My Dad In The War (Part Twenty)

I've already told you the story of how my father diarrhea-bombed the Japanese during World War II when he was stationed in the Phillipines, and this story happened around the same time.
     My father and his platoon were camped near a cliff. I don't understand the logistics of how the foxholes were laid out, but that's where they were. For some reason, the Japanese soldiers they were fighting were camped at the bottom of that cliff. For the most part, they left each other alone. There was no order on either side to attack, and no one wanted to die, so each group tried to pretend as best they could that the other group wasn't there.
     It's pretty boring being a soldier. When you were camped, there was absolutely nothing to do. You could talk with your buddies, but after a while you begin to hear the same stories being repeated over and over redundantly, just like this sentence.
     During this period, with the Americans at the top of the cliff and the Japanese at the bottom, the Japanese soldiers must have been just as bored, because one of them began singing their National Anthem.
 

"Kimigayo wa!

Chiyo ni yachiyo ni!

Sazare-ishi no!

Iwao to narite!

Koke no musu made!"

   
     Maybe he was trying to ease everybody's boredom. Maybe he was trying to raise everybody's spirit. Whatever it was, it must have worked, because all the Japanese soldiers were soon singing their National Anthem.
 

"Kimigayo wa!

Chiyo ni yachiyo ni!

Sazare-ishi no!

Iwao to narite!

Koke no musu made!"

   
       I don't know if you've ever heard traditional Japanese music, but it pretty much sounds like cats caterwauling to Americans, and I'm sure the Japanese thought the same thing about American music in the 1940s, especially if they heard anything by Spike Jones & His City Slickers.
     When my Dad and his buddies heard the Japanese soldiers singing, they looked at each other with pained expressions. Some of them stuck their fingers in their ears, and others pinched their noses shut in the universal sign of, "This stinks!"
     "Watch this," my father told his buddy Bennett, and then sang out, "Ay! Ay! Ay! Ai-eee!" like a Mexican mariachi singer.
     The Japanese soldiers stopped singing.
     My Dad and his friends started laughing. They could almost picture the Japanese soldiers beneath them looking at each other in befuddlement with big bug eyes.
     "Good one, Duchene," one of the soldiers told my Dad.
     Needing no more encouragement than that, my father, in full voice, started singing a Mexican folk song.
 

"Alla en el rancho grande!

Alla donde vivia!

Habia una rancherita!

Que allegre me decia!

Que allegre me decia!"

     
     The platoon was busting a gut laughing. Some men were rubbing away tears from their eyes and others were holding their stomachs. Bennett had a hand on my father's shoulder for support as he cracked up.
 

"Te voy a hacer tus calzones!

Como los que usa el ranchero!

Te los comienzo de lana!

Te los acabo de quero!

Alla en el rancho grande!

Ay! Ay! Ay! Ai-eeee!"

 
     With an exaggerated flourish, my father wrapped up his musical debut with a sweep of an imaginary sombrero. His buddies, their laughter tapering off, gave him a round of applause. And then...
     And then, hesitantly at first, the Japanese soldiers started applauding my father's performance, too. Some even trying to imitate his mariachi cry.
     "Goddamn those Japanese," my father told me, years later. "They were vicious killers, but they had good taste."

 
 

