The only Saint I have ever known

Gram at 94. God bless her.

Dog Days

August, and waiting the past two weeks for some kind of rain. The hottest days of the year, where the air is thick enough to swim in and you sweat just sitting still outdoors. Seasons are my calendar. This hot slow season is one favorite of mine. Virginia is such a wonder ... the variety of flowering plants, trees, and shrubs is a never-ending delight, marking the weeks' passage like so many pages of a botanist's calendar.

Where else on earth do trees bloom in color to take our mind off the heat?










Purple Myrtle: This is an old tree and could use some judicious pruning. Someday.









White Myrtle: I planted this one myself a few years ago. It was three feet high at the time.










Smoke Tree: Took some to track this down. Wiki says it's native to one small Tennessee county. No idea how it got here but I am so glad it did. Blooms purple, turns to smoke by late Summer.











Hydrangea: What I'm told anyway. I call it "butterfly" or "popcorn ball" bush. Brilliant white buttery balls are actually painful to look at from the second story bedroom in early morning sun.

Next up: Sugar Magnolia (oh heavenly scent) ...

My Final Public Address

Remarks delivered to the graduating class of basic petty officer training, Yorktown Virginia 3 August 2007

Thank you. I am Master Chief Phillip Wolf and it has been my distinct honor and privilege to serve these past three years as the Rating Force Master Chief representing the Boatswain's Mate rating at Coast Guard Headquarters. I would like to express my appreciation to Captain Ewalt and Senior Chief Stein for this opportunity to address the graduates and guests of BM "A" School Class 15-07.

I don't know whether you knew this when you received orders to this school, but by now you must all realize just what you have gotten into. Besides delivering every Coast Guard mission by operating boats and cutters, Boatswain's Mates are also universally recognized by their strong leadership. This leadership is developed quite naturally by being placed in charge of people. Starting with your very first coxswain letter, or first bridge watch, you are going to be in charge of directing others to accomplish your mission.

I am retiring at the end of August 32 years after I joined the Coast Guard. In this, my last opportunity to take literally the Center Stage, I am going to claim my right as an old salt to take extra time to mention some people I have found to be important in my own career. I hope you will enjoy some of these stories as I introduce you ....

* * * * *

When I graduated boot camp and reported to BOUTWELL I hoisted my seabag over one shoulder and walked the length of Pier 36 in Seattle looking up at the superstructure thinking "What kind of Gods they must be who can drive such a massive ship" I soon found out. Captain J. C. Guthrie was a slim, grey, man with wrinkled crows feet around his eyes from gazing into a thousand sunsets at sea. He was ancient, about as old as I am now, and we were all pretty sure what the J. C. stood for.

I don't mind telling you that I quaked in my boondockers every time I had to enter the Cabin and approach the Old Man: "Captain, the hour of noon approaches. The officer of the deck sends his regards. Ship's chronometers are wound and compared. Request permission to strike eight bells and sound the ship's alarms and whistle."

If he ever said anything more than "Very well. Make it so" to Seaman Apprentice Wolf, I would have jumped out of my skin.

Underway he could be seen late on an evening watch standing over at the weather rail, fists plunged deeply into his great black bridge coat. I swear I saw the OOD one time bring him a position report at twenty hundred. Captain Guthrie looked at the slip of paper, up at the stars in the sky, back at the slip of paper, and finally at the Ensign: "That's about right."

* * * * *

Later, when I was in Alaska, I had a shipmate who would go snowshoeing with me up Douglas Mountain outside Juneau. We were up there one bright sunny winter day, taking frequent stops to enjoy the scenery as we climbed higher. About the third rest we could make out a single figure way down at the bottom of the trail starting his way up. On the next break he was closer, and we could see it was a tall, strong man making the motions of a cross-country skier. My friend turned to me and said, "Wouldn't it be a gas if that was the District Commander? I know he likes skiing."

Sure enough on the following stop, Admiral J. B. Hayes caught up with us. "Hello, Boys!" He boomed. "Say, did one of you happen to drop one of your gloves? I found this on the trail." "Why, yes, Admiral ... that is mine!"

So I like to tell the story of how the Commandant of the Coast Guard skied up a hill to give me back my mitten.

* * * * *

Senior Chief Boatswain's Mate Rick Hooper on PLANETREE up in Juneau didn't know my 22 year old face from Adam. But when I blew the engine on my Land Cruiser one frigid January day, this crusty Deck Chief towed it himself and let me use his garage and wood burning stove while I honed the cylinders and replaced the heads. Took me two weeks. Then, when I was getting out of the service in 1980, he strapped it up and boomed it over onto the buoydeck to take it to Seattle, saving me the drive down from Alaska. Senior is now the President of the Las Vegas Chapter of the Chief Petty Officer Association. God bless you Rick.

