The Snake Ranch Papers is one of those things that has followed us around since 1981. There was a time when triplicate forms were used in order to provide “carbon” and “file” copies to normal correspondence. That limited distribution to a very small group and provided safety that would have saved at least one career I know of through the inadvertent use of that “reply to all” button on the screen. But that is the generation we were, and the generation we are now passing away with equal determination. The manuscript was in sheets of that annoying thin paper with the scars at the top where the copies were separated. They were in a folder, probably the one kept under the little desk in the six-man hooch on South Post, in the Yongsan Military Garrison in Seoul.

The sheets were fed through one of the big copiers we used back in the old days and were rendered as ‘portable document files’ (.pdf) and were stored on one of those square floppy discs that transferred the digital version across the last dozen home computers I have managed to manage across fifty or sixty upgrades and changes to the operating systems, Word to Mac.

We had one of those experiences you would expect to happen to a cocksure little snapper like the authors of these letters from a far away place. We came across them as imposing stacks of paper while trying to find all the pieces of my Great Grandfather’s trip to Europe in 1903, before all the madness of the 20th Century played out. I had transcribed them from paper and thin ink lines to digital a couple decades ago, and it was almost ready to go with all the photos and postcards scanned in. Strange little project, but I never met the man, and thought his notebooks stuck moldering in one of the boxes of Mom and Dad’s stuff might be worth saving for his great-great-great-children.

Then we ran across this. On the ship I had written a strange thing called “Nick Danger, Third Eye.” When I washed up in Korea, I took the experiment in writing a little further, and invested in an actual typewriter. It was a cool thing, electric, and I began to try to tell stories about what was happening around me. I don’t know how many Team Spirit exercises Midway did when I was aboard. I only remember one of them, a big deal combined arms exercise off the SE coast of the Republic, Marines storming ashore, ROK infantry simulating hunting down North Korean commandoes, that sort of thing. But landing in the middle of Seoul with a military coup underway was interesting, as was the rioting down in Kwang-Ju Province, and the usual tunneling and infiltrating under surveillance flights and satellites whizzing above.

Anyway, the kid who is using his typewriter to bitch about life is a little hysterical for my taste these days and he is living harder than I can even imagine these days. It was an interesting year those 40 trips around the sun ago.

Here is an idea. Why don’t you take a PX cab over to the Hooch on South Post and enjoy a year of your life put somewhere you had never deliberately intended. We took the challenge to enjoy the time the extent possible. You haven’t lived until you have visited the gigantic piles of cabbage being sold after the Fall harvest, so the Capital can lay in a good season of kimchi. Or be an honorary Junior MP in a riot. But that is all in here, told by a wise ass for maximum ironic effect. And long ago. In a place now very far away.

We are just going to take them as they came. The first one was:

Nick Danger, Third Eye
The first published book, a Noir treatment of a hard-nosed Private Dick working the mean streets of USS Midway (CV-41), 1978-80.

Long Shadows: The Search for Jack Graf
Life and Times of VADM Rex Rectanus. A life in the secret world that shaped our own, from WWII to modern times.

The War in the West
An account of a wild young Irishman who joined the struggle against the Union, his sister and the grandfather of my grandfather who married her. Vicksburg and Raymond are battles you have never heard of. Imprisonment, escape, combat and love in older times have an odd resonance to ours. Some years after this family account was scribbled there was business on the Gulf Coast that might have led to transactions of real property. A late afternoon in the thin Mississippi winter-sunshine led to the place my uncle caught the falling body of his Colonel. A century and a half after the family business it was a peaceful place.

The Lucky Bunch
A respectful account of an unusual relationship between Government and others in New York City, plus the search for German technology used in the Cold War that went far beyond rockets..

The Snake Ranch Papers
A 14-month one-year tour in the Republic of Korea, 1980. A military coup provided an interesting sidelight to a war with no end.

Grand Tour of Europe, 1903
Great Grandfather Socotra tours a Europe before the age of powered flight and The Great War.

Boondoggles
Originally compiled as a sort of real-life civics lesson on How Things Really Work. Travels with the Congress in Haiti, Burma and North Korea, among others. The trips featured freeing a Nobel laureate and normalizing relations with Vietnam and talking with the North Korean leadership about the “defensive” use of atomic weapons.

Cocktails With the Admiral
The life and time of RADM Donald “Mac” Showers, last of the Midway codebreakers, another war in Asia and implementing reform in an IC operating “off the reservation.”

The Last Cruise of IJN Nagato (Operation Crossroads)
The Crossroads Atomic Tests exposed thousands of sailors to the effects of Atomic blasts, and the last deployment of an IJN Japanese battleship to serve as a target, crewed by Yanks. Includes the account by the Nagato’s XO, a man who died young, perhaps from the effects of the blasts.

Cruisebook (Fall of the Wall, 1990)
A routine Mediterranean cruise turns electric as USS Forrestal steams while the Berlin Wall collapses and the Cold War ends.

Stones of the District
A tour of the first monument of the United States- the boundary stones of the District of Columbia.

Point Loma (Compiled)
The salty works of an Old Salt, charter member of the Socotra House Writer’s Section. Adventures afloat and ashore around the World Ocean.

Tales from Big Pink
Life in a vibrant Arlington VA as life, society and Government change dramatically along with the Writer’s Section, 2001, to at the time of the great Depression of 2008.

The Seventy Days
So, there was an election in 2020 and a couple changes in the way we live. This account runs from November 3, 2020 to an Inauguration on 20 January 2021.

The Family Book: (Irish, German, English)
The account of the family in North America, dating to before the Revolution, the conflict with the King, a Civil War in the family, and living with modern change.

Living With the Shadow Warriors
Our 83-year old Girlfriend Jinny was looking for an editor to put together the stories of the wives of a Navy Reconnaissance squadron in the Philippines and Japan. An assignment when the husbands might not come home from work. By Pauly Varney and Several VQ Squadron Wives (Socotra edit)

In Work:

Winds of Change
A candid account a little ahead of gentile publication and a running account of a society embarked on a great transformation we do not recall asking for.

Big Smoke’s Life and Times
The bare-knuckled adventures of Tom Duval, an Old School Spook, 1944-1980. Japan and Italian adventures on the other side of the fence.

Field Marshal’s Daughter
A US Army Colonel, once a British Coldstream Guard captive of the Chinese masquerades as a Master Sergeant while married to a German Field Marshall’s daughter. A life introduction to the fields of Far Eastern lies.

Car People
Some poignant tales of the families that preserve (and drive) the autos that meant something to a couple adventurous generations. Ramblers and Rods.

Cooking Under Cover
With Jinny Martin, an account of what being a hostess in the Cold War diplomatic corps really meant when the spouse calls up and says “I have a group of diplomatic people coming by the house this evening. Have something good to feed them.” Recipes from Jinny and some other grand ladies who knew what the point was, and what would work with the representatives of all sorts of odd places.

The Red and Green Books
Early attempts to copy the enigmatic style of Gonzo Journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson pioneered in his seminal work “Hell’s Angels.” The Socotra House attempt to capture that spirit with an experience with a much larger armed gang. Mostly law-abiding, and MUCH longer than a year on the road. Handwritten, of all things.

The Motorcycle Books
Oh, we should not forget the contribution of Marlow, second of the Writer’s Section to produce his ticket for the Eternal Express. We have a tradition of memorializing the legacies of the Salty Scribblers at Socotra House, and Marlow’s project covered at least two finished manuscripts. They captured the essence of what it is like to ride on two wheels across a really big freaking country!

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com