For several years, our Independence Day was spent at the Hicks’ manor in Sonoma, a comfortable home to which they moved from San Francisco after Alan retired. Alan and i, among other friends, would claim our spot on the plaza and Maren and Maureen would join us later. The parade, as you can see below, was local and wonderful. Miss it. With no energy yet from the scourge, my post will be short, but that’s okay: there is no shortage of posts and articles about our Independence Day.

i will keep my comments short today, but as you celebrate, i do hope all of you will remember the reason for the season and drop all of the politics George Washington warned against and thank those who made our Freedom possible. The ideas of equality and freedom expressed by those men were limited by their culture, time, and knowledge, but the idea remains in its totality, its underlying essence of liberty, freedom, and independence.

i again refer to Major R. Kenneth Morgan, my Latin professor at Castle Heights Military Academy, who defined “Freedom” as “The freedom to do anything you want unless it restricts the freedom of someone else.”

May you have a wonderful Independence Day.

i have been absent here for a few days. The Southwest corner Jewell’s finally got caught. In spite of all the boosters and relatively safe practices, we came down with COVID. Maureen is back in battery after her ten-day hiatus. My tenth day is tomorrow. It has not been a lot of fun but undoubtedly would have been a lot, lot worse without the inoculations

Last night after Maureen had gone to bed, the below, out of nowhere, came into my head. i checked the song lyrics this morning, and here it is:

did you hear the old man singing
“bringing in the sheaves”
when he realized the river ford
was not as shallow as he perceived?

did you hear the old man singing
“swing low sweet chariot
coming for to carry me home”
as the current carried him
away to another home’s distant shore?

did you hear the gushing waters
of the ford that belied his fate
swishing through the channel
as if no one had waded through
its deceptive waterway gate?

well, i heard the old man singing:

…Though the loss sustained our spirit often grieves,
When our weeping’s over, He will bid us welcome,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
My spirit grieved but knew he’d bid me welcome.

I heard him change his tune as he was swept away:

I looked over Jordan and what do I see
A band of angels coming after me
Coming for to carry me home
…Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home.

I sang with him, hoping he could hear:

If you get there before I do,
Coming for to carry me home
Tell all my friends I’m coming too
Coming for to carry me home
Swing low, sweet chariot.

that was long ago;
i now sit in my rocking chair
with the fire in the hearth a’blazing
remembering the treacherous river
where the ford was not a ford
to mumble under my breath,
i will be rejoicing bringing in the sheaves;
tell all my friends, i’m coming too;
swing low sweet chariot.

This morning well after first light, the perfect half moon in its perfect whiteness hangs high in the remaining deep, deep blue of the high sky. Pink has captured the eastern horizon. Quiet reigns in the cool of morning with only the doves’ coos interrupting the silence.

Jupiter remains visible to the moon’s east. Mars is a tad further and fading in the light of the expanding day. Venus — ah, i wish we had retained the earlier Greek name of Aphrodite for the goddess of beauty and love — continues eternally to be a flirt. Just over a week ago, she rode on the back of Aries, the ram, while this morning, she dares to taunt Cetus, the sea monster.

i stand in the quiet coolness, newspaper in my hand, wondering why i am so fixated on the planets, stars, and constellations. Oldness is the first thing that comes to mind. The years of navigating have imbedded this need to know and understand the worlds of faraway that guided me on the night watches.

i wonder how i cannot remember where i left the pencil only to find it held by my teeth while remembering moments, short finite moments, over the span of near four score years:

Standing on the front lawn in only shorts, so glad Mother has allowed it was sufficiently hot for us to head to Hazelwood’s pool, and later in my pre-teens at Hazelwood again on a blanket by the pool to hear Bill Doggett’s “Honky Tonk” for the first time, becoming entranced. Then a few years later, out at Horn Springs, the higher end pool for girls, hence where the boys went, at least those whose parents did not have the coins to join the country club, and hearing Bobby Darin, who someone at the county fair said i looked like, singing “Splish Splash” and decided i liked it before i began to denigrate “bubble gum” rock because it couldn’t hold a candle to the soulful blues of Jimmy Reed, Lonesome Sundown, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, and many others. Feel it, man. Feel it.

Henry (Harding) and i hunting rabbits with a 12-gauge and 410 on Grandpa Arnold’s farm in the winter and me deciding to test the ice in the large tin watering tub for the cows with my right leg plunging through the thinness and sitting there for about an hour or so when George or Virginia came to pick us up as scheduled (and somewhere around 20,000 other misadventures with Henry and Beetle and Mike Dixon and Jimmy Gamble and Mike Gannaway and George Thomas and and Charles “Fox” Dedman and Alex “Country” Harlan and Pat Climer and Jimmy Hatcher and Earl Major, which i shall not mention here).