* * * * *

I went to college on the G.I. Bill and was out for seven years. When I returned in 1987 I was a thirty-one year old seaman on board another buoytender, BLACKHAW, out of San Francisco Bay. This was back in the day when you hauled chain across the deck with long steel hooks, swung a sledgehammer to beat steel shackles closed, and manhandled five foot cubed blocks of concrete sinkers by getting a gang together and putting your shoulder into 'em. I worked for a BM1 known as Doc Holliday. Now, Doc and formal education had never got along real well and he kinda resented a smart guy like me out there. I had to work twice as hard as the rest of the kids on Deck Force to even get a grunt of appreciation out of him.

I'll never forget Doc used to hold court on the Messdeck, with all his seamen and strikers gathered around soaking up his words of wisdom. One such day, the Captain himself walked on the messdeck and right up to Doc, wanting to discuss upcoming buoy ops. Trouble was, some one had seen fit to staple up the sleeves of his foul weather jacket. When the Skipper wanted to walk out forward and discuss arranging the deck, there was Doc trying to get his arms through the jacket without taking his eyes off the Old Man. He looked like he was wrasslin' himself. And losing.

But I will tell you this: Doc was a sheer wizard at arranging a bouydeck. We would load up in homeport and pack that thing tighter than a drum. Then Doc would look at me and say "Wolf, go get another shot and a half of that 3/4" chain. And another 12,000 pound rock."

I'd look at him: "Doc, ain't no way it's ever gonna fit."

"Jes do what I tell you and go git it."

And sure enough, it would.

Over a year out there on a dangerous buoy deck doing extremely hard physical labor, and not once did anyone ever get injured or hurt. Not even a scratch. Doc wouldn't let you out on his deck 'til he was good and sure you could handle it.

* * * * *

Skip ahead a few years. Now I'm on CHEROKEE, an old World War II Navy tug converted to a Coast Guard Medium Endurance Cutter. I'm a Second Class again, and one day I'm working up charts for a January fisheries patrol coming up out in the North Atlantic. I look up and Captain Tom Bernard is on the Bridge. "Afternoon, Cap'n" and I salute him.

"Wheels" he says, "I'm wondering if you could work up the mileage for me from the middle of George's Bank to Bermuda. I'll be in the Cabin."

"Sure thing, Cap'n" I says, dreaming of pink sand beaches and tropical drinks.

Six months later, we're back in homeport, D1 Patrol come and gone, back on the bridge doing charts for yet one more patrol. Captain Bernard again appears on the bridge.

"QM2, I been wanting to thank you for not telling anyone what I asked you about."

"I don't understand, Captain."

"About the mileage to Bermuda, remember? I asked LANT Area for a port break in Bermuda as a treat for the crew but they wouldn't approve it. And if you had told anyone what I was thinking, it would have spread throughout the whole crew. All it would have done is make people angry over something that just wasn't gonna happen. I have always appreciated that."

* * * * *

Oh, just a couple more. Let an old guy talk, will ya?

Master Chief Boatswain's Mate Diane Busey and Master Chief Lorie Pruitt, who sat on the Officer in Charge Review Board that certified me for Command. Master Chief Busey by all right should have been the first woman named Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard, and without Master Chief Pruitt's counsel, guidance, and advice I would have never made it.

* * * * *

Lastly, Master Chief Garry Moores.

A Son of Lubec, just like Hopley Yeaton, he was a legend along the Downeast Coast of Maine by the time I arrived aboard POINT HANNON as a Second Class, having spent three tours there already and now back for a second time as Officer in Charge. Master Chief Moores forgot more about shiphandling than I will ever know.

I was so proud when I learned I was the dock jumper. That's the crewmember who has to get to the fishing pier, or the blocks of granite at the quarry, or the seawall, or whatever, and handle the mooring lines when no one else is around. Then I found out it was also the crewmember you can most afford to lose in the drink because they're not much good at anything else.

Anyway, I would stand outside the lifelines on the bow, and if I so much as hopped Master Chief would let me have it. "Phil, if I can't get close enough for you to step across, just hang on and I will back up and make another approach."

I learned by watching the Master Chief that so long as you keep your screws in good water and know at any given moment just where your bow is and where it is moving, you can make a patrol boat do anything. When we would go anchor in Rogue Island Master Chief would take the back entrance. The coxswains back at Station Jonesport were afraid to take the 44 footer through there. I'd stand on the bow and point out the granite rocks just below the surface but I could have saved my effort really. Master Chief had grown up lobstering all along that coast and could probably draw you an accurate chart of every track strictly from memory.

