My Navy Career Part 1

 

TWO OLD COUNTRY BOYS AND MY MILITARY CAREER PART ONE

 

We were just young country boys back in 1964. We had just graduated from Rosman High School. Now, I’m sure that everyone knows where Rosman is located. But just in case someone is reading this in California, or some other foreign country, Rosman is 43 miles east of Asheville, North Carolina where the Great Smokey Mountain Parkway begins.  Now, on the Parkway is a place called Devil’s Courthouse. I wrote about the Courthouse in another of my Owen Newsletter stories. I was arrested on the Parkway with my brother Howard and spent the night in Waynesville Jail, but that’s a story for another time (watery grits floating in liquid eggs only warmed up).

Anyway, my good friend Henry McDevitt and I somehow managed to graduate from High School. Some might think, so what, no big deal. Well, let me tell you in Western North Carolina up in the hills, graduating from high school is  or at least was a big deal. At that point, I was the first in my family to graduate. My mama was so proud of me, and she came to the graduation with my sister Thelma and my beautiful Grandma, Ethyl Chapman. My first cousin Eddie was a year behind me, and he graduated too. He was too stubborn to quit school. Eddie and I grew up together and we thought we were brothers instead of cousins. Hell, it would take a phone book to list all my cousins. A family reunion would reveal cousins that nobody in the family knew. They just come out of the woodwork. It could have been that they were not cousins at all but strangers driving by the Church picnic tables and seeing my Mama’s chocolate cake or my Aunt Francis’ Banana Pudding.  At any rate, we even had kissing cousins, some fine-looking girls. After a hug and a kiss, they would ask (are we going to hell now?). I would tell them there was a good chance so we might as well have another kiss. Jerry Lee Lewis had nothing on us.

Sometimes, I slide off the storyline so, back to the story.

 

Both Henry and I were good looking guys although I must admit Henry was better looking than me. The girls liked us. Henry was 18 and I was 17. After graduation, we spent some time fishing and partying up on old highway 64 by the trash pile by Harvey Morgan’s house. Harvey had stone steps with pretty marbles embedded in the concrete.  I would walk from my house to Harvey’s to watch westerns on Saturday nights. We did not get a TV until some time later and it was either 13 or 17 inches wide and someone had to hold onto the rabbit ears so the picture would come in clear. We had a choice of channel 13 (WLOS) or Greenville, S.C. on channel 4.

After our break from High School, both Henry and I looked for jobs. We must have put in 25 or 30 applications, and we were always told the same thing: “You boys get your military obligation over with and then we will hire you. We don’t want to train you and then you get a draft notice.” Henry and I hung out a lot down at his Mama’s house in Rosman. Verona was OK with us drinking some beer or white lightning as long as we did not drive, and we did have a few while listening to Johnny Cash records.

 

At that time in July of 1964, Viet Nam was getting a lot of attention, and the draft was pretty active.  Henry and I felt bad that we could not get a job and one morning after a night of drinking, Henry said: We better get our ass in the Navy before we get drafted into the damn Army. After sobering up a little, Henry called the Navy Recruiter in Asheville, or it might have been Hendersonville. He agreed to come to Henry’s house and give us our entrance test.

Well, the night before the Navy Recruiter came over, Henry and I pooled our meager dollars and bought a couple of cases of Schlitz  and Blue-Ribbon beer and stayed up all night drinking.

When the Navy recruiter showed up way too early in the morning, He banged on the door and someone let him in. Henry and I were still sleeping on the couch and on a pallet on the floor.

We got up all bleary eyed and wobbly and the recruiter asked if there was a place he could go over the papers with us. Henry turned around and with one arm, he swept about 20 beer cans off the kitchen table and asked if that was OK. The recruiter took some paper towels off the counter, wiped the table dry and broke out a pile of papers.

We sat there sipping on a breakfast beer and the recruiter had one too as he gave us each a sheaf of papers to fill out. Then he asked if we were sure we wanted to commit to joining the Navy and we said yes. Then he gave us our entrance exam while Henry’s mom made coffee.

