CHAPTER 8
In March 1943 my father went to war. I was one year and nine months old. With exception of people cursed with total recall most of us lack any cognitive memory of our first two years of life, certainly so when you reach the golden years. Who was most attentive or least attentive to my infant needs is not in my data bank. I do have one fairly clear memory from those years other than the sirens.
It is the earliest image I have of my father and probably defines the family dynamic of my childhood. I was a couple months past one year old in late August 1942. I was walking by this time and my hair, like Samson, had never seen a scissors. It was red. It was wavy. It was long and my parents were having an argument about that fact. As best as I can paraphrase such a long ago conversation, it went something like this.
“His hair is too long,” dad said one day.
“I like it. It’s so pretty,” said my mother.
“He looks like a girl. It’s time to get it cut,” dad said. I can still hear the tone of his voice in my head. Dad was not making a statement; he was giving an order.
My mother sniffled. “Do we have to cut it? It’s so beautiful. I love his waves.”
“It makes him look like a sissy. I’m taking him to the barber.”
And he did, to Clarence Miller’s Shop in the middle of downtown
Downingtown.
I was terrified of the barber. I bawled my head off. It is a good thing I didn’t need a shave or that might have been a literal comment. The way I fought, one slip of a sharp straight razor and off goes my head. “Uh, Mr. Miller. I think you took a bit too much off the top.”
My dad had to hold me in place on that contraption placed across the arms of the barber chair for children to sit within reach. I flung my head about and cried. Dad was angry with embarrassment, but the hair got cut.
When I came home my mother cried.
Perhaps that is why most my life I’ve kept my hair too long.
This was part of the differences between my dad and wrote about them in 1970 in a book called Tales of a Chester County Child. (This cover shows me laughing. The other boy is a friend, Bobby Lukens.)
“What’sa matter?” It was the man.
Frank was unable to speak momentarily. When he did he mumbled, “My light’s out.”
“I know. I turned it out. You’re too old to sleep with a light on. Now go back to sleep.”
The man closed his door. The room was dark. Dark as a tomb. Dark as the cellar. Dark dark. Frank pulled the covers high against his face. A bit of light came in the window, enough to make shadows of his clothes heaped on a chair. Frank listened. His ears were most awake. He could hear little creaks, tiny squeaks and strange bangs. He listened as hard as he could and he heard voices. He began to cry.
His door opened. “Quite down. Big boys don’t cry,” said the man. The door closed.
The voices began again, louder. Frank listened.
“He’s just a child.”
“He’s too old to be afraid of the dark.”
“It isn’t his fault. It was the blackouts. The sirens, the panic, the sudden darkness scared him.”
“Those days are over.”
“He’s a little boy. He doesn’t know.”
“He’s a little boy, you’re right. Stop treating him like a little girl.”
There was a pause in the conversation, and then the man spoke again.
“We got to get his hair cut.”
Excerpt from “Haircut” (1970)
Collected in Tales of a Chester County Child, 1970
These conflicts over me were a constant of my childhood, mother trying to slow my progress and father trying to rush it. It was a looping soundtrack of “Bill, leave the boy alone, he’s scared” and “You coddle him too much, Milly. You’re making him a sissy.” It was a tug of war and I was the rope in the middle. It resulted in my manipulating my mother and avoiding my father. Mother didn’t turn me into a sissy and dad didn’t turn me into Macho Man. All they created was a conflicted and confused child with a determined will to do things his own way.
The only other memory I have of my dad in those early years isn’t even really a memory. It is images from photographs. Dad left for his Boot Camp training in March 1943. After his training he came home on leave before shipping out to the South Pacific. He brought me a sailor suit when he came home.
By the stripes on my sleeve, I think I outranked him.
Dad was home for two weeks. I am not sure he spent much time with me. I could be wrong because I don’t remember it at all.
I vaguely recall the excitement in the house that he was coming
home, but that was around me, not in me. Did I run to greet him? Did he hug me or kiss me? I don’t know. There is a picture where he holds my hand before an open car door. I don’t know if we were about to get in the car and go somewhere or if we had just gotten out of the car.
Behind and across the street in that photograph is a house. The Buckleys lived in that home. It sat right next to the East Ward School Grounds. Both those things would play a part in my next clear memory of my dad, but that would come a few years in the future after he returned from the service. These are pictures taken just before he disappeared from my preschool life.
My parents had a professional photograph take some photos during this leave. It is somewhat startling to see the physical resemblance between my father and me. I notice how much I look like him in other photographs. It is a frightening thought. I know where my own countenance is headed seeing what he looked like in later years.
In the family picture everyone is
beaming, but you wonder what was going on inside his or her head. My dad was about to ship out to the War in the Pacific. His assignment was on a destroyer escort christened the U.S.S. Jaccard (left) It was
very dangerous duty at the time. The Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway (May and June 1942) were considered turning points in the Pacific conflict, but by 1943 the Allies were experiencing set backs. The Japanese fleet had been decimated. They did have submarines, although the boats were not particularly used efficiently. Still, in 1943 Japan was using its subs to disrupt U.S. supply line. It was the job of the destroyer escorts to locate and destroy any predator subs so the convoys could move safely. My dad’s ship did confront some submarines during his enlistment and at least one aerial Kamikaze Attack during 1944. These desperate suicide attacks by Japan were not restricted to airplanes. Japan employed other vehicles in Kamikaze warfare, including submarines, adding more risk to the destroyer escorts assigned to ferret out subs.
The photo is dad with his crew. Dad was a Coxman and he is
squatting in the first row on the far right. The man next to his right is Bob Lukens and they remained close friends after the war.
They served in the Battle of Bataan and the Philippines (1945)when General McArthur made his historic return to those islands. By then Bataan was pretty devastated (photo left) Dad left me a mystery with this photo of Candida Sanchez of Manila (1944) On the back she wrote “I hope you won’t forget.” He had another picture of her, completely nude, that he kept in his wallet. I tried to find it after his death but it had disappeared.
After my father and my brief encounter when dad finished basic training, he sailed out of my life for the next few years.
You will note in those photographs before he shipped out that I looked like a happy child. My mother told me I was a very happy child and very gregarious in those preschool years. I was not at all shy, apparently quite the opposite and would both strike up conversations with complete strangers, somewhat to her concern, and blurt out my observations to her embarrassment.
There was an incident where I accompanied my Grandmother Brown and my mother to Joseph Mfauewd the shoemaker on Lancaster Avenue in Downingtown. (I have no idea how to pronounce his last name.) A man came into the store that had a large reddish
birthmark covering about half his face. I did not miss this and asked very loudly, “What’s that man got all over his face?” My mother was mortified and apologized to the man, which probably made matters worse by focusing more attention on his discoloration. Of course, I got a stern lecture from both women about keeping my mouth shut about such things. Frankly, I think it was perfectly natural for a three or four year old to innocently ask such a question. I had seen people of different colors, but never one half and half.
In later years I wondered if this youthful indiscretion led to my affliction of psoriasis. Did the man put a hex upon my skin?
This brings us back to the question, where was my mother (pictured left, 1942) when I was tagging after my grandmother as she did all the household chores and cooking?
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