50th Reunion

I went to my high school's 50^th reunion this weekend. It was not easy. I don't think it was easy for a lot of us there. It was a good weekend but for me there was a lot of stress in just showing up to see people I hadn't seen in 50 years. I spent a lot of time prior to this event just thinking how I would appear to my old classmates.

This event had been on my mind for months if not years.  I was embarrassed by my own inner dialogue.  It seemed so petty that in my head I was justifying myself and explaining how successful I really was instead of the way I thought I might appear to them.

From the very start it turned out to be an exercise in maintaining my self esteem while keeping my ego in check. What I learned at my high school 50^th reunion was that my classmates, mostly people I barely knew in high school, were really nice people. As a group John Doherty observed we were men of substance, respectable members of our community. As I met people I was struck over and over again what good guys they were. And their wives were nice too.

There was only one classmate from my circle of friends there. Seeing Bob again was a real pleasure. The last time I saw him he was getting ready to ship out to Vietnam as a Navy medic. The best part of seeing him was to celebrate that he had survived. One of our classmates was badly wounded in Vietnam, shortly after arriving there as I understand it. He was in long recovery that started touch and go. He was the war hero that everyone seemed to be particularly aware of. I guess John was the sacrificial lamb for people and they had to express their admiration and awe for his sacrifice and certainly gratitude for his recovery.

As a veteran, I didn't have to go to Vietnam, I admired John for going and I'm sure his recovery required courage and heart. John like many others was wounded in the first few weeks in Vietnam probably before he learned to duck. 

(After writing this I learned John had been a medic in Vietnam.  Anybody who was a medic in my world automatically is a hero.  Sometimes it doesn't pay to write honestly how I feel, particularly when I'm wrong.)

No one seemed to notice Bob the way they did John. If anyone was a war hero I thought it was Bob. On direct questioning he admitted he had been a medic with the Special Forces and jumped out of a few helicopters. I'm sure he saved many lives and saw many young men die. No one seemed to be aware of that except me. Today Bob is a heart surgeon. I sat next to him for a few minutes and we exchanged information. Bob talked on about things I didn't have much interest in. We don't really have much in common any more, but sitting next to him I had a real feeling of affection and joy in his presence, just to see him and I could feel the same from him. Without thinking about it we patted each other on the arm a few times. We were there together. The words didn't matter.

When I was in high school I thought I was one of the bright kids and a lot of the others were kind of dumb. Since then I've learned that some of the others became doctors, veterinarians, county administrators, financiers, lawyers, newspaper reporters, bartenders, artists and stock brokers. For me my own career pales when I compare it. I was smart. I'm still smart, but not smart enough to have earned much money or prestige. I remind myself I never really worked very hard to earn money. Of course, I'm selling two successful careers short, but when I started comparing myself to my classmates,

My struggle was to be mindful that we had all done well including me while at the same time trying to resist telling stories that made my own experience sound like more than it really was. Most of us were pretty interesting when we got to talking about the things we loved. Many of us had kids and had been good parents, most of us were grandparents and proud and excited about the offspring of our offspring.

One of my classmates was a doctor, who was living and practicing in the same town he had gone to after residency. He said he was married to a wonderful wife and had wonderful children and as we exchanged stories, we hadn't really been friends in high school, he said something about being envious of the excitement in my life. I've been a banker, a juvenile hall counselor and a Park Ranger. His admiration surprised me when it was his life I was envying, his stability and solid accomplishments.

I heard one of our classmates had been in auto accident as an undergraduate at USC and suffered severe brain damage in the frontal lobe and while still alive was badly debilitated. Steve had been a bright guy, he was good looking kid and though he hadn't found himself in high school, I'm pretty sure he would have been successful in life but for the accident. No one else said anything about Steve. Maybe it wasn't true. Maybe I got it wrong. I hope so.

With another classmate I speculated that probably 10 of our classmates had passed on, ten out of 95. One of them had been my closest friend in high school. He died in 2011 of a heart attack a year after my own heart attack. Another had died of some mysterious infection or illness but as the story was explained it seemed the underlying cause was acute alcoholism.

Two of us were sober in AA. The other AA member avoided me every time I tried to talk to him. I'm not sure what the problem was. He was someone I had felt kinship with in high school. I had been looking forward to seeing him. After chasing him the first evening of the reunion, I gave up, and noticed the next night he carefully kept his distance. There was something wrong between us but I had no idea what it was.

Three of us had been commercial bankers, probably the only three in the room who knew that banking can be interesting, at least before bankers become securities brokers instead of lenders.

The school hadn't changed much. The reunion was all around a football game Friday night. When I attended St. Francis the school was all about football. Then Saturday evening there was a Mass before the dinner. It wasn't mandatory and the attendance was light. Father Tony the new principal preached a sermon based on the workers in the vineyard parable. The moral I got from his homily was that even though our lives up until then may not have earned us a place in heaven, that we could still secure a place in heaven at this late date. It occurred to me that one way we might secure our eternal reward was by donating a large sum of money to the school. I'm prone to being too cynical about intentions in the Church.

Later when I cornered Father Tony he seemed to be in a hurry to move on and talk to someone else. We might have had a lot in common.  Before he became a priest he was a banker in downtown LA,  He was quick to deny I might know anyone he knew.  Like a politician looking for voting blocks or donations, he didn't have time to waste with pointless questions. He made a good impression on everyone else.  For myself maybe I'm a little jaundiced on bankers and priests.

