Editor’s Note: I stayed up late watching Monday Night Football, something fewer and fewer of us do these days for a variety of perfectly good reason, some of them akin to the reason we have a President-elect with orange hair. I talked at length about that with Liz-with-an-S at the bar last night. She was pulling hard for the other team, and wanted some assurance that things were going to be OK. I was unable to assuage her concerns after three glasses of wine and a half-shot of Fireball, but we left the Front Page feeling much more numb. Anyway, this story encompasses the first try at generating something that vaguely resembles the story of a life that mattered to many, and which ran through the last century like an in inexorable stream flowing down to the vast ocean. Mac Showers lived it in full. Where does this part go? Maybe before the War Years chapters, I don’t know. But come on, let’s go to Willow and see what the Admiral had to say back in 2010.

– Vic

Binding Commitment

The two projects have been hanging over my head for weeks now. I had to generate a special 25th Anniversary issue of the Quarterly for the Professional Association, and then the regular Fall-Winter issue. Between them, that can take weekends of work, and I was running out of time. I am bound by the commitment to get to print, so there it is. I think of Mac as eternal, but I really was anxious to have something from these years of interviews to show him while he was still fit and active.

The time is at hand, and in desperation, I decided to harvest Mac’s stories about the dawn of the modern naval intelligence community, forged in the cauldron of the Pacific war, and honed in real and desperate combat.

I did up a title page on the computer, inserting the seal of the Association and the cool picture of Mac, taken just after Chester Nimitz awarded him the Bonze Star for his war service. Then I three-hole punched all the papers, printed the picture of the big fly-over of USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay celebrating the victory and slid it into the plastic cover. Then I took it and walked over to meet Mac at Willow.

It was hotter than hell, and sweat was rolling down the inside of my Brooks Brothers shirt by the time I covered the short distance. The heat wave comes on schedule, just when they shut down the air conditioning at Big Pink for the season.

I decided I was pleased with the project, generally, though it is not history, per se, but more a set of bar-room recollections that started at the end- or the beginning of something else and wandered backward through the years.

I don’t know what the Association will think of it. Our membership rolls include some cranky former analysts who insist on precision in thought and detail. This isn’t it, but is, in my estimation, thoroughly true to the other spirit of the Fleet that worked hard and played hard when it found itself ashore.

It has been a while since I actually printed any of the stuff that pours out of my computer and into yours. It was impressive, seeing the digital files represented as a ream of paper. It actually looks pretty slick. Needs a serious edit for the usual Socotra typos I insert to keep you alert, a table of contents and that stuff, but I am actually pleased to have something to actually send to lay-out and get it off the plate.

Willow was jammed when I arrived after sifting through the wreckage, and little signs reading “reserved” had been placed on all the usual places I sit. Four private groups had reserved most of the bar, the conversation nook, and the patio area. Things were pretty chaotic. Big Jim the bartender hustled past as I stood with the binder, blinking. He said some folks in the middle of the bar were preparing to leave, and I might get a seat there. Peering down through the crowd, I saw a couple of the other regulars there, looking disoriented.

At least for that afternoon, Willow is a victim of its own success.

I thought of Yogi Berra’s observation about a long-ago New York watering hole: “No body goes there anymore, ‘cuz it’s too crowded.”

I saw Tracy O’Grady, the co-owner and chef supreme, stick her head in from the back of the bar, looking a little apprehensive before suddenly disappearing. I managed to save the seat next to me, and suddenly Mac appeared, dapper in his sport-coat and signature Aloha shirt buttoned at the collar. We were supposed to meet his son for dinner, but he was stuck on the tarmac at Detroit due to the thunderstorms coming in over Loudoun County and an attendant burst of FAA caution, so between the weather and the crowds our plan was coming off the rails.

It was hard to hear anything in the din, and I leaned in close and pushed the binder over to him. The young Lieutenant in the picture on the cover looked up at the 91-year-old Admiral he had become.

“You don’t expect me to make comments here, do you?” asked Mac, raising his voice to carry over the noise. He signaled Peter, who was juggling four bottles of beer, and asked for a ginger ale.

Peter raised an eyebrow at the change to his choice of beverage, and Mac smiled. “I am turning over a new leaf. I am having a personal trainer come to the Madison on Friday. I told her to be prepared to start from zero. I am going to get out and about more.” He flipped the cover open, and looked at a few pages at random.

“That is great news, Sir.” I said. “I am trying to do the same thing. Take the manuscript home if you wish and write down any comments, deletions or additions you want. Let me you know if there are any show-stoppers in there. Remember we called Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner an asshole in there, and I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“He was widely known to be an alcoholic,” said Mac, speaking up over the background babble. “And besides, who is still alive that cares?” Then he laughed.

“I think we also called the Redmond Brothers’ conduct with the Chicago Tribune after the battle of Midway and the sacking of Joe Rochefort close to treason.”

“I think we can let people make up their own minds on what they did. The secrecy about the code-breaking covered their tracks until the 1970s. That is the nature of the business. We can bury our mistakes.”

“Between this, and the series I did on Admiral Rex, we cover most of the community history from the outbreak of the Pacific War through the end of Vietnam,” I said. “It is sort of a jumble, but great fun.”

Mac nodded and took a sip of the pale golden liquid in his glass.

“Yes. After that, there are still some things that we can’t talk about. I think the investigation I conducted over the capture of the Pueblo is still in a vault someplace at DIA, and then there is that operation we don’t talk about in the Pacific.”

“Well, I hope we can cover that for the 50th Anniversary issue,” I said.

Mac smiled. “You never know,” he said. “But stay in touch. I’ll tell you how the fitness routine worked out then.”

“I’ll view that as a binding commitment, Sir.”

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com