Dealing with applications – what a pain in the ass. They also gave me a unit of platelets and a unit of blood. People visiting the blog is shrinking rapidly. Either people are dealing with “life” and Xmas and everything – or I have officially bored everyone to death with my problems. I know I’d be bored. I need to “liven” things up a little bit. Let me work on that.
I can’t believe it is December 15th. They say the next move is administrative with the transplant. I guess getting the donor online is part of that. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about “Flight Deck.”
I have another person who wants a copy of Flight Deck when I finish it. I know she’s a nurse and all and trying to keep our spirits up and engaged in the world and all. Everyone who I talk to about it for more than a few minutes tells me they want to see the finished product – so do I. We were talking about how we couldn’t go into town until we did a “daily” inspection on our plane. I remember doing it, in 120 degree heat – covered everything: wiped down struts with hydraulic fluid, wiped down engine cowlings with oil, and we didn’t complain one bit. We were a machine – a real team – 19 and 20 years old and practically telepathic. I mentioned that that kind of sense of duty and counting on one another went unspoken. We were the right guys, at the right time, in the right place. She says kids need to read that – they have no exposure to “applying” themselves and digging deep. Although we didn’t consider it “deep” – we considered it a privilege. I also said unfortunately the military may be the only way to communicate that to a kid. That is what’s sad about us — only with our lives at stake do we do the right thing? I can’t figure it out. I only know how I turned out.
News finally. Apparently I have no leukemia cells in me right now and the red blood cells are starting to wake up so all that is considered good news. Next, the BMT – bone marrow team, takes up the torch and they do their thing. Hopefully the next phase doesn’t take too long to get off the ground. I can’t back down no matter what happens next. We found out that since 11/22/13 and 12/4/13 the cost for that period alone is over $300,000. I have MediCare but about two weeks without the 20% deductible …you can do the math. We’re trying to find a way to deal with all this. Things can go bad and they can get worse, but the universe gets bored being one thing all the time.
No news. Still awaiting news from the latest biopsy. Getting real tired of writing about this day after day after day.
I wrote more on my “‘Po City” (Olongapo) chapter. By the time I’m finished you’ll know all about air craft carriers and aircraft. Well, as much as I can recollect that isn’t too off the mark. The whole thing is very sensory. Noisy (which I cannot describe) beyond belief. Hot, Cold, Wet, Dry and everything in between. Google is handy for calling up info. So maybe I can pull it off. It doesn’t have to be critically chronological, but can be interesting, I hope.
You get a real sense of time flying by when you’re stuck in a box all the time. Its not that bad. I have all sorts of things to humor myself with (this for example). I look at the window and its daytime, I look again and its nighttime. Makes me really feel like if you don’t take the time while you’re awake to do something (anythingdu) – it will be gone and you can’t get it back.
My (current) doctor just came in and asked how things were going? My blood pressure has finally come down. I was around 170+ for a few days. That may have contributed to these pulsating, gnawing, shooting pain headaches of late. Today my blood pressure is down around 130 – so that’s an improvement and the headaches have lessened, but never go away entirely.
Beyond that…still haven’t taken time to draw anything. I thought I would try to draw each character that is introduced in the book “Ringworld” by Larry Niven (never read it). It a little hard to get into and I’m surprised. It has aliens cohabiting with humans and that always throws me off. I want to know where the aliens came from and how they learned English and stuff I know I don’t need to care about. I guess that makes me a more “hardcore” scifi fan? Hardcore is the more playing with science side; instead of the nesting, atmospheric, cuddle up and learn to speak Klingon thing. There are very definite directions that scifi goes into, and it is really handy to fine yourself a reader’s guide, so you can be directed to what sort of thing you’re more interested in. A lot of people say science fiction is a waste of time. I feel the same about romance and mysteries. Mysteries are always straightforward. Some criminal pulls a stunt. They hunt them down and lock ’em up or kill them back. To each their own.
Nothing new. I tell them that I’ve lost my taste of food. Everything tastes kinda flat. I know it will pass, but they decide to give me marinol – synthetic cannabis – thinking that will stimulate my appetite. I can’t tell anything except swallowing a beige pill. They’re so cute.
I want to add a little bit to “Flight Deck” – I’m beginning to see a structure emerge. All I need now is the stamina to push the thing out. I’m recollecting things I had forgotten altogether. Like we slept under the #3 wire. Which was the third of four arresting cables that stop the aircraft when they land. Forget the weight of the plane smacking into the flight deck right over head – the tail-hook catches a cable, which is pulled through steel pipes at 140 mph. Once the hook is lifted when the plane is stopped they have bring the damn cable back. Its like sleeping in a factory. People always tell me they could never sleep through that. Wrong. You get tired enough, either you pass out and call that sleep, or your conscious mind can’t absorb it anymore and you fall asleep. Given enough time, you almost look forward to the rhythm. How your ears hold up through all of this is another question altogether.
Another day –
They want to give me a unit of blood because I am .10 under the break-off point to (drum roll) …not needing a unit of blood. Yawn.
I tink one way I can attack Flight Deck is to write all the memories one at a time and then assemble them chronologically later. Build it up from parts. I’m sure that’s how writers do things – it just new to me is all. For example:
When I was ordered to Whidbey Island to go to Jet School, I needed a car. I found a cheap Ford ’56 wagon. It had a few issues: oil leak, etc. But the guy who owned the car before me was an officer. Officer’s had a sticker on their bumpers that showed the Marine at the gate that the driver was an officer and they had to salute them. So every time I drove through the gate and had a couple of the other guys with me the stupid Marine would always pop to attention, snap to a salute – and they can’t bring their arm back down again until we return the salute – so we would return the salute and mutter under our breathe, “Carry on you stupid fucking jarhead.” That never got old.
They gave me IV for: platelets, anti-biotics, and later they will give me another unit blood ( just talked to the nurse – they gave me blood this morning – they will give me platelets tonight – and a unit of (drum roll) plasma!).
I hope I survive this because I do have a book in me that I can see now will practically write itself (Flight Deck). I was thinking if I play it straight – right off the brain pan, I don’t have to make any of it up. If people don’t believe it – well its high time they got educated. Like I’ve always said “Its too hard to live with a lie. You tell the truth – its always the same story” I don’t have to make anything up. Obviously I’ll have to somehow channel in exposition, the sonar room of a destroyer in 1964 for example. I was in high school in ’64 and I can look that up in my yearbook. I think I have it somewhere and can see what I was doing.
So it has to be auto-biographical in large part. But that may be more unbelievable than Vietnam itself. I’m sitting here not knowing if I’m soon going to be drawing my last breath – so – what the &$%# do I care whether someone who doesn’t know me at all thinks anything of anything. That’s their problem.
Remembering may be hazardous to everyone around me. The more I recollect, the more pissed I get – (relax); the more I remember, the more I realize how stupid I was, as we all were, when we were kids being forced to do the exact thing no one ever wants to do. It was INSANE then.
I enlisted to avoid the draft. Young kids today in many ways make me sick that they don’t have that weight hanging over their heads. I’m not saying they should enlist or be drafted (although that is exactly what many of them need – tough love in the worst way). I’m saying their lives are so incredibly easy, and they toss it around like toilet paper.
Save all that for the book.
Today was a circus again in my room, I woke up with a mind-bending headache – I was surprised. I don’t know what a migraine is – don’t care to know either. I had my 16th! bone-marrow biopsy. (Mmmm biopsy…) Right.
They forgot to bring me breakfast. They brought me lunch in the middle of the biopsy and I couldn’t move; on my back, for a couple hours to protect the bandage over my pelvis – And tonight I lost any appetite altogether, talking with Taisia about what has this ridiculous world come to were they make it so easy to be deconstructed and tossed into the sea after all your hard work? If I hate anyone its the bureaucrats – the inhuman devil’s spawn with all the money preying on people trying to get by. I’ve been busier here (when I should be healing) than I can remember being at home, with deductibles, health plans, Deadlines. Hoops to jump. Its ludicrous. The world doesn’t have to be like this, but it is, because “insane” people are calling the shots. And “apparently” we are powerless to clean it up.
Or the other option is to leave altogether – which is a concept that is sounding more and more appetizing. To hell with ’em – they can sniff each other’s farts all day long if they want. Or pick their nose – I forget what it is they are most qualified for. That’s all the good they’re for.
That’s the other problem with Flight Deck – The “fucking” language. It is the most ear-splitting, creative, and embarrassing product of Navy life ever to have sailed the seven seas.
Its going to be a hot potato of a book for sure. I should write it, then die (not), and then let God sort everything out.
Arr.
