Gas Station Carnival

This story takes place on a trip out of Atlanta, Georgia up to Ashville, North Carolina.  My wife Sue and I had flown into Atlanta to visit family and had rented a car at the airport.  After visiting our Georgia family we headed north to see the Biltmore House.  Since this was a sightseeing vacation we took the infamous “scenic route”. 

We left Atlanta on 85 and eventually picked up 441 northbound through the Blue Ridge mountains.    This route also takes you through some really small towns.  Since we are now off of the major interstate system we have to be careful to keep an eye on the gas gauge.   Our selected rental car was probably getting a whopping 18 miles per gallon which was not unusual in the 1980’s.

Running out of gas in the mountains is not a real good idea.  You can’t always plan to run out while you can still coast into that gas station at the bottom of a hill.  It is also scary for other reasons.  It is a fact that if you roll down the windows and turn off the radio you can faintly hear the dueling banjo music in the distance.  The movie Deliverance was to mountain driving what Jaws was to ocean swimming.  The point of all of this is that while driving in the mountains I treat the half-full mark on the fuel gauge like empty.

On this stretch of the trip however I was enjoying the scenery so much I forgot how I am supposed to drive and looked down to see that I had but a quarter of a tank left.  We checked our paper maps and found that we were not far from a small blip of a town whose name I don’t really remember.

We hoped that we could find a gas station.  When we rounded the two hundred and ninety third curve since discovering our gas predicament we realized that it would have been impossible to miss this gas station.  You see they just opened this brand new gas station/convenience store and it was the biggest event to reach this area since Jesse Helms came through on a campaign tour looking to get re-elected for the fifth time.  They had a bounce house for the kids and a veritable carnival of stuff for everybody else.  There were those brightly colored triangle flags flapping from ropes tied to every vertical support they could find.  The place was packed with the twenty-eight residents of this town, thirty-four residents of other neighboring towns and two tourists from Florida who needed gas.

We filled our tank and I decided to pick up a few goodies for the remainder of our trip to Ashville.  I’m sure back then it involved Good ‘n Plenty’s.  It is just about as hard to travel without gas as it is to travel without Good ‘n Plenty’s.  I moved the car to the front of the convenience store part of the gas station and joined the crowd inside.  Sue elected to wait in the car so I left the engine running to provide her with AC.

I found the shelf with Good ‘n Plenty’s and grabbed an extra-large box.  I then began to peruse the rest of the snack offerings when I was shocked to turn and see someone I knew.  It was my wife, Sue.  She had decided to see if the snack shelves held any of her favorites.  We both made our selections and meandered our way to the cash register.  I paid the bill and we both returned to the car.  All was well until I saw Sue’s face after asking her to hand me the car keys.  It wasn’t that reassuring look of, wait a minute I think they are here in my purse.  It was that look that says, what the Hell are you talking about?

I looked around and quickly found the keys.  They were hanging where they belonged in the ignition.  The engine was running and the windows were rolled up and the AC was keeping the car at a cool 72 degrees.  The problem came with a special feature of the car in that it assumes under those conditions that you want all of the doors locked.  I didn’t want this feature, didn’t ask for this feature but the car manufacturer thought I needed it.

We are standing outside our locked idling rental car, with a full tank of gas, many miles from what I like to call civilization, with our comfort food snacks in paper sacks and now feeling like we were quickly becoming the center of attention.  I looked up to see that this latter feeling was in fact reality and not just a feeling.  Something new had been added to the carnival atmosphere in that two bumpkins from Florida had locked themselves outside their rental car.  Luckily most of them hadn’t realized that the car was also running, as this would have been almost too much for them to contain without laughter.

A few bystanders offered suggestions about how to get into the car.  I quickly found out that the nearest coat hanger was probably back in Atlanta.  The most common question was, why did you lock your car?

I headed to a phone booth and found a new phone book for the town and surrounding area.  It was at least fifteen pages in length.  I tried to find a locksmith but since nobody locks their doors up here locksmiths tend to starve to death.  I called information and had them connect me with the rental car company’s help line.  As usual they were no help.

I then went into the convenience store and asked the cashier for advice.  She suggested that I call the Sheriff.  I gave her that look dogs sometimes give when their masters make a funny sound.  She assured me that he could probably help.  In my head I could just hear Andy Taylor telling Barney Fife about the two stupid stranded motorists from Florida.  As I was completely out of options I made the call to the sheriff’s office.  They said he would be by shortly.

About fifteen minutes later a patrol car pulled up and parked behind my car.  A rather professional patrolman exited.  He seemed to relish my explanation about what had happened.  It was somewhat amusing, if you weren’t me.  He then went to his trunk and pulled out a “Slim Jim”.  They had these in the gas station convenience store snack shelf but theirs were made of flavored rawhide.  His was the metal kind used to open car doors when idiots from Florida lock themselves out.

It took several attempts.  He first tried the driver’s door then the passenger side.  Both times the car won the battle.  He looked like he might abandon the whole approach when he decided to try the driver’s side door again.  The door opened after a couple of tugs.

