Way Back When…

Back when I was in the US Naval Military Drill Team of Treasure Island, California, our team was invited to several out of town parades where we would perform our drills for trophies and bragging rights. If there wasn’t going to be a trophy, we wouldn’t accept the invitation. Usually we wouldn’t be far from San Francisco but one parade we were invited to be in was in Carson City, Nevada.

The staff arranged for a military plane and crew to fly us over there and when we got to the air base we were surprised to see waiting for us an old WWII vintage DC3, we had expected a more modern plane…maybe even a jet.

Twin engines roaring, the thing was a tail dragger with a proud 30-40 degree angle of attack while it sits on the ground. Probably seats 30-50 people. We clamored up 3 steps into the fuselage and found webbing seats waiting for us. These seats suspend you in an uncomfortable sling type fashion with little room between riders. Everyone sits facing the aisle, which isn’t very wide, so we’d be scuffing each others shoes while we rode. The plane was set up for soldiers heading for battle. This didn’t go over well with the DM (drill master) since we had spit shined and all. Wearing our dress blues too. Couldn’t turn back of course. None of us wanted to lean our backs against the wall because of the dress clothes we were wearing so most sat straight up.

The plane smelled of oil and fuel and the inside was that drab army green color, all the webbing, the walls, the equipment, the metal floor, everything was green. There were those hook rails on the ceiling that ran to the door for parachute pull cords. Up in front was the door to the cockpit and it was left open the whole flight but the plane was so old there wasn’t much interesting in there in any case. The engines were running while we boarded and when we got seated you could feel a harmonic vibration run through the metal of the ship with your feet. The noise in there barely tolerable.

Eventually the pilots received clearance and the plane screamed down the runway, bouncing two or three times before liftoff like she didn’t want to leave the ground that day. I tried to watch the pilots but there was so much vibration I couldn’t focus on them. It was pretty exciting…I’d never been on a plane that rustic before, that smelled of fuel, or on one that had probably fought in the war since there were patched holes in the body. The windows were so small as to be pretty much useless so there wasn’t much to watch. Engine noise was so loud we could not hear each other.

After two hours of being abused by the plane, we arrived at an air base in Carson City, climb onto a bus and get dropped off near the staging area for the parade. After a half hour of brushing off the dust, it’s almost 10am and we’re all ready. The parade was uneventful since we used drills we all knew pretty well, lots of cheering and applause followed us around and the officials weren’t on our backs the whole time about speeding things up. We did one of our best drills before the viewing (judging) stand and ended the parade a few blocks later.

Our nemesis drill team was there too. We’d faced them in parade judging several times and usually beat them but once in a while they would get first place. While we were a precision drill team, they were not. These were all black guys with a kind of jazzy, laid back, high-flying jitter bugging type routine. They were good all right, and were pretty flashy, what with their jumpin’, jivin’, slammin’, bangin’ and tossing of pieces way up in the air…their uniforms were kind of non-military flashy too.

Our style, on the other hand, was slow, deliberate and precise. Every movement exactly replicated by each member of the team. We would spin our pieces but not toss them. In some towns, the judges liked those other guys…because they were sort of ‘hip’, ‘with it’ and ‘modern’. While at other parades, we were liked better for being ‘traditional’, ‘precise’, ‘sexy’. Both teams got lots of applause and cheers so we considered ourselves equals on the parade route, and we’d hang out jive talking with them while we awaited results of the judging, but our guys thought the precision of our drills overshadowed their jazziness. We WERE a military drill team after all. If they beat us, we’d just try even harder the next parade, no hard feelings. Secretly, I really liked their drills! Lots of rifle spins and tosses, and syncopated rhythms of clattering pieces and such. And the cool part was they could toss their pieces 10-20 feet, both up in the air and across to another column. I would have joined them after I mastered the drills I was learning, but there weren’t any whites on their team, so I figured I wouldn’t be allowed or at least be heavily discouraged. (This was in the late sixties so I’m probably wrong about that-but I never asked either).

