The Last Mission: A Voyage Through History as Remembered

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

13 October, 1920-1941

CHAPTER 2

1941-1943

CHAPTER 3

1943-1944

CHAPTER 4

1945-1947

CHAPTER 5

1947-1948

CHAPTER 6

1948-1950

CHAPTER 7

1950-1952

CHAPTER 8

1952 -1956

CHAPTER 9

1956-1958

CHAPTER 10

1959-1961

CHAPTER 11

1961-1966

CHAPTER 12

1966-1972

CHAPTER 13

1972-1990

CHAPTER 14

1990-Present

DEDICATION

APPENDIX

THE MILK RUN

PROLOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Had I not met and married Mae and had written a book, it would have been much different and probably of little interest to anyone other than a flier. Our plan was to write of our lives in separate chapters from childhood through our marriage at age thirty-four in England, and from that point on, we would write of our lives together.

Shortly after we began to put our book together to be called Ever the ‘Twain Shall Meet or Flying and Spying, Mae had a recurrence of cancer, a disease she had been fighting for many years. We decided to put my story aside and with a terminal diagnosis and the courage and determination she had displayed for her entire life, she completed her book entitled A Woman Ahead of Her Time and died just five days after she gave final approval to our publisher, i-Universe.

Our son, Tim, an experienced writer, has been of great help to both Mae and me. I haven’t given up hope that when he retires from his present career, which has him directing an international program from Eastern Europe through Asia, that he will put Mae’s and my books together as originally intended. I strongly recommend that he and his wife, Lora, write their own stories and encourage their daughter and sons to do the same so that their children will know much more about their families.

My thanks also go to Karen Rinehimer whose business name ‘Letter Perfect’ clearly described her management and secretarial skills as displayed on both Mae’s book and mine.

I also thank those friends and acquaintances who over the years have encouraged us to write our books. Perhaps they were only being considerate or polite, but I thank them. Maybe this book will encourage them to go and do likewise.

INTRODUCTION

When I started this book, I had no intention of writing a history. As I relate things that happened during my ninety years, I have an advantage over the vast majority of the readers who can rely only on stories told by those who have passed on, or upon history books which are constantly revealed as containing much misinformation.

Through the years, I have painted pictures, composed parodies of songs, and written poetry, as well as military and rehabilitation manuals. I have enclosed a smattering of those as appendices. All of these activities have helped me to recall what I might have otherwise forgotten.

All I ask is that you read the book with an open mind and understand that my only sources for what I have written are based on the fact that I’ve been there, and done that, and that is history – my history.

TAIPEI TO HONG KONG – 17 JULY 1951

Pilot to crew and passengers:

Please take your seats and fasten your seatbelts. We are making our approach into Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Approach Control reports some rain clouds but the cloud base is high enough so we shouldn’t have any problems.

You won’t see much on this approach in that we let down over the water until we get beneath the clouds, then we start our approach over a radio beacon on an island lighthouse. From there we fly to enter the southeast passage which runs between 3500’ hills on both sides into Hong Kong Harbour. As I said, not much to see but we’ll soon be into the Harbour and in a few minutes make our landing at Hong Kong Kaitak Airport.

Number one engine looks O.K.

Pilot to Navigator:

There’s the white washed cliffs. We’re turning into the passage.

There’s the first bend – what the hell! There’s a thunderstorm right ahead!

We can’t turn back!

I can’t see a thing!

God help us!

CHAPTER 1

13 October, 1920-1941

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Early Years

My earliest recollections are as a very small child growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the early 1920s. I remember one of my greatest delights was opening the doors of a kitchen cabinet and dragging out all the pots and pans and lids onto the floor. The big attraction was the capability it gave me to make noise – and I did.

I also remember a big round oak table in the kitchen. It was a pedestal table with lions’ claws clutching balls for the base. Another fixture in the house was a big German shepherd named Baldorf. For some reason – probably to keep him out of the rest of the house – he was tethered to the oak table. I also remember someone coming into the house and Baldorf going after that person, pulling the table over and narrowly missing me. It’s strange how some events stick in your mind to be clearly recalled years later.

I can still see myself sitting on the floor in the kitchen playing with some cardboard cutouts of Indians, teepees, log cabins, trees, and canoes, and then looking up to see a strange face and letting out a scream. The stranger turned out to be an inmate from the Allegheny County Farm at Polk, a nephew of my step-grandfather.

This area of Pittsburgh was called Bloomfield, a section which had been settled by German émigrés, probably starting in the 1830s. In the 1920s, most of the people who lived there were of German descent. German was spoken everywhere – in the schools (where English was taught as a second language), in the churches (where the sermons were delivered in German), and in the shops. My mother was of German descent and my father was of Irish descent, born and raised in Greenfield, a section of Pittsburgh settled by the Irish.

