This Easter Sunday our family gathered for an evening meal, and it’s always been a tradition of sorts that someone say the blessing. I’m kind of a box of chocolates when it comes to prayer aloud, and you could hear about starvation in Croatia or our sick feral cat with one ear if I’m saying the prayer, so I usually opt for someone like Lisa or someone more trustworthy to say the blessing before our meal. For the past few years, one of our 7 grands, Dawson who is 7 years old, has volunteered to say the blessing during our family gatherings and to be honest, I don’t know exactly where that came from but nonetheless Dawson continues to lead us in the blessing at family gatherings. Dawson knows about prayer from going to church with us from time to time and at his old daycare, for years they said blessings when they ate. This Easter Lisa and I talked about who would say the blessing and I told Lisa that it should probably be her or Dawson. Dawson is young and a little nervous when it comes to the blessing, so I told Lisa to take over in backup for Dawson if needed.
When the time came, right before our Easter meal, Lisa asked who wanted to say the blessing and immediately Dawson piped up and volunteered for the task. He didn’t shy away from the challenge once again and I was very proud that he had no fear of praying in front of others. He started a little shaky and I could tell he was losing his concentration. I was thinking Lisa was going to jump in for assistance, but Dawson stopped mid-sentence, smiled and glanced at me very briefly. He started over but this time it was more fluent, and he hit the mark we were looking for by the time he had finished with an amen.
The more I think about that event, the more I think that grandfathers are supposed to be the one that gets that quick glance when there are uncertain times and grandfathers need to set the example for their grandchildren in order to establish generational faith. I’m super proud of our grandson Dawson taking over the duties of saying our family meal blessings and I’m looking forward to Tate and Jasper doing the same one day.
Diet: Chicken, asparagus, rice and soup for dinner and 1bagel and honey for breakfast
This entry covers yesterday and today but I only timed todays walk. Also, the mileage on my watch and the data above doesn’t really match what’s marked on the trail, but the real mileage was about 4.2 miles total today. Yesterday was a three mile walk.
Yesterday, I invited one of my favorite people out for a walk. It was the first time my neighbor, David, and I walked together after fishing together for the last 10 years. I have been his mentor in fishing so he can take his grandkids out on the lake and be successful or at least have a clue about what to do. That’s very important to me because grandpa needs to know where the fish are and how to catch them when the grands come for a visit. In return, David has been my spiritual mentor, and I have learned so much from him over the years. David and his wife, Ann, have authored at least two books, and I wanted to pick David’s brain a bit about a couple of aspects of writing, as well as some spiritual guidance on my new endeavor. I got both from him; but more importantly, I got the encouragement I needed to keep going.
It’s kinda funny in a way, but David asked me what the folks around me thought about me putting down the fishing rod for a while and writing a book. I had to crack up a bit because they have busy lives and really don’t read my blog, but that was all okay because that’s what gives me the fuel I need to keep going. It’s like I shouted, “Hey, guess what fam? God told me to write a book!” This is a good pictorial depiction of the expected response….
Man, I love that picture and sometimes I crack myself up looking at it. It’s like I just told a raunchy Navy joke or something.
I told David that I know it sounds weird, but I no longer had the slightest desire to fish, and the book is what I’ve been tasked to focus on. So, David and I walked on, and then David put his hand on my shoulder as we walked along, and he prayed for me aloud. People were walking by, and here we were, David and I walking in prayer. It was David on my left with his hand on my left shoulder praying, and Noah was on my right with his hand on my right shoulder, saying, “Welcome to my world, Jim.” After our prayer, David said, “If there’s anything I learned about you over the course of the last ten years, it is that you have an uncanny dedication and devotion to your interests, whether it was training for a marathon or learning to improve your fishing skills.” I wasn’t looking for technical help in my writing skills or suggestions from David as much as I was looking for encouragement, and he did just that.
