NOTE from Jill: Much of the information below, was research from my dad, Hal, when putting this section together. I presumed he had taken much of it from Wikipedia, so please note that as you read through this postscript.
I was busy with my young family, night school, and my job at Lockheed and really didn’t understand or have much interest in the background behind the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time since no one from the military, the media, or politicians articulated a logical reason for the US intervention. Only many years later did I start to learn what was behind the rationale that led the US to enter the conflict.
To understand the sequence of events that led up to the United States’ major role in the war you had to understand the history of the region known as French Indochina from at least as far back as 1945. I was born in 1944, so this stuff was well before my time.
What was known as French Indochina was a grouping of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia. These colonies were a hold-over from the colonial era when several European Nations including England, Netherlands, and France held sway over other nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America among others. At the end of WW II, the era of colonialism was coming to an end but there were still a few holdouts. France in French Indochina was one such holdout.
French Indochina included three regions of Vietnam, Tonkin in the north, Annam in the center, and Cochinchina in the south, along with Cambodia and Laos and the leased Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan. These territories were under French rule since the 1890’s.
In Saigon, the anti-Communist State of Vietnam, led by former Emperor Bảo Đại, was granted independence in 1949. On 9 November 1953, the Kingdom of Laos and the Kingdom of Cambodia became independent. Following the Geneva Accord of 1954, the French evacuated Vietnam, and French Indochina came to an end.
Sailing south, de Genouilly then captured the poorly defended city of Saigon on 18 February 1859. On 13 April 1862, the Vietnamese government was forced to cede the three provinces of Biên Hòa, Gia Định and Định Tường to France. De Genouilly was criticized for his actions and was replaced by Admiral Page in November 1859, with instructions to obtain a treaty protecting the Catholic faith in Vietnam, but refrain from territorial gains.
When I graduated from high school in 1962 and began my first full-time job as a tool and die apprenticeship there was no draft for the armed services. It was a strictly volunteer army. US soldiers were present in Vietnam for several years but ostensibly only as advisors. The Green Berets were advising the South Vietnamese army in their fight against the North Vietnamese communists. However, as the war escalated, and the US took a broader role a military conscription was implemented. Although not everyone was eligible for the draft.
There were numerous exemptions. Certain medical conditions or religious affiliations precluded being drafted. Other exceptions were an upper age limit and marital status. If you were twenty-six years or older you would not be eligible or if you were married or married with a child, you would be ineligible. If you were a full or part-time college student or employed in certain professions in critical industries, you would also be exempt from military service. These exemptions were known as deferments from military service.
One of the critical occupations during that period was a tool and diemaker including a tool and diemaker apprentice. A deferment was automatically issued if you were employed in one of these positions. Out of high school, I was automatically issued a deferment through my employer, Heller Machine and Tool. And since I was also a part-time college student that also qualified me for a deferment. Since I had an occupational deferment, I didn’t give much thought to entering the armed services. I wasn’t against it I just didn’t think too much about it.
Tool & Die Apprentice
All of these rules changed rapidly as the war escalated. But, as chance would have it, I was just ahead of the curve and for five years was automatically issued a deferment every year. First, because of my apprenticeship in a critical occupation and when that was eliminated because I was married. When that was eliminated, a deferment was issued because I was then a full-time student. When that was eliminated, I continued to receive a deferment because I was married with a child on the way. When that was eliminated a lottery was established and the landscape changed drastically.
The lottery was established supposedly to improve the fairness of the system. This was a ruse. The lottery ensured an ample supply of cannon fodder because the war had been drastically escalated under Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency and when Richard M. Nixon was elected the United States had a major and growing presence in Vietnam and American casualties were numbering in the thousands each week. The rules had been constantly amended as the troop deployments escalated and number of casualties and deaths increased. Eventually, no one was exempt except those with serious medical issues, conscientious objectors, and those over twenty-six years old.
The lottery system was based on a person’s birthdate. The dates were selected on a random basis and you were either in a high, medium, or low probability to be drafted. My birthday, June 19, fell in the of high probability category. I was 25 ½ years old, less than six months from the upper age limit of twenty-six, married, Joann was pregnant with Jill, and I was a full-time engineering student. But suddenly the rules changed and my number was up.
Shortly after the system was initiated, I was drafted. I received my draft notice in the mail. It stated President Richard M. Nixon orders you to report for active duty at Fort Dix military base in two weeks. I immediately petitioned the local draft board for an exemption based on the fact I was married, soon to be the father of a child, less than six months from the age exemption and a full time student approximately one year from graduation. I was granted a hearing with draft board on a Tuesday evening two days before my date to report for active duty at Fort Dix.
Entrance of Fort Dix
Prior to the hearing, I summarized my situation in writing. When I was called into the hearing, I reiterated my experience with ever evolving rules over the previous five years and finally made my plea. I told them I was twenty-five and a half years old, six months from the upper age limit, had a certification as a tool and diemaker journeyman, was a year from graduation with my bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, was married and with a child soon to be born. I then asked for an exemption to finish out the academic year. I also brought my Journeyman’s certificate, my current college transcript, and my notice to appear for active duty. And I further stated I would agree that night to sign up for four years in whichever branch of the armed service they stipulated at the conclusion of my exemption.
There were six people on the board to hear my case. Five of the six appeared to be pillars of the community, businessmen and politicians in business suits. The sixth was an Army Captain in uniform. They were all seated along a long table and I stood at the head of the table to make my case. After I described my situation, the Army officer spoke up and said, “Okay, you made your point. Please leave the room and we’ll call you back when we’ve made our decision.” I sat outside the room for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes while they deliberated. It felt like a week.
Finally, I was invited back into the chamber and again stood at the head of the table. The military officer addressed me and gave me the news, their verdict as it were. He said, “The board has decided to extend your deferment for six months. At that time when you will have passed your twenty sixth birthday and under our current rules will no longer be eligible for military service.”
He then added an afterthought, “We really aren’t looking for someone like you in the military, especially at your age. We need young soldiers that can follow orders. You, on the other hand, clearly won’t fit that pattern. You came in here tonight fully prepared, armed with ample documentation, and made a solid case. You spoke like a Philadelphia lawyer and if I had you under my command, I’d be worried you would take an entire company AWOL. OK, that’s our decision. Now, I’ll ask you to wait outside for the next hour or so until were finished with our business here. I want to discuss your statement regarding enlisting following the expiration of your deferment.”
Naturally, I agreed but had no idea what he had in mind. I was thinking of the Navy. Once the board disbanded for the evening the Captain approached me and said that he would like to recommend me for a special assignment. I didn’t know what the special assignment was but agreed out of gratitude for the decision to allow me to continue my education. What he asked me to do was have a conversation with a special projects manager at Lockheed Aircraft located in Edison, New Jersey where I was then employed as a journeyman toolmaker. He provided the contact and naturally I agreed. We shook hands and parted.
The next morning, I was on the telephone with the contact at Lockheed and was asked to meet with him for an interview. At the conclusion of the interview I was offered a transfer from my current job as a machinist toolmaker for production line machinery to a specialist in prototype manufacturing to work on fabrication of classified military projects. Naturally, I accepted. Once I completed the mandatory background check and received my security clearance, I was transferred to the Lockheed special projects group, or skunkworks as it was then called, to work with a group of highly qualified senior toolmakers. And fortunately, Lockheed also continued to refund my tuition for engineering classes in the evening program at Newark College of Engineering.
US involvement in the Vietnam War started with President Harry Truman and further escalated during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950’s. It then further escalated and finally gained national attention under John F. Kennedy with the US military in an advisory capacity. It then escalated again into a full-blown conflict with major US involvement under Lyndon B. Johnson. US intervention finally ended when Richard M. Nixon abruptly pulled out our troops. That war and its aftermath had a huge impact on my generation and essentially shaped the baby boomer’s view of world events and US politics ever since.
To paraphrase a quote from John Steinbeck made following WWII, “War is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal. We go to war with an enemy and a generation later, enemies are friends and friends are enemies and the whole stupid cycle starts over again.” The Vietnam conflict, as it’s called, is an example of Steinbeck’s pronouncement.
It begs a simple question that has yet to be satisfactorily answered. Why on earth were we involved in Vietnam in the first place? The answer to that question was the ‘domino theory’. We were there because of the ‘domino theory’. Simply put, the domino theory predicted that if one small country fell to communist rule then all the other surrounding small countries would fall as well, like a row of dominos. In hindsight however, this was a gross oversimplification.
Domino Theory – Vietnam War
There were over 58,000 US military deaths in Vietnam making it the fourth deadliest war that the United States was ever engaged in, and for what? If you take a nation to war you need to have complete and clear strategic goals, something the Vietnam hawks never had. Who were these hawks anyway? They were “eggheads”, the lot of them.
The Secretary of Defense under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson that hatched this idiotic scheme in the 1960’s. Their concept was to develop a modern defense strategy in the Nuclear Age by bringing in economic analysis, operations strategy was Robert McNamara aided and abetted by a group of so called experts from the RAND Corporation and Ford Motor Corporation nicknamed the Wizz Kids.
They planned to improve the management of the United States Department of Defense by using research, game theory, computing, as well as modern management systems to coordinate the Department of Defense with planning, programming, and budgeting Systems. In other words, systems analysis. A procedure that had then gained popularity in the business environment. What? Unbelievable! This was war, man. People’s lives were at stake, not just profits.
