Sailors and Dogs Keep off the Grass (eBook)

Thomas Turman (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019 | 1. Auflage
266 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5439-9156-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Sailors and Dogs... is my coming-of-age story of my non-wartime, four-year tour of duty in the Navy Construction Battalions (Seabees).

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Sailors and Dogs Keep off the Grass is Thomas Turman's coming-of-age account of a spirited, sensitive and humorous four years in the Navy Construction Battalions (Seabees). This follows Turman from Boot Camp in San Diego, to the odd Nevada Navy, to the mobile construction battalion's work in New Foundland, Spain, Cuba, Bermuda and in one incident, a secret "e;Black Op"e; job in the Caribbean. Escaping from the Navy, there are sensual and humorous side-trips to Reno, Boston, Providence and New York. This story should appeal to those who have served in any service and even to those who haven't and are curious about military life.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

The Lucky Dragon

My draft card reads Thomas Lee Turman. It’s 1957 and our government is after me.

John Denis and I are looking for a way to hide from the military draft. I just left the University of Colorado because I ran out of money, and John lost his gymnastics scholarship at the University of Florida. We’re 20 and our student deferments have disappeared along with most of our options. We, and any future employer, know the Army has its sights set on us as raw material for their mandatory two-year hitch. We’re scared, but optimistic. Our plan is to escape from Denver’s winters and loose ourselves in the hustle-bustle glamour and sunshine of southern California.

I have just parked my tired, ’49 Chevy in front of the mysterious and iconic Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. The low, early morning light of December excites the detailed and intimidating entrance to the movie palace to our right. This is no average movie theater. The 100-foot tall, red columned pagoda-like entrance structure lurks at the back of the vast concrete court formed by four-story buildings 200 feet apart whose facades are right up at the sidewalk. There is a 20-foot high dragon carved into a flat stone above the theater’s entry. In this morning’s shadows, this silent processional court and elaborate entrance feels like the portal to an emperor’s palace. This royal manor or movies is waiting for John and me pay tribute. A large poster just in from the sidewalk says that “The Sweet Smell of Success” is playing. Hollywood is where some Americans come to start a new life. After all, MGM discovered the teenaged Lana Turner in a drugstore just blocks from here.

I unfold myself out of the smelly car and stretch my arms after our all-night dash across southern Nevada. John steps out on to the sidewalk and squints up at the carved, stone dragon down at the entrance to the theater. Then we both ease to the front of the car to each lean on a front fender, waiting for our new lives to begin.

“Jesus, Tom, it’s good to get out of the car. How long were we in there?”

“About 9 hours, I guess, but at least we’re here for an early start.”

John peers up and down the empty street and says, “Early start for what?”

I was born in California and lived in L.A. before moving to Denver. I gesture toward the theater and say, “My mother, hoping to be discovered by some talent agent, brought me here as a five-year old during WWII. We’d watch actors and actresses of the 30’s and 40’s attend movie premieres. She told me the dragon up there was a lucky beast. Huge searchlights would stab their shafts of light into the night to tell us where to come. The stars would arrive in big, shiny Packards and Duesenbergs and stroll down that court between the fans to see their movie. It was a mark of their fame to be asked to leave their handprints in the wet concrete of the theater’s forecourt. A lot of the movie stars came here to leave their mark. Still do, I guess.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that in newsreels. Sometimes the leave their footprints too.”

“My dad was an engineer. He never came to the premieres. I remember him lecturing us, ‘That exotic trap with its red and gold entrance, topped with that damned dragon, separates everyone in the real world from their desperately desired fantasy world within. The dragon invites some people inside but frightens others away.’ I’m sure he was trying to warn my mother about the disappointments awaiting her for holding on to her country-girl, show business dreams.”

In this pre-rush-hour silence, the contrasts of the low light and long shadows on the theater and sidewalk are strong. It’s like we’re watching the beginning of an old black and white, Bogart/Sidney Greenstreet movie. The only sound is the creaking of the Chevy’s engine cooling off. The faintly salt air is beginning to revive us some.

John, in a red nylon jacket, and expensive haircut, looks a lot like the current heartthrob actor James Dean. I know he hopes that the coincidence will get him into the movies. But even I know there will be no work for yet another James Dean look-a-like.

