Half a Century Later, Part III: USS Galveston, CLG-3

Since I had no “profession,” as far as the Navy was concerned, and had never been on a real Navy ship, arriving on the Galveston was totally terrifying. I struggled up the after brow from the ship’s boat with my duffle bag, trying to remember the procedure for getting on a ship, “Request permission to board, sir,” and trying not to look over the edge of the scary drop to the water (a guided missile cruiser is quite a large ship). After that it was all a blur for the next few days.  With no assignment, I was put on mess duty; what else could they do?

While on mess duty, someone came around looking for anyone who could type. I had learned already not to volunteer, but I checked around later and found out the request was legitimate. I presented myself, my typing skills, my year and a half or so of college (no mention of being kicked out, of course) and became a part of the administrative division, X Division, specifically the Training and Education Office. That was definitely a step up from mess duty.

My main job was handling GED exams; I also arranged for correspondence courses for the crew and other menial tasks. The T&E office was adjacent to the personnel office, and the T&E officer (I don’t remember his name) and I were under the direct supervision of the personnel office manager, Lt. Cato. It seemed a satisfactory arrangement.

The ship spent most weekdays on maneuvers, cruising the Pacific. Once we took a group of new officers to Hawaii. While there I and some friends rented a car and drove halfway around the island of Oahu and then down through its center and the pineapple fields. On other cruises we fired our Talos missiles, which were capable of carrying nuclear warheads, although in my lowly position I never knew if we had them on board or not.

But weekends were the most fun. We weren’t allowed to have civilian clothes on board, so we rented lockers at clubs right off the docks. We would change into civvies and, at least in my case, head away from the nearby bars to those farther afield; i.e., those bars away from sailors. I became a regular at Reuben’s Roost, a kind of hangout for artsy types. I still have a book of matches from the place, although the bar is long gone (I checked!). Occasionally, I would splurge and go to the El Cortez, riding its outside glass elevator to the bar at the top.  I fear I saw myself as terribly sophisticated, which I surely wasn’t.

One weekend all this came to a halt, at least temporarily. It was late Friday, I was in a hurry and couldn’t find the T&E Officer to lock up the GED exams, so I just hid them in the bottom of my desk drawer. Big mistake. Unknown to me, Lt. Cato went through our desks every weekend. He found the exams, I was written up for violations of secure materials, sent to a captain’s mast (the level of punishment just below a court martial) and, you guessed it, was kicked out of the administrative division and assigned to the lowest of the low (at least as I saw it then): the deck force. But more on that in the next blog.

Half a Century Later, Part II: U.S. Naval School of Music

After a brief visit home, I reported to the U.S. Naval School of Music at the Anacostia Annex, Washington, D.C., sometime, I think, in September of 1963. I had auditioned prior to joining the Navy, so I was immediately assigned a major instrument: the piano.  No problem, or so I thought, since I had been playing and studying piano for many years. I was also assigned a “minor” instrument: the bass drum; after all, one can’t march with a piano. And I immediately begin classes in music theory.

Music theory was a breeze as I had studied that in college before joining. My memory is that I made a perfect score on all assignments (but my memory being what it is . . . ). The bass drum was simply a matter of practicing all the complicated rhythmic patterns. If one can read music, one can play the bass drum, at least on the level required here. But the piano became a problem: I was classically trained and knew nothing about playing popular music nor jazz. I still thought I could manage it, though, with a little practice and help from an instructor.  I was wrong.  The teacher would sit at the keyboard, whip through a jazz piece with elegance and skill—and then he would say, “That’s how it’s done; now, you do it.” And that was the full extent of my instruction in jazz and popular music. I didn’t learn a thing. And as the term wore on, I knew I was probably in trouble.

On November 21^st of 1963 I turned 21.  Great, except the drinking age at that time in D.C. was 18. But a friend took me out for drinks and an evening of soft-core porn movies; all I can remember of those were a lot of shower scenes and lots of women’s breasts bouncing around. I was not impressed, but I tried to put up a good front.

