Looking Back: 14 – an indifferent scholar

      Although I hadn't been a scholar or even a particularly good student in high school, (I got kicked out of school for “sassing” my typing teacher one time), learning came fairly easy for me and without trying very hard I got mostly As and Bs with an occasional C here and there. My favorite classes (I know they were my favorites because I remember the teachers' names) were US History and Mechanical Drawing—Mr. Bowden and Mr. Tinker respectively. Mr. Bowden was infectiously enthusiastic about the subject of American History. He knew his stuff and delivered it as though he were a Shakespearean actor. He made history vivid and made it come alive. Mr. Tinker had a long serious face. He wasn't a talker but he didn't need to be. He simply had us draw at these very high architect's desks on barstool like chairs. Then he would constructively criticize and suggest I try this or that technique. I was in the so-called Commercial Course track and Mech. Draw. was a General Course class. I took it as an elective for three years I liked it so much.

      But, indifferent scholar that I had been in high school, I began to read on my own, pretty much as the spirit moved me, in my free time. When you're on duty or at sea there isn't much to do or many places to go on a ship—you know, water, water everywhere. The base always had a library and many ships had a small library on board. I started reading contemporary novels and moved up, little by little, to more classical work even working my way up to some philosophy. I especially liked Plato in those days. Reading provided an incentive and many models to try and write better letters. But my dipstick Ensign unwittingly provided the opportunity and incentive to write something that could really use language to write about the way I felt about a searing emotional experience.

      Ensign S. took a very superciliously condescending attitude toward the accident that I had been involved in without knowing anything about it. He immediately and automatically assumed that I was an irresponsible, possibly drunken, sailor out for a joyride and probably debauching nice decent young girls. He rather treated me like a priest in the confessional. For your penance say 100 Our Fathers and 200 Hail Marys—and, for good measure—throw in 50 Credo in unum deums. Go and sin no more, yada, yada, yada. Or, more accurately, like an adult scolding an errant child or an aging schoolmarm having you write 100 times in your copybook:"I will not _________ (fill in the blank) in the future." I was assigned, I kid you not, to write an essay entitled “Why I should be a safe driver." 

     Well, why not simply wave a red cape in front of the bull? 

 

 

      The essay, as I remember it (I wish I had kept a copy) was very simple. I simply and straightforwardly repeated the story, much as I did here, concluding with something like you never know what it's like until one day it happens to YOU (without the caps, though). Interestingly enough I had no more trouble with Ensign S. after that, and I was transferred from the Salinan soon afterward to my last ship the USS Kaskaskia AO-27.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 13 – the bubble burst

      You wonder, at least I do, when you pass an automobile accident on the road, what it feels like to be on the inside of the car. I don't honestly remember too clearly really. I guess, at first, we were all in a state of shock. You wonder what the hell happened if you aren't unconscious or dead. Then you begin to assess your physical condition; you think of getting out of the damn car before it blows up or some damn thing; you check with the other passengers to see how they are; little by little you feel some relief that no one seems seriously injured, except, wait a minute, there is no response from Nancy. Then you notice the bloodstained rearview mirror that is jammed into the shattered windshield and the inert young woman bleeding from the head slumped against the back of the seat.

     Another thing you may wonder, upon sighting an accident, is how the police and ambulance seem to magically appear, but magically and mercifully they do appear on the scene and take all decisions out of your quite incapable hands. The police gathered the necessary information and surmised what had happened. The woman who was driving the other car was unlicensed and uninsured. Why she stopped in the middle of entering the highway was unclear, panic and inexperience I supposed. The shock of impact apparently caused her to hit the accelerator and careen her car into the drainage ditch on the other side of the highway. Fortunately, neither she not her little boy were seriously injured. In my car, however, Nancy remained unconscious. The ambulance arrived and took her to a nearby hospital. Meanwhile, the Ts had been contacted by the police and notified of the accident and that their daughter had been taken to the hospital.

     My old '55 Ford couldn't be driven and had to be towed to a garage where I would later make arrangements to have it repaired. Finally, all the tiresome paperwork was finished and I went to the hospital where Nancy had been taken and the others had also gone. I don't remember how I got there, perhaps the police had been kind enough to drive me. I was dreading having to face the Ts and now that the shock was wearing off feeling pretty depressed, but I steeled my nerves to face the music. I was expecting anger, and accusations and recriminations of all sorts in my feverish brain.

     Everybody was there when I walked in. As I approached I fell apart and kept apologizing over and over. Everyone assured me, over and over, that it wasn't my fault and no one blamed me, that my quick braking and swerving reactions had probably substantially reduced the force of the impact and prevented a much worse outcome. They told me that Nancy had regained consciousness and had incurred a mild concussion and bruised forehead, but that she would make a complete recovery and there would be hardly any scarring.

