Armed Forces Day

(Looking forward toward the Amen Corner at the Willow bar. Photo Willow.)

Ok- so it’s Armed Forces Day. I assume you are partying your brains out to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the announcement by the second Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson, that henceforth “Armed Forces Day” would replace separate Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force Days. I would be OK with separate days if they each came with a holiday, but the holiday was intended to signify the importance of the unification of the Armed Forces under the Department of Defense.

(Second Secretary of Defense, the Hon. Louis Johnson. Photo DoD).

Certainly that was a challenge for Mr. Johnson, and it isn’t completely fixed yet. But all days have their challenges. For me, yesterday, it was the nail in the front right tire of the Panzer. It was sort of interesting. I knew it was low, but figured it could wait until the appointment yesterday. Then, the tire pressure hit 28 psi (Panzer apparently prefers 35), and the instrument panel went red and locked up the display in a very stern and forthright manner.

I hate it when the car yells at me like that. It is very Germanic, or like living in New York City. It is for my own good, after all.

I sighed after I turned the key and had exactly zip-nada happen. Had I left the lights on when I got back from Willow? I glanced down and the switch was in the vertical position: “off.”

Battery failed? Crap. I was going to get to the rest of the car issues this week. It appears the priorities list is going to get changed around. I just bought a new battery last year- they are supposed to last for at least three years. I remember installing this one- it was from the Ft. Myer service center. Where the hell are my jumper cables?

It is nice to have a back-up vehicle, at least until the primary and the backups are simultaneously disabled, which shows you the vulnerability of a unified force. And expensive, which is something else I have to consider these days.

We were talking about that at Willow. The regulars were limited to Old Jim, me and Jerry-the-Barrister. Sometimes Fridays are like that- thin on regulars- and sometimes it is packed. I would have gone down to the farm in the afternoon, but Panzer did not get liberated from the shop until late. A nice lady asked him if she could take the two stools closer to the window, which stumbled into one of Jim’s pet peeves, which is that you can’t reserve barstools like you do tables, but it turned out she was a recently deployed Army light Bird, who did not have an easy deployment.

She had some troopies killed, the front of her building got blown up. You know, the usual.

“The private companies don’t understand what our resumes look like. They don’t understand the acronyms.”

“Why not just say you worked for a company with a half trillion dollar budget, a worldwide footprint, an intermodal logistics network that is industry standard and has a license to kill?”

We laughed, but there was a slightly haunted look in her eyes. She had been working for the Joint IED Defeat organization- JIEDDO- an organization for which I have a lot of respect. Well, the mission, anyway.

“I hate IEDs more than I hate snipers,” I said. “And I hate snipers.” Actually, she had just been laid off as a contractor from the place as the Army basically shut the place down. Pity, really, since we never did defeat the infernal things, and now that the wars have been declared over, there is no need for all those people trying to stop the slaughter, the consequences of which I saw way too closely in the number of stumps I saw at the Ortho clinic at Walter Reed two summers ago.

There are hundreds of analysts out of work at JIEDDO as of two weeks ago, and I am not sure what the effect is going to be for the DC job market, except that it looks like nothing good for anyone nuts enough to have a mortgage or a family.

Beyond Jerry-the-Barrister to my right (Army, Vietnam, then Navy Intel) was an Air Force pilot, just retired, and his lovely raven-haired wife who was a Senate staffer. Actually, she was on the Veteran’s Affairs committee- and you can imagine how that got everyone wagging his or her tongues.

I cleared my throat as she said where they stood on the bogus waiting lists and the Vets who had died waiting to see the doctors. “I heard Press Spokesman Jay Carney on the television not talking about it. He said they were investigating themselves vigorously and would tell us if they found anything but he couldn’t comment because the investigation is incomplete.”

“Aren’t they all incomplete?” laughed Jerry, putting down his fork. He was tucking into the duck breasts with the hoisin sauce and coarse-chopped veggie medley. “Mr. Holder is still investigating stuff from 2009.”

That sparked a vigorous dialogue which veered over to a discussion of the merits of the individual service elements, and eventually the whole corner was holding up their retired military ID cards and grunting “ooo-rah!” in unison.

Army, two Navy and the Air Force covered the Bigs. If Jarhead Ray had been there, we would have been complete except for the Semper Peratus crowd, and in the spirit of the unified Armed Forces, I raised a glass of Happy Hour White to my pal Boats, the Master Chief Bo’sun’s mate from the Coast Guard.

We had a rollicking food time until the “you gotta drive” warning light began to flicker in the back of my reptilian brain stem. I bade Jim a pleasant good night, and chatted with the Colonel on the way out.

Turns out she lost her company health plan when she got laid off, just like I did last year. That could leave us to fall back on the safety net of Veterans Affairs, which was a disturbing notion.

The whole idea of depending on the VA for health care is enough to make you sick.

Happy Armed Forces Day- it is a modest holiday for those of us who are still living. Next week there is a much more important one in which we honor the dead.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Later (and Later)

(The chairs are un-stacked, the umbrella is up. The patio is straining with anticipation. Hockey is almost over; the Wizards are out of the playoffs, it is too soon to care about Baseball. There is only one answer. Photo Socotra).

I was walking down the passageway to get to the garage this morning and saw Jiggs coming up the other way. It looked like he had been walking outside. I envied his dedication, but of course I didn’t have anyplace to be for a while, and have got out of the habit of exercising before the office because, well, there is no office.

