Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life (27 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 134

Hey, man, I'm not up for there for that services stuff.

I'm down in L.A. My God, Thursday night at 5:01, I'm outta there like a rocket. Four hours to get back to L.A. I'm home by 9 o'clock to watch Alfred Hitchcock on Channel 4.

Not that I have exactly been slaving away all day on Friday anyway. It turns out, I am only required to perform my amazing milk-butter-etc. military feat four days a week. Because, I don't know if you were paying attention, but if you happened to catch the name of Sgt.-Maj. Milton J. Spritzer, you might be aware that "Spritzer" could be a German name. But it is very definitely a Jewish name.

Now, we have a situation where Sgt. Spritzer and his new young administrative assistant, Corporal Bank, who has performed his duties in such exemplary fashion, are both of the Jewish persuasion.

And because of the ethnic makeup of the Monterrey Peninsula back in 1960, there were no delicatessans on the peninsula. Sgt. Spritzer had a very specific yearning, because he came from the New York-New Jersey area, for kosher hot dogs and kosher salami, which were both extremely hard to come by in those days. Unless you happen to be passing Cantor's Deli on Fairfax in LA. We drove down, went in and spent a buck-and-a-half on the hot dogs and $2 on the salamis. Of which that wonderful Corporal Bank reached into his own pocket each and every week and took that three-and-a-half bucks out and got the sergeant-major his hot dogs and salamis. And every other weekend, I would also get him a really neat seeded rye bread, sliced, so he could make sandwiches.

Therefore, my job, instead of taking me 20 seconds, five days a week, took me 20 seconds, four days a week.

I was proud to serve.

On Aug. 5, 1960, Frank and his buddy, Al, jumped into his '57 Chevy and cruised down the winding Pacific Coast Highway to the dazzling sounds of Duane Eddy and the Cannonballs twanging, "Walk, Don't Run", out of Fort Ord and out of active duty in the United States Army.

But our Bilko-ing doesn't end there. It only gets better.

Al and I now have to start going to reserve meetings. I'm having a pretty good time at UCLA. These reserve meetings are sort of cutting in on my style. They're definitely cramping my Monday-night sex because we had to be at meetings from 7-to-10 and I could always schedule at least one girl in there. And then I don't want to be up too late that one Saturday night because one Sunday a month, we're supposed to show up at the reserve meeting out on Wilshire and Barrington, right near Brentwood, not too far from O.J.

Anyhow, in come Bank and Levine to the old 311th Log Command. Remember, this is the unit that will rush over to the Beverly Hilton and type

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out orders for the Pacific if marshal law is ever declared or some crisis like that. Well, this unit is so large we happened to have a two-star general and a one-star general. It's one of the biggest reserve units on the West Coast.

Gung-ho as they can be.

In this reserve unit was a certain dickhead sergeant, Gordon Duvall. Gordon Duvall used to be a linebacker for the USC football team, so you know going in he's a double-dickhead already, as far as a UCLA Bruin like myself is concerned. Dickhead Duvall has achieved some notoriety during the Frank Gifford days at USC. I think he was a total flop in the pros, but he tried.

In the meantime, he still got his jollies by being a sergeant and getting to yell at people. Probably wound up being a disgruntled postal employee the rest of his life. But during this period he was a sergeant.

Now, a couple of months into our reserve military life, Mssrs. Bank and Levine happened to notice that on one certain Sunday our two-star general was retiring. Mssrs. Bank and Levine really felt like that day should not be observed by going to the meeting. Rather, it would be appropriate to honor the old coot by going down to the end of the Santa Monica pier and doing a little fishing.

But before we headed down there, true Americans that we were, we put on our little uniforms and we went to our meeting on Wilshire and Barrington. They fed us lunch. After lunch, we're gonna have the general's retirement parade. Halfway into lunch, Mr. Bank and Mr. Levine decided that it was again time to have a little crap game in the latrine.

Sort of our own observance of a sacred event, the day we took Capt. Jenkins for all he was worth and earned our stripes.

We get this crap game going and again we are on a roll. This time, however, the door flies open, it's Dickhead Duvall. Old Sgt. Duvall comes in and we get arrested. That's right. That's it. The jig is up. We're busted.

Well, they really did it to me. They ruined my life. I guess that's why I turned out the way I did today.

They took my stripes.

I was friggin' heartbroken.

It really just flabbergasted me.

The crap game gaveth stripes and the crap game tooketh away.

But I somehow had to live with the shame.

Somehow, I found the strength to carry on.

Anyhow, I loved being in the 311th Log. If nothing else it provided one of the best lines I ever heard, anyplace, anytime, TV, the movies, nightclubs, you name it.

It came courtesy of a chap named Kip Kattan.

He was an actor. That's redundant, of course. Where can you swing a

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dead cat in Los Angeles and not hit an actor? Anyway, I'd seen him around Hollywood.

He was a nice guy. He was also almost as big a jerk-off as Al and I.

He had the same wonderful attitude toward the United States Army as we didto become dedicated Beetle Baileys.

Well, one day the aforementioned Sgt. Dickhead Duvall was roasting everyone in formation. Everybody in our company was standing at parade-rest with our rifles at our sides like we're supposed to.

Everybody, with the exception of Pvt. Kattan.

Pvt. Kattan was standing at parade-rest looking forward when the ever-alert Dickhead Duvall walks up. He stands with his face in Pvt. Kattan's face and we all look around. We look down. Pvt. Kattan is standing there in the same position as the rest of us with the minor variance that he is pretending to hold a rifle, when, actually, he has no rifle.

