A Mobile Life

As of August 15, I have lived at the same address in Chicago for ten years. That is the longest I have ever lived at any one address.

I never intended to be so mobile. A quick check online and I see that the average person in the United States is expected to move 11.4 times in his or her lifetime. My number of moves is 29. It’s not a competition, but for someone who hasn’t spent decades in the military, I seemed to have moved a lot. I’ve lived in five states and the District of Columbia. I’ve lived in 13 different cities (see the red stars on the map), multiple locations in most. I wasn’t sure how to count my time on the USS Galveston, but decided it was one location, even though I traveled all over the world on the ship. And there were the odd weeks when I moved back with my parents, usually while in transition; for example, I lived with them a couple of weeks while awaiting my trip to boot camp in San Diego. I didn’t count these short stays as part of the 29.

So why so many moves? A few were for very good reasons: I moved near my mother in her final years, for example. Some were for love and romance: I first moved to Dallas to be with my partner, Don; we lived in seven homes in our seven years together. Don loved remodeling and reselling houses. Most of my moves were simple restlessness. Until my final teaching post before retirement, I never stayed more than five years in a job: new job, new location. Most led to interesting experiences, a few to one minor disaster or another (I loved San Diego, but it was a financial disaster for me).

I’ve tried to think what might have made me so restless. Perhaps it was all that reading I did as a kid, from such soul-inspiring book as Two Years Before the Mast to more than a few books of SF and fantasy—escape literature, after all. Maybe that led to my constant escape from wherever I was. Maybe it was always the search for something better, even if ill conceived: I wanted something better, even if I didn’t always use good sense in the endeavor.

Now, I’ve been settled for ten years, and I don’t seem to miss the moving. Of course old age has something to do with it: I’m no longer able to fill up a van with boxes of books and head out. I have finally come home to roost, it seems. I’m okay with that.

Half a Century Later, Part IV: Cleaning up My Act

“Deck force” is a slang term for the division on a ship that mostly includes boatswain’s mates. Their responsibility is the maintenance of the ship, including upkeep of a ship's external structure, rigging, deck equipment, and boats, and, most memorably for me, holystoning the teak ceremonial decks. These are good hardworking men, and I don’t want to denigrate them in any way; still, one could hardly call them the intellectual giants on a ship. And me, being me, did not take well to manual labor.

After my captain’s mast, where I was removed from the administrative division and placed on the deck force, I had to endure some punishment: working in the engine room where the temperatures can reach well over 100 degrees; and a stint working in the paint locker, which was the only time I became seasick: the locker was in the bow and I was there during a storm. As the ship crashed up and down, the paint thinner fumes wafted up and I became violently ill. I left the paint locker so sick that I didn’t care if they keelhauled me; I just had to throw up and then lay down, preferably not at the same time. Nobody seemed to miss me, though, which was a good thing.

The most memorable event while on the deck force was holystoning. Look at the image: you bend over, broom stick inserted in a sandy brick, and you go back and forth 20 times on each of the teak boards (ships are metal, but the ceremonial decks have an overlay of teak). It’s brutal and backbreaking labor, it lasts for days, and I don’t remember ever working so hard and so painfully—and I was raised on a farm which required a lot of manual labor. I was miserable. If you’re interested, here’s a video on holystoning (on the USS Missouri, not my ship) which, for me, brings back painful memories:

Holystoning video: https://youtu.be/dktL8MdZWF8

I probably would have finished out my days in the Navy on the deck force had I not already taken the exam for advancement to personnelman 3^rd class before being kicked out of X Division. While on the deck force I found out I had passed the exam and would be made a PN3—X Division had to take me back. It was at that moment I accepted the fact that the Navy was going to win this battle; I became a model sailor, shoes always gleaming, uniforms crisp and clean, and my work, now in the personnel office, always perfect and on time. I became the perfect sailor.

And truthfully all that work at being shipshape made my life much easier. Mostly I worked in the office dealing with enlisted records (officer records were handled elsewhere). When we spent six months off the coast of Vietnam, using our six-inch guns to give support to troops ashore, we were at battle stations a lot of the time. For me that meant Damage Control Central. Since we were never damaged, that time was mostly spent reading. Occasionally I had duty on the bridge as either a watchman or as the man who transmitted messages on a sound-powered headset. War for me was more a battle against boredom than anything else.

After our tour in Vietnam we went on a goodwill tour. This took us down the Pacific coast, through the Panama Canal, up the east coast, and then on to the Mediterranean, with stops in Malta, Italy, Corsica, Spain, France, and Crete. “Join the Navy and see the world!” That turned out to be the case for me.

My four years ended while in Europe. Rather than having to fly back, I opted to extend my duty until the end of the cruise, which turned out to be another month. By then my commanding officers wanted very much for me to stay in the Navy. I had passed the exam for PN2. But I had had enough of the Navy. Within an hour of docking back in the United States, I was out of the Navy and headed home. It felt good.

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.