February 27, 2005 – The Collector

February 27, 2005 – The Collector

My father has one more duty that he owes to his departed friend Charles Upton, who passed away in early 2004: to take care of his collection of accumulated belongings for lack of a better word. I accompanied my dad to Mr. Upton’s house a few blocks from my parents’ place. Imagine the clutter of a home where nothing was discarded. Every newspaper, magazine—vintage Playboy and every other man’s magazine of the mid-20th century, book—every genre western, detective, literary works, etc—garage sale item, musical instrument—who collects accordions anymore, decorative wall hanging—prints and original oil (though some had the numbers showing through), unopened purchases with store receipts in the store bags.

I know why my father has a difficult time getting rid of any of Mr. Upton’s collection: he cannot get rid of any of his accumulated belongings. In the basement of our house is the darkroom set my father bought for me when I was in eighth grade along with boxes of expired developing paper—some of which contained naughty pictures that the soldier who sold it to my father hid there, the collected school work of my sisters and me, pictures—countless pictures of us growing up that didn’t make it into the photo albums, winemaking equipment and bottles of wine my father produced that have not been consumed by the neighbors, and tools—the collection goes back to the late 1940s—many of them Craftsman’s from Sears as well as others collected for special jobs on cars, truck and houses over the years.

The solution in my father’s mind was to build a large metal shed to contain all Mr. Upton’s belongings as well as my dad’s. He purchase the metal shed and it was stored in a trailer that my brother “D” made available to dad until it could be constructed. This was some six to eight months ago. The lag in getting the construction completed was the result of trying to get permission from the city to construct the building on my father’s property that Mr. Upton sold my dad over twenty-five years ago. It was fitting that the building should go up there not only because the property once belonged to Mr. Upton but also it was large enough to house the huge structure. When erected, not only will it hold all Mr. Upton’s belonging but five old cars that had sat on the property for over thirty years.

After countless rounds with city representatives trying to get a permit to construct the building, my father was taken aside by one of the city employees and told to put the building up without a permit since it fell into the category of a temporary structure. Frustrated at the delays, my father took the employees advice and contracted with “G” to build the structure. “G”, a friend of my father, who happens to be a general contractor, has been doing work for my dad for the past ten years. He built a second story to my parent’s home large enough to house my youngest sister, my wife “I” and I, and daughter “M” and family and daughter “R” and family, though it is tight. “G” also purchased a duplex from my father with my dad carrying the note. “G” now wants to buy Mr. Upton’s place, the sale of which is contingent on getting all Mr. Upton’s possessions safely stowed in the huge metal shed.

While my dad had been dealing with the city over the permit, “G” had poured the foundation for the building—a huge cement slab from which the building would rise. A month ago “G” got going erecting the structure. His hired workers quickly completed the job and in no time the structure was complete except for two doors, one large garage size door that could handle large items like my dad’s five cars and a smaller office size door. The former proved to be the more troublesome of the two to get completed. Instead of paying the rather large price the company that sold my father the building wanted for the door, my brother “D” had a door of the same size he could get from a building that was building demolished. The demolition proved to be the factor that delayed the door’s delivery. The building contained asbestos and the city had to determine what parts were contaminated before any of the parts could be salvaged. That took three weeks but once it was released, my brother “D” and his helpers had it installed in a day.

The office door was the one last element that needed to be added before the building could be secured and Mr. Upton collection could be relocated to their final resting place. A week ago, my brother “D” installed the office door finishing up just as one of El Paso’s rare drenching rains started. Taking shelter from the rain inside the building, “D” noticed that one area of the roof was leaking water. When my father bought this to “G”’s attention, he owned up to the fact that one part of the roof had been installed backwards but when he discovered the error, he didn’t think it would cause a problem. The rain, however, dispelled that notion and “G” made arrangements to repair the problem. I told my dad to make sure he tested the fix to make sure that it was repaired correctly. I expect the construction to be finally completed in March and Mr. Upton’s belongings can be moved to their new home.

Thinking of my father and his possessions I’m reminded that it is human nature to acquire. If the tombs of Egypt tell us anything it is that humans have acquired belongings for as long as there has been civilization to enable and protect their accumulations. I’m reminded of a story my sister told at the last family gathering about her friend “P” who had been nursing the aging El Paso-based novelist Tom Lea—the book I remember him for is Brave Bulls, but there were many others as well as paintings. Lea’s family lacked anyone with my father’s reverence for the accumulated belongings of the artist. There was an estate sale and all those items collected over a lifetime were scattered into the collections of others who like Lea needed to possess them for their time on earth.

I asked my dad what will become of Mr. Upton’s belongings once he is no longer around to ensure they are housed. My dad wisely willed the property and the building and its contents to my brother “D” who shares my father’s acquisitive nature.

February 26, 2005 – A Visit to Nagasaki

February 26, 2005 – A Visit to Nagasaki

In April 1966, the USNS Michelson deviated once again from its usual routine of just over three weeks at sea followed by a week in Yokosuka to re-supply. This month instead the ship anchored in Sasebo which is near the southeastern most tip of the island of Japan. Nearby is the city of Nagasaki one of two Japanese cities suffering an atomic bomb attack during World War II. Both cities are a short boat ride from Pusan on the Western coast of South Korea. Japan resembles a crescent moon with the island of Hokkaido at its most northern tip and the islands of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu curving southeast with Tokyo on Honshu nearly due south of Hokkaido at the inflection of the curve.

It was the only visit the ship ever made to the southern port and everyone on board ship treated the visit as their one chance to visit this beautiful southern part of Japan. I had determined that on my days off I would visit Nagasaki to view one of only two cities in the world to have suffered an atomic bomb attack. My sojourn to Nagasaki from Sasebo was by train. It began at the Sasebo train station, a place bustling with passengers, that early morning I chose to begin my journey. I had a small overnight case containing a change of clothes as I planned to spend the night in a small hotel and return late the following afternoon.

Sasebo and Nagasaki are both on the western coast of Kyushu, Japan’s largest southern island. Kyushu is separated from the main island of Honshu by a narrow stretch of water separating the smaller city of Shimonosek on Honshu from the larger city of Kitakyushu on Kyushu. Sasebo is north and slightly west of Nagasaki—under 100 miles—about an hour and twenty minutes by train. The rail line between the two cities passes through some of the loveliest vistas I’ve ever seen. The train trip followed the western coast of Kyushu and we were treated to sights of lush green islands and a blue ocean.

On arriving at Nagasaki, I found a small hotel that sat on a slight hill and offered a scenic view of the city. When I was about to leave for a walking tour, the mama-san who spoke about as much English as I spoke Japanese, took me by the arm and pointed in the direction of Hypocenter Park, the place where the bomb rained destruction on this beautiful city. Yet as I look in the direction she was pointing, there was little to suggest that the city had been visited by any kind of destruction, least of all something as massive as the atomic bomb that fell August 9, 1945 at 11:02AM. A score of years can cover over an incredible devastation in the earth. What surprised me was that the kindly mama-san, who went out of her way to show me the spot, seemed unfazed at showing a citizen of the country that visited the disaster to that very spot. For her, the event was as ancient as a devastating earthquake a century ago.

When I arrived at the park, I visited the memorial monolith marking the exact point of the atomic bomb explosion. I next visited the Peace Statue and realized that the mama-san had used the same pose after pointing to the park, The statue is of a seated man, his right hand raised and pointing skyward, his left hand horizontal to the ground in front of him. The former warns of the threat of nuclear disaster; the later a gesture for peace. Why did it seem that the former had more gravity than the latter. Perhaps because I was part of the force that could easily rain down far larger bombs than the one that crashed down on Nagasaki.