It was here that I wasn’t sure of what to do.  In Miami you would just fold up a twenty-dollar bill and slip it to the patrolman with your thanks.  Here in the mountains things were obviously different.  I decided to open my wallet and ask to make a contribution to the local police fund.  I got the puzzled look and then a polite refusal.  So, either they don’t take “donations” in North Carolina or there were too many people watching.  In either case I couldn’t offer him anything for his assistance.

I then just did the polite thing and extended my hand in thanks.  He reached up to shake my hand and once our hands were shaking I went berserk.  I hollered, jerked, and looked like a mental case from Florida.  Now there were some really puzzled onlookers including one cop and my wife.  What nobody but me knew was that at the very moment he went to shake my hand a yellow jacket wasp flew in to our just clasping hands and proceeded to sting the bejesus out of me.  

After I finally extricated my hand from our “friendly” shake and stopped yelling I tried to offer an explanation.  It wasn’t until I finally spotted a slightly crumpled yellow jacket on the ground that I was able to make anyone understand.  I pointed to the soon to be stomped on insect lying on the ground.  I then held out my hand to show the stinger still protruding from my palm.  He said I ought to put something on the sting but, more painful than the sting was the humiliation and embarrassment I felt.

The patrol car was eventually moved and I put as much distance as possible between myself and the gas station carnival.  I can imagine one of the onlookers today sitting on a porch overlooking a North Carolina mountain saying to a family member, “Do you remember that idiot from Georgia who locked himself out of his car and went nuts when he shook that cop’s hand?”  By way of explanation, the rental car had Georgia tags.  There are already enough embarrassing Florida stories to go around.

If you look up yellow jacket wasps you will find that only the females will sting so I had a 50-50 chance of this story ending about four paragraphs ago.  You will also find that yellow jackets are known by one peculiarity in that they have a side-to-side flight pattern just before landing. They also typically sting multiple times to maximize the agony.  I think I was touring the second floor of The Biltmore when the throbbing stopped.

Hambrick's Quarter Pound

This story takes place in the summer of 1964 in Hayward, California.  I had cooked hamburgers in Miami for Royal Castle all through high school.  They had cheap fifteen-cent hamburgers, five-cent birch beer served in frozen mugs and a thirty-five cent breakfast of eggs, grits and toast.  They hired young school kids and old alcoholics with questionable backgrounds.  Anyone willing to work for less than minimum wage as a “trainee” for three months.  They would then bump you to minimum wage and called it a raise.  Actually it was the bare minimum required by law.  The “trainee” dodge was just a money saver.  Tipping was not allowed.  You could however eat all the burgers you wanted.  Minimum wage in the early 60’s was $1.15 an hour.

I heard that California had higher wages so I drove out to Hayward in 1964 with a friend to seek my fortune.  I was eighteen so employment opportunities were limited.  I got a job at the Hambrick’s Quarter Pound Giant Burger on the night shift.  This shop is located just next to the Hayward Plunge, the public pool.  The job paid $3.45 an hour but you had to join the Culinary Workers and Bartenders Local.  I made a down payment of $20 and agreed to pay the balance of $300 at the end of three months.  Since I would be back at school in three months I wasn’t worried.

I got trained by the outgoing night shift employee.  Since it was not busy at night the job mostly entailed cleaning the machines, sweeping and mopping the floor and scraping the grill.  The old night shift guy looked really old.  Hell, he was probably in his 30’s.  This is of course no longer funny.  I think his name was Bill.  He had dirty blonde hair, was slightly built, stood about five foot six and had a black eye.  On the last day of my training Bill explained the black eye, which was now a really pretty shade of purple.  Bill said that a local motorcycle gang had jumped him and given him his shiner.  That gang was now banned from the Quarter Pound.  I was instructed that if they came in I was to run into the back office, lock the door and call the Hayward Police.

Hambrick's Giant Burgers, 24134 Mission Blvd, Hayward, Calif.

I had known motorcycle clubs in Miami.  The Little River Rats were teenagers who rode around on Cushman’s, old BSA’s and Triumphs.  If they were really bad they owned a zip gun and shot holes in trashcans for amusement.  I thought Bill overreacted.  Bill then rounded out my education by pointing out the small all-night restaurant across the street that fronted as a brothel.  Big rigs would pull in, drivers would order a cup of coffee, chat up a waitress and the two of them would exit a side door and walk across an alley to the nearby hotel.  On slow nights you could watch the whole transaction.

Current Picture Hambrick's, Motorcycle Parking around back.

I began my night shift without incident.  I could get all of my cleaning done in a couple of hours and just had to wait on a few kids after dates and the occasional drunk.  At Royal Castle one of the old timers had taught me how to short out the jukebox.  The counter had a chrome box with a music menu and push button controller.  A patron would put in a nickel for one song or six plays for a quarter.  The actual jukebox with the 45-RPM records was in the back.  The two boxes were connected with a multi strand wire.  All you needed to do was to cut through the wire insulation and short out a couple of wires.  This wouldn’t give you any selection but would play music all night.

