(This is a somewhat deformed image captured from the weather deck of the USS Midway (CV-41) in 1978 or 1979. That I was able to capture it suggests the ship was orbiting somewhere awaiting tug support to enter port. It would likely have have been outside Yokosuka or Subic Bay, but I can’t tell you that, except there is a faint stirring of memory of sunshine and warm humid air. It was done on paper with a Sharpie ink pen and some of the assorted color markers from that box near the podium in Mission Planning, a long room on the 01 level of the ship where the CVIC (Carrier Intel Center) could accommodate the flight crews who would be participating in the next launch cycle. They flew airplanes now long out of the inventory from a living ship that is now a museum. To preserve the vista, the image was cut out of a sheet of paper and covered in adhesive plastic cover and stuck to the cover of a notebook. It only stayed stuck for about 40 years).
So, before retiring last night, I had a chat with the members of the Socotra House LLC Editorial Board’s Writers Section. They had moved from the Loading dock area at the farm to the Fire Pit out front.
Technically, drinking is fine there, but smoking is not. Which is one of those inconsistencies since it is known, as you know, as…oh, never mind. Some of them were further along in their march to dissolution than I was, but that is expected when you consider that I had, moments before, been 27-years-old and escorting a young ‘Oriental’ woman from the Club Bushido to the Alliance Club complex just outside the gate at Fleet Activities Yokosuka. As I recall, it was 1978. As a time traveler, it makes complete sense. To the executors of my estate, who had not been conceived at that time, it may be a little startling.
The Writers Section sighed in unison, since they are going through the same process. They will find, should they look at the green ledger, that I was a creature with a certain compulsive curiosity and a penchant for mistaken judgement.
The influence of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is apparent, though he is sixteen years in his grave. As I recall, this too has a certain ambiguity, since he was reported to have had his ashes blown from a 105mm artillery piece in Aspen, Colorado. Accordingly, his influence provides an interesting spin placed on a very unusual time and place. It is one that placed value on excess and we did have that aplenty.
The below is not my cartoon. It was scrawled by one of the Air Ops guys who were trusted to put out the Daily Air Plan, a single sheet of long paper printed on both sides that included details for the launch and recovery from Midway of Carrier Airwing FIVE aircraft. It summarized, by implication, all sorts of things. Like, what jets need necessary maintenance to fly when scheduled, who needed to get some shut-eye to fly them safely, who needed to move them to spots on the deck appropriate for cycling them to the catapults and that sort of stuff.
Sometimes the Ops guys got a dig in at the Supply folks, as in the cartoon from 14 January 1979. This referred to a minor conflict in the Ship’s S-5 Division about the frequency of laundering officer’s country sleeping materials. It was clipped from the air plan and appended to the notebook in the general sense of fun:
Time Travel is an odd sort of thing. Dr. Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an inspiration at the time for many of us. It was an avant garde attempt to deal with a changing world. He had risen to prominence with the publication of Hell’s Angels (1967), a book for which he spent a year living and riding with the Hells Angels motorcycle club to write a first-hand account of their lives and experiences. His widow said her husband killed himself while the two were talking on the phone from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 67.
The green notebook that contains the sea view of a welcoming port contains the memory of a ship with well-used sleeping materials, not unlike those described by Dr. Thompson in his book. I would show you the book, but you may remember them. It was an exercise by a young man turning 26 to 27 years of age in a strange place (Yokosuka, Japan) entering a new environment (a thirty-two year old aircraft carrier) through a lens of then-modern Japan. It is an interesting exercise in temporal dislocation. Here is the handwritten title page:
Nippon Notes, 1978
Note Book
Easy Write, Easy read
Continuing best White Paper
++ Nippon Notes ++
1978
Continuing idiocy
From the Wandering Wonder
Vic Socotra
INDEX Fear & Loathing on CV-41
CHAPTER. PAGE
ONE “THE YEN FALLS ONE
03/JULY/78 TWO THE COLONEL HOGAN CONNECTION FOUR-EIGHT
THREE “ART IMITATES LIFE, ER” NINE-TWELVE
05/JULY/78. FOUR “WAITING FOR AN AIRLIFT- OR GODOT- OR SOMETHING” THIRTEEN
12/JULY/78 FIVE “CDR WATER BRIEFS THE FNG” TWENTY
13/JULY/78 SIX “SKINNY DIPPING IN NORTHERN HONSU” TWENTY-FOUR
14/JULY/78 SEVEN “I GOT THOSE AT-SEA CYCLICAL OPERATIONS BLUES, MAMMA” THIRTY
22/AUGUST/78 I AM INSTALLED AS “CHOCK FULL O’ NUTS OFFICER P.52
FEAR & LOATHING ON CV-41
02 SEPTEMBER “TEXAS STREET, DRIVER, AND STEP ON ME” P.59
05 SEP I GOT THOSE TRANSIT-TO-YOKOSUKA BLUES, MAMA. P.69
01 SEPTEMBER 5 ALARM CHILI RECIPE & WEIGHT CONTROL MANUAL
01 SEPTEMBER READEX AND OTHER OUTRAGES P.81
08 NOVEMBER. FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE ROAD TO BANGKOK
8-9 DECEMBER CRAZY ENS SOCOTRA ACHIEVES NIRVANA P.130
“PATPONG ROAD DRIVER, AND STEP ON ME!”
01 JANUARY 1979 AND FORWARD:
“A RECURRING THEME: FEAR & LOATHING ONBOARD CV-41
– CHARACTER ASSASSINATION
20 JAN – ASSESSMENTS
05 MARCH – THE TWELVE DOWN & 18 TO GO SYNDROME
TEAMU SPIRITU IN THE CORPUS DEL MAR CHEJU-DO LOC du MOD
20 MARCH FEAR AND LOATHING REPRISE
01 APRIL: THE KADENA FOUR & RUTH’S CAFÉ 1ST ANNUAL GRAND PRIX P.175
#3519 ATSUGI TERMINAL
The notebook contains stories both exciting and banal. Most deal with topics our mature memories have expunged. Before talking to the Old Salts, I had looked in the notebook and found myself escorting a young Japanese woman from the Club Bushido to the Club Alliance, a place of wonder outside the gates of Fleet Activities Yokosuka (FAY). As the notebook ends, I had transferred from writing by hand about some of the madness, and began using the Midway IBM Selectric typewriter in Mission Planning. You may not remember the spherical type-head bouncing maidenly across paper shoots inserted by hand into the top of the machine. “Nick Danger” was a side project, which turned into the first book typewritten in my wayward scribbling career. It would not go digital until another decade had passed. And now we are all digital, all the time.
The senses are awash. One of the later, typed versions, included a “full service” massage from the Samurai Health Club. I have already inflicted that on you. These are even more visceral. It is very strange to meet this self-important young fellow, and realize what is ahead of him. But there was a spark of beauty amid the dissolution:
(A day on the trail up Mount Fujiyama, and most of the way back down. From Yokosuka, the great mountain would only occasionally show it’s grandeur and majesty through the haze. One morning, stuck with a Flight Deck Integrity watch, I sat on the non-skid coated deck and looked south as the volcano revealed itself, beckoning. It was magic that day, but my last view was the best one that has lasted a life time. Inverted in an F-4 Phantom, seated in the back, lying convincingly to the Air Traffic Control people in Tokyo, telling them a routine VFR transit to Naval Air Station Atsugi was anticipated).
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra