Joining The Military

So, for whatever reason, the sandwich shop failed and father took his friend's advice and joined the military.  I do not know where his basic training was at but I do know that mother went back to live with grandmother on the houseboat opposite Swan Island in Portland.

Having completed his basic training, father was stationed temporarily at a base in California - where I was then born.  Under the US laws I was born under, if your father was foreign and you were born on Federal property - not US soil - you were not granted automatic citizenship.  So, I was born a German citizen, since this was father's nationality at the time.  The state of California, wondering how to register the birth, ended up issuing me a permanent voter's registration card!  But, no birth certificate.  The hospital on the base issued me a live birth card, stipulating me foreign born - and a female.  (Thank you, you worthless military typist!)

Anyways, that little distinction - Federal property - not US soil, was to haunt me until I was 20, when I finally went through naturalization - even though I WAS a US citizen according to the US agreement father signed.  So, that closed that problem, mostly!

Probably the greatest of father's inabilities was the lack of knowledge as to how people behave.  He judged all by the standard of himself and though he was a world class liar, he was never sneaky.  A very odd combination.  You could not trust his words but you could his motives and actions.  If your life was in his hands, he would lose his first to save you (not me, I'm the troubled son, remember?).  Weird.

So, had father of been of just even average knowledge concerning human behavior, he would have looked at his first post and wondered - "Why am I here?"  Why would a foreign national have immediate access to weapons of mass destruction?  Had he of thought about it - he would have realized he was being tested and set up for the next step in the devious US plot to draw him out into the open.

But, in any event, father was shortly to find himself in hot water with the US Government.  We can call this one Cold War paranoia, however this time it was for all Germans in the US employ.....

And, I now am at a bit of a breaking point.  So far I have been fairly free to write about father's life - however, his work for the US Government was very hush-hush and I have no desire to go through yet ANOTHER citizenship hearing, with the threat of being deported - again!  So, we will ignore a great deal of father's professional life.  Sorry, I am not going to tell you how to build weapons of mass destruction - go to the library and read up on it, everybody else does.  Though you may find that libraries are more accessible on such subjects in other countries than in the US....