Ghost Ship

            “Of all the conveyances invented by the hand and mind of man, none captures the imagination as firmly as the ship, ancient or modern. We bless ships and give them names; we endow them with human attributes. They have courage, strength of will, pride, resoluteness, and nobility. Their character is often described as faithful, honest, good, or brave according to the quality and tenure of service. When ships die, we mark and remember their loss.”

                                                                           - I don’t remember who, to my shame.

            This week the battleship USS Iowa was towed from the mothball fleet in San Francisco Bay to L.A. Harbor (San Pedro) where it will be permanently moored as a floating museum.  The Iowa, an Iowa Class battleship strangely enough, has a long and both honorable and less than honorable history that started on August 27^th, 1942 when she was launched.

            The honorable came in moments like when she transported FDR to Casablanca for a meeting with Churchill and Stalin in 1943.  An elevator was installed on the ship so the President could travel between decks, making her possibly the first ship to that would have met the Americans with Disabilities Act had it existed.  And like when she served as Adm. Halsey’s flagship during the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.

            The less than honorable moment came in 1989 when the number two turret was destroyed by a massive explosion.  The Navy in their original investigation put the blame on a gun crewman whose homosexual relationship with one of his shipmates, they said, went south.  That investigation suggested that the crewman deliberately set off the explosion as a suicide.  Later investigations cleared the now deceased crewman and an apology was made by the Navy to the crewman’s family.  The actual cause has never been determined.

            How much of both histories will be part of the tour when the ship opens for business this July 4^th?  We’ll see.

            A couple of years ago I toured the USS North Carolina, which to the untrained eye like mine, looks very much like the Iowa.  When I toured it I was taken back by the smallness of the compartments on such a big ship.  Even the bridge seemed little more than a standing room only place from which to command the great vessel.  I entered one of the 16-inch gun turrets and was hit with such a strong wave of claustrophobia that I immediately turned around and climbed back out. I can’t begin to imagine what it was like to the men sealed in there with the explosive force to launch 2,700 pound shells up to 25 miles resonating in the breaches and barrels around them.  One compartment that I found most interesting was After Steering.  It was there that the great posts to which the rudders were attached came up through the hull.  There were huge wheels that could be used to manually turn the rudders should the hydraulics fail in an attack.  On the deck in one corner were large wood blocks that crewmen and brought down so they could be jammed into the mechanism to keep the rudders in place so as to spell the men.

            The time when I was stationed on a ship was when I felt the most intense esprit de corps in any fellowship before or since.  Sure there were rivalries between departments; the deck force (Deckies) and the engineers (Snipes), but when it came down to it we realized we were all in the same boat, literally.  The bridge was (is) bigger than those on battleships and the engine room while smaller, still afforded you a view from one end to the other.  And that was with four engines.

Like suggested in the quote above, ships get into their sailor’s minds and hearts, and acquire human-like traits that leave a long lasting impression.  The ship I was on had a rubber expansion joint in the middle that would creak and groan in heavy seas as she bent like an arthritic knee joint, she had a port side door on the bridge that wouldn’t seal all the way, allowing water in, especially when heading north into the Pacific weather patterns, that would slosh on the deck making watch-standing a challenge.  Supposedly the port side was also haunted by the ghost of Freddy Swartz, a yard worker who, as the story goes, fell from mast to keel while the ship was being built.  His stomping grounds are pictured above.

            I checked on the Internets and found that my old ship is still on the job; patrolling the Bering Sea and even going through a dry dock overhaul in San Francisco.  She’s 42-years-old and younger cutters can sail circles around her.  But I’m sure the men and women, who maintain her engines, slap paint on her bulkheads and decks are as proud of her as their counterparts on the sexier ships in the fleet.  Just like the men who served on the Iowa from WWII on.

While there are many ships out to pasture from the Constitution in Boston to the Arizona in Hawaii, the vast majority of ships end their days in yards where they are scrapped. I think when a ship gets cut up like that, although it’s economically and perhaps ecologically smart, it’s a stab at the heart of her sailors.  There should be only two finalities for ships; as a lovingly maintained memorial or to be given up to the sea.  I hope I’m aware when the my ship (I consider it mine) is finally decommissioned.  It will likely be cut to pieces by men who never walked her decks, worked her engines, or slipped and slid while standing those late night Aleutian bridge watches.  Perhaps when the last few feet of cabling is wound up and hauled away, the davits and winches are sold off, and the steel down to the keel itself is melted down, the she will be gone from my memory as much as from the physical world.  Or maybe she will occasionally haunt me until I’m “scrapped,” like Mr. Swartz supposedly roamed the boat deck on crisp, Alaskan nights.

Burning Books Without Matches

“You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.” 

                                                                                                        - Ray Bradbury

           

There used to be a library not too far from the house I grew up in.  The library was in a space on the northwest corner of the mall and didn’t face the interior, like it was embarrassed to share mall space with the Tandy Leather shop, so you had to enter from the back.  I was pretty young when I’d visit this library and I only specifically remember checking out one book.  I don’t even remember the title.  It was a book about a rocket to Mars or something where there were twin sisters; one going on the trip and one staying home.  Before the launch the staying home sister breaks her leg.  At the end of the story it is reveled that the sister on the trip was really the staying home sister and had switched with her twin because the going on the trip sister was the one who broke her leg.  I don’t remember why it was a big deal.  But I remember science fiction and rockets were a powerful force on me when it came to choosing books to read.

Last Tuesday Ray Bradbury passed away.  I know I read The Martin Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, most likely checked out from that library.  I remember while reading them as a child I liked the stories and loved the images but was sure there was something in the stories I was missing.  There was something bigger, more important, and cleverer than my cognitive skills at the time could hook.

            Right after his death I read obituaries of the man. How he moved to Los Angeles when he was a kid, how he never drove, never went to college stating that “libraries raised me.”  Then later in the week I began to read essays on how book paper doesn’t really burn and 451 degrees Fahrenheit and how he was an icon of the Tea Party movement.  These people are missing the point.  They deconstruct the title of his most famous book as if they believed it was a science book on combustion temperatures. Have they ever looked past the title?  They shoehorn every offhand comment he’s ever made until they find the one that fits their preordained idea of his politics. They're burning his books.

            Ray Bradbury was about one thing; books.  He saved Southern California libraries from the budget axe and he only allowed Fahrenheit 451 to be put into electronic form when it was agreed it would be free to download at libraries. Self-serving?  Maybe.  But what other famous author gives away his most famous book?
            That strip mall from the top of the page is still there, but the library, and Tandy Leather, are gone.  Tandy Leather probably went out of business but the library moved to the next intersection to the south, leapfrogging my high school.  There are many other things from that intersection that are gone or going; the bookstore next to the fish and chips place to the east is gone, along with the fish.  The bowling alley to the south is to be torn down. On the day that Mr. Bradbury died, the building housing the library caught fire, prompting an evacuation.  Had the fire started at night, it's likely books would have burned.  I believe I'm the only person in town who caught the irony.
            My favorite book is his Something Wicked This Way Comes.  It's not the prose, although it is beautiful.  I like it because it's about an old and tired father who saves his son and his son's friend through love, laughter, and happiness.  While reading it as a boy, I was the boy.  While reading it as a father, I hope to be the father.