https://www.kqed.org/news/12022479/why-are-there-so-many-abandoned-military-bases-in-the-bay-area
Sea Stories
Treasure Hunting: Memories Behind Every Item
One of our family’s traditions every January (besides my spouse searching for, and acquiring outdoor Christmas decorations at a discount) is taking several boxes of used clothing, housewares, exercise equipment, and knickknacks to Goodwill or other donation center. The only things I do not part with are contained in 3 black and yellow tubs stacked in the garage. Some of these I acquired during several moves around the country as a child and then later, during 30 years of a Navy career.
Everyone has a sea story to tell
Often, I bring back interesting stories when talking with volunteers at the donation center. This week, I chatted with a guy who had been ‘mentored’ by Frank Zappa in his youth while a musician in a recording studio. “It is so amazing that records (we called them LPs) have outlasted cassettes and CDs. I still have several thousand albums in my collection.” Working at the Goodwill, the option to find unusual items related to his history is probably a perk.
Reading a story online about the making of the second “Top Gun” movie, it remarked about the original movie’s technical advisor Pete “Viper” Pettigrew, an original Top Gun instructor. I was fortunate to meet him several years ago aboard the Midway museum in San Diego. “You should consider being a docent here, Chief”, he told me. ” You can tell (the same) sea stories to visitors every day.” While my wife has heard or lived many of my stories, I have yet to tell them to our adult children and grandchildren. Still, when our eldest son spent four years in the Army, he would call home to talk Army jargon to his mom; she would hand the phone to me and we would converse using the “army-navy jargon” translator all veterans know instinctively.
As I go through my collected mementos, decades-old memories come back vividly. And it is for this reason, I have a difficult time parting with even ticket stubs. (I still have, somewhere, ticket stubs from the 1980 Los Angeles Pink Floyd “Wall” concert.)
One man’s trash is another’s treasure
Every January, as I toss out old appliances, irrelevant papers and tools from work my wife and I no longer have need, and things neither of us remember buying, I take some time to look through my “memorabilia”. When I rotate through the bric-a-brac, displayed in a cabinet by my writing desk, I remember the places and people I met when I acquired them. Unfortunately, some break into pieces while using them over the years (mugs and glassware from my travels); some have gotten lost (letters I wrote my late mother during various deployments), and the rest I rediscover in random corners around the house. Other items I know to be fragile antiques, but “heirloom” is a far-fetched label for a fragile Bentwood rocking chair, old monogrammed silverware, military badges, Egyptian papyrus, or Irish wool blankets.
The Bentwood rocker, a butter churn, iron tools, glass medicinal bottles and scraps of a charcoal drawing have come to me after my mother passed. Some fifty years ago, when my parents divorced, I was moved from California to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The home my mother bought together was originally built in 1745, and later became the studio for a famous muralist of the late 19th Century, Edwin H Blashfield. Predating Indiana Jones by ten years, I became an amateur archaeologist, uncovering odd items buried in the soil under a centuries-old barn. When we moved yet again, after my Sophomore year of high school, to Arizona, I convinced my mother to moved a 1930’s era Zenith radio with us. While it worked for a time on the Cape, finding vacuum tubes became difficult. I did not know then how to repair electronics or rewind coils. That was one of the influences that lead me to a Navy career in electronics after high school. Unfortunately, long before my mother passed, the radio innards and the cabinet disappeared.
Heirlooms only have value if there are interesting stories attached to them. At the moment, our grandchildren are more focused building things with magnetic tiles, splattering paint on bits of cardboard, and enjoying snacks at Pop-pop’s house.
After a year sabbatical, I am committing this year to putting memories online, so my children and grandchildren can look at images and stories and if interested, keep a few items out of the January trips to the Goodwill store – or the trashcan. If you have not given up on an old Chief, I hope the readers of this blog will stay with me.
help, Mr. Peabody!