I was only taking the indoor route because it was raining puppies and kittens outside- it had been mastiffs and panthers earlier, but news-and-weather-on-the-eights told me that it was going to continue to be wet for a while and the Panzer was scheduled for routine maintenance and annual inspections, 0715 sharp.

We exchanged pleasantries, and he said he noticed The Daily was arriving later and later.

I told him it was a function of semi-retirement, not mentioning that the morning stream of activity has subtly mutated, gone partially underground, and turned into several manifestations of commentary that could wind up having me pilloried in public, like not believing computer models are caused by CO2, or however that works.

I didn’t want to get off on that, or any other topic that people are so damn sensitive about these days- the last thing I needed before the car dealership was some act of patriarchal micro-aggression based on privilege. I told him that later seemed to work better, and didn’t mention that I feel an increasing sense of ennui for daily production.

It is not lack of energy, nor anything approaching writer’s block. Quite the contrary.

In fact, the whole thing is starting to get out of control. I was talking to a pal at Willow last night about it. It is time to generate the book that has been bobbing in the settling pond, and there is another beyond that which may have had enough time to leach out some of the raw emotion and leave the framework of something that is true, and funny and possibly even useful.

But then I got swept away in the smaller stories of smaller life and lose sight of what is floating out there still. Get focused. Get to work, dammit.

Now, looking up, I see it is noon already and I should be doing something else. This morning was a beginning. I opened the door to the hallway and marched down to talk to Rhonda at the Concierge Desk. In front of here was a sign that said the 2014 Pool Passes were available for pick up.

I asked for mine, and was presented with the card, officially endorsed by the Big Pink Condominium Unit Owner’s Association. The new crop of Polish Life Guards cannot be far behind.

And in a week, I will once more have an excuse for getting the story out late, and I know what that is going to be:

A plunge in the deep blue waters of the Big Pink pool.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Soapy

(G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams, governor of Michigan).

I wanted to write about the way TLB’s hair shimmered with highlights when she walked into Willow last night. Honestly, I don’t think I have seen her look so lovely, and I have to say that Jon-without was at his dapper best.

I was doing my best to stay away from anything that could be taken wrong: the revelations of the moment were that the VA had spent $500 million on new office furniture, which I am sure they needed, while dozens of Vets died waiting for care. Then someone said that the Department had also spent $700 million on malpractice since 2002, making the scandal thoroughly bi-partisan in nature.

Heather was managing a private party and phasing in and out of the little crowd at the bar. Old Jim was next to me in the usual place. Dante was behind the bar, with Brett Maverick and Boomer.

“Is this all a scheme to force the Vets onto the Health Care Exchanges, since the system clearly doesn’t work? Does that mean the retirees are next?” I made a rhetorical statement to no one in particular and Jim harrumphed and said I was paranoid, and it didn’t matter anyway.

I nodded in vague agreement. “You would think that a budget of $152.7 billion and 280,000 employees would get you a little bit more bang for you buck.”

“Time for reform,” said Jon-without.

I looked at him and suddenly it hit me. Jon was a dead ringer for a former governor of Michigan, a reformer and one of the most popular chief executives in the State’s history.

“Do you know who G. Mennen Williams is?” I asked, thunderstrick at the revelation.

“Who?”

“Soapy Williams. Demorat governor in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.”

“Soapy wore a bow tie like you, Jon. You could be brothers.”

“Soapy? Why did they call him that?”

“His mom came from a prominent family; her father founded the Mennen brand of men’s personal care products. Hence Soapy.”

“He was a reformer, too.”

“Sounds like something we could use right now. I looked at Jon speculatively. “Are you interested in politics?”

“No,” he said. “I am interested in the shredded pork sliders, though.”

“A wise choice,” I said, and took a deep sip of Happy Hour White.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Twenty Four

The morning started out with ennui. I slept well enough, but rose still tired. The temperatures have declined from the sultry first-sweat day of the season. The coffee was good enough, when I remembered to punch the button on the side. I don’t know- there is plenty to be outraged about but somehow I could not rouse myself to any serious polemics about the shocking state of the VA health care system.

Or anything else, really. I read the mail in a desultory manner. We have known the VA has been in deep trouble or twenty years or more, so this is no surprise. I really wanted to be surprised, and yawned when I saw that everything was recycled, banal, or so self-evident as to go almost without comment.

Problems at the VA? Hell, we have known about that for about twenty years. If you were looking for a dysfunctional example of the United States Government in action, you really don’t have to go much further to find one.

And no, I am not going to veer off on that topic, except to note in passing that this is the way the much larger health thing is going to go for all of us- this is just a sideshow about how the system is going to wind up managing resources. They used to call them Death Panels- they are not that, really, but the process by which a finite amount of treatment is parceled out to a growing number of consumers amounts to the same thing.

Sound harsh? Check how the National Health Service allocates care in the UK. It is as inevitable as it is inexorable.

I know the feeling of inevitability. I stayed home from Willow last night to re-watch the second episode of the re-cycled “24” shoot-em-up with Kiefer Sutherland as the indestructible Jack Bauer.