I thought about the priest who taught us English the last two years at St. Francis.  He taught us by reading out loud from the introductions to the pieces in our anthology. His interest wasn't really in teaching, he seemed to be more interested in administering to the spiritual needs of the rich.

Of course, some of us needed to tell people who we were, to explain to our classmates our success as if we were still 17 years old. I don't think anyone was doing it intentionally but it was the gist of some conversations that night. It was something that came out, something we needed to say. Having been bullied most of my youth from early on through high school, I was telling people that I could stand up for myself. I had been a cop. One classmate who had been a poor student told me, one of the smart kids he reminded me, that he was really smart and had been very successful and was very well off in spite of having been classed with the dummies.

Some if not most of our classmates seemed to be comfortable with who they were. All of us I think were trying to portray ourselves as successful, as happy with our lives. No one seemed unhappy. And it was true we were successes, we had done well.

I was interested in how we were aging and what that was like for others. I wasn't the only one who had had heart trouble already. I was asked, “How many colonoscopies have you had?” Someone I talked to had had a hip replacement. All of us are in our late 60's and we looked it except for one of us. Rick did look much younger than the rest of us. At first I didn't think he belonged to our group. I heard another classmate remark that he must be drinking formaldehyde on a regular basis. Our wives looked our age as well, the homecoming queen, the comfortable housewives.

I sat at the stag table, those of us from out of town, the bachelors or the divorced. It was a Catholic school so there was no talk of first, second or even third wives, no divorces or worse. No one was openly gay. One classmate wasn't there because he was in prison in Arizona or had been. I thought it was for financial fraud, but learned later it had been for burglary.

I was interested in who was retired and how they handled that and who wasn't. One classmate had retired for a year and half and said, he couldn't take it and went back to work as an insurance broker. About half the class seemed to be retired and happy with being done with it all and the other half were still working. Being in the retired group my bias is that those who are still working are refusing to give in to the aging process, to give up their work bound identity and just be. It wasn't so much that people were still working but as they told it they were working hard and they told me how much they were still valued in their jobs. We all do what we need to do, I was just happy I don't have to work anymore.

I was glad I had been there. In the end I had to admit to myself that while I wasn't rich, that my life hadn't followed a predictable path to success and prestige, but I had what I needed. I was saddened to know that Steve had been debilitated early in life. It was disappointing that most of the people I knew well in high school weren't there, a couple had passed away, others were out of contact and some just couldn't make it. I felt fortunate that I had survived and that after 68 years I wasn't embittered, that I wasn't a fool, and that like most of my classmates I was OK. We had done well.

Israel Gaza

Last week was the 69^th anniversaries of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I've never struggled much with the morality of dropping the bomb. Less than a week after Nagasaki Japan surrendered and the War in the Pacific was over. In March before the bombing nearly 7,000 Americans lost their lives in the invasion of Iwo Jima, a small island east of Japan. It is said that the invasion of Japan would have cost 100,000 American GI lives. Between 130,000 and 250,000 were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, without doubt almost completely civilian, non-combatants. There was no point to the bombing except to kill as many citizens of Japan as possible in order to convince Japan to surrender and it worked.

Last week in a discussion about Israel Gaza with Jewish friends, men of moderation I respect and like, the argument was made that killing Palestinian civilians while not intended, collateral to killing Hamas leaders, would convince the Palestinians to give up Hamas and terrorism. My belief is that the death of three Israeli civilians does not justify an invasion that killed 1800 people mostly civilians.

The argument that is strongest for me is my firm belief that violence begets violence, that the abuse of the Palestinians stokes hate on both sides and strengthens the hand of Hamas and any group that resists Israel, and that the State of Israel cannot survive by killing as many Palestinians as possible and depriving the survivors of any human rights.

I have to admit it is not a rational argument that moves me against the State of Israel, it is visceral. My visceral reaction is based on the memory of the USS Liberty and the 34 American GIs killed in the Israeli attack on the US Navy vessel monitoring the Six Day War in 1967. My job in the Air Force one year later was the same as the sailors, we monitored everybody, and I identified closely with the Liberty sailors.

Around the same time I was in the UK when the Troubles started in Northern Ireland in 1968. As an Irishman I identified with the Palestinian victims of colonialism in an insoluble problem similar to Northern Ireland. I grew up in the American spirit of support of the new state of Israel and the hope it held for the Jews of the world to finally have a homeland again. Later seeing the brutality of the Zionists against the Arabs in the West Bank converted me to a dissident to the Jewish occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. I stopped short of supporting the Palestinians, the PLO, the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. I sent my check, the only thing I could do, to Yesh Gvul, a group of Israeli soldiers resisting service in the occupied territory.

The violence that created Israel was as much Arab as it was Jewish, fundamentalists and nationalists on both sides justified brutality in an intransigence that ended in stalemate that continues to this day. But if the violence in Israel is to end it's the Israelis who have to end it. Unfortunately there is no Palestinian Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King.

Things I know, judgments about right or wrong, the rights of return for Israelis or Palestinians are not the basis of a solution. While a large number of Americans acknowledge that the land grab and genocide against the Indians was wrong, no one is considering giving back anything our ancestors fought so hard to attain. They may have been wrong but they are still heroes of the American imagination.

