Sailors and Dogs Keep off the Grass

By Thomas Turman

Sailors and Dogs... is my coming-of-age story of my non-wartime, four-year tour of duty in the Navy Construction Battalions (Seabees).

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543991567

Book preview

© Thomas Turman 2019

Print ISBN: 978-1-54399-155-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54399-156-7

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Chapter 1

The Lucky Dragon

Chapter 2

California Dreaming

Chapter 3

Hollywood to Boot Camp

Chapter 4

Boot Camp Life

Chapter 5

Hurry up and Wait

Chapter 6

Sailors and Dogs Keep off the Grass

Chapter 7

Seabee College

Chapter 8

CAN DO Humor

Chapter 9

Off to the Nevada Navy

Chapter 10

Wild West Navy Seabees

Chapter 11

Nevada Shore Patrol

Chapter 12

Going East

Chapter 13

When Hell Freezes Over

Chapter 14

Bermuda, Cuba and Out

SAILORS AND DOGS, KEEP OFF THE GRASS

Chapter 1

The Lucky Dragon

My draft card reads Thomas Lee Turman. It’s 1957 and our government is after me.

John Denis and I are looking for a way to hide from the military draft. I just left the University of Colorado because I ran out of money, and John lost his gymnastics scholarship at the University of Florida. We’re 20 and our student deferments have disappeared along with most of our options. We, and any future employer, know the Army has its sights set on us as raw material for their mandatory two-year hitch. We’re scared, but optimistic. Our plan is to escape from Denver’s winters and loose ourselves in the hustle-bustle glamour and sunshine of southern California.

I have just parked my tired, ’49 Chevy in front of the mysterious and iconic Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. The low, early morning light of December excites the detailed and intimidating entrance to the movie palace to our right. This is no average movie theater. The 100-foot tall, red columned pagoda-like entrance structure lurks at the back of the vast concrete court formed by four-story buildings 200 feet apart whose facades are right up at the sidewalk. There is a 20-foot high dragon carved into a flat stone above the theater’s entry. In this morning’s shadows, this silent processional court and elaborate entrance feels like the portal to an emperor’s palace. This royal manor or movies is waiting for John and me pay tribute. A large poster just in from the sidewalk says that The Sweet Smell of Success is playing. Hollywood is where some Americans come to start a new life. After all, MGM discovered the teenaged Lana Turner in a drugstore just blocks from here.

I unfold myself out of the smelly car and stretch my arms after our all-night dash across southern Nevada. John steps out on to the sidewalk and squints up at the carved, stone dragon down at the entrance to the theater. Then we both ease to the front of the car to each lean on a front fender, waiting for our new lives to begin.

Jesus, Tom, it’s good to get out of the car. How long were we in there?

About 9 hours, I guess, but at least we’re here for an early start.

John peers up and down the empty street and says, Early start for what?

I was born in California and lived in L.A. before moving to Denver. I gesture toward the theater and say, My mother, hoping to be discovered by some talent agent, brought me here as a five-year old during WWII. We’d watch actors and actresses of the 30’s and 40’s attend movie premieres. She told me the dragon up there was a lucky beast. Huge searchlights would stab their shafts of light into the night to tell us where to come. The stars would arrive in big, shiny Packards and Duesenbergs and stroll down that court between the fans to see their movie. It was a mark of their fame to be asked to leave their handprints in the wet concrete of the theater’s forecourt. A lot of the movie stars came here to leave their mark. Still do, I guess.

Yeah, I’ve seen that in newsreels. Sometimes the leave their footprints too.

My dad was an engineer. He never came to the premieres. I remember him lecturing us, ‘That exotic trap with its red and gold entrance, topped with that damned dragon, separates everyone in the real world from their desperately desired fantasy world within. The dragon invites some people inside but frightens others away.’ I’m sure he was trying to warn my mother about the disappointments awaiting her for holding on to her country-girl, show business dreams.

