Another story from my childhood.  This is probably a good place to leave it.

By Garland Davis

My uncle Theodore was a Redneck and a tobacco farmer.  The farming was just a front to fool the Alcohol and Tobacco, (this was before firearms became so dangerous) agents, more commonly known as revenuers.  He was a middle-man distributor and sometimes retailer of a non-tax paid alcohol beverage, otherwise known as moonshine, white likker, and in more recent times, ethanol.  He often conducted protracted quality assurance tests of his product, in other words, he would get drunk and stay shit-faced drunk for days.

I remember a Christmas when I was eight or nine years old.  I was already old enough to know that Santa Claus was a fictional character that children are misled to believe in. I had suspected as much for quite a while, the fat son-of-a-bitch never brought the things I asked for in the lengthy letters I wrote and my parents mailed to the North Pole for me.  My brothers, sisters and many of my cousins still believed that Santa Claus broke into their houses on Christmas Eve and left them cheap ass toys and ugly clothing.

It was a snowy afternoon and evening.  My father worked for the state highway department and had been called to work operating a snow plow scraping snow off the roads and highways.  My mother had taken my brothers and me to my grandmother’s house for Christmas Eve. Two of my aunts and many of my cousins were also there.  My Uncles also had been called in to plow the roads.  We had finished supper, the other kids and I were listening to the radio (my grandmother didn’t have a television), playing board games or reading. All the women were in the kitchen making cookies when my uncle Theodore arrived.

He parked in the front yard and came into the house carrying a shotgun in one hand and a quart fruit jar in the other.  I never knew how to take him.  I don’t know whether he liked kids or not, but he always acted as if he didn’t.  We were all a little afraid of him.  He went into the kitchen and set the shotgun in the corner by the door.  He sat down at the table and asked for an empty  glass and another glass of water.  His method of drinking; he would pour a half glass of whiskey with a glass of water on the side.  It may take an hour, but when he drank, he killed the whiskey and followed it with the water.  Then he would refill the glasses and begin the wait until next time.

After about an hour, he yelled, “Hey all you young’uns git in here!  I brought you some candy.

The younger kids jumped up and ran into the kitchen. I trepidatiously followed.  He had a pile of candy on the table and was handing it out.  My aunts and mother were reminding the kids to say “Thank You” and were smiling at their kids.

My uncle suddenly said, “Be quiet, I heered something.”  He jumped up grabbed his shotgun saying, “Hear that?” and went through the door onto the back porch.  Almost immediately the shotgun fired and then again. He yelled, “Git yore ass outta here you fat bastard!”  Everyone was wondering what he was shooting at.  I started through the door, but Mom grabbed me and said, “Don’t go out there.”

He comes back through the door and sets the shotgun back in the corner and says, “Well they ain’t gonna be no goddamn Sandy Claus this year.  I just run that Sumbitch off.”

Those Santa Claus-believing kids were screaming and crying. They probably suffered mental problems and may have needed therapy for many years.

I must have inherited some of the same genes as my uncle.  I thought and still think it was hilarious as hell.  He died during my second year in the Navy.  He was in prison during my boot leave.  I never got the chance to have a drink with him.  I think we would have hit it off. He would have probably been a good Asia Sailor.

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

The Last Time I Saw Doug

By: Garland Davis

Just about the only friend I had at school during my elementary years was named Douglas.  Doug was a preacher’s kid.  He was short, portly, wore coke bottle lens glasses, slobbered, and had a bladder condition that caused him to have to piss about every half hour, often times in his pants.  The other kids in school honored him with the name “Pissy Pants.”  I had shit my pants the first day of first grade.  I guess, it became natural that “Dookie Drawers’ and “Pissy Pants” were forced into a friendship of sorts, primarily, because none of the other boys wanted anything to do with us unless they got a chance to beat us up for being smart, the teacher’s pet, or just because they could.

Doug was a couple of years older than me.  I met him when I was promoted from first grade to third grade a week after I had started school.  My grandmother had taught me to read and write and rudimentary arithmetic when I was four and five.  This caused an immediate desire for the bigger boys in the third grade to welcome me by kicking my ass for being a smarty pants.  Doug also was a smarter than average kid and was also picked on by the other boys. He was as large as them, but wouldn’t fight back.  We just kind of gravitated to each other.

When other kids went to the playground for recess, we carried our books to read.  We usually went to the corner of the schoolyard closest to the door and we and kept a watch for anyone sneaking up to kick our asses.  The teachers tried to look out for us, but that only caused a higher level of animosity from our classmates.

We were if you could call it that, friends from third grade through seventh grade.  Before eighth grade Doug’s father was offered a larger congregation in another town and they moved away.  I lost track of him.  It would be eight years before I saw Doug again.

By 1964, I was a Third Class Petty Officer serving in the ammunition ship Vesuvius.  We had just returned from the Western Pacific and were anchored in San Francisco Bay. I had just gotten off a bus on Market Street heading for a nearby Gin Mill to meet a fellow cook for some recreational boozing and harassing the Bar Hogs.

