Chapter 19: Private Parts

Chapter 19: Private Parts

Job 48: PFC (continued)

1986

Now that I had “graduated” from Fitness Company to real basic training, the yelling really began in earnest. It was quite unsettling. I was bused to a distant part of the seemingly endless Fort Jackson and mustered into a large auditorium with hundreds of other nervous new recruits. Then a strange thing happened. The drill sergeants told us that if any of us were having second thoughts, now was our chance to back out, but with a catch. They said that if any of us had withheld any information that would have barred us from entering the Army, now was the time to ‘fess up, and we could be on our way, no more questions asked.

As a matter of fact, I was thinking that I had made a horrible mistake, and there was something I had withheld. I held up my hand, and joined a small group of other new-comers in another room to make our confessions. A DI (drill instructor) came up to me to ask what I hadn’t admitted. I told him I’d lied about not using hallucinogens. He told me that he hoped I started having a flashback right then and there so he could kick my ass. I appreciated his candor, despite his lack of understanding about how drugs work.

Finally I got to a table behind which sat a more reasonable-seeming DI. I told him my sin, and he basically said that it wasn’t so bad, so I was going to have to stay. I’m not sure what the point of that whole exercise had been. I guess they wanted to make sure they weren’t taking anyone really unsuitable, or just to see who the quitters were. As it was, I didn’t hear anymore about my illicit drug history (mild though it was), but I felt like I had been lied to. I was embarrassed for admitting to something uncomfortable, and it hadn’t even gotten me what I’d hoped it would. At least I never again saw that one DI who wanted to see me start gibbering and hiding from the moon or god knows what.

So began the long weeks of basic training. As time went by, I even managed to adapt to the rigors of such an existence. I still had occasional bouts of extreme depression, and even thoughts of suicide at times when I felt like it was the only way to get out of that excruciating situation In general though, there wasn’t a lot of time to dwell on one’s problems, and I even have some pleasant memories of that time. That’s the nice thing about memory: we seem to remember the good stuff more than the bad of difficult times.
One of the best memories I have from BT (and which I can’t really work into this narrative in a seamless way, so I’ll just bung it in here) is one that still makes me laugh out loud today. It happened on bivouac, which is a fancy army way of saying “camping”. We were learning what it was like to work and fight in the field and sleeping among the sparse, piney woods of the south east in tents at night. There was one private from a large city who had never been in the “woods” before. He had an unusually large concern about encountering snakes (which we never did). The rest of us found his phobia amusing, and then somewhat annoying. The first night, I was in my two-person tent with my buddy Rogers (whose first name I can’t remember because in the army we only ever addressed each other by our last names). The quiet was suddenly shattered by the sound of a huge explosion some distance away. We weren’t sure if maybe this wasn’t some drill that required a response on our parts. When we heard nothing more, I ventured to whisper, “What the fuck was that?”. After a brief pause of perfect comedic timing, Rogers said, “Maybe…it was a snake.” I couldn’t roar with laughter the way I wanted to for fear of an ass-kicking by a DI, but I giggled into my sleeping bag for the next several minutes

One thing that helped get me through BT was Vicks Formula 44-D. I was allowed to take this for my persistent “barracks lung”, even though it had a surprisingly high alcohol content. Every night just before lights out I would have my little cough syrup “night cap”, and I slept quite well until reveille, which always came way too early for my tastes.

One of my favorite parts of basic training was BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship). I had fired guns before, and I seemed to be a naturally good shot, but in the Army I found I had a real talent for it. I wasn’t exactly sniper quality, but I quickly got a reputation for my skills. Don’t worry – I didn’t wind up like Vincent D’Onofrio in “Full Metal Jacket”. I was just glad to have something for which I could get praise in a world full of Dads in BDUs.

One day I was at my position on the shooting range. We were taking a break, while one of our DI’s was accompanying the captain and lieutenant of our company on an inspection of our targets. The group paused at my target and looked at my tight shot grouping, and then they turned and looked admiringly at me. I was very proud, but a little nervous at all the attention. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to salute or wave or what, so I just stood still and nodded back.

Towards the end of BT, we were graded on our marksmanship, of which there were three levels (from lowest to highest): marksman, sharpshooter and expert. We were given forty bullets to shoot at forty plastic targets which popped up from behind little hillocks. They varied in their speed and distance. One was called “Fast Freddy”, and he had a cousin named “Quick Rick”. Everyone in my platoon expected me to be a “Dead Eye” and get all 40. However, I missed Fast Freddy and one of the furthest targets. I was a little disappointed at not getting them all, but it was enough to make me an expert marksman. There were actually a couple of soldiers in our battalion who got “Dead Eye”. They didn’t get a special medal for their acumen, but they got the dubious honor of the “Blood Badge”, which meant that when the DI attached their “Expert” badge to their field jacket, he slapped it into their chest before the little clips were put on the back of the pins that poked through the cloth. When I heard about that, I was quite content with my measly score of 38 out of 40.

Even more than shooting guns, my favorite part of BT was meal times. I’ve always been a fan of free food, and the Army wasn’t stingy with the vittles, and it wasn’t bad either, despite jokes you may have heard about “shit on a shingle”. The other nice thing about mess hall was that for some reason the DI’s didn’t scream at you while you were eating. Maybe too many privates had choked or thrown up from stress (or choked on their stress vomit). So meal times were like islands of peace and comfort food in a sea of stress.

Actually, there was one time when they did holler at us during mess. For some reason one day a small group of female privates were dining in our mess hall. We males kept sneaking peaks at the girls. Finally the DI’s decided to just get it over with. They made us Joes stand up, then they ordered us to either “look left” or “look right”, (depending on which way we were facing) so we could good get a good look at “Molly”, and then meal time continued on schedule.