We lived on Sciota Street on the corner of Millvale Avenue, and my grandmother ‘Masie’ and my Aunt Ida lived a few houses away on the same street. My grandmother had been widowed with four grown daughters and elected to remarry. The stepfather was never really accepted by the girls and I have no clear recollection of why. I cannot recall even seeing any pictures of him.

My grandmother was a large, imposing woman who seemed to me to always be in control of the situation – but aren’t all grandmothers? We had a mutual love affair. I would sit for hours as a pre-school tot at a large round table in her dining room, over which hung a stained glass chandelier, and I’d play cards with her and my Aunt Ida. We would play the usual children’s games like Old Maid and Go Fish but they soon got me into the old German games like Euchre, Skat, and 500. Occasionally, we would be joined by some of my grandmother’s friends. I would show them no mercy at the card table (either that or they would let me win).

I was the youngest of four children. The eldest, William, had died in the influenza epidemic of 1919 before I was born. My two sisters were one and one-half and four years older than I. Our house in Bloomfield was a two-story duplex, with the landlord living upstairs. The two families shared a bathroom in the landlord’s apartment. There was a toilet in the basement. The dominant feature of the basement was a large coal furnace with hot air ducts running out from the air chamber in all directions and slanting up through the ceiling to hot air registers in the floors of the apartments above.

Adults walking through the basement had to duck down under the ducts. There were white-washed walls and a concrete floor that slanted down to a drain in the center. Many families of spiders wove webs in every nook and cranny. It was a place where a three-year old boy would much prefer the company of an adult. On those times when I would venture into the perpetual dusk alone, it was with great trepidation as I could see fearsome things lurking in the shadows. The weak grey light which filtered through the soot-encrusted windows did little to identify the creatures which were rushing at me (which turned out to be clothing hanging on lines to dry).

Daily visitors were the huckster with his wagon loaded with fruits and vegetables, and the iceman with his tongs and a pad of burlap on his shoulder. He would chip out a 25 or 50 pound block of ice and carry it in to fit into our icebox. The icebox was wooden, metal-lined and had several doors and a drain pipe and pan to catch the water from the melting ice. The pan had to be emptied periodically, lest it would overflow or become too full to empty without spilling. There was also the milkman, the bread man, and the store delivery people. Of these trucks and horse drawn wagons, none were more impressive than Kaufmann’s Department Store. They had large yellow and black flat-bed trucks, electric powered, with solid rubber tired wheels. The underside of the truck bed held racks upon racks of batteries.

One very special visitor was someone I could never forget – Old Man Usmann, the junk man. He rode down the street in his horse drawn wagon calling, Rags, old iron, rags. He had a barn down Millvale Avenue, a couple of blocks away. It was a big, black wooden structure stuffed full of things that Mr. Usmann had collected. One night, the barn caught on fire and the people watching saw things go up in flames that belonged to them – some of which they swore had been stolen. In the present day world of antiques, Mr. Usmann’s collection, had it survived, would have been worth a fortune.

Up on Liberty Avenue, a few blocks away, was St. Joseph’s Church where we went to Sunday mass. My mother and her sisters had been baptized there and also had gone through school there. Very often the sermons were in German and as I mentioned earlier, most of the shopkeepers were German. A visit to the butcher would get you a wiener or a slice of bologna. The baker would always give you a cookie. A dozen was always thirteen – the Baker’s Dozen.

About a block down the street from our house was my favorite store. It was a little candy shop where my sisters would take me with my pennies or a nickel tightly clenched in my hand or tied in a corner of my hankie. As we opened the door, a bell would announce our presence and the proprietor or his wife, who lived in rooms behind the shop, would come out to greet us. Selection of candy was an exquisitely agonizing process. We would start at one end of the glass counter and ask what each of the many pieces of candy were and how many we could get for a penny. We could never make our choices on the first trip down the display case and we would have to go back and make sure that we understood that this one was three for a penny and that one was five for a penny. They had such things as Wine Cups which were capsules filled with colored sugar water, Peanut Bolsters which were peanut butter-filled honey logs coated with chocolate, Pinwheels which were caramel and sugar rolls, Frying Pans which were aluminum pans filled with colored and flavored sugar which could later be used as doll toys, Necco Wafers which were hard, colored and flavored sugar wafers, and Chicken Corn, Licorice Whips, and Jelly Beans. Add Jawbreakers, Suckers and many more varieties and you can understand that a trip to the candy store could never be properly done in less than thirty minutes. My sisters constantly pressured me into buying whatever they wanted with my money. They were very adept at convincing me that ‘this’ was the kind that ‘I’ liked best.

