It’s strange how people’s attitude change over time. When Bev and I were first married we were frequently asked when we were going to have kids. After a few years that changed to “You don’t have kids yet.” That eventually changed to “You don’t have kids? Gee, you’re lucky!”

The Veterinary Office was located in a building that was used to house German prisoners of war during World War II. The military housed POWs at various cities in the US. Those POWs were used as farm laborers among other things. Many of them stayed in Nebraska after the war.

One Sunday Bev’s parents took us to the Bohemian Cafe (really good Czech food). I suppose they finally decided that I wasn’t going away so I might as well join the family. Bev always ordered dumplings and sauerkraut. We went to the Bohemian Cafe off and on for over 50 years. Had to make that one of our stops every time we were in Omaha. Bev’s order never changed and she never ordered anything else other than an occasional kolache for dessert. I was sad when the restaurant finally closed its doors a few years ago.

I had an experience at the Bohemian Cafe that was the only time in my life that I’ve been at a loss for words. I’m ashamed to admit that I once watched “professional” wrestling while in Omaha. One of the wrestlers was Pompero Firpo. Billed as the Wild Bull of the Pampas he looked very fierce with has long black hair and bushy black beard. One day as we were leaving the Bohemian Cafe someone held the door for us. I looked up and there he was as fierce looking in person as he was in the ring. I was speechless and didn’t thank him for his courtesy. After we passed him, I heard him very friendly say “You’re welcome.” My first encounter with a celebrity and a life lesson in proper manners. I heard from someone later on that he was a real nice guy in person, as opposed to his villain persona in the ring, and that he used to be a high school teacher.

One of the food items at our wedding was apple strudel. It was made by a bakery in Omaha and we had to go there every time we were in Omaha to get some. Strange that one of the most enduring memories of the wedding was a dessert. But it was that good! The rest of the wedding is kind of a blur. I remember the vows of course. I remember the priest calling me James while reciting the vows. I always told Bev that we weren’t legally married because she married James and not Jimmie. I remember spending the night before the wedding in Bev’s parents basement. I think they wanted to make sure I didn’t get cold feet and take off.

One of the Air Force requirements in that era was that airmen needed to be counseled before they got married. My unit commander was in the Vet Office one day and I asked him if I needed to set up an appontment. Commander: “We can do it now. Why do you want to get married?” Me: “Sex.” Commander: “Consider yourself counseled.” Probably the shortest marriage counseling on record. Luckily, my commander had a sense of humor.

Dealing with the public coming into the Vet Office was interesting. I was trying to help a Captain that had some kind of problem and he was not very happy about the answers I was providing. The NCOIC, a Chief Master Sergeant, over heard and got involved because the guy was being a bit of an asshole. He managed to get the Captain calmed down and the problem solved. Before the Captain left, the Chief turned to me and said “Remember Jim that you cannot call a Captain a SOB but you can call a SOB a Captain.” He turned to the Captain and said “Right Captain?” Captain stomps out of the office and Chief goes back to his office muttering “asshole” under his breath.

The only other memorable customer was a young woman. I looked up when she walked in and felt a shiver. I’d never been instantly attracted to someone before. She wasn’t particularly attractive but very striking with her one brown eye and one blue eye. I admit to being tongue-tied. I did notice she was married so that meant she was off-limits (yes, I’m old fashioned that way). I’ve often wondered what might have happened. It was before I met Bev so I guess it was fate that she was just a passing fancy.

You can count me among the people who have seen a UFO. We were leaving the house one day and I happened to look up. Bright blue sky with high clouds. I saw a triangular formation of three bright orange “dots”. They were moving pretty fast from west to east and appeared to be high up. They seemed to be at the altitude that passenger jets fly. I know they weren’t airplanes because of the color and I’ve never seen reflections off aircraft that was that color. I don’t know what it was I saw. Since we didn’t have an alien invasion that day, I chalked it up as truly an Unidentified Flying Object.

I bought my first set of golf clubs at Offutt. Our unit commander was going to give me lessons so I got fitted for a set of First Flight clubs by the golf pro. I remember he fitted me with clubs that were three inches longer than normal. I got transferred before we could get together for the lessons. I used the clubs for years. While in Spain, I happened to play a round with the club pro at Rota Naval Air Station. On one of the holes he asked if he could hit my driver. He swung and hit the ball straight right. He said that no wonder I was hitting the ball all over the place because only a gorilla could hit those clubs. He offered to cut them down for me. I started hitting the ball better after he did that. I rotated back to the states shortly afterward and went to Hill AFB. That fall, I broke 100 for the first time. I’ve always been grateful to that pro for what he did.

I was up for reassignment and was supposed to go to Thailand. I was not enthused and my Chief pulled a few strings and got me an assignment to Dyess AFB, Texas instead. I always said that I traded one overseas assignment for another. It ended up that I only put off the trip to Thailand for a year or so though.