Henry asked where we would be sent to, and the recruiter said either Great Lakes or San Diego Boot Camp. Well, we both told him we did not want to go up north to Yankee land, so we agreed on San Diego. Then Henry, asked where we would  go after Boot Camp and the recruiter said we could join on thee Buddy program and we would be stationed together.

 

Well, we both chose Naval Aviation . I qualified for a school, and I chose Aviation Electronic Technician School in Millington, Tennessee. I think Henry would have qualified too, but he drank more beer than I did before taking the entrance exam and he had one of those headaches. He did take some aspirin with his breakfast beer. We both swore by Bayer Aspirin.

So, within a couple of weeks, we rode a Greyhound bus along with a lot of other new recruits down to Columbia , South Carolina  where we raised our hands and became sailors.

Now, I had one night in Columbia before flying to San Diego. We went to Fort Jackson for breakfast before riding a Navy bus to the airport. After eating green condensed scramble eggs and day-old coffee at the Army base, I hoped the Navy food would be better and it sure was.

A Navy bus hauled us out to the Naval Training  Center called NTC. We got off the bus and were assigned to a Company. Henry was assigned to Company 495, and I was assigned to Company 522.  Everybody was marched to a barber shop where they took all our hair. Then we were marched to a warehouse where they gave us about a dozen shots and issued us some working uniforms, Bell bottom denim and blue  chambray  shirts. We were issued white hats, tee shirts  and jockey shorts along with two pairs of shoes, steel-toed work boots and dress shoes. While they were marching us to and fro, they called us maggots along with some other unpleasant names. Finally, we were assigned bunks and everybody collapsed. About 5 o’clock in the morning  reveille was sounded and we were told to get our maggot  asses out of bed and get dressed.

After a quick shower and shave, we were marched to the chow hall in our new bell-bottom pants and blue shirts with our white hats along with our steel-toed shoes. We had a company flag with a blue background and large numbers showing 522.

I wound through the line and a cook behind a row of steam tables looked over the shield and asked me what I would like for breakfast. I said how about some grits and two eggs and two biscuits . He laughed and said listen shitbird, hold your trey (a steel trey with compartments) out and move down the line. I held my trey out and received a biscuit covered with gravy and chipped dried beef (SOS), some little potato cubes, some scrambled eggs, and a muffin. We sat at long steel tables with knives, spoons and forks in stainless steel buckets and a stack of napkins. The table had lots of salt and pepper and hot sauce. There were drink fountains with milk, chocolate milk and a choice of apple or orange juice.  The food was delicious. After breakfast, we were marched out on a hot concrete area called the grinder. At the grinder, we were issued rifles and marched for miles. We were called maggots, shitbirds and girls. Finally, lunch rolled around and we were marched back to the chow hall where we feasted on roast beef, roasted potatoes, and carrots along with a dinner roll and shelled corn. It was also delicious. I drank chocolate milk and orange juice. Lunch ended too soon, and we were marched back to the hot  grinder where they taught us which foot was right and left and how to stand at attention, right face, left face among other drills. By the time suppertime rolled around everyone was exhausted. We were called all sorts of disrespectful names although maggot seemed to be their favorite. The days went by, and we were issued white uniforms and had to wear out dress shoes with leggings. Once in a while, we would get to sit on aluminum steps and listen to lectures about what was going to happen to us if we survived the training. We had no trouble sleeping and 5 o’ clock seemed to come earlier and earlier.

Our Company Commander, a Navy Chief, would greet us each morning and tell us we were going to have a fine Navy day and soon we would no longer be maggots, we would be United States Sailors , that is if we lived through training. He said a tadpole turns into a frog and a moth turned into a butterfly, so he had faith in us.

Stay tuned for Part Two.

 Seventh Son 

I was born a young child. No, I wasn’t a coal miner’s daughter. (Loretta Lynn Song) I was a moonshiner’s son. 

 

It was a hot August day, the nineteenth, to be exact. The sun was about midway up its

climb into the sky over the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, not too far from the Cherokee

Indian reservation. The familiar blue haze was being displaced by the bright rays of the warm

dog day’s sun. 

