My dad’s last duty station before he retired was at Naval Communications Station Cheltenham, MD about one or two miles from Andrews AFB.
While there (we had six kids in our family) moved in across the street from an officer who had five kids...we all became pretty good friends with them on that sleepy little base...and they would tell me stories about their last duty station out in Washington State...I remember them telling me they would jig for salmon, and I had no idea what that meant...:)
They apparently loved it up there.
Sigh. So many stories about them. They were batshit crazy. Four boys and one girl in their family, and we were all pretty much the same ages. I was a follower in those days and got into trouble with them a few times. My dad was the XO, and on at least two of them, I can only imagine less anger and more perplexity. Their father was a mean guy, mistreated them, drank, and was kind of scary looking. He had a problem with alcohol and had been a boxer, and with his shaved head at that time (not as common as it is today) and square, overhanging brow that always seems furrowed with anger...all the time, he was intimidating.
I was over at their house one day while his dad was at work and his mother was gone, and the youngest son Mike had lit up one of his dad’s cigars as we were on the four season porch playing darts (I was fourteen and he was thirteen)
He had the cigar in his hand, gesturing it around and speaking in a voice I took to be a mocking imitation of his dad (who none of us ever heard speak) while I threw darts at a board hung on the back of the door to the outside.
There were curtains, so you couldn’t see someone coming.
Suddenly, the door opened just as I threw a dart, and it hit his father on the pate of his bald head. (Disclaimer: I swear this is what happened. But to be honest...I don’t know if really happened that way or my 14 year old brain just reconstructed it that way.
It reminded me of a few years back when I went to the big air show in Oshkosh, WI, and my buddy and I met an Australian guy who was a fervent fan of the F-111 aircraft which the Aussies apparently put to good use. Anyway, he was telling us what a certain area of Australia was like, and he said “Well, if you go down out there, if the crocs don’t get you, the bloody aboriginals will!”
Later, we roared with laughter recalling this guy who was an awesome stereotype of an Aussie for us Americans, in the retelling of the story, we realized that neither of us could remember if he actually said the word “bloody”, but..we both “heard” it, even if he didn’t say it. Which only had the effect of making it seem even funnier!
Anyway, what I was trying to say is, my brain swears to me that dart hit him in the forehead, and without batting an eye he plucked it right out as he glowered and advanced towards his stogie smoking son with ill intent.
I did not stick around. The last thing I saw as I darted out the door (his father had unexpectedly entered through) was Mike, cigar clutched between a thumb and his index and forefinger right about face level with the lit end stick up at a 45 degree angle as he pranced over the threshold towards the interior of the house. His menacing father, hot on his trail, had grabbed a handful of his shirt...his meaty fist with the shirt clenched in it and Mike, about a foot’s worth of stretched shirt between them running away.
I heard yelling and screaming from the house even as I got further away.
Another time, all the neighborhood teenagers on the small base had snuck outside to meet around 0300, and there were five or ten of us gathering under that streetlight on that warm summer morning.
All of a sudden, into the cone of light under this streetlight marched his father with a nine-iron in his fist. He said “Where’s Tom?” Everyone was too stunned to speak, and he turned on his heel and disappeared into the night. He later told us his father had beat him with that nine-iron.
His father was a bad character, and his sons, well, they all had the Devil in them. All of them. I did too, but on my own wouldn’t have done anything, but...I was a happy follower in those days. His family was fractured and dysfunctional.
I got a chance to see Tom. (He was my older brother’s age) some years later when he came out from California to visit us in New England for a few days. He has a bit of the hippie look to him these days, long stringy hair, longer fingernails for his guitar.
He said his family had healed. His father had kicked alcohol (like mine had late in life) and they somehow found a way to get past all that stuff in their youth...that they all. had a great relationship with their father who we had all found so terrifying.
I can’t tell you how good that made me feel...:)
The loss of friends was hard on me, because I wasn't someone who made them easily.
And other things-the constant packing and unpacking...one of the things that broke my 11 year old heart was in moving from Yokosuka to Subic, I had gotten a real pair of binoculars for Christmas, wore them around...:)
When we moved and I packed them away, well, they never arrived in the Philippines. For the next four years or so, every time I saw an unpacked box somewhere (there were alway a few somewhere) I would root around in it looking for those binoculars.
Kind of like what happened with my Dad's Holy Cross ring. The ring he had whacked us on the back of the heads with all those years...when my dad passed, I wore the ring to his service down in Arlington, and...somewhere...somehow...that ring disappeared.
To this day, I will pause when I see some small container or a coat I haven't worn in a while, and for a split second I fight the urge to open the container or stick my hand in that coat pocket, even though I have checked it forty times in the last twenty years...
I have all my dad's stuff, I wish I did have that ring, though. I just fixed this plaque (given to my dad when he retired) which was completely tarnished and the wood in disrepair. Somewhere over the years, my younger brother had used by Dad's sword in a school play and lost the scabbard, so...I printed one on my 3D printer! I didn't want to pay for a new one! Here is what it looks like now:
