{"id":1149,"date":"2011-06-03T22:43:15","date_gmt":"2011-06-03T22:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/?p=1149"},"modified":"2011-06-03T22:43:15","modified_gmt":"2011-06-03T22:43:15","slug":"mid-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/mid-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Mid-Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\n(Mac and the Lovely Bea at the Willow Bar. Photo Socotra.)<\/p>\n

Well, some of you expressed concern about the lack of a story yesterday. Many more were relieved to not have to hit the \u201cdelete\u201d button. But Mac was mildly concerned, and he said so as I slid onto a bar stool next to him, just down from where Old Jim and Ray the Jarhead were holding court.<\/p>\n

Ray, you will be happy to know, is back from foot surgery, and was prepared to make up for lost time at the bar.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a big deal,\u201d he said. \u201cMiddle aged stuff- bone spurs and crap. What\u2019s up with you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot,\u201d I said, as Old Jim took a healthy swig of Budweiser.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really care,\u201d said Ray with a his crooked smile.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know,\u201d I said. \u201cThat is why I gave you the short version.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jake was midway down the bar collecting a bet from The Greek and Jeff, two Spooks I knew from the Task Force, and with whom I used to see on the weekly VTC with Kabul.\u00a0 The Greek has been hunting Osama bin Laden for a long time, even before the attack on the Towers, and it was time to settle a bet made long ago. They appeared to be doing so in earnest.<\/p>\n

I shook The Greek’s hand and asked what the bet had been. \u201cWhether Osama would be killed in Afghanistan or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you picked Afghanistan?\u201d The Greek nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the smart money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jake smiled. \u201cI got the rest of the world,\u201d and took a sip of his victory beer.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut didn\u2019t they drag his body back to Afghanistan for identification?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA triviality,\u201d said Jake. \u201cHe sleeps with the fishes now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t write this morning,\u201d said Mac.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d I said defensively. \u201cI did, but I didn\u2019t publish. I was freaked out by the tornadoes in Massachusetts. The footage of the one you saw on the television that tried to suck the Connecticut River dry could have been shot from the house of our buddies Bonds-and-Donna. There were hysterical people from DC, Michigan, Chicago, Florida and Colorado trying to figure out what happened. I was right there two weeks ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre they all right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, Bonds checked in later in the morning. It was a relief. He wrote one of the funniest notes I have seen in a while about it, but the twister couldn\u2019t have been more than a few hundred yards from his house. There is something going on this season.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLast one this violent was back in \u201936, when I was just eighteen,\u201d said Mac. \u201cthese things are cyclical, but there are a lot more people living in the path of the storms than there were then.\u201d<\/p>\n

I nodded and took a refreshing sip of wine. \u201cThen, I was midway to crafting an account of what is going on in the Little Village By the Bay out of some phone conversations with my sister Annook, but in the end it wasn\u2019t that interesting or funny and she does it better herself anyway. She is living the nightmare in person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I am sure she will get to telling the story,\u201d said Mac, finishing his ginger ale. \u201cI am parched from the heat wave, and it is my first time out since the season changed.\u201d He looked up at Big Jim and asked for a Bloody Mary as he poured a rich pale tulip glass of Happy Hour White into my glass.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Bloody Mary?\u201d I asked in surprise. \u201cDid you fall off the wagon?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d said Mac quickly. \u201cSorry, a Virgin Mary. Still have to watch the medication. It is just good to be out again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tracy O\u2019Grady, Executive Chef and co-owner (with Kate Jansen, the best goddamn pastry maker in town) came down the bar to press the flesh with the regulars. Deborah was bustling around, doing her best den-mother thing with the rest of the staff, and the lovely Elizibeth-with-and-S was hustling to serve the throng out on the patio, basking in the brilliant lowering sun or huddling in the artificial shade of the orange Willow umbrellas.<\/p>\n

She was focused, but I wanted to ensure that she knew that Mac was at the bar, since he is a babe magnet. She stopped long enough for me to get a picture as she delivered an astonishing new appetizer Tracy brought back from the restaurant convention in Chicago:<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Elisabeth-with-an-S presents. Photo Socotra.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is sherry and tomato steamed mussels with speck ham, sweet garlic, fennel with ravioli and Basil,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is not bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mac smiled. \u201cI think I will go with the fish and chips from the Neighborhood Bar Menu,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to eat at the Madison tonight. Been there too much lately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing more amazing in presentation,\u201d I said, reaching for a napkin and taking out a pen. \u201cNow, where were we? We were going to finish the Pueblo damage assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mac nodded. \u201ctook about three months. We assembled everything we thought they might have had on-board and reviewed it for what was disclosed about our collection priorities. The idiots in Yokosuka had ensured that everything we were interested in was in the inventory, in detail. All of it was compromised.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWas there any suspicion that the Russians put the North Koreans up to attack in order to get the KW-7 coding machines?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, my no. It wasn\u2019t until they caught that bastard john Walker that we knew that they had the keymat material. We had to assume that the crew did what they were supposed to and destroyed the enciphering machines and the keying material. We didn\u2019t actually get to interview the crew until they were released the next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was scribbling frantically on the napkin in front of me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the Board of Inquiry they held out at the Amphib base in Coronado, right? My pal The Lawyer used to skate out of his JO job on the cruiser on the 32nd Street waterfront and attend the hearings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVice Admiral Harold Bowen was the President of the Board. He was Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence as a tin-can sailor. That was unusual. Dick Bates was his Special Security Officer, sent out there in case any codeword material came up in testimony.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid they ask any of you to testify?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(San Diego Union photo of VADM Bowen signing the report of the Pueblo Board of Inquiry. Photo San Diego Union from Official US Navy source.)<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d said Mac dryly. He fished in the pocket of his Aloha shirt for a ancient scrap of newspaper and pushed it across the bar. \u201cThis is the admiral signing out the Board\u2019s report. He wanted Bucher court marshaled. SECNAV Chafee reviewed the recommendation and ruled that no one would be punished. He said that the Pueblo officers “have suffered enough” and that the inability to anticipate the attack reflected a general failure in the Navy command.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo everyone was responsible and no one was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou got it,\u201d he said with a thin smile. \u201cDick Bates never forgave the Pueblo’s skipper, Lloyd Bucher. He felt that he surrendered his ship without a fight. He could have been as big a hero as Lawrence, but instead he gave up the ship.\u201d<\/p>\n

At that very moment, the lovely Bea arrived, just a few minutes ahead of Jon-with-no-H. I waved her over to meet the Admiral. \u201cBea, I would like you to meet the last of the Midway Code-breakers, Admiral Mac. He was part of the team that broke the codes to enable the great victory at Midway in 1942. The anniversary is coming up on June fourth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bea turned on that dazzling smile. \u201cI had an Uncle who was there. He landed in Normandy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mac just smiled. Like I say, he is a babe magnet.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Mac with fish and chips. Photo Socotra.)<\/p>\n

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Mac and the Lovely Bea at the Willow Bar. Photo Socotra.) Well, some of you expressed concern about the lack of a story yesterday. Many more were relieved to not have to hit the \u201cdelete\u201d button. But Mac was mildly concerned, and he said so as I slid onto a bar stool next to him, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1156,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions\/1156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}