The old wooden skiff with a small outboard motor cut ripples through the bay’s glassy sea. The old steamer with discolored paint on the hull and even a few spots of actual rust with the resultant line trailing down to the waterline and black keel stood like a ghost ship in the gray fog, anchored in the middle of the bay with the hills silhouetted along the channel framing the open sea beyond.

Hake Wilson, an old man in a worn Navy pea coat, maneuvered the skiff to the head of old creosote wood pier. He climbed the ladder and slowly ambled toward the foot of the pier. His gait was altered from past injuries. The collar of the pea coat was up. He wore an old Navy watch cap. He was not in a uniform, just wearing the stuff men wore at sea. Hake’s salt and pepper hair was long, hanging out from under the watch cap.

At the foot of the pier waited Ulyana Bondar and the young girl. They were similarly cloaked in gray wool hooded long coats. The girl, perhaps nine or ten, had a brightly colored wool shawl wrapped around her neck and protruding from the coat. The hoods were thrown back and both the woman and the girl wore tasseled wool caps, the girl’s matching her shawl. The wind coming off the bay was biting cold.

The old man Hake leaned over and placed a kiss on Ulyana’s cheek. It was a note of respect for her and something that happened long ago. Next, he picked up the girl in his arms and walked out the pier stopping about half way. Hake kneeled down and looked the young girl in the eye, holding her shoulders.

“Child, I only came by to see you. It would be my greatest joy to spend every day, every moment with you as you grow up. But your mother is taking good care of you, and she needs you. I have been called to help some folks. I thought it was over, that I had helped enough, but I have been called away again. I must go. I don’t know when i will get back. My greatest wish is for you and your mother to be comfortable and as happy as you can be. Remember i love you. You should always try to do the right thing, even when it’s difficult. If you do, things will turn out all right.

“I love you.”

Hake picked the young girl up, walked back to the foot of the pier, put her down beside Ulyana and repeated the kiss on Ulyana’s cheek, again out of respect.

The woman and the girl remained standing holding hands at the foot of the pier as Hake walked with his altered gait back to the head of the pier, climbed down the ladder, sat at the stern of the skiff, released the lines, and motored back to the steamer. The two remained as they watched Hake, barely visible now, climb the accommodation ladder, turn and wave at the gunnel as one long blast screamed from the ship’s whistle.

Then as the accommodation ladder was raised, the anchor came out of the water and was stowed in the hawse pipe as the ship began a slow turn before moving out to the channel and disappeared in the misty fog of the open sea.

It must be Thanksgiving time. The weather’s right. Just enough briskness in the air to feel like back home in Tennessee. And we have reorganized who does what chores out here in the Southwest corner. Thanksgiving.

It all boils down to…er, smokes up to the turkey.

You see, when we are at home for Thanksgiving, which is almost every year, i have the honor of smoking the turkey. i learned from the famous Col. James Lynch, also known a “Death Dodger” and “The Alligator.” i watched him smoke a Thanksgiving turkey in the early ’70s in Paris, Texas. i bought a smoker. Damn near burnt up our home in San Pedro Navy Officers Housing in ’74. Figured it out.

For about ten years after Maureen and i married, she wanted a traditional turkey, scoffing at the idea of smoked turkey, like when she laughed hysterically when Bobby Byrd told her about “beer butt chicken” a few years later. We haven’t tried that beer butt thing, but when i got her to let me try smoking that turkey once, it has become our mainstay (recipe story to follow).

This year, i decided to enter a brave new world and figure out how to smoke a turkey in our Japanese egg grill knock off. Damn thing has almost, almost made me a cook instead of a macho griller, Australian type with get-the-fire-roaring and throw the steak on the barbie, guessing when it’s done to everyone’s specifications: always turns out way too rare or way too cooked but no one cares because they’ve been downing Fosters…actually in my case that would be Emu beer.

Well, we needed a test case to see if this new fangled contraption could equal the wonderful but labor intensive smoker. So Saturday, i marinated and smoked a pork loin. Success.

Being in a groove, i offered to cook my chili tonight. Well, there are about 4,368 stories about this chili. It originated when JD Waits and i were roommates in a two-story, two bedroom apartment on Coronado, with a rent which now probably runs more than our combined salaries then and pretty close to what our income is now. Combined. We were  shipmates on the USS Okinawa (LPH  3) and known as a duo knock-off Belushi and Akroyd’s “Blues Brothers” except we were known as the “Booze Brothers.”

i do not have a photo of what we wore out as the “Booze Brothers” in ordinary party times, but here is one of us in our more formal attire when i was the best man at JD’s second wedding to his wife, Mary Lou. That is his second time to marry Mary Lou.