In many television shows and movies during my childhood, the idea of using a time machine to travel backward was a solution to many problems and answered many questions. The cartoon “Peabody’s Improbable History” featured the adventures of a genius, Mr. Peabody, and his boy, Sherman. They travelled back in history to visit various people who, but for Mr. Peabody, might not have been immortalized for developing inventions or theories. Did Mr. Peabody visit Pythagoras? A true story about translating a Babylonian clay tablet, discovered a hundred years ago, indicates the “Pythagorean Theorem” and trigonometry were used fifteen hundred years earlier than the Greek we credit.
A movie and several television episodes of Star Trek featured time travel, but one (All Our Yesterdays), has Captain Kirk and crew investigate a planet whose population has vanished ahead of their star about to go nova. In the episode, a timekeeper sent everyone backward in time to live out their lives and avoid obliteration. In our history, myths of ancient civilizations like Atlantis or Homeric tales that proved later to be true, indicates history repeats itself. With nations today always on the verge of destroying one another, nuclear war is more real than our Sun going nova- at least for the next 4 billion years. However, we have just reached the milestone sending human-made inventions beyond our solar system’s limits (Voyager 1 and 2). An achievement a half-million years in the making.
Paleontology and genetic research suggest that modern homo sapiens might have out-competed homo Neanderthalis to inherit the world. In recent years, the discovered remnants of presupposed modern construction techniques nearly a half-million years old suggest we may repeat history over and over again. Discoveries of enormous cities reclaimed by the Amazonian jungles, Bronze Age religious sites drowned by the sea, and Roman roads and aqueducts demonstrate a modern knowledge of science (astronomy) and construction techniques. Perhaps, like the conquering Spanish conquistadors in the Americas, or the Near East Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Ottomans, might humans repeatedly destroy libraries that housed knowledge it then takes millennia to relearn?
Mr. Peabody, we need you.
On the road
My wife insists that a road trip I am currently enjoying would make an entertaining video. She was intimating that she should have put a camera in the vehicle, so our friends back home could enjoy colorful jabs we were bound to make during the ride. We have made these at each other’s expense for decades. When I first suggested riding along with Russ, I protested to him and my spouse at game night, “It is not that I want to go so much, as I want to make sure Russ crosses the state line and keeps going.”
“Your wife will enjoy a peaceful week without you around. I’m the giver here,” He retorted.
He and I, two retired Navy Chief Petty Officers, drove fifteen hundred miles together from San Diego to Norman, Oklahoma in April. This would be both my first time RV’ing and first time making a road trip with Russ. I had asked to accompany him back in February, and he had quickly agreed. Together with our wives, we had been close friends for two decades, serving together in our community church, enjoying shows, concerts and other events together. From our earliest days, he would greet me Sundays, “Hey Old Man” and I would retort, “Respect your elders!”. We were exactly six days apart in age. “But you are, and will always be older”, he would say.
That I retired as a Senior Chief Petty Officer, which in the military paygrade was E-8, and he a Chief, or E-7, was always a running source of amusement. “That is exactly what I would expect from an Even Number.” I would generally follow up with something about him being odd. For the last several years, we would only pause our characteristic jabs during church or our small bible group meeting each week. After his wife passed, his neighbors, my wife and I spent Friday evenings playing Mexican Train. (It also could have been an excuse to drink margaritas but we never made excuses.)
Fast forward to this year. With his house sold and a new one under construction in Oklahoma, we were on the road moving him back to his Oklahoma roots, daughter and grandchildren. Our first stop was to visit his friend during a stopover in Las Vegas. Where many would think casinos, we instead visited the Pin Ball Museum together.
The pinball museum has hundreds of operational machines – and many that need repair. This was sort of a pleasant memory for Russ as he had repaired many of those 1960 -1980s era machines before his Navy career. Playing several games, Russ casually reminded me that I might be dropped off somewhere in Nevada, if I continued to win as handily.
