The Amazing Adventures

Reading my father's autobiography--of his military years right now--makes my head spin, but not in a bad way, like the girl in The Exorcist. The ease with which this Ohio farm boy leaped into the saddle amazes me, as it must have amazed him at times--though he seems to have taken it all in stride, flying here and there all over the world. I had to laugh when I read that Dad dashed off to Holland when the dike broke--it turns out he was the boy who stuck his finger in the dike.

He reconnected the broken communications cable and called out the Engineers to patch up a dike that had taken years to create with dirt and boulders. The new one they built with concrete has evidently held up over the years. He was feted like a hero whenever he went back to Holland.

~

His brief account of our life in France was refreshing. I've never lived any place I could go back to and say there, that's my home, so it's wonderful to have someone confirm what happened. I had the same experience when I read some things my sister Liz wrote for a writing class she took--great relief, great happiness. She was there too! I remember with vivid clarity the estate in Montigny and SHAPE village--what a wonderful time that was. Literally, full of wonders. I am eager to read what he wrote of our time in Germany, which I know is coming.

It's as if this were my first time reading the autobiography, though I remember every section once I arrive at it. It's all refreshed by distance and passage of years, oddly enough. My favorite lines so far are quotes from people he knew. One was that the mountains in Africa were so high and the clouds so dense, pilots often found some of them contained rocks. This was when he was (we were) stationed in Eritrea, East Africa. He had decided not to fly with two friends going across the mountains to get to Kenya, I believe, only to hear shortly that they had run into a cloud filled with rocks. Their bodies were recovered surprisingly low on the mountain.

My other favorite line came when Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) was being established in Paris, they cleaned out Pigalle. My father mentioned that the red light district was well patrolled and medically attended, suggesting that he thought they probably should have let things be. A French officer he knew said that when they shut down the red light district all of Paris took on a rosy glow. Good line, that.

~

Many wonders pass through the book, including a few deaths to which he had to attend. It struck me in the reading that you can probably judge the arena in which a man has worked by the number and nature of deaths that occur. I wanted to hear more about my father's having to initiate and oversee the exhumation of all the American bodies that had died on local African soil. He said they were well preserved in the arid climate and suggested this probably had something to say about why the mummies survived so well.

He said a few other interesting things that left me wondering, such as that during the trip from California to Africa, my sister and I fell ill with a flu that required several days hospitalization in Rome, which afforded he and my mother a chance to visit the antiquities and sample the fare. That is certainly odd, but I'm glad they went, as we obviously survived.

I loved the things he mentioned that Liz said. On her way to Africa, at three years old, she asked my father where her backyard was. That's a line I heard repeated throughout our lives as a family together. When she disappeared at the Paris zoo, they searched all over for this beautiful spot of sunlight and only found her when they went back to the car. She was sitting on the hood and informed them, I knew you'd have to come back to the car, so I just waited.

~

I woke up in the middle of the night last night, as I sometimes do, and as I sometime do, I read an hour or so before going back to bed. The autobiography kept me engrossed. I sometimes reread sections to get them down right. Things he understood so easily sometimes require a bit of concentration. The man was a globe trotter, to be sure, but a workman as well, a dedicated soldier--absolutely dedicated.

When I was fourteen I was assigned by a teacher to ask my parents a few questions about their lives, one of which was, If you had it all to do over again, what would you do differently? A very stupid question for a child to ask a parent, but that's because it's a good one--who would expect an honest answer? My father said, I think I'd like to try it all again without a family.

He did not hesitate to tell the truth and never considered sparing the feelings of a growing fellow. It makes me laugh now, as one man speaking to another. Back then it merely made me think, and I guess there are those who would say that's always a good thing, eh?

One thing for certain: I never forgot it.