From Methodism to atheism

Ellen: Tell me about your religious upbringing. Who was the religious person in your household? Hattie? 

Carl: My grandmother, Big Hattie. Her grandfather was one of the people who established the Methodist church in Portsmouth... Monumental was the first Methodist church in Portsmouth. He was one of the founding members, so of course we went to Monumental Methodist Church in downtown Portsmouth. (The link suggests that the original church burned in 1864, and was rebuilt in 1872-76. Carl is probably referring to this time period with regards to his great-great-grandfather.)

I can't remember when they didn't shoot me off to Sunday school... they must have had classes for infants (laughs). By the time I was four or five, I had to show up at 9:30 every Sunday for Sunday school. Then I had a whole half-hour break before I had to go to church, eleven o'clock to twelve, or one if the preacher was going good, which they sometimes did. Then I had to go back at three in the afternoon to a young people's services, then I had to go back for Sunday night services, then I had to go to Wednesday evening services. That was routine. I learned to hate it. I still despise it.

Ellen: How old were you when you learned to hate it?

Carl: About the time I went to high school. I was old enough to say I'm not going to do it. Before that, I couldn't-- when you're nine or ten, you don't stand up, but by the time you're in high school-- I said, "I'm not going to do that." I said, "I'm not going to Sunday school, and I'm not going to church." And I haven't been since.

They used to give us a nickel-- which was a goodly chunk of money back then-- to drop in the collection plate at church. We had the half hour break between Sunday school and church, so we would walk down to the New York Delicatessen down on High Street, which was the only place that was open on Sunday back then, and buy-- there was a song written about this, called "A Nickel for a Pickle." A whole nickel... you bought a great big old kosher pickle. Not every Sunday, but many Sundays, my friends and I would slip down there and get ourselves a pickle. (There is still a New York Deli in Portsmouth, just off of High Street. I haven't been able to determine if it's the same building or not.)

Ellen: Were they floating in a barrel?

Carl: Yeah, you'd just look in the barrel and put a fork in, pick the one out you wanted-- the biggest one for the nickel--  and munch on it back to church.

Ellen: And I guess the deli was open because they were Jewish?

Carl: Yeah, back then the deli was absolutely the only thing that was open on Sunday. There were blue laws until... till the end of the thirties, movies weren't open on Sundays, stores weren't open-- one drugstore was open on Sunday, to handle prescriptions and things. Portsmouth was a small town then-- well, a small city-- 

Ellen: Well, they had the blue laws when I was a kid. Not as bad, but they did have them. When you went in the Army, they made you put your religion on your dogtag, didn't they?

Carl (with pride): I put "none." 

Ellen: Really? You did that back then? They didn't give you a hard time about it?

Carl (firmly): I put "none." I was fully grown by then. Every record about me from high school on has "none." And I've meant it!

Ellen: I was just curious as to whether they made you...

Carl: No, by then we'd come a long ways. In the thirties, as I say, nothing was open in Portsmouth except for a drugstore. By the forties, we were playing Sunday baseball. Then the movies started to stay open... by the end of the war, we were like we are now, a seven-day week.

Ellen: I've got a little New Testament that was given to you with a note in the front by the President. Do you remember that?

Carl: No.

Ellen: Even if you were Jewish, did you get a New Testament?

Carl: I don't know. I don't think they had anything for atheists. Maybe if you were Buddhist... see, we had a lot of Chinese Americans come into the Army, and a lot of them were still Buddhist.

Ellen: That's what I was wondering, if they handed everyone the New Testament. I'll have to do some research on that...

The Norfolk streetcars

Here is an excellent page about the history of Norfolk's streetcars, with articles and photos from the era.

Carl's hobbies over the years

Ellen: I found a picture of you playing the clarinet.

Carl: Yes, me and V (his girlfriend). Yeah. I would have been maybe twenty, twenty-two. Oh, I played the clarinet all during the thirties. I started out with an old beat-up trumpet, but I bought a good clarinet. I was a pretty good clarinet player. 

Ellen: How come you got into the clarinet, because you liked jazz?

