Editor’s Note: The bunker here at Refuge Farm is starting to look…oh, hell, it is looking cozy. That is what the Notary said when I spent most of Tuesday signing pieces of paper to refinance the place. I hope the slightly lower costs for whatever it is that is to come. What follows was another, institutional but somewhat personal November, advancing on Thanksgiving to be spent in an unfamiliar place. I am not going to go off on the astonishing COVID phenomenon; I have talked about referring to the footnote- you know the one, “we take this seriously, washing hands, avoiding crowds (including family) and wearing those mask things to protect other people, since they apparently don’t protect the wearer.”

(Steve and Kathy Doocy have written another cookbook. I bought the first one, before Fox changed, and discovered they used an old idea I had when I started to write mine years ago. The Doocy’s know interesting people from TV-land, and they asked for “favorite recipes.” Mine was along the same line, but focused on the can’t-miss recipes the Attache Wives used when a hubby called up in the heart of the afternoon in some diplomatic capital and says he is bring the Bulgarian delegation by for food and drinks. Fun intelligence collection. More on the turkey tomorrow.)

The media is saying the virus is spreading again, and we have to take a repeat dose of government-imposed house arrest for Thanksgiving, wearing a mask between bites. I would prefer not to consider this, and hope it goes away like all the other bad flu seasons. I am working on something to pass the time, and have a recipe to try- a bacon-honey wrapped turkey breast. That should be fun, even if we are discouraged from sharing. So, between the election and the plague, I thought about other strange Novembers. This one popped up. It includes the USS Forrestal (CV-59), and a horizon to the east.

– Vic

The Wine Dark Sea

Going to Work

I take a last look at the beach at Mayport, the gulls wheeling over the channel of the St. John’s River. I feel a sense of loss that had been building for weeks. I shrug, then turn and walk through the hatch into the hangar bay. See you next year, America.

I amble forward through the Air Intermediate Maintenance (AIMD) tunnel and up two ladders to the 02 level and my stateroom. Sounds grander than it is, since it is a two-man and my roomie is the staff’s young Porkchop, or Supply Guy. You have to ease into these things, I tell myself. One thing at a time, first things first. I stow away my case of Cup o’ Soups, cans of pistachio nuts and underwear. I lay down on my rack, just to see what the next six months were going to feel like.

I look at the creamy green paint on the bottom of the rack above me and can feel the edges of my own narrow sanctuary against each shoulder. It feels chilly and it looks like steel all around. I listen to a new tape I bought…Indigo Girls…and thus fortified, lock the place up and go to work.

The ship departs at 1243 local, 03 November 1989. The clock is still running, but now it is not toward Separation but to Return. After the months of preparation, it is now unwrapped and real.

I walk aft on the 03 level to frame 133 and discover there is pandemonium in Mission Planning. We are transforming a long steel box, approximately thirty feet by twenty feet, into the dim homey cave in which we will spend the next half year. Since this will be my own personal Space, including the responsibility to manage it for half a year, let me describe it. It will make all the rest of this much easier.

It is a steel rectangle maybe thirty feet long. Along each wall are a series of fold- down planning tables, nearly all covered with some sort of computer gear. Beneath these are file cabinets which prevent the tables from folding but provide the necessary storage for the reams of classified documents we must drag around with us.

Across the front wall are two enormous sliding charts of the Mediterranean. Our television camera faces the podium which stands before the charts and television arc lights dangle from the ceiling, perfectly positioned to smash you in the head. Two long trestle tables are erected lengthwise in the middle, with chairs scattered around them in disarray. My little desk sits all the way in the rear, under the Plexiglas window of the television control room.

Cruise boxes are everywhere, mimicking the big steel box in which we now steam east. If you don’t know what those are, imagine heavy-duty shipping crates made of sheet aluminum left at random on your porch. They fold flat, a real plus for getting out of gray steel perdition.

Two gents from the Defense intelligence Agency are in the corner, looking disoriented and a little bored. They are living the maxim that every time you step on a Carrier you immediately want to eat dinner, take a nap and find out what the evening movie is. We are supposed to treat them nicely.

The Troops are packing things away. Nooks and crannies are filling up with debris and the tools of the planning trade. Overhead transparencies. Compasses. Sheets of acetate. Pens and paper and all the magic markers in the universe. Maps are unfolded and messages and computer manuals are strewn everywhere, on the tables and chairs and in the odd spot of deck. Some sporadic cutting and pasting is going on. The place needs focus and direction.

”Bulgaria!” I shout at the top of my lungs. Some of the Junior Officers look up in amazement and one of our Petty Officers stops cutting the lock off a file cabinet.

“Get to work on the Bulgaria chart!” I throw a binder thick with charts and publications down on my desk. It lands with a minor thud.

“And for Christ sake, turn up the radio! We need tunes! We’ve got work to do!”

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com