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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Writer’s Block or Why I Didn’t Write Today

Posted on 05/19/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

If you read writing blogs or how to books on writing, you’ll very quickly come across the basic topic of, “Writer’s block.”  Yes that sinister soul sucking malady that terrorizes all writers and drives many from their keyboards to fill their souls with shame and guilt.

The most often heard cry from the novelist’s desk is, “I don’t know what to write about!”

I have an answer to that cry, sarcastic and flippant, but it is an answer. It goes like this:  Write anyway – you can always rewrite and edit later.  Not every piece of writing needs to win a Pulitzer Prize (bet this blog post won’t).

I have wondered from time to time if journalists suffer from writer’s block.  Think about.  Does the New York Times hold classes for journalists who can’t think of a thing to write?  Let’s say you’re a reporter on the city desk and a ten-car pileup, closes the Holland Tunnel.  You’re sent out on assignment.  Is it an option to come back to the editor and say, “Couldn’t think of a thing to write.  I think I’ve got writer’s block.”?

What do you think the response will be?  A compassionate hug with a free pass to the next writing seminar or a quick kick up the backside with a ticket to the unemployment line?

I will leave the answer to that question as an exercise for the reader.

I bring up the above little illustration because I am about 15 minutes into an essay where I am suffering from writer’s block.  Yup, I don’t have a clue what to write about but I have a self-imposed weekly deadline for my blog and would hate to have to fire myself for missing it.  So I am following my own advice and writing anyway.

Some times free writing – the process of just writing whatever comes into your head – for 15 minutes, is enough to get the brain and creativity working.  I will admit to writing a lot of stuff that you never see on this blog.  I figure if I can write for an hour, there will be enough stuff to edit out for a decent post. And if there isn’t a decent post – well I’ve got tons of pictures in iPhoto that I could post.

Hey, photo captions count as writing.

My reason today for not having an award wining post is:  I’ve been busy and I am very tired today.

Heather and I know we’ve been over doing lately and yesterday, we planned a day out. As Julia Cameron suggests in her book “The Artist’s Way,” to ‘breath in’ – to do something that feeds our soul, rests our mind and inspires our creativity.

I think I inhaled too deeply. We went for a hike at one of our favorite spots, Fall Creek (watch for a Reluctant Hiker post with pictures and some words).  It was a great day out.  We hiked about four miles and I took 81 pictures and 10 video clips on my iPhone.  Today I can barely move without pain – well maybe not that bad, but yesterday did show how badly out of shape I am.

I was also still a bit tired from my day on Thursday.  My brother, Wild Bill, had his treatment procedure for his prostate cancer.  I was up at 5:00 am to get him to the hospital and it was well after 1:00 pm before I staggered home.  Bill’s fine and the procedure went as expected.  His doctors are confident that this treatment will be enough to knock out the cancer.

The emotional and physical energy drain was more than I expected.  Guess I am getting a bit too old to be lifting wheelchairs in and out of cars and chasing doctors and nurses around hospitals.  Since Bill and I have the same cancer the emotions ran deeper since I knew what he was going through.

And I am just plain physically out of shape.  Have I mentioned that yet?

I’ve been doing my daily walks at lunch time and have been trying to eat as healthy as possible (a large pastrami sandwich is healthy if you skip the bag of chips and the soda, right?).  I have felt my fitness level fall lately – gotten worse since our treadmill died.  You’d think that a treadmill would last more than ten years – especially when you consider that I didn’t use it for five of those years.

So here I am, out of shape, with nothing to write about.

Well I’ve got a solution to both.  I am now committing myself to a serious fitness program to both improve cardiovascular and general fitness with the vain hope that I might lose some weight.  Heather and I are going to look into health club options and possibly buying a new fitness machine.

Okay, get the laugher out of your system now, I’ll wait…

Next week I shall write about my new fitness program, my progress, goals and the name of the hospital to send the get well cards too.

Till next time,
Andrew

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My Mother’s Day Post

Posted on 05/11/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

Mountains.  Distant mountains rising above the valley.  Some blue-green touching the sky and some golden-brown thrusting the land up to heaven.  They feed our spirit and renew our faith.

My mother loved the mountains – any mountains, all mountains.  She had this need to see them – to travel to them.  They were her church, her temple.  Her soul was incomplete without them.

Sadly fate forced her to live in the valley, where she could daily look upon the mountain, but rarely travel there.  She made her pilgrimages to the Yosemite high country as often as she could. From her home in Stockton she’d often take a Saturday drive into the golden foothills above Sonora, California.  In summer she’d drive over the pass on highway 108 to Bridgeport.  In winter she’d stop just below Pinecrest.

