All posts by Jim

Two Stories of Best Friends

A Pocket of Resistance, Sea Stories

I met two of my best friends because after screwing around for a while, i made the Navy my real career. They were two of the best friends i could have possibly had. Now, they are gone. Both crossed that bridge last year. There are so many stories about both, i could write several books. Many of their escapades with me have been posted here. But several things in this last week have brought to mind these two stories.

JD Waits and i met in Perth, actually Fremantle, Australia in 1981 after i reported aboard the USS Okinawa (LPH 3). There are many stories i have posted here and many more to come about him or by him here.

One of the best is the one that came from my stumbling upon a find at a grocery store. It was in the early nineties. JD was the aviation maintenance officer for ASWWINGSPAC, an acronym i will not try to capture here. Due to a relief for cause of an aviation squadron (that, for non-Navy folks is not a good thing), JD was called upon to take the officer relieved as assistant maintenance officer on one of the carriers, i think it was the USS Constellation (CV 64) for a nine-month deployment to the Western Pacific (WESTPAC).

As they were preparing to get under way, i went to the Navy Commisary on the Naval Station to stock up in groceries for our family. In the back of the commissary, there was a freezer displaying a special. It was boxes of frozen “JD’s Fried Chicken.” The prominently displayed subtitle on the 6″x10″x3″ box read “Mostly White Meat.”

Perfect, i thought, and bought a box, presenting it to JD the next day. He laughed and took the gift. i’m guessing he cooked it before the deployment, but he told me he took the box with him and put it on the shelf above his desk in the maintenance shack. His maintenance division saw it and constantly made jokes about it, convinced it was a joke.

Now, after JD and i returned from our deployment on the USS Okinawa (LPH 3), we became close friends, share a condo in the Coronado Cays with a boat slip, we began to show up dressed as Jake and Elwood from “The Blues Brothers” Movie and named ourselves “The Booze Brothers.”

JD, in explaining the box, told his maintenance crew of his and my adventures as the Booze Brothers. The old sailors weren’t buying it, and it became sort of a running joke for the deployment. When his ship was returning to San Diego, JD’s wife, Mary Lou, was on family business in Virginia and unable to be there for the homecoming.

Our daughter Blythe was here from Austin during summer break. She helped me — actually did most of the real work — in creating a 3×5 foot sign. It read: “Welcome back, Jake. Elwood is cooking some JD’s Fried Chicken tonight for your Homecoming. It is mostly White Meat.”

JD was down in his maintenance office while the ship was mooring pierside at the North Island Naval Air Station. Blythe and i were in the crowd of dependents, loved ones, and friends of ship’s company on the pier. JD’s crew were standing in quarters on the flight deck when they spotted Blythe and i waving the sign. They ran down to the maintenance office and found JD.

They were hysterical, yelling “It’s true, it’s true. Elwood is on the pier waiting for you. His sign says he is fixing you JD’s Fried Chicken with Mostly White Meat tonight.

The Booze Brothers were a legend, but they and Blythe did not eat fried chicken that night.

◆◆◆

This week, our Thursday Morning golf group played Admiral Baker South. As we walked up the fourth fairway, i pointed out a pine tree to the right amidst a number of other threes to Karl Heinz, a retired SEAL captain, playing in our foursome.

“Karl, see that tall tree over there?” i asked, pointing. He nodded.

“That is part of our golf legends,” i said.

“Several years ago, Marty Linville and Pete Toennies were walking and i was riding with Jim Hileman. As usual, Marty, Jim, and i had bets going. i hit a slice that landed next to that tree.

“As we rode up to my ball, i explained to Jim, i was going to hit the ball just to left of the trunk with a draw, which after clearing the other trees should drop onto the green. Jim chuckled.

” I took a practice swing, took my stance and hit the ball. It went off to the right just enough to hit the trunk squarely, bounce back and hit me on my forehead just below the cap brim. It knocked me to the ground.

“i lay there holding my head. Jim asked me if i was okay. Pete hurried over.

“Marty walked by, looked at me on the ground and said”

“You know that’s a two-stroke penalty.”

i still laugh every time i go pass that tree.

111

A Pocket of Resistance

That man on the left walking with his great grandson Sam James Jewell Gander was a man among men.

