Was there any "characters" in your childhood that made an impression that is still memorable?

When I was 17 (way back in 1972), I was a spit and vinegar teenager. High school was very difficult for me. The four walls and constraints of a classroom were very oppressive for a kid who rather focus on the horizon.

Between my home and the high school was a small machine shop. The man who owned the shop lived in my neighborhood - Mr. Wieland. I knew who he was, but I didn't really know him at that time. I was curious about him because he always spoke with a steep German accent. One day I stopped in the shop after school and inquired about a job. I told Mr. Wieland I had a great interest in anything mechanical. I also told him my dislike for high school, and I would drop out if I could work full time. In that very steep German accent, with out even a hint of a smile, he said, "If you vant to verk here, you vill remain in school and verk part time." He had set the ground rules and if I wanted this job, I had better agree. So I did.

In a short time he had shown me most the functions of the shop. It wasn't long before I could handle most of the lighter, typical machining and lathe tasks. Mr. Wieland was not only an excellent machinist himself, but a great teacher too. He was patient, and would lead by both instruction and example. He taught me a lot. Much of the extensive machine work he did was from repeat customers. Everyone that came in for any type of custom work really liked this guy. I began to realize why. I began to realize what integrity and character meant. Mr. Wieland was most honest and patient. He listened, and made decisions based on what was right.

When time permitted, I asked about his accent and his background. He told me a few details at first. But opened up more over time. He was born in Ulm, Germany. In 1942, he was 20 years old and an accomplished pilot in the German Luftwaffe (Air Force). He flew the German fighter - Messerschmitt BF-109. This was one of the most feared fighter airplanes of World War 2. A 12 cylinder 1,400 horse power fighter, with plenty of armament intended to knock down enemy planes. Mr. Wieland flew combat missions over North Africa, then Italy. After the D-Day invasion in 1944, his squadron was transferred to France. One day while on a mission in August of '44, he was shot down. His 109 was pretty well busted up, smoking, and on its way down. But Mr. Wieland was able to hold the plane level long enough to bail out. A parachute gets a lot of attention from the ground. And an American patrol saw him come down and captured him as a prisoner of war. Mr. Wieland was sent to a POW camp just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. A camp that held mostly German airmen. Every day the prisoners were trucked to work in the orange orchards south and east of Phoenix. They even earned 65 cents a day. After the war was over and the POWs were free to return to Germany, he stayed. (Many Germans did.) He worked around Phoenix and became an American citizen. He saved his money until he could establish his own machine shop. Many years later, he hired me. And Mr. Wieland took it upon himself to be a mentor to this spit and vinegar kid. I learned a lot from him. First, I learned how to learn. As ironic as that sounds, there is substance to the statement. He taught me about integrity, about various perceptions in dealing with situations, how to read people and react accordingly. When to listen, how and when to offer assistance and advice, when to push back and how hard. How to approach obstacles in life and whittle them down to something manageable. He showed me by example how a good and decent man conducts himself.

I did graduate from high school. Even attended a couple years of college. But I was still focused on the horizon. I moved around some, and now - 35 years later - I live in Minnesota and work for a railroad. Mr. Wieland was a great influence on me. I have his sense of humor. I find myself reacting the same, and saying the same things he would in certain situations. He was indeed a pilot, and showed this punk kid how to get off the ground.

Mr. Wieland departed for his final mission October 25, 2001, at the age of 79. He was great man. He may have been a warrior and a terror in the skies of World War 2, but on the ground he was one of the greatest men I've ever known.

I might add also, that just over 1,200 people turned out to pay their last respects at the funeral. Quite a testimony to a man's character.

