Bernard Cromwell

 I have been reading books by Bernard Cromwell now for nearly a year.  I felt I needed save the following excerpt from his book Crackdown.  “ I like the sounds of a boat sailing at night. The sounds are the same as those of daylight, yet somehow the night magnifies and sharpens the creak of a yielding block, the sigh of air over a shroud, the stretching of a sail, the hiss of water sliding sleek against the hull, the curl of a quarter-wave falling away, and the thump as a wave strikes the cutwater to be sheared into two bright slices of whiteness. I like the purposefulness of a boat at night as it slits a path across an empty planet. I like the secretiveness of a boat in the blackness, when the only thing to dislike is the prospect of dawn, which seems like a betrayal because, at night, in a boat under sail, it is easy to feel very close to God—for eternity is all around.”   Those words really struck home as I experienced the same feelings when standing watch alone at night.  

Navy Day

 On this day 60 years ago I joined the US Navy.  I had never before considered the Navy.  I had been a member of the Civil Air Patrol all through high school and had at one time threatened my parents with quitting school and joining the Marines.  Little did I know then that the decision probably saved me from a early death in VietNam and that I would go on to serve 20 years.  It also caused the eventual birth of at least six more people, as most likely, I would have never been in San Diego in 1964 or in Ft Lauderdale in 1969.   

My Dilemma

 I found out this morning via some Facebook research that if this person, subject of last post, is truly a son that I never knew that: 1. He has in the past suffered from some type of debilitating event, such as possibly a stroke.  2. He has an ex wife and at least two daughters. 

 My initial feeling was that he is 56 years old.  He probably has no clue about me. It is unkown if he had a relation with his father.  I think he might have passed sometime in the 90s.  I know his mother had a difficult relationship with him in her marriage, or at least when I knew her she did.  So I felt I would just let it go. If by chance he finds out via Ancestry that there is this other close relation he never knew about, and contacts me, then well and good.  I’m ok with that.  

On the other hand, there are two grandchildren. Did they know the person they thought was a grandfather. Chances are good they didn’t. Would I like to know them?  I think I might.  

Surprise of the Month

 This past month has been quite eventful and several ways.  To begin with, my daughter gave me an Ancestry.com dna test for fathers day.  For the past several years we have kind of worked together on building our family tree on Ancestry.  She had taken the dna test a while back.  I don't know, maybe she wanted to find out if in fact she was my daughter.  Well she is and there is no doubt about that.  We also found out that my two sisters are really my two sisters as they have both taken the test in the past.  

The real surprise however was that my father's day gift indicated that I had another son.  He is currently living in California, and is 56 years old.  Both my sisters had wondered who this person was when they had received an email several months ago from Ancestry that there was another link to their ancestry, evidently a close link but they could not figure out where he came from.  Well now they know.  

I had graduated from high school in June of 1963 and joined the Navy that month.  I graduated from Boot camp in September and was assigned to Torpedoman Class A school in Key West, completing that in December.  So in January 1964 I reported to my first duty station, the USS Nereus at Ballast Point submarine piers, in San Diego.  I was 19 years old.  

In San Diego there was not a lot to do for young sailors without transportation.  You couldn't keep civilian clothes onboard the ship so when you went on Liberty you left the ship in uniform.  If you didn't have a place ashore to go to you rented a locker downtown on Broadway at the Seven Seas Locker Club.  There you could store a couple of pairs of pants, shirts and civilian shoes.  But really there was nowhere to go other then strolling along Broadway.  Drinking age was 21 and they were pretty strict about it, as the Shore Patrol would make bars off limits if they were caught serving underage sailors.  Every evening there was a bus that would leave the Seven Seas Locker Club for Tijuana, Mexico where you could drink as well as get into a lot of trouble.  I did it a couple of times but after almost getting knifed one night, and then running from the Tijuana police, I decided I was done with that kind of entertainment.  

I think this was probably the loneliest period of my life.  I had no transportation, which I had always had since I was 16.  I didn't really know anyone.  There were a couple of guys from my bootcamp class there but we really didn't hang out together. I had met a couple of guys who did have cars but I was always dependent upon them if I needed to go anywhere.  It was probably around March that I met a couple of guys on the ship who wanted to go in together to get a small apartment on the beach.  We were in 3 duty sections on ship and each of us were in deferent sections so we could get a two bedroom apartment and only two of us would ever be there at a time, and there was bus service from the ship to the beach. 

 I had been to the beach several times and had found that there was a coffee house there that I liked to visit in the evenings.  They only served coffee so it was legal and they had folk singers come in each evening and play songs like "Freight Train, Freight Train", "Where have all the Flowers Gone" and "If I had a Hammer".  I suppose that was the beginning of my liberalism, but I didn't really know it then.  

