The Warrior Returns

the Warrior Returns

By the time I was six mom had a hard time convincing me to go out and cut a switch when I had misbehaved.  She said, "You just wait, young man, till your father comes back from the army.  He's a tough first sergeant and he'll make you behave."
I had a few memories of my dad, but it had been mom and I since I was three.  She tucked me in, or if some radio show played scary music she let me sleep in her bed.  We had our disagreements but mostly we had a good time together.  She was about five feet tall with dark hair pinned up in back, like Bette Davis in Now Voyager.  She had dark moods when memories of her late sister caused her to sit and stare into space ignoring me, but mostly she laughed.  We into Eugene to watch movies and shop in Penney's, and sometimes stop at Seymour's on Willamette Street for an ice cream soda or banana split.
In our house we had two pictures of dad.  One was from the cover of Life Magazine, titled, A Yank In Australia Reads His Mail.  It showed dad in his uniform with a pack on his back reading a letter.  In another he is in uniform in front of a tent, smiling.  He had a  square face and black curly hair, combed back.  His smile was accented by a gap between his two front teeth.  He had written me saying a  Koala Bear was in the mail to me. When it finally arrived I was disappointed to find that it was stuffed!
As 1944 came to an end GD and I were in the living room while grandma prepared dinner.  We were arguing whether the King of the Cowboys was Gene Autry or Roy Rogers.  I heard mom yelling my name from outside.  She came in waving a letter. "Nicky, your daddy's coming home."
When he finally arrived I was nervous, waiting for a spanking, but he was very friendly.  He picked me up and gave me a kiss and kissed mom and we danced around the kitchen of our little house.
It was election time, and we had a good time sitting front of the radio saying: Phooey on Dewey!  and cheering when Roosevelt won.
A few days later dad and Grandad drove GD and me down to a farm outside Marcola that raised turkeys.  "Boys," grandad said, "go pick yourselves out a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner."  He opened a gate and in we went among a herd of turkeys.  They were as tall as we were, walking around us clucking and scratching the dirt.  We heard his quiet snort and turned to see him smiling.  "Choose one, boys, the farmer is here to chop off his head."  GD pointed in front of him and I nodded and we quickly stepped out of the crowd of big birds.  There was a lot of blood when the turkey lost his head.  Then the farmer dipped it in a tub of boiling water to loosen the feathers and took out the insides.
When we got home we  had to help grandma pluck the feathers off.  "Dont forget those pinfeathers," she admonished.
After Thanksgiving dad had to go back to duty in Texas.  He was to train the Air Corps boys to become infantrymen so they could fight in Japan.  Before he left we drove to Springfield to see his parents.  There were a lot of uncles and aunts and cousins.  His parents were a lot older than granddad and grandma, and Grandma Ellen smiled a lot more.  She had a gap between her front teeth just like daddy.
Then he was gone.
At Christmas we got a letter from dad.  He had found an apartment in Denton, Texas, and we were to hop in the Hudson Terraplane and drive down to stay with him.