I know that a one state solution, where Jews would eventually be a minority, is impossible for Israel to accept. I know that peace between the two parties as they currently stand is impossible.

I believe if peace is ever going to happen between the Palestinians and the Israelis, that the aggressive settlement of the West Bank by Israelis has to stop. I believe that the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza have to be treated with respect and their basic human rights respected. Important first steps would be fair water rights for everyone in the West Bank and freedom from harassment and violence. The Palestinians will have to accept that Israel can protect the border of Israel Palestine and stop the inflow of weapons to be used against Israel.

I believe the United State should stop supporting Israeli aggression and stop all military aid to Israel; and Egypt and Saudi Arabia while we're at it.

I don't know how the conflict between Arabs and Israelis in Israel can ever be ended. But I do know that bombing and killing civilians is the problem and not the solution. I also know that civilian casualties on either side do not justify killing civilians in revenge.

Both sides need to stop the senseless killing, stop the revenge for past wrongs. Is it going to happen soon? No, but we need to condemn the murder of civilians by both sides and stop our unquestioning support for Israel to murder civilians. It's ironic that there is more criticism of the Israeli government in Israel than there is in the United States. In the United States we need to discuss our support for Israel.

I think if Israel stays on its current path led by Netanyahu and the Likud Government world opinion will eventually turn against Israel, may have already done so, and Israel's brutality more than anything else threatens the continued survival of Israel.

I started this essay with Hiroshima and Nagasaki because my argument is against violence but I have to admit to not having the same problem in a far worse killing of civilians.  I think we have to acknowledge that we have different points of view even within ourselves and that this is not an easy topic to discuss.  It is a discussion we have to have because what is happening now is not leading toward peace and the United States is an active partner in the problem.

The Angel Island Fire

On October the 12^th, 2008, after the last ferry left, I finished my shift. It was around 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening.  It had been a long day, Sunday of a three day weekend and Fleet Week, more than the usual visitors coming over to the island to see the air show from the island's south side. End of shift, I went home to my house on Ayala Cove and settled in for the night. At 8 o'clock I got a call out. The dispatcher said an employee was reporting a bonfire in Campsite 1.

I got back into my uniform, put on my POPE gear, the acronym we use in Parks to describe our gun and all the other stuff on our belt. We always wore the full gear for a call out. At Mt. Diablo I had been called out one night on something sounding innocuous that ended with an arrest after a camper high on drugs had threatened us with a knife. After that I never thought twice about wearing my POPE gear. It was easier to have it on than it was to go back and get it.

The weather was warm. Humidity was low. There was a light but steady breeze blowing out of the northeast. Mount Tam and the larger parks were on fire alert. At Angel Island, wood fires were never allowed though campers could use charcoal. From my house in Ayala Cove I drove to the northeast side of the island where Campsites 1, 2 and 3 were clustered about 200 feet above the shoreline on a spur off the fire road .

I drove my truck to the turnoff above the campsites. I didn't see any fire. I got out and walked back to the campsites and started with the young adults in Campsite 3. They seemed relaxed and surprised to see me. Campsite 2 and 1 were four fathers and a large group of young girls, about 10 years old. There were small bikes, mostly pink parked all around the campsites. As I did in 3, I checked the to see if there was a campfire or wood burning anywhere and I didn’t see anything to be concerned about.

Everything seemed to be as it should be. The girls were running around, shouting, having a good time. I talked to the men and told them I was checking for fires and they assured me they didn’t have a campfire. I told them it was a serious problem and people needed to be careful. They said they understood my concern. I walked back to my truck and headed for Campsites 7, 8 and 9. Some employees can be pretty unreliable reporters, new employees with no experience and people who just overreact. Like any reporters they get their facts jumbled up. I called in to dispatch that I was leaving Campsite 1 and heading for 7,8,9. I got a phone call on my cellphone. It was Gerald O’Reilly our maintenance chief. He was the reporting employee.  Gerald is a reliable source and he had been driving on the fire road and had personally seen a large fire at Campsite 1.

I was halfway to the other campsites. I turned around and drove back and left my truck at the junction of the fire road and the campsite road. I walked down into the campsite. The girls were still running around and I walked up to the barbecue stand and there were coals in it but also chips of wood that had been gathered from the site after I left the first time. I gave the men a stiff lecture and told them, no fire was allowed, no wood at all should be put on the charcoal and that if there was another report of a fire that they would be ticketed. I warned them it was a heavy fine. One of the girls asked what a ticket was and I gently explained it to her. I had not been gentle with the men.

I walked back up to my truck and as I got close to it, I saw a column of white smoke rising up beside the reservoir nearby. My heart jumped with a shot of adrenalin and I hurried to my truck and called in a fire and requested assistance from dispatch. I knew Tiburon Fire would be moving immediately and they would be there soon. That alone made me feel better.

I drove quickly toward the smoke swallowing the panic I felt and began planning what I needed to do. I got up to the smoke where there was an old retaining wall below the reservoir. The fire was on a patch of grass behind the wall sloping up the hill. It was a small grass just starting right at the wall. I got a shovel out of my truck and got up beside it, I knew enough not to put myself in front of the fire but to go to the side and try to work around it. I shoveled dirt on the fire and it kept broadening and advancing. Gerald arrived in his pickup truck with a small water tank and pumper in it. It took a minute or two to get the pumper going and we attacked the fire with the small water hose from the truck. Still the fire kept creeping up the hill and expanding and we weren’t getting control of it. Mike Holste arrived with the island's fire truck, a pumper, and we got that going, but by the time we began pouring water on the fire, it had jumped to a pile of dead branches and then into a dead tree and from there the fire took off up the hill.