In this pre-rush-hour silence, the contrasts of the low light and long shadows on the theater and sidewalk are strong. It’s like we’re watching the beginning of an old black and white, Bogart/Sidney Greenstreet movie. The only sound is the creaking of the Chevy’s engine cooling off. The faintly salt air is beginning to revive us some.

John, in a red nylon jacket, and expensive haircut, looks a lot like the current heartthrob actor James Dean. I know he hopes that the coincidence will get him into the movies. But even I know there will be no work for yet another James Dean look-a-like.

Like a typical 50’s college student, I’m dressed in a long-sleeve, button-down shirt, cords and loafers. I studied engineering and architecture and hope those will get me a drafting job in an architect’s office. I plan to save money, get back to school, and hide under another student deferment. My plan is slightly more realistic than John’s, but not by much. We are both scared of what our looming, potential military future might bring us. I won’t admit that and neither will he.

Now what? John says, staring down the empty sidewalk.

I don’t know. We get some breakfast and look in the papers for jobs and a place to stay. Let’s just see what happens. How bad can it be?

I hear some noise from up ahead of us and I notice someone walking toward us down the middle of the street from the end of the block. A good-looking, muscular guy is walking boldly and calmly along wearing nothing but a jockstrap and tennis shoes, carrying two large gym bags. He stops opposite us, turning to face the pagoda and the dragon. With his arms outstretched holding the large gym bags in a crucifix-like pose. He begins screaming a prayer-like diatribe on how the Jews are keeping him from getting the acting jobs he should have. I’m not sure he even notices us as his only live audience. With his face tilted up in a beatific gesture, he elaborates his appeal to the dragon that is guarding one of the sacred cathedrals of the movie world.

The stoplights at either end of the block are flashing through their stop-and-goes for ghost traffic on the empty street. The guy in the jock, now facing the two of us leaning on the Chevy at the curb, doesn’t see a fat black Cadillac limo that creeps around the corner on our left to ease up to within just a couple of feet of the gym bag in his right hand.

The Cady’s horn lets out a small beep, beep. Angry jockstrap guy’s lecture stops. He jerks his head over his shoulder and fixes a look on the driver that clearly says, Why don’t you just go around me? Turning back to us, and Grauman’s red and gold gate, he begins his rant again.

"Beep, beep.

This time the jockstrap guy doesn’t even look at the car and just yells in exasperation, "I’m busy here!"

After an uncomfortable pause comes a third, long blast of the Cadillac’s horn.

The angry jock-strap guy sets down his bags. Very slowly and deliberately leans down and unzips the bag on his left, purposely giving the Caddy a significant view of his bare ass. He pulls out what looks like a 10-pound dumbbell, turns quickly and heaves it into the windshield of the Cadillac, which screeches backward leaving smoke and a burning rubber smell in the air.

Jockstrap guy picks up his bags, steps up on the sidewalk, nods to us, and disappears into the shadowed forecourt of the theater past the Sweet Smell of Success poster as we watch the black Cadillac speed away west.

Welcome to Hollywood.

We drove all night to get here early this morning, and, despite the salty air, we’re in a sleep-deprived-stupor. The sun is just high enough to warm us into even less action. Stunned into silence by the street performance, we lean back against the car quietly, our faces to the sun, eyes closed, when the jockstrap lecturer returns. He has put on only some very small, bright blue shorts.

You guys looking for a place to stay?

Like hicks in the big city that we are, we just stare, then answer together, Yeah.

C’mon. He waves one of the bags in a sweeping arc invitation to follow, and he strides off toward the next corner in front of us. You can come back for the car. I lock up the Chevy, and we follow jockstrap guy to the corner and up N. Orange. North Orange is a beautiful, leaf-shaded street sloping up slightly toward the low hills covered in now-sun-lit greenery. This is probably the kind of perfect street movie location directors seek for their movies.