     I contacted my ship and requested a few days leave of absence to negotiate repairs for my '55 Ford. The other guys went back to Key West and I stayed on at the Ts. When the details were ironed out I went back to Key West by bus, alone. I was in pretty low spirits with a crippled car in a garage back in Miami facing a pretty hefty repair bill. The other party, as I mentioned, was uninsured. I don't remember if had collision insurance for my own car, probably not, so the entire cost of repairs would have to come out of my own pocket. I was in no mood for the patronizing reception I got from my division Ensign when I came back on board the Salinan.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 12 – almost like one of the family

     Ireturned to Kendall, sometimes with shipmates, sometimes just me, many times in the ensuing months. The T.s were like a second family. I stayed overnight on weekends on several occasions. Carole and I took a liking to each other and it might have turned more serious under different circumstances, but she was in college and I was still in the Navy, stationed in Key West, only coming around from time to time. Sexual mores in those days were not as casual as they became as a result of the social revolutions of the 60s and 70s. My future prospects and whereabouts were not conducive to establishing a stable relationship. We were less than lovers and more than friends although we came close to the former one night on the beach. But that was special and will remain so.

Mary jumping the hurdles

      The T.s had a large property, around two acres as I mentioned earlier, and they kept a horse. Much of the backyard was a corral and, of course, contained a stable for the horse. Mary, the youngest, was an avid rider and jumper. She won several prizes jumping hurdles in equestrian competitions. 

Hallandale Beach

      Unfortunately, the perhaps inevitable serpent turned up in paradise. On one of my weekend trips up to Miami, this time with a couple of ship buddies, we took the three younger T children to Hallandale Beach, some 25 miles up the coast from downtown Miami, in my old '55 Ford. After a fun-filled day at the beach we were heading back to Kendall on the Homestead Extension of the Florida Turnpike. There were six people in the car: I was driving, Nancy, the second girl, was in the middle of the front seat and a buddy was next to the passenger door. Ricky and Mary, the two youngest kids and another buddy were in the back seat. 

      I was driving along in the outside lane heading south on the turnpike doing around 50 or 60 mph, within the speed limit. I noticed another car ahead on the left stopped on a road that crossed the 4-lane highway apparently waiting to get onto the highway. Suddenly, this car moved into my lane and stopped halfway onto the highway—directly in my path. I reacted immediately, hit the brakes hard and swerved to the right to avoid a head on collision into the other car's passenger side door (I could see a small child in the passenger seat), but it was too late to avoid hitting the other car altogether. My left front fender slammed into her right front fender avoiding a head on but still making a significant impact. Somehow, the driver of the other car hit the accelerator and sent her car plunging into a ditch on the other side of the highway. My old Ford was dead in the water, leaking radiator fluid onto the road. 

      In the car it was chaos. I had managed to throw my hands in front of my face before I slammed into the steering wheel and only bruised my forehead. The people in the back seat were scattered and jumbled about but didn't appear to be hurt. The guy in the passenger seat also managed to throw his hands up and avoided serious injury. Nancy, however, hadn't seen it coming fast enough to react and banged her head hard on the rearview mirror and was knocked unconscious.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 11 – getting acquainted

     If you can imagine a fairy tale castle, writ small and transposed from the Bavarian alps to the palmetto strewn plains of South Dade—that's what the T's home seemed like to me. It was, actually, only a 4-bedroom ranch with a couple of bathrooms set and secluded in a palm treed driveway and landscaped with other tropical plants and shrubbery. And—the cherry on the sundae—a private pool right off the living room. It was as though I had done my time in purgatory and gone, at last, to heaven. It was Florida living, close to the ground (no cellar) and open to the sky. People lived half in half out of doors the climate was so genial. Well, it wasn't completely “open to the sky”, Florida has humongous mosquitoes, the pool was screened. (Just so you don't think I had gone completely batty.)

       Those very friendly people, the T family, that we had met at a roadside drive-in in the Keys, turned out to be the real McCoy. They had been sincere when they gave us their address and phone number and invited us to visit their home in Kendall. On a weekend pass, not too long after we had met Mom and the four kids, we hopped in my '55 Ford and headed up to Miami. We thought better of just appearing on their doorstep in case they had had a change of heart. Mr. T had not been at the drive-in and we thought that maybe he, having attractive young daughters of a certain age, might not be so enthralled with the idea of having three sailors in his home—given the image we believed many people had of sailors. When we got to Kendall and before driving up to their address we called them from a phone booth along the highway.

       There had been no need to worry, they sounded delighted to hear from us and that we were calling from a nearby phone booth. Of course, we didn't say that we had come especially to see them, but that we had a weekend pass and decided to come to Miami and check out the beaches and since we were already in the area thought we'd drop in and say hello, blah, blah, blah.... That gave them the opportunity to back out of the invitation and us to save face. But, no, they insisted that we come to their house. We did so, as I said before, “with bells on.”

       The house sat on a couple acres of land, as we soon discovered, and it was like nothing any of us had experienced before being all northerners. Our houses up north were closed in with cellars and central heating or cast-iron stoves. But this was tropical living. We were ushered into the house and immediately saw that you could just step out of the living room into the screened in swimming pool—don't forget the mosquitoes. The whole living room wall was made of sliding doors that could be pulled aside to leave the whole side of the house open to the pool. It gave the feeling of living out of doors, yet sheltered from the elements—the ultimate evolution of the cave.

