Monday January 28, 2005 – Trying to Remember my Fading Past

Monday January 28, 2005 – Trying to Remember my Fading Past

This is a milestone year for me in that it will mark my sixtieth year on the planet earth. The actual event won’t happen until the last month of the year so for he time being, I’m savoring the last of the fiftieth’s years. In looking back trying to remember where all that time went, I’m becoming painfully aware of how much of that time I spent unmindful of the world around me. I was trying to conjure up my late teens and early twenties, the years where I sowed my wild oats. I remembered a great deal about those years, but the details are all missing. For example, I arrived in Japan just after the Olympics in 1964. Tokyo back then was a city less than twenty years removed from the Second World War.

I’ve returned to Tokyo within the last ten years and the city has so changed since my youth that I was at a complete loss. There were some recognizable place: Hibiya Park, the Imperial Palace, and a few other landmarks that weren’t torn down and rebuilt in the intervening thirty year. But Shimbashi Station, where I had so often begun and ended my journey to Tokyo was so expanded that I easily got lost. I had not kept a journal during my time in Japan and thus, the dates of when events happened are nebulous. Everything seems to become a blur. I do remember arriving and spending time in Yokosuka Naval Base and getting to know the city immediately around the base. I remember the time I left the ship for the last time. It was with a sense of loss—leaving something that had become familiar and comforting to me—and elation—getting back to the civilian world where I could resume the life I had interrupted to join the service. But, what I was returning to was most uncertain and I hadn’t formed a clear plan of what I was going to do.

I remember reading some books while aboard ship. I discovered Joseph Conrad and read Lord Jim and The Secret Agent, Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of fools, John O’Hara’s From The Terrace, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, and Tortilla Flats. I also struggled through Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Too much of my time was spent reading spy novels: John LeCarre’s The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, the Ian Fleming books I had not already devoured before coming aboard ship: Diamonds are forever and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Man With The Golden Gun and Thrilling Cities, Ian Fleming’s recollections of major world cities back then. I also read other spy thrillers by other writer’s Len Deighton, The Ipcress File, and many others who’s names I cannot remember. Most were mind candy to pass the time aboard ship,

The ship also would receive reels of movies that we were supposed to watch one a night while at sea. When the reels were bought aboard, if the ship’s yeoman, the ship’s projectionist, was standing duty, he would run as many as he could get through during his duty shift. One movie I remember during one of these marathon series was That Man From Rio, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac. It was memorable because I saw the movie many times while in port and at sea as did everyone else on board ship. It was the one movie that everyone wanted to watch over and over again.

When I began visiting Tokyo, I walked nearly everywhere taking cabs or the train only when I needed to go from say the Shimbashi district to the Shinjuku. You went to Shinjuku or Akasaka after midnight when the bars in the Ginza all shut down. It was an nightly ritual, with every bar along the Ginza playing “Auld Lang Syne” and drunk, suited Japanese Salarymen, their ties loosened and shirt collar buttons undone, streaming out into the night heading for the train station and home. For guys like me who did not have to go to work the following day, if we had money we would end up in the Akasaka District. I remember the Otani Hotel, newly built for the previous year’s Summer Olympics having a rotating bar on the very top floor. For the price of a beer, I think about 360 yen, you could sit at a table for an hour and receive a 360 degree view of Tokyo.

The Shinjuku district had been the red light district right after the Second World War. By 1965, it was then becoming the Greenwich Village of Tokyo, with coffee house playing jazz into the early hours of morning, movie theaters featuring film classics. I remember Olson Welles, Citizen Kane prominently featured at one. Shinjuku was where you also went for a bath and a massage, which was supposed to revive you after a night of drinking. It didn’t return you to sobriety but it did provide a sense of well being and if you were willing to pay an additional charge sexual gratification.

Now, this many years later, I’m trying to document that time, to put into words those memories that have slipped into the past and are becoming less distinct with each passing year. The great weakness of humankind is its need to relearn continually the experience of each previous generation. The great sadness is that much of each generation’s experience is lost in the handoff. My generation was faced with an obligation to serve the country for at least six years, at least two on active duty and the remainder on active reserve. I chose to serve a regular enlistment of nearly four years and remained subject to recall for the remainder of my six-year commitment. In many ways that obligation contributed to creating the person I am today. Capturing what I can remember of that experience on paper will at least enable me to share it with whoever finds it of interest.

Friday January 28, 2005 – Setting Sail on My Second Cruise

Friday January 28, 2005 – Setting Sail on My Second Cruise

Life aboard ship during my second cruise the first week of September 1965 had become a very predictable routine. We spent several days traveling to a destination in the Pacific where the scientists on board had determined. Once on site, the ship would make a sonar sweep across a square area several nautical miles on a side, much like a crop duster sweeping across acres of farmland laying a stripe of insecticide, only we were drawing a precise map of the ocean bottom. Once constructed these maps could be used by submarines to navigate the ocean without ever having to surface. In an era of highly precise global positioning systems that can be had for a few hundred dollars, our effort appears naïve and so passé.

The vast majority of our cruise was spent going up and down one square area of ocean after another, the most tedious part of the trip. The most enjoyable part was the outbound and return leg of the cruise. During these times, the ship was moving at a good ten to fifteen knots, ten outbound and fifteen on the return as the Master was anxious to return to port. Each day had a routine. The duty of the sailors on board ship was to stand watch in three eight-hour shifts: 800 hours to 1600 hours, 1600 hours to 2400 hours, and then 100 hours to 800 hours. Those doing the day shift or the graveyard shift typically ended up in the mess hall after dinner, smoking and swapping stories, something we did a great deal of to pass the time.

The first day or two out of port the stories recounted drinking in Yokosuka bars or recounting a trip made to Yokohama or Tokyo and the bars frequented there. Later the stories got around to personal confessions that revealed startling intimacies into each sailor’s private life. The chief confessed to throwing the covers over his wife’s head and farting in bed. Tall petty officer second class Hank confessed his infidelity with a fellow sailor’s wife and how easily she had an orgasm and then reveled in helping him achieve his. Sam another petty officer second class in his late twenties with a build similar to Hank and sporting a slight beer belly, too, recounted his attempt to engage in anal sex with his wife and the grief he received as a result. These testimonies seemed to be attempts to relive the pleasure or expurgate the pain each memory produced.

Butch the steward for the enlisted men’s mess was one of us and he would join in our conversations after the meal was finished and he had cleared the dishes. He was a solid, muscular guy with no hint of a spreading paunch. He had the attitude and physical appearance of a boxer, a middleweight, with arms and hands better suited to trading blows than neatly serving our meals, a task he did with considerable skill and grace, almost as if he had once been a waiter at some fancy restaurant. His speech had the quality of a fighter’s, a cadence that suggested each word was measured before being delivered. This made him appear slightly slow, but no one would ever mock him for it. Though he seemed mild mannered and harmless, you got the sense that Butch had done his share of standing up for himself. I took an immediate liking to Butch. I suspect the act of bringing food to me every day elevated him in my eyes—a nurturer, a provider. I must confess though that he and I would have little in common once off the ship.

On this trip out Butch was happily explaining how he had set up housekeeping with one of the hostesses in the Mickey Maru’s bar. I had remembered seeing him sitting with the hostess he was describing, a young thing with a sad, vulnerable look on her pretty oval face, tinged with European features. I had suspected she had been hurt and Butch had come along in time to catch her as she was falling. He was over the moon describing how great it was to be living with a woman in a place of their own. He had moved some of his personal belongings off the ship into the new place, mostly clothes, books, records, and small collectables he had picked up during his travels. On the last day of shore leave she had taken him to Kamakura to see the Great Buddha that had survived typhoons and Earthquakes since 1252. Perhaps she was seeking a blessing for their new union. He confessed to how he missed lying all night with her curled up beside him. I got the sense that Butch had a real affection for his young companion. I wondered what it would be like when he had to leave her.

After I had my fill of stories, I would often go out on deck and enjoy the night. On board ship at night in the middle of the Pacific Ocean you can look up in the sky, especially on moonless nights and see so many stars it would make my head spin. The majesty of that endless expanse of sky and the realization from the ship’s movement of being completely alone hundreds of miles from land gave me a sense of being completely insignificant. For the rest of the world, the Mickey Maru and its crew had ceased to exist when it sailed out of Tokyo Bay. In fact, most of the time we were at sea, no one knew where exactly we were. Our mission gave the Navy some idea of the where in the pacific we were, but we were outside of the consciousness of most everyone who knew us casually or intimately. Perhaps, that was why all my shipmates with wives and girlfriends somewhere in the states or in Japan were continually reliving the memories of their time ashore. They wanted some connection to that land we had left behind. For a single guy like me, the ship was where I belonged—the land was where the ship took me. The ship was where I was from and for the next fourteen months, it was where I would be going as well. I was having that adventure I had read about during my high school years.

Wednesday January 26, 2005 – Getting to Know You

Wednesday January 26, 2005 – Getting to Know You

By the time I left on my second cruise on the Mickey Maru out of Yokosuka harbor, I had become familiar with the ship, its routine and with my shipmates. Like my first trip, this one began on a clear, hot day. Like everyone else on board, I had brought a bottle of Chivas Regal aboard to enjoy or to sell later in the voyage. My shipmates were far more ambitious, some bringing a full case on board to squirrel away beneath the drawers of the lower bunks. Those who had lower bunks held the prize storage space and they set the terms for allowing others to use their storage. Since I had only a bottle, I promised to share the bottle with Tim who had the bunk below me. Tim had a couple of bottles but made the space beneath his bunk available to others who had too much to fit into their own staterooms. Arthur likewise provided storage for others. Our stateroom was relatively sober by comparison with the rest of the staterooms, though to be fair, most of the liquor stashed away was for sale later in the journey to the merchant seaman that ran the ship.

