Notes on Hemingway and Twain

There are no doubts, I still use dozens of my dad's sayings and slangs that I heard from him as I was growing up. From his days in the late 1920s till our last time together in 2013 he had some classics. By the time I was a teenager I found my own from friends, films and music. But the best ones were his.

The same with names. He told me that he and my mom, Bernice, named me Mark for a few different reasons. They felt Mark was a good solid name and one my future mates would have a hard time making fun of. I laughed when I heard that and recalled my friends failed in their attempts. No one ever really hit home with a good put-down of my name. Score one for my folks. Of course there was the reference to the bible of course, yet my father was not religious at all. What I liked about my name and it's origin I will explain below.

My father held that name serious his whole life, he felt the incredible measure of being named after his uncle Ernest Julius. We often visited EJ's grave up in Dakota at the Riverview Memorial. It was a solemn time. I could see my dad's face and how he was affected by his uncle and how he felt toward an uncle that he never got to meet. The name was a bit of a ghost to my father and even when he joined the Air Corps in early 1942, he assumed that Ernest Julius was watching over him and keeping him safe.

When I was a kid I heard my father's buddies, Air Corps vets, Lockheed guys, neighbors call him Ernie. At first it seemed strange. My dad was Ernie Erickson. I knew he had two nicknames. Lindy was from the war (he resembled Charles Lindbergh). E Squared came from his Lockheed buddies, as his initials like my wife Elena's are EE. He pencil initialed his aircraft design drawings E2 from the time he started at Lockheed and continued when he transferred to their secret shop, 'The Skunk Works.' He also used E2 when signing drawings he and I did at the Cow's End Cafe in Venice, California. We did hundreds and most have that E2 in the corner.

When I heard someone call him Ernie I would think of the ww2 writer Ernie Pyle who my dad admired, as well as the great comedian actor Ernie Kovaks. Then there was Dragnet. A reoccurring character called Dirty Ernie always brought a chuckle from my dad when we would watch Dragnet and there would be Dirty Ernie at the bar.

It all made sense to me. A cool name, Ernest Anders, the Anders part coming from the first name of both his grandfathers, Anders Alfred Erickson and Anders Nelson. He also told me when I got older, "I was also named after Ernest Hemingway." I could dig that. On other occasions when we were together and there was someone around, making sure they heard, "You were named after Mark Twain and I was named after Ernest Hemingway," then he would smile and say, "So you see, we're literary men."

My dad's favorite airplanes were the B-17 Flying Fortress which he piloted during the war with 95th Bomb Group out of Horham Airfield, England. The second one was the F-104 'Starfighter.' A jet he called, "The best looking sleekest jet ever designed." I agreed with that. He brought me home many models of the Starfighter as I was growing up. My dad worked on the design of the F-104 in the 1950s, soon after he had moved from Dakota to Southern California. He later in the 1960s and 1970s worked on a connected project in Munich, Germany called 'The Zell Project' with the F-104 front and center.

His Air Corps crew in 1944 named their favorite B-17 (they flew twelve during their 35 missions during the war) the, 'Lili of the Lamplight.' A fitting name at the time, named after Marlene Dietrich's song 'Lili Marlene.' The men were fortunate to see Dietrich perform at a USO show in Reykjavik Iceland in late 1943, on the way to England to begin their combat flying.

With a ship later named 'Lili of the Lamplight,' which he called his 'Lucky Lady' and a guardian angel named Ernest Julius, l feel my father was set. He came back from the war in mid 1945 to a very relived family. He had a great life and I am still learning things about him, one of the most fascinating persons I have ever met.

The October 5th, 1944 Bismarck Tribune article titled, 'Lili of the Lamplight was Lucky Lady, Pilot Says,' is below.

Second Photograph below:
A very nice early morning walk with my father, Ernest Anders Erickson along Venice Beach in 2013.