Father’s Day Post

Posted on 06/16/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

I am proud to say that my Father served overseas in the US Army in World War II.  My father would dismiss any sense of pride in what he did.  It is just what young American men did in the 40’s – fought a war to end Imperial Japan’s hold on the Pacific and crush Hitler’s Nazi war machine.  What’s the big deal?  That was his attitude.

Father died in 2001 at the VA hospital in Menlo Park after a string of strokes and related health problems.  He wasn’t an old soldier, but rather an old civilian who had served his country.  He didn’t leave behind many objects – physical possessions or war memorabilia. His entire collection of things from his service included:

His dog tags
Alaska Department patch (polar bear with star)
Rank patch – technician 5th grade
Campaign medal for Asia Pacific
Two garrison caps
His discharge paper

The only other thing I have from his military service is his flag.  When a veteran dies, the VA gives a US flag to the family.  I remember the day father died, the doctor called me early in the morning with the bad news and later in the day someone from the VA mortuary called to ask where to send the body and the flag.

We displayed it at father’s memorial service (father was cremated so there was no casket) and afterwards my brother and I folded it.  My wife bought me a display case for it and now the flag sits atop my memorabilia cabinet next to my desk.  As I write this, his flag and memory sits over my right shoulder.

Perhaps that is as it should be.  There is rarely a day that goes by that I don’t remember one of his jokes, or one of his stories, or bits of wisdom.
I could go on for days listing all the things I remember.  Here are a few of his often spoken quotes:

When told, “Good to see you.” He’d always reply, “It’s good to be seen.”
“I didn’t quite smoking, I became a non-smoker.”
“You are who you say you are.  Be careful what you call yourself.”
“Can we say that in a positive way?”
“There’s the right way, the wrong way and the Army way.”
“If I had to live my life over, I would.”

Father also told, and retold, a number of his Army stories.  One that came to my mind this last week was his story of “Dock Duty.”  Here is my retelling of that story (I’ll do the short version – dad’s version could take 20 minutes or more depending on the level of embellishment):

A couple of times a month the supply would come into port and all enlisted men were called for dock duty to unload the ship.  Father didn’t really like this heavy lifting detail and like any good enlisted man did his best to figure a way out.  Normally the arrival of the ships wasn’t announced – mostly to give the men as little time as possible to think up an excuse to get out of it.

Being in the coast artillery and working the radar set, father often found out about supply ship arrivals well before anyone else (some times even before his CO knew).  Well one, cold snowy day, father had learned the ship was coming in and came up with a plan.

He went down to the radar shack just before he thought the lieutenant would be around to collect all the enlisted men for dock duty.  When the lieutenant came into the shack father was ready – he had his maintenance manual out, a set of tools and the log book.

The lieutenant came in and called out, “Fall out for dock duty.”

No doubt he put on his innocent face and replied, “That’s today sir? I’ve got a problem, the set needs it’s weekly maintenance and it should really be done today.”

“Dock duty is important too, Reynolds, now move it,” replied the lieutenant.

“Yes, sir,” says my father, “Could you just sign my log book saying you sent me to dock duty instead of working on the set?”

“You son-of-a-bitch, you’d do that too.”

“Just following procedure sir, you see I’ve already started and if I don’t do it, it should be noted in the log.”

The lieutenant didn’t press the point, didn’t sign the log and father dusted the vacuum tubes, made a few voltage checks and put on a pot of coffee.

Father claims he did this twice.  Then one morning father was in the barracks when the lieutenant burst in and called out, “Dock duty, everyone fall out.  and you Reynolds, I suppose the set needs maintenance work today?”

“Yes sir, I was just about to get started,” replied father.

“Well, get going, Reynolds,” growled the lieutenant.

Father hadn’t been on the radar set the night before so didn’t know that a ship was coming in.  He just figured the lieutenant was just tired of the game.  Father said that he never did dock detail after that day.

