Journal of an Underachiever – On the Road

After Denver we drove across eastern Colorado and Kansas, stopping once to visit one of Dad’s friends who ran a motel. I think he had some kind of wild animals in a tiny zoo. I vaguely remember feeling sorry for the animals, but we were only there overnight.  We drove through Springfield on our way to Branson. Our objective was to buy a farm where Dad could find a job in construction. Table Rock dam was scheduled to be built soon, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity. It felt like there was a sign for a realty or real estate company every ten miles or so on the roads we took. One of them was a big conglomerate that had offices everywhere we looked. We had a catalogue from the company, and we made our way to the office in Branson.

I should mention that in those days Branson was not the entertainment hub of mid-America. It was a good sized town that was the supply center of farming country.

Dad checked in with the realtor and somehow (I think the realtor new someone) we ended up in a trailer park for a few days while Dad and the realtor looked over properties. Eventually they found the perfect place: 104 acres with a house and some outbuildings that would have frontage on Table Rock Lake when it was full. The house lacked a few amenities, like electricity and plumbing, but that was not uncommon in that area at the time. The cost? A mere $4000. I suspect that if the property were still intact, you couldn’t touch it for one hundred times that much now.

The land has changed significantly since we left but I believe I’m in the right area. My best guess is that the farm was along what is now Route UU

We did get electricity installed but we settled for the existing outhouse and a cistern that collected rainwater from the roof as our plumbing. We got a horse for riding and a pig for eating and we were set.

The horse was named Myrtle, if I remember correctly, and we called her Myrt. Richard took to riding her right away, but she sensed my unease and would never go faster than a walk when I rode her. I don’t recall exactly how it happened, but Myrt was involved with us meeting our neighbors, two kids about our age who lived on the adjacent farm. They rode two draft horses, bareback. Strangely, I don’t remember having a whole lot to do with them.

Our school was in the border town of Blue Eye. I was in ninth grade there. The biggest disappointment for me was I expected to take algebra in ninth, but there weren’t enough students in my grade to have more than one math class, so that’s what we had – math. I did get to participate in glee club, and I still like to sing (despite my voice tending to give out). I think the biggest influence on me was our social studies teacher. He was the archetype conservative. He even advocated that the first ten amendments should have never been adopted. While I didn’t always agree with him, he definitely indoctrinated me into the concept that the government should keep its hands off anything that could be done by private citizens (I added “without harming other private citizens”). He also got me interested in history, where I had always considered it to be boring.

We always seemed to have pets in the house. While we were in Missouri, we got a kitten. I don’t recall having a dog. I remember the cat for an odd reason. Sometime in the middle of winter I caught a particularly nasty bug. I was in school when I came down with chills and fever. I was so out of it that I snuggled up to one of the radiators in the school library to keep warm and ended up in bed for a few days. While I was recuperating, the cat slept with me on the bed. As I began to feel better and was getting bored, I did a pencil sketch of that cat. Mom thought it was so good that she kept it from then on. I remember seeing it at her house in Glenmora, but I don’t know what happened to it when she died.

I did have occasional flashes of brilliance with art. Going back to Guam, I baby sat for friends of ours one night. This being before the days of widespread television, I read magazines to keep busy. I stumbled on a photo of Marilyn Monroe, and did a sketch of her. It was the same quality as my cat sketch.

While we were in Missouri, Dad kept waiting for the dam project to get underway, but it was delayed. Since we were living on our savings and had a $2000 payment due in July, Dad started looking for other jobs, first close to home and then farther away. When he finally found one, it was in Wilmington, Delaware. We reluctantly packed up and left.

Next arriving in Wilmington.

Journal of an Underachiever – Back to the States

Before I get started, I’d like to welcome any new readers. I started this blog primarily to discuss what I have written and what I am currently working on. I discovered right away that I wasn’t going to be able to post once a week if I restricted myself that much. After much interior discussion I realized that the one thing I could write about on a regular basis was me. I’m not claiming to have an exciting history, but members of the family had urged my mom and my wife’s mom to record what they could remember from their childhood and on. Neither of them did, and that part of the family history is gone forever. I decided to rectify that situation and had a blog in place that was going virtually unused. Thus I started recording what I could remember of my past.

Recently, I wondered if anyone who stumbled across my book Peacemaker might be interested in my life and what led me to write. I figured I could make it available. It couldn’t hurt. I also plan to throw in some comments about Peacemaker and my work in progress, Teleportal.

This is what you are looking at now. It is July of 1952. My family has just returned from four years on Guam, and I have just turned fourteen.

Since my last post I looked up the General A. E. Anderson. She turns out to have been put in service hauling passengers around the Pacific in October of 1949. Since we went to Guam in September of 1948, she had to be the ship that took us home rather than the one that took us to Guam. There are several write ups about her on the Internet, if you’re interested.

