1. No matter what they’re telling you, they’re not telling you the whole truth.
2. No matter what they’re talking about, they’re talking about money.
All posts by Jim
Notes from the Southwest Corner – 012
As i edit this post from my past Democrat columns, i still miss Erma Baird, and all of those folks, now over that bridge, who were like family back home those many years ago. Life goes on and seems to come back to me in my older years. It was a lovely way to grow up, and those folks like Erma, Charlie, and Sharry made it that way.
SAN DIEGO – This has been a difficult column to write. Numerous things from my perch in the Southwest corner and far away in Lebanon made my past weekend (January 18-20), poignant with significant personal events.
Working backwards, Sunday was moving day. Our daughter Sarah, after a semester of commuting to San Diego State University from our home, moved into a dormitory for her second semester. I once again experienced the difficult art of letting go.
Her departure was rough on the old man. While many have experienced a child leaving home, my role as the at-home parent, a.k.a mister mom, and at a substantially older age than most parents, made Sarah’s departure particularly emotional.
The day before, Saturday, January 19, I became an old man according to the Beatles. On their “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band,” album, McCartney sang “When I’m 64.” I reached that magic number. Robert E. Lee reached birthday 200.
Friday, the beginning of this significant weekend, the initiating event was sad. My mother, Estelle Jewell, called to inform me Erma Baird passed away.
Mrs. Baird, her husband Charlie, and their daughter, Sharry Baird Hagar, have been a part of my life, literally since I was born. Sharry, Henry Harding, and I were baptized on the same Sunday at the Lebanon First Methodist Episcopal Church South on East Main in the late spring of 1944.
Erma is one of my wife’s favorite people in Lebanon.
On one trip to Lebanon, Charlie and Erma came to call while we visited my parents. Mischievously, Erma smiled and said, “I have something for you.” She gave Maureen pictures of a play the Methodist Youth Fellowship produced when I was fourteen. Many friends were co-stars but somehow I had been chosen to play Jesus as a young boy.
Maureen focused on this goofy looking guy at center stage, complete with a page boy wig, knee-length toga, and madras Bermuda shorts showing underneath as he sat spread-legged on a stool. I am not sure Maureen has ever completely recovered from laughing at the photo.
Erma, of course, loved the reaction.
The women of the “greatest” generation, as labeled by Tom Brokaw, were an incredible group of people. Their role through the Depression, World War II, and its aftermath was the synthesis for change. They balanced being a housewife and mother with pioneering equality in the workplace. They were strong; they were supportive; they were always busy.
Erma Baird had all the characteristics of the women of her generation. She was also one of the sweetest, loving women who ever walked the face of the earth. It seemed to me she loved everybody and could always find something good about any person or any situation.
She was that way when I can first remember her in my life, and she was that way when I visited her just before Christmas.
Even though, I am some 2,000 miles from Lebanon, the impact of losing Mrs. Baird hit me hard.
In the middle of all of these significant events, my daughter Blythe informs me my grandson Sam has spoken his first words, “Kitty Cat,” and is obviously connecting the word to the two felines who reside with him. It was a big day for the Jewell household. We are informed of Sam’s “firsts” almost daily, but a baby starting to talk is a giant step.
Years ago, a great deal of this weekend’s events would have washed over me. I would have kept on “chooglin’” along as Creedence Clearwater Revival exhorted me to do.
But late that Sunday evening, I sat before the fading embers in the family room fireplace and reflected: The world continues to change with significant events. Letting go of children, getting older, losing friends who have completed life’s cycle, and welcoming new friends into the cycle is constant. If all of us can deal with the cycle as have Erma and Charlie Baird, my parents, and many, others of that generation in Lebanon, we will be all right.
A Tale of the Sea and Me (for Sam) – Installment 11
Shenanigans of Officer Candidate School (OCS)
My four months at OCS was not the kind of thing you brag about. Company Quebec had a bunch of misfits that banded together to be just a slight bit unconventional.
