It all began when our younger, Sarah, decided to come out to San Diego in her car with her dog Billie.

Sarah’s car is Maureen’s 2001 Acura with over 250,000 miles. The trip is 1300 miles through some of the least friendly summer country in this country.

After considering the trek she faced, i decided Daddy would not be sane if she traveled that route by herself. So Monday, Maureen took me to the airport at dark thirty. i caught a ride to Austin, arriving before noon. That evening, we had burgers with Blythe, Jason, and my hero Sam, which was a highpoint of the very short trip.

Sarah and i took the car in for repairs and a final check to see if it was fit for such a trip. Good thing it was scheduled. The air conditioner went out about an hour or so before i arrived. Now about the only thing i can think of less attractive than the already scheduled trek across West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California is to try it without air conditioning. So we got it fixed also.

The repairs were a little bit more than expected and the whole thing delayed our getaway until 2:30pm Austin time. i took the wheel for the day.

So there are no photos in this post from Austin through to Deming, New Mexico. It is pleasant although Hill Country hot and humid through Fredericksburg and the ranch territory to the west is…well, it’s Texas summer ranch land to Junction where it’s remote enough and hot enough for Bear Bryant to use Junction as the site for early football practice when he was coach of the Aggies. After that, not much. Just West Texas. The entire trip was much greener than i had seen in my gazillion traverses, surprising. But West Texas is still a pretty desolate territory until you get to El Paso.

El Paso is worse. It is my least favorite place of the entire journey between East Texas and the Southwest Corner. It decided to reinforce my dislike on this journey. When we were about 100 miles out, i thought i saw a lightning streak in the dark high clouds over the western horizon. Soon there was another. The frequency increased turning into a verifiable and no BS thunder and lightning show lasting until we reached Deming, New Mexico, almost perfectly halfway in the trek. But El Paso added some fun with a couple of detours, a couple of miles of one-lane traffic, and more than a couple of severe rain squalls, several of which came close to me pulling over and stopping.

But we made it and i pulled into a Deming motel around 12:30 mountain time morning.

The next day, Sarah did nearly all of the driving except for my midday substitution for a several hours. We arrived home almost exactly at five.

Since there are probably a bunch of folks who have not made this trek, i thought i would show a couple of landscape shots to give them an idea of what such a journey is like. If you would like to get some idea of the route between Austin and Deming, you’ll have to check out Sarah’s post about the trip.

 

 

 

 

And that my friends is what’s like to travel between the Southwest corner and Austin. There are many interesting places to stop along the way. i don’t think i ever have seen them. i would recommend the trip to anyone…as long as they can figure out how to bypass El Paso, and going through Lubbock is not a good alternative.

 

Yesterday, i posted a photo of her when she was young, probably three.

As usual with my daughters, i felt as if i hadn’t done enough to celebrate her birthday.

So i decided i would post some of my favorite photos of her. It’s not complete. There are a bunch hidden somewhere in the piles amassed over forty-five years. So i’ll just go with these.

This began this morning when i was listing all of the things i planned to get done today. Except for agreeing to go to Costco with Maureen, nada. Nada was done. You see, this was a very lengthy, somewhat maudlin piece, so it has now been edited. The photos are more than half gone. The text is considerably less than what it was originally.

Blythe Jewell.

She was born in Watertown, New York. In fact, she was the reason i asked for and was awarded a return to active Naval service. i wanted to be sure we had enough to provide for her growing up well with security.

This was a wonderful relationship. Granny and Blythe. When Blythe was seven or eight and Granny was near the end, she had become somewhat hostile, but never with Blythe. Blythe was the only one who Granny treated with love all of the time. Sometimes i see Granny’s grit in Blythe.

 

 

Brother Joe would come down from Boston and grad school while we were in the Navy’s Fort Adams housing on Newport Bay. It was always fun to watch these two together.

 

 

 

 

 

This one is an early favorite, 1974. It was in one of the last cabins for officers at Fort DeRussey on Waikiki. We walked across a parade field and a street to get to the beach. i was going to my ship, the USS Hollister (DD 788) when her mother took this. the cabins have given way to the homogenization of Honolulu’s tourist district. Now the Navy has a huge high rise resort on the beach. We stayed there also when she was nine. 

She was their first grandchild. The relationship was close, closer even than most. She would stay with them for extended times every summer after she began school. It warms my heart to see them with her.

