Road Construction
Bert inherited our father's love for road construction and most other projects that involved earth moving. I didn't. The way I saw it, if God wanted this particular piece of dirt over there instead of here, He'd have put it over there in the first place. I was especially unenthusiastic when I was asked (told) to move it myself with an idiot stick.
But it did pay for college. Of all the summer jobs a teenager could have, laborer in construction was the most lucrative. Actually, that kind of job was not available for most teenagers. I worked for Goodfellow Brothers because Dad was one of the brothers, and a dollar I earned from the company was a dollar Dad didn't have to shell out from his personal income. Three months' income from the summer job paid about 65 percent of the year's college expenses. Though much of the time I worked as a laborer, I was billed as an Operating Engineer, belonged to that union, and earned a staggering $3.65/hour! This was in the 1950's, when gasoline sold for 25-35 cents per gallon.
I worked in road construction and other earth moving projects during the summers of 1951 through 1956. Though most of the time I was bored stiff with it, some things stick in my memory.
Powderman's Helper
The first job I was on was a pipeline in the Mission Ridge area, several
miles NW of Wenatchee. I was a "powderman's helper." My main task
was to slit sticks of dynamite lengthwise, so when they were tamped into
a hole they would collapse, spreading to fill the hole.
Dynamite is nitro glycerin suspended in a sawdust-like substance. Handling it with bare hands in hot weather can allow the nitro glycerin to leach into one's blood stream, resulting in a terrible headache. I got one in spades, my first day at work. I have never had a worse one, before or since. The powderman, Frank Spinneti (sp), tried to tell me how to get rid of it. He could barely speak English, but he finally got it across that when I got home I should have a stiff drink of hard liquor. I was 17 at the time, and when I explained to Mom what Frank had said, she said, "You'll take aspirin. No liquor at your age." About that time Dad walked in. He said, "If Frank says a stiff drink, that's what Dave gets," and fixed me a scotch on ice. The headache was gone in minutes, and I was gone shortly after. The next morning I had to deal with the hangover. But it worked; the alcohol neutralized the nitro glycerin in my blood stream and my headache went away almost between heartbeats. Scotch has been my drink of preference ever since.
Most days, while coming back to town from the job we played a game I'm not proud of. There would be three or four of us in the back of the pickup, drinking bottled beer. As we'd pass someone's open newspaper delivery box at 40mph, one of us would try to put his empty bottle in it. I'm sure there were a lot of people on that route who got pretty tired of finding a lot of broken glass in their newspaper box. I didn't do much of that because I could never drink more than one bottle of the stuff. After that it tasted bad.
Frank was an artist with dynamite. Dad told me about a job Goodfellow Brothers had, leveling a vacant lot in Wenatchee. The lot was almost all bedrock, so they had to use explosives to break up the rock enough to level the lot. They drilled the holes with wagon drills, and Frank loaded them with dynamite.
As Frank was nearly finished, the city inspector came up and said, "Frank,
how much dynamite did you put in those holes?" The inspector was concerned,
because the vacant lot was surrounded by houses. Frank, who didn't like
the inspector much, pretended not to understand, and kept saying, "What?"
as he ran the wires back to the battery box. The inspector kept asking,
his voice getting louder because Frank obviously didn't speak much English,
and one always speaks louder to punch through the language barrier. Finally
Frank said, "One case, two case, who cares?"
The inspector was horrified, and ran over to Dad, yelling "Stop him!
He doesn't know what he's doing! He's overloaded the holes and there'll
be rock flying all over town! Then Frank touched it off. There was a muffled
WHUMP! And the bedrock lifted about six inches and came down as gravel.
The inspector never questioned Frank again.
The Wobble-Wheeled Roller
The first road job I was on was a portion of Highway 2, starting
at the outskirts of Wenatchee and going about a mile and a half toward Cashmere.
I was given the job of packing down the shoulders with a wobble-wheeled
roller. This device is a trailer built as a rectangle-shaped water tank,
with hundreds of gallons of water giving it weight. The front of the trailer
has six wheels with smooth tires, running side-by-side. The rear end has
seven wheels, spaced to knock down the ridges made between the front tires.
The whole mess is pulled by a rubber-tired tractor. In this case it was
a farm tractor made by Case.
The trailer is pulled at a walking pace, about three miles per hour.
The gentle bouncing on a 100-degree day, with the hot air off the engine
fanning your face all adds up to sleepy-time. I fell asleep while packing
down an area of fill. When I woke up the tractor was skidding backwards
down an embankment, being dragged down by the trailer, which had slipped
off the road first.
It was about 3:00 p.m., just before rush-hour traffic. Tom Riley, the job
superintendent, had to send a D-8 Cat down to pull me out. This operation
blocked the road for two hours, backing up traffic for miles - not to mention
tying up two profit centers (the Cat and the wobble-wheeled roller) with
a job that cost money rather than making it. A really expensive nap.
I was intimidated by Tom Riley in the first place, and I figured that owner's son or no, I was going to be fired off that job. He finally showed up, after we had pulled the roller back to the grade and got traffic moving again. As he walked up to me I was sure my employment was about to end. "Dave," he said, "I've seen 'em roll Cats; I've seen 'em roll trucks; I've even seen 'em roll shovels. But this is the first time I've ever seen 'em roll a wobble-wheeled-roller." And nothing more was said about it.
(Years later, Tom died in a plane crash. As I understand it, he was bringing his Ercoupe in for a landing one night at Wenatchee's Fancher Field and had a heart attack. He impacted just yards short of the field.)
On another road job, again I had roller duty. This job was the hill going down to Lake Chelan. As I was plugging along (not asleep!) our mechanic, Calley Hotchkiss, drove up to inform me that one of the rear tires was flat and we had to change it.
