The Bank Heist
I lived with my grandparents and mother in their house while my father was fighting in WW2. I was born in 1944. My grandmother, "Momie" cried
herself to sleep practically every night she said, although I don't remember hearing her. Dad was in the Pacific theater....the Philippines. I was told he never saw combat yet what he saw when he came in after the battles must have been horrific. The one thing he ever revealed to me about his fears there was about those flame throwers and what it looked like when a human being was burned to a crisp...fried. He was in a place called..?.... (Leyto or something like that) a book was written about that area entitled, "Ghost Soldiers". I'll look for the book and find the place where he was stationed so I can remember it..to remember what Dad must have seen upon arrival there.
As a girl, I remember finding some photos of men with elephantitis (from the islands) where that their testicles were so large they hung down to their feet....they were as big as a large pumpkin. In the book, Ghost Soldiers, it tells in graffic detail about how the Japanese used their machetes (s) to chop off the heads and other body parts of the American prisoner's of war if, when they were marching to another place, they just got too tired or if they couldn't walk because of the bleeding sores and blisters on their feet. Babies were cut and torn from their mother's wombs. Children were impailed on the Japanese bayonets right before the parent's eyes.
There were other much worse astrocities but these were the sights that faced my father as his company marched in to rebuild the areas and/or to clean up. My father, his old friends from home said, was never the same. Gone was the happy go lucky, innocent, young, small town boy.
There was a Japanese interment camp right outside my little hometown where Japanese-American's were encamped until after the war. I used to try to get my family to explain that place to me but they always changed the subject. Another thing that was hush, hush was the existence of the KKK. Once there was a caravan of cars filled with "sheeted" KKK members...lights on in the cars....they drove by my family's house to intimidate us because of mu uncle being on the school board during desegregation. They actually burned a cross in his yard. I was told these KKK people were ignorant, rednecks but you never know.
When he was drafted he was playing professional baseball in the minor league up in Winnepeg, Canada getting ready for the big time...to play for the Baltimore Orioles or the St. Louis Cardinals. I can never remember which one. He came out of the war unscathed. As he was disembarking the ship stateside, he threw his duffle bag over his shoulder and ruined it. His dreams of pro-ball destroyed with one little mistake.
He and Mother had gotten married at home plate up in Winnepeg with Dad's team mates in attendence. Mother had taken a train along with Daddy's father to see Dad play with the proviso that they would not even call to ask if they could marry. Of course, this is exactly what they did. My mother's youngest brother answered the phone and thought it was funny when he told mother, that if she called he was to tell them to go ahead and marry with the family's blessing which was not true.
Soon after their marriage Dad was drafted and sent to the war. In all the papers I've seen in recent years, the dates don't add up. It seems mother was pregnant when she was married. It then made more sense that they rushed all the way up in Canada by train to get married and that it was my paternal grandfather who accompanied her up there.
My parents were beautiful as a couple. She a cheerleader and Dad a star ball player. He was even recruited by the great Bear Bryant when he was coaching at Vanderbuilt but Dad preferred baseball. It's so sad that their dreams were crushed.
So I was born while Dad was overseas and was around 2 years old when he came home after the war. I lived and grew up in my grandparents house. In our little town everone knew everyone else. You could roam the streets in complete safety never having to lock your doors. On very hot nights we left all the doors and windows open trying to catch a cool breeze. I was in the 6th grade before we had airconditioning AND television. Friday nights, everyone we knew came over to watch the fights and have a few bootleg beers.
During the summer months everyone sat out on their screen porches or out in the yard under the giant oaks and pecan trees. The men cranked the ice cream machine after the women made the custard...sometimes with peaches. The school was a half block away so the children all went over to skate with our skates which were held on and kept on with a key. The skates fitted on our shoes. Neighbors came out on Sundays in their Sunday best to visit with one another. Our front porch was always full and lively. Sometimes the men would go inside and play dominoes...their fingers brownish with tobacco stains. The women would play bridge or go for a walk....like a prominade with the easter bonnets or something. :)
Those were the days that a lady wore high heels and gloves just to go downtown to shop. And we always dressed up when we had to go to our doctor.
One day, the news came to my grandfather through the polilce chief, "Lefty Bolen", that our little local bank was going to be robbed by some famous bank robbers. (don't remember who). I had come home from school for lunch. Momie, who could never keep a secret, told me what was about to go down but that I could, under no circumstance go downtown because it could be dangerous plus I was suppose to go back to school after lunch. Naturally I walked the 3 blocks down to the bank to check it out.
Much to my surprise, Lefty Bolen and Mr. Cleiland the deputy police chief, were sitting on the fence in front of the bank along with just about everybody in town. Both sides of the street were crowded just waiting. One can imagine that when the gang drove through town and saw the crowd they just kept going! I for one, was disappointed there was no action although I did get in a bit of trouble for skipping school that afternoon.
Another morning, when I was about 6, I was called to the principle's office. I was to help solve a very serious problem. The bank vault had been accidently closed and locked and was on a timer. There was no way to open it UNLESS my little hand could fit through the bars and turn on that magic switch. Otherwise, the town would have to take a day off. Alas, I could not get my little hand through the bars. I felt I'd let the whole town down. Took me awhile to get over it not to mention the jokes I had to endure.
On Saturdays, Big Pop (my granddad) gave me a dollar. It cost 11cents to buy a ticket to the movie. A quarter could but you a ticket and keep you in refreshments all afternoon and leave some left over to go to the five and dime to buy comic books. Francis the Talking Mule, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Buddy Hacket, love stories with Jeff Chandler and Esther Williams (I wanted to swim and dive like her), Donald O'Conner and Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astair...and on and on. They were swell days.
These days were during 1951 to about 1953. So much has happened since those innocent days. I haven't felt that warm and fuzzy feeling since about 1956. Then it seemed I was at last beginning to see the world as it was and is.
We listened to the radio.....Fibber Mcgee and Molly, Amos and Andy, The Squeaking Door, baseball games (when there wasn't too much static) and many others. ( I forget the cop show- we always listened to with the sirens blaring out through the speakers) Sometimes we played checkers while we listened. Very often I just fell asleep feeling warm and safe. But those warm, safe says were soon to come to a halt. We would begin to deal with life in all it's realities.
The space age was coming, the Viet Nam war, desegregation, riots of many kinds, assasinations...Camelot coming and going and at the time none of us realized Camelot was fabricated by Mrs. Kennedy. We wanted to believe that the Kennedy's were what they seemed. But they were just "Glittering Images"....false images projected by television for the first time in history.
I had a maid as a young married woman who was the daughter of the maid of my mother and grandmothers. They were paid $3 a day..this was in the early 60's...about 1964-65. In my house, we worked together. We watched the marches and the racial riots together on TV. We watched and wept watching Bull Conner make a fool of himself, we watched and wept as the black people were hosed and dogs were unleashed on them, we watched and wept and became angry at the bombings and the killings.
From the end of the World War in 1945 until the late 50's America enjoyed the illusion of innocence and prosperity. No longer was it enough to promise and give your word of honor. The computer age was on it's way. On it's way was impersonilation, the lure and seduction of new industry to take away the youth in the old home towns...the sons and daughters whose parents had lived there for decades..now being assimilated into the faceless masses of impersonal, cold and harsh "city" life. Succeed, make your fortune and lose your identity. Move away, lose touch, finally, no one knows who your family was and what they did nor does anyone care.
I enjoyed the story, but believe the war prisoners held near Jackson were German rather than Japanese.
Posted by: bill page | July 29, 2004 at 07:24 AM