I heard someone yell, “Garland.”. No one called me Garland now. Among my shipmates, I was known as Dave.  I turned looking to see who was calling my name. I saw him there. At first, I didn’t recognize him.  He was pretty heavy, no make that downright fat, and sporting a long shaggy beard. He said, “Hey Man, It’s me, Doug.”

It took me a minute. I tell you, I was flabbergasted.  The last time I had seen him was at a little country school in North Carolina and here he was in San Francisco.  He told me he was meeting his girlfriend in about an hour.  I reluctantly joined him at a little coffee shop to talk.  From the smell coming off him, he hadn’t outgrown the moniker “Pissy Pants” nor did he waste a lot of time in the shower.  He didn’t talk like the Doug I once knew. I couldn’t hear the North Carolina in his voice. He talked fast with the quick rising tones you associate with door to door salesmen, con men, and panhandlers.

Of course, my uniform told him my story.  During the next forty-five minutes, I learned that his dad had run off with a widow woman from the congregation whom he was consoling.  This left Doug and his mother destitute.  His mother had a mental breakdown and had been institutionalized.  He lived with an uncle for a time but had finally left North Carolina on a Greyhound Bus for California to explore the evolving hippie culture.

He now lived with his girlfriend in a commune. Although she wasn’t exclusively his girlfriend.  He said there were a number of girls in the commune and you could just fuck whoever was available.  He said many of the members were artists and musicians but mostly lived by shoplifting and panhandling.

He said, “Here she comes now,’ as he stood to wave at someone I couldn’t see.

I turned and looked up as this huge lump of suet approached. I tell, you, this woman could have wrestled in the same weight class as Andre the Giant.  From the smell that came off her, she also had a bladder problem that caused her to piss herself frequently. Apparently she also shared a lack of motivation with Doug to bathe or there was a lack of shower facilities at the commune. He introduced us and said they were on the way to North Beach, where the commune flopped in a couple of apartments.  They invited me to come along. He offered good drugs and free pussy.  I begged off.  I told them I had to meet a guy who owed me money and I couldn’t afford to miss him.

I had no desire to involve myself with them or their lifestyle.  He hit me up for a five dollar “loan” and the two heavyweights waddled out of my life forever. Worth the five bucks to see the last of Doug.

And that is the last time I saw Doug and if I never see him again it will be too soon.  Truthfully, I never really liked Doug and he is a reminder of all the unpleasant hours and ass kicking’s I endured in elementary school.

Legacy

By:  Garland Davis

Definition of legacy

plural leg·a·cies

1. 1:  a gift by will especially of money or other personal property :  bequest
2. 2:  something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past<the legacy of the ancient philosophers

I learned of an event yesterday that has me thinking about legacies.  Not the monetary or property legacy in the definition but the historical legacy that a person leaves in the minds and memories of those left behind.  Was the person a good or bad person, etc.

We often hear the word legacy in connection with presidential terms and libraries.  Lincoln set the bar pretty high by freeing the slaves and preserving the United States.  If the pundits and newscasters are to be believed, the thing foremost on a president’s mind is the legacy he will leave.

Although his term still has about thirteen months to run, it appears that Obama’s legacy will be:

• Two autobiographies that contradict each other.
• Friends with a domestic terrorist from the 60’s.
• A questionable education, of which, he keeps the particulars of hidden.
• A questionable place of birth that leaves many unanswered questions.
• A historical national debt and a failing economy.
• An unwanted health care program that is flawed.
• Mishandling of the wars in the Middle East.

His predecessor, G.W. Bush’s legacy is as follows:

• Hanging Chads.
• World Trade Center attacks.
• Poor response to Katrina and ineffective follow-up.
• Strong response to Trade Center attacks by taking the war to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
• Needlessly involving the country in the Iraq war.
• No more caring president when it involves the active duty and veteran service men and women.

I’ll leave Bill Clinton’s legacy with a single line. Although I could write much more, this will be what he is most remembered for:

• Monica and a blue dress.

George H.W. Bush’s legacy is pretty much:

• A broken promise involving a tax raise.

Those of us who served in the military under Reagan remember:

• A military second to none.
• A six hundred ship Navy with four Battleships and thirteen Carriers.
• F114’s and Libya.
• “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
• The Iran hostages released the first day of his presidency.
• And so much more…..

Jimmy Carter brings to mind a number of things:

• Foremost is the Iranian hostage crisis.
• Peanuts
• Billy Beer.
• Gas lines and rising gas prices.
• Wage and price controls that didn’t work
• That’s all I got.

I could continue going back president by president, but I think that is enough to emphasize the point I am trying to make.  I am sure there are those who would dispute my points, but this is my opinion.

A lady I know died in her sleep Friday night and was found yesterday morning.  It caused me to think about legacies that us common people leave behind.

