Albert Anthony Pate 1925-2006

Dancing Through the Minefields

By Lorinda Pate, his daughter

Stating nonchalantly that he became a paratrooper because it offered better pay than other branches of the Military, Dad rarely mentioned his wartime exploits. Once in awhile, he’d reminisce about traversing the minefields, dancing from side to side to avoid bullets, with wine-bottles pilfered from a nearby French Chateau clinking in his knapsack as he ran. His numerous medals and awards went undiscovered until after his death when I was astounded by the number of  letters, photos, commendations, Nazi war “booty” and other memorabilia he had managed to carry with him from city to city over the years. When a young nephew asked to see his Purple Heart Medal,  Dad told him, “I sold it,” yet, in his effects, I found three of them, one pinned to a uniform with Airborne patches affixed to the shoulders..

The son of Italian immigrants, Dad was raised in the rough and grimy steel town of Weirton, West Virginia during the Depression years. Giant steamboats were a common sight on the Ohio River which separated Weirton from Steubenville, Ohio. These immense vessels churned up the waters, creating wakes that made it exciting, but extremely dangerous, for swimmers and small boats. Several children had drowned in the river, so Dad and his siblings were strictly forbidden from going anywhere near it. Of course, Dad paid his father’s warnings no heed, and would regularly ride the steamboat wakes on his home-made wooden raft.

He endured regular beatings from his father for swimming in the river, for hopping boxcars on the railroad, and for trysting with the wives of neighborhood toughs. Neither the bullets fired by enraged husbands, nor the brutal punishments of his father could deter the teenager from his objective. That fierce determination, along with his tremendous good fortune, brought Dad back from the war relatively unscathed…at least, physically.

Back in Weirton, the returning WWII soldiers were treated like celebrities. One woman remembers my father stepping off the plane in his paratrooper uniform and shiny black boots, planting kisses on one after another of the clamoring girls, bending them backwards with a flourish and asking each, “Did your toes curl?” with a wink.

It was 1945, and the sister cities of Weirton, WVA and Steubenville Ohio had become a pair of harlots on the make… The politicians were crooked, the mother of the town cop took numbers, and organized crime ran rampant. Before casinos became legal in Nevada, many storefront businesses in Weirton and Steubenville were fronts for bookies, numbers, and other gambling rackets. Most of these gambling establishments were allegedly run by the Mob. Legend has it that a prominent local mobster was shot to death in one of these saloons by his wife after she refused to pay off her husband’s gambling debts with sexual favors.

After their shifts ended, the mill workers from Weirton, Steubenville, and Youngstown  would pour into these gambling joints to donate their meager paychecks. A Greek dice game called "Barboot" was the game of choice in those days. It was a common practice for the house to employ a dice cheat/manipulator or "mechanic," to hustle and break the winning streaks of lucky customers. The best mechanics in town gave it their all, but none were able to derail Dad when he was on a roll.

While his brothers and other childhood pals toiled in the steel mill, Dad spent most of his time in the gambling joints wearing a clove of fresh garlic around his neck for luck, earning him the nickname “Smellers.” He shot dice with an endless array of steelworkers, assorted small-time hoods, and one Dino Crocetti, later known as Dean Martin.

One of the most infamous of the shady Weirton gambling saloons was Hen Barber’s Place on Main Street.  Barber’s was where “Smellers” made the big score for which he is legendary among those locals still able to recall the heady postwar days.

Remembered by his friends as a happy-go-lucky guy, Dad never worked in the steel mill, yet always seemed to be “flush.” A family friend said he once watched as Dad shot dice for hours, never losing a bet. One night, on his final roll of the dice, Dad won enough money to buy his parents a house in the upscale part of Weirton Heights, along with a  new car and a 2-seat airplane to take the neighborhood girls flying in.

Shortly thereafter, Dad drove that new car out to Los Angeles, California, followed by his parents and three siblings. He never looked back, leaving one brother, his hometown and his nickname behind him. Who could blame him for wanting to get out of the smoke and filth of the steel mills?

According to oldtimers, Dad returned from the war with frostbitten feet as his only malady…As lucky on the battlefield as off. His younger sister remembers differently. She remembers his nightmares…hearing her brother screaming, kicking, pounding the wall in the middle of the night. For all of his years, Dad slept with a bayonet blade under his pilllow…One could never attempt to wake him without risking life and limb.

I vividly remember an incident that occured when I was about 4 or 5 years old…Getting up to use the bathroom late one night,  I stepped into the hall, and before I could reach the light-switch, came face to face with an apparition! I screamed….It was my father, eyes blazing, crouched down with bayonet at ready. Needless to say, I never got up in the middle of the night again!

