Dad

“Up and at em’” was dad’s favorite wake-up call.  Up and at em’ was the way he woke us up in the morning like he was rousing ranch hands in a bunkhouse.  I guess it comes from his South Dakota farm upbringing where his industrious German foster parents probably woke him up with the same call.  Dad was built like a “brick shithouse” as they say, not being over five feet ten inches, but he was big boned and strong.  His light brown hair was fine and whispy and he had a rather large nose that had apparently been broken some time in his life.  He also had two upper front teeth that leaned backward into his mouth and gave his smile a flatness that was unique.  I asked him about his nose and teeth one time and he told me that he had been kicked by a horse; a mean horse.  “I got even with that horse” he once told me, “I hit him right between the eyes with a large board and dropped him to the ground.”

Dad and all his siblings were virtual orphans before the oldest of them was nine.  It was 1926 when their own family disintegrated and the kids were scattered all over South Dakota and Nebraska.  Dad ended up with Adam Straub and his wife Rosie on a nine hundred acre farm near the town of Eureka, South Dakota.  His adopted family treated him fair enough, he said, but life on the farm was a lot of hard work.

Dad stayed on the farm for about five years before he left and started riding boxcars around the country, a mode of transportation that was dangerous but common in the depression years.  He was only thirteen or fourteen when he quit school and ran away from the Straub farm, and he never made it beyond the eighth grade.  With his propensity to clown around and be a jokester, I doubt that even the eight grades he completed did him much good.  My guess is, he was the class clown and didn’t get much “book learnin’.”

Dad is in the back row, 5th from the left, making a face

 When dad was deep in thought he had the curious habit of tickling the tip of his nose with the hairs on the back of his wrist.  We would watch him from a distance and wonder, what the hell?  Even his smile was different.  Most people see a smile as lips with the ends turned up, but his lips would form a reverse smile where the ends turned down instead of up.  It didn’t mean he was sad, it meant he was thinking and anyway, believe it or not, it still looked like a smile!

When dad was thinking, you could almost hear the wheels spinning in his head.  He possessed and intellect that far surpassed his station in life and I sometimes wonder what might have been if he’d had a normal family life and had the same opportunities as others of his generation.  He did study law for a while, but just long enough to defend himself against the corruption he faced in the course of his business.  Believe it or not, he was very good at law and actually set a precedent in California that is still in the books.  Many powerful people have underestimated him and fallen victim to his legal prowess.

Dad at 18, just prior to his first enlistment

In spite of his meager education, dad had a talent with numbers.  He seemed fascinated by them and spent hours playing with his “hundred key” Monroe mechanical calculator.  He purchased that calculator in 1953 and must have paid a small fortune for it.  It was “cutting edge” at the time, sort of like a computer for his generation.  A little “overkill” for balancing his checkbook, I think.

When dad did leave the farm in South Dakota, his travels took him to the West Coast where he visited as far north as Seattle and as far south as Los Angeles.   Upon arriving in the Los Angeles area on his third or fourth trip, dad and his brother Paul, enlisted in the Cavalry at Fort Mac Arthur, Upper Reservation.  It was December 7th, 1937.  The two were sent to Fort McDowell on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay where they arrived on Dec.10th, 1937 (the same day the Japanese sank the ship "Panay" on the Yangtze River, China).  After some basic training the two brothers ended up in Hawaii where, due to a typographical error, dad got the opportunity to undergo training as a bombardier.  During his stay in Hawaii, he taught swimming at the YMCA and his graduating class was honored with a reception at the estate of James Drummond Dole, the Pineapple King.

After a couple of years of military life dad figured he’d had enough and finagled an early discharge, I guess he thought things would be better in civilian life.  He was wrong, the depression was still going on and jobs were scarce.  “I was quick to leave the military,” he said, “but I soon learned that picking fruit in the Sacramento valley was not for me either.”  Dad bummed around California with a friend for about a year and a half before he finally re-enlisted into the newly formed Army Air Force.  Soon thereafter, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he found himself headed to England as one of the first logistical support teams.  He spent several months establishing bases and supply depots for the troops that were to follow.

Dad on the right with his younger brother Ralph who was a tail gunner

 When dad’s bombardier training was discovered, he was offered a position with the Eighth Air Force as a replacement bombardier for crews that were shorthanded.  He told me he needed the flight pay, but that seems like a crazy trade-off for the dangers he would face flying in B-17’s.  The life expectancy for a B-17 crew at the time was only 14 missions; dad flew a total of 37.

Dad at his 80th Birthday, wearing his favorite tie