From my “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar archives thanks to Aunt Evelyn, Uncle Pipey, and cousin Nancy:
Denniston’s Law: Virtue is its own punishment.
Denniston’s Corollary: If you do something right once, someone will ask you to do it again.
Goofy guy’s observation of Denniston’s Law and Corollary: and again and again and again. This, however, is not reciprocated.
Well, there was this great weekend of college baseball with my scorekeeping fanatic friend, Alan Hicks. In LA. Vandy. So i’m writing this post, long post, which i can’t seem to finish. Plus, i really am working on my book again. And i installed some sunshades (it’s been cloudy and rainy, which fits my usual order of getting things done) . Also, i’m back to putting things in order (See, you are getting Murphy’s Law posts again). And i had to recover from driving: i’m old, you know, and recovery time is one of the things where i recognize i really am old.
So i’ve been very, very quiet here. Perhaps it really has been a respite for you.
But the respite is over.
When i found the Murphy’s Law entries, one of which i posted earlier today, i also found a note i had in a pile of unfinished writing. i wonder what produced such a note?
Vituperative is “pissed off” in five syllables.
Well, you see i continue and will forever be organizing my files in my office and other spurious locations around our home. This morning, i ran across more “Murphy’s Law” daily entries i had pasted on my action/to/calendar notebooks, which i had not posted here. So i’m back at it:
From my “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar archives thanks to Aunt Evelyn, Uncle Pipey, and cousin Nancy:
i woke up in the middle of the night like an old man does most nights, thinking about the book i continue and continue to work on and had this name come into my head: “Maurice Sudduth.” Don’t know where it came from. From there, i realized someone like him should be called “Mo.” My good neighbor Spud’s real name is Maurice Mumby. My wife is often called “Mo.” But i’m not sure they had anything to do with this name popping into my head in the middle of the night.
Then, i sat down and began writing one of those things that is almost a poem, certainly not in keeping with the rules for poetry, not any of those rules but mine.
As i was writing, i looked at a quote of Colette from Casual Chance, a 1964 work of hers i had saved on a small piece of paper and placed near my laptop: “Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”
So be it. i am a writer. Someday, in addition to my book of poetry, which did not fare well as far as being purchased, i may be published. But i’m not sure i will ever be an author, probably not using Colette’s definition.
But for my friends, here is what this writer wrote one middle of the night this past week:
Mo Sudduth
Mo Sudduth,
they called him Mo
came out of the South,
huffing and steaming,
he ran away, running hard,
no stop, no governor,
running away from the people and things
he knew and loved
because
he dreamed
of far away places,
beautiful isles —
yes, it was Fiddler’s Green,
although he didn’t know the name then
but
he learned —
and
huffing and steaming,
he ran away, running hard
into a life at sea:
swells, spume, storms, doldrums,
cold bitter winds, soft warm breezes,
sultry heat, tempests in the night,
glowing sea urchins,
dolphins, giant sea turtles, whales, sharks,
gulls, albatross
and
the sea spoke to him,
captured his love
with tales of the deep
and
all things of the sea
she owned them all
and
she showed him her beauty
in all her fury, her calm,
in the dark night sky with a blanket of stars
and
Mo Sudduth
huffed and steamed
until
the huff was more of a sigh
and
the steaming gave way to diesel and gas turbines and such
until
Mo Sudduth left the sea,
returned to the South
and
sold home-made trinkets he carved from hickory
at a roadside stand
out front of his one room cabin
out in the country
while he drank his coffee
like the brew he drank continuously at sea
with a cigarette, long ago when he still smoked:
coffee with no additions
to spoil the dark and strong aroma and taste
until
one evening deep and dark
like a cloudy sea night,
he took his nightly nip of Tennessee sour mash
and
gave one last huff,
no longer dreaming
of his far away places,
beautiful isles,
huffing and steaming
and
his sea.
i probably worked harder In 1973-74 as Chief Engineer (CHENG, i preferred to be called) of the USS Hollister (DD 788), than in any of my other Navy tours. i had longer hours and more things to do in less time as First Lieutenant of the USS Anchorage (LSD 36) or the Weapons Officer, nee First Lieutenant of the USS Okinawa (LPH 3), but my previous tours had given me experience in those two jobs. As CHENG, it was a whole new ball game, and i had no real experience in engineering. Not only that, it was a time when a commanding officer with no engineering experience, like mine, left CHENG alone. i had to insist he come down to main control to see a malfunctioning pump for himself. i think, in the nearly two years i was the engineer, it was the only time he went into the engineering spaces.
But there were a number of good moments, most of which were funny experiences i had as engineer. Today, shuffling through old files, i found a note i had written of one such incident.
As CHENG, i tried to go through all of my spaces daily to catch any problems requiring correction, to talk to my sailors, and just get a feel of how things were going. After all, the Hollister was 29 years old, and the previous CHENG, who had been a corpsman before getting his commission through the NESEP program, fixed auxiliary steam lines using plaster casts like the ones he had previously used for broken bones when the ship was on line in Vietnam. She wasn’t in great engineering shape.
But on one of my daily walk-throughs, i was checking out the forward fire room and had slid down the ladder to the lower level. There, two firemen had placed a 55-gallon drum on the deck plates. The two were cleaning out debris and oil from the bilges below and dumping it into the drum.
i pointed out to them the drum, once full, would be much too heavy to lift up the ladders and out to the pier. They seemed puzzled when a BT3 (Boiler Tender third class petty officer), who had overheard the conversation from the boiler flats, slid down the ladder seeking to remedy the problem.
“Don’t worry, sir,” he explained to me, “There won’t be any problem with lifting it out of here.”
And then pointing to the bottom of the drum, he further explained, “There’s a hole in the bottom of the drum. All of the oil and water is going right back into the bilges.”
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, i did not record my reaction or the ensuing result. Today, i just shook my head and laughed.
It was a good tour.