by Jeff Noonan
I honestly felt like a big brother in this little family. To this day, I don’t understand why they took such an interest in me, but I really do appreciate the fact that they did. It was a very good memory to take away with me.
While we were in Bath, I got a letter from Mom telling me that my sister, Kathy, had been married. She had married a St. Regis logger that I knew slightly.
I was surprised. I hadn’t known that Kathy was even dating anyone seriously, but I was happy for her. Her new husband, Don, was older than Kathy, but he was a good guy from all that I had seen, and I thought that he would be good to her.
Actually, my first thought was, “Great! Kathy escaped!”
But all good things must end. After I had been in Bath about four months, the ship’s construction was done, and we had to leave. We took Leahy to Boston Naval Shipyard, where it was to be outfitted with supplies and some final work was to be done before the official commissioning, scheduled for the coming August.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It’s Great to be a Bar Hero!
Master Chief Martinez did a number on me when we arrived in Boston. Upon arrival, the ship was required to furnish one person to the Armed Forces Police in Boston. Martinez volunteered me. It was to be a three-month tour, after which I would return to the ship.
I wasn’t too happy with this idea. There would be a tremendous amount of technical work done on the missile systems during this three-month period, and I didn’t want to miss it. But the Chief didn’t understand the amount of work coming up and he wasn’t particularly interested in it anyway, so I had no choice.
I left the ship within a day or so of its arrival in Boston, a bit excited by the impending adventure. I had done some one-night Shore Patrol assignments when I was on Cogswell in WestPac, but the Armed Forces Police, where I would be working for the next three months, was something new to me.
I had a weekend off before I had to report, so I decided to get a room and relax for a couple of days before reporting to the new duty station. I checked in to a downtown hotel, within walking distance of the Westerner Bar, which I had visited the night before with a group of my friends. Then I got cleaned up and went out for some dinner.
The Westerner Bar was in a Boston neighborhood that, in 1962, we called “The Combat Zone,” but it was nothing like the freewheeling mess that was created in the same area a few years later when the city tried to corral all of its sleaze in one central area. The Combat Zone of 1962 was only a three-block area that had a group of bars and restaurants that catered to young people—primarily college students and military personnel—who wanted a place to hang and dance at night. It was well-patrolled and safe, but exciting.
It was about nine in the evening when I walked into the Westerner and got a seat at the bar. A Country-Western band (what else?) was just warming up, and the evening’s customers were slowly wandering in. Most of them got tables close to the dance floor, but, since I was alone, I stayed at the bar and just watched the people.
I had been there about an hour when a woman came in and sat next to me. I recognized her as someone that had danced with my friends and me the night before. She was about ten years older than me, but still quite attractive for an older woman.
She said “Hello,” obviously remembering me, and I did the same.
I said, “I remember you from last night, but I don’t remember your name. I’m sorry.”
She said “I’m Delores and I think that you’re Jeff. Am I right?” She had me there, so I bought her a drink, and the evening was off and running.
We soon joined a group of her friends at a table and danced the night away. Of course, I gave her a ride to her apartment when the evening was over and ended up staying for the weekend. Boston was starting out with a bang!
On Monday I reported to the Armed Forces Police Headquarters, which was co-located with the Boston Police in a downtown police station. I was surprised to find out that I would, once again, be on per diem while I was assigned there. I was to get a hotel room and live “close to where the action is.” The theory was that we would always be on call in case of serious trouble, so we had to stay nearby. We were to work four days and then have three days off, on a staggered rotation. Our work hours, during our “on-shift” days were from three in the afternoon until three the next morning.
The first day, I was taken to a small-arms range and went through a firing test with a .45 caliber pistol, and then I had to take a physical at the Naval Shipyard Dispensary. While I was at the shipyard, they had me fill out about a million forms, after which they gave me my per diem check and told me to find a hotel room and report to the police station at three the next day for duty. They gave me a choice of two hotels and sent me on my way.
I checked in to the Bradford Hotel that afternoon and got my gear ready for the next day. Then I drove over to see Delores for dinner and a quiet evening at her place. We had a quite a talk that night, and we decided that we would become “friends with benefits” because we enjoyed each other but had such an age difference. We both agreed that we would pass each other by if we ran into each other when we were with dates or anything like that. We also set up a telephone code so I could call and see that the coast was clear before I came over to her place in the future. I have to admit that I really liked this arrangement!
The next day was a bit of an adventure. I reported to the police station a few minutes early and ran into my fellow Armed Forces Policemen, a group of about twenty people from all the services. Almost half were sailors from ships being worked on in the shipyard. The rest were from all types of military bases in the Boston vicinity. At 1500 hours sharp, we assembled in a police briefing room and waited for our assignments.
A Marine gunnery sergeant came into the room and took the podium. He went through some housekeeping items and general information and then he discussed the patrol assignments for the day. All of the assignments were by teams, since all patrols were two-man efforts. He made a special point to remind all of us that we were only there to ride herd on military personnel. “If there is trouble, but no military are involved, call the cops, but stay the hell out of it!”