 

Omaha turned out to not be “Awful Airplane Patch” after all. It was a fun city with lots to do. I got involved in bowling pretty heavy and bowled in several leagues every week. Got to be pretty good at it. Also got addicted to golf and played usually on the weekend at the base courses. Especially enjoyed playing at Elmwood in Omaha; short course but fun.

I bought my first car, a used 1954 green Ford, in the summer of 1962 which was a piece of junk. I got rid of it and bought a used 1960 red Ford Falcon. Roamed all over Omaha in it and got to know the city really well. It developed a bad muffler and sounded like a sports car whenever you shifted. Had to be careful going off and on the base to make sure I didn’t get any tickets. It wasn’t a “chick magnet” but I managed to get my share of dates with the local young ladies.

On one of those dates, I really don’t remember her name, she wanted me to go bowling with her to a league she was in in the basement of Sokol Auditorium in South Omaha. It’s important because it’s the night I met my future wife Beverly. I remember the first time I saw her. She was making her approach throwing the ball down the alley. She was wearing red pedal pushers and my first thought was “nice butt” and, when she was walking back, “damn she’s pretty”. I don’t remember how but I managed to get an introduction and her phone number. This was in the fall of 1962 and we got married June 1st, 1963. I guess you could say it was a whirlwind romance. I always believed that I was the one who pursued and won her over. Fast forward 55 years. Bev was in the hospital for some tests. I was visiting her and we were talking with one of the nurses. Bev told her we met and got married in Omaha, etc. Out of the clear blue, she kind of shocked me when she told the nurse that she knew she would marry me the first time she saw me. Bev had never told me that so I guess it was love at first sight for both of us.

After I proposed, we set a date for September but she mentioned one day the she always wanted to be a June bride so we moved it up. Bev had a ton of relatives in Omaha. We always said that we were sure that her mother, aunts, and cousins were counting the days after we got married because they were sure we moved it up because she was pregnant. Fooled ’em! I wonder if the ones who are still alive are still counting. Bev had so many relatives that there seemed to be one wherever we went. One time, I was on a flight back to Omaha after some Air Force training. I was talking to my seat mate and remarked that I married a girl from Omaha and told him her name. He then told me that he knew Bev and her family and the rest of the clan and described where they lived, etc. That’s when I knew I could never screw around during my marriage. I was convinced that, if I did, no matter where I was someone from her family would know.

Bev and her family were Catholic so we had to attend the church’s premarital counseling. It was conducted by Monsignor Barta who was a very old school Catholic priest. At our first meeting, he asked me what religion I was. I told him that I didn’t have a particular religion but that I had been cradle rolled in a Baptist church. He then said “well, as far as the church is concerned, you’re a pagan.” I almost lost it. I wanted to give him a middle finger salute and tell him where he could stick his church. I managed to hold it in and got through it because I didn’t want to embarrass Bev. After we had been married a couple of years, I decided to convert and be baptized as a Catholic. I was not prepared for the reaction of Bev’s mother and her aunts (who were very staunch Catholics). They treated me like I had discovered a cure for cancer. They thought it was a big deal so I went with the flow. Really, the only difference for me personally was that I had to genuflect and cross myself when we went to church.

Bev and I were born in 1940, her in October me in December. So for two months every year I would joke with her about being older and me being seduced my an older woman. When she turned 40, I was of course still 39, I told her that I was going to trade her in for two 20s. Her response, “honey you’re not wired for 220”. It remains one of the best put downs I’ve ever heard.

I remember taking a trip to a park. Unfortunately, I don’t recall its name or location. Besides the beauty of the area, my most outstanding memory is of a statue of twins that commemorated the first set of twins that Japan’s emperor allowed to live. Twins were killed at birth as something evil. I bought a small statuette of the monument. Unfortunately, it was lost/misplaced during one of my moves.

I was stationed with the base hospital. I remember that we had our own barber shop manned by a young Japanese man (probably in his early twenties). For 25 cents, you got a haircut along with a neck and shoulder massage. Part of that was a vibrating massage done by him placing two fingers inside of his fist and vibrating across your shoulders and upper back. The final part of the massage was going down your arm to your hand and popping your fingers. Super relaxing!

The hospital occasionally got psych patients in from small outlying posts. We kept them until they could be evacuated to a bigger hospital for treatment. One patient’s thing was he liked to set off fire alarms for kicks. I’m sure he had other problems but that tendency required that he be watched all the time. On one occasion, I drew the duty to watch him. He was fairly rational but could not be trusted to go out of his room unescorted. I was chatting with him and he kept trying to go for a walk. I had to keep reminding him that was a no-no. I had the following conversation with him after telling him for the umpteenth time to stay in his room.

Him: “What would happen if I just took off down the corridor?”
Me: “I’d go after you.”
Him: “What would you do if you caught me?”
Me: “I’d ask you to come back.”
Him: (angrily) “And what if I told you I wasn’t going back?”
Me: “I’d drag your ass back.”
Him: “Oh. Okay.”

