My Grandpas

Jacob Delb Deutschland 1930's 

This is my German Opa. My mom, Hannetraude,  immigrated from the Vaterland in early 1970s. Jacob was not actually her bioligical father, but raised her from 1947 on. He had been captured by the Russians at Stalingrad and his wife recieved a letter that he was dead. Luckily this wasn't true, although for many other German POWS in the hands of the Ruskies it WAS a reality. He managed to contract TB in POW camps, but escaped from the one he was in at Minsk in 1944. He spent three years walking home to Germany, wintering over with Russian families that were sympathetic. He has since insuated that we probably have unknown cousins in Russia. When he got home to Homburg, Saarland, Deutschland, his wife had previously had a child with an American doing postwar occupation duty as an MP, Clyde Tipton of Weaverville NC. I know we should honor our ancestors, and I got to meet Clyded in the 1980's. He played claw-hammer banjo, still plowed with a mule and slaughtered his own hogs and the sausage WAS  good. But he was a awnry sumbitch and cussed me (i was like 9-10) for slamming the door of his truck too hard, calling me "a little shit-ass." He also commented on a girl walking over a bridge as we drove into Ashville as having "an ass  like a nine dollar mule!" If something was really good, he said "it was like Up-Town" I can remember this like it was yesterday. Oh yeah, almost forgot, he had to leave Germany because of extenuating circumstances. His girl (my mom's mom, her name escapes me right now) worked at a local Bierstube, Gasthaus. One night when he came to see her, he opened the door to find an African American GI (I'm sure he had a more colorful epithet for this gentleman) talking at the bar to his woman working behind it. He simply slid back out the door without being noticed and when the colored fellow left, he shot him in the back of the head. Murder. His buddies got him on a plane out of there before he could be charged with the crime. I am very ashamed of this chapter of history in my lineage. Some poor guys family never got to find out what happened to him, while Clyde went home and never served any time for his crime. Hell, in 1945, I don't know how much time a white man would get for killing a black man in North Carolina, if at all. And this is truly regrettable for all of us because racism still exists, even if hidden behind closed doors. 

YOU CAN'T COLOR-CODE PEOPLE!!!!! Some of the biggest NI**ERS (in the literal sense: ignorant) I know are as white as me, and walk around talking about how all the blacks and latinos are the biggest problems they have! WTF????? To be fair to Clyde, He landed at D-Day at H-Hour minus 30 as an Amphibious Engineer and served throughout the Normandy campaign and on into Germany and taking a man's life was no big deal to him at that point. It doesn't make it right.

The good news? Jacob Delb returned after the war and raised my mom as his own and had two more girls with his wife. I never met the man because he eventually died from the TB he got in the camps before I was born. From my mom I have discerned he was a friend of man and animal alike and didn't have a mean bone in his body. Funny story: Jacob didn't have anything but motorcycles and bicycles as transpotation until the mid fifties. Once, while riding home from the bar in Neunkirschen, wifey on the back, they rounded the corner at the bottom of a big hill and turned onto the main drag hitting a pot hole in the middle. Well, Jacob got half way home to Homburg before he realized his old lady had fallen off. He returned to Neunkirschen and found her sitting on the curb pissed! 

This is my Dad's dad, Delbert "Scotty" Wainscott in NewCastle, Henry Co. KY. He served at Pensacola FLA at the Naval Flight School as a flight instrument mechanic. He had apprenticed as a watch repairman, so they played on his natural talents. He told me that Gyros were new and complicated and no one wanted to work on them but him, so they sent all the Gyros to him. I knew him my whole life, even lived with him in the last years of his life. He was pretty awnry too, but didn't have a mean bone in him either. I miss him and my grandma Ruby Collins Wainscott. They raised me a lot when I was little and both my parents were working. I guess that's why I am so old fashioned for my generation. I called them OMI and PAPA. 

Papa told me he had an Indian Scout Bonneville while in Pensacola. He told me the Bonneville part meant that it had been balanced and ported and polished at the factory and would FLY! One night he and a buddy were heading out for a night on the town on the old Injun. His buddy's uniforms were all at the laundry, so he borrowed Papa's only spare uniform he didn't have at the laundry too. Well, it had just quit raining and they rounded a corner and passed over a manhole Papa couldn't see to avoid it till it was too late. Needless to say, they low-sided, ruining both of Papa's uniforms! They had to turn around and stay in for the night. He told me that story like it was yesterday. No pics of the Scout, wish I had it now. 

Anyway that's your geneological history lesson for the day.