Our back porch looked out over Millvale Avenue and in good weather it was my perch where I could play and keep out of trouble. One day, for some unknown reason, my sister Jeanne and I got into a hassle as to who would take out the garbage. The battle took place on the wooden stairs leading down into the backyard. I must have been on the downside when I won because the garbage and I went tumbling down the stairs and landed in a heap at the bottom. Jeanne let out a shriek and started to cry which impeded her feeble efforts to inform my mother that she was alright – but she wasn’t too sure about me since the garbage and I were still lying at the bottom of the stairs.

The back porch was also the scene of another crisis in my life. At the corner of Millvale and Liberty Avenues stood the firehouse, on top of which was a cupola from where a siren would wail out its message when a fire was reported. On this day as I played on the porch, the siren screamed and I ran to see the doors of the firehouse fly open and out charged a team of three huge grey horses pulling a pumper. In those days, a pumper was a huge nickel steel coal fire-powered machine from which flame and smoke shot toward the skies. The rig came clattering down the cobblestone street in a cloud of steam, smoke, fire, cinders and noise. The bells clanged, the siren shrieked and this little kid, standing on his back porch looking over the rail, wet his pants and let out a yell.

Whee! Look at that son-of-a-bitch go! Before the last word came out, my mouth was full of soap and my bottom was red. You know? At times mothers just don’t understand.

I remember a great fascination with the Wild West – cowboys and Indians – and the U.S. Cavalry. My Uncle Jesse had been a cavalry man in the First Division during WWI, known at that time as ‘The Great War’. He had ridden across the Mexican border chasing after Poncho Villa and the Mexican bandits who had raided American border towns. I would sit for hours and listen to his stories, usually dressed in my Indian suit replete with feathered headdress. The greatest thrill was when Buffalo Bill Cody brought his Wild West Show to Pittsburgh. Uncle Jesse took me to see the show and I sat in the grandstand, enthralled while cowboys in the stagecoach being pulled by six horses fought off the bandits and the covered wagon train whipped into a circle. The pioneers fought off attacks by wild howling Indians who raced at breakneck speed on their pinto ponies around the wagons, shooting and being fired upon. There were longhorn cattle being roped, bulls and bucking broncos being ridden by cowboys, and Indians doing their war dances. There was everything a four-year old could want.

The next most exciting event was the annual Armistice Day Parade. The veterans in uniform marched behind waving flags, where bands played, and there was my Uncle Jesse – riding on a horse-drawn caisson, arms folded, not even hanging on. An honest-to-God 75 mm cannon was attached to the caisson. People lined the parade route and cheered as the veterans marched past. This was only a few years after the American doughboys went ‘over there’ to save the French, beat the Huns and ‘Make the World Safe for Democracy’. The War to End All Wars. America was fiercely proud of her boys who returned as conquering heroes.

For all my years of childhood and adolescence, there was no way I had any possibility of knowing that by the time I had graduated from high school, the name of that war would be changed from the ‘Great War’ to ‘World War I’ since World War II had begun in 1938. And I had no inkling that I would be an active participant not only in WWII but also in the Korean War and the Viet Nam War.

* * *

My grandmother’s house had electricity on the first floor but upstairs there were gas lights that gave off a sharp intense brightness that curiously enough did not spread like an electric light bulb, but instead left many, spooky corners in the room populated by dancing shadows. Under each bed was a chamber pot, which I used reluctantly when I stayed there. I could readily identify with the old poem,

Who took me from my warm, warm cot

And put me on that cold, cold pot

And made me go whether I wanted to or not

My mother

I stayed with my grandma when my sisters got chicken pox, measles, and scarlet fever, because in those days the Board of Health quarantined your house and no one could leave until they got a clean bill of health from the Board. My mother remained with my sisters and I stayed with my grandmother until they were cleared. My Aunt Ida would take me down to our house daily where I could stand outside and talk with my mother up through an open window. I remember wishing that I, too, had scarlet fever so I could be home with my mother instead of standing out on the sidewalk.

There was a big cast iron stove in my grandmother’s kitchen that seemed to go constantly and required hauling coal in and ashes out, which were dumped in the far reaches of the backyard to be sprinkled on the icy sidewalks in the winter.

The sink had a lead-covered drain board and a hand-crank water pump. I loved to crank the pump and see the crystal clear, ice cold water come spurting out. There was an enamel cup (gray, I think) hanging on a hook near the pump for common use.

The backyard was long and narrow, bounded by a high wooden fence. There was a rain barrel under a downspout to catch rainwater which was used for hair washing among other things. There was also a slanted wooden cellar door which when opened revealed stone stairs leading down to the basement door. All houses there had basements which were rock-walled and painted with whitewash.

In the spring, summer and early fall, the bright sunlight slanted down through the old maple trees out front that lined the street. It etched bright pools of light on the gray slate of the sidewalk. In some places the sidewalks were cracked and tilted by time and tree roots. Here and there on level stretches, the smooth grey surface was marked by chalk into hopscotch games in the hands of children. Between the sidewalk and the granite curbs, the black earth was devoid of grass in places and smoothed down carefully to provide an arena for marble games.