The tires were mounted in pairs, on short axles that were fixed to the trailer with a ½" x 6" steel pin. To remove a pair, one had to drive out the pin with a sledge hammer. Calley used the sledge hammer against a driver pin, which I held to the trailer's pin. It was a hot day, and his hands were sweaty. As he swung, the sledge hammer slipped in his hand, and hit my head instead of the pin. Two things saved me. I was wearing a hard hat, and there was space for my head to move with the blow. Even so, it was a heck of a wallop. I stood up. Calley's eyes were big as saucers. As I keeled over and fell down the slope, I heard him yell, "My God, I've killed him!" Then I was out cold.
A few minutes later a couple of workers helped me back up the slope. I couldn't have made it up there by myself, for I was only half conscious and my legs weren't working quite right. The doctor said I was ok, for by the time they got me to his office enough time had passed to rule out concussion.
On that job we had to spend 15 minutes or so before firing up the machines in the morning, inspecting them for rattlesnakes. Usually there would be two or three on every machine. The snakes would get on them at night to cuddle up to the warm engines.
Another Accident!
One summer we had a job on Stevens Pass, near Cole's Corner (later
the Squirrel Tree, and later still, something whose name I've forgotten).
I drove a water truck by day, and after work Cousin Bob and I would practice
operating a Caterpillar DW-21 and an Allis-Chalmer's HD-19 tractor. The
tractor was a little larger than a D-8 Cat. The DW-21 was a rubber-tired
earth mover, pushed through the cut by the tractor while it scoops up the
dirt.
The stock tractor had a hydraulic system for controlling the dozer. That was too slow to suit the company, so Calley replaced it with a cable system from a D-8. The control arm protruded horizontally from behind the driver's seat to about even with his nose. The tractor also had a torque converter, so normally it was driven with the throttle wide open.
One evening Bob was driving the DW-21 and I was pushing him with the tractor. Bob's dad (Jim Sr.), my dad (Bert Sr.) and Brother Bert were watching. Bob and I were new to this, and we were having trouble keeping a smooth cut. It had steep hills and valleys, the result of us over-controlling.
On one pass, after pushing Bob through the cut, I was wide open in 3rd gear reverse, making my way back to the beginning of the cut. The tractor dipped into a valley and then up the next hill. It dipped so violently that I was left in mid air, several inches above the seat. Then as it rose I came down, with my chin hitting squarely on the control arm. Stunned, I was flopping around on the deck while the tractor went racing toward the river. Finally I was able to reach up and close the throttle, stopping about 20 feet short of the water.
Bert swears that as I was heading for the river he heard dad call out
in a panic, "My Son!" and Jim call out in an equally panicked
voice, "Our tractor!" Probably not true, but it makes a good story.
That was the only really happy summer I had in road construction. The weather
was comfortable, not blazing hot, I lived in Mom and Dad's cabin at Lake
Wenatchee, the work was fairly interesting with some responsibility, and
the fishing was great!
The new road was straight, and kept cutting off sections of Nason Creek, re-routing the creek so that it remained on one side of the road. The portions on the other side of the road were land-locked, and the fish started getting really hungry. Flies, live bait or lures, it didn't matter; we always got our limit - and then some!
Hi-Jinks
Construction crews' concept of humor was sometimes rather physical. For
example, one hot day during our half-hour lunch break, I lay down on a 10'x10'
piece of half-inch steel plate resting on steel sawhorses, to take a nap.
At the end of the lunch break someone woke me up by taking a healthy swing
at the steel plate with a sledge hammer. I felt like I was inside a base
drum. It seemed like hours before the vibrations left my body, and my ears
rang the rest of the day.
The Lunch box
On a road job near Moses Lake we had a Cat skinner who enjoyed
eating lunch inside a concrete culvert, because it was the only place for
miles around that was comfortably cool. There was room for only one person
there. At the stroke of 12 he would leap off his machine and, at a dead
run would grab his lunch box from the tailgate of his pickup truck. For
several days in a row he beat the others to the culvert, until someone tack-welded
his lunch box to the truck. He grabbed it "on the fly," but it
didn't budge. His momentum stretched his body out horizontal. Then the handle
broke, and he crashed to the ground. He wasn't hurt, except for a sore shoulder.
He was never fast enough to use the culvert again.
The Battle Royal
Early in the company's history, it had steam shovels, called
"merry-go-rounds" because of their ability to swing 360 degrees.
By the time I appeared on the scene these had been replaced by diesel powered
shovels. Two of the company's regular employees, Jim Elmore and Shorty (forgot
last name) had worked as a team for more than 30 years. Jim was a shovel
operator and Shorty was his oiler. They loved each other like brothers,
but you wouldn't know it because they were always swearing at each other.
They also liked to put on a show, as I found out on a sewer job in Waterville. They were in their 50s at the time, but a rough life made them look much older - as in ready for the grave. One day at noon Jim yelled something nasty at Shorty, who responded with "You (expletive deleted) come down here and say that!"
Jim jumped off the shovel and charged Shorty. They grappled and fell down a slope to a large culvert, swearing and beating on each other. They had put their lunches in the culvert at the beginning of their shift, and they spent their break eating and swearing, and making noises that made the locals think they were killing each other. They had a lot of fun with that.
The shoveling action of the merry-go-rounds and the later diesel shovels was controlled by cables. These heavy cables ran through pulleys to articulate the arm and open the floor of the bucket. One of Shorty's jobs was to keep these pulleys well lubricated, and occasionally they would have to stop work and grease the pulleys. Jim would stretch the arm out horizontally as low as he could get it and Shorty (usually on a ladder) would apply the grease. While doing this, he would have Jim "bump" the controls a little to turn a pulley for better access. Over the years they had several accidents in which the "bump" was bigger than expected and ran Shorty's finger through the pulley. Snip! One less finger. When I knew them Shorty had lost three fingers from his left hand and two from his right. Shorty would blame the operator for being too heavy on the controls and Jim would blame Shorty for being careless about where he put his hands. But they both knew that the real cause was the inherent danger of the job. Now everything is done with hydraulics, and that particular hazard is a thing of the past.