Carl: I got into jazz. When I bought the trumpet, I was more into being in the high school band. I paid about ten bucks for the trumpet-- it was an old battered-up thing-- but the clarinet was a good clarinet, a Selmer, the equivalent of a Rolls-Royce. Nellie (my mother) and I, we played Mozart sonatas (this would have been in the late fifties or early sixties, after my parents were married). After a while, she got so involved in the organ (Nell was a church organist) that we didn't have time to sit down and play. She had to practice, practice, practice, rehearse, go through the whole Sunday program on Saturday, and it just ate up all of her time, so I sold the clarinet to a nice young fellow and haven't touched a clarinet since.... My playing was a combination between Pee Wee Russell and another guy, a quiet easy guy, and Pee Wee, who was very agitated (mimes playing a clarinet frantically)... yeah, I could play pretty good. 

Ellen: There are pictures of you as a fisherman, too. How did you get into fishing?

Carl: My dad would take me to Ocean View. Back in those days, you rented a boat, right at the amusement park, and black men-- you got in the boat, and they rowed you out and then rowed you back. You didn't have outboard motors in those days. You caught a bushel or so of fish, brought them home on the streetcar...

(Ellen makes a noise of disgust.)

Carl: No, it was a strange time. It wasn't unusual, because nobody had cars then. No, we'd come back with a bushel basket full of spot and croakers, then call all our friends to please come and take some fish... I fished with B for years, up till the seventies, when you kids came along. (My sister was actually born in 1961.) I wanted to spend more time at home, and by then Nellie was busy, so I dropped fishing. I had the biggest bass of the year once...I think it's that one in the picture. (When I was a child, Carl had two plaques for catching exceptional fish which were proudly displayed on the wall.)

Ellen: And you and Mom built the boat, the bass fishing boat?

Carl: We built that boat; that picture was the day I tested it. We built it-- four guys from the boat shop came over on Friday, when I wanted to launch it, and took it down from our second-floor porch, put it on ... I hired a trailer, and trailed it down to where I was going to keep it, a boathouse. Those were the first fish I caught on that boat. The boat was named the Nellie Belle. It had a double meaning-- there was a pond I was very fond of fishing at called the Nellie Bell pond (a web search indicates the Nellie Bell ponds are in Currituck County, NC). I used that boat for years and years and years...

Ellen: Did Mom ever go fishing with you?

Carl: She went with me one time. She caught a bass, as big a bass as I ever caught. A big old bass. No, she was too busy fungling with that organ... I fished with T for years and years, and all of a sudden one night, just after I got married, his wife called and said, "Carl, I hate to tell you this, but T died." Big, strong, healthy man. Heavy, big... not fat, but you know, big burly guy. Dropped dead of a heart attack at fifty-five. So then I began fishing with B, who was the associate editor of the paper then, but who became the editor. We took him up to meet the Maxwells (my mother's parents) one weekend-- Max was the associate editor of the Baltimore Sun, so I figured they'd have a lot in common. 

Carl's service in World War II

I have quite a few documents detailing Carl's time in the military, which is fortunate, because his journey from recruit to captain seems quite unlikely for a high school graduate with no special skills. He enlisted in January, 1942 (waiting to be drafted, he explained, meant that he wouldn't get to choose where he went) as a private. He loved planes, so he chose the Army Air Forces, aware that he couldn't be a pilot, but hoping to be made a tail gunner. He somehow skipped the rank of private entirely and rapidly made his way up to Staff Sergeant, then enrolled in Officer Candidate School. He was discharged a captain in January, 1946. Quotes from various documents follow-- all caps are original.

I have a document entitled, Honorable Discharge from the Army of the United States, certifying that Carl W. Kraft, Staff Sergeant, is "hereby HONORABLY DISCHARGED from the military service of the UNITED STATES... to accept Commission as Second Lieutenant in Army of United States. When enlisted he was 24 11/12 years of age and by occupation a Clerk. He had Brown eyes, Black hair, Ruddy complexion, and was 5 feet 10 1/2 inches in height. Given under my hand at Miama Beach, Florida this 27th day of October, one thousand nine hundred and forty-two."

Carl seems to have gone to the Army Air Forces Technical Training Command in Miami Beach, Florida for Officer Candidate School. He gave me a sort of yearbook for his time there, which begins with these words, scribed by Lieutenant General H.H. Arnold: "As members of the United States Armed Forces, you do not have to be told of the magnitude and importance of the task that lies before you.

"At every base, station, and training field of the United States Army Air Forces, you are preparing yourselves for the great test of arms which will prove that the forces of democracy can destroy the evil power of the totalitarian nations."

