Bill's Memoir

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=120 BGCOLOR="#FFCCFF" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0453f781egdyul.gif"> <div> <B>Bill's Memoir</B></div> <bR> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=190 BGCOLOR="#CCFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <a href="http://bar.hit-counter.udub.com/stats/w/wks/" target="_top"><img border="0" alt="Free Web Page Hit Counter" src="//bar.hit-counter.udub.com/counter/index.php?u=wks&s=scoreboard" ALIGN="middle" HSPACE="4" VSPACE="2"></a><br><a href="http://www.lasikeyesurgery.com/lasik-eye-surgery/Florida/Miami/" target="_top"><font color="#666666">Lasik Miami</font></a> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Scroll down for</B></div> <div> <B>Memoir and Photos</B></div> <div> <B>         </B></div> <div>  <IMG SRC="04790a20.gif" border=0 width="144" height="162" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="_"><U><IMG SRC="0491f1f0.gif" border=0 width="31" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B>Memoir Part 2</B></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="memoir3"><U><B><IMG SRC="04a1f1f0.gif" border=0 width="31" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B>Memoir Part 3</B></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="memoir4"><U><B><IMG SRC="04a1f1f0.gif" border=0 width="31" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B>Memoir Part 4</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="nnnn"><U><B><IMG SRC="04c1f1f0.gif" border=0 width="31" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B>Memoir Part 5</B></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="memoir6"><U><B><IMG SRC="04a1f1f0.gif" border=0 width="31" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A></FONT><B>Memoir Part 6</B></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><IMG SRC="04a1f1f0.gif" border=0 width="31" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">  <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B>Memoir Part 7</B></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id23.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="memoir8"><U><B><IMG SRC="04a1f1f0.gif" border=0 width="31" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B>Memoir Part 8</B></FONT></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Photos</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id24.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Northern Ontario Canada"><U><B><IMG SRC="05026270.gif" border=0 width="38" height="39" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B>Canada Trip </B></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id29.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="lp1"><U><B><IMG SRC="05126270.gif" border=0 width="38" height="39" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B>Last Patrol</B></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id32.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Navy1"><U><B><IMG SRC="05026270.gif" border=0 width="38" height="39" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B>My Navy</B></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id36.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Family"><U><B><IMG SRC="19226270.gif" border=0 width="38" height="39" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B>Family</B></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="id45.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="hurricane"><U><B><IMG SRC="1841f1f0.gif" border=0 width="31" height="31" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B>Hurricane</B></FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=360 BGCOLOR="#CCFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <a href=http://www.MADEinUSA.org/clk.cgi><img src=http://www.MADEinUSA.org/musaorg.cgi></a> <bR> <div>          </div> <div>                 <IMG SRC="062c8240.gif" border=0 width="200" height="36" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>I Didn't Do It Alone</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>A Memoir</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Copyright W.K. Bill Scott  August 2003</B></div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="040f03e0.jpg" border=0 width="240" height="318" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>Norfolk, Virginia  1968</B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Prologue</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>My life may not be great to others, but to me it has been one of steady progression, never dull, often exciting, often tired, and lonely, but always learning.  Somewhere back down the years I decided, or my nature decided for me, that I would be a teller of stories.   ---- Louis L'Amour</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Carole is the worlds worst when it comes to throwing anything away.  