Well, well, today is President's Day. So, if you came home to get away from the Presidents' Day Sale, you can read a little about the a president, Franklin D. Roosevelt's flag boat embedded someplace in the below ramblings.
When I first went on active duty in the Navy I was sent to
Charleston Naval Yards, in Charleston, South Carolina. I spent about 30 days there.
The Naval Yard was a huge Navy Base on the Cooper River,
near a big bridge. The big bridge
always seemed to be looming saliently in the background.
The Naval Yard was a Transient center. There were may six to ten barracks for
transients. In the mornings we stood on
an assigned number on the pavement so they could do a muster check. Then, after
were assigned jobs for the day.
For a few days I was picked for cleanup details. A group of us would report to places like the
EM Club, Marines Club, CPO Club, and so on and clean up from the night
before. Also, one day I had to help
clean up the chow hall.
Interesting in cleaning up the different clubs I found
instead of placing bottles into a container, it was quicker and more efficient,
really, to throw the beer bottles into the container, breaking them to
pieces - that way breaking into pieces
you could put more bottles into the container to be dumped. Just don't go skin diving in the dumpster.
Once I was assigned
to paint a historical boat. It
was the flag ship that President Franklin Roosevelt used from time to
time. It was docked at a dock. We painted the deck gray. While I was painting a wave knocked the boat
a wallop and knocked me onto the fresh paint I just put down. It mostly got on the front of my hands.
I don't remember what I did with my clothes with paint all on them, I probably bought new denim
chambray shirt and pant replacements. It was only slightly larger than a cabin cruiser you would see on a lake. FDR might have preferred small things. His Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, is a small house.
Finally I was picked for permanent job for as long as I was
there to the base theater. Another
transient and I had the daily job of
cleaning out the theater and other rooms, which all in all took about 90
minutes. Then we would watch the latest movie with the Chief Petty Officer
in-charge of us. I became friends with
the other transient and one weekend we hitchhiked together back home to
Georgia. He lived south of Atlanta and I
lived north of Atlanta. More about that
later.
The base was so big there was a bus service. The bus was Navy gray. One night I went to a movie and taking a bus
back to the barracks, miles away, I rode the bus. I remember one person getting on did
something that did not sit well with the driver. They had words and the driver ordered him off
and he refused. He was really a high
ranking officer and he was on the bus because he heard the bus driver was crude
and rude. The driver proved the rumor true. After the officer's secret identity was known there was a deathly quietness.
One evening my new friend and I ventured off the base at the
main gate. Just outside the main gate
was a busy street that was lined with bars on both sides. They were all trying to lure the sailors
inside. We went to a few bars looking
for something interesting (and cheap).
One bar seemed overly crowded and we went in to see why so many sailors
were drawn there. It was the
barmaid. If the barmaid served you a
drink, she charged something like $5 more than if you bought the drink
yourself from the bartender. The reason was the stirred the drink a
special way. First she drove her finger
"inside" herself and used her finger as a stirrer. We left.
They even charged just to watch her mix drinks her special way. Those sailors had probably been at sea a long
long time.
Somehow my friend's mother and my mother became
friends. I don't know how Mama did it,
but she knew how to relate to people and find out what there was we had in common... which this was
a piece of cake for her. As I mentioned
earlier one weekend we hitchhiked back
to Georgia. It took several rides to
get there. He got off south of Atlanta and about that same area I
had to stand by myself with my thumb out in the middle of the morning for a
couple of hours.
My last ride a guy picked me up someplace in Atlanta. He asked where was I going and I said
Marietta and he said he was too. About
the time we were going over the Chattahoochee River he reached over and touched
my thigh. I started cursing him and
demanded to be let out or I would jump
out. He said he was only joking
and would not do it again. I sat uptight
the rest of the way home. He let me out
in front of our house and I ran in without even thanking him. He rode back and forth on our street for a
few times before he probably determinate I really did go into a house.
I spent about a day at home and hitchhiked back to
Charleston. The only thing I remember
about the return trip a drunk man driving and his wife and several kids picked
me up. He stayed sped through Georgia and South Carolina
during over 100mph most the time. And oh
yeah, his car was junky inside too... trash all over the seats and floorboards.
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