April Fool's
Apr. 1st, 2006 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minxyThis is my grandfather’s story:
He is sitting at a kitchen table, midwest sunlight streaming in the window on a posse of people with German blue eyes and American corn-fed bellies. He has the easy smile of a man accustomed to laughing; accustomed to smiling at his wife. Accustomed to frugality, because it is the Great Depression, but also to having enough, because he is a banker, and his bank survived the crash.
She has a small mouth and large eyes. She played softball in high school and graduated three years before her husband, though she is only one year older, because she skipped a grade, she was so smart, and he missed a grade because his family couldn’t afford to miss the salary he would make if he worked that year. The school system adapted to the growing season, because my grandfather wasn’t the only one, and he went back to school eventually, and married his schoolmate’s older sister.
He gets a letter on April Fool’s Day, before noon; he thinks it is a prank, but he ends up drafted to a battleship in the Pacific arena, sister ship to the Arizona, that fell spectacularly to the bottom of Pearl Harbor. He is a laughing soldier, and a sailor who can’t swim. He has a best friend who says his name with exasperation, because Grandpa is always getting them in trouble, but they still stand together, mischief after mischief.
Later, he will come home, and his eldest daughter will gain four younger siblings, including my father, who will be raised with frugality learned from the depression, and conservative politics of the heartland.
This is my father’s story:
He will not wait for his draft notice, because he already has a draft number, and it is a low one. It is a number that follows him into Writing 101, where his first essay will earn a C due to two extraneous commas: an attempt by the school to weed out students just hiding from the war from the students who intend to study. He will fail organic chemistry twice because he doesn’t particularly want to study it, but it’s required for his engineering degree.
He will witness martial law curfews on campus (he will break it because that is the only time he can get to do his homework on the punchcard computer), will be less than half a state away when the American military shoots and kills four American Vietnam war protesters at Ohio University. He will take his leather shaving kit (the only present his family gave him when he went to college) and his degree and he will enlist in the Air Force National Guard and give them four years as a radio repairman (no relation to his engineering training) stateside rather than two (or less) as a foot soldier in Vietnam.
It will take him until peacetime to begin playing pranks on the National Guard, realizing that they marked attendance on the bus on weekends in the winter in the heartland, but paid little attention to whether you actually went to the rifle range, and will get a sharp shooting medal commendation because he failed to miss the target. It will be his favorite story to tell of his experiences in the military. All these things will conspire to let him allow his wife to gradually influence his politics leftward, until the liberal, amusing Daily Show with Jon Stewart becomes his favorite program in the new millennia. He will be the first of his family to move away from Ohio; Grandma and Grandpa will visit once before they start begging off because it's uncomfortable to travel. My father's older sister will take years to visit, but it will become an annual tradition.
This is my history:
When I told my parents of my intention to declare an undergraduate major in chemistry, my father repeated over and over that he failed organic chemistry twice, and asked incredulously if I was really very serious about this, because he failed organic twice.
I learned to swim young, like Dad. My grandfather always asked me to show him how I could swim the butterfly from where he sat on the side of the pool, fully dressed in his golfing clothes, and how I could hit a softball like my grandmother. I was one of the grandchildren that smiles with a full face grin when he walked into a room, gave a two finger, two tone whistle and announced in a booming voice that we were all under arrest, cracking himself up in the process and confusing a lot of my cousins.
A new war was declared, and the sum of my grandfather’s experiences led him to state, quite levelly, that while he still didn't think he could vote for a liberal candidate, he was also not sure we had any right to attack a sovereign nation. My father was very impressed and called me at medical school to report this development. My grandfather consistantly emailed me the latest scientific article he read in the paper online, and told me seriously that I didn’t need to be the first two doctors in the family. He was surprised when I went out of my way to visit him (in one of my somewhat alarming jaunts around the world) without either of my parents in tow, but he was less surprised when my brother was then inspired by the jokes I brought back to do the same.
My brother showed him pictures of the imperial palace in Japan, which he toured, and my grandfather showed him the aerial photograph his father had taken from the cockpit of a WWI bomber, which they all did because they were told not to bomb the palace, but taking it's photo proved they could've.
Grandpa emailed us this on the April Fool's Day when he is 90 years old:
I thought I would never forget April 1,1943
but needed your reminder.
The draft board's notice said "report for
duty" on that historic day.
Your draft story is better. You reported
on the day they said to--but they didn't
take you that day. They just wanted to tell you when to report.
He is sitting at a kitchen table, midwest sunlight streaming in the window on a posse of people with German blue eyes and American corn-fed bellies. He has the easy smile of a man accustomed to laughing; accustomed to smiling at his wife. Accustomed to frugality, because it is the Great Depression, but also to having enough, because he is a banker, and his bank survived the crash.
