When Carl was 19, he joined the National Guard and he quickly distinguished himself with his marksman abilities. He went to the Guard’s summer training camps at Fort Sill, Oklahoma four years in a row and twice qualified to attend the national rifle matches at Camp Perry, Ohio. These trips were his first travels out of the Little Rock area.
At least once, Carl’s boss at the Grocery Company, refused to give Carl time off from his job to attend the camps, so the Guard had to send a Sergeant over (with a pistol on his hip) and demand that that Carl be released for duty. The boss argued with the Sergeant and told Carl that, duty or not, if he left he was fired! Upon his return from camp, Carl had to go back to his boss and grovel to get his job back.
Carl enjoyed socializing with his National Guard buddies and became good friends with Johnson Harmon. The slightly-older Harmon exuded confidence and style. Harmon owned a Harley motorcycle and Carl decided to buy a used Harley ($65) so they could ride together. The boys took a week trip down to Baton Rouge, camping along the way.
One night, Carl and Harmon were riding their motorcycles in the hills around Little Rock, looking for prohibition booze. As they rode down a dark country road, a cow appeared in front of them. Harmon swerved, but Carl slammed right into it. Fearing that a farmer might come after them; Carl and Harmon quickly left the scene. Carl’s motorcycle didn’t appear to be damaged, except for a burned-out headlight. The next day, Carl discovered his headlight wasn’t burnt out… it was just covered with a circle of cowhide, punched out of the side of the cow!
Riding the motorcycle was a problem when Carl had a date with his girlfriend, Ester Singleton, so he would rent a car for those occasions. He had to be careful not to drive too far though, the mileage costs could really add up!
At the 1928 training camp, Carl and Harmon convinced their Guard Commander to let them take their motorcycles with them on the troop train to Fort Sill. When training camp was over in July, they jumped on their motorcycles and headed west. The trip was initially Harmon’s idea (his parents had worked the fruit harvest in Colorado) but Carl had the idea of loading the bikes on the train.
The boys rode from Oklahoma out to Colorado. They camped out, often sleeping under the bleachers at local baseball fields. When they arrived in Grand Junction, they had a couple weeks to kill until the harvest, so they did some sightseeing and a little hustling in the pool halls. Soon they found jobs picking peaches and apples. They mostly camped in barns and fruit sheds, but at one point they found a closed-for-the-season motel to sleep in. The owner was suspicious at first, but decided the boys could stay if they watched over the place. They boys liked it, because they would stay in a room until it got dirty, then they moved to the next room.
The boys made about $5-$7 a day, picking about 100 to 150 bushels of fruit a day. In the evenings, Harmon and Carl would dress up and go to dances or do a little hustling at the pool hall. They had to be careful not to win too much money playing pool, because they didn’t want to anger the locals. No one bothered them much, including the cops, because the boys looked official wearing their Guard outfits.
The boys worked 4 months and the day after the apples froze on the trees in late November, they headed back home. The boys made slow progress across the Great Plains as they rode their motorcycles thru the freezing rain and snow. They would buy gas at every gas station they passed, just so they could warm up inside.
When Carl returned home, he thought about what he wanted to do next. For 3 years in a row, Carl had groveled to get his job back at American Grocery and this time he decided he wasn’t going to beg to get his job back any more. Since Carl was unemployed and not going to school, it wasn’t long until Roy said, “If you’re going to sit around the house, come down to the streetcar company, and I’ll put you to work”. So Carl got a job running the streetcar.
Although Carl enjoyed working as a conductor, he realized that he could end up working the rest of his life in Little Rock and not see the world. Carl had read some recruiting materials and thought about enlisting in the Navy. He also knew that his Uncle Earl worked in naval aviation in California and the idea of being a Navy pilot appealed to him. Carl had a desire to discover what possibilities were out there and the Navy seemed like a good way to do that.
Those recruiting materials that Carl was reading didn’t just appear in the mail by magic! In an effort to get Carl out of the house and “make something of himself”, Roy would stop by the recruiting office and address a batch of recruiting literature to Carl! Carl wasn’t fooled, because he recognized his Dad’s handwriting on the envelope.
When Carl inquired at the recruiting office in Nov. 1928, he found out that recruits were being sent to Great Lakes training center. Carl didn’t want to do boot camp in the snow, so he told the officer to call him when recruits were being sent to California.
The call came on Feb 4, 1929 and, a few days shy of his 24th birthday, Carl joined the Navy. This was just 8 months before “Black Thursday”, which triggered the Great Depression. During the Depression, quotas for recruits were curtailed significantly. In that sense, Carl got in under the wire.
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