Robert James Duncan, R.I.P.

September 22, 2007

For a few years now, there has been a story I wanted to write, but it wouldn’t come together. Then Bob died. Bob was my brother-in-law. I will write a story. Maybe this is the story I wanted to write.

Bob died. I had to say goodbye to Bob a long time ago. He was a hero. I love him dearly. I don’t miss him because he is not that far away. Picking out sympathy cards for his children and my sister was particularly difficult: They were simply not appropriate and the Bob I knew was looking over my shoulder, was laughing, and kept making sarcastic remarks about each card I looked at.

The 1930’s. It was a time when there wasn’t so much stuff. I remember guys -- people called them hobos or bums -- would come and knock at the door of the White House, our home, and they would ask to work for a meal. These guys -- all they owned was on their backs -- had no jobs and no place to stay. Leona, my mother, would find something for them to do around the house and would fix them a meal. They would cut wood, stack wood, weed the garden, or cut and rake the grass. Always outside. Leona would set up a card table in the backyard. It would have a table cloth. She might provide soup from leftovers (canned soup was rare and it was too expensive), some bread and butter, maybe a sandwich from leftovers. That was it. Times were tough for everyone. She never turned one away. These guys were common all over the United States. In those days the railroads were the ordinary means of cross country travel. They would sneak onto the flat cars or into the box cars. They were hunting for work and there was no work. It was called The Great Depression. That was the big story of the times.

Then in 1941 came the war. It came late to the United States. In both Europe and Asia the war had been going on for years. I think a lot of people here hoped that the war would somehow kind of pass us by. But that wishful dream ended when the Japanese bombed our fleet in Hawaii. This united the country. President Roosevelt declared war on both Japan and Germany. Our war lasted about five years. That was a big story too.

In 1941 and 1942, when I was six or seven years old, I looked around and there were no young men. None. As soon as they were of age they all joined the army, navy or air force. I mean there were no young men. If for some reason a young man could not be in the service, you still did not see him. He kept out of sight. If seen, he would be asked why he wasn’t in the army, navy or air force. It was shameful if you weren’t.

After the war started, there weren’t any more bums and hobos. Most were either in the military or in industry. Transients who came through eastern Oregon could be shanghaied by ranchers needing labor. A nice man offers to buy you a drink and in the morning you wake up a hundred miles from anywhere. No telephone and maybe not even any electricity. The rancher explains he will be glad to take you back to town as soon as haying season ends.

We had a blackout every night where all lights had to be turned out so enemy airplanes could not see our location and bomb us. Then we were able to have blackout curtains so that lights could be on inside and not be seen outside. Outside there were air raid wardens who patrolled, checked this lighting business, and would knock on our door and tell us when we had any leaking light. Everything was rationed: Meat, butter, eggs, sugar, chocolate, gasoline, alcohol, tires, and on and on. How many gasoline stamps you had depended upon what your job was. Traveling salesmen got more stamps than factory workers. Locally the Hines Sawmill workers walked miles to work each way. Some things simply were not available. There were no new automobiles, or motorcycles, bicycles, scooters, skates. Very few toys. Trading second hand toys was a serious business. No candy bars. There were few traveling salesmen because there was very little to sell. If you had a flat tire you fixed it with your tire repair kit and by hand you pumped air into the tire until you could drive on it. As tires wore out, there were more and more flats and more and more patches. We had Victory gardens where we patriotically grew vegetables. We recycled all our tin cans and paper, carrying them down to local collection points. Sand piles would be nearby and we would carry pails of sand back to our homes because sand was the only way one could put out fires caused by incendiary bombs.

A Japanese submarine fired upon a fort here in Oregon. There was all sorts of gossip about this attack and that attack. Me and my friends got a book on identification of enemy airplanes and we sat out on the woodshed roof and looked and looked and looked. We rarely saw any airplane. When we did, it wasn’t a military plane. There was no change in the skies over Burns, Oregon.

