What Knotts

Introducing Jack's Flash!

2011-03-28T10:53:00.007-04:00

As of March 1, 2011, my new posts will appear at:

www.jacksflash.blogspot.com

Prior posts may continue to be viewed at:

5B (and me) 3/19/2010 - 7/26/2010

5B (and me) 7/22/2008 - 2/4/ 2010

What Knotts 2/2/2008 - 7/23/2008

New Blg Location

2010-02-24T08:31:00.002-05:00

To my most excellent and loyal blog readers:

Going forward, my blogs will be posted on:

jackmclean.us

Old blogs will remain here and on:

whatknotts.blogspot.com

jamclean.us also has links back to both for your convenience.

Thank you for your continuing readership and undying support!

Jack

"These little town blues, are melting away...

2008-07-23T10:42:00.011-04:00

I'll make a brand new start of it in old New York..."

After nearly a year in Knotts Island,

I'm moving to the Big Town.

It's hard to imagine a greater contrast.

What will become of What Knotts??!!

My cousin Tom suggested Not Knotts. Very good, Tom, but I felt it best to go forward with a more positive moniker.

Here forward you may visit me at:

http://livefrom5b.blogspot.com

Thank you for your support of the only known blogger from Knotts Island. I wonder if there are any bloggers in New York? Perhaps, but I will be the only one Live from 5B.

Bookmark the new link and join me from my perch high above the George Washington Bridge EZ Pass Lane.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk to you again"

2008-06-04T20:56:00.013-04:00

We Remember

L.Z Loon

June 4-6, 1968

Barbour, James Wesley, PFC 6-5-68 New Rochelle, NY

Brazier, John Kenneth , S/Sgt 6-6-68 Baltimore, MD

Carbaugh, Woodrow Franklin, Sgt 6-5-68 Thurmont, MD

Eaton, Clifford Lyman, PFC 6-5-68 Cortland, NY

Garcia-Figueroa, Juan F., L/Cpl 6-5-68 Yabucoa, PR

Haralson, William Scott, PFC 6-4-68 Everett, WA

Kilderry, Michael J., L/Cpl 6-6-68 Philadelphia, PA

King, Jr., George Louis, PFC 6-5-68 Clatskanie, OR

Klein, Joseph, Cpl 6-5-68 Highland Park, NJ

Langston, Melvin Doyle, PFC 6-6-68 Valentine, NE

McDorman, Darl Kenneth, Cpl 6-4-68 Lyndhurst, VA

Morrissey, Jr., Thomas, J.Cpl 6-5-68 Dover, NH

Ortiz, Eliezer, Pvt 6-5-68 Bethlehem, PA

Uutela, Derris Lee, PFC 6-5-68 Duluth, MN

Wilson, Eugene, PFC 6-6-68 Water Valley, MS

Burgard, Paul Edward, PFC 6-6-68 Portland, OR

Casares, Manuel, PFC 6-6-68 Tehachapi, CA

Enix, Jack Gene, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Lorain, OH

Frankenstein, Jackie, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Cincinnati, OH

Frazier, Jr., Timothy Joseph, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Cohoes, NY

Roberts, Gary Kenneth, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Summerville, SC

Smith, Donald Lee, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Ino, VA

Ebright, William Raymond, Cpl 6-6-68 Miamisburg, OH

Flores, Felix Frank, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Los Angeles, CA

Hannings, William Elwood, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Lansdale, PA

Harper, Ralph Lewis, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Indianapolis, IN

La Plant, Kurt Elton, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Leneza, KS

Morelos, Jr., Catarino, PFC 6-6-68 Sanger, CA

Palacios, Luis Fernando,L/Cpl 6-6-68 Los Angeles, CA

Porter, Lawrence Eugene, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Dalton, OH

Sanchez, Jose Ramon, PFC - 6-6-68 New York, NY

Satter, Donald Stephen, PFC 6-6-68 Minneapolis, MN

Stoops, Jonathan Lynn, PFC 6-6-68 Union City, IN

Rest in Peace, Brothers

Semper Fideles

"I love to take a photograph, so mama don't take my Kodachrome away"

2008-04-17T18:31:00.011-04:00

"No pictures, sir. Please put the camera away."

The guard's admonition did not surprise me. I'd been snapping pictures with my cell phone camera in the lobby of The Random House Publishing Group for several minutes. The space is anchored by a large security desk surrounded by walls of enormous glass-enclosed bookcases that, given the vintage of some of the contents, may have included every book ever published by Random House.

In a year, my book would be slid in among the thousands. Having just returned to the lobby from meetings upstairs, I could not resist the temptation to record the scene for posterity. I had, after all, just become the newest author in the Random House Group.

Wow.

Pippy Longstocking and me. Now THAT will impress my three daughters.

The day dawned at the legendary Algonquin Hotel, home to visiting authors for nearly a century. I'd stayed there before - perhaps with hope that some of the fairy dust would rub off on me one day.

In the previous month it had.

I met my agent at her 62 Bleaker Street office, a classically preserved Louis Sullivan treasure from the 19th century. I later met my publisher for the first time 60 blocks uptown, across from the Random House corporate headquarters. He subsequently took me through the office and introduced the individuals who had acquired Loon and will publish it next year. It was a dream. The praise for the book was without condition.

Among the players was the head of publicity. We talked about Terry Gross, Oprah, and Imus.

We talked about a book tour.

He said I needn't be concerned about going to (for example) Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They no longer invested in whistle-stops for turn outs that drew less than 10 people.

Wayne Wood is from Cedar Rapids. Woody was the most severely wounded survivor of the Battle for LZ Loon. He received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church three times and survived. He returned to Cedar Rapids to marry Jan, his high school sweatheart. They now have children and grandchildren.

Cedar Rapids?

I'd begin in Cedar Rapids.

Woody Carbaugh was from Thurmont, Maryland. Joe Klein was from Highland Park, New Jersey. Cliff Eaton was from Cortland, New York. Jim Barbour was a 19 year old PFC from New Rochelle, New York. George King, a 19 year old PFC from Clatskanie, Ohio. Tom Morrissey was from Dover, New Hampshire.

They all were killed during those three horrific days in June 1968. They were joined by several dozen others.

Where to start?

Take some pictures, Jack.

Mark the moment.

Know that now - thanks to my agent, thanks to Random House, and thanks to so many supportive friends - what happened outside of Khe Sahn, Vietnam during those three days in June 1968 will never be forgotten. Years, decades, a century from now, a new Random House author will note my weathered book behind the glass case as he too proudly joins the legendary house that told the world about the Charlie Company Marines of LZ Loon.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"And it's one, two, three, what are we fightin' for?"

2008-04-09T09:51:00.021-04:00

Woodrow Wilson won reelection as the 28th President of the United States in November 1916. With war raging in Europe, Wilson campaigned on a neutrality platform as the man who "kept us out of war."

Five months later, he asked and received from Congress a declaration of war on Germany.

Franklin Roosevelt won reelection as 32nd President of the United States in November 1940. With war raging in Europe, Roosevelt campaigned on a neutrality platform saying that he "would not send American boys into any foreign wars."

Thirteen months later, he asked and received from Congress a declaration of war on Germany.

Lyndon Johnson won election as the 36th President of the United States in November 1964 (he was not technically reelected as he was completing the first term of the assassinated President John Kennedy.) He pledged that he would not commit "American boys to fighting a war that...ought to be fought by the boys of Asia..."

Days later, he asked and received from Congress approval for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which, in effect, began the War in Vietnam.

Richard M. Nixon won election as the 37 President of the United States in 1968. With war raging in Vietnam, he pledged that he a had a "secret plan" to end it. He of course could not tell us what the "secret plan" was or it would not have been secret anymore.

The war continued for another seven years during which time - INCREDIBLY - he was reelected.

George W. Bush won election as the 43rd President of the United States in 2000. Openly critical of Clinton administration's efforts in Somalia and the Balkans, he pledged that United States troops will never "be used for what's called nation-building" during a Bush administration (you just can't make this stuff up!)

Months later, with Confressional approval, he invaded Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq and has mismanaged nation-building in both countries ever since. Let’s just put aside that 17 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Egyptian and Saudi and that there were no weapons of mass destruction. We now know that there never was an attack in the Gulf of Tonkin that night either.

Incidentally, not one of these countries - Germany, Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, ever directly attacked the United States (in fairness to FDR, I don't begrudge his declaration of war on Japan which came three days prior to the declaration of war against Germany.)

So what?

Next month, I will participate in the American democratic process for the first time in eight years (I have heretofore been a resident of the unrepresented District of Columbia - a blog for another day.) Let's pretend that I have the opportunity to choose between the three presidential contenders which, of course given their party differences, I don't.

I am a one issue voter. My issue is war. I will not vote for the candidate(s) who gets us into war or promises to keep us there. I will vote for the candidate(s) who promises to get us out (for this very reason, I once voted for Richard Nixon two months after I returned from Vietnam.) All things being equal, I will always vote a veteran, especially one who served in harm's way. McCain would have had my vote in 2000 had he not been slimed out of the race. Kerry got my vote in 2004 despite being slimed out of the race.

I will never vote for a draft dodger or anyone who actively tried to avoid Vietnam service. Thereby, I voted for neither Clinton ("the famous draft board letter") nor Bush (the Texas Air National Guard was the preeminent Vietnam dodge of the 1960's.)

By my own rules, however, I can no longer vote for McCain, given his support of the war, nor can I vote for Clinton given her own vote in favor of entering the war. That leaves Obama. He seems like a good fellow and he meets my criteria.

All that being said, Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Nixon, and Bush II have all demonstrated that "words", in the lexicon of my former wife, "are just words." On this score, she is, sadly, correct.

History and the Constitution teach us that foreign policy (including war) is about the only arena in which an American President has the leverage to do whatever he pleases. All domestic issues (education, health care, transportation, social security, etc) are so bound, tied and regulated that, no matter what promises are made, the machinery of government will simply slog along through them all. But foreign policy? War? Now those are places where a President can make his mark with little interference from the electorate or a helpless Congress.

History has taught us that those Persidents who pledged to keep us from getting into a war haven't (Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Nixon, and Bush II) and he who pledged to get us out of war didn't (Nixon.)

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

Editor's Note: Boomers will recognize this blog's title as coming from Country Joe McDonald's "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag." Since the 60's Joe McDonald has been a tireless and selfless supporter of Vietnam Veterans issues for which we owe an enormous debt. Thanks Joe, and best wishes to the Fish.

"Don't punish me with brutality. Talk to me, so you can see what's goin' on"

2008-04-03T18:31:00.008-04:00

Forty years ago I was serving with C Company of the 1st Batallion, 4th Marines near Con Thien, Vietnam. I wrote in an earlier post, that numerous events to which we were horrifically exposed as a Marine company and as individuals occurred during the spring of 1968.

Several of these occurred back home and gave us pause to wonder what it was that we were fighting for.

Early on the morning of April 5, 1968, as we dragged our filthy, smelly, exhausted bodies inside the perimeter through the south wire, fresh from an all night ambush emplacement to the west, we were greeted with the most awful of the escalating bad news from home. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., while spending a day working at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis to plan a Poor People’s March on Washington, DC, was killed with a single shot from a 30.06 rifle.

Despite pleas for calm and a powerful extemporaneous eulogy from Senator Robert F. Kennedy, we heard that rioting had broken out in cities throughout the United States killing dozens of people and causing untold millions in property damage.

That morning, I became aware of a thin line that began to divide the black Marines from the rest of us – nothing that ever manifested itself in combat – but a “something” that began to appear in a thousand little ways in our day-to-day lives.

© Loon - A Marines Story

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"She's got a light around her and, everywhere she goes, a million dreams of love surround her. Everywhere

2008-03-31T21:47:00.023-04:00

Thank you Margaret, Sarah, and John for the time of my life.

It has been remarkable for me, as father and grandfather of daughter and child to see them together, separately, and as one.

Margaret is Sarah and that makes me laugh and cry all at once.

Margaret's morning coos are Sarah's.

Her wet diapers are Sarah's.

Her brand new giggles and laughs are all Sarah's, but of course they really belong to Margaret.

Wherever did the time go?

It has been an extraordinary three weeks filled with our cherished past, loving present, and hope that the future forever brings.

I am at a loss to describe my feeling about the woman that Sarah has become in my life, so I will close by again resorting to Billy Joel:

She comes to me when I'm feelin' down
Inspires me without a sound
She touches me and I get turned around.

Thank you, Sarah.

And thanks to all visitors.

Jack

"And when I touch you I feel happy inside. It's such a feeling that my love I can't hide"

2008-03-28T18:29:00.013-04:00

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"It's Just the Luck of the Draw, Baby, the Natural Law."

2008-03-26T22:53:00.023-04:00

Images that enter our eyes do so upside down.

It is, thereby, up to the brain to sort things out. What we know to be true is that, for the most part, the brain then turns things right side up. The two go on to form an impressive partnership that allows most of us to stay alive (hot stoves bad, smiling babies good.)

Occasionally, our brain cannot make sense of what our eyes are seeing - it can find no experiential context. This happened to me occasionally in Vietnam. My brain had a tough time knowing where to put a pile of dead bodies or a 122mm rocket incoming at close to the speed of sound.

Such a happenstance occurred to me again about ten years ago while driving through the Connecticut countryside. I was lost, late for a meeting, while on a beautiful stone wall-lined New England back road that was going nowhere. Then, all of a sudden, I came around a bend and - whoa! - There was Oz...No, Xanadu...no Oz and Xanadu in one.

What I was seeing for the first time was the Foxwoods Casino – now the largest single gaming facility on the planet. It was so enormous, so completely misplaced, and out of context that I could do little but pull over to the side of the road and gape.

Gambling. Wow!