Initially, i played an important part, not in the unconventional way, by actually helping my company mates get ready for inspections.
At Castle Heights Military Academy ten years before OCS, Tommy Palmer helped me. Tommy, another town boy cadet was a sophomore when i was a freshman. When one of the early personnel inspections was going to be held the next day, we all sat on the lawn in front of McFadden Gymnasium to shine our shoes, hopefully a spit shine. i was pretty much inept. My spit shine was hazy and spotty. Tommy was considered our champion spit shiner. He sat down beside me with his Kiwi black shoe polish, the top filled with water. He proceeded to show me how, and i emerged, not the champion, but something of a spit shine expert.
When a couple of Company Quebec OCs found out i went to a military academy, they immediately glommed onto me. We had a training session sitting on the deck of our hallway. After that, our shoes were never a problem in personnel inspections.
* * *
But otherwise, Company Quebec didn’t quite match the model of an officer candidate company. Perhaps it started when our liberty service dress khaki and service dress blue uniforms were finally issued. The next weekend’s liberty loomed. With Company LIma, a problem developed.
Every day, a new 4/c OC was selected as the “SLOD”, the acronym for “Section Leader of the Day.” During the week, our SLOD was marching our section to another class. He failed to see a rather uptight lieutenant walking the other way and failed to salute. The lieutenant, intent on teaching our SLOD a lesson, ordered him to to halt the section. As we stood at attention, the Lieutenant proceeded to chew out our SLOD unmercifully. One, if not several of us, recognized what we perceived absurdity in what was occurring. One of us stifled a chuckle. Quite a few more of us reacted by unsuccessfully stifling our muffled chuckles. The lieutenant became even more irate.
He put us on report as a section. We received a weekend of restriction. Thus, our section’s weekends of no liberty was a week later than the other fourth class Officer Candidates. It was not fun watching all of the other OCs head into town on liberty while we were confined to the base. Perhaps it gave us our identity as a company.
* * *
In our classes, i learned a great deal about seamanship, navigation, ship’s engineering, and damage control. i suspect my attitude was shaped by my instructors.
Our seamanship instructor was a Limited Duty Officer (CWO) Boatswain. He gave us a practical, no BS education in deck seamanship. In his introduction to our first class, he informed us, “I want your study guide to be familiar with you.” i lost it.
* * *
Our navigation instructor was what later would be called an E-8, and then called a Quartermaster Senior Chief Petty Officer. i learned a great deal about celestial navigation, piloting, dead reckoning, and charts. But today, i clearly remember our late afternoon class, the senior chief leaning back in his chair in front of the classroom and telling us when we were marching to our evening mess, he would be driving across the Claiborne Pell/Newport Bridge on his way to his home in Jamestown. “When you guys are filing into the mess hall, i will be reaching over to the back seat and pulling out my first of three Narragansett beers on the way home.”
* * *
Company Quebec’s Company Officer was LT Mellon. He was an Aviation LDO and old school Navy. He gave us the only leadership training i can remember us. It seemed almost offhanded. LT Mellon called us together in a lecture room in King Hall. He put on one of the old rolling slide cartoon films matched with an audio tape. The video was about John Paul Jones and how he led the United States Navy in the Revolutionary War. It was pretty hokey to me. At the conclusion of the slide show, LT Mellon gave us that one leadership lesson.
It was short. He bragged about as a division officer on carriers, he was most proud of never sending any of his division personnel to captain’s mast. i thought he must have had an exceptional group of enlisted personnel until he explained he took care of all the bad acts at the division level. Essentially, he told us that the best division officers were the ones who used the old corporeal punishment allowed in “Rocks and Shoals.” i thought it was strange.
