Jardine: Streaker with poor sense of direction visits salon

JARDINE: Veterans get together after WWII story

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THAT '70s SHOW -- A couple of hours after a robber hit Chase Bank in east Modesto's Century Center last week, Lynnell Ford, co-owner of Creations Salon, a few doors away, wondered, "What else could go on here today?"

Seconds later, she found out.

A man wearing nothing at all burst into the salon.

"It was really pretty funny," employee Tracy Casaletto said.

Funny, salon co-owner David K. Ford said, because once Sir Godiva came into the building, he couldn't find his way out. When he reached the back of the salon, he had to stop for directions.

"Where is the back door?" the panicked prankster asked the stunned stylist at the salon's rear-most station.

"There," she replied, pointing toward the door. Except that he took the wrong one -- the door marked "restrooms," Ford said.

"He came out and came back around," Ford said.

The streaker finally found the proper door and exited to a getaway car idling behind the building.

A physical description? He was in his 20s, said Ford, who guessed the streaker might be a college student carrying out a fraternity initiation rite, or something to that effect.

He was tall, Casaletto said -- 6 foot 2 or 6 foot 3 -- and thin.

His head was shaven -- and so was just about everything else.

"He was suntanned, well-toned and well-trimmed," Ford said. "He didn't need our services."

The streaker gone, Ford said the staff spent the rest of the afternoon listening to Ray Stevens' 1974 hit "The Streak" over the salon sound system.

Oh yes, they call him The Streak

He likes to show off his physique

If there's an audience to be found

He'll be streakin' around

Invitin' public critique...

Perhaps the most amazing thing was that in this era of technology, when virtually anything can end up on YouTube, no one in the busy salon grabbed a cell phone in time to snap off a photo or two.

"We were all too stunned," Ford said.

REUNION OF SORTS -- In my Aug. 9 column, I wrote about how one person's actions can have a major effect on the life of a total stranger. Modesto's Vern Korock was among the SeaBees who built the runway on Tinian Island, from which the Enola Gay and Bockscar B-29s took off to drop the atomic bombs that ultimately ended World War II in 1945.

As a result, Lonie Black of Turlock didn't have to fear being in the first wave of U.S. soldiers to invade the Japanese mainland, a strategy that anticipated heavy casualties. In fact, he credits the SeaBees with giving him 64 years more of "borrowed time."

After the column appeared, Korock received calls from several other valley residents who worked on the airfield on Tinian. Black, meanwhile, received calls from several veterans who would have invaded Japan if not for the bombs, and suspect they would have died.

So Korock organized a lunch, uniting about a dozen veterans and spouses Saturday at Mike's Road House in Modesto. None had ever met before, but all shared their experiences.

VFW NEEDS YOU -- When two teenage boys torched the Veterans of Foreign Wars building on Hatch Road two years ago, the fire claimed all of the organization's memorabilia. Now as it prepares to dedicate its new building, the VFW lacks the kinds of materials it used to display in the old place. So the organization is asking for donations of uniforms, medals, photographs, documents or anything else military.

"Maybe there are widows and families who have the stuff in a box in the attic, and they don't want to throw it away," the VFW's George Bower said. The VFW would take it to display.

Contact Bower at 595-2685 or Terry Vernon at 648-8885.

FEATURED SPEAKER -- John Middlesworth, a counselor at the Stanislaus Veterans Center in Modesto, will be the keynote speaker at the convention for the National Vietnam Dust Off Association in Dallas,

Sept. 18-20. The group involved medics who saved thousands of Americans in Vietnam, working on helicopters that didn't have door gunners.

The event takes place at the Convention Center.

Middlesworth is an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder.

Jeff Jardine's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in Local News. He can be reached at 578-2383 or jjardine@modbee.com