BLFS

I hate to admit having suffered the pain and embarrassment of this terrible insidious disease for many years without even being aware that I was heinously infected.  Though not debilitating in any outward way for the host, it does have serious ramifications for those in close proximity.  Symptoms include negativity, an overwhelming aura of smugness, and a desire to make others with the disease complicit in its complications, reinforcing the symptoms to an even greater degree, leading to depression and unfounded gossip.

Treatment is totally voluntary.  Interventions have not met with great success.  The cure is slow, a steady pace preferred for a complete recovery.  Once cured, relapses have not occurred in any of the known cases.  Recovery is permanent.  It is characterized by a more positive attitude and outlook on life.

Prevention is simple - keeping an open mind and open heart.

San Francisco Days 1975

  We'd leave Los Gatos early in the morning; drive into the coastal mountain range on State Route 9, switching to State Route 35 North.  The mountain turns would test our suspension and our nerves.  Sometimes we'd get a caravan going.  At State Route 92, a right turn led to Junipero Serra Freeway (the 280), a left turn led to Half Moon Bay and PCH 1 (Cabrillo Highway).  Which way you turned depended on how fast you wanted to get to San Francisco.  Leisurely, scenic, relaxed was always the way to go (this is California, after all, laid back and mellow).  The ocean breeze wafted in the fish and salt-water aroma, the waves bashing the shore endlessly, mostly sunny days, windows down, cassette deck pushin' out my favorite tunes.

Once in the city we wandered at will, exploring the hills, finding the neighborhood treasures, off the beaten path, away from the tourist tee shirt vendor havens.   This day we found Marina Green on the bay side of the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was a long, rectangular park populated by the locals.  Parking, we saw the joggers, free dogs, the bicyclists, the walkers, the picnickers and the sunbathers.  Our attention was drawn to this huge, colorful canopy half filled with ocean air, children's silhouettes along the bottom, happy, screaming, little voices.  A good day at the park.
 
The gusting wind suddenly picked up the canopy and we realized it was a kite.  A dozen little bodies were suddenly airborne, children clutching to the hem.  It rose to, perhaps, 10-feet, some children letting go, others hanging on for dear life.  Some that let go twisted and twirled in the tempest, crashing to the ground in a heap, bouncing.  The kite crashed like kites typically do.  In the aftermath peals of laughter from the children, screams from the mothers, "Do it again, do it again, PLEASE!" could be heard, all to no avail.  The free ride was finished.
 
Free now of its tender human ballast the kite rose majestically, tethered by a cable to the ground, which the kite master worked with skill and experience, providing a point of focus for all of us looking up.  We basked in all the activity, talked, and enjoyed our day off, then started thinking about heading home.  Driving down the Coast Highway once again, we watched the sun setting out the passenger side window.  Before it touched the horizon we pulled over so we could safely view the green flash. 
 
Pulling into Los Gatos we stopped at Mountain Charley's for a bite to eat and a cold drink.  We went to the bar afterwards to have a deep discussion with our old friend Jack and listen to the live music.  The bourbon burn matched our sunburn in heat and intensity, providing us with a glow of satisfaction inside and out.  The best part about the day was the realization that tomorrow was Sunday – we could sleep in!

Life's Pleasures

Near the end she couldn't eat.  The ember was still glowing brightly but would never be the conflagration that had enveloped her throughout her life.  The light she shed on her family and friends was dimming.  Her room at the hospice was filled with well wishers and those who wished to be enveloped in her grace one last time.  When awake, it was too much effort to talk, so she basked in the presence of those she loved, then nodded off again.  Her pleasures were minimal now, reduced to the favorites of a life long lived.

"Mom, would you like some ice cream?"  She nodded, the spark flaring brightly.

Lisa went to the hospice kitchen and returned with chocolate, another time vanilla, still another time strawberry.  Her favorites were peanut butter cup or black walnut, not available here, but no matter.  Lisa sat on the side of the bed and fed her spoonfuls of whatever flavor had been on hand.  The nurses, too, took to giving her medications mixed with ice cream, the spoonful of sugar approach.

