They Know Who They Are

People were not usually chewed out during our army meetings. If somebody thought you had an ass chewing coming, they would call you into the office and do it privately. The closest they ever came to public humiliation was when they would say something like, "There are certain individuals in this company, we won't mention their names, they know who they are....." Everybody else usually knew who they were too, but they got that information from the grapevine, not from the commanding officer.

Before anybody could be promoted, there first had to be an allocation. Allocations came from God or somebody, and were passed down through the chain of command to the platoon level. Some months there were many allocations, some months there were few, and some months there were none. Nobody knew why. The platoon sergeant would call a meeting of his squad and section leaders, announce how many allocations he had been given, and solicit recommendations. The recommendations would be passed back up the chain of command and God or somebody would make the final decisions. Orders would be "cut", which means "printed", and passed back down through the chain of command. The promotee would get a copy, and another copy would be posted on the company bulleting board. There was one time when our C.O. was mad at us, so he turned his allocations back in, which was like saying there was nobody in his company worthy of promotion. Such a thing was unheard of, and that C.O. was never able to regain the loyalty of his men. The more he tried, the worse it got, until we were on the verge of mutiny. Then he got shipped to Vietnam where, rumor had it, he was shot in the back by one of his own men. Of course it was just a rumor, but none of us grieved over his alleged demise.

I thought you told me that the busing in Chicago was discontinued a long time ago, and that all the White kids now go to private schools. Are they still busing for racial reasons, or is it just kids who are in special programs?

My parents went out of their way to not transmit any racial prejudice, if they even had any, to my sister and me. They spoke of a neighborhood as either being "good", "bad", or "questionable". A questionable neighborhood was one that, if you talked about going there, you would be questioned as to why you wanted to go there. If you had no good reason, you didn't go. I remember you saying that you got nervous anytime you were east of Western Avenue.  The way I remember it, Western to Halsted was "questionable", and anything east of Halsted was "bad". I don't think it was totally about race, although that might have been part of it. At any rate, Sherman Park turned out to be okay, but I never went anyplace else in that questionable neighborhood because there was no reason to.

I remember going to Bohemian National for my grandfather's burial service. The only thing I remember about it is that it was way on the North Side, and it seemed like it took forever to get there. None of my family ever lived on the North Side, so maybe you're right about the religious reason. The Czechs had a Protestant revolution, led by John Huss, about a hundred years before Martin Luther came along. Huss was burned at the stake, but his followers kept the cause going for another 50 years or so, before being defeated at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. After that, all the Czechs became Catholics if they knew what was good for them, but many of their descendants are not happy about it even unto this day.