DEFEAT FASCISM

 As the news of a great American victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania seeped across America 162 years ago today, another, some say even more important, event occurred some 1,000 miles away at Vicksburg, Mississippi. There, after a five-month campaign and a siege of 47 days, General John C. Pemberton surrendered the city and 30,000 rebel troops to a United States Army under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant.

This opened the Mississippi River to traffic and separated the insurrectionist states of Arkansas and Texas from their eastern counterparts.

President Abraham Lincoln observed, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea"

The campaign to capture Vicksburg resulted in 48,000 killed, wounded, captured, or missing, counting both sides. The three-day battle at Gettysburg resulted in as many as 51,000. But on July 4, 1863 the dreams of two separate nations, instead of one, had faded.

Freedom isn't free. That makes it even more precious.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 THE FOURTH

Today is the Fourth of July and it creates competing feelings. First is respect and reverence for an experiment that began as a glorious way of government for a few, one that we have grudgingly expanded to include the rest of its citizens.

Until now.

Next, a sort of selfish feeling of gratitude that I was one of the Americans fully able to appreciate the largess of its democracy.

Then, a sort of begrudging sense of pride that I sacrificed four years of my life in thanks for the opportunities that America provided me.

Also, a feeling of loss as I ponder what the next four years will bring.

And finally, a bewildering sense of wonder as to whether I would have given those four years had I known that so many Americans would someday worship at the table of a cult led by the likes of Donald Trump.

Perspectives

The film Easy Rider made quite an impression on the Baby Boomer crowd back in the late Sixties (1969). It resonated for a number of reasons, I suppose.

- It represented, for that “spoiled beyond redemption” group, freedom, freedom from what it never was quite clear, just freedom.

- It had perhaps one of the best music scores in cinema history.

- It had a couple of titillating scenes. The boys liked that.

- It had excellent acting save for some ultra-corny lines uttered stiffly by Peter Fonda.

- The cast enhanced verisimilitude, they say, by actually getting stoned for some scenes.

- It introduced a relatively unknown actor, someday to be a mega-star, named Jack Nicholson.

- It was anti-social enough to appeal to the young and disillusioned.

It became a phenomenon. I think I went to see it three nights in a row, each time with a different bunch from our ship moored up the Cooper River beyond Charleston.

That was many years ago. A lot of water has flowed from the Cooper River into Charleston Harbor since then. I’ve encountered a trophy wife and more than a few changes, including a career as a piddling fish in a small pond. Now I spend a few minutes each morning thinking. I don’t like to do that—think that is—so I do it early and quickly to get it over with.

What I’m thinking is that my perspective changes over the years, hard as I try not to let it. Here are some thoughts.

After all the communities, neighborhoods, small towns, and families I’ve seen destroyed by drugs, I’m a little put off by the concept of freedom purchased by wicked or nefarious means.

Of course, even back in 1969, I considered it ludicrous to think about a bunch of hippies planting seeds in the desert and expecting something to grow. Why do films never picture “back to the Earth” groups settling in the Arkansas Delta where one could buy (cheaply) some of the richest soil on the planet and really live off the land?

Back to the film. Even then, if I were to go “looking for America,” I don’t think I would start in east Texas or south Louisiana. And … now this is going to aggravate my neo-hippie friends, but … I might even try to blend in a bit.

And, the last national election in our county proved that, even 50 years later, bigotry and blind prejudice lie waiting in most areas of our country, not just the deep South. It’s a national curse, brought on, as William Faulkner suggested, by the practice and allowance of slavery.

So there. I still like the film, to a large degree for the music. Speaking of which, isn’t it amazing how music can ease the rough edges of what later proves a troubling film? Oh yes, it can for me. In 1967, I watched the film The Graduate at some lonely Navy base somewhere. At the end, I said, probably aloud, “Far out, man.”

A few weeks ago, I watched it again after a long hiatus. This time, at the end, I turns to my wife and says, “I think she just ran off with the sorriest summich in the state of California. That ain’t gonna end well.” Even Simon and Garfunkel couldn’t save me. Nor could Creedence Clearwater or Percy Sledge redeem that narcissistic group of "navel-gazers" in The Big Chill.

Why are people
staring at us?

My Redacted Life: Chapter Two (Cont._11)

Ready to start a new job in Little Rock, Arkansas on January 4, 1961, I took inventory. I owned a Gibson “sunburst” acoustic guitar, my proudest possession. I also owned a large grocery sack full of books. I had managed, with my unused travel money, to purchase four changes of clothes, which, coupled with the one I had, made for a week’s worth. I had skivvies and socks left over from the Navy.

