Chuck, Brenda, Bill, Nancy, Sully, Ahni, Bobby, Johnny, Diane, Bill, Connie, Judy.
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Today is Friday, Mar. 09, 2012, and I thought I'd recap last weekend's Great Kills Beach lifeguard reunion.
I returned Monday after spending the nite Chez Robinson in Picayune, Mississippi.
Awoke 2:45 a.m. and was out the door shortly later; drove 30 miles south on the lonely, local, but very good roads of southern Mississippi and then picked up Interstate 10 towards New Orleans sixty miles to the west; good thing I left early because there was lots of traffic near the airport, compounded by construction work and trying to find the car rental place while moving; finally beat the logistics and made the gate with time to spare.
Always happy to return to the Bay Area and home in San Francisco near Coit Tower.
I keep thinking how gratified I am for Chuck and Brenda putting me up not only Sunday but Thursday a few days before; this gave me the flexibility needed to put the travel plans together.
Earlier I'd been impressed by the natural beauty of the ranch country and the coast as I followed Chuck over the scenic back route towards Biloxi and then along the long, clean, white sand beach. Hardly any beach goers despite the warm day; surprised me. Too busy working, I guess.
The Robinson's live in a very lovely home on large grounds planted with azalea, magnolia, and tall yellow pine, survivors of Hurricane Katrina. I was pleased to have a guided tour of Chuck's yurt, a Mongolian ger, in his large rear yard, the site of his various metal-working forges, anvils, pounding, welding and cutting equipment.
Chuck has always liked to make things, meaning with tools you wield yourself, especially if the project takes high heat and lots of hammering with heavy duty hammers. Chuck showed me some of his creations, finished and in process; when he carved a steak on Sunday for a lovely dinner whose guests included Bill and Connie McNelis, the boys going back together to somewhere around 1947, the Cub Scouts, PS 29, and the neighborhood of Four Corners, we saw the results of his handiwork in action. A champagne toast after dinner capped off the warm and delightful meal.
Earlier, Ms. Brenda, as Chuck refers to his bride, drove me around the neighborhood showing me its origins as a timber baron's spread, later subdivided into lovely homes. The Stennis NASA base is a few miles south; after leaving the Navy as a line officer, a commander of ships, Chuck worked for something he calls NavOcean, a scientific research outfit dealing with work of interest to the Navy requiring sea duty and heavy weather in the world's oceans. Back home, he's Hephaestus, the Greek god the Romans called Vulcan.
"Ever hear of the Shield of Achilles?" I asked. He hadn't, so I called it to his attention and we looked it up online. In the Iliad, Homer describes a shield created by the metal-crafting god of fire and forge, Hephaestus at the requests of Thetis, Achilles' goddess mother, for her son to fight with at Troy; the shield depicts Civilization itself by showing scenes of farming, vine tending, pastoralism, a court scene for peaceful dispute resolution, a bridal procession, and the like, set against various scenes of war and battle, by contrast. Click the link to see the lines of the Iliad and an artist's conception of the shield; the lines especially never fail to impress this reader with their evocative depiction of what it means to enjoy peace.
The metal working art goes waay back to the Bronze Age, at least, and Chuck is in the grand tradition.
Constitutional law professor Phillip Bobbit has written a master work of historical analysis entitled "The Shield of Achilles" in which he sets forth the pertinent lines of the Iliad, using it as the basis for his tracing of the development of nations from the early kingly states of Europe, to the large nation-states, to the postwar conglomerations of competing ideologies, socialism, fascism, market economy; one of his theses is that World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the smaller wars we've fought since are all episodes of one longer war that he refers to simply as 'the Long War.' This is where I learned of the remarkable Shield.
But we were speaking of the lifeguard reunion, weren't we? It's hard to keep the conversation on track when dealing with lifeguards. Why? Because our on-chair discussions were brief, usually no more than an hour, and tended to continue interminably and jump around depending on whom the next chair-partner was. This doesn't seem to have changed.
At the reunion, we'd meet in the Terrace Room of the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino for breakfast; Saturday's lasted three hours, starting with tall Bloody Maries...
