Up North

And always capitalized, as every good Michigander knows.  Where Up North begins is a matter of some conjecture.  For some, it's hard and fast - the 45th parallel of latitude, which cuts through Michigan at the tip of the ring finger.  The line runs through Sutton's Bay on the west shore of the Grand Traverse, reportedly bisecting the griddle at the 45th Parallel Cafe.  For others, it's the Mackinac Bridge, another seventy-odd miles to the north.  But for Pat and me, Up North is more a state of mind than a line on a map.  And states of mind - especially at my age - can be a little fuzzy.  There's a point on M-127 north of St. Johns where the road narrows and you come to Uncle John's Cider Mill and maybe stop for a break.  If you get out of the car when the wind is blowing just right (by which I mean due south from the Straits of Mackinac, still 200 miles away) you may sense something different in the air: a molecule or two of something tangy and fresh mixed in there with the stale coffee and the diesel fumes.  You're not quite Up North, but you're getting close.  And so you keep driving and you notice - actually, now you're looking for it - that there's pines, and spruce and junipers lurking around in the oaks and maples on the side of the road.  You are definitely closer.  You pull off onto M-115 for the diagonal 50 mile shot into Cadillac, and then somewhere on that two (occasionally three) lane road as you close in on the Manistee National Forest, you sense that you've crossed the divide.  Your breath comes easier.  Your heart rate goes down.  That tang in the air is palpable.
You pop some oldies into the Malibu's CD player and sing along with Don and Carol and Carley and if you can find it, Revolver.  Then you turn north at Mesick and 15 minutes later you're driving through Buckley, and you turn in your seat to tell Pat about the twin sisters from Buckley who won a trip to Shanghai for a modeling competition and got so drunk on the plane that it turned around in the middle of the north Pacific and the crew kicked them off in Fairbanks, and Pat just listens and smiles even though she's heard the same exact story every single trip for the past ten years, both on the way up and on the way down.
Another thirty minutes and you hit the far south end of Traverse City and continue on until you bump into the Bay and you 'oooh' and 'aaah' at the blue water for five minutes while you turn left and left again at Tom's Market and then start the mile drive uphill, and you don't even remember to curse the fact that Pat talked you into a ridiculous little four cylinder engine, which presently sounds like it's tearing itself apart while every other car on the road, and a guy on a bicycle, passes you by.  You head west, past a few gas stations, and developments that - thank God - never ever got developed, and the lone home of the proud mother of three Marines with a flag pole for each and then, if it's spring, you look into the ditches and the shade at the side of the road, and there's the trillium - first dozens, then hundreds of them, delicate white flowers growing in the grass and weeds.  If by now you're totally in the Up North zone you miss the abrupt turn that points you to Glen Arbor, but if you're truly in The Zone, you don't care 'cause it's a state of mind - not a state of miles - and you keep going straight because you know the sand dunes are somewhere ahead of you and they will be glorious because they're always glorious.  If you made the turn, though, then it's up the hill, past the scenic turnoff that hasn't had a decent view in 50 years because of the riot of trees, then up and down and down some more until the stop sign, then the right and immediate left across the bridge that separates the two Glen lakes, then through the woods next to Glen Lake and past the houses - some from the turn of the last century, some from the mid - until the road opens and Anderson's Market appears, along with - if you're lucky, a fox or a deer.  You catch a glimpse of Lake Michigan as you turn left, but it disappears in the trees as you take M-22 west, not certain whether you want to speed up and get there ten seconds sooner, of just enjoy the ride.  Then you see the sign on the side of the road.  It doesn't say Up North.  It doesn't need to.  You slow down and take the winding, quarter mile drive through the tamarack.  You get out of the car.  You breathe.  You smell pine needles, bark, water.  You stretch.  If you are not completely in The Zone, you unpack the car.  But if you are, you leave the car - unlocked! - and run to the front of the house and then down through the dune grass and the sand to the narrow wooden walkway past the fire pit almost to the beach.  You may find you have your camera in your hand.  If you do, you take a picture.  If you don't, it doesn't matter.  Nothing matters.   For a week, nothing will matter.  You're Up North. 

Glen Arbor, MI.  November 2012.  Late Afternoon
 



THE DOG DAYS OF WRITING

It's August and even the prolific Michelle Scott is struggling to put words to screen.  I belong to a writers group on Linkedin where someone started this thread of 'tell me the first two lines of the book you're currently working on."  Which sounds a whole lot easier than actually writing those two lines.   But personally, I don't think two lines - even great ones - can sell a book, but a paragraph?  That's another story.  So, since I'm as stuck as Michelle, let's see if this already written opening paragraph does the trick.  Just fill out the little comment thingie at the bottom of the post.  And I hope you and your dog have a real nice August.