The trip to Guam had been non-stop, but going back to the States we stopped at Wake Island, a coral atoll so low that a small tsunami would have completely flooded it, and at either Midway Island, home of the Gooney Bird (Laysan Albatross) or Johnston Atoll, which barely has room for a runway. We didn’t dock. Instead, we sent a tender ashore with mail and what-not at each location.

We also stopped at Oahu, and I immediately fell in love with Hawaii. We stopped long enough to do some touristy things. We visited an orchid hot house (yes, even on Oahu they protect these special flowers when they grow them). I was fascinated by the incredible variety. We stopped at a hotel for lunch. I ordered a cheese burger. I know, no sense of adventure. This place turned out to be a pretty high class establishment. When my sandwich arrived, it was open-faced. The cheese was a sauce. I was supposed to eat it with a fork. Instead, I closed the sandwich and ate it what I considered the normal way. I dripped cheese sauce all over. I believe it was on this trip that I first saw the Upside Down Falls. Somewhere on the Pali Highway in the mountains outside Honolulu there is a view of a waterfall that when the wind blows strongly enough starts down but gets blown upward so hard it turns around and doesn’t reach the bottom.

One of the passengers on the ship was a redheaded army brat named Iris. It was love at first sight — but I was too shy to even talk to her. We crossed paths while touring Oahu, and I couldn’t even wave. Oh well, it would never have worked out. She was headed for Kansas, and I was on my way to the backwoods of Missouri. As we were driving through Kansas on our way to Missouri, I could swear I saw her in a school bus we passed, but I’ll never know. I even worked up the courage to wave. And then she was gone.

Our next stop after Honolulu was San Francisco. Before we left Guam we had ordered a new Ford. It cost us all of $2400, and we picked it up in San Francisco. From there we visited my new Aunt Ruth’s family and drove through Yosemite National Park. I don’t know which came first. The only thing I remember about Ruth’s parents’ home was that while we were there, the Seventeen Year Locusts were out and incredibly loud.

I suppose I should digress briefly. My uncle Pat came to work on Guam while we were there. He met and fell in love with a pert redheaded company nurse, Ruth. They got married while we were on Guam. One thing I’ll always remember is that Ruth gave Susan a shot in front of the rest of us. She was so nervous (family presence, I suppose) she had a hard time giving the shot. At one point the syringe came loose from the needle with the needle stuck in Susan’s arm. She did finally get it done.

I remember one thing about Yosemite and that was driving along a stretch of road that had an incredible drop off on one side. There was a wide valley below. I could swear it was over a thousand feet beneath us, but I suspect it just seemed that way.

Our next stop was Denver. Our friends from Guam, the Cooks, had returned to the States before we did. They had a home in south Denver, which at that time bordered farmland. The house and the farmland are all gone now. We spent several days with them visiting the mountains and getting to know something about this beautiful state. Strangely enough that had nothing to do with us settling here when I retired.

Our next stop was Missouri. More on that the next time.

In case you’re interested, I have a website that right now focuses primarily on Peacemaker, gordonsavage.com.

Journal of an Underachiever – The Last of Guam

I’m sure there are many things about Guam that I’m not remembering right now. I’ll come back to them when I think of them. For now I’ll cover what I have on my list.

At some time during 1951 the company finished erecting new housing at Camp 1, and we moved there. I don’t remember much about the new house. It had vertical walls like the Butler buildings in Camp 2, and I’m fairly sure it was made of metal. The one thing I do remember is that in addition to a regular refrigerator the company provided what we called a reefer, a double-sized refrigerator without a freezer compartment. Why I remember that I don’t know.

Camp 1 was on the west side of the island, somewhere near where the Builder’s Club was. Stanley Brown’s family moved about the same time to a private home near the camp. I rode there on my bike once in a while. One time some local kids were out with their dog. It came up behind me while I was riding by and bit me on the heel. That was the first time a dog had ever bitten me. It wasn’t a big deal, but for some reason I remember it.

I also remember a kapok tree on the route. It was the biggest (real) tree I had seen on Guam. It had been so long since I had had a tree climbing fix that I had to climb it. I picked some of the pods and examined them. They were full of white cotton-like fiber, which now makes me wonder if they are related to cottonwood.

I became a Boy Scout while I was on Guam. I got my first taste of camping out while I was in the troop. There was a stream a few miles east of Apra Heights north of what is now route 17. At one point it widened into a small pond, smaller than the swimming hole at Camp 2 but large enough to swim around in. My first camp out was there. The weather on Guam was so mild that my camping gear consisted of an oil-cloth table cloth and a bed sheet. My breakfast consisted of eggs and fried spam. Don’t laugh. It was actually good.