I spent the rest of the day walking about the city of Nagasaki, which was slower paced than frenetic Tokyo. I kept looking for signs of the destruction but found none. I’m sure the seasoned observer would easily have spotted signs I was overlooking. When evening came, I watched the sunset and marveled at how the day I had just experienced and was putting behind me was yet to being for the rest of the world. It made me realized that I was not only separated by distance from the rest of the world, I was also separate by time.

February 24, 2005 – Confronting a Tough Choice

February 24, 2005 – Confronting a Tough Choice

I spoke by phone with my Dad over the weekend. As he has gotten older, over 80 now, we seem better able to communicate. You go through this continual evolution in how you relate to your parents. Childhood is all about rebellion, pushing the limits of what you can get away with, and finally escape from their control and domination. What I found is that though I was able to leave, I was never completely free from the influence they exercised over me. The connection was embedded in the very substance of us all. I know that now, having two children of my own. The umbilical cord stretches over infinite space and even time. I suspect it extends to reach into death and beyond. I’m sure that my grandmother and great grandmother, both strong forces in my father’s life continues to extend their control—he is of them and their spirit still resides in his being.

Into adulthood, you begin to believe that you can remake yourself into someone completely different from your parents—a person more urbane, more open-minded, more whatever. And to some extent this is all possible. My life with my wife and children was vastly different from what I remembered as a child growing up with my parents. Watching my grandchildren, I can see the same is true for their lives relative to the lives their parents had growing up in our household. But those are all superficial things: credit cards to finance interruptions in cash flow versus pawn shops that were the financiers for my folks; television serving as electronic nannies to our children versus videos doing the same job for our grandchildren, public telephones for our generation, cell phones for our children.

The really important things are still the same and probably have been since people first formed communities and began living in family units. How do you get you child through each of the major hurdles in their lives as they grow up as part of your family and how do you help them over the hurdles once they form families of their own? Recently, my youngest sister called on my parents for help with a crisis she was going through and my parents responded in the same way they did when she was a child at home. My father complained mightily about my sister’s choices in life, but when she asked for help, he came to her aid. I completely understood this act on my father’s part when our youngest daughter experienced a similar life crisis and came to us for help and we reacted the same way as my father did coming to her aid. You never stop being parents.

Surprisingly, for my 80+ year-old father, he is still up to the challenge of being the patriarch of his family. Despite his reconstructive surgery to repair aging joints in hip and knee, that to this day continues to frustrate his desire to ambulate in the manner he did before both procedures, he continues to endure, to be the parent he is expected to be. He is somewhat of a problem solver for the community of peers around him. When he was more able bodied, he would be their handy man, their financial adviser, and their psychological consultant. He continues the last two tasks but now hires younger more able bodied men or women to provide the handy person services.

He was discussing one of his latest problems with me in our last phone conversation. There have been two women who have been long-time helpers at my parent’s home: “M” and “E”. “M” has been with my parents nearly 40 years. Her daughter was just a bit older than my two girls. She was housekeeper until ten or so years back when a crisis in her life took her back to Mexico for a time. That’s when my parents engaged “E”, who became housekeeper and cook and eventually became the nurse’s aid to my father’s ministering to his long time friend, who died last year. During the period “E” had come into my parent’s lives, “M” returned hoping to have her old job back. My parents took her in providing her work when “E” took on the job of nursemaid to dad’s friend.

Now that there is no invalid for “E” to care for, she has resumed her job with my mother and father and “M” feels displaced, not only by someone competing for her job, but also someone two decades younger competing for her job. My father’s next task is providing some resolution to this conflict. And his choices are equally difficult: “E” who has provided care to a dying friend as well as to my parents and “M” who my parents have known for close to half their lives. When I think of the responsibility that my father faces, I am awed by his ability to persevere. I’m sure I would be able to shoulder the burden but given the choice I would not willingly take it on. How my father will handle the choice is anyone’s guess, but I suspect he will find something that will create the least hurt for all concerned. He seems to have a knack for doing so.

February 23, 2005 – Witnessing an abusive relationship

February 23, 2005 – Witnessing an abusive relationship

California has been under siege by Mother Nature the past several days. A stationary low pressure system set itself up off the central coast of the state and its counterclockwise rotation continued to catapult moisture coming up from the warm waters of the southern pacific ashore. The location of the low-pressure system drove the bulk of the rain into Southern California, which for the year has experience near record rainfall totals. The result, of course, has been stories of flooding and mudslides. To listen to the national news broadcasts from NBC, CBS and ABC, the whole of California was caught in a devastating inundation of rain.

Anytime a California catastrophe gets national news attention, the spectacular mudslide caught on video at the coastal town of La Conchita that killed 10 people last month, or the recent mudslides over the weekend, I get a call from my mother. My mom is a terrible worrier; has been all of her life. And she wants to be reassured that her grandbabies and great grandbabies have not been hurt or injured and are not in harm’s way. I reassure her that her babies are all safe and dry and not threatened in any way by the storm. When the Loma Prieta earthquake hit back in 1989, she demanded to hear her granddaughters’ voices to reassure herself they were safe. It was the one time that our youngest daughter was in the middle of the disaster, stranded at U.C. Santa Cruz. I have to admit, that time, my wife “I” and I were beside ourselves with worry.

The storm of the past weekend was just another in a continuing series of nature’s forces that plague the Golden State. Perched atop the Eastern Rim of the Pacific Plate, California along with Baja California, Washington, Oregon, the British Columbia and Alaska form the castle wall that holds the great Pacific at bay, keeping its waters and the weather fronts it spawns from inundating the mountain states. California and its neighbors are also locked in continual combat, wrestling with the Pacific plate, which continually presses up against the entire western landmass of the North American Continent. The two resembling determined Sumo wrestlers neither willing to give to the other.

The people who populate this state are well aware of the many forces at war here. Many have been affected by the conflict, flooded out, hurt in modest to severe earthquakes, injured in the firestorms that follow in the wake of the winter rains—the former producing fuel for the latter, or blown away in the occasional burst of gale force winds that hammer the coast when conditions are right. Why do we choose to live in such a place? The answer might be that California is alive geologically. This is not your placid plain that only has to cope with freezing snow and violent thunderstorms. This state is literally evolving geologically in human time. You only have to watch the progress of a fault line over a decade to see how much movement has occurred. Part of California is being carried North to Alaska on its way to Asia.

When that wall of mud careened down the side of the cliff that had held it fast these many hundreds of years in the town of La Conchita, you were witnessing the geology of the state transform the land in an instant. The ongoing series of rock slides on Glacier Point and elsewhere in Yosemite National Park change the completion of the landscape in an instant. And though I did say that California continues to battle the Pacific Plate, I should also have said that California is yielding to the Plate as the height of the Coast Range continues to rise being pushed upward by the relentless force pressing against the edge of the continent.

If California and the Pacific plate were people their relationship would be considered an abusive, co-dependent one, which no amount of intervention will ever solve. These two have the ultimate dysfunctional association. Neither can walk away, both are compelled to continue to engage and suffer the abuses one heaps on the other. The inhabitants of this land can only stand by and helplessly watch these abuses continue and marvel at the ability of both to coexist without one destroying the other.

God I love this country.

