i once again have come out a lucky man.

Thank you, Jason, for being who you are, and being in our family.

And Happy Birthday!

Perhaps it’s my age.  My hackles are up. i am a curmudgeon. i am not liberal or conservative. i like to think i’m for common sense. i’ve been called, quite correctly, a contrarian. But it’s time for me to make some comments about stupid.

i did not send the below to Navy’s “Morale, Welfare, and Recreation” organization in San Diego: think stupid bureaucracy that has forgot its mission. i think it’s indicative of our lack of commons sense and critical thinking, which has caused  many problems we have.

So i’m posting the text of my letter never sent just to be public about my frustration:

Commanding Officer, MWR

Last Wednesday, July 24, I went to the pro shop of the Admiral Baker Golf Course to punch my card for a round and pay for a riding cart. As I handed my twenty-dollar bill to the attendant, I was informed the facility was now “cashless” and would only take credit and debit cards.

On Friday, July 26, I played my usual round at North Island’s Sea ‘n Air Golf Course. After finishing our 18 holes, I bought a pitcher of beer for our group of seven players. A brightly colored sign on the club house bar announced this facility would be “cashless effective 15 August.

I recognize the methods of payment of goods, services, and debts have changed greatly over the years, but I try to minimize the amount of charges I pay with credit or debit cards. I also believe in the sanctity of our financial system founded during the presidency of George Washington and his Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. The wise people of that era established an incredible system that allowed our country to become more prosperous beyond anyone’s imagination.

On each bill of currency established back then and still in existence today is the statement:

“This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.”

With this in mind, I wonder why a government institution would demand a system of payment that undermines the currency of our country.

If I understand this correctly, if I should arrive at either Navy golf facility in San Diego with no credit cards, I will not be allowed to play because I have no credit or debit cards with me, only cash, I will not be allowed to play.

Or perhaps, since these facilities will be incapable of recognizing or accepting legal tender, I would be allowed to play for free.

Please advise.

The would have accused me of disrespect had i sent this i know. That’s what they have done with my past frustrated  submissions.

This was begun last night, and i got stuck. And i got sleepy: After all, i am an old man. Then in an email today, one of my closest friends from Vanderbilt days, Susan (nee Butterfield and affectionately known as Butter) Brooks, asked about what i had done and where did we dine. She opened up my mind as she as done a number of times in the past. Thank you, Susan. i completed the post this afternoon.

i sit in the room. The fire has been a quiet one, crackling minimally. i have turned out all but the reading light. Maureen has gone to bed. i have read some. i have filled out my tomorrow’s plans. My hands on the keyboard in my lap are old hands, weathered, veins standing out, wrinkled. Old hands.

i can remember donning my double holstered six-guns and heading out to the empty lot between our home and the Padgett’s. Night. Summer. Looking at my hands and envisioning them as old, weathered, cowboy wrangler hands, quickly darting into the holsters and with a blaze of glory, surpassing even the quickness and accuracy of Wild Bill Hickok, wiping out the bad guys in the black hats. The absurdity of imagining a nine-year old, barefooted, shirtless in shorts, carrying toy six guns for instruments of justice and death never occurred to me then as it does while those hands poise over the keyboard by the fire.

It has been a good day, a fitting day, i think. i kept a vow of responding to well wishes.

Then, there was this experience we attended. A fairgrounds, a horse race track. In some respects, an odd place to revere artists.

Maureen, Sarah, and the goofy old man went to “Beyond Van Gogh” late morning.

i remain somewhat stunned. To say i was moved is an understatement. This huge enclosed space was continually filled with brush strokes recreating Van Gogh’s works with accompanying and very appropriate music (there were even a few scores from Don McClean’s “American Pie” side “B” where McClean honors the artist with his songs, played beautifully by an orchestra at the exhibit). Technology gave us an essence of the artist without allowing the sophisticated electric magic to come to forefront.

It was truly magic. The photo shows at the entry into the exhibit. Van Gogh’s quote on the wall is  “I dream my painting and I paint my dreams.”

Truly. i found myself hoping that somehow, somehow, Van Gogh knows of the appreciation he earned and has now been so beautifully captured.

