By his own admission he wasn't much of a student, so he dropped out of school at age 16. His mother had died several years earlier and his father was indifferent. “I spent most weekends with my aunt and uncle, Henry and Emma Homan, who lived near Biscay. They were like parents to me.”

With few ties to the area, Homan sought his fortune elsewhere. He hitchhiked to the golden state of California where he found work in Arcadia as a busboy clearing tables in a restaurant near the racetrack. “The first couple of nights I was there I slept in a 24-hour theater,” he said. “Eventually I got a room.”

After a period of time, Homan returned to Minnesota to visit. While listening to him tell of his adventures, Homan's cousin decided to throw his hat in the ring and join him. The two of them returned to California, where they saw and ad to report to RKO Studios for work. They were hired to work in a magnesium plant. “It was the early 1940s and it was war-related work,” Homan remembered. “It was a good job. It provided free eats and a place to sleep.”

One of the high points of their tenure at the magnesium plant was working undercover for the police. “Bootleggers, were smuggling booze into the plant,” Homan said. “They recruited us to act as informers to use marked money to buy the stuff. They caught them, but after that life wasn't worth living for us. We had to go to court and testify as witnesses. It was about that time we headed back to Minnesota.”

Upon his return, Homan found work as a herdsman on a farm near Glencoe. When Homan decided to enlist, his boss tried to talk him out of it because he was needed on the farm. Homan talked his cousin into taking his place, so he enlisted in March 1943.

Joining Up: “I was young and I was looking for entertainment,” Homan said, as he talked about joining up. “I wanted to go into the Navy, but when I reported to the induction center, the recruiter asked me, ‘Army or Navy?’ I said, ‘Navy,’ he said ‘Army.’ I was sent to Camp Roberts, California for 13 weeks of basic training. At that time they were sending a lot of men to the South Pacific. I had heard enough about that and knew I didn't want to go there, so I volunteered to become a paratrooper — thinking that would be better. It also paid $50 more a month, which was big money back then.”