Is a tale I should be ashamed of and would be if it wasn’t so damned funny.
Like most things at the time, it began in Kodiak as I was planning a trip to Seattle for some reason or another. Somebody’s kid asked me if I’d stop in an Army/Navy store and pick him up one of those training grenades.
Of course I was planning on an Army/Navy store trip anyway, so I agreed.
The instant I got off the plane in Seattle I was met by a friend of mine that was somewhat of a jailhouse lawyer in that he was always scheming to get rich at someone else’s expense. It made for interesting company, as listening to schemes and haywire ideas is always entertaining.
He immediately brought me to the nearest ginmill where we met up with a couple of guys I knew that owed me a couple of favors.
They tried to pay me back with a trip to some damned cat house. I tried to beg off, but they insisted and to make this part of a long story short, we got kicked out after I said something that I will not post here.
Getting chased out of a whorehouse by some tall skinny guy wielding a straight razor makes for a pretty good beginning to a trip to Seattle.
We went back to the ginmill and proceeded to get pretty slopped up. I sacked out on my friends couch which was par golf in those days. He offered the couch because he knew that the money he saved me on motels would mean I had more money for beer.
The next day I did most of my shopping, mainly Levi 501s and Pendleton shirts at J.C.Penny’s and from there we made the obligatory Army/Navy store run for a few odds and ends.
There was a small pail of training grenades on the counter and I examined them. They had actual fired fuses in them which meant we could reset the hammers so that the spoon would fly off when the pin was pilled.
I snagged a couple and the clerk made an offer. If I bought the entire pailful I could keep the pail.
I decided that was a pretty good deal as they were cheap anyway so I snagged the pail and the rest of our goods and garbage, paid the man and off we went.
There was a bench nearby and the pair of us busied ourselves by resetting the fuse-hammers in all six or eight of the grenades. Then we put them back in the pail and threw then into the pickup and hit the road.
This was back in the days before everyone had air conditioning and people drove around with open windows.
Later that afternoon some thuggish looking guy cut us off. I was driving and my angry pal told me to pull up alongside that greasy bastard at the next light, which I did. I had nearly gotten into a pretty good accident over that and wanted to at least chew the jerk out.
We pulled up next to the guy at a stale red light and then my pal simply picked one of the grenades out of the pail, pulled the pin and as soon as the spoon flew off he tossed it in the guy’s window.
Panic ensued. The guy stuffed his car into park and bailed out right in the middle of traffic and ducked behind his car waiting for the thing to erupt.
At the same time the light turned green and we drove off feeling pretty good about ourselves.
We spent the rest of the early part of the afternoon finishing up a couple of errands and by then we were famished. Chinese food sounded pretty good so we pulled parked on the street and wandered into the Chinese joint we saw about a half-block earlier.
I noticed my pal stuffed another grenade into his pocket but I forgot about it as I was pretty hungry. We had skipped breakfast and lunch.
Now this wasn’t one of the of the run of the mill Chinese buffets they have these days on every block. This was an Old School chop suey joint that you don’t see much of these days. I mourn their passing as they were great places to eat exceptionally well on short money.
For one thing the place was owned and operated by a family where at least the parents had been born in China. These days a lot of Chinese restaurants are run by second and even third generation Asians. The Chinese accent some of these people use these days is somewhat of a put-on as over the years I have overheard a couple of them in the back room sounding like they came from the corner of ‘Toidy-toid Street an’ Toid Ave.’
The waiter spoke pretty broken English and sounded a lot like something out of an old movie. In the movies a person like this would have had a name like Hop Sing or something along these lines.
We sat down and ordered and the waiter must have noticed the ball cap my pal was wearing. It came from an Alaskan cannery. The waiter asked if we were from Alaska. When I said we were, he seemed interested.
Of course, we knew why. Alaskans have a reputation of being pretty damned good tippers if the service is good. What people generally forget is that they are also the worst if service is lousy. Among people that work with the public, the stories often grow with each retelling.
Anyway, it was pretty obvious that this guy was fishing for a pretty hefty tip and he probably would have gotten one if he hadn’t made it obvious. Another thing Alaskans hate is having someone fish for a tip and this guy had his long lines baited and set. We were being fished. We knew it.
The look of wordless communication my pal and I shared said it all. This waiter was going to get stiffed.
We ate and paid the bill. As we got up to leave the waiter asked us if we had forgotten anything. I was about to innocently say “No.” when my pal looked at him.
“Here’s a little something for you,” he said, pulling the grenade from his pocket and pulling the pin. The spoon flew off and he tossed it to the waiter.
The look of surprise and fear on his face was pretty funny to look at, but the panic that instantly followed was not. It was the most terrified look I had ever seen on someone’s face before.
The waiter went straight into a state of total panic and threw the grenade as hard as he could through the store front window and the safety glass exploded.
The cast iron grenade kept on going where an oncoming car caught it in the windshield putting a pretty good set of cracks in it.
I looked at my pal, and simply shook my head. “Well, Stanley, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us in to,” I said and calmly held my hand out toward the open space where the window used to be.
“After you,” he replied and with that we stepped through the gaping storefront window, passing by a couple customers who were dealing with shattered glass all over their tables.
We walked down to the truck and I snagged my pal’s ball cap and used it to obscure the license plate and we drove off calmly. At the end of the block we make a right and then proceeded to zigzag through the streets of Seattle until we were several miles away. We got on the interstate and headed north towards Bellingham.
When we were safely on the interstate, I looked and picked up the rest of the grenades and dumped them all into my pack.
“It is obvious that these hand grenades should be placed in the hands of someone responsible,” I said.
“Who do you have in mind?” he asked.
“Adam Josten’s eight year-old son,” I replied, solomnly.
“You may be right,” he said. “I guess we did more damage with a dummy grenade than we could have done with a live one.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
A couple hours later we were in Bellingham and maybe I’ll tell you how that went down one of these days.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
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