Mid Rats

Momma comes to me and clambers to be picked up and loved.  She smells just a little, a common characteristic of the elderly.  I nuzzle her neck and wonder if it isn’t time for a shower myself.  The dogs don’t complain about it much; they delight in eating cat shit straight out of the litter box, what fetid human odors would they find objectionable?

When the old dear (we reckoned her to be about eight years old) was rescued, she was gaunt, her teats drooping from countless litters, never house broken, especially distrustful of men.  I could easily imagine a back yard life with little food or shelter, unspayed and bred every time she came into heat.  She might have been mistreated in other ways, but that need not be speculated.

The only thing in her favor was that she tested Heartworm negative; amazing for an untreated outside dog.  I took her in and gradually won her trust.  Too old to housetrain now, adequate throw rugs and washable pads are spread in the living room.  She’s good enough to hit them, most of the time.

We made our bond with eating.  Of all my dogs, she is the most enthusiastic chowhound, no small feat in this house.  At the call of ‘Treats!’ Momma streaks in through the pet door, maneuvering like a point guard, her bulging Chihuahua eyes fixed on the prize.  Snapping up the proffered num-num (no simple task with five other sets of jaws closing in) she dashes for the pet door, to eat her portion out in the yard, far from the other contestants who are all consummate thieves.

Well, it’s common knowledge that dogs will eat anything tasting good and smacking of protein.  I further indulge my family (ONLY occasionally!) with table scraps.  I even let them lick plates and bowls.  Don’t vomit; I have a dishwasher that cycles for about three hours; I think that is well clean enough between uses.

Last night, once more confronting shaky hands and the certain feeling that my blood sugar was hovering somewhere below 100, I crash-made a meal consisting of pork chop leftovers (OK, 30 seconds microwave—that’s enough) and a bowl of instant mac and cheese, the kind where the pasta takes four minutes in the same microwave and gets mixed with a yellow powder that comes in an envelope.  Voila!  Mac and cheese!  Dinner is served!

I make the dogs keep their distance when I’m dining; but as soon as the last bite disappears in my mouth, here they are again, the Mutt Brigade, waiting patiently with those pleading doleful eyes, the first card played in the game of begging.

To assuage my guilt, I lowered the pasta bowl to the tile.  All six dogs came up, sniffed in the bowl, and walked away.  The bowl lay untouched at my feet. I was flabbergasted.  Actually, I was horrified.  What did I just eat that they would not?  What did they smell with their keenest of senses?  What conglomeration of Sparky Griesmeyer additives in that mélange would make a dog back off? 

It was the last of that Kraft product in my larder.  I’m going to pretend there is nothing else in there that my dogs would snub.

This dietary correctness, this sensitivity in present day me to what I put in my gob.  Can this be the same me that did what he did in the seclusion of his hooch and in the larger arena of the mess hall?  Maybe it’s that thing about completely morphing by metabolism every seven years.  Let’s see: 2012, minus 1970 divided by seven equals six.  Six morphs in forty two years; that must be the solution.  I can’t possibly be the same person.

Yes I can.  Yes I am.  I ate C rations that were leftovers from the Korean War.  Those little gray boxes were a treasure trove of nifty goodies.  Canned meat: labeled ‘ham & eggs’, ‘corned beef’, ‘chicken noodle’—on and on.  Canned fruit, a tin of hardtack wafers, a little wrapped wad of toilet paper, one Chiclet gum stick, a pack of four Lucky Strikes (usually the worm-riddled paper a memorial to the tiny larvae who burrowed delicate curly cues, dead those many years).  Smokers all know the desperation required to smoke something that old. I and my companions certainly did.  We considered the marbling to be enhanced curing, adding strength and pleasure to the smoke.

And finally, like a Cracker Jack Miracle, the random find of a small folding can opener, about the size of a double edged razor blade: a P-38, a John Wayne.  No guy in the whole fricking ‘Nam could say he was dressed unless he had one of these little wonders strung around his neck with his dog tags.

We would have opening contests to see who could open their GI can first.  Such races would invariably end with a soul satisfying PING!, as the lid went sailing across the room.

The mess hall at Tien Sha served three squares every day.  There but for the going in and the grabbing up of a metal tray.  I did eat there during daylight hours once in a while.  Unfortunately, once settled at the hooch and three or four doogies already down, the resultant munchies demanded a quicker fix than a meandering cattle car ride down the Peninsula.  Diving into the cache of C-rats, we would sit on the floor, picnic style and have at.  Sometimes, usually late of a Saturday night (we retain our cultural mores wherever we are), the bland taste of the little boxed dinners just didn’t cut it.  It was time for Mid Rats.

NSA worked around the clock to keep I Corps supplied.  There were night crews everywhere; and in the middle of their shift, they wanted a lunch break just like the day crews.

Thus, Mid Rats at the lovely old historic Tien Sha Barracks.  The midnight chow line beckoned us with its Siren Song.  Soldiers and sailors, grunts and civilian contractors made a beeline for the mess hall.  I have to admit that when midnight rolled around, our gang was pretty much stoned beyond description.  Our eyes bleeding red, the unmistakable signs of the munchies leering from our sweaty faces, we came in like lions and went out five minutes later full enough to pop; disciples of the Fatted Calf.

For all our disheveled appearance, we didn’t particularly stand out in that crowd.  Stoners, as we were called, dominated Mid Rats.  We came in, heaped a mountain of food on our trays, making no distinction for the little tray dividers—one for pudding, one for mashed, one for shit-on-a-shingle—to us, the egalitarian comingling of the bounty of the earth needed no such dainty separation.

Sitting down at the long tables, we would inhale our chow like the greedy unsupervised little boys that we were. Ceremony and familiar ritual was waived.  There would be no washing of hands or pause for a Blessing.  There was no cause for idle chit-chat in that cavernous hall either.  Mid Rats was serious business.  You couldn’t hear much more that a murmur over the busily intense click and clack of 250 forks making contact with metal.

Then placing our empty trays on the gurney near the exit, we quietly drifted off to our respective bunks.  If I had missed the last cattle car back to Service Craft, no matter.  Like a visiting salesman passing through town, I would lay my sleepy little head down on the bunk assigned to me before acquiring the hooch.  A condo in town with all the amenities was the legendary Tien Sha Barracks.  Good night, David.  Good night, Chet.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.