The navy ran a snack bar called the Canteen somewhere around Apra Harbor. The whole family was out for a drive one Sunday, and Dad had elected to not wear a shirt. Who needed one, right? But then he ran out of cigarettes. He pulled up at the Canteen and because of not having a shirt recruited me to go in and buy him some cigarettes. First of all, as I mentioned earlier, back then I was pretty straight arrow, and I was sure I wasn’t supposed to buy cigarettes. I tried to talk Dad out of it but to no avail. Eventually, I went inside. I told the clerk the situation as it really was, and, of course, he turned me down. I suspect he thought I was a kid trying to get myself some cigarettes and had come up with the most unique story he had heard.

Sometime while we were on Guam I got a snorkel and began to try to use it for surface diving. I believe it was at the Builders’ Club that I dove into a coral branch. It poked me in the chest, and a tiny piece broke off. As far as I know that piece is still circulating in my body — at least that was the old-wives’ tale I was told about coral. Of course the branch was dead, and being a calcium compound, it has more likely been absorbed. I carried the scar for a long time but can’t even find it now.

Dad was an estimator while we were there. One of the projects he had a part in was building the dam that now hold the Fena Valley Reservoir. We drove up there at least once to see the progress. There was a cave near the dam that an underground stream came out of. I suspect that cave is under water now but it was interesting at the time. We tried to get a close look, but it was a hive for mosquitos. Patty Cook was with us and she and one of us (I say Richard. He says it was me) were covered with mosquitos and bites. I mean really covered.

We took more than one trip to the South End of the island. We went by Talafofo Bay each time. We’d stop at an overlook and take in the view. At that time there was a Japanese ship, the Aratama Maru, sunken near the entrance to the bay. Her masts and the wheel house were above the high tide mark so we could always see her, and I always wondered what her story was. There is now a monument with a picture of her (the wreck has been removed from the bay) and some kind of description (Unfortunately the photo that Google has is too fuzzy to read the details, but other sources say she was abandoned by her crew when a torpedo from an American warship struck her amidships and ignited her cargo of gasoline. She drifted for seven days before coming to rest on a shallow shelf in Talafofo Bay).

Dad had a game he would play while we were there. The overlook had a steep drop. When one of us kids would get close to the edge, he’d come up behind and yank us back while shouting some kind of warning. Talk about getting your adrenalin pumping.

One time we stopped somewhere along the route, Talafofo I think, and paid for water buffalo rides. The two things I took away from that were that these big work beasts were surprisingly gentle – and their skin was incredibly loose. If you weren’t precisely on center, the skin would move so far you couldn’t stay on.

A narrow dirt road was the only way to get to the South End back then so we usually went as far as Inarajan or occasionally Umatac and then turned around to go back home. One time, however, we continued on from Umatac up the west coast to Agat and on to home. I notice one thing looking at recent photos. When we were there, all these villages were almost at the thatched hut stage, now they are surrounded by modern homes.

I’m sure there were other things about our stay on Guam I could talk about like Christmas without cold. However, this will have to do for now. I do remember that the whole time I was there I kept lamenting about not being home (the States). Now I’d like to go back and see how much it has changed.

We left Guam so that my fourteenth birthday took place onboard the ship (the USS General Anderson, I think). More about that next time.

Journal of an Underachiever – Learning to Drive

First of all let me clarify. I didn’t really learn to drive on Guam. I saved that to my junior year in high school. Still, I did make the attempt.

When I was a kid on Guam, you could get your learners permit at fourteen, so when I turned thirteen Dad started trying to teach me how to drive.

The first time out was on an unused navy runway which was then Orote Naval Air Station. Dad drove me, my brother Richard, and my sister Susan over there one evening and sat me down behind the steering wheel. He walked me through the process of starting the car, using the clutch, shifting the gears, steering, and so forth.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about when I say using the clutch, in those days automatic transmissions were hardly more than a gleam in some engineer’s eye. We had 1938 Plymouth sedan. It looked somewhat like a Volkswagen Bug only larger – much larger. It had a manual transmission (maybe you’ve heard the term “stick shift”) with three gears. The gear shift lever was on the steering column. Oh, and it had bench seats front and back. That meant Dad could sit next to me.

With several false starts – killing the engine, grinding gears, etc. – I started driving up and down the runway. I was beginning to get the hang of it when flashing red light showed up behind us (This was long before light bars with blue flashing lights and stroboscopic headlights). “That’s the shore patrol,” Dad told me. “The red lights mean you need to stop.” Actually, I don’t remember his words, but I suspect I cleaned them up a bit.

Apparently some navy brass had seen our lights running up and down the runway and decided we didn’t belong there. Fortunately Dad was able to be civil, but we were told politely to leave and not show up there again. I didn’t get to drive us home.

