Dreams & other Things…

I did not leave the Sea Bird RV park in Brookings very early in the day because I was hoping that a used LCD monitor I’d purchased via eBay would arrive before I left. I knew from the tracking system that it was suppose to be on the truck from Coos Bay to Brookings but you know how those things go. Anyway, I’d kind of developed a relationship with the owner of the local mail forwarding service and he knew how antsy I was to get the package before I left. I had to leave today because if I didn’t I’d miss my connections with my brother and probably miss the Oregon Ducks vs. the California Bears at Berkley. That relationship helped because I tried to call FedEx but ended up in phone loop hell. I called the mail guy and explained that I needed to find out if the package had made it onto the truck and he gave me the driver’s cell phone number. Wow, great luck. By now, it’s 4pm and I have to leave by 5pm, 6pm at the latest. I call and the guy answers, checks his route sheet and “Yes, it’s here”. So we make a plan to get together at a local parking lot. I meet him about 20 minutes later, grab my package, thank him profusely, he tells me that if I hadn’t called he wouldn’t deliver to the RV park until 9ish. Then it would be returned to the shipper (since I’d be gone by then) and I’d have to pay for re-shipping plus waiting another week or two.

So, I leave town at exactly 5pm. Whew. Great load off my mind. Now I’m in a hurry because I’d like to get to the RV park in San Leandro at a decent hour. I didn’t get any pictures while on Hiway 101 heading south because you need to pay attention to your driving. Too many cliffs and such along the way, and very curvy-swervy and upy-downy. Moreover, there are places where the road narrows and winds through giant redwoods. A lot of places I could only do 20-30 MPH.

I arrive at San Leandro around 1:30AM, tried to park in my reserved RV space as quietly as possible (that’s impossible since I have to back into the slot), shut everything down, relax a few minutes, and went to bed.

Next morning (Saturday), I take BART and then a shuttle to the airport (Oakland), and then jump on the rental car shuttle, which fills with a gaggle of giggly girls, the cheer squad of a nearby high school heading for a big game, and just seconds before we get to the rental place brother calls. He’s standing at the curb when I arrive. Nice.

So we head back to the RV, dump off a bunch of crap brother doesn’t need, and go back and park at the BART station, then ride downtown to Berkley. We walk until we arrive at the bar where the Ducks fans hang out before the game. Had a few beers and almost had a hot dog but when I asked the guy where the other condiments were for their $6 hot dogs he tells me that the mustard and ketchup where all they had. Off I go down to a local college type hot dog place that was so crowded it took nearly a half hour to get my dog. However, they had many condiments…and it only cost $3.50.

When I got back to the bar, there had been a little trouble with someone sneaking in and there was a cop there. He parked his cycle on the street in front of the bar…

Nice bar that must have had 200 people there for the pregame:

Here’s Dan and me (on the right) just about ready to go into the stadium:

The ‘Bear’ facade:

The tennis courts – they were all spongy like, nice to walk on:

And an interesting old building:

The field from our seats:

The poor replay screen:

After the stands had filled a bit:

Those folks up there get to fire off the cannon when the Bears score:

And we’re off!:

The game didn’t start until 5pm and here it is late in what turned out to be a very bad day for the Ducks:

We straggled home, dejected and all. Sniff. The Ducks lost! No, they were beaten, and will drop in the standings. However, if they beat USC the weekend of Oct. 14th, they’ll still get a bowl game. The next day, we drove the rental around from where we were in San Leandro, through Oakland, across the Bay Bridge, around San Francisco, and then back home. The circle route allowed us to visit five breweries. After visiting the first two places on the Oakland side (I’m not much for drinking in the early part of the day so I didn’t taste the brews like Dan did), we took the Treasure Island exit off the Bay Bridge to get a few shots of the bay. There had been a weekend long air show over the bay so all the boats were out there to watch the Blue Angles and such. Pretty neat. These first shots are from near the older Treasure Island apartments where, back when I was a sailor, the married junior officers lived.

