<\/p>\n
We were talking about Guam and slowly lowering the levels of the liquids in the glasses in front of us. Mac had a golden Bell\u2019s Lager, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and I was working on a pale white wine from \u00a0South Africa that Kevin the Sommelier had picked out as the Happy hour loss-leader.<\/p>\n
We may have been on Guam at the moment, but were headed somewhere else, I was pretty sure. Jasper the Best Bowler on that island was behind the bar with Liz-S.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere were we?\u201d I asked owlishly. Mac was getting to the three-quarters mark on his first beer. \u201cYour quarters there on Nimitz Hill?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a two-story Quonset Hut. \u00a0It was a dun-colored building. Our room was at the end corner, closest to the HQ. We had in in-room head, Hal Leathers was my roommate, as I have told you before.<\/p>\n
\u201cSounds civilized,\u201d I remarked.<\/p>\n
Mac smiled. \u201cA bottle of Three Feathers whiskey was a couple bucks at the Wine Mess. Cigarettes were ten cents a pack.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat kind?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI smoked Camels \u00a0back then . When filters came in, I switched to Winstons.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWinston tastes good, like a cigarette should,\u201d I said, quoting the old wheeze.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was sort of racy at the time. The ungrammatical clunker in the middle was supposed to broaden the appeal of the brand,\u201d said Mac. It worked on me, anyway.\u201d He wrinkled his brown.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would have been in the early \u201850s. 1954 maybe? Anyway, Winston vaulted to number two behind Pell Mells, and finally was the top brand in America by the 1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will never forget when the Marlboro Man died. I remember the folks smoked Pell Mells at one time, but Dad wound up as a Kent guy, but Mom liked Chesterfields. She used to send me up the block to Olsen\u2019s Market to buy them for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou quit in the early \u201870s, right?\u201d Mac nodded. \u201cAnd you still have COPD today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCautionary tale, Vic. Do what you want, but you ought to think about quitting yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Yessir. Everyone tells me that.\u00a0So, let\u2019s see:\u00a0 Nick Russell was your best pal on Guam?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, he was a Supply Corps Officer, like Dick Nixon. Interesting story about that- I was teaching at the Intelligence School at Anacostia, and Nixon had stayed in the reserves. It was a requirement that Reserve officers take correspondence courses. I got to grade Mr. Nixon\u2019s when he was Vice President.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow were they?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cProfessional. I don\u2019t remember much about them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t suppose failing him would have altered anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I don\u2019t suppose so.”<\/p>\n
“So, when you came back from Guam, everyone was trying to get out as fast as possible. Your Boss Eddie Layton was back testifying. You worked for CAPT Frankel, right?\u201d I flipped through a few pages of notes. \u201cWendy Furness was getting rid of everything at JICPOA, and then he came up to relieve me. That was about six months after the war ended. Did you still have the Frankenstein car with the borrowed engine?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I got rid of that heap when I went to Guam. CAPT Frankel just lived up Makalapa Drive, and he let me use the Staff Plymouth.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat was that like?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat. The Navy could get tires and gas, so it was a deal. The Army also used the Plymouth, but they painted their cars\u00a0olive drab. Navy mostly used them for the Flag motor pool, or Assistant Chief of Staff cars. The Navy \u00a0P11 Plymouth was mostly stock, with some chrome. Ours had an L-head 6 cylinder engine with a three speed transmission. It took a good foot on the clutch to prevent the car from \u201cbucking\u201d on the up-shift. \u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what did you do at the office in those days? There obviously was no threat to worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, the war might have been over, but we had a ton of stuff to pack up, shred or get rid of. \u00a0That pretty much summed up the task.\u00a0 Well, that and the odd party at the Junior Officer BOQ in Makalapa. I remember one we had with some Navy Nurses and we drank Grasshoppers. We all got pretty tight, and lost the car. My pal Nick had to drive everyone home. I honestly don\u2019t know where the staff car wound up, but we found it the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 1978, some pilots from my first squadron borrowed a staff car on a port visit to Busan, Korea, and the NCIS was hunting the culprits across Asia. The ones who took the car got thrown in HACQ* by the Skipper and they missed one of the great port visits in history at Pattaya Beach, Thailand.\u201d I beamed at the recollection.\u201d I wound up in Bangkok with the advance detail of the Shore Patrol, which I got away from as soon as possible. Patpong Road was indeed a place to make a hard man humble.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac did not recognize the reference to the song, but he got the drift.\u00a0 \u201cThe staff car had suicide doors, by the way,\u201d he said. “The rear door hinges were set behind the seat on the rear doors.<\/p>\n
The door locks were forward. \u00a0We called them \u201csuicide doors\u201d since if they were opened while the car was moving they would swing open, sometimes pulling the passenger out of the seat and hurling them into the street. Not good if you are hauling the Admiral around.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember suicide doors on the old Lincoln Continentals,\u201d I said. \u201cYou and Nick didn\u2019t lose any nurses that night, did you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot that I am aware of,\u201d said Mac, taking a sip of Bell\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid anyone get lucky?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly you would ask, Vic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, you weren\u2019t married yet, and I need a chapter on Sex and the Single Officer in the War War II Years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot from me you don\u2019t,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cThere are some things a gentleman does not discuss even after all these years.\u201d
\n\u201cAll right. So, after six months in peacetime Hawaii, were you restless?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou bet. I wanted to stay in the Navy; we had just won the biggest war in history; I had just made Lieutenant Commander. The Pacific Fleet could afford to be generous. If the right job was out there, so they cut me permissive TDY orders to go back to Washington and poke around and see what was possible. If I found something, the understanding was that I did not have to go back to Hawaii to formally detach.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that gets us to a place we have been before, back at Main Navy in Washington and a chance encounter with Admiral Forrest Sherman that changed the course of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed it did.\u201d Liz-S topped me off with some more South African white, and brought another Bell\u2019s for the Admiral. He likes two, just two, and that suits him just fine. I just soak the stuff up, and I am pleased that the Bluesmobile does not have suicide doors, not that I can drive that well from the back seat.<\/p>\n
\n* House arrest, confined to quarters.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were talking about Guam and slowly lowering the levels of the liquids in the glasses in front of us. Mac had a golden Bell\u2019s Lager, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and I was working on a pale white wine from \u00a0South Africa that Kevin the Sommelier had picked out as the Happy hour loss-leader. We may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2688,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions\/2688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}