SAMUEL G. TOOMA, AUTHOR
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CHAPTER 6. VIGNETTES (CONT'D)3/26/2021 I am posting 4 vignettes today. Tokyo, Japan Customs Incident (1966) and Silly Goose (1982). In reading the first story, please try to put yourself in my shoes. I was trying to go through Japanese customs in Tokyo, and I was carrying with me 3 fiberglass cases, each of which contained what looked like a bomb. I couldn't speak Japanese, and the custom agent(s) couldn't speak English. I had just had a 17 TOKYO, JAPAN CUSTOMS INCIDENT (1966). The following incident occurred about a year before I reported to the USS Banner. We were conducting a survey in the Sea of Japan, and I needed to bring several bathythermographs (BTs) with me to the ship I would be boarding (Figure 24). BTs were used to provide a temperature profile through the shallow water column. BTs were carried in small fiberglass containers which looked like baby coffins. I had 3 of them with me at the time. I got into the customs line with my luggage and the 3 BT boxes. When my turn came, I opened the boxes, and you can imagine what the customs agent thought when he saw the BT pictured below. The Japanese agent just looked at me and laughed as only the Japanese can do. He thought that it must be a bomb of some sort. He spoke no English, and I spoke no Japanese. I tried to explain what it was but to no avail. He bowed to me politely and told me to wait by holding his hand up to me. He disappeared for a moment then showed up with another gentleman that was wearing an ID badge. They both looked at the BT and were laughing. They would periodically look at me and bow. They left and came back with a third official who had a badge larger than the second one. They tried to talk to me, but that didn’t work. They took me aside so that other passengers could go through customs. A fourth agent joined us who had an even larger badge. He spoke some English, but imagine trying to explain what a BT was to someone who only understood a little English. Finally, a distinguished Japanese gentleman (A passenger, I believe) approached me and said in perfect English, “I have been watching what has been going on. Perhaps I could help”. I was very grateful, and I explained what the bomb-looking device was for. He seemed to understand, and he began talking to the now 4 customs agents. As he explained, they would look at me, laugh, and then bow. Finally, they came to me, signaled that I could close the boxes, and that I could proceed to the street. The whole incident took about an hour. I had been travelling for about 17 hours to get to Japan. I was very tired, and I still had to hail a taxi and drive the hour’s trip to Yokosuka. I don’t know what my Japanese passenger “angel” had told the customs agents, but it worked, and I was finally on my way. SILLY GOOSE (1982). In 1982, a very popular TV show began airing called “Cheers”. It was about the happenings in a bar in Boston named Cheers and starred Ted Danson as Sam and Shelley Long as the waitress named Diane. Diane was a snobbish sort, and she often bugged the other workers and customers by her speech and other mannerisms. Our family would watch the show religiously. On one particular episode, Diane said to Sam, “Oh Sam. You are such a silly goose”. Later in the show, Diane asked Sam what he had against her. Sam said, “For one thing you say crazy things like “Silly Goose””. Well my wife and I and my two daughters, Monica and Stephanie, all thought that this was really funny. From that time on, whenever any of us does something dumb, we say to that person, “Oh, Dad (or whoever), You’re such a silly goose”. Figure 24. A Bathythermograph (BT). A BT Is About 3 Feet Long
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CHAPTER 6. VIGNETTES (Cont'd)3/15/2021 I am posting 2 stories today. The first is titled "New York Customs Incident (1963)." This story shows how naive I was at 22 years of age. The second story is titled "My Buick Skylark Drenched With Bird Doo (1966)". This story is one that I would like to forget but my kids refuse to let me. NEW YORK CUSTOMS INCIDENT (1963). In September 1963, I had just completed my first oceanographic cruise with NAVOCEANO. This had been my first trip out of the country, and I was very naïve about the process of custom’s inspection of luggage when returning to the U.S. During the cruise in the Norwegian Sea, I was asked to return quickly to Washington for another cruise in the Caribbean Sea. I was asked to bring as many oceanographic “messengers” with