Also, when we would bring a fishing trawler in for a catch seizure, and Master Chief Moores figured there would be press and tv cameras waiting, he maybe used way too much throttle pulling in to the Portland Fish Pier. But you also knew that at the very last moment he would kick the rudders, split the throttles, then jam them to All Stop in time to float, bobbing, right up to kiss the pier.

Driving home from Portland, if the weather was bad, we would take the inland route. There was only one bad stretch where if the bar was breaking on Petit Manan you had to go outside to get around. Sure enough one day I'm driving back and it is blowing fresh from the Sou'east and on the long Northerly stretch to Moosabec Reach we are taking swells on the starboard quarter. This results in steep rolls where the port rail is dragging through green water, and I am scared whether she is ever going to come back up.

I swear, right in the middle of one of these death rolls I hear a "thump. thump-thump!" The trap door in the deck from below flies open and Master Chief hops through up on the ledge, with a cup of coffee in his hand. A full cup of coffee!

"Master Chief, have they ever lost an 82?"

"Rolling over? Nah, she'll always come back up. The HANNON can take more than the crew can."

Of course, he had come up just to see what the heck I was doing to his ship. But I have never felt more reassured than seeing him with that cool, no-big-deal attitude. And the cup of joe.

Leaving Cape Cod Canal on a Sunday, having been relieved of SAR Standby in Woods Hole early, we are standing out to sea through Massachusetts Bay. There is this huge, gentle, groundswell, about three feet high and maybe fifteen, twenty seconds apart, coming right out of the Northeast. What that means, I know now, is that there is one big blow far far out to sea, and it is coming to get you.

This was the Great Halloween Storm of 1991. The book and movie called it The Perfect Storm. And we are just trying to get home.

Twelve hours later I am still on watch. The swells are now twenty feet high and six or eight seconds apart. I know they were an easy twenty feet because I had been logging them as fourteen and Master Chief chewed me out. We are abeam of Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire and Master Chief asked me if we should turn and try to make it in. "Master Chief, big as these seas are we don't dare turn sideways to 'em. I don't see any choice but to keep taking them right on the head."

When BM1 Westcott called me on the bridge to say he was too seasick to take the watch, I told him: "that's alright, Bud ... I want to see the wave that's gonna kill me."

All day and into the night, I am driving the cutter like a surf boat: powering up the face of the advancing wave, then chopping the throttles at the top to shimmy down the back. Somehow, somewhere in the middle of that long night, we finally spot the three colored sector beam on Portland Head Light and reach a lee.

Master Chief Moores: I apologize. I will never be blind-sided by the weather ever again.

* * * * *

There are a hundred others I don't have time to mention. Right, now back to YOU

What I am trying to say is, you are going to have a blast. This is a great job, but it is the people you will meet who make it worth doing. And you can't be a great leader until you first learn to be a follower of great leaders. When you get to your new billet, don't be in a hurry to hook up with people. Take some time to look around. The real characters, the real leaders, will be very easy to pick out. Trust me, they will.

And when you make coxswain, or leading petty officer, or Chief Boatswain's Mate, or ... the ultimate ... Officer in Charge ... don't be quick to judge someone. Hold your water and consider if you will that someone maybe sees something you don't, or sees the same things you do in a different way. Listen to what they are saying and try to figure out what it means to you.

And that fine day when you reach the top, and it all comes down to you, you will have a huge storehouse full of tools you can use to create your own way of leading people.

It's not hard for me to imagine that there are more than a few Warrant Bosuns, or Chiefs, and a whole string of XPOs telling some kind of Master Chief Wolf story right now. “Remember that time Master Chief got that look in his eyes and said, 'Watch this here'?”

Go home. Have fun on leave. Come back and take good care of my Coast Guard.

Thank you.

Crying time

This morning I drove to a pet shelter and surrendered two kittens. A cat who was obviously someone's pet adopted me this year and gave me three kits in a litter. I have raised them in my kitchen for the past two months. They already had personalities and would look for me hearing my voice when I entered the kitchen. I was already in tears by time I got to the shelter. I just cannot give them all the attention and care they deserve. It is so hard to say goodbye to someone I love.

Just over a year ago I lost a new pet to a car, after an agonizing, painful day and night at emergency. On March 15 I held my dear sweet Natasha in my arms while the vet administered the euthenasia drugs after seventeen years together. Her brother Boris is showing signs of his own age. I thought we were all going to make it into retirement.

