Nickname

One day Grandad told me about a guy on his crew with the nickname Sacky. Or maybe it was Sackie. I'm not sure how it was spelled. That was his short nickname. That part of his nickname came from the fact that he liked to sleep a lot. If he wasn't where he was supposed to be at a certain time, you could find him in the sack. He had a full nickname too. He was known as Sacky-the-guy-who-killed-ten-Japs-by-mistake.
As Grandad intended, I was curious and asked him how he got that nickname. So he started to tell me about Sacky. He was a country boy from Indiana. He was pretty good natured, but not really very good at most tasks. Somehow, whatever he had to do, he would mess it up. If he was carrying something he would drop it, if he had to stow something he would put it in the wrong place. Grandad tried to find a use for him, but he kept screwing up and causing difficulty and grief for the rest of the crew. But Grandad finally found something he could do without screwing up. That was scraping rust and painting. And Grandad always liked to praise his crew when they did a good job and let them know when they did something wrong. In fact, when he first talked to the crew, he told them, "There are two ways to do things. My way, and the right way. AND THEY'RE BOTH THE SAME THING!" So he finally had something to praise Sacky for. He would tell him he did a great job getting rid of the rust and painting. And Sacky was very proud of his work. Then this praise started to go to his head, and he got so he wouldn't let anyone else do it. He would act hurt and sullen if other crew members had to get involved with the painting. But at least he had a task which kept him from screwing up important things.
So one day they had a mission to take some Filipino guerrillas to a beach early in the morning, drop them off to go inland for a surprise attack operation against a Japanese position. They were to then anchor in a nearby bay to wait quietly, and then pick them up from the beach later in the afternoon. The operation went very smoothly in the beginning. The drop off went fine and all they had to do was wait in the bay. All the painting was caught up so Sacky was bored and was hanging around one of the 20mm anti-aircraft guns. He was not allowed to be in a gun crew but he kept asking the guys who were cleaning and checking the guns if he could look through the gun sight just to see what it was like. They didn't let him at first but he kept pestering them and eventually he wore them down, and they let him get in the firing position and look through the site as long as he promised not to touch anything. He loved it and pretended he was firing away at enemy planes. He got a bit carried away and put his hand on the trigger and before anyone could do anything, he squeezed the trigger and was so scared when the gun fired that he froze, and his hand froze on the trigger, firing of a whole drum of ammunition inland towards where the guerrillas were supposed to be stealthily attacking the Japanese position. The gun was aimed towards a hill in the distance. Grandad thought they were under attack and called general quarters and was scanning the skies for the attacking planes when the gun crew told him what happened. He was furious of course, but they had to keep alert in case the firing of the gun gave away their position and caused a real attack from the air, the land or another ship, so he didn't have time to remonstrate and punish Sacky. He was quite afraid that he had just alerted the Japanese to the impending guerrilla attack and ruined their chances at the very least, or caused their deaths, or possibly even shot their own allies. He was going over in his mind how to explain this, what to say to the guerrillas, if any of them made it back alive, and how to report this massive screwup. He couldn't think of anything to do that might not make the situation worse, so just had to stick with the original plan. They waited until afternoon, went to the beach, and the guerrillas were there. As they approached the beach, the Filipinos were waving their arms and yelling and Grandad's heart sank, thinking he was about to find out how many had been killed. But as they hit the beach, he saw they all looked happy.

They started waving a Japanese flag around and were carrying Japanese swords and guns. They were celebrating. The commander came aboard and asked Grandad how they knew. He had to ask how they knew what. The commander asked how they knew where the Japanese command bunker was. As they were about to attack, a burst of 20mm fire hit the command bunker, killing ten Japanese soldiers, including several officers, throwing the enemy camp in disarray. They routed the Japanese with no casualties on their side. Grandad said something like they were just lucky and fortunately, the guerrillas were so happy about their victory they didn't ask any more questions. And that's how Sacky got his full nickname, Sacky-the-guy-who-killed-ten-Japs-by-mistake.