One block up, at the end of N. Orange, we crowd into the foyer of an aging, three-story apartment house called The Jersey Arms. The lobby smells like the last 40 years of its sunless, smoke-filled life. This vaguely Art Deco place must have been really something in the 30’s when it was built.

I’ve got a place here, but I’ll be moving at the end of the month. They have an empty apartment up on the third floor. Jockstrap guy clumps his bags down and knocks on the first door at the end of the foyer marked Manager.

A very good-looking, well built, 15 or 16-year old girl wearing shorts, an undershirt and too much make-up opens the door, backs up slightly, and yells, Dad, its Jake and some of his friends. She does this like a lioness without taking her eyes off us.

I’ll handle this, Jenny. You go in the other room, from behind the door. A solid, dangerous looking, dark-haired man with thick, bushy eyebrows on a serious face steps around the door wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt hanging out loosely. He tenderly moves the girl aside with his beefy forearm, opens the door wider and, in a New York accent, says, Damn it Jake I told you to wear clothes around here. He takes a step forward, filling the doorframe, backing us up. He turns his significant frown on me and John, addressing Jake with a jerk of his chin toward us, What’s this?

I told you I would find you somebody for that upper unit, Bruno. These guys are looking for a place. They’re friends of mine from Colorado. I’m really beginning to feel the effects of our long drive and too tired to argue or figure out how he came up with this accurate fantasy so quickly.

Bruno looks down at his sturdy shoes, his hands open and closing in practiced fists, thinking. He raises his eyes to Jake and then slowly over to us for an uncomfortable few seconds, takes a deep breath and looks down at the floor again.

In a low, but ominous growl, Bruno begins, I don’t want no actors; no smoking; no cooking; no women; no wild parties; and, most important, and here he looks up at us with a menacing glare, my daughter is off limits. Another meaningful pause… I run a respectable place here. He must have been warning people with this rules speech for a long time.

Looking down again to let that sink in, he then gives Jake a scary, hard look and continues for our benefit, "Jake, here, lied to me. He wants to be an actor, but can never pay the rent, so he is gone as of the end of the month. He looks John and me up and down again and says, For you two, 75 bucks a month. C’mon, I’ll show you the place." I feel like Jake-the-jockstrap has just sold us to this gorilla of a man in the Hawaiian shirt for 75 bucks and a player to be named later.

Jake is leering at Jenny, who hasn’t gone into the other room. She is smiling back like a Lolita from behind her father.

You have to move the Chevy, you guys. You’re right in front of Grauman’s. At eight o’clock they start ticketing. They’ll haul it off, Jake tells us.

Jenny’s father reaches behind the wall to his right, grabs a key, and, in an odd, rolling, limping gate, heads slowly toward the dark stairs at the back of the foyer.

Bruno quickly growls, as if it were an order, It’s only 7:45, you got plenty of time. See the place, and then go get the car. We got parking in the back.

As we clump up into the increasing heat of the old building, I can see that Bruno has a definite limp from a stiff right leg. The heat up here is probably why this unit is hard to rent.

He unlocks number 879.

There are only two apartment doors up here at the top of the stair on the third floor, but before we can question this odd numbering system, he says, Bought all these numbers at a garage sale. They didn’t have no more small numbers. 897 over there is storage.

Inside, John and I shuffle around pretending to examine the bathroom, furniture, beds and the curtains sneaking looks at one another for agreement. Neither of us has ever rented an apartment before, so this looks OK to us.

How about $70 a month. It’s really hot up here, John tries, something his father must have taught him

Bruno just stares at us long enough to bring back the original fear we felt when we first saw him. 75 bucks a month, take it or leave it. He takes our silence as agreement and throws me the key. Go get your car, and he thumps down the stairs.

We bring the Chevy to the back of The Jersey Arms and are muscling our suitcases to the back door just as Jake, dressed in long, khaki pants, blue shirt and even shoes, is leaving.

How did you come up with that story about us so quickly? John asks.