My next time out was in the housing area. I’m pretty sure it was a Saturday morning. Dad drove Richard, Susan, and me over to the perimeter road and put me behind the wheel again. I should mention that the old Plymouth was like driving a tank using a steering wheel.

After a quick hands-on briefing Dad sat down beside me and gave me the go-ahead.  I pushed in the clutch, pulled the shift lever down and toward me into first gear. I eased out the clutch, and we were off. I got into second without killing the engine or doing much damage to the gears. Then I shifted into third and reached the speed limit, 25 miles per hour. I made the turn at the bottom of the hill without any major problems, drove across the south end of the camp, and successfully turned up west side road.

I was starting to feel pretty good about myself. I hadn’t made any big mistakes and I was headed for home. About half way up the west road it happened. Over the hill coming the opposite direction was the first car I had seen all day. Back in those days I was as straight arrow as they came. I knew I wasn’t old enough to be driving on a public street. I panicked. I threw up both hands and yelled, “Aaah!” The car drifted across the road onto the left shoulder. At which point Dad grabbed the steering wheel, and I put on the brakes. Fortunately, Dad kept us from going over the embankment which dropped about ten feet into the boondocks. Unfortunately, when I put on the brakes, I neglected to push in the clutch and killed the engine.

We were stopped dead on the wrong side of the road. All I could do as the other car drove around us was … smile and wave. Boy, was that embarrassing. And Richard and Susan got to witness the whole thing.

Funniest thing, Dad never did try to teach me how to drive again – ever.

Journal of an Underachiever – Guam, Potpourri

I’m not about to start making excuses for being late. I honestly don’t know how I got so far behind. Let’s just move on with the narrative.

While we were in Camp 2, I had my first ‘girlfriend,’ Ann Jorgenson. We met at the playground and liked each other immediately. I don’t know how much time we spent together. The only things I remember are pushing her on the swings and demonstrating my prowess at jumping at the highest point of the arc. Then came the big question. She asked, “Do you want to kiss me?” I answered that I did but I had to ask my parents first. … Talk about a short romance, but I had been introduced to the attraction of girls.

I don’t remember how it came about, but someone invited me out several times on a fishing boat named the DUVA, the Navy’s four letter designator for Guam. We would go out in the morning and cruise the swells until about noon. I loved the motion of the boat as we plowed through wave after wave. The best place to feel the waves was at the front of the cabin, right at the bow. The second best place was on deck at the bow. I think that was my primary reason for going, although I did enjoy being out on the ocean in any case.

I mentioned Stanley earlier. I managed to wrangle a trip for him once. It turned out to be a mistake. He got sea sick while I had a great time. The ocean wasn’t rough, but the swells were large. I took him into the forward cabin to get the feel of the waves. He didn’t last.

As essentially a naval base Guam had almost no commercial facilities at the time we were there. Everything we had convenient access to was run by the military. We sometimes went out for breakfast at an officers’ club at the naval headquarters. That was where I fell in love with Spanish omelet. I still make it every once in a while. At the north end of the island, just outside Anderson Air Force Base there was another club, Agafogumas, where we’d go occasionally for dinner. They had music and a dance floor, and I think they sometimes had live music. A great place for Mom and Dad and, if I remember correctly, the food was good.

For some reason we had borrowed a jeep to get around the island, and this one time we drove it to Agafogumas. As usual we had a good time and stayed until well after dark. When we got in the jeep to go home, the engine started, but the generator didn’t. Dad decided the battery was good enough to get us home — as long as we didn’t use the headlights. We drove some fifteen or so miles without meeting another vehicle and without lights (we might have turned them on when we went by Agana. As I said before my memory of back then isn’t that sharp). In those days the north end of Marine Drive was surrounded by trees so we could keep track of the road by the open sky. For Richard and me it was an adventure. I suspect that for Mom it was a nail biter.

Another time in the same jeep we were headed toward Agana and came on this rain curtain. From a distance it looked as if the road literally stopped at a vertical sheet of rain. When we hit the rain we could barely see. What I remember most though was the abrupt drop in temperature. I felt cold for one of the few times while we lived there.

One Christmas, our last at Camp 2 I think, I got a bike for Christmas. I took it out for a ride on Christmas morning. I rode it up to the perimeter road and started down the hill toward the south end of the camp. When I put on the brakes, to my horror instead of slowing me down they made me go faster (the Japanese were new to coaster brakes at the time). I kept accelerating all the way to the first turn and still managed to make the turn. The next turn was slightly up hill and I made it. The third turn was where the camp ran out. Going straight ahead would have run me into the boondocks, but I was still slowing down – a little. Somewhere in there I figured out that the only way I was going to get out alive was to drop the bike in the turn. Fortunately, I walked the bike the remainder of the way home unscathed.

Next up: learning to drive.