Occasionally, the marble game being played by two little boys of about four or five years old, dressed in short pants, sweaters, high black stockings and wearing high-laced shoes, would be interrupted by the emergence on the street of two little old ladies from their narrow, three-story red brick house. They’d cross the sidewalk and enter their electric car parked at the curb. The car was a square steel and glass box with black and brass trim, which sat on four large wooden-spoked wheels with narrow hard rubber tires. The windows were trimmed with white lace curtains and the seats were grey plush. The carpeted floor was reached through a door on the right side by stepping up from the curb onto a wrought iron stirrup and then into the car. The car was steered by a large tiller which turned the front wheels. Transverse steel leaf springs, very similar to what would be found on a buggy, carried the body of the car over two hard axles. The batteries were slung on racks under the body.

After closing the door and seating themselves, one of the ladies would firmly grasp the power switch and the tiller, apply power, and the electric car would trundle slowly away from the curb over the cobblestone street from under the shade of the huge maples and into the bright sunlight of Millvale Avenue where it merged with the traffic.

It vied for running room with horse-drawn grocery and bakery wagons, icemen with wagons and trucks, street cars running on steel rails and overhead trolleys, and a sprinkling of automobiles. This was the early 1920s and although the motor age was upon us, we still had vestiges of the past where people grouped in city and neighborhood cores for mutual support, ease of communication and ethnic solidarity. They used forms of transportation now found only in museums. Then, horses still played an important role even in the large cities.

* * *

We moved from Bloomfield to Greenfield when I was about four or five. We had a much larger house located on Greenfield Avenue. This was the Irish neighborhood where my father was born. Our house was orange-red brick with a sun parlor which if I remember correctly, was too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. There was a low brick wall in the front. The street was lined with huge maple trees. The street car tracks ran in front of the house. We lived in the middle of the block and on the corner was Rosen’s Grocery Store. I was just learning how to roller skate and I could manage to skate from our house to the store and then back safely by hanging onto the wall or the maple trees.

In the fall, the leaves on the maple trees would turn yellow, then red, then brown, and then drop off in huge piles, knee deep for a five-year old. I took delight in running through the leaves and when my dad or one of the neighbors were considerate enough to rake the leaves into piles, I would barrel into them at full tilt. Life was good!

At the age of almost five, I was entered into kindergarten at Roosevelt School. On the morning of the first day, I returned home with a note from my teacher asking my parents not to send me back that afternoon since I was not really ready for school yet. I don’t recollect what precipitated this action but I had been told I had already expressed a desire to start in high school. My reprieve lasted a year and in 1926, about six weeks short of my sixth birthday, I entered first grade at St. Rosalia’s. I had either matured in the past year, or what was more likely, the nuns knew how to handle me.

Up to the day before school started, however, I was standing on my constitutional rights not to go before the age of six. On that day, my Aunt Nettie arrived at our house with a birthday cake, six candles, a school bag and pencil box for a present, and everyone stood around and sang Happy Birthday. All hell broke loose a month later when I had my ‘second’ sixth birthday!

We lived about two miles from St. Rosalia’s and my sisters and I walked downhill to school each morning and back up the hill at the end of the school day at 4:30 p.m. We had at least fifty children in each class and one nun who taught all subjects. My problems that had been evident in kindergarten were to continue into the first grade. One day, my teacher sent me up to my sister Jeanne’s 2nd grade class to sit beside her and take good example. Jeanne was humiliated. I was elated and had thought – and told my mother so – that I had been promoted.

* * *

In the late ‘20s, we were entering into the age of flight. Newspapers and newsreels in the theaters were filled with the grand adventure of ‘Lucky Lindy’ and his transatlantic crossing in the ‘Spirit of St. Louis’. This plane was built by Claude Ryan, whom I secretly claimed as a not-too-distant cousin. The Dornier giant DO-X from Germany crossed the Atlantic to New York. The Graf Zeppelin made regular and frequent transatlantic flights and the spark was kindled in the heart of a little boy that grew into a steady flame which to this day has not died.

My mother bought me a leather jacket, helmet, and goggles with isinglass lenses and knee-high boots. I, along with most other boys and a few girls, would identify with Lindberg, Rickenbacker, Doolittle, and Clarence Chamberlin as fearless fliers. We would reenact the scenes from Dawn Patrol, Wings and Lilac Time where we would take turns being the fearless American Ace on the tail of the Red Baron. We would zoom up and down the street, through the yards, onto the wall. The roar of engines and the scream of the wind whistling through the wires punctuated by the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine guns came pouring out of the throats of the clean-cut American boys as they lined up behind the fleeing Hun and blew the tail feather off of him. Whoever was playing the Hun would falter in flight, the motor would stutter, then fall silent. One wing would drop and the plane would roll over into a tight spin to the accompaniment of an ever-increasing howl until it ended in a loud ‘crash’. The victor would circle the crash and pushing his goggles up, would lean out over the side of his cockpit and give a salute to his fallen foe.

