Frequent Wind

USS Midway (CVB/CVA/CV-41) was the lead ship of her class, and the first to be commissioned after the conclusion of World War II. Active in the Vietnam conflict, the Navy’s Overseas Family Residency Program (OFRP), the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Operation DESERT STORM, she is the only remaining non-Essex class aircraft carrier of the World War II era. She was the first US warship constructed that exceeds the beam limits of the Panama Canal. Laid down on 27 October 1943 at Newport News Shipbuilding in Tidewater Virginia, her revolutionary hull design was based on what would have been the Montana-class battleship. She was launched 20 March 1945 with Mrs. Bradford William Ripley, Jr. as sponsor and commissioned 10 September 1945, Captain Joseph F. Bolger Commanding. Midway is currently a museum ship in San Diego Harbor, moored at the former Navy Supply Center pier. Over a million visitors walk her decks each year.

 

They say that you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and everyone in Washington was pretty much done with the whole Vietnam thing by the time the Nobel Peace prizes were handed out for the cruel charade that was the Paris Peace Talks.

 

I think it was about the size and shape of the conference table, though mostly I was just relieved that the Draft was over and I didn’t have to worry about anything more important than finding a job once that plush college gig ended in the summer of ’73.

 

A retired spook comrade is a docent on Midway-Maru and he is trying to get people interested in the CVIC (CV= aircraft carrier, IC= Intelligence Center) spaces. It is padlocked at the moment, though if I could breach the locks and undog the hatch over the formidable knee knocker, I would not need lights to find the hinged green linoleum planning table where I used to hang out, brushing the counter on my right were the 200-cup industrial coffee maker used to sit.

 

Now, this is going to go in a couple directions.

I had a beer at Willow with Senior Chief Dave, who was onboard for Frequent Wind in 1975- he left CV-41 about twelve months before I reported to VF-151.

 

“Frequent Wind” is the end of Vietnam, for the Americans, anyway.

 

I remember standing in the rooftop bar of the Caravel Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City- we still called it Saigon- and looking over to the roof of the former US Embassy, which served as a helo pad in the chaos of the fall of the city. It was 1995- the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the city.

 

The skyline was only then beginning to change, and things then were the way things were.  It was a very emotional day, as we walked over to the former Embassy and asked to look at our property. The Vietnamese caretakers were confused by our presence, but cooperative.

 

They used the building as the oil ministry for a while, but the place was fraught with too much symbolism. They could not find the keys, so we contented ourselves with walking around the grounds.

 

The ground troops may have been gone that day twenty years before, but there were still 16,000 Americans assigned to liaison jobs, and tens of thousands of American dependents, employees and colleagues left behind.

 

I remember President Ford appearing in Congress with charts to ask for renewed aid to counter the breach of the Paris Accords, but no one had the stomach for opening up the war again and the North Vietnamese advance was unstoppable.

 

And so, four aircraft carriers- Hancock, Enterprise, Coral Sea and Midway, all with their escorts, appeared twelve miles off the coast of what was ceasing to be the Republic of Vietnam, and the helicopters began to fly.

 

There is enough drama and horror about the fall of the city that I could spend the next month talking about it. Americans died- not in combat, but in a plane crash trying to get orphans out of the grasp of the advancing North Vietnamese refugees.

 

The reason for this stroll through a sad and ugly time is the subject of the exhibition of a Cessna 0-1 Bird Dog aircraft at the Midway Museum in San Diego. It is not the actual Army spotter plane that made Naval Aviation History- the real one is on display in Pensacola, but it is close enough for a powerful statement about an extraordinary time.

 

Our pal Mike is one of the Midway docents, who provide patter for the visiting tourists. He was interested in how the ship supported the evacuation, since he and the other docents talk about the amazing (and inspirational) 29 April 1975 event.

 

With North Vietnamese tanks advancing, South Vietnamese Air Force Major Buang-Ly took off from Con Son <http://en.wikipedia.or>  Island with his wife and five children loaded into the little spotter plane. After evading enemy ground fire, the Major headed out to sea and spotted Midway. With only an hour of fuel remaining, he dropped a note asking that the “runway” be cleared so he could land.

 

Disobeying the direct orders of the embarked flag, Midway’s CO, Captain Lawrence Chambers ordered a bunch of UH-1 Huey helicopters be pushed over the side to make room, and brought the nose of the ship into the prevailing wind and rung up “all ahead full.” With wind over the deck and speed of advance and the low stalling speed of the Bird Dog, the Major literally floated over the round-down, and brought his family aboard with an “OK Two” on the first (and only) pass.

I had a beer with ISC Dave on Friday at Willow. He was a Midway FREQUENT WIND-era sailor, and he promised me some words on the experience of being at flight quarters for a week straight.

 

Eventually the helicopters stopped coming, and that was that.

 

Which also was not true. Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese still sought escape. They just transitioned to become Boat People, and they headed for the gray ships of the US Navy for rescue.

