Through the good offices of the Oil King of Breckenridge, Texas, Bob Henderson, it was our fortune to meet Vice Admiral Wm. Shoemaker. We were gathered in Bob’s magnificent home in Los Angeles, formerly occupied by Mary Pickford and Mary Miles Minter (on the q. t., folks, you’ll have to admit it was pretty soft for a decrepit old Robbinsdale farmer) indulging in the ornery duties of testing the champagny contents of Robert’s cellar.
It was while the sparkling bubbles bubbled that the subject of a visit to Admiral Shoemaker’s Pacific fleet bobbed up. Next day we received a personal invitation from the Admiral, who insisted that we board his barge at the San Pedro dock. On the Red River of the North my Dad hauled wheat for the Northern Pacific railroad in a barge and not having been on speaking terms with naval language I assumed that a barge was a heluvan ugly looking thing.
Imagine my surprise, please, when the bare-foot jackies heaved ho with an immaculate launch with three golden stars. Pretty soft for a hardened old rascal, I claim. We rolled on to the Flagship “Pennsylvania” and were greeted by the Admiral’s aide, Lieut. L. S. Lewis. It was my first view of a battleship and at once I was impressed with the fact that the “Pennsylvania” probably could have licked any of the numerous boats that father once owned on the Red River. I was surprised to learn that the 14-inch guns I had read about were really about 40 feet long instead of 14 inches.
Anyway, we had a delightful time aboard the “Pennsylvania” and it was the first time in my life I ever cussed Josephus Daniels (say it sweet and low: “gawsch darn him”) I had to drink tea. But the Admiral was a wonderful fellow—hale, hearty and well met. We exchanged anecdotes and spent a grand, though dry afternoon. Lieutenant Lewis and his crew of noblemen returned us to the dock in the starry BARGE.
Now in the day of retrospection I fain would believe that the Admiral or his aide must have been in collusion with the “Pennsylvania” gobs because every last one of them either was bare-footed or reading Sam Clark’s Jim Jam Jems or the little old Banger. Wonderful fellows, these jackies, but the pesky cusses just insisted on looking onward and upward (mostly upward) when the fairly formed feminines in the party mounted from deck to deck. They just couldn’t control their naughty eyes. Possibly it had something to do with Bull of the Durham, for I am told that the sailor boys love to roll their own.
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Now, Gentle Readers of this journal of uplift, I have one little wee surprise for you. Gus, my old time hired man, who jumped the job two months ago, located and surprised me at the Alexandria. Gus is a pestiferous cuss and has the faculty of bobbing up at the crucial moment. My “supply” had given out and promptly, even more promptly than had been his will to paint boats at Breezy Point Lodge, he supplied the missing medicine. It was “terrible stuff” but with the sailor boys I’ll say—Any port in a storm. His juniper juice created a tempest within me but I was glad nevertheless once again to shake the hoary hand of toil.
In parting I slipped Gus a five simoleon note. He whispered that he was “on the rocks” and hadn’t worked since he left Minnesota. We then and there entered into a gentleman’s agreement that he never again would work for me unless his duties would be solely acting as Indian guide at Breezy Point at a wage of nothing—except the maternal or fraternal friendship of Maggie, our cook. Gus loves Maggie, I think, but better still, he loves her flapjacks.
Adios to you, Gustav, and here’s hoping I don’t see you till the fishing season next spring.
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