Bill Jensen, out of the blue, called out "Vince LaDell!" "It pays to look well!" I replied, without missing a beat. Bill was letting me know that he'd lived on Windsor Road near some other families I recalled. Vince LaDell was the singing barber whose shop was located at the intersection of Victory Boulevard and Todt Hill Road, where Hodges Place, the home of the McNelises and Sheridans and Blumins happened also to intersect. Also Tom Ferry and Eddie Wegener, lifeguards all who inspired some of us. Vince was my barber for years and it was no problem recalling his motto, appearing on the sign in his window. Fifty-cents for a flat-top. Let's see, the haircut in San Francisco a week before the reunion cost $21.00 plus tip.
Whenever I think of Nancy Jensen I'm reminded of my first day of kindergarten at PS-29. Kindly, but no-nonsense, white-haired Mrs. Hammill was my kindergarten teacher. After the tears subsided and I survived the first day unscathed, despite worst fears, I returned home where the conversation was as to how it went.
"Who's your teacher?" asked my father.
"Mrs. Hammill," I replied.
"She was my kindergarten teacher," he said.
He was from Sunnyside, at the bottom of the Clove Lakes Hill, and attended PS-29 a generation earlier. Having been born in 1914, he must have been in kindergarten in 1919, right after the war, just as I was in 1945, after the next war. I can recall the blackout curtains in the Sunnyside home where we lived and him flattening tin cans with a hammer to contribute to the war effort. He worked as a crane operator at Bethlehem Steel shipyard, building destroyers and liberty ships. Some would exit the Harbor and be sunk by German U-boats outside Sandy Hook, until someone realized that we'd better turn off the lights at night. These reunions dredge up old memories.
I mentioned to McNelis that my father's father had been the stationary engineer at the city-run pumping station at the bottom of the hill on Victory Boulevard, the hill leading down from Four Corners to Sunnyside near Clove Lakes Pond. It pumped the water up the hill to the reservoir, now a ballfield, to maintain pressure. Bill replied that the grandfather he was named after had been the engineer there in 1908, before my grandfather. Small world, S.I. especially.
Next to the pumping station an open pipe spouted fresh-running well-water into the creek leading to Clove Lake; we'd get clear unchlorinated water there for the fish tanks or to put in the fridge. This was before bottled water became a very big business. Who knew?
A friend of mine on the Island from up the block went into the business of selling sneakers; what kind of a business is that, people wondered. That was before he caught the running/jogging craze, Nike, and Michael Jordan, where people were killing each other for expensive athletic shoes. He became rich enough to be ripped off by Bernie Madoff. Last I heard he was working part-time opening doors in Florida, just to keep sane. Later sold his house atop Todt Hill near the Country Club and doesn't open doors any more.
The line from Carol King's song, So Far Away: "Doesn't anyone stay in one place any more?" seems particularly pertinent to us; most of us are Dandelions, colorful flowers who've blown away and taken root in the fine gardens of the world, where they can hardly get rid of us... So we reunite in places like Baltimore, Sarasota, and Biloxi.
McNelis, a Civil War buff, wanted to see Beauvoir, the last home of the rebel president, Jefferson Davis, so on the way back to the Robinson's on Sunday, Bill, Connie, Chuck and I stopped there on Hwy. 90 for sightseeing. This stately home on the highway, facing the Gulf, is sponsored by a private foundation. It flies a Confederate as well as state and American flags out front and displays of statues of the former political leader of the Confederacy on the lawns.
A group of about a dozen visitors gathered for the tour.
The first question from the tour guide was where we were from, a mixed group from North and South, it turned out.
He was explaining the features of the home, how Mrs. Jefferson's room is here, and the dining room there, when it was built and then mentioned how Jefferson didn't have to pay any taxes during the process of fixing the place up after he'd bought it.
"Did he have to pay any wages?" I asked?
Someone failed to stifle a laugh.
"He did pay the slave who did the work," the guide answered, "enough for the man to buy his freedom."
"Wonderful," I thought.
Usually the wages were paid to the owner of the slave who rented him out. No owner, no slave.