Journal of an Underachiever – Odd Ends

Well, the Broncos weren’t the better team on the 2nd. Wait till next year.

I need to go back to Louisiana briefly. I fell in love with cowboy movies while we lived in Forest Hill. Understand, we didn’t have a movie theater, but on some Saturdays a tent movie theater showed up and either only showed cowboy movies or I only went to them. We saw Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott, William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy), Red Ryder (I should remember who played him, but I don’t right now), Lash Larue/Whip Wilson, and others. I was hooked.

For movies like Bambi and Song of the South we went to Alexandria. And there was one movie shown at the school that made a deep impression on me, but now I can’t remember its name. Back when I could remember its name, I tried to find it again many times with no success. That may not make much sense, but there was something magical about the movie (that didn’t involve magic), which made me aware of the basic good in people – and it has stuck with me all these years.

Now, back to Guam.

One day when I went to play with Joe 5, a fire truck was parked near his house and firemen were keeping people back. Something had sheared a power line, and it was lying on the ground. I remember it because part of the wire was in a small puddle, and it kept sparking – bright blue sparks that were like erratic fireworks. I watched for a while waiting for the electrical crew to show, but since we couldn’t get close to it, I eventually got bored and left.

While we lived in Camp 2, someone organized a soapbox derby. Most of the race cars were made of a few boards and various kinds of wheels. I’m not sure where the wheels came from but most of them were hard rubber on a solid steel rim. The drivers steered the racers by ropes attached to a pivoting board that held the front axle.

The race course was somewhere near Apra Heights on what is now route 17. The road sloped enough that even the hard wheeled racers made good time. I think some of the racers had brakes that consisted of a board attached to the side that the drive could pull up on, but other than that the drivers had to rely on coming to a flat spot and dragging their feet.

However – One racer had fifteen inch or more diameter balloon tired rear wheels (at a guess motorcycle front wheels) with smaller tires on the front. I think it disqualified from the race because I remember it coming down the hill after the other racers. It was going like the proverbial bat, and the flat spot the other racers had used to stop didn’t even slow it down. It flew past the finish line and was going so fast it couldn’t make the turn farther down the road. Instead, it went straight ahead and took off as went over the embankment. It crashed into a thicket of the boondocks trees and came to a stop. Miraculously the driver wasn’t hurt, but I’ll bet he had to change his shorts.

As far as I know that was the first and the last soapbox derby on Guam.

I feel I need to say something about going to school on Guam. When we arrived, Richard and I went to school on Adalupe Point, where the governor’s office is now. I think we started our second year there, but the school was closed so it could be rebuilt. It stayed closed the rest of the time we were there. Our next school was a temporary one at Apra Heights, a Navy housing area. Or was the second school the one in Agana (Hagatna now). I don’t remember much about either school. At Apra Heights my best friend, Stanley Brown, became the target of a bully or excessive tickling, I’m not sure which. He ended up giggling uncontrollably. He couldn’t stop for over half an hour. I remember two things about Agana: a red pepper plant that just touching one of the peppers released enough oil that you couldn’t touch your face without it burning, and a friend who wrote plays that we performed in school.

I had this ready on Thursday, but I couldn’t make up my mind where to stop.

Next up some more odds and ends about Guam.

Journal of an Underachiever – Interlude

I’m going to take a brief break from Guam with this post. Instead I’m going to bring us up to the moment.

A few years back we had accumulated enough hail damage to our roof to make an insurance claim worthwhile. To make hail less of a problem and make the house less vulnerable to fires we put on a metal roof. In general it has been great, but it has one “feature” that I’m not real fond of. It’s slippery. In fact, I couldn’t find any shoes that had enough traction to allow me to feel safe climbing on it.

Fortunately, that hasn’t been a problem until recently. About three weeks back a wind storm blew through and all of a sudden our television reception died. As far as I could tell the antenna had been blown out of alignment. Besides not being able to climb up to it because of the slippery roof surface, nature intervened with a pattern of snow storms – not heavy snow but enough to cover the roof briefly each time.

I took advantage of a gap in the snows to climb out a window onto the top of the garage. I found out that some of my shoes have enough traction for me to climb on the metal – at least as long as I had something to hold on to. I used a long pole to bang the antenna to a new aim. Still no reception.

Things were getting desperate. The AFC championship was coming up and the Broncos were playing the Patriots. My wife Carol invited us to her sister’s house so we could watch the game. Fortunately we were welcome, and the game went to the Broncos.

That meant I had two weeks to solve the problem of the antenna. I considered hiring someone to go up and adjust it, but I didn’t want to risk someone else’s neck unnecessarily. I had found some shoes that worked on the roof. However, those same shoes didn’t seem to work on the part of the roof leading to the antenna. On top of that the drop off was two stories on one side and two and a half on the other, and Carol was adamant about me not taking the risk.

