by Jeff Noonan
That afternoon, I went up to the Stag Bar and had a drink with some locals, but nothing was happening, so I decided to go home and hang out with the family.
I had just walked onto the front porch when I heard Lyle calling to me from out in the yard, “Jeff! Jeff! Don’t go in there!”
I turned to look at him, and that was a mistake. Dad came out the door and lunged at me, landing a huge right fist on my right ear and temple. It was so hard that it picked me up and knocked me completely off the porch. I remember being massively confused when I landed on the path at the bottom of the stairs. My face and my shoulder where I’d landed were hurting, but I just couldn’t figure out what was going on.
I struggled up onto my hands and knees and then to my feet, just in time to catch another fist—this time to the left side of my rib cage. I went down again, gasping for breath. I remember thinking that I must be dying, because I couldn’t breathe and I was hurting so horribly. Then his foot hit my solar plexus hard, and I must have blacked out.
The next thing I remember was Mom washing my face with a wet cloth. I was still lying in the pathway in front of the porch stairs.
I sat up quickly and looked around, trying to find Dad to make sure I saw him coming this time, but he was gone. Lyle and the younger kids were there, watching, but Dad was nowhere in sight.
Mom was crying and I could see that she had been beaten again.
I asked, “What happened?” and they told me that Dad had come home a little while before me and had been screaming at Tim and Lyle.
When Mom tried to intervene, Dad had hit her, and Tim had run out the back door, taking the other kids with him.
Lyle had seen me coming in and had doubled back. He was crying as he told me, “I tried to warn you.” He repeated this over and over.
I stood up, saying, “Lyle, I know that you tried. This isn’t your fault. Believe me, it isn’t your fault.” I tried to put my arm over his shoulders, but I found that it hurt my ribs too bad to raise the arm, so I just patted his arm and repeated that it wasn’t his fault.
I went to the bathroom to wash my face. I was a mess. My ear and cheek were both cut badly, and blood was everywhere. It hurt to breathe, so I knew that I had some rib damage. My shoulder was scraped and bleeding where I had landed on it.
I also had a strange buzzing in my ears that bothered me, but I didn’t think that was serious, so I ignored it as much as possible. (I still have that background sound, that buzzing in my ears, even today, after all the years that have passed. It has never gone away.) This was the worst beating that I had ever had. Dad was escalating.
I washed up, and Mom wrapped my ribs with some gauze strips. Then she made some hot tea, and we sat and talked, calming the kids as best we could. Mom did some cleanup of the mess that Dad had made of the kitchen, but none of us were in any shape to do any meaningful work, so we mostly just sat and talked. After awhile, Tim came back from where he had been hiding in the woods. He cried hysterically when he saw me, but we finally got him calmed down. We slowly came back to sanity. After all, this was not a totally unusual day in this household. Eventually, everyone drifted off to bed.
We never saw Dad for several days after that. I stayed home the next day, both to heal a bit and to be there just in case he returned, but he didn’t. I don’t know where he was, because he never showed up in St. Regis. Kathy was working at Tilly’s Café, beside the St. Regis Bar where Dad sometimes drank, and she reported that he never showed up there. At the time, I just didn’t care where he was, as long as he wasn’t hurting my family.
The rest of my Christmas time at home was fairly uneventful. I spent a lot of time in town, either playing pool with friends at the Stag Bar or hanging out in Tilly’s, gabbing with Kathy. Dad finally showed up a couple of days before I had to leave, but he never mentioned what had happened, and he seemed to be a lot more sober than he had been. I hoped for the best.
Then Mike and the other guys showed up, just as a snowstorm was starting. Mom insisted on feeding everyone dinner, but then we headed out, planning on driving around the clock again. The guys wanted to know, of course, how I had managed get so badly beaten up. I told them that it was just a bar fight and warned them that it was never safe to screw around with a Montana logger’s woman. They were good with that explanation.
We made it across Montana and into South Dakota before we started seeing some really bad weather. We were in a rather desolate stretch of highway somewhere in South Dakota, when a real blizzard came down on us. We were driving about ten miles per hour and couldn’t see anything. The farther we drove, the worse it got, with the road almost totally obscured at times. Apparently, other drivers had received some warning, because there was no one on the road other than us. We had no option but to keep going and hope for the best. We drove like this for several hours before we finally saw a small town. When we spotted a motel, we pulled in. There was no way we could go further.
We took the last two rooms at the motel and were very happy to have them. Mike and I doubled up, and the other guys took the other room. Once we were settled, we decided to try to get something to eat. The motel clerk pointed us to a combination bar/restaurant that was just across the street, and we set out to get some food.
The wind and snow howled around us as we walked across to the restaurant, all very happy that we had found shelter. It could have been a bad scene if we had stayed on the road much longer.
We had a bit of a surprise when we got to the little café that we had been directed to. It adjoined a bar, and we entered through the bar and went on through a door to the café. In both establishments, we were the only Caucasians. Apparently we had stopped on, or near, an Indian reservation; the people in both the bar and the restaurant were all Native American.
We sat down in the café and had dinner. After dinner, we went into the bar to have a drink and play some pool.