Other than one female DI, we often went for weeks without seeing women. One day we were practicing crawling under barbed wire, which is apparently something that happens a lot in the real world of warfare. A small group of Mollies was drilling on the same field, but they were kept off to the side, away from us. I was in a line of privates on the edge of the practice field, closest to Molly, who were separated by several empty tracks. We were doing the low crawl, which meant we couldn’t really see where we were going, and we couldn’t lift our heads because of the barbed wire. I just tried to follow the guy in front of me as best I could. I kept glancing forward to keep him in sight, and I began to think, “I guess I’ve been without the company of women for too long, because this private has a really nice ass.” Then I discovered I had somehow gotten way off track and was following one of the females. I got yelled at, but it was worth it to know I wasn’t turning gay.

Getting back to the subject of meal time: somebody had to help prepare all that food. Each mess hall had a sergeant in charge of the kitchen, and a small, permanent staff of underlings, but most of the grunt work was performed by us trainees. They couldn’t get anyone to volunteer for “Kitchen Patrol” (at least, not more than once), so each day a few luckless, random privates were pulled away from whatever training was on tap that day to work in the mess. When my turn came, I was marched into the mess hall along with several others from the battalion. We lined up in front of the mess sergeant, who wrote mysterious letters upon pieces of masking tape which were placed on the front of our caps. This way everyone knew where we were supposed to be. Mine said, “P&P”, which I didn’t understand, but I was hoping it stood for something nice, like “Pies & Pastries”. No –  it meant “Pots & Pans”. For the next 16 hours, all I did was scrub pots and pans – extremely large pots and pans. After all, we were feeding an army. It was probably the toughest assignment one could land on KP.

I had a partner from my platoon helping me with the P&P, and I found I wasn’t the biggest wimp in the Army. After a few hours, this guy couldn’t stop whining about how much his feet hurt. I was tired and sore, but my feet were okay, so I regarded his complaints with disdain. Finally, after the last pot (or maybe it was a pan) had been cleaned after the evening meal, I slouched back to my platoon. After wearing my cap in the kitchen all day, I forgot it was still on my head. For some reason, under normal circumstances, you’re not supposed to wear your cap indoors. I stumbled through the door, and one of DI’s was standing there. He just looked at me. I didn’t wait to be told. I pulled off my cap and dropped and starting banging out 25 push-ups – the standard punishment for minor infractions. A great home-coming after a hard day.

You would think that with all the push-ups we did in the normal course of our days, and the extra ones doled out as punishment, that I should have been a ripped, push-up monster. Actually, I didn’t have to do a lot extra push-ups on my own account, because I was good at doing what I was told, and I didn’t make trouble. Most extra push-ups were done en masse because one private had fucked up, so we all suffered.

But despite all the opportunities for practice, push-ups were still the bane of my military existence. At the very end of BT, I didn’t graduate with my platoon because I still couldn’t quite pass the stinking push-up test. I had become friends with a few of the other guys, and all us had been through this amazing experience together (except one guy who tried to kill himself by taking an overdose of aspirin and had been discharged). I was humiliated and downcast.

I didn’t go back to Fitness Company, but I was stuck in the now mostly deserted battalion barracks with a few other weaklings. At least some of them were girls, who are always better company than guys. Over the next week or two, we did a lot of exercise, and eventually I barely managed to do enough of those damned push-ups to pass on to my AIT.

The radio operator school was at Fort Gordon, near Columbia, Georgia – which is only about 100 miles from Ft. Jackson. A private from another battalion and I were the only ones headed for Ft. Gordon at that time. We were given our orders for our change of assignment (I’m sure there was an official name for such papers, but I can’t remember what that was) and we were dropped off at the local Greyhound station. I had been hoping that we might get a little time off before having to report to our new post. On the bus ride, I noticed that although the date of our exit from Ft. Jackson was that day, the date of having to report to Ft. Gordon wasn’t until the next day. When we arrived in Columbia, I called the phone number on the orders and asked the clerk on duty if I was correct in my interpretation of the orders, which he confirmed.

So – a night of freedom, after all. My new buddy and I rented a motel room, and then we proceeded to explore the nightlife of Columbia, Georgia (which ain’t much) and get blind, stinking drunk. I won’t go into the details about some of the mayhem that occurred that night. Let’s just say that neither of us will probably ever be welcomed back at that motel. The next day we reported for duty at Ft. Gordon with massive hangovers.

Advanced Individual Training was easier than boot camp. There were still the usual obsessions with exercise and clean barracks, but most of our time was spent in class, learning our chosen specialties. The school was done in two shifts. My company’s classes were the during the second shift. We’d get up at 8 in the morning (which seemed really decadent after being rousted out of bed at 4 AM in BT), have breakfast and do our usual Army stuff for several hours, then have lunch, and then march across base to the school, where we would be stay until late in the evening. Then we’d march to a different mess hall for a late dinner, then be bused back to our barracks. Part of our march crossed a huge parade field. There was a forest on one edge of the field, and it was actually quite inspiring to hear our march songs echo back at us from the wall of trees.

I had a hard time adapting to such a schedule. Considering how late we were at school, 8 AM still seemed rather early for reveille. I’ve always been a morning person, and being in school after dark was really hard for me. I was often punished by the sergeant in charge of our class for dozing off at my desk.

Classes and our company we co-educational, but Joe and Molly slept in separate buildings. In AIT there wasn’t the draconian proscription against “fraternization” as there had been BT. There was also a lot more free time when we weren’t in class. In fact, we essentially had our weekends to ourselves. Most of the time they were spent on the base, but we could go anywhere we wanted with in that vast space. There was even a civilian-run taxi service, and a bar! With alcohol and everything! Not a great idea for a drunk like me. Sometimes we were even given passes to spend our weekends off-base. On those occasions, most soldiers rented rooms in the same motel for purposes of co-ed partying. I wasn’t interested in hanging out with the same people I’d been with all week, so when I got a weekend pass, I rented a single room at the Columbia Holiday Inn. I checked in during the wee hours of the morning, and the first thing I did was sleep. The room was dark and quiet and no one bothered me, and I slept the sleep of the dead. When I awoke it was still dark out. I thought my watch must have stopped or something, but I confirmed the date and time with the front desk. I had slept a staggering 18 hours! I guess I had a deficit to make up for.

