Gene Roliff – Page 4

Claude Lang

Claude Lang was the oldest boy in the Lang family. During the time I lived with the Langs (1935-1943) he operated Lang’s Sunoco gas station where he dispensed gas and repaired cars and small appliances.

The kids in the Lang family were all musically gifted – except for Claude. He tried playing saxophone for awhile but it didn’t work. His strength was in designing and repairing mechanical things.

Claude built some of the first radio receivers in the area. These radios had large four- pronged vacuum tubes, several coils and knobs, and were powered by 3 or more large square batteries.

Home-made radio receiver with 2 vacuum tubes

With Claude’s help and by studying some of his books, I built a crystal radio receiver. It consisted of a coil made by winding wire on an oatmeal box, a variable condenser (we now call them capacitors), and a “cat-whisker” detector. This receiver needed no power but used headphones and a long antenna wire which we strung outside in the trees. Many nights in bed when I was supposed to be sleeping I would tune in WSM Nashville and listen to old time country music on my home-made crystal set. It amazed me that music could come 500 miles through the air and get into that little tangle of wires.

Crystal receivers made with oatmeal boxes

“Cat Whisker” detector

Claude had an old Model A Ford truck. The passenger’s seat was a wooden pop case and had no backrest. When he took me for a ride he would pop the clutch, take off quickly, and I would fall over backwards, he would then laugh heartily at my clumsiness.

Even when he was many years older I never saw him start out in a car without throwing gravel or burning rubber. He always ran or walked very rapidly wherever he went – his speech and movements were always quick. He moved as if he was constantly going to a fire. It was fitting that he helped establish the Randolph volunteer fire department and was its chief for more than 20 years. He could then get his speed fix by driving a fire truck.

Dad told me about a race car Claude built in the 20’s called “The Red Devil”. It would go over 70 mph when everybody else was going 25. I once saw a picture of it but I cannot locate it now. If I recall correctly it looked like a large stream-lined soap box derby racer.

The picture of the “Red Devil” looked similar to the top picture but it had solid wheels like the racer in the bottom picture and no spare tire.

After Lang’s gas station closed Claude concentrated on repairing lawn mowers, farm equipment, pumps, gasoline engines, electric motors and generators . He had a thriving business. His shop was a mess, littered with old motors, used parts, strange one-cylinder gasoline engines with large flywheels, and other fascinating contraptions. These things were strewn all over the floor, and a visitor to his shop walked around in there at his own peril. If you needed a part no matter how old or rare, Claude could usually come up with it. This was my favorite place to hang out as a kid. I’m sure I drove him crazy with my barrage of questions, but he always took time to answer in great detail.

At one time Claude drove an International hopper truck for Herman Miller. With this truck he would spread gravel on the back roads of Portage County. Sometimes he invited me to ride with him. On one of these rides my mother sent along a quart jar of milk. She told me that because of the constant jarring and rough ride I would have butter in the jar when we returned. I carefully stashed the jar behind the seat in the truck. To my amazement, when we returned there was a large lump of butter floating around in the milk.

One time Claude was asked to repair a leaky gas tank. He ran water through it to wash out the gasoline, then had me help hold it while he attempted to fix the leak with solder and a blowtorch. My dad saw me holding the tank and immediately panicked. He told me to stand several yards away while the repair was going on and he took my place holding the tank. Soon there was a loud bang. Both Claude and Dad were blown across the road and the tank went 20 feet into the air – both ends blown out. Dad ended up with a broken thumb.

Claude was often very funny and had a quick wit. One time when I was older we attended a family gathering and were all sitting around the dinner table passing and sharing the food. At dessert time stewed pears came around the table. I took a few and handed the dish to Claude.

“Do you want a pear?”, I asked him.

“Gotta pair”, he quickly snapped back. Loud laughter followed.

Uncle Claude taught me many valuable things about mechanics and electricity. Because of his knowledge and example he was a strong positive influence in my life. His public service lives on through his sons and grandsons, who still run a repair shop in Randolph and serve as fire fighters around the area.

Chief Claude Lang

My Life as a Milkman

One of the jobs I had while attending Kent State University was delivering milk for Fenn Dairy in Kent. I would start at 4 AM on a school day and work until noon, at which time I would drive over to the university and attend class. I usually didn’t have time to change clothes so I looked more like a milkman than a college student. Around that time (1951) tuition at KSU was $40 per quarter!

After awhile for various reasons I quit school and began working full time. I now had a job as “swing man” at the dairy. This involved my learning all of the routes and taking over for the regular driver when he became ill or went on vacation. It was a difficult job and quite challenging since I had to learn the routes, the amount of each product to drop off, where to leave it, etc. It was quite rewarding monetarily since I earned 110 percent of the regular driver’s salary.

