![\"mac-in-hospital\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/mac-in-hospital-e1481836362499.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n\n<\/p>\n
Mac had some back problems last week, but he came roaring back and was ready to hit the bar at Willow on Monday. The weather was loosening up just like his sacroiliac- unseasonably warm in Arlington, and the rising temperature featured the best of both worlds- the ladies shed their coats to revealing advantage but kept their tall leather boots with the spike heels.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was admiring the view on the way over,\u201d I said. Mac had beat me to the bar by minutes, and he was sitting by Old Jim and Chanteuse Mary, who stopped on her way back from the offices of the Chamber downtown.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a cracked rack on the Metro,\u201d she said. \u201cThings were a mess all day.\u201d<\/p>\n
I nodded, grateful that I do not have to travel far to get to the office. I looked around for a pen, found that I had conveniently forgotten mine, and borrowed one from Katya, whose dark-eyed beauty graced the business side of the bar along with Tinkerbelle and Jasper and the lovely Liz-with-an-S. \u201cSo,\u201d I said to Mac, grabbing a stack of napkins, \u201cWhere were we?\u201d<\/p>\n
The door to the bar swung open with a rush and in walked Point Loma with Jiffy Lube, another Midway-Maru sailor in tow. I knew this was going to get complicated, particularly with both Johns, with and without H\u2019s, and The Lovely Bea.<\/p>\n
Mac is a babe magnet, for sure, and he was in fine fettle and thoroughly enjoying the first of his two Race 5 India Pale Ales. He cleared his throat and said, \u201cI don\u2019t know. What do you want to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, the big news is about Hawaii, and where we should stay if we go for the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Midway this summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Hale Koa is all the way downtown, and the events are supposed to happen at Pearl Harbor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the Rainbow Tower of the Hilton, too. That is where the Navy used to put us when they tented the houses to kill the monster cockroaches. We had them in spades, and it would startle the crap out of me when I opened the medicine cabinet in the morning to get ready for work. The housing area at McGrew Point was built on landfill, and there was no way to really eradicate the things. They just moved from house to house.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always in quarters at Makalapa, on the rim of the crater. It was a nice short walk to work with the scent of flowers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI bet. Kimo is out there now, in your old job as the Fleet Intelligence Officer. It will be good to see him again back in his element. And Admiral Paul is up at Camp Smith. This will be fun if we can pull it off.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will see,\u201d said Mac. \u201cPaul was leaving on official travel to Thailand, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShould be time for COBRA GOLD,\u201d I said, looking at he Rolex on my wrist as if it contained a schedule of Pacific military exercises. COBRA GOLD was the best joint naval exercise in the world, since it normally came with a four-day port visit in Pattaya Beach.Other notables littered the long bar. Colonel Ike was further down, huddled with Jake. I pointed at him, saying \u201cIke just got back from Cambodia. I have always wanted to go there.\u201d Katya the dark-haried lovely bartender topped up my white wine. \u201cAnd Laos, of course. Damn, there is a lot to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac smiled. \u201cI was one of the last Americans on the Plain of Jars,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was the trip with Lt Gen Bennet when I was Chief of Staff at DIA. We were visiting the Ambassador, G. McMurtrie Godley, which made things confusing since we were both known as \u201cMac.\u201d Everyone else knew him as \u201cThe Field Marshall,\u201d since he was involved in everything going on in the country, political or military.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"screen-shot-2016-12-15-at-12-52-08-pm\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Screen-Shot-2016-12-15-at-12.52.08-PM-e1481836411419.png\")
\n\u201cSo, you were there just ahead of the Pathet Lao guerrillas?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac nodded. \u201cIt seemed like a good idea to see the place while we could.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now we can again,\u201d I said. \u201cI sort of feel like just heading west from our trip to Hawaii this summer and seeing the parts of Southeast Asia I missed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac took a sip of beer. \u201cI think I have been there for the last time,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was on the same trip we saw Admiral Rex in Saigon, and had dinner with him and Admiral Bud Zumwalt.\u201d<\/p>\n
I picked up my pen. \u201cWait,\u201d I said, scribbling. \u201cThat is impossible. He was not Zumwalt\u2019s Intelligence Officer. I have talked to the guy that relieved him the year before. Rex was back here, working collections issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat may well be, but when General Bennett and I walked into Zumwalt\u2019s quarters, he was there, big as life. I sat between him and Bud.\u201d<\/p>\n