Porcupine Village doing a story for The Great Outdoors. I had gone there to the filming as my husband was an employee there at the time and he was going to be in the filming of the advertisement for Porcupine. Anyway, as I said, I was only there as a tag along, and Ernie was walking about checking out the set. He saw me and instantly wanted me to be in the add. I don't know if it was good or bad, but he wanted me dressed up as one of the whores that were up on the balcony of the hotel. So I got pulled into the resturant where all the costumes were, and as I started getting dressed, Ernie walked in while I had the dress half way over my head. You can imagine the shock, not just me, but Ernie as well. So what did he do?? What else, he made a joke out of it and said, "I'll just stand here and make sure no-one comes in". Well we all laughed. He is a real larrican. He is so funny. After blowing Ernie a kiss during the shoot for the show, from on-top of the hotel, (which was used in the show) we all had lunch in the restaurant. We all talked and laughed together. Ernie is a real funny man, and a family man, and very very tall. Anyway, that's my brush with fame. He may not a hollywood star, but he is an Aussie legen

My grandfather was a mountain man who played a banjo and spun wild tales of two-legged creatures who would go over the mountain where he lived at night. Some woman wrote a book about him for children which had pictures of him with a mule pulling a plow and sitting on the steps of his log cabin with his banjo. My grandmother made biscuits and kept them in a trunk (not a pie safe). They had a spring and carried all their water. They had no electricity and only a coal stove. My grandmother said that one day there would be bridges over the mountains so they would not have to walk up and down them. I wish that day had never come, but it did. These two grandparents are what kept us fed when times were hard. They knew how to live off the land and what they grew, and they knew how to preserve it. Their skin looked much like shoe leather from the cold and the heat. Sometimes I still hear banjo music at night.

My uncle was a caring guy and so much fun. He loved people and he loved me and all my cousins. My children also loved him as well and loved it when he came to visit. He was definitely a people person.

He was a hypnotist. For some reason - he couldn't hypnotize me - I was a giggler and couldn't settle down long enough to be serious - but he could hypnotize my cousins - aunts and uncles.

He also worked with women and the doctor - using hypnosis - while delivering their babies.

He performed hypnosis with audience participation for fund raising events.

Oh my - how funny. He was also a very kind an honest person. He set an example for all who knew him to follow.

My husband has always said - that he was the finest person he has ever known.

When he passed away - I wrote a tribute to him - It was read by his daughter at the funeral. He was a Veteran and served two different times in the Navy. His funeral was big with standing room only.

He was special. May he rest in peace.

Thanks for this memorable question.

DeeJay - here with a tear.

My mother's entire family was nothing but an assortment of the oddest, most eccentric group of folks ever gathered into one place. They were all characters .... we were about the only children....and they all spent a lot of time with us.

As a result, we are also all very odd, very eccentric and pretty much just like them.

We went to a Catholic neighborhood school at a time in the world when nuns who had doctoral degrees were running hospitals, running schools, and teaching in schools. Every teacher I had from 1st grade through 12th had at least one doctoral degree. They were all characters....they were also very strict and very exacting. College was easier than 9th grade at the school. They also were characters and made us even odder and more eccentric than we already were from the dose of it we got at home.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a very homey neighborhood where all the neighbors spent a lot of time on front porches and visiting back and forth. We had been raised to be polite, and all the seniors in the neighborhood liked us & invited us in.

We were forbidden to pick any flowers, and we were also strictly forbidden to eat anything growing outside. Old Miss Rose who lived around the corner had a crabapple tree. Miss Rose loved us and fixed "tea" for us in the afternoons...lemonade and cookies....and Old Miss Rose thought there was nothing wrong with four little children picking crabapples and eating them.

So, we ate them. We never figured out how my mother always seemed to KNOW we had eaten them, though....she finally, one Christmas many years later, told us it was because we would develop the "runs" every time we did it.

I 'spect we weren't very smart in some ways as we never figured it out until Mama told us. DUH....

When I was a child growing up in the city in the early 1950s, it seemed to me that EVERY older person I knew was a character, certainly including my parents, who were extremely eccentric. I wonder if this is a trick of perspective, having to do with the way children perceive things, or whether it really was true that back in the 50s people were more peculiar than they are today. In any case, I didn't meet people who seemed "normal" to me until we moved to the suburbs in the 1960s.