This gave the lie to the idea floated by the South that the slaves really enjoyed being slaves, being fed and housed and clothed so nicely.
Later, after the group moved away, I spoke to the guide, aside.
"Usually we don't erect monuments to men who've made war on the United States. The Civil War cost 600,000 American lives, both sides. What do you think? Osama bin Laden attacked New York and killed close to 3,000 people; I can't see putting up a monument to him next door to the Jefferson Davis monument," I observed.
"Jefferson Davis didn't make war on the United States," the guide politely replied, "the United States made war on him."
I guess he'd forgot about the South's attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, that initiated the war. Lincoln had taken pains not to fire the first shot, despite provocation.
I said that I'd thought that the South sought to secede from the Union after Lincoln was elected and that this brought on the war as Lincoln tried to preserve the Union.
The guide then declared that the South had a legal right to secede from the Union when it no longer served the purpose of those seceding states. "You could read it in any schoolbook," he asserted. I wondered which schoolbooks those were.
This sounds like the long-rejected, except in the South, Compact Theory of the Union which held that the states are free to come and go at will when it suits their fancy. It doesn't make for a strong union, does it.
So I let it go, having made my point and not really wanting to rekindle a sad episode of our history.
Later I mentioned this exchange to Chuck who kindly advised that I'd better be careful what I say in this neck of the woods.
No doubt, but why let the guide gloss over the most important aspect of why this place was on display.
Truth in sightseeing is an important value, as is freedom of speech.
"Never let the bastards go unchallenged," is my motto.
But we were speaking of the reunion, weren't we.
Johnny Lenahan and Diane; Jim Sullivan and Ahni; Judy Livingston. Bill and Connie McNelis; Chuck and Brenda; me.
At the banquet on Saturday evening at Mary Mahoney's restaurant across the highway from the casino, we had a drink, dinner, wine, and a toast; Nancy raised a glass to our departed ones, recalling Poppy Litinsky's late husband, Bob Madden, a WWII navyman who performed heroic service in the Philippine Theatre; Bill Noll, Art Oberle, and George Livingston. I returned the original Livingston lifeguard parka to Nancy who presented it in turn to Chuck for his work organizing the reunion and keeping the flame alive.
Unfortunately, we'd let 45 years elapse before George, battling the pancreatic cancer that would kill him, came up with the idea for the first reunion, in Baltimore, in 2005; since then we've met in Sarasota in 2008 and Biloxi in 2012. I remember George calling one day in 2005 to invite my attendance at the first reunion and we started laughing all over again at some old joke we both recalled about clams dug off Oakwood Beach that we were bringing to Noll's house to cook into chowder.
The voices never change; all that's happened over the intervening years is beside the point when it comes to recognition...seems a miracle. The bond is there whether you realize it or not.
"Why do we have these get-togethers?" one might wonder. Years ago an older woman from New York worked for me in San Francisco as a secretary and we kept in touch after she retired. Her lament was that no one out here knew who she really was or why she was here. She'd been active in the newspaper industry on the side of labor in the wars with management; she'd been hired to work in San Francisco for the labor movement in that industry and had made her life here. But years had passed, she left the industry and the movement, and then she'd become a retired older lady. No one knew her story. The people who'd known her as a young person were family and friends she no longer saw except for a few. The people she'd worked with here had moved on. Now she was alone. And almost no one knew her for who she really was. Sad. The price of Dandelionhood; the alternative is staying home when adventure calls...
One of the nice things about our reunions is that no matter where we've moved to, despite time and distance and new chapters of our lives, when we reunite, it's with people who knew us way back when. The conversation picks up where it left off; no introductions are required, no explanations required for who is talking. Robinson is still Robinson, working on some project with his hands; McNelis, with whom I've debated since we were age seven, still has theories of how the world really works, apart from the usual nonsense spouted by so-called experts who fail, as usual, to give due weight to pertinent facts that would change everything, if appreciated. Good for him; I don't often believe experts either.
Sully is about to embark on a new chapter, doing what he likes best, as opposed to keeping his shoulder to the wheel as he's been doing over the last forty years. What does he like? Lifeguarding. Watch out.
