The repeat of hometown columns continue. A couple of people have asked me why my posts have been more infrequent. The second COVID vaccination (Moderna) laid me low. It wasn’t serious, but i sure as hell was not bright eyed and bushy tailed for about four days. The reactions were intermittent and varied, touching all of the potential reactions. It’s over and worth it. i am not as concerned as before, still concerned, but not as much.

However, the real reason for the cutback is i am working on my book. It is almost like having a job and has demonstrated i am a bit weird compared to most folks. Having a job gives me structure and makes me feel like i am accomplishing something. Gives me purpose. Seems like lots of people just want to have fun and to have things be easier. i find i still need a purpose (other than golf). So at least for a while my entries here will not be as frequent. i will keep posting these columns from the past.

Dave Carey remains one of my heroes and a great friend. i really enjoyed writing this column.

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – This past Monday, I left the cleanup from the San Diego fires and flew to Lake Tahoe, Nevada. It was not an escape. It was work. I was co-facilitating a team building workshop for a California police department with my friend, Dave Carey. 

Dave is not your ordinary business associate. On August 31, 1967, Dave Carey’s A-4 was shot out from under him over North Vietnam. He spent five and a half years as a Prisoner of War (POW), most of the time in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.”

Dave and I met in 1985 at the Naval Amphibious School in Coronado. We worked together for just shy of a year as I transitioned into Dave’s position as the head of leadership training for the West Coast and Pacific Rim. Together, we help create a two-day workshop on leadership excellence for senior Navy officers.

Dave retired. Four years later in 1989, I followed suit. After my initial dive into my new job as Mister Mom, I soon started to look for ways to generate income in the quiet hours.

After some discussion, Dave and I agreed I would write a book about his POW experience, or more accurately, about his motivational speeches concerning his experience. After completing the draft, we decided it really should be written in first person. The original draft is on my office bookshelf.

Eight years later, Dave holed up for three weeks and completed The Ways We Choose: Lessons For Life From a POW’s Experience.

Part of my approach to writing was generated from conversations with Dave. He and I were driving to another workshop about fifteen years ago when I asked him about what outcome did he expect the audience to have when he gave a speech.

Dave said he had expectations initially, but discovered his listeners made their own connections. Early on, Dave had completed a luncheon speech when a huge Texan came up to him, put his big arm around Dave’s shoulder and drawled, “Can I talk with you Dave? I understood every word you said today. The fact of the matter is, in this life, we are all going to get shot down, and some of us more than once.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve managed to get shot down several times. Dave’s book and his ideas have been significant guides to me as I have wandered through living. The book not only applies to San Diego, Lake Tahoe, and Middle Tennessee; it worked in the Hanoi Hilton over 40 years ago. 

Dave’s book revolves around a question he is most frequently asked, which is, “How did you do that? How did you and the other POW’s get through that?” He maintains they did that in a similar way to how we get through our daily process of life and work.

Dave’s assessment of how he and his fellow POW’s made it through boils down to five factors:

• We did what we had to do
• We did our best
• We chose to grow
• We kept our sense of humor
• We kept the faith
  • In ourselves
  • In each other
  • In our country
  • In God.

His anecdotes relating to those factors are humorous, inspiring, and thought provoking. I have had the wonderful opportunity to discuss these things in depth with Dave. 

So I check myself against his factors almost daily. They have even become part of the value statements for my consulting group.

I will not ruin the book by parroting it here. However, I am particularly fond of Dave’s pointing out how the POW’s trusted each one of them would do the best they could, would resist the severe interrogations to their limit; recognizing each of them had their own limit levels. 

I now try to consider folks I work with are doing the best they can do. This puts a whole different shape to the way I work with these people. Fewer rocks are thrown; fewer lines are drawn in the sand; fewer chips are put on shoulders.

I would encourage everyone to read’s Dave’s book. Your connections should be yours, not mine, not Dave’s. I know folks in Middle Tennessee also get shot down every once in a while.

