Dad joined the Marines in 1948 when he was 17. He was raised and lived in the Steeke community of Loudon County where he had taken numerous jobs after dropping out of school in seventh grade. He apparently couldn’t find one he liked, hence the military. Other than boot camp, I believe his first service was pretty sweet in that he was assigned to the aircraft carrier The Essex for a substantial cruise. He never really talked about his carrier experiences except for two stories about a couple of drunken episodes, one where he got into a fight with a fellow serviceman (which left dad with a broken jaw), and an ever wilder story about leave in Cuba. He claimed to have no memory of the actuality of the Cuban adventure other than waking up after a drunken night to find that he was sharing a bunk with a large snake he had bought and smuggled onto ship. That seemed to me very strange because dad feared snakes. Dad had some tattoos on his arms, one of a naked lady talking on the phone, and a couple of others on his shoulders (the name Dot was inside one shoulder design). I’m not sure the two incidents are related, but I think they may have occurred on the same evening.
The sweet duty, however, ended with the Korean War. Dad’s tour began near the end of 1950 and lasted into 1952 (I think the duration was 18 months). He spoke, as of most of his past, very little about it. The stories that I remember, that he told me directly, were scant many details. The important aspect of his experience turned out to be that he was once sprayed by shrapnel, and another that he received a minor head wound from a bullet fragment, neither of which yielded decoration. He said he landed in Korea in winter, near Christmastime, and that the temperature was the coldest he had ever known. Not long into his arrival the North attacked at night. Dad was totally unprepared. He said the enemy banged on drums and played a weird, seemingly out of tune gaggle of pipes, whistles, flutes and the like before launching their assault. He gave no real details of the fight, but was horrified the next morning when three Americans who had gone missing during the skirmish were located frozen into a solid block at the bottom of a huge hole filled with ice. As in all wars, what 19 year old could possibly be prepared for that?
After combat duty ended, he picked up mom, who at the time lived in Loudon, Tennessee, and took her across country in 1952. Along the way they married, first in Mexico, then again when they reached San Diego, California, where dad was stationed. Neither of them talked much about their courtship and I have never had enough curiosity to inquire. Apart from that, mom left California to live at my grandmother’s, now in Madisonville, Tennessee, after she became pregnant in 1954. Dad remained in the Marines and California (he occasionally came to Tennessee on leave, and once AWOL) until his discharge in 1959.
Transition to civilian life was not easy for him. He was used to living like the carefree, hard-drinking drill instructor he’d been since 1952, so his return was bumpy. He got a job in construction right off the bat, but his erratic behavior was scary and destructive to the weak family unit. Sometimes he’d leave for work around 6 AM and return drunk as a skunk sometime in the next early morning. After a fight with my mom he’d sleep a little and go off to work. He’d then be good for awhile before the same thing would happen again. After several months of this routine he and mom divorced. I was sad and relieved at the same time. Not long before I began school, dad took classes to become a mechanic. He eventually started coming back around. One night we went to the theatre in Loudon to see Psycho. They told me after the movie that they were going to remarry. I protested, not because I didn’t love my dad, but because I didn’t want to revisit the shit we’d already been through. He assured me that would not be the case, and it wasn’t.
The troubles weren’t over by a long shot. Dad’s hard living softened, but he just didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up (not unlike my own situation now), so he wandered around either working in dead end jobs or moping around the house out of work. Finally mom went to Norfolk to work in the restaurant where both my aunt and uncle worked, and dad followed a couple of weeks later. At first he worked as a short order curb cook with mom (she and my aunt were carhops; my uncle made pizzas) at Freddy’s, but found other work as an auto mechanic.
I began to bond with dad at the movies in Norfolk in 1963. We went to a drive-in near Hewitt Farms every Saturday night. The first movie we saw was Dr. No. We also saw and enjoyed The Longest Day that same summer. This dad was someone I liked a lot. That was when I really got to know him for the first time. He was still sort of a devil may care kind of guy, but I was too, so we bonded.
When I returned to Norfolk in 1964, dad was riding high. He had a good job repairing forklifts for Slick Airways, which had a contract to haul things for the Navy. Often, when mom worked, I spent time on the naval base while dad worked. I got to know an aircraft mechanic who took a liking to me and would take me with him to sit in the cockpit of the planes while he did repair and maintenance. How good can a kid have it?
Not only did dad have a good job, but he also had a new car, a red, 1962 Ford Galaxy 500. We usually rode around in jalopies held together with spit and prayer, so the Ford was a big step up. Dad told me he really liked that car, even years after he’d traded it in for another. When I rode with dad we always listened to country music because that’s what he liked. I don’t know who any of the artists were (unless it was someone I heard on television), and even though I wanted to listen to Top 40, it didn’t matter. We usually had a great time.
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