Nightfall in Neuilly

   SYLVIE DELACOURT USED HER MOBILE PHONE five times the February night she was killed.  France Telecom logged the calls at 2:17, 2:23, 2:29, 2:46 and 2:51 in the morning.  The calls were placed from her car as she sped down the A-1 from Charles de Gaulle to her apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the chichi suburb that abuts the 17th arrondissement, separated from Paris only by the Périphérique, the insanely clogged highway that circles the city.  The first call was to her audit colleagues in Ciudad Juárez, the second to her office in La Defense, the third to the agency that handles her apartment, and the last two to Christopher Reardon, her lover.  She told the auditors she was not returning to Mexico, her boss that she was resigning immédiatement, the agency that she would be out of town for an indefinite period, and she twice begged Reardon to take an earlier flight to Paris.  All five calls rolled to voice mail.  The auditors were at dinner, the boss asleep, the agency closed.  And Reardon?  He was in an outdoor hot tub on the snowy shores of Lake Michigan, making love to a tall blonde named Karen

POLITICAL THEATER

AND POLITICAL COWARDICE - my own, I'm afraid.  Tuesday was primary day here in Michigan and Pat and I trooped on over to Riley Junior High after work to cast our votes.  (They call it 'middle school' now, an artsy fartsy affront to the millions of us who suffered through JUNIOR High School in our brush cuts and dorky banlon shirts and musical corduroy trousers (and don't mistake them for pants, 'cause they weren't pants...  no sir, pants were cool, the Beatles wore pants, trousers were what our fathers wore, and goddamnit, that's what they made us wear, us poor little geeky twelve year olds in black corduroy trousers with flecks of bright color in the fabric like maybe there were little red fire ants crawling up our legs, and there you were, these innocent little ex-elementary school kids mixing in with fully hormonal fourteen year olds - girls with honest to god breasts, and guys like John W (I don't even dare write his name because even though he's got to 70 by now, he will come and find me and beat me to a pulp) who was in his mid-20s and enjoying his fifth or tenth trip through 9th grade, and he drove to school - DROVE TO SCHOOL! in a car with more horsepower than all the teachers' cars combined, and he reeked of cigarettes, and had a girlfriend who was way way beyond training bras, and who gave us poor little twelve year in corduroy trousers a brain freeze so bad we'd either smash into the walls, or into John the W himself, who'd growl at you and then toss your body through the nearest window.  That my friends, was JUNIOR high school, so don't give me any of that middle school crap!)

But I digress.

We found the end of the gymnasium where our precinct voted and we stood in a not very crowded line and the nice poll workers had us fill out the voting cards - and there it was down in the left bottom corner.  Two fill-in-the-ovals asking me if I was a US citizen.  Ruth Johnson,  Michigan's Secretary of State, is apparently so concerned that illegal aliens are going to hijack our elections and maybe, by god, vote democratic or something, that she needed one final check to ensure that only god fearing US citizens are stumbling through the ballets, despite the fact that even George W. Bush couldn't find any creditable evidence of voter fraud, and that our Republican governor, Rick Snyder, told her to knock it off. 

So, I decided to get on my high horse and not fill in the circle.  I handed over my driver's license and the card and the license proceeded down the line of pole workers until this middle-aged woman pointed to the card and said I had to fill it out.  And I said 'no', very loud and distinct, saying I was a US citizen and this was unconstitutional.  She looked confused and said, no, I need you to sign the card.  Upps.  So, I signed the card.  And then she said, I needed to fill in the circle, yes or no.  Then I repeated myself, standing on principal.  She allowed as she could call 'headquarters' (wherever that was) and check.  I thought that a fine idea, but people were starting to come in and I was holding up the line, so I said, fine, I'll sign.  I voted (solidly democratic) and we left.  But I felt like I let myself down.

Many of my liberal brethren seem to think this whole voter fraud issue was designed to keep down the Latino vote.  Me, instead, I think this was specifically designed for the white, middle-class, middle-aged voter, to remind him (usually it's a him, women being a heck of a lot smarter than us guys) that there's all these Mes'cans and 'others' out there and they vote for the Democrats, so don't be an idiot, vote the party that looks like you - Republican.

So, later I was at home nursing a middling Cabernet when my daughter Susie called and said she'd voted, and when they told her to fill in the circle, she told 'em it was illegal and she wouldn't do it.  The poll worker said she'd call headquarters.  Susie said, go ahead.  The worker did, and the worker said, 'you're right.'  No circles were darkened.

I went to bed feeling that my daughter was a better freedom fighter than I was.  I later read in the online versions of the Freep and the Detnews some comments to the effect of 'come on, it's just one little line, quit with the political correctness'.  Yeah, it's a little thing, but I seem to remember all the Rush and Sean wannabees saying never to give in!  The road to the Kenyan, socialist, hate America, gay, black, basketball shooting dictatorship is lined with giving in on little things.  So, no more giving in.  So, a warning.  Don't be in line behind me if those little circles are still there in November.

Now back to doing the damn laundry

THAT GODDAMN ISLAND

Guadalcanal.  A name that means very little nowadays except to historians, military buffs and those honored few who remain of the greatest generation.  It was a name that resonated through the '40's, '50's and early '60's, but now "sounds distant on the ear," as James Michener observed, "like Shiloh and Valley Forge."  The battle for Guadalcanal began seventy years ago August 7th, when the leathernecks of the 1st Marine Division waded ashore on that dark, sodden, pestilential island in the middle of the south Pacific to deny the Japanese an airbase that could threaten Australia.   Doing so commenced a six month campaign of unrelenting misery and savageness that became a war within a war, fought by every branch of the US military - Marines, Navy, Army, Army Air Force, and Coast Guard, which had its only Medal of Honor winner in Douglas Munro, Signalman First Class, who sacrificed his life to rescue a battalion of marines pinned down on the beach by Japanese fire.  Guadalcanal was the beginning of the end of the empire of Japan, although it would take another two-and-a-half years and two atomic bombs before that fact was clear to the Japanese.

