MEMOIRS OF THE 1st WOLFHOUND BRAVO THIRD PLATOON 66-67
2020, Fred Roark
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-1-09832-480-3
ISBN eBook: 978-1-09832-481-0
INDEX
CHAPTER 1
A LITTLE ABOUT THE AUTHOR BEFORE THE ARMY
IT WAS A BRIGHT SUNNY DAY, not a cloud in the sky and all of my packing was complete. I had been looking forward to the adventure for weeks that began Saturday June 4, 1960. I had been hired to travel from my hometown in Logansport, Indian to the Indiana University Geologic Field Station in Montana to serve as a cooks helper or as most people call it a dishwasher. Dr. Lowell the Head of Indiana Universitys Geology Department had accepted my application for the job and now the time had come. I was sixteen years old and had been employed to work the entire Summer in a remote field station located about twenty miles south of Whitehall, Montana. I had received my train ticket that would take me from Union Station in Chicago to the train station in Whitehall, Montana. The week before, a package arrived containing my tickets and a letter from Dr. Lowell reassuring my mother her son would be well looked after.
Mother called up to me from downstairs to get a move on. She wanted to leave the house by 7:30. The train would be leaving Chicagos Union Station on Canal Street at 11:00 AM. The trip from Logansport to Union Station was about two-and-a-half-hours by car and mother wanted to get us there at least an hour before departure. I drove, with mother in the front seat and Janet my baby sister, who was only seven, in the back seat. This way mother could rest before having to make the two-and-a-half-hour ride back.
This was a trip my mother had taken two years before when she took my brother to catch this same train. The only difference was my brother was notoriously a bad driver and my mother drove both there and back. My brother, Mike had learned of the opportunity from a boy scout friend and now I was following Mike. The traffic was minimal and the roads were clear of construction workers so we arrived a little earlier than my Mother had planned. No, I didnt speed much.
Mother dropped me off with hugs all around. I went inside Union Station to learn the procedures of getting on the right train, when and where to present my ticket and how would I know where I would store my luggage. The ticketing officials were very helpful and even offered to walk me to the correct train. There directions were so clear I declined and struck out for the platform. I stopped at a concession and bought a book called Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. By the time I worked my way to the front of the concession line and paid for the book my train was boarding. With book and luggage firmly in hand I boarded the all silver car where my cabin was located. The room was spacious with a large window sporting lavender curtain. It had a separate bathroom with a shower. The bed was single but wider than my single bed at home. The floor was carpeted in a plush deep pile. In one corner, there was an over-stuffed garnet leather chair, or at least to a sixteen-year-old it looked like leather.
I had sent my application off to Dr. Lowell in January of 1960, my father had passed away in February of the same year, in March I was moved from number two to number three on the tennis team, on April, 25 just six days after I turned sixteen I wrecked my car and lost my license for a month. Things began to turn around in May when I won back my number two slot on the tennis team and mother gave me my drivers license back. By June 4, 1960 the terribly confused son of Louis June Roark was fit and ready for a sixteen-hundred-mile, two-night, three-day train ride to Montana. Dr. Lowell had booked a Pullman Car Cabin for me with dining privileges in the Dining Car. The train had an observation car that had leather-bound seats elevated with surround glass. I felt like the son of a potentate on a journey to the Wild-Wild West.
I sat down in the leather chair in my room, after unpacking and putting away my luggage contents. I opened the Catch 22 book and began reading. In about twenty minutes I felt the jerking movement familiar with a train beginning to stretch out. I was on my way. Setting the book down, I got up and opened the drapes to watch the passengers milling about the platform and the brilliance of the of the sun light as the train passed from under the roof covering the entire staging area. The progress was slow at first since the train was traveling through downtown Chicago but picked up as the Metropolis faded away to rural Illinois.
I had heard how the clickety-clack of trains soon becomes so soothing it puts you to sleep. Having returned to the leather chair and my book It was not long before I too succumbed and was fast asleep. I awoke two hours later, famished. I stepped out of my cabin and saw a steward walking through the passageway and asked, which way to the dining car?
He said, follow me that is where I am going.
I ordered a pork tenderloin sandwich with onion rings and coleslaw. I ordered a martini but the waiter just laughed so I asked for water instead. Keitzers Restaurant in Logansport served what I thought was the best tenderloin sandwich I had ever eaten but this was better mostly because of the Kisser roll it was served on. The Kisser roll was a big improvement over Keitzers hamburger buns. It had some real texture to soak up the toppings heaped on by the outstanding kitchen staff.
The waiter asked me if I had been to the observation car. He said, sir you will find it exhilarating.
Yes, I remember, he called me sir. I was only sixteen and no one had ever called me sir. So, when I finished my lunch, I headed for the observation car. I took a seat and looked out over the countryside of Illinois or was it Wisconsin. I wasnt sure which state we were in but I remember feeling like how I felt when I was twelve going off to Camp Buffalo a Boy Scout camp. I remember that several of the boys got home sick the first night and their parents had to come and pick them up. I was just excited then as I was on the train to Montana and the Wild-Wild-West.
I opened up Catch 22 and began reading. I stopped every once in a while, and took in the vista then went back to reading. I had been seated there for nearly an hour when a young girl about my same age sat down next to me. She asked what I was reading and I showed her? Then she asked where I was from and I said, I live in Logansport, Indiana a small town in the northern part of Indiana. I said, my name is Fred Roark may I ask your name?
She said, Kathy Brooks.
Then I asked where she was from, and she told me she lived in Forest Park a suburb of Chicago. She was gorgeous, way out of my league but we talked on for hours. Finally, I asked, whats your destination? She said she was off to visit her grandmother in Bismarck, N. Dakota. She said, this is the first time her parents had allowed her to make the trip alone.
She then asked where I was going? I told her I was going to work for the summer at the Indiana University Geologic Field Station in Montana. I told her I was looking forward to the adventure.
She said, how exciting that must be.
She told me about the private school she attended and all the stuck-up boys and girls that went there. She went on for a long time telling me all about her grandmother and how her grandfather who she had never gotten to know had died in the war. She told me her grandmother was half Lakotah or Sioux Indian. She mentioned how it was a Lakotah by the name of Big Nose that killed General George Armstrong Custer. She told me her great grandmother was a Lakotah squaw married to Big Nose. She said both were killed at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. My grandmother said she had only been two or three when the soldiers came and my great grandmother hid her in a canoe before she was killed. She was later found by a family of settlers and taken in by them.