Today there is scarcely an hour anywhere in the U.S.A. where an aircraft is not seen flying overhead. In the 1920s, it was a rarity. My dad occasionally would take me up to Bettis Field, a grass strip on a bluff above McKeesport, which was Pittburgh’s airfield at that time. If we were lucky, in addition to a few small private planes, we might see a huge Ford Trimotor corrugated aluminum transport and if we were really lucky, we would see it land or take off. I also saw the Graf Zeppelin and the U.S. Navy’s Macon in flight over Pittsburgh. Once in the early 1930s, a hometown boy overflew Pittsburgh in a Curtiss P-6 fighter plane and did a loop and slow roll over our neighborhood. I was hooked.

Fokkers, Spads, Camels and Nieuports were as familiar to me as Fords and Chevys. My parents indulged me in my fantasies by taking me to movies about flying and buying me toy aircraft. Later, it was model aircraft from kits or from scrap wood. When I earned money from work around the house or in the neighborhood, I would buy aviation magazines like G8 and His Battle Aces, Flying Aces, and Air Trails. I began a scrapbook and filled it with clippings and pictures of aircraft, engines, and men and women of aviation. Dornier, Heinkel, and Messershmitt were in my book and never in my wildest dreams could I imagine that I would meet them and talk with them someday. Nor did I ever dream of flying and fighting under the command of the great Jimmy Doolittle.

I despaired when England took the world speed record and when Italy took it in turn – with seaplanes! My goal was to design and fly an American plane so fast that my record would never be broken. My greatest success in aircraft design was in the paper aircraft field. They were long and slender with pointed nose and delta wing, much like the modern day aircraft but in those days, real airplanes were stubby nosed bi-planes. So I experimented endlessly to make a paper aircraft that would fly as well as the delta wing jobs – to no avail.

* * *

My paternal grandfather was Irish and for many years I had bought into the story that as a child he was put on board a ship to America and that he was in a Baltimore orphanage until the age of eleven, when he left to work in the Pennsylvania coal mines. Several years ago, while in Salt Lake City, I accessed the 1900 census and discovered that he actually came to this country in 1877 as a twenty-three year old – from England! I believe the point of departure for the States was Swansea, Wales. He became a successful paving contractor and had six children. I also believe he died before I was born as did my paternal grandmother.

My Uncle Bill was the oldest of the six and before Prohibition, he was a wholesale liquor dealer. I have a feeling that he continued in business during Prohibition. My dad, who thought the sun rose and set on his brother Bill, had been trained as a plumber but under Bill’s guidance had owned the hotel in Hazelwood across the street from the steel mills. The ‘hotel’ was a bar and despite the Prohibition at that time, operated openly with only the faintest trappings of concealment. I was rarely in there but I remember the white tile floor and the long, dark wood bar which ran down the left side. Across the street and upstairs was a bowling alley he owned and where I occasionally pushed bowling balls down the alley, being too little to actually bowl. Dad also had two prize fighters on contract that fascinated me. One went around squeezing a sponge ball in his fist to strengthen a broken hand. I too, of course, had to have a little sponge ball to clench as I would walk along after Frankie – shuffling, punching, bobbing and weaving – shadow-boxing like a real pro. What a thrill!

At about this stage, we had a visit from my mother’s sister, Clara, who lived with her husband and daughter in San Angelo, Texas. He owned a chain of movie theaters in west Texas. They arrived in a big touring car driven by their ‘hired man’, Newt Burns, who was a ‘half-breed’, as part Indians were known as at that time. Newt wore a ten gallon hat and I had to show him off to all the neighborhood kids.

Shortly after this visit, my maternal grandmother traveled by train to San Angelo to visit Clara and her family. Clarence, the father, was off on a visit to theaters in other locations when my aunt confronted Newt about forging a check in my uncle’s name. Newt went back to the garage, got a hatchet, and killed my aunt, my cousin, Myrna, and my beloved grandma. Dad took off down to San Angelo to help my uncle through the investigation and the trial.

When he came back, he had such things as a huge rattlesnake skin, several stuffed horned toads and a live great-horned owl. The owl remained alive in the hotel until he damned near bit off the finger of a patron who got too close. As a stuffed owl, he was not quite the attention draw but was a lot safer to be around.

