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John “Joe” White, 2001 went back for Class Reunion

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Table of Contents Straight Outta Dumfuk: Raised by the Greatest Generation

114 STORIES

SECTION ONE

Mandatory Daily Meeting, Supper Table

Ground Hog’s Day Is a Big Deal

The Wisdom of the Greatest Generation

Always Moving, the Army Life

Reading to Us

Dental Side Work Money and Airplanes to Fly

Before the Children

Weekend Trips to Pittsburgh

How Stupid Are They Back There?

Ann Riley Goes to Hollywood

SoCal Mud Slides Make National News

California Serial Killer Worried Them

Who Are You Girls?

Gallows Humor

Run Over and Lived

Failed Suicides

Shot Himself in Head and Missed

Safety Conscious Idiot

Righteous Stupidity

Every Stupid Child Left Behind

Almost What Mom Said

Margaret Jean McPherson Gives Me a Clue

Our Dogs Were Family Members

Billy the Bully Beaten

Death−the Biggest Brick of All

Sunday School Doubts

You Must Join a Church, Any Church

Getting My Bell Rung

Smart Kids, Finally

Racing the Moon in a Hudson

Rinso’s Infinite Tolerance vs. Saint Bernard’s

Terrifying Polio and Cancer

Health Threats at School

Hunger Prevention

Morphine, Wow

Stan McCleary Lives Because of Doc Meyers

Motivated by No Car Keys

Last Fucking Day Playing Golf

SECTION TWO

What Kind of Bird Is That?

Junior, Well to Do Company Owner

Shreckengost’s Life

My Last Horror Movie

Lawn Mowers Lead to Cars

Money Does Make the World Go ‘Round

Uncle Al and the Installment Plan

English Bikes Cost a Lot of Money

Pinball Machines Prevent Savings

Gambling at Pennzoil

Herm Was a Typical Man from Shippenville

Dick Measuring with Shotguns

Coon Hunting–Not What I Thought

Best Coon Hound in Clarion County

Knocked Out Front Teeth

Second Paying Job

All Guns Are Deadly

Our Camp Was an Old Farm

Dad Drowned But He Made Sure We Did Not

Brutal Reality of Life Saving

Paneling a Fire Trap with Cardboard

Death by Single Shot .22

Sub-Space Drive De Soto

Failed Rancher

Back Flip Off Motorcycle

I’m in Love

Carolyn Taught Me a 25-Year Lesson

Kissing Causes Pregnancy

Running from Pregnancy

SECTION THREE

Mr. Wise Enforced His Own Rules

Pendulum Physics

Too Good to Be True

More Death Lessons

Right between the Eyes

Pepsi Diplomacy

Cross Eyed Cow

Liberty Ship Upshur

Raymond’s Chores

Uncle John’s Bricks

Dad’s Propaganda for College

Ass Kissing Job Interview

Funeral Home Intern

Explosive Lessons

Carbide Bombs

Deadliest Drug Ever

Uncle John Was a Smoker

Saving Western Civilization from the Soviets

No Time for Sergeants or Officers

Testing–Right Man for the Job

Dog Tags for Atheists

Getting My Orders

Trying Hard Does Not Work

One Armed Alcoholic Hitchhiker

Gasoline Is Dangerous 101

Gasoline Kills Californians

Televison in 1949

Dad Wins Soap Box Derby Two Years in a Row

Telephone Operator, First Paying Job

Life Changing Summer of 1956

Pine Grove Speedway

Race Day

Creating Our Own Pinegrove Speedway

The Battle of Sue Beasley’s Outhouse

Horrible Teen Years

Go Kart from Bed Springs and Theft

Mom Goes to College at 40

Teaching Teachers to Teach

Nobody Was Hungry or Homeless–the Poor Farm

LBJ’s Damage up Close and Personal

Don’t Take a Dog’s Bone

They Shoot Their Own Dogs in Dumfuk

Kitty Contributed a Very Big Brick

Go West Young Man and Wife

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STRAIGHT OUTTA DUMFUK by John Joe White

Excerpt - Chapter One (minus photos)

People ask why I refer to Shippenville as Dumfuk. I didn’t come up with that name, my friend Roger Beckwith did, a fellow tech writer during my early days working in aerospace named it that. We were bullshitting about our childhoods. I told him many of the stories in this book. He told me similar stories from his youth. I said, “Where are you from?” Roger said Dumfuk, Iowa. I had heard of Dubuque but he didn’t say that. So I said, “Huh?” Roger said, “Same town as you grew up in, but different state! He’s right!

MANDATORY DAILY MEETING, SUPPER TABLE

In the bygone days families ate together, at a minimum, at the evening meal. That was a way for Dad to check up on everyone and it built a sense of belonging and acceptance. Families in that sense are gone with the wind as is the word for the evening meal, “supper”.

Usually at the supper table, Mom and Dad discussed the news of the day and at about eight, I was expected and invited to participate. When I was old enough to think like an adult, about age 14, we discussed how to solve the world’s problems. Younger brother Alan didn’t seem to give a shit about being included or not. I claimed for years and years of conversations with either or both parents that education was the solution to everything, poverty, racial strife, even Vietnam.

After Dad died in 1973, Mom retired from being a teacher after 25 years. Later she moved to California. She bought a condo in an “over 40” gated community near the ocean in Huntington Beach. She loved me to visit, just to talk, saying the residents of “Seizure World” only wanted complain about failing health or how badly they had been treated by their deceased spouses. Years passed. It was Memorial Day, 1990. I was 40 Mom was 77.

