Congratulations !
You have been awarded points.
Thank you for !
- Story Listed as: True Life For Teens
- Theme: Family & Friends
- Subject: Memory / Reminiscence
- Published: 07/23/2012
Ricky's Two Grandmas
Born 1954, M, from Magalia, California, United States.jpg)
Ricky’s Two Grandmas
We were at approximately eleven thousand feet as the pilot backed off on the airspeed. We were ready to make the drop over France. There were only six of us on a special mission. The plane was being hammered with shrapnel, so there was no time to take in the sights before jumping. The sergeant shouted and Dean went out the door. I went next. All six of us jumped, and when we hit the ground we rolled with the impact and immediately ran around the corner of the building next to where we landed. Hearing a loud whistle, I looked back and I saw Howard sitting on the ground holding his leg crying and rocking back and forth. Great! The war dissolved, as the yard duty teacher approached and I saw Howard point in the direction we had run.
We were in trouble again. I just turned around and walked back to where Howard sat, as Mrs. Matthews could see me anyway. I knew that Howard was going to try to get out of being in trouble by blaming his injury on us somehow, as he always did. I was right.
Mrs. Matthews said, “Howard says you, Keith and Dean threw him from the Jungle Jim. What do you have to say, Ricky?”
“He parachuted, just like the rest of us,” I said. “We were making a drop over France to fight the Krauts. Howard went last. Nobody pushed him.”
“You boys are going to have to go to Mr. Hansen’s office.“
I looked around, because I didn’t know that any of the others were around me until she said “you boys”. Then I said, “But nobody pushed him.”
“But you did purposely jump from the Jungle Jim. You’ve been told about that before.” Mrs. Matthews looked tired.
Dean piped up, “We were talked to about bailing out of the swings, not jumping off the monkey bars.”
“Go. To. Mr. Hansen’s Office. Now.”
Howard was taken to the nurses office, right next to Mr. Hansen’s office. By the time Mr. Hansen showed up the nurse had taped a bag of ice to Howard’s leg and had him join us. Mr. Hansen was our principle, at Yachats Elementary School. Those were the days that the school had authority to discipline the children. Looking back, I approve. At the time, I was less than happy.
If I got a spanking from Mr. Hansen, it was a guarantee that there was another one waiting for me at home. In a small town the last thing a family needed was for their child to have a reputation for being a trouble maker. My ex-marine father was not the only one to react with a second dose of “what’s good for you”, but I do believe he’s the only one who dished out pushups for desert.
Actually, it didn’t work out so bad this time. He attempted to explain the idea of liability if we got hurt, so he asked us to take our military exploits out to the ball field by the toolies. No more jumping off the swing sets or the monkey bars or off the school roof, (I have no idea how he found out about that as we were playing at the school yard on the weekend. With a huge population of 413 in our enormous home town of Yachats, there is no way he could have possibly spotted us himself).
It wasn’t long after that when my military career ground to a halt completely. My friends and I would always watched a program called “Combat” and then reenact the program the next day. Vic Morrow was the Sarge, usually played out by Dean. Keith was the Lieutenant, (sorry I don’t remember the actor’s name). I liked to be one of the scrounges slash thieves and the rest were platoon. One day we were tumbling and dodging through the sallal and salmon berry bushes and killing the “dirty krauts” with our machine guns when my grandmother that lived with us, grandma Schreiber, caught me by the arm and brought me in the house and told me, “Your grandfather was from Germany. He moved here just before World War Two, and was a very nice man. And your mother is half of what your grandfather was, and you are half of what she is. What did you call them, ‘dirty krauts?”
I thought about that. My mother’s father had died when I was three, and for some reason when someone mentioned him I always felt like I lost someone special, yet I don’t even remember ever meeting him. Well I couldn’t shoot Germans anymore. It never occurred to me that when I told the guys why that I’d be the object of their war. Dean, Edward and I got in several scraps and felt Mr. Hansen’s paddle a few times before we got over that foolishness.
My other grandfather was an architect that owned the hardware and gas pumps at the south end of Yachats, and I stayed with him often. My grandfather loved to watch westerns on TV. Among them was “Death Valley Days” and “Rawhide”. Now, I’d told my friends that I wouldn’t kill anymore Germans, because all of them weren’t bad. So we switched to “shootin’ injuns”. I was chasing and shooting and yelling at those injuns when my other grandmother came and called me in for lunch.
