Asleep at the Wheel

Copyright © 2013 George Penton

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-6901-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6902-3 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 12/19/2012

CONTENTS

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Epilogue

Will I still Joke around? Will I still dig the sound? When I grow up to be… a man… 

—The Beach Boys

‘Cause he loves me and I know… it… But he’s just afraid to show it… ‘Cause that the way boys are… 

—Lesley Gore

Is there something which we ought to have known and have never been told, and is that why we do such terribly stupid things with our lives?

—Sigrid Undset

To my fellow baby boomers.

PART I

Autumn 1972

HI, ALL, MY NAME IS PAUL, I’M SIX FOOT TALL, AND I COOK STEAKS

for you all, at the Seven Seas Restaurant, for Nicholas Kastodoulou, and his nephew, too, in the year 1972.

Once upon a time, in a long forgotten period known as the early 1970’s, I actually thought that rhymes like that were funny.

Life is not bad. I’m nineteen years old, the steak cook at the Seven Seas, the best seafood restaurant in Panama City, Florida. We specialize in seafood but I do the steaks. The restaurant has a nice charcoal pit for that purpose.

After high school I took a job busboying at the above-mentioned restaurant and was soon promoted to steak cook. In a few days I’ll be starting college at Gulf Coast Community College, until last year called Gulf Coast Junior College, here in Panama City. I am also enrolled in the Marine Corps officer program, the Platoon leaders class, and in 1976 when I graduate from college I’ll be a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. I’m not athletic. I can’t hit a baseball unless it’s right over the plate. I can’t throw a football or baseball, well maybe the latter, but I throw like a girl. I can’t run two blocks without getting cramps but I can swim. I can swim like the Dickens.

But I’m gonna be a United States Marine Corps officer. How? Because I’ve got guts and I’ve got heart. That’s all it takes. If you got heart that will overcome any physical limitation. The Marines won at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pelelieu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Inchon, and Khe Sanh because they had heart, right? Semper Fi.

The recruiter talked me into it back in April. He called me at home. I had talked to him back in December about enlisting in the Marine Corps, and he sure was a contrast from the Army recruiter. The Army recruiter phlegmatically told me You’ll hate the Army at first but it’ll grow on you. The Marine recruiter, I don’t remember what he said, but he dearly loved the Corps. That much I remember. I’ve got a great memory but I can’t remember what the Marine recruiter said. But I remember his love for the Corps. His enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is contagious. Especially if you’re religious, conservative, and idealistic like I am. Semper Fi.

Well I hemmed and hawed, Army or Marine, during January, February, and March 1972. Couldn’t make up my mind. By April I decided none of the above—I was going to college. A smart guy like me belongs in college. I’ll be a year behind everybody from my high school class because I skipped a year, but so what. I didn’t know what to major in, maybe business, a smart guy like me has gotta be able to make it in business, right? I’ll major in business administration.

But towards the end of that month the Marine Corps recruiter calls.

Are you ready to join the Corps?

No, I think I’m going to go to college this fall.

College!

That’s what I’m thinking.

College! Great! The Marine Corps officer program is for you! If you’re going to college we don’t wanna put stripes on you, we wanna put bars on you!

I’ll think about it. I’m a great thinker.

So now it’s August, I’ve signed up for the program, a few weeks of rigorous training in Quantico, Virginia summer of ‘73 and ’75, and come spring 1976, I’ll be a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. I’ll be a great lieutenant, too. Since I’m smart. I’ll graduate near the top of my class. And since I have heart my men will love me. And I’ll teach my men to have heart. Semper Fi.

School starts Thursday, day after tomorrow. On Thursday I have Tennis at 1:30 on the main campus, and College Algebra at 6:00 out at Gulf Coast’s satellite campus out at Tyndall Air Force Base. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I have Orientation at 10:00, Geology at 11:00, English at 2:00, and Western Civ at 3:00. On Tuesday it’s the same as Thursday, except I have Introduction to Business at Tyndall instead of College Algebra. Same time. I’m looking forward to it. It’s gotta be better than high school, at least everybody tells me that the professors are all smarter than the high school teachers. I hope so.

Thursday, August 24, 1972, I had my first day of college. Tennis at 1:30, my required physical education course. A big class, maybe forty, fifty people. A lot of beautiful women in the class, looking so good in those tennis outfits. One young woman, Mandy Darren, looked especially fine. I knew her in high school, kind of. She was a junior when I was a senior, but now we’re both freshmen in college. Because I took a year off and worked. At the Seven Seas Restaurant. For Mr. Nicholas Kastodoulou.

I liked Mandy, but I barely knew her. I loved her smile. It melted my heart. I remember that she flirted a lot with my buddy Tom Yelmanoff in high school, and she was a wonderful flirter, cool, but not too suggestive. Beautiful smile (did I say that already?)

