Lou and the Shelf Stretcher

In the early 60's, before I went in the Army, and in the late 60's, after I got out, I worked for Delchamps grocery in Pensacola.

After I got back from the Army, the Delchamps folks took me back and put me on the night stock crew at their Mobile Highway store, out near the Circle. Shortly after I started, the stock crew chief, Larry Poole, took a transfer to another store, and I became night stock crew chief. It was while working there that I took part in one of the few practical jokes I ever helped pull.

Since night stock crew only took a few hours a week, most of the night crew, including myself, worked stock during the days to make our 40 hours. I often worked with a guy named Doug. Doug was, well, to put it mildly, a little nuts.

One day a new bagboy was hired. His name was Lou, and you couldn't hope to meet a nicer guy, but he was naive. To the bagboys, stockers were a step up the food chain anyway and a couple of steps short of management.

One day, the manager, Kenneth McLemore, also a nice guy, but not the least bit naive, was out of the store for a few minutes. As Doug and I walked up to the front, we noticed Lou bagging groceries for a lady. We were in the elevated office with a clear view of the checkout. Doug picked up the microphone and paged, "Lou. Come to the office when you're finished."

Lou came up right away, and Doug said, "Lou, I noticed you put the eggs and tomatoes on the top of the bags. They might fall out and get broken. You need to put them in the bottom of the bag and put a couple of things on top to make sure they stay in."

Lou listened intently, but with a confused look on his face. "I thought we weren't supposed to do it the way I did it!"

Doug asked angrily, "Are you questioning me?"

Lou immediately said, "No, Doug. I guess I was confused."

He went back down to help another customer. I watched him while Doug looked for some supplies. Finally I picked up the microphone and paged, "Lou. Please report to the office, now."

Doug looked up. "Now what?"

I replied, "He put tomatos in the bottom of the bag and was putting cans on top...just like YOU told him. If Kenneth finds out...."

Just then, Lou came back into the office. Doug explained that he had just been joking, and told Lou to go back and fix the lady's bag. Lou came back over and he started explaining how we knew so much and he was still trying to learn everything. He went on to say that he wished that he could get off the front and help us work stock.

Doug looked at him and then winked at me.

"Lou, do you want to help us out?"

Lou nodded.

"Well, Don and I need to set up a display up front here, but we need a shelf stretcher. Would you go in the back and get us one?"

Lou was off like a shot. He was back in a few minutes, with a worried look on his face.

"I looked all over the stockroom," he said, "but I couldn't find anything that looked like one."

Here came my contribution,

"Hey, I think I saw it back in the incinerator room."

Back in those days, we burned the excess boxes and other garbage.

Lou headed towards the back again.

Now, it was Summer in Florida, and we had used the incinerator that morning, so the incinerator room was sweltering AND FILTHY! You could not move in there without getting soot all over yourself, and we wore white shirts!

While Lou was in the back, the store manager, Kenneth McLemore, came in the front door. Kenneth always wore a gold blazer and looked starched and neat. He had worked his way up from bagboy to store manager, and he was a great guy, but he ran a tight ship...no nonsense.

We were ready to split to the back and pull Lou off the hunt for a shelf stretcher, but Kenneth caught us by surprise.

"What are you guys doing hanging around up front?"

Before we could answer, Lou came up, red-faced, dripping sweat, and with soot all over his clothes, face, and hands.

"What's going on?" asked Kenneth with a little edge in his voice and a slightly brittle smile on his face.

Before we could answer, eager Lou piped up, "I was helping Doug and Don set up a display. They asked me to find a shelf stretcher for them." All this with a happy smile on his face.

Kenneth looked at Doug, looked at me, back at Doug, and said, "Come up to my office, now!"

The jig was up. Kenneth was going to fry us. Doug, Lou, and I began to follow him. Suddenly he stopped, turned to Lou and said, "Lou, the reason you couldn't find a shelf stretcher in the back was because I lent it to the manager of the Red and White Grocery by the McDonald's on Navy Boulevard. Do you have your car here?"

Lou nodded.

"Okay," said Kenneth, "I want you to drive down to the Red and White and tell the manager we want our shelf stretcher back. He was supposed to return it last month. Make sure you let him know how mad I am that he didn't return it."

Lou nodded again and bolted out the door, a man (boy) with a mission.

Kenneth headed for the office with us in tow.

"I'm going to get you guys for this!" but he was smiling.

He pulled out the phone book, found the number to Red and White, and called. He asked for the manager, and once he got him on the phone, briefed him on what was going on.

After hanging up, he turned to us and said, "He's going to give Lou a hard time and will call us back."