Christmas was usually less than Merry. Not for lack of presents, of which there were many, but because of some mysterious “Battle of the Bulge” that my father always brought up again and again when Mom tried in vain to get him to join in festivities with other relatives. He’d go out to a bar, and we wouldn’t see him until the celebrations were over.  Mom and Dad never told their toddler what “Battle of the Bulge” referred to. For awhile I thought that it had something to do with Santa fitting into his costume!

It was many years, books and movies later before I realized how horrific Dad’s WWII experiences were…Having to gut young German soldiers as one would gut a fish, using dagger, bayonet and rifle-butt while his adversaries pleaded for mercy. He fought his foes face to face. He wasn’t firing at abstract moving objects on a far-away atoll, or at a target viewed through a ship’s torpedo sight, or shooting from an airplane flying overhead. It was hand to hand, German blood mingled with his own. Dad kept the ID photos…Hundreds of them. He told me later that some of the dying Germans had begged him to give their loved ones a message once the war was over. I don’t know if he ever delivered the soldier’s messages, but I found letters in German among his effects.

Fast forward through Dad’s marriage to a local Weirton girl from a wealthy family who’s father disinherited her upon her marriage to a man he viewed as a scoundrel. Through the birth of their only child, a daughter. Through moves two or three times a year. Through countless jobs…working construction, then quitting at whim. Always gambling and more gambling, drinking binges becoming more and more frequent. Through a two-year stint in Hawaii with Del Webb Construction, building  the Ala Moana Shopping Mall during the year that Hawaii became our 50th state.

Those two island years were the happiest years of my life. My father’s demons left him alone, he just drank socially, and gambling on the island was confined to neighborhood cockfights that Dad found inhumane.  My parents were always laughing and full of youthful exhuberance, like schoolchildren on holiday.  Hawaii was truly a paradise in 1958.

In 1960, we sailed on the SS Lurline back to Los Angeles and resumed our pattern of contentious family dinners. When I would attempt to help in the kitchen, Dad would get angry,  “I didn’t raise my daughter to be a slave to some sonofabitch like me! You go to college, make something of yourself and hire a cook!”

Once a week, usually on Sundays, all the relatives would gather for dinner and fun at Grandma’s house. Dinner was always followed by card games of “Briscola,” played in Italian, for money, in teams of two against two…Winking, hand-signaling or scratching in strategious places to indicate who had what cards and what to play next. Back then, I had at least a dozen Uncles, Aunts and enough cousins to fill a schoolyard.

Happy days came to an end when Dad hastily decided to move our family to Reno, NV.. Gambling luck gone sour, Dad began drinking with a vengance following a near-fatal auto accident in which Mom and I were hit by a drunk driver while driving home from church. Dad passed the wreck on his way to the casinos and recognized the car.  I thought he would kill the drunk who had rear-ended our car.

Of course, Dad blamed himself for not being awake early enough to drive us to church.  Things went downhill from there. Divorce soon followed, and Mom and I returned to Los Angeles, leaving Dad spiraling out of control.

He floundered there in Reno for a good ten years before finally moving to north San Diego, CA to build military housing on the Camp Pendleton Marine Base. Several relatives already lived in the area, so my mother and I soon followed Dad south. Together again, though not under the same roof.  Sunday get-togethers continued as before. My parents remained friends and neither remarried, although Dad always had a woman in tow.  I never married either, and remain childless. Some blame my father for that, but I thank him for teaching me to cherish my freedom.

Dad was absolutely fearless...Histongue was a horsewhip,his knuckleswere brass,buthis heartwas puregold. He had no patience for fools, and could be cruel in his admonishments, but there was nothing he would notdo for his friends and family.He taught me to shoot, and taught me to fight, trying his best to make me tough, but I could nevercome close to measuring up to him.

In watching the movie “Patton,” where the General becomes enraged at the whimpering soldier who is in the field hospital claiming “battle fatigue,” I saw my father mirrored in Patton’s actions. As the General smacked the cowering soldier and ordered him back to the front lines, I saw my father berating me when I would come home crushed by the taunts of schoolyard bullies and neighborhood kids who would steal my toys.

My sniveling was met with, “You’d better stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!”  No tears were allowed. He taught me to fight “like a man,” using Army combat moves. ”First, go for the face, but kick to the stomach instead, then when he doubles over, clamp your hands together and crack him behind the head to bring him to the ground, a swift kick or two to teach him respect, then take your toys and walk...don't run...home (all the while watching behind you for retaliation). Never show fear.”

