i am tired. But awake.

i woke up a bit earlier than usual, and even though it is a Saturday, i did not roll over and try to go back to sleep, an “iffy” proposition all the time, but not an option today.

You see, Maureen has to return a favor. A friend of hers took us to the airport about ten days ago for our trip to San Francisco. She picked us up at 11:00 a.m. Her flight back east and beyond was around 8:30 a.m. and she, like most women i know, especially my wife, wanted to have a buffer in time. So Maureen is to pick her up at 6:55 a.m.

Come to think of it, Karen is a bit more daring than Maureen. For an 8:30 a.m. flight, Maureen would want to be at the airport just after midnight before the flight but will compromise. We would have left home at 5:00 a.m.

So i made sure i got up and didn’t roll back over to dreamland in order to make coffee for when Maureen arose (i was also the backup alarm). One should not ever have to deal with Maureen without an early coffee or when she’s hungry. i’ve learned that.

The coffee has just finished percolating (i like that word: percolating). i started this when it was not quite alarm protection time. The coffee is done and i have retrieved the paper from the driveway.

Getting up this morning was particularly tougher this morning. i watched the Aztecs squeeze out a win over Air Force, 21-17, in a game extended an hour by a lightning delay.

Lightning delay! In San Diego! With rain! Who’d a thunk! Rain. i had almost forgotten what is was like. So much so, i made an excuse to go outside when it started so i could feel it, taste it, smell it. It was all good.

By the way, the game was a defensive battle in the rain, the kind i really like including the Tennessee rain-soaked Alabama 10-9 victory in Neyland Stadium in 1966 when Stabler was the quarterback and Louis Thompson was the super duper defensive tackle and when Tennessee had driven down the field with seconds left on the clock and missed a short field goal by inches and some nut sportswriter asked Bear what he would have done if the field goal attempt had been good and the Bear said “we would’ve blocked it and the game was mostly punts the rain and mud, the kind i like — after all, i was a diminutive linebacker in the dark ages. The Aztec win was marred by lots of miscues, the kind announcers feast on because they can blame somebody for something rather than crediting the other side for making it happen. Still, i’m a long-distance San Diego State football fan. They are fun to watch.

Even in the rain. The joyous, glorious rain, something everyone back on the right coast is getting too much of. A blessing here. i think about that a lot. i love San Diego weather, a big reason we stay here. It is high desert on the ocean front and the best weather year round for anyplace i’ve been in the world (and i have been to quite a few places in this world). i miss the seasons even though we claim to have them, and there is a subtle difference between the “summer” six months, and the “winter” six months. We can even detect a minuscule bit of spring and autumn. But it ain’t like back home.

i love rain. i like to walk in it. i am even known as a “mudder” by my golfing friends because i golf better in the rain. Rain and i have a long love affair.

i remember smelling it on the wind in Lebanon’s Augusts, a respite from the summer heat, especially around early football practice.

i remember it as a welcomed interloper into grave digging at Cedar Grove, where we would have to stop (but knowing digging in the wet clay was going to be a bear when the rain stopped).

i remember Henry Harding and i in a golf cart (why weren’t we walking at that age?) sitting under a small structure when a lightning storm caught us on the fifth hole.

i remember running in it during a Hash House Harriers run with the Aussies in Columbo, Sri Lanka, and sliding down the side of a a virtual cliff in the mud, clinging to vines to slow the descent because the downpour made the normal route impossible to traverse and then running through the road for the last mile in water up to my shins to reach the huge open shelter where the Aussies had steaks on the barbie and yanking one steak off and a Fosters out of the ice cooler and gnawing and gulping with the rain still dripping from my pores.

i remember the driving rains in the storms at sea coming down at a slant and the roar of the frothing, turbulent waves crashing over the bow and rolling down the main deck, and just how incredibly beautiful, even haunting the rain was in those moments.

i remember running my lunch circuit in Coronado during my last assignment, the circuit being modified by one of those rare rains and having to climb a temporary fence near the Hotel Del Coronado because the staff didn’t want anyone to walk through the foot or so of water collecting on the sidewalk. So i ran through it and climbed the fence and felt proud of myself for some curious reason.

