This is Me, Jack Vance

by Jack Vance

  Halfway through my second semester, an intense young fellow presented himself in the Daily Cal office. His name was Samuel Hayman Wainwright III. He was gaunt, dark-haired, narrow-faced, with keen aquiline features and blazing dark eyes, and he palpitated with nervous energy.

  He came to the Daily Cal in search of publicity. He had organized the Thumbwaggers’ Club, which was intended to expedite hitchhikers in their travels hither and yon. He laid out on the desk a T-shirt emblazoned with a black fist with the thumb raised in the hitchhiker’s salute, and explained that he was organizing a stunt by which he hoped to excite public interest in the association, and to establish this T-shirt as the official uniform for hitchhikers. There would be two teams of two persons each; these would set out from Berkeley and hitchhike to Salt Lake City and back over the weekend.

  The juniors came to interview Sam and wrote the story, so that Sam received his desired publicity. The story, when it appeared the next day, cited the names of those who were to participate in this challenging exploit. This was Wednesday. On Thursday, the day before event was scheduled to begin, Sam revealed that a member of his second team had backed out of the project. Sam was in distress. He looked here and there, and his eyes fixed on me. He said, “Jack, why don’t you become a Thumbwagger, at least for this occasion?”

  I thought to myself: Jack, once again the gods of chance have tapped you on the shoulder. So I agreed to Sam’s proposal.

  The next evening at 5 o’clock we gathered at the foot of University Avenue, the four of us all wearing Thumbwaggers T-shirts. Sam and his partner were up first, and within five minutes they caught themselves a ride. I and my partner, a pleasant fellow named Bob Wylder, went out to stand in the road; almost at once we too were picked up by a man who had read of the Thumbwaggers in the newspaper. Sam’s strategy had borne fruit!

  Sam and his partner, arriving at Reno, were picked up by an Indian towing a trailer. The Indian said that he was on his way to Salt Lake City, so Sam and his partner gladly jumped in the trailer. However, a few miles out of town, the Indian changed his mind, and turned south toward New Mexico, so that Sam and his partner were marooned at Sparks, Nevada. Bob Wylder and I reached Elko, Nevada, where we too were stranded, and could not catch a ride for love or money. We became discouraged, and Bob, making discretion the better part of valor, decided that we should return home.

  Across the road was a Southern Pacific Railroad yard, where a freight train had just pulled in. We crossed the road, climbed the fence and approached a brakeman, from whom we learned that the train was heading west to Oakland. He seemed good-natured, so we moved down to the end of the train and climbed into the caboose, where we made ourselves comfortable. There was an iron stove to heat the car, but the fire was on the point of going out, so we opened the front panel and replenished it with kindling we found in a box. We sat down to rest and enjoy the ride. The train started to move.

  Almost immediately a railroad bull entered the caboose. He saw us and bellowed, “What the hell are you two doing in here? Get out!”

  We sidled past him to the back door, but the train was already moving at a good speed. We looked back with imploring expressions, but the bull showed us no mercy. “Go ahead,” he roared, “jump!”

  The train had picked up speed, and was now going at 15, maybe 20 miles an hour. But the bull pushed forward. “Jump!” he ordered again.

  Wylder and I both jumped. We landed in a ditch, rolled over and over, scraping ourselves, but breaking no bones. Sitting up, we disconsolately watched the tail lights of the disappearing train.

  We sat for a few minutes, then picked ourselves up, climbed the fence, limped back into Elko, where we found a bus station, and, ingloriously, rode a bus back to Berkeley*.

  When we arrived, we found that Sam and his partner had preceded us. We consulted together, and at Sam’s instigation, decided to lie, so that in The Daily Cal there appeared a new story, to the effect that the two gallant teams of Thumbwaggers had both completed their epic journeys to and from Salt Lake City over the weekend. Sam, however, had lost his enthusiasm for the Thumbwaggers’ Club, and we heard nothing more of the project.

  During these years, when I found the time, I wrote science fiction. In my freshman year I wrote a long novelette, which I never submitted for publication, but which I later cannibalized.

