Love Story

 

Fred L. Miller, age 75, of Gore, VA, died Friday, October 18, 2013, at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD).

He was a long way from home. He got to the Charm City from the lovely Shenandoah Valley by medevac helicopter piloted by a veteran Army Blackhawk pilot and accompanied by two hot EMTs: one each, blonde and brunette.

My pal Annie thought he was going to live, since that was the opinion of the physicians in Winchester. She took pictures thinking she would have fun teasing him about pimping his ride, his last as it turns out.

I was stunned when I got the news. I am one of Annie’s kids, part of a long extended family over whom she bestowed love and kindness (and a certain stern discipline, when required).

We were the crowd back in the bullpen, the nestled desks of the Office of Legislative Affairs arranged in open rows. No cubes for us, just desks and computers and a fractious Congress to deal with. I have no idea how I got there, but the usual candidate for a job in OLA was a certain flair for human relations, mastery of a warfare skill in Aviation, or Surface Line or Submarines, or part of the infrastructure that keeps the Navy bounding across the waves. Communications. Logistics. Even Spooks.

Anyway, as you well know, the Executive Branch cannot lobby the Congress. That is illegal. What we did was provide necessary services to the members, Committees of Authorization, and their key staff. In other words, we had the opportunity to serve as travel agents for all those important fact-finding trips the Members like to take when not occupied with pressing affairs here in the capital.

Annie ran the front office, and served the long line of Captains who attempted to control the chaos of the back office. Decades of Captains, and hundreds of us “kids,” mostly up-and-coming three stripers. She would not blink at the prospect of getting a call for help from me in Rangoon or Pyongyang, or Carl on some mission to a Balkan war zone.

I have written before about her girlhood in Marshal Tito’s Yugoslavia, and the adventures of her Dad, the bold Army attaché, told by her Mom, who I was privileged to interview prior to her passing. But that was hardly the biggest adventure of her life, which was her marriage to Fred, and the family they founded together. There were some challenges, but nothing that the indomitable couple could not handle.

So when she wrote tersely to inform her very large family that Fred was gone…well, I blanched.

She amplified the situation later, providing a SITREP the way she might have managed any other crisis in the Pentagon:

“Right now am too busy to let the reality of Fred’s sudden departure set in. The funeral home attached quite a sense of urgency about identity theft. Skeezy bastards! Pretty sure I’ve threatened everyone into believing there will be hell to pay if… One of the first things was to have Fred removed from the voter rolls.

Here is the short version:

12 Oct Fred started feeling puny at Great granddaughter’s BD party.
13 Oct Felt slightly worse but we managed to have our planned dinner guests.

16 Oct Dragged him to doc’s office. You see a PA when it’s an unscheduled appt. She could find nothing – although Fred was having difficulty breathing. “Here’s an inhaler – come back Friday if you don’t feel better.”

17 Oct Wife said FT we’re off to the ER. By this time he was gasping for air and could barely walk.

ER took him right away. Doc literally skidded into the room and said: “You have acute leukemia. The type you have only 1.2% of the population gets.” His hematologist said UVA or Johns Hopkins are the only two places that can help him. I requested and Johns Hopkins accepted him.

He had no immune system, almost no red blood cells (reason he couldn’t breath). His severely compromised immune system allowed pneumonia to set in. Then his kidneys shut down then the domino effect took over and my sailor was gone.

And so it goes. He lived a good life, he didn’t suffer and he went quickly.

Now, if I can resist the overwhelming urge to bitch slap a certain PA into the next decade I’ll be fine!

We met in 1969 and married in 1971. Am grateful for the time we had together.”

There is one more bit- Fred was a Navy Chief, an African American and a great guy. Their long lover affair was not altogether common in 1969, at least not in Virginia. Loving v. Virginia, the case that held the Old Dominion’s miscegenation laws unconstitutional, was decided in 1967.

The rest of it? Here it is: Fred was born in 1938 in Roanoke, VA, the son of the late Henry and Rosa Miller. He was a 1957 graduate of Lucy Addison High School. Fred enlisted in the United States Navy in 1957, retiring in 1979 during which time he served in Vietnam and achieved the near-mythic rank of Chief Petty Officer.

Mr. Miller was a member of Sweet Union Baptist Church, Roanoke, Virginia. Fred was a loving husband, father and friend to many. In his spare time he enjoyed all sports especially golfing, as well as the beautiful mountains of Virginia.

He married Annie on May 22, 1971, in Arlington, VA.

Surviving with his wife is a son, Christopher Scott Miller and wife, Tina of Chantilly, VA, one grandchild, one great grandchild, sisters; Stella Grant, Charlene Randolph and Narcissus Bishop, and brothers; Gordon Miller and Dennis Miller, as well as many nieces, nephews cousins and many close friends.

He was preceded in death by a son, Gregory Michael Miller, and a brother, Jerry Miller.

