A Double Happy Father's Day

I've now lost both my Father and my Father in Law, so I wanted to share this story.  It's not really much of a story, but it means a lot to me and my wonderful bride.

Because Dad had no daughters (at the time) he thought he would never get the chance to walk a daughter down the aisle.  When we were about to be married he made a very special request of my Father in Law to be.

Because he loved Maria and was as excited as anyone to have her as part of our family he asked if it would be possible to show that by meeting my Father in Law and my bride half way down the aisle, and walking with them the rest of the way.

I didn't learn until years later that my Father in Law was very uncomfortable with this but he loved his daughter and my wife loved my Dad and wanted to do this for him.  He reluctantly agreed.

I am eternally grateful to my Father in Law for doing that for my Dad.

Dad always was, well, let's say, a rule bender.  I hope the two of them are together somewhere now enjoying the memory because I sure am.

Happy Father's Day, gentlemen!

Mystery Handcuffs Found

About a week ago I got a message from a very nice lady.  She said she was cleaning out her late father's garage and made a very interesting find.

She found a leather case and inside were a pair of handcuffs.

The cuffs were found in Romeoville, IL.  Her father was a supervisor at General Motors so this was very odd.    The lady said her family had never been in trouble with the law so they were most likely never used on father.  She had no idea why they would have been with his possessions.

The most odd thing about them though was that they were engraved, like by hand with a Dremel Tool or something.  The engraving says:

11/9/04 William G. La Fleur

We think Dad was the only William G. La Fleur to ever serve on the Chicago Police Department.

The lady who found them started investigating.  Apparently the brand (Chief of Police from Japan) is a brand that the Chicago Police use and these were made in the 1970s.  They are well used so they could easily have been Dad's, except he retired from the CPD in 1997.

I wondered if they hadn't been from Dad's time in the MPs with the Illinois National Guard, but he retired from the Chemical Brigade in 1998 and hadn't been with the MPs since the 80s or 90s (if I remember correctly).  Mom, Dad and Elizabeth had moved to Rochelle in 1998.

As far as my mom; my brothers Shawn and Garrett; and I know, November 9, 2004 was not a specifically important date in our family.  There was a William La Fleur in the employ of the City of Chicago in 1904, but he was a fireman and the cuffs aren't old enough anyway.

The lady said she was sure they had once belonged to Dad, so she wanted to get them back to the family.  I've asked her to send them to me.  When I get them I'll photograph them and share the photo here.

If you know anything about these cuffs or might have an idea of their story, please let me know.

I've made up a story in my own mind about them, worthy of a Papa Story, complete with aliens and mysterious nights and Ernie the cop.  I'll go with that if no one can come forward.  Like the best Papa Stories I will even have physical evidence.

Xanadu Fighting

No, not this one

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:"
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

When I was about in 8th grade my Mom dragged us all, my three brothers, my Father and me to see a movie.  She was a fan of disco and roller skating at the time (she and my Dad even both bought roller skates (hers, white; his, black)).

The movie was Xanadu.  I won't go into what the movie was here.  If you don't know about it you can check Wikipedia.  What I will tell you is that is was a disco-roller-movie and of course the only one happy to go was my Mom.

Not this one either

Behind us, about two rows were two men.  If I remember correctly they looked like toughs, bearded, leather jackets, tattoos, each about 200 lbs.  I don't know why exactly they were there, I won't even take a guess at the several ideas that immediately spring to mind.  The only thing I know for sure is that they were not there to enjoy the movie in silence.

They talked loudly through the movie, and not to each other.  They complained how bad the movie was to the screen and they berated the audience.  I'm pretty sure they used words not in our First Communion books (if you know what I mean), but I have no clear memory of that.

My Mom kept shushing them.  Then she would lean over to my Dad and tell him to do something about them.  I don't remember what my Dad said.  I'd like to think he said something like, "What do you want me to do shoot or arrest them?"  All I remember is that he didn't do anything while the movie played.

At the end of the movie my Mom stood up and gave them a piece of her mind.  They stood up and challenged my Dad.  He stood up and said something about them leaving quietly.