The next day President Kennedy was assassinated. I’ve chronicled my minor part in all the funeral activities previously in a blog and won’t repeat them here: http://garysworldinwords.blogspot.com/2013/11/my-brush-with-history.html.

By the end of the term, the school was making preparations to relocate to Virginia Beach; ten of us who were at the end of the first term were sent in advance to the new location to help with the relocation: moving pianos around, unloading instruments and music, and various other manual tasks.

Once settled in, my second term began.  The powers that be decided that piano wasn’t working out since I couldn’t (in their view) or wouldn’t (in my view) learn pop music and jazz, so they switched me to flute, an instrument I had picked up back in my music major days.  Again, no problem with this new major instrument. My minor instrument, however, was a sax, which I had never played before. Have you ever heard a beginning sax player? I couldn’t stand the sound, so I didn’t practice. The inevitable happened: I was kicked out of the U.S. Naval School of Music. After being there for over a year (including the move), I was shipped out to, where else: back to San Diego, this time to a guided missile cruiser, the USS Galveston. I had one more “kicked out” to endure, but I’ll save that for the next blog.

Half a Century Later

I realized with a shock today that it’s been almost 50 years since I got out of the Navy. Half a century! How is that possible? I just dug out my DD 214 and realized I wasn’t released until August 30, 1967. I was sure it was June; how could I have misremembered such a date? And I thought I had gone on active duty in early June, 1963; actually, I see it was July 31, 1963.

Well, hell, that was 50 years ago; no wonder I don’t have a clear memory. DD 214s don’t lie. And besides, since I worked in the ship’s personnel office, I typed up the 214 myself. It has to be correct. I started this blog thinking it was almost exactly 50 years ago that I was released from the Navy; I’m off by a more than a month, but I’m going to continue it anyway and reminisce a bit—and hope all my memories aren’t flawed.

I was 20 in 1963 and my life was pretty much a mess. I had been kicked out of college for bad grades. My plans to be a biologist were scrapped, thanks mostly to chemistry 101. I struggled on as a music major for a while until I realized I wasn’t disciplined enough to be a musician. I was working at a decidedly dead-end job as a customer service rep at an insurance company, writing letters to customers explaining their policies. My personal life was hardly any better; in fact, there really wasn’t much of personal life at all as I was deeply closeted, as I would remain until after my discharge.

The woman who worked in the desk in front of me, Daisy, and I became friends. We started hanging out together. Daisy was dating a Naval recruiting officer. I must have mentioned that when it was time to go into the service, I was planning on going into the Navy: all those novels I had read, such as Two Years Before the Mast, no doubt gave me a greatly skewed idea of what the Navy would be like: the romantic life at sea and those very sexy uniforms.

Vietnam was beginning to build up. Although I hadn’t yet been drafted, it was just a matter of time—probably months. With my life in such a disarray, the Navy looked more and more inviting; Daisy was more than happy to introduce me to her Navy buddy. He and I talked about possible options if I joined, and I decided to apply to the Naval School of Music, then in Washington, D.C. I became friends with another potential recruit whom I had met at the recruiting office; and we decided to join immediately, without waiting to hear from the School of Music. I signed up, took the oath, broke the news to my parents, who were decidedly unhappy, and flew to San Diego for boot camp.

After a few miserable weeks in “regular” boot camp—the usual: marching, exercises, humiliations--I received word that I had been accepted to the School of Music. I was immediately transferred to the Drum and Bugle Corps, eventually becoming drum major—with my own office. Once I was in the Corps, my boot camp experience basically ended; all we did was rehearse and play for boot camp graduations every Friday. The only actual real boot camp experience I had after transferring to the Corps was the time we spent in the tear gas room and the time we had to crawl out of a smoke filled “ship.” Compared to regular boot camp, I got off lucky. I still have the yearbook we got at the end of boot camp.