Never had any trouble with him after that. Not all patients were that calm. One became very violent and it took four of us to hold him down so the doctor could tranquilize him. I can still picture him struggling and snarling with his id card in his mouth. Scary dude. Never did find out what his major malfunction was.

Off duty we found things to keep us occupied other than drinking or running the downtown bars. I never cared much for the bar scene. Mostly because I don’t care to be around most people when they’re drinking. We killed time playing double deck pinochle, bid whist, or dominoes. Mostly for fun but sometimes for money. People think that sports has a lot of trash talk and it does but you should have seen our card games. It’s difficult to put into words but there was always a lot of loud good-natured insults and profanity involved. Frequently, we would start playing on Friday right after work and play continuously until Sunday evening. Usually, we had one table going with people waiting to play. Losing partners got up and were replaced. And on it went. I can remember looking around in the middle of the night and be the only white guy there. I don’t recall much racial conflict. Everyone just got along because we were all in the same boat thousands of miles from home.

The reason I got along with the black airmen so well was because of our mutual love of doo-wop music. I had brought quite a few 45s with me and bought more in Japan (bootleg copies made in Japan). I would go over to the Rec Center and get one of the music rooms with a record player. I tended to be by myself, turn the lights down and get lost in the music. Often I would attract other people who liked doo-wop and most of them would be black. Sometimes you could see tears in guy’s eyes when a song would bring back memories of home. That record playing led to me hanging around with the guys who would sing. Loved that harmony! Some of them were really good. Everybody wanted to form a group and be the next Del-Vikings (group of airmen from Pittsburgh Air Force Base formed in 1955 and recorded “Come Go With Me” and “Whispering Bells”). Tried but didn’t really have the voice (2nd Tenor) for it. I did discover that I could write lyrics though. While in Japan, I wrote some 80 songs and a list of 20 or 30 titles that I had planned on writing. Recently, I rediscovered them in a binder that hadn’t seen the light of day for at least 50 years. I remember that I typed them at night on the office typewriter. Looking at them now I can remember some of the melodies and why I wrote them. Others are just lost in the mists of time. I did have one of my songs performed in front of an audience. I was working with a vocal group, whose name escapes me, and they wanted to perform something original for a talent show. The song was:

Everybody Makes Mistakes

Everybody makes mistakes,
And they lose the one they love,
Then they fall down on their knees,
And pray to the Lord up above.

They beg forgiveness,
For the hurt they’ve caused,
They know they’ve broken,
All of loves’ precious laws.

Then the tears come to your eyes,
When you think of the things you’ve done,
You know you’ve really hurt,
The only one you’ll ever love.

You remember the look in her eyes,
When you told her you were to part,
You saw the tears come to her eyes,
And you knew you had broken her heart.

Then the answer comes to you,
And it says that’s the breaks,
You will be forgiven,
For everybody makes mistakes.

I don’t think we won but they didn’t get booed and at least I had the satisfaction of having one of my songs performed in public. For some reason, I quit writing when I got back to the States. Don’t know why. I lost virtually all interest in music especially after I got married in 1963. That didn’t have anything to do with it. Just a coincidence. Fast forward 56 years. A few months ago I woke up in the middle of the night and some lyrics were running through my mind along with a basic melody. I got up at 3:00 am and wrote the below in about 30 minutes. I have no clue as to what kick started the desire to write again. I have another one that has been in the back of my mind for a while. Maybe I’ll get around to it one of the days (or sleepless nights).

I’ll Be There

If you want someone to love you,
If you want someone to hold,
If you want someone to cry with,
I’ll Be There, I’ll be there.

If you need a shoulder to lean on,
If you need a heart that’s true,
If you need a love that lasts,
I’ll Be There, I’ll be there.

If your mind begins to wander,
If your heart is broken,
If your soul is troubled,
I’ll Be There, I’ll be there.

If you change your heart,
If you find a new love,
If you ever need a friend,
I’ll still be there.

I think that was what started me on the path to writing this blog. The internet got me into doo-wop again several years ago. I found a treasure trove of songs that were public that I hadn’t heard in a long, long time. I’ve amassed over a thousand songs that I listen to occasionally. Also discovered doo-wop radio stations on the net. Listening to them is a lot more enjoyable than the crap they pass off as music today.

It came time in 1961 to rotate back to the States. They sent me an assignment to Offutt AFB, Nebraska. Or as the troops called it, Awful Airplane Patch on the banks of the Misery River in Oh My God Nebraska.

The flight to Japan was long and tiring. We took the polar route flying up to Alaska then over to Japan. Somehow that was better and shorter than going directly from California straight west. We had to stop in Alaska for refueling. Didn’t get to see anything of Alaska as we had to remain in the terminal area.

Arrival in Japan was a cultural shock of course but I soon became interested in Japanese culture. They were, and are, a fascinating people. The town of Misawa at the time was a small rural community. Very few paved roads. Lots of bars catering to the military. One of the first warnings I got was to be careful in the bars and picking up girls. Disregarding the dangers of venereal disease, a big problem was that some of the “women” were really males. You could not tell the difference just by looking at them. A lot of guys didn’t discover that until they ran their hand underneath a dress and received a bit of a shock. Then they were usually beaten up or mugged. Of course I never frequented those establishments what with being a clean living lad and all.