But father did his share of KP – I suspect because it was the best way to steal extra food from the officer’s mess, but that is a story for another day.

Till next week,
Andrew

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More Meanings

Posted on 06/09/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

This week I still have the meaning of things on my brain.  Partly because I am still reading Graham’s book on intertextuality, so naturally I got thinking about the word, ‘meaning’ and wondered what it means.

Seriously, what is meaning?  What does it mean to be ‘meaningful’?  Or, the question I use to torment my elders with, “What is the meaning of life?”

In my teens and twenties I was seriously concerned that there was some grand purpose to the universe: that I hadn’t been clued into what it was and was missing out on something good. After many years of asking almost everyone I could thinking of the most direct answer I got was from my father when he replied, “Yes, it must mean something.”

Then he’d break into singing, “What’s it all about Alfie.”  Father was not a singer and in time I learned not to ask father certain questions.

In my thirties I settled on this nobel statement, when asked the question – “I believe it is about finding out what God’s will is for me and doing that.”  I was all about the notion of “discernment.”  Turns out I am not very good at it and still haven’t figured out what the man/woman/being/thingy upstairs wants me to do.  There are times I feel like I’ll get to the gates of heaven and just flat fail St. Peter’s little quiz – you know the one that lets you in the gate to the promised land.

In my forties I just tried not to have such lofty thoughts and got on about the business of living.

Today I am feeling old – mostly because yesterday, Heather and I spent much of the day building a deck.  The deck is turning out great, but today my body feels shattered – walking hurts, typing hurts, thinking hurts, hurting hurts…

Now that I am feeling old, the whole, “what’s all about?” question popped up in my brain so I thought I’d take stab at it again.  This time I thought I’d use some different methods to analyze the question.

So the first tool I thought I’d apply to the problem is one that many young people use today for such questions, yes, google.  Top of the list of answers is in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life  If you can’t believe Wikipedai, what can you believe.

Then I thought I might apply some good old literary criticism to the problem and see if I could derive some meaning by looking at what is the question really asking.

I’ll admit that as a young’n I asked without really understanding the question.

Let’s start by looking at these three words: ‘the’, ‘meaning’ and ‘life’.  We need to look not only at the significance of the word but also at it’s opposite.  We often need to explore both sides of a thing to understand it.  For example, day is meaningless without night and to be wet is ‘not dry.’

Take the word ‘life.’  It could be defined as, “not dead.” Therefore the meaning we are seeking to know about only applies to a specific period of time – that time between being  birth and death.  The word is a limiter to the question and rules out all other times.  Therefore the question doesn’t apply to any ‘after life.’

The word, ‘the’ is an interesting word in that it implies that there is one and only one meaning of life.  The opposite of ‘the’ is many so we’re not talking about many possible meanings but rather the one meaning.  We could also use the word ‘a’ here and change the question from, a single meaning to one of a number of meanings.

And this one should drive you nuts to think about it too much, “What does the word meaning mean?”  If you want a dictionary version try this:

what is meant by a word, text, concept, or action
implied or explicit significance
important or worthwhile quality; purpose

The implication is that to be meaning full, life should have an importance, a worthwhile quaintly or significance.

If we put the whole thing together and rewrite the question in a more specific form, we might come up with: “What is the one worthwhile quality of not being dead?” or possibly “What is the specific explicit significance of the time between birth and death?”

However, given the variations of possible questions that could be generated, is it possible for there to be one meaning? Or is it more likely that our life has meanings at different levels at different times?

Or, is it just possible that the question is unanswerable and the only value in it is the exploration?

A further complication that I’ve proven in my life is that as we have new experiences and learn new things the whole structure of our understanding shifts and the question itself changes, so I end up back with my father’s statement, “Yes, life must mean something.”

I am just hoping that at the Pearly Gates, I get away with the answer, “Sorry, couldn’t figure that one out.”

Till next week,
Andrew

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What Does it All Mean?