I'd been to Las Vegas years ago and ogled at what I thought was a well regulated local phenomenon. I have a vivid recollection of older normal looking people dropping money without restraint at all imaginable venues. It was sort of cool, but mostly scary - particularly the scale of it. I knew that politicians hoped that gambling would save decaying Atlantic City. Most states had by now begun to rely on lotteries to augment revenue. I knew that Native Americans were using loopholes to build casinos on their land with little concern about local laws, regulations and, obviously, community standards.

But this? My eyes were blinded on that October morning in 1997. Foxwoods was beyond all imagination. I understood that if this could be happening in Ledyard, Connecticut, it could be happening anywhere.

And it is.

Yesterday I visited the former Portuguese colony of Macao, an hour south of Hong Kong by jet ferry. The guide books say it is a good one day trip to see several worthy historic sights and dine on Portuguese cuisine. I knew that gambling was legal in Macao as was prostitution. I knew they also had an annual Formula One automobile race. The idea of it all seemed sort of James Bond-sy.

Macao was both the oldest and the last European colony in China. It was settled by Portuguese traders in the 16th century and returned to China in 1999 - two years after Hong Kong. Like its neighbor to the north, Macao enjoys the political status of a Special Administrative Region. What this means, in both cases, is that anything anybody wants to do to make loads of money for China is O.K.

For Hong Kong? International finance.

For Macao? Gambling

Prior to turnover, Macao gambling was tightly controlled by Stanley Ho to his enormous benefit. Ho kept things in check. Revenue poured into him and growth was modest. After turnover, the Chinese felt that the only way to break Ho's hammerlock was to open Macao gaming to international competition. Since then, all hell has broken loose.

There are 34 casinos in Macao. Enormous new palaces by the giant American gaming companies such as MGM Grand, Steve Wyn, and the Sands have sprung up almost overnight. There are at least 8 more under construction by my count. Like Las Vegas, each is trying to outdo the other in scale and perceived opulence. Huge areas of the old colonial city have evaporated as massive casino construction abounds. As with my first sight of the Foxwoods Casino a decade ago, there was little for me to do during my day-long visit than simply walk around and gape. Busload after busload of Chinese tourists poured in forming an endless stream that no doubt continued day and night. There was no integration with the old Macao, architecturally or otherwise. The whole place had had the look and feel of a mad, greedy, pathetic free-for-all.

I read the papers. Banks are in trouble, the world financial system is teetering, and credit is tight. There appears, however, to be no shortage of cash for casino construction in Macao and no shortage of people to fill them when they are completed. I suspect the situation is the same the world over.

You may want to take another look at that little innocent town down the street from you that you just found out was largely owned by a long forgotten Indian tribe. You may also want to take another look at your own town council or state government. It can happen in a heartbeat.

Strapped localities need cash. Gambling is a simple solution.

Ledyard, Connecticut

Macao, China

The power and appeal are enormous.

Like global warming, the trend will not be reversed in our lifetimes or those of our children

Thank you for visiting

Jack

Wannabes, Valor Thieves, Poseurs, Fakes, Frauds, Scumbags, Low Lifes, Imposters,Charlatans, and Cheats

2008-03-25T23:16:00.018-04:00

When I served with the Marine Corps in Vietnam, I was part of an infantry company that spent a predominant amount of time in harm's way. That's what infantry companies do.

Of all of those who served in country during the Vietnam war, it is estimated that perhaps only 30% or less were involved in actual day to day combat activities. The rest were engaged in the critical support functions. That percentage may be higher with the Marines, but still.

Shortly after my 19th birthday, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Parris Island was as tough as its reputation. Infantry training was unbearably long and taxing beyond anything that even my fertile mind could have conjured. Then, one day, over a year later, I stepped off a plane in Danang and spent most of the ensuing year shooting or being shot at. It wasn't every day. There were times when we'd go weeks with little or no action at all. But they were always out there looking for us and waiting for their moment. At those rare times when we found each other, the dance was macabre.

It was a long year. Friends were killed and injured. We were exposed to cancer and diabetes causing Agent Orange. Most from my unit carry government disabilities for mental and physical wounds received. Lives were never the same.

To a man, however, we are proud that we served, honored that we served with each other (living and dead,) and will ever stand tall that we earned the title of United States Marine. Consequently, we get angry - VERY angry - when some poser wannabe tries to hitch a free ride on our bus.

An article in today's New York Times triggered me. Senator Hillary Clinton admitted that she lied about being exposed to sniper fire while visiting Bosnia with her husband, the President, in 1997...check that...she didn't "lie" she (in the current hot lexicon of Washington, DC) "misspoke."

Speaking from my own experience and that of my many brothers - trust me on this - when a sniper is shooting at you, it is not a "kind of pregnant" sort of deal. Every orifice opens and closes and opens again, adrenaline spews and you instantly make yourself so small that, in the lexigon of the day, you'd have to look up to look down. It is the scariest fucking moment that you can possibly imagine.

Mrs. Clinton has now joined the vomitously long list of wannabes who would like to make the public think that they stood tall in harm's way. You may say or believe whatever you will about Senator John Kerry and his swift boat experience in Vietnam. There is not one person who questions that he was there, got shot at, and served with honor. Medals? No medals? Wounds? No wounds? Big deal. He served.

War Wannabes are obviously a subject about which I feel strongly, so let's pull back the rocks and see who climbs out.

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (at the time a Congressman) said at Congressional Vietnam Veterans' Caucus that "I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962. One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions. I'm proud of my Navy service. I put my ass on the line day after day. (WSJ 12/29/01)

Liar liar pants on fire. Mr. Harkin's Navy record shows his only decoration is the National Defense Service Medal, awarded to everyone on active service during those years. He was never within half a world of Vietnam.

Professor (and Pulitzer prize winning historian) Joseph Ellis of Mt. Holyoke College fabricated his alleged war record for years. According to the Boston Globe (6/20/01) he told students and anyone else that would listen, that, while serving under General Westmoreland, he saw action clearing out the area around My Lai as a platoon commander of combat paratroopers from the legendary 101st Airborne.

Liar, liar pants on fire. Ellis never left the states. He also lied to his students and in numerous television and press interviews about his work as an anti war activist (not), a civil rights worker in Mississippi (not) and as the scorer of the winning touchdown in the last game of his senior year in high school (not.) He wasn't even on the team. Oh, and during the Vietnam War? Ellis was teaching history at the United States Military Academy.

Incredibly, then Mt. Holyoke president Joanne Creighton supported Ellis and said he was a "man of great integrity, honesty and honor." No kidding, you can't make this up. How can a blatant liar be a man of "great integrity, honesty, and honor." Where was she educated?! I remained stunned that he wasn't tossed out on his ear. Where were groups like the American Legion when we needed them to defend us?

The American Legion? Oops.

Paul A. Morin is the National Commander of the American Legion. In the lead sentence of his campaign biography, according again to the Boston Globe (12/3/06) he describes himself as a "Vietnam veteran of the US Army." When he testified before the House Veterans' Affairs Committee that fall, he was also introduced as such. He went on to say, "When we came home (from Vietnam), life was a little different. We do not want to see any veteran ever returning to what we did, so we'll be there to be welcoming them home with open arms,"

Liar, liar pants on fire. The closest he got to Vietnam was Ft. Dix, NJ.

Had enough?

I haven't.

Former Toronto Blue Jays manager Tim Johnson fired up his baseball teams with bloody tales of his days as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam. He had killed a little girl and her brother who happened into the line of fire.

Liar, liar pants on fire. He served in the Marine Reserves. An exemption for baseball players had kept him out of combat.

Former U.S. Rep. Wes Cooley told reporters he'd fought in Korea as a Special Forces demolition expert trained in mountain climbing and escape tactics. The Oregon Republican said he'd engaged in countless secret missions.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. He never left the states. He hadn't even finished his training when the Korean conflict ended.

Actor Brian Dennehy said he served five years in Vietnam. He'd been hit by shrapnel. Combat, he told Playboy magazine, was "absolute f---ing chaos."

Liar, liar pants on fire. Dennehy had been a Marine, but his only overseas assignment had been as a football player on a service team in Okinawa.

There are groups and individuals who are ever vigilant for Wannabes. One among them is Stephen Burkett, co-author of "Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History." My hat is off to all who are vigilant for evidence of such unspeakable fraud. I encourage each of you to join the ranks. Posers are your friends, neighbors, and co-workers. It has been said that there are more people who falsely claim to have served in harm's way in Vietnam than those that actually did.

I feel strongly that an early post World War II American public would not have stood for the swift boating of Senator John Kerry in 2004, the "unpatriotic" moniker hung on Vietnam War triple-amputee Senator Max Cleland during the Georgia primary the same year, or the Republican sliming of Senator John McCain (former prisoner of war) during the South Carolina primary in 2000. To this day, few people stand tall to protect and defend the service of those who served in harm's way during the Vietnam War.

We have the power to change that.

Perhaps a good way to begin is to boycott all books written by Joseph Ellis. To Vietnam Veterans, he holds a dubious place of honor that heretofore had been the exclusive domain of Hanoi Jane Fonda.

He lied about himself, for goodness sake.

Did he lie about Jefferson?

This Imposter is teaching our kids.

The list follows:

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
His Excellency: George Washington
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams
After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture
Thomas Jefferson, Genius of Liberty
School for Soldiers: West Point and the Profession of Arms
Something That Will Surprise the World: The Essential Writings of the Founding Fathers
What Did the Declaration Declare?

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"Oh, I Wonder, Wonder Who, Mmbadoo-ooh, Who, Who Wrote the Book Of Love?"

2008-03-22T22:55:00.005-04:00

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"So Remember, Every Picture Tells a Story Don't It?"

2008-03-21T05:29:00.043-04:00

Hong Kong March 21, 2008
(Click on picture to enlarge)

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"Glory Days"

2008-03-17T22:21:00.000-04:00

Most tourists are eager to see that which they ought to see in the first several days (given they have the luxury of time that I have in Hong Kong.) Guidebooks understand this and customarily outline the first 48 hours in detail (lunch here, shop there, ogle at this, be sure to see that, etc.)

New York? The Statue of Liberty.

Boston? Old North Church.

Hong Kong? The Peak.

Delving more deeply into a guidebook, hotel concierge, and in my case family, tourists next want to know where the locals hang out. Where do they eat/shop/do local stuff? Where can I go to see locals doing what ever it is that locals do so that I might better understand the fabric of the place?

Hong Kong is all about money, so it is easy to spot a local financial type bursting out of an enormous office building, yakking on his cell phone, sucking down a cigarette in two drags, while knowing that civilization itself may hinge on his next deal. In fact, given the state of the U.S financial market this week and its impact internationally, for once he may be right.

Hong Kong is also about eating. There are more restaurants per capita here than anywhere else in the world. Getting to them is another matter. The early evening streets and intersections in the more popular destinations are unimaginably clogged with people. As in Tokyo, cars drive on the left. People are encouraged to move in the same fashion (IE., 'up' escalators are always on the left.) Left to their own devices, however, pedestrians walk wherever they please on whatever side they want. There is no right side, so to speak. Pedestrian traffic is chaos everywhere - all the time.

My first look at locals hanging out occurred during my walk through Victoria Park on Sunday. Sunday is nanny's day off. Most of the nannies are either Philippino or Indonesian. The Philippinos flock to the Catholic churches. The Indonesians, on the other hand, flood to Victoria Park. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. Along every pathway, in every nook there were clusters of a dozen or so brightly-clad, head-covered Muslim women on plastic sheets reading, praying, laughing, talking on cell phones, and eating volumes of exotic (to my eye) foods of all colors from every imaginable kind of container. Were such clusters spotted in an American park, the Homeland Security level would instantly go to red.

Yesterday, with Margaret's help (you knew I'd work her in somehow,) we took the #25 bus up the hill to see where the locals go to school. Coincidentally, her mother also teaches there. It was a win-win deal for Margaret and me. She got a mid-morning feeding and I had a chance to burst with pride as I walked around Sarah's (empty - remember the flu) classroom. It expressed the energy and excitement of a vital 5th grade class. Her creativity and style oozed from every corner. On the hall wall, just outside of her door there is a plaque with her name written in both Mandarin Chinese and English. Father-wise, it does not get any better than that!

The most popular local spot that I have identified to date is the Hong Kong Central Public Library. This morning, I arrived 30 minutes prior to opening. What I saw when I escalated to the plaza, were about 800 people (really, I counted) waiting eagerly in a line that wrapped around and through the plaza in a manner reminiscent of the security operation at LaGuardia Airport on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving.

Officials patrolled the scene to be certain that order was maintained. When the doors opened, people poured in as though it were festival seating at a Springstein concert. Half shot for the three elevators and the rest to the escalators. My goal was a window cube overlooking the harbor on the 9th floor. The elevator was chancy, the escalator a sure thing. I joined the throng tearing up the escalator steps two and three at a time. When I arrived, I got the last spot - the others already comfortably occupied by the more seasoned elevator people.

There is nothing particularly special about the 9th floor. There are probably 1,000 working cubicles in the library and each has power and an Internet connection. By 11am all were filled and, based on past experience, will remain that way until closing time at 10pm.

There is no mention of the Hong Kong Central Public Library in my Fodor's guidbook, and yet here may lie a clue about that in which the locals are engaged.

Where can I go to see locals doing what ever it is that locals do so that I might better understand the fabric of the place?

The Hong Kong Central Public Library is such a place and serious learning, education, and self improvment are the activities.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

“As you wish”

2008-03-16T06:21:00.002-04:00

In the closing scene of The Princess Bride, Wesley asks swordsman Inigo Montoya about his plans, having avenged the death of his father. "You know,” Montoya responds, “it's very strange -- I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life."

I know how he felt – not about revenge, but about achieving a long sought, all consuming singular goal.

Five years ago, I set out to become a writer, although I didn’t know it at the time. I was unemployed, recently married, and struggling with the dormant torment of my United States Marine Corps service in Vietnam. My writing career began with the transcription of the 102 letters home written during my two year enlistment. Somewhere along the way, the letters began to morph into a book and I dared to dream that I could be a writer.