I like to think this photo was taken shortly after that occurrence.
https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/80-G-259000/80-G-259134.html

sleeping bag trouble II

When we visited the shack when we were kids, sometimes the condition of the place was not so great. It might not have been clean, had perhaps too many rodents, snakes or bats, or sometimes it already had some people staying in it and was deemed too crowded. It also smelled of gasoline lanterns, smoke, kerosene, old mattresses and maybe sometimes rat poison. I think one time we went we set up a family size canvas tent just right in front of the shack. It was a sort of light blue and yellow. Or maybe it was a faded blue. It was reasonably comfortable and with its zip up door flap and screened window openings perhaps also more insect-rodent-snake-bat-free than the shack. If it was pitched on grass sleeping on the ground, covered in tent canvas, in a thick down sleeping bag was actually pretty comfortable. At some point maybe it felt too busy or crowded by the shack so the tent was moved over by the dam which was a bit more isolated. At some point after that point, someone was doing some target practice over by the dam and when they came back to the tent, they noticed that somehow the tent had bullet holes in it. I remember hearing the story and seeing the patched holes, but I never figured out exactly how that happened. Did the bullets ricochet somehow or was someone just shooting in the wrong direction? Some cousins, possibly an aunt and uncle, and family friends were also visiting the shack that summer so there were a fair number of kids around getting into fun and getting into trouble. During that time a kid got a fish hook embedded in their scalp when someone else didn't look behind them when they cast the line. Our cousin also enjoyed swinging a tent pole around and my brother got in the way and stopped it with his forehead (he still has the round scar). It was an amazing and fun time for us kids, but not without risk. One day at about lunchtime, someone noticed that my brother was unaccounted for. My mother and father started looking for him but couldn't find him. They told others, and everyone started looking for him. We called his name and started looking around in the swampy area near the shack, down the logging roads, the thick undergrowth near the dam. Our parents started to get very worried. They blew the car's horn hoping to attract his attention if he was lost. A child could wander off into the woods and easily get lost. They could fall on a steep hillside. There were black bears in the area so they could get between a bear and her cub. There was the lake, the culvert under the dam and the creek. A kid could easily slip into the water when reaching for a frog or tadpole and drown, or be pulled into the culvert and held underwater by the current. There are so many possibilities. Someone drove into town, or maybe the few miles to the nearest house with a phone and contacted the police. A couple of local cops came and turned on the siren to try to attract his attention if he was in trouble. People looked in the tent, under the bunkbeds in the shack, even in the attic where the gasoline lanterns were stored. I remember my dad stripped down to his underwear, moving around in the dark tinted water near the shore of the lake, feeling around in the mud hoping he would not find a little boy's body. I don't remember who, but someone went back into the tent and actually felt the sleeping bags which were laid out on the floor of the tent. They found my brother asleep in the bottom of the thick down filled sleeping bag, insulated from the sound of the police siren, the yelling of his name and everything else. He had a nice nap and had no idea what everyone was so excited about. I can imagine the relief of my parents, thinking how grateful they must have been not to have lost 50% of their progeny, but they also must have been at least a little bit annoyed at the trouble he'd caused. The next day we went into town and got compasses and whistles at the hardware store. We had lectures about safety and were told if we got lost in the woods or were in danger we should blow the whistle three times in a row, wait a bit then blow the whistle three more times. We were told to be very careful around the swamp and the lake and always tell someone where you were going, even if it was just to take a little nap. After we got the whistles and some other things in town, we came back to the car to find a police officer writing a parking ticket. The parking meter had expired while we had the safety lectures. It turned out to be one of the cops who had come to help look for the lost child. My parents thanked him again and told him we'd just been bying whistles and compasses and talking about safety and the police officer laughed and made some joke about whether my brother was sleepy and tore up the ticket. So at least some good came of it; my parents didn't have to pay the parking ticket they wouldn't have gotten anyway if it hadn't happened. Plus, a story to tell decades later.