 

 

 

 

 

We were in San Pedro, my first West Coast tour. We were big Texas A&M fans, and her grandfather, Col. James Lynch, Aggie alumnus, and Bettie gave her this outfit. i have had the photo on every one of my desks since then. Good luck, i think, but it also allowed to look at her every morning and smile.

 

 

Lady Snooks of Joy and Blythe. 1975. Pacific Beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1978. Texas A&M. There are several of her with Reveille, the Aggie mascot, a beautiful collie, but i like this one better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was once this heaven on earth for all of us. No one enjoyed it more than Blythe,and no one enjoyed Blythe being there on Barton’s Creek more than Grandma and Grandpa.

 

 

 

 

1982. Evan Fraser and Sarah at a lake on Orcas Island, Washington. It was a magic trip.

 

 

 

This is the essence of Blythe to her father. Seattle, 1982. We spent a day there and traveled to Victoria where we stayed in the Empress Hotel and Blythe watched Monte Python’s “Search for the Holy Grail” for the first time.

 

 

 

 

Then Maureen joined us. This is 1982, San Diego Bay on JD’s sailboat. i’ve always been thrilled Maureen truly considers Blythe her daughter.

 

 

 

The Jewell’s have always had a place for family. Lebanon, 1984, Thanksgiving. Tommy Duff of Signal Mountain, and Kate Jewell from Vermont. Spread out, but still close.

 

 

 

 

 

Then there was a sister. Blythe and Sarah at the petting zoo at the San Diego Zoo, 1991.

 

 

 

 

Then there was Jason. i am so glad they met each other. Austin, 1996.

 

 

 

 

 

Then along came Sam. Thanksgiving. 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas. 2014. i’m a lucky man to have these three in my life.

 

 

 

 

What more can i say.

Except offer another birthday wish to a beautiful daughter and thank her (and Jason) for an incredible grandson.

1944.
Even in war, there was bureaucracy and paperwork, in “triplicate” no less. Perhaps that was a good sign. It was even complicated. He had gone to boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. It remains a Marine Recruit Depot, much like the one here in San Diego. i’m guessing the Seabees went there rather than Navy recruit training  because they would be ashore, not on ships. From there, he went to Davisville, Rhode Island specifically for Seabee training. Through his enlistment agreement, he completed the training as a second class petty officer in his specialty.

After roughly four months in the combat zone in the southwest Pacific, the Navy gave him a new rating designation. It was a “casual draft.” i wondered what that meant. The new designation allowed him to do more mechanical work legally. i suspect he had been doing a much wider field of work than his original designation allowed ever since his liberty ship arrived at Espiritu Santo, the largest island in the nation of Vanuatu in July.

1945.
It is a photo smaller than usual 1¾ x 2¾ inches. Without the border, it’s even smaller. You cannot really make out who he is other than a sailor in a dixie cup and dungarees on a beach. He sent it home to her. He is even standing at attention. A man is walking or running in the surf behind him. It’s the Philippines, probably soon after they arrived on D+4. It depicts more than a Seabee. It depicts he’s still okay. It doesn’t say he will be home soon, but he would be back in Tennessee in several months. But no, the photo doesn’t say that. It says he is in a land far away in a war. i wonder if she could really comprehend that part of the message the photo conveyed.

1975.
There are two special moments in my Navy career when he was with me. The first was a day of multiple exercises aboard the USS Stephen B. Luce (DLG 7) out of Newport, Rhode Island on beautiful spring day. Commander Dick Butts suggested he ride as a guest. It was a day long of Navy crazy. i was the sea detail and GQ OOD. He got to watch me on the bridge doing my thing. i was the ASW Officer. He got to go down into the bowels in Underwater Battery Plot, and in the dark, listen to the sonar ping, watch the plotting monitor track the submarine, hear my order to simulate firing an Anti-Submarine Rocket. When we crossed the brow at the end, he said to me, “Son, now i understand why you wanted to return to the Navy.”

The second time is contained in this card they gave him. “Tiger Cruise” they call it. He met the USS Anchorage (LSD 36) in Pearl. He rode back with a bunch of other “Tigers.” He stood watches next to me. He wandered the ship talking mostly to my deck hands. Art Wright, the commanding officer, gave him a plaque. It hung by his work bench until he was gone. It was a special time: two Navy men, father and son, understanding each other.

i miss him.