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- Ducharm’s Axiom
If one views his problem closely enough, he will recognize himself as part of the problem.
This is almost too true to be funny unlike most Murphy’s Laws.
- Coming Home
Yesterday, the USS Abrabam Lincoln (CVN 72) pulled back into her home port of San Diego. It was a zoo. It nearly alway is a zoo when a ship that large returns from a deployment to the Southwest Corner, but this was the biggest zoo i’ve experienced since i first was stationed here in 1975.
i will not comment about the affairs of the Lincoln and the longest underway period in modern history, as Alan Hicks researched and verified, nor the impact of social and news media today. After the publicity began flowing and several Facebook exchanges, i realized it had become a political football. i try to refrain from such things (usually, but not always succeeding).
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I do know a good bit about ships returning from deployments. i personally experienced six of them on the arriving side and one as a greeter on the pier.
On thing that struck me. I was on the USS Lloyd Thomas (DD 764) when i was a third class midshipman in the summer of 1963. Before we pulled back into Newport from a 7 week underway period, the captain anchored the ship in Narragansett Bay, and boatswainmates and midshipmen including me were suspended from the weather decks and painted out the rust that had accumulated on the sides of the ship. We didn’t didn’t go into port until the job was done. That was comon practice then.
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The most lonely return was my first one. i had reported to the USS Hawkins (DD 873) in Malaga, Spain in late April 1968 as a brand new, wet behind the ears ensign. That deployment for me was short. We got underway shortly after noon, passed through the straits of Gibralta before sunset and arrived in Hawkins’ home port, May 15, 1968. i had been in the Mediterranean for half a day.
When we moored to the Newport destroyer pier 2, the pier was awash with relatives of the wardroom and the crew. The DCA asked me to help him as he was engaged to two women on the pier. i diverted the one by herself telling her the fiancé was still involved in damage control (ironic, huh?) while he met the other fiancé and her parents, then escorted her off the ship with her parents. When they left, he showed up for the one i was engaging.
Everyone left except the duty section left. Of course, the wardroom duty section consisted mostly of single officers, especially the only newbie ensign, aka me. Since i had used most of my leave before i reported aboard, i was the only officer who did not have leave the first two weeks or the last two weeks after we arrived.
i felt like the Lone Ranger…without Tonto or Silver.
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My other returns from deployments were much better. There were a few when i had that glorious time as a lieutenant commander bachelor when i came back from Western Pacific (WESTPAC) deployments when there was no one waiting. That was okay because i was single and back in San Diego.
In my other returns, someone was waiting. Certainly, my favorite was in 1984. That deployment on Yosemite was one of the most successful i ever had. It was a hero and heroine reception. Best of all, i had left my bride of ten days behind to join the ship in Mayport, except for three days over Labor Day, we had been apart for 71/2 months. Maureen was on the pier. It was a glorious feeling to see her.
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The only one where i was on the pier waiting for someone was in the late 80s. Daughter Blythe was here for her vacation time with us. She joined me on the pier. i have related this return before. To repeat:
JD Waits and i met in Perth, actually Fremantle, Australia in 1981 after i reported aboard the USS Okinawa (LPH 3). There are ma ny stories i have posted here and many more to come about him or by him here.
One of the best is the one that came from my stumbling upon a find at a grocery store. It was in the early nineties. JD was the aviation maintenance officer for ASWWINGSPAC, an acronym i will not try to capture here. Due to a relief for cause of an aviation squadron (that, for non-Navy folks is not a good thing), JD was called upon to take the officer relieved as assistant maintenance officer on one of the carriers, i think it was the USS Constellation (CV 64) for a nine-month deployment to the Western Pacific (WESTPAC).
As they were preparing to get under way, i went to the Navy Commisary on the Naval Station to stock up in groceries for our family. In the back of the commissary, there was a freezer displaying a special. It was boxes of frozen “JD’s Fried Chicken.” The prominently displayed subtitle on the 6″x10″x3″ box read “Mostly White Meat.”
Perfect, i thought, and bought a box, presenting it to JD the next day. He laughed and took the gift. i’m guessing he cooked it before the deployment, but he told me he took the box with him and put it on the shelf above his desk in the maintenance shack. His maintenance division saw it and constantly made jokes about it, convinced it was a joke.
Now, after JD and i returned from our deployment on the USS Okinawa (LPH 3), we became close friends, share a condo in the Coronado Cays with a boat slip, we began to show up dressed as Jake and Elwood from “The Blues Brothers” Movie and named ourselves “The Booze Brothers.”
JD, in explaining the box, told his maintenance crew of his and my adventures as the Booze Brothers. The old sailors weren’t buying it, and it became sort of a running joke for the deployment. When his ship was returning to San Diego, JD’s wife, Mary Lou, was on family business in Virginia and unable to be there for the homecoming.
Our daughter Blythe was here from Austin during summer break. She helped me — actually did most of the real work — in creating a 3×5 foot sign. It read: “Welcome back, Jake. Elwood is cooking some JD’s Fried Chicken tonight for your Homecoming. It is mostly White Meat.”
JD was down in his maintenance office while the ship was mooring pierside at the North Island Naval Air Station. Blythe and i were in the crowd of dependents, loved ones, and friends of ship’s company on the pier. JD’s crew were standing in quarters on the flight deck when they spotted Blythe and i waving the sign. They ran down to the maintenance office and found JD.
They were hysterical, yelling “It’s true, it’s true. Elwood is on the pier waiting for you. His sign says he is fixing you JD’s Fried Chicken with Mostly White Meat tonight.
