The Storms of Life

Just what we needed: more rain. It happens I suppose. It sure happened in 1927. I’ve heard old-timers say that flooding was what made the Arkansas Delta so fertile, all those nutrients being deposited, as the floodwaters receded. Does that mean something positive may come from all this? I don’t know.

What I hope may come from it is the awaking of an understanding that we need adults in charge of government. A slow dismantling of state government, for example, hardly prepares us for facing a catastrophe like we are experiencing.

I can remember as a lad when a bad storm would hit. My Sainted Mother tended to go into hysterics, one of the few signs of weaknesses I ever observed in her … well, that and snakes. She wasn’t, I will admit through the fog of time, above elevating the histrionics a bit for the pure delight of garnering attention.

Anyway, it scared the hell out of my sister, my brother, and me.

Know what though? We made it through those violent electrical storms (and they did seem more violent back then) because of one thing. Our daddy was there. There was an adult of legendary proportions who wasn’t about to let a puny little thunderstorm threaten his family. Why he would walk outside and seem to taunt it. We knew we were safe.

It used to be like that in our politics. When disaster hit, we knew we had adults there to protect us. We, as a country, might stumble, but we couldn’t fall. We feared no evil when we had the likes of James Lee Witt in charge of FEMA.

Then it started, this dismantling of government, this cancerous belief that public service had no meaningful role to play in our lives. We fist elected those who denounced government. Then we elected those who distrusted government. It's finally led to electing those who hate government. Somewhere, in a lonely place, we left the adults. It’s like if our little group of pirates that made my childhood so memorable suddenly quit listening to our adult, Boogie Shannon, and made Nicky Bohannon quit picking his nose and take over as our leader.

It’s like if the crew of the USS Hunley, (AS 31), on which I served, were to decide that we would vote our beloved Captain Anders out of office before we reached that storm down in “the Devil’s Triangle” and put SA Dewayne Puttephat in the Captain’s seat.

It’s like if some insidious force had, one day, put me in charge of our household.

I make light of it now, but it’s painful, very painful, to watch people who don’t believe in government try and tell us what we, as a state and nation, are going to do to face our current crisis. So far, they've mumbled platitudes, as the floodwaters devour home after home. Very painful. Very sad. Maybe the more fertile seeds of understanding will enrich us if the floodwaters ever recede. We may even find the adults waiting for us there.

Some think better times are ahead.

Morning Thoughts: September 28, 2016

What I know of Puerto Rico stems from the time our ship docked there for a few days back in the early 1970s. They range from despondency to awe.

I was coxswain of the Admiral’s barge so I didn’t have much to do at sea, and noncoms generally steered around me. I was free to wander up to the fo'c'sle when someone said land was in sight. Sure enough, one could see the dark outline of mountains rising on the horizon like a bank of clouds, and I thought of how the first Europeans must have felt upon experiencing that sight. Colors became pronounced as we steamed closer and the magnificent grandeur of the island showed itself like a young girl modeling her Easter finery.

The beauty faded as we docked alongside a greasy pier, watched all the while by a line of young boys sitting side by side with their feet dangling over the dock. Each had a paper bag which he would raise and pat from time to time, with the opening around his nose.

Sniffing glue, they were. That seemed to be a common pastime for many of the young boys. One of our more pompous officers yelled for them to leave. It only took one finger each for them to respond. Thus began our relationship with the locals.

My pals and I had liberty next day. There being no Bible-study outlets near, we opted for a tour of the famous El Yunque National Rainforest. A bus transported us there and we were able to see a great deal of the countryside on the way. What I remember was staring out the window at mile after mile of cardboard and barn-tin shacks interrupted from time to time by a long stretches of whitewashed masonry fences with brilliant green golf courses beyond. There didn’t seem to be much middle ground in the local society.

We were warned not to go into certain sections of the “Old Town” area. There were groups there, we were told, that didn’t care much for military personnel. This was nothing new to us, so many from or ship went anyway. There were no incidents with the locals, but a sailor from a German warship taught one of our guys a lesson about the myth of American invincibility. Boy, did he ever.

