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- Fagan’s Rule on Past Predictions
Hindsight is an exact science.
- A Tale of the Sea and Me: One Last Reminder
After seven days, Anchorage and the host of other ships weighed anchor off of Vung Tau and got underway in early May 1975. Nearly all, if not all, headed toward Subic Bay and then on to other liberty ports.
i believe all except Anchorage had refugees on board. While off of Vietnam, we were ordered to pick up two additional LCM8’s that had been used by the South Vietnamese before the fall. Although we were already crammed, we somehow managed to add these two 73-feet long, 21-feet wide landing craft. i don’t know how but we did it. i can only remember we turned a lot of craft and other vehicles at angles in the well deck, fitting them like a jigsaw puzzle. i do remember the Mike 8 boats sitting cockeyed at the aft end of the well deck.
The requirement to offload these two craft in Subic is likely the only reason we went to Subic Bay. Perhaps for that reason, Anchorage was independently steaming, not accompanying other ships. i was OOD on the mid-watch (00-04) on the first night, roughly 150 nautical miles into the transit. There were no contacts and the seas were comfortable.
Around 0200, we began receiving strange radio messages from another ship: “This is Clara Maersk, radio check, radio check.” As the calls kept repeating and getting a bit stronger, i decided to respond.
“Clara Maersk, this is United States Navy ship, Anchorage, roger, over.
She responded. The master was trying to reach any US Navy ship. The Clara Maersk had come upon a ship sinking in the South China Sea en route to Hong Kong. She rescued 2000 refugees and was attempting to find a ship that could take them aboard.
The Clara Maersk was likely several hundred miles from Anchorage. i did not know and was attempting to maintain communication while determining what do do — including waking the captain — when our communications was lost..
Once again, i felt remorse at our country not being able to do more to allow this folks to remain in their homeland.
Anchorage continued on her way to Subic. i wrote a note to myself with the ship’s name and carried on. After all, i had a whole bunch of other things on my mind.
NOTE: GWLO, Old Hong Kong, https://gwulo.com/node/57141, contains an article about the Clara Maersk offloading 2000 Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong shortly after my communications with the master of the cargo ship. i was checking my facts when i came across the article. i am glad i found out Clara Maersk and her refugees made it to Hong Kong.
- The Oxymoronic Cinemascopic Chocolate Covered Boysenberry Bitter Lemon Sweet Dream
i wrote this over several days past. i do not know if i have finished it or not or if it will end up in the round file. It is one of my few attempts to create something in the “farcical” genre of writing. i just wanted to share it this morning.
Romulus Stevenson saw the light. The light was a gleam over the horizon, nothing more. He heard the muffled boom, boom, boom. He could not discern from whence it came. He laughed into the wind and wondered how his horse was doing on the farm now surrounded by housing developments.
Moby Dick was not a whale of a lot better off. He waited with Romulus and the wolf beside him (or was he a wolf, too?) as the sun hid below the horizon but near enough to see the horizon and shoot a falling star with the sextant old Romy’s mama had given him for his first birthday, along with the horse, of course.
From deep in the woods came the observation from Midnight the Cat that it was “Nice” in the falsetto voice while someone, perhaps Andy, demanded in a deep bass voice of Froggy (in the pond, of course) “Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy,” which he did, and in his deep gravelly voice would emit the salutation, “Hi ‘ya, kids, hi ‘ya!” Or was that Andy Devine on the horse he rode in on with Wild Bill Hickok, and Andy was Jingles, and just exactly who was the side kick? Or was it Red Ryder’s Little Beaver who outshone Jay Silverheels who was more to like Tonto than Johnny Depp, and Clayton Moore showed who actually wore that mask and shot with the silver bullet. Or was that a train?
And was Phineas T. Bluster really Spiro Agnew hiding as a puppet. Now he would be a pocket of sanity in politics compared to the 21st Century, but no in these woods where a ship lies off the coast and Romulus wonders about the light just beyond the horizon he can’t see. The horse surrounded by newly sprung ticky-tacky houses all in rows, neighed in sadness. The boom, boom, boom was another war to wipe out people, not countries, or fireworks to celebrate something that needed some respect from those who did not see the falling star like Moby, Romulus, and wolf saw before they shot it with a sextant.
Andy’s gang lived in reruns if one could find them along with Roy and Trigger and Bullet, Dale, and of course Nelly Belle without Pat Buttram who had run away with Gene and Champion while the many masks of the Lone Ranger rode away with only one and it was Jay Silverheels’ Tonto whom he had met in The Philosopher’s Club in San Franciso.
If only it was just a dream…
- Zappa’s Law
There are two things on earth that are universal: hydrogen and stupidity.
- Indpendence Day
Folks are gathered in numbers at parks and on city streets. Families are picnicking in a variety of places. Tonight, the air will be inundated with booms and the sky will be composed of flares and other spectacular fireworks.
After all, it is Independence Day.
I have written of my previous Independence Days back home; here in the Southwest corner; at sea; in Newport, Rhode Island; on Coronado Island; in East Sound on Orcas Island; and at the Sonoma Plaza.
This Independence Day, after brunch with Maureen’s sister Patsy, we will be at home, just the two of us. My siblings are with their families in Queechee, Vermont, and Signal Mountain, Tennessee. My first daughter, grandson, and son-in-law are in Chicago on their summer vacation. My second daughter is with her husband and his family in Las Vegas.
i am happy for all of them and happy for us.
i will not go into my wailing about commercialism or missing the meaning. i will not judge.
But i will quote from the document that got all of this started, not berating the founders for their faults, i am thankful to them for creating such a profound document. i will not attack those who want “justice just as long as they get theirs first” (thanks, Mose Allison for those words).
There is not a government nor a document stating the purpose of such a government that is perfect. They were created by humans. But “The Declaration of Independence” comes about as close as any could get to being perfect. It’s beginning:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes…
And i consider those words with the words of Major Kenneth Morgan, my Latin professor at Castle Heights Military Academy: “Freedom is the ability to do anything you want to do as long as it doesn’t interfere with someone else’s freedom.”
Blessed be our independence.