I screwed up my brow in puzzlement. \u201cIf he was there, and I believe you, Sir, that means something had caused him to be sent temporary duty from Washington, and it must have been something big that he did not mention to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike the case of the missing intelligence officer, Jack Graf,\u201d said Mac. \u201cBut we have been down this rabbit hole before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJack\u2019s loss was a major crusade for Rex in his later years. I learned a lot helping to research the available evidence on his POW-Missing in Action status. A lot of the Naval Intelligence guys obviously followed the case pretty closely, and they came close to rescuing him at least once, with the camp where they held him showing signs they had only left hours before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTorture can make anyone talk,\u201d I said. \u201cI heard the SEALs even found some of the Viet Cong interrogator\u2019s notes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac nodded thoughtfully. \u201cThat is why the whole shot-while-trying-to-escape and Jack\u2019s body being buried in a place where the river washed it away is an interesting story.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. When I found out that Jack had been to the Kodak School to learn about how they were going to do electro-optical imagery from earth orbit before he went back to Vietnam I was stunned. They never let people with those clearances get far out of Saigon for fear they would be captured and compromise the biggest secret in the Intelligence Community. And then Jack parachutes down right into the middle of them after he got shot down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think Rex was in Saigon to do a damage assessment on his loss?\u201d asked Mac.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, and if Jack was traded to the Soviets, we have lost our window of opportunity to find out from the KGB files.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t suppose we will ever know the answer, but to get a technician who knew how the spy satellites really worked would have been worth a lot to the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac shrugged. \u201cCase closed, as far as the POW-MIA folks are concerned. But it would explain why Rex was there. The Navy would have been embarrassed at the screw-up that put Jack in a place where he could be captured.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then we drifted away from mystery, and talked about other ones, cancer being one of them, according to my notes, and then about Mac\u2019s top ten recipes.<\/p>\n
![\"screen-shot-2016-12-15-at-12-55-47-pm\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Screen-Shot-2016-12-15-at-12.55.47-PM.png\")
\n\u201cEggplant Parmesan, hands down,\u201d he aid. \u201cI did all the cooking for the last few years that Billie was still living at home. I got pretty good at it. The stuff they serve at The Madison is abysmal. They don\u2019t have a clue.\u201d<\/p>\n
I scribbled frantically. \u201cI need the recipe,\u201d I said. \u201cI would like to try it. What else did you have in the rotation?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChili con carne,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a recipe I invented myself. Spaghetti, apple crisp as a dessert.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo pear pies, like the ones from the C-rations on Guam.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, definitely not. I don\u2019t think I have had a pear of any kind since the War. And tenderloins. I would get the big ones form the Commissary- I would toss one in the over at 400 degrees for an hour, then turn it off an let it rest for an hour. Couldn\u2019t miss. Perfect every time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sounds delicious,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids liked a thing we called \u2018Porcupine Balls.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t sound very appetizing,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually quite tasty. We used a pressure cooker. Dangerous things, those cookers, and you had to watch them closely. I would take hamburger and shape them into meatballs mixed with regular white rice. When they cooked under pressure- I don\u2019t recall how long, but not too long- the rice stuck out like the quills on a porcupine.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"screen-shot-2016-12-15-at-12-57-05-pm\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Screen-Shot-2016-12-15-at-12.57.05-PM-e1481836471181.png\")
<\/p>\n
I wrote it down. There were several other conversations in progress. Point Loma was talking about Ops Officers he had known on Midway, and Mary was saying why Bob Ryan the weatherman had changed stations, and why he got eased out of his old job at Channel 7.<\/p>\n
The threads were all interesting, and I decided to stop writing and concentrate on the wine. Mac smiled. \u201cGood, now that you are not writing things down, I have a story for you that you can\u2019t tell.\u201d<\/p>\n
I put down my pen. \u201cI am all ears,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
It was an interesting story, and it is too bad I can\u2019t tell you. But it was Mac’s first introduction to one of the social issues that confronts society all these years later. I promised him I would not breath a word, so there it is. <\/p>\n
Life is interesting, you know? And like the Jack Graf story, it doesn\u2019t always make a lot of sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did Shakespeare say about life?\u201d I asked Mac.<\/p>\n
He smiled broadly. \u201cA tale full of sound and fury,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I gestured at my notes. \u201cAnd told by an idiot,\u201d I said. “Which would be me.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mac had some back problems last week, but he came roaring back and was ready to hit the bar at Willow on Monday. The weather was loosening up just like his sacroiliac- unseasonably warm in Arlington, and the rising temperature featured the best of both worlds- the ladies shed their coats to revealing advantage but […]<\/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-14796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14796","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=14796"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14803,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14796\/revisions\/14803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}