My Father's War

 

My dad posing in New Guinea, his hand strategically placed against the company sign, which was painted by fellow Kingsport draftee Worley Lane. 

My father would never talk about the war.

When I was a kid, this was no big deal. Everybody’s dad had been in the war and none of their dads would talk about the war either.

I knew my father had served in the Pacific, I knew he was a supply sergeant and I knew we had a photo album of his war-time photos, mostly scenes of laughing G.I.’s clowning around in hula skirts, bombed out buildings in Manila, a couple of topless New Guinea women: the closest thing I got to Playboy for many years.

I would ask questions, he would evade them.

“I served under McArthur, he would joke. “Way under.”

But what did you do, I would ask. “Supply sergeant,” he would say. “The man behind the man behind the gun.”

That’s about all I got. He bragged how he got around Army censorship rules. “We weren’t allowed to tell where we were. So I would write to your mother, ‘Do you remember the family that lived across from the Green Shed church? How are they doing?’ That was the Hagens. She would look on her map and see Mt. Hagen and know that I was in New Guinea.”

He once told me about waking up and finding a dud bomb outside his tent.

And he frequently recalled that the saddest day of his life was passing under the Golden Gate Bridge, on board a ship headed for the Pacific Theater. “They were playing ‘Oh What A Beautiful Morning’  on the radio but it wasn’t a beautiful morning for me.”

But that was it. I didn’t know what he did. In the absence of any details, I created my own image of his wartime experience, a picture cobbled together from fifties war movies, Sgt. Bilko TV episodes and Beetle Bailey comic strips. I figured his was a desk job, hand out uniforms, order rice and beans for the mess hall. More like a country club than a war zone.

When I got in my twenties, I wanted to know more. “You don’t want to hear about that,” he would say, effectively ending the conversation.

When I bought my first VCR, I offered to rent “The World at War” and watch it with him. “I don’t want to see it; I lived it,” he said. And that was that.

On his deathbed in 1986 I asked once more; could we talk about the war? He agreed but died before we ever got around to that talk.

After he died, I made a discovery while digging around in a drawer in my father’s desk. It was a drawer I’d never searched before. On the surface it appeared to be a collection of order forms from his hardware store. But in the back, all rolled up, was the photo of his Army unit. A mimeographed sheet curled inside the photo gave the details: this was the 850th Ordnance Depot Company, 155 men, photographed in front of their barracks on 16 December 1943, shortly before they shipped out. The company could as easily have been called the 850th Tennessee: 107 of the 155 were from Tennessee, 20 from Kingsport.

There was my father, third row, sixth from the right, a hint of a smile on his face. I knew that smile. That was not his happy smile.

Then watching the Iraqi war on TV shed new light on what my father did.

War is not a country club, no matter what your job. When the Iraqi war started, the first P.O.W.’s weren’t Green Berets; they were a group from the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company. These weren’t frontline soldiers, with assault rifles and hand grenades. These were auto mechanics, cooks, support services, like my father.

It suddenly became clear: my mother has always said she didn’t sleep for three years, the three years my father was overseas. I understand now.

War isn’t tidy. The enemy’s rules of engagement don’t say spare the cooks and quartermasters. Maybe my father didn’t carry an M-16, but he was a target, too. The Japanese didn’t care if he was in charge of routing foodstuffs or routing munitions - I think he did both. He was the enemy and he was as valued a target as any frontline sharpshooter. He was in enemy territory, where a crafty company of Japanese fighters might circle around to the rear, cut-off the soldiers from the supplies. And capture the quartermaster.

Bombers, snipers, artillery, they didn’t differentiate. There weren’t classes of enemy targets. There were only targets and my father, along with 1,458,911 soldiers in the Pacific theater, was one. He spent three years in harm’s way and I never knew that.

I’ve tried to research his unit but I can’t find a company history. I can’t even find a record of what units they were attached to.

His best buddies from the service, Stump and Whittamore, died before he did.

I can’t get any stories from them. That part of my history is lost.

I hope the surviving veterans of my father’s war will write down their stories, tape their memories, tell their sons what they did in the war.

I don’t know what hell my father saw, what hell he experienced.

But I think I now know why.

I don’t know what he did in the war because he didn’t want me to know.

 

 

The 850th Ordnance Depot Company on Dec. 16, 1943, right before shipping out.

 

I.D.'s of soldiers from Kingsport.

