Ken Moores Recollections

Dayton, Ohio

A weekend event was planned for our Canadian Air Force Reserve Squadron. We were scheduled to fly about 80 people from our base in Downsview, Ontario to Dayton, Ohio, Air Force Base to visit the nearby air museum. We piled into ten single-engine DeHavilland Otter aircraft and headed south.

This was a nice break from our usual evenings and weekends of maintaining these wonderful old aircraft. The Otters had served well in the Canadian arctic as transport and search and rescue planes. They are still in use today in the north. They can be rigged with wheels, skies, or floats in various combinations. This allows them to take off and land in a variety of snow, water, and dry land terrains. They are affectionately referred to as 'stone boats' for their seemingly unlimited capacity for carrying heavy mineral samples for the mining industry.

The Otters were continually breaking down, which gave us something to do. The Pratt and Whitney radial engines were prone to leaks, giving the engine technicians endless hours of playing the 'find the leak' game. The airframe technicians were also kept busy fixing or replacing cables and parts and whatnots. I was an engine technician. We usually didn't get a chance to fly much. When the planes weren't in for maintenance, it was usually the pilots only that would take them up for a few test circuits around Downswiew.

A few of the other guys had been to Dayton before and assured me that I was in for a treat. The museum was said to be first rate, but that was only part of the adventure. The town of Dayton contained several American bars, which were attractive to our hard-drinking Canadian boys simply because they were American, not Canadian, bars. We were looking forward to sampling the various unique libations, probably until closing time.

We touched down in the early evening, and were immediately told not to de-plane. After about ten minutes, cars and trucks came racing across the tarmac, surrounded us, and out jumped big burly military police with snarly Shepherd dogs. They treated us like suspected criminals. They brought the dogs on to our crowded planes and the dogs sniffed us and our belongings for drugs. This was all very amusing to us. Did they really think we would be brave or stupid enough to bring drugs from one military base to another? We were coming from Canada, not Columbia!

We got settled into our accommodations and hit the town. The prime destination was the Dayton Playboy Club. I had grown up stealing my older brother's Playboy magazines and drooling over the girls, but I had never actually been in a Playboy Club. It was quite pricey, but worth it to see real 'Bunnies' swishing around the room with their bathing suits, trays, and bunny ears. We all got pretty loaded and went back to the base. There were several of us billeted together in each room. The party continued with very little chance to sleep.

The next morning, we visited the air museum. It was one of the best I'd seen. I think the Wright Brothers' plane was there, or a copy of it, and a mammoth B-36 bomber aircraft towering over everything. This was all very interesting, but we wanted to party. We had been told of a country and western bar called the "Crystal Pistol". The name sounded intriguing, so several of us piled into cabs and headed for the Crystal Pistol. We arrived mid-afternoon. There wasn't much going on, but they were willing to ply us with liquor anyway. They claimed that there would be a live country and western band starting about nine. We were more than happy to have a few drinks while waiting for the intervening seven hours to pass.

My poison of choice was Jim Beam bourbon. I insisted that all my buddies try it out. I bought shots for everyone and, of course, had to have one for myself each time. We decided to get something to eat and ordered a few cabs. The taxis came a little quicker than expected. I had just ordered another round of about six shots of bourbon when they showed up. Everyone was rushing toward the door and nobody seemed interested in the shots I had just bought them. Not one to waste good booze, I downed them all myself. Mistake! On the way out the door, the shots came right back up again. I spewed just as I was exiting the building. The taxi driver saw this and sped away before I could baptize his cab.

I have no recollection of that evening's festivities, but apparently I had a pretty good time. The next morning, it was time to go back to Canada. We stumbled into our planes observed by the local Reserve Squadron, who had jets to play with. They were quite amused to see our old rotary-engine aircraft. One of them remarked that they had planes in their museum that were younger than the ones we were flying. He was right. We got nine of our ten planes off the ground, but one stubborn old bird refused to start. We asked for a boost from our hosts. They came out with an Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) to jump-start our plane, but the fittings didn't match. We had no recourse but to haul out our special manual starting device. This was several lengths of metal rods, stored under the pilot's seat, that, when assembled, made a long crank. We attached it to the engine and several people lined up along the crank. On command, we cranked like hell. The big prop began to turn slowly, the engine sputtered and caught, and we were in business. Our hosts were amazed and impressed. They had never seen anything like that in their lives. We knew we would be welcomed back anytime to 'entertain' our American brothers and sisters with our antique antics.

