Salesman

--> As a salesman, I read cars. Well . . . I read car stickers. I follow my not-so-great grandfather, who went door to door and was called a canvasser around 1900. “Always see what sits in the garage," my first sales manager would say. Subaru is probably a shopper and looking for quality and longevity. BMW wants to impress his friends with what it cost him.
 

What college stickers are there on the cars? Notre Dame or Cape Cod Community? Price accordingly.

I also read kitchens. Brown wood kitchen = lay down sale.  White kitchen probably has five other estimates and will be a pain to work for.

Animal stickers “I love my dog."

Sell yourself, your long marriage, talk about your kids. Easy sale and probably won’t shop because they like you and you built their friend's whatever, and it came out nice and the price was good. So my price will be good?

I just put a sticker on the rear sliding window my pick up truck. It is a Navy Seabee sticker. It helps sales with the fact that I have always sold construction jobs. Swimming pools and spas, fence, concrete and small buildings. On top of that I am proud to have served my country. But if serviceman are asked to stand during an event such as a baseball game or a rodeo, I stay seated. The closest I got to actually fighting was in a bar where Tex Ritter was performing in Oxnard, California in 1965.

Today at the dump a younger guy in a pick up saw the sticker and stopped and asked, “Were you a Seabee?"   

I answered "Yes."

He asked me, "What battalion were you in?"

A battalion can be anywhere from 300 to 800 servicemen. I answered that I was lucky, and stayed in the U.S. as a station keeper. 

I asked him what rate he was and he said BU. That means builder or carpenter. He was stationed in Port Hueneme and Gulfport. So was I, and so was my father. 

"What were you?" he asked.  

"CE Construction electrician," I said. 

My strikers badge was a telephone pole with a lighting bolt through it. Some regular Navy guys thought that I was a telegrapher, but I was a power pole climber and responsible for light in very high places, such as water tanks or blimp hangers and also very low places like runways. Blue strikers badges were few and far between. 

One Seabee friend got stationed on an aircraft carrier. They didn’t know what to do with an EO equipment operator --  bulldozers, graders, etc. -- so the chief boatswain mate made him the movie projectionist of the ship. In the Navy we called them flicks.

Seabees reunion at Poopsie's

 In the real Navy, the color of your badge tells where you worked. White meant that you were a seaman and probably worked on deck. Red meant you were a fireman and worked below deck. Green was airedale, meaning you worked around airplanes. Did I get that right? It has been 53 years. Our badge was blue. That meant that I was a Seabee. C B = Construction Battalion.

The guy that I met at the dump said he helped build a hospital in Iraq, in Fallujah. Seabees build things like airfields and harbors and barracks and even hospitals. They rarely make the news. If there is a disaster in the U. S. they go to help rebuild, etc.

I told him that my dad was a Seabee during WWII and was out of Davisville, Rhode Island. It is not far at all from Ninigret, where the music festival is on Labor Day. Ninigret was once an air field. You can still find some blacktop here and there. I mentioned that I was born on a day when he was fighting on Okinawa in 1945.  He said he came home from Iraq and six days later his son was born.

I said. "Thank you for serving."

He said, "Thank you for serving.”    

And that is all I have to say about that.  Forrest -- Forrest Gump

Bacon R. F.  693 -10 - 63   CEW2