Over the weeks, my beloved cousin Troy Harden and his wife Charlene had given me some unused kitchenware, as had Sainted Mother. I had won $200 playing poker with a Korean officer and others while still “in country.” With that I had started a modest collection of camera equipment although I wasn’t any good at photography. I picked up enough groceries and snacks to last a week and bought a cheap alarm clock.

That was about it. The apartment I had rented was furnished. So that was all I needed to start a new life. It all fitted nicely into my 1967 Impala: Steinbeck. I have thought many times since about a life in which all one’s Earthly belongings could fit into a sedan, with room to spare. Was that freedom? Maybe. Or, perhaps, was that already too many possessions? Time would tell.

I loaded up and headed out the day after New Year’s. I saw the sign over VonTungeln's Grocery fade in my rear view mirror and, of course, felt a pang. But, one had to seek new ports in life's voyagers, else the cruise would grow tiresome and stale. I ceased looking aft. A new world beckoned, and life felt like a following breeze blowing from a friendly sea.

I felt good.

 I couldn’t shake the thought, however, that from Little Rock, there was a highway that led to Oklahoma City and west then to adventures galore in the territories. Nothing was stopping me, absolutely nothing. I was about to drop anchor in one of the poorest and least educated states in the union. All I had to do was refrain from applying the brakes. Freedom is a vicious and tempting mistress.

But, here I was in Arkansas, and what did I have to lose? Nothing. Besides, feeling good was good enough for me.

Freedom ... overrated?

My Redacted Life: (Chapter One (Cont. Four)

On the afternoon of the second day of my release from military service, November 13, 1970, I neared my hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas harboring strange feelings. F. Scott Fitzgerald in one of his books, Tender is the Night, I think, describes a man’s going home to a small town in America from Europe for his father’s funeral. He described the competing feelings far better than I ever could.

I was not going to a funeral, but I found the memories of long-ago times crowding in and finding warm places in my heart. I saw a road leading to a lake once legendary for crappie-fishing, then a spot where a cousin experienced a terrible car wreck. I headed my car, Steinbeck, along a highway where our family sometimes traveled to and from our annual vacations to Florida. Some years we headed in the opposite direction, to the Texas Gulf. All were glorious events, which a snatch of a once popular song could place me within, to my everlasting joy.

That made me think of choices ahead of me. I had money to get to California, “light out for the territories,” so to speak. I had a place to stay just a short piece ahead. I could “drop anchor” there.

California was an exciting, vibrant place abounding with dreams waiting to be picked from trees.

Arkansas was under the tortured leadership of a progressive governor. Like a great vessel reversing itself in the Ocean, it was turning away from the bigotry and backwardness of the past. The state called itself “The Land Of Opportunity.” Maybe it would become that. Was there some young entrepreneur striving, even at that moment, to place the land of my birth on the map of history?

I knew this: There wasn’t a soul in the entire State of California who cared a whit about my dreams or aspirations, not to mention the sacrifices I had just made at my country’s request.

What I didn’t know was that here, in my native spoil, there were few, outside of family and the dearest of old friends, who cared a whit for those things as well. What would surprise most me most was that my entire country felt the same way.

Steinbeck and I moved on into the future, singing happy songs.

My Redacted Life: Chapter One, (Cont.)

I left Charleston, South Carolina on, I believe, November 11, 1970. I didn't drive fast, for I had no place in particular to go. I've never felt like that since. It was a good feeling while it lasted.

Near the end of my service, I had used savings from combat and sea pay to purchase a 1967 Chevrolet Impala I had named "Steinbeck." We traveled well together.

The last thing I imagined was that I would ever be back, but I did return once, four years later with my young wife while on a vacation through the Southeast United States. My hair was long enough that the Charleston police ignored me. I still remembered how to get around the area. We visited the normal tourist spots, checked out some old haunts, and then moved on.

In 1970, there was a special feeling in the air, one of boundless promise. The United States stretched out before me like a patchwork of dreams ready to be savored. A few trees still boasted their autumn colors and sun hovered above in a bright blue sky. The earth was at peace with itself. America had just sent men to the moon and we had finally admitted that the entire adventure in Vietnam had been a foolish and horrific blunder. We wanted out, and that was the first positive sign.

Arkansas beckoned to me. The state had just elected the most progressive governor in recent history. New high-rise bank buildings were standing proudly over our Capitol city. My home town was constructing a new Civic Center designed by the office of Edward D. Stone. We were constructing an interstate highway from east to west and one from the center of the state southeast to Texas. Our future seemed unlimited.

As I said, I was in no hurry. To my mind, I had wasted my life for four years in a frantic hurry to be done with military life forever. Now, my goal was to savor each day. As I left South Carolina, I felt as if I were leaving an asylum for the mentally challenged. No more bars where entertainers sang songs using the "N-Word." No more insolent salespeople who didn't even attempt to hide their distaste for military personnel. No more police who, as one told me late one night, didn't "feel complete unless they had enjoyed beating up a sailor." I was entering a new world where the American Civil War had ended.

