Read Online Ernie: The Autobiography by Ernest Borgnine - Free Book Online

generally happy folks who used to make good rice bread. It was miserably hot and humid there and most of us slept on deck. We’d bring our mattresses up from their swinging hooks and lay them down. You’d have to deal with the flies, but that was better than the heat belowdecks.
    Anyway, I was on watch one night and somebody came to me and said, “Borgnine, we just got notice that your grandmother has passed away.”
    That’s the military for you: unsentimental and to the point.
    While I waited to see if I could get leave to go home, I started thinking about my father’s mother. I’m sure you’ve experienced this: the passing of a loved one brings about all kinds of wistful thinking. The tears would come at some point, probably at her funeral. Then and there, on that dark deck, was a time for remembering.
    My grandmother lived nearby and during the summer I would spend a few weeks at her house, helping with her garden and washing and sterilizing bottles for the root beer she made and sold. Like Mrs. Simone and her pizza, my grandmother could have gotten rich off her root beer.
    I had a friend in that neighborhood, Spenny Holtz. One time my grandmother caught us smoking in the bathroom. Not cigarettes, which we couldn’t afford, but corn silk that we saved after eating corn on the cob in some poor farmer’s field. Well, this little old lady just tore down the house.
    “Out!” she screamed, grabbing me by the hair and hauling me all the way home. I knew she wouldn’t tell my mother, because she didn’t want my mother to worry about anything, since her health was fragile. But she laid the law down. She said “From now on, you don’t do that.”
    Not only didn’t I smoke, but I would get a little tingle of fear every time I ate corn on the cob. My grandmother was strict!
    I was given permission to go home for the funeral. When I got there, I found out that Joey had just joined the navy, too, and was waiting to ship out. We had lost touch and neither of us knew the other had enlisted. It was good seeing him again, more man than boy now. He introduced me to one of his neighbors, a woman named Victoria Warwick, who was a palm reader. She asked us to let her tell our fortunes. We didn’t believe in any of that, but figured we had nothing to lose.
    She took Joey’s hand and said, “You’re in the navy now, and that’s wonderful. You’ll be okay on the sea, but something will ail you. I don’t know what it is, but you should be careful.”
    Then she looked at my hand and she was thunderstruck. She said, “You’re never gonna have to work hard in all your life. You’re going to be very rich and you’ll do something that’s extremely different.”
    That made absolutely no sense at all, but I thanked her and we left.
    As it all turned out, Joey came home from the navy shortly before I did, suffering from ulcers. I heard he wasn’t well and as soon as I arrived I went to see him. I have since changed my mind about Mrs. Warwick, wherever she is. Sadly, the fortune-teller had nailed it.
    Joey was very sick due to internal bleeding and died not long after. I was able to visit him just one more time at his home and he didn’t look well. I knew the end was near. I wanted to see him again after that, but I didn’t get the chance. Maybe it’s just as well, because I remember him now as the scrappy little kid who used to filch celery with me.
    God bless him.

    No sooner had I gotten home than we got a telephone call from a neighbor who asked if we were listening to the radio. We weren’t, and he said, “Turn it on, quick!”
    We heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I thought of my crewmates, my ship, my country. I remember thinking, “Oh, my God, what am I going to do?”
    I went and got out my uniform and my mother said, “No, no, please. Don’t go. Wait till they call you.”
    I said, “Mom, I’ve got to go!”
    She said, “No! I want you to wait until they call you.”
    Well, she probably saved my