Carl's photo is on a page for Squadron 22:

The next document is a DIPLOMA for the Army Air Forces Officer Candidate School, certifying that "Carl Wilkerson Kraft has satisfactorily completed the course prescribed the the Army Air Forces and Given at Officer Candidate School, Miami Beach, Florida... Given on this Twenty-Eight day of October in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and forty-two."

Carl was then apparently assigned to Santa Ana Army Air Base in Santa Ana, California, and became an Instructor of Air Recognition. He is listed in a sort of yearbook there, under "Training and Operations":

The next document reads: "Army of the United States CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE. This is to certify that Carl W. Kraft Capt Bakersfield Calif honorably served in active Federal Service in the Army of the United States from 19 January 1942 to 21 January 1946."

This is the top of his certificate of service, which has been placed into a photo album with a photo of Carl and other officers. Carl is second from the left. The back of the photo is labeled Santa Ana Army Air Base Class Dec. 1942.

The final document is difficult to read, with very fancy typography, but the top reads THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and states that "resposing special trust and confidence in the patriotism, valor, fidelity and abilities of Carl Wilkerson Kraft, I do appoint him Captain, Air Corps in the Army of the United States.... He will enter upon active duty under this commission only when specifically ordered to such active duty by competent authority. Done at the City of Washington, this ninth day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and forty-seven." I would guess this placed him into the reserves.

Of positive changes

Carl: I noticed that the president of Hampton Roads Transit, which runs the Tide (the Norfolk light rail system), is black. I'm old enough to notice the irony. Forty years ago he couldn't have sat in the front of a bus. Literally, couldn't have sat in the front of the bus. And now he's in charge of the buses and the Tide. I've seen so many of these changes over the years. It pleases me.

(The US Supreme Court ruled that this sort of segregation was illegal in 1956, so it's closer to fifty-five years, although de facto bus segregation may have endured longer than de jure segregation, for all I know.)

Carl's family

This is a photo of Carl's family. The woman on the left is Big Hattie, the grandmother he lived with. The sad-eyed girl in the middle is "Sister," his aunt, also named Hattie, who raised him after his father left. The very pretty girl on the right is Marguerite, his mother.

Transportation

Carl: A lot of times, to get around, you rode a ferry. You had no bridges; if you went from Norfolk to Portsmouth, or Berkeley, or Newport News, you took a ferry. If you were going west on the Chesapeake and Ohio, which went out of Newport News, you took the ferry boat. They had a fast ferry--steamer, actually, but it was a ferry. Everywhere you went-- if you were going to New York, you took the ferry over to Cape Charles. You traveled by steamboat to these places. You had the Baltimore line-- two lines going to Baltimore-- the Washington line, a Philadelphia line, a New York line, a Boston line, a Charleston and Savannah line-- there were no bridges.

Ellen: When did they start building bridges? Was that one of the things the WPA did in the thirties?

Carl: They actually got into the first bridges during the Roosevelt administration, during the Depression. The Military Highway was built almost entirely by WPA workers. (Note that the Wikipedia link indicates Military Highway was built in 1943 due to the military buildup during World War II. Carl may be conflating two different roads here.) It put a lot of men to work. The Post Office building in downtown Norfolk, that was built by the WPA. I worked there for twenty years, before I went to Portsmouth.

Ellen: Did you ever work for the WPA?

Carl (thinks about it): Somewhere along the line... I went to work for the railroad (first). That was my first really permanent job. I did work some for the WPA, office-type work... Anyway, one of the things that's most different today was the fact that you went nowhere across water except by ferry.

Ellen: Tell me about your first car.

Carl (with sardonic amusement): Oh, my first car was a wonder.... a real dog, I think it was an Essex. I think I paid $35 for it. It had holes in the floor; you could reach down and push yourself along. Holes in the floor where your feet were. That was a real dog. 

But the second car I got was fantastic. It was a straight-eight sportscar. Pierce-Arrow, which was the American equivalent of Rolls Royce. That was a real fine car. I got that from-- a young "blade," as we used to call them, and he got married, and his wife insisted he settle down and buy a normal car. So he bought a Buick, or something like that, probably, and sold that car to me for something like $75. Which doesn't sound as cheap as it would be today, because you could buy a new Ford or Chevrolet for $700.

