Part II; Chapter 2

My father’s mother was a high school English teacher up until his birth in 1926, in Atlanta, Georgia. She married late in life and was widowed by the time he was eight. Returning to work at Georgia Military Academy for boys, where she had taught previously, covered my father’s tuition and uniforms after his enrollment there. To make ends meet, she also ran the boarding house where they lived.

Even before her physical illness, my paternal grandmother became easily confused and disoriented. Two world wars, the Great Depression, widowed and left destitute early in her marriage took their toll.  In her elder years, her circumstances were reduced to small rooms in a dingy boarding house. My father and mother sent her what money they could from their military pay. The local grocer regularly cheated her, taking advantage of her vulnerable state.

Her wardrobe, clean, shabby, but always elegant, was limited to one dark suit, two white lacy collared blouses, and one pair of black shoes. She never left the front porch without her black felt beret anchored by its jeweled hat pen. She tightly clutched an empty black leather purse and spotless white cotton gloves. The ball of her cane, needed after a fall and resulting broken hip, was always polished. Even with her mind almost gone, and no assets to speak of, she somehow retained the dignity of a Southern lady.

Outside of military school, my father ran wild in the city of Atlanta. He later showed us where he sneaked into a grand old movie palace built in the 1920s, the Fabulous Fox Theater, to see movies for free. During the Great Depression, he paid a nickel each for a large Mason jar of beer and a big dill pickle wrapped in paper.

He rode his GMA classmates’ polo ponies in the lovely parks near their mansions along Peachtree Street. The delicious Southern meals he shared with their families made quite an impression on him. He never forgot their gracious manners and formal table settings.

My father had neither money nor station in life. His mother worked hard to earn what little they had while relying on the charity of friends and family to see them through to month’s end. Yet, he was able to enjoy much of what was available in Atlanta during the Great Depression, through association with his wealthy classmates.

He never spoke of his half brother. His mother’s sister had committed suicide, leaving her son in my grandmother’s care. She and my grandfather, who was still alive at the time, adopted my father’s first cousin.

When my brother and I were children, my father became very angry when our grandmother asked him to send money to his half brother. He yanked the car off the road and slammed on the brakes. Seat belts were not yet in use, so my grandmother, brother and I were thrown around the back of the car. We were all badly bruised and frightened by my father’s violent reaction.

My father’s half brother was described to me later as an alcoholic and a parasite, neglectful of the needs of his own family. My father was supporting his family and his dependent mother at the time. She really had no idea what she was asking.

My father worked hard for everything he accomplished. He left Atlanta at eighteen and enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps, the predecessor to the US Air Force. His first training was as a machine gunner in the belly of a bomber. He graduated at the top of his class.

After WWII, he left the service and picked up a few classes at the University of Georgia where he met my mother. With her blessing and a commitment to their future together, he re-enlisted and earned his commission after graduating from Officer’s Candidate School. He was what was later called a “90-Day-Wonder.” He served as a tanker, then as an aviator.

He tried very hard, over his entire adulthood, to achieve a formal education, taking many classes, but never earning a degree. Though he excelled at whatever short-term goals he pursued, he found it impossible to establish and achieve long-term goals. I believe that was a deep source of frustration for him.

I, also, believe he tried to emulate the gracious lifestyle he had experienced among his wealthy young friends and their families on Peachtree Street. It was he who influenced the level of formal entertaining in our home. It was he who collected the china, crystal, and silver, more than my mother.

I well remember the regular trips to the Class 6 Liquor Store. We left with large bottles of hard liquor and wine filling the back of our vehicle. They would replenish the Waterford crystal carafes on the buffet.

As far as I know, my father was never screened, diagnosed, or treated for any mental health or substance abuse issues. Even without a diagnosis, it was evident he was volatile and unstable. He grew up in military schools, had little parental contact, and took up smoking and drinking at an early age.

Bi-products of the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam War, my father’s alcoholism and mental imbalance produced a vicious, cowardly bully. There really could not have been any other outcome in those days. He abused his family and others rather than seek help and face his own painful truth.

