It was her idea. Really.

We were at Hanaoka’s Saturday night. An early Father’s Day outing. The best gyoza ever. Anywhere. Their sashimi plate is my go to. Been that way for about thirty years. She and her mother asked me to pick a place for Saturday night. She was scheduled for a boat ride with friends the next morning.

While she and her mother discussed what movie they might see when she got back from boating, i was excluded as they know i’m not a movie going fan unless it’s one i really like (and they are very, very few unless they are old, like me). They brought up “Ocean’s 8.” Maureen admitted she had already seen it. i prodded Maureen could go again because she liked it. But they agreed on “Incredibles 2.” i surprised them when i said i wouldn’t mind joining them for that one. A bit stunned, she recovered and reserved our seats in The Lot, a movie dining/movie experience in Liberty Station at the foot of Point Loma.

So Sunday, the appointed date for Father’s Day, Sarah hosted Maureen and me for a second outing. i loved it. i didn’t eat food but i did have a .394 IPA. That’s the IPA made by AleSmith, a San Diego brewery in conjunction with Tony Gwynn, Jr. honoring his father’s batting average the year his pursuit of hitting over .400 could have — and i believe, i believe he would have reached Ted Williams’ status. But that’s another story. The movie was enjoyable. The fact Sarah wanted to treat us made me feel about ten feet tall.

Since i don’t go to movies and only watch my favorite ones from the past on television, i should not be considered a critic. But i liked the tongue-in-cheek fun of the “Incredibles 2.” It was fun to watch. And the theater was cool. Perhaps when i turned onto Truxton Road just past the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot, MCRD, or “M-Crud” as we Navy folks call it, was when i got into what this area used to be.

For those who are not familiar with San Diego, the Navy Recruit Depot, San Diego covered this large and valuable piece of land on the waterfront. About half of the recruits in the Navy were trained here. If you saw the movie “Top Gun,” Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis drove the sports car through what was then the main gate of the base where Tom’s squadron commander, Tom Skerrit, supposedly lived.

Then the budgeteers and the politicians all got together to commence “Base Realignment and Closure” (BRAC) beginning in 1988 and whacking and pasting bases through five iterations, which changed the face of San Diego (and other places as well). With the misguided aplomb politicians, including top military brass, seem to boast about, they closed the recruit depot here and the one in Orlando and moved all of the training to Great Lakes. i guess they thought there was an ocean there instead of Lake Michigan, and that the weather north of Chicago was more hospitable for training than the Southwest corner. Go figure…oh that’s right, it was politicians involved — they also put Marine Aviation at Miramar (where “Top Gun” the movie was filmed, and moved the Navy’s crack fighter training to Nevada, obviously because Nevada is so much closer to the ocean and Navy carriers than San Diego…oops, forgot: politicians.

Regardless, the development men frothed at the mouth and moved in on what had been the Navy Recruit Training Center, San Diego. Actually, they did a pretty good job. There is some housing development, but the attraction is a lot of neat places to go like the “Stone Brewery World Bistro and Gardens:” big place, good food, nice atmosphere for a big place, and beer, lots and lots of all kinds of beer made by…yep, Stone Brewery. Among many other attractions, there’s The Lot.

In the back of my mind, i was missing the recruits marching; the USS Recruit, actually used to train the recruits about Navy ships with the major exception of going to sea. It’s still there, but just a toy now.

i enjoyed the recruits being here. One of my best memories was in 1982. A bunch of single officers in the USS Okinawa wardroom, including moi, decided for a late night adventure to visit Crazy Eddie’s Booby Trap.

Crazy Eddie’s was just like you would think a place called Crazy Eddie’s Booby Trap would be. It was a dingy bar and a strip joint with greasy cheeseburgers. The joint’s big calling cards were the strippers (obviously) who also served the burgers and beer and then stripped to country music. Go figure. For some reason, it attracted all kinds of men. i enjoyed going there for the people watching. No, not that kind of people. i’m talking about the other men that attended: Old biker guys with chains hanging off their black jeans, silver chains holding keys, tools, and old car bumpers, big chains; men in $1,000 business suits with pointy-toed shoes and slicked back hair; old men in Irish tweed caps, white shirts, and khaki pants with suspenders; all kinds. And they all got along just fine, swigging their beers, smoking cigarettes, and watching the women, laughing with each other.

But my favorite happened that night the Okinawa officers were out to just enjoy themselves. We were standing in a small area to the side. i sidled up to the square bar seating with a dance stage in the middle because the waitresses…er, strippers were quicker to serve there. George Jones singing “White Lightning” was blaring at top decibels from the sound system. i wedged my way between some old guy and a very young sailor sitting at the bar to order a Bud (this was before “craft beers” and our standing position did not seem adequate for a pitcher).  An older man in a wrinkled polyester suit sat on the other side of the sailor. He spotted me.

“This is my boy Johnny,” he proudly and loudly boasted over George claiming his “daddy kept a cookin’…whoosh, white lightning” and the young lady on the stage lost another piece of strategic clothing.

“We’re from Indiana” he explained, “but came out here for Johnny. He graduated from recruiting school today,” he beamed.

i rendered what i thought was the appropriate congratulations.