College Station, Texas in a small house i bought with bad reasoning on the cusp of an unwanted divorce where i would shed my hated polyester khaki uniform, shift into my running shorts and Adidas running shoes, which i bought at JC Penney for twenty bucks and never wore socks, managing to wear for five years, adding shoe goo to the disappearing soles until some crazy person stole them while i was taking a shower in Diego Garcia’s gym locker room. Running a five-mile route to return and put the coals in the small hibachi charcoal grill, closing it to create the flu and expedite the charcoal reaching maximum burning while i showered and returned to put on the one lone steak while i made the salad and toast to eat with a beer damn near every weeknight unless i went to Frank’s, a modern restaurant that played jazz of all things in western swing and outlaw music heaven, and sit at the bar with a sandwich and chips made on site while i talked to the bartender as we listened to jazz, even some Jimmy Smith stuff i brought with me and closing the evening with a Jack Daniels on the rocks before going home and sleeping in the bed alone except for my Old English Sheepdog “Snooks” and the three-legged cat “Shore Patrol” on top of me. And it wasn’t all that bad.

i breathe in the creeping daylight, return to the house to layout the fixin’s for my bride who will make another gourmet breakfast as we watch the hummingbirds feed on the Mexican sage outside our breakfast niche window, and as i pour my first cup of coffee well before she arises, think “maybe this is what one is supposed to do when they get old: remember moments.”

i do.

It has been a quiet Father’s Day for me. Maureen and i went to a locally owned bookstore and on to a nearby restaurant for brunch this morning. i became one of those potatoes watching baseball and golf. i got calls from both of my daughters. They made my day.

i’ve been thinking about my fathers. My Uncle Snooks Hall was a close second to being my real father. Then there was Jimmy Lynch, my former father-in-law. Then there was Ray Boggs, Maureen’s father who was also one of my best friends. Then there is Jason Gander, the best father i could wish for my grandson Sam. There are others. i read with delight Facebook posts extolling fathers.

i wanted to write something appropriate about my father. i will only repeat my poem previously posted here about him. When he read it for the first time, he simply said, “How did you know.” That’s enough:

Hands

when most folks meet him,
they notice steel blue eyes and agility;
his gaze, gait and movements
belie the ninety-five years;
but
those folks should look at his hands:
those hands could make Durer cry
with their history and the tales they tell.

his strength always was supple
beyond what was suggested from his slight build.
his hands are the delivery point of that strength.
his hands are not slight;
his hands are firm and thick and solid –
a handshake of destruction if he so desired, but
he has used them to repair the cars and our hearts.

his hands are marked by years of labor with
tire irons, jacks, wrenches, sledges, micrometers on
carburetors, axles, brake drums, distributors
(long before mechanics hooked up computers,
deciphering the monitor to replace “units”
for more money in an hour than he made in a month
when he started in ’34 before computers and units).

his hands pitched tents,
made the bulldozers run
in war
in the steaming, screaming sweat of
Bouganville, New Guinea, the Philippines.

his hands have nicks and scratches
turned into scars with
the passage of time:
a map of history, the human kind.

veins and arteries stand out
on the back of his hands,
pumping life itself into his hands
and beyond;
the tales of grease and oil and grime,
cleaned by gasoline and goop and lava soap
are etched in his hands.

they are hands of labor,
hands of hard times,
hands of hope,
hands of kindness, caring, and love:
oh love, love, love, crazy love.

his hands speak of him with pride;
his hands belong
to the smartest man I know
who has lived life to the maximum,
but in balance, in control, in understanding,
gaining respect and love
far beyond those who claim smartness
for the money they earned
while he and his hands own smartness
like a well-kept plot of land
because he always has understood
what was really important
in the long run:
smarter than any man I know
with hands that tell the story
so well.

Dear Folks,

My long journey is not over, but it has cleared the biggest hurdle. Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings: A Navy Officer’s Memoir now has a publishing date of August 1, 2022. Pre-orders for the trade paperback version is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online book sellers.

For those who might not know, the book is about the USS Yosemite’s 1983-84 deployment to the Indian Ocean told from my perspective as second in command. She was the first Navy ship with women officers and enlisted assigned to experience extended time at sea.

Obviously, I hope you buy it, but of more importance to me is that you enjoy it and perhaps learn something from my experience.

Regardless, thank you for being a friend, relative, or shipmate.