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Youkey was a two-year draftee, and the clerk-typist; tall, rangy, glasses with a white convertible sports-car, and an Athenian-actress girl-friend. They actually attended the city horse-race track like in the movies; too-sophisticated for me, he blondish be-speckled, an impression of exuberant wood-peckerish mirth, laughing out-loud, no squelching - at everything they-said up-front, as he typed like a crazy-man, and was so fast and error-free, he was untouchable and laughed as he liked. "I'm a draftee, ha ha ha". Nothing they could do, for they'd be lost without his services.
Maybe that is where I learned the value of due- diligence, incorporated into the rest of my life, be necessary. In the-back next the window wall another draftee was Reada; the 201 file-guy, the basic-file kept-on all enlisted-men, each having to be kept up to date. Reada was a decorator in civilian life, who had everything color-coded and incessantly talked of his color coding systems. "Oh - I think I have that under-yellow." Even his pencils he ordered by color, neat to a hair-degree; young - think from southern California, not tall, dark curly hair, an exuberant two year draftee, "I can stand on my head for two years" - personality. He turned me-on to the book "The Magus" by John Fowles, but which I didn't read until years later at Powers Street in San Francisco.
Youkey liked to mess with Reada's mind, and mix-up his pencils and make general disorder on his desk when Reada was out of the room. He would explain to me that-that - is what he likes to do.
And there across the isle to the right of Youkey's desk and in front of Reada's desk was nothing, a space in front of the rear window, the sill of which became my desk, a field-phone and a chair. I had a private-office in D.C.
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