Cups and Saucers

Elephants and Teacups

Anyone earning over $5,000 a year was considered well off.  Gasoline was just under 25 cents per gallon.  Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the middle of his second term as President of the United States.  And I was a sailor in the US Navy on my way to war.

Well, actually, there was no war, but I was aboard a Navy vessel and we were about to enter a truly foreign port – my first.  Oh, I had been to Cuba.  Actually to Guantanamo Bay, but the USA owned that place, so it wasn’t a real foreign port.  There was a little excitement there at the time, however.  Some guy called Castro was apparently about to run off Presidente Batista and take charge of the palace.    

It was 1958 and we had crossed the Atlantic and were about to drop anchor in Tangiers, Morocco.  Did I mention that Alaska would become the 49^th State shortly?  Or that people in the USA would soon be buying Toyotas?  Times were really changing.  One thing that apparently hadn’t changed was the illicit use of drugs, and Tangiers was reputed to be one of the places where the supply of drugs was unfettered.

Every day for the past week we had been lectured to by our superiors on this topic, repeatedly warned to avoid any temptation we were surely going to experience as we toured the city.  We were even put on notice to avoid any and all activity known as bartering over the rail – where locals would approach our ship in small boats and offer an endless assortment of goods for an unimaginably small price.

Now when I joined the Navy, just over a year earlier, I had an older brother serving in the Air Force.  He was traveling all over the south Pacific and had started a family custom that I decided to emulate.  In each different country he visited, he would purchase two gifts: some kind of elephant memorabilia for our dear Aunt, and a cup and saucer for our mother.  He was buying elephants in the form of small glass or stone statues or bookends as well as highly decorated demitasse cups and saucers.

On day two in Tangiers, it was my chance to go ashore and see a different city and culture for the first time.  With a small group of shipmates, when we hit the pier in town we hired a local guide and spent the day touring the city, sampling the food and drink, and rubbing shoulders with ordinary citizens.  It may have been because of all the excitement of actually being abroad in a strange land, or something, but when we returned to the harbor that evening to await our ride back to the ship, I suddenly realized I had made a serious mistake.  I hadn’t bought an elephant or a cup and saucer!

I reached in my pocket and, finding a small wad of leftover local cash – worth about $10 US, I turned in desperation to our young guide, a boy of about 12.  “If I give you this money,” I began, “do you suppose you could find…”  and I told him what I needed and suggested he give it to one of our boat drivers to bring to me on the ship the next day.  Of course, I realized how silly it sounded at the time, and the next morning back aboard ship I accepted the fact that I had screwed up and that the little bit of cash I had sacrificed was no real loss.  I thought that would be the end of it.

My work station on the ship was below decks, about a third of the way back from the bow.  Late in the morning, our final day before leaving Tangiers and heading to a port in Spain, someone yelled down a companionway that I was needed back at the stern deck.  A few minutes later I stuck my head in a machine shop near the stern and asked who might have been called for me.  No one here, I was told, but somebody pointed to a nearby rail.  As I stepped back on the stern deck and approached the rail, I heard a voice from below. 

I peered over the side and, to my astonishment; there were two kids in a small rowboat – one of whom was our guide from the previous day.  The boy was standing up, holding a crudely wrapped package and pointing at me!  Now he was twelve to fifteen feet below, and there was no ladder or stairway.  So, smart guy that I am, I quickly found a small rope in one of the nearby spaces and dropped one end over the rail.

The boy tied the rope around the package and I began pulling it up.  The boy and his friend immediately began rowing back to the pier.  I was thinking that maybe my prayers were about to be answered, at least possibly so, when I suddenly felt a hand grip my shirt collar and a deep voice that said, “What in hell do you think you’re doing, sailor?  What part of ‘no bartering over the side’ instruction didn’t you understand?”

Holding my package in mid air, half way up from the water, dangling at the end of a small rope, firm hand on my collar, I slowly turned and found myself looking directly into the eyes of the ship’s Executive Officer, Commander Wallace.  “Pull that thing up here and come with me,” he sternly instructed.

I followed him two thirds of the way forward and up several decks to his wardroom near the bridge and the Captain’s quarters.  There, he took the unopened package from my hand and placed it on a nearby table.  “Please explain what is going on and what you have in that package,” he said.

There was no place for me to go.  Yes, I knew about the order to avoid any bartering over the rail.  I did recognize the kid who had delivered the package, and had no choice but to trust that it contained what I thought it did.  “Well, you see, Sir,” I began, and as quickly as I could I told him of my plan to acquire two gifts in each port and so on.  I ended with the details of how I had given my left-over money to our guide.  He took it in, his face as serious as could be, and then directed me to “open it up and let’s take a look.”

My hands were shaky, but I pulled back the paper and exposed what I prayed were my gifts.  There, among the wrappings, was a small, white somewhat plain, cup and saucer and a small, wooden carved Rhinoceros!  Well, it wasn’t an elephant, but in this case, close enough. . .

The Commander apparently understood that what I had told him was true, however silly it may have sounded, and after an attempt to remain serious and remind me that I might have been in serious trouble for violating a standing order, he could no longer contain himself and burst out laughing.  “Get that stuff and yourself out of here,” he directed, and I complied forthwith with all due speed.

That might have been the end of the story, except that over the next several months we visited more than a half dozen countries.  I remembered my obligation and had accumulated quite a cache of goodies.  We were in Istanbul, Turkey, at the time and about to enter the Black Sea where we would be ‘out of touch’ with the world for over a month.  There would be no mail, so before leaving Turkey I carefully wrapped my assortment of gifts, each lovingly marked as to origin and time of acquisition, and shipped them home.

Five and a half weeks later, returning from Odessa, Russia, and our tour of the Black Sea, we were given mail that had accumulated during our absence.  I had several letters and a couple of goodie boxes, so I put them in order according to when they had been sent and began reading.  Somewhere about letter 6 or so I learned that my package from Istanbul containing a number of gifts had been received, all unbroken and most welcome.  Thanks very much.

However, about that one from Tangiers.  Yes?  Well, the thin gold stripe on the plate was certainly attractive, but . . . well, we turned it over and there, on the bottom, was an inscription “King Fireware, Made in the USA.”  Anyway, we loved it, and it will go in the collection of course, but you should know that very same cup and saucer is on sale in our local IGA store right now for $2.95.”

Oh well, it was just another foreign adventure, after all.

Paul Sherburne