Sitting in a cheap motel in Starkville, Mississippi that night, picking on an old Gibson guitar I had bought for $40.00, I thought of a life at sea and decided I might prefer to drop anchor someplace where there were people who loved me. It had been a long time.

And thinking back further, I thought that I would never have to sit through a night in abject fear for my life. I would miss the Sea. I would miss it a lot, but not enough to accommodate the attendant bullshit. I was headed places.

Everything would be coming up roses for me from now on.

That was only partially true.

Do I ever miss old shipmates?
Do I ever miss the Sea? Sure.

Morning Memories: February , 2018

Each branch of the service has its own way of communicating I suppose. I know the US Navy used to, some of it even repeatable.

I got the biggest kick out of a freshly-minted ensign while he was standing his first “Quarter Deck Watch,” on the old US Hunley, AS-31. They had sentenced me to a year and a half aboard her when I finished my tour “in-country.” I stood plenty of watches on the old quarterdeck, mindlessly ringing the ship’s bell and communicating orders via my bosun’s pipe to surly sailors still hung over from a night ashore.

You are aware, I suppose, of the phrase “red skies at night, sailor’s delight” and “red skies in the morning, sailors take warning.” It may surprise you to learn that it had more to do, in the old days, with whorehouse districts than with the weather. That’s a free tidbit.

Anyway, about that fresh young ensign, ready to make John Paul Jones proud, wherever his nautical bones rested. There was a little ordeal they put him through. The shipmates in the engine room would do it on purpose. To tell the truth, most anything a sailor does has a purpose, sometimes mired in antiquity and sometimes popping new and full blown from minds plagued with too much time available for breeding mischief.

It was done, usually on a slow weekend day. That’s when they let young ensigns rule the quarterdeck. The Navy of the late 1960s believed the commies were least likely to launch their mongrel hordes at us on a weekend. I’m not sure. They never did, though, so maybe it’s true.

Anyhow, the guys from below decks would send a squad “up and aft” to the fantail of our proud vessel and catch the fledgling officer in a moment of reverie. With a solemnity that would have made Bull Halsey shake his head in wonder, they would approach the unsuspecting officer, assume the position, salute and, in voice worthy of launching a nuclear attack, bellow, “Request permission to jack the shaft, … sir.”

The enlisted on duty, including myself, would suddenly find something that occupied every shred of attention in their being. Neither help nor solace was nigh for the self-imagined hero.

One thing they teach at “The Academy” is never to appear confused or bewildered in front of the enlisted. I think it started with the Phoenicians and filtered through history like a tenuous gene. Officers followed the rule the way a blackjack dealer follows the numbers.

But, “jack the shaft?”

It couldn’t be a nautical joke, perpetrated by the lower ranks. Officers didn’t rate such an honor. You never saw an officer being sent to fetch “six phantoms or waterline” or to stand “mail-buoy watch.” Perhaps they had their own pranks, the officers. I don’t know. They were a mirthless lot, so somehow I doubt it.

But, “jack the shaft?”

They had a way of asking it, those enginemen, that made it sound only slightly less important than a surgeon requesting a scalpel while removing a brain tumor.

It was always more fun to watch the episode if the officer in question had to pause and allow someone to walk past the quarterdeck in the middle of things. To come onto the ship, you had to salute the flag, salute the Officer of the Deck, and say “Request permission to come aboard, sir,” as if, on this great planet Earth, you had no other place to go. It was just the way the Navy did things.

While the ensign took care of this duty, the engineman in charge held his salute like a gunner’s mate waiting to order the first salvo at Normandy.

The decision as to how long to let a prank nurture and grow is a nautical skill of great respect. You never wanted to humiliate a young officer, you just want to bring him close to wetting his starched, white uniform. After all, he might be the one processing your discharge papers some day and, by then, may have mastered the use of the ancient Naval axiom that “payback is a motherf****r.”

So, before the tears started, the senior sailor present would explain what “jacking shaft” meant. (The explanation was confined to usage aboard ship and not to its more casual usage when used ashore in a bar).

It seems that, when a ship is at rest, the weight of the propeller causes a strain on the propeller shaft. Consequently, when our ship was moored, standing orders required both that it, the shaft, had to be rotated (jacked) periodically to even the strain, and that his precaution had to be approved by the Officer of the Deck.

As for the look on the ensign’s face when elucidation rushed in, like a band of Spartans to the rescue, it was just a little bit of fun in a boring and, otherwise, humorless existence. Protecting your freedoms is a lonely and mirthless task, requiring the garnering of any scrap of relief in sight.

Anchors aweigh, and all that.

Do these faces bespeak cruelty
of any sort whatsoever?