i first noticed him when he shuffled up to the bar, smiled at the bartender and ordered a glass of chardonnay.

On several earlier stops at the Bonita Golf Club for lunch, i had complained about a pickup parked illegally close to the door of the restaurant. Then one day, i noticed it had a sticker on the rear bumper that read “Pearl Harbor Survivor.” i decided whoever owned that truck deserved to park anywhere he wanted to park. i would no longer whine about the parking.

When i watched the old man shuffle, i wondered if it was him. The next time i saw him i was having a beer at the bar waiting for a take out order when he again approached the bar, ordered his chardonnay, and shuffled back to his table in the corner in the wing closest to the course 18th green. The bartender, a pretty young lady, smiled while she watched him shuffle back. i asked her if he was the one who owned the truck. She told me he was, he was 99, and added he was wonderful. i agreed.

i saw him several other times and now we smiled, nodded, and exchanged greetings. After each time, i regretted not asking him his name and getting more information about him.

This morning, as i noted in this morning’s pictorial post, i raised my flag atop my hill. The flag had a role to play later today.

Our cleaning ladies came today and the kitchen was embroiled in their efforts at lunchtime. Maureen and i went to the golf club for lunch. They serve great food with a variety of choices. Maureen had an afternoon appointment and left in her car. i finished my sliders and fries, paid my bill, and headed out. i looked back in the corner. The shuffling old man was sitting by himself. i decided to rectify my earlier regrets. i walked to his table, introduced myself and asked his name.

“Jesse Thompson,” he said.

i was taken aback a bit. i knew of Jesse Thompson, but on a Google search about a year ago, i could only find older references. i thought he must have passed. And here i was talking to him.

i asked him where he lived. He told me it was down the hill from my house. i asked if he was the guy with the Pearl Harbor museum in his home and had weekly meetings with other Pearl Harbor survivors at his home before they abandoned those meetings recently because they were down to three or four in San Diego and those had trouble making the meetings for various health reasons. He acknowledged it was his home. i knew he was the one. He kept apologizing for being forgetful. i told him i had been forgetful for a long time.

Then i asked him if he remembered coming to my house about ten years ago. Maureen and i were out, and only Sarah was home and answered the door when he rang. He told her who he was and gave her his business card. He told her about his club and how they would come out of the meeting and look at my flag in a moment of silence for the flag reminded them of the one on Mount Suribachi, the locale on Iwo Jima where six marines raised the U.S Flag to signal the U.S victory and become a national icon.

Then he told me he came to the club every day. i finally asked him if i could use his name and write about our meetings. He said yes. Then he apologized again for not remembering everything, and explained his reason for his daily trip for his chardonnay.

“You gotta stick to a routine when you are my age,” he explained.

i applauded him. We talked a bit more, and i took my leave, promising him i would like to talk him every time i saw him in the club. He said he would like that.

So i raised my flag this morning and talked to a hero at lunch. i didn’t lower the flag at sunset. i sort of hoped he would come out of his house after nightfall and see that flag lit by my lights to make it all right by the regs.

It was a gesture to thank you, Jesse Thompson.

If you would like to read my account of my first knowing about Jesse Thompson, it was a column written for The Lebanon Democrat. i have included the column below:

Notes from the Southwest Corner: Veterans Day and Flags on Hills

SAN DIEGO – An annual event passed almost unnoticed this past weekend here in the Southwest corner.

With San Diego being a big Navy town, it is difficult to understand why the “Day of Infamy” at Pearl Harbor went by so quietly on Saturday. I am not sure how much Lebanon observed the event which catapulted the United States into World War II, but I suspect it was much the same as in the Southwest corner.

I, too, was remiss in marking the day in any meaningful way. It seems we celebrate on multipliable numbers like 10, 25, 50, 100, etc. This was the 67^th year since the Japanese hit the beautiful harbor in Oahu with all they could muster, not a very multipliable number. Perhaps this was the reason for mine and others’ oversight.