Posted on 06/02/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

Last week I started reading a new book and this line caught my eye, “The dictionary is where language goes to die.”  The book is Intertextuality (The New Critical Idiom) by Allen Graham.  I bought it for a little light reading to relax before bed.

I found the quote interesting because earlier in the day I had gone to my dictionary to look up the meaning of a word.  Don’t remember the word, but trying to find the meaning of a word got me thinking about how we know what things mean – how do we find meaning and ultimately, the Truth (note the capital T – the real truth, the truth that sets the world free)?

Normally I just try to watch old WWII movies to keep myself from thinking about such things,  but our copy of “Saving Private Ryan” got a large scratch on it and I couldn’t watch it so my mind started to wander.  Then I went and started looking up things.  Using google, I searched Wikipeda for stuff, then found a word I didn’t know and went to the dictionary on my computer to get a quick definition.

Then it hit me that we define words with other words and the meaning of a word like say, “tree” is dependent on my ability to describe what a tree is with words you know the meaning of.  That in turn got me to thinking about the lessons in language that I learned while getting my BA in English and the reason way I was drawn to the noble study of literary criticism.

Literary criticism is an often misunderstood academic study and discipline.  It isn’t about witty remarks on how horrible the last novel I read was – rather it is about how we derive mean from a literary work.  In this case the criticism part really refers more to “critical thinking” than “criticizing that horrible movie.”

There are a number of ways to do that which are referred to as “literary theories,”  that is to say ways of viewing a text.  One of my favorite theories is the notion of intertextuality.  So once I let my mind start drifting towards literary theories I remembered that I didn’t have a book to read and went to look at my “to-read” list on Good Reads.

What joy to find that top of my list was Graham’s book on Intertextuality.  The Kindle version of the book was about the same price as a 12 pack of beer so I figured I could afford to buy it.

Well, if I’d bought the beer, this post would have been a lot shorter.

I could go into great lengths to explain the theory to you, but the three of you who read this far would now be clicking to a different website.  So here’s the short version: How do you know what I am talking about in this blog post?  How can you understand its meaning?  Simple, you’ve read other texts that use the same words – language – and assume that I am using the word or phrase in a similar way and then in your brain you construct a mental picture of what you think I am saying.  Then a meaning is formed for you.  Each reader of my blog approaches it from a different set of experiences and therefore each reader is likely to understand my words differently.

Cool, huh?

Makes more sense after the second beer.

But here is my problem as a writer – I don’t want you forming your own meanings to my words.  I want you to see what I am trying to say.

Let’s take a simple example.  Let’s say I use the word, ‘tree.’  What picture does that bring to your mind.  Think about it for a minute.  I’ll wait……

Okay, now let’s finish the game.  I was thinking of a tall redwood tree – specifically a sequoia semperviren (or coastal redwood) that inhabit the California hills near where I live.

Chances are the tree you thought of and the tree I thought of were very different.  Once I tried this exercise with a group of software engineers and when I went around the room, each engineer described a tree from where the grew up.  However, one engineer had a puzzled look and said, “I thought you were talking about a file directory tree.”

I am consistently amazed that we humans have any level of mutual understanding.  It’s no surprise that people misunderstand each other.  After all the only way I have to understand you is to relate the language of you to language that is me – a language stored in the dictionary of my experiences and knowledge.

The only way for you to get the same exact meaning out of this blog post that I intended, is for you to have had all the same experiences as me – that is to be me.  But you aren’t me so you’ll discover a different meaning (or none at all).

Makes one want to give up writing altogether – what with readers having their own minds and all.

But despite the challenge we writers persist – either looking for common ground or throwing words to the wind, hoping that someone will find something worthy in our words – whatever it might mean.

Or we could just get a beer and watch a movie.

Till next week,
Andrew

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The Memorial Day Post

Posted on 05/26/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

My father served in WWII as a radar technician in the Army Coast Artillery Corps.  He didn’t see combat and did nothing heroic.  He spent three years siting on a rock in the Aleutian Islands polishing his radar set and watching for an attack that never came.