Slowly, I became consumed – some might say possessed – by the book and the process. Six months later, I got a job. During lunch and after work, I worked on the book and thrived in the writing process. After a year, I lost the job.

I continued to write, research, and network the book while looking for another job. It had now become a product that I wanted published, both for my own validation and that of my fallen brothers in arms.

Two years later, I got another job. During lunch and after work, I worked on the book and thrived in the writing process. After a year, I lost the job. A month later, my marriage ended. She said "I never want to hear the word 'Vietnam" again."

Oh well.

Broke and now homeless, I accepted the generous invitation of Nancy and Terry Tillery to live over their garage in North Carolina. The completion of the book was near and, as throughout the process, I was filled with hope. My family, friends, and Marine Corps brothers believed in me without condition. They provided the enormous positive strength that I required to complete the book.

Over time I had acquired the services of a brilliant editor and a top New York literary agent. Three months ago, with the book completed to the satisfaction of my editor and me, I hand delivered the finished product to my agent. Last week, thanks to her efforts, we received word that Random House will publish the book in May, 2009. It will be positioned as “a good beach read.”

The story will be told.

Now what?

I am sitting in a cubicle on the ninth floor of the new Hong Kong Central Library, listening to Bonny Raitt, and looking out at the full expanse of the magnificent waterfront and skyline. I will be visiting with my daughter and her family for two more weeks before returning home to a wonderfully uncertain future.

Another book? A writing or teaching position? A carpenter’s assistant?

I have never been happier.

Amid the ferries, container ships, and mammoth cruise liners that I can see plying the harbor below, an ancient Chinese Junk with two red masts is slowly working it’s way northward with the wind. It is an incredibly incongruous site. It ignites my fertile daydreaming mind to a career idea that makes me smile – laugh.

“Have you ever considered piracy?" Wesley responded to Inigo in the closing scene of The Princess Bride. "You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.”

A pirate?

Of course.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"Well rock my so-oul, how I love to stroll"

2008-03-14T06:06:00.000-04:00

Margaret and I went to Victoria Park this morning in her stroller.

We used to take Margaret’s mother to the park in what we called an umbrella stroller – a flimsy fold-up piece of canvas held together by a cheap aluminum frame. It moved, so to speak, on four Stone Age era wheels for which every pebble or poorly laid brick was a major obstacle. But, it was the latest in baby stuff. What did we know about space age metals and aerodynamics?

Margaret’s stroller is the modern kind with which you are familiar. It moves with the smooth precision of a monorail and has more stuffed stuff hanging off it than a Christmas tree. Little Margaret is strapped in like a flight attendant on airplane jump seat.

The Hong Kong that I have seen so far is stroller friendly. Our outing was impeded by not so much as a curb. Here’s one for you old-timer stroller pushers - Victoria Park actually has a “pebble walk.” People of all ages take off their shoes, and walk around a lovely path of smooth rocks and pebbles. Perhaps its something one does after Tai Chi to maintain Fung Shui. Remembering the old umbrella stroller, I took off my shoes and pushed Margaret in her stroller along the pebble walk because…well, because I could. I thought it was a riot until the bumps gave Margaret the grumps. Then it wasn’t funny anymore.

The park was particularly busy since all of the elementary schools are closed due to a flu outbreak (don’t say epidemic!!) Additionally, Victoria Park is the site of the annual Hong Kong Flower Show, so groups of mostly elderly ladies in bright color-coordinated baseball caps were being led around by a tour director with a similarly colored flag. We see this all the time in Washington DC this time of year, but the groups tend to be comprised of school aged kids wearing bright color coordinated tee shirts that might say, “The East Jefferson Tigers Annual Cherry Blossom Special – April 2008.”

Lot’s of people were playing tennis in the park and there was evidence that a tournament was in progress. We also passed playground after crowded playground (schools closed,) each more beautifully laid out than the last. I gave passing thought to giving Margaret her first swing ride in one of those baby plastic seats, but decided it best that her first emergency room visit not occur on my watch.

We took an elevated walkway across to the harbor to look at some old Chinese house boats and paused to drink the most spectacular city view on earth. Hong Kong, built as it is on a steep hill, is remindful of San Francisco in that you walk a block, turn a corner and whammo – you are hit with one breathtaking view after another. Hong Kong – for architecture, scale, culture, parks, and overall civility - gets my vote as the most beautiful city in the world (I’ve now been here for two days).

My last visit to Hong Kong was in 1965 on a trip with my family. Dad had business and we all got to come along for the ride. It was a different Asia then. The war in nearby Vietnam was just beginning and Hong Kong was still a British Crown Colony. I remember how big and crowded it was even then. I remember the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon with the bell boys in the funny hats. I remember the near blinding phosphorescence in the water during a late night boat excursion. I particularly remember the ride up the funicular railway to the Peak – the highest point on Hong Kong Island. The views were and remain, absolutely breathtaking. The area around the Peak was developed by the British during colonial times as a resort of sorts where they could escape the stifling summer heat on the water far below.

In returning to Hong Kong, I am making my first true visit to China. The British have been gone for a decade. The Peninsula Hotel still exists, but without the colonial swagger. My daughter Sarah looked askance when I mentioned my memory of the phosphorescence. Perhaps pollution has taken its toll on one of nature’s magnificent spectacles. Suffice to say, tourists no longer come for the midnight glow of the water.

The funicular railway IS still here, however, literally unchanged in 45 years. The guide books insist that it is THE first morning outing, so off I went yesterday (without Margaret.) I took the subway to Central and found my way up the hill to the terminus. The bottom terminal is all new and fancy, but the railway cars, tracks, cable, and employees remain frighteningly unchanged. As with a San Francisco cable car, I’d have preferred more evidence of investment in the actual cable operation. Not to be outdone, the new terminus on the actual Peak is crowned by an enormously precarious edifice that is right out of the Jetsons.

I took the funicular up, gasped at all the views, and dodged a formidable gauntlet of 21st century marketing madness (Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Company??!!) Prior to my descent, I took a magnificent wooded walk of several miles around the top of the mountain. Every hundred yards, a break in the trees would expose yet another breathtaking unbroken view. I was lost in a once colonial refuge of extraordinary peace and beauty. It was simple to close my eyes and pretend that it was one hundred years ago. Unlike the rest of busy Hong Kong, there are areas on the Peak where time has in fact stood still.

Later in the evening, after Margaret had been bathed and retired, I recounted the events of my day to Sarah and her husband John, who were excited about what I had seen. They shared stories of their own visits up there shortly before Margaret was born. There had been some hope that the air, the altitude, and the breathtaking beauty might somehow induce labor.

The Peak will, consequently, always be a part of Margaret’s life, regardless of how long she lives in Hong Kong. She will hear these stories from her parents and pass them on to her children, much as the tales of Sarah’s early days in New York have become the stuff of our own family lore.

There is, however, a sobering side to the Peak as family history. One hundred years ago, when Hong Kong was under British colonial rule, Margaret would not have been permitted on the Peak, because she is Chinese.

Margaret and I were now making our way back through Victoria Park from our foray to the waterfront. We watched the earlier scenes take on a more frenetic pace as the morning approached noon. The playgrounds were busier, the paths more crowded, and the baseball capped flower show groups were now being herded into holding pens designed to manage the overflowing crowd.

Nearing the end of the park, I lost Margaret. Glancing down, I saw the eyes gently closed and the little head listing lightly to one side. I wanted the moment to last forever, but knew that she would need her mother in time. As we approached the large lawn bowling green, I decided to make our final stop of the morning. There were several teams of Chinese men intently playing a game, brought over and left by the British colonials over a century before. Lawn bowling was no longer for whites only. I wasn’t certain if this was fitting, ironic, or something else. I found a nearby bench and watched the activity (as in paint drying) for nearly an hour as Margaret snoozed away.
Margaret and I had a most excellent first morning together.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"And my China doll down in old Hong Kong, waits for my return."

2008-03-07T09:03:00.000-05:00

Why would a sane person leave Knotts Island for three weeks on the cusp on the most beautiful season of the year??!!

May I introduce you to Sarah and Margaret (John not pictured.)

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"And we would all go down together"

2008-03-05T18:09:00.000-05:00

Forty years ago, I was a Lance Corporal serving with a United States Marine Corps infantry company in Gio Linh, South Vietnam. Gio Linh was a coastal outpost hard on the DMZ that separated the two Vietnams.

I remember two things about Gio Linh. First, forty years ago last Saturday, I scrambled into a bunker during an enemy artillery barrage. The bunker, which we had been reinforcing, sustained a direct hit and, incredibly, barely held. Being on the receiving end of a direct artillery hit is, well, indescribable, so I won't try.

My second recollection of Gio Linh was the ongoing the aerial spraying of the dioxin laced defoliant Agent Orange around us, on top of us - everywhere. Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara had decreed that the entire DMZ be defoliated so that enemy penetration could be monitored.

Where was Rachael Carson when we needed her?

This past weekend also marked the annual Knotts Island Hunters' Feast - several thousand men wandering around the bay eating all manner of meat and game, drinking beer, and generally having a good time. It is a fundraiser for a local children's home. The gross this year was over $100,000. The weather was spectacular.

Several years ago, Terry Tillery decided that he would use the Hunter's Feast as a destination for our Charlie Company brothers. This year we attracted brothers in arms from California, Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia. We had a blast.

The group began arriving Wednesday. I spent the morning having routine blood work done at the Veterans Administration in Hampton, then beat it over to Norfolk airport to begin grabbing the guys. By Thursday evening we were assembled in a small hunting lodge not far from my garage. Knotts was and is a serious place for duck hunters.

I thought it might be fun to have everyone over to show off my new grill, but I was seriously trumped by Johnny Barnes, son of the lodge proprietor, denizen of the pool house without a pool (across the way from the lodge), and without argument, griller extraordinaire. It would be easier to describe the aforementioned 155 mm enemy artillery round than to even touch that which Johnny produced for us over the following days.

Thursday was fish - fried fresh (like just pulled from the water) scallops, ma hi ma hi, some things I wasn't sure of, and grilled fresh tuna steaks with a freshly made crab sauce. Add to that corn bread, cole slaw, beans, etc. All but the tuna were deep fried. The tuna was cooked in a cast iron skillet over flame (this is all outside, now.) We stayed up most of the night dancing and keryokiing to an Eagles concert CD on John's home theatre setup (we're still in the pool house without a pool.)

Friday morning was bacon, hash browns, and eggs on the skillet (I'm sure I forgot something.) Friday night was steak night. Pound upon pound New York strip thrown on the Green Egg (oval green grilling device heated with some special wood.) Baked potatoes, backed beans and - well - please forgive any gastronomic details that I may have overlooked.) Somewhere in there we spent several hours with a tape recorder laughing and mostly crying about the grand young sons with whom we served. Each year it becomes increasingly unimaginable for me to process that these were all teen aged boys.

Saturday was the Hunters Feast on nearby Blue Pete Haven. It was a glorious day.

As the sun set, after a needless stop at Pearl's Bay Marina, we struggled back to Johnny's to be greeted with Egg fired Italian sausage slathered with his outrageous caramelized onion thing that he does on the skillet.

Incredibly, we all eat again and that is that.

Nobody moves.

Nobody speaks.

The Eagles concert is running on a closed loop, but few are singing.

We've all been had.

Sunday, the trips to the airport began anew. My last drop was Tuesday morning. Limping back to Knotts Island, I stopped by the post office to say hi to Bonny and pick up my mail for the first time in a week. I was greeted by two envelopes. I opened the one from the Veterans Administration without interest or curiosity to scan my lab results from the previous week.

Several sentences on the second page struck my eye, "your diabetes is directly related to you Agent Orange exposure..." "you will get a meter to check your blood sugar at home," I've referred you to our diabetes support group."

Blah, blah, blah.

I have diabetes.

Forty years ago this week, as I ran for cover, all of our young lungs absorbed the deadly dioxin around us. I survived an enemy artillery attack, but my real enemy was in the air, just as surely as if it had been a 500 pond bomb.

Forty years from today, a 60 year old Iraq/Afghanistan combat veteran is going to walk into a local Veterans Administration Hospital because he doesn't feel right.

Then it will be his turn.

This does not stop.

As long as we insist on fighting wars in strange faraway places, we will expose our troops to strange faraway ailments - like those eminating from the dioxin laced defoliants and napalm manufactured by the Dow Chemical Company of Midland, MI, USA.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"Days of Future Passed"

2008-03-04T17:42:00.000-05:00

I was in the second grade at Brayton Elementary School in Summit New Jersey in 1955 when the day came to get our polio shots. Our class was summoned to the auditorium and stood frozen with fear in a line that wound into the nurses office. I recall a conversation with a friend in which I said I'd rather risk polio than get the shot (I hated shots.)

Foolish?

Completely.

Polio was the scourge of the 20th century. It was one of the most feared of many childhood diseases that, to a great degree, no longer exist. Polio epidemics crippled thousands of people, mostly young children. All related to polio was horrific. In April, 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk announced the development of a vaccine and, within a year, nearly every American child had been vaccinated. Within a decade, the disease was largely eradicated from the United States.

Those were the days.

We were the first wave of the baby boom. Our fathers had defeated the Japanese and saved Europe. Anything was possible. We would have men on the moon and bring them safely home prior to my college graduation. To us, the power of American scientific achievement and (occasionally blind) hope for the future wasn't really amazing, it was assumed.

Five years after my first polio shot, while having a Coke at a diner across from the Strand movie theatre in Summit, I made the idiotic decision to have my first cigarette. Not long into my tenure as a smoker, the Surgeon General of the United States announced that there was a direct link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. I remember saying to a friend at the time that, by the time I got lung cancer, science would have found the cure. It was not a preposterous assumption, given the times. It was my own blind hope for the future. It also allowed me to continue smoking cigarettes in full denial of the personal repercussions (and, as we've come to find out, the significant second hand smoke repercussions of those that were around me.)