        Mr. T was at home this time and he turned out to be a terrific guy and host. He was an airline pilot with Pan American Grace Airways. His regular runs were between Lima, Peru and Miami International Airport. Drinks were mixed and poured and we all relaxed and got acquainted. Finally, someone asked if we had brought our swimming trunks and would we like to use the pool. We had and we would like very much indeed, thank you so much for asking. (I suppose they couldn't have missed the fact that we kept glancing at the pool and oohing and aahing about how great it was to have a pool right outside your living room.) There was a cabana on one end of the pool and we were invited to change into our swimming trunks...and would we like to stay for dinner?   

      “Oh, no, no, we couldn't possibly put to you to so much trouble, thanks anyway. And we do have to get back to Key West.”

      “Right away?”

      “Well, er, no, not right away, necessarily, but.....”

      “That settles it, you're staying for dinner.”

      “Well, if you insist, we'd love to.”

      “Are you hungry?”

      “Are you kidding, we're starving!”

      “Good! We'll do a barbeque. Have another drink, jump in the pool....

To be continued...

Looking Back: 10 – chance encounters of the best kind

     Sometimes something wonderful happens when you least expect it

US Naval Base, Norfolk, VA

      Perhaps Norfolk had a a negative view of sailors because of the size of the naval base there and the ratio of military personnel to the actual civilian population. At any rate, Norfolk didn't make us feel like “America's finest” and the “good” people tended to shun us. It was really two different worlds and rarely did the twain meet—if ever. The feeling was mutual and that was why I couldn't get out of Norfolk fast enough and landed in the clink. Henceforth, I'll put Norfolk and negativity to rest once and for all.

like sunshine emerging from a dark cloud

      Florida was like sunshine emerging from a dark cloud and so seemed the people. The Key West Naval Air Station was a small naval base at the southern end of the Florida keys. Sailors were not tainted with the brush of notoriety and bad reputation. Key West was a pretty laid back, sleepy mañana kind of town, hospitable to people of all persuasions—including sailors.

Naval Air Station,  Key West, FL

      Being stationed in Key West was the next best thing to being on permanent holiday. Except for my dipstick Ensign of broken bridge wing fame, duty on the Sally was pretty hassle free. We were in the auxiliary service fleet, rigid regulations of dress and protocol were relatively relaxed. It was as nearly idyllic (from my decidedly non gung-ho point of view) as it is possible to be in the military. We were between wars—hot ones that is. The Korean War had ended with an armistice in 1953. In 1954, President Eisenhower stated the “domino theory” related to Southeast Asia after the defeat of France at Dienbienphu. The paranoid fear was that other SE Asian nations would fall, like dominoes, to Communism. The Geneva Convention (1956) had split Vietnam in two (North and South), and the first American military advisers and trainers arrived in Saigon laying the foundation for America's evolving involvement. But the debacle it was fated to become was still just a blip on the horizon and we were enjoying the Florida sunshine.

typical roadside establishments in the Keys

      A couple of my shipmates and I were on one of our usual sojourns up the Keys. I think it was around Key Vaca, but I'm not sure. At any rate one Key was pretty much like another along the Overseas Highway, basically lined with drive in restaurants and motels. Key Vaca is situated about halfway along the Overseas Highway between Key Largo and Key West. We had stopped for something to eat at one of these drive ins and were eating, drinking and shooting the bull. There was what appeared to be part of a family (no man) sitting at a nearby table, an obvious mother and four kids (three girls and a boy). The oldest girl was about my age, maybe a little younger, and very attractive. The whole family, as a matter of fact, was attractive. Assuming they wouldn't want to associate with a bunch of sailors we pretended not to notice them.

     All of sudden, the mother addressed us quite boldly and straightforwardly asked us if were trying to avoid them. I guess our masquerade of pretended indifference was pretty transparent. Taken aback, we turned and started laughing. I said something bantering like: “No we're just minding our own business and keeping out of trouble. Hope we weren't being too loud and disturbing your lunch.” That broke the ice and we all started chatting. 
 

painting "At the Silver Slipper, Key West," by Waldo Peirce

     Peg, the mother, was very open and vivacious, but my eye kept roving back to Carole, the eldest. They were from Kendall, a suburb in Dade County south of downtown Miami, and, like us, they were out for a drive in the country—or, I should say, a drive in the Keys. Mr. T., who was an airline pilot, was away on a flight. We told them that we were sailors stationed in Key West and, lo and behold, no “Oh!” and no raised eyebrows. We were being treated like ordinary guys instead of dissipated sailors and it felt wonderful.

      And then, beyond belief, these terrific people invited us to visit them at their home in Kendall and actually gave us their address and telephone number. I think I said something like: 
    
      "Thanks. We don't get up to Miami very often, but if we're ever in your neighborhood we'll give you a call."  

     And, then silently, to myself:

     “We'll be there with bells on!”

To be continued....

Looking Back: 9 - look out below

"Sally" with uncrumpled port wing (with life preserver)

      The funniest event, in the way that seeing somebody slip on a banana peel is funny, aboard the Salinan was something that happened when we were chasing a barge that had gotten loose in a hurricane and was drifting around in the Gulf of Mexico. We were assigned to go out, find it, capture it and tow it back to port. The only problem was the hurricane wasn't entirely over yet and the sea was still pretty rough with very large swells. Large waves tend to bounce and throw the ship around, whereas swells cause it to roll queasily back and forth.

