Tuesday, last Tuesday, almost a week ago as I write this, was Veteran’s Day. A day to honor all our Country’s Veterans. I ignored it, like I usually do. Then my buddy Don texted me a thank you for your service which I appreciate. He was being Ironic, I suspect. But I like Irony. And I certainly like being thanked. Even for shit I don’t deserve. Don was on hand that spring and summer of 72. He knows what went down, and what my service was like.

I enlisted in the Navy on Sept. 29 Nineteen Seventy One

I discharged just over a year later. I forget the exact day I got out. 54 years is a long time ago to remember exact dates. Especially if you’re half-demented. Now I know what you’re thinking. A year ain’t a normal enlistment period. I was supposed to do four years. That’s what I signed up for. Why’d I get out early? Mainly I got out cuz I went AWOL and missed my ship’s movement and I don’t remember what all else they charged me with. I got Court Marshaled. Spent time in the Brig. At one point in my inglorious service they offered me an Undesirable Discharge.

An “undesirable discharge” is a military separation under conditions other than honorable, typically for administrative reasons like minor misconduct, unsuitability, or failure to meet service standards. It is a formal administrative action, not a criminal one, but it has severe consequences, including loss of veteran benefits, difficulty with future employment, and other legal disabilities. compliments of A.I.

I understood their motivation. These Officers. They were thinking what are we fucking around with this loser for? He’s not dangerous. Just another Lunkhead. He’s not worth punishing. Not worth trying to train for anything, either. Why not just forgo the Brig Time and the red tape and just shit can him? So they offered me this deal. An Undesirable Discharge. An Exit Badge a lot of loser kids back then got offered, and snapped up like their young lives depended on it. They put me in with those guys.

The Waste-Of-Time Crew.

So just before they shipped me off to the Brig to do my 4 month sentence for being AWOL and missing ship’s movement, etcetera, upon which I would be reassigned to another shipboard duty to serve out the remainder of my 4 year enlistment, this Navy Commander he called me in to his office. He said, “Now look here, Lad. You’re a seaman apprentice. We can’t bust you down any further. I’d like to bust you to seaman recruit but I can’t. Because somehow or other and don’t ask me how you managed it, you slid your lazy ass through boot camp with a good conduct badge. So what do we do with you now? You’re good for nothing. How about we go ahead and give you a U.D. and a bus ticket home. Save you the brig time. You’re off the hook and so are we…”

Well, it didn’t take me more than a second to respond to his offer. I said, “No Sir, I, ah, I don’t think so. I think I’ll stay in and do my Brig Time.”

Well, that Commander he looked at me like I’m shit that won’t flush. “Suit yourself. Enjoy your time behind bars!”

Somewhere deep within my drifty-ass nineteen year old brain lay a deposit of good common sense. I wasn’t about to wear a scarlet letter the rest of my life. So I did the Brig Time, which wasn’t too bad. Kinda like a Boot Camp redo only easier because I was used to it. Twice during my four month stretch they called me in and the warden, this Marine Colonel, he repeated the Commander’s offer.

“We’d like to admin you out of here, son. Make it easy on you. What do you say?”

I just kept shaking my head. “No, sir. No. I think I’ll stay in. With all due respect, sir. I’ll just go ahead and finish my enlistment.”

At one point they must’ve done a serious cost/benefit analysis. They looked over that long list of Drifty- Ass Sailors and they checked me off for disposal. One morning just short of my release from the brig they called me in and said they were gonna go ahead and offer me a better deal. Which I grabbed. They issued me a chunk of change and discharged me under Honorable Conditions. Which meant I kept all my veteran’s benefits. I used the G.I. Bill to go to college. And best of all, I’ve been getting free Medical Care all these years. Which is a big fucking deal let me tell you.

So if you feel like thanking me for my service, like they do these days. Especially with all us sad sack Vietnam era Vets. When you come to me, you could maybe say, “Thank you for your short service. And Thank God they never let you handle the Nuclear Codes.”

Anyway, I grabbed my honorable discharge and floated away.

Seems like I’ve been floating my whole life!

Half a Century of water under the bridge. Floating along like a frog on a lily pad.

I’m still floating.

Nowadays my lily pad’s a double lotus

Marina Plaza Sausalito

Marina Plaza yesterday

Something’s been bugging me about Vet’s Day. My drifty ass brain won’t formulate it exactly. Let me cook it in the back of my head for a while and maybe it’ll come to me.