I made one more try from the garage roof. I used my snow boots and had a safety rope this time. To my surprise the snow boots had good traction. On the other hand moving the antenna did nothing to help. I decided to see if the traction was good enough for me to safely climb on the main roof.

When I got up on the ladder, I found that I had been working on the wrong problem. The antenna orientation wasn’t the problem. The cable had become disconnected from the antenna. I had to get on the roof to fix it. Nothing else would work. Still that was a long way to fall. I needed a safer way.

I figured I had a couple of possibilities. I could climb up the roof from the chimney housing. If I got into a slide it would stop me from falling off. Still that was a last resort. The other would be to get a rope over the roof and tie it off on both ends. That turned out to be easier said than done.

I took a ball of heavy twine and attached a dog-toy ball to the end of it. Then I ran the ladder up high enough that the rung I stood on was right at the edge of the roof. I didn’t have a safe place to throw from, so I spun the toy on about two feet of the string and let it go – sort of like a bolas but spun in a vertical plane. I rapidly discovered that torque messed up my aim. I also discovered that the release point had a very narrow window. Most of my throws went left of where I was aiming, and most of them hit the roof before reaching the top. Finally one throw went over the peak. Yay!

Wait a minute. It stopped. Every short throw had rolled back down like it couldn’t wait to get off the roof. Maybe a light yank would get it moving. Oops! The yank pulled it back over the peak of the roof. Here it comes down my side of the roof, and there it goes. After several more tries, I finally got it over again. This time I flicked a wave up the roof to see if that would free the toy. Most of the waves didn’t even reach the peak, and the ones that did didn’t seem to be moving the toy. Maybe more tension would help. Oh, rats! Here it comes down my side again. After a third attempt rolled past me, I knew it was time to quit for the day.

The forecast the next day was for snow starting about noon. I had to get it done that morning or else it was all over. The snow was supposed to continue off and on into the weekend. I tried another heavier ball. I kept having the same result. Then I got one over the peak … and it stopped! Nuts! I gave it a light tug, and it popped over the peak. This time it was too far left and wrapped around the furnace chimney – and stuck. Now what?

I had one more, even heavier ball left. After several attempts with it, I got it over the top. It stopped. I’m not sure what it was that triggered the idea, but something about that last failure gave me the answer. I went up on the garage roof and threw the ball onto the house roof. It rolled down on the far side where I wanted it. I used the long pole to put the string where it wouldn’t snag and pulled the rope over. I tied it off and climbed up to the antenna. My boots worked great, and I even had the right tool with me to screw the cable tightly to the antenna fitting. Success!!!

        This experience showed me that real fear is exhausting. The first time on the garage roof I was holding on to anything I could get a grip on and still couldn’t shake the feeling that I was one slip away from disaster. When I got back into that upstairs bedroom, my legs felt like jelly. I made absolutely sure that cable wasn’t coming loose again in my lifetime.

GO BRONCOS!

Journal of an Underachiever – On the Beach

One of the first things that made an impression on us, besides the climate, was the ocean. Three beaches immediately come to mind: Tumon Bay, Nimitz Beach, and the Builder’s Club. When we arrived on Guam, I couldn’t really swim. The best I had done up until then was to take a breath and thrash around face down in the water until I had to breathe. Then I’d put my feet down, stand up, and take a breath. Right after we got to Guam we kids got swimming lessons at Nimitz Beach (still there and now a park).

Salt water made all the difference. Instead of sinking (which I still do), I could actually float. I learned to swim well enough that I could go into water over my head. I carried that with me when we found a couple of fresh water swimming holes. I never did learn to flutter kick (still can’t do it).

Dad’s company provided bus transportation to Tumon Bay on the weekends. Back then the only artifacts were picnic tables and trash cans (I think). A sandy beach extended around the entire arc of the bay, and a reef separated the bay from the drop off into the Pacific. The water was so shallow at low tide you could touch the bottom near the reef. Perfect for swimming and shallow diving. Take a look at Tumon now. Hotels all over the place. There’s even a Kmart across the highway. It has become a tourist trap. As a matter of fact it has become the Japanese equivalent of Hawaii.

I remember a few things about Tumon. Coconut palms all over and the occasional fresh coconut within reach. I found out that getting to the nut isn’t easy because it’s protected by a tough husk. I’ve seen movies of natives (Hawaiian) opening the husk with a sharpened wooden stake driven in the ground. A navy hunting knife doesn’t do the job.

Sea slugs and sea stars and sea urchins. The bottom was covered with fascinating fauna. The coral formations I remember were all dead (white). There may have been some live ones out near the reef (the reef was coral after all). Then there were the fish. Flounders and other flat fish abounded. Harder than heck to catch or even to find since they were usually covered with sand. Step near one and they were gone in a swirl of sand. I never so much as saw a shark but I did come face to face with a barracuda. Four inches long.

