“Okay, Rats, that will be all right, I guess. Good luck, let me hear from you.” General “Skeeter” closed out, little realizing that they were not only going to hear, but they were going to see an avalanche of unfavorable crap plastered all over the front pages of every newspaper in the country as a result of my drinking past. I knew that all this was on its way even though I pretended otherwise, for I just simply couldn’t face facts. And my drinking pattern was coming back again, worse than ever. I was able to get by with the talks and in some very fancy places because I was smart enough not to take a drink until the occasion was almost over, consequently, a great many people were spared embarrassment. That is, all the people except those who attended a talk in the last city on my itinerary, which happened to be Portland, Oregon. Once again I had counted upon completing a job before casting it to one side as useless; but no, fate, as I termed it—fate later became alcohol as far as I was concerned—was to rear its ugly head. And with my lecture tour in the bag, so to speak, it happened again.
After getting out of the car in Portland we were taken up to a large suite. There was a grand piano, along with many other things I had no use for. However, I soon spotted one item that could be of some use, a scotch-and-soda setup on the table. The committee said: “Go ahead, take your time. Rest, get cleaned up and take a shower and shave. We won’t have this informal dinner for a couple of hours.”
“But I’m not expected to go to any dinner tonight,” I answered. “The program’s supposed to start tomorrow, not today.”
“But this is just a little dinner,” the committee said. “Only a few of us will be there. You’ll not even have to talk. Just relax, take a few drinks, you’ll have plenty of time to get cleaned up later.”
All my life I seemed to have difficulty saying no to anything, especially when I was drinking. But my biggest problem was that I could never say no to liquor—and mean it. I suppose the only reason for the war record is that I couldn’t stop myself from volunteering. When I didn’t have to say no, all I had to do in most cases was to remain silent. But silence wasn’t one of my virtues either.
The committee hung around. I poured drinks for them, and they poured drinks for me. They began to feel good, but I am certain that I felt better. One of the more jovial said: “Pappy, I’ve heard that you can give a hell of a good talk, but that you’re always sober. I’d love to hear you after you’ve had a few drinks, so you could feel free to cut loose, giving us the real lowdown.”
Frank could stand no more and said: “Man, you don’t know what you’re asking for. Please believe me, and let well enough alone. Why don’t you all leave and let Greg get some sleep? I know what I’m talking about.”
With a few drinks in me I resented this, but I laughed for the benefit of the straggling committee and said: “Oh, Frank is just the worrying type. Thank God he is, or I’d never been able to complete this trip. But come on, fellows, I love good company, so let’s have another drink.”
Frank left us saying: “I’m going to catch an hour’s rest. But don’t ever say that I didn’t warn you people.”
The shower, shave, and rest I had looked forward to slowly slipped out of my mind. We drank right up until somebody said: “My, how time flies; it’s time for dinner.”
I was escorted down to a lower floor where the informal dinner, or whatever it was, was to take place, and I found that this informal affair included about two hundred of the city’s leading citizens, all dressed formally for the occasion. Leading, I might add, as far as making money was concerned.
A combination of shock and scotch made these guests go out of focus, much as if they were standing behind the heat waves coming off from a hot radiator. I had been tricked. I had to talk, and there was no way out of it. In order to get by I realized I was going to have to eat and then drink a lot of black coffee before it came time for me to speak.
I had every intention of sobering up, and I was trying my damnedest by gulping down a few cups of coffee. My audience was beginning to get into focus a bit better, when one of my drinking friends in the committee said: “Too bad you can’t talk like Patton. Have you ever read one of Patton’s speeches, Pappy?”
I answered: “No, I haven’t, but that is a man I admire.”
He laughed and handed me a sheet of typewritten paper, and he said: “This is a copy of one of Patton’s speeches. Go ahead, read it. I’ll bet you wish you could talk like he does.”
The coffee had cleared my vision enough to enable me to struggle through a speech that had a wonderful selection of four-letter words. This had been given to a completely different kind of audience from the one I had facing me, but the committeeman had started my ego rolling.
In an attempt to get sober I hadn’t so much as touched any of the drinks lined up in front of me. They just stood there waiting until my talk was over. I was going to be announced any minute. But by now I was desperate. Forgetting the fact that my audience was a group of men and women, and all of them swells, I was going to try to top Patton’s talk, which had gotten his troops so fired up. In order to do this I needed something, and something in a hurry, too.
The answer was staring me right in the face, five or six glasses full of scotch and soda (heavy on the scotch and light on the soda). I downed the lot of these glasses about as rapidly as I would have downed water on Truk, if the Japs had given it to me. The stage was set. My lengthy and fantastic introduction was at an end, at last.
With General Patton’s speech before me to help remind me just how far to go, I started out:
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I compliment you all, for I have never seen more beautiful gowns or handsome dress clothes. And how thoughtful of you to invite me to this little surprise. I wish to thank you for gathering here tonight, because I realize that it must be quite a sacrifice on your part. But I will assure you that I will get right to the meat of this occasion. I shall not keep you long.