Albums and boxes full of photographs, drawers full of letters and other memorabilia, as well as souvenirs of all sorts are located though out the house.  On occasion, we would go though this large stack of stuff and try to get it organized.  I was always interested in doing new things, and let history be history so I gave little thought to the importance of the junk that kept accumulating. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Several friends, and the children would listen as I told stories about my time in the Navy.  I showed photographs and other items from the disorganized stack.  Mom enjoyed my stories and told me to write a book.  So here's to you Mom.     </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>I am in my twilight years.  Carolyn and I celebrated our 50th anniversary in June 2001.  It was then that I decided to write my life story, one that may sound like fiction, but is true to the best of my recollection.  My life was blessed with many friends who helped me through life's journey, and my dear wife who stuck by me through many difficult times.  My story will tell of these people.  I certainly didn't do it alone.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad things you did do--that's a memoir."</B></div> <div> <B>--Will Rogers</B></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Memoir Part 1   </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania</B></div> <div> <B>9 June 1949</B></div> <div> <B>     </B></div> <div> <B>     A gruff shout from somewhere behind me stirred me to </B></div> <div> <B>action.  "Okay, men, drop your skivvies,"</B></div> <div> <B>     I couldn't see the guy who shouted but next to me was an older man who was going back in the Navy.  Several tattoos decorated his arms and legs.  He was called Boats. He dropped his shorts to his ankles.  I followed suit.  As my shorts fell, my color rose.  I had never stripped naked in public before. </B></div> <div> <B>     As he looked at me, Boats shook his head slowly.  The expression on his face seemed to say, “What the hell is this man's Navy coming to?”</B></div> <div> <B>     At age seventeen, I was thin, five feet ten and a half, and weighed a hundred and twenty-eight pounds.  I imagined I was not quite the specimen Boats was used to serving with.</B></div> <div> <B>     A doctor and a corpsman started down the line, poking at each man's groin, and telling him to cough.</B></div> <div> <B>“The next time I tell you to cough, turn your damn head. What do you think I am, a handkerchief?” </B></div> <div> <B>I was learning fast.  This was my third trip to Pittsburgh since finishing high school a few weeks before.  I had been turned down twice before for flat feet, but on </B><B>this day, my feet seemed to develop a satisfactory arch.  I squeezed my toes in, and it worked.  I passed the physical, and was told to report to the third floor.  It wasn't long before I raised my right hand and swore allegiance to the U.S. Constitution.  I was in the Navy.</B></div> <div> <B>One of my best buddies, Tom Meli, had tried to enlist with me, but was turned down for hypertension. Tom was short and on the heavy side.  I was sad indeed when I found out Tom would not be going with me to Boot Camp at the Great Lakes, Illinois.  The year before, Tom and I had taken a trip to New York to join the merchant marine.  We were sixteen at the time.  Tom's father was reluctant to let him go, but my dad convinced him that we were only feeling our oats, and would return home after being rejected as underage.  </B></div> <div> <B>We caught a bus to New York, and were met by my cousin, Tom Bivin.  He was an attorney and vice president of the Great Atlantic Insurance company.  He lived on Long Island's exclusive Gold Coast, in a small incorporated village called Planedome.  When we got off the bus, he had no trouble finding us.  We wore bell bottom dungarees and T-shirts, and smelled to high heaven from Mennon aftershave.</B></div> <div> <B>      A couple of girls invited us to a large stone home with a circular drive a few doors down from the Bivin's.  We were met at the door by a butler.  I told the girls no one at the Pittsburgh Steel Company was over my dad</B></div> <div> <B>Dad was a crane operator, so I didn't lie.  Nobody in the plant worked higher up than he did.  The girls were not impressed.</B></div> <div> <B>     After a short visit with the Bivins, Tom and I went to the Merchant Seamen Union Hall.  There was a line of old seamen seeking work.  It wasn't long until we were told to go home, and come back in a couple of years.  Dad was right. We caught the next bus home.  Adventure was in our blood. We decided to join the Navy after high school.</B></div> <div> <B>     I was born in the Charleroi-Monessen Hospital early in the morning on the 2</B><B>nd</B><B> of January 1932.  