True Stories of Monkeyswithguns (796 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.5 on 28 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by monkeyswithguns-Genetically modified even! (View user info) at 2007-11-16 21:55:40 EST
Inspired by: http://www.ubersite.com/m/113177 which was Axlotl's post about nukes.
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My Mom's father and I have never had a great relationship. To put it shortly, he's a completely warped old man who for some reason took delight in making me cry when I was a child as he "tutored" me in mathematics the summer I failed 6th grade math.
My Mom's father (who shall be referred to as "Papa" for the rest of this story), was raised up during the Great Depression. When he was 8, his father died after being kicked in the chest by a mule, and his uncle became the patriarch of their family. He didn't mention it specifically, although I think the real story behind his life afterwards could match Frank McCourt's.
He worked on a farm picking cotton until he was 13, when he began working for a Jewish shopkeeper in tiny Lawrenceville, Va. This jew whose name I don't know became like a new father to him, and raised him, though not in the Jewish faith as his natural children, but raised him to be a man nonetheless.
When he was 15, his uncle was killed by his mother because he beat Papa's 6 year old sister so badly that her right arm was broken.
He was now the only man of the household, and as the oldest of his 8 siblings, had to take care of the lot of them in the best way a 16 year old could.
When WW2 Broke out, the un-named Jew travelled back to Germany to help his distant family pack up and immigrate to America, but unfortunately never had the chance to make it back home, was picked up by the Nazi's along with his family, and was never heard from again.
In repayment for the kindness shown to him and his family by the Jew, my Papa now not only had to take care of his own siblings, but also the Jew's children and wife. The Jewess did not know how to run the general store, but she took great care of Papa's siblings. Papa knew how to run the General Store, and so he did.
Eventually, as the time passed, and his siblings grew up, and the Jew's chidren grew old enough to run the store, Papa decided it was time to move on, and explore the world.
He joined the Navy, soon after V-J day, and went through his basic training, to become a seaman, and was assigned to a cruiser, although I'm not certain of the name as he's never mentioned which one.
After WW2, the U.S began conducting extensive experimentation on nuclear weapons, and Papa was a part of it. He was a part of Operation Crossroads, although the U.S. Government to this day denies that anyone was ever a part of this, despite Papa's extensive records proving he was. He even sued the gov't for 10 years in the 80's/90's for nothing other than the right to be recognized, so they could fix the problems caused by these tests.
(Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads)
Papa and all of his fellow sailors were positioned on the deck of their ship, with the duck and cover method approximately 30 miles away. When he described it to me, he said that had you been overhead at the time of detonation, you would have seen a 1-mile wide patch of seabed, where the ocean should have been.
After the bomb's effects had abated sufficiently, the sailors noticed that thousands of fish had floated to the surface, and the navy, not wanting to waste a good opportunity for a fish fry, began scooping them up and serving them to the sailors. Fortunately my Papa didn't have the opportunity to eat that meal.
Unfortunately, he was sent along with a crew of 20 other sailors in their seamen's uniforms, and armed with a bucket and mop each to one of the "test ships" that were at the 15-10 mile radius to attempt to clean up the radioactivity from the deck, and thus salvage it for further testing purposes.
When Papa came home, my Grandma was ready to have a child, and so they tried to get pregnant for some time. It resulted in 12 miscarraiges before my mother was born. After another 5 miscarraiges, my uncle was born. He's an electrical engineer, and while a genius is also quite strange. Many of the advancements in digital photography in the past 7 years have been worked on by him. We understand each other quite well, although I'm more of a word person.
I didn't find all this out until I was 23, and living back home, after I made my first attempt at cleaning my act up from "A Promised Story." I hated him at the time, not only for the reason I mentioned at the beginning, but also because the one dream I had, to be a writer, was dashed by him. I didn't think I could ever forgive him the day he said "You'll never be a writer!" with hate frothing at the corners of his mouth. He said this because I rejected his suggestion of becoming an accountant, working with numbers, which I hate to do.
