Long before I lived in Jacksonville, Florida or even knew it existed, I used to hear stories about the father I never knew. Just like his father before him, he got into quite a bit of trouble through the years. One typical story was that while he was stationed at Camp Blanding in 1943, he went to Jacksonville for a night on the town and got very drunk (which was pretty much his standard state, hence his absence from my life). While wandering around town he came upon a fire truck with the engine running. This fire truck was responding to a fire at the Cohen Brothers Department Store in Downtown Jacksonville. Thinking it was just the thing for a foot sore GI, he stole it.
A PBS program called Jacksonville’s Yesterdays refers to the incident but credited it to a Navy man. It is and was, after all, a Navy town. My father was in the Army, assigned to the 1758th Ordinance Supply and Maintenance Company. He apparently was returned to the rank of private and peeled a LOT of potatoes as a result of his little stunt. Incidentally, the building still stands, and later became Jacksonville’s City Hall, so he did not contribute to its demise that night.
I never knew my father, so it’s very hard to know what is fact and what is fiction with him. Some of the stories are pretty wild, but who knows if they’re true? Clearly he was in Jacksonville during the fire truck incident, but did he simply hear about it and adopt it as his own, or did he, in fact, do the deed? I have attempted to contact the local PBS station to find out where they learned of the story, but have had no cooperation. I’ve searched old archives to see if the story was reported, but have had no luck. I’ve even sent several e-mails to the Camp Blanding museum, and have had no response.
Whether or not this actually happened to my father, it became part of my family’s oral history. When I drive downtown, I’m seeing something that no one else around me sees: a young, complicated and crazy soldier taking a joy ride in a fire truck in 1943. It makes me smile.
(Update 4/2/13: I recently spent several hours at the library searching through newspapers and historical references to see if I could find anything about this story, as the Jacksonville Yesterdays people must have gotten it from somewhere. I did find an obscure and vague reference to it, saying that it happened “in 1957 or 1987” and that the guy was wearing a white uniform, so definitely a sailor. If any of these things are true, then it definitely couldn’t have been my father. I still have more research to do, though.)
The View from a Drawbridge 
I Love that you have a story about your Father.
It’s one of many. But I’d much rather have had a father.
I love a good family history story. We have a relative who was the second to the last person hung for arson in England. Not even the last guy, who would at least be in the history books.
Do you know the details? Like what he burned and why? Was it political, or a love gone wrong, or insurance fraud, or was he just a pyromaniac? That would be interesting to know.
I should find that out.
It would make a great blog entry. You could title it “Crazy Exploits Run in the Family” or something. 🙂
It would just hilight the fact that all the craziness runs to me.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
No… I have learned to live with it.