Last night, i wrote my post about Memorial Day.

Today after all of those nice words from me and about a gazillion others on every media option possible, i was recipient of a Facebook post that put it all in perspective for me.

Larry Wood relieved me in my last Navy tour. Larry had been a helicopter pilot of some renown. He and i had a cup of coffee at the Naval Amphibious School, Coronado. He now lives in Florida.

What he posted today brings into focus what this day is really all about. i confess when i saw the photo and read Larry’s comment, i had to catch my breath to keep control of myself.

Larry, i stole this off your Facebook page. Here it is:

Larry is the dark-haired guy on the left in Navy dress whites. The Navy has shoulder boards on dress whites. Marines do not. Here is Larry’s explanation of the photo:

This is the class I got my wings with in’69. All Marines and me. We all went to NAM! To my knowledge, I’m the only one who came back. RIP Marines!

i don’t think anything i might add could say more about the deepest meaning of Memorial Day.

Thanks, Larry, for giving me a  better understanding of what Memorial Day is really about.

Monday is Memorial Day.

We celebrate with a long weekend, car races, baseball games, picnics, and sales, lots of sales. We all do it under the red, white, and blue pretense of the Memorial Day weekend.

There are some precious souls who travel to military cemeteries with their neat crosses in a row marking the fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, many of whom made the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of their country, their flag, their constitution, and ALL of the people who believe in liberty and equality. i am not one of those precious souls.

There are a bunch of folks who travel to the Vietnam Memorial in our nation’s capital. Ken Hall and his wife Diane joined Rolling Thunder in the motorcycle riders tribute. The last time i was on a motorcycle was in 1969 when Andrew Nemethy, Rob Dewitt, and i would tour the mountains in eastern Virginia on weekends when we didn’t have the duty on the USS Hawkins, about six months before i went to my Vietnam tour.

i honor those who died for our country in my own way. i have also written a number of pieces about this honoring of our fallen on past weekends such as this one. i began to write another tonight, but i think you’ve had enough of that already.

So i returned to the powder blue “Deluxe Baby Gift Box” that once held “Baby Powder, Baby Cream, Baby Soap, and Baby Oil,” the Johnson & Johnson products of “New Brunswick, NJ,” and “Chicago, Ill.”

i am guessing it was handy when he was deciding what to do with the photos he brought back from the war, the big war as they called it. The products in the box, i’m sure were for me. When he got back i was a month from my second birthday and those baby products had probably been used.

So he took the photos, put them in a box and stored the box in his chest or closet. i wonder if he ever took out that box and went through the photos. It was intact when he gave it to me about a half century later. i have refrained from showing nearly all of it to anyone except my brother and some very special friends who served later, like me. Some are rather grotesque, some show some pretty horrific things, but all of the photos in the box are like his private memories of the war. i’m not sure he ever showed any of them to my mother, including the ones she sent him of her and their newborn chubby baby.

My father didn’t die in that war. Neither did my  Uncle Bill Prichard who was flying fighters on the opposites side of the world or my Uncle Pipey Orr who rode a minesweeper out of Charleston. Somehow, my father received photos of his brother-in-law beside his aircraft in Britain. i’ll remember each of them throughout the weekend but not because it’s Memorial Day weekend. i remember them for their sacrifice, but those sacrifices weren’t the ultimate one. i honor their service, but this weekend is for those who didn’t come back.

Still, i think a number of the less graphic photos  and some memorabilia in that box might give us pause to think about what those men and women were up against in WWII, and by extrapolation, our service men and women in all of the wars and conflicts from the revolution to today.

The one on the left is my father’s rating badge for Machinist Mate Second Class, Automotive. The one on the right is the patch designating him as in a Construction Battalion or Seabee. They are from three quarters of a century ago. He advanced to First Class Petty Officer before the war ended.

He apparently received this photo from his brother-in-law, Bill Prichard. It is my uncle with his aircraft named Colleen for his new wife. On the back my uncle wrote “Notice the snow. Guess  you haven’t seen any for quite a while.”

He carried these two photos, the left one of me with Mother right after we got home from the hospital. He was there for my birth but caught a train back to Gulfport the day after i was born,. The second was of him and me in Gulfport in May 1944. My mother; Aunt Naomi, and my grandmother drove me down there so he could see me before the liberty ship took him and his 75th Construction Battalion boarded a liberty ship for the transit to the South Pacific.

