Lucky, Lucky Me

By Jake Jones

In this book, Jake talks about his more than eighty years of life experiences. He takes the reader from Americas great economy depression of the 1930s through an up-close and personal view of three American wars to a life of relative abundance in this century. His twenty-eight years of flying in the air force took him to beautiful places like Stavanger, Norway, cold places like Thule AFB Greenland, hot places like Sattahip, Thailand, and dry places like the San Joaquin Valley in California.

He describes the details of losing fellow crew members in four different plane crashes and the personal hardship on their families. His most memorable events of his military career were in the 1960s when on three occasions he was involved in the work and decision making of President John F. Kennedy. He vividly remembers seeing and being close to President Kennedy just four weeks before he was assassinated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514427521

Jake Jones

Jake Jones lives and writes in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He’s a retired USAF command chief master sergeant. He joined the air force in 1951, shortly after the start of the Korean War. He did not see combat as a B-29 gunner during that war but did fly 103 combat missions as a KC-135 boom operator during the Vietnam War. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of New Hampshire and a graduate degree from Golden Gate University.

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Copyright © 2015 by Jake Jones.

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 11/17/2015

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Contents

Introduction

1     Life at 746 Pine Street (1931–1940)

2     Hanging around the Corner (1941–1950)

3     United States Air Force, Marriage, and a New Family (1951–1960)

4     Thom Is Born, President Kennedy Visits, and 103 Combat Missions (1961–1970)

5     Closing Out a Military Career (1971–1980)

6     Just a Few Thoughts

7     Writings

8     Words of Wisdom

Carol’s Influence: Guided by a Cardinal

Conclusion

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This book is dedicated to the memory of my wife, Carol, who provided me with my life’s greatest lucky moment when she said yes to my marriage proposal on July 27, 1953, her twenty-first birthday.

Introduction

This is a story of my life experiences and lessons learned. I hope others will read it for entertainment and maybe learn something about life from my experiences. I want this to take on the feeling of another group gathering, where we’re together in a comfortable room under pleasant circumstances, and I want to tell you some stories as I’ve done many times in the past. This time my stories happen to be in the form of a book.

I want to impress on all of you—family, friends, colleagues, and associates—what an important role you’ve played in this wonderful life I’ve been able to live. I’ll be sparse in my specifics about each of you and your influence. All have influenced my life in a positive way.

The number of ways and the degree varies from individual to individual. With the exception of Carol, who has been, by far, the most loving, positive, and supportive person anyone could ever dream of having as a wife, you’ve all contributed a great deal. Ah, yes,

The Way We Were

Memories, light the corners of my mind

Misty water colored memories of the way we were

(Marvin Hamlisch lyrics, sung by Barbra Streisand in the movie The Way We Were)

It’s the joy and laughter I remember best, not the pain and sorrow.

1

Life at 746 Pine Street (1931–1940)

Come in when the streetlights come on, my mother would say as we went out the door after supper. The city streetlights were every family’s nighttime timepiece. Only rich people could afford watches, and there were no rich people where we lived. Those well-off could afford a car. We couldn’t until I was twelve years old. It never bothered me, because any place I wanted to go was within walking distance, including the Pawtucket Boys Club two miles away.

Central Falls, Rhode Island, where I was born, is in my blood as much as the plaque that lines my arteries threatening to attack my heart with the downing of every State Line potato chip. It’s as much a part of me as the way I say cah (car), bah (bar), and pahk (park). It’s where I was born and lived for the first twenty years of my life. My roots were formed here, and I’m proud of it.

Central Falls was a vibrant inner city with a plethora of wonderful, hard-working people when I lived there. Life then was simple. People and their lives were the center of all activities. There were no mechanical or electronic distractions. But it wasn’t a quiet, sleepy, Boston bedroom community with wide streets lined with elm trees and long, winding driveways bordered with colorful flowerbeds and manicured front lawns. Rather, it was a one-mile square mill city with rows of three-decker tenement houses and a population of twenty-five thousand. Although crowded, it was great! It was home! I loved it then as I love the memories of it today.

I joined the air force in April 1951, ten months after the start of the Korean War, and remained on active duty for twenty-eight years. While I’ve been back to visit, I haven’t lived there for a long time. The fond memories I have of those days are frozen in time. This book is about a wonderful life’s journey: it all started right there.

On the morning of July 17, 1931, my brothers, John and Bob, were told to go outside and play when we lived at 746 Pine Street. They were five and a half and almost three years old at the time. My brother, Everett Jr. (Rip), must have been in the mix too, but I don’t know.