Johnny Lenahan? Well, if you need to buy or sell a fine home in Fairfax County, Virginia, John and Diane are the ones to call. I remember him as a pre-schooler on Winthrop Place, Four Corners, before the roads were paved.
Did I say that we go way back together?
We do.
No chance of putting on airs among people you grew up with, is there...?!
Let's see whether I can figure out how to post some of the fotos sent by Judy and Chuck as well as some of my own; some are in email and others in iPhoto, making it a challenge to (a) find them and (b) view them as fotos as opposed to tags, which is the hard part.
Chuck's ger/yurt; yup, he built it himself; it's constructed like an umbrella you can stand in; only Chuck could have imagined it, much less built it.
Oh, and it withstood Katrina...
Inside the forge, Hephaestus himself:
Anvil and tools...
Wanna pound metal? You need a pounder...
Watch your fingers...
He even looks like Vulcan...
How big you want that shield?!
Here's how we do it...you hold the frammis next to the thingamajig and you have it...
Next thing you know, you've got one of these knives.
Are they sharp?
Don't shake yo' haid...
Chez Robinson, Picayune, Mississippi, for the past 35 years:
Hurricane Katrina smote Chuck a mighty blow; he used this tractor to unbury himself and his neighbors during the week they were without power. See those tall yellow pine in background, above? Their taller, thicker big brothers were blown down in the furious wind.
Chuck mentioned that when he began distributing to his neighbors the modest collection we took up, some of them broke down in tears. It wasn't so much the money, he explained, but that for the first time they'd felt remembered; they'd been cut off; government services, local, state and federal, were down; power was down, roads were blocked with fallen trees, stores were closed. They were stuck. One of the churches nearby had opened a soup kitchen. Suddenly I began to rethink separation of church and state.
If government is going to abandon people to their own devices when the storm hits, maybe it would be good to pre-place food, water, blankets, medical and emergency supplies in the only place that seems available to pick up the burden and actually help people. Reminds me of the atom bomb shelters we enjoyed learning about during our yoot.' Remember the air raid drills? The noonday siren? Every day? One day the one on our street went off by accident; the woman next door gathered her kids and hid in the basement for hours. I always figured that we on the Island would fry in a nuclear holocaust, what with the oil tank farm a few miles out the back yard.
Now it's earthquakes in California to worry about. If it isn't something, it's something else.
Lot's of azaleas in bloom around Chuck and Brenda's:
But we were tawkin' about the reunion, weren't we? Okay, back on track:
Bill & Nancy Jensen
Johnny Lenahan:
Foreground: Sully. Background: Jensen trying to sell Chuck a bill of goods...
Ahni Sullivan:
Bobby, Diane, Johnny, Judy, Sully
Ahni, Diane, John, Judy, Jim:
More, courtesy of Judy and Chuck:
I snuck these in, my grand-daughters: Liana, 6
JuJu, 3, and watch out!
Presentation of The Parka by Nancy to Chuck for all the work he did in setting up the reunion over the past year:
Ahni:
Atrium, Beau Rivage, an MGM Grand Hotel:
Bill, Connie:
Connie, Bill, Ms. Brenda:
Billy, Charlie:
What the girls use to keep the boys in line...:
Bobby S., Johnny L.:
Diane L., Chuck:
Nancy J.:
Chuck, showing how it's made, with great difficulty and lotsa banging and hammering, to an appreciative audience:
The day we arrived it was hot; next day we froze:
Hurricane Katrina, 2005, wiped out the Gulf Coast including 26 miles of beach, now replaced with white sand making for a scenic drive along Hwy-90. Many live-oak trees were wrecked by the huge storm. An artist got out his chain saw and began carving birds and fish out of the standing remains; photos courtesy of Robinson:
Dayton Scroggins, Chainsaw Artist
Bayou with local citizens:
Ft. Pike:
Thanks to Chuck and Judy for the photos; there's room for more if you'd care to forward a few select shots...
Need I say that we had a good time?
There's talk of another reunion next year in Florida, when I visit my mom, Molly, 95, in Boynton Beach and sister Eileen, in Boca Raton.
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