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Sharp As A Serpent’s Tooth!

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Could We Start Again, Please?

My favorite two Broadway shows have always be HAIR and Jesus Christ Superstar. I came of age in the rock-saturated 1960s and 1970s. When both the above albums were released, I bought them. I still have them. Although their cover jackets are beaten up and held together with tape, the vinyl within remains pristine. I still play them. I still sing along. I still know most of the words by heart. My fantasy has always been to have a role in either one or both of them. But what are the chances, right?

Late one evening in December 2018, I got a Facebook message from the owner/director of Amelia Musical Playhouse, a local theater company where I’ve done some acting. All members of AMP, as we call it, are volunteers – cast, musical pit, stage crew and lights crew. The question I got from Jill Dillingham was straight and to the point: “How would you like a part in Jesus Christ Superstar? We’re doing it for three weeks in April. Rehearsals start in January.” I couldn’t reply fast enough: “Are you freaking kidding me? It’s been my dream!”

Me as Peter the Apostle!

I landed the part of Peter, the Apostle. The rest of the cast that got chosen for the roles of Jesus, Pilate, Judas and Mary Magdalene, and even the minor roles and chorus, were amazing. Their talent was almost unbelievable. It was such an honor being onstage with them. Getting to sing the plaintive duet, “Could We Start Again, Please?” with the actress who portrayed Mary Magdalene was bittersweet, especially having come right on the heels of Peter’s screaming denial that he even knew who Jesus was, followed by Mary’s gentle chiding of Peter for having done so.

By the time the show opened after three months of sometimes grueling, yet loaded with fun and silly antics rehearsals, we were a well-oiled machine. Every show went off without a hitch to a sold out auditorium every night. A couple of years before, I’d seen the show put on by a large company in Jacksonville, Florida. Although on a smaller scale and working with an entirely volunteer company, I think ours was on a par with it. And from comments we heard from other folk who’d seen the Jacksonville production, so did a lot of other people. But best of all, it was like going to a rock concert every night with all your friends. The atmosphere and chemistry among the cast was electrified. We couldn’t wait for the final show.

One of the show’s big hits with the audience was the Last Supper scene that opened Act II. Crew members and stage setters had built a long table with a faux , rumpled table cloth. Before the curtain opened, Jesus and all the Apostles took their seats at a table covered with plates and wineglasses. All of us assumed the positions of Jesus and all the Apostles depicted in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, The Last Supper. Every night when the curtain rose on that scene, we had to wait a few moments for the laughter, applause and photograph taking to stop before launching into the comical number, “The Apostles Song.” By the third time we’d sang it at the end, all of us, except Jesus and Judas, were merrily “drunk” and slurring our way through the lyrics.

Jill isn’t a fan of reprising shows. The exception being Rocky Horror near Halloween and Scrooge in December. But this time, she decided to make an exception. The show had been so popular that a reprise was demanded. We were ecstatic. It was only going to be a short, three day run leading up to Easter this year, but we still couldn’t wait to do it. Rehearsals were set to begin in late January. Almost the entire cast was coming back. That first rehearsal or two was like a family reunion. Most of us remembered our parts and routines, which made it even more fun.

And then Covid-19 came along and put an end to it all. No more practices because indoor activities, especially on a crowded stage, would be foolhardy. Plus, for awhile here in Florida, all such activities indoors or even outdoors were banned. The word deflated doesn’t even come close to how we felt. Jill kept pushing back the date. But that date would come and go and have to be pushed back again. We were running out of time. The professional version of the show is set to go on the road again in the early fall. Once that happens, any performances of it by other groups is barred by the contract. Bummer, dude. We thought that was it but we kept praying we’d somehow find a way.

And then it happened. What about a performance outside under the stars? We could practice social distancing and even wear masks, which would add even a little more comic relief. Jill’s husband, Greg and some of the crew set about building a large outdoor stage, lights, pit and all, not only for Jesus Christ Superstar but other shows for the time being. Two weeks ago, we opened to a packed “house” in the big lot behind the theater. All week long, we’d been besieged by violent thunderstorms. There seemed to be no end in sight. Strangely enough, the skies always cleared just before final dress rehearsals. We crossed our fingers and held our breaths. Some prayed for cloudless skies with the moon shining down. I prayed for rain because, in Florida, if you pray for sunshine you generally get the opposite.

So, we defied the odds and held an open dress rehearsal for anyone who wished to attend. The turnout was wonderful. On Friday and Saturday nights, for the regular shows, had we been inside, we would’ve almost packed the house. Not a bit of rain on either show, although one evening it stopped not long before the show started.

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought a new reality to the lives of us all. The stage on which we live has been radically altered. An entire world that for thousands of years has done things one way for the most part, has had to learn to do things another way, and oftentimes, in radically different ways. The human touch and intimacy upon which we thrive as social creatures, has been squelched. The new normal is six-feet apart, masks and no hugging or touching except among close family members, and sometimes not even then. The handshake has been replaced, when it happens at all, by the elbow bump.

Worst of all, the stress and strain is starting to get to us. We weren’t meant to be solitary creatures. Regardless of one’s views about evolution of the species, we’re herd animals. That’s for a reason. There’s safety in numbers. But no longer. Now it’s the herd that the predator turns its attention to and runs amok in. The solitary members are safer. We find ourselves bewildered and depressed. Anxious. And yes, even angry. How long will this go on? When will we be able to return to normalcy? What kind of lasting effect with this terrible plague have on us as human beings and social creatures?

We don’t have the answers to any of this. We can only guess with the best advice modern medicine has to offer. In the meantime, every day finds us praying for sunshine. For relief. For the comforting reassurance of the human touch – the embrace of those we love and cherish. Every day finds us pining for a do-over. Just like Mary Magdalene and Peter did in Jesus Christ Superstar.

Could we start again, please?

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William, King of the Blues

We hear so much about bullying today and the devastating effects it has on its victims. It’s good to keep in mind and to be watchful for, ready to intervene when we see it. I wish it had always been that way. I wish it had been something so front and center in people’s minds when I was growing up. Bullying was just something that happened, something you endured and, so regrettably, something so many kids like me engaged in if not actively, but passively by our silence and fear of speaking out. I think about a kid from my school days sometimes. What I remember almost makes me cry.

His name was William. He attended the same junior high as I did. He dropped out sometime before high school and slipped off our radar screen. It happens more than one cares to admit. William was a skinny kid who didn’t have any friends that I recall. Looking back, I think it’d be safe to say that William was somewhat mentally challenged. And, still looking back, it would be painfully honest to admit that we kids William tried so hard to fit in with were cruelly indifferent to his attempts at friendship.

It’s one of those things that gnaws the edges of your mind bloody sometimes at night as an adult when you look back with the wisdom of the years and realize that the sins of omission are as equally odious sometimes as the sins of commission. I had been bullied in my own childhood, much of it by my father. As such, I found it easier and safer to hold my tongue when I saw other kids being bullied rather than speaking up and taking the risk that I’d draw the ire of the bully.

It was cowardice and it still haunts me when I think about it. It wasn’t until I’d left home and joined the Navy and became a medical corpsman that I finally found my courage. But I digress.

William refused to be outdone by his shortcomings. Every day, in his own way, he was out there gamely making another pitcher of lemonade from the basket of lemons his life had been dealt. And there we were, his classmates, always making sure his basket was brimming. Most of us never set out to be willfully and wantonly mean to William. It generally doesn’t begin that way when kids single out another kid for teasing. But nevertheless, meanness and cruelty is the outcome.

William had his own way of coping. He carried around an old guitar that was missing a couple of strings most of the time. As I slip ever closer to the edge of my life, I find myself contemplating sometimes that the two strings absent from William’s pawn shop guitar were eerily emblematic of the things missing from his life. The couple of things that would’ve given his life the happiness he sought, like the the way a couple of strings would’ve made his guitar whole, were respect and acceptance. William got neither from his classmates. All he had was his raggedy old guitar and the chords of loneliness he knew by heart.

