Before Okinawa

Ah, life was simple in the Army.

Getting in the bag, aka drunk,was our big deal. Never even thought of crack cocaine or heroin. Never heard of 'meth' or oxycodone pain pill addiction. How would any of us, 1940's GI's, know that 'sucking on a glass dick' meant smoking a crack pipe?

The doctors in the Army were bored spit-less especially when talking to us ignorant, stupid enlisted men. I think they were resentful of their medical school 4F buddies who were home raking in the big bucks while they were pissing their lives away on a bunch of ignorant dummies who didn't have shiney bars on their shoulders.

It all seemed like the Catch 22 theme ruled where if you complained about being crazy, you had to be sane. How else would you know that you were crazy?

Going to the enlisted man's club bar to drink 3.2% beer was a big fucking deal. I volunteered for a job, for money, as a bartender. As smart and as quick as I thought I was, I couldn't get myself into the routine of collecting money for the beer and allocating the receipts, three for the club and one for me. That, even for me, with my consummate greed, crossed the line.

One night of bartending was enough for me. Guys screaming at me for their fucking bottles of Pabst, Millers, Schaefer's or whatever, crossed my emotional limit. And when one of my fellow schmucks started fucking fumble fingering in his pants pockets looking for change to pay, I would go nuts.

Everyone was screaming at me to get them a fucking beer while this guy was probably jacking off. He probably, didn't have any pockets up front and kept his money in his rear pocket pants. Fooling with his ass didn't turn him on.

Common labor was in very short supply during WWII. Sacramento with a vegetable packing plant, the Southern Pacific freight yards and a big time almond packing plant really needed common, unskilled labor. Phillip Wylie said the the trouble with the common man is that there are too many of them, too common.

Being a good soldier, while being noisy, pissing and groaning was my big drive in life. My non Army major commitments, at the time, were to make some money, get drunk and get laid. The first one required me to work at a civilian job, the second to have the money to go into town and get drunk. $54 a month, plus the $20 my Mom sent me, didn't go far enough to suit my voracious liquid booze appetite.

Getting laid, while important, was not that important. I had outgrown the fear that jacking off would cause hair to grow in the palm of my hand or cause me to go blind. Doing it so that 40 other guys in the barracks didn't know what I was doing was a minor problem. I mostly quit breathing.

Wrangling a three day pass by grinding my heel into the right lens of my eye glasses worked at Camp Kohler in Sacramento, so I gave it a shot at Fort Worden and Camp Hayden. Worked like a fucking slot machine since none of them had facilities to replace the specs and without them I was a useful as teats on a boar pig.

While stationed at Camp Kohler, I would go into Sacramento.On one three day span I worked at a tomato canning plant putting four cans of tomato paste at a time into boxes. Eight hours of looking at the blinding tops of the fucking cans made me believe that going blind seemed like a possibility. One eight hour shift cured me of ever wanting to go back.

The next day I worked at the Southern Pacific yards unloading freight cars which was wonderful. The other 'unloaders' were GI's. Plus the cars had little in them so we spent most of the time sprawled out in the freight cars dozing. Most GI's could sleep standing while leaning against the wall.

The third day was working at the almond packing plant packing almonds.Got the usual $1.00 an hour and a big time case of constipation.Couldn't look at a fucking almond for years much less eat one. Now my fucking dentures won't let me eat almonds though I do get constipated from time to time but not because of almonds.

Next blog will talk about working in the Southern Pacific foundry for 24 straight hours: $1.00 an hour for the first eight hours, $.1.50 per for the next four and $2.00 an hour for the last four. My two times at the Crown Zellerbach paper plant in Port Angeles proved that greed and the fearlessness of youth always overwhelms common sense.

'Everything changes. Everything remains the same.'