1958 Christmas, Lake Oswego, Oregon
Now, we return and we are back to the story of this particular Christmas Memory. As an eight year old kid, 1958 was a regular ole year of fun and games with my neighborhood friends including the little vandalism event, it was unremarkable until Christmas that year.
Let us roll back the clock to the end of WWII. Mom and Dad met while they were both enrolled at the University of Iowa (UOI). Dad was an ardent fan of the University of Iowa and followed them pretty religiously. He actually played on the football team while he was enrolled there with a friend named Fred Eno. Dad and Fred grew up together in a tiny little town in Southwestern Iowa called Villisca (home of the famous [at the time] for its Axe Murders circa 1912). Fred and Dad both enrolled at UOI on the GI Bill.
Dad had told me the story of their football careers. Apparently, in high school at Villisca, Fred was a standout athlete on the team. Fred’s family ran the the only pharmacy in Villisca and Dad’s Dad or my Grandpa was in real estate and farming. But Fred and Dad were fast friends from when they were little all the way through high school. Then WWII started and they both enlisted and got shipped overseas to fight. Dad has told me the story of his enlistment and what happened to him, post-enlistment. As he tells it, Dad wanted to fly so he applied to be in the newly formed Army Air Corps. According to Dad, he and 50,000 other recruits were assembled on a airfield somewhere and their names were called out one by one. All the recruits on that airfield had applied to be in the Army Air Corps so the Army had to evaluate each one for acceptance into the Army Air Corps, hence the assembly on the airfield. Dad’s name got called out and he was not accepted into the Army Air Corps so he got an assignment to Northern Scotland where he played trumpet in the AirBase’s Band. This is a bit ironic since Dad’s brother, my uncle Edwin played slide trombone as a professional in several Big Bands prior to WWII. Uncle Edwin was assigned to Patton’s Army as an infantry soldier. A typical Army screw-up meaning Uncle Edwin was a professional musician while Dad was a dabbler on the trumpet. Go figger!
It should be noted here that as Dad lay dying in hospice in 2015, all he could articulate with great difficulty was Edwin’s name and only a couple times in a three day hospice stay until he passed on Mom’s birthday, February 19, 2015.
N.B.:
Mom had pre-deceased Dad in 1989.
Well, , that took an interesting turn but it is the backstory of how Mom and Dad were fans of the UOI football team in 1958 and how this Christmas Memory was intimately tied to our shared experience of that 1958 Christmas.
To be continued in VII.