One of my first trips off base was to attend a combined welcome/sayonara party for me and some others from the office who were getting ready to rotate back to the States. The party was held off base at a restaurant owned by one of the food vendors that did business with the Air Force. We were sitting on tatami mats on the floor at small tables and were served by young ladies in kimonos. Since I didn’t speak any Japanese, one of the guys explained to me what was going on. At one point, one of the servers said something to me and the guy sitting next to me. I asked him what she wanted and he said she wanted to know if we wanted an egg with our rice. They definitely lost me when she cracked a raw egg into his bowl. I’ve never been a fan of raw eggs. The most outstanding memory of the event was drinking cold Nippon beer and warm Sake (made from fermented rice). It tasted really, really good and sneaks up on you after a while. Of course, by then it’s too late. That combination resulted in a bad hangover the next day.

As a food inspector, I worked in a warehouse inspecting food delivered from local vendors and rail shipments. I got to be friendly with the Japanese workers. I was considerably taller than them and we joked around together. I would pitch in when unloading boxcars and had some fun with them. We would have to stack 50 pound sacks and the stacks would get higher than the workers heads. I admit to showing off by lifting sacks to the tops of a six or seven foot pile. There was a lot of horseplay that happened among the workers and I joined in. One day I was wrestling around with someone and got him into a headlock. All at once he stopped moving around and said “Are you ready?” I thought “oh shit!” because I knew what was coming. The next thing I knew I was flat on my back and he was standing over me laughing. That “little” dude put me down like it was nothing. I learned later that he was a judo master. I’m glad we were friends else it would have meant a hospital stay for me.

At one point in my tour, I had to take a trip south to Fukushima by train to attend a training conference. The trip included an over night on the train. I must have had the luxury ticket because I was in a small compartment by myself. It had facing seats that would seat probably three people. The staff came around at night and adjusted the seats into a bed. I think I had all of the them watching because they wanted to see how the ‘giant’ was going to fit into that small of a space. The only way I could halfway fit was to lay on a diagonal and even that was cramped. Needless to say, there was a lot of laughs by all including me. One of the other customs was that people changed from their clothes into a kimono provided by the train. Picture a 6’6″ body trying to wear something designed for someone 5’6″. Not a pretty sight. I think it didn’t even come down to my knees but luckily they were made big enough so I could at least wrap it around me. I don’t remember what the conference was about but the train trip was a hoot.

I played my first round of golf at Misawa. I don’t remember what I shot but I was hooked. I didn’t play a lot in Japan but it’s stayed with me until this day.

 

Gunter AFB is located in Montgomery and was home to various medical training courses. At the time, the Civil Rights movement had begun a few years before with the Montgomery bus boycott. Of course, I was relatively clueless about that or the Klan and racism in general. My introduction to real life was my first day in the cab ride from the airport to the base. I shared the cab with a couple of other airmen. Someone brought up the subject of the treatment of blacks and the restrictions of blacks and whites associating with each other. I made a comment that no one was going to tell me who I could associate with. At a stop light, the cabbie (white) turned around and said “Be careful talking like that around here white boy. It can get you killed.” He said it calmly and I didn’t feel threatened. Thinking about it later, I think he was just giving me some good advice. Luckily, we didn’t get very many chances to go off base. There were no problems between us on the base.

The course I attended was Basic Veterinary Specialist training. We were taught how to inspect all types of food and how to inspect food service facilities. Courses were conducted in food borne diseases and their prevention. The reason it was called the Veterinary Service was because of the relationship between animals and food. Zoonoses are those diseases which are transmitted from animals to man which is why Doctors of Veterinary Medicine run the service. Part of the course was testing and tasting various types of food. The only thing I couldn’t take was sampling oysters. They brought in toad sacks filled with the miserable things. We were supposed to eat some along with learning what fresh ones look and smell like. I could not choke down one of the slimy things. Others in the class had a feast because they didn’t want to throw them away so that let the class chow down. Today, I have to force myself not to be too critical when visiting restaurants or any place where food is prepared. Otherwise I probably would avoid a lot of places.

I was also at Gunter attending an advanced class in 1963. They interrupted class the afternoon on Friday, November 22, 1963 to notify us of the assassination of President Kennedy. All of us were in shock of course on losing our Commander In Chief. They brought in a television set and we gathered around to watch all of the news coverage. The thing I remember most about it was the silence in the room. I think most of us spent the weekend glued to the television. Come Monday, it was back to class and tried to get back into our normal routine. I’m ashamed to admit it now but the first president I voted for was Nixon instead of Kennedy. Watergate proved how wrong my choice was.

At the end of the course, we got our next assignments. I don’t recall having much of a choice in deciding where to go. Mine was to Misawa AB, Japan.