We enjoyed talking about history, politics, philosophy, and life. On this fateful day the conversation turned from the legalization of flag burning to the Iraq war. I had taken my education-is-the solution position more firmly than ever. I’d guess that’s why Mom decided it was time to dash my dreams of solving the problems of the world through education. When I finished my spirited presentation, Mom told me a story.

You know Joe, “Every summer I had to go back to Buffalo where I got my PhD for Continuing Education to keep my certificate current. Every year there was a different expert with a new method to teach reading. I dutifully learned the method and went back to the schools in the fall. Every year I’d optimistically use the latest, greatest method.

In all those years, son, no matter what method I used, the smart ones got it and the stupid ones never got it.”With that, she was done with the conversation.

Mom taught reading as a circuit rider in the scattered small elementary schools around Clarion County because the small schools didn’t have the money to hire a full time teacher of reading. In 1979, over dinner, she told my brother and I the highest IQ she saw in 25 years was of a girl in the Tippery district, it was 114, only slightly above average of 100. I was shocked, so was Alan. The stereotype of Appalachia is based on fact.

Those were the days before the Teacher’s Union decided IQs could not be shown to anyone, even parents, for fear it would cause teachers and parents to ignore kids with low IQs and pay attention only to kids with high scores. Didn’t help a bit.

This book is a collection of anecdotes about events I remember from growing up in Shippenville, Clarion County, Pennsylvania. At the time these things happened I didn’t realize the insights I eventually got from them proved Mom’s thesis. I call the insights “bricks” as in, another brick in the wall of understanding reality.

At the time, I didn’t realize how simple yet profound Mom’s conclusion was. This book is about what led me, actually forced me, to realize Mom knew the cause of every problem we ever discussed, “. . . the stupid ones never got it.”

GROUND HOG’S DAY IS A BIG DEAL

Some SoCal people have heard of Punxsutawney Phil the Groundhog who looks for his shadow on February 2nd to forecast the future of winter. In, 2017 on February 5th, my daughter Syndee and I were at a Super Bowl party when a friend of hers, Judi, said Happy Birthday to me. Judi and I chatted a bit. I told her why my birthday is on the 3rd not the 2nd, Groundhog’s Day.

On February 2nd, Punxsutawney Phil, winter weather forecaster, comes out of his burrow. If he sees his shadow there will be six more weeks of winter, if not spring is right around the corner. Everyone hopes for a cloudy day

Syndee was listening to the story, as were several other people as I explained my birth date. Mom and all of her siblings had been cruelly teased, harassed and beaten up for being Irish and Catholic. That lasted for years and years until her brothers, John, Frank, Al and Eddie became teens and were strong enough to kick ass. The fighting Irish is a true stereotype.

Western Pennsylvania, in the dead of winter at minus 20 degrees, Ground Hog’s day is a big deal, calling for drinking, celebrating or mourning and more drinking. Mom was worried I’d be mercilessly teased about being a “groundhog” so she insisted the doctors wait until two minutes after midnight to officially deliver me.

My daughter and the others listening to the story were touched. Syndee added, in an accusing tone, “I never heard that story.” Now, I am writing many of my other stories for her, with a thread provided by the comment by my mother about the total futility of education in America.

Full disclosure, some motivation for this book is to have people rethink their usual instant rejection of this fact: Half of Americans are below average in intelligence. Those who don’t believe it, look up the definition of “average.” Okay, let’s get started.

THE WISDOM OF THE GREATEST GENERATION

My Mom and Dad both went hungry many times when growing up. Fear of that ever happening again to their children haunted them. Poverty ruled the lives of their families, Dad’s because Grandpa White went bankrupt in the early 1920s after machines made tinsmiths useless. Mom’s family just had way too many kids to feed, house and clothe on a railroad laborer’s pay,

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Captain Video and His Video Rangers.   From 1949-52 our favorite TV program was Captain Video. To get out of trouble Captain Video ordered the Chief Video Ranger, equivalent of Star Trek’s Scotty, to shift to “Sub Space Drive” ensuring Captain Video’s and his Video Rangers escaped once again as their rocket accelerated in sub space drive accompanied by much shaking of the video camera and props on the set flying. 

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1952 Soap Box Derby, Junior Hot Rod Race - John Joe White (center), First Place; Bill Vowinkle (left), Second Place; Dickie Weaver (right), Third Place. “Doc” White is standing behind John Joe White, with checkered flag in his shirt pocket.  Alan White, in helmet, stands to right of “Doc” White.  Peering between “Doc” White and Alan White is Leo Shrekengost.  Fourteen year-old Janet Shrekengost stands far right, looking into camera.  Junior Hartle peeks out behind boy who is standing to the left of “Doc” White.  Fulton boy, in stripped shirt and glasses, is two boys to the right of Alan White.  He and Alan both became doctors.

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HOUSE 1938 was designed and built by my Dad and his dad, uncles and many men from Clarion County. Flat roof in the Snow Belt!

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Here I am proudly holding my 13th Birthday cake.

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My freshman class at Shippenville-Elk High School.  I’m fourth from the right, in the second row from the bottom.  Same row, third from left is Betty Etzel, my first big crush.  I prayed every night for God to make her my girl.  But like all my prayers, it was never answered.  Damn!

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Clarion County newspaper - 1953 - My brother Alan White wins the Soap Box Junior Hot Rod Race.

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Soap Box Junior Hot Rod Race finish in 1953, with Ham Miller on mike as track announcer at Pinegrove Speedway.  Ham called it a tie, we raced again and Alan, my brother, won the second race, then beat Dick Heraty for the win that year.

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Visited Shippenville for my 50th/60th high school reunion.  Not enough people were alive for the Class of ‘57, so they combined 1950 to 1960.