Her father was a sailor who promised the pregnant Japanese girl that he would return for her and her baby and then abandoned her.  Her stepfather, another sailor, barely tolerated her and when her brother was born, he and her mother pretty much ignored her.  She was often neglected and left with relatives for weeks at a time.  She did poorly in the DOD Schools and was passed through the system with a very poor education.

She discovered alcohol at an early age and then drugs.  She did straighten herself up long enough to marry and have a child.  But it was short-lived.  A Navy wife, alone, her husband deployed and her with a predilection for mind-altering substances, and a willingness to do whatever it took to get them was a ticking time bomb.  Her husband was granted a humanitarian transfer to shore duty in Pearl Harbor to care for his daughter.  He eventually divorced her, left the Navy and moved, with the daughter, to the mainland.  She hadn’t seen the daughter since the girl was a child.

She moved from shack up to shack up.  She went where the drugs were.  When the men kicked her out, she would go begging to her mother and stepfather for a bed to sleep and food to eat.  They always took her in.  She would stay for a time and then the urge and need for drugs would send her looking.

I don’t know how long she had been home.  Yesterday morning, her sister-in-law went to wake her and found her dead.

I guess her legacy will be, poor abandoned and neglected girl who lived her life believing and acting as if she had no value.

I have never considered a personal legacy.  I hope I am remembered as a good husband and provider.  I also hope I am remembered as a crazy son-of-a-bitch and a good shipmate.  And, I hope that from time to time someone finds the crap I write out there in the ether, reads it and thinks, “I would like to have known him.”

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

Just a Few Degrees Off Cool

By:  Garland Davis

I wasn’t aware of the concept of being cool for much of the time growing up but, as comedian Bill Engvall put it I was always just a few degrees off cool.

My name has relegated me to uncool in so many ways.  I was born in 1944 before my Mom and Dad were married.  He was away in Indiana training for duty in Europe.  They were married after he was discharged.  I still have my mother’s maiden name.  They would have to go to court to change my name and that cost seventy-five dollars.  Let’s face it, they didn’t have that much money and there was another baby coming. So I ended up the lone Davis boy in the Salmons family.  Learned early on the meaning of “Bastard.”

To top it off, I was given the most uncool nickname ever, Buster.  My mama named me Garland Gray.  Buster came about when my aunts came to see the “new” baby. I was told that I was given the name when my Aunt Bet asked my mama, “What did you say his name is?”

“Garland Gray,” she replied.

“My God, what a mouthful of a name.  I’m going to call him Buster.”

I was about two years old (hell yeah, I remember this stuff.  I remember the day I was born.  Cried like a baby!) and most of the men I knew either smoked or chewed tobacco.  I didn’t like the smell of the smoke or of the chewing tobacco.  But, most of my aunts dipped snuff.  It was a fine powder, known as Scotch Snuff.  I remember them packing their lower lips, getting their spit cups and sitting on the front porch clucking like a bunch of old hens.  I thought I might like to try snuff.

I know it was a Sunday.  We had just come from church.  One of my aunts announced that she had found a new brand of snuff and it tasted good.  They were in the kitchen around the table, each of them using the little spoon that came with the snuff to pack it under their lip.  I asked if I could have some and of course, they laughed and said no.

They all retired to the front porch and left that jar of snuff sitting in the middle of the table.  I climbed onto a chair and pulled myself up to the table.  I pulled the jar to me and wrestled the lid off.  I smelled it.  Didn’t smell that good.  For some reason, I blew into the jar.  I was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of tobacco powder.  I was coughing, sneezing, my eyes burned and I was crying.  After, I was cleaned up and was pretty much okay, I was crying again because my Mama swatted my bottom for getting into the snuff.  I have never tried snuff, of any kind, since.  If anyone tells you that a two-year-old is too young to make a life decision, I have news for that person.

I tell you, it seems as if I was always a little behind where I thought I should be.  I think I was between two and or three years old when I inherited a hand me down tricycle from an older cousin.  I was proud of it and pedaled down the walk to show the kid next door.  He wheels out his brand new, shiny trike sucked the cool right off me.  I looked at the scratched, rusty bike I had been so proud of and for the first time realized that the world was unfair when it came to cool.

Shortly after the tricycle, we moved to the farm.  Everyone in the farm community wore denim bib overalls.  My overalls were corduroy.  All the cool guys were wearing denim.  I wanted to be cool and begged for denim overalls.  And finally, my begging was rewarded.  I had denim overalls to start school.  I strolled proudly through the door of the first-grade class dressed in my brand new denim overalls to learn that only one other boy was wearing overalls. All the other boys sure seemed cool in their denim jeans.  To really add to it, I had to go to the toilet and I couldn’t get the galluses unfastened and shit my pants.  Not long afterward, my Mama bought me some denim pants with a belt.  What were known as “hip britches.”  I was on my way to cool.

