By the time my mother passed away in her sleep, a year ago, she’d let go of most of her possessions. She spent most of her time in her sparsely furnished little bedroom, in an extended care retirement complex, with a few family photos hung on the wall next to some framed needlepoint projects my father had completed during his last years.
My sister Cecilie lived a few miles away, and spent quite a bit of time with Mom, taking her out sightseeing or shopping or to her doctors’ appointments. My sister had also filled her garage and closets with some of the items that Mom no longer needed, but wasn’t quite ready to part with. Boxes of family photos. Smaller, prized pieces of furniture. Some ceramic knickknacks with sentimental value. Christmas decorations. Jewelry that hadn’t been worn since the 1950s, perhaps.
Earlier this year, the family gathered at my sister’s house to celebrate Mom’s long life and to disperse, among the grandchildren and great grandchildren, the few prized possessions that Cecilie had been keeping at her house. We spent hours looking at old family photos, including the faded black and white ones featuring Mom and Dad’s relatives and friends that no one could identify.
Most of the more recent photos were in color, of course, and had been shot almost exclusively during happier times. Graduations; weddings; camping trips in the mountains of California; Thanksgiving dinners; the trip to Niagara Falls with Mom’s sister, Claire.
Among the possessions was a spiral-bound notebook with a zebra-skin pattern on the cover. Inside I found my father’s scribbled handwriting — obviously, written during his final years. Maybe even, shortly before he died?
The notebook contained an interesting mix of simple jokes (Dad loved to tell jokes) and haiku poems. He’d also included notes on good fishing locations and techniques. Some of the haiku had been crossed out with an ‘x.’ A few had been circled — like this one:
Green moss covers the
Gnarly bark of the old oak.
Where is the sunshine?
About halfway through the notebook was a page titled “Autobiography.” On the following dozen pages, Dad had scribbled down a few significant essays from his childhood — moments from a long life that, for whatever reason, held a special significance for him. I’d heard Dad relate these same stories at family gatherings, or at the dinner table — and here were those stories, one more time, written down in pretty much the same level of detail that I’d often heard them recited aloud.
A few special moments, from a 92-year-long life. On a dozen pages.
Dad had spent most of his career teaching English and Drama at Oakland High School, so you might understand that books, and writing, were central elements of his existence. He’d also directed children’s theatre programs at various Oakland recreation centers, and wrote numerous scripts for the kids to perform. You might say that he’d spent his life teaching young people how to interpret the written word, and how to compose their own essays and stories.
“Write about what you know.” That was one of his key instructions to his students. I remember a time, after my sister and I had left home, when he was beginning to write a textbook about techniques he’d developed to help high school kids become better writers. Definitely, this was something he knew. But he never finished writing the textbook, I guess.
Nor had he finished filling this notebook I now held in my hands. And I wondered, who was Dad writing this for? Who was the intended audience? Was he writing notes to himself? Did he intend for his children and grandchildren to find it, one day, and come to understand him a bit better?
One of the final pages in the notebook contained a short story about his Army Air Corps Basic Training, during World War II. Dad had gone on to become a flight instructor — stationed in Tucson, Arizona — and from what I recall from his storytelling, he trained dozens of cadets the basics of flying an airplane. Many of those cadets didn’t survive the war.
Of course, my father did survive, to tell the tale.
In Basic Training in Anaheim, California, the Army Air Corps cadets were required to take a number of courses in Ground School. They were not difficult, but if you failed one, you were “washed out” of flight training and sent home, to be assigned to the infantry.
Among those courses was one called “Aircraft Identification.” In it, you had to identify the silhouette of an enemy aircraft, when it was flashed on a screen for 1/25th of a second. Of course, you had seen these same silhouettes several times before, but in the final test, if you failed, you were gone.
Fortunately, I had an advantage. I had an extensive background building model airplanes, so I had no trouble making the identifications. And there was one other cadet in the class with a similar background.
The final exam. Lights out. The shuffling of chairs. He and I found ourselves surrounded by frantic cadets.
What to do?
The first silhouette flashed.
“What is it?”
“It’s a Japanese Zero.”
What else could one do? Do you let twenty-some-odd cadets flunk their final test?
All of them passed.
I have never regretted it, or felt ashamed.
I’d heard this story before, but I’d never given it much thought. I’ve always considered my father to be one of the most honest, ethical, caring people I’ve ever known. But I can now ponder this story, and what it says about my father. And what it doesn’t say.
I can imagine twenty Army Air Corps cadets frantically scooting their chairs over, to be closer to the two men in the room who would be easily able to identify an enemy plane within 1/25th of a second. I can imagine their fear of being “washed out,” and their desperate hope that their two colleagues will help them cheat on the test.
I can also imagine a detail in the story that Dad never explained. Someone in the room — not one of the cadets — was running the projector during this test. Presumably, this person witnessed the two men giving the answers to the other cadets in the room, but chose not to reveal that any cheating had taken place.
What, actually, had been tested, here?
Loyalty? And loyalty to whom?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.