Fred’s Family will be conducting services at a later date in Roanoke, Virginia. Interment will follow in Arlington National Cemetery.
Contributions to honor the memory of Fred Miller may be made to St. Jude Children’s Hospital, 262 Danny Thomas Place, Memphis, TN 38105 or Wounded Warriors Foundation, PO Box 75817, Topeka, KS 66675.

I will not make it to Roanoke, but I will be at Arlington when the time comes, along with a couple hundred of Fred’s best friends.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Orange is the New Black

I felt pretty productive by the time I ambled on to the end of the day. The light was lowering, the temperature had climbed to nearly seventy, the trees were nearing some spectacular colors and the sky was Culpeper Blue with a few puffy white clouds. Raptors wheeled in the air above the farm.

I was wondering whether I should shave. That is about where I wanted to be, except I was thinking for a word that rhymes with “orange.”

Orange County is just down the road from the farm; it is a nice place and even better insulated than Culpeper from the loonies up North. I thought I might try to catch and episode of that new television show- you know, “Orange is the New Black,” which is supposed to be pretty good. I thought it was a show about hunting, or like Duck Dynasty, since the folks over at the Target and the Walmart on the Big Box end of town are stocking up on Hunter’s Orange to avoid getting shot out in the woods late next month.

The black-powder rifles are legal on Friday, though I have found the aficionados of the old technology are fewer and more like bow hunters (they are out there now) than the high-velocity crowd.

I don’t hunt, and won’t so long as the Martin’s superstore is open over in town. I don’t rule it out, should desperate times require it and the dry food stock be running thin, but at the moment the critters are comfortable where they are and I am content to leave them there.

There are issues out in the country, though. The Russo-Socotra compound backs up to State land- largely scrub and an excellent habitat for wildlife. One of my rural Coon-Ass Counselors, a retired Master Chief Boatswains mate, had some tough questions for the city slicker Socotra:

“Is this your first deer season out on the farm? Do you know if you need to post your property to keep hunters in “hot pursuit” from shooting across your property or from making a kill on your property while shooting from other property and crossing your property to retrieve it?”

I was thinking about that when I had the Husky on my back blowing leaves into the woods on the east pasture. I should post the property, though this will be the fifth deer season I have been on the land. If I ever get horses that is only smart. My pal went on:

“Then there is the case of the deer shot on say a nearby hunting lease that wanders wounded onto your property, perhaps crossing to another private property to actually die with hunters trailing. May these trailing hunters cross your property without permission? Sometimes the laws or lack there of can be surprising.

In Louisiana a lot of people have beach-front property. They consider the beach a private possession, but under Louisiana law fishermen have the right to sail right up on their beach, careen and repair their hulls and dry their nets. Where hunters and landowners rights aren’t clearly spelled out you need to have clear personal policy, possibly announced by some strategic signage.

Personally I would actually encourage hunters to retrieve deer dying on my property or allow trackers to cross it (gun’s empty, and breaches open where applicable) to follow the wounded. That helps insure that harvested deer count as harvested and don’t just die opening the door for hunters to kill more than their possession limit, and keep the land owner from having to process dead animals. BUT PREVENTING HUNTERS FROM SHOOTING INTO OR ACROSS YOUR PROPERTY SHOULD BE A PRIORITY.

I had to agree with that- and if there are large animals of my own around, that is an absolute priority.

“Hunting deer in these exurban neighborhoods where the habitat is laced with small farms and estates is best done with archery equipment and shotguns. If anybody is out there with a 30-06 and misses there is no telling when that round will ultimately end up even when fired in dense brush.

Stay out of the woods in deer hunting season, remember quite a few of the leaves are red and orange at this time of the year (at least in Virginia, not here we ‘re in the eighties still and live oak, magnolia, short leaf pine and sable palm, palmetto, and yucca don’t lose their leaves or change color, neither does anything else unless we get an early frost, the deciduous trees just sort of gradually brown out and go bare about January and greens up again the second week of February) you may not stand out as much as you think or emit the level of danger signal that you think.

We shoot very few hunters in Louisiana, I think because the hunting vests actually are visible and unusual. Oh well, let me get off my soap box, before I joined the Navy in my teens and discovered the wonderful religion of boatswainsmat-tology I actually wanted to grow up to be a Louisiana conservation officer.”

I never felt that compelled to go out in the woods wearing bright colors with all those other armed citizens out there, but in the country, I guess Orange is just the new Black, and I am going to be wearing it anytime I am south of the barn for the month of November, anyway.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra
Twitter: @jayare303

All Engines, Large and Small

Sorry- I was going to scribble something profound and moving this morning, replete with emotive imagery and passion. There is plenty to talk about, after all, what with the collective bill of goods being peddled back up in the Emerald City, but the hell with it.

The road to the barn is paved with good intentions, right?

The project de jour yesterday was the resurrection of Small and Large Engines yesterday, or at least the intention thereto, and one thing just lead to another when the little Husky fired up its motor after spending the night on the front porch next to the Dwarf.

