Chapter One

I was raised in a very conservative Christian home. My dad was so strict that once when he caught me kicking a soccer ball on a Sunday afternoon he grounded me for a week and told me that my actions had ruined everything he had been teaching for the past two years. We were allowed to play board games on Sunday, but we could not play any physical games, such as tag, any sort of ball game, or even go horseback ridding for fun. We could go down to the river to cool off, but we could not jump or dive into the water. I remember Sunday’s as the most boring of all days. There was nothing to do except sit around and read a book. I couldn’t even go outside and play with my dog.

I grew up down in the jungles of Paraguay in a place which is now underwater due to the construction of the Itaipu dam on the Parana river between Paraguay and Brazil. Now when I use the word jungle you need to think big trees, dense jungle vines, and vegetation so thick you could not see three feet into it and animals could not run through it.

Our house had dirt floors, straw roof, and poles and mud for walls. When it rained the water ran into our house because the dirt floor had become packed and was lower than the ground outside the house. We had all sorts of bugs and spiders in the house, and we even killed two poisonous snakes in the house. At night we would often have bats fly into the house. We kids thought this was great because as the bats would dive down our dogs would jump up and try to catch them. We’d help the dogs by trying to hit the bats with brooms. It seems that the brooms were large enough for the bats to avoid most of the time. We later found that coat hangers or other thin whip-like rods worked much better as the bats could not avoid those whip-like devices and we could knock them out of the air for the dogs or cats to catch.

Behind our house was a beautiful arroyo called the Dos Hermanas, and in front of our house there was an arroyo called the Victoria. The Dos Hermanas was probably four times as large as the Victoria. We were only a short distance from the Parana river, into which both of these arroyos emptied into. Since the Parana was down in a deep gorge the Dos Hermanas had two beautiful waterfalls, one about 21 feet high followed by another 30 foot high. The water was crystal clear and we used to go swimming in the arroyo nearly every day. We would dive off the top of the larger waterfall into the 15 or 20 foot deep water below.

We had no running water, no electricity, no refrigeration, no paved roads, no telephones, no local radio, no television, no local store, and none of the other luxury items so many people take for granted today. The nearest gas station was 82 kilometers away, but those 82 kilometers often took a couple of days to navigate in bad weather. I spent quite a few nights stuck on that road, sleeping in the car with my dad and brother.

Dad would go to Asuncion, about 350 kilometers away, about every two months to get groceries such as salt, flower, sugar, rice, noodles, cooking oil, and other such things. On a good trip that 350 kilometers would take about eight hours. Most of it was over dirt roads which was nearly impossible to drive on when it rained. In front of our house we had rows of large Oveña trees. When the trees had fruit on them we would have hundreds of big parrots come and land in these trees to eat the fruit. We would go out and shoot the parrots for food. They were very tasty! We also ate Toucans and doves, both of which were plentiful. We would go hunting and fishing to get other fresh meat for food. Eventually we raised pigs, got a cow so we would have fresh milk, and raised chickens for both meat and eggs. I learned to hunt with a 12 gauge shotgun when I was only nine years old.

Before we got a sawmill we had men using a two-man-saw cut logs into boards and timbers for building a house for a retired school teacher who went down and taught me and my brother and sisters. The roof was made of split shingles which were on a 45 degree slope. Even though you could see light through the roof it didn’t leak because the roof was so sloped. The retired teacher got me up to about a 5th grade reading level, and from that point on I read about everything I could get my hands on. My dad had a sister who was secretary to one of the vice presidents of Prentice Hall and she got a sample set of books sent down to us for our education. We also had all sorts of science and other books which my aunts sent us. Since books were one of the few items which could go into the country duty free we enjoyed a number of subscriptions to good reading materials such as Reader’s Digest and National Geographic. We also had a complete American People’s encyclopedia which I read nearly cover to cover over the years. I also received a set of books on electricity and electronics which I read and re-read, laying the foundation for me to go into aircraft electrical repair when I would join the U.S. Air Force years later.

For some reason my dad favored my older brother. I knew that all my life, but only later in life did it really hit home. As a consequence of that, I was always working to gain my dad’s approval. Yet no mater how hard I tried I could never do anything good enough to earn my dad’s praise. I remember my brother set a record of getting 16 logs out of the jungle and to the sawmill in one single day. I nearly killed myself breaking my brother’s record over and over, eventually delivering 32 logs in one day. My dad never gave me one word of praise. I finally figured out I was never going to be good enough for my dad and gave up trying. That led to some real bitterness and hard feeling between my dad and me. From about the age of 16 until I got my draft notice at age 21 our relationship was almost that of a boss to his foreman. Dad gave order and I carried them out. When dad was gone I ran the mission farm. When he returned I gave him a report and got new orders. Those were some very difficult years in my life.

When I was 12 we got a sawmill and dad built a two story wood house with a wood floor and tin roof. We were living in pure luxury. My dad build the new house near another river and we had to move about 20 kilometers. Now we were only 30 kilometers from Hernandarias which was the nearest town, instead of 50. Also, the town was growing and now had a single telephone. We were also getting some modern luxuries. We built a stand at the back of the house and put a 380 liter aluminum aircraft fuel tank up on it. We then installed a hand pump down at the river and I would then pump the tank full so that we would have running water in the house. We also had a kerosene refrigerator so we could keep food cold.