I found this out because he PAID me $70 to drive him from South Hill, Virginia, to Sylvania, Georgia, in order for him to look at a trailer park he was considering investing in. Of course it was just a reason to get me alone in a car so he could have 8 hours to describe in vivid detail every aspect of his life, where my ancestors were from, and the story I've just told you.
At one point during the drive, halfway between Virginia and Georgia, I actually pulled over on the side of the interstate, left the keys in the car, got out, and began walking, as I yelled out "Drive yourself you old sonofabitch!" as he was being extremely hateful at the moment.
I got back in after cooling off and finished, because I needed the $70.00.
When we got back from the trip, I still despised him, but before I could drop him off, he had me drive him to Lawrenceville so that he could show me the family's old cemetary.
We pulled up, got out and began walking through the forest to the cemetary. When we got there, he just cried for a good 10 minutes, and apologized for the way he was, and explained that the Toxoplasmosis in his brain was causing his agression.
As hateful as he can be, I love my papa.
User Reviews
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-11-20 14:45:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2007-11-19 05:08:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You are a girl, right?
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No ma'am, I'm a grown man. At least that's what my wife keeps telling me to act like.
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2007-11-19 14:44:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
'Jewess' is in fact a word. It's the female form of the masculine 'Jew'. Like the female forms 'Princess' or 'Dominatrix'. Actually, come to think of it, it's very much like those indeed.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2007-11-19 09:31:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
"Jewess?" That can't be a real word...
Nevertheless, good story.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-11-19 09:15:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
very interesting stuff.
Submitted by Respek (user info) at 2007-11-19 05:30:32 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
iddqd and orph are both knob jockeys.
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2007-11-19 05:08:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You are a girl, right?
Submitted by orph (user info) at 2007-11-19 05:02:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
why bother, it's rather obvious that you're painfully insecure, using every opportunity you can to bleat on about how educated you are, and promote your superior literary knowledge with us all.
what is it you study again? philosophy, creative writing, literature studies? good luck with that.
Submitted by iddqd (user info) at 2007-11-19 04:50:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
nice comeback. i suggest to finish me off once and for all you point out my lack of correct capitalisation and punctuation.
Submitted by orph (user info) at 2007-11-19 04:35:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
douchebag? my my, that education of yours is really paying off.
Submitted by iddqd (user info) at 2007-11-19 04:28:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
knob jockey who gives actual advice and criticism. which puts me a long way ahead of you, douchebag
Submitted by orph (user info) at 2007-11-19 03:53:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
iddqd = knob jockey
Submitted by iddqd (user info) at 2007-11-19 02:13:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
"Then again, don't take my word for anything. I've got fuck all education. I just read a lot. The more you read, and write, the more you'll get a feel for the flow of the words and see what fits right and what doesn't. "
im reasonably well-educated (and still continuing in further studies.) Ive done a shitload of creative writing courses of some description and i currently work as a writer. i can tell you, with my reasonable amount of experience, knowledge and intuition that jacks comment above is pretty much spot on.
you dont jsut 'be a writer'. all you can do is write a bunch and try and get published any way you can. as far as grammar etc, all id offer by way of advie is to not let yourself get too concerned about it. give your stories a draft or two and worry about that finiky shit later. a good story is a good story because of its charaters, plot and language. not because of whether it has its i's dotted and its t's crossed.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-11-18 10:14:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-11-17 23:38:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I just got back from a Police concert. Sting is hawt. +2 for you.
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-11-17 19:38:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-11-17 19:03:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Another good read is Schindler's Ark, on which the List movie was based. It shows that Schindler was much more of an opportunistic shit (meaning a real human being) than the movie let on, who still did good.
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Thanks, I'll have to check that out if they have it at my library.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-11-17 19:03:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Another good read is Schindler's Ark, on which the List movie was based. It shows that Schindler was much more of an opportunistic shit (meaning a real human being) than the movie let on, who still did good.
