My Amazing Life ....Part 39/ My WWII Clan Buddies
I've had such a lucky break, when looking back. There is a picture of an old friend on my desk, an Italian American buddy, far in advance of my age who I had known in South Philadelphia when I worked there, both of us worked in the airline business many, many decades ago.
He of the "family connections" and I of the naive Anglo-Saxon heritage, conservative Baptist, church every Sunday, not-ready-for-prime-time adulthood. "Bob" I'll call him and three or four of his other goombahs, all "connected" to south Philadelphia casa nostra families and the airline sales business cultured me in the ways of center city life, hob knobbing in social cocktail parties, tangentially whisking by both high and low-lifes, high end affairs and back streets at 2 in the mornings, sweet women and tough men, champagne glasses and tough joints that almost no one knew about.
Promotion, they called it.
In the sixties and seventies, "my crowd" of men were all World War II men, all much older than me. At 27, they all were well into their fifties, weathered by combat, too much gunfire, death, stupid bosses, rigid military life, or corporate rules that imitated non-sensical Army pay grades that tired them out long before their times.
George Heath, the fire plug Military Policeman in German who couldn't pull his 45 auto out of his holster when two Nazi storm troopers with sten guns walked up to him, hands high in the air, hoping to surrender peacibly. George, frustrated that he couldn't clear his pistol, finally said to them, "go surrender someplace else."
Jim Dowling, Navy navigator spent his time through a Norden bombsight, laughing. Gray and wrinkled before his time, he could find sarcastic humor in anything. In the famous air collision of Long Island involving a jet and TWA constellation. His fool boss remarked the Connie's was at fault (prop driven plane).
Jim smiled and spit out, " Oh. I see. The prop backed up into the jet in mid air, huh?"
A whole coterie of funny, satcastic, wizened war vets became my fast friends, we lunched, drank, caroused and coffeed together for years. I learned everything I could from them. Chief among them was Tom Vincent MacNamara, who lied about his age at 16 and wound up at the Tulaga River in southeast Asia fighting the Japanese. Working a machine gun next, he and Joe Fatone, both of South Philly piled up dead enemy so high they had to stop, they couldn't see over the bodies.
All these guys worked for airline management who had no respect for them.
Once, at a professional meeting of 76 of us, an National Association President from New York came down to give us a speech. In it he insulted us by asking who among us even knew the scientific principle by which airplanes flew. After several agonizing moments, it became aparent no one in the Philadelphia contingent would know, so I, the youngest member, arose, raised my hand and he asked me to recite it.
" The French scientist Bernoille said the air pressure over an air foil creates the lift drawing the wing up by creating a vacuum over the wing, and the pressure under it, lifting skyward," I said. "CORRECT," he bellowed.
It brought the house down. Everyone rushed to me, patting me on the back, buying me drinks.
Next week, I was elected President for the next two years.
I loved those guys, my World War II buddies.
###
He of the "family connections" and I of the naive Anglo-Saxon heritage, conservative Baptist, church every Sunday, not-ready-for-prime-time adulthood. "Bob" I'll call him and three or four of his other goombahs, all "connected" to south Philadelphia casa nostra families and the airline sales business cultured me in the ways of center city life, hob knobbing in social cocktail parties, tangentially whisking by both high and low-lifes, high end affairs and back streets at 2 in the mornings, sweet women and tough men, champagne glasses and tough joints that almost no one knew about.
Promotion, they called it.
In the sixties and seventies, "my crowd" of men were all World War II men, all much older than me. At 27, they all were well into their fifties, weathered by combat, too much gunfire, death, stupid bosses, rigid military life, or corporate rules that imitated non-sensical Army pay grades that tired them out long before their times.
George Heath, the fire plug Military Policeman in German who couldn't pull his 45 auto out of his holster when two Nazi storm troopers with sten guns walked up to him, hands high in the air, hoping to surrender peacibly. George, frustrated that he couldn't clear his pistol, finally said to them, "go surrender someplace else."
Jim Dowling, Navy navigator spent his time through a Norden bombsight, laughing. Gray and wrinkled before his time, he could find sarcastic humor in anything. In the famous air collision of Long Island involving a jet and TWA constellation. His fool boss remarked the Connie's was at fault (prop driven plane).
Jim smiled and spit out, " Oh. I see. The prop backed up into the jet in mid air, huh?"
A whole coterie of funny, satcastic, wizened war vets became my fast friends, we lunched, drank, caroused and coffeed together for years. I learned everything I could from them. Chief among them was Tom Vincent MacNamara, who lied about his age at 16 and wound up at the Tulaga River in southeast Asia fighting the Japanese. Working a machine gun next, he and Joe Fatone, both of South Philly piled up dead enemy so high they had to stop, they couldn't see over the bodies.
All these guys worked for airline management who had no respect for them.
Once, at a professional meeting of 76 of us, an National Association President from New York came down to give us a speech. In it he insulted us by asking who among us even knew the scientific principle by which airplanes flew. After several agonizing moments, it became aparent no one in the Philadelphia contingent would know, so I, the youngest member, arose, raised my hand and he asked me to recite it.
" The French scientist Bernoille said the air pressure over an air foil creates the lift drawing the wing up by creating a vacuum over the wing, and the pressure under it, lifting skyward," I said. "CORRECT," he bellowed.
It brought the house down. Everyone rushed to me, patting me on the back, buying me drinks.
Next week, I was elected President for the next two years.
I loved those guys, my World War II buddies.
###
Comments
Post a Comment