He couldn’t even tune the guitar but that didn’t matter to him. He was proud of the instrument and carried it with him everywhere, including school and the classroom. I can still seem him strolling down the road with his guitar slung across his back. Denied admission to the world of his classmates, William created his own world. In it, he was blues and guitar legend B.B. King. In that world, there were no handicaps, no classmates who shunned him, only a stage, blues licks on a fine guitar and throngs of adoring fans clamoring to be near him.

William practiced his art as diligently as he could and the only way he knew how. He’d strike a few discordant notes on his guitar, croak a few lyrics, then end his performance with a flourish, strumming the strings loudly while leaning forward to face his audience and growling, “B.B. Kinggggg!”

William was only too happy to perform upon request. Someone would walk up to him and say, “William, play some B.B. King.” He’d light up like the pep rally bonfires he never attended, unsling his guitar, render his performance and always end it the same way: “B.B. Kinggggg!” It never dawned on William that he was being made fun of. And it never dawned on us that our taunts were music to his ears. In his mind, he was the great B.B. King and we wanted to see him perform. He had center stage and an audience, if only for the moment.

The years passed and William faded from our lives like the lyrics of a forgotten song. We all grew up and went our separate ways and mostly lost track of each other, the way kids from small towns often do. One day, when I was home on leave from the Navy, I was talking with a group of friends about who was doing what. I happened to ask whatever became of William.

The silence following my question was soul shattering. The answer was worse. “He hanged himself from a pecan tree in his backyard one afternoon,” one of my friends finally said. I couldn’t have felt more guilty had I purchased the rope and fashioned the noose. And I know that my buddies felt equally guilty. We’d all taken part, in one way or another, in shoving William off the stage with the rope around his neck. No one said anything else about him. I never heard his name mentioned again that I can recall.

A wise man once said that we should make a list of all those we’ve harmed and be willing to make amends to them. Sometimes, that means apologizing to the dead, to the Williams of this world whose mortal remains lie in graveyards, some in places we’ll never know. If we’re to be forgiven our trespasses, we have to atone for them.

It’s too late to stick up for William. But it’s not too late to honor his memory by sticking up for others when we see them being bullied or victimized, even if doing so puts us in bad stead with others. Even if it hurts. It’s the only way to even begin to erase the stain of our own flaws.

I’m so sorry, William. I wish we could have a do over. I surely do. I hope you finally got the gig you wanted but never got here on Earth.

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Busted at the hootchie-cootchie Show

I was chatting on Facebook messenger with an old high school friend a couple of days ago about the golden era of our youth. It put me in a nostalgic frame of mind about childhood and teenage events that are worth remembering. One of them, in particular, is a standout because, fifty-two years later, I still can’t think about it without laughing.

A fair came to my little hometown every year in the fall, just as the evenings were starting to get that apple crisp feel to the air. The smell of candied apples, cotton candy and various other goodies frying in vats of grease permeated the air with scents that still make my mouth water.

We rode the double Ferris wheel with our girlfriends and clumsily made out when the cars stalled at the top as the operator paused it to let on more passengers below. We hooted like crazy people as we crashed into each other headlong in the bumper cars. And some of us puked our toenails up riding an insane contraption call “The Zipper,” which was as high as a single Ferris wheel but flipped you upside down and in mad circles as it hurtled around its course. Afterward, the ride operators collected all the change than fell from everyone’s pockets onto the canvas tarp beneath the ride.

We tried our hands at the games of chance operated by sketchy looking men and women who knew a rube when they saw one but who had no qualms about taking your last dime while you tried, in vain, to win your gal the five-foot tall pink panther.

But there was one attraction tucked away in a dimly lit corner of the fairground, known colloquially as “the hootchie-cootchie show.” There was always a throng of grinning men crowded around it as the barker titillated the crowd- a word that best describes the goings on inside that grubby tent – with wild tales about Hawaiian princesses and other exotic “ladies” who would get “bare nekkid” and show all for any man not too shy to ante up his four bits and step inside.

Raging hormonal teenage boys who were spotted in the leering crowd were chased away by deputies and roustabouts. As we stood safely away and watched the men come out after each show and noting their even bigger grins and shoulder slapping, we schemed ways to get inside. Alas, we could never sneak past the watchful eyes of the authorities as we tried to just blend in with the men herding into the tent and we yearned for the day we turned eighteen and could gain admittance.

