(A Zumwalt-era Beard on USS Midway sailor)

The drive home covered 768 Miles in 11 hours and 20 minutes. I was moderately interested by the pace, once I got the car parked in the garage, since it was the night of the same day I had departed the little town in Michigan, and I had allowed two full days for the trip in daylight.
 
With as much time to think as I did, guiding the Blusmobile over the packed snow, I thought I would scribble something about Rex and his relationship with Admiral Bud Zumwalt, then go back to Jack Graf, since he was the anomaly among the Navy people assigned to be NILOs.
 
He not only was on his second tour in country when he was lost, but he was as old as the NAVFOR-V Intelligence officer, almost, only as bold as a swinging-dick fighter pilot, and out there flying close-observation missions as often as he could.
 
Admiral Zumwalt was a legend among his people in Vietnam, as Rex often said. Of course, I knew him only for the results of his amazing tenure as the Chief of Naval Operations resulted in a flurry of new regulations that were called “Z-Grams.” the uniform regulation changes that permitted me to wear a beard in the Fleet, and the wearing of such directly countermanded an order of the 8th US Army in the Land of the Morning Calm.
 
I thought about that when I was shaving Dad in the kitchen before I left yesterday. You have to stay on top of his beard, since the electric razor won’t work if you let him grow his whiskers for more than a day or two, and then it is the more problematic procedure with blade and cream and water everywhere. Or let him look like Howard Hughes, of course. That just makes everything worse.
 
In my case, the issue of the close shave was that the leadership of the Joint Command to which I had been assigned was Army, and in its wisdom, had determined that the local Koreans would take offense at Miguks (Americans) wearing facial hair. That is a privilege, reasoned the Army, only for aged men in Korea, who in that culture are treated with deference due to their acquired wisdom.
 
I snorted, saying that the host nationals were under no illusions about us, as to age, wisdom or national origin, but the Yeoman at the Navy Element told me it was serious and I had to go along with it.
 
Or else, was the implication. Taking on the whole 8th Army on my first day in country was not the smart money, in his opinion.
 
I muttered that the North Koreans had done all right with it, and took the order to shave personally, since Bud Zumwalt had given me the right to wear the beard, and I did not view the Army as having the authority to tell me otherwise. You had to see us all in those days: hair lank over the collar, wild mustaches and beards on everyone. We looked like a regular pirate crew.
 
On Midway, home-ported as we were in Japan, we did maintain a certain military decorum and there was not as much pressure to look fashionable, since there were no civilians to impress out on the economy. The Japanese were under no illusions that we were actually civilized people.
 
When we saw the guys from the West Coast Cruise Boats, it was something else. They were like out of Gentleman’s Quarterly with their elegant coifs and tailored khaki working uniforms.
 
Anyway, that was the Zumwalt Style that Rainy Day Actual perfected in Vietnam. He cared about his people, and he did all sorts of things out of the ordinary to recognize them and treat them as well as could be expected.
 
Jeremy Boorda, the CNO who wound up shooting himself over accusations that he wore the “Combat V” on some Vietnam ribbons he had earned, was a case in point. Rainy Day Actual thought it was OK, and it was his theater of war, and he just issued a policy and let it go. Of course it was authorized, even if that reformed Army glory-hound Colonel David Hackworth got his shorts in a knot about the issue.
 
I dislike and distrust people who are reformed from anything. They tend to zealotry.
 
Admiral Zumwalt understood about the Army. It was unwritten policy that any NILO headed out to be a liaison with the Vietnamese or the Army was spot-promoted to Lieutenant (0-3) even if he was still an Ensign, not for pay, mind you, but just to give his people a better place in the pecking order. Rex supported that, even if BuPers would have blown a fuse over the matter if they had ever know, just like the Combat V device, since it was one of those things that worked.
 
I took the order to shave as a betrayal of the trust I had with the Navy Department, not realizing that Admiral Zumwalt and his radical personnel policies were an aberration in Navy life, and left over from a war that was won on the field and lost at the conference table.
 
