Reed Joseph Tippets by Wayne Tippets March 31, 1992 Tuesday
I am going to attempt to write everything that I know and remember about my older brother, Reed Joseph Tippets. The first I remember of Reedy Pie is when we first moved down here from Georgetown, Idaho. He was not around very long after we moved out to Kanesville for he joined the Army and that would have been in about 1935.
All I can remember at first is that he was sent over to Hawaii where he was working in the hospital but somehow or other he did not agree with one of the officers or doctors there and the guy’s chin ran into Reed’s fist and so that ended his career in the hospital. I think then he was sent to the Philippine Islands. Not too much that we heard from him there except he sent some pictures home of an airplane called the China Clipper, which landed on water, which really amazed us kids, for we had never seen any big airplanes, even pictures of them and then to see one sitting out in the middle of the ocean and it looked so big.
Next he got sent down to Panama Canal and we heard more of things that happened there. He must have been stationed by Gatune Lake for he talked of it a lot in his letters. He said the water was so terrible down there that the only thing safe to drink was beer and so he drank beer. I am not sure he was telling the truth about the water or not, but he did come home, I remember, after that with big fat jaws and a beer belly. He was not probably as bad as I remember but he was different and he also learned how to smoke too.
When the war broke out he was transferred over to the European Theater where he was in the artillery and shot them thar great big guns at the Germans. He wrote home some little bit. The one thing I remember was him sending home the words of a couple of songs that he had learned but censoring will not let me repeat them words, but it affected me a lot then. I don’t know how, though. Didn’t hurt me any I know.
After the war ended, because he had 10 years in the service, he was one of the first ones to be discharged for he went by points, so many for each year in service, and he got home not very long after the Japs surrendered. I was the one that got to or had to sleep with him in the same room and he got the bed and I got an army cot that I slept on in the corner of the room.
Some one asked me why I did not sleep with him on the bed and I just told them that there was just not enough room for he had his guns on one side of him and his clothes laying on the other side of him with him sleeping between them, but that was okay. I didn’t mind. I never made my bed only once or twice a month. He used to laugh at me for I tied the corners of quilts down so they would not get messed up. I would just slip in between them at night and slip out in the morning without disturbing them. Smart, huh?
Reed always kept a bottle under his bed. I think it was filled up with, it may have been milk? Or water? Anyway he would take a swig during the night a few times. He always had a jar full of silver dollars on his dresser. Never got empty or never got run over either.
He had some army lingo that he used all the time, which does not bear repeating here, for he was sometime along in his career in the Army, a drill sergeant and he had to use them French words to get recruits’ attention.
I can never remember fighting with Reedy Pie, although I did fight with all the rest of them one time or another. I had to stick up for my rights even though they may have been wrong. One time when he was home on leave furlough with the Army, Pappy told me to do something and I told him no and that was the wrong thing to say to my dad and so he started towards me and I got scared and started to run and then I didn’t dare stop running so round and round the house we did run until that doggone Reed caught me and held me for Pappy, but he was so tired he didn’t whip me and took me in the house and told my mother to have a talk with me about running and not minding, and she did. I never did run from him again. Thanks, Reed.
After he got discharged, he worked at a pipe company and then the arsenal and it seems like he had a couple other jobs but I can’t remember them. He left the arsenal and went to Hill Field (Air Force Base) where he was a fireman. He was a guard at the arsenal. He stayed there until he retired in about 1978, I think.
We always seemed to be doing something together as brothers, either swimming up to the dam, whoops, darn, or hunting or just plain goofing off. We played a lot of penny ante poker, which my dad used to be very, very upset at us doing that.
He learned to fly a Piper Cub along with Joe and he took me up a couple of times. I loved to fly.
When I lost my vision in 1946, after we went to bed he would read me my literature assignment, never complaining at all about having to do that. John helped me with math and Thad helped me with physics. We had an assignment to read the Homer Iliad and Odyssey in prose and Reed got so disgusted with it for he could not understand what he was reading and neither could I, so we gave up on that part of literature. I remember him quitting reading it and said, “To h… with it,” and threw the book out my window and I had to get out of bed and go downstairs and get the book, which was a library book. I knew I would fail the English class if I flunked the test on them so I had my mom call the principal and tell him that I lost my vision but this was the last week of school. But we did try anyway.