* * *
After many years, i don’t recall any other training except for a warning about sexual contact. It was in January with slight snow on the ground when we marched to a WWII wooden barracks and climbed upstairs to a cramped, overheated room. We sat in wooden chairs as the training film began. The black and white, old film began with an obvious fake pilot house of a destroyer escort. the ship was in a dangerous situation on a dark and stormy night. Another ship was nearby when the OOD gave an steering order to the helmsman. The helmsman collapsed. The ship collided with the other ship. Then, the film revealed the helmsman had unprotected sex with a prostitute in a liberty port and had contracted syphilis. The film continued and showed “short arm” inspections, which were to check penises for venereal diseases, stressing how important those inspections were.
A few of our section was gagging. The majority was dead asleep, and i was aghast the training program thought this would be effective for something.
* * *
When our section finally got liberty, it was like letting the dogs out of the pound. After the week long of classes and Friday night athletics, a personnel inspection was held on Saturday morning along with a parade of the OCS battalion. When it was over, we were granted liberty from noon until 2000 Sunday night. We made the best of it.
After exploring the many wonderful places to explore in Newport, Rhode Island, we found the gathering place for Officer Candidates and …women. Think “Officer and a Gentleman” except in Rhode Island, not in Washington, and none of my partners in crime looked like Richard Gere and none of the ladies from Fall River, although attractive, didn’t quite match up to Deborah Winger.
Hurley’s was a what i would call a dance hall. There was a bar (of course), a stage behind the bar, a dance floor, and a large array of tables back of the dance floor. The food was…well actually, i don’t remember the food, but we ate it and liked it. Hurley’s was located across Bellevue Avenue from the Tennis Hall of Fame on a side street. The bands played jazz and Rhythm and Blues, the old kind. i quickly learned Sunday afternoons at Hurley’s was a jam session, and the featured band, both Saturday and Sunday played “My Satin Doll.” The lead singer nailed it. i would have sat there forever listening this woman singing that song. It resonates in my head to this day.
One of our OCs, one of my closest friends there, who shall rename nameless here because i don’t wish to tell any tales that might get him in trouble now, met a woman on our first Saturday night of liberty. They became pretty hot and heavy. But on subsequent dates, she insisted he hooked up one of us with her friend. The friend was not all of that attractive. He was having difficulty with this and a bit desperate. Doc, my roommate, and i came up with a plan.
i agreed to have a date with her, but had to be accompanied by Doc. The story was i was in the German Navy, attending the US OCS, and only spoke German. Doc and i were roommates because Doc spoke German and served as my interpreter. We all met at Hurley’s and found a table for five. When our buddy introduced us, i uttered some gibberish i thought sounded like German mixed with a few actual German words and “ach”s sprinkled in frequently. Doc interpreted. We kept this up a bit more than a half hour. Doc then said the two of us had to go back to the base to meet a German attached to the German UN contingent who was visiting Navy installations.
We left. No one was the wiser (including us especially), and our OC company mate had his date.
* * *
One of our favorite “gags” occurred almost every liberty weekend. Liberty expired at midnight on Saturday and 1700 on Sunday. On Saturday nights, we would stop at Dunkin’ Donuts on our way back to our barracks. We would each get a cup of coffee and order a dozen, jelly-filled donuts to go. When we reported in on our deck in King Hall, we would go to the second deck stairwell at the end of each wing. Just to give us something else to do, a security watch was set on each deck after taps until reveille every night. The Officer Candidate assigned to the watch rotated between the fourth class OCs. Each hour, the security watch would walk through each wing to find nothing (except once). As he entered the first deck stairwell, the three or four of us with our jelly-filled donuts hurled them down on the unsuspecting security watch. We had ducked out of sight before he looked up and scampered to our barrack rooms. The security guard would report in to his post. We guessed he either went to his room to change uniforms or remain on his post to wipe off as much of the jelly, parts of donuts, and the powdered sugar.
We never knew what he did, and we never got caught. We thought it was funny is my only excuse.
* * *
There were several more antics, which will not, and should not be told here. The night before we were to complete the training and be commissioned as ensigns, one more event occurred, which aptly captured what OCS was to us.