Raising My Father

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@JimDuchene

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are having our Thanksgiving dinner this afternoon at 1600 hours. (That's 4:00 pm, for you non-military types.)
     My wife is not only a saint, but she's also a first-class cook. Ask anybody whose eaten her food. Anybody, that is, except my Dad. You could give my father a million dollars, and he'd complain about the taxes he'd have to pay.
     Another plus about my better half is that she's just like me. On-time. If dinner is scheduled for 4:00 pm, I like to be sitting down and eating at 4:00 pm. My wife is the same way.
     I once went to a Thanksgiving dinner where the turkey was going to be prepared in an oil-cooker, which, from what I hear, is pretty quick and makes for a tasty turkey. I had never had a fried turkey before, so I was looking forward to it. The dinner was scheduled at 5pm.
     We got there on time.
     No turkey.
     We ate some nuts in a bowl.
     No turkey.
     An hour passed.
     Still no turkey.
     My wife and kids ate some more nuts and another hour passed...
     Where the heck is the turkey?
     Finally, after 8pm, somebody shows up with the turkey-fryer.
     All right!
     Everybody's nice and hungry and the show's about to get on the road, but, you know what?
     No oil.
     So that same somebody has to leave to go get the oil to fry the turkey with. By that time, it was late and my family was hungry. They had been hungry for a while. A bowl of nuts only goes so far. So we made our excuses, said our good-byes, and found a restaurant to have our Thanksgiving dinner in. I didn't even get to have a slice of the pumpkin pie I made, and I make a pretty mean pumpkin pie, even if I do say so myself.
     I hear the turkey was finally ready a little after 10pm.
     Later, my mother, who was still alive at the time but didn't go because she knows how this particular family is when it comes to time-management, told me, "Did you try the turkey? I hear it was delicious."
     My punctual wife?
     I guess I'll keep her.
     Which is a long way to tell you that...
     This morning, I heard someone skulking around downstairs at 0600 hours. (That's 6am, for you non-military types.) Heck, it was still dark. I picked up my Alaska Brown Bear Rifle and went down to check.
     "Oh, hi," my father said, when he saw me. He was all dressed up and ready for his Thanksgiving dinner.
     In the dark.
     With the whole house asleep.
     Sometimes, I have to feel sorry for the old guy.
 
 

Raising My Father

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jimduchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

 

Baby, It's Cold Inside

If you read the last story, maybe you saw the same pattern that I did.

     When a person is a baby, they ask you "Why?" all the time, and when a person gets elderly, they ask you "What?" all the time.

     Most times, I'm sure it's because they can't hear. Other times, I'm sure it's because they just plain don't want to hear. If he's learned anything watching Law & Order, it's that you can't be held accountable in a court of law to what you haven't been a party to.
     As I write these words, my father is sitting in the great room. I know the weather in other parts of the country is very severe with cold fronts if you're lucky and snow storms if you're not. That's why I live where I do, Here, the weather has been nice. It's not even cool, it's actually warm.

     Don't hate me because my weather is beautiful.

     From where I sit, I can hear my father complain.

     "It's cold," he says to no one in particular.

     Since he doesn't direct his comments to me, I ignore him.  It's not because I'm a jerk, although I know it can be construed that way. I've just been through that conversation a thousand times before.

     "It's cold," he's said.

     "Why don't you put on something warmer?" I've said back.

     "What?"

     "Why don't you put on something warmer?"

     "Something what?"

     "Something warmer."
     "What's warmer?"
     "No, why don't you put on something warmer?"

     "What?"

     So forgive me if I don't volunteer to be frustrated.

     The funny thing is, when my wife and I don't want my father to hear something, that's when he gets the kind of super hearing even a Shaolin monk would be jealous of.

     In the old 70s TV show Kung Fu, a blind kung fu master asked the boy version of David Carradine's Kwai Chang Cain, "Do you hear the grasshopper by your feet?"

     The young apprentice didn't, but my father could have if that grasshopper had been whispering something it didn't want my father to overhear.

     "Whisper, whisper, whisper," the grasshopper might whisper to his grasshopper wife, "and that's where I hid our grandson's Christmas present."

     "Are you sure you hid it far enough in the back of the top shelf of the closet?" my father would want to know.

     "You weren't supposed to hear that," the grasshopper would tell him, throwing up its grasshopper arms in exasperation.

     "What?"
     That's when the grasshopper might want to go out for a pack of cigarettes and do what Bruce Springstein's does at the beginning of his song Hungry Heart. With a hungry heart, he sings...

     "It's cold in here," my Dad says, rubbing his arms, bringing me back to the present.

     I watch him from the corner of my eyes as he complains. I look around the house. The doors are closed, the windows are closed, the fans are off, and, shoot, to tell you the truth, I'm hot..

     "Mumble, mumble, mumble cold."

     I feel like telling him,"You wouldn't be cold if you would just put on some warmer clothes, old man."

     My father is wearing his usual winter outfit: a thin t-shirt, shorts to show off his skinny legs, and sandals. Shoot, I'd be cold if I was wearing that get-up, even if I was wearing it in 85-degree weather.

     My wife looks at me, and I look at my wife.

