Morning Thoughts: Carnage

On this day in 1968—let’s see, that will be 50 years ago next year—I was standing gate duty as part of the Naval Security Forces at a former French base outside Da Nang, Vietnam when orders came that we were on full alert.

It seems all hell had broken loose. That’s all we knew at the time.

Our unit immediately moved to “six on and six off.” Every six hours we stood guard somewhere and every six hours we slept, fortified our areas of responsibility, went on patrols, or observed “other duties as required.” We were to stand that duty for the next 26 days.

Since I had been on gate duty, my armament consisted of a 45-caliber semi-automatic pistol, called “the weapon responsible for more accidents than any in the history of our military,” despite having three separate safety devices. I treated it with respect and was happy the day the Federal Government confiscated it from me. My other armament was a sawed-off pump 12-gauge shotgun that stayed at the post. It tended to command a lot of attention. But I carried no other weapon than the pistol.

Directed I was, therefore, to report to the armory to be issued an M-16 rifle for the duration. I had carried it for three days when a gunner’s mate decided that, instead of sleep, we need to fill a six-hour respite with some target practice. There had been some reports of poor marksmanship during this dust up, forever to be known as “The Tet Offensive.”

At a makeshift range, I proceeded to miss every target, to the hoots of my shipmates and the consternation of the gunner’s mate. “Give me that goddam thing,” he requested of me. Then he proceeded to miss every target.

Seems something had caused the barrel to bend, no telling what. We often received our weaponry second-hand from infantry units. They, the Navy, issued me another weapon that shot straight, and, because I was a strapping six-footer, made me an “M-60 man.” Well shucks. I was to carry both the M-16 and the additional responsibility for the remainder of my tour, as I later left for a mountaintop base on Monkey Mountain, a 3,000-foot landmark on the south side of Da Nang Bay.

I have many more memories of that hellish period, but this one involved no carnage and serves the current purpose. But, to this day, when I hear someone use that word—carnage—flippantly, I’m tempted to say, “Jocko, you have no idea what carnage is.”

If you feel you must vote for a
candidate who proposes a land war
in a foreign country. Don't.

Morning Thoughts: Gravity

Sitting in the living room at our farm, I’m watching the sunrise illuminate a spot I’ve only heard referred to as “The Grove.” It’s a quiet place. Ancient farm implements lie scattered around, of no use in the modern world save being used, on occasion, as lawn ornaments. It's fun to imagine what their users would have thought of that. Intrusive gum trees now compete here with the young oaks, adding a sort of tension to the peaceful setting.

History hangs over the spot like the morning fog that covers it this morning. Tax records of the late 1850s show the owners at that time owned eight slaves. Their hands may have made the ancient bricks just below the surface of the ground. Who knows?

They say the county Extension Service taught “canning classes” under the huge oaks that once shaded the ground here. They taught local women the skills of preserving food for their families, as well as preserving traditions. B’s grandpa made molasses in The Grove. Parts of his apparatus still linger as gateways to the past. They say he made stronger stuff here, a legend supported by the existence of a home-made still hidden away in the attic.

A branch of the “Trail of Tears” passed a quarter mile from The Grove. Did some of those unfortunates take a moment’s rest here? One can only speculate.

I’d had heard tales that Union Troops once camped in The Grove. I had dismissed them as rumors until I read about Doc Rayburn. He was a diminutive Rebel guerrilla who roamed this countryside. Legend has it, would dress as a woman and sneak into the parties held by Federal Officers. Supposedly, troops tracked him to this farm, having heard the owners were hiding him. In reprisal, cattle and mules were taken and slaves freed. Doc Rayburn’s grave has never been located.

The mighty oaks have died. One massive skeleton remains, leaning to the east as if waiting for The Second Coming. One can only guess the date on which gravity, or storms, will bring it down.

Someday, I’d like to clean the grove and make it into a park, if gravity doesn’t get me first. 

When this tree's companion fell,
I quit counting growth rings at 150.