After the war, when I bought my old Chevrolet, I wanted to buy it-- I had a good buy. That was a '48, the last remaining prewar car. It was nothing in the world but a '41, '42-- they discontinued (cars) entirely during the war, made tanks and that sort of thing. When they went back into the business in '47, after the war-- it took them a couple of years to tool up and get going-- they didn't have a new car. They still made the prewar car until about '49, and the first postwar Chevrolets that came out were 1949s. I had a '48, brand new. Well, practically. Guy I worked with bought it, then shortly afterward the '49s came out, and he had to have a new car. So he sold me that thing for a reasonable-- something like $200. Almost brand new. I had that car for a long time, right up till after we were married. (This site suggests Carl's dates are accurate, saying, "In 1949, Chevrolet presented its first all new models since the end of World War II.")

Ellen: What happened to the Pierce-Arrow? Did you sell it when you went to the war?

Carl: I went into the service, and I left that car with somebody I knew, told them to take care of it. They thought I was gone, of course; I mean, when you went in the service-- and he had it a while, and when he got a chance, he sold it up the river. He sold it to somebody who knew the value of it, and he completely restored it, and it was a showcar after the war, at sportscar shows. I mean, it was a showpiece! It had a trunk, and under the second seat was a hole, like that (holds hands a couple of feet apart)-- that was for your golf clubs. It had wire wheels, something like twenty-two inches. Straight-eight. The two spare wheels were in wells on either side-- you've seen pictures, it was the standard sports car of the day. Got about six miles to the gallon (laughs). Beautiful car.

Reading and music as entertainment

Carl: What did you do for entertainment when you had nothing at home? You read.

Ellen: You had a library you could go to, right?

Carl: About as big as this one row (waves at the small section in Red Robin where we're seated). Yeah, they must have had a children's section with fifty books (laughs). I can remember when they built the big library-- it's still there, right on Court Street. There were bookstores... I didn't have many books, we couldn't afford to buy books very well. I would walk to the library when it opened at nine in the morning, and get the maximum number of books-- I think it was two. It was that big a library (laughs). Read one of them walking home, sit on the front porch and read the other one. You could only go once a day, so I'd wait till the next morning, go down and get my two books, bring them home and read them. Every day, walked three miles back and forth to the library. They were very... limited. The children's books were strictly children's books...  Tom Swift, Don Sturdy... the Boswell Sisters (stops with a sly grin and waits for Ellen to notice he's kidding). No, they were a vocal group.  I'm jiving you.

(The conversation turns to music.)

Carl: Phonographs. You had three minutes, then you turned it (the record) over, played that three minutes... you were used to it, that's what you did.

Ellen: Was that the sort of player with the horn on it? The big horn?

Carl: Yeah, that was before the electric loudspeaker. First one we had was a big old Victor, with a big old tonearm with a great big sound collecting device, like eight pounds on the needle. Everybody had Caruso records, and this Scotch comedian who was very popular... Harry Lauder. And (unable to guess at name). Everyone had those records... you showed off the fact that you were cultured by what you had on your phonograph. Everybody had the same records, because that was what was considered cultured then. Most people never played them, but they had them.

Portrait of the oldster as a young man

A quiet childhood in a quiet town

Carl: You wouldn't imagine how quiet it was back then. Televisions, of course, were unheard of; radio was rare-- this was in the twenties-- 

Before 1928, you had no television, no radio...well, radio was an amateur thing back then. You had no network radio, no shows. Your movies were silent until 1928. The world was very quiet back then. Very few automobiles. You walked. You thought nothing of walking miles. I went to high school about five miles from my house, on High Street, for four years. Walked, every day. You never even thought-- to get there by bus you had to take a bus downtown, then transfer to the streetcar going up High Street. It was easier to walk. All the kids walked back then. 

When I was very young, we had streetcars. The electric line were not streetcars; they were like these Tide cars (modern light rail), interurban cars. In Portsmouth, we had streetcars. In Norfolk, you had streetcars... all the streetcars came down and circled around from Granby Street to the Monticello Hotel (Carl pronounces this name "Montisello," as it is traditionally pronounced in Norfolk, in contrast to Jefferson's home, which is pronounced "Montichello") and then back up Monticello Avenue... that was the center point of the town, uh, city. You had an Ocean View streetcar, a Willoughby streetcar, a Naval Base streetcar, a Colonial Place bus-- never had a streetcar there-- Berkley streetcar, a Riverside streetcar-- that was the city park-- all of them converged right downtown in front of where the Monticello was. 