He died on this day eleven years ago. He was born in a country town with only two paved roads and a coal-fired electric plant that served 500 homes. He stoked his father’s steam engine boiler with slag wood when he was six years old. He contracted yellow fever when he was seven and was in bed for three years in his home on West Spring Street in Lebanon before returning to school.

He quit school before his senior year in high school to help his family when his father developed tuberculosis and could not work. He began as a novice mechanic changing tires to become the best (and most forthright and honest) auto mechanic in Wilson County, finally becoming a partner in a Pontiac dealership, Pan-Am oil and gas distributor and commercial business properties.

He married his high school sweetheart. They remained that way for 75 years.

He went to war as his son was born — me — and served over two years, mostly in the Southern Pacific as a Seabee.

The list goes on and on. He was loved by anyone who met him. Men gave him their highest compliment to him as a “good man.”

And i miss him every day.

Happy 111th birthday, Jimmy Jewell, my best friend.

Notes from the Southwest Corner #3 – Finalities

Notes from the Southwest Corner

i have felt vulnerable many times in my life. This column was written during one of my most vulnerable times, October 2007. It was the worst fire threat to our home we had moved into in September 1990. i think it is good for me to remember being vulnerable.

SAN DIEGO, CA – This second weekly column has been tough to write.

In a rare exception from my usual pell-mell, last minute throw-it-together mode of operation, I followed the tenets of making any worthy task a success. I determined the desired outcome as I started; I outlined the important steps and created a timeline for completing those steps; I gathered notes and resources and researched needed missing pieces.

Then came the fires.

I tried to stick to my plan and to my regimen. The fire had a different plan, however. It preoccupied my every sense for three days, even though I only briefly felt true concern for my family or my home. Even if I could have eliminated the overbearing presence from heat, smell, smoke, ash, news reports, incoming phone calls checking on us, or outgoing ones checking on others, the fires pervaded every sensible thought I tried to have on other topics.

This is my sixth start on this column. I wanted to write about connections and memories and good stuff. I am compelled to write about the fires.

The devastation and the impact here is mind boggling. Fortunately, the only thing to keep this past week in Southern California from being worse than Katrina is the number of deaths. Only seven deaths have been reported so far.

The fires desolated over 750 square miles. More than half a million people were evacuated. In San Diego alone, over 1400 homes were destroyed. On a local news program, it was revealed we were literally seconds away from cutting power to large numbers of residents during the middle of the crisis.

Returning from our evacuation, we must sort what we packed willy-nilly and place them back from whence they came. We must clean ash on and in the home without the benefit of water, blowers, or vacuums (from a call to conserve water and energy). The fires have put us behind in our usual tasks and added significantly to the list.

As I started on those five other columns, I attempted to escape the fires. Early this morning, I realized I needed some closure.

Of all of the horrible statistics of devastation and costs and of all of the reports of bravery, kindness, futility, anger, meanness, selfishness, and the other aspects of human nature, I have been most intrigued with a whole bunch of people, including me, dealing with finality.

Many people dealt with the prospect of finality in many different ways.

There’s an old adage about living every day as if it were going to be your last. Yet most of the three million people in San Diego County refused to believe it was their last day.

Many ignored the evacuation orders and stayed behind. Some decided they did not trust the government to do its job. Some thought their presence would protect their homes. Some refused to leave their pets and livestock. Some valued their possessions more than life itself.

Learning from the 2003 fires, the ordered evacuations were more successful this time. One of the reasons was most of the evacuation centers in 2003 did not allow pets. With no where to go without their pets, people refused to evacuate. This time, the evacuation centers allowed pets as much as possible and had pet care built into the evacuation plans.

Of the half million who chose to put more days between them and finality, there were also many diverse reasons for doing so, and many different ways of going about it.

Some panicked and simply left seeking shelter somewhere. Some had planned thoroughly beforehand and methodically carried their plan out. Some like our family had pieces of the plan in place and tried to stay ahead of the curve, tried to make wise choices based on the information at hand and assessing the risks and benefits.

I experienced dealing with finality as I chose what to take and not take with us on our departure. It put some different priorities on what is important when we returned home.

I suspect the thoughts of finality will fade quickly for those who escaped home loss like us. We are already re-prioritizing without consideration of this possibly being our final day.

Most of us who have gone through this twice take a little bit more learning away this time. Finality is closer to home.