One of the wholesale routes was particularly challenging. It involved driving over 100 miles in a large refrigerated truck and delivering dairy products to super markets as well as small “mom and pop” stores. It was very physical since it involved literally carrying tons of milk into stores each day and getting back to the dairy in time to load the truck for the following day’s delivery.

I envied some of the other delivery men. I would often see two big guys assigned to a bread truck, each man carrying a loaf or two of bread or a package of cookies into a store, while little old 140 pound me was struggling with a 55 pound case of milk in each hand.

Running the retail routes was less physical since the volume was much smaller, there was less lifting, and less distance was covered. On these routes we delivered to private homes, fraternities, sororities, railroad workers bunk houses, or factories, depending on which route was run.

The retail milk was delivered in glass bottles, the lid was pressed onto the top and held by friction. If left outside too long in the winter the milk would sometimes freeze, but the bottles wouldn’t break since the expansion of the frozen milk would just push out the cap making a tubular-shaped appendage of frozen milk sticking out the top of the bottle. It was quite a sight to see the neighborhood cats standing around these bottles having a few licks of those delicious frozen milk-sickles.

Milksickles

Some of the houses had boxes in which to place the milk. I remember one in particular that was built into the side of the house with a hinged door on the outside. It also had a door on the inside so that the owner could retrieve the milk from within the house. The only problem for me was that their little dog sometimes used this box as a bed, and every time I tried to deposit the milk, that little yapper tried to take off my arm.

I think those wild folk tales that one hears about the milkman and the housewives on his route are somewhat exaggerated. Most of the excitement I had was trying to keep ahead of the neighborhood dogs who were constantly snapping at my ass. However I do remember one time when delivering to a super market, the “vegetable girl” followed me into the milk cooler and closed the door. Unfortunately I was so pressed for time I couldn’t do much about it.

One of my biggest challenges was learning to drive a Divco. These were small “stand-up-and-drive” delivery trucks built in Detroit. Learning to drive one was a unique experience.

Divcos

Here is how it went:

There was one pedal on the floor and no seat. When the pedal was partially depressed it acted as a clutch. When pushed all the way down it was a brake. There was a T-shaped gear shift lever on the steering column. While shifting, the throttle was operated by twisting the end of the gear shift lever.

Combination clutch and brake pedal

Divco Thottle

But wait, there’s more –

If the shift lever was in the neutral position and the pedal was depressed all the way to the floor, it stayed down and acted like a parking brake. If you pushed the pedal too far down while shifting, the truck came to a sudden, screeching halt.

There’s still more!

These little beasts didn’t have synchro-mesh transmissions so they had to be double-clutched when shifting. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to double-clutch standing up! If you missed a gear, you just had to stop and start over.

Since we had to step in and out of the truck so frequently, we normally drove with both doors open. One day I was driving my little Divco down South Water Street with a load of milk in glass bottles. I had the little devil wound up tight in second gear and was in the process of shifting to third. When I attempted to double-clutch I pushed the pedal too far, the parking brake engaged and the truck came to a sudden, violent stop – bottles flying out of both doors. Nick Stefen, the local policeman, came along and stopped both lanes of traffic while the embarrassed driver (me) cleaned up the mess.

Then there was the snow in winter. During the delivery process snow built up on the truck floor. This quickly turned to ice and the driver was constantly sliding around in it. Since the only thing to hold on to was the steering wheel, it made steering quite a challenge. Sometimes we looked like hula dancers while driving down the street sliding around on the slippery floor holding on to the steering wheel and trying to keep the truck between the ditches. One of the drivers when making a left turn, slid on the icy floor, tripped over the drive-shaft housing, and flew out the right-hand door.

I had driven large trucks, high lifts, bulldozers and other heavy equipment while working in the strip mine but I never operated anything so tricky to learn as those little stand-up-and-drive Divcos. Once mastered however, they provided a very fast and efficient way to deliver milk.

Because I had dropped out of school I eventually lost my deferment and was drafted to serve in Korea (see previous posts).

After coming back from overseas I decided to say good bye to Fenn Dairy and return to college to pursue other adventures. Fenn Dairy closed its doors around 1965. The building was purchased by The Record Publishing Company.

Many years later Tom Gregory, a friend and former student of mine, found this bottle in a dump outside of Kent, OH.

The Fenn Dairy building several years after closing

Todd Fenn – Owner Fenn Dairy c. 1953

“Uncle Elmer”

One of the members of The Far East Playboys was a stand-up comic named Elmer. We called him “Uncle Elmer”, which was his stage name.

