My posts are likely to be a less frequent for a while.
Oh, i’m writing a long, long one just to sort of get myself straight with myself. And i think i remember where the rest of my “Murphy’s Law” calendar entries are and may make them a daily exercise again. And i’m sure i’ll hit on some other ideas i will want to express.
And i wonder why i put all of this stuff down on pap…er, this infernal machine. i mean i really enjoy getting complements on what i write. They energize me. i try to reply to all of them because they make me feel good, and i want you to know they make me feel good. And i would like to make a bit more money to cover all of the crazy things i do and keep this thirty-year old house operating. But i’m not asking for anyone to pay for this stuff. It would change things. This is sort of like when i became sports editor of the Watertown (NY) Daily Times in early 1972 and i announced i would not have a daily column because i didn’t want to feel i had to write something no matter what every day as there would be days no comment would be better than some invention not worth writing. Nope, this old goofy guy is writing because he likes to write.
But, after almost a year’s rest, i am back to working on my manuscript for Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings. For the first time, i really am putting it first in my writing efforts, and i am determined, this time, to finish it.
And since i have sworn off comments about politics again and again and again — yeh, there’s at least one more coming — there’s a whole lot less to write about.
And somehow this time of year induces travel. i spent the two weekends ago in Scottsdale. Baseball, the college kind, the feel good kind. Next weekend, i head to Los Angeles for another three days of baseball, the college kind, the feel good kind when Vandy comes out west again, this time to play UCLA, USC (the Southwest corner version) , and TCU.
Then we go to visit our daughter Blythe, our son-in-law Jason, and TA DA, our grandson Sam. i’m so excited my britches are bursting (or something like that). To add icing to the cake, i’ll head east from Austin, not west and go home again (take that, the real Thomas Wolfe) for about ten days. Perfect weather to catch up with home folks.
But to be honest, there is another reason. You see, i played golf today. The high was seventy-seven. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. i actually, for a change played well. Riverwalk. Mission Valley, about the only thing left that’s green on what used to be about eight miles long and about two miles of farm land along the San Diego River, now pretty much taken over by the development men and concrete, lots and lots of concrete, and lots and lots of cars, more than required to make it a really crappy place to to.
But i braved it today. Good friends, good weather. Oh yeh, did i mention good weather?
So just so folks will understand why i choose to live here and why i ain’t gonna leave, the photo below was at home after the round.
i am not a big fan of nearly all mandated holidays. Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving. That’s about it for me. i do pay respects to deserving military folks on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
i loved Halloween when i was growing up when the only decorations on all the houses were carved pumpkins, one, and good-hearted pranks were treats as good as the candy. i enjoyed the holiday when i could share it with my two daughters and grandson, but it was their joy i enjoyed, not mine. Halloween has gone overboard (so has Christmas) with the decorations, and when i see them i think how much better it would be if half the money spent went to help someone, some cause, or the national debt.
i have the same problem with Valentine’s Day when the price of roses goes out of sight, candy and cutesy card ads are pitched as a necessity, and you are shamed if you fail to buy several hundred of each. But with this past holiday and all of the preceding ones, i have always felt pressure. How to show my affection for those i love appropriately, tastefully. What if they don’t like what i offer? And now, Maureen has beautiful roses around our yard. Why would i or should i give her red ones? And i want to tell the folks i love with words or gifts when i get the notion, and i get the notion quite often, but i don’t like someone mandating i express that on a certain day.
So this year, i left. i mean Vandy baseball in the desert with life long friends is a strong draw for me. Not Maureen. She ain’t into desert. Now i feel guilty…just a little, but still guilty.
But as i went through the weekend, i was distracted.
First there was the drive: i enjoy long, alone drives. Don’t know why. i think my father enjoyed them, but nearly all of his was with my mother. Since Maureen has sworn off riding with me on long rides (due to some differences of opinion about what a road trip is supposed to look like and the cleanliness of out of the way gas station bathrooms. But that’s another story), my long ones are nearly always alone. Just me, the car, and the road.