Of course, I take a lot of shit personally, like the rip-off price of the 16-ounce can of energy drink because I was nodding at mile 150 yesterday morning when the “low fuel” light popped on in the sugar beet flatlands of Michigan just North of Saginaw.
 
It was $2.99 the can, which is three times what a whole six-pack of Olde Towne budget lager went for, back in the day. It didn’t seem right, but about that point I was beyond caring. I had not slept well, wondering about what the future holds for my folks up there in the frozen north, and some other personal stuff that kept my brain running like a hamster on a wheel.
 
Three bucks for caffeine, or the ditch for free. I had hours of daylight to burn and a lot of ground to cover, so I picked the can of go-juice.
 
I did not read the ingredients on the can, since I was sure it would have been an intimidating number of calories, but I imagine it was mostly sugar and caffeine in staggering proportions.
 
I blasted out of the gas station and over the sweeping Zilwaukee Bridge. The Tri-Cities of Saginaw, Midland (where they made Agent Orange back in another day) and Bay City swept by without comment. I put the window down on the Bluesmobile and was singing along with the radio at the top of my lungs as Flint dropped astern (“Banana 101.5: Flint’s Rock Radio Celebrates 20 Years of Recession!”) and was still singing as I blew past Ann Arbor.
 
I hit the state line (just short of 300 miles) with a lot of energy. The sun came out, and by the time it was gone, I was east of Cleveland and just past Youngstown when I needed gas and a fresh pack of Luckies if I was going to keep on going down the highway.
 
I checked the GPS app on the phone and realized I could probably make the Capital on this tank, and fished around in the vast trunk filled with Christmas presents from Mom to the Boys, two garden hoses, long orange and yellow electrical extension cords and the other detritus of the holiday.
 
I was looking for the box filled with cookies and gag gifts was a little package with a pair of two-ounce vials of berry-flavored liquid called “Five Hour Energy” that my Sister had sent from Alaska. Apparently it is very dark up there this time of the year, and sometimes they need help getting out of the house even for a few hours.
 
The product was advertised on the label to “provide hours of energy now- No crash later! Sugar free, only four calories!”
 
I am looking at the vial that is left. The ingredients say they put Niacin, B6, B12 and sodium in it, along with the berry flavor, with an 1870mg energy blend of Taurine, Glucurondactone, Malic Acid, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, L-Phenylalanine, Caffein and Citicoline.
 
I drank down its brother at the pump and walked into the plaza to pee and saw the line was too long to get coffee. I bought a Coke instead and got back on the road. The light faded completely to black in the most interesting part of the Pennsylvania Turnpike- the part where the road is being expanded and the Jersey Barriers squeeze you up against the trucks in two narrow traffic lanes as you snake up to the great plateau from the Ohio Valley.
 
It is a close shave, and if my eyes dilated a bit, I didn’t care.
 
It was only 270 miles to home at that point. Whatever was in the little cocktail, it worked like a champ, and flew on in the darkness, out speeding the headlights. My night vision is gone, anyway, so who cares?
 
When I pulled into the garage under Big Pink, I noted the stats on the dashboard, unloaded the car, stowed the crap, read the mail and wondered if I should go out again and wash off the salt residue of the North that was caked on the car, or find a watch to disassemble. I went to bed around midnight, and was wide-awake again at 0400, thinking about the holidays, past, present and future.
 
There had been a grim Christmas in Korea that year, long ago, since the Commanding General closed the Officer’s Club so the Buddhist employees could spend the holiday with their families. By the time I got back to America proper, the counter-revolution against the Zumwalt reforms had been successful and all was overthrown.
 
0415, looking up in the darkness. Nope, “no crash later,” that is for sure. Not even a landing.
 
According to my calculations this morning, that is an average speed of advance (with the two fuel stops) of 68.3 miles per hour.
 
It was a new personal record. The drugs may have contributed to it, but I think it was really the fact that I felt something was chasing me all the way from the little town on the bluff above the Bay.
 
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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