When I was in my twenties, I had a job parking cars. The parking lot was in the basement of an old, downtown San Diego hotel. The lot held about 70 vehicles.

The only light downstairs by which to park the cars was provided by a few light bulbs scattered widely over the large space. Therefore, it was pretty hard to see what you were doing.

Bill, my boss, was the owner of the business. He was a handsome, articulate, warm man. He never did anything slowly, including talking.

One day, I was running the lot by myself. A woman  entered our driveway at the top of the ramp to the basement. She drove a beautiful ten year old, black Caddy. It was a gorgeous car and perfectly maintained. She was a steady customer named Helen.

I was starting to jump into the car when I noticed there was a huge dog inside. He was a German Shepherd. I quickly backed away.

Helen said, ” Don’t worry, he’s as friendly as a puppy. His name is Lucky.”

I got into the car and  spent a few minutes getting acquainted with Lucky. Sure enough, he was a delightful, playful dog. After awhile, I drove down the ramp to the basement and parked the car. I petted Lucky for awhile, then I walked back up the ramp to the office.

In a few minutes Bill came in. He wanted me to run some business errands. I was gone for maybe two hours.

When I returned, Bill was standing on the sidewalk waiting for me. I could see he was furious. He said, “I want to talk to you right now. Park the car and come back up to the office.

I was afraid I had angered him by being gone too long. After I parke the car, I went back up to the office to face the music.

When I was in the office, he said, ” If you ever park a car with a dog in it again, and don’t tell me, I will fire you if I don’t kill you first.”

My imagination began to work. I could see a little of what must have happened. I could feel myself wanting to laugh, but of course, I had to hold it in because Bill was so angry.

He went on, “When Helen returned for her car, I went down to get it for her. I hopped in the car and started it up. I put it in reverse, and started to turn my head around toward the back of the car so I could see where I was going. All of a sudden, I felt a huge tongue licking me, completely across my face.”

I kept a serious look on my face, but the humor in the situation was threatening to overwhelm me. I was in agony wanting to laugh.

Then Bill said,” I did not hit the brake. I did not look to see what there was in the back seat that had licked me. I just let the car run into a cement pillar.  I just opened the door, jumped out and ran away.”

By now my need to laugh was enormous. Fortunately, Bill took that moment to storm out of the driveway and down the street on his way for coffee.

After I laughed for a few seconds, I began to see the seriousness of the what had happened. When Bill returned, I apologized profusely and offered to pay for the damage to the car.

Bill said, “Oh George, it’s all right. Cars frequently get damaged in parking garages. Its a cost of doing business.”

Then he laughed and said, “It’s a great story. I will get my money’s worth  retelling it for the rest of my life.”

I was an enlisted man in the U.S. Army in the early sixties. I served as a Chaplain’s Assistant for two chaplains.

The Baptist chaplain was young. He was a loving, funny, committed man. He had been in the Army only a few years.

I was in constant hot water with my sergeant because I lacked the ability to keep my uniform looking sharp. In particular, I did not keep a high sheen on my boots. Sometimes, the chaplain would shine my boots for me. I think he did it because it gave him such a good chance to tease me.

One time we were on maneuvers in the state of Washington. Our opponent in the maneuvers was one of the airborne divisions. There were plenty of rumors going around about the brutality of the airborne troops. One story was that they hung one of our men upside down from a tree and beat him with sticks. I believed the rumors.

I was not famous for jumping out of bed the instant an alert was sounded.  I had found out that, very often, in the confusion of a dark middle of the night alert, no one would miss me if I did not get up.

However, this night, I did not want to be caught in bed by airborne soldiers for fear of what they might do to me. I slept in my uniform fatigues but without boots.

My  pup tent was right next to the chaplain’s large tent,with my tent’s rear wall parallel with the chaplain’s tent rear wall. That meant that my tent opening faced the same direction as the larger tent’s opening, but was a few feet further back.

The instant the alarm sounded, I jumped up grabbed my boots and  loaded a clip of blanks in my M-1, and stepped out of my pup tent. I leaned my rifle against the large chaplains tent and began lacing my boots.  I was bent over facing my tent opening. Therefore my back was toward the front of the chaplain’s tent.