After that, Maureen and i went to The Fishery in Pacific Beach, a surfing part of town with the air of bohemia. The restaurant was true to its name in atmosphere.

The oysters were as fresh as they could be and as good as i have had anywhere.

Their clam chowder was right up there with the Black Pearl in Newport, Rhode Island, and Hudson Bay, a shack in the public sea fishing boats near Shelter Island.

The Black Pearl is where i sat next to Frank Sinatra who had sailed that day with the owner of the Black Pearl, both the restaurant on the pier and the two-masted schooner moored down the pier. The secret i was told by the waitress (Kathy McMahon was whom i dated while in Newport in those magical years and continues to be a close friend: she was attending Salve Regina and is now a retired doctor (as if she could actually really retire) in special education at the University of Miami, Ohio) was armagnac.

Hudson Bay closed several years ago. On its last day, Pete Toennies and i went there. The owner and holder of the magic recipe for the chowder saw us eating our chowder at the rail on the narrow porch looking out at the fishing boat crews cleaning up. The other customers had left. She brought out a bottle of the chardonnay we were drinking and we discussed clam chowder, Arizona where she was headed, the state of the world, and over that bottle and one more, the world seemed a little bit better. A beautiful afternoon with a good soul. She did not pass on her secret to chowder.

So The Fishery chowder is in high cotton.

The mussels and their broth and the bread served with it was beyond incredible.

It was so good, we ordered the Chef’s Catch to go and had it for dinner with Maureen’s salad. Yesterday’s catch was mahi mahi and cooked with butternut squash, sun dried tomato, cilantro lime crema, pine nuts, and cilantro.

We ate on dinner trays, watched an episode of “What’s My Line.”

i write after a long day and pretty long life, certainly a crazy life.

It was a fitting day.

78 RPM.

Yes. Seventy-Eight Revolutions Per Minute.

I wonder as i write this how many folks who read it will have a clue about my choice of titles.

The title seems so appropriate for many reasons, some obvious, some not.

I still have a few 78 RPM records on a shelf that my father made and hung in our guest bedroom. The individual records are brittle, being made of shellac resin long before record makers went with vinyl. Many are broken, but it is difficult for me to throw them away.

Nearly all of those records are from the albums my Aunt Bettye Kate and Uncle Snooks Hall gave to the Jewell siblings when the Hall’s got a household music and sound system in their new digs (Lord, it must have been in the late 50’s when they moved from their neat and lovely home on the corner of Castle Heights Avenue and Wildwood Avenue to their new rambling home on Waggoner). They passed along their console stereo to my brother Joe and i, which i dominated. It was in our shared bedroom upstairs. It was old and the records, both their 78 RPM’s and my 45’s skipped a lot. We fixed that by appropriating one of Daddy’s weights for his fishing lines and taping it across the top of the needle.

My favorites of those 78 RPM records are Vaughn Monroe singing “Ghost Riders in the Sky” and a Phil Harris’ totally politically incorrect but funny album “That’s What I Like About the South.” Even though it would be broken en masse or burned today, Phil sang “There Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens” with lines like “We chickens trying to sleep and you bust in and gobble, gobble, gobble with your chin.”

The only album that originally was in my own family was the one my parents got for me and my sister in 1948. Dennis Day sings Walt Disney’s production of “Johnny Appleseed” long before it became a movie. Martha, later Joe, and i listened to it for hours. i dreamed of being Johnny wandering our county and planting apple trees everywhere i went while wearing a skillet on my head and singing: 

The Lord’s been good to me;
For that, I thank the Lord
for giving me
The things I need:
The sun, the rain, and the apple seed.
Oh, the Lord’s been good to me.

It’s pretty scratched up now, but it produced an iconic moment when JD Waits and i hosted a party for the wives of the officers aboard the USS Okinawa (LPH 3). Being a single Commander and Chief Warrant Officer, we were known in the wardroom as the “Booze Brothers.” For wardroom parties, we donned Belushi and Ackroyd black complete with fedoras, white socks, and even put sharpie letters on our fingers that spelled Elwood” (JD) and “Jake” (me).