The Bay Bridge crossing over to San Francisco:

My brother trying to convince me that “Here’s a good shot” right into the sunset, yeah, right, a good shot:

In that general direction but lower and farther to the right:

More of the bay, that’s the Golden Gate Bridge over there:

And a few minutes later, a view of San Francisco:

Here we are heading down to the navy base down below the hill we were just on…took us a second or two to realize that it’s not a Navy base anymore and we can just drive in there:

There’s the main gate:

Just beyond the gate and that white building, (the old Navy Admin building), there is a christian church. One fine Sunday morning I was walking by the church when a Lt.JG (Lieutenant Junior Grade) stops me. I salute and stand at attention. We know each other vaguely from shared work details around the base. He then proceeds to ramble on how I’m suppose to be in church, how it’s good for my soul and other crap. While he’s talking I think “Whoa, what if I was a Jew, would he, could he, be ordering me to a christian church?”. When he says, “I think I’ll order you to church, sailor”, I say, “No sir, I don’t think you can sir”. He starts sputtering, eventually ending the conversation with “Well, you certainly NEED church”. To which I answer, “No sir, I don’t think so sir”. He turned and stomped off. You can get away with most anything if you say sir. When I told this story to friends later, they say that it’s good I didn’t go into the church because it surely would have burst into flames. I disagree.

Further into the base are now hundreds of condos and apartments where there use to be 10’s of military style barracks that housed thousands of sailors. This base was mainly a school and I went to electronics school here. I also got involved with a drill team here, and earned a nickname. This place is prime real estate now since it’s only around 5 minutes from downtown San Francisco. We saw hundreds of apartments, no reason to take pictures of them. But if you lived there, you’d probably love the place…until the fog sets in. Months of fog. Makes sunlight feel like liquid gold.

The drill area and a nice view of the other part of the Bay Bridge. It’s getting a face-lift and some new lanes added, plus some needed repairs because of the last big earthquake here:

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There’s my old barracks, in the shot directly above. While I was there waiting for my orders, I would muster out in front of the building at 7am with everyone else. Then the CPO (Chief Petty Officer) would ask for volunteers for various jobs all over the base. I’d wait until a large group had agreed to some job and then, when they were marching back up the stairs to get ready, I’d follow them into the barracks, and right out the back door. Then I’d spend the rest of the day just goofing off. They called me ‘Super Skate’ because I was always ‘skating’ out of duty. Never peeled one potato. The day I got caught was the day I got my ship orders so I lucked out and didn’t get a ‘court marshal’.

When I was here, I was waiting for my assignment to a ship. I’d volunteered for Viet Nam and they were having trouble finding me a spot so I spent several weeks here. The year before I’d gone down to San Diego for boot camp, I’d been here for Electronics school (I flunked out – it was too fast for me, I needed a slower pace). While here, I became a member of the “US Naval Military Precision Drill Team of Treasure Island California” (that’s really it’s name), which is the main reason I flunked out, too much time with them practicing drills instead of studying. We practiced after school and on weekends went and marched in parades. One parade we were invited to was in San Francisco. We only had two speeds, slow & slower, and when we did a drill, that also took time. The parade officials were yelling at our drillmaster but each time we stopped in front of a crowd and did a drill, people would go nuts! Screaming, standing ovations, riotous applause, the whole bit. The officials would lay off us for a few more blocks. Eventually we got to the reviewing stand and while we did our drill, the news people were looking for quotes from members of government and all. The stand had the SF mayor, US & state dignitaries, big wigs & family members. Since we had been causing such a ruckus with the crowd & the officials, the press swarmed around the stands asking for quotes about us just after we had done a special drill in front of them all. The mayor’s 22-year-old daughter happened to be asked what she thought of our drill team. She called us a “moving sex machine” that quote was in the nightly news and appeared in nearly all the next days’ papers so the drill team staff had many phone interviews. Then just after we had been reviewed, the parade officials kicked us off the parade route for marching to slowly. But we made the news. Hah! It would be cool if someone that works at a SF paper could look that up for me and email me a link…yes, very cool.

Weeks later, we were invited to be the ‘entertainment’, along with a band, at a party for Admiral Nimitz. This was after we had been on several trips to local area parades, each time either winning or almost winning the drill team contests. During that time, we also developed several unique and thrilling drills that just wowed the crowds. I’m pretty sure that we only received one 3rd place trophy. All the others were 1st or 2nd, the majority 1st place. We tossed the 3rd place trophy.