Unlike polio, however, lung cancer was not cured. Our school headmaster, who announced the Surgeon Generals report to us at an assembly in 1963, died of lung cancer nine years later. He never quit. My father died of lung cancer twenty years later. He quit only near the end. These were two intelligent and accomplished men. Several years later, I finally quit. Science was not going to win this one.

Smoking = death. It still does.

So much for blind faith in the future.

I was in denial about polio (I'll take my chances rather than the shot) and cigarette smoking (science will figure it out.)

Man defeated polio, cigarettes defeated man.

So now I am thinking of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is one of history's great individuals - on a par with Da Vinci, Gandhi, or Shakespeare. He was an accomplished diplomat, farmer, scientist, architect, inventor, and author. We all know Jefferson as the drafter of the Declaration of Independence.

"All men are created equal."

Jefferson was also a slave owner and fathered children by at least one slave (Sally Hemming.) He was not a wealthy man. He felt that he needed slaves to live a life that permitted him to be all of the things that he was and aspired to be. Many historians agree that Jefferson, although tormented by the institution of slavery, felt that, over time, it would die a natural death in the United States. This hope was based on my aforementioned cigarette argument. Somebody would think of something.

The ideals which Jefferson espoused were incompatible with his personal behavior. And, as far as his prognostication about slavery, he could not possibly have been more wrong. Slavery did not did a natural death. Its hideous end cost hundreds of thousand of lives and very nearly destroyed all that Jefferson envisioned.

Because the cure for polio came at my young age, I had reason to believe that lung cancer too would be defeated. Jefferson had drafted the Declaration, defeated the British, and achieved almost unimaginable personal accomplishments during his young lifetime and yet died alone as the owner of slaves.

So what?

Days when I drive the 25 miles from Knotts Island to Virginia Beach to do errands, I pass several enormous sand quarries with holes in the earth that are nearly unimaginable in scale. Sand is used for everything in road and housing construction. This is where it comes from. Sometimes I pretend that those holes contain granite, or oil, or coal, or all of the other natural resources that we consume to an unfathomable degree. The end products are in the skin of my car, my tires, the gas, the book on CD to which I listen, and the very the road upon which I drive.

Dr. Jonas Salk is nowhere to be found to cleanly solve that which we are bringing upon ourselves.

Like Jefferson, we will all be dead prior to the time of reckoning.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"Food Glorious Food, Hot Sausage and..." organic chicken?

2008-02-23T15:24:00.000-05:00

My sister Ruth can cook.

The other day she told me that she had made three kinds of soup, a batch of spaghetti, and some chili. My stomach grumbled. I asked that she send some over, but alas she lives in Oregon. However, she said it was easy, really.

All I had to do was take an organic chicken, throw it in a pot with a lot of water, cook it until "you have nothing better to do", stop cooking it, take the bones out, throw in anyting that is in the fridge, plus barley, carrots, onions, celery, squash, spinach, garlic, and mushrooms.

Ruthie says that it is good for whatever ails me and lasts a long time - two weeks at the least.

Great.

She wasn't too far into the instructions before it became apparent to me that this simple exercise would certainly require a stove. For all of its hospitable amenities, the Tillery Garage on Knotts Island does not have a stove. Given the space limitations of the "kitchen area," the garage would, in all liklihood, never have one either. Such an addition would require the elimination of either the bathroom or the Harley Davidson motorcycle workshop. I knew better than to even ask.

What to do?

I headed 25 miles up the road to look at gas grills. All this talk about boiling an organic chicken had me starved for a completely inorganic rib eye steak.

My first stop was Home Depot, as it was the closest. After some casual looking around, I had three wonderful revalations. First, gas grills don't have to cost a lot of money. I set my budget at $300 (gas can not included) and actually stayed within it. Neat. Second, most grills now come with a separate gas burner on the side. That meant that I could grill my steak and boil an organic chicken at the same time. Wow. The third point was heaven. All of these stores now assemble the grills for free!

My now son-in-law Brad Elmer and I once undertook to assemble a new gas grill right out of the box at night by flashlight in the middle of winter. We were guys. We were hungry. How hard could it be? Nearly impossible, as it turned out. I finally completed the assembly in the spring, months after Brad and his appitite had departed. Throughout the winter and early spring, as I toiled away, I'd occassionally call Brad with revelations that I felt certain would be as astounding to him as they were to me (hey, Brad, remember that funny screw that was left over after we realized we'd put the upper assembly on backwards again...?)

Having set my budget, identified the necessary features (4 main burners, 1 side burner), I set out to find my grill. Those who know me will not find the following behavior to be out of character. I left Home Depot grill-less, headed across the lot to Wal-Mart, went up the street to the new Super Target, went around the construction fence to Costco, drove down the road to Sears, and finally marched into a Lowes store which I was sure had not been there two weeks before. In point of fact, not one of these stores had been there even a year ago.

Despite my rigid "I'm a guy who knows what he's doing, don't fuck with me" exterior, a pleasant and knowledgable sales associate appeared and, within minutes, had sold me a Char Broil Gas Grill (Commercial Grade!!!) for $299 (gas can not included.)

Two days later, I drove back up the 25 miles to Lowes and picked up my grill. Planning ahead, I had already swung by Costco and purchased $234. worth of steak, pork, and chicken, and everything else on hand that might relate in some way to a grill. I also grabbed a case of plastic freezer bags to store it all in.

Within the hour, back at the garage, the grill was unstrapped from the back of the car (I might ask for help, next time), the can was connected, and the tank turned on.

With the turn of a dial and the push of a button...

...woooosh…

I was in business.

Thanks for the inspiration, Ruthie.

Thanks to the rest of you for visiting.

Jack

"Beautiful Boy"

2008-02-21T17:37:00.000-05:00

Before you cross the street,
Take my hand,
Life is just what happens to you,
While your busy making other plans,

Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful,
Beautiful Boy,
Darling, Darling,
Darling Sean.

John Lennon "Beautiful Boy"

An early morning phone call from an old friend can set the stage for a terrific day.

Plans to be made?

Laughs to be had about old times?

Old friends provide a unique leveling balance.

Such was not the case this morning. Vietnam buddy Terry Tillery called to tell me that Sean Mecham, the 31 year old son of our former Navy Hospital Corpsman, had died yesterday. The cause of death was reported to be a staff infection run wild.

I had breakfast, put on a jacket, and went for a walk.

I am in Cheshire, Connecticut. Although it was bright and sunshiny outside, one glance at the tightly closed rhododendron leaves told me that it was very cold. Undaunted, I turned down the street, and headed off in no particular direction while thinking of the Beautiful Boy that I had never known.

After years of searching, I’d reconnected with Mac four years ago. He was living in Sacramento, not far from his childhood home. He was happily married, had two grown children (a boy and a girl), and had a good job. On the surface, all was well – even better than well. We loved having each other back in our lives.

I walked through Cheshire’s suburban neighborhoods, cut through back yards, was stymied by several dead ends, and was soon largely lost. My mind was elsewhere. How does a 31 year old man just die from an infection? We have become so inured to the miracle of modern medicine that early natural death is nearly incomprehensible.

I pointed myself back in the general direction of Cheshire’s Main Street and, some time later, reemerged a mile south of town between the 7-11 and Dunkin' Donuts. Braced against the wind, I headed north, up the hill towards the center of town. As surely as he had lived, Sean Mecham was now dead. I could not walk away from that terrifying fact.

Once back in town, I noticed a curved wall in front of the brick City Hall. It was the Cheshire War Memorial. It contained the names Cheshire residents who had served their country in conflicts going back to the Civil War. It is impressive. To one side, was a bronze plaque honoring 1st Lt. H.C. Barnum, USMC, a son of Cheshire who had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for service with the Third Marine Division in Vietnam the year before Mac Mecham and I arrived in country. I knew Barney, as he is known. He and I had met on occasion in Washington and had friends in common, including Bill Negron, Mac’s and my company commander in Vietnam.

Wow, I thought, small world.

Prior to our recent reunion, I had last seen Mac in the summer of 1968 at the Oakland Naval Hospital where he and other comrades were recovering from horrific wounds suffered while our unit was under heavy attack months earlier. Mac recovered, met and married Lise, and several years later, had their first child – a boy - who they named Sean.

I never met Sean, but knew that he had had a difficult life. He suffered from severe addictions that had torn at his family, friends, and community for most of his adult life. Mac and Lise struggled as parents in ways that few of us can imagine. Some times it was scary, some times it was a nightmare, but at all times it was their beloved son, struggling with unspeakable demons deep within his soul.

Standing in the cold, staring at the bronzed name of my friend Barney Barnum, I realized that towns do not build memorials to young men like Sean Mecham. His brief life, unlike those commemorated on the Cheshire Wall, was one that we as communities try to forget rather than extol.

Where is the glory in the life of a young man who clawed every minute of every day to get past the inbred monsters that precluded him from living a normal life? In 31 years, he never even got to the starting line that the rest of us assume and expect.

This day, we rightfully continue to honor Barney Barnum as we have for 43 years. His service was extraordinary and stands as a paragon. Mac and I were Marines. Barney was a great Marine.

May we now add Sean Mecham and the thousands like him living and passed who so inspire us all, often by executing such seemingly simple tasks as getting out of bed each morning, dusting themselves off, and trying to get back in the game.

That is how I define courage.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"You did not desert me, my Brothers in Arms"

2008-02-11T13:17:00.000-05:00

Bill Negron called to remind me that it was the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive. Every day is now the 40th anniversary of something that happened to us in Vietnam.

Our company was fortunate during Tet. We were near Con Thien doing bridge security at a position we called the "Washout." Cam Lo, a small village several miles south of us, was the northernmost civilian location in South Vietnam.

Vietnam veterans often did not get the positive recognition that veterans of America's other wars received. Today, in honor of Tet, I'd like to recognize Corporal Larry Leonard Maxam, then a 20 year old boy from Glendale, California. He was my Brother in Arms.

Days after the beginning of the Tet Offensive, I accompanied a sergeant on a trip down to Cam Lo to get a situation report for the Skipper on some recent activity. Two squads from Delta Company had been sent down from the Washout the previous afternoon to bolster security following the NVA ambush of an Army convoy.

We had stood lines in Cam Lo for several days shortly after my arrival, so I was familiar with the layout. Nothing, however, could prepare me for what I saw on this sunny February morning. Coming into the tiny village, we spotted six U.S. Army trucks on the side of the road, still smoking from the rockets that had leveled them the previous afternoon. Their frames were twisted. Several were on their sides. Blackened bodies lay in the cabs, burnt into the seats, all but irremovable.

We paused for a brief moment, and then moved on. There was nothing there for us to see and nothing there for us to do. As we drove around the corner, another horrific sight came into view. There before us was a pile of dozens upon dozens of dead bodies stacked as high as they could be thrown.

Gooks?

Yes, thank god they were all gooks.

The Marines from the two squads of Delta Company that had come down from the Washout the day before to provide security were now methodically grabbing body after body off the barbed wire that encircled the small perimeter that they had established. The only sound was that of our idling motor. The only smell was the omnipresent stench of cordite – the detritus of modern battle. The bodies had only been dead for short hours. It was a remarkably surreal scene - indescribable and instantly etched into my permanent memory.

Years later I was sure that it had only been a dream.

The previous evening, those two squads from Delta Company had held off a vastly superior force of NVA that had targeted the previously defenseless Cam Lo village as part of the Tet Offensive. In one night, these thirty-five boys confirmed 160 N.V.A. dead (with dozens of others certainly carried away.) Enemy body counts in Vietnam were routinely inflated by the higher ups. In this case, however, you could walk over and count them one by one. Thirty five other NVA were captured along with several enemy trucks and a flag signed by all of the troops that was to have been raised over the village after their anticipated victory.

Delta Company lost one Marine killed.

Nearby, the Army lost several more in the passing convoy that had been ambushed to begin the attack.

The entire scene was so far beyond anything that my sane mind could comprehend that, after a time, I forgot the incident but for recurring nightmares that continued for decades. Like many grunts, I had dozens of such memories that hung between the real and the surreal. They became part of our DNA. Therapy could bring some out over time. Most however were destined to remain right there, deep inside, as surely as if they inhabited a bone. They would not depart my body before I did.

A Delta Company Marine, Corporal Larry Leonard Maxam, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his valor that night. It was awarded posthumously. The citation reads as follows:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a fire team leader with Company D, First Battalion, Fourth Marines, Third Marine Division in the Republic of Vietnam.

On 2 February 1968, the Cam Lo District Headquarters came under extremely heavy rocket, artillery, mortar, and recoilless rifle fire from a numerically superior enemy force, destroying a portion of the defensive perimeter. Corporal Maxam, observing the enemy massing for an assault into the compound across the remaining defensive wire, instructed his Assistant Fire Team Leader to take charge of the fire team, and unhesitatingly proceeded to the weakened section of the perimeter.

Completely exposed to the concentrated enemy fire, he sustained multiple fragmentation wounds from exploding grenades as he ran to an abandoned machine gun position. Reaching the emplacements, he grasped the machine gun and commenced to deliver effective fire on the advancing enemy. As the enemy directed maximum fire power against the determined Marine, Corporal Maxam s position received a direct hit from a rocket propelled grenade, knocking him backwards and inflicting severe fragmentation wounds to his face and right eye.

Although momentarily stunned and in intense pain, Corporal Maxam courageously resumed his firing position and subsequently was struck again by small arms fire. With resolute determination, he gallantly continued to deliver intense machine gun fire, causing the enemy to retreat through the defensive wire to positions of cover. In a desperate attempt to silence his weapon, the North Vietnamese threw hand grenades and directed recoilless rifle fire against him, inflicting two additional wounds.