This is my third week of walking the trail, and one thing that I get from spending this kind of time by myself—whether it’s fishing, running, or walking a trail—is clarity. It may be the extra oxygen from being outside, but for some reason, I can sort it all out and come up with a plan. Remember a few entries ago when I talked about always setting goals for yourself? One goal I set for myself is to get down to 175lbs and see if it’s possible to run again on two replaced knees. But another goal for now is to finish my writing over the course of the next few months. Here’s a sneak peek at the layout and title. The title is explained in the preface.
The book has three sections of short stories, and the name of the book is “The Shadows of October” (Stories of Fishing, Freedom, and Faith). Each section has a number of stories from my life.
The fishing section is called “Fifty Years of Fishing” and will interest the Lanier fishermen because the first story is called “Twenty Years on Lanier” and that encompasses a lot of what I learned in those twenty years and some of the fishermen around the lake that were an influence on me. There will also be other stories from some of my fishing adventures over the years.
The second section is called “Twenty Years of Service,” and it will encompass 20 years of service to the Navy and this country in short stories. There are a few stories from the blog that will be included in this section, but there will also be some stories that I’ve not shared with anyone. There are some things that I experienced in the Navy that I don’t talk about much, but some people ask about them. You can’t work in the environment that I worked in and not see some gruesome things over the years, so I’ll share a few of the more heinous incidents that used to give me nightmares, as well as a raw look at what it’s like for us maintenance folks in fighter and fighter/attack squadrons.
The third and last section is called “Fishing for Faith” and is about faith as it pertains to my story and my journey through Christianity. This section will be devoted to my grandchildren so they can have a tangible look at their grandfather’s life (so far). There are stories of some unexplained events and explanations of how God has been a factor in my life and has given clarity to the unexplained. I’ve said it before in the blog, but my grandfathers were great men and significant influences in my life in their unique ways. I just wish someone would have written a book about their lives because all I have left of my grandparents are the pictures and the memories, and they are fading fast.
My plan is to release the book on my dad’s birthday in October which gives me about 3 months to finish my work. We’ll see how it goes but eventually this blog is going to go away, either by a hacker or myself, but I’m going to extract everything I’m going to use in the book very soon. Most folks don’t know this, but my blog was already hacked, stolen and sold off without my knowledge once, but it was recovered. The next time I might not be so lucky.
Song of the day. Not the original but an awesome rendition.
I didn’t really exercise for the last 4 days, and I guessed that my weight would be around 203 this morning, but it’s not as bad as I thought. After my walk this morning, I checked the scale and it was 201 even. Lisa and I went to the Braves game on Thursday evening and had a great time. I found two last minute discounted tickets on Stub Hub and they were front row seats, field level. Best seats I’ve ever had, and we were right next to the action. The Braves beat the Mets, and I got to watch Juan Soto play for the first time. For some reason, we were surrounded by Mets fans and after the Braves jumped out to lead the game, things got awful quiet in our section and the only sounds being made was me chattering it up, like I was still a first baseman back in the day.
I joked with a buddy on Facebook, that I may have to fight our way out of the section we were sitting in, which prompted an old friend of mine to like my comment. His name was Oscar Tellez, and I knew he got a big chuckle out of my comment because he and I had to fight our way out of a section at a San Diego Padres game some 33 years ago. I was a Cincinati fan at the time and I was wearing an Eric Davis jersey at a ball game between the Padres and the Reds. Eric Davis played for the Reds back in the early 90’s, and he was a favorite of mine. The Padres were winning the game till the 8th inning when Eric Davis came up to bat with ducks on the pond. The Reds were down by two and I was receiving a lot of flak from the Padres fans in our section where Oscar and I were sitting. Oscar was wearing a Tony Gwynn Padres jersey, so he wasn’t catching as much flak as I was getting. Eric Davis hit a 3-run home run, and I stood up in my seat to cheer as the Reds took the lead. When I did, a couple of drunks from a couple rows above threw a beer and hit me with it. It splashed on Oscar also, so it took us about 3 seconds to grab a couple drunks and go to town on their cabeza’s. That prompted more drunks to join and get involved and then these knuckleheads tore my Eric Davis jersey. That’s when it became an all-out brawl which involved several fans and several security folks. We were blamed for the scuffle and Oscar and I were escorted out of the area in the end. They let us watch the rest of the game in a breezeway far away from where our fight went down. Oscar was a Padre fan but when it came to sticking up for me and fighting these guys, he was right there with me.