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2007-11-17 11:38:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Enjoyable
Submitted by Flak (user info) at 2007-11-17 11:05:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-11-17 09:19:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
skrap- I would freakin love that picture, and that's amazing that you had family there also. Well not so much amazing as a surprising coincidence, but you get the idea.
Caes- Yep, read it, own it, re-read it last week actually. Now if they would just make it into an animated film that would be perfect.
I wonder whose dick I'd have to suck to make that happen, because I'd actually consider it.
fellow beef lover- I saw a 60 minutes episode a few years back that had a really old famous guy whose name eludes me touring Chernobyl with some former resident.
At one point he's walking around a playground, and finds a steel toy tank. (Why the Soviets made toys out of steel is anyone's guess.)
Anyway, the guy picks it up and asks if he could take it back as a souvineer, and the guide says
"Yeah, sure! Nobody is coming back for it, but I should warn you that as it's metal it's still radioactive."
The look on his face as he immediately dropped it was priceless.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2007-11-17 03:24:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting.
It's amazing, the kind of hardships a person can go through...and even though you might be close to them, you might never know the shit they had to deal with. My parents went through hard times that I can't even fathom, and so did all of their brothers and sisters...it was just the way things were, back then, in that part of the world.
Have you ever read Maus? It's a comic book, written by a Jewish man, which details the true life story of his father's survival during WWI and WWII as a Polish Jew in Europe. The twist is that all the ethnic groups in the comic are portrayed as animals. All the Jews are mice, all the Pols are pigs, the Germans are cats, etc. Anyway, what this guy went through, it just boggles the mind. It's worth reading; the horrible truth of it will blow you away.
Submitted by ilikesteak (user info) at 2007-11-17 02:26:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I brought souvineers from Chernobyl.
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2007-11-17 02:22:39 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
MWG!
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2007-11-17 01:53:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
What McCallum said (in his second review).
I should be too drunk to read/review this right now, but I couldn't stomach the hard liquor.
Washington has made a vagina out of me.
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2007-11-17 01:03:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
If you read my comment on Ax's post, you'll know I have a photograph for you. I'll see about scanning it and making it available to you. It is a wide-format photo of the "Event Bravo" pic in the Wiki article you reference. My grandfather took that pic.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-11-16 23:04:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'll stop commenting now. The more comments I leave on a post deserving a good rating, the higher chances that I fuck up and forget to rate.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-11-16 23:03:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Well, for example, 'to put it shortly' just doesn't work. I know you're saying 'to sum up' or 'to put in in a nutshell,' but the word shortly just doesn't fit. It jars.
Then again, don't take my word for anything. I've got fuck all education. I just read a lot. The more you read, and write, the more you'll get a feel for the flow of the words and see what fits right and what doesn't.
I do little proofing as well, on uber, anyway, so I know what you mean about keeping things fresh. A lot of uberstuff is so meticulously correct that it doesn't seem to have a whole lot of heart.
Good tale though, just needs polish.
Keep on telling 'em.
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-11-16 22:20:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-11-16 22:13:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
If you worked on your grammar and story-telling technique more, polished it up, you'd have gold in stories like this.
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How do you mean on working on my grammar and technique? Any suggestions?
And also part of the reason why my true stories are rough grammatically, is because they're unplanned, and I go with my stream of consciousness, and it's somewhat of a purging.
I've found in the past that if I try to go back and clean it up I find it to be a much worse read afterwards because I tend to be cringe over some of my actions and want to "change my past", which usually ruins it all. I hope this makes sense.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-11-16 22:13:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
If you worked on your grammar and story-telling technique more, polished it up, you'd have gold in stories like this.
Still, it's funny how when you are young you don't want to hear any of that family shit, and when you get older, you really want to hear it... but a lot of people who could tell it are gone.
Sounds like the old man had an interesting life.