This is some stuff I know (or think I know) that I think might be interesting to my descendents. In most cases there is at least one other person that knows it too, but a number of them are now dead. The memory is a treacherous thing, others may dispute what I say here. A lot of them are dead now, too. Just take it for what it’s worth.
THE BIG RED 1
The First Infantry Division, The Big Red 1, had a more than average part in prosecuting the war against Germany in World War II. Such were the achievements of the men in that outfit that one of its members wrote a historical novel about those brave men. One of the episodes recounted in that novel and whose central character was played by James Caan in the movie The Big Red 1 concerned a Sergeant Charles (Chuck) Dohun,whose company commander was horribly wounded.
Chuck put him in a Jeep and ignoring the danger of driving around in a fire fight, rushed him to the nearest aid station where, after finally getting a doctor to look at his CO, was informed that the captain was too far gone to try saving him. An argument ensued because Chuck thought too much of his CO to give up while he still lived.
Sgt. Dohun drew his .45, cocked it, aimed it at the doctor and said for him to try anyway. The doctor's talk was of court martial, but his action was that of a doctor. The captain survived and Dohun was not court-martialed. He was later decorated for bravery.
What has all of this to do with me? Well, when Chuck came home from the war, he and his wife established a supper club and catering business. It was located on the lot next to Payne & Associates, where I worked when I first came to Raleigh. He called it "The Dohun House" and I had the honor of meeting Chuck and his wife. Mr. Payne had told me of his story before he was a part of the novel.
When the Dohuns retired, Mr. Payne bought the property and we used it for a testing facility for the inflatable life saving equipment we manufactured. Unfortunately, the building suffered a fire about a year later. It was not arson. At each side of what had been the main door to the building were two cement flower urns. They looked oddly out of place sitting on that bare slab with no building for them to grace. I took them home and they now sit at the foot of the steps to our front porch. Some years they have flowers, some years they don't, but every year they hold my memory of and honor for Sergeant Charles Dohun,one of theuncountable number of heroes of World War II.
DEBTLESS
Brother George allows that I have this story wrong, that the house in question was the first one Granddad and Grandmother Hatfield owned in Oceana, W.Va. I recall pretty clearly Mom relating this to me so we will have to be at loggerheads on this one.
About 1938 or 39, my Grandfather Hatfield set out to build a house into which he and Grandmother could retire when the time arrived. At the time, they had a big, old house on the southeast corner opposite the Cabel County Court House in Huntington, West Virginia. The house was owned by Grandmother's sister, Hattie. For some reason, the estate of Isaac Christian went to Hattie alone; was not shared as one would expect. (I have learned that nineteenth century law was such that the oldest offspring inherited all of an estate If one died without a will) Hattie was married to a fairly successful building contractor. They bought the house and let Grandmother and Granddad have the place. It was a fine residence converted into a boarding house that had rooms for about six or eight roomers and a dining room that fedprobably twenty regular patrons including the roomers. I mention in passing that one of the roomers was one George Stumph. Everyone liked to inform you that he had a wooden leg and worked in a wooden leg factory as well. So much for stump..er Stumph.
I had regular two week vacations there in my childhood and have vivid memories of Grandmother who was maybe five feet tall, working that kitchen like a drill sergeant, sweating over two cast iron stoves and ovens. There were two or three hired hands that did the serving and KP type chores and handled housekeeping duties for the roomers. My memories also include playing in the grassy yard canopied by giant sycamores. The green stain that the covering of those sycamore balls imparted to one's clothes is permanent. It is little wonder that the pulpy stuff was so highly prized by the yarn and fabric industry for dyeing the olive drab used by the military.
Grandfather Hatfield seemed to be of little use at the boarding house, occasionally operating the apple peeler or doing some emergency shopping or providing other minor support. Mostly he simply liked to read or talk philosophy with any roomer or diner who had time to chat. Every so often he would don coat and hat and leave the house after the noon meal and I wouldn't see him again until after the evening meal.
I was about sixteen when my trip with the folks to Huntington for the two week vacation with my grandparents ended not at the boarding house on Fifth Avenue, but instead at a two story brick residence on, I think, Eleventh Avenue only one block from the Owens Illinois Glass plant near the south edge of town.It was not elegant but roomy enough, having four bedrooms and bath upstairs, and the usual room complement downstairs including a half bath. It was only half a block from Grandmother's sister Hattie and her husband Theo Morgan. Their grandchild Ward and I were playmates when our visits coincided. More on that later.