 

Guidance for the treatment of the boat people was stark: Midway personnel were to board and ensure that the vessel was seaworthy and to provide water and directions to nearest land. The boarding officer, a crusty LDO, reported that the boat was taking on water and he needed pumps. He requested three from Damage Control- one of which he used to pump out the bilges and the two others to pump water in.

 

“Can’t keep her afloat,” he reported, and the refugees were brought aboard CV-41 and made the short list for further transport to the land of the Big PX. The junk was dispatched as a hazard to navigation with 5-inch rifle fire.

 

It was a busy time in the South China Sea. Not everything got pushed off the deck and into the blue water.

 

The Mayaguez incident serves as the official end to the war in SE Asia, and Vietnam had nothing to do with it. It was mid-May of 1975. The Cambodians detained a US-flagged merchant, and the Pentagon took action, not knowing the crew of the ship had been released unharmed. The names of the Americans killed, as well as those of three Marines left behind and subsequently executed by the Khmer Rouge on Koh Tang Island are the last names on The Wall on the Mall.

 

Midway proceeded on Thailand and took on USAF and RVN aircraft and ferried these aircraft to Guam.

 

For a while, the North Vietnamese who were running the newly unified nation were the biggest supplier of American war material in the world.

 

That is all part of Midway’s history, and some things for the docents to talk about. There is a lot more, of course. There is a lot of talk about our enduring commitment to Afghanistan these days. I would not want to be the last American in Kabul thinking about commitment, you know?

 

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

 

 

 

 

Kanto Plane: The Ruth’s Café Collision Derby

07 April 1979

 

(USS Midway (CV-41) in dry dock at Yokosuka, Japan, 1979, in between Indian Ocean deployments. Photo by young Socotra.)

 

Yeah, you read the date correctly. And dammit, I am not lazy. I was going to go one way this morning, and then I thought I might as well set the stage for how things were on the Good Ship, back in the Day. I had a couple beers with Senior Chief last night at Willow.

 

Dave left the Good Ship the year before I got there, and he had been there for Frequent Wind, and he has promised me some words about it when he gets to it. We got lost in what fun the Old Navy had been, and I am not speaking about the discount retail chain.

 

Meanwhile, the other old Spooks are getting all agitated about the details of what we used to do, and how we used to do it, and the machines we used in the dawn of the transition to the digital age.

 

I have been pounding on word processors since my first exposure to computers at the Fleet Ocean Surveillance Information Facility in Hawaii in 1981. Think about how the world has changed. So, rather than launch into a big slow-moving account of crap that no one except a bunch of old farts would care about, I am going to do something in the way of a scene-setter.

 

I ran across this in my digital files the other day. It is from 1979, the year the Soviets went into Afghanistan, and a couple minutes after we got back from the Indian Ocean and those whacky Iranians and their crazy Ayatollah. I have changed nothing.

 

Imagine if the Navy let people act like this now. We might win wars.

 

“It had been a busy week, and we were leaving again soon. It meant there was madness in the air, the madness that went with the going-to-sea, maybe-to-war mind set. In the grips of that, we found our heroes enjoying their last hours of liberty with gusto.

 

They had found themselves delivered back to the tender mercies of Ma Midway (CV-41) after a remarkable line period.  A busy workday on Friday, hauling gear up the ladders and into Ready Room Four. It could have been a night for a nice dinner and quiet contemplation of the rigors to come. 

 

But Fridays are The Night at the Officer’s Club at Atsugi Naval Air Station, and thus it was time for a pre-disco dining extravaganza out at Ruth’s house. Ruth is a Navy Nurse, and she is a very nice person who takes care of Her Boys. Gaijin women who are not already attached to someone are a rarity on the Kanto Plain, which helps account for the beauty magnification factor. West of Hawaii, 5’s become 8’s, and 7’s become 10’s. Fact of life. Ruth handles it well, though, and has adapted to the situation by more or less adopting us as her own personal fighter squadron. 

 

She feeds us and leads us around for our own protection. She is a queen, she knows it, and treats her subjects with an even hand. Neat lady. What’s more, with her hefty nurse’s Basic Allowance for Quarters, she can live off-base out by the Hayama resort on the Sagami-wan, in a little house halfway up a hill.  It has a splendid view, made the more so by the constant exposure to the gray steel windowless walls of my current abode. It is a general delight to be there.

 

This night the pre-Disco meal was chicken-stuffed crepes, hearty neo-Caesar salad and wonderful warm loaves of bread. The Japanese have great bread. They encountered it for the first time after the war, and discovered it had many uses. They even decided the American variety was too bland, and, in typical Japanese fashion, looked around for the best bread in the world and found it in France. Voila! Here it is!  The ambiance was delightfully non-industrial, the food was outstanding, the wine divine. If anything, the bottle of rum that Scooter poured into the dessert daiquiris was superfluous.  But good.  

