Timestep: A Love Story?

By Julian M. Olejniczak

In 1965, a young Special Forces officer, originally from Chicago, and a young woman from North Carolina meet by chance. Her father was wounded at Pearl Harbor aboard the USS Nevada but fought the duration of World War II aboard another battleship. By the time that they meet, Mike has served in South Korea and fought in South Vietnam, where he was wounded and decorated for valor. By that time, however, Gloria already had lost her father while she still was in her early teens. After some initial difficulties, eventually they are married while Mike is an assistant professor at West Point. They go on to have three children; and Mike is stationed in Kansas, South Korea (again), Washington state, and Alaska, where he commands an infantry battalion. Finally, he is assigned to advise a National Guard brigade headquartered in New York City, but the story suddenly unravels. Mike takes ill while in New York and is hospitalized, but his illness appears to have occurred much earlier and during a different assignment there. Their marriage and the other duty assignments that followed apparently were the product of Mike’s vivid imagination. Then after a prolonged, frequently comatose hospital stay, he quietly dies in his sleep, leaving a complex mystery to be solved. And the mystery only becomes more complicated in the months that follow, forcing the investigation into his death and a few graves to be reopened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796065640

Julian M. Olejniczak

Julian Michael Olejniczak is a career infantry officer who served combat tours in Vietnam with Special Forces and the Vietnamese Rangers and two unaccompanied tours with an infantry division in South Korea. Stateside, he taught literature and philosophy at West Point and offensive tactics at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In the interior of Alaska, he commanded an arctic light infantry battalion and later advised a National Guard brigade in New York. He earned a master of arts degree in literature from the University of Wisconsin and a joint MBA and law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After practicing corporate law in Nashville, he returned to West Point as vice president for alumni publications. His military decorations include the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. He also is the author of To Be a Soldier: A Selective American Military History.

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Copyright © 2019 by Julian M. Olejniczak.

Library of Congress Control Number:    2019916423

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-7960-6566-4

                            Softcover                           978-1-7960-6565-7

                            eBook                                978-1-7960-6564-0

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.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/04/2019

Xlibris

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To my wife and fellow author, Sylvia Graham Olejniczak, who provided much of the fictional backstory and many of the quotations for the character Gloria; our adult children, Julie Ann and Edward (a Gulf War veteran); our grandchildren; and those who have served faithfully and courageously in our nation’s armed forces for over two centuries.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Prologue

PART ONE

Chapter 1:    North Carolina

Chapter 2:    Gotta Dance!

Chapter 3:    Postwar Chicago

Chapter 4:    Bobby The Backstop

Chapter 5:    The Chicago Neighborhood

Chapter 6:    Postwar North Carolina

Chapter 7:    Old Christmas

Chapter 8:    Growing Up In Chicago

Chapter 9:    High School In Chicago

Chapter 10:  High School In North Carolina

PART TWO

Chapter 11:  Suddenly One Summer

Chapter 12:  West Point

Chapter 13:  No Longer New Cadets

Chapter 14:  Plebe Christmas, 1957

Chapter 15:  Plebes No More

Chapter 16:  Stations In Time

Chapter 17:  Life As An Upperclassman

Chapter 18:  Halfway To Graduation

Chapter 19:  West Point Graduation

Chapter 20:  College In North Carolina

PART THREE

Chapter 21:  Miss Me In The Rain

Chapter 22:  Fort Benning, Georgia

Chapter 23:  South Korea

Chapter 24:  Operation Seven Seas

Chapter 25:  Company Command

Chapter 26:  Special Forces

Chapter 27:  Training For Vietnam

Chapter 28:  Vietnam

Chapter 29:  Battle For Ta Rau (Unclassified) Briefing

Chapter 30:  Medical Evacuation

PART FOUR

Chapter 31:  Return To Fort Bragg

Chapter 32:  Mixed Emotions

Chapter 33:  The Time Step Begins

Chapter 34:  Getting To Know Mike

Chapter 35:  Fort Benning, Georgia

Chapter 36:  Return To Vietnam

Chapter 37:  On, Wisconsin!

PART FIVE

Chapter 38:  Getting To Know Mike—Again!

Chapter 39:  Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Chapter 40:  Teaching At West Point

Chapter 41:  Deerly Beloved

Chapter 42:  Will You Marry Me?

