Me
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Me
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Peter Allen Daggett For a long time it seemed to me that real life was about to begin, but there was always some obstacle in the way. Something had to be got through first, some unfinished business; time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
Mom lived in Ashland, Maine, while Dad was in North Africa and Italy winning the war. Since there's no hospital in Ashland she made the 20-mile trek over Haystack Hill to Presque Isle in time for me to be born. My father was a US Army Captain in North Africa at the time, I wouldn't get to see him till I was about two. When the war was over and he got back he got a job teaching History at the High School in Ashland and eventually got a job selling leather for American Hide and Leather Company and we moved to Littleton (Now Littleton Common) Massachusetts, I was four. Dad was offered a job selling leather in the North Central US and he took it, we packed up and left for Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin (A suburb of Milwaukee) when I was seven, about the time I started 1st grade. By that time I had two sisters, Susan Rae who was born in Ashland and Leigh Elaine who was born in Littleton (After rereading the first paragraph several times ... I can see this is could to be real boring, I’m putting myself to sleep ... so I'll just hit the high spots. I feel I must apologize in advance. What follows is not intended to be a chronological recounting of my life, it's a rambling hodge-podge of facts and recollections and... ) I had a blissful childhood, I lived the idyllic life of "Happy Days" Ritchie Cunningham and I graduated an unmotivated, average student from Whitefish Bay High School in 1962. A friend, Jon Miller, and I finagled $200.00 each and we borrowed his mothers Corvair and my Dads Chevron Gasoline card and took a month long trip all over the West, an amazing coming of age trip actually. When we got back it became imperative somehow that I start to move on. I thought about college for about 10 minutes, and came to the personal acceptance of the fact that I am not academically inclined, I figured that I would not be any better a student in college than I was in High School so the military seemed to be the only viable option. I mustered up all the nerve I had and went down to the Recruiting Office. The Marines, Army, Coast Guard and Navy were all in the same area. I had planned to join the Marines and go to Cuba to fight Fidel Castro. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I arrived around noon and the Marine Recruiter was out to lunch with the Army and Coast Guard Recruiters. The only person left there was the Navy Recruiter. I had my nerve up and didn't think I could muster up the courage to come back later. So I told him I wanted to join the Navy. The recruiter asked me what I wanted to do in the Navy and I said I wanted to be a Boson's mate on a Cruiser on the East Coast. (I obviously knew nothing about the Navy). He just smiled and said "No problem." I went to Boot Camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center on September 17th. 1962. I made it two weeks and got Double Bronchial Pneumonia, almost died, I spent three and a half months in the hospital. When I finally finished Boot Camp and IC (Interior Communications) School I got a Tin-can (Destroyer) out of San Diego'
I was not destined to fight Castro it turned out, apparently there was trouble brewing in Vietnam. I was in the Philippines, it was 0400 and the loud speakers woke us up to tell us we were on "Alert" because President Kennedy had been shot. Not long after that President Johnson decided that it was necessary to escalate our investment in Vietnam and that was that. I spent the next three years chugging back and forth across the Pacific. We spent a lot of time rearranging the landscaping of that little country. Word to the wise, always check to see if the country you are going to war against has a Navy before you join the Navy. If they have no Navy, chances are you will be fairly safe. I figured out early on (about twelve hours into Boot Camp) that the Navy and I were not made for each other. I managed to get out in 1966 without the Navy or I having had much impact on each other. My dad once told me that he "spent four years in the Army learning how to do as I was told." I also learned (slowly) that I have a taste for, and low tolerance of alcohol. There are several large chunks of time that are lost to me because I was too young and stupid to take advantage of the opportunities presented, I went to Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Guam, Taiwan and the Philippines and all I did was head to the nearest bar. Stupid... I don't drink anything but beer any more and I still have to be careful not to over do. Oops, almost forgot, I got married to a person from El Monte, California in 1965. As long as I spent 85% of my time over seas the marriage was pretty blissful. Once I got out of the Service and we had to actually spend time together it became apparent that it was a poor match. We went to marriage councilors and tried lots of stuff but we separated, finally, in 1976. Unfortunately, in the interim we adopted a son, Russell Allen in 1968. She got custody of him and I was so intimidated by the whole thing I didn't fight her for him... I should have.