 

We have a variety of cars strewn up and down the hill. Cars are one of the little quirks here. First, you drive on the wrong side of the road. That is sorta cool. Second, the cars are only worth the amount of Japanese Compulsory Insurance that remains on the policy. There is a public law that any vehicle over four years of age has to go through a rehabilitation and certification process that in effect costs more than buying a new car. They call it the Beautification Law. 

 

Due to the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), we are exempt. 

 

Accordingly, if you see a trashed-out car hurtling down Telephone Pole Road headed for Yokohama, you can be sure it is one of us. I own a clapped-out1970 Toyota Publica mini-wagon with three months left on the policy, making it worth exactly 42,000 yen. I had artfully painted the squadron tail flashes on the sides. Although you could see the roadway through holes in the floorboards, I considered it a beauty.

 

I have been stashing the little gaijin-mobile over at Ruth’s during our at-sea periods. It has an old battery, not worth replacing, that has a tendency to go dead as a doornail. So as our group was leaving the house I enlisted the hearty bodies of L.P., Jambo, Space, Splash, Scooter, Scotty, and Nasty in levitating the little econo-box out of the driveway, bouncing it backwards over the curb.

 

 “Cut the wheel!  Cut it hard port!” someone shouted.  I wondered if they were talking to me….

 

A near run into the benjo ditch on the other side of the road, a quick transition, and I almost hit L.P’s  911 Porsche Targa. He had brought it over with his household goods with the idea of selling it on the local economy. The Japanese love hot cars.  Given traffic moves about five miles an hour during the day, it is amusing to watch the Jags and Mercedes creeping along.  I decided a look behind might prove helpful as I navigated backwards down the steep hill. The trick was to get the thing rolling and pop the clutch, using the motion of the wheels to turn the engine.  Splash stayed with me almost the whole way down the hill, till I figured out it was just not going to start in reverse. I swerved into the curb and got it rolling forwards. I jammed it into second gear with my left hand and slipped my foot of the clutch. Well alright! The little monster started right up.  I put the clutch in, kept the revs up, and hoped it wouldn’t die before I ran out of incline.  Splash watched me disappear around the corner, about a half-mile downhill from his car.

 

“Hey, thanks Splash!” I yelled into the slipstream, “See Ya!”

 

I reached the traffic light at the bottom on the hill and stopped. It was red, and it was the right thing to do so I pulled over, foot on the gas, way short of the white line so as to have a fighting chance if the car crapped out.  Space’s patented Space Shuttle van pulled up next to me. Scotty leaned out the passenger side and inquired if it was O.K.  “No sweat” I replied, about the same time the Nasty-mobile showed up and intentionally read-ended them.  I saw the impact push the van about five feet down-slope.  Space crammed it into reverse and hit the gas.  Nasty sort of got pushed back uphill.  Tires were smoking on the wet pavement, and the sound of the vehicles rubbing metal was real interesting.

 

I noticed Ruth’s horrified face in the passenger side of Nasty’s car.  The light changed, Space went into first and roared off toward Atsugi. Nasty appeared to take it as a challenge and vanished in pursuit.  I had to keep the revs up anyway, so what the hell….

 

We joined the frantic procession of normal traffic out on the highway.  The road is narrow, as  they all are in the Kanto Plain, and has steep open benjo sewers on each side. This doesn’t keep the locals from driving at breakneck speeds and performing outré maneuvers.  About the only thing it does keep them from doing is driving drunk.  You see, up till about fifteen years ago, drunkenness was a perfectly legal excuse for accidents. Unfortunately, with the onset of massive casualties it became obvious that this remarkable notion had to give way to a more rational approach. As they so often do, once the Japanese make a decision they make a tough one.  Even a beer – a single beer – will make you legally drunk.  Should you cause an accident, or hurt someone, you may as well throw away the key.

 

Unfortunately, we were drunk Yankees, driving $175 cars, in a toy-sized land. And it was off to the races.  My first indication of this was Jambo flying by into oncoming traffic.  He cut off a taxi and gained the lead.  We rounded a bend, the line slowed down, and out of nowhere flashed a yellow Porsche 911, beating out the entire crowd and disappearing into a curve.  This was an outrage too great to be borne …. it was pandemonium on the roadway …. the drivers were flying their aircraft, unconscious of the civilian life around them. We approached the first light on the way into town.  Red. The racers were in line astern. Oh my goodness…I saw the green station-wagon’s back up light go on; in an inexorable chain reaction the cars bumped, jumped, and began to move toward my grill…the Space Shuttle into first!