Some Close Calls (Mine and Others)
Runaway!
Goodfellow Brothers had a road job in Missoula, Montana, some 300 miles east of Wenatchee, and we had to move three Caterpillar DW-21s to the job site. Rather than make three trips to ferry the three rigs with the low-boy trailer, it was decided to drive these rigs to Missoula, at 28 miles per hour -- the earth movers' top speed. This was a long day's drive, if everything went well. Everything did not go well.
The DW-21 was a rubber-tired scraper, designed to be pushed through a cut to scrape up a load of dirt and transport it at up to 28 mph to another location on the project. Its four tires were six feet in diameter, and they doubled as the rig's suspension -- no springs.
The mass of these rigs was incredible. The rig ahead of me clipped a concrete guardrail post, uprooting it and sending it flying. The driver didn't even know he hit it.
We left Wenatchee at daylight -- about 4:30 a.m. -- and by noon we were at Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. We reached the top of (Lookout Mountain?) about 1:00 p.m., at which time we all piled into the proverbial handbasket headed for the proverbial destination.
I was third in line, with each of us separated by about 100 yards. When we reached the summit, the driver of the first rig put it in Mexican Overdrive, and began to pull away. Soon the second driver made the same decision, and pulled away from me. That looked like fun! I let him get a quarter-mile or so ahead of me and kicked my rig into neutral as well. The rig had no speedometer so I don't know for sure how fast we were going, but I believe we were soon doing well over 50, when I made a startling discovery: since the rig had no springs, every time the tires hit a bump the rig would be airborne! And the bouncing was so violent that I couldn't keep my foot on the brake. It seemed that every time my foot found the brake pedal the rig would be in the air, and every time it hit the ground again my foot would slip off the brake. The drivers ahead of me were having the same problem.
I could see what was happening ahead of me, and it was not encouraging. As the first rig entered a gradual turn to the right, it began to drift left, into the oncoming lane -- no oncoming traffic for him, thank God. Then the second rig began to drift, and I knew it would soon be my turn. Then a tanker truck appeared. Its driver saw what was happening, and pulled onto the shoulder. The second rig missed him by inches. The truck driver saw me coming, and jumped out of the truck and ran for the woods. I don't know how I missed that truck, for I was fully in his lane when I went by. Then the road straightened out and soon we were all in the proper lane again. After another mile or so the road leveled out and we regained control. We stopped at a turnout and vowed to tell no one what had happened; we were all too embarrassed at our stupidity. The flag car drivers went along with the vow. I think perhaps my dad heard about it anyway, for from then on those rigs traveled by low-boy.
I'm sure we've all had close calls, but usually they happen so quickly that there's no time to be scared until after the incident. This one was special because it happened so slowly; there was plently of time to get scared, and I made good use of it.
An Act of God?
We were building an access road alongside a metal irrigation pipeline near Mesa, Washington. The powderman set charges to break up a rock that had to be moved. He was running the wires to the battery box on the other side of the pipe when a lightning strike miles away sent a static charge down the pipe. The wires, which were lying across the pipe, took the charge and ignited the dynamite. The powderman was killed.
Another Death
This accident did not happen to Goodfellow Brothers; I don't remember the names of the contractors involved. The contractor was doing some work on Stevens Pass (Washington). The road had been built some 20 years earlier by another contractor, with earlier technology -- that technology being setting of dynamite charges with fuses. They would set the charges with fuses of varied length, so explosions would not occur simultaneously. That way, they could count the explosions and verify that all had gone as planned.
Evidently this left room for human error, for one charge had not gone off. It sat there and waited 20 years of freezing and thawing, freezing and thawing. When dynamite has been frozen it becomes extremely sensitive, for the nitro glycerine separates from the sawdust-like material that cushions it.
Fast forward 20 years. The contractor is widening the highway. A laborer is using a wagon drill to punch holes for placing dynamite. His drill contacts the old hole and the waiting dynamite. The drill operator is killed in the explosion.
Bert's Close Call
The company was building a pipeline several miles east of Wenatchee. My brother (four years my senior) was 17 at the time, and this was his first year on the job. He was a roustabout, carrying supplies from one point on the project to another. He drove a WWII jeep, loaded to the gills with drill bits, acetyline and oxygen tanks, dynamite, caps and whatever else was needed. As he told it to me, on one occasion he was taking something to a shovel -- not an "idiot stick," but diesel-powered shovel mounted on tracks. He drove along the side of a steep hill some 50 feet above the shovel, when an oxygen tank slipped from its moorings on the "high" side and shifted to the "low side" of the jeep. This tipped the jeep on its side, and the oxygen tank went skipping its merry way toward the shovel. It clipped a track on the shovel, knocking off the gas fitting. The oxygen tank became a civilian version of a JATO tank gone wild. It became airborne, and headed right back toward the jeep, missing it by just a few feet. Considering the stuff on board the jeep, a hit by that tank would have put Bert right in the middle of a fireworks show. He, of course, would not have been alive to see it.
I don't really know if this happened or not, for Bert subscribed to the motto, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Don't we all?
The Shit Detail
Sorry about using an impolite word, but it's the only one that adequately describes this incident.
Goodfellow Brothers had a job in Waterville (Washington) building a new sewer system for that town. The old system was a series of town-operated concrete cess pools that had to be replaced by sewer pipe. But first the cess pools had to be drained and their bottoms punched out. The cess pools were pumped out into waiting tank trucks, leaving maybe an inch of "material" on the bottom. My job was to go into the drained cess pool with a jack hammer and break up the concrete floor. Trust me. The job was as ugly as it sounds. Wearing fisherman's waders, I'd hold my nose, climb down, and do my thing.