I was well-rested, which felt great, but now I was wide awake in the middle of the night. It was too late to go anywhere. I ordered room service, watched TV, took a long bath, even got in some leisurely hobby practice in complete privacy, but mostly I was bored and lonesome, so I was actually glad to get back to the base.

All that free time and access to alcohol wasn’t really a good thing for me. Booze is a depressant, and I had more time to ruminate on what I was doing with my life, for which the answer was still, “I don’t know, but I don’t like what I’m currently doing.”

Eventually I became desperate to get out of the army. I kept trying to find a way out, but I had signed an iron-clad contract. They just weren’t going to let me out, no matter how much I begged. I finally hit upon a technique used by people much better than I, for causes more noble. I went on a hunger strike. I just stopped eating. Of course, being hungry didn’t make it any easier to do all the push-ups we were still forced to perform, but I persisted. My biggest mistake was wandering into the base PX (Post Exchange), which was a full-fledged supermarket. I felt like Robin Williams’ Russian defector in “Moscow on the Hudson” – overwhelmed by a bewildering array of food choices, and I almost passed out like he did.

Soon word of my shameful hunger strike got to the right people. I suppose that technically they could have charged me with disobeying a direct order and chucked me in the brig and force-fed me or something. They apparently didn’t want to go to all that trouble, and they grudgingly gave me my discharge.

It’s difficult for me to admit this. On one hand, I feel proud that I was able to do this thing which took a lot of will power to get out of a seemingly inescapable situation. However, I’m not proud of being essentially a pussy, when many fine people have bravely served in the military, even ones who didn’t want to go but were drafted. I don’t usually tell anyone I was in the service, especially veterans, because I don’t want to have to tell them that I got an early discharge. And I really don’t want the subject to come up of just how I achieved that rare privilege.

Of course, paper work never moves very quickly in the Army, so it took a few more weeks for my discharge to actually come through. I gladly started eating again, but meanwhile, I just banged about, going through the motions of attending class and all the other stuff – and getting drunk on the weekends.

One Sunday night I had been partying all night. It felt like my discharge was never going to come through, and as the sun came up on another day in the Army, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had just gotten paid, so I packed some civilians clothes in my duffle bag, caught a cab to the airport and boarded a flight to San Francisco.

I had sobered up a bit by the time my plane landed. I didn’t know if the army would come looking for me, but I thought it might be a good idea not to just go back to Butt County – the last known residence they had for me. Of course, this was in the “good old days” – long before 9-11 – when you didn’t have to show ID to book a domestic flight. So PFC Rimpy Rimpington got off a plane in San Francisco, and a few minutes later a person matching my description by the name of Max Rockatansky bought a ticket to Seattle. Some of you may recognize that name from a popular film franchise, but in 1986 the ticket clerk didn’t even blink, except at having to spell it.

So I winged my way northward once again - no plan in my crazy head, other than not being in the Army any more. Of course, you can’t just walk away from the military, unless you plan to stay Max Rockatansky forever and never use your social security number. Maybe some people have done that, but it sounded like an even drearier existence than I’d already led. So job #48 didn’t end when I got on that plane in Columbia. There’s a bit more to wrap that up after my escapades on the lam, but that’s a story for another chapter.

The end.

Chapter 18: PFC Rimpy

Chapter 18: PFC Rimpy

It's nothing like this.

Job 48: Private First Class, United States Army

1985 - 1986

I arrived back in Butt County during a period of very pleasant warmish weather, which is not unusual in November. It was a wonderful feeling after the chill and wet of Seattle, but that was  the only good thing about my situation. I had no job, no money and worst of all, no place to stay. I’d sleep on friends’ couches when I could, but I was beginning to wear out my welcome most places I went, because I had developed a bit of a drinking problem. If I could get my hands on some booze, I’d drink to excess, and then I became extremely obnoxious.

It wasn’t long until I found myself having to take shelter under a bridge for the night. I had become a bum. There weren’t any billy goats in the neighborhood, so I couldn’t even make a living as a troll. My father, during one of his innumerable lectures on the importance of finding a vocation and becoming very good at it, once said that even if I was going to be a bum, to be the best bum I could be. I’ve never been sure if “the best bum” would be the most pathetic bum, or the one with the best cardboard box, shopping cart and other accoutrements of bum-dom.  I seemed to fall into the former category, because despite having gone on numerous guided backpacking trips in my teens, I had no experience with urban camping. However, I did pick a pretty good bridge, so maybe my dad would have been a little proud of me.

I had the bridge to myself, because it was a bit off the usual paths beaten by College Town’s homeless, whose population wasn’t nearly as large in those days as it is now. The flat part of the embankment was only about three feet from the underside of the concrete bridge, so it was actually very dry under there. One rainy night, though, I couldn’t fall asleep because I had this irrational fear that the creek would rise and sweep me away to a cold and watery death.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and by the time morning finally arrived, I had made a desperate decision. Perhaps my father’s phrase “be the best bum you can be” was banging around in my head and reminding me of “Be all you can be”, for I went to the local U.S. military recruiting office and volunteered for job number 48: the United States Army (the toughest job you'll ever love). I settled on the Army because I didn’t qualify for the Air Force, and I had heard horror stories about the Navy. The Coast Guard was also out of the question, because, honestly, I don’t like boats. Of course, I didn’t even consider the Marines, since I’m not a tough guy, not by any stretch of the imagination. As it turns out, I was barely tough enough for even the Army.

I wanted to make a good impression on my future employer, Uncle Sam, so I went to the library and studied for the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery), a series of tests to determine what MOS (Military Occupational Specialty – the military really likes acronyms and initialisms) you’re suited for, and I got a good score. However, I was in dire need of money, food and shelter, so I wasn’t choosey about which MOS I selected. I went with the unglamorous Single Channel Radio Operator because it was the soonest one available. Additionally, because I had some college credits, I was able to enter the service as a Private First Class, which is the third level of privacy.