Note: Dave’s book may still be obtained on-line through the Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble; web sites, and Dave’s website, www.davecarey.com. You may also be able to order it from a Borders or Barnes and Noble bookstore.

i know many things and damn near all of them are worthless. i stole this statement and learned many worthless things (and a few that weren’t) from a legend.

i have told this story before. When i went back to refresh my memory, i realized my earlier memory was wrong as i had combined two, maybe three, of the Jimmy and JD parties in that earlier post. So the below is that story revised. i don’t care. i wished to revel in it and take a break when i began this post last night rather than continuing work on editing my manuscript.

Last night, i’m sure most of you, including my wife, could have found something that interested you on that big flat black screen hanging or propped up in your house where you spend most of your time. i couldn’t. Vanderbilt basketball’s team took a hit from Alabama and officiating in the morning, staying close to the end, again. That was my television for Saturday. Maureen is not into oaters, and i’m not into Victorian chick flicks although i would pretend to watch if she chose one for her watching pleasure — But then i surfed to find a movie for her when i came upon the documentary, Living with Lincoln. It was an incredible story. i connected. So all Television, or whatever you are supposed to call it today, isn’t all bad…

But this is about today and the legend. JD Waits catches up to me age-wise today. 77.

In case you missed it, JD and i ran wild in the Southwest corner for a bunch of years beginning in the early 80’s and have continued a milder and long-distance version ever since. The photo below is of “The Booze Brothers” in our formal attire for JD’s second marriage to Mary Lou — there was another marriage in between the two with Mary Lou.

This morning i called, wished him a happy birthday, and then laughed a lot, a usual part of my conversations with JD. Some of his stories related today i could tell here and may later. Some of them cannot be here because neither JD nor i should ever be considered politically correct (or grammerly correct either and certainly have a penchant for off-color, and that’s putting it mildly, for that matter). But without any thought of his birthday being today, i made our Southwestern chili yesterday. Maureen loves it.

And that, that is what made me want to revel in the first version of JD and Jimmy Rye Southwestern Chili:

It was a great party. i don’t know how the idea came about. There were a lot of ideas that came about in the two-story, two-bedroom, two-bath, two-Navy officer apartment at 8th and E in Coronado.

Somehow JD and i decided to have a chili party there for the wardroom of the USS Okinawa (LPH 3) and invited guests. i think the final count of attendees was around fifty, in and out for three or four hours, maybe more. We planned for that many and realized we needed a really big pot to cook the chili.

We were single Navy officers who do not ordinarily have big pots. So we found a discount store, now gone, off of Plaza Boulevard in National City, and bought a really big, really cheap big pot that could hold something over five gallons. i’m pretty sure it wasn’t tin, but it was close to tin.

Now JD, among his many other talents, knows how to cook, especially Texas cooking. After all, his parents owned a diner in Houston and his father was the cook. So as we walked the aisles of the North Island Commissary, i was surprised after we got the stew meat, the red beans, the onions, the cheese, and the condiments, JD picked up several boxes off a shelf. Even though he could have made it from scratch, he declared it was much easier and just as good to use Shelby Carroll’s Texas Chili fixings packet.

So being us, we collected all the ingredients and the big pot in the apartment kitchen, and began. JD, a master at getting me in trouble, oversaw the mixing and set the temperature on the range. i was in charge of stirring. JD took a nap. i had a beer. i may have had another but when i went back to stir the chili in the pot, the wooden spatula struck something on the bottom of the pot. i had not stirred soon enough. The elixir at the bottom had stuck to the magic pot. Not realizing what it was, i scraped it off the bottom with my big spatula. When i picked the spoon up, i realized what the charred goop on the spoon was.

i called JD. “i think i ruined the whole batch,” i lamented.

“No problem,” JD cooly calmed me, “Just stir it into the rest. We’ll tell ’em it’s Southwest chili. They will never know the difference.”

The next morning, we sat out a can of Hormel chili alongside bottles of Thunderbird and Night Train (“Serve Very Cold” for obvious reasons), a total outlay of six bucks. We placed them on the big liberty ship hatch cover i had converted into a large coffee table sitting in the middle of the living room.  When folks expressed dismay, we assured them the Hormel can was just a joke. King Deutch, JD’s boss on Okinawa, showed up with his model wife, Jeannie. She insisted on having a glass of the Night Train. After tasting her wine, she assessed, “Quite elegant with a nice finish.” She laughed.

Everyone loved the chili. They thought Southwest chili was incredibly good.

