Clothes Make the Man
When he gets an evening job unloading quahogs, a young Coast Guard sailor finds out just how important clothing can be when it comes to making a good first impression.

While I was in high school, I decided to make the Coast Guard my career. In the summer of 1954, I was on my way to Coast Guard boot camp in Cape May, N.J. As a 17-year-old seaman recruit, I was on top of the world.

Much to my surprise and pleasure, I was assigned as permanent party at the Coast Guard base in Cape May in the carpenter shop, primarily repairing wooden- hulled Coast Guard boats. In those days, civilian clothing was not allowed onboard the station, so most of us, as new, young sailors living aboard, had none.

One summer afternoon while on liberty, several of my shipmates and I went to Wildwood, N.J., and got ourselves evening jobs. Our task was to unload a fleet of 10 clam boats when they returned to port after several days dredging large chowder clams, called quahogs.

But now that we had a job, what were we going to wear? We all decided to wear our old, unserviceable, tattered chambray shirts and dungarees, which in those days had our name and serial number on the back of the uniform and just our name on the left front pocket.

After we had worked there for a while, we realized the clam docks were quite an attraction for tourists. One afternoon while busily unloading the Empress Mary, I spied a particularly attractive young lady watching the unloading procedures with her mother and father. When the Empress Mary was unloaded, the girl walked over to me and started asking questions about the quahogs. I pulled one out of the sack and popped it open so she could see what they looked like inside the shell. Before she or I knew what happened, her mother hurried over, abruptly grabbed her by her arm, and pulled her away from me, back to where her father was waiting.

As they walked away, I heard the mother give her daughter a stern warning about us, saying, “Dear, do not go that close to them again. Did you not see the numbers on their shirts? They’re prisoners, you know!” All had a good laugh that day, except for me, as I never saw that attractive young lady again.

—   William H. Wilson Jr. is a retired Coast Guard commander.
He lives in East Boothbay, Maine.