Camp Borden, Ontario

Our reserve squadron was at the Canadian Forces Camp Borden Training Base for weekend exercises. Our presence was tolerated, but not welcomed, by the regular forces training there. To them, we were 'weekend warriors', not real soldiers. They were right. Once a year, we were sent to Camp Borden for war-game type exercises. We took a few of our new Kiowa helicopters to practice air support for ground troops. This beat sitting around the hangar playing cards and reading maintenance manuals. My job was to drive a jeep and guard whatever I was asked to guard. I didn't have a gun.

I enjoyed transporting people around in my peppy little jeep. I felt like I was in a M.A.S.H. episode. I brought an officer to a clearing in the woods where one of our helicopters had landed. He took off in the chopper and ordered me to guard the area. It was dead silent there, with nothing happening and only the birds to listen to while the sun beat down and made me lazy. I felt Mother Nature taking hold and went in search of a latrine or reasonable facsimile thereof.

I found a nice log to straddle and had just settled in for a nice dump, when I got the shock of my life. A big booming voice said, "Don't you look cute, Private Moores!" Just when you think you're all alone! I looked around but saw no one. The voice said, "Up here, you moron!" I looked up and there was an officer with a parachute on hovering about three feet over my head. He landed within inches of where I was squatting. Several of our people belonged to a skydiving club and had decided to take advantage of the weekend to practice. He gave me shit for taking one while on duty.

We were bunked into several rooms on one side of a barracks building. 'Real' soldiers doing 'real' soldier things occupied the rooms across the hall. We had a good laugh watching them getting inspected and lining up at attention in the hallway outside their rooms. We were slobs by comparison.

We were keeping up our reputation as party animals. In the early evening, the commander of the unit across the hall asked us politely to quiet down. No way, were we ready for that. We directed him to Sergeant Lockie, our commander. Lockie came out in his underwear to see what the commotion was. He was annoyed at having his poker game interrupted. We waited and watched as the timid master corporal, who was dwarfed by Lockie's towering drunken presence, repeated his request. Lockie, who outranked the poor fellow, told him to go to hell. We all cheered and continued our noisy reveries with a passion.

The next morning, we felt really bad, for two reasons. One, we were all severely hung over. Two, those poor bastards were lined up in front of their rooms at five A.M. with full 80-lb. packs on their backs and grease paint on their faces, ready for a full day of slogging through the woods playing war games. We felt very sorry for them. We knew we had contributed greatly to the hell they would have to endure that day. We could see how tired they looked, even under the camouflage paint. We mumbled a few apologies, but it didn't even begin to compensate for our moral transgressions. I never returned to Camp Borden, but I'm sure our squadron's yearly trips there became much more respectful in the following years.

Bacardi's Rum and a Mustang on the Head

I was an Air Force Reservist living on the base, working and training with the regular forces. This was called Class B employment. It was supposed to accelerate my learning. Since there wasn't much to do in the way of aircraft maintenance, my chosen trade, all that was being accelerated was my aging process. Nights of heavy drinking at the mess were alternated with days of going to work, signing in, and crawling onto a pile of parachutes in a back room to sleep off a hangover.