Abbie

Grandad was born in Oklahoma on land homesteaded after the government opened up the Indian Territory.  He was raised a farmer, and during WWI he grew wheat to feed the armies fighting in Europe.  He was married with three girls when the wheat market busted after the Armistice was signed and had to sell what remained of his acreage to pay his debt to the bank.  The family boarded a train and rode to Wendling, Oregon, where he had heard that the sawmill there was looking for a man who could drive a team of horses.  On the train up into the hills from Springfield he met the mill owner, who asked him a few questions, decided that Abercrombie was too big a mouthful and called him Abbie, and suggested that he might think of bigger things than merely delivering firewood to the citizens  of Wendling.
He bought a house on the east side of  town and drove the team until he decided how he wanted to proceed with his life.  He decided on sawmill maintenance and with self education and hard work advanced to assistant head millwright.
He was a man of few words nor did he exhibit much emotion.  I never heard him laugh out loud.  He would grin briefly or would squint his eyes, but mostly he observed life with curiosity and with a rational outlook.
A lot of things amused him.  His grandchildren amused him, and evangelist preachers and "holy rollers" amused him, his wife's family amused him, and he greatly enjoyed reading cowboy novels and watching cowboy movies.
When I was small I would see him getting into his car and ask, "where you going, grandad?" and he would answer "going to see a man about a horse," and smile and drive off.  Every time I decided that he was driving down to the Downing's ranch to buy me a pony.  I would wait, or discuss with GD what we would do with a pony, but a pony never came.
When we were driving and a car approached us he would raise his first finger.  "What are you doing, grandad?"  "Just sayin Howdy."
He said things like "pertneer," for almost, '"aint," "mebbe" for perhaps.  When he hammered his thumb or bumped his shin or suffered some frustration he would say "Shoot!."
Mom said that when she was small he said "Shit!" but the youngest girl, Carldene, always followed him around and repeated after him so he softened his tone.
He was stoutly built and very strong.  He was noted as one of the best "cold spot" welders in the state of Oregon.  When there was a breakdown of machinery he would work all night if need be to get the mill back in production.
When he came home he would eat with little conversation then go sit by the woodburning stove in his easy chair and read a western novel until his eyes shut and the novel fell from his fingers and rested on his stomach.
He did not drink alcohol or gamble.  He enjoyed going to county fairs and finding the man with the hammer that he could slam down and cause the weight to fly to the top and ring the bell.  He would collect his stuffed animal and walk away with a faint grin.
In the summer during the war mom and her best friend Shirley would go to different farms in the valley and pick fruit or beans to can for the winter.  Usually I would be dragged along.  They wore shorts and tied their hair in a kerchief and they would wear a man's shirt with the bottom tied in a knot around their stomach.
One day after picking fruit mom dropped me off with grandma and went to the store.  She came back crying and angry.  She talked quietly to grandad.  I noticed him leaving.  Sometime later during dinner he returned looking disheveled and breathing heavily.  I was surprised to see him in an emotional state.
The next day I walked into town on the walkway across the mill pond.  Along the way I heard a conversation that was interesting but not entirely clear to me.
"You know old Q., he has a kind of dirty mouth?"
"I've noticed that,"
"Well, yesterday old Abbie's eldest daughter was walking in front of the union hall wearing them short pants and old Q. come by and said something to  her that set her off."
"Oh, my, her man's in away in the army, aint he."
"That's right.  Well she run on home and told old Abbie.  Now you know, he dont say much.  So I hear that old Q. there was in his barn milking his cow, and Abbie come marching in and took a look at old Q there and marched over and kicked over his milk bucket.  Q. come up a yelling and swung at Abbie and they had quite a tussle and Abbie whipped him good then marched out and drove home.  Never said a word."
"Well, my stars, that dont sound like Abbie."
Then they saw me and frowned and I scurried off, bemused.
I asked mom about it and she looked at me and stared into space so I waited a while then went out to play.
Abbie was a strong believer in family and in protecting his girls.