 

Tires smoking, the line begin to move out into the intersection … the taxi behind me is keeping his distance … the light goes green and the race is on … it’s a cacophony of straining water pumps, abused gear boxes, over-revved little engines. I am working with my handbrake only, to avoid taking my foot off the accelerator …. Around a downward curving turn, into another red light …. the Porsche stops …. the Jambo Special goes left, the Nastymobile to the right, drifting through the red signal with tires burning …. past two amazed Japanese policemen …. Oops …. I try to look inscrutable …. a crowd of pedestrians are bent over in amazement …. their mouths are beginning to work as the signal changes …. see ya! …. the racers roar down the narrow Ginza …. hard port! A light, hard brake, then onto R-16, four lanes and it is all guts and drag-racing technique. The last quarter mile to the gates of the Atsugi Naval Air Station…. hard starboard and into the chicane …. I stop the car, dim my lights, and the Marine on duty salutes me. I turn on the lights, turn right and follow the slow procession up to the Club.

 

We park the cars giggling like the drunken idiots we undoubtedly are.  A leisurely stroll up to the doors where I can hear the sound system blaring some repetitive beat.  On the way in I see one or the guys from Attack Squadron 56.  

 

“Hey Vic” says one of them. “How’s it going?”  

 

“Oh you know” I say with a negligent wave, “There just ain’t nothing to do in Japan.”  

 

“Yeah,” says Jambo. “Except for maybe fifteen years.”

 

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

 

 

 

The Catalpa

Ah, I feel something lurching toward us, and I do not mean the stupid election, or the stupid Tea Party or the resurgent strain of Marxism that is raising its hoary and discredited head across the pond. I have to click fast to stay ahead of the political ads that intrusively appear as side-bars to my email accounts. It is cloying. Sickening, almost.

It was a relief when I got a request from a pal of a pal for some information about an inspirational story that involved one of my ships. I wasn’t there, mind you. I arrived on the Good Ship Midway three years after the event, and the ship’s company and associated Air Wing had largely turned over, and only a few were present to remember the astonishing event.

Since the Good Ship still exists as a memorial in the lovely waters of San Diego Harbor, that was the precise reason the dialogue began about how we worked and what equipment we had at the time to accomplish our part in the intricate ballet of hurling jets off one end, and bringing them back on the blunt end.

The compartments are still there, silent, dogged and padlocked and off limits to tourists. They may get around to restoring them, some day, but the non-public areas are much vaster than those open to prying eyes and there are ghosts in the voids.

We will talk about them when we get to it.

The Midway Docents, mostly retired Navy men who like to tell sea stories about the bold old flat-top, are always interested in new tales about the half century that CV-41, Midway Maru, sailed the world ocean and proudly flew America’s flag.

I was trying to figure out how to do it. The jargon of Navy-speak is almost impenetrable unless you have been in the tribe, and there is no good path between just spewing it out, or slowing down long enough so that it is comprehensible to the layperson. Then it rings inauthentic, like the sailors remembered to USE FULL TITLE at first incident of acronym for clarity.

In reality, it was much more like: “Hey. Aft CIWS is AFU! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! How are we supposed to run the fucking profile on the Event Two Launch?”

Explanation is for writing, not hearing, and the acronyms linked by assorted obscenities that makes the dialogue a rich, acrid, and obsolete dialect.

So, walking the fine line is going to take some time, and I am dubious about my chances of success. I was moving some facts around to make it a real Sea Story- the sailor’s version of the Fairy Tale (not that there is anything wrong with it) and got sidetracked with another ship and another astonishing story.

But that is the way of this stuff, one thing leading to another, and so off we go.

This other story I will impose on you has lyrics and lore, and I came around to it with a recollection from a shipmate with a fondness for the romance of the sea, and the inevitability of history. My pal started off with the words to an old song from the 16th century, and how he came to it:

Gentlemen it is me duty
To inform you of one beauty
Though I’d ask of you a favour
Not to seek her for a while.
Though I own she is a creature
Of character and feature
No words can paint the picture
Of the Queen of all Argyll.

Turned out that the song, which he linked to the woman who would become is bride, had first appeared to him in the friendly islands of Hawaii where we served together for the first time. The tune popped up on a port visit to West Australia on what he described as the “stained and strife-weary” USS Constellation (CV-64).

It resonated this morning. I never cruised in Connie, but I did ride her a few times, and she was one of my favorite ships. But the trains of The Queen of All Argyll brought something back to me vividly, particularly as I was thinking about Ma Midway.

Our visit to Perth was in 1979, the first I a long while. There was a little rag-tag group of Enterprise sailors waiting at Fleet Landing to turn themselves in to Navy justice, refugees of the last major warship visit to the West Australian port.

Which leads directly to the first American visit to Perth on Regatta Day.

No, it was not a Navy visit, but there is a great story about it in one of the best liberty ports in the universe. There were friendly ladies and stand-up cobbers and fabulous music. I had a cassette as well, long gone now, that had some fine lyrics and seemed appropriate to write back to my pal.

I envy the union he has enjoyed with his Queen of Argyll. My path has been a bit more circuitous, and at the end of all things I imagine I will have to go it alone- or at least with some of the best friends a man could have in this world.

