The Hooch

My kitchen is swarming with fruit flies.  I am inured with the convenience of the compost trash; else I could eliminate the problem by moving the miniature trashcan to the garage.  The tiny Drosophila melanogaster are specks in repose, but become practically invisible in flight.

Spraying the surfaces with a pesticide contaminates everything; I might as well spray Raid on my salad.  So, there is no complete solution, but I have in my possession a diabolical gadget which renders me a pyritic soul satisfaction.

Shaped like a child’s tennis racket, the grid is metal wiring, strung in a cross-mesh. A press of the button and the grid is electrified.  It’s a rather unwieldy fly swatter, as the ‘D’ batteries are cased in the handle; nonetheless, a casual swish brings an electrical spark and a loud Crack! One more good drosophila goes to the hereafter. My death racket never entirely clears the air, but I have the small reward of having left the battlefield blooded in combat with the pesky little buggers.

I do realize this is the stuff of young boys.  Boys derive a primitive glee from the destruction of insects and reptiles.  We generally don’t eat our prey as our prehistoric ancestors surely did.  Who would want to crunch down on a squashed locust when there are popsicles in the freezer?

Today, I am so so ecologically correct in my choice of insect control.  The wisdom of my advancing age cringes in remembrance of what I did in Viet Nam.

I convinced my superiors, when they appointed me skimmer coxswain to the Chief of Staff that I should remain close to the four Boston Whalers that composed my little fleet.  Ready at a moment’s notice at a call from HQ, to sortie on whatever mission was required of me.  The position was in addition to my 10 hour days as Boathouse Yeoman and consisted of ferrying chaplains to the hospital ships out in the harbor or delivering a pilot to a bullet boat at Deep Water Piers.  The calls from HQ were infrequent and the position was largely ornamental; but it attached me to HQ staff and very few were anxious to screw around with anyone, no matter how lowly, who reported directly to HQ.

Thus came the acquisition of my hooch, not a stone’s throw from the tethered ski boats in my charge.  Okay, it was an abandoned storeroom, but it was mine—secure from the prying eyes of Shore Patrol, officers and senior non-coms.

At five o’clock, the Division knocked off and made their way back down the peninsula to Camp Tien Sha for chow, a drink (or several), and their bunks in barracks built by the French.  The night crew arrived and went to the Boathouse, not to emerge until seven in the morning.  The three-man pusher boat crews went below decks on their boats, many of which were outfitted with bunks, galleys and air conditioning.

I retired to my hooch.  Removing the padlock, I stepped in and took inventory of the treasures within: a small Toshiba refrigerator, containing exactly two cases of beer cans (I had sixty cases in storage; another triumph of my finagling ways), a double bed built of plywood similar to the ones on the pusher boats, a cache of cases of C rations (more finagling) and enough dope to stone Mardi Gras.  One last comshawed item: a case of olive green insect repellant—pyetherinnes—and a roll of black friction tape.

Plucking the tape and one of the GI cans up, fetching a cold cold beer from the Toshiba, cracking it with a church key (no pop-tops in 1970), I would return to the stoop.  Taping down the button on the bug spray, I would place it in the room and shut the door.  No mosquitos again tonight!

Then I would settle on the stoop, light the first joint of the evening and enjoy the solitude as I awaited the gaggle of friends and interlopers who would finish chow and take the cattle car back up the peninsula.  Soon after sunset, it was party time.

I can’t remember a single night that this did not occur for about eight months of my tour.  We drank and smoked and laughed at our own jokes until about ten, when the last cattle car of the night would screech to a stop up on the road to take the revelers back to Tien Sha.  I would fall back on the bed, fully clothed and sleep till sunrise when duty soberly called me to another ten hour workday in the stifling heat.  Although I was entitled to a day off every ten days, I rarely took it.  Why should I?  Life was good and the war was somewhere else, far far away.  My friends and I enjoyed the privacy and the security of that 8X10 hooch and counted the days to freedom.

When you are young, you think only of yourself, never of others, never of consequences and never of a future in which the sins of youth become accountable.  The residue of those spray cans was on everything I ate, I drank, I smoked and everything I wore. 

Now, with my prostate cancer mercifully in remission, but my diabetes rampant, I wonder if Agent Orange was the only contributor to my present state?  As Dad would always say, how the hell would I know?