Like any kid at that time, I was fascinated by the movies. We used to go to the Nickelodeon on Greenfield Avenue on Saturday mornings. The ‘Nick’ was in the middle of the block on the right side going downhill. Greenfield Avenue was the main drag. The business district was confined to three blocks on one side of the street. Houses, both brick and frame, each with a front porch which sported awnings and a swing in the summer, faced the stores from across the street. St. Rosalia’s Church flanked the business district on the right and Winterburn Street on the left. A double set of iron streetcar rails straddled the center of the street with overhead trolley wires. The outside lanes were paved with ‘Belgian block’ as was the area between the rails. Both sides were lined with a virtual forest of telephone poles, light poles, power poles, and trees. Kids going to or from school took full advantage of the shelter they provided to ambush others with toy or imaginary guns or bows and arrows, probably in a reenactment of the latest thriller which had played at the Nick. In some places, the space between the curb and the sidewalk was planted with grass or flowers. In other places, the dirt was smooth and packed down by the feet, knees and knuckles of generations of the marble shooters with their aggies, glassies, commies and steelies. Many a fortune was lost after school to steely-eyed sharks with their favorite shooters. A good shooter might cost as much as 5-cents at the 5&10 cent store. It was usually an aggie.

‘The Hollow’ was a gully that was ringed by Greenfield Avenue on one side and a side street which lined the other side and joined Greenfield Avenue at the end. At one time, there had been a wooden trestle across the mouth of this gully which carried the streetcar rails but sometime before I came along, the trestle had been torn down and the rails curved around to the right along Greenfield Avenue. The Hollow was a real wilderness of bushes, trees, and weeds which on any day could hold a tribe of Indians, a posse of cowboys, a troop of cavalry, or an assortment of bear, wolves and lions. The remnants of the trestle were still in place and provided all to a boy with a strong imagination. The Indians had blown up the trestle! A train was carrying rebel troops across and I hit the plunger, setting off the TNT and blowing up the bridge and tumbling the train into the canyon!

* * *

In 1927, we moved to Squirrel Hill on Beechwood Boulevard. We had a new large yellow brick house with a concrete/brick front porch covered by a large orange and green striped awning. I remember fondly lying on a glider on a hot summer afternoon and listening to the whir of tires on the hot asphalt.

St. Philomena School in the third grade was a blast. My teacher was Sister Adelbert who, to a nine-year old, seemed huge. My memory may be somewhat faulty but as I remember, she sat on two chairs. I also remember having her grab me from behind by the hair of my neck when I was misbehaving – talking, drawing, passing notes, shooting spitballs, etc. I also remember being slapped on the palms of my hands with a ruler or a pointer for major infractions – or too many minor ones. One time I also dodged an alarm clock she threw at me and then got whacked because either she missed or broke the clock – or both.

My favorite means of getting from the back of the classroom to the front was to stand on the seats on either side of the aisle and fall forward, landing on my hands on a desk then swinging my legs forward to the next seats. I would make my way from the back to the front without touching the floor. Sister Adelbert preferred that I would walk and I secretly longed to see her try my style. In my twisted vivid imagination, I could see her leaping from desk to desk, crushing all in her wake, habit flying, crashing to and through the floor and being slapped on the hands by Mother Superior for misbehaving.

On one of my birthdays, I received a football uniform complete with helmet, pants and jersey. This was the greatest. I think the first night I even wore them to bed – including the helmet. The next day, I wanted to wear them to school. My mother, of course, put the kibosh on that. No way. Our side door onto the driveway was halfway between the first floor and the basement. We kids used this door for coming and going so I hid my football uniform in the cellar and then when I left for school, I picked up my uniform and changed in the boy’s room. I dutifully informed my teacher that my mother knew that I wore my uniform to school and she just as dutifully – with a straight face – informed me that I should tell my mother that I shouldn’t wear it to school again. I didn’t. I was smart enough to know when to quit.

They were building a lot of new houses in the area and after school, we kids would enter a house under construction and climb up the framework as high as we could go. One time a pile of sand had been dumped at the rear of one new house and we seized the opportunity to do the ‘cowboy chased the Indians off the cliff’ routine, running and leaping from the second story into the pile of sand, ten feet below.

The houses were also the source of some fine scraps of wood, dropped nails and other things that could be used to build things. You could use 2x4’s to make excellent boats or the bar for a soapbox scooter. You would get a piece of 2x4 about 3-4’ long and take an old roller skate apart and nail the front part with two wheels to one end of the 2x4 and the back part of the skate to the other. You would then get a wooden box and nail it to the 2x4 over the front wheels. Two pieces of laths were nailed to the top of the box as handles. From there on, you were on your own. Two tin cans on the front for headlights were common accessories. A piece of screen for a radiator grill. A radiator ornament. A second smaller box for a seat. You held the handles, with one foot on the 2x4, and you used the other foot to propel you forward. Going downhill, you had both feet on the 2x4. Cheap but effective.