They took a rubber ball with them and headed for the backyard and proceeded to throw the ball against our house at a height equal to the second floor where we lived. Our three twelve-foot-wide bedrooms stretched along the entire width of the back of the house. While they were doing that, I was in the bedroom on the far right giving my mother more than a pain in the neck. I was keeping Mrs. Scofield, a well-known midwife in Central Falls, busy as I declared it to be my time to enter the world. My mother, who had been carrying me for nine months, thought it was a good idea too.

I’m told that I was an extraordinarily cute baby. As an eighty-four-year-old octogenarian now, who has to look in the mirror each morning to shave, I wonder at what age that cute baby turned to he who doesn’t look too bad for an old guy and what he’s been through, does he?

That was day 1 of more than thirty thousand days I’ve lived since. While all days were not times of pleasure and delight, I’m thankful for the abundance of joy and laughter that has been given to me over the years. I’m very lucky!

Two weeks before my eighth birthday—July 4, 1939—the immortal Lou Gehrig, one of Major League Baseball’s finest players, stood before a somber crowd in Yankee Stadium and delivered a brief farewell-to-baseball speech. He had recently learned that he had been stricken with the fatal disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), now known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

In the speech, he said, I consider myself to be the luckiest man on the face of the earth. With due respect to Mr. Gehrig, I believe I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Here’s why. I was born in America into a loving and caring family who provided a foundation to pursue happiness in a free and supportive environment.

That pursuit has resulted in a life of pleasure and joy. I am happy now and have been for as far back as I can remember. Call me gullible or callow, but those two important factors resulted from nothing done or brought about by me. It was luck! Just plain luck!

This happened in the middle of an era when Bing Crosby was singing one of his hits of the day:

Lucky, lucky me

I can live in luxury

’Cause I’ve got a pocketful of dreams.

Little did I know then that the lyrics of the song pertained to me. My dreams were not grandiose; they were simple, realistic, and attainable. I dreamed not of a life of riches and gold but, rather, of fun, friendships, and laughter.

As I got older, I dreamed not of success by someone else’s definition but by mine. I dreamed not of fleeting friendships but permanent ones. I dreamed not of just settling for a wife and family to fill an obligation to society but loved ones with whom I could enjoy every day for the rest of my life.

My life’s mission has always been to be happy and to help others to be happy too. Those events and my marriage to the most wonderful person in the world contributed immensely to the joy I’ve experienced each and every day.

I couldn’t verbalize it then as I can today; however, living that dream always seemed comfortable in my heart and in the pit of my stomach. Turn the other cheek, judge not, and ye shall not be judged, and there but for the grace of God go I, always came to mind without hesitation in appropriate circumstances.

With a strong and lasting foundation of family and friends, I started my journey through adulthood well prepared for the future. I was very lucky. Everyone should be so lucky.

I lived through America’s worst economic depression, World War II, and was personally involved in two lesser wars—if there is such a thing as a lesser war—which all took place before I was forty years old. Those years were not without hard times, losses, and sacrifices. Yet I wouldn’t trade any of it for a life of riches, entitlement, and the privilege of living on high ground above it all. Not a single minute! I wear the scars and memories of every event as badges of honor.

Living in a large seven-tenement house at 746 Pine Street in Central Falls, Rhode Island, in the 1930s and early 1940s was a wonderful start in life for me. We were poor and didn’t get an awful lot to eat, the same as our neighbors. And I wore clothes that were tattered and torn, shoes that sometimes had the sole flapping in the wind, and a mackinaw coat in the winter that had found its way down to me after three older brothers had worn out its newness during previous winters. None of that bothered me; I was too busy laughing, playing, and having fun. Naive? Perhaps.

We lived on Pine Street until my grandfather died in 1943. After my uncle John and his family moved to 53 Ash Street in Pawtucket, we stayed in the city but moved to 110 Summer Street.

My mother must have inherited some money, because although we couldn’t afford to own a home, we could afford rent at seven dollars a week, instead of three, in a very nice neighborhood. We also bought a car. Before too long, refrigerators appeared in homes, and we bought one. The Depression was coming to an end. Life was getting better. Thank God!

My senses today allow me to relive the past. I can smell the fresh-baked bread from Gorman’s Bakery permeating the air at the corner of Dexter Street and Hedley Avenue. A few blocks from there, I can smell hamburgers cooking on the grill at Stanley’s Restaurant. The smell couldn’t be confined to the restaurant itself, so it wafted to the sidewalk outside. The combination of a patty of ground beef with pressed-in grilled onions and a dill pickle all on a fresh Gorman’s bakery bun brought connoisseurs back regularly for more of the addictive treat. At ten cents each (twelve cents if you wanted cheese on it), buying five or six to go was common.

I can see the stores lined up next to each other on Dexter Street. They started at West Hunt Street and proceeded south. The ones I remember clearly are West Hunt to Moore Street (WS, or west side,