I’ve Been living on C dock going on fifteen years. On three different boats! That’s right. Same Dock, different boats. I’m one of the old timers of this floating turf.

I do pretty much everything on C dock. The only thing I don’t do is my laundry. For that I hit the Mexican Joint up the street. Otherwise, I hang. Hang with the usual suspects. Lately, there’s been some fresh faces. Brand new fellow brethren. Like Lionel. Lionel bought Scruffy from my son, Ronnie. Ronnie’s not my son but he’s like a son to me.

Ronnie was here for a while. Now he’s fixing elevators. Living in Pacifica.

He sold Scruffy. Sold it as a rent-to-own deal…

So Lionel took over Scruffy and now lives on it with his wife, his son, his mother-in-law and I don’t know who the hell else…

I don’t know how long Lionel’s gonna last here on C dock. Roberto, The Harbor Master, asked me what I thought about these people. He doesn’t really want to throw em out. He likes Ronnie, the elevator mechanic. He would rather not wreak Ronnie’s deal. But there’s rules. Renting Scruffy to these people is kinda breaking the rules. It’s like going too far. I told him it’s not a strict rental deal. It’s more of a rent-to-own deal. He grins. Renting is renting. Then I told him these are nice people. They don’t make noise. They’re very quiet. Even the mother in law is quiet. I told him they’re not here all the time. They got a house in Novato. I’m only telling him this because that’s what Lionel told me…I know there’s no house in Novato. And I notice they are here all the time. Harbor Master’s no fool, either. He knows the real score. But he’s a liberal guy. “They don’t make noise,” I repeat. And that’s the truth. If they actually made noise, I’d be the first one to complain. And they’d be gone. So maybe what I say carries some weight…

Seafarers

Then we got some real transients. A French dude name of Nomad. He calls himself Nomad. He’s a friend of the Harbor Master. Roberto let him park here a few days before they shove off for Mexico. Nomad and his girlfriend sailed this beat up old boat down from Canada. That was the first leg. Soon they’ll be joining the Ba Ha Ha Ha for a journey south of the border.

Nomad borrowed a sander from me to do a little repair work before splitting for Mexico. This morning I see he’s gone. And he forgot to return my sander? Shit. Oh, well. Least I still got my orbiter. I never loan out my good sander.

Lorenzo

Have I mentioned Lorenzo? He’s kind of new. Lorenzo cleans boat bottoms for Roberto, our Harbor Master. Lorenzo’s not exactly new. He’s been on C dock going on two years. Two fucking years! My how time flies. Here’s Lorenzo, hanging his wet suites on his boat to dry…

I could go further and change his form to that of a friendly canine.

How’s that for the magic of A.I.?

Here’s Lorenzo tarping his boat for the impending rain. For this shot I removed his head altogether.

You satisfied Lorenzo? Nobody knows who you are.

Lorenzo and I like to talk Politics. He’s a liberal dude…even kind of Radical…like we old dudes used to be back in the Sixties. There’s something comforting in that. Well, thank god there’s a few of us still around. Did I mention Lorenzo is still in his thirties? Same with Lionel. All these people are like spring chickens. Lorenzo is not exactly like a son to me. Mainly because he’s not covered with tattoos. I was getting ready to leave Lorenzo alone to do his business of tarping his boat for the impending rain, when, offhand, he sez, “By the way, Gloomy. I have your sander. Nomad couldn’t find you and he left it with me.”

I’ll be God Damned.

The Summer of 72

I was still AWOL from the navy. Had been loose going on three months. Nothing much to do in Santa Cruz but hang around feeling the dread of being AWOL. So I’m just hanging out. Crashing in my buddy Robert Baugh’s garage. AWOL. Hanging out, committing petty crimes for food money, mostly shoplifting and busting into beach tourist cars. Then something happened. With summer I fell in with the Egan brothers. Egan’s Rats we called them. Thrill Seekers would be a kind way of describing the Egan Brothers. I spent a few days binging whiskey with Randy, the oldest bro. Until he got evicted and vanished. Then, Ricky, the youngest, showed up, and we drove my Dodge Dart down to Hollywood to hook up with his bro Rodger. Two Egan’s meant at least twice as much trouble. Yet I was ready for some action. You’re 18 you do crazy shit. I don’t know why. Now I’m thinking about it I don’t know why I was AWOL from the Navy in the first place. Oh, yes, I remember now. I hated my ship, a tanker called the U.S.S. Mars, docked at the Alameda Air Station. I hated being part of the deck crew. Hated being a swabby. Hated sleeping in a tin can packed like a sardine down below with eighty dudes. Down in the steel bowels with the greasy fowl air and dudes playing Hearts all night shouting and snoring and I’m wedged in the middle bunk between two assholes….and during the day I’m getting all the shit jobs cuz I’m the boot. The new guy fresh out of boot camp. Meanwhile we’re getting about ready to deploy for the Philippines and I’m looking at six to nine months at sea with these fuckers. I know I’ll be stuck pulling duty all hours of the day and night…and…standing night watches with Officers breathing down my neck…and swabbing decks and sanding bulkheads all day…then more standing watches…so I said fuck it. I took a weekend liberty and stayed gone.

