What Changing PC's Can Do for You

I just swapped out an old PC for a new one. Before doing that I backed up everything important by sending it to the cloud. This reminded me that I had *years* (eleven, it turned out) of backup CD's and DVD's. I decided to go through them, keeping only the latest version of everything, "just in case." In fact, although I'll have cloud backup for everything, I have now resolved to make a DVD backup of everything important once a year, again just in case. Uneverno.

Without segue, I must tell you that before my father died I had a conversation with him in which I hoped aloud that he would document whatever he knew about the family, because "When you go, nobody is going to know anything."

This got him interested in genealogy. He was retired, and wound up spending many a day in public libraries and in cemeteries in various parts of New England. I do think it made his declining years more interesting.

This also led to conversations about his childhood and I asked him to write down whatever he remembered about his life during the depression. He sent me a number of typewritten pages (typed on an old Underwood typewriter which had only capital letters), and asked me to make copies or transcribe the material and send a copy to each of my three siblings. This I did, sending him a copy as well. The material he sent covered more than the depression period, beginning prior to that and ending nearly fifty years after it.

I found a copy of my transcription in my old PC backup files (Aha! The missing segue appears.)

The material is a treasure to me, and while it won't be that to you, you might find some of it interesting. Beginning with my next post here, sometime in the next several days, I will post what I transcribed and sent to him, my brothers, and my sister.

That material included some parenthetic comments from me, generally identified as being from "Jr," which I will break out from the main body of the text so that those of you not familiar with the family (aka "everybody") will be able to keep track of the main thread. I'll leave all names intact. I'll not provide information about names that pop in and out of the story as they are simply tangential references he thought I might be interested in.

I thnk this is going to appear in three parts, which is how he broke it down for me.

Regional Accents

For ten years, beginning with the day I entered the Army, I was part of a tossed salad of men of different backgrounds. Among those in their first - perhaps only - hitch there were enlistees and draftees, the latter being older as a class, and sometimes already established in their chosen professions. There were hustlers and slackers, guys who were friendly or remote, rednecks, hillbillies, optimists and pessimists, fast learners and slow learners, cowboys and city slickers, whites, blacks, Hispanics, and even a handful of Asians.

Prior to enlisting I had only set foot in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. New Jersey, where I was sent for basic training, had existed only in books, movies, and geography classes. At seventeen I was provided with a whole new view of the population. In some cases differences in speech were much more striking than differences in appearance due to race.

For me the most difficult accents to understand were those of the Hispanics. The problem went away, but was fairly severe initially. (Here I might mention that my platoon sergeant in basic training was Puerto Rican, career infantry. He soon learned that I had enlisted for "Armor, Europe," and every morning greeted me with "Hendricks, djoo gonna *die* in a tank.")

I had a broad New England accent, which presented others with problems. The first time we were provided with an uncheduled period and were free to do whatever we desired (within the barracks), a number of guys broke out decks of cards and played poker, pinochle, spades, and other games. I asked several men whether they wanted to play hahts. Despite asking me about the game, none knew what I was talking about until I said "You know, the game where you try to avoid taking hahts or the queen of spades."

"Ohhhh, hearts."

*****

In Vilseck, Germany, we had a Brooklynite, nicknamed Smitty. He was occasionally teased about his accent, which he accepted with good humor. One friend, Vernon, used to quote an imaginary conversation with Smitty:

"Listen to da boids."

"Those aren't boids, Smitty, those are birds."

"Chee, dey coitainly choip like boids."

*****

Thrown in with a large group of strangers, most of us are chameleons to one extent or another. During ten years in the Army I lost most of my Boston accent. Most. When I got home my mother told me I sounded like a stranger, but every once in a while I say something with a hint of the old accent, and I can actually hear myself doing it.