The Non-Dharma Bums.

Stich2442 said:
Very cool thanks for sharing, it brought back a lot of memories for me, I spent three months hitchhiking around the U.S when I was younger. I did it a year to date after a good friend of mine had died, the two of us had plans to travel and after his life was cut short I tried to solicit someone else, but as usual people seem to not have any follow through. So I left out of respect for our dream on the anniversary of his passing. The thing I remember most of the journey, is the day I arrived at the north rim of the Grand Canyon it was a few hours before sunset and looking out at the infinite colors in front of me I remember shedding a few tears thinking of my pal, the canyon was one of the places we had both wanted to do.
The only things I brought, a Swiss Army farmer, a pack with a few cloths, a flask for H2O, a fleese blanket, a ridgerest, guitar, and a harp. The food I carried was a jar of peanut butter, and pita bread, cuz it's flat and packs well.
Thank you I have not thought about this in years, I kept a journal I will have to try and find it.
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Amen Brother! Thanks for that.
 
Here is the wrap up on Dad's hobo days.

I'm including a bit about the start of the war. His ship, the U. S. Blessman DE 69, was a Destroyer Escort.

After 3 years away I had been wondering how things were going at home. I was a little homesick. I gradually drifted back towards Cleveland. I didn’t go directly. First I went to Wakeman, Ohio. They had a river there and the farmer let us use the low lands next to the river to camp. There was one guy named Hank that we know. After I visited with him I went down by the campers and I went back to Cleveland with them.

Since I had been working with a sign painter my Dad put me to work painting the house. I learned how to use linseed oil to treat the windows. I had a few ladders there and they were hard to handle but I did manage to get the house painted including up in the peaks. After the house was done, my Dad got me a job. One of the first jobs I had was doing finish work in a new house. My job was to put down the baseboard in all the rooms. I had to be careful when I used a hammer not to make hammer marks. Every time I would make a hammer mark my Dad would spot it.

When it came time for payday the contractor gave my Dad the money that I had earned. Instead of turning over the money to me my Dad was going to give me an allowance and keep my money. At an earlier time when there were 9 kids to raise there was some reason for the older kids to kick in their money to help keep the household going. But by that time there weren’t nearly as many kids living at home. The necessity of this kind of arrangement no longer existed.

I was willing to pay room and board. Since I had been living on my own for around three years, I was used to making my own way. We locked horns and I packed my bags and left again.

For the next few years I drifted east and south. In order to support myself I was doing odd jobs. Some yard work, washing dishes, and doing a little carpenter work even though I didn’t have my own tools to do that. I went to New York City and then through some of the southern states. Usually I traveled on the trains and sometimes hitchhiking.

The War Years

When I finally came back home we were on the verge of going to war with Japan. My brothers were going into the service. My oldest brother, Ralph, was exempt because he had a family. Howard went into the Army. His job after he was in there a while was as a bartender in the officers club. Some of the officers told him he ought to apply for a commission, which he did. He went through some type of course and he became a commissioned officer. Al went into the Marine Corps. He took his course of training and became a full-fledged Marine.

Elmer was in the Air Force and one of his jobs was working on the new American bomb site in England. At the bomb site they calculated how far the bombs were from the targets. So he spent a lot of time in England. While he was there, he met this woman and he wanted to make it a permanent attachment when the war was finally over but the woman elected to go back to her husband. In the meantime, after he returned to the United States she was pregnant with Elmer’s child.

Bob joined the Navy and spent just about all of his time aboard a destroyer. Most of that time was spent in the Pacific.

Norbert joined the Army or was drafted. I am not sure.

With all of my brothers already in the service I didn’t want to miss out. I didn’t think of it as getting killed, I thought of it was the great adventure of the day. So, I joined the Navy.

There was many people joining at the same time and the biggest part of them joined the Navy because they didn’t want to go into the Army. When it came time to leave there were almost 100 from the Cleveland area that were packed aboard trains and sent to Chicago where the Great Lakes Training Center boot camp was. We were put up in barracks there. We did some marching and they gave us a duffle bag and all of our clothing that we were to wear including dress whites and in the barracks we had to learn to keep our bedding made and to clean the barracks. We were taken out and marched around. We learned how to handle a rifle. They took us to the firing range where we practiced shooting. All the time they were giving us tests. After about three months of basic training we were sent out on our next assignments. I was sent to machinist mate school which was set up in Lawrence, Kansas on the University of Kansas property. There was an obstacle course, rooms with all types of machinery (lathes, drill presses, etc.). At the end of about three months they gave us tests and I graduated 4th in the class. This entitled me to more schooling. During this time when we were at training was where I met Ken Kalbfliesh. We became friends and we went on liberty together. We were a little like Mutt and Jeff because Ken was tall and I wasn’t. We made a great team and we had a lot of fun together.

My next assignment was to refrigeration school. This was at the Carrier Corporation in Syracuse, New York. There were about 15 in the total class that went there. We found housing at different people’s homes. In the daytime every day we went to the Carrier Corporation buildings where our class was set up. They taught us the basics of refrigeration and then the refrigeration machinery that was being used in the destroyer escorts.

After that course, I went to Massachusetts around Boston at the Hingham Shipyards where our ship was under construction. There was a whole line of DE’s under construction. The purpose of these ships was to do convoy duty. It was all types of commercial ships going back and forth across the Atlantic, mostly to England. The reason for us escorting the convoys was because the U-Boats were very active at that time in blowing up the cargo ships. We had aboard the sonar and we carried depth charges and we carried torpedoes.

When I first came aboard my ship, the U.S. Blessman, DE 69 it was still under construction. So I showed up every day and had to be aboard for so many hours. We did fire watch – we kept an eye when welding was going on. I was there at my station very often and I watched how they constructed the coolers. There were two coolers. One was at colder temperature than the others. This was mostly for meats. The other room was at a lesser temperature for all of the other food provisions. The walls were very well insulated and there was a metal skin over the insulation and all of the joints were soldered. They had very experienced people doing that.

At the time I was sleeping in a barracks and often on my time off I would go to the Boston Commons where all the Revolutionary War buildings and lots of other things to see in Boston. Finally the work on the ship was done and we were christened and slid out from the dry docks into the water and we went on our shakedown cruise.
 
Raymond, thanks...if the opportunity presents itself to post more of your Dad's experiences, I for one would be a grateful reader.
 
Just got around to reading this story. Thanks for posting it. It's always interesting to read these true accounts of what people went through in the "good old days".
 
First off, thank your Pop for a great read.
And thank you for sharing it.

Raymond1000 said:
Quite a guy? No question. He was and is a good man.

But he was a son-of-a-bitch to work for. I grew up under a sterner dogma than “Children should be seen but not heard.” By his old world standards, “Children should be criticized and not praised.” My brother and I were always expected to know more than we had learned, and do more than we had done. No job, no matter how well completed, was ever good enough. Mustn’t let the kid get a swelled head. The closest to praise I ever heard from him was, “You did okay. You can pat yourself on the back, but don’t break your arm.”
He’s mellowed over the years. But back then, I was glad to get out on my own.
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I think he knew my Pop.
:)
I got married at 21 & out of the house.

jackknife said:
I think he must have loved you so very much, that he cared enough to hold you to a higher standard, his standard, so you'd learn to do it right in his eyes. I'd bet that he was very proud of you, but like a lot of men of that generation, he didn't know how else to show it. If he didn't care, he would not have been as hard on you. But he did, so he was. You should be as proud of him as he is of you. It's unfortunate, but sometimes those who love the most, are hard on those they love.
Carl.
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True. So true.
 
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