At any rate, I had moved into the apartment about March with the two other guys and had moved out of the Seven Seas Locker Club.  So every Liberty Call I was off the ship and over to the beach at the apartment.  On weekends I was on the beach.  I can't really recall spending a lot of time with the other guys, I was pretty much a loner then as I hated to be dependent upon anyone else.  In the evenings I went to the coffee house.  

I can't remember exactly how I met her.  It could have been at the coffee house or it could have been in another apartment where a group had had a small party.  At any rate she was really pretty but she was older, like about 25 or 26.  I remember glancing at her and receiving looks in return but nothing special.  The interesting thing was that she was an amputee.  I believe it was her right arm which was amputated just below the elbow.  After everyone broke up I went to my apartment and went to bed.  I'm not sure how long afterward but I heard my door open.  I thought it was one of the other guys but it wasn't.  It was the one armed lady.  She came in and came to my bed.  I don't remember too much of that night, I don't even remember if anything happened that night other then us just talking.  At any rate it was the beginning of about a two to three week relationship.  Long enough for a 19 year old boy to fall in love with a 25 year old woman, who by the way already had at least two small children.  

Yes it was only about 2 or 3 weeks but we saw each other often during that time and yes we did consummate our relationship during that period and since that was the only consummated relationship I had when I was 19 in San Diego I can only assume that this is the result of that.  

During that period I had started seeing floaters in my vision.  It was really bad in bright sunlight and especially on the beach.  One weekend it was so bad that I went to a civilian optometrist.  He dilated my eye and looked in with a bright light and decided that since I was a sailor I should immediately go report to the Naval Hospital at Balboa for an evaluation.  He called a doctor there and I went that day to see the  ophthalmologist and was admitted with an eye infection called chorioretinitis.  At any rate once I was in the hospital I was not able right away to contact anyone for a few days.  Not the guys I was rooming with as we had no cell phones in those days and not the woman I had been seeing.  When I was finally able to call her, she informed me that our little fling was over and that she was going back with her husband.  I had gotten the impression that she had either left him a while ago or that he had left and that he had been abusive to her in the past.  Of course I was pretty upset but not much I could do about it.  I think I tried calling a couple more times but with no success.

I stayed in the hospital for a couple of months.  Long enough that all my clothes and belongings disappeared from the apartment as the other guys had moved out and new guys had moved in.  In about June or July I reported back to the ship as a new sailor and in September I was transferred again to Dam Neck, VA., where I was supposed to start Polaris Missile technical school which never happened.  In November or December I was reassigned to the Bushnell in Key West.  I obviously never heard from the one armed lady again, but often wondered.  

Now the question is should I ever try to make contact with this person or should I just go about life and if he finds out like I did that there is someone he doesn't know but should, maybe he will contact me.  I have a pretty substantial digital footprint.  

Trump flags on boats

 Every time I see a Trump flag on a boat I don’t see a patriot, I see a racist.  

What Makes a Sycophant

One of the biggest dilemmas to me, as we approach the 2020 election, is what makes the people in support of Donald Trump so supportive, even in the face of all evidence indicating that he is only interested in what benefits him and his.  

I suppose I never really considered the word sycophant.  As a noun Merriam-Webster's definition is: a servile self-seeking flatterer.   Yet I look at the people surrounding Trump and I wonder, are they really self-seeking when they are flattering him as they do?  

One example comes to mind.  Yesterday I watched Wolf Blitzer interview Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg after the news came out that Olivia Troye, who served as Vice President Pence's Homeland Security adviser and an adviser to the White House coronavirus task force, said that Trump failed to keep Americans safe.  Just another in a long line of ex-Trump staffers and long time Republicans who have come out to say that Trump is dangerous to the Republic and is only interested in himself.  Yet General Kellogg, with a long distinguished career in the military, comes on CNN and refutes everything that Ms. Troye said about Trump.  He essentially said she was either a liar who had an ulterior motive or insinuated that somehow she was coerced into saying what she said.  When Blitzer brought up the fact that she was just one of many, and named General Mattis, General McMaster and General Kelly, all colleagues of Kellogg, all he could say was: "they just didn't like his style." 

Come on man!  They just didn't like his style.  Its like there is a whole different reality when it comes to Trump.  I see people like Kellogg and Kellyanne Conway that can say absolutely nothing bad about Trump.  I see the people at his rallies wearing red hats screaming his attributes.  Yet when I listen to him, I hear a person who can't string ten words together in a sentence that makes any sense.  I see a person that loads every sentence with the words I or me.  I see a person who either lies about or exaggerates every endeavor.   So what is in it for the Kelloggs and the Conways.  It doesn't seem that they are self seeking in their flattery.  I don't have the answer.  I wonder if anyone does.    

Thank You for Your Service

 I always feel a little uncomfortable when people "thank me for my service".  I wonder if they are really sincere or is it just guilt that they didn't serve.  Kind of like all those people putting yellow ribbons on their cars after 9/11.