A new fellow arrived from Germany, Tom Mc Cann. Thankfully Tom had a bit of life about him
and was almost Irish, so at long last I had a decent partner in crime. Tom lived in Stowmarket so from a social
aspect we couldn’t really meet up that often, which probably was a good
thing. The occasional blow out would
have been acceptable but anymore would be frowned on. As was the wife swapping. Somebody had snitched. It wasn’t me, I fact I probably wouldn’t know
how to report such a thing or who to report it to. But somebody did and the Station Commander
was most definitely not impressed. Vic
and I were summoned to the Station Commanders office. It was a pleasant meeting, thankfully. He explained that he was worried that once
the news of the wife swapping got out, the community would fracture. Our job was to strengthen the community,
provide more functions and entertainment oh and by the way, I was now the bar
manager.
Normally the committee would have elected the bar manager but
in this situation the Station Commander was stepping in. No one was going to argue with the Station Commander,
especially me. It certainly was a boost
in my drive for promotion. The one thing
I couldn’t control was the time limit; I would have to serve a minimum of three
years at my present rank before I would be eligible for promotion, and then start
all over again. The wife swapping air trafficker
had got himself into a little trouble, on top of his sexual shenanigans, and I was
giving him a lift in and out of work, when I was on duty. Whether his lifestyle was caused by certain
events or whether the events caused his lifestyle I’ll never know. But it was interesting watching and listening
to events as they unfolded.
He had one divorce under his belt, two suicide attempts, both
failed by the way, and the air force had taken over his finances. Every Friday he would have to report to
accounts where he would be given some cash.
This would have to provide food for him and his two children for the
following week. He had got himself in so
much debt that the air force had taken over his bank account and was trying to
dig him out of the hole he had dug himself in to. It was certainly a pretty poor career position
to be in, so sometimes I would feel sorry for him, no matter what you lot think, I
am human, almost. Now of course he was to
be posted. This is where I could never
understand the logic of the air force.
You would think that a group of people being posted to break up a wife
swapping ring would get the more undesirable postings. Maybe they would be posted to some remote
Scottish Island where the cold air would dampen the ardour but no. This fellow was posted to Gibraltar, oh and
by the way, why not have a little promotion on your way.
It certainly makes you think about what is going on, well it
did me. Suddenly you wonder if it is all
worth it. He was almost bragging to me that
he was off to Gibraltar for three years, with promotion, and all his little misdemeanour's would be forgotten about, he was being given a clean slate. The only reason I could think for this to
happen would have been that the Station Commander had been involved in the wife
swapping. On the one hand it was nice to
think that the air force were not going to hold a grudge and that you could resurrect
yourself, but I wasn't sure, if you shoot yourself in the foot you should have
the decency to limp. It certainly made
me reconsider all my options and I reaffirmed to myself that I was on the right
path which was to work harder than I had ever done before, and to get promoted
faster than anyone had ever done in the past.
And secretly wish that in some way or the other they would all get their
comeuppance, because, in a way, their behaviour did reflect badly on the rest
of us and I was no angel myself.
A month or two after he left for Gibraltar I met the fellow
again and he told me that on arrival in Gibraltar he had been given an arrival brief. During this meet and greet chat, a file had
been produced and he was told that despite the fact that the file existed, and
that it contained every little detail about him and his past, it wouldn't be mentioned
or taken in to account again, if he stayed out of trouble and debt. I’m not sure if that’s torture or not but suddenly, to me at least, his get out of jail free card didn't seem to be worth much,
despite the sunshine. With the wife swappers
going and me now holding the most powerful position in the families club I
could now let my creative juices flow. I
had noticed that there were very few Americans coming in to the club and
decided to focus on finding out what they required from the club, after all it
was their club too.
John Lanzafame was my main link into the American air force
so he encouraged one or two of his buddies to come along. I managed to get two of them to volunteer to
be bar staff. It was an interesting situation
where I couldn’t pay my bar staff money and up until I had taken over, the only
form of payment they would receive would be if someone bought them a drink or
gave them a tip, a sort of keep the change type gesture. As I was a wizard with mathematics I was able
to employ a little creative accounting and provided anyone working as bar staff,
for the evening, a couple of free drinks.
The first volunteer was a fellow called Craig Scritchfield; he was a firefighter
and a great giggle. I think he would be
classed as a red neck and he used to entertain us all with stories from the
states.
I think he may have been suitable material to become a good
ol boy. The bar had to close every evening at eleven o clock on the dot. For specific functions or parties I would
have to apply to the Station Commander for permission to stay open later. Needless to say, sometimes this rule was
ignored and the bar would stay open to dawn.
We were not alcoholics, or addicted to drink, but sometimes the craic would
be so good we just forgot about time. Of
course it would mean that at breakfast time you were off your trolley and I do
remember one such breakfast time. Craig
had married a local English girl from Ipswich. She had a reputation for
throwing things at him. He believed that
staggering home at breakfast time might put him in the getting shouted at
category so he came up with a brilliant idea, as most drunks do.
Craig had a huge minibus type vehicle which was always parked
on his drive as it was too fecking big to go in to his garage. He decided that we would both sneak around to
his house. He would grab a spanner and
roll under his truck, pretending to be working on it, while I would arrive at
the front door, knock and ask if he was coming out to play. This probably shows how drunk I was as I
agreed to do it. Craig’s wife wasn’t so easily
fooled and she demanded that he get into his house immediately before the
neighbours saw the fool. As I walked
away I began to try to identify the objects being thrown inside the house from
the sound they made as they ricocheted off the walls.
The other fellow John Lanzafame had brought didn’t volunteer
for bar duty but his wife did. Peggy
Sue. Peggy Sue was great fun and was
liked by most people and was a great little worker. Normally my bar staff would roll in on a Sunday
evening and choose which shifts they would like to work during the following week. One Sunday evening Peggy Sue’s husband came
in and came to the bar. He asked me for
a pint of beer and I poured one, presented it to him and said that it was free,
on the house, as a sort of thank you for all the hard work his wife had put
in. He refused to accept the free beer
and insisted that he would pay for it.
Strange, but I followed the maxim that the customer was always
right. “Where is Peggy Sue anyway?” I asked, as I hadn’t seen her for a few days.
“She’s fine,” he said, sipping at his beer. “She’s stateside.” “She’s in America?” I asked, thinking that it
was strange she had never mentioned anything about going home. “Yeah,” says her husband. “I got a letter from her this morning and she
says the syphilis has nearly cleared up!”
This is where he took his beer and turned away, leaving the bar, to sit
on his own. He finished the beer and
left. I thought it the strangest thing
to say and couldn’t work out why he would say such a thing, but the following
day everything was explained to me. I
was running the wife swopping air trafficker home after work when he asked if I
could drop him at the special clinic in Ipswich. I didn’t know what a special clinic was and
had to ask. It seems that one evening there
was a small group in the bar and they had been talking about sexual preferences
or specific turn-ons. Peggy Sue had said
that her fantasy was to have sex with four men at once, on a pool table. I could never play on that pool table again,
but I was content that if the air force didn’t provide karma, Mother Nature
would step in instead.
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