To McNamara and the Wizz Kids this was a grand experiment to see what would happen. And 58,000 young American men lost their lives, many of my former high school classmates among them. Never trust the eggheads. They’ll invariably lead you down the primrose path.
“All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?” Edward Abbey
First Marriage, Honeymoon and the Kluin’s Extended Family
When I wasn’t at the Jersey shore for the summer, but back north in Union, NJ, I spent a lot of my time alone. I only had a few close friends and since my parents were quite a bit older, they didn’t have relatives close by with kids my age. I didn’t have the opportunity to associate with anyone close to my peer group at family outings and parties. In fact, we didn’t have any family outings or parties.
Joann, on the other hand, had a relatively large group of relatives and extended family. On weekends, they would all get together at one another’s houses for dinners and parties and, as her steady boyfriend, I was invited to join in. It seemed that practically every weekend there would be an invitation at either Joann’s home or at one of her uncles or cousins or other relatives or friends of relative’s nearby.
We would all gather for an informal dinner accompanied with spirited conversation on current events and more often than not this would be followed by a friendly poker game among the men. It was generally five-card draw with nickel, dime quarter limit on the bets. I never had the opportunity to play poker before and so it was a new and interesting experience for me. And since I was an only child with a small family, I had never experienced the comradery that these informal family affairs offered. I enjoyed it immensely.
Night over at the Kluin/Vogtman House (L to R: Herman Kluin (FIL), Anthony Kuzma (Cousin), me, Ted Vogtman (MIL Brother)
Over a period of a few years Joann and I became a steady couple and increasingly became active participants in all of the families’ informal parties as well as weddings, birthday parties, and other miscellaneous excuses to get together and party. Beer and wine were always available and flowed freely unlike at my home where alcohol consumption was generally frowned upon. Although social drinking was discouraged by my Father, he always had a few bottles of whiskey stashed around in secret hiding places in the basement, garage and attic where Mom wouldn’t necessarily look. And I could understand her concern over the booze because once he started nipping at it, he would eventually get pretty autocratic and ornery. So, on balance, inclusion in the Kluin family social circle was a pleasant respite from sitting at home watching reruns of “I Love Lucy” on TV with my folks.
This was also during my last year of high school and beginning of my first job at Heller Machine and Tool and the atmosphere on the home front wasn’t very easy-going. I kind of merged into the Kluin’s extended family before I was actually part of the family. This continued until I was twenty-three and Joann was twenty-two and it became a foregone conclusion that we would get married and raise a family. I didn’t actually propose to Joann in the formal sense, but we just started planning our wedding together. It was time. We were married on May 27, 1967 in Roselle, New Jersey in the Catholic Church Joann attended throughout her youth.
“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” Socrates
Communion, Protestant versus Catholic (Confession)
I believe the rule has now been revised but back then because I wasn’t a Catholic we couldn’t be married on the alter like a Catholic couple but rather exchanged our vows in the pit down below in front of the alter. I wasn’t a very religious guy, so it didn’t matter to me one way or the other. The wedding reception was held at a local hall that specialized in such affairs and overall, it was a pleasant experience. No arguments or fights or brawls took place and I believe a good time was had by most if not all.
Aruba Honeymoon
Joann planned our honeymoon and actually did a good job. She found a great deal on a trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba. Aruba has since become a featured vacation destination and I understand it now has numerous hotels, casinos and all-inclusive resorts. But in 1967, it was off the beaten path. There was only one hotel on the island, The Aruba Caribbean Resort. So, we spent the week at the Aruba Caribbean.
It was a great hotel right on the beach with a nice restaurant and attached casino. We booked the all-inclusive package which included all our meals and entertainment. It was first class. But after three days lounging on the beach every day, eating in the same restaurant every night, playing the slots in the casino every night, listening to the same female singer, good as she was, every night became a little tedious. I think the fourth night when she ended her routine with the same song, Guantanamera, Joann and I just looked at each other and broke out laughing. The next day we signed up for a guided tour of the island more to break up the routine than anything else.
The island is small, six miles wide and nineteen miles long, so the tour wasn’t very extensive but still a welcome break from just lounging on the beach in front of the hotel. Besides, by this time, I actually had sun poisoning from laying out in the extremely intense sun. It was the first time in my life I ever got sun poisoning. Since the time when I was a small child I always tanned immediately. My Mom would always say you’re brown as a berry at the beginning of the summer when after one day in the sun I was already tanned. So, when I was out in the sun in Aruba, I never gave it a second thought. What I didn’t realize how intense the sun could be that close to the equator. Especially since in Aruba where there is a constant wind from the East, the trade wind, that makes the intense heat bearable. Joann was smart, she covered up. But I was the big Macho Man and just stayed out there on the beach and baked. It was time for a break in the routine and a chance to give my bright red blistered back a break, so we signed up for the tour.
Before sun burn…..
The tour bus was a small mini-bus or van, if you will, and the tour guide was a local guy from the island, nicely dressed, articulate, knowledgeable and friendly. He appeared to be of mixed race as were many natives of the island. He had Caucasian features but was a sort of medium brown skin color. As I recall the tourists were comprised of four couples, including Joann and I. One was a black couple from the US. After the bus left the hotel in the town of Oranjestad, we proceeded toward the other end of the island and passed through the small town of Sint Nicolas.
The tour guide warned us that if we were to rent a car and take a trip around the island on our own, we should bypass Sint Nicolas and not stop there under any circumstances. One of the couples spoke up and asked, “Why not?” The guide then told us, “Blacks, because of the blacks. That town is where the blacks live, and they cause a lot of trouble.” The same couple then asked somewhat incredulously, “Blacks, what Blacks?” He answered as if it should have been obvious, “Haitians, the black Haitians, the blacks”. Here we are on a small island in the middle of nowhere populated by a handful of people all of them of mixed race and we had some racial strife going on.
Years later I experienced the same thing in Brazil, a country of mixed race people where nearly everyone is of mixed race and there was a distinction among them based on relative percentages of European and African heritage and they would make a distinction based on bloodline to the nearest one-sixteenth. Wow. So, on the guide’s advice, we didn’t return to Sint Nicolas. But I was wondering at the time what the black couple from the US thought about his comments.
The high point of the tour was the shark feeding station on the west side of the island. The water on the west side is always a rough as a consequence of the trade winds that constantly blow. There was a cove there where everyone including the resort hotel staff took their garbage to be dumped in the ocean. The garbage attracts sharks and we were cautioned to never go in the sea on that side of the island and particularly near that cove. We happened to be there during the garbage dump, and you could see the shark fins churning the water. They were well trained.
First Apartment
Trafalgar Gardens, Edison, NJ
When we returned from our honeymoon, Joann and I rented an apartment near Oak Tree Road in Edison, New Jersey on the second floor of a relatively new apartment complex called Trafalgar Gardens. I was working at Lockheed Aircraft in Edison and the apartment offered a convenient commute to and from work. It was a one-bedroom garden apartment (not sure what they meant by that as there were no gardens around the place). Nevertheless, it was a nice area and a nice apartment; an auspicious start.
Edison, New Jersey was undergoing a transition at that time evolving from a rural to a suburban area. Trafalgar Gardens was on the very outskirts of the suburban zone and directly behind the apartment was an open field interspersed with open fields, trees, and a small creek. It offered a great view from our second story deck and a certain degree of seclusion.
Located in the field behind the apartment was a collection of barns and outbuildings. The collection of buildings was part of a horse auction called Roosevelt Sales and Stables. The outfit was run by a guy named Louis (Bunchie) Grant and the stables were referred to simply as Bunchie’s. Auctions were held every Wednesday night and we could hear the auctioneer from the deck at the rear of our apartment.
We would frequently wander over to Bunchie’s and observe the goings- on. We would sit high up in the bleachers and watch the “cowboys” run the horses fore and back below as the auctioneer prattled on with his chant. Matter of fact I enjoyed the chant as much as watching the horses. It was an evening of exciting free entertainment. “Ok, Boys, open the gate, let’em in.” The gate would fly open and the rider would run the length of the building at full gallop spin around and run em back again. It also was the first time I was around horses up close and personal. I would often wander around outside the auction house to the stables and investigate the livestock and chat with the “cowboys”. I didn’t imagine at the time that later on I was to become a lot more up close and personal with the equine species.
I believe we stayed in the apartment for about two years, and it was at that time I started to contemplate switching from night school to a full-time day student. Joann was working a steady job at the Bell Telephone Company and between her salary, our meager savings, and the option of scholarships and student loans I reasoned I could switch to a full-time student and obtain my Bachelor’s degree, before going bust.
Things at Lockheed were also not looking very promising. The space program was winding down, layoffs in the industry were already taking place and it was only a matter of time before I would have to find another job. I applied to NCE as a full-time student and resigned from my position at Lockheed.
When I resigned and told my boss Tom (Snake Hips) Brennen that I was resigning to go to school full time he motioned over his shoulder at the engineering department and said, “What are going to do, become one of these guys?” I said, “Yeah, I hope so.” He responded, “Best of luck kid, you’re a damned good machinist and I know you’ll make a damned good engineer.”
Joann was pregnant, with Jill, at that time and in hindsight the prudent course would probably have been to stay put but nothing ventured nothing gained so we moved ahead with the plan.
The second apartment
A year after I started as a full-time student, I had enough credits to graduate but lacked two required courses. Nevertheless, I applied for a full-time position and was fortunate to get a job as a junior process engineer with The Lummus Company, a major engineering contractor in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Lummus had a tuition refund plan and the two courses I took after work at night were paid for by the company. I actually graduated with the class of 1970.
