After listening to a full 30 minutes of her whining, I had a feeling there were many other reasons her husband had not taken her away for some love making.
Jim had started to play with a scanner that some other Marine had brought down to the beach. He was listening in on the various frequencies and became lost in his own world.
Jess continued nonstop. “Why aren’t you playing with my daughter? Why aren’t you whisking me off to make love in that flea-infested trailer? Why won’t you get in the water? Why won’t you build me a rocket ship?” And on and on she went.
Her husband simply turned up the volume on the scanner.
She finally told her daughter that she would play with her. Lloyd had played with her in the ocean most of the day, but he was now ready to sit next to the fire pit and relax with a beer and a hot dog.
So Jess and her daughter went off to play volleyball while Jon and Lloyd got into a discussion about surfing. Beenie and I settled back to cheer the players on.
Volleyball nets had been set up all along the beach. About fifty feet away were large cement fire pits set deep in the sand. They had been used heavily that day. Although it was July, the weather was overcast and cool.
Anyway, someone volleyed the ball to Jess, who hit it out of bounds. You guessed it. It went off in the direction of the fire pit.
She yelled, “I’ll get it!” We watched as Jess, who stands all of 4’9”, ran straight toward the fire pit. The ball had rolled past it.
No one said a word of warning because we figured no one could miss a giant fire pit. No one flinched until she flipped ass over elbow into the damn fire pit! Her tiny body disappeared beneath the surface.
Beenie and I jumped up screaming, “Oh, my God! Jess is on fire!” As I ran toward her, I yelled back at Jon, “Get a towel. Get it wet. Jess is on fire!”
By the time we got to Jess, she was climbing out of the pit. She looked like a Phoenix rising from the ashes!
While there was no fire in the pit, Jess had landed on hot embers, which had burned her entire hand.
She was brushing away tears as we began to fuss over her. Even the strangers she had been playing with gathered to check on her. Jon and Lloyd rushed over with wet towels while her daughter tried to hug her.
Her husband, however, remained sitting in his chair, listening to the scanner. I screamed at him, “Jim! Your wife was just on fire!”
He looked up, looked her over, and went right back to the scanner.
The rest of the evening was awkward, to say the least. Jess was trying to make jokes about falling into the fire pit. I actually think she was embarrassed that her husband had ignored her.
Beenie and I were doing our best to distract her. Since she hadn’t even yelled at him, we were holding our breath waiting for the inevitable explosion.
Jess started poking fun at herself when we checked the ice on her hand. I told her she would be fine, that “Johnny Tremain” had turned out OK and so would she.
I was referring to a popular book for elementary school students. It’s the story of a Colonial-era youth who became disabled when he burned his hand.
I guess she had read the book, but didn’t see the humor in my comment. She abruptly stood up and asked her husband to take a walk with her. It was obvious she needed to talk with him.
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. We thought she was finally going to let him have it.
As they walked up and down the beach, we could hear her screaming. Her poor daughter just sat in her chair. No one said a word.
We could see Jess’s tiny frame in the distance—waving her hands and gesturing. As her volume rose, we did our best to try and ignore it.
Then she pointed at me and I heard the words, “Johnny Tremain.” Right then Lloyd, who had gone to the restroom (alone), showed up. “Mollie, she’s mad at you for calling her a cripple,” he explained. “She’s been going on about it for ten minutes.”
That did it. Jon and I grabbed our chairs and left. The base may not have provided fireworks, but we had gotten a “fire show” and enough “explosions” to last us for a year.
Naturally, the Fourth of July is a big holiday on base. And we had some amazing Fourth of July parties. However, Jon never made it to another after Jess caught on fire.
Since many of the men were deployed during the summer, the wives went all out for this celebration. It was the last holiday before the men came home!
Our Navy neighbors across the street invited us over to their backyard to watch the spectacular fireworks. We would pile in, grill out, eat cupcakes, drink beer, and watch the fireworks.