So, it was the afternoon before in the dimness of the barn. I had a bag of things acquired in town to accomplish the task. The Turf Tiger started fine, I had to move it to accommodate the JG’s Ford; the blue stinking oil-gas mixture almost made me nauseous, and the Ford itself, which was running, all in the center aisle of the barn, and the raw smell of the premium gas in the new container filled with care at the Martins Supermarket complex along with the trickle charger.

There is nothing the Nanny State can’t get at, BTW. The new gas containers have a fail-safe nozzle with an intricate twisting lock that is so secure that it will not permit gas to actually pour out. But that discovery was sort of in the middle of something else.

Once I had a Rube Goldberg lash up from the 12 volt batteries to outlets with the chargers somewhere in between, I ventured into the back of the packed garage to fish out the dust-covered 130mph Husqvarna blower. It is a nifty thing, purchased Up North when I arrived on one of the Raven and Bib Mama Support missions to find the lake-effect wind had built a mound of leaves in front of the garage nearly as tall as I am, and neatly bounded by the Venturi effect of the gale around the corners of the structure.

Damn. So, that day it was off to the Home Depot to bite the bullet and get the back-pack gas blower.

I am sure you understand. We have had it with electrically-powered lawn machines (and cars, for that matter, but that is a topic for some other day). I will never forget the hundred foot extension cord that was part of one of Raven’s periodic experiments in New Ways to Do Things Efficiently. It had no less than twenty splices from being run over with the blades of the electric lawn mower. I have no idea why I was not Speedy Electric with all that black tape holding the severed copper together.

And don’t get me started on tripped over that goddamned cord with the electric leaf blower.

Anyway, I dispensed with that mass of leaves in Michigan by stripping it systematically with the 130mph artificial wind, blowing them all over the bluff and down toward the Bay. Then I threw it in the back of one of the rented SUVs that I used to get back and forth, and eventually the machine made it to the farm to gather dust lo these last two years.

Being committed to small and large engines anyway, I decided to fire it up, which had meant purchasing the gas container that does not pass gas, actually, and then the stop at the gas pump to top off the Ford for the winter, and attempting to turn myself into the human torch monkeying with the gas can and the little filler hole to the gas tank, and then realizing I had no idea where the little rubber button was located to bleed the air out of the carburetor so it would start, which it wouldn’t, and then had to go on line to find a Husqvarna owner’s manual while the Turf Tiger belched blue smoke out of the barn, conveying the idea that perhaps I was going to succeed in burning down the structure, or myself if I dared light up a Lucky, and the whole thing was a nut-roll that culminated in pouring a drink and leaving the blower out on the porch.

Well, I got up from a witty email response to address the Great Concerns of the Day to see if the dew-covered machine I had left on the porch would magically start this morning, just in passing, since I had a bunch of caustic chemicals sitting in the downstairs toilet to try to remove that irritating rust-ring around the water level that comes from the high iron content of my well water.

I tried another couple switchology tricks on the blower while I wondered if there was a box that had rubber gloves in it because I didn’t want to put my hands in the thing, you know, and goddamned if the Husky didn’t fire up.

Well, never let a crisis go to waste, right?

So, I blew leaves until the gas tank ran dry and I am pleased as punch.

Anyway, I have to get organized and get out of here due to a foolish commitment elsewhere, but I will be back tomorrow. I think a tipping point is at hand- I can do the pastures and the lawn with the Tiger and the Husky; I need an industrial-grade weed eater, also a gas model, but that can be a project for the Spring, when the snows of winter have gone, and maybe we can get on that season of hope again, you know?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Deer in the Pastures

You can feel the season in the air. The foliage at the farm is turning, maroon and orange and bright yellow, and the deer are in the pastures, maybe getting a last bite of clover before the Men in Orange come for them in a couple weeks. East of the Blue Ridge, the bag limit for deer shall be two a day, six a license year. Of the six deer limit, no more than three may be antlered deer and at least three must be antlerless deer like this one. It is early archery season at the moment, so I was comfortable not wearing orange, but will alter my pattern of life when the muzzle-loading season starts next week, and for sure when the high-velocity rifles are permitted, 16-30 November.

I can feel the stress of the city leaking out. I got down in the early afternoon, a little ahead of the Sunday Rush on I-66, which rivals that of the normal working week. I walked the property on arrival to see if anything was amiss, or critters had penetrated any of the perimeters.

A brief spate of alarm spiked when I saw the office door was ajar on the side of the garage, and I walked over to see what might be inhabiting the boxes that came down from the Little Village By the Bay.

Nothing seemed out of order, but one never knows. The Turf Tiger was still hooked to the trickle-charger in the barn, and the JG’s Ford was still parked phlegmatically in front of it. I resolved to take it into town and top off the fuel tank in preparation for the cold weather to come, and maybe pick up another charger to keep all the batteries happy.

(Whitetail grace as she became aware of my presence).

I looked back up the slope from the outbuildings, and thought just how much I like this place far from the Beltway.