me for use during the upcoming cruise. Figure 21 below shows a messenger hanging below a Nansen bottle. The purpose of a messenger is to “trip” the next Nansen bottle on the oceanographic wire. The messenger slides down the wire and strikes a trigger at the top of the Nansen bottle. The bottle then flips over and captures a water sample. At the same time, the thermometers attached to the bottle reverse (or flip upside down), thereby capturing the temperature of the water at that depth. The messenger then hits a lever at the bottom of the bottle holding the bottom attached messenger (shown in the figure) which is released and continues down the wire to the next Nansen bottle. The purpose of including this involved description is to show that these stainless-steel messengers were necessary to conduct an oceanographic station. We had a shortage of them; hence, I was asked to bring about 12 back with me. In New York, when I reached my customs agent, I was asked to open my suitcase for inspection. When I did, the messengers were on the top of my clothing and in plain sight. Although it is difficult to see in Figure 21 below, the messenger is attached to the Nansen bottle by a 3-inch-long wire with a loop in it. The customs agent gingerly picked up one of the messengers and began to touch this wire. I said loudly “Don’t touch that”! The customs agent, in a panic, flipped the messenger into the air, and it fell back into my suitcase. He looked at me with panic in his eyes. Well, I thought that all this was quite funny, and I had a big grin on my face. The agent did not share my humor. He asked me what the messenger was, and I explained it to him. He then proceeded to empty the entire contents of my suitcase, pushed it all aside, even onto the floor and then said “Next”. I had to repack my suitcase with all my dirty underwear in front of all the other people waiting patiently in line. I had the first laugh, but he certainly had the last. Needless to say, I didn’t pull any more dumb stunts like that with customs again. MY BUICK SKYLARK DRENCHED WITH BIRD DOO (1966). I finally replaced my beloved 1958 Austin Healy Sprite in late 1965. I got a 1966 Buick Skylark Gran Sport. It was the Buick version of the mid-1960’s so-called “Muscle Cars”. Pontiac had its famed GTO, Chevy had its SS, and Oldsmobile had its 442. My friends nicknamed my car the “Batmobile”. It was all black, inside and out. Figure 22 below is a photo of my Buick Skylark Gran Sport. Not too long after getting this car, I took Sylvia to a movie in Washington, D.C. Well, unlike the “date from hell” described earlier, I found a parking spot on the street not far from the theater. After the movie let out, we walked to the car only to see that I had parked the car under a near-dead tree. Hundreds of large birds were roosting in the tree, and they had recently fed on some kind of purple berries. They were doing what birds do. They were all pooping onto my nice, new, shiny black car. The car was almost totally covered with purple bird doo. In those days, I had to unlock the car with a key. And when Sylvia tried to get in, she was hit by several sharpshooting birds. When I got into the car, I realized that I could not see out of the windshield because it was covered by the purple mess. I tried to clean off the windshield with the washers, but this only smeared the doo and made it worse. I’m not sure how I made it back to our apartment, because I had to lower my side window and drive back with my head out the window so I could see. When we arrived back home, Sylvia found about 5 purple bird bombs in her hair. She was not happy. The next day, I cleaned off the windshield as best I could and went to work. On the way home, I stopped at a car wash place. I remember that the automated car wash did not get the car clean, and it had to be scrubbed by hand. The workers complained loudly as they cleaned the car. I was very embarrassed when I got into the car and relieved when I drove away. Figure 21. A Nansen Bottle. Notice the "Messenger" Hanging Below the Bottle. Figure 22. My Buick Skylark Gran Sport.
CHAPTER 6. VIGNETTES (Cont'd)3/1/2021 Again, I will post 2 short stories of humorous events that took place in my life. The first is part of the very first date that I had with my future wife, Sylvia. She has told me numerous times that she can't understand why she went out with me a second time after what happened in my story entitled "Snowing In the Sprite." The second story is one of my daughter Stephanie's favorites, entitled "The Joker."
SNOWING IN THE SPRITE (1964). In the winter of 1964, I met my future wife, Sylvia Stone. She had just moved into an apartment on the floor above me. The first time we met, she knocked on my door and just walked into my apartment. She was surprised to see me, because she had expected to see my roommate whom she had met earlier. She wanted to borrow something. She was a little embarrassed, plus, she had her hair in curlers and generally looked a mess. She apologized and made a hasty retreat. We really met a few days later in the laundry room of the apartment complex. We both wanted to use the dryer, so I suggested that we dry our clothes together and save money. I like to say that we washed our underwear together, because I found some of hers mixed in with my clothes later on. A few days later, some of the NAVOCEANO guys were having a little party, and we needed some girls to be there. In the mornings, Sylvia would wait in the foyer for her ride to work. I went down to the door and asked her and her roommate, Billi Jo, who was with her, if they would like to go. They both said yes. So, it wasn’t a date since I had asked both of them. In fact, Sylvia drove to the party with two other guys. That night, after the party, Sylvia and Billi Jo went back to the apartment with me. We all piled into my Austin Healy Sprite. Billi Jo sat in the passenger’s seat and Sylvia was between us on the car’s drive shaft hump. The Sprite is a 2-person roadster. She was not too comfortable. And, as luck would have it, snow began to fall. Soon, it was snowing in the cockpit of the car. Sylvia said, “What kind of a car do you have here?” I was a little embarrassed, and I tried to explain as she was being blanketed with snow. A few weeks before the party, I returned from a trip to Bermuda and discovered that the convertible top to the Sprite had been slashed by vandals. I located a business that replaced convertible tops, and I had the top replaced. The original top had a rubber gasket along the part that attached to the top of the windshield. They did not replace this gasket. The snow was riding up the windshield and through the space where the gasket should have been. Hence, it was snowing in my car. Again I had not started off well in establishing a relationship with a girl. When I tell this story and Sylvia is listening, she always adds that she doesn’t know why she married me. She thought that I was a klutz with a crazy car, and she always seems to add that she thought I was a cheapskate because I asked her to pay for her share for use of the clothes dryer when we dried our clothes together. She maintains that it was only one little piece of underwear that got caught up in my clothes. That is not what I remember. THE JOKER (1982). I had not planned to include this story and had not included it in my original outline. But my daughter, Stephanie, insisted that I do. She said that what happened to me here was one of the funniest memories of our 2 years in Hawaii. So, here it is. It was 1982, and I was fairly new at my position as Environmental Advisor to ADM Kauderer. Since I was flying on military helicopters, I was required to take survival training in event of a crash at sea. To fulfill this requirement, I was bussed, along with about 15 military guys, to a rather large swimming pool at a seemingly abandoned base in the mountains of Oahu. We drove through the unmanned security gate, and when we did, the smell of chlorine was strong. When we gathered around the swimming pool, we were told that all the in-water tests had to be done wearing our full suite of flight gear. This included the flight suit, helmet, gloves, and, boots. I felt like, you’ve got to be kidding. Also, I realized that the strong odor of chlorine that I noticed earlier was from the pool. It reeked of chlorine. We were pushed into the pool and told to swim 2 laps to warm up. When I finished the laps, I was already exhausted because of all the extra weight I was wearing. However, I was not allowed to touch the side of the pool. I was instructed on how to use my helmet as a “flotation device”. I used more energy trying to use my helmet than I would have doing the dead man’s float. They ran us through a bunch of simulated drills, one of which almost killed me. The helicopter had crashed, and burning oil was blazing on top of the water. We had to swim about 3 strokes underwater, come up to just below the surface, use our hands to splash the water (and hopefully clear the surface of the burning oil), break the surface, take a deep breath, go back under, and repeat the process for the entire length of the pool. I knew that I was going to drown. What kept me going was that several of the young stud military kids had already asked for help and asked to get out of the pool. I don’t know how I did it, but I survived. We were finally allowed to get out of the pool and get dressed. I had a scheduled appointment with the admiral later that afternoon, and the instructors knew about this. They had promised that they would get me back to the base in time for my meeting. However, we were getting short of time, and we had to hurry to get dressed for the bus ride back. When I entered the admiral’s waiting room, I noticed that everyone was looking at me very strangely. No one said a word to me. When the admiral was ready for me, I was asked in. I noticed that he looked at me and had a little grin on his face. When our meeting was over, he shook my hand and shook his head. As I was leaving the outer room, the yeoman (secretary) said, “Dr. Tooma, can I ask you a question”? I said, “Sure, go ahead”. He asked, “Are you in a play or something”? I said, “No. Why”? He said, “Your hair is a bright green”. I said, “What”! I ran into the bathroom to look in a mirror. To my horror, my white hair was now a neon green. I looked like the Joker in a campy Batman movie. No wonder the admiral was shaking his head. I was so embarrassed. When I got home, Sylvia and the kids looked at me and laughed uncontrollably. They asked me how my hair turned so green. I told them about the chlorine-laced pool. It took me several days of hair washings to get the green out. It took several weeks before my family stopped teasing me about it. AuthorMy life's experiences. Archives
May 2021
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