DOPE CITY

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I had bever even seen a marijuana cigarette . . .

In the last years at home before I went into the service we drank lots of beer. Even at sixteen I attended very few parties where there wasn’t a huge keg of beer in a tub of ice. And we always made sure it was empty before we left the party. But beer was the extent of our wild parties. We never saw any drugs.

Those were the good old days.

Then in June of 1960, I left to spend four-years in the Navy. I couldn't believe what I found when I returned.

One night and old drinking buddy took me to a so-called "pot party" in a big old house on the outskirts of town. The place was packed with young people, and every room was dark except for a small lamp with a cloth thrown over it to diffuse the light; plus, the air was choked with marijuana smoke. I must have looked like a wide-eyed little kid because I had never even seen a marijuana cigarette, let alone attend a pot party. My friend just laughed. “That’s the way it is now,” he said. "Dope City."

It was after midnight when we left the party, and the air was nippy, but my friend said he needed to make one quick stop on our way home. It was in a rundown group of single story apartments in an older section of town. And as we walked along the dark concrete walkway I noticed that all of the windows had been completely covered with cardboard to prevent anyone from looking inside. I was a little nervous.

After my friend knocked, the door cracked open just a little and, seeing who we were, someone let us inside. In the dim light, all I could see was that she was a bony young woman with a narrow face and shiny mop of black hair who appeared to be intoxicated. She was dressed in a white slip and bra. It reminded me of how my mother used to walk around the house in her bra and slip. My friend handed her several bills and she handed him a small bag. “Let’s go,” he said. And as I looked up, the woman gave me a drunken smile. “How about you baby . . . need a little Antifreeze?" I waved her off and we left.

It was astonishing. In just four years, my peaceful little hometown had become Dope City—a haven for drug dealers and addicts. I left a few weeks later and never returned.

BUBBLEHEADS

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The bubbleheads did something I still can’t believe . . .

Everybody knows that submariners are the elite service of the U.S. Navy, and their bravery and heroism during the Cold War is an undisputed fact. But one night in 1963 a group of submariners did something I still can’t believe.

Surface sailors like me referred to submariners sarcastically as “bubbleheads.” But in all truthfulness, I can’t imagine a job more courageous than being in the submarine service during the Cold War. Days at a time, hundreds of feet below the surface, silently running along the freezing Soviet coastline to gather intelligence, tailgating Soviet submarines to learn their evasive tactics, and dodging hostile anti-submarine destroyers to avoid being sunk in thousands of feet of deep, dark ocean. It was enough to drive a surface sailor crazy. But they loved it. Submariners were a tight group that worked hard and played hard and, when they were on shore leave, their raucous antics were legendary—like the night they came into our bar.

Myself and several other carrier sailors were in our favorite downtown bar drinking beer and shooting pool when a pudgy chief and four other pale-looking submariners pushed through the swinging doors and swaggered up to the bar. “Beer!” they yelled, and it wasn’t long before their heroic sea stories dominated every conversation in the place. And after every salty tale, they’d raise their mugs and propose a toast to the chief. That’s when things got a little weird.

The chief removed one of his high-top boots, placed it on the counter and told the bartender to “filler-up” with draft beer. “Flood the ballast,” he gargled. At that point, the rest of us in the bar started to take notice. Even the bartender looked a little concerned. Surely, those guys weren’t going to drink beer out of the chief’s boot—or would they?

Then the chief held the boot high over his head, looked at his men and barked, “Thirty degree down angle,” and each man in turn took a long swig of the cold beer—right from the chief’s smelly boot! And as they slurped down the sudsy beer, they patted the fat-ass chief on the back and told him what a great guy he was. Our jaws hit the counter, and the bar was so quiet you could have heard the hollow sound of pinging sonar a mile out at sea. I almost gagged.

Yep, that was some forty-five years ago, but that night the bubbleheads did something I still can’t believe.