Over time things became less patriotic and maybe a little more realistic. Wait a minute! We are never going to be bombed by Japanese airplanes in Burns, Oregon! Blackout curtains were ridiculous! There was very little one could buy so money was saved. Poker and slot machines grew in popularity. (Ten years later we learned that this meant an organized crime inroad.) At night, after supper, I went with dad and watched him play poker at the Palace Café. It was far more interesting than grade school. But I think some teachers complained that I was sleeping in class and dad stopped. Moonshine became more common. A person could trade rationing stamps and some were better traders than others. Somehow the kids whose dad had a gasoline station seemed to always have enough gasoline for their cars. Damned few kids had cars. The Black Market, a second economy, arose. One might pay or trade to get things on the Black Market -- if you knew the right people.

I went to a Fourth of July celebration at the public park. They had different kinds of games of chance sponsored by different civic clubs. The money went to buy war bonds. I spent all of my money trying unsuccessfully to win a candy bar. After the celebration and everyone had gone, some of my scrounging friends discovered candy bars had been dumped into the garbage cans. I found two. They were left over from the games. They were old and the chocolate was turning white but were the first candy bars I had had in years. Candy bars! Thrown away!? Where did they come from in the first place?

Those young men who had physical disabilities or were indispensable at home and therefore were not drafted often had relatives or friends on the draft boards. Ten years after the war, people still talked about these young men. Somehow the ones from poorer families always got drafted. I remember a young couple who moved in next door. He was very pale and walked with a limp. There was gossip that he had shot himself in the leg to avoid the draft. It was embarrassing. They did not stay long in the community.

Meanwhile the war effort rumbled right along. It seems all that stuff we didn’t have on the Home Front we converted into stuff to throw at the enemy on the War Front. After a few initial scares, we started winning. We won battle after battle. There were lots of new weapons, and airplanes, and ships and tanks. A lot of young men died.

Year after year, there were no young men in my home town. In 1943 -1944, when I was eight or nine my grandmother died and Mom took some of us kids to the funeral. We had to travel to Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington and then across Puget Sound. There was no gasoline available for our car. We went by Trailways bus to Portland and had to stay all night there because the next available seats on a bus to Seattle were the following afternoon. The buses were relatively small. They had no restrooms onboard like the buses now. The buses were mostly filled with young soldiers. There were no rooms at the hotels in Portland. They were all reserved and taken by the military. They did allow us to sleep on the carpeted floor of the second floor balcony. The carpet was dirty. We were grateful. The hotel was very, very busy with the comings and goings of soldiers and sailors and airmen. Train travel was all reserved for the military. Travel for civilians, because it was all taken, was very difficult.

There was a great stirring of the people, a mixing. It started with the Dust Bowl. Then the Depression. Then the War. People from all different parts of the country entered the service and were sent here and there and many times also overseas. With the young men gone, women became the workers in the war industries. Big companies didn’t think twice about funding onsite day care for their working women.

In Harney County we had an army come for a few months for maneuvers. Some said it was preparation for the invasion of North Africa. So we had tanks and jeeps and airplanes and all kinds of soldiers running around the county. One can still find .50 caliber shell casings in the Alvord Desert. I personally watched young men in fighter planes buzz the White House so closely their propellers chopped the tops of the poplar trees. Leaves and twigs fell like rain into our yard. So close you could see the pilots grin.

By 1945 half of my life time had been spent in a world war. I was beginning to think that my turn to join would be coming soon. This was about the time the European War was ending and the Pacific War was getting really vicious. There was a time when I looked forward to being a soldier. No longer.

During the war, my oldest sister, Dolores (we called her Dee), had been in high school. Each new year she was in school there were fewer and fewer boys in her classes. She wrote to many who joined the service. That was a lot. Dolores, even when 10 years old, had money making projects going. In high school she started working in a beauty parlor. She needed the money to pay for all that stationery and all those stamps. And nail polish and hair conditioner. I never saw my father in church nor would I ever have expected to see him there, but like a religious fundamentalist he was adamantly opposed to “beauty” and beauty products. Which meant that one of the many tensions in our home was between Sandy, my father, and Dolores. He really thought women ought to stay in their place -- wherever and whatever that was -- and he had a wife and three daughters who did not agree with him.