February 22, 2005 – A Spy in Our Midst

February 22, 2005 – A Spy in Our Midst

During the cruise in October 1965, two months before my trip to Tokyo with the ship’s electrician in late November, there were some strange goings on that had my roommate “A” a bit paranoid. “A” was convinced that there was someone on board collecting information about the ship’s crew and he had his own idea of who it was, though, there was no way to prove his assertion. “A” had an insatiable love of gossip. I remember conversations in our stateroom that lasted well into the night with him relaying gossip about others on board as well as gossip about his friends back home.

“A” was a disillusioned young man, whose naivety had been turned into cynicism. In one conversation, he recounted a most beautiful wedding. Picture bride and groom, two members of the church choir, both possessing gifted voices being married in one of the largest, most ornate churches in Dallas, packed with family, friends, and well-wishers. The two came together at the altar before the minister and suddenly the organist begins to play “Because you come to me,” and the two begin to sing interleaving the verses.

In another conversation, he recounts his days as a male escort in a service where he worked to help pay for college tuition. Presumably the order women he was hired out to escort were only interested in having company at social functions. Imagine his consternation at finding them desiring far more than that and were willing to pay far more for the extra. His cynicism had been transformed into a general mistrust of everyone. I suspect he might have even considered me for the spy at one time, but probably dismissed me as being too naïve.

The one “A” suspected was a young officer on the ship who seemed too much of a chameleon. “A” cited examples of the officer changing colors to blend in with the surrounding group: drinking and playing card with the merchant seaman, doing the same with the factory reps and the scientists on board. He would also gossip with the enlisted men, often engaging them individually in informal conversations the way you would hang out and talk with friends at home. He did have that ability to charm and disarm you when he engaged with you. I had an occasion to speak with him on deck during pistol practice, shooting off the stern of the ship at targets hung above the railing. It never occurred to me that the officer was doing anything more than having a chat, though he did ask a great many questions, nothing direct, but rather unfinished thoughts he left the listener to complete.

I liked him because he took an interest in what I thought. He asked about my plans to re-enlist. I told him that I wasn’t and when he pressed me as to what I would do afterwards, I told him I wanted to go back to college and get my degree. He tried to make me feel guilty that the Navy had spent two years sending me to electronics and computer schools and I would only serve a year and a half more before being discharged to inactive reserve. Most all other new recruits would have had to sign up for a six-year tour to get half that schooling. I explained that I had been ordered to all the schools I attended and extending my enlistment was never a precondition. He smiled at that and said I was a very lucky sailor. In hindsight, I was incredibly lucky.

During the conversation, he tried to get me into a discussion of the other guys on board the ship, where we went together—the bars, the women we associated with, the kind of talk sailors typically had with one another. I listed off the places I had gone with various groups. I was not part of any regular crowd that hung out together consistently, but would mingle with different ones going ashore for a night out. Everyone on board ship was teased for some peculiar trait. For me, I was known as the guy who “played the role”—dressed up in suit and tie and hung out in Tokyo more than bar crawling in Yokosuka and Yokohama with the rest of the crew. He asked where I liked to go in Tokyo and I listed the places I liked to hang out, talking about movies houses where I had seen memorable movies, book stores that sold books in English and other European languages. He knew some of the places I mentioned and we swapped experiences.

My pick for the “spy” was a big guy named “Y” who was in charge of ordering stores for the Navy detachment—someone who interacted with everyone except the merchant seaman crew. Whenever I needed parts for the Bendix G15D computer I maintained, I would requisition them from “Y” who had a work space cluttered with so many catalogs, I had no idea how he found anything, but he explained that there was an order to the clutter, pointing out a cluster of catalogs that stretched the width of an 8-foot-wide desk. The pages were bound into a metal shelf that tilted the tops of the pages 45 degrees off the desk. Starting from the left and going to the right, the bound pages listed every part for all the Navy equipment on board each associated with a standard military part number designation. He knew where I should look and I moved to that section of the bound volumes and sure enough I found tubes for the G15D, motor parts, cabinet components, circuit cards—a complete listing of all the replaceable parts of the G15D and beside each part was the military part number. “Y” had the keys to the biggest candy store in the world and all he needed was a signature from the commanding officer on board and he could get anything we wanted—talk about power.

I had dismissed “A” suspicions about a spy in our midst, but I became more cautious of what I said both aboard ship and ashore. I had completely forgotten about the whole spy-in-our-midst scare “A” had engendered in me—and himself, I’m sure—until the end of December just before we were about to begin our trip to Portland for repairs in dry dock. I had returned to the ship after a couple of days in Tokyo. The following morning, I was told by “C” the ranking chief petty officer on board that I was to make myself available for an interview at 1000 hours in the officer’s mess. There was a tension aboard ship that I could sense. Even “C” was being very careful in choosing his words and nobody was saying anything at all about what was happening in the officer’s mess.

My first reaction was panic. I had been to Tokyo and I had been in an area of the city that might have been considered off limits. The Navy knew all about homosexuality—they discharged you immediately with a medical discharge if you are determined to be gay. I was certainly not, but I had been in the gayest part of Tokyo. It scared me that someone might have told the Navy about my evening. I had not described my evening to anyone on board the ship, not even “A” or my other roommate. The only person who knew where I had been that evening was the ship’s electrician, “S”, his significant other “T”, and the high school student “X” in our bar hopping that evening. Was “X” a spy sent out to entrap unsuspecting sailors? Had “S” been interrogated and ratted me out under questioning? The two-hours between 800 and 1000 hours was the longest I could recall spending in the Navy. The countless times during my tour of duty I was ordered to hurry up and wait had only made be come to expect the treatment, not produce any way to cope with it.

When 1000 hours rolled around I entered the officer’s mess and stood at attention, my Navy white cap held in my left hand. I felt awkward not knowing whether to salute or not, but the two men in the room—attired in business suits—were in conversation when I entered. After finishing their remarks to one another, they turned to face me and asked me to stand at ease and take a seat. I said thank you sirs and did so. They began with simple questions: what was my name, my rank, what were my duties aboard the ship—by the way, are you enjoying your tour so far. The last question struck me odd and I took pains to answer it with some details. I explained that I enjoyed the ship, its crew, and the work of the ship—I found the ship’s mission interesting and rewarding.

Thereafter, the questioning got very, very specific. They asked what I had requested be ordered in the way of replacement parts for the equipment I maintained in the months I had been on board ship. I explained that I had ordered tubes and air filters for the computer I maintained. They showed me the forms I had completed to do so and I acknowledged them and my signature on each along with the signature of two others up the chain of command. They then asked me about “Y”. How well did I know him? Hardly, I replied since I had never been bar crawling with him, nor had I had much occasion to speak with him on board ship—he tended to stay to himself. The two had a way of asking the same question a different way later in the inquiry and this happened several times. I would provide the same answer worded differently because I could never remember how I had said something earlier. In reality “Y” was a man it would be hard to befriend. If I had to describe him he was big around the middle, but tall, close to six foot so he towered over me; the build of a John Candy, the mean demeanor and rugged facial features of Tommy Lee Jones and his voice was gruff and gravelly.

When the ship left port en route to Portland, “Y” was not aboard. In fact, he had not been aboard when I returned to the ship from Tokyo either. Once the crew was out to sea, the story began to unfold. The guys who interviewed us all were from Office of Naval Intelligence. “Y” had been taken into custody for something pretty serious, but no one knew exactly what. The reasons that everyone came up with ran the gamut from being a spy to grand theft. I guess, I had been wrong about “Y”. If he had been a spy he was not spying on us. “A” on the other hand seems to have been right about their being someone in our midst checking us all out.

