Mondays are like foreplay to a redneck, something that has to be endured in order to get to better times. All over America at this time, at least in the eastern half of the country, sour faces are filling rooms that rang with laughter at quitting time Friday. Comparing Mondays to Fridays is like saying that castor oil is like Stella Beer, they are both liquid and supposed to make you feel better.
Reading the news made Monday worse. Calling this “thing” coming out of Washington a “Tax Reform Bill” is like calling a hot dog eating contest a nutrition class.
After pecking away rather aimlessly, I walked around to loosen up a bit. I kicked a dog who was asleep in my pathway, not a mean-spirited act, but rather a gentle restatement of a long-standing philosophical example of the hegemonic positions of the two species. Even that didn’t make me feel better.
I considered playing the Jimmy Hendrix version, at top volume, of what we used to call in the Navy the “Star-Spangled Bananer” That brought back memories. On a Navy base, the sailors on watch had to play certain tunes at certain times of the day to accompany certain actions steeped in history, protocol, and regulations. They took it fairly seriously. Failing it any way would be like spitting on the grave of John Paul Jones himself.
The playing of the tunes was accomplished by finding a miniscule band of grooves on an old vinyl record that must have had every bit of music that the United States Navy had ever considered vital. I’m sure that “Barnacle Bill the Sailor,” was on there somewhere, as was “Roll me over …, no, that was Army. Let me just assure you that finding the appropriate band for “Taps” or “Revile” wasn’t easy for a sleepy or hungover sailor whose indifferent attitude stood out like an “Irish Pendant” on the mainmast.
The punishment, however, for a mishap was offset by the jollity of hearing “Anchors Aweigh” blasted over an entire base at some ungodly hour of the morning in place of the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” or whatever. Sometimes a sleeping Officer of the Deck would jump to attention and start singing the words to beat the band. I think maybe they did that at “The Academy.”
The examples of such loose rigging (that’s what they called them in the Navy) paled in contrast with the act of misjudging the length of the country’s flag at end of day and becoming entwined within its folds to the point of twisting and turning—while it flapped in the wind—like a super patriotic Isadora Duncan. Base commanders in particular eschewed such scenes.
There, memories of sacrifice and valor have brightened my day to the point where I can cope. At least I think I can. First, did I ever tell you about the time, as coxswain of a rescue boat during a drill at sea, I ran completely over the “rescue dummy,” causing our Departmental Bo’sun to stage a mock funeral at assembly the next morning?
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| "Courage at Sea" and his buddy "Valiant Shipmate" |
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