Staying up to view it at the time it is actually broadcast is such a throwback. I try to watch when it is broadcast, though that means I miss the second half to somnolence. I am not completely sure what it is about, though I like William Devane more as President than as that irritating guy on Fox who keeps trying to sell me precious metals to hide in my safe since the economy is about to melt down and only sensible people will be able to go to the farmer’s market and barter for corn with silver ingots.

Mary Lynn Rajskub (as Chloe Obrien) is my favorite. She is channeling The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in this edition, and I have to say she keeps my attention more than Kiefer’s single-minded intensity. Chloe has a loopy punk haircut and tons of eye-shadow. She grew up in Trenton, MI, and we share a lot of classic Detroit heritage: she is Irish-Czech-Polish, so I guess when she has a couple drinks she wants to invade Germany.

I know I do.

It is very strange watching the show again after it’s four year hiatus. I remember when it first appeared, the November after we realized we had been at war for a long time. It was the first big series that reflected the national free fall into the Global War on Whatever.

The tension between Sutherland’s no-nonsense, whatever-it-takes attitude and normal social etiquette did not get me particularly agitated, though it was controversial at the time. We were, after all, fighting murderous fanatics. The show verged on depicting something close to reality a couple times, but then veered off to find more correct villains. Mostly Russian, as I recall, which is why I always thought the show was sort of prescient.

I watched it religiously as the bizarre construct of the show rolled through 24 episodes per season, each supposedly covering a single hour of one day of intense, non-stop terror-busting action.

They are not even going to try that this time- twelve installments are planned. I will watch them as many times as necessary to follow the plot. You may recall that season two featured African American President David Palmer, as portrayed masterfully by actor Dennis Haysbert. He was voted the number one favorite fake president in a 2012 survey by TV.com. He even beat The West Wing’s Martin Sheen as Jed Bartlett, a liberal President in Aaron Sorkin’s hallucination about progressive government.

The former seemed impossible to imagine at the time, and the latter inconceivable. And look where we are now. Twenty four.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

In From the Cold

 

Listening to news-and-traffic-on-the-eights, I heard about the big collapse of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet. Twoo teams of scientists say the long-feared collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has begun, kicking off what they say will be a centuries-long, “unstoppable” process that could raise sea levels by as much as 15 feet.

When I heard that, I had to swerve the Bluesmobile to the curb, feeling the palpitations coming on. The process is irreversible, according to the scientists- and I marveled at how this could be, considering that on the very same day, NASA’s Snow and Ice Data Center announced that the extent of Antarctic ice sheet also just hit record levels- by a significant degree.

I am a curious fellow, and while I still had power poked around a bit with the information. People are talking about the early break-up of ice in the Arctic, so there is clearly something going on, but we don’t know quite what it is- colder south and warmer north? Hard to say- since all the records date only to 1978, the beginning of the satellite era.

Before that we really don’t know with any precision.

I looked at the information of the catastrophe of the collapsing ice and was reminded that I need to do something right away. According to the scientists, the Thwaites Glacier could disappear entirely in somewhere between 200 and 1,000 years.

That loss would raise global sea levels by nearly 2 feet, and if that happens, it could remove the linchpin holding the rest of the West Antarctic Ice sheet in place. Ominously, there is sufficient frozen mass to cause another 10 to 13 feet of sea level rise, which is what gets us to the headline.

I am really alarmed. This could inundate lower Old Town Alexandria on the Potomac by almost a city block by 2214, or 3214 at the latest. Then there could be real trouble.

Thankfully, I think we have a few minutes to deal with the coming catastrophe, or maybe my children’s great great great grandchildren.

I am quite sure that the prediction is sincere, even if wildly broad in the estimate of time.

And time is something that I don’t have much of this morning. But taken in the sort of millennial increments the scientists are using, perhaps a look at the geologic global temperatures might be useful:

I think we have a minute to think about this, wouldn’t you agree?

Particularly if it is inevitable and irreversible as the men in the white coats tell us. I am a little concerned about how quickly things can get cold. That might forstal the ice loss, but of course, they want me to worry, so as a good citizen, I will.

But maybe next week.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Sustainable

(This is the prototype for solar energy farms of the future that can produce electric power except when there are clouds or when the sun goes down. When operating, the individual mirrors focus intense heat on the tower array, which boils water to produce energy. It also shreds birds in midair and can blind pilots, but it is sustainable except for the fact that the mirrors get dusty and wear out and require government subsidies which are offset by higher costs to the consumers. That is not to say that it isn’t a swell idea if there were means to store the energy for use when the array is not “optimized,” but there is no provision for that. Photo Solarmaxsystems).

You know the second someone says the phrase “sustainable” and “common sense” in the same sentence that the individual knows that the rest of what they are going to tell you is:

a. 1. Not

b. 2. Isn’t.

But I am not going to go off on that this morning, but rather on a tangent, since the two phrases are used interchangeably across a host of public policy issues.

At the moment, it seems like they are trying to change what people are talking about, which is not the climate, and I certainly don’t blame folks for wanting to change the topic to something that might happen by the mid-term elections in 2054. At the moment, they are busy telling us that the temperatures on this resilient planet could go up ten degrees this century. That stunning prediction was from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, headed by Dr. John P. Holdren. He is a smart man who has been around the block on this stuff.

He was at Harvard, and you know what that means. I speak from experience. As a graduate of the shortest resident course that actually leads to a certificate from the JFK School of Government, I know we have to stick together.