 

To find the exact place, you would start in a well known tourist city of North Carolina.

The city of Asheville and also the home of the famous Biltmore House and the Buncombe

County jail as I was to find out in later years. You would take State highway 64 east and pass by

the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Cherokee Indian Reservation. About 30 miles

from Asheville you would come to Brevard, North Carolina, now a popular retirement spot for

out –of- towners from Florida and New York City. Brevard is also well known to artists and

musicians as an up and coming sorta artsy fartsy place. A place where you can experience some

of the finest musical and art events and still get to rub elbows with the natives, more commonly

referred to as hillbillies. 

 

 About nine miles on up highway 64 you will find the small town of Rosman. You would

stop in Rosman at the Company Store and have two famous chilly dogs and a pint of Sealtest

chocolate milk for about 35 cents or so and pick up a nickel’s worth of penny candy from the

display by the meat counter. Continuing up highway 64 about three miles you would come to a

turnoff road proudly labeled Frozen Creek Road. Since you could only go left, you would go left

unless you were my sister, Vonda Lee, who still has some difficulty telling her left from her

right. Up Frozen Creek Road about a mile and before you get to Jim Dick Hill, you will see a

small road leading to the left named Bothy Road. Please don’t ask me why someone named the

driveway to my Daddy’s house Bothy Road. It didn’t even have a name when I was born. The

first road to the left off Bothy leads directly into the yard of my Daddy, Fred Owen’s house. 

 

So, roughly 45 miles from Ashville on Frozen Creek Road about ten o’clock in the

morning on August 19, 1946, I was born in the living room of my Daddy’s house. Within 11

minutes of my birth, in a little town called Hope, Arkansas another young boy was born at home

also. His name was William Jefferson Clinton. Despite sharing a birthday with this other young

boy, I did not become President of The United States as he did. However I was elected a Union

President twice much later. Now Union President has nothing to do with the Yankee Union

Army. It’s a different thing entirely. But both Hillary and Anita can claim they slept with the

President. 

 

Well, everybody had been hanging around the house all day because my Mama had told

everyone she was giving birth so she could get back to work. I remember one minute being all

warm and sleepy and the next minute be held up in the air, my butt slapped, and wrapped in an

old rough towel. The sun was coming through the window and I had trouble holding my eyes

open. Mama, yelled at my sister Thelma to bring her a wash pan and some warm water. The next

thing I knew, she was scrubbing me with a washcloth and everybody was gathering round

saying, “I wanna see the baby.”  I had never known such excitement. As I looked around the

living room, I saw a gaggle of people who I later came to know as my family. They were talking

about the new baby. I looked all over and did not see the baby they were talking about. I was still

a little sleepy and also beginning to get a little hungry too. 

 

Mama shooed everyone away and carried me out to the front porch. There was a little

breeze and as she sat on the porch in the hot morning sun, I dozed off in her lap. I didn’t own any

clothes then so I was still wrapped in the towel, but I was awful tired and a little confused about

seeing so many people around. I must have slept for about an hour when Mama stood up and told

my sister Thelma to come and hold me while she fixed something for dinner. You see, in some

parts of the country folks eat dinner in the evening, but we ate supper in the evening so

dinnertime was about high noon in our parts. 

 

My sister, Thelma pulled up a wooden chair with a straw bottom and sat down in 

it and Mama handed me off and went in the kitchen. Soon, she came out and brought a plate of

soup beans and cornbread. Thelma held me while Mama fed me my first meal. I liked the soup

beans o.k. but I found out later they make you fart. The corn bread was delicious but the onion

and hot pepper seemed a little strong to me as well as a little crunchy on my new teeth. 

 

Well, it wasn’t too long until my Grandma who lived across Frozen Creek Road heard

that I had made my appearance and came to visit. I still remember looking out our drive and

seeing her walking toward the house. She had her hair all tied up in a bun and had a blue flowery

dress on with a white apron. She walked right up on the porch and told my sister Thelma who

was holding me to let her hold the baby. When Thelma handed me over to her, I then realized

that I was the baby that everyone was talking about.

