An Unremarkable Life

By Samuel Parkins

Some lives change the world.  Some don't.  All are worthwhile.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Samuel Parkins
• Release date: Jun 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393105350

Samuel Parkins

Sam Parkins was born and raised in Minnesota and now lives in Kansas. In between, he moved around for education, jobs, and military service.  His oath has no expiration date and he continues to serve as a life member of the Vietnam Veterans of America.

Book preview

AN UNREMARKABLE LIFE

Prologue (as told to me by my father)

Mid-March of 1950 a young soldier came running into the day room in Fort Sill, OK.  He was desperate.  He ran over to the only other person in the room.  Harry!  I need your help.  My date brought a friend and won’t go out unless we double date.

Harry agreed to help out and grabbed his hat. 

As they both walked out to the car, Harry saw a beautiful redhead in the back seat.  He took off his hat, leaned in through the open window and kissed her on the cheek before ever saying a word.

They were married two weeks later

on April 1st.

I was born to Harry and Louise Parkins on December 21st.

Go ahead.  Do the math.  I’ll wait.

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They said I was born a couple weeks premature.  We’ll stick with that story.

Forward

I was having trouble remembering common words like cupboard and elevator (Lethologica, look it up.).  I asked a VA therapist if this was Alzheimer's or mere senility.

He reassured me that it was probably just the latter.  He suggested that as a memory comes, I should write it down.

This is a compilation of those memories.

These may not be exactly correct as these are only my own imperfect memories and the timing on some may overlap as they happened concurrently, at least in my memory.

Before anyone mentioned here calls their libel attorney, please consider these things.

I am not wealthy or even comfortable.  I live on social security.

All of this is true as far as I know. 

Again, this is neither fiction nor non-fiction.  These are merely an old man's fading memories.

Some memories will not be included because they might negatively affect someone to be printed or I've simply lost them. 

Growing up

My earliest memory is of my mother and father coming home from the hospital with my newborn sister, Cindy.  I was sitting on a radio the size of a desk and warm on a cold Minnesota February night.  Dad's friend, Duffy had been baby-sitting.  I was a little over 2 years old.

There was a blast of cold air as they came in.  Cindy looked like all babies do, I guess.  She was all bundled up from the cold.  At my age one didn't really consider other people that much.  I doubt if I even understood that mom and dad hadn't been there until then.

No big reveal, just a snapshot of a moment.

I don't think I noticed much when my brother, Randy, was born the next January.  He just seemed to have always been there afterwards. 

My dad, an Army Guard officer, was activated and sent to Fort Sill, OK as an artillery instructor while I was just starting kindergarten.  Oklahoma rules were different and I was too young to go to school there. I ended up skipping Kindergarten when we returned to Minnesota. 

We lived in a Quonset hut house, corrugated metal, 2 bedroom, which passed for officer family housing back then.  The base hospital seemed like a giant's castle looming over us up on a hill.  As an Air Force 2nd Lt, I returned there to visit.  It was a couple hour's drive from Sheppard AFB where I was now stationed.  I found the view of that hospital, but the huts were long gone.

It seemed too small for that giant now.

My mother was from Texas.  I am sure she felt uprooted moving to such a strange place as Minnesota.  Sometimes I would see her just staring out the window at nothing.

She did, however, like the pretty yellow flowers that just seemed to grow wild in everyone's yards. 

She had never seen dandelions before. 

There were woods on three sides of the Jackson, MN house where I lived.

Besides knowing short cuts through the woods in most directions, I just preferred those paths to the sidewalk to school, parks, etc.  I liked Fall especially for the colors, the dry crisp air, and the way the leaves crunched as I walked.

One day, coming from school, I got to the last small hilltop before coming out into my back yard.  Something was different.  There was the usual sunny opening, but something was in there.  It took a moment to realize that 4 deer were standing there, looking at me.  After a moment, I guess they figured that I was no threat and wandered off into the trees.  I never saw them again.

My parents were in service organizations, dad an Oddfellow and mom a Rebekah.  Sometimes we kids would get dragged to some function or another when a baby-sitter was not available.  One Christmas Eve there was such an event.  We had all gotten into the car when mom remembered something and asked me to go back in the house to help with it while dad, Cindy, and Randy waited.

It was a ploy.  We quickly got the Christmas presents from Santa out of hiding and under the tree and ran back to the car.  As a first grader, I had not yet been told there was no Santa, but had begun to suspect.

That night I was Santa.

I kept their secret.  It was now my secret too.

My mother would shake Christmas presents to try to figure them out.

Dad came up with a way to stop her.  He put a cheap wine class in a box with some rocks and wrapped it up carefully.

The first time she shook it she heard the glass shatter.

She never did it again.

You know you're Minnesotan when: 

Randy and I as kids, outside in a snowstorm, wearing parkas, practicing casting into snowdrifts with our new Christmas fishing rods.  Dad recorded it on 8mm film, from inside.

The only time I remember ever seeing my father angry was once when he was driving me around base, in the mid '50s at Fort Sill, OK and we saw some soldiers waiting for a bus on a corner.  There was a bench with a cover for 'whites' and an uncovered bench for 'colored'.  At my age I didn't know anything about race and didn't notice any difference between the two groups.  Dad became visibly angry.  Somehow, unlike most small children, I knew he wasn't mad at me, but at someone else.

There are no white soldiers or colored soldiers, just soldiers

This moment set my feelings towards race for the rest of my life.