From the ship’s master all the way to the lowly deckhand that continually kept the ship clean, the merchant seamen crew aboard the Mickey Maru were a strange breed. The crew consisted of Licensed Deck Department—they all had licenses for their jobs: Master and First, Second, and Third mates, the equivalent to officers in the Navy or management in a large corporation. They navigated the ship getting the civilian scientists to a destination and once there, the scientists navigated the vessel. In charge of the ship’s propulsion was the Licensed Engine Department: chief engineer and his First, Second and Third assistant engineers. One of them was watching over the engine and propulsion system around the clock. To provide the ship’s upkeep was the Unlicensed Deck Department (the enlisted men of the merchant Navy): Boatswain (Bosun), Ships Chairman (Shop Steward), Able Seaman, and Ordinary Seaman—the working class of shipboard society. They scrubbed, painted, and repaired the ship’s physical structure. To provide the engine’s upkeep was the Unlicensed Engine Department: Pumpman and Electrician (who were Qualified Members of the Engine Department—QMED), Pumpman (Tankers), Equipment (Liners), and finally, the lowly Wipers. They took care of all the utilities—electrical, water, and sanitation—aboard ship. To provide three square meals a day, there was the Steward Department: Chief Steward, Chief Cook and Baker, and Steward Assistant. Finally, a complete Military Sea Transport Service Ship had a radio operator.

Though we shared the same ship, we didn’t often mix with the MSTS personnel except the Steward Department that took care of our mess. And when the electrical system failed or plumbing got clogged we dealt with the engine department crew. Those I got to know, our steward, the electrician that fancied my eyes, among others were men who had a difficult time settling in one place. Most had trouble establishing and maintaining any kind of relationship. Many were alcoholic, including our Master and his mates. At least one was agoraphobic—he stood watch while in port for everyone else who wanted off the ship, never once leaving the ship during the time I was on board. Most were out of place on land. On board ship, their life was regimented by the sea and the demands of the vessel, so much so, that their daily routine was as regulated as the rising and setting of the sun. At the end of the cruise every stashed bottle of alcohol had been pulled from its hiding place and sold to the highest bidder. On a cruise that ran longer than planned the bidding got to a $100 for the last bottle of alcohol.

The ship’s electrician was one of the more intriguing characters aboard ship. He was quite good looking, with a boyish face, well groomed brown hair, brown eyes, an oval face with a smile that reminded me of a Cheshire cat—always with a knowing smile that suggested he knew something that he was keeping secret. And he wanted you to ask him to reveal it. At 19 years old, I was pretty naïve about the world, particularly about human relations. He sensed that naivety and tried to exploit it any chance he got. I liked him because, unlike most of the other merchant seaman, he was not an alcoholic, seemed to have a life off the ship—he had a place in Tokyo where he lived while the ship was in port, and had a engaging manner that made you like him. The merchant seamen had their own quarters and their own mess hall. They were separate but equal to us enlisted men but we each shared in common our working class station relative to the officers, civilian factory engineers, and government scientists we enlisted men and the merchant seaman reported to. The electrician and I talked mostly on deck when he would come up and surprise me as I gazed out at the expanse of ocean all around us—something I particularly enjoyed doing, especially when the ship was making for a destination and the dolphins and flying fish would be jumping out ahead of the bow; the ship would be moving at 10 knots but the dolphins seemed to keep pace effortlessly.

I didn’t mind his interruptions, as he would usually draw me into a discussion that would turn into a friendly debate—something I enjoyed, topics, such as the meaning of Plato’s forms or some such. However, the conversations all seemed to end with a discussion of my being homophobic. I made it plain on nearly every occasion that I was a raging heterosexual, but the Electrician seemed intent on convincing me that I was fearful of homosexuals—insinuating someone such as himself though never saying so plainly. The Navy had explicit rules about men fraternizing with one another, though “don’t ask, don’t tell” was the unspoken rule. And gay sailors remained firmly within the closet or else faced being drummed out of the service. The Mickey Maru was particularly strict regarding sexual orientation.

Each person aboard ship had at least a secret clearance. And you were admonished to keep completely silent about anything to do with the ship or its operation when ashore even on a military base. Homosexuality was viewed by the military as a weakness that could be exploited by enemies to extract secrets from a crewman. Curiously, it was completely acceptable to fraternize with hostesses at any bar in Japan or elsewhere in the world so long as you did not discuss your ship or its operation. An enterprising Mata Hari could bleed a drunk sailor dry of everything he knew in an evening. And most of the hostesses around the base in Yokosuka were well informed about the Mickey Maru’s movements and probably about what it did at sea as well. The civilian scientists were a source of this intelligence no doubt.

The Electrician was also curious about my visits to Tokyo, questioning where I had stayed, what I had done, where I had gone. And then with smiling cheek he would berate my activity condemning it as the actions of a tourist, not someone curious about the country, its culture, and its people. He was right. I enjoyed being in exotic Tokyo with its mix of Japanese and Western styles. While the majority of businessmen in the streets of the city wore Western suits, many of the merchants in the small restaurants and shops wore Kimonos, as did many women I saw in the city, especially those with children and most retirees. I was completely ignorant of their food and unlike many of my shipmates, Arthur and Tim, especially, I lacked an adventurous palate eager to taste the food of the island nation. My diet in Tokyo was strictly western from ham and egg breakfasts to Japanese versions of meat and potato dishes for lunch and dinner. The movies I went to see were American or European all played in their original language with Japanese subtitles.

The Electrician from our first extended conversations kept challenging me to experience the real Japan, not the compartmentalized Western enclosure that Japan constructed to keep outsiders from their exclusive culture. I read that outsiders mistakenly believe Japan integrates the ways of other cultures into their own. The reality is more like the performers I watched at the enlisted men’s club on base before I joined the ship. On stage were four Japanese performers all attired from head to toe in country and western dress. The musicians began playing an immediately recognizable Hank Williams song, “Your Cheating Heart” and the singer began singing the song exactly like Hank Williams. If you closed your eyes you could be Nashville listening to the same music. However, the musicians had cloned the music right down to the sound of the singer. It was almost a recording. That was how Japan adopted outside culture. It created a separate compartment where the foreign culture was quarantined and kept apart. The music was for that compartment. When the musicians went home the music was left behind safe in its enclosure.

I moved about this world as an outsider and I enjoyed that role, a voyeur that no one took notice of. Japanese typically looked at Westerners and immediately saw Gaijin. My darker skin and mixed Filipino-American features made me somewhat invisible. No one took notice of me except when I interacted—asked a question or made a reply—only then was I Gaijin. I took it as a compliment the number of times, Japanese would speak to me in Japanese before realizing I was Gaijin. The Electrician wanted me to engage this culture to become more familiar with it. The idea appealed to me, but I kept putting off his invitation to join him and his Japanese friends. I liked being on my own. The Electrician would become a continuing source of intrigue and danger for me. It wasn’t that I would fall under his spell, but rather being familiar with a security risk could bring me under closer scrutiny, another reason I kept declining his invitations.

Monday January 24, 2005 – Confronting Mortality

Monday January 24, 2005 – Confronting Mortality

On the news Sunday evening was the story that Johnny Carson had died and both my wife “I” and I were shocked—how could Johnny be dead?—and saddened. When we were first married, watching The Tonight Show was our late night entertainment. Johnny was born in 1925 about four years after my dad and I got to thinking about my father’s advancing age. Dad was born in 1921. I gave him a call Sunday evening around 7:30PM Pacific Time. Mom answered and she asked after her great grandchildren. “All doing well Mom, the youngest ‘T’ started crawling on Friday, instinctively moving knees and hands in the correct manner to propel himself quickly toward some bread his older sister ‘A’ left unattended on a paper towel near him on the carpet.” It was music to my mother’s ears to hear her great grandson loved to eat. “Here’s Daddy,” my mom said and resumed her progress to bed that the phone’s ringing had interrupted.

“How’s Mom doing,” I asked my dad and he said she was doing quite well especially since the two of them had started seeing a chiropractor every week. The regular adjustments seemed to help her balance and she seemed to be moving about much easier. It seemed to be doing my father’s troublesome knee—healing from knee replacement surgery just over a year ago—some good as well. My father’s mind is still remarkably sharp but first, a hip replacement over two years ago and a knee replacement a year later have conspired to slow his activity and it has led to constant frustration at not being able to perform the handyman tasks on the house and car that he had been doing up to then. He now finds himself hiring others to prepare the evaporative air conditioner sitting atop his two-story house for winter, for example, or to cut back the fruitless mulberry tree in front of the house. All these tasks were second nature to him before. Now, they require more from his recuperating leg than was possible for it to deliver.

What I wanted to hear in that voice of his was assurance that he was still up for the battle that confronts us all every day. And I heard what I needed in his recounting of all the trials that continued to confront him daily. He is still overseeing the construction of his large metal building on his property in northeast El Paso. The building will house all the accumulated belongings of his life-long friend Charles Upton as well as a good amount of his accumulated belongings including his five 1950s and 1960s car now parked on the lot. He has had a large door installed on the building—this is the one he’ll drive the cars through, but he’s waiting the installation of the smaller door. Once that’s complete, he’ll begin the process of moving the belongings into their new home.

He tells me of his problem getting rid of an old Lincoln still on the lot that has been scavenged for parts. He gave the pink slip to a neighbor who died. His family moved to Colorado after the old man passed away and my father needs to get in touch with the oldest daughter to see if he can get the pink slip back so he can have the car towed to a junk yard. I tell my dad the odds are not good that the daughter still has the document and if she did have it she probably wouldn’t be willing to rummage through accumulated papers attempting to find it. He concedes I’m probably right. He then says he’ll have some of the scrap metal collectors from Juarez come by and cut the car up with an acetylene torch and sell the individual pieces as scrap metal, something he had done in the past with other cars.