Like a typical 50’s college student, I’m dressed in a long-sleeve, button-down shirt, cords and loafers. I studied engineering and architecture and hope those will get me a drafting job in an architect’s office. I plan to save money, get back to school, and hide under another student deferment. My plan is slightly more realistic than John’s, but not by much. We are both scared of what our looming, potential military future might bring us. I won’t admit that and neither will he.

“Now what?” John says, staring down the empty sidewalk.

“I don’t know. We get some breakfast and look in the papers for jobs and a place to stay. Let’s just see what happens. How bad can it be?”

I hear some noise from up ahead of us and I notice someone walking toward us down the middle of the street from the end of the block. A good-looking, muscular guy is walking boldly and calmly along wearing nothing but a jockstrap and tennis shoes, carrying two large gym bags. He stops opposite us, turning to face the pagoda and the dragon. With his arms outstretched holding the large gym bags in a crucifix-like pose. He begins screaming a prayer-like diatribe on how the Jews are keeping him from getting the acting jobs he should have. I’m not sure he even notices us as his only live audience. With his face tilted up in a beatific gesture, he elaborates his appeal to the dragon that is guarding one of the sacred cathedrals of the movie world.

The stoplights at either end of the block are flashing through their stop-and-goes for ghost traffic on the empty street. The guy in the jock, now facing the two of us leaning on the Chevy at the curb, doesn’t see a fat black Cadillac limo that creeps around the corner on our left to ease up to within just a couple of feet of the gym bag in his right hand.

The Cady’s horn lets out a small “beep, beep”. Angry jockstrap guy’s lecture stops. He jerks his head over his shoulder and fixes a look on the driver that clearly says, “Why don’t you just go around me?” Turning back to us, and Grauman’s red and gold gate, he begins his rant again.

“Beep, beep.

This time the jockstrap guy doesn’t even look at the car and just yells in exasperation, “I’m busy here!”

After an uncomfortable pause comes a third, long blast of the Cadillac’s horn.

The angry jock-strap guy sets down his bags. Very slowly and deliberately leans down and unzips the bag on his left, purposely giving the Caddy a significant view of his bare ass. He pulls out what looks like a 10-pound dumbbell, turns quickly and heaves it into the windshield of the Cadillac, which screeches backward leaving smoke and a burning rubber smell in the air.

Jockstrap guy picks up his bags, steps up on the sidewalk, nods to us, and disappears into the shadowed forecourt of the theater past the “Sweet Smell of Success” poster as we watch the black Cadillac speed away west.

Welcome to Hollywood.

We drove all night to get here early this morning, and, despite the salty air, we’re in a sleep-deprived-stupor. The sun is just high enough to warm us into even less action. Stunned into silence by the street performance, we lean back against the car quietly, our faces to the sun, eyes closed, when the jockstrap lecturer returns. He has put on only some very small, bright blue shorts.

“You guys looking for a place to stay?”

Like hicks in the big city that we are, we just stare, then answer together, “Yeah.”

“C’mon.” He waves one of the bags in a sweeping arc invitation to follow, and he strides off toward the next corner in front of us. “You can come back for the car.” I lock up the Chevy, and we follow jockstrap guy to the corner and up N. Orange. North Orange is a beautiful, leaf-shaded street sloping up slightly toward the low hills covered in now-sun-lit greenery. This is probably the kind of perfect street movie location directors seek for their movies.

One block up, at the end of N. Orange, we crowd into the foyer of an aging, three-story apartment house called The Jersey Arms. The lobby smells like the last 40 years of its sunless, smoke-filled life. This vaguely Art Deco place must have been really something in the 30’s when it was built.

“I’ve got a place here, but I’ll be moving at the end of the month. They have an empty apartment up on the third floor.” Jockstrap guy clumps his bags down and knocks on the first door at the end of the foyer marked Manager.

A very good-looking, well built, 15 or 16-year old girl wearing shorts, an undershirt and too much make-up opens the door, backs up slightly, and yells, “Dad, its Jake and some of his friends”. She does this like a lioness without taking her eyes off us.

“I’ll handle this, Jenny. You go in the other room,” from behind the door. A solid, dangerous looking, dark-haired man with thick, bushy eyebrows on a serious face steps around the door wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt hanging out loosely. He...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.12.2019
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Dramatik / Theater
• ISBN-10: 1-5439-9156-4 / 1543991564
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5439-9156-7 / 9781543991567