  During my sophomore year, since I was still an English major, I took a course in creative writing. The professor was George Hand: a tall, saturnine gentleman, stern and doctrinaire. Each week we were required to submit some item of creative writing, which he would comment upon and sometimes criticize. A fellow student in the class was Don Fabun, who later became editor of The Daily Cal. He submitted a pastiche concerning a prize fight. I, on the other hand, turned in a short science fiction story which I thought I would submit somewhere for publication, but which in the meantime I thought would serve as my weekly exercise in creative writing.

  The class convened. George Hand entered the room, marched up to the podium and looked around the class. He gathered his energy, and spoke with almost painful deliberation. “This has been a remarkable week,” he said, “and I have been impressed by the breadth and scope of the submissions. I should note that they range up and down the gamut of excellence. On the one hand, we have a pungent account by Mr. Fabun, which takes us to the front seats of a prize fight. His sentences are terse and alive. We can smell the sweat; we can feel the thud of the blows; we know the thrill of victory and the pathos of defeat. It is a memorable piece of work. On the other hand—” and here Professor Hand rapped the top of the podium with his knuckles “—we have an almost incomprehensible example of what I believe is known as ‘science fiction’.”

  The professor here allowed himself to show a small smile. “This sort of thing, perhaps unkindly, has been termed a semi-psychotic fugue from reality. I, of course, am not confident to make such a judgment.”

  After class, I threw away the story, which I did not like very much anyway.

  The semester came to an end. I learned that Western-Knapp was starting a project at a tungsten mine near Bishop, in the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevadas.

  I drove down to Bishop in a Model A coupé jointly owned by my brother and myself. The job was isolated in the mountains a good distance from Bishop, so the crew was lodged and fed on the premises at no charge. The superintendent was Eric Freitag. He took up residence in a small house adjacent to the work, where presently he was joined by his wife and—to my astonishment and delight—his daughter Dorothy.

  At the first opportunity, I made myself known. This—to make a long story short—initiated a romance which lasted through the summer.

  Here I must describe a pair of events of no particular consequence. The first of these was a rash act on my part. The other young bucks on the crew beside myself were Bob Magliano and Neil Holbrook. One day we were unloading sacks of cement from a truck, and for some reason entered into a ridiculous contest to see who could carry the most sacks to a platform. All of us carried two sacks without any problem, one on each shoulder, and Magliano carried three sacks, two on one shoulder, one on the other; I did the same, and I forget if Neil followed suit or not. Then, out of sheer bravado, I told the truck driver to put four sacks on my shoulders, two on each. He looked dubious, but shrugged and did so. I stood there with four sacks of cement on my shoulders, my spinal column feeling like a piece of overcooked macaroni, my knees knocking, and I staggered over and dropped the cement on the platform. Of course this was an idiotic stunt; I might have sprained something beyond repair. Luckily I didn’t, although I am not too proud of this display of macho heroism.

  The second incident occurred while I and one of the laborers were up on the hillside digging out a footing. It must be recalled that the year was 1939. While we were working, the news reached us that the Germans had invaded Poland and that war had started. For a moment we stood silent, awed by the thought of the carnage now in progress and the inevitability of more to come.
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  Summer passed, the job ended. Dorothy and her mother returned to Palo Alto; I never saw Dorothy again.

  In the fall I returned to Berkeley. I was no longer part of the Daily Cal staff, since I had failed to make the sophomore cuts. Still, I spent most of my spare time in the Daily Cal office.

  My usual cronies were John West, Don Matthews and Jimmy Tierney, otherwise known as Tiger. It was our habit to sashay down University Avenue to the Anchor Café, where we would indulge ourselves in the house speciality, Anchor Steam Beer. At more or less appropriate hours of the day, the cry might be heard, “Down to the Anchor for a tankard!”

  At this time the appellation “red-assed” was in use. Red-assed meant dashing, daring, wild, ready-for-anything, let-it-all-hang-out. We considered ourselves a very red-assed group, and one evening at the Anchor, we conceived a very red-assed scheme. By some clever means, we would hoist a large red communist flag high up to the top of the Campanile*.