     "I've bought him all kinds of warm clothes," she's told me before and is telling me now. "His closet is full of warm clothes."
     "What?" my father says.
     "It's cold," my wife humors him.
     "You bet it is."
     To me, she mouths the word, "Packed."

     It's true. My father has sweat shirts, sweat pants, heavy-duty 32-degree long-sleeve pullovers, light-weight jackets, and thermal tops and bottoms. He has Under Armour shirts made with a space-age material available only on Matt Damon's Mars. He has the same kind of clothes that were worn by Bob Hall the final time he summited Mount Everest (He died on the way down, but we only tell my father about the first part.). On and on. And on. Plus, my father has an electric blanket he refuses to use on the armrest of his--my--favorite chair.

     "Man, it's cold," my father says again.

     I shake my head. My Dad is cold because, like a stubborn baby, he chooses to be cold. The older a baby gets, the less cute its antics become. Nothing more annoying than a 96-year-old baby. Unless it's me, when I'm 96-years-old. I bet you I'll still be pretty darn cute.

     My wife has a sixth sense about things. She knows I'm about to open my big, fat mouth and say something I'll probably regret later, so she gives me The Look. Then she gives me a double-shot of The Look, just in case I didn't get it the first time.

     She's right.
     It's better that I don't say anything.
     Because if I did say something... I probably would regret it later.

 

 

Raising My Father

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@JimDuchene

 

November 22, 1963

Being sent back in time to Dallas to stop President Kennedy from starting a nuclear war with Russia that will devastate the world.
     Wish me luck.
 
 

RaisingMyFather

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@JimDuchene

 

And Some Days Just Are (Part Three)

Somehow... someway... I don't know how he did it, but my Dad found one of his great-grandson's Christmas gifts.

     I bought my grandson a dual-propeller helicopter a few months ago and hid it in plain sight. I actually wanted it for me, but, since I'm too old to play with toys, I have to pretend it's for him.
     Anyway, my better half became suspicious when my father was in his room all by himself in the middle of the day. You see, my father is very rarely in his room. If he wants to take a nap, he'll just plop himself himself down in the middle of everybody and their monkey, and expect the world to come to a standstill so he can sleep. He usually remembers to wear his pants, but sometimes he forgets.
     My wife became suspicious because, you know how it is with children, when you hear them go quiet you know they're up to something.
     Well... my father was being quiet.
     "Are you okay, Dad?" my wife called out as she opened his door.
     She was afraid to look, because we've recently heard about some children who caught their elderly parents having sex in an old folk's home, so she didn't know what kind of gross thing he might surprise her with.
     "Hunh? Ah? Wha?" my Dad said.
     "Are you okay?"
     She could see that he was standing over his bed with his back to her, messing around with something.
     "Yeah, yeah... I'm okay," he said, shifting his body to block her point of view.
     "What are you doing?"
     "Me? Ah, hmmm... nothing."
     My father was trying to open a box and was very concerned with what was inside of it. He could see that it was some kind of a mechanical mechanism with metalic parts, but he just could not figure out what it was. He must have thought ISIS had left it there.
     "Um... what are you doing, Dad?" my wife asked him again, recognizing the box in front of him.
     He told her he had found the box and that it contained a very complex machine. He wanted to figure out what it was, but first he had to figure out how to get it out of its cardboard container.
     When my father was twelve-years-old, his uncle used to let him borrow his car IF my father would keep up with the mechanical stuff. In those days, my father could take apart a piece of machinery and put it back together better than before. Today, my father was having trouble opening a box.
     Life is cruel.
     "Where did you find it?" she asked him, knowing that I had my grandson's Christmas gift hidden in the closet out of reach of my grandson.
     "I was looking for something," he told her, not really answering her question.
     "You were looking for something?"
     "Right."
     "What?"
     "What?"
     "Yes, what?"
     "Did you say 'what'?"
     "Yes, what were you looking for?"
     "What was I looking for, you say?"
     My wife looked at him with those steely eyes of hers. Eyes that have brought lesser men to tears. (Not me, of course.) My Dad shuffled uncomfortably from one foot to the other, and then back again.
     "I was looking for my dog," he tells her.
     "You were looking for your dog?" she sputtered.
     "Yeah, why?"
     "Why were you looking in the closet for your dog?"
     "What closet? I wasn't looking in the closet."
     "You must have been looking in the closet, because that's where we hid the box."
     "What? Oh, yeah, I was looking in the closet. Sometimes my dog likes to go in there."
     For the record, his dog has NEVER gone into that closet.
     "How did he get to the top shelf?"
     My wife was just teasing him now. She knew that the box was hidden in the top shelf of the closet toward the back.
     "What do you mean?"
     "Well, that's where we had our grandson's Christmas gift hidden. How did your dog get up there?"
     My Dad hemmed and hawed, trying to come up with an answer. My wife eventually felt sorry for him, and changed the subject. Sort of. She was annoyed to find out that he was snooping around through our closets, but as long as she didn't find him in her underwear drawer, she could put up with it.
     "Your son bought that," she told him.
     "Who?"
     "Your son."
     "What about my son?"
     "He bought that."
     "Bought what?"
     "Bought that toy."
     "Toy? It's a toy, you say?"
     "It's a toy for our grandson, Dad," she told him.
     "A what?"
     "A toy."
     "It doesn't look like a toy."
     "Well, that's what it is."
     "What?"
     "A toy."
     "It's a toy?"
     "Yes, a toy."
     "It sure doesn't look like a toy."
     After fifteen, but more like twenty, minutes of explaining to him that it was a toy for his great-grandson, he finally answered, "You don't have to tell me what it is. I know a toy when I see one. But who's it for?"
     "It's for your great-grandson."
     "I have a great-grandson?"
     Actually, if he wanted to count how many great-grandchildren he has on one hand, he'd have to pull down his zipper, that's how many he has.

