A Food/War Story
Zero’s piece on weird food items made me think of a story from the past. We were living in a subdivision out the back gate of NAS Pensacola in the late 70’s where many of our neighbors were naval and marine aviators. I was the southeast regional military sales manager for a pharmaceutical company and had invited one our military broker reps to an “Atta girl” dinner. Since we were going to a seafood restaurant nearby, she and her date, a retired Air Force O-6, came to the house for pre-dinner drinks.
As she came in the door she mentioned that she couldn’t have much to drink on her empty stomach as she hadn’t stopped work for lunch, the very work ethic that had earned her the Atta girl dinner. I told them we’d just have a quick one in the kitchen and be on our way. A few minutes later, as we were standing in the kitchen with our quick drinks and learning something about the colonel, I saw the lady reach out and grab a handful of snacks from a black-lacquered oriental saucer sitting far back on the countertop. Except it wasn’t snacks but those little, multi-colored pellets of moist cat food that come in foil packets. My wife had hastily picked it off the kitchen floor just before our guests entered the room and shoved it back where she thought it was out of sight.
I gotta tell you I would have given anything for a video of what followed. Before I could say “No!” the lady had tossed the stuff in her mouth and chewed perhaps three times before her eyes went wide, her cheeks ballooned and she ran for the sink where she finally managed to gag and rinse it all out. Once she got over it she joined in the laughter and we laughed about it all through dinner that evening. After seeing her response I have never ever been tempted to taste-test anything we feed our cats.
The story has an interesting sequel: over dinner the colonel revealed that as a very young pilot he had been flying one of the B-17 bombers being ferried from the mainland to Hickam Field on the morning of December 7th, 1941. Short of fuel, they’d had to land while the field was under attack. Realizing I was hearing living history, I asked him if he would be so gracious as to retell his story to some of my aviator neighbors and he agreed.
As soon as we got back to the house I called some of them and soon had a full living room of strangely quiet and respectful young officers listening intently and occasionally asking polite questions. The colonel had flown bombers on a series of hairy missions throughout WWII in both the European and Pacific theaters and had one great war story after another. Even a marine major, who’d flown Phantoms in Vietnam, and who had a reputation as a real hotdog, was respectful and attentive. The colonel kept that usually loud and boisterous bunch mesmerized until well into the wee hours by which time they had, in typical aviator fashion, consumed all my booze. But this time they did it much more quietly than usual. In fact, even though we lived there several more years, I never saw them so well-behaved ever again.
Category: Military issues
Back in ’85, while assigned to the 193rd HQs in Panama, our admin officer, a major, kept a jar of candy on his desk. Eventually he grew tired of people helping themselves without ever offering to replenish is supply and replaced the candy with what he told me was Panamanian beef jerky. He offered me some and I passed because as I told him it looked like the doggie treats I gave my hounds. He gave me a knowing look and we let the matter drop. During the day several people sampled the “beef jerky”. Finally the colonel stopped by to talk with the major and helped himself to a piece and it was all I could do to keep from laughing. The “jerky” disappeared in to a drawer as soon as the colonel left and was never seen again.
In IOBC many years ago, one of our Arabic students cleverly purchased a can of fish as he wasn’t happy with the C rations. Since he couldn’t read english, he shopped by the pictures on the cans labels. Can you imagine how bad canned cat food smells on a hot Georgia afternoon? 😉
I too met one of the Hickam B 17 pilots. My wife was working at our local hospital (Pyallup WA) I had to drop her car off and when I went up to her floor she said I might like to talk to one of her patients. We stated talking about solar heating, I noticed a WW II officers cap with a hundred mission crush sitting in the window sill. Turns out that he was piloting one of the Forts that arrived over Hickam field on that Sunday morning. He diverted to an aux.fighter field on the north end of Oahu. The field was a short 1000 or 1200 feet and he ended up in a pineapple field. He continued to fly in the Pacific and had several hundred photo recon missions. He left the army and went on to fly for an airline. It was on December 7, 1981, 40 years to the day that his war started. My wife told me later that he died just a few days after we talked. It was a true honor to meet and talk with him that day.
I’m living in a subdivision off the back gate of NAS Pensacola right now. Was probably a lot nicer in the 70’s.