But when we shared that apartment and later, one in the Coronado Cays, we became legends. One reason was our chili. One morning, while listening to my old 45 RPMs on the magnificent stereo system i had bought in the Navy Exchange in Sasebo, Japan in 1970 along with complete Nikon and Nikkormat high end camera set, which alone cost more than the national GNP of a third world country, and in its entirety set back my financial status to something more fitting in the Great Depression…Any how (as my mother used to say when she went off track while telling a story and then returning to the original tale), we were drinking beer and talking crap as we usually did on a weekend morning before launching into another Booze Brother’s adventure (unless we hung out and watched our favorite television show, which ran only on Saturday afternoon, which was midget wrestling reruns from the 1950s with [i’m not kidding about the names; i didn’t make them up] Sky Low Low, Little Beaver, Lord Littlebrook, and Fuzzy Cupid ) when we came up with perhaps the best idea we ever had. We decided to host a chili party at my apartment in Coronado for the Okinawa wardroom. It was legendary, at least in the annals of LPH lore.

i’ve been using our formula ever since. i even won a chili contest once but i didn’t divulge my secret since a great deal of it really isn’t mine. But i was on a roll after the pork loin and offered to make chili last night. Took less than two hours for the chili and the cornbread, a supper treat and i got the cornbread, sliced, grilled, and buttered by Maureen this morning with breakfast. Double treat.

So now, i’ll be prepping for the big bird event Thursday. More about that in a following post.

Along with the other chores, i decided it was time to get back into the fitness thing, so i have begun walking in the early morning. i’ve never liked early morning exercises except in in 1977 and 1978 when i ran the morning run with the second class midshipmen on their summer cruise at the Amphibious Base, Little Creek, Virginia when i was the Assistant Officer in Charge (AOIC, of course) of the Surface Warfare phase and earned the title of “Hootin’ and Screaming” because the Marine guy, also from A&M, saw me coming back from late night carousing when he was beginning the Marine morning run and watch me begin the Navy version when he returned — he said i “hooted with the owls at night and screamed with the eagles in the morning.” The nickname didn’t stick. i liked it.

So i went on a walk the last two days, an early morning walk because i have discovered if i try to do it later in the day, something gets in the way, always. i also prefer running. i have run (when i actually do work out) for a number of years because most of my friends near my age due to various aging maladies, can’t. Recently, my doc said i shouldn’t run. Too old, too brittle, things might break. i am trying to obey. So i started walking again. On some of my walks, like Sundays, i take a route that gives me a view about one point east of north, or as the sailors used to say, “nor, nor, nor, by noreast.” The view is over the open space with Dictionary Hill,, the Sweetwater Reservoir, and Mount Helix in the background.

On walks, i usually think of Eddie Callis who has walked, oh i don’t know, about a half million miles in the early morning at the indoor track in the gym at the Lebanon First Methodist Church.

Then i come upon a view that is somewhat bittersweet. The canyon open space is where that crazy dog Cass, the lab, and his even goofier buddy (no, no, there was no “master’ involved in that relationship) roamed and Cass would chase coyotes who could not figure out just what that insane animal chasing them actually was, and Cass would roll an opossum, and damn near break my arm chasing a roadrunner, and leap over a five-foot, fat southwestern rattlesnake sunning himself on the walking path, and i smiled at the good memories and felt sad Cass and i couldn’t take those walks anymore.

But morning walk is over, cornbread and eggs are gone. It’s time to get to work.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Things are turning into Thanksgiving, even in the Southwest corner. Yeh, most of the daylight hours hovered around seventy degrees, the mornings are nippy enough to require at least a wind shirt for early golf, and i can have a fire on the hearth at night. In fact last night, i finally convinced a skeptical wife it was cool enough to have our first fire in the family room fireplace. She still remembers in the early nineties when in early October, i opened up all of the windows and turned on a fan so it would be cool enough to have our first fire of the season. i have been politicking (the only politicking i think i have ever done after junior high) since mid-October this year, only to have her shake her head, perhaps derisively. But last night…ahh, last night.

So this morning, we started getting ready for Thanksgiving. There’s a whole bunch of stuff i might write about this later and will post my annual post about smoking my turkey. However, this morning, i started thinking about coffee again. i have begun a post like this several times, but discarded them because of distractions. It seems i have a lot more distractions lately. But today, i vowed i would finish this one when i admitted i have become a coffee snob or aficionado or nut or something. i find this strange.

i grew up where children were not allowed to drink coffee until they were in their forties…No, not really. But i’m pretty sure i didn’t have coffee in our house until i went to college. This could have been my choice because football, basketball, and baseball were my top priorities — oh, okay, girls were right up there as well — and alcohol, coffee, and even cokes were avoided until my after my senior year. i believed they were detrimental to my fitness.

i’ve more than made up for those lost years of coffee drinking.

