NaNoWriMo update

This shares an interesting Thanksgiving story. But first, an NaNoWriMo challenge update. Every day I am writing something towards the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words in the month of November. I have completed fourteen days and I am ahead of schedule. I hope to finish by day 22 so I have Thanksgiving free. Today I passed 29k.

Smoked Turkey

Thanksgiving is next week. My wife and I were talking about the dinner this weekend. She asked to smoke a turkey which is something new for us. We have smoked chicken parts and found them delicious. A smoked turkey should be just as delicious. When we learned that a niece and family are coming to visit, we added an oven cooked turkey to the food list.

This started me thinking about past Thanksgivings we have shared. There have been 43 of them since we met. Our first Thanksgiving together was in Iceland. She had joined me in October and we lived in a Quonset hut outside the base. I don’t remember what we for dinner had but I know it was good. My wife is an exceptional cook.

Thanksgiving in Panama

We spent many Thanksgivings overseas in places like Iceland, Italy and Panama. The Thanksgiving that I will never forget occurred in Panama. Let me set the stage if you will. We lived in Pan Canal housing. The tropical housing routinely shown where you park cars under the house. ( Pictured above.) The command recreation center and mess hall (restaurant) was in a similar building near us. The wife was the command ombudsman.  She had many duties but one was to represent the command at commissary, exchange and public works meetings.

We bought our first Weber dome grill that summer. My wife found instructions for cooking a turkey on the grill. I don’t remember if I was happy or not with the prospect of keeping the grill fed with charcoal for the hours needed to grill a turkey. She prevailed. We would cook the turkey on the Weber. I fired up the grill and we put on the bird. Everyone else, including the mess hall, were cooking their birds in their electric ovens.

Dinner must wait? NO!!

It was about 2 pm when the power went out for the entire neighborhood. Turkeys sat in ovens partly cooked. My wife got frantic calls asking her to do something. Since she attended the public works meetings, they thought she might be able to get something done. They were right. She called the proper persons and soon trucks showed to work the problem. Hours later, power was restored. While others were cooking again, our grilled turkey was cooked and we had dined.  Some called it good luck, I called it good planning by my wife.

We have many interesting Thanksgiving but this is one that we relate when asked.  I would enjoy hearing about your favorite Thanksgiving memory. Use the comment form to tell me about it.

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Coming home from deployment

“You can’t go home again”¹. I completed a thirty month tour of duty in Hawaii and took home leave in route to Corpus Christi, Texas. My parents and sibling twins, brother and sister, greeted me at the airport. My other brother was in San Diego on active duty. In those thirty months, my father retired from the Navy and the twins graduated high school. The twins were not the gangly teenagers I remembered. After all of the hugs, kisses and welcome-homes, we drove to the house they bought the year before.

Old small house, new big house

The family lived in a small house in a rural housing development while I left. It had two bedrooms, living room and dining room – kitchen on the main floor. There were two small bedrooms and closet on the second floor. The basement partially finished. We pulled into the driveway of a stately three story house. This house was twice the square footage of the old house. Four bedrooms, two and one half baths, an open attic (without bedrooms) and the basement utility storage room. I wouldn’t have to share a bedroom in this house, oh joy!

There were other noticeable differences. Tiny front yard and a backyard that ran the length of a city block. We would never have worried about hitting the baseball over the fence in this yard. Except we would not have played ball here. The majestic spruce trees lining one side of the yard and fruit trees the other formed a corridor leading to the vegetable garden. This was not a yard designed for a pickup game of baseball. It was more suitable for horseshoes but we never played horseshoes at ‘my house.’

I didn’t mean to demean the new house but I missed my cozy old house. That house forced me outside to create secrets. Inside, conversations were whispered or everyone was privy to them. The staircase slid back to reveal the stairs to the basement. Brazen youth, my brothers and I loved the challenge of climbing it to our bedroom when it was back, nearly horizontal. We added a back porch on the old house. On summer days, my brother Cletus and I would parachute from the roof onto the soft sod below.

There was no need to go outside to create secrets in this large house. I could call out and no one hear me. The new house had two flights of stairs to climb to the bedroom. Fixed and no challenge to climb at any age. The new house had a porch with shrubs fronting it. No soft sod even if I dared jump off this one’s high roof. The new house had two redeeming features. I had a bedroom which I mentioned and the front porch I had no desire to jump from. The porch had a big wooden swing and screens to keep out bugs.

Talking on the porch

Most nights, my mother and I sat on the swing and watched the world go by as we chatted. We talked about the new house, the old neighborhood, new friends, old friends, her pride in her kids, her disappointment Cletus and I were not home more, and uncounted other things. We spent many hours in that swing. Sometimes, my father would join us on the porch, sometimes a sibling, or an uncle. Sometimes, but rarely I sat alone in the swing.

Too soon my leave was up and I had to move on to my next duty station. No, you can’t go home again if you expect it to be the same place as when you left. Even if there was no new house, the family had changed as had I. The talks were of memories of times past and about futures which would not be shared.

Writing this made me melancholy. My parents are gone and so are my three siblings. The house sold and the porch with its swing belongs to another family. I hope the swing makes memories for someone in that family as it did for me.

Do you agree that you can’t go home again? I would love to hear your thoughts. Share by leaving a comment.

1. Thomas Wolfe wrote a book with this title.

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Why I enlisted in the Navy

I enlisted in the US Navy in August 1966 under a deferment program. I had 90 days to make preparations for leaving civilian life. The draft notice Uncle Sam had sent me was voided by the enlistment. I was property of the sea service.

On 29 November, 1966 I arrived at the induction center in Chicago, Illinois at about 6 am. I was very early. Eventually, someone unlocked the center. I was told they were not ready to begin processing new recruits and sent to a waiting area. I was told someone would call me when it was my turn.

Too scared not to, I followed directions verbatim. I sat for several hours waiting. I watched many men my age enter and be taken to other rooms. My patience exhausted,  sore from sitting on an uncomfortable chair, I stopped a passing sailor to explain my concerns. This caused a stir because the processing was nearly complete for the day.

I was hustled to a room where I filled out forms and took tests before undergoing a physical. After getting dressed, I was given a folder with my paperwork. I was taken to a room where recruits were receiving their assignments for boot camp.

Getting to San Diego Navy Recruit Training Center

I entered and placed my folder in the tray on the desk. My folder became the topmost folder. I was the last one through processing but would be the next considered. The sailor picked up my folder and called me to his desk. He reviewed my paperwork and asked me to select San Diego, California or Great Lakes, Illinois for boot camp.  I took the last opening for San Diego Naval Recruit Training Center given that day, 29 November 1966.

I was one of three recruits that boarded a flight to San Diego, California that afternoon. I would spend the winter in balmy California. As it turned out, the recruits at Great Lakes suffered through a very cold snowy winter. I endured rain in San Diego.

No Holiday Break

Boot camp did not break for holidays. I spent Christmas and New Years with my company. The highlight of training came the day my Father, a Senior Chief Petty Officer, came to visit. His ship remained in port long enough for him to attend my graduation. (He deployed to Tonkin Gulf off Viet Nam shortly after I graduated.) If you read my welcome blog, you know he recommended I join the Navy. *He also encouraged my two younger brothers to enlist when they turned 19.*

In retrospect, it is clear these series of events foreshadowed many times during my career when fortune shined on me. I had arrived before anyone and was the last processed.  As a result, I selected the last assignment to San Diego and missed the awful winter experienced by Great Lakes. And had I gone to Great Lakes, my father could not have visited or been present at my graduation. Fortune smiled.

I would enjoy hearing if  fortune or a lucky talisman has shined on you.

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