Coolness?

I have been in a number of situations where the possibility of dying was very real, but only one where I would say that possibility was very close. What happened was, I nearly drowned; not once, but three times. The first one was the traditional sink or learn to swim situation so it doesn't count since whatever danger there might have been was imagined. (Then again, imaginations do inform, and sometimes create, reality.)

The second involved my being unwilling to heed a variety of warnings and insisting on swimming beyond the roped off section of a lake with a “don’t worry, I can swim”; there is this vague recollection of someone shoving a board at me but don’t remember much more than that – or the rest of the day for that matter. I was 16 at the time; had been attending a Tap Room picnic and had drunk a lot of beer. (It was several decades into the future before I could tolerate even the smell of beer.)

Having managed to survive to the age of 21, there was yet another opportunity to do it again. I was stone sober that time. We, that is, myself and a few friends, had trailered a ski boat upriver (the Delaware) just past the NE Philadelphia border,  to a place where there was a public boat ramp that was part of a park with picnic tables and such.  We put the boat in the water and while some of us, myself included, were hanging around the picnic area; others were water skiing.

Somehow or another, the ski line broke and they came close to shore while they tried to fix it. As the former Navy guy with an expert knowledge of knots, I offered to do the fixing. I hadn't planned on swimming that day and was wearing full (long pants) Levi’s. Undeterred, I swam out to the boat and worked on the ski line while the boat, me with it, drifted downriver. Ski line fixed, I prepared to swim back. “Hey, we can take you back in the boat.” I looked towards shore and while it would be a long swim, thought I could make it.

But I couldn't. Hadn't counted on the strong under current; I’d swim towards shore until I was too tired to go on and then float for a while only to find myself back in the middle of the river, some ways further downriver. It became apparent that I wasn't going to be swimming back to shore and it was about time to make a decision. What decision?

Whether to lose my cool and holler for help – or drown. That was a big decision and required a lot of thought. Tried swimming one more time; not even making as much progress as I had the last time I tried. Float and think. Give it another 15 minutes….

Okay, yell; wave my arms and yell some more. Wait a minute, what are those people standing around over on the shore doing? I’m out here drowning and they’re waving at me! I wasn’t saying hello, I was going under!

Of course they weren’t waving at me; they were trying to get the attention of our friends in the boat; which they did. And when they got to me, one guy had to get in the water and pushed while the other guy pulled me into the boat. I couldn’t so much as lift an arm to contribute to the effort. The boat then had to just go around in circles for a good while before I could be assisted to a spot on the grass.  

Just what was it that I had to think about? To appear uncool, or die?

Just what is it to be “cool”?

Is it the well dressed snobs who are one step away from being verbal bullies and seem to smile a lot.

Or the kids in the traditional jeans and leather jackets who may be one step away from being criminals but for surenever seem to smile.

Certainly not the in-between’s trying to stay out of the sights of both of those groups and who are just a few years away from ruling them all. 

It is more than self-image alone; you can’t just decide you’re cool and that will be how others perceive you. Is “cool” a matter of dress? Speech? Attitude? Some combination of all these? It would seem to be ultimately indefinable; you just know it when you encounter an actual example, and even that perception will vary by socioeconomic groups, gender and race.

So what was I thinking? I really have and, most likely had, no idea.

Trying for New

On the plane and all buckled in; at least most of us were.  Judith(age 7) to the right, Kira(5) to the left and Eddie(1) on my lap – he was the one not buckled in; good luck kid. Holding him meant I wouldn’t have a free hand to hold a book and it would be about six hours before getting to Ireland. Time enough to mentally review what had taken us to this point and what that feeling of having forgotten something was all about.

It had all started with that phone call from my former assistant, Jim H.. “Hey Ed, ISI has decided to open a facility in Ireland, know anyone who could set that up?”  “I’ve never been to Ireland, let’s talk.”

It had been a little over ten years since I had worked for for  ISI and my departure was not under the best of circumstances. In point of fact, I had given them six months notice and then did exactly that right on schedule.

Who gives six months notice? Bit of an interesting story there; at least I think so, let’s see if you’ll agree. As I said, it all started a decade or so ago and began with a rather routine, and altogether boring meeting of  the Management Committee.

 The purpose of that particular meeting was to review a report from a Quality Control expert concerning a recent study. There were seven members on this Committee; their average education was a Master’s degree (I brought the average down) so they should have been able to follow the proceedings, but what was actually happening was an argument between that expert and myself while everyone else more or less napped with their eyes open.

My position was that the expert was comparing apples and oranges since while he may have understood statistics, he clearly did not understand the products.

And then Dr. Eugene Garfield, the Founder and President of the company, came in. That woke everyone up and motivated an abundance of opinions, mostly contrary to my own.