Elmer was from the back-woods of South Carolina. The way he used the English language was quite hilarious to this yankee from Ohio. When he saw the picture in a magazine of a pretty “round-eyed” American girl, he would sometimes become overwhelmed. “Look at them dad-blamed ahhs! (eyes)”, he would exclaim. I will concede that those “ahhs” were quite different from the ones we usually saw in Korea.

One morning Elmer tried to open the door of our tent and could only open it part way. He peered out the small opening and exclaimed, “My Land”, over and over.

“What’s wrong?”, I asked. Elmer responded,

“MY LAND, I BELIEVE IT DONE COME ONE!”.

It had “done come one” alright. During the night four feet of snow had fallen preventing him from opening the door. It was quite a shock for a guy from southern U.S. who had never seen that much snow before.

Snow Storms

Besides doing stand-up comedy, Elmer was also a magician and slight-of hand expert. During the day in our tent he would be constantly honing his craft – juggling cigar boxes and tennis balls, doing slight-of-hand with cards, making golf balls disappear, and trying out his tricks on us. He could hold maybe 12 lit cigarettes in one hand and they would not be noticed by the audience because he was using that hand to point at something else. He could spit out a cigarette and immediately another one would magically pop into his mouth, already lit. He could hold a lit cigarette inside his mouth under his tongue for several minutes and pop it out later without getting burned.

He would wear some outlandish hillbilly clown costume to do his comic routine, then change into a tux and white jacket to do the magic act. He was then “Mandrake The Magician”. The band members were sitting behind him during his act so they could see how he did some of his tricks. When he bent forward, I could see golf balls on springs, rubber bands, scarves, and other paraphernalia hanging out from under his jacket.

Uncle Elmer

Sometimes a heckler would interrupt Uncle Elmer while he was doing his monologue. What happened next to that poor guy was worth the price of admission. By the time Uncle Elmer had finished working him over, that guy was wishing his sorry ass was somewhere else!

First Elmer would invite the heckler to stand. Then he would start taking him apart with statements such as:

“Well HELLO JOHN!

Do you know why I call him John?

Because every time he opens his mouth HE REMINDS ME OF ONE!”

“He’s just mad because his mother wanted a boy”.

“This guy was so ugly as a kid that his mother didn’t know which end to put the diaper on”.

“When he was born the doctor spanked his mother”.

“Of the 7 million sperm that were there when his daddy made him, it’s too bad that one swam the fastest”.

“When the doctor circumcised this guy HE THREW AWAY THE WRONG PIECE”

etc, etc. Of course the crowd would be roaring with laughter.

By the time Elmer was finished, the heckler would turn bright red and sink quietly into his seat.

Most all of the girls in Korea that I saw were rather flat-chested.

“I saw a Korean girl this morning and she didn’t have nary-a-damn titty”, Elmer would say in his finest back-woods southern drawl.

There was a rumor going around, however, about this Korean girl who was extremely well-endowed. The GI’s called her “Bam Bam”.

One night we were coming home from playing a show for the guys in the 17th up on the DMZ. We were riding in the back of our duce-and-a-half as usual. For some reason the truck had to stop near a village. We stayed on the truck, and as soon as we stopped several girls from the village gathered around the tail gate. One of them was the notorious Bam Bam. She was wearing a white cashmere sweater, and she definitely lived up to the rumors I had heard about her.

When Elmer spotted Bam Bam, he said to her, “Meeda meeda one time (let me see)”. Bam Bam pulled the fuzzy white sweater up around her neck. There was a sudden rush of troops toward the tail gate. Then several hands went over the edge of the gate to “check out the goodies!” It was all over in a second or two because the truck started moving again.

Smitty, our driver

Elmer rotated back to the States several months before I did. Later we had other comedians, but none were as colorful as Uncle Elmer.

Elmer training his replacement

Uncle Elmer is going home!

Korea 3

Surprisingly the army food at Camp Casey in Korea was much better than at Fort Knox. American army cooks made the meals with Koreans helping and taking care of the KP.

When we were in the field our food was often C-rations. Although packed 10 years earlier for WWII many of these were surprisingly tasty. There were cans of pork-and-beans, spaghetti, hamburger patties, macaroni and cheese, candy bar, chocolate disk to make cocoa drink, along with a can of sterno canned heat that would act as a small stove. Also in each box was a P38 folding can opener, matches, a pack of 6 lucky strike cigarettes, small pack of toilet paper – all the comforts of home!

C-rations

P-38 folding can-opener

The meals served on holidays were especially good. On Thanksgiving we had the whole spread including turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Each soldier was also given one glass of wine. I figured there were no seconds because the army didn’t want to encourage drinking among the troops. I found out the real truth later that evening.