(Six bold Fenians.)

But the music of West Australia- now that was a moment at the show worth remembering. One song on that tape struck me, the story of the 1876 rescue of six Irish convicts from the Crown’s screw-warders. It goes to a melody that is a variant of the old Irish air “Rosen Up the Bow.”  I still sing snatches of it to this day:

A noble whale ship and commander
Called the Catalpa, they say
Came out to Western Australia
And took six poor Fenians away

Chorus:
So come all you screw warders and jailers
Remember Perth regatta day
Take care of the rest of your Fenians
Or the Yankees will steal them away

Seven long years had they served here
And seven long more had to stay
For defending their country Old Ireland
For that they were banished away

You kept them in Western Australia
Till their hair began to turn grey
When a Yank from the States of America
Came out here and stole them away

Now all the Perth boats were a-racing
And making short tacks for the spot
But the Yankee she tacked into Fremantle
And took the best prize of the lot

The Georgette armed with bold warriors
Went out the poor Yanks to arrest
But she hoisted her star-spangled banner
Saying you’ll not board me I guess

So remember those six Fenians colonial
And sing o’er these few verses with skill
And remember the Yankee that stole them
And the home that they left on the hill

Now they’ve landed safe in America
And there will be able to cry
Hoist up the green flag and shamrock
Hurrah for old Ireland we’ll die!

Hurrah, too, for love, and for history, and a lives lived with thunder and passion. More on another of those tales, on what was our ship, tomorrow.

(Cell block at the Freemantle Gaol. I bought the tape not far from the imposing gate.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(A concise account of the rescue can be found here).

Half Way Home

(There is a clue here about what this depicts. Check it out. It might not be what you think. Image businessinsider.com)

Let’s take a break, shall we? It is hot and muggy and I feel sluggish this morning. Plus, I am the Poster Boy for Cabin Fever. The Better and Better thing continues, blah blah, yadda yadda.

It is day 42 of 84. I am precisely halfway to completion of the post-op recuperation and on to resumption of normal activities.

I think you are tired of hearing it, and I am tired of talking about it.  I saw Czar Peter as I hobbled up the sidewalk next to the pool on the west end of the building yesterday.

Czar Peter has that Fabio thing going. I admire him- he parlayed his life-guarding days as a teen at the pools around Arlington into a prosperous small business. He services the out-sourced needs of the various pool complexes around the county, and does human trafficking with Mittleeurope to provide labor in the summer.

Being his own man, he gets to set his own standards. Accordingly, he has that Fabio thing going- lean chiseled torso above practical cargo shorts, leonine chestnut hair gathered into a long ponytail and fed through the hole above the strap of his Deep Blue logo ball cap.

He was talking to Lukas, this year’s model of the Polish Life Guard. I had a shoulder bag slung awkwardly over my right side, where is caught on the crutch and threatened to send me sprawling onto the low brick retaining wall of Joe’s patio.

“Thought you had died or moved on,” he said. Peter has the rich mahogany tan that is reputed to be so bad for you these days, and he is a happy guy who gets to work outside.

“I don’t think I died,” I said, stopping to lean against the black steel mesh of the pool enclosure. “I have been worried about the Higgs Boson and didn’t have enough space in the unit to do empiric research. I was working on the Commerce Clause and the Tax code, but not making much progress. And as to moving on, it will be another few weeks before I can get in the water.”

“Hah. I warned Lukas about you, but he said he you were no problem, since you have been invisible.”

“He will live to regret that remark,” I vowed. I could see Mila sunbathing and Jiggs splashing in the refreshing blue water. “He will see more of me in the last month of the season than anyone needs to.”

Lukas laughed uncertainly as Peter grilled me on the surgery. As I said, the topic bores me, and there is nothing in the world I want to do more than throw away the damned crutches. I smiled a little grimly, and made my adieus. I had fresh produce in the bag, and too many devices, and a reefer to clean out, and fireworks to watch on the big-screen television.

I cursed the lazy people who had all parked closer to the door than I could, and to the short-sighted Condo Board that refused to provide decent handicapped parking near the door. I sighed. If I complained, they probably would get around to lining out something with the blue wheelchair sign the week I returned the wheelchair and threw the crutches off the balcony towards the pool.

Then I would be cursing the Condo Board for catering to those handicapped people as soon as I wasn’t. It is not that you can’t win. It is that the timing of life is just very tricky.

I cleared out the dead food from the icebox, marveling at how far beyond the shelf life a dedicated preservationist can go. I made a note to clean the inside of the thing before I got my Guardian Ensign to take me to the store again.

The air conditioning felt good, once I had horsed the inedible former proteins to the garbage chute down the hall, and sat down to check email before the Capital Fourth came on with a tall frosty beverage. I saw a note from Soul Mountain, who still labors in the Pentagon and as a condition of service, has to believe at least three impossible things in the morning before getting her Starbucks from the Ethiopian ladies at the stand down the corridor.