This was taken the week after MacArthur returned to the Philippines. It is the beachhead encampment and stores being offloaded from cargo ships.

And what Monday and this weekend is all about. This one is a US military cemetery on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Many of the men buried here have relatives who have never seen their grave. i honor all of them with a silent moment while i conclude this post, and i will honor them again tomorrow and Monday.

Thank you folks for your service. i will not forget you.

i awoke this morning around 6:15, unusually late  for me. i was charged to take care of one of about two hundred thousand chores i had either invented by myself, had been requested by my most significant other, or required, like damn near everything in this twenty-eight year old house. i also thought i would finish a post i promised Eleanor Hicks.

Then i remembered a phrase that had passed through my somewhat scattered brain either from a dream or an actual thought blossoming up like a dandelion in my head.

So i  scrabbled around the office as i usually do to start the day, rather than doing the stretches i should do every morning, had a lovely breakfast with Maureen, piddled, and sat down to consider the fairly substantial to-do i had planned.

That thought just refused to go away.

So i added some words, got a little bit enthused, added some more words, and liked what i had written, just a tad off center from what i usually enter here:

i walked on the dark side of the moon
where living, breathing gargoyles screech,
where souls with black hearts rule,
slithering about everywhere with no compassion;
i could not see the world;
indeed, it was dark and damp
with coldness of the sickly kind;
i walked through the dark side of the moon
without guilt; therefore
unharmed by the living gargoyles and souls with black hearts
although they screeched their pitiless cries of harm and fear;
finally, i turned in the darkness to ask
“why are you so cold and heartless
when, if you just walked with me
from the dark side of the moon,
you could see the light;”
the gargoyles and dark souls scratched their heads;
a couple began to walk with me
from the dark side of the moon;
the others retreated to the dark;
the breathing gargoyle and the dark soul
who walked with me to the sunny side of the moon
smiled when they met the light and warmth;
the gargoyle turned into an infant angel;
the soul lost its darkness and glowed;
i thought how sad the others had stayed
on the dark side of the moon;
but
for the two who walked with me,
my walk on the dark side of the moon
was worth it;
enough reason to continue walking.

This past Sunday, Eleanor Hicks ran the Bay to Breakers run in San Francisco.

Eleanor is one of my favorite women of all time. The daughter of my Vanderbilt friends, Alan and Maren Hicks, she is an attorney for Google. She is also astounding: a good athlete, an adventurer, one of the smartest and caring people i know, and perhaps one of the best read people on earth. She is as much a daughter as a friend (Eleanor, i purloined your photo off of Facebook).

Bay to Breakers is the longest running run (pun intended) in the country. The first one was in 1912 with 218 entrants, 186 runners who showed up, and 121 finishers. And so it began. It routinely has 50,000 plus running. In 1986, it peaked at 110,000. It begins on San Francisco Bay, near the Embarcadero runs up the hill on Howard Street, takes a jog on 9th Street and another jog on Hayes Street. It is pretty much down hill from there going through Golden Gate Park to the Pacific Ocean beach. 12K run. 7.53 miles.

i know.

i ran it. Twice. 1982, 1983.

Of course, as usual, i didn’t have a clue what i was getting into. i was the weapons officer, aka first lieutenant on the amphibious helicopter carrier, USS Okinawa (LPH 3). Master Chief  ETCM B.R. Kellish and Senior Chief NCCS Woody Brown came up with the idea.  The master chief was from San Francisco and both were highly rated California marathon runners. The two of them were responsible for organizing many runs in San Diego. Then they came up with an Okinawa team running in the Bay to Breakers.

CWO-4 JD Waits, my co-conspirator in many scams, and Major Lou Rehberger, the Marine Air Ops and a constant running companion with JD and me, considered our options. We announced it would be a go for us.

i flew up in the ship’s CH1 Huey helicopter. Rehberger was the pilot. i was the qualified right seat safety observer until we picked another Marine pilot at Pendleton. There were five of us and the crewman. BR, Woody, JD,and a couple of others met us for the run.

We all put on running shorts, white USS Okinawa singlets, some wore Okinawa ball caps, and all of us had secured a toy helicopter on top of our heads with a large rubber band. We thought we were dressed well. But the gamut of costumes and floats driven by runners were incredible. So we were a bit embarrassed. The run started at 8:00 am. We got there around 7:15 and were so far back from the starting line, we didn’t cross it until around 8:10. As the run started, those who had dressed warmly for the San Francisco cold mornings shed their outer garments and threw them in the air. Clothes were hanging from every electric, phone and light line for the several blocks before we reached the starting line.

