Authority Figures 1804

       I remember when I was a boy I used to say huh instead of what did you say? The grade school teacher frowned on that misuse of the English language. We were learning to write in cursive (now a lost art because they no longer teach it in the local schools). One day the teacher had us write a letter to thank our mothers for all they did for us. I started my letter with “dear Jean” and the teacher freaked out! I did that because everyone in the family called her Jean; I had never heard her called anything different than that and that is what I called her from my very first words. That was her name. I explained that to the teacher, but she insisted I use dear mother, so I did. That may have been the start of my dislike for some authority figures.
       That said, in most of my last 50 years I have had a level of respect for those I have worked for, some I had tremendous respect for, others, only tolerance. I have always done the best work I could at my jobs and been dedicated no matter what the job was, even working in the galley as an unrated airman, scrubbing food trays in the navy. I was not fond of getting up at 4 am to go to the galley and be inspected by a bosun’s mate to ensure my fingernails and uniform were clean enough to scrape off the metal breakfast trays and then scrub them. Oddly enough, when I was placed on night shift to clean and actually cook for midnight rations and then breakfast; the second class cook in charge never looked at us but the pots we scrubbed, those he looked at. We spent half the night making sandwiches for outgoing flights in the morning, no gloves in those days, just bare hands.
       The picture above is pretty much what I looked like in 1964 and early 65 working in the galley.