Sunday November 7, 2004 - Of Another Place, Of Another Time

Sunday November 7, 2004 - Of Another Place, Of Another Time

A couple of weeks back, I talked to my dad on the phone about the time he retired from the service. I had left the family when my dad was stationed in Ft. Lewis Washington. Shortly after I enlisted and shipped out for recruit training in San Diego, he was transferred to Ft Benning, Georgia. He was getting tired of the service by then. He was past retirement age so within a year of his transfer, he decided to put in his papers and hang it up. That time in my life I was completely oblivious of what was going on with my family only where they were living and the monthly goings on.

Living in a military family back in the 1950s was living among a wandering tribe of gypsies that looked out for one another. On at least one occasion we opened our house a family we had known during a tour of duty in Puerto Rico, who was relocating to Ft. Bliss. It was also a time when deals were struck between individuals on a handshake and each party knew that the pact was inviolate. I was stuck by one of the last such deals my dad struck as he left Ft Benning. Our conversation went like this.

Me: I left in June of 63. You must have been transferred shortly after that.

Dad: Everybody in my company was going to Ft. Benning, Georgia. So, I got down there and I had to go out and get me one of those house trailers. I bought one of those and when I got ready to leave, I didn’t want to bring it out here. The government would have moved it out here free of charge.

But an old boy there, he had been in the service longer than I had, and so he was getting ready to retire in another year or two. So I said to him, “Melcher, I have a good deal for you if you want to take it.” I told him “I’d let you have this damn trailer, just take over the payments on it and you’ll have a home when you retire. He said, “you mean that?” and I said, “Yeah I mean it.” So he said “Mac I take you up on that.” I said “one other thing…I had bought a refrigerated air conditioning and put that in the trailer. I told him “you’re going to have to pay for that.”

So I guess he’s taken care of it because I know nobody ever bothered me about it. If he hadn’t paid for it, they would have been after me. But anyway I know he was an honest old boy. But anyway, I was talking to him one day and I said, “You got to have some place to go when you get out the service.” He didn’t have no mother or father, sisters or brothers, you know. I said to him “the government is willing to move that damn thing any where you want to put it.” I told him “the thing you ought to do is go buy yourself a little piece of land and sit the trailer on it and then you got your own place, buddy.

You know I tried to keep in touch with that old boy but I didn’t do it. I know he paid for it cause wouldn’t they’d a come looking for me.

M: What’s his name again?

D: Melcher, a German name I believe.

M: What’s his first name?

D: Oh shit, I done forgotten now. We use to call him Mel all the time. I can’t think of it… I called him Mel all the time.

M: How old was he? Was he younger than you?

D: No, he was about the same age. We was all World War II veterans. But he went in ahead of me. He went in under this deal when guys went in for six months or some such bullshit or another. He had a few years on me in the service. He had 23 years, I think, in the service by the time I got out. I only had 21. So anyway we was pretty close together.

I told him “buddy, you need some place to call home when you get out of here. Don’t, you’d be staying in hotel and motels and rooming house and what have you.” He said, “no, you’re right Mac, you’ve got a point there.” And he said “I can’t turn down an offer like this.” I told him “just take over the payments and it’s all yours,” I didn’t put much down on it when I bought it no way. I forget now what it was. That sucker might still be down there in Georgia.

M: He could be. He might have just drove it off the base and set it up on a piece of property and it’s still there.

D: It wasn’t on the post. It was in Mockingbird Trailer Court. That was not on the post… Oh he might have bought a piece of property out there some place and put the trailer on it. See I was paying for the site it, the trailer, was sitting on. It wasn’t much.

M: you had to pay rent plus the cost of the trailer.

D: Right. It wasn’t too much at that time.

For as long as I can remember, my father would strike bargains like this. His close friend Charles Upton trusted my dad so completely that he gave him full power of attorney to handle all his legal matters. My father paid Mr. Upton’s bills, made sure his medication was purchased and administered correctly each day. He took Mr. Upton to the doctor on a regular basis. On one visit, Mr. Upton’s doctor commented to my dad that had the old man been put into a nursing home, he would have been dead years ago.