I don’t remember if she was a junior or senior but Dolores spent the summer with her Aunt Hazel in Seattle. (She might have gone both summers.) Now, Aunt Hazel was a real Rosie the Riveter who was really a riveter putting together B-52 Super Fortresses for Boeing in Seattle. But that is another story. When Dolores returned she had in tow a young sailor.

His name was Bob Duncan.

He was young, brash, outspoken, cocky, a wise-ass -- all of the things that were all the sailors in all the movies and newsreels I had seen over the past four years. These guys were winning the war! Looked pretty sharp in his neat, clean uniform, polished shoes, wearing his cap at a cocky angle!

Besides, he gave me quarters. With a quarter I could buy an ice cream soda. I did. Chocolate. I believe it was the second one I ever drank. I bought it at the same Home Drug Store where my sister Dorothy sometimes soda jerked. With a quarter I could also buy six glazed doughnuts at Herman’s Bakery. I did. The very best. One time Bob gave me a silver dollar! It was the first one I ever owned. He had battle stars on his campaign ribbons. I thought he was another one of those American heroes.

He tried to join when he was too young and too small. The Coast Guard took younger persons, but he was still too small. So he gorged himself -- was it bananas? -- barely met the weight minimum. I have heard this story so many times from so many men I am unsure this is Bob’s story. Yes, the Coast Guard. If the Coast Guard, how did he get into the Pacific War? I asked him. The Navy used the Coast Guard in their Pacific campaigns.

His ship was a destroyer escort. I had heard of destroyers; not escorts. They were smaller. When they got this small, one heard about PT boats. Of course, I had been following the war on the movie newsreels. It was all about the Navy. A destroyer escort was probably about the biggest ship the Coast Guard had. He said he was a cook who if under attack manned 20 millimeter aircraft guns. Ever fired them? Yes.

Over the years I learned that Bob knew his way around a kitchen, but I am not sure he ever respected cooks or cooking. From him I learned it was okay for a guy to cook but maybe not to be a cook.

My mind gets foggy. The war ended. Dee and Bob ran off and got married.

After the war there were all of these military guys -- millions -- coming back to be civilians. Frankly, the stay-at-homers were a little concerned. The jobs weren’t available. The housing was not available. Industry was going to take some time to shift from war footing back to peace footing. They were millions of young men! Not only that but they had been trained to kill and many had seen violence. Alarm! Alarm!

It all worked out. Senator Wayne Morris of Oregon sponsored the G.I. Bill that provided money for these guys to go to school. The women who were building ships and tanks and planes were persuaded to leave the factories for marriage and motherhood. Those veterans scarred by the war tucked it in, kept their mouths shut. Those badly scarred veterans often felt they were a danger to society and sometimes to themselves. They tended to take their selves away from society, often moving to the few remaining frontiers of North America. Alaska looked good. There was talk of free land in Canada. They had trouble getting close enough to real emotions to be real fathers.

Later I learned that it doesn’t take a war or violence to dull a soldier. Military service itself, providing effective training, will deaden sizeable chunks of a man’s or woman’s humanity.

Pretty soon all that stuff we were throwing at the enemy was converted into stuff to throw at civilians. We went from not much stuff to too much stuff. Then the problem was how to get people to buy it. But American marketing ingenuity, with its new psychological insights and manned by ex-G.I.’s with their discipline, military planning and tight lips, soon figured in out. Soon, with a far greater impact that the Atomic Bomb, the arrival of Television introduced a whole new, far more powerful, way to create consumers and markets. It is a story that needs to be told.

Bob had to start with his G.E.D. -- like so many vets. And then college. And the babies started arriving -- not just the Duncans, but a flood of babies across the United States. Dolores can tell you about delivery rooms or the hallways outside delivery rooms. That is her story. This was the beginning of what was later called The Baby Boomers.
That is Dolores’s kids’ story.

In my life the Duncans came and went. They were mobile. I mostly stayed in Burns, Oregon. Later, I sometimes spent summers near or with them. They would come to Burns and then they would leave. Thinking about it, it seems they were moving all of the time. I honestly don’t know of any family who moved so many times as the Duncans. It is surprising that the kids all ended up in college and finishing college. (Yep. I’m sure that is another story.)

