All posts by Jim

A Tribute

A Pocket of Resistance

It doesn’t quite fit with the expectations of Thanksgiving. It wasn’t even the same time of year. But today, for a few quiet moments, i took time for a few moments for reflection. At my time of life, reflection comes a lot more frequently.

It was close to midday. Maureen had gone shopping. A few tasks around home had been completed. Preparations for smoking the turkey had been accomplished. Some financial matters had been addressed, a post had been completed. It had been a good, productive morning.

i took a break and moved out to the backyard patio. It was Southwest corner incredible. The sun was rolling across the heavens. My seat was bathed in warmth. The autumn’s early mornings out here are best in a long sleeve shirt. Not much more. It is cool. But at this moment, i could feel the warmth flowing over, into me.

i thought of my mother.

When Estelle Jewell and her husband would spend a month or so with us in the early winters, she would often disappear around this time of day. i would find her in our courtyard or one of the backyard patios. She would be sitting in a chair but leaning back basking in the sun fully clothed.. Her eyes would be closed. She would be absorbing the Southwest corner sun, undoubtedly reflecting. It is a pleasant memory for me, catching her in such repose.

She and Jimmy Jewell loved to watch humming birds. They had a couple of those sugar water hanging things to attract the small birds outside their home. She would report her sightings of the little things with glee.

i’ve reported here, with the funning of Jim Hicks, of our humming birds. Since Maureen and our longtime friend and landscape expert, Paul Shipley, have turned most of our yard to native blooming plants, the hummingbirds have proliferated.

Sitting there basking in the sun this morning, a humming bird dropped in and hovered to a succulent’s bloom just beyond the patio. Flitting about, the humming bird fed off the blooms, hovered some more, dashed about and returned.

It seemed during its hovers, the humming bird was studying me.

Now, i’m not into physic kinds of things. But i’ve got to tell you in those moments of the warmth of the sun and that humming bird studying me, i felt as if i was connecting with my mother.

Whether it was that or not is irrelevant. i connected with her, and in my reflections, i silently paid tribute to an incredible woman.

Annual Post on Turkey Smoking

A Pocket of Resistance

Over the past several years, i have posted the below, a column i wrote about smoking a turkey in 1990 for The Lebanon Democrat. i have been repeating the column here around Thanksgiving and paying my respects to JB Leftwich, my journalism mentor, advisor, and close family friend who would repeat his column about his grandmother’s recipes (carrot cake?) around Christmas. Over those years, i have kept adding explanations on top of explanations. This morning i read them and thought “This is not good journalism, Coach (i always called him “Coach”).” So this is the only intro this year. Thanks, Coach.

Dec 10, 1990, 10:36 pm

SAN DIEGO—Holidays, except for the weather, are pretty much the same for me out here in the southwest corner or back in Tennessee. To start, no one will let me smoke the turkey.

When I was growing up in Lebanon, and every time I return there for a holiday, my mother cooks the turkey. When there are only a few of us there, she makes a chicken taste like a turkey. She roasts the turkey, or the chicken, in the oven, and it comes complete with dressing and gravy. When we have a holiday out here, my wife cooks the turkey the same way my mother cooks the turkey. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, I volunteer to cook the turkey. Every year, whether in Tennessee or out here in the Southwest corner, whoever is in charge of turkeys says no. They profess to love the turkey the way I fix it, but they say another time would be better. They say they want a traditional turkey.

I picked up turkey cooking while I was spending some considerable time about two-thirds of the way between here in the southwest corner and Tennessee. The Colonel, father of my oldest daughter, lived up in Paris, Texas, and he fed me my first smoked turkey. I loved it. Since then, I have modified his recipe somewhat and cook one fine smoked turkey. Since I can’t have it out here or in Tennessee, I thought someone with fewer traditionalists in their immediate family might like to have the recipe to try for the holidays.