The Booze Brothers were a legend, but they and Blythe did not eat fried chicken that night.
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This rather lengthy post was motivated by the Lincoln‘s return to the Southwest Corner Thursday. Regardless of all of the political posturing and the turmoil produced by social and news media, those 5,600 officers and sailors who had ridden her for what must have seemed like an interminable time deserved a huge homecoming welcome. They got it.
To the Lincoln, Bravo Zulu, i.e. well done, and Bravo Xray, i.e. have an extra drink of rum (that’s old Navy stuff).
- Worker’s Dilemma
1. No matter how much you do, you’ll never do enough.
2. What you don’t do is always more important than what you do.
- Sportswriter Reborn…for a brief moment
It was…? well, weird.
The last time i was a real sportswriter was in 1972 when i walked away from a wonderful job in a wonderful place, sports editor for The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York. It was purely a financial decision in order to provide an adequate income for my wife and infant daughter.
i rejoined the Navy as a surface warfare lieutenant. It was the right decision, and i don’t regret it. However, i do often wonder what it would have been like to continue my career in sports journalism.
Regardless, i haven’t had the feeling like being a sports writer since July 31, 1972…until last night.
i have become a critic of sports at all levels because i think even at the youngest age level, sports are no longer “sports” but are focused on making them careers, very lucrative careers but still careers. Very few youngsters play multiple sports. Seasons overlap. Parents and hired athletic tutors teach youngsters all of the techniques and proper styles of sports. Playing football or baseball on an open field with bases and foul lines established by sweatshirts or old rags no longer exist. Some adult is supervising and safety is more important than fun.
This, of course, comes from an old curmudgeon whose last direct offspring quit playing organized sports or sports of any kind before high school. So, i really don’t know if some kids are sneaking around and playing some sport with just others their age and not spending that time on some electronic game device. Hey, the world is changing, but i think we’ve lost something.
i have morphed from watching every baseball, football, and basketball game, as well as tennis, soccer, and volleyball games i could find into watching only my teams, Vanderbilt sports and Padre baseball. Even with the sideshows of commercials, coaches, referrees and umpires, and rules intended to make the “games” more enjoyable to watch interrupting the pace of play and breaking the momentum of impressive runs of success (or dismal failure), there are some amazing athletes out there. They may have had more coaching, more training, more personal fitness, more psychological stress coaching than i ever had, they are still better than i could ever have achieved.
The old curmudgeon had pretty much forgotten about his time as a “sports journalist.” Until last night.
It was strange. i was watching the San Diego Padres playing the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League playoffs. i fully expected it to be the last game i would watch this season. The Brewers were likely to win their third straight, eliminating my Padres.
Maureen and i watch nearly every Padre game during the season. It’s a great way to spend an evening when one is retired and not into movies anymore (that’s me, not her). i’ve been a Padres fan since the first time i saw them in Jack Murphy Stadium in 1975. My buddy, Jim Hileman and i shared full season tickets for several years in the late ’80s, early ’90s, then went down to two 40-game season tickets, which i maintained until 2014.
Therefore, i am a bona fide Padre fan. Maureen is more excited about them than i am. She has to leave the television and go to bed and read when the final two or three innings are tight — then, if the Padres won, she wants me to find the replay so she can watch it when she already knows the outcome.
Consequently, she went to our bedroom at the end of the sixth inning. i sat alone with most of the lights out watching by myself. i found myself twitching in my chair, mumbling good and bad things depending on the play and sometimes at the risk of disturbing Maureen, bringing a Navy cuss word down upon the perpetrator’s head.
The Padres won 4-3 in a thriller. How they did it has been all over the sports media. I won’t describe it, but i will say the thrill of victory pulsated in our house this morning and undoubtedly in households where the Padres are the favorite.
Yet, there was this strange thing happening to me. As the game progressed, i began to feel the objectivity of a sports writer returning.
Objectively, that was one of the best baseball games played the way i think it should be that i’ve seen in the past 30 years or more. Both teams pitched exceptionally well. They both played small ball with bunts, steals, and hit-and-run plays. The defense of both was incredible.
Had the Brewers pulled it out and won, i would have been a bit disappointed, but i was elated i was allowed to see such a wonderful game played the way baseball should be played (in my mind).
Holding true to my curmudgeon image, i must say at the end of the 5th inning i turned down the volume to where i could hear the crowd noise and could hear the announcers but it was too low to hear what the announcers were saying. In the bottom of the 5th, the Brewers shortstop Pratt was on third, their hitting hero Chourio hit a short fly ball to left field. The Padre’s left fielder, Dustin Harris, caught the fly, and the center fielder Jackson Merrill backed him up. Harris took two steps and fired to home plate too late. Had he taken just one step, he might have gotten Pratt out. But he took too.
One of the announcers proclaimed Harris shouldn’t have caught the ball, that he should have stepped aside to allow Merrill to catch the ball because he was the better outfielder. I not only found the comment stupid but insulting.
The trio had been spouting drivel all night, usually denigrating a player (either side) because they knew better than the players on the field. The stupid comment about Harris finally drove me to shut them down. Fox Sports should be ashame for having such BS on the air. Sadly, it’s the other networks also, especially ESPN. i will have the volume where i had it last night for tonight’s contest.
i’m also thinking about installing a seat belt on my chair just in case tonight’s game is a good as last night.
- Ruby’s Principle of Close Encounters
The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you don’t want to be seen with.