One morning on the way to see her, Lisa and Laurie saw a candy store, Speach Family Candy Shoppe, a couple of blocks away.  Stopping, they purchased the house signature fudge, exotically rich chocolate.  They fed slivers and small chunks to her, placing them in her mouth, sometimes she would feed herself.  The fudge would melt as she lay there enjoying the smooth sensation envelope her taste buds, ecstasy in every bite.  That's all you really needed.  

She was sleeping longer and longer now, her breaths shallow and labored, she fought and fought, then stopped, the light fading to an afterglow.

After the funeral we gathered at Laurie's house, sisters, husbands, grandchildren.  A dozen strong, we were gathering in the dining room.  Lisa suggested we should have ice cream sundaes after dinner.  Off went the sisters to get the mixing's for sundaes; two flavors of ice cream, a sherbert, syrups, nuts, cherries.  Everyone built their own sundae.  We raised our spoons in a salute to Mom, "Here's to you Mom (Grandma)!"  We dug in, laughing, talking, remembering, throwing smiling glances at each other.  We could feel her there laughing with us.  It reminded the daughters of earlier family days when their joys were shared in similar fashion.  Now the family had expanded and extended, every soul there touched by her existence, influenced by her will.  It was an appropriate tribute to the woman.

The Bar

Two young veterans sat in the darkened bar, sipping beers, recounting their shared experiences overseas, united this week by the passing of their grandmother.  Having served in different phases of the war, pre-surge and post-surge, they relived their missions.  They talked in a shared language filled with acronyms and military terms that other patrons in the sparsely populated bar would hardly understand.  For them, getting to know each other after all these intervening years, they spoke in an old, but not forgotten language.  Relieved of the burden to explain terms and background, they understood each other’s actions, anxieties, frustrations, and triumphs.  Each spoke animatedly, finding a positive, non-judgmental sounding board, touching shared emotions long buried, coaxing them up from the depths to be briefly revealed once again in the dim shroud of night. 

 

The strum of a guitar, the scratch of a fiddle, accompanied by a bass and the twang of a banjo mutedly drifted from the jukebox.  Their conversation ceased, unnoticed by the other tenants of the bar.  Each were transported back to a time and memory juxtaposed by the glint off the liquor bottles and tiny bubbles rising languidly in their glasses.  Fixated on a place so alien from home and family, each silently recalled how they had dreamt of being right here, right now.  It seemed immediate, yet a lifetime ago.  An American song spanning the northeast and south, spoke of wandering for the truth, love, wind, rain, and being gently rocked by a southbound train.  Lost in their respective memories, faces and places surfaced randomly, were caressed and returned to their places of rest. 

As the final chords faded they looked at each other and toasted their friends that live now only in their cherished memory, picking up their conversation where they had left off.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

Quoted by Ronald Reagan (from Rev. William J. H. Boetcker, commonly misattributed to Abraham Lincoln)

I Never Saw...

We were in our bunks, sleeping soundly, when the door burst open with a crash. He stood there at the threshold for an instant, silhouetted against the outside light cast by a mercury vapor lamp. He swore something unintelligible at us, went to take a step, his right foot caught on the worn wood before moving barely an inch and down he went. I never saw a man fall so flat. His knees, stomach, chest, chin, nose and forehead all hit the sandy plywood floor at the same time. His arms remained motionless at his side as he toppled. It was like watching a statue fall. The eighth inch door sill was all it took to trip him up. I was on my left side, face to the door, and lifted my head. I could see the rest of my crew staring at him in the dim light streaming through the moist, tropical air of Diego Garcia.

All of us, Hot’n’tot, Low Boy, Wild Bill, Taipan, and me, Spice, threw back our scratchy, yellowed sheets and leapt to him. He had rolled over on his side and was brushing at his shoulder. Blood was boozing from his nose and the scrape on his forehead. He was trying to brush away the floor, unaware he had fallen. His cursing continued unabated, misdirected at the world in general. We picked John up gently and carried him to his bunk. We wiped his face with a damp cloth, set him on his side, he was all the time mumbling, placed the trash can at his head, from experience, and crept back to our bunks, trying to resurrect our sleep. The waves outside clapped the sand without pause…