After he’s brought me up to date on the progress with the building, he begins to describe another crises he’s facing. One involves a dear family friend, one that I knew quite well when I was growing up. Now in her late 80s, she is a widow living with a grand daughter that has a penchant for spending money on parties and drugs. The grand daughter has been a constant source of trouble for the elderly widow who within the last year has survived a heart attack that everyone believe should have killed her, yet she made a full recovery as if by shear force of will she had decided not to die; she still had unfinished business on this earth. Dad has come to the widow's rescue on a number of occasion, paying bills to prevent the shut off of utilities to the widow’s house, helping the widow with home repairs, and when she was still driving, he kept her car running. He is now faced with trying to talk some sense into the widow’s grand daughter to prevent further uncontrolled spending that could throw them all into greater financial trouble.

We end the conversation with a discussion of his will. He tells me that he has gotten one drawn up and had distributed all of his earthly possessions to my sisters and me. Such talk would once unsettle me. Now it no longer has this affect. It now makes clear how well ordered my father’s life has become. And it makes me realize how poorly ordered my own life is. I suspect I’ve neglected this sort of planning precisely because I did not want to acknowledge that I had reached a stage in my life that I needed to bother with such detail. If my genes are as good as my parents, I can expect another twenty to twenty-five years. I’ll start thinking about the inevitable and I will begin to make plans accordingly, but for now I’d like to continue worrying over my parents’ health and marveling at their will and ability to endure and prosper.

Friday January 21, 2005 – Adventures in Los Banos

Friday January 21, 2005 – Adventures in Los Banos

A week ago Friday, My wife “I” and I set out for Orange County a little after 9:00 AM and proceeded south on 101 as per usual, existing the freeway in Gilroy and picking up California 152 junction and headed west. It was overcast, Central Valley fog being pushed westward by an offshore wind direction. A strong high-pressure system entrenched just off the California Coast was responsible for this condition. By the time we had put Gilroy behind us and started climbing toward Pacheco Pass on 152, the low-lying fog had given way to an gray overcast that followed us all the way to Interstate 5, where we headed south.

As per usual, we made our way to the Apricot Tree Restaurant, which is off the Panoche Road exit from the Interstate. It’s about 30 miles south of where 152 intersects 5. We made the distance is under 30 minutes and as we locked the car and entered the restaurant, I noticed steam and then smelled steam emanating from the hood of the car. Opening the hood, I noticed the radiator hose stained white and immediately suspected a ruptured hose. There was nothing to do for the moment so we went into the restaurant and had breakfast. As we left, I drove to the Shell service station across Panoche Road from the restaurant. They had a mechanic on hand and I had him replace the radiator hose.

When the repairs were complete, we both realized that the radiator hose was fine. The leak was coming from the water pump. I purchased a couple of plastic jugs of radiator fluid and a two-gallon plastic container and filled it with water. I figured I could keep filling the leaking fluid and make it back to San Jose. Heading back north on Interstate 5, the car got ten miles north before the “check coolant” light came on. I pulled off at the next exit and filled the radiator with fluid and got back onto the freeway. We got another five miles before both the “check coolant” light came on and the temperature gauge went crazy, followed by the “check engine” light coming on. I knew the pump had failed and the coolant wasn’t getting to the engine block. I drove another mile to a rest area and pulled in, killed the engine, and called AAA.

Something happens when your car dies. Now, you’re no longer mobile; you’ve suddenly become tied to this immobile ton of steel that someone must come along and haul away. We waited nearly an hour for the tow truck to arrive. In that time, I called my oldest daughter M and asked her to check if Los Banos, the nearest town of any size, had a garage that repaired German cars. She found only one place, appropriately named “Foreign Auto Repair.” She gave me the number and I called to see if they could handle my problem. Surprisingly the owner seemed quite familiar with my car and said he could handle the repair, but he said he would have to order parts that would take a day to arrive. Monday would be the soonest the car would be ready. I asked if there were any rental car companies in town that I could get a car to get us back to San Jose. He pointed me to Santos Ford, which rented cars and was three blocks from his shop.

When the tow truck driver arrived, I asked him to haul us to Los Banos. He loaded the car on the back of his truck—towing is no longer the preferred way of transporting injured autos. We climbed into the spacious cab of his truck—Mercedes engine powered, I noticed on the side of the truck’s hood. Within 20 minutes of climbing aboard he was unloading the car at Foreign Auto Repair on the 200 block of West Pacheco Blvd, the busy main drag of Los Banos—it is also California 152. The shop was right out of the 1950s and I immediately took a liking to the place and to the gray haired owner and his ace mechanic. The building was on the corner of a side street and the main drag. The garage bays were accessed from the side street, where the tow truck driver unloaded our car. The mechanic had the car up on a rack before the tow truck driver had completed his paper work and charged my credit card—Visa or Master Card, no Amex.

The store front of the business faced the main drag and it had three chairs in front of a glass window to the left of the entrance, which had a panel of glass in the center framed by wood. Facing us as we entered was long stomach-high counter that ran from the entrance a good 10 feet left and intersected the side wall of the building. Off to the right was a counter high rack creating an island in the right half of the room. It was loaded down with boxes of parts. Immediately to the right of the entrance was another tall shelf that also contained parts. A large glass window let the gray overcast day into this half of the room. Near the ceiling in the right most corner was a large gas heater blowing warm air that heated the room. Behind the counter facing the front entrance was a doorway leading into the garage bays where the mechanic was examining our car and calling out parts he thought he needed to order.

When the mechanic had inventoried the damage, the owner gave me an estimate and I unloaded our bags from our disabled auto and left “I” with the bags while I walked the two block to Santos Ford Lincoln Mercury to pick up the rental car. When I returned, the mechanic was working away pulling out the damaged pump and the owner was busy on the phone with another stranded motorist calling for help. I loaded “I” and the bags into the Ford Focus, waved goodbye to the owner and the two of us made the return trip to San Jose, a weekend journey interrupted. The car’s failing had made me aware that it had gotten old and I had been oblivious of its aging, much like my being unmindful of myself getting old. Occasionally, I realize that I’m not running the entire six miles of my early morning run. Two years back, I had gone to a company picnic at my company in the outskirts of Boston. We played games, one of which was a three-legged race and as I got started I realized that I was completely unable to do this simple task. More recently, the company I’m with currently, also had a picnic and we had played a game of volleyball and my skills again seemed to fail me. At one point chasing a ball that had been knocked out of bounds, I fell backwards and hit the base of my spine and instead of walking if off as I would have done before, I found myself nursing the hurt, which took a couple of weeks to go away. Like the old car, my parts were beginning to wear and I was wondering when I would need major repair.

To my great surprise the owner of Foreign Auto Repair called late last Monday and told me the repairs had all be done and I could pick up the car early Tuesday morning. I left home just after 6:00 AM and drove the 90 miles to Los Banos in just over an hour, had breakfast at a café right as you enter Los Banos on 152, and finished just before 8:00 AM. Los Banos turned into a pleasant diversion. The Café turned out to be a place that brought back memories of the café I remembered from my youth, a fry cook in the back in a tee-shirt and apron visible over the neck high serving counter separating the kitchen from the counter seating—I had sat at the counter rather than take a table. The cook was swapping stories with another fellow at the counter when I sat down. The waitress took my order—eggs over easy with hash browns and sausage, white toast, (no thanks to the biscuits she offered), poured coffee—it tasted like something from the past and handed the order to the cook. A few minutes later the meal arrived and it reminded me of breakfasts I had as a much younger man. Los Banos was a trip back in time. I could visualize Rod Serling’s intro to my adventure, describing a broken water pump, and the journey to Los Banos like a trip back to a youth I had forgotten, then the trip back to the present.

After breakfast, I got to the shop and the owner was there. I retrieve my car, dropped off the rental and made the drive back to San Jose and on into work, back to the present.

Thursday January 20, 2005 – A Walk About in Tokyo

Thursday January 20, 2005 – A Walk About in Tokyo

As I walked out of the Dai Ichi Hotel that Tuesday August 31, 1965, I entered a wonderful world so entirely different than anything I had seen before. The smell of Tokyo was different than the smell of Yokosuka, though the two were familiar and both were unique from all the cities I had known in the states: San Francisco, New York, Norfolk, and Seattle. It is a distinctive smell, a mixture of diesel and gasoline fumes, burning sandalwood, and an amalgam of Japanese flora, cleaning solvents, and cooking fragrances emanating from the many small restaurants tucked into the side streets along Chuo-Dori the main thoroughfare leading from Shimbashi Station into the Ginza. There is a hint of the same scent in a Japanese car. In 1965, Chuo-Dori was lined with low rise buildings most no more than two or three stories high. There were a few new high rises in the Ginza, notable the cylindrical Mitsubishi Building rising nine stories, capped with a huge Mitsubishi logo at the top which rose a third of the height of the building further skyward. Around the bottom of the cap were the words Mitsubishi Electric Mfgr. Co.

The city had an energy that you could sense. It wasn’t the manic-neurotic force of New York, but the energy of a city where everyone seemed to be working toward a common purpose. You could sense it in the way people walked. Individuals within a crowd seemed to act as though part of a single larger entity. If there were any disruption it was due to an outsider like me not familiar with what was expected. Another sign was the greeting protocol where each person understood their position relative to those around them and acted accordingly, a younger man being deferential to an older, a shop or restaurant owner showing deference to customers, men seemingly peers with one deferring to the other. Small school children in groups—dressed in uniform of white top and short blue pants topped off by a blue cap—all following their teacher and assistants with a well-understood notion of what was permitted and what wasn’t. Older children dressed in a uniform of dark blue of black jacket and long pants of the same color. I was reminded of cadets at military academies.

During my first walk down Chuo-Dori, I discovered two great places that I would visit each time I stayed at the Dai Ichi. One was the Takarazuka Theatre and the other was the Nichigeki Music Hall, which was in the same building on a different floor. I can’t remember where the theater was and today the Takarazuka has been rebuilt and in no way resembles the multistory building I remembered back then, The Takarazuka on the ground floor was an all-female dance review that reminded me Radio City Music Hall—a movie followed the review. The shows were colorful music and dance productions—some with a large cast of dancers, others with two or more principal dancers demonstrating their artistry. The Nichigeki was a burlesque show, skits as well as partially nude dance numbers resembling the reviews in many Las Vegas hotels. One skit I remember clearly shows a young prostitute dragging herself home after a hard day. As she prepares for bed, she looks into her purse to count her earnings and, shrieking in outrage, realizes that she has been short changed. The skit was understandable with no knowledge of Japanese. However, all of the top banana sequences between longer skits were spoken and the jokes went over my head though the body language was quit funny.