The Angel Island crew were amazing that day. They had proved themselves before in medical emergencies and crises. Now with a fire they showed up and immediately started doing what was needed. As each one arrived and pitched in, I felt less and less alone. We were working together. Park people everywhere are good, but the Angel Island people are the best.

The whole time we were fighting it, the fire kept growing just out of reach. It seemed if we had been just a little better, a little faster or just had more water or more people we might have been able to stop it. At each stage it was just a little more than we could handle. When I first got there it was only two yards square and then it was the whole draw and working up the hill. Casey Lee our chief interpreter arrived on the scene and she began evacuating the campers. Kelli Holste was in her truck evacuating campers. Tiburon Fire came across on their fire boat and arrived in one of the vans we kept in the cove. Ed Lynch, the Tiburon Fire Battalion Chief, greeted me with a smile and began moving his crew along side the fire. Ed and his crew were in charge. I don't think I've ever been so relieved. The fire was theirs now.

Time seemed to compact itself. The first concern was campers and the Park employees evacuated them and made sure we had everybody. They loaded people into their trucks and vans and searched the island thoroughly. Rangers from the mainland arrived and more firefighters. We helped the new firefighters figure out the lay of the island. We evacuated the visitors to Camp Reynolds and the Quartermaster Building which was on the southwest side of the island, all the way across from where the fire started.

By the time Dan Villanueva, a Ranger from China Camp, arrived the only vehicle left in the cove was one of the small electrics we used. Dan used it until it ran out of juice in an area that was later overrun by the fire. All night Dan worried that he was responsible for a puddle of plastic on the hillside. It wasn't the worst thing that could have happend he felt bad about it. In the morning, we learned one of the firefighters had moved it. Even the electric cart had been saved.

The fire quickly reached the top of the island and began coming down the southwest side. We decided to evacuate the visitors completely off the island and the employees and their families to Ayala Cove on the northwest side of the island. I went to Camp Reynolds where the campers were gathered. Some were calm but some were frantic. We assured them they were safe and I had to tell one woman she was not going back to her campsite to get something she needed. By that time the fire was already heading down the south side of the island through Campsites 4, 5, and 6. Later we saw that the firefighters had set a backfire behind Officer Row protecting the employee houses on the east side of the island.

Before we loaded all of the campers in our various vehicles I pulled aside the four men who had been in Campsite 1. They wanted to explain, to talk, and I told them I really didn’t have time, I just wanted names, addresses and phone numbers. We would talk about it later. They were pretty chastened.

Maggie McDonogh, captain and owner of the Angel Island Ferry, met us at the docks. She had come when she saw there was a fire. She evacuated the campers and began bringing firefighters across the strait to the island. Her boat held about 300 people and she brought us firefighters as they arrived in Tiburon. By early morning we had 375 firefighters, all the local companies and CalFire crews.

Dave Matthews the superintendent arrived on the island. I was assigned to the docks to help the firefighters and equipment coming in.

Rich Ables a maintenance worker was operating the Ayala, a crew boat. Allyn Shaffer, our boat operator, and his son Nick were operating the LCM, landing craft mechanical, a boat of about 80 feet, able to carry a large truck and land it on a ramp.  Western Marine showed up with another LCM and began transporting fire trucks to the island. The Coast Guard showed up with their Life Boat and asked if they could help. By that time everything was covered and there wasn't much for them to do. They left and came back with pallets of bottled water and cartons of Cliff Bars which turned out to be a wonderful contribution. After that they patrolled the strait with a cutter ready to assist us if we needed it.

It was a hectic night. 375 firefighters fought the fire. 15 Fire Trucks were brought on the island. The docks were a busy place all night long. I helped unload the ferry and LCMs and oriented the firefighters to the island. I could see smoke coming over the top of the hill but I couldn't see the fire from the cove. I had a second radio with the firefighters band on it and I heard the constant stream of reports and commands back and forth between the firefighters.

I heard them staging to fight the fire on the southwest corner of the island and all along the south side. The fire came over the hill and they held it at the fire road. At one point I went up to my house and the night and the trees changed the perspective and the fire looked like it was in my backyard when in fact it was better than three quarters of the way up the island. The residents of the island from the east side who were staying at my house didn't like the look of it, but with an effort they managed to stay calm.

Before dawn four helicopters staged themselves in the air above Tiburon and Belvedere across from the island. At 5:30 am it was determined there was enough light for them to begin their runs and they came over the island and dropped loads of water, a couple from belly tanks and a couple from large buckets suspended by cables. They made another run and another run, pulling water up from the lakes nearby on the mainland. Within the hour the fire was under control. The hotspots which had been held at the Fire Road by the firefighters were doused.

After that all the tension was gone. Cal Fire arranges for food for firefighters and the caterers arrived in the morning. Breakfast signaled the end of the fight. After that it was cleanup. Everyone’s mood shifted. It became a friendly and relaxed gathering of first responders, stories to be told, work to be done. No buildings had been lost, no firefighters injured. There was no one else on the island, just us. A wonderful air of satisfaction settled over the island, lots of work to do, but the worst part was over.

