Tag: Inflation

Just click on “Buy on Amazon” to purchase on line. You can also get this book in audio format. Go to Amazon.ca (Canada) or Amazon.com (US Residents) and type in audible and the book title.

A great memoir. Real cheap.

An excerpt:

“I ONCE KNEW A GUY, a very close friend of mine at the time,
who ate fifteen Big Macs at one sitting. It occurred very late at
night after an evening of drinking and debauchery. It was a small
bet to start with to see how far he could go as he loved Big Macs,
but the challenge progressed nonsensically as we kept egging
him on. Great fun! He did it although he was a wee bit pale at the
end of it all.

Those were carefree days, as all days are carefree when you
are young. And those burgs only cost forty-nine cents each back
then. Not too sure if he ever touched another one after that
though. I do think that he is a vegan today. I can still see in my mind’s feeble eye this same guy being dragged down a set of stairs by his shirt collar by a tall buxom blonde Norwegian gal who truly was an Amazon Olympian at
six feet and some. Very athletic and, as my friend told it later the
next day, very ambidextrous, triple-jointed.

This blatant kidnapping occurred at a country and western
club that we called the “Hug and Slug”—a colloquial term for
the Army, Navy and Air Force Club, so called by all the
WESTPAC Widows that frequented this abode. An appropriate
name, I can tell you. WESTPAC Widows were those women
married to sailors who were deployed from home in the Western
Pacific operating areas for very long periods of time. To normalize,
these widows would frequent this country and western bar
every Friday and Saturday night for a bit of dancing fun and then
some. And we, being the young and restless lads that we were—
naïve, thank God, and wet behind the ears—were navy recruits
who were alone from home for the very first time and were
delighted to provide the required entertainment, for we yearned
for motherly comfort. This was also a time when very long hair
was the fashionable norm so we, with our newbie brushed and
navy white-walled haircuts, were social outcasts, as the saying
goes, especially at the bars, the discos, and the dance halls of this
parochial port town. Yes we would tempt our fate from time to
time and test our sense of belonging and manhood at these
discotheques, but after striking out early we would all head down
to the ole “Hug and Slug” to test the waters. It never disappointed.

Country and western clubs are extremely down to earth,
value oriented, and patriotic, old-fashioned, but all-welcoming
fun. We would end up having a great time there to the wee hours
dancing with these widows to such memorable tunes as “All My
Ex’s Live in Texas” by George Strait. Or the equally memorable
and nostalgic “Ten Tall Beers with a Shooter of Whiskey Is All It
Took.” Great stuff! A good time was had by all, for these women
could not have cared less about our appearance. As long as we
had some hair on the top of our heads, that was all that mattered.
And my friend? Battered and bruised by the pounding he took on
those stairs and helpless as he was, he had a very big smile on his
face for he knew his fate. She wore a determined and predatory
look if I ever saw one and was, as I recall, entirely attuned to her
prey and purring, “You’re coming home with me, sonny boy.”
“Oooooookay!” he whimpered. To us, “See ya!”