 As it was, I wouldn’t be departing for basic training until January, so I still had the problem of where I was going to stay until then. Fortunately, just the fact that I was entering the military made people feel more kindly toward me than the average bum. I went to the state employment office to see if I could get Unemployment Insurance Benefits from my rash of jobs in Washington. Technically, I didn’t quite qualify, but the lady who interviewed me had been in the service, so she approved my claim. Also, the Catholic Ladies Relief Society took pity on this nice young man who was about to serve his country, and they put me up for a few nights at a flea-bag motel.

Then the best thing of all happened. I had to go to O-Town to take care of some sort of official document business in relation to going into the service. As I was leaving the county clerk’s office, I ran into my dear old friend “J”. You remember me saying a few chapters back that Mrs. Rimpington’s first named started with “J”? You remember me mentioning in the last chapter having had a brief romantic  interlude with the future Mrs. Rimpington? Yes! They are one and the same woman! We had been close friends since high school, but I had lost contact with her for a couple of years, what with all my gallivanting off to Washington and general instability. And suddenly here she was, in what some may call a chance meeting, but which I call “fate”. I look back on that moment as probably the most important in my life. It feels like that was when my life truly began.

Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. It’s not like romance was instantly rekindled. We were just old friends who were happy to see each other. I caught her up on all I had been up to in the last couple of years, and more importantly, what I was about to do. She was surprised by my choice of the military. In fact, all my friends who knew me well were a little incredulous when they heard the news. They knew I wasn’t really the army type. I should have listened to them, but once again I’m getting ahead of myself!

J invited me to stay with her for a few weeks. I then relocated to my brother’s house in Sacramento for the last few weeks until it was time for me to fly off to South Carolina for basic training. J was sharing a rental house with our old friend Lurleen. J had an 8 year old daughter from a previous marriage named…hmm…what to call her here? Now I usually call her Step-Rimpyette in my writings, but she wasn’t a step-child yet. I’ll just call her “B” for now.

Lurleen had a little boy we shall call “Z”, with her estranged husband Scoop. J also had her young cousin “C” living with her. It was a happy, crowded little house, and I was welcomed warmly. It was wonderfully soothing to someone who was between the recent unpleasant experience of sleeping under a bridge, and an uncertain future in the military.

As the weeks passed, true affection began to develop between me and J. Silly boy about love that I was, I don’t think I knew exactly what I was feeling. I was also afraid to try to take it further because I was  leaving soon for my brother’s house and then on to the army. I knew I couldn’t stay indefinitely with J and the gang, but it made me sad to have to leave this group of loving people.

Eventually the day came when I boarded a plane in Sacramento for Columbia, South Carolina. During the flight, I reflected that all I knew about “boot camp” was what I had seen in movies. I fully expected that the screaming of orders and calls of “maggot” would start as soon as I stepped off the bus at Fort Jackson. The recruiting office had given us a little practice in marching and about-facing and whatnot so that we wouldn’t look like total morons when we entered training. I was surprised to find that I knew the drill sergeant who led us in those drills. He was the older brother of one of my former roommates (the who worked at the rice cake factory). When I knew him then, he was just a guy, going nowhere and having occasional run-ins with the law. Now here he was, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, and looking very comfortable in his new profession. It made me wonder if there was hope for me.

At the airport in South Carolina, I forget how they rounded up us handful of recruits, who had arrived from various places around the country. The staffers from Fort Jackson who herded us weren’t yelly drill sergeant types, but they were somewhat impatient with us. Instead of a bus, we piled into a couple of olive-drab vans for the ride to the base. We arrived in the middle of the night, so nothing was really going on. We would have to wait until the morning to receive our gear, so we were simply assigned some bunks for the remainder of the night.

There wasn’t much remainder of the night, since the Army likes to get an early start on its day. We were rousted out of bed, and then the yelling started in earnest. Seems like you could never move fast enough for the liking of anyone with power over you. That first full day was a blur, especially after some 29 years. It was basically (pun intended) the sort of things which, if you’ve never done it yourself, you’ve probably seen at the movies: a fast and severe haircut, the issuance of uniforms, et cetera, all accompanied by hollering non-commissioned officers. One important part of that day, which I had not seen depicted in any popular entertainment, was a test of our fitness to see if we were really fit for basic training.

I had already passed the Army’s physical, which was admittedly rather perfunctory, so I was a little confused by this new test. I thought that the point of basic training was to get you into shape for service. Why did we need to prove fitness for getting fit? The test mainly consisted of “how many push-ups can you do?” My result was “not many”. I’ve never much of a physical type, and push-ups had always been a bit of a bug-bear for me in PE classes in school. I had certainly not kept up on them in the years since.

I quickly found out what happened to those recruits who didn’t pass the test: Fitness Company. Apparently the new, all-volunteer army had realized that too many recruits were washing out of basic training because of the physical rigors. So, if you weren’t already reasonably fit, they put you in Fitness Company, which was like BT Lite. We didn’t get to do any of the fun stuff like shooting guns or throwing grenades. We just spent most of our days exercising to get our flabby bodies into the minimum condition needed for real BT. Every other day was a “hard” day, full of calisthenics, running and other PT.  Alternate days were “easy”, which usually consisted of slightly more enjoyable physical activities, like volley ball. Great. I hated volley ball in high school, now I was playing it for my country.

To their credit, the drill sergeants in charge of Fitness Company didn’t make us feel bad about not being in “real” BT. It’s funny to think that they it’s likely that they were teased by their peers in the rest of the camp for their assignment to a bunch of sissies. They just wanted to get us through it and on to the rest of our military training. A popular song sung during marches and runs goes along the lines of, “from the east to the west, [insert name of company here] is the best”. I thought it was ironic that we sang that song in Fitness Company, because we so obviously weren’t the best.

