Cassidy's Run Read Online Free PDF

five-thirty, wash glasses, and straighten up the place. We would leave the bar at five forty-five, run over to the cathedral a few blocks away for six o’clock mass, and then back to Clark’s restaurant for breakfast on Jack’s tab. I’ve gone to Catholic church ever since.”
    By now, Cassidy had a steady girl, Ray Dailey’s sister, Pat. “We always bought the five-cent new song list each week, and we listened to the Lucky Strike Hit Parade together on the radio.
    “These were Depression days. Wages were low, but we could buy ground beef four pounds for a quarter. My grandmother helped me buy a car for thirty-five dollars. Gas was seven or eight cents a gallon, and they cleaned your windshield and checked your oil and tires.”
    When Cassidy was eighteen, he found work at Erie Forge and Steel Company as a laborer, laying railroad ties. It was tough work, but soon the war in Europe brought better jobs at higher wages. Cassidy was offered a job as third helper on the open-hearth furnace. Wearing dark glasses and long-sleeved wool shirts to protect themselves from the intense heat, the helpers shoveled sand into the furnace, to repair holes caused by the extremely high temperatures.
    “There were about five guys in a circle, taking turns,” Cassidy recalled. When the furnace’s hydraulic doors opened, a machine called a charger fed scrap metal into the flames. “What comes out is molten steel.”
    After a few months, Cassidy was promoted to second helper. He still had to shovel sand into the furnace, but now he also got to tap it out. “When it’s time to tap it out, you open up the back of the furnace. You poke an air hose into the back of the furnace until the molten metal starts to pour. The crane operator takes the ladle and pours it into an ingot, about fifteen feet by six feet.”
    It was hard work, but by now Cassidy was a rugged, handsome young adult. After Pearl Harbor, the steel plant was working overtime, and Cassidy’s friends were going off to war. Because his job was considered essential to the war effort, there was little chance he would be drafted. But Cassidy chafed to join up.
    “By late 1942, most of my buddies were in the service, and one of my best friends had already been killed. I told the personnel office I’d like not to be exempt from military service at my next call-up. They honored my request, and I was drafted in February 1943.” Private Cassidy reported to Fort Lee, in Petersburg, Virginia, for basic training, and then was selected to attend school to become a drill instructor.
    He rose rapidly through the ranks, and after a year he was promoted to first sergeant, skipping several grades. Cassidy also got engaged to Pat Dailey, but he did not often go home to Erie to see her, because of the expense and lack of leave time.
    Hilda Marie Prince, a young woman from Petersburg who worked in the PX, noticed the good-looking sergeant. When Cassidy’s grandmother died in the late summer of 1943, Prince heard about it and urged Cassidy to stop by before he left on emergency leave for the funeral.
    He did. “She had a bag of food for me to take on the trip.” Cassidy was touched by the gesture. When he returned, they dated and were married after the war. “Eleven months later, we had a daughter, Shelby Jean.” But Cassidy’s marriage to Hilda went rapidly downhill. “As I look back now, I do believe she saw me as a ticket out of the burg-Petersburg, that is—because the marriage was a bust right from the start.”
    In 1947, Cassidy was transferred to the First Cavalry Division in Japan and detailed to the 302d Reconnaissance Company. His wife and daughter remained in the states. After a year, he was shipped back to Fort Lee, where he remained until 1952, when he was assigned to the Far East Command. The Korean War was under way, and Cassidy, again without his wife, was sent to Japan, expecting he would end up in Korea. Instead, he was detached from his unit and assigned to Kokura,