One of the worst things about getting older is how one must limit different kinds of eats.

Tragically, some people are restricted because of health issues from the get-go. i have a number  of relatives and friends who were born with those limiting conditions. i would like to be able to describe to them some of the tastes i have had. Can’t. Just can’t do those tastes justice.

Some i probably should have avoided then and definitely should stay away from now. Aging has made me less tolerant of spicy foods and perhaps just a little bit less of an idiot.

i have a very mild condition of esophagus reflux, or acid reflux as they call it. Not good for eaters of spicy or drinkers of alcohol. i’ve done both and enjoyed them. Still do, at a risk.

Of course, there were some things i shouldn’t have eaten when i was in the Navy in foreign ports. i’m not even sure what some of them were in Turkey, Vietnam, Somalia, and especially South Korea. The one i do remember in Pusan was winter kimchi. That’s something with fish (whole fish i’m told, but i’m sure they at least scaled it) vegetables, notably leeks, and a whole bunch of other stuff. They cut up all of this stuff, added some peppers and lord knows what, put it in an earthen jug, and buried it. For the winter. Then for some reason i cannot fathom in the spring, they would dig up this jug and eat the contents, surprisingly not dying from indigestion.

i know.

Somehow in 1970, i was coerced into digesting…oops, wrong word, getting down this vile concoction. i remain stunned i still live today. Oh by the way, i have never eaten kimchi of any kind, let alone winter kimchi again.

Of course, there was “monkey meat” sold on the streets of Olangapo, the city created by the U.S. Naval Base in Subic Bay on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. We were never sure exactly what it was but it was grilled and stuck on a wooden stick. We called it “monkey meat,” but we didn’t know where it came from. And i’m not going to describe “baloots.”

And then in Pattaya Beach, Thailand, i pronounced Thai food equal to Vietnamese in hotness.

Back on this continent, Chuey’s, not the Texas chain Chuy’s, but a real Chuey, whose restaurant attracted all kinds throughout San Diego was famous for his fare. i discovered the restaurant while it was still in its first, now long gone, establishment, a white painted quonset hut just south of  the intersection of Main and  Crosby Street, which is now renamed Cesar Chavez Parkway. Jesus Garcia came across the border in the late 1940’s, early 1950’s. He was an illegal. His nickname was Chuey. In 1952, he opened the quonset hut for business. It became known as the place to get real border-Mexican food. He is as good an argument as one could make about allowing folks to come across the border. He not only ran the signature Mexican eatery in San Diego, he became a mainstay in the barrio community, a positive influence on many. He took advantage of a program in the nineties and became a U.S. citizen.

i have written of Chuey and his restaurant before. It became my place to take visitors to show them real, real, no kidding Mexican food, not that nice stuff up in Old Town, but Mexican food in Barrio Logan. i took Maureen there on a “business” lunch right after we met. i took my daughter Blythe there every time she came to stay with me.

But my favorite story was in early 1983, my entire family came out just as Maureen and i decided to get married. So of course, i decided to take them to Chuey’s for lunch.

Chuey’s food is…well, hot doesn’t quite justify what it’s like. My old friend Earl Major loved spicy food. So he loved Chuey’s. And when we went there together, he would eat something that literally would bring sweat to his brow. i’ve also seen this phenomenon with my father, my military contracting associate Don Budai, and my cousin Maxwell Martin. And i’m not talking about a little bit of perspiration. i’m talking about full blown, handkerchief soaking sweat. My favorite and what became my father’s and Earl’s favorite item on Chuey’s menu was the chili verde. That pork with green sauce was the hottest item on the menu. Hot!

My kin except for Daddy didn’t order chili verde that January 1983 lunch. They ordered milder things like chicken enchiladas and stuff. Aunt Bettye Kate Hall did not like spicy at all, so she ordered liver and onions, figuring it was safe. As the waitress took our orders, they brought out the chips, salsa, and the little bowls with sliced carrots, onions, and jalapeño peppers. We were munching on the chips and carefully tasting the salsa. Carla, Joe’s wife decided to play it safe and took a bite of an innocent looking carrot slice. She immediately said loudly, “Shit!” spitting out the offending spicy carrot slice. i still love her for that. My family of practicing Methodists, stopped breathing for a second. Then they all laughed, or at least chuckled.

As we finished our meals and Daddy and i were pulling out our handkerchiefs, we arose and moved toward the door. Aunt Bettye Kate declared, “Even the liver and onions are hot.”

