The Topless Shoeshine Parlor: The Draft-Era Military Really was Different

After Basic Training, the Air Force sent me to a technical school at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado.  The base is now a community college, a golf course, and a museum of the many missile and weapons technicians trained there during Cold War. 

In 1972, Airmen with free time could take a bus or walk the 108 blocks west to downtown Denver.  The first time I went to Denver was in April. The weather was nice so ‘Bama (my basic training bunkmate) and I walked to the city.  A few blocks east of the base on Colfax was proof positive we were serving in a draft-era military composed of mostly 19-year-old single men.

We walked east past taco stands, pawn shops, pool halls, stripper bars, bars without strippers, tattoo parlors, burger joints, military surplus stores, camera shops, and other stores of interest to young men easily parted from their meager incomes.  At about the 9300 block of East Colfax Avenue, ‘Bama stopped and said, “Lookie here Gussman. Son. Of. A. Bitch.”

We were staring in the front window of the only Topless Shoeshine Parlor I have ever seen before or since. My 19^th birthday was still a few days away, so as far as I knew I was still the only 18-year-old virgin in the United States Air Force, or maybe in the world.    

‘Bama, being a man of the world, insisted it was a rip-off and we should just keep walking.  I took his advice, but as we walked away, I was twisting my neck farther than normal anatomy allows to look at the hypnotic motion that occurs when a woman wearing just a skirt rhythmically rubs a shine cloth on a boot.

Topless shoeshine parlors were a 1970s phenomenon. They were also part of the culture around military bases that began to disappear with the all-volunteer Army. From its beginnings with the end of the draft in 1973, the volunteer army recruited more and more married soldiers. With the bad economy of the 70s, especially after the oil crisis, the Army recruited men who needed medical care for their wives and kids.  All through the late 70s, the replacement soldiers who came to our unit fit this profile: 19-21 years old, married, one child, wife is pregnant. Like most soldiers, that young man was from the south or the west.

With more married soldiers, wives had more influence on the culture on and off the base. The stripper bars and other family unfriendly businesses moved away from the gate of the base.  It’s not like the soldiers stopped going to strip clubs, topless shoeshine parlors or pool halls, but with so many wives going on and off base, they went to strip joints away from the gate. 

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The War We Won, In a Podcast

In 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The Cold War ended. There was only one Superpower left in the world. China was still communist, but a hybrid kind of communism with a free market.

Whether the Soviet Union collapsed from corruption or a bad economy or the its war in Afghanistan, the Cold War ended when its fourteen member nations and satellite nations became self governing, many of them voting in democratic governments.

The new podcast on the Cold War by wondery ends at this moment in history.  It's six episodes begin at the end of World War II and trace the history of the conflict that never happened. The perspective is inside America.  It looks at the Cold War from the perspective of Americans going about their lives, which we all were before and after our service in the Cold War.

I loved the podcast. I hope you enjoy it too. Listen here or on iTunes.

Immigration and Surviving The Holocaust in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

On the eve of World War in the late 1930s, the original "America First" campaign turned away thousands of Jews who came to America to escape the Holocaust.

But more than twenty Jewish families that escaped Germany and the Nazis found refuge in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a haven for refugees then and now.

One of those refugees died on February first.  Just a young boy when he arrived here with his parents, Arno Gerhard "Gary" Wolff of Millersville was 83. 

Born in Schneidemühl, Germany, he was the son of the late Kurt and Else Rothschild Wolff. Arno had two older brothers who stayed behind in Germany. They were both sure that things would get better. Both were lost in the Holocaust.  

The two older brothers were murdered by the Nazis. Arno and his parents, while fortunate to get out of Germany, were left to deal with the scar of the murder of their Arno's older brothers, the sons of Kurt and Else.

Arno Wolff had a long and successful life in America. He taught as a Professor in colleges and universities in both the United States and Germany. But he and his parents lived with a loss from which no one fully recovers. 

Nazis are not "fine people." Not here, not anywhere, not ever.