I remember also a mineman named Dave Sanders. I knew him first as an MNSN at both Naha and Kadena, then again as an MN3 in Charleston. A pretty decent fellow Dave. We did not hang out much together, though. This was on account of Dave's being entirely too straight-laced for the likes of an ex-hippy like myself. In the first place, he was an ordained Baptist minister. And in the second place he was something of a sports jock. I didn't mind him being those things. It's just that it left precious little common ground for mutual interest. While still down in Naha, Dave was one of my two, or sometimes three, roommates.
Dave was a real good worker. In fact he liked to work pretty hard. And, it seemed, that he liked it to show how hard he was working. Dave himself was a very clean person, once he cleaned up after work. And he would always go to work spiffy clean in the mornings. But always by the end of the day Dave was complete and total grubbsville. Even by lunch, as often as not. Some of the guys, unkindly, called him Pig Pen, after the Schultz cartoon character. You know, the little kid who magically attracted dirt even while just standing still? Dave let on that he accepted the name with no small pride. And even was himself amused when, someone (I think it was Robert Mullins, our other roommate) modified a near-empty can of flat black spray paint, affixing to it a custom made label that read "Colonel Sanders' Spray-On Dirt" complete with fine-print instructions for daily application. Reference to Kentucky Fried's founder, who was famous for his clean white outfits, made for a clever mixed metaphor, in my opinion.
Dave was always reading the Bible. A most unhealthy occupation from my point of view -- especially the early bits. And for his part didn't think too much of my being Buddhist. Sometimes he would find it needful to correct my of view. I was all but used to that from other sources. But most irritatingly of all was that he seemed to dismiss my conviction as not truly genuine. Or at least so it appeared at the time. So I decided to play along and baited him most evilly. I let on that I might indeed be open to conversion...to Satanism. This was a prank which had afforded me some small amusement with previous philosophical opponents of a similar ilk. I may have overdone it a bit. I fear he may have become convinced. Some of my props were rather too creative by half.
A game like that has a life of its own, and did run on entirely too long. The posing was over-elaborate and therefor time- and effort-consuming. I can't remember how long it I played it to the hilt before winding down. But I myself had well and truly tired of it some time before that.
Yet for all my baiting I hold that Dave was still a fine chap. I remember that he used to run. Dave ran miles and miles every day. He would run all the way from the mine shop on Senaga Shima to our barracks across from the Pink Palace. Mind you there was an airport and a mile-long causeway in between. A very long ways. And sometimes he'd run back again.
Dave also liked to snorkel. Snorkeling in Okinawa is very different from California or Florida. Second only to Australia, Okinawa is the most dangerous place in the world to swim. You have to get a special permit to scuba dive. Dave would find things out there in the water, shells mostly. And he would bring them back to the room, with the poor live creatures still inside. His method of cleaning out the shells was to let them rot a little first. Not to the degree of being absolutely putrid, but enough to give the place a mildly unpleasant air. Still, some of the shells were indeed quite pretty when he was done. I expect he still has them. One day Dave came back from an outing with a nasty rash, which only got worse for the next day or so: fire coral. Could have been worse, Okinawa also has several kinds of scorpion fish, the two most deadly species of conus mollusk, and Australian brown sea snakes on top of that. And sharks, of course.
One day Dave had need of getting back to the shop. And he either was not inclined or else did not have time to run. The mine shop had a couple of trucks. But unless you happened to be on duty there was no hope of borrowing one. And besides, both where kept at the shop and never at the barracks. So Dave asked if he could borrow my bike, that is to say, my motorcycle.
I had two different motorcycles on Okinawa. Both were Hondas: both DOHC Twins, a 350 and a 450. You won't read very much from me about the first one. I did not have it very long. Something terrible happened to it. That something was Dave.
So Dave asked to borrow my bike. I would have gladly taken him except I did not have a spare helmet. Off base I often rode without. But this was on base and doing without never failed to earn one a ticket from the Air Force Police. So simply giving Dave a ride was out of the question. Now, the speed limit on base was piddlingly slow. And the traffic was very low. And the bike was just a bit on the ratty side, being Nth hand and all of that. So I said okay.
For the sake of caution I gave Dave the usual two-minute quiz: where's this? where's that? and so on. Dave knew where everything was and what it was for. So I figured he knew what he was doing. I figured wrong. Dave didn't make it fifty feet out of the parking lot.