Everett's war
 The 41st Infantry Division was activated September, 1940, and the National Guardsmen were stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. After the attack on Pearl Harbor they were shipped out. To fool any spies, they were entrained to New Jersey, where they exercised and trained and finally set sail for Australia in May of 1942. Everett was the first Sergeant of the 162nd Battalion, HQ company. He reported to Captain B.
 They got to Australia and began jungle training alongside the 32nd Infantry Division, a National Guard unit from Montana and Idaho.
After attacking Pearl Harbor the Japanese Empire began expanding like a giant balloon, spreading almost to Midway island, over the Philippine Islands, over Singapore, and almost to Australia.
In the south, the Japanese began to build an airbase at Guadalcanal in order to stop flights from USA to Australia. In New Guinea they established a base at Buna on the north of the island and began moving south. Their attempts at an end around the east coast was stopped by a combined force of Australians/New Zealanders (ANZAC) and US forces in the battle of Milne Bay. They also sent troops over the Kokoda track, a mountain trail from Buna over the Owen Stanley Mountains of central New Guinea that reached 7000 feet before descending into Port Moresby, which faced Australia. The Kokoda track was narrow and muddy and steep, but the Japanese were able to reach the top and look down into the distance at their target. They were soon met by the ANZAC army and an exhausting battle began.
 Then the balloon began to puncture. The Marines attacked at Guadalcanal, the US Navy fought the Japanese Navy to a standstill in the battle of the Coral Sea, and General MacArthur sent the 32 Infantry Division from Australia to attack the Japanese base at Buna, a plantation community with a small harbor. While the men of the 41st trained they got news of the 32nd's efforts to displace the Japanese. It was wet and hot and bloody action against a well entrenched enemy. Their progress was slow and MacArthur got impatient with the National Guard and sent a member of his own staff to oversee the action. He recommended relieving the undertrained and exhausted men of the 32nd.
On New Years Day, 1943 Everett and the rest of the 162nd Regiment got on planes and flew over the Owen Stanley Mountains to an airbase then took landing ships to Buna. Dad was airsick the whole time flying but and seasick on the landing craft, but once on land he was able to lead his men in taking over from the tired 32nd. According to many reports I heard later, his Captain climbed into a foxhole and as the bullets flew over the US soldiers he began shouting for his first Sergeant to come over and tell his what was happening. He shouted orders out of his foxhole and Dad hiked around setting up his men in position. It is just like baseball, he told them, we have trained and we know what to do, so get out there and do it. They finally displaced the Japanese from Buna. The enemy attack on Port Moresby was stopped from the front and back.
After a short rest the 162nd was sent on to Salamanau and eventually to Biak, which dad described as the hardest battle of a hard campaign. The Japanese were hidden in limestone caves atop a mountain, The hike up the mountain was steep over unsteady terrain. At one point hiking along the side of a ridge the ground gave way and the men slid down the hill in a cloud of dust and gravel. They were using Springfield bold action rifles, the more modern MI's went to Europe. Their heavy weapons were a couple of BAR's. But time after time they overcame the Japanese defenses.
 Biak, he told me, was where, unable to dislodge the enemy from the limestone caves, they poured cans of gasoline into the limestone and set it on fire. He said it sounded like bacon frying.
He made a face thinking about that. After almost a year of combat First Sergeant Squires, whom the ranks all called Pop because he was ten years older then the rest, was washing his face in front of the command tent and a colonel came out and asked him how long he had been in New Guinea. "Too damn long," he replied. "We think so too," the colonel answered, "you are going home." He hated to leave the men he had cared for and comforted. His best friend had died in his arms and he had been hit in the leg with a four inch chunk of shrapnel and he suffered from Malaria most of his days in the jungle. He nodded his head and packed his gear and boarded a ship that eventually got him back to San Francisco in December of 1944.
 After getting drunk with his sister Lela and her husband he got on a train for Springfield, Oregon to see his family. He would have more time in the Army, but his war was over.

The Folks
In Oregon in the thirties there were dance halls in every small town or junction. The building might be a grange hall during the week, but on Saturday night a band would come in and tables would be set up and a crowd would gather to dance and drink, and sometimes fight. Up the McKenzie River was a small town called Blue River, which featured a Saturday dance. One night in 1937 Carl brought his two oldest daughters to the dance hall. He kept a close eye on them, but finally allowed his oldest daughter, Lois, to dance with a young man with curly hair, a disarming gap between his front teeth, wearing a double breasted blue serge suit with a powder blue tie. That was my dad and mom. They danced the two step, which is kind of jumpy to look back on, but they found themselves in perfect coordination, and danced several dances together. Everett, my dad, asked Carl if he could call on his daughter at a future time and a date was set.
He arrived at their home in Wendling in his Hudson Terraplane in his blue suit with a yellow tie. Carldene, the youngest daughter answered the door. He asked her if she knew the barnyard shuffle, which turned out to be a pantomime of a man cleaning off his shoes, which caused her to laugh uproariously. He came in and chatted with grandma and Mom and Rita. Grandad stayed behind his newspaper. As the couple went out the door he emerged to say "eleven." He was a man of few words.