We had noticed we were left out when the wives had a social gathering. So, we threw a party to be included in that group.

Unfortunately, the wives brought their husbands.

This unexpected circumstance did not deter us from having a great time.

JD and i became roommates during the Christmas season in 1982.

He was going to spend Christmas aboard the ship, and i felt that was cruel and inhumane, inviting him to stay in my Coronado two-bedroom apartment. He stayed for about two months when he moved into the Oakwood Apartments across the island. He also bought a 22-foot Cal sailboat and rented a slip in a Harbor Island marina. We were rolling along quite well. I was paying $400 a month for my 2-bedroom, 2½ bath apartment. JD was paying $500 for his apartment and $125 for his boat slip – he had upgraded from a 22-foot Cal to a 25-foot version. The good ship Okinawa was getting ready to go into an eight-month overhaul, and her operations were minimal. Life was easy and good.

Then, the prices went up. My rent gradually increased to $600 per month and another $100 hike was on the way. JD’s rent went to $600, and another increase was looming. We started looking for something a bit better. JD found it.

The second floor, two-bedroom condo was in the Coronado Cays on the strand between Coronado and Imperial Beach. It had a huge patio looking down on our boat slip. The great room had a corner fireplace. We rented for $900 per month, not only moving to high cotton, but saving $350 each month. It was a perfect bachelor pad. We were proud of ourselves.

That’s when we invited the wardroom wives over for a party.

As was our way, JD and i often would pull out one of my records, a 45 RPM or a 33⅓ album, most often blues, and spend the morning listening. One morning, i asked JD if he remembered the “Johnny Appleseed” album. When he said yes, i told him i had a copy. At the back of my oak wardrobe that i had converted into a stereo cabinet with record storage, i found the 78 RPM album and put it on for our listening pleasure. That’s when we got our idea for the party.

At the ensuing festivities when we deemed everyone was sufficiently plowed, we formally welcomed the wives and declared they would have to reciprocate by inviting us to all of their social events.

Then, we had a conspirator put “Johnny Appleseed” on the record player. We pulled out two cast iron skillets and placed them on our heads and began dancing (carefully balanced dancing to keep the skillets on our heads) as we had practiced. At an apex of the song, we did a 180° spin move and repeated it to face the crowd again. They were wowed. Some even claim, and i believe them, the skillets never moved, remaining in the same place as we rotated underneath. But remember, the audience was plowed.

Booze Brothers, crazy wardroom parties, and 78 RPM’s are pretty well out of style now.

And 78 corresponds to my birth day, January 19, 1944. i too, i recently have discovered, also am out of style.

i’m an old man.

Of late, i’ve noticed i’m being treated differently, deferential even. i can wear anything i want, and folks just think i’m a funny, little old man. People seem to think i’m fragile, a danger to myself. My existence seems to be dominated by people telling me what i should do and what i shouldn’t do…because i am OLD.

Well, it is time for me to put aside childish things and act…well, act like an old man, almost forgotten, like 78 RPM records.

I have spent the last two years intermittently writing how i feel about a lot of things i have sworn (futilely) not to address in writing or my word or mouth. It occurred to me that on the auspicious occasion where i have attained the same number as old records, i might want to set the record straight on how i think about things, about how i feel about things. i was going to set the world straight.

I reasoned if i let the world know how if feel about things, lay it all out, i then could just sit back, play bad golf, take hikes in the open space hills around our home, work around the house, and pretty much do what i wanted except for what my bride won’t allow.

i wrote about twenty or so pages of stuff on religion, equality, politics, and lord, knows what other contentious stuff.

That stuff has been archived in case somebody wants to know how i thought about such things, they can access them after i’m gone. I will make them available for my grandson.

After all, i am like a 78 RPM record. Nobody listens to them anymore, and at least on those particular subjects, no one listens to me either.

Both of my parents and most of my aunts and uncles were storytellers. They told great stories that made you chuckle or feel good.

Hopefully, i’ll stick to that.

But if you get the chance, you should listen to Dennis Day sing about Johnny Appleseed. I’m just sorry you can’t see JD and i do our spin with the cast iron skillets on our heads.