 

WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG

 When you are young, in your mind, the world is your oyster (that was hard to spell). Of course if you don't like oysters, you  the world could be your lobster, or anything else that brings you peace of mind. Maybe a thick ribeye steak or a fifth of Scotch. (I prefer JB). Anyway, I had to start somewhere. Thanks for being patient. 

 Back to my story. When you are young, you don't think of getting older or if you do, there are other people older so you still think of yourself as young, You have heard the term 10 foot high and  bulletproof. You just don't think that you will ever be old. You know about death because as you travel through life, you see old people die. Once in a while you see a young person die and you think that is just an exception (won't happen to you).    It's probably a good thing that you have that idea that you will live forever as it seems to help you when you suffer from illnesses and hard times.

In my case as many of you know, I was born a young child. I was born at home so that I would not have to experience the trauma of being born in a hospital.  My youth was filled with things like hoeing corn, chopping wood, going to school, working in my Daddy's whiskey still and eating good food. 

We grew a garden and my Mother and Grandmother and my sisters canned everything that did not move. We had canned peaches,  beans, corn, beets, grape juice, jelly, jam and various and sundry other things like along with  a variety of berries. We always had a fall ham and pork chops, venison, and other slow creatures. We supplemented our diet with squirrels, rabbits, coons and ground hogs. We had a creek full of fish and the river was just down the road a piece. We did not know we were poor and nobody told us. We wore hand me downs and patched shirts and pants. I would not trade those days for any amount of money.

All of a sudden, while still young, I graduated from high school. I still felt young, just a little bit taller. When I got out of high school in 1964, my friend Henry McDevitt and I looked for a job. Viet Nam was just starting to heat up and it seems we heard the same story over and over. "You boys go and get your military service over with and then come back and we will give you a job." Well after hearing that advice several times, Henry and I decided to join the Navy. So we joined up under the buddy program where we would be stationed together. I was young and 17 and Henry was 18. Our first duty station was a Naval Air Facility just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. We had both chosen to be in Naval Aviation. 

In the evenings, we would ride a liberty bus into Phoenix about 40 miles from base. We would walk around the city and window shop. We were too young to drink. We found that the streets in Phoenix were named after Presidents. Our bus would park on Washington street and we would explore Van Buren, Jackson, and Jefferson streets. We sometimes wore our uniforms and sometimes civilian clothes. We were still young.

We went to a party out in Estrella park not far from the small towns of Avondale and Goodyear. I left the park  with one of the party goers in a pickup truck to make a beer run. He started driving extremely fast and I tried to get him to slow down but he would not. The road was a gravel road and we went around a curve too fast and slid off the road and flipped over and over. The driver was thrown from the truck and he abandoned me. I was badly injured and bruised and my foot was just hanging from my leg with some meat. I had broken my leg bones with a compound fracture and my head had several deep cuts. I was bleeding quite heavily. I crawled up from the wreck to the gravel road and passed out a few times. A man and his wife was driving by and saw me laying on the edge of the road. Once they found out I was military, they loaded me in there car and drove me to the base hospital at Luke Air Force Base about 20 miles away. I did not get their names and was never able to thank them. I left blood all over their back seat . 

At the hospital, the military doctors were talking about amputating my foot and ankle because it was almost off and dirty with gravel in the wound. I was drifting in and out of consciousness but I told them I wanted to keep my foot. They finally agreed but they told me that if I did not lose the foot, I would always have a limp. They put a cast with a window on my leg and as the bones healed, they took skin grafts from my thigh to cover the bones. There was no meat on the bones just a skin cover.  One bright spot was I had a cute nurse who brought me small bottles of booze and played poker with me. The skin grafts held and after a few weeks, I was released with a pair of uncomfortable crutches. I had a head full of stiches from the cuts. My whole body was bruised and I was lucky to have survived. Luckily I was young. 

