Surviving America

By Larry Charles Peterson

Surviving America is a true story, an autobiography, of Larry Charles Peterson. Through the years Larry has had the hard luck experiencing bad things right during a time when America was experiencing similar hard luck. A professional victim of sorts, Mr. Peterson tells how he dealt with each situation. It's a good entertaining, honest read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477142806

Larry Charles Peterson

Born on August 28th, 1952, Larry Charles Peterson was brought up in a rural community in northeast Iowa. He had no idea he would become a “Forest Gump” of sorts concerning many major issues Americans would face. The main purpose for writing this book was to show that anyone, anywhere, anytime, can be propelled into a controversial national predicament.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Larry Charles Peterson.

Cover sketch by Diane Munkel

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4771-4279-0

Hardcover 978-1-4771-5536-3

Ebook 978-1-4771-4280-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

(Remake of the Baby Boomer series copyrighted in 1996, Library of Congress registration numbers: Txu761-936)

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

118237

Contents

Thank You To:

Part One

A Personal Account Of Growing Up During The Baby Boom Era.

Chapter One

Under The Mushroom

Chapter Two

Into The Fire

Chapter Three

Revolution

Chapter Four

Prime Time

Chapter Five

A Visit To Hell

Chapter Six

Optimistic Rejuvenation

Chapter Seven

Utilitarian Spirit

Chapter Eight

Understanding Jurisprudence

Chapter Nine

Cruel And Unusual

Chapter Ten

Third Party Action

Chapter Eleven

Boot Camp

Chapter Twelve

Faithful Nighthawk

Chapter Thirteen

Loosing Altitude

Chapter Fourteen

Special Missions Man

Chapter Fifteen

Service Manager Coadjutant

Chapter Sixteen

Illusions Of Hope

Part Two

Reflecting On The Experience

Chapter One

Wheels.

Chapter Two

Women

Chapter Three

Society

Part Three

Witnessing The American Dream

Chapter One

Historic Humor

Chapter Two

Animalistic Behavior

Chapter Three

Excessive Toilet Paper Use

This book is dedicated to all the people mentioned in it that didn’t survive America. Be it in war, automobile crashes, illness, or a job related accident.

Thank you to:

The Austin Writers’ League

Marie G. Storey

Diane Munkel

Vicki Holland

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country . . .

Robert F. Kennedy

Foreword

Amazing what a person experiences in a lifetime and how many people you can potentially meet. I truly believe you can learn something from everyone you meet. I’ve had the good fortune to have met some fine humans. Some good animals too. I think I learned the most from the humans. Generally, they live longer. When you get down to it, life really is an ongoing case of survival. No time in history is any harder or easier than any other time frame. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, or even nationally, . . . surviving, . . . just do it. Keep on keeping on. Go with the flow. Don’t look back. Survive.

I look back, occasionally, and reminisce. Who made it? Who didn’t? Why? That’s what this book is really about; remembering all those that died. There were so many. How did I make it this far? Looking back now, if it all would have ended the first year of my life with the hydrogen bomb, if would have saved me a lot of grief. I was just under the mushroom of bad luck. That’s no fun.

Would I do it all again? Sure, . . . in a heart beat. I’d stay away from acid vats and try to be born six hours and five minutes earlier.

PART ONE

 A personal account of growing up during the baby boom era.

Chapter One

Under the Mushroom

If you’re expecting a Hollywood plot, stop right now and look elsewhere for unbelievably happy endings. This is a true story with a real conclusion. I can tell you right now, I’m not going to get the beautiful girl or perform any super human feats. I’m not going to be the hero in many cases. I consider myself more of a professional victim than anything else.

The hydrogen bomb was born in 1952, so was I. It probably should have killed me, along with everyone else, but for some strange reason it didn’t. In Hollywood it would have. My birthday didn’t make headlines like the bomb’s did, as you might imagine. I wasn’t a very big deal. I’m still not a very big deal for that matter, nor do I ever plan to be. The bomb, however, still is a big deal. When I was born the nurse on duty brought the wrong baby to my mother. No big deal. It’s not as serious as screwing up the delivery of a hydrogen bomb. That kind of mistake is not easily corrected. The screw up didn’t happen the first day I’m told. Some screw-ups take a while to manifest themselves. However, the mistake was corrected, thank goodness. It was just another event that potentially could have altered the future for me. Not as serious as being blown to kingdom come by the H-bomb or having to live with radioactive fallout, mind you, but serious for me and my family none the less.

