241007 Things I Miss

This post may be longer than my usual posts.

The list is random, no weighted values, I just wrote down the memories as they come to mind.

Round Table pizza in Rancho Bernardo, California was the best pizza anywhere and Kevin and I along with our coworkers would gather there with several different topping pizzas and pitchers heavily laden with beer on tap. As the British would say, “It was a jolly good time.”

Working on the flight deck of the USS Kitty Hawk during operations off the coast of Vietnam. Despite working 12 hour shifts, there was action all 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Repairing aircraft and launching them was hard work, but also fun for me. Off my shift and in my sleeping compartment, I could see the work going on up on the flight deck. The cameras watched everything on the flight deck every hour of every day and night. Seeing the F4 Phantoms launch at night using full afterburners lit the night sky up from launch until they gained enough altitude when they shut off the burners.

Japan was my favorite place to visit. For some reason I felt I was home there. I made one trip on the train to Tokyo. It was easy from Yokosuka to Tokyo because the signs were in English. From Tokyo back to Yokosuka there were no signs in English. I finally saw a young girl and asked if she knew which train was going back to Yokosuka? She didn’t understand English, but she led me to a ticket booth and a clerk that understood our language. I got on the train and I was the only non-Japanese person on the train car. They all wore facial masks, while I had none, so they stared at me. I suddenly had to sneeze, before I could get my handkerchief to my face. That was an oh shit moment. For a moment I thought they were going to throw me off the train while it was moving.

Singapore was a place I had long wanted to see but never dreamt I would see. I knew the Raffles hotel was the gathering place for British officers and aristocrats for cocktails and fine dining. In the lazy afternoons before WW-2, the officers would sit out under the shaded veranda to have drinks. The Raffles hotel created the Singapore Sling cocktail for those officers. My first liberty off the ship in Singapore, I headed for the Raffles hotel, sat under the covered veranda and had my fill of Singapore Slings. My dream had come true and it was better than anything I had imagined.

Living in Coronado, California. We had a huge apartment that was a five minute walk from the beach on the Pacific ocean side and a 15 minute walk to San Diego bay. We went out walking along the beach or the bay every night. It was one of the great times in our lives.

Being strong like I was when I was far younger than I am today. Being able to sleep for several hours at a time without waking up every 2-3 hours.

Most of all, I miss having Joyce in my life. I miss the hard times living in an efficiency apartment a mile from the naval technical training center. Living without a tv set and barely having enough money to live on. It turns out that the difficult times were the best of times because we had to pull together to make things work.