Letter Home

1956, NJ: John, Dad, Jim 

Remember the Class C training? Last week, in a box of old bills, Dad discovered a letter he had written to his parents. The letter is postmarked Jacksonville, FL, and was mailed to East Orange, NJ, where his father was temporarily employed. I have typed up the letter in its entirety—fixed some spelling and minor punctuation, but otherwise left it alone—but no typeface can possibly take the place of the handwritten (on personalized Navy stationery) flavor of my Dad’s missive. Take a peek.

The road trippers!

A. W. Petrakovitz

VR-6 Mats. McGuire A.F.B.   Box 47 NAS JAX

Trenton, NJ   Jacksonville, Fla

10-1-56

Hello,

Guess who is writing? You’re right it’s your lazy son. Well, really I couldn’t write because I have a broken arm? No, huh, you didn’t believe it—how about a sprained wrist. No again. Huh. A badly cut finger, a hangnail, no lead for this pencil, ah, no stamps, or I could try the one about losing the keys to my locker, but you wouldn’t believe that either. Okay, I give up—I have no excuse, and you can bawl me out when I get back. You can even use the belt on me and I won’t say a word—go ahead and beat me. I got it coming.

I saw Donna and Bob, boy, did they look good. They picked me up at the gate Saturday at 1:30 and we spent the rest of the weekend together. Man what a ball. I did get mad though, Bob wouldn’t let me take them to dinner. I couldn’t pay a thing except the hotel room where I stayed. ($2.50) Boy they stayed at a nice motel, swimming pool and air conditioning. Donna sure has good taste.

Wait, this car was green?

Last Saturday, myself and two other guys went down to Jax Beach. We got there about 10:30 A.M. and parked the car on the beach. We went in swimming and before we knew it the tide was in and we were stranded on the beach with the car. Luckily the car was on high ground and didn’t get wet—even though the road was under water—it sure got loaded with sand between the wind and what we tracked in. Sunday we had to wash it, and believe it or not, under all that dirt I found green paint. Man I had to wash ever thing on the car. Underneath, inside and even under the hood—the motor was covered with sand so I turned the hose on it and washed it off.

I got the straight dope—we are leaving here a week from Friday and driving up through the western part of North Carolina. One the guys lives there and we are going to spend the night there to break up the long trip. So if I don’t see you that Sunday I’ll be up on Monday nite for sure.

Well, this is your favorite son (I hope) signing off until I write again (you hope).

Love,

Tony

xxxx

Naval Man, 1956

Hog Hunt

The other day I read that funny letter “written” by a farm kid who had just joined the Marines, urging the family back home to enlist immediately. Marine life was apparently a cake walk compared to the daily farm chores, hike to the rural mailbox, shooting the night’s dinner, or wrestling with the neighbor boys (or oxen). Even the food was okay, especially since you could eat the city boys’ leftovers in addition to your own tray. The writer just knew the other siblings would also excel at this soft life, with easy-to-please drill sergeants, and easy-to-avoid officers. Dad started chuckling at the first paragraph, was guffawing by the third, and when the letter was revealed to be written by the farmers’ daughter, he howled.

An actual letter home, from my dad to his.

Once the mirth subsided, he shared with me a tale from his Navy days in New Jersey. He was part of a group of men from his base chosen for Class C avionics electrical training in Florida. Dad was one of the few enlisted men on base with a car, so they pooled their money for gas and headed south on a road trip. Along the way, they decided to stop in South Carolina, at the home of one of the young Seaman from the group.

Dad has fond memories of their Southern hospitality. The couple was awfully impressed that Dad would give their son a ride to Florida—and back! They were very warm and welcoming, taking the entire group into their home, and feeding them up right. And there was entertainment. While they were there, the young men were invited to help put food on the table by joining in a hog hunt.

Feral pigs. Wild boar.

Makes me think of medieval hunts and ferocious, scarred-back, long-tusked menaces that must be killed to save the communities they terrorized. Of high feasts, accompanied by a bardic tale of the epic hunt, the prey brought down by large groups of fearless men on stalwart steeds, equipped with barbed spears and mighty crossbows, the boar then served for supper well-roasted, with an apple in its mouth. Brave deeds and heroic efforts. Trumpets. Crowns. And stuff.

The reality is that South Carolina has wild pigs rooting around across the entire state, and it’s always open season. The hogs are a menace, in that they steal food from the native wildlife, damage farmlands and infrastructure, spread disease to livestock, and attack people.  They are mean, stubborn, and not at all inclined to be eaten. They also tend to fight amongst themselves.

When they fight, they use their tusks to scrape along their opponent’s side and back. As these wounds heal, they create a tough layer of scar tissue that seems impenetrable, even to bullets. Not knowing this, Dad was all set to take a hunting rifle and head out the door, but he was stopped and told you never just take a rifle alone. Hunt in a group, he asked? No, take a .45 in a holster, as well.