Like most people, I don’t have an extensive memory of my early youth. I am told I was a good baby. I’ll have to take their word on it. I guess the place I was born greatly influenced the future for me. I was born in Decorah, Iowa. Decorah is a small farm community in Northeast Iowa. The soil is very rich and the winters are extremely harsh. Personally, I didn’t grow up on a farm, however. For the most part of my life I actually lived in the city of Decorah. Since the community was very small, under 10,000 people, everyone seemed to keep track of everyone else. This is common in most small towns across America I imagine. To me anyway, everyone seemed to isolate themselves from the rest of the state and the rest of the country. The few television stations that could be received at that time in Decorah, with poor reception, I might add, rarely ever mention Decorah, even during weather forecasts. It was like Decorah didn’t even exist to the outside world. This isolation was ideal for raising children free from outside influences, in my opinion.

One of the first memories I have is the first day of kindergarten. That’s going back a long way for those memories. It seems I wasn’t too impressed with the educational system. After being dropped off at school, I left school and walked to my grandma and grandpa’s house that was only a block away. After I was told school was mandatory, and that what I was doing wasn’t going to be allowed, I returned to school and never repeated the event. I survived that humiliating blunder. Like most things at that age, humility was unknown to me then. That would be a rare and precious time that would fade away forever. I’m glad that I decided back then to walk to my grandparent’s house instead of joining a band of gypsies though, because kindergarten turned out to be fun. It was just another one of the things I would do in life that was much different than the others around me.

I met many new friends in kindergarten. Many of the people I was to meet that first year in school would be influencing me for several decades to come. Unfortunately, a few of those people my age would not survive for that long.

At an early age, my family, my parents, my older sister, and my younger brother, lived not far outside of Decorah city limits in a basement home that my father was building. We all lived in the basement for some time before the construction was completed. I’m told that by the time I started kindergarten we had already moved to the upstairs. I remember while living in the basement my father, Charles Peterson, was rebuilding a Lincoln that had been fire damaged for his older brother, Ervin, who owned a Lincoln and Mercury dealership in town. It was quite a chore for my father. Almost the entire car had to be disassembled then reassembled. Things like that were always going on. My father was, and still is, a wheeler and dealer. He started his own business ten miles north of Decorah called Aero Auto Sales, as the name implies he sold airplanes as well as cars and trucks. I was treated to many airplane rides and introduced to more types of automobiles than the average person. Most of the time it was a good healthy influx of transportation information, . . . most of the time.

One day while my father was home for lunch and was in the house conversing with my mother, I was playing taxi in the particular car that my father was driving for that day. I was with my sister and I inadvertently took the car out of gear. Back in those days there were more cars with manual transmissions, or straight sticks, as they were called, than cars with automatic transmissions. We lived on a steep hill and soon the car started rolling and in a very short time was careening down the hill towards the family chicken coop. We did have some farm animals. Fortunately for us, and the chickens, my father saw what was transpiring through the living room window and ran as fast as he could to catch the car. He caught it in time, threw the driver’s door open, and dove in to apply the brakes. I knew those pedals on the floorboard served some purpose. My eyes must have been as big as saucers during that incident. This happened long before I was knowledgeable of humility, too. I don’t know if the safety glass was invented for automobiles by then or not, but I’m fairly sure the dash was made of metal and could have potentially damaged my soft, round, closely shaved, empty head. Who knows? I may have not survived that potential accident. Whether death came in the form of a hydrogen bomb or an automobile accident, I eventually came to realize that it could happen at any time.

That would be just one of the many close calls I would have with automobiles.

Another time my father saved me, as well as the entire family, was when we were traveling north bound on Highway 52. We were north of Decorah by Nob Hill, a popular restaurant, when a car heading south at a high rate of speed came right at us on our side of the road. It was on a curve in the roadway and the other driver had taken the curve too fast. My father, with lightning reflexes, left the highway and headed for the ditch. He took out several guard rail posts in the process. Our car was slightly damaged as a result, but more importantly, my father had averted a head-on accident. The other driver lost control of his vehicle, skidded 490 feet, and rolled over. He was seriously injured. I personally don’t remembered the accident, however, I did see pictures later in life of the mammoth cars that were involved.

Most of my early youth was quite enjoyable, having a sister one year older and a brother three years younger insured me someone to play with nearly all the time. Besides public school, I, with my parents, also attended church. I also attended Sunday school every Sunday and, in the summer months, attended Bible school. Since we were located outside of town a few miles, my brother, sister, and I were driven to many exciting events by automobile or school bus.

