Ever have one of those moments where Lady Luck laughs out loud and things are going so good that if you were hit by lightning afterward you would just say to yourself “Fair enough” and smile?
When I was assigned to March AFB back in the 70’s I spent the weekend in Hollywood, then showed up at the base early Monday morning where I played a Harlem Globetrotters pinball machine while they looked for the proper paperwork. I remember that a California earthquake hit (my first, but certainly not my last) about the time I shot my first ball, and I couldn’t lose if I wanted to. I was in the groove and I knew it, and when the Sarge called me into the office I walked away from my first game with 12 more games racked up for whoever stepped up to the machine. “Son, we’ve got a small problem. While you have certainly been assigned to this base, the paperwork that tells us what you are doing here and where you are supposed to go is misplaced. I guess you will be staying in the guest quarters until things get straightened out.” I wore my civvies and ate at the Officers Mess Hall for about two and a half weeks until I was officially assigned to my unit, and it was the best intro an E-2 could ask for.
I’ve got a couple more stories of excessive unearned luck to tell, but why don’t y’all tell me your own tales of wonder?
A few months ago, I was at a hospital to see a sleep doctor for a first visit and he commented, “Well, would you know it - normally a polysomnography requires you to spend months on the waitlist, but someone just canceled his slot for tonight - bring your pajamas and we can get you sleep study’d this very night. No need to wait 2 months.” And indeed, it was done that very night.
My friends and I decided to play craps in a casino. It was a $5 minimum, so I bought in for $40, and received eight chips. The next come-out roll was mine, so I put $5 on the Pass line. Made a point. Backed my Pass bet up with odds. Made my point.
Literally, it was lather, rinse, repeat after that. Establish a point, back it up with odds, and make it. Then do it again. Playing Pass and Come only. By the time I sevened out, I had a rack full of chips in front of me. Against all odds (heh), I must have made six straight passes. I walked away with about $350. For a $40 buy-in, I did pretty well.
Another tale from March AFB. Dave Rushton said he was heading to Ontario Motor Speedway, said he had a spare ticket and asked if I wanted to go. I said yes, because I had never been to a race before and it sounded like fun, but loud.
Well, it was fun, and it certainly was loud…but it sure as shit wasn’t a race.
The date was March 18, 1978.
The event was California Jam 2.
It was my first concert and, to date, my best concert.
When I was about 12 or 13 my Dad took my brother and I to a nice evening at the horse races. He wanted to teach us a lesson about gambling, so he gave us each $10 to bet with, and let us bet on whatever we wanted.
My brother lost all his money on the second or third round, but I kept on winning small amounts, and putting half my remaining money back in my pocket, betting with only the rest. Dad was busy drinking and drooling over his date for the evening, so didn’t really notice what was happening.
By the time he noticed, I was ready to put on my final bet of the evening, $100 on the real name equivalent of “TruCelt’s Decision.” He started to object, then saw the odds and decided that my lesson was in the offing.
The horse won at 11 to 1. Fortunately, I had enough brains to realize this was an anomaly, and did not set off on a lifetime of dissipation and ruin.
When we first moved to the DFW area, I was working weekends as a flight instructor for butter and egg money. During one flight with a student, I saw a beautiful B-17 parked at an airport below us.
After finishing with the student, I flew back to have a closer look. A dozen or so volunteers were polishing and working on the plane, so I grabbed a buffer and some paste and went to work. I’d worked on clad-aluminum before, and seemed to know what I was doing, so I wasn’t noticed for a few hours.
I returned a few times, just for the fun of working on such an amazing plane, and eventually got to know everyone. They invited me on a 3-day trip planned for an upcoming weekend and I agreed (duh!).
The trip was to a reunion of the 8th Air Force, and I got to ride in the B-17 while it flew in the airshow.
Along the way there, they let me fly left seat for a while, and during that weekend I got to eat dinner across from (and visit with) Gabby Gabreski.
Ride in an airshow; Left seat time in a B-17; Meet and talk with Gabby Gabreski; The fates seriously smiled on me that month.
I was in North Lake Tahoe with an old girl friend. We went into a Casino there and I started playing the quarter slot machines. In those days, they were fully mechanical and took actual 25 cent pieces. After pulling the handle and recycling my winnings, I hit a jackpot. When that happened, you had to wait until the guy came around to hand you a few rolls of quarters. While I waited, I fed quarters into the machine beside it. Before he arrived, the machine beside it also hit a jackpot. After the girl friend came around and we started to leave, I fed a few more quarters into another machine and it hit a jackpot.
So I am living in Gig Harbor, and while attending Rustycon 2 I get invited to a child’s first birthday party at an ice cream parlor…in Portland, Oregon. On a whim, I walk across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and hit the exit for I-5 southbound. I am at the exit with my thumb out ready for a long wait and several short trips, but the third vehicle stops and asks if I want a ride.
It is a stretch limo, it is loaded with uneaten food in the fridge, good alcohol and a television, and the driver is going all the way to Portland. He says “Hope you don’t mind riding in the back” and grins.
That was the very last time I ever hitchhiked.
Curiosity question: If they knew you were an E-2 why were you eating in the officer’s mess? Closest I got was when I was at a small command and it had a combined mess where everyone ate – except of course the CO and XO.
Mine is similar to your arcade portion. I and seven coworkers went to a Japanese teppanyaki and it turned out sake was included. Nobody liked sake except one other fellow and me so we downed four doses between us, perhaps half a liter each, and left pretty buzzed. Next door was a video arcade and one of the games was Tempest, the one where aliens are climbing out of a well and you’re shooting down it at them – this was a long time ago.
