Golda was a secretary in a construction firm. John worked at Cessna. Granddad Harold Mayfield was a Christian Scientist and, like George Washington, high up in Masonic orders. He passed away before I was one year old, of a heart attack. Somehow I never got around to reading Mary Baker Eddy, who wrote Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures when she founded the Church of Christ, Scientist. Her name "Mary Baker Eddy" reminds me of the scene in Galaxy M51 (near the handle of the Big Dipper), in which I seem to leave my divorcing 1st wife Susan to come to Tampa Bay for the 2nd time and get with Mary So-and-So on the other side, the first girl I dated when arrived in Tampa in 1987 when I went to work at Honeywell Defense Communications. When she left me, I began dating Linda, then Jean. As a Principal Design Engineer with a master's degree in the field, I was an "Eddy Baker" intent on finding a third wife. Uncle John took me to Church a few times at a local Church of Christ Scientist, but I formed no clear image of its doctrine, save that they were at one time loath to consult doctors from the School of Medicine. I have wondered if this was not perhaps a jibe at the kind of scientists Christians were at one time. I note that James Clerk Maxwell, a PhD and the inventor of the electromagnetic theory of light, was a Presbyterian. Instead of a collection plate, the Christian Scientists had a velvet bag with an elastic black fabric opening into which you could sink your whole hand, as if you were exploring the bottom of a very loose angel. I guess it would be possible to extract money from such a thing, as well as to deposit money inside it. Goodness knows we need some way of communicating about the seat of all value. I am reminded of the scene in M16's Star Queen Nebula over it. Perhaps the Star Queen is the heavenly image of a Christian Scientist who knows the passions of her own soul thoroughly. Abra-Cadabra!.

Dad said one time that the Mayfields were descended from Hessian mercenaries that were captured by George Washington before they joined the American Revolutionary Army. Eventually they settled in Oklahoma after the land run on the Cherokee Strip, so that my mother was born in Claremore, Oklahoma in 1923. However, I have been unable to find evidence that they participated in an Oklahoma land run.

Every year there were two Christmas parties and two Thanksgiving parties, one at the Mayfield residence, the other 2.5 blocks away at Grandad Green's. Dad married the girl next door, pretty nearly, which was good for togetherness. Uncle Wilbur Nuckolls, a general contractor, always showed up for Christmas and Thanksgiving with Aunt Betty (shown on the left side of the photo). Wilbur built homes and offices and was a very skilled fellow who produced works of art in architecture. He constructed Grandad's workshop on the West side of the house next to the garage.

Grandad was President of Mesa Oil & Petroleum, and took me to the Algonquin Hotel in New York as a kid to see Mary Martin in Peter Pan (videos). While we were at the Algonquin, we bumped into actor Peter Lorre in an elevator. (See Peter Lorre videos.) Peter Pan reminds me now of my engineering career in Florida, where the boss complained alligators were after him with clocks inside, like workers on overtime. Grandma and Grandad Green were members of the 20th Century Club and of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution. They met in a bank in Missouri, and were both members of The Missouri Society and of the National Geographic Society. Grandad was a member of The Petroleum Club, too. I was a Junior Optimist, myself, and a Boy Scout, like Dad, who got to be an Eagle Scout. I built my first electric motor in scouting. Grandad Green took me to baseball games in Lawrence stadium, and introduced me to a lot of Americana, in addition to classics of literature like Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Grandad Green liked to read the paper in the Sun Room at his two-story house on 401 South Quentin, where Grandma and I played Chinese Checkers [5]. He introduced me to Rudyard Kipling and the Mowgli Stories. "When chill the kite brings home the night that Mang, the bat, set free..." Now it reminds me of May 13 when I was born, when Corvus stands like a kite with head star Gienah on top, facing Orion in the West, where Orion sets at the position of the setting sun in a Betsy Ross-like arc of stars. When Orion sinks out sight below the horizon, Corvus seems to have rotated to become the headstone of a grave, and by then it is Memorial Day. Lost Horizon also happens when the Eagle Eye of Aquila (The Nurse of Jove, according to Allen's Star Names) sinks beneath the horizon as Orion rises, wing-robe first, like a proud phoenix. It makes me feel a bit like the Abbot of Shangri-La to behold it. Grandad also took all the Greens to Florida for vacation, where I rode in glass-bottomed boats and picked up shells on the seashore.

Grandfather Green liked to explain that we were Christians, although he disliked attending church services and did not go. The nice thing about Christians was that then bank loans could be forgiven if something attempted in business failed. Granddad loved to read the paper, The Saturday Evening Post, selections from his library, and National Geographic, which he had collected back for many years. I read Kipling's Mowgli Stories from his bookshelf. They were worried and startled a little if they found me reading one of Dad's science fiction books.