Sixteen
My very unusual sixteenth year.
©Copyright 1999, Carroll Williams, all rights reserved
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        My sixteenth year was filled with adventure, travel, and learning experiences beyond the imagination of most boys that age.   I turned sixteen in June, 1950.  We moved from a small apartment in the Pine Haven housing project at Bauxite, Arkansas to a very large but older white clapboard two-story house in Benton, a relocation of about six miles.  We were still unpacking when we heard on the radio that North Korean troops had crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea.  We didn't think it would amount to much.  Korea was a long way off.  However, it did eventually effect everyone's lives.

        During the previous year at Bauxite High School, Mr. Phillips, the shop teacher who was a Marine Corps Reserve Captain, recruited many of the boys seventeen and older into the Marine Reserves.  These lads were looking forward to a summer of training at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina and a return to school in the fall.  They expected to come back as heroes from basic training and fulfill their obligations as week-end warriors.  Instead they were called to active duty and sent to San Diego for boot camp, then to Camp Pendleton for advanced combat training, and onward to Korea.   

        I was recovering from a broken heart after losing my girl friend, a tall and rather attractive young lady named Dorothy.  She started seeing an older fellow who was already out of high school.  The other lad was working and had his own car, a really neat 1933 Plymouth coup.  I was still on foot.  Oh, I had access to my mom's 1946 black Chevrolet sedan, but it wasn't mine.  It wasn't the same as having your own wheels.  In the mind of a young man, wheels were the key to romance.  I set about to earn the money to buy my own car.  I took a job at a local grocery, and a second job at the local five and dime store.

        Bauxite High School and Benton High School were arch rivals in every athletic sport known and some perhaps not yet invented.  I spent the summer of 1950 getting acquainted with the Benton boys and trying to be accepted into their social scene.  The Benton boys belonged to organizations like DeMolay, an arm of the Masonic Lodge, and the girls belonged to various branches of their mother's lodges.  Of course every one who was anyone belonged to the First Baptist Church or the First Methodist Church.  If you weren't in the 'correct' church you were nothing.  Kids in other denominations were regarded as, well, socially disadvantaged to say the least.  The Baptists even felt sorry for the Methodists because they weren't fully immersed and besides that the Methodists even shared their communion cup with other Christians.  A definite no-no among Baptists.

         Church-going folks in Benton didn't mind taking a sip now and then and would even pay a premium price for the convenience of buying booze in a legally dry county. I worked at a local grocery store and discovered that the meat market there served as a surreptitious package store.  Folks bought their meat wrapped in heavy butcher paper. It was easy to conceal a pint rolled inside a piece of steak and covered by the opaque wrapping.  The butcher walked inside the big refrigerator and prepared special orders.  Cases of whiskey were brought into the store through the back door hidden under layers of produce from the wholesale markets in Little Rock.  The state capital was wet, which suited the needs of the politicians.  The standing joke was that the bootleggers and the Baptists always voted to keep liquor illegal in our county.

         One of the Benton boys had his dad's big Chrysler and a bunch of us piled into it to cruise around town and figure out what to do for the rest of the day.  We bought hot dogs, buns, and mustard at the local market where I worked, and headed down to the Saline River which curved around the Westside of our town.  The summer was dry and the river was low.  We jumped a narrow stream of water onto a gravel bar, gathered driftwood; made a bon fire, and roasted our hot dogs on sharpened sticks.  Another car load of guys soon joined us.

        I had always imagined myself a great adventurer and had no thought of settling down too quickly in one place.  I was surprised when the conversation turned to college and careers.  Each of these guys had already decided on a college or university, and even some of the fellows had chosen a law school to follow university.  I had some vague hope of attending college someday, but didn't have a clue how I would ever pay for it, or even what I wanted to study.  These guys, each in turn, told us what they intended to become.  Engineers, business men, lawyers, and so on.  When they looked at me I thought of my dad who was in the Navy and told them I would seek an appointment to Annapolis and would become a career naval officer.  I had no idea how to go about that, and hadn't planned for it, but it sounded good. 