At one party I managed to get wasted while playing horseshoes. A five-foot tall, 100-pound spouse going through a deployment should not be given heavy metal horseshoes to throw around, especially if she is drunk.
There are pictures circulating of me wearing a tiny Uncle Sam top hat while drunkenly throwing horseshoes at people. How anyone avoided serious bodily injury is a miracle.
It was not my best moment. Good thing I limit drinking to parties. After that day, I started to think that even that was too often.
HALLOWEEN
We always had the fall months together and thoroughly enjoyed them.
Halloween has always been a favorite holiday. With all the kids on base, I was so excited about trick-or-treat time. Jon and I went all out carving pumpkins and putting costumes on them. One year we had Hajji pumpkins with full headdresses.
Jon was usually in the field during trick-or-treat hours, so Michelle and I would sit in lawn chairs in the driveway and hand out candy.
One year a Marine family dressed up as members of the band KISS. Even the three-year-old was in full KISS gear. We got the biggest kick seeing these big masculine Marines dress up in costumes along with their kids.
Jon and Beenie’s birthdays were near Halloween, so we would plan huge costume parties. We had music, cake, and prizes for the best costumes. It was excellent to see all these Marines cut loose and get dressed up.
One year, Christa and I dressed as Sigfried and Roy. Another couple was Clementine and Dangle from Reno 911—tiny shorts and all. All the couples really got into making their costumes and trying to outdo last year’s design.
We would hold the party in our garage—moving couches out there and putting up lights and decorations everywhere.
The fall and winter holidays came right before scheduled deployments, so they became a way for all of us to blow off steam. We enjoyed them to the fullest.
Thanksgiving has turned into my next favorite holiday and I owe it all to the Corps. It is the one holiday that nearly all military families spend together.
Our tradition is centered on the turkey. No one can fry up a Thanksgiving turkey like Beenie’s husband. Once you have had a fried turkey, you won’t want it any other way. You will risk burning a hand or even your entire home just to have a turkey fryer out back.
My husband had to serve duty on our first Thanksgiving together. I remember taking Jon a plate and sitting with him in a tiny office as we ate our dinners. We sat and watched a movie together, then I headed home.
Beenie’s dad, who lived in Las Vegas, would sometimes join us. Boy, was he a treat! His hobbies included gambling, undergoing plastic surgery, and dating as many young ladies as possible.
I would tease Ed: “Oh, Ed if I wasn’t married, and just a few years younger!” He loved it. No one really knew how old he was because he looked amazing—a bit like Ricardo Montalban, but with this great mustache. He was really debonair, and a huge flirt. Ed would take turns socializing with everyone while nursing his Crown Royal.
At our second Thanksgiving together we had just said the blessing over the meal. Beenie’s first child, Grace, just six months old, was sitting in a walker beside the table. I was next to Autumn, who was next to Ed, who was next to the baby at the end of the table.
Ed stood up after the blessing and started to say something. The next thing Autumn and I knew, Ed looked at us and then seemed to leap backward like a cheerleader at a football game prepping for a back flip.
As he was flying through the air, I saw that the baby was directly in his path. Nor could I do anything to stop what surely was going to happen.
He went flying through the air and bounced off the baby in her walker. Once he landed on the ground, we saw that not one drop of his Crown Royal had spilled.
Grace was screaming, but more from fright than pain. Apparently he had missed her by inches.
The men pulled Ed up off the ground. As they did, he exclaimed, “My leg atrophied.” I have never seen an atrophied leg, but I had just seen a 70plus-year-old man cut a back flip at Thanksgiving dinner. Who knew a little Crown Royal could do that?
Beenie missed the entire incident, but Autumn and I being Aries and horribly immature, had to excuse ourselves and go into the garage for major giggle fits several times during the evening.
To this day Jon and I have kept our military tradition of frying a turkey at Thanksgiving. We will either spend the holiday with members of our military family or invite friends over who are unable to go home for the holidays.
Our prayers of blessings and thanks are always focused on our military family wherever they may be in the world.