One afternoon when the fair was in town and we were fourteen years old, a group of us were playing a game of sand lot baseball on a vacant lot in our neighborhood when one of our buddies, whom I’ll just call Johnny B, began blabbering about the hootchie-cootchie show, where women got “butt naked and even showed their lady parts.”

Now, Johnny, who was known to be an aisle short in the smarts department, told us this as if it were some divine revelation he’d just been given. After a few moments, he finally got his wits back enough to go on with his story. Johnny had an older brother named Earl who was a hood, as we called young ne’er do wells back then. The night before, Johnny B heard Earl bragging and haw-hawing with their drunkard and frequent jailbird of a father how he’d managed to sneak into the hootchie-cootchie show with his best friend that night, where they got to see the starring actress, billed as “Hawaiian Princess Lilly Lukianii.”

The plot involved passing two pints of Red Hurricane wine – a fearsome concoction that could turn a meek country preacher into a raving whirlwind of debauchery – to the toothless, tattooed man who guarded the rear of the tent against those who tried to slip in under the flap under cover of darkness. Properly bribed, the old wino would pretend not to notice.

” And guess what, y’all?” Johnny B confided. “Earl has a few bottles of Red Hurricane stashed in the garage. We could pilfer ’em and he’d never know!”

Early that evening, when Earl and his buddies piled into his old beat-up Chevy and went off for a night of cruising the Dairy Queen and Burger Chef parking lots to terrorize other guys and try to pick up girls, we swiped the wine and off to the fair we went.

The plan worked like a champ. “You kids get caught, I don’t know nothin’,” the already drunk rearguard told us as we handed him the contraband. We slithered under the tent flap and into the semi darkness and immediately recognized some of the town’s finest and most respected gentlemen. We crouched low in the back of all the men in the tent, which reeked of bourbon, aftershave and cigars, and waited for the show to start.

Moments later, the barker came out and announced that after a brief warm-up act from a couple of other “fine looking ladies,” the star of the show would perform. A few minutes later, Princess Lilly Lukianii sashayed on stage in a red silk robe, strutted around amidst hoots and whistles and proceeded to disrobe. She was tall, lanky, and blessed with the biggest bosoms I’d ever seen.

Priness Lilly bumped and grinded to tinny-sounding music as the din grew louder and more enthusiastic. She flowed to the edge of the stage, leaned over and pulled one man’s glasses off his sweaty face and proceeded to rub them on her bosoms. When she put them back on his face, he crowed louder than a horny rooster.

And then Johnny B spoiled it all. Incapable of anything softer than a whisper in a sawmill, he brayed out his dismay for all and sundry to hear: “God a’mighty! That ain’t no High-Waiian Princess, y’all! That’s one a them trashy boopsy gals that lives down yonder behind the cannery. My diddy says they’re looser than the wheels on a Piggly Wiggly buggy!”

And just like that, Deputy Tom appeared and shined his huge flashlight in our faces, mentally registering each and every one of us by name, address and phone number, and worse, parents’ names. One of my buddies bolted and slithered like a rat snake under the tent flap, vanishing into the night, howling like a siren.

Deputy Tom studied our stricken faces and smiled. “Boys,” he said. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a little standoff here. Now, think real hard and tell me, who was it y’all saw here tonight? “

“Nobody, Deputy Tom,” we said in unison, catching his drift. “We wasn’t even here.”

“That’s right,” he said, still smiling. “Now y’all go on. Git. Right now. You hear me?”

We turned around and slid beneath the flap and fled in terror. I’m sixty-six and I still haven’t squealed on those men. But I’ll tell you one thing. Folks would be real surprised if they knew who some of Princess Lilly Lukianii’s admirers that night were. And rumor has it, one of them never again took off his glasses except when he went to bed at night.