February 21, 2005 – An Evening in Tokyo’s Gay Subculture

February 21, 2005 – An Evening in Tokyo’s Gay Subculture

During the time the USNS Michelson was in port a couple of months before sailing to Portland for its repairs in dry dock in December 1965, I had agreed to go to Tokyo with the electrician, who had complemented me on my beautiful eyes the day I came aboard. I’ll call him “S” for lack of a better name, which I cannot recall. “S” had a partner he lived with in Tokyo and the two of them had plans to show me around a part of the city most guys like me were oblivious of. When the ship pulled into Yokosuka for our monthly re-supply in port, “S” and I boarded the train for Tokyo. I had an overnight case with me as I planned to stay a couple of nights. What manner of overnight case and exactly what I packed besides my toilet items escapes me. I want to say a change of underwear, a couple of dress shirts, some socks, and one or two ties. I was then and still am a fussy dresser and I might have had a second pair of slacks as well.

We got off the train at a stop before Shimbashi Station. I want to say at Shinagawa Station, but my recollection is imperfect at best. We walked for a good five minutes through a maze of streets and alleys. Along the way I tried to fix landmarks in my mind so I could retrace the path back to the station without having to be guided by “S”. Eventually we arrived at a small apartment-like complex. In Japan, Tokyo especially, the scale of buildings are smaller than anywhere I have ever been in the U.S. Doorways are narrower and lower than Westerners are used to. And before entering any home or living quarters, shoes are exchanged for slippers left near the entrance hall or genkan.

I entered the small building padding down a narrow corridor my stockinged feet encased in borrowed slippers. The walls within the building—typical of Japanese structures of the time were thin and made of what appeared to be paper. We entered the living room through the “fusuma” a heavy paper door. It fascinated me that in Japan this was what served to prevent someone entering your living space—no deadbolt, no lock, merely a closed door. One of the books I read while in Japan, the title of which was something like The Psychoanalysis of the Japanese Mind, observed that insane asylums in Japan contained patents simply by locking the fusuma to their room, suggesting that the taboo against breaking something as fragile as these doors is conditioned at a very early age into every Japanese.

Inside the room, the parlor or zashiki, was a small square table, tsukue, standing hardly two-feet off the tatami floor. The zashiki was the epitome of minimalist functionality, the tsukue—its only piece of furniture—would serve as dining table at meal times as well as gathering place for socializing and tea at other times. “S”’s housemate greeted me as a guest, o-kyaku. “S” took the time to explain the Japanese words to me as we went along. He was learning the language and wanted to practice the words when the opportunity presented itself. A neophyte gaijin like me was the perfect opportunity. I don’t recall “S” friends name, but I’ve concluded that “T” will serve my purposes. “T” invited us to sit for a while and take some tea. We sat crossed legged on cushions, zabutons, around the tsukue and chatted, “S” telling “T” about his naïve shipmate who has no idea of the real Japan and is content to live within the Westernized world the Japanese have created to keep outsiders at a distance.

We lingered for almost an hour conversing and drinking tea. As the conversation exhausted itself, “S” suggested we go out for dinner and then visit a couple of nightspots where the two of them would introduce me to some of their friends. The first place we entered was a bar not far from “T”’s place. It was dark outside now and the street lighting was minimal in the neighborhood of dense low-rise residential dwellings mixed in with commercial storefronts along every artery—narrow ones catering to foot traffic and wider ones accommodating small vehicles—some only wide enough to handle a single lane of traffic, others larger thoroughfares wide enough for two lanes. I was completely lost and knew I would have to find a wide street and hail a cab to get back to the train station, but I would have to retrieve my luggage from “T”’s place first.

The first place we visited was definitely not something I had ever seen in Tokyo, but I suspect it was no more a reflection of the “real Japan” as the Dai Ichi Hotel. The place was teeming with Japanese men, all of them laughing and talking together far more than in any bar I had ever frequented in Japan. It resembled a party where everyone knew one another rather than a public bar where small groups carried on among themselves. As “S” and “T” entered several of the tables shouted out greetings and as we made our way to the bar, patrons seated along the long bar turned and nodded greetings as well, some exchanging words with “T” others shouting broken English to “S”. I had just entered the bar where everyone knows your name and “S” and “T” were busy explaining to their friends that I was their straight guest in tow. I had never been hugged and kissed on the cheek by more men in my life. I took it in the good-natured spirit that it was all intended. I was the evening’s entertainment: everyone aware watching the reaction of a straight male in a room full of gay men.

We found a table and ordered drinks, male server, though I did notice one or two females waiting tables as the evening drew on. One or two men from the bar or from other tables would come over and join us for a time, those conversant in English would speak directly to me, others who weren’t would ask in Japanese and “T” would relay the question to me and translate the answer. The first question was about my ethnicity, mixed American and Filipino, some would giggle at the response, others would want to know the ethnicity of my father, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant—Southern Baptist actually though he has since converted to Catholicism, the result of my mother’s piety and close involvement with the priests of their church. Had I ever had a gay encounter? And to my answer, no, there was a general disbelief—every boy growing up has had to have had some form of gay experience followed by a list of all the activities that fell into the category.

Had I been questioned with less alcohol to drink and without the company of “S” and “T” I would have simply walked away. The questions were personal and would have been inappropriate at any other time and place. Here and now, they were acceptable. I answered each query after combing my memory to ensure a “no” was the correct response. In light of all the questions, I was amazed at how completely naïve I was about the world—that is assuming everyone asking the questions had experienced what they were inquiring about. I began to see this small colony where these men could gather and be themselves. Outside the community they had to assume a guise of normalcy that would allow them to get along day to day. And by the look of most of them, they fared well in the straight heterosexual world of Tokyo. Most appeared affluent enough to prosper in both worlds, though I’m sure they felt as estranged in the straight world as I felt in theirs.

In the 1960s, homosexuality was as visible in Tokyo as it was in San Francisco. After all, one of Japan’s greatest novelist of that era, Yukio Mishima, pseudonym for Hiraoka Kimitake, was gay. His first major work Confessions of a Mask, which appeared in 1949, dealt with discovering his homosexuality. The work’s narrator concluded, that he would have to wear a mask of 'normality' before other people to protect himself from social scorn. His last work, The Moon Like a Drawn Bow, was performed in 1969 at the National Theatre. The play ended with a scene of a seppuku—the Japanese formal term for ritual suicide, something Mishima would carry out poorly on himself in 1970. Mishima’s seppuku had less to do with his sexual preference than with his masochistic fantasies and to his failed attempt to seize control of a military headquarters in Tokyo. He sought to redeem his lost face in the manner of the Bushido, the samurai knightly code of honor he had sought to reestablish in Japan.

It was getting close to 10:00 PM by the time we left the bar. Outside after we began walking we happened to pass another lively place, which had the word “Rathskeller” in its name. Coming toward us from the opposite direction was a tall blond haired young man about my age but a few inches taller than my five foot, six inch height. He was dressed in the school uniform of a Japanese high-school student, black, possibly dark blue—hard to tell in the limited light—trousers and jacket buttoned to the neck with stiff collar. On either arm were two young blond haired girls dressed smartly in autumn colored skirt and white blouse covered with a light-colored sweater. “S” and the young man exchanged glances and the two exchanged greetings, the two young women walking on toward the entrance of the Rathskeller. The young man, I’ll call “X” invited us to join him and his friends for drinks and we followed the threesome down into the cellar. It was a noisy place with long communal style wooden tables I would recognize years later in the beer halls of Munich.