As the day drew to a close and the city’s office workers began to file into the streets, I joined the crowd allowing myself to be swept along hoping to follow some group to where they were going. I ended up in a bar that was far different from those I knew in Yokosuka. This one had no hostesses waiting to greet you and become your companion for as long as you were inside. Instead it had a long bar that ran from near the entrance all the way to the rear of the building, which was sufficiently long that a good twenty-five or so patrons were seated side by side along its length on both sides—the bar ran down the center with drinks above the bar tender and beer in the coolers below. There were three such bars parallel to one another and nearly every seat was taken as I entered, found a vacant seat and order a Suntory Whiskey. As soon as I sat down, I found my box of Benson & Hedges cigarettes and lit up just as the bartender placed the whiskey in front of me and collected the Yen I had laid on the bar. I spent a good hour and a half in the bar watching the teaming crowd within. There were some solitary drinkers like me, but most were part of small groups two to three people talking shop, There were women in the bar but they were vastly outnumbered by the men. Back then women were just beginning to enter the work force and most were in secretarial pools in large offices. Dave Brubeck had produced an album entitled Jazz Impressions of Japan. In the album is a cut called “Toki's Theme,” his homage to one of these women.

I left the bar, its name I never knew as it was in Japanese not English, though many bars and restaurants signs had English or European names along with Kanji, and wondered back toward the Dai Ichi. I discovered along the way a high rise building featuring a bar at the top and I ventured up to have an Asahi beer and watch the sunset over Tokyo. By the time the sun went down, so was the beer and I returned to the hotel, freshened up grab a light dinner had headed back toward the Ginza to catch a movie. During my walk about earlier in the day, I had passed a number of movie theaters advertising American and European movies along with Japanese films. All the movies were in the original language with Japanese subtitles.

I spent the remainder of shore leave catching all the sights around Tokyo, Hibiya Park, the Imperial Palace, Tokyo Tower, but mostly I walked up and down the streets of the Ginza and the Marunouchi district—Tokyo’s business district. At night I caught a few more movies. I was “playing the role” as my shipmates called it, which meant pretending to be a businessman, not the sailor I was. But, that was okay, I came to enjoy the role I was playing. It helped shape the adult I would eventually become.

Saturday January 15, 2005 – Getting Away From Roommates

Saturday January 15, 2005 – Getting Away From Roommates

The first cruise was a milk run and very typical of most of the cruises that followed. I fit into the group easily because I had known many of those on board during the time we attended school in Dam Neck Virginia in the fall of 1964. However, my two room mates were both new. Art, though I took to calling him by his full name, Arthur, was from Dallas. He was close to six feet tall and had a high forehead. His blond hairline receded along the temples forming a W with a center crop extending to a point in the middle of his forehead. He had a lower lip that pouted slightly, a prominent nose, gray-green eyes, and a cultured Texas accent.

He had dropped out of Southern Methodist University to join the Navy. Given the build up to the Viet Nam War that had begun after President Johnson took office in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination, it was a wise choice on his part. He was a choral singer, involved in his neighborhood church, and active in the church’s many activities—especially working with younger members of the congregation. You would have thought he was a pillar of the community. But, he abruptly informed his parents, his neighbors, and his friends, that he had decided to drop out of school and join the Navy and here he was sharing a room with me and young Tim, who Arthur had taken it upon himself to look after, while ashore. It seems that young Tim had seriously contemplated going AWOL by staying ashore as the Mickey Maru set sail this last time. It was Arthur’s counseling that convinced the lad to buck up and return to his duties aboard ship.

Tim was a reluctant enlistee in the Navy. He was a year younger than me, with boyish good looks, though possessing a face with no features that caught my eye sufficiently to leave an impression. I recall that he had light brown hair, a skinny build that had the body language of someone adrift and lacking direction but not caring. It seemed that he had become involved with the daughter of a well-to-do Houston politician and the two had decided to run off to New Orleans in the daughter’s car along with another couple and do something wild and crazy during the time they were in the Big Easy. The something wild and crazy they did was get married. Something that did not please the young woman’s father, who promptly got the marriage annulled and Tim was given an alternative of shipping out in the Navy or doing some time in a Texas jail for kidnapping. The chastened no longer married daughter would be willing to bear false witness at her father’s command. Tim found himself enlisted and on his way to boot camp in less time than it took for his whirlwind marriage and annulment.

There we were three people arriving at this place at this time each arriving for entirely different reasons. Arthur was leaving something behind. Tim was being pushed away and the Navy simply took him off someone else’s hand. I was there in search of adventure. No, that’s not completely true. I was there looking for myself. I lacked the financial resources or the academic prowess of someone like Arthur to have gone onto college from high school. I lacked Tim’s devil-may-care attitude that allowed him to follow whatever path that open itself to him, first New Orleans and marriage, then the Navy and the Mickey Maru.

When we docked after our first cruise, I had three days shore leave before I was to stand duty. I would have one day thereafter of shore leave before the ship headed out to sea once more. During the time I had been waiting for the ship to return, I had used some of my savings to purchase two tailored suits from one of the tailors off base. The small tailor shop with its tiny cramped space, its lone tailor and its bolts of wool fabric was going to turn me into a civilian. The tailor had been around the Navy base long enough to have acquired a good grasp of English and he knew the styles most likely to appeal to U.S. servicemen and civilians. I had selected a dark blue wool and he had taken my measurements. About a week later, I had returned to be fitted with the suit in its early stages of construction—its inner shell exposed like a person with layers of muscle and bone in plain view. I had donned this suit and with a contrasting pair of trousers and traveling clothes in a small suitcase, boarded the train from Yokosuka to Tokyo to spend my three days exploring this international city. It would be a welcome escape from the isolation of shipboard life at sea.

Japan’s train system in 1965 was the most efficient in the world. It was a measure of pride bordering on fanaticism that train conductors ran on time to within seconds. The trip from Yokosuka was a bit nerve racking as I had to constantly watch as each station came into view. I was planning to disembark at Shimbashi Station, where one of the civilian contractors on board ship, who spoke Japanese fluently and had a Japanese wife and two kids living in Yokohama, told me to disembark and to check into the Dai-Ichi Hotel. He said it was the Holiday Inn of Japan. I found both the train station and the hotel, which would become my residence in Japan when not aboard the Mickey Maru. The Dai Ichi is still within a short walk of Shimbashi station—I returned to Tokyo in the early 90s and spent a couple of days there on business, though I stayed in the new Annex as the Dai Ichi that was my old home was being completely refurbished.

The Dai Ichi in 1965 was nearly brand new, the result of a building explosion that was beginning to transform Tokyo from a low-rise city, to one of towering skyscrapers. The 11-story Dai Ichi was just the beginning. A single European-accommodation room with bath was 2000 yen, or $US5.56. A Western breakfast (eggs and bacon with toast) ran 450 yen or just over $US1.00. A Western lunch ran 700 yens, just under $US2.00. The hotel had several restaurants, the Fuji (its main dining room), the Grill Carnaval—with a Western menu, the Olympia—it served international dishes, the Ichi-Zushi (Sushi-shop), and a Chinese restaurant. It was after noon when I arrived and got checked in. I unpacked, hung up my suit jacket—it was warm and muggy in Tokyo and the coat though a light wool weave, was still too warm for the weather. With shirt leaves and slacks, I set out to explore the Ginza and the other areas around Shimbashi station.

Friday January 14, 2005 – Having Any Woman He Wanted

Friday January 14, 2005 – Having Any Woman He Wanted

Evening meal was the major gathering time for us enlisted men. Butch would have cleared all the dishes away and everyone would be sitting around the mess hall drinking coffee and smoking. We all smoked. Marlboro was my brand, though the older guys teased those of us who smoked filtered cigarettes. I didn’t mind; I was the Marlboro man. Some evenings saw large gatherings of eight or more all talking about a memorable drinking party the group had before boarding ship, trading tales of mama-san and the best bar girl they had met, talking about the women in their lives back home. The best gatherings were those with Doc holding forth. Others in attendance would include Ernie, Manny, Cue, and Ken. Occasionally Gus, Bud, Hank, and Jake would join. After dinner on Monday evening our first night out, all those mentioned were assembled comparing tales about the drinking party they all attended at some time during Sunday evening. I had missed the festivities.

During the day on Sunday, the group had agreed to meet at the ship’s hangout bar, where Mama-san and the hostesses knew most of the crew. With few exceptions everyone who showed up at the bar was intent on getting drunk beyond remembering and the hostesses were only too happy to help them achieve their oblivion. Once each individual had reached their desired drunken state or spent their limit on booze, they had returned to the ship—everyone that is except Doc and Manny who had closed the place. The group now assembled was eager to hear what happened after they had left. The evening had begun with tension between Doc and Mama-San, who was older than the hostess at her bar, but an attractive, desirable woman in her own right. She was particularly covetous of her hostesses and did not approve of them having dates with the bar’s clients after closing. Doc and Mama-san were kindred spirits and often engaged one another in conversation or exchange of jokes and jibes.

Doc was drinking but was less concerned with getting drunk than finding a companion to spend this last evening in port with. When he entered the bar, he had noticed a new hostess and had asked Mama-san her name. Mama-san had told Doc her name Keiko and said that Keiko was Mama-san’s girl but could be Doc’s hostess for the evening expecting Doc to honor her request to keep his hands off. For Doc, the warning had exactly the opposite result. Learning that someone else had put a claim on Keiko only made her more desirable and he was determined to win her over before the evening was out.