This one began, as usual, in a time judged appropriate to miss most of the morning commute. For some reason, i did not resort to my iPod tunes or the radio. The entire trip. Just me and the car. After escaping the web of freeways, i headed east on Interstate 8 with the long gradual drive turned steep and winding over the the mountains adjacent to Pine Valley and Mount Laguna and Boulder Oaks — someday, i’m going to take the time to head out on CA 94, not I-8, to experience road travel through the mountains in the Southwest corner the way it used to be; Maureen and i partially did that about a million years ago when dating someone was a proper description of a relationship (another story).
It is a beautiful drive and an engineering marvel. Bridges approaching a half-mile long hundreds of feet above the canyons below. Grandeurs amazing in their rocky vastness. Sometimes on this high, i feel like i could touch the heavens, even at seventy miles an hour.
Outposts, mostly on Indian Reservations (Sorry if someone takes offense at the terms), of homes designed for working the land, such as it is with rocks and almost no level place for planting, yards filled with equipment some operating, some obviously long silent, but who is going to get those mechanical, metal behemoths off the mountain. A lonely life? Hmm, i don’t know. Sometimes, sometimes i think they live a simple life and don’t concern themselves with everybody in the world trying to fix everybody and everything their way and opposing all who wish to change them or their views. No, they rise early, gather the eggs, milk the cows, slop the pigs, and don’t think too much about indoor pets. Everyone works. And then the breakfast, homemade, hearty. And then to work again, tending fields, at least what there is, clearing land, checking the herds, perhaps even rounding them up from the rocky crevasses; home for noontime dinner, another big one, probably tortillas rather than buttermilk biscuits; perhaps a nap; then back at it until the cows come home to milk and feed again, supper; rocking on the porch for a while, perhaps reading a bit; but likely the Farmer’s Gazette and not a novel; hitting the rack early after a shower.
There is some beauty in that. i know i would have problems with the remoteness, the aloneness, but i dream.
i contemplate as i coast down the switchbacks to the desert valley. Looking southward, mountains and hills remain cloudy from the mountain mists, gray and three dimensional in their ethereal aloofness from any country’s claim of their property; Zane Gray stuff but Mexican, not the vastness which also resides in Utah, the location of Riders of the Purple Sage, the first western novel to capture my heart, but beauty untouched, unlike at the peak of the mountains down to the valley floor of sand and dirt and scrub brush and not much more now disrupted by the giant fans, windmills of the now for electric power, not water from wells and aquifers as before and when whirling, slaying the unsuspecting fowl; followed by the miles, square miles of solar panels and the attendant machine-looking plants to harness the power of the wind things and the panels; and then fields of plants; not a farmer’s garden next to his small home, but fields, seas of plants, neatly planted in rows, and tended, plucked by many men bussed in with port-a-potties scattered across the landscape and irrigation that would blow the minds of my Tennessee farming brethren, and the men, perhaps with family, in row houses with no shade from the desert heat and dirt yards and worse, the barracks-like quarters for these laborers who are paid disproportionately low for their effort, which none of high and mighty folks who wish to include them in their eviction to even greater poverty because the truck farmer owners and the corporate men know “the Jolly Green Giant pees in the valley;” but we don’t think about that; sad; we condemn like we once did the Irish and Italians and Germans and anyone who came after us because we were high and mighty and disdainful of folks who are now part of our heritage; but we just can’t seem to learn from history.
And then there is El Centro, the town in the middle of the desert, housing a large number of the folks from Mexico who work so hard and the Mexican restaurants abound; and once when the winds forbade my western passage over the mountains, i stayed in the cheap, roadside hotel, and walked a block to a Thai restaurant to find the owners were the Mexican family gathered inside, and sat by myself and found the Thai cuisine really prepared well, tasty, and suspecting some jalapeño might have spiced it up a bit, and on through more fields until reaching the dunes. Miles and miles of rolling mounds of sand as far as the eye could see except where hundreds, literally hundreds of RV’s of every shape and size sat in the forlornness while the owners and their kin and friends rode dune buggies recklessly across those dunes up and down sometimes in caravans, leaping into the air and landing with humongous shock absorbers softening the landing while the drivers and riders swallowed the sand and have it encase them so they could use the precious desert water to shower off the sand and grit and grime so they could grill burgers and sit around in the evening and brag of their exploits while drinking light beer or perhaps tequila. And i am amazed and wonder why every time i see them while passing.