A few minutes later the phone rang, and Kenneth talked to the caller for a while. It was obvious that it was the other store manager with his report.

After he hung up, he said, "Lou got there and gave him my message and he told Lou to tell me that I was crazy and that he had returned the shelf stretcher weeks ago. He added a few obscene remarks about me and Delchamps and told Lou to get the hell out of his store.

A few minutes later, Lou pulled back into the parking lot and rushed into the store with a woeful but angry look on his face. Lou was a good guy, and somebody like that talking that way about Kenneth and Delchamps really upset him.

Kenneth played with him for a couple more minutes and then let him in on what had happened. At first, Lou was upset, but after a while, he began to talk about how the joke had been on him.

Several years later, I stopped at a Delchamps store in Gulf Breeze (now known as Bruno's), and the manager was, you guessed it, Lou. Delchamps went out of business several years ago, and I don't know where anybody is that I used to work with, but I can still see everybody's face as Lou walked up covered with soot, eager as a puppy, as Kenneth realized what was going on.

Did I Really See a Ghost at the Winchester Mystery House?

Okay, I give up. I've been trying to get started on this for days, but each time, I come up with the same problem. My logical mind says to start at the begining, but my freewheeling mind says, "No way, Bubba!"

I simply will not be able to make this chronological, so the stories will come as they come...no sequence, rhyme, or reason. One time we may be in 2007, as today, and the next we may be reviewing my parents' lives in the late 1930's...or earlier.

Anyway, in April, 2007, my wife and I took a trip in our Prius Hybrid from Texas to California and back. We were gone for three weeks and visited friends and family and went to places we had wanted to see.

One of these places was the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California.

We took the standard tour, which is done with a group of people who are led through the home of Sarah Winchester and given little talks by the guide at various points.

Our group was small, and within a few minutes, I had a pretty good handle on who was with us. Everybody was normal, except possibly me, and nobody stood out.

At one stop, we were gathered around the guide, listening to his presentation. As I glanced over the small group, I noticed a lady standing on the outer edge of the other side of the semicircle we had formed. She caught my eye because I had not noticed her before, and her appearance really should have caught my attention earlier.

She was very short, as was Sarah Winchester. She was an older woman with a round, ruddy face, and she was wearing a brimmed flat hat such as I had often seen women wearing in pictures from the late 1890's and early 1900's when they were outside...gardening, perhaps. It looked a little like Zorro's sombrero.

I gazed at her for a moment, wondering why I had not noticed her before. I glanced back up at the guide, and then looked back at her....

She was gone.

There was no exit she could have gotten to in the couple of seconds I had looked away, yet when I had seen her, she was as real in appearance as anyone else in the group.

I did not tell my wife about her until after the tour, and she is certain that I saw a ghost...probably of Sarah Winchester herself.

Me? I have no idea. It's just something which happened to me on my journey through the universe.

Did I see a ghost? I personally don't believe in them, but acknowledge that I have no corner on wisdom and knowledge.

What do you think?

Looking Back - With Google Earth

My wife and I both have itchy feet. Mine are itchier than hers, and probably smell kinda funky too!

That's probably why the two jobs I have enjoyed the most in my entire life were soldier and truck driver.

I know, the guys from the Florida Jobs office, whatever it was called back in 1962 came out and gave us all kinds of tests at Pensacola Catholic High. They told me I had an aptitude with words, but should stay away from anything that required manual dexterity.

I can't say that they were wrong, because as much as I prefer doing things that require activity, at least as opposed to sitting in an office behind a desk, I tend to bang myself up more than others around me doing the same thing that I am.

I even cut my finger on an orange peel the other day...but that's another (very short) story.

As a soldier, I have done, as the saying went, "more before 9AM than most people do all day". In fact, sometimes I did so much for such a prolonged period that I could not have told you which day it was!

By the way, there was only one time in my life that I not only did not know what day it was but whether it was morning or evening, and that was January 1, 1967. I had only been in Germany for a few months and spent the night at the NCO club drinking champagne and German beer. When I got back to the barracks, someone challenged me to chug cheap German rum out of a bottle down to a mark they had put on the label.

The rest is history, but for for the next couple of years, we could point out the dent in the wall locker where my head hit.

Anyway, back to my life in the woods and on the open road.

I probably enjoyed being a truck driver more than being a soldier, and both beat the hell out of being an accountant...which a piece of paper from the University of West Florida says I am!

So anyway, my wife has gotten hooked on Google earth, and this afternoon, we toured Monterey, California. We tooled along 17-Mile Drive, and looked at the Robert Louis Stevenson house. Then we went over to Carmel and tried to find Lulu's House of Silk, a great little shop we went into in 2007, the last time we went out there.

