Our Gang
The setting: Litchfield, Connecticut, Spring
1958. The new Litchfield High School had
been opened and the class of 1958 was thinking about graduation in June. The upper-class students were planning how to
spend Mom and Pops money on Ivy league schools.
Cindy, the senior beauty queen in her mind, was exhibiting her, “I am
better than everyone else” attitude. The
middle-class regulars were attempting to conquer their business curriculum. The blue-collar crowd was just getting by
with passing grades in the GENERAL curriculum.
These curriculums were established based on parent income levels, upper,
middle and lower. Us lower income guys
formed “The Gang”. Bob Knox, Sonny Dwyer,
Jerry Spring, Norm Keith, Woody Hickey, and Art Munson. Woody and Art were once
in awhile members because they did not live in Litchfield or Bantam Ct. Bob, Sonny, Jerry and Norm were a tight group
who drank beer, bullied a few students and loved to take adventurous out-of-town
weekend excursions. Our favorite
hang-out was a little red-neck-bar, called Bog Hollow, that was just across the
NY state line. We were all under the Ct
drinking age. The concept at Bog Hollow
was that if you could climb up on a bar stool and had a quarter you could buy a
beer. The route to Bog Hollow was about
twenty miles long on a two-lane country road which included a life-threatening
trip down Kent mountain and then a few miles along the Housatonic River Valley.
Going was not bad but returning drunk
was hell. Once we decided to take an
alternate route home and ended up in Albany NY.
We finally found our way back to Litchfield Sunday afternoon. The Bog Hollow NY clientele resented our gang
so naturally a fight or two normally erupted.
Jerry Spring was our fighter and he won most of the fights.
After graduating in June of 1958. We worked
odd jobs in the local grocery stores, apple orchids, and gas stations. I worked
at Bantam Supply for Mac Seeley, my Brother in-law. We spent most of our evenings at the Bantam
Skating Rink just raising cane. I had a
1947 Ford Pickup Truck that would burn rubber leaving the Skating Rink,
something we did probably five or six time most nights. One morning I came out of the house and found
my truck with five flat tires. I just
went to the junk yard Bob Knox’s father owned and rounded up a bunch of old
tires, which put me back on the road.
None of us had any career aspirations and
did not care because life was fun and we were carefree. In early September 1958, we were at Bog
Hollow drinking hard. Our transportation was an old Chey
convertible. We decided to load the the
back seat with rocks that we intended to roll off the trunk of the Chey on our
way up Kent mountain. Things were going
great, we were having more fun than the law allowed until one of the rocks just
about rolled into an old farmer’s truck. It did not hit his truck but did knock
down a fence pole on the side of the road.
About fifteen minutes later, a Connecticut State Trooper pulled us over and
escorted us to the Litchfield State Trooper Station. This event changed our lives
dramatically. The Trooper gave us a
choice of seeing a judge or getting out of town by Monday. His solution was for us to get out of town by
joining the United States Marine Corps, as he had been a Marine and knew that
boot camp at Parris Island would teach us a lesson. On 8 September, the Gang got on a train in
Torrington CT. The next morning the train stopped at a little railroad stop in
Yemassee South Carolina. We were met by
some nasty acting USMC Drill Sergeants who yelled and screamed at us while we
picked prickly burrs out of a field until the bus that would take us to Parris
Island arrived. The next thing we knew,
we dismounted the bus and were ordered to stand on the famous yellow
steps. In that instant, our lives changed
forever. It was the best thing that ever
happened to us. During the following
fourteen weeks, we were all transformed into proud Marines.
By: Norman E. Keith, SGT USMC 1958-1962
Mt Fuji Adventure
It was winter in Japan and cold as
hell. Our Artillery Battalion was on a
training exercise at North Fuji MacNair Training Area. My MOS was 0846, Artillery Observer and my
job was to train new Second Lieutenants how to adjust artillery fire. Each morning my enlisted observation team
would meet several Lieutenants at one of the observation posts positioned
around the artillery impact area. Fire
missions were called in to the Fire Direction Center and the Lieutenants
adjusted artillery onto their targets.
The training days were long and cold. At night, my team was assigned
guard duty. One night we were walking
our four-hour guard shift around the camp perimeter during a blizzard. The snow was about knee deep and the
temperature was below freezing. It did
not take long to discover that some of the local citizens were selling Sun Torres
Whiskey over the perimeter fence. A
common misconception is that alcohol will warm a person up. All it really does is throw your mind into
such a daze that you do not even remember walking guard. The four-hour shift seemed like it was over
in a few minutes. We never got caught by
the Sergeant of the Guard because he stayed in the guard tent so that he would
not get cold.
On one weekend my team got overnight
liberty. We went to the local village
and found a nice warm bar. Overnight rooms were available so we decided to rent
a room and get some sleep. These rooms
had mats on the floor and blankets to cover up with. When you pulled the blanket up your feet would
be uncovered. These were unheated rooms and
the cold unbearable. In about an hour we
decided to go back to the bar. Soon it
was time for the bar to close so we each bought a Typhoon fifth of Saki and
left the bar. It was against the rules
to carry our Saki bottles in public. By
this time, we could have cared less about the rules. We were all having a great time until the
Shore Patrol apprehended us and put us in a small bamboo holding area until a
truck could be arranged for transport back to base camp. After a few minutes in the holding area we
decided we had enough of this crap so we just busted through the bamboo walls
and started back down the street. We
were soon apprehended again by the Shore Patrol this time in a much worse
mood. We were delivered to the camp CP
where the Duty Officer Lt Bailey, asked us what was going on. Lt Bailey was one of the Lieutenants we had
been training so we made fun of his name and told him “he was not worth
training because he would never be a good Forward Observer.” The next morning, we woke up in our tent still
in our Marine greens. We were ordered to
report to the CO’s tent ASAP
Captain Chamberland, who had been an enlisted
Marine before becoming a commissioned officer, asked “What caused you to raise
so much hell.” We told him “We were just
out drinking and got really drunk like most good marines do”. We said “We meant no harm and would apologize
to LT Bailey.” Captain Chamberland restricted
us to camp for the remainder of the training exercise. When we left his tent, we could see the smile
on his face as he said, “what a bunch of great marines I have in my Battery.” We went back to training the Lieutenants on
the OP. They gave us a hard time and said
we should have lost our rank. About a
week later, the Battalion got word to move out,
We loaded onto LST’s and sailed
back to Okinawa. I guess luck was on our
side this time! That was the last time I saw Mt Fuji.
By: Norman E. Keith, SGT USMC
1958-1962
No comments:
Post a Comment