There were obstacles (Like my divorce) and trials to overcome but we finally got married in 1982 in my parents living room in Mequon Wisconsin. It was a real special wedding just Russell, and Christy's two sons Jeff & Robert, my sister Sue and her husband Ross, their kids Christine and Katy and my Mother and Father. Dad had found a retired Judge who was a little eccentric (to be kind) to marry us. He was a local radio personality who was a spokesman for the Ultra-Conservative loony's indigenous to that neck of the woods. (Note: The black blob next to my mother is the shoulder and arm of the judge, he deemed his presence necessary in every photo...) Dad died three years after this was taken. At the time, no one, including him, knew he had cancer… after almost 20 years it is still difficult for me to talk about him. He was a great guy, a loyal friend and confidant... I miss him every day. As I mentioned, Christy already had two sons. We lived in Canoga Park, California in a wreck of an apartment building, then her parents moved to Lake Los Angeles and we bought their house in North Hollywood. We sold that house a few years later and moved to Canyon Country but we soon figured out we were over our heads because it was costing us an arm and a leg every month to live there so we sold it and moved out to Acton in '86. We anticipated that we would move out of here after five or six years, but it looks like we're going to have to stick around a while. We have plans to add on a couple of rooms to the back and that should keep us going for a while. Even after adding two rooms the house will still be small for 9 people but Windsor Castle would be small for this bunch. There I go digressing again. When I got out of the Navy I took a month off and traveled around with the "person from El Monte". When we got home, on a Wednesday, I said to myself that I would spend the next two months looking for a job and if I couldn't find one I would go back into the Navy. I went out and bought a newspaper and opened it to the classified section and there was a big ad that said PACIFIC BELL IS NOW HIRING, I called them on a Monday and went down for an interview the next day. They called me on Friday and said I could start work as a Frameman on Monday at the El Monte Central Office. Thirty years one week and four days later, on December 2nd, 1996 I retired as a Technical Support Manager. A lot of interesting things happened, I saw technology change radically over those thirty years, I was trained in mechanical switching called Step By Step that had been chugging along for 70 years, there was the new stuff starting to take over, a sort of integrated mechanical switching called #5 Cross Bar. Then Electronic Switching came along in the late 60's, before we were even out of the decade Digital Switching was introduced. It got to the point where all my energy was consumed by trying to keep up with what was around the corner. In 1994 I finally gave up trying to keep up with progress... at 17:15, June 3rd, 1994 to be precise. I had a heart attack. Nothing like a confrontation with mortality to help you get your priorities rearranged. After recuperating from an Angiogram, and Angioplasty in July, and eventually, in November, I had a triple bypass to repair the aneurism caused by the Angioplasty I went back to work in February of 1995, but I was totally out of it, emotionally, technically and every other way. You take seven months off someday and try to jump back into the swing. I was lost, frustrated and apathetic. Then SBC (Southern Bell Communications - or - Short Block Chevy - or - Southern Baptist Church... whatever) bought Pacific Bell and "made me an offer I couldn't refuse." I got my thirty years in and said "Adios". Someone asked me which retirement gift I wanted I said all I want a small brass plate on the wall beside the loading dock door that says: Peter A. Daggett passed through this portal at 4:00 in the afternoon of December 2nd, 1996 and never looked back" In 1989 Christy got fed up with her job at a local HMO, I was at my mothers home in Mequon, Wisconsin taking a break from a company school in Lisle, Illinois. I was talking to Christy on the phone about school and she said, "Oh by the way, I just quit my job, I want to stay home and take care of Foster Children." I said "Oooookay, can we afford to do that?" "She said the State will pay us to take care of them and it's what I want to do." Well that was that. About a month later we had a 15 year old girl here, the social worker didn't bother to tell us that the reason she brought her to us was that the