Being out of a job wasn’t what I had looked for so soon after graduation, but construction carried with it a short lived job security. So, I was out looking for a job. You have to understand that here is a young man, nineteen years old, 1-A for the draft has automatically a cloud hanging over his head. It’s called the draft. During these years Viet Nam was a living hell for many young men.
By this time H.T. (refer back to Theodore and Nina Mae Cayton) had already been drafted and spent time in Viet Nam, became addicted to drugs, all the while rising in rank to Staff Sergeant. To get that rank in the Army in a short period of time back then only required the person in charge of the squad or platoon to be killed and you happened to be the next ranking member. You were tagged for that rank and there was no voting. You were just it. Well, H.T. came home a total wreck. Who knows what kind of drugs he encountered while there. For him I wished no harm. In fact I would rather he had gone to Canada. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten so messed up. Then again H.T. was H.T.
There was one eventful evening I remember. They lived just across Cousin Julia’s field that dad and I tended crops. H.T. was as the dinner table with the rest of the family and he had a flash back. They said he jumped up from the table and pound his arms on the table so hard it broke the table and then he ran from the house. It took several of them to catch him in the field across from the house and then hold him down. He though he was back in Viet Nam fighting the enemy. I won’t try to elaborate on this since I didn’t witness it firsthand. It was what was told to me.
As I write this I hope to prove something. I’m easily led to different rabbit trails completely off track. That’s why I believe I have a disability of some sort. I can’t concentrate for long periods of time. I guess this is a disclaimer right here in the middle of all this but here it is. But here it is. Maybe I’ll move it somewhere nearer the top later.
Now to get back to the point I was making. Getting another job proved difficult. I had no experience to speak of other than carpentry and there were no other jobs that would take me with all that was going on in the world. That is until one day I happened to stop in at Hatteras Yacht works. Mom was still working part time as a waitress at the Berne Restaurant where you turn to go there. I submitted my application and went back by the restaurant and got some lunch. All the waitresses in there knew me, so it was kind of like home. Anyway, Hatteras called me back for an interview and hired me. I was placed in the research and development building. This is where the newest boats coming online were built out of a life size wood model and then the molds were made from those wood models. This presented a lot of tedious work. Take for instance the arc of the bow had to be perfectly symmetrical from side to side in wood. Wood screws were used to hold the wood in place on the frame it was build on to prevent it from coming loose. The screws were countersunk into the wood and plugged with a wood plug. Long wood planes, small wood planes, sanding blocks and then just sand paper in hand was used to bring this to perfection with templates to gauge the preciseness of the curve. Then it was all covered with polyurethane and sanding by hand would start all over again with the templates until you had a perfect product. This could take several coats of polyurethane and sanding. The final coat of poly would be so perfect and slick you could see your face in it. I was somewhat of a perfectionist and I live in a world of symmetry, but this wasn’t the world I wanted to live in as I came to find.
The boat we were building at the time was a prototype of a seventy foot yacht that was to be built on the line at some point. There were two other boats in the fifty five to sixty feet range, and a shrimp trawler about the same with a deeper hull for the freezer. I did see one custom trawler converted to a luxury yacht because of its size. But that was rare. The R&D department was building the largest to date. It was to be seventy feet. When I came on board the crew had already constructed the hull in wood and pull the first fiberglass production of the hull and had set it up on a jig to hold it in place. It was huge. The crew had put stringers in the bottom to stiffen it up. They were fiberglass channels that ran from bow to stern. They were also reinforced with metal to mount the huge twin V12 diesel engines. Both had dual huffers on top to push air through them to increase the horse power. Down there around the stringer were installed two fuel tanks that would hold up to 1200 gallons of diesel fuel. In the back of the boat was installed a 500 gallon fresh water tank. One day they put a guy and myself down inside the hull without any ventilation and had us working with acetone and some resin and hardener for the fiberglass mats. We were working away not really thinking much about it, but my coworker and I were finding thing getting sillier and sillier. Just so happened one of the supervisors came up from the outside to see what our progress was and noted our condition. He may have saved our lives actually. He got us out and took us outside. Winter was settling in by this time and it was cold outside, so we came back to our senses fairly quickly. But those chemicals were also volatile. Especially the acetone.
There were a couple of women working there and some skinny little nerdy guy. Then there was the younger studious type of guy. You know the kind. You wouldn’t want to leave your wife or girlfriend around him alone. Then there was the old fart who drove the International Scout and smoked a pipe. The old curmudgeon type who’d basically outlasted his physical capabilities, but he was still around for advice. During one of those days it started to snow and I eagerly awaited for them to tell us to go home. I got really ticked off at the old guy when he said for me to just call home and tell them where I was, since it was more important to work than go home. I think that was another instance of my being an ass, but I didn’t think that boat was as important as going home to see that all was okay there and the pipes weren’t froze up and the animals were fed. He didn’t like me clocking out and leaving in protest. But he didn’t fire me. I was right back to work when the snow was cleared. They did note during this time I didn’t like working with fiberglass so they gave me jobs like painting the water line on the boat hull and non-fiberglass stuff.