Doc was in his late thirties, still handsome with his sandy-auburn hair that seemed slightly more red in the Pan-like goatee of his. He was a man of unlimited sexual appetite to hear him talk. On one occasion, he had been out with the pregnant wife of another sailor he knew. She had accompanied him to the enlisted men’s club on the Norfolk Navy Base offering to introduce him to a young woman who might spend the evening with. Unfortunately, there were no women in the club that evening and when Doc took his companion home, she invited him to her bed for the night. Doc often boasted that he wanted to be killed in bed by an enraged husband and he had numerous tales detailing last minute escapes from near death. On this particular evening, the husband was well out at sea and not due back before his child would be born. Doc was married but his wife was not with him at the time.

Being in Japan, sailors seldom find themselves in the company of American women except in the enlisted men’s club with the wives of other sailors. Doc had regaled us with his escapade in the club at Yokosuka a few months later. He had met a sailor and his wife and engaged them both in conversation. Doc had the same charismatic charm on men as he had on women. Men liked to be around him, listening to his stories, hanging on his every word. By the end of the evening, Doc was about to say his goodbyes and return to the ship, when the husband invited Doc to spend the evening at their quarters on base. Doc agreed and accompanied them to their house where he spent the night on their couch. When the husband left for his watch the following morning, the wife invited Doc into the still warm bed vacated by her husband. How much of this was male boasting is hard to tell, but seeing Doc’s affect on a woman it’s easy to imagine the tales are true.

This evenings tale was in the same vein as most of Doc’s others. He had begun buying drinks with the young hostess that Mama-san had warned Doc not to touch. As the evening wore on and midnight approached—closing time for all the bars throughout Japan back then, Doc had begun getting very familiar with the young hostess and she had found herself returning his affection. She would resist only when she caught the stern gaze of Mama-san directing her to behave. At one point during the evening, the young woman had forgotten herself and allowed Doc to engage in some rather heavy petting—this all the while the rest of the party were laughing and joking among themselves with their hostesses. Mama-san became so enraged at Doc’s advances that she approached the two of them and upbraided them both. While Doc smiled nonplussed, drew on his cigarette and sipped his drink, the young hostess was torn between her physical attraction to Doc and the strong reprimand from Mama-san. Doc knew he had won, when the young woman refused Mama-san's order to leave him and find another companion.

As midnight made its appearance and all the bars on Honcho Street began playing “Auld Lang Syne”, Doc, the smitten hostess, and Manny exited the bar. As Manny began making his way back to the base, Doc called after and invited him to join the two of them. As Manny slept off his drunk on the floor near their bed, Doc and the young hostess engaged in carnal lust. That was the story according to Doc. Manny was too drunk to remember what happened. He only remembered waking Monday morning and cabbing back to the base with Doc.

For a 19-year-old-going-on-twenty kid like me, Doc was the Alpha male incarnate. However, I could not reconcile the happy-go-lucky tales of female conquests with the reality I had experienced in all my relationships with women. Watching Doc was like watching a movie where the hero gets to sleep with whom he wants with no consequences, no emotional toll to be extracted for his indulgences, a free ride for the hero, But that was at the beginning of my adventure when all I was seeing was the outward appearance of all those aboard. Over time, new pieces of information would be added to Doc’s narrative that would begin to fill in the pieces omitted from his commentary. Eventually, a far more poignant picture would emerge. Like Doc’s life, my months at sea which began with an idyllic, benign ocean welcoming me would turn stormy and frightening at times making the beauty all that more beautiful.

Thursday January 13, 2005 – Out To Sea

Thursday January 13, 2005 – Out To Sea

We set sail from Yokosuka on Monday August 2nd, 1965. It was a warm muggy day. The uniform of the day aboard ship underway was denim shirt and pants and navy hat. Most of the denim pants had a slight bell-bottom to them, but many sailors spent the extra money to tailor the inseam so that it narrowed from the crotch to the knee—tightening around your thighs. From the knee to the pant bottom, the taper widened producing the bell. As the tugs nudge the Michelson out of the harbor and pointed us in the direction of the open Pacific, the ship’s master took control and steered us out onto open ocean. To be precise—someone besides the master most likely the first mate was at the wheel.

On deck in the focsle (“forecastle” area of the deck near the bow) I leaned over the side and watched the bow of the ship slice through the waters. There was a breeze blowing as we picked up speed and I walked aft to the stern of the ship and watched as Tokyo bay receded into the distance. It was just after midday and the crew was sluggish from the muggy warm heat—about 85 degrees Fahrenheit with 90 percent humidity. I had been in Japan for a couple of weeks but my body was still adjusting to the humidity. I had left El Paso a couple of weeks earlier where the humidity was less than 10 percent and the temperature was in the mid 90s. I had broken a sweat during the walk from bow to stern. We were pulling three eight-hour watches and mine would start at 1600 hours (4:00 PM).

There is a smell to the ocean, a mixture of salt and the organic smell of ocean life—not the smell of fish, though its odor is combined in the mixture, The smell embodies an amalgam of scents from ocean plant and animal life blended to produce one distinctive odor. When all signs of land had vanished and there was nothing but blue sky above and the wide expanse of ocean surrounding the ship, I went below deck to my room. On warm days like today, the interior of the ship could equal or exceed the temperature outside. Our only relief was a vent that blew a steady stream of air. I had one above and toward the foot of my bunk.

Ship routine got firmly established the first morning after leaving port. Everyone not on watch would find their way up to the enlisted men’s mess hall. The mess hall was on the port side of the ship (left side as you face to ship’s bow). It had seven tables each fixed to the floor with benches on either side—what you’re likely to find at a fast food restaurant. On board ship there is virtue in furniture that doesn’t move with the constant motion of the ship. A row of four tables greeted you as you entered the mess hall, extending lengthwise into the room from the bulkhead where they were bolted, benches bolted firmly to the deck on either side. Turning left you would be facing the galley with the remaining three tables at your left. Two portholes in the mess hall and one in the galley lit the interior during the day and naked four high-wattage overhead incandescent light bulbs—two over each set of tables—lit up the room at night.

Officers and civilians had a separate mess facility with their own stewards. Our steward was a character called Butch, a name that fitted his rugged look and his anti-intellectual speech and demeanor. He was much smarter and more sensitive than any one of us enlisted men could have imagined. Butch was a merchant marine and in combination with our cook, a towering black man who was a great cook, were the equivalent of “mom” to us had this been a normal household. We never got to know “Cookie” as he was affectionately called. He was shy and hesitant to engage in conversations that stretched beyond simple greetings and brief comments: “Cookie, how about them Yankees?” to which he would reply, “Them boys know baseball.” From there you’d have to serve up another question to keep the volley going.

Butch on the other hand was one of us. He had the build of a boxer, eyes that seemed to look beyond you even when fixing you in his gaze, no hint of a beer belly, broad shoulders, black hair struggling to escape his shirt at the neck and sleeves, big hands—far too masculine for the dainty task of serving dishes, which he did remarkably well. After getting everyone fed, he would sit with us and join our conversations. Morning conversations right after the ship got underway invariably centered around everyone’s adventures on shore. Butch described his new girlfriend. He had rented a house in Yokosuka and set her up there. She continued to work at the bar where they first met, but did not need to earn extra sleeping with men to help earn money for extras. Butch was already providing most of that in the house he was paying for.

He was beginning to worry that she was becoming more and more dependent upon him and in the process becoming more possessive of him as well. She knew he was not cheating on her during his time at sea. Every bar girl in Yokosuka knew the comings and goings of most of the ships that docked at Yokosuka. They knew that the “Mickey Maru” their name for the Michelson went to sea for 28 to 30 days and returned without going into port anywhere else. They probably had a good idea of what we were doing out there as well. He knew she was expecting him to marry her and take her back to the states. He was fully aware that he would not be able to deliver on that expectation and he was becoming increasingly concerned about the time some months hence when he would have to break the news to her. Before my tour was up, I would hear this story many times over.

Tuesday January 11, 2005 – Traveling Companions

Tuesday January 11, 2005 – Traveling Companions

When we set sail, August 2nd, 1965, I was in a state of euphoria. I was going to sea; I was going to have an adventure. My shipmates besides Art and Tim, were a chief petty officer, the ranking enlisted man onboard—we called him chief. He was a bear of a man with thinning blond hair, a broad face and a mustache that covered a hair lip. He was married with a young daughter. He wrote to them both daily, a real family guy torn between the Navy and home. Another chief petty officer, the ship’s medical officer we called Doc was a tall handsome man, with a goatee that made him resemble Pan, the god of woods and fields, of flocks and shepherds. Like Pan, he had a way with the ladies, besides his wife. I remember him having long legs that would have served well for dancing or running, though I couldn’t imaging Doc doing either. Doc was a good timing sailor that would never settle down to the dismay and heartbreak of his wife.

Three others, each with a petty officer first class rank, Gus, Red and Bud, who reported to Chief, were in charge of telling the rest of us what to do. They were watch leaders, one each on call in case there were problems. Gus was a navy veteran with a sad face that easily broke into a lazy smile when amused. Divorced and in his thirty’s, he stood just under six feet tall with a slight slouch. He had thinning brown hair, a slight beer belly, lips that curved downward and sleepy eyes. Red, just over five feet six inches—my height—was a thin-as-a-rail, short thirty-year old with a southern accent, a freckled face, and carrot red hair and green eyes. He had the mischievous face of a leprechaun and always had a funny one-liner to dispense. His wife and kids, too, were on a Navy base somewhere in the states. Bud was a career Navy bachelor, a plump Edwardian character—spreading midsection, chubby red face, graying brown hair, and the freckled complexion of a man who has lived hard. A couple of inches taller than me, he was big framed and short-legged.

Another married shipmate with family in the states was a tall petty officer second class, called Hank. He had the build of a football player that had gone soft. He had the disposition of a easy going bear, hard to rouse to anger and far more inclined to negotiate rather than confront a crisis. He had a high forehead, a cherub-like face with high cheekbones. The ship also had a photographer on board, a petty officer second class, called Jake. He was a thin and wiry thirty something, with a buzz cut, hard eyes, and a long thin face, with slightly hooked nose. He, too, had a family stateside. He was the opposite of Hank, more easily roused to anger and a distinct sense of what was right and wrong. A third petty officer second class, Sam, had a build similar to Hank, slight beer belly, too. He was in his late twenties, with had a wife in the states but no kids: Black hair, brown eyes, and a large face with a prominent Roman nose.