Smoking a Turkey

INGREDIENTS:

  1. This is fairly important to the success of the whole affair. Pick a good one. The critical part is to make sure it will fit in the smoker
  2. 1 container large enough to hold the turkey and cover it with the magic elixir. I’ve been known to use a plastic bucket, but sometimes the dog gets upset as we normally use it for his water dish. This is okay as long as we stay out of biting reach of the dog for two or three days.
  3. 1 smoker, probably any kind that claims to be a smoker and any number of possible jury rigs would work; however, if I were using a “Weber” or like vessel, I would make sure that there was extra water in the smoker).
  4. 1 bottle of beer. Beer in longnecks is preferable but one should not become too concerned about the type of beer as “Lone Star” is a bit too elegant for this type of cooking. Besides, we wouldn’t want to waste a beer worth drinking on some dumb turkey. If one is desperate and doesn’t mind subjecting oneself to abject humiliation, it is permissible to stoop to using a can of beer.
  5. 1\2 cup of Madeira. Again, I wouldn’t be overly concerned about the quality of the wine, and in truth, any red wine is probably okay. However, I would stay away from “Night Train” wine as it has been known to eat through barbecue grills, smokers, and anything made of material weaker than that used in hulls of nuclear submarines.
  6. Angostura bitters
  7. Worcestershire sauce
  8. Chili powder
  9. Oregano
  10. Sage
  11. Honey
  12. Molasses
  13. Undoubtedly, there are numerous items that I have forgotten to list here, but that’s okay as it really depends on what your individual taste is — I don’t suggest substituting low fat milk for the beer, but most everything else is probably okay — and if it’s really important, I’ll realize I left it out when I get to the narrative of how to use all this stuff and include the forgotten ingredient there.

PREPARATION:

Thaw the turkey. Take all those weird things that they put in those plastic packages inside the turkey and cook them in a skillet without the plastic packages, turning them frequently. Then feed what you just cooked to the dog. It might placate him enough to keep him from biting you for taking away his water bucket. If there are traditionalists in the bunch, give the stuff to them rather than the dog and let them make gravy.

Put the turkey in large container. Pour beer and Madeira over turkey. If you have not allowed about 24 hours for the turkey to thaw or about 8-12 hours for marinating the turkey, call your invited guests and advise them that the celebration will be about two days later than indicated on the original invitation.

Sprinkle other ingredients over the turkey. Be plentiful. It’s almost impossible to get too much.

Crunch the garlic cloves I didn’t mention in the ingredients and add to the container. I normally use about four normal sized cloves for a normal sized turkey. Also add the previously omitted bay leaves, about 6-8 for that same normal sized bird.

Add enough water to cover the turkey although it probably wouldn’t be a disaster if a leg partially stuck out. Then put the container in a safe place, unless of course, you want the dog to be rapturously happy and not bite you until long after his teeth have fallen out.

Allow to sit undisturbed for 6-10 hours (longer is better and ten hours is not necessarily the upper limit but exceeding ten hours may have some impact on when you either eat or get tired of the turkey taking up all that safe space).

Put the turkey on smoker grill above water pan after lighting the charcoal (one or two coals burning well is the best condition for the charcoal) and placing soaked hickory chips, which I also forgot to mention, earlier on the charcoal — again, be plentiful — after soaking the chips for at least 30 minutes. Pour remaining magic elixir over the turkey into the water pan. Add as much water to the water pan as possible without overflowing and putting out the fire below. Cover. Do not touch. Do not look. Do not peek…unless it doesn’t start to smoke in about thirty minutes. Then peek. If it’s smoking, leave alone for at least six hours for a large normal sized turkey. It is almost impossible to overcook if you have added enough water at the outset. You should check and add water or charcoal throughout the process. I have found that mesquite charcoal is the best, as it burns hotter. Regular charcoal will do fine but will require more checking.

The secret to the whole process is to cook extremely slow, as slow as possible and still start the fire.

Serve turkey, preferably without the garlic cloves or bay leaves. Now is the time for “Night Train” wine or the good beer. Serve “Night Train” very cold as indicated on the label.

The turkey’s also good cold.

Shoot the dog.

NOTE: We got a new komodo grill recently, and i am in heaven smoking the turkey this year.

Happy Thanksgiving.

