Trafford Publishing: I'm A Lucky Man...

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I'm A Lucky Man...

by John Franklin Weitzel

312 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #05-1610; ISBN 1-4120-6699-9; US$26.00, C$29.45, EUR21.50, £15.00

This is about a young boy growing up during the Depression under horrible conditions and his struggle for survival. How he turned this around and became a productive adult.

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About the Book About the Author Excerpts Catalogue Information

About the Book

On the day I was born, June 15, 1929, I was told there was a severe thunder storm. I was born at home like most people at that time. My father came to see the new baby, my grandmother and my mother opened up the window of the second floor and threw water out all over him. This ominous beginning soon became the rhythm of my life.
My mother, Miriam, had a bad habit of hitting. If you did something wrong she would hit you and knock you down on your rear end. If she had something in her hand she would hit you with it, it didn't matter if it was a dish, milk bottle, I don't care what it was, you got hit with it. I used to hate that. I hated that with a passion.
I was quite young when we went to a place called Schnader's Dam. It was near Mohnton. Miriam had some relatives living up there, so we went up for a visit. There was a dam there. This guy took me out in the water, he was suppose to be my uncle, and he kept pushing my head under the water. He held me down for a long time and I was getting scared--he pulled me up and then he did it again. Then someone came out and asked him what he was doing to me. He said "I am just having fun with him."

About the Author

I grew up during the Depression and my home life was not an easy one. I had to become self-reliant at a very young age in order to survive the diversities that were handed to me. I was considered "Peck's Bad Boy" but through some very good friends and learning how to trust people, I turned that around, had a very productive military career in the Air Force, was a scanner for the Air Rescue Service for the Air Force, was a very good recruiter and could sell the Air Force because of how they helped me. I became a wonderful husband and father to a very lovely young child and made sure that she had a much better life than I had. I wanted to convey to mis-treated, underprivileged children that you can overcome diversities and become a productive adult with the help of good friends and eventually trusting in the Lord.