I slapped my forehead. Of course that is how it works.

The link to this presentation explains everything. I strongly recommend it. Now, I am afraid it is back to work. Who ever put a holiday all by itself in the middle of the week?

I tuned in the fireworks on the big screen, and realized I could actually hear the bombs bursting in air through the open door to the balcony.  Sort of like Stereo, I thought, and when it was over, I picked up the crutches and tapped my way tentatively back down the hall to the bed.

(A Capital Fourth, as viewed from my chair in the living room. Photo Socotra of live coverage by WETA.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Well, I Declare….

(Classic, with Boop. Culpeper Car Show 2010. Photo Socotra.)

 

I listen to NPR streaming on the satellite broadband at Refuge Farm when I am not blasting The Loft on the satellite radio from the antenna that points North East toward the repeater in geosynchronous orbit. I actually listen to the local outlets in the West, either Colorado or Wyoming, not the one up north, that is just personal preference.

 

The Declaration of Independence is just as good, regardless of which outlet is broadcasting it.

 

“When in the Course of human events,” read the alternating male and female voices, “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation…”.

 

There is some other stuff in there, too, and you can’t not hear it without thinking of what a different world those words were uttered. The thing about the Indians sort of jars these days, but oh well. The guy who penned the words had a house just up the road from Refuge Farm, and he did pretty well with the words as they are.

 

I thought about the holiday, and how things were different on this one. I checked to see that the crutches were handy, so I could get out of the chair in the dining nook of Refuge Farm.

 

I was at Torch last year for the 4th. I took Raven and Big Mama down to see our pal Dee and the crew on the lovely lake. They were still able to be out in the world, one of the last times before the gray wool cocoon gathered them in. Torch is reputed by no less an authority than the National Geographic as “The third most beautiful lake in the world.”

 

Our pals throw a big shindig in the run-up to the local shoreline arms race display.  This year, with the dryness at tinder levels, they can shoot across the dark sparkling waters without concern that they will torch the shore of the Torch.

 

No so out west, but I am here in one what is arguably the Real Virginia, as opposed to the ersatz one where Big Pink was built.

 

Sonya was sitting in for Rhonda when I called yesterday. “Did the power come back?” I asked.

 

“Yes,” she said with that wonderful South Asian roll of the vowels. “It appeared once more last night,” she said, like the power was an incarnation of Shiva out of the Bhagavad-Gita. Which, upon consideration, I think it is.

 

I clicked off after thanking her for the update, thinking I should get back and deal with the contents of the refrigerator, and then shrugged. Whatever is in there is all cold again and it can wait.  Other than that, things are just about perfect here. Plus, the Car Show is downtown on the 4th, and that is about as small-town cool as it gets.

 

I was there two years ago, stumbled on it completely by chance. I wanted a couple Frost Diner eggs sunny side up, side of grits and shredded home-fries with an English Muffin, and what I discovered was an eclectic aggregation of antiques cars, hot rods and moonshine-running vehicles. The line of diagonally parked cars lined both sides of the street from the Diner down to the Depot. Too awesome.

 

I imagine I will head into town for breakfast, and crutch my way as far as I can go. It is a beautiful day to be a refugee from the great Derecha storm that still has hundreds of thousands of people without electricity on this sultry Independence Day.

 

I was thinking I was going to drive back north in the police cruiser after looking at the other classics, but the thought occurred to me right then: Why? It is pretty damn nice right here, I do declare.

(Culpeper Moonshine Cruiser. Completely understated. Photo 2010 Socotra.)

 

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

 

 

 

Refugee

(The Great Hall at Refuge Farm. Respite for a Refugee. Photo Socotra.)

I don’t call it Refuge Farm lightly. The little place nestled between the two creeks has pretty much what you would need to get by in a pinch, and a pinch is what we were in.

I was horizontal, looking up, skin dewy and sticky with the humidity. The fan attempted to do something with the sultry air and not succeeding. The single circuit of power that pulsed with the product of the emergency generator in the basement of Big Pink allowed me to run the fan and the radio in the back bedroom.

Crazy, really, since any reasonable system would have fed the refrigerator first.

Oh well. From what the news radio told me, the food that was nestled in the once frosty box was a write-off already, and the other word from the little radio was that the power companies were trying to manage expectations.

The fridge was going to be a disaster when I opened it again, so screw it.

Oh well. The chipper voices on News radio (“Traffic and Weather on the 8’s!”) told us the food was gone, wasted, since they would not be able to get the juice back on for a week.

Frank is my yard guy. He has spent more time on the farm than I have of late, and he sent me a text. He lost power down at his place in Culpeper and said it was as savage as anything he has seen. He was on generator power, and offered to swing by the farm and check it out for damage.

