Sometimes when I wait too late to start a post, the evening meds take over and make you the stupid person that you can only be when you are STUPID on meds.
It's not like being drunk on beer or anything like that, in fact, it's more like the days of the hippie movement when you could walk into a smoke filled rock concert hall and discover that you're stoned before you get to your seat.
Despite that, I have to tell you that coming home and ending my boarding school career was a mighty sweet thing for me. I immediately hooked up with Greg and was brought up to speed on everything that was going on around the neighborhood and family.
By doing that, I also got to hook up with Aunt Grace, my Daddy's sister, and Uncle Charles, her World War II veteran husband. After Daddy passed away, he was my first of several surragate fathers on both sides of the family.
Uncle Charles had become somewhat of a specialist in his area of responsibility at the Colossus Midland Belting & Supply Company, of which he was part owner. Since Greg and I were his right hand men, so to speak, both of us ended up working there and doing the clean up stuff and simple warehouse work for kids.
During that time and in line with Uncle Charles's somewhat unique position as an owner and a field specialist, I got to travel with him and keep him company with stories about Morris and St. Gregorys. He took me to every account he had in the city but one of them was the huge Ralston Purina Plant where all kinds of specialty animal foods were made.
We went there to deliver some magical part that was the only thing left to make one of their machines runable. When we arrived, we went into a man's office, delivered the magic little part, put away the signed delivery ticket and began a conversation.
Uncle Charles knew him very well and it was clear that they had become good friends. After their initial greeting, he motioned me to come closer so that I could meet Mr. Hamp Smith. We shook hands and he and Uncle Charles shot the breeze about one of the systems in the plant. Soon after that short conversation was over, Uncle Charles and I left and went back to his car.
When we got in the car, Uncle Charles told me that Mr. Smith was a World War II veteran but he was a very special kind of veteran. Uncle Charles said that the government called him a Bataan Death March Survivor.
I freaked as I had already read a ton of stuff about McArthur, Stillwell and the entire campaign for the Phillipines. .He told me that I would soon have my driver's liscense and probably be delivering parts to Ralston on my own. He added that I should never, ever, ever mention that I knew about it or ask him any questions at all about it. I promised to keep it secret and away we went, back to the warehouse.
As luck would have it, Greg and I were out of school just in time for taking inventory and breaking in some brand new push brooms that would have to clean 14,000 square feet of floor space. Despite the fact that it was hot as hell, it was kinda neat and instructive to actually put your hand on every part in a warehouse two stories tall.
I also learned that serious industrial supply companies have a magazine rack in the men's room and that they are filled with brochures of every known part you could imagine.
I learned alot about power transmission by rote. I had them in my hand during inventory counts and then I had the brochure that explained all about it and it's application to any specific job for which it was manufactured. No, I didn't spend alot of time in the men's room but when I did go there, I did some studying that was often times followed by taking a brochure home for my bathroom.
As another wierd coincidence, a guy named Cecil Murray showed up for inventory. Cecil was like a forest product specialist but he had been around long enough to where he could go to any plant of any kind and know all about the component parts of their systems.
He was kinda like the company drill seargent. He would yell instructions to the warehouse employees from an open door of the sales room and expect it to go all the way to the back of the warehouse. The coincidental thing regarding Cecil was his time in the Army Air Corp during World War II.
Cecil was attached to a bomber squadron and was directly involved with the bomb loading end or that team. One year, the Air Corp had a bomb loading competition and it was held at Esler Field, only 130 miles south of Shreveport. He and his team won the competition and was immediately sent out west to begin training on larger systems that the B 25's and B 17's he'd been loading.
Let's just say that there's more coming from that story but for now, I'll just say he was eventually transferred to Tinian just a short time after the Saipan/Tinian invasion where we took it from the Japanese.
What a unique oddity it was that I knew 5 men in that convoy/battle group and 2 were blood kin with one other being a future father in law, the Great General G.E. McGovern ret with the last two being Melissa's step Daddy, Eddie and our own Cecil Murray.
It was really super cool to be working at the Colossus amidst family and friends as well as my mother who had gone to work in the accounting department. If you add to that the fact that I was roughly a 3 minute drive from Joe Massina's hanger which was on the same street the Colossus was,
it was geographic heaven for me. I had all the toys a big boy wanted and they were all right there in front of me, every day.
To top off all of this, Uncle Charles' other partners were my Uncle Woodrow who was married to my Daddy's sister Nell, the one that came to Morris with Momma to pick me up when I broke my arm.
Then there was Daddy's other sister Helen who married a doughboy from the first World War. He was always referred to as Uncle Shirley. His name was Francis Shirley Hebert (Ay Bare) but Shirley was it. Helen was always called Aunt Baby by neices and nephews but "Baby Lee" by her siblings. Don't ask me how that unfolded but that was just the way it was.
In any event, during the first 3 months of that summer, I had ended my years in boarding school, reconnected with my people, had a lot of day trips to industrial plants in the area, met a lot of grown people and was surrounded by World War II veterans.
Uncle Woodrow was alot like Uncle Charles in that he was a specialist, too. He hardly ever went to the plants as his duties pretty well chained him to the warehouse/office building. Despite that, I found out that he spent his time in the Navy teaching something of an electronic nature and was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Station, the same base where Tim Jr took basic training, 7 years ago.
For purposes of point and foundation, you may well fill in the blanks about all the war stories I was made privvy too and how the closeness of the airport continued to influence my mind about being a fighter pilot.
Keep hanging in there, there will be more soon.
Tim
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