Dodging a Bullet
In August 1969, Hurricane Camille was slated to arrive in New Orleans and the surrounding coastline.[1] I had been through two during my time in the Shithole (where they were known as typhoons), but this would be my first in the U.S. The base issued a recall of all junior people on a Sunday. We had to go in and prepare the buildings on the base for the hurricane.
I remember Mrs. White tearing up and becoming angry that another hurricane was coming. She started talking about how she was tired of them coming and destroying people’s lives. Told you she was so sweet, never once mentioning herself or her problems. I liked her. I didn’t care about other people, but she made me sort of wish I could.
I rode out Hurricane Camille on the New Orleans side with the Chief Hospital Corpsman in a warehouse that was being used as a refuge center. For the longest time we sat in his office playing cards, but then he got a call that someone somewhere in the warehouse was having a heart attack. He grabbed his medical bag, while I grabbed a litter, then we went in search of an unknown person having a heart attack in an unknown location of a very large and expansive warehouse. We never found the person. Hopefully they survived. We returned to the office, and soon it was over. I was sent back to the Algiers side and helped clean up the base from the debris. Most of the other corpsmen were sent to Biloxi, Mississippi to help the Red Cross. All of the senior staff and doctors stayed in New Orleans.
Shortly after Camille, my life was in for another kind of upheaval. I was filing records in the outpatient clinic when in walked this girl. I looked at her and fell in love, puppy dog style. She was probably about 5’6”, brown hair just past her neck that surrounded a very pretty, impish face. Brown eyes, innocent looking, with an attractive figure — not full, but to me, perfection all around. Good god, I’ll never, ever forget the first time I saw her. When she came up to the counter, I just stared and stammered. Fortunately, before I could make an even bigger ass of myself, Walt came up and grabbed her hands and started jabbering, “Why Marianne, what brings you here so late in the day?” This guy knew everyone. He introduced us. Marianne Freeman, a senior in high school. (Ok, don’t think I’m a pervert. I was only 20 versus her 18 or soon to be 18).
So let me fast forward on this relationship as it was. I was infatuated with her. It was an infatuation that never went beyond hand-holding as we walked everywhere. I don’t remember a single kiss, just a sort of puppy dog infatuation.
In a nutshell, I was afraid of myself. I wanted so badly not to screw things up that I totally blew it.
We talked, we laughed, we danced. We went to swim parties with friends. It was always with friends. When we were alone, I was so freaking nervous being around her I was not a coherent talker. The relationship ended when her family moved to Arlington, Texas, where she went to college. She disappeared from my life but not my memory.
My first ever rebound romance started with a girl I met through Marianne. Cathy was a full-figured, girly girl. She was really sweet and cute and the life of the party as far as laughing and dancing goes. She didn’t smoke, drink or go further than 1st base (and that took some time). I unknowingly took advantage of her seeking something that was not attainable with me. I never took her to bed or anything like that. Rather, her misadventure with me was psychological. I even introduced her to my mother. Mom liked her as much as she would like anyone, which was as if to say, “Sure, ok, if that’s what you want. At least she’s Catholic.”
At the time, I didn’t recognize that this was a rebound and that in no way was I capable of ever reciprocating her feelings for me. Even though I was around happily married people, I was not a happy person. I’d survived a year in the Shithole, so I was an old man of 20 years who was quickly approaching the end of his enlistment at the age of 21.
My river town values told me it was time to settle down, and poor Cathy had all the nesting requirements I needed to become normal. A good ol’ Southern girl, born, bred and raised in Westwego, Louisiana. She had spent her education in a Roman Catholic school.
She was naïve in the ways of the world, but we could learn together. Right? All this made sense to my alcohol-infused brain. I was going to be normal, finally. But fate didn’t see it that way.
The day I got out of the Navy, I went to see her. I told her I needed to go home (home, it’s always going back to a place I hated) and get our lives set up so that we could make real plans for our future. So off I went to New Madrid, Missouri, where it all began.
In the end, I didn’t go back for Cathy. Instead, I called her to tell her I didn’t have anything to offer her in New Madrid. Even for a drunk, I’d had enough insight to admit, at least in that moment, that I wasn’t ready for marriage. Of course I promised to write or call, neither of which I did. But as far as I was and am concerned, Cathy dodged a bullet, and so did Marianne. Neither one needed to be married to a flaming drunk asshole. They both deserved a lot better.
By a lot better, I mean, not only was I a drunk and an asshole, I was an unemployed one too. Even though war made me grow up, my time in New Orleans proved I still had a lot to learn about adulthood. At 21, I was still young in age and had absolutely no clue how I would support myself, let alone any poor soul who could love me. Perhaps I was bound to lose my way.
[1]Hurricane Camille was a Category 5 cyclone when it made landfall.