One of the guys, a fellow named Jim, started flirting with the bar maid. She was going along with it, and they were having a good time, bantering back and forth. As the night wore on, the bar started to fill up a bit. I was winning the pool games, so I wasn’t paying attention to the other customers until one of them suddenly threw a pool cue onto the table as I was getting ready to shoot.
I looked up and realized that at least ten young Indian men were standing at the end of the table. The leader, a guy that would have made three of me, said, “You’re not welcome here. We understand that you’re snowbound, so you can stay in town, and you can eat at the café. But get out of the bar, and don’t come back.”
It was all very calmly stated, and I took it at face value and put my pool cue away. But Mike wasn’t so accommodating. He asked, “Why? We aren’t bothering anyone.”
The big guy pointed at Jim and said, “He’s bothering one of our women. You had your chance. Now get out and stay out!”
Mike started to say something, but I grabbed his arm and said, “We’re leaving.”
The big guy flashed a grin and moved aside to clear a path to the door. We took it. There are times when discretion really is the better part of valor, and I was convinced that this was one of them.
We went back to the motel and talked about it. Not one of us thought that we should have stayed. We would have ended up reenacting Custer’s Last Stand.
It took three more days before the roads were clear enough to drive again. We had one terribly boring time hanging around the motel, but we stayed there.
It was obvious that we wouldn’t get back to the Great Lakes Naval Base on time, so we called ahead to the Base Duty Officer and explained our situation. It turned out that we weren’t the only ones. The blizzard had caused a lot of people to be stranded, and the Duty Officer just told us to get there as fast as was reasonable. In the end, we were three days late, but we were not even close to being the last sailors to get there.
I received some really bad news when I got back to the base. My car, which had been parked in a paid parking lot outside the gate, had
been stolen. I reported it to the police, but it never turned up. I was heartbroken. I had really loved that old Mercury convertible.
The rest of the school went by uneventfully. I was having no problems with the course, now that the math part was over. It even got really interesting when they taught a week on a new subject, “Transistor Theory.” I had heard about transistors, of course. After all, Transistor Radios had been the rage for a year or two. I was really excited to learn this new technology.
Then I received my orders to my next duty station. I was going to a twelve-week school in Virginia. The school was going to train me to maintain and operate an analog computer that controlled the guidance radars and missile launchers for a Terrier Guided Missile System. I was really excited, especially when I was told that the computer was totally transistorized. This was the Navy’s most modern equipment, and, after working on an older destroyer for the past three years, this would be an incredible advance in technology for me.
It turned out that most of my class was going to this school, so all the single guys decided to drive down together in a caravan when we were scheduled to go. But first we had to complete the school at Great Lakes, which we did in February 1962.
Upon graduation, I was promoted to second class petty officer. I was really proud of that promotion. Three years earlier, I had been cleaning the ancient bathrooms of an old destroyer; doing one of the worst jobs in the Navy. Now I was an E-5, and I was on my way to one of the Navy’s premier enlisted schools. I have to admit that I was incredibly proud of myself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Never Pick a Fight with a Destroyer Sailor
The trip to Virginia was a lot of fun. We were given two weeks’ leave, plus travel time, when we left Great Lakes. Since we had just been on Christmas leave a few weeks earlier, we decided to forgo the leave and just drive straight to Virginia. But we had lots of time, so we just drove a few hours each day, then we would stop at a likely-looking town and party for the day. We ended up spending three days in the town of Warren, Ohio, while we waited for one of our guys, Big Bob, to fall into and out of, love. Then we drove on to our final destination, the Navy Guided Missile Schools Command, at Damneck, Virginia.
This school proved to be both interesting and a lot of fun. The instruction included both classroom theory and hands-on lab work. I found that I learned much better and retained the knowledge better with the hands-on approach. We were taught to operate and maintain the Mk 119 Computer, a key component of the Mk 76 Terrier Guided Missile Fire Control System. This was the one of the Navy’s most modern systems; one that being installed on the newest Navy ships.
The computer itself was like nothing that exists today. It was about six feet high, eight feet long, and two feet thick. The entire front of the computer was taken up by metal dials that were driven by about twenty electromechanical modules, each about a foot square. They, in turn, were driven by electronic signals emanating from small, transistorized modules located in the rear of the unit. The computer itself was electronically coupled with weapons control consoles in the ships’ Combat Information Centers (CICs) that transmitted target coordinates to it so the computer could point the fire-control radar at the target. When the radar locked on to the target, the computer then calculated data for the guided missile launchers and the missiles themselves. When the launcher was assigned to the computer and the missile was on the rail, the system was ready to fire. It was incredibly complex, yet for me it was very understandable. I really felt at home with this system and its maintenance as soon as I was introduced to it.
The school passed uneventfully. Since Damneck was an out-of-the-way location a few miles from Virginia Beach (which was way too expensive for us), we mostly stayed on the base at night. I did some studying and played some bridge, but there was really nothing exciting to do. Once in a while, a group of us would go out to a private club, the Fleet Reserve Club that was located near to the base. But it was mainly a family club, so we would just have a few beers and then go back to the barracks.