 

Everyone who enters the Air Force goes to Lackland for Basic Training. Most of it for me is a blur. Get a buzz cut, your clothing issue, get settled into a barracks, indoctrination, and on and on. Basic is designed to break the civilian in you and make you a part of a team. Mostly, they do this without screaming at you too much. One thing that stuck with me, even today, is you have to do everything left then right. You put your pants on left leg first, shoes the same, marching left first, etc. The old stereotype of a rock in your left hand is true for those who can’t remember their left from right. I still do things left to right as I’m sure a lot of ex-military do.

After eight weeks, in the Air Force’s infinite wisdom, I was reassigned from weather observing to the medical field. I have no idea what qualified me for that other than that’s what the Air Force needed at the time. Everyone, regardless of which part of the medical field you end up in, attended a basic medical course. I was selected to be a Flight Leader. Probably due to my outstanding qualification primarily consisting of being taller than anyone else. Part of the course consisted of a disaster exercise that brought all of the flights together. Ours was an aircraft crash simulation with casualties scattered over a large field. Patients with various injuries were created using mucilage, makeup, and fake blood. I was selected to be a patient and was made up with a neck injury that included a severed neck artery. I was given a wound on my neck that included a tube running down my arm inside my shirt to a bulb in my hand that was filled with fake blood. When the alarm sounded to kick off the exercise, other students were to treat the casualties and get then evacuated by ambulance. I was supposed to cry out and pump the blood and the medics would treat the wound. Two medics came running up to me so I started my act (moaning, groaning, yelling for help, and pumping blood). Medic 1: “Damn, he’s big!” Medic 2: “F**k him! He’s dead!” Mind you, I’m moaning, etc., obviously NOT dead and they took off to treat someone else. Meanwhile, I’m still laying there moaning and pumping blood until it ran out. And there I lay until they blew the whistle to terminate the exercise. My critique unfortunately couldn’t include the names of the two assholes who left me laying there in the weeds.

Being a Flight Leader, I frequently had to go to various offices by myself to coordinate things. One day I was walking past the WAF training area. I went past a flight of young ladies and, being a randy 18 year old, I slowed down to look at the scenery. There was a female Master Sergeant DI that was chewing out her ladies for not marching to her satisfaction. I heard her say, “You will suck your gut in, stick your tits out, and when you’re marching all I want to hear is 60 pussies sucking wind.” I picked up my pace and exited the area because I definitely didn’t want her getting on my case.

I don’t remember too much about the city of San Antonio because we didn’t get off-base passes very often. I do remember on one pass we rented scooters at Breckenridge Park. It was fun zooming around the park generally making a nuisances of ourselves.

At the end of Basic Med, I was selected to become a Veterinary Specialist. The vet field is actually a public health organization that includes food inspection and food service sanitation inspection. It also involves the care of military working dogs. We also treated AF members pets when possible. It turned out to be more interesting than I initially thought.

 

Moving to Stockton at age 13 was somewhat traumatic. It was quite a culture shock going from a small town of 1500 to a city of 75000 people. I don’t remember ever seeing a non-white person in Royalton. Stockton had so many different ethnic groups (Black, Latino, Oriental, etc.). Shortly after arriving I was enrolled at Edison High School. For a poor white kid, it was a major cultural shock. I didn’t really know anyone and no friends to speak of. That changed and I got to be friends with neighbors in the Sierra Vista Housing Project where we lived.

Unlike Royalton, there were several gangs at Edison and you soon learned to avoid them. Luckily, I never had a major problem with them. I’m not sure just exactly why that was. I’m sure that fear played a large part in keeping a low profile. I remember that there was an area called Dogpatch where the Latino gangs roamed. The advice I was given was to never go there which I gladly followed.

I remember witnessing a fight between two Black girls. I have no clue why they were fighting. I can vividly remember one of the girls was rather well endowed. The other girl had the longest red finger nails I had ever seen. I can still see that girl curl her fingers like claws and sink them into the other girls breasts and fling her around. That was the worst fight, male or female, I’ve ever witnessed. I didn’t stick around to find out the final outcome.

We had to walk to school and took a short cut through train yards. Trains were moving fairly slow and we had a habit of jumping on the car ladders and riding for a bit. It was stupid to do that but since when do teenagers have any common sense. We quit hopping trains the day we found out that a boy, not someone we knew, slipped while trying to grab the ladder and lost both of his legs. I remember him showing up to school in a wheelchair afterwards.

There were a lot of poor families, us included, living in Sierra Vista. It wasn’t the worst place and definitely a step up from Royalton. The project had a Community Center and gym that I went to occasionally. I was a tall, gangly kid and not very coordinated. There was a basketball coach that tried to work with me to turn me into a player. He would have to do drills practicing hook shots with both hands. I gave up on it because, being a know-it-all teenager, I couldn’t see any benefit to it. I wish I had listened and worked at it because it probably would have gotten me into high school ball. Maybe even college. I did eventually wind up playing intramural and noontime ball in the Air Force which I enjoyed.