Too weak to reload his machine gun, Corporal Maxam fell to a prone position and valiantly continued to deliver effective fire with his rifle. After one and a half hours, during which he was hit repeatedly by fragments from exploding grenades, and concentrated small arms fire, he succumbed to his wounds, having successfully defended nearly one-half of the perimeter single-handedly.

Corporal Maxam's aggressive fighting spirit, inspiring valor and selfless devotion to duty reflected great credit upon himself and the Marine Corps and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.”

Corporal Maxam was just one of us. He had been a corporal, a fire team leader, a veteran of December 6, 1967. Until the day before, he too had been at the Washout, digging pissers, burning shitters, filling sand bags, and going on endless perimeter patrols. He was now the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, as surely as if he’d been Audie Murphy himself.

In point of fact, Corporal Maxam could have been any one of us. This realization and the horror of what our Delta Marines had endured, snapped many of us in Charlie Company back to the reality that, although times were slack, the war was all around us, and it a matter of minutes we could again be in the very thick of it.
© Jack McLean 2007 All Rights Reserved

Thanks, Larry. We all miss you a lot.

Semper Fi and God bless.

Jack

"Sunshine Superman"

2008-02-03T15:08:00.000-05:00

SUPER SUNDAY!!

O.K., it's not Christmas or the Fourth of July, but it has been around long enough to conjur memories.

This is my first Southern Super Sunday in years (I don't aknowledge McLean, VA to be Southern.) I've been invited to Bill and Barb's pool house next door to watch the game. Chili and beer will be served. Excellent.

An interesting insight into Knotts Island is that one need not have an actual swimming pool to have a pool house. Bill and Barb do, but Johnny Barnes down the street does not (Johnny is just completing a major renovation of his pool house to include a small bedroom.)

Pool Houses are places where guys go to drink, watch football, and fall asleep in big lounge chairs. They are decorated to look like island tiki bars. I wasn't introduced to the concept until I was too old to get away with it in my own life. Happily, however, I now have an entire garage that serves as my personal pool house. All my stuff is here and I can fall asleep with the TV on and no one gets on my case.

It is warm. Pool house doors are open, guests are arriving (see photo above), grills are being fired up, bags of ice are being dumped over buckets of beer, and all seems right with the world. I'm looking forward to the game and am glad that Bill and Barb invited me over. Who wants to be alone on Super Sunday!?!

I spent my first Super Bowl Sunday in the South and I was, for the most part, alone. I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the sprawling east coast anchor for the United States Marine Corps. I was a Private First Class, attending supply school, and learning the one transferrable skill that I took from the Corps - typing.

That Saturday morning I was granted a 48 hour pass and decided to visit Andover friends that were attending the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I rose early, took the base liberty bus (known as the "vomit comet") into the neighboring town of Jacksonville, and boarded a Greyhound bus for Durham. Eighteen stops and 6 hours later I arrived to transfer and take the final three stops to Chapel Hill on a connecting bus.

I was young, excited, and free so have little recollection of the journey. I arrived, found some friends, drank a lot of beer, and flopped on a dorm sofa. Had I remained on base, I would have found some friends, drank a lot of beer, and flopped on my rack. The contrast seems less obvious to me now that it did at the time.

Sunday morning I was given a brief campus tour that included the college basketball stadium. I was stunned. Basketball was nothing at Andover. Even with the Glory Celtics, basketball was nothing in New England either. Hockey ruled! And yet, here was the home of the legendary North Carolina Tar Heels - a college gym bigger than the fabled Boston Garden itself.

I felt as though I was in a foreign land. Why ever would so many people want to watch a basketball game. Even my former classmates had been converted. Twenty years later, I moved with my young family to Charlotte. Several months after that, I began to understand the allure (the Tar Heels suck - a subject for a future blog.)

Super Bowl I must have begun around 3 in the afternoon as it was being played in L.A. It wasn't all that big a deal. In fact, it probably didn't become known as Super Bowl I until the next year when some genius decided to call the second rendition Super Bowl II. The Vince Lombardi Packers were playing the Hank Stram Kansas City Chiefs. Everybody was a Packer fan.

At halftime, I had to head back. I took a cab to the bus station, retraced my steps to Durham, and after a wait, boarded a Greyhound bus for the eighteen-stop six-hour journey back to Jacksonville. This trip I remember vividly. Every stop.

Raleigh. Zebulon. Bailey.

We reached Wilson at twilight.

I was now the only white person on the bus. It was a foreign country. We'd stop every few miles. People would get on and people would get off. I was miles removed from the Marine Corps and an entire light year from Andover or Chapel Hill, for that matter. The towns were small and ramshakle and the ground was perfectly flat. A single naked light bulb marked the bench that comprised the bus stop in each town.

Goldsboro, Kingston, New Bern.

New Bern?

My great-great grandfather came to the United States from Scotland with his brother. They were stone masons. When they arrived, my great-great grandfather went to Patterson, New Jersey (birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and consequently the epicenter of brick) and his brother came to New Bern, North Carolina. New Bern had been the capital of North Carolina prior to present day Raleigh. I made a point to return to New Bern in the daylight to review my great-great uncle's work. I've yet to go.

Pollocksville. Maysville. Belgrade. Jacksonville.

I disembarked with several other Marines who had joined the trip along the way. The Comet arrived around 11pm and we made the lonely last leg to Mountfort Point, Camp Lejeune. I flopped on my rack and during the brief instant before I fell aspeep, I wondered about what a long strange trip it had been.

Seven hours later, I was sitting tall in Sgt. Lerma's Monday morning class.

"Type 'A', you worthless motherfuckers, type 'A'.

It was good to be back.

"Songs For Beginners"

2008-02-02T15:15:00.000-05:00

My Nursery School teacher was Miss MacMaster. The class met three mornings a week in a small brick building adjacent to the Memorial Field playground in Summit, New Jersey.

My memories of Nursery School are fond, or at least uninvasive.

On one particular morning, workmen were banging and sawing away next door while we were singing, of all things, the Marine Corps Hymn. The louder they banged, the louder Miss MacMaster would have us sing. It was lots of fun. We were all singing and screaming at the same time, with her approval and encouragement.

Needless to say, I have never forgotten that moment. One thought that occasionally recurs is that we were in Nursery School and ALL of us - boys and girls - knew the words to the Marine Corps Hymn.

The Fifties were like that.

When I was little, we weren't all that far removed from World War II. There were war movies, war heroes (Audie Murphy), war ship models to be built, old Army uniforms stuffed in the attic, and endless war games to be reenacted with friends throughout the battlefields of the Watchung Reservation.

So why was it a surprise when, during my senior year in prep school, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps? It had been my childhood. It was how I was brought up. Patriotism, guns, war, and the Marine Corps were all very cool. Given the opportunity, the choice seemed obvious.

That being said, I’d like to turn you my readers, into you my listeners, for a peak at Miss MacMaster’s Nursery School class circa 2007. You can almost hear the workmen next door.

Semper Fidelis.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"It's a Small World, After All"

2008-02-02T10:08:00.001-05:00

Perhaps your young family endlessly sang this Disney classic. Mine did. It was a reminder that, despite our differences in culture and appearance, we are one as people of the world. Years later, Tom Friedman wrote The World is Flat in which he set forth our global economic interdependence. It had nothing to do with culture or appearance and everything to do with money.

Either way, for better or sometimes for worse, we are one people inextricably interconnected.

November 10, 2007 was a day that continues to remind me of the global village which Disney and Friedman acknowledged. Were I to write the movie trailer, I say that "it was a day of war and peace, love and hate, wealth and power, birth and death, honor and tradition, family and friendships spanning generations, with an all star cast."

My camera would then zoom in on the stars - My Granddaughter, Terry Tillery, Bill Negron, Tim Heck, and - reluctantly - me, all sitting around a table at Tun's Tavern in Philadelphia. The United States Marine Corps was founded at Tun’s Tavern on November 10, 1775. Hence, that day in 2007 was the Corp's 232nd birthday.

To mark the occasion, several survivors of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division were celebrating at a reunion in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Coincidentally, the day also marked 40 years since several attendees (me included) had arrived in Vietnam.

Others were busy that day as well.

In Hong Kong, 7,600 miles to the west, on that very day, my first Grandchild was born.

In Baghdad, Iraq, 7,300 miles to the east, on that very day, an American and a Marine Corps flag were being flow in my honor over Firebase Spiteful in Camp Fallujah - the definition of hell on earth for a new generation of United States Marines. I only became aware of this yesterday when the flags and accompanying citations arrived in the mail.

Margaret came first. Given the time difference, we awoke to the wonderful news. Most of our day was spent visiting Angel Fire, a stunning memorial near Taos created by Victor Westphall to honor his son David, a 4th Marine brother who was killed on our watch in 1968.

That evening we celebrated. Marine Corps Birthday rituals were followed to the letter. I rose to toast Bill Negron, our company commander on this his 71st birthday and Margaret on her birth day. I also read an email that I’d just received from 1st Lt. Tim Heck detailing the activities of his unit during the previous week at Camp Fallujah, Iraq. Bill, Margaret, and Tim each received a standing ovation.

After dinner, a raffle was held. The prize item was a Marine Corps baby quilt beautifully created by the wife of one of our group. In addition to the Vietnam service ribbons and eagle globe and anchor, the date and our unit markings were embroidered in. The winner was Terry Tillery. Terry wasted little time in quietly presenting it to Bill Negron in honor of his birthday. Several minutes later, Bill walked over and, without fanfare, handed the quilt to me.

“Here,” he said in a whisper. “Please give this to Margaret with love from all of us.”

The evening ended, but I had yet to see the actual conclusion of the day until yesterday. In the mail, I received a package from Tim Heck. Tim was a Georgetown neighbor during his undergraduate years. Each fall, as new students arrived to reside on our street, I’d ring several doorbells wearing my Marine Corps sweatshirt to let my new neighbors know exactly how it was going to be for the upcoming year. It was a stunningly effective strategy which gained me hours of additional weekend sleep.

Tim opened his door, gave me a quiet Indiana up and down and remarked,

“I’m going to be one of you.”

I was stunned. This was a first. “One of me,” I responded?

“”Yes sir, one of you. I’m in Naval ROTC. When I graduate, I’ll be commissioned a 2nd Lt. in the United States Marine Corps.”

My first reaction was to ask the poor misguided soul if he was in full possession of his faculties. There would soon be a war going on and Tim wanted to be an infantry officer.

“Semper Fi, brother” were my only words.

“Semper Fi, sir,” he responded.

Tim and I became friends and have stayed in touch. He loves the Marine Corps and thereby, by extension, loves me. I love Tim as well. It’s one of the reasons that the United States Marine Corps is older than the country itself.

Yesterday, a package from Tim arrived. It included a Marine Corps flag, an American flag and two documents. The first document was a formal citation that read:

This Flag was flown over Sierra Battery Gun line at Camp Fallujah, Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 06-08.1
Presented to:
Jack McLean

It included appropriate seals and signatures. I was, needless to say, blown away.

The second document was a memo to me, Cpl. Jack McLean C/1/4, on the unit’s letterhead from Gunnery Sergeant M.D. Hamby, Position commander of Firebase Spiteful, Camp Fallujah, Iraq. It reads as follows:

Subj: For Your Loyal Service to the Marine Corps

The enclosed flags were flown in your honor by First Lieutenant Timothy G. Heck of Battery S, Fifth Battalion, Tenth Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team Six, aboard Firebase Spiteful, Camp Fallujah, Anbar Province, Iraq on November 10, 2007.

The flags were flown with the ideals of General Lejeune’s original birthday message animating our thoughts and actions. The Marines of Spiteful Battery are currently carrying on the legacy set forth by the Marines that have preceded us on the battlefields both here and elsewhere and the warrior ethos you have passed on to us. The Marines here are the successors to the legacy of Chapultepec, the walls of the Peking Legion, the wheat fields of Belleau Wood, the volcanic sands of Iwo Jima, the frozen expanse of the Chosin Reservoir, and of your own battles in the DMZ.

We hope these flags will be a small token of our appreciation for the heritage and standards you have established for us. The Marine Corps is in good hands as a result of your work.

May the Marine Corps enjoy many more birthdays as our legacy for honor, courage and commitment continues to be built daily by the Marines of Spiteful Battery.

Semper Fidelis!

Semper Fidelis to you as well, Gunny, and to Tim and to Terry.

To Bill, Margaret, and the United States Marine Corps, Happy Birthday!

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"The Ragpicker's Dream"

2008-02-01T14:31:00.000-05:00

We have all moved.

Several months ago I moved into an apartment over the Tillery's garage in Knotts Island, North Carolina. (Note: There is no house to this garage. The Tillerys live miles away.)

My relocation to the garage last fall was precipated by a desire on the part of my soon-to-be-former wife that I vacate the marital premises with all due haste.

Our house was placed on the market and, yesterday, sold. Our final act as a couple was to execute a parking lot exchange of the detritus that had wound up in the wrong camps. Mine was contained in a cardboard moving box. I picked it up, bid adieu, and moved on with my life.

Early last evening, I arrived back home at the garage, tired from the long drive, exhausted from the process, and, enormously relieved. I unloaded the car, put the food in the fridge, laundry in the washer, mail on the desk, and the box on the floor nearby.