I am keeping mama and Curious George, but even as I assume responsibility I know I think love will last ... but I am wrong.

I can't take such heartache.

Everything takes longer than you think

Cut the power, pulled the medicine cabinet, opened the wall. That's all.

When you hit drywall with an ordinary carpenter hammer you can usually turn it sideways to maximize the damage, you get a nice satisfying "Smock!" - and the whole head goes clean through. Usually. Not here. I hit this wall with the business face at half-speed and nothing happened. Took three tries with increasing moderate force and all I got out of that was a half inch hole. Knocking out a small rectangle took twenty minutes. Very ugly. Just what the hell kind of drywall IS this?

Well, got my keyhole saw out thinking that I would have to saw the wall away then noticed that it is a full one inch thick. What? ... ah, I see what you did there ... THIS stuff is regular wallboard and a double layer of plaster over it. Always wondered why the walls in the rest of the house were crappy ragged peeling away and the bathroom the only square, smooth room in the joint. So I grab my trusty jigsaw and start to trim it out with power, arrgh! and of course this fills the air in (both bathroom and sunroom) with choking fine white powdery dust. Just freaking lovely, and you can trace my track by the footprints all over the house, of which there are many because, you see, whenever you are working on two sides of the same wall from two different rooms there will be many, many occasions you need exactly the sidecutters and gaze longingly at them sitting peacefully on the table out of reach in the other room through the hole you just opened.

Note to self: Google "plaster dust hazards"

And now a note on the beautiful subtleties of home improvement. Today was a day I once again fully understood the admonitions in my favorite renovation books that taking on an old home destroys family and domestic bliss. I spent all day and this is all I have to show for it. But I take my time because that is my basic currency these days; I can trade my own labors for speed. Here is the backside, the sunroom ... a number of things to take note of here, some of which really piss me off:

• "T" framing in opening to be removed for glass block, no big deal, but notice the angle cut below it. That is where the original stud was cut out when the add-on kitchen was built. Trouble is, this is a load bearing wall and there was NO provision for taking the strain. I will have to construct a doubler above to bridge the opening and place a cripple stud above it to lay the strain off against the two studs they did not cut on either side.
• Whole lot of bastard framing goin' on.
• This is LUMBER here, folks. An honest 2" by 4". Rough cut. None of this dimensional, nominal stuff you buy at Lowe's. Probably milled on site back in the 19teens. Compare the darker studs with the amber one at right used to frame in the bathroom closet I removed. I can smell the pungent pine sap every time I saw or drill.
• The white and yellow wires lower left are new, installed by me. The outlet box lower right (seen from behind) was original to the house, the wires I cut are visible above it. I got to it just in time.
• DAMNIT. Look at this. The top neutral wire isn't covered by the outlet screw, in fact I do not know what was holding it at all. When I put a screwdriver to the screw there wasn't any torque to it. It was twinned with another to jump the power off this outlet to an overhead light, which isn't in itself wrong, but myself I would run one pigtail under the screw and splice the second circuit into it somewhere back inside the box. Not try to get two #12s under a screw post meant for one.
• Second side, the hot, are covered ... BUT ... the "buttonhooks" faced two directions! DAMNIT. The bottom one, the wrong-way one, will always be squished out from flush contact with the screw terminal when you torque the screw. How much time does it take to get the righty-tighty?
• I am so anal retentive over such stuff that I will often take a half hour just to install one outlet when I rewire. Take care not to nick the conductor when I strip the insulation off . Twist the buttonhook with my needle nose "just so" that I get a 3/4 turn and you can't see copper protruding from the screw when I'm done. Torque it down to specs, always. Wrap a turn of electrician's tape around the outlet terminals before I stuff everything in the box. Use #12 gauge when the code says I can use #14 gauge, #10 when it says #12. Loose connections cause sparks, sparks cause fires.
  
• Note no fire blocks anywhere between studs. And, this place was balloon framed, which means the studs run from the foundation footer all the way to the roof joists. One spark and everything goes. Bring hotdogs.
  
• Two wire, no ground. Rubber insulation crumbling from age. Jesus

Also today: Pickup would not start, dead battery. Lawnmower quit on me halfway through. Finally had to stop to think about dinner and I just could not stand myself. I stunk. So I rigged a shower using a sprinkler head and a wire deck chair. Can't say I recommend it but at least it has been in the 90s every day for a week and if you stink bad enough you don't think about the 60 degree water. Much. Interesting getting to all of the bitty parts, though ... let's just say I know something about how a bidet must feel.