The party was his birthday party, I believe, so we would have performed for him near Feb. 24th, 1965. We performed at the Hilton in downtown SF on an upper floor, in a large room filled with friends of Adm. Nimitz. Since he was such a respected navy guy, as you would expect, the place was filled with naval officers and their wives and families. I think around 500 people all sitting around tables surrounding a large dance floor in the middle of the room, bandstand at one end.

We staged out in the hallway while they finished dinner and before the band was to play. Several famous senior officers came out to give us encouragement and calm our nerves (we had never performed in such a small space before, before such a distinguished crowd, and most of us were teenagers). At the end of the dance floor was a raised bandstand. We entered, in our dress blues, perfectly pressed, with spit shined and polished shoes and rifles since the team prided itself on such things. With our pieces (rifles – plugged so they couldn’t be fired), clothes and shoes being perfect, we entered through double doors marching four columns of four abreast.

We had practiced modified drills, since we usually marched outdoors, that we could do in such a tight space. Just after starting in that small space, we did a drill where we rapidly drop our pieces from our shoulders down to waist level, WHAM, into our palms, like slicing the air with a sword. Then we get it to where we can slam the butt on the floor twice, drag it up and spin it like a propeller before dropping it on our shoulder. Our second drill, with many of the same moves, was very close to the bandstand, I was directly facing the drummer and was around 12” away. He started sweating as we did our drill, knowing that he was probably in the wrong place. We never talked during a drill, using numbers to communicate. I expected a shouted ‘ONE’ from the drillmaster which was the ‘everyone freeze’ command since I didn’t seem to have enough room for the sudden and sword like arc my piece would make during the maneuver…I thought I could whack the guy on the head, if I wasn’t sharp. But the drillmaster (DM) trusted me and during the drill, stone-faced, I watched as beads of sweat formed on the drummer’s forehead. When I got to the part where I slam the piece down into my palm, I pulled the butt of it way back and just caught the end of the barrel in my palm, just missing him by an inch or two. The drummer was visibly relieved. (Remember that he was navy too, he was standing at attention, and he wasn’t supposed to cut & run). Anyway, we did several drills to thunderous applause, and exited after about 15 minutes of drilling to take a break (very hot in there with all those people, very loud too with the applause and us in our tapped shoes and what with banging the butts of our pieces on the hardwood floor several times). When we returned to the hall, it was to do two very special and spectacular drills for Nimitz.

We had practiced our hearts out…since we knew how special a guy he was and our respect level for him was so high. We marched onto the dance floor, four rows by four columns, and did a rather nifty drill where the columns do a syncopated drill with pieces twirling and being slammed on the floor and such. After that, we took a couple steps and needed to do a turn around. I wasn’t the best at this, and when we took two steps we were suppose to stop, I took another step. That put me right at the edge of a table with two officers and their wives. My next drill move was supposed to be to slam my piece into my palm, do some fancy drill moves, then spin the piece. I knew that I didn’t have room to do the spin without hitting the table, so I shouted ‘ONE’ in mid step. Every one on the team, except the drillmaster, froze in position. My piece is held by both hands, across the middle of my body at a 45 degree angle, and my next move is suppose to be a twirl of the piece, and I’m in mid-stride. The drillmaster matches over to where I’m standing. Makes a big show of looking me and my hazardous position over. Whispers in my ear, “May I touch your piece”. I say, “Yes”. He removes my piece from my hands. Then he barks an order to me alone to resume the drill where I left off…sans piece. I resume. Since we are a precision drill team this means I behave as though my piece is still there, eventually, my forearm is parallel with the floor, my hand appearing to cradle the missing piece and I stop. He orders me to ignore the following portion of the drill (we had single digit orders for this sort of thing). Now that I’m at attention, he turns to the rest of the team and orders just them to resume. Meanwhile I’m standing still as ordered, facing straight ahead, into the crowd. At just what he deems the right moment, he shouts ‘ONE’ and the team instantly stops in mid drill. Then he turns his attention to me. I’m facing away from the team and at attention with my arm positioned as though I was holding my piece. He looks at me, looks over at the squad, and looks back at me. Marches over to a naval officer, asks him to hold my piece, and then returns to me. Wraps his arms around my waist, picks me up, walks me over to the squad and plops me in place. Then orders me alone to commence a drill, when I get to the right part, he barks ‘ONE’ and then returns my piece to my hands to a roar of laughter, applause and murmurs of approval. Then he orders the entire team to proceed. We are now all in sync to a roar of approval from the crowd. Now we have turned completely around and we’re all 16 of us marching slowly to towards the bandstand. We had just three steps to take before we started our most spectacular drill.