Psychiatric Ward at Antelope valley was full. (Truth). After threatening Jeff and attacking Christy and me, mistaking me for her brother, Christy having to call 911 three times, picking her up at the school for fighting twice, and other bizarre behavior, we finally got her Social Worker to take her someplace she could be properly cared for. I thought Christy would be fed up and our Foster Parenting Career was going to be short lived but then Christy brought home Tim (Mike), then a week later, Christian, and then Cindy, "B", Calie, Monica, and Autumn. There were several more kids staying here but they eventually went to their parents or other family members. Then we adopted Christian, Cindy and Calie then Monica then Autumn now Mike. "B"'s adoption is in the works too. I may have to go back to work just to get some rest... (Mike was adopted in 1999) From here on you can get caught up in my Journal
An e-mail to a friend who was writing a "CV": J Yeah, I’ve been pecking away at one [Autobiography] for years, haven’t made much headway, it’s tough. I want it to be concise but revealing, and honest. I started writing and got on a subject, like the Navy, when I was all through I realized how much I had left out and how many other significant things happened in that era… my sisters marriage, my grandmothers death… my first marriage. I got on a subject and stayed with it, like writing about work, 30 years worth… then went back and picked up the marriage (s), then the kids then, hell, it’s a hodge-podge. I think it is better than trying to do it all chronologically though, lives are not neat and pretty. For most of us life isn’t one story, and the stories don’t happen chronologically, they overlap and intertwine, some stories cover 30 years some cover 30 minutes. I have a cousin named Richard Daggett who has Polio and has been through several levels of hell, completing his bio was a personal quest for his personal Holy Grail, he did amazingly well laying out his life with wit and candor. But his life is unique, there was really only one subject and that was Polio and how it affected his life and lives around him, most lives aren’t that focused. I think it is interesting to know what a person was like, what made him laugh and what made him cry, what he was passionate about in anger and love and if possible why. I think a true CV is about as dry and meaningless as you can get… for me my Education and Work History says nothing about me, it is merely a log of which doors opened for me when I needed to move on. From what I think I know of your life you seem to have played a larger roll in directing your circumstances than I did, I just went with the flow. I think about my Grandfather and Grandmother and all the questions I would ask them now that I am old enough to have some perspective beyond my own self absorbed little world. How he felt about things like his brother running to Canada to escape The Great War. He was hit with Mustard Gas but I don’t know where or when. I have thousands of questions to ask but no one to ask them of. I keep intending to get back to my ramblings but every time I do I get distracted, almost like some subconscious force is preventing me. I want it to imply, but not spell out in minute detail, something about who I was to future generations. Let folks know that it is possible to be a total nobody and have led a full and eventful life. What would I like to know about me if I were a researcher 100 years from now? It would be interesting to know whether I were a nice guy, what my sense of humo(u)r was like? Why was I so cynical. My heart trouble and how it has affected me. Soul searching isn’t for everyone I guess, liberal ex-hippie-wannabe mystic atheistic old farts like me get introspective and agonize over irrelevant crap all the time, but that’s the sort of stuff that interests me. My journal is getting to be a pretty awesome document it says just about all there is to know about me and my family but only someone imprisoned for 20 years with nothing else but my website to look at would read it and then they would probably commit suicide after three hundred pages or so. The information that excites me are letters written to family, actual quotes, photograph’s (By the way, you should post the picture of you in the airplane, the disembodied head doesn’t cut it) obituaries. |
The USS Cogswell, DD
651. This old bucket of bolts was to be my life for the next three years. I mean
OLD, "The
Cogs" was commissioned in April 1943, three months before I was born.. 
I met
Christy through a friend and we hit it off from the first minute.