We used to drive for Schneider, so, since we were in Califonia, we took the Google Earth express over to Fontana, California and looked at the Schneider operating center we had been in and out of so many times. We discovered the dinky little truck stop on the corner where we used to weigh our loads was now a sleek and shiny truck stop, but Cherry truck sales is still on the corner diagonally accross from Schneider.

I took a quick Google trip over to Germany, to Bad Aibling, and looked for the barracks where I used to live (67 to 70), where the aformentioned falling down thing happened. As usual, one memory revives another, and I can remember....

The Rabid Hedgehog - don't ask
Beer Deliveries
The Girl I Loved Madly Who Worked in the Snack Bar - but did not speak English...or German
The Count, or Graf, Riding His Horse Around the Perimeter of the Post
The Mad Bull
The Kriechbaumer Gasthaus
The Only True Case of Levitation I Ever Saw
The German Cop with the Machine Gun
The Spinout in the Gym Parking Lot
The Upside-Down Car (x2)
And all those nights at the NCO Club....I wonder what ever happened to Sascha and the Metronomes!

And other things.

The Events at Fort Hood, Texas

Sorry if today's entry is a bit disjointed and without purpose, but I felt a need to write on this subject, but did not really know what to say.

I do not think of Fort Hood as home, but it was the site of my last assignment in the military. As a sergeant in the army, I spent hours in the field there, and I lived in Copperas Cove, a community next to Fort Hood, longer than I have lived anywhere else since I graduated from University of West Florida in 1973. I have had an operation in Darnall Army Community Hospital, and have supervised and trained many soldiers while there.

If I have a place I have thought of as home nearly as long as I was in my parents' home in Warrington (Pensacola), Florida, it is Fort Hood.

It is slightly strange to watch national news, or even local news here in Atlanta, and see sights that have been familiar to me for years....streets I have driven, buildings I have entered, now the center of international interest.

Years ago, I was in Frankfurt at a military building. It was 1982 when General Dozier had been taken hostage and had been rescued. As I entered the building, I saw a lectern in the center of the entry area, with several microphones and a mass of wires. It was only later that I found out that I had just missed Mrs. Dozier's press conference.

Terrorism is, as Geico likes to say, "So easy, even a caveman can do it."

I have memories of lots of places I have been, and I have touched history either before or after the fact. I have stood where Hitler stood, seen what Ceaser saw, walked where Shakespeare walked, but this is one link to history I could do without.

It is a shame when anyone dies, and just as much a shame when a soldier dies in defense of his or her country or beliefs. It is twice a shame that those who died at Fort Hood yesterday, while still "fallen warriors" had their lives snatched away by someone who appeared to be their brother in arms.

We who have worn the uniform usually recognize a bond with all others who have done so as well. When evil befalls them, it befalls us. We feel this as naturally, and often as deeply, as if a member of our family has been involved.

Whether you, as a citizen of the U.S., agree with current events in which the military is engaged is not the point. These people, many just out of high school and in what should be some of the most exciting days of their lives, have signed away control of their lives for the purpose of defending you and the benefits you presently enjoy...including the right to disagree and express your displeasure.

Treat the government as you will. Treat the soldier, sailor, airman, marine as your brother and your sister...and never betray their trust as did Major Nidal Malik Hasan yesterday. Had Major Hasan come under attack from others, American soldiers would have come to his aid. Even after he committed the actions of yesterday, he was treated medically by some of the most professional caregivers in the world.

Even after his betrayal, those who he had renounced as his brothers and sisters, believed that it was right and proper to treat him as if he were still their brother.

Perhaps, sometimes at least, soldiers exist to protect a country which can create such an attitude in its citizens.

November 5 - An Anniversary of Sorts

I enlisted in the U.S. Army in Montgomery, Alabama, August 30, 1966. They put me on a bus which took me to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where I was housed in a tent at the reception station for a couple of days until I was assigned to a Basic Combat Training unit, Company D, 3rd Battalion, 1st Training Brigade, or "D-3-1! Best damn company on the hill! Sir!"

While waiting in tent city, I began to be assimilated into the army culture. I got yelled at, got my head shaved, got cursed at, and, when I accidentally called a Drill Sergeant "Sir", got told at a very close range, "Don't call me 'sir'. I work for a living."

I also got to experience the pure joy of the army mess hall, and the communal latrine.