License plates, dummy, and I actually do know your brother Robert, John. We met at school here a couple of years ago. He had pictures of you. He bustles past us. Got to go find a place to live, see ya. John’s older brother, Robert, did go to UCLA. This crazy coincidence is enough to give us some California hope.

Bruno is waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs up to our room. We can see that he has more to say. I mean what I said about Jenny, he says very quietly and lifts up the Hawaiian shirt to show us a snub-nosed, .38 revolver in a holster on his left hip. Now, you look like good country boys who won’t give me no trouble, is that right? We nod our agreement vigorously.

OK… I also guess that you’re looking for work. He looks around like he is being watched and continues, I got connections. If you want, I can get you in somewhere.

"Get us in somewhere?" I ask.

Yeah, we got some clubs. They always need people, waiters and such. It don’t pay too bad and you get tips, but the hours can be crazy. Want me to take a look?

Sure, I say. I’m wondering who we is and what John and I have gotten into? Bruno turns and hobbles back to his door. When he opens the door the smooth tones of Sam Cooke’s You Send Me slides into the lobby. As long as we stay away from Jenny, and don’t get shot, this could work out OK.

Bruno is an ex-enforcer for some mob in New Jersey, Jake tells us later. My brother works for the FBI and told me his story. He got shot up in one of their gang wars and was retired to California to run some of the gang’s money laundering businesses. It also keeps him out of the government’s hands.

Now we know who the we is.

Jake also reminds us that Bruno’s prize possession is Jenny. The three of us see that this might be a problem because she’s developed into a stunning and curious girl/woman.

Bruno has Jenny in a private catholic girl’s school, but she has recently become eager to date and make up for lost time. She has talked to me while I was working out in the yard. Here, Jake re-emphasizes that Bruno is not to be crossed and that Bruno’s job connections are with some of the after-hours jazz clubs springing up all over Los Angeles funded by Bruno’s bosses. These are clubs where young men and women can make a buck and possibly get to meet some famous people. I tried working at one of these places, Jake says, but I’m just not the waiter type and the hours are terrible.

A note tacked to our door tells John and me to go see somebody named Connie at a joint called Notes just off Sunset Boulevard. We ask Jake about this. He says, Connie is another Bruno, so, if you want to live into next week, you shouldn’t make any jokes about his name.

Notes is a Jazz Club/bar with no street sign, but a deep purple, front door with three, white music notes professionally painted across it. We ease into the dark, booze-smelling cavern, and find an old black guy sweeping up the cigarette butts and wet napkins from the night before. The place has about twenty tables and booths around the walls facing a small stage at the back. It is so dark I can’t tell if the room is classy or cheesy. Empty, it sure smells sour and lonely like the few joints I’ve ever been in searching for my dad.

You look’n for Mister Connie? Before the old guy can say anything more, a door in the rear creaks open, letting in a cloud of fluorescent light. Two wide shapes slouch across the miniscule dance floor to us very quickly in that muscular swagger of men used to enforcing their way.

Bruno send you?

Yes, sir.

The other heavy grunts.

Don’t ‘sir’ me, kid. He looks us up and down, sighs and says, Where you from?

Denver, Colorado, I get out looking from one face to the other.

Cowboys, huh? You the ones talked to Bruno over at the Jersey?

Yes, John says, we’re staying on the third floor.

Third floor, and he looks at the other guy who grunts again. If Bruno says you’re OK, then you’re Okay with me. I’m Connie. This is D. Stay on his good side. I own the place. Come on, and he walks away.

Connie, who is alternately scary and then fatherly, takes us in like we are long lost relatives. D, in what we now recognize as a gun concealing, Hawaiian shirt, closely follows our tour of Notes his eyes never leaving John and I. At the end of his well-worn rules speech, Connie puts a meaty hand on each of our shoulders and says, So, you know to keep away from Jenny, right? D moves slightly forward and nods his agreement. Not a polite request, it sounds like a life-threatening order.