      We proceeded out of Key West, heading into the Gulf looking for this wayward barge. Eventually, with the help of radar and sharp-eyed lookouts up in the crow's nest (not really in the crow's nest, only figuratively—crow's nests went out with tall sailing ships), we found the old rust bucket helplessly bobbing around and rolling in the swells of the hurricane's aftermath. Needless to say, we, too, were rock and rolling enough to make American Bandstand dancers look completely arrhythmic. (American Bandstand was a popular rock 'n roll TV dance program in the 1950s.)

ooops!

      I was on the wheel, as usual in tight circumstances, as we approached this rusty behemoth barge that was at least twice as big as the Sally. Our dipstick ROTC Ensign “had the con” (he was in charge of the operation) as we pulled in alongside the barge. The idea was to get a tow cable over and secure the barge so that it could be towed back to port. I looked out the wheelhouse portholes (windows to landlubbers) and could see this humongous derelict rolling dangerously close when I heard some shouting from the deck below that we were getting to close and should pull back before we collided. The Ensign, confused, didn't know what to do so, too late, the captain took over the con. By then, precious seconds had been wasted and the gap between us and the barge had narrowed too much. We were bobbing up and down and rolling left and right and so was the barge. Then the bobs and rolls lined up just right. Up came the barge and down we rolled onto it with our port (left) side bridge wing which caught and was pried up like the lid on a freshly opened tin can. Fortunately, everyone on the bridge wing scrambled quickly enough and no one was injured—except the Sally with her broken wing.

      Our Ensign, red faced, quietly slunk away. Being an officer, he would not be reprimanded publicly by the captain in front of enlisted men like me. But I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in the officers' quarters later on. The captain was not happy.

      After the collision the deck crew managed to get a line over to the barge and board it. The towing cable was attached and we headed back to port with what must have looked like a very funny profile from behind with one crumpled bridge wing sticking up in the air. And I could only imagine one very unhappy and humiliated Ensign confined in the wardroom to his bunk with an ice pack on his head.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 8 – Eldorado

Cibola

      In 1513, Ponce de Leon, a Spanish Conquistador probably looking for gold and slaves, named it La Florida—the flowery land. And it really seemed like the fabled land of Cibola, the mythical golden land that attracted the Conquistadors in the 16^th Century, after the sailor-phobic Norfolk, Virginia area. 

Biscayne Blvd., Miami

      We rolled into Miami on US Rte. 1 in brilliant blue sky and sunshine; Biscayne Boulevard lined with coconut palms on both sides as far as the eye could see, behind the palms glass-covered buildings glittering in the sun seemingly made of gold—the mythical golden land of Eldorado just like in the travel posters. We rolled down Biscayne in a kind of delirium of ecstasy unable to absorb the beauty of the scene quickly enough to satisfy our appetite for...what?...rain after a long drought.
 

Fountainbeau Hotel, Miami Beach

      Miami and Miami Beach in those days were already, of course, well-known tourist resort towns, but they were still not overly spoiled by too much emphasis on tourism (or, at least, didn't seem that way to us), and the alligators weren't romping in your swimming pool yet, either. At any rate we didn't have the kind of money or time to truly sample the delights of Miami; we were due to report to our new assignments in Key West and were compelled to continue south on US Rte. 1 all the way to the tip of Florida and across the Overseas Highway to Key West, the southern end of US Rte. 1.

Key West, Florida

      Gatch and I said good-bye when we arrived in Key West and went on to our new assignments, I to the USS Salinan.

      Did you ever meet someone you took an instant dislike to without ever having exchanged two words? That turned out to be the case with my division officer—a snotty ROTC wonder Ensign (lowest ranking officer) who gave himself credit for a lot more than he actually had on the ball. And, I suppose, the feeling was mutual—as far as the dislike not the on-the-ball part was concerned. I had, by now, more time and experience in the Navy and at sea than he did, but he was an officer and I was just a dumb swabbie as far as he was concerned (even though I was QM3 [3^rdClass Petty Officer] by then). Our denouement came later although our mutual antagonism occurred instantaneously.

drive in restaurant

      Life aboard the “Sally” was relatively leisurely paced so we had a lot of liberty time to enjoy the exotic locale of the Florida Keys, especially having a car on base. A couple of shipmate buddies and I used to jump in my old '55 Ford and drive along US 1, go to one beach or another often stopping at roadside restaurants for lunch or dinner before coming back to Key West and the Sally. Back in 1961, a more innocent time, some of these restaurants had catchy signs to attract the attention of passing cars like, for example, the interesting sculpture on the right. They may still have them to this day for all I know. 

To be continued...

Looking Back: 7 – a parting shot from Nofuck Virginia.