        One of the guys came up with a brilliant suggestion.  He said, "Let's take over this town and the county as well.   Our dads and uncles run this place now, let's take control as soon as possible and run it our way."  The idea caught on like wild fire.  Each boy in turn selected a city or county office they would seek as soon as possible.  Mayor, town council, county judge, and so on.  I felt a little strange already having decided to leave this place and seek adventure elsewhere. 

        Those boys pledged to one another to follow up this conversation with action.  They sealed their pledge with hand shakes and back slapping all around.  I was the odd man out.  They still accepted me as a friend, but not one of their chosen inner circle as defined by this brilliant plot.   In the 1970's I returned to Benton, Arkansas and learned that each one of those lads had fulfilled his vow to "take over" the town and county.  They did it with alacrity.  The boys from the gravel bar ran the town and county from the mid sixties into the late eighties.  I have always been amazed that any group of teen-aged boys could have been so focused.

        Those lads told me that we should all start collecting our bugs for Mrs. Totten's biology class.  If we waited until fall, the selection would be limited.  Each of her students was required to collect, mount, and label fifty insects.  I started, but by fall I was no where near the required fifty.   As colder weather arrived the task became impossible.  The insects had gone into hibernation or fallen under the mounds of autumn leaves and were unavailable for my class project.  I was in a quandary.

        Mrs. Totten was knowledgeable and well prepared to teach her subject.  Unfortunately she spoke in a hypnotic monotone and my class was scheduled for the first hour after lunch.  Warm autumn sunshine streamed into the classroom warming the air and lulling the senses.  I fell asleep almost every day with words like coleopteran and lepidopteron reeling through my fading mind.   I stayed awake in English and math classes, but managed to fall behind in those courses as well as biology.  I had no trouble with Ma Gilbert's history class.  After all, that grand old lady had lived through most of our nation's history and had many personal anecdotes to share.  She could remember more history than most folks had ever read. 

        I was too small for football.  Sure I had gone out for the team but didn't make the first or even the second string.  I didn't relish sitting on the bench freezing so I joined the marching band.  I beat a mean tattoo on my snare drum.  Besides, band members, unlike the football team, got to ride to the out-of-town games on a bus loaded with cute chicks.  We had cheer leaders and majorettes in those little short skirts that showed off so much leg.  Any part of a teen aged girl's anatomy is a big turn on to a teen-aged boy, but especially those parts we could see more clearly.  There were plenty of other cute but otherwise fully clothed girls in the band as well.  The football team rode with the coach and trainers.  We were the lucky ones.

        I fell in love with a rather attractive clarinetist named Beverly.  She was a friend of Dorothy, my ex girl friend in Bauxite.  I had asked her for advice on boy-girl relationships, and for help in getting me back together with my old flame.  Some girls liked being asked to help a relationship along.   It was a real turn on.  Beverly finally broke the news to me that recovering my relationship with Dorothy was a lost cause.  Well, what else to do?  Move on and start dating each other.   During our brief fall courtship we both did something that neither of us had ever done before.  Ready for this?  We agreed to go steady.  This was a very big step.  Most kids didn't go steady in those days until they were seniors and we were lowly juniors.   Going steady only meant that we wouldn't date anyone else.  There was heavy petting, but no sex.  That was still taboo in the fifties, at least among the kids I knew.

         In the fall months I became addicted to cruising around in my mother's black '46 Chevrolet.  I always made up some excuse that I had to go back to school for band practice or some other activity.  My friends and I would sometimes spend time in the woods terrorizing cans and bottles with a 22 rifle.  On some occasions we fired at targets using the Japanese army rifle my dad had recovered on the beach at Saipan.  Other times we fired my dad's M1 military carbine.  We carried and fired those weapons with no adult supervision.  No one thought anything about boys having and using firearms. Most boys owned and maintained their own personal weapons in small towns and rural areas.

        I spent so much time cruising around and having fun that my school work suffered.  Between cruising, going steady, and playing in the band I came to a crisis point in my life.  I had to do something and I had to do it soon.  Beverly found out how far behind I was in three of my subjects and dumped me.  I was devastated.  This was the last straw.  School was no longer the place to be.

        Uncle Ted got me a job at the Crosland Fisheries on the Miami River where he worked as a foreman.  I went to work every morning before daylight with Ted in the old company-owned Dodge pickup.  I went aboard fishing boats and shoveled tons of fresh fish onto a conveyor that lifted them into the packing plant.

