An optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds; a pessimist believes this is true.
All posts by Jim
O’Reilly’s Law of the Kitchen
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
Peace in the Valley
We returned to the Southwest corner this afternoon. We just had four wonderful days of Peace in the Valley.
No, it wasn’t the peace in the valley in the religious song written by Thomas Dorsey made immensely popular by Elvis, but originally sung and sung better by Mahalia Jackson. It was our peace and the valley was Sonoma’s. Regardless, it provided us with peace in the valley.
The primary reason was our stay was at Alan and Maren Hick’s home adjacent to the Sebastiani vinyards. The Hicks homestead is about as peaceful as you can get. Alan, Maren, and i have been friends since we were at Vanderbilt together 62-64. The friendship has never waned even though my Navy career and Alan’s shipping career primarily with Pacific Container Lines took us far away for years.
When Maureen met Maren at a Vandy reunion in 2006, it was a instant friendship. Their likes and interests are an amazing match.
Our ventures from peace in the valley were intriguing. Alan and Maren are very good at allowing us to learn.
On Thursday, we walked through the past. Alan drove us to Mare Island. The US Navy’s first presence on the West Coast was on Mare Island in 1849. The first permanent Navy dry dock on the West Coast was completed in 1891. It was made of granite, not concrete.
Many buildings dating back to the 1800s are still standing. The area has been declared a National Historic Landmark. Several of the huge cranes for dry dock and ship maintenance services, no longer in use, stand as if they were ready to roll again, sentinels looking out on the past. Mansions, formerly the residences of Naval officers, stand majestically and serve many purposes. In the middle of it all is the Navy chapel, the first interdenominational chapel in the Navy. It has Tiffany created stained windows and is a beautiful and stately evidence of the past. As we drove past the old Navy cemetery and then walked up the hills to a promontory where the base golf course once sprawled, now only imagined on the open spaces where there were once fairways.
As we walked, i commented to Alan that the experience was beautifully eerie. After all, one of its first commanders was Commander David Farragut in the 1850s, of the later civil war quote “Damn the torpedoes” .
The other travels out of peace in the valley were equally intriguing.
It was a great weekend. The Hicks, as usual, gave us respite from our daily dallying in the Southwest corner. Thank you, Alan and Maren.
i close with the lyrics of “Peace in the Valley.” For me, they seem to fit:
Oh well, I’m tired and so weary,
But I must go along,
‘Til the Lord comes and calls
Calls me away, oh, yes;
Well, the morn-ing is bright,
And the Lamb the Light,
And the night, Night is as fair
as the day, oh, yes.
There will be peace in the valley for me, some day;
There will be peace in the valley for me, oh Lord I pray;
There’ll be no sadness, no sorrow,
No trouble, trouble I see;
There will be peace in the valley for me.There the flow’rs will be blooming,
and the grass will be green,
And the skies will be clear
and serene, oh, Yes;
Well the sun ever beams,
in this valley of dreams,
And no clouds there will ever
be seen, oh, yes.
There will be peace in the valley for me, some day;
There will be peace in the valley for me, oh Lord I pray;
There’ll be no sadness, no sorrow,
No trouble, trouble I see;
There will be peace in the valley for me.Well the bear will be gentle,
And the wolf will be tame,
And the lion shall lay down
By the lamb, oh, yes;
And the beast from the wild,
Shall be led by a child
And I’ll be changed
Changed from this creature
that I am, oh, yes.There will be peace in the valley for me, some day;
There will be peace in the valley for me, oh Lord I pray;
There’ll be no sadness, no sorrow,
No trouble, trouble I see;
There will be peace in the valley for me.
Evans’ and Bjorn’s Law:
No matter what goes wrong, there is always somebody who knew it would.
A Tale of the Sea and Me: Adventures in Manila
The remainder of the transit from Vung Tau to the Naval Station Subic Bay was uneventful. We anchored in Subic Bay mid-morning. It was the only time i had been on a ship at anchor there, but it looked like the entire Seventh Fleet was in the bay. i was glad we would be there only for several hours.
But there was business to take address. The CO, Lou Aldana, directed Rob Martin, CHENG, and me to take the captain’s gig to the squadron flagship to communicate with Pacific Fleet about boat supplies we needed for engineering and the our ship boats. We were directed to the pilot house to wait for access to the top secret crypto circuit. There were only the two of us on the bridge where a speaker for the circuit allowed us to overhear the caller in front of us.
i don’t remember his name but he was the amphibious commander for the evacuation. He was talking, er, listening to the guy on the other end of the phone. That guy was the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. Apparently, the amphib admiral had held a press conference and said something of which his boss did not approve.
It was the most classic chewing out rages i ever heard on any Navy radio circuit ever. It lasted almost ten minutes.
When it was concluded, the amphib admiral stepped out on the bridge en route to his cabin. Rob and i acted as if we had not heard a thing. We communicated with the necessary folks, got our parts expedited, and headed back to the Anchorage.
After all of the marine equipment and vehicles were offloaded, along with the two South Vietnames LCM-8s, Anchorage weighed anchor and got underway in the afternoon and anchored in Manila Bay the next day.
In a conversation with Mike Dixon last week, I recalled my dinner in Manila in 1975. I was First Lieutenant on the USS Anchorage (LSD 36). We reached Manila after our Pacific transit; operations in Iwakuni, Numazu, and Okinawa, Japan; a typhoon avoiding South China Sea transit; the evacuation of South Vietnam dubbed Frequent Wind; a return transit to Subic Bay Philippines for another offload; and finally liberty after more than two months at sea.
Note: this section is taken from a Democrat column written in 2014. Mike Dixon, a close friend and basketball, baseball playing buddy, walked over that bridge in 2021.
I was Command Duty Officer the first day, the most difficult duty in any port visit. The duty engineer and I had no more than a couple of hours of sleep between us when our liberty launch took us to shore mid-way through the second day.
Although tired, we were determined to have fun. In the hot and humid late afternoon, we wandered through downtown Manila. We eventually entered a respectable looking cafe. Our exterior assessment did not match the interior. It was a local disco.
Too tired and hungry to leave, we were escorted to a red imitation leather booth accompanied by a blaring, live rendition of “Staying Alive.”
In broken English, our waiter recommended a local favorite entrée, a spicy goat stew over rice.
The stew was the spiciest food I have ever eaten. Vietnam peppers, Korean kimchi, and even a renegade jalapeno in a Southwest corner border restaurant could not compete with our Manila disco meal.
I’m sure it was not on Homer Hunter’s menu in his 1930s restaurant off the square.
As we concluded our meal, a manager sat down with us and offered to show us something. We walked back through a long hall in the back of the main room to a large window. It was a one-way pane, allowing us to see into the other room but appearing as a mirror on the other side. In the other room, many women, clad in flimsy négligées were milling around or just sitting on the wooden benches. Our guide informed us we pick out one of those women to have for the rest of the night for twenty dollars.
I was taken aback. It was about as emotional for me as watching all of those Vietnamese escaping their homeland with their families in unseaworthy craft. It looked like these women was even more abused than those refugees, slaves.
i was disgusted but remained silent. Declining the offer, we left and went back to the hotel, falling asleep. The next morning, we caught the first liberty boat back to our ship. Anchorage weighed anchor and got underway the following day.