Now, i don’t burn the bottom of the pan. The pan itself is cast iron and much. Some people even think it’s award-winning, which it is…to my way of thinking. And yes, it is cheating, but i don’t care. It’s good.

Thank you, Carroll Shelby.

And Happy Birthday, JD.

It wasn’t planned. After all, i am not, as often stated, a fan of mandated holidays. Valentine’s Day is one of my least favorites. i don’t like some mysterious something directing me to express my love for folks, especially my wife. i mean i do that quite enough, thank you, without direction.

And i should have taken photos, but i was into the day, the experience, being with her, and stopping to take photos just didn’t quite fit for me. Besides who would like to look at a chubby, bald, old man in a selfie (of which there are very few…intentionally), even if he is on a beach with a beautiful lady.

It was after a lovely breakfast, during which i said i had not done anything for Valentine’s and she replied she had not realized it was that day. Good for her.

As i was washing the breakfast dishes, i asked if she would like to go for a walk. She, thinking i meant around the neighborhood, or perhaps the walking trail around the park at the bottom of the hill, said yes. i upped the ante. i said i was thinking about the Coronado Beach. She, somewhat surprised i think, said yes.

Somewhere around ten, we left. We drove through some of the neighborhoods on the island looking for plants that might go well in our continual rehab of our exterior (yeh, it’s one of her passions). Then we parked about a block from the beach. And took a walk.

My parking spot was near the beach gate into Naval Air Station, North Island, the most frequented Friday Morning Golf rendezvous. i’m very familiar with this area.

i’m pretty familiar with Coronado. When i returned from a 1979-80 deployment, i lived in a two story, two bedroom apartment on Eighth and E. Many legends were created there, most with JD Waits. i would run the island at night after work through neighborhoods not yet overcome with overbuilding behemoth proclamations of financial success, but small neighborhood homes, a small town gone wealth crazy.

But it’s still a beautiful place, and  barring intelligent financial responsibility, it would still be my first choice for living the rest of my life.

Today, it did not matter. Maureen and i walked the beach from the beach gate for the base to the Hotel del Coronado. Not quite high tide. i don’t wish to brag about it because of family and friends across the country are getting hit pretty hard with nasty, cold weather, but the walk was in mid-60’s weather, clouds almost nil, surfers bobbing beyond the wave crests, young children playing in the water, and the magnificent Hotel Del Coronado looming in front of us, and Point Loma jutting out into the Pacific behind us.

We walked through neighborhoods i remembered from when i lived here. Small, comfortable 50’s bungalows now overcome and replaced by mausoleum-like Taj Mahal wannabes on postage stamp yards. But it is still Coronado. Bikes, rider propelled and motorized, with boom box music, disturbing the ambience. Eateries, those with enough outside space to stay open swamped with tourists, from all over and lots from just over the bridge.

But not on the beach. No, not on the beach. So after our walk, we retreat to our go-to in South Park in the heart of the city. A late brunch at The Rose Wine Bar.

But all of that was not the big thing.

Two lovers, ne’er 39 years, holding hands on the beach they have walked many times before, remembering.

It is nice to remember.

And we didn’t even consider it was Valentine’s Day.

He woke me up in the middle of the night. Put these thoughts in my head. Wouldn’t let me go back to sleep for fear of losing the thoughts like i nearly always forget the dreams i had except for snippets. i was afraid. i got up, bundled up, and began to write.

Actually, i don’t think it was the devil. i almost didn’t publish them here. But what the hell:

A Puzzling Question

now that the republicans have proven accountability and responsibility
is only required by the opposition,
and
now that the democrats have validated cramming their legislation
down the opposition’s throat is “unity;”
and
now that the democrats have proven accountability and responsibility
is only required by the opposition,
and
now that the republicans have validated cramming their legislation
down the opposition’s throat is “unity;”
and
now that all the politicians who get elected are
the ones who either have or raise the most money,

What remains of the Union and the Constitution?

it must be nice

it must be nice
to be someone who is
always right,
never wrong,
and
get mad at
folks who disagree,
and
only listen to
folks who do agree.
i don’t know
because i’ve never been
always right
and
try to learn from
folks who disagree
but now
i must admit
when i realize
someone believes
they are always right,
i turn the volume control
to off.