I had spent most summers with my grandmother and she had taught me to read, write, add, subtract, and multiply.  Shortly after the mishap with the galluses, I was moved from the first grade to the third grade.  I would no longer have to endure the name “Dookie Drawers” during recess.  In elementary school, like every organization I have ever been affiliated with, embarrassing news travels at the speed of light.  Not only was I called Dookie Drawers, but I got my ass whipped regularly because I was smarter than the rest of the class.

You couldn’t reach a higher state of uncool.  Think not? I stammered.  Whenever I tried to talk, especially if I was excited, I had a real problem with the letter S.  I solved that problem by talking as little as possible.  I became the introverted little geek who had shit himself in the first grade.  The only friend I had was the preacher’s kid who wore the coke bottle lens glasses, slobbered and had a bladder condition that caused him to piss about every half hour.

A common theme of recess was, “Hey it’s old Dookie Drawers and old Pissy Pants alone in the corner of the schoolyard reading books, let’s go whip their asses.”.  The thing that usually saved us was our ability to out run them back to the school room.

By the time I reached fifth grade, my brother started first grade.  He was a confident leader in his crowd on the school yard.  He told tales, both true and false, about me that filtered through the school yard detracting from any iota of cool that I did possess.  He did it partly out of spite for unpleasantness I had caused him at home and because he was expected to, and couldn’t, live up to my example as an exemplary student.

I pretty much stumbled through a six-year eighth-grade education thusly.  The one bright point of my elementary education was a sixth-grade teacher who cared enough to work with me to overcome my stammer.  For fifteen minutes every day after class she had me practice vocal exercises and encouraged me to practice at home and to try to emulate the newscasters on radio and TV.  I slowly overcame my stammer and haven’t been able to shut up since.

I knew when I went into High School, it would lay a measure of coolness on me.  I forgot that I would be entering high school with the same kids I had had to endure during elementary school.  Being about two years younger than them, our interests suddenly didn’t coincide.  They were entering puberty.  Their voices changed, they grew body hair and suddenly boys and girls became interesting to each other.  Me with my books and my science projects were of no interest to them.  I would have two wait two years for students of my own age.  I was still “Dookie Drawers” but, no one cared any longer.  My friend’s father had been offered a congregation in another town and he moved to another school.  I was too young, too smart, too alone and too uncool enough to fit into the social life of the high school.

The summer before my Junior year, a cousin had enlisted in the Coast Guard.  He was a high school dropout and the recruiter sent him to take the tests for his GED.  He passed and was issued a certificate by the State of North Carolina stating that he had the equivalency of a high school education. I called the testing facility and learned that anyone could take the tests, but it cost $20.  I had that much money and the Friday before my fourteenth birthday, I took the tests.  About a week before school started I received my certificate in the mail.

On the first day of school, I went to the Assistant Principle and showed it to him and told him I didn’t have to go to school any longer.  He burst my bubble.  He told me that regardless of the GED, state law required children to attend school until at least sixteen years old.  But, he told me that since my scores on the GED tests were extremely high, that he would try to get me into a state vocational school.  He made a call and told me the only thing available was a course in Baking and Bakery Science.  Not wanting to spend two years in a high school where I was so out of place, I agreed.

A little less than three years later, I enlisted in the Navy, where I served as a baker and a cook for thirty years.  I always thought by being a sailor I had finally achieved a state of cool.  But the older I get, the less I give a crap about cool.

But I tell you, The Asia Sailor Westpac’rs reunion in Branson, MO and the shipmates I meet with there every May are cool.

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

Changes

by:  Garland Davis

Life gets weird when you try to take it seriously.

Beat someone to death with a fire ax, get convicted, and sent to prison you will end up with a room, your own rack, a window, fresh air, regular hot showers, movies, and television.  In addition, with the current state of American justice, you would be out in eighteen months to two years.

If you rode old Fletcher, Gearing, and Forrest Sherman class tin cans and old swaybacked Cruisers out in Asian waters, you got very little of that. People in prison were living a lot better than you were. Hell, they probably got enough blankets and didn’t have to steal them from each other to keep from freezing to death or didn’t have to wear a kapok jacket to keep from drowning in their own sweat.

Also, they never missed things.  They had radio, TV, newspapers and were kept abreast of things happening in the world.

We couldn’t. Oh, the Radiomen got news sheets sometime with shit that no one cared about, you know, the scores of soccer matches in England and who won the polo game.  The kids begging for Pesos or trying to get you a date with their sister in Olongapo knew more about what was going on in the world than your average Asian sailor.

We lived in a world where day and night were controlled by watches, painting, and cleaning, general quarters, refueling, rearming, another watch, and was that midrats or breakfast that I just ate.  If you were a seaman or fireman life became damn near meaningless because everything you did was controlled by an entity know as Petty Officer. And, somewhere, we lost our link with the civilized world. In short, the world passed us by and we were content with that, we had found a new, more exciting world.