In Portsmouth, there were no cars, no radios-- it was profoundly quiet. I could lie awake at night, a mile from High Street, and hear the streetcars rumbling-- they had a little bell, the standard signal for a streetcar, clang clang clang! Late at night, there was absolute stillness; you could hear the streetcar coming out to Park View, by ear. There were about five railroads-- the Seaboard, the Southern, the Atlantic Coastline, the Beltline... in Norfolk, right across the river, there was the Norfolk and Western, the Norfolk Southern... about eight railroads altogether. And they all of course had steam locomotives.  Every steam locomotive had a whistle, a very distinctive whistle. And all night-- you could hear steam locomotives from the Beltline five miles away, blowing their whistles.

Ellen: There were a few rich people who had cars, weren't there?

Carl: Doctors had cars, lawyers had cars. The M family had cars-- they ran the big hardware store. A truck was a really noisy thing back then. Most deliveries were done by horses and wagons. You had the milk wagon in the morning, you had the ice wagon... 

Ellen: So you heard the horses clopping around?

Carl: The horses didn't make big noise. You had the vegetable truck, horsedrawn. The farmers would come in with their wagons, pulled by a single horse, and peddle their fresh vegetables. They'd come to Park View, and you knew they were coming-- you'd expect them. 

Ellen: Didn't they have vegetables in the markets?

Carl: In someplace like Park View, you had a little family store, and that was groceries. That didn't mean meat departments-- basically just the canned stuff, package stuff. Lot of the same stuff you see today was around even then. Then you had, somewhere in the neighborhood, a meat market. Downtown you had a fish market. The first chain was A&P; we had a local chain called Piggly Wiggly. The DP Store-- that was run by David Pember in Norfolk. 

You had a milk truck every morning, that brought you milk-- a quart or a pint. The bread man came out with his horse and wagon from Hall's Bakery, brought you fresh-baked bread, fresh pastries and such, right out of the kitchen.

Ellen: I guess you couldn't keep too much milk around, because you didn't have a proper fridge?

Carl: For the first ten years of my life, we had an icebox. You got your ice every morning. Had a sign you put up in the window-- 25, 50, 75, or 100.  The number that was up so they could read it was the amount you wanted that day. The ice man would come down his route and look at everyone's window. Those guys could take a 500 pound block of ice and go chip chip chip chip chip and come up with 25 pounds just like that, or 50 pounds.

Your fishman came around every day. Bakery wagon, fish wagon, grocery wagon-- they brought all those things-- 

Ellen: When did they switch over to proper trucks?

Carl: Somewhere in the late twenties. I can remember the first time I saw a truck, a Mack truck, with a big M on the front. I was maybe four or five years old, and it scared me. I was sitting in the bay window, and I saw what to me was a great monstrous thing pull up. There were only about four cars in that whole part of Park View. Cars were terribly expensive-- $775 to buy a Ford or a Chevrolet new. That was a lot of money...  

I imagine there's not a couple of dozen people in Portsmouth now that can remember the things I can.

Baby pictures

As part of this project, I raided my father's house today for all the photos and other stuff I could lay hands on. Here are a few baby pictures from his photo album. It is impossible to see Carl's face in one of the photos, which is damaged, possibly due to wear and tear, but also possibly due to my great-aunt, who unfortunately destroyed many Kraft family photos in a bout of angry senility. The woman is Carl's mother, Marguerite Wilkerson Kraft (my middle name is Marguerite, after her). The man is his father, Jerome Carr (or possibly Carl) Kraft. The pictures are dated 1918.

Growing up in Portsmouth

Carl: I grew up in Park View, the oldest suburb in Portsmouth. The rich people lived on Court Street, a block from the ferry (to Norfolk, the city across the Elizabeth River), but Park View was the first of the suburbs. My parents separated around 1928-- don't know if they ever formally divorced or not, I don't think so. I went to live with Sister (his aunt, named Hattie after his grandmother) and my grandmother, who they called Big Hattie. My brother (George) and my sister (Jean) stayed with Mother. We lived a couple of miles apart-- might as well have been in a different world.

Ellen: George is the one who died young, right?

Carl: Yeah. He was still in high school. I think it was around 1938. (An internet search indicates George Franklin Kraft died on April 28, 1938.) I remember I was walking to the streetcar when V (his girlfriend at the time) came running after me and called, "Carl, Carl, your brother's dead." He was out on the river in a rowboat-- stupid-- when you're young-- well, I don't suppose it's any more stupid than some of the things I did. Anyway, he was with the younger brother of my friend, and what with all the boat traffic on the river, and the wakes... the other boy had the sense to stay with the boat, but George tried to swim for a pier. It was only about a hundred yards away, and he was a strong swimmer, but he got partway there and then just... (mimes going under water). We weren't close, because like I said, we didn't live together. 