And then Yuma, continuation of the desert but the flora and fauna change but to be frank, there ain’t much change to Gila Bend, once home of the Astro Hotel, long gone to shabbier environs but replaced by the Best Western Space Age Lodge, a little bit cleaner version than the locally owned breed where we once stayed with the cold shower running about 95 degrees at ten in the evening (but that’s another story); but i cut through on Arizona 85 to Interstate 10, the promenade to and from LA and trucks and trucks and trucks to the outskirts of Phoenix and Peoria and Glendale and Surprise and Scottsdale and Goodyear and Mesa and i see…concrete.
It is a complex some fifty miles east west and the same north south. Concrete. A big city just like the other big cities with the same corporate shopping, the same strip malls, the same artsy fartsy shops, or at least in keeping with the idea of the other big cities and roads and cars, lots and lots of cars and continuing expansion of houses, people, road construction.
But then i am there: Scottsdale; Air BnB house; and my friends from almost sixty years ago and still laughing and still enjoying each other’s company and baseball. Yeah, baseball. Sitting in a ballpark with a hot dog, later peanuts, and a beer, watching the game, kibitzing, cheering good plays of either side. College kids playing ball, quite a bit different than the factory mindset of college football and basketball. Eleven and half scholarships maximum, even though some Mississippi State fans believe Vandy gets 35. Huh? And we lose two out of three. But you know what, that is not what is most important. It’s a game. We are friends.
We enjoy each other’s company and the game:
Goofy guy in left foreground, Jim Hicks behind, Cy Fraser, and special attendee Kyla Huberland. And the guy with his nose hairs (just kidding, but he is a close up, isn’t he?) in the camera is Alan Hicks.
And the world was right. We also enjoy good eats and we did, and we enjoy exploring and we did. Our favorite this trip was the Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West with great and expansive art, surprisingly including some wonderful photography by Barry Goldwater, and relics of the old west, too many to mention and then there was Alan and i becoming a part of western art:
And then it was over. The ride back was just fine except for all of those RV’s with dune buggy tows over the mountain.
And i learned my recovery time for long drives i love has extended into days.
But i’ll do it again at the next opportunity.
Go Vandy. i think they will do just fine this season. i know i will.
Growing up, i enjoyed the Looney Tunes cartoons prior to the oater Saturday matinee at the Capitol and Princess Theaters in Lebanon.
i enjoyed the feature with the white hatted good guys triumphing by fighting fair against the black hat bad guys who cheated and shot people in the back. i enjoyed Lash Larue, Rocket Man, and Buck Jones escaping from yet another death peril in the short serials preceding the main event only to face another sure fatal ending until the next Saturday.
i thought the quarter for my ticket, the dime for my popcorn, and the nickel for my coke (did i reverse the prices?) were well worth those serials and Roy and Gene, Bob (Steele), and The Three Mesquiteers.
But ahh, the Looney Tunes cartoon: i laughed and laughed and laughed, sometimes so hard i snorted my coke and popcorn.
Then came that magical moment when, several years after 1954 when we acquired our own television, the prominent thirteen-inch console job that sat in the corner of the living room thus becoming the center focus of all things living room, they would occasionally run a Looney Tunes cartoon on the “small” screen.
The only adult who laughed as hard as my sister, brother, and myself was my father. He loved Daffy, Sylvester, Bugs, Porky, Foghorn Leghorn, Elmer Fudd, Pepé Le Pew, and especially the Road Runner and Wiley Coyote and the Tasmanian Devil (“Why for you bury me in de cold, cold, ground?” remains one of my watchwords).
In my father’s later years, there were several gifts to him on Christmas centering around Looney Tunes. First there were the VHS tapes with collections of the various characters. In the latter stages of VHS gifts, i stumbled upon some car floor mats, which i thought was perfect for Daddy: The Tasmanian Devil going fishing. My father loved them and immediately put them in his Ford Escape. When he decided my mother had too much difficulty getting into the Escape, he sold it to Blythe, my older daughter and moved the mats to the Buick. When he passed away, i inherited the mats, now which proudly adorn my Mazda 3 hatchback and bring memories every time i get behind the wheel.