The sight of two attractive women suddenly pulled me out of the testosterone-rich world I had been in for the past several hours. However, they were oblivious of the rest of us, talking between themselves, politely answering the couple of questions I asked them once we had been seated then turning into themselves as I was drawn into conversation with my three male companions. The dialog was a repeat of the ones I engaged in earlier in the evening, though it was more of a tennis match as I asked as many questions of “X” as he asked of me. He was a student in a Japanese high school; his father in U.S. Government service, which department I forget now. He spoke Japanese with hardly an accent and spoke English without a discernible dialect.

My ninth-grade high school English teacher in El Paso, a lovely, white-haired fifty-ish matron, who I adored and instilled in me a great love of literature, was also intent on getting all of her class to speak proper American English. Her ideal of someone speaking proper American English was Edward Everett Horton, the voice actor narrating “Fractured Fairytales” from the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon show. I never asked but always wanted to know if that’s where she had known him. Her reply would more likely be the many films he had appeared in during the 1940s notable the role of Mr. Witherspoon in the Frank Capra's 1944 version of Arsenic and Old Lace, with Gary Grant in the lead. The way “X” enunciated English would have passed my ninth-grade English teacher’s test. She would have loved the way he spoke and I mentioned as much to him as we spoke, recounting the story, though it must have sounded so much like something someone with too much to drink would say.

As it got close to midnight, we exhausted the conversation and I was getting tired and a tipsy. The two parties left together and we said our good byes at the spot near the Rathskeller’s entrance were we cross paths earlier in the evening. I was telling “S” and “T” how much I had enjoyed the evening and asked if they could help me find a cab after I picked up my suitcase from their place so I could get a ride to the Dai Ichi—I had no heart to lug my suitcase onto a train and then lug it the distance from Shimbashi Station to the Dai Ichi. They protested insisting that I should spend the night with them but I politely but firmly declined. They understood but suggested that I stay at a Japanese hotel nearby their place. It was much cheaper than the Dai Ichi and I would get a chance to experience a night as a real Japanese would experience it. I was so tired that I accepted the suggestion just to be on my way to my bed.

As we were about to leave, “X” returned explaining that he had put the girls into a cab and decided to join us if that was okay. “S” and “T” were overjoyed. For them the evening was still young. The three began discussing places to go and after they had decided I reminded them that I was going to bid them all good night once I collected by luggage. At this point, “X” expressed surprise that I was giving up so early. Then “X” asked if I would like some company for the evening and I said no that I wasn’t gay, a fact that “S” and “T” confirmed. The four of us returned to “T”’s place. Along the way, “X” asked if I had found his two female companions attractive. I admitted that I had but realized that I was appealing to neither of them. He said I should not take it as rejection since the two were together.

That explained a great deal about the evening. I should have realized that “S” and “T” had settled in a gay enclave and that here the straight person was the outsider. I asked “X” if his parents were aware of him being gay. He said he suspected they knew but he played his role as the dutiful straight son and they allowed him to live his life without trying to change him. I told him he was a very handsome young man and must have broken many young women’s heart, when he had not reciprocated their interest. At this he blushed and I bade them all a good evening of revelry. I exchanged my shoes for the hotel slippers and followed Mama-San to my room, made myself a pot of green tea, and once I had finished it settled into my bedding, which had been turned down and awaiting my arrival: a thin feather mattress, sparkling clean sheets, and a down comforter. I crawled between the sheets, rested my head on the small firm pillow and was asleep almost instantly.

February 18, 2005 – You Can’t Go Home Again

February 18, 2005 – You Can’t Go Home Again

I did not spend the entire month of January 1966 in Portland. I spent nearly a week visiting my folks in El Paso. Afterward, I flew to San Francisco and spent a couple of days with my friend R and his family—sister and brother in law—in Hayward in the East Bay about 30 miles south of San Francisco. At one time when I was younger I had a crush on R’s sister, now the mother of two rambunctious boys. I had sent her a Christmas present—for the life of me I can’t remember what. I had taken the bus into San Francisco from SFO and changed to an AC Transit Bus at the Transbay Terminal near the entrance to the Oakland Bay Bridge. R’s sister met me at the bus stop in Hayward and had immediately given me the most delightful hug and kiss. I can still remember how wonderful it felt.

We drove the few miles from the bus station to her place. After she thanked me for the gift, she questioned me about Japan and life in the Navy. I described Tokyo and the places I had been there. I described the ship and life at sea. As I had exhausted my adventures I asked her how her boys were and how married life was treating her. Before she had her first son, she had spent all of her life after high school working. R’s sister was a beautiful woman, who took after her mother. Both had striking facial features, penetrating gray-green eyes, well-shaped lips and nose, well proportioned to their narrow face, shoulder-length brown hair, almost red. Both mother and daughter dressed well and made themselves up in a deliberate morning ritual. There was some obvious strain as she spoke of being a stay-at-home mom raising two preschool boys. She took pleasure in having her younger brother at home, living vicariously through him the life she once knew as a young single woman, free of the responsibility of home, husband, and children. I envied her settled life with roots planted firmly in ground that I had always wanted my roots planted in. I could not comprehend what could make her unhappy, but I had no idea of what her life was like day to day. I could sense her unhappiness though and it made me sad.

I was relieved when R finally arrived home and I was able to slip into his happy-go-lucky life—the eternal optimist who only saw silver linings. He always raised my spirits and made me question my brooding moods. I’m sure he had the same affect on his sister. He clowned continually extracting laughs as he poked fun at his sister’s foibles and at mine. I can’t recall ever being angry with R, though I’m sure there must have been times when the two of us quarreled over something. R had graduated high school and was now working a full 40-hour week. He had no ambition for college. For me it was the rite of passage that permitted you entry into the world of the enfranchised. It didn’t matter what you learned, it only mattered that you made the passage. With the realization, I was intent on enjoying the passage choosing my path rather than having it dictated to me.

I had arrived Friday in the afternoon and planned to spend the weekend before catching a plane on Monday for the trip back to Portland. I had known R and his family since my freshman year of high school. They lived a half block up from us on in El Paso. Beside his sister R also had an older brother, a big hulking guy who took after R’s father. Both R and his sister had the slender build and facial features of their mother. R’s brother was out of high school when I first got to know R. The brother was a grown man but easily reverted to childhood at times. He was an avid comic book collector. He was a fast draw expert and took pleasure in demonstrating his technique with his self-fashioned pistol and holster. He was also a martial arts fancier and enjoyed tossing R and I about in the yard. He also pictured himself an intellectual pointing to the collection of authors he had read, one of whom was Ann Rand. He introduced me to The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and Anthem, all of which I read in that order before finishing high school, though Rand's message was lost on me, the stories kept my interest.

R’s sister had met her husband when he was station at Ft Bliss. The two had gotten married a year later, when I was a sophomore at Austin High School. R was then a freshman. The newlyweds had moved to Hayward where the husband had a job working for Pacific Bell—now known as SBC. Thereafter, R spent the next couple of summer in Hayward, returning in the fall with tales of his adventures in California—the girls he met, the music and movies he heard and saw that we in El Paso had yet to know of. The summer after my junior year of high school, my family moved to Tacoma, Washington. R went to live with his sister and her husband in Hayward, where he would finish his junior and senior year of high school. R’s mother and father followed two years later, selling the house in El Paso. R’s brother stayed behind.