We were moving at a fairly decent clip but kept noticing there were a lot of runners drinking beer. One of the guys had tucked a twenty in his running shorts so when we hit the Ninth Avenue and Hayes street jog, we veered right into the market on the corner. We bought a six pack of Miller Lite and returned to our run.

As we emerged from the market, a party passed by us. Apparently, there had been a formal event the previous evening. About a dozen of the party goers showed up at the start in their tuxes and evening gowns and were making the run. They all had champagne glasses and about four of the guys were toting magnums of champagne. When they spotted us, in unison they yelled, “You mean you are drinking light beer?”

As we approached the Haight-Asbury district, speakers were hung out seemingly every window and the music was bouncing everywhere. We passed a runner who was wearing an overcoat. As we went by, he opened the overcoat. He had stuffed a woman’s stocking with cloth and affixed one end into his pants, the stocking fell down as if it was his business. We were at first stunned until we realized it was a stocking, not what we thought.

The rest of the run went well.  We had another beer and agreed to run the next year.

That’s when it became complicated.

I was disappointed JD could not make the next year’s run because of a schedule conflict.

BR and Woody decided to do it up right. BR asked his family members who still lived in San Francisco if they would like to participate. Several were excited to do so, but one niece said she would love to but she wasn’t a runner. That’s when the idea hatched.

The two chiefs made a small wagon out of plywood and a child’s toy wagon wheels. They attached a swing chain to the front with chain harnesses for four runners. On the wagon they put two lawn chairs and a large cooler up front. As this was progressing, i asked my fiancé Maureen if she would like to join us. Not being a runner but a trooper, she said yes. The lawn chairs were for BR’s niece who would not run and Maureen who could hitch a ride if she decided not to run the entire race.

We flew up and met our other runners and carriage about the same place, several blocks from the starting line. BR had donned a super hero costume of tights, colorful shorts, and a long-sleeve thermal underwear shirt with “Captain Ugly” painted across the chest of the shirt. He had added a curly red wig. Perfect.

BR’s niece came in a black gown and sported a calla lily. She regally established her royal presence on the cart’s lead folding chair. Maureen, after sitting in her chair while donning her running gear, then began running rather than sitting in the chair. She never sat in the chair again. Four of our runners, including me, slipped into the swing chain harnesses. There was a plan for us to switch out occasionally for breaks, but somehow Rehberger and i were always two of the mules pulling the wagon the entire seven and a half miles. There were lots of strange rigs, some elaborate, in the race, but we certainly got our share of attention (As i recall, the number of runners had swollen to 60,000 from the previous year).

With all of the ridiculousness involved, one task had not been worked out: who was going to bring the tow mules their beers? Maureen, being the caring soul that she is ended up being  the beer hauler and ended up running more than anyone else because she was constantly running back and forth between the cart’s cooler and the runners. i knew marrying her had been a superb decision.

As we entered Haight-Ashbury again like the previous year, there was this guy in an overcoat again. When i spotted him, i yelled for Maureen to check him out. Sure enough, as we got close, the guy, who was also sporting large sunglasses, opened the overcoat and out flopped the stuffed stocking. At first, Maureen gasped at the sight. Then she realized what the stocking actually was and laughed all the way to the finish line.

About then, we began to have a problem, the toy wagon wheel’s tires began to smoke a bit. They had been rubbing against the plywood sides of the cart and the rubber was overheating.

Maureen took on another task. She opened a can of beer and poured it on the smoking rubber. She did this with a couple of beers. We were alarmed. Not that the rubber was burning, but afraid our beer supply might not last. At about the five-mile mark, the last of the rubber had fallen off and we were pulling the cart with metal hubs for wheels.

Undeterred but significantly slower, we continued to pull the cart with the princess niece still aboard.

The last half-mile was a challenge. We had reached the beach and the remaining distance to the finish was through beach sand. It would have been tough with rubber wheels, but the metal hubs made it even tougher. As we swallowed down another beer (or two), we refused to quit towing. After all, we were stubborn mules. It was a slow run. Completely worn out, we crossed the finish line amid cheers.