Jukebox Controller Mounted on counter

I picked a slow night for my assault on the jukebox.  The ten counter stools were empty and I had just served a couple at the walk-up take out window.  There were no other cars in the lot.  I used my pocketknife to slice the wire under the counter.  I sat on the floor as I stripped off the insulation.  I would then use a fine piece of bare wire to act as my temporary short.  This was the delicate part where I needed to place the short wire so that it could be activated by a mere squeeze of the outer insulation.  I heard the door open and the shuffling of feet.  I announced from under the counter that I would be right with them.

When I finished my “excellent-if-I-do-say-so-myself” job I saw the folks who had entered.  There, standing not more than four feet from me, were about twelve to fifteen Hells Angles.  This was 1964 so I had never heard of the Hells Angels but I could see the difference.  These were not teenagers on Cushman’s these were adults on Harley’s.  Not just ordinary adults but adults who had last bathed during the Eisenhower administration.  As an eighteen year old the whole scene was frightening.  I looked back at the twenty feet that stood between me and the back office door.  It might as well have been twenty miles.  No way would I make it before something bad happened.  I didn’t know what bad that might be but common sense told me I needed to think of something.

I asked if there was a leader of this group.  All eyes moved in the direction of the alpha male who identified himself as Dirty Ed.  Now his name may or may not have been Ed but the dirty handle fit him like a glove if it referred to his personal hygiene.   I moved in Ed’s direction and explained my dilemma.  I told him that I would be fired if I served his group and the boss happened to drive by and see them sitting at the counter.  The tribe began to grumble so this was not a good sign.  I then explained that I had a solution.  Ed listened.

Hell's Angles

My offer was that I would serve all of them if they would move their bikes to the back area of the shop where they wouldn’t be visible from the street.  They could then send one or two to the take out window where I would take their orders.  Since I had heard that they were banned at all of nearby all night establishments this would help them too.  I further explained that if I was fired they would just be going through this all over again with the next guy.

Ed thought for a moment and then gave a quick hand signal.  Everyone left through the front door.  Their bikes were cranked and they move behind the shop.  Two members came to the take out window and placed several orders.  They paid their bill, ate on their bikes in the back and eventually left.  It was a good night.  I had music and just enough time left to air out the place.  They had left a peculiar odor and I think my underwear needed changing.

Roughly What I Saw From Behind the Counter

About once or twice a week motorcycles would roar into the rear parking area and the whole sequence would be repeated.  On slow nights I would go out back and talk to them when there were just a few in the group.  It seems I had arrived at a time when the old local gang was being brought into the Hells Angels.  The old gang was the Hayward Question Marks.  They all sported a question mark tattoo on their forearms.  They decided to join the larger Hells Angels.

After I left Hayward and returned to Miami I remember seeing a Life Magazine article on the now famous Hells Angels.  In the list of colorful names included in the article I recognized one.  The names mentioned were:  Little Jesus, the Gimp, Chocolate George, Buzzard, Zorro, Hambone, Clean Cut, Tiny, Terry the Tramp, Frenchy, Mouldy Marvin, Mother Miles, Dirty Ed, Chuck the Duck, Fat Freddy, Filthy Phil, Charger Charley the Child Molester, Crazy Cross, Puff, Magoo, and Animal. In the pictures I thought I recognized a few faces behind the dirt, but who knows. 

My Golf Story

The sport of golf is the source of many amusing stories but, since I don’t play golf, I only have one.  I never got around to playing golf, as I didn’t see the point.  I had an uncle who called it “cow pasture pool”.  I will however admit that golf is almost essential to get ahead in the corporate world.

This story takes place in the early 70’s when I had a brief stint with the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors.  I was hired into a branch zone office located in Miami.  My title was Sales Relations Representative.  I was a go-fer not a golfer.  My job description said that I was to mediate disputes between customers and dealerships which were related to the actual sale of the vehicle and not the vehicle warranty.  This latter duty had a whole team of people in the zone office.  My job, I would learn later, had only one other contemporary stationed in California.

The sales disputes were few and far between and did not represent any real need for a full time employee.  My actual job involved a more social function.  You see, whenever two or more executives in Detroit needed to have a meeting they would jump on the corporate jet and fly to Miami.  Even if their offices were next door to each other it would be destination Miami.  Anything to get out of Detroit.  Having since been to Detroit I now see why they would want to be in Miami.  It would then be my job to see that the corporate jet was met at the executive airport and that transportation was provided to their hotel.  I would also see that their rooms were stocked with enough booze to open up a retail chain of liquor stores.  Any excess you see would be loaded back to Detroit to stock home bars.

I would drive executives, and their wives on occasion, to go shopping, look for real estate for their retirements, to special meetings, etc.  On one weekend I had the privilege to drive Ed Cole and his wife around to do many of these things.  At this time Ed was the president of General Motors having worked his way up through the ranks as one of its top engineers.  He had worked on the Corvette, the Vega and the Corvair.  He was a down to earth individual and a refreshing change from the stuffed shirts I normally had to deal with at GM.

Chevrolet Corvair

Chevrolet would also host campaign payoffs for top dealerships across the nation.  One such campaign was held in Boca Raton, Florida at the Boca Raton Resort and Club.  It was just a coincidence that I had parked cars at this very same hotel when I went to college at Florida Atlantic University.  I took pleasure upon my arrival with tossing my keys to my old boss and telling him to take good care of my new Caprice.

