It was a day of delirious beauty in San Diego’s waterfront. Older son and lovely wife arrived around noon with a fabulous reunion in what had been our old stomping grounds across the majestic Coronado Bay Bridge. This being a day still filled with gathering from around the country, there was a chance to take a couple of hours and visit something large in the harbor, something that changed my life, and continued a progression of events and places that shaped all our lives.
So many issues once distant in far-away California were suddenly worth discussion. I asked the Groom to be about some of them. We have heard the stories of the people who live on California’s streets and the new-comers who have flooded what used to be the border just a couple miles south of town. I had looked out the window of the jet at the long strand that leads from our old, rented home in Coronado down to Imperial Beach. Seeing what used to be home when these large young men had been little was emotional, as was the sudden sight of the old sailing ships at their berths. “Star of India, right?” I asked, and The Groom nodded. “I don’t see anyone living on the street. Is it a problem here?”
The Groom shrugged and explained how it worked in today’s version of what I still consider America’s prettiest big town. “They manage to keep it away from the Downtown. They are here, but it isn’t like LA or San Francisco.”
“Coronado?” I asked.
“Zero,” he said. The real problems of modern life slipped away as the vast bulk of the Museum loomed near what had been, in my memory, a 1930s-era Navy office building. Now it was not. That buildings gone, replaced on an adjacent block with a pristine modern tower. Below the architectural achievement was another one, a big steel ship painted the same gray as she had been upon commissioning in 1945. She had been my home for two years, the center of American life in a Japanese harbor. From that place she had carried us twice to the Indian Ocean, once as far south as Perth on Australia’s west coats, and to the shores off Kenya where we had an astonishing four-day port visit at Mombasa, and a wild but peaceful adventure on what had been East Africa Rail, steaming across the plains to see the crest of Kilamanjaro rise against the African sun.
The Groom dropped us near the admissions complex at the bottom of the ladder and parked the car, rejoining us for the trip up brow to an elevator, a marvelous addition to make the Quarterdeck accessible to those of us with physical challenges. I looked up, remembering preparations for an emergency deployment after another West Coast carrier collided with commercial shipping in the Starit of Malacca, a waterway that had showed us Singapore’s proud towers four times, coming and going. What I remembered was being the junior officer in our Fighter Squadron, and entrusted with the finances to keep the aircrew fed and happy. That last part involved ensuring non-regulation carbonated beverages were stored in the locker of Ready Room Two. By that I mean specified brands of Coca Cola and Ginger Ale to slake seagoing thirst.
Squadron policy was that a working party of our sailors could not be utilized, since this was not a squadron-wide supply issue. The sodas were for members of the officers coffee mess. With the sudden departure announcement there was no time to find a crane to bring the cases of carbonated beverages to the flight deck, and I loaded them all in the little Toyota Publica wagon I had purchased to get around when we were docked at “home.” I looked at my sons yesterday, unable to recall how many cases of sodas I had humped up the ladder. My mind churned at the reunion of memory and current fact. Certainly not a hundred, which would have been four at a time up the steel steps for that amount. Maybe it was only fifty, or even fewer if I was counting by brand, rather than inanimate weight.
Now there is an elevator installed on the pier, rising to disgorge disabled tourists into the sweeping space of the Hangar Bay, which stretched aft in an impossibly large steel space. I got a chance to look around where there was a place to sit. Otherwise, my view of what had been our steel home was mostly concentrated on the space 14-inches forward of my cane and moving shoes. An important factor on Midway, since her structure required armored portal between major frames of the hull, forward and aft.
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(Neither of these impressive men were born when I stood in the places they did yesterday).
I figured I could manage the ladders up from the Hangar Bay to go forward and see the stateroom where I slept for seven hundred nights. Those were easier to count than heavily-laden trips hauling soda up to Ready Two, home of the World Famous VF-151 Vigilanties. Partitioning the hatches and knee-knockers for the tour meant the usual route forward we used to get to our racks was interrupted, though I tapped the cane on a knee-locker or two to remind her that some of her children were home. I was delighted to find that Ready Two- now called Ready One due to a squadron change years after I fled her steel embrace- was open. Legs quivering from the unexpected effort, I collapsed into one of the Ready Room seats, neatly bolted in a more accommodating fashion than I remembered. Then my sons took up the position at the forward end of space, and the memories of those “all officers” meetings with presentations not devised on Powerpoint slides, but drawn on large sheets of paper we had to flip. And a slide projector.
My sons asked me if smoking was permitted back then. I pointed at the square receptacles on the port side of each chair. Now empty, they were once filled with aluminum boxes containing the dog-ends of smoldering butts. “You never went anywhere without a pack of cigarettes. They cost $2.50 a carton down in the smoke shop, and aside from flying, working and sleeping, there wasn’t much else to do.”
The boys smirked at the idea, and I fished my phone out of my jacket pocket to get an image of my sons at the front of my ready room. It had been our living room, back in the day, and now just a stop on the forward tour. Then were were off for a visit to spaces we normally stayed away from- the Combat Information Center (CIC) and the ATC spaces and a couple berthing compartments to ensure they knew that my complaints about the limitations of Bunkroom FOUR were all relative. The massive chains in the Foc’sle were still there, connecting the ship to the seabed when required. And then down the various ladders back to the Hangar Bay, and a couple stops at the Ship’s Library space to visit LTJG Winky, whose plush presence marked a return of old time briefing aids for the aircrew conducting cyclic operations.
“Two hours before two hours prior,” I said. “We needed to get ready to get the aircrews ready to go fly. Then we stayed until the last jet from an eight-cycle day was recovered and done, and the debriefings were completed and submitted to Air Ops.”
I probably muttered more stuff along the way, since I was divided in time and space. This had been a living, humming, moving place, but mostly in Japan. She had always answered “all bells,” since that is what we all expected. But of all the ships on which I served, she is the only one that is motionless but still afloat. And she still lives. My sons managed to find a docent to take a picture of us around the Quarterdeck sign that had announced the return of some old-timer that day. It happened to be me that day. And what a trip through time and space. Our thanks to Phil and the others who report for duty in her motionless spaces each day. A Museum, not an operating aircraft carrier. But a hell of a place to do some routine space-time travel!
Visit her the next time you are in town. She is worth it. And if you see a somewhat frantic LTJG in wash khakis looking at a battered old Toyota filled with soda, offer him a hand in carrying a case or two aboard. He would really appreciate it.
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com