Chapter 43:  A New Bride At West Point

Chapter 44:  A Home In Tennessee

Chapter 45:  South Korea Again

Chapter 46:  Fort Lewis, Washington

Chapter 47:  Command And General Staff College Again

PART SIX

Chapter 48:  We’re Tenting Tonight

Chapter 49:  Welcome To Alaska

Chapter 50:  Climbing Gunny Sack Mountain

Chapter 51:  Best In Marksmanship

Chapter 52:  Family Considerations

Chapter 53:  Fighting A Major Forest Fire

PART SEVEN

Chapter 54:  New York City

Chapter 55:  Dawn’s Early Light

Chapter 56:  Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital

Chapter 57:  Post Mortem

Chapter 58:  Post Mortem Redux

Epilogue

About The Author

FOREWORD

The following is the love story of two very different young people: a second-generation Polish-American army officer from Chicago and the daughter of a Scottish-American navy officer from North Carolina whose ancestors came to the United States over 150 years earlier. It begins with their quite contrasting childhoods, a chance meeting following his return from his first combat tour in Vietnam, and a courtship solidly based upon fact—until it isn’t. After all, love tends to be the greatest of mysteries.

The story you are about to read quite closely reflects incidents and events common to an army career. All the events are plausible and closely reflect actual experiences, but some may have been experienced by several different persons or in a completely different sequence. All the names of the characters are fictitious, except for some historical personages, as are the names of a few of the geographical locations. Only the later chapters have been transformed into pure fiction.

PROLOGUE

It was as if a ray of sunshine suddenly had broken through the clouds on an otherwise dark and dreary day. Captain Mike Tadeusz now felt revitalized after an otherwise frustrating Friday at work. All he could think about now was Gloria, the attractive young woman he had just met. At first, he merely glimpsed her driving by in a convertible with the top down as he waited to cross the road to his office after an unproductive morning at a planning conference. Then after spending a similarly mind-numbing afternoon attempting to incorporate the minimal guidance received into a series of detailed tentative plans, he quite unexpectedly had stumbled upon her again.

And in spite of her apparent indifference initially, he had managed to arrange a date for the following weekend. The inescapable reality that his current weekend would be spent in a series of dawn to dusk planning and budgeting sessions became utterly irrelevant in the cosmic scheme of things. He had just met an intriguing young woman. As a matter of fact, just about everything seemed absolutely perfect now. Next weekend promised to be fantastic. And 1965 just might turn out to be the best year of his young life thus far.

This is the simple tale of a woman named Gloria and an army officer named Mike who met as an indirect result of the Vietnam War and possibly even World War II as well. On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s panzers invaded western Poland; and by early October, Poland was once again effectively erased from the map of Europe.

In late October, Mike Tadeusz was born in Chicago, the city with the largest concentration of persons of Polish descent at that time other than Warsaw. His father was a first-generation Polish-American, born in 1899 in Michigan, as was Mike’s mother, who was born there a few years later.

On December 7, 1941, the United States was thrust into World War II by the surprise Japanese attack on the Pacific fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor. Earlier, in August of 1940, a little girl named Gloria Broughton was born in San Diego. Her Scottish ancestors had come to the United States more than 150 years earlier and settled in Virginia and North Carolina. Her father was one of the many US Navy officers and men wounded aboard the USS Nevada as it attempted to get underway from Battleship Row during the Sunday morning Japanese surprise attack. Many other sailors, soldiers, and civilians in Pearl Harbor would give their lives before the surviving enemy aircraft finally returned to their carriers, leaving the US military installations and ships in flames. Fortunately, all the American aircraft carriers were training at sea and were spared.

Although born in San Diego, California, a navy town, Gloria was a foster daughter of the South—due to frequent extended visits to relatives in North Carolina—and had a bit more than a trace of an enchanting Southern accent. As a navy junior, she had, however, grown up on both coasts and often traveled between them by rail at an early age. One time, she traveled alone from California to North Carolina during the war, trusting to the kindness of the train conductors and the contact information inked on a large tag attached to her clothing. Her travels and the effects of the war upon her family subsequently had made her wise beyond her years. It also made her feel like an outsider whenever she returned to North Carolina.