Once while my sister was leaving the school bus with its stop sign extended, a car tried passing it from behind. Fortunately the car stopped just short of hitting my sister. Andy, the bus driver, gave the woman driver a tongue lashing that would have made a marine cower. She deserved it though. Andy was a good man and at the end of every school year he would treat everyone on his bus to ice cream at the local Whippy Dip. Although Andy came off as being very strict with the discipline aboard his bus, everyone knew he really had everyone’s best interests at heart. This is before the typical school bus had flame proof seats and a reinforced gas tank. Many children around America would have to die before those changes were made.

My family moved into Decorah while I was attending the Westside Elementary School. From my new location on Heivly Street, I was able to walk to school. While living on Heivly Street my family lived only a city block from the river that flows through the city. I had a plethora of new adventures concerning the river. I was always fascinated with the ice flows in the springtime. Even today, whenever I hear the shrill sound of a red winged black bird announcing its territory, I think back to the time when I spent so much time fishing, skipping rocks, and tubing or canoeing down the lovely Upper Iowa River. Now that my family lived in town, I had many more kids to play with. We would spend our free time and summer vacations playing army, board games, cowboys and Indians, or just riding our bicycles around town exploring. Unlike most larger urban areas elsewhere, we had no fear from criminal activity. It was a much different time then.

The activities around Decorah seemed endless to us kids. The city is full of parks and nature walks for exploring. The public school grounds had swings, merry-go-rounds, tether ball, baseball diamonds, football fields, and basketball hoops. We utilized the dike keeping the river in check that was constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers for sliding with our sleds in the winter. The dike was so steep you could slide down it on cardboard in the summer. I was told that before the dike was built, my neighborhood was flooding annually.

We lived close to the municipal volunteer fire station. One group of kids on our block we played with sometimes, the Rude family children, would go see their father, Kenneth Rude, at the fire station because he was a volunteer fireman. All the firemen were very friendly and I admired them for their dedication. The fire station had a pool table and an indoor shuffleboard table that sometimes we could play on when supervised.

One time our furnace started on fire while living on Heivly Street and my mother, Rose Peterson, had to call the fire department. The volunteer firemen showed up with a fire extinguisher and extinguished the fire. A memorable event for me. I was thinking at the time that they would show up with their fire truck, but they showed up in an old Studebaker. This was before smoke alarms were readily available as they are nowadays.

While still living on Heivly Street, I also experienced another memorable event; a near miss with a tornado that skimmed by Decorah. Fortunately, I was close to home and was able to get to the basement with my mother and brother. My sister was coming home from the municipal swimming pool and had to duck into a local food market, Phelps Grocery. She witnessed the building across the street, Lang’s Dairy, have its roof lift up and slam back down again. When it was happening, all I can remember from the entire event was the loud whistling of the wind through the basement screen windows and hearing the town’s siren blowing. I was astonished to see the enormous amount of damage done to the trees around my neighborhood when I emerged from the basement. Our small house wasn’t damaged, but a tree had toppled over unto our neighbor’s house and several large cottonwood trees were shattered across the street. Trees were down all over Decorah. One could hear the sound of chain saws for days after the storm. Fortunately, I didn’t hear of anyone hurt during that storm in Decorah, but in Charles City, Iowa, thirteen people were killed. In Oelwein, Iowa, another six people were killed during that same storm.

Another outlet for adventure for us kids during this time besides playing around town, was visiting my grandparents who lived at that time about ten miles north of Decorah near a small community called Burr Oak, Iowa. Alfred and Violet Rosendahl, my mother’s parents, owned a farm that was like Disneyland to us kids. There was a wooded area that was like an enchanted forest. We would make teepees out of long branches covered with blankets. We would build little bonfires out of dry pine needles and, sometimes, with our cousins dancing with us around the fire, we would yell and scream bloody murder until we wore ourselves out. We would run around and, occasionally, through the fire until we would hyperventilate. I’ve seen other kids do this too, so I know it’s normal. They had a pony and also a barn where the pony lived. We often built forts out of the hay bales in the hayloft. There was a swing that was secured high in a pine tree. It had a tremendous sweep to it. If my uncle, Virgel Rosendahl, or my grandfather was giving you a push it was exhilarating. We kids would often climb on the roof of the chicken coop and bomb the chickens with kernels of corn that was in abundant supply. We would always get a big kick out of the chickens because when a kernel of corn would land on their backs and another chicken would come and peck it off, the unsuspecting chicken with the corn on its back would think it was being attacked and panic and we thought that it was hilarious. Although much of the time we were closely supervised, we usually had the run of the entire empire. Much of the fun was just being around my cousins. They were approximately around my age, give or take a few years. The boys, Daryl and Danny Brickner, and Keith and Brian Rosendahl, were usually my playmates. I can’t remember a time when we fought or argued. I do remember one occasion, however, when one of my cousins was playfully roughhousing with my grandfather and got a little too rough by socking my grandfather in the stomach. The perpetrator promptly received a freshly chewed wad of chewing tobacco spit on his head. That calmed him down a bit. Chemical warfare. Violet, my grandmother, would tell us a story or teach us a new card game.