When I joined the Navy, I qualified for a guaranteed school. I had chosen Aviation Electronic Technician school in Memphis, Tennessee. However, my school convened while I was recuperating and I was told I would have to wait another 10 months to get my school. Once I was off crutches, Henry and I saw advertisements on the base bulletin boards where volunteers were needed to go to Viet Nam. We both decided to volunteer and I ended up in an Attack Squadron and Henry ended up on the Navy's first nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise. We were still young. I trained as a plane captain. After training, my squadron , the Road Runners deployed on the USS Ticonderoga and went on a 9 month cruse off the coast of Viet Nam . Our ship pulled into Subic Bay, Philippines and there was the USS Enterprise. Henry and I were reunited for about a week and we enjoyed drinking San Miguel beer together and eating good Filipino food. There was a Marine enlisted club on the base and we enjoyed going there and listening to the various bands and eating great food. There was a short Filipino who sounded identical to Johnny Cash as long as you did not look at him. The time together was short and both our ships sailed once again for Viet Nam. We were both still young. I was muscular because once back off the coast of Viet Nam, I worked on several 4 hour bomb loading parties. The average bomb weighed 250 pounds. It took two of us to lift it up to the undercarriage of the plane as an ordinance man attached it and armed the bomb. Four hours of lifting 125 pounds of bombs made me tired but strong. Working on the Flight Deck was dangerous. We had exhausted sailors walk into propellers or behind a jet blast . We put their bodies in the refrigerated coolers where our vegetables were stored. During our long cruise, the USS Forrestal caught on fire and killed several sailors. We helicoptered several of the wounded to our Ship's sick bay until we pulled into Japan. The men that were killed were young. My Mom heard on TV news that an Aircraft Carrier was on fire and they would not release the name. She worried that it was my carrier until she got a letter from me.  As a plane captain, 3 of the pilots on my assigned planes were shot down over Viet Nam. One was a prisoner of war for years, the others were killed.  They were young. We did our jobs and we all mourned out sailors killed on the flight deck and the pilots we were so close to. The teamwork was the thing that stuck with me. A squadron sticks together and supports each team member through the hardships. 

I recently learned that my friend Henry McDevitt died. I will forever miss him. He was no longer young and I realized that my youth was also gone. Old age crept up on both Henry an me. 

    

 

Sylvia’s Mother

 

I was stationed in Iceland at a NATO base when I first heard the song by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.

For some reason the song had a special meaning to me and reminded me of when I was courting my wife  Anita of 59 years. While the singer did not get Sylvia, I did get Anita. Persistence pays.

 

I was 17 at the time and not old enough to drink although I was raised where at a young age I worked in my Dad’s whiskey still. I carried sugar , malted corn and one gallon Coke jugs into the still and carried 4 gallons at a time of 100 proof whiskey out. Well to make a long story short, when I first met Anita, she worked in a drug store in Avondale/Goodyear Arizona  at the soda fountain and snack bar. I would stop  frequently and she would make me a tuna fish sandwich and a cup of coffee. She was hard to flirt with because her Dad was very strict and wasn’t overly fond of sailors and hillbilly’s. We would infrequently double date with my good friend Henry McDevitt and his close friend, later his wife, Guadalupe Maria Silva who we called Lupe. Anita was nervous just holding my hand. Anyway, Henry and I did not let our being too young to drink stop us. We would drive out to Luke Air Force Base and go to the enlisted men’s club where they did not hesitate to serve us beer or whiskey. We would sit at a table and drink. One time I remember vividly was when I had drank a little much and I wanted to talk to Anita. I called and her mother answered the phone. She could tell I was inebriated to put it mildly. I asked to speak to Anita and her mother refused to let me talk to her.

Years later, in Iceland, Doctor Hook’s song came out and it reminded me of the time in Arizona when Anita’s mother would not let me speak to Anita. I was calling from a pay phone and I had to often put in 40 cents to keep the call alive.  I just love the lyrics to the song and I am sure several love sick men can relate. Please take the time to go on you tube and listen to Dr. Hook and his medicine Show singing Syvia’s Mother. The emotion of the song comes through loud and clear. Just thought I would share the lyrics but to appreciate the song, you have to listen to it.

