Babe Ruth, The Southern Pacific Freight Yards, CZ, Silver Dollars

"I had a better year than he did.", was Babe Ruth's response when asked to justify why his $100,000 a year contract was more than President Herbert Hoover's annual salary.

Seeing Babe Ruth play, while sitting in what was then the right field bleachers (now the right field grandstands) is a not to be forgotten thrill. Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day had double headers at the Stadium and came with Babe Ruth playing for .55 cents each holiday.

We brought our own peanuts. No way we're we going to get fucked and pay .10 cents for a small bag of fucking peanuts.

Ruth's swings at the ball were unreal with his graceful rhythm. Watching the 'Bambino' talking to the 'Bleacherites' and watching him trot into the dugout by way of second base (a superstition of the Babe's) are memories embedded in my mind's eye.

Memorable also, was grinding my heel into the right eye glass lens while at radio operators school. The lens couldn't be replaced at Camp Kohler and going into Sacramento to see an optician to be able replace the lens was the only solution. So I got a three day pass into Sacramento with a purchase order and a ton of free time to make money.

Making a $1.00 an hour plus the opportunity to make double and triple time working at the Southern Pacific yards was a serious money making opportunity. When you were making $50 a month as a GI, a dollar an hour was hog heaven. Time and half  for $1.50 was Nirvana .

Carrying hot molten lead in pots from one place to another for 12 straight hours, shirtless, pants rolled up and sweating like a stuck hog bleeds turned out to be my emotional limit. Hauling molten lead in pots from one damn place to another was too nerve wracking, even at 20 years old.

Being paid in silver dollars was wonderful and used back at Camp Kohler for shooting craps. And I saved a few for my next trip into Sacramento to get in the bag. 3.2 % beer at the Enlisted Man's Club, just made me piss a lot.

But my weirdest civilian jobs were in Port Angeles while stationed at Camp Hayden. They were at at the Crown Zellerbach paper plant. Finding civilians to do those jobs during the war was plenty fucking tough. So jackass, greedy GI's like me were welcomed with open arms.

The first 8 hour job was at the Crown Zellerbach paper plant where I worked in a huge room with newly produced paper on rollers acting as the 'ceiling'. My job, every time there was a break in the paper, which was real fucking often, was to drag the very warm paper over to a stream that would carry the paper, while chopping up the paper into small pieces, back to be remade into paper.

After an hour in that paper hell and dragging it to the stream I was generating enough fucking static electricity to light the City of Philadelphia. I couldn't touch anything without generating an electrical charge. The next time in Port Angeles, I turned down the opportunity to spend my time dragging paper breaks for eight hours and ending up like a fucking walking electric charge storage plant.

But when you're 20 years old, and in the Army, you think that you're tough, smart and omnipotent. Certainly my body fat content was probably under 15%.

So this time, in my unfucking arrogance, I took a life and limb threatening job at CZ pushing logs into the 'grinder', (to be converted into paper) with a long pole. The logs were in a fast moving water stream fed by really cold, really fast flowing water from the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

The water sloshed over to where the other dummies and me were standing raising the serious risk, that while pushing the logs along of slipping, falling into the stream and getting chopped up with the fucking logs. My heart rate had to be through the roof.

Never went back to Crown Zellerbach. Left my $1.00 an hour greed in the the San Juan de Fuca Straits' water with the logs. And really started grinding my Captain to transfer me to an outfit going overseas.

And then came Okinawa and earning a Purple Heart. But I believe that I got more than I gave in the Army, starting with the privilege of serving my country.

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