Hours later, I became curious about that which I had somehow left behind. I thought that you, my loyal readers, with memories of your own last departing looks at former houses after a move, might have an interest as well in knowing the contents of the box:

Seven audio books and CDs including 8 Weeks to Optimum Health, The Odyssey, A Tale of Two Cities, The Iliad, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, The Anventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Farewell to Arms, and Jim Lizotte's 2005 Christmas CD.
A small dark Vermeeresque framed print of a lone woman in a white hat reading alone. From earlierst memory, this picture has given me the creeps. Why do I insist on keeping it? It was my mother's.
A severely tarnished sterling silver Owl Club ice bucket which I have never used and of which I remain incapable of disposing.
A small red carved Japanesey box that used to live in the top drawer of a mahogony drop leaf side table. Inside the box are four two inch sections of leg, sawed off years ago to assure the table's fit in whatever space it was then accommodating.
Two Tiffany paperweights, each a parting gift after a speaking engagement.
Two tire pressure guages.
A liner adjustor for my ski helmet.
Dozens of McLean family snapshots, some framed, some in plastic baggies (one, in fact, a Jacobi family snapshot.)
A single polished stone bookend.
A beaded keychain with a NATO 7.62 rifle bullet attached.
Two picture holders swipped from a table at Sarah & John's rehersal dinner.
A Washington, DC region bike map.
A cork McLean of Duart coaster.
Assorted unopened credit card offers touting breathless interest rates.

It was like Christmas, of course. Each item a treasure (I always wondered where those ski helmut pads were...I wonder if they'd work on my bike helmet.) The book end is now holding up books, the paperweights now secure papers from pesky ocean breezes.

As I write, I am transferring items to the most excellent key chain. The family snapshots have renewed immediate interest given my brother Don's recent passion for the subject.

I never did listen to For Whom the Bell Tolls, still have interest in Optimum Health, and REALLY missed Jim's Christmas CD this year.

The Vermeer will be rehung, continue to give me the creeps, and forever remind me of my mother (kindly ignore the association.)

Anybody want a DC bike map - still in the original plastic sleeve?

It goes on EBay next week.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"I am a Rock"

2008-01-28T15:30:00.000-05:00

This morning I paused while crossing a wooden foot bridge and gazed at the brook below. The late morning sun hung in a cloudless southern sky. My goal was to attempt to understand the effect that the mottled sunlight and slowly moving water had on the objects upon which they played - specifically a rock. It wasn’t that cold and I had time on my hands.

My mother was an artist. She might observe such a scene and, through the prism of her mind, use her hand, brush, and pallet of paints to create her visual interpretation of the scene on a canvas or piece of paper. I’d seen her do it countless times.

I am an artist as well, but possess mostly the ability to write and lead you, the reader, to visualize what I saw through your mind’s eye as opposed to your actual eye.

Occasionally I wonder about such things.

My friend Betsy is an artist – a painter and a singer (she’d challenge me on the latter.) Yesterday during dinner, I asked her how she had become a painter.

“I’ve always been able to paint,” she replied.

“Always, like since always!?” I queried. How far back is always and how do you know when you actually have what might be considered a talent, I wondered to myself?

“Since elementary school, I was the kid who could draw and paint," she went on. “Teachers recognized it and, for the most part, encouraged it.”

In that regard, she was like my mother. A difference was that mom went to art school while Betsy went to a liberal arts college. Both continued their lives while their once burgeoning artistic talents were turned into avocational endeavors. After kids, after dad, mom began to paint again. Betsy kept her skills alive by using vacation time to attend painting workshops with well know artists.

“What would you learn,” I asked? “I mean, what could another artist teach you that would make you a better painter? Is it about the paint, the paper, the brush, the canvas...” I had run out of variables. I was trying to compare it to writing – better grammar, sentence structure, but to me they were incomparable. Perhaps I was also trying to better understand my late mother.

“I had a wonderful teacher years ago who would begin each day with a fresh piece of (very expensive!) water color paper and he’d just go.” Betsy had removed herself to a faraway place as she fondly recalled an act of learning.

“One day,” she continued, “it was a stream. He’d move some blue-green paint effortlessly across the paper. A gray tree would be added, then more trees. We’d all watch. It really was amazing see him work, Jack.”

I visualized the class huddled around the master’s easel and wondered how they learned whatever they were learning.

“In an hour or so he’d be done, she went on. We’d then spend the rest of the day at our easels painting our own streams while he walked around giving us individual pointers.”

“What might he say to you when it came to be your turn,” I asked? Betsy smiled. I wasn’t certain if she was nurturing a memory or patiently indulging my boundless curiosity. “Am I being a pest,” I continued? “You’ve got me going. I’m just really curious.”

“Not at all.” She laughed out loud. “Let’s see, what might he say?”

She thought for several seconds, took a sip of her drink, glanced at the desert menu, and returned her eyes to mine. “A rock looks different underwater than it does above the water. It’s a different color and the sunlight plays on it differently. The water has motion that both reflects and absorbs the light in different ways. Sometimes a stick will get stuck behind a rock. That changes everything. It’s so much about the light, Jack.”

The light.

Her words faded as her eyes lowered.

And so I paused this morning while crossing a wooden foot bridge and gazed at the brook below. I focused on a submerged rock. I watched the water slip over and around it while the sun twinkled and played on it through the trees. Betsy had reminded me that it was important for a painter to remember that the light always comes from the same direction.

To my eye, on that brook, this morning, there was nothing but light. There was even light in the absence of light. A thousand shades of light danced in every crevice and every corner.

It was blinding.

It was a moment.

I lingered until I felt that I could linger no longer and moved on.

Thank you, Betsy.

Thanks to the rest of you for visiting.

Jack

"My Father's Eyes"

2008-01-15T12:43:00.002-05:00

On April 4, 1946, Lt. Col. Donald H. McLean Jr. and five U.S. Army colleagues, while on a visit to Rome from their headquarters in Berlin, were granted an audience with Pope Pius XII. The following (edited) account is taken from his diary.

Having agreed to meet at 11AM, we rose at a reasonable hour and had a casual morning. Several of us went shopping for gifts. The main drag had all sorts of tourist items, especially leather goods. I got a bottle of perfume (2,000 lira) and a set of wooden band figures. I also purchased several rosaries for the Pope to bless.

At the appointed hour, we were driven to St. Peters in two cars under the leadership of a representative from the American Embassy. Driving in was like entering a castle. We passed through several gates, each positioned with the famous Swiss Guards who saluted smartly as we passed. We stopped in an inner courtyard, were ushered inside, and had our hats and coats checked.

After a brief wait, we began our trek through the 12 rooms that lead to the Pope's anteroom. They were all very ornate in a quiet red plush medieval sort of way. Several had chairs set up, apparently for Papal audiences. The Swiss Guards were everywhere, dressed in their distinctive costumes. We encountered another brief wait in a room about four removed from the main one where the Pope sat. We all stood by. We were then ushered into the anteroom, lined up, and waited again.

A Cardinal and several clerics of lesser stature filed out as we were ushered in to greet the Pope. As instructed, we knelt on one knee, held his hand, kissed his ring, got up, and took our seats which had been arranged in a semicircle around his desk.

He wore a pure white vestment, skull cap, and a beautiful diamond studded ivory crucifix on a chain. His sapphire ring was surrounded by small diamonds. I noticed that he had lovely hands with long fingers. He spoke in English and seemed to understand it as well. At the center of his desk was a box of blue (for boys) and white (for girls) rosaries as well as a small stack of envelopes about one inch square.

After greetings and introductions, there ensued a brief discussion about the dire food situation in Germany. The Pope had recently met with former U.S. President Herbert Hoover who had been appointed by President Truman as a special envoy to determine the food status of the occupied nation. The Pope was complementary of all that America had done in this regard and was to give an address on the subject that afternoon.

The Pope asked each of us where we were from and listened carefully and attentively as we spoke. He then asked if we'd like a rosary. I took 2. He blessed them with a wave of the hand. He similarly blessed the ones that we had purchased earlier. After about 15 minutes, the he slowly rose to his feet, came around the desk, shook our hands, and gently (but firmly!) let us out. We then filed back quickly through all 12 rooms again. It had been a most impressive event which words are inadequate to describe.

We were then led into a room jam packed with about 700 standing people who had come to see the pope for a public audience. The crowd included some 100 young Italian children (5-7) in white dresses. We were led to chairs along the side that were in front of the rope that separated the crowd from the Pope's chair.

With all carefully arranged, the Pope entered through a side door. The children clapped loudly and broke into a chant which I did not understand. It sounded like a college cheer. He blessed the crowd, went up to the dais, and sat down. He spoke in English then repeated his words in Italian. He concluded with another blessing, rose, and slowly departed through the same door. The children again clapped and cheered loudly.

The Pope had an obvious human touch that reminded me of General Eisenhower. There was nothing pompous about him. He appeared to be very friendly and kind.

The Wheels on the Bus (Redux)

2008-01-12T10:43:00.000-05:00

Readers here may recall the Byzantine challenges faced by the school children of Knotts Island (The Wheels on the Bus, 12/7/07.)

Readers may also recall my anticipated participation in the Most Excellent California Christmas Ever (12/12/07) in Davis, about 10 miles west of Sacramento.

In what unlikely way are these two entries related?

Davis sits in the Pacific Flyway, a major migration route for waterfowl and other North American birds. The Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area provides habitat for thousands of resident and migratory waterfowl on more than 2,500 acres of wetlands.

Knotts Island sits in the Atlantic Flyway. The MacKay National Wildlife Refuge provides a sanctuary for thousands of migratory waterfowl on more than 8,000 acres of primarily wetlands and marshes.

Davis and Knotts Island are flat and low (elevations of 51 and 10 feet respectively.) Agriculture dominates both areas. Big green John Deere farm equipment dots the landscapes. Ginormous pickup trucks are also common to both areas. Many in this area have Confederate flag licence plates on the front. California requires a state issued front plate.

Davis covers about 10 square miles. Knotts Island covers perhaps 20 square miles, with better than half being the MacKay Refuge.

Davis bills itself as a "a university-oriented city with a progressive, vigorous community noted for its small-town style, energy conservation, environmental programs, parks, preservation of trees, red double-decker London buses, bicycles, and the quality of its educational institutions."

Knotts Island describes itself by acknowledging that "not many people have ever heard of us. We're generally unknown to the travelers who visit North Carolina's Outer Banks every year."

The City of Davis was founded in 1868. Knotts Island is unincorporated, so was never really founded, per se. The Outer Banks were formed about 8,000 years ago after the glaciers melted.

The population of Davis is about 65,000. The population of Knotts Island, by my guess, is about 1,000. I could be way off.

Davis has more than 50 miles of bicycle paths and more bicycles per capita than any other city in the nation. Knotts Island has no bike paths. I am one of, perhaps two or three adults that I have seen publicly riding a bicycle.

Davis has 10 elementary schools in addition to secondary schools ,alternative schools, etc. Knotts Island has a small elementary school. Period.

O.K., so Davis is a comparatively large progressive place with thousands of kids, a Starbucks and a Borders, and probably a Gap. Knotts Island is a backwater with a couple of hundred kids, a small post office, country store, and a restaurant (of sorts.)

What's the point?

Knotts Island school children are bussed to schools, some across state lines - some by ferry, that lie in two states and are as much as 40 miles apart.

The City of Davis, California does not own a school bus. Not one (they do lease several from a bordering town to transport kids with special needs.) Every child walks, rides a bike, gets driven, or (in the case of some high schoolers, I suppose) drives.

I am at a loss to draw a conclusion from this except that Davis probably has healthier kids.

Christmas 1967

2007-12-25T13:53:00.000-05:00

One quiet night, I was standing an uneventful third watch thinking of home and wondering what the scene was in Brookline. It was Christmas Eve – my first ever away from home and family. At midnight, preparing to wake my watch relief, I took a final scan out over the parapet toward the desolately black DMZ beyond.

My rifle laid before me with a full magazine, chambered round, safety in the off position. There were several hand grenades by my side -fragmentation in case they got close, illumination in case I heard a scary noise. There was also a little switch that connected to a wire that lead to a claymore mine that I had placed twenty feet in front of me. When activated, a claymore would eliminate all living things within fifteen feet of its face – plants, rats, humans. It was a nasty little weapon that provided great peace of mind to any weary Marine on a late watch.

I had a fresh canteen of water and a half smoked pack of Camels. I pulled one out and lit it - ever careful to shroud the ignition lest I expose my position. I was saving the remnants of a joint for a special treat for later.

I wasn’t certain that I had ever been up at midnight on Christmas Eve. Dad and Ruthie used to go to the midnight church service sometimes, but I never found the idea very appealing. The faster I got to bed, the faster Christmas would come. I continued to believe that long after I stopped believing in Santa Claus.

Yet, here we really were - caught it an unfathomably peculiar limbo between war and peace.

War – the previous two weeks had been cold, wet, mud, horror, death, wounded, scared, oh my god so scared.

Peace – a three day Christmas cease-fire during which there was no noise, no movement, no patrols, no incoming artillery or mortars, and no outgoing.

At midnight, as I was preparing to give my watch relief a gentle nudge, a dull distant boom broke the silence. It was a distinctive muzzle blast from far to our south. Dong Ha? Quang Tri? Then another - boom. It must be night defensive fire from the rear.

Why were we shooting?

More drumming boomed on top of the other. So much for Christmas. Then, all at once, the familiar whistling sound from far above was followed by a friendly pop.
A white illumination flare exploded across a jet black sky…then another.

Alert.

Senses spiked.

Enemy activity? Eyes sharp, Jack – adjust. Adjust. Use your peripheral vision. Look away from the lowering flare. Look for movement, any movement. Is the claymore still there? Yes. Thank god. Then again from high above

A green flare ignited a sky that was already sprayed with a million stars, followed by a red flare.

A red flare.

I get it!

It’s Christmas Eve.

The silence of the cease fire continued all through Christmas Day except for a brief early morning flyover by a spotter plan with speakers that serenaded us with Christmas Carols. It was very cool. No patrols were sent out, although the watch schedules were maintained.

We took the time to breathe easier, while playing children’s games that my sister Ruthie had sent – checkers, slinkies, yo-yos, Old Maid, and Silly Putty. There were candy canes to eat and photographs of peaceful places back home in which to lose ourselves.

The yo-yos were the biggest hit. Machine gunner Tom Morrissey instantly made one of them his own. For weeks it never left his side. During an occasional quiet moment he could be seen alone pulling it out and, through the magic of a string and a round block of wood, removing himself to some distant New Hampshire childhood place.