Cyrus Vineyard (2nd row, 4th from left)

Ralph S. Cooper (2nd row, 6th from left)

Clifford Broome (2nd row, 7th from left)

William I. Fleenor (Fleanor on I.D. sheet, Fleenor in Times News when he was drafted) (2nd row, 8th from left)

Ernest Whittamore (2nd row, 9th from left)

Jack B. Cox (2nd row, 11th from left)

Samuel T. Elliot (2nd row, 28th from left)

Millard C. Peters (2nd row, 31st from left)

Frank J. Martin (3rd row, third from left)

Alton L. Hamilton (3rd row, 10th from left)

Edgar J. Sensabaugh (3rd row, 14th from left)

John C. Riley (3rd row, 23rd from left)

Romulus Wilmeth (3rd row, 30th from left)

Lyle Staten (3rd row, 6th from right)

Phonso L. Durham (Top row, 32nd from left)

Park Corum (Top row, 47th from left)

 

Worley R. Lane

Ralph Stump

Friel V. Jennings

John W. Quillen

Unidentified from Kingsport because mice chewed the ID sheet.

I think top row, 14th from left is Worley Lane.

And I think top row 12^th from left is Ralph Stump.

The Wisdom of P.T. Barnum

 

A Childhood Chump

There’s one born every minute.

I'll be the first to raise my hand.

When I was a kid, I'd believe anything.

I even fell for those White Cloverine Brand Salve ads on the back of funny books.

Surely you remember the ads. They seemed to be on the back cover of every comic book:

“Boys! Girls! Ladies! Men!

“We Give You Cash or Premiums!”

There, in the midst of a host of exclamation points, was the pitch: Sell boxes of White Cloverine Brand Salve and you could win a wagon or a bike, a Daisy air rifle or a guitar, a .22 rifle or - drum roll please - a live pony! Now that one deserved an exclamation point.

Wilson Chemical Company of Tyrone, Pennsylvania would send you - on trial - 14 boxes of White Cloverine Brand Salve. On trial! You would sell the salve for 25 cents a box, return the money to them and pick a premium! Or keep a cash commission!

It seemed simple enough. I mean, who of your neighbors, didn’t need salve? According to the ad it was “wonderful for chaps and sunburn.”

In my youth the back pages of comic books were almost as good as the comics themselves.

There was the famous “Hey Skinny, Yer Ribs Are Showing” ad, inviting all us 98-pound weakling kids to shape up with the Charles Atlas He-Man course. Just send 15 cents to Charles Atlas Dynamic Tension, Dept 29, New York 10, N.Y. and no muscle-bound bully would kick sand in your face again.

Empty your piggy bank and learn to “Draw Any Person in One Minute - An Amazing Invention - Magic Art Reproducer.” Just send eight quarters to Norton Products, Dept. 652 New York 6, N.Y.

You could earn money selling Grit in your neighborhood. Or you could buy all sorts of neat stuff: whoopee cushions, hot gum, fake vomit, trick black soap, X-Ray glasses (see through skin and, who knows, maybe see through clothing!), joy buzzers, Hypno-coins (“Hold the Hypno-coin in front of the person you want to hypnotize”). 

I talked my mother into letting me order the “100-piece Toy Soldier set - Only $1.50 - Packed in this Foot Locker” from Lucky Products, Dept. B-6, Westbury, Long Island, N.Y. The excitement of getting mail, even tiny mail, was dampened by the product that arrived. I hadn’t paid that much attention to the ad - in little letters the word “pasteboard” was in front of “foot locker.”

The foot locker was just a cardboard box, a tiny cardboard box, maybe six inches long, a couple of inches wide and an inch high. And the soldiers who looked so realistic in the ad were about the size of a thimble. And flat.

Another time I ordered a gizmo that was guaranteed to “Turn your home’s electrical system into a giant TV antenna.” I had visions of watching New York stations and Los Angeles stations. When it arrived, it looked like a potato scrubber, a U-shaped coil that you put between the TV plug and the electrical outlet. I followed the instructions and excitedly went up and down the VHF dial, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 19, 11, 12, 13. Nothing. We couldn’t even get Johnson City anymore.

But no matter how many times I was disappointed, I always went back for more.

And no ads were more enticing, or ubiquitous, than those White Cloverine Brand Salve come-on’s.

The clincher was a cartoon ad: “Jim and Judy Defy Savage Gorilla!”

“Help the gorilla is loose!” a frightened zoo visitor screams in a six-panel cartoon.

“Stand back, I’ve got a gun!” Jim says, aiming his .22 rifle at the ape.