For most of the sixties, I lost touch with baseball.  It had been one of my passions growing up.  I started losing my excitement for the game when the Dodgers left Brooklyn and I was getting closer to seventeen and could enlist.  During most of the sixties, I have no idea who won the series, what happened to Old Gold cigarettes and what happened to those latex girdles, you know, the ones that were impossible to get past in high school. And when did they stop making that ugly assed Edsel.  I remember when Kennedy was shot.  I was in Subic and Vesuvius sortied with the fleet.  We were ready in case the Russians had been involved. I read about the first man on the moon a month or so after the landing although someone had told me about it.  I remember hearing about and then becoming very involved in a place in Indo-China known as Viet Nam. How, why and when is still fuzzy as hell.

They told us that the economy was poor.  The only thing we knew about economics was if you spent money on a short time, then you had less beer money and vice versa and that the operators of the ‘slush funds” were greedy mothers.

You would come into Subic and find yourself dining on monkey and San Miguel in some dive and someone would say something like,

“Hey, shipmate what do you think of Muhammad Ali?”

“Who the fuck is Muhammad Ali?”

“You know, the heavy weight boxing champion.”

“I thought Cassius Clay was champ, when did this Ali character kick his ass?”

“No, Clay and Ali are the same.”

“I’ll take your word for it, honestly, I haven’t got any idea what you are talking about. Hey, honey give us two San Miguels here”.

“Jeezus, man where in the hell have you been?”

“At sea, out on the ocean… Ask me anything about dirty laundry, water hours, sweating your ass off, powdered fucking milk and seagull shit and I’m your expert.”

It’s not that we were stupid and totally unconcerned, it was strictly a matter of access. If you grow up living in a metal box, the only thing that matters is when the son of a bitch who opens the lid shows up.

Then someone would ask, “Any you guys ever heard of a place called Vet Namy or something like that?”

“Nah, where the fuck is that?”

“I got a letter from my Mom.  She says that the Commies are trying to take it over and that Ike signed a thing that said we would help them and Kennedy sent some Army dudes there.  It’s over here in Asia some fucking place.”

Then the Chief would come in with his cigar spreading ashes and say, “Hey, it ain’t here by the geedunk and it ain’t in the mess decks.  Knock off the bullshit…toss them soda cups in the shitcan and haul your worthless asses topside before I plant this brown shoe in your rectum.

We averaged nineteen in age.  You are expected to be dumb at nineteen and not know what is happening in the world.  Hell, everyone expected you to be unconnected.  You could make Third Class and have no fucking idea how a zipper worked.

The first time back in the States after a Tour in Asia or a protracted WestPac cruise came as a rude awakening.  When you left for the Pacific Rim, George Jones was an icon in country music and Elvis was the king of Rock and Roll.  The first day back in the “world” your friends asked if you had heard the latest Beetles.  This left you wondering, “why the fuck would you be listening to a bunch of bugs?”

Then your best bud from High School comes in with his hair down below his ears.  You immediately offer to loan him a few bucks.  He really must be a loser if he can’t afford a haircut.  Then you see other guys and think that you must have missed something somewhere.  You were wondering, “is every dude I know queer.”

When you left for the orient all the dudes had flat top haircuts and girls wore bras, saddle shoes or penny loafers, and smelled sweet and were saving the pussy for their future husband.  By the time you returned to the states, guys had hair hanging half way to their asses.  The girls were going barefoot, without bras, wearing dirty tie-dyed skivvy shirts, smelled like an Olongapo pisser and would fuck anyone who could stand the smell.

You found yourself hoping that the Tincan you had orders to in San Diego would be leaving for WestPac and recall that you were overjoyed to learn that it was to be forward deployed to Yokosuka.

After spending eight years in Asia, you never caught up. Never understood poor personal hygiene… Looking like bums… War protesters… Psychedelic anything… Dope… Gene McCarthy… Hubert Humphrey… Gremlin cars… A whole lot of stuff. I’m still twenty fucking years behind.

But the Navy gave us a home, shipmates who would become closer than your family, and a load of great memories of tough times spent in conditions that only we could understand. Asia sailors, in the words of John McCain, understood the concept of serving a cause greater than one’s self.

Somehow, the world changed.  We didn’t.  We couldn’t.

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

Retirement

By:  Garland Davis

“All three of my ex-wives were good housekeepers.

The first one kept the fucking house.

The second one kept the fucking house.

And the third one kept the fucking house.

……Buddy Hackett……

“Dave, after having to give my ex fifty percent of my retirement pay and then paying child support on top of that, I am left with fourteen fucking dollars and eighty-seven fucking cents every month”

….Charles Nathan Fulfer….

I was a Navy Master Chief Petty Officer assigned as Command Master Chief of a Submarine Squadron in San Diego.  This was my twilight tour and I would be retiring from the Navy in a few months after thirty years’ service.  My relief was already ordered aboard.  Everything was ready for the turnover to him.