(Dr. John P. Holdren, Office of Science and Technology Policy. US Government Photo.)

I looked hard to see what the new science was that Dr. Holdren was referring to. I mean, we all agree that the temperature has skyrocketed almost a whole degree Celsius since 1840. I think we all agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas- I mean, that is why the actual Greenhouses increase the level of the gas to encourage plant growth, right? The increased level in the atmosphere may have contributed to the dramatic increase (17%) in the 19 most-grown agricultural crops between 1995-2009.

The dates roughly line up with the amount of time that global surface temperatures have stayed within the margin of error- which now goes back to the second Clinton Administration.

Still, Dr. Holdren is a smart guy and he must be on to something, or else why would he have just issued the impressive 840-page National Climate Assessment that told us that the effects of climate change are already upon us? Having just watched the latest and largest snowfall out in Colorado, I am in agreement. I just am not sure what it means.

I mean, weather isn’t climate. Climate is the average of weather, right? So the average over the last 17 years really hasn’t changed, but it is suddenly going to go off the scale?

I am not anti-sicence and I am certainly not anti-technology. There are plenty of great applications for photovoltaic systems- as back ups and for household applications and the like- but the astonishingly bad idea of the massive (and inefficient) solar farms in the Mohave Desert are a case in point about “sustainable” things. I am not even going to ask what is sustainable about the gigantic windmills.

The hardy Danes have been using them for a while, and the oldest one they have still in commission has lasted 28 years. The average is more like sixteen.

So, ‘sustainable is’ sort of a relative concept. But about the big solar arrays:

A new report by the people who hang out with us at Willow- the Fish & Wildlife Service- finds that the new massive solar facilities in California are acting like “mega traps” that kill and injure birds. As a result, “entire food chains” are being disrupted. Here is the deal:

The Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory studied three projects in California: Desert Sunlight, Genesis Solar and Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS). Two-hundred and thirty-three different birds from 71 species were found dead over the course of a two-year study.

The three main causes of death were:

1. Solar flux: Exposure to temperatures over 800 degrees F.

2. Impact (or blunt force) trauma: The birds’ wings are rendered inoperable while flying, causing them to crash into the ground. Birds that do not die are often injured badly enough to make them vulnerable to predators.

3. Predators: When a bird’s wings are singed and it can not fly, it loses its primary means of defense against animals like foxes and coyotes.

Hummingbirds, swifts, swallows, doves, hawks, finches, warblers and owls were just some dead birds found at the solar facilities’ “equal opportunity” mortality hazards.

I take this stuff seriously- there is an awful lot at stake, after all. So here is a bold prediction: the average temperature could go up in Washington by twenty or thirty degrees by August from what they are now. Of course, it might also change in November, but I am confident that the temperatures are going to go up. I think.

Dr. Holdren is, too. In fact, he is so serene in what he is predicting that it is exactly the same thing as what he told president Clinton in 1995:

It is comforting to me that some things don’t appear to change, as Dr. Holdren has not changed his position since 1995. That must mean they are sustainable, right?

And that is only common sense.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Mother’s Day

(Mom in Miami, 1960)

To all the mothers out there, the very best wishes for a day filled with little luxuries, and the adoration of your children. Perhaps brunch? Certainly a respite from the cares of raising the next generation.

Mom has been gone now since January of 2012. That first Mother’s Day without her was all still too raw, and the joint funeral with Dad still incomplete. I think last year the realization that there was no one to call finally penetrated to my consciousness. I had thought about cards before dismissing the idea. The Sunday finally came and went, leaving me feeling empty and a little lost.

I wondered if it would be easier this year, and I have to say it is not.

I keep wanting to reach for the phone to call her and wish her the best for the day. I think toll charges will apply.

For those who still have the woman who gave the birth alive and well in this world, make sure you call, or better, go see her and give thanks for the ability to do so.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Hiding in Plain Sight

Sorry-got off on the Cold War this morning with the usual suspects. Maybe it was part of the informal celebration of Soviet Victory Day yesterday at Willow- the one that commemorated the final victory over Nazi Germany by he Red Army.

We started with some thoughts about the Boko Haram, the militants who kidnapped almost three hundred young women for the crime of going to Western-style schools, and the subsequent massacre the group perpetuated against male and female citizens of the remote town of Gamboru Ngala in a remote corner of Northern Nigeria.

The city was essentially unprotected, as Government troops were off looking for the kidnapped girls, and Boko fighters spent 12 hours gunning down civilians (male and female), lobbing home-made bombs into homes and torching shops. Some estimates put the number of murdered citizens as high as three hundred.

That led to a vigorous discussion about why these particular fanatics were not sooner placed on the list of known terrorist organizations, which is curious, but hardly something I wanted to spend the morning exploring. What resonated most powerfully was the discussion about a resurgent Russia and increasingly assertive China. Since we don’t seem to have a plan to deal with either, we got to talking about what we were expected to do in the event of miscalculation back in the bad old days.

One of them was to go underground. McNalley’s Alley was the tunnel to the rear adit of one of the old forts that remained- remain- from the darkest days of the Cold War, before Soviet missile guidance improved to the point that they could reliably hit the known “secret” locations. Most of the hardened structures date to the late 1950s, and a lot of money was spent on them.

There was another program that followed the abandonment of the Forts, but they turned out to not actually have been rendered completely irrelevant. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a few of us were mobilized to hunker down under the concrete and stone behind blast doors of steel.