The cooks at Camp Casey were avid country music fans, and they were also avid booze hounds! After our Thanksgiving meal they invited the band members to their tent for a private holiday party. There in the corner were cases of wine stacked up to the roof. The cooks had “liberated” this from the holiday meal for themselves and their friends! That’s why there were no seconds.

It was a challenge to communicate with the natives since most of them didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Korean. Many Koreans, however, spoke Japanese since the Japanese had previously occupied Korea. To enable communication a form of pidgin-english evolved that was a mixture of English, Japanese, and Korean.

Here is a very abridged version of the pidgin-english dictionary used by the GIs in Korea:

Moose (from Japanese musume ) – girl or girl friend.

Mamma-san – Older lady or madam in prostitution house.

Cherry girl – Young girl or virgin.

Sucahachie – Literally a Japanese flute ( Use your imagination to figure out what it meant in pidgin).

Number 1 (from ichiban) – very good.

Number 10 -Very bad.

Hoochie – house, tent, residence.

Sayanara – Goodbye, kill, take out garbage, throw away, etc.

Slicky boy – pick pocket.

Short time – “Quickie” with a girl.

Skoshi – small, little.

Takusan – big, large.

Takusan stinko – drunk.

Ediwa – Come here.

Ediwa shoes – White rubber moccasins worn by most Koreans.

Meeda meeda one time – Let me see, look at this.

Cutta-chogie – Get-the-hell-out.

Hava-yes, Hava-eeso – I have some.

Hava-no, Hava-uupso – I don’t have any.

Yak juice – Cheap Korean Liquor (It was like drinking razor blades!)

Our house boy, Kim, liked me and wanted to tell me that I was number 1” (good). The Koreans had trouble saying an “R” or an “F” ,so they had real trouble pronouncing a name like “Roliff”. They would substitute “N” for “R” and ”P” for “F”, so my name would come out “Nolipp”. In order to express his approval of me Kim would say,

“Nolipp, you number PUCKING ONE!”.

One day a dog wandered into our tent. Kim chased him out with a broom yelling ,

“CUTTA EESEEKIAH” .

I asked him what that meant. He said,

“It mean GET-OUT-OF-HERE-SON-OF-A BITCHEE”.

For Christmas someone sent me a baby stocking to hang as a holiday decoration. The houseboy saw this one stocking hanging and he asked me,

Other one hava-no?

He couldn’t understand why I had only one stocking.

Kim, our houseboy

Cigarettes and soap were a rarity to the natives and were therefore quite valuable as a form of barter. The houseboys often gave us money to buy these items for them from the PX which they could then trade in the Korean market.

When we went to Japan the houseboys would ask us to bring back Ajinomoto. It came in a red tin box. I didn’t know until years later that it was mono-sodium glutamate (MSG) and was valued by Koreans as a food preservative and flavor enhancer.

Other items of value were GI wool blankets. Almost all mamma-sans wore pants made from these.

Mama-san wearing GI blanket pants and “ediwa shoes”

Often in the Korean markets we would see bottles of expensive whiskey such as Seagram’s VO. Even though these had all the proper tax stamps, labels, and perfectly intact seals, it was not a wise purchase. They always contained “yak juice”. I never figured out how they refilled those bottles without breaking the seals.

Korean Market

Officially we were not permitted to go to the villages or mingle with the natives, but the rule was not strongly enforced. I know of several beds in our tent that had hardly ever been slept in because the occupant had a “moose” in the village.

“Doris Day”

“Jane Fonda”

We were not allowed to have U.S. dollars in Korea. The only U.S. coins we had were pennies. Instead we were issued Military Payment Certificates (MPC). Every few months the Army would give us notice that as of tomorrow all MPC previously issued would have no value and to exchange old MPC for new immediately. It had something to do with the Korean black market. I only know that it did a real number on Koreans that did business with GIs, because when this happened we would see mamma-sans crying at our gate with large rolls of valueless obsolete bills begging some GI to exchange it.

MPC – nickels and dimes – The largest bill I saw was $100. Unfortunately it wasn’t mine

The Far East Playboys never had more than 8 members, so we shared our tent with another group, The Jazz Combo. Many of these guys were extremely talented, had played and sang for big name bands in the States, and had much knowledge of music theory which they willingly shared. I enjoyed hearing their stories and picking their brains.

Our tent mates from The Jazz Band

Benny Grant from The Jazz Band

Our band also had stars from the past. One in particular I know of was Faron Young, who had several country hits in the early 50’s and also starred in some western movies.

Faron Young was once a member of The Far East Playboys

This was 1955 and we were pretty much cut off from what was going on in the States when it came to the latest fads and styles. We had never heard of Elvis, so when guys would come in fresh from the States and try out for the band shivering and swiveling a-la Elvis, we thought they were having some kind of a spasm. It took us awhile to get used to this kind of music.

