This story is a great illustration of Marty Linvilles’s sense of humor and his ability to laugh at himself. In fact, it is also a great illustration of the sense of humor of two groups of old guys both of which Marty and i belonged.

i began playing with the San Diego telephone guys in the early 90’s. Navy friends and my brother, Dan Boggs played with us until he moved to Tennessee. Others really good guys played with us and then moved on.

Marty, Rod Stark and i played our weekly game, which began when the three of us were on our twilight tours at the Naval Amphibious School in Coronado. That group also has had a number of folks join us and move on. Currently, there are about a dozen regulars.

So there was a melding of curmudgeons in both group who earned that “curmudgeon” moniker long before we were really old.

Marty became a mainstay of both groups and our foursome in each one.

As mentioned before, Marty suffered from angiospapgelitus; to repeat it is, “a disease that fuses spinal discs. This caused his head to naturally point down. His ability to withstand the pain and the inconvenience was a testament to his will.

Our foursome of Marty, Jim Hileman, Pete Toennies, and i were was playing in the telephone club’s annual tournament, this one at Terra Lago in Indio where they held the Skins Game a bunch of years ago.”

We were all milling around and Marty Marion, one of the SDTGA leaders went into the pro shop. There he saw what he thought was Marty Linville. He walked over, said hello, and started to talk when he realized it was not Marty Linville, but a mannikin with a broad-brimmed golf hat placed on top of the no-headed manniken.

When he told our group, we decided to honor the other Marty with this photo.

Marty Linville thought this was hysterical. His grandson Carson almost hurt himself when he saw it he was laughing so hard.

The Linvilles have a great since of humor.

He gave me the book last Tuesday as we were winding down from a golf tournament in Temecula.

Jim Lindsey is a terrific golfer who played on the San Diego State golf team several years ago. He is also a friend and a good man. He had mentioned the book at the tournament a year earlier. This year, he brought it and handed it to me for safe keeping and transferring it to an appropriate place.

i was honored to be a steward, even if only for a short while. i was the carrier of the torch because Jim knew of my Navy experience and thought my writing about that time in my life was an indicator of my capability to find a good place for the book.

i reached out to a number of my Navy friends who might have a better idea than mine about who to approach for retaining the book.

Jim’s book is entitled American Naval Biorgraphy: Comprising Lives of the Commodores Distinguished in the History of the American Navy. It is 440 worn, faded, and stained pages of American Naval History from its beginning to 1844. Why 1844? John Frost. LL. D. (Doctor of Law) finished writing his book in 1843. It was published the following year.

Many of those Navy officers i contacted were impressed. The first response was from my friend Dave Carey. Dave was a POW in Vietnam. i was a co-facilitator with him of a two-day leadership seminar for senior officers during our last active duty tour. He retired, and i took his place, as if anyone could take Dave’s place, as the Director of Leadership, Management, Education and Training (LMET) for the West Coast and Pacific Rim. Dave was a Naval Academy graduate and reached out to Jimmy DeButts, who is the editor of Shipmate Magazine, the academy’s alumni magazine. Jimmy noted the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association and Foundation would “love to be stewards of that book.” i connected with Jimmy and will be sending it to him later this week.

You see, i have become entranced by this book. i am retiring to our living room in a club chair by the fireplace and reading, carefully turning the frail pages and wandering around in US Naval history 260-180 years ago. Those Navy heroes are all there: Richard Dale, Edward Preble, Thomas Truxton, Stephen Decatur, Oliver Hazard Perry, William Bainbridge, and many others.

Of course, that line of amazing men begins with John Paul Jones. It is compelling to read about the father of our Navy through the words of his contemporary.

The language itself is captivating. i have spent some time looking up words and terms of which i was not familiar. It is not a read. It’s a journey.

Soon, i will finish and carefully send Jim’s book, handed down through four generations of his family, to the Naval Academy, a fitting place for it to rest. There are republished, newer copies of the book currently available on the internet. There are also texts that one can read residing in the cloud. i will likely add one of those to my library.

Jim’s copy came from his great, great grandfather, Harrison Tinkham. Jim’s response to my questions included a bit about that man: “Harrison Tinkham (my great-great grandfather) who was a Sea Captain originally from Massachusetts who later migrated to San Francisco. (only a guess…He may have captained a boat of supplies for the gold rush 49ers and then stayed in San Francisco)  He was born 1821 and died in San Francisco in 1889.  Obituary in San Francisco paper list him as Capt. Harrison Tinkham age 68.  Other family records just say he was a sailor.  Can’t say if he was military or civilian shipping. 