CHRISTMAS COMPETITIONS
Base housing neighborhoods go wild at Christmas. The competition starts when the first dad climbs on the roof to put up lights. The obsession of “yard of the quarter” hits its zenith in December. The designated parking space at the commissary is awarded to the house with the best holiday decorations.
However, the spot is not as prestigious as the respect from the other men in the neighborhood when your home has the best holiday decorations.
I have to say Del Mar housing had some bizarre decorations. Maybe it was because we were in California and everyone was trying to be politically correct, or maybe it’s because there were just more options for decorations at Wal-Mart.
Some of the houses were adorned with Mexican Santas—very tan, very festive Santas. Neither white, nor Black, but definitely Latino.
One of our neighbors had this bizarre blow-up reindeer that was over nine feet tall. He would climb up on his roof, complete with night vision goggles, and scope out the competition in the neighborhood before blowing up his monster reindeer.
This made the wives nervous. Here was someone with night vision goggles looking in our yards at night. (Keep in mind that I had a trampoline in my backyard that neighborhood parents were just as fond of “playing” on as the kids!)
My personal favorite decoration was the one in the Colonel’s yard down the street. He had a light-up Santa seated in a wheelchair. I wondered if Santa had had an accident while trying to get down a chimney.
It was great fun to drive around base housing checking out the lights. Some houses were just over the top.
One of our Bunco ladies, Sally, had lost her husband in Iraq and it was her first Christmas without him. Whenever she would come down to the base to play Bunco with us, she often stayed at my girlfriend Karen’s house.
At night those two would go wild. The Officers’ Club was just behind our neighborhood, so those two would take a shortcut by cutting through the tall grass.
Every time Sally came down for a visit, two things would happen: they would “drunk dial” me at two in the morning, and the reindeer decorations would be rearranged to make it look like they were humping each other.
The coital reindeer raised some eyebrows in Del Mar housing. The few teens in the neighborhood were getting blamed, but I knew it was all the work of one woman: Sally from the Valley.
Look, she had lost her husband in the war against terrorism. I think she should be allowed to blow off a little steam.
Sally became an inspiration to us. Humping reindeer aside, she showed us that life goes on, and it is all about attitude.
HOLIDAY WISHES FROM A DRUNK POGUE
Our first Christmas on base started off on the wrong foot. With the holidays approaching we looked for an opportunity to share a little Christmas cheer before we traveled to see our families throughout the United States.
Jon’s first deployment with Second Battalion, First Marines, was in January. This was going to be our first Christmas on base and our last holiday before deployment.
The deployment was getting close so we wanted a festive gathering. Jon and I decided on a holiday “wine and cheese party.”
No offense to Grunts, as I am deeply in love with one, but my attempts at a sophisticated, elegant party stopped at the invitation. Even the fact that I had sent out invitations was, by the guys’ standards, “gay.”
I should have known better and planned a beer and pretzel party instead, but hindsight is 20/20. I tried really hard for the sake of the women. We had had so much fun getting dressed up for the Ball. I wanted another chance to feel elegant.
I even attempted to make fondue. Here’s my recipe for Grunt family fondue: heat up Cheese Whiz.
I did get a bunch of gourmet cheeses and Brie (whatever that is) from a grocery store off base, but I didn’t have matching wineglasses. But I did have glasses I had collected from the restaurants I had worked at over the years.
I told everyone to bring his or her favorite wine, which translated to the wives bringing their favorite wine coolers and twelve packs of beer for the men.
Mostly, I just wanted the evening to be fun. The women had hung out with each other while the guys had worked together for nine months. But this was going to be the first official gathering we had had in our home.
We were proud to have the 2nd Lieutenants from the battalion in our home. The Christmas tree was up and I thought it looked darling. It was our first Christmas tree together.
There were many things to be proud of that night, but the disaster that happened was not one of them.
Beenie was about six months pregnant with her first baby. Although Lloyd was not in my husband’s battalion, she had spent so much time with us at the beach and playing Bunco that it seemed natural to include them. Besides, Lloyd had gone through TBS with all of these guys.