They were married a few months later. I was born over a year later. Mom pointed out to me one evening when I was in college and while she was ironing, that my dad was the only one of his siblings whose first child was born over nine months after the wedding. This was a point of some pride to her, and it was also an admonishment to me to be careful.
 Their first house was a little yellow house on fourth street in Springfield, but in 1940 the 41st Infantry Division, a National Guard unit, was activated and dad was stationed at Fort Lewis. We had an apartment in Steilacoom, close to Tacoma, where mom would take me on walks on the pebbly beach of Puget Sound. I had a friend named Willy, an African American boy whose grandfather was a friendly and amusing old gentleman.
One Sunday morning there was a speech on the radio which caused mom to burst into tears and dad looked solemn and a few days later mom and I went to Fort Lewis. Dad was the top sergeant of the headquarters company. A lot of the men in his company came to give me a hug and shake mom's hand and they all got on trucks and drove away to board a train, the first step of their long trip to Australia. In a few minutes mom and I stood with other dependents in an empty parking lot, the wind off of Puget Sound blowing memos and receipts and chewing gum wrappers in a swirl as we all looked at the tail lights disappearing down the road.
We moved back to Wendling then, staying with the grandparents. Carldene was married to David and Rita was married to Gordon, and they had a little boy I called GD.  The bedroom used by the girls was available and we stayed there while mom got a job in the Booth Kelley Lumber Company office. Then David was drafted and he and Carldene went to Georgia, and Rita was killed in an auto accident and Gordon joined the SeaBees and went to the South Pacific. Mom and I moved into his house. And GD and I began our lives as little boys together.
Nick

The house we lived had a two bedrooms on either side of the living room one faced east, mine faced west. From the living room an open doorway led to the kitchen which featured a nook containing the kitchen sink, with running water, and a main area highlighted by a woodburning stove with a table and four chairs. There was enough room in front of the stove to stay warm when we filled a galvanized metal tub with hot water for our bath. There was a door from the kitchen to the west leading to our yard, which fronted a dirt road leading off to the north. There were several houses up that street. The room to the east of the kitchen held the washing machine, a large round agitator with a wringer on top. After wringing the water out we hung up the clothes to dry. On nice days they went outside. This room was open to the outdoors, with screens along the east side. To the north was a small room which might have served as a garage but which we used to store our fire wood. Every fall the Company brought by a load of mill ends from the planer which kept us toasty throughout the winter. The door to the wood shed featured a small dog door, large enough for a small boy to scuffle through, which I did one afternoon after Mom had dressed me up in my suit for a visit. When she saw my dusty disheveled state she directed me outside to get a switch. The door from the washroom to the east led to an uncovered porch and the raised wooden walkway that headed east for a while then forked. To the left was our two hole outhouse, and to the right was the path down the hill to the plank road that led up the hill to grandma's house or down the hill to our cousin's house, and then on to the paved highway. The front yard was seldom used. There was a pile of dirt where I played with toy soldiers or little wooden cars. When I was four Mom gave me an Exacto knife, a razor sharp blade attached to a round handle, to be used for carving wood. She suggested an elephant, and plopped a cube of balsa wood in front of me. I cut my fingers several times but managed to eke out something resembling a creature with a trunk. Mostly I carved up short pieces of planer ends into cars, or tanks, to play with in the dirt. The back yard was shaded by a giant maple tree. In the summer mom would fill up the galvanized tub with water outside so I could pretend to swim or just sit in the water on a hot day. Further down the path were more trees and a garden plot. A seldom harvested peach tree stood next to an apple tree which produced Gravenstien apples that sometimes became a delicious pie. Near the bottom of the hill was a walnut tree. I mostly used the walnuts for throwing. The tree was very good for climbing, and a small boy could hide up in the tree with a pocket full of walnuts, still in their green skins, and pelt unsuspecting passers by. This sometimes led to a switch hunt. Mom was not cruel, but she was under a lot of stress with a husband somewhere in the steaming jungles of New Guinea fighting for his life and a small boy with an independent nature. Working at the sawmill was not easy either. One afternoon I saw her limping as she came up the hill from work. Her job was to mark grades on the pieces of lumber as they came by out of the planer. There had been a lull in production and she was sitting on the edge of the table chatting when the chains carried down a piece of wood with a large splinter which jabbed into her unsuspecting right gluteous maximus. (butt cheek) She was sent limping and bleeding to the first aid station then sent home for the afternoon. The next day she was back on the job. The living room had a radio sitting against the wall on the south side, and there was a couch against either wall, and we would sit in the evening and listen to the news or to radio shows. I was certain at first that the radio was some kind of funnel which gathered sound coming up from the California to the south. I especially enjoyed the late afternoon shows, 15 minute serials starring Tom Mix (who had actually died several years before,) Terry and the Pirates, Captain Midnight, who led a group of young people on flying adventures, and of course The Lone Ranger. In the evening Mom liked to listen to Lux Radio Theater (Lux was a soap,) and a string of comedians: Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Fanny Brice as "Baby Snooks", Jack Benney, and Bing Crosby. She also like to listen to The Inner Sanctum, tales from the crypt, and other mysteries with sound effects that scared me, and often caused me to ask if I could sleep in her bed. We also listened to the news, Gabriel Heater, intoning "There's good news tonight," and other commentators from far off war zones. In 1944 my dad returned from the South Pacific in time to join us listening to the news of the election race between Roosevelt and Dewey. "Phooey on Dewey" we would shout at the radio. It was cosy little house, if primitive. We stayed there until dad wrote us from Denton, Texas, where he was now stationed, training Air Force personell no longer needed in Europe how to become jungle fighters. We were to pack up and drive the Hudson Terraplane to Texas and join him. Change was coming.

