Month: August 2017

Drafted

After spending a summer working in the strip mine I entered Kent State University but I had no idea what I wanted as a career. I started a pre-med course but had no desire to become a doctor. After 2 years of classes I still didn’t know. This lack of direction made it difficult for me to study and my grades began to suffer. To add to the problem, I was working almost full time at Fenn Dairy . I bought a 1940 Ford so I could commute to Kent, and my parents furnished meals and allowed me to stay at home. I would get up at 3AM and work until around noon, then go to class, many times not having time to change clothes. Then my father became ill and did a stint in the hospital, so I decided to drop out of school.

About 3 months later I received this envelope in the mail:

Which contained this letter:

As you can see it was from my “neighbors” at the Portage County Draft Board telling me that I had been drafted to serve in the military, and to show up at the bus station in Ravenna where a bus would take me and others to Cleveland for a physical exam and intelligence tests.

When we arrived in Cleveland at the Federal Building, a sergeant herded us into a room with high ceilings and long marble benches and told us to strip.

So there we stood between the marble benches, shivering, scared, naked as bird’s butts, and wondering what was going to happen next. The sergeant then shouted,

“ Readyyyy, SIT”. Everyone “SAT”.

When those bare bottoms hit the marble benches in unison it sounded like a round of applause echoing through the room. The doctor came in, inspected us for lice, looked in our ears and other “hard to reach places”, gave us the “cough test” (turn your head and cough), etc.

I don’t remember much about the written test except that it was slanted toward those who didn’t read at a very high level. For example, it showed a drawing of a wrench, then  showed drawings of wrenches oriented in different directions and asked which drawing depicted the original wrench.  At that time the average level of education of a draftee was 6th grade.

I must have passed everything because soon I was on a train headed for Ft. Knox, KY.

Basic training was somewhat traumatic – especially for those boys who were out of shape. I was used to going without sleep, and I didn’t have trouble with the physical part since I had been running in and out of stores carrying 55 pound cases of milk every day for Fenn dairy. The harder part was putting up with the cadre trying to destroy our identity by shouting in our faces, insulting us, and generally trying to make us feel worthless. They made it especially tough on those who didn’t conform.

Infantry squad, basic training at Ft. Knox, KY (author on right)   c. 1955

 

Shoes had to be spit-shined and lined up. All foot locker lay-outs had to be exactly alike including a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes in the upper left hand corner. I didn’t smoke but I still had to buy cigarettes to display in the foot locker.

There were several training sessions on taking apart and cleaning  the M1 rifle. We broke it down into small pieces, each part was cleaned and oiled, then it was all put  back together and handed in for inspection. It didn’t matter how spotless the rifle, it never passed the first inspection. There would always be a “boulder” in the barrel (speck of dust) or a “huge rope” (small piece of fuzz)  somewhere in the works.  We then had to take it all apart again, clean, oil, re-assemble, etc. We finally learned to wait until midnight to hand in the rifle, because it would always pass inspection at that time since the inspectors wanted to quit and go to bed.

Author with M1 Garand rifle      c. 1955

I remember one boy in particular who had a rough time conforming. For punishment the sergeant made him run around the barracks flapping his arms and shouting “I’m a big shit bird”. The sergeant was right behind him yelling, “louder, louder” in his ear. I felt sorry for the kid but it was such a funny spectacle I couldn’t keep from laughing.

Although I didn’t particularly like the soldiering stuff I could do it well enough to stay out of trouble. At the end of our 6th week I was awarded a weekend pass to go into Louisville. It was the weekend of the Kentucky Derby horse race and I had bought tickets. That morning on a whim the sergeant pulled my pass because he found a guitar under my bed, so I missed the race. I will never forgive him for that. This is the kind of “chicken $h!+” that causes “friendly fire” incidents.

For my advanced training I was schooled in fire direction for a field artillery unit. This involved geometry, slide rules and map-reading and I found it to be quite interesting. We would use information from a forward observer to locate the position of the target on a map, translate this into numbers the guns could use, and then pass these data to the gun batteries. This was actually fun!

But it was still the army, and we had a captain in charge of our unit who thought he was either Napoleon, Caesar, or Attila the Hun.

Our job at the time was to put on a combat demonstration for important officers. They would sit in bleachers and observe military maneuvers being carried out in a large field. First planes would come in and drop napalm. Then the artillery (us) would shoot the place up, then the tanks came in, then the infantry, etc.

Combat demonstrations at Ft. Knox, KY.   c.1955

One day I was working fire direction out of the back of a truck for one of these shows. I had the misfortune of looking up from my table and out the back of the truck for a moment. “Captain Badass” saw me and decided I was not concentrating, and that I needed an attitude adjustment. He told me to get down from the truck and start digging a hole. After I had been digging for a couple hours Captain Badass told me to fill the hole back up, then he decided that my mind was properly cleansed so he put me back in charge of directing fire.

That was a big mistake. On the next shot I moved the map pin to a point that caused the shells to land in front of the bleachers where the officers were sitting. It was still within the safety area but it deviated quite a bit from the point of attack, and that made the captain look very incompetent to the observing dignitaries.

I heard later that when the shells exploded some of the officers dived underneath the bleachers. The captain didn’t say a word to me about the incident, but the following week I was headed for Korea.