It was a close run thing, to borrow a phrase from the Duke of Wellington.  It was a campaign of attrition and supply - especially supply.  American convoys tried to resupply our troops by day, Japanese convoys tried to resupply theirs by night.  There were seven naval engagements in the seas around Guadalcanal, the first, the last and the one in the middle clear Japanese victories, while the others - save one - were American victories mostly in the sense that they kept the Japanese from resupplying their troops.  Between the two sides, three aircraft carriers, two battleships, 12 cruisers, 26 destroyers and six submarines were sunk.  It was not for nothing that American sailors nicknamed those waters Iron Bottom Sound. 

The air battle lasted almost the entire six months. Relays of Japanese planes - Bettys and the dreaded Zeros - from the Japanese airstrip at Rabael, flew 650 miles down 'The Slot' daily to plaster the ex-Japanese airbase, now named Henderson Field.  The make-shift Cactus Air Force of Marine, Navy and Army Air Force fighters rose to challenge them, losing scores of planes and pilots in combat, and even more planes and pilots trying to take off and land on that rutted, shell holed dirt field. 

And then there was war on the island itself.  Most of Guadalcanal was - and remains - uninhabited, an ancient, festering tropical jungle growing on top of sharp rocky ridges and plunging ravines, except for a narrow grassy plain on the northeast coast that seemed perfect to imperial planners as the site of an airfield.  Japanese construction crews landed on June 8th.  The Americans wouldn't have it.  Two months later the Marines waded ashore.  The 1300 Japanese escaped into the jungle, and despite the convoys and transports that boosted their numbers to almost 30,000, despite three major nighttime battles and scores of minor actions, they never took the air field back.  The Marines, and later the Army, held - and they held in spite of being placed on a ten mile long defensive front around Henderson Field.  It was, in a way, like the western front of World War One, except that instead of 100,000 or so men crammed into ten miles of damp, cold trenches, there were 20,000 Americans strung out in a weakly defended line, sweating in fox holes and little depressions in the ground, on half rations from Day One (the Marines landed with only four days of ammunition and 17 days of food), staring out into the jungle, never quite knowing where the enemy was or when he would attack.  

But whereas the Americans were hungry, the Japanese were starving.  This I didn't know when I was growing up.  The John Wayne movies never mentioned that.  I wouldn't have known it either, except for the book 'Guadalcanal', the definitive work on this battle, authored by Richard B. Frank, a young, ex-army officer and lawyer who published this book in 1990.  My friend, Ken, gave me the book years ago.  It sat in my basement bookshelf for several more years when, for reasons unknown, I started reading it - at night, in bed, all 800 pages of it held at arm's length over my head. It was fascinating - horrific and fascinating.  Frank not only told the familiar story of America's experience on the island, but he also researched the other side, and as a consequence, half of the book explains what the Japanese did.  And what they did mostly was get sick and starve. 

The Japanese soldiers were forced to live in those pestilential jungles, often on the dark, damp reverse slopes of ridges to avoid American artillery fire and attacks by the aircraft of the Cactus Air Force ('Cactus' was the allied code name for Guadalcanal).  The Japanese navy never quite managed to supply their army with enough ammunition or food - due to our habit of sinking their supply ships. Their soldiers nicknamed Guadalcanal 'starvation island'.  Of the 30,000 soldiers eventually posted to the island, only 13,000 were capable of duty.  Capable of duty was generously defined - if they were too weak to walk, but could man a gun, they were capable of duty.  The Japanese navy eventually managed to extract about 10,000 of them, leaving 20,000 dead behind.  Those rescued were a spent force.  Franks quotes a report to Admiral Yamamoto that the evacuees were "so undernourished that their beards, nails and hair had all stopped growing, that their joints looked pitifully large.  Their buttocks were so emaciated that their anuses were completely exposed, and on the destroyers that picked them up, they suffered from constant and uncontrollable diarrhea."

Another thing I didn't know was the grudging respect many of our military had for the Japanese.  I knew all about Admiral Bull Halsey and his strategy of: "Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs!"  What I didn't know were the other thoughts.  From Admiral Willis Lee, who sailed the last battle-worthy American ships into night action against a Japanese fleet determined to bombard Henderson field into oblivion, and won a smashing victory, "... we have no edge on the Japs in experience, skill, training or performance of personnel," to John George, an army officer who served on Guadalcanal "... most of us who have fought in the Pacific are ready to admit here and now...  that for sheer, bloody, hardened steel guts, the stocky and hard-muscled little Jap doughboy has it all over any of us."

A grinding, bloody, savage fight in and around a bloody, savage island in the middle of nowhere.  Fought by boys, now wheel chair-bound old men with mottled skin and fuzzy memories.  Honor them while you still have the chance.

SO THAT'S WHAT IT WAS LIKE

Okay, I happened to find this 'gem' buried in an ancient, ancient unpublished nautical mystery on a floppy disk (you old guys may remember those) that by dint of imagination and an ancient version of Windows was brought back to life and safely copied onto my hard drive.

People have occasionally asked just what it was like flinging myself off the pointy end of an aircraft carrier.  The following should give you an idea.  The cast of characters is:

Douglas O'Dell - a new Ensign, the lowest of the low.  Also the hero of the story.  He gets beaten up, but in the end he gets the girl.

Ellison Bainbridge - The respected elder with feet of clay and a nasty secret.

Constantine 'Connie' Pappas - The enlisted flight technician with a smile on his face, but don't look too closely at his cold eyes.

Tom and Harrell - the two pilots, about the same age as O'Dell.