A few hours earlier, and I would have been a New Years baby, and Mom would have gotten a bunch of freebies.  When they smacked my butt, I was named William Keith Scott.  Keith was in honor of Keith True, a wheelchair-bound friend of Mom and Dad.</B></div> <div> <B>     Dad worked for the A&P Stores as district manager.  We lived in Maple View a community just south of Charleroi, a town of seven thousand, thirty-five miles south of Pittsburgh.  </B></div> <div> <B>     There were not many young boys my age to play with so my best buddies were the neighborhood dogs  </B><B> One day, I rounded up all the dogs in the neighborhood and put them in the cellar. It wasn't long till all the neighbors were calling Mom to see if she saw their dogs. Mom didn't know they were all in the basement until later that day, when she heard barking. She opened the cellar door, and eight or nine dogs came flying out. I'm sure the neighbors wondered where their dogs spent the day. </B></div> <div> <B>    When I was about six, I looked at the Sears Roebuck catalog and it seemed the women underwear section was the most interesting.  I was curious - what’s the difference between a boy and a girl?  Brother Jack caught me looking, and gave me the devil saying I shouldn’t look at such things.  Now my curiosity was really getting the best of me.  When Jack wasn’t around, I would take another peek.  So much for my sex education.  </B></div> <div> <B>     Mom and Dad made it through the depression OK, but shortly after, Dad slipped and fell in the store on a banana peel hurting his back. The store released him, and made no compensation. In those days that's the way you were treated, and companies got away with it. Things were tough after that. </B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Courier New" ><B> </B></FONT><B>We moved to a small mill town about five miles up the Monongahela River where Dad got a job as a crane operator with the Pittsburgh Steel Company.  I was six years old and going into the second grade.  We lived in a rented house on Main street which was Highway 88 that ran through the middle of town.  The House was a twin with a small fireplace in each room, no bathroom, just a commode in the basement, and no furnace to heat the house.  The entire family had to take turns bathing in a wash tub.  Dad eventually built a shower in the basement.  I'll never forget how great it was to not have to get in the wash tub, again.</B></div> <div> <B>     Mom had a Maytag washer with a swivel ringer.  She would ring the clothes into a tub of clean water, then ring them out again before taking them outside to dry  When a Pennsylvania Railroad steam engine puffed through town, it would turn Dad's shirts a bit gray.  Sometimes Mom would have to hand wash the shirts again until she learned the train schedule and wash around it.</B></div> <div> <B>     The school in Allenport was two stories with four large class rooms.  It was just four blocks up the street.  Grades one through eight were in this building while grades four through seven were in another building two miles away in Vesta.  We went through the eighth grade then rode the </B></div> <div> <B>street car to Charleroi to attend high school.  Pete Garnic was the eighth grade teacher as well as the principal.        </B></div> <div> <B>When I was twelve, Dad bought a house in New Town, a nicer</B></div> <div> <B> section of the community next to the river.  At night,</B></div> <div> <B>the river boats whistled as the passed one another, and if it was foggy, they would sound their horns as they slowly made their way.</B></div> <div> <B>The railroad was about two blocks away on the other side.  Many times the trains would sound their bells and whistles as they came through town.  I could feel the vibration in the house when a large steam engine rolled down the tracks.  Oh how wonderful it was.  I would dream of far off places as I fell asleep.  </B></div> <div>       <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#111111" FACE="Arial" ><B> I enjoyed going to the garden with Dad.  His little patch was on the hill side owned by the steel mill.  A tall, thirty to forty foot, elm tree, was not far off at the edge of the woods.  Elm trees were the best trees to climb.  The limbs would bend, but never break.  When I reached the top, I could see from one end of town to the other.  I could see smoke pouring out of the stacks at the mill.  The huge river willows on the river side of town were beginning to leaf.  It was a sure sign of spring.  The air was crisp.  A trolley car was rolling through town on tracks in the middle of the street.  Several paddlewheel boats were making their way down the river pushing barges of coal.  The steel mills near Pittsburgh depended on these boats and their cargo.  A ferry boat was on the other side of the river waiting for the paddle wheelers to pass.  Men walked toward the mill with meal lunch boxes in hand.  