In Las Vegas, it always takes an edge to get into exclusive places. Any good Navy Chief knows how to get things done, in uniform or in retirement. And so we had an “in” to get a table for a great dinner at Top of the World Restaurant at the Strat. (Of course, now that my wife knows, I will have to go the traditional route to make reservations for our next anniversary,) We also had tickets to the Cirque de Soleil Michael Jackson tribute show, One. And now, that my wife also knows this, I will have to scramble to get two tickets for this phenomenal show as well.
The next day we got out of Las Vegas a little later than planned. I had to walk our other passenger on this road trip first. Our other passenger, Karma, is Russ’ dog, the sweetest roly-poly pittie dogs any . Oh, and we had a little electrical problem that needed attention. Though we had made an art of good-natured ribbing each other at every opportunity, we barely traded a barb, “You doddering old man. Can I get your walker?”
Instead, the twenty-something hours of driving across three states was spent with the fictional adventures of Mike Rabb, a former CIA special operator, as he tracked down megalomaniacs and world-destabilizing villains. These audio books kept us focused while we drove through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and then into the Sooner state.
We arrived in Norman in time to catch a little nap, meet Russ’s family and catch a rare celestial event over this specific part of the country, a total solar eclipse across the central U.S.
So this week is a vacation and perhaps an opportunity to invest in some property. And catch up with a little sarcastic bombasts.
Why have a Preventative Maintenance System?
CINCHOUSE (for those unfamiliar with military acronyms, this means Commander-In-Chief, House), otherwise known as my wife, has been very gracious throughout the last 72 hours without the use of a tactically significant piece of home equipment: our clothes dryer. After many thousands of loads over the last 7 or 8 years, the dryer failed to turn on, and I was asked to perform corrective maintenance. I am the command Maintenance Chief as well as the Supply Chief, which can range from scheduling a Maintenance Availability with a contractor, or restoring operation myself with the assistance of Amazon or other parts supplier. Without a backup system onsite, the Laundry Officer took the towels to a laundromat the first night.
Troubleshooting: Fault analysis & Symptom Elaboration
The process was fairly straightforward even without having a repair manual or parts list on hand. After three decades expertise, proper tools and following normal safety precautions, I expected to have the unit fixed. I was able to retrieve a parts list, and have the most likely replacement part shipped to me. It arrived this morning. Fortunately, I did not need the EMO’s signature on a tag-out log, but disconnected the dryer plug from the 240VAC line.
Upon disassembly to gain access to the electrical part, the first thing I noted was gundecked PMS. A Preventative Maintenance System is only effective in maintaining equipment at optimum working efficiency when followed precisely. That, of course was my problem. The electric dryer was not on any schedule for periodic maintenance and only received cursory vacuuming every few months by the MATMAN, when he remembered. With the thousands of hours of use in the last decade, the vent /lint trap port within the system and the exhaust to vent the dryer resembled the clogged arteries of a hear attack victim – with dust, dirt, hair, coins and even a man’s ring (!) almost completely clogging it.
There is a time when the OPTEMPO is such that waiting for a repair contractor, that the priority becomes replacement and not repair. After following online instructions, I was no closer to determining the broken component. Fortunately, the Supply Officer, my wife, and whom incidentally, is the Immediate Senior in Command, approved the purchase order for a new dryer. It gets delivered the day after Christmas. But the more serious issue is the ignored PMS. Were it not for the reasons that the dryer was never added to the Equipment List, and there was no PMS card detailing scheduled maintenance, the responsible Sailor should have scheduled, at a minimum, annual maintenance with a civilian contractor. As both the Maintenance and Training Senior Chief, I need to review, or create, a program for the new dryer that was ordered for delivery on Monday. It may be the end of year “holiday routine” but like military operations, washing and drying clothes and towels occurs 365 days a year.
