Yes, I have no bananas
During years of daily conversations, Cousin Boots shared a lot of stories. One was unique in that a tinge of remorse could be heard in the conclusion. Perhaps not as much guilt as a nagging curiosity about the very nature of personal responsibility. It was that nasty game of “what if” we play with ourselves.
During years of daily conversations, Cousin Boots shared a lot of stories. One was unique in that a tinge of remorse could be heard in the conclusion. Perhaps not as much guilt as a nagging curiosity about the very nature of personal responsibility. It was that nasty game of “what if” we play with ourselves.
According to Boots during the summer of 1939, three Stigler boys not long removed from high school, Boots Claunts, Roland Hill and W.D. Hargis, Jr., were seduced by the posters and newsreels hyping the Army Air Corps. The trio decided to come to Spartan School in Tulsa where there was a recruiter and enlist in the Army Air Corp cadet training program.
Arriving early in the morning, the Stiglerites presented documentation of their high school graduation, took the pencil and paper tests and completed the physical examination before noon.
To the dismay of the threesome, W.D. weighted in just short of the required weight. The recruiter, described as a gnarly and pragmatic old veteran of World War I, advised, “Go poke down all the bananas you can down and come back just before 5:00.”
The now determined trinity, pooled their funds and found grocery store on the outskirts of town, somewhere near 11th Street and Yale Avenue, then along the path of Route 66. There they purchased chunks of bologna and cheese, a sleeve of crackers and two sacks of bananas. The boys found a curb and sat down.
Boots recalled that they could see the Philtower, then the tallest building in Tulsa, from where they sat. He recounted that they all shared in the bologna and cheese, but he and Roland wouldn’t eat a banana for fear that W.D. would come up an ounce short.
They arrived back at Spartan shortly before 5:00. W.D. stepped on the scales and made weight.
Here the story always got a bit fuzzy. Boots said he got in, was sent to Santa Ana Army Air Station in California. He would recount not liking the Army Air Corps much and he missed a certain young lady in Stigler so he deliberately washed out, a practice not uncommon among pilot recruits from the Heartland.
W.D. (William David) Jr. went to flight school and quickly fell in love with flying. Upon completion of his training, he was assigned to a B-26 Squadron as a navigator. On December 7, 1941, his Squadron left California and flew into Hickam Field, Hawaii and into the teeth of the Japanese attack. All survived.
On June 4, 1942, Lieutenant Hargis’s Squadron was engaged in a torpedo attack against the Japanese Navy at the Battle of Midway. Lieutenant Hargis was killed in action. He was posthumously awarded our nation’s second highest honor, The Distinguished Service Cross.
On the lawn in front of the courthouse in Stigler is a large marble monument to Haskell County’s World War I and World War II dead. A central obelisk rises from between two stone panels. The third name on the left panel is that of Second Lieutenant William D. Hargis.
You can not escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. – Abraham Lincoln.
Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.