        I filled fifty gallon drums with live rock lobster and worked the electric hoist mounted on a monorail sending them across the dock and into the plant.   I helped pack crates of fresh fish on ice, dump tons of live lobsters into a steam cauldron to cook and pack them on ice when they cooled.  This was the best part of the job.  The crew kept fresh butter, lemons, and salt near the cooker.  When the steaming lobsters were dumped out on a long conveyor, we ate steadily all that we could hold and packed the rest for the hotel and restaurant trade.  I ate a fortune in lobster tails each day. 

        I enjoyed my days at the fishery.  I met some colorful characters, and heard some colorful language.  I got off work earlier in the afternoon than my Uncle Ted and I would ride the Miami city bus back to his house in South Miami.  When I got on the bus and put my money in the fare box, everyone  melted away and let me have any seat on the bus.  They showed great respect for a working man who spent his days up to his armpits in fresh fish.  I appreciated their kindness.

        I spent my week-ends wandering around the Miami area.  Sometimes I would go to Matheson Hammock State Park and wade the shallows of Biscayne Bay studying marine life.  Other times I would go to the bay shore near the Miami Herald building and rent a skiff.  In the fifties there were still several uninhabited islands in Biscayne Bay.  Today giant cruise ship terminals dominate the area.

         I found neat things on the bay islands.  Things that drifted ashore from as far away as Brazil or the coasts of Europe or Africa.  I opened ripe coconuts, feasted on their flesh, drank their milk, and slept on the beach in the sunshine.  It sure beat the heck out of sleeping in Mrs. Totten's biology class.

        My Uncle Ted decided that I should have a better job than the one at the fishery.   He didn't see a future there for me.   Ted arranged for me to meet one of my mother's cousins, a man named Paul Spaight.   Paul was the maintenance engineer at the Del Monico Hotel on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach.  I would work as a gopher and roustabout in the maintenance department at the hotel.  I jumped at the chance to get out of the fish business.  Not only did the hotel job smell better, it paid a little more.

         I learned a lot at the hotel.  For example, gambling was illegal, but the hotel had what they openly referred to as 'the bookie room.'  It was just off the swimming pool deck and was decorated with murals of famous horse tracks around the nation.  Guests of the hotel could listen to the races on the radio and place bets openly over the counter in that room.  No one made any pretense of hiding the room or keeping it a secret.  I did maintenance chores in there several times. 

        When Paul's daughter Sherry learned that I had played snare drums in high school, she offered to get me an audition with a local band.  Sherry sang in a number of clubs around Miami and knew a lot of entertainers and lounge people.  I never did audition, but it was a nice thing to offer a kid like me. 

        I learned to play poker with my aunt and uncle and their friends.  In one game, I had such a run of luck that the older folks were not too happy with me.  I cleaned them out.  The stakes were low and the money wasn't much, but it was the thought of being trounced by a novice that irritated my uncle's friends.  I also learned to like the Puerto Rican Rum served during the games. 

        I soon got homesick for my old pals in Benton and Bauxite.  I used some of my earnings to catch a bus out of Miami.  I bade my Uncle Ted and Aunt Dorris goodbye, thanked them for their help in getting jobs, and started my journey home.  

         I made another futile attempt to succeed in high school.   Although I had been out for several weeks, I visited the Principal and offered to work very hard at catching up if he would allow me back into school.  He made a remark I will never forget and will always hold against him.  He told me that if I didn't graduate from high school I would "work in overalls the rest of my life."   I have many relatives who worked in overalls all of their lives and they were honorable, good, and decent people.  I had recently worked in overalls at the fishery in Miami. I respect and appreciate blue collar workers all across the labor spectrum.  That remark cut me deeply then and still does.  I wasn't afraid to "work in overalls," if I respected myself and the work I was doing.  I did not appreciate his snobbery.  I silently vowed right there that whatever work I would ultimately do, I would do with dignity no matter what the conditions or the uniform. 