Cold

Can weather conditions induce memories? Oh yes. The chilly weather of the past week incited a flood of remembrances of things past to course through my mind. None, however, topped my recalling of the winter of 1980. Here’s what happened.

I had gotten into a fitness program at the Downtown YMCA in Little Rock, AR in 1975. Excessive body fat and high blood pressure limited me to one waddle followed by one walk nine times around a 30-laps per mile indoor track. I followed the program, and by 1979 I was up to jogging several miles a day. Then, a new neighbor moved next door. As fate would have it, we hit it off and began running together.

That’s when it happened.

One morning, from out of the blue, he said, “The Arkansas Marathon in Booneville is March First, why don’t we train and run it?”

“Okay,” I said, thinking more about negotiation the coming hill than forming any soundly logical reply. But train we did, getting up to nearly ten miles a day as the day approached. Then we did a couple of 20-mile Sundays. Things seemed good.

The day before the race, a winter storm moved in and two of the TV stations predicted a blanket of snow and freezing temps overnight. The third station allowed a slight possibility of simply freezing weather. We decided to take I-40 to Little Rock and spend the night in Russellville, AR. That way, if the snow stayed away, we could cross the river and make Booneville by race time. Otherwise, we trusted the interstate to get us home. Okay. We kissed our wives goodbye. No, we didn’t. I made that part up. We actually tried one last time to convince them we weren’t totally crazy, but long-held beliefs aren’t easily displaced, particularly with counter-evidence staring them in the face.

We just left them shaking their heads.

As a precaution, we stopped at a big-box and purchased headgear, gloves, and pantyhose. Yes, pantyhose, not uncommon for runners in those more innocent times. He bought the regular kind. I bought “Big Momma” heavyweights. Later, in the motel, we tried them on. In the middle of that exercise, I suddenly imagined a police raid and statewide headlines announcing that two prominent Little Rock professionals (he was at least) had been apprehended in a central Arkansas motel up to some big-time mischief.

Well, to put a point on it, we made the race. The temperature was 15 degrees above zero and the wind was strong enough to shred the edges of flags along the route. By midway, when the wind was at our backs, I felt good. By this time, my friend had left me behind and I was in the company of another running pal, the late John Woodruff, then a reporter for the Arkansas Gazette. We laughed, joked, and observed that we had met the marathon standard that one should feel pretty strong at the ten-mile mark. We met the man who had led me into the fun already coming back and he looked good as well, except for a couple of runs in his pantyhose.

Then we started back. I can only describe that portion of the race as having an automatic cannon firing ice into you at each step. Runners with beards passed us with them totally encased in ice, looking more like Yeti than humans. Totally exhausted, I finally settled on running to one light pole and waddling to the next. I cursed my friend, the YMCA, Bill Rogers, the day I was born, and fate in general.

After a century or so, I heard the sound of a loud speaker. It came from the finish line in downtown Booneville. Suddenly, I was beautiful again. Pulling my face into a smile required the very last of my strength, but I, in my Big Mommas, crossed the finish line to the applause of the crowd of maybe 20 that were still there. My time? Four hours and six minutes. I still have the proof if anyone should disbelieve me.

I never ran another. There are some bucket list things that don’t bear repeating.

I've seen lots of down towns, but
not one ever looked better than this.

Epiphanies

Since a photography road trip with a friend last week, I find myself fascinated by the existence of the Rohwer and Jerome, Arkansas Japanese Relocation Centers. Few in our state seem to realize that we bear scars from this dark episode in American history, even as some in our country seem hell-bent on repeating it.

I found a clip of actor and activist George Takei discussing his family’s imprisonment at the Rohwer camp. The interview occurred a couple of years ago on the Daily Show. Click here to see it. I hadn’t realized the role Earl Warren, now a liberal legal icon, in the internment program. He's more well-remembered for his role in “Brown v Board of Education.”