And with what is my most poignant memory of the rain, i remember running in my street clothes (what a strange term for just clothes) in the rain until i thought my lungs would burst, running down West Spring Street, stopping and looking up for what seemed like an eternity, screaming, screaming as loud as i could. It was my freshman spring at Vanderbilt. Henry and Beetle’s mother, my beloved Virginia Harding, had passed away way too young. i did not know why. i didn’t understand. i felt cheated. i looked up to the heavens and screamed with the rain pouring down, onto my upturned face. And the rain was soothing.

i’m sure my love for the rain is not grasped right now by the folks who just went through the wrath of Michael. There are family and friends who live in Michael’s path whom i’ve not heard from yet. i try to imagine the grief, the scary future, the emotion of dealing with such destruction and loss. i can’t quite manage absorbing the enormity. i grieve for all of them.

And at almost the same time, San Diegans (i’m half San Diegan, half Lebanonite) were joyful, even with the rain delay of the football game, at less than a half-inch last night, hoping for more today, hoping the wildfires would be less of a possibility.

Weather is awesome, unpredictable, different…and strange.

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Maureen has left, taking her coffee with her. Good. Karen will be glad she is on time. i suggested i meet Maureen on her way back from the airport for breakfast at Donny’s. Donny, a former professional bike racer in Spain, has the coffee shop with the best coffee in the world and several years ago added sandwiches to the offerings. And breakfast, good, good breakfasts. Maureen said that was a good idea but she had thought about making pancakes. i immediately nixed any more discussion about Donny’s. Nothing, nothing beats Maureen’s apple and blueberry pancakes. Made me want to run down to the Navy commissary and get some Tennessee Country Pride sausage. We’re out. Mild or hot is fine with me. Tennessee sausage with pancakes. Best breakfast in the world. i’ll settle for Maureen’s pancakes without my Tennessee sausage this morning.

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And i wander in and out of these musings. In between i read my email. One came from my brother-in-law, Daniel Boggs, lives in Crossville. Tennessee. This native San Diegan fell in love with East Tennessee and moved there. Loves it. Dan is a music lover. He shares his love of music with Bob Hurt, another San Diegan gone to Crossville, who has had some gigs as a deejay on an Anaheim jazz station. They both know their stuff.

Dan sent me a “You Tube” video of an Aussie playing “Deep River Blues.” Tommy Emmanuel is the Aussie. i watched, but more importantly listened. i could not imagine someone matching Doc Watson playing and singing “Deep River Blues.” i couldn’t even imagine anyone trying.

Tommy Emmanuel is one hell of a guitar player. His introductions praises Doc, his inspiration. Then he plays and sings the song. Rather incredible. He even did some stuff Doc didn’t do. Impressive. Enjoyable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q316r10jJT8.

i have a lot of friends and family who are music lovers. There are several: Andrew Nemethy (guitar and piano), Rob Dewitt (banjo), Alan Hicks (banjo), Cy Fraser (mandolin…well, a little bit), Evan Fraser (the things Evan does with native instruments from all across the world as a member of Dirtwire and several other bands is phenomenal), Tommy Duff (guitar), Martha Duff (piano), Tim Prichard (guitar) to name a few who are accomplished musicians. Sarah, my younger daughter, is pretty good on the guitar and piano as well.

i, on the other hand am about in dunceville. i played the piano for about four years up until high school. i was okay, but didn’t have a great ear and was only so-so reading music. i now sit down and stumble through Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust,” followed by my short composition inspired by Jody Williams’ “Endless Sleep,” a rockabilly tragedy tear jerker in 1958. Then i pull out the Cokesbury Hymnal, and pick out the gospel songs i really like such as “I Come to the Garden Alone,” “Amazing Grace,” and several others with my left hand in my lap. When i play those hymns, i wish i had paid more attention, practiced enough to ingrain the left hand, almost boogie-woogie accompaniment my grandmother, Granny Prichard and my aunt, Barbara Jewell, played and demonstrated for me.

As for the guitar, i’ve had one since the mid-1950’s. Fooled with it pretty much ever since. To no avail. So i pick at a single ditty i invented that sounds like the beginning of a couple of songs i’ve heard, play some other simple things i made up and maybe a terrible rendition of the Beatles “This Boy.”