One day I lost my balance and scratched my knuckles on the wall of a cess pool. Within a half hour my hand was nearly as big as a football, and hurt like the dickens. A local doctor gave me a shot of pennicilin and sent me home, where I stayed for nearly two weeks, with a pennicilin shot every day for the first week and every other day for the next. And people wonder why I didn't love the construction game!
Characters
Bun Hoffman
Bun was a sometime "pusher" (foreman) and some time
laborer, depending on the state of his body chemistry. In rank he'd go up
and down like a yoyo, because of his drinking. He was a competent worker,
but the booze had him by the throat. He'd go for weeks as a reliable worker
or foreman, and then disappear for a week or so, off on a toot. Then he'd
show up at the office, haggard and humble, hat in hand. Whichever brother
was holding down the office at the time would chew him out to a fare-thee-well,
and then fire him. Then he'd reluctantly give in, and retract the dismissal,
but give him the dirtiest, most menial jobs available. Slowly Bun would
gain ground and finally make foreman again, just in time for his next toot.
And so it went. Bun worked for Goodfellow Brothers for years, often working
through the winter on "make-work" projects. The company did that
for a lot of people who had stuck with them through the tough years.
Every time someone would assign him work, his response would be, "Yes, M'Lord." He wasn't being humble; the expression started out as a joke and then became a habit.
Calley Hotchkiss
Calley (I always pronounced it "Kelley," and he never
corrected me) was a mechanic when I knew him. I understand that earlier
he had been a driver - truck, or some other piece of machinery - but had
had an accident in which someone was killed, and he changed vocations.
Calley stayed with Goodfellow Brothers throughout World War II, and kept the company's equipment operational in spite of spare parts shortages. By peace-time standards he was considered a poor mechanic, but he was supremely practical and was able to make do with nearly anything - chewing gum to bailing wire. If duct tape were around then, he'd have been in seventh heaven.
In fact, Calley was held in such high esteem by the brothers that when Tom Riley tried to fire him, the brothers over-ruled him and instead transferred him to another project. Calley was never retired. When he got too old and feeble to do mechanic work, they had him chasing parts for projects or "working" around the office, but kept him on the payroll as a mechanic, with no summer layoff. I think he was on the payroll until he died.
What I remember most about Calley (except for when he hit me with a sledge hammer) was his almost grandfatherly attitude to me, Bert and our cousins in the company. (That, and his pipe smoking. He used to light his pipe with his ever-present acetylene torch.)
Roy Dodd
Roy in his younger days (when I was five or so) was a handsome
man. That changed as he grew older. He grew a pot belly that hung over his
belt so far it became the focal point for whoever looked at him. He used
to tell me that the belly came from bouncing up and down on the seat of
a Cat all his working life, but I suspect the quantity of beer he drank
had something to do with it.
I'm told he didn't have much in the brains department. I don't know about that, for by the time I went to work he was pretty much out of the picture.
He bought a side of beef once, and somehow talked Dad into buying half of it. I guess Roy either didn't have the freezer space for all of it, or couldn't afford to pay for it all. Anyway, he sold half to Dad. I understand it was so bad we had to throw it out.
Bob Jerome
When I started work, Bob Jerome was a leftover from the old days.
He had been a mule skinner, but when mules became obsolete he became a cat
skinner. He was work-wise; under his control a Caterpillar tractor could
practically walk on water. He was also an alcoholic, of the kind who could
(and would) drink all day and never show it. He carried, and drank from,
a flask of hard liquor wherever he went - on the job or off. I don't know
if the brothers knew or not. I suspect they did, but let it go out of loyalty
to him and because he was never drunk on the job. Drinking, yes; drunk,
no.
He was also rather gullible at times, and occasionally was the butt of practical
jokes.
Louie Luigi
Louie immigrated to the U.S. sometime in the '20s. He worked
as a laborer and sent almost all of his pay back to his family in Italy.
His English was understandable, but heavily accented. You had to listen
carefully. He lived on his poker winnings. He played every weekend at a
pub in East Wenatchee, and nearly always came away with more money than
he went in with. In fact, I'm told that he made more money at poker than
he did in his day job.
Louie was work-wise. No one could keep up with him at "sloping," in which laborers would use rakes and hoes to dress up the slope of a cut to make it look nice. I once worked alongside him, sloping a cut on my first road job - the one I described earlier on which I had my accident with the wobble-wheeled roller. I worked my tail off, with all the energy of an 18-year old in good physical shape. Louie just lazed along, but by the end of the day he had accomplished many times what I had done, and he was still fresh and going strong, while I was ready for bed.
Louie carried two bottles of beer in his lunch box - no sandwiches, just beer. By lunch time it wasn't just warm, it was hot, as summers in the Wenatchee area often exceeded 90 degrees. Louie liked his beer hot.
Louie retired at about 70, and died just a couple of months later. From boredom, I think, for he had only his work and his poker.
Frank Spinetti (sp)
Frank also immigrated from Italy, and he never did get a good
handle on English. In fact, I worked with him for almost two months before
I could understand him well enough for casual conversation. Until then,
when he told me what to do or how to do something, he had to repeat himself
several times, use gestures and sometimes even draw diagrams in the dirt
to make himself understood. Usually I felt pretty dumb by the time I figured
out what he meant.
But he was an artist with explosives. In all the shots I saw him orchestrate, not a single one was a surprise. He just never made mistakes.
Leo
Leo was a truck driver. Nothing more, nothing less. He drove
the company's lowboy, a tractor/trailer combination used for moving heavy
equipment down the highway. His job was driving, and he would never lower
himself to help load or unload the trailer - or do any other work except
driving that lowboy. He was in love with that truck and trailer. One day
he showed up with his name, "Leo," painted in fancy letters on
the truck's doors. He must have been an awfully good driver; he'd have been
fired otherwise.