At three o’clock in the afternoon I left the docks and was off duty. Suzette met me on the main land and we had a late lunch at Il Fornaio in Corte Madera. It was a strange feeling after the preceding 18 hours to be sitting in a nice restaurant and enjoying a nice meal. It was wonderful like stepping through a curtain.

Later that afternoon I came back to work and showed the County Fire Marshall around the island to the scene of the campsite and where the fire started. At the campsite we saw beer cans littering the ground and in the trash. There were wine bottles in the trash as well.  It had been quite a party before the fire broke out. We heard from other campers and some of the girls that the girls had been putting sticks into the charcoals and burning wood debris and running around the area waving their burning sticks like sparklers.

It had been a bad combination of unsupervised children, an illegal fire, and red flag fire weather.

The next day two investigators from Cal Fire arrived. George and George, they said there was good George and bad George but they wouldn’t say which one was which. They were incredibly professional, combing the spot for evidence inch by inch where the fire started. They were both Fire Captains trained as investigative police officers. They were in civilian clothes but they wore pistols, magazines and handcuffs on their belts, serious looking men.

Our own district biologists and the County Forester visited the island. Quickly the conclusion was the fire had not been bad for the island. No buildings were lost. The valuable historical sites were unharmed, Camp Reynolds had been saved. The chaparral in California is fire compatible and the environmental effect of the fire was to clear invasive weeds and revitalize the cycle of the local plants which are able to withstand fire and regenerate themselves. As one naturalist said, it couldn’t have been better if it had been a controlled burn.

Our superintendent was always one to assume control of the situation and he began a struggle with Cal Fire over who was in charge of the investigation. There was never a question that it was Cal Fire but the effect was they stopped talking to us and as is normal in these cases, we never learned about the results and the whole incident just faded into the past.

They quickly determined the cause of the fire was human, that it was negligent not criminal. Before they stopped talking to us I asked what happens in these cases. They said the responsible parties pay the cost of the fire. The initial estimate put the cost of the fire at over a million dollars. I said, if it were me, I just didn’t have the money, what do they do then? They said the judge determines what the responsible parties can afford and they make payments for the rest of their lives. That sounded fair.

I was never able to learn what happened after the first few weeks but it was a solid case against the campers and I’m guessing that the State of California reached a settlement with them before it went to court and they are paying for their negligence. They didn’t seem to be bad people, they just did something very dumb and it seemed fair they should be held accountable for it.

At the fire scene in the beginning there was a little girl who was very distraught and had to be calmed down. Of course, no one admitted what had happened. I was sure her parents were going to fight legally any responsibility but I hope they stepped outside of the legal issues and get the little girl the help she needs to understand she wasn't responsible. The guilt she might feel seemed to me to be the worst potential damage of the fire.

The fire was exciting but like all the other events in Parks, within a surprisingly short period of time everything returned to normal. Visitors came, the island renewed itself, and the Park went on.


The photograph is from:
http://www.chriswage.com/2009/08/07/angel-island-on-fire/

A Poem of sorts

It got better
December 13, 2013


(A fictional persona of course, because if I were in AA I'd be anonymous)


Today I have 30 years
of sobriety in AA.
30 years ago December 13th
in 1983 I drank a beer, my second or third and went home
and skipped a nightcap.
The next day I wrote myself sober
in a journal
I used to think on paper.
Yeah I should, I wrote, why not?

And I went home and
I didn't drink and the next day
I called a counselor
and we made an appointment---
for the following week
and I didn't drink.

Go to AA
he said
and a day later I did.
St Francis of Assisi Church
in Atwater
a gay meeting, I didn't know.
A warmup speaker
said no matter how hard he tried
it got worse and then he didn't drink
and it got better
and if he doesn't drink
it gets better.
And I heard that.
And I didn't drink

A week,
a month,
60 days,
a sponsor,
90 days,
six months
and a year
and I didn't drink
and it got better.

I served coffee
I became a sponsor
I made friends
I started to grow up
I was the secretary of a meeting
I became a board member
of a recovery house
I attended meetings
and I didn't drink.
And it got better
I got to leave the bank branch on the Sunset Strip,
my bottom in banking,
I got a job in a decent bank
I became a Vice President
I had a reputation,
a good one,
I knew people,
I got things done.
My kids grew up
I quit banking,
became a juvenile hall counselor
and then a Park Ranger,
a park cop,
I had a daughter unexpectedly,
I had a heart attack,
I turned 65,
I retired
and I didn't drink.

And today I have 30 years.
It's true
the way to get to be an old timer
in AA is
don't drink
and don't die.

Winter in California

After a very cold week in California
December 11, 2013


Today is the last day
of our nearly freezing weather.
I know but it's California,
California on the coast,
San Francisco Bay
OK, it's seldom warm here.
We're cool here,
but almost never cold.