I wandered over to the Russians for a glass of White from the Old House winery at cocktail hour, and we talked about the horses where the Middle Russian and her daughter are taking riding lessons. The Corey the big handsome Andalusian former stallion was the mount for the adult rider, and a little Bay named Cooper was the ride for the Princess.

The Middle Russian showed me a picture of the Princess with one of the Croftburn Farms lambs, whose fate may be pre-ordained, but darn cute at the moment:

(The Russian Princess and lamb.)

I got up early, but not as crazy-early as I do back in adrenaline-land, and the second I logged on to the net my pals started to drag me back into the Decline and Fall of the West.

Don’t get me wrong. I think we are in the process of doing exactly that, for a variety of insane but perfectly understandable reasons. I wound up logging off after getting a little agitated and walking down to the barn to look for deer in the pastures.

My view here at the farm is that is that agitation is a function best left to the Dazbog extra roast coffee, and the emotion left to the matter of how on earth the door to the office came to be open.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Tailgating with the Terps

Well, that’s it for football. There may be more games on the schedule, but from here out it is just too damned cold for me, anyway.

Earlier in the day, I thought it was God’s Own Football Weather: bring, cloudless blue skies, and just enough crispness to bring up the thirst and hunger. And actually, it was GOWF, when the sun was out. The tailgating was superb- the Argonaut brought the compact Webber grill, I had a cheese platter, Tony brought the fried chicken and there was a bunch of designer beer from the brewery in which Jake and Dave are investors.

We hooked up in an unusual place- next to the Arlington Cemetery fence across from where the Navy Annex used to be due to the running of the Marine Corps Marathon, a race I did twice, and the last competitive athletic event I intend to enter. It is strange looking at the big emptiness of the site. The last thing left is the security shack at the former entrance.

They are getting the former Bureau of Personnel site (and the Marine Corps HQ) ready for us vets to pass away and plant us where our desks used to be. Next to go will be the road itself. I will be interested to see how that is going to work.

It would be a little weird if it wasn’t ironic. We decided we liked the idea.

Dave was up front, riding shotgun and I was in the back with Tony. I was a relief not to be driving; I could ignore the rules about drinking and driving, and I did not have to do an inventory of my car to ensure that I wasn’t violating any of the peculiar new laws being enforced with such zest in the District and The Free State of Maryland.

Tony was Army, and has a son in Afghanistan, and I was Navy with a son in Japan. We talked about that, and how the parking sucked in the District when he tried to go and visit his daughter. She lives in NW, for whatever reason, and likes the City.

“I’ll take Arlington,” I said. “Besides the usual crap, did you hear about the guy the DC cops went after? They got warrants to search his house twice. The second time the guy’s 14-yearold daughter let 30 cops in riot gear into the house. They handcuffed the adults face down, broke down a bathroom door and dragged the guy’s son out naked.”

“What the hell for?”

“Looking for unregistered weapons.”

“Did they find any?”

“No, hell no. The guy keeps his guns at his sister’s place in Virginia. After three hours they found a twelve-gauge shotgun shell that had misfired. Couldn’t be fired. Oh, that and an empty expended round from a pistol.”

“Just the brass? That is illegal?”

“Apparently it is if you piss someone off.”

“I’ll go you one better. The Maryland Patrol and DHS showed up at the home of a free-lane journalist this summer at 0430 and ransacked the house on a warrant looking for guns. They didn’t find any, but they did take the writer’s files about whistle-blowers in the TSA.”

“Wait a minute- a warrant to look for guns was used to roust a journalist’s files and identify her confidential sources? WTF?”

“It’s getting kind of interesting out there. I remember when the PG SWAT team and the county narcs raided the home of the mayor of Berwyn Heights, shot his dogs and tied him up and interrogated and his mother in law for hours with the dogs laying dead on the floor.”

“Ah, that was a long time ago. Bush Administration stuff.”

“Yeah, what difference at this point does it make?” We all laughed, though there was a hint of unease at the strangeness abroad in the land.

Our host likes to drive across the District to avoid the Beltway, and it is remarkable to see how the bedraggled NE side of town is coming back. It must be a lot safer these days, what with all those SWAT guys available to help the citizens manage their affairs.

When we arrived at the lot and cracked the first beers of the afternoon, the Argonaut already had the burgers and dogs going. The sky was bottomless blue, and the ladies in the crowd were almost uniformly attired in tight leggings, boots and red Terrapin jerseys.

“Only two hours until game time,” said Dave earnestly. “We better get started on this.”

“Roger that,” said Tony.

I light up a Lucky, and looked around to see if any of Governor O’Malley’s goons were around. He made the whole campus a no-smoking area. I thought I was safe, at least for the moment.

I think the Terps lost, later. But of course, that is not the point, is it?