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So I Wrote A Novel

I’ve been writing since I was a high school kid. All the way through elementary school I was the kid who peered out the window and daydreamed about everything but the lesson plan of the day, unless it was reading or writing, which kept me in trouble with the nuns who taught me. I had conversations with myself and friends only I knew. When all the other kids were holed up in their rooms at night reading comic books, I was plowing through a set of junior encyclopedias my mama bought for us. Before I was in high school, I was in the major leagues, reading the upper level and adult encyclopedias. I sometimes wrote poetry. Okay, really bad poetry, but poetry nevertheless. My crowning achievement in poetry came one day when the nun who taught us in fourth grade, a sweet-natured one whose name I can’t recall, told us to write a poem about spring. When the other kids were writing the usual “Spring has sprung and fall has fell,” stuff, I used my overly fertile imagination and embarked on a stream of consciousness opus. When the sweet-natured nun read it, she said I couldn’t have possibly made it up myself and basically accused me of plagiarism. Wounded, I stopped writing until I reached high school.

I was in my junior year at Waycross High School in southeast Georgia when I took an English literature class taught by a tall, blonde, drop dead beautiful teacher named Elaine Thomas. I don’t think she’d been out of college more than a couple of years when she came to our school to teach. Like most of the other boys in her class, I was gobsmacked by her elegant beauty and poise, but, most importantly, the passion for teaching she bought to classroom. She was also a huge Peanuts fan and almost always had a poster of Snoopy on the wall. I was shy and introverted growing up so I tried to avoid getting called upon for lesson questions. But Miss Thomas, as we all called her, lit a fire in me with regard to literature. When I went to the school to pick my classes just before the commencement of my senior year, I saw that Miss Thomas was offering a creative writing class. I think I cut into the line to sign up for it.

Once again, still with no crack in my armor of shyness, I sat in the back of the room and tried to be invisible. The first day was just the usual introductory stuff – the lesson plan, reading lists, etc. But the second day changed my life forever. When everyone had taken their seats and the usual hubbub had died down, Miss Thomas told us to take out a sheet of notebook paper and write a one page story about anything we wanted to write about. I really wish I could recall now what mine was but it got Miss Thomas’ attention. The following day when she returned our graded papers, mine had an big underlined A on it. When the class dismissal bell rang, Miss Thomas told me to remain in the room for a few minutes. I’d been chewing gum during class that day and thought I’d been discovered and was about to be privately reprimanded. But Miss Thomas came to my desk and asked me to stand up. When I did, she lit up in a smile and her pretty blue eyes practically danced. “Joe,” she said, “you have a gift. Use it. Don’t ever let it go.” And I didn’t. I’ve been writing ever since, even spending several years during college and after college as a newspaper reporter where I honed my chops. Nearly fifteen years ago, the local newspaper editor here asked me to start writing a guest column about anything of my choosing. My column, Cup of Joe, ran for ten years. It was folksy and full of stories, some real, most of them embellished with figments of my still overactive imagination. I developed a large and enthusiastic following and it wasn’t long before readers started urging me to push the envelope and write a novel or collection of my stories. I opted for the novel.

I wrote my first one in a manic, burn the midnight oil blaze, period of six months about ten years ago. Friends read it and liked it but I didn’t. It just didn’t turn me on. I stuck it in a box in my office where it sits until this day. Five years ago, on a punishingly hot afternoon, I was laying up a stubborn patch of fiberglass on an antique sailboat my wife and I had acquired, when a song by recording artist Mark Knopfler wrote called In The Sky popped up on my play list. It’s about an old man who builds his own sailboat and sails all the over the world, bravely facing storms and raging seas but sticking to it for the beauty of the other days and places. When the song was over, I thought to myself, wow, what a great story that would make. And here we are, that story, eventually called A Mariner’s Tale, will be published in October, fulfilling a lifelong dream to become an author, write a novel and see it published. I had a pretty miserable childhood that left me with some nasty scars. I wear my heart on my sleeve. My literary idol, Pat Conroy, whom, sadly, I never met, taught me that it was okay to spill those emotions, feelings and memories onto the page in the form of prose. And that’s what I’ve done. A cynical and tragically afflicted old sailor building his own boat crosses paths with a tragically afflicted teenage boy and becomes his mentor as the two of them figure out how to be happy again. And so, here we are.