And then there was the sun burn. I would go to the beach one week and get a light tan. Next week I would go to the beach and get a sun burn. Peel and repeat.

The Builders’ Club was originally a military R&R facility. In fact, the only place I could find a reference to it is as a military facility. It had a restaurant/bar, a snack bar, a salt water swimming pool, and a beach – not to mention picnic facilities. I can still remember eating canned potato sticks from the snack bar. Unfortunately, it was a casualty of Typhoon Allyn (November of 1949 I believe), the storm that drove us out of our houses and into the company headquarters. The Builders’ Club was on the east side of the island, and apparently Allyn struck hardest there. The wind flattened the buildings and surge washed the sand from under the pool, literally cracking it in half. Bye, bye, Builders’ Club. I can’t even find a trace of it on Google Earth.

Last time I did promise my introduction to science fiction, which ultimately led to my writing Peacemaker – The Corona Rebellion 2564AD and now has me writing Teleportal. It goes like this:

We had a local store and a barber shop in Camp 2. The store wasn’t much more than a convenience store, and the barber shop was similarly small, two, maybe as many as four chairs. Besides being the source of necessary haircuts, it was also the local library, at least for magazines. Two of them made a lasting impression on me, Galaxy and Astounding, both science fiction. I quickly became a fan and later subscribed to both.

I had this piece effectively finished Wednesday. Then I remembered having promised that last paragraph. I’ll have to keep from making promises in the future. I’ll stick to my objective of trying to get out one of these each week. Expect my next one on Thursday.

Journal of an Underachiever – Guam, More Camp 2

Guam has mountains, at least that’s what they’re called. Camp 2 was on the slope of Mt. Tenjo. I really believed that it was 7500 feet tall, but looking on the Internet, I discovered that it is 1001 feet instead. On top of that I thought that Camp 2 was north of the Apra Harbor breakwater. Unless they built another breakwater since we left, that can’t be. Of course that explains one of the reasons I couldn’t find Camp 2 when I looked on Google Earth. The other is that the roads that we had have been almost completely obliterated. Based on the swimming hole, the tank farm, and the small stream that appears to be the one that ran through part of the camp, the old roads have all but disappeared.

Perhaps I should write more about boondocks. The trees consisted of short trees with thin trunks (to me at the time it seemed that the tallest were no more than twenty feet). There were deciduous trees with small leaves and a pine-like tree that we called Australian Pines (They had needles, but the needles were segmented). There were also banana trees, papaya plants, and an amazing grass that we called sword grass. The leaves were long, around three feet. When they were green, they were quite literally razor sharp. When they were dead they lost their edge.

A fairly extensive marshy boondocks ran west of the camp from the perimeter road. One of its distinctive features was a nasty little green bee or wasp. Smaller than honey bees, they tended to swarm. Their nests blended into the background, and they attacked anyone who so much as brushed the plant a nest was in. We learned from experience to watch carefully in certain parts of the boondocks and be ready to run ­– really run.

On the east side of the camp we had a picnic area. Right now I don’t remember much about it other than it had a splendid view of the sunset. Just south of it a small boondocks occupied a space less than one hundred feet in diameter. Less underbrush and better drainage made it a lot friendlier (no bees) than the large one on the west. It was surrounded by a loose formation of sword grass plants. We found from them that if you could get past the green blades, the inside of the tussock was a great hiding place.

The rest of the housing area abutted open grassland. At that time Guam had quail. I have no idea how they got there. The only difference I could see between these birds and bobwhite quail was these were much smaller. On one of my first explorations outside of camp I nearly stepped on a female and her babies. I suspect the brown snakes have totally eradicated them.

You would think that being a volcanic island, Guam would be covered by basalt. Instead, the rocks I remember from the open fields were green and were either degenerating into clay or clay solidifying into rock. Some of the green rocks were solid and some were crumbling. The latter could be mixed with water and became a clay like mass. As a matter of fact, when Joe and I built our little dam, we used that clay as a form that we poured the concrete in. I would bet that dam is still there because it filled up with mud after just a few rains and probably was covered by the time the camp was dismantled.

We had wild papaya plants in our boondocks. One day I decided to bring one home so we could pick ripe papayas right beside our house. I carefully unearthed the roots to save as many delicate root hairs as possible. I dug a hole, cautiously put the plant into it, and filled the hole with dirt. I watered that plant conscientiously every day. It had just begun to look like it would survive, when Richard came running around the house, not looking where he was going, and ran into it, ripping the roots from the ground. There went my first and last attempt at agronomy.