My first job was working for a crop duster named Anderson who was a neighbor. I think I made 50 cents an hour. My job was strictly manual labor. The plane was a Stearman biplane. It originally had two cockpits and Andy had converted the front one into a fiberglass lined hopper for the chemicals he used. The hopper had a metal folding lid to keep the stuff from blowing away when dusting a field. It was also where I sat while we flew to whatever job we were doing that day. The drill was that the day before or that morning we would transport bags of dust or barrels of spray chemicals by truck to the field being treated. We would go back to the airfield and then fly back to do the job. Looking back, I realize that it was fairly dangerous. I was sitting inside the hopper, no seat belt, with the lid pulled almost closed. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It was kind of fun flying along at 1,000 feet or so looking at the countryside. We would usually peel off and strafe whatever field was being treated. That included occasionally going under telephone wires or going up and over trees at the end of the fields. At the time, I thought that was fun. I lost my enthusiasm for it after one incident. We returned from a job and was pushing the plane into the hanger. It jumped the blocks and one of the wings had a strut damaged. Over the next week, I helped Andy repair it and he gave it a test flight. We were flying to a job after that and was zipping along at about 1,500 feet. All of a sudden, the right wing and nose of the plane tilted down. I didn’t think much of it since we usually did that to check out a field. The next think I knew we were standing on our tail, the nose pointing skyward, and the left wing tilted down. I almost crapped my pants. I had visions of the wing falling off and me dying. Shortly, we landed and I shakily got down. I wasn’t very calm and asked Andy, “What the f**k was that”? He said, “I just thought you’d like to see what a wingover felt like.” Andy was an old barnstorming pilot and got a kick out of my reaction. Sometime after that I saw a newspaper clipping of a crash he had before I worked for him. The article had a picture of the totally destroyed plane. Andy didn’t have a scratch on him and walked away from it. He told a reporter that the only thing hurt was his pride.

One of my least prideful memory of high school was my sojourn into crime. We used to visit a local supermarket to ‘buy’ something for lunch. I had a coat with a tear in an inside pocket. As we went around the store, I would pick something up (usually cupcakes, twinkies, cherry pies) and slip them into the pocket and from there into the lining of the coat. We bought something to cover our tracks and then escaped to enjoy our goodies. To this day, I’m surprised we never got busted. I wonder if there’s a statue of limitations for shoplifting.

I don’t remember why but I quit going to Edison in my junior year and went to a vocational school. The only class I really remember was typing. It’s one skill that I’ve always been glad I learned. It kept me out of doing other work at times in the Air Force. I was usually the only one in the office that knew how to type so I got “stuck” with typing reports, etc. Little did they know that it wasn’t a punishment to me. It really came in handy when I got into computers 20 years later.

I remember spending some time just riding buses. Got to know one of the drivers and would ride from one end of the line to the other just bsing. It was also the only way to get around town. I would ride down to the YMCA just to hang around shooting pool or watching TV. I had one of the most embarrasing times of my life there when I enrolled in a talent show doing an Elvis impersonation. I was horrible! That cured me of performing on a stage. You could me all kinds of people at the Y. I met some of the musicians performing with Richie Valens. The Civic Auditorium was just down the street and they hit the Y to shoot pool. They also liked to bullshit people. They almost had me believing that the song ‘Donna’ was written for a girl from Royalton (LaDonna Carpenter). I’ve often wondered in how many towns they told that story to unsuspecting teens.

Somehow I ended up at a bowling alley near to the YMCA keeping score for pot game bowlers. There would be five or six or more bowling on a pair of alleys and I got a reputation for being quick and accurate. Most of the winners were fairly generous in tipping the score keeper and kept me in running around money.

I decided to join the Air Force shortly before my 18th birthday. I waited until I was 18 because then I wouldn’t need my parents permission to join. I considered joining one of the other services. Didn’t like the idea of being on a ship so the Navy was out. Discounted the Army because at 6’4″ I made too big of a target since ground pounders tend to get shot at. A friend of mine had joined the Marines and I was seriously thinking about it until he was involved in an incident. He was assigned guard duty on one of the towers at the prison at Camp Pendleton. They had to climb up a ladder on the outside of the tower to get to their post. Pat was coming down the ladder after a shift when he fell landing on a car and broke his leg. While in the hospital, he received an Article 15 (administrative punishment). His offense was “damaging government property”. Himself not the car! Joining the Marines lost some of it attractiveness after that so the Air Force won by default. I was signed by my recruiter supposedly to go into Weather Observing. Proof that recruiter aren’t always truthful, I ended up in the Medical field. I was processed through the center in Oakland and was sworn in on February 4, 1959. The Air Force pays for your travel and I had fun filling out my travel voucher which includes specifying your mode of travel (mileage by car, bus, train, etc.) I asked the clerk what I should put down since I went from Stockton to Oakland by private plane. He looked at me like I was crazy and I had to explain that the crop duster I worked for flew me in his Cessna. I think we finally settled on car mileage.