Yet another piece of information for me to return to the past and wonder about that man and his life at sea.

Admittedly, some of my interest may have been driven by recently reading a novel series on the U.S. Navy in its beginning. James L. Haley wrote three novels, The Shores of Tripoli, A Darker Shore, and Captain Putnam and the Republic of Texas (Haley has recently published the fourth novel in the series, The Devil in Paradise: Captive Putnam in Hawaii. His hero, Bliven Putnam, goes from a farm in Massachusetts through at least 1820 in his role as a Navy officer.

This Haley fiction gave me a image of a Navy sailing man of war. As i read my friend’s book of biographies, i kept envisioning life at sea in those times of unmechanized ships.

The experience has been invigorating. Jim Lindsey’s book has put life to my Navy and its history, a fitting thing to consider at the end of this year’s Veteran’s Day.

Thanks, Jim Lindsey, Dave Carey, and Jimmy Butts.

Many politically correct folks will become infuriated with this post. It violates all of their rules.

We are curmudgeons, old men who will make fun of anything. If we are the target of some impolitically correct prank, joke, or supposed bullying, we will laugh right along with the others.

The reason is quite simple. It’s funny.

This story is a classic example, one of the best.

My great friend, Marty Linville, was a hero, as i have noted, for his service in Vietnam, which earned him the Army’s Silver Star. He suffered from that service with several conditions. The one that struck him earlier than the others was angiospapgelitus. This is a condition that grows bad bone on the spine. It fused most of Marty’s spine and created the inability to turn his neck and his head was thrust forward and down. It caused him a great deal of pain for almost thirty years. Yet, he remained a very good golfer up to the very end of his life. Marty was amazing.

Twenty-five years ago or more, Marty had been over-medicated by several of his specialists. Consequently, he could not hit a golf ball very far (he finally managed to get his specialists coordinated and the problem did not go away, but the treatment lessened his pain a bit and increased his flexibility somewhat for at least twenty years; he was still limited in distance on hitting shots, but it was tolerable). Before, he resolved that distance problem, he had a problem on one specific hole.

The 12th hole at Sea ‘n Air, the Naval Air Station, North Island’s golf course, is a 528-yard, par 5 hole. There is a water hazard about fifty yards in front of the green that requires a tee shot to clear about 150 yards without landing in the water. With Marty’s limitations at that time, he just couldn’t clear the hazard, but he tried, tried, and tried.

Then on one Friday round, we were playing with my old shipmate, Al Pavich, and my neighbor, Ralph LaVage. As we approached the tee box, Marty announced he was going to lay up short of the hazard so he could clear it on his second shot. We thought this was a good idea.

Marty pulled out his sand wedge, and hit. The ball was just a bit off-line to the right. It hit the cart path and bounced high and long. The excessive bounce took the ball an extra twenty yards or so and into the water with a big splash.

When Marty turned around with that look only Marty could give, Ralph was doubled over in laughter, Al and i were rolling on the ground laughing. Marty got that great grin of his and started laughing along with us.

As noted after the meds were corrected, his distance problem was somewhat resolved for a long time. The story became a must to tell to anyone who joined our golf game who had not heard the story. Marty was often the one that told it.

Yep, Marty was a legend. He, like the rest of us, just wasn’t politically correct.

i have too much on my hands to get it all done before i leave for another place. i would like to publish posts at least four times a week, if not more. i have six books in various stages of completion (none are completed) i would like to finish. i have established a “kick the bucket” check list and narrative for a guide to whomever is left behind to clean up my mess.

An Aside: My sister was the executor for our parents and aunt, and i was the same for my father-in-law and helped a Navy widow across the street. There are some excellent check lists for such things as funeral, burial, social security, other financial matters, as well as personal matters. The VA provides one that is excellent and also includes information for veterans and military retirees.

Then, there are all of the things i want to do around the house. Hang some outside lights, raise my flagpole a bit, clean up and repair some hardscape, organize the garage mess, put all of my paperwork in order.