I was getting pissed off  and, maybe, just a little defensive.

And then Gene says: “Well, Ed, don’t you see what everyone is trying to say……”  I interrupted: “Gene you came into this meeting 45 minutes late; why don’t you just hold off on your opinion until you get an idea about what’s going on.”

You could have heard a pin drop from way over in a far corner of the room. Garfield’s favorite subordinates were the ones who always agreed with him; he especially did not like to be corrected in public. Meeting over.

A few weeks went past and then Peter, Gene’s step-son, dropped by my office. “Gene’s thinking of reorganizing things and having fewer people reporting directly to him. How would you feel about reporting to Phil S. (the IT VP)?”

 Phil was my least favorite person in the company.

“Well”, I said; “it’s Gene’s company and he can do as he wishes, but the day that becomes effective is my last day.” Peter left and all was quiet for a month or two. And then he was back.

The name that was floated this time was Gabriella, the Director of the Chemistry product line. Not a very logical candidate, but at least not an enemy of mine. (And by “enemy”,  is meant in the sense of office politics; you might die economically but not literally, usually.)

So I said, “fine, let’s do that and I will leave in six months and in the meanwhile I'll hire and train a replacement.” We were all in agreement.

For my replacement, I hired someone with a Masters in Library Science, just as I knew Garfield would want, but who I also knew wouldn’t be able to do the job. To make up for that bit of revenge, I insisted they hire back my former assistant. He had left to try opening his own business. Sadly, that was a gas station at the start of our first major gas crisis and now he really needed a job. He would also be able to get the job done.

And off I went for other adventures. At the time Jim called me about Ireland, I was six months away from becoming vested in my then current employer’s pension plan. But I didn’t plan on living that long (family medical history) on the one hand and on the other was my wife, Karen,  who had become a full blown drug addict and was in yet another rehab.

I had no particular reason to believe that the results this time would be any different than in the past. I was sure she would not want to go to Ireland. Or, at the least, if she did, she wouldn’t have any contacts there.

So, there I was, meeting with Garfield to negotiate a contract. My main requirement was that I would be completely autonomous  with respect to anything involving Ireland. (That clause would later become very important!)

Whoops, there goes the seat belt sign; landing soon; would have been nice to get some sleep; also have to adjust my watch, not to mention myself, ahead five hours; whatever - let’s go see what is going to happen. Whatever it is, it will be something new.

Oh, I remembered what I had forgotten! I had told the IDA (Irish Development Authority) that I wouldn’t need a driver so I would be renting a car at the airport and there was something about the steering wheel…….. 

A Sampling of Sea Stories

An Introduction to Sea Duty

November 1961, two months past my 17^th birthday; I had just arrived at the US Naval Training Center at Great Lakes Il. and it was very cold. Three months and a lot of yelling, running, more coldness and other BS in general – along with a little bit of learning, and I was still at the Lakes although now it was my Duty Station.

There had been some discussion about my going to some type of school; a part of the recruiting experience was taking a lot of tests and my scores had qualified me for just about whatever school they might have. But they were short of Hospital Corpsmen at the time, so that is what they were pushing me to do. I declined. And ended up with no schooling and assigned general duties. That’ll teach them, or me; well, someone or other would surely learn something; don’t you think?

Insofar as recreation, my main problem was how to spend what passed for my pay. I could buy some cheap civilian clothes – and have no money to go anywhere. Or, hang out in my uniform which did not get you much respect in those days. (“Sailors and dogs keep off the grass”.) Besides, I had a better chance of getting served (i.e.; passing for 21) in civies.) Oh well, one kept distracted as best as one could.

And then came the Cuban Missile Crisis and the blockade of that island so there was the premature ending of that Shore Duty and off to the Fleet I went. I was assigned to the USS Lorrain County, LST 1177; the initials stood for Landing Ship Tank. You've seen the movie where these types of ships (not those much smaller personnel boats) get as close to the beach as possible (using causeways as necessary) to offload vehicles and Marines.  Think of them as large ferry boats with guns. The defining characteristic was a flat bottom which made for a very active ride (as the saying went, those things” rolled in dry dock”).

I was now a deck seaman, also known as a swabbie or deck ape. But for some reason, I also had part-time responsibility for the ship’s library. And it was in that rarely visited room that I was trying to ride out my first major storm at sea, determined not to get sea sick (and didn’t). And then all sorts of  alarms sounded and General Quarters was announced.

I had only been aboard about two weeks and had no idea where I was supposed to go, so I locked up the library and followed another sailor who was headed towards the bow of the ship. This took us through the areas where the Marines were quartered and they were looking none too happy. All they were allowed to do was stay in place and they were getting no information. They certainly weren’t going to learn anything from us since all my new friend seemed to know was were the bow of the ship was.