During that first year while working at Lummus my daughter, Jill, was born. We were quite cramped in the one-bedroom apartment at Trafalgar Gardens. We needed to find a larger apartment, a two bedroom, one for us and one for our daughter Jill. Joann soon found a place not far from where we were. It was a two-bedroom apartment above a detached garage at a private residence. It looked good, it was on several acres out in the country, and was very affordable. So, we took it and moved in. It turned out to be a huge mistake.
Joann, Jill and me
The landlord who lived in the house next to the garage had a couple of sons in their late teens or early twenties and basically, they were New Jersey “rednecks”. The sons were involved with building hot rods in a shed out back of the house and frequently they and their buddies would be revving up engines, peeling out and just making a general ruckus oftentimes until one or two in the morning.
The apartment was heated electrically with space heaters about two feet tall built in the wall just about the height of a toddler. On cold winter nights when the heat was turned up, they were red hot and a major hazard especially for Jill. If she accidently bumped or fell into one of them, she would have been severely burned. The living room walls of the apartment were also covered with faux wood panels made of flammable plastic. Clearly this was a disaster waiting to happen. In addition, late one night the rednecks working on their hot rods set the shed on fire. It was quite a blaze. No one was hurt but the shed and the cars inside were burned to the ground. That was it. We needed to get the hell out of there, ASAP.
Moving in with the Kluins
Options were limited and so we took up an offer from my in-laws to move into their house in Colonia, NJ (next town over). It was a relatively small but nice house in a quiet neighborhood. It had a partially finished basement, so we moved in and set up housekeeping.
Financial issues were also in play. Joann and I were in complete agreement that she should leave her job throughout her pregnancy and become a stay at home mom as soon as I was employed by Lummus. I would do that again, it was the right decision. However, finances were very tight. My starting salary at Lummus was the same as the salary I was making when I left Lockheed to attend school full time, $10,000 per year. But now circumstances were different. Joann’s salary was missed, savings were depleted, and I was faced with repayment of student loans I had taken for tuition. Thus, the offer to move into with the Kluins had definite financial benefits. It also allowed my in-laws, Herman and Helen, to participate in the first years with their new grandchild, and Joann and I had a babysitter for Jill when needed.
But in hindsight it also had some major drawbacks. This was a time for Joann and I to become full partners in life, raising our daughter, making our own decisions together and generally making our way in the world. But family decisions now involved four people instead of two. And since I was working full time, with a long commute and travelling on business as well I became less than a full partner in this family. It started innocently enough but escalated over time and in hindsight was a major factor that eventually led to our inevitable separation and divorce.
Annie is an American Dingo, sometimes called a Carolina Dog, living with me on my sailboat in North Carolina. The Carolina Dog isn’t a domesticated breed but rather a wild pariah breed that runs free from the Savannah River basin in Georgia to the lower regions of coastal South Carolina, half dog, half wolf, half coyote, half who knows what. Anyway, Annie is with me twenty four hours a day aboard my boat in a local marina.
Learn more about the Carolina Dog discovered by Dr. I.Lehr Brisbin – LINK.
Recently I had to take a business trip to Houston, Texas for a week and couldn’t take Annie along. So a friend who speaks English but whose first language is French lives nearby and he offered to take Annie in his apartment until I returned. I was a little skeptical about leaving her there because with her wild nature she can be a bit hard to handle at times. However, my friend assured me he could take care of her without any problems. In fact, he bragged about it. He told me that when I returned he would have her so well trained I wouldn’t recognize her. He also told me he would teach her commands in both English and French. So, I took a chance.
Everything went well for five days but on the morning of the sixth day I got a panic phone call. “Hal, I’m really sorry but Annie ran away last night. I drove all around, looked everywhere and she is nowhere to be found.” I asked what happened and he said, “I came home from the market with my arms full of groceries and as soon as I opened the door she bolted, out the door, down the steps, through the parking lot, into the street and gone.” I told him that she had a chip implanted and I would call ‘Home Again’ and see if she could be located.
When I called and gave Annie’s registration number I was told that she had already been located on the beach late the previous evening and was in the animal shelter ten miles south of the apartment! I called the shelter and spoke to the dog catcher who captured her and he told me she was running on the beach along the edge of the surf heading south. There was a fine of $125 but since I was out of town, they would reduce it to $60. I called my buddy and told him she was in dog jail ten miles south and he would have to go down and bail her out. She didn’t need a lawyer since she had already pleaded guilty, but bail would be $60.
In a few hours, she was back at the apartment and the next day I flew back from Texas, picked her up and returned to the boat. I got to thinking about it and reasoned that after five days she had enough of that apartment and French was just too damn hard for her to learn. So she decided she was going back home to the boat. She headed right to the water didn’t see any boats so headed south thinking, “I know those boats got to be along here somewhere.” She got ten miles down the beach and that’s where she ran afoul of the authorities.
Without ‘Home Again’ the outcome may not have been so good and for certain would not have been so quick. Good job ‘Home Again’. Annie and I are both grateful for your excellent service.
This story was originally written by Hal Gunardson and posted on a Rescue Dog Site, which no longer exists. It is dated 25 Mar 2010. Annie passed away in April 2022. She lived a long and happy life. We missed her terribly.
Annie’s Story
Hal Gunardson offered to share his adoption experience with Breed Rescue. This is Hal’s unique story with Annie aboard his sailing vessel “Free Radical”.
People are frequently asking me, “What kind of dog is that?” The answer is, I really don’t know. Annie is reputed to be a two and half year old half Shepherd half Smooth Collie mix but nobody knows for sure. She is a rescue dog and her early history is shrouded in mystery. I adopted Annie from an animal shelter just three days before her termination date and so Annie, who was formerly a rescue dog, is now a “rescued” dog. All I can say for certain is she is a good-looking animal, bright, healthy, alert, and curious about everything around her. In short, she is everything that you could want a dog to be.
Annie in her bunk aboard the sailing vessel “Free Radical”.
Ever since I was a kid I’ve always had a dog and it is hard to imagine life without a canine companion. But after my black Lab, Calgary, passed away three years ago, changes in lifestyle made it hard to see how I would deal with the responsibility of another dog. My lifestyle changes involved, among other things, living full-time aboard a sailboat and sailing up and down the east coast of the US and the Caribbean. For the past three years, I’ve become, as many call us, “snowbirds” sailing south in the winter and north in the summer. It was hard enough for me to adjust to this lifestyle without considering what it would be like having a dog aboard. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. Dogs are remarkably adaptable creatures and we can learn a lot from them about always making the best of any situation.
At First Sight
So how did Annie go from being a landlubber to a seasoned “sea dog” in a couple of weeks? It was, to say the least, an interesting transformation. I was in port in South Florida when I finally made the decision to find a dog to live aboard. On a Sunday afternoon, I went over to the local shelter to look around. There were two lab puppies posted on the shelter’s website and I thought one of these might be the one. I inquired about the puppies and was told they were three and a half months old. Miley was already adopted but they believed the five-month-old pup was still available. I walked through the kennel to take a look and sure enough, the five-month-old lab was there, but somehow Annie, the two-year-old Shepherd-Collie mix got my eye. I think at first it was the ear action. She always has one ear up and the other down and switches from one to the other from time to time. It’s kind of her signature idiosyncrasy.
Anyway, the shelter’s procedure is first you write down up to three dog’s names, then enter a small room with a chair, desk, and a very large dispenser of paper towels, then they bring the dogs you are interested in, one at a time, into the room. You spend about 15 to 20 minutes alone with each dog to see if you are simpatico. The five-month-old lab puppy came in first. Nice dog but the puppy personality and all of the basic training involved gave me second thoughts. The puppies are apparently very popular and there were already three families interested in adopting her. So if I was interested, I could go to the bottom of the list. I said no, best to let one of the families adopt her. Then they brought Annie in.
She jumped, yanked, and pulled all the way down the hall. When she entered they told me to beware of two things. First, “This dog is totally out of control” and second, “she was abandoned because she chases livestock.” OK.
As soon as the handler left the room Annie laid down at my feet. I petted her for maybe 10 minutes. She then got up and paced about the room, each time stopping and staring at the crack in the door. She was telling me she had to go out to take care of her business but of course, I couldn’t let her out. Next, she squatted in the middle of the room and made a pretty good-sized puddle. So, that’s why there was such a large towel dispenser on the wall. After the clean-up, she laid back at my feet for the remainder of our time. When the handler returned I said, yes we definitely bonded and I would like to adopt her. Seemed to me she was only out of control when she was trying to get out of the kennel and concerning the livestock, well there wasn’t going to be any livestock to chase where she’d be living. Two problems already solved.
Her Name
I asked if there was a list of adopters for Annie and they said, “No, it’s generally more difficult to place the older dogs.” For a brief moment, I thought about renaming Annie, perhaps to something more nautical. But then it then hit me, Little Orphan Annie, the perfect name for her. As I thought more about it I realized that the karma actually went much deeper.
The Sailing Sloop Annie
Being a lifelong sailor I remembered a famous sailing sloop named “Annie” built in 1880 that’s permanently moored in the Mystic Seaport museum. It seemed apropos that Little Orphan Annie, the rescued dog, would be living aboard a sailboat herself.