It is one of my favorite memories of family dining outs and there are several of those.

Yep, Chuey’s food was hot but not the hottest.

The hottest, as in spicy, i ever ate was in Manila. It was 1975, May 7, the day Ford announced the end of the Vietnam War. The Anchorage had returned from the evacuation of South Vietnam (another story) to Subic Bay in the Philippines with the two amphibious squadrons and at least one carrier. After offloading what we had taken on during the evacuation, we were sent away. It was too crowded there. We went to Manila, arriving on the evening of May 5.

As luck would have it, i was the command duty officer (CDO) for the first day the ship had real liberty in sixty days. It was wild night. We were anchored in Manila’s harbor and our boats, worn out from the many loads and off-loads of our crazy journey from San Diego; Pearl Harbor; Iwakuni and Numazu, Japan; Okinawa; Subic; Vung Tau, Vietnam; Subic again; and finally Manila, were breaking down faster than imaginable. Liberty problems arose and the liberty boats unavailability made it a long night, a complete disaster. It would have been much worse except Chuck Parnell, our machinist warrant officer and main propulsion assistant (MPA) performed wonders, keeping at least one liberty boat running throughout the night.

Our duty day, supposedly bringing about our relief at 0800 extended until midday. Chuck and i stood relieved, changed into our civvies, caught one of the LCM8’s Chuck had wired together for the liberty boat the night before, and we went ashore without a plan, not a clue as to where we should go or what we should do.

So being good Navy officers on liberty for the first time in two months and with about three hours sleep between the two of us on our duty day, we did the natural: we wandered around the waterfront until we found a place that served lunch and beer, and i emphasize the beer. The wandering took less than five minutes. We had an American, almost, sandwich with our three or four San Miguel’s apiece. After that, we simply wandered around the streets, taking in the sights and sounds of a big, almost soulless city, stopping occasionally for another San Miguel, or as sailors have long called them, San Magoo.

As it began to turn dark, we looked for a nice place to eat dinner and found what looked to be what we were looking for and attached to a hotel. We had two days and one night of liberty before we caught the duty again. The hotel was our spot. After all, we were getting tired.

The dining room was cavernous. We were seated up front in a wrap around oval booth with table. The manager came over immediately and described the menu items. We both decided on the house special, goat on rice with vegetables on the side. And, of course, San Miguel.

That goat remains the hottest thing i’ve ever eaten. The roof of my mouth, my tongue, my digestive tract, my eyeballs, and my hair (yes, i had some then) all felt as if they were on fire. i quickly downed something along the order of four San Miguel’s, not for the beer taste or alcohol content, but something to douse the apparent fire inside or at least make it bearable. It took about two hours before i felt human.

So if you are in Manila, avoid the goat.

There was one significant oversight in this post. i did not include JD Waits as a member of the foursome. JD and i were shipmates on the USS Okinawa (LPH 3) and shared the perfect bachelor’s pad, complete with a dock for JD’s sailboat, in the Coronado Cays. JD picked up golf while we were doing our things, and as with all things JD, became a golf legend. He played with our foursome after Lloyd left. When JD went back to Texas, North Carolina, and back to Texas again, my brother-in-law, then became a member of our foursome (some legends there also). Apologies, JD.

It’s over.

Oh, sure there is one more tournament in December.  But it’s sort of a token farewell with a bit of competition. And yes, the organization will continue to exist in some sort of shadow fashion of its old self, allowing some guys to keep their handicaps less expensively. And there may be an event or two during the week, unlike old times when it was always once a month on a Saturday.

But it’s over.

It ended, not with a bang, but not with a whimper either. It was the guys playing golf out in the desert for two days, just like they had been doing in late summer or early autumn for…oh, about a half-century as near as i can figure out.

i, myself have been in this outfit for about twenty-five years.

It was the “San Diego Telco (Telephone Company) Golf Association.”

How did a retired Naval officer get into a telephone company outfit?

Well, there is this guy named Jim Hileman. He showed up for my wedding in 1983. At the end of the reception. He is married to one of my wife’s best friends from high school. He worked for the telephone company. We were introduced by our wives. He apologized for being late. Said he had been playing golf. i asked him why he hadn’t invited me.

We’ve been friends ever since.

We even shared Padre season tickets for a long time because we sat together to watch Orel Hershiser break the consecutive scoreless inning record in a 16-inning game (the Padres won 1-0), discovered we were both Pittsburgh Pirate uber fans, and talked ourselves into those season tickets. But that’s another story.