During this time a country singer named Webb Pierce became popular. His steel player, Bud Issacs, had a very unique sound. No matter what I tried I could not re-produce it. I tried using bar-slants, tuned the guitar backwards, and everything I could think of but I just couldn’t get the same effect.

One day a show that included an Air Force country band from the Philippines performed for our outfit. The steel player was producing the sound that had me mystified. After the show I went up and inspected his guitar. I immediately saw what was going on. He was using a pedal to change the tuning on the fly by stretching the strings! This was the first “pedal steel” I had ever seen. Later with the help of my buddy Jim and some scrap metal and commo wire, we installed two pedals on my guitar. Now I could sound like the modern country players.

Teisco 8-string lap steel which I purchased in Tokyo for $26. I put it on a stand, modified the pickups, and added 2 pedals.

I left Korea for the States on New-Years day, 1957. My buddy Glenn, a guitar player and vocalist with our band, came with me. We walked up the gang plank carrying our duffel bags along with our guitars. Soon after boarding the ship I heard this on the ship’s speakers:

“WOULD THOSE TWO SOLDIERS WHO BOARDED THE SHIP CARRYING GUITARS REPORT TO THE ORDERLY ROOM IMMEDIATELY”.

Now what, I thought, assuming we were in for some kind of punishment. Instead, they wanted us to entertain the officers wives who were being sent home from Japan! The way Glenn and I lived on the trip home was completely different from the way we did on the way over. We were treated as celebrities, and spent our days in the officers quarters eating real food from real plates and white table cloths surrounded by beautiful women. We played music for the ladies on afternoons and evenings. One evening we played a two-man show for the whole ship with a Navy crew member as the MC. The next day they re-played the recorded show on the ship’s PA. The only time we were in the hold with the troops was to sleep in our hammocks.

As of 2017 Camp Casey is still active and occupied by U.S. soldiers. The troops no longer live in tents, but in modern buildings with TVs and high speed internet in each soldier’s room.

Camp Casey 2017

The city of Seoul has changed also, as shown by the following pictures:

Downtown Seoul c.1955

Downtown Seoul c.2017

Thirty years after I served in Camp Casey, my son Neil was also stationed there. It is possible that I could have a grandchild stationed there also. It is interesting to note that after more than 3 generations, troops of the American Army still occupy South Korea.

More Pictures HERE

Korea2

I finally made it to 7th division Special Services where the musical groups were located. This was in “Camp Casey” close to the Korean village of TungDuChon, about 40 miles north of Seoul. Within this compound were several different services of the 7th division, including headquarters, 7th med(a MASH company), 32nd Infantry, 7th REPL-depot, 7th division band, Red Cross, and other support groups. I was assigned to a small all-soldier combo called “The Far East Playboys”, a name borrowed from “The Texas Playboys” which was a popular western swing band at the time.

We lived in a tent that had a wood platform floor and could hold 20 people.

My new home in Camp Casey

Inside our tent were double-deck bunks and two pot-bellied heaters that ran on fuel oil. These heaters each had a stovepipe that ran through the tent roof and a heat control with numbers 1-10. We could lift the knob and turn it up past the inscribed numbers to about a 12 or 13 – we called this “Chinese overdrive”. On Chinese overdrive the stove and 3 or 4 feet of the stovepipe would turn completely red. Although risky, we did that when the outside temperature went below -15°.

Inside our tent showing the liner and fuel oil heater

The tent was normally quite comfortable. Occasionally at night when everyone was asleep and the weather was cold, the wind caused the heater to be disconnected from the stovepipe. The tent would then fill with smoke and the soot would hang in festoons from the inside of the roof. You could tell at reveille which tent had this problem because the occupants would emerge completely black, except for their eyeballs.

We had a Korean in the camp that painted signs and did some minor art work. In exchange for painting a picture for our tent door we gave him an old table radio that didn’t work.

Our new door

The painting was much more appealing at first, then some Red Cross girl who visited the camp got a “case of the asses” and convinced our commanding officer that our girl should be wearing clothes. I guess the RC girl just couldn’t stand up to the competition! So we returned the painting to the artist who added clothes (almost).

Helicopter landing at 7th Div HQ

This place was somewhat more civilized than the 49th field artillery where I was previously stationed. We had Korean “houseboys” who did our laundry and other chores. There were even Red Cross girls and service club girls from the States with ROUND EYES!

Kim, our houseboy

Houseboys doing laundry

No matter what job a person had he was expected to go on field maneuvers one week per month. In the field I was no longer an artillery fire-direction man, no longer a musician, but an infantry soldier. That was OK with me as long as we were not fighting and I could play music the other 3 weeks.