 

This part will include memories from my sister Jennie. Some of them I vaguely recall and some I don’t. In any case, they satisfy the objective of memories of Royalton. Names may have been changed to protect the innocent (or guilty as the case may be).

Jennie – Most of my memories of Royalton are centered around mom’s sisters especially Aunt Jennie and Grandma. Here’s a story that always stuck with me: Uncle John was a contractor in Chicago and offered to install a toilet in Grandma’s house and her reply was “what fer?”. Evidently taking a crap anywhere inside your home was beyond her comprehension. I was spending the night with her one time and noticed that on a chair with the back broken off that was her nightstand was a glass of water and a hammer. This table sat below an open window with no screen. I asked her why the hammer was there and she told me in case someone tried to come in she would knock them out. I asked her what if they picked up the hammer and she said “they wouldn’t dare!” That old woman would tell me ghost stories and scare the bejesus out of me.

Jim – I also remember being scared witless by her ghost stories. I think she got a big kick out of scaring us. I wonder how much those stories had to do with my fear of the dark. I can remember when Mom would send me down to a bar to get my father. Of course, he would never come right away and I would have to go home by myself in the dark. I would try to walk on the sidewalk but something would spook me and I would run down the middle of the street as fast as I could. To this day, I really don’t like the dark.

Jennie – I was wondering if you remember when we were playing marbles. Our brother Richard swallowed some of them to keep you from winning them. We had to wait until he pooped them out. Seems to me like that was when we had chicken pox.

Jennie – I was telling my granddaughter how we took a bath in a washtub with water heated on a wood stove and it wasn’t changed in between kids either. She thought it was the most gross thing she ever heard.

Jennie – Remember when Fran fell in the outhouse at grandma’s? She always got so mad when we brought that up. Could have been worse…..mom and grandma thought we were saying she fell in the well!

Jim – I had forgotten about the outhouse incident. I do remember the well and getting water from it with a bucket tied on a long rope.

Jim – There was a small store on the corner at the end of the block near our house. It was a long narrow room with shelves and wooden floors. We used to run through the front door and out the back door. I guess we were too lazy to just go the few feet around the store on the outside.

Jim – From time to time, there was someone who would set up a screen (maybe it was just a large white sheet) in a field near our house. They would show movies for anyone who wanted to come. I don’t remember if they charged anything for doing it. I can’t recall what specific movies were shown. They were probably the typical ones from the late 40s along with serials. Maybe that’s were my affinity for western movies came from.

Jim – I remember listening to the radio a lot. We got the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns baseball games. For a long time I remained a Cardinal fan after leaving Royalton. We also listened to radio shows from that era. The Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, Red Ryder, Boston Blackie, Suspense, Inner Sanctum, etc. A few years ago I felt a need to listen to them again and started downloading/collecting. Thankfully, most are in the public domain and available through the internet or Old Time Radio clubs. Eventally, I ended up with 6,883 files (49.4 gigabytes). Once in a while I’ll lean back and listen to some of them. If you’re reading this and want a particular show, let me know. I just might have it.

 

 

I remember – we had a big iron coal furnace(?) that sat in the middle of the room. At least it seemed big to me. You had to shake the embers down from the top into the bottom to cool off before they could be scooped into a bucket to be taken outside. There was a coal bin outside that miraculously was filled from time to time. (BFO – blinding flash of the obvious – we lived in a coal mining town what else would we use to heat a house.)

I remember – from time to time we spent the night at my grandmothers house. I sometimes see flashes of the interior of the house. I do recall that we had to use an outhouse that was some distance from the back porch. I remember having to pee in the middle of the night in the winter time. I didn’t want to walk all the way to the outhouse in the cold and dark so I just peed off porch. I kind of think about that whenever I water the bushes on the golf course.

I remember – being bullied as a kid. Mostly just teasing because I was somewhat of a big, clumbsy kid. One day, during school, I was walking down an aisle between the desks. One of the guys, I don’t remember his name, stepped in front of me and I hopped over the desk to another aisle. He jumped over their too apparently wanting to just mess with me so I jumped over to another aisle and he did too. He then poked me in the chest. The next thing I remember my hands we around his throat and I was trying to stuff his head into a bookcase at the back of the room. I seem to remember that most of the bullying stopped after that. I didn’t get into fights. I try to avoid them if at all possible. The only other one I recall was many years later in my 20s. Someone with beer muscles was playing tough guy and wanted to fight someone and picked me for some reason. I asked him as he was getting ready to throw a punch if he was willing to die. That made him stop. He wanted to know why. I told him that I was dead serious. One of was going to die that day and it wasn’t going to be me. He changed his mind about fighting.