I got a call from an old Navy friend on Saturday morning to tell me that Oscar passed away suddenly the day before and that really hit me hard. Oscar was one of my best fishing friends out west and another one of our fishing crew that is now gone. If you’ve read my story, “Mooning the Lincoln”, you’ll read about myself, Oscar and the passing of our fishing friend Steve and Lucky, both of which has passed from our old crew. It’s pretty much down to Frank and me now. I know for a fact that Oscar got a chuckle out of my comment about fighting my way out at the ballgame and I almost made a comment about our fight years ago. I’m going to miss you buddy. RIP till we fish again my friend.
Lisa and I took a little road trip up to Ruby Falls and Chattanooga to checked out some stuff up there last week. We had to stop at Buccee’s on the way up and the way back for some of their delicious food and a few snacks, so I decided to break from my diet for a few days. We ate our meals on the road and at restaurants once we got to Chattanooga, but I tried to eat semi-healthy when I could and stay away from grease and chocolate, my two favorites. If you’ve never been to Ruby Falls up in Chattanooga, it’s worth the 2-hour drive to get up there for a visit. We stayed at a nice hotel on the river and had dinner at a nice place Friday evening before heading back home on Saturday morning.
Yesterday evening I threw a couple blackened red snapper filets on the Blackstone and put them on a bed of pasta to end my weekend and get back on my weight loss plan this morning. Party’s over but it was a fun four days off the diet. Back to the trail and back to the diet.
Song of the day. The first time I heard this song was while I was on my latest trip to the big easy for some red snapper.
When I reminisce about my time out west while in the Navy, the memories can come and go, some never return (thankfully), and are lost forever but there are others that stay in my mind because of the significance of the event. I know I told this story a few years back on a local podcast and I’m pretty sure Lisa has heard it at least a half dozen times, but I still like telling it because it was one of my more memorable near-death experiences while in the Navy. In my latter years in the Navy, I developed a successful process by which I would analyze a situation and the outcome of my actions. It’s called “Operational Risk Management”, or ORM for short. It is a process by which I would ask myself if it was worth doing, not worth doing, or maybe even overdoing it a little bit. In some situations, the process is not worth doing, but when you add a couple cold drinks, good ORM can turn into bad ORM in a hurry.
I was going on my tenth year in the Navy and by then I had it all figured out. I was at my peak when it came to being bullet-proof and some may argue that I was too stupid to be scared during that period of my life. Being in a F-14 Tomcat fighter squadron had that effect on young sailors like me and I learned very quickly after joining the squadron that you had to be tough to be in the squadron. The Tomcat was an older fighter, and it always had older aircraft problems. Every day I went into work, there was something different to work on. They say that it took 72 man-hours to fly the Tomcat one flight hour, and I don’t dispute that for a minute. I’ve seen everything from squirrels invading our hanger at night and chewing through bundles of wiring in the aircraft avionics bays to exploding engines and subsequent flaming fireballs on engine startups. It was hard work for sure, but you know what they say, work hard, play hard. That’s what I did, I still don’t know why I played hard, but I guess my brain wasn’t fully developed so I did stupid stuff from time to time. For some reason I liked to hang out in bars during this time period, more specifically, bars with pool tables so I could pass the time shooting pool. Since I was a boy, I spent time in the pool halls. My grandfather would take me when I was young and while he played dominoes with his veteran friends, I would occupy my time in the back of the bar playing pool. I’ve always played pool somewhere. Even now I have a billiard room complete with a 9-foot table to remind me of earlier times and the fun I’d had over the years playing pool.