The last of the sandbaggers. The remarkable 8.8m/29ft Annie was built around 1880 in Mystic, Conn. Her racing rig measured 20.7m/68ft from the tip of the bowsprit to the clew of the main. Annie was preserved by the far-sighted Maine Historical Association in the early 1900s and is now at the Mystic Seaport Museum. Pic from the Museum site.
Annie’s Song
Next John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” which he wrote for his first wife came to mind. Particularly the second stanza which was a love song for his wife but any dog lover can immediately connect the lyrics to their relationship with their dog;
Come let me love you, let me give my life to you let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms
Pretty heavy-duty stuff to be sure, but exactly what I had in mind as I left the shelter with Annie by my side.
The Interview
The next step in the process was for the handler to interview me. I understood they are cautious as I’m sure the folks at the shelter really didn’t want to see the dog back again in a few days or a few weeks.
During the interview, the biggest concern about my qualifications for adopting Annie seemed to be the fact that I am a full-time live aboard on a sailboat. I can’t imagine that I was the first one who lived aboard a boat to come in to adopt a dog. Nevertheless, it seemed to generate a great deal of concern. But I apparently passed muster and off we went. Despite my nervousness about the dire warning “out of control”, she walked alongside me as if she had been doing it all her life. I felt she somehow knew she was going home.
Only home turned out to be a lot different than she expected.
The Boat
She rode in the car sitting up in the passenger seat like an old pro and got out when we stopped without any doggy drama. However, the trouble started when we approached the dock. In her former life, she apparently had never seen anything like this.
Annie relaxing next to “Free Radical” – on the dock at the marina.
There is an aluminum ramp leading from the land to the floating dock which moves up and down with the changes in the tide. When I tried to take her down the ramp you would think she was walking across a bed of hot coals. At first, she balked and finally, she literally pranced down to the concrete dock as fast as she could. When we got to the boat she was completely perplexed. She didn’t want any part of it. There is about a two-foot difference in height between the dock and the boat and she could have easily jumped the gap but it scared the hell out of her and she was determined to stay on the dock. I tried to gently lift her aboard but she wouldn’t have it. For the next four and a half hours she lay on the concrete dock and stared at the boat as it gently swayed back and forth.
Annie at the Dock Staring at the Boat for the First Time
Suddenly another song with an Annie connection slowly entered my consciousness, “Sweet Dreams (are made of this)”, by Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics. Somehow I imagined that Annie, the rescued dog, might be having these thoughts as we approached the edge of the land, the Marina, the dock with the boat gently rocking in its berth.
Sweet dreams are made of this Who am I to disagree? Travel the world and the seven seas
As I looked at her expression, I imagined she must be thinking, “You want me to do what?”
Finally, she fell asleep on the dock. I left her tied with a fresh bowl of water and went down below in the cabin to sleep.
I woke about midnight and went to check on Annie. There she was fast asleep on the dock but the temperature had dropped and I worried about her catching cold on the concrete. Especially since, like most shelter dogs, she already had a case of kennel cough. While she was still asleep I lifted her aboard and put her in the cockpit of the boat. She was not particularly happy about it but grudgingly submitted and saw that all things considered, it was a better deal than the concrete dock. She fell asleep in the cockpit and I did the same down below in the cabin.
Annie Oakley, another Orphan Annie
I believe that orphans, both human and canine, have a special internal drive to adapt and excel in whatever situation they’re thrust into. Perhaps because of their humble and often difficult start in life, there is a strong tendency to overcompensate and overachieve. This was certainly true with Annie Oakley.
Annie Oakley c. 1880
Annie Oakley was born a poor back country girl from, believe it or not, Darke County, in western Ohio. When she was nine her father died and her mother gave her up to the care of the county’s poor farm. Afterward, she was placed into indentured servitude with a local family where she reportedly suffered both physical and mental abuse. Despite her difficult start, she became an extraordinary shooter and her amazing talent got her a starring role in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show making her the first American female superstar.
Taking Care of Business Aboard
About a month after Annie had been aboard, the kennel cough cleared up, she had learned to jump on and off the boat, climb up and down the ladder from the cockpit to the cabin, and experienced her first offshore sail. She was genuinely relaxed and seemed to be really enjoying her sailing lifestyle.
Annie Oakley, another orphan, and yet another Annie connection, is for me just another part of the Annie karma. I don’t think Annie the rescued dog will become a canine superstar but it didn’t take long for her to get accustomed to her new and, at least for a dog, unusual surroundings. She adapted extremely fast and within about a week had the basics down pat and was taking the whole experience in her stride.
Annie on Alert Aboard s/v “Free Radical”
And she is also extremely serious about her new and critically important duties as First Mate in charge of security. (NOTE from Jill – Anyone, I mean anyone, who knew my dad and Annie knows this to be true. You could not step foot on the dock the sailboat was located without hearing Annie “telling” my dad, “Alert! Alert! Someone comes this way.” She took this job extremely seriously. After my dad passed away, it took her a while, but she does the same thing when anyone arrives at the house!”)
Taking Care of her other “Business” Aboard
A major issue with a dog living aboard a boat is how to deal with their daily bodily functions, especially when sailing offshore for days at a time. It would be great if they could be trained to back up to the starboard rail and hang their hindquarters overboard but I think that is probably easier said than done. There is a sailor, who has posted on the internet that claims he has actually trained his dog to do this, but the old saying is “seeing is believing” and I haven’t seen it yet.
So, I bought a 2 by 4-foot piece of Astroturf and placed it in an out-of-the-way place in the cockpit. It took her about two days to figure it out and then, no more mistakes. As I said dogs are very adaptable. Of course, when we go ashore I’m among the blue plastic bag brigade following close behind her cleaning up as necessary.
Rescue Annie
Once I had exhausted all of my immediate thoughts about Annie’s name, I did a bit of further research and found some fascinating connections that only reinforced my decision to not change her name.
There is a training mannequin used for teaching CPR known as Rescue Anne, (also known as Resusci Annie or CPR Annie). It was developed by a Norwegian toymaker around 1960 and the distinctive face was based on L’Inconnue de la Seine (the unknown woman of the Seine), the death mask of an unidentified young Parisian woman who died in the late 1880s.
Mystery surrounds the origin of the death mask. According to one legend, she was a young woman who drowned in the Seine River, and a pathologist at the Paris morgue was so taken by her beauty that he had a plaster death mask made of her face. Another legend claims that the face was modeled after the daughter of a German mask maker. But in any case, the term L’ Inconnue de la Seine has survived to describe her face. The origin of the Inconnue is uncertain, veiled in mystery, just like Annie’s past.
Bohemian Lifestyle
After the L’Inconnue mask was made public, copies quickly became popular in Parisian Bohemian society. Bohemians are known for practicing an unconventional lifestyle in the company of like-minded people with few permanent ties. They are societies’ wanderers, adventurers, and vagabonds which also pretty well describes offshore sailors, the so-called “snowbirds”. Seems like a pretty apt description of Annie’s new life as well.
The L’ Inconnue de la Seine has also been the subject of many artistic and literary works over the past century. Albert Camus compared her enigmatic smile to the Mona Lisa, inviting speculations as to what clues the eerily happy expression in her face could offer about her life, her death, and her place in society.
And so I thought, how could I possibly consider changing her name with all these incredible coincidences going for it.
Annie, it is – and so Annie it shall be!
Barefoot Annie – Barefoot Annie’s Coffee Shop, South Carolina
Finally, as to the compelling appeal of Annie’s name, I think of Barefoot Annie of Barefoot Annie’s coffee shop in Simpsonville, SC. Coincidently, the sailboat “Free Radical” originally came from Charleston, SC. (check out Barefoot Annie on YouTube where she sings “Amazing Grace” acapella, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWrU6ImndyI).
And the very first verse, I can imagine in Annie’s thoughts:
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.
With all due respect for the late John Denver, for both Annie and me, this is the real “Annie’s Song”.
Postscript
I hope you enjoyed this saga about Annie the rescued dog and her adventures aboard s/v “Free Radical”. I work alone on board and I really don’t have anyone to review my writing. So I read it aloud to Annie a couple of times and she seemed to think it was OK. She even panted a bit from time to time when I got to the parts that complemented her. So, I’m taking that as positive feedback. I hope you find it inspiring and my message is if you’re thinking about adopting a rescue dog, don’t sweat your circumstances, just go for it! Dogs are incredibly adaptable and the rewards are immeasurable both for you and the dog!
In my teens, when my family was spending our summers in Ocean Beach at the Jersey shore I hung out with a bunch of kids whose families also had summer houses in the same small town. One of my friends was a young guy named Bob McGonagall. Bob was a stocky athletic kid with a great sense of humor that was always up for any kind of spontaneous mischief we could devise. Because of his kinky brown hair his nickname was “Buffalo Bob”. “Buffalo Bob” was not merely a participant in our mischief but a major instigator as well. Whatever crazy scheme the group would come up with Bob would always be the first to kick it up a notch or two. The general consensus was that sooner or later he would probably end up in jail. On the contrary, I heard years later from some our mutual friends that Bob had become a law enforcement officer and in fact joined the FBI in Newark, NJ.
Decades later, when I was living in Allentown, PA and working for Air Products I would frequently drive down to Philadelphia at night to have diner in the Society Hill section of town and hang out there in the bars and nightclubs for the evening. On one such trip I was having dinner at the bar in one of the popular restaurants on 2nd Street and wound up sitting next to a group of guys that were FBI agents from Philly. They were telling “war stories” about some on the job exploits and the stories were hilarious.
