Hurricane Rain

Over the past two weeks, South Carolina has been visited by two early season tropical storms that formed off our coast. These storms did little damage both made landfall in Florida near my hometown of Jacksonville, FL but the one last week then turned northeast crossing Georgia and South Carolina before re-entering the Atlantic. During my time working at the Department of Natural Resources in the early 90s, I learned that is the path most storms take when they strike the coast of my adopted state. Storms approaching the east coast of the Carolinas typically turn northeast at the last minute and strike near Wilmington, North Carolina or somewhere on the Outer Banks. Hurricane Hugo in 1989 was the most notable exception to that rule.

Left: Hurricane Rain on my Windshield Last Tuesday, I saw something that struck a memory and had not seen in a long while. Tropical Storm Beryl was crossing the Savannah River into SC from Northeast Georgia and Columbia was feeling the influence in the form of rain bands. For lunch that day, I met some friends some driving distance from my office. As we were walking out to our cars, a fine mist-like drizzle began. Pretty soon the drops came down much faster, driven by a Northeast wind. Faster and faster they came until the air was filled with tiny raindrops. The windshield of the car was covered and the volume of the rain was so great that the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. Normal raindrops seem to get bigger as the volume of the rain increases but not this kind of rain. It was almost as if there was no space for the air between the drops, but the drops remained as fine as a mist.

Left: Hurricane Donna's Path (Courtesy NOAA) That made me flash back to my childhood in Jacksonville. I think the year was 1960, and the storm was Hurricane Donna. Donna formed off the coast of Africa, tracked across the Atlantic then came into South Florida near Miami and traveled up the west coast of the state before crossing over and exiting back into the Atlantic near Jacksonville. I remember lots of wind, power outages and excitement as we all prepared for the storm. I remember the adults in the family conferring about the storm and discussing what was happening. What I remember mostly was the rain, the same kind of rain that I saw last Tuesday. One of my uncles stood on the back porch of my house and proclaimed that this was a “Hurricane Rain.” Mom responded from the kitchen that it was a “Northeaster Rain.” My uncle nodded his head and said “Yup, that too!” It has been said that the Inuit People have many words for snow. Recently that has been debunked as an urban myth. What they do have is a number of suffixes to their root word for snow. So I am not surprised that Floridians who see more than their share of hurricanes have many descriptions for the rain that we see around hurricanes.

Left: Departing Houston during TS Erin It seems to me that Tropical Storms produce more rain in a given locations than hurricanes do. I remember being caught in a traffic jam on San Filipe Street in Houston in 2007 when tropical storm Erin came ashore near Corpus Christi. That put Houston in the Northeast quadrant of the storm, typically the worst place to be. The rain was the same as last Tuesday, only there was much more of it. I was trying to get to the airport to fly home to Columbia when suddenly I realized the water was overflowing the curbs of the street and rising rapidly. Like some other drivers, I drove onto the lawn of the bank building that was next to us and found an escape route to higher ground that got me to the elevated interstate and then to the airport in time to catch my plane. But it was a close thing, just as my front wheels crossed the curb, my back wheels lost traction. It was a lucky thing for me that I was driving a front wheel drive or I could have wound up floating down the street like some of the others.

So as I drove back to the office, sometimes as slow as 40 miles per hour on the interstate in the blinding Hurricane Rain, I thought, here it is, after all this time not much has changed. Oh MY!

Memorial Day

It was inevitable that coming from a family where every generation sent their young men off to serve their country, that Memorial Day was a special holiday around my house while I was growing up. Each Memorial Day my family would gather around a grill somewhere and celebrate the unofficial beginning of summer. However, we always took the time to honor those among us who went out into harm’s way in defense of our country. We remembered those that no longer walked amongst us whether they died on the battlefield or came home from their war to live long productive lives. We also celebrated those who were still with us.

A small gathering would usually form on the side of the picnic area where the veterans would talk quietly of heroic actions in lands far from home. Rarely, did they talk about their own part in history; rather they preferred sharing stories about their comrades in arms who did not come home from the war. I began to form a picture of what these guys were like. They were ordinary Joes who stepped up to the plate when it was time to. They were not fearless, but like any sane normal person, had a strong sense of self preservation, but the focus of that self preservation was not only on themselves but also on those in their company, platoon, flight or “general quarters” station. They had each other’s back and trusted each other every day with their lives.