(Clockwise from upper left: Terps crowd is optimistic at the beginning of the game; the Argonaut at work on the Grill; Pete cuts some Croftburn Farm summer sausage, extending his long-severed index finger to demonstrate his expertise at slicing; the Culpeper product was a real crowd pleaser; the mood turns south for Terps fans as the Third Quarter ends, Co-eds in leggings and boots were still optimistic late in the game; Pete and the sausage again, Dave, and center, the shadows grow long on the 2013 Terps season.)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

A Matter of Focus

(College room-mate? I have no clue.)

I lacked focus all day. The problem- one of them, anyway- was the large box that had arrived from the Scan Café people out in California. They run a decent service in digitizing old analogue photos, and they had done a pretty good job on the first load of 35mm slides I had sent them in desperation to try to reduce the amount of junk from the estate.

I dreaded looking at this batch. Sometime during the chaotic summer I had thrown all the photographs that filled the bookcases to overflowing one of similar size, printed the label from the website and dropped it off at the UPS store.

It had been months since I had seen the box and was actually at peace with having got rid of my history. Quite liberating, actually, now that I realize the ultimate fate of all this crap we accumulate.

Now it was all back. Rhonda the Concierge propped it up by the front door, and now I have to deal with it again. The pictures themselves were back, including the 35mm slides that I recall dumping out of their well-organized carousels into a loose pile in a backpack while participating in the orgy of discard at Raven and Big Mama’s house last Spring.

Tentatively, I opened the box and removed the four CDs that contained the digital versions of the analogue masters. I sighed. They would all have to be organized, again.

I thought that there was no way to live this all over again, not in real time, but the urge to at least sample one of the discs and see if the process had worked overcame me.

Some must have come from the “doubles” we sent off to Raven and Big Mama- I had not seen them in nearly thirty years.

(This image is from the North Shore of Hawaii with my older son and Big Tom, R.I.P. I think it was Thanksgiving of 1984.)

I got lost in the images, some of them well focused, and others not. Remember when you did not know what the image looked like until the prints came back from the drug store? I was equally at sea with how to re-catalogue the images so that they had some coherence and sense. I glanced up as the shadows lengthened and realized I had lost the afternoon.

I shut off the computer and left the North Korea of 1996 and went over to Willow.

(Vic is bemused on the central square of Pyongyang, DPRK. 1996.)

It was Buffalo Night, last Friday of the month, and Tracy O’Grady was putting on the traditional pub fare from her hometown on the east end of Lake Erie. That is always a draw for the regulars who have a taste for her take on the regional cuisine, and there were old and new faces along the bar.

“How was your day?” growled Old Jim, surrounded by noisy people as I slid onto the stool up the bar to his left.

“Weird. Been all over,” I said waving at Tex as he bustled up and down the bar providing refreshments to the Friday crowd.

“Like where?”

“North Korea. Vietnam. You know.”

“I don’t,” he said, taking a sip of Bud. “I know that I am going to be in Las Vegas, but that is a matter for tomorrow.”

(Laura, the other Jamie, John-with and Jerry the Barrister waiting on Buffalo comfort food.)

“Are you going to gamble?” I asked.

“Life is a gamble,” he responded, and reached out to the bucket where Tex had placed reinforcement Bud long-necks to minimize the inconvenience.

“No shit. Figure the odds.”

Original Jamie arrived, looking at her watch. “Bea said she would be here at five-fifteen.”

Jon-without smiled wryly. “That is probably a goal, rather than a statement of objective fact.”

(Buffalo comfort food. Photo Jon-without.)

“I imagine it is a matter of focus,” I said.

Bea arrived in her own time, looking vivacious as always, and took the gentle ribbing about her timeliness with good grace. Jamie arranged for one of Kate Jansen’s wonderful cakes- chocolate with an Amaretto cream icing- and after the wreckage of the main course was shoveled away, we sang as she blew out the single candle.

(The Birthday Girl and lovely Jamie).

I had my week’s supply of carbs long before I finished the generous slice Bea carved off the cake.

I arrived home in time to attempt to watch the third episode of the quirky Sherlock Holmes update series “Elementary.”

Fourth time is the charm, I thought, and I think I made it all the way to the end. For the life of me though, I am not sure what the story was. Something about a search for a knock-off Julian Assange? I think that was it.

I woke up early, but it wasn’t my fault. I still felt the sugar shock of Kate’s wonderful cake, and there was a vague recollection of some awful dream there in the deep darkness.

I could not recall the specifics. It seemed to have been a combination of the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act or the communications with the former spouse. Secretary Gates and Secretary Hagel were there as referees, and urging their retirees to sign up for health care elsewhere so they could purchase more F-35 fighters.

I don’t know where I stood on any of those, except I knew they were all going to cost serious money.

I was up anyway, though out of focus, so I got out of bed and turned on the MacBook Pro. Then I began moving my life around into new folders.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Catching Up

I had a chance to make a new friend yesterday, and things being the way they are, that is a good thing. There were some challenges getting together- the town does not look the way it did when Jinny and Jack lived here years ago, but we managed to locate one another and I drove them in the Panzer over to Willow for an elegant lunch.