Days later, Tom and I were on a patrol with the second platoon. I noticed him, far ahead where the column twisted around and into the tree line. He was at the edge of a rice paddy, kneeling to fill his canteen with the tepid swamp water. As he rose, M-60 machine gun carefully balanced on his shoulder, Ray Ban aviator glasses in place, he pulled the yo-yo from his hip pocket and with one downward thrust, spun a perfect “cats cradle.”

Then, with the flick of his shoulder, in a ritual of ultimate cool that he had performed a thousand times before, his weapon fell softly into his hands. In one unbroken motion he slapped a full bandolier of NATO 7.62 caliber ammo into the top, chambered a round, flipped off the safety, and followed his fire team back into the jungle.

Forever Tom.

I’m certain that no one saw it but me.

Six months later Tom Morrissey was dead.

c 2007 Loon - A Marine's Story All Rights Reserved.

Welcome…Back

2007-12-22T13:28:00.000-05:00

It’s been years since I was in a small New England town at Christmas time. There is a thick layer of snow and ice thanks to last week’s storms. Beautiful. It is now lightly snowing again. Can my first snow angel be far behind!

A white Christmas is assured.

Last evening we went to St. Patrick's Church to hear a Christmas chorale. The church was packed, candles were held, children behaved, while adults sang and listened to the story of the first Christmas. It was as magnificent as I remember from so many years ago.

There are, however, unmagnificent elements to a pending white Christmas. Because of the snow, roads are several feet narrower, turning lanes no longer exist, mall parking lots are diminished, vehicles are salt encrusted and filthy, sidewalks are unshoveled, and, not surprisingly, tempers are short as the big day approaches.

I am a world away from Knotts Island, but I do feel welcome … back in New England.

I walked over to the coffee shop this morning. As I slid across the parking lot to the door, a young woman exiting held the door for me.

“Thank you.” I said with a smile.

“No problem,” she responded neither breaking stride nor looking up.

No problem?

Safely inside, I ordered a tall chai tea latte.

“One tall chai tea latte?” the clerk responded.

“Yes,” said I. “Thank you.”

“Yup.”

Yup?

My lidded paper cup shortly arrived at the other end of the counter.

“One tall chai tea latte,” said the young man.

“That’s me,” said I reaching for the drink. “Thank you.”

“Thank youuuu,” came the reply.

Thank you??!!

Who’s doing the thanking around here and how is it that so few people care to acknowledge that. We teach our children “please” and “thank you” and most emerge form childhood with that aspect of manners intact. But, what about the “you’re welcome”…back?

“Please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome” are part of a three part contract that enters our lives dozens of times a day among family, friends, and total strangers alike. You ask a favor of someone (“please pass the salt”.) The salt is passed. You respond (“thank you.”) The salt passer then completes the transaction (“you are welcome.”)

Done.

Somewhere along the way, the “you are welcome” part was replaced by responses such as “no problem”, “yup” or, the worst of all, the echoing “thank youuuu.”)

In the case of my door holder, she may have more politely acknowledged my thanks (“you are welcome”) then passed on the additional information she felt compelled to give (“no problem.”)

The clerk who took my coffee order was flat-out rude. To respond “yup” to a “thank you” is to dismiss the person completely. (I don’t care if you thank me or not, because to me you don’t exist.) My daughter Sylvia will laugh out loud here. Ridding her of the “yup” response to a “thank you” was one of my singular achievements as a parent. She has since become a worthy disciple and, as an elementary school teacher, molding more young brains than this blog ever could.

Finally, the “thank youuu” response to the “thank you” delivered to the young man who delivered my coffee. By immediately responding to my “thank you” with his own, he is saying that not only does my “thank you” not count, but he is trumping it with his own “thank youuu” thereby letting me know who’s really in charge (nobody’s going to thank me and get away with it!)

Yogi Berra once said that “you can see a lot just by observing.” Do some observing of your own and see what you come up with. Turn on the TV to a show that has guests or commentators (Oprah, Meet the Press, NFL Today, etc,) and listen to how the guests respond when they are thanked by the host. You will hear, “yup,” thank you,” my pleasure,” "thanks for having me,” and, of course, the greatest of them all, “thank youuu!!”

You may listen for days before you hear “you are welcome.” When you do, buy lots of whatever the show’s sponsors are selling.

Let’s bring welcome…back.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"When life looks like easy street, there is danger at the door."

2007-12-16T07:43:00.000-05:00

Nothing much happens on Knotts Island. This seems agreeable to the residents. My new eyes, however, see things happen all the time.

The other day, I walked to the ferry dock for a ride over to Currituck and back. It was a gorgeous windy day - ideal for a boat ride. The hour and a half round trip would afford an opportunity to take pictures and fiddle with the Times crossword.

When I arrived at the landing, I saw a large white van with "North Carolina Prisons" stenciled on the side. It was hauling a portable outhouse and several cases of orange trash bags. I had noticed filled orange trash bags along the side of the island roads over the previous several days. This would be the source.

The ferry was delayed because of wind, so the driver of the prison van and I sat on the curb and chatted (his human cargo was securely chained within the van.)

"What's doing," I asked the ferry operator. "Is the ferry going to go?"

"Dunno" replied the captain. "Wind."

He was an enormous man with a sweet demeanor, but difficult to understand.

"Have your guys been picking up the trash along the Knotts Island roads the last several days?"

"Yip."

"They all prisoners?"

Long pause, "Yip?"

After a time, he pulled out a cell phone and speed dialed a number.

"We still here." Pause. "Yip." Pause. "Yip. K."

"What's up?' I asked. "Did you get some info?"

"Yip. Wind. Maybe go at 11."

It was 10:45.

There seemed to be no urgency on any one's part to get the ferry going. The prison van was the only vehicle in line and I was the only other passenger. I began to wonder if the prisoners would be released during the ride. I began to further wonder about the wisdom of my spontaneous morning adventure.

"Where's the prison?" I asked. I decided to keep the conversation, such as it was, going.

"'Lizbit Siti."

"Elizabeth City?" I searched for clarification.

"Yip."

"Ah." I responded. "State prison?"

"Yip."

"Ah" came my rote reply. "How do you pick the guys, I mean, what's to keep them from taking off?"

"Sho timahs."

"Ah, short timers. I see. So they don't really have much incentive to run. O.K. That makes sense."

"Yip. Maybe a mon or two left mos ofem, but evy so ofen, one dummass will duck in da trees."

"Try to escape, really, with only a month or two left?"

"Yip."

"Gosh, then what do you do?" I had visions of southern chain gangs, shot guns, blood hounds - scary stuff. Knotts Island is not that big a place.

"Oh, we go fine hid gull fran. He be there. Dummasses."

I suppose it made sense. If a prisoner with two weeks left was stupid enough to run, why would he be smart enough to go someplace other than his girl friend's house.

The guards cell phone rang.

"Yip. Wind. Yip. "K."

"Any news" I asked?

"Nope."

On those times when the ferry didn't operate, one had to drive 25 miles up into Virginia Beach, 15 miles across to the Great Dismal Swamp, then 20 miles back down into North Carolina. The upper school kids did it all the time. It took about as long to drive the 60 miles as it did for the ferry to travel 5 miles across the sound.

"Well, too bad about the drive," I commiserated. "I suspect you are ready to get these guys back."

"Can drive. Godda takeda ferry."

Now I was confused. "What if the ferry doesn't go. I mean, what if the wind doesn't die down? Don't you have to drive around?"

"Nope. Can't"

"How come," I pressed?

"Ain't loud take da boys to Ginia. NoCalina prisoners."

"Oh. No kidding. Gosh, I never thought of that. You can't cross a state line with the prisoners, is that it?

"Yip."

"So, what do you do?"

"Wait. She'll go."

It was a curious state of affairs - no pun intended. Knotts Island has no land connection to North Carolina. The only two ways out are by road north to Virginia Beach or by ferry to Currituck.

I waited for five or ten more minutes, took a final look back at the prison van, and decided to walk back to my garage and finish the puzzle at home.

The wind died down later in the day. That afternoon, I saw the van was gone and the ferry appeared to be operating.

All's well that ends well, I 'spose.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

It's Official

2007-12-15T10:08:00.000-05:00

I've lived over the Tillery garage for three months - well past the legal time limit for a local driver's licence and vehicle registration. So, yesterday, I took the 10AM Currituck ferry across the sound to begin my journey to Elizabeth City, the closest motor vehicle office.

I had, in fact, set out the day before on the same journey but realized, as the ferry left the dock, that I had brought no proof of anything (age, residence, insurance, etc.) I was so focused on the driver's exam, that I had brought only the NC Motor Vehicle Manual to study on the ride over.

Yesterday I was ready, or so I felt.

Friends had forewarned me that the DMV would get me one way or the other, so I set aside the entire day for the adventure. I am not a novice. This was to be my ninth driver's license in seven different states (NC and Mass. being repeats) and eighth vehicle registration. Most notably, over the past nine years I had become a battle scarred veteran of the antediluvian District of Columbia DMV. How tough could North Carolina be?!

I had no idea.

After driving off the ferry, I studied every traffic sign for the duration of the journey to Elizabeth City (regulation?, warning?, informational?) I flipped though my notes (25 feet from a curb, 15 feet from a fire hydrant).

My heart raced.

The first surprise? There was no DMV office at the given address.

How diabolical.

While blindly retracing my steps back through Elizabeth City, I noticed a door in a small strip mall that said "License Plate Office." I'd have missed it but for the large black and white sign on the adjacent storefront church ("Jesus? He's in the Book!")

The license plate office, run by a private contractor, was the size of a living room and housed four staff, stacks of plates, computers, printers, extra paper, a small fridge (safely behind he counter), a twisting line of 14 people, several stenciled signs announcing the presence of no bathrooms, and dozens of other faded hand stenciled signs announcing changes in every code imaginable over the past ten or so years. Unfortunately, I did not notice the one announcing that an NC driver's licence was now required to register a vehicle.

Twenty minutes later, I was so informed.

The diver's licence bureau is located six miles on the other side of town inside of the State Police office. When they called my number (28) the officer while pleasant, was insistent that my laminated Social Security card was not acceptable. I was in luck, however. There was a local Social Security office on yet another side of Elizabeth City. Talk about good fortune!

The Social Security office was the size of, well, a living room. There was one extremely patient staff member who gave diligent and thorough service to each of the nine people in front of me. She was remarkable. I'd have killed half of them. An hour later I emerged with a valid Social Security card - not part of my original mission, but a small sign of progress.

It was now 2PM.

The people at the driver's license office seemed happy to see me back. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, or perhaps there are some poor souls who never return from the trip to the Social Security office.

I was now getting nervous. The driver's test loomed.

I confidently presented my passport as my second form of ID. Had I been more diligent, I'd have noticed that my passport had expired in April and was, thereby, unacceptable. Fortunately I was deep in ID. Ironically, the notarized copy of my marriage license sufficed.

The final hoop prior to the test was proof of insurance. I proudly presented my insurance card with all of the required information. Unfortunately, it had Karen's name on it. An hour later, after several telephone calls and a fax from my agent, I was ready for the test.

Eyes? O.K.

Sign knowledge? Check.

Driver's exam? 22 out of 25. I passed with two to spare!

Back ground selection (lighthouse, airplane, bird), voter registration, organ donor, signature, photograph and...???

I am legally licensed to drive a class 3 motor vehicle in the state of North Carolina.

Armed with the license and renewed confidence, I headed back six miles to the Final Battleground. The line at the license plate office wasn't that bad - maybe nine people this time. I waited patiently, read some more signs (they apparently are not responsible if small children swing on the ropes that twist around the room to demark the line), and fooled around with the prior day's NY Times crossword.

After a time, I got to the front, gave them my license, gave them my insurance information, and even gave them my Social Security information - not because they asked for it, but because I could. There was one snag as the old title read J.P. Morgan Chase the leasing company wanted the new title to read Chase Auto Finance. Tab "A" did not go into slot "B". I was tired, starved, but rigid in my resolve.

It was 4PM. Victory was at hand. They made a few calls, sorted things out, pulled out a shiny new plate, showed me where to sign, and asked for $238.

$238!!??

There was a tax of which I had not been aware. I'd forgotten my check book and was way short on cash.

Would they take a credit card?

Laughs all around.

Where was the nearest ATM?

Shrug.

The rule was that, if you left the parking lot, you'd have to return to the end of the line.

I was erased from the computer, given back my paperwork, and exiled to search for an ATM. There aren't a lot of banks in Elizabeth City - a subject perhaps for a future blog. After a time I found one, my card worked, I returned four miles back to the license plate office, the line was manageable (7 people - 2 appeared to be together) and at 4:45, exited with my new plate. NC XPA4552. I waved goodbye as we all agreed to get together again in the Bahamas in 5 years.

I just made the 5:30 ferry back to Knotts Island. As it pulled out, I headed for the upper deck to watch a magnificent sunset and find a trash can that would be a worthy receptacle for my dog-eared North Carolina Motor Vehicle Manual.

Thank you for visiting,

Jack

"The Most Excellent California Christmas Ever!"

2007-12-12T13:48:00.000-05:00

This is the title that my daughter Sylvia has given to our family Christmas celebration.

No doubt, somebody in her family has a background in marketing.

In deference to my California friends, this will be Sylvia's first California Christmas, so her claim is not designed to slight those of you who have had a string of most excellent California Christmases.

This will be the Most Excellent (McLean/Elmer family) California Christmas Ever.

You know how people sometimes will say, "boy a year ago, I never imagined that I'd be doing this or that...?" When someone says that to me, my mind tries to imagine everything that is imaginable ever. I don’t want to be caught off guard in a year having something happen to me that I never imagined would happen. My brain is so actively ADD that I like to think that I've imagined everything that could ever be conceivably be imagined. It keeps me from thinking about the things that normal people think that I should be thinking about.