My uncles served in both Europe and South Pacific during the Second World War. Some were soldiers following the first line of troops into France or Patton across North Africa and Italy. Some were sailors who fought on the crowded, dangerous flight decks of the aircraft carriers, or drove tractors clearing the tropical jungle off islands while trading pot shots with enemy snipers. It wasn’t glamorous, or glorious, it was hot sweaty, dangerous work, where any given second could have been their last. They came back from their experiences no longer boys bucking for excitement, but changed men who experience prepared them for the no nonsense task of building this great country during its biggest growth spurt in history. Truly, these men and the women that went to war with them or stayed at home to keep the fires burning in the factories and on the farms to supply the guys on the front line deserve the title that Tom Brokaw gave them; “The Greatest Generation.”

Left: Back in my Navy Days in Cherbourg France, June 1964, 20th anniversary of D-Day Vietnam was my war and my time to serve. I was fortunate in that I never had to face the enemy across a rice paddy. I was in the Navy and served all my active duty in the Second and Sixth Fleets facing down the Russian Navy during the cold war. Although I had my moments of excitement, I never was tested like the generation before me, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t lose shipmates and friends to the battlefield. I will always remember those whose names are in the wall just north of the Reflection Pond on the National Mall in Washington. It is a tough thing for me to visit the wall, or the smaller, traveling version of it, but I make myself do it whenever I can in honor of my friends.

Let me tell you about the heroes I knew, they were happy young men, but serious about their commitment to the service they were in and the protection of their country. They would not want us to sit around and cry over them nor would they want for us to make EVERY National holiday all about them. They would want us to live our lives in freedom, honor them on THEIR DAY and pass on the passion they had for their country to the next generation. I remember that sad time time during the Vietnam War when patriotism almost became a dirty word. Soldiers didn't come home to parades and their country’s gratitude. They came home to hatred, being spit at and being called names like “baby killer” and “murderer.” I remember our commander advising us not to wear our uniforms off base to avoid trouble. As today’s headlines still describe, we can't ignore that war time atrocities are committed by a handful in every war, but we have learned the lesson of not painting the entire force by their actions. Most serve honorably and fight for our freedom. Even the freedom to criticize. It truly warms my heart to see that at last, the veterans of the Vietnam War and the Korean War are being recognized for their service. As long as they are with us, it is not too late to say thank you. Just don’t be surprised if they have no way of saying “You’re Welcome”. Do it anyway, because, I can tell you that despite their silence, your thanks are appreciated.

So, as we celebrate Memorial Day, amongst all the cookouts and barbeques, as we unofficially welcome summer, let’s take a minute or so to remember our fallen service men and women on their day. That is all they ask. Oh MY!

Catching up

Gentle readers, I apologize for not posting my usual weekly blog last week. That weekend was pretty busy; last Saturday was our Goddaughter’s wedding day and we were tied up in all the festivities on Friday and Saturday and spent all day Sunday catching up all the tasks that we do around the house normally on Saturday. Not the least of which was to rest up from all the activity. I was honored to be the DJ at the reception and that meant setting up and tearing down all the equipment a DJ uses at a reception. We had a great time and it was fun to watch all the folks out there on the dance floor and occasionally out there myself. By the end of the day, my tuxedo needed a thorough cleaning.

Meet Megan Sluder, the Bride. I was pleased that the bride and groom’s playlist included a healthy chunk of music from the 50s and 60s as well as some of the more modern hits. I even got to see them dance to “The Wobble”, now that was really something. I say “them dance” but it was really the young women and girls that dance while the boys and young men stand around and watch. That is pretty much the biggest change from “our day” when boys and girls got out there and danced the night away. It really amuses me that these days the girls get on the dance floor and wiggle while the boys stand around with drinks in their hands and ogle.

Speaking of the music of the 50s and 60s, my Monday morning radio show on WUSC-FM here in Columbia has undergone some changes. I have been doing a blues and soul show every week for some time now. Recently the last station playing “Oldies” moved to a 70s and 80s format leaving the market quiet for the songs of our times. Station management asked me if I would consider changing format to fill in the void. As much as I love the music of that era, I did not want to stop the work I have been doing with classic soul and blues singers to keep their music alive so we compromised with a new show, “50s, 60’s and Soul”.

This is Katherine, the DJ on the show before mine. This has given me a chance to dig even deeper into the music of our day and I am lovin’ it. I am playing everything from Perry Como, Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds to the British Invasion! In my opinion, our music was much more diverse than the pop music of today. Remember Bo Diddley and Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and The Coasters? They are all fair game for my new show format and I am really having a good time bringing it all back again. I am doing the show, “old school” style, with fast paced short duration patter, lots of production elements and maintaining the feel good mood that we had on the radio back in the 60s. The other DJs in the station have not heard anything like it and many are intrigued by the diversion from the block announcing style that has been de rigueur on the radio for the past 20 years. I love having them hang out with me in the control room where we can chat about all the changes in radio that have occurred over the years. Some of them want to learn how to do “old school” and I am more than glad to teach them.