Among my peers— besides my roommate Art, there was Ernie, Manny, Ken, Cue—our pool shark, Grey Eagle, and Roger. Bespectacled Ernie had the handsome, boyish look of a high-school quarterback. Just under six feet tall, blond hair with a slightly receding hairline that looks attractive on a young face, blue eyes and a mouth that seemed to smile even when it was a rest. Manny was a dark-haired, light-skinned Puerto Rican, who had grown up in Queens and had no accent. He was about my height but with more athletic build, broad shoulders and an upper body of someone who can do a hundred pushups without breaking a sweat. These two shared a room. Ken and Cue, I had known before joining the Michelson crew. We had attended school in Virginia and Long Island.

Ken was from Minnesota. He was a inch or so shorter than me, but big framed with large hands. When you looked at him, you first noticed his overbite that gave his speech a slight almost imperceptible lisp. He had a broad face, blue eyes and a full head of blond hair. He loved to crack jokes and had a lack of social grace. He shared a room with Cue who was from Nebraska, a dark-haired fellow that stood five feet ten, with a medium build, the first signs of a beer belly—he loved drinking beer as much as playing pool. He had a slightly receding hairline, a good-looking face with brown eyes and dark brown hair. Cue was impetuous—he married during the last week we were in school on Long Island. The marriage, such as it was, was doomed from the start.

Dark haired, handsome faced with dark obsidian eyes and black hair, Grey Eagle stood over six-foot tall, with a lean athletic build. He was extremely introverted and had the quiet demeanor of a man with a big chip on his shoulder. There was a tension that surrounded him continuously, though when he spoke his voice was soft and you had to strain to make out what he said sometimes. Roger was what today would be called a nerd. He was a few inches shorter than Grey Eagle, with a mustache, short cropped hair that required no grooming, a look of concentration seemed to always pervade his broad face. Roger related far better to the machines on board ship than he did with his shipmates, though he could be drawn into conversations during meals. Roger’s machine was the ship’s NAVDAC computer, a much older machine than we had learned during our training course in Virginia. It was understood that no one was to touch the NAVDAC other than Roger, who took it as a measure of pride that it was never down for any length of time. Grey Eagle and Roger were roommates.

These would be my companions on my journey of adventure.

Monday January 10, 2005 – First Day Aboard USNS Michelson

Monday January 10, 2005 – First Day Aboard USNS Michelson

When I finally reported for duty on board the USNS Michelson, I was relieved to be finally settled where I would remain until my tour of duty was over. My living quarters were spacious by comparison with those of sailors aboard a destroyer or any other ship in the Navy, where space is a premium; my stateroom was the accommodations an officer might expect aboard a Navy ship. I shared the room with two others, third-class petty officer A and Seaman (the grade below third-class petty officer) T. We each had a double-door deck-to-overhead metal wardrobe sufficiently spacious to accommodate a week’s worth of clothes on hangers and shoes.

The room had four bunks, two to your immediate left as you entered the room—I took the top one of these two, as I liked sleeping high off the ground. The other two bunks were on the bulkhead opposite the door. Beneath each bunk were three drawers. The lower bunks the drawers pulled out to reveal an open space beneath the drawer—a safe that everyone on board ship used. On the wall to the left of the entrance was a wardrobe, a sink and the door to the head—Navy term for toilet—and shower. The other wardrobes were on the wall at the right of the entrance.

The Michelson was in port for five to seven days at a time to take on supplies, rotate civilian personnel—the oceanographers on board typically came for six month stretches, but individual scientists came and went as the job demanded. During the time in port on any given day, everyone except those on duty abandoned the ship. After getting settled, I wandered about the ship getting to know the place: the mess hall, the laundry room, the rooms amidships and below deck where all the equipment was contained. As you entered the main equipment room, on your right was a large structure resembling an upside down cup mounted to the overhead—this was the Sperry MK3 MOD4 SINS (inertial navigation system). It was about six feet in diameter at the overhead and six feet from overhead to its lowest point off the deck. Inside were miles of wire and electronics that I had learned the function for from January to May 1965 at the Sperry factory school in New Hyde Park on Long Island, NY. On the bulkhead to the left of the entrance was a Bunker Ramo Computer—the most state-of-the-art system on board ship. It tracked a satellite providing very accurate data on the ship’s location at any given time. Anything the ship’s sonar mapped on the ocean bottom could be precisely fixed in latitude and longitude.

Next to the Bunker Ramo computer was another computer, the NAVDAC MKII (for navigation data assimilation computer). This system I learned during training at Dam Neck, Virginia from September to December 1964. Next to the NAVDAC, there was a large drafting table and chair where we stood watch during out time at watch. Above the table was an intercom system that allowed us to communicate with the Oceanographers who had their own work area as well as the bridge and other areas of the ship. Behind the table was a refrigerator size unit with a display panel that controlled the SINS system. During our watch, we would periodically record readings from the display on a large piece of drafting paper as well as from the Bunker Ramo. Next to the SINS controller was a large coffee urn that was the most important part of the room. It supplied a constant flow of Java that kept us alert during the eight-hour shifts we each took around the clock. The room had one great benefit that each of us appreciated immediately. It was climate controlled to keep the equipment a constant room temperature—a blessing on hot days in the South Pacific with the outside temperature at a blazing 100 degrees and the humidity a muggy 90 percent plus.

Another climate-controlled room one level below the computer room contained another computer, the Bendix G15D, an aging workhorse used to control the LORAN equipment on board—the LORAN receivers were on the bridge. The computer was the only computer onboard that still used vacuum tubes. The machine was about my height and wide enough that I could just barely get my outstretched hands on either side of its sides. The system had a small center control panel with a few lights and switches. Latches on either side of the control panel at the top allowed me to swing open either side of the machine to access the array of electronics inside: rows of tubes mounted two each on removable printed circuit cards. The G15D was so old that it did not have factory personnel on board ship to ensure it was continuously operational. That task would fall to me and it was one that I came to both love and hate.

My shipmates were far more interesting than the equipment but I would meet most of them once the ship was ready to set sail a few days later. Meantime, I left the ship and spent a few days on base taking in movies during the day and hanging out in my favorite haunt on Honcho Street. When the day arrived for the ship to set sail, I was formally introduced to the small Navy detachment on board. During the night before our last day in port, my two room mates A and T came aboard and began stuffing bottles of whiskey below the drawers in both the lower bunks. I learned during this operation that the whiskey had two purposes: the first was to provide personal libation during the next thirty days at sea; the second to sell near the end of the cruise to all those who had consumed their supply. I was told that a bottle of whiskey could fetch ten times its price depending on the shipboard supply or lack thereof. I had bought two bottles of Chevis that would last me the cruise. I couldn’t get into the whole thing of selling liquor to alcoholics for profit. And then we were on our way.

Saturday January 8, 2005 – Honcho Street Yokosuka Summer 1965

Saturday January 8, 2005 – Honcho Street Yokosuka Summer 1965

Before my adventures on the USNS Michelson began, I had found my way around Yokosuka. I had found the stretch of bars catering to sailors just outside the main gate of the base on Honcho Street. I had begun to learn a bit of Japanese so that I could at least try to make myself understood. But, what I did most was walk. From the time I was old enough to be on my own, I would walk about a new place. Walking its streets became my way of making a new place my own. Japan was the first place I had ever been where I felt completely safe walking at any time of day or night. The only dangers came from the sailors who got drunk and started fighting.

The bars were much the same in that there was a Papa-san and/or Mama-san who ran the place and tended bar. And there was a hostess who would provide hospitality for each customer entering the bar throughout the evening. It was required that the customer reciprocated the hospitality by purchasing “drinks”—colored water or tea with no alcohol for his hostess as well as his own drinks which were a Japanese brand of whiskey and beer. I began with beer, Asahi and Kirin were well-known brands and I typically drank one or the other. The hostesses were outcasts of Japanese society, many mixed breeds of various nationalities—mostly black and white gaijin American servicemen—and others were Korean, Chinese or other Asian ethnic that were outsiders in the homogeneous Japanese culture.

I got to know a few hostesses, some fleeting evening acquaintances, others I knew as long as they worked at the bar I frequented—a regular occurrence if I wasn’t standing duty. Being of mixed racial parents, I had an affinity for them, but their plight was far worse than I could imagine. Raised in the insulated world of the military, I was accepted as equal among my peers on the Army bases where we lived throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. They had been outcasts from the time they were conceived. They had grown into women and were on the brink of raising another generation like themselves for the next generation of servicemen being stationed in Japan.

When I arrived in Japan, I was a petty officer third class, with a designation of ETN3. The ETN designated electronic technician and the chevron on the left sleeve of my Navy white and dress blue jumper bore a small symbol showing an atom with nucleus and two orbiting electrons. This was below a white eagle with outstretched wings and above a single red chevron stripe. Dressed in blue jumper, thirteen-button bell-bottom blue pants, with spit shined shoes and a clean bleached-white sailor hat; a sailor presented a striking site striding down any street anywhere in the world.

The Navy pay back then was $40 to $50 a month, but all meals, medical, and dental were free. Most of the money single sailors like me made was spent on transportation on and off base to nightclubs and bars off base. We had an enlisted men's club on base but there were no hostesses to provide female companionship—only the wives of servicemen stationed on base or home ported at Yokosuka—more about them later. Occasionally, the club on base would have traveling entertainment—American or European performers who would give a show for one or two nights and move on—made possible by the USO. An American dollar in 1965 was worth 360 yen. A cab ride on and off base was typically no more than a 100 yen, and a drink of Japanese beer and whiskey went for 100 to 200 yen. Honcho Street as well as the same streets in other Japanese ports including Tokyo was a source of exchange for Japan. American sailors were contributing the better part of their monthly income to sustain the street’s proprietors and hostesses.