Perhaps my lack of interest was abetted by continuing to come down from my grandson’s visit to the Southwest corner over Thanksgiving.

We had the big turkey dinner with my smoked turkey. We went to the San Diego Zoo. We went to the beach. We went to our favorite Japanese restaurant for my daughter Sarah’s 19^th birthday. All of the events, with the exception of the present opening at the birthday celebration, found Sam as the center of attention.

I am still winding down from his stay and find myself looking at the photos and reminiscing about how wonderful it was. I’m sure all of the grandparents who read this will nod their heads in agreement and understand.

Perhaps my inattention to the significance of the day was overshadowed by our short trip out to the desert with friends. The feature of last week was a round of golf in the winter Mecca for Hollywood celebrities with streets named after Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Gene Autry, and Fred Waring – as I type out “Fred Waring” on the computer,  I  wonder how many of those who read this will remember Fred Waring and his orchestra.

Since most of my trips here are in the blazing heat of the summer where 120 degrees is not uncommon, the journey and golf here in 70 degree weather was especially enjoyable.

Perhaps my lapse was due to the ballyhoo over Christmas. Even with the economic downturn, decorations here in the Southwest corner seem no less prolific, ads appear to be even more beseeching for gifts than usual, and Christmas carols are a constant background at our home.

And on Saturday, the big event was “December Nights,” at Balboa Park. It was called “Christmas on the Prado” for years before some over zealous political correct politicians changed the name. Sarah’s high school show choir performed at the open air organ pavilion, and the family went to relive old times.

So Pearl Harbor was forgotten for most of the day. But as I lowered the ensign (U.S. flag) on my hill before heading out to the Park and festivities, the significance of the day came rushing back to me.

I have written of my ensign before. I am proud of it. Raising and lowering it has become a responsibility. The hill on the back of our property is one of the higher ones in South San Diego. My ensign can be seen for several miles and has become something of a local landmark.

Almost two years ago, my responsibility surrounding the daily regimen of raising and lowering the ensign took on extra weight.

While my wife and I were out on errands, a older gentleman knocked on our door and Sarah answered. He inquired about the ensign and Sarah told him it was mine. He told her he lived down the hill and a group of his friends were thrilled with the flag and that it reminded them of Mount Suribachi. He gave her his business card.

When Sarah gave me the card, I recognized the name. Jesse Thompson has turned his home into an unofficial museum of the Great War. He and a group of remaining friends gather at his home each Wednesday to reminisce. They are all veterans of that war and most were on ships in Pearl Harbor 67 years ago.

The club’s weekly meeting and Jesse’s home has been the subject of several newspaper stories and television reports over the years. It is a much less formal gathering than the “Pearl Harbor Survivors Association,” but as many as 24 veterans of the war still show up on Wednesdays.

For those who are not aware, Mount Suribachi is the peak on Iwo Jima where the Marines raised the flag after taking the hill in fierce fighting. The event was captured by on camera by Joe Rosenthal. The photograph has become a symbol of the war in the Pacific and was the model for the famous sculpture for the USMC Marine War Memorial adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery.

San Diego autumn weather vanished this morning with the hot, dry air blowing in on a high from the desert: a Santa Ana we call ’em out here, highs reaching toward 90 and humidity no higher than 30% all day: fire season as we reckon out here.

But yesterday was the usual from mid-September to May. i slept later than usual and ran my morning routine just after sunrise, not around first light. i put up a new flag in that routine, something i’ve dismissed since i installed a light to observe the rules for flying it 24/7, something a number of neighbors have asked, principally because they like to see it on their way to work. i told myself i needed to get back to that as walking up the hill and raising the flag (at 8:00 a.m. as we did correctly in the Navy for oh, about 22 years and still observe, stopping on about the fifth or sixth hole on the North Island golf course almost every Friday when the base observes colors with the playing of the National Anthem). My flag raising is the capper on morning glory.

