My Father, the Teacher?
One of his fondest memories
One of my father’s accomplishments that he was most proud of was the fact that for a few years he was a teacher. It was quite the accomplishment considering that he was a high school dropout.
My father’s father died when my dad was just eleven years old. His mother was left to run the family business just as the Great Depression began. So she told my dad to drop out of school so that he could help her run the small ethnic deli/grocery. His main job was delivering milk early in the morning to people in the neighborhood. He made one penny for every bottle he delivered. He considered himself rich.
(He told this story approximately three million times.)
Eventually, the business was forced to close. My dad’s brothers went to work in the steel mills but my father would have none of that. He wanted to be a baseball player. His life dream was to pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
But he never made the team and instead joined the army and began a long military career. Before long he was in England in the middle of World War II. He never saw any combat, though, because he became a mechanic. He worked in the motor pool fixing tanks and trucks and jeeps. It was something he got very good at.
