The
next morning, I woke, of course, with a lovely hangover. After muster and morning chow we headed for the
one great service of the Treasure Island base—a real barber shop. I settled myself into a chair and told the
barber, “The works—shampoo, haircut, singe, and shave—the whole bit!” then I
promptly fell asleep as he went to work. I was to regret falling asleep. I dimly recalled later that the barber
touched my beautiful handlebar mustache and asked, “You want that trimmed?” I do not recall my answer but when I woke he
was finished and he turned me to face the mirror I saw to my horror that he had
indeed trimmed my mustache—to an asinine thin line on my ussper lip! I did not look like either David Niven or
Clark Gable. The few haris he had left
on my upper lip were so sun-bleached that they hardly showed.
My
temper asserted itself. I read him off
royally—informing him that I had not even had time to get a photography
taken. He had ruined my mustache and I
was not going to pay him one damned dime for what he had done! He insisted that I owed seven dollars for the
shampoo, haircut, singe, and that he would not charge for the mustache trim. I acidly told him what he could do with his
bill, that he could fine me at the transient barracks, and I stalked indignantly
out of the barber shop. (I heard no more
about it.)
It
was that night and the next morning that Oscar Hook repaid me in full for the
long ago night that I got him back to Ford Island from Waikiki. After noon chow, we packed our toilet kits
into our ditty bags and headed for San Francisco. There we got a double hotel room then headed
for the fabled Barbary Coast.
In
retrospect, we started drinking too early and the entire night and the
following twenty-four hours are a bit of a blur in my memory. I vaguely recall that there were several bars
and night clubs in some of which, when the patrons learned that we were
returned veterans from the South Pacific, they would not let us spend any of
our money. (We were well heeled. I had four or five hundred dollars that I had
no sent home.)
There
was music and dancing. At some point
there was a table and some women. One
brunette, quite a good looking woman as I recall, was particularly attentive to
me. I told Hook that I was going to need
the room for a couple of hours and took her thee. Later, I could only dimly recall that I
called room service for some drinks and the next time I was aware it was the
next morning and Hook was holding me up in formation for morning muster.
As
best I can reconstruct it, when Hook came to the hotel room in the wee hours of
the morning he found me passed out on the bed, obviously the victim of a “Mickey”
slipped to me by the brunette and the room service waiter. I was dead to the world and mu wallet was empty. I was still fully dressed. Hook got me into a taxi and back to Treasure
Island. His debt for the night in
Waikiki was paid in full.
After
muster our orders were distributed. Mind
were to NATTC in Chicago with eleven days delay enroute. My problem was that I had been foolish enough
to go ashore the night before with all my money in my wallet and now I was
broke and could not buy a train ticket to Portland. Still have comatose form the drugging, I took
my baggage and went to the Market Street office of Western Union in San
Francisco. There I called my mother and
asked her to wire some money from my bank account to that office, then I sat
down and went to sleep. They woke me
when the money order arrived and I managed to find my way to Oakland, buy a
ticket, and board the next train for Portland.
I slept most of the way up the coast and was finally halfway back to
normal when I arrived home.