Two days ago
I walked down the path
in Canyon Trail Park,
sounds wild but it's smack in the middle of houses.
The small creek that runs through it pools at the bottom
and the pool was covered in a large sheet of ice
in the afternoon.
A rock I threw skittered across it
and the sun was shining all day
cold and clear.
I've seen ice here in the morning
before the sun is up
but never in the afternoon

Saturday on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley
the streets are crowded with pedestrians
students, people on errands,
the young people who live on the street
and workers.
And they're all wearing extra clothes
ski clothes or sweatshirts piled on,
scarves wrapped around their faces, wooly hats,
many have on gloves,
real winter clothes they've scrounged somewhere,
or the clothes they use
when they play in the snow near Tahoe
clothes they've dug out of a closet or found on the street

And then there are the few
like punctuation in the common narrative
obviously visiting from a colder clime
in light clothes, some even
in short sleeved shirts
enjoying the sunny day
and the warm weather
winter and 10 degrees above freezing
balmy weather for them
walking among us, our blood thinner,
chilled to the bone even in the sunshine.

So in a day or two,
the high pressure system will shift
the winds from Alaska
will slack and
we will be back to our normal winter,
jackets, hats, a layer or two,
cold, but no more
down jackets, scarves over the face
and wondering where our gloves are.

Global warming,
inevitable changes
is it possible we'll be colder here in El Cerrito
instead of warmer?
balancing out a soon to be temperate Canada.
Well at least for now, god willing,
not tomorrow.

Growing Old

I grow old. It’s not something I expected to do, that I prepared for, or even that I’m looking forward to, it just happens. I’m 66. I know 66 isn't that old, but at 66 I'm certainly more aware of impending impediments to the good life than I was before. I enjoy my life. I look forward to the rest of my life, but whereas long ago I eagerly wanted to grow up, growing old is not that attractive and not that easy. I don’t feel bad, but I don’t feel as good as I did thirty years ago, or twenty years ago, or even ten years ago. and it isn’t getting better.

People tell me I don’t look 66. So what? I’m still getting older. Occasionally someone quite a bit younger says, “You’re as old as you feel.” That’s a piece of crap.

I have arthritis in my back. More often than I'd like I feel nerve pain in my legs. Sitting down or even standing up for any period of time I begin to experience an ache in my back. If I keep moving it helps. I still hike. I still walk. I ride a bicycle and I ride a motorcycle. Most of the time I don’t let it bother me, but it’s there. I have a scab on the crown of my bald head that won’t go away. A year ago the dermatologist said it was nothing to worry about. This year I’m worried about it and I’ll ask again at my annual checkup. I have age spots on my hands. I hate age spots. Right now the muscles and skin on my neck don’t sag, but they will if I live long enough and probably soon.

When I went bald twenty years ago I didn't do a comb over. I think accepting myself the way I am and adjusting is good for the soul, so I don't do cosmetic surgery.

Sure age is an attitude.  That doesn’t mean you don’t get older.

It is all relative. Three years ago my back and the muscle pain there had been getting to me and I went to physical therapy group for back pain. The therapist asked me what I was experiencing? I told her that if I walked too far I experienced a burning sensation around my waist and at the top of my hips. “So how far is that?” she asked.

I said, “It starts at about three miles or so.”

“Three miles!” one of the other participants snorted. “I can’t even walk three blocks.". Her tone said I didn’t belong in this group.

Aging is different for all of us but limiting my walks to 3 or 4 miles, my bicycle rides to 20 miles and the time I can spend sitting at my computer to 20 minutes and then a break and I’m adjusting to it. I’ve been adjusting to it for a long time now. I first noticed things were changing and not for the better when I turned 40. I had an enlarged prostate. I had to be more careful about getting that last drop out. Before I turned 50 I was bald.  I began straining my back more often. Then sex was not always surefire.

Age is not an attitude, it’s a fact. How I deal with it has a lot to do with attitude but attitude doesn’t absolve me from getting it.

When I was a cadet at the State Park Ranger Academy at the age of 58 we had a physical training instructor, Dave Dixon. Dave was my age and an ultra marathon runner. He was a strong advocate for conditioning, good health habits and good nutrition. He drew two graphs on the board, one with a steeply downward sloping line that ended in death and another, a plateau that sloped very gently downward and then dropped off precipitously at the end.

He said good conditioning and nutrition doesn’t change when we die, just the quality of life we have before we die.

And that’s where I am at. I hope I can maintain a good quality of life, that I’m not struck by some debilitating illness, that I don’t begin to lose my mental capacity or get Alzheimer’s; that I can move and think and function. I had a heart attack three years ago. The attack itself was very minor and I received six stints for the blockages. I think Dave Dixon was wrong. It’s my theory that I survived my heart attack, that I did extend my lifespan because of my good conditioning and ancillary circulation around the blockages and I am very lucky. I think of James Gandolfini’s death of a heart attack at the age of 59 with blockages similar to mine. My closest friend in high school died of a heart attack two years ago.

Being old is not becoming aware that we’re mortal. I’ve always known I was going to die.  Today I know it more. Thirty years from now, 20 years, 10 years or tomorrow I will be gone. There’s nothing I can do to change the final outcome. I think the new feeling is not that I will die, but that probably before I die, I will deteriorate, that I will be less physically capable and maybe even less of who I am. I wonder, how will I enjoy life like that? What will that be like?

I don’t have an answer. So many people have done this before me and I've asked, what's it all about; why?  But it's one of those things you can't know until you get there.  The answer seems to be just do it. I have some good examples of how to do it. I know to keep going ahead, to take life as it comes and to realize in the end, we have no control over it. Maybe the answer is that all of life is a grace, the good and the bad, and then it's over.

