Gampy cover photo

Gampy cover photo
Bernie/Tex and Grampy/LB

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Orphans and Rags

In the late 1940's times were tough for many of the soldiers who'd returned from WWII. Especially soldiers like Grampy who had dropped out of school in the 8th grade and with the advent of war, saw the Army as the easy, go-to choice for employment. The fact that he got drafted also influenced his career preference. These men soon discovered the realities of a life that involved rising at dawn in a cold, wet fox-hole, and daily watching their backs for foreign soldiers wanting to kill them or, worse, killing those same strangers first —all the while missing family and country for far too long.

Ron, Bernie, Gary, Tex and Mike
Soon after the war he shook the dust of military life off his proverbial sandals, returned to Massachusetts and never looked back. He had a gal waiting for him there. Tex and Bernie were married soon thereafter and, as every fairy tale goes, babies followed and time marched on. Ron was the first baby born about a year after they wed, then two years later came Gary. About that time Grampy found himself jobless. Again. Times were tough and PTSD wasn't popular enough yet to validate any problems he might have had adjusting to civilian life. There were no food stamps or government assistance program to fall back on. These sturdy men, these war heros, these G.I. Joes who would become known as the “greatest generation” had only themselves, strong backs, and a clever wit to see them through.

So Tex joined up with an Army buddy of his and the two of them became Rag Pickers. Grampy told me this story with a straight face—as if it were a noble profession—clicking his dentures for effect. Every morning he and his buddy would go to the town dump. The dump trucks would inevitably lumber in with their heavy loads and commence dumping their contents into deep trash pits. “So you'd jump into that crap and pick out rags?!” I asked in disgust. “No! Now shut up and let me finish” he said. Chastised and zip-lipped I sat back and listened. He said the Sanitation workers would set the trash on fire as soon as they were done dumping so he and his buddy got two very long sticks and fashioned sharp hooks on the end. As soon as those trucks started dumping they would lickety split stand on the edge of the pit and fish out whatever they thought they could sell. Rags, cardboard and magazines—quickly before it was set on fire, all the while being careful not to fall into the pit itself, which would spell utter disaster. “LOOK magazines fetched the most” he told me as a final matter of fact. “What kind of 'utter disaster'? What does that mean?” I asked. But he was done. He sat back, rubbed his stomach and glanced toward the kitchen, asking if we had any ice cream. “Wait dad”, I said, “Who the heck would buy that stuff in an era before Goodwill stores and recycling? How did you make money?” He squinted at me...a bit irritated at my ignorance, leaned forward a bit and said “Junk yards would buy them.” That's all. Junk yards. Then he walked off to check out the freezer.

Meanwhile, zoom back to 1948. As his Rag Picking career took a dump (pun intended), Bernie and the boys found themselves evicted from their apt. Rag Picking doesn't bring home much of a paycheck at best so Bernie relied on her own clever wit to come up with a Plan. She went to the local Catholic orphanage and begged for a job doing housework, cooking, whatever they needed in exchange for room and board for her family of four. Mother Superior looked doubtful but even crusty old nuns have hearts so she gave her the job—chief cook and bottle washer. Bernie told me this story herself several years before she died. For many months, she worked from dawn to dusk cleaning and cooking while her boys lived there with the orphans and were cared for by the nuns. She seldom was allowed to see them but she knew they were eating and were warm. They socked away whatever money Tex brought in, dreaming about the day when they would get their own little apartment again at last—dreaming about hitting the high road.

NOT Mother Superior - He just plays one on TV

I asked Grampy about this Orphanage story as he was eating his ice cream, just to see what he'd have to say and fully expecting him to pronounce his dearly departed wife a damn lunatic and a bad liar. But no, he corroborated her story completely, with his own version of course. He added that Mother Superior was a mean old so and so. If the orphans said anything she didn't like she'd pop them in the mouth. Well one night at dinner Grampy said something she didn't like (it was only a matter of time) and she hauled off and hit him. POP in the mouth. Grampy is a doer, not a thinker. He stood up, wiped the blood off his lip, pulled back his left hook and popped her back, BAM! Before she could get up off the ground he'd grabbed Bernie's elbow, ran upstairs for his boys and left that orphanage for good.

Well truth be told, it's questionable the woman actually hit him and I sincerely doubt he'd really hit her back. He likes to exaggerate from time to time. He was only a scrawny 5'3” pencil stick Canadian, while Mother Superior was a corn-fed, bible-thumping Amazonian. Chances are he just ran... and never looked back.

1 comment:

  1. I loved this story. I imagine living through those years being dirt poor was traumatic enough by itself. Grampy is justifiably fiesty. I guess the grumpy part he earned.

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