Bob is what you could call one of my significant others, meaning I liked him a lot, learned a lot from him. Sometimes he was like a big brother. Rarely was he like a father. Sometimes he was like one of my hell raising friends. I had three significant others. Not surprising, my father, Sandy, was one. The third was Jack Evans, another returning vet, who married my sister, Dorothy. I have always said that Bob was my Blue Collar Significant Other. I learned to work hard, drink beer, go fishing and tell dirty jokes. On the other hand, Jack, who had been in the Army Air Force, was my White Collar Significant Other. I learned about wine, cheese, poetry and literature. All different in some ways, all the same in different ways; all far more important to me than I have implied. I am deeply grateful for these guys. Another story.

My father died in 1985. Jack died last year. Bob died a few days ago.

There was just not enough money to go to school and raise a family at the same time. Bob tried clerking at a Safeway store, but couldn’t handle school and the store. He tried entry level forest service work. Again there was not enough money.

Early on, there was a summer when Bob and I painted the White House. With brushes. With white marine paint. I’m sure it was 50% lead. Day after day in the heat of the summer. I got blisters on my hands from using the brush. All day. The brush became like an extension of one’s arm. One day we were taking a rest, sitting on the scaffolding at the second floor level. A mosquito lit on Bob’s right cheek. He slapped it with his paint brush. There, in the white coat of paint beneath his right eye, was the mosquito. He had forgotten he was even holding the brush.

I learned some dirty songs. I learned some dirty jokes: Herbie came home. His mother asked him, Herbie I hear you been dating a new toots. Is she a Gentile-toots or a Jewish-toots. Herbie said, Neither, Ma-ma, she is a prosti-toots. My family was surprised and a little alarmed when I proudly shared what I had learned.

I learned that smokes and booze were cheap in the Coast Guard. I learned that even more astounding than the Second World War were the strip joints in Panama.

After the war when a person could again buy a baseball and a mitt, Bob and I played catch. He could throw curves and so fast I often missed the ball and ended up running after it. I soon tired of catch. I never got around to appreciating baseball.

I remember -- it seemed forever -- a period of time when we dug out under one of Leona’s rentals. It did not have a foundation. The ground was hard. Eventually I gave up. Bob did the job. I don’t know how. He also did some interior renovation. Before all the common carpentry power tools one sees now, Leona bought a table saw for Bob to use. I didn’t know such a thing existed. It was the first time I ever saw one in use. I have one now, but rarely use it.

Later, I believe, the family lived in this same house for awhile. It was across the street from the plumber, Neil Smith, who had a son, a Navy pilot, who survived the war and became a postmaster in Burns. It was the place where Dee found the sack of kittens in the street; raised them. One calico, named Mehetabel, ended up mousing for Leona. Her first litter was twin yellow toms. Several stories here.

I was still in grade school when the county had an overpopulation of jack rabbits that were doing serious damage to hayfields and haystacks. Bob and I went hunting. I borrowed dad’s .22. Eventually, the goal was to each have a box of .22 cartridges, holding fifty, and to each kill 50 rabbits. Many times we did. More often, we shared a box. I think the cost was a penny a cartridge or fifty cents. That was pretty pricey then. We could have hunted every day all day. There were that many rabbits. It was too expensive to go too often. On occasion Bob provided some driving lessons. On occasion Bob provided some beer.

I wanted my own .22 rifle. I had to wait until I was thirteen to buy it. The summer I turned thirteen my dad sent me out to work for a rancher, haying. All summer. There were lots of positive things about working on ranches on and around Steins Mountain. I worked summers on ranches for many years. I earned enough that first summer to buy my own .22. It was only while writing this story that I realized that Sandy might have farmed me out to get me away from what he thought was a bad influence. Could be. I will never know.

Bob always had trouble with pretension. He could not help but stick pins in bubbles of phoniness. My sister Donna was, what we politely called, theatrical. A drama queen. As a teenager, she also tended to sleep late. Bob, after the actress Tallulah Bankhead, started calling Donna Tallulah Bunkhead. She hated it. Really hated it. I am not sure she ever forgave him. However, we all live in glass houses. Pretension can be kind of like lipstick, something we hide behind when presenting ourselves to the world. We may think what we are hiding is pretty sensitive, pretty delicate, fragile. It is why we like good portraits. I never saw Bob pop his own pretensions. Through the years I often wondered if this wasn’t -- in some way -- his youngest son’s role. Another story.

