We are always with something going on, but let’s go back home for a moment. About early summer I got a letter from Vickie. She gave me this story about how sorry she was for her actions and wanted to make things right. In my mind the tie had been cut for good. I wrote her back and told her that I had given her an opportunity when I was home last and after I left I had gotten further news of her waywardness that anything we had was gone. I knew she wouldn’t follow through anyway. That’s why I moved ahead and asked Julie to accept the pre-engagement ring, as it was called then. Julie and I had developed a good relationship at this point and my mind was more than solid that we would marry when I returned home. I didn’t hear from Vickie any further. I want to say I got a letter from one of her sisters, but I don’t remember and am not so sure that I did. Julie and I were moving ahead with things and talk of marriage was becoming more of a matter of fact. Her mother approved, but some members of her family weren’t quite sure. They’d never met me for one thing. Secondly, I was in the military and gone. I’m sure they wondered how she could possibly fall in love with a guy she’s only laid eyes on two different and quick leaves from the military. Four weeks in all was all she’d seen of me and at least a week or so of that she spent trying to get rid of me. But for some reason we were in love enough and level headed enough to see it through.
She graduated from New Hanover High School that June and was now working downtown at McRoy’s Department store. I may have spelled that wrong, but that is my phonetic spelling of it. While working there she met a woman who was handicapped from polio named Margaret Babson. She and her husband were ten years older than Julie and me and they were to play a part of our lives for several years, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
My dad was taking a liking to Julie and her mom and was visiting with them. How much I don’t know, but I know we always had a garden every year and he was taking them vegetables and the like. Billy, you remember him, would go by and visit on the weekends and she and he would go for rides. I trusted Billy with my life, so I never worried about this company they kept.
About this time an event happened at home that changed a lot of lives there. The gang I used to ride with had a very tragic happening. We were always up to something when I was around, but I always tried to keep everyone in line. I mean that. I didn’t like fights, getting drunk and driving and stuff. I was known to take one of the group, who got drunk one night down on the West Road, where a supposed ghost could be seen down there looking for his head. Everybody’s everywhere has a story like this, I believe. Well, I dropped him off down there about a mile or so in the pitch dark. We had to throw him out of the truck, because he didn’t want to go. Oh, yes, we went back to get him and couldn’t find him where we left him. We drove on down the road about a mile further and found him in my headlights running as hard as he could and much more sober-minded than when we left him. Okay, I’m killing a rabbit again.
The happening occurred one night when a group of them got together and played “follow the leader” in their cars. They were going down a dark country blacktop and the leader decided to turn his lights out. Each one behind him in turn cut their lights off as well. Donald knew the road but in the dark timing is everything. He had Charles Fulcher in the car with him. As the story goes they all went through an S curve with a bridge somewhere in the bends and Donald missed turning enough. His car hit the weight limit sign posted at the end of the bridge railing and broke it off at the bumper and the sign slid through the windshield decapitating Charles. The rest of the guys up ahead by this time were turning their headlights back on and noticed that Donald was not to be seen behind them. They turned around to backtrack and find out what happened to him and Charles. Word was, they found Donald lying in the road screaming from having seen Charles being decapitated. I don’t know how much I’m misquoting here. Needless to say, Charles was dead.
There was a pretty big funeral for Charles and as friend of all these guys I don’t want to embellish any of the story. I will just say it was a sad time in Small. Joe Fulcher, his dad had already lost his wife in a freak fire at the Esso station a few years earlier, where she worked. Curtis Potter, the owner, also died in that fire I believe. Joe had one son left. That was Ted. Ted was a grade or two ahead of me.
You’ll have to pardon me sometimes. When I’m not writing I can’t seem to remember what to say, but when I get going all the memories start flooding back in. I believe that’s why I get so many rabbit trails. There’s a lot of history for me to remember. At least from what I experienced or heard about.
Being so far away, I wasn’t so affected by it. I did mourn though, even being so far away.
This was the sum of home life to this point, so let’s get back to Germany. By this time the SFC who had the drinking problem was getting short and would be leaving soon. Ed and I put in a request to get his room and use it as a two man room so we could get a little more peace and quiet. It was approved, so the wait was on.