In the early sixties, my family moved again. It was to a location just up the street one block from where we had previously lived on Heivly Street. Our new address was 112 Julian Street. It was in the same area of Decorah commonly called Goose Island. The new house my family moved into was much bigger, although I still had to share an upstairs bedroom with my younger brother of three years, Craig. I was getting into softball and baseball by this time with my neighborhood friends. We loved to play three rollers or a fly or 500. With three rollers or a fly, if you caught a fly ball or fielded three ground balls, you could take over batting. In 500, every ball fielded was worth a certain value and the one that reached a personal score of 500 would take over batting. The block I grew up on had very little traffic so often we would play catch or four square right in the street. In the winter months I loved to ice skate. The city had a public ice rink not far from my neighborhood so often after school or on the weekend I would walk to the public rink and play tag or pom pom pull away with other kids from all over Decorah. Often the winter weather would manufacture a skating rink several places right on my block.

In the summer months at around this same time frame my family was into going camping on the Mississippi River. It wasn’t uncommon to go on one of these camping excursions with some close friends of the family. Dewey and Ruth Barth had a motorboat and would often accompany us. My family had a cabin cruiser made of wood that I helped paint. I always thought it was going to sink because it rode so low in the water.

By far the biggest thrill of this time frame was the stock car races. My father drove a stock car every weekend he was able to. The stock car he drove was a 1951, Lincoln Cosmopolitan. The car’s official number was 31X. It was painted bright orange with wide white stripes with a black stripe running down the center of the stripe. It had an eight cylinder flathead engine, the largest engine allowed on the track.

Youngsters all over Decorah idolized the stock car races. On my block, my friends and I bought model cars and made the models to resemble the original designs of the local stock cars as much as possible. We would even heat the plastic and mold it to resemble dents that were present on the real thing. The king of the model car builders, with the most realistic looking models, was John Headington. A group of us kids would often gather at a steep hill somewhere in Decorah and race our models down it. Sometimes we even had a purse for the winner to collect. We were obsessed to the point where we would race our bicycles on an oval track to mimic the races. We even had a flag man at our races to copy what we saw the real flag man, Eddie, do.

To finance my model building, I took over a newspaper delivery route from my sister. The Cedar Rapids Gazette was the name of the newspaper. It was hard work and the pay was slow in coming.

Meanwhile, the outside world continued to evolve seeming not to have the slightest effect upon the residents of my small community. The Cuban missile crisis popped our bubble and I, with everyone else, was forced to remember why the United States of America had developed the hydrogen bomb. There were tremendous forces of evil in the outside world. I was tremendously proud of people in the military like my uncle, Dave Brickner, for keeping the world safe. Only after several decades passed did I find out how close we all actually had come to nuclear annihilation during that crisis. Soon the national news stunned us all again when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was in school when Mr. Stark, my teacher, came in and told the class the news. School was canceled for several days. The oldest son of the Neuhring family, that lived across the street from my family, came over and watched it on television with us. He wasn’t there when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot though. I saw that.

I delivered newspapers for many years. Lester Ellingson, the local paper boss, was my favorite of all the newspaper managers. When it was cold outside, and that was quite often, he would let us paper boys read comic books in his basement until the paper truck arrived from Cedar Rapids. I remember that his wife was also very kind and generous, often treating us boys to food or drinks.

The Ellingson family weren’t the only people I remember to be very generous during those years, however. Around Christmas time I would receive so many gifts from my paper route customers that my paper bag would be full of gifts like chocolate covered cherries, chocolate mints, or homemade chocolate chip cookies.

One day the paper truck ran over my sled and Mr. Ellingson got me a bigger better one. The most lasting influence that the paper route gave me wasn’t the gifts or the income, but the extremely harsh weather I had to endure. Often it was so cold that my toes and fingers would turn numb. This made me yearn to live in a warmer climate someday. Eventually, later in life, I did move, but as you’ll find out, the weather would be the least of my worries. When the weather was so bad that most cars wouldn’t start, my mother would drive me on my route. Even when school was canceled do to abhorrent weather, I still had to deliver newspapers.