He began giving out the assignments for the night. Several teams of people were called out and their patrol areas assigned. Then I heard my assignment, “Washington and Noonan, Roxbury.”
I looked around for Washington and spotted his name tag. He was the biggest man in the room, a huge black sailor wearing the uniform of a first class commissaryman (cook). He spotted me at the same time and immediately shouted out, “Hold up, Sarge!”
The sergeant stopped and asked, “What is it, Washington?”
“You’re saddling me with that skinny little kid and giving us the Roxbury beat. Not only is he a 150-pound midget, he’s also a frigging technician. He’s not going to be able to handle Roxbury.”
The sergeant looked at me and started to say something, but I held my hand up, palm out, to stop him.
I said, “Sarge, please let me answer the man.”
He nodded, and I turned around to face the giant cook.
Then I said, in a very firm voice, “First off, I’m not a one-hundred-and-fifty pound midget. I weigh a grand total of one-hundred and twenty-eight pounds, soaking wet. Second, I was a bos’n mate before I ever thought about becoming a technician and I am probably one of the meanest motherfuckers you’ve ever met. Third, I’m not sure that I am really comfortable with having a cook as a partner. You can’t just deep-fry the assholes when they cause trouble.” I paused and then said, “But if you’re willing to give it a try, I guess I could bend my rules for you. If we do work together, I’ll have your back—or at least the part of it that I can reach.” I grinned and held out my hand to him.
The whole room cracked up. Even the sergeant was laughing. Finally a big grin broke over Washington’s face, and he walked over to shake my hand. I had a partner for the day.
After all the patrol assignments were given out, the meeting broke up, and we wen
t to the parking lot where paddy wagons were standing by to take us to our assigned spots. While I was waiting, Washington and I got a little better acquainted. It turned out that he was there on permanent duty, working his way through a two-year shore duty assignment. He had been there about six months when I showed up. He asked me if I had any questions, and I replied, “Yeah, just one. Where the heck is Roxbury?”
He looked at me and said, “Are you serious? You don’t know about Roxbury?”
“I never heard of it.”
He responded with a very discouraged, “Oh shit.”
He didn’t say anything else until we were getting out of the paddy wagon. Then he turned around and, grinning, said, “Welcome to Roxbury, Kid.”
I looked around. The first thing that struck me was that I was in the middle of the most rundown slum that I had ever seen. The second thing I noticed was that I was the only white person in sight. Washington was still grinning. He said, “I tried to help you out, Kid. But your alligator mouth overloaded your hummingbird ass. Now you’re gonna be in real trouble if you aren’t careful. Stay behind and watch me, do what I do, and we may both survive this night.” With that, he led the way down the street.
I followed.
The first few hours were uneventful, and I slowly gained some confidence. We mostly walked the sidewalks, stopping to talk to vendors and shop owners. While it was still quiet, Washington brought me into several bars and nightclubs that he told me were the trouble spots we would have to deal with later. We went through each of them in some detail, checking to make sure we had the layouts down and knew where all the doors and hiding spots were. I also went out of my way to say “Hello” and try to talk a moment with all the bartenders and waitresses.
As evening fell, the bar scene started to develop. Each of the bars he had shown me had bands playing and large dance floors. We modified our patrol; we were just walking from bar to bar now, but things stayed quiet for the evening. After all the buildup, it was almost disappointing, but everyone was great to us. After the first couple of times through the bars, the people just seemed to accept us and even joked a bit with us as we wandered through. I soon relaxed and started having fun along the way, cracking wise to the waitresses and generally having fun with the crowds. It wasn’t that much different from other bars I had been in. Everyone was there for a good time, and no one wanted trouble.
The night was soon over, and we were walking back to where we were to meet the paddy wagon when Washington broke the silence, “You did real good tonight, Noonan. People really liked you, and that’s important here.”
I replied, “It’s important everywhere, Cookie. These are just people like you and me; just people trying to have some fun in this old world.”
Washington was silent for a time before he said, “Just people like you and me? I don’t think that I have ever heard anything like that from a white man before.”
A bit confused, I said, “It’s the truth, Cookie. We’re all alike underneath it all.” He immediately came back with, “Noonan, you lied to me. You really ain’t the meanest motherfucker that I’ve ever met.”
I chuckled and we got aboard the paddy wagon.
That first week passed with no remarkable events. The daily roster gave us all alternating beats, so that we didn’t get too friendly with anyone that we met while on duty. We would go from Roxbury one day to the Combat Zone the next, and then South Boston the next. Occasionally we would get Paddy Wagon Duty, but that was usually kept for the permanent staff people.
I spent my first free weekend taking care of my uniforms and doing some housekeeping chores. Delores and I ran into each other on Saturday night in the Westerner, and I stayed with her through Sunday and then went back to the hotel.
One day the following week, I was assigned to patrol in the Combat Zone with an older Navy machinist’s mate who was so small that he made me look big. We did the normal afternoon routine and then went into patrolling the bars after the sun went down. The, about ten in the evening, we ran into what became my first real encounter on the police beat.