Boca Raton Hotel

These campaign payoffs, in order to be eligible for a corporate tax write-off, had to involve some measure of business so no recreation was planned before noon.  At 12:01 however the bar was open, the tennis court pros were giving lessons, the charter boats would be pulling away from the docks and the tee off times would begin.  I had to make sure all of these events went off without a hitch.  I didn’t have to worry about the bar opening on time as the corporate guests were generally two deep by noon.  My biggest problem was the flow of the golf tee off times.  I therefore spent most of my time in and around the pro shop making sure things went well.  It was here I finally saw the real purpose of golf.  This was the part of golf that they didn’t teach me during my golf/tennis course in junior college.  I now saw the benefit in knocking a little white ball all over a large green field.  That benefit came in the large cooler mounted on the back of the electric golf carts.

Some of these coolers would hold beer and some would hold wine.  But one cart in particular didn’t play the game with the same “fuel”.  It was Harry’s cart.  Harry being one Harry Heathman, the vice president of marketing for Chevrolet.  Harry was a particularly unpleasant fellow who was exceptionally demanding.  Harry had to have stone crabs everywhere he went.  When he arrived in Miami he would be driven to Joe’s Stone Crab restaurant on Miami Beach for stone crabs.  When he fished he would have stone crabs on the boat.  When he ate dinner he would have stone crabs for an appetizer and would then substitute stone crabs for his main dish.  When he returned to Detroit he took two coolers of stone crabs with him.  At Joe’s one particular afternoon Harry was busy filling  his little round face with stone crabs.  He had his mouth literally stuffed full of crab meat, then his eyes closed and with butter dripping from his chin and down his neck he began making low moaning sounds.  My boss, also named Jack, remarked that it was the first time he had ever seen a man have a gastronomic orgasm.

Florida Stone Crab

So, as you might have already guessed, Harry had stone crabs in his golf cart cooler.  To wash it all down however Harry had discovered “cocktails in a can”.  These were alcoholic mixed drinks in an easy open can.  Harry had enough of these in his cooler to leave one empty can on each of the eighteen holes.

On this day an emergency call was transferred to the pro shop for Harry.  Harry was to have made a major decision before he left Detroit but in his haste to get to his beloved stone crabs he forgot this minor detail.  The deadline for the decision was fast approaching and they needed him on the phone immediately.  It fell to me to go find Harry somewhere out on the back nine and bring him to the pro shop.

I grabbed a golf cart and made my way out on the course.  I found Harry on the fairway approaching the fourteenth hole.  How he was able to stand up let alone play golf was beyond my comprehension. It defied several laws of physics and the law of gravity.  I literally poured him into my cart and drove him back to the pro shop.  I didn’t want him to try to walk into the shop so I went in and had them transfer the call to an outside line.  I then drove the cart close to the building so the cord would reach.  I handed the phone to Harry.

Harry listened to the problem as it was explained to him from Detroit.  He then turned to me and asked, “What is the World Football League?”  I quickly explained that it was scheduled to be a third football league with all new teams.  I told him that they were recruiting players from the existing leagues and hoped to form about ten new teams.  Harry then went back to his phone conversation, listening more than talking.  He then turned to me and said, “Should Chevrolet commit to sponsor this new league?”  I told him that the stability of this new league was in question and that while the initial ratings would probably be high the whole thing could quickly fall apart.  I told him that if he were to sponsor the league he should insist on a clause that would allow Chevrolet to pull the plug at any time.  Harry then returned to the phone and slurred that Chevrolet would initially sponsor the WFL but that he would insist on a clause that would get them out from under should the league start to have problems.  Now that’s how big corporate decisions are made, especially at GM. 

WFL Brought to you by Chevrolet

I hung up the phone and drove Harry back to his golf game.  He had missed a few holes so he probably had the best score of his life.

The Arab oil embargo hit, Chevrolet and all of GM had to tighten their belts.  They still flew to Miami for their meetings but jobs were being cut.  Mine was among them.  I was offered a job in Detroit but declined.  Probably one of my better decisions.  I got a job with Miami Dade County and eventually retired from there.  I wonder how those other employees faired with their retirements from GM.

I did however enjoy watching a few World Football League games that were brought to me by Chevrolet.  The WFL enjoyed a wide popularity at the beginning of the first year and then ratings began to sag.  The second year was their last.  The WFL also did damage to my Miami Dolphins when Csonka and Warfield left.  Chevrolet eventually pulled their sponsorship and I’m sure Harry congratulated himself on his foresight.  He probably had some stone crabs shipped up to Detroit.  Or better yet, he flew to Miami and went to Joe’s.  Austerity programs you see are only for the peons.

My last GM car was a 1981 Pontiac Grand Prix whose plastic parts all disintegrated and turned to dust in the Florida heat.  Someone at GM probably saved enough money buying inferior plastic to pay for all of the corporate booze and stone crabs they would ever need.  I now buy only Hondas and Toyotas.  As I write this GM stock is selling for about $20 a share.

