Sunday, April 19, 2009

In the Lap of Luxury

I lived in a hooch.  A hooch is a simple wooden structure measuring 16x32 feet.  The exterior is unpainted clapboard siding halfway up, screen the rest of the way, and a tin roof.  Sheets of plywood with hinges at the long edges are attached at the top of the screens so they can cover the screens when it rains.  The plywood was propped open at the bottom with a stick when it was sunny.  From inside you could see the bare studs, the inside of the clapboard, and the underside of the tin roof.  It was pretty noisy when it rained. The hooches had electricity but no running water.  Bugs, and plenty of them, came and went as they pleased.

In 1987, as a fairly new Air Force 1st lieutenant, I was assigned to Joint Task Force Bravo at Palmerola Air Base in Honduras for 6 months. While in Honduras, GIs had to observe some rules.  Rule Number One: Don't drink anything that's not from an approved source.  Rule Number Two: Never break Rule Number One.  You could be laid low by disease, and you're no good to the military like that.  

Honduras is a hot place, and you don't want to get too far away from drinking water.  There was one approved water source near the hooches, and it was a faucet at the end of a row of latrines.  Outside the base, sodas from a sealed bottle or can were OK, but ice was off limits.

I spent the first night in-country in a transitory hooch.  The next day I was assigned to my permanent hooch. Four Army officers were already settled in there and in varying stages of their own 6 month tours.  The hooch had a TV and a refrigerator, but what really caught my eye was a water cooler.  It was just like what you might find in any office; it had the clear five gallon water bottle and a tap for dispensing the chilled water.  

I was thrilled to have that water cooler.  No drinking water from the faucet for me!  I had bottled water!  I drank often from the water cooler, and in a few days the bottle was near empty.

One afternoon in the hooch after duty hours, one of my hooch-mates, Captain Salter, said, "DeLoach, it's your turn to get the water."  I was happy to do it.  I had been hitting the water pretty hard and was more than willing to pull my weight.  I'd just grab the empty bottle and go swap it out for a full one.  I asked Salter where the bottle swap was.  My balloon full of Palmerola bliss was soon deflated when I heard him reply, "You don't swap it.  You just take it to the faucet by the latrines and refill it."

2 comments:

  1. Funny! At least it was clean water and it probably went with your twizzlers pretty well too!

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  2. I did keep a bag of Twizzlers in the thigh cargo pocket of my camo pants at all times. The crinkling of the cellophane probably defeated some of the stealth characteristics of my camouflage uniform, but I tried to make up for it with an increase in my general level of sneakiness.

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