Before long they drew me into their conversation, and we exchanged information about who we were and where we were from. I casually mentioned that I had grown up at the Jersey Shore and in my teens had a buddy that joined the FBI in Newark, NJ. They asked his name and I said his name is Bob McGonagall but he went by the nickname of Buffalo Bob. Suddenly the whole group became animated and they responded telling me “Hey, that guy is famous in the FBI, That’s Rocky McGonagall, he’s one crazy ass son of a bitch”. They started to tell me about his exploits and the stories sounded like they were talking about Clint Eastwood’s character Dirty Harry. They told me he was retired a few years back but his legacy lives on within the FBI.
My Grandfather built two model steam engines which I inherited from my Dad. When I was a pre-teen these engines were a source of endless fascination for me. One is a two-cylinder vertical engine for a model boat he built and the other is a stationary one-cylinder single action horizontal engine.
One day when I was playing around with the engines, I decided it would be interesting to build a smaller version of the horizontal single action engine out of scrap metal from the basement stash. I understood the general principle of the single action steam engine but was somewhat confused how the valve actually worked.
I thought I would fool around with the thing and figure it out. I had my Dad’s permission to use the metal working lathe and drill press so I decided it would be a good project for me to mess around with. The cylinder, flywheel and shafts were straightforward lathe projects, but the valve was a bit of a mystery.
I realized it had to be constructed so one port would let the steam into the cylinder and another would be needed to let the steam out. They also needed to be timed so that this would occur the instant the piston reversed direction. It also had to be made using only the lathe and drill press since these were the only two machines I had to work with.
Eventually, I figured it out after many false starts, and I used up a lot of scrap metal before the engine would run beyond one revolution. By trial and error, it finally came together and ran smoothly.
Years later I became aware of the saying attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, “The mind learns from the hands”. But this was probably my first actual hands on experience based on this principle. There is no substitute for building one; thought experiments are all well and good but fundamental understanding comes from building, experimenting, modifying and experimenting some more.
Many years later, when I was a self-employed chemical engineer, I worked with a mechanical engineer, Richard Keener, who had a complete machine shop in his garage and built some of the machinery I designed for my clients.
We were working together in my basement shop one day and he spotted the model steam engine I had built. He asked me about it, and I told him it’s a steam engine I built when I was a kid. He asked, “How old where you when you built it?” I told him “I was about twelve or thirteen.” He replied. “Christ, you’re a damn prodigy!” I told him “No, I just had a good example to follow.” But it was a great compliment from a guy I had a lot of respect for. A man that designed and built his own turbo charger for his vintage Mercedes Benz.
He also had a vintage 1953 MG TD sports car his shop completely disassembled. It was now in a heap of parts piled on the floor. Hanging on the wall over the pile of parts was a photo of Richard at the wheel in Watkin’s Glen, New York setting the track speed record. He was negotiating the last turn with the car healed over on two wheels. I asked him when he was going to put it back together? He told me eventually. He called it his future retirement project.
I don’t believe he ever retired or ever got around to that project. I would have loved to tackle the rebuild. But there was no way he would part with that old pile of parts. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now.
1953 MG TD
The Unfinished Gasoline Engine
When I was in high school, I took a college prep program but also took a class in machine shop. With my marginal grades, my Mom encouraged me to take the shop class as a backup plan. She encouraged me to “learn a trade” so I could make a living if I didn’t get into college. Having worked with machinery at home from the time I could barely look over the top of the workbench it was obvious to the shop teacher that I knew my way around a machine shop. He was an excellent teacher and provided me with a great deal of encouragement.
In the senior year each student had to do a shop project of his or her own choosing that would count for fifty percent of their final grade. I already conquered the steam engine project at home several years earlier, so I decided to take it up a level and build a model of a one-cylinder gasoline engine.
I worked the entire school year on that project but near the end screwed up machining the cylinder and never finished it. I still regret that I gave up too soon. Nevertheless, the shop teacher was impressed, gave me a good grade, and more importantly recommended me to a local machine shop, Heller Machine and Tool, for a job as a tool and die maker apprentice.
This was my first full time job after I graduated from high school. And so, I started the apprenticeship program at Heller Machine and Tool Company in Union, New Jersey. It was a formal four-year program sponsored by a Government grant for my employer. I started for minimum wage of $1.25 per hour. Take home pay was $42.50 per week. It was a great job. I loved it and was good at it. Part of the program was a requirement to take certain courses in the evenings at an approved technical school, specifically algebra and trigonometry.
For the first time since my early childhood, I was truly academically motivated. I researched the options and discovered I could take the required math courses at Union County College, a local Community College located nearby in Cranford, New Jersey. I eagerly signed up for the courses and at the end of the first semester I received an A in both courses. The first time I ever got two A’s back to back was in those two math courses. I signed up for the next semester and Heller Machine reimbursed the tuition.
Once I started with the program, I became even more motivated. There was none of the bullshit there had been in grammar and high school. Either you showed up for classes and got the benefit or you didn’t and dropped out or flunked out. I not only showed up, I was energized.
I didn’t want to lose my Toolmaker’s job and actually found the higher math a really gratifying challenge. I finally hit my stride. I was doing well in the curriculum and made a commitment to continue with the program and obtain a two-year associates degree which would qualify me to apply later to a four-year university. It wasn’t part of the apprenticeship program, but I was able to convince Cliff Heller, the owner of Heller Machine, to support my plan and reimburse my tuition for the Community College program.
I aced all the courses in Junior College and began to consider majoring at a four-year university in engineering. I never actually completed my Associate’s degree but after a year and a half in Community College decided to transfer to Newark College of Engineering (NCE). That was the plan if I could get accepted. I had taken the SAT’s in high school and scored in the top ten percentiles. I then took the entrance exam for NCE and achieved a very high score. I was always good at tests, I was just never good at doing the homework assignments. Based on the SAT’s, the NCE entrance exam and my grades in Community College I was accepted at NCE and entered the evening program majoring in mechanical engineering.
Over the next year, I continued evening classes in the mechanical engineering program. I then took a required course in fundamentals of chemistry, an introductory chemistry course for mechanical engineering students. This was it! I had another epiphany. I loved this stuff and it occurred to me I was enrolled in the wrong program.
Chemical engineering was the right place for me. The following semester I switched from mechanical to chemical engineering and fortunately was able to transfer most of the credits I earned as an ME student to the ChE program.
The Jersey Shore – A great experience, the beach, the girls, the boats, the sailing, all good stuff for a growing boy
This Is How It Started
When I was about fourteen my folks bought a summer home at the Jersey shore. It was in a small beach community called Ocean Beach (in Lavalette, NJ) about halfway between Point Pleasant to the north and Seaside Heights to the south. Our house was on the Barnegat Bay on a street called Bay Shore Drive which led to a peninsula that jutted out into the bay. Ours was the third house from the end of the peninsula. It was in a great location right on the water overlooking the bay; a modest one-story beach house with a great view and boat dock.
Our neighbor was a stock broker with a rather elaborate house that included among other amenities a two-car garage as well as two baths. I was a pretty handy kid with tools and so my folks allowed me to build a vanity for the bathroom in our house. It turned out pretty well and one day my Mom showed it off to the neighbor. He asked me if I would build a similar vanity for his second bathroom and told me he would pay me for the job. Naturally, I agreed.
He bought the materials and I went to work. When it was finished, he paid me a few dollars for my work and then told me he had a small sailboat in his garage. He said I could have it, but it had a hole in the deck where someone stepped on it, but if I could fix it up it was mine.
My Dad bought me a ¼ inch 4 x 8 foot piece of marine plywood for the job and I went to work on it. I repaired the deck, gave it a new paint job and had my first sailboat; a sailfish, which is basically a surfboard with a mast, retractable fin keel and a tiller. I had no idea how to sail it and neither did my Dad since he was a power boat guy. Nevertheless, I launched it in Barnegat Bay, raised the sail and fooled around until I finally got the hang of it. I must have tipped it over a thousand times during my learning process but when you’re fourteen and a good swimmer that was just all part of the fun.
The Sailfish
Hal on his Sailfish
I recall my first experience tacking. I had no idea what tacking was but one afternoon out in the bay quite far to the north of home a stiff wind arose out of the south. I took off heading northbound with the wind at my back and was having a great time but wound up a considerable distance from home. I finally decided I better get back, so I came about into the wind and discovered that I was still heading northbound and my sail was flapping (luffing) in the breeze. The sailing term is “in irons”.
I didn’t realize then that the boat would not sail directly into the wind. I fooled around for a while until I discovered if I pointed the bow at an angle to the wind the boat would make forward progress but not exactly where I wanted to go. A little more experimentation and I was going forward at a different angle but again not on my desired course. OK, it dawned on me what I need to do is zig zag back home. So that’s what I did.
It took a couple of hours, but I finally made it back just before nightfall. I was back at the dock exhausted, had been more than a little panicked but now secure in my newly acquired knowledge of zig zagging. Years later I learned that zig zagging had a technical sailing term, “tacking”.
When I took my offshore sailing courses in Fort Lauderdale on a 38-foot sailboat, a Jeaneau, I realized the sailfish really was an excellent way to learn. Small boats, as sailors say, are “lively” which means everything happens fast and they are really easy to tip over. By comparison, on large sailboats everything happens in slow motion, but the basic principles are the same. If you can sail a small one, you can sail a big one.
I enjoyed that sailfish so much and spent so many hours sailing it that when I turned sixteen my Dad bought me a brand new “Snark” for my birthday.