Maybe it was method acting or something.

Anyhow, Sgt. Dickhead, who likes to get off by yelling at people sticks his mouth further into Pvt. Kattan's face and screams:

''Soldier, where is your gun?"

To which Pvt. Kattan immediately retorts, without skipping a beat:

"I left it on my horse, sir."

Well, about 300 guys hit the deck, laughing and rolling.

I mean, it was probably the funniest remark I'd ever heard in public.

We were laughing so long and so loud. The man caused total pandemonium.

It really was the greatest remark I ever heard in the United States Army. In civilian life, it's in the Top 10.

Think about it. "I left it on my horse, sir."

Nobody knew what the hell he actually did with the rifle. Probably left it in the toilet.

I later saw Kattan in a lot of commercials. He did a lot of comedy work.

The man proudly earned his comedic stripes that day.

Not that I had time for all this constant hilarity.

My attention was getting diverted by more serious military maneuvers.

By this time, there was this nice young man in the White House. His name was John F. Kennedy. John F. Kennedy, good Democrat that he was, decided it was time to cut back on all military expenditures. God love that man.

He didn't want to trim all these active-duty guys. So what's he gonna dowhip-crack-away, whip-crack-away, Chippewa, Chippewa, shut down, I believe, it was about 15 to 20 percent of all these U.S. Army Reserve units around the country.

It was going to save millions of dollars.

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Even more crucially, it was going to save Mr. Bank and Mr. Levine millions of boring hours at reserve meetings.

If we played our cards right.

By now, if you know anything about me, I tend to play my cards right.

Instantly, we knew that the 311th Log unit at Wilshire and Barrington would never go away. Can't break that up. It was one of the biggest units in Los Angeles.

But one great thing about being in the 311th Log. It only stood to reason that we would get a copy of the list of the units that were probably going to be deactivated long before it ever went public.

Now, if I remember right, the proposed group of shutdowns in the Southern California area arrived at our Barrington address and our first sergeantI forget his namehad that list.

And if I remember right, Al and I had a $100 bill.

What we did was, we got ahold of this list and we proceeded to ascertain what were absolutely the most useless outfits you could find on this list. We came up with about a dozen candidates.

But about three of these units really stood out.

Whereas we had 300400 reservists at our place, some of these units on the list had 20, 30 guys. I mean, nobody was gonna know that they were gone.

So we came up with this one unit. We were sure this had to be right at the top of the deactivation list.

It was the 25th Tank Command in Maywood, Calif.

Commanding officer was a captain.

This was a dogmeat unit.

So we go walking into our company commander's office of the 311th Log Command and I said, "Sir, we are going to transfer from UCLA to Compton Junior College. And it would be a hardship for us to come to meetings here in West Los Angeles. Is there anyplace out there in Compton we could attend meetings? Also, is there any possibility that there could be a unit that was a mechanized unit? We really had an interest in going to tank school and becoming full-time reservists."

Well, they had to research it. They said they'd get back to us.

We got a phone call a couple days later saying, as luck would have it, damned if there wasn't this unit in Maywood that specialized in tanks. There was plenty of room because it was a small unit. They'd be glad to give us specialized attention.

We ran, we didn't walk, over to Barrington to get our orders cut so we could rush to our very first meeting the following week in Maywood. Once you decide to be tank guys, you just can't wait to jump in those tanks.

Naturally, none of the geniuses we were dealing with asked us why we would be wanting to transfer from UCLA to Compton Junior College. I guess

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it was pretty obvious. Who'd want to spend all his time on a gorgeous campus in a beautiful little city crammed with unbelievable women like Westwood when you could go to school in an urban hellhole like Compton?

Obviously, there was more ethnic charisma out there than in Westwood. We had an intense desire to live in Watts.

I remember when we went in to request our transfer, I almost lost Al.

I hadn't told him how we were going to ask to be switched to this Compton unitin fact, I didn't even know exactly what I'd say when we went in there.

So when I began this impassioned plea about wanting to quit a dump like UCLA so we could follow our dream of going to a really good school like Compton Junior Collegeand this Einsten company commander is actually buying itwell, Al damn near went south on me.

I see out of the corner of my eye he's getting red, then purple in the face.

I can see water forming in his eyes.

He's starting to shake.

Now he's standing there and he's beginning to make little animal noises.

We just made it out into the hall before Al starts howling. He's laughing so hard he has to hold onto the wall.

I can't believe the CO doesn't come out in the hall to find out whether we've flipped out or what.

I guess he figured we were just overcome with joy getting to further our academic pursuits at Compton.

Well, anyway, we're allowed to transfer.

We go to our first meeting at the 25th Tank Command and, of course, it was a total crock.

Guys are talking Greek. They're all into tanks, big time, and we don't know what the hell we're listening to. We grunted our way through the first week-night meeting.

But then, like two weeks later, there was a phone call right before the Sunday meeting. Make sure we all were there. Don't miss this meeting. This was a very important meeting. Mandatory attendance.

What happened at the meeting was that the commanding officer got up in front of all his troops and he gave the us bad news.

The United States Army was deactivating this unit.

Aww. Shuckie-durn.

We joined the rest of the men in lamentation. How could they do this to us?

The good old 25th Tank Command.

After all our years of faithful service as Greek-talking tank geeks, this is the thanks we get.