When my roommate Frank and I rented a house out in Santee, a suburb of San Diego, we found a local bar with a pool table just down the road from our house. Our house had a pool table, but we liked to hang out at the bar, drinking beer and shooting pool from time to time. After we got to know the bartender and the owner of the bar, Frank and I joined a coed billiard team that consisted of myself, Frank and two women we had met at the bar that like to shoot pool. We had befriended Teri and Lisa, our partners and teammates, both single and they were pretty good pool players. We decided to form a coed team and shoot pool in a local pool league that traveled around to different bars in the area and competed with other coed teams. It was a lot of fun, and it was pretty cool to compete with other pool players to match my skill against others. Between the four of us, we were pretty competitive and personally, I loved the attention of having an audience while shooting pool in competition.
This was the early 90’s and back then there was no internet to surf or cell phones to call people on a whim, and one way of meeting people to date was the classified ads in the newspaper. In San Diego there was a dating service or “dating club” in the classified ads that guaranteed one fully vetted date each month for a year for $100.00 a month and you had to pay for something like 6 months up front. The dating service catered to the upper income crowd who wanted to be more discrete in their social life, and that’s where Lisa came in. She was a very successful realtor in the San Diego area, and she wanted to meet a man who was very financially stable, and looking for a partner in her age group, which was late forties to early fifties at the time. It was her first date since joining the dating club and she was excited. She knew very little about her date, other than that he was in his late forties and an officer in the military, but she was very optimistic. They had discussed a Friday night outing for dinner, and drinks afterwards at our local bar. It was all set up and Lisa wanted a way out of the date just in case things weren’t going well, so that’s where I came in. Lisa wanted me to hang out at the bar for a while and she would give me a report after they got to the bar and after Lisa got to know Bill. The fact that I was in the Navy, and bullet proof of course, may come in handy later in her evening if the guy turned out to be a flake. If he was a weirdo, then the date would end at the bar, and I would give Lisa a ride back home. That was the plan.
I gotta say that I was a little skeptical about the dating service that Lisa had joined. I worried that there may be some rich men with bad morals in the dating site and I wondered how well the men were vetted. The night finally came, and I was poised at a barstool positioned at the very end of the bar and it was very crowded for a Friday night. By the time Lisa and her date came in, it was standing room only in the bar and I was waiting patiently for my turn at the pool table. I had already consumed a couple beers and I was feeling pretty good about my chances once I got to the pool table. It was just my kind of night with the large crowd in the bar. A large crowd in the bar meant a large crowd watching the billiard games in the back. They had one pool table in the back of the bar and the area always gathered a crowd if someone good was playing pool. I wanted that someone to be me, so I waited for my quarters to come up. When Lisa and her date came through the door, they were greeted by some of the regulars at the bar as they made their way towards the back of the bar at the other end from where I was sitting. Lisa and I made eye contact as they came in and I could tell by her smile, it was going well. The bar was long and stretched from the front of the room to the back with bar stools all the way down and around the bar. It had to be 60-80 feet in length and there was also a small dance floor in the room. It was shoulder to shoulder as Lisa and Bill settled in to an area at the back of the bar and I could see from a distance that her date Bill was larger and older looking. At first, I thought that he looked too old to be actively in the Navy but he also looked big and was taller than most of the folks around him as he walked to the back of the bar. I watched them chatting with one another and soon I saw Lisa pointing my way as if explaining to Bill who I was. I could see them both looking at me and having a conversation, so I assumed that Lisa was telling Bill about me. Soon I saw Lisa heading my way as Bill stayed at the other end of the bar. I was in full protection mode by then and Lisa sounded excited when we greeted each other. She explained that he was a true gentleman and was very kind. She liked him because he seemed so upfront, honest and outgoing about his work. When I asked her what he did for a living she responded that he was a Commando in Navy SEALs.
