Civilian &nb sp; &nb sp; &nb sp; 4-7-2009
I got my separation papers at Ft. Jackson, SC just after noon. I knew that McNamara’s extensions announcement was coming any minute. I got in a cab and asked the driver to take me to the nearest train, bus, or airport. The train station was closest. Went to the ticket counter and asked for a ticket on the next train. It was going to Maine. I rode that train all the way to Hawthorne, NJ. Knew an Italian girl there I had met through my buddy Kevin. Called Ellen and she came and picked me up at the train station and took me to the airport and I bought a one way ticket to Kansas City but wasn’t going to leave just yet. I was free, and the Army didn’t know where I was. I was worried about getting recalled which may or may have not been realistic. There is no doubt that I would have been extended for a year had I been in the Army a day longer. Anyhow I was in NJ with a friend and had a ticket home so it was party time. Ellen’s dad was a professional musician so we went to see him perform in some club. Her parents were pretty cool. They let me stay with them while we ran all over and partied. Finally after a couple of weeks I was out of money and went home.
It was nice to be home and have the Army behind me. Like lots of soldiers I was glad to be out, glad to tell my friends my “war stories” and it would be some time before I fully appreciated what the Army had given me. Some visiting was in order and of course I tried to do it all at once which wore me out but I finally settled down some and had to start thinking about a job. I bought a 53 Ford for $75.00 and went job hunting which didn’t work out to well. Got lots of interviews but no job. I had a teacher in Ft. Monmouth that worked for IBM before the Army and what he had to say about IBM impressed me so I tried for a job there. I wasn’t then and am not now very good with electronic theory and didn’t do very good on that test at IBM. Hallmark had to take me back by law so that’s where I went. Hallmark had two openings and gave me a choice. One was for a sales clerk at Halls store on the Plaza. A very upscale expensive department store. Not my thing. The other choice was in an old warehouse Hallmark had in the Old Abernathy building in the West Bottoms. More my style so I took that job. Hallmark allowed me a week off so I could escort my nephew Larry home to Phoenix, AZ. Flew out there and spent a few days with my sister and took the train home. While in Phoenix the IBM Office Products Manager in Kansas called me (got my sis’s number from momma) and wanted to talk to me about a job. I had made some high scores on all of IBM’s test except for the electronics. Must have done well on the mechanical aptitude because that’s the one that generated the phone call from IBM. The Office Products Division was typewriters and dictating machines. I left Hallmark to work for the mighty IBM. At the time IBM interviewed an average of 200 applicants for every one that they hired. I considered myself fortunate.
The train ride from Phoenix was so unusual that I gotta tell about it. As the small passenger train left Phoenix to hook up with a larger train in Flagstaff the old conductor started walking down the aisle passing out scrapbooks that he had collected over the years. The old man had been a conductor on that train from Phoenix to Flagstaff all his life or at least most of it. The train passed through beautiful desert country like I had only seen in pictures. There were mesas, canyons, gulleys, rock formations in every color and shade of red imaginable. The conductor conducted a tour of the countryside every inch of the way. The train would come around a bend and the conductor would tell what year Tom Mix made what movie there and then the year and name of John’s Wayne’s, Hoppy’s, Randolph Scott’s, and everyone else’s cowboy movie. It was that way all afternoon and all the way to Flagstaff. I have always thought that the railroad should have advertized this train ride as a tourist trip. Word of mouth would keep the train full for the best day trip ever. The old conductor had quite a life that he enjoyed sharing with all passengers. That ride was a surprise treat for all the passengers.
So I went to work for IBM. The dress code was strict. Just a suit and tie wasn’t good enough. They had to be very conservative. We looked like funeral directors. I even got told once that my white on white shirt was a little too much for an IBM employee. The first couple of months I was in school in Kansas City learning about IBM typewriters. Thousands of parts and had to learn each parts name in order of where they were located on the typewriter and what they did. This schooling was self taught with me in a room alone and IBM’s excellent teaching methods. Then I had to go to the factory in Lexington, KY to be taught by outstanding teachers how to repair the IBM Selectric Typewriter, and their Executive model which at the time was the only typewriter with proportional spacing. It amazed me just how complicated a typewriter was. Kinda took them for granted till I found out that they were quite an engineering marvel.