I keep yelping about writing “Flight Deck.” This is a book (novel – or series of short stories) idea I’ve had for years, that is auto-biographical in a sense. I don’t know what is “too” much for people, so if you can’t handle it or don’t believe any of it. Your beliefs are not required and you can keep on walking. I don’t think my feelings can be hurt anymore anyway. If I am the protagonist and it may very well end up that way, its gonna be interesting for sure. Everyone takes a deep breath – and in unison, say: ” Yea, right.” I can guarantee you that I know a lot about the subject. I want the story to be about the kids that would rather do anything else in the world than work on an aircraft carrier. Where I worked as a plane captain (brown shirt) – I did that for three years on board the Forrestal class aircraft carrier, the USS Ranger – (CV61), I did that – at night (I’ve always been basically a night person) – but I must also have been a closet adrenalin freak. I turned out to be really good at it. I tend keep my head out of my ass and somehow paid attention. It is one of the most dangerous jobs on Earth (so I’ve been told). So, as a result, I have this innate sense that, given that you’ve got the right people, the right tools, the right sense of survival – humans can do unbelievable things. Humans who for the most part were, on the average, 19 years old. So this “blog/sketchbook” is also going to wind up being filled with aircraft carrier and flight deck stuff.
I’m really sick (pun intended) of writing about all this health crap. Time to shake things up for a while around here. If I do finish some writing, off and on, I think I’ll have a separate blog that this will link to. A text only place,
Plane captains are not officers, so the word in there: captains – makes people’s eyebrows float. Relax – they are enlisted personnel. They still have to take orders from officers but they (plane captains) rarely get told what to do because you wouldn’t get you’re name stenciled on a plane if they didn’t trust your judgement. Maybe we loose track of time when we come back from a night on the town (Liberty). The Marines are always at the gate eager to greet us, and you know, they always look all serious and shit. They write us up (ticket or something) we wait respectfully while we wave around like we’re still at sea. Yup – they report us to the higher ups that we were bad little boys. Oddly the other shoe never drops. The report gets as far as the division Chief and quickly gets torn up. The other inescapable truth is that if we’re cooling our heels in the brig – that multi-million dollar plane parked on the flight is waiting for you and ain’t going to fly until the pilot signs off on the pre-flight – which we give him. (There were no her pilots in ‘Nam) There are no extra people hanging around, loitering, especially on a flight deck who can “fill in” for you. No one can absorb, over night all the things you have learned from Jet Scool in Whidbey Island, or Fallon Nevada, or among each other waiting for something to happen. We practically knew every rivet. So we kept our heads screwed on – tight – and played it straight. Hmm – this book might just write itself.
Usually one guy carries three chains – three for each wheel (mounts) of the aircraft. They secure the plane to the deck while the ship is trying to shake them off its back. They were either short two guys(?), or he’s showing off. It dosen’t really matter, what matters is that he rose to the occasion and got the job done.
Those chains are heavy -I haven’t weighed one lately (but I will). You get a lot of practice throwing them around. It also helps when you’re nineteen years old and being trusted maybe for the first time in your life.
Plane captains are also called “Line crew” or “Ground support.” They are the ones who do all the walk-around inspections on the aircraft before the plane takes off, and they are the first to be there ready to inspect and do basically what a pit crew does at the Indy 500 (turn it around). The last ones to see ’em off, the first at them when they hit the deck. They are the ones who fill out “gripe” sheets, we called them. Little report cards with everything that we found wrong with the plane: oil leaks, high temperature leaks, pressures in the various hydraulic actuators that open and close doors, bomb bays, flaps, wings folding, etc. Even if we are not sure, we write up a gripe, send it to maintenance (blue shirts) and they have to fix, replace, or do whatever magic they do to fix the problem. If the pilot gets up there and they haven’t finished work on something, the plane captain can tell the pilot “Sorry Sir, you can’t fly – a who string of rivets just came loose with paint. If he wants to fly and go around me, HE has to sign a form that says I’m taking the plane knowing the wind fell off and the plane captain warned me this could happen. I give a shit, Darwin is alive and well on the flight deck too, but at least he goes to Leavenworth and I don’t. I don’t know there are many situations where an enlisted crew member can tell an officer (who can be as big as a Commander or something) what’s going on. And down his aircraft. We wash the planes, polish the canopies, refill the crews canteens, swear under our breath, you get the point…no, you ain’t got it yet.
Ken Gulley 