Unlike the combat veterans of that war, my father talked freely about his experiences in the Army and during the war.  It’s an interesting difference I’ve noted among veterans – those who suffer in battle are the least likely to talk about their experiences.  Just too painful I image.

For my father the war past him by.  He was drafted, trained and went where the Army told him.  He didn’t like being in the Army and likely wouldn’t have volunteered, but when the draft notice came he did his duty.  He put on the uniform and tried to be a soldier.

He wasn’t much of a soldier.  Physically uncoordinated, not physically fit and no idea which end of a rifle to point at the enemy.  Father often told the story of how on the obstacle course while he was trying to climb the wall an exasperated sergeant just yelled, “go around Reynolds, just go around you’re holding up the platoon.”

It’s very likely that had they turned my father into an infantryman, father would have done more damage to our side.  Seeing my father in later years, I could just see him walking along, falling into a foxhole and injuring his squad.

We’ve all heard stories about the dumb things that military organizations do, but in my father’s case the Army did the right thing – they took away his rifle and sent him to radar school. Likely the best – father was smart, mentally tough, detail oriented and learned fast.  Everything they needed in a good radar man.

When I was a teenager listening to my father’s war stories, I often wondered how good a radar technician he was.  After the war father didn’t carry on in electronics, becoming an accountant instead (a damn good one).  He couldn’t really fix anything – not even changing a tire, so I often wondered about some of the stories he told.

Then I turned 18 and decided on a career in electronics for myself.  I signed up for an electronics school and proudly brought home my text books.  Showing them to my father, I was astonished to have him start lecturing me about the applications of Ohm’s law and correcting my inductance calculations.  His theories on troubleshooting electronics helped me move ahead in my career.

But that was my father – more theory than practice.

What I’ve come to realize is that he only really knew how to repair two radar sets – the ones the army taught him.  The two he was ordered to operate.  The two that were used at his base.  Other than the general theory, he wasn’t really interested in radar.  He was willing to do his duty and take part in the war.  He was told to learn how to fix the radar and so he did.  Knowing my father, I suspect that if they had told him to learn how to repair tanks, he would have done it.

Father often told this story about the first time he was on duty as an operator – he was both the repair man and operator. During the day the radar wasn’t used and radar was used mostly at night, or in foggy conditions – anytime that the men at the base end stations couldn’t get a good view of the ocean.  One foggy night, father was watching the set and noticed an echo.  He swung into action.

Quickly he calculated the position, speed and size of the target.  Then he called the battery commander with the sighting report.  It was a worrying target, about the size of a submarine conning tower and in a likely place in the harbor for a sub to sit itself.

The battery commander was a bit confused by the sighting – odd place for an enemy vessel and in the dark and fog, what could a Japanese sub hope to accomplish?  Plus the fact that the officer hadn’t received much training on radar and knew little of its capabilities.

So they watched.  The whole thing took on a very odd, surrealist quality.  The target dropped out of sight once or twice. Then it got bigger and slowly moved about 100 yards to the right.

At dawn, after calling in position reports every fifteen minutes, father was ordered to shut down the radar set and report to the base end station (an observation point for battery).  There, a slight harassed officer pointed out to the harbor and said, “specialist, you’ve been tracking that rock all night.”

Yup, there was a big rock in the harbor that was only visible during low tide.  Father had just come on duty as the tide turned.  Over the next few days the radar men were ordered to plot the position of every rock and obstacle the radar could see and where given the tide tables with orders to record high and low tides in their logs.

Father’s version was much funnier and went on for much longer.

But on this memorial day, he is on my mind and I remember.

Father died in 2001 at the VA hospital in Menlo Park, California.

On this memorial day, join me in remembering all those who served – however they served, from just doing as ordered to those who were called to do more.

Till next week,
Andrew

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