“Veterans Day reminded him of Grand Ole Opry” from the November 20, 1975 Door County Advocate
Veterans Day reminded him of Grand Ole Opry
By JOHN KAHLERT
On Veterans Day quite by accident my wife and I happened to watch the TV show marking the 50th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry. In a way this was fitting, as I didn’t know there was such a thing as the Opry until I was drafted into the military service.
That happened nearly 34 years ago. It came as quite a shock because my oculist had assured me that anyone with vision like mine could never pass the army’s physical examination. But eventually the “greetings” came. In those days there was no grace period after you were accepted, so before I left for the induction center I had packed all my belongings which were to be shipped to my family if I did not return the next day. Incidentally, they carefully stored everything, including a box of dirty laundry that was waiting for me when I returned some years later. I did not know whether to say goodbye to my friends or not.
Frankly I viewed the prospect with extreme distaste. I was no longer a youth. I had completed almost all the requirements for a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and was looking forward to a career. I was as set in my ways as only a very proper bachelor in his mid-thirties can be, and I was doing a job that I thought was important although by now I think differently.
Anyway, I was in, and before I knew what was happening I was on my way to the reception center at Scott Field, and in a couple of. weeks I found myself at a training center near Little Rock, Arkansas. Since I was given a “limited service” classification I was assigned to the medical service. The other five men in my tent of course were also “limited service” personnel, all but one because of limited intelligence. The exception was a pharmacist who had worked the four to midnight shift in his family’s drug store in St. Louis and the twelve to four AM (or later) shift in the various night clubs and in they company of various entertainers in the St. Louis area. He was in worse physical shape than I, and even less receptive to the 6 A.M. reveille. I can still recall his moans and groans because the night we arrived there were no cots and we had to sleep, if that is the word, on the ground. He also claimed to have fallen arches and whenever we went on a long hike he always was one of those who collapsed and had to be brought back in the ambulance.
My best friend among the group was a tough, sunbronzed construction worker who claimed he once had spent two weeks in the McPherson county, Kansas, jail for bootlegging. One of the favorite questions of the inspecting officer at the usual ‘ Saturday morning line-up was ”who is the base commanding officer.” Despite frequent coaching my friend could never remember.
Every Saturday night he came back from Little Rock roaring drunk, keeping the rest of us awake, but he had a good sense of humor and was always ready to lend a hand if there was work to be done. When he shipped out I was glad to lend him $10 out of my princely monthly stipend of $28 because I knew he would return it. He did, several months later, from Hawaii.
Basic training for medical personnel was not as strenuous as for combat troops or I would not have survived, but it was strenuous enough, especially in that hot, humid, chigger-ridden country, and eventually it came to an end. Rumor had it that all those with any educational background would be sent to a large army hospital in Denver to be trained as medical technicians. It didn’t sound too bad. Imagine my surprise to find myself assigned as a clerk in a medical unit attached to a small air base in, believe it or not, Selma, Alabama.
The barracks were divided into rooms housing six men each. The other five of my bunk mates all were from surrounding southern states. I recall my astonishment that on the first night we arrived someone smuggled in a small portable radio so that after the lights were out they all could gather in one corner to listen to a broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry. I had never heard of it before. Anyone I knew who liked to listen to music usually tuned in on the symphony concerts broadcast Sunday afternoons.
They were an odd assortment. There was one semi-degenerate who returned after every week-end pass with lurid accounts of his non-discriminatory exploits amid the low class bars and brothels somewhere in the neighborhood. Another was a simple, laconic, slightly older man named Tebo who came from a cabin in a “holler” back in the hills. When he went home on a furlough his father put two gallon jugs of white mule on the kitchen table. “Son,” he said, “I want you to have a good time while you’re here.”
The other three were average, easy-going young men, but they thought I was a peculiar duck. Not only was I a Yankee, but I read books. After I left I corresponded for a while with one of them named Delmar. He always closed his letters “with love.”
In the office I was completely superfluous as there were three civilian girls (all engaged to officer pilots) who knew all the army regulations and did all the work. In charge was a staff sergeant in his early twenties who had completed only eight grades of schooling but received what seemed to me a munificent salary. He was handsome and had beautiful manners, but he also had the outlook of an Archie Bunker and almost the foulest mouth I have ever known.
After about four months I managed to get transferred to an air force classification center at Nashville, Tenn., where applicants for pilot training were subjected to a rigorous physical and, psychological testing program. Here the atmosphere was much more congenial because most of the men in my unit were psychologists. My assignment was to proctor written examinations. We were supposed never to stand still, but to keep constantly on the move, walking up and down the aisles. It was boring and very exhausting. After a while some of the guys got so they could read a book while making the rounds.
One evening I was in the Nashville USO when a gracious lady came in and asked if there was anyone around who would like an invitation to dinner. A friend from New York and I gratefully accepted. Thereafter we were often in her home which she shared with a sister, the only woman faculty member of Vanderbilt university’s medical school. We met other Vanderbilt faculty, too, including the Dean of the Graduate School of Library Science and the Director of the School of Social Work.
They were incredibly nice to us. I don’t know that they listened to Grand Old Opry but they knew Mrs. Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon who had all the proper credentials for a role as an upper class southern lady but who had instead chosen the role of Minnie Pearl. My impression is that her friends thought she was wasting her talent but she was said to be convinced that mountain music and humor was a distinct art form and to be determined to stick with it. Art form or not, she has stuck with it and no performance of Grand Ole Opry would be complete without her.
I was never a good soldier. Sometimes it seemed to me that I was the only one in my outfit who never received the Good Conduct Medal. I hated the stateside army with its micky mouse regulations and in which rank rather than ability determined authority. But eventually I was sent overseas, where I had an interesting job to do and where rank was of little concern, and I had a great experience. Believe it or not, four years, three months and 8 days after I was drafted I was discharged with the rank of Captain.
Curiously enough my fondest recollection of my military service is the year I spent as an enlisted man in Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee. Listening to the Grand Old Opry turned out to be not such a bad way of celebrating Veterans Day after all.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles by John Kahlert
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/john-kahlert
Articles about Veterans Day
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