Geezer

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Letters to Grandma: 13 August 1989

[Note: Read this post first for an introduction.]

I sent this letter a month before my first deployment, PACEX 89. I had just completed my first foreign port call at CFB Esquimalt, outside of Victoria, though I never updated Grandma on that visit. Probably because I remember so little of it.

You can see me already griping about sea life, but by the end of my tour I became quite attached to it. I simply didn’t care much for being the low man on the totem pole or living in a cramped, crowded berthing area all the time. You can also see my discomfort with California though, like life at sea, it would also come to grow on me.

I had forgotten that at this point I thought I would study law. That didn’t last too long (as did studying anything in college – besides the women!).

From:
J.M. Turner
USS Elliot (DD-967) OZ
FPO San Francisco, CA 96664-1205

13 August 1989 [age:20]

Dear Grandma,

Sorry it’s been so long since you heard from me. Last week marked the beginning of “refresher training,” three weeks of drills, drills, and more drills – the biggest test I’ve had since boot camp, I guess. The first week didn’t kill me so there’s hope. I must say I’ve learned (or “remembered”) more last week than I have since I got to San Diego.
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Letters to Grandma: 05 March 1988

[Note: Read this post first for an introduction.]

This was the first letter I wrote to Grandma while I was in the Navy. Reading it again, I found my description of boot camp surprisingly apt: “long days and short weeks.”

At the time I had no real clue what a cryptologic technician did but my guess wasn’t too far off. What I didn’t know at the time was before I would leave boot camp, my “A” school would be switched from Pensacola to Ft. Devens, MA. I still got to “P-cola” after A-school but it wasn’t as much time to visit Grandma as I had first anticipated.

1300 05 March 88 [age:19]

Postmarked Orlando, FL

From:
SR TURNER USN xxx-xx-xxxx
C096 DIV 3
RTC ORLANDO, FL 32813-6100

Dear Grandma,

Hello from Orlando! I am enjoying my stay here at Disneyworld, but after three weeks here, I still haven’t seen Mickey…

Funny, but even though I’ve been here for 3 weeks, it seems like yesterday when I was a civilian. The best way to describe it here is the days are long and the weeks are short. When I “pass in review” on April 7th, I’ll wonder where the time went.
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Letters to Grandma: July 10, 1981

[Note: Read this post first for an introduction.]

This is a lively letter, to be sure. Today I have no idea now what the “gimmie five” stuff was all about.

Charlie and Krista are my Florida cousins.

July 10, 1981 [age:12]
10:57 AM

Dear Grandma,

Thank you for keeping us noisy, bratty kids over at your house. I bet you’re glad to have the television all to yourself! Sorry we used up all your paper! Gimmie “five” from you and “five” from Krista and “five” from Charlie and send it all in a check down to my house.

Ha-Ha!! Well, “good numbers” to ya (love and kisses in CB talk) and I hope your headache has gone away (ME).

Your Grandson,
John Mark Turner [signed]

[below is an ink spot]
My Pen Busted.

[in big letters at the bottom]
FSU

Letters to Grandma

An unexpected package arrived in the mail for me today from my Aunt Nancy. In it was a bundle of letters I had written to my grandmother over the years. Aunt Nancy had collected them and mailed them out to their respective authors.

My aunt also included a note, part of which reads:

“In this age of electronic communications, there may not be much of a permanent record of your life. But, these letters are part of your history. You can enjoy them … or throw them away. I just thought you should be the one to make that decision.”

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Beach dreaming


We spent some time shopping for beach houses to rent this summer. Kelly’s partial to the Outer Banks but I felt drawn to the beach I knew best as a kid, Garden City, SC. I grew up a lot during those week-long summer stays at my aunt and uncle’s beachhouse. It was one of those homes (much like my grandmother’s) that I came to know quite well year after year, in contrast to the many homes we moved into and out of when I was a kid.

In spite of monster hurricanes it still stands, though it belongs to someone else now. The memories will remain, and one upcoming summer we’ll rent one of the homes just down the block from the one I used to know.