  We acquired a bag of balloons, a tank of helium, a good deal of stout cord, and several other items, then set about to wait until the weather would seem to be propitious. The optimum weather conditions occurred almost at once when we arrived at a quiet, balmy evening with no prospect of wind. At midnight, after inflating a large number of balloons with helium, we crept out to the Campanile with our cord and supplies. At this time the campus was deserted and we felt inconspicuous. We encircled the Campanile with the cord, leaving it somewhat slack. To the plumb end of this cord we tied the flag.

  The next step was to attach a hook, fashioned from a paperclip, from which would hang a length of thread by which someone on the ground might control the balloon’s rate of ascent and at the proper moment unhook the balloons by giving a jerk on the cord. The flag, drawn in by the encircling cord, would hang as if from a flagpole.

  This, as I say, was to be our next step. But at that moment, sad to say, our luck deserted us. Wind came first in a little puff, then a breeze, and finally as a gale. The balloons danced around crazily; some of them went into a holly tree where they burst, producing alarming noises. Not too far away was a night station where the campus cops rested, or played pinochle, or did whatever they did. Evidently they heard the noise, because they immediately emerged from the station. When we saw their flashlights and heard them running, we fled like frightened rabbits in all directions. Our wonderful red-assed scheme came to naught, although at this time it is pleasant to contemplate what might have been; one mourns the passing of youth.

  Winter came and went, and when spring arrived I became bored with university life and decided that I was wasting my time. I heard that the navy was recruiting electricians to work at Pearl Harbor. I made inquiries and applied for a job as an electrician. To my surprise, I was hired and told to report to a ship at a certain date, which I did. I arrived wearing a suit and carrying a suitcase. I mounted the gangplank and asked the man on duty to direct me to my cabin. He laughed with sour jocularity. “Cabin? There’s no cabin. Get your ass forward to the number one hold.” I discovered that this was a troop ship and that we were being shipped over to Honolulu as if we were troops. Here was the start of my disenchantment with the navy.

  The passage to Honolulu was by no means a luxury cruise. The cuisine was uninspired; we slept in bunks stacked one above the other; the bathroom facilities were grim and evinced no concern for ordinary sensibility. There was some gambling, and a few fights, but otherwise little recreation. In due course we landed in Honolulu. No one came aboard to cry “Aloha!” or throw leis around our necks.

  We rode buses out to Pearl Harbor, where we were addressed by a functionary. He congratulated us upon the privileged status which we now enjoyed, although as I surveyed the group, I thought we seemed a rather shifty lot. He mentioned that accommodation was available in a nearby bunkhouse, with an adjacent restaurant, at moderate rates which he quoted. Since I would be earning 56¢ an hour, these rates seemed exorbitant. The functionary went on to mention that other places, more reasonable if less convenient, might be located in Honolulu proper. I immediately returned to Honolulu, where I consulted a newspaper and was guided to a pleasant room with kitchenette privileges a block behind Waikiki beach.

  On the next morning, I rode the bus to Pearl Harbor and reported for work at the electricians’ shop. The superintendent was a blond affable chap about forty years old named Ralph Honeychurch. He told me that much of their work was for the repair of gyroscopes, meters and other such delicate equipment. I told him that I could probably handle the work after I learned a few of the techniques. Honeychurch took me to the desk, gave me some tools, brought me a meter, and left me to my own devices. I took the meter apart, tested it here and there; I saw no broken wires or signs of dry-rot. I located the adjustment screws and gave them a twist or two with my screwdriver and put the meter back together. I noticed no improvement.

  For a week or two I sat at my workbench, achieving little or nothing. To pass the time, I polished candlenuts until they took on a beautiful gloss. Presently Honeychurch told me that they needed a man in the electroplating department, where he thought I might perform to better advantage.

  I discovered electroplating to be interesting, although it was wet work, and there were acids and toxic chemicals to be avoided. Still, I did well there, and lasted two months.