 

 

Sylvia’s Mother Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Sylvia's mother says "Sylvia's busy
Too busy to come to the phone"
Sylvia's mother says "Sylvia's trying
To start a new life of her own"
Sylvia's mother says "Sylvia's happy
So why don't you leave her alone?"
And the operator says "forty cents more
For the next three minutes"

[Chorus]
Please, Mrs. Avery, I just gotta talk to her
I'll only keep her a while

 

[Chorus]
Please, Mrs. Avery, I just gotta talk to her

I'll only keep her a while
Please, Mrs. Avery, I just want to tell her goodbye…….

[Verse 2]
Sylvia's mother says Sylvia's packing
She's gonna be leaving today
Sylvia's mother says Sylvia's marrying
A fella down Galveston way
Sylvia's mother says please don't say nothing
To make her start crying and stay
And the operator says forty cents more
For the next three minutes

 

[Chorus]
Please, Mrs. Avery, I just gotta talk to her
I'll only keep her a while
Please, Mrs. Avery, I just want to tell her goodbye

owennewsletter.blogspot.com

 

When You Reach the End of The Road

There is always a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning is always the same. You come into the world and wonder what the hell is going on. You start with a clean slate. What you write on that clean slate is what you do with your life. The end comes quickly, and you are always surprised, and everyone asks: How did the end come so soon?

You wake up each morning with a second gift from God. The first is the breath of life.  The second gift is when you open your eyes and then the day is up to you. You can go to work, go fishing, mow the lawn or waste time. There is a heartfelt song by Otis Redding called “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.” A significant end of the line is “wasting time.”

As important as every moment of your life is, you sometimes don’t put those moments to use because when you are young, you feel as if the moments allotted are endless. But one day you wake and look in the mirror and ask yourself, how did I get this old and where did the months and years go?

Well, I can now feel the sand running out, I can see the time I wasted. Reality sinks in and I know I can’t go back and do things differently. At an early stage of my life, I began to love music and songs. I know that the songs tell a story of happiness, love, lost love, lost chances, and heartache. Some of the songs dwell on happiness like Roger Miller’s “Walking in the Sunshine” or Buck Owen’s “Loves Gonna Live Here” There is Frank Sinatra’s “I Did it My Way.” There is Merle Haggard’s “Today I started Loving You Again.”  There are songs of Regret like Gene Watson’s “Farewell Party” or the song “It’s My Party or “Turn out the lights, the parties over” Unfortunately, a lot of the songs are about misery. There is a song for every mood you might have. There are good old gospel songs like “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art” . “I’ll Fly Away” is both a happy and a sad song. “Peace in the Valley” is a hopeful song that will one day come true.

I became a workaholic and did not focus on the important things in life. I was raised poor and proud. I had an unforgettable family. My Daddy was a strong man with strong opinions, but he taught me to help someone when and if you can. I have tried to help,  and I have succeeded and sometimes failed. My sister Estelle loved the Bible verse about the good Samaritan. A rich man whose chances of getting to heaven were as slim as his ability to pass through the eye of a needle. I bet he is there. My Mama grew up poor and she and her sister Lola (nicknamed Monk) was courted by my Daddy and my Uncle Robert. Daddy made whiskey with my Grandpa Edmond Chapman who married my grandmother Ethyl who used snuff and was sometimes known to take a sip of whiskey to chase a cayenne pepper she had just eaten raw. My preference was always a pickled cayenne  with a bowl of soup beans and corn bread. My brother Charles was the best fisherman in Frozen Creek until my brother Michael took away his title. My Daddy had several witty sayings, and one was: “I thought fish was brain food, but Charles proves that wrong” Charles wrecked his Harley Davidson Motorcycle and had to wear dresses until his skinned hide grew back.