South Meck reunion

After my friend Mitchell Franseth invited me a few months back, I decided to attend the South Meck High School Class of 1987 reunion later this month. I left South Meck near the end of my junior year to move to Great Falls, VA, so I’m not officially a part of the class of 1987. Even so, I spent more time at South than I did at my last high school, Herndon High School in Herndon, VA.

My time at South Meck was a challenging one. I was a poor student, feeling hopelessly and embarrassingly lost in my math classes (due to my laziness coupled with my frequently-interrupted educational experience, I think). I was a geek before geeks ruled the world. The closest friends I had moved away before I did. My best friend attended a different school. It was also the first time that my older sister, Suzanne, didn’t attend a school before me, which I think tended to help me know what to expect. Charlotte in those days wasn’t as accepting of newcomers as it is today – certainly not as welcoming as the Northern Virginia suburbs where I’d soon live. I found it challenging at South to find my identity.
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Save the date. Every one of them.

Along with Kelly, I went to a volunteer luncheon at Conn Elementary yesterday. One of our favorite teachers, Nicole Jackson, sat down with us and chatted a bit.

“He was the cutest little boy!” she said of Travis as she told another volunteer how he used to play “peek-a-boo” with her as he passed through the hallways with us, not yet old enough to attend Conn himself.
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Bees’ baseball season ends

Yesterday Travis’s baseball season ended with a whimper when late afternoon storms rained out his last game. Though thunder rumbled and rain fell, I sat in my car next to the field, hoping against hope that some miracle would occur and the game would go on. Sadly that miracle never came, and my phone soon rang with a call from Kelly, telling me that the parents of the other Bees teammates had thrown in the towel. I was surprised at how sad that made me.

Kelly and I agreed that we will probably miss the games more than Travis will. There’s something magically simple about being on the ball field, where one’s only worry is the game itself. All is right with the world. There’s something especially magical about watching as our son progressed and improved throughout the season. As an assistant coach, I’ve been proud to watch as Travis and teammates came together as a team.

With a five-run limit before changing up, our coach wanted to slow down the runs, giving our players as many batting chances as possible. As the third-base coach, I would wave runners on for a double or triple but more often I would hold them at third.

I guess I’m still trying to stretch out the game, trying for one more hit for Travis, or one more goal for Hallie’s soccer game, or just one more after-game hug.

Every season ends. the players grow up and move on, and we’ll never live that moment again. It’s kind of sad, isn’t it?

Wikipedia’s article on the USS Iowa turret explosion

USS Iowa's turret two explodes


My meeting General Shelton got me researching some flag officers I’ve known. On the way I happened to land on the Wikipedia article about the 1989 turret explosion aboard the USS Iowa. The article is one of the best I’ve read on Wikipedia. It’s as riveting as a novel. The book about the incident, A Glimpse of Hell: The Explosion on the USS Iowa and Its Cover Up, is equally compelling, as this excerpt shows.

I was in the Navy at the time and I remember well this incident and the subsequent whitewash. It was a lesson to me that the term “military justice” will always be an oxymoron.

The USS Iowa turret explosion occurred in the Number Two 16-inch gun turret of the United States Navy battleship USS Iowa (BB-61) on April 19, 1989. The explosion in the center gun room killed 47 of the turret’s crewmen and severely damaged the gun turret itself. Two major investigations were undertaken, one by the Navy and then one by the General Accounting Office (GAO) and Sandia National Laboratories. The investigations produced conflicting conclusions.

via USS Iowa turret explosion – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Where I’ve worked: Applebee’s


A thread on Reddit about a restaurant customer leaving two pennies and a nasty note for bad service got me thinking I needed to blog about my time working for Applebee’s. Working as a server was the hardest job I’ve ever had and likely will have.

As I traveled the world in my previous jobs I was fascinated by the different ways different cultures pay their restaurant staff. In Australia there is no tipping as restaurant workers there get paid a full salary. Do you know what restaurant workers here in America get paid? Try $2.13 an hour. Yes, you can’t even buy a gallon of gas for that, but that’s a server’s base pay. The really sad thing is that that rate hasn’t changed since I waited tables at Applebee’s twenty years ago.
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