Tales of Reflection: An Autobiography of Sorts

By Doug Hodges

Unlike my previous ten books, Tales of Reflection is about myself, pure and simple. It travels from the 1950s through the present, chronicling my times, my events, and their relationship to the times and the events about me. It is a book no one else could write, full of pathos and full of humor, full of fear, and I hope, full of love. It is my life, spread out like a blanket for a picnic. You are all invited.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504976671

Doug Hodges

I have been writing since I was old enough to hold a pencil, with my first poem written in the fifth grade. This led to a career in Colorado newspapers, which lasted more than twenty years, though in a variety of capacities. I once wrote an historical column, titled The Trail’s End. This tied my love of words in with my love of history, a deep-seated yearning flowing throughout my life. A need to blend the humanity and emotion of raw life with the cold stone of fact, the idealism of win and loss with the blood and bone reality of violence being a lose-lose proposition, trying to find that spiritual truth among the physical fact. In 2014, a good friend invited me to share a trip to Gettysburg, which reawakened a long-dormant civil war seed. From this journey came our collaborated book, Bob’s Gettysburg Saga & Poetry. Upon its successful publication, we decided that Bob should visit other historical sites and chose the Alamo for his next venture. Unfortunately, my friend was not able to participate in this endeavor. So I continued, trusting that the spirit of Bob’s creator would find its way between the lines. Following Bob’s section are a couple of obituaries I penned some time ago. Completing the volume are a couple of Western tales. I hope the reader may enjoy this collection of historical reminiscence as much as I enjoyed writing it. Now, on the backside of sixty, I reside in the Rio Grande Valley with my wife, who is also my personal editorial department (all errors are still mine, she will be quick to note), three dogs, and a parrot. My wife taught high school English and communication (speech) for over thirty years. When not writing or visiting family, we like to sit around and discuss words and language.

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Contents

I    TALES OF REFLECTION

2    THE BEGINNING

3    BEFORE THE BEGINNING

4    THE SECOND FAMILY

5    CANADA

6    A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE CHURCH

7    MAGIC BUS

8    SCHOOL

9    IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND

10    A HARD LESSON

11    JOBS

12    THE CAB, THE COTTON CLUB, AND FAIRYLAND

13    TRAINING: POINT A TO POINT B

14    SILVER WINGS UPON THEIR CHESTS

15    THE CAVE

16    … A WITCH’S TIT

17    TRAINING: EVENING

18    NOTES ON FT. JACKSON

19    CALIFORNIA

20    A FEW WORDS ON    THE NATIONAL GUARD

21    THE UNDERGROUND

22    DAILY GRIND

23    … AND A GAY TIME WAS HAD BY ALL

24    THE STORY OF JOAN

25    A NOTE ON BRENDA

26    BLUE MEADOW

27    KING OF THE WORLD

28    THE NEWSPAPER

29    CHOICES

30    THE QUEEN OF THE SILVER DOLLAR

31    BARRIERS

32    THE SUN

33    GHOSTS AND HALLOWEEN AS WELL

34    TWO GIRLS AND THE INDIANS

35    THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF BOULDER

36    DEBBIE DUZ DONUTS

37    THE INCIDENT OF ’93

38    GILPIN COUNTY, COLORADO

39    THERAPY

40    MY QUEST, RAVEN & COYOTE A STORY OFTEN TOLD

41    SOLOSPEAK

42    NAVIGATOR

43    LIFE CHANGES AS WE AGE

44    NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

for Mom and Dad

long overdue

To Linda

cover photo - the author

Fredericksburg, Texas

title page photo - Fisherman’s Wharf

San Francisco

all images herein have either been taken by myself

or are taken from my family collection

(1)

TALES OF REFLECTION

an autobiography of sorts

I do not live in the past

yet flashes of the past seem to haunt me -

a scent, a touch, a timely deja vu

conjures up old memories

like reflections in fun-house mirrors,

remembered correctly or not,

named or unnamed.

some are pleasant,

some not so much;

these semi-conscious visions

become almost as real in the reliving …

perhaps more so.

there is a reason, I am sure

these nooks and crannies of my mind

reveal themselves;

something about being connected with

who I am or where I come from

or how all the threads of myriad

strands of various stories

have brought me to the point of today,

maybe a lesson to help me through some present

dilemma or a guide, a warning;

or merely an electrical synapse of connection.

in any event, these moments can disturb me

they can also fill me with moments of warmth

or with an ironic sense of loss.

they are touchings

they are reflections

for which I am grateful.

as siblings may grow up in the same house

and have different memories

or even different takes on the same memory,

so the winds of time,

the turbulence of physical mind,

will have struck me,

I am sure.

whereas I have tried to be as accurate as possible

these recordings, I hope, have captured the essence

if not the exact detail of the moment.

if there are any errors,

and I am sure there are,

I leave it to those others

who would chronicle their own adventures

to set the record straight.

DH

(2)

THE BEGINNING

like most stories

mine had a beginning,

which was in a small town,

perhaps a village,

in Bavaria,

called Herrsching-Am-Ammersee,

in essence the town

of Herrsching on the Ammer sea,

these seas are what we call lakes.

it is situated west of Munich in the country of Germany,

in what was then called the American Zone.

my father had been a Polish fisherman

my mother a German maid;

I don’t believe they ever married,

something about a previous marriage

and them both being Roman Catholic.

however, they had two children that I know of,

a sister two years older than I

and myself, named at the time Joseph Freyer.

1949 was still post-war Germany

and times were difficult.