Our little group searched the historic district for museums, libraries, and monuments. I later recognized some of the locations when they appeared as substitutes for Havana in such films as I’ve Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. The beauty was breathtaking, the landscaping lush and rich. Do bodies still lie tangled among it now while our mainland government dawdles? I don’t know.

Our stopover ended quickly. On the last day ashore, we walked down to the local beach and ogled the girls in bikinis. We had no religious literature to distribute, so we just sat and watched while enjoying beverages of choice. My last memory of the island was of a young girl who appeared to be enjoying herself with a group of friends. She was quite gorgeous and curvy, the very image of a young, wholesome, fresh-faced teenager engaged in harmless recreation with her friends.

She would have fit seamlessly in any park in America. This was only natural, for they were Americans, just as we were.  She looked at us and one of the group smiled and nodded. She took us in, symbols of truth, justice and the American way, in our starched white uniforms and service ribbons, protecting her freedoms as well as well as those of all peoples.

“I hope you drown in the sea,” she said in perfect English. She nodded, her pals giggled, and they all strode away. At that moment, we felt as though we were back home.

Local hero … not.

Growing Up Southern: August 30, 2017

Ya’ll know I can bore you to death with my “connect the dots” babblings, but here goes: the Houston Flood, James Joyce, and my naval career. I’ll try to explain.

See, I was happy as a clam living in San Francisco and working a job in the Mission District. I was there one day, not bothering a soul as Sainted Mother used to say. A few days later I was on my way to Navy Boot Camp, the military draft having caught up with me and I having opted for sea life rather than Vietnam life. Months later I was in that very war zone. Don’t ask. The point is, our lives can change very quickly and we’d best, as I learned back then, not allow our happiness to be determined solely where we live and what we are doing.

No one on Earth, as far as I know, lives a life of guaranteed continuity. I know I had to learn to adjust, or perish from misery. From a life of fun, and so-called “friends,” I suddenly transitioned to a place where my friends were ashamed of me and the only ones who truly cared about me were thousands of miles away, soon to be halfway around the world, from me. I can’t begin to tell you how lonesome a person in such a state feels when he hears Taps played over a Navy base shutting down for the day. That's when a totally dark silence descends upon his world. I was so low then that I could have walked under a snake’s belly wearing a stovepipe hat.

I was in Monterey, California waiting to transfer to a naval security detachment in Da Nang. One night, I had 25 cents, a quarter, to my name. I could go to a base movie for the quarter, or buy a package of cigarettes with it. I opted for the cigarettes and then went to a little library they had on base. Oddly, they had a copy of Ulysses, by James Joyce. Over a number of evenings, I read about the wanderings of Leopold Bloom as described by Joyce, and it gave me an idea.

Given a day off, I rose early and went wandering. I walked to Fisherman’s Wharf, then to Alvarado Street, through Cannery Row, past the shipyard and around to the Great Tide Pool. There, I sat on a rock where I contemplated my situation and my choices. I had made a mistake, I thought, and I still had more than three years left to live with it. That didn’t shape up as a happy future.

I had choices. I could to something truly dishonorable and live with the consequences. I could spend the next three-an-a-half years wallowing in abject pity and anger. I could accommodate fate and seek the best it had to offer, however meager the offerings.

I chose the last option, sitting there where, as Gary Toler once said, “… the wide old Pacific comes a’pounding on the shore.” The waves forming my life were pounding now, but there was a wide sea beyond them, and I chose to wander it with acceptance in my heart.

 Know what? Life didn’t turn out as badly as I had imagined. I learned what I consider to be one of life’s great lessons: be happy as possible, no matter where you are. Always seek to find happiness in “the now” instead of in some distant dream. As Victor Frankl observed in his classic Man’s Search for Meaning, even in Nazi death camps, those with the best chance for survival were the ones who could, in some of the most inhumane conditions ever devised by humankind, enjoy, for a brief moment, the beauty of a sunset.

Here’s hoping that our brothers and sisters in Texas may someday, once again, enjoy the beauty of a sunset. I’ve enjoyed many since my day of Bloom-like wandering, including last evening’s.

For a short story inspired by my wanderings that day, click here. It's the one called Of Times and Tides. Thanks.

"Fearsome Four-Eyes"
ready for whatever.