A control room full of people is a happy control room. The look and feel of radio control rooms has changed significantly over the years, but the camaraderie of the “pilots of the airwaves” has not changed. It is so good to know that there are young people with a fire in the belly for the same thing that made me glad to come to work every day back in the day. So if you tune me in on Mondays from 9 AM until Noon Eastern time, don’t be surprised if you hear another voice on the air with me, digging the old style. For those of you in Columbia, the station is at 90.5 on the FM dial and WUSC.SC.EDU on the web for those of you who are not.

So as I write this, my mind is already thinking of all those songs we danced to at the parties and the proms back in the day. I remember the RCA Victrola on the garage floor surrounded by my classmates shuffling 45 rpm records around while the rest of us danced to “Why Must Teenagers Fall in Love” or “Blue Suede Shoes” or “Venus in Blue Jeans” or “Lipstick on Your Collar”. Wow, that could be the start of tomorrow’s show! Oh MY!

Time Aloft

I suppose it was inevitable. I grew up in a Navy town with a major naval base complete with its own airfield, two more large naval air stations and numerous small “outlying fields” dotting the landscape all around the city. Two of the naval air stations were on my side of town, Cecil Field, the largest master fighter jet base on the east coast at the time and Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, locally called Mainside Naval Air Station which was at the time the home of the famous VP-7 patrol squadron that protected the Fleet and the US seaboard from submarine attack.

Left Lockheed P2-V Neptune The skies above my home and school were filled with Lockheed P2V Neptune aircraft departing and arriving from Mainside. We lived under the pattern near the point where these unique aircraft made their turns from downwind to base in the prevailing easterly sea breezes that covered the area. I loved to look up into the sky as one lumbered overhead, messing up television reception for miles around. I marveled that with the bulbous nose, the wingtip tanks, and the long pointed tail the plane could even fly, but it cut a swashbuckling arc through the sky on its way to missions in the clear tropical air that spanned between towering cumulus clouds that were about to bring relief in the mid summer afternoons.

Left Lockheed P-3 Orion Around the time I left Jacksonville to start college and my own naval career, the P2-V was replaced by the Lockheed P-3 Orion which was a much bigger aircraft and sported four, not two engines. Although, the P-3 was a monstrous presence in the sky, somehow it lacked the panache and style of the P-2. The pilots that flew both liked the stability and relative comfort of the larger aircraft, but I can tell they missed the excitement of flying the smaller aircraft.

A couple of years later, during my second class “cruise” as a Midshipman in the Naval Reserve, I had the chance to take control of an honest to goodness naval patrol aircraft. It was a S2-F which unlike the land based patrol craft, had the capability of carrier borne operations. I was in Corpus Christi, Texas for three weeks of Naval Aviation Indoctrination and by time I left for Little Creek Virginia to learn how to invade beaches in landing craft, I had the chance, under the watchful eyes of instructors, to not only fly the S2-F but also get hours of flight time in the Beechcraft T-34 and the Grumman F9-F Cougar jet fighter. I was bitten by the bug and I had a developed a second dream of becoming a naval aviator, my first, being a DJ on a top 40 radio station. Fate had me realizing my first dream but not my second.

Left Grumman F9-F Cougar But aviation was not done with me quite yet. In early 1969, I began taking flying lessons in slick, modern Piper Cherokees at the Columbia Airport. I could do that because I was working the evening show at WCOS at the time. Life was good, flying the skies in the day and entertaining the kids at night on the radip. In just a couple of months, I had spent my required 40 hours of student time, performed my solo local and cross country flights to the nearby Greenwood, Charlotte and Savannah airports. Sure enough, on final approach to Savannah, I looked up and saw one of those P-3s out of Jacksonville fly past.

Left Piper Cherokee A few years later, I flew a friend to Daytona Beach in a borrowed Beechcraft Bonanza. My father and brother met me there and I flew them back to Jacksonville’s Herlong field. As I approached the St. John ’s River from the south, Jacksonville approach, handed me off to Mainside RAPCON. They cleared me around the eastern edge of the pattern, and then had me join the Orions in their procession north of the sparkling white asphalt runway. I realized that now I was part of the symphony in the sky of my youth, passing over my boyhood home, joining the stream of naval airmen passing overhead on my way. The circle was complete! Oh MY!