She’d fixed me some clam chowder and a tuna sandwich, and as I ate I played with the little turtle that lived on her kitchen table. It loved for me to give it little pieces of tuna or hamburger. While I was doing this grandma came out with a sketched drawing of a really pretty Indian woman. She said, “This is a picture of my mother when she was young.”
I looked at it and said, “I thought grandma Branson was your mother.”
She said, “That’s right. Grandpa Branson married her off the Reservation in North Dakota, before he took up the riverboat ministry on the Columbia River.”
Grandma Branson was old and wrinkled with white hair and walked with a cane. Grandma Wooldridge hair had gray in it, but you could tell it used to be all black. Her skin was darker than mine, but not as dark as my Cub Scout Master, who was from the local Reservation. The picture was stunning. She was grandma’s mom? I don’t know what happened to that picture, but for years afterward I used to ask to look at it.
All I could say at that time was, “Wow.”
My days as an Indian hunter ended before they started.
I have friends today that I’d be ashamed to have hear this story in connection with me. As a seven year old boy, the media would have had me hating and ready to kill people I knew nothing about. And, no thanks to the media, my views of people have changed over the years. It is possible to love your neighbor as yourself.
If you look at this beautiful planet from space you’ll notice that there are really no lines dividing us from each other. Albert Einstein said, "As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable." Nations are not individuals who can learn and grow and love. They are beasts that hunger and must feed to survive, even if it must feed on its own population. Such ugly things feeding prejudice and hatred between people, while organized religion follows the feedbag.
There are a lot of confused little seven year old children. What could you tell them. Jesus Christ said, “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves.” It sounds pretty simple to me. Then, again, if it wasn’t for my two grandmas, would I have stopped and thought about this? Wisdom comes from the strangest places.
Ricky's Two Grandmas(Ric Wooldridge)
Ricky’s Two Grandmas
We were at approximately eleven thousand feet as the pilot backed off on the airspeed. We were ready to make the drop over France. There were only six of us on a special mission. The plane was being hammered with shrapnel, so there was no time to take in the sights before jumping. The sergeant shouted and Dean went out the door. I went next. All six of us jumped, and when we hit the ground we rolled with the impact and immediately ran around the corner of the building next to where we landed. Hearing a loud whistle, I looked back and I saw Howard sitting on the ground holding his leg crying and rocking back and forth. Great! The war dissolved, as the yard duty teacher approached and I saw Howard point in the direction we had run.
We were in trouble again. I just turned around and walked back to where Howard sat, as Mrs. Matthews could see me anyway. I knew that Howard was going to try to get out of being in trouble by blaming his injury on us somehow, as he always did. I was right.
Mrs. Matthews said, “Howard says you, Keith and Dean threw him from the Jungle Jim. What do you have to say, Ricky?”
“He parachuted, just like the rest of us,” I said. “We were making a drop over France to fight the Krauts. Howard went last. Nobody pushed him.”
“You boys are going to have to go to Mr. Hansen’s office.“
I looked around, because I didn’t know that any of the others were around me until she said “you boys”. Then I said, “But nobody pushed him.”
“But you did purposely jump from the Jungle Jim. You’ve been told about that before.” Mrs. Matthews looked tired.
Dean piped up, “We were talked to about bailing out of the swings, not jumping off the monkey bars.”
“Go. To. Mr. Hansen’s Office. Now.”
Howard was taken to the nurses office, right next to Mr. Hansen’s office. By the time Mr. Hansen showed up the nurse had taped a bag of ice to Howard’s leg and had him join us. Mr. Hansen was our principle, at Yachats Elementary School. Those were the days that the school had authority to discipline the children. Looking back, I approve. At the time, I was less than happy.
If I got a spanking from Mr. Hansen, it was a guarantee that there was another one waiting for me at home. In a small town the last thing a family needed was for their child to have a reputation for being a trouble maker. My ex-marine father was not the only one to react with a second dose of “what’s good for you”, but I do believe he’s the only one who dished out pushups for desert.
