Two weeks to fill in before I could find us a place to live. Most married troops would normally live in on-base housing. But Schofield was filled up. Even sergeants were livin' off base. As for a new PFC like me, I was lucky they let me stay married. Oh well, at least I had a good excuse for not lookin' on base.
A normal trainin' day went something like this: Get up around six. Stand formation. Clean the place up. Chow. Go out and practice bein' soldiers. This last part was a hard one to take. Most of us had been in combat and knew what real soldierin' was all about. Playin' soldier was hard to take seriously.
One day our company took part in some silly assed war game. Seein' as how there were no real bullets involved and that the bad boys were really on our side, the group I was with laid back in the sun and took it easy. A while later some guys with brass on their shoulders came along and told us were were all dead. I looked around. We sure didn't look dead. And I knew what dead looked and smelled like. No sir, no dead here. That's when it dawned on me this was a whole new ball game. And about as real.
Back from the field we'd have lunch then we do some fatigue. More cleanin'. Kept the quad buildings sparkly in case Hollywood wanted to shoot another movie there. Idle hands bein' the devil's workshop was more to the point. Yeah, the Army sure had it in for the devil.
After fatigue it was an hour or two of organized grabass. Softball or knitting classes. By then it was near to five and time for chow again. Finally it was private time. Go to town, read a book, see a movie, get drunk. Unless you were confined to quarters and on extra duty. Then it was time to clean for another couple of hours. 'Cause of my screw up, this PFC's day ran from six a.m. to eight p.m. No complaints, I'd asked for it.
Here's where irony came to visit once again. Like I said, the Hawaii National Guard was still activated. And at least one of 'em was a screw up just like me. Incompetence loves company. Don't remember the man's name but he was pullin' two weeks extra duty. Whatever he did he musta done it at the same time I did 'cause our time synchronized just like we were in the military.
On our passes between latrine and dayroom, mops in hand, we'd got to talkin' a number of times. He learned I was married and needin' a place to stay. Near the end of our two weeks he asked if I'd be interested in lookin' at an apartment. I said I sure was. Well, he was engaged and his fiancé needed to bail out of her lease but didn't want to pay the extra month's rent penalty and also lose her damage deposit. He was wonderin' if I'd like to drive down to the city come when our after class detention was up and check the place out. I mighta hesitated a quarter second before sayin' I was his man. Takin' over the lease would be my pleasure if it was affordable. Turned out it was only an efficiency apartment and eighty-five bucks a month.
Eighty-five bucks? Holy crap that was even cheap by Minnesota standards. In Honolulu efficiencies were upwards of two hundred per. You bet I was excited. I was ready to sign on the dotted line sight unseen.
So, come Sunday, the two of us headed down into Honolulu. Now, I don't know about you but Honolulu was one of those cities you read and knew about as a kid but didn't ever expect to spend any time in, much less live there. Good thing the man knew where he was goin' 'cause I wasn't payin' attention at all. My head was just rubber neckin' around lookin' at all the strange things.
There was mountains and ocean, pineapples and sugar cane, people knee deep in water workin' on their gardenin'. That was weird. Little houses everywhere and not a one of 'em looked like it was American. Low pitched and pointy eaved. Palm trees and flowers I'd never seen before. People drivin' on the freeway like they'd just got off the boat from Asian rice paddies and didn't have time to wash their feet. Honkin' and weavin', no regard for a decent speed. Thirty mph on the freeway and blockin' traffic like the whole world was their papaya.
Then, way too soon, we were in a little concrete block, apartment building ghetto. Now I didn't know it was a poor neighborhood back then. It was mostly clean and the sun was shinin'. Everything looks better in the sunlight at eighty degrees with mountains in the background and the ocean a half mile away in what smells like a garden. Plus the building we drove up to was a two story, board sided affair with a fresh paint job. Clean lot and flowers bloomin' in little neatly trimmed grassy areas. The flowers were bird of paradise and plumeria but I sure as hell didn't know that back then.
The apartment was on the second floor and tiny. By tiny I mean real short from front to back and side to side. If it had been a troop in the Nam it woulda had about six minutes left in country, that's how short it was. Twelve foot wide, maybe twenty deep. And chopped up into three rooms. Livin' area, bath and kitchen. Linoleum on the floors. Kitchen table was a wide board hinged on the wall so it could be raised and propped up by a couple of fold out legs. But she was clean and, did I already say this, eighty five bucks a month. A ten second walk through was enough. Lois and I had ourselves a place to live.
Then the man took me out to a buffet brunch in Waikiki which was two minutes away, up and over the Ala Wai canal. Imagine that. We were gonna live in a ghetto within sight of the most famous island vacation spot on the planet. Enough to make a newly wed's head spin.
What struck me most was he was treatin' me to brunch 'cause I was doin' him a favor. Him doin' me a favor? This was a Godsend for me and Lois. As to the size of the place I recently saw a travelogue on livin' in Hong Kong. Seems most Asians live in tiny places. That's probably why they're generally smaller than us corn fed yankee doodlers, not enough room to stretch out in.
Bein' busted cost me eighty bucks a month. Bein' confined to quarters saved me and Lois at least a hundred fifteen a month and found us a place to live. The other on the way to Vietnam AWOL got me out of country seven months early and stationed in Hawaii. Go figure. Every time I did the wrong thing it turned out to be the right thing. This sure ain't a fair world.
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