There was the time when Bob became a delivery driver for Truxton Dalton. Trux was a beer wholesaler. Sometimes I went along. For my age I probably knew more bars and saloons than any other boy in the county. He would finish his distributing route and we would go fishing. Bob taught me to tie my own hooks, do away with spinners, and consider using leader -- less than 20 lb. test line -- for ten inch fish. Often he would bring along a six pack and he would share. Good fishing was less than two hours away. Sometimes I was home for supper. He was a good fisherman.

After I learned the rigging, streams and the fish, I got pretty good also. Then I discovered Bob was a competitive fisherman. He would chortle when he caught bigger fish or more fish than Sandy. But Sandy with his spinners and 40 lb. test line and impatience was not much competition. When I caught bigger or more fish he was pretty quiet. So was I: I never chortled. He told me when he was a teenager that home was tough. There were stepfathers or other men who he didn’t get along with and he would take off, just go fishing, days at time, alone. This would be Bob’s story. It also is what fishing is about. Fishing is also a way to prove things. It is also a way to catch answers. One might fish to find peace. Fishing is many things to many people.

Somewhere along here Bob got a job in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and I visited.
I remember eating antelope meat. I remember a natural soda spring where people would come and fill up containers. At the forest service location there was a reservoir. The water was very clear and very cold. I remember spending one day with Bob where he had set up a checkpoint to stop cars to see that they were properly equipped for fire season: ash trays and so on. And he would remind the drivers about fire prevention. He was driving his old second hand Army Jeep. It had a wooden cab that had been built to provide cover for the driver and passengers. After a long, boring, hot day, he was driving home and we were passed by a guy who as he went around us pitched out a lit cigarette. Bob growled, “God damn,” and ran the man down. It was pretty scary. The jeep was slow. The jeep did not have a window one could roll down so Bob had to open and flap his plywood car door and scream. I was always surprised the guy didn’t think he was about to be attacked by some crazy person and simply outrun the slow jeep. Turned out he was a local mill foreman. Bob wrote him up.

In Harney County, out on the Blitzen River there is a place called Burnt Car. Then, the roads were not all that good. One could drive in to a rim above the river, camp, and then walk down into the river early the next morning. Sleeping in the bed of the pick-up was hard. Mornings were cold. On one trip, after bacon and eggs, we started walking in. I was barely awake, following Bob’s heels in front of me. I watched his stride take him over a coiled rattlesnake. He never saw it. I called his name twice to get his attention. He turned around. I pointed at the snake. He always wore a .22 pistol. He took it out, pointed, and with one shot killed the snake dead. He never said anything. Nor I. We walked on down to the river. We fished. Later that morning I got quite a bit upstream from him. I heard shooting. Bang-bang-bang. Then, bang-bang-bang. I figured a snake and I figured he killed it. Then, bang-bang-bang-bang. I started heading back. Silence. Silence. He got it? What was it? Then, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. He must have reloaded. Bang-bang-bang. I walked faster. When I got there, Bob was fishing. He seemed kind of nonchalant so I asked, Snake? He nodded. Where? I expected a see a snake shot to hell. He motioned over there: a brush pile. No snake. The snake got away!

The last time I was out on the Blitzen with Bob, his sons were along. It was also Sandy’s last trip to the Blitzen. We went to a place called The Crossing. Bob caught a 26 inch rainbow where Little Blitzen runs into (Big) Blitzen. On that trip, I watched Bob involuntarily jump into the river and float down the river, losing his hat, one hand holding his pole and the other hand holding a willow holding his fish. I don’t know why he didn’t drown. I don’t know how he got out. That story has to do with two rattlesnakes. The story belongs to his boys, Bob and Marc.