The accident - Not fiction.  This is a famous incident - of course, it happened to an E-2B, so it was only famous in the E-2 community, but I still remember the photos in an aviation journal taken from an accompanying aircraft.

Enjoy

                They launched in fifteen minutes. The parachute rigger appeared with the rest of their gear and Doug and the crew struggled into their parachute harnesses - grim nylon and canvas straightjackets always a size too small. They grabbed their helmets, flight bags and a thermos of coffee and headed out into the corridor, joining the stream of people heading up the ladderways to the flight deck. They walked out of a hatch at the base of the island. They were flying number 725. The aircraft was already spotted on one of the forward catapults, wings extended, number one for the launch.
                The ship was turning into the wind and bending on full power. The five of them walked forward, leaning into the stiff breeze. Other crews emerged from the hatches and catwalks, some shambling, most striding purposefully towards the twenty other aircraft on deck. Doug and his crew soon reached 725. The hatch was port side, a third of the way down the long fuselage just below the high-mounted wing. Harrell, the pilot, stayed outside and began his preflight walkaround. The rest of them climbed onboard, exchanging the wind and salty air for the stillness and the acrid smell of nomex and warm electronics. Tom, flying copilot this mission, went forward, settling into the cockpit. Doug, Bainbridge and Connie Pappas turned aft, and walked through the radar compartment into the aircraft's Combat Information Center.
                The CIC was fifteen feet long, a miniaturized version of the Indy's own combat center. Three seats ran along the centerline, each seat made up of a metal frame, parachute and raft. The raft doubled as the seat cushion and the parachute as the back. Strapping yourself into the chair also meant strapping on the survival gear. To the left of the seats ran a wall of electronics. A radar screen faced each seat, along with three UHF and two HF radio panels, computer control knobs, and more switches, dials and circuit breakers than most people see in a lifetime. The external power was connected and the electronics hummed audibly, while dozens of small yellow, green and red lights glowed back at the crew. Doug squeezed past the Flight Tech and CICO positions dumping his flight bag on the ACO's seat, farthest aft directly in front of the 'hell-hole', the equipment compartment, which contained the radio boxes and what passed for a toilet.
                Bainbridge and Pappas took their places. The three of them strapped in, then swiveled their seats to face the blank radar screens, each going through his preflight routine, stowing the pens and pencils, checking settings, testing circuit breakers. Peterson stuck his head out of the cockpit and yelled, "Yellow gear's coming!"
                Doug pivoted his seat back to the centerline and looked out the small window to his right. The deck crew drove a small, noisy tractor up next to the starboard engine and begin uncoiling a long, corrugated tube. They connected the tube to the underside of the engine, then walked away. The tractor's turbine hummed, waiting to blow the engine into life. It was time to put on the helmets. Doug twisted a pair of foam plugs into his ears, then squeezed the hard plastic helmet down over his head. He plugged the headset into the intercom, and listened as Tom and Harrell concluded their preflight.
                "CICO, pilot, how we doing?" Tom called over the intercom.
                Bainbridge switched on. "About finished. How 'bout you, O'Dell? Pappas?"
                Connie flashed a thumbs up.
                "Locked and forward," Doug replied.
                "We're set back here, gents. What's the story up front?"
                "Hurry up and wait. There's lots of scurrying 'round outside, but - no, no, wait - okay, here we go. They're clearing the deck... blast deflectors are coming up. There's the Catapult Officer...  Looks like that Johnson character.  Okay, he's in position.  I'm getting the signal to turn 'em. Here goes the starboard."
                The turbine in the yellow tractor shifted to a deeper whine. The hose stiffened. The big four bladed propeller began turning. WHOOM. . . . . WHOOM. . . . . WHOOM. . . . WHOOM. . . WHOOM. . . WHOOM. . WHOOM. . WHOOM. WHOOM WHOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM. The port prop kicked over, adding to the din, surrounding Doug with a continuous ear-splitting roar. He watched out his window as the deck crew struggled to disengage the tractor hose and the external power line, their clothes rippling in the backwash from the propeller.
                Up front, the hatch opened and Master Chief McChesney climbed onboard. He gave the electronics one final inspection before launch, turned, gave Connie Pappas a thumbs-up, and left the aircraft, shutting the hatch, cutting the crew off from the outside. Then they were alone, waiting to be hurled into the sky.
                This is the time of fear, of ice in the belly as you watch over your right shoulder, out the tiny, streaked porthole, as the mechanics and the catapult crew go through their final checks. You see the tops of their heads scurrying around purposefully, then suddenly they're gone, leaving you with a unobstructed view of the starboard catwalk and the ocean beyond. You can't help remembering all those accident films they showed you down in Pensacola, or how the Grumman Aircraft Corporation, in it's infinite wisdom, designed the E-2 without ejection seats. Doug tested his seat harness for perhaps the hundredth time, and tried working some saliva into his dry mouth.
                Up front the pilots went through their final pre-flight as though it were just another morning on the assembly line.
                "Ailerons?"
                "Clear. Free."
                "Rudder?"
                "Clear. Free. What's with that A-7?"
                "Beats me. Gonna launch him first, maybe. Naw, look, they're just moving him around. Flaps?"
                "Set, one third."
                "Hokie dokie. That's it. You all set back there?"
                "Let’s do it," Bainbridge replied.
                "Okay. . . everyone's in the catwalk. . . we're just waiting for the signal. . . here it comes. . . tension on the catapult!"
                Doug felt the aircraft go nose down, like a sprinter waiting for the starting gun. The pilots advanced to full power. The roar became even more deafening, the twin Allison propellers beating a cyclone across the flight deck. The aircraft shook like it was in the eye of a hurricane.  "Gages normal!" Harrell called. Doug grabbed his shoulder harnesses and closed his eyes.
                "Okay!" Tom replied. "Lets give 'em a - no, no, wait… wait… shit, something's wrong. There's the backdown signal. Dammit! Tension coming off the cat. Coming off power."
                Some snafu. The roar surrounding them lessened. Doug opened his eyes, and stared at the Mediterranean some more. They waited for two, three minutes, then Harrell got on the intercom. "Well, whatever it was, it's been cleared. There's the power signal. . . Tension on the cat."
                They went to full power again.
                "Gages fine!"
                "Roj. . . Salute the Cat O. . . He's touched the deck. . . he's pushing the button. . . here we gooooooooooooo!"
                An invisible giant reached out and smashed Doug in the chest, squishing the air out of his lungs. The aircraft hurled down the catapult. Bainbridge's oxygen mask hung straight back from his seat, brushing Doug's face. A loose pencil flew Doug’s feet. Two seconds later they were airborne, sixty-two feet above the Med, airborne at a hundred thirty-five knots.
                The aircraft dipped slightly, then began climbing to altitude. Doug breathed a sigh of relief, but he did it quietly, so not to activate the intercom - cheating death is a personal affair. Connie Pappas reached out with his foot and kicked open the hatch between the CIC and the radar compartments, giving the dark interior of the aircraft the once over before activating the radars.
                Then came a squeal.
                And a thump.  And Connie Pappas said "Christos!" over the intercom, very loud and distinct as the port propeller wrenched itself free from the engine and buzzsawed through the radar compartment. The big, four bladed monster sliced several feet into the aircraft before its momentum lifted it up and walked it over the top of the fuselage. It traveled across the right wing and flew off into the bright Mediterranean morning.