She has a small mouth and large eyes. She played softball in high school and graduated three years before her husband, though she is only one year older, because she skipped a grade, she was so smart, and he missed a grade because his family couldn’t afford to miss the salary he would make if he worked that year. The school system adapted to the growing season, because my grandfather wasn’t the only one, and he went back to school eventually, and married his schoolmate’s older sister.
He gets a letter on April Fool’s Day, before noon; he thinks it is a prank, but he ends up drafted to a battleship in the Pacific arena, sister ship to the Arizona, that fell spectacularly to the bottom of Pearl Harbor. He is a laughing soldier, and a sailor who can’t swim. He has a best friend who says his name with exasperation, because Grandpa is always getting them in trouble, but they still stand together, mischief after mischief.
Later, he will come home, and his eldest daughter will gain four younger siblings, including my father, who will be raised with frugality learned from the depression, and conservative politics of the heartland.
This is my father’s story:
He will not wait for his draft notice, because he already has a draft number, and it is a low one. It is a number that follows him into Writing 101, where his first essay will earn a C due to two extraneous commas: an attempt by the school to weed out students just hiding from the war from the students who intend to study. He will fail organic chemistry twice because he doesn’t particularly want to study it, but it’s required for his engineering degree.
He will witness martial law curfews on campus (he will break it because that is the only time he can get to do his homework on the punchcard computer), will be less than half a state away when the American military shoots and kills four American Vietnam war protesters at Ohio University. He will take his leather shaving kit (the only present his family gave him when he went to college) and his degree and he will enlist in the Air Force National Guard and give them four years as a radio repairman (no relation to his engineering training) stateside rather than two (or less) as a foot soldier in Vietnam.
It will take him until peacetime to begin playing pranks on the National Guard, realizing that they marked attendance on the bus on weekends in the winter in the heartland, but paid little attention to whether you actually went to the rifle range, and will get a sharp shooting medal commendation because he failed to miss the target. It will be his favorite story to tell of his experiences in the military. All these things will conspire to let him allow his wife to gradually influence his politics leftward, until the liberal, amusing Daily Show with Jon Stewart becomes his favorite program in the new millennia. He will be the first of his family to move away from Ohio; Grandma and Grandpa will visit once before they start begging off because it's uncomfortable to travel. My father's older sister will take years to visit, but it will become an annual tradition.
This is my history:
When I told my parents of my intention to declare an undergraduate major in chemistry, my father repeated over and over that he failed organic chemistry twice, and asked incredulously if I was really very serious about this, because he failed organic twice.
I learned to swim young, like Dad. My grandfather always asked me to show him how I could swim the butterfly from where he sat on the side of the pool, fully dressed in his golfing clothes, and how I could hit a softball like my grandmother. I was one of the grandchildren that smiles with a full face grin when he walked into a room, gave a two finger, two tone whistle and announced in a booming voice that we were all under arrest, cracking himself up in the process and confusing a lot of my cousins.
A new war was declared, and the sum of my grandfather’s experiences led him to state, quite levelly, that while he still didn't think he could vote for a liberal candidate, he was also not sure we had any right to attack a sovereign nation. My father was very impressed and called me at medical school to report this development. My grandfather consistantly emailed me the latest scientific article he read in the paper online, and told me seriously that I didn’t need to be the first two doctors in the family. He was surprised when I went out of my way to visit him (in one of my somewhat alarming jaunts around the world) without either of my parents in tow, but he was less surprised when my brother was then inspired by the jokes I brought back to do the same.
My brother showed him pictures of the imperial palace in Japan, which he toured, and my grandfather showed him the aerial photograph his father had taken from the cockpit of a WWI bomber, which they all did because they were told not to bomb the palace, but taking it's photo proved they could've.
Grandpa emailed us this on the April Fool's Day when he is 90 years old:
I thought I would never forget April 1,1943
but needed your reminder.
The draft board's notice said "report for
duty" on that historic day.
Your draft story is better. You reported
on the day they said to--but they didn't
take you that day. They just wanted to tell you when to report.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 12:40 pm (UTC)kind of makes me wish i could win powerball so i could wander all over taping peoples stories from their/the past(s).
no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 05:05 pm (UTC)Pretty sure it also got used in some school plays. And I loved his duffle bag for camping trips and even aerocommuting to an from college on the other side of the country.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 05:39 pm (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 07:21 am (UTC)Actually, it's crazy to realize I know so much about Grandpa. He's 90 years old, and I'm one of 10 grandkids, but it's still crazy to talk to him and think, yup, that would be where my sense of humor comes from, I think. I also didn't understand why he loved to watch me swim so much until I was older. Helps to have your Dad repeating the stories of his Dad, repeating the stories of his parents. And in a wierd way all of a sudden you realize you understand some amazing things about someone you don't really talk to all that much.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 10:11 am (UTC)