France's 'Penguin Island'. 

 

One night a friend of mine and I were in a used car lot on Van Ness Avenue driving cars around the with their starter motors until the batteries went dead. We got caught and we were arrested. Our parents were called. My dad and my friend's dad came to get us. My friend's dad was quite angry but when my dad saw me sitting there, he burst out laughing. 

 

And when I got kicked out of St. Ignatius high school my mom was livid. When I told my dad why he didn't say anything. He just gave me a look and a nod that said, "I'm proud of you son." I never saw my dad much after I joined the Marines. Only when I came home on leave. When I was in Korea, I wrote him letter once. My mom wrote back to me that when he read it, he had a tear in his eye. 

 

One time when I was home my brother and I took him to see the movie Paint Your Wagon. I had never seen him laugh so loudly except for the time I got arrested. He contracted Alzheimer's. My brother Leon was home, and he took care of mom and dad after they retired. I was living in Utah with my own family at the time. I called my mom once and my dad answered the phone. My mom wasn't home, so I asked my dad to tell her I called. 

 

A while later she called me and asked if I had called. My dad had told her someone called. She asked, "Was it Leon?" "No," he told her, “It was the other guy." The last time I saw him he was in a nursing home bed and reminded me of an infant in a crib. He died shortly after that. 

 

What I was in my working life I owe to my dad, the Jesuits at Saint Ignatius High School, and the United States Marine Corps. But mostly, I think, my dad. He started me on the path that led to Saint Ignatius and the Marine Corps. The independent thinker that clashed with the religious theology that the Jesuits didn't appreciate and a work ethic and respect for authority that got me through boot camp and my military career and my promotion from technician to engineer when I was working as a civilian.

 

Not to shrink from my beliefs when criticized but not to be so stuck on them that I couldn't change my mind if thought they weren't serving me well. 

 

I think of him from time to time and it's always with fondness."



Noel Siverston- I Remember Mama

“We were walking toward my new school, Saint Jarleth School in Oakland. We had just moved back to California from Chicago. I was in the second grade. I didn't want to go. I was shy and as we walked up the steps and into the great hallway of the school I began whimpering and holding my mom’s arm a bit more tightly. 

 

We walked into sister superior's office where mom enrolled me. My whimpering turned into sobs. By the time mom and sister superior got to the classroom I was crying. My mom told sister superior that we had better wait until tomorrow. Mom took me back home and I spent the rest of the day setting up my windup train and playing with it on the living room floor. Mom never said a word about what happened at the school. 

 

The next morning we walked back to school. This time the sobs and crying did not work. Mom kissed me on the forehead and I walked into the class room still sobbing. The sister walked me to my desk, and I sat down and just stared at the desktop. I was afraid to look up. 

 

Then the recess bell rang. I followed the members of my class into the schoolyard and a girl came up to me and said, "You're from back east aren't you?" That is one of the earliest memories I still have in detail. Mom was ordinary and unique at the same time. She had been born in Antwerp, Belgium.

 

During World War I, she was a refugee fleeing the Germans and wound up in England. Later she immigrated to the United States and lived in New York with my aunt and uncle. I don't know how she ended up in California. At some point we moved to San Francisco, the city in which I was born. I entered the third grade at Saint Brigid School without the trauma of the second grade. My brother Leon entered the first grade. 

 

Mom was a typical housewife in the 1940s, she shopped for groceries every day. Our refrigerator was small, and home freezers were still an appliance far in the future. So for fresh pork chops and peas in the pod that had to be shelled had to be shopped for each morning after the house cleaning was done. She did the laundry almost every day in the old washing machine on the back porch with the wringer on top. Clothes were always hanging on the clothesline in the back yard. 

 

After doing today's laundry, yesterday’s laundry had to ironed and folded and put away in the dresser drawers or hung up in the closet. Then it would be time to put out the milk and snacks for Leon and I when we came home from school. By then she would be shelling fresh peas on the kitchen table and getting ready for dinner. In that sense Mom was an ordinary housewife but she was also a party girl. No holiday was too insignificant for her to celebrate.

 

On Saint Patrick’s Day the living room would be decorated with green crepe paper streamers and Leon, and I would drink green milk, colored with food coloring. 

Likewise, Halloween would be orange and black streamers and orange milk. A life size cardboard skeleton hanging from the middle of the ceiling. After dinner she made sure our trick-or-treat costumes were properly fitted and gave Leon and I each a kiss before we left for out trick-or- treat foray through the neighborhood. 

 

The Fourth of July was also Leon's birthday, so it was special. Red, white and blue streamers and red milk. And a red, white, and blue birthday cake. This was one of the holidays the whole family; aunty Mit and uncle Bob, cousin Emile and his wife Elsie, and Grandma would be there. 