This is probably where I should jump in and explain a few things about Navy SEALs and the eighties and early nineties. Back then the Navy SEALs stayed in the shadows. They led very private lives and unless you were told that someone was a Navy SEAL, you’d probably never know they existed. They were never on your local news channel, never on CNN and they led very private lives. About all I knew about Navy SEALs was from my only encounter with them during Navy boot camp and that was a rough night of fun and games as punishment for something I did. If you go to my “Sea Stories” section of the blog or do a search and find the story “The Marching Party” you’ll find out all about my encounter with the SEALs early on in my career. I had also read a couple of Richard Marcinko’s “Rogue Warrior” novels and if you ever get the chance, the “Rogue Warrior” novels are a great way to get familiar with the Navy SEALs and what they do. That’s about all I had to go by at the time, but I did know that the chance of running across a real Navy SEAL was pretty slim when out in a small bar in a small suburb of San Diego. Since SEALs in that era like to lead private lives and leave a very small footprint, I changed all the names in story out of respect for Bill. The rest of the events that happened next are all true though.
So, Lisa tells me that her date was a Navy SEAL Commando and immediately I raised the bullshit flag. I didn’t know much about the Navy SEALs but what I did know was that there was no chance that a crusty old dude standing at the other end of the bar was a Navy SEAL Commando. The term “Commando” wasn’t a term I was familiar with, and I told Lisa that her date may be a phony. I was getting a little defensive and stolen valor was a thing, even back then. I asked Lisa if she would kindly ask the gentlemen that I would like to see him and his military ID if he wouldn’t mind, so off she went. Hindsight dictates that this is where things should have been handled differently but once again, I didn’t use good ORM, and I was setting myself up for trouble. I wanted to make a point with this so-called Navy “Commando” imposter and to ask another man for their military ID at a bar with a date on a Friday night isn’t good military protocol unless you’re looking for a fight. By this time, I was getting fired up and I watched as Lisa explained to the old guy that I was interested in him and his identification at the other end of the bar. I knew that if I got up from the stool I was sitting on, I’d lose my seat, so I waited on Lisa’s return, and had some casual conversation with my neighbors at the bar.
When Lisa finally came back, she handed me an ID card and it was a military ID card for sure. I quickly looked at the back and saw an 0-5 under the rank box and I did a double take. I also noticed a Geneva code that further assured me that it was real. There was a moment of shock as I stared at the card and at that very moment Lisa said, “he says he wants to see your ID card”. That was when a cold chill shot down my spine and I knew that it was about to get real with a Commander in the Navy. I may have bit off a little more than I could chew and when I looked down at the other end of the bar Bill was gone. In another moment I felt this large body just behind me and to my left and when I turned to look, it was Bill hovering over me. He was huge and wide, well over 6 feet in height and he had this look on his face like he wasn’t playing ID card games anymore. I was still sitting on my barstool, but I felt like I was about to take a giant ass stomping from the sitting position to the ground in one fluent motion. Another cold chill ran down my spine and I stood up to face the music. I will say this, Bill’s stare was cold, his eyes were somewhat squinted and black. At times his stare was chilling, for lack of a better word. I’ve been in a few fights in my life, but I’ll say this about that moment in time, when I looked in this man’s eyes, it was like he was looking right through me. I don’t know if it was gut instinct or the Holy Spirit telling me not to screw with this guy or Jello could be on my menu for the next several months while the facial bones healed. I didn’t know where this was going but just about the time I expected the encounter to escalate into a scene, Bill broke out into a smile and stuck out his hand to shake my hand. Talk about a relief! It was like every muscle in my body relaxed and went limp. I thought for sure there was going to be a fight, but I was so relieved to see he was friendly to me. I explained that the mix-up was that he was a Commander in the Navy and not a Commando. We laughed as we shook hands, and I will say this about that moment, I’m very thankful that there were no punches thrown because Bill had huge hands that were very hard and callused. Not the kind of hand or fist you want upside your head in a fight. Bill told me that he was a Navy SEAL and had been for quite a few years. He worked down at Coronado Island and was coming to the end of his career and thinking about retirement after twenty some years of service. We talked about my job in the Navy, and he was very curious about what the aviation side of the Navy was like. He came from the Midwest as did I, so we hit it off from the start and talked about where we grew up hunting and fishing.