Actually, for basic food, the mess hall was not bad. Plenty to eat, but, as the signs exhorted, "Take what you want but eat what you take" was the rule of the day. Also, eating in silence. They had to push a lot of people through what was a rather small mess hall, so you ate your food and got out. Fortunately, at later assignments, the army actually tried to make dining a relatively enjoyable experience, and a meal with your friends included plenty of conversation for seasoning.

The latrine, on the other hand....

How do I say this?

It was a large, drafty, wooden building. There was a shower at one end...essentially a large room with several very basic (maybe that's why it was called "basic"...basic food, basic showers, basic beds, basic toilets, etc.) shower heads. The shower took up about one-third of the building. The other two-thirds was a large room with sinks along one wall, and toilets, or should I say toilet seats, around the others.

Although AT&T had not come out with the ad yet in 1966, it gives new meaning to the phrase "reach out and touch someone"!

There were no stalls, no doors, no walls separating the toilets. You sat side-by-side with, or directly accross the room from, others engaged in the same activity.

As with every place in the military, there were more signs, but the ones I remember most vividly were the ones which said something to the effect, "Stand Up Before Flushing". I wondered about that one for a couple of minutes until someone did - flush while still seated, that is.

Apparently, they took the water for flushing toilets directly from the hot water line which went to the shower.

He got up rather quickly as hot water splashed against...ahem...delicate areas. Perhaps "leaped up" would be a better description than "got up".

I will write more about basic training later, but to get back to the anniversary mentioned in the title:

I graduated basic training on November 4, 1966. I had orders to report to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California to study German for six months. On the morning of November 5, 43 years ago today, a hungover Drill Sergeant drove me to the airport in Columbia, South Carolina where I boarded a plane for Charleston, where I changed planes. I changed one more time, I don't remember where, but believe it was Chicago, and the third flight took me over the Rockies to San Franciso, where I changed planes again to a little puddle jumper which took me to the Monterey airport.

This was the first time in my life that I had been in an airplane, my first trip to California (of the many in my lifetime), and the first (and fortunately last) time I got airsick.

Not much of a story, perhaps, but it's mine, and I'm sticking to it.
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I never have been to Kenya in my life!

My wife has been after me to write my memoirs, and this is my feeble attempt to comply with her wishes. She thinks I tell funny, entertaining, and enlightning stories about places I have been, people I have known, and things I have done.

However, I contend that while these stories can be fun, they are best for spur-of-the-moment situations where they can be used to liven up the conversation, offer a different insight, or just, as mentioned above, entertain the listener.

In fact, I cannot normally produce these things from memory...they just pop out when some receptor in my brain recognizes a link which can be exploited. Thus, friends and family, and a few total strangers, are usually warned by one of these phrases: "I know a story about that..." or "You know, that reminds me..." or something similar.

I guess it's a touch of the Irish in me that likes to tell a story. I always harken back to that "dear little priest", Father Cunningham, who used to both amuse and upset the nuns by telling us mystery stories or old Irish folk tales, when he was supposed to be teaching us religion. He often told us stories about amteur detective Father Brown, a character created by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, in that lovely Irish brogue when I was in grade school at St. John's elementary in Warrington, Florida in the 50's. It was probably those very stories which prompted me to spend hour after hour reading mystery stories, western tales, and science fiction books checked out of the Pensacola Public Library.

You see, talking about telling stories reminded me about Father Cunningham, which reminded me about "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne, which reminded me about the time John Wayne filmed part of "The Wings of Eagles" near my home in Pensacola and onboard Pensacola Naval Air Station, where my father worked for 30+ years, which reminded me of all the times I was onboard NAS Pensacola myself as man and boy, including the very spots where some of the scenes were filmed....which reminds me of my own career in the U. S. Army....

You see how it goes!

As mentioned in the title of this post, I have never been to Kenya in my life, so why the title?

In the great British comedy, "As Time Goes By", one of the lead characters, Lionel Hardcastle (Geoffrey Palmer), has written an autobiography with the uninspiring title, "My Life in Kenya". When asked in one episode what the book is about, he responds, "My life in Kenya"!

In the show, all who read the book, even those who love him the most agree that the book, about things which matter to him and which have made him the man he is, are really boring to read.

That's how this blog will probably wind up.

It will be boring for the most part, interesting or funny at some points (I hope), frightening or enlightning at others. It will allow me to write down, in some vaguely autobiographical manner, the things that have happened to me or which I have learned in my 64 years on this planet.

Well, that's enough for the first installment. I hope to add to this daily, but am sure, based on past performances, that there will be lapses in that plan.

However whichever day you choose to happen by, I will always wish you....

Have a great day!

Donovan Baldwin
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