Where I Slept — or Didn't

At the age of 84 the bed I sleep on is king size. The mattress has a hump in the middle so that I sleep going downhill on one side of the hump while Lana sleeps going downhill on the other side. It isn't very comfortable, and I don't sleep well — but maybe at 84 I wouldn't sleep well anywhere. A long time ago when we had a flat mattress we used to sleep with our bodies touching. I enjoyed that very much. Now that we have a mattress with a hump in it, we just reach across the hump and shake hands before we go to sleep. I don't say anything to her because she couldn't hear me anyhow. She has already removed her processor that attaches to her head and facilitates hearing by her cochlear implant. If a burglar came into the house she wouldn't hear that either — but I would. I have ears like a fox. She bought a pistol so she could shoot the burglar if I woke her up. I hope I don't have to do that. The blood would get on our highly polished wood floor and I would have to clean it up. I'd probably have a hard time getting back to sleep.

A few years ago a couple of yellow jackets came up through the bricks and got in the bed and stung Lana. She thought it was a spider bite but it wasn't. The yellow jackets had built a nest in the ground outside of the house. It took a while for us to figure that out and destroy it. Since our mattress was several years old she decided to buy a new one for our king size bed. So, we went to Pease Furniture Company on old Maryville Highway and told Greg, the salesperson, we wanted a good mattress for a king size bed. He sold me one that did not have a hump in it. Now it does. Greg is a nice man. He did not know that our mattress would eventually have a lumpy hump in it. He could not forecast future lumps or humps. He is married to the daughter of Willie Pease, who is now deceased. We liked Willie a lot. We always got good deals from him. I don't think we ever did need a king size bed. The regular mattress worked just as well for whatever were going to do — which we did a lot of when we were younger.

When I was very small my family lived at Indian Creek below Coalwood Road and adjacent to the mines where my father worked. He once told me I slept in a bed with iron bedsteads when I was a small boy. When I was 12 and we had moved to a new house on Premier Mountain I slept in a cot in a tiny room at the back of our house. My four sisters slept somewhere else in the house. I don't know where. At other times during my teenage years I slept in my Grandpa's bed with him while Uncle Homer was in Europe fighting the Nazis. My grandmother had died before I was born. Grandpa and I would lie in bed and listen to Gang Busters and the Green Hornet on the radio. In the morning he'd cook us breakfast on the potbelly stove with two eyes on the top. Once he took me to Hillsville, Virginia on a Greyhound Bus to visit his brother Edward. They lived on a farm and grew cabbage for a living. Large flatbed trucks would move through the patch while farm workers would load baskets of cabbages onto them. My time there was very boring. They had no electricity and lit the house with kerosene lamps. Everyone went to bed shortly after dark. I slept on a cornshuck mattress with grandpa. On Sunday morning we walked miles and miles to a biblical foot washing. I think they were Baptists. I'm not sure. I was very tired of being there by the time we left to go back home. I never had my feet washed.

At the age of 18 I had my first train ride. I traveled from Welch, West Virginia to Lackland Air Force Base at San Antonio, Texas. The train left Welch in the morning and went by way of Cincinnati, Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri. That night I slept in a Pullman car. I went to sleep in Texas, and when I woke up I was still riding through Texas. We wouldn't get to Lackland until that afternoon. I suppose I slept well. At that age I could sleep anywhere. That evening, I saw my first open bay sleeping arrangement. I had never thought about sleeping in a large space with a lot of people that I did not know before. It was the first time that I encountered double decker military bunk beds. Since I was six foot three, I naturally inherited the top bunk. If I stretched out, my feet stuck over the end. Before the week was out, I had learned to make up the bunk properly. That included how to fold hospital corners, how to make the olive drab blanket so tight it would make a quarter bounce if the Flight Chief dropped one on it. Throughout the next eight years of military service I would spend a large amount of time sleeping on bunks too short for me. I was lucky. I knew that it was a great deal better than lying on a piece of frozen ground in Korea with someone shooting at me.

Many times I slept sitting up on buses as I rode through the night going from one base to another. If I had a seat by myself, that was easy, but sometimes I'd be asleep and someone would slip into the seat beside me. Once, I woke up to find a black lady sitting next me. That was okay, but when she woke up and moved there was a greasy spot on the shoulder of my khaki uniform shirt where her hair had been. I had to have it dry-cleaned. At Chanute Air Force Base at Rantoul, Illinois I slept in an open bay. When I arrived for weather school in September it was still warm and pleasant. I went to a local high school football game. It brought back many memories. By December, there was snow on the ground and the barracks were very cold and drafty. Wind blew through the cracks with a vengeance. I slept in all my clothes with a heavy wool overcoat on top of the blanket.

At Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., my next duty station, the open bay was broken up into cubicles, but the bunks were the same as the others. From there I went to Fort Dix, New Jersey as a transient before going to Europe. Again, it was the open bay and bunks. I was on an English ship for the 13 day crossing to Germany. I slept very little. When I did, it was in an arrangement of several hammock type beds, one above the other in a stack five high. There was little room to turn over without coming in contact with the person above me. Consequently, I slept on my back, and for the most part was uncomfortable.

After arriving in Bremerhaven, in late May of 1951 I rode a troop train to southern Germany. Two weeks later I was in Wiesbaden where I slept on bunks in former German army quarters for a couple of nights. After that, it was on to Orly Field, Paris where again, bunks were the order of the day. Only this time, the open bay was a quanset hut — imagine a giant barrel cut in half vertically and placed side by side. For the next three months I spent the time that I was in the hut either sleeping, sitting, or bent over because there wasn't room to straighten up. The first week that I was there a buddy I had known at Bolling who had arrived at Orly several weeks before me took me to a bar in the Pigalle section of Paris called the Blue Train. Late that night I went to sleep in a regular bed with a French girl. Sometime the following morning a man walked into the room. To say the least, I was startled until she said, "Cherie, don't worry about him. He is just my boyfriend." He said something in French, set a bag down on the dresser and left quickly. With the thought in my mind that he might come back, I was out of bed, into my clothes, and after a hasty goodbye kiss was out the door and down the street. Although I would spend a few more nights at the Hotel de Paris during the next year and a half, I never saw her again.

After three months at Orly I was transferred to Chateauroux 120 miles south of Paris as part of a contingent of air force personnel to reopen an old French Base. It was September, and still warm. Again, I would sleep in a bunk. A half dozen men and I were housed in a large tent. (Think MASH.) I suppose I felt like I was on an extended camping trip. When December arrived with its' torrential rains and dreary skies the space between our tent and others just like it became a sea of mud. On most evenings there was a long line at the beer tent. By the end of January things were looking better. Some old French barracks had been refurbished and we moved from tent city into two person rooms. Morale improved considerably, but we still slept on bunks. They just moved them into the new quarters.

My next change of sleeping arrangement occurred during the spring of 1953 when I was transferred to Weather Central at Rhein-Main Air Force Base in Frankfurt, Germany There, we slept in bunks, four to a room. Since there was a midnight curfew I was usually not in town after that hour. Occasionally, I missed the curfew and had to find somewhere to sleep until 6:00 a.m. One time I rode a street car home with a slender dark haired girl and slept in her bed with her. The following morning I dressed and walked into the kitchen where her mother was preparing breakfast. The girl, Martina, was standing in front of the sink naked. When I asked her what she was doing she said, "I'm washing my pussy."

After she finished, still naked, she, her mother, and I sat down at the table and ate a delicious breakfast. Her mother spoke perfect English with a British accent; and she seemed to enjoy talking with me. I certainly enjoyed it, but had a hard time keeping my eyes off Martina. I never saw her father. I suspect he had gotten up early and gone to work. I don't think he and I would have had much to talk about anyhow.

Another time I was out after midnight and became involved with a girl named Gertrude Schultz, and ended up at her upstairs apartment. Her bed was a bit small, but we managed to sleep okay. For several weeks after that I would spend a night with her now and then. She was nice and we liked each other a lot. Sometimes I would take food with me and we would have a meal. Other times we might go to a movie or just sit and listen to some old records she had. Once, on a cold winter night she was not at home when I arrived there after midnight. Thinking she would awaken me when she came in, I went to sleep on the stairs. She did not come in. After a while I got cold and ripped the heavy drape from a window at the bottom of the stairs and used it as a blanket. At daylight I left. I never went back.

In March of 1954 I returned to the United States on a troop ship. Again, I slept in a hammock. It was not comfortable. After spending 87 miserable days at home I re-enlisted and was sent to Langley Air Force Base at Newport News, Virginia. While there I slept on a bunk in an open bay. As a Staff Sergeant, I expected a better arrangement, but it didn't happen. At the beginning of August Sergeant Charles Grant and I were sent on temporary duty to Hancock Field at Syracuse, New York to provide weather service for the Air National Guard for two weeks of training. Charles had just purchased a new 1954 Chevrolet Bel Aire. We left early one morning and began a drive that would take us through Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and New York City. We arrived in the city about midnight. We needed a place to sleep, and couldn't find one. Finally we went to a bar and had a beer. While we were there someone told us about a flophouse around the corner. For 50 cents each we found a couple of empty bunks in one corner and stretched out among the smells and snores of a room full of street denizens for an experience I will always remember, but have no wish to repeat. As I have said before; if you are tired enough you can sleep anywhere. From there we drove to Syracuse and slept in open bays for two weeks. In August, the nights can be cold in Syracuse. We managed to procure a couple of extra blankets from supply and that helped considerably. When the two weeks were over we drove back to Langley via Niagara Falls, Binghamton, New York, and Scranton, Pennsylvania where we slept in a regular bed that smelled of cigarettes in a ratty motel room with telephone numbers of women scribbled on the walls. Charles had a conversation with one of them. I didn't.