“What do I need that for?” he wanted to know.

“Because once you’re out there, and that animal gets you treed, he’s there. He stays there till the day he dies. He won’t let you down from that tree. You may have shot at him with the rifle at the start, but you think you gonna get a rifle shot off from that tree? No way. Before you know it, there might be two or three of them there. So, you take that .45, and shoot ‘em in the head.”

Dad wouldn’t give me details of the hunt, and I leave it to you to decide whether the two-gun wisdom was shared before or after the hog hunt, but dinner the next night was a right tasty side of pork.

(I will tell you this: he was invited on a deer hunt when the family lived in Pennsylvania. He got up in the trees, sighted a likely buck with his rifle, took a good long look into the deer’s eyes, and lowered his gun. He just couldn’t shoot it.)

Twigs, Trains, and Blueberry Trees

Yesterday, my father told me that when he was young, he had no toys. It was the Great Depression, you see, and they couldn’t afford any little frivolities. Instead, said he, he would make do with the scrap ends of the lumber his father was using to build their home. Poor, sad, little boy. Resourceful and plucky, but forced to grow up early, and put away childish things. Serious from the start, that’s my Pops.

Don’t you believe it.

We had been looking through some old photos from a museum, and one featured a wooden rocking horse, brightly painted, and built around some sort of gliding mechanism. Real hair for the mane, saddle made of leather, reins draping downward. This was not your typical rocker. But Dad looked at that for only a moment, dismissing it quickly. So, too, went the metal roller skates that attached over the shoe—“We lived on a gravel road! How would I roller skate without killing myself?” No board games, no puppets, and what on earth would he do with a stuffed animal? They did have a radio, but that’s not a toy.

Last night, my mother called his bluff. Of course he had toys, said she. It may have been the Depression, but that didn’t mean the kids lost their imagination or determination. For her part, she and her group learned to make toys, like dolls out of corn silk or rags, or find a rock to scratch a hopscotch pattern on the ground. At this point, Dad admitted to making things, too. He would take two bits of wood, and nail them together to make a gun, and go play War. Or find a twig on the ground, and chase the little girls with it.

Dad on his trike, looking for things to run into.

But of course he had some toys, manufacture or otherwise. When the family lived in Chicago, there was some money, and my dad was the first grandchild. You may remember his balloon-tire tricycle, with which he attacked neighborhood garage doors. There were always pennies to put on the railroad tracks, and the fence around the railroad right-of-way to clamber over and conquer. There was a frenemy who would scrap with him every day after school, just for the fun of fighting—or perhaps because of the pretty-boy clothes Grandma Lucille insisting on dressing him in.  

Dad looking fancy in 1938.

When not chasing little girls or fighting bigger boys, he could look forward to rides in the family’s new 1940 Ford convertible. With his father at the wheel, his mother up front with his baby sister, Dad had the backseat to himself, and he could stretch out and revel in the wind in his face. There was the small matter of his father’s chewing tobacco. Grandpa Tony would spit out the window, but right back in it would come, right at my dad. He laughs now, but I’m not sure that part of the ride qualified as fun.

And he had an electric train set.

Like most things in his life, he just had to push the limits with that train. Maybe three or four cars long, with a caboose, it was just big enough to have some real fun with. He would race it around and around the track, letting it gain momentum, trying to see at what point it would jump the track. It just wasn’t a complete session unless the train derailed. Much like how he rode his bike as a young teen—standing on the seat while racing down steep hills. Always live to the edge. Always see just how far you can go.

You can’t always stop the fun to think about the consequences. Once, he noticed a handsaw in their garage in Chicago. The Investigative Child immediately grasped the possibilities, as well as the handles of the saw. He trotted over to the blueberry tree his Grandpa Petrakovitz had planted, from which fruit he made his wine, and climbed on up. Once he was comfortably ensconced on a limb, about 4 or 5 feet from the ground, he began to saw. He just knew that limb had to come off—oh, the fun he would have with it then!

Well, he was sawing away, and sawing away, stopping every so often to check on his progress, when his father emerged from the apartment, camera in hand. He just stood there, close to the tree, watching his four year-old son at his play-work. Eventually, Dad noticed the camera, and asked what was going on. “Oh, said his father, laughing, “I’m just waiting for that branch to come down. Just keep cutting.”

“But why are just standing there, with that camera?”

“Just waiting for the picture to happen. Son, when that limb falls, you’re going to fall. You’re sitting on the wrong side of the cut!”

He stopped sawing. But the disappointment still remains: his adventure was cut short. His glory went unachieved. Unlike the time he borrowed a buddy’s motorcycle. But that, as you know, is another story, for another day.

Christmas, 1951. Back: Tony Sr., Rezie, John, Tony Jr.
Front: Lucille, Jim, Donna, Dad. There were toys aplenty,
but none for Dad (cue the sad music).