Month: June 2018

Donna, Will You Please Be Quiet!

It was “meet the teachers” night at an East Wake High School [near Raleigh, N.C.] PTA meeting and the class was full of parents, many of whom my wife, Donna, and I knew.

We were sitting near the front, listening to one of our sons’ science teacher.  He was talking about drugs and he mentioned a new one that helped control the herpes simplex virus.

Donna immediately turned to me and whispered, loud enough to be heard by everyone for several rows, “Pat, did you hear that! They found a way to control herpes! Isn’t that wonderful!”

According to the studies in Elisakit.net Herpes simplex virus types 1 and 2 can cause sores on the mouth [type 1] or in the genital area [type 2]. Donna was talking about type 1, fever blisters –cold sores–  which one of our sons, Jack, had from time to time.   Fever blisters are spread by sharing a fork or a toothbrush, or kissing.  Other people may have suspected that Donna was talking about the other kind of herpes.

I ignored her.

Donna must have thought I didn’t hear her because she raised her voice: “Oh, Pat, isn’t that great news about herpes!”

Jack Stith
Jack Stith

Everybody in the room heard her.

I kept looking straight ahead. No, no, I don’t know that woman blabbing about a drug to control sexually transmitted infections.

And then, suddenly, Donna understood.

“Jack, I meant good for Jack,” she stammered. “He gets fever blisters.”

Yea, sure, lady.

Coming Monday: River Music

 

Payback

It was around 2 a.m. when Chief Petty Officer J. R. Mastronardi, who was in charge of our training, turned on the lights in our barracks and rousted us out of our racks.   Then he began calling out names,  12 or 15, including mine. He ordered us to dress, get two rifles, tie them together, and fall in on the grinder, double time.

He was angry.

Navy recruits washed clothes daily.
Navy recruits washed clothes daily.

Every night we washed the uniform we had worn that day or, at least, we were supposed to.  And tied our clothes to clothes lines with square knots, with the fly of our pants always pointing toward the camp nearby where Marine recruits trained.

[You get it don’t you? Pee on the Marines.]

Mastronardi had gone down the line feeling each uniform. Ours, he said, were dry.  He concluded that we had hung our uniforms on the line without washing them.

But I had washed my uniform, and I told him so. I think he knew he had made a mistake, but it didn’t matter.  He ordered us, me included, to do manual of arms drills over and over – and over — until men began collapsing on the grinder.  

* * *

A few days later one of my shipmates said, “Stith, you’re in trouble. You didn’t lock up your change, you left some on a shelf in your locker and Mastronardi found it.”

The Navy was dead serious about a rule requiring recruits to lock up their money because they didn’t want sailors stealing from one another.  The officers and petty officers in charge of our training  could not ignore a theft, however small, but they did not want to waste time on a penny-ante matter.

So lock up your money. Or else.

Chief J.R. Mastranardi
Chief J.R. Mastronardi

Mentally, I braced. This was trouble. But Mastronardi, who was in charge of  our company, never said a word to me. Not one word.

Payback.

NOTE:  Every time I polish my shoes I think of that guy. Because of him I give special attention to the backs, making sure they are as shiny as the fronts, shinier maybe.  That was the only thing I learned in boot camp that I retained for life.  Mastronardi hammered it into our heads:  “A man who won’t shine the back of his shoes won’t wipe his [bottom].”

Coming Friday: Donna, Will You Please Be Quiet!