Fitness Company was also pretty chill in that it was more gender-mixed than the rest of BT. The guys and gals had separate quarters, of course, but we were all in the same multi-story building, and we did our training together, so I least I got to see and occasionally talk to females. One day, during the dreaded volley ball, I noticed that one of the girls on the opposing team always ducked when the ball came towards her. Oddly enough, one of my few athletic skills is being good at “serving” a volley ball and sending it exactly where I want to. When it came my turn to serve, I just served it every time at that girl, who of course threw her hands over her head and hunkered down rather hitting it back. Her teammates were reluctant to knock her over to get to the ball before it hit the ground. My team won by a wide margin thanks to my dastardly Scorpio “win at all costs” ploy.

Despite the the Fitness Company's co-ed training,  the Army strictly forbade fraternization between the sexes (which is a weird choice of words because it literally means “turning people into brothers”). One Sunday we were allowed to relax at a nearby base recreation center, but the frivolity (such as it was) was brought to a screeching halt because a sergeant spotted a “Joe” playing checkers with a “Molly”. Despite this rather overweening proscription, I knew of some privates who risked punishment to engage in late-night assignations in areas out of view of roving non-coms. I wasn’t one of them, even though there was a girl who would have been willing - I was thinking of the girl I’d left behind. Actually, the girl I’d left behind probably wouldn’t have minded, since we hadn’t made any commitments to each other yet. I was still just a total dork when it came to the opposite sex. This young female private  had sidled up next to me one day when we were all standing around, listening to some wisdom from some sergeant. She slyly slid the side of her foot against mine. I knew this meant something, but I was too terrified to follow up on it. It’s a wonder I’m not still single.

One thing I didn’t expect about being in “the South” was how cold it was in January. One night we were blasted out of bed by a fire drill. We just had time to throw on our barracks version of leisure wear, which were sweat pants, before running outside, but other than that I only had on socks and a t-shirt. We were out there for quite a while before the all-clear was given. Those tough-as-nails drill sergeants were similarly attired, but seemed unfazed. One of them tried to talk us through putting mind over matter by picturing warm scenes, in which effort I was like Dickens’ Bob Cratchit: not being a man of strong imagination, I failed.

Another thing about the Army for which I was not prepared was the never-ending lung infection which I acquired practically on my first night of sleeping in a closed room with dozens of other humans, and which plagued me for the rest of my time in the service (which was mercifully shorter than originally intended, but I’m getting ahead of myself again).

There is one funny memory I have of my time in Fitness Company. I was standing outside our barracks one day, when a middle-aged female sergeant walked by. I had never seen her before, and I experienced the utmost confusion, because this woman was a dead-ringer for my mother! I thought I must be losing my mind, to be seeing my mother walking about Fort Jackson in battle dress fatigues. She saw me staring at her and bellowed, “What are you looking at, Rimpington?” In panic I wondered how, if she weren’t my mother, she could possibly know my name, until I remembered that it was written in big letters above the right pocket of my field jacket.

I was probably in Fitness Company for no more than a couple of weeks, but it seemed like an eternity. Eventually I was able to do enough precious pushups to pass on to actual BT. Even though we were all going to different parts of the same base, so vast was it that I never saw again saw any of the people I had come to know during that brief time. I soon found out that Fitness Company was a breeze compared to actual BT.  My trouble with push-ups continued to be a problem for me through-out the remainder of basic training and into AIT (Advanced Individual Training), where you learn your MOS (have you been paying attention?)

Wow. This is the first (and hopefully only) job in this long list which it will take more than one chapter to tell, with the exception of the Osmosis Saga, which was written several years ago. Even though my time there wasn’t much more than about half a year, there are so many memories from an intense experience like military training, that it requires more space than your average job. We should be able to wrap this up in the next chapter, and then I can move onto what I consider my real life, where I was more than just a holder of a string of jobs.

The end.

Chapter 17: Loveless in Seattle

Chapter 17: Loveless in Seattle

Jobs 39 - 46

My new Seattle domicile was in the Fremont district, a little northwest of Lake Union. I had never lived right in a large city before, and it was very exciting.  I didn’t consider that my time near Los Angeles counted, because Lake View Terrace was just one of many in the great suburban sprawl, many miles from the city itself. I spent a lot of time exploring my new home that probably would have been better spent looking for work, but I couldn’t resist. Seattle really is a beautiful city, with many interesting things to see.

To facilitate my explorations and job search, my first item of business was to learn the local transit system, so I went downtown to their headquarters. You could buy a large book which contained all the route maps and schedules, or you could take for free little pamphlets of individual routes. I of course chose the option that didn’t involve money. I didn’t know where any of those routes went or where I might need to go, so I took one of each. I took them home and put them in numerical order in a shoe box. There were so many that they filled the box.

I did however splurge on a three-day transit pass, intended for tourists, which also included one ride on the famous old monorail system, which had been built for the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, and was still in use, more as a tourist attraction than public transportation, since its route is very limited. I didn’t have any real reason to ride the monorail, but since I had a free ticket, I was determined to use it. Trouble was, I wasn’t sure where to catch it. You can see it over your head seemingly everywhere when you’re in the central business district, but it only has two stations, one at each end. As I was riding a bus in downtown that first day, I kept an eye out for the station. I was sitting right behind the driver, and as we were about to pull away from a stop, I spotted the monorail station, just as the bus doors were closing. I jumped out in the nick of time, barely avoiding catching my heel in the doors and startling the poor driver.

Job #40: Dishwasher

I got my money’s worth out of that three-day pass. I covered a lot of ground and it wasn’t long before I landed Job #40, which was washing dishes in the kitchen of a large convalescent hospital. The job was alright, I guess, but most jobs like that sort of suck. What really bugged me was the realization that I had not come all the way to Seattle just to continue doing the same dumb, dead-end jobs I’d been doing all along. I was in a new place, and I wanted a new kind of job. I’d had a dream for a while of being able to work in a bookstore. I love books, and the thought of working in a clean, quiet store full of them sounded like heaven. Still does, actually.