On the way out to Burnt Car, before one arrives at the little town of Frenchglen, most of the Blitzen River is in the Malheur Bird Reserve and fishing is prohibited. On one trip Bob showed me a place where he and his vet friends (and drinking buddies) poached fish. He said they preferred to go in at night. It is called Grain Camp and it is a place where there is an irrigation dam. Below the dam is one of the finest fish holes ever seen by man. Looking over our shoulders, in the mid afternoon, we fished less than an hour. Lost one and caught three. All over 20 inches. Rainbow. Beautiful fish.

We also poached geese. I remember one occasion there was no approach to get up close to the flock. All Bob had was a .22 rifle that fired shorts. He would fire and then one could hear the bullet bounce off their wing. We never disturbed them even enough to make them fly.

To this day I am convinced that the only way to hunt a Canada goose is with a .22. Long rifle.

About a year afterwards it was this same spot that a State Policeman stopped us. I was fifteen years old because it was the day after I got my learner’s permit. Bob was driving. Bob quickly had me scoot under him and get behind the wheel. He didn’t want to be caught driving with a Washington driver’s license. The officer said we had a burned out stop light. I was given a written warning. This experience bothered me a little.

The proximity to so much beer was not good for Bob. He would make deliveries and the bar tenders would offer him free beer and bullshit. As the representative of a dealer, how could he refuse? Delivering beer is hard work. At the end of the day he would be tired and swacked.

One night -- I was in high school, the Duncans were in another apartment -- Dee got knocked around by Bob. The apartment was across the street from Sandy and Leona. Leona called the sheriff and a deputy came and talked to Bob. Leona was pretty steamed. Like Sandy, I think Bob thought women ought to stay in their place -- wherever and whatever that was.

The last time I visited the family was in Montana in 1965. Bob was a forest ranger. The kids were all finishing high school, going to college. We visited a buffalo jump and dug up a few buffalo skulls. Bob took us up to a high meadow where we counted nearly three dozen different species of wild flowers. In that meadow one could see indentations in the meadow floor, places created by buffalo when they wallowed not all that long ago. He really loved the forests. I have an abiding love for the outdoors.

There is so much I have left out. I could have written about annual trips Sandy, Bob, Jack and I made to Burnt Car. Or, about me driving while Bob would shoot the hell out of road signs. Many things. Importantly, this whole story could have been about Bob’s career path, the struggle to raise a family, everyone sacrificing, struggling, while returning to school again and again, the family moves from one national forest to another, until he finally achieves the status of USFS Ranger. He did and the family did. Everyone has a right to be damned proud. They are damned proud.

But he pissed it off. He did some dumb things (you can imagine) and was pressured into early retirement.

Bob always had the tendency to piss into the wind. On occasion maybe we all need to, but Bob didn’t seem able to help himself.

Like Sandy, he loved the outdoors, mountains, forests. Sandy would even hunt deer in the desert. Sandy and Bob were much alike and, though I haven’t presented the argument, I think that is why they didn’t get along. Sometimes the things we don’t want to see in ourselves we find easy to see in others. I think that is the problem Bob had with his youngest son. It might be part of the problem his youngest son had with Bob.

Bob could be a mean drunk and do things he knew was wrong, and he could sincerely apologize, and drink again and.... so on. It hurts to see yourself hurt the ones you love, don’t want to hurt, see yourself apologize, and do it all again. You watch others watch you and see them over time start to disbelieve, become hardened and cynical. Time passes. Sometimes, if you can’t stop, you just say, What the hell! You too become hard and cynical. Stuck. I met Bob when he was young and when he still apologized. I hope all of his kids knew him then and remember.

With addictions, like booze, tobacco or other drugs, the addiction is primary: Once in the bottle it can be hard to get out. The addiction is what others see and think is you. No, just a guy in a bottle, just a smoke, just a needle, a pill. Meanwhile the real you is somewhere else, fragmented, stuck. Others and you never get to meet the real you. But others can catch glimpses of what might be the real you. I think that is what is so tough about knowing someone like Bob. There were times, behind the pretensions, when I would catch glimpses of the real Bob. I never got to meet that person. Maybe Bob caught glimpses also. It is too bad that Bob never got to meet and be that person. But that is another story.