Just as an important note for the post-attack tourist, there is not a great deal to do down there. Accordingly, we took delight in exploring the place. There were reservoirs, decontamination stations, the hospital and the crematorium, the double blast doors, the office spaces for a variety of agencies, some of them three stories high. All the agencies and offices were expected to have an alternate location and be able to run the affairs of government from there.

The Alley ran to one of four “towers” (two on either side of the front and rear entrances) that ran up to a point near the surface with their own heavy blast doors that were not used, but which would, in the event, provide a means for little bulldozers to venture out to the blasted surface and re-erect communications antennae that would have been vaporized in the Great Exchange.

We wondered what the troops designated to accomplish that would have thought about the radiation exposure. There were a lot of very strange things out there. I still have a yellow box with the famous Civil Defense logo on the side, part of some piece of long obsolescent Geiger counter.

I know why the whole thing remained such a big deal- I saw a picture of the Shah of Iran at the facility where we worked. But the real program had moved on to a mobile system that would not be vulnerable to pre-programmed targeting.

I remember the savage delight some took in physically- kinetically- blowing up the white vans to ensure that the system had a stake through its heart and the agencies no longer had to pay for a capability that was only intended to deal with the stuff of nightmares. Best not to think of it.

That was the early 1990s, of course, when history had ended and peace had broken out all over and pretty flowers bloomed.

Or something.

Anyway, that didn’t quite work out the way we thought it was going to, and after 9/11, I was engaged in the survey of alternate locations still in the Government inventory as places to continue operations in the event of some catastrophe in the National Capital Region. There were a couple of the undisclosed locations that remained in long-term storage; others (Like Site R) that were acknowledged and others that were not. There were others that were mothballed, while some had been sold off.

(Mount Pony shortly after decommissioning. It doesn’t look like this any more. Photo Library of Congress).

One was the bunker at Mount Pony dedicated to the Federal Reserve’s continued existence- there was rumored to be a stash of small bills on pallets in the range of a few billion dollars – to restart commerce after the nuclear exchange with the Soviets. The money was long gone after the end of the Soviet Missile Threat, though the real estate flyer offering the property for public sale was kind of neat.

(Cages in the Mt. Pony Bunker that once held pallets of small bills. Now they are a home for old Hollywood movies. Photo Library of Congress).

We thought a lot of improbable things back then; with the assessed improvement in Soviet missile technology in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the bunker defense strategy was deemed outmoded. Rather than hunkering down under concrete and earth in a location probably known (and targeted) by the Strategic Rocket Forces, the government would go “road mobile.”

One of the last Cold War survival drills in which I participated involved a long direct flight on a military transport out of Andrews AFB with selected members of the Joint Staff to establish an alternate operating location in a western state. The white vans were all there- and I realized then that you occasionally saw them out in public on the Interstate, just like the trucks that moved nuclear stuff around- and almost always at FEMA disaster sites. They hid them in plain sight.

The J2 asked us in a private moment if we knew that this was the real deal, would we report to be whisked away from our families at the moment of disaster.

I said “probably not.” I suffered no immediate consequences for my honesty.

In 1992, the Washington Post ran a big story about the facility the Greenbrier Hotel that was intended to support the Congress of the United States. I remember the impact of the story: the facility was immediately closed, and the bunker returned to the hotel. There were people itching to harvest the Peace Dividend and the costs of maintaining the bunkers all over jurisdictions adjacent to the Capital were continuing irritants in a time of steeply declining budgets (any relation to the current environment is purely coincidental).

(The Greenbrier now offers tours of the post-attack Congressional Bunker. Photo courtesy The Greenbrier).

The Greenbrier had been in patriotic cahoots with the Government, of course, and a facility large enough to support the Congress in the immediate post-attack environment was significant enough that it was hidden in plain sight, and some of the public spaces were used for hotel functions. You can take a tour for $30 bucks, though you can save the money with the virtual tour at the Civil Defense Museum site. All of us of the “duck-and-cover” generation will feel the old dread come back looking at the images here:

http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/greenbriar/index.html

Mt. Pony was on the commercial real estate market for a while in the mid-1990s, but the Library of Congress wound up using an option to acquire the bunker, where private donations funded the David H. Packer Media Center to restore and preserve old nitrate-based movie films.

I think there is a codicil in the bequest that permitted the acquisition to the effect that the facility can never be used for anything scary like surviving the holocaust.

I always think about it when I drive by on the way to the farm. You can see it from the highway, as you can many of these things. Back in the day, they figured the most effective way to conceal them was to just hide them in plain sight.

That is still true, I think. Look around.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

We’ll Leave the Light On For You

I have been a traveling man most of my professional life. Mostly the unpleasant bag-dragging sort of travel in which you never really get to unpack, and wind up humping the luggage through elevators of varying reliability to cabs of uncertain hygiene to oppressive air portals of embarkation. Remember the stunning invocation of luggage with wheels? Technology on the march!

To the degree that there were no bags to drag, the cruising life represents travel in the grand manner.

On the big decks, it was remarkable. Someone would make Africa appear alongside the gray steel, or sampans ply the harbor below the big steel beach, or some exotic beach with rich land smells of flowers and crap and bus exhaust. You only had to drag your bag on at the beginning of the trip, and drag it off again some indeterminate time later.