Just to mention one thing I remember from the 50s: Three of our neighbors were elderly people--a retired high school athletic coach, a retired Presbyterian minister, and a retired doctor, all of whom were having affairs with their younger, live-in "housekeepers." I don't mean to disparage them. I understand that the "housekeeper" story was a convenient lie used by many people in those days to get around the reactionary attitudes of the McCarthy era--and especially necessary in the case of the doctor, who was a woman, as was her young lover.

There was an 'older' black guy that everyone called "Jingles"...not sure how old he was or what his real name and no one seemed to know...who worked at the canning factory. After work, he'd kick off his shoes, put bottle caps on the bottom of his bare feet, break out his harmonica and an empty coffee can and walk around town playing his harmonica into the can (made a great sound!) and people would give him change (he didn't beg, they just gave it to him). When I left for the Navy in '65 he was still doing that. I was in Viet Nam in 67 and got a letter from my mom telling me that someone from the NAACP made "Jingles" stop doing that because it 'cast a bad image on the colored people'. She said after that, he just disappeared. When ever I hear harmonica music, I think of old Jingles and wonder what ever happened to him.

My grandmother. She was without question the strongest woman I know. Back in her youth when women didn't work outside the home, she graduated with a master's degree in nursing and rapidly climbed the ranks to become the youngest Director of Nursing at Eastside General Hospital. She worked full time, while raising twins (my mother and uncle) and solely supporting the household financially due to my grandfather's being on permanent disability from a serious heart attack at the age of 38 (he formerly had worked for Chrysler)...which she never became bitter about, by the way. She was a VERY devout Catholic who still had a sense of humor about it...once when I was young, and griping about someone not liking me, without missing a beat, she told me to "quit trying to please everyone. Jesus Christ was perfect, and look what they did to HIM". She was a classy lady with a 'down home' approach to common sense.

BTW: Derail: Beautiful story. Have you ever considered becoming a writer?...not that you aren't already...I just meant, by profession.

Yes but it's a long story but here's the very short version. . .I went on vacation with my Mom & Dad. My older sister got to stay home so I was really bored. M & D went off to fish and I was left with nothing to do. There was this caretaker that was very nice to me. He showed me bugs and trees and things and even got me up on the old work horse. He was totally respectful. My mom thought he was a letch but she still left me alone. I would walk outside and he would just appear. I was so sure he was magic. So I'm up on the workhorse plodding down the road and there are these horseflies biting the old nag and she was bleeding. This man show up in his grubby T shirt he always wore and pulled the wings out of the horseflies and ended up with blood on his shirt. He wiped his hands down the front of his shirt and then my mom started yelling for me. He got me down off the horse and ran away and I went to my mom. She was outraged. Just seconds behind me the man showed up but his shirt was clean. I was amazed, so sure it was magic again. My mother was beside herself. I now know that Tru went to his house, where ever it was and changed Tshirts but that was the kicker. . .there is nothing better than a magic friend. My mother probably would have had a heart attack had Tru showed up with the blood on his shirt. I don't care to rationalize the whole deal. It hasn't been often in my life that I thought someone was truly magic.

My Aunt Jennie was an incredible character. This was my father's sister who never married,but she went to school and ended up with a great job. She learned how to speak 4 languages and had friends all over the world. One of the best things was her generosity to her nieces and nephews. I was one of them and she took me to Boston,New York City,Washington D.C. and all kinds of historic sights around the country. She introduced me to the Broadway stage and also took me to Quebec to help me to learn French. This was one remarkable lady.

A very mean spirited neighbor lady. I was little, not yet in school, but she took a dislike to me (just me, not my sister). I did not do anything to gain her dislike, but she was always glaring, sneering and making ignorant comments to me. I was not allowed to play with her little girl who had no problem with me. I finally told my mom about it just this past year, mom did not know what this person did to me.

Why would a grownup feel the need to bully someone under 5 yrs old?