We were standing unobtrusively to the side in the Westerner Bar when an obviously deranged man suddenly appeared in front of us waving a big stick. He was a little taller than me and quite a bit heavier. He was yelling that he was a good Marine that had fought in Korea, and that we were harassing him. (We had not even noticed him until he started waving the stick in our faces.) He just crouched there in front of us, waving that damned stick and yelling taunts, “Come on you scum-sucking sailor bustards. Come on and see what a real man does to you!” and similar things. He had one of the most intense looks on his face that I had ever seen, with a wild stare that seemed to be all over us all of the time. He was either crazy or on something very strong.
My little partner was scared silly. He kept mumbling, “Oh shit…Oh shit,” over and over again. He was an older guy, and this obviously wasn’t his thing. He stayed half hidden behind me. That pissed me off, but I didn’t have time for him right then.
I remembered reading somewhere that you shouldn’t show fear to a guy with marbles missing, so I tried something that I wasn’t sure would work. I started smiling at the guy in a friendly manner. He noticed and hesitated, but then started yelling even louder and more profanely. So I upped the ante and started laughing. The louder he got, the harder I laughed. After a few minutes, I was slapping my thigh and pointing at him, and he was screaming at the top of his lungs. It must have been quite a sight. Finally I stopped laughing, looked at him, and said, “That’s enough. The show is over. We’re leaving now.”
He cocked his head to the side and looked startled. Then he dropped the stick to his side, said, “Okay,” and walked away.
I was really relieved. We had no authority over civilians, and we could have gotten in trouble if we had been forced to hit him or anything. We were forbidden from aggressive action against any civilian, even one as obviously out of it as this guy had been. As soon as he moved away from us, I told my partner to follow me and I went to the bar, borrowed a telephone, and called the police. They found the poor guy and took him to a hospital for evaluation.
But that was not the end of the incident for me. At least a hundred bar patrons had seen the action, such as it was, and even the band had stopped to watch us. I had an instant reputation in the Combat Zone. I was “the sailor who laughed at the crazy guy.” The story traveled fast, and, of course, the deed got bigger with each telling.
We left the bar on our rounds right after the incident, but when we came back on the next visit an hour or so later, a little waitress named Rosie that I had joked with earlier met me with a cool soft drink. Additionally, before we left the bar, I had a date for the next Saturday night with another girl, a tall brunette named Angela. It was good to be a bar hero.
The Saturday date with Angela turned into a good thing, and we were pretty much a steady item within a week or so. Delores was cool with it, so I kind of alternated between the two of them.
Then, one day, I was sleeping in my hotel room when I was awakened by a knock on the door, “Room Service” a voice said.
I mumbled something at the door and turned over to go back to sleep when the voice said, “I said Room Service, Jeff. Get your ass out of bed.”
Startled, I went to the door and opened it a crack. Rosie, the little waitress from the Westerner was there, wearing a maid’s uniform. She pushed her way right on into the room. “I got a second job here” she said, “Is that okay with you?”
Totally confused, I said “Sure,” and jumped back into bed to cover up. She grinned and stretched, and, with a shrug, the uniform hit the floor. There was nothing under it.
It was really, really, good to be a bar hero!
The next two months on the Armed Forces Police were every young man’s fantasy. Over time, Delores and I saw each other less and less, but we remained friends. Angela kept me busy in the evenings, and Rosie took care of me during the daylight hours. It was certainly a fantasy li
fe, but I knew that it was temporary. As much as I enjoyed Delores, Angela, and Rosie, they were not people who would fit into my lifelong fantasy of a little cottage with a white picket fence and a couple of cheerful kids. None of the three was a settling-down kind of person, and I was not a forever-partying kind of guy.
I enjoyed it while it lasted, but nothing lasts forever. Soon my three-month Armed Forces Police gig was over. At about the same time, Angela and Rosie found out about each other. Judging by their reactions, I was no longer their favorite bar hero. Delores and I were still friends, but it was back to the ship and back to work for me. The fantasy life was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
My First Shakedown Cruise
When the ship left Bath, all of the ship’s equipment, including the missile systems had been turned over to the ship’s crew. The missile systems were still far from operational and were in need of extensive repair and modernization. While I was doing my police duty, the missile crew had been working night and day to get the systems together. When I returned, I jumped in with the rest of the guys. The next months were an incredibly hectic time for all of us.
While the ship was under construction in Bath, the shipyard had been responsible for the installation and checkout of the missile systems, but the shipyard’s construction contract was several years old, and the shipyard was only contractually obligated to bring the systems up to a baseline operating condition that had been established when the contract was awarded. By the time the systems were turned over to us, this baseline was obsolete. In the years since the construction contract had been awarded, the Navy had authorized a host of equipment and system changes to fix problems that had been encountered in both laboratory and fleet environments. It was our job to tear the systems apart and install the changes and upgrades, which were known as Ordnance Alterations (ORDALTS). When we finished installing all of the changes, the engineers would be brought back, and we would retest the systems to ensure that we had everything put together correctly.