Rick, Rodger and Randy on the left. Little sis in the middle. A triplet of sis’s friends. If the bros look stoned its because they are…

The sunset boulevard Crash

My memory is pretty dim these days. The farther back I go the more the details of a memory blur. Names vanish. Facts get made-up. If I go way back, say, to 1972, a story becomes a myth. So lets just say I’m making this shit up, even if all of it really happened.

Like I said, hanging out with the Egan Bro’s back in the day was like inviting trouble. Did I say that? Well, I don’t mean to be too critical. I think I said they were Thrill Seekers…but it just so happens, etc….

Currently, Hollywood Boulevard merges with Sunset Boulevard at a diagonal. Together, the two boulevards cross a north-south street, named Virgil Avenue on the south and Hillhurst Avenue on the north.

We crashed just where Hollywood Boulevard merged into Sunset Boulevard. Matter of fact, I think, the merge caused the crash…

By then I’d been a fugitive going on three months and I knew it couldn’t go on forever. Sooner or later I’d need to go to Canada and start a new life. Or figure out how to change my identity and start a new life. Or go back to the Navy and start a new life. It never occurred to me I might start a new life by dying.

We’d been chugging this cheap wine called Tyrolia. Me. Rodger. Ricky. Maybe Don. We got very very drunk. Did we all love the stuff? I don’t remember. I remember Rodger swore by Tyrolia Wine..

Anyway, we ran out of Tyrolia and we needed to buy more.

On the way to buy more of this rot gut we crashed. Rodger and Me. I recall racing down Hollywood boulevard. Rodger is driving. I’m sitting in the passenger seat, laughing my ass off. Rodger was racing Ricky. Ricky was driving my dodge dart. Why wasn’t I driving my own car? For some reason I don’t remember I was in the Volkswagen with Rodger.

Rodger is winning the race. At one point we’re neck and neck. Then suddenly. It always happens suddenly. Suddenly Hollywood Blvd. merges into Sunset Blvd. Rodger makes a sharp turn. The VW flips. I don’t remember how fast we were going. I remember going upside down. Suddenly. Suddenly Flipping. Over and over over. Coming to a stop before I even remembered we crashed. Landing upside down in a fancy car sales lot. I think we smashed up a Ferrari on our way. We were both upside down when Rodger said, “You okay?” I’m thinking, am I okay. I’m feeling myself. “Yeah, I’m okay.” And Rodger says, “We gotta run…no we can’t run, we gotta stay.” Then he ran away. I crawled from the car. Marveled that I’d survived a God Awful crash without a scratch. I remember. Yes. I remember just standing there. Staring at the demolished car. A bystander sidled up to me and said, “Hey, you were in that car!” I looked at him. I had the sense to say, “No, I wasn’t.” “Of course you were,” he said. “I saw you crawl out of it.” I looked at him and laughed. I’d been laughing, standing there, staring at the car, laughing. A Tyrolia wine laugh. Then I stopped laughing. “Are you kidding,” I said to the Dude. “Look at the car. It’s smashed all to hell. I’d be dead if I was in that car…”

After that I don’t remember much. Only that I drifted away. Wandered down the street and got picked up by Ricky, who was driving my car.

We abandoned the car in the car lot. Prescient move considering the damage Rodger did to the Ferrari and several other fancy cars on the lot. Later he called in the car as stolen. There’s more to this story but it’s mostly anticlimax. And like I said, my memory is so weak I’ll just end up making up shit…

Maybe the crash knocked some sense into me. Maybe. Probably not. Yet it wasn’t too long after the crash I did go back to the Navy. I’d blown my wad. My Dodge dart blew up just outside of San Jose. Ricky got a lift home and I hitched it to Santa Cruz, where I dicked around for a few more days until it finally entered my fat head I’d wore out my welcome with everybody. One day I made up my mind. How I’d start a new life. I walked to the Ocean Street onramp and stuck out my thumb. Don’t remember how many rides it took me to reach Alameda. I remember arriving at the Navy Base. Being dropped off at the East Gate. Standing there. Staring at the Marine Guard checking I.D.s of the drivers coming and going. Guess I stood there for a long time, watching him. Dreading the moment. Then walking into the office. Waiting in line. Then stepping up to the clerk’s window. The clerk, a Sailor, asking me what I want. Me saying, “I’m back.”

