#he and penkala seemed like very good eggs. such a shame they didn't make it.

[pastlivesandpurplepuppets]

Warren H. Muck was about the millionth kid our age to be named after Warren Harding, a fairly popular president from 1921 to 1923, when a lot of us World War II kids were being born. No wonder he preferred “Skip.” We were different in some ways. We couldn’t have grown up farther apart—Oregon and New York. He was from Tonawanda, just north of Buffalo and along the Niagara River. My roots were Irish, his German; he even spoke a fair amount of it. When it came to drinking and gambling, I was a major leaguer while Skip was happy to bounce around the minors, playing here and there, but the more we got to know each other, the more we realized we had lots in common. We both had that adventurous spirit; while I was swinging across ravines on the branches of Douglas firs in Oregon’s woods, Skip was swimming across the Niagara River in New York. We were both about five-seven or five-eight, he a bit more wiry. We were both a little ornery, mischievous, and athletic; he played wide receiver in football and was on the swim team. Both of us liked a good laugh. Both of us were nuts for music: Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Harry James, The Mills Brothers singing “Paper Doll,” and Frank Sinatra’s “Moonlight Serenade.” At the end of a day, we��d go to the PX—it wasn’t much bigger than a boxcar—and were usually so tired that we’d sit on the floor, our backs to the wall, and with a beer or Coke in our hands listen to that jukebox until I thought we were going to wear out the grooves in those 78rpm records. It wasn’t just the sound of the music, it was what it could do to you inside: take you away from endless days of sweating, grunting, and cussing beneath your breath at Sobel.

The Depression had been hard on both our families. In some ways, we both were forced to become the “man of the house.” My dad essentially bailed out in 1938; his dad abandoned his family in about 1930, deciding he’d rather play in a jazz band and travel the country than be a father. Beyond that, we both were happy-go-lucky, witty, a little nutty, prickly when provoked, and, here and there, prone to laugh in the face of the odds if we thought, after doing so, we’d survive to live another day. How else do you explain our trying to become paratroopers? How else do you explain a guy swimming the Niagara? Or me defying an ROTC colonel? Skip was the real deal; didn’t have a phony bone in his body. Unassuming and yet had a personality that drew people to him like cold hands to a fire. He was the barracks peacekeeper on occasion. Not the guy who demanded to be in the spotlight but probably the best-liked man in the company. A guy who could make each of us feel as if he were his best friend. Deep down, I felt honored that he even had time for a maverick like me.

In some ways, Skip had replaced my family and my pals at the Sigma Nu house as the person I was closest to on earth. Once, on our way back to the barracks from the PX, Skip and I were having a smoke when he asked me why I chose airborne. I told him about growing up with the stories about my uncles both giving their lives for their country. “I dunno, Skip, I think I was just born to do this,” I said. His response didn’t surprise me in the least: “Me, too, Malark.” But we never talked about not making it home. We only talked about what it would be like when we did, how we’d visit each other and he’d show me where he’d swum the Niagara and I’d take him fishing on the Nehalem, maybe out in the ocean for salmon. “Going out over the Columbia River bar makes swimming the Niagara look like kiddy stuff,” I huffed. “We’ll do it,” he said. “But, remember, I swam the Niagara at night.”

~ Don Malarkey