Okay, you ask. What else is going on at this time besides work? Okay. Okay. Let’s explore that for a minute. I was hot and heavy with Vickie by this time. We’d go to movies, parking, go places during the day and have fun. The gang was still flourishing. Our band was still kicking around. But knowing I didn’t want to work with my hands all my life sent me looking of something else. I found this correspondence technical school in Chicago. I contacted them and they sent a representative to the house and I ended up enrolling in a course in architectural drafting. This was in late November. They sent me a drawing table, drawing instruments and study books and lessons. I had to study how to prepare the site for foundations and how to make sure the load bearing would be done properly to hold up the building and not let it turn into the Leaning Tower of Pisa or something worse. I worked hard at it and complete the introductory course with an A+. Then I started the in depth part of the course and was maintaining an A. It was right down my alley. Straight lines and symmetry were all there. I loved it.
Winkie
I also applied at an art school. You may remember those commercials where they ask you to draw “Winkie”. I ordered the evaluation kit and they sent it. I drew all the characters and sent it back. They went crazy to get me to enroll. I had always had problems with drawing human faces and such, though. I continued to work on that problem. I have scanned those in and will include some of them with this story. The drawing here is the original. I kept a good many of my drawings from high school through getting out of the Army. I drew cartoons, continued to work on human form, although I don’t think I got real good at it. In the end of it I didn’t enroll to this school. The other seemed more profitable. But overall, I drew both buildings and freehand stuff.
Well, after about five months of grinding fiberglass, painting hulls and laminating ‘glass fabric I got an offer back to construction. During this time, my dad had been laid off as well, he immediately went to Castle Hayne, NC a few miles northwest of Wilmington and got on with Daniel’s construction there. The job took a few months to ramp up and I couldn’t get a job as a carpenter apprentice, but my dad talked to the Chief Field Engineer about my taking architectural drafting and such and it was decided upon they would hire me on as a tail chainman with a survey crew and see how it worked out if I wanted it. This meant I would have to be gone all week from Vickie, but I’d be home early Friday afternoon and the whole weekend, so I gave notice at Hatteras and took off to Castle Hayne. Dad had already established himself with a trailer in a mobile home park behind some greasy spoon on the north side of town. The guy who was the sites saw blade sharpener was staying with him and they had a three bedroom place so I was in. It was a laugh at the size of the bedroom I had. It was all of six feet wide and maybe seven or so feet long. It was just enough room to throw down my stuff and fall into bed. The old guy who stayed with us insisted he was on a diet, so in the mornings he would get up and make buttermilk biscuits with syrup and then eat a bowl of Kellogg’s Special K. He was a hefty size fellow and I never saw him get any smaller.
When I moved in, I brought my own sheets and pillow and stuff and on Monday afternoon work dad and I would hit it across the street to the local Piggly Wiggly and get enough groceries to hold us over till Thursday evening. We’d work for nine hour days and Friday was a four hour day and then we’d hit the road for home. At the end of the week we’d load the car before going to work Friday morning and head out for home as soon as the whistle blew. Dad and I always stopped at the Traveler’s station just north of Holly Ridge for something to drink, some gas and a trip the restroom before the almost two hour drive. Me? I had one other chore. The bathroom had a “family planning center” in there for a quarter a piece and I always got a couple of those gems to take home. So far as I was concerned I wasn’t planning on a family and this was my approach to seeing it didn’t happen.
A lot happened during this time between April and the end of August 1970. I worked hard and found it an easy job. It was like I belonged in it from the beginning and had to be harnessed a couple of times when I felt I wasn’t moving up the line fast enough. I wanted to be an instrument man and they didn’t seem to think I was ready just yet. I think the idea of being 1-A still loomed over me as well.
I also met a young guy still in high school at New Hanover. His name was William Nunnalee. Billy for short. He had blond hair, blue eyes and talked like me. Once we started hanging out together people started thinking we were brothers. The road to his house ran along the back side of the trailer park and he’d pass by my humble abode most everyday and I ended up at his house more often than the trailer. His mother, Eleanor, was almost always home, but his dad, Lloyd was a long haul truck driver some bag company. He also had an older brother named Norcum who was a corpsman in the Air Force at Sumter, SC. I really loved Billy like a brother. We kept each other company and hung around and bs’d with his mom all the time and I became somewhat a member of their family. Still that didn’t deter me from hitting the road for Aurora on Friday at noon. I was too attached to Vickie and had to be with her. Looking back now I see it was an obsession. Yet, I still think I loved her at the time.
The most ominous thing I endured during those time traveling back and forth from home to Castle Hayne was I had to go through Jacksonville, NC on Hwy 17. There were always deuce and a halves full of Marines traveling the highway between the bases and it only led me back to the fact I was likely going to have to answer the call at some point. But I was out to live this day as much as possible till then.