pump

When visiting the shack one had to think about the things which are modern conveniences which one can easily take for granted. At home one might turn the tap on for a drink of water, take something out of the refrigerator to eat and turn on the stove to cook it. At the shack, there was no running water. There was usually a gas stove there, but there may or may not be any propane in the tank to run it, and it may or may not be working. A mouse might have built a nest inside it, so turning on the oven if there was gas might be risky. As long as I could remember there was a refrigerator there, but I don't recall it ever working. For a long time I thought it was just there as a big inefficient cooler to put ice in to keep things cool because I had no idea that there was such a thing as a gas powered refrigerator. There was also an actual ice box on the porch. And every time one visited, it couldn't be assumed that any particular thing would be there or working. There was a jar of sugar on a shelf in the kitchen which Grandad told me probably had pre-war sugar in it because they would just keep dumping more sugar in it when it ran low. There would often be cans of food there but sometimes they would have been through many cycles of freeze and thaw and be completely ruined. There might be tea or coffee in a can or jar or box but it might have no flavor left or might taste vaguely of desiccated mouse. There was no electricity so you had to bring your own in the form of batteries. There was often a radio or two but if there were batteries they'd likely be dead and if they were still in the radio they might have broken and leaked and ruined the radio. There were usually Coleman gas lanterns in the attic but they might be out of white gasoline and the mantles might be full of holes or gone completely. There were some kerosene lamps but they were often empty or had short wicks or no wicks at all. There was no running water, so you had to bring water too, unless you were prepared to drink lake water. And even if you were prepared to drink lake water, you had to draw it out of the lake somehow and wading into the mud on the shore would make for some not very clean water unless you went far out and acted quickly and then the mud would take a while to settle so you'd have to adjust your position or go further out next time. And there would be pots and pans and even a few milk cans for water, but they might be greasy from some ancient food, or have a dead mouse inside, or an old dry snake skin, so you'd need to clean them to put water in them, but you'd probably need some water to clean them. The lake might be frozen over in which case you could walk out a ways if you were sure the ice was thick enough, chop a hole in the ice and get water that way. Or if it was not winter, you could see if the boat was ok and turn it over and drag it down to the edge of the lake and hope that the oars were under the bunk bed where they usually were and hope there was at least a matching pair. So a visit to the shack took some planning and then often dealing with some surprises and then some work to make things comfortable if you were staying more than one night. When my brother and I were young we visited the shack for a while one summer with our mom and dad. Our aunt and uncle and cousins and some other people were also visiting. We actually called it "the cabin" in our family. Others in the family called it the shack and I eventually started using that term too. There was even a wooden sign someone made with "The Shack" engraved on it so that seemed more official somehow. But even quite young, the collection and use of fresh water made an impression on me. I can still remember the milk cans full of fresh water stored under the counter in the kitchen and the clink of the metal ladle against the side of the can when getting some water to drink or cook with or clean with. I think some people had arrived there before us during that visit, so they'd already cleaned the milk cans and started filling them with fresh water. Sometimes there would also be some jugs of lake water for cleaning and some jugs of fresh water for cooking, drinking and brushing teeth. A few times when we were there that summer, my brother and I would be involved in refilling the milk cans. There was a hand pump somewhere a short drive away. We'd get the cans in the car and take them to the pump. Somewhere near Musser Lake I think, perhaps not far from a campground or boat ramp. Then my brother and I would vie for the privilege of operating the hand pump to fill the milk cans. Once they were full they would be very heavy and I think we had to rely on some adult to move the full milk cans back to the car for transport back to the shack. We really liked that kind of productive work and it was almost like a game, pumping away at seemingly nothing to get the water up and then the satisfying sloshing of the fresh clean cold water from underground into the clean can once it created enough suction to actually start pumping water. I later learned that at some point there had been a hand pump on the kitchen counter in the shack. I don't recall if someone had sunk a pipe right there in the kitchen or if it had been outside somewhere close with a pipe leading into the kitchen. I was jealous of those people back in the day who could pump water right up into the kitchen. I think someone told me it eventually got clogged and stopped working. When I stayed at the shack years later I found the pump handle and body under the kitchen counter when I moved everything to re-chink the logs and briefly fantasized about getting it back into operation but I had no idea how to even start that particular project. The re-chinking was difficult and I made some progress, but I was surprised how heavy the plaster was and started running out of plaster and jute. I experimented with a recycled paper chinking by filling a bucket with old newspaper and water and mashing it with a big stick until it was pulped. Once it dried into place, it seemed remarkably tough and lightweight, but I have no idea how long it lasted. I used lake water for that. I don't recall whether there were any milk cans left under the counter at that point.

