Chapter 1

Older now and hopefully wiser, I often look back over the years to the late 1970s. That was a significant period for me. Today, I see things in the news, on Yewtoob, or on TV shows that amaze and concern me. Most of that is media driven.

Until the 1950s, the usual thing was to finish high school or college and then find a mate. We all felt the drive to marry and raise a family together. A man for every woman, a woman for every man. Marriage allowed us permission to have sex, preferably with your wife.

Starting in the 1960s, women enjoyed the new freedom that the birth control pill allowed. It was the start of the sexual revolution. Before Aids, people fucked a lot, a whole lot! It was indeed a freewheeling time. Sex was casual and happened often. Many times with someone you just met. In the sixties, seventies, and eighties, women liked men. They wanted us a lot, and often!

This story is a blast from my past. It is 5% true, and other than that, and the rest is my own BS. The names and places have been changed to protect the guilty.

Authors Note, I never served in the Army, so don’t fry my bacon over this story. Please, take it as an homage from a fellow serviceman.

I’m William Paul Mooney, or Bill. I joined the US Army in late 1974 and enlisted for four years. Enlisting for a longer period allows you some extra training. Thinking I might want to be a cop someday. I had opted for training as an MP or Military Policeman.

After my training was complete, they sent me to Honolulu, Hawaii. Of all places, I get Hawaii for my first assignment? However, I was to find there were no pretty girls in hula skirts for me. I was posted to a relatively remote base.

Being young and of age, I often went to the enlisted club with other MPs to decompress. We could afford to drink on the base; Honolulu was 20 miles away from our base post and too expensive for us lowly paid swine.

Being an MP meant we were personally held to a higher standard. We were limited to social drinking to set an example for other men. You learned to sip drinks slowly. No drunkenness allowed, period.

So, most of us learned to control our drinking.

As for local people of the fairer sex, we were the undesirables.

Young soldiers don’t make much money. Add our very short army haircuts which made us stick out, and we were ignored or even became a focus for assholes of the male and female variety. We couldn’t get lucky in a whore house with a pocket full of the 50s. So, we stayed on post for the most part.

I also did not have wheels. I have had motorcycles all my life except for my time in Hawaii.

I was assigned to Schofield Barracks for my time in Hawaii. It’s on the western or dry side of the island of Oahu.

The only close town was Wahiawā, which had two churches for every place serving food or liquor.

Native Hawaiians are socially conservative. Being drunk in Wahiawā was strongly frowned upon by them, as well as by the army. It was Okay if you just had to have a big mac or wanted to shop for something.

Thus, low-ranked enlisted men stayed on base most of their time in Hawaii. Occasionally a couple of us would swim at Nanakuli Park or Electric Beach. They were places you could swim or snorkel.

In 1976 Jimmy Carter became president. He started a push to downsize the military as soon as he was in office. He must have had a hard-on for the army because he decimated our ranks. In all honesty, the services had built up too much during the Vietnam War.

During the early stages of the downsizing, you could volunteer and get a fast early out. A couple of days later, you were flying home.

Later on, we just got notified you were getting discharged. I didn’t volunteer to leave, but it didn’t matter. The services had a last-in, first-out thing going. Career guys got to stay, and we newer guys, like me, were sent home. I was discharged in late 1977.

Home was a small farm town between St. Augustine and Palatka, Florida. More like a gas station and a 7-11. It was serious redneck territory with mullet haircuts and pickup trucks. Add a Budweiser between your legs as you drive the country roads, and you begin to get the picture. Hot, dry, flat and empty.

I had one buddy that was from Florida. Bob Howard was from Jacksonville, and he was headed back there. He said his folks had moved further south, so it was mostly going to be him there. I was at loose ends since I was not returning to Podunk, Florida. We decided to team up together for a while.

Bob picked me up at the airport just north of Jax on I-95. He had bought a used 1974 Toyota Corona sedan with two doors. It’s an uglier clone of the Corolla. We arrived at Jax Beach. He had found a tiny old motel that rented efficiency apartments by the day, week, month, or year. It was grubby but cheap.

On the way towards the beach, we saw a VW dealer. Over a late lunch, I asked him if we could swing back by the VW place and I could take a look.

I picked out an ugly 1965 green beetle. It had 42,000 miles and had been there a while. I got it relatively cheap because it needed a paint job. I paid using money orders and drove the bug back to the apartment.

In Hawaii, they had strange banking laws. Most of us kept our money in the credit union. I had withdrawn my money from the credit union and put it into many $100 money orders.

I had spent my years in Hawaii almost entirely on the post. I ate at the chow hall and lived in the barracks. I banked most of my pay.

I stopped at a navy credit union on the way back to the beach. I showed them my recent discharge, and they allowed me to join it. I put the rest of my money orders in their credit union. That took a while. I had been in Hawaii for over 3 years and had spent very little. My pay over all my army years averaged 400 a month. At least $325 went to savings each month.

Every morning I got up and read the newspaper. I was looking for a job I could do. I saw one advertisement for a security company. Hmm, MP and Security were moderately similar. I called them up and talked for a bit. They recommended I bring my DD-214 to prove I had been an MP.

I was hired on the spot. I was issued two uniforms, a heavy-duty leather belt with a giant flashlight attached. I was not an armed guard. I had to go to security school in the evenings for two weeks to get qualified.

They put me on days working with another security guard driving around a country club in a golf cart. The place was way more than a mere country club. It was a city unto itself, with controlled access and all the amenities you can imagine a rich guy wanting.

Less than a month later, I had punched my ticket for Security Guard. I was eventually transferred to an enormous shopping mall. The senior guards got the cushy country club job. I got the night shift at the mall. Three days a week from 7pm til 7am.

From 7pm until 9 nightly, it slowed to a stop. It started at a medium speed and slowed as 9 pm rapidly approached, and everyone eventually departed. We locked the public doors at 9. Some employees would leave soon after using special one-way doors.

Our biggest problem was teenagers. They tended to run in groups. We never hesitated to run unaccompanied teens off. They spend little money, and they often cause trouble.

Once in a while, we had to trespass them. That meant calling the cops and having them run them off permanently.

Bob and I soon rented a regular apartment in Jacksonville on the east side of the river. We split the costs down the middle. We went out weekly for a steak and a few whiskeys. Everybody smoked, so we did too. It was what you did back then. Eventually, we decided going out was getting too expensive. Plus, the barmaids never took us up on our flirting anyway.

That’s half the story. Bob liked to drink whiskey. He drank several bottles a week. Now, I like a good drink of sipping whiskey, but slugging them back all night is bad for your pocketbook and your health. I talked him down from the bar scene.

We were both kinda low-key and were not suave and all that shit. We were not virgins, but we had low experience levels with women. Getting lucky in Hawaii with our short army haircuts was nigh on impossible.

I still ran daily for my health and did some calisthenics in my bedroom. Near the apartment, people looked at you like you were weird if you were jogging or running. I liked how I looked. I realized I looked good when we went to the beach to girl watch. The girls watched me right back now that my hair had grown out some.

After our six months in the apartment, I decided paying rent was a waste of my money. I wanted to buy a house. There was the running issue, and we had noisy neighbors. The kids next door made my sleeping during the day a problem.