I introduced them to Tracy O’Grady, who was at the matre d’ station and we were shown directly to a nice table by the window. I was seated next to Jinny, since she is a little hard of hearing these days, and much more frail than when I saw her last at Admiral Rex’s funeral.

She is still a looker, though, and elegantly turned out. She was with her new boyfriend, with whom she has been spending time since early this year. They laugh and say they have known each other for 60 years- Jack flew with Barney, Jinny’s late husband, in VQ-1. Jack was married to one of the ladies who contributed a chapter of the book I edited about life in the Phillipines in the early 1950s. He was among those who greeted the vivacious former American Airlines stewardess at NS Sangley Point, R.P.

Jack is a grand guy- a retired Naval Aviator, who had WESTPAC combat tours in Sherman-class DD’s. He volunteered for Aviation training, and he was at Pensacola when Raven was getting his wings there in late 1945.

The reason they were back here from California was the occasion of the 70th reunion of his Naval Academy Class of ’44 (actually graduated in ’43 due to the exigencies of the War) is why they are back here from California. Jack joked that there were not enough of them left to have a proper crowd, so they were joining the Class of 1953 in the celebration.

It was a kick to get to know him. He was a Navy CAPT who got crosswise with SECDEF Robert Strange McNamara in 1966. He did thirteen cases in the Strategic Studies Group before he decided that it just wasn’t fun any more and retired.

He is a smart guy, and still quick as a whip. He flew AJ Savages in the Fleet, plus the first VQ SIGINT bird, the P-4M-1Q and several other aviation types. He had 200 carrier landings and 3,000 hours total flight time- or the equivalent of 125 continuous 24 hour days aloft.

(North American AJ Savage heavy bomber on USS Oriskany, the famous “O-Boat.”)

He is 90 this year- thin, wiry, tall. Watery blue eyes that have seen a lot. Upon commissioning, he participated in the invasions of Iwo Jima, Guam and Okinawa.

Perhaps seeing the dauntless birdmen high above the surface gunfire support seemed romantic. After getting picked up for Aviation, he was back in Pensacola for VJ day. They really put one on that night, since it looked like they were all going to live.

Early post war was nuclear weapons and guided missile development- Sparrow for one, Sidewinder for another.

He was the only regular officer at Pt. Mugu when this was all going on. Knew the guy who pulled the trigger on the Nagasaki bomb- and has the oral history “someplace” in his stuff. Not a widely known story.

We talked about Major Sweeny’s mission, the second one after Col. Tibbet made history and devastated Hiroshima. Sweeny was supposed to take out Kure, but weather caused a diver to the secondary target of Nagasaki. That was the one that almost screwed the pooch as all engines on Sweeny’s B-29 ran out of fuel on final at the emergency field at Iwo Jima. Avoided a crash landing by about five or six seconds.

Jack went to Stanford for his masters to get caught up on the technical stuff.

He did Korea and Vietnam, with his last Fleet tour was as the XO of a carrier XO. I regret that I forget which one.

Then the curse of the Washington tour. He reported to the Pentagon for duty with the Strategic Studies Group under McNamara in the mid-sixties. His group did 13 studies- got the LHA class amphibious ship concept approved and had some victories, other failures, including the one that said we could take out the Soviet Boomer subs.

Also had a plan for total warfare in Vietnam that “would have brought victory in six months.” He is actually sort of convincing about that, since it included everything that we wound up doing under Nixon (bomb the dykes, cut the bridges and end the Ho Chi Minh Trail by invading Cambodia) anyway just to lose. Troubling. McNamara wanted to follow “gradual escalation” and that was a loser as we all know.

After all that, Jack broke his neck two years ago falling off a stool trying to put Christmas Decorations up in the garage. He lived, though a buddy who did the same thing was dead in two days.

“Avoid ladders and stools,” he said wisely.

Witty, articulate, soft-spoken nice guy. It was almost like talking to Mac again, a thought that send a pang of regret through me.

Jinny beamed. It was great to see them both.

Amazing times then- and helps to put everything here into perspective, you know?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Penny for Your Thoughts

(USS Forrestal (CV-59) on her first Med deployment in 1957. Photo USN).

They did it- sold her for scrap. The ignominy of the transaction- the price- is what got me. The famous warship and my former home- the First Supercarrier- was sold for a penny.

Ex-USS Forrestal (CV-59) went for a sliver of copper amalgam: $0.01

No one wanted her for a memorial ship. I know she was not loved the same way other ships were. Ex-Midway is almost universally beloved by birdfarm sailors, part because of her quirks and part because she lived overseas for the latter portion of her active life, and was home to the Navy’s Foreign Legion, home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan.

That love carried over to enough enthusiasm that a foundation inked a deal with the Navy to take custody of the Maru and tow her down from the INACSHIPFAC at Bremerton to a place of honor in San Diego Bay. She is a popular tourist attraction now, and doing well.