We had liberty until midnight on Thursday, February 3, the day before commissioning. Everyone except married OCs and those who had families or friends there to attend the next morning’s ceremony, celebrated with drinks. We all came back to our barracks tipsy and hit the racks.
Sometime around 0200, a fire ignited in the small Navy Exchange Shop on the first deck of King Hall. The security watch finally had a reason for being there. He notified the base fire department. All hell broke loose. They began barking orders over the intercom system very loudly, accompanied by louder alarms clanging. The officer candidates awoke, or most of them. The awake OCs awoke the others. We were ordered to muster in our companies on the drill field in front of King Hall. Nearly everyone of us slept in our skivvies. Not knowing the extent of the fire, we guessed the worst and hurried down the stairwells to our section’s spot on the drill field. A few wise OCs had brought the blankets on their racks, but most of us had only our skivvies as we stood in our formation.
Now, i don’t know how many of you have been to Newport in February, but i can tell you with great assurance, it is cold. It may not snow much being on the seacoast, but it can rival any place in New England with its coldness. i don’t know what the temperature actually was, but there was a 15-20 knot wind blowing off Narragansett Bay that night, enough to make shivering me in my skivvies feel like it was zero degrees Fahrenheit. We stood there for about 45 minutes before we were told it was a small fire in the exchange and had been doused. Shivering, we went back to our racks.
The next day, we went to our commissioning, glad the gym was large enough for the 600 or so of us wouldn’t have to stand outside.
“The Adventures of Remo Williams” continues…
Daddy
You can call it “Father’s Day.” if you choose. i call it “Daddy Day.” That is because i never in my life called my Daddy “Father.” As an aside, i never called my Mother anything but “Mother.” And i never called him “Dad” either. It was always “Daddy,” even when i last saw him in July 2013.
He was and is always “Daddy.”
i don’t know why.
But “Daddy” fit my father better than the alternative. “Grandpa” may have been a better moniker for him. He was that kind of man.
i’ve said enough about him in many posts, in many ways. i’m sure there are many others that feel that way about their Daddies. i think the best ones were called “Daddy.” So, i will simply note i miss him and always will and include the poem that prompted him to say, “Son, i didn’t realize you knew so much about me.
Hands
When most folks meet him,
they notice steel blue eyes and agility
his gaze, gait and movements
belie the ninety-five years;
but
those folks should look at his hands:
those hands could make Durer cry
with their history and the tales they tell.
His strength always was supple
beyond what was suggested from his slight build.
His hands are the delivery point of that strength.
His hands are not slight:
His hands are firm and thick and solid –
a handshake of destruction if he so desired,
but
he has used them to repair the cars and our hearts;
His hands are marked by years of labor with
tire irons, jacks, wrenches, sledges, micrometers on
carburetors, axles, brake drums, distributors
(long before mechanics hooked up computers,
deciphering the monitor to replace “units”
for more money in an hour than he made in a month
when he started in ’34 before computers and units).
His hands pitched tents,
made the bulldozers run
in war
in the steaming, screaming sweat of
Bouganville, New Guinea, the Philippines.
His hands have nicks and scratches
turned into scars with
the passage of time:
a map of history, the human kind.
Veins and arteries stand out
on the back of his hands,
pumping life itself into his hands
and
beyond;
the tales of grease and oil and grime,
cleaned by gasoline and goop and lava soap
are etched in his hands;
they are hands of labor,
hands of hard times,
hands of hope,
hands of kindness, caring, and love:
oh love, love, love, crazy love.
His hands speak of him with pride.
His hands belong
to the smartest man I know
who has lived life to the maximum,
but
in balance, in control, in understanding,
gaining respect and love
far beyond those who claim smartness
for the money they earned
while he and his hands own smartness
like a well-kept plot of land
because he always has understood
what was really important
in the long run:
smarter than any man I know
with hands that tell the story
so well.
God, i miss him.
A Tale of the Sea and Me (For Sam) – Installment 10
This is out of sequence. If i ever get through all of my sea stories and make it a book, this post will be toward the later part of that book.