Job #41: Bookstore Clerk

I quit the dishwashing job, and spent the next few days remaking myself. I put together a resume (which was mostly bullshit) that somehow suggested I’d be a likely candidate for being a bookstore clerk. Then I started bombarding every bookstore I could find. And amazingly, it worked! I found job #41 in a new, tiny bookstore in an old school building that had been converted to shops. My lady boss co-owned the store with her friend, who worked a regular job. I was so happy because I felt like I had found my dream job.

Unfortunately, my dream job only lasted about a week, when my boss’s partner (in more than just business, I suspect) decided she wanted to work at the bookstore rather than her other job. So I was out – and I was crushed. But I still had my bookstore resume, to which I could now add a real bookstore job. That’s the nice thing about resumes – you don’t have to put down just how long you were at a particular position.

Job #42: Setting Up a Bookstore

In short order, I found job #42, which was helping to set up a B. Dalton’s bookstore (which I’ve just found out no longer exist) in the brand-new Columbia SeaFirst Center (now just Columbia Center), which at the time was the tallest building on the west coast.  Cutting open boxes of books and putting them on shelves according to some plan-o-gram wasn’t quite the kind of bookstore job I wanted, but they said that some of us would be kept around as store clerks once the store opened. That day soon arrived, but I wasn’t among the ones kept on. I don’t know what criteria, if any, they used for their decision, or if it was all just bullshit to lure minions to unpack boxes. I don’t even know if any of the people I had been working with had been retained. Either way, I didn’t take it personally, but I was still bummed that I needed to continue my job search.

Job #43: Making Instrument Cases

I found a job at a place that made cases for musical instruments. What a miserable job that was. Basically I just had to stand at a machine and punch rivets into cut pieces of leather to assemble them into working cases. If you did a bad job of riveting, you could take the piece over to a different machine which would push the rivet out. I had a hard time acquiring the knack for riveting, and I seemed to spend as much time at the unriveting machine as I did at my riveting machine.

My co-workers were all young men who looked like they wanted desperately to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band, but this job was the closest they could get to the music industry. Long hair and black t-shirts seemed to be the uniform of the place. They spent their lunch breaks sitting in their Camaros, blasting heavy metal music. I felt very out of place there.

The factory was in a remote corner of the city that wasn’t well served by the otherwise stellar bus system. After one particularly bad day, I got off a little too late to catch my bus, and there wouldn’t be another one for a long time, so I had to walk the five miles home. I tried hitchhiking along the way. One person did pull over, but just as I reached their car, they tore off. Ha ha! Funny! By the time I got home, I’d decided I wouldn’t be going back to that place the next day.

Job #44: Hanging Door Hangers

I found a job distributing door hangers. Groups of us would pile into vans or the backs of pickups, and then be driven around at break-neck speeds to different residential neighborhoods. We would split up and go from house to house and hang the advertisements on all the front door knobs we could access. The job was simple, but it was actually a lot of work. Seattle is a hilly place, so many of the front walks presented goodly little climbs. We weren’t allowed to short-cut across lawns, which is reasonable, but even if we could have, we would have been thwarted by the fact that a lot of the houses had garages, and the driveways were cut level into the slopes, which created a deep, wide, walled trench between each property. After full days of trudging up and down innumerable front walks and streets, my leg muscles were on fire.

We didn’t make an hourly wage, but were paid according to how many hangers we were able to unload. Of course, the managers were aware of the potential for cheating by disposing of hangers in trash cans or down storm drains and such. They told us they knew where all hiding places were and would be checking them regularly. I’m not proud of it, but I took a chance and tossed a few anyway, and got away with it.

Job #45: Unloading Blueberries

I forget the details of my departure from that job, but job #45 was a one-day gig unloading blueberries at a warehouse, which I got through my roommate Leo, who was friends with the boss. The blueberries had just come in after being picked. You can’t get much fresher than that. Golly, they were tasty. Don’t worry, I didn’t eat TOO many.

Job #46: Selling Flowers

This job was a bit of a low point for me. My great Northwest adventure just didn’t seem to be panning out the way I’d hoped. For a couple of days, I was actually one of those sad people you see hawking flowers on a street corner.  A young man would drop me and some buckets of bouquets off at various busy intersections, and I would wave flowers at passing cars in the hope they would stop and purchase some. Few did. I tried to look lively and cheerful, but my heart wasn’t in it.

My young boss would periodically check in on me (and whatever other flunkies he had stationed at different intersections) to collect the money and replenish my supply if needed. I forget how my pay was worked out, but I certainly wasn’t earning an hourly wage. After a few days of this nonsense, I was standing morosely at my corner, barely noticing the passing traffic. My roommate Jim and his girlfriend happened by in her car and stopped to ask how I was doing. I made a rash decision, and handed the girlfriend the bouquet I was holding, and hopped in their car and abandoned the rest of the flowers. I had what little money I collected for that day’s meager sales in my pocket, and I kept that, too.

Yes, I stole from my employer, and left his wares to possible theft. I’m not proud of that fact. It’s the worst thing I’ve done to an employer (even worse than dumping a few door hangers), and it wasn’t at all justified, but like I said I was sort of bottoming out. Oddly enough, I never got any consequences for my malfeasance. I think my boss tried to call me once after that, but I ignored him. Luckily I hadn’t even given an address when I got that job. A few days later I was walking around downtown, and I saw my former employer turning onto a street I was about to cross. I don’t think he saw me, but I turned tail and disappeared into the crowds.

I think one thing that was contributing to my generally low mental state was the Seattle climate. I’m a California boy, and I’m not used to a lot of rain. Coming from a Mediterranean climate, at first the cool moisture was fun and refreshing, but after a few months it started to wear on me. I think I may actually have Seasonal Affect Disorder, and too many days without sunshine get me down.

But there was something bigger than a little rain that was bothering me. I went to see the movie “Choose Me” with Keith Carradine and Rae Dawn Chong. I didn’t think it was a particularly good film, but it affected me because it was all about love and relationships, and it made me realize I..was…LONELY! I had always been a shy and retiring sort when it came to the opposite sex. I’ve mentioned that I had a girlfriend in high school, and in 1983 the future Mrs. Rimpington and I had a brief romantic encounter, but otherwise I had resigned myself to being a loner with a boner.