The chaplain had gone to bed fully dressed and in his boots. When he heard the alert call, he jumped up. He was worried that I had not gotten out of bed. He came running out of his tent to make sure I was up.

I heard someone running up behind me. I was still leaning over. In one beautifully trained move, I grabbed my rifle, kneelton one knee, slipped off the safety, whirled and shot off a blank round.

Blanks have a wax paper stopper compressing the gun powder. When a blank is fired, the stopper comes flying out like it is a bullet. It only travels a few feet, but at point blank range, it is very dangerous.

At the sound of the shot, the figure running toward me stopped in a single step. When he stopped, I could see the cross on his helmet reflecting the moonlight. I was really scared.

I asked, ” Is that you Chaplain?”

After a long pause he said, “Nice time to ask.”

Later he told me that he had felt the stopper whiz by his ear. I was very fortunate that he was not wounded.

I was told that the story of the “Chaplain’s Assistant Who Shot the Chaplain”, made the Stars And Stripes, the Army wide newspaper. The chaplain himself , took enormous pleasure re-telling the story to other officers in my presence.

Years later, a young soldier named Larry was in the army stationed in Germany. A nearby Chaplain asked him to come sing and play the guitar for a  chapel service.

When he arrived at the chapel, the Chaplain asked him where he was from. Larry told him he was from San Diego.

The Chaplain said, “Let me tell you a story about a Chaplain’s Assistant I once had from San Diego.”

Larry stopped him and said, “Let me tell you the story.”Then Larry told him the story I am telling you.

The Chaplain said, “How did you hear that story.”

Larry said, “George Caywood is my Uncle.”

The chaplain glanced down to see what Larry was carrying and said, “I  hope you don’t have a M-1 in that guitar case.”

Eric was one of JoAnna’s first boyfriends. He was a handsome, sweet, bright,  athletic boy. Jo Anna seemed to really like him. They dated for several months.

When they first started going out, Jo invited him to spend the day with her family at our home. We all wanted to support Jo in her romantic adventure. I was on my  best behavior.

The day went well. The family liked Eric very much. For Jo, having her charming sisters around to help entertain undoubtedly eased her early date nerves.

In the late afternoon, Eric and Jo decided to leave. However, they could not find Eric’s tennis shoes.

Jo asked me if I had seem them. I had not seen them so, I organized a search party. I assigned everyone a room  to search.

I said, “Start looking at the immediate left of the door into your assigned room. Then work your way all the way around the room till you come back to the door. Then look under everything in the middle of the room.”

The search took about ten minutes. No luck. We stood around thinking. We knew the shoes were in the house somewhere. Once in a while, one of us would think of a different place to look. Still no shoes. It was baffling.

Finally Eric said “Jo, lets just go.”

She said, “No, Eric, the shoes are here. Let’s stay until we find them.”

Eric insisted. “Jo let’s just leave.” There was emotion and determination in his voice, so Jo agreed to leave.

They went out to Eric’s truck, Eric in stocking feet. I followed them outside. I stood on the edge of the grass, waving good bye.

They drove around the corner until they were out of sight. Then Eric pulled the truck over and started to laugh uncontrollably. Jo sat there wondering what was so funny.

When Eric regained a little control, he said, “I know where my shoes are. They are on your Dad’s feet. When we were standing there wondering where my shoes were, I happened to notice that your Dad’s shoes had a hole just exactly where my shoes had a hole. That seemed odd. Then I realized that they were my shoes.”

Here is what had happened. I had the idea that my family sometimes got embarrassed by some old item of clothing I dearly loved and  was wearing. They would  throw the offending item into the trash when I was not around. A few months before, my Nike’s had turned up missing. I thought the girls had gotten rid of them.

When I saw Eric’s shoes, I said to myself, “My Nike’s”. I was so happy and immediately put them on. They were so comfortable.

All the time we were searching for Eric’s shoes, I had them on. I especially like the picture of me standing on the lawn, affectionately waving goodbye, wearing his shoes.

Eric was embarrassed to take his shoes off my feet. They went to his house and picked up another pair.