So, this time we won…got first place trophy and all so we wanted to celebrate somehow. Nearly the whole team was under 21 but we all wanted a drink. We had several hours to kill since the plane wouldn’t take us back to Treasure Island until the next day so we wandered around the casinos causing trouble. At one casino, four of us just walked in and sat at the first blackjack table inside the door. Three of the guys were adults, then there was me. Don’t know why, but the dealer flipped us all cards, (I was planning on just sitting there and not playing so I could watch). So we all flip out some money, get some chips, and begin playing. Now, I’m no expert, but I have a brain and it didn’t take me long to notice that she (the dealer) was cheating. Palming cards, badly, calling her hand BEFORE she had looked at it, sweeping up money from winners as though they had lost…that sort of thing. So I whisper to ‘mother’ about it and he starts watching her closely, and sure enough, he sees it too. So I get bolder and start pointing to her hands when she tries to palm cards or deal from the bottom and laughing. She gets flustered and starts doing badly. We start winning, eventually getting back nearly all of our lost money. Then the pit boss comes over, the place was pretty quiet when we came is since it was early afternoon or he probably would have been there earlier, we complain about her cheating and he kicks us out.

So, feeling cheated, we decide to cause them some trouble. Understand that we’re all kind of happy about winning the competition, we haven’t really lost much money to them, we’re not in a physical fighting mood, so what WE did, (I know, it was silly), was stand outside their door, and sing protest songs. In 6 part harmony with twelve voices. HAH! Take that you casino you!

A couple of us bitched at the floor manager whenever he came out about the cheating dealer, and he ran inside, meanwhile we are just belting out a pretty good rendition of ‘Micheal rowed the boat ashore’. We’re all laughing and carrying on and waving at people wandering by and on the streets. It was pretty much a laugh riot…and lots of fun. Anyway, the big guy came out and told us that the sidewalk right in front of the casino was private property and he was going to call the police. So while mother bitched at him for 10, 15 minutes, we’re still belting out songs. I’m still chuckling about that. Cheating bastards. Just as the cops arrived, we walked across the street. We were already outside so it was easy.

(One of the members of the drill team, the most sensitive one, would be accorded the honor of being assigned as & called ‘mother’. It was a position of honor. He would be the one that if you had a problem of the kind you’d normally talk to your own mother, you would talk to him about. Remember that most of the team was made up of teenage boys. Our team ‘mother’ was around 25 or so).

It’s now dusk and we still all want a drink. We’re walking down the main drag, where all the casinos are, and we stop in at a bar or two on our way. They shoo us out since we’re mostly underage (we are in uniform).

Then…after we’d tried 5 or six bars, we wander into a small hole in the wall Pullman style bar. The place is empty because they had just sent everyone home because they were out of food, and in that town, a bar had to stop serving liquor if they don’t have food. Since it was a parade day, they had just sold out. That’s what the bartender told us, as he flipped the OPEN sign over to CLOSED and returned it to the window, then closed the blinds on the windows and door, then closed and locked the door. All the while telling us what a great job we had done that day, asking where we were from and that sort of small talk.

‘Well’, says mother, ‘you might be out of food, but we just want to drink and if you’ll serve us, we will certainly make your work worthwhile’. Mother then pulls out a wad of bills and plops them on the bar. The DM does the same thing. I’m standing next to them and do the same. He has $75 or so in front of him and says, ‘Sure, what the hell’. Then everyone cheers and they all pull out their money and slam it on the bar. Time was around 6 pm.

Pretty soon the bartender was drunk with us and was serving us free drinks. So was the owner. It was the uniforms, for sure, since they were both ex-navy.

When 11pm rolled around, the DM called the base and asked for the bus, then got cussed out for taking so long to call. EVERYONE except me and mother and another, older guy were the only people that appeared sober (though I was also hammered, I can fake sobriety). Even the DM was hammered. If you’ve ever had to pour 10-12 teenage drunks onto a bus at midnight in downtown, you know what I had to do. But for some reason, I had perfect luck that night and though there were several that hurled, I was missed each time. My perfect dress blues stayed that way.

Back at the base, we stayed in an air force barracks. I can’t remember much about that. Next day we fly back to Oakland and bus back to Treasure Island.

All in all, a pretty good journey.