Then I ran into a real problem. Against my better judgment, I went with a group to the Base Enlisted Men’s Club. We had dinner, and after dinner, we stayed and gabbed and drank beer. By this time, we were all old friends, having gone through Great Lakes and now the computer school together.
We were having a good time, joshing around, and we stayed far too long. Finally, the club was closing, the lights were turned up, and the bartender was telling us, “Wrap it up, Guys.”
One of our group, Big Bob, was getting a bit obnoxious and was refusing to leave. He claimed that he didn’t have to go anywhere because his beer was still full. So, in the cheerful mode of the evening, I reached over and poured ketchup in his beer and told him that he had to leave, because now all the beer was undrinkable.
Bob erupted and came for me. He tackled me, and we went down in a childish kind of wrestling match on the floor. Our friends immediately pulled us apart, and the Shore Patrol took Bob in tow. We explained to the Shore Patrol that we were friends who had just had a few too many, so they agreed to just hold Bob until the rest of us could get to the barracks before they brought him back to the barracks in their paddy wagon. With that understanding, the rest of us headed home to the barracks and bed.
I was asleep in my top bunk in the barracks when Bob was brought in. Apparently, he waited until the Shore Patrol left, and then he started hunting for me. He was still drunker than a skunk and was really pissed that I had ruined his last beer.
I was sleeping on my side, with my back to the aisle, when he found me. He immediately started pounding on my side and back, hitting everything he could reach.
I woke up, totally startled, and sat way up on my bunk. In what was purely a reflex, my right hand shot high in the air above my head, and then down with all of my strength to hit him right in the eye. The punch was so hard that it split both my knuckles and his eyebrow. He went down, bouncing off the bunk across the aisle from me. I jumped out of my bunk and grabbed him in a headlock as he was getting up. He was none too stable, so I was able to hold him there.
By this time, the lights had come on in the barracks, and everyone was shouting and milling around. The Duty Petty Officer came to see what was going on. As soon as he figured it out, he called the Shore Patrol back to the barracks.
I was still holding Bob in the headlock when the Shore Patrol got there and took charge. They took Bob off to the Base Brig for the night, but not before they put both of us on report.
Some of my friends tried to talk them out of writing me up, but it was no use. They explained that it wasn’t their job to judge the situation; it was their job to document it so the CO could do the judging. But they did leave me in the barracks, even as they hauled Bob away, still yelling obscenities at me.
The next day was Sunday, and we never saw Bob. The Shore Patrol kept him locked up for the weekend. That did bother me a bit. I’d just thought Bob was overly drunk and would probably be his old happy-go-lucky self by Sunday morning, but the authorities had apparently decided to give him a taste of the crowbar hotel.
Monday morning, Bob showed up in the barracks just in time to shower, change clothes, and go to class. He had one of the biggest shiners that I had ever seen! The whole side of his face was swollen beyond recognition.
Bob caught hell from our classmates. He was at least six inches taller and sixty pounds heavier than me, and he looked awful. But he took it in good humor and repeatedly apologized to me and the other guys that had been with us. He was a good guy. He had just exceeded his capacity, and now he was paying for it.
I caught a lot of comments from the group about how bad Bob looked and how unscarred I was, but I never told anyone that my one big punch was just a half-asleep panic reflex. If they wanted to consider me a giant-killer, who was I to argue?
But all was not sweetness and light for us. We had been put on report, and the School’s Command did not take this fact lightly. We were hauled into the school’s front office
at the first break on that Monday morning and were royally chewed out by the Command Master Chief. He then informed us that we were to appear at the Base Executive Officer’s Office on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. for a “preliminary hearing” before going to Captain’s Mast at a later date as scheduled by the Executive Officer.
I had been so proud of making it to second class petty officer! Bob and I had both been promoted at the same time, and we were both certain that we would both lose at least one stripe over this mess. Bob spent the next two days apologizing to me, and the rest of the group spent the next two days telling him what an asshole he was for doing this to us. It was not a fun two days.
Finally the day came and we were both standing in the outer office waiting for the Executive Officer to get done with some other offenders. I was shaking in my boots. The last time I had been this scared was when Sheriff Tamietti had caught me poaching the night before I joined the Navy. Bob was in worse shape than I was. He was noticeably shaking, and with that huge black eye and swollen face, he looked horrible.
The chief in charge of the office came over and told us, “When your names are called, march into the inner office and come to attention in front of the podium. Salute the XO, then go to Parade Rest and stay there. Only speak when spoken to. Understand?”
We both replied, “Yes, Chief.”
Then we waited.
Finally our names were called. We did exactly as we had been told and ended up standing in front of the podium. The XO was there, but his back was to us. We still went through the routine and came to Parade Rest, waiting. Then the XO turned around, and I almost crapped my pants. It was Commander Moore, the Cogswell’s (apparently former) commanding officer!
My jaw must have dropped, but he ignored it. He stared right through both of us and gave no sign of recognition, even though I knew he must have known me. We had shared too many long bridge watches together for him not to have known me. It was only about a year ago that he had officiated at my reenlistment ceremony in Manila Bay.