Germany had been divided into four parts

by the victors and jobs were scarce,

trust was even scarcer,

on both sides.

one thing, however, remained constant,

parents love for their children.

knowing there was no way

they could support two children,

I, the youngest, was placed in an orphanage.

my sister and mother occasionally visited.

the nuns apparently adored me

and I was called Seppi.

unlike today, where nationalism

almost demands that children remain in

the country of their birth,

at that time the German people wanted something

better for their children

which they knew would be a long time coming

in Germany.

so, the adoption of orphans by

United States military personnel

was actively sought and encouraged.

Dean Hodges, my dad to be,

had been a bomber pilot during the war,

my mom, his wife Lorna Marjorie,

Lorna to everyone except my dad

who called her Marge,

had both come from a small town in Iowa,

called Greenfield.

they and another military couple,

decided to adopt two boys from the St. Alban’s orphanage.

their son and myself could have easily been interchanged,

my new name was to become Douglas,

his became Rick.

we were issued new Birth Certificates,

in both German and English to prove it.

I was two years old.

it was said I spoke fluent German.

what two year old speaks fluent anything?

however, it was also said that I loved to use

the word, Actung! meaning, attention or attend to me.

the nuns said that I was afraid of nothing

and guarded and inhaled my food and drink

as if it would be taken away;

I still tend to eat fast.

I was sickly, with bad nasal congestion,

remnants of which last to this day,

mom said they would pull long streamers

of mucus out of my nose and throat.

my mom, their Boxer dog, Butch,

and myself sailed back to America

on an ocean liner,

converted to troop carrier during the war,

afterward converted back to a semi-liner

carrying military personnel and their families,

the U.S.S. Washington.

the seas were rough and everyone

was said to be seasick,

except me.

I ate like a horse.

mom would lead me around the deck

with a harness leash

lest I fall into the sea.

1949-1951

R3.jpg

my parents’ German maid, Isolde,

a nun, the orphanage St. Albans

myself, & my mom, Lorna

(3)

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

my grandfather, Bernard Heifner, was a salesman.

not in the typical way,

he sold himself

and thereby, whatever

he happened to be dealing in at the time.

he was born a farmer

on a small farm in Adair County, Iowa

as a matter of fact

he died within twenty miles

of the house in which he was born

and only left Iowa twice during his eighty-eight years.

the first time was to help my parents

move a house trailer from Florida to California

reminiscent of the Lucille Ball - Desi Arnez, movie

The Long Trailer.

he did not particularly like farming,

early on, he dealt in mules,

a used mule salesman.

he was also,

I was later to learn,

very charismatic

and a charmer with the ladies.

about the time of World War II

he and my grandma, Zoe, owned

a small store just outside of Greenfield.

by the time I came on the scene

the two were running a ten-room motel in Des Moines

called the Trail’s End.

enough room to hold

my parents and I,

my aunt and uncle and their two sons,

our great-grandmother,

and my other grandfather

for Christmas gatherings.

it was here, through various

vacations that my cousins and I grew up.

Ampa, as I called him,

he always called me and my cousins,

Dougie, Andrewie, Gary,

emphasis on the ee sound.

he was a life-long hunter

and raised bird and coon dogs.

hunting coon was his love.

I have a Coon magazine with a photograph

of him on the cover along with one of his dogs

and her thirteen puppies.

later in life, when he was too old to get around

he would lease out his dogs

and sit in his old car,

a 1949 red and rusted Studebaker,

while the other fellows hunted.

this beat-up old bullet-nosed vehicle

was the car with which I grew up.

later, in its life, the trunk would be cut out

and replaced with crates for the dogs.

my grandmother had two miniature schnauzers,

these were not real dogs to my grandfather

and he never understood why they had to live inside

while his dogs had pens outside where dogs belonged.

Grandpa had bought my grandma a huge

orange Oldsmobilly automobile

emphasis on the ee.

back behind the Trail’s End

were sandy cliffs

dotted with wind blown caves.

we, my two cousins and I,

were strictly forbidden to play there;

we didn’t.

when I was a young adult,

three kids were caught in a cave-in

and my grandpa was in the news;

he had heard their cries

climbed up with a shovel and dug them out.

my grandmother, Zoe, was short and plump

when she was driving down the road

you were lucky to be able to even see

the top of her head through the windshield

of her orange tank.

she sat on cushions and there was a

suicide knob on the steering wheel …

for younger readers,

before the advent of power steering

and automatic transmission

this knob, also called a brody, necker,

wheel spinner and granny knob,

swiveled and made steering with one hand

incredibly easier …

which would then slam her in the belly

every time the steering wheel revolved,

like whenever she turned a corner.

unlike Ampa, grandma

liked to travel and often flew to visit us

whenever she could.

these were my mom’s parents.

R4.jpg

my grandfather, Bernard T. Heifner

(4)

THE SECOND FAMILY

my mom’s brother, Gene, was a jeweler.

like my dad,

he had grown up with an innate love

of taking things apart

and putting them back together,

usually better than they had been.

Gene and his wife, Pat,

had two sons.

Andrew was about my age

and the somewhat younger brother, Gary,

later to be called Mark,

was the hanger-on

which we two older boys

constantly tried to avoid.

Mark would grow up to become a doctor

with a very nice family of his own.

possibly because I was an only child,

Andrew seemed more like a brother to me,

albeit a part-time one.

though we only met on vacations

we shared wonderful growing up experiences.

to avoid any appearance of favoritism

grandma and grandpa would almost always

buy the three of us

the same thing

so we all wore the same clothes,

received the same hair cuts,

and had more or less the same toys

once Andrew and I were sitting in

grandpa’s old Studebaker,

we were