USS Salinan ATF-161

     In June, 1961, after a year and three months assigned to the USS Hoist another shipmate and I were transferred to Florida at the same time. My next ship was to be a fleet tugboat, even smaller than the Hoist, called the USS Salinan ATF-161, a glorified tugboat for towing operations on the open sea as opposed to within protected harbors and tighter spaces. The Salinan was homeported in Key West. The other guy, whose nickname was “Gatch”, and I both had cars and we decided to drive to Florida together in a sort of two-car caravan. We were both itching to get the hell out of Norfolk and excited about going to what in our minds was the fabled golden resort of Miami Beach, of swank hotels, great beaches and swaying palms—in short, paradise. We were only nineteen. 

       With our transfer documents in hand we left the base and headed out of Norfolk speeding and weaving in and out of the evening rush hour traffic in our haste to put distance between ourselves and the no-love-lost-between-us Nofuck Virginia. But Nofuck wasn't so eager to see our backs just yet it seems—it wanted to give us one final shake down. Accordingly, an alert state trooper caught us in the act and stopped us. Of course, we tried to bullshit our way out of it saying that we were sailors of the United States Navy fer Christ sake being transferred to Florida on emergency orders or some such line of nonsense. The trooper wasn't buying it and we expected to get a traffic ticket with X number of days to pay the fine. Oh no, not that simple! We were ordered to accompany him to the nearest precinct and any attempt to try and escape would be met with dire consequences.

       So, we were hauled in, booked for reckless driving and driving to endanger, etc., etc., and escorted to the drunk tank with its typical nightly haul of other derelicts. Gatch and I had to share a roughly 1.5 by 2.5 meter cell with one steel cot (no mattress) and open commode (no seat or seat cover) overnight before going before the judge in the morning. They had quite a neat little shake down operation going there thought I. It seemed to be an awful lot of trouble, time and expense for a mere traffic violation that would have resulted in a speeding ticket most any other place. But there we were, locked up for the night in a 2 x 4 cell with only one cot. Somehow we managed to sleep by putting our heads on opposite ends and feet beside our heads. Just delightful! 

      You can imagine what bedraggled condition we were in by the time we were marched to the courtroom and stood before the judge. We both got slapped with a hefty fine. I think it was around $50 in 1961 terms. That was highway robbery. Neither of us had enough cash on hand to pay our fines. The icing on the cake was that I, like ET, had to phone home, admit that I was in jail and needed $50 wired to me in care of the courthouse before I could get out and continue on my way to Florida. Of course, the cash was forthcoming in a matter of a couple hours and we continued more circumspectly on to the deep South without further incidents.

Looking Back: 6 – Bermuda

Bermuda - Tourism Promotion Video

on a scooter

the sand really is pink

       Bermuda in 1960 was a charming if sleepy colonial island attached to the British Commonwealth, noteworthy mostly, to us at least, for its clear water, pink sandy beaches and scooters. The big event for me was a chance to learn SCUBA diving with the ship's gear and expert divers. The first experience turned out to be terrifying. I didn't really understand that the air didn't flow freely, as does the normal air you breathe every day, into the mask. The instructors told us that you have to consciously suck in and exhale the air from the tank and to be careful not to hyperventilate. Oh, yeah, sure I thought, no problem. 

this a propane gas tank, of course

       Full of piss and vinegar and gung ho to jump in I donned my wet suit and hoisted the tank (felt like the picture on the right) onto my back, put on the fins and the mask. Ready, I thought to jump in, the instructor says just a minute, you forgot your lead weight belt. So, put on the belt and jump in to about 15 feet of water off a pier—and sink directly to the bottom like a ... well, like a lead weight. Shock. Can not resurface. The lead weights make it seem like I'm glued to the bottom. Hey, the air isn't flowing. Start to panic. Remember that you have to suck in...suck in...not enough air....suck in harder...still not enough air...begin to hyperventilate....start to freak out. Suddenly, an instructor appears, unhitches the belt and I bob to the surface gasping for air. Instructor laughs and says I told you not to hyperventilate. I'm furious: “Yeah, sure. You didn't tell me I wouldn't be able to get off the damned bottom though!” “Best way to learn. It's a lesson you won't soon forget, will you?” Mumbling to myself: “Bleeping a**hole.”

inside a decompression tank

       Being so intimately involved with the romantic idea of submarines while working on the SONAR submarine detection system, I got it into my head that I wanted to be a submariner. I must have been temporarily out of my mind. I suppose I wanted to upgrade my B-navy-sailor-in-the-service-fleet status to a “right stuff” warship sailor. I actually put in a written request to train for submarine duty. Since the Hoist had a decompression chamber (photo on left) on board that worked both ways—it could compress as well as decompress—the captain agreed to consider the transfer request if I would take a compression test. I agreed and entered the tank. As the depth simulation increased it got warmer and warmer and the weight of the pressure began to press on me and especially my eardrums. I was instructed to continually adjust the pressure in my ears my holding my nose and swallowing to pop the eardrum back into normal position. The pain in the ear canal and accompanying headache would become excruciating if I forgot the adjust and abated when I held my nose and swallowed. I succeeded in getting down to the required depth [several hundred feet below the surface] to pass the test and the tank was decompressed and I began to “surface” to normal sea level pressure. As it turned out, my request was denied because the Navy considered that I didn't have enough time left to serve to make the training required worth their while. So, I stayed in the dungaree navy as a service fleet sailor.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 5 – old enough to buy a car