The cast of reprobate Birdfarm sailors with whom I communicate have sailed the seven seas on aircraft carriers, which are funded by the Congress of the United States and managed by the hoteliers of the Department of the Navy. We began with a general attempt to provide a Michelin Guide to lodging in the Airdale Navy, but of course it got quickly into a recitation of a whole sub-culture, framed in showers and load noises and chow and broken sleep, and living amid machines already four decades old the first time we saw them.

So, the Michelin people would not actually visit the big ships to see how the button-crushers in the CV laundries were doing their jobs, or the quality of the Nairobi Trail Markers in the Dirty Shirt Wardroom, or where the coldest beer on the ship might be found in one of the Blind Pigs that operated sub-rosa in the old pre-Tailhook service.

Most of us were WESTPAC sailors, and most of the accounts I have are of the ships that went to the wars in SE Asia and the Persian Gulf. It was a busy time out there, but painfully different. Then, the South China Sea had no issues of sovereignty, nor a resurgent China with its own (albeit re-cycled) aircraft carrier. There is no doubt in my mind that it was more fun to serve on ours rather than theirs, but I will wait and see if the PLA-N issues me an invitation to review the wardroom fodder.

Anyway, this is not a case of Motel 6, where they leave the light on for you, but much closer to a review of Best Western Motels than a real Michelin Guide. You know the BW chain- often quirky, wildly different in amenities, uniquely themselves rather than some cookie-cutter corporate Holiday Inn Express. Some of us are old enough to have served on an actual Essex-class carrier, the mainstay of the WW II Navy.

(USS Ticonderoga, a 27C mod Essex hull. Photo USN).

My first ship was Midway, a late construction WWII ship with an armored steel deck and bristling with guns. She had two sisters: Coral Sea and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Having dozens of the Essex hulls to spare, a modification was introduced (“The 27C mod”) that added an angle deck and steam catapults. Then came the FID-class boats- the Forrestal was “First in Defense,” (sisters Sara, Ranger, Indy) and they were quite remarkable in their day, and controversial, since the great debate still echoed about the role of the new Air Force and whether Navies (and armies) were still relevant in the Nuclear Age.

As it turns out, they were. But that is a matter for another day, and another discussion of whether past is prologue or just past. The old force was oil-fired and steam driven.

(Kitty Hawk wasn’t really for sale- but the Chinese could have bought a better ship).

The needs of empire spawned the workhorse ship of my time on the waves: Kitty Hawk and her kin (Connie and America), and the original Nuke, Enterprise and the remarkable sleek conventional JFK.

(USS Enterprise. First of the nukes. Photo Military Today).

Then came the ten ships that form the core of today’s carrier navy- the Nimitz-class ships. Cadillacs they are, by comparison with what came before, hybrid nuclear-steam machines that are wonders of 1970s technology.

Now, the USS Gerald R. Ford class is abuilding, and it will be a nuclear-electric beast, as will the two programmed sisters, the new Enterprise and JFK. I have the luxury of being skeptical about the whole thing. There is zero chance that I will wander down to the Dirty Shirt for a cup of cappuccino on the Ford when the hours are small and the horizon dark and impenetrable.

Regardless of the technology, one thing was common for the Airdale community, as opposed to the Surface Line and enlisted troops who lived below the hangar bay. We lived downstairs, if I may permitted the lubber term, but above the hangar bay, a palpable stratification of birdfarm social life. The air wing folks were lodged in bunkrooms and tiny staterooms wedged into spare space along the asbestos-lined catapult tracks. If you could learn to sleep through a launch cycle, you could properly call yourself a member of the extended-stay community.

My pal Point Loma wrote to support one of one of the old boats- the Coral Sea. I have to agree she got fairly short shrift in her treatment, and she had an advantage that the others did not have for me, personally. As the sister to Midway, I could always find my way to the dirty shirt and knew what they meant when they gave me a frame number and deck to navigate to. My pal commented thusly:

“Coral Maru was a good ship – I spent a day aboard her in the IO during a Gonzo Station turnover. But although she was a sister ship, she was not Midway.

(USS Midway leaving her extended stay in Dai Nippon. Photo USN).

On Hotel 41, our mustang wardroom officer had been a Mess Specialist aboard the Pueblo, or People’s Museum Number FIVE as she is known in Pyongyang these days. The Mustang was a serial WESTPAC rat, so he may even had been there when you were. I wrote a review on a book about the Pueblo incident several years ago and mentioned him in the context that we weren’t done with the North Koreans, yet, and they had a habit of reminding us of that at inopportune moments.

One of our doughty Naval Academy grads decided one evening to rip the wardroom officer a new asshole, maybe because he had the duty and couldn’t eat in the dirty shirt, or his shrimp were overcooked or whatever. At any rate, he got up and publically started to berate the Mustang – we couldn’t believe it. You don’t do that sort of stuff in the dirty shirt, much less the formal Wardroom.

That provoked one of the older Mustangs seated at a table nearby. He walked up, got in the middle, and then proceeded to enlighten the Lieutenant as to whom he was abusing, as if his bullshit even was a pale comparison to the punishment he had endured from the DPRKs. There were all sorts of exiles and pirates associated with the Maru- they were there for the most part because part of themselves had been given to Asia and the Land of the Big PX did not hold the same allure as it did for the tourist sailors.

