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THE SKY-WRITER, PASCO, Friday, June 15, 1945

"Do You, Too, Suffer Much
From the Sailor's Shakes?"

Somewhere in a bar on the shores of Puget Sound—By Special Bar-Fly—Liberty or leave as I am now spending (and I do mean spending) isn't all that it is cracked up to be in a Navy town like Seattle.

There are more white caps here than the South Pacific ever tossed up at any beach party . . . Which doesn't exactly go too far towards a pleasant cruise.

Daytimes, lately, have been spent buying the latest books on "Survival At Sea" and "How The Rover Boys Made Out on Iwo Jima." Also, I've been checking prices on life belts, jackets, rafts and pontoons.

One salesman suggested I get a canoe of a collapsible rubber type in anticipation of my coming sea assignment.

In between these shopping trips I have devoted a lot of time writ­ing letters to Japanese business men exhorting them to toss in the towel.

Talked to Jack Dempsey the other day and the cigar-smoking, husky-voiced Mannassa Mauler let it be known that Okinawa wasn't exactly the Pasco version of a Sacajawea Park Easter egg hunt.

Right now I'm in the midst of an enlightening conversation with two of Seattle's foremost citizens, Goodtime Charlie and Nervous Nate . . . G. T. Charlie says he thinks the war will he over by 1948 or '49, and that if I will buy him another snort, he will tell me about his life in the Navy in the last war.

Nervous Nataniel doesn't say much except that, if he had his way, he'd bring back prohibition and open a speakeasy . . . And he wouldn't mind a drink at all, at all ... At all.

Breaking away from the upper crust, I am now dictating these lines to another ex-serviceman who is taking shorthand while he leads me to a place which he guarantees will be "the good time."

It's "Funland" . . . And I see the "girl, girls, girls" he was talking about are all celleloid [sic] dames. But, I fish out a jit, drop it in the slot and there's "Marge, The Model" doing a brief Highland fling . . . Oh, well. It only cost a nickle. What did I expect, a bullfight?

Seriously, I believe one reason why the Northwest is having such a helluva time recruiting shipyard workers lies on the shoulders of The Fourth Estate Auxiliary, No. 723 (Namely, the radio news commentators). To hear some of the boys make with the mike, you'd swear Japan quit two months ago!

And, then there was one guy in Bremerton who told me that when the crews of three ships heard I was shopping around for an assignment, they left port without ever upping anchor.

Surprising, too, how many girls there are in town that I don't know. So, guess I'll adjourn to another bar across the street where I'll take up the matter with that beauiful pair of blue eyes that "sent me" the other day in Brem­erton.

I'll tell ya some real "sea stories" the next time. So, it's s'long for now from the Gasburner.

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