I Want It All

Anytime you can get all of something you’d be a fool not to go after it. Like the Hunt brothers in the 70’s when they tried to corner the world supply of silver. At the time they were possibly the richest family in America and it would have been easy for them to say, “Yeah, sure, we’ve got it made.” but they didn’t get rich resting on their laurels. They wanted more, which is pretty much how the rich eventually become the filthy rich. You have to want it all but even more importantly you have to go out and get it all.

Wanting more is what made this country great. Getting more is what made things complicated. The Hunt brothers certainly proved that. They succeeded in acquiring half the world’s supply of silver but in what could actually be the definition for complicated, they eventually had to declare bankruptcy declaring assets of $1.5 billion and liabilities of $2.5 billion. That’s complicated with a capital C, considering the average bankruptcy involves assets of $30,000 and debts of $47,000.

But this isn’t a story about bankruptcy or even the Hunt brothers. This is a story about cornering the market—any market but in this case the Carlings Black Label market.

One day Sam, the manager of the 1^st Aviation Brigade Headquarters Company Club affectionately named the Yellow Submarine, mentioned to Cecil and me that he had 50 cases of Carlings Black Label and he was willing to let them go at a good price if we were interested.

Were we! I dunno ‘bout Cecil, but it had been a lifelong dream of mine to have all of something, regardless of what that something was, so long as no one else had it. I was captivated with the idea of living large even if living large meant nothing more than having my own personal stock of beer in rusty old tin cans left over from the Korean War.

I’m just kidding. This was never a lifelong dream of mine but once the offer was made I did find the idea of having my own stock of beer in the fridge, all bought and paid for in advance, very appealing. As the newest writer on the HAWK magazine staff, it just seemed like something Kerouac might do, or Hemingway.

 “If you promise to always have some on ice, I’m in,” I said, smiling like a kid coming down the stairs on Christmas morning.

“Oh don’t worry. I’ll take good care of you guys,” he responded, smiling like that kid’s parent who knew something the kid did not.

For a while, everything was working pretty well. I had a cold beer with my name on it waiting for me whenever I walked into the Yellow Submarine. Between us we actually had 1200 cans with Mabel’s picture and our names on it—enough to take us almost all the way to the end of our tour if we played our cards right.

But playing cards and drinking is always an iffy proposition and it wasn’t long before things started to get a little crazy. I started to drink more, which I had allowed for but some other stuff caught me completely off guard.

Because I didn’t need to bring money with me, I stopped wearing pants, showing up at the Club in just my army boxers. In fact, I was walking around in my underwear so much that Lin, the barmaid, said I was looking more and more like a Vietnamese peasant every day.

I also began giving away more beer—often to guys I didn’t know and sometimes to guys not even assigned to our company, who’d heard rumors of the great Vietnam War Beer Giveaway. The consensus around the barracks was that it was nice to have a writer in the house.

I eventually arrived at the conclusion that something Kerouac or Hemingway might do, really wasn’t something I should be doing.

As it turned out our personal stock of beer didn’t even last until the end of the month. The good news was that with all the freeloaders gone you could now get a seat at the Yellow Submarine. That and I started wearing pants again.