“Back from what?”

“I’m turning myself in. I’ve been AWOL.”

He just looked at me and said, “What do you expect me to do about it?”

How about a Veteran’s-Of-Life Day?

At the beginning of this blog post I told you something’s been bugging me about Veteran’s Day. I said my drifty-ass brain won’t formulate it exactly. So I cooked it in the back of my head for a while and I’ll be damned if it hasn’t come to me. It’s about Veteran’s Day, specifically.

I understand why we have Veteran’s Day. We have it to honor the men and women who served our country in the Military. Memorial day is especially for those who died in the military. Killed in action. While Veteran’s day is for all of us who served, both those who served and those who served and offered up the greatest sacrifice. I get all that. I even kind of appreciate it. Vietnam vets were shit on for their service back in the Sixties. All that has changed. Now we honor people’s service. Even lunkheads like me.

But what about all the rest who didn’t happen to serve? What about them?

I often think the fact I made it to Seventy Two is a far greater achievement than the year and a half or so I spent dicking around in the Navy. Not counting the time I spent AWOL. I’m thinking I’d much rather have some dude come up to me and say thank you for your service not because I joined the Navy a long long long time ago but because I made it to Seventy.

So why don’t we have a day especially for us Old Farts.

Call it Veteran’s-of-Life Day.

You made it to 70 without killing or raping or bilking some poor fucker out of his dough or despoiling the earth too drastically. Or even if you did some bad shit along the way, what of it? Thank you for your service even if you were kind of a dick and you never gave a shit about anybody. At least you made it to Seventy. Thank you for your service. Thank you for showing us that even a Dick like you can plug along through this vale of tears.

But what about really bad people? Real real bad people who’ve made it to Seventy and beyond? Should we honor even them on Veteran’s-of-life Day?

I say yes. Definitely yes.

Here’s a for instance:

Maxwell’s not quite Seventy. So I’ll wait a while with her. As for President Donald Trump. Thank you, Trump, for giving me an example of a perfectly atrocious human being. Thanks to you I have a standard of pure nastiness from which I can rate other people’s nastiness. From now on I’ll be able to say, “Well, Old Joe, over there, he’s a real fucked up human being. But is he anywhere near as bad as Donald Trump? No, he’s not. And here’s why…”

And I’ll have a hundred or so examples of why to choose from.

Thank you for your service, Donald. Keep being just as Nasty and Vile as you can possibly be.

And have a very happy Veteran’s-of-Life Day!

Take the Long Way Home

I’ve come to the conclusion I’ve had a pretty good life. True, I haven’t achieved a lot. I’ve lived a lot. When I think back on my life I’m kind of amazed what I’ve been through. I haven’t been an especially good person. Certainly not pious. But I’ve kept my eyes open. Tried to notice stuff. Take note of my surroundings. Get as much fun from the moment as I can. It’s only when I forget to pay attention that I get depressed. And I’ve had quite a bit of that lately. But I’m trying to shape up. Like my pal Rel Render says, enough with the whoa is me shit. You got it made. Maybe he’s right.

Not too long ago. Last month I think. I found myself in Alameda. Just for the hell of it, I drove over to the Naval Air Station. To the spot where I returned and turned myself in for being AWOL. The base has been closed now for many years. Part of it is a bird sanctuary.

The base is for rent and several companies have moved into various buildings on the base. Yet the place as a whole has the feel of a ghost town.

It’s kind of weird. Really weird if you want to know the truth. Which of course you do. Weird to stand before this abandoned entryway and think back 54 years to those days when this base was one of the busiest Military Installations in the country. Well, it just goes to show. You can live your life in a straight line…getting shit done…being, how do you say it, Proactive. Or you can just float along on that Lily Pad. Get where you want to go when you feel like it. As for me, I’ve always managed to take the long way home. Getting there. But getting there at my own pace. Or maybe not getting there at all. And then finding out that it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. I’ve outlived the Alameda Navel Air Station. I consider that one of my crowning achievements.

And I wouldn’t mind at all if you thanked me for my service…for that at least!