I shared this before.
My friend Ralph, who was a Korean War Veteran, used to tell me lots of stories about his childhood during the Depression and a little after. His father committed suicide, though I kind of suspect Ralph's mom shot him. She did later shoot Ralph's uncle, his dad's brother. Ralph was dirt poor. At around age 8, Ralph ran with a group of kids, who rolled drunks in Dayton. Ohio. Ralph was the stick man. If the drunk, who they were robbing, started to wake up, Ralph's job was to club him on the head to knock him unconscious. They would look for drunks and vagrants under wagons and in and under rail cars and take their money and anything they had of value. Ralph would give what he stole to his mom, so she could buy food for him, her and his younger brother.
Ralph would also catch and sell pigeons he caught under bridges and in buildings for 25 to 50 cents each, which was a lot of money back then.
When Ralph got a little older, he got a car and a gun. He would drive out of town and look for animals to kill to eat. He said if you saw any sort of animal, he and other people would stop, shoot it wherever it was and take it home and eat it. He used to skin his catches before taking them to his mother. One time, Ralph left an unskinned opossum in the sink, because he had to go to work. His mom had never seen one before and was grossed out by it, because it looked like a rat to her. She told Ralph she never wanted him to bring an opossum home again. Ralph did bring more opossums home to eat, because it was often all he could kill, but he always skinned them first, so that his mom would not know what it was.
Ralph was a hard old man. Once he got mad at himself for doing something stupid and hit himself in the head hard enough to knock himself out. Another time he thought he saw someone he hated at the end of his driveway and ran down with a stick to club them to death and realized it was someone else, right before he hit them. In his old neighborhood, if someone stole from their neighbors or had relations with a child or another man's wife, they would "burn them out". People who did more minor infractions would get beaten by a group of men with sticks.
While in Korea, Ralph along with another GI were separated and without food for a few days at a landing strip. There was a Korean, who had been burned. Ralph was so hungry the Korean smelled good enough to eat....
Ralph stayed in the Airforce after the Korean War. He was originally stationed in Washington State. Ralph would slip off into the mountains and kill black bear and deer. He had 6 small, full body, mounted black bears in his house. He had a huge amount of firearms, several full auto. He had a 50 caliber, belt fed machine gun.
Ralph designed and was instrumental in getting the Korean War Memorial built at the Airforce Museum at WPAFB.
He often talked about killing himself by shooting himself in the head. One time, I pulled into Ralph's driveway and smelled something beyond horrible. I went towards the smell expecting to find Ralph dead and found a pile of 40 some dead raccoons Ralph had killed. Minutes later Ralph's neighbor showed up, also expecting to find Ralph dead. Ralph asked me to help move the coons. The leg pulled most of the way off, from the first coon I tried to move and I told him he was on his own. Ralph grabbed one and it exploded. We burnt them in the spot.
A few years ago, Ralph finally did take his life. None of us that knew him were surprised.
Ralph was overall a good person. Like all of us he had some flaws. As an adult Ralph was very honest. He would always say exactly what he felt. He never stole a dime after childhood. He had an eighth grade education and genius IQ. He was very knowledgeable on animals and in particular pigeons. He could dig, shape and build with stone, like a beaver could with wood. I kind of loved that old man. He was like a grandfather.
Keith