Knowing the origins and environment of my father’s illnesses may bring me understanding and educate my intellect, but it does not lessen my pain. His behaviors were much like a malevolent cult leader intent on controlling every aspect of his family members’ lives. He actively sabotaged independent spirit and creativity. Differing opinions were met with severe punishment. I received my last beating at eighteen.

He, like untold numbers of veterans, died of inoperable cancer attributed to his exposure to Agent Orange during his tour in Viet Nam. I do not miss him. I do not mourn him. I mourn the father I never had.

Part II; Chapter 1

Life changed radically for my parents and grandparents when stock marketers margined America’s economy into the Great Depression. Stocks were purchased with 10% down, creating an over-extended credit culture, the very beginnings of what our economy suffers from today. After the market crash of 1929, unemployment rose to 25%.

In the spring and summer of 1932, 43,000 marchers, including 17,000 unemployed WWI veterans and their families, converged on Washington, D.C. in efforts to collect their war-time bonuses.  A practice since 1776, those who enlisted and served in the military were promised the difference in compensation between what they earned as soldiers and what they would have earned had they not enlisted. The Bonus March, as it became known, proved to be one of the most shameful and visible examples of post-war treatment of American military veterans in our history.

Part I; Chapter 13

When I lived in the South, people of color were referred to by many names. They were called coloreds, colored people, Negroes, darkies, and worse. The terms “black” and “African-American” were not yet in use.

Not all the people of color I knew could trace their ancestry back to Africa. Many came from a mixed heritage of Native American, Jamaican, French, English, Spanish, Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican. Theirs was a rich and fascinating contribution to the culture I knew and cherished.

Part I; Chapter 12

While my mother was growing up in Sandersville, Georgia, she and her family attended the Baptist Church. Her father was a staunch Baptist. Her mother was a lapsed Catholic.

Indifferent to her father’s strong objections, my mother attended the Episcopal Church near her college with her well-to-do classmates. In later years, she took every opportunity to criticize the Baptists, embellishing on the gossip she repeated, emphasizing hypocrisy. Though never offering details or examples, she never had a kind word for her father on the rare occasions she spoke of him.

Part I; Chapter 11

My military family moved well over twenty times in my first nineteen years. Out of pocket expenses added up quickly. Thousands of dollars spent on travel and temporary housing; forfeited deposits and start up fees for utilities; the cost of replacing household goods lost, stolen, or damaged in transit; and, items needed to start up a new home were never adequately covered under reimbursements for our relocation expenses. There were also insurance deductibles.

Each new assignment meant considerable new debt. We hoped to remain in our new location long enough to re-coop our losses before relocating. That never happened.

Rarely did our moves coincide with school summer vacations. We regularly relocated mid-year, leaving one school system for another. Each curriculum differed greatly from the last.

Part I; Chapter 10

When my father returned from war, we left North Carolina and returned to Ft. Rucker, Alabama. He had been assured a promotion to Colonel, with the command of a battalion, had he remained in Viet Nam for a second tour. He declined the offer.

This time, we didn’t live in the Civilian Conservation Corp cabin in the woods surrounding Lake Tholocco.  Our new home was a faded beige one-story duplex with a flat roof and an attached open carport.  There was no landscaping in the front yard or the back other than dry, patchy grass. Hundreds of such quarters surrounded us in the officer’s housing area.

Part I; Chapter 9

Over the next three years, my family was bounced between the rolling blue grass hills of Ft. Knox, Kentucky; the deep, blowing snows of flat, frigid Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas; and, the sweltering dry desert heat of Ft. Hood, Texas.

Within two days of the arrival of our household goods at Ft. Hood, my father received emergency orders to go to war in Southeast Asia. Moving boxes were stacked high around us as we stood together in disbelief. Those were the military orders my parents feared and dreaded, yet knew would eventually come.

Part I; Chapter 8

In those days, military families lived yellow alert life styles as they followed their soldier around the world. Everyday living had its extraordinary challenges and hardships. Within the gray areas of war, exposure to great risk, physical and psychological, was the norm for soldiers and their dependents.

My brother and I were trained early to be security conscious and paranoid. We were warned to protect all information about our family and the military. At a minimum, we were lead to believe civilians would neither understand nor approve of our lifestyle. At a maximum, we were lead to believe a slip of the tongue could endanger lives. All were disproportionate responsibilities for our young lives.