It is said that Warren came to regret his role in the imprisonment of American families. One wonders if his change came slowly over the years, or as a sudden epiphany, where the evil gives way to the good. I call those "Thomas Becket Moments," in honor of the saint as featured in Becket, or The Hour of God, by French playwright Jean Anouilh. Seems Becket and England's Henry II were great hell-raising pals, so no one was shocked when Henry appointed him Archbishop of Canterbury, a plum ecclesiastical posting. As portrayed, however, once elevated to this lofty position, Becket succumbed to a higher calling and defied the king in favor of serving his, Becket's, god. The act led to Becket's murder, but gained him both his sainthood and a revered place in what many now call the right side of history.

 As America heads into unknown waters, we might take heart in the notion that any person is human, and may rise from the deplorable to the sublime in one lifetime. What might save us from the darker passions of our souls would be a few "Thomas Becket Moments." As Anouilh himself once said, "Nothing is irreparable in politics."

The line marking the right and wrong sides of history will not change, only the honored rolls containing the names of those who choose well.

Today, one only sees decaying
monuments and peaceful fields.

Morning Thoughts

Someone posted a query on-line the other day as to whether listening to an audio version of a book constituted “reading” it. I have to submit my opinion as “yes.” Having chosen a profession that involves heavy travel, I’ve “read” many a work that way, first on tape, then on CD, and now downloaded onto my cell phone. A sample of the works I’ve read include Darwin’s Origin of the Species, the condensed version of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a number of Bill Bryson’s works, Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters, and most of the published books of the late Stephen Jay Gould. Some read better than others. Some carry more impact. For example, I found myself pulling into parking lots and delaying my arrival home in order to hear more of Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea.

Fiction can prove tricky, for it becomes more and more obvious the extent to which modern writers violate the last of Elmore Leonard’s “Ten Rules of Writing.” It recommends, “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” It was easy to skip over superfluous jibber-jabber with tapes. One only had to punch the “forward” button as many times as necessary. With CDs, one had to skip tracks. Now, with downloaded audio, one loses entire chapters. It’s easier to tolerate the junk.

Worst, in modern fiction, are the ubiquitous and gratuitous sex-scenes. Dear me, in today’s America, anyone over the age of six is perfectly aware of what happens when two people succumb to the uncontrollable urges that the Apostle Paul warned about in First Corinthians. They occurred, he said, sometimes as a result of drinking the communion wine, but more often as a simple weakness to be avoided at all costs until the end of time, which was right around corner, a few months at most. Any righteous soul should be able to keep it zipped up that long and avoid the indecencies involved in the act, not to mention the eternal consequencies.

Oops, I’ve gotten off-track.

Facts are, there just isn’t much we can add in describing the act by now that isn’t portrayed nightly on TV. But we still try. I once had to endure a mystery novel’s sex scene that lasted from downtown Jonesboro, AR to well past Walnut Ridge, even with constant fast-forwarding past the most unseemly actions. Trust me, the description covered it all, and left one both exhausted and laboring under the strong belief that the two folks involved were each in desperate need of a hobby, one that didn’t involve a member of the opposite sex.

These days, I’m afraid, at least one sex scene looms as essential in a modern novel as the 58-minute car chase looms in modern movies. It wasn’t always that way. Consider the masters, the ones we really should be reading anyway. Here’s how Joseph Conrad described what we might call “The Grand Finale:”

“He swerved and, stepping up to her, sank to the ground by her side. Before she could make a movement, or even turn her head his way, he took her in his arms and kissed her lips. He tasted on them the bitterness of a tear fallen there. He had never seen her cry. It was like another appeal to his tenderness—a new seduction. The girl glanced round, moved suddenly away, and averted her face. With her hand she signed imperiously to him to leave her alone —a command which Heyst did not obey.”

That’s from “Victory,” and no, I don’t think the scene spawned the name of the book.

But wasn’t it sublime? I don’t believe that even the Apostle himself would have begrudged that little bit of hanky-panky.

How this could lead to some of the
 scenes I've read is the true mystery.