Crap, I thought. Suppose the place got wiped slick? There was nothing I could do about it. Frank was going to have to go out and look for gas and I asked if he could let me know if I had been overcome with another disaster.

He texted that he would, and I continued to sweat where I was. My pal Point Loma wrote to say that he had seen the Derecha close up and personal. I like his notes. He saves time by not using capital letters and stuff. It is sort of like having ee cummings as a correspondent.

He said: “i was sitting in the gazebo at the marina in galesville doing e-mail and thinking that i ought to check the weather channel for thunderstorms before hitting the rack. then i heard this roaring sound to the west, went out into the dark and saw a black wall of clouds approaching. before i could think “what the fuck is that?” i got hit in the face and eyes with the cloud of dust preceding the storm front and the power went off in an eerie fashion. i grabbed the laptop, snapped it shut, tossed it into the trunk of the car (which as handily right next to the gazebo), and sprinted out the pier to the boat. it took a good minute of armstronging it over to the finger pier so i could get blown aboard and then the rain hit. i managed to get the hatches and ports buttoned up and then grabbed a beer out of the fridge to sit in watch in awe. there was shit flying everywhere – inflatable dinghies cartwheeling down the fairway, torrential sideways blowing rain – only other time i saw something like that was in a hurricane. it blew a good 30-45 minutes and then we survivors crept out of our boats to do some damage assessment. except for dirt and leaves blown in at the onset, i had none but others weren’t so lucky. and now being soaked to the skin, it was cold.”

I wrote back that I had slept through the whole thing, and he had at least a half hour more excitement than we did. Then Frank called from the farm.

He said there was a screen off on the front porch, either from the storm of someone trying to get in. He looked in the window and reported the kitchen dials and such were illuminated and no major damage beyond voyage repairs.

What is the point in having a refuge if you do not avail yourself of it?

I looked up at the ceiling. I could stay here and sweat, or get behind the wheel of the Bluesmobile and head south, a power refugee, and head for Refuge Farm. It is a bit of a production number, what with the crutches and the computers, but damn it, it there was power, there was going to be air conditioning.

I leveraged myself out of bed and collected some connecting cables, the iPad, the laptop and threw them in an old parachute bag with a canvas strap that did not quite trip me as I tottered on the crutches.

I watered the plants. I and headed out the door, locking it behind me.

The air conditioning on the old police car worked like a champ. Once I cleared Fairfax County, people seemed to be acting normally.

Interesting. We have yet to see the massive dislocation of the entire system, the whole grid, all at once. I am curious what our response will be.

I just drove down the road through one darkened sector, and turned the air conditioning down to 68 when I arrived. There was canned food and liquor, and though the quinine water was nearing the end of its shelf life, everything was else was good. A comforting refuge for a refugee.

There was ice spilling out of the chute in the side-by-side reefer.

I made a very tall vodka-and-something and sat down on the couch, watching the ceiling fans swirl the rapidly chilling air through the tall room.

Power is good, I thought. Like way good.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Derecho

(Unhappy pick-up truck on George Mason Drive next to Big Pink on Friday night after the Derecho event. Photo Sara-1).

It was hot. My back hurt and the leg ached dully. My skin was sticky. I wanted to be in the pool, but there are still raw openings in the incision and you know what people do in the pool.

Man, is life fragile, or what?

I was thinking about that after I woke at two-thirty Saturday morning in the dead of the night. I had been reading in bed after returning from Willow Friday night, me being the Poster Boy for Cabin Fever.

I retreated to the meat-locker coolness of the back bedroom and continued my assault on a book-a-day reading program. My eyes began to flutter, and I put down the tablet reader around nine- thirty in the little pile of support equipment on the bed next to me- phones, table , that stuff- and closed my eyes.

Sleep patterns have been a challenge and rest fitful since the operation but gradually improving. I woke in sudden sullen silence, thirsty, and felt something was wrong, just like when the air conditioning went out of the ship, and I knew we had suffered an engineering casualty or maybe something worse. I swung the leg brace out over the floor and used it to leverage myself out of bed.

I grabbed the crutches and hobbled out to the kitchen for a drink of water.

The darned light in the stove hood was out- I made a note to replace it when daylight came-but why was the door to the balcony closed? That was a mystery. I had secured the sliding rod that binds the door to the frame with a pair of Vise-grip pliers to ensure it stayed open, and for the life of me could not remember removing them and buttoning up the place the night before.

I stopped taking the narcotic palliatives weeks ago, but was I losing my mind? Had someone been in here? How many glasses of wine did I have before bed?

Curious.

I opened the reefer and the light did not come on. Power out. Crap. Sleep was banished with the puzzling events. I got horizontal again, and read for an hour or two, then checked email on the tablet after switching from the home wifi connection to the Verizon network. There was a link to a Facebook update from Sara-1. It featured a picture of small Japanese pick-up squashed by a massive oak tree. Sara-1 lives only a bloop single across the parking lot. What the hell was going on?

