Category: DailySocotra

Building 213

It was an anonymous box on the oldest Naval reservation in the nation: the Washington Navy Yard. Building 213 is gone now, part of the re-development of the Washington Navy Yard. I had been meaning to tell you story, but did not get around to it. I am in a cab shortly to Dulles and […]

Wrapping Up

(Vic is shown here wearing the shirt that commemorates his impending 65th year of continuous, successful, sustained respiration on the planet Earth. It reads even more ominous than it sounds. It is a gift from a Black Labrador Retriever, discerning literary critic and Patriot). We jump around a little like Ricochet Rabbit here at The […]

Balalaika

This is a season with two anniversaries that are so significant and profound as to mention them before we do anything else. First is the one that is tantalizingly close but impossibly far away. We all knew someone growing up who had been there when Ike’s Armada steamed across the Channel to disgorge their cargo […]

Time Traveling

I was on a mission from God. Or somebody after The Blonde telephoned me from the Lake. I had called Jon-Without and Heather to see if they wanted to join me for a cross-country adventure to find the Original Willow Bar, but Heather explained that she was trapped at a wedding in Cape May with […]

Lost and Found

(The Blonde took this shot yesterday at a restaurant called “the Cove” at Lake Anna. I am headed there now). OK- time to take a deep breath. We got the boys back from their cruise, celebrated the heroes of the Battle of Midway on the anniversary of the first day of that fight, and am […]

With the Golden Pelicans at Midway

As you know, I did a series of articles on the commemorative events scheduled for the Battle of Midway Week, 04-07 June. Having written them was almost as good as having actually done them, so I sort of forgot about them. It is appropriate that am writing now 74 years from the exact time the […]

Homecoming

02 June 2016 Editor’s Note: Every Fly Off is the same, and all are different. My fighter buddy Bronco sent me this one, from his time as an F/A-18 Hornet Skipper, which sums it up nicely: “Ah, Channel Fever. I remember it so well. I know you might discuss fly-off next, so here’s my story […]

Cruise Boxes

Editor’s Note: Bear with me. We will get everyone home tomorrow- well, maybe… Cruise Boxes (Navy Cruise Boxes: an open and shut case.) 08 APR 1990: The realization that things are almost over fir this cruise suddenly struck home with reality today. Yesterday, we were trapped in a time dimension in which there was no […]

Going Home

31 May 2016 Editor’s Note: Yeah I know. I hate going back to work the day after a long weekend. The pile of stuff that needs to be done….oh well. That included feeding some old papers through the scanner to retrieve the end-bits of that story about the Med Cruise that spanned the end of […]

In Memory

(Culpeper National Cemetery on a lovely Saturday in May. Our little county may have been the most fought over in all of Virginia back in the day). We were drinking white wine at The Copper Fish, my favorite place on historic East Davis Street in downtown Culpeper. I was going to stop at the Culpeper […]