As with all things electronic, the VHS world ceded its place to the DVD world. So Daddy got his share of those as gifts. His grandson (earlier i wrote “nephew” but Tommy is my nephew and one of the best around) Tommy Duff gave him a slew of westerns. i gave him a large portion of his Looney Tunes DVD library. When both of my parents left us, i drove a U-Haul across country with things for my daughters and us. The boxes of music cassettes and CD’s and the VHS and DVD videos were stored in garage attic. This late autumn as we began to consider Christmas gifts, it occurred to me there were some perfect hand-me-downs for the little ones. i considered giving them to my grandson Sam, but he is a pre-teen and not likely to be that amused. Two specific little ones were also on my mind.
So this Christmas on Signal Mountain, when Max and Culley Duff, the four-year old identical twin grand nephews opened their gifts, one was a Looney Tune DVD. i don’t think they really had a clue about this treasure. But their father did. You see, Tommy was as big of a Looney Tune fan as his grandfather and his uncle.
Several weeks ago, he shared a photo of the two boys enjoying their gift. Then Monday, he sent me these photos. It moved me. i laughed. i thought about my father. i thought about growing up in a world quite a bit simpler for youngsters. i thought about how lucky i was to grow up where i did and how i did. i was glad the young boys had a chance to share laughter with their father as the three generations of Jewell shared their laughter.
This is a slight rewrite from about fifteen years ago. A very special moment in my life initiated my writing this. i don’t recall if it was newspaper column or i simply wrote it.
Recently, Mike Dixon, a close Lebanon friend, basketball one-on-one opponent, baseball teammate, and of several other connections sent me an email containing a photo purported to be a Popular Mechanics cover from the 1950’s. The photo showed a massive control board with many gadgets, dials, and meters. The email falsely claimed the photo was Rand Corporation’s idea of a home computer in the future 2004. A couple of my old Navy connections had sent the item to me previously, and i had checked it out to find out it was a hoax. The photo was actually a control panel for the propulsion plant of a nuclear submarine used for training prospective submarine officers. i informed Mike of this information. When he sent a not of appreciation, i provided him the following response:
When i first saw the photo and the claim from someone else a long time ago, i questioned it primarily because it did look more like a FRAM engineering plant’s main control board in the forward engine room but a bit more sophisticated. i then started checking it out and discovered the photo’s actual source.
In case you don’t recall, one of my Navy tours was as chief engineer or “CHENG” on the destroyer, USS Hollister (DD 788). FRAM’s were WWII vintage destroyers “modernized” (Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization) in the 1950’s and early 60’s by taking off the original superstructures and replacing them with lighter aluminum versions and new electronics and weapon packages that would add back the weight and then some. The aluminum superstructure created a ship better equipped for that era’s battle-at-sea environment, but the aluminum also induced bimetallic corrosion at the juncture of the new superstructure with the steel main deck. This was a serious problem by 1973 when i assumed my duties. This was the tour where Earl Major and i reconnected while attending destroyer school and with both my destroyer and his cruiser, the USS England (CG 22) being homeported in Long Beach.
When i arrived on board, the Hollister was forty-years old. The plant in those destroyers is still the most reliable ship propulsion system i ever experienced, especially for ships with the mission of war at sea. Duplication was everywhere and it was steam, steam, steam. Any electrical engineering equipment was backup or auxiliary. Those old greyhounds were small, fast, and durable. My vintage Hollister weighed in at 4200 tons and was 390 feet long and forty feet beam to beam. During one engineering full power trial, we built up the four boilers superheat and were still accelerating at 35 knots when we had to call off the dogs in order to make another commitment. i still have no idea what speed she might have reached.
Main Control aboard USS H. R. Tucker, taken from Jesse Fox’s post in the Facebook group “U.S. Navy Gearing Class Destroyers.”
Main control and both the forward and after engine rooms were snarling, hissing, clanking, roaring webs of pipes and asbestos-lagged machinery, hotter than Hades and louder than the pits of a NASCAR racetrack or a flight deck during an A6 takeoff (and i know as i have been in all three places). The lower levels were mostly a swamp of pumps akin to a mechanical jungle. The entire engineering plant was quintessential Rube Goldberg. The heart was the main control board flats. We stood behind a wheel similar to the one in the hoax photograph as the machinist mates responded to the engine order telegraph from the bridge to funnel the appropriate amount of steam from the fire rooms through the turbines larger than a Ford Exhibition SUV to reach a finite RPM. When i climbed the ladder through the hatch to the main deck after general quarters or engineering drills, i was flushed and hoarse, feeling like we had just harnessed an untamed stallion and ridden him through a fiery desert, then him dragging us through a steaming jungle pond.
