Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life (26 page)

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Authors: Frank Bank,Gibu Twyman

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BOOK: Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life
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Page 129
I was smoking cigarettes.
Yeah, I guess the worst thing about basic training, I did learn to smoke for the first time.
I mean, there's always that thing where they stop you when you're marching on some detail and go, "Smoke 'em if you got 'em." I never smoked 'em. Never had 'em. But somehow, you just seemed like you were missing out if you don't got 'em and don't smoke 'em in the military.
Otherwise, you're just standing there with your finger up your nose.
One day, some guy goes, "Hey, Bank, wanna butt?"
I go, "I got a butt."
Old joke.
He gives me a Pall Mall. I'm choking away on this thing. But the next day I had another one. Within a week, I went to the PX and bought a pack of cigarettes. By the time I left the Army I was smoking two packs a day.
Bivouac week, it might have been three or four.
God knows, it was tough keeping the Commies out of our barracks. A guy can jack around just so much. I needed something else to do while the guys were out there digging holes and dumping in them.
Me and my Pall Malls somehow made it through the week.
Finally, however, the fun of basic training ended. It was time to break up our beloved company. All these fine young Mormon men from Utah are signed up to become Airbone. They are all shipped to Fort Benning, Georgia. Then all these other fine young men signed up to be tank guys, and they sent them to Fort Knox, Kentucky. The rest of the clodbusters wound up to be spearchuckers. They were "111s" and "112s". That's the advanced infantry training. Nothing comes any worse than that.
Then there were two guys in the entire company of 300-and-some-odd who stayed right where they were at Fort Ord.
"Bank and Levine, fall out for BAAC school," the captain hollered.
BAAC stood for Basic Army Administration Course. It was at the top of the hill at Fort Ord. We had to move over two whole barracks for our next assignment in the United States Army.
No sooner did we get there, than we started giving Sgt. Bilko a run for his money in earnest. In fact, not even the Old Bilkmeister, himself, may have topped what happened next in my distinguished military career.
In the Army, it is important to note, you get paid once a month. Key factoid in my next little drama. I don't remember, really, whether it was the last day of the month or the first day of the month. But I was what was called an E-1. That's pond scum. That's the bottom of the scale. That is buck private. That is no-nothin', man.
I got 77 bucks a month.
Likewise, Mr. Levine got 77 bucks a month.
 
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What ever would we do with it all?
We were about to find out.
Our very first night in BAAC school also happened to be payday. That night, these two young, enterprising Jewish boys, Bank and Levine, pooled their $77 and between them had $152. Doing the math are you? OK. The reason we had $152 was that we went to the PX and we got some of that 3.2 beer and two grilled cheese sandwiches each. So we each blew off a buck there.
Then we took the $152 and we decided to introduce ourselves to our new soldier-mates in the latrine with these two little white things with the black spots on them.
We cracked out the dice and we started a crap game.
Now, on that payday, there were half a dozen guys in our company called RAs. RA stood for Regular Army. Those are the morons that are either drafted for two years or the total nimrods that enlist for three years. Al and I were both what were called RFAs. RFAs are Reserve Forces Acts, otherwise known as "Six-Month Wonders."
We were extremely proud of that handle.
Extremely proud, because it did have a certain connotation of intelligence. Meaning we did not fall off the turnip truck, nor did we walk along scraping our knuckles on the ground as the other guys did that were RAs.
So here we are on payday. It's about four hours into the night because the crap game started around 5-ish and Al and I were up, I want to say, about 1,200 bucks.
See, some of these guys got what was called "re-up money." If you signed your name on the bottom line and you re-up, or re-enlist, for three years, you get like three months pay. If you re-up for six years, you get six months pay. We had, like I said, maybe six or eight guys in our little company that made that major patriotic move for their country.
They also liked to shoot dice and we cleaned their clocks.
About four hours after they had received their re-up money, a serious quantity of it had rearranged itself into the pockets of Mssrs. Bank and Levine.
Now, along about this time, about 9-ish, this man who was to become our new superior officer walks into our bunkhouse.
His name was Capt. Jenkins.
Capt. Jenkins comes into the latrine and says, "What's going on in here?"
And one of the guys says, "Just havin' a little crap game, sir."
"You know you boys aren't supposed to be gamblin'," the captain says.
"But," he says, "since it's goin' on . . ."
He reaches into his back pocket and drops 20 bucks down.
I immediately fade him.
 
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I hand the brass the dice. And Capt. Jenkins proceeds to throw an acedeuce.
Craps.
Capt. Jenkins then reaches into his pocket and says, "Well, I'll just try one more.'
About 25 minutes later, we have relieved Capt. Jenkins' wallet of his entire paycheck. Approximately $420.
During that period, we were hotter'n hell ourselves. Our bankroll had grown to over $2,000. All right?
Well, along about 11 o'clock, Capt. Jenkins asks for Bank and Levine to please fall out and meet him outside.
"Boys, you know I can't let you keep that money," Capt. Jenkins says to us.
"Captain, you know we won it fair and square," we retort.
He says, "Look, I'm a married man. I live here on the post and my wife is expecting me to bring home my paycheck."
"Captain," I said. "It wouldn't really be fair. You know you were holding the dice, and you lost the money to us."
"I'm aware of that," he says.
Then he looks directly at us and says, "Boys, here's what I propose to you. You will no longer be privates. You will be E-4. Corporals. You will also get a three-day pass every weekend for the entire amount of time you are at BAAC school."
The way the Army worked for us Six-Month Wonders was: two months of basic training, two months of your MOS training and then two months OJT (On-the-Job Training).
The captain added, "The final stroke . . . you give me the money back and I will make sure you each get a very choice assignment for your last two months."
To this, I mentioned the subject of my '57 Chevy, which I had brought to Fort Ord. They used to make the raw rookie recruits park their cars in this huge old lot like a cattle pen that was all gravel-pitted.
"Captain," I said, "I have this '57 Chevrolet that I really love, and is there a really good parking place somewhere near the barracks?"
Capt. Jenkins must have had some Bilko in him. He really admired the crust I had in asking that question, seeing as how I was standing there with his money in my hands. My car, indeed, would have a new home if we struck a deal, he promised.
"Well, Bank . . . ?" he asked.
I handed him back $210 and Al handed him back $210.
"You boys go on up to the PX and buy some corporal stripes," he said.
And we did. But then we could afford them a little more than we could
 