“Get back!” says Judy, pointing her bow and arrow at the gorilla.

“Look he’s climbing back into his cage!” says a matron.

“That boy and girl saved out lives!” cries another.

“You kids deserve a medal! Where’d you get that ‘22’ rifle and that bow and arrow?” asks the Mayor.

“We earned them selling White Cloverine Brand Salve!” say Jim and Judy.

“Wow! I’m going to sell some of that salve, too!” interjects some little punk.

I took the ad to my father. He studied it carefully.

“I want to sell this stuff and earn a pony,” I pleaded.

“We don’t have any place to keep a pony,” he reminded me.

“Then I want to earn a .22 rifle.”

“Your mother wouldn’t allow that.”

“How about a bike?”

He looked at me over his glasses, one of those Ward Cleaver looks.

“Remember the stamp club?”

Yes, I remembered the stamp club.

I was the world’s worst stamp collector. I had an album and I pasted in stamps but after filling up all the one-, two-, three- and four-cent stamp slots, I was stuck. My uncle who was in the Air Force in Libya would send me stamps from there but the only way to fill the rest of the slots was to buy stamps through the mail from collectors.

Then I saw an ad on the back of a comic book and joined a stamp club. They would send me stamps every month “on approval.” Soon I was getting stamps and stamps and more stamps. They came in little cellophane sleeves and I would tear them open and paste the stamps in my album.

Then one day a bill arrived. I owed Peterson Stamps of N.Y. something like ten dollars. I didn’t have ten dollars. So I did what any ten-year-old kid who owed ten dollars he didn’t have would do. I hid the bill. But soon another arrived. And another. Along with stamps and more stamps, all on approval.

One day my dad came home from work and sat me down. Peterson Stamps had called him at work. Where were all my stamps? I dug them out from under the bed, along with the bills.

He sent them all back along with a check for ten dollars. I paid him back out of my allowance and my credit rating was saved.

So when I came to my father with the White Cloverine Brand Salve, he explained to me a lesson that has stood me well: there is no such thing as a free lunch.

I saved up my money and eventually bought a bike.

And White Cloverine Brand Salve and I were both the better for it. 

 

 

TV Antenna Gizmo Challenged by FTC

In 1973 the Federal Trade Commission investigated the TV antenna scam folks.

“In advertisements for their ‘JUMBO TV ANTENNA,’ respondents make the following statements:

“Every home a super receiver ELECTRONIC MIRACLE TURN YOUR HOUSE WIRING INTO A JUMBO TV ANTENNA

“Do you know that you have one of the greatest TV antennas ever constructed? It's better than any set of rabbit ears, more efficient than complicated external antennas. It's your house. Yes, the wiring in your home constitutes a giant antenna that acts as a super receiver for TV, FM, all kinds of difficult reception.

“And the secret to using all this reception potential is an amazing little plug-in attachment that utilizes the receptivity of your house wiring without using a single bit of electrical power. Yes, you simply attach the adapter easily & quickly to your set ... plug it in to any wall outlet and immediately your entire electrical system is working for you. No ugly looking rabbit ears, no difficult, dangerous to maintain external antennas, and reception so sharp and clear it will amaze you even in the more difficult areas.”

The FTC hired electronics engineer Frank Triolo of the United States Electronic Command in Fort Monmouth, N.J. to investigate the claim.

He concluded the mail order antenna was inferior to all other antennas he used for comparison, including rabbit ears.

The FTC reported that the claims were “false and misleading.”

I could have told them that.

 

 

Sucker!

P.T. Barnum is always credited with the saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

He may have lived it but he likely never said it.

His biographer Arthur H. Saxon could not find a single documented instance of Barnum actually quoted as saying the phrase.

The earliest reference I could find was in a January 2, 1879 Chicago newspaper story about, what else, Chicago gamblers:

“It's mighty hard times with the most gambler; in the season they make a bit on baseball, or on the races, and then, you know, ‘there's a sucker born every minute,’ and rigid city legislation drives the hard-up gambler, who would be a decent one of the kind, to turn skin-dealer and sure-thing player. When gambling was run as it should be run, everything was open and aboveboard. Anybody could walk into the room, be he policeman looking for a criminal, employer for a clerk, wife for a husband, father for a son. Now, what little is done is done in fear and trembling, as it were, behind iron barred and bolted doors, and that's no way to do things. Why, look, did you ever see so much card-playing before in saloons as you see now? Of course not.”