The Inventory

The setting is Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  I worked at the commissary during this, my last year in the Navy.  The commissary was a big operation.  There was the main store, the attached warehouse, cool dry storage spaces and the "refer" plant.  The refrigeration plant was dockside with two giant chill boxes and two giant freezers.  The freezers and chill boxes were large enough for forklifts to stack pallet loads of merchandise.  It was here that we stocked cold storage eggs coated with parafin that could supposedly be used a year or more after they last saw a hen.  They wouldn't kill you but they did taste funny and had a strange green tinge when scrambled.

Regular milk on the base was made at a plant from instant cows.  They would add water from the desalination plant to powdered milk and put it in containers.  This way you could get the "real milk" experience without having to add your own water. 

I stocked shelves, operated a forklift, drove a truck, worked as a cashier, took inventory and basically did as I was told, most of the time.  The commissary was run by a certain Lieutenant who didn’t like me.  His second in command was a first class petty officer.  I don’t remember either of their names now.  The Lieutenant had dark blonde hair and the first class petty officer was a freckle-faced redhead.  If either of you two ever gets to read this you will know who you are.  If all went well you already know who did the evil deed.  For the rest of you, here is the story.

I was married and had a wife living in Miami.  The Lieutenant and the petty officer were also married but had their wives stationed on the base.  I was trying to get to see my wife and they were trying to get as far away from theirs as possible.  The solution to their problem, and mine for that matter, lay in the monthly produce flights to Miami.  Except for the Miami flights the only fresh produce came from Jamaica.  The Jamaican produce consisted of furry tubers and weird vegetables most Americans never heard of.   We also had refrigerator ships that docked in Gitmo but after the two to three months trip from Norfolk via other stops, the produce they carried could hardly be considered fresh.   

The produce flights also brought “cargo” out of Gitmo in the form of Cuban fence jumpers.  These were individuals who managed to sneak on to the base without getting blown up in the minefields.  The clever brain-trust that was the military kept this secret cargo separated from us on the boat ride to the west side of the bay near the airstrip.  We were kept below deck while the "cargo" was kept topside.  We weren't supposed to know they existed.  It was then however impossible to separate us in the hold of the open cargo plane that we were all flying to the Opa Locka base in Miami.  I was never an aviation buff so the actual aircraft type can only be described as a large propeller driven cargo plane with a nose wheel and that it loaded from a side door.  I've looked at pictures of military cargo planes and it was similar to a C-130.

These "C-130's" weren't in good condition and were prone to oil leaks.  They had two of them at Gitmo and could never get both of them in the air at the same time.  They were always stealing parts from one to get the other one running.  When we got close to Miami they would open the side door and two of the air crew would be stationed there with fire extinguishers to put out any oil fires after landing.  We would have a day off and then we would be back to load the plane with local produce, fresh eggs, dairy products and fresh milk. On one occasion the loadmaster was late and we loaded the plane without his guidance.  The heavy milk ended up in the back of the plane and by the time the loadmaster arrived the "C-130" was sitting back on its tailpost.  We had to shuffle the milk forward and then everyone had to move to the cockpit area and jump up and down to bring the plane back down to rest on the nose wheel.

In order to get the heavily laden plane to clear the fence at the end of the Opa Locka airstrip we had to start our take off at one end of the runway in the grass.  We would make the fence next to 27th avenue with a good three or four feet of clearance.  It would be two feet if anyone had eaten a big meal beforehand.

In the nine months I served in Gitmo I was only allowed to make the trip to Miami on two occasions.  My selection was never a priority as the Lieutenant and the petty officer chose those individuals who would party with them.  I just wanted to see my wife.  Needless to say these two were not my favorite people.  They regularly went out of their way to give me crappy jobs.

This would just be a sad story if what you have read was the end of it all.  That story would have no place here.  This is a happy place.  I'm here to tell you of a chain of events that came together that provided me my opportunity for revenge.

The first thing that happened was that I put in for an early discharge.  The Lieutenant signed the early discharge application only because a denial would mean even more paperwork for him.  Besides, as he said to me, “These things never get approved.”  He promptly forgot about the application and things went back to normal.

The second thing in our chain of events was that both a general inspection and a mandatory inventory came due at a most inopportune time.  The inspection was to be one week after the scheduled inventory.  You see, in order to simplify any large-scale inventory, you need to let your on-shelf display stock run down before the inventory.  This allows you to count by case and pallet instead of individual items.  This would all be well and good if it weren’t for the fact that the general inspection would be calling for fully stocked shelves.

The third thing in our whirlpool of Karma would be that unbeknownst to the Lieutenant, my early discharge was approved and I had a date of departure that would yank me out from under his control at the worst possible time.  We were all assembled two weeks before the scheduled inventory and given our assignments.  There would be twelve-hour days and no time off during the inventory and inspection periods.  I had been assigned the crappiest of jobs doing inventory at the "refer" plant.  I raised my hand and told them that I was planning to spend that time on the beach in Key West.  Everyone laughed except my roommate Matt.  You see he knew that my discharge had been approved; that I had a flight scheduled out to Jacksonville, Florida, and that my discharge station was to be the naval base at Key West.  I was required to tell my supervisor of my upcoming departure so I counted this announcement as my official two week notice. I couldn't help it that they didn't believe me.