        Going back to school was a hopeless situation.   I was so far behind in the three subjects mentioned earlier that there was no hope of ever catching up.  By this time we were receiving letters from the Marines in Korea and reports from the war that were very disturbing.  In the fall, our forces under General MacArthur pulled off a brilliant stroke with the Inchon landings west of Seoul and fought their way to the Manchurian border.  North Korea's army for all practical purposes ceased to exist.  It seemed we would just mop up and come home. Then the Chinese Communists sent one hundred thousand so-called volunteers across the border from Manchuria and the war took an ominous turn.  Our forces fell back once again south of the 38th parallel and we were just holding on.  

        With school going so badly for me, and the fortunes of war going badly for our forces in Korea, what was I supposed to do?  On 10 January 1951, I lied about my age and joined the Marine Corps. 

        I saw the first snow to fall in the desert west of El Paso in over one hundred years.   The scenery looked like something out of a John Wayne movie.  San Diego was sunny and warm when I arrived at midday, January 13th.  Two Marines met us at the station.   Four Arkansas recruits rode to MCRD, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, in style.  We stood in the back of a deuce and a half truck with the wind in our faces, and got our first look at the harbor and mountains.  San Diego was really very beautiful.

        Receiving barracks was a two story wooden building typical of early World War II days.  It was situated just east of the mess hall.  A good location for a growing boy.  We waited there for three days until enough recruits were available to form a new training platoon.  Late in the afternoon on the third day, we were assembled after supper and marched south the length of the 'grinder' which is a huge rectangular asphalt drill field.  Later we learned first hand why they called it the 'grinder.'  Our DI's would grind us down with close order drill. 

         The Korean conflict put pressure on the training facilities at MCRD.  There were two training battalions housed in permanent buildings that had been constructed during the early 1930's.  Those buildings are of Spanish colonial design with tile roofs and stucco exteriors.  We passed right by them and arrived at a bare spot of ground piled with lumber and folded tents.  We constructed a tent city complete with wooden decks for the tents, wooden sidewalks between the tents and the head (bathroom to you civilians) housed in a tar paper covered shack.   We had running water for shower and sanitary facilities and for the wooden tables that served as rub boards for hand washing our clothes. 

        Training was vigorous.  There was never a let up.  We were rousted out of our racks (bunks) around 3 to 4 a.m. every morning and not allowed to hit the rack until around 11 p.m. at night.  Sleep deprivation was part of the training scheme.

            We became so deprived of sleep during the week that we always volunteered to attend Sunday chapel services in the base theater.  If you went to sleep in chapel, no one bothered to wake you up.  The Chaplain stood there preaching to a room full of sleeping recruits, not so different from some civilian churches.   We hated the end of chapel because we had to return to the rigors of training.   Sunday afternoons were usually spent doing laundry by hand on the wooden outdoor tables.  We scrubbed dungarees with a stiff bristle brush and a cake of laundry soap and hung them on a line by tying them with cords at the corners.  A man was assigned to walk laundry guard all night to prevent someone from another platoon from stealing our clean clothes.  We walked our post with fixed bayonet and orders to stop any intruder with force if necessary.  I am not sure I was up to killing a fellow recruit to save another recruit's clean skivvies.       

        Typically we would assemble in front of the platoon area each morning and stand at attention in the cold damp fog drifting in off San Diego Bay.  We would sing all verses of the Marine Corps hymn at full volume.  Then we marched off to the mess hall with our M-1 rifles on our shoulders and stacked them out front.  Seventy five rifles were stacked; three rifles interlocked in a tripod arrangement, and you better remember which one was yours.

        Next came close order drill, followed by class lectures while we were seated cross legged on the ground.  Physical training; aquatic training (swimming) which included abandon ship drills, boat drills; pugil stick combat which consisted of trying to defeat another recruit with a padded stick pretending it was a bayonet attack; actual bayonet course drills; and last but not least firing weapons, the M-1 Garand rifle from World War II days, the Browning Automatic Rifle mounted on a bi-pod; the .45 caliber pistol, .30 and .50 caliber machine guns; and throwing live grenades.   Weapons firing took place at Camp Matthews, away from MCRD.  One of three ratings could be earned on the firing range; marksman, sharp shooter, or expert.    This sixteen year old kid from Arkansas grew up handling weapons including military arms.  He fired expert with every category of weapon.