One delivery day an eerie event happened that I’ll never forget. I was delivering the newspaper, as usual, to a duplex apartment on West Main Street. I didn’t know it at the time, but the unconscious body of Mrs. Zweibommer was lying in the adjoining apartment. Her husband had assaulted her earlier that day. Decorah wasn’t totally free from violence. I had heard a story about a dead baby found at the city dump previous to this occurrence. The mere thought of Mrs. Zweibommer lying in there while I delivered the paper gave me the creeps. Later I had heard she had been assaulted with a hammer but would recover. Her husband, on the other hand, was chased down by the police and committed suicide when he was cornered.

My father also painted houses and entire farms when he wasn’t selling cars, trucks, and airplanes. I often would work with him for a little extra income. I distinctly remember one time I was along when he was painting the local drive-inn theater fence pink. Drive-inn theaters are rare now, but before VCRs, the drive-in theater was the place to be. My main function during painting was just to be handy with a scraper, available to mix paint, and, sometimes, fetch tools. I learned by watching and any questions I asked were enthusiastically answered.

With the extra income I was free to purchase anything I wanted. I bought models from Harvey’s Hobby Hut, softball and baseball supplies from Hardy’s Western Auto Store, dairy products from Winkie’s Whippy Dip, soda pop and candy from The Family Store, and paid for pinball games at the Oneota Bowling Alley. Other great places for meeting kids and playing pinball in Decorah at that time was The Sugar Bowl, Lang’s Billiards, and Ted’s Tobacco Store. Very few of these businesses are still around today. About this time there was a new pizza place that would become the greatest hang out place of all time in Decorah. The place was called Mabe’s Pizza. On the opening day they sold a piece of pizza for ten cents. From that day on I was hooked. After the stock car races it became a ritual—a pizza and a bucket of broasted chicken from Mabe’s Pizza. Mabe’s Pizza is still open for business and is as popular as it ever was.

I didn’t need to eat out much though, my mother could cook up some tasty dishes at home. She was very good at cooking and baking. Her specialty was, and still is, scalloped corn, but she could potentially create anything from rhubarb pie to roast turkey. If I ever did eat out though, it was probably because I was with my father on the road to some car sale. Our favorite restaurant at that time for eating out in Decorah was The Green Parrot. It was owned by a friend of our family; Les Branhagen.

The food champions, though, are on the Peterson side of relatives. Any Peterson family gathering always had a banquet fit for a king. My father’s side of relatives is much more extensive than my mother’s side. At that time, most of my father’s relatives lived locally in a rural area around the Decorah area.

I distinctly remember staying with Walt and Doris Bender while my parents vacationed in California once. It was a new experience for me; staying on a farm and experiencing farm life for a while. Walt would take us fishing and teach us new tricks on catching fish; we considered him an expert. We could hang around when he did his daily chores and watch him milk the cows. We could also pet the calves, ride with him on the tractor, and throw ears of corn at the pigs. He always said we could have a ride in the manure bucket that hung from a rail on the ceiling of the barn, but I never took that ride. Being from the city, I was manure shy. Doris would have us check the chicken coop every once in awhile for any new eggs. There were always plenty.

We kids, usually just my brother and I, could walk up the gravel road to the next farm that was owned by Virgil Bender. Doris and Lucella are my father’s older sisters that married brothers. At that farm we could raid the raspberry bushes. My cousin, Carol Bender, had Elvis Presley records we could play. We also could hang around with Virggie, as we called him, when he did his chores. We considered him an expert fisherman too.

Grandpa and Grandma Peterson also lived on that farm in a trailer home. Lenora Peterson, my, grandmother, made the most perfect ginger snap cookies in the world, at least I thought so. John E. Peterson, my grandfather, was the custodian at our church; Hauge Lutheran.

Robert and Grace Peterson lived next to Aero Auto Sales on the North Winn Road about ten miles north of Decorah. Robert, or Bobby, as nearly everyone calls him, is a master mechanic. If my father couldn’t fix something, Bobby could. He was the main mechanic on the stock car and accompanied my dad to the races. When visiting Aero Auto Sales, which was quite often, I would mess around with Bobby and Grace’s adopted son, Lauren. Lauren had an older brother, Donny, who died of a brain tumor. I was very young when that happened, so I don’t have many memories of him. I’ve often wondered, if by some medical miracle, he could have been saved if he would have been a close friend of mine. Lauren was fun to play with. We would go back in the field and explore the sink hole that is there or climb the many apple trees. The crab apples were O.K. To eat, but we liked throwing them most of the time.

John and Lorraine Peterson lived just down the road