Ski trip, 2014

Jane and I drove UO to Timberline to ski a few runs today. We had a fine time, the snow was smooth and the skiing was easy. There was a slight wind and as the day wore on the light got flat, so we called it a day at noon and drove down to Welches for Mexican food. Jane and I met because of skiing. She moved to Eugene from the Midwest after graduating from college. One day she mentioned to a new friend that she wanted to learn to ski. The girl said, "I know a guy on the Aspen Mt Ski Patrol who comes back to Eugene every summer." On schedule I appeared. Dad raised cattle and I came back to help him bale hay every summer. While relaxing at a tavern I was introduced to Jane. The attraction was mutually strong, and that fall who should turn up on the doorstep of my trailer house next to Bishop's Garage but the cute girl I had met in Eugene. Before I knew it, she and her pregnant Siamese cat were moved in. Of course broken hearts littered the streets of Aspen, but how could I resist this lively entertaining beautiful young lady. I had met the girl of my dreams. She has been my best friend for forty three years. Skiing has been a big part of my life since the winter of 1952 when JDL and STH and I took wooden skis, handmade by JDL's Swedish grandfather years before we were born, up to Willamette pass Ski Area. Of the three pair, only one survived the trip, but skis were all that was broken, and we were hooked. Back then downhill and cross country skis and boots were almost the same, but it was a time of quick change in the world of skiing. Within a few years we had skis with metal edges and stiff leather boots, multi layered for stability. Our feet were firmly attached to the skis with long strips of leather, long thongs. The skis had to reach to the tips of our fingers. Stein Erickson won the Olympic downhill on TV and we discovered parallel turns. In college we spent every spring break at Sun Valley, lurking near an instructor and is class to pick up pointers. When I graduated in 1960 I signed up for the Navy OCS program and was at loose ends over the winter so Bob and Jim and I followed a couple of friends who were entering races to qualify for the Olympic team. We started on Mt Hood, then Sun Valley. We were total ski bums, for lunch we would get a glass of water, fill it with ketchup and oyster crackers, and eat our tomato soup while keeping an eye out for edible leftovers gliding by on the busboys pushcart. We saved our money for ski tickets and beer and lodging. We stopped in SLC to ski Alta and ended up in Aspen, where we packed sow in the morning for afternoon tickets and stayed in a motel next to the Hotel Jerome which was managed by an alcoholic cowboy who let us stay for free is we looked after the place for him. Eventually our money ran out and we drove back to Eugene nonstop, through a snowstorm from Bend to Oakrisge. A month later I was in Newport RI marching in formation with a bunch of other recent college graduates, preparing to keep America's oceans safe from communism. And we did. Nick