Crossing Bridges

There is no way to grow up in a coastal city without developing a keen interest in bridges. The three bridges in Jacksonville that captured my imagination were the old “Main Street” or officially, the John T. Alsop Jr. Bridge which opened in July 1941, the second bridge built across the St. Johns River, the Fuller Warren Bridge which was built in 1954 as part of the “Jacksonville Expressway” and my favorite of all, the Acosta Bridge which was named for City Councilman St. Elmo W. Acosta who championed its construction back in 1921, it was the first to be built across the river. All three of these bridges connected points on the west side of the river to Southside.

The Old Acosta Bridge. My Beautiful Monster!

Two of the three bridges have been replaced by modern structures that, while sleek and flowing, they don’t pique my imagination as much as the old style construction with girders and beams glistening in the sunlight as the bridge soars across the sparkling waters of the St. Johns. As a child I would look up into the superstructure of the bridge and wonder exactly why they were designed this way. All those pieces, angles and spans put together as if by a mad scientist playing with Tinker Toys. I was full of questions such as “Why so many triangles?” and “Do men really climb up there to paint?”

The Alsop Bridge, the only one left with the old construction style.

As a child, we crossed over into Southside on the Acosta Bridge at least once a week to see my maternal Grandmother. She lived on Atlantic Boulevard between the railroad tracks and San Marco. Each Friday morning my father would take us to Grandmothers and then pick us up in the afternoon and take us home. We would cross the river an hour or so before sundown when the sun shone on the gossamer webbing of the bridge’s superstructure and made it come alive way up in the sky.

The new Fuller Warren Bridge, in the background, the new Alsop Bridge.

Even my sleeping hours were filled with images of the bridge. In my dreams I would find myself having to walk home from Southside and crossing the bridge on one of the two footpaths that line the bridge between the four lanes of traffic and the guard rails. I would see myself looking down at the rail crossing that hugged the river’s surface on the southwest side of the bridge. Sometimes these dreams became the mild nightmares that a child occasionally has. For, you see, the Alsop Bridge like most of the others crossing the St. Johns at the time was a drawbridge. The center section would rise up horizontally between the two sets of towers that were the foundation of the span. In my dreams, the drawbridge would rise while I was on it. There I would be, stranded, unable to get home or back into Southside, and then I would wake up, safe and sound in my own bed.

I often wondered if those dreams would ever leave me. One fateful day they did. During High School Pat Thayer, Chuck Datres and I decided that we would walk home after a rare Saturday morning band practice. As we walked down San Marco Boulevard towards the river, my heart began beating faster and faster as I approached this metal behemoth that I was bound to conquer that day. Pat, Chuck and I continued our schoolboy banter and neither of them knew of the terrible and wonderful fascination that the bridge held for me.

The next thing I knew, my feet were tracking across the bridge towards that drawbridge section that was differentiated from the rest of the walkway in that it was made of steel instead of concrete. Without the slightest hesitation, I crossed the demark point onto the draw section then a few moments later, without incident, back onto the non moving section. I had done it; I had beaten the beautiful, awful monster that tormented my childhood dreams. I never had that nightmare again. Now I could enjoy the beauty of the bridge, without fearing the beast. Oh MY!

Learning to Swim

It was just about this time of year, back in the day, that my parents decided that my brother and I needed to learn how to swim. And with good reason too; Jacksonville is a coastal town and there was water everywhere. There was a river or a creek within a mile of our house in three of the four points of the compass. Most of our family outings were to water destinations. So, it was time to pack up the swim suites and slip up to Lakawanna Pool at Lenox and Day Streets where the Red Cross was holding a 6 weeks beginning swimmer course.

We both passed the beginning and intermediate swimming courses and that put our parents’ minds at ease. For the rest of the time that I lived in Jacksonville, I spent at least one day a week from spring until fall in one of the many nearby bodies of water. Northern Florida is dotted with many lakes, rivers ponds and swimming pools, not to mention the 500 pound gorilla of swimming locations, the Atlantic Ocean. Mom and Dad never worried because all the kids in my family became strong and experienced swimmers.

Even my very first "date" date was taking Carolyn Head, now Carolyn Helquist, to Gold Head Branch State Park to go swimming in Lake Johnson. Water was integral to my teenage social life. All through high school there were pool and beach parties. I can still smell the hot dogs and hamburgers cooking, depending on where we were, the food smells mixing with that of chlorine from the swimming pool, the salt air from the beach or the woodsy smell at one of the fresh water lakes we frequented.