The Snark
The Snark was a little bigger than the sailfish and had an actual cockpit with a seat at the tiller. I refined my sailing skills in the Snark and became adept at keeping her upright and skimming over the whitecaps. It was great fun and a great learning experience.
I also had a small secondhand runabout that my Dad bought for me. It was a fifteen-foot Lyman skiff with a twenty five horsepower Johnson outboard engine. It was a wooden boat with what is called a lap strake hull. That is the boards of the hull overlap rather than butt up to each other. It’s a more seaworthy design than a smooth hull.
The “Sea Tiger” – 15 ft. Lyman Outboard Skiff
The boat had a brass plaque on the dashboard with the name of the boat engraved on it, “Sea Tiger”. It was the mighty sea tiger; well more like the sea kitten but whatever. I never thought it was an appropriate name, but my Mom loved that name and always called the boat ‘Sea Tiger’. When I prepared to take it out, she would always ask, “Are you going out in the Sea Tiger?” I would always cringe when she said that and I’m sure that’s why she always said it. It became a private joke between us. It was a great little boat though and I spent many hours in the bay cruising and fishing and just messing around out on the water.
Most of the other kids my age living in the area had their own similar small outboard skiffs. We had a great time racing each other and exploring the tidal islands in the bay and generally learning by hands on experience about boats and tides and weather and all of the stuff you need to know to safely handle yourself on the water. These truly were the Halcyon Days of Summer.
“According to Greek mythology, Alcyone, the daughter of the god of the winds, became so distraught when she learned that her husband had been killed in a shipwreck that she threw herself into the sea and was changed into a kingfisher. As a result, ancient Greeks called such birds alkyon or halkyon. The legend also says that such birds built floating nests on the sea, where they so charmed the wind god that he created a period of unusual calm that lasted until the birds’ eggs hatched. This legend prompted people to use halcyon both as a noun naming a genus of kingfisher and as an adjective meaning either “of or relating to the kingfisher or its nesting period” or calm.”
Risky Behavior
Most of the time when I took ‘Sea Tiger’ out I would fool around in the bay with the other kids on boats and be back home by supper time. But there was an inlet not too far away, the Point Pleasant Inlet connecting the bay to the Atlantic Ocean and every once in a while…
At certain times, the inlet can be treacherous, especially when the wind runs against the tide. But from time to time I would take the ‘Sea Tiger’ out the inlet to the ocean and back just for adventure, just for the thrill of it. My folks never knew I did this. If they did, I am sure I would have been grounded for a long time.
Point Pleasant Inlet
But when you are a teenager you do stupid things and sometimes you are just plain lucky. I would purposely take the boat through the inlet during rough conditions just for the fun of it. I would generally take it out late in the afternoon and come back in with the fleet of large fishing boats returning to port to “ride and surf their wakes”. It was usually on an incoming tide. This is called a following sea and often times I would look behind me and there was a five or six foot wall of water directly behind the transom of my boat. The wave would not break until it hit shallow water and so you could ride the wave, so to speak, as long as you kept up your speed. It was a great thrill but dangerous as hell! There is nothing like impending disaster to focus the mind and somehow, I was lucky enough to stay focused and survive without any mishaps.
Recently in Florida there was a story that got a lot of attention on the local news about two teenage boys both fourteen years old, ostensibly experienced boaters and fishermen, who took their small 19 foot open cockpit outboard boat out of Jupiter, Florida and were lost at sea. Months later the damaged boat was found washed ashore in Bermuda nearly 700 miles away with life vests and one of the boy’s iPhone was aboard but no sign of the boys. It was stormy the day they went missing and they probably were overtaken by a sudden gale and heavy seas, the boat capsized, and they were not able to grab a hold and were lost at sea.
This story had a profound effect on me because of my own experience when I was that age. Like many of us, I thought I was “bulletproof” and could get away with risky behavior. And somehow by sheer luck I did. But when I heard about this incident, I couldn’t help but think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Just thinking about this tragedy made me “weak in the knees”.
My Dad’s Boat
Shortly after we moved into the house in Ocean Beach my Dad bought an 18-foot Chris Craft mahogany speedboat with a trailer. The boat was a Chris Craft Riviera named “Playboy” with a 327 cu. in., 300 HP Chevrolet inboard engine. On flat water the boat could do 60 mph.
18 Ft. Chris Craft Riviera
The Ocean Beach community had a small marina where he kept the boat. “Playboy” was the prettiest boat in the marina especially just after we worked on it all winter and re-varnished and re-caulked the hull and the deck. That was an annual project and a lot of work every year. These boats were designed for use on freshwater lakes, not for salt water. Every season we would take the boat back north, strip it down to “bare wood” and refinish the whole thing.
There was only one other boat in the marina that was more outrageous than “Playboy”. That was the Chris Craft Cobra owned by a guy from our hometown, Union, NJ, Pete Szpaichler. His nickname was “Spike” and he owned an auto body shop in town not far from the high school. He was a few years older than me and I didn’t know him very well, but I knew him by reputation.
Those were the times when all of the high school boys were into hot rods, most of which were more or less “junk” and needed a lot of work. Spike had a hell of a racket going with his auto body shop. He would let the kids work on their own cars in his shop and they would pay him to do so. Today with liability legislation, insurance and so forth this would be impossible. But in those days with the lax regulations he pulled it off.
At any given time, there would be seven or eight “hotrods” in his shop in various states of disrepair and the teenage owners and their buddies would be there every day after school working their butts off and paying Spike for the privilege. What a racket! I would see these guys in school, and they would brag, “Hey man, Spike lets me work in his shop,” like it was a status symbol. Idiots, they didn’t get it.
So, Spike had the 18 ft. Chris Craft Cobra with the custom metal flake gold paint job on the fiberglass cowling. He pulled it on a trailer with authentic wire wheels which matched the wire wheels on the 1955 pink Cadillac convertible he used to haul the boat.
18 Ft. Chris Craft Cobra
1955 pink Cadillac Convertible
It was a sight to behold! Spike was quite the marketing genius in his time. He had a lineup of teenage ‘would be’ drag strip jockeys paying him to work in his shop on their cars. Wow, what a scam.
Where is Spike today? I don’t know, but I bet he is either in jail or he’s living on his multi-million-dollar mega yacht in Georgetown, Bahamas laughing his ass off.
My Dad’s Second Boat
Pop on Sundancer
The name of this one was “SUNDANCER”. It was a 26-foot Shepherd mahogany speedboat built in Canada.
The Casino Arcade – Seaside Heights
When I was sixteen years old my first full time summer job was at the Seaside Heights boardwalk. I got a job in the amusements section at the Casino Arcade making change for customers for the pinball and skee-ball machines. The building also housed a fabulous old antique carousal. The carousal had a pipe organ in the center of the ride that was converted at some point to a mechanical device that played the organ continuously. It played one song all day and all night; Down Yonder. I would hear that tune every day all summer for sixteen hours a day. To this day sixty years later I know every note of down yonder by heart.
There was a dance hall on the second floor of the building that was open from six till midnight every night. I never went into the Casino Dance Hall as the age requirement was twenty-one. But every night I was entertained by the impromptu show going on just outside the dance hall.
Every night about seven-o-clock, four or five amateur harmonizers, would congregate under the overhang at the Casino Arcade in Seaside Heights decked out in their Italian Knit shirts, three quarter length black leather jackets and PINZANO Milano black Fedora straw hats for an a capella jam session. They would start tapping their feet in unison and begin with “Eh, doom bopa, DOOM BOPA, doom bopa, doo …” Then the lead singer would break in in a soprano falsetto joined by the tenors and baritone while the bass continued to maintain the tempo “Eh, doom bopa, DOOM BOPA, doom bopa, doo …” These guys were great and never failed to draw an appreciative crowd. Different groups would show up at random and compete for the crowd’s approval every night of the week. The jam sessions would continue for several hours until late in the evening. These were the original Doo Wop A Capella groups of the 1950’s. Oh and by the way “Eh, doom bopa, DOOM BOPA, doom bopa, doo …” is the lead in to Why Do Fools Fall in Love by Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers circa 1956. How the hell do I remember that? That was more than sixty years ago. Amazing the trivia that’s stuck in your mind.
During my senior year in high school after I had turned eighteen, I took the driver’s education course in school and finally got my automobile drivers license and also purchased my first car.
When I was looking for the first car, two of my friends, Tom and his older brother Don Demscack, both car enthusiasts, who were really into hot rods, introduced me to a fellow a few years older who lived nearby and had a car available that he was giving away! He had just been drafted to play football for the Chicago Bears, was moving to Chicago and had to get rid of the car. It was a 1932 Ford three window coupe without an engine that looked a lot like this one.
1932 Ford Three Window Coupe
He claimed he was willing to give the car away to get it out of his driveway to anyone that was willing to pick it up, work on it and transform into a hot rod. All we had to do was tow it away. I regarded this as a real bonanza and in my imagination the car would look something like this when it was done.
I really excited about this potential windfall and immediately went home to tell my Mom and Dad about the car and persuade them to let me tow it home. That really didn’t go over too well. My Mom went ballistic when I told her I wanted to tow it home and put it in the back yard to work on it. She told me in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want the house to look like a junkyard and her refrain was “What will the neighbors say?”
Needless to say, I was very disappointed and to this day I’m actually still disappointed. Over the years I’ve seen many of these “32” three window coupes at hot rod and car shows and I will always regret I didn’t just drag it home and deal with the aftermath.
