Dem
47
GOP
53
Today, a less rosy turn from P.C. in Vero Beach, FL:
I keep hoping that you'll end these "never forget" posts. I'm sure that many are inspired by the selective memory remembrances; I for one, prefer the whole story. In that light, here is my submission.
When World War II broke out, my father was already a bit long in the tooth, having passed his 30th birthday. But, out of a sense of duty and having the trade of electrician under his belt, he joined the Navy in 1942. Eventually he was assigned to a mine sweeper; his electrical skills were invaluable to the process of sweeping mines through the set up of electrical fields behind the minesweeper. His duties kept him mostly around New York and Boston harbors, but he got to travel as far as Iceland during his hitch.
His most-often-told story was that of the captain's dog, a privileged little cuss who had the habit of urinating on a life preserver, which was hanging on the railing on the bridge where he spent his time with the captain. Unfortunately, below the life preserver was an area where off duty crew could relax and enjoy the outside air in the summer. Often, while lounging there, they would be hit by a strong stream of doggie urine, an unpleasant experience that stayed with them for a long time due to the lack of hygiene in the small, ocean-going warship. Having the electrical knowledge, my father took it upon himself to rid little Fido of this habit, so he placed a metal plate into the middle of the life preserver and hooked up an electrical current to the plate. As we all know, salty water can conduct electricity, so the next morning when the dog did his morning business, as soon as his stream hit the plate, a strong electrical current ran back up the stream leading to a very, very shocked dog. Ha ha, those kidders.
After the war, my father met and married my mother, a devout Catholic who would have been happier as a nun but ended up as the mother of four kids. My father was a successful manager at RCA, moving up the ladder into middle management quickly. Both my parents were devout Catholics and spent hours in the church and volunteering for church duties. One year, my father ran the summer picnic; a few years later, my mother ran the winter bazaar. When the church wanted to start a Sunday night bingo, it was my father who ran with it, organized it, and made it very successful. At home, my father's main habit was drinking beer and abusing his family, which he did with increasing regularity. Saturdays were the worst, with my father calling them, "Saturday Night at the Movies," where he would get drunk and select one of his children to sit with him and be verbally abused and told what an absolute piece of crap they were and how they would never amount to anything. If he got drunk enough (quite often) he would make phone calls, often to the parish priest, to let him know how awful his family was and how he deserved better.
My mother would mostly hide during these drunken rages, I'm sure praying or some other useless effort, while leaving her children to deal with the verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse. Over time these rages became more and more frequent, sometimes 5-6 nights per week. As we children got older, our main efforts were to get out of the house as soon as possible, either through boarding school or college. Still, it was very hard to leave, because that meant that you were condemning your next youngest sibling to his/her turn in the sh**chair.
As my father aged, his health required him to reduce, then quit, drinking. Sober, he actually became a sweet old man, happy to work his crossword puzzles and watch sports on TV. This enraged my mother, who used his drunken antics to support her own claims of martyrdom, putting up silently with an obnoxious husband. When visiting late in their lives, my mother would constantly rant on any perceived weakness of my father, trying hard to establish her ongoing martyr status and reminding us all of the abuses of 40 years past.
When my father died, he was remembered in the church as a pillar of the community, bedrock of the church he helped build, and a devout family man. My mother played the grieved widow, then promptly disowned three of her four children because we saw through her charade. Over the last 20 years of her life, I visited her maybe 3 or 4 times, including her spending time with her only grandchildren (after that upbringing, none of my siblings chose to have any children).
So, thanks for posting all these warm memories of our patriotic fathers.
Thanks, P.C., and our sympathies on your upbringing. (Z)