It turns out that Grandfather Hatfield, in his excursions from the boarding house, was taking the week's profit and buying building materials a bit at a time, going out to the empty lot near the glass plant and building a house. The lot was bought and paid for before he commenced construction. Brother-in-law Theo Morgan, husband of Hattie Christian, Grandmother's older sister, being in the construction business, was helpful in acquiring 'surplus' building material and could help find manual laborers willing to work after their regular hours. He did much of the manual labor himself, contracting out such specialized work as brick masonry, wiring and plumbing. It was all done piecemeal, a few studs here, a window or two there. Being done mostly during wartime when building materials were in short supply, he garnered what he needed from leftovers at industrial building sites and what little could be offered at building supply stores. Dad could glean some vital materials through his connections with major industrial goods manufacturers but Granddad paid cash for every bit of work and material that went into that house. They never borrowed a penny to build their retirement home. You try it.
One summer, just after the war, I was in Huntington when the vacation overlapped the Fourth of July and the visit by my distant cousin, Ward Morgan. Fireworks were not then restricted as they are now and so Ward and I had gotten a goodly supply and were having great fun with the detonations. Ward and I preferred to use the crackers for demolition rather than simple flash-bangs. We destroyed cans and bottles with great zeal.Like any sensible kids, we were saving the biggest and most expensive fireworks for last. Saved ‘til just before being called in to supper, were our two M-80s. They were expensive. They were not mere firecrackers wrapped in red pulpy paper like an overgrown ladyfinger. No, these were about as big around as a cigar, wrapped in hard cardboard, about two inches long, they were crimped on both ends like a shotgun shell. Painted uncharacteristically silver, they had a hard twine fuse protruding from the side, not the twisted paper fuse in the end of the ordinary red firecracker.
They went off with a very satisfying bang that could be heard for blocks. Our curiosity about their anatomy got the better of us when we had only one left and day was fading into night. The steps onto Aunt Hattie's porch was flanked by a low wall capped with concrete slabs about two feet wide and three or four feet long. It made a perfect examination table. Using our pocket knives (every kid had one back then, even in school. How could one play mumbly peg at recess without a pocket knife?), we dissected the last of the M-80s and laid its innards bare. There was the wrapper, and the end caps, and the powder, and the fuse all displayed so harmlessly. The matches were still at hand and so nothing would do but to light the powder to watch it flare harmlessly as we knew powder would do from having dissected other firecrackers. At arms length I touched the match to the powder and it flared more violently than expected. There was a bang. I mean a BANG! I mea “BANG!!!”
At the inner tip of the fuse, unnoticed by us, was a small detonator, much like that used to detonate dynamite. Explosives people call them caps, ammunition people call them primers. They initiate the detonation in high explosives as they are designed to be more resistant to accidental detonation for safety reasons.
My ears rang such that I could hear nothing else. Ward talked but I couldn't read lips. Aunt Hattie had to prod me to get my attention, informing me by sign languageon letting us baby sit ourselves.that it was time to go back to Grandmother’s(though she didn't know that's what I was reduced to reading). I went home in a daze. I bluffed my way through supper and slept fitfully. Next morning I could hear a bit better, but it was weeks before the ringing finally faded (mostly). There is a firework presently available on the black market that is called an M-80. I've seen one of them. It ain't the M-80 I know so intimately.
One evening Ward and I were left alone at the Morgan’s house as they were going to some kind of gala function. It was thought that the two of us would be safer together than Ward would be if left alone and since Grandmother and Granddad retired early, we were to stay at Hattie’s that night; a sort of sleepover. We were cautioned strongly to stay inside.Even at our advanced age of sixteenfourteen or so, such was the care of adults for childrenin those days that they thought us pretty young to be trusted alone at home at night. Times have changed.
We, we found their record collection and played many of them. They were the popular tunes from the teens and twenties, jazz, the beginnings of swing, and one record in particular had a tune I shall never forget: "Collegiate" It is so corny and so illustrative of the jazz age that it still echoes in documentaries today:
"Collegiate, collegiate, yes we are collegiate
Never intermediate, (pronounced “intermejut”)
Yay, Boys
Trousers baggy,
And we're rough and ready
We can hold her steady
We're collegiate through and through."