     Later that night, after finishing the five-star dinner my wife is always gracious enough to cook for him, his eyes pop out and he gets a Halloween look on his face. He's still not done with us.
     "Ah, hey!" he exclaims loudly, his muppet-like arms flying all over the place.
     My wife and I look at each other.
     "Hey now, how about some ice cream?"
     "Did you want some ice cream, Dad?" my wife asks him politely.
     My father ignores her question.
     "Where's my ice cream?" he demands. "Aren't you going to give me some ice cream?"

     "If that's what you want," my wife tells him.

     "Damn right, that's what I want," he says. "Mumble, mumble, mumble ice cream."

     My wife serves him his ice cream with a little bit of the magic dust his doctor prescribed as a topping. Twenty minutes later, my father is sound asleep like a baby in front of the TV.

     The magic dust helps him, but it also helps us.

 

 

Raising My Father

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jimduchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

 

Some Days Are Worse (Part Two)

The TV in the great room is blasting.
     It's on a cooking show. My father, who's never cooked a meal in his life and never will, likes to watch shows like Top Chef or Cutthroat Kitchen or anything with Guy Fieri, who's given my father many hours worth of entertainment wondering how it's possible to have bleached hair with black roots.
     "How does it grow that way?" he'll ask no one in particular.
     "He colors it that way," my wife will explain to him
     "He does?" my father will respond, seemingly amazed at the idea. And then: "But how does it grow that way?"
     I like Top Chef, but mainly I like that hot girl who tells all the cooks to take their knives and stick them where the sun don't shine. An insult coming from a hot model somehow seems less insulting. If she told me, 'Take your knives and go," the only thing I would hear would be: "Chocolate cake."
     On the cooking show my Dad is not watching, a woman who looks like the cartoon character Dr. McStuffins from the Disney channel is one of the cooks. The other two are a skinny white guy and a fat white guy with a bald head and pony tail. I don't mean to imply racism by pointing out that these guys are white, but they are. I don't judge a man by the color of his skin, I judge him by whether or not he wears a pony tail. My father, meanwhile, sits in front of the TV looking like he's agreed to go toward the light, and I'm not talking about the one on the TV screen.

     I'm hungry, but instead of seeing what Ronald McDonald is up to, I decide to make myself lunch. It's early, but it's clear to me that the coast is clear now and might not be later. My father is out like Jeb Bush's presidential ambitions, and the TV's volume will block out any noise I'll make. I prepare my feast and put it in the toaster oven to heat.