That battle-honed rage that enabled my father to charge through enemy lines, slashing blindly through forest and flesh, came alive in me during my childhood tussles. I still remember the terrifying madness that blocked out my consciousness and made me oblivious to the pain being inflicted upon me by my foe.I came back to reality as my screaming 6th grade teacher pulled me off the much larger boy whose head I was repeatedly bashing into the asphalt of the playground. "Stop, you're killing him!" It was frightening, that murderous rage.  My father was so proud when the school Principal called him to come take me home.

Did I also inherit Dad’s gambling "luck?" One night I took my grandmother to Vegas to see Elvis, whom she adored.  It was 3 am, I was bored and not into casino gambling at all.I walked up to acraps game with the $20 I had in my pocketand came out with over$2,000 in less than an hour, rolling consecutive hard 8's (a longshot "sucker bet.") Finally, Grandma found me and pulled me away. What did I know about Craps?

It is amazing what is passed down in the genes. Dad taught me to handicap race horses with the Daily Racing Formwhen I was 10 years old, his version of ”bonding.”  I learned that if a horse’s sire was a distance runner, the offspring would be no good in a short sprint. If the sire refused to run in the mud, chances are that the offspring would inherit that same stubborn trait, and so on. Does this hold true for humans as well?

How I loved spending days at the track with Dad and his brothers.  They tirelessly tormented each other, and their ribald banter was more entertaining than any television comedy show. One particular day we were sitting up in the Turf Club,I hadn't cashed a ticket all daybut wanted to stay and watch the feature race because some of my favorite thoroughbreds werecompeting. Dad and his brothers left saying, "Here's $5, take the taxi home and don't bet with this!" Of course, that warning went unheeded. $5 was good for a one-way exacta bet. To win, the horses had to finish 1st and 2nd in the exact order printed on the ticket..

So, my winning picks arethundering down the stretch, One-Two! One was a 20/1 longshot and the other a lukewarm favorite. I had bet the favorite to win...a cinch, right? Well, the 20/1 shot aces him at the wire, making my ticket void. I'm walking out of the racetrack, swearing under my breath, when all at once, the announcer's voice blares over the loudspeaker, "Please hold all tickets. There has been a Steward's inquiry regarding the finish of the last race!"

I stopped dead in my tracks...The minutes ticking away seemed like days..."For interference in the stretch,thewinner will be placed second." What a coup! Fate had intervened and switched the order of finish to match the numbers on my ticket!! I called Dad to come pick me up, pretending to have gambled away the cab-fare, then when he drove up cursing, I fanned out close to a thousand dollars in winnings! My run of luck lasted a good five years.

My mother once told me that she would light candles and pray fervently every time she knew I was headed for the racetrack. She prayed for me to lose!  She was so afraid that I would end up an inveterate gambler like my father. She often warned me, “When you come back from visiting your father, you act just like him. I don’t want your filthy money, Big Shot. Take it back to the track.” (And so I did.) Finally, Lady Luck walked out on me once and for all, and stamped my meal ticket “expired.” It seemed that Mom’s unlucky genes had kicked in.

Virtually indestructible until his late 70’s, Dad became increasingly embittered as death came calling on those close to him;VFW buddies, ladyfriends, parents, siblings, and finally my mother, one after the other, leaving him the last man standing. The only time I ever saw my father cry was when someone close to him died. I was shocked when I first witnessed his tears as he learned that his younger brother’s flu was actually Leukemia. That was the last funeral Dad ever attended.

He never admitted it, but each death chipped away a bit of Dad’s inner core.  I could see him diminish bit by bit, wondering why he had been spared while the young ones were felled one after the other like soldiers on the battlefield. Dad’s vigor began to wane, he became indifferent to diet and hygiene. Drinking and gambling had fallen by the wayside years ago. Even the women, whose companionship was ever present, could not provide solace. At 83 years old, all foes vanquished, Dad was finally ready to walk off the battlefield…Triumphant and without fear, his way. Coincidentally, my father died on the anniversary of the Malmedy Massacre, during the season of the Battle of the Bulge, and alas… the season he always seem to loathe…Christmas.

I never for one moment wished that I had been raised by a gentler man. My father’s cynical views on life, coupled with his determination to wring every bit of pleasure from this earthly existence, bring to mind visions of the young paratrooper dancing through the minefields, wine bottles clinking merrily in his knapsack. He knew full well that at any moment he could be blown to bits, yet forged ahead regardless, finding some small dollop of joy in even the most harrowing experience.

Now, I’m left to navigate life’s minefields alone, wine bottles clinking as I attempt to dance.