My life is an adventure. I call myself a tourist. I’m curious to see how I do aging. I’m curious to see how it ends.  I am pretty sure the end is the end.  I wish I wasn't.  I’d be delighted to be wrong. So right now, this moment, life is good. Or as Bill Williams, an older friend, near the end of his life told me, “It sure beats the alternative.” 

The Angels' Island

On Angel Island people asked me how I got such a great assignment.  Well it wasn’t hard, between the isolation of living on Angel Island itself, totally unattractive to anyone with a family, and the Superintendent's reputation for being a micromanager, there weren’t many takers.  A few Rangers were interested but as soon as they looked into it, they backed off.

I went to Angel Island November 17, 2007, 10 days after the Cosco Busan oil spill.  The island was still coping with the spill when I arrived.  The cleanup on the island’s shore went on for months afterwards.   I had my own personal crisis, having recently separated from Susan.  At Angel Island no one knew her or anything about my marriage and how it ended.  As far as anyone knew Suzette was my girlfriend and she started coming over to the island and was an immediate hit with the island residents, they all seemed to like her. 

The island itself was another beautiful place, 800 acres, about one square mile, sitting in the middle of San Francisco Bay with a view of the City, the East Bay, the San Rafael Bridge and Richmond, and a mile from Tiburon across a very rough piece of water.   

I told people that coming to Angel Island I had had a religious conversion of the Park variety, from the Devil’s Mountain to the Angels’ Island. 

The island was a favorite camping spot of the local Miwok people for over 5,000 years, then part of a Mexican land grant where they ran cattle, and then an Army Camp from 1862 until 1962.  After 1862 it was a Federal island and in addition to the Army post they used it for a quarantine station and an immigration station with detention barracks.  The Chinese, mostly young men, were detained for interrogation about their documents and their detentions ranged from weeks to years. 

Most of the human history was on the edge of the island surrounded at an elevation of about 150 feet by the Perimeter Road. 

Richard Dana in his book Two Years Before the Mast, wrote about Angel Island in the 1830s.  He called it Wood Island.  The Whalers who stopped in the Bay took on wood at Angel Island for rendering whale blubber.  By the time the Army occupied the island in 1862 photographs show it nearly completely bare of trees.  The Army planted Eucalyptus trees around their structures supposedly to prevent malaria and left the rest of the island alone.  Over the 150 years the Army stopped grazing and wood cutting the interior of the island restored itself with a dense covering of live oak and California chaparral.  Above Perimeter Road, we tried to keep the island as natural as possible.  The biologists battled invasive species removing Eucalyptus and Monterey pine. 

The views from Angel Island are the best in the Bay Area.  We could see the City as if we could reach out and touch it, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the East Bay and the North Bay.  From the top of the island I could look over the Berkeley Hills and see Mount Diablo. 

Angel Island was a much quieter park than Mount Diablo.  The only way to get to the island was by ferry or private boat.  We had spaces for 30 boats to moor overnight in Ayala Cove and 10 campsites.  Alcohol was fine on the island.  The café sold beer and wine.  People brought their own, but the costs of getting to the island kept most of the rowdy 20 somethings away.  Public drunkenness was an occasional problem but easily handled. 

There were fewer accidents on the island, but as the only Ranger I responded to all of them.  Even when Eric Knapp joined me in 2009 we still responded together, so the only accidents I missed were when I was off the island.  We only had one serious police incident the whole time I was on the island, a drunk who called in a bomb threat and then said he was armed and was going to kill himself.  Eric and I went searching for him.  We found him in the bushes on the east side of the island and arrested him.  We never found any weapons.

Law enforcement was very low key, most of it was enforcing fees and boating regs for the private boaters who came to the island.

The housing at Angel Island was amazing.  I was given a choice of houses, the Pharmacist’s house in Ayala Cove or the newer Coast Guard house at Point Blunt.  Point Blunt has an incredible view, but it’s windy and often foggy.  .  I chose the Pharmacist’s house, an 1890 two story Victorian house with a wraparound porch.  It was up the hillside from the beach at Ayala Cove.  The house was cold and drafty but beautiful.  Ayala Cove is where all the ferries came in, the Park offices are there, a café, a picnic area and a small beach.

The house is up from the picnic area and 100 yards up the road from the Park Headquarters.  Even though it was within sight of most of the activity of the Park, it was still quiet and out of the way. 

There is no bridge to Angel Island.  The only way to get there is by boat or swimming.  I had first gone to Angel Island in a kayak from Sausalito and for a number of years that was the only way I got there.  It’s a strenuous kayak trip against strong and rough currents and constant headwinds it seems.  Before I had decided to work there I had only come ashore at Ayala Cove and Camp Reynolds, both on the western side.  I kayaked around the island a number of times, but I’d never really got up on the island to explore.  I’d seen the east side from the Larkspur Ferry and all the houses and buildings at East Garrison seemed mysterious and forgotten. 

So just prior to taking the job at Angel Island I went to the island by way of the Tiburon Ferry.  Once I moved on to the island the regular means of getting on and off were the Angel Island Ferry and the Park’s 50 foot crew boat which ran a regular schedule of 8:30 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.   The Ferry ran for the tourists hourly on weekends and during the visitor season three or four times a day during the week.  During the winter the ferry ceased operation on weekdays except for charters. 