A Tale of the Sea and Me (For Sam – Installment 37 or something like that

Sea Stories

This is a column i wrote for The Lebanon (TN) Democrat in 2009. The incident occurred in March of 1969 while the USS Hawkins was conducting ASW exercises with the USS Chopper (SS-342) during refresher training out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Just after the incident, one of the GTMO trainers told me a second class submarine machinist mate was next to the diving plane control as the sub went into its out of control dive. The machinist mate could not move the locked planes, finally kicked them, the planes flipped from from the locked down angle to the up angle, which also was locked. The move eventually broke the back of the sub, but it saved a lot of lives.f

Notes from the Southwest Corner:

SAN DIEGO – With August madcap doings in the Southwest corner, I postponed my trip back home and missed a unique reunion in Newport, R.I.

Several sailors from my first ship, the USS Hawkins (DD 873) held an ad hoc reunion in Newport, RI. I was honored they asked me to join as they had been enlisted and I had been a junior officer. Allen Ernst, my leading sonar technician when I was Anti-Submarine (ASW) Officer, had found me in the intergalactic space of the internet about a year ago. I suspect he instigated including me.

Regardless, Allen, Robin Lewis, and Norm O’Neal took the lead, and R.J. Beihl, Bill Durbrow, Bill Carey, Bruce Coulture, and Rik Tuinstra completed the group.

They sent pictures and reports. Then last week, Allen forwarded me an email train from a discussion they had had at the reunion. The email detailed an incident I will never forget, including a seven page breakdown of the Navy investigation.

After completing a major overhaul in February, 1969, the Hawkins sailed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for “refresher training,” two-months of intense exercises to get the ship’s company back up to speed before operations.

ASW exercises with a real submarine were included. The USS Chopper (SS-342) was assigned to Guantanamo for these exercises.

The ASW exercises were actually a respite for me. Other duties required grueling 18-hour days. The ASW part was exciting and fun, and my first with a real sub.

Hawkins stood out of the channel February 11 and conducted engineering drills in the morning. General Quarters 1A (for ASW operations) was set immediately after the morning drills. I moved from the bridge to the small ASW/Sonar space in the after section of Combat Information Center (CIC). There was no time for lunch.

Quicker than expected, we gained sonar contact and began to track the Chopper.

Just finding a submarine with sonar remains magic to me. The sonar transmits sound beams, and if the beams hit the submarine, the returning echo alerts the sonar crew to the contact.

By maintaining contact, a good sonar team can track the sub, deducing course and speed and producing a solution to fire an anti-submarine weapon, such as a torpedo with some probability of actually hitting the submarine.

This did not occur often. We spent more time talking to the whales on “Gertrude,” our underwater telephone designed to communicate with other Navy ships and submarines, than actually locating submarines.

But this particular afternoon, we had good luck, establishing solid contact. We could actually see the submarine blip turning in circles on our fire control system.

Then the blip became progressively weaker and disappeared. We were stumped as to the cause, wondering what kind of maneuver the Chopper could have employed.

Within two minutes, the bridge reported the Chopper had shot almost completely out of the water, 100 yards off of our starboard beam, crashing back into the sea. It disappeared again briefly before bobbing to the surface.

The Chopper had lost its generator and electrical DC power. The sub’s down angle had increased to 15 degrees, then to 45 degrees and beyond. She had plummeted to over 1,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, dangerously close to her “crush depth.”

The emergency actions of the sub’s personnel finally took effect. The Chopper ceased its descent and began to rise. The crew couldn’t control the reverse ascent, and the sub was almost vertical in the water when it cleared the surface. She re-submerged to about 250 feet before finally bobbing to the surface.

Amazingly, she returned to port under her own power. The ensuing investigation determined she had suffered structural damage, and the Chopper was decommissioned a year later.

More amazing, no one received any critical injuries. This is even more startling in that the report reveals steel deck plates were not secured and were crashing about during the violent descent and ascent along with anything not tied down. The officers and crew carried out emergency procedures 90 degrees off the normal plane. It would be like doing house work in an emergency mode standing on the wall instead of the floor with furniture flying around.

The Chopper was just one of many impactful incidents during my Hawkins tour with those sailors. It was quite an introduction to anti-submarine warfare for this young officer.

I am still amazed.

NOTE: Sadly Allen Ernst, that fine young man who played a significant role in getting our division through the overhaul and all of our sonar evolutions, passed away in 2011.