I have been married twice.  The first wife was a shipmate’s sister, a lovely girl I fell in love with when I stopped at his house in North Carolina.  I was on leave in Florida and he in North Carolina.  I was taking my car back to Connecticut and had promised to pick him up for the ride north.  I arrived at his house a couple of days early.  During the three days before we left, I fell madly in love.

Within a year we were married.  I arranged duty on a boat home ported in Norfolk so she could be near home.  She actually lived with her parents when I was deployed to the Med or on patrol.  We drifted through eleven years of marriage.  No children and no real problems.  I was at sea a lot and we just naturally grew apart.  The divorce came as no surprise to either of us.  I had received orders to a Pearl Harbor boat.  She just didn’t want to go that far from home.  The divorce was amicable.  She made no demands on me other than her rights to half my retirement pay.  I had no say in the matter and couldn’t refuse.  She was entitled to it by law.

I had nineteen years in when I married my second wife.  It was also her second marriage.  She had been married to a Chief on a skimmer.  She had caught him with another sailor’s wife and divorced him in, what I came to understand, a very acrimonious and contentious splitting of the sheets. We had, I thought, a good marriage.  She was helpful and supportive of me and my career and interacted well with the other wives after I was appointed COB on my first boat. Although, at times she could be a real bitch when things didn’t go the way she wanted.

After a tour of shore duty with TRE in Pearl and another boat, I came to the squadron in San Diego for a final tour before retiring.

I was just coasting when the Commodore called me in.  He told me that the COB (Chief of the Boat) of one of our deployed boats was being relieved for sexual improprieties.  It is unfortunate that the politicians have decided that open homosexuality is permissible in the services.  The Commodore asked me if I would fly to Yokosuka, Japan and act as interim COB for an approximate forty-five-day patrol.

My first reaction to the Commodore’s request was excitement. A chance for a final liberty in WestPac, a chance to ride a boat one last cruise, and a couple months’ sub-pay.  I would come back to San Diego to a retirement ceremony and sixty days’ terminal leave.  I had a tentative job offer at the local ship building company. My wife and I were planning a month’s vacation driving and sightseeing the country.  She was enthusiastic about it.  I accepted the assignment and went home to tell my wife and pack.

She wasn’t happy that I had accepted without talking with her first.  I explained to her that I really didn’t think I had a choice and I wanted to experience one more trip in a submarine.  After all, it was what I had done and done well for the majority of my life.  I explained that the extra money would help finance the trip we had planned.  She reluctantly accepted the fact that I was going. I was flying from San Diego to Los Angeles and then on to Tokyo the following morning.

She wasn’t happy and that evening showed her displeasure as only a woman can.  The farewell the next morning was cold.  I took a taxi to the airport.  She refused to drive me.

I arrived in Yokosuka and reported to the boat.  My wife’s displeasure and her reaction to my going were driven from my mind in the last minute preparations for sailing.  There were stores to load, berthing assignments, duty assignments, qualification checks, battle station assignments, a thousand things to do or oversee.  And then we were at sea.  After clearing Tokyo Bay, we pulled the plug and were, for all intents and purposes, isolated from the world for the next fifty days.

Now the surface ships have e-mail and limited telephone service that enables the members to maintain almost constant contact with family.  Submarines do not have that luxury.  We anxiously await, what in this modern day, is termed snail mail.  We arrived in Yokosuka and mail bags were waiting on the pier.  I wasn’t expecting mail, since I was only aboard temporarily.

After completing all the tasks of entering port and ensuring that watch bills were correct and the watch was set, I met the Master Chief who was to become the permanent COB of the boat.  Only an abbreviated tour was necessary.  He had served as the A-Gang LCPO on the boat before.  He assured me that he had it and I could go make a call to my wife.

A telephone was available in the CPO mess.  I dialed the numbers to my home only to get the message that the number was no longer in service.  That can’t be.  I tried again and got the same message.  What the fuck.  I called my neighbor and friend down the street.  He answered and I asked if he knew why my phone wasn’t in service.  He told me that my wife had divorced me in an uncontested divorce.

I caught the first flight to the states and arrived in San Diego about noon.  Taking a taxi to my house, I found that my keys no longer worked and no one answered the door.  As I walked toward my neighbor’s house, two police cars stopped and one of the officers asked my name.  I told him.  He said you will have to come with us.  I was taken to the main police station and informed that a Temporary Restraining Order had been issued forbidding me from communicating with or going within a hundred yards of my ex-wife or my former home.

The same day I left for Japan, she had contacted the lawyer from her previous divorce and filed two days later.  Letters notifying me and letters setting court dates were all sent to my address at the squadron in San Diego.  Expecting nothing important, I had instructed them to hold my mail until my return.  Her lawyer rushed everything through the divorce court.  Since I didn’t appear in court to contest the divorce she was granted everything she asked for.  She was given the car and the house with the provision that I continue the payments until the mortgage was satisfied.  She was also awarded a substantial alimony.

All my pay was deposited to a joint account.  I went to an ATM to withdraw money only to find that there was a minimum balance and no funds were available.