Except for a good round of golf yesterday, a really good time with my wife and my friend, Pete Toennies; my usual Friday Morning Golf; some reorganizing; and trying to get back on track with Sarah’s help (and Sarah really knows how to organize and work the current technology),  i’ve been pretty much useless since we got back from San Francisco.

Down? Don’t know. But it was sort of like limbo. Still i reconnected with more folks on Facebook, like Don Jones, who was raised in a home about two homes down from where my father was raised on West Spring Street in Lebanon, but his and my father’s rearing took place about fifty years apart.

Then i went to my rather amazing counselor, Martina Clarke, and attempted, as usual (as the captain of the prison (Strother Martin) in Cool Hand Luke demanded) “to get my mind right.” i told some stuff about me and wandered into my youth.

i recount here a lesson from my father i related to Martina:

Jimmy Jewell taught me many lessons, but most of them were by example. i watched; i learned. He was the force behind my mother’s discipline. i tried very hard to avoid that force while i watched him go about living and learned. Like his brothers and sister, he was a story teller, but he only really got into that with his three children later in life. Growing up, he was really pretty quiet, but i remember his lessons well.

When i was 14, he began to give me driving lessons.

In the autumn of 1957, a young man (whose name i shall not divulge here) was in my eighth grade class. He had failed a couple of grades and had just turned 16. He took the tests and got his driver’s license. i think one of his older friends gave him a ’54  Ford. He played hooky (this is the way i remember it, and although my memory is no longer as good as i thought it was, this is my story and i’m sticking to it). He invited two friends to go on a joy ride in the Ford. They drove around for quite a while. Much later that evening, they drove west out Leeville Pike, an old railroad bed turned country road.

Then they turned around.

Apparently, that is when the young man decided he would see how fast he could go. He was doing about 95 when the Ford hit a bump and launched into the air, coming down in the field to the south of the road. Unfortunately, there was one lone tree, a maple i think, which the Ford decided to hit coming down from its arch.

The guy riding shotgun on the bench seat was thrown out the window. i recalled he eventually succumbed. In thinking about it more, i have decided he lived but spent a long time recovering from a broken back.

The teenager in the middle was launched through the window and died instantly.

The driver was literally cut in half by the steering wheel.

My father, who was a partner and service manager of Hankins, Byars, and Jewell, was also the alternate wrecker driver when the regular driver wasn’t available. Daddy had the duty that night. They, the police i think, called after we had all gone to bed.

i did not learn what happened until they told us the next day at Lebanon Junior High School the three boys were dead. i learned the details and my father’s role from classmates and the rumor circuit. Daddy was one of the first to arrive, and he had to extricate the two dead boys. He pulled one off the tree and he pulled the two parts of the driver out of the car, passing them to the ambulance driver before he hauled the wreck away.

Daddy never said anything about what happened to his children. But he knew i knew.

That Sunday after church and our Sunday dinner, he told me to get into the driver’s seat of our new ’58 Pontiac Star Chief with the biggest GM engine and three two-barrel carburetors. He gave me directions. We went south on Castle Heights Avenue and turned west onto Leeville Pike.

After we turned, Daddy told me when i passed a car, i should not move back into my lane until i saw the head lights of the passed car in my rear view mirror. That was my first lesson about driving. It has stayed with me throughout my driving.

i was about to get my second lesson.

Roughly a couple of miles down the road on the other side of the road was what was left of the tree the Ford hit in the wreck. Lonely and eery looking in the grassy field, the limbs were shorn off but had been cleared by then. The tree, now really just a long trunk ascending toward the heavens was  bent away from the road. The bark had been skinned off the tree.

i knew what had happened there.

Daddy instructed me to pull off onto the shoulder of the road. i would like to think he nodded toward the tree. i don’t think he did. He didn’t have to say anything.

Then, he said, “Remember this when you are driving.”

That was it.

Best driving lesson i could have had…ever.