USS Hoist ARS-40

     After only four months on the USS Pawcatuck I got transferred to my second ship, the USS Hoist ARS-40 in March, 1960. Like the Pawcatuck, the Hoist was home-ported in Norfolk. The Hoist was a salvage and rescue vessel that was adapted or modified to come to the rescue of sunken submarines, presumably with living survivors trapped on the ocean floor. Part of the crew were qualified deep sea divers as well as skilled SKUBA divers. The ship also had a decompression chamber designed to relieve people with the bends (a condition arising from dissolved gases coming out of solution into bubbles inside the body due to too rapid depressurization). In other words, if a man rescued from a sunken submarine, say, rises to the surface too quickly the too rapid depressurization causes bubbles to form in the body causing severe pain and possible death. In such a case, the man would be put into the decompression chamber and re-pressurized more slowly until his body was readjusted to normal surface atmospheric pressure. 

      I had turned 18 in December, felt confined by the Norfolk scene without wheels and decided to buy a car, my first. It was a 1955 Ford, just like the one in the photo on the right. Having a car was enormously liberating. Away from Norfolk, in civilian clothes, you could be yourself, whereas in the Norfolk area, even in civilian clothes people seemed to know you were a sailor and treated or shunned or exploited you accordingly. Sad to say, but there was little respect or honor for “our finest”, our boys in uniform, at least not in the Norfolk area where sailors were concerned. It wasn't unusual for us to travel as far as, say, Ohio, to a shipboard buddies hometown and be fixed up with local girls (non professionals) for a weekend. Driving half the night to get there and half the night to get back, staggering and bleary-eyed and back in uniform, aboard ship for Monday morning muster. But it was worth it to get out of Nofuck Virginia.

mushroom cloud over NYC (composite idea)

      We were in the midst of the Cold War and paranoia vis-a-vis the Soviet Union seemed, in retrospect, to be building towards the brinkmanship that was the Cuban Missile Crisis, still a couple years down the pike. There was concern that Soviet subs could easily reach the eastern seaboard of the United States and an early warning system seemed absolutely essential to prevent Manhattan from going up in a mushroom cloud. To this end a kind of wall of sound detection was laid on the ocean floor off shore from the US East Coast. These were a series of sonar submarine sound detection modules known as SOSUS a Sound Surveillance System. For several months the Hoist was engaged in laying these sonar modules on the ocean floor and we were berthed in Hamilton, Bermuda for the duration. 

Photo credit: http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/BE058429/mushroom-cloud-over-nyc-composite-idea

To be continued....

Looking Back: 4 – rude awakenings

1957 (Federal troops escorting the Little Rock Nine)

   The Pawcatuck's homeport was in Norfolk, Virginia. Small town hick from the northeast that I was, I had never had any contact with other than white people before joining the Navy. My first contact with Blacks, Asians and Hispanics was at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. This was 1959, before the sit ins, civil rights marches and urban riots of the 1960s. By this time the momentum toward civil rights for Blacks was well underway after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954; Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-56; Little Rock, Arkansas school integration, 1957.

       But, in 1959 there were still remnants of the old Jim Crow Laws in the South where I saw, for the first time, blatant racism depicted in “white” and “colored” signs in rest rooms, waiting rooms, restaurants, etc. I was growing up in more ways and more quickly than I had ever anticipated back in the old all white home town.

       Norfolk was affectionately, or, more accurately, sarcastically, called Nofuck, Virginia. The nickname referred to the attitude of decent girls who shunned sailors as a general rule and B-girls in the bar strips outside the bases who led us on for overpriced drinks and disappeared when the chips were down. There was another side to the sex scene in Nofuck that I was naïvely unaware of when I first arrived and soon fell into a trap, that is, trapped in a moving car with a huge merchant marine man trying to feel me up while driving.

        Lots of sailors, yours truly included, kept “civvies”, civilian clothes off base in lockers at the YMCA in town. We would leave the base in uniform as required, change to civvies to go on liberty, and change back to go back to the base. There was a bus stop just outside the Y. I had changed back into my uniform, one day, and was waiting for a bus when this car pulls up and a big macho looking and smiling man leans out the window and offers me a ride to the base. So, I thought, hey, a ride, sure, why not, and jumped in.

       We drove along exchanging the usual what's your name and where're you from introductions. Suddenly, there is this hand tentatively brushing my knee, which I moved to the side. But, the hand returned more insistently on the knee and traveling up my thigh. I pointedly removed the hand this time and I realized the man was rather drunk. Meanwhile, we were still on the road to the base and traveling too fast to do anything but tell this insistent gentleman with his hand back on my thigh that I wasn't interested and to let me out of the car. He refused and became more insistent both verbally and with his hands, and I became more angry, unceremoniously throwing his hand off me and demanding that he keep his goddamned hand to himself and stop and let me out of this fucking car. No soap.

       Now I realized that he had no intention of taking me to the base and figured he would turn off the main road at some point and drag me to a remote area and probably beat and rape if not kill me—he was big enough. I was scared. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer and the adrenalin was singing. I managed to keep my wits and decided to watch for my chance and hope that he would have to stop for a traffic light or at least slow down enough for me to jump out of the car when he inevitably, I was sure, would turn onto a road that didn't lead to the base.

