The Big Red Canoe

Four of us water polo players at Stanford had our expenses assisted partly by bunking in the campus boathouse. It was more than adequate, including a glassed-in "porch” that overlooked the fake lake. For a prepared pond, it was fair sized.


At the end of November, during "Big Game" week, students built a monster wood pile to put to flame the Thursday night before the game. Of course, it needed considerable guarding to fend off U.C. Berkeley students' attempts to set it off prematurely.

Stunts back and forth were a given. The most astonishing of all during a pre-game week occurred while I was there. One pre-game week night some Berkeley-ites painted bear paw prints all the way up the ten story Hoover War Library.

I digress. This story is about a Lake date.


One superbly lovely spring afternoon, on a whim, I phoned a girl I only somewhat knew and invited her for a canoe ride.


"I’d love to," she said. She’d come to the lake, she offered, because she had a dinner date and needed to dress first. And dress she did: necklace, ear rings, and one of those funny little purses that are beautiful and don’t hold anything.


I helped her into the canoe, picked up a paddle, placed a foot on the stern, and shoved off.


As the bow of the canoe rose up, she reached for the pier, and I was alone.


I pulled her out of the water, and, amid my apologies, led her up to my room. She phoned her house. I heard her roommates squeal while my ex-canoe mate still had the phone to her ear.


Ten minutes later, three roommates arrived with a large bag full of something. I had been waiting on the canoe level, but as the three entered my room, I heard more screams and laughter. Ten minutes after that, the four came down to the canoe dock level with my ex-canoe passenger now clad in flaming red ski underwear, which she had to wear walking the quarter mile to their dorm.


I actually really was forgiven, perhaps because her roommates were so awful.

The Long Walk West

Our Tiki didn't care where we went to dog shows, with only one stipulation: he hated rain. We only disliked very hot weather, and our reasons were different. Dog show “rabids” (there aren’t any not-rabid dog show exhibitors) sign up for shows months in advance, and nothing on earth keeps them away.  If, once there, the weather is brutally hot, they spend their time inside motor homes and stay close with their dogs, keeping their dogs and themselves as comfortable as possible. Otherwise, they cruise the grounds checking out supplies, friends, the competition, vendors, and wandering show judges.






But Tiki thought dog shows were for the show chairperson to escort him around in a golf cart, for us to introduce him to most of the half a hundred breeds, and to sleep on our stall display table while visitors came and went.


But not in the rain. Rain has thunder, or at least it beats on the roof. That’s scary. He even got to distrust overcast conditions.


If you know anything about Missouri and its environs, you know that 110% of the time Tiki would hate it. And he did.
But we were the bosses of our lives and went anyway…. to Springfield, MO.


And he hated it.


He put up with one whole day, and then he insisted that he needed a walk. It seemed reasonable, so we started out.
I probably should have guessed something was afoot, because he was not checking curbs, bushes, etc.,  for random scents. He was single mindedly trotting in a fairly straight line to the edge of the show grounds and then directly along the sidewalk past the showgrounds. Then, suddenly, it hit me.


Tiki was headed west…. west by northwest….. Toward HOME.  Tiki had had it with Springfield, and he was on his way to Oregon!!!!


Still, I wasn’t positive, so I let him continue awhile.


About half a mile from the grounds, we came to a major intersection with lots of traffic and signal lights. At the curb, Tiki stopped and looked up at me. I was to escort him across the street.


I shook my head slowly no. “Not yet,” I told him. “We have to go on to Fargo after this, anyway.”

Lost in England

Everyone knows that an American driving in Great Britain....well, it’s an interesting experience.


Every morning, as we left our B&B, Muriel had to remind me that I had turned into the oncoming lane.


I really had gotten the hang of it by the time we’d survived the intricacies of the weird traffic arrangements around the town of Bath.

So, we were both puzzled when in the rear view mirror of our rented Ford a blue patrol light was blinking. What had I done wrong?


That’s what I asked the young officer who, grinning widely,  walked briskly toward me from the funny little cars they drive.


Pulling out a pencil and pad, he stated airily, "Yer lorst, arencha?"


“Well, in fact, yes.”  And we were.

On our way... in the left-hand lane

We had been searching for one of those incredible country homes which were designed centuries ago for the presumed comfort of an immensely wealthy British peer and his army-like coterie of relatives and attendants. They could house a major university in some of those country homes.