The thing I remember so clearly and what amused me to no end was that when my Dad stood up and it looked like he was going to have to step outside with these two; several other men, most likely other fathers or husbands who had been drug to this horrible movie by their wives, who had been sitting and steaming at just having to be there; stood up behind my Dad.

I heard one of them say, "We got your back, man."

Several angry father/husbands just looking for something, anything to relieve them, to clear their minds of this roller-disco experience against these two loud-mouths.  They decided discretion was the better part of valor and left quietly.

I don't know about the adults, but that made the movie for me.

Oh Christmas Tree!

The boys - Christmas '75

We just put our Christmas tree away for another year and it made me think of a sort of Papa story.  We've always had artificial trees as long as I've been around, but Nani and the Nortons (in other words, the La Fleur side of the family) always had natural trees.

Well, it seems that Dad grew  up with natural trees.  I think he may have told me stories of hunting for a good one when he was younger, but I can't remember them.  I do remember the story of the last natural tree our family had though.

In August 1964 Mom and Dad got married.  Christmas 1964 was their first one together.

I know that Dad stayed in the USMC for a while after they got married and they lived with Nani for a while, but if I remember the story correctly Mom was expecting.  Since I was born in November she wouldn't have been expecting Christmas '65.  It must have been 1964, only a few months after they were married, when Mom was expecting their first child that this story happened.

The house on Kostner always had a huge plate glass window in the front, and they used to have the tree right near the window.

That first Christmas Dad told Mom that when he was gone, if the tree ever caught fire she should grab a chair and throw it through the window.  Once the window was broken she should shove the burning tree out of the house through the opening.

I'm sure Mom looked at him and asked if he really just told a pregnant woman to throw a burning Christmas tree through a window.

Needless to say, Mom was not going to put up with that, ahem, "stuff."  The very next Christmas they had an artificial, flame resistant tree and have had one ever since.

Merry Christmas everybody.

The Rest of the "Japanese" Stories

I was just talking with Dad's old Marine buddy, Don Provin, the other day.  He was asking what stories I had from my Dad's time in the USMC and when he was deployed.

I figured I'd steer him in the direction of this blog, but there are still four stories I can remember about that time that I haven't shared here.  I hope these help Don and I hope they are all the ones there were.  If anyone can remember more please let me know so I can post them.

The first two are what Dad called his:

"Japanese Toilet Stories."  

As they are toilet related I don't think they are appropriate for this blog, and they really wouldn't help Don as he was looking for combat stores which these are definitely not.

"Japanese toilet" in Dar Es Salaam

Let me just say this about them.  The first one involves fecal matter and what Dad always called a "Japanese toilet."  I've included a photo of a toilet of that kind.  They are sometimes called Asian toilets. I call them "floor toilets."

The second story involves stitches.  I will not relate the story but if you watch the movie, "Something About Mary" and you know the story you might recognize the situation there.



The other two stories are disconnected in my memory.  I really don't remember where or when they were supposed to have taken place, but I assume they were sometime while he was deployed overseas (primarily to Japan).  I could call them the:

"Japanese Knife Stories."

The first isn't really a story, but rather a quip or anecdote.  Dad said there were these UN soldiers who each had a knife.  Their tradition was that if the knife was unsheathed it must "taste" blood before being re-sheathed.

I know of two sets of people who have knives with this as a rumored tradition.  The first is the Gurkhas, but I think it is just a myth with them and their kukri knives.  I know Dad did admire the Gurkhas and may have met some, but the tradition seems to not be true.

Kirpan

The second group that I know has a knife tradition (real group, not the fictional Fremen of Dune) is the Sikhs.  One of the five K things they need to have or do is carry a kirpan knife.  It is true that the kirpan must taste blood before being put away.

Compare them yourselves

The story is that the Marines wanted to compare knives.  They showed their Ka-Bars and asked to see the kirpans.  The other soldiers obliged and when they were done the Sikh soldiers pricked their thumbs and put their knives away.

This was very curious and amusing to the young Marines.  They returned to their own group, sitting not too far from the other soldiers.  When another Marine joined their group who had not seen the kirpans before the first group would tell them to go over and ask to see their knives.

