How to Build a Fire: And Other Handy Things Your Grandfather Knew Read Online Free

the 1954 movie Johnny Dark . (Look closely, and you’ll see Tatum driving the car.) By then, he’d also met and fallen in love with his second wife, Evelyn, whom he married in 1952 at age twenty-six. They had four children together, and in 1964, after a close call on the racetrack, Tatum, not wanting his children to grow up fatherless like he did, retired from racing and became a car salesman. Now he’s looking forward to celebrating his sixtieth wedding anniversary. On the guest list: his eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
    Joseph Toth
    Joe Toth was born in Buffalo, New York, on February 10, 1923. His father, like most in the area, worked at the steel plant as a bricklayer. “He had such hardworking hands. Every day he’d come home with blisters on his knuckles,” said Toth. “When I saw those hands, I thought, I’m never going to work in a steel mill. ” With eleven siblings, everyone in the family had to chip in, and Toth remembered doing his part. “Everybody loved wearing knickers, because they had elastic below the knee. So, you’d go into somebody’s yard with a fruit tree and pick fruit. Of course, you had holes in your pockets so you could fill your pockets and your knickers. By the time you were done, you’d be pretty heavy!” After graduating from high school, Toth attended Alfred University, a trade school, and worked on a government-run farm, milking cows and cleaning gutters. On Columbus Day, 1942, he enlisted in the navy and became a fire controlman (or ship gunner). Before he shipped out, one of his buddies introduced him to his fiancée, Frances. “It was love at first sight,” said Toth. “I told my friend, ‘If you screw up and lose Frances, she’s mine!’ ” His friend did, and Toth soon won her heart. In the fall of 1943, he was scheduled to depart for the Pacific on the USS Liscome Bay , but the ship had too many fire controlmen, so everyone with last names beginning with T through Z got reassigned. After the ship departed without Toth, it took a direct torpedo hit by a Japanese submarine and sank, along with more than six hundred men aboard. “I just thank God my name starts with a T ,” Toth told me. When he got out of the service, he moved to Garfield, New Jersey, married Frances, and became an electrician. Together, they raised two children. Now he lives in Warwick, Pennsylvania, where his two granddaughters and four great-grandchildren visit him often. A navy man to this day, his grandchildren call him “Mate,” and he loves to make their eyes light up by building them things, including giant dollhouses with hand-laid parquet floors, chandeliers, and tiny working light switches.
    Frank Walter
    On October 1, 1922, Frank Walter was born in Milton, Massachusetts, just outside Boston. His father worked for New England Bell Telephone, and after the stock market crashed, his mother picked up work with the Camp Fire Girls, a sister organization of the Boy Scouts. Life in the Walter household ran on a tight schedule: Supper was at 6 PM , bedtime was at 7 PM —and when he wasn’t doing chores, Walter would roller-skate or play Ping-Pong with his two younger brothers. He attended Tufts University, but after his sophomore year, he enlisted in the navy with hopes of becoming a pilot. By March 1943, he’d earned his wings and soon after was selected to join the marines’ Corsair Flying Fighter squadron in Okinawa. After the war ended, he remained in Japan as an operations officer. “I was the only captain who wasn’t married, so I said I’d stay as long as I was needed,” he said. In 1946, when he returned home, his parents threw him a party, where a childhood friend, Elinor, sat on his lap and asked him, “Well, Frank, are you going to marry me now?” He dodged the question.
    After graduating from Tufts with a degree in mechanical engineering, Walter took a gig with the Chrysler Corporation in Detroit, which allowed him to work during the day and earn his