We smile our agreement with Connie and D. What have we gotten into? On our first day in California, it could be more dangerous, than the military we are escaping.

Chapter 2

California Dreaming

John and I get to work bussing tables and watch how the waiters work. Within five days, we both are waiting tables presumably because we are reasonably quick, and don’t drink on the job. The money is good, but I usually don’t get off work until 4:00 a.m.

Knowing something about construction and buildings, I offer to help Bruno keep The Jersey in good shape. I do a lot of minor plumbing, replacing of outlets and switches, and adjusting doors and windows so they work properly. I even got Bruno to pay for an attic fan in the ceiling at the top of the stairwell so John and I don’t die of the heat on the third floor. I sleep better and my fear of the lurking military is subsiding.

Bruno surprises us and shows his appreciation for my work by having us into his apartment for tea. He says he wants to practice for the required monthly visits of the nuns at Jenny’s school. Bruno has even bought a fancy teapot and matching cups for the upcoming evaluation. The last one didn’t go so well because Jenny, who doesn’t want to go to the restrictive school, shocked the nuns by wearing a low-cut, tight shirt and no bra.. To make it worse, towards the end of the meeting, Bruno’s .38 fell out of his holster at the feet of the two nuns. Jenny had to do some fast-talking about recent break-ins to get the nuns to agree not call the police or to put that in their report.

John and I show them both as much teatime etiquette as we can remember from our Senior Social Problems class at East Denver High. Because of Jenny’s current tight shirt and Bruno’s ever-present .38, concentrating on the lesson is difficult.

One warm afternoon, two days later, as John and I walk up to the front door of The Jersey, we can hear frightened, strangled cries. We rush in to find a young guy smashed up against the wall, held there by Bruno’s left forearm, and with the .38 up under the boy’s chin. The kid’s feet are off the floor and he’s shrieking something about English class when he sees us. There is what looks like a textbook clutched in his left hand.

Bruno! Bruno! What are you doing?

He come sneak’n around here look’n for Jenny.

She left her book… on the table where I work. I’m just… trying to bring it to her, the kid squeaks. He looks like he might wet his pants.

We ease up on either side of Bruno and I try to get him to look at me. At first he won’t do it. When he does, I say, He’s just wants to get her book back to her. Let him go. Bruno isn’t buying it.

How’d you know where she lives, you little piss-ant. You lie to me and you will disappear.

I grab the book out of the kid’s hand and check the inside cover. Look Bruno, Jenny put her name and address on the inside cover. I gently put my hand on the thick arm with the gun. Let him down, Bruno.

He pulls the gun away and lets the kid stand on his own. The kid’s face is all red and his eyes are tearing up because he hasn’t been breathing.

Bruno grabs the book from me, and checks the inside cover. Pointing at the front door with the book, OK, but I don’t want to see you around here again. Beat it. The kid is out the old front door and stumbling down the steps before we can calm him down.

Bruno, his face still in a mean scowl, still holding the .38, turns on us and says, Don’t get between me and this kind of business ever again, got it?

Yes, we both say quietly.

Once, about two weeks after we started working at Notes, at 3:30 am, we burst out of the front door on our way to get something to eat before going home, and smash into a couple showing up too late to the club. I knock the man flat on his back. He doesn’t scramble up, but only manages to barely raise his head slightly up off the sidewalk. He stares blankly up at us and just collapses back on the concrete flailing his arms around like a down-for-the-count fighter in the last round. I kneel down to try to calm him.

Shit! the stunning redhead with him barks. I look up and recognize a famous redheaded actress we’ve seen in magazines and movies. The guy on the ground is her famous actor husband we’ve read is not doing so well these days. Shit! she says again. The redhead reaches into her little purse, grabs out some bills and throws two $10 bills at each of us and hisses, Get this drunk son-of-a-bitch back into the car, jerking her head toward their big, ‘36 yellow Packard convertible parked partly on the sidewalk.

We do as we’re told. Hubby is already