.jpg)
My Dad worked for a local laundry/dry cleaner. He drove a route and picked up the dirty clothes then delivered when cleaned. That had been his job for as long as I remembered. Dad was also a veteran. He had served in the infantry during World War II and saw action in the Pacific: Angaur Island and the Philippines. He told me that when he met my mother he tried to join the Army but was denied because of his eyesight. They got married then Pearl Harbor was attacked and he was drafted. He ended his service during the occupation of Japan.
Dad didn’t look for a fight but wasn’t afraid to fight and had a temper. During training at Fort Rucker someone made a negative comment about mom. He had a knife in hand and thumped it into the wall beside the loudmouth’s head. He missed and considered himself lucky to have. He had done the same thing under similar circumstances prior to his enlistment only with a wench.
Several weeks before his death, Dad was on one of his his routes. He worked the lower socio-economic sections of town. He always said he worked them because no one else wanted to. They made him good money, and he’d had never had a problem. He usually hired a young local to ride with him and go to the doors. I don’t remember if anyone was with him that night. He drove a GMC Stepvan. He climbed back into the van to find a masked teen with a shotgun standing in the back of the van. The teen demanded Dad’s money. I don’t remember if he claimed to have said anything. He did say he closed on the teen and fought over the shotgun which promptly fell apart. The, would be, robber fled. Dad reported it to the police and came home.
As a result of that event Dad asked my brother, a Raleigh cop, to get him a pistol. My brother got him a .25 caliber Bauer. From that day on Dad carried it with him at work every day until he didn’t.
Carry.
No comments:
Post a Comment