A few cars headed for the mill.  </B></FONT></div> <div> <B>     Dad liked pole beans, and would place a pole by each hill to form a pyramid.  When the beans climbed the poles, it looked like a tee-pee.  His favorite bean was the Kentucky Wonder, a long tender bean that had a sweet juicy taste when eaten raw.  His favorite tomato was the Beef Steak.  This large pink fruit was very tasty.  I ate many right out of the garden, and Dad would laugh as the juice ran off my chin.  During the time in the garden, Dad would answer my endless line of questions.  The time spent in the garden with Dad was as near Heaven on earth as any other time of my life.  </B></div> <div> <B>     During the forties, most everyone had a garden.  Mr. Rossi worked a big one just above Dad's, and Tucker's granddad, Mr. Celaski, had one just down the hill.  He also had a grape arbor.  When the grapes were just right, He would have us boys wash our feet, and step in a large wooden tub, and walk on the grapes.  He made the resulting juice into wine. </B><B> It took about a month to get the purple stains off my feet.  One day, Tucker took me down to his cellar, and we drew off a small amount of Granddad's wine.  It was </B><B>strong and bitter.  We never got into the wine barrel after that.  </B></div> <div> <B>     When it got cold enough, Dad and I would go after Maple sap.  There had to be a freeze then a warming trend to get the sap moving.  I remember many trips to the woods helping Dad collect the sap, usually in late February or early March.  It was fun walking into the woods and through the snow.  Dad drilled a small hole three inches into the tree using a brace and bit, and then pounded in a wooden pipe called a spile made of sumac.  The sap ran into a bucket left under the spile.  We checked it twice a week.  The bucket usually had all kinds of bugs in it.  Dad just scooped them off, and poured the sap into five gallon buckets.  When we collected enough, he would pour it into a large kettle, and boil it till it thickened into maple syrup.  Twenty gallons of sap didn't make much syrup.  Now if you have never eaten fresh-made maple candy or put pure maple syrup on your pancakes, you have missed one of the finer things in life.  My mouth waters just thinking about it.</B></div> <div> <B>     In late June and early July, we went out to pick blackberries on the edge of the woods behind what was then called Niger Hill.  The vines were about eight feet high, and usually full of berries as big as my thumb.  The best always seemed to be at the top of the vines.  Dad carried a stick to chase the copperhead snakes off the vines.  They seemed to like blackberries as much as we did.  Dad told me to be careful, and if I smelled cucumbers to be on the lookout for Mr. copperhead.</B></div> <div> <B>     When I went into the vines to get the big berries, I usually got stuck on the arms and legs by big thorns.  One for the bucket and one in the mouth was the picking procedure.  When we arrived home with the berries, Mom would wash them, and prepare to make a cobbler.  When she opened the oven door the sweetest aroma filled the kitchen.  While the cobbler was still warm, I would pour a little cream over it and enjoy the heavenly taste.  The next day, I was ready to go again, forgetting my scratched arms and legs.</B></div> <div> <B>      The little town of Allenport was a great place to grow up in the forties.  The Allenport gang was always close.  Several of my buddies passed on.  Contact with the few that remain is usually at our high school class reunion.  There were Tom Meli, Bill Colditz, Tucker Celaschi, Joey Brown, Frank Chuccudi, and a few others who were older, Lefty Livingston, Paggetti Haywood, Ray Ermlich, and Monk Myrtle to name a few.  The town  was a melting Pot.  The Lycos were Greek, the Meli and Celaschi families Italian, the Millers were Jews, and the Colditz were German.  There was only one church in town, a small Methodist Church.  We all met in the basement of the church to play ping pong.  On Sunday most of the gang showed up even though many were not Methodist.  Heck, many of them were not even Protestant.  Everything good or bad, we learned from the older guys.  For some reason, the girls paid little attention to us.  They treated us more like brothers.  We looked at the girls from another town as the girls did the boys.</B></div> <div> <B>     My first job was at the Allenport Pontiac garage.  The owner had me sand the paint off a big truck before it was painted.  One day I went to the rest room.  The owner came in and it was then that I found out he had an attraction for young boys.  I walked out and quit.  I don't believe he ever paid me.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>   </B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#000000" 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