February 9, 2005 – Dishing out Grief

February 9, 2005 – Dishing out Grief

The journey from Yokosuka Harbor to dry dock in Portland, Oregon held one other unforgettable experience. It involved Gus, the Petty Officer First Class that I admired. Gus was a fellow I looked up to because he didn’t take himself seriously. He was in the Navy because he didn’t fit into the world outside and knew it. He was well suited to sailing about a wide-open ocean. It was a metaphor for his life, which lacked an anchor holding him to any place or person. There was a bar in Yokosuka that was a bit more upscale than those most of the younger sailors from the base frequented. The hostesses were older, late twenties, early thirties. The civilians from the ship made it their bar, as did the older petty officers like Gus. My first visit came as a result of a recommendation from one of the factory representatives I knew from the ship and earlier from the factory school where I had been trained—ironic that both of us were assigned to the Michelson to maintain the same equipment. The factory reps were engineers and thus the experts. The sailor like me were there to operate the equipment not maintain it. The Navy, however, had sent us to school with the goal of us maintaining the gear: a case of “catch 22” that worked in the sailors favor.

When I got to the bar, the name of which escapes me now, the place struck me as not your average Yokosuka watering hole. For one thing, the place had a long bar that extended from the entrance to the rear of the building. Tables were to the right two deep running the length from entrance to rear of the room. There were a great many regulars in the place sitting at the bar and all seemed to know the hostesses, bartender, and Mama-San. One of them was Gus, who was seated with an attractive woman. He invited me to join him and his companion and I took the seat on the other side of her. I took to her immediately, a woman with a presence about her. She knew who she was and made no apologies for it. And yes, there were traces of European features in her lovely round face, somewhat rounded brown eyes, thin lips, and slightly more pointed nose than is typical on a Japanese face.

I could see that she and Gus were more than drinking buddies, though I doubted she had any misgivings about his ever settling down with her and raising a family—I saw the possibility however. I learned little or nothing of who she was but I learned a great deal about Gus, his failed marriage, his desire to not marry again, the plight of his two children, now being raised by another man, how cold it gets in Michigan in the winter—I suspect the weather was not the only thing that was terribly cold in Michigan. Having been raised as the dependent of an Army sergeant, I knew the stress that military life inflicted on a family. For a Navy household, the strain was intensified by the months; often years sailors are separated from their family aboard ship.

Gus and his companion were cut from the same cloth, emotional realists who knew themselves and their place in the world. She knew that the life of a hostess in Yokosuka was her lot and she was making the best of it, never expecting Prince Charming to walk into the bar and deliver her from this life. Gus, saw himself in her, a lonely soul, fiercely independent, looking for help from no one, while trying to inflict as little grief on others as was possible in a world that demanded each of us dish out some amount of grief in their lifetime. She accepted Gus’s keeping her while he was in port but made it plain that she did no expect to see him again when he left. On each return, whatever they shared lasted for the time they were together. In some ways their relationship was intense and meaningful since it meant something for the time they were together. Its existence depending on the two of them making an effort to keep it alive each time they saw one another again.

Gus was the Petty Officer First Class on duty as the watch supervisor one night two thirds of the way across the Pacific from Yokosuka to Portland. We were sailing through choppy seas that were relative benign for a ship with full control, but became menacing to one without. The emergency came on suddenly when the siren and intercom blurted general quarters. As we all turned to, information began to emerge in bits and pieces. Finally, everyone learned there was a steering failure that left the ship without the ability to direct itself in the water. The storm that had plagued us earlier in the trip had mercifully left us in its wake before we lost steering, but the sea was nevertheless nasty and as we drifted sideways into the waves we began to experience rolls that made it difficult to walk anywhere on the ship. Aft the chief engineer and his assistants were working feverishly to restore control to the ship.

Gus had yelled down over the intercom an order that I failed to carry out immediately having been distracted by another task that was occupying me as I answered his intercom communication. I eventually got round to carrying out his order only to find him confronting me in the computer room yelling at me that he could have me before a court martial for neglecting to carry out his order as commanded. I explained what had delayed me and it seemed to calm him down. This was not typical of mild-mannered Gus, who seldom raised his voice. I suspect a combination of the stress of the emergency and his realization at how close we came to having a real problem prompted his rage: nerves and fear finding release.

The all clear had just come down and the ship’s intercom had broadcast that everyone should return to their duty stations and resume normal ship’s operation. Gus apologized for the outburst but still insisted that I follow orders in the future, I said I would knowing I had been wrong to delay. It was one of those instances when Gus had to dish out that share of grief he had been compelled to distribute in his lifetime. Unhappily it had been my time to receive it.