 

Thanksgiving too. Orange and brown streamers decorated the living room with a large cardboard turkey hanging from the middle of the ceiling. And a turkey feast for the extended family. People always feel sorry for me when I tell them my birthday is on Christmas Day. "Oh, you only get one present." Not true. I always got both a Christmas and birthday present and it was the one holiday Mom indulged herself.

 

My birthday cake was always her favorite. A rum cake. The Christmas tree was in the corner with all the presents under it and manger scene with statues in the other corner on a small table. After dinner the family would sit around the Christmas Tree and cousin Emile would be Santa Claus and hand out the presents among the voices saying, "Oh, just what I wanted!" or "You shouldn't have." 

 

Then after all the presents had been handed out and we had finished surveying all of our loot and Mom and aunty Mit and cousin Elsie had carefully folded the Christmas wrapping to save to use for next year although it wouldn't be used. Mom would come into the room wearing her coat and a hat. She would take Leon and I to midnight mass at Saint Brigid Church. The priest had on his very best robes and the choir sung Christmas songs in both English and Latin. Mom was the only devout Catholic in the family and made sure Leon and I went to church too. 

 

But one day we came home from school and the living room was decorated with red, white and blue streamers and an American Flag hung from the center of the living room and small American flags festooned the house. We asked her what the occasion was, and she said it was a surprise. We would have wait until Dad got home from work. As soon as Dad came in the front door, she ran to him and threw her arms around home and said, "I'm a citizen!" 

 

She had been studying for weeks and this day she went downtown and took the test and was sworn in as a naturalized citizen. The hug became a group hug, and Mom had a tear in her eye. Desert was a red, white and blue cake. But there were two celebrations that were a bit different. Yes, the house was decorated and there would be cake.

 

But Dad was not good at remembering birthdays and anniversaries. So, before Leon and I went to school those morning she would give us carfare to go downtown to Dad's shop and remind him that is her birthday or their anniversary. So on the way home he would pick up a gift and when he went in the house he would hand it to her and say, “Happy Birthday” or “Happy Anniversary.” And she would always throw her arms around him and say, "Oh Sig, you remembered." 

 

Another festive occasion was the Annual Big Game between the University of California and Stanford University. Again, it was an extended family affair, and we listened to the game on the radio and cheered our teams. Lunch was hard rolls, like those made only in San Francisco spread with Kraft's Old English cheese and filled with slices of salami. I can still taste them. Friday nights were special. That was family night.

 

After dinner the family would sit down, and we would usually play Canasta or some form of Rummy mom liked. Or we would just sit around and play verbal word games like "I'm thinking of a word they rhymes with milk" or simply just talk. Mom and dad would have a glass of wine and eat a small brick of Liederkranz cheese (an Americanized version of Limburger cheese). I could never get past the smell to taste it. 

 

It was not just for the family. Our friends were invited to join in too and many times they did. They were as comfortable with Mom and Dad as we were. I recall one Friday I was in high school and for English Literature I had to memorize Antony's speech after the assassination of Julius Caesar and was complaining about it. Dad offered me a dollar if I could memorize it that evening.

 

It took about 40 minutes. I recited it to dad and he gave me the dollar and mom came over and kissed me on the forehead. Leon and I were her life. She made sure we always had what we needed. She fed the family well.

 

She was very interested in our education. She always wanted to see our report cards and made sure our homework was done. Dad helped out too, but mom was the driver. 

When mom first came to America, she taught herself English by doing crossword puzzles. Before I entered the first grade, she had taught me how to read.

 

She even made a game of it by making simple little crossword puzzles for me to do. By the time I was in the third grade she was buying me easy crossword puzzle books to work. 

But she was a very emotional woman too. She cried easily. She would faint whenever something happened to Leon or I or when she became very angry.

 

We learned how to handle the situation. Prop her feet up on a pillow and put a cold, damp rag on her forehead. I couldn't lie to my mom. She always knew, I don't know how, but she always did. In the story I wrote about my Dad I said I owed what I am today to my dad, Saint Ignatius High School and the United States Marine Corps. That's only partly true.

 

Dad gave me the motivation, but mom gave me the tools. 

 

Mom was also a smoker, she had a two pack a day habit. I remember her favorite brand was Chesterfields. She was almost eighty when she died of bladder cancer due to smoking. When Leon and I were teenagers and at that age when smoking cigarettes was 'cool' mom and dad said it would be OK for us to smoke in the house.

 

I never did start. I guess I thought if it's not forbidden then what's the point. Sometimes Leon and I reminisce about Mom and Dad and how we turned out. It always come down to mom and dad loved us. Like the title of that wonderful old movie, I Remember Mama."




Transcription and Audio Edit by Grace McKenzie and Samantha Alcaraz.

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