It seems nowadays, everyone wishes to knock what used to be, failing to recognize the progress we have had is rooted in what was in those days. To fail to recognize the goodness of what was, and deride the bad is a negation of that progress.
To me this is sad. Yesterday, i found myself in the midst of some great men whose institutions are now subject to a lot of rebuke…and misunderstanding of what was. Selective memory is bad, creating only divisiveness and disrupting if not stopping progress. Sad.
Gratitude
It was after our usual Friday morning golf round, a ritual begun in May 1991. In the past, we have had as many as four foursomes included. For the past number of years, we have been down to two groups. Now, it seems the number is growing again. Yesterday, we filled up the two foursomes. Eight of us sat on the patio of the Sea ‘n Air Golf Club on the Naval Air Station, North Island, located on the northwest end of what is now part of Coronado — Sometime after the big war, they filled in the “Spanish Bight.” It was a spit of water and sand almost totally separating the two islands connected by a causeway.
That golf dining patio, and the one at the Admiral Baker Golf courses, North and South, are part and parcel of the tradition. It is where we gather at the end of the round with our usual pitcher (or two) of beer. That’s where sea tales and war stories abound.
As i sat listening yesterday, several thoughts bounded from the past into my head.
i also thought of the folks who have played with us and been an integral part of our group who have passed on. They are missed, and we continue to try to recapture them in our stories.
Another thought: in 1964 in “Maple Manor,” a 1920’s relic of a house near Vanderbilt housed four Vanderbilt students and me, a former Vanderbilt student and office boy/cub reporter for Fred Russell’s sports department of The Nashville Banner. Think of the movie “Animal House” and you should have a good idea of what “Maple Manor was like. Cy Fraser, also a former Vandy student and close friend from Old Hickory, frequently spent the night. One morning while fixing the coffee, i remarked to Cyril that i apparently was going to be someone who recorded life and people and not be an earth shaker. This is why i am writing this post.
Another thought, frequently uttered by yours truly, also bounced into my head: “i am one lucky man. i have met some incredible people passing through life, amazing folks who consider me a friend.
Friday was a good example of that. It is not a place for thin skin. Each of us is roasted for past antics. We delight when a new golfer joins our mix. We can tell our phalanx of stories all over again. Some we just repeat because we think they are hilarious. The Friday session is what we politely call sea stories and war stories. There are a whole bunch of other kind of stories in the mix. It is really a bullshit (B/S) session. And it is great fun. Many of the stories cannot be told anywhere else. Politicians, many flag officers (we have had a couple of admirals that enjoyed our sessions), the politically correct, do-gooders, and single-cause focused folks would gasp at some of those stories, maybe even faint. We love them. It is a relief from the daily grind and awful news of today. It is the past, which will never be repeated. It is at the root of esprit de corps.
Our Friday group was composed of five Navy SEALS, all of whom made Captain; one army artillery major who was awarded the Silver Star for his actions in Vietnam; one nuclear power submarine maintenance Commander; and me, a ship driving Commander that was euphemistically changed to “Surface Warfare Officer” in 1969. All but two of us were in action in Vietnam although mine was only slight compared to the others.
We are laughingly referred to as curmudgeons by the golf staff. It is an appropriate name we have adopted for our group. Our laughter is a mainstay on the patio, and several folks have told us they really enjoy listening to us have so much fun. Yes, there have been a few who have been shocked by our language. Profanity was part of the art of being in the army and navy back then as was drinking a bit more than we should and antics on liberty that would get us hoisted on our own petards in today’s military. We revel in it.
i will not take a stance on today’s military here. It is what it is today and not what it was then. i am too old to disparage our forces today, at least not here.
But we represent a living that no longer exists and, in our own way, are proud of it.
i will not name names here. i will send a link to this post to all of those who golfed Friday, thanking them for allowing me to be a a part of this group of not just good, but great men.
As i said, i am a lucky man.