(The beginning of this memoir dates back to 1949 for those scrolling back)

                                                               TUNA FISH

BIG MOE

     Fred Hutchinson and I came up together in the Detroit organization and before shipping out to the South Pacific during the war we played ball on the East coast together and were in the Gene Tunney program, and since we were big league ball players the Navy made us chiefs. Fred was a ground-ball pitcher with good stuff. There was a lot of resentment on the Norfolk based toward us Tunney program chiefs among the old chiefs who’d spent their entire careers getting a chief’s ranking. They were bitter, a tough, nasty bunch, and when Hutch and I—good friends—drank together in the club, well, these chiefs ganged up and gave us a pretty rough time, rode us hard, called us Tuna Fish, which is about as low an insult you can call a Navy man.

     This went on month after month, and we understood it, took it in pretty well, but I guess these chiefs took this as weakness, and it got worse and worse, real personal and vicious, until these goddam chiefs were practically foaming at the mouth, embarrassing us in front of everybody, really enjoying themselves. They hated us, and I could see why: we had pretty young wives, we were ball players, the brass loved us and bet on us like crazy on our games, and if we won we got perks and so on, which were far and few between in those days, so that you almost felt guilty taking them.

     Hutch was a big red-faced guy, some Irish or Scot in him, a serious man, but sweet-natured, a gentleman. But he had a long fuse and a temper that could blow quick, and he could fight. One evening we were at the bar having a few, and these chiefs were all around us and all over us, and it really got nasty and ugly as they tried to out-do each other. I finally looked at Hutch, and his face was redder than usual, and his mouth was tight, like one straight line, and his eyes went coal black, and his cheek was twitching. He said to me, very softly, “Murray, let’s take those goddam old salts outside teach ‘em a lesson.”

     We were in our pretty ice cream uniforms, all white and starched. I finished off my beer and so did Fred, and then he stood and pointed toward the door that led to the big lawn outside in front, and bellowed loud enough to be heard all over the base: “OUTSIDE! The whole goddam bunch of you! We’ll find out who’s Tuna Fish, and who’s Barracuda!”

     We went outside. Earlier in the year I’d put on boxing exhibitions for the troops with the world light-heavyweight champion, and Fred, he was like an angry ox, and we beat up six or seven of these chiefs, one at a time. A pretty good crowd formed, and it got bigger and bigger. We were hitting these chiefs so hard they were groaning and screaming. Chiefs were laying all over the lawn, moaning, crawling around on all fours, bleeding like stuck pigs, their beautiful uniforms all torn up and full of blood.

     Finally an older chief, one with all the chevrons who must have been in a few campaigns, with the big red boozer’s nose, a guy with a real pus gut, he taps me on the shoulder and asks us to stop before the two of us kill all the chiefs in the goddam Navy. After all, he says, we got a war to fight with the goddam Japs over seas, and we’re all in this together, and so we helped up the beat-up chiefs and got their caps for them and put their caps on their heads and led the poor bastards back into the club, and the chiefs bought all our beer and got us good and drunk, and pretty soon we were singing together, leading Navy cheers, and they toasted us, because we weren’t Tuna Fish no more, we were Barracuda, and after that we could do no wrong with those chiefs.

     (Next Sunday installment: Creating Writing 102)