Excerpts

1. Whenever Miriam wanted to go somewhere she would lock Bob in the closet, tie me to the bed and take David with her. First she would roll me in a blanket. Well, I found out how to get out of that. Then she would roll me in a blanket and put a strap around my waist. I found out if I wiggled enough I could get out of that too. When I would get loose, I would let Bob out, and when we heard her coming in, I would lock Bob back in the closet. But I would be up and I would get a beating for being out of the bed.
Then she started tying me to the bed. She would tie my hands, legs and head down. The only good thing she did was she left the radio on. Although she probably did that to muffle any noise we would make to get help. I remember that I was listening to opera music, especially if it was a Saturday, and that was the only thing that kept me sane.
So with Bob being locked in the closet, if he had to go to the bathroom, he would have to go in the closet and I would have to go in bed because there was nothing else we could do. Then when she would come home, she would make us clean it up and give us a beating and it was miserable. So Bob and I would run away from home again.
2. I had a shoe shine kit, I would keep it at that comfort station. I went down to the comfort station and asked the attendant if I could keep it there. I could not take it home because Miriam would have taken it away from me. This black man asked me what I was doing, shinning shoes and I said yes. He asked me if I was trying to put him out of business. I felt bad and then he said no he was teasing me. He told me that if I wanted to keep that there I could do that but the only thing was I couldn't shine shoes there or up on 5th and Penn Streets. That is where he was required to work. So I would go down past the Capital Theater or up further and I would shine shoes. I was thrilled to be allowed to do this because it was my only source of income and paid for my food. One day I went in to this one bar and the guy told me I couldn't be in there because I was just a young kid. A guy sitting at the bar said "Oh, let the guy give me a shine." So I gave this guy at the bar a shoe shine and he paid me a quarter and I left. I walked around town trying to shine shoes and I didn*t have any luck so I went back to this bar. When I walked in, this guy said "Hey, young man, you forgot to shine the back of my shoes." And I said "I know, that is why I came back." Well everyone in there laughed, they thought that was really funny. I didn't know I forgot to shine the back of that guy's shoes, didn't know it at all, but I shined his shoes and honest to God he gave me another quarter. Then I shined another guy's shoes, but he only gave me the going price: 10 cents. So I made 60 cents that day.
When I would sleep under the porches, my clothes would get dusty and messed up. I was at the comfort station and I took a couple paper towels and I made them wet and I was trying to brush off my clothes but the paper fell apart and made my clothes look worse. The man who operated the comfort station gave me a towel out of the laundry hamper to clean my clothes with. Back in those days, people would pay 10 cents to get a clean cloth towel to freshen up with, the attendant would gather the used towels and launder them for use the next day. The attendant gave me one and showed me how to use it to clean my clothes so I did. The towel was a little damp and I would brush off my pants and my shirt and they would look pretty good. This was something this kind man always did when I went down there. Besides the toothpaste and the damp towels he would always help me clean up my clothes so I would look neat. He never called the police on me, he never did anything like that. He knew that I was staying out late at night or wasn*t going home at night, but he was such a nice man and he took care of me. He did things that other people would not have done. I don't know if he would have gotten fired if anyone found out what he was doing for me, but he really did take care of me. Because of him, I was always able to stay as clean as possible and that was a must for me.
This man was like a surrogate father to me. He took care of the comfort station in Reading and also took care of me.
3. Whitey quit driving the beer truck and started driving for Arrow Carrier. They hauled silk. He had to carry a gun on this job, he carried a .45. One Sunday morning, Charles found the gun and he lined Bob, Dick, Ralph and me up in the dining room and he was playing like Dick Tracy.
4. One time Bob and I were going to run away and walk to Florida. We got a ride out to Route 10 going towards Morgantown, Pennsylvania. Whitey's boss gave us a ride part of the way. We didn't tell him we were running away from home or where we were going, we just told him we were going out to the Morgantown Road. He dropped us off there, and we were well on our way to Florida. We walked and walked and walked and we got close to Morgantown. By this time, it is almost noon time, and the sun is getting hotter and both Bob and I said that we must be getting close to Florida because it was getting hot. We had gone about nine or ten miles. The sheriff came by and picked us up and took us into Honey Brook. Morgantown is not far from Honey Brook and we had relatives living there that I didn't know about. He took us to this restaurant and he asked if anyone knew who we were. Of course no one knew us. He told the people that we wouldn't tell him where we were from or our names. Bob and I never spilled our guts until we got something.
5. At the Outer Street Train Station in Reading (I think it was on 6th Street) between 6th and 8th Streets, there was a bridge that the trains would go over and automobiles and pedestrians went across under the bridge. There was a wooden platform over the sidewalk so that the dirt, cinders and stuff from the trains would not fall down on the people walking underneath the railroad bridge. It was a protection for the people. It was up kind of high.
Bob and I wanted to sleep up there one night. We couldn't figure out how to get up there. Bob always had a rope in his pocket. It was a wash line rope. It must have been about seven or eight feet long. We used the rope to tie up stuff when we took it to the junk dealer, boxes and papers--that was what we used it for.
Anyway, a guy came by and Bob told him that our ball went up on the platform (we didn't have a ball) and asked him if he could help Bob get up there to get the ball. The man was very willing to help us. He boosted Bob up on the platform and made sure that Bob saw the ball and Bob told the man that everything was okay and he could get down on his own, so the man left.
When the man left, Bob threw one end of the rope down to me and then he pulled me up. There was a stone wall there and I would put my feet on the stone wall and help Bob pull me up and that is where we slept.
6. Miriam was working one day and she told me to take care of David. Now David was about three or four years old. She told us not to leave the house. Well, we decided that we were going to take a walk, we walked across a bridge and there were about four billboard signs, way up high. There was enough space between the boards that if you walked on them someone could fall through. So I am leading the pack, Bob is behind me and David is behind Bob. We are walking up on the cat walk of one of these billboards and all of a sudden I turn around and I asked Bob where David was. Bob said "Oh My God! David." We turned around and went back and there David was--he fell through one of the cracks in the boardwalk and he is sitting down there on the ground, just waiting and grinning for us to come back to find him.
7. I enlisted in the Army on 20 June 1946. Miriam had to sign for me. Whitey could have signed, but they really wanted her to sign. Miriam told me she would sign for me to go into the Army providing I would make out an allotment to her when I got to my base. I wanted to get into the Army, so I told her I would do this. And I would have, except when I got to Fort Meade, Maryland they told me I had to wait until I got to Fort McClellan, Alabama.
I went to Fort McClellan, Alabama for my Basic Training. When I got there, they told me that day was allotment day. If anyone wanted to make out an allotment they needed to go to the Finance Office and fill out the paperwork for their allotment. I went in and told them I wanted to make out an allotment to my mother. They said okay, got the paperwork out and he asked for her address and I told him Saint Ignatius in Centralia, Pennsylvania. He asked what Saint Ignatius was and I told him a Catholic Church and that she worked there for a Priest as a housekeeper. He told me that if she was working I couldn't make out an allotment to her. Oh boy, nobody knows how happy that made me. I walked out of that office floating on cloud nine. At last, I was on my own. I got a rifle, a machine gun and a .45 and I was getting paid. It was fantastic--I finally got away from Miriam and didn't have to give her all my money.

Catalogue Information