That first day I overheard her talking about her boyfriend, definitely not Tom Yelmanoff. The boyfriend, it turned out, was a student at the University of Florida, and she was wearing an engagement ring. But she called him boyfriend, not fiancé.

Since I was taking Introduction to Business on Tuesday night and College Algebra on Thursday night, I had to take off steak cooking at Seven Seas those nights. So I was working Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights there. They were closed on Sunday. So that Thursday night I drove out to Tyndall Air Force Base for my College Algebra class, an Air Force major, don’t remember his name, teaching.

A pretty sharp guy, actually. Not as sharp as a Marine Corps officer, of course. Not as sharp as I would be one day. But pretty doggone sharp. I was one of two or three civilians in the class, the rest were Air Force people. A couple of long-legged women. I guess they were all about my age but they sure looked and seemed older. The military makes people mature, I thought.

Friday morning, August 25, 1972, 10:00 a.m. College Orientation. A one hour credit class. Required of all freshmen. In the auditorium. It was helpful, I suppose.

No tests. Just show up every day and you get an A. Show up most every day and you get a B. I would get a B. The class will end mid-semester. The instructor, some kind of dean, said, look at the person to your left, and look to the person on your right. Only one of you, one out of three students, will graduate from Gulf Coast Community College.

After Orientation came Geology with Mr. Aaron. Medium height, age 32-35, pencil-thin moustache, very academic. Acted academic but didn’t look academic, until he started lecturing, when he began to both look and act academic. Science and geology aren’t my fields, but I respected the guy.

My old high school buddy Mark Watanabe was in the class. That was intentional. We wanted to take a class together, and this was a class that we both needed, so we both signed up for it.

Mark was cool. As tall as I, tall for an ethnic Japanese, stronger and heavier than I, Mark was a ladies’ man, but he stuck to one woman at a time. He went with Karla Wodneski in high school, a beautiful short brunette girl, but now he was dating Diane Walsh, a tall blonde chiropractor’s daughter.

Mark was a fan of John Lennon’s. He combed his hair down the middle and wore thin-rimmed round glasses.

Mark, an ethnic Japanese living in the South in the 1970’s, was sensitive about race. He sensed a lot of racial animosity towards himself and his family, and there was some, but nearly as much as he thought there was. Certainly not from me. Actually, most everybody that knew Mark liked him very well.

His father, a retired U.S. Army colonel, managed an experimental shrimp farm in Panama City, and had been in the O.S.I. during World War II, doing who-knows-what to defeat Japan, the nation of his parents, Mark’s grandparents, immigrants circa 1920. Mark’s father liked me back when I had Army ambitions. I remember he showed Mark and I how to put shelter halves together once. But as soon as I began to talk Marine his father began treating me like an idiot.

Oh, yeah, the women in that class. One in particular, Sharon Kemp by name, attracted my attention. Short, medium build, with dark brown hair, she wore tight short shorts with little slits cut in them every day, even well into late November. Tempted a good Catholic boy like me to impure thoughts. But so long as I don’t give the thoughts full consent they’re just venial sins and I can handle that. She had a Midwestern accent, and looked and seemed a couple of years older than the rest of us, maybe 22 or 23ish. But I didn’t think too much about her because, I guess, subconsciously, I thought I didn’t stand a chance with her, she being so much older.

Friday afternoon, 2:00 p.m. English. With Mr. Daly. Good old Mr. Daly. A joker. Like me. But he could be serious. Like me. Nobody thought he was goofy or anything because he could be serious when he wanted. A good teacher. I liked Mr. Daly.

The girl I liked in that class was Judy Gunderson, tall, plain-faced, no make-up, no bra (you remember the seventies, right?), fairly well built, age eighteen, with mature outlook and confidence. Very, very intelligent. Talked a lot. Not a whole lot, but more than most. Dated at least two or three guys at a time. She hinted strongly that she’d date me, but I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want to get lost in the shuffle.

After class that first day she had an irrepressible happiness about her.

You look like you’re in a good mood, I said.

Yeah, I got three dates lined up for this weekend.

Who’s the lucky guy?

Well, tonight it’s Tony, tomorrow John, and Sunday I’m going to the beach with this guy Bill I met yesterday.

Mr. Daly let us out early. Most professors did for the first class. Mr. Aaron didn’t, and the Orientation teacher didn’t, but the Air Force major, the tennis instructor, and Mr. Daly did. So I walked over to Western Civ, my next class, a little early. A girl I knew in high school, Judy Perriman, was there, outside the classroom, early like me, waiting for the professor to arrive. Like Mandy Darren and so many others I saw those first two days, she had been a junior when I was a senior at high school.

Judy! What are you doing here? I thought you were going to California after graduating!

I had seen her at a high school football game the previous year, her senior year, my year off from school, and she told me that she was most definitely going to get out of our turkey town and stay with her grandmother in California for awhile, after graduation.

No, I decided to stay awhile, she said. I didn’t expect to see YOU here!

Why not? Am I not the academic type?