Really curious. I found a position on my right side in which the brace was not too intrusive a presence and drifted off for an hour before the daylight was fully up.

The appraiser was coming between eleven and noon, and I realized I needed to get the place in some sort of order. Start with the mystery of the back door. The pliers were popped open and on the floor.

Then, I was mildly surprised to find I could not open without a hefty shove. The footstool was upended and tangled in one of the aluminum lawn hairs and the metal planter. The cushions on the Adirondack chairs were gone.

Black potting soil from the planter was strewn everywhere, and white flecks of paint were mingled to present a discouraging mess atop the gray paint of the balcony floor. It looked as through something had scoured the white concert of the pillars that frame the dusty mauve glazed bricks that give our building its rakish nickname.

Down below I could see my cushions on Tony’s patio, and The Queen of the Dogs was talking to him with animation. “Hey, Tony!” I shouted. “Mind snagging my cushions? I will come down if the elevator is working!”

“Sure, Man.” Tony is sporting a beard. A lot of things pass you by when you have missed the change of season. That was not all. The furniture from the pool deck was actually in the pool along with branches from the maples that now rise more than halfway up the eight stories of the building.

Damn, I thought. This was big-how did I miss it?

Jiggs and Ludmilla invited me to dinner via cellphone, which still had a charge.

We were on emergency generator power from the big diesel in the garage, and one third of the circuits to the unit had power. I had garbage disposal, no reefer. Walk in closet light, no television or internet. That sort of thing. The appraiser called to reconfirm his appointment, and I realized I had to get hot on cleaning up the place.

I assaulted the guest bedroom where the Ensign and his buddies had stacked furniture to make the rest of the place wheelchair-friendly.

The apartment looked almost presentable for the appraiser when he eventually showed. Commendable work ethic, I thought, considering most of the traffic lights in Arlington County were out and traffic was a mess with citizens prowling for gas and ice.

When the appraiser was gone I went back to bed, I did not get an eye-witness account of the savage ten minute strike until after I tucked a bottle of 14 Hands Winery “Hot to Trot” red blend (generous aroma of berries, cherries and currants) in the back pocket of my cargo shorts, mounted my crutches and hobbled to the Service Elevator.

This experience with temporary disability has opened my eyes. The cheapskates on the condo board had considered not upgrading the generator when we replaced the aging elevators last year. Sweet reason prevailed, and we did, though the neighborhood was dark, we could charge phones and tablet computers and run a fan, if we chose.

And I could ride the one working elevator down four flights to the lobby.

When I first moved to Big Pink, the generator didn’t work, and when the power went out, the entire structure went cold iron. Pity the elderly on the upper floors. No way out but the stairs.

Jiggs lives on the ground floor on the front of the building, and his patio had a working outlet, over drinks and sizzling steaks he described what it was like when the wall of wind and rain slammed into the building and lightning hit the security light right in front of his place.

Amazing, I thought. Slept right through it.

I kept thinking that the power would come back pretty swiftly- I mean, we are on a major east-west artery, and how hard could this be, but the murmur from the radio was sobering. 90% restoration was estimated by PEPCO (Maryland) and Dominion Power (NoVa) to be at the end of the week or beyond.

The explanation was clear. Big storms- our hurricanes like Irene and Isobel- gave us days to prepare and power crews were able to pre-stage from locales as far away as Oklahoma. Not with this one.

That was a little different than the “possibility of thunderstorms, some of them severe” that I heard about before going to Willow. What hit the building was a wall of 70-80 mile winds that ripped trees, hurled lightning, and was there and gone in a span of ten minutes.

Leaving us completely screwed.

It is worth talking about what this monster was. The phenomenon is not what some have termed an unprecedented demonstration of Mother Nature’s punishing wrath for our environmental sins. They’ve been known over a century, and named “Derecho,” the Spanish word for “Straight.”The term was first cited in the American Meteorological Journal in 1888 by Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs, who wrote about a significant derecho event that crossed Iowa on 31 July 1877.

Derecho events happen about every four years in this neck of the woods, but not like this one. We know a lot more about them from the data amassed by the advent of Doppler weather radar.

Derechos are typically bow or spearhead-shaped on weather radar, and hence they are also called a ‘bow echo’ or ‘spearhead’ radar echo. This one formed near Davenport, Iowa and roared east in a curved massive linear front, clipping the southern edge of Lake Michigan, scouring Ohio and West Virginia, and then intensifying in a red mass of energy crossing the Blue Ridge to slam into Big Pink in a little over 14 hours.

If I had internet, I would have told you about it. As it was, I had a great meal with Jiggs and Ludmilla, and hobbled back to the lobby where I could hear the roar of the generator in the basement giving us a whiff of hope that things would be OK.

Then I put myself back flat on the bed next to the fan, and prepared to sweat until morning.

Tomorrow: Refugee

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com