 On The Line -- Issue 599 -- September 8, 2006  Online News and Views of Life in San Benito County with Herman Wrede Published by HollisterOnline.com -- Copyright 1995-2008 HollisterOnline.com
|
|
On The Line -- Issue 599 -- September 8, 2006 Online News and Views of Life in San Benito County with Herman Wrede Published by HollisterOnline.com -- Copyright 1995-2008 HollisterOnline.com
|
|
News from home is not always good. A few days ago my sister, Anna, called from Toledo to say that Fred, the last of our four brothers, had died of cancer the previous day. He was 71.
It is strange how news like that affects one. First there are the words. One hears them and understands the message but it is almost as though it is a play with characters asking this or saying that until the scene ends. The significance of the message hits later. Of our parents' six children, Anna and I remain. She, the youngest, will be 68 next month, and I, 73 in November. It must have crossed her mind -- as it did mine -- which of us will be next. She, Fred and I were the only members of our generation to live past 66. Larry has been gone for 15 years; Ed, seven; and John, five. Larry was the oldest, followed by me, Ed and Fred, John, and finally, Anna. Memories come unbidden after a family member's death, including some not thought of for years. Many memories of Fred are naturally linked with those of Ed, his identical twin. Their resemblance was so close that even our parents sometimes had difficulty in telling which was which, not to mention their teachers. Many neighborhood children upon seeing one by himself -- a rare occurrence -- would simply address him as "Twinnie." Somehow I never had any difficulty in distinguishing them, even after we were middle-aged. They also dressed alike to compound the confusion. When they were 10, Ed suffered a cut on his right cheek while playing ball. The bandage should have enabled people to tell them apart but my brothers thought it would be amusing so Fred also wore a bandage on his right cheek. Because their teachers had trouble identifying them, the twins were separated in the fourth grade. However, their resemblance allowed them to change classrooms when the whim struck them with neither teachers nor students being the wiser. The resemblance also had its drawbacks. Ed had a schoolyard fight with a boy a little older and bested him. The next evening the boy and his older brother chanced upon Fred on his way to a friend's house and drubbed him severely. The twins were selling newspapers at the railroad on a summer day in 1948, when a train pulled in, carrying President Harry S. Truman on his famous whistle-stop campaign. He spotted them and, bemused by their resemblance, invited then to the back of the train with him while photographers' flashbulbs popped. They were all over the Toledo Blade's front page the next day. Another time they were selling newspapers downtown when Joe E. Brown, the movie comedian whose roots were in Toledo, spotted them and invited them to his interview during a local television show. There was no living with them for a month or so. The twins joined the Navy soon after their 17th birthday and the petty officers in charge of training found themselves with the same difficulty in telling them apart. Several times one was gigged for the other's infraction. When that happened, the innocent one took the punishment uncomplainingly, knowing that it was all going to even out. After they served their hitch, Ed had had enough of military service but Fred missed it. After a few years of civilian life he returned to the Navy to stay. His ship came under enemy fire several times in the Vietnamese War, and he sailed to many ports of the world. He retired as a chief machinist's mate upon completing 27 years. Most of that time our youngest brother, John, was pursuing a career in the Army. He was a paratrooper as our oldest brother, Larry, had been during World War II. When Fred's and John's leaves corresponded, they kidded each other about the best branch of service. Larry sided with John in those comparisons, and Ed, naturally, backed up Fred. My opinion was discounted because I had been a member of an armored unit in the Army, so what did I know? We all married but because of our occupations and widespread residences it was seldom that we saw each other. When I took my wife to Toledo from California, Ed met us at the airport. A few hours later Fred stopped by my parents' home and my wife, Sigrid, at first believed we were having a joke on her when he was introduced. Our daughter, Andrea, visited Toledo when she was 16 and could hardly believe the resemblance, even though her mother and I had told her about it. Fred "adopted" her during the visit and called her his "bud." The resemblance also made the newspaper again. Ed's wife, Joanne, had her second child at St. Vincent's Hospital. She was there for five days and Ed visited daily. He was an easygoing fellow and made a good impression upon the nursing staff. Three days after Joanne was discharged, Fred's wife, Shirley, was admitted for the birth of her first child. Fred was home on leave for the event and visited her in civilian clothes. The nurses were pop-eyed: apparently the same man was visiting a second wife giving birth. Fred said later, "I knew that Ed had been there, and what the nurses were thinking but I thought it was funny and didn't correct them." None of the staff asked Shirley about it. Finally, the head nurse decided to look into it and consulted the admission records. She thought it was too good a story to keep to herself, so notified the Blade, which ran a feature about it. By Fred's request there was no service after his death. He was cremated and his ashes sent to Arlington National Cemetery, where our younger brother, John, is buried. Larry's career was in the Merchant Marine and he became a captain on the Great Lakes. His ashes were scattered on Lake Superior. Ed is the only brother buried in Toledo. So many memories crowd in. Among the earliest and most enduring is one from about June of 1938, a month after the twins' third birthday. They were dressed in brown shirts attached by buttons to short pants. My mother was tending to our youngest brother, John, just three months old. My father was on the Great Lakes and we saw him for only hours at a time when his ship was in port. Larry, who was already our hero, took the three of us across the street to an empty field, and set us loose. He sat with arms folded around his knees and kept close watch as we played, to give Mom a much-needed break. I was the big boy of the three so I directed the activity. Each of the twins took turns to run past me to get to Larry. I pretended I did not see him coming, whoever's turn it was, until he was nearly upon me, then shot out my arms and yelled, "Stop!" He stopped and ran back to the starting point and his brother began the run. Every time one was stopped he laughed, and returned to the starting point, and the other began his run. Soon they were laughing so hard that they wobbled as they ran. It goes through my mind again like an old newsreel: children running and laughing across sun-dappled greenness, turning, jumping and falling, rising again in the unadulterated boisterous joy of youth to run again across a field of green and gold that seems to stretch in front of them forever. |
 |
