Morning Talks

Airman Second Class K was well liked and well known. He refurbished a "woody" station wagon that he kept immaculate and his tall, thin body drove it with authority all over the sprawling Laredo Air Force Base in 1952. He played the trombone in a band that played for the Officer, NCO, and Airman clubs on the base. He loved enchiladas. After tasting his first one he never ordered anything else. Growing up in rural Indiana, his only fault was that he was incredibly naive and the target for constant leg-pulling -- where one tried to make somebody believe something that is not true as a joke.

I was never one for practical jokes, but working every day with K in the base photo lab tempted me into my first and last practical joke. It almost got me a court-martial.



My assignment was to fly in a T-33 jet trainer, Lockheed's Shooting Star, and take photographs of other T-33 jet trainers flying in formation. My photo assignments had let me fly on every aircraft on the base except the T-33 and I was excited about my first jet flight. The day before, I was outfitted in a helmet, oxygen mask, and parachute.

The next day I climbed into the rear seat of the T-33 and the crewman checked me out on the equipment, including the ejection procedure. I swivelled around with the 4X5 Speed Graphic camera in my hand to make sure I could get in position for taking photographs. The pilot checked out the two-way communications and started to close the canopy.

CRUNCH -- the canopy stopped closing.

Pilot: Do you see anything blocking the canopy?

Me: Aaaaaaah, I left a film-pack holder on the track. It's crunched and jammed in so I can't get it out.

Pilot: Let me open the canopy and see if you can get it out and if you see any damage.

Me: I can't see any damage except the mangled film holder.

Pilot: (After opening and closing the canopy several times.) It seems OK, can you still take photos?

Me: Yes, I have a spare film-holder and plenty of film.

The most memorial part of the flight was the severe difficulty in holding and pointing a heavy Speed Graphic camera when pulling several G's in a tight turn.

So how did I almost get a court-martial?

A mangled film holder should never be wasted -- so after the flight I had the motor-pool driver drop me off short of the base photo lab. I slung my camera case and parachute under the porch, and rubbed dirt on my polished boots, clothes, face, and hands. I then limped into the photo lab with a pained look on my face.

K: What happened to you?

Me: I had to eject from the jet.

K: You're kidding me! (He knew he was the favorite target for leg pulling.)

Me: Look at this (holding up the film holder.) I lost the camera and the only thing I could salvage was the film holder. (While K examined the mangled film holder I continued talking as I bent over making painful faces.) I didn't pull the chute leg straps tight and now I know why that's so important. I almost blacked out from the pain when the chute opened. (Making more painful faces.)

K: Oh my gosh. You really did have to bail out.

Me: You don't think I would purposely mangle a film holder do you? I need to go back and clean up and maybe lie down a bit.

K: (Five minutes later, over the lab P.A. system.) Hey Jerry, I called operations about your ejecting from a T-33. They don't know anything about this and want to talk with you. The Air Police are on the way and will pick you up in a couple of minutes.

Me: (Silently) Ohhhhhh Shit.

I stood at attention in front of the operations officer as I told my story. I knew I was in serious trouble, but the Captain, knowing K, had trouble keeping a straight face. At the end, he proceeded to chew me out as I had never been chewed out before. He reminding me that what I did, falsely reporting a plane crash, was a court-martial offence. I had better walk the straight and narrow from then on. The story went viral around the base and the next day almost everyone was chuckling.

I'm not too sure about the straight and narrow, but that was my last practical joke.

Another story shared over coffee and biscotti during our morning talk.

Nails were a valuable commodity during the depression and World War II, because you wasted nothing. For World War II there was another reason. Every piece of available metal was collected to melt down to make munitions for the war effort.
 
The nails were mostly collected from construction sites, then sorted, straightened, and stored for reuse or scrapped for the metal.

Child labor, in a good sense, was often used to do the sorting and straightening.


Dolores and I both had this job. Dolores in Denver and myself in Salt Lake City. We were both doing it the summer of 1941 when she was 10 and I was 9 years old.

When a neighbor re-roofed an apartment building next to where Dolores lived, the old shingles were stacked in the alley and the neighbor offered to pay Dolores ten cents an hour to pull all the nails from the shingles and straighten them. Decade old shingles are extremely dirty -- but outfitted in old clothes, a claw hammer, and a brick for an anvil, she started the grimy task. It went well for about four hours until the local junk collector came up the alley. After getting flashed, she went home and her mother told the neighbor that working unsupervised in the alley was no job for a young lady. Dolores earned $0.50 for her half-day work, and that ended her nail-straightening career.