I remember – playing cowboys and indians with friends. We would pretend to be Tom Mix, Roy Rodgers, Gene Autry, Lash LaRue (using long, thin willow tree branches as whips), etc. We would emulate some of the singing cowboys and gallop around on pretend horses making up nonsense lyrics as songs. Looking back, that was probably something that influence me later on when I went through a phase of writing doo wop lyrics in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

I remember – a neighbor coming home with a huge catfish they caught logging in one of the rivers. They hung it from a large tree branch. Us kids would hang from the branch along side of it to see just how big it was. It must have been at least five feet long. They cleaned it and had a big fish fry for the neighborhood. I think of it every I smell catfish in a restaurant.

I remember – playing after a rain. Water would be standing in between the houses and we would run and do belly flops to slide through the grass. Now, people have to go out and buy a special, long piece of plastic to do the same thing.

I remember – having treasure hunts. We would put some items in a small box and bury it somewhere. We then drew maps to the location with spots marked along the way that supposedly gave clues to where the treasure was buried. We always seemed to be surprised when we finally discovered it and wondered who buried it.

I remember – my father taking me up to the miner’s locker room and letting me take a shower with them. The showers was a large area (seemed large to me) that had concrete floors and walls and a seemingly endless supply of hot water. That’s probably why I like to take showers today and not baths.

I remember – well, not really. My mother told me a story of her taking me to a department store when I was probably about five years old. Apparently, I disappeared and they had to look all over the store for me. They finally found me standing in front of an aquarium. When they tried to take me away, I said “No! I want to watch the damn fish!” I find it difficult to believe I was ever that bratty. I know I was always a perfect child. Yeah, right! Even today, I can’t walk past an aquarium display in an office or store without stopping to look at the fish. There’s just something mesmerizing about the critters.

I remember – moving to California in 1954. My father had gone out there before us looking for work because there was nothing to be had in Royalton. After a while, we took a train to join him. I don’t recall much about preparing for the trip and saying goodbye to friends and family other than being less than thrilled about leaving Royalton. Mom told me I had to look after my brothers and sisters during the trip and I was probably a little bossy. I remember there were observation cars where you could watch to scenery go by. I admit some of it was interesting. Thinking back, I’m amazed that my mother was able to make it. She had to take care of a baby and four other kids (13, 10, 9, 7). I’m surprised that we all made it without her throwing one or more of us from the train along the way. I think she must have had a lot of the pioneer woman spirit to make that trip with virtually no help.

 

Growing up in a small town of 1500 people in the 1940s was interesting. At least what I can remember of it. It was a coal mining town for a while until the mine gave out. Their web site is pretty good (www.royaltonillinois.com). One interesting picture to me is from 1926 of the cast of “A Womanless Wedding”. An all male cast that surprised me when I saw it. My grandfather, Jim Hicks, is the bride!! Talk about getting in touch with your feminine side! It’s sad that one of the pictures you have of a grandfather and he’s wearing a dress (a wedding gown at that).

I remember – getting up one morning in the winter. It had snowed and when I looked outside there was a large, white Snowy Owl sitting on a fence post across the street. I don’t remember anything else about that day except the image of that owl.

I remember – my father taking me fishing one night with a friend of his. There was a small lake near where we lived and they had trot lines that they checked. I still remember the smell of carbide lanterns. We were sitting around a small fire when we heard an owl hooting. It sounded to me like it was saying whoooo. My father told me it was asking my name so I shouted out “Jim Hicks”. It hooted again and my father told me to shout louder. I don’t know how many times I yelled “JIM HICKS” as loud as I could. I guess they got tired of their little game after a while.

I remember – running and playing all over the place with friends. One time I took a fall in a corn field that had just corn stalk stubs left in the ground. I ripped a gash in my knee about two inches long that bled something fierce. I can still see the yellow fat showing in the wound. I limped home crying and tried to get past my mother. She made me show it to her and immediately rushed me to a doctor. They put eight or ten stitches in it and it made a nice big scar. The doctor told me that I was lucky that it wasn’t a little lower or I would have lost my kneecap. Sometimes I wonder how I survived my childhood.

I remember – my grandfathers funeral, at least part of it. They had his casket in our house which, I’m told, was a common thing to do then. One of my aunts made a scene by wailing and throwing herself on the casket. She was wearing a mink (or faux fur) coat.

I remember – going over to a friends house to watch television. It was one of the few in town. I can’t recall which programs but do remember being fascinated by the new gadget.

I remember – playing tricks on people at halloween. The old dog poop in a paper sack, sitting it on fire on somebodies porch, and laughing while they stomped it out. We would also take shelled corn and throw them at houses. Once we threw some at the Goat Man’s porch (don’t remember why he was called that). We didn’t know he was sitting in the shadows at the time. He chased us down the street screaming “God damn sunabitchees”. It’s hard to replicate his accent in print.

I remember – my teacher from first grade. I don’t remember her name but I do remember a valuable lesson she taught me. I was cutting up in class one day. She called me up in front of the class and told me to hold out my hand. Then she whacked me across the knuckles with a ruler. Hurt like hell! Taught me to not screw around in class anymore.

(To Be Continued)