Perhaps because of the Padre/Pirate affinity, Jim asked me to play golf in a tournament as a guest. i did. And then, he asked me to play in another tournament and invited my father-in-law Ray Boggs as well. All of this resulted to my first trip to the desert. In the early 90’s, i went on my first of numerous summer golf outings in the desert.

This is not necessarily a wise thing to do. However back then, various groups like the heart association, the lung organization, and the cancer organizations sold discount golf tickets. In the summer using these tickets, one could play golf in the desert essentially for cart fees. So we would go out on a weekend between late June and August. We would stay in Jim’s timeshare and play two rounds for three days. In 120 degree hot, dry heat. Hot, dry heat. From the tips, as they say. Where the pros play. Not terribly bright or healthy, but man, those big boy trips were fun, pure fun.

Somewhere in there, Jim asked me to join the association. i accepted. Jim and i have been in that foursome ever since. The other players have changed, but Jim and i have been a constant. Lloyd Lanksbury and Mike Kelly were the other two when i joined. Lloyd was one of the nicest guys i’ve ever known. He died five or six years ago. Mike Kelly, who remains an absolutely terrific and funny guy and still a very close friend of Jim Hileman (and i consider him the same) moved to Houston so he and his wife could be close to their son granddaughter.

After Lloyd, Marty Linville became a part of our foursome. Marty, Jim, and i remained until the bitter end. My brother-in-law, Dan Boggs, played with us for several years, and Pete Toennies has been with us for about ten years, give or take a few.  This last group, Jim, Marty, Pete, and i have closed it out as a group while all of us have played on Fridays (Jim occasionally) beginning with Marty and me in 1991, about the time i joined the Telco group.

It’s been a fun ride. And the trip to the desert is the only time i enjoy playing silly golf like scrambles, “1-2-3-waltz,” and several others.

The best of this group by far is “yellow ball.” This is where the foursome is given a sleeve of three yellow balls. One player alternately plays the yellow ball on each hole while the other three play a scramble. The total of the yellow ball and the scramble is the score for the hole. If the group brings back all three yellow balls, three points are reduced from the total score, two balls two points reduction, and one ball, one point reduction. When we first started playing, if you lost all three yellow balls, the team was disqualified. Even without disqualification, the format produces a great deal of puckering and arguments over which club to hit.

Long ago after one group showed up with four yellow balls at the end (they fished one out of a water hazard), the yellow balls were hand marked to prevent such shenanigans.

One year during the yellow-ball match, we hit a yellow ball into the middle of a water hazard, a large but shallow pond filled with Japanese Koi. Jim Hileman waded waste-deep into the middle of the pond and retrieved our yellow ball. He is a hero.

Banter and unrelenting nasty comments about each other’s traits are part of the tradition. We have been merciless on each other at times. Our verbal attacks would have produced major law suits in more sensitive people. We laugh and work at being more merciless than the one before. There is nothing off limits. And we love it. After all, we are in a class by ourselves as curmudgeons.

Everyone in our group has medical issues. In fact, one of the fabulous foursome, Pete Toennies had to miss the last “year ender” due to a muscle pull. After all, our youngest is 65 and our oldest (moi) is working on 74. To list those issues would make a three or four page document. We laugh at those also. Marty Linville, awarded a silver star for fighting off a Vietcong attack on his artillery battery, suffers from Ankylosing Spondylitis, a disease that grows bad bone and fuses the spinal cord structure. Nearly all of Marty’s spinal sections are fused. He cannot raise his head and constantly looks down.  In spite of that he still plays very good golf.

But it does not get him a pass on the razzing.

On the morning of the last tournament this past weekend, one of the main drivers of the association, another Marty, this one named Marion, came up to us as we were loading our carts for the round.

“Marty,” said the Marion to the Linville, “when i got here this morning, i went through the pro shop. There was a mannequin without a head dressed up in golf attire and there was a brimmed hat on the shoulders.

“i thought it was you and said ‘hello.”

Now Marty the Linville did not get upset or cry or slug Marty the Marion. He laughed. Uproariously. So we decided to take a couple of photos to record the event:

and

And here’s the straight shot of the group. James Clark, the guy on the left, filled in for Pete. He may be the reason we finished third in the first day “1-2-3-waltz” round and first (with a card off) in the second day scramble.

