A Place Called America-I
By John A. Ross (08/07/07)
Long ago a very colorful and influential person in my life, my father, impressed upon me the importance of being self reliant and able to express yourself in a straight-forward manner. Arriving in California on a freight train during the Depression he, my father, met my mother while picking lemons. Endowed with a strong back, very quick hands and an agile mind he quickly graduated from farm labor employment to semi-organized prize fighting. Within a few months, a professional promoter named Cus D'Amato drafted my father into his stable of fighters. Quickly rising in his light heavyweight class ranking, my father became a contender for the championship within a year.
During the same period, Uncle Adolph, Chancellor Hitler, and the Imperial Japanese Army managed to Invade Poland and attack Pearl Harbor. Upon receiving a letter informing him of his reporting date, my father entered the U.S. Army and soon became a member of the Rangers, or special forces. Soon after receiving extensive training he got to see places like Anzio, Monte Casino, Omaha Beach and participated in the Battle of The Bulge to be captured in Germany 6-months before VE Day. Three months after being captured he escaped from a German prison camp in a “honey wagon” and was returned to California to be de-fanged, as prescribed by Eleanor Roosevelt. In appreciation the U.S. Army bestowed upon my father three purple hearts, a Bronze Starr, two-Silver Stars and the Medal of Honor that he gave to his unit.
Discharged from the Army after he had been “de-fanged,” and surviving a few “brushes” with the authorities he “settled down” to become a union organizer for the Iron Workers Union. During this period of his life, my father built numerous dams, power plants, missile launch silos and oil well drilling platforms off the California coast. Today my father lives in Reno, Nevada.
The day this writer was born, my mother was picking strawberries in Central California. The war years found my brother and I living in migrant farm labor camps with our mother’s parents. Interestingly enough, it was my mother’s second attempt to have a meaningful relationship with another man that influenced my brother and I to pursue professional careers. More specifically, we, my brother and I, did not want to go back to the farm labor camp therefore deciding that we would mutually pursue education as the vehicle to escape purgatory.
Back breaking work, years of education and the will to focus on objectives usually renders a composite portfolio of relationships, investments and some convictions that are forged over time. The good investments and meaningful convictions are nice but they really do not amount to a hill of flatus generating red beans, unless there is someone to share them with. Fortunately, “In A Place Called America” the givers, not the perennial takers, always seem to find a niche somewhere to contribute to the well being of others. On the other hand, “the takers” usually find places to fit in but it costs them a lot more.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized the importance of individualism, equal justice and a level economic playing field. As such, all the people that consider themselves sheep, wolves and the various breeds of sheep dogs have important roles to play in the ongoing American story. It was, in hindsight, the sheep that forced my father to go to Europe and “earn” all those medals he didn’t want.
John Ross
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