Just had a few days left in school and I got a call from momma that daddy was very ill and could I come home. Back then IBM was really good to their employees and I was out of school a couple of day’s early and sent home to learn that daddy had terminal lung cancer. That was just about Christmas 1965 and daddy died May 16, 1966. Those five months were very hard for my family. Momma and I worked every day so my sister Freida came over and took care of daddy during the day. There is no nurse or hospice on the planet that could have cared for daddy like my sister did. She took loving care of daddy, cleaned house and kept cheerful (on the outside) through it all. She did the little extra things to comfort me and momma. I might open the medicine cabinet for an aspirin and find that it had been emptied, cleaned, and had a note saying “the phantom was here.” Little things like that can and did make a big difference during a difficult time. My sister Louise came and helped and to spend time with daddy. My sisters showed what outstanding people they are during that time. My brother Albert came and stayed and was with daddy when he died. I have always been thankful for that. Albert was daddy’s first child.
I didn’t “man up” and do my share during this time. After work I came home and helped some and then went out and drank. Momma was understanding of so many multiple problems, hurts and worries during this time that she demonstrated herself tougher than any man or woman I have ever known. The doctor (a family practitioner) came by the house several times a week. Daddy was restless even though he was pretty much out of it. The old doc recommended that we give him a little beer (we were feeding daddy with a syringe at the time) or weak bourdon & water to allow him some rest. We explained that daddy had never had a drink in his life except for one that was prescribed for a rattle snake bite which was medically the wrong thing to do but daddy was proud of his no drinking record without a prescription. The good old doc wrote a prescription. My drinking was no secret so momma asked me if I could take care of this chore. She asked so that I could feel like I was making a contribution to helping with daddy.
There is some humor in everything. Daddy was in the hospital for awhile but didn’t like it. His mind hadn’t been 100% since he had a stroke 12 years earlier. Daddy was on oxygen in the hospital so he wasn’t supposed to smoke. Attempting to keep him happy (quiet) the nurses let him keep cigarettes but no matches. That didn’t work. I went in to see daddy one night and saw where he had burnt the sheets on the edge of his bed with a cigarette. He immediately covered the burn with the top sheet and told me to keep quiet about it because he didn’t want to get the nurse in trouble. Said that the nurses weren’t allowed to smoke on duty and he let them sneak a smoke in his room. Another time he told me he was going to escape the hospital. “How ya gonna do that daddy?” “I’ll just walk out of here and start hitch hiking.” “Daddy, the only clothes ya have are pajamas.” “That’s ok. A Hi way Patrol man will stop and I’ll tell him I’m a traveling salesman and a hitch hiker I picked up robbed me and just left me with my pajamas. Then the Patrol man will take me home.” Daddy had it all figured out. Bless his huge heart.
Freida and I took daddy to a lung specialist early on and he examined daddy and then put daddy in the waiting room with some magazines and took me and Freida into his office. He explained some about daddy’s condition and then said, “I wish I wasn’t a man with a conscience. I would operate on your father because he wouldn’t survive the surgery.” Then he told my sis and me that we could use his office as long as we needed it. I respect that Doctor more than any I have ever met. The American Cancer Society is a gift from God. There was nothing that could be done for daddy except take him home and keep him as comfortable as possible while nature took its course. The Cancer Society provided us with a hospital bed, a porta potty, bed pans, bed clothes, and anything else we needed. They just asked that we return the things when we were finished with them. They took donated shirts, cut the collars off and fixed them up to wear backwards for bedridden patients. Those were and are better then those damn things hospitals give ya.
Daddy had a funeral in Raytown and another in Springfield the same day. Both were crowded. My Army buddy Kevin called me from NJ and told me about reading about daddy’s death in a NJ paper. “The Walkin’ Preacher” was well known. Now he is peaceful, his mind is 100% and he is with the God he served.
7-3-09
I wrote the above three months ago and haven’t written anything since. I have however moved Esther and her stuff that makes her comfortable in the house. I also married her last Saturday, June 27th. at the Sycamore Log Church.
The future looks so bright I need to wear shades.
Guy