Mike, on the other hand, was a true son of the North and had grown up in a big city that he loved—Chicago. He was intelligent but reserved, spoke with no apparent accent whatsoever, and already had served in Korea and Vietnam. Until he left for West Point by train at the age of seventeen, however, his actual experience was limited to his home state of Illinois, his maternal grandparents’ state of Michigan, and a tiny bit of the state of Indiana that linked them.

The two young people sometimes would prove to be as different as night and day, but it is often said that opposites attract. And both had tended to see themselves as outsiders at some time or another.

PART ONE

TWO YOUNG PEOPLE

CHAPTER 1

North Carolina

On December 7, 1941, little Gloria was not yet sixteen months old, so she had little memory of the date that shall live in infamy or the many anxious days and nights that would pass until her mother received word that her husband was wounded in the attack but still quite alive. Gloria did, however, recognize her dad when he returned home after the war—mainly because of the large framed photo portrait of him in uniform that her mother showed her every day of his absence. She also recalled a pair of Oriental pajamas—stained from immersion in salt water—that her dad had purchased for her earlier as a Christmas present. They were recovered from his officer’s quarters aboard the USS Nevada before it was hauled into dry dock for major repairs. For the remainder of the war, he would serve as the native North Carolinian ranking officer aboard the battleship USS North Carolina as it earned its nickname, the Showboat, for exemplary service in a number of naval combat operations. As a toddler during World War II, Gloria had both adventures and trauma on the North Carolina tobacco farm owned by her maternal grandparents.

Decades after her birth, when reflecting upon her life, Gloria would admit, I never did keep a diary. There is no record of my thoughts, hopes, dreams, and fears. In fact, probably no one would even recognize my maiden name except in a little community in the central part of North Carolina … I most definitely was an outsider.

Her first inkling of being an outsider came at the age of two and a half while attending church in North Carolina with her mother during the war. Dressed in a pink angora sweater, a pleated gray flannel skirt held up by little suspenders with pearl buttons, lace-topped socks, and new patent leather shoes, she held tightly to her mother’s hand. She was painfully aware of the tiny owllike glasses she recently was required to wear to correct a severely wandering eye. While her tall, slender mother received admiring glances from the congregation, little Gloria continually was required to scrunch up her face to keep her glasses from sliding down her little button nose.

Toward the end of the service, Gloria, as a newcomer, was invited by the minister to join the other children in selecting a closing hymn. She startled the congregation with her choice of Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition, a popular but secular song of the war years. The minister acknowledged it to be a fine song but suggested Jesus Loves Me instead since he had forgotten to bring the music for her song. Gloria was enjoying the gracious welcome home that her mother and she were receiving until someone said, That sure is a young’un to be wearing spectacles. She sure does look funny with those specs on. Burning tears rolled down her cheeks as one of the children called her Four Eyes, and the others began making circles around their eyes with their fingers. Gloria could not get out of the church fast enough when the service was over.

As soon as the car stopped in front of her grandparents’ house, Gloria jumped out and rushed into her grandfather’s arms. When he heard what had happened, he was livid and told Gloria, You don’t have to go back there. In the end, he happily agreed to his granddaughter’s suggestion: I go if you take me, Granddaddy. He told her to change into her play clothes and come outside with him. As he walked down the hall, Gloria’s little voice called after him, Wait for me, Granddaddy. Wait for me.

Although Gloria did not remember the first time she had met her grandfather, he most certainly did. Gloria was about nineteen months old at the time and had just traveled three thousand miles from San Diego by train with her mother. As soon as Gloria saw him at the railroad station, she put her arms around his neck and refused to be carried by anyone else. Her granddaddy was true to his word until the day that he died. No one ever bothered his little granddaughter at church again.

While driving home with her grandfather one day, a heavily loaded truck pulled out of a side road directly in their path. Although he slammed on his brakes, her grandfather could not avoid a collision with the rear of the truck. Little Gloria was thrown through the windshield and over the truck but miraculously landed relatively unhurt on the roadway. Her only noticeable injury was from small shards of windshield glass superficially imbedded in her forehead and scalp. Her grandpa, however, was not as fortunate. He was pinned against the steering wheel and had to be cut out of his car. This caused a problem since little Gloria, even at this young age, had been taught well and refused to be taken home by a stranger. She insisted on staying with her grandpa, but eventually, he convinced her to ride home with a friend of his while he was extracted from his automobile and taken to their family doctor.