These trips were ones I only heard about – often from her friends and not her.  It was in a time after her divorce when the need to get a job, drove her to move 100 miles away from where her now-adult-children lived.  She needed the comfort of the forest, the peace of a mountain stream, and the solitude that only can be found in a meadow.

Or so I suspect.

When I was a child, before teenage problems and before father’s alcoholism finally shattered what was left of her marriage and our family life, she would take me and my brothers on long summer vacations to the mountains – the coast range of California, the Sierra Nevada, Marble Mountains, Siskiyous, Tehachapi, the Grand Tetons, the Rockies and once even into the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Mother was a teacher and on those trips she taught her sons to love the mountains too.  She showed us their importance, their majesty – their soul renewing power.

I now find myself in the same trap as Mother – forced to earn my living in the flat lands and only getting to visit the vistas and tall trees on occasion.  Each year Heather and I make our pilgrimage to the sacred Tuolumne Meadows and breath in the life-giving air of that high place.  It was one of my mother’s favorite places and I can’t help but remember her when I am there.

Once a month we drive into the hills and hike for a few hours – barely enough time to taste the air but enough time to remember and renew a little.

Just after my mother retired and just before her health failed I decided that we should go on one more car trip together.  I’d become interested in the Pacific Crest Trail (link to PCA).  The PCT is a hiking trail over 2,000 miles long stretching from the Mexican border and ending in Canada, that generally follows the crests of the mountains that form the boundary along the west coast.  Hundreds of ‘thru hikers’ hike the entire distance in a single year – spending six to eight months on foot.  Thousands more hike sections of it.

I showed Mother the maps I had and suggested that we could drive to many of the places where the trail crossed the road.  We would start in Southern California, just northeast of Los Angles and then up highway 395 following the eastern Sierra until we got to just north of Lake Tahoe.  I only had a week’s vacation so our time was limited.

It was an interesting trip and a reversal of roles.  I drove and mother sat in the passenger seat.  She had recently had knee replacement surgery on both knees and couldn’t walk too far, so we couldn’t do any hiking.  Mother got tired easily so we made it a low energy trip.

Each day fell into a rhythm – we had brought an ice chest with food for breakfasts and lunches and it was my job to haul them out in the morning so mother could fix our breakfast and decide if we needed to stop at a store.  I’d check the maps, the gas tank and the water bottles and then we’d be off to find the next place the PCT crossed the road.  Then we’d find a picnic spot and I’d haul out the ice chest.  Mother made the sandwiches. Then it was down the road again chasing lines on a map.

Around 4 pm, I’d start looking for a motel and a place for dinner.  By 6 pm we were usually checked into a room and off on foot to find a restaurant.

Mother talked the entire trip – every waking moment.  She complained that I wouldn’t let her drive and then would see something that would remind her of a story – then she’d be off down memory lane.  She told me things on that trip that she’d never spoken of before – her problems with father, her disappointments with life, where she found strength, her faith – even a few subjects I didn’t want to know about.

I just listened and eventually the journey ended and we came home.  I returned to work and she returned to her apartment, but neither of us ever forgot that trip.  Neither of us spoke much about it to others – it was our private time together.

I’d like to think that I gave her something on that trip.  I know I received from her.

My last gift to her was after she died from cancer.  Heather and I went to the cemetery to pick her gravesite. Where Mother wanted to be buried  (where her parents and other family are) is getting full and there aren’t many sites left.  They led us to a far corner of the cemetery to a section that had some space left.  At first I wasn’t sure, as it was very far from where my grandparents graves are.

But then we found the number marker just up a little hill and I looked up from the grass into the distance – beyond my grief – I could see the mountains.

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Wild Bill

Posted on 05/05/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

I call him “Wild Bill.”  Most of the family refers to him as, “Billy”  His friends call him Bill.

He calls me when he’s broke.

Yes, my older brother, the guy I’ve mentioned before.  He’s often on my mind, more so these days as we move closer to his prostate cancer treatment.  The last few decades I’ve been his – well hard to describe but it’s some place between guardian, case manager and caretaker.  I don’t do much of the day-to-day care, but I do check in from time to time to make sure his caregivers, doctors and others, know that I am watching.

It hasn’t always been this way.  There was a time, when were young that we’d tie a wagon to Billy’s three-wheeled bike and he’d take me an my friends for rides up and down our quiet suburban street.  There was a time he could walk and drive a car.  There was a time he was my babysitter.  There was a time I caught him smoking a cigarette and he paid me two dollars not to tell (hey – $2 doesn’t buy forever, you should have given me the five).