My brother Edgar loved Science Fiction books and beer. He loved music also and often asked me to play “My Favorite Memory” and “Picking Flowers on the Hill” My brother Gerald loved the song “Listen to the Rhythm of The Falling Rain” Charles loved “White Silver Sands” and “Wildwood Flower”  My brother Harold loved “Now and then There’s a Fool Such as I” My brother Michael and I used to sing “ Thinking Bout Things” My Sister Estelle’s favorite song was “When Will I Be Loved” My sister Vonda loved “Satin Sheets” and “I’m Not Lisa” along with “Life Turned her That Way” Howard loved the song “White Lightning”. My brother Brian loved the Southern Rock Bands “Alabama and Oak Ridge Boys” My sister Thelma loved the old Gospel tunes such as “ Further Along” and “Amazing Grace” . Mama loved the instrumental tunes and put up with my first song “Tom Dooley” which I played until everyone was sick of Tom Dooley. My Daddy loved old ballads such as: “Knoxville Girl” and “Hangman Hangman” “Keep on the Sunny Side” “Cheer up my Brother” and one of my favorites, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” He often sat on the back porch and sang those old songs.  My sister, Sis, loved songs by Billy Joe Royal and Mel McDaniels. She has such an amazing talent as an artist. I hope she does not cut off one of her ears.

It took me several years to get over my Mamma’s death. I just could not believe that I had lost the one person who I knew for sure loved me. I was stuck in grief for many years/ That is why I don’t want any of my family to grieve over me and go though the customary rituals of a funeral or a stone on the hillside. I want my family to accept my wishes when my time on earth is over. My wishes are to be cremated quickly and my remains given to the Navy to be scattered at sea.  A simple Military service and one rose will do. My belief is that when you are born that God gives you your first breath of life and when you die, your last breath releases and frees your spirit. I hope that my spirit will soar after death and be able to travel this world in the blink of an eye. If someone wants to have a memory of me, just look up and wish me fair winds. I don’t believe in family members having any obligation to visit a marker in a cemetery and feel sad. My Daddy sang a song, “Don’t send for me no flowers when just a rose will do” If anyone wants to have a ritual, visit the sea, and toss as rose into the brine. Hold on to only good memories cast away any bad ones. Don’t grieve me. Hopefully, I have left a good memory for you  to think back on. Don’t spend too much time as the song “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” says “wasting time.

I hold such dear memories of growing up, traveling the world, and plucking on my old guitar. My regret is I did not spend as much time with my family as I should have. I never believed in the word “Love” when I was younger but when I was younger, I was foolish.

Live your life to the fullest and help others when you can. I hope my daughter, Margaret Rose will read the verse “There is a Time for Everything”  when I go. I want my son, Kyle Edward, to think of all the good times we had together, especially the horse track and our laughs together. We loved our jokes and our puns.

If I am able, I will check in on everyone now and again.

 

With Love,

Carl

GROWING UP ON FROZEN CREEK

 

MEMORIES OF GROWING UP ON FROZEN CREEK

 

I dug up a Prince Albert Tobacco tin full of worms up by the corn crib and walked across the foot log crossing Frozen Creek. I trailed the creek down toward Buren Morgan’s place and found a deep hole where my brother Michael had caught a 14-inch rainbow trout. Well, to hear Mike tell it, the fish was a good 18 inches. Mike has been known to exgaggerate.

I sat down on the creekbank in the long wheat grass and unwound my fishing line from my favorite alder pole. I had an old treble hook on the leader, so I changed it out with a brand new Eagle Claw hook that I had bought that morning at Gerald Burch’s little country store about two miles away on highway 64. Once I got the triple wound knot tied on the leader, I sacrificed a worm and tossed the line with two small sinkers into the creek. The current took the bait to the center of the hole where I hoped the big one was resting.

As I sat there on the creekbank relaxing, my gaze settled upstream on a cottonmouth snake gently swimming down the middle of the creek. As it got closer, it opened its mouth and I realized why they call it a cottonmouth. Two sharp fangs dropped from a blanket of snow-white flesh. It was obviously preparing to bite down on something. There was plenty of creatures for the moccasin to bite in Frozen Creek. We had muskrats, big water rats, hog sucker bottom feeder fish and unsuspecting bare feet of those who chose to walk the creek.