Part I; Chapter 7

After about a year in sprawling Frankfurt, my family and I relocated to Fulda, Germany. A tall fence surrounded the small post and armed guards manned each gate. We were stationed about five miles from the Communist East German border.

Our new home was a furnished two-story duplex.  Window boxes spilling over with colorful petunias welcomed us. There was a large backyard that followed the fence. The view from my second story bedroom looked down the hill, onto a snowy field, and across to the German dwellings at the edge of the village. I could also see the comings and goings through the front gate.

Part I; Chapter 6

The photo of the jagged metal spires that are now the symbols of the recent assault on America rushed me back to a different war, in a different nation. I became immersed in the memory and its accompanying dark wave of sadness. It was a different era and a different enemy, yet the losses for all sides were no less devastating.

After leaving Alabama, my maternal grandmother, mother, brother, and I spent July through October of 1961 in Alexandria, Virginia. Our temporary home was a one bedroom, sparsely furnished apartment in Huntington Towers. Our view overlooked the wide, muddy Potomac River. We were waiting for orders to join my father in Frankfurt, Germany.

Part I; Chapter 5

The post-WWII fifties saw the spread of the suburbs with ranch style houses filled with shiny, new major appliances. The new conveniences allowed more time for coffee klatches and cocktail parties, broadening social circles. Big cars, extensive highway systems, and motels promoted mobility and vacation travel.

My parents kept up with the civilian Joneses, on an Army Captain’s pay, until my paternal grandmother’s physical health started to decline. A survivor of the Great Depression, she had no savings, no assets, and no medical insurance. A widow, she had not benefited financially from the World Wars as so many had.

The cost of her medical care became an enormous financial burden to my parents. They begrudgingly curtailed their lifestyle. The boats were sold and the parties slowed.

Part I; Chapter 4

By 1958, I was a sunburned child standing in the brown shallows of a small, man-made lake in southern Alabama. The depleted wake of a ski boat lapped against my shins as I squeezed red clay between my toes, slapped away biting horse flies, and chewed sweet honeysuckle. I watched, enthralled, as a fiery sunset ignited the breaks between the tall pines on the opposite shore and gently melted into the water.

Our transition from post-war metropolitan Tokyo, Japan, to the rural, Deep South could not have been more dramatic. For the next three years, our home was a small, rustic cabin that hugged the slope above the lake. Our new world enveloped us with the warm fragrance of baked pine needles.

Part I; Chapter 3

It’s strange how one memory will open the floodgates for so many more that have been blocked for years. I keenly remember being a very small child sitting in the left rear passenger seat of our car. My father was driving and my mother was talking. I could barely see her head over the seat back as she angrily lambasted toy manufacturers for distributing unsafe toys.

I was shaking and my teeth were chattering as I gripped my foot with a blood soaked washcloth, trying hard not to drip on the seat. I had sliced it open on a metal toy sweeper. My parents were taking me to the emergency room at the military hospital.

Part I; Chapter 2

After a year living with my grandmother while my father fought in Korea, my mother, brother, and I sailed to Japan in 1957. Our slap-dash WWII Liberty ship pitched, creaked, shuddered, and groaned, barely holding together in the violent seas. Late one night, I was thrown out of a top berth, hitting my head and breaking my arm as I crumpled onto the concrete floor.

My heavy plaster cast started at my shoulder, encased my elbow, and wrapped around the knuckles of my hand. When I became ill, I was doped with tablespoons of clear, green liquid codeine and kept in our cold, noisy metal cabin the remaining weeks of the voyage. My father was shocked to see his battered family when he collected us at the pier. During our return home on another Liberty ship, he quickly appreciated the enormous difficulty of our initial voyage.

Part I; Chapter 1

A later childhood memory is of my older brother slithering out from under my maternal grandmother’s house. He was covered with dirt, debris, and cobwebs from head to toe. Delight covered his small face as he excitedly readied us for his find.

My grandmother had told us her home was a schoolhouse before the War Between the States. “Civil War” wasn’t part of a Southerner’s vocabulary back then. Though much time had passed, it was still freshly felt there had been nothing civil about the war between the North and the South. It had been a War of Aggression.