It turned out that the band had been depleted by members who had served their time and rotated back to the States. Upon my arrival it had no vocalist and only 3 members: Curley, a bass and accordion player, Peewee, a fiddle player, and Elmer, a comedian-magician. They had ceased putting on shows due to lack of members. When I arrived we started doing service club gigs with me as a singer – guitar player.

I finally found a 6-string lap steel at a service club. It didn’t have any strings but I scrounged some from another service club along with an amp. I then concentrated on playing the steel, and used every available hour working on that instrument.

Would you buy a used car from this guy?

We put on 4 or 5 shows per week traveling to the different units. After a week or so we would take a day to work up a new show and then make the rounds again.

We traveled to the different Army posts riding in the back of a duce-and-a-half truck that was open in the back. I would always carry my amp on my lap to prevent the glass vacuum tubes from shattering due to the rough roads. The trips were up to 50 miles each way and the roads were not paved, so we usually arrived at our destination looking like dust-bunnies. We often returned to our camp after 3AM.

On this road at night I would sit with my feet over the tailgate ready to jump!

We were constantly checking the new arrivals for musicians. After a month or so of searching for talent we finally put a good band together. We were provided with colorful outfits to wear on stage. The Army also hired a civilian producer from the states to work with us. He didn’t know much about music but he was a theater type and knew how to make us into a first class show band.

Far East Playboys

We sometimes traveled to Japan. We rode in one of these.

C-124 Globemaster

One disadvantage of being at Camp Casey was that there were many new gung-ho officers walking around with nothing to do but harass the underlings. Consequently the Army “chicken$h]+” was worse than it had been at 49th Field Artillery. Many of these guys thought that since we were entertainers we were a bunch of goofoffs trying to get out of work, so they harassed us when they had a chance. Here is an example – even though we often got to bed later than 4AM after putting on a show at some distant outfit, some of these officers had us falling out at 6AM to stand reveille. We could then go back and try to get some sleep except that many times some hard-ass captain or major would come barreling through the tent, get us up and ask why the hell our lazy asses were still in the sack. Our immediate superiors would eventually get this straightened out, only to have a change in personnel cause this process to repeat itself.

In spite of this, It was much better to be stationed here than in most other places in Korea.

Korea

In the ’50s planes didn’t fly across the pacific nonstop so soldiers were transported to Korea on troop ships, a trip of about 22 days. The ship to which I was assigned carried about 600 troops.

The troop ship USS Howze

We were each assigned a hammock in the hold of the ship. These hammocks were suspended by chains, stacked three or four on top of each other and grouped in pairs side by side. It was quite dark and stuffy down there. At the end of 22 days the place smelled like someone had opened up a skunk works.

Hammocks aboard USS Howze

We sailed out into Puget Sound in the evening to a beautiful sunset and water as smooth as glass. That ship seemed so large that I didn’t believe it could be pitched about by the waves. This is going to be a breeze I thought, and crawled into my hammock and promptly went to sleep.

About 4AM I was awakened by creaking and shuddering along with a strange sensation of becoming very heavy, then very light. I was in a bottom hammock and as I looked out over the edge it appeared to be raining, and I heard sounds of retching and gagging. Turns out that the boys above me were getting sea sick. I immediately bailed out of there and headed for the deck and fresh air. There were many boys up on deck bending over the rail. I was OK until I went to the head (toilet) where several guys knelt in front of the johns with their heads in the holes. That did it for me, and I unwillingly joined them!

The mess hall was cafeteria style with a long chest-high stainless steel table with a raised edge and no chairs. Each person was expected to hook his thumb onto the table and his food tray, hang on for dear life with one hand and eat with the other. There were stainless steel pitchers of something resembling coffee on this table, and due to the pitching of the ship these went sliding past us at irregular intervals. Anyone wanting coffee would try to catch one as it flew by.

This scene was usually too much for me so I would slap some meat between two slices of bread, grab an apple, and head for the deck.

Going up a stairwell was a strange experience. Sometimes it was an all-out effort to climb up one step, then I would just float up the remainder with little or no effort.

I remember one incident when I was in a darkened room below decks watching a movie with some other troops. The strange thing was that it seemed to be a normal dark room, except there was the sensation of becoming alternately very heavy and very light. Suddenly the ship hit a rough spot and the projector fell over, causing the picture on the screen to rotate 90 degrees to the right. This caused the sensation that the ship was upsetting and over half the boys immediately fell off of their chairs.

After a few days most everyone obtained their sea-legs and felt OK. However there were a few poor souls that remained sick for the whole 22 days.