My father was a coffee drinker. He had a cup or two with every meal, and it seemed he drank coffee almost non-stop at work. Until he was in his late eighties, i didn’t think his coffee drinking impaired his ability to sleep. It was then, on my parents’ annual winter trip to the Southwest corner, that he told me he had to not have more than two cups after dinner or he would have difficulty getting to sleep. Knowing him, i think that meant it took him ten minutes to fall asleep rather than his usual three seconds.

And he never, never put anything in his coffee. Black.

When i went to college, i needed to stay up late. That is when i started tossing back the coffee. Black.

Then came my Navy  years. On ships, i drank coffee pretty close to 24/7. When i was awakened for the mid (00-0400) or the morning (04-0800) watches, the first cogent thought i had was after my first cup of coffee. On watch, whether it was the bridge, Combat Intelligence Center (CIC), or main control, my coffee intake was pretty much non-stop.

i eventually learned the best coffee on the ship was in the fire rooms. The water was better. The worst coffee on the ship was the wardroom. Oh, it was okay at breakfast right after the stewards (initially) or mess cooks (later when the Navy once again screwed things up by making it nicer and getting rid of stewards: they thought it was demeaning apparently) made a fresh pot. There might be two fresh pots at breakfast. After that it sat in the pot, boiled down to a black tar like stuff that could eat its way through titanium. So, i drank it, pretty much continuously. Now, i have four or five cups from wake up time to mid-morning and occasionally one cup after dinner. That sleep thing, i’ve discovered, is more difficult for me than it ever was for Jimmy Jewell.

Our house growing up had either Maxwell House (“Good to the last drop”) or Folgers in cans, very convenient for storing other stuff after the coffee is gone. i didn’t know there was any other kind. i found out the coffee on ships comes in bags, large burlap bags (or did). i couldn’t tell the difference between Folger’s, Maxwell House, or Navy coffee.

Somewhere during all of this when i wasn’t on a ship, i had to shop for myself. The array of coffee choices was impressive, of course, nothing like it is today. i would stare at all of the options, look at the grinder installed in the shelves with the grounds covering the machine, shake my head and buy…yep, Maxwell House or Folgers. i liked the cans for storing stuff.

Then somebody took me to Starbucks. i didn’t like it. It tasted bitter to me. Still don’t like it. Of course, this is about when adding stuff to your coffee became an art. People liked this stuff they did to coffee because they had cool names like “café latté,” or “espresso.” They put all sorts of junk in it to, i presume, make it taste not like coffee.

My wife has turned this into a morning ritual close to matching high mass, or a television sporting event with all of the commercials and talking head time, in the required amount of time to make her “coffee.” She has evolved from stirring her cream to getting a small gadget that whirred on the end of a small rod and “frothed” her milk or cream, now even more upscale (i guess) with almond milk, which makes me try to imagine somebody crushing nuts…no, no, no: almond nuts to get milk. But that wasn’t good enough. She found something that resembles a small nuclear reactor that really “froths” her almond milk. And this is the one reason i appreciate almond milk: unlike real milk, it does not solidify and cling to the side of the reactor like it melded into the teflon interior surface and required more time for me to clean than all the rest of the breakfast dishes.

She grates chocolate into this mixture. Then she adds store bought creamer — no, i don’t know what flavor; i’m guessing vanilla. Then she uses some cinnamon powder that she shakes out of a round cardboard container. i think that’s it, but i’m not going to inquire…oh yes she puts her coffee in it. i think the coffee is about two spoonfuls with all that other stuff.

Many of my friends are into this stuff as well. i guess that’s because they either like Starbucks or they are a lot cooler than i am. They have bought these things that remind me of a 600 pound steam plant found on Navy destroyers, which make Rube Goldberg contraptions look simple. They have latté machines. They have espresso machines. They have combination latté and espresso machines. Some of these things cost about as much as the national debt. And of course, they have bought the stuff that will allow them to make a “mocha chocolate latté.” Now what could be cooler than that? Of course, it makes me want to barf.

