Stories From Under A Bootheel (Rants, Laughs, and Tears)

Chapter 7 My Dad Part 1 Cleverness, Creativity, and Courage

I realize now my affinity for those with the traits of cleverness, creativity and courage is probably because they represent my own father's best traits. I should probably also include kindness in this list, but since it starts with a "K," it doesn't really fit my alliteration, and my readers all know what a fanatic I am for alliteration. Besides, my father often disguised his kindness as if embarrassed by it. He too was no doubt raised in an environment where kindness was seen as a weakness. Still, on many occasions I saw my father surreptitiously slip money to or otherwise help out or come to the defense of someone in need. Everyone I ever met, told me what a good man my father was. They probably felt they needed to because with his drinking, it was not always obvious.  

My father would sometimes flaunt his pretense at meanness especially if it was in the service of humor.

Before mowing the lawn, we always had to "work" on the lawn mower. An evil decrepit machine that somehow eschewed the junk yard. I was certain it kept barely hanging on just to make my life miserable. In an effort to get this relic functioning, my father would have me clean the air filter, the spark plug gap, put in fresh gas and hopelessly pull the starter cord over and over to no avail. Once, when a neighbor was over watching our futile efforts, my father decided we needed to check if there was "spark" getting to the plug. He had me hold the lead to the spark plug leaving a small gap between the lead's connector and the plug. Nowadays, the connectors are completely covered by an insulator, but this machine was built back when it was assumed people had more sense. Anyway, I was to hold the connector near the plug and watch for the spark while my dad pulled the starter cord. Of course, the proof of "spark" was not to be seen at the plug, but was shown by how high I jumped as dad pulled the starter cord. To this day, I hate lawn mowers.

Or, there was the time my puppy left a puddle on the floor and my father offered to show me a quick and easy way to clean it up. He threw a towel down next to the puddle and had me sit on the floor behind the towel with a leg on either side of the towel. He then grabbed my ankles and drug me and the towel across the puddle to the total delight of my sister. I was just glad the towel absorbed the brunt of the dog pee.

More than once I was made the butt of my father's jokes. Being somewhat precocious and the youngest in an extended family of cousins, I was generally the butt of everyone's jokes. I realize now they were just trying to make me stronger. It worked.

My father's jokes were not always mean nor did they always involve humiliating me. Often when I had friends over and my dad was thoroughly drunk, my friends would beg him to tell stories of his youth which he would begin by saying, "When I was a little girl..." which would always start the kids laughing.

There was the time when he was in grade school and looked out the school house window and saw a dirigible flying over. A rare sight even in those days. A sight my dad decided everyone in the school should get to see. Naturally, he got up in the middle of class went over and pulled the fire alarm which got all of the children out of the building and on to the playground where they could see the passing phenomenon. When my dad explained to the Principal his altruistic motive for the inappropriate act, she let him off with a warning. Getting away with stunts like this is a skill I inherited from my father.

It was probably my father's war stories the kids loved the most. To hear him tell it, World War II was a series of episodes from a sitcom. When the U.S. entered the war and my dad enlisted, he was in his late twenties and had quite a bit of experience in construction. Due to his age and experience, he was made a senior chief petty officer in the Navy's construction battalion. He was in charge of crews that built the landing strips on the islands for the island-hopping campaign across the South Pacific.

One of my favorites of his war stories was the time during the war in the Pacific when he used defused grenades to trick some Marines into taking down some Quonset huts. As he told it, it was the day before they were to hop to the next island, and they had done laundry and hung it out to dry when some trigger-happy Marines used the Seabees' laundry for target practice and shot holes in all their underwear, supposedly by mistake. Anyway, to get even with the Marines, daddy decided he would give his guys some extra free time and have the Marines dismantle the Quonset huts that the Seabees were assigned to take down the next day. He had three defused Japanese hand grenades and a rather clever plan. That night the Marines were unwinding playing cards in the huts. My dad simply threw one of the grenades into each of the huts. The Marines in their hurry to escape the grenades simply ran out the sides collapsing the huts.

It wasn't until my number came up in the draft for the Vietnam War that my father confessed to me that war was not the fun and games, he portrayed it to be. I had never seen my father so serious about anything before. He told of the horror of not knowing when gunfire would start coming at you from out of the jungle. He showed me his scar from a bullet wound. I remember it was right next to his appendix scar. He told me war was worse than anything I could imagine. How good men assigned the task of escorting Japanese prisoners to holding camps on the other side of an island would simply take them a short way into the jungle and shoot them rather than risk the perilous journey through the jungle still occupied by Japanese snipers. I don't believe my father ever did this, but he knew about it and I could tell it still haunted him.

As a kid I remember playing with his medals including a purple heart. I had no idea what it was for and he really never talked about it until that day my number came up in the draft. He told me I didn't have to go and that he would pay for me to go to Canada if I wanted. Instead, I enlisted and fortunately was never in harm's way. I assumed my father probably thought I was an idiot. My mother told me after my father died that he was very proud of me for serving. I had accomplished a lot in my life before my father died, but I realize now the thing he was most proud of was my service to my country. Ironically, there was nothing heroic about my service. It was actually a lot of fun and practical jokes straight out of a sitcom. It always amazes me how much I had in common with my dad.

I really empathize with my dad now, because I realize how tragic his life really was. Although my father was raised in a rather wealthy environment, his father lost much of that wealth in the Great Depression. During the Depression, my father lost his first child shortly after it was born. Then he went to fight in World War II. His first wife divorced him while he was overseas fighting for his country. I didn't learn about my father's first wife and the death of their child until after my father died.

After he got back from the war, my father started a successful construction company and then when I was about five, he was driven into bankruptcy by some rather unscrupulous lawyers. It seems to be my family's curse that every generation all the way back to the revolutionary war and perhaps even earlier has built a fortune and then lost it to war or some other economic disaster. So far, I've been the lucky one. Believe it or not, I think I was lucky to have grown up poor and retired wealthy rather than the other way around as was my father's experience. A childhood of poverty teaches you to appreciate things more and exposes you to aspects of life you might not otherwise experience in a life of wealth and comfort. Although, I suspect regardless of one's financial and social circumstances there will always be unique experiences to be appreciated.

When I was a teenager and my father was in his late fifties, the doctor told my father that he had to give up cigarettes, drinking, and go on a 700-calorie a day diet or die. Like most of the "greatest generation," he was addicted to cigarettes. I am still impressed by the fact that he was able to stop all of his bad habits simultaneously — "cold turkey." It gave him another twenty years of life. Still, he eventually succumbed to emphysema from all the damage caused by his smoking. After the talk with the doctor, he never had another cigarette. The diet and abstinence from drinking lasted about three months. I mean, he was only human.

Yes, my father drank too much, but considering all he had been through, I'm surprised he didn't drink more. Throughout it all my father maintained his creative and clever sense of humor. Never giving up took a great deal of courage. And yes, he really was kind.