She was an interesting ship.

I remember well flinching at the shock of bleed air steam coming unexpectedly out of the handheld water devices in the showers- an exciting treat during the perfect Navy shower; that coming after various random blasts and spurts of hot and cold water.

Better yet – when you were totally soaped up and expectant of a semi-soothing hot water wash down, there was the reward of the “oh fuck” gurgle of nothing from the plastic beast, usually before a GQ was scheduled.

That experience was mostly aboard conventional (oil) powered carriers (and the Command Ship Coronado). Nimitz-class ships, being nukes with unlimited desalinization power- were much more reliable for hot water. And of course, there was the sweet fragrance, emollient and laxative effects of Jet Fuel #5 that only enhanced the CV spa experience.

This brings back a great memory. Around the corner from my stateroom aboard Midway on the starboard side inboard of Cat One on the 0-2 level (and just forward of the Switchbox Ready Room Two) was a semi-private head that had no outward compartment markings. It was four right turns out of the bunkroom (BK). Inside, there were three Hollywood shower stalls and in there you could turn on the taps and luxuriate under torrents of hot water just like at home – no fucking hand-held nozzles that forced compliance with the hated Navy wet-soap-rinse routine.

The head was a hidden, semi-private oasis and I never stood in line to get in, as if anything like that could be a secret aboard an aircraft carrier, ever, but it was. Another reason why I love and will always treasure that ship. I had almost forgotten that.

I became a shellback in 1981 aboard Kitty Hawk after joining VA-52 during a mid-cruise port call in Perth (a sea story in its own right) on the way back up to Gonzo Station. It was not a pleasant experience, but it is what it was. After that, I had the pleasure of being a sadistic trusty Shellback during a few more crossings. My outfit was typically pirate with a homemade bandana, sunglasses, shorts, flight boots, a t-shirt with a cartoon on it with the caption “Nuke the Wogs” and my shillelagh emblazoned with “I love sweet Wog ass” upon it, which I wielded with gusto.

As I was still worn out from the war (Clausewitz was right about the whole Friction thing), I skipped the last crossing aboard Midway Maru, choosing instead to sleep in. We were returning from DESERT STORM and dipped down south after passing Singapore to put an exclamation point on the combat cruise before a well-deserved port call in Pattaya Beach, Thailand.

(I began to chuckle at that, since my son is making his first port visit there soon. On the same ship in the same port, our A-6 Intruder Squadron had rented an Admin suite in one of the high-rise hotels. VA-115 prided itself on their bombing accuracy, and decided to conduct proficiency operations by precision-dropping some of the furniture off the balcony. It became their opportunity to “meet the Ambassador,” but I missed it, being ensconced at the Nana Hotel on Soi 4 up in Bangkok, and exploring the quite remarkable world of the Grace Hotel Coffee Shop, which after 0200 became the prototype for the Star Wars Cantina.)

My pal continued: “As we had missed several “beer days,” the Skipper (he was famous later) and XO (later an author) decide to combine the two. Since our CAG didn’t drink, I managed to talk our Admin Chief into giving me his beer tickets that I shared with the CVIC Supervisor (Carrier Intelligence Center) in his stateroom.

We had something like 15,000 cans of beer onboard which we couldn’t take back to Japan and instead of dumping them overboard, the XO ordered us to “drink it all.” During dinner down in the wardroom, I think I had another four beers – sort of like being back at the Atsugi O’Club. As we used to say, there is the right way, the wrong way, the Navy way, and the Midway. God, I love that fucking pirate ship.”

What is most remarkable is that you can visit her in San Diego Harbor. See, the point of this guide is that a handful of these ships will survive. Navies are expensive things, and the way of ships is to return to the iron oxide from whence they came. They become inconvenient and hard to keep from sinking on their own, and hence are scrapped for razor blades or sunk for reefs. So thanks for coming along for a visit to the lost world.

This won’t be the end of these stories, of course. There are a million of them. And the way you can tell a sea story from a fairy tale is that one starts out “Once upon a time,” and the other “This is a no-shitter, really….”

We will leave the light on for you.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

The Micheline Guide to Birdfarms: Coral Maru and Sorry Sarah

I got one in the inbound this morning that caused me to sit up straight and sputter in my coffee. I was hung over- I don’t know what happened with the Happy Hour White on Tuesday, but I got a vague case of dyspepsia, and came home early. It was the Lovely Jamie’s last trip to Willow, since she is departing for some burg in the vicinity of Richmond until her employment ship comes in, and when Jon-without called the next day to see if I was going to be there, I said yes and wound up drinking bourbon, which I normally do not do and that accounts for an even more dyspeptic Thursday.

So, when I finally got up this morning, I was surpassed to see a long line of messages critiquing ship’s or war as fine hotels. The note from my pal Denny was far above average, and it turns out he reviewed the sister ships to two that I steamed in, Coral Sea (Midway) and Saratoga (Forrestal). What is more, he was in the same (though earlier version) of the squadron I was- the Bland and Mellow Vigilantes of Medium Pursuit Squadron VF-151, the best darn Phantom squadron in WESTPAC.