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

She was a nice girl, medium height, dark complexion, jet black hair, an Indian look to her. Later I would find out that she was one fourth Cherokee.

She had been overweight in high school, not too bad, but enough that her ankles were thick. That always turned me off in a girl. But now she was too thin.

You’ve lost weight, I offered.

Yeah, she said grinning, obviously glad that I noticed. But she was too thin. I don’t mean anorexic or anything, but thinner than a person of her frame and build should be. When I had seen her at that football game about a year prior she looked just right. Fine, even. Somebody should have told her to stop right there.

Two other girls in that class drew my eye. There was Catherine Dressler, whom I had known slightly from high school, and who graduated the same year as I, and who now was a college sophomore taking freshman Western Civ. She couldn’t fit it in her schedule the year before, I think. She was a good Catholic girl, or at least as good as Catholic girls were in the post-Vatican II Church. I remember her arguing with some Protestant fundamentalists when we were in high school.

Hi, Catherine!

Uh… hey you’re… 

Paul.

Oh, yeah, Paul.

You know Judy here?

No.

Catherine, Judy, Judy, Catherine

Hi!

Hi!

The other girl was Brenda Mazursky, a short, a little on the fat side, wore a short but not too short dress most every day, beautiful creamy smooth skin, beautiful legs.

The professor in that class turned out to be a Mr. Culiter. Medium height, slightly heavy-set, flabby, but not too flabby, wore a bow tie most days. He got right down to business. No getting out of class early with this guy.

He knew his stuff. I was extremely impressed with him. He loved history. Bubbled with enthusiasm for it. He let us know that he was going to be a tough, demanding teacher, and we would have to work. I knew the other students wouldn’t like him, but he became my favorite teacher that semester.

That night I cooked at the Seven Seas. Saturday Mark Watanabe and I went to the beach, and that night I cooked at the Seven Seas. Sunday I went to the beach by myself and spent the whole day. Not too many tourists out there. They would all be down the next weekend, Labor Day weekend.

Monday was pretty much an uneventful day, Orientation, Geology, English, Western Civ. In Geology I looked at Sharon Kemp more than I listened to the instructor. In English Judy Gunderson, in response to my query about them, offered simply that her dates were fine. In Western Civ I chatted with Judy Perriman about people we had known in high school. Uneventful and unbusy evening at work.

Tuesday night, Aug. 29, 1972, Tyndall Air Force Base, Introduction to Business Administration with Mr. Billington. Mr. Billington was a regular member of the Gulf Coast business faculty and of course was a civilian. I was one of the eight civilian students in that class, the class numbering approximately forty. I sat next to Lee McCullen, a fat civilian girl who liked me a lot and laughed at all of my jokes. So it turned out that I liked one girl in every one of my classes, except Western Civ, where I liked three, and College Algebra and Orientation, where I didn’t like any in particular.

September came and went, hot as blue blazes, the summer of ‘72 being particularly hot in northwest Florida. The first week of October brought some welcome cooler weather. Seven different girls in five different classes had struck my fancy but I hadn’t asked any of them out. Yet.

The one I thought about the most was Mandy Darren, the girl in the tennis class. She talked more and more about her boyfriend at the University of Florida, how she missed him, how she loved him, how she looked forward to his visits, etc.

Why don’t you just transfer to UF? someone asked her.

He graduates in December, no need to go there now.

What’s he going to do then?

Get a job, I guess, she answered, with a nervous giggle.

What’s he majoring in? someone else asked her.

Business administration.

I had this idea the guy was 6’4", 250 pounds of solid muscle, smart, and outgoing. Maybe he was. I idealized Mandy, so I idealized her boyfriend. But maybe he was just a schmuck that bought her an engagement ring and now regretted it and was ignoring her. But asking out engaged women wasn’t something I was prepared to do. So I didn’t.

I began to talk to the two Judys a lot. Judy Gunderson talked about this guy and that guy and the other guy. Judy Perriman didn’t say much. I did most of the talking there. Mostly I told her little one liner jokes, for instance if Judy’s track star acquaintance Roger Kilcarney ran by, I would say, there goes Mercury! Judy would laugh. Catherine and Brenda would roll their eyes. But in a nice way. You see the Western Civ classroom was on the second floor and we would wait outside on the breezeway balcony for class to start and Roger would run by and we would get a good look at him running and he looked like Mercury and… well, you had to be there.

The first week of October Judy Perriman says to me Guess what? The youth group at my church gave me a surprise birthday party last night, but it was the wrong day.

What happened? I asked.

They called me up and told me there was an emergency meeting of the executive committee and when I came they were throwing a party for me.

You’re on the executive committee?

No, she laughed. No I’m not, but they told me they needed me at the meeting. I don’t know why she was laughing at that, maybe she was delighted at the thought that her friends would throw her a birthday party, but she didn’t do any laughing until I asked her if she was on the executive committee.

How old?