“You came here to be entertained by some sideshow freak, I know. You want to hear about the time when my foot was bleeding so badly that I had to roll my Corsair onto its back to make my blood last longer. How I continued shooting down Japs upside-down against overwhelming odds. Yes, you’d love to have me dramatize the race between running out of ammunition and running out of life’s blood.
“But I know the only reason I should be here tonight. And I would like to inform you of the only reason you should be here.
“It is not to pay homage to a so-called war hero, because he would have been helpless without the financial assistance of slobs like you. So, in closing, I’m going to remind all of you slobs to continue to invest in War Bonds.
“Thank you for your time. Good night.”
Then I sat down. There wasn’t one single clap of hands. The guests filed out of the private dining hall with bewildered expressions on their faces. None of them ganged up at the speaker’s table to shove and shake my hand as they usually did. The committee members were dumfounded and probably hoped that the whole thing was nothing but a bad dream. I recall saying: “This serves me right. I shouldn’t talk over people’s heads.”
Then someone put his arm around my shoulders and said: “Come on, Greg, forget it. I love you. You’re just at the wrong address tonight, so let’s go to a night club where we’re wanted, then we’ll have a little fun.”
This man took me to a night club. I have often wished that I had some way of repaying him for some of the kindness and thoughtfulness he has displayed throughout the years. He happened to be my uncle, Guy Boyington, and I am positive that he would do the same for any poor soul.
But the bond tour was over, at last. It was loused up at its completion like everything else in my life. Frank and I headed for Los Angeles, and his home.
One of the things I have never been able to figure out is how lucky a person can be, especially one who has a knack for always getting into trouble. Others have wondered too. Some have said so—to my face.
A few years prior to the war a classm
ate who was killed later while dive-bombing at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, gave a toast one night. His name was Ray Emerson, and a great person. Ray and I started out in the Marine corps together, so he knew me well enough to wonder about some of the luck I had.
My drinking had not progressed to the point where it seemed to bother me in the slightest, but some things were happening that most people pass off as bad luck, things actually caused by neglect and by forgetting what seemed to be a part of me, leading to forced landings and car accidents. Although none of these incidents was pinned down as my fault, I am certain most of them could have been avoided if I hadn’t been drinking.
One evening when we fellows were drinking toasts to this, that, and the other thing Ray said: “I would like to give a toast.”
“Okay, what to?”
“I would like to toast to the luckiest unlucky man I know. Here’s to Rats, may his luck continue forever.”
We all drank; I did too, even though they were toasting me. Most people miss all the fun, for they just take everything at face value, or would probably know why somebody gave them a toast. But I had to wonder. I asked, “What do you mean, Ray?”
“Simple,” he said. “You are forever losing your wallet, somebody takes your car and bangs it up, and the C.O.s always seem to choose you when they have a mad on and want to chew somebody out. We feel sorry for you and stick up for you. But I sometimes wonder why, because, if anything important happens—like a wing coming off or your car rolling over a dozen times—you seem to always fall into the proverbial backhouse—and come out smelling like a rose.”
Maybe the same thing Ray spoke about was the reason I had decided to end up in Los Angeles instead of somewhere else. For here is where I met the right girl for me, although it was doubtful whether it was vice versa for a long, long time. This lucky thing happened while I was in the naval hospital.
As a patient I was granted special permission to go within a certain radius of the hospital as long as I kept in touch. And this is the time my friends and I drove down to Rosarita Beach, about eighteen miles below the border. We went down for the evening for dinner.
Our little party consisted of Frank Walton, who had been with me on the tour, his wife, her sister and her husband, and a beautiful friend of theirs to whom they previously had introduced me. I had not known her before the war, or even for very long, as measured by weeks. But for some reason, whenever we had been together in the group, she of all persons seemed to make me forget that there were troubles in this world of ours. So again this evening, while at Rosarita, and with Mexican music going on, I suddenly felt happier than I had felt for years and years.
The word “love” has been thrown around so carelessly in songs and stories that it has come to mean very little any more. In fact, it is almost better to avoid the word. But whatever the feeling is, or whatever word it has come to be known by, all I can say is this: that while we were talking or just listening to the Mexican music, I knew now for sure that this girl, with her slightly pug nose, and blue eyes with blond hair, her quick little way of laughing—I now knew for sure that she was the one somebody I should have known from the very beginning. I wanted to tell her so, but I didn’t know how, and I didn’t dare, although ordinarily I am not particularly reticent around women. But this seemed—for the first time in my life—altogether too right and too real.
Anyhow, rather than risk shooting off my mouth about what I was thinking, I guided her over to the bar and ordered two drinks from the little Mexican bartender, who, without my knowing it, had been watching us all the time. For what he did right then is the reason the girl is now my wife. And he did it all so simply. With laughing eyes he merely said: “For two people who have the look you two have, I’ll break out the crystal glasses.” And immediately that little bartender, with all the wisdom of the Latins, began to polish up two of his most beautiful glasses. With his words and his gesture he broke down what seemed a barrier, and Franny and I both suddenly found ourselves sort of crying and laughing at the same time, and we found ourselves suddenly telling each other about each other, and we were on Cloud Thirty-six, and the little bartender had put us there.