Denny replied like this:

“In your field guide to Birdfarms, you rated the Coral Sea pretty low, but she was a good ship and a far cry better than the Sorry Sarah (Uss Saratoga, CV-60). I provide the following so that no one accepts orders to her, since she was an engineering nightmare. When we were to deploy from Mayport, FL in 1966, we were delayed for an additional 2 weeks so they could round up as many of the AWOL enlisted crew as possible. The Plan of the Day (POD) had a 4 page addendum with Captain’s Masts and Courts Martials listed thereon.

Two days out of port and we were on water hours; wet down, soap down, rinse down and hope that the water did not turn to super-heated steam before you could bail out of the shower stall. Sometimes you even got JP-4 out of the scuttlebutts. To her credit, though, we spent 6 months in the Med and only lost one Whale (EA-3B Skywarrior), and only one crew member from it.

The cruise on Coral Maru turned out to be 13 months instead of the planned 8 months, as two of the CVs scheduled to replace us on Yankee station could not get out of overhaul or fix serious maintenance problems on time. We also had problems deploying to WESTPAC, and had to spend two months in Hawaii while they replaced two of the boilers. At he time, the locals had it in for us Haoles (Mainlanders), and gangs of Kanakas prowled the streets of Honolulu looking to kick ass.

Only a fool went on liberty without a crowd.

The Kanakas tossed one of our enlisted men off the roof of a building in the Hotel Street red light district, killing him. And one of the pilots in an A-4 squadron was beaten so badly in a bar on the strip itself that he had to sent stateside for brain surgery. The military commanders on the Island got together and solved the problem. They gave the Mayor two weeks to clean up the mess with the Kanaka gangs or they would call Dungaree liberty and let the troops have at them. From then on, the local police seemed to have the situation better in hand.

We flew out of Barber’s Point while there, a pleasant experience, save for our first night there. They opened up some Quonset hut BOQ’s that had been vacant since WW II: no A/C of course, and with little breeze it was too hot and muggy to get much sleep. I got in the tin shower stall hoping to cool off. With the first spurt of water came this huge black spider which I assume was a tarantula. After a mad scramble to kill it with my shower clog, I finished my shower and tried to get to sleep.

I was awakened by something tickling my nose. It turned out to be one of those giant cockroaches they have over there and another mad scramble ensued.

That was enough! I spent the rest of the night in the common lounge, dropping quarters into the beer machine for cold cans of Coors and reading a book. That time in Hawaii was particularly important (maybe sadly so) to LCDR Alverez, the Ops officer of one of our two A-4 squadrons (VA-153, I think).

(LCDR Everett Alvarez, first US POW shot down and longest resident of the Hanoi Hilton. Photo USN).

When we left the states, he was still in a hip to ankle cast as a result of an unusual experience he had over the Rockies. His engine crapped out and he had to punch out, but he must have forgotten how high those peaks are. He failed to manually deploy the chute for his ejection seat, which had a barostatic release set for 10,000 feet. As a result, he landed on the side of a mountain with the seat acting like a toboggan for a hairy ride down. The chute deployed once he passed below 10K and it slowed him up enough so that his collision with a tree just shattered his right leg instead of killing him.

By the time we left Hawaii, he was out of the cast and had been rehabbing the leg to the point where he was able to requalify for carrier ops. As you know, he was the first pilot shot down and captured over in North Vietnam and spent more time in the Hanoi Hilton than any other. I thought I would lose it when I watched him on TV getting off that plane after repatriation of our prisoners.

Food and beverage Service: We had some great parties aboard the Coral Maru, when they would stand us down for a few days of relief from the 24/7 flight ops; 1/2 hour prebrief, 2 hour hop, 1/2 hour debrief, some chow, then a couple hour nap and start over for 3 or 4 hops a day. Almost everyone got their Coral Sea Centurion patch for 100 carrier landings before that cruise ended.

As you probably know, when someone reached that milestone they made an announcement over the 1MC to that effect. The door to the appropriate ready room would then open and they would wheel in a huge sheet cake with a tailhook centerpiece and the guy’s name on it. We had a super flight surgeon in our squadron (VF-151), named Hank. His wife said she could not seem to look at him without getting pregnant.

They already had 11 kids, and when she came for a visit to Hawaii, she got pregnant again. After one recovery, the 1MC announced that LT Hank, USN, MC had just attained unique status as the one and only Coral Sea Circumturion, having that day completed his 100th circumcision aboard this ship. Where upon the ready room door banged open and they wheeled in a sheet cake with you know what as the centerpiece.

One more quick story about CV-43 and I will quit. During the middle of one particularly long ops cycle on Yankee Station (50+ days), I was grabbing something to eat in the dirty shirt mess (where I tried to take all of my meals) and I was sitting with Hank among others.

The tall Supply Corps LT in charge of the mess suddenly staggered through the door from the kitchen with the haft of a huge butcher knife sticking out of his shirt front. He had, we learned, tried to get the attention of one of his Philippine stewards who was engaged in violently chopping up vegetable with that knife. The steward was having severe marital problems and was lost in thought about same. When the Mess Treasurer tapped him on the shoulder, he wheeled around and ran him through with that knife.

Hank rushed him to the surgery, and, surprisingly, was back within a half an hour. He advised that, unbelievable as it must sound, that knife had passed completely through the Mess Treasurer in the only conceivable place possible without hitting any vital organ or artery. All he had to do was sew up the cuts on either side.

So, I have to give Coral Sea at least one Michelin star, just for food and beverage, and the medical staff, just for the records.

Copyright Vic and Denny 2014
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303