At the time, it didn’t really dawn on me that I was just a little E-5 turning wrenches on fighter jets while making friends with a Navy SEAL with twenty-some years in the Navy and the rank of Commander. I never really advertised it much and I kinda knew that Bill’s life was somewhat clandestine after chatting with him a bit. I didn’t really ask a lot about his operations or his past history as I figured that some of those things would probably be better left unsaid. I could tell Bill had been around and I just knew that he was one heck of a warrior from the get-go. He really wanted to hear about my adventures, which at times kept the conversation from his adventures. I think he was genuinely interested in aviation and always enjoyed conversations about our travels with the squadron, but he was somewhat vague and elusive when it came to exactly what he did.
Eventually Tina and I found a house and moved in together and Frank moved in with his new girlfriend, but we continued to shoot pool together on the coed league. Lisa and Tina were best friends, and they liked to hang out together. We had a swimming pool and jacuzzi at our house and Lisa and Bill were our guests on a few occasions to swim or sit in the jacuzzi drinking wine. Bill was between deployments to Iraq during Desert Storm when we met, and we got to spend some time together at the bar shooting pool and at the house hanging out at the pool. Bill was somewhat of an introvert and told me one time that he was most comfortable while overseas working. He said that when he was in the states there was a lot of responsibilities to take care of but when he was overseas, he could just focus on his job and no utility payments, car payments, insurance, mortgage, etc., just his job. I totally understood what he was talking about. It was the same when I was away from home on a detachment. It was a pretty weird friendship to have between a Navy SEAL officer and an Enlisted E-5 wrench turner from Miramar, but our girlfriends were best friends, so we were kind of thrown into the friendship. Bill liked hanging out with us though, and he was a lot of fun to have around at the bar. We traveled a lot during this time period so there were times that Bill was gone, or I was traveling with my squadron, but when we were both in town we would get together at the house or spend a weekend in Vegas with the girls. Unfortunately, Bill had to deploy again to Iraq, and I was transferring to Louisiana from San Diego. After I got to Louisiana, I had gotten word that Bill had returned from his deployment to Iraq and received a silver star as well as being promoted to Captain. That was quite an honor for him for sure and I wanted to congratulate him in person if I could. I was coming up for another 4-year re-enlistment and I called Bill to ask if he would swear me in for another four-year tour in the Navy. He told me that since the fast boats that the SEALs used for operations were being built at a shipyard in the New Orleans area and he could kill two birds with one stone he would be there. He said he needed to visit the shipyard and check on the boats being built for the SEALs and he would be happy to drop by the squadron and swear me in. He just asked that we kept it semi-private because he didn’t want to draw a lot of attention to himself while visiting.
When I told my Commanding Officer that a friend of mine that was a Navy Captain and a Navy SEAL would be dropping in to the squadron to swear me in, I got a pretty funny look from the CO. He wanted to make sure we gave Bill all the honors he deserved without making a big deal out of it, so we kept it to ourselves until the day arrived. I was really anxious to see Bill in his uniform with his Trident, a fresh silver star to go with a couple of bronze stars and Captains bars. I’d never seen him all dressed up before, but on my re-enlistment day in the early afternoon, he pulled up in a rental car and walked through the halls of the squadron to re-enlist me in his uniform. We set up a private room for the ceremony and my Commanding Officer as well as our Executive Officer were present to greet Bill. Bill was a Captain in rank which outranked both the CO and XO of my squadron. It was very interesting to see how the other officers acted around Bill and I’m sure they were very perplexed at how we had become friends. Bill and I explained to the officers that were present how we became friends and then Bill swore me in for another 4-year tour. It was a very proud moment in my career, and I was very thankful that Bill took time out of his schedule to come and swear me in. Bill took the time to chat with some of the officers and pilots that were in the area, and it was very cool to show Bill around the hangar and the aircraft where I worked. It was a very special day for me.
That was the last time I saw Bill, but he and Lisa went on to marry and as far as I know, they still reside in Florida somewhere, but we lost touch years ago. In the Navy friends come and go but the memories last forever. I’ve always had a profound respect for our Navy SEALs and the job that they are tasked with. They are truly our unsung heroes.