During my evening’s conversations with the hostesses of Honcho Street typically I would ask where they were from, how they came to this bar on Honcho Street, generally draw them into telling me about their lives. Most of the stories were sad, each wanting a better living but finding the bars were the only place where they could find work that paid enough to live on. I spent a good portion of the money I made listening to bar girl stories. I’m sure much of what I heard had become fictionalized to keep men like me from knowing the truth. Though from the young ones just getting started in the business, I’m sure the tales were true. The stories turned to fiction after a hostess became involved with a sailor and believed he was her savior only to find he had deserted her after all his promises to the contrary. Every bar girl I ever spoke with knew the story of Madame Butterfly. It became part of the clubby banter for a girl to accuse her male companion of being a “butterfly boyfriend.” And every hostess knew that no matter what a man told her in the heat of passion, it would freeze into lies as soon as the passion ebbed.

The Navy paid us in Script—red bills that looked like monopoly money—instead of greenbacks. If we were going off base, we were required to convert the scrip to Yen and at no time make the exchange off base. You know that a sailor, drunk and yearning but out of Yen would have no qualms about having Mama-san take script instead of Yen for another drink. Only the exchange rate was a bit higher but the sailor was beyond caring. Bars also had customer loyalty programs. Each would allow you to bring your bottle of American whiskey purchased on base at exorbitantly low cost to the bar. Mama-san would put your name on the bottle, charge you a small corkage fee and serve you your whiskey. For the liquor aficionados with a bottle of Jack Daniels or Chevis Regal, this was the drinking they longed for.

One night I decided to bring in a bottle of Chevis and a bottle of Moet Champagne—I cannot remember what the occasion for celebration was, but I explained to the bar girls at my hangout that Champagne was really not alcohol and it was a much better drink than what Mama-San was serving them. I had Mama-san put the bottle on ice for about an hour and then asked for her to serve herself and each of the girls a glass. Mama-san declined but three of the girls accepted the invitation. The girls finished the bottle and Mama-san scolded me for getting her girls tipsy. I gave her the bottle of Chevis I had brought to compensate. She could water the Scotch and sell it at a premium to sailors wanting something other than the Japanese whiskey. At least she did not exile me from the bar.

Friday January 7, 2005 – Setting Sail For Adventure

Friday January 7, 2005 – Setting Sail For Adventure

I was twenty years old when I first arrived in Japan in July 1965. I arrived fresh from visiting my family in El Paso, Texas. I had taken a Continental flight from El Paso to San Francisco and from there I reported to Travis Air Force Base outside Sacramento (Ck) for my flight to Tachikawa Air Base in Japan. We were flown on a chartered Braniff International Airline's plane. Back then Braniff had hired American designer Alexander Girard to redesign the airline’s look which included painting the planes distinctive colors—lime, orange, reds. Braniff had also hired Italian designer Emilio Pucci to design flight attendants’ uniforms—pink and plum dresses, pants, and coats with multicolored scarves. For a love-struck sailor, I was smitten to say the least.

We left Travis climbing into a mid-afternoon Pacific sky, looking down on the fog bank laying just off California's coast and the silver ocean surface for miles toward the horizon. We had begun racing the Sun to Tachikawa and we would lose arriving after sundown and boarding a bus for the trip from Tachikawa to Yokosuka. My early memory of the Navy was the bus trip from San Diego’s Lindbergh Field out to the U.S. Naval Training Facility for boot camp. I was tired and longing for a place to sleep. The night bus trip to Yokosuka brought back the same memory. Only this ride took a lot longer. And when we arrived, there was no one to yell at us, but the process of getting assigned a bunk, collecting bedding and getting into bed still took far longer than I would have wished. By now, I had come to realized that this was an integral part of Navy life and something I no longer railed against or fretted over.

It took a couple of weeks in my temporary barracks in Yokosuka before my ship, the USNS Michelson returned to port. When it did, I was so glad to finally begin my life aboard ship. I had been in the Navy since June 1963—just over two years and I had never been aboard ship. The Michelson was a converted Victory Ship, that were used toward the end of the Second World War and during the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts as the main supply ship ferrying supplies into to the war zone. It was 455 feet long, had a 62-foot beam, and had a draught of 23 feet. It could run at 16 knots—made fast to outrun submarines. The Michelson was named for Albert Abraham Michelson, the 1907 Nobel Laureate in Physics, who first measured the speed of light. The ship was laid down May 5, 1944, at Oregon Shipbuilding Corp. in Portland. During my tour we would return to Portland while the ship was in dry dock for repairs.

On the 15th of December 1958, the ship was converted at Charleston, S.C., Naval Shipyard, and placed into service under the operational control of MSTS Atlantic as USNS Michelson (AGS-23). It was one of several ships the Navy built for oceanographic survey. The ships recorded magnetic, and gravity data, plus bathymetry (mapping of the oceans bottom). Civilian seamen, merchant mariners, under Military Sealift Command operated the ships. They commanded the ship—we had a Master, ran the engines, cleaned the ship, cooked for the crew, everything involved in running the ship’s operation while underway and in port. I was part of a small contingent onboard who were essentially passengers doing survey work. The Navy personnel operated the equipment, factory engineers repaired the electronic equipment on board and Naval Oceanographic Office personnel performed the scientific mission of the ship: sonar mapping of the Pacific sea floor, recording the earth’s magnetic field in the Pacific region, as well as other scientific experiments.

The Michelson was relatively new to the Pacific. It had conducted oceanographic survey work for the Hydrographic Office in the Atlantic until 1964. It arrived in Japan earlier in 1965. En route to Japan from San Francisco in mid-January 1965, The Michelson received distress signals from SS Grand, a Nationalist Chinese merchant ship that was breaking up in heavy seas off the Japanese coast. The ship proceeded to the scene and swimmers from her crew rescued six survivors in the 12-foot seas. During my seventeen months aboard, I would have my share of adventures: enough shipboard emergencies and interpersonal intrigues to help me learn who I really was and what I wanted from life.

When I first set foot aboard ship, “permission to come aboard, sir,” at the top of the gang plank after a salute to the colors at the stern of the ship and you boarded and found your way to the purser’s office where you were presented your orders and reported for duty. Anyone who has ever been in the Navy will tell you that the Michelson was the exception and not the rule of shipboard life. I was assigned to a four-man stateroom with a closet and bunks with drawers and enough common space to have such luxuries as a complete stereo system. I was encouraged to wear civilian clothes while in port and not to discuss anything about the ship or its mission outside the ship.

As I made my way from the main deck to the first level below, I was confronted by a boyish looking man dressed in denim jeans and rolled-up long sleeve denim shirt, with a tool belt around his waist and a mischievous grin on his face. He had stepped aside at the bottom of the stairway to allow me to descend with my duffle bag over my shoulder. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I looked at him, smiled and introduced myself and said I was looking for the purser’s office. He returned the greeting, gave me directions, and welcomed me aboard. Just before I walk off, he said, “you have beautiful eyes.” I blushed, thanked him, and left feeling a bit uncomfortable. Thus began my life aboard the USNS Michelson.

Thursday January 6, 2005 - My Mother, My Hero

Thursday January 6, 2005 - My Mother, My Hero

My mother TQM was the oldest daughter in the Q household and was given the duties of house keeper as her mother was pregnant. The family consisted of one boy and two girls, my mother’s older brother and a younger sister. When my mother was seven years old, my grandmother died and my grandfather remarried my grandmother’s sister. This union produced another seven siblings. Remarkably most are still alive and living in The Philippines, My mother and one of her half brothers—there were six—were the only two to have left The Philippines and lived a large part of their lives abroad. My mother arrived in here 1947.

She was 34 years young. Now close to 92 she has lived 58 years off the island. Her brother CMQ left The Philippines to travel the world as a merchant seaman before living several years in the Middle East working in the old fields. Fifteen years ago he came to visit my mother in El Paso and never left. He married one of my Mom’s rental tenants, a single Filipina mother with a son working as a nurse. CMQ settled into life in El Paso as head of a household and flourished.

After my grandfather, a policeman in Agoo La Union—where my mother was raised—remarried, my mother asked her father if she could go and live with her uncle, a successful undertaker in Manila. Her father and uncle agreed. The uncle had an only daughter my mother's age and the two were close friends. The world of Manila was far more exciting than the smaller town of Agoo. She spent most of her adolescence and girlhood in her uncle's home. At the age of eighteen, she married her first husband RC and had a daughter she named SC. RC had gotten a job at a printing company owned by a Chinese businessman. RC was able to get the owner to take my mother on working in the business. She did well as a typesetter and the two were able to afford a nanny to care for SC.

RC died a few years later of lung cancer after a long illness just before the Japanese invaded the Philippines after the Second World War broke out my mother became the bread winner for a family that included SC and SC’s grandmother and aunt. With the Japanese invasion, she evacuated all of them to San Fabian in the northern part of Luzon Island. It was here she met my father who helped provide supplies to her family and neighbors. In return my mother began living with him.

My mother became pregnant with me. My father's tour of duty in the Philippines came to an end seven months later just before I was born and he was shipped back to the states. My mother now pregnant moved in with the RC’s family and I was born. Afterwards, my mother went back to work and about 18 months later, she got a call from the Red Cross saying that my father was coming back to the islands. It seemed my father was already married back in Mississippi and had to get divorced before he could return and marry my mom.

He had managed to get a furlough from his duty station in Saipan to fly to The Philippines to marry my mother and arrange for our passage back to the U.S. via Military Sea Transport Service. Once we had our travel orders—civilian dependents of military personnel are also issued orders—my mother sent a letter to my dad in Saipan detailing when we would be arriving in San Francisco. All the solders on Saipan were being sent back to the states, my father included, but instead of taking the slow way by ship, he managed to get a flight back in time to meet our ship arriving in San Francisco.

