Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [40]
Tom was waiting at the other end smiling. “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “You know, you can also do two trips so you don’t have your hands so full while going through.”
Now he tells me.
When we got outside, Tom immediately lit up a cigarette. Camel non-filter. I myself had just started smoking a few months before and preferred Camel Lights. The Camel non-filters seemed to be the cigarette of choice around here. I noticed the night before that Jesse had also smoked those.
Tom told me to follow him to where we would have muster.
Muster is where everybody from any given Sea Organization is rounded up, lined up and accounted for. Every single person must attend all scheduled musters throughout the day. Usually there are at least four musters each day. Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and mid evening. Additional musters could be held at any point during the day and penalties for not attending musters were never fun.
“What’s with your uniform?” Tom asked.
“I was at the Association for Better Living and Education. We wore civvies every day of the week. I was never issued any other uniform parts,” I told him, noticing that no one else was wearing civvies and that I stuck out like a sore thumb again.
“This is Building 36,” Tom told me as we arrived to the muster location. As we walked towards the huge building, Renee Norton, the Supercargo, came up and told me that she would tell me where to stand. Tom walked over with us and told me to just stand behind him. He said that he was in the Hubbard Communications Office as well and I could just stand in the same line. Until I got posted, I was an Expeditor and I would stand in line with him.
As 8:30 a.m. drew closer, more and more people showed up for the muster. I had never seen this many Sea Org members in one place at one time. There must have been at least 300 people lining up. The individual lines of 10 or 15 people went down the road at least 100 yards.
At 8:29:55, a tall guy with bars on came out of the big building and stood in front of the muster lines, there were about 5 or 6 other people standing there in a line on either side of him. As he came to a stop, somebody yelled “Aten-Hut!” and everybody stood at attention.
Each division was called out, and the person in front of the line for that division yelled out who was present or accounted for. This went on division after division. It seemed to go on forever. After the last Division was called out, the tall guy said, “At ease.” And everybody put one foot apart and clasped their hands behind their backs. Damn these guys were really formal! At ABLE Int, we stood around in lines and muster took about one minute start to finish. We had been here for what seemed to be at least 10 minutes and that was just roll call!
The tall guy asked if there were any announcements. Renee, the Supercargo, raised her hand, stepped forward and motioned for me to come forward as well.
“We have a new arrival, Marc Headley. He is the first arrival from the mission that went down to the Hollywood Guaranty Building!” she said. Everybody clapped.
“Thanks,” I said and went back in line, mortified that I had to go up in front of everybody.
“Well, since it is Thursday, we will make this quick. Dismissed!” the tall guy belted out before I even get back into line.
“This is Ray McKay,” Renee said, introducing me to an older guy who had a bit of a haggard look on his face. “He is going to do your routing form with you and get you grooved in.”
“Hi,” I said as people scattered around us in all directions.
“What’s with the uniform?” Ray asked me as we headed into the building.
I told him, and thought I would need to get a white uniform before I was asked that another 300 times.
“Yeah, we might want to see the Uniforms Officer right off, so she can get your sizes and see what we can get for you right away,” Ray said.
We went into the reception area and everything