I found all my uniforms and clothing in the storeroom at the squadron.  I moved into the CPO quarters at the base.  I was broke, no place to live after next week, and every dollar I would earn for years obligated to paying her divorce demands.  I contacted a lawyer who told me it could be undone, but it would take time and lots of money.

After the retirement ceremony, I learned that she and her lawyer filed a claim to fifty percent of my retirement pay.  My first wife also filed for fifty percent of it leaving me with zero percent. No retirement pay and alimony and house payments equaling more than I could possibly earn.  I was between the proverbial rock and a hard place.  You know, I have never understood what things would drive a person to suicide, but, that day  I seriously considered it.

I owned a few acres and a house in Florida that my folks had left me. She must have forgotten about it.  I called a realtor friend there and made arrangements for a quick sale.  I was able to stay in the CPO quarters during my leave.  Once I received the funds from the sale of my property, I bought a one-way ticket to Honolulu.  Arriving there, some friends helped me get a job with a government contractor.  The salary wasn’t enough to cover my court ordered obligations to her so I just ignored them.  I went in to work one morning to find that there was a court order to garnishee my pay and I was being fired for not disclosing these obligations when I was hired.

After being fired I spent a couple of months drunk, living in a cheap hotel. After the Florida money ran out I sobered up with no job, no money, and no place to live.

That was two or three years ago.  I now live in Honolulu under a Nimitz Highway bridge.  I have long hair and a beard, I get my clothes from the free bin at one shelter, I eat at another homeless shelter when they are offering food.  I beg for money to buy my daily bottle of whisky.  I will smoke pot if it is offered, too expensive for my circumstances. I have often been tempted to try the stupor of harder drugs, but so far have resisted.

I told this story to that young college girl who was doing a study on why homeless people become homeless.  I think I told her everything.  It gets harder and harder to remember.  Sometimes I am not even sure if it really happened or if it is my imagination.  Maybe I just made it up because she gave me five bucks.  I’m not sure…..

“Hey Buddy, you got a dollar or two so I can get something to eat. I would appreciate it.”

Driving a Taxi

By: Garland Davis

In a second life after retiring from the Navy, I was in the taxi business as both a driver and the owner of a taxi leasing company for twenty years between 1992 and 2012.  I met some characters and found myself in some strange situations during that period.

Many people think that taxi drivers are presented with opportunities for sex with a myriad of women.  The truth is diametrically opposed to that belief.  I can think of three instances where I was offered sex by a customer.

The first was a hooker.  She was going to her “stroll” near the Army facility at Schofield Barracks.  Since she made the trip often, she knew the fare was twenty dollars.  As she got in the car she proffered a twenty and asked, “Is twenty enough or I can give you a blow job.”  I took the twenty, you don’t let anyone that unattractive see your junk, much less touch it.  Well, I guess it would depend on how much you had to drink.

The second time was a guy.  I picked him up at his home and was taking him to a gym when he asked, “Did you ever do anything homosexual?”  He got pissed when I laughed at him and sulked the rest of the trip.

The third time was a Navy wife.   I picked her up at a club.  She gave me an address in Navy housing.  On the trip, she said, “When we get to my house, park your car and come in and we will party.”

I got pissed and said, “Your husband is really lucky.  He probably has the duty or is deployed and you are out drinking and fucking taxi drivers!  You make me sick.”

She then yelled at me, “He doesn’t have the duty.  He is out fucking another guy.  He should be home fucking his wife.  He is a fucking queer!”

When we reached her house, she paid me and said, “Aren’t you coming in?”

I told her, “No get out of the car.”

She was standing in the middle of the street, in Navy housing, at about eleven PM, yelling, “Fuck You,” at the top of her voice as I drove away.

Taxi drivers are fair game for scammers.  Someone is always trying to con a driver out of a free ride or a reduced fare.  I picked two ladies up at a Jack in the Box late one evening.  The older lady showed me a fifty, told me that it was all she had and asked if that was enough to pay the fare to a housing development on the other side of town.  I told her yes, they got in and I drove them to the destination.  The development was a gated area.  Instead of going to the auto entrance, they asked to be dropped at a pedestrian entrance on the other side of the area.  One lady got out and went through the gate, the other handed me a folded bill and said, “Thank you, honey, keep the change.”  The fare on the meter was forty some dollars. She also went through the gate.  I unfolded the bill.  She had given me a five!

A number of drivers were scammed by a guy who would walk up to a stand and take the taxi across town.  Upon arriving at his destination, he would tell the driver to wait and he would go into the house and get the money from his grandmother.  The door to the house not visible from the point where he had the driver park.  Some of the drivers talked with the lady who lived in the house.  She told them that the guy would arrive in the street go around the house and jump over her back wall.

The drivers got together and came up with a code word that could be passed when anyone had a fare to that address.  The dispatchers agreed to pass the code.  After a few days, the word came over the dispatch net.  To make the story shorter, when the dude jumped over the wall, he was met by five drivers he had cheated.  They kicked the shit out of him.  As far as I know, he gave up riding taxis.