I think back on my mother’s ordeal during the war, her hardship in providing for her extended family with the stigma of being a pregnant war bride and her journey to a far away place to start a new life among complete strangers and I’m in awe of her courage and inner strength. Being married to an Army enlisted man in the 1950s with all its associated hardships only added to her burden. And her task was made even greater by the addition of my three sisters.

From her upbringing in a middle class Filipino household, my mother has seen more than her share of suffering and adversity. But through it all she has remained a pillar of strength. Now in her early 90s she continues to carry on. She survived a mysterious blood illness that kept her in and out of Army hospitals for the good part of a year. Into her 80s, she survived a heart attack that we all thought might be fatal. Like a fighter with the heart of a lion, she pulled through. She is a testament to the human spirit’s ability to endure hardship and prevail against overwhelming adversity.

After all that she journeyed by train with my dad from El Paso to Watertown, New York to right a wrong done to a family friend buried in the cemetery there. She returned a week later invigorated and eager for another adventure.

My Mom, My Hero.

Wednesday, January 5, 2005 – Making a Fortune

Wednesday, January 5, 2005 – Making a Fortune

I’ve spent the better part of my life writing about other people; engineers, scientists, corporate executives, etc; and what they did. Reading now what I wrote I realize how repetitive the stories were, a new device that was 10-times faster, smaller, lighter, less expensive than what existed. Nowhere in any of those stories was there any mention of the person, what motivated them—money for sure, but there had to be more.

I ghost wrote a story for the CEO of a high tech company based on a recorded session at his elegant home in Carmel, California. It had an ocean view to die for. His was a true rags-to-riches story. By the time I met him—I’ll call him C—in 1986, he had taken his company public adding to an already considerable personal fortune in the process. Yet, C had begun as a humble draftsman at another high tech company in the valley ten or so years earlier.

He had a gift as a sales person. When several of the engineers, led by one I’ll called A, decided to start their own company—call it Acme Inc.—C went along. I never found out what he did at the start-up early on, but he eventually ended up in sales where his true talent emerged and he made a name for himself as one of the top salesmen. By contrast A’s fortune plummeted and the investors fired him and brought in a replacement that turned the company into a success.

When the company went public, C profited reasonably from his stock options. A went off to lick his wounds and consider what he had done wrong. After the company went public, C parted ways. There was a messy legal battle upon his departure and C is pictured in a trade paper in a late 1970s, early 1980s suit, walking into the courtroom with his attorney, smiling his best salesman smile. The man had charm.

The legal battle drew to a close and C went on to a new start-up making a smaller version of the product his former employer supplied. The start-up was hopeless from the beginning since it lacked the marketing muscle to make the smaller version as acceptable as the existing product, for a variety of reason, all of which I covered in excruciating detail back then. But, C saw the future and it entailed a product that was even smaller than the one his new start-up was making. He proposed his idea to the CEO who was having none of it. It was hard enough trying to make what he had a success and he had no heart for starting over with a yet smaller version.

When C parted ways with the founder of the start-up, he asked for and received the legal rights to the product he had proposed and left. The next time I interview C, he has partnered with A and the two have started a company, call it XYZ, to build the smaller product C had taken with him. A is the technical wizard. C is the sales force. Within a couple of years, the company is profitable and has a very successful public offering, which made A and C two wealthy men. The company is still a very successful public company today and a leader in its field.

However, as the company grew, the struggle for control of the its direction created a rift between A and C and the latter left to start yet another company, making—you guessed it—a smaller version of the product that XYZ was making. To everyone’s amazement, C’s new company—call it ABC—was profitable within the first year and had a successful public offering in under two years, making C even wealthier than before.

This is when I interviewed him just as he was conspicuously consuming the wealth he had amassed. I was flown in to Carmel on one of his two private planes—one for short hops—the other a jet used for longer flights. He is pictured in a Business Week profile, sitting in his larger plane, explaining how he had taken ABC public in record time back then. He wore an impeccably tailored suit in this picture. My story was a think piece under his byline for a popular trade paper.

When I arrived at his spacious home, a professional golfer on the PGA tour (with his family) was visiting C at the time and he was pointed out to me during the walk to C’s study, a huge portrait over the fireplace of C’s son staring at me as I enter. In the course of our conversation, C attired in casual sport slacks and dress shirt, recalled Acme Inc. and the legal battles—not for publication. He gave grudging admiration for the CEO who had replace A and turned Acme around.

He steered away from all mention of A but did recall the early days of XYZ and one financial backer who contributed to their early success. A friend of both A and C, who had given them parts on credit and never submitted a bill until well after XYZ’s final product was in production and being shipped. The backer had a large block of shares and C said he was the most deserving of their backers. XYZ was one of the few investments the investor made that paid off.

C’s run of success with ABC eventually came to an end several years later after a good stretch. But with maturity, the company’s growth slowed and C resorted to a series of acquisitions to bolster the product line, but to no avail. In an ironic twist, XYZ eventually acquired ABC and C was again an unemployed wealthy man with private jets and nowhere to go. The other ironic twist to the story is that several years later, A’s luck ran out as well and his tenure as head of XYZ came to an end with the board ousting him from his position, a faint refrain of his dismissal from Acme Inc.

At some point we all outlive our usefulness.

Tuesday January 4, 2005 – Cambria Clan Gathering

Tuesday January 4, 2005 – Cambria Clan Gathering

When a new year begins I’m put in mind of Sisyphus, the Greek demigod, who angered the Olympian gods by refusing to stay in Hades after his death and returning to earth. As his punishment for loving life on earth so much as to disobey them, the gods decided his punishment would be to push a large rock to the top of a hill and watch as it returned to the bottom whereupon he began the task of driving the rock once again up a hill for eternity. Mankind is likewise condemned to the same fate as Sisyphus, collectively laboring each day to achieve some end. Once achieved, the process repeats. For the individual human, death in old age is a welcome end to this tiresome repetitive chore.

I’m reminded of this myth because just as Christmas marks the end of our annualy struggle, the New Year marks the beginning of the same struggle all over again. I’ve found that as a young man I thoroughly enjoyed New Year and all its connotation for starting over, another chance to accomplish what you failed to accomplish last year,… The tradition of resolutions to begin the new year no doubt springs from this feeling engendered in us all.

We spent the weekend in Cambria, the little town just south of Hearst Castle on California’s scenic Highway 1, the twisting, turning two-lane blacktop that meanders along the coastline over 600 miles from Camp Pendleton in the south all the way to Mendocino in the north. Cambria is still considered Northern California as Southern California begins below Point Conception at the latitude where the transverse Tehachapi Range collides with the Coast Range. Thus, it tends to be cooler and foggier than cities further south.

This weekend it was downright stormy as the cold front that sat atop the California coast from about Friday on continued to pump wind and rain over most of the state. We had rented a large house for the weekend, which we spent with our extended family of children and grandchildren. The house was just off Main Street at Wellington. The house sat midway up a gentle rise that offered unobstructed views of the restless Pacific; made more ominous by the darkened sky, rain-laden clouds and persistent southeast wind.

We received a welcome break on Saturday; New Years Day when the clouds gave way to sunshine and Cambria took on the look of a chilly spring day. The sidewalks were crowded with vacationers that annually mob the town during the last week of the year. The shops along Main Street in the West Village, that stretch a good part of a mile from Highway 1 east to Tamsen Street were doing a brisk business, especially the Main Street Grill on Main near Highway 1. The shops are rustic buildings of an early 1900s appearance, wood construction, one or two story in height, sitting side by side along Main Street giving visitors the impression of being back in time before fast food and modern conveniences.

The grandchildren tired of the leisurely walk along the crowded sidewalks and the family broke up into grandparents who took two grandchildren, the two youngest, and walked back up the hill to the house and the rest who decided to put up with the wait at the Main Street Grill with its serving line stretching out the main entrance. About a half hour later, everyone returned home with take out sandwiches—barbecue pork and beef dripping with sauce—and copious amounts of seasoned French fries. A bottle of Central Coast Merlot was uncorked and lunch was served at a dining table with an ocean view, a great way to start the New Year.

The last time all of us had gotten together in Cambria for New Year was New Year 2000 again in a vacation rental property on the coast side of Highway 1. The contrast between the two visits was startling. Earlier, there was only one grandchild now there were four. Before, a century was ending and a new one beginning, now we were observing the passing of a year. Earlier, the entire extended family was in some stage of the flu. We all decided to make the trip because we were all infected, though my wife “I” and I seemed to have the worst of the symptoms, lethargy, body aches, and labored breathing. Trudging up the stairs between floors easily winded the two of us. Nevertheless, we managed to prepare a great New Year Day meal served with a magnum of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Champagne—it was a special occasion that demanded conspicuous consumption. This time we were all healthy except our oldest granddaughter E, who came down with bug that gave her bloodshot eyes. Earlier we were all flush with inflated valuations from dot-com spending. Now, we had all suffered and recovered from the aftermath of that dot-com debacle.

The gathering this year was a celebration of that renewal as each of us had embarked on a new passage in our lives. Both children now with two children of their own and new careers. “I” and I, no longer new grandparents but firmly cast in the role of extended family elders. When the grandchildren weren’t the center of everyone’s attention, we gathered around the dining table and talked about what we were all looking forward to in the year to come. Listening to the conversation, I realized how our children had grown and what they had made of their lives, And yet they were still our kids and around us, I could see subtle signs of the younger versions of both: the tendency for our oldest to order the world around her in her vision, the inclination of the younger toward impulse. Each with their own traits have fashioned their lives and those of their families around those traits.

After a dinner of Shepard’s Pie courtesy of “I” and a fine bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon—the best on the Central Coast, according to The Cambria Wine Shop on Main Street, we spent the evening watching DVDs of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Sunday morning found our two daughters packing up early and heading out shortly after eight in the morning, the youngest heading south to Orange County, the oldest going north to the Bay Area. “I” and I lingered at the house until ten—the earliest we could drop off the house keys and settle the bill—watching the continuing story of the South Asia Tsunami. The tragedy made us appreciate how fragile life is and just as Sisyphus, we appreciated our lives all the more.