Writing a novel isn’t all that hard if you possess the tools to do it, the imagination to conjure up a story and the passion and discipline to see it through. Every time I sat down at my desk to write, I recalled Miss Thomas’ words to a shy teenage boy in the fall of 1971. “You have a gift. Use it. Don’t ever let it go.” Several years ago, I reconnected with Miss Thomas, who’s now Mrs. Stephens. I thanked her profusely for what she did for me. She demurred and said she didn’t do it, I did. But you woke the muse, I told her. You woke the muse. I drove up to Waycross, where she teaches creative writing at the community college, a few years ago and took her and her husband out to dinner. We keep in touch regularly. She’s invited me to come up and talk to her classes when this Covid-19 mess is over. I feel honored beyond words. I’ve taken to calling her Sensei, the word with which someone in the martial arts honors their teacher. And she is. My Sensei of words. She woke the muse that set me on the path to writing a novel. My dream. I can’t wait to hold it in my hands. And my advice to all young, or old, aspiring authors out there comes down to just a few words: Do it. Don’t wait. It isn’t really all that hard. If you have a good story to tell, the rest will come easy.

Thank you, Sensei. You get the first signed copy.

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Place as Character and Muse

In the evenings after supper, especially at this time of the year, I like to watch the sunset. I live on a barrier island in Northeast Florida. It’s twelve miles long and two miles across at its widest. The ocean is the ruling monarch of the eastern side of the island. The river, estuaries and marshes rule the western kingdom. The two are as different as night and day, as sunrise and sunset.

Although I love the bright orange ball of the sun rising from the ocean in the morning, the golden sand beaches with their ever-present voice of the ocean, whether sotto voce or forte, the clamorous seagulls and the market-fresh smell of brine and sea oats, it’s the other side that draws me like iron filings to a magnet.

The eastern side never raises its voice above a whisper. The river, creeks and marshes keep their own counsel. You must listen closely to hear their murmurings. But sunset there is a visual feast and the king of the west lays the table in bountiful abundance, the fruits of it in the colors of tangerines and plums, slices of peach and kiwi fruit. Here the scent from his kitchen is the sensuous, feral perfume of the marshes, a blend of raw oysters and dark pluff mud, of the racks of spartina that’s dragged ashore by the river, rotting and left to dry in the punishing heat, its smell like hay cured in molasses. The final slash of sunset is supper for the eyes, but the after show is the dessert, the creme brulee of the gods.

After the supper dishes are cleared away, I pour myself a tall glass of ice tea, load my big Great Dane, Harley, into the car and drive down to the marina, where I park and check the dock lines on my sailboat, then walk the two blocks along Estrada Street on the sand and crushed shell road to the plaza where the old Spanish fort of San Carlos used to be, where the bluff overlooks the river. Sometimes I take a lounge chair, other times I just sit on the heavy wooden bench a few feet from the edge. Many come to watch the sunset. Few remain in their seats to watch the after show. The colors spread across the gunmetal gray of the languid river, burnishing it like copper. The fire that was in the sky a few minutes earlier leaves low burning embers that continue to glow for almost an hour after the sun makes its curtain call.

The music is the chamber orchestra of night birds like the blue heron, who passes by on his way to his roost, hailing you with a hoarse call that sounds like quorrrrk, the chuffing from a passing pod of dolphins, their purplish-gray skin glistening in the dregs of sunlight, the drone of a boat far out on the river, the sudden popping sound of a sea trout taking its evening meal in the shallow water near the shoreline and the occasional maniacal laughter of marsh hens. A cool sea breeze flows across the island and feels like silk pajamas on your skin. You can almost taste the night, as sweet as sea salt and caramel ice cream. The channel markers come on and wink at each other in flashes of red and green.

Harley busies himself scenting where the wary brown marsh rabbits have been and anointing every bush along the edge of the bluff while I remain seated and take in the after show. It’s an almost holy experience. Its easy to lose yourself in it and, oftentimes I forget how long I’ve been sitting there until Harley finally tires of his adventures and returns to sit with me, leaning into me panting, his fur warm against my legs. Together we sit, an old man and his dog, until what light remains is scarce enough to see by. Then we get up and walk back down Estrada Street to the car and go home.