Finally, one of the young ladies asked me for my order. Johnny’s father looked at the skimpily clad waitress and asked, “Miss, would you mind bring us another couple of bourbons and coke, please?”

Taking the order, she provocatively sashayed away. Johnny’ dad slid a ten-dollar-bill into his son’s hand. “Now son, when she brings us those drinks, you slide that sawbuck into her panties (as i said her outfit was pretty skimpy) and tell her there’s more where that came from,” the father instructed.

He looked at me with a sly grin, “Yessir, Johnny graduated today. He’s a man, and i’m gonna introduce him into manhood tonight.”

“Well, congratulations again,” i sputtered and walked back to my friends as soon as my beer came.

i had decided not to tell him his intentions were unlikely to occur at Crazy Eddie’s. There were a lot of legal restrictions about joints like this one and Crazy Eddie walked a straight line to avoid getting shut down. i had seen some big, bad, drunk bikers, and some of those slick businessmen fail at such attempts. It wasn’t likely a seaman recruit still wet behind the ears was going to score at Crazy Eddie’s Booby Trap. Maybe in Indiana, but not in San Diego.

But who knows? We didn’t stick around to find out.

But like the movie i watched on Father’s Day, it was incredible.

As i have said many times before, i am not a big fan of government sponsored holidays or most holidays in general. Most are commercial boons to make people feel good about having fun, not working, or buying a lot of stuff we don’t really need — and ironically, i acknowledge this buying stuff is essential to the way our economy works. Then, i keep disproving myself like i did at Mother’s Day.

i am uncomfortable with “Father’s Day,” perhaps embarrassed is a better adjective. i don’t desire having my daughters, grandson, and others acknowledging me because some yahoo many years ago, jealous of mothers having their “day,” coming up with this idea of “Father’s Day.” i want people to express any gratitude they might have, any inclination to praise me, or give me something because it’s their idea when it’s their idea, if they have such an inclination, not because it’s mandated to be done on the third Sunday in June. Bah, humbug.

Then, damn near out of nowhere while Maureen and i were returning home after buying a new washing machine, coming up the hill to our turnoff into Bonita Long Canyon, this random thought comes rushing into my head as i shifted down from sixth to fifth. The thought was how i wish i could be fishing with him, this ordinary man.

After spending about seventy years with him, i think he would like me calling him an ordinary man.

i don’t think he had any aspirations other than having a good life with his wife and his children, all of his children, not just his daughter and two sons…and fishing, of course.

He was not a scientific fisherman although he eventually bought a sonar to determine if there were schools of fish beneath his boat. His secret locations for the best fish catching were mostly superstitious, i think. But he did catch a lot. It was his pursuit, void of the latest fish-catching equipment (except perhaps lures: he bought into the latest lures). There are about one hundred fishing stories i could relate here, but not now. No, not now. He always, always, caught more fish than me. Perhaps that is symbolic.

i have many photos of him i could post here. In fact, i have posted many of them. But there is an image in my mind i prefer.

He was a good-looking skinny man, five feet, nine inches of 135 pounds of skinny for most of his life, whose strength was belied by the thin frame. i have watched him lift a 300-pound barrel of oil onto the back of a pickup bed by himself using only that strength and practical, no nonsense know-how.

He  was not alone. He was like many men of his generation: loving husbands, good fathers, primary wage earners, no nonsense, caring men who served their country to defend their way of life, religious, community-supporting, workers in trades that served the community, not asking for more than a secure and safe lifestyle. His love for his wife was total and worked to make the relationship a compatible, synergistic existence. He was the strong one, the provider, the defender, the handy man, the buck-stops-here guy, the go-to man, the final decision maker.

i don’t remember him ever mentioning politics. i know he voted Southern Democrat for many years, but i never heard say a word about them or any other politician.

On the grand scale of advertising and marketing folderol of today, he was not a hero.

My image of him was captured in a couple of seconds of an 8mm home movie from the 1950’s. He had come home from work sometime after five (he might work later, but i don’t recall him ever getting home before five: he went to work at seven, a ten-hour workday, not counting lunch; this included evenings when he would leave around eight to go night fishing, getting home at three or four in the morning but still not missing the six-thirty o’clock departure for work the next morning).

The image was captured on film by my mother, who never quite caught the hang of movie making, jumping from subject to subject like she was taken snapshots from the old Kodak box camera. His time for movie fame was about two seconds. He had come home from work on a summer weekday. He is still in his work clothes, blue cotton pants and shirt with his first name on a white patch bordered with red stitching over his right shirt pocket. His sleeves are rolled up. He is mowing the front yard at our home on Castle Heights Avenue. His hands have grime and oil from working on cars all day, before he washes them with lava soap, which still doesn’t get all of the dark from under his fingernails. He might use his pocketknife to clean them later.

That’s it. That’s my image of this man. He was pretty special even if he wasn’t a plastic, false-image hero to the masses of social media.

He was my father. He was my best friend.

And even if i never caught as many fish as he caught, i wish to God i could go fishing with him again.

Even though i wish no special acknowledgement on this government proclaimed day, i do wish to thank you, old man.