Not all memorial ships work out that way. Poor old ex-Olympia, Dewey’s flagship at Manila Bay, is constantly on the verge of sinking at her berth in Philadelphia, a national embarrassment. So, taking on the mission of preserving a huge chunk of steel that is attempting, successfully, to return to its native state of iron oxide is a daunting one.

No one cares enough about FID to take it on, and now the All Star Metals Company of of Brownsville, TX, has handed over the penny to the Navy Comptroller and will tow FID- “First in Defense,” for the tortured genius James V. Forrestal, first Secretary of Defense- from Philly down to the Gulf and cut her to pieces.

It is a big deal. These massive ships were designed to take a beating and stay afloat, even in the nuclear environment. The hulk measures- or measured before bits began to be cut off- 1,067-foot length overall and 159-foot 4 inches on her beam.

When they cut up jolly old ex-USS Coral Sea, it was the largest scrapping in maritime history. I watched her slowly disappear at the Seawitch shipyard in Baltimore between 1993 and 2000 when the last chuck of steel disappeared and CV-43 was gone forever.

See, capital ships by law must be scrapped in the United States, and when the Seawitch people tried to sell Coral Sea to the Chinese the Navy brought suit. New regulations on the environment have made sinking them expensive, too, though they blew the bottom out of the O-Boat when her time came to become a sport fishing reef down in the Gulf. So, a penny to get rid of her, and the deed is done.

We used to joke about our ships becoming razor blades, in time, and it looks like that is FID’s fate.

(Ex-USS Forrestal was offered as a museum but found no takers. It will be towed from Philadelphia to Texas for dismantling. PhotoTom Gralish)

There is a lot of valuable material that is not steel on a modern warship. For exercise during deployment (and when the deck was closed for flight ops) I would skip rope in the hangar bay, looking out at the wine dark sea and enjoying the numbness of the ropes repetitions. Prominently posted was an ornate and solemn piece of brass, engraved with the particulars of the 134 sailors who died that awful day on Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin.

(The Forrestal fire, 1967, on Yankee Station. Photo USN).

You may have heard of the story. LCDR John McCain was sitting in his A-4 Scooter when an electrical malfunction on a nearby F-4 Phantom cooked off and hit the aircraft next to him, starting a blaze that culminated in the detonation of ordnance prepared for the morning’s Alpha Strike against North Vietnam.

I told you these ships were built tough. Although an additional 161 men were injured in the conflagration, FID kept steaming. She gained another nick-name that day: Forest Fire.

The whole thing seemed long ago, steaming in the peaceful Med as the Soviet Union melted down. I hope they will respect the memory of those shipmates who perished, and preserved the plaque.

On that cruise, 1989-90, I lived up on the O-2 level forward, around frame 32. That was right under where the terrible fire occurred. It was there that I found another memorial to a long-ago war.

Now, you know that alcohol is mostly illegal on Navy ships, thanks to that prim old kill-joy Josephus Daniels who banned it in 1914, a dark day in the Fleet. Well, there are times and there are times. On my first ship, the prohibition was flouted openly. The medium attack squadron- VA-115- had a reefer filled with beer in the Junior Officer bunkroom, and our squadron Maintenance Officer Mr. Sluggo had a saying that “if they expect me to fly at night, I expect to have a scotch when I get back.”

They say the little safes in the stateroom desks were sized the way they were to accommodate a bottle of Johnny Walker.

Times were changing. By the time I got to FID in the late 80’s, there was still alcohol around, but you had to be careful. One mid-cruise party in one of the fighter squadron bunkrooms was sniffed out by the Master At Arms, and the squadron skipper was relieved for cause.

I happened to be going ashore when I saw him, eyes downcast and in civvies to make his way to the airport and a lonely flight home.

Anyway, my stateroom was located directly under the flight deck- the catapult track formed the side to one of the bulkheads , and the graceful curve of the bow arched out, leaving a space that could not be utilized by the rectangular modular issue furniture. That left a void partly covered up with sheet metal panels, painted gray, of course, and I was looking for potential places of concealment during the work-up periods at sea as we prepared to deploy.

I noticed one section in which the rivets had been replaced by screws, and as an enterprising Naval Officer, I applied the screwdriver blade on my Leatherman all-in-one tool that I wore on my woven cloth khaki belt. The screws came off easily enough to reveal a deep square space that was filled with objects that had obviously been there a very long time, since the surface was completely covered in black grime.

The shapes looked familiar. I reached in and pulled one out. The side facing down on the can was still pristine, and I read the familiar logo with wonder:

“Budweiser
Lager Beer”

The can had a pull-top, which for you kids means that there was a little ring that pulled up and detached from the can, leaving a drinking slot for the cold foamy beverage to cascade down a thirsty throat. That feature dated the beer to the Vietnam era. The hairs went up on the back of my neck. I wondered if the stash belonged to one of the officers who perished that awful day?

No aviator worth his salt would have gone on a combat cruise and let a case of Bud go to waste.

I reverently placed the can, dirty side up, back in the space with its mates and screwed the metal panel back on. I wondered whose rack I was sleeping in, there by the cat track.

