HAWAIIAN VACATION (sort of...)

There were only two Fleet Sailors in my C-School class in San Diego, me and another Second Class Petty Officer.  All the other guys were straight out of the Boot camp/A-School pipeline: young squids and very green.  Unlike us (ahem!) seasoned world travelers, most of the boots had never been outside of their home states before, must less to other countries.

One particular kid, we’ll call him Sam, came from a small Midwestern town where no one ever went anywhere.  Just by traveling to the big city of San Diego in the far and exotic land of California, he had become something of a local celebrity in his home town.  He began to like the attention that his travels brought him, and before long young Sam started to stretch the truth a bit in some of his letters home.  One day, he stretched the truth a bit too far, telling his girlfriend and family that he was in Hawaii for a special and highly-classified school.

For non-military types, I should explain that all Navy mail was routed through Fleet Post Offices, and that any letter mailed through any Navy Post Office in the entire Pacific Region would be postmarked FPO San Francisco.  So the postmarks on his letters didn’t unmask his little hoax.

Everything was going great.  His family, friends, and lady were all duly impressed with Sam’s worldliness as he (supposedly) trod the sugar sand beaches of Waikiki.  Then, Sam’s deception swung around to bite him.  His family, friends (and – yes – his girlfriend) all wanted him to send home pictures of his great Hawaiian adventures.

Sam was mortified.  He moped around for two days, tortured by the idea that his exalted reputation as a world traveler was about to revealed for the sham that it was.  We could tell that something was eating him alive, but it took a lot of tugging to get him to confess his problem.  Finally, he told us everything.  We wanted to laugh, but it was obvious that the poor guy was in misery.  Instead, we put our heads together and started to brainstorm ways to help him.

Thus began the Artificial Hawaiian Vacation Package.  The other Fleet Sailor and I had both been to Hawaii, so we dug through our photo negatives for pictures of famous landmarks - Diamond Head, the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, the big statue of King Kameamea, and the like.  We accumulated a nice little collection of pictures, but of course, Sam wasn’t in any of them.  So, we moved on to Phase II of the operation.  Sam bought one of those cheesy Aloha shirts, and we picked up a couple of flower leis from a shop in Ocean Beach.  Armed with his fake Hawaiian attire, we dragged him to every tropical looking spot we could find for photos.  We took his picture on the beach, with white sand and bikini-clad beauties for a backdrop.  We took his picture in front of palm trees.  (San Diego has plenty.)  We snapped his picture standing in the fake pearl diving village they had at Sea World in those days.  We took him to Bali Hai, a local Polynesian restaurant that used to put on full-fledged luaus, with roasted pigs, fire dancers, hula dancers, giant carved Tiki statues, and the whole nine yards.  Needless to say, we took a ton of pictures.  We even got a shot of Sam drinking a tropical drink from a coconut, complete with a little bamboo umbrella.

When we had accumulated enough photos, we took the new negatives and our old (real Hawaiian) negatives to a photo processing place and had them all printed in the same format on the same kind of photo paper.  When we got the pictures back, we were floored.  Given those photos as evidence, we would have believed that Sam had been to Hawaii, and we were fellow perpetrators of the hoax.  As a final touch, Sam picked up some tropical looking souvenirs from the shops down in Ocean Beach: dried sand dollars, sea shells, tee-shirts with pictures of dolphins, and glass paperweights with hula girls inside.  He wrapped up the bogus evidence into five or six packages to friends, family, and his lady, and mailed them from the base Post Office (FPO San Francisco).  And, with a few stamps and a few dollars in postage, Sam ascended to near Godhood in the eyes of small town USA.

As soon as the packages were safely in the mail and the weight of despair had lifted from young Sam’s shoulders, we felt safe in giving him all manner of grief over his screw up.  I looked him in the eye and told him, "We hooked you up, this time. But, if you tell those guys you’ve been to Timbuktu, you’re out of luck!"

Private note to Sam:  (You know who you are…)  I’ve protected your sneaky little secret for twenty years, and I still don’t use your real name or mention your hometown when I tell this story.  For all I know, you came clean with your family years ago and it’s all become part of your family history.  But I won’t make that assumption until I hear it from you.  Maybe, by way of thanks, you could send me a photo or two from the old Artificial Hawaiian Vacation Package.  I won’t post them without your permission.  I’d just like to see them again, and laugh my butt off one last time.