Thank you, Jimmy Jewell, for being the father i needed.

i was just sitting here not doing all of the things i should be doing and several of the things i shouldn’t be doing wondering why i think i shouldn’t be doing them, and in general screwing off in a funk. Then out of the blue, a thought from two nights ago came rushing into my abused and not frequently used mind. i finished it just a few minutes ago. Now, i’m going to work in the yard, do some finance stuff, fix a couple of things on this demonic machine. Things i should be doing.

every man; no man

i am every man;
i am no man;
i have been everywhere;
i have been nowhere;
i have seen the heights of joy;
i have seen the depths of despair;
i have laughed; i have cried;
i have found the world and its inhabitants inspiring;
i have found the world and its inhabitants depressing;
i have been loved, and i don’t know why;
i have been hated; and i don’t know why;
i have failed;
i have been successful;
i have watched the generations following mine and become disgusted;
i have watched the generations following mine and been in awe;
i am older than the limbs of a wizened oak;
i am younger than a babbling brook;
i have lost loves;
i have found love;
and
i marvel at my life, the world, the people while sitting on my perch of older:
it’s a pretty good view.

My bio-rhythms were messed up Monday morning.

The Vanderbilt loss to Mississippi State, 10-6, in 11 innings in the NCAA Baseball Super Regional took up about a quarter of yesterday late. i was a bit disappointed but the effect on my day today was exponential. i was running around trying to do tasks i had put off, get ready for Monday (and of course, a round of golf) and was feeling the pressure. This dude who used to teach time management was on the opposite end of his instruction, the bad side. That would be me.

So i was stressed big time, trying to fit the round pegs into the square holes, trying to prioritize and then figure out the time required only to realize there wasn’t enough time. For those who read my almost daily posts from the no longer published “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar, you should understand when  write i was a walking, talking, writing Murphy’s Law.

Then, i checked my email. A very close friend who was part of one of my more successful weekends in my life, had written me to tell me her husband had passed away. i held my breath for a moment. i did not know him, or rather, i did not meet him but felt i had known him through his wife’s communication. The connection, even with her, was very long distance in a number of ways, but no less real.

The story of our connection is, i think, rather wonderful. But i shall not include that here. i don’t wish to infringe on her and her family’s time reflecting on losing someone vital to their lives.

What i will address is my reaction. The criticality of all of those things pressuring me (or really me pressuring myself) to get them done pretty much washed away. i remembered a bunch of sayings to motivate old agers like me. They rushed at my mind like a three hundred pound defensive end. Ordinarily, i don’t like them, shun them, certainly ignore them.

But the one i remember (perhaps incorrectly remembering) was “Live today as if it might be your last.” Like all of the other attempts to inspire me, this one is harder to pull off than it seems on the surface of it. Lord knows what a complete mess of things i could create by simply doing what i wanted to do at the moment.

Without going into detail, it reminded me of Stephen Covey’s “Prioritization Matrix,” which seems to draw a lot from Abraham Mazlow’s triangle holding the theory of “Hierarchy of Needs” (but of course with a square divided into four quadrants instead of a triangle and just different enough to avoid accusations of plagiarism). Covey says you should work in the “Urgent/Important” quadrant first, the “Not Urgent/Important” next, and ignore or not dwell in the “Urgent/Not Important” and “Not Urgent/Not Important” quadrants, which, of course, is where lies all i want to do. And Covey’s theory never mentions a wife’s “honey-do’s.” Where the hell do you put those in a matrix?

But sitting there Monday morning thinking about my friend, her family, and her late husband, i thought to myself, “You know, you’re there. As one of your high school friends said about a half-dozen years ago, now you are a survivor. Live like one. Enjoy those who care for you; don’t mess with those who don’t; do as much as you can; and as you have been saying and need to quit saying and start doing, live as good a life as you possibly can…and enjoy life.”

Easier said than done.

But i’m trying.

This morning, i was cleaning out files yet again when i ran across a faded piece of typewriter paper containing a poem i wrote in 1970 at the end of my tour taking Republic of Korean troops to Vietnam and back on Military Sealift Command ships operated by merchant marines.. i was the executive officer of the Navy’s transport unit (MSTS Transport Unit One) for coordinating and managing the 1500 troops while embarked.

The poem was one of the few i wrote about Kosyko. It was back when i fell in love with women often. i didn’t just become infatuated with women. i loved them. None of that period really turned out too well. Kosyko saw me with an American young woman and that made me persona non grata. i might have married her had it not been for my gaffe. i married that young American and, as i said, that didn’t turn out too well either. i have mixed feelings about both of them. i’m sorry neither worked out, but i loved my time with them or rather, loved them while i was with them, but had i remained with either, i would not have met Maureen, and she is worth all sorts of hurt i endured before her.

So here is a glimpse of a bit of sorrow from forty-eight years ago:

Farewell to Kosyko, December 1970

slight figure
fiery anger
complete with flashing black eyes
with
the bewitching, pensive smile
diminutive, yet precious
in tearing my world apart
i shall never get to know you
enough to understand
and
i shall leave one day soon.
what shall happen
to our worlds?