In April of 1956 I transferred from Langley to Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base at Goldsboro, a small town in eastern North Carolina. Again, I was opening a weather station for a base that had been closed a long time. I was the chief observer and detachment clerk all rolled into one since the only other person there at the time was Lieutenant William Talbot, the detachment commander. I slept on a bunk in a room without electricity. When it became dark, I went to bed. A couple of weeks later we had light, and that was much appreciated. That summer I played on the newly formed base softball team. I played in the outfield, but knew nothing about hitting a fast pitched softball. When we flew up to Norfolk, Virginia to play a navy team I struck out twice. I decided to bunt on my next try at the plate. I did that and made it to first base as I heard the ball zing past my left ear and go toward the dugout. I rounded first and headed toward second where I slid in and tore a large chunk of skin out of my ass in the process. Later that summer I became the manager and second baseman of a squadron team. By then I had figured out that I had to step into the ball in order to hit it. After that I got lots of hits.

I left Seymour-Johnson In November of that year. By that time we had a full complement of observers and forecasters. Being there was a great experience, and it was a good base, but an opportunity to transfer to Nashville, Tennessee as a weather instructor for the Tennessee Air National Guard at Berry Field became available and I took it. I hated to leave the people I was working with, but I had to make a choice. Fortunately, I made the right one. When I arrived at Nashville on Thanksgiving weekend I found that there were no living quarters on base. After a couple of days at a nearby motel, I moved to the YMCA in downtown Nashville. I lived in a tiny room with a small bed and no television. I stayed there because it was inexpensive ($10.00 a week), and there was a gymnasium available. I spent many hours playing basketball. I also began taking classes at the University of Tennessee night school four evenings a week. Eventually, I made friends with Ben Cates, a man who lived there. He was a bookkeeper for Tom's Peanut Company. After being there six months he purchased a large house in west Nashville and intended to turn it into a rooming house. I became his first tenant at $50.00 a month for room and board. From then until June of 1958 I had a soft bed in a large room, delicious meals cooked by his mother, and became friends with several other tenants.

After I received my discharge from the air force I enrolled at Middle Tennessee State College (now a university) and continued my studies toward a Bachelor's Degree. During most of my time there I lived in a large brick house on Main Street. At that Time I slept in a very unique bed. It was quite large, very tall, very soft, and had a pink canopy on top. It became a topic of conversation for anyone who came to visit me — and quite a few did! I took it all in stride. Being an ex-GI and having slept everywhere from train stations to park benches I was happy to have a bed with a soft mattress even if it did have a pink canopy. At the time I was eating my meals at the City Café in Murfreesboro. My stipend from the GI Bill was $110.00 a month. I paid $35.00 of that for room rent. I also had a couple of part time jobs which provided me with a few extra dollars a month. I had three friends that cooked their meals in an apartment where they lived on College Street. I asked if I could share their food for several dollars each week and they said yes provided I help with the cooking. I consented to do that. We ate a lot of vegetable soup. It was cheap. If money ran short toward the end of the month — and it usually did, one of the guys who worked part time at A & P Grocery brought home some over-ripe bananas. One year when it was nearing Thanksgiving when Billy Banks asked "Frog Thorpe" if it would be possible for him to find an "over ripe" turkey for us to cook? With a wide grin on his face, he said he might be able to do that. On the day of the turkey find the rest of us discussed ways of cooking it. We talked about spices, oven temperature, and how to make dressing. While we were doing all of that Frog was checking his inventory for a suitable turkey. When he found one, he made sure that it was positioned near the shortest route to the back door. While he was doing that there was two guys sitting in a pickup truck near the edge of the parking lot watching the area where they had previously seen him hide things behind the dumpster. It wasn't long before they saw him emerge from the back door with a large lump under his apron and leave something in the hiding place and turn to go back into the store. Immediately, the one driving the truck revved the motor and with tires screeching sped toward the dumpster, and then slowed down just enough for the other guy to jump out and scoop up the turkey and leap back into the truck as it zoomed out of the parking lot. While all of that was going on, Frog stood near the back door too surprised to utter a cuss word before they were gone. Thirty minutes later when he got back to the apartment the first question out of everybody's mouth was, "Where's the turkey?" All Frog said was, "It got stole!"