Because I was in the Corps, my boot camp time lasted longer than most, but it was easy duty indeed. And at the end of that I was shipped off to the Naval School of Music in D.C. But that’s a story for another blog: I got kicked out of there, too.

Some Thoughts on Opera

[A preliminary note: I’ve been away from blogging for some time now, thanks to a complete knee replacement (and three weeks in the hospital) and a trip to Europe and . . . well, laziness.  I’m back now and will try to be a bit more regular with my posting.]

I don’t remember a time when opera wasn’t a part of my life. One of my earliest memories is listening to Enrico Caruso singing, on a 78 rpm record, “Vesti la giubba” from Ruggero Leoncavallo's 1892 opera Pagliacci. This famous aria comes at the end of Act I and is usually translated as “Put on Your Costume.” The clown, Pagliacci, has just discovered his wife’s infidelity—but the show must go on—not that I knew or understood any of that in my callow youth. By an extraordinary stroke of luck, I still have that record.  It was recorded on one side only, as they were in those days.  I still get it out every once in a while and listen; it always brings back a flood of memories, although there are better digitized versions on CD.  But those scratches and hisses take me right back to circa 1948, listening to this deeply moving aria.  I’m still moved by it these many years later.

My mother instilled a love of opera in me. She was passionate about it and passed that passion on to me.  My dad hated opera and would have nothing to do with it; he passed that hate to my brother Ken, who to this day will have nothing to do with opera. But it was important to me then and it is now.  

I remember my first live opera performance Mom took me to: Faust by Charles Gounod.  I don’t think I followed the plot completely, but I remember quite vividly two scenes.  One is where Méphistophélès first appears in Act I.  I knew nothing of stage “magic” and didn’t understand the techniques behind Méphistophélès appearing suddenly in the air over Faust, seemingly floating off the ground.  I know now he was lit behind a scrim painted as a library, but at the time I was spellbound by this wonder.  And then I remember the final scene: Faust is visiting Marguerite in prison; she’s there for murdering her child. I doubt if I understood all those details at that age, but then Marguerite sacrifices herself for Faust and falls, seemingly dead.  Suddenly (and with that wonderful music) the walls of the prison were pulled away, the clouds of heaven appeared, and Marguerite ascended to Heaven. It would take a far less romantic soul than me not to be greatly moved by this scene.  Although I’ve seen it many times since, I am always moved by this great opera. I’ve seen it once in Chicago already with the wonderful Piotr Beczala as Faust and Ana María Martínez as Marguerite.  And it returns this season with Benjamin Bernheim as Faust and Erin Wall as Marguerite.  But I’ve never forgotten that memorable first performance.

There were other operas.  I remember a Rigoletto in particular.  I also remember that these operas were performed by The Metropolitan Opera on tour. I’ve spent a little time online and I can’t find any reference to The Met performing in Oklahoma City, so I suspect it was some other opera company on tour and my memory yet again fails me. It doesn’t make any difference: I was dazzled.

And I’ve been a regular opera attender ever since.  I had season tickets for the Ft. Worth Opera when I lived in Dallas (I couldn’t afford Dallas Opera, although I attended a few performances there).  Then when I moved back to Oklahoma I had season tickets for Tulsa Opera for many years.  For both those opera companies I had two tickets, and Mom would travel from wherever she was to join me.  After Dad died, she moved near me in Eastern Oklahoma, and we continued to regularly attend Tulsa Opera.  The last one we saw before Mom died was The Barber of Seville. After that, I moved first to Oklahoma City and then San Diego.  I attended San Diego Opera occasionally but couldn’t afford season tickets, working as I was as a night clerk in a hotel.  After returning to Texas I was too far away for a season at Austin Lyric Opera.  But now I’m in Chicago where we have a world class opera company: Lyric Opera of Chicago.  I have had season tickets for my almost ten years here.

What a world of music Mom opened for me.  I will always be grateful.