In the previous story, Uncle George, the Stud, I told of spending time with my favorite uncle and with the help of a bottle of bourbon to aid the conversation hear of his various exploits while on spring break on Jekyll Island, Georgia. Where that story left off was upon his graduation from Dartmouth and subsequent commissioning in the Navy. I had the good fortune of sharing yet another bottle of Wild Turkey with Uncle George when he told me of the beginning of his naval career. We sat there in his study each with a glass of bourbon: mine with ice, Uncle George's neat.
After graduating from Officer Candidate School at Newport, RI, Uncle George had headed home in his dad's Chrysler. Interstate 95 was in the planning stages but for the most part it was state toll roads and older U.S. routes all the way to his family's home at Falls Church, Virginia. The story doesn't get interesting until a week later when he had to get the train to Pensacola, his first duty station. At Washington's Union Station he boarded the Atlantic Coast Line train, The Silver Meteor, heading to Jacksonville. While the Navy would only pay for a day coach ticket, George's father, through a business connection with the railroad managed to get him a roomette. George, traveling in uniform, got to the station and boarded. Now this is where this gets interesting and I'll let George tell it in his own words.
"I got on the train and a porter showed me to my roomette where my immediate reaction was there are larger phone booths. Still, it was better than the reclining seat in the coach section. About 10 minutes later I felt the train lurch to a start. Travel was slow until we cleared the yard limits of Union Station. As we picked up speed my thoughts turned to finding a drink in the lounge car."
"This doesn't sound too bad under the circumstances."
"It wasn't but the story gets better."
"Let me guess, you met a woman?"
"Well, now that you mention it, yes. But not until over an hour later when she boarded at our stop at Quantico. She was a Marine lieutenant, tall and good looking. Let's just say that she filled out her uniform nicely."
"I'm already all ears."
"Now hold on. Marine lieutenants outrank Navy ensigns so I had to be careful. Anyway, shortly thereafter I headed to the dining car. Most of the tables were occupied but one had a seat open. You won't guess who had the other seat?"
"The lady Marine?"
"Yup. So I asked her if that space was taken and she invited me to join her. We introduced ourselves and I learned that her name was Jill Kroger, that is like in Lieutenant Jill Kroger! After we ordered we got into the small talk of where we were from and what we were doing in the military. I explained that I was fresh out of OCS, an engineer and assigned to the Seabees at Pensacola. She had been at Quantico for two years following graduation from Bentley College in Boston with a degree in accounting and was heading to the Marine Corps Repair Depot at Albany, Georgia where she was going to do an inventory audit. With different destinations we were both going to change trains at Jacksonville."
"So you two were hitting it off."
"We were. She had a great sense of humor and an even nicer smile. She was a real looker and just a pleasure to be with. I made a comment about the train being so nice and modern. She agreed, but said that she only had a seat in coach and wasn't looking forward to not getting any sleep. That's when I told her that I had a roomette. She said she had never been on a long-distance train before and wondered what they were like."
"I think I know where this might be going."
"Well, just hold on. Remember I am an officer and a gentleman and she outranks me. But I agreed to show her the roomette. Now mind you, it is not huge, but still had a double bed which the porter had made up while I was at dinner. So she takes one look and tells me that it is apparent that I'm going to get a good night's sleep. So I politely offered to let her join me, but emphasized that it was not a come on."