The day had started with us rising at “oh-dark thirty” to attend our usual 3:00 AM preflight. We were VP-19 and completing our rotation on the “circuit”. The circuit consisted of flying from NAS Subic Bay, Philippines to Utapao AFB, Thailand, to NAS Diego Garcia, Indian Ocean, on to Bandar Abbas, Iran. We would spend anywhere from 2-hours to 2-weeks at any of these stations. When our mission was completed we reversed course, ending back at Subic, where we would stay for 2-3-weeks before departing on the circuit again. We arrived in the Philippines in December 1974 and left in May 1975, returning to NAS Moffet Field, California, our home base. We hunted submarines and tracked the world’s shipping as the cold war peaked in Vietnam and was now waning. The line had been drawn in the sand, the ideology of nations tested. The Shah’s power and influence over his own people had also peaked and was now waning, signs we had seen in-country but weren’t apparent, yet, in Washington, D.C. The undercurrent of Islamic fundamentalism was ebbing.

At 4:00 AM we filed out of our briefing and headed to our plane, a P-3B Orion, starting our equipment checks. As the dawn intensified and the stars began fading into the graying sky, it was my duty to check the wheel wells. Exiting the bright interior I would descend the ladder with my “Mickey Mouse” ears on, the auxiliary power unit screaming in the depleting night. This had quickly become one of my favorite responsibilities. Coconut crabs were fond of hiding in-between the tires and chocks. Five to seven of them could usually be found in-between each of the wing tires, and three to five in the smaller nose gear. I would pull the chocks, shine my flashlight and watch them scurry from their hiding to the sandy edge of the concrete apron. I fancied myself a crab wrangler, herding them en masse to their natural habitat. I was amazed to discover that, yes; they do walk sideways, pincers in the air, clicking, rising tall on their spindly legs, looking as vicious as they possibly could. I would flip them on their back with the toe of my flight boot, standing over them, their legs writhing in the air, till they righted themselves. It was one of my fondest diversions, better than harassing the hermit crabs on the beach in front of our plywooden barracks. Then back to the wheel wells to search for any strays that may have avoided detection or had crawled up into the bay. The warm morning breeze started to pick up as the red ribbon slowly passed overhead and the first rays beat back the dusk, the underbellies of the clouds deep into the horizon ablaze with color. The waves continued their clap…

By 6:00 AM we were wheels up and heading to our patrol station. We would spend 6-hours on station before returning to “Dodge”, always getting back around noon. Post-flight responsibilities and debriefing took 3-hours. At 3:00 in the afternoon we were in the duty truck speeding over the crushed coral road to our plywood homes on stilts, nestled in-between the palm trees, the white sand reflecting heat and light up from below. Because of our air crew status, we enjoyed having one of the few air-conditioned huts on the island, thanks to the Seabees. Our mail would follow us when we were on the circuit. We could go for weeks without a letter and then arrive at one of our destination points to find a sack of mail waiting for us, dropped off by another crew heading out. So it happened this day we each had a stack of letters to read, except John, he had one letter. We were busy reading our mail in the back of the open-air duty truck when I saw John wad up his green pastel letter and flip it out the back, watching it bounce and skitter off the road, litter by the wayside. Looking up from our letters we saw John sitting with his back to us. We went back to our reading after casting knowing glances to each other. When we jumped off the truck “downtown”, we headed to our hut, pealing off our flight suits to reveal our Diego Garcia shorts, our official off-duty uniform. All except John; he had gone directly to the Enlisted Club. We looked for him after the obligatory dip in the warm ocean water, searching the club, the beach, the ball field, and the mess. He was hiding. We gave up, respecting his privacy.

We didn’t see him until the door burst open that night, revealing a vulnerable, lonely, heartbroken ship-mate. He wavered on that threshold half a world away, and then stumbled in an alcohol-induced stupor, brought on by a letter from home that began, “Dear John...”

The Roots of Character

Those who preserve their integrity remain unshaken by the storms of daily life. They do not stir like leaves on a tree or follow the herd where it runs. In their mind remains the ideal attitude and conduct of living. This is not something given them by others. It is their roots...it is a strength that exists deep within them.

Unknown Native American

The ideal attitude and conduct of living - that scares a lot of people, mainly because they are aware they are so far from their ideal. Somewhere along the way they chose the path they find themselves on and then seek to rationalize their choice. Constantly finding fault, criticizing the ideal conduct of others, tear down that which they know reflects poorly on them. Those who preserve their integrity, respect the integrity of others!