                Sunlight poured in through the jagged slit behind the cockpit. The aircraft crabbed violently to the left. The right wing raised, trying to roll. There came more sounds, like someone flinging stones against the side of the fuselage.
                "Shut 'er down!" Tom screamed. "Port side, now, 'fore it explodes!"
                His voice jarred the crew into action. Harrell punched the port engine extinguisher button. Ellison Bainbridge flipped on a radio and called out a mayday in as calm a tone as possible. Pappas fumbled for the hand-held extinguisher in case the radar compartment caught fire, and Doug reached up and yanked out the overhead escape hatch, flooding the CIC compartment with sunlight. He stowed the hatch in the space under his radar console, then braced himself for the inevitable wing-over and ditching.
                Only they didn't flip. The propeller hadn't sliced the main hydraulics. Tom and Harrell stood on the rudders, manhandling the aircraft out of the sideslip. The right wing came down. Despite a full load of fuel there wasn't a fire. The crew was going to live for a few minutes more. Harrell began dumping fuel. Tom coaxed the nose up and slowly pulled the aircraft away from the water. It flew upwards in a broad left-handed spiral, greasy black smoke trailing from the ruined port engine.
                Harrell leveled out at 5000 feet. Commander Skomanski was suddenly on the radio. Bainbridge talked to him. There was a lot of reassuring dialogue, a joke, too-hearty laughter. Bainbridge and the Skipper talked alternatives. There was the air facility at Naples, or Sigonella on Sicily - both good long fields. Tom got on the radio. No dice, he said. They were in a slight, but permanent left-hand turn.
                Skomanski asked what kind of control they had. Tom and Harrell began testing. The aircraft had full elevators and ailerons. The flaps were frozen at one third. They could live with that. Rudders were the problem. Two pair of feet jammed down hard on the pedals gave them nearly level flight, but if either of the pilots let up, the Hummer crabbed badly.
                Their options were to bail out, ditch, or try to recover. They were at a good altitude to bail out. It was a maneuver they'd practiced often enough back at Norfolk. About once a month the Parachute Rigger would get a couple padded mats from the base gym and lay them on the hangar floor alongside the entrance hatch of the handiest aircraft. The officers would assemble, then separate into groups of five. The first group would go inside the plane, strap themselves in and wait for the Rigger's whistle.
                When it came they'd pull a special handle on the seats which freed the chute and raft and the little oxygen bottle that was supposed to keep them conscious as they fell to earth. The crewmen would waddle into the radar compartment with the parachute on their backs and the raft tucked under their butts. Someone would throw the lever that 'blew' the hatch away from the aircraft and then they'd jump down three feet onto the mats. It was always good for a few laughs. They always scheduled the bail-out drill late in the afternoon, then adjourned to the Officer's Club. The group that took the longest to exit the aircraft bought the beers.
                Bailing out was a known. It would save the back-end crew, but given 725's condition they needed two pair of feet on the rudders to keep from going into a fatal sideslip. Neither of the pilots could make the jump. Ditching was another alternative. Water landing an E-2 was unpleasant work, and fatal the few times it had been tried, the aircraft having the tendency to snap in two with both halves exhibiting all the buoyancy of concrete. After several minutes of discussion it boiled down to Tom and Harrell trying to get them back on deck. Tom offered to let the three of them in the back end bail out beforehand. Bainbridge declined.
                In the meantime, the flight deck had been cleared - no easy task when you've got nineteen other aircraft manned and ready to launch. Once the decision to recover had been made, the deck crew erected the barricade. The barricade was an over sized tennis net of high-strength steel cable twenty feet high and a hundred fifty long that stretched across the flight deck, strong enough to snare and stop any aircraft that flew into it.
                The pilots motored around in circles for another fifteen minutes, burning down fuel. The backend crew took the time to stow all the loose gear, and fumble through the emergency procedure cards, really reading them this time. Doug kept the overhead hatch out. The warm sun beat down on the top of his helmet. It could have been a day at the beach. He leaned over and looked out his small round window. The Independence was far below, a brown postage stamp on an endless blue tabletop. Doug put his right thumb onto the glass. It covered the ship right up.
                Tom began the slow, circling descent. There was nothing to do in the CIC compartment but sit back and enjoy the ride. The radar dome's shadow passed over Doug's head four, five, six times. The postage stamp below him got larger and larger. Doug could make out rollers, and soon, individual waves. The Independence's wake lengthened as she took on speed, her captain trying to give the aircraft the maximum wind across the deck. Doug caught the glint of sunlight reflecting off the rotors of the rescue helicopters as they took station behind and to the right of the carrier.
                They continued spiraling down. Bainbridge began calling off the altitude - 2000, 1500, 1000 feet. Tom leveled off at 600 feet a mile-and-a-half astern and approached the Independence from the rear, going for a flyby before committing to the landing. First the choppers, then the ship's bridge flashed across Doug's window. Commander Skomanski was on the radio. The gear was down and locked. They were cleared to land.
                Tom paralleled the ship's course for half-a-mile, then eased into a left turn. Harrell called off the last of the pre-landing checklist as they flew abeam the ship. Tom slowed to landing speed and raised the nose as the aircraft banked for the final turn. The controller passed them off to the Landing Signal Officer. They caught their inbound bearing a mile-and-a-quarter behind the ship. Tom spotted the 'meatball', the freznel lens of the landing system and made the standard report "Seven two five, ball, fuel state six-oh".
                "Roj,” the LSO called. “Lower your hook, babes. Bring 'er home."
                The LSO began talking them down. They were at 500 feet a mile out, 400 at three-quarters of a mile. The Hummer overflew the plane-guard destroyer laboring in the Independence's wake. The choppers blew past Doug's window at a half-mile, level with him at 300 feet. The sea was awfully damn close. The surface air was choppy. Up front, the pilots struggled to retain control. The wings rocked viciously as they hit 'the bubble' - the turbulence created by the ship's island. Doug saw a grey-brown mass in the corner of the window. He sucked in his breath, leaned into his shoulder straps and closed his eyes.
                The aircraft pounded onto the deck. It was a good approach, but they were above the flight path. The Hummer missed the arresting wires and slammed into the barricade at a hundred-twenty knots.
                It stopped them the way a kitchen floor stops a falling egg. Movement ceased, except in Doug's inner ear. The cilia went crazy. He was tumbling end over end over end, falling into the sea, drowning, blind, nauseated-
                "Mister O'Dell! Mister O'Dell!"
                "Whaa?" He opened his eyes.
                Doug looked up. Chief Nagroki was framed in the open hatch above his head. There were white clouds in the painful blue sky behind Nagroki. Both the Chief and the clouds were swirling around in rachetty little circles. Doug closed his eyes, counted to ten, then opened them again. Nagroki and the clouds were steadier this time. "You okay there, Mister O'Dell?" he asked.
                Doug raised his hand in affirmation. His other senses were returning. The engine noise had ceased. He could hear anxious voices outside, and in the background, the ocean. Ahead of him, Bainbridge and Connie Pappas were beginning to stir. Tom was suddenly on the intercom. "Jesus H. Christ," he said in a high voice.
                Harrell joined in. "Doesn't seem to be much point in the shutdown checklist, the barricade did a number on the starboard prop. Look, there's the Skipper, up on the bridge. Guess he'll be wanting to talk to us."
                Bainbridge reached over and flipped on his intercom. "Skomanski will have to wait."
                "What for?"
                "Don’t know about you guys," he said, "but I gotta change my shorts."

