Sing it to the tune of “You’re in the army now.” My dad’s version from when WWII interrupted his college studies.

You’re in the army now.
You’re not behind the plow.
You’ll never get rich, you son-of-a-bitch
You’re in the army now.

I have posted these lyrics before. My dad? Forestry student, mechanical engineering student, WW2 flight instructor, automotive factory worker in Detroit while restarting his college career, hay fever (?), tannery worker, banker. I don’t think my dad ever had hay fever except maybe as ruse to get The Commander to move to the yooperland to get out of living in his in-law’s house in Garden City (near Detroit). This was you-are-my-wife-goodbye-city-life Green Acres style without the penthouse in New York. Or penthouse anywhere. My mom adapted to the yooperland with bells on and lived there happily until her death in 2012. My dad never finished college despite every advantage but he became a Successful Failure *anyway*.

My dad did his time behind the plow as a kid. His dad (my grandfather) was not a farmer, he was a banker. But if I have it right, he crawled his way up from manual labor as a teenager into the banking biz. He was an immigrant (Scot, born in Canada) who became successful at banking and was greatly respected around town. I’m not sure he graduated from high school? I could be wrong.

My grandfather made sure his children graduated from high school and sent all of his children to college and one to med school. He also wanted his children to know what it was like to work HARD for a living, especially his sons. So when they were kids he arranged for them to walk 10 miles out to Dafter on non-school days where my great-aunt/great-uncle Alice and Alec lived on a farm. The brothers helped with whatever farm work needed to be done. There were probably a few automotive vee-hickles around Sault Ste. Siberia at that time but not too many and I don’t think the family owned one until a few years later. But I could well be wrong.

So my ballot is on the way. Hopefully I will get it before we leave for the yooperland but probably it’ll get hung up in held mail. But we’ll get there. VOTE VOTE VOTE.

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