My father was inducted into the Navy at seventeen years old. He was definitely not “military material” so I was surprised, despite World War II and the general national patriotism, that he would have signed up that young. But my father did not enter the Navy waving a flag, he became a Navy man out of a negotiated court agreement after being busted.
What did you get busted for?
Smoking on the dock.* I ran away from home some days earlier. I hooked up with a buddy and he had been encouraging me. He had his own apartment and he was working at the dock. And he said he could get me a job. So I said okay, I’ll do it. I didn’t take any of my clothes figuring it would take my parents a little longer to figure out I had split.
Your body not being there wouldn’t tell them?
I’d goof off a lot. Stay at Whitey’s or wherever. And they had no phone. Phones weren’t such a big thing then.
I stayed in this dude’s place and sure enough he got me a job. It was a hell of a job. It was on the waterfront. At the time there was a sugar refinery across the way. It’s gone now. Jack Frost Sugar and we were getting sugar from Cuba. And it came, big raw sugar, the real raw stuff (what they call raw sugar now they put the molasses back in) It came in 500 lb. burlap sacks and the ship would pull up on the New York side of the river. The Jersey side was too shallow and it had to go on barges. The pier, I would say it was three times the length of this living room (My Laguna Street townhouse) Say it was 50 or 60 feet long. You had this a great big hand-truck and you’d get it by the handles. So what would happen is they’d drop the sugar on your hand-truck. At that point the ship is kind of high and the barge was high. You’d grab that hand truck and you’d run. You’d run your ass off. Not only do you run across the pier, you’d run because you have to get this 500 pounds worth of sugar up this slope. And you got two guys busy kicking ass. As you hit the bottom of the ramp boom they hit you. You still running. Because what happened is if you slowed down that weight and the leverage would roll you back. So I was young and strong, but hot damn a full day’s work of that is something else.
I was young and they had all these signs “loose lips sink ships.” But one of the things they want you to do, because some ships have ammunition is not smoke. Now anyone with good sense knows this damn sugar ship ain’t got a damn thing unless the captain got a piece (e.g. a gun) and they have white boys sitting there on each pier. I get finished and I ‘m tired. When I got out onto the avenue there’s a wind tunnel and I can’t just light a cigarette so I stopped behind the pier, behind a big pillar and fired up a cigarette and this guard busts me for smoking on the dock.
Had I been more of a child of my surroundings I’d a punched him in the chops and ran. It would have saved me a whole lot of trouble. Instead I stand there and I’m talking, “Man I didn’t…” At that very time the guard is changing so there are three jeep loads full of white boys in sailor uniforms. They drop one off, they pick one up. Man comes up and tells me “Smoking on the dock, you’re busted.” They put me in the jeep. This is the week after the Harlem riot.
At that point I am being paraded through New York. This one little Black dude, a couple of jeeps in front, a couple of jeeps in back. I am surrounded by these f’in sailors. Most of them with guns and the people standing on the sidewalk wondering “Now, what did that nigger do?” They got a bunch of Germans over there saying “Heil Hitler,” and a bunch of Italians dealing with El Duce and they got me for being a saboteur.
And so I went through a bunch of New York and they drove me to The Tombs. Now The Tombs at that stage of the game was the most modern municipal lockup in the country. It had electric gates and it was up on the tenth floor so it was escape proof. They took me down to the Tombs and booked me, put me in this cell. I’m in the cell and all around me are brothers. They got this one brother with a bunch of suits. He has his old lady bringing him a clean suit every other day. Guys wearing watches and stuff and all of them are pleading not guilty and they got all this loot in there. I got busted on a Friday and my folks didn’t find out about it until Monday.
That was the point when the judge called me up and looked down on me and said (voiced with an imperious attitude) “You’re Reginald Wadsworth Major?” Now again, he reads me the riot act about smoking on the dock and this and that, there’s no use in me saying shit. So he offers me a choice – one was a joint called Wildwood which is state juvey (juvenile hall) I’d been in juvey thrown in once before the equivalent of Woodside here (San Francisco Juvenile Hall) It was a terrible place and I didn’t want to be part of that, I didn’t want to be locked up, so when he suggested that my patriotism might be used in the Navy** I agreed with him. As a matter of fact I had tried to sign up because I wanted to fly.
So that’s how I got busted, smoking on the dock, and that’s how I got in the Navy.
* Reggie explained that because it was a time of war it was considered an act of terrorism to smoke on a dock where there might be munitions. At the time my father was on the sidewalk end of a pier where munitions were NOT being unloaded.
**At the time Navy was the only branch of the service that admitted seventeen year olds to serve.
Thank you, Devorah, for sharing this. Very interesting. You know my mind was there as he described his story!
I am glad you enjoyed the story. In these days when so many are called terrorist without cause it is interesting to see how the charge evaporated when he joined the Navy. Next week I’ll be putting up some of his Navy stories.