My Version of 13 Days

 

We are watching the movie THIRTEEN DAYS  which is about the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.  The official crisis was from October 16, 1962 to October 28, 1962.  My friends and I went out drinking wine straight out of the tilted bottle, to discuss it, like should we join up and help them or head for the hills.

I compromised.  I joined the Naval Reserves.

I went to the Naval Air Station Atlanta and signed up and was sworn in.   I was sent to the Dobbins Air Force side of the base for a physical.  The doctor turned me down because of my urine test showed I was a diabetic.  The doctor added, unless you had any wine recently.  I did!  So, I took a lot of water according to their suggestion and try again, which I did.  I was flushed out.  I passed the physical.

I went to a two week boot camp at Christmas time  at NAS Atlanta. Starnes, a Navy DI was our boot camp instructor.  After I joined, but before boot camp my buddies and I took advantage of the EM Club on the base.  What I did not know that the bartender Starnes would be our DI.  I must have tipped well, he did not bother me like some others.   He seemed to have it in for one black recruit.

One night in the barracks after I shined my shoes and whatever else in preparation for the next day I went to bed, or as Sailors would say, “Hit the bunk!”  That was before 10:00pm.

 

About midnight the person that had guard duty in the barracks shook my bunk telling me I had a visitor in the head (bathroom).  I went to the head with no idea what who to expect.

I walked in the head and there stood Parks Groover, old childhood friend, Parks Groover, grinning from ear to ear. 

He had a trench coat on and officer bars on the shoulder of the trench coat.  From underneath the trench coat he pulled out a bottle of whiskey and we had a few drinks.  If I remember correctly, Parks just got out of Air Force.  He was a surveyor, surveying the islands near Australia.  He said, “In case they ask, your grandfather died.” 

I said, “He did!”  About 13 years ago.