Some of Dad's Stories
Dad sometimes told anecdotes about "the old days" - during the
transition to mechanization. A lot of immigrants worked those early jobs.
The work was labor intensive, with hand tools or mule-powered equipment.
And the workers, mostly Italian, were from poor families in the old country
and had little education - and little experience beyond construction work.
Indian Wrestling
In "the old days," 10 miles out of town was such a
long way that they had construction camps on site, where the workers would
stay during the week. Giuseppe and Luigi worked on one of Goodfellow Brothers'
projects on which they had such a camp. One day after work Dad was Indian
wrestling with some of the workers. Luigi kept trying to beat Dad and couldn't
in spite of the fact that he was a foot taller and 50 pounds heavier. He
simply did not understand leverage, and Dad beat him every time.
A few days later Giuseppe was doing some work that needed correcting, and Dad tried to tell him the right way to do it. Giuseppe was surly and defensive, and Dad finally fired him. He came out of the ditch angry and looking for a fight. Dad said the guy could have dismantled him. But just as Giuseppe started for him, Luigi yelled something in Italian. Giuseppe turned and ran the other way, and the two brothers left the job.
Dad asked another Italian what Luigi had yelled. It turned out that he had yelled that Dad was stronger than he looked, that he'd tear him apart!
Disappearing Act
Two other brothers worked as a team on a mule-powered scraper. One man drove
the team and the other operated the scraper. The scraper operator would
tell the mule skinner to turn left or right, go or stop.
One day they had a fight, and wouldn't talk to each other. That same day they disappeared, and couldn't be found anywhere on the job. They were finally found a good mile from the job, still moving away. The operator had dumped his load at the right place, but since he and the mule skinner weren't speaking, he didn't give the instruction to turn around to go back for another load. And the mule skinner was darned if he was going to turn without being told.
The Funnel and the Dime
They often had a party in the construction camp when the project was completed.
During one such party the beer was flowing nicely and everyone was having
a good time, when someone approached Bob Jerome (a mule skinner, and later
when I knew him, a cat skinner) with a challenge. "Bet you can't do
this, Bob," he said. He stuck a funnel in his belt and a dime to his
forehead. Slowly, and making it look as difficult as possible, he nodded
his head until the dime fell off and into the funnel.
"Bet I can," said Bob, and stuck the funnel in his belt and the
dime on his forehead. As he held his head high to settle the dime on his
forehead, the other guy poured his beer down the funnel.
Bob was enraged, but by the time he had cleaned himself up and changed his
trousers he decided that was a pretty good trick, so he went off to find
someone else to victimize. He found a victim, but while he was demonstrating
the victim poured his beer down the funnel. Poor Bob got it twice!
Military Service
So I Joined the Navy
The draft was still with us when Bert, and then I became eligible for this wonderful, mind-expanding government program. Bert allowed himself to be drafted into the army rather than enlist in another service, in the hope that he'd be stationed at Fort Lewis, allowing him to go home most weekends. I, on the other hand, wanted to see foreign lands, so I enlisted in the Navy. "Join the Navy and see the world!" ran the recruiting ads.
Bert spent his hitch in Korea and Hawaii; I spent mine at the U.S. Naval Training Center, San Diego. I went there for boot camp, and remained for two years. Such is the way of the military.
I was graduated from the University of Notre Dame in June of 1956, and worked that summer for Goodfellow Brothers, on a local highway project. One day in September while I was on an errand in the office, I got a phone call from Mom.
"David," she said, "a letter came for you from the Selective Service Board."
"Don't open it," said I. "It has to be my draft notice. If it's not opened I haven't received it." Then I hustled down to the Navy recruiting center, where I told them I was about to be drafted and I preferred to sleep in a bed rather than a foxhole. A predatory glint appeared in the recruiting officer's eye as I asked him what he could do for me.
"Well," he said, "we can give you eight years active duty, with the opportunity for on the job training in any of a number of skills, plus sea duty that will put you in all the exotic ports you've read about."
"Well," said I, "two years in a foxhole is beginning to look a little better. Bye."
"Wait!" he called. "With this enlistment you qualify for USAFI (United States Armed Forces Institute)! The Navy can give you training that will result in your getting a high school diploma!"
"I already have a high school diploma."
"Oh. In that case I'm authorized to offer you a six-year active duty enlistment, followed by two years active reserve."
"Two years in a foxhole still looks better than that. Thanks anyway."
"But wait!" Since you have a high school diploma, we can offer through USAFI up to two years credit toward a college degree!"
"I already have a college degree."
"Oh hell. Come on in for two years active duty, plus two years active reserve, plus four years inactive reserve.
So I joined the Navy.
Boot Camp to OCS to OGU to The Hoist
When it was time to go, I took a train from Wenatchee to Seattle, where (as ordered) I joined a group of other recruits at the YMCA. We stayed there for the night. The next day I was given the individual recruitment orders for the 20 or so of us, and was told I "was in charge." After all, I was the oldest (and therefore most mature), had had two years ROTC, and (drum roll please) was a college graduate!
We flew to San Diego on a United DC-3. United flew jets on some routes, but was still using prop jobs on the Seattle to San Diego run. We arrived at Lindberg Field and were met by a Navy bus. I turned over the paperwork to the petty officer in charge, and was promptly demoted from my exalted status as group leader.
One of the first things I did in boot camp was apply for OCS (Officer Candidate School). I took their 60-question test, and missed one question. The question was, "What is the proper water level in a lead-acid battery?" I knew the answer was "to the mark," but for some reason I circled "to the top." Even so, I was told that my score of 59 was the highest recorded there in 6 months. My acceptance to OCS was assured.