End of the trail

long day's journey into night

Been off work a solid week for the first time in perhaps ten years. Not sure I know how to do this. Unless I serve something I wake up restless and unfocused. I am going to have to learn how to serve myself.

Work on the house is rewarding enough but at the end of the day it is still just me, an old old country place, and a passel of fleabag cats. Boris is of an age he looks now only for a warm place in the sun to sleep, and the small can of premium wet catfood at precisely 5:30pm. I stategically placed cardboard boxes near ledges and the bed he likes so he can get up without having to try to leap. Please don't tell him I told you that. I watch him stagger and stumble and stutter enough now to feel how it is for him. Seventeen is an awfully advanced age for a cat.

Here is the backside of the bathroom wall, where it faces the breakfast nook. (Bonus: zombie red-eyed kitten supervisors.) I plan to cut the power circuits tomorrow and rip out the medicine cabinet to open the wall between the studs. Enough to rough-in a four high by three long 8x8 glass block opening for light. The bathroom is such a hole. Then I will have to offset the waste line and hot/cold supply valves since I never liked the fact you could rest your chin on the bathroom sink while sitting on the can.

Funny how things have changed the last hundred years. No ... not broadband internet, cellphones replacing Western Electric, flat screen HDTV, Department of Homeland Security changes ... the fact stair bannisters in this place are a full six inches lower than you expect from a modern townhouse, and this bathroom is smaller than closets you find in homes built today. At least I can move the sink away from the pot. Humans a hundred years ago were different than you and I. They predominantly spent their days outdoors. And they were shorter.

I haven't shaved this whole time - Hell, I haven't bathed. I drove to 7/11 this morning to crap. I have to use a bucket from the kitchen to fill the tank to use the crapper at home. While there washing my hands I observed in the restroom mirror silver whiskers are hanging from wattles I never used to have. It occurred to me when I got home my selfwinding Rolexstopped right where I left it when it got too hot and sweaty to bother with anymore. A few days ago, don't ask me which. Then I remembered how pleased I was my old schoolhouse clock is re-energized and penduluming nicely again with just one swing after a few years' rest. The cretins I let use my house in my absence even broke the glass out of the dial face. How on earth does that happen? Obviously they had no need for such a quaint antique. No doubt they wore digital Casio LCDs.

I considered briefly being perturbed over the noise the clock makes, a background, gutteral "tock-TOCK!-tock" marking constant time here. You can hear it from anywhere in the house. I really don't like external drumbeats driving my internal clock anymore. Not at all. Not after living my whole adult working life with the precise moment I eat, sleep, shower, work, shit, quit, move, relax, talk, walk, wake, make, breathe, leave, love, live dictated by the military. They assign people twenty-four by seven by three sixty five to enforce such rules. I used to be one of them. And, I was very good at it.

Nope. By nature, I like getting up near sunrise every morning to spend two hours doing no thing. Nothing but listening to NPR Morning Edition sitting on the porch glider drinking my coffee. Doing the Sudoku and the crossword next in fresh gel inkpen only after I ensure the hanging birdfeeder in the purple crepe myrtle tree out front is freshly charged with safflower seed. The cardinals and goldfinches count on me.

Then I realized if not for the daily newspaper I wouldn't know what day it is.

Gotta serve something.

Wolf Creek

Bought this old place in 1997 when I was transferred to Virginia. Lived in it three years before I got called away someplace else. I had a string of oafs live in it over the past seven years, just trying not to let it burn to the ground. I'm 50 now, and told I have to retire from the Coast Guard so I am trying to adjust to being home fulltime. Got a lot of work to do and so let me get started ...

My ugly pink bathroom.

My water was rusty colored and there were some soggy spots in the yard, then one month my water bill shot up over $100. The place was plumbed in the 1950's when the old black family who owned this place embraced indoor plumbing and abandoned their outhouse. I know this because I found newspapers stuffed into the joists over the bath when I was tearing into some wiring. Daily Press, 1955 The expected lifespan of galvanized pipes is about fifty years.

So, I tried to get someone to give me estimates on the job. Peculiar thing around Tidewater is that the custom McMansions make so much more money than the miscellaneous $2,000 small job that it is near impossible to get a tradesman to stop by. So when Phil Moore of Moore's Plumbing said he would replace my water main with 3/4" copper and terminate it to a manifold under my kitchen sink like I wanted, and he could start Thursday, I just said "go ahead." I was afraid I wouldn't get another offer.

Now it's the hottest part of the Summer and I don't have a shower. I got the kitchen back in service but there is a little work between now and then. I'll keep you posted.