I thought I would be content just practicing my favorite hobby, but that movie brought it home to me that something huge was missing from my life. Suddenly I wanted a girlfriend very badly, but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about it.

Job #47: Taxi Driver-in-Training

While pondering this imponderable, I got a job as a taxi driver. I spent a few days riding around with another driver, learning the streets and other aspects of the job. That might have been a good job, but I never went solo, because the shortening autumn days and increasing rain finally got to me and I decided to flee back to California.

It was a fateful decision, because it led to the lowest point in my life, but once you’ve bottomed out, there’s nowhere to go but up. And fate also intervened in the romance department, but you’ll have to wait to hear about all that.

The end.

Chapter 16: Go North Again, Young Man

Chapter 16: Go North Again, Young Man

Jobs 37 - 39

1984

(continued)

Job #37: Bus Driver

Job #37 was my first foray into public transportation. All of my jobs in this field have been right here in Butt County, for three different contractors (and even more name changes) for what has essentially remained the same public transit system. Since the first contractor has long since gone out of business, normally I would feel comfortable using their real name in this pseudonymous memoir. I know my disguised business and place names are as thin and transparent as fairy wings, but I must be careful. So, I'll have to call them...oh...Eastwagon. Yeah, that'll work.

There is only one other person at my current job beside myself who was there back in the Eastwagon days (and she has been there this whole time, which is very impressive – one job in thirty one years, especially compared to my 47 or so in the same period), but my employers would know who Eastwagon was if I used their real name, and therefore they would know I'm talking about them (in a very actionable kind of way). I don't think they'd necessarily know the real identity of Rimpy, since I've never used that name at work. But since I've just admitted that there's one other person who knew me at Eastwagon, all they'd have to do is ask her. Then I'd have to kill her, and I'd hate to have to do that. Or I could just take that bit out. Naw! She'll just have to take her chances.

I'm probably going to spend a bit more time on this job than many of the others, because it relates to my current position. It's interesting to compare public transit then and now. I know it's easy to say something like “people are getting dumber”, but from my view from the driver's seat of a bus over a few decades, it really looks like they are.

I suppose it could be a matter of simple numbers. The population of Butt County has grown in the last 30 years, and so has the size of its transit system. The old bus schedules used to be printed on a single piece of paper which was folded into a handy pocket size, with a map of the routes on one side, and the times on the other side. Now it's a quadra-fold, multi-page affair with a staple in the middle and everything, and it seems to strike fear and loathing into the hearts and minds of average bus passengers.

The downturn in the economy has also caused an uptick in bus ridership. So it could be that the proportion of blithering idiots in the population has remained constant, but I'm just seeing more of that slice of the demographic because of my job. That could be part of it, but I don't think it's all.

At the risk of sounding like the old fogey that I am, thanks to the proliferation of the internet and mobile devices, never before has so much information been so readily available to so many people, and yet fewer and fewer people seem interested in accessing that information. A lot of people on my bus carry smart phones and other devices, but they can't be bothered to look up what bus goes where and when, let alone take down one of those scary paper schedules in the rack behind the driver.

There were other things that made my first job as a bus driver truly seem like “the good old days”. Back then buses didn't have cameras in them. You're probably thinking that cameras help protect us in case we're attacked or robbed, and you'd have a point, but more often than not they are used to catch us making mistakes. We also have sensors that trigger the cameras when we hit the brakes too hard, or don't wait long enough at stop signs. It's all in the name of safety, but it feels very oppressive at times.

Back in the day, the fare boxes were simple brass and clear plastic cylinders with an opening at the top into which passengers dumped their money. If they used a lot of change, it was impossible to verify that they had paid the correct amount, but, oh well. The worst thing that happened with those old fare boxes was when a dollar bill would hang up in the opening. Then we drivers had to take a piece of Venetian blind we kept on hand and push it down, and we considered ourselves misused when we had to do that. We also kept count of fares manually with a big clicky machine thing.

Now the fare machines count each coin, which sounds great, but the coins must be deposited one at a time, and they're absolutely terrible at taking any dollar bill which isn't as pristine as when it rolled out of the mint. If you think that helps the buses run on time, then you haven't ridden public transit. Consider yourself lucky.

The other thing that made them “the good old days” is probably going to upset some politically correct types, but here it is: prior to 1990 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, buses didn't have wheelchair lifts or ramps. The transit company had a division of vans with those capabilities for people who couldn't access regular public transit. We still have that division, but now all buses have to be able to accommodate wheelchairs as well. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it certainly doesn't help us to run on time. The buses can only take two chairs at a time, but you can get several getting on and off over the course of just one loop, and then you're thirty minutes late and you've got bunches of angry people waiting at bus stops, who of course always think it's the driver's fault.

In the mid-eighties we didn't know how good we had it, but now I look back on those golden days and let out a sigh of longing. I really can't remember how long I drove bus, but it was probably most of a year, which is a goodly while – for me at the time, anyway. For a while things were good. I had a tiny but very adequate studio apartment and even cable TV (great fodder for my favorite hobby).

My downfall came in the form of a bunch of unruly high school students. I was only about 25, so I wasn't a whole lot older than them, but I was ostensibly an adult, and the captain of the ship, and I wanted them to respect my author-i-tah! I just hadn't dealt with children before. I was the youngest in my family by a good ten years, so I didn't even have the experience of relating to younger or near-age siblings.

Things went from bad to worse. I had parents wanting to murder me for saying something rude to their precious progeny. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore, and quit. Sometime after I left, Eastwagon went bankrupt, and the various cities within Butt County and the county itself that supported the system had to scramble to keep it running. My long-ago and current co-worker said that some of the drivers actually worked for free for awhile because they cared about the passengers.

