Dear Blog Reader.
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I am on
the banks of Lake Indiana in Sawyer, Michigan . I know that you may be saying to
yourself that there is no Lake Indiana in Sawyer Michigan . I have dealt with this topic
extensively in previous blogs. It is a sore subject. How my forefathers would
let the Michiganders, or Michigan goose people
as I like to call them, usurp the Indiana
name when it was our territory to begin with is beyond me? As I said, it is a
sore subject and I find myself sitting here on the edge of this great lake
contemplating how to get the naming rights back. I do take a bit of comfort in
the irony that I am sitting in the town of Sawyer ,
Michigan not 7 miles from the Warren woods. It is an old growth forest set
aside by Mr. Warren, he of the corset fortune, for the purpose of tormenting
all of the “saw-yers”, who made a living, turning other old growth logs into
2x4’s
Last week was a special week in Sharritt land. We received a
text from a cousin informing us that two old Army trunks were found in her
mom’s garage. She had figured that they were filled with her father’s army gear
but upon opening the rusted hinges all of the tags said Sharritt, which meant
that they were my dad’s old Army issued gear. Having been hermetically sealed
in those trunks for close to 60 years, they were in amazingly good shape.
Donning gas masks to eliminate the strong odor of still pungent moth balls, we
went looking for treasure.
Treasure item number 1 was a pair of blue silk toddler pajamas.
I suppose that he was planning ahead. I know that mom wasn’t pregnant with me
at the time. I am a little disappointed that they had already been relegated to
a sister’s garage and forgotten by the time I came along. I would have been
stylin in powder blue silk pajamas with Korean hooha on the lapels.
Treasure item number 2 was a five year diary. I opened it
carefully, hopeful and expectant of the details that I might find about dad’s
Korean adventure. Before I go further, I have to say that for dad it was an
adventure. Hostilities were over. Dad was there for the rebuilding. He was part
of a construction battalion. He drove semi’s and heavy bulldozers all over the
south end of the peninsula. He would have been the first to admit that he was
fortunate to not have been in the contingent of brave men, my father-in-law
included, who were thrown into a violent and desperate situation and fought
bravely against overwhelming odds.
While revelatory expectations were high, they were not to be
fulfilled. There were just two lines written on one page of the 1825 available
for posterity. On the very last page, on the back cover, Herman Lloyd Sharritt
was written just below the “Property of” imprint. The hand writing was
terrible, a trait passed on to his son. Just below his name in much neater
script was written “Who is property of Estella Mae Sharritt.” That is all that
it said, but it said a lot.
The rest? The chest was filled with dress greens, field
greens, warm weather gear, rain gear, wool socks, everything that a soldier
needs to help rebuild a country. Everything was in pristine condition. It was
like he had not spent two years in Korea wearing army issue. This made
perfect sense to the lovely Miss Beverly. She astutely pointed out that dad
would wear one shirt until it fell apart and it was time to get a new one. He
had no concept of a laundry rotation. He had his reasons, and we kids had our embarrassment.
That was all. Move along there is nothing else to see here
folks. It appears that dad brought home some stuff from Korea . It
appears that his sister thought that they should be kept for posterity. Fifty
year later the posterity has worn off.
However, dad did bring back something else, or maybe left
something off for the kids to sort though. It is a story that was told on the
back of a tractor in farm fields and repeated from time to time to eager kids who
wanted to hear a story that reverberated in our collective world view DNA.
Dad was the rookie; new kid on the block. His platoon was to
go down to the depot in a 6 truck convoy to pick up a load. The company had a
fleet of trucks; all grade A Army issue. However, all trucks are not created
equal. They have different sized motors, different gearing ratios. Some trucks
suck. It was the tradition in the company to saddle the newbie with a
particularly sucky truck. The convoy would take off and leave the newbie who
was to dutifully follow the others to the destination. Unable to keep up the
newbie would become lost, wander around in a foreign country with road signs
that made no sense on a road system that had been designed for oxen and carts. The
befuddled newbie would finally get back to base with no load and then get
yelled at by the sergeant for being an incompetent.
Dad had heard rumblings of the upcoming initiation. He had
vowed to not be the butt of the company’s jokes. In today’s world, he decided
that nothing parties like a rental, especially and US Army rental. He got
behind the wheel; instructions in hand; follow the truck in front of you. Everything
will be fine and don’t get lost. Being a farm kid, he quickly diagnosed that
the problem was one of insufficient power for the gearing that was set to high.
So when you shifted the transmission into a higher gear, the engine would bog
down and never recover. The solution was to have more speed before shifting
into the higher gear.
Hat pulled down low over his eyes, he pulled out behind all
of the other trucks. They immediately sped off in an attempt to leave him in
their dust. With them pulling away he needed more speed. So he stamped the
pedal to the floor and refused to shift. As the tachometer climbed to the red
line, he was gaining speed and his brothers in arms were no longer pulling away
so fast. The truck was screaming now and starting to shake. Dad said that he
thought he would either keep up or the truck would blow apart. If it blew apart
it would be the army’s problem so keep it in the red for another second. Then
with things shaking in the cab, he shifted into second. The truck, with the
gearing needed to carry speed, leapt forward and he was catching up.
He followed the same pattern all of the way up through the
gears. 20 miles later, he pulled into the depot with the other guys. As he got
out, he received the slaps on the back of the entire convoy. They loaded and
everyone headed back.
The trip back he did the same thing pulling into base right
on the heals of his buddies. The sergeant came storming out of the barracks and
started to tear into dad. He was told to follow the convoy all of the way to
the depot and he had obviously stopped outside base and waited for the convoy
to return. He was derelict in his duties. The others came over to the sergeant
and got him to calm down. They assured the sergeant that he had indeed kept up.
“Look in the back. He has a full load.”
Nature or nurture? It is hard to say. But that story 40
years later still makes my inner motor hum.
Take care,
Roger
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