I come to my desk and write, capturing those final moments of the day before they slip away like the fleeting moments of daylight. In the Southern tradition of writing, we are bound to the land, to a sense of place that is vivid and alive. It is both character and muse in the stories we tell.

Pat Conroy began his opus, The Prince of Tides with these words: “My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.” As Southern writers, it’s a wound we all share. It’s also one we bear with pride. Its blood is the ink we spill on the page.

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A Memorial Day To Remember

Dutch Dillingham was about to do a presentation at work this week when one of those Facebook messenger posts popped up on the screen from someone he didn’t know. You know, the kind we all get from time to time and are reluctant to open lest we let a virus or hacker into the house. The message Dutch got was from someone in Boston claiming to be a genealogist asking for information about his family. Dutch is the son of Gregg Dillingham who, with his wife, Jill, own and operate Amelia Musical Playhouse here in Fernandina Beach. Like any of us would be, Dutch was leery.

“This sounds like scam material,” he recalls thinking right away. “I was like, hmmm, I don’t know what’s going on with this.” But the genealogist quickly provided documentation and really was who he claimed to be. And, as it turned out, he had a whopper of a story to tell. And, almost by serendipity, coming so close to Memorial Day. It’s one of those stories that’s almost too strange to be true. Except that it is.

Gregg’s grandfather, Charles Kollack Dillingham, a textile engineer from New Jersey, joined the Army during World War I. He served as a Second Lieutenant, 318th Infantry. He was an intelligence officer and was involved in numerous reconnaissance missions up close and personal with the German lines. In fact, Gregg has two items of his grandfather’s that prove just how close he got to the enemy and how close he came to injury or even death. One is his field glasses, which Gregg says still have visible drops of mustard gas beneath the lenses. The other is his wrist watch. He was wearing the watch in a battle somewhere in France when his unit got shelled. A piece of shrapnel hit the face of the watch and took the brunt of it, sparing Charles Dillingham damage to his hand.

But all these years, Gregg never knew another of his grandfather’s wartime possessions would appear more than a hundred years later. And that story begins with the peculiar Facebook message Dutch got.

Charles Dillingham was a member of Phi Psi, a textile fraternity. The organization had an annual meeting and awards dinner and ceremony at the Hotel L’eNoume in Boston in 1917, the same year Charles Dillingham went off to WWI. During his wartime campaign, he fought all over France. Gregg has a map of France with locations where his grandfather fought, from Dijon and Avalon to the north of France around Chantillon. One of those campaigns was in Arras, France. Don’t forget that detail.

After the genealogist had confirmed his identity, he explained to Dutch that he’d been contacted by a man in France who’d been metal detecting in an area near a forest. While doing so, his metal detector indicated the presence of a metal of some sort and he stopped and dug it up. It was a circular piece of metal that resembled bronze and appeared to have something written on it. But it was completely unreadable and didn’t seem to be anything significant, so the man didn’t think much else about it.

He had it for almost two years when he decided to clean it and see if he could make out what appeared to be written on it. What he found was amazing. The inscription on the metal, which turned out to be a medallion, indicated that it was bestowed up Charles Dillingham at that awards ceremony at the Hotel L’eNoume just before he shipped out to fight in WWI.

The genealogist gave Dutch a link and he was able to get in touch with Nicolas Carpentier, the man who made the discovery.

“He must’ve been so upset when he lost it,” Jill told me when she contacted me today about this rare find and amazing story. “He must’ve been really blown away and then, to have someone else find it.”

“I wonder how he lost it?” Gregg wondered. “Probably crawling through bushes running for cover.”

Nicolas Carpentier had hoped to come to the United States and present it to the Gregg family himself. Alas, because of the Covid-19 situation, he might end up just having to ship it, instead, Dutch told me.