The duty roster showed that I had the night watch two days before the inventory was scheduled.  On the night watch you locked yourself in the commissary and patrolled the premises.  You mostly had to keep an eye on the temperature gauges on the coolers and freezers and record your findings.  You wandered around most of the time just snacking on whatever you wanted.   It was a boring job, except on this night.

I already knew how they conducted inventory.  It was a truly asinine system designed by the Lieutenant whereby the accounting office would print up two complete sets of IBM punch cards with one stock item on each card.  The stacks were identical and would be used by two inventory teams.  This, on the surface, would seem like a good plan.  Actually it would be a good plan if one second class storekeeper (me), didn’t have a grudge against the person who had the most to lose if things went wrong.

The next step in the inventory process was the weak link.  This clever system had each inventory team take a stack of cards.  The large teams were then divided into two man teams, each with a small portion of the full stack.  The two man groups would write down the shelf item count on the individual card.  This involved running all over the store to find the next item in the stack.  The inventory process never involved walking down each aisle and counting each shelf in order.  That would have been the normal way.  My dad always said there were three ways to do things, the right way, the wrong way and the Navy way.  In this case the Navy way was interpreted by a not so clever Lieutenant until it more closely resembled the wrong way.

 The next step in the inventory process would have the teams use the same stack of cards back in the warehouse to record the case lot quantities.  The cards would then be given to a keypunch operator who keyed in the recorded quantities from each card.  The computer would then print out a list of any discrepancies and the recording teams would recount and verify.  After the counts matched on each set of cards, the inventory would be assigned a dollar value that needed to balance with the accounting records.  Sounds good doesn’t it.

It might have been good but you see I spent the better part of my last eight hour duty shift going through the two stacks of cards back in the accounting office and I removed identical cards from each stack.  I picked relatively expensive items that wouldn’t likely be missed.  Spices like saffron and vanilla were expensive but did not have a high turnover.  I also pulled cards of certain frozen meat items or obscure expensive canned meat or seafood.  I pulled enough cards out to make a serious dent in the outcome of the inventory if those items weren’t counted.

The day of my departure coincided with the first day of the inventory process.  I got all of my checkout signatures except the one from the Lieutenant.  I didn’t want him standing in my way so I scribbled something next to his name and nobody checked.  I did manage to get both the Lieutenant and the first class petty officer an appropriate Get Well card that they would receive in the inter office mail while my commercial jet was out over the Atlantic.  I told them that I knew they were sick and hoped they would be feeling better soon.  A p.s. at the bottom wished them luck with the inventory.

I flew to Jacksonville and drove to Miami.  I had a few days off before I checked in at the Key West Naval Station.  It took a couple of weeks to finalize my discharge. Then I was a civilian once more.

A couple of months later I met my old roommate Matt for drinks while he was in Miami on a produce run.  Since I knew Matt was involved in the inventory I hesitated to even bring it up but I had to know.  I had never told anyone what I had done.

I casually asked, “Well, how did the big inventory go?”  I innocently listened as Matt proceeded to tell me of the chaos I left behind.  The inventory had been hurried because of the general inspection but the books didn’t balance.  There was a tremendous shortage.  Matt and I knew that everyone who worked at the commissary stole the occasional case of rib eye steaks but it really looked like things had gotten out of hand.  They could only explain away so much to "shrinkage" before things looked really bad.  They counted, recounted, and counted again.  They used that same double stack of inventory cards over and over.  Days went by, tempers flared, accusations were made.  It seemed like all was lost when it was finally decided that they had almost worn out the IBM cards with all of the notations and such.  They re-ran the double stacks and the inventory came in close enough as they say for “government work”.  There was no time to properly stock the store and organize the warehouse in time for the inspection.  Matt was sure that we (they) got a low score.

I then knew that Matt would enjoy knowing what I had done more than be mad at me for all of the extra work I had caused him.  He didn’t like the Lieutenant any more than I did and he hated that first class petty officer.  I told Matt what I had done with the IBM cards.  Matt’s eyes had a natural bulge to them but when I told my tale I thought they would fall out of his head.  It took a few minutes but I saw a smile come over his face that was the result of more than just the alcohol he had been consuming.  I knew he was good with it all when he said the next round was on him.

I made Matt promise that he would tell the two SOB’s what had happened to their inventory and who was responsible.  He readily agreed.  He never got to go on another Miami run but I got one final letter from him.  In it he said he told my story to both the Lieutenant and the PO and both were thoroughly pissed.  The PO had said he would hunt me down the next time he was in Miami.  Since I was now a civilian and had a significant height and weight advantage over the little redhead I told Matt to give him my phone number in Miami.  I never heard from Howdy Doody.

The Dental Chair

This story takes place in Orlando while I was stationed there pre-Disney.  If you read The Flag story you already have the basic setting.  The Naval Training Center in Orlando was situated on an old Air Force base.  There was a main gate and a back gate.  Just beyond the back gate were the base dental offices.