So why did I spend my hitch as an enlisted man? By my choice.
Boot Camp
Boot camp was a joke, at least as far as I was concerned. Since I was slated
for OCS, a lot of the time I was going to required seminars, lectures and
meetings when the rest of my recruit company was involved in marching, calisthetics,
KP, and so forth. I had some of that routine, but nowhere near what the
rest of the company got.
Mealtimes were quite a production. There were about 50 recruit companies, with about 100 men in each. All companies would march to the mess hall at the same time, and one company at a time was selected to go in, with the order based on the company's standing in overall weekly evaluation. The company I was in by accident got the "meatball" - a flag designating the best company that week - the first week. When we realized that meant admission to the mess hall first, we worked hard to keep the meatball, and never relinquished it for the rest of basic training.
We had one guy who just didn't care. He was fed up with training, and simply quit. Quit regular shaving, quit regular bathing, quit washing his clothes, quit making his bed. For a week or so, the company covered for him to retain the meatball. But we soon realized that we couldn't keep that up, and what's more, we didn't want to. So one night someone tossed a blanket over his head. Someone else held him by the ears while the blanket was replaced by a blindfold. Then, with a number of guys holding him, he got a shave - everything above the neck, including eyebrows. They tied him loosely so he could in time release himself, and then we all abandoned the barracks. By the time he got the blindfold off there was no one else there.
Naturally, he complained (sobbing) to the recruit commander and petty officers, and we escorted him to the petty officer on duty that night. He told his story to the petty officer, who asked him who did this terrible thing to him. Of course he didn't know. And the petty officer told him that since he couldn't name names, there was no way to punish anyone for this "crime." Then he told him that probably there was a reason for the hazing. Probably, he told him, he could avoid another episode by toeing the line. Problem solved.
Near the end of boot camp, two fellows decided they wanted out. Military life was not for them. One of them had a bright idea, and pretended at night to sleepwalk. Sure enough, the Navy discharged him because he would be a risk aboard ship - might go overboard. Unfortunately for him, the Army had no such worries. They snapped him up. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
The other guy had a much better idea. He showered with Fels Naptha soap,
which is a harsh skin irritant. He immediately broke out in a rash and ended
up in the base hospital. After a few days he was ok again, and was returned
to duty. He used the soap again, and went back to the hospital.
He did this several times, and finally the doctors decided he was allergic
to the wool in Navy issue turtle-neck sweaters, which often were part of
the uniform of the day. He got a medical discharge.
OGU
After graduation from boot camp, I was placed in a barracks called OGU (outgoing
units) where I was to wait for the next draft for OCS. There was one draft
every four months, and OCS took four months. A draft went to OCS just a
week before my entry into OGU, so I had nearly four months to wait. The
Navy kept me pumped up with plenty of fascinating jobs as I waited for the
next draft, such as mowing the Center Commander's lawn, picking up cigarette
butts outside the camp theater, and so forth. Then something happened that
ultimately made my stay at OGU more enjoyable.
I was out with some friends one night in San Diego, when we witnessed an automobile accident. The lady driving one car was stunned and nearly unconscious, and a small fire was burning under the hood. Two of us got the lady away from the car, and the other two were able to put out the fire by throwing sand on it. I was one of the sand-throwers.
The local newspaper made a big deal out of it, making us death-defying heroes who risked our lives to save a stranger. It must have been a really slow news day. This led to an interview with The Hoist, the training center's weekly tabloid. The reporter's questions brought out the fact that I had graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in English. The reporter informed the Public Information Officer (PIO) who immediately had me pulled off lawn-mower duty to serve as a reporter on The Hoist.
The Hell with OCS
Four months passed, and a new draft went to OCS. I was not on it, since
my place in the alphabet put me just outside their cutoff. That's when I
started doing the numbers.
1. I was six months into a two-year enlistment.
2. The next draft was four months away.
3. OCS took four months.
On receiving my commission I would be trading the 10 months I had left
to serve as an enlisted man for three years to serve as a commissioned officer.
Plus, as an officer, I could be called back in any time Uncle decided I
looked nice in a uniform. The numbers just didn't work for me - especially
now that "Uncle Sam's Canoe Club" was leaving a bad taste in my
mouth. So I wrote a letter to Bureau of Personnel (BUPERS) saying thanks
but no thanks, and turned the letter in to Commanding Officer, OGU. And
that's when the offal ran smack into the cooling system.
OGU's CO, a lieutenant commander, called me to his office and read me the
riot act, accusing me of being non-patriotic, possibly a traitor and likely
a communist. All because I had decided I didn't want to be an officer. If
this personal attack was meant to change my mind, it simply made me more
determined to get out when I could. I reminded him that the Uniform Code
of Military Justice required him to send my letter on, which he finally
did.
Next day I was called into the office of Commanding Officer, Recruit Training Command. This man was a full commander. He had been a submarine skipper in World War II. He was critical of my decision and tried to talk me out of it, but passed my letter on when he saw I was determined.
And the next day I was called in to discuss my letter with Captain Robert (Rusty) Dornin, Commanding Officer, U.S. Naval Training Center, San Diego. He too had commanded submarines in the war.
"Sit down, Goodfellow," he said. I sat. "Now what's this bullshit about you dropping out of OCS?"
I showed him the numbers, and explained that since I did not intend to make a career of the Navy, those numbers did not work for me.
"Makes sense to me," he said, and passed my letter on. I realized that BUPERS had received my letter when I was transferred from OGU to a "ship's company" barracks.
The Hoist
I continued as a reporter for The Hoist for the next couple of months, when
the paper's editor (a Journalist 1st Class named Bernice Timm) left the
service. The PIO, Commander Robert Mereness, made me editor. The fact that
I was a mere Seaman giving orders to reporters who outranked me (Journalists
3rd, 2nd and 1st Class) bothered no one. They, like me, were there simply
to satisfy their obligation to the Selective Service system, and didn't
care that my being in charge was against the rules.