     I'm sitting at the counter, waiting. My back is to my father in an attempt to not lose my appetite. That's when I hear a VERY LOUD gargling sound.
     Please, no.
     There's a swishing of liquid and then a smacking of lips.
     "Ahhhhhhh!" I hear him say. Smack! Smack! Smack! I hear him go. Click! Click! Click! I hear him, well, click.
     I sit... I wait... and, like David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu, I listen, hoping the noises and the exclamations, like General MacArthur's old soldier, fade away. My lunch is almost ready. Maybe I can wait him out.
     But no.
     I hear a shifting in his--my--favorite chair. It's my father, like a geriatric Godzilla, coming back to life.
     I wait, very quietly.
     I hear him gargle his drink very loudly. He must have his mouth open. Occasionally, he stops to swish the liquid back and forth. He then smacks and clicks his lips together several times before he starts the process all over again.
     The whole thing makes me feel like gagging.

     I know he must do it on purpose, but just how he knows when I'm getting ready to eat is beyond me. Maybe he sits there, with one eye open, pretending to be asleep. Maybe, in the dead of night, he inserted some kind of a James Bond tracking device just under my skin where I wouldn't notice, and then proceeded to lay in wait. Maybe he does it to make me leave the room. Which I did.
     I'll eat later.

  

  

Raising My Father

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jimduchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

 

Some Days Are Better Than Others (Part One)

Some days are better than others.

     My father and I were sitting at the kitchen table. It was just after lunch, and my father was drinking a cold glass of ice tea and I was enjoying a hot cup of gourmet coffee, my only indulgence. I was also reading the morning newspaper, which is a rare thing for me to do so early in the day, because my father is known for hording the morning newspaper like it's the last roll of toilet paper during the zombie apocalypse. When, out of the blue, he asked my wife,"What are those things?"

     My wife looked at the table and then around the kitchen counter, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary or unrecognizable. I looked, too, but saw even less.
     "What is what?" she asked.

     "Those green things?"
     "What green things?"
     He pointed at the decorative bowl in the middle of the table. It was filled with limes.
     "Those," he said.

     "You mean the limes?" my wife asked him.
     She looked at me, her eyes starting to water. I was still trying to figure out if my Dad was serious or not. He's been known to pull our legs on occasion. He's also been known to pretend he doesn't know something to get out of doing something else, but, try as I might, I couldn't see what was in it for him to pretend he didn't know what citrus fruit was.

     "Those green balls in the bowl," my Dad said. "What are they?"

     "Those are limes," she told him gently.

     "Limes? Hmmm... did you say limes?"

     "Yes, Dad. Limes."
     "Limes..." he repeated, processing the information.
     "Dad," she told him, "you've had limes before."

     "I have?" He considered this. "What are they good for?"

     My wife tried to explain them to him, but everyday, commonplace things are hard to explain. Try explaining the word "the," if you don't believe me.
     "Dad, limes are... well, limes. You've had them in your tea."

     "Oh? Hmmm..."
     He looked at the glass of tea in front of him, but didn't see any green balls in it.
     "You squeeze them and add the juice to your tea," she explained further.
     "I don't do that," my father said, sniffing as if doing such a menial task were beneath him.
     I must admit that's true, because my Dad's motto is: "Why do things for myself, when I can just get my daughter-in-law to do them for me."
     When my wife is out and I'm in charge of taking care of my father, he's perfectly capable of doing things for himself. Not everything, you understand, but the basics, like squeezing a wedge of lime, for example. He has to, because I won't do them for him. But when my wife is home he's been known to call up the stairs for her to fetch him a bowl of ice cream, and, yes, I did use the word "fetch."
     On this occasion, it may just be a case of my father forgetting how to squeeze a lime because the last time he had to squeeze one for himself was when General MacArthur kept his promise and returned to the Philippines.
     "I know you don't do that," my wife told him, "because I do it for you."
     That was pretty bold, especially for my wife. Usually she'll just agree with him and then vent to me later about it. I'll listen, but only because I hope to rewarded later.
     "Ahhh," my dad finally exclaimed, as if the veil of forgetfulness had lifted, but more probably to change the track the conversation was taking. "Limes."
     He looked at me.
     I looked at him.
     I nodded.
     He nodded back.
     He turned his attention back to my wife.
     "Where do they come from?" he asked her.

 

 

 

Raising My Father

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jimduchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene