Page 71 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

For entertainment, the Day Room had a stack of recordings on large records. They
contained many popular radio programs of the time. We listened to the “Jacks Benny
Show”, Red Skelton, “Can You Top This?”, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and a
musical program called “Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians”. We played the records
on the phonograph in a large Juke Box.

There was a small room behind the Day Room that had a Bendix washing machine.
About once a week, I would carry my bag of dirty clothes to the front loading washer.
After using the washer, I emptied the lint collector at the bottom of the machine.
Occasionally, I would discover a coin or two that had gone through the washing cycle.
During my time at Shemya, the best collection I found was I found was a very clean
quarter. Twenty-five cents in those days would buy five Cokes!

The mail takes days to go out and a day to come into this lonely island, plus the many
miles it must be taken to each of the lower 48 states. On January 3, I received twelve
letters written around Christmas that were chasing me through Elmendorf. Some of the
guys are scared by rumors that Shemya is just a large rock sitting on top of an
underwater mountain peak. It didn’t help calm their fears on January 4 when we felt a
brief earthquake. I guess you can call it a tremor because it caused no damage and only
lasted about 5 seconds.

Chaplain Clarke had temporary duty elsewhere for the first two Sundays in February,
so I conducted the morning services those days. I was now reading my RSV Bible in
the book of First Samuel, and I found it was a lot easier to understand than the King
James. I was surprised to learn the book of Ruth was so short, only 4 chapters within 5
pages. The organist for the chapel returned this month and I joined him in a
piano-organ duet, with me mainly picking out the melodies. I always wished I was able
to take more than one piano lesson when I was growing up.

We had many sunny days with temperatures between 25 and 35 degrees. I enjoyed the
snow showers that we had. They didn’t get us wet like the Florida ones did. Most of
them were in the form of snow pellets rather than snowflakes. One day, the chaplain,
organist and I were walking along the beach and we found pieces of coke bottles that
were broken so long ago, that they were worn smooth by the waves, rocks and volcanic
soil. I wish I had kept a sample of that soil. The grains were dark gray, smooth and
spherical, about 1/8 inch diameter.
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