The stories from our playing in this group could make a book (hmm…) and more will be told later.

But it’s gone, over, kaput.

It seems like all good things really do have to come to an end.

i’ll miss this one.

i have, by my count, about a dozen posts begun but put on the back burner for various reasons. i’ve flitted from one to another, adding paragraphs, deleting whole passages, adding more, never quite finishing. Here is one i actually finished today.

i went to the San Diego State campus Tuesday morning. i have the microfiche copy of the USS Yosemite’s ship logs for the almost two years i was fortunate to serve as her XO. The logs will verify dates and significant events for the book i am trying to write about that tour.

Why i am going there to read the microfiche is a long, other story, but the SDSU library appears to the best answer.

There is this undefined thrill, feeling of being surrounded by academia, that pulses in me when i walk across any college campus. Don’t understand it considering my history, but it’s there, undeniably there and it feels good.

Every time i visit Vanderbilt, i feel it in spades. Perhaps it is because that is the spot of my academic plummet and i’ve always wanted to go back and get a degree of some time. But i’ve finally admitted it’s too late now. My daughter Blythe feels it. Only a small percentage of us has shown the grit necessary to pursue a degree after several years in the business world. It was tough. She did it. i remain proud of her for this difficult achievement. When she was showing us her campus, University of Texas, Austin several years ago, she talked about how she would love to spend her life going to school there. She said there was some special feeling about the campus, the pursuit of knowledge.

i know how she feels.

College campuses, even Vanderbilt’s, are greatly different than they were when i was in college fifty-plus years ago, than they were when i was an NROTC “associate professor” (sic) at Texas A&M.

They didn’t have skateboards back then. At state, there are students flying all over the campus, ignoring signs for safe zones where they are forbidden. Then there are the students. Diversity is much greater, which warms my heart. And of course, the attire. Oh, there are still some male students who wear sports coats and ties, but either they are headed for a job interview or it’s sort of a low humor mockery — a few SDSU boys (is it okay to call them that? i don’t want to hurt someone’s politically correct sensitivity) wore black sport coats and red ties, the school colors, while sliding past me on those skateboards.

What women wear now would have caused expulsion, not to mention one whole hell of a lot of male students flocking behind them, when i was a student.

Back then, men wore grey or blue slacks, madras shirts, sweaters, dark socks, and cordovan weejuns.  London Fog jackets were okay if it was cool. Women wore dresses, or blouses and skirts, usually flats, and even saddle oxfords with knee socks. Sweaters were the cover for cool weather.

Now, damn near everything goes. Tee shirts with profanity inscribed abound. Some women, many who shouldn’t, wear leggings. period, often with a sweatshirt. Shorts of every kind and every length has proliferated with no regard to sexual preference. Gym gear on students who don’t look they’ve ever set foot inside a gym, including watching a sport, is everywhere.

And hair. There is short hair, long hair, twisted hair, colored hair, no hair, and hats of all sorts hide hair. The one i’ve never understood is baseball caps worn backwards for…what? to keep their necks from getting sunburned? To wear because one is always facing away from the sun? The only thing i can figure out is one day, this really ugly guy trying to get some women wore his backward one day to see if he get some woman interested in him and the lemming boys decided since it was different it was cool and could attract women. Not. Stupid.

i stopped and sat on a bench in the main plaza to make a phone call. i try not to do something like that while walking. i just watched as the campus began to come alive at 8:30. And you know what? All of the differences just seemed to fade away because that feeling of the pursuit of knowledge was still there, perhaps even more so.

These young adults were after knowledge. Not all of them, of course, but most. Seeking to know, seeking to learn the way they should, could succeed in this crazy world. A bastion of knowledge, academics. Oh yeh, there are a bunch who actually believe their side of the media circus and protest instead of studying, who think they know more about how to make the world better than all of the generations before them, even when, like all of the generations before them at that age, don’t know snot.

But they are looking for a better way. They are trying just like all of those earlier college students.

And with that feeling of knowledge and academia, it’s quite all right. Quite all right.

The front page of our newspaper this morning screamed of the idiot terrorist attack in New York City killing eight yesterday.

That doesn’t make for good breakfast reading.

Seeing the headline, i reinforced one of my wishes/hopes:

i hope every terrorist, every mass killer, every wrong doer just before they are about to die or, like sexual predators, think in that last instance, “i was really, really stupid to do this. Wish i hadn’t.”

i am afraid they won’t, but i still hope.