Another photo of the main control board in the forward engine room, this one of the USS Carpenter (DD 825) taken from Jerry O Brien’s post in the “Gearing Class Destroyer” Facebook group.
Ship’s propulsion was not my favorite endeavor on warships. i loved standing watches on the bridge, conning the ship, feeling the pitch of the bow into the waves — a primary reason i eschewed carrier duty — navigating by the “seat of my pants,” piloting in coastal waters and the harbors. i loved the deck evolutions of alongside replenishment, the gun shoots with 5″ 38’s booming in my ears, putting the boats in the water, and all of the boatswainmate endeavors. i also loved the dark, blue-lit hole of sonar and the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) plot where we detected and tracked submarines, watching the scopes and the fire control tracking while listening to the high-pitched beeps of the sonar transmissions and return echoes.
(Sometimes i would go into ASW on the mid (midnight to four a.m.) or the morning (four to eight a.m.) watches after my own watch on the bridge and, while one watch stander monitored the sonar search another sonar technician (ST) and i would “talk” to whales on the underwater telephone nicknamed “Gertrude.” The whales would talk back.)
But engineering was an awesome thing to behold. The machinist mates and the boiler tenders were working men in the fullest sense, giving themselves to incredible hours of hard labor to keep their beloved monster steaming safely. i appreciated and respected their knowledge, their experience, and their work effort. Even though i remained an officer-of-the-deck (OOD) and weapons oriented, that tour in engineering still brings a sense of satisfaction.
In the spring of 1974, my father took a very unusual solo trip to Long Beach. My mother stayed in Lebanon. i took Daddy down to Pier 9 at the Long Beach Naval Station where the Hollister was berthed. i gave him a tour of the engineering spaces, my domain. We went to the forward and after fire rooms, each containing two boilers the size of small two-story buildings and their intriguing support equipment through three levels of forced draft blowers, fresh and feed water tanks and cable runs, which would out cable a TVA dam plant. We went to both engine rooms with propulsion shafts with diameters the width of a one lane road and every conceivable pump one could conjure as well as a distilling plant (we called them evaporators or “evaps”) that defied logic. We visited the welding shop, the machine shop, the damage control lockers, and damage control itself, a plotting and communication hub for any emergency. When we emerged and headed back to my Navy quarters in San Pedro, my father seemed contemplative.
This man was a pioneer in many ways in the automobile world. he was acknowledged as one of the best, if not the best automobile mechanic in Wilson County, having started to work on cars in the late 1920’s. He drove his first car, his older brother’s, in 1924 when he was ten around the block and stopped it by hitting the garage gate because his legs couldn’t reach the brake pedal. He bought a junk car from a Cumberland law student in 1932 or so for ten dollars. He completely rebuilt the engine and the drive train, then constructed a wood chassis. He drove that on dates with my mother (and others) for three years and then sold it for ten dollars. In the sixties, he built a VW Beetle for my sister from two totaled wrecks, practically by himself including welding the good parts remaining from the two, doing all the engine work, upholstery, chassis, electrical. He knew more about the practical application of mechanics and engineering than anyone i have ever known, and at that stage of my Navy career, i had experienced college engineering propulsion professors and the elite officer and enlisted engineering community. He garnered my greatest respect.
i, on the other hand, had fallen into the engineering job through progression. i had been a sports editor, a disc jockey, a sub chaser, and a deck hand. Engineering was something i was passing through.
As we drove across the Vincent Thomas Bridge from Long Beach to San Pedro, Daddy finally spoke, “Jim, I would have never considered you would ever be the head of such a mechanical wonder. I’m proud of you and just a bit amazed.”
To this day, i am convinced the wrong James Rye Jewell was the Chief Engineer of the USS Hollister.
i have just shared this on my Facebook page. i wanted those who are receiving my posts here to have a chance to read this as well. In my introduction to sharing the article, i noted,
“Andrew Maraniss just keeps on telling us like it really was. This is not only a moving piece like the book from which it was initiated, it should be a reality check for those of us who seem bent on playing the hate game. Thank you, Andrew.
