Jack Brown

“It was rare that I escaped the confines of Columbia when one fine fall Saturday in October 1943, demerit free, I was given a 12-hour pass starting at noon. I wasted no time in abandoning ship and hotfooting it over to 128th Street to catch the subway bound for Times Square, the heart of the great U.S. metropolis.

With a quickstep, I boarded and held on in wonderment as the electric-powered marvel, like a giant mole, sped through dark tunnels. At each stop, more people squeezed in than out so that we hung suspended from straps gripped firmly in hand while those without were kept in place by bodies closing in on all sides. At Times Square, all exited en masse into the brightly lit station, where throngs more were waiting to get on.

I couldn’t distinguish which of the passages was egress and was carried by the crowd up and out of the mole’s hole into the crisp autumn air tainted with the exhaust of cabs, buses and some private automobiles. I stood on the sidewalk as long as the passing people would allow and gawked at the neon signs extolling their virtues of Lucky Strike, Heineken’s, Baby Ruth, Dance Land and other ways to spend my money. Then I was forced into walking, a sort of shoving match block after block, before I ducked into a pub for respite.

Inside was just as crowded with lines at each watering hole. The drinkers were 90 percent military from the lowest rank to the highest gold braiders.

‘Gimme a beer,’ I shouted over the din of voices.

Expecting the frothy glass I was accustomed to in the brewery city of Milwaukee, I was given a bottle with a glass over the top, passed through three sets of hands. I handed over two dollars, which passed back through the same hands. The bartender grabbed the bills and, stuffing one into his pocket and ringing up the other, ignored my outstretched palm. It was one for the bar, one for the bartender and no change for me, the young would-be officer.”

Jack at midshipman school, Columbia University, NY

USS Kern-AOG2 pumping 100 octane at Pelilu


Deck apes aboard the Kern

An early writing gig of mine was to type and edit a devoted local doctor’s autobiography, a well-meant, albeit shallow chronology, including a family trip to see his older sister in Hollywood, service in the Pacific during WWII aboard the USS Kern-AOG2 (which probably provided the fuel for the Enola Gay), treating U.S. astronaut Deke Slayton’s parents, grisly off-color accounts as a county coroner, and other community and family events. Though every life can be a wonder and feat, perhaps there is an argument to be made for oblivion.

 

Location: New York, NY, USA

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