In twenty years pushing a hack, I had one robbery attempt.  The fellow walked up to the stand where I was next up and asked how much it would cost to go out to the west side of the island.  I told him thirty bucks in advance.  He gave me three tens and wanted to ride in the front seat.  I caught the freeway and started west.  He then asked if we could pull off in a developing community so he could stop at a convenience store.  He told me he would give me another ten bucks.  So we stopped and he came out with a bottle of water.  To get back to the freeway, we had to pass through an undeveloped section of secondary roads.  He suddenly yelled for me to stop that he had to throw up.  As I came to a stop, He pulled a hunting style knife and told me to get out of the car.  I had a hand-held shortwave radio jammed between the seats.  I grabbed the radio by the antenna and slammed him across the bridge of his nose with the body of the radio as I bailed out the door.  I went around the car and jerked the passenger door open.  He was bent over holding his nose.  I grabbed him by the collar, dragged him half out of the car and hit him again with the radio.  I told him to get face down on the ground or I would kill him.  I dialed 911 and reported the attempt.  When the police arrived, I told them what had happened and showed them the knife in the floor of the car. The officer walked over to the guy, lifted his face up, looked, and said, “Junior, you just got paroled out of prison a couple of days ago.  Looks like you going back for the full term plus.  I kicked his ass and still had his thirty bucks.

Druggies will do anything and spend any amount to get their drug of choice.  I once went on a call where the lady asked how much it would cost to make a round trip to town and back.  I told her sixty dollars.  She pulled four twenties from her pocket and gave me three of them. The druggies knew that going to that neighborhood, payment in advance was required.  We made the round trip, she paid me sixty dollars to go buy twenty dollars of meth.

The scariest incident with a druggie happened early one morning.  I answered a call for a pick up in a residential area.  When I arrived at the house, I didn’t see anyone.  I tapped the horn and a guy came out of the shrubbery, ran jumped into the car and said, “Hurry go, they are following me.  Take me downtown.”

I asked where downtown did he want to go.  He said just drive and gave me a hand full of money.  He told me not to talk to the dispatcher that he didn’t want me sending coded messages to the dispatcher about his destination.  After we entered the freeway, he started yelling for me to pull over.  I stopped and he jumped out of the car for a minute and then climbed back in.  I asked him why.  He told me he was making sure there were no helicopters following us.

As we moved out he seemed to settle down.  A little later he told me to take him to the Pacific Marina Inn, a seedy hotel in the airport area.  I was happy with the change, it saved me a trip to town and got him out of the car faster.  Right after he changed the destination, the dispatcher told another driver to go to the Pac Mar for a pickup.  When he heard Pac Mar, he started yelling, “You sent a coded message! Stop, let me out.”

I slowed and pulled to the edge of the freeway as he got louder.  I was afraid he would try to attack me, but he jumped out of the car, ran across the freeway and started climbing the fence into an Army housing area.  The trip was worthwhile.  He had given me over one hundred thirty dollars when he had gotten into the car.

I met a few celebrities driving a cab.  Another driver and I were sent to carry the Platters to the airport one morning.  We each carried two of them.

I carried many pro football players who were in Honolulu for the Pro Bowl over the years.  Lousy tippers.

I carried Eddie Albert to a Japanese restaurant one evening.

I drove Michelle Wie and two sets of golf clubs to the airport one morning.  Tall girl.

Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1993, about four in the morning, I was in Waikiki hoping to get a tourist load to the airport, when a portly gentleman flagged me on the main street through Waikiki.  I stopped and waited while he got into the car.

He asked, “Is there someplace we could get breakfast?”

As soon as he spoke, I recognized the voice.  I said, “Uncle Buck!”  I had John Candy in my cab.  I told him there was a Denny’s nearby.

He said, “Let’s go.  I’ll buy you breakfast.  I hate to eat alone.”

I try to be funny and I enjoy making people laugh.  John Candy and I hit it off.  I spent a pleasurable two hours with him laughing and joking.  He finally told me he had to go to a PR thing.  I dropped him at his hotel. I thoroughly enjoyed and treasure that two hours at Denny’s.

I was saddened a few months later when I learned of his death.

A truly funny man!

I only had one accident while driving.  It was in ’97.  I was on the north side of the island.  Cell phone communication was rather sketchy on that side.  I found a place where I had enough service to call the dispatcher and pulled off the road to make the call.  As I was on the phone, a drunk driver rear-ended me, totaling my car and knocking me unconscious.  I woke up in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.  If you must have an accident, get hit by a drunk driver with GEICO Insurance.  They paid and paid.

There are many more stories that I could tell.  Sometimes driving was boring and monotonous and other times it was fun.

The one thing I learned driving a taxi.  I hate driving in stop and go traffic, but I don’t mind it nearly so much when the meter is running.