What really surprised me is my father didn’t support my idea. He had all of the skills and the tools to accomplish the rebuild and it would have been a terrific father and son project as well as a great learning experience for me. He just remained silent and my mom won the argument. No hot rods at Tyler Street, period. I began to have some doubts about the story of the Stutz Bearcat in a basket that was oft repeated and the subject of so much family folklore.
1949 Cadillac Convertible – First Potential Car
When I finally took the driver education course and obtained my license at eighteen, I started to look for a used car I could afford. I found a 1949 Cadillac convertible. Mom insisted that I bring my father to check out the car. He came with me and boy was he negative. He found the car didn’t have any oil pressure and convinced me it was about to fall apart. That deal was nixed on the spot. Unfortunately, for whatever reason this story of the Cadillac with no oil pressure became a ‘thing’ with my mom and she would often repeat the story to friends and family.
She would say, “Skip was going to buy a car with no oil pressure, boy it’s a good thing his father was there to check it out and save him from himself”. The implication being ‘what a stupid kid’. Of course, the fact that he was a Ford guy and the Cadillac was a Chevy product had nothing to do with the reason he didn’t like the car from the outset and with a little investigation discovered it had low oil pressure. However, my enthusiasm for car shopping fell to a low ebb.
1954 Lincoln Capri Convertible – First Car
Dad then found a 1954 Lincoln convertible for sale and announced that this was the right car for me. It actually was a really nice car and a Ford product. And the oil pressure was OK. As I recall I bought the car for $200.
1954 Lincoln Capri Convertible – Skip and First Car
It was a nice first car and it ran well for several years without any major problems. But at eighteen years old you feel it’s time to make your own mistakes even if they’re stupid mistakes. This was never really “my car”. It was my Father’s car that he decided was right for me.
1957 Lincoln Convertible – Second Car
Out tail finned everybody, even my Dad’s Eldorado, with these fins. These were by far and away the biggest tail fins known to man! This car was also one of my father’s finds that he thought would be good for me. You always have to be skeptical when someone tells you “Hey, this is a really good idea…. Oh, and by the way, it’ll be good for you too”.
1957 Lincoln Convertible
Nevertheless, I bought the car and drove it several years before it eventually started to have mechanical problems and became too expensive to maintain.
1963 1/2 Ford Fairlane – Third Car
Another one of my father’s finds. This was the car I owned when I got married. It was also a Ford and have to admit It was a good one.
1963 1/2 Ford Fairlane
The Volvos – Just the Beginning
1968 Volvo 145 Station Wagon
This was the first car I actually decided to look for eventually located and bought for and by myself. It was actually a good decision and turned out to be a practical and economical family car. It was the first of many Volvo station wagons I owned over the next several years.
1968 Volvo 145 Station Wagon
The ultimate Volvo station wagon was the 1973 P1800 ES.
1973 P1800 ES
1973 Volvo P 1900 ES Wagon
I really liked the Volvo P-1800 coupe that was produced from the 1960’s through 1970’s. However, in 1972 Volvo introduced a modified version of the P 1800 which was a mini station wagon. Volvo called it the P 1800 ES Sport Wagon. I was shopping for my first sports car at that time and looked at many of the coupes but couldn’t find one in decent shape that I could afford. On one of my many car shopping excursions I stumbled onto a 1973 Volvo P 1800 ES. It was at the upper limit of my budget and I really liked the concept of the station wagon sports car, or as my father-in-law Herman called it, the Volvo speed wagon. The only drawback was it had an automatic transmission and I really felt a true sports car should have a manual. Nevertheless, I compromised and bought the car. And it was great fun to drive.
Volvo only produced this model two years, 1972 and 1973. The coupes were very common, but the P1800 ES speed wagons were and still are a rarity and always attracted a lot of attention.
I was able to purchase this car for well under market value and was skeptical about the low price. But desire overruled better judgement and I went ahead anyway. The car ran well and seemed OK but the old saying “if it looks too good to be true then it probably is” tuned out to be true.
Everything was fine for the first several thousand miles and then the transmission would periodically slip or fail to shift into a higher gear. I changed the transmission fluid several times and temporarily solved the problem. But after a few hundred miles the problem would reoccur. I brought the car back to the dealer numerous times and they fooled around with for a little while and returned the car ostensibly fixed.
Each time after a short interval the transmission problem reappeared. Out of frustration I eventually brought it to an automatic transmission specialist and again had the same issue. They charged me a couple of dollars, temporarily solved the problem and then just as the guarantee period was up the problem reappeared. So, this was why the car was so attractively priced!
Exasperated, I finally decided to fix it myself. I bought the Volvo Shop Manual and a 4×8 foot quarter inch thick Masonite board which I painted white on one side. I then brought the car to my parent’s house on Tyler Street since they had a two-car garage. I parked the car on one side and on the other side placed the Masonite board white side up. I removed the transmission and put it in the center of the Masonite. I then disassembled the transmission laying out the internal parts on the board exactly like the exploded view in the manual. The very last mechanism I disassembled was the hydraulic clutch located, deep, deep, way inside the transmission.
This was the very last thing to take apart before all of the parts were completely disassembled. And when I finally took it apart the problem was obvious. The O-ring that sealed the piston in the clutch body was completely deteriorated. It turned out to be a 95-cent part!
NOTE – Jill Johnston – this picture reminded me of what the garage floor looked like. I never understood why I always was fascinated with these pictures of order, but it could have come from when I visited that garage and say the transmission of my future car in pieces. I don’t recall it exactly, but always seemed to recall that memory.
For good measure, I also replaced the clutch plates which cost another fifty dollars. But the cause of the problem was the O-ring. I finally realized why the car was under-priced and also why the Transmission specialist didn’t fix it for their advertised guaranteed price of $29.95. The labor cost to totally disassemble and then reassemble the transmission was prohibitive. The bonus for me was I got to learn a lot about automatic transmissions.
Once I got the car back together there was never a transmission problem again for all the years, I drove it and for all the years Jill drove it after me. The transmission actually out lasted the car. The so-called unibody was notorious for eventually rotting out rusting from the inside out and ultimately the car disintegrated leaving only the engine, transmission and drivetrain intact.
1992 Toyota MR2
The Toyota MR2 was a great little car. It was a mid-engine design, perfectly balanced and was like driving a high-powered go cart. I had great fun driving this vehicle on the winding back roads in rural Pennsylvania. However, it was virtually worthless in the ice and snow. Really couldn’t drive it during the Pennsylvania winter.
1992 Toyota MR2
It had two other vexing problems. First, the cable for the emergency brake ran through a tube underneath the body that would get wet on the road and if the temperature dropped below freezing the cable would freeze making it impossible to release the emergency brake until it thawed out. The solution was to not use the emergency brake in the winter but to always remember to put the transmission in first gear. It took a couple of times getting stranded in the Air Products parking lot before I figured out the simple solution and got in the habit of using this parking option.
The other major fault with this car was the rear tires were a larger size than the front tires and tended to wear out twice as fast. I could only get 8 to 10 thousand miles before they needed to be replaced. And they were quite expensive. So, I got in the habit of buying rear tires with a high mileage guarantee. But I would keep changing tire dealers since they would only fall for this once before they refused to sell me new tires.
1999 Porsche Boxster
I had just received a pretty good end of year bonus from Air Products and went shopping for my dream car, a Porsche 911.
Over the span of a few months, I test drove several 911’s but they were all just a little bit out of my price range and the sellers were unwilling to budge on the asking price. I was poking around at the Porsche dealership in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania and this silver Boxster was just traded in on a new 911 coupe. It had 7000 miles on it and was essentially just broken in. It was also within my budget. I took it for a test drive and bought it on the spot. Never sorry I did. It was a great car and a lot of fun, but ………….
1986 Porsche Twin Turbo – Whale Tail
This is the one I really wanted, the “black on black” twin turbo whale tail, but alas it wasn’t in the budget.
1986 Porsche Twin Turbo
This car only had 4500 miles on the clock and was reported to have been owned by Lonnie Smith. Not my buddy Lonnie Smith in Houston but Lonnie Smith the baseball player who originally played for the Philadelphia Phillies. The asking price was $80,000. I test drove the car and it was awesome. It was essentially a street legal race car. However, the car had a disconcerting glitch; turbo lag. Turbo lag occurs when you hit the accelerator hard and momentarily the car doesn’t respond and then about a second later the turbo kicks in and launches you into outer space. Well that’s what it feels like! A good thing I didn’t get this car or I probably would have killed myself with it. The Boxster was enough car for me. But when I see one of these on the road I still …
Porsche 930 Turbo
I found the following posted on internet under the heading “the ten most deadly cars”.
“There was a time when the Porsche with its even more precise handling, and throttle lift mid-corner sent you backward into the weeds. When the turbo was added, you got a car whose potency was matched only by its lethality. In the right hands, the Porsche 930 Turbo was sublime, however, the slightest errors in high-speed cornering often meant you wouldn’t get a chance to try again.” Guess I was right about the Porsche twin turbo!
I can’t remember his actual first name, but “Baby” Wade was a small cocky little bastard with a huge attitude. His buddy, Roy Woodton, was a physically big more mature guy built like a fireplug. Between them they devised a scheme to intimidate usually the smaller shy white kids to hand over their lunch money each day to avoid getting beat up. “Baby” Wade was the mouth and Woodton was the enforcer. I just tried to avoid them as much as possible.