Her experience was far more enjoyable when her grandfather’s cow Spot pushed her way through a fence and wandered off in search of greener pastures, literally. Grandpa began to follow the cow tracks toward the neighboring McDougal farm, but little Gloria insisted on accompanying him on the search. As they finished traversing a cornfield, they saw Leon, one of the McDougal boys, leading Spot toward them. He said that Spot had done no damage but had just stood in their field, looking all around. Grandpa thanked him for his help and started leading Spot and Gloria back home. By that time, however, Gloria complained, Granddaddy, the weeds are itchin’ me. I don’t want to walk anymore. Let me ride on Spot. Although he tried to dissuade Gloria from riding by suggesting that the cow might not like having a little girl on her back, his young granddaughter won the argument simply by asserting, "Spot likes me!"

Now Spot’s back was pretty wide, so Gloria’s little legs stuck straight out as she rode on the cow, but nevertheless, she was very happy. Not wanting to take Spot back through the cornfield, Grandpa led her along a path next to the dirt road that ran past their own farm. Suddenly, a car driving along the dirt road stopped, and the driver got out and introduced himself to Gloria’s grandfather. He was a photographer for Progressive Farmer magazine and requested permission to take a picture of the little cowgirl. Grandpa crouched down behind Spot while still holding on to Gloria, but if you looked closely at the photo, you could see that Spot had six legs. And two of them were clad in denim. Sometime later, complimentary copies of the photo arrived by mail, along with an authorization form for the publication of the image on the next cover of Progressive Farmer. Little Gloria was going to be a cover girl. Living much of the time on a relatively self-sufficient farm in North Carolina, however, she would know little of the rationing that dominated the diet of city dwellers, like the Tadeusz family.

Chicago

Young Mike Tadeusz was awakened early one morning to say goodbye to his big brother, Joe, as he left to enlist in the US Navy. It was his brother’s eighteenth birthday, and Joe would serve in the Pacific during the final year and a half of World War II. Although over a dozen years older than Mike, during the previous years, both brothers had participated in paper and scrap metal drives for the war effort—although little brother Mike was as much a hindrance as a help—and joined their dad in turning their small backyard into a Victory garden full of tomato plants, carrots, radishes, and lettuce—and some morning glory flowers on their fence for Mom. Even at his young age, Mike was familiar with ration books and little round fiberboard points with differing colors for meat and other staples. He also was fascinated by the curious box of rolled-up, empty toothpaste tubes at the local drugstore. They were required to be turned in before customers could purchase a new tube. Eventually, even the two rubber tires on the cart they had used to haul blocks of ice from the icehouse about a mile from their home were sacrificed to the war effort.

A more permanent and ominous sign of wartime could be found on several of the lampposts in their South Chicago neighborhood. They were adorned with official blackboards with a gold star and the name, rank, and branch of service of a neighbor who already had given his life in the war. Some lampposts held two or three of these killed-in-action memorials. Almost every house displayed at least one small white silk banner with a red border, a gold fringe, and a blue star for a living soldier or sailor from the family or a gold star for a father or brother or husband killed in the war. Some had both.

Many years later, Mike’s parents would post a similar blue-star banner recognizing his participation in the Vietnam War. The letters received from big brother Joe spoke of endless guard duty and security patrols around supply installations, countless resupply convoys up to the front lines, and later duty as a member of the shore patrol in a number of places with strange-sounding names. Most letters sent to Joe in the Pacific included at least one crayon drawing by his little brother, and Mike liked to try to wear his father’s heavy white air raid warden’s helmet.

Following the surrender of Japan, big brother Joe spent several months helping dismantle the navy’s wartime logistics system before rotating back stateside for his honorable discharge from the navy. Meanwhile, his little brother eagerly awaited his return and the promise of some keepsake items from his big brother’s navy uniform and insignia. These would include a number of white sailor hats, some leggings used while working with the shore patrol and pulling guard, a set of signaling flags, and a number of stencils used to mark various items of his brother’s uniforms and equipment with his name and serial number. Big brother offered to get Mike a military brush haircut when he returned home, but his little brother declined. That would have to wait quite a few years, and it would happen in New York rather than in Chicago.

CHAPTER 2

Gotta Dance!

