March 21, 2004

• Okay, let’s try this again. If xTools screws this one up, I hope it’s prepared to withstand a tug-of-war between a rancor and a Balrog.

  
  

  Monday – travel day. Left the house early in the afternoon. Of course Monday was the only day of the week that had anything resembling sunshine, and I was sitting in the truck at 65 mph for a good three or four hours bound for Connecticut. Needless to say, I got to New London/Groton only to discover that the Submarine Force Museum isn’t open on Tuesdays. Mr. Murphy must be invisibly bumming a ride in the back of the truck…

  
  

  Tuesday – Submarine museum is a no-go, so I do Mystic Seaport instead. Being on board some of those 200-year-old sailing ships is like being in a Virginia coal mine, making me suddenly and coldly aware of the phrase “put your back into it.” I attend a seaman’s-song performance, hoping tensely for “Barrett’s Privateers”, but alas, the singer doesn’t know that one any better than I do…ah well. Now all of a sudden, just when I’m starting to enjoy myself, it starts to snow. Museum closes three hours early.

  
  

  Backup plan: Mystic Aquarium.

  
  

  Backup plan, implemented: aquarium closed two hours ago due to weather.

  
  

  Does the entire state of Connecticut shut down on account of a few lousy flakes? (Not that the flakes were few, mind you - it was a well-weighted blizzard by the time I returned to the hotel…)

  
  

  Wednesday – Submarine Force Museum at last. Toured the museum, toured the Nautilus, and attended a long, earsoring lecture by a retired admiral who likely stood pretty close to the bottom of his public-speaking class. At least one can force oneself to look halfway interested in these things. Rest of day: travel to Fall River, MA.

  
  

  Thursday – Battleship Cove! Seven hours traipsing through every accessible foot of every vessel on display. This time, I really paid close attention to the surroundings and got plenty of pictures of the interior of the Lionfish. No greater reference for submariner stories of the future…Aaaand Thursday night, 6:30 was da bomb. Roseanna, you weren’t kiddin’ about Lazer Gate! Too bad Fall River is such a hike from Boston, or that would be an ideal meet.

  
  

  Friday – Drove up to the Boston area, parked at Alewife, and then headed into town via the Red Line. Scouted out possible meet locations and now have a nice long list in the making – should see the Rebels well into next year. After that…have you ever had one of those days when there was absolutely nothing you really wanted to do, so you just rode every single mile of the nearest rapid-transit system? Well, that’s what I did for the rest of the day. In case you ever wondered, a complete round trip of every operational mile of the Boston subway will take upwards of 9.5 hours. (Possibly more during rush hour, as this is Beantown we’re talking about…)

  
  

  You know, in the seven hours it took me to peruse Battleship Cove on Thursday, I would often stop, sit down or lean against a bulkhead and think about what happened at that exact spot fifty or sixty years ago.

  
  

  March 18, 1944 or 1954, at varying times of day. 

  
  

  Was a Chief Petty Officer standing here yelling at running sailors? Were they having chow? Sharing pictures of their girls? Rushing past on their way to battle stations? Were they wincing, trying to keep their balance as the Massachusetts shook the entire ocean with gunfire? Were they tightly gripping bunk rails, their tension at an all-time high as the Lionfish squared off against an enemy submarine?

  
  

  It gave me the shivers, it did, to stand in the Lionfish‘s control room and listen to the simulated sonar pings wafting from the speaker overhead. How close was the heat? How close were the other bodies, breathing heavily and gulping as they awaited the torrents of terror? Were they muttering to themselves or joking nervously to stave off the fear? How fast did it flow when the chips and the depth charges were down?

  
  

  Of course the Lionfish was never depth-charged, but watching “Das Boot” in one sitting makes one numbingly aware of these things.

  
  

  It boggles the mind to think of what these people – submariners, destroyermen, battleship sailors, PT boaters all - went through to protect our borders. It breaks the heart to witness the irreverence of young people traipsing through the vessel, pissing and moaning about how they’d never want to live like this and making all sorts of snide remarks about the work that had to be done to keep the ship in operation.

  
  

  Well, gang, these ships and their crews were fortunate to stay in operation long enough that said ships could survive as museums, memorials to their comrades who weren’t as fortunate. Challenge yourself – go to a military museum some time, find a place to stand, and imagine what was happening at that exact spot sixty years ago. See what happens to your perspective.

  • 2:53 pm
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