When the DM barks the command, the outer two columns immediately stop and began a drill while the inner two columns march one more step. They then stop and began a drill sequence. If you can see this in your mind, picture 16 young men, in dress navy blues, with white spats and impossibly shiny shoes and guns (pieces) while we all do a drill in cadence but seemingly at odds, inner columns with the outer. The nature of the drill routine is to always be in cadence and during this drill two columns would always be slamming the butts of their pieces on the wood floor while the other two were doing some other maneuver. Then it would revert to the other columns. Very satisfying noises.

Suddenly, after we have done this entire routine at odds while in cadence, we turn to face the other columns. So now we have the two outer columns facing the inner two columns. We are all now in sequence and doing the same moves during the drill with the inner columns one-step beyond where the outer columns are positioned. The last sequence is; remove piece from shoulder and drop it over the chest to the left hand, swing piece so it is straight up and down in front of the body, move the right hand to the upper portion of the piece and grab, drop the left hand smartly to the side while simultaneously with the right drop the piece to the floor and tap the floor smartly twice in cadence. Pull the piece back up over the chest and grab with left, drop the right hand to your side then back up under the piece. Remove the left hand and…(this is the big finish and happens all in cadence, all 16 of us at the same instant, it’s called a Queen Anne Salute)…spin the piece 360 degrees into our left hands while dropping to a one knee stance. The four columns mesh into two columns as the shiny and chromed pieces spin towards each other, like airplane propellers. Sort of like shuffling two packs of cards in a blender, only cooler. And with spinning, flashing guns. Then, when we all get our knees on the floor, we precisely and smartly move all 16 pieces so the butts are pressed to the center of our chests and the barrels are all pointing at a 45 degree angle up to the ceiling, our left hands resting on our left legs (our right knees on the floor).

Whew, we did it. You can’t imagine all the things that can go wrong with a drill like this. It was a new drill for us, it had only been invented a few weeks before, we’d only performed it in public 3 times, we had foreshortened the movement to account for the small space so that was new too, and most of us were teenagers not accustomed to that kind of performance pressure. But we did it and did it perfectly in every possible way. While we were all marveling at that, we were getting a standing ovation. Most of us said later that we didn’t even hear it for a while, we were so astonished at the beauty of the drill in that setting and at doing it perfectly…in practice, we had screwed it up many times.

The standing ovation went on for several minutes. When it quieted down, we continued with the end of that spectacular drill and smartly marched out of the room to the sound of continuous applause that went on long after the doors closed.

While we were out there in the hall amazed at our success, with the DM slamming me on the back for my screw up that everyone in the audience loved, Adm. Nimitz (and some of his staff) came out and congratulated us his own bad personal self. What an honor. We were all so stunned, I can’t remember if he shook my hand or not…seems he did. Later we were invited into the hall where we mingled and met with many senior officers who were amazed that they really didn’t know much about their own Navy drill team.

And then, sadly, I was sent to San Diego to meet my ship. I wouldn’t meet any of the people from the drill team for months. But it’s something I’ll never forget. I’m pretty sure I can still do most of the drills. I know I can still do a Queen Anne Salute.

Click here to read some history of Adm. Nimitz.

“Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz died at his home on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay on February 20, 1966. He would have been 81 years old on the day of his funeral at Golden Gate National Cemetery at San Bruno. He was the last surviving five-star admiral.”

While I was waiting for orders, after I’d flunked out of school, I was still in the drill team and once when I’d skated out of duty, I found that there was a blood drive going on at the mess hall. So, I went to the building shown in the picture below, walked in the back door you see in the picture and tell them I’m from the blood drive picking up donuts for the donators. The petty officer asks me a few suspicious questions, which I answer with aplomb, then allows me to fill a large paper sack with fresh donuts. I wander over to the drill team quarters, plop them on the table, eat a bunch, and then take a morning nap on the couch. Super Skate strikes again.