I got to work as a nail straightener for a full summer. A University of Utah professor living next door believed in introducing youth to the work place early as part of their education. He worked summers in a lumber yard office and hired me with money out of his own pocket to work in the same lumber yard. I worked 4 hours a day, several days a week and was paid $0.50 for the half day. His wife was surprised that he was paying me enough so that I could take the bus to and from work.

My first and primary task was sorting nails although I also did other things.

Construction workers would search their work site and drop any nails they found into a bucket and returned the bucket to the lumber yard. I would get the bucket and sort the nails into like-kinds for reuse. If the nail was bent, I would straighten it using a hammer and small anvil. If the nail could not be salvaged, usually due to a totally mangled head, it went into a scrap-metal bucket.

In the depression, if you saw a penny, or the more rare nail, you picked it up and recycled it as appropriate. Now, many ignore a penny and a nail is only picked up if it threatens to puncture your tire -- even then it is usually thrown someplace to rust, away from tires.

We would have never known that we both had the job of straightening nails the summer of 1941 if not for our morning coffee, biscotti, and talk. 

I parked my bike in front of the Sunset Blvd apartment building, threw the saddle bags with the Hollywood Citizen-News around my neck and headed for the elevator. In 1944 I was a 14 year old paper boy and Jack Benny was the most famous customer on my route. He lived on a higher floor of the apartment building and I would deliver his paper first. As requested, I fully inserted it under the door so it did not show. I then took the elevator to lower floors to drop off papers to the rest of my customers in the apartment building.


Jack Benny lived in Beverly Hills but maintained an apartment on Sunset Blvd to be nearer the NBC studio where he broadcast his show -- and I was his paper boy!

I never expected to see Jack Benny when delivering papers -- but collecting payment each month always raised my expectations. Alas, knocking on the door always brought his maid to the door, not the famous Jack Benny. She would disappear around the corner and come back with the correct amount and a dollar tip. Tipping was not common for paper boys during World War II and was usually no more then a quarter. I remember all my dollar tippers to this day. I never did see Jack Benny, but the generous tip was a great consolation.

So how come now, when we are in our seventies in the first decade of the 21st century and Jack Benny left us in 1974, is he still part of our lives.

That's because we live in Rancho Cucamonga.

Old timers will remember Mel Blanc's train-conductor character on the Jack Benny show calling out "Train leaving on track five for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga." No single train went to all three locations, but it had a lovely ring to it that always brought a laugh to the listener, especially since Cucamonga was stretched out with creative pauses added -- as Mel Blanc did so well for comic effect.

Cucamonga is now Rancho Cucamonga with a street named Jack Benny Drive. A statue of Jack Benny, dedicated in April 1993, was first located in the Epicenter Stadium. It is now in the Rancho Cucamonga Victoria Gardens Cultural Center at the entrance to the Lewis Family Playhouse. Jack Benny stands with his violin and bow hanging from one hand and his other hand, with palm-to-cheek, in the body language that always brought a laugh to his audiences without a word being spoken.

Rancho Cucamonga pays tribute to the man that made the name Cucamonga, whose indian name means light on the mountain, a familiar name to hundreds of thousands of people.

Biscotti and Coffee are the lubricants for Morning Talks.

More about Jack Benny in Wikipedia.

What's the best part of retirement for my wife and I?  It is starting each day with coffee, biscotti, and morning conversation, our morning talk.


To make things even better, there is a ritual associated with the break-of-fast each morning. The ritual starts the prior evening when a cannister of fresh dark-roast coffee beans is opened. When the cannister is opened, Dee, myself, and our pet moose Boab, insert our noses into the cannister and breath deeply.

Then filtered water and eight scoops of coffee beans go into the grinder/brewer and off to bed we go.

The next morning, the first one downstairs punches the button and the harsh grinding noise acts as an alarm clock if one of us is still sleeping. If that doesn't work, the aroma of fresh brewed coffee drifting up the stairs to the bedroom always works to launch the tardy one downstairs to break fast and start the day.

The day always starts with a chocolate drizzled biscotti dipped into rich black coffee -- and the morning conversation talk begins.

So what do we talk about? The experiences of life that have made our seventy or so years on this planet so rich and meaningful to us.

Which gets us to the purpose of this blog -- to record those experiences for our children, grand children, and perhaps others who might find interest in morning talks.