There's more, but you get the idea.
Later that evening, we thought we would have a bowl of cereal since we were methodically going through every cabinet and drawer in the house to see what was there and had finally gotten to the kitchen. We found Corn Flakes and milk and spoons and bowls. Our search for sugar ended with a dilemma. There were two identical covered bowls side by side containing white granular material. It was clear to us that one contained sugar and the other salt. We touched a tiny bit of each to our tongues to make our selection. They both tasted the same and not distinctly sweet or salty. We tested several times, something preventing us from taking a large enough taste to be certain what we were trying. Finally, we decided one was more like sugar than the other and doused it on our cereal. The first spoon full told the tale. We had chosen salt. Ugh
There were no garbage disposers in those days and so disposal of the incriminating evidence was a problem. Ultimately we chanced to go outside; although positively forbidden by Aunt Hattie, long enough the dump the mess in the garbage can out back. We repaired to the kitchen, rinsed the bowls, poured more cereal and milk, sprinkled the sugar from the other bowl on our snack and dug in. Ugh! More salt! How could that be? Back to the garbage can.
We gave up on the snack idea and went back to ransacking the house, but carefully. The next day, when Ward and I got together alone again (I had been walked back the Grandmother Hatfield's house to sleep that night) he told me that he learned from Aunt Hattie that Uncle Theo, being mildly diabetic, had no sugar in the house, she merely had two bowls of salt over the stove for cooking purposes.
BIRDS
Everyone watches birds at some time or other. I can remember my fascination with birds as a child. One summer as I talked with Mom about them and expressed the fact that I couldn't get hold of one because they flew when approached, she told me that if you put salt on a bird's tail, it couldn't fly and you could catch it. I was delighted to have this information and asked for a salt shaker. Mom gave me one and I headed for the tree in our front yard. Funny, I didn't bother Mom for over an hour, trying to get close enough to put salt on a bird's tail. The realization of what was going on crept upon me so slowly that I never did feel embarrassed.
When I sit on my front porch in the evening having my beer ration, I watch them come to the bird bath in the planter. Yesterday, the Cardinals and the Orioles were in town. They were both washed out. No runs, no hits, no errors. Speaking of errors, I wonder at the ability of a bird to fly at top speed into the foliage of a tree having branches spreading forty or maybe as much as fifty feet and not have any trouble flying right to the middle of the spreading limbs, leaves and twigs without getting tangled, or 'tripping' on any of them. They simply fly in any direction they choose to a selected branch and alight as if the dense foliage doesn't exist. Most remarkable. Do they fly into the foliage having the target limb in sight, or do they fly in there and just land on a target of opportunity?
Density altitude is a thing pilots must consider before flying, especially in a plane with a significant load on board. Our local airports are at about 700 feet above sea level. On a hot day the temperature and barometric pressure can make the plane perform as though it is already at half of its maximum ceiling while taxiing out for takeoff. Hot air is less dense than cold air and that means two things to a pilot. The wings of the pane will generate less lift at any given speed because the wings are displacing fewer molecules of air while the hotter air also means that the engine will develop less power because the more widely dispersed molecules of air can evaporate less gasoline into it so that there is less fuel/air mixture in the cylinder to burn on each power stroke. On hot, low barometer days the plane will accelerate more slowly and will need more runway to attain the speed for take-off; conflicting needs that can result in death and destruction.
What's that got to do with birds? On really hot days, you watch the birds; they will fly a lot less and walk or hop a lot more because it requires less power, and less power is what they have. Their wings generate less lift in those conditions too
Did you ever notice how it is that small birds don't do anything slowly? On the ground they do everything in spasms of motion that are sometimes faster than the eye can perceive. They can turn around on the edge of a bird bath so fast you may think another bird has landed there. Starlings and larger birds can move more slowly on the ground and often merely walk from place to place, but wren and sparrow-size birds flit in everything they do on the ground. Again, remarkable. That's why I remarked about it. By the way, how do birds drink the filthy water in my birdbath and not get sick? Someone needs to find out what immunizes birds that way and translate it to humans. And another thing, do birds know one another? Like, Bird 'A' from nest 'A' sees another bird and says to itself "That's bird "B", from over at nest "B", or does it say: "Who is that stranger? I've never seen him before." Or does he even think about it all?