Chapter 4

It's only been since I started thinking about writing this that I have come to realize that I've never been much to set big goals and pursue them. I mostly just did the obvious thing at the time, and for the most part everything worked out pretty good.

Coming home was one of those times that I didn't do the obvious thing. Oh, I was glad to see my folks and my brother, but that glad wore off in a hurry. My brother Philip had been drafted in 1941, had gone through North Africa and Italy, and had somehow made it up to the rank of private first class. He had been out of the service for about a year, but he was really cheesed off at me coming home a staff sergeant with a lot less time in service and he made damn sure I knew about it. He was the older brother and he was going to be the boss, no matter what the Army had done.

I guess I haven't come right out and said that we grew up just about dirt poor out there in the Nebraska cornfields. We never had running water in the house, and we didn't get electricity until the REA finally put in a line. Phillip had dropped out of school in the ninth grade and had just worked on the farm until he got drafted. The folks had a few good years farming during the war while the crop prices were high, and the next few years looked to be pretty good. Now that I was home I was told pretty directly that I was expected to stay home and be a farm hand. I'd get room and board like I had before, but I could just forget about a regular paycheck.

What made it worse was that it had been pretty well decided years before that Philip was going to be getting the farm when my folks passed on. They weren't all that old yet, but they seemed old, and it looked to me like it might happen sooner rather than later, which meant that I wasn't going to be working toward anything except being Philip's free farmhand. There was no way in hell that was going to happen.

It was after midnight when I got home and the very next damn morning Philip was up in my attic room at five AM yelling at me to get up, go out and clean up after the cows while he did the milking. I told him right out that it was going to cost him fifty cents an hour and the more he bitched about it the more it would cost him. That real quick turned into a yelling match between me and Dad, who took Philip's side, and frankly I think that Mom sort of sided with them, too. Well, I went right back upstairs, grabbed the Army duffel bag that I hadn't even unpacked yet, got my Army clothes back on since my civilian stuff from high school was now a little too small, got out on the road and started hiking toward town, just mad as hell.

I hadn't had breakfast before I left, and by the time I got to Hartford I was hungry. The Mercantile wasn't open yet to buy some civilian clothes that would fit, so I headed into the Hartford Café for breakfast, and there my luck changed, because who should be there but Mr. Vogt, my old high school principal, who invited me to sit down with him.

It didn't take Mr. Vogt long to discover that I was still mad at my whole damn family. "So, what are you going to do?" he asked gently.

"Get some civilian clothes, get the hell out of Hartford, and go find a job in some city some place."

"You know," he smiled, "With all the vets coming home and looking for work, jobs are hard to find most places."

"I heard that," I admitted. "But what the hell else am I supposed to do?"

"I don't want to tell you what to do, but you might look at this as an opportunity to better yourself."

I asked him what he meant by that.

"Well, you're qualified for the GI Bill, aren't you? You could go to college."

Now, that was something that I'd never even thought about. I didn't know much of anyone who had been to college, except for Mr. Vogt and a few teachers, of course – at least nobody around my age. College wasn't something that you worked into your plans when you grew up in Hartford, Nebraska back in those days. "What would I learn in college?" I asked, mostly protesting the idea. "I'm not even sure I could do the work."

"I think you can," he told me. "You were one of the better students in high school, and you would have been better yet if your attention hadn't been on farm work. As far as what you could learn, going to college will give you a better idea of what you can do and give you the means to get there. Best of all, it'll give you the time to think about it."

"Yeah, but I've got to have something to live on, don't I? I managed to save some money in the Army, but it's not that much."

He gave me a big smile. "You heard of the 52-20 Club, haven't you?"

I have to admit that it had never even crossed my mind. Back at the out processing in San Francisco a few days before they'd given us some lectures about returning to civilian life, and one of the things that they told us was that we were eligible for unemployment insurance, twenty dollars a week for a year. "That'd take the sting out," I admitted, realizing that I was beginning to buy into the idea. I'd never thought of going to college, being a college graduate, but right at the moment it seemed like something real good to jam down Philip's throat. "How would I go about getting into a college? It starts pretty soon, doesn't it?"