  Meanwhile, I was enjoying my life away from work. Every evening I went swimming at Waikiki Beach, and Sunday mornings I would breakfast at the Waikiki Tavern. This was an open-air restaurant between the Moana and the Royal Hawaiian. Here I had my first taste of papaya. I would sit over my coffee, enjoying the surroundings as if I were a wealthy tourist. Girls were a scarce commodity, due to the navy. I gave this matter a great deal of thought, and finally evolved a thesis, to this effect: If you want to find girls, you must go where the girls are.

  I immediately put this theory to a test. In the newspaper I learned that the local theater group was casting for a play called My Sister Eileen. I showed up at the stipulated time and place and found that I was right; the place was swarming with girls. Just for fun, I tried out for a part but failed to make it. However, I cut one of the girls from the herd and arranged a social engagement. This took place on the following Sunday. I rented a car, picked up the girl, whose name I now have forgotten. We drove out into the hills to a nice restaurant, where we ate dinner, drank a bottle of wine, and the evening went along swimmingly. Yet this girl, while she was very pretty, was by no means the Queen of Sheba or Salome, and in fact was quite proper; so the evening ended on a formal note, and I never even kissed her goodnight. When I calculated the price tag, I was forced to conclude that girls were a luxury I could not afford, especially since I was trying to save money to pay for my passage home.

  At the plating shop the work went slack, and I was transferred to the degaussing crew. “Degaussing” means canceling a ship’s magnetic field so that it will not detonate nearby mines. To achieve this end, a gang of low-status workers is situated at intervals deep down in the hull next to the outer skin of the ship, where they sit like galley slaves, heaving on a cable to a regular beat, so that eventually they haul the cable completely around the hull of the ship. This is a miserable job.

  I worked at degaussing for several weeks until I had accumulated enough money to pay for my trip home. I resigned from my employment at Pearl Harbor, and the navy gave me a “discharge with prejudice”.

  I boarded the Matsonia, and enjoyed the most idyllic cruise of my life. This was to be the last voyage of the Matsonia, and we arrived back in San Francisco about the first of December.

  A week or so later, the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor. A somber thought sometimes occurs to me: if I had not departed as I did, I would probably still be there.

  Along with the rest of the country, my life entered another new phase. In Richmond, Kaiser had opened a shipyard and was starting to build Liberty ships. I applied for work and pretended that I was a welder. They gave me a test to strike up a few sparks, and time after time I stuck the wel
ding rods to the steel, so they ejected me with derision. I went to another building and, citing imaginary qualifications, was hired as a rigger. Riggers worked in conjunction with traveling cranes, which moved along tracks in front of the main fabrication shops. These were extremely heavy-duty cranes, capable of moving anything from single sheets to several tons of steel. Three such cranes moved along the tracks, each with four riggers and the operator, who sat in a cage high above the work. A checker designated which sheets of steel were to be moved. Two of the riggers attached appropriate harness to this steel—this would be either slings or clasps—and then signaled to the operator as to which bay the steel should be delivered. The other two riggers of the crew landed the steel, disengaged the harness, and the whole process began again.

  As I mentioned, four riggers worked with each crane, one whom was designated the leaderman. I was assigned to the No. 2 crane, the one in the middle. The leaderman was Ted Lyon. We were an efficient crew and moved a great deal of steel, so that after three or four months, Lyon was promoted to be quarterman, which means ship superintendent, and I was promoted to be leaderman of the number one crane.

  This was a job I enjoyed. I unloaded the steel with Jack Hart, a young man about my own age, while two older men whose names I forget worked in the bays unloading it. Hart was an engaging young rascal, and he and I became friends off the job. One of Hart’s intimates was another young scamp by the name of Galen Fisk, who will long be remembered as the inventor of the Fisk System. This was a method by which Fisk prepared himself for a social occasion. He would fill the bathtub with warm water, remove his clothes, place on the rim of the bathtub a pint bottle of scotch, then immerse himself in the water. As he washed, soaped his hair, brushed his teeth, or did whatever else he did in the bathtub, he would take occasional nips from the bottle, so that after stepping from the bathtub, drying himself and dressing, he would find himself prepared for the evening.