Inchon is a shallow water port and a large troop ship cannot get close to the shore, so we landed on the beach in small landing craft similar to the ones used in the invasion of Normandy. We disembarked from these and were loaded into the backs of duce-and-a-half trucks for our trip to the 7th division replacement depot (REPL-depot) in Camp Casey, a drive of about 2 hours.

Landing craft in Inchon Harbor c:1955

What I saw during those next two hours ( and the next 16 months) came as a real shock – It was like being on a different planet. The poverty and hardships suffered by the Korean people were something that I had never experienced or even suspected. To see 5-year old kids starving, homeless and begging for food was not the normal thing I observed in Ohio.

Children begging outside of Inchon

Korean village c:1955

Korean farmer carrying load of straw

Mother & child (note pants made from GI blanket)

I thought I was pretty tough but nothing had prepared me for this. Many people had limbs missing. Shelters were made from whatever was available – cardboard boxes, old canvas, metal from old tin cans, etc. I saw one residence made entirely of beer cans. Later I saw people doing things to stay alive that they would not ordinarily do, including begging, stealing, and prostitution. The kids became extremely creative in their pick-pocketing abilities. We called them “slicky boys”. Because of press censorship this kind of thing was never talked about on the news at home or shown on TV.

When we arrived at the REPL-depot, we were each interviewed so we could be placed in a position the Army deemed useful. I heard that 7th Division Special Services was looking for musicians to travel around the Far East and entertain troops. I told the interviewers that I had played in a polka band and had done some things with a Hawaiian lap steel guitar, so they sent me and some other musicians to a special tent for an audition. The corporal in charge told me that they needed a steel player for a country band. I told him that I was his man – the problem was that there was no steel guitar on which I could audition, so the piano players and others were auditioned and I was left standing around in frustration. I picked up a bass and played along with some of the other tryouts. Then I picked up an accordion and played a polka, then picked up a guitar and sang a country song. I noticed the corporal was paying more attention to me than to the other candidates. He said that I didn’t mention to him that I could sing and play those instruments, so he was convinced that I could play a steel guitar even without a tryout, and if not I could be used on some other instrument. He then told me to go back to the REPL-depot and meanwhile they would cut some orders and send for me very soon. I was thrilled at the thought of playing music instead of agitating gravel!

The next thing I knew I was in the 49th Field Artillery right up on the DMZ – not exactly what I had expected. Some North Korean soldiers were visible in the distance, but a truce had been declared 2 years earlier and we were not shooting at each other. Probably the scariest thing we did up there was standing guard duty at night. Since we were not being shot at, other things we did were tolerable. Most of the time we were at the mercy of the elements. The weather was about like it is here in northern Ohio, except the rain and snow were more intense. The Army bull crap was not nearly as bad up there as it had been at Ft. Knox, and believe it or not, the food was much better.

Often we pulled back from the DMZ to practice fire missions with the 105 howitzers. This was actually fun since I didn’t have to dig holes for old Captain Baddass.

155 Howitzer in permanent mount aimed at North Korea C:1955

FDC bunker 49th field artillery

Going for a practice fire mission

105 Howitzer under camouflage net on a frosty morning

Glen takes a chow break during field maneuvers

Each week I would check with the sergeant in the orderly tent to see if there were any orders for me from Special Services. This went on for several weeks. I guess the sergeant became tired of my pestering and called Special Services. He told them there was a soldier here that says he was supposed to be in their country band. They replied that they had lost track of him, the Army couldn’t find him, and please send this guy back to 7th division headquarters.

When I heard this I almost started believing in God again!

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.

Uncles Emmett and Bud

Emmett and Bud were my father’s younger brothers. They were close in age – Bud being the youngest. Emmett was somewhat shy and quiet, Bud was boisterous and dashing. They were always together when they were young and had a reputation for extreme orneriness according to my mother, who taught them at Randolph school. Emmett would come up with ideas and goad Bud into carrying out the dirty work, then they would both sit back and laugh.

Dad told a story of how they would get their rooster drunk. They would fill a battery tester full of wine, stick the hose down the rooster’s neck, and then squeeze the rubber bulb, thus filling up the rooster. The drunk fowl would then drag his wing tips along the ground to keep from falling over, walk right off of the roost – a drop of about 5 feet, and exhibit other bizarre behavior. The boys would double up with laughter.

Emmett and Bud were both musicians – Emmett played banjo and Bud played guitar, and sometimes they would sing harmony together. They played old time music from the hills of West Virginia similar to what is now called “Bluegrass”. The Langs had never experienced any sounds like this since they were raised on classical and pop, and they thought this music primitive and comical.