And by then, my life was almost completely centered around Norfolk. I lived in Portsmouth, but I worked in Norfolk, and I'd take the ferry over there for work, work till five, come back to change, then go back to Norfolk and take V out for a date. It was about a mile walk from my apartment to the ferry, but that was normal then. People just didn't have cars. We didn't think about it.

(Goes back to childhood) After my father left, Mother had to work for Grant's (a department store), because someone had to bring in the money. She became a manager of the children's department, which was unheard of-- back then women were always just clerks. But she became manager, and they called her the Queen. Not that she was mean, but... well, she had things her way. Sister, on the other hand, worked for the railroad. She got me my job there when I got out of high school. That's how things were back then-- you didn't apply for jobs, a family member got you a job. (He gave me a sort of yearbook for his time at the Officer Candidate School, and his occupation is listed as "Railway Clerk.")

The great warrior of California

Carl: Did I tell you about my combat duty in California? No, I'm not joking. I got to ride in blimps to survey the Pacific coast for Japanese submarines. I got the little ribbon for combat duty (points to left side of chest to indicate where the ribbon was to go). All I did was sit in a blimp and drink good coffee. Still, if things had gone differently I suppose my blimp might have been shot down. If the Japanese hadn't miscalculated at Pearl Harbor-- they thought all our aircraft carriers were there, you know. If they'd destroyed the whole fleet, things might have been very different. And then at Midway, six months later-- if we hadn't been successful there, who knows what might have happened? But as it was, combat duty for me was just drinking coffee. 

I don't know if I ever told you about the demerit I got at OCS. You had to be very careful-- if you got too many demerits, out you went. Well, reveille sounded, I think it was at six. Taps was at nine, and you went to bed then. But when reveille sounded (mimes playing a bugle and sings reveille quite loudly, oblivious to the fact that we're sitting in Ruby Tuesday), you had maybe ten minutes to get up and ready for inspection. I tried to get myself together every morning, but-- you know. Ten minutes. You were bound to forget something.

So one day I went out there, and they said, "Garter inspection!" (mimes pulling up pants leg) You know what garters are? I don't guess you would. Men used to use them to hold up their socks. Well, I was fine otherwise, but I'd left off my garters. So I got a demerit. The first and last time there was ever a garter inspection! But it was the only demerit I ever got.

About this blog

This is a project I've been meaning to work on for a while. My father, Carl, is ninety-five, and loves to talk about his life. He was born in the small town of Portsmouth, Virginia, and grew up in a time when people kept their food cold with an icebox, AM radio was a new and exciting form of entertainment, and most people got from place to place by walking or riding the electric line. His mother was a Methodist, but he was an unbeliever from an early age, and when he was given a nickel for the collection plate and sent to Sunday School, he tended to duck out of church and walk down to the drugstore to spend his nickel on what was in those days a special treat-- a pickle from a barrel. He has grown no more reverent with the passage of time.

When he grew up and graduated from high school, during the Depression, he got a job working for the railroad, and later for the local radio station (WTAR- "We'll Try Another Record"). He developed an enthusiastic love for jazz, and later for classical music, and amassed thousands of 78s (he sold them off in the 1970s, and now he has thousands of CDs). He joined the Army Air Forces in World War II, though he couldn't be a pilot because he wore glasses. However, because of his ability to ace an IQ test, he was picked out for Officer Candidate School. He did well there, and wound up teaching pilots to identify airplanes at Santa Ana Army Air Base in California for the duration of the war. He left the Army a Captain, and was tempted to go to the University of Virginia on the GI Bill, but decided against it because it would mean leaving his girlfriend at the time. He wound up working as a civilian clerk for the Coast Guard, and as a reviewer and journalist. While working for the Ledger-Star in Norfolk, he met my mother, and the two of them had two children.

He has an excellent memory for his age, and is full of fascinating stories about the things he's done. I intend to record his ramblings and transcribe them here. His favorite topics include trains, music, his time in the armed services, and "the way things used to be." I don't vouch for the absolute truth of anything I record here-- this is oral history told by a very old man, and as such some of the facts may have been distorted or lost over the years. What he chooses to talk about is quite random (hence the name of this blog), but I will try to label his entries with tags so that specific topics can be found readily.