Living on Angel Island was wonderful but it was also like being exiled.  Even though it was only a mile from Tiburon and within sight of most of the Bay Area, it seemed very far away.  I enjoy unusual and remarkable things and living on an island was a remarkable experience.   Knowing the boat schedule was very important as it was the only way of getting off the island and back on.  If I needed milk, I drove or walked down to the docks on Angel Island, got there in extra time and waited for the ferry.  There was nothing more frustrating that to get to the dock just in time to wave good-bye to the departing boat.  If I were operating either of the Park boats myself there was preparation time.  It took 10 minutes to get across the strait and then the tying up, disembarking and a four block walk to the parking lot where we kept our vehicles for use on the mainland.  Until the last year on the island I could use the Park’s boat for trips, but these had to be scheduled and announced well ahead of time so everyone had an opportunity.  There were no spur of the moment runs to the mainland.

So that quart of milk took about an hour and a half to two hours if I planned it just right. 

I could have gotten my own boat, but maintaining a boat is a lot more trouble than a car.  People joke it’s like having a second wife.  And there are no public docks available in Tiburon.  Tying up required borrowing space, permission and avoiding spaces when they were needed.  The whole thing made it nearly impossible.  To rent a space was hundreds of dollars and the only thing available was all the way over in Paradise, about five miles away.  Dave had a whole course and qualification system for the crew boat and only a few of us qualified to operate that boat and a 16 foot inflatable with a large outboard motor on it.  Even that ended with a new superintendent in 2011. 

I lived on Angel Island for four years.  At first it was a novelty and I enjoyed it, but as time wore on the inconvenience of it began to weigh heavier and heavier.  The worst part was scheduling a return from the mainland.  After Suzette moved on the island and we had Paloma, if we were to go shopping or just to visit the mainland we would have to schedule it in such a way that we could return to Tiburon in time for the boat.  

There was a lot of waiting around because we had to get there early enough to make sure we didn’t miss the boat.  The islanders were well known at the town library and the café on the corner near the docks. 

I remember one time we went to LA by car.  We drove back overnight so Paloma would sleep through most of the trip and scheduled our return to catch the morning crew boat to the island.  It’s hard to be precise about time with a 400 mile trip and we gave ourselves plenty of time to make the ferry.  We arrived in Marin before 5:30 a.m.  The boat schedule for the island was 8:30.  We went to the 24 hour Safeway in Corte Madera.  We shopped for things we needed and bought some morning snacks and then returned to to the car to wait for the ferry. 

We still had 2 hours before the boat left Tiburon for the island.  Of course, there we were, Paloma, Suzette and me, our luggage and the debris of the trip in the car.  The security guard for the shopping center, drove around us every 10 minutes for the two hours we waited.  We looked like a homeless family living in the car.   That was the worst time but we often felt like a homeless family looking for a temporary camp until it was time to catch the ferry. 

On a busy summer weekend there could be 5,000 visitors to the island or more.  Most of those would arrive by ferry and leave by ferry the same day.  So the earliest visitors arrived at 10:30 a.m. and the latest left at 5:30 p.m.  There was space for 30 boats to be moored and there might be a 100 people in the moorings but they stayed on their boats overnight.  We had 9 campsites distributed around the island and maybe 50 people used those.  During the winter on a weekday or rainy weekend we might have 10 visitors, a couple of moorings and no campers.  Except for busy weekends which were only half the year the only residents on the island were the Park employees and our families, about 25 people. 

After sunset and before mid-morning it was very rare to see anyone on the island.  There were 80 or 90 deer on the island, hundreds of raccoons, harbor seals in two different locations and a host of owls, hawks, and seabirds.  There were no rattlesnakes, no coyotes and no bobcats or mountain lions.  It was an idyllic place.      

The Superintendent at Angel Island was Dave Matthews.  Before I went to Angel Island I met Dave and decided at worst he had to be better than my supervisor on Mount Diablo.  He seemed like a good guy.  I worked with Dave for three years and at times it got a little crazy.  He was a micro manager.  He was always changing things, couldn’t leave anything alone and something I didn’t expect he was always battling with the forces of evil, park vendors, partners, maintenance people from the mainland and management.  There were things Dave could have done or more often not done that would have made working there easier but basically Dave was a good guy, honest and a reliable friend.    

When I first got to Angel Island Dave and I were the only Rangers.  I was replacing Hector Heredia.  Hector was an odd character, a real wannabe cop, he had been heavy on enforcement on an island where there was a rare need for it.  Dave had to fish him out of trouble with the visitors a number of times.  After I’d been there awhile I began to realize Dave’s MO included surrounding himself with dysfunctional people who needed his help to stay afloat.  His most loyal follower was Jean Orchard, a Park Aide.  Jean had a serious alcohol problem and a year after I got there had to be fired for testing positive for cocaine.  Dave tried to get her a job on the mainland.  His reasoning was that drug testing was an island requirement because of crewing the boats.  It didn’t apply to working as a park aide on the mainland.  The Tamalpais Sector people thought that hiring a coke addict made no sense at all and didn’t accept Dave’s recommendation. 

It was a blow to my ego to realize why Dave so readily recruited me to be a Ranger on Angel Island.  As a 61 year old Ranger over the hill and wounded by Bill from Mount Diablo,  I was another one of Dave’s cripples needing his protection.  

I felt like Dave made a mistake in my case, but that’s probably not true.  I flourished under Dave’s protection.  He excused my failings and appreciated I didn’t do anything without checking with him first