One time we were driving up to Star Valley and just as we were going across the Wyoming line, there were some cows by the road so I decided to light a fire cracker and throw at them. I pushed the cigarette lighter in and when it got hot, I lit the firecracker with it and threw the lighter out the window and held onto the firecracker. Reed seen what I had done and hollered, “Get rid of that thing!” so I threw it out the window just as it went off. I took us about 15 minutes to find it but we did find it finally. But that just shows to go you how dumb I was. But no harm done.
I can never remember Reed ever getting in an argument with Ma or Pa. Never, never. He always respected them. Good boy, Reedy Pie.
We all of us double dated a few times with Reedy, but not with the Ruby he married. I remember the night he got married, Uncle Joe ran the station on the corner and we called Reedy Pie up on the telephone and Joe said it rang 72 times before the receiver went click. He had picked it up and hanged it right back up. I don’t know why he did not want to talk.
I remember Reedy Pie coming home with a big shiner where he had got in a fight. He never said if he won or lost the fight. Maybe it was a tie. But he used to say he was as sober as a judge or was that Gene that said that?
When Reed got married, he lived for a while in the apartment up on Monroe just off 22nd Street. He then bought a house down on Hilds (?) across the street from Uncle Joe and that is where he is still living, well sorta the same street but a different house. Our old house is where he is living now. I think it was right after he moved down there that they got active in the church, for all of us brothers would go to Priesthood together. It was neat to have us all fill up a whole bench, but then all of the dummies started to get married off. Oh, they were already married except John and myself and Gene.
Reedy Pie is the only one in the family that has ever been in the bishopric out of all the 8 boys, but he should be the one after all, he’s the older boy. Reed has always been in shape. He could beat all of us when we used to race around the park. I think he had longer legs or something but he used to outlast me. I think I could whip him now, well maybe. Don’t bet on it, though.
I remember when he quit smoking, Uncle Aaron had quit and gave Reed the rest of his carton of cigarettes for he would not need them anymore and Reed decided if he could do it, so could he and so he gave them to someone else and never smoked another one that I know of after that. Good going.
I can’t remember Reed ever teaching a class that I was in but am sure he did at different times.
I remember going hunting deer with them and I was walking along with Reed. It was when I could see and I looked clear across the valley and could see some little tiny spot moving and Reed put his binoculars on them and sure nuff they were deer and so he shouldered his 4570 elephant gun and we started hiking down towards them and in about an hour we rounded a curve and Reed said stop and I stopped and he pulled up his cannon and shot and I was not around the bend yet so did not even get to see him shoot the deer.
I believe he missed it closely for it started to run but the concussion of that big gun must have done something to it for it stopped and leaned up against a tree and then he shot it again and killed it. Boy it was heavy carrying that deer back up that hill, till Thad and Joe came along and the four of us got hold of each leg and carried it up that way, then we drug it down the other side.
During the war, talking about deer hunting, all of Pappy’s sons got leave at the deer season and came home to go hunting, but Pappy was now working at 2nd Street and couldn’t off. He told his boss, “You mean you won’t even let me off to go hunting with my sons who are all headed overseas to the war?” and he told him he could not get off so Pappy told him to take the job and shove it for he was going to go with his sons and he did.
We went out to Park Valley that time. Got a couple of deer but had a lot of fun and learned a lot about life from Reed and other brothers and my dad. And I don’t blame Pappy for wanting to go bad enough to quit his job. But the Lord blessed Pappy for he got a better job down to the railroad as a boiler maker at more money.
Still when we have our family parties everyone really enjoys Reed singing some of the old time songs, not the ones he learned in the service, but ones he learned while on the farm from Pappy and other uncles we had.
Reed was saying the other day or other month or other year one or the other that we have not got any uncles left at all, nor do we have any brother-in-laws except Festus (Les Gomm).
Reed, we are getting old. I remember when I was younger, used to be a lot older than me, maybe 20 or 30 years older, but now you are only 17 years older than me. I think.