Actually, it didn’t work out so bad this time. He attempted to explain the idea of liability if we got hurt, so he asked us to take our military exploits out to the ball field by the toolies. No more jumping off the swing sets or the monkey bars or off the school roof, (I have no idea how he found out about that as we were playing at the school yard on the weekend. With a huge population of 413 in our enormous home town of Yachats, there is no way he could have possibly spotted us himself).
It wasn’t long after that when my military career ground to a halt completely. My friends and I would always watched a program called “Combat” and then reenact the program the next day. Vic Morrow was the Sarge, usually played out by Dean. Keith was the Lieutenant, (sorry I don’t remember the actor’s name). I liked to be one of the scrounges slash thieves and the rest were platoon. One day we were tumbling and dodging through the sallal and salmon berry bushes and killing the “dirty krauts” with our machine guns when my grandmother that lived with us, grandma Schreiber, caught me by the arm and brought me in the house and told me, “Your grandfather was from Germany. He moved here just before World War Two, and was a very nice man. And your mother is half of what your grandfather was, and you are half of what she is. What did you call them, ‘dirty krauts?”
I thought about that. My mother’s father had died when I was three, and for some reason when someone mentioned him I always felt like I lost someone special, yet I don’t even remember ever meeting him. Well I couldn’t shoot Germans anymore. It never occurred to me that when I told the guys why that I’d be the object of their war. Dean, Edward and I got in several scraps and felt Mr. Hansen’s paddle a few times before we got over that foolishness.
My other grandfather was an architect that owned the hardware and gas pumps at the south end of Yachats, and I stayed with him often. My grandfather loved to watch westerns on TV. Among them was “Death Valley Days” and “Rawhide”. Now, I’d told my friends that I wouldn’t kill anymore Germans, because all of them weren’t bad. So we switched to “shootin’ injuns”. I was chasing and shooting and yelling at those injuns when my other grandmother came and called me in for lunch.
She’d fixed me some clam chowder and a tuna sandwich, and as I ate I played with the little turtle that lived on her kitchen table. It loved for me to give it little pieces of tuna or hamburger. While I was doing this grandma came out with a sketched drawing of a really pretty Indian woman. She said, “This is a picture of my mother when she was young.”
I looked at it and said, “I thought grandma Branson was your mother.”
She said, “That’s right. Grandpa Branson married her off the Reservation in North Dakota, before he took up the riverboat ministry on the Columbia River.”
Grandma Branson was old and wrinkled with white hair and walked with a cane. Grandma Wooldridge hair had gray in it, but you could tell it used to be all black. Her skin was darker than mine, but not as dark as my Cub Scout Master, who was from the local Reservation. The picture was stunning. She was grandma’s mom? I don’t know what happened to that picture, but for years afterward I used to ask to look at it.
All I could say at that time was, “Wow.”
My days as an Indian hunter ended before they started.
I have friends today that I’d be ashamed to have hear this story in connection with me. As a seven year old boy, the media would have had me hating and ready to kill people I knew nothing about. And, no thanks to the media, my views of people have changed over the years. It is possible to love your neighbor as yourself.
If you look at this beautiful planet from space you’ll notice that there are really no lines dividing us from each other. Albert Einstein said, "As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable." Nations are not individuals who can learn and grow and love. They are beasts that hunger and must feed to survive, even if it must feed on its own population. Such ugly things feeding prejudice and hatred between people, while organized religion follows the feedbag.
There are a lot of confused little seven year old children. What could you tell them. Jesus Christ said, “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves.” It sounds pretty simple to me. Then, again, if it wasn’t for my two grandmas, would I have stopped and thought about this? Wisdom comes from the strangest places.
- Share this story on
- 6
.jpeg)
Kevin Hughes
04/19/2019Ric,
We had the same childhood- except I was from a big town (back then it was big, now...it isn't even in the top fifty). Like you, I learned from real people that TV teaches you the wrong things. Like you, I learned not to use names for folks, their nationality, or their religion - instead I learned to find out who they were.
Einstein was correct. There are no borders in Space.
Thanks for the Memories...and we parachuted from a bridge. Once. Three of us, three sprained ankles, one dislocated elbow, and we changed to Navy. LOL
Smiles, Kevin
Help Us Understand What's Happening
.png)
Gail
04/18/2019Awesome story Ric. Well written. The pic I posted on my last story could relate well to this story .
Reply
COMMENTS (3)