R had a girlfriend, J, the weekend I visited in January 1966. They had gone to high school together. She was then attending California State University at Hayward and doing rather well academically. She was the daughter of a Navy Chief Petty Officer, thus we shared a common life experience. Her dad liked me, being a sailor himself. Now settled and retired from the service working at a civilian job, her father longed for the routine of the Navy. She on the other hand had had her fill. The oldest of the family, she had been the surrogate mom to her younger siblings as her mom had been weighed down by the duty of a Navy wife and a demanding authoritarian husband. J was desperately in love with R and had wanted the two of them to get married, but R was having none of it. He was restless and wanting to enjoy the life of an irresponsible bachelor. Though the two dated, J knew R would break off their relationship in time—something she confided in me, when J had dropped me off on her while he worked on Saturday.

I spent the early part of the day at J’s house chatting with her and her dad when J bounded off to the shopping mall. She wanted to marry R and for the two of them to go away somewhere together. I suspect the going away part was more important than the marrying part. I completely sympathized with her feeling. It was why I joined the Navy. Later in the day she asked me to drive her to Cal State Hayward to an event that was happening on campus. I thoroughly enjoyed being in the company of a young woman my age, with so much in common with me. I was reminded of those kids I met during the trip by sea to Puerto Rico in the mid-1950s. We were migrants coming from some place going to another and would be going somewhere thereafter. We talked about all those duty stations we had been on and other kids we met that had made impressions on us. She eventually met up with friends who had promised to drive her home. I had to take my leave to pick up R in his VW Beatle.

I picked R up after work and the two of us went out for dinner and from there we were going to a party, R had been invited to. R knew the host but no one else at the gathering where beer and grass were the inebriants of choice. After that weekend in 1966, I never saw R’s girlfriend J nor his sister again, though I learned that she did separate and eventually divorced her husband. It was sad. I liked them both. I would see R one more time, in November when I was discharged from the Navy. He had moved out of his sister’s house and was sharing an apartment in San Jose with a couple of college students attending San Jose State. By that time we had both chosen our paths in life and they were fast diverging.

He called my folks a year ago and they gave him my phone number. We spoke by phone. He had settled in eastern Washington State. We didn’t have much in common except those years in the early 60s together. It was ironic that here we were so many years later separate by time and distance.

February 16, 2005 – Passing Through

February 16, 2005 – Passing Through

On Tuesday January 21, 1966 when the USNS Michelson docked at Portland Shipyard, the entire ship began to move out. The Navy detachment on board had been assigned rooms in a downtown Portland Hotel and encouraged to take leave if you had some to take. For the next two weeks, the ship was moved to dry dock and it underwent repairs and upgrading. During the two-week period, companies with computer equipment on board sent factory engineers out to do the same for all the high-tech gear.

I was ambivalent during this time. Here I was in Portland, 150 miles south of Tacoma, where I enlisted in the Navy. But, there was nothing for me in Tacoma but memories. My family had moved back to El Paso, where my father had retired from the Army and had begun a new career working at American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO). My father has lived a charmed life, always finding something to keep him going. I take after him in that we both live in the moment—neither of us planned a great deal as young men. I’m different from my dad in that I continually look forward to the future, never comfortable with the present, and never willing to lament the past.

The present for me in January 1966 was Electronic Technician Petty Officer Third Class. The future was November 1966 when the Navy would have to discharge me from active duty and I could resume my life before the Navy. Being in Portland made me aware of the time I still had to do. Curiously, I also missed Japan, where the yen-dollar exchange rate allowed me to live better than I could in Portland. And the drinking age in Portland was 21, limiting me from frequenting the bars of the city, whereas in Japan, I was completely enfranchised; no limitation on where I could go. It wasn’t that I had a need to frequent bars, it was that I was prevented from doing so.

In Japan, I also had the sense that the world was happening—I felt the same in New York and San Francisco. Great events were taking place and I wanted to be in the midst of these great events, ideally contributing to and benefiting from them. In Japan, it was the advent of consumer electronics—stereos, tape recorders, TVs, consumer video cameras, every conceivable gadget an audiophile or audiophile wannabe could desire was on sale in Japan and they were affordable because of the exchange rate. Japan was a consumers’ paradise and it had the energy of a place that was on the move, growing out of its skin. I wasn’t part of that grand movement. Yet I knew I was part of the next one that would sweep over the world—the computer revolution. For the moment, the only thing I knew was I would have a job when I got out of the service.

There were moments that brought back fond memories of some good times in Tacoma. The hotel where we stayed prepared a great breakfast that brought back the experience of the early morning lumberjack platters I consumed when working for the junk dealer during the summer of 1963. The smell of the Portland reminded me of Tacoma, the scent of the sea mixed with the smell of diesel fuel, paint, and an assortment of other chemical odors my nose was never able to parse; all borne aloft by the ever present early morning fog. I loved walking its streets, watching people go about their everyday lives. As a kid walking the street anywhere, you’re an outsider, no stake in the world around you, no profession, no possessions, no ties that bind you to the place. If you’re the clever student, you’ll make your way to college somewhere away from where you are now. If you’re an average guy like I was, you’d join the service and spend four years learning about life.

The Military embodied that rootlessness of youth. The service moved you about every three years or so. Raised in a military family, I knew what it was to be without roots. My father planted roots of his own, in Mississippi where he kept the family homestead refusing every offer to sell the 40 acres just outside of Brooklyn. He had also bought our house in El Paso, which we rented out when the military had stationed him in Puerto Rico, Oklahoma, and finally at Ft. Lewis, just outside of Tacoma. But El Paso and Brooklyn where places we visited or lived for short period of time in between moves. I have never become attached to any place we ever lived. They were all like mistresses you slept with knowing that after some amount of time had passed, you would move on to find another place to sleep.

Portland also brought back the realization that like Tacoma, it was a place I had wanted to be away from as soon as I arrived. Perhaps it was the gloominess of the winters filled with weeks of continuous rain that gave me a sense of melancholy. When I lifted off en route to boot camp in 1964, I had experienced a weight being lifted from me. When we completed our dry dock and we began our half-day journey west along the Columbia River, I was once again jubilant. Portland had been a limbo, a taste of America after the Navy, but with the realization that ten months lay before I could savor that taste unencumbered by my military commitment.

Back in Japan, I could resume my life of labor at sea followed by my life of leisure ashore. It was a most pleasant way to spend the rest of 1966.

February 11, 2005 – Homecoming

February 11, 2005 – Homecoming

Up until January 1966, the farthest I had traveled by ship had been from Brooklyn Naval Shipyard to San Juan, Puerto Rico. I was nine years old then. On Tuesday morning January 4th 1966 that all changed. I was on deck near the bow of the USNS Michelson looking east at the horizon and watching the shoreline of Oregon come into view, the near completion of a 6000 mile journey from Yokosuka to Portland Shipyard.

Travel by sea affords the sojourner the luxury of contemplating his travel and that was certainly the case of me. I had been in and out of Japan aboard the Michelson for half a year. In that time, I had come to see Japan as “home,” the place you returned to get your bearings, to feel the solid earth under your feet. The language around me, on television, heard on the street, and displayed everywhere was not my own but I had accustomed my ear and eye to it. It was comforting and familiar and it had become the compass I used to get through the days I spent ashore. My native language was heard in enclaves throughout the country: on the Navy base of course, and in hotel lobbies where Westerners congregated, and finally in movie theaters where the films were all displayed in their native language with Japanese subtitles.