In his final years dad became racist and anti-Semitic. 

This still convinces me that racism is related to dementia and senility.

The park downhill from my house had equipment that would never be allowed today.  Swing sets were tall and you could fly out at the apex of your arc with the inertia that could land you in a tree.  One piece was a kind of tee-pee shaped merry-go-round that was attached at the top center to a pole.  You could swing it hard enough to slam into that pole, and we did.  One fiberglass dome looked like a mushroom bud with alcoves around it with handles. 

That mushroom ride was fairly tame, but I found that you could crawl under and inside of it.  I could see the shadows of other kids playing on it, but no one could see me.  As they pushed it around I could ride the framework inside.  This worked for an hour or so until I saw a huge shadow and heard a truck pull up to the side.  The gravel truck was pouring fresh gravel around the play area and built the ground up to where I could no longer crawl out.  I had to wait until they were done and no one was playing so I could dig enough gravel to squeeze back outside. 

Her name was Sheila.  She was an exotic,black haired woman. 

She was foreign, from Canada. 

We met when our families were camping in Northern Minnesota. 

She was my first kiss and my first lust. 

She was also an older woman. 

She was 7.

I had a hamster, Hamlet, when I was in about 4th grade.  He lived in a bird cage and seemed to like climbing the walls up to the top and sitting in the swing there.  He would often wait for me by climbing the bars like some prisoner.  I would tickle his tummy before letting him out to feed him a small carrot which he would stuff into his cheeks.  He escaped while I was at school one day.  Mom didn't like the 'little brown rat', but knew how much I loved him.  She looked for him all day and finally found him behind the dryer.  She coaxed him out with a piece of lettuce and got him back in his cage.  After that he was no longer a rat, but a tiny bear and she liked him too.

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In Minnesota it was illegal to release carp back when you caught them.  They would crowd out the 'good' fish.  You normally would kill them and toss them up on the bank.  The smell of dead fish told you that carp had been caught there in the past few days.  Clear lake was good fishing, but had lots of carp.

When I smell that now it takes me back to fishing as a child. 

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I was about 5 or 6 when mom let me go into the bakery by myself to get some pastry. 

I didn't know big words very well and the lady said they didn't have any of what I ordered. 

I went back to the car and told mom they were out of brasseries. 

Bismarks! she said. 

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I wasn't allowed to buy stuff by myself for a while after that.

How does a kid understand what is going on when the hamster he's had and loved for two years just won't wake up?  How do you explain what it means when Hamlet stops breathing forever?

How do you explain death to a grieving child?

We had a station wagon when we kids were little.  During a thunderstorm dad would open the garage door and back the car so that the rear-facing seat was just outside.  Now we could get in the car inside the garage and climb into that third seat and watch the lightning while safe and dry.  The storms fascinated us and we never developed a fear of the lights and loud thunder.  I still love to sit at a window and watch thunderstorms.

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Our house in Jackson had a picture window facing the back yard and you could see most of downtown Jackson down in the valley.  That view was my dad's pride and joy.  He even cut down a couple trees that infringed on it.  We would spend time watching storms move in from the west or the Christmas lights across town come on in the evening.  Keeping that large window clean was a priority.

Mom was inside watching dad outside cleaning the window and trying not to laugh.  I'm sure he didn't notice anything outside, but inside we could see how badly it was streaking. 

She let him finish and come back in, then asked him to look outside as the sun was setting (to get the best streaks).

Instead of window cleaner, he had grabbed a can of Pledge furniture polish.

She never did let him live that down.

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In the woods behind my childhood house in Jackson there was an old wire fence that had almost fallen over.  It was springy when I stepped on it and seemed like it would make a good hammock. 

I was wearing a parka unzipped because it was only Fall.  The air was crisp and when the sun hit the coat lining it felt nice and toasty.  I lied down on the square wires and let the sun warm me.  The warmth and soft bouncing lulled me to a wonderful sleep.

There were no bears or wolves in those woods.  The only large animals would have been deer and they were no danger.  At that age of innocence I never considered the hazards of a stranger finding me there. 

After a while I got up and continued exploring the woods.

In one clearing in those woods there was a slight depression.  I wondered how that had come to be and explored it.  Inside I found some old nails and other pieces of metal.  There seemed to have been stones arranged around the edge of the depression at one time.  Perhaps this was once a pioneer's cabin.  Archaeology was not yet all that interesting to me and I never followed up to find the history of that location.

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Back in the days of black and white TV I used to really enjoy seeing and learning about interesting places around the world.  Lowell Thomas had a show that really made me look forward to seeing every week.  What a delight it was to hear that he also had books about these places.  The city library was on my usual walk home from school, so I went there and asked about Lowell Thomas travelogues.  The librarian looked down at this grade school kid and said that those books would be too hard for someone my age to understand.  Challenge accepted.  I found and read them all and was thrilled to learn how people lived in Tibet and New Zealand and other places this Minnesota boy had not even imagined.  My rebellion against that snide librarian created a lifelong compulsion to read everything that I could find.  I never thanked her properly.

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Another show that I was allowed to stay up and watch (after my younger siblings went to bed) was the Tonight Show with Jack Parr.  I enjoyed the comic bits with the man-on-the-street segments with Don Knotts (who one day I would get to meet.) as the nervous one and Louie Nye as the aloof know it all.

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One night there was a travelogue (Oh Boy!) from Italy including movies of the locals harvesting pasta from