Before the room became available our genius roommate had brought us to the boiling point with not getting showers regularly nor washing his clothes. The idea of wearing the same six pair of underwear for a month without washing them was wearing thin on us. Come paydays, his idea of fixing the problem was to go to the exchange and buy a new three pack of underwear. Then he’d through the top three dirty drawers in the trash and put the three new pair on the bottom of the stack and that put them in rotation. See he had six pair, never more. The night came that we found him very sound asleep. Four of us guys opened the door to our room and very quietly lifted his bunk with him in it and literally walked it down the hallway and into the showers. It was an open shower like a gym shower. We sat his bed in the shower. There were not shower heads on the showers. Just pipes coming out of the wall with a forty five degree bend. Oh, did I mention we never had hot water the entire time I was there? Oh yeah. Wait till winter. . . Anyway, we got his bunk into the shower, lights still out, and turned on three of the showers onto him in his bunk and ran out and down the hallway listening to him screaming as the water pounded him in three solid streams of water. Would you believe this did not cure him? So, we endured, although he never spoke to us again. That was okay, he never brushed his teeth and always had bad breath too.
Just before we moved we had changed the room around and lost another member from this room, but we gained a new guy fresh from the states. He was an okay guy, but he talked trash about being able to drink us all under the table. We had gotten enough on into the end of summer now and the German’s were celebrating the something that involved new wine. It looked like orange juice with the pulp in it. But believe me it had a kick to it. Soooo, we took our guy out one night to put him to the test. I don’t think I’ve introduced Hochsang or Pops. Hochsang was a Swedish, Nordic sort from the Midwest. He was a Spec 5. He had a German girlfriend who had previously married a soldier and moved to the U.S. at Fort Jackson. She divorced him and moved back home only to hook up with Hochsang. Then Pops was from Minnesota. He was genuine Swedish. He looked like Grandpa Jones only a little dumpier, so that’s where he got the nickname. Well, there was Hochsang, Pops, Ed and myself. Well, the new guy was on the hook for the evening.
We went to a tavern and ordered up a pitcher of new wine. The tradition for drinking required we all drink out of the pitcher. One would take a swig and pass it to the next who in turn would take a swig and so on. Well, I was getting my buzz on and as it always was, when the buzz hit me, so did my kidneys. After my turn I told the guys I would be back, I had to go dump my load of rented wine. When I returned the pitcher was once again in front of my seat. I noticed that the pitcher did seem to be a little fuller than when I left, but thought maybe they ordered more, so I picked it up and tilted it back to take a swallow and all the guys in unison yelled at me to put it down and began laughing so hard they were about to fall out of their chairs.
What occurred while I was gone was our new guy had met his limit and when the pitcher got to him instead of taking a swallow he puked in it instead. They guys thought it would be funny to put it back in front of me and see if I would notice. I came that close to tasting some pretty bad stuff. With all the commotion we didn’t notice our new guy had passed out and slid out of his chair into the floor for a few minutes. When we did it just contributed to our laughter. We all about peed in our pants over the goings on.
Not to be stopped Ed and I took new guy back to the barracks in a cab, dropped him in his bunk and headed back to the tavern where we left from there and went to this huge hall where there were hundreds of people partying and drinking and having a good ole time. There were these tables like very long picnic tables with benches and people sitting from end to end. Well, we all found spots on the benches and at some point the ompah band struck it up and started with that three quarter time music. There were two old German fellows sitting on either side of me laughing it up and I’d look at one then the other and they motioned for me to lock arms with them and swing and sway with them to the music, which by this time I was so drunk I was more than obliging. In a way I wish I could do that again. I don’t believe I could have been happier at that time. I might have been drunk, but believe me the people were so friendly and accepting of us. It was so much better than hanging out at some GI joint getting drunk and fighting.
When we’d had enough fun for the evening, we all got into a taxi and headed back to the barracks. Once we got back there I went to my bunk, opened my window and threw up from all the drinking and swinging and swaying. Ed was there patting me on the back as I remember it. I then went to my bunk and laid down and from there the night was history. A new day would dawn soon enough.