Since free dental care was one of the “bennies” that came with my “voluntary” service, I took advantage of that care whenever needed.  This particular story was at a time when I needed to have some work done on two lower teeth.  It was also a time when the Navy was remodeling their dental offices.

The old barbershop style dental chairs were being replaced with the ultra-modern curved lounges that you still find today.  I have to say that the old patient chairs seemed to be a holdover from the days when barbers and dentists were the same guy.  At least that was what one learned from old westerns.  The barber could also be the town surgeon.

Old Style Dentist Chair

The Navy never did anything suddenly.  They phased in the new dental lounge chairs long before they replaced the other furniture in the office.  This meant that while I was this day reclining at a low height in the new contour lounge, the dentist and his assistant were perched on tall stools.  Even at their lowest setting the stools were still too tall for the low position of my lounge patient chair.

New Style Dentist Chair

The procedure this day involved two cavities and two fillings on two adjoining lower front teeth.  The dentist told me that he would be using a new technique with a new filling material.  He would do both fillings at the same time.  He drilled, buffed, sanded, and sprayed the way dentists still do today.  Then he came to the double front filling procedure he would be doing.  All went well and when he came to the part where the new filling material needed to set up he announced that he wanted to show off his handiwork to the other dentists in the office.  He left the room to gather some admirers. 

I was left behind in my reclining position.  Left with me was his female dental assistant.  Not just any female dental assistant, but the type of dental assistant that a dentist would have if he could design her himself using the best components from the Miss World competition.  His top-heavy and very attractive assistant was left beside me on her tall perch.  She wore a tight skirt and tight blouse.  It was her job to use a probe to test how the new filling material was setting.

My Dental Assistant, Sketched from Memory

She would twist and lean over from her high perch and had to virtually lie across my body in order to get in a proper position to inspect the new fillings.  It was during one of these thoroughly enjoyable probes that the dentist walked in with his entourage.  As everyone filed into the room the dentist asked, “Is it hard yet?” Whereupon I quickly answered, “You bet it is.”  The technician’s face flushed and four dentists broke out in hysterical laughter.  One dentist left the room.  I think he wet himself.

The Flag

This is another Navy story and takes place in Orlando, Florida of all places.  Yes, right in the middle of Florida, miles from any ocean is a Navy base.  Actually it was a former Air Force base the Navy purchased to add a third boot camp during the Vietnam era.  I was stationed there in 1969 and 1970, just before Disney announced it was to open up a little theme park there.  These were critical years of protest, peace, love, hippies, the draft, flower power, psychedelic day-glow posters, the Age of Aquarius, Credence Clearwater Revival, Three Dog Night and Blood Sweat and Tears.

I worked in supply and I was housed in a barracks that was nothing more than a long rectangular building.  It had a common hallway and a central bathroom (head) and shower area.   There were maybe ten rooms total situated on either side of the head.  It was of CBS (concrete, block and stucco) construction except someone forgot the stucco.  In its place was paint.  The original color had long since been obscured with dirt and with whatever else that managed to stick to the walls over the years.  Two people were assigned to each room.

There were rumors that these buildings on the far end of the base had been used as a POW camp in World War II.  I doubted these rumors because such conditions would have been in violation of the Geneva Convention.  There was no air conditioning even though the temperatures in central Florida regularly hovered in the mid-nineties.  We did have one luxury which was a large exhaust fan that pulled air in through any open window and up through the ceiling.  For this to work however you had to leave the doors and windows open.  Since it rained every day promptly at 3:18 p.m. you had to leave your windows shut while you were at work.  The attic fan as it was called was about four feet across and had metal shutter louvers that opened when the fan was turned on.  When it was working the fan made it sound like you were sleeping in the middle of the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.  The noise however was better than the heat.

Our other luxury was that this remote area of the base was never visited by anyone of any importance.  I should say almost never, for reasons that will later become apparent. My roommate’s name was Mike.  Mike was of Lebanese heritage from Gulfport, Mississippi.  We were paired up since he was the only other college graduate in the building.  Mike and I regularly made attempts to liven up our dire existence by decorating within our budget.  Our budget was $Zero so everything had to be acquired from nature or comshawed.  This latter word is Navy jargon for “stolen with purpose” or “misappropriated”.  There are other interpretations I’m sure.  The word goes back to the Navy of the 19^th Century and was adapted from the lingo around Chinese ports.

At Christmastime we would chop down a small Australian pine tree and put it in the center of an old wooden cable spool.  We would decorate it with old beer cans or whatever shiny object seemed appropriate.  We found discarded rug remnants for the floor.  On one wall Mike had a poster of his favorite singer, Janis Joplin.  You get the picture.

The object of this story is however a flag.  Not just any old flag but one that reflected the times.  It was a modification of Old Glory where the white stars on a blue background were replaced with a large white peace sign on a blue background.  We used an old Navy flat sheet and two cans of spray paint to create our masterpiece.  Some masking tape and red spray paint for the stripes and a can of blue spray paint for the peace sign.  We hung it proudly on our wall.