Gasping, we got out of our harnesses and waited in one of the twenty or so lines to get our tee shirts. Maureen and i both were gassed, but we were proud of ourselves and laughing at the exploit. That’s when we discovered the guy in the overcoat was right behind us. He turned out to be a great guy and we laughed all the way to the tee shirts where we bid each other a fond farewell.

We found our other runners and someone asked where were our cars. Well, with about 60,000 people on the beach, parking was at a premium. Our transportation was over a mile away. So the spent runners/towers/beer deliverers of Captain Ugly’s bunch trekked one last time to our cars.

BR suggested we stop at one of his old haunts for lunch. The tavern was a great place and somehow all of us began drinking salty dogs. Not a good idea.

But it was over. We said goodbye as we left the bar. Lou, Maureen, and i went to one of my favorite dining places of all time, Pacific Cafe on the third level of the Ghiardelli Plaza. It had great fresh seafood and the back of the bar had an arched window, like an oversized version of what was in the Perry Mason television series, looking out at San Francisco Bay with Alcatraz right in the middle of the window. As with all good things, the Pacific Cafe is gone, replaced by condos and business offices.

After our dinner, the three of us got to the airport on time to catch our flight back to the Southwest corner.

Tuesday, friends in San Francisco informed us we had made the the headlines in a sidebar of The San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage of the race: “Captain Ugly’s Team Was Well Received.” That’s the best i can remember the headline. Somewhere in my pile of stuff, i have a copy of the story. If i ever find it, i will post it here.

If you don’t believe me, here’s proof:

And Eleanor, i hope you had as good of a time at Bay to Breakers this year as we did in 1983.

The letter came with extra scotch tape on the seal.

She was family famous for wrapping Christmas presents, usually about a roll of scotch tape on each package regardless of package size. We would laugh and she would laugh. She had and still has a great laugh. She also continues to use lots of scotch tape.

The return address label has a puppy on it. She and her brother had a dog when they were growing up in Red Bank, a suburb of Chattanooga. His name was Spot. The puppy on the label did not look like Spot, but it brought back memories. Her name is listed as “Mrs Nancy Schwarze.” She is also known as Nancy Orr Winkler Schwarze, a history lesson in her name.

Being she is on the other side of this country, we don’t see each other often, certainly not often enough. When we were growing up, i thought she was one of the prettiest girls i had ever seen. She was. i have a photo where she looks like a young Elizabeth Taylor, but it’s late and i’m not going to look right now.

Nancy is two years and change older than me. Her brother Jon, who passed away several years ago was between us. They were so much cousins they were like another sister and brother.

The letter was addressed to Maureen, but Maureen was in Cleveland with high school friends. i cheated and opened it. It was a very nice, heartfelt letter generated by a communication Nancy and Maureen had a month or so ago. The two are alike in they love family unconditionally.

The letter contained lots of news about her family and how she and Bill Schwarze, her husband are doing. It also told of her folks, my aunt and uncle Pipey and Evelyn Orr and the war years.

Then she related a story about the three cousins, Nancy, Johnny, and me. i did not know about this one. i will not attempt to rewrite but give you Nancy’s narration from the letter (with Maureen’s approval):

Jim was two, i think. He was not exempt from getting into trouble. One day, Granny was keeping the three of us out on the farm (the Webster land on Hunter’s Point Pike) while our mothers had gone to play bridge (This was during the war and Daddy and Uncle Pipey were still in the Seabees and Navy respectively). When they got back and came into the house, Granny was sitting in a chair and the three of us were sitting on the couch. The only bath tub in the house was a metal tub on the back porch (i have a photo of that too, but again, not tonight). Our mothers asked Granny what happened.

It seems we found a jar of Vicks salve or Vaseline and rubbed it all each other from head to toe. Granny gave each us a bath in that tub. After that, we went out to let the cows out of the barn, and we rolled in manure. Another tub bath for each of us. Granny sent us out to play and we all played in the do dirt (cow pies and dirt). After the final bath out of nine she had given us that day, she put us on the couch and dared us not to move. 

I (Nancy) was probably the instigator, but I will never admit it.

Now Nancy, my sister, and my brother have better memories than mine. And Nancy did get us, as well as herself, into some difficulties, but i suspect that threesome were all culpable in the antics that afternoon.

Maureen might tell you i haven’t changed.

But i will never admit it.

i wonder how many children in this country today have a chance to do that. i’m pretty sure the answer is none. Sad.