Gloria couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t dance. The movies were her inspiration—Shirley Temple movies in particular. When visiting Grandma Broughton on her farm, she loved the sound that her shoes made on the linoleum floor, and Martha Graham would have been proud of her modern dances created in the violet-covered meadows of the farm. There, an old lace curtain panel waved softly in the wind to the music only she could hear rising from her inner soul as she performed for the cows grazing silently nearby.

Only once, at age five, did she receive an unfavorable review from an old bull infuriated by the lace panel blowing in the wind. Gloria noted, I recalled hearing a loud snort and feeling the ground tremble as he began his charge. Even this city girl knew to run, making it safely under the electric fence while the bull choreographed his own dance with my discarded lace panel caught on his horns.

For a little girl, Gloria had a lot of rhythm. Her earliest recollection of performing before a real audience was in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the home of her uncle John and aunt Jane. Her aunt was an accomplished classical pianist but could manage a mean boogie if the situation demanded it. Her beautiful concert grand piano rocked as four-year-old Gloria danced all over her tile hearth and around the edges of the wooden floor not covered by beautiful Oriental rugs. Relatives enjoying cocktails after dinner provided a very appreciative audience that applauded her efforts. That night, Gloria was heard to say in her sleep, I can’t dance anymore now, but I’ll be back tomorrow.

Her next public performance—unscheduled and also at age four—took place outside the local church during one of her many visits to North Carolina. Walking through the church parking lot, she happened to notice a potential stage. Actually, it was just a stack of lumber for building an addition to the church, but it looked pretty good to an aspiring dancer like Gloria. Sometime later, all the adults were still attending Bible classes, but the preschoolers finished early and were dismissed. When they went outside, she headed toward her stage.

I hoisted myself onto that stack of wood and began to sing and dance for all I was worth. I was offering my rendition of the cancan—flipping up my skirt to show my ruffled panties, singing and dancing for my entranced Sunday school friends—when my mother yanked me off my stage with such force that I don’t believe my feet touched the ground until we reached our car.

Her mother was humiliated, but as friends walked over to praise Gloria’s dancing, her mother calmed down and accepted the rave reviews with grace. When she related the story back at home, Granddaddy suggested that Gloria be given the opportunity to take real dancing lessons.

Gloria was enrolled in dancing school after the war even though money was tight and dancing lessons were a luxury. I started in California and danced my way across the country, so to speak. Each time her dad was transferred to a new naval base, she had to change dancing schools. Sometimes the classes were with a hundred kids in a large ballroom. Other times they were with ten kids in a side room at a roller skating rink, but I loved every minute of it. I always looked forward to recital times, but I never managed to be there when the big day arrived. Sometimes it was due to her dad being ordered to a different naval base or her being sent to stay with her grandparents while her mom returned to her nursing profession.

Illnesses also interrupted my chances to perform. A case of chicken pox curtailed my performance at age six, while an injury to my left leg later almost ended my dancing career because of a severe infection. Her mom worked for weeks with warm compresses and exercises for her skinny little legs. Soon I was dancing again, although with a limp that would remain with me for the rest of my life. I learned to compensate, however, and the limp only became noticeable when I was especially tired. Mike never noticed the limp until she was seven months pregnant with their first child.

Gloria recalled the adventures of moving from base to base with her parents after the war. At one city, she often ate supper out with her dad because they had no kitchen in their rented apartment, and her mom was working late as a nurse. A favorite place was a diner that served great hot dogs and gave you your next hot dog free after you had purchased ten. It was what Gloria later referred to as a greasy spoon when she told her mother about a pretty waitress there who always gave Daddy a free slice of pie and sat down with them for a few minutes to talk. Needless to say, Gloria’s mom made them promise to never go to that diner again.

Many years later, married to Mike and then the mother of two young children herself, Gloria voiced a similar complaint to her own husband when a young woman—nineteen years old at best—working a food concession at a favorite theme park spent too much time holding Mike’s hand while admiring his West Point ring. No free pie was involved.

Another time, little Gloria’s parents were visiting some friends, and she was sent out to play with the two older daughters of the family they were visiting. The older girls soon got tired of having a little girl tagging along after them, so they told her to wait on a park bench. They never came back for her. A kindly stranger asked her if she was lost. She certainly was, but the only thing that she could remember about the family they were visiting was that the mother was making spaghetti sauce for their supper. Since many of the apartment buildings were similar in that section of the city, the Good Samaritan took Gloria into the entrances of over a dozen buildings before she was able to detect the aroma of the spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove and tearfully be reunited with her parents.