Further to celebrate the occasion, this sudden new feeling, I immediately changed the order to champagne, and the little bartender happily drank with us. And there were no troubles anywhere in the world any more. There was no other world. There was only Rosarita, and it was the world.
Home from roaming the globe, I had at last found my mate, but I had yet to ask that all-important question. It is not an easy matter to ask a girl to take, not only a husband, but three children in the bargain—nice children, as I know they are.
To add to my dilemma, as I sat squashing out cigarette butts in an already-overflowing ash tray, listening to the radio, my friends, the press, were telling the whole world about me. Everything except that it was all caused by my own personal drinking past. No question but what Franny was listening, I was positive.
It sounded to me like the Voice of America. Naturally it wasn’t, but it was just as loud as far as I was concerned. I happened to be newspaper copy, the war was over, and they were short of news. So they were spicing up every utterance that came from the lips of a woman who wanted her next husband waiting outside the doors of a divorce court while she shed the one she already had.
I couldn’t say that I hadn’t been warned, because I had—in no uncertain words. Also, I knew that this party would stop at nothing, and counted upon my being in such a position that I wouldn’t take a chance with the threat of bad publicity. But my tour in prison camp had sobered me sufficiently to decide upon the correct move, and to hell with the threats.
The press didn’t know the real reason, and didn’t give a damn, but it was money. My old drinking buddy somehow figured that the Medal of Honor brought in a good deal of loot, and under no circumstances wished to have anything like that taken away. This is understandable, however, because very few people know that this honor brings in ten dollars per month, but the catch is—you have to reach your sixty-fifth birthday before it starts coming in.
Anyhow, they didn’t ask me my side for two reasons: the stories wouldn’t have been nearly so interesting, and besides I was too hard to locate. But somebody had dared me, and apparently no one has ever had much success choosing this method on me. Switching off my radio tormentor, I decided to take the bull by the horns.
“Operator. Please get me Hempstead 0872—in Los Angeles. Hello. Hello. Franny—is that you?
“Now that you know all the gory details, I want to ask you a question. Will you marry me?
“Oh, Franny, say it once again. I want to be certain that my ears aren’t just ringing, Honey. Pack your bag, because we’re leaving in two hours for Las Vegas.”
The connections by plane were rough, but there we were in Las Vegas in the bare cold room of the justice of the peace, which seemed to grow warm and bright in its wintry surroundings. A Western-appearing gent in cowboy boots was on hand to stand up as best man.
There are weddings and weddings, but when it is your own, well, it is just your own. We know things only by our own feelings and experiences, as I have mentioned before. But a sense of rightness and sincereness took place about our wedding, as though it were being held in a huge cathedral filled with white roses instead of in the tiny office of the justice of the peace in Las Vegas—in the desert.
My bride wore one lone orchid in bright shining hair. No other flowers were needed, for indeed we had all the happiness any two people were entitled to.
As the amiable little justice congratulated us after the ceremony, he told us how he would like to be in for another term, as business was great. He had no idea that Franny and I were eloping, for both of us were past that tender age. But we were eloping—from the press.
And as time has gone on, I can see more and more evidence of what Ray Emerson was toasting to: “The luckiest, unlucky man I know.”
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36
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Shortly after the war the glamour was gone and there was nothing in my life but turbulence for nearly ten years.
To start with, the Medical Department of the Navy recommended that I be retired because of injuries received during the war. For this, I was thankful: it saved the Marine Corps the trouble. Or, I probably should say, a few people in the Corps were robbed of the pleasure.
The outlook ahead appeared to be getting darker instead of lighter, and somehow I sensed that I was eventually going to get “socked” in tight and run out of gas. For as time went on I seemed to be on some one-way street on which the buildings were becoming closer and closer together as I moved along.
To add to my problems, I found that it was next to impossible to obtain employment. Nobody seemed to want any part of me. There had been so much notoriety printed about me that I can hardly blame anyone for not wanting to hire me. Any hopes that had been entertained at intervals were always smashed just about the time I thought I was going to work for some top-notch company. I was lucky to get any kind of a job.
But one can always do something, and so did I. For four years I had one job after another, but I remained with each until it became evident that I couldn’t make my salt. These were all selling something, and the things I tried to sell varied from soup to nuts: air freight, clothing, jewelry, stamps and insurance. Every one of these companies had one thing in common, though, in that they were having so much difficulty in selling their different specialities that they would have hired Satan himself if there had been the slightest possibility that he could sell their particular lines. All except one had something else in common too: they have been out of business for a long time.
If it hadn’t been for a money-making hobby of mine, my family would have had some mighty slim pickings, the way things were going. This hobby took very little of my time, maybe two nights a week, sometimes three. These nights were spent inside of a squared circle surrounded by a pack of howling idiots who fouled up the air with smoke and words while I was busy refereeing professional wrestling.
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