        Something puzzled me about the Marine Corps.   When we arrived they took away all of our glass bottles, and any knives or shaving razors we brought with us.  They issued us an injector razor to shave with, and said that all that other stuff was dangerous because we might get in a fight and hurt someone with it.  Then they issued us an M1 rifle with a bayonet.  We slung our rifle under the edge of our rack and had to sleep with it always close at hand.  Our bayonet was in its scabbard, but we could easily fit it to the rifle should we desire.   If we were going to get in a fight in the platoon area, we were much better equipped by the Marines to hurt one another than with that wimpy civilian stuff they took away from us.

        We were the ninth platoon formed in the newly activated third training battalion.  I have met many young Marines in the years since, and I ask them what platoon they were in at MCRD.  Their platoon numbers are up in the thousands now.  They seem impressed when I tell them I was in a platoon with a single digit in the third battalion.  It is customary among Marines to ask, "When did you join the Corps?"  It all started on November 10, 1775, at Tun's Tavern in Philadelphia, when Capt. Nichols of the U.S. Navy recruited the first Marine.  The next day, the story goes, he recruited a second fellow.  The first one asked the second one "When did you join?"  When he heard the answer, he told him, "Why you ain't nothin' but a raw recruit."  And so it has gone through the centuries.  Good natured kidding is part of the tradition of the Corps.   Of course Marines don't kid around when it comes to sailors.  That is when it gets serious.  Especially in a bar fight.  Our DI even taught us some interesting bar room brawling techniques. 

            Sgt. Metis told us that the Marine Corps was born in a tavern, and if the Corps ever dies, it will die in a tavern.  I am not sure he was joking.

          As I mentioned before, the First and Second Battalions were housed in the permanent buildings east of the 'grinder.'  Our tent city was southwest of the 'grinder' in an area between the base theater and the fence separating MCRD from Lindbergh Field, San Diego's main airport at the time.  We were just across the fence from the Convair flight line filled with B-36 bombers undergoing test flights prior to their delivery to the Air Force. 

          The sound of a B-36 was unlike the sound of any other airplane that ever existed.  It had six R4360 engines mounted as pushers, and four J-47 jet engines in pods of two under each wing tip. We were always amazed at these giant aircraft taking off and landing right beside our tent city.

            I had the misfortune to have the chicken pox during boot camp.  Chicken pox is not a rare disease by any means, but the Navy doctor that diagnosed me became very suspicious of may age.  He said it was mostly a childhood disease. I spent two weeks in isolation at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. When I returned to MCRD I was behind the 9th platoon's training schedule and was re- assigned to the 12th platoon.

            At the end of boot camp an officer raised a question about my age.  Since no birth certificate had been filed when I joined the Marines, the battalion commander demanded that I obtain one.  By this time, I had learned that anything a superior told you to do you better do without hesitation.  My birth certificate arrived and I was summoned to appear before a colonel.  I don't remember his name, but he was livid.  He said many choice words and then told me I was being reassigned to Casual Company to await discharge for minority reasons.  

        Casual Company was somewhat like receiving barracks in reverse.  It was the conduit out of the Corps.  The guys in Casual Company were a real odd collection of humanity.  There were true heroes who had done their time and fought valiantly in World War II and Korea.  There were losers like the former DI who had exceeded his authority and been a bit too violent with his recruits and been judged a psychopath unfit for service.  There were some other psychos as well who were just plain misfits, like the kid from Los Angeles who had a long police rap sheet and bragged about killing people while he was still in high school.  Then there was me.  A sixteen year old kid who tried to become a fighting leatherneck only to be rejected because he was too young.  Well, if they didn't want me, I would have to apply elsewhere.

        I was given a General Discharge under honorable conditions and allowed to wear the good conduct ribbon if I chose.  I was also encouraged to come back into the Corps when I turned eighteen or even sooner with parental consent.  Two MP's drove me to the San Diego railway station in a Jeep.  I took a late afternoon train to Los Angeles.  The trip northward along the Pacific coast was especially beautiful as the tracks follow the Pacific beaches a large part of the way.  I caught a last glimpse of   the afternoon anti-submarine aircraft, a PB2Y  turning to seaward over Point Loma where my dad had attended sonar school in 1924.  I had my last look at North Island Naval Air Station, the carriers moored alongside and many smaller combat ships in the bay.   San Diego was a Navy and Marine Corps town.  Perhaps the naval services are not so dominant today as they were in the fifties, but they are ingrained in the history and the life of that city.