When they start cutting off the flight deck, those cans will be exposed to light again for the first time in 23 years, and nearly 45 since that unknown Airdale hid them away.

That will be my contribution to FID’s memorial. That, and thinking about all those who served- and the ones who died- on that immense ship of steel.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Ticket to Ride

The government is back at work, just like it never left, and the Fish and Wildlife crew were occupying the cocktail nook in force. Jon-without was standing next to Old Jim, who was sitting at the stool I normally occupy at the Willow.

Some young guy- business suit- was sitting in Jim’s usual place. I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Sotto vocce, I said “What the hell? I sense a Disturbance in the Force.”

“It’s OK,” said Jon-without. “Jim doesn’t mind.”

“Adam is a fine fellow,” growled Jim, and then he introduced me to the young man in the suit and defused the potentially explosive situation.

“I will move,” Adam said apologetically. “I hate to take the seat of a Regular. I didn’t know I was walking into Cheers.”

“There were some assholes in that bar,” I said. “Norm, right?”

“No, it was that postal guy. The know it all.”

“Cliff Claven,” said Adam. “I have been here since 3:30. They cancelled a meeting and I had a choice of trying to get an earlier plane or start drinking.”

“Drink early,” said Jon-without.

“Drink often,” said Jim.

Then the conversation drifted on to why we liked Coach better than Woody Harrleson, and how Shelley Long screwed the pooch by leaving early. “Kirstie Alley ate the set,” said Adam.

I noted that both Adam and Jon were drinking martinis and briefly considered doing the same, though Jasper decided the matter by firmly planting . The discussion transitioned to the pluses and minuses of the miracle elixir, and whether or not Jon should have another, since the Lovely Bea was going to pick him up to go to the grocery store, and she was going to call and advise him of the plan at five.

I looked at my phone. It was five-fifteen. “Oh, you mean Bea time. She will be calling sometime before six.”

“I hope it is before that. I am parked at one of the two parking meters next to the bar. It is a one hour meter and I have been here since four-thirty.”

“So you have to feed the meter pretty quick. Are you going to try to have another drink before she gets here?”

“I think it might be the wise thing,” he said, and gestured toward Tex to get another of those perfect vodka martinis with four olives. As it turned out, Adam was from Hartford, CT, and had a traveling job that coincided with Jon’s hometown of Plattsburgh, NY, where his Dad had retired after an Air Force career.

“That is quite a coincidence. There is not much else around there, not since the base closed after BRAC 90.”

“They did a fire-sale for all those SAC bases after the Cold War ended,” I said. “We lost three bases in Michigan.”

“Plattsburgh was on Lake Champlain, right where the stop signs turn into “Arret” in Quebec.”

Adam said: “Walking from the plant I visit there down to the lake you can feel the temperature drop ten degrees.” He simulated a shiver.

Jon’s new iPhone 5S went off, and he pressed his finger on the print reader to unlock it and answer. It was the Lovely Bea, running just a little late, and sure enough just a minute or two past when Jon’s meter was going to expire. He got up to go feed the infernal contraption and returned a couple minutes later holding an official looking strip of paper.

“They got me,” he said. “Those Arlington meter-readers are something fierce.”

“They are a cunning bunch,” I said, and we exchanged stories of the ingenuity, tenacity and guile of the enforcement community until Bea arrived. She had a drink, but clearly wanted to accomplish the mission. When they called for the check, Old Jim and I decided to do the same thing and leave the bar to Adam and his business partner, a Punjabi man of about the same age.

They had decided that more martinis were the answer, and were attempting to soak up the alcohol with sirloin tips in some sort of elegant sauce.

We left Willow fairly early, and I was astonished to note that we had not talked about a single one of the elephants in the room. It felt pretty therapeutic, and I actually whistled on the way up the block to the car.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Willow Faces

I wrote a piece this morning that was so compelling that I had to put it aside, and let it sit for a while. I doubt if it will get better: it is too dark by half. It is a challenge to live amongst this serial madness we call Washington and not let it start to get you down. One of my pals commented that the whole system appears to be devolving into something simultaneously mendacious and malevolent.

So we aren’t going to do that again this morning. Once before breakfast is plenty.

We had a much better time at Willow last night. As you know, Mac’s family is in town to see if they can liquidate the condo, and came by Willow.

It got me to thinking about what a grand time we have in that place, and some of the people who make it that way. Hard Working Rafael; Jerry the Barrister, John-w and Jon-without; the Lovely Bea, Placid Jamie; Mischievous Jasper; Brenna Just Because, Old Jim, the Fish and Wildlife Service, Tex the Bartender; Sous Chef Robert; and a host of others who have passed through the food and beverage side of Tracy O’Grady’s restaurant.

There have been some grand times this summer, and as we slide into Fall, I think I will think about that rather than the other things it would be possible on which to dwell.

So, these are the faces of Willow. These are people whose lives have become woven into my own. And what a grand life it is.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303