Cumshaw
I soon found out that the Navy runs on cumshaw. Nobody told me this; it
just seemed like the easiest way to make a distasteful situation more bearable.
(Cumshaw, by the way, is loosely translated as "You scratch my back,
I'll scratch yours," or "We're all in this together; let's make
it work for us." For many years I thought it was strictly a Navy term,
but I have since found out its roots are in China, where it means the same
thing. As editor of The Hoist, I was in a perfect position to live on cumshaw.
My first use of cumshaw occurred when the staff (about 15 of us) decided we wanted to have a picnic on Labor Day. We knew that Special Services, an on-base organization that hands out everything from baseball gear to picnic hams, plus assigns park areas, was nearly jugged up for that day and was saving special areas and supplies for the wheels on the base. The challenge was to become a wheel.
Four weeks before Labor Day I sent reporters and photographers to spend a half-day with Special Services, and we prepared a full-page spread extolling the virtues of that organization. (This was an eight-page weekly, so a full page is a big deal.) We had pictures and interviews with every person involved, and in addition to the story in The Hoist, we sent stories and photos of the individuals involved to their home town newspapers for local publication.
When two weeks before Labor Day I applied to Special Services for space, baseball gear and picnic food, I discovered to my surprise that we had somehow become wheels, and anything we wanted was ours for the asking for as long as we wanted it. It was a great picnic.
I used cumshaw on another occasion for my own personal benefit. I bought a 1936 Ford coupe. It was a wreck, but all I could afford. (Actually, I couldn't afford that, but that's another story.) The driver-side window was broken out, the tires were bald, and the brakes pulled hard to the left. And one of the headlights was burned out.
I needed to get the car registered for on-base use, so I could get it to the base's "fix it yourself" garage, where I could fix it myself. But of course it wouldn't pass the safety inspection.
So I did a special on the Vehicle Registration section, ala Special Services. A week after it came out I drove the car to the Safety Inspection area just outside the base. A new guy came out to look at the car. He hadn't been there when we did the spread, and he didn't know me from Adam's off ox. He told me the car couldn't pass, which meant I couldn't even get it in to the do-it-yourself garage. About that time the chief petty officer in charge sauntered out and said, "What's the problem?" The inspector said there was no problem; he was just denying a pass for this car for safety reasons. Chief says to me, "Is it insured?" "Yup," I said. The chief says to the inspector, "Goodfellow's ok. So's his car. Give him the pass."
Here's the other story:
I wanted that car - any car - in the worst way -- but I was $200 short.
A WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) - a photographer's
mate 1st class (she outranked me by three grades, but worked for me in the
paper's darkroom) heard from someone else that I was trying to raise the
money for the car, and placed $200 cash on my desk and said "pay me
back when you can." She had no selfish interest in the loan. She was
simply as nice a person as she was beautiful. I paid her back at $50/month.
I got a part-time job at the base hobby shop to do it, for $50/month was
about what I made as a seaman 1st class. Thank you, Angelina DeBartalomeo!
Incidentally, Angelina did not believe in banks. She carried her entire
net worth in cash - in her purse.
My job at the hobby shop, a civilian-run enterprise leasing space on the base, was to teach people how to develop their own film and print pictures. The shop had a customer darkroom, and I spent a lot of time there showing people how to do it. I also did retail sales at the counter (model airplanes, mostly) and took portraits of customers with a 4x5 Crown Graphic. Most of our customers were recruits, just out of high school, with this being their first time away from home.
One of those kids bought something from me and when he paid me I said, "Gracias." He had been to Tijuana a few days earlier and someone there had taught him how to say "You're welcome" in Spanish. What came back to me was a phrase that would have made Oedipus blush. The whole store went silent until some officer started to snicker; then the whole place erupted into hoots and hollers. He went white when I whispered to him what the phrase really meant, and bolted. He got over it, though, and came back a few days later.
Some cumshaw was simply my due as editor of The Hoist. Off-base stuff especially. I received four tickets whenever the San Diego baseball team had a home game. Two of these I gave to the Sports Editor, Seaman George Reeves, for him and his date. In return, George would do a write-up of the game. The other two tickets I gave to anyone on the staff who expressed an interest.
Then there were the tickets to the Old Globe Theater, a Shakespearean theater in the round, situated in a beautiful area of Balboa Park. Sometimes the plays were Shakespeare's, some were more modern, and some were brand new. Usually they were great entertainment. One play I remember in particular was the local troupe's rendition of Harvey. It was terrific. I could almost see that wonderful, invisible giant rabbit - that Pookah - walking across the stage.
Those plays were always a bright spot in an otherwise unhappy time for me. Usually I got four tickets for opening night, and though I gave tickets away to staff, I always kept one for myself.
Small perks came from companies The Hoist did business with. For instance, a downtown commercial printer produced our paper, and when I became a ham radio operator our staff artist designed a QSL (confirmation of contact) card for me and I took it to that printer, intending to buy 500 of it on cheap paper. When the job came back it was 5,000 on expensive coated paper, at no charge. The printer knew I had nothing to do with printer selection, but appreciated the fact that I was easy to work with. (When Bert and I had our print shop, I found that easy-to-work-with customers were a rarity.) I'm still using those cards, 50+ years later.
The greatest perk I had as editor of The Hoist was a stolen one, and I make no apology for it; but it needs some background information to explain it.
