[GreenKeys] World War II Vets & Surplus

[Steve Hilsz]

I'm steering the middle of the road on all this flak about war & morals. I 
was born during World War II, so my childhood heroes were people like G. I. 
Joe and Ike. When I was a teen-ager my favorite haunts were military surplus 
stores.

I remember buying Teletype stuff at Standard Surplus on Market Street in San 
Francisco. Abe Cranow, the owner, would raise the roof when he caught us 
pawing through his Teletype apparatus, because all of it went to the 
Philippine Islands. Us kids remembered the Philippines because of General 
"Dugout Doug" MacArthur and General "Skinny" Wainwright, who got left behind 
on Corregidor.

I digress. The wealth of electronic surplus left over from the Last Good War 
still exerts a siren song for me. Believe it or not, there are still caches 
of the stuff. I just found over 100 BD-71 switchboards for field phones, a 
lot of them still uncrated!

For now, I am being irresistibly pulled to Brownsville, Texas, where the 
carcass of the USS DES MOINES heavy cruiser (with 8-inch guns!) awaits me. 
Maybe I'll find some neat Teletype stuff aboard the old gal.

Steve Hilsz 



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