Charles Dillingham had a distinguished career in the Army, going on to serve in WWII and attaining the rank of Lt. Colonel before he retired. One of the medals and ribbons he was received was the Croix de Guerre, awarded by France for individuals who distinguish themselves by acts of heroism involving combat with enemy forces. He was also awarded a Distinguished Service Cross by General John J. Pershing.

And now, a century later, one of his most prized possessions comes to the attention of his family on the cusp of Memorial Day. You can’t make up a story this unlikely or this good.

Happy Memorial Day, Lt. Colonel Charles Kollack Dillingham. Bravo Zulu, sir!

Oh, and Jill has one of those stories of her own to share. Remember the POW bracelets so many of us wore during the Vietnam War? Jill had two of them. Most of those POWs never came home. Jill recently found a Facebook site about these bracelets and made the discovery that of the two she had, one of her POWs was repatriated after the war. He lives in Texas. She has his name and date of birth. Next week, I’m going to help her find him. And since I’m a veteran of the Vietnam War era myself, it’ll be an honor.

The post A Memorial Day To Remember appeared first on Joe Palmer.

Welcome Fellow Seafaring Folk!

One afternoon in August five years ago on a day when it was hotter than the hinges of hell and so humid you could damn near swim through the moisture in the air, I sat in the cockpit of our sailboat, sweat pouring off my face and stinging my eyes as I labored over and cursed a section of fiberglass I was repairing. I had the stereo on \while I worked, listening to my favorite recording artist, Mark Knopfler.

I’ve listened over the years to every song he’s composed but while I sat there cooling off and resting, one came on that I’d never heard before. The title of it is, In the sky. There are a few bars of his skillful fingerpicking and then he segues into the introductory lyrics: “Are you home from the sea, my soul balladeer? You’ve been away roamin’, far away from here. Weathered a storm, your heart unafraid. Crossed every ocean, in a boat that you made …”

When it was over, I thought to myself, “Man, what a great story that would make.” And on that punishing hot afternoon, with the pungent smell of fiberglass in my nose and a bellyful of Gatorade, came the concept of what would become my first novel, A Mariner’s Tale.

The first title was different, but one day while talking with my dear friend and fairy godmother, Marly Rusoff, we decided that, although it was a catchy title, it didn’t quite capture the entirety of the story. “Jot down a few ideas for other titles and get back to me,” she said. And this is the one we ultimately settled on.

A Mariner’s Tale is a story that nearly all of us can relate to – one full of pain and sometimes despair and longing, but also one full of hope and triumph – a story about loss and redemption as the characters sort through the messes their individual lives looking for the answers we all seek:

How did I get here? Where am I going? How do I get there? How do I extricate myself from the pain of my past and present and find the answers I’m looking for that bring me peace and fulfillment? What does it mean to be in love and will I ever find it?

As a sailor, myself, I’ve learned that setting sail to a particular destination is rarely a straight line. It’s one full of waypoints and course deviations. You know where you are and you know where you want to be.

And sometime you can even see the place where you’re going, but, try as you might, you just can’t set a true heading to get there. The wind is fickle and shifty and won’t cooperate and so you must tack left and then right, constantly trimming your sails, sometimes having to tack so far port or starboard-left or right-that it almost seems as if the wind will take you so far off course that you’ll never get there.

Sailing can be blissful and easy, so soothing and gentle at times that you get lulled into feeling it’ll always be that way. And then a thunderstorm or squall comes along so nasty that it’s all you can do to battle your way through it. Sometimes the crack of thunder, the burnt smell of ozone from the sudden burst of lightning and the suddenly angry sea are so terrifying that all you want to do is flee below decks and hope it blows over.

But that’s a recipe for disaster. You have to keep your hands on the helm and your attention focused. You just have to take deep breaths and reassure yourself that you’ll eventually get through it. You just have to weather that storm. It’ll pass. They always do. They sometimes beat us black and blue in their passing. But eventually, the golden sun will break through those ominous clouds and, all of a sudden, the sea and wind are with you again. You trim your sails, make another adjustment and keep going. If you don’t give up, you’ll eventually get to where you want to be.

Life’s a lot like sailing. It’s about the journey. How we reach the destination is secondary.

Thank you for being my readers. Fair winds and following seas to every one of you.

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