The sun was warming up the day and my eyes were growing tired. The gentle gurgling of the water was slowly putting me to sleep. Since it had happened before that I dozed off in such a serene setting, I had prepared. I had cut a forked branch from a willow sapling to hold my fishing pole. So, I leaned back and was just dozing off when a crack of thunder caused me to awaken and look at the sky. The sun was now gazing through a dark cloud and I could tell that it was going to come a rain. I got up from my comfortable position and made my way back to the corncrib. In my rush, I almost slipped off the foot log. Just as I approached the corn crib, the rain came down in torrents. Slipping through the open doorway of the corncrib, I settled down on a pile of hay over the corn cobs. The tin roof echoed the sound of the initial burst of rain. The thunder settled down and the rain became a gentler patter on the tin roof which slowly put me to sleep.

The hog in the pen next to the corncrib bounced off the walls of the pen and woke me. I took my time getting to my feet and looked out on the return of the sun shining through the haze of the clouds. The rain had stopped. I jumped down onto the wet ground and made my way back to my fishing pole.

As I pulled the line in, I realized that a beautiful sun perch had made a lunch of the sacrificed worm and the sharp Eagle Claw hook had latched on to the perch’s upper lip. The perch was nice and fat with very sharp upper fins. I cut a small branch and run it through the bright pink gills as I unhooked the perch. It was about 6 inches wide and 10 inches long. To avoid a jab of the perch’s fins, I held the fins back with one hand as I removed my hook. I took my camping knife and scraped the scales into the creek and cleaned the fish. It was tasty with a piece of Mama’s corn bread and a bowl of soup beans with hot sauce and onion. This was a typical dog day afternoon growing up on Frozen Creek.

 

 

A GLIMPSE INTO MY LIFE

I went to Navy boot camp in September of 1964. I joined with a high school friend, Henry McDevitt, on the buddy program. The buddy program allowed me and Henry to be stationed together after boot camp.

My fist airplane trip started in Columbia, South Carolina and ended in San Diego, California. A bus took me to the Naval Training Center where they started yelling at me and calling me a maggot. I was assigned to Company 522.

After 12 weeks of carrying around a rifle and marching all over hell and half of Georgia, I graduated somewhat the worse for learning how to fight fires and survive being gassed with tear gas. I qualified with the pistol and rifle. I even learned to throw a grenade as far as I could and get my ass low to the ground.

Well, Henry got orders to Naval Air Facility, Phoenix Arizona. My orders read the same. The Naval Facility was in a small town known as Goodyear or Avondale. I was advanced 2 weeks leave after graduating. I took my Navy pay that the Navy kept for me and bought an Airline ticket to Asheville, North Carolina. I landed in Asheville on a Sunday. I got a ride with an old geezer from the airport to downtown Asheville. I asked him where I could buy a beer and he looked at me kind of funny and said: “Son, don’t you know that today is Sunday?”  I walked the streets of Asheville for a while and found a Café that served coffee and grits and eggs. The cook was an old black man who gave me a big plate with a slab of pork tenderloin. Grits never tasted so good. I told him I wanted a beer, and he told me of a place din the bad side of town, a house, where I could pay double for a cold beer. It was a run-down house with a window that was open. I bought my beer and asked how I could get from Asheville to Rosman. The beer salesman told me to either hitchhike or ride the bus to Hendersonville. He gave me directions to the Greyhound bus station. I bought a $3.00 ticket to Hendersonville. The bus stopped at every crossroad to let people on or off.

When I got to Hendersonville, I walked to the edge of town and hitchhiked to Brevard. I walked to the edge of Brevard and hitchhiked to Rosman. In Rosman, I stopped at the Company store and bought a chili dog and a pint of chocolate milk. Then I walked the four or so miles to Frozen Creek Road. I walked about a mile up Frozen Creek Road and cut across Frozen Creek on a foot log. I walked up past my Daddy’s corn crib, up past the spout branch and entered the house by the kitchen door. I saw the familiar pot of soup beans (pinto beans) on the woodstove. I walked into the living room and there was my Mama. She jumped up from her chair by the wood heater and grabbed me and called me a little devil. That hug from my Mama was more valuable than gold. She had tears in her eyes as she welcomed me home. I will never forget that greeting.