Early in my enlistment I was so unhappy with the Navy - the chickenshit navy that I experienced at the Naval Training Center - that I lost my hair over it. It came out as I combed it, in big clumps. In a period of about one month I lost it all, except for a tuft here and there. Alopecia Arietta, the doctors called it, which was Greek for "bald spots." At 22 I was not ready for that and I became a sort of recluse. I compensated by studying Morse code in anticipation of getting my ham radio license. I got permission from Commander Mereness to do code practice in the office, after hours. He also gave me permission to set up a ham station at my desk when I got my Novice license. I'd spend hours in the late afternoon with a code practice oscillator, trying to increase my speed, and then in the evening I'd get on the air and talk to people all over the country, in code.
About this time I became aware of an opening for an editor of the paper at the Navy base in Yokosuka, Japan. Commander Mereness had just been transferred to become the Public Information Officer for the 13th Naval District and so he couldn't help me get a transfer, but if I was able to get off the Training Center he could put me anywhere I wanted to go - even if I was initially transferred to a garbage scow in San Diego harbor I'd be moved on to my intended destination before I ever went aboard.
So I put in for a transfer. And nothing happened. A couple of weeks later I did it again. Same result. I even requested duty in some of the armpits of the Navy, that had been crying for volunteers. No response. Finally it became too late. Not enough time left to serve to justify a transfer. I'd have had to re-enlist, and that I would not do.
Then I overheard Chief Petty Officer Broward, the PO in charge of The Hoist staff, brag to a friend that he had cumshawed the outfit that processed transfers into "losing" all records of me applying for transfer. As far as they were concerned, I didn't exist.
Broward was a signalman. His expertise was code in its various forms, and he had no experience with newspapers. I was doing a good job as editor, and he was afraid I might be replaced with someone who didn't know how to do the job, making him get off his rear and do something constructive.
When I heard what he had done I was enraged, and in the after hours whenever he walked by while I was practicing code, I would start calling him - in code - every nasty thing I could think of, and as an ex-construction stiff I had plenty in my vocabulary. Since Morse code was almost second nature to him, he understood every word, and I enjoyed watching his face turn red.
Finally he had had enough. He couldn't put me on report, because that would give me an opportunity to say why I was angry with him, and that would put him in worse trouble than I would be in. So he did what he thought was a better solution. He pulled my liberty card. He told me he'd give it back the day I apologized and stopped the harassment. I did not respond, but the next day I joined Angelina in the darkroom and together we built a press pass, with my name and photo, authorizing unlimited travel on and off the base, containing a good copy of the Center Commander's signature, and all sealed in plastic. Thank you again, Angelina! You were well-named!
This was my liberty pass for the next six months. It got me on and off the base at any time of the day or night, in the car or on foot, in uniform or in civvies. If the counterfeit had been discovered, it may have meant court martial, but I was so fed up I just didn't care. And after I had used it a few times it became obvious it was good as gold.
Fast Forward six months, to the day of my release from active duty. My
car was in the shop (off base) so I walked off the base. Broward was walking
in. He stopped me and wished me luck in civilian life, and then told me
how much he admired the way I had stuck it out without a liberty. I did
not respond. I just handed him the press pass. He studied it, scowling and
turning red with anger. Then suddenly his face cleared and he started to
laugh. "Well I'll be damned," he said. "I've been had! Goodfellow,
you'd have made one hell of a Chief Petty Officer!" With that he cleared
the air, and I wasn't mad anymore.
The Rumor Mill
Although mostly I was in the dumps about my patchy baldness, on one occasion
I managed to have some fun with it. I had two weeks' leave, and was taking
a Greyhound bus from San Diego to Wenatchee. I was traveling in uniform
to take advantage of the bus line's discount for service men. I looked like
the wrath of God. The tufts of hair that remained were dry and unhealthy
looking. I should have shaved it all off, but I was desperately trying to
keep it. As the bus filled up, people avoided the seat next to mine. Finally
that was the only vacant seat left, and a lady reluctantly sat down. She
kept glancing nervously at my head, and by the time she asked me what had
happened to me, I was ready for her.
The first atomic submarine, the Nautilus, had just made the news with some successful mission. I think it was traveling submerged to the North Pole. At any rate, this lady asked about my hair, and I told her I was a crewman aboard the Nautilus, and we had had a small accident aboard and my loss of hair was due to exposure to radiation. I was lucky, I said, for my station was as far away as possible from the nuclear engines, hinting that the other crewmen weren't so lucky. She started to ask me more, and I was ready to tell her more, when we came to her destination and she had to get off.
Months later I read an article in a newspaper emphasizing the safety of duty aboard the Nautilus, saying there had never been an accident involving the nuclear reactor, and that radiation levels inside the vessel have always been less than those found out of doors anywhere in the world. I like to think that story was the direct result of the cock-and-bull stuff I fed that lady!
Discharge and After
About the time of my discharge, I had a lady friend in the Personnel Office,
where discharge papers were drawn up. This WAVE knew how much I detested
the Navy, and that I was slated for two years active reserve, requiring
weekends and two weeks' active duty each summer. She took it upon herself
to make a "mistake" when drawing up my discharge papers. Those
papers discharged me directly to civilian life, with no mention of active
reserve. Halleluiah!
Five years later I was a family man with a steady job and a mortgaged house in Seattle when I received a letter from Bureau of Personnel, U.S. Navy. It informed me that a mistake had been made in my discharge documents, and that I was supposed to have been discharged to the active reserve. It instructed me to report immediately to the Navy active reserve unit in Seattle. I tossed the letter.
A year later another letter arrived from BUPERS. This was an angry letter, demanding that I report to my active reserve unit at once, or suffer dire consequences. This worried me, but I was determined to never don that uniform again. I trashed the letter.
Still another year went by. Then came another letter from BUPERS. I opened it nervously. It informed me that since I had chosen to ignore the previous two letters, and had failed to report to my active reserve unit, I was to suffer the consequences. I was hereby removed from the roles of the active reserve! Horrors! Dire consequences indeed.
