Keith Tillotson
Jack Dempsey's (1944)
Los Angeles - July 27, 1945
Seattle - Sept 1, 1945
I ran around with a cadet most of the time. He was a young kid. I usually went ashore with him. I paid off there in New York, and met a girl there. We went to Jack Dempsey's Restaurant. I remember that. And we got thrown out of the place. We went in there to meet these girls. We went in, we saw a couple of girls there, and we asked them for a dance. And you weren't allowed to do that. They didn't want you to meet anybody there. If you came in with 'em, fine, but you couldn't come in and pick up somebody. I guess it was the rule of the club.
So, I remember these big guys – probably Jack Dempsey's sparring partners or something – picked us up and set us right out in the street, just like that. Then the girls didn't like that. They came out. So we went someplace else. But, we decided to go back there. Now we met the girls, so now we can go back, see? "You guys were here last night, weren't you?" We walked in with the girls, the same girls, so they couldn't throw us out. It was a strange rule, that's true.
Meantime, I wanted to go through Iowa and see the people there. The girl I liked, she lived in Chicago. So I stopped in to see her on the way when I went back to Iowa.
I remember when I got to Iowa, Perry and Mom are gone. Nobody seemed to know where they were – hadn't heard from them. I can't recall seeing them there. I remember seeing Don and Dennis, my cousins – Leonard's boys. They were still on the farm. I stayed a few days and I went right on through to Portland Oregon.