Sorry. i admit i’m a hick or a tar or something that definitely doesn’t qualify as cool.

i also have a different take on “espresso” coffee. You see, i took an ad hoc team to a Turkish destroyer in Izmir, Turkey in 1972. There were a half-dozen of us sent there off the USS Stephen B. Luce (DLG 7) to help the Turks with maintenance on various equipment aboard their old Gearing class destroyer. The ship was the former USS Forrest Royal (DD 872), which they had bought from the US several years earlier. Being the officer heading the team, i was invited to the wardroom by the captain. They served espresso. Drinking that espresso was like throwing a red hot anvil down my innards. My tiny cup was strong enough to wipe out a herd of buffalo.

Although in a pinch i might have an espresso as it is much preferable to a latté, but i keep my Turkish coffee experience in mind.

But i too have fallen prey to coffee snobbery. You see, about twenty years ago, i went into work early. There’s this guy who had gotten back from bicycle racing in Spain and opened up a portable kiosk on the road i took for work. His name was Donny. Donny, being a pretty straight forward guy (but cool), named his operation “Donny’s.” He opened at 5:00 a.m., about the time i passed by. i would stop and get a medium cup of coffee. i liked it. Black, of course.

Donny has grown from the kiosk into “Donny’s Café” and gets a big crowd every day. He and his wife make bagels and stuff for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch, along with every kind of coffee drink imaginable with several different kind of coffee beans.

He opens at 6:00 a.m. now and that’s okay with me because i don’t go into work anymore, although i would stop there on Friday mornings on my way to our early tee time if he were open earlier.

By experiment, i discovered i could tell a difference in Donny’s coffee and Maxwell House or Folger’s. i tried his different beans and found i much preferred his Columbian. When i quit going into work, i began to buy my coffee from Donny and brewing it every morning. Columbian. Black.

Then one day, i asked Donny about where he got his coffee. Well, there’s this outfit down in National City, near the Naval Station and the barrio. It’s called “Café Moto.” They roast their beans every morning and deliver them to Donny and others. So i asked him what is the freshest way to drink coffee at home. Donny told me to buy whole beans enough to last less than two weeks, keep them in a dark, vacuum sealed container, grind them just before brewing. If the coffee lasts two weeks or longer, move it to the refrigerator, or the freezer.

Bought an inexpensive grinder. i don’t think i ‘ve ever had to put my coffee in the refrigerator.

Then i had some French pressed coffee in Paso Robles after lunch and wine. Sold. Bought an inexpensive French press.

Last Christmas, Maureen gave me a super duper, double micro-filter French press. i kid you not. Then about two months ago, i bought a super duper grinder with all sorts of settings for the amount of grind. Donny told me one should use a “coarse” grind for a French press.

So now, i am a coffee aficionado. No, not really, but i do like my Columbian, whole bean coarse ground each morning and brewed with a French press.

Come to think of it, it now takes the morning coffee preps between Maureen’s regular brewed coffee and my French press version about as long as it takes for jury selection for a major trial.

And mine is still black, like real coffee.

But i sure wish i could get some more of those coffee cans. i’ve got a lot of stuff to store.

i will not mention names here. In a way, names aren’t important. Although this name is very important to me because of our shared experience and how we think alike.

My only clue to the name is the two of us met tonight in a Scottish pub called Fourpenny House in, of all places La Mesa, a pretty neat place for a suburb of San Diego.

Amongst the “Smoked Auld Fashion,” some ales, a Scotch egg, and fish and chips, we talked of many things: the usual state of the world, change, life, family, the past…ahh, the past. We remembered a sea we had been on when being on and under the sea was different. i remain convinced, in spite of curmudgeoning (my word) creeping into my old age…okay, not creeping: crashing in like the curmudgeon in me owns the place, my world of the sea then was best for me then. We talked of many, many things.

It was a wonderful evening. The kind of evening this old folk would like to have with many, many friends in a world from far back in time. This is not a knock on now time. Now time is different. It is unfair of many of us, if not duplicitous, to accuse now of being worse than then. After all, we had something to do with now being what it is because of then. But now is changed, different, not bad or good, different.

We talked about that, and, i think, resolved it in our own minds.

It was a good evening. When i got home and related the news of my evening to my wife, i sat down and thought of the evening.

It occurred to me friendship, relationships to love ones are more powerful, more important than all of the other things in this world. And as long as that is most important to most of the people in this world, we are going to be all right.

Now, i’m going back in time tonight. The rain in the Southwest corner has made it cool enough for my first fire on the hearth in the living room. i will read some Robert Penn Warren and Wordsworth, two sources of my strength and belief in us.

Most folks east of here have gone to bed. Perhaps they will read this tomorrow. Regardless, i would like to convey to folks still up and those friends and family who will see this after they wake tomorrow morning, the way i feel right now, with a song i find…hopeful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QuIxSW_OMM

and i believe in you.