The reasons for having a Preventative Maintenance System, or PMS, for equipment and systems that are relied upon for national defense is actually one of common sense. OPNAV Instruction series 4700.7() provides the guidance for all Navy systems maintenance. Up through the new millennium, paper schedules and “hard card” maintenance requirements were used by all Surface,Air, Shore, and Submarine forces. During the past two decades, online software, such as SKED (2022) has replaced the system the author used during his days as a “blueshirt”.
Military systems are designed generally for harsh conditions and use occurring in combat. While some are specific to the equipment operating environment, dust, dirt and other particles are generally everywhere. Aboard ship, a closed system like a ship at sea, with dozens or thousands of human beings aboard create a lot of dust, hair, dander that must be removed every few hours. The same can be said for residential living.
*gundecked – Navy slang for falsified or sloppily performed, which the responsible party, when identified, receives punitive measures to prevent a recurrence.
These illustrations were originally published on navyaviation.tpub.com
Mermaid of Mission Bay
I thought it might portend good fortune yesterday morning when my companions and I departed Mission Bay (San Diego) for a couple hours of fishing. A mermaid was taking in some pleasant weather in the middle of the channel. She hadn’t much to say as to where to find hungry fish. Perhaps she was just dreaming of our region’s famous fish tacos; the boats all sitting off La Jolla didn’t seem to have any better luck. (A mutual friend of ours once reminded me that the hobby was not called “catching” as it takes skill and proper timing.) But i will still go as often as I’m invited. A career Navy man, I need to put to sea every so often to refresh my retired Sailor “Saltiness”. And seeing a mermaid, gives me another sea story to share with my readers.
fishing tales
A fisherman, a boat captain, and me put out from Dana Landing just before first light on a gray Saturday morning. The fisherman was experienced, the boat’s owner, a former Navy man but not a fisherman, was hoping for a large catch and me, a retired Navy Senior Chief, neither boat owner nor fisherman, was keeping a weather eye on the horizon. With choppy seas ahead, the fisherman brought along Dramamine. (We all took it.) Had I brought along any bananas? To the fisherman’s question, I responded none.
luck and bananas
Apparently, sailors should not bring bananas on a voyage if we wanted fishing luck. With eight years at sea in the Navy, the thought crosses my mind, had I “ever” seen bananas in the fresh fruit available on the mess decks? Apples and oranges, I remember, but never bananas. Sailing superstition links bananas to lost ships and cargoes. (I looked it up online.) I heard that overcast days are pretty good days for fishing. Our companion, a passionate fisherman, who knows where he has had success and what signs might mean good fishing, provided me a rod and reel. He also showed me how to properly tie a weight and hooks. The rest was left for me to figure out. Fish are not waiting for the unsuspecting fisherman to drop his line and jump on the hook.
seabirds and dolphins
Nine miles off Pacific Beach at mid-morning, the swells were past tolerable, and the overcast remained. With a couple larger boats in the distance, and seabirds, pelicans and dolphins for company, we found some floating kelp and put down our lines again. We took it for a good sign when the captain caught a seabass and the fisherman brought up a rock cod a little later. We decided against going farther out. (One of us admitted to being queasy.) We put down our lines again off Sunset Cliffs and determined the fish finder was not malfunctioning; it had not detected fish all morning. (The seabirds told us as much as neither tern, gull nor pelican were seen retrieving fish from the water at any point.) Back in the channel leading to Dana Point Landing that afternoon, I snagged two mackerel. No fish were worth keeping.
I learned a few things from our adventure. Overcast days do not suggest good fishing weather. The lack of bananas does not conversely bring good luck. Neither does bringing a large cooler. Dolphins do not mean lots of fish are about. And a bad day fishing is better than a good day working. Twelve hours after suggesting to our wives we’d be fishing “three or four (hours)” we got home. The fisherman is one I admire. He intended to play softball all the next day. I slept for ten straight hours. And might go to bed early tonight. But I have Craigslist and OfferUp dialed in; I’m looking for a rod and reel at the right price.