 

Crotchety Old Rant - Part 2

Well, it seems the Iran war fever has broken for a little bit, our Republican brethren having turned their attention to explaining how Mittens could simultaneously be the CEO and the Not CEO of Bain Capital, and also why The Mitster will only deign to release two years of tax returns.  Contrast that to his father, the late, lamented, George Romney, former Michigan governor and 1968 Republican presidential candidate - yeah that one, the one who came back from Vietnam and said he'd been brainwashed by the military (i.e.: they thought we were winning) - who released 20 years of tax returns without even being asked.  As they say, 'now there was a man.' 

But I digress.

The issue here is The Draft, conscription, whatever you want to call it.  Once in the early '80's I was a computer lab partner with a twenty-something kid in grad school who called it slavery.  This, of course, after I'd served my six and a half years theoretically protecting his lily white ass from the Great Commie Menace.  I nearly decked him, except that he wouldn't have understood why.  And besides, he was bigger than me.

There were a lot of guys in the Navy bigger than me.  And lots of guys smaller.  From different parts of the country.  Different colored.  Different religioned (for lack of a better word).  I served with black guys from the inner city, fishermen from Louisiana, and 18 year old hillbillies who came from so far back in the hollers that they had barely any teeth in their heads.  I once listened to a petty officer first from northern Maine taking orders from a lieutenant (jg) from south Texas and neither of them - or anybody else in the vicinity for that matter - had the slightest idea what the other one was saying.