This is all to be done while i play golf one or two times a week, would like to practice more, and go to doctors, dentists, optometrists, specialists, not to mention lab tests…aha, i’ve created another checklist.

So in this clean-up-things yesterday, i found some old treasures. Cassette tapes exchanged with dear people while i was deployed going back fifty years. In three boxes, i also found slides. i took about a gazillion when my ships were carrying Koreans to Vietnam and back to Pusan.

It is outright fun to look at them and remember. So another project has been added. Here are a few of the initial results:

The fading is bad on this one, but if you look closely, the ship tied to the Delong pier in Qui Nhon, Vietnam, is the USNS Barrett (T-AP-198). The photo was taken from the bridge of the Barrett’s sister ship, the USNS Geiger (T-AP-197). It is the only time the two were in the same port in my year, 1970, aboard. The two rotated between Pusan, Korea and several ports in Vietnam, carrying Republic of Korea troops back and forth. They were on a 22-day cycle with a six-day respite in Sasebo, Japan for maintenance, resupply, and refueling.

The Geiger was relieved by the third ship of this type, the USNS Upshur (T-AP-196) about half-way through my tour. In the late 1940s, the three were built by American President Lines to be cruise liners, but were bought by the Navy to serve as troop and dependent carriers as the Korean War began. They performed that mission in the Atlantic and the Pacific until 1965 when the mission was to carry the ROK troops and officers. The 1500 troops were berthed in below deck compartments and the officers, including my 18-personnel unit above decks, which retained the configuration of cruise liners. I was a lieutenant junior grade (LTJG) and served as executive officer of the unit. It was a wild and crazy year.

A US Navy swift boat comes alongside as Geiger enters Qui Nhon. The base was an Army base while the swift boats and harbor security was run across the bay at a Navy location with the generic name of “market time.” Several of my unit went across numerous times with the idea of giving the sailors there a bit of a morale booster. Our units, as far as i know, were the only US military in country that wore our regular khaki uniforms and carried US Dollars. We were popular.

Some time in the late spring, early summer, Jim Harding learned i was on the ship. Jim, called “Beetle” by family members and myself, was in charge of the Army’s 101st Calvary medivac helicopters (Jim, correct me if i got the title wrong) based near Qui Nhon. He showed up when we pulled into port and i hosted him with a dinner on board — those meals were exquisite. On the next go-round, he invited me out to the 101st’s base. He took me on a tour of the country side with his driver and armed guard.

A 2,000-year old Buddhist temple (Before you ask, the swaztika is not from Germany. From Wikipedia:

The swastika is also used in other Asian religions, including Buddhism and Jainism.

The swastika is a sacred symbol in Hinduism that has many meanings: 

• Direction: When facing right, the swastika represents the universe’s evolution, and when facing left, it represents the universe’s involution. 
• Good fortune: The swastika is also a symbol of prosperity, good luck, and well-being. The word “swastika” comes from the Sanskrit word svastika, which means “conducive to well-being”. 
• Spiritual purity: The swastika is also a sign of spiritual purity. 
• The swastika is also used in other Asian religions, including Buddhism and Jainism: 

Here is my Lebanon, Tennessee friend at the temple. He and his driver took me all over the countryside in a day’s outing after i had spent the night in his hutch with five or six other Army officers. After dinner of steak and beer, we went to the hutch and someone pulled out an LP album they had gotten. It was “Woodstock,” the two-record set of all of the music at the renown festival. It was the first time, i had heard the music.

Beetle is the younger brother of my best friend, Henry Harding. i practically lived at their house growing up. The three of us ran around together all of the time. Seeing him in Vietnam was one of the brightest moments of my tour.

To conclude this show and tell time, here is LTJG Jewell, executive officer of Military Sea Transport Service (MSTS, later in the year, renamed Military Sealift Command, or MSC) in fatigues, i thought Beetle got them for me, but he says he didn’t. i remain puzzled as to how i got them. i am on a hill above a Vietnamese village.

This was the only time i was outside of our port areas. The circuit of my two ships began by stopping at Qui Nhon to debark and then embark troops of the ROK Oak Leaf Division, primarily a supply division. The ship’s second stop was Nha Trang where we repeated the troop exchange. These were troops from the Tiger division, the Korean version of marines and known from their fierce fighting. i was told they had learned how to fight from the Turks during the Korean War.

More later.