From: caz@owlnet.rice.edu (HWRNMNBSOL)
Subject: Obit And Three Stories
Organization: Rice University
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 06:59:26 GMT

ROBERT TRAVIS SOLBERG: born 8/22/22, died 11/8/92 at the age of 70, from
natural causes.  
  Mr. Solberg was a veteran of World War Two and was decorated for valor
twice.  He ran a successful shipping business until age 55 when he retired.
  Mr. Solberg leaves behind his wife of 57 years (Theresa Mae Solberg), three
sons, and eightteen grandchildren.
  Services will be held at Memorial Presbyterian.  He will be sorely missed.

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Grandfather was a neat guy, and I loved him very much, but he had some definite
bad points.  For one thing, he was a terrible liar.  From the moment I was
able to understand speech, he was telling me and my brother that he was a
direct descendant of Comanche Indians.  We believed this as gospel.  Then,
one day, we asked Grandmother if she, too, had Indian blood.  She wordlessly
seized a ladle from the kitchen drawers, marched into the den, and beat
grandpa stoutly about the head and shoulders until he slinked away to the
garage.  From that moment, anything the old bastard said was utterly suspect.

He was also the worst racist I have ever known.  I was visiting him only a
few years ago, and he spent almost a full hour telling me how the postal
service would run about twice as fast if it wasn't manned by so many goddamn
niggers.  We proceeded to have the following conversation:

Me: Grandpa, lay off on the black people, will you?
Grandpa: Wassamatter?  Marrying one?
Me: Jeez..... you really hate people different than you, don't you.
Grandpa: (evil grin) Kill 'em when I can, boy.  Kill 'em when I can. 

Still, it never ceases to amaze me how, in a pinch, he was the most reliable
old shithead you ever would want to meet.  For instance, there was the time
that the blizzard came to West Texas.  It was in the fifties, I think, at a
time when a neighbor was somebody in the same county.  I have the following
story straight from grandmother who, to my knowledge, has never prevaricated
in her entire life:

It had been snowing for about four days, and only the best cars could clear
the roads.  The grandparents had been prepared, and they were weathering
the storm nicely, when a knock came at the door.  A very cold fellow was
there, and he asked if grandpa had a tow-cable for his truck: his own car
was stuck in a big snowdrift.  Grandpa bitched about it, but went with the
guy out to the truck.  Grandma saw them drive away through the snow.

She waited for hours and hours.  She was about to call the police (remarkably,
the phone lines were still up) when grandpa drags himself in the door.  He
has frostbitten ears, and it takes grandma an hour before she can thaw him
out enough to get the story.  Turns out that they found the car, alright,
and it would have taken the better part of the day to pull it out.  Seems
they didn't have that much time, as the man's wife was inside, and she was
about ready to give birth right then and there.  Grandpa coolly handed the
keys to his own truck to the couple and asked them to return it.  Then he
turned around and walked back through the snow.  On the way, of course, he
fell into a creek and almost froze.

They got the truck back.

******************************************************************************

Grandpa liked to tell war stories.  Of course, he was such a damn liar that
you couldn't trust anything he said, but one story in particular is 100%
trustworthy -- only because that's the one he got a medal for.  It goes
something like this:

Before the war, grandpa took a job at a ranch breaking horses.  He was 
particularly adept at falling off their backs and giving himself concussions,
but that was part of the game.  I suppose that somewhere along the line he
must have gotten good with the beasts (never go near the things myself)
because he rode broncos in the rodeo several times and won a trophy or two.
Then the war came along, and grandpa, like all the other young bozo rednecks,
joined up.  Whee!

Grandpa hated France, which was muddy and involved lurking in trenches.  This
was nothing like the fine war flicks that he had seen -- particularly the
bit about going deaf for months at a time.  No fun at all.  Still less fun
was the bit about getting captured by Germans.