The people next door were Lithuanian and had a son a few years younger than I. One summer, they went back to Lithuania for a visit and brought me back a little knife in a leather sheath. I was thrilled and also very disappointed when my mother would not let me take it to school except for one time for show and tell. The other memorable event was when they brought a live turkey for Christmas or Thanksgiving and hung it upside down from the rafters and slaughtered it. I was sick and horrified. I swore I would never eat turkey again. My vow lasted until I got the first whiff of a turkey my mother was fixing.

Another neighbor in the next block had a son several years older than I who had a carbide cannon that absolutely fascinated me – still does. He also had molds for making toy soldiers. I can’t remember for sure but I think he probably persuaded me to melt down some of my soldiers to make some new ones in his molds.

Another family, on Ebdy Street, had three daughters. One was about my age and two were younger. One of our favorite games was rump sliding down their carpeted stairs. The girls attended dancing school with my sisters. I had a crush on the oldest girl. Wouldn’t admit it to anyone though.

Still another neighbor had a son several years older than I who used to let me tag along when they went down to the dump with a BB gun to shoot rats. This family had the first refrigerator I had ever seen. It was a huge Westinghouse box with the round compressor on the top. We still had an icebox which had its advantages, too. The iceman used to stop and we kids would hop up on the back of the truck and get some slivers and chunks of ice. It was really great on a hot summer day. He seemed to cooperate because there would always be some pieces of ice left over from his operation of chiseling a 25# or 50# block out of a large slab of ice. His ice pick was carried in a leather holder on his belt and he picked up the chunk of ice with a pair of tongs and slung it up on his shoulder which was protected by a pad of burlap.

My mixed breed dog, German shepherd mostly, was a real juvenile delinquent. He would disappear periodically for several days at a time and then slink home on his belly, much the worse for wear. One time he came home with a tin can hanging from his tongue. After a bath and a meal, he would sleep for days interrupted only for food, water and calls of nature. Following recovery, he would assume that all was forgiven and resume his normal life of making things difficult for all the cats in our neighborhood and for tradesmen and service people who might have the bad fortune to visit our house.

One day ‘Zeppy’ (short for Count Graf von Zeppelin) seemed to have gone berserk. His usual place of refuge when he had been bad or when he was just in the way, was the cellar. The access to the cellar was from the kitchen down a short flight of stairs with a side door out to the driveway and at a right angle down another short flight to the basement. The cellar was dominated by a coal fueled, hot air furnace from which large white tubes extended carrying hot air into all the rooms above. Directly across from the stairs was a toilet seat in a booth with a partial door for privacy.

On this particular day, I had come home to find Zeppy pacing back and forth in front of the cellar door whining and crying, with the hair on the back of his neck and shoulders standing on end and his tail straight out. When I came in through the side door, up the steps and opened the door into the kitchen, he scooted back to the far corner and looked like he was ready to defend himself to the end. When I closed the door, he resumed his position, sniffing and whining at the crack under the door. When I opened the door again, he scooted back. There was something down there that had him really scared. I found this to be incredible because he had been utterly fearless in the face of man or beast. What was down there?

My mother phoned my dad and he came home. We three ‘men’ (dad, nine-year old me, and two-year old, 75-lb. Zeppy) then went down into the cellar to find out what it was. Dad was armed with a broom, I had a ball bat, and Zeppy, who had doubt about the whole operation, brought up the rear. Dad left the door open to the kitchen and opened the side door on the landing to provide clear avenues of retreat. As we advanced into the cellar, lights on and weapons at ready, there was a scurry of sound and something shot out of the toilet closet and into the area behind the furnace.

What is it? called mother in response to our fearful shouts.

Damned if I know. called dad. But whatever it is, it’s a big one!

Zeppy was in a semi-crouch peeking out from behind me as Dad inched forward around the furnace, broom at ready.

Close the kitchen door, he called to mother. I don’t want it to get into the house. About that time there was a scream from someone or a number of sources as a very large yellow cat streaked from behind the furnace and up onto a basement window ledge behind a hot air duct.

There it is! I called. Over there!

Zeppy barked his agreement but still recognizing the cat’s superior position, maintained his defensive posture behind me.

Hold on to Zeppy, Dad called to me. I’m going to scare him out. Get over by the washtub. By now, Zeppy was regaining his courage and exhibited this by snarls, barks and lunges forward followed by recoils back. Let’s say he was cautiously belligerent.

Dad’s strategy was to get into a position to take a swing at the hissing, spitting cat with the broom where the cat would see the clear unblocked path up the stairs to the open side door. He was almost there. He couldn’t swing but he could poke. The cat screamed and lashed out with razor sharp claws, knocking the broom to one side but Dad poked again and the cat streaked for the open door.