Halloween COMTHIRDFLT style
In 1998 or perhaps 1999, when Commander, US THIRD Fleet, Vice Admiral Herb Brown was embarked on the USS CORONADO (AGF-11) we had the first and only Halloween that the embarked Staff celebrated underway. Or I should clarify, that the enlisted members of the Staff celebrated underway. It might have been a first-ever “trick or treat” that was robustly and enthusiastically celebrated in an underway Navy vessel.
Several of my peers in the Petty Officer First Class Mess had the idea, with us underway to Anchorage during Halloween, to make unfinished compartments in the aft part of the ship a “haunted house”. We had made a port visit to Pearl Harbor earlier in October, where we picked up supplies. My “partner-in-crime”, Storekeeper First Class, aka “SK One” decided that we would add a little to evening by going around-in costume – Trick or Treating – but handing out candy to various members of the Staff and crew. I wore a Frankenstein mask and an old suit bought at a Honolulu thrift store, and my partner, the Grim Reaper (complete with a rubber sickle). The most memorable door we knocked on was the Admiral’s cabin. He was traveling with the ship up to Anchorage and had a family member with him at the time. I think the sight bowled him over with laughter. We bestowed a couple pieces of candy and a toy “Death Star” ornament.
Meanwhile, for members of the crew off-duty we had a great time with our “haunted house” – complete with ghouls, Davy Jones, and a booty chest. Since that part of the ship was still under construction, glo-sticks provided the only light, adding to the spookiness. For days afterward, there was a lot of scuttlebutt going around about who might have dared to go trick or treating the Admiral, the ship’s Commanding Officer, and others aboard. I don’t think we admitted to it, but the Supply Department Head I think figured out SK1 had to be involved. (I was suspected also, as I had made a remark to my Intel officer a week or so earlier.)
Twenty-five years later, and retired eleven years now, each Halloween has become an opportunity to be a little creative, to entertain the neighborhood children and our grandchildren. Tonight was no exception. But that particular Halloween nearly 25 years ago, was memorable, such that it still makes me chuckle when I put up the inflatable Frankenstein yard decoration.
NOTE: While the AGF-11 has been decommissioned and scrapped a long time, the communications call sign for this command and control ship, during my assignment on her, was re-designated “Death Star” in response to a quip by an enlisted member of the crew published in the NAVY TIMES. The CORONADO was a SPAWARS (now NAVWAR) testbed for all sorts of new bleeding-edge technology during my time aboard – and was pretty amazing for a renovated old LPD. As for the gifts we gave out to certain senior officers? During a port visit in Seattle, after the “Death Star” designator made the rounds among the Staff, SK1 and I found a memorabilia store in Pikes Market where we bought several Star Wars “Death Star” ornaments. Oh, that remark I mentioned earlier? “Wasn’t the Death Star, the ship in Star Wars that was blown up…. TWICE?”
craigslist and sea stories
It was the tone of the ad on craigslist that caught my wife’s attention. We were looking for a used filing cabinet for our business and personal files.
“Text or call”, the ad said. “I don’t do email”.
It said to contact the seller between “0800 and 2200, that’s between 8 AM and 10PM for you landlubbers”. The number was phonetically spelled to frustrate scammers and telemarketers. The ad continued that the seller did not want payment in anything other than cash. When I read the ad on craigslist, I “knew” this was another old Salt.
In the manner of two old shipmates, though meeting for the first time, it was typical Navy. He challenged, “You got your shots?” (Meaning of course, the COVID vaccine.)
I replied. “Which ones? Hepatitis? Anthrax, Cholera, Typhoid? – I’m a Sailor- had ’em all”
Laughing, he retorts, “No the one that hurts like hell!” The mystical shot with square needle story, I winked knowingly.