Not a mention of P.T. Barnum, who would have been seven years old at the time that paragraph was published.

My Basketball Hat

 

The Jone-Zy Roll Up was not nearly as cool as this ad tried to make it out to be.

The Year of the Hat

Once upon a time I owned a hat.

I didn’t want to own a hat. I didn’t wear hats. I still don’t wear hats.

But in the fall of 1962 my father bought me a hat.

Not because he wanted to buy me a hat but because one day I came home from basketball practice with a two page mimeograph headed: “Basic Training Rules for All Athletes of Dobyns-Bennett High School.”

At that time I was an ath-a-lete for Dobyns-Bennett High School. I was a basketball player and a very mediocre one at that.

And my father had to buy me a hat because of Rule 9:

“In cold weather (in season) you must wear a cap or hat to protect from exposure.”

The basketball coach Bob DeVault had suggested a Jone-Zy ™ roll up so I asked my dad to get me a Jone-Zy ™ roll up.

If you Google Jone-Zy roll up, without the trademark symbol, you will find images of “fisherman’s hat” or “bucket hat.” They look exactly like my Jone-Zy ™ roll up, shapeless cotton buckets with the short brim turned down all around.

So my dad bought me a tan Jone-Zy ™ roll up, $2, at Dalton’s Young Men’s Shop (we went to church with the Daltons).

And yes, you could roll it up and stick it in your pocket, so that as soon as you got out of sight of coach DeVault or his assistant coach Whited, you could pull it off and jam it in your pocket.

For three years I looked like a fisherman during the winter, at least when I was in sight of the school.

It didn’t prevent me from getting sick. In fact one memorable Saturday the flu caused me to miss one of Coach Al Wilkes’ all-day practices: arrive at 9 a.m., practice till noon, head over to Minute Market for a nabs and Coke lunch, then practice from 1 till 6 p.m. My dad would literally drop me off on his way to work and pick me up on his way home.

The one Saturday that I missed was memorable because that meant I was suspended for the next game, which turned out to be Science Hill in Sprankle Gym.

I was a bit of a hero to some of my fellow-nerd friends. “You’re suspended? What happened?” I would just brush them away with the flick of my hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

 I had violated Rule 7:

“Absolutely no missing practice unless a family emergency arises or unless you have sickness or injury yourself. Your coaches expect to know in advance if you have reason to be absent.”

I didn’t know in advance that I would have the flu that Saturday. So I watched the Science Hill game from the stands.

(D-B won without me.)

How do I remember such specific details, like Rule No. 7 and Rule No. 9?

I don’t.

I just happen to have saved that “Rules for Athletes” from so long ago (59 years this fall).

The Rules sheet was put together by head football coach Tom Brixey with input from the other coaches, most notably basketball coach Bob DeVault.

Rereading those rules – and knowing my teammates and my friends on the football team – it’s a wonder D-B was able to field any teams that year. They were not easy rules to follow.

There’s no date on the mimeo but I know it was from my sophomore year, 1962-63, when I actually was an ath-a-lete.

The rules begin with these slogans: “Do Your Best - Think Like a Champion - Live Like a Champion.”

Those mottos are followed by a quick pitch for team spirit along the lines of the “THERE IS NO ‘I’ IN TEAM” tee shirts favored by coaches today. (My son once pointed out to me, there is ME in TEAM.) 

Coach Brixey wrote, “These sports are team sports. To play on any of these teams you must practice self-discipline and place the team ahead of yourself as an individual. If you can’t do this there is no place for you on the team.”

Next were nine tenets under the heading RULES OF CONDUCT, ATTITUDE AND INTEREST YOU MUST LIVE UP TO AT ALL TIMES:

“1. No alcoholic beverages of any kind.

“2. No smoking.

“3. No eating of sweets or milk shakes between meals.

“4. No profanity will be tolerated.

“5. Proper respect must be shown all Coaches at all times.

“6. No swimming in excessive amounts during practice or playing season. Swimming softens your muscles and saps your strength.

“7. Absolutely no missing practice unless a family emergency arises or unless you have sickness or injury yourself. Your coaches expect to know in advance if you have reason to be absent.

“8. You are expected to be on time (or early) for all practice sessions, games and trips.

“9. In cold weather (in season) you must wear a cap or hat to protect from exposure.”

The boys on the 1946 team didn't have to wear hats.

(I think that is Cecil Puckett third from left.)

