The Gullible Young

I was all of 19 years old, and thought of myself as rather worldly what with 2 ½ years in the Navy already under my belt.  I had joined VP-8 a Navy Patrol Squadron with a dozen P2V5F aircraft the preceding August.  Our squadron was destined to be split up into three groups beginning in early January 1958.  Three aircraft and ¼ of the squadron personnel went to the Azore Islands.  An equal number of our members were scheduled to Argentia, Newfoundland, “The Rock”, while the remaining ½ remained in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, our home base.  After three months we were scheduled to rotate stations.

As a newer squadron member I was to remain at the home base during the first three month period.  However another squadron member with my exact rating was married and his wife was due to have a baby during the three month period so I agreed to take his place deploying to Argentia with the first group while he remained at our Quonset Point home base.

Little did I realize that for three months our enlisted personnel had nothing to do, but eat, sleep, and work.  There was no way to leave the base to go on any sort of liberty.  We worked whenever there was work to do.  The rest of the time we slept, ate, or played cards mostly.  The card playing most often was some sort of gambling, mostly poker of one sort or another.

So it was that one evening I was playing poker with several “friends”.  Four players were actually in the game while two or three others stood around watching.  A fellow that worked right in my own shop with me named Fitzpatrick was sitting across from me.  In a hand of five card draw I drew one card to the Ace, King, Jack, and Ten of hearts just because it didn’t cost much to do it.  Against all odds I drew the elusive Queen of hearts for a Royal Flush unbeatable hand.  Fitzpatrick after his draw held three aces and a pair of deuces.  Our betting began to escalate quite rapidly causing the other two players to drop out.  Another fellow that I knew quite well, named Alonzo, had been standing behind me for a long while.  Suddenly he grabbed the cards from my hand and threw them on the table face up with the garbled statement, “Lookee heah what dis boys got.”  This immediately caused me to win the hand, but with little in the pot versus what the potential win was.  I went on to lose my entire stake and had to quit shortly thereafter.

It was a very long time before I realized one day that Alonzo had been tipping off Fitzpatrick throughout the entire game that evening what I was holding.  When Fitz continued to bet against my Royal Flush Alonzo could not make Fitz understand to quit so took the action that he did.  Being young and gullible I always had to learn the hard way.