backwoods entertainment

There was a game we used to play if there were not enough kids to field a team for baseball that involved one player hitting fly balls to several kids.  The game was called 500 and you got so many points for catching the ball on the fly, fewer points for catching on the first bounce and so on.  When one of the kids catching accumulated 500 points he got to bat.
There were never enough kids to field a team of anything on our side of town.  Mostly our preschool days were spent pretending to be soldiers or cowboys.  The older boy who lived behind my grandparents, George, was able to carve realistic guns out of wood, and so with our two girl cousins who watched over us we would run around shooting and falling to the ground.  Uttering "fix  fix" allowed the corpse to arise, totally recovered.
One day my mom bought me a cap gun, shiny metal with red plastic panels on the handle.  It came with a holster.  Soon after this gift she took me to the beach.  We stayed at Newport.  Because of the war the beach and town were patrolled by Coast Guardsman carry in rifles and some leading German Shepherds.  Upon seeing the young man with the large dog I drew my pistol and shouted bang bang.  This was a mistake.  The dog nearly pulled the Coast Guardsman over in his efforts to rip the gun out of my hand.  My mom was quite upset as a crowd gathered and the young man got his dog under control and several mean comments were made.  I was paddled when we got back to our cabin.
Back home a few days later I was demonstrating my gun to George and he suggested that the gun he had carved was a more realistic copy of what the soldiers were using in the war.  He said he would be willing to take my inferior cowboy copy in exchange for the nice wooden pistol he had carved.  Of course I thought this was quite a bargain.  But when I got home to show my mom I got paddled again.  She was under a lot of pressure and I was not as cooperative as I should have been.
She promised that we could go down to the theater in Marcola and see Snow White, so while she went to work I industriously shined my new shoes with black liquid polish.  There was not enough to finish both shoes so I mixed in some water.  The water appeared to make them shinier so I applied more water.  When mom got home and found my good shoes were dripping wet she got upset. " Go out and get a switch, " she said, so I had to take a knife out and cut a stick so she could paddle me.  But I got to go see the movie.
One day Grandad approached me and GD and said he had a surprise for us.  He took us down to uncle Ted's barn across from where our cousins lived.  In the barn were two baby pigs.  "You boys can name these pigs," he announced.  We were quite excited.  We named them Sloppy and Slurpy.
As time went by the pigs grew larger.  They were enclosed in a fenced area up the hill from the barn.  One day I asked George if he wanted to go play with the pigs, and I led him to the pig pen.  We crawled over the fence and found the pigs and I scratched Sloppy's ears.  Then the pigs got up.  They had grown to an immense size.  They snuffled and began pushing against us, sniffing and poking us with their snouts.  Suddenly fearful, George and I climbed a tree in the pen and sat on a limb as the pigs circled around beneath us.  The sun began to go down and dinner time approached but we still sat in the tree.  Then I heard mom yelling my name.  "Over here in the pig pen! " I shouted.
Mom shook her head upon seeing our plight.  She picked up a stick and came into the pen.  She poked the pigs and shouted at them and drove them away from the tree, allowing us to descent and scamper over the fence as fast as we could.  She gave me quite a fierce look, but I got dinner instead of a paddling for that escapade.
A short while after this adventure Grandad collected me and GD and took us down to Ted's barn.  We were quite surprised to see Sloppy and Slurpy hanging from their heels in the door of the barn with blood flowing out of slices in their necks.  The blood flowed across their jowels, down their snouts, and formed a river of blood that ran down the ramp into the barnyard.  After gazing wide eyed at our pet pigs, now destined for our dinner plate, we focused our attention on the blood forming a lake in the dirt.
We got sticks and began to direct the flow but uncle Ted noticed us and gave us a stern shout and Grandad shifted the toothpick in his mouth and jerked his head, so we moved away from the blood and watched as the men used a pulley system to hoist the pigs one by one over a 55 gallon drum of water boiling over a fire.  They dipped the pigs into the boiling water.  Grandad explained that this was to loosen the hair which covered their bodies.  By the end of the day we had watched the total disection of our former pets into chunks of meat that later turned into ham and porkchops.  
As we sat at the dinner table that winter dining on the remains of the pigs we would ask, "Is this Slurpy or Sloppy?"  and laugh.
Although is would seem that sentiment was in short supply in those days, in truth Grandma was a very sentimental person, serenading us with such tunes as "Poor Little Babes Lost in the Woods," or "Red River Valley."
Nick