It was early October 1948, having just graduated from the Naval Recruit Training Center at San Diego; I sat staring out the Pullman coach window at the vista of the passing California countryside. Being raised in the piney wood and palmetto flat lands of the Deep South; I was in awe of the ever changing landscape, particularly the brown craggy mountains that jutted skyward and the arid desert flora...
Filled with pride at my recent achievement and the wonderment of a newfound freedom…I felt euphoric! Having the micro-management of my every breath during twelve weeks of Boot Camp behind me I could now make a decision on my own. Damn, come to think of it, I could sit anywhere on the train I wanted to! Laughing to myself, I changed seats, and then switched again!
Basking in self-importance, I looked in admiration at the three newly sewn white stripes around the cuffs of my Dress-blue jumper. Then retrieving my white-hat from the luggage rack above, I put it over my knee and began to manipulate its shape…rolling the rim, forming it with wings, without wings…what shape looked the “saltiest?” Hey, I was a real sailor now and had an image to maintain! I probably needed to do a little work on my starboard swagger…
Alphabetically at the top of the travel orders, I was placed in charge of a ten-man draft heading north to the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme for technical training. The port and adjoining base constructed at the onset of World War II was located on the coast between Oxnard and Ventura, California. Oxnard, a small sleepy town some forty or so miles north of Los Angles, was a sparsely populated agricultural area. The region consisting primarily of orchards and bean-fields was punctuated by checker-boarded rows of gnarled eucalyptus trees which marked metes and bounds of farms and fields. Patterns which probably dated back to Spanish land grants.
It was nearing daybreak when the train slowed, jerked repeatedly and lurched to a stop. I looked out the window into the darkness and saw nothing…no lights, no buildings, no people…nothing! The conductor came through and rousted us out; assuring me this was our stop. He sends us forward several cars to exit. Apprehensive, I stepped from the train onto a planked platform shrouded in escaping steam from the train’s under-carriage. The platform ran the length of an old gray rectangular wooden building, typical of “whistle-stop” depots of the 1920-30s. A single bare light bulb hanging over the locked entrance provided the only illumination for the area.
The war’s conclusion three years earlier brought massive reductions in the Armed Forces and its infrastructure. The reductions had turned the Oxnard area, as it had many other base/post oriented communities into a virtual ghost town. Searching for some sign of activity, we found a battered USN marked “cattle-car” troop carrier parked behind the depot. I assumed it was our transportation, but where was the driver?
As I opened the truck door to blow the horn, a sailor tumbled out catching himself on the doorframe. Gathering his senses from an apparent dead sleep he cursed, then babbling incoherently ordered us into the carrier for the trip to the Seabee base. Entering through some remote gate the light of day brought further examples of the impact and remnants of war. There was row upon row of abandoned Quonset-huts. Huts that once teemed with the activities of thousands were now empty hulks. An accumulation of brush and tumbleweeds piled up between buildings obscured many from view. Loose blowing sand had created dunes that partially covered old interconnecting wooden boardwalks and drifted into door-less entrances.
The adjacent port’s staging area was littered with mountains of airfield matting, pontoon cubes, anchors, chains, moorings and ship’s screws. Massive strapped sea-crates marked with coded stenciled letters and number; once destined for far off Pacific islands formed long corridors that went to infinity. I could only imagine the excitement and the myriad of activity that once took place in this now eerie silent place. Was this decaying relic some unintended monument to victory? It all seemed so wasteful…so very sad. Yet, having a young lad’s fantasy of the glory and heroics of war, I was keenly disappointed that I had not been a part of it…
The entire draft was assigned mess cooking to await technical school billets. Jake Tyler, a Surveyor-striker from Atlanta, Georgia, became my bunk-buddy. He bragged incessantly of seeing Clark Gable and the other stars in person when “Gone with the Wind” premiered in Atlanta in 1939. He was fascinated to the extreme with movie stars and kept a stack of those related magazines in his locker. As with many fans of that era, yours truly included, we had been brainwashed by the hype of those pulp fiction rags, radio gossip-columnists such as Hedda Harper and newsreels glorifying the lifestyle of that most magical spot on earth, “Hollywood and Vine!” To the believer that intersection was bathed in spotlights and paved with golden stars! One only had to stand on that corner and their favorite film stars would sashay by! Jake was busting a gut, to go to Hollywood!
Our first weekend liberty finally came. Early that Saturday morning we were out on Route One, the famous “Pacific Coast Highway” thumbing south. It was still a patriotic gesture to pick-up hitchhiking Servicemen so it was only a few minutes before we were on our way to Santa Monica. Our ride dropped us off at the foot of Wilshire Boulevard. We walked some distance before sighting a city bus.
Jake soon spotted the famous Brown Derby Restaurant, a prominent hangout of Hollywood’s elite…we got off. The building shaped like a derby-hat was to me rather rundown and seedy, stacked garbage cans and litter could be seen from the sidewalk…still morning, it was closed. Jake sighed, no movie stars yet, but our spirits remained high. Continuing up Vine Street, the excitement built and our pace quickened as we neared the “Glamour Cross-roads of the World”…to shake-hands with Bogart and Bacall!
Now, we were a block away! Street traffic picked-up, cars, buses, cabs and limousines clogged the thoroughfares as people hurried about. Jake was so excited he broke into a trot, I followed! Reaching that shrine to the gullible, our excitement waned. Jake’s jaw dropped, “Eddie it’s, it’s just another friggin’ dirty street corner!” We checked the special signs on the lamppost once again: Yes, it was definitely Hollywood and Vine. We stood for awhile unspeaking, dumbfounded and perplexed. There were no celebrities, no Gable, no Harlow, no Crawford! Alas, there was no joy in “Tinsel Town!”
Turning disillusioned, we slowly started back in the direction from which we had come. Two naïve, but wiser young lads having learned that all is not as it seems, hitched back up the Pacific Coast Highway…