There he goes, Dad yelled. As soon as Zeppy saw the back end of the cat streaking for the door and not the business end with sharp teeth and claws, his courage returned and he leaped forward in pursuit completely unaware of the fact that a nine-year old was holding firmly to his collar. I don’t think I even slowed him down. As he rounded the corner in full pursuit of the rapidly disappearing cat, I first hit the wall and then the stairs, losing my grip on his collar and damn near my neck. Out the door he went. I scrambled to my feet and saw Zeppy leaping and barking around a tree in front of the house in the branches of which sat the huge yellow cat calmly licking his fur, content to know that he had completely terrorized the home of Zeppy, the neighborhood bully.

* * *

There was a street near our house that had been cut into a bank of shale. The cut uncovered a small cave or a mine and most of the neighborhood kids at one time or another had ventured into the dark hole. Although I know of no one who ever went so far as to lose sight of the entrance.

The cliff above the cave created by the cut was very steep and stood as a challenge to the bold and adventurous – and scared the stupid kids who were conned into climbing to the top. As I recall, I was in the latter category and succeeded in climbing far enough up the cliff so that when I lost my hand grips and footing and came tumbling down, I was knocked unconscious for some minutes – definitely long enough to convince me and many others that it was a stupid thing to do.

My older sisters had scooter bikes and decided to teach me to ride. The most likely spot in their fiendish little minds was Ebdy Street, a few houses away, which dropped precipitously for about three blocks and then ended in a dead right turn. They put me on a bike, got my feet on the pedals and let go. Talk about crash courses in bike riding. It was either learn right there or die! So I learned, much to the delight of my sisters.

We had two cars, a Stutz Blackhawk touring car and a Hupmobile, which my dad bought for my mother (which she never learned to drive). We were very well off, but then in 1929 came the Crash.

* * *

The Big Depression set in and within a short time we had lost the cars, the house, our baby grand piano and I’m sure much of my mother and father’s jewelry. No one explained to a nine-year old boy what a ‘Depression’ was and how it affected us. I knew that things were different. The good life was over but we would do all we had to do and would survive. I was sent to stay with my Aunt Nettie and Uncle Jess, still in Pittsburgh, and after a few months, moved together with them into a large house in East Liberty – two families, five adults, three children and two German Shepherd dogs. Uncle Jesse was still employed with a large title guaranty company. This arrangement didn’t last too long and to start with, I was registered in the wrong school. The children on our side of the street were in a different school district and I was changed to the proper school much further away. It was a very good school and I joined the church choir, singing boy soprano until my voice started to change.

The area where we lived had a large Jewish population, mostly Orthodox, who observed the Sabbath and I had a regular route in supporting these families – turning on and off light switches, stoking furnaces, going to the store and doing other things prohibited in the practice of their religion. This included the synagogue which was a few houses down from our house. A short time later, our families separated and moved back to Greenfield. The house to which we moved was only a few houses away from the one we had left only about three years before. As time went on, I began to understand the effect the Depression was having on my family. Things I expected were no longer possible. My father was crushed, my mother shaken.

My father went to work in the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and my mother taught elocution and sewed. My older sister, Vera, taught dancing as a high school student and worked as a playground supervisor in the summer. This was a far cry from luxury autos, summer vacations, and anything else we wanted and needed.

My mother was the one who kept things going. Our ever-present flower garden was changed to a vegetable garden and beans and pasta were the base of our meals, supplemented by ‘on sale’ items from the grocery stores and occasional visits to distant relatives who were farmers. Also, infrequently, the Government would make a distribution of surplus groceries. We survived but it was an entirely different world from only a few years before in the Roaring Twenties. I freely admit that it was a great lesson in survival which came in handy when I opted to stay in the Army Air Corps at the end of WWII when for the next five years, there were virtually no pay increases nor promotions to keep pace with the post-war boom in the civilian world. I don’t know how I can explain except to say that I found my place in the Air Force.

It was a bad time for my father who was an alcoholic. He would at times fall into a state where it was, for our family, a period of waiting and praying until he came back to being his normal lovable self. The drop from the good days of the 1920s to the black times of the 1930s was more than he could handle, even through the 1940s.

To make things worse at that time, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and had a mastectomy. In those days, there was little chance for a full recovery and in a few years, there was a recurrence which could only be treated by continual dosages of narcotics to reduce the pain. Before long, she was confined to bed and we – our family – provided full care but could do nothing but try to make her as comfortable as possible. She died in 1940. For me, it has been seventy years of thanking God for giving me a wonderful, strong, talented and loving mother, and I continue to thank God for giving me a wonderful strong, talented and loving wife for fifty-four years. Mae also died of cancer in January of 2009. I’m sure that their spirits are together in heaven watching over me.

My sisters and I were back in St. Rosalia’s School. Vera was in high school, Jeanne was finishing up the sixth grade, and I, the fifth. Up to this time, school was pretty much a place for me to play from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. I excelled in recess and not much else. I liked art