           I took an east bound train out of Los Angeles and headed into Arizona.  We passed through Flagstaff in the dark.  It was a disappointment, because I wanted to view Humphrey's Peak to the north of town.  I had seen it on the way out to San Diego.  It is a 12,600 foot peak and I thought it would make a good climb someday.  I even entertained the notion of getting off the train in Flagstaff to make the climb while I was in good physical condition. 

         I got off the train early the next morning in Albuquerque and bought some Indian souvenirs.  I didn't know when I would pass this way again.  I changed trains in Ft. Worth and made an overnight trip to my home town of Benton, Arkansas.

        Around 6:00 a.m. I disembarked at the Benton railroad station at the foot of the town.  I hiked up a long hill wearing my Marine Corps greens and carrying my sea bag over my shoulder.  The weather was still nippy with some scattered frost.  I arrived home in time to have breakfast with my mother and younger brother.  I hadn't a clue as to what I was going to do next. 

        I looked for work but found none.  Through the rest of the spring I hung out with friends from both Bauxite and Benton.  My mom was teaching in a three-room school in a rural community.  She had three years of college and needed to complete her bachelor's degree in order to get a better teaching job.  There was no sick leave in the district where she was working, and when she became ill for a couple of weeks I took over her teaching duties.  I drove every day to Mt. Olive School and held class for about 25 first and second graders.  I followed mom's teaching plans to the letter.  I learned a lot about kids in those two weeks.   The other two teachers in the little building were very helpful to me.  The 3rd and 4th grades were in one room, and the 5th and 6th graders also shared a single room.   After Marine Corps boot camp I believed I could do anything.

        My mom made arrangements to attend Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway about 50 miles from Benton.  I helped her and my younger brother Jim make the move to Conway.  During the weeks leading up to the move, mom tried to persuade me to return to high school and start my junior year over again by enrolling in Conway High School.  I agreed for a while, but then I heard a radio commercial. 

         The United States Air Force had a special offer.  If a veteran of any military service had completed basic training they could join the Air Force and skip Air Force basic training.  After MCRD I couldn't imagine a better offer.   I began the slow process of persuading my mom to give parental consent so that I could join the Air Force at seventeen.  I say slow, because at first she didn't see the wisdom of it.  She finally gave in after a lot of discussion.  Its called wearing a parent down.  Many teen-agers are very good at it. 

        I had tried to join the Navy once when I was 15 and had taken the Armed Forces Classification Test at that time.  I did fairly well on it, and had taken it a second time when I joined the Marine Corps.  When I took the AFCT at the Air Force recruiting station it was the third time I had seen the test.   Even though the questions were different each time, the test lay out was the same.   I knocked the top off of it.  They scored applicants from one to nine in each occupational category with nine being the highest possible score.  I scored a nine in every single occupational category the Air Force had.  This opened up the possibility of going to any technical school for enlisted personnel. 

        At 0800 on my 17th birthday I was sworn into the United States Air Force at Conway, Arkansas and departed for Barksdale Air Force Base outside  Shreveport, Louisiana.  There I was assigned to the 301st Bomb Wing, a B-29 outfit with the responsibility to bomb the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons should war arise between the super powers.  I went to work on the flight line as an apprentice aircraft mechanic.  Later I would attend five Air Force technical schools. 

        As a footnote, I passed the high school GED test in July, 1951, and was awarded my High School equivalency certificate almost a full year before my classmates earned their high school diplomas at Benton and Bauxite High Schools in the spring of 1952.  Later I earned a B.Ed. at the University of Miami (FL) and an M.A. in History at the University of Denver followed by additional graduate school work at D.U.

        My sixteenth year was truly filled with adventure, travel, and learning experiences unavailable in any high school.  I traveled from Biscayne Bay to San Diego Bay.

        I met a remarkable cast of characters; and learned to work under extreme conditions.  What I learned when I was sixteen has served me well in countless situations throughout my lifetime.         

End

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