There’s nothing really outrageous in those nine rules. No sweets might be a laugher today. And wearing a hat.

But I’m only beginning. Next up is the section titled CURFEW TIME, DATING AND SOCIAL LIFE. 

“Any night prior to a school day you will be expected to be home and in bed at 10:00. This includes Sunday night.”

This one was enforced. I can remember being dragged out of bed to the phone to tell Coach DeVault that, yes, I was in bed.

“Friday nights after a ball game curfew time shall be 12:15.

“Saturday night curfew time shall be 11:45.”

The Friday night exception was so we could go to the Frolics, a dance held in the Civic Auditorium after every Friday home football game. The Frolics ended at midnight. That fifteen-minute cushion gave you time to take your date home, if you had one, and then race home yourself and jump in bed so when Coach DeVault called you could say truthfully that you were in bed. 

It is the next section of rules that modern athletes may find funny:

“It is not the desire of the coaching staff to make any boy abnormal in regard to his association with the opposite sex but it has been proven that social life is not in the best interest of a good athletic team. We feel it is necessary that your social life and association with girls be held to a minimum during the athletic season so that it will leave your mind clear to do the best job possible in school and athletics.

“Athletes are free to date on weekends within the curfew hours. Special conditions apply to after-game situations. During the week on school nights, dating is not recommended but will be permitted one night under limited conditions which include curfew hours and being at church or at home. (Not in movies, drive-in movies, drive-ins, or other places in or out of town.) Athletes are expected not to be standing or walking in close association or conversation with girls in the halls between periods and at other times and locations between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.”

On my mimeograph copy of the team rules I circled that last section about standing or walking in the halls with a girl. Forty years later I don’t know if I marked it because Coach DeVault stressed it or if it was more wishful thinking, that some girl would want to stand in close association with me in the halls.

After a couple of rules about representing the school at away games, the mimeograph gets around to behavior:

“Any misconduct or childish, destructive behavior will be dealt with severely. Athletes should be, and are expected to be, the outstanding boys in school in attitude and conduct and self-discipline. You must be polite, not doing things to show off or attract attention. In the halls you are expected to avoid all horse-play and loud show-off actions. Your style of dress should be neat and appropriate, not the show-off type.”

A few years ago I passed these old rules around a few of my classmates from long ago. They remembered well the regulations about girls. They all remembered being dragged out of bed to tell Coach Brixey or Coach DeVault that they were in bed. But they were all stopped cold on the style of dress. What was “show-off type” clothing in the fifties and sixties? The only thing we could figure was a turned-up collar.

Jim Beck, a basketball teammate of mine, chuckled after reading the rules. “I think (our star running back) broke every one of these rules.” The Star Running Back was a football player who shall remain nameless since he later became a minister.  I’m sure he broke almost every one of the rules, too. He just didn’t get caught. But I know he wore a hat in public. Otherwise Coach Brixey would have made him watch a few games from the stands.

Which is what happened to me during that long-ago Science Hill game.

The Star broke every rule and never missed a game.

Me, I wear a hat and avoid girls in the hallway (or maybe it was the other way around) but I break one rule – and I had a good excuse; I was sick – and I get suspended.

 

 

 

 

Coach Al Wilkes’ Worst Team

Front row, left to right: Stephen Burns, Tim Thayer, the late Carlos Courtney, Dommie Jackson, the late Gary Kilgore, Charles Worrell, Jim Barker, Jim Beck, Joe King, the late Coach Al Wilkes.

Back row, left to right: David Foulk, Bill Worrell, Vince Staten, Mack Williams, Robert Bruce, Danny Olinger, the late Charles Housewright, Flip Gilmer, Joie Kerns, the late Don Robinson. (not pictured: Sam Beford and the late Robert Strang, who also played on the varsity).

We all wore hats in season. Good luck finding a picture of any of us in a hat.

I had the privilege that season of playing on Coach Al Wilkes only losing team. Coach Wilkes coached the D-B junior varsity team for almost forty years and in all those seasons he had one team with a losing record. My team. We finished 8-12 and he always blamed it on the fact that our two best players, Sam Bedford and Robert Strang, split time between the B-team and the varsity, which limited them to only two quarters in each game.

He was probably interviewed about that losing team dozens of times over the years and he never once mentioned another possible reason for that losing record: I missed 5 of the 20 games. I missed the first four games of the season recovering from a high ankle sprain (it was in a cast for four weeks) and then I was suspended for the Science Hill game.

The team really missed my 2.1 points per game.