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have just a few seconds before that.
Remember, an E-1 gets paid $77 a month? E-4 pay was about $180more than double. I gave the guy back $210 and I got four more months to go in the Army. I wound up making money just off the promotion. Not to mention the three-day holidays and the pick at the end of BAAC school. Plus my car no longer had to eat dirt in the ratty parking lot.
Yes, military life was beginning to strike me as really cool.
Somehow, I felt, Milo Minderbender, the scheming quartermaster of Joseph Heller's classic, "Catch-22" would have been proud.
But that, actually, was just the beginning of my Minderbending days in uniform. By now some higher-ups had begun to recognize me as Frank Bank of Lumpy and "Beaver" fame. I also got passes to make movies for Beaver whenever Hollywood needed me.
Capt. Jenkins also had the pleasure of signing those temporary passes so that I could go perform my patriotic duty for Hollywood.
But even better than any getaways to make movies was the gig I wound up with back at Fort Ord. To pay off his craps debt, Capt. Jenkins had promised Al and I would get our choice of plush assignments. Well, I defy anyone to come up with a job to top the one I got. Capt. Jenkins more than kept his word.
That is how I wound up in the 17th Aviation Companyagain stationed at Fort Ord.
Here is what comprised the 17th Aviation Company:
One Maj. Worthington Mahone, pilot.
One Sergeant-Major Milton J. Spritzer.
A typewriter.
An airplane.
A pool table.
One Corporal Frank T. Bank.
Tha-tha-tha-that's all folks.
Here is what the 17th Aviation did to heroically keep America the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Sixty miles down the coast from Fort Ord is Camp Roberts. Camp Roberts is usually a place for Army Reserves and National Guard units to do their two-week summer encampments.
Each morning at 4 o'clock, a small airplane at Fort Ord is loaded up with cartons of milk, butter and half-and-half. After it is loaded up by whatever donkeys are ordered to do so, Maj. Worthington Mahone boards this airplane, gets it up into the bright blue Pacific sky, makes the 10-minute trip over to Camp Roberts. Fresh donkeys take the milk and half-and-half and butter off the plane and over to the mess hall for the summer-camp guys. They wave bye-bye to Maj. Mahone, who flies back, lands the plane, goes
 
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home and goes to bed.
At the same time, the inventory of what Maj. Mahone has just delivered to Camp Roberts is handed to Sgt.-Maj. Spritzer, so he may log how much milk, butter and half-and-half has just been delivered, how much gasoline has been used and how much flying time has been used to accomplish this harrowing mission.
Because this is such a heavy task, Sgt. Spritzer lays it off on his Assistant Company Clerk, Corporal Bank, Esquire. (Did I say I had the cushiest job in the history of the U.S. Army? Now that I think of it, maybe one Sgt.-Maj. Spritzer may have topped it with the awesome duty of handing the piece of paper from Maj. Mahone to Cpl. Bank. But I still had to be a close second.)
I sit down at a typewriter, where I have been painstakingly trained.
I type: "Sixty miles, 22 cases of milk, 20 cases half-and-half, 16 pounds butter. Blah-blah gas."
I throw the report into the "out" box.
I whack my hands together.
Another job well done by your Armed Forces in action.
I spend the rest of the day sharpening up my pool game.
Or going down to the PX and hanging around there, which was, I want to say, almost a block away. Almost. Four barracks away. Outrageous that I had to walk. I should have really gotten a driver from the motor pool. I could have requisitioned one.
You'd think I would have become amazing at the game of pool, but I actually only got fairly good at it, despite all the time I put into it.
You'd also think I would have treated the post rabbi better than I did. But I didn't. One time after finishing my grueling milk-butter, etc., task and heading for the PX, I ran into the good rabbi.
The rabbi looks at me and goes, "Bank, you're a corporal."
"Yes, Rabbi," I said.
"Where are you now?" he said.
"I'm at the 17th Aviation Company."
"Bank, I'm a little disappointed in you," he said.
"What's this?" I asked, already well aware of the answer.
"I haven't seen you at Friday night services since you were in basic training," the rabbi said.
"Rabbi," I said. "I'm gonna make a note of that. I'm going to talk to Cpl. Levine about the same situation. I promise that we will make a very strong attempt to rectify it."
I walked away real sheepishly.
The rabbi was a really good guy.
What am I gonna tell himI've had a three-day pass the last three months and on Friday nights I'm out in L.A. having a good old time?

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