 

not heaven

One day when I was up at the shack with Grandad for hunting season, it started snowing heavily in the afternoon. I went outside and took a photo of the shack as the big fat wet clumps of flakes started falling. It snowed a lot and it was a thick damp snow. I was sure that the snow would show up in the photo, but later when I developed the film and made a print, I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't too obvious how heavily it was snowing in the photo. There was still some snow on the ground at that point from a previous heavy snow which had mostly melted. The snow kept coming and was eventually pretty deep. In the kitchen I found a can of Borden's condensed milk, of an unknown vintage, and decided to make some snow ice cream. I got a big mixing bowl and added some snow and poured in some condensed milk. The snow was still kind of wet and it just became sort of lumpy and slushy when I stirred it. I added some more snow but it didn't help too much, so I added some more milk which also didn't help too much. I think it just wasn't cold enough to get a sort of ice creamy texture that I'd hoped for. Eventually, I cleared some space on top of the old ice box which had been moved out onto the porch by then and set the snow ice cream bowl there to freeze overnight. I went back into the warm shack and forgot about my bowl of snow ice cream and enjoyed a nice dinner, loaded up the wood stoves and fell asleep in my sleeping bag. In the morning I went out to see how the ice cream was doing. Oddly, with a low thick cloud cover, it seemed to have gotten warmer overnight rather than colder as I expected. The snow outside was even more damp and melting. My snow ice cream had completely melted and in the middle floated a little furry lump. Overnight a mouse must have smelled the enticing smell of condensed milk and somehow jumped from the top of one of the old paint cans or the bird seed pot into the mixing bowl to find itself in a slushy heaven of snow ice cream. I hope it got to enjoy its fill of condensed milk slush before it realised it the sides of the mixing bowl were too steep and slippery to get out and the slush didn't provide a solid enough springboard to jump from. Or, I suppose the intended ice cream might have already been just diluted condensed milk when the mouse got into the bowl, in which case it would have immediately been in trouble and met its sad fate after swimming and scrambling to try to get up the sides of the bowl, eventually succumbing to the cold in the wet or perhaps drowning when exhausted. I was a bit disappointed that my attempt at snow ice cream was a failure, if not due to the mouse then due to the unseasonably warm night. When I had taken the mouse out of the milky liquid, I set it down on the table on the porch. It had stiffened in the posture of the mouse equivalent of a dead man's float so it sat upright balanced on its stiff hind legs and tail. It seemed an odd and serendipitous natural taxidermy of the poor creature in a curious or perhaps aggressive stance and I thought I would memorialize the moment with a photograph which I present below.

 

 

by the dozen

I think it was late 1996 or early 1997 the last time I saw Grandad. He and Carolyn were travelling by car to or from somewhere on the East coast. Now the memory is somewhat vague. I found on old email dated 8 January 1997 with this summary, "meet mother and vernon at barretts seafood restaurant to have lunch with grandad and carolyn. nice to see him. he eats raw oysters and she crab soup and a whole dish of tartar sauce. has jumbo martini. i have the salmon. grandad still himself but hair seems impossibly white and he seems to be aging over the years. how old he must be, say eighty five years." I don't recall if he had two or three dozen oysters. I think I drove my old Mercedes 300D there but the memory fades in and out. We both needed a cane by then. I had an old Zeiss camera which shot an an uncommon film size. I don't recall now where I got the camera, maybe a yard sale? I don't recall where I got the film either. Maybe I had to get a different type, 126 perhaps, unwind it from its spool and re-wind it onto the old Zeiss roller in the dark. Maybe I did that in the bathroom with no windows and a towel blocking the light from coming in under the door. Later in that email I wrote, "o i attempted to take photographs. sent film to bruce for development." By April 1997 I must have received the film back and scanned it. The jpeg file is dated 13 April 1997. It was the last photo I ever took of Grandad. And Carolyn. Who was looking stylish as ever. I'm not even sure I took it. Maybe I got Ross to take it. I wonder where that camera is now. Probably sitting on a shelf somewhere. I wonder if it still works. Now I've just found another email which proves definitively that this last meal and photograph occurred maybe the day before, of, or after Christmas. In yet another email I wrote about this photo, "with grandad is often carolyn, wife of grandad, eager holder of cigarette after nonsmoking lunch." Although I don't remember it specifically, I can visualize her holding the cigarette discreetly while the photo was being taken, waiting until after the shutter clicked to light it.