 

The Roliffs

Since I had lived with my Lang grandparents for over 8 years I knew them better than I did my Grandma and Grandpa Roliff. I am telling this story from what I remember and from the things my father told me.

The Roliff family originally lived near Ravenswood, West Virginia, close to the Ohio River. According to Dad, they moved more than 30 times before he was 17, at which time he left the family to strike out on his own. During this time my grandfather, Fred Roliff, did not have a regular job, nor did he want one. His grandfather, Andrew Jackson Roliff, owned two paddle-wheel steamers on the Ohio River and made a fortune selling and delivering barrel staves.

The Valley Belle – owned by Andrew Jackson Roliff –     c. 1850

Somewhere along the line this wealth was squandered, but the attitude of entitlement remained with my grandfather. He was a very charming man and a good story teller, but hard work was beneath his dignity. Dad said his motto was, “Only Fools and Mules work”. His only occupation at the time was “horse-trading” which was about as dependable for making a living and supporting a family as being a gambler or used car salesman.

To add to the family stress, Grandpa Roliff was not very practical. Dad tells about the time Grandpa made some money selling a horse. Instead of paying the rent or buying some substantial food, he came home with a wagon-load of watermelons.

So here was the Roliff family with 7 kids, a horse-trader for a father, that moved every time the rent came due. It was Grandma Roliff’s job to keep this family together and to keep everyone from starving.

If anyone remembers Mammy Yokum from the Lil’ Abner comic strip they would have a good picture of my grandmother, Clementine Roliff. She had flaming red hair and the hardened look of someone who had lived a difficult life. Her ancestors were some of the original settlers of Appalachia who came from Wales and Scotland. She was the classic example of a tough mountain woman. Dad remarked that she could “chew nails and spit rust”. He recalls her chasing salesmen and rent-collectors from their property with a revolver.

One of the Roliffs’ last moves as a family took them to Portage County in Ohio, near Randolph. My father obtained a job in the Lang gas station-restaurant as a short order cook.

After the children grew up Fred and Clementine Roliff separated – I never knew the details. They didn’t appear to be angry with each other, it just seemed that they just didn’t want to live together.

After the separation Fred lived in a small apartment in Ravenna, did some house painting, and later was employed as a guard at the Ravenna Arsenal.

Fred “Grandpa” Roliff as Arsenal guard – c. 1943

Clementine had a bungalow in Brimfield and lived there with Uncle Emmett, her second youngest son, who had recently returned from the military.

When Emmett started a serious relationship with a girl, Grandma became worried that he was going to move out and she would be alone, so she was not very hospitable to Emmett’s new friend.

One day Emmett was looking around in the pantry and discovered a bottle of saltpeter.

Now saltpeter was used to preserve meat such as corned beef and prevent botulism in soups. There was also a rumor that it was mixed into food given to soldiers to cause impotence. Everyone at the time believed this, and Emmett was no exception – he was suspicious that Grandma was putting saltpeter in his food in an attempt to keep him at home and away from his girl. She was certainly capable of this, so he confronted her about it.

“It’s used to cure your meat”, Grandma told him in her own defense.

“It’ll cure your meat alright”, Emmett replied.

No one ever knew the real reason why the bottle of saltpeter was in the pantry or of its use, but nothing would surprise me concerning this incident. Grandma Roliff had a reputation of toughness when it came to her survival.

Grandma was a staunch Democrat and she hated Richard Nixon with a passion. As a matter of fact she had his picture glued to the inside of her toilet seat. She called him “Old hawg jaws”.

Emmett eventually moved out and Grandma acquired a boyfriend, but she didn’t want the family to know about this. While visiting her one day we suddenly heard some moaning and groaning coming from the closet. She had made the old boy hide in there so we wouldn’t discover her secret, but our visit lasted too long and the poor old guy almost suffocated. After the secret was exposed, friend Charlie was allowed to visit with us when we came, so from then on the closet was only used for clothes.

I often played bass with a dance band from Canton. One evening we played the Lakeview Cafe in Randolph. The crowd on this night was rather quiet and subdued. All of a sudden the door flew open and in came Grandma Roliff with 3 of her girl friends. They were all over the age of 60, but they danced like 20 year olds and the mood immediately went from subdued to wild and upbeat. They stayed for about a half hour, then out the door they flew and on to the next bar. The mood in the Lakeview Cafe immediately went back to quiet and subdued.

Clementine “Grandma” Roliff dancing at Ruth Roliff’s wedding – c. 1954

One time Dad and I went to visit Grandma at her place in Brimfield. We heard some loud singing and laughing coming from the back of the house. Grandpa Roliff and Uncle Bud were up on a scaffold painting the house, singing old hillbilly songs, laughing, and having a good old time. The singing went something like this:

Grandpa: “Rattler was a good old dog blind as he could be”

Bud: “Every night about supper time I believe that dog could see”

Both came in on the chorus:

” Here Rattler here, here Rattler here

Calling Rattler from the barn, here Rattler here”

Now they would start improvising:

Grandpa: “Rattler’s dead and gone now where all good dogs do”

Bud: “Better not act like a dog yourself or you will go there too”.

More singing, laughter, painting, etc, etc.

This was the last time I saw Grandpa Roliff alive. He had a heart attack and died in 1951 at the age of 66. Grandma Roliff died in 1977 at the age of 92. I don’t believe I will ever meet more colorful people than these two.