But most British roads were designed, pre Stone Age, to lead likely enemies astray, or something like that. If so, that’s why no invasion of England has succeeded since 1066, when there were no roads at all (I think). Anyway, he was right. We were "lorst.”

Our destination

The bobby asked me to name the destination, and he promptly sketched out a marvelously helpful notation. He added , "I’d foller yer; but it’s past my route. God bless, Yank."

Betty Boop in Shanghai

"We called it ‘Betty Boop’, the English gentleman said.


He was the prototype of the cultured Englishman of 19th Century literature. He nursed a substantial cup of green tea as I listened to him in the officers’ "mess" area of the British cruiser. He looked surprisingly well for one who had spent many months a prisoner of the Japanese north of Shanghai.


A couple of weeks after the bombing of Nagasaki, my shore leave from the Philippines had ended, and I had been assigned to an LST ship somewhere in the China Seas. A ship journey and two airplane hitches had carried me to Shanghai, where I was waiting for a connection to Hong Kong. I bunked on the U.S. cruiser anchored in the Whangpoo (Huangpu) River alongside a British cruiser.  My only duty was to check the location board each morning to see if my vessel was reported somewhere, and then to figure out if there was a way to get to it. Hong Kong seemed likely. With the war ended, I wasn’t sure anybody cared if I never found my assignment.


In going ashore that morning, the Englishman and I had met, and he had invited me to tea on the British ship. Now he was regaling me with stories of his imprisonment.


Probably his stories were mostly true; but, true or not, all I cared about was his beautiful accent and an escape from the boredom of my ship. I’d already been in downtown Shanghai three times, which was about enough in those days. There was nothing much for an American save a few night clubs, which I didn’t need.  And the side streets had signs in English warning that, if one was foolish enough to wander into them, the shore patrol would not bother to search. So, the Englishman was a gift.


"Betty Boop?" I asked.


"Your American cartoon," he said, and I understood. The Allies called the twin engine Japanese bombers "Betties." This particular airplane had a routine that did not vary. When American B-29 planes began seriously attacking Japanese positions around the Shanghai area, the sirens would moan their deep whoo, and everything and everybody went for cover. 

The prisoners loved it, he said. They would try to peek out the badly shuttered windows, hoping to see the B-29s. Then, when things were quiet again, a single Japanese Betty bomber would make a lonely, noisy circuit of the area. The prisoners would relax and announce that "Betty has Booped.... All clear."

Long Jump

As a pre- teen growing up at the edge of the city, the huge Golden Gate Park two blocks distant, the ocean even nearer, and miles of raw sand dunes to occupy my time, I was a city boy who more or less lived rurally. I participated as well in every fad and sport season as each came along. Also, the vice principal was a woman who would have made an excellent coach. Our school teams did well consistently.


So, when track season came around, I was out there. Not very big, nor particularly strong. but way up there in the Day Dream Division.


I wasn’t very fast. When, in tryouts, I was in the middle of the pack, I promptly switched to a field event. The school not having javelins, poles for vaulting, or steel balls for putting, it sort of left the jumps. We had no crossbar, nor hurdles. I pondered the skimpy opportunities and at last saw that I really could be an Olympian. I could long jump.

A sports writer for the Cal-Bulletin, which I delivered, had written a long article describing in detail the style of the contemporary U.S.C. star. I read it several times over. Yes, and there was a perfect practice place. Along the uphill wall of the school, by the kindergarten classes, was a strip of sand about four feet wide. I could run along the fence, past the gate, and take off in the Trojan’s form. If I smoothed the sand first, I could measure where my feet first touched.


About ten yards from the sand, I went over and over the article: the hopppity start, the speed-up, the slight crouch a stride before the take-off , and the lean to one side to get one’s feet out of line with the body. I nodded to myself in approval, then went into action.


I’m sure I did it all fairly well. At least it felt right.


What I had overlooked was that, in leaning to one side, my right arm extended outside the four feet width of sand. The sidewalk tore up my arm.


When I got home, my mother said sharply, "WHATEVER DID YOU DO TO YOURSELF?"


"I fell," I told her.


"Off the school roof?" she asked, probably not expecting any real answer.


"Not quite," I said.