HOM: Fleeting Memories

When "A" school ended, I packed my life into my duffle bag and headed for the base at 32nd Street. It was a different world there. At NTC, we were in school; at the Naval Station, we were in the working fleet. The piers were lined with Destroyers, Cruisers and Auxiliary vessels. The harbor was packed with small craft rushing about. There were buildings everywhere, from tin sheds to multistory offices, and warehouses mixed in with dozens of specialized repair shops and unidentified buildings. There was a rush of vehicle traffic of all shapes and sizes from forklifts to semis, all of it painted haze gray and all of it in a hurry. It was all confusing. It took a while, but I finally signed in at the school, where I was given a check and told to find a place to stay for a while. The Patrol Gunboat School was brand new, and at first there were no barracks for the students. We were each given a per diem allowance and told to cope. I got a cheap room on the third floor of the downtown YMCA and rode the bus or took a taxi for school. Downstairs at the YMCA there were pool tables and slot car tracks, and I spent some time & money playing with them. I talked a guy into teaching me a bit about pool. He was pretty cautious till I promised no bets of any kind were involved. He said my request was one that pool hustlers used to line up suckers and he had been taken in that way. He was a good teacher, but I was a lousy student. I did better with the slot cars than I did the cues & balls. I was too uncoordinated for pool, but all the cars required was speed control. Once things got a bit better organized, we were given rooms in some newer barracks and ate at the chow hall. If memory serves, the new barracks were set up so that there were three or four of us per unit sharing one head facility. Much better than the Y, where each tiny room had a sink, but a whole floor shared one toilet and everything reeked of urine & disinfectant. Memory lapse! I remember the barracks & chow hall for basic, but not for the RTC schools. Odd. Unfortunately I'll never forget the chow hall at 32nd Street. The meal was Welsh Rarebit and it was pretty good, but at midnight I woke up with cramps so bad I couldn't walk. I won't go into details, but by morning I was exhausted, emptied of everything, sleepless and dehydrated. My exhausts were sore, too. Several of us headed for sick call instead of PG school the next morning, where we were basically told that it was nbd, stop slacking, get back to work. We did. Welcome to the Fleet. Later, we found out through the grapevine ("Scuttlebutt" in Navyspeak) that the rabbit was the culprit. Byron K. "Buddy" Jones was an IC (Interior Communicationsman) and ended up on PG-90, the USS Canon. We got to be good friends. I nicknamed him "Beaky" for his initials and his nose - he got the "Buddy" monicker because he looked exactly like Buddy Holly, glasses and all. We sort of kept in touch through the years. He was one of the few crew members on the 90 that was not wounded - more on that later. He also had the joy of riding the Canon across the Pacific. He spent some time in the Highway Patrol in AZ and then was working as a contractor. Since food seems to be a subtopic of this post, I remember that shortly after the Rarebit Incident, of which he was also a victim, we ate at a nice restaurant down town. When the waitress brought the food, I put my head down and said grace. (After the Rarebit, I decided praying over the food couldn't hurt, even away from the chow hall.) Buddy, out of politeness, bowed his head too. When he opened his eyes, the waitress had her face right beside his and was asking him what was wrong with the food, it looked okay to her. He stammered and stuttered and turned red, and never did fully forgive me for that incident. Buddy. He had a nice car, one of the more luxurious GM models from the Fifties. It was fancy enough that, like modern cars, the headlights would turn off a few moments after the engine was shut down. That was kind of rare in those days. We parked on the street over in OB, and as we walked away a Good Samaritan told Buddy he needed to turn his lights out. Buddy's timing was perfect. He said "Thanks!", turned, puffed out his cheeks and blew at the car, and the lights went out. He walked off, deadpan, leaving a couple of thunderstruck spectators. Me? I was laughing so hard I could hardly walk at all. TBC PS: According to Word, the series of HOM posts now totals 77,104 words. Ouch! (Me) (Home)