The Sikhs were good-natured about this for the first one or two times, but they quickly caught on that the Marines were really just trying to see how many times they would cut themselves.  The next time they sent a Marine over to ask about the knives they took one out as asked, but before putting it away this time they stuck the Marine before putting it away.

The last story really upset me when I heard it and so I never asked for a retelling or further explanation.

If you are squeamish then you should stop reading right now.

Dad said he was cutting tall grass with some Australian soldiers.  They would take a handful of grass and twist it around to hold it up.  Then they would come along with their knives (machetes or Ka-Bars or whatever, I didn't get the details) and cut the bundle of straw at the base.

Dad said he was working near this Australian who, when he made the bundle with his left hand, left his thumb sticking out.  He brought the knife across too close to his hand and cut his thumb.

The way I remember it, and I was prone to imagine the absolute worst when I was younger, what that he cut his whole thumb off.  Later I rationalized that he probably one cut the tip off.  Now thinking about it I'll bet my Dad had said something like, "He cut the whole thumbnail off."

Regardless of how much he cut, it was substantial enough that the Australian could pick up the severed piece.  The story goes that the Australian was so tough that he just picked up his thumb and kept right on cutting grass. 

A Smell Memory

This is more a vignette then an actual story.

When I was young my Dad had a workbench near the basement door.  In that area was also a radial arm saw (that sort of defined the space, as it was the last thing before the washer and dryer), the brick chimney and a wood burning stove.

My Dad kept a scrap barrel.  All the little pieces of wood that he cut off, or pieces he cut wrong, or extra pieces he put in that barrel.

Probably a couple of times a year he would clean up the work area.  Mostly it had been made completely disordered by us.  He would set aside some Saturday, usually in winter or late autumn.

He would start a fire in the old wood stove and burn all the scrap.  He would clean things up and hang up the tools.  Eventually he would sweep up an the whole place would be clean and cozy.

I loved those days.  We would work together to clean up and in the end the results were dramatic.  It made you want to start a new project.

Buzzing Uncle Jeff

Dad, Mom, me, Shawn, the pool, the fence and the Kennedy

I hope I can remember all the Dad and Uncle Jeff stories, but here is one especially for summer.

When Dad was in the CPD, at one time they offered a program for officers who wanted to fly the police helicopter.  Dad applied and had some flying lessons before they canceled the program, probably because of budget constraints.

At the time we had the pool in the backyard on Kostner and the six foot red wooden fence.  The pool was within about two feet of the fence on the south side, facing the Kennedy.  It was fairly common practice for young men to climb out of the pool and onto the fence.  They would then jump into the pool.  I had seen it done many times, but I think that by the time I was old enough to try it, we had replaced that fence with a chain-link (cyclone) fence.

Apparently Uncle Jeff liked to startle Dad when they were younger.  I say startle because, of course Dad wasn't "scared" of anything, but if you jumped out of a hiding place and yelled boo you could catch him off guard and make him jump.

Actually, now that I think about it, the only things Dad was afraid of were Mom and his children.

Ryan on the fence: one of the scary things

Anyway, Uncle Jeff liked to hide and jump out to see Dad jump.

One day while Dad was getting flying lessons in the police helicopter Uncle Jeff was visiting the house and swimming in the pool.  The instructor let Dad fly up the Kennedy and they were going to practice auto-rotating.

Auto-rotating is when the power goes out in a helicopter (the engine dies or some kind of power train failure).  The blades and the system are designed to keep rotating.  As long as you were going a certain speed forward you can ride the free spinning rotor blades safely down to the ground.

They weren't going to land, the instructor was just going to give Dad a taste of how auto-rotating feels.

As it turns out they were very near our house when the instructor turned off the engine.  So, there was Dad, coming in out of the south west and the low afternoon sun in a silent helicopter.  And there was Uncle Jeff climbing out of the pool and standing up on the fence getting ready to jump in.

Dad turned on the loud speaker and said, "HEY YOU, GET OFF MY FENCE!"

Dad said that after that day it never bothered him if Uncle Jeff tried to startle him, because Dad knew that he would never be able to top that.