My grandfather was born on a farm in the western United States.
This was between WW1. No phone, car, electricity, indoor toilet. Today we describe it as “Third World Conditions.”
One day, you are a child plowing fields behind a cow, cruises 40,000 feet above the Arctic Ocean, piloting a killing machine with the power to evaporate the city.
He was one of ten children. For some reason, he and all of his siblings have grown up.
He was a tap dancer. I worked in Vaudeville (i.e. he opened for strippers). That’s how he paid to the university during his depression. The first member of the family.
He was a war pilot. He learned to fly and run radio – a skill that was barely present before he was born.
After the war he married and started a family. He worked as a stockbroker for a while, but his old boss asked him to come back during the airlift in Berlin. There he joined the US Air Force.
Eventually he returned to school and earned a Masters degree in International Relations. For a while he worked for the NSC at the Eisenhower White House. He wrote the President’s Daily Intelligence Brief. He was very proud of it.
He was mostly stationed in Europe. That’s where my mother mostly grew up. Earning US dollars in postwar Europe has become a good lifestyle. Servant, French Riviera vacation, good stuff.
He ended his career to a b-52 due to strategic aviation orders.
The 20th century was a strange period. One day, you are a child plowing fields behind a cow, cruises 40,000 feet above the Arctic Ocean, piloting a killing machine with the power to evaporate the city.
I became his caretaker at the end of his life. He was 101 years old. His doctor was surprised he was still alive.
He lived longer than his wife, longer than three of his four children, and lived most of his siblings. But he continued to stroll. And no one could understand why.
He kept asking him to go home near the farm where he grew up.
I didn’t want him to go because there was no one to take care of him. I don’t have close family. I didn’t want him to be in a nursing home in another state.
But he continued to insist. So, finally I was forgiven. I found a nursing home to take him with me.
He was so frail for the drive that we got an ambulance. It was a bit of a rear jet. I went with him.
The pilot asked if he was a veterinarian. I told them he was truly a retired colonel.
Both pilots were air force reserves. He addressed him as a colonel. I gave him a salute. He was weak, but he salutes.
He had tachycardia at that point. His resting pulse was usually about 130, but when we took off, his pulse was in the 70s. It wasn’t that low for years.
He felt in an empty house. Flying was something that he could dream of as a child. He was relaxed, calm and slept.
We arrived at his hometown supplement facility. I settled him in his room, met the nurse, walked down the street and grabbed a fast food dinner.
I came back an hour later and he was dead. He wanted to go home and die, and that’s what he did.
Our grandparents lived in a world that must have been a daunting change. But it was also a world of opportunity, where children from poor farms could fly jets, have European servants, and work in the White House.
That world is gone and has not returned. The question is what we build in that place.