And this was a good thing - a very good thing.

The draft forced middle class northern college boys like me to work with the sons of southern dirt farmers, New York deli owners, Midwest foundry rats, and the occasional rich brat from Marin County who arrived in Pensacola for flight school driving a brand new Datsun 240-Z (yeah, you know who you are.)   As cliched as it sounds, we were forced to deal with / put up with / rely on each other, to know who you could trust and who you couldn't, who would bend and who would break, who could lead, and who couldn't find his way out of a paper bag.  Sometimes the star was white, sometimes black, sometimes catholic, sometimes a jew, sometimes rich, sometimes poor, sometimes his teeth were perfect, and sometimes he had no teeth at all.

The draft forced young Americans of different classes, races, and religions to work together in an environment of real physical risk - as opposed to, say, an office, where the greatest physical risk is choking to death on your chateau briand at lunch (big shout out right here to Tom Wolfe and The Right Stuff).   Anyhow, you get my drift.   This crotchety old man thinks there'd be a little more respect and understanding between Americans of different classes and political persuasions if they had been forced to spend a couple years working with each other in the military.  And who knows, maybe some Americans would think twice before they talk about shipping our children off to war.

    

GROUNDHOG NIGHT

From the annals of getting old and stupid.

So after enjoying a pizza with my wife - a pizza picked up on my way home from work Friday evening - I go upstairs to change out of my suit.  And maybe I had a glass or two of cabernet along with the extra sauce and cheese.  I get partially undressed, then feel the urge to lay down for a short while.   Under the sheets.  Very pleasant.  I fall in a deep sleep.  I awake refreshed.  Light streams in under the window shade.  I glance at the clock radio: 8:45...   8:45!  My heart catches in my throat.  It's eight forty 'effing five in the morning!  Work started fifteen minutes ago!  I run out of the room and down the stairs dressed in the  button down shirt and underwear I'd fallen asleep in.  The wife is sitting in her chair, laptop on her, well, lap, doing whatever one does on Facebook.  "What day is it?" I shout.
"Friday," she says, looking more than a bit confused.
Jesus H. Christ, it's Friday morning and I'm late for work.  I am in a complete panic.  I run back upstairs, throw off my clothes and start up the shower.  But something isn't quite right.  I've done this before.  Done it recently.  Damn...  I run back downstairs, totally confused and - worse - totally naked (not a pretty sight when you're in your early 60's).  I accost the wife again.  "Are you sure?  Sure it's Friday"  It isn't Saturday, is it?"
The woman is looking for something to protect herself with.  "No, dear.  It's Friday."  And then the magic word.  "Night."
"Night?"
"Yes.  Night.  What did you think?"
I glance out the window (at an oblique angle, so there's nobody can stare in and see the naked, raving lunatic).  Yup, it isn't morning light, it's twilight,  Dusk.  It is Friday evening, a quarter to nine.  An old Humphrey Bogart movie plays on TCM.  The pizza box is on the counter where I left it, along with the bottle of wine.  I don't normally drink wine first thing in the morning.  I do drink wine at night.  But not anymore tonight, I decide.  Not anymore.  I trudge back upstairs to find some clothes.  Humphrey Bogart growls something at his moll, but I can't make out the words over my wife's raucous laughter.  This will not be a good weekend..

CROTCHETY OLD RANT - PART I

Events have conspired to piss me off.  I've been thinking about Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the man who apparently went berserk back in March and slaughtered those Afghan civilians.  It was an act that can't be forgiven, but I was struck by the fact that he, like so many others in our volunteer military, was on his fourth tour of duty in that god forsaken part of the world.  That's four, people.  And at the same time this was playing out on our TV screens, our bold Republican presidential candidates were salivating, absolutely salivating, at the idea of attacking Iran - I guess they're aiming for the big trifecta:  Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran all within ten years.  Apparently someone's offering a prize for the most wars fought in a single decade.
 
And yet, I couldn't help noting, none - NONE - of these gentlemen (Romney, Gingrich and Santorum) has ever worn the uniform.  EVER.  That makes 'em chickenhawks in my book - big mouths, but very little guts (except, of course, for The Newt).  And, as far as I can tell, none of them have children in the service.  I am getting sick of war-happy politicians with no military experience and no blood relatives in uniform.  And while I am not so naive as to think that a president can't be effective in handling a war unless he has served (I think Obama is doing just fine, thank you very much), it would sure be nice if the president and members of congress had a little skin in the game.  Therefore, I propose the Anti-Chickenhawk / Skin in the Game Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as follows:

Part the First:  Unless one of the 50 states or territories are attacked, U.S. military forces cannot fight for more than 24 hours without a formal declaration of war. 
Part the Second: No congressperson is allowed to vote on such a declaration unless at least one of that congressperson's children are 'of age' and serving in the active military or reserves - preferably this will be the congressperson's firstborn. 
Part the Third:  Should war be declared, said child / children unless already serving in a combat unit will be transferred to same and remain there fighting alongside all the other poor sons of bitches until the end of hostilities.

Pass this amendment and then let's see just how serious our Republican brethren are about heading off to war.

Okay, I've said my piece.  Now I'm going back to cleaning the damn bathrooms. 