That having been said, a year ago I never imagined that I would be cheerfully anticipating the “Most Excellent California Christmas Ever!” I’ve spent the last five Christmases in Georgetown with my wife Karen, her ex- husband, their two kids, and four grandkids. One big happy family. O.K., I did feel a like an outsider, but over time it had developed into a manageable routine.

My three daughters spent Christmas with their mother Roz in Maine. That was the way it worked. Two years ago, however, the wall began to crack. Sarah moved to Hong Kong and married John. Last summer, Sylvia married Brad and, against all imagination (mine included) moved to Davis, California. A month ago, Margaret McLean Tsien came into the world. New grandmother Roz will, consequently, be flying to Hong Kong for Christmas.

Coincident with this family excitement, Karen decided that she’d had enough of me, so I raced to the Outer Banks to write, consult and, on a breathtaking day like today, ride the Knotts Island ferry five miles over to Currituck and back with only my camera and a book. This I happily could not have imagined a year ago.

The balance falls conveniently into place. Sylvia and Brad are eager to host Christmas for their displaced family members (Sylvia’s sister Martha, Brad’s mom Peg, his identical twin brother Chris, and me.) Three of us. Three of them. Perfect. It has all the makings of the most excellent (McLean/Elmer family) California Christmas ever.

Now, two weeks before the big day (we will in fact celebrate the day on December 26), my mind is again in overdrive. How could I not have seen this a year ago - Sarah and John have Margaret, Sylvia and Brad move to California, and Karen splits.

What will next year hold?

I can hardly imagine.

I’m hoping for the Second Most Excellent California Christmas Ever.

Two years in a row?

It will have become a tradition.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"Everybody's a deamer. Everbody's a star."

2007-12-08T14:41:00.000-05:00

Bonnie is the Post Mistress of the Main Knotts Island Post Office. I'm not aware of a branch office, but they call it the Main Knotts Island Post Office nonetheless.

Bonnie and I became friends shortly after I moved down from Washington, DC. She signed me up for my little post office box and explained how, when a larger package arrived, she'd put it into one of the two bigger package boxes, a key to which would be placed in my little box.

Simple pleasures.

It's the most enjoyment that I have derived from the mail process since I was in Vietnam when we watched the big red nylon bags of mail being tossed off helicoptors.

Bonnie was excited the day that I came in several months ago and, with a resounding "thwmp," presented for delivery the first of my book manuscript edits to be sent to my editor Katie Hall in Seymour, Indiana.

"A book? Really? Goodness. How exciting."

"Well, almost sort of a book, Bonnie. It still has a long way to go," I responded.

Bonnie proceded to ask me about out the book, ("It's a memoir about my time in the Marine Corps between prep school and college,) how long I'd been working on it (five years.)

Another "goodness" from Bonnie.

I asked that it be sent by overnight mail. "Overnight is not overnight to anywhere either from Knotts Island or into Seymour, Jack" It will take two days. "

She said she'd keep a close eye out for Katie's return package.

Several weeks later, I found a key to the big box in my little post office box. Inside the big box was the returned manuscript. It was one in the morning. Bonnie was nowhere in sight.

Several days later, I returned with the final draft. Bonnie made certain that it got right off to Seymour with the proper postage and packaging.

"Remember, Jack, overnight is not overnight."

"Right, Bonnie. Thanks."

"Goodluck."

Last week, Katie told me that the finished product was on its way back to Knotts Island by overnight mail. I waited the requisite two days, took a deep breath, and rode over to the Post Office.

I opened my box - the New Yorker, a cell phone bill, and a flyer from Circuit City.

No key.

As I was closing the box, Bonny's voice came from the void beyond.

"Jack? Is that you? Hey Jack. Wait a minute. I've been waiting for you. You have a package. It's from Seymour. It's from Ms. Hall. Is it your manuscript?"

It was.

I took it home, sat on my bed, opened the box, and began to slowly turn each of the 292 pages. A typo here - a missed comma there, but mostly nothing across page after black and white page where, on pervious iterations, Katie's grey pencil had splayed every manner of the editor's script, praise, and admonitions.

At the end of the third chapter came her first remark,

"Jack, I will endeavor not to gush at the end of every chapter, but this is pitch perfect. I am so proud of you."

Wow.

End of Chapter 4... "Great."

And so it continued with more "greats" and even smiley faces (Katie HATES smiley faces!)

Chapter 14..."Great, great, great."

"Excellent"

"Oh! How wonderful."

When she wrote the occassional, "good" followed only by a lowly period, I wondered if I had somehow failed.

"Seamless, fluid, cohesive, effortless, v.v. good."

"Your battle dialogue is some of the best in the book."

"Excellent, Jack. Classic wartime writing."

"Breaks my heart. You're profoundly talented."

"Awesome." Complete with enormous smiley face.

And finally, at the end, "you make me cry every time. Bravo!"

I am now frozen with such an enormous sense of accomplishment, that I literally cannot speak to it. So, I am trying to write.

When, as a child, I extolled in the manner above, my mother would be quick to say, "that's nice dear, but it would come so much nicer from someone else." Wise words.

When my children were young, however, I'd remind them of the importance of marking important moments, in whatever form they may manefest. Fleeting though they may be, they exist for us all if we can only recognize them.

So, I am here stopping and marking one of the great moments of my life. That God has guided my hand and permitted me to tell the untold story of the grand young sons of Charlie 1/4 is humbling beyond all imagination.

From so many of you over the past five years, I have recieved love and support, every ounce of which was required to keep me pushing myself to a place that I could hardly imagine.

The writing is complete.

Tomorrow, Katie and I will speak and the next phase will begin. This moment will have passed.

We are satisfied that the manuscript is an honest well told accounting of those turbulent times and a group of boys who were swept up into them for better, worse, or reasons none of us will ever be able to adaquately articulate.

It has been my great honor to have had the opportunity to try.

Thanks for the package, Bonny.

Thanks to you for visiting.

Jack

"The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round."

2007-12-07T11:27:00.000-05:00

Knotts Island, North Carolina, where I live, hangs as an appendix into Currituck Sound, 30 miles south of Virginia Beach, Virginia. It is connected to the mainland my a long breathtaking causeway from the west that winds through the Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge.

The Refuge, largely wetlands, covers most of the island. The Refuge bird list, issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, identifies 154 speciaes of birds from bald eagles to hummingbirds that may be observed (and checked off the list) throughout the year. There are also snakes, deer, racoons, an annoying rooster, and other predictable rural flora and fauna, including dozens of mostly hospitible pet dogs of every make and model that freely roam.

The northern third of the island, well above the causeway is physically in the state of Virginia. I often ride my bike down the road for a mile, pass a "Welcome to Virginia" sign, then ride another mile past houses, farms, stables, and trailers. The road ends abruptly at the edge of the Mackey Preserve.

So much for the Virginia part.

South of the causeway is all North Carolina. There is a small general store, the post office, and Pearl's, a restaurant of sorts. The garage, over which I reside, is on the island's southweatern point, about six miles from the causeway and several hundred yards from the ferry dock. I have three windows and each faces the water (east, south and west.)

The ferry crosses Curituck Sound eight times a day for a 45 minute ride west to the town of Currituck on the mainland. The ferry is very cool. It holds ten or twelve cars and is free. Were I in search of a morning maritime adventure, I could grab a book, walk to the ferry dock, ford the bounty main to Currituck, wait a few minutes for loading and unloading, then ride it back - and all before lunch!

What ever does all this have to do with "the wheels of the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round?"

It's all about the kids.

Knotts Island has an elementary school (The Knotts Island Elementary School) for the North Carolina children. The Virginia children from earliest age, thereby, must be daily transported to the Virginia Beach schools by busses that come down from Virginia, pass into North Carolina, cross the causeway, take a left, reenter Virginia via my afformentioned bike route, pick up a few kids and reverse the process. There are also busses that take the Knotts Island children to the Knotts Island Elementary School, but they travel exclusively on the North Carolina side.

It is a curious fact of island life to obseve, on a morning walk, a Virginia school bus directly behind a North Carolina school bus both heading south on a North Carolina state road. The Virginia buss peels off at the causeway, but still....

So, compared to the Virginia Knotts Islanders, the North Carolina kids have it made. Right?

Well, not exactly.

The Knotts Island North Carolinians, although well served by a resident elementary school, have neither a middle school nor a high school. They are no more welcome in the relatively proximate Virginia Beach Schools than that unfortunate Knotts Island Virginia kids are welcome at the Knotts island Elementary School.

Knotts Island is part of Currituck County. The Currituck upper schools are five miles across the sound in Currituck. Therefore, the North Carolina Knotts Islanders can either travel about fifty miles by bus (which they occassionally do during inclement weather) off the island, north into Virginia, west across the state, then south back into North Carolina again.

Or...

They can take the ferry which is of course what they do. Every morning, before dawn, the busses line up to take the Knotts Island North Carolina children five sea miles across to school. They seem to come home at all hours what with sports and after school programs - I haven't figured all of that out yet. The last ferry, however, comes back over at 6:30.

It seems to med that a five mile morning and evening ferry ride to school beats the five mile walk in the snow (uphill both ways) that we endured as kids.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"Blind people come to the park just to listen to him pitch."

2007-12-05T12:21:00.001-05:00

Reggie Jackson was commenting about New York Mets Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver's performances during the mid 1970's. He was the dominate pitcher of his generation.

Listen to him pitch?

Counterintuitive and true.

Certainly the blind patron could not have seen Seaver's wind up, pause, gaze, and delivery. Nor could he have seen the dirt on Tom's right knee - a sure sign that his follow through was complete, and that his stuff was unhittable.

The blind patron could, however, hear what the others might miss; the distinctive pop of a high fastball into catcher Jerry Grote's mitt, the soft crack of a ball missing full bat contact and dribbling down to first, the crowd's screaming anticipation with every two strike pitch, and, of course, the public address announcer introducing a new player with every third or forth pitch.

Perhaps that's what it was like to listen to Tom Seaver pitch.

When I worked for the New York Mets, I saw Seaver pitch dozens of times. Occasionally, I closed my eyes and felt the unmistakable aura that existed in Shea Stadium when he was on the mound. Different rules applied when Tom pitched and my every sense was aware of it.

The sense of sight may, thereby, be no more important to watching a great baseball pitcher than, say, hearing is integral to appreciating a Beethoven symphony.

Had I been deaf, I would like to have seen Leonard Bernstein conduct Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in New York's Carnegie Hall. I would have watched his animated arms extol the mighty brass while enticing the delicate triangle in the same seamless motion.

The hairs on the back of my neck would feel the mighty strings while my arms tingled at the subtle vibrations of the oboes. The chorus would be animated while the audience sat rapt in anticipation of the next note - indeed the next quarter note.

Finally, the crescendo. The audience would stand and cheer while mouthing the word "more!" Bernstein would bow his deep bow, wave to his concertmaster who would bow in turn, while signaling his arm to the orchestra who would all rise and bow.

It would have been the euphoria of a near perfect performance that Beethoven himself had never heard. Beethoven was near total deafness when he composed the Ninth Symphony. For years he sat plotting note after excruciating note, hearing a perfect symphony in his head without ever having the perceived benefit of his ears.

I was most fortunate.

As a child, I did hear Leonard Bernstein direct Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Carnegie Hall. Every one of my senses understood that Saturday afternoon that they would never be the same.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

"Get Busy Living, or Get Busy Dying"

2007-12-04T09:13:00.000-05:00

These words were spoken to Red by the fictional inmate Andy Dufresne at Maine's Shawshank Prison in 1947.

Get busy living or get busy dying.

It is my first thought each morning when I rise.

My immediate second thought is, "so now what?"

Then it all starts to become complicated.

Andy was a thinker who set and pursued goals. For him, happiness existed with hope. He hoped to start an inn in Mexico and provide a charter boat service.

For him to get busy living, however, he was forced to stoically endure torture at the hands of the guards and the other prisoners. For him to get busy living, he also had to dig an escape tunnel, build trust with the guards and other inmates, and meticulously defraud the warden.

Living with hope and happiness is a choice and, as seen in Andy's case, may require endurance and action all at the same time.

We are born with the capacity to live lives filled with hope and happiness. We indeed live in a country in which the persuit of happiness is a constitutional guarantee.

That being said, the very idea of hope or happiness may become so buried or blurred over time that it eludes even our deepest probes.

We are all filled with dreams. We are all filled with hope.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Thank you for visiting.

Jack

Why I Write

2007-12-03T17:28:00.000-05:00

It may be fitting that, as a writer, I begin this blog in writer's block.

My sister Barbara has come to the rescue with the following passage from author/naturalist Terry Tempest Williams on why she writes:

I write to make peace with the things I cannot control.
I write to create fabric in a world that often appears black and white.
I write to discover.
I write to uncover.
I write to meet my ghosts.
I write to begin a dialogue.
I write to imagine things differently and, in imagining things differently, perhaps the world will change.
I write to honor beauty.
I write to correspond with my friends.
I write as a daily act of improvisation.
I write because it creates my composure.
I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams.
I write to the questions that shatter my sleep.

I write to remember.
I write to forget.
I write to quell the pain.
I write as an act of faith.
I write as an act of slowness.
I write to record what I love in the face of loss.
I write as a bow to wilderness.
I write becauseI believe I can create a path in the darkness.
I write because I am not employable.
I write as a witness to what I have seen.
I write for the love of ideas.
I write knowing words will always fall short.
I write as thoiughI am whispering in the ear of the one I love.

Wonderful.

In the words of the older woman deli customer in When Harry Met Sally, after Sallys faked orgasm, " I'll have what she's having."

And so I begin.

I will endeavor to speak with you tomorrow and daily thereafter on subjects that float through the open window of the Tillery garage in Knotts Island, North Carolina.

Thank you for joining me.

Jack