His wife gave the two old Salts a smile and went inside the house. “She’s heard it all before”, he chuckled. We swapped stories on the places and ships we had both seen. And that was thirty minutes after we traded greenbacks for the cabinet we put in my SUV. And that is no bull**. (Comments edited for you landlubbers out there.)
child’s play for old Salts
Age merely shows what children we remain.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
I am taking the opportunity to play again. Watching our grandchild once or twice a week, we have taken every opportunity to go to parks to run with and after him. With nice Southern California weather, time to run through the grass, over the little bridges, and then feed ducks at the lake. As Zander gets a little older,. he more boldly climbs up jungle gyms. Sliding down slides, he directs us to follow after or to catch him – over and over again. Sitting on his uncle’s lap he enjoys swinging on swings. But not that high he says. And as “mam-mam” and “pop-pop” get a bit more winded, we suggest going to get a little frozen yogurt and then to “mam-mam’s” house to play. Even though a pandemic year has stolen time from us all, It is unavoidable that both preschoolers and grandparents still have grown older. Yet it is pretty much a given that clambering around a jungle gym and marveling at child’s play, this old Salt feels younger for a little while.
You have two basic rights
I am dusting off and republishing a few of my oldest efforts blogging. Rough around the edges. Originally published in July, 2009.
My old Senior Chief back in the days before political correctness blanched most of the testosterone from the military, used to introduce himself to his charges, “You have two rights in this world, one, to live, and another, to die. Gentlemen, when you f*** up, I will take one of them away from you!” I was the Petty Officer assigned to escort restricted and brig confinement -bound men at the NTC San Diego Correctional Custody unit, when the Navy Training Center and not an artsy community/ civic center.
It was his responsibility – and by delegation, mine as well, to attempt through proper application of discipline and hard work to turn last-chance misfits – clowns, chronic whiners, and immature boy-sailors into rule-followers, and rehabilitated men. There were of course, two alternatives that several ended finding – discharge at the convenience of the government, or hard time at the Navy Brig – and then discharge.
After those formative days of my youth, I see my responsibility as training young people in my charge, Sailors in my Reserve unit, recent graduate-engineers at work, and especially my sons, to help them develop along the right course. There is a culture in the military that juniors respect the senior enlisted mentors, as this is how the former progress to becoming the latter. In the civilian workforce, particularly in companies which nurture and reward excellence among all employees, there is a lot of the same cameraderie, cross-training, and shared purpose.
As a parent, though, raising boys who were as independent-minded and stubborn as mules, was work! These teens were self-disciplined only to the extent of things which held their interest – guitars, skateboards, and motocross bikes. Perhaps memory of similar behavior in those young men from the Correctional Custody days, urged me to impart some cautionary pearl of wisdom. Often the effect was wrath and counter-accusation, and exasperated red-faces. It would have been so much easier to find “a fan room”. (a Fan Room is a noisy air handling compartment where 2 could a disagreement with a few fists, without a public display). But political correctness has broken down all the means to apply discipline at any age.
Too much is thought of individual liberties, psyches, and others well-being, to the detriment of everyone from classroom pupil, to those helmsmen of a warship or even public transport operators. Policy which prohibits certain behavior (texting on cell phones while operating a train) is only effective when the individual has ingrained self-discipline.
raining conspiracies
Seems it never rains in southern California Seems I've often heard that kind of talk before It never rains in California, but girl, don't they warn ya? It pours, man, it pours
I think the rain we have been seeing from multiple storms since the Governor of California required our state to deal with catastrophic drought, at the beginning of 2019, is part of a secret conspiracy to ship the melting polar caps- Arctic and Antarctic to California. While I do not believe in secret Governments, a vast global conspiracy to fool people about a pandemic, or the right-wing movement to control women’s uteruses, I am beginning to suspect that all the rain we have been getting is meant to shove the illegal succulent trade in Southern California back across the Arizona border.
At least, the rain is giving a big boost to my fruiting stone-fruit trees: Apricots, peaches and nectarines. And all the other ornamental bushes are flowering. This is also a treat for my roses. But “April showers bring May flowers” was never a rhyme we knew in California before now.
Truths, Half-truths, and Sea Stories 