Dad’s supervisor and his wife lived in Camp 2. One of the things I remember about them was they had two cats named Bud and Weiser. The other thing I remember is that once a week they hosted a cook out for all the kids in the camp: hot dogs, hamburgers, and Kool-Aid (or coke). They were well attended and were held at the camp picnic area.

I could go on, but I keep coming up with new things related to camp life. I have to cut it off somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. Next up, the swimming beaches and my introduction to science fiction.

Journal of an Underachiever – Guam, Camp 2

Before I started writing this, I had to look at Guam again. I used Google Earth, and I think I found Camp 2, but boy has it changed. I have a pretty solid memory of the layout on our side of the main road. It may be totally erroneous, but I’m pretty sure it’s close. I remember two landmarks that I think are still there.

The south end of the camp almost abutted on a navy tank farm (oil storage tanks), and I found tanks between the navy housing area (Apra Heights) and what I believe was Camp 2. Joe 5 Lee(, Jr.) and I poured a miniature concrete dam on a run-off creek between his house and the nearest tank. And, yes, his name really included the number 5.

What appears to be the other landmark, a swimming hole east of the camp, stands out even from satellite altitude. I remember the spot for a two main reasons. The high school boys challenged each other by jumping into the stream from the cliff that overlooked it, and I was awed by the cliff. Of course, I was ten at the time. Also the mushrooms that grew there glowed in the dark, and I was fascinated by them.

I don’t recall much about arriving in Apra Harbor. Dad picked us up at the ship and drove us to our new home, a Butler building. Butler buildings had sheet metal sides and roofs. I believe we shared ours with another family, we on the south end and they on the north. I don’t recall a thing about them. I just don’t recollect having a back door. How’s that for deduction?

In fact, I only remember two of our neighboring families, or parts of them. To our east lived Dennis and his dog Tippy. We became friends, but I don’t remember anything about them except that Dennis and Tippy were the same age. Across the street to our west were the Cooks. Russ and Laura became close friends with mom and dad. Their daughter, Patty, was closer to Richard’s age.

One of the neighborhood artifacts was a typhoon shelter, basically a white painted building made of steel plates. It had ventilator pipes instead of windows and a solid steel door. I don’t think we ever went in it. As a matter of fact, about a year after we arrived, Typhoon Allyn hit the island with devastating force. Dad’s company, Brown-Pacific-Maxon, evacuated the entire camp. We spent at least one night and one day at the company offices. But Typhoon Allyn comes later in my tale.

Let me see if I can describe the camp. I’m not sure why it was called a camp. Perhaps it had been a camp for the navy. We got there by driving up a road paved with crushed coral and used motor oil. It climbed up a hill that was part of Mt. Tenjo to get to the camp. It wandered through what we Statesiders called boondocks. These days boondocks equates to backwoods, but for us it meant a woods or forest of small trees and bamboo groves.

When the road reached the top of the hill, the boondocks gave way to the camp. I don’t remember what was on the left side of the road when it reached the camp. I think there might have been a motor pool. Farther up the road on the left someone – perhaps the navy or perhaps the company – had scraped out an amphitheater and installed wooden benches and a movie screen. We saw movies for free, and we could bring our own popcorn. One feature I remember was that next to the theater was a shaved ice machine. We could fill our glasses or whatever with shaved ice before we took our seats.

The housing area consisted of Butler buildings and Quonset huts south of the main road. Three roads lead away from the main road in pretty much straight lines. Boondocks abutted the first road on its west side. The Rec Hall and playground occupied the top of the hill between the first road and the second. The Rec Hall also housed the washing machines, and clothes lines filled the large open space that was the recreation area. About the only thing you could do in it was roller skate and jump rope. The chapel stood near the Rec Hall, I think between it and the first road. Once you got past the playground/Rec Hall the houses started.

The third road served as a perimeter. It ran to the south end of the camp, made a sharp right and crossed the other two roads. Then it crossed a dry wash, made a sweeping turn to the right, crossed the wash again plus the other roads, and teed into itself about halfway down the hill from where it started. Understand, this housing area wasn’t huge. I believe I’ve completely described the roads. I can only guess how many families lived there, and it wouldn’t be accurate.

Getting back to the main road: after you passed the third road, you came to the grocery store on the south side. We’d call it a convenience store nowadays. Next to it was the barbershop. A little farther on a dirt road turned off and led back to the swimming hole. After that the main road came to the houses designated for Pacific Island Engineers. There were only a few of them.

I became friends with a boy who lived there. We frequently played in the boondocks by his house. One of our favorite places was a flat faced waterfall that we climbed up and down. It was covered by a thin sheet of water, but I don’t recall ever being concerned that I might slip and hurt myself.

I could babble on about the camp, and I will later, but for now it’s time to wrap up. According to psychologists your experiences when you are ten have major impact on your development. I was ten when we moved to Guam so you can see why it important to me. You’ll be reading more about it in the next issues.