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Marine Corps grapes In February 1957, I joined the Marine Corps and was sent to Parris Island, S.C., for boot camp. As I was only 17 years old and had spent all of my young life on a small farm, I knew very little about the outside world. At lunchtime on my first day, I was going through the chow line and noticed a large bowl of purple grapes on the salad bar. I loved grapes, and since we very seldom had any on the farm I piled about a dozen on my tray. As soon as I sat down, I popped one into my mouth and just as quickly spat it out. “There are no grapes on earth that taste this bad,” I thought to myself. When I had finished the rest of my lunch, I got up and started to dump the “bad grapes” into the trash, but my drill instructor stopped me. He wanted to know why I did not like the Marine Corps food. It really upset him when I told him the grapes tasted sour. He made me sit down and eat every last one of them. When I had finished choking them down, he sent me to the barracks. Later on that day, I told some of my more worldly city friends what had happened. After a good laugh, they explained that what I thought were grapes were actually olives. Kenneth A. Rose | Morganton | Rutherford EMC |
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