I was about to set foot on land where English was the native language and signs and media broadcasts were no longer foreign. We had already begun picking up sporadic radio broadcast out at sea and as we approached the coastline the sound of American life was reaching us loud and clear. Curiously, I had missed the commercials—those annoying spots that encouraged you to “drink Coke” or to “see the USA in your Chevrolet.” Those nuisances had provided me a sense of well being, like an annoying friend who was always trying to get you to do something and no matter how you tried to get rid of him he kept coming back. And then when you left him behind you suddenly realized how much you missed him. I’ve always had friends like that and still do.

As we approached the mouth of the Columbia River, I realized how gratifying it was approaching a treasured destination by sea. The ship’s passage took time and we were able to savor the moment of return and to bid a lingering goodbye to the Pacific as we made our way into the treacherous waters of Cape Disappointment, where Lewis and Clark first set eyes on the Pacific Ocean in November 1805. Earlier in 1788 Lieutenant John Meares of the British Royal Navy gave its name. He had sought but was unable to find the river that Spanish explorer, Bruno Heceta claimed in 1775 to be nearby the rocky headland Heceta had named San Roque—hence Meares’s unfortunate name. The Coast Guard still maintains a large search and rescue staff on the headlands due to the large number of shipwrecks that have occurred near the river entrance.

Passing through the mouth of the Columbia our journey was nowhere close to over. We had another 100 miles of river before the Michelson could have its rest and its crew could set foot again on American soil. Those not on duty were in the mess hall drinking coffee and watching the ship make it’s way into the wide mouth of the river. In the distance off the starboard side was Astoria, Oregon, laying its watchful eye on an errant steely citizen finding its way home after many years calling on foreign ports. Off the port side was Washington state, Beyond Astoria, the Michelson followed the river making a long right turn passing Cathlamet, Washington; Westport, Oregon; and numerous other towns on either side of the Columbia: Flaundersville, Waterford, Eagle Cliff, Oakpoint, Looda, among many others. From the deck of the Michelson, these were small communities just starting their day and we were just another ship making its way up and down the Columbia. Funny, how time and place of great importance to those on board ship was just another everyday event to those on shore.

After the initial excitement of entering the river wore off, everyone resumed their daily routine and the places along the river we were passing became just more scenery overlooked as routine forced the observers to focus on their daily duties. I’m struck by how little I remember about the journey along the river. Flashing back I can picture Doc, Red, and others of the Navy crew standing on deck smoking and looking at the shoreline swiftly passing in front of us. The 100-mile journey from the mouth of the Columbia to the Portland Shipyard took most of the morning and by the time we docked everyone on board had already mentally adjusted to being stateside. Everyone was making plans for the time the Michelson would be in dry dock. Most like me were taking leave to visit their family: an intense period of homecoming followed by a strained heartbreaking period of saying goodbye—tough for single guys like me but hell for guys with wives and kids who would leave a long lingering sense of guilt over leaving loved ones behind to fend for themselves.

February 9, 2005 – Dishing out Grief

February 9, 2005 – Dishing out Grief

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 7, 2005 – 1965 Yokosuka to Portland, A Journey

February 7, 2005 – 1965 Yokosuka to Portland, A Journey

Departing Yokosuka Harbor on the 21st of December 1966, the Mickey Maru cast off on a journey across the Pacific. Its destination was dry dock in Portland, Oregon. The journey took two weeks exactly to complete with the ship sailing at close to its maximum speed of 16 nautical miles per hour. The voyage was new to most of us aboard ship in that we had never set sail for another port since most of us had been aboard. Our usual voyage was to find several locations (ocean stations) in the South Pacific, perform some mapping, occasionally stopping to take samples and then move on. We were all excited because we had a state side destination in sight and we were cruising there nonstop.

This voyage was the most memorable of all for me, mostly because I have clear memories of certain parts of the cruise unlike the others which are a collection of random memories with no definite time associated—for example this cruise we crossed the equator and underwent the Crossing the Equator Ceremony. Aboard a real Navy ship we newbies, called Slimy Pollywogs, would have endured some loathsome initiation rites at the hands of the Trusty Shellbacks—those who had already crossed. It would have been at the Trusty Shellbacks’ discretion and for their enjoyment just what the indignity we Slimy Pollywogs would have to suffer. I can’t remember what actually transpired but the presence of civilians and the lack of a large number of Trusty Shellbacks kept the ceremony more subdued. We all received our certificate of passage, which I believe went into our personnel file.

One of incidents that left a lasting impression on me was the rough sea a week into the journey. I had never seen the ocean so angry and violent. The breezy, sun-baked placid surface of the South Pacific had turned turbulent. I remember coming up from my stateroom below deck after my graveyard shift to catch a glimpse of what I had felt below deck throughout my watch, the constant rolling and pitching of the ship as it carved its path over a surface that I later saw resembled a constantly changing landscape of shallow and deep liquid arroyos and sharp upwardly jutting or gently watery rising mounds. The sky was completely overcast and pelting the ship with a fierce wind driven rain, not a hint of sun to be seen anywhere in the sky.

Standing in the enlisted men’s mess hall in front of a table with a porthole, I seated myself on the bench seat of the table—both securely bolted to the deck—and slide along the bench to the porthole and stared out.
I was the only one in the mess hall. All of my fellow shipmates had either decided against breakfast or were waiting to come up for chow, including our steward. I supposed they were secure in their room unless at a duty station. I had the place to myself and the view out the porthole was completely overwhelming. As the ship would roll to starboard, all I could see out the porthole was a wall of water. I kept wondering what the chances were that the ship would roll at such an angle that the main deck would dip beneath the surface and the ship would begin to take water and be unable to right itself. After a time watching in awe the ocean toss the 13000-ton ship about like a bathtub toy, I made my way up to the bridge to glimpse the sea the ship was plowing through. And the incredible sight I saw out the porthole was even more astonishing viewed through the higher and wider perspective from the bridge. The ship’s bow would drop into a depression left by a passing wave and white water would careen over its top rushing for the drainage holes on both port and starboard sides of the main deck.

I made small talk with the bridge crew while watching the sea in the safe confines of the warm dry bridge. Each of us recounted waves that had impressed us. Afterwards, I made my way below deck to my stateroom, got undressed and climbed into my top bunk. Everything in the cabin had been tied down or stowed as we began our trek into troubled waters the night before. I crawled into bed, dead tired from the long night and eager to allow the rough sea to rock me to sleep, which is exactly what it did. I slept most of the day waking after 1600 hours rested and hungry but knowing the most I’d find in the mess hall would be cold sandwiches. The cook would have been hard pressed to prepare a hot meal in a storm like this.

Another memory was my first Christmas spent aboard ship, a few days before the advent of the storm. Christmas Eve was a Friday and Christmas was Saturday. On the days leading up to our departure from Japan, I had spent the weekend, December 18th and 19th in Tokyo at the Dai Ichi. Upon my arrival on Friday, I spent the evening wandering the Ginza, dropping into the Japanese bars and beer halls that did not have hostesses but rather made their money selling liquor. As I walked about, I noticed that the Ginza had decorated itself up with Japanese interpretations of Christmas decorations. The ceremony, which would officially begin on Monday the 20th, was called bonenkai (forget the year past). It’s a week of bacchanal when the salarymen of Tokyo get to drink themselves into stupors throughout the week in an attempt to purge the past year. Time magazine reported that Tokyo had 3000 clubs in the six sakaba the sections of the city where drinking is licensed. You would see sandwich boarded men in crude imitations of Santa Clara parading the streets advertising night clubs for your bonenkai event. This was a custom that excluded outsiders as well as women.