Dave pulled in the clutch. Okay so far. He gave it the gas. Oops, too much! He let out the clutch. Oops, too fast! And there went Dave...off on a wheelie to rank among the ten best I have ever seen. And just possibly some god somewhere was lending a protective hand, because through a pair of awkward teeters Dave still managed to wheelie an S-shaped path through the parking lot and into the street. First on the right he missed some cars and a curb; then left Dave missed yet another curb. Out into street he went without even a nod to the stop sign. But he couldn't get it wobbled yet a third time rightward for the straightaway. Which, I suppose, is just as well...since it went downhill to a T-intersection not too far away. Thus it was that the third curb caught him, whereupon Dave bid adieu to my motorcycle and they went their separate ways. Dave made an ungraceful arc softly onto the grassy incline the other side of a concrete walk. My bikes choice of path was less forgiving. She landed hard, but fortunately not atop of Dave.
I was bummed, but more yet amazed and astounded. Dave was both embarrassed and apologetic. Bereft of my only transportation, I was also a little angry. But Dave was quite a lot bigger than me, and claimed to have once ranked 3rd in the State of Ohio for high school wrestling. There was no point, and surely no advantage whatever, in making a scene. Plus I figured, and rightly so, that Dave was more than honest enough to surely make it up to me, which he did. He paid over cash up front toward repairs to be made on the bike.
Being just an MNSA at three-hundred something dollars a month, I owned no proper tools, of course. And I rather lacked gear-head skills beyond the changing of oil and so forth. Plus my short ownership of the 350 left me feeling it to be more than a shade on the wrong side of dinky. I then had dreams of owning a Harley. I felt that now was the time to take a small step in that direction. Not yet a Harley, but something bigger anyway. So when another mineman who thought he could fix it offered to buy it off from me cheap, I let him have it as-was. What with that and Dave's own hundred and fifty I was near to breaking even on the 350. That bike, as it turns out, was indeed totaled. Dave had hit the curb so hard as to snap the crank shaft. A pretty good tumble... And Dave had walked away from that with only bruises. Honest, trustworthy and straight-forward, Dave had good karma. Dave's own theory, I am sure, ran somewhat differently. Whatever...
That was by no means Dave's only fortunate escape. One time a fork lift ran over is foot. And unless I am mistaken, it was hauling a mine at the time. Do you maybe think that steel toe boots are not a good investment? Ask Dave about it sometime. His own steel toe got half-squashed down to the point of just barely touching his foot, on the instep side of the knuckle of Dave's big toe...so that he could not get it off. His foot survived. But the boot had to be destroyed.
A couple years later Dave got me back for all of my baiting. He had made MN3 before me. So he had the privilege of tacking on my crow when I, finally, made MN3 too. (You could say that I was a bit of a heel-dragger in that department.)
The navy had this ancient tradition: the tacking on of the crow. I suspect that now it must surely be illegal. For good luck, so the tradition went, it was necessary to affix a brand new badge of rank into place...so that it may not fall off. That was the official reason. I'm sure you can guess the other one. For non-navy folks, please know that the crow is the navy badge of rank: an arm patch showing a white eagle above red stripes below, or just one stripe as in my case. Tacking on, fortunately did not involve tacks. But it did involve a good solid punch. (Using real tacks was the officer's version of that tradition. You know, the shiny gold chest pins...)
Dave was not the first in line to tack on my crow. But I made sure that he was one of the very last. My arm was already quite sore, with already then a fine green bruise just starting to shade towards blue-black. An Dave, I must say, had perfect aim. He was taller than me by a little bit, heavier again by around a quarter. He leaned into the task at hand with bit of downward arc, drilling through to his point of aim. He nailed it dead center and, in my own inexpert opinion, managed to separate my shoulder. Not a real dislocation, mind you. Just a quick out-and-back-in. It did not stay put in any kind of wrong arrangement. But I got that instant bolt-of-lightning kind of pain from my neck all the way down the length of my arm. The whole works went numb for several minutes, so that I could not even move it. It wasn't that I dared not to try. Rather it was that from my fingers to the shoulder no muscle would heed any call from the brain. It did wear off though, and in just minutes, not the subjective hour that I seem to recall. I remember having that pins and needles feeling in my fingers for days.
There were still some folks yet in line to claim their privilege in accordance with tradition. (Not an actual physical line but a temporal one of chance encounters spanning over two or three days.) Against the pressure of history I refused them with a look that I hoped might imply unforeseen consequences at some distant time and place and in the manner of my own creative devising. I think that it may have been effective, since only one or two insisted upon weighing in against that unspoken proposal. I won't say when, how or even whether I came to validate it. So do not ask. Memory tends to laps on some points. But in the end my arm did recover, after about a week or two. And I enjoy its use today.
As for that time-honored tradition, I expect that by now, after more than twenty years (and perhaps a couple of law suites) it may have died out. I rather hope so.