Bill was born in 1949.  He was the first child and both my parents often told the story of getting Mother to the hospital and how they barely got there in time – my father could spin that story to an uproarious 20 minute tale that would get everyone laughing.  What they didn’t talk about and I didn’t learn until I was in my teens was that Billy was a ‘blue baby.”

The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and he was turning blue from suffocation when born.  The doctors were able to revive him but within 18 months it was clear that something was wrong.  By the age of two years Billy was diagnosed with cerebral palsy (CP) ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_palsy for a basic description ) – basically a form of brain damage.  It affected his right side and he has very little muscle control over his right arm which tends to move seemingly on it’s own – often jumping at loud noises.  His CP is spastic and impairs his ability to control some muscle groups.  He also suffers from speech difficulties and mild dyslexia.

As a young child I never really understood that there was a problem with Bill.  He seemed to do everything a normal kid would do: went to school (in a special bus to a special school), had a bike (a three wheeler with a large basket), was in the Boy Scouts, went to church and in high school a few girl friends (one whom he married).

That was largely due to my father, who insisted that Billy was, “A normal American boy who happened to have cerebral palsy.”  My father was actually very progressive for his time and thought the best way to help Bill, was to ensure that he had as normal a life as possible.  At first Mother wasn’t completely sure that dad’s approach was right, but she quickly saw the wisdom in it and went to great lengths to ensure that Billy had a chance to do all the normal things a boy got to do.

It was Mother’s idea to get Billy a bike to ride – all the boys in the neighborhood had one and it was a normal thing to get your boy a bike.  Because of the CP, Bill has little natural sense of balance and could only stand and walk after years of physical therapy.  Mother did what she did for all of her life, adapted.  The bicycle shop had a red three-wheeled bike with a big basket in the back.  No doubt the intended consumer of this contraption was a senior citizen who’d just lost their driver’s license but to Mother it was the perfect solution.  She brought it home and taught Bill how to ride it.

And ride it he did.  Everywhere.  All the time.  He rode to the store, the play ground, the movies and even did the normal daredevil stuff you’d expect from a 16 year-old.

I remember it well. Billy was out with me and my friends.  We all had roller skates and Bill was giving rides.  He’d line us up on the sidewalk and one kid on skates would hold on to the basket and he’d ‘haul ass’ pulling us down the sidewalk as fast as he could go and he could go fast – fast enough to thrill us 7 year-olds.  At the  corner he’d turn right and we’d let go to jump off the curb into the street.

In the ‘60s mothers would often say, “it’s all fun and games until someone looses an eye.”

No, Bill didn’t lose an eye, but he did miss the turn and lost a tooth.  We’re not sure how it happened – either he turned too late or took the turn too fast but the result was Billy flying over the curb, the bike turning on it’s side and blood running down his face.

I was about four houses away when it happened and one of the older boys with us came running to me and said, “Go get your mother fast, Bill’s hurt bad.”

I skated home as fast as I could and ran into the house yelling, “Mom, Mom, Billy’s hurt, Mom!”  She came at a run and years later she said there was something about the way I looked that caused her to worry.  Whatever she saw in me, she never mentioned the fact that I came into the house with my skates on.

Mother bought Billy home and I was sent to the back patio and told not to come in.  I remember being quite miserable out there on the patio.  I felt personally responsible and felt in physical pain because of it.  I desperately wanted to make it alright and wanted to know how bad he was hurt.

After what seemed like years, I heard Mother on the phone and my other brother Rick came out – sent by mother (likely to make sure I was still there).  Rick told me that Bill was badly scraped up and had lost a tooth.  Mother was calling the dentist.

Mother never said much to me about it, but I still feel that she held me mostly responsible for the accident.  I suspect that, because that night after dinner father came to my room and gave me one of his special fatherly talks on, “How important it was for all of us to make sure Bill had as normal a life a possible, but also make sure we protect him when he exceeds his abilities.”  That’s about as short as I can make that.  As I recall the lecture lasted about three years of kid time and by the end I was wishing he’d just spank me and get it over with.  The lecture ended when I was able to repeat and paraphrase father’s major points and promised not to let the other kids take advantage of Bill’s good nature.

Then father made popcorn and gave us all a Coke to drink.  Likely not the best thing for Billy at the time but dad was more of a theoretical parent rather than a practical one – great ideas with no clue how to put them into practice.

The dentist was able to put Bill’s tooth back in but about 20 years later it needed to be removed.  Today Bill has a bit of a toothless smile and every time he laughs at me I see that missing tooth and …

Well, Wild Bill’s cancer treatment procedure has been set for May 16.

I feel very responsible.

Till next week,
Andrew

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