We finally reached an area where there were steps going up to a hatch leading to the outside. When the hatch was opened, we were immediately soaked as a wave broke over us. (There was a combination of 40 foot waves and 40 knot winds.)

“Not going out there” my new best friend exclaimed; seemed reasonable enough to me; but then an Officer came along and out we went.

It seems that the ramp which was used to move vehicles below deck had come loose and fallen on a jeep; fortunately, no one was in it but a fire was started and had already been put out. What remained  was to get the ramp back up and secured, while the storm raged on around us.

As it turned out, that was only my introduction to the possible mishaps which could occur on a ship. We were headed for Little Creek, VA (the amphibious, or  ‘Gator Navy, base) just down the road from Norfolk, VA. We lost our Ship-to-Shore communications system, one of our two generators failed and there were two more fires before getting there.

I would be on that ship for almost three more years.

Liberty in Panama

“Liberty” is military speak for having some time off, an interesting choice of words, wouldn’t you say?

There we were, in Panama at a little out of the way bar, the only two Americans in the place. We were drinking from a "set-up", four bottles of coke, a bowl of ice, a couple of glasses and a bottle of rum. After a while we decided to skip the part about using those glasses. We just dumped the rum into the bowl, added a dash of coke and drank directly from the bowl.

Understand, I was maybe 19 at the time and we were sailors. Bored sailors. All the music on the jukebox was in Spanish; no problem, just lip synch along as though we knew what we were doing; there was a guy at the bar who seemed to be signing, presumably also in Spanish; once again, no problem, sign right back. Never mind that I couldn't sign in English, let alone Spanish.

The bowl was nearly empty and outside in the street was a parade. Looked like fun; always wanted to be in a parade. So we joined in, bringing up the rear for several blocks before we figured out that it was an anti-American demonstration. Did I mention we were in uniform during all that? Oh well.

The next night we went back to that bar. Soon as we were inside, it was like Norm came into Cheers, everyone greeting us. "Lo Siento, se hable poquito Espanol...". (That was me in my high school Spanish explaining, poorly, that I was sorry but only spoke a very little bit of Spanish.) No, they said, "you speak excellent Spanish." It was also about then that we discovered, by way of a couple of Shore Patrol authorities, that the place was off-limits, declared unsafe for us American sailors to be in and we had to leave.

And then there was that time in Puerto Rico; the park and the pretty young lady with very little English...

Not a Morning Person

One of the routines aboard ship is the “watch”. This is a four-hour period of time that is over and above the regular eight-hour work day; doesn’t happen every day, but rotates on a schedule dependent on a variety of  factors. The hour of the day your watch will commence also rotates.

There was this occasion when my watch was scheduled for 0400 (4am) which required that I be on station at 0345. There was one person from the prior watch whose job it was to wake the replacements. The first time he tried to wake me was 0320; I signified awareness and promptly fell back to sleep as soon as he left. Ten minutes later – repeat; another ten minutes, another rerun. The guy trying to get me up had just about reached his limit. There was a light at the top of the bunk and he turned it on, right into my eyes. Auto reaction, swing at him; not a good idea when you’re laying down.

But the adrenaline was  flowing and I was awake.

It was mid-morning of the next day, my friend of the Watch (and he was a friend of mine) walked past the tool room where I was loitering in the hatchway. I took the opportunity to apologize for our little to-do.

He didn’t accept and instead challenged me to repeat what I had said earlier that morning. Hmm,the thing was, I couldn't remember whatever that was so I decided to interpret his demand as a physical threat and told him if he was “going to jump, then jump”. And he did, the momentum of that action took us to the back of that very narrow, very small tool room. We ended up on a pile of ropes where the ceiling was at its lowest.

“Get off me” I yelled and he did manage to back off. But I couldn't just stand up, no, I had to jump up…..and hit my head on the edge of a metal beam from that ceiling. Didn't go all the way back down, but it was close and then I started to move back into the front aisle. Jim suddenly picked up a hammer and told me to sit down.  “What the hell’s with the hammer?” By way of a answer I was told to touch my face; didn't much matter where because there was blood everywhere.

After Jim had first made his move, we had been locked into that room to avoid interference, but now Jim banged to let us out. On our way to sickbay, we passed a group of Marines and had the full attention of at least three of them who proceeded to lose their breakfast over the side.

There were only four stitches sewn by our resident corpsman, but the thing is, before that hair had grown back, there was a storm and in the process of battening down the hatches and securing the boats, there was an accident involving a wrench and my head. You guessed it, another four stitches.

And then there was that time…….