John was married to Betty. Betty had come over to England during WWII with the American armed forces and John has fallen for her. She must have been quite something – she’d have to be to make John’s day job dull. John flew Mosquitos on low level bombing runs.
After the war, John and Betty married and he emigrated – a GI Groom. Quite a rarity. He left his sister, Lois, who was my sons’ great granny on their mother’s side. So John was my sons’ great great uncle.
They settled in California. In a place about two hours inland from LA called Redlands. Redlands was a respectable place and full of orange groves. It overlooked a mountain range to the north and John and Betty had their own little slice of the richest real estate in the world. A white weather board house, a lush garden, a three acre plot including their own orange trees and a gleaming turquoise pool in the back yard.
John and Betty had two sons. Terry and Ralph. Terry was the favourite. How do we know this? Back when the draft operated, parents only had to send one son to Vietnam. Ralph was volunteered. He was pretty bitter about that.
Ralph went because he was the rebel. Terry was more like Norman Bates in the film Psycho; a ‘mother would’ve liked that’ kind of fifty year old boy who never left home, never had a wife, never deserted his parents. And Ralph smoked Marlboro reds.
Anyhoo. I don’t recall what John settled down to doing after the war but it sure didn’t fill adrenalin the hole left by the flying. Ralph told how he remembered his dad jumping off the roof into the pool when they had folks round for parties on those 1950s sunshine weekends back in the day when he was still young and the boredom set in.
“He had to get a buzz somehow”, Ralph volunteered.
I guess all that clean living, mid-century, consumer booming American-Dream-living just didn’t do it for John. He missed the chill of death breathing down his neck. Although, having seen Betty’s bullying boreishness up close, death must have seemed appealing. Maybe that’s really why John jumped off the roof: repeated suicide bids or reliving the thrill of flying with the hazard of death at his side.