We were all invited to go on a tour of the Bacardi's Rum factory in Brampton, Ontario. A bus arrived at the base, we piled in, and off we went. On arrival, we were escorted to a theatre were we were shown a movie. The movie, about fifteen minutes in length, starred William Shatner and showed the history and development of the original Bacardi's factory in Puerto Rico. Following the movie we were given the 'tour' which consisted of looking through a doorway into a laboratory, with nobody in it, and looking at a bunch of barrels. The 'tour' lasted about a minute. Then, it was on to the 'hospitality lounge' where pretty, nicely-dressed ladies explained how Bacardi Rum could be used in place of other liquors in all of the standard cocktails. There were samples of various drinks lined up in fancy glasses on the counter. There were Bacardi Daiquiris, Bloody Bacardis, Bacardi Sunrises, Bacardi Screwdrivers, etc. We had two hours to 'sample' these drinks. I think the expectation was, we would pick up a drink, take a sip, and make a comment like 'oh, my, now that's different, I think I'll try that at my next party'. They had no idea what they were dealing with.

Within half an hour, we had cleaned them out and were demanding more booze. There were fellows slumped in chairs; there were guys puking in the nice plastic shrubbery lining the 'hospitality' bar. We descended on the 'samples' like a pack of vultures. Samples meant to be sipped and savored were thrown back like shots, one after the other. The attitude of the prim and proper waitresses changed rapidly.

"Good afternoon, what would you like to sample today, sir" quickly became, "whaddaya want" accompanied by a steely-eyed frown.

We were cut off and poured ourselves back onto the bus. On the return trip, we started telling jokes to amuse ourselves. This was a common enough past time, but this joke-telling bout took on a new twist. The idea was that if someone told a 'groaner' or bad joke, everyone on the bus would jump on that person, like football players jumping on the guy who has the ball. This was great fun in the state we were in, and after a short time all jokes became groaners. The problem was that when evryone on the bus jumped on one guy, he was usually sitting on the left or right-hand row of seats and the collective weight of our rum-soaked bodies shifting from one side of the bus to the other was making it almost impossible for the driver to control his vehicle. Did I mention it was winter? Well, it was and the roads were icy. The driver pulled over and informed us that if w didn't behave ourselves, we would be walking home.

When we arrived at base, we saw no reason not to continue our party. We descended on the mess and proceeded to recapture our buzz that was lost on the return trip. We regaled those non-attenders of our exploits into the manufacturing sector. One of the fellows, Rob, who was very drunk, announced he was driving home in his baby blue Shelby Mustang. We all told him, no deal. He could barely walk. In our reverie we didn't notice Rob quietly slip away.

About ten minutes later, Rob was back mumbling something about his car. We followed him outside, and here was his beautiful car in a ditch about twenty feet from the mess. We jumped to the rescue. I had an old Country Squire Station Wagon, which I thought would make a good tow truck. I drove it into position and attached an old rope to the bumper of my car. The other end of the rope presented a bit of a problem, as there didn't seem to be any good attachment points on the Mustang. Its bumper was buried in mud and snow. Rob said he knew of a good place under the car, so about ten of us lifted the back of the car allowing Rob to crawl under. When we heard OK, we lowered the car. Hearing screams of pain from under the car, we raised it again. There had been a serious breakdown in communication. Rob had meant OK I've found the attachment point, NOT OK I'm clear.

When both cars were attached , I got in to my car, gave it the gas, and pulled my bumper off. Just then, the military police came by and told us to forget the rescue mission, and either go back to the mess or go home. We agreed politely. As soon as they left, we discussed our new strategy. One of the guys worked at the fire hall and said he could get a fire truck. He arrived ten minutes later with a fire truck, which made a much better tow truck than my bumperless station wagon, and we proceeded to hitch up the ornery Mustang to the fire truck. The police came by a second time and upped the ante. They told us if we didn't stop immediately we would all spend the night in jail. This slowed us down temporarily, but we were determined to complete our mission.

Rob's car was removed from the ditch that night, but the fallout of our actions was severe. I believe the fellow that borrowed the truck was jailed for stealing a military vehicle and operating it while under the influence. I got my bumper reattached, but the car was never the same after that. We all stayed away from Bacardi's Rum for quite some time and it never became part of our drinking culture. And Rob, poor Rob, has never been the same since. His head looks a little thinner these days, he's somewhat unresponsive at times, and he stares a lot.