Grandpa's unit was rounded up fairly peacefully, having been given bad
directions and marching right into the enemy's lap, and they were sent to
a prison stockade.  Said stockade was made from the rear part of an old
stable; the front part was being used as a kind of command post.  There
was also one pony remaining in the place: a mean-spirited brute that,
supposedly, the German commander wanted to take back with him to Germany.
Can you tell yet where this is going?

The Germans were understaffed, so they used their own wounded for guard duty.
One night, grandpa and a few others convinced one guard, whose foot was badly
infected, that if he would help them escape they would make him their prisoner
and take him to be treated at an American medical unit.  The turnkey agreed.
They snuck out of the stockade, borrowing a jeep in the process.  However,
there was not room for all the boys in said vehicle, so grandpa decided to
hitch a ride on the horse.

It gave him the hairy eyeball as he approached it with the harness, and reared
up at him when he tried to put it on.  Grandpa reportedly punched the beast
in the nose, and it was so shocked that it let him saddle up and ride it.
On the way out, they had to bypass a guard at the gate.  The jeep drove
through the gate; as the guard rushed out from his post to shoot, grandpa
rode up and kicked him in the head.  ON MY HONOR, every word of this is true.

Grandpa avers that this was the only casualty he inflicted in the war.

*****************************************************************************

Grandpa taught me everything I know about fishing (a little), hunting (a lot),
and guns.  My brother never got into the stalking-and-slaying-of-helpless-
forest-animals thing, and we were the oldest grandchildren, so I got to go
on long outings with grandfather through the Texas countryside, making like
the Great White Hunters.  Some times we bagged the limit; others we got nothing
at all.  Most of the time we just sat around in a blind or by a river bank,
bullshitting and passing the time.  Very Hemingway.

Have I mentioned that grandpa was a damned liar?  Well, he was, and he spun
the damnedest yarns.  All of his tall tales had some kind of point to them.
In particular, once when he wanted to instill in me the importance of gun
safety, he told me about Bull Shipley and some of his mishaps.  From memory,
here is a reconstruction of the first Bull Shipley tale grandpa ever told me:

"So, Bull was a very spunky hunter.  Loved to shoot; loved to be in the out-
of-doors; but he just didn't have the brains to back it up, you understand?
I mean, a hunter's got to be smart, and Bull, well, Bull couldn't pour piss
out of a boot with the instructions printed on the bottom, see?  

"That man -- he was sure stupid.  He was stalking a big buck, see, but he
never could get within a mile of the beast, and he bumps into me.  He asks
me, 'Bob, what the hell am I doing wrong?  It's like this buck's got radar
or something!' And then he spits a big wad of chew out on the ground.  As
if deer got no noses.  Sunovabitch.

"Yep, he sure was dumb -- as in 'can't count his own balls and get the same
number twice' kind of dumb.  Tell you about Bull hunting turkeys....

"He had his kid along, right, and they had found the perfect place for 
hunting up some turkeys.  It was the dried up bed of a pond, and grass had
sprung up high, which is just where turkeys love to hide.  So Bull, who is
not the most quiet man, goes charging in after them, with his fool boy
coming right after him.  Well, any dumb Mexican could tell you that this
plan is like poking spaghetti up a wildcat's butt; that is to say, unlikely
to succeed.  Turkeys are pretty smart, and they know that noise spells
trouble, so they just ducked out of sight whenever the old Bull tromped past.
He did not see a single turkey.

"Then Bull gets him a plan."

"The plan, you see, was quite simple: his boy would come in from the other
side of the field and make a lot of noise.  He would drive the turkeys right
towards Bull, who would pick 'em off like clay pigeons.  Easy, right?

"Wrong -- pure foolery.  First of all, turkeys don't drive easy -- they just
duck out of sight.  That's what the grass is for.  They don't move unless
they are right in your way.  Second.....well, here's what happened:

"Bull hunkers down and waits.  At first he hears nothing, but pretty soon
he starts hearing something moving through the brush.  He aims....draws a
careful bead....and BOOM! Shoots his own boy in the head!  Kid survived,
though..............

"........on account of his naturally thick skull......"

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Bob Solberg, rest in peace.

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