For me, swimming took on a new dimension at a family outing to Lake Brooklyn in Keystone Heights. At the public beach there, I ran into a guy with an aqualung, an early version of SCUBA gear. He let me try diving with his gear and I fell in love with being underwater. It was complete freedom; soaring over the sandy bottom of the lake, flipping over and tumbling in circles amongst the sunlight and swirls of shimmering bubbles glistening in the water filtered sunlight. I knew then and there that I had to get my own gear.

Ichetucknee Springs is it was in the early days. Untouched and pristine.

In the flash of an eye, I was diving in the lakes all over northern Florida. We didn’t dive in the ocean too much because the visibility was not nearly as good as it was in the spring fed lakes. A couple of places that stand out in my mind are Jennings Springs and The Blue Hole (Ichetucknee Springs). Both of these locations held access to crystal clear water leading down to the Florida Aquifer.

Blue Hole courtesy of National Geographic

There is some spectacular cave diving there and my buddies and I explored many of the shallower caves in the area. Of course, we were safety conscious, being sure to watch the time and bring along safety lines to find our way back to the entrance of the caves and the surface. Back in those days, the area was completely unexploited and if the rumors I heard where true, there was a time when diving was prohibited in the caves for a time before the area became commercialized and dive shops were established. They offer a much safer approach to cave diving than we had in the wild and wooly days where we were all immortal.

All of this grew out of those first hesitant strokes across Lakawanna pool in west Jacksonville. The old pool is no longer there but the visions of the cool water glistening under the live oak trees laden with Spanish moss will live on in my memory forever. Oh MY!

Riding the City Bus

When I was growing up in Jacksonville, Florida, the city had a vibrant and bustling public bus system and riding the buses was integrated into the fabric of my youth. Like most middle class families, we had only one car and Dad drove that to work most days. While I was in school, my mother was a stay at home Mom, managing a busy household of me and my three siblings.

That left the issue of how to get to school to either walking, riding my bike or public transportation. The first eight years at St Matthews Parochial school were not a problem since we lived only about a mile from school. But my high school was in Southside way over on the other side of town, presenting a different challenge. The school chartered buses from the city and provided a “Special” bus service from a nearby parish about 3 miles away. We had brand new GM buses in the city just like the one shown here, only ours were mostly white. So my day began with catching the Route 22 Lake Shore bus over to St. Paul’s, where I would transfer to the special bus over to Bishop Kenny. In the afternoon, the routine was reversed; riding the Special back to St. Paul’s then the city bus back to Lake Shore.

I found that I looked forward to my daily bus ride. Starting on the route bus, usually there would be one or two other students from my school and we found out that we had just enough time to catch up with each other before getting to the transfer point. On the rare days when I was alone on the route bus, I would spend the time honing what would become a lifetime passion for me; people watching. Usually there would be a business man or two making their way downtown to the office. A young mother would board with all her kids in tow, going who knows where. It was interesting to listen to the conversation of the grownups; finding out what was going on in the city and everybody’s lives.

On the Special, it was a different story, we had a pair of buses to ourselves and it was a rolling party all the way across town. I mean that in a positive sense, that this was a big social time for us. For, you see, the boys and the girls were in different classes and in the final years, in different buildings. The administration and teachers thought that separating the boys and the girls would enhance the learning experience. I have always felt that was at best a neutral outcome. I firmly believe girls mixed in with boys in a classroom environment act the same way as control rods in a nuclear reactor; they keep the boys from bouncing off the walls. Overall as a group, my classmates valued the education we were getting and to a point, the brighter kids in the classroom were the more popular ones.

But back to the buses; every now and then, I would miss the Special back to St. Paul’s and would have to ride the Route 17 Atlantic Boulevard route bus to downtown and transfer to the good old Route 22 bus to my home neighborhood. This would take about three times longer than using the Specials but it gave me the opportunity to walk several blocks downtown between the closest Atlantic Boulevard stop and one on the Lake Shore route. Now I was in heaven, in the middle of the hustle and bustle of downtown, on my own, wild and free. Well sort of, for my school had distinctive uniforms and if there was too much wildness and freedom, somehow the word would get back to the principle and there would be a meeting the next morning.

The bus system in my town is in trouble, ridership is down. Every family has more than one car and only the poorest of families still need the system. I find that a bit sad, because when I look back on my bus riding days, I remember all I learned about life and people on the bus. I remember the green tinted daylight streaming through the windows. I remember the smiles on the faces of my schoolmates. And occasionally, if I was very lucky, sitting next to that special girl and quietly holding hands. Even today, the smell of diesel and the sound of a bus engine revving up when the lights turn green take me back to a time of innocence, happiness and the special joy of growing up in a special place. Oh MY!