It was enough to make me homesick for the Christmas that I knew as a child, but for the past two years had spent on Navy bases away from home. This would be my third. I did not let it get me down. Rather, I took pleasure in knowing that some version of Christmas was being celebrated so many miles from home. I did not drink to forget the homesickness. In fact, by the standards of my shipmates I was a teetotaler. I seldom got so drunk that I had to stagger back to the Dai Ichi or to the ship. I ended my stay in Tokyo literally circulating at the top of the Otani Hotel, nursing a scotch and soda and eating the free munchies the hotel provided with my drink. I so enjoyed watching a constantly changing view of Tokyo rotating at my feet many stories below.

On board ship, celebrating Christmas was an alcoholic endeavor. A few of the staterooms had been converted into casinos with poker the game of choice played on the floor with a stiff whiskey and water sitting beside each player. I was not much of a gambler. I sat in on one game and every time I got a winning hand—three of a kind, full house, or a flush, I started to shake uncontrollably. The first time it happened I had just gotten into the game and the pot had grown to about $10, a good size pot considering the ante was a quarter. It was a game of 7-card stud and there were eight players sprawled in a rough circle inside a stateroom of one of the first class petty officers. I forget whose room. Everyone had something in his hand, two of a kind, maybe even three of a kind. I had a full house kings high and a couple of number cards, I had the hand with my third king and my second number card in the two cards left on the table. I had struggled to keep my body from shaking and I avoided talking no matter how my fellow players tried to draw me into banter. When the final round of betting completed and my one remaining opponent had called, I displayed my hand and was rewarded with my only big win of the evening. I spent the rest of the evening well into early morning giving most of it back plus some. Each time I had a good hand, everyone would roll their eyes and throw in their cards if they had nothing.

I threw in my cards on the last hand, $10 in the red and grabbed some breakfast—it was 800 hours—and went to bed. My watch started at 1600 hours. As a way to spend Christmas it wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t Christmas and what was pretty scary in retrospect was that nearly every sailor aboard that ship was drunk that night and was probably still drunk—especially the Merchant Seaman crew including the master and most of his mates. Miraculously, we all lived through it.

Tuesday February 2, 2005 – Life’s Work

Tuesday February 2, 2005 – Life’s Work

My daughter “M” returns an earlier call I made to her today and we get into a discussion about my life. M likes to organize my life for me and for the most part her organization is a hell of a lot better than mine, which is largely non-existent. I should clarify that by saying that my life is not “planned”. My life kind of happens. But there are degrees to everything and to give you a comparison, my father is the sort of person who drove his Ford Van 70s vintage with a Lincoln V8 engine he had installed pulling a Airstream trailer from El Paso, Texas to Fairbanks, Alaska sometime in the late 1980s. He would stop at whatever trailer park he could find along the way, never once making a reservation. That’s the extreme. When I travel I have reservations. But, I don’t have financial planners running the numbers on my earning power, what my exit strategy is, and what financial goal I expect to have when I’m force to exit.

M was proposing that I establish some sort of consultancy and build a business that I could eventually sell and that would be my exit strategy—she’s kind of like that financial planner in that regard, but much more lovable and endearing. I think of running a business and that whole thing about planning comes rushing back at me. A business, a small business especially, is like a small enfant. It requires and incredible amount of nurturing unless you stumble onto something that takes off like crazy, the early PCs for example. The early small business owners that ran those no-longer-existent companies—like Northstar, Altair, Ohio Scientific, Vector Graphics, the list goes on and on—were mostly small business owners who started their company, hired a large number of people and found themselves toiling away trying to feed an insatiable appetite—a kid with a voracious appetite that continually threatens to eat you out of house and home. Each of them found something they were good at and a market interested in what they were selling but none of them were able to find the follow-on product that would keep people coming back to buy the next thing they were producing.

The attributes of a good businessperson include the ability to foresee the future or more accurately to formulate a view that a large majority of the buying public buys into. When I was a kid we made skateboards by breaking apart a skate and screwing the front part to one end of a three-foot 1-by-6 board and screwing the back part to the other end. Nothing fancy but it did allow us to skate down Pierce Avenue in El Paso, Texas at a good clip—the sound of metal skate and concrete sidewalk creating a noise nuisance for the neighbors. The first owner of a skateboard business must have seen kids like us doing our thing and built the first skateboard—he was probably one of us. Over time, being a skateboarder himself—likely one that pushed the envelope, he modified the design continuously over time adding just enough new capability to keep up with the leading edge of his customer base who would drag the rest of the community along over time.

I saw the business, but unlike the businessman I lacked the focus to concentrate on that one thing. That guy is still building skateboards and probably loving every minute of it. But that’s not me. With that epiphany, I had to explain myself to M. “Look,” I said, “what I do best is flit from one intriguing thing to the next—skateboards, motor scooters—I had a Vespa like Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette in Rome Adventure (1962), and finally cars.” My interests were constantly changing. I read books by Victor Hugo, Francois Sagan, Earnest Hemingway, Nero Wolfe, a book on Francisco Goya and the Naked Maya, Robert Payne’s biography of Heinrich Schliemann, and I bored easily of detective novels, biography, and etc. moving from one to the other and eventually back. I had a difficult time with mathematics. I rebelled against their puritanical order, their absolute requirement of a correct answer, their absolute predictability. If you have $100 and you spend $10 a day, at the end of ten days, you’re left with nothing unless you can figure a way to make another $100 or some other amount.

In later life, I did become part of a small company confronting a finite life and had been a death’s door on many occasions. The company, a monthly newspaper, began in the early 1990s with a million-dollar investment from a group of venture capitalist. They had invested at the urging on one of the group’s members. The business plan was simple. Get a number of companies in an industry—this case high tech—all making the same kind of product. They needed a publication to communicate their messages to potential customers. Each company committed to purchase some number of ads from the publication. The companies would each contribute a list of their prospects and customers with names and addresses—this would be the circulation list and voila a newspaper was formed.

A few months after the first edition came off the press, the area went into recession. The promises to purchase ad space went away and the newspaper had to live off the investment capital they had taken in hoping the recession would end and the business would resume. As cash burned with modest sales of ad space, everyone agreed desperate times call for desperate measures. The VCs took a larger share of the company in exchange for another Million-dollar infusion, the funds to be spent of a conference and trade show. Same premise: get a large group of high tech companies to provide presentations on their products, charge the same companies to exhibit their wares in a large exhibition hall—the San Jose Convention Center, and charge attendees to come listen to the presentations. This was an instance where the publication created a high-ticket event and no one showed up, even the luncheon speaker—a well known politician who had promised to speak but cancelled at the last minute to a scheduling conflict (better known as bait-and-switch).

I joined five years into the ten-year run and after four million in cash burn. It is not fair to say we resurrected the company from the dead. Rather we convinced enough advertisers to spend money with us at a time when the economy of Northern California was booming—dot com was rising. Then as the new millennium was upon us the president decided to sell to an overseas buyer willing to offer ten million for the property. The sale went down. The VCs got their money back with bank interest for the time their money was tied up and we all got new bosses. A year or so later, the economy tanked. The remnants of the publication inside the larger conglomerate evaporated with nearly all of the employees gone. The going concern we had infused with enough life to last ten years, died from lack of concern, in a tenth the time.

What I learned I do well is survive, but what I did for the publication was continually find new things to do. The last thing I did was produced a conference, something everyone at the company feared but this time, we threw an event, and everyone showed up. It didn’t make us any money, but it got us noticed by the giant that eventually acquired us and in that sense it more than paid for itself.