Back in North Carolina again, Gloria’s mother occasionally noted that a kitchen pan was missing. Although Dad usually suggested that his wife possibly forgot about loaning it to her own mom, who lived a hundred yards away, he knew the truth. Little Gloria had made yet another disappointing batch of fudge that had turned into asphalt and ruined the bottom of the saucepan. To hide the evidence, the pans were buried out in the pasture. Her dad sometimes speculated upon what conclusion some archeologists a thousand years in the future might make about bizarre religious rituals requiring the burial of a number of metal vessels with the remains of a strange potion solidified in the bottom of them.

CHAPTER 3

Postwar Chicago

When his brother returned home safely from the war in the Pacific, Mike inherited some of the previously mentioned pieces of his uniform plus his navy boot camp tome, The Bluejackets’ Manual, 1944. Mike immediately attempted to learn some basic military skills, including dismounted drill and the manual of arms for the rifle, from it. A number of uncles and cousins who had served with the army in Europe provided another set of examples and random pieces of military uniform for many schoolboy games of Soldier in the public park across the street from the modest four-flat apartment building that his father and mother owned. A twenty-foot buffer of trees and shrubs along two sides of the rather large park provided the combat zone. Favorite radio programs of the time were about Sky King, a flying cowboy; and Captain Midnight, a former army pilot who now fought crime and international intrigue. There was no doubt in young Mike’s mind that when he was old enough, he too would be a soldier, a sailor, or perhaps even a pilot.

Within a few blocks of home were located the St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church and Schools and the Carnegie Steel Mill (later United States Steel). His father worked there as a foreman and had helped set production records during the war. A few blocks beyond were the Lake Michigan shore and Rainbow Beach, named in honor of the storied Forty-Second Infantry Rainbow Division that had served with distinction in both world wars. Mike attended St. Michael the Archangel Elementary School, accompanied each morning by his sister, Marie, who was starting her freshman year at the Catholic high school on the same block when Mike began first grade. When she graduated, he was deemed old enough to walk the several blocks to school alone since there were traffic signals plus a traffic policewoman at the busiest intersection. Also located nearby was the Sullivan Public Elementary School.

Meanwhile, with his older brother back from the Pacific and enjoying his bachelor life with two high school buddies who also returned safely, Mike was the recipient of varied souvenirs. These included chopsticks from Chinese restaurants, plastic bibs emblazoned with drawings of big red lobsters from seafood restaurants, souvenir menus from varied other restaurants, introductory Charles Atlas bodybuilding lessons, and even a booklet from an Arthur Murray dance studio—complete with diagrams for a waltz (box step) and a more complex dance known as the Lindy Hop (in honor of Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean). Mike’s elementary school devoted an hour each month to a social on Friday afternoon with recorded music for dancing for the four older classes.

Since few of the young boys knew how to dance, most of the couples were girls. When Mike entered the fifth grade, he decided to do something about it. He carefully hand-copied the two dance step diagrams from his brother’s booklet and sold them to some of the boys in his class for two cents each. Unfortunately, this early start in ballroom dancing did not help him many years later when he auditioned for a part in an amateur musical production at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He was cut early by Gloria, the attractive young blond choreographer whom he just had begun dating at the time and eventually would marry.

Mike grew up in a Polish Catholic neighborhood only a half-hour ride by commuter train from Chicago’s Uptown Loop area and a fifteen-minute walk or five-minute streetcar ride to the local downtown. Three dime stores (Scott, Kresge, and Woolworth), a six-story department store, an ice cream parlor, and two movie houses were the main attractions. Besides all that, the Thom McAn shoe store even had an x-ray machine that displayed how much extra room your toes had in the new shoes your parents were about to buy for you. Last, but not least, there was a clothing store that provided birthday presents to the children of good customers. On Mike’s ninth birthday, the gift awarded him was a gleaming silver Colt .45 cap pistol with ivory grips (actually white plastic). No gun belt with holster was included, but it seemed a wonderful gift nonetheless to a youngster like Mike. It was just perfect for playing cowboy.

The following year, in midsummer, Mike stumbled upon an unusual item, evidently discarded, in the alleyway that ran behind