Emmett and Bud both enlisted in the service during WW2 and were combat infantry soldiers. Emmett carried a sniper rifle and served in France and Belgium. He told me that the recoil from his rifle sometimes caused the scope to hit his face and gave him a black eye. He was wounded by shrapnel which took about 2.5 inches of bone from his upper left arm. The only apparent lasting effect was that his arm was shorter and somewhat weakened. This prevented him from operating his pump shotgun upon returning to civilian life, so he bought an automatic shotgun for hunting.

Bud carried a B-A-R (Browning Automatic Rifle) and saw action in the Battle of the Bulge and Hürtgen Forest. These were fierce and bloody battles – especially the latter. Unlike over 95 percent of his company, Bud came out of there alive – and without a scratch. He did however, end up with very severe PTSD ( they called it combat fatigue in those days).

Hürtgen Forest

Both uncles were a lot of fun, but Bud was by far the most entertaining. One time when he was courting his future wife she invited him over for dinner to meet her folks. In order to embarrass her when dessert was served, Bud picked up the cake and rubbed it all over his face.

Instead of saying “goodbye” or “so-long” when leaving our house, Bud would always give the old truck-drivers mantra:

“Keep your endgate up and your fifth wheel greased”.

At Roliff reunions Bud was the center of attention. He was full of fun and laughter and the kids loved to hear his stories. Emmett never talked much about wartime experiences, but he knew exactly how to push Bud’s buttons. All he would have to say is, “Hey Bud, tell them about the Battle of the Bulge”. Bud would then stand up, pull in his chin, puff out his chest, take a deep breath, and the tales would flow thick and fast about how he and his buddies beat up the whole German army with nothing but a rusty old fly swatter! Emmett would then just sit back and grin, satisfied that he had put Bud on once again. The stories were obviously a mixture of fact and fantasy, and told with humor as though he didn’t expect anyone to take them all too seriously.

I remember one story in particular in which Bud told of passing a jewelry store in Germany with the name “Roliff” over the door.

Somebody asked, ”Were you nice to the owners”

“WELL, I DIDN’T SHOOT ‘EM”, replied Bud in a big deep voice.

Someone else asked, “Didn’t you stop and talk to them since they were probably your relatives?”

Bud replied, “I didn’t have time”. Then he said in his most important voice:

“AFTER ALL, WE HAD TOWNS TO TAKE!”

The last time I saw Uncle Bud, I walked up to him and said,”Hey Bud, how the hell are you?”, expecting to start the usual round of fun and laughter. With wide-open eyes and expressionless face he stared right through me, not being able to say a word. He was dying of Alzheimer’s, which was most likely due to the stresses of war. The fun-loving person that I once knew no longer inhabited that body.

Because of the sacrifices of ornery boys like Emmett and Bud, we now live in freedom and speak English, not German.

Godspeed Uncle Emmett and Uncle Bud wherever you are. Keep your endgate up and your fifth wheel greased.

A Small Farm

In the early years of the depression when we lived in Akron my father lost his job. Living was hard for those who were out of work since there was no Social Security or food stamps – only soup kitchens in some of the cities. My mother told of the time she was pushing me around in a stroller and spotted an old potato lying on the sidewalk. She wanted to pick it up but was afraid someone would see her and thus discover that we were poor. Fortunately for us we were soon able to move in with my grandparents in Randolph. They had a grocery store and were relatively well off, so I never experienced the hunger that many people suffered at the time.

Randolph is located on US Route 224 between Atwater and Akron. This road passed in front of the Lang family business. Randolph is about 5 miles from Atwater which has a busy rail line, and trains passed through there every day. During the depression there were many men looking for work, and some were hitching rides on freight trains. Since there were possible jobs in the rubber factories these “hitch-hikers” sometimes jumped off the train in Atwater and walked into Akron, a distance of about 20 miles. For food these transients depended on the generosity of people living in the houses or stores that they passed. They often were carrying all of their worldly possessions, including pots, pans, skillets, bedrolls, etc. Many had these articles in a cloth feed sack hung over their shoulder, and some had pots and pans hung under their coats so they looked like penguins walking down the road with their arms stuck out at an angle. The utensils banging together under their coats announced their presence as they walked.

Most of these people were hungry, and Grandma Lang would never refuse food to a hungry person. Many times I would see one sitting on the front steps eating a sandwich. It was a sign of the times.

Later Dad obtained a job and we moved into a house next door to the Langs. On one occasion he invited a beggar into the house to sit at our table during dinner. After having a fine meal of pork, mashed potatoes and sauerkraut the man was feeling rather prosperous. When dinner was finished he thanked us for the meal. He then tilted his chair back on its rear legs, tucked both thumbs under his armpits, and asked:

“Does anyone know where a man could buy a small farm around here?”

Now here was a man who didn’t have a dollar but was too proud to admit it – even to himself. My dad saw the humor in this and told the story many times about the penniless beggar who wanted to buy a small farm.