For the first time ever and the only time since I made it well past level 16 where the color palette changes, to somewhere above 20. I must have been relaxed.
I’ve told this story several times already in other threads, but here it is again.
Part of my college financial aid package was a part-time job (20 hours/week) for the university’s student services. I showed up at the student services office after getting settled in at my freshman dorm to get my assigned job. The line of new students was fairly long and the lady at the desk was basically saying, “Dorm crew…dorm crew…dorm crew…” (Dorm crew was cleaning bathrooms in the dorms for four hours a day.) When I finally got to the front of the line, I fully expected to hear, “Dorm crew.” Instead, she looked at me and asked, “Do you have any audio-visual experience?” I was surprised, but quickly said, “Uh…sure. I was captain of the A/V crew at my high school.” This was a total lie. Anyway, I got sent to the university’s A/V services department. All the student jobs paid exactly the same hourly rate.
This was an unbelievable stroke of luck. I was part of the team that set up lecture halls, showed movies, delivered and picked up equipment, and generally did all kinds of cool things. I got to attend many different classes, including fine arts, film studies, and museum lectures, as well as having the opportunity to work overtime and get cash for showing films on weekends to film societies. I made much more money than was guaranteed in my aid package. Eventually, this led to what I did for a career after graduation.
The only explanation I have for this is that the lady who made job assignments got reminded that one out of so many jobs had to go to the A/V department. There was absolutely nothing about me that would have implied I should do A/V work instead of cleaning bathrooms.
so you are saying your whole current life is based on a big LIE? …
.
(I keeed, I keeed …)
Fake it 'til you make it has a long and storied pedigree.
Yes, based on a spontaneous lie. I have a BA and an MA and I’ve never made a dime off of either of them.
Back in the '80s money was fairly tight; so a big summer vacation consisted of Mrs Trep and me getting the cheapest available car ferry to France and camping for a couple of weeks, Channel ferries run 24 hours and, unsurprisingly, cheapest = wee small hours of the morning.
One return journey went badly awry. Driving through the French countryside towards Calais, well after midnight, the clutch went - completely (stick shift). So we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, no food, no nothing, and no chance of catching our ferry. And then… a car pulls up behind us, and an English guy gets out.
What’s up?
Clutch has gone
Ah, you don’t need one of those.
At which point I thought Things just got worse? How could that happen?
I don’t pretend to know much about cars, but it turns out that, no, you don’t need a clutch to drive them (might not be true of modern cars - and I don’t propose to find out.) So we drove up and down this stretch of (entirely empty) road with this guy, as he taught us how to crash the gears. After that he drove behind us for a little while, and then headed off wherever he was going.
We had to be towed onto and off the ferry (something else which might not happen these days) But otherwise we drove home clutchless. Because we could. Because out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, an English stranger appeared on an empty French road and taught us how.
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“I’ve always wanted to try driving without a clutch, and now I can practice on these people’s transmission.”
Q: What’s the best kind of car to practice clutchless driving?
A: A rented one.
And when you tried to track him down to send a thank you gift or something, it turned out that was the anniversary of his death, he died because his clutch went out on that same road a long time ago…
It was inconvenient for my advisor and committee to convene for me to defend my dissertation so they just signed the paperwork and I got a PhD diploma in the mail.
Not that the defense is a huge hassle; most schools won’t let you defend unless all parties are on board.
Not me so much as my future wife, although I was a side beneficiary. We were flying out to Salt Lake City, where I’d gotten my doctorate. Not only hadn’t she been as far west as SLC, she’d never flown.
We were sitting in the waiting area when they came to give us the bad news – there was a cancellation, and we’d been bumped up to First Class.
First time she flew, and she literally got to go First Class (So did I, but I’d flown many times before).
Another neat thing, which I mention only because it came up during discussion at dinner last night. My wife was an intense D&D player when I met her. She and her friends were still playing out a campaign that had literally been going on for years. They had a huge collection of painted models and everything. I joined them on this for a while.
Nevertheless, I was shocked to learn, when the Peter Jackson movies came out, that she’d never read any of Tolkien (she still hasn’t read The Hobbit, let alone the Silmarillion and the rest of the Christopher-Tolkien edited stuff). A D&D-er who hadn’t read The Lord of the Rings – I didn’t know such creatures existed.
So when we went to see The Fellowship of the Ring it was a wholly new experience to her. Her friends had never even discussed any of the details with her (although they are intense Tolkien fanatics), so everything was fresh and revelation. And, of course, it’s heaven for someone who does fantasy role-playing games. My favorite moment was when the company is surrounded by orcs in the caverns of Moria, and they all suddenly scatter when they hear the Balrog approaching , and his fires begin to light the halls.
“What new evil is this?” asks Gandalf
“Run,” says my wife. Not with emphasis, but in that matter-of-fact way Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka says “Help” Just good advice to someone sharing your dungeon quest with you.
The company continues to funfer around and discuss the situation.
"Run, my wife repeats, with a little more emphasis for the hard-of-understanding.
She is, of course, completely vindicated when the burning hulk of the Balrog bursts upon them like a marshmallow that caught fire over the camp flame. But, of course, it’s too late by then for old Gandalf. (Fortunately, Gandalf knows The Truth About Balrogs – Balrogs Bounce!)
Great story, thanks for sharing!
I’ve been flying for over 50 years now (typically 2-3 trips per year), and have yet to fly in First Class (or business class, for that matter).
I’d always heard that people would occasionally be bumped up to First Class, and figured it would happen by chance at some point, but no. And I’m too frugal to pay for it myself, so it may well never happen.