"End of the month, give or take a little," Mr. Vogt said. "Depends on the college. I know a lot of colleges are pretty full of people on the GI bill, but from what I hear most colleges are glad to take that government money so they find room. It might go better if you were to go to a college here in Nebraska. They might be a little more open to taking an in-state student, especially this late."

"You mean the University, down in Lincoln?"

"Wouldn't hurt to ask," he shrugged. "There might be a chance you could still get in. But there're other schools, and if you really wanted to go to the University you could probably transfer. On the other hand, you might be wise to get off at a little slower pace, someplace small where you could adapt a little easier. I went to the State Teacher's College in Chadron, and I thought it was pretty good."

"You mean I could be a teacher if I went there?"

"Probably could if you wanted to be," he told me. "Or the University, or lots of other places. And there're lots of other things you could do besides being a teacher if you went to Chadron, too."

I have to thank Mr. Vogt for that. Ten minutes after I walked into the café that morning I had a whole new shape and direction to my life. I had left the farm thinking – what little I was thinking, that is – that I'd head for some place like St. Louis or Chicago and get a job in a factory or something. I hated the thought of working in a factory – about the best I could say about it was that it was better than living on the farm with Philip. Now I could envision a good job where I stood a chance of staying clean.

After Mr. Vogt and I had breakfast, he stayed with me while I went over to the Mercantile and bought some civvies, then we went over to his office at the school where he could make a few phone calls. Long distance phone calls were expensive and not real common back in those days, but if you made one or got one you knew it was important. By noon I had a provisional acceptance at Chadron State Teacher's College – I'd actually have to go there to make the application but based on what Mr. Vogt told them about my grades I would be accepted when I turned in the application.

Mr. Vogt gave me some advice about how to do things in college and some things about Chadron, then took me back to the Mercantile where I bought some more civvies. That afternoon, a bus came through heading for Norfolk, and I was on it.

It was a long time before I came back to Hartford, and then I didn't stay long. I've since come to realize that Philip probably had his right to be concerned about me coming home and claiming my share of the farm, because it really wasn't big enough to support all of us, and the way farming went in the future it only got worse.

They wanted me gone, and they got their wish. Still, he had no reason to be such an asshole, and my parents weren't far behind. From what I heard years later, my rant in the café got around town, and it didn't help Phillip's or my parents' already none too good reputation any.

I never saw Philip again. A couple years later Dad got very sick, and he and Mom figured that he might do better in a softer climate. They moved out to San Diego where my sister Shirley had moved during the war, not wanting to be a Nebraska farm wife any more than I wanted to be a farmer. They worked out a deal to mortgage the farm to Philip to give them some income. He figured they wouldn't last long and he would be off the hook. Dad died a couple years later but Mom lived on into her nineties, and only died a few years ago, long after Philip had to pay off every cent of the mortgage.

Making those mortgage payments on that too-small patch of dirt just about stretched Philip to the limit. He could never afford to even think about getting married, and he became your typical bachelor farmer, grumpy and lonely, taking a bath once a month whether he needed it or not. Back about 1970 a neighbor found him lying in the back yard, dead of a heart attack.

So, my sister and I wound up with the farm after all. We had most of Philip's stuff auctioned off and threw away the rest, sold the farm as quick as we could and split the money. I eventually used my share towards buying a little place in Florida, and figured it served Phil right and then some.

But that was long in the future as I rode the bus out of Hartford with what bridges I had pretty well burned behind me.

I had to wait in Norfolk until I could get a bus the next day, so spent the night in a cheap room in a brownstone, then caught the bus that would take me up US-20 to Chadron.

Nebraska is a pretty empty state in the best of places and northern Nebraska and the panhandle are emptier than most. There's some fairly pretty country there in the Sand Hills and down around Pine Ridge near Chadron, but I didn't appreciate it much, because as I rode the bus west I was worrying about whether I might have gone off half-cocked.