EPSON MFP image
Ronald “Butch” Boyko was a big white kid. A bully himself. I don’t know how Butch and I started to hang out together but we did. One day on the way to the school cafeteria, Butch and I went into the Boys Room. The only two other guys in there were “Baby” Wade and Roy Woodton apparently just hanging around looking for opportunities to expand their protection racket. Butch and I ignored them at first and went about our business. But soon the little punk, Wade, made his pitch. “Hey white boy, gimme your lunch money or we gonna kick yur ass”.
EPSON MFP image
I replied, “Don’t have any lunch money”, but Butch told them “Yeah, you gonna kick ass and take our money? Then come and get it”. And it was on, Boyko with Woodton and me with “Baby” Wade. I really wasn’t a fighter, but I had no choice; too late to talk our way out of this. Boyko was getting the upper hand with Woodton and when I got in a good shot to the midsection Wade winced and doubled over, they both quit fighting and made a quick exit from the lavatory. I thought it wasn’t over though and we would surely be ambushed on the way home from school that day. But no, we made it home without incident.
However, about a week later after gym class when I went into the locker room to shower and change into my street clothes there was a whole group waiting for me including Woodton, Wade and about six or seven others. I knew I had an ass kicking coming my way, so I just covered up and let it happen. The gym teacher heard the ruckus and a few minutes later came into the locker room and broke it up.
Once I cleaned up, he took me into his office and tried to get me to explain what was going on in there. I told him nothing was going on just a little misunderstanding, that’s all. He kept up the interrogation, but I refused to tell the whole story. I just clamed up.
The next gym class we had wrestling. I was matched with a white guy about my size and weight and was waiting on the sidelines for the bout to begin. Wade and Woodton came up behind me and started to give me tips on how to take this guy down. Suddenly they were my newest best friends. I don’t remember how the match turned out – I probably lost, but the advice from my two new buddies was well taken.
Afterward I reasoned that since I didn’t squeal on these guys about the ass kicking in the locker room, I earned their respect, or something. Anyway, I didn’t start hanging out with Wade and Woodton, but I didn’t have any trouble with any of the badass black kids after that. And no one ever approached me for my lunch money again. Honor among thieves, I guess. I was starting to learn how to deal with these guys. Mouth shut, ears open, a keen sense of situational awareness and become the master of the art of slipping away at the first signs of trouble. Once I perfected it this skill served me well in adulthood when I started to travel extensively outside of the US to some pretty unsavory locations.
I also learned another thing during those years in junior high. The students, primarily the black kids, but some whites as well, were well armed. I never saw a switchblade knife until I entered the seventh grade and what in the hell was a gravity knife anyway? A gravity knife is a switchblade without a spring. The blade is exposed by flipping the knife with your wrist, so it locks open. These knives are for one purpose only, intimidation as a prelude to knife fights. The first time I ever saw an actual pistol was in a kid’s locker in that school. I quickly determined that after school detention was to be avoided at all costs. It was like an armed camp in there! You could get into serious trouble in a heartbeat.
Whenever I misbehaved, I mean seriously misbehaved, which was fairly often in my grammar and high school years, my parents would always chastise me and try to scare me straight with the same idle threat, “If you don’t behave, we’re going to send you to reform school”. Funny thing is I already regarded this as reform school, especially Junior High. I mean how bad could reform school be compared to this kind of bullshit?
The Talk – John Derbyshire – written after the murder of two young British tourists in Sarasota, Florida.
The essay was written by a journalist for the National Review. In this day and age of hypersensitive political correctness he was deemed a racist based on the ideas he put forth in this essay and was fired for publishing this piece. I won’t pass judgement on that aspect, but I will say the essay is a pretty accurate representation of my personal experience in junior high and high school. And I’ll add that I’ve followed his guidance, especially the points outlined in items 10a thru 10i, in my encounters with people of various ethnicities and backgrounds in my travels where I’ve frequently been in the minority. I’ve survived unscathed thus far and so regard it as sound advice.
NOTE from Jill Johnston – I have not included the excerpt here due to the radical views within the piece and do not want to spur any connection between this post and John Derbyshire, however, if interested, the actual article piece can be found here.
When I was at my first full time job at Heller Machine, an old toolmaker I worked with told me a story that described his take on racial issues. The truck driver for Heller Machine Tool company, Fritz LaRue, was a Hattian immigrant. One day I mentioned to the old toolmaker that Fritz seemed like a pretty good guy. He said, “Yeah he’s a good guy when he is around here, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in that under other circumstances.” I asked, “Like what other circumstances?” He then told me the following story. He said, “If you’re in a situation where it’s you and a black guy, that black guy will bend over backwards to be friendly. If a second black shows up that friendly attitude will be cut in half. And when the third one shows up, they’ll start telling you what to do.”
I hadn’t thought much about that tale for many years, but recently here in Fernandina Beach, Florida I went down Main Street some distance out of town to buy some new clothes, a shirt and pair of shorts. I didn’t have a car at that time, so I took the Trolley that makes a circuit around the island. It was a brutally hot Florida summer day so after I purchased the clothes, I went to the adjacent park to sit in the shade of a small Gazebo and wait for the trolley. As I was sitting there, and older black guy showed up and sat down near me. He smiled and we exchanged the, “How you doing today?” courtesies. We had a short friendly conversation and just sat back and enjoyed the shade.
A few minutes later a second old black guy showed up and the two of them started talking and I was basically ignored. We briefly made eye contact and I smiled and gave a friendly nod. It wasn’t returned. That was okay with me. No harm no foul.
A while later a third black guy approached on a bicycle. An old fat tire bike that was pimped out in a garish fashion. It had more lights and stuff dangling off it then you could shake a stick at. It reminded me of a pimpmobile. Well he got off the bike and engaged in conversation with the other two black guys and completely ignored me as now did the other two. Which was okay. But as time passed, the environment became increasingly tense.
There was a feeling that came over the Gazebo that was hard to describe, a certain tension in the air. I finally decided I better not stay any longer, picked up my package and wandered out to the street corner to wait for my ride. Fortunately, it came a few minutes later and I left. On the way back to the Marina, I thought about that conversation with the old toolmaker at Heller Machine and Tool nearly fifty years ago. I also thought about Derbyshire’s rules no. 4 and 10e.
Rule No. (4) The default principle in everyday personal encounters is, that as a fellow citizen, with the same rights and obligations as yourself, any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship.
Rule No. (10e) if you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.
Some might think of me as racist for the strategy I employed that day but they would be wrong. I’ve followed Derbyshire’s rule No. 4 in many encounters in my worldwide travels as my first reaction, or as he calls it the default position, and it has served me well. I also follow it with the southern rednecks I encounter here in Florida all the time. So far so good, it’s kept me out of trouble this far.
My Take on the Talk
This essay by John Derbyshire, particularly in today’s hyper politically correct environment, was widely viewed as a racist rant. I personally didn’t see it that way. From my experience, it is perceptive observation and practical advice. However, I do take issue with some of his points that reek with British sarcasm (items 13, 14 and 15) and I have no references for mean intelligence cited in item 11. I presume these are the items that provoked the most ire from his critics.
An Engineer’s Take on Racism
A few years ago, I read an interesting non-fiction book by Tracy Kidder titled “The Soul of a New Machine”. Kidder, a professional author, observed a group of engineers for a full year at Data General Corporation as they developed a new state of the art supercomputer. Data General assembled a team of top engineers to develop the breakthrough technology. The group consisted of hardware and software specialists and was comprised of both males and females and also reflected a diversity of ethnic backgrounds.
The group included Caucasian, Asian, East Indian, and Afro-Americans. The group wasn’t selected for diversity but for their individual capability. During the year it took to complete the project, Kidder made an interesting observation. He drew a comparison between the engineers thought process with their product development and relationships with each other with the binary computer language they were working with. He imagined the binary language as an accurate reflection of the engineers’ thought processes; that is zero and one, or on and off. Correct answers equaled on and wrong answers equaled off. When individual members of the team consistently got right answers they were fully accepted and maintained their status as valuable members of the team. But if they got the wrong answers they were excluded from the team without exception.
I’m not a software engineer, but from my experience as simply an engineer his observation was accurate. As Tracy Kidder correctly pointed out, engineers, by instinct and training, have a very strong inclination to regard all things in binary fashion, forming our opinions based purely on logic. We judge both ourselves and others this way. If others consistently come up with correct answers about things that we have previously considered and thought through, they are highly regarded. If they come up with wrong answers, they are disregarded or ignored. This characteristic, for better or worse, is our primary criteria. It’s not dependent on race, color, creed, religion, nationality, feelings or any other of a myriad of social differences. It’s a judgement based purely on reason and logic. This principle applies to all kinds of behavior, not only mathematical and scientific questions. It applies to what is generally regarded as acceptable and normal patterns of behavior as well.
On my final annual review the year, before I retired from Air Products, my boss gave me excellent marks for on the job performance but also told me I had one problem. He said that when I tell someone something and they don’t listen to me I never speak to them again. I stared back at him and said, “So what’s your point?”
I thought about his comment afterward and had to agree. I’ll generally talk with anyone and I always try my best to be cordial and polite, never rude. But if I judge they are not open to a rational discussion, just want to argue for the sake of arguing, are totally illogical or otherwise generally a pain in the ass I won’t waste any more time. I follow my dog’s example. She takes a shit, kicks a little sand over it and moves on.
Long Story Short: A Collection of Stories by Hal Gunardson 