        Soon enough, that's exactly what happened. He slowed down to turn without stopping but slow enough for me to take what I calculated was my most likely one and only chance to get away. When I opened the passenger door he tried to grab and stop me but I managed to jump out losing my white hat in the car in the process. To my relief the car kept on going. When I stopped rolling I checked for physical damage. I wasn't seriously injured, just a few cuts and bruises mostly on my hands and knees and tears in my clothes, but I was considerably shaken. I sat down on the curb and pulled myself together. When I had calmed down enough, I started thumbing a ride back to the base. Before too long another sailor picked me up and asked me why I was “out of uniform”. 

       I laughed and said: “I'm lucky that's all I'm out of!”, and told him the story.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 3 – bell bottom blues

      Just as I was born into a neither here nor there generation, I was also in the military between wars. The Korean War had ended in more or less a stalemate and a “peace treaty” had been signed inJuly 1953. It was the first of America's subsequent involvement in victory less wars, and tensions continued on the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere in the long Cold War. The United Nations commander in the Far East, General Mark W. Clark said at the time that he had "the unenviable distinction of being the first US Army commander to sign an armistice without victory." 

USS Pawcatuck AO-108 in refueling positi 

     I was a “dungaree Navy” sailor. All four of my ships were auxiliaries, ships that supplied the “right stuff” Navy (fighting ships like cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers). My four ships were in order of assignment: November 1959, USS Pawcatuck (AO-108); March 1960, USS Hoist (ARS-40); June 1961, USS Salinan (ATF-161); December 1961, USS Kaskaskia (AO-27). We were considered sort of B class sailors, the downstairs kitchen help to the upstairs nobility serving on warships. 

 

graphic of a 45º roll

      My first ship was a fleet oiler, the USS Pawcatuck AO [auxiliary oiler] 108, to which I was assigned in November, 1959 after a four-week training course in Newport, Rhode Island. People often asked me at the time if I ever got seasick. So, to put that one to rest, yes, I did get seasick on my first cruise, but that was the one and only time. I never got seasick again even in heavy seas with 30- and 40+-foot waves battering my second and much smaller ship (USS Hoist), pitching and rolling as much as 45º on the inclinometer (even hovering there just a bit too long with my nose practically in the water thinking she ain't gonna go back up). But she did!

      The experience of that storm was, oddly enough, strangely beautiful and exhilarating, with the wind shrieking in the rigging and the foaming crests of white-capped waves blowing spray high overhead; the bow of the ship plunging into the oncoming wave and the fantail hovering and dancing on the crest with her screws out of the water; the charcoal and white color of the sky and the deepest blue green water I've ever seen—except in the ship's wake where the color seemed a blend of jade and turquoise of an intense hue dappled with white foam that almost hurt your eyes with its brilliance.

      I was a Quartermaster, trained in Newport in celestial and electronic navigation and updating navigation charts. I also became an expert special quarters helmsman, steering the ship in tight situations such as coming in and out of ports, fueling at sea operations where there were three ships steaming side by side quite close to each other; us in the middle, usually an aircraft carrier on one side and a string of destroyers and cruisers coming and going on the other, being refueled and re-provisioned.

refueling at sea at close quarters

      I remember one incident during fueling operations. I was at the helm of the Pawcatuck, there was a carrier on the port (left) side and the smaller destroyers were coming up on the starboard side one after the other. I must have been daydreaming because the Pawcatuck started to close the distance between us and the carrier. In other words I was drifting to port on a collision course. Suddenly, I awoke with a start, when, from the port side bridge wing, the captain yelled at me: “Boucher! What the hell are you doing in there?” Looked out the wheelhouse window: “Oh, shit!” On instinct, without another word, I spun the wheel hard to starboard to stop the drift. It isn't easy to turn a sluggish tanker with its deep draft, and it's just as difficult to stop it once it starts to turn. In such a critical situation, with ships close on either side, the timing of the opposite rudder was critical. The captain had enough sense to leave me alone until I got the Paw stabilized and on a true course once again. I guess he must have been just as relieved as I was, because he merely took me off the wheel without the ass-chewing that I was, deservedly, expecting. I could have killed a lot of people. 

 

To be continued...

Looking Back: 2 - join the Navy and see the world

            My response to the restlessness and the push and tug of growing up and striking out from the bosom of the family (in view of the fact that we still had a military draft and not being particularly interested in carrying a rifle and slogging through mud and very much interested in “seeing the world”) was to enlist in the USNavy after graduating from high school in 1959. I was seventeen, feeling confined by small town life, restless, wanting to break out of my cocoon and, as I saw it, spread my wings, literally, on my first flight from Boston in a TWA airliner headed for Chicago and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. It felt like I had truly “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” as John Gillespie had described it in his poem High Flight.