 

 

YOU BE THE JUDGE

It struck me that what I'm wring in this blog is a memoir, kind of. And while there are rules for writing memoirs, there are also rules for reading one. When reading a memoir, you've always got to be asking yourself:

• Are these the thoughts the writer thought at the time,
• Or are these the thoughts the writer thinks he thought at the time,
• Or are these the thoughts the writer wishes he'd thought at the time (because his original thoughts have proven to be complete rubbish),
• Or are these the thoughts his wife, girlfriend (boyfriend?) or publisher want him to have thought at the time,
• Or is he just senile?

My wife votes for the last one.

NED GEIGER. REST IN PEACE

I was sitting down in my easy chair after dinner last night, ready to write something hopefully amusing or at least mildly snarky when my wife looked up from her computer. “My god,” she said. “Tom Baur sent an email. Ned Geiger died.” The news brought me up short. Ned Gieger. . . A name I hadn’t heard - a face I hadn’t seen - in almost 40 years. And yet I could instantly picture him in front of me – slim, dark haired, an incredibly handsome young man, whether in a flight suit or his Service Dress Blues.
We were squadron mates a hundred or so years ago when we were both in our twenties. Ned checked into VAW-122 a few months after the squadron returned to Norfolk from the Med cruise of 1974. He was, like me, a junior NFO – a Naval Flight Officer – the ‘other’ type of aviator, the ones who sat behind the pilot and operated the weapons or the radars back in the days before electronics took over most of those tasks. Ned and I, and Jim Robkin were the junior members of the back end crews who sat way, way behind the pilots in our E-2 Hawkeyes, back in the tail end squeezed in next to the three radar screens, the half dozen radios and a few thousand knobs and toggle switches. The two pilots sat up in the cockpit admiring the scenery while the NFOs plus an enlisted technician who was there to keep the gear from blowing up sat in darkness staring at the blips on our radar screens and listening to the BBC on the HF radio that fed into our helmets.
Ned was good. Whether he was a natural or had to work at it, I couldn’t tell. But he made it look effortless. Our warefare speciality was to vector F-4 Phantoms and later F-14 Tomcats towards whichever radar blips were heading in the general direction of our task force and see if they were airliners or Russian bombers. They were always airliners, but you never knew.
We trained off the Virginia coast, but instead of Russian Bears, we’d run intercepts on Navy Reserve jets. The senior NFO would take control of the bogie and me or Jim or Ned, we’d take the fighter., We’d run the two jets in opposite directions for 40 or 50 miles, then turn them back towards each other at a closing speed of 500 knots, about 570 miles an hour, pretty much 9 and a half miles a minute. The goal was to talk the fighter pilot into the perfect intercept position: a half mile behind and five hundred feet above the enemy. The trick was knowing when to turn your guy so he ended up right on the bogie’s tail – not five miles behind, and certainly not a mile in front. Ned always nailed it. Always. Me, I was inconsistent.  Some days I could do no wrong, most days my pilot wasn’t even close enough to see the other jet.
Ned had a level of competence I could never match. I stayed in for a second tour, but knew the Navy wasn't going to be my life. I assumed that like most of us junior officers, Ned had returned to civilian life, studied law perhaps, climbed the ladder to the executive suite. It would have all been open to him. Instead, the email said that he’d stayed in the Navy and gone on to command one of our sister squadrons. I read an obituary tonight on the US Naval Institute blog that said Ned had been a pillar of the E-2 Hawkeye community, a master tactician, and retired as a Captain. I’m sad at his passing – sad for his family, and sad for those who knew him, even if like me, it was only for a moment of time 40 years ago. Rest in Peace, sailor.

CROTCHETY OLD MAN TELLS ALL

My writing buddy, Michelle Scott of Lilith Straight fame, told me I need to have a webpage or a blog or some such electronic space to give readers my particulars, opine on writing and the grand subjects of the day, and in general plug my book. I know Blogspot isn’t the sexiest of places to do this, but it’s like my old Malibu Maxx – it’s not pretty, but it doesn’t cost much and it gets me where I need to go. So here it is, and here I am:

I am a Navy veteran, as if you can’t guess after looking at the cover of THE CHAIN LOCKER. I am the son of a veteran, the grandson of a veteran, and the proud father of a serving Air Force officer. My 18 year-old father plowed the waters of the south Pacific on a Navy supply ship in World War II. My 17 year-old Canadian grandfather fought the Kaiser's army in the muddy, bloody trenches of Passchendaele and "Wipers."  My son takes care of the nation's business at an air base in the heartlands.  And me? I helped save America from the commie menace by sitting in the back end of an E-2B radar picket aircraft while being simultaneously airsick and frightened to death by the thought that the two pilots trying to land our 40,000 pound monster were 24 year old former college goofballs just like myself.

The aircraft carrier we were trying to park ourselves on was CV-62, the late, lamented USS Independence. The Indy plays a major - to the tune of 60,000 tons - if silent role in THE CHAIN LOCKER and the books to follow. She was, in real life, ear-splittingly loud, especially during flight ops. And smelly? Good god... She reeked of bunker fuel, JP-5 aviation gas, cigarettes (always a bad thing to have too close to the JP-5) industrial lubricants, garbage, rotting food, fouled toilets and 5000 sweaty, unwashed men who rarely changed their underwear.
   

And man, was she unsteady on her feet. You would think that 60,000 tons of steel would be unperturbed by the elements, but in anything other than a calm sea she rolled back and forth, and if we were lucky, from side to side as well in a corkscrewing motion that kept the makers of Dramamine rolling in dough.

Big, noisy, smelly... Not the kind of girl you'd care to bring home to meet the parents. She was my home for almost nine months. The older I get, the more I cherish those memories.