the cast iron skillet

Some of the best fried chicken I ever had was at Grandad and Carolyn's house. It was home cooked, but not by Grandad or Carolyn. It was made by their cleaning lady. I think it must have been the summer we took the train to Chicago where Carolyn picked us up. I have this vague memory of having to go the wrong way to Martinsburg to catch the train, then later passing by the way we had just come. Another indistinct memory of the trip is of factories, smoke and flames as we passed Gary, Indiana on the approach to Chicago. It was roads, bridges and steel structures, with a sooty darkness and a chemical smell that seeped into the train. It was like things we'd seen in movies, but real. It was an exciting journey for two young boys alone. But back to Racine. When the cleaning lady came, we were away, perhaps running some errands, and I'm pretty sure, picking up some kringle on the way home. She was nearly done for the day when we returned. She was just straightening up in the kitchen, and there was a cast iron skillet of the most perfect looking fried chicken sitting on the stove and a delectable smell of good cooking in the air. She seemed almost apologetic that she was still there when we arrived. To me then, she was an older woman, but now, looking back, perhaps she was in her forties or fifties. She was black, and had kitchen gloves on, an apron and a dress with flowers on it, nothing out of place, very well put together and proper. Along with her immaculate neatness, she had the look of a very warm and caring person, but she had a certain coldness towards us as she quickly finished up. I don't recall if Carolyn then took her home, or someone arrived to pick her up, but I have the impression she didn't have a car at the house. I noticed how clean and tidy everything in the house was. It wasn't ever dirty or unorganized, but there was an aura of professional cleanliness hovering over the house. Everything had a clean smell and there was no speck of dust or smudge anywhere. Before long, even though the sheen of clean was like a forcefield which encouraged the use of coasters and napkins, my brother and I soon smudged and smeared things back to normal. We had the fried chicken for dinner, warmed up, with something on the side I don't remember. Kentucky Fried Chicken up until then had been the pinnacle of my fried chicken experience, but this fried chicken was on another level. Even after being warmed up, it was perfectly crispy on the outside and succulent, tender and juicy on the inside. The Colonel's blend of secret herbs and spices had nothing on whatever magic formula this woman had used. It was a subtle blend that seemed to bring out the flavor of the chicken. We enjoyed it very much and I think everyone at the table would have eaten another piece, but we'd finished all of it. During our extended summer visit, we hoped to have the chicken again but it never came to pass. I think the day the cleaning lady came again, we were out doing something or other and didn't see her and the cast iron skillet was sadly not left on the stove when we got back home. Thinking back on it now, there seemed to be some uncomfortableness around the cleaning lady, as if we weren't supposed to have encountered her. I had no idea why that could have been back then. My mother had hired a cleaning lady at home for a time, perhaps more as a favor to an acquaintance who needed the work, and it seemed a normal thing to us. We thought it was pretty cool at home to have slightly fewer cleaning chores for that period, and anything that would help ensure we weren't burdened with cleaning chores during our summer vacation was a-okay in our book.

the bomb

"You know, we ought to tell the Russians to go ahead and drop the bomb on New York. Do us all a favor and kill a few million liberals," said Grandad one evening at dinner. He laughed, and others laughed for the same or different reasons. He was very conservative. I remember talking to him in early 1991 just after the end of the Gulf War and he mentioned they were having a victory party. I had ridden about 10 hours in a van full of students to Washington DC to march against that war. It was strange to hear about a victory party for this war which I thought was unjust and politically motivated. It just didn't make sense to me to celebrate such a thing. I remember now people spoke of the redemption of the military with this victory after the loss in Vietnam, and wondered if this really meant that much to the conservative mind. I thought back to visiting in the summer and being there on the fourth of July for fireworks, cookouts and parades. I wondered if the victory party would have flags, fireworks and cocktails. It seemed so removed from this remote war that was waged on TV. Recently I remembered this and I wondered how Grandad would have thought of the current administration. I wondered if he would have been a "never Trumper" of the old guard, or if he would have embraced the bellicose America first attitude of President Trump. Previously, I came to the conclusion that being a judge and taking the law seriously, he might have taken a dim view of how the Trump administration did what it wanted even when it might not be within the law. But when I remembered his "drop the bomb" joke, I wonder if he wouldn't have supported the "let's show the liberals" tactics of Trump. I wondered if he would have supported efforts to stop counting votes, or to discount mail-in ballots, or to just sue for anything in any state which is close to get a case before the Supreme Court with its conservative majority. It's easy to make a joke about killing a few million liberals in a stable society where such a thing would never happen.