Didn’t really learn either instrument. Didn’t practice. So now, i try to play both with everyone out of earshot. Just for me.

But i have worshipped Doc Watson since i first heard him. i believe Rob DeWitt introduced us. On the USS Hawkins in 1969. Maybe it was Andrew Nemethy. Or both. i listened. i began collecting Doc’s albums. Think i have four or five now, not counting Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s collection “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” where Doc is one of the star performers.

i saw Doc live about a half-dozen times, about two hundred thousand times too few. He played for Maureen and i on our second date when i took her to the Belly-Up Tavern again. She too fell in love with his music. And as good as Tommy Emmanuel is, perhaps even more technically advanced than Doc. He ain’t Doc. There’s only one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE2swkx9WXE

Thank you, Danny.

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These musings have gone from the dark of early morning to the promising but stubborn clouds unwilling to bring more rain. This is way too long but i’m into it, winging it, not wanting to stop, i think of ships.

In a not-yet-post piece, delayed by my inability to quickly resize photos, i inserted some comments about our San Francisco trip. i won’t elaborate here except for my last Saturday experience: My gracious Vandy brother Alan Hicks got tickets for a San Francisco “Fleet Week” event. We boarded the Jeremiah O’Brien around 1000. The O’Brien is liberty ship. She carried cargo when she participated in D-Day. Remember D-Day? That may seem like a silly question to someone my age, but i don’t know how much younger folks actually know about that war long ago.

Regardless, the O’Brien was in the midst of that day of death on Omaha , Utah, Gold, Sword, and Juno beaches some three quarters of a century ago . Impressive. My nostalgia loomed large as we walked down the pier. A ship like her, modified to carry troops instead of cargo, carried my father and his fellow 75th Battalion of Seabees from Gulfport, Mississippi through the Panama Canal to San Francisco where the remainder of the battalion boarded — and i’m thinking that happened at Fort Mason down the Bay in the Marina District from the Fisherman’s Wharf pier where the O’Brien was moored last Saturday — and then on to the South Pacific.

Her three-cylinder reciprocating engines with two 250-pound boilers were an older vintage engineering plant than my last ship, the USS Yosemite’s  400-pound, four-boiler, geared turbine plant. O’Brien was a year older. Two of my destroyers, the Hawkins and the  Hollister were of the same vintage with four 600-pound boilers, steam turbine plants. Still as Alan i descended into the bowels of O’Brien’s engine room, the heat filling our lungs, i was taken back to those days on destroyers and the tender. The roar of the boilers and clanking of the reciprocating engines sung in my heart as if it were thirty, forty, even fifty years ago. At sea.

The O’Brien got underway right after we talked to the pilot. “Maritime, or Coast Guard?” Alan asked of his training and qualifications.

“Hawsepipe,” the pilot responded. He seemed a bit embarrassed. We were impressed. i let the term simmer in my mind. “Hawsepipe:” he had learned the ropes by coming up through the system. The term took me back again. That hole in the bow where the anchor chain rolls out in thunder and creaks back up, dropping and retrieving the anchor. “Hawsepipe:” where the anchor is housed while underway. Oh, sweet sea. Oh, sweet ocean. The lady of a fierceness and beauty just laid out an unimaginable swath of destruction but can be like glass in the doldrums, but always, always beautiful.

“Hawsepipe,” he said.

The O’Brien, with the help of two tugs, slid from her berth and traversed a large part of the Bay, under the Golden Gate and back, holding steerageway off of Alcatraz as the Blue Angels did their aero-acrobatics in F-18’s, aircraft just coming into the military when i retired. Impressive.

But not as impressive as the Jeremiah O’Brien. She was magic. She was magic. She took me back in time.

We docked and disembarked about 1600.

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i hope this lengthy, rambling musing has not put you off. i was on a roll. That often happens when i hit upon music i like, recalling rain, or falling in love with the sea again, even if it is from long distance.

Maureen is back home. We had her wonderful pancakes and read the paper. The house is stirring. Vanderbilt’s game against Florida is about to begin. i plan to watch, then take a nap, a bit longer than usual.

i will sleep well.