Month: February 2014

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.

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.

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.

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!