        Of course, the Post Office posters and the recruiter's enlistment pitch turned out to be somewhat different from the reality of life in the military. Thus did I become, on the one hand, addicted to the lure and fascination of faraway places and, on the other, disenchanted with the regimentation of military life.

my dog tags - the nick is for inserting the
tag between your front teeth in case of death

        As a sailor I was something of a rebel with a cause—getting through my hitch with my independence of thought reasonably intact. It grew increasingly clear to me that I was being conditioned to be a faceless cog in a machine, a number on a dog tag where thought and opinion were discouraged while adherence to strict rules and regulations were demanded. Furthermore, as time passed and I became more familiar with the guys around me, I developed the strong impression that many re-ups (career sailors), far from being fierce warriors, were really dependent type personalities who needed to be told what to do and when to do it. I also began to realize that I liked to write (thanks to a snotty ROTC wonder Ensign who demanded that I write an essay about driving carefully after I had been invoved in a traffic accident that wasn't my fault). I think that what I considered his arbitrary treatment of me as if I were  a juvenile delinquent contributed to my determination not to submit to the unquestioning obedience required of a good soldier. In short, I was not and could never be a real soldier—and I knew it.

        But I got around. And I also got a tattoo either in Milwaukee or Chicago, I don't remember which. It was the de rigeur thing to do on our first day of liberty from Great Lakes. You were supposed to brag later how you got drunk and laid and so out of your head that the supposed pain of the tattoo needle didn't bother you a bit. Well, in fact, full disclosure, there was no getting laid and I wasn't even drunk when I got the tat. Everybody invariably asks: "Did it hurt?" No. It stung like a series of mosquito bites, but it took a couple weeks to heal the scabs.  

       I was assigned to four ships in three years, sailed the Atlantic and Caribbean. Memorable [both for positive and negative reasons] ports included my stateside homeports: Norfolk, Virginia, Key West, Florida and Jacksonville, Florida. Overseas ports included Hamilton, Bermuda, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Charlotte Amalie, Virgin Islands and Funchal, Madeira off the coast of Morocco in North Africa.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 1 - a generation neither here nor there

As Charles Dickens said of David Copperfield—and perhaps himself as well: I am born.

me

Aren't we all!

Mom and Dad

I wasn't born a Baby Boomer. I must have been born a vagabond. In those days we were just born into an unlabeled generation. The “neither here nor there generation” you could say. I arrived on the planet on the cusp of the Great Depression and World War II—December, 1941. It seems, in retrospect, that I was born into a world entering an era of perpetual war, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, sometimes in conscious thought, sometimes buried in the unconscious disturbing only occasional dreams, but always there as a kind of painted backdrop to a stage set.

me - 8-years old

I don't remember much of my earliest years (nothing actually) and only know what I've been told. I lived in a bilingual home (English and French) because we lived with my recently widowed grandmother until I was about 4- or 5-years old. Grandma was an immigrant from Montreal in Quebec Province, Canada who spoke no English. She was a widow because my grandfather died from a head injury incurred when he hit his head on a low tree branch while riding in an open trolley. When my grandmother remarried she sold the house and moved out. We moved into a cold water, unheated (that was normal in those days) 2-bedroom tenement in another part of town and I entered the first grade at the local parish school. My younger brother was born in the same year, 1946.    

Elvis Presley in the 50s

We came up in the era of Rock 'n Roll--Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis Presley idolized by millions of swooning hysterical fans. There were Father Knows Best,Leave it to Beaver and American Bandstand on that marvel of marvels, the TV. I was around 12-years old when we got our first one. Before that, I remember listening to programs like The Shadow and Fibber McGee on the radio in the kitchen. The 1950s were a kind of age of innocence, or maybe it just seemed that way because we were still young and relatively innocent to the world outside our small industrial city. It was the time of my first high school (unrequited) crush, "duck's ass" haircuts, record hops, bowling night, wet dreams, pegged pants and white buck shoes. Some of the lucky ones had cars, but not me. We swam on weekends at my uncle's “camp” on a lake and ice skated on the frozen pond just down the street in the winter.

James Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause

The seemingly placid surface of the 50s began to show a few ripples, troublingly and darkly, in Rebel Without a Cause at the movies. James Dean epitomized the angst of growing up with pablum for breakfast in a sunny TV kitchen (the real “morning in America”?) and the aimlessness and confusion over what to do with a life seemingly without challenges (other than seeking thrills in driving cars over a cliff in the flicks). And then, when I was 16, Brigitte Bardot breathtakingly appeared in shocking semi-nudity in the then notorious (now, what was all the fuss about?) French film (et dieu crea la femme) And God Created Woman. There were two movie theaters practically next door to each other on Main Street in our town. One was showing And God Created Woman, the other was showing Walt Disney's Bambi. My cousin and I told our parents that we were going to see Bambiand, of course, went into the other theater instead.

Brigitte Bardot in et dieu crea la femme

Around this time my parents were building their dream home. My father, who died in 1986, was a carpenter. In high school I was interested in drawing and took a mechanical drawing class as an elective for three years. Part of the class involved drawing blueprints and with Dad's guidance we designed the “dream house”. We worked together building it on weekends when my father became very ill with bleeding ulcers. To help supplement the family income and while still in high school I went to work part time at my uncle's small furniture making factory doing a bit of everything that didn't have to do with dangerous machinery, but mostly in the shipping department. And so, the 50s played out not altogether as carefree as they had seemed earlier in the decade.

To be continued...