Soon a nationally known contractor took over operating the system, which is who I worked for in Jobs #60 and 62. By the time I came back for job #85 in 2010, that contractor had been bought out by an international firm. Since I've been there, that company separated from its parent company, merged with yet another international firm and changed its name once more. Oh, the hurly burly of public transportation contractors!

1985

Job #38: Delivering Coupon Books

I went into a bit of a slump after leaving the bus driving job. I couldn't work up any enthusiasm for, well, work. I couldn't get unemployment benefits because I had quit the bus driving job, so I found odd jobs when I could be bothered. Job #38 was once again delivering coupon books, but for an outfit operating out of a dingy office downtown. A handful of workers cold-called people and tried to sell them the books. When they were successful, I would then deliver the books in my 1959 VW van, named Klaus. He was a rusty old bucket, but I loved him. He was rather rare, having the double cargo doors on both sides. I wish I still had that rig.

Job # 39: Yard and Job Site Clean Up

The coupon job wasn't enough to pay the rent, however, and I got evicted from my groovy studio apartment. I stayed with my friend Steve for a while (a very little while, because his roommate didn't like me), and together we performed my 39^th job. Steve had acquired the use of a dump truck through his roommate's brother, who was in the construction business, and we would go around to construction sites and anywhere else someone needed junk and debris hauled to the landfill. We also did some yard work as needed.

I hadn't done any really physical labor in awhile, and after a couple of days of that, I was so sore I could barely move, but I kept at it. I was basically killing time waiting for my tax refund, which promised to be substantial because I had been pretty steadily employed for most of the year. You see, I had hatched another (escape) plan.

I felt like I had already burned out the local job market, and needed a change of scene. I had a vague plan of moving north. I wasn't sure whether I would settle on Portland or Seattle. I didn't know much about Portland, but it seemed cool, especially with that flashy major...

Hizzoner

But I had spent more time in Seattle, and sort of knew some folks there - a couple named Lan and Lar(ry). Lan was the sister of my brother Dick's girlfriend at the time, and we had stayed with them on our way through town on our wonderful Alaskan vacation. I had also called upon them when I was on my to live in Alaska, and they had helped me get to the airport shuttle in downtown Seattle so I could catch my flight to Juneau.

There had been some sort of delay in my tax refund, and I had to contact the IRS about my much-anticipated check. When it finally arrived, I cashed it and started making final preparations for heading north. The next day there was another check in my post office box! They had somehow sent me two separate checks for the same amount. I was sorely tempted to try to cash the second one before they realized their mistake. I even solicited the opinions of the other patrons of the bar where I was having a couple of drinks while mulling over the problem. The general consensus was that I shouldn't cash it, so I tore up the second check.

Soon I was on my way north in my rusty, trusty Klaus. Steve had built a platform in the back so I could put in a full length mattress, so I had a pretty comfortable makeshift camper. It was late spring or early summer, and I was under no deadline, so took I my time on my trip. The national speed limit then was 55 MPH, but I stayed at a steady 50, for no particular reason. I told myself I just wanted to savor my trip, but I'm sure I was just delaying the inevitability of having to look for work where ever I settled.

While cruising through rural areas on Interstate 5 at five miles below the speed limit, I discovered a curious phenomenon. Packs of cars doing 55 would pass me, then there would be long stretches when I had the road to myself, then another cluster of cars would go zooming past. I thought it was funny that even though most drivers were content to all do the same speed, they didn't seem to want to be alone. If you were in the middle of one of those packs, you probably couldn't tell that there were large patches of empty road between yours and the next pack. They probably wouldn't want to admit that they were engaging in herd mentality, but it seemed pretty obvious to me.

By the time I reached Portland, I had already decided that I would continue to Seattle, where I at least knew somebody. I gave Portland a cursory visit, then headed more north. I stopped in Tumwater, Washington to tour the Olympia brewery. We had stopped there on our Alaska trip, but I had been too young to sample the wares after the tour. I intended to correct that temporally-enforced oversight.

The amount of free beer they gave us after the tour wasn't huge, but I've always been a bit of lightweight, and I got rather more light-headed than I had intended. For some reason I can't recall, I didn't want to spend too much time in Tumwater. Perhaps I was aware that my funds were dwindling, and I needed to get to Seattle and procure lodging before they ran out altogether. I walked in the park along the nearby waterway and viewed the famous falls from the beer label until I felt like my head was clear. I may have been mistaken about that, and it may have contributed to what happened next.

As I was getting back on the freeway, there was road work on the on-ramp. I was following what I thought was a safe distance behind the car in front of me. The flag woman abruptly halted that car, and Klaus' brakes never having been terribly good, I banged into the back of it. There wasn't much damage, but we had to exchange insurance information and wait while the highway patrol did their thing. They cited me for following too close, which I didn't appreciate, but I was just glad that the fact of my recent visit to the brewery never came to light.

Unfortunately, the collision somehow blew out what little was left of Klaus' already dodgy brakes. I managed to limp him into a nearby regional park, which was at the bottom of a terrifyingly steep hill. The park didn't allow overnight camping, so I drove back up (much easier) and parked behind a bar. I had a few more drinks before crawling into my now-crippled transportation to sleep.

The next day I called ahead to Lan and Lar's to tell them I was coming into town. They were a bit caught off-guard, but were much more gracious than I had a right to. I really had a bad habit of surprising people with my burdensome presence, didn't I? I then caught a Greyhound into Seattle. I rented a U-Haul truck and a car-trailer, and Lar and I drove down to Tumwater to recover Klaus. I parked him behind Lan and Lar's house. I stayed with them for a couple of days until I found a room in a house with some other people.

I probably shouldn't have bothered to haul poor old Klaus up to Seattle, because I ended up having to junk him. Repairs were beyond my means, especially (and ironically) after the unexpected expense of the hauling.

So now I was in my new chosen city, in need of work, but without my own transportation. Fortunately, Seattle has a wonderful public transportation system, so I could get just about anywhere I needed to. In the next chapter, we shall embark upon a whirlwind of false starts and dead end jobs above the 45^th parallel.

The end.