Peace Flag

Mike and I left for work one particular day.  Mike says I left the door open.  I say Mike left the door open.  We both agree it would take a child of three with a paper clip about four seconds to open our locked door.  Half of that time would be for the three year old to lift his hand with paper clip up to the knob.  I’m sure the Chief Petty Officer who decided to inspect the barracks that day didn’t care how he opened the door but he was sorry he had.  What he saw almost gave this “lifer” a career-ending stroke.  He was face to face with a genuine sign of anarchy in the form of our peace flag.

When I think back I imagine the chief in his khaki’s opening the door and seeing his beloved flag enjoined with his worst nightmare, peace.  His eyes would bulge.  The veins in his neck would pop.    He would have been apoplectic.  Military men are not about peace.  They are about something else.  Whatever it is it has nothing to do with peace signs or flower power or any of that left wing radical nonsense.   

These were the recruit barracks, not ours

The chief and his first class petty officer stooge who lived in our barracks had a meeting.  They needed justice for this outrage.  It couldn’t be just a simple slap on the wrist either; no it had to be something serious involving time in the brig.  Between them they hatched a plan.  They went to the officer of the day (OD) and filed charges.  Mike and I were pulled from our duty assignments and were charged with desecration of the American flag.  The OD wasn’t sure what to do so he restricted us to base while he researched the matter.

Being restricted to base isn’t as bad as it seems.  We had two lakes with beaches, we had an award winning chow hall, and we had a beach club where we could drink beer.  The worst of it involved having to sleep in our barracks which we would have had to do anyway.

The chief and the first class PO filed lengthy reports supporting one another in their outrage over this desecration of our country’s symbol.  Between the two of them they did have half a brain.  It all evoked lines from the 1967 Arlo Guthrie song and movie, Alice’s Restaurant.  This was our “littering” incident and we had two officer Obie’s bringing charges.  They never got around to the 27 eight by ten color glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.  You could have easily cast the chief and the first class PO on the Group W bench scene from the movie.

Eventually we were both called into the base JAG (Judge Advocate Generals) office where we had to explain our side of the story.  The JAG officer quickly realized we had not desecrated an American flag.  We had destroyed a government sheet.  Mike and I worked in supply so we determined the government’s cost for that sheet was like $0.88.  The charge was then dropped to “destruction of government property, value less than one dollar.”  Being a diplomat the JAG officer let the chief and the PO come up with an appropriate penalty, subject to his approval.

Arial image of the Naval Training Center in Orlando, Florida.  It has been since torn down.  Our barracks were already torn down before this picture was taken.

Our barracks was about where the vacant field is in this later image, 

lower right center

The two of them must have pondered long and hard on this one.  They finally came up with the worst penalty they could think of that didn’t involve trying to keelhaul two sailors in Orlando, Florida.  I’m sure keelhauling came up but without a ship and without an ocean the keelhauling was a non-starter.  It seems that both the chief and the first class petty officer had made three attempts to pass a shore patrol course.  They had failed each time.  We were to be restricted to base until we could pass this course.  They just knew we would be restricted to base for the rest of our deployment.

Mike and I quickly checked out the course materials.  These courses were all self-study and were passed or failed based on an open book test at the end.  There were perhaps twenty chapters to read.  We decided on an all-niter.  After all, we had nowhere else to go.  I read chapters one through ten and Mike took the back half.  The test consisted of 100 questions taken directly from the pages of the book.  I took the test for the first half of the book and Mike did the rest.  We swapped answers.

I asked Mike, “Did you miss even one question?”  Mike said, “Nope, I aced the whole thing”.  I said that I felt the same way.  In order for it to look good I suggested, let’s intentionally miss three questions, but different ones for each of us.  It still gives us more than we need for a passing grade.  We submitted our tests.  They had to be mailed out for scoring so we waited a couple of weeks for the results.

When the results came in Mike and I were summoned to the JAG office.  There, sitting in the office, were the JAG officer, the chief and the PO.  The JAG officer informed us that the test results were in and that we both got identical scores.  The chief and the PO were now accusing us of collusion.  Now, according to them, we were really in trouble.  The JAG officer said it did look suspicious but so as not to jump to any false conclusions he decided to make a phone call.  He contacted the scoring section for the tests and, after a couple of transfers he was talking to someone who could help.

That person informed the JAG officer that while we both had identical scores, we had each missed three different questions.  The shocked look of dejection on their faces was priceless.  They knew we had cheated but couldn’t figure out how anyone could pass this “difficult” open book test on the first try.  Mike and I couldn’t figure out how they had managed to fail the course test three times.   Perhaps they were cheating.

As a postscript to this story the shore patrol course did come in handy later.  While I was in Gitmo I was able to pull shore patrol duty to help out when the fleet came in.  This got me out of regular duty at the warehouse or freezer plant more than just a few times.  Shore patrol at the EM (enlisted man’s) club consisted of finding a safe corner, building a barricade of tables and chairs and waiting for the fights to break out.  I felt safe since I was sober, wore a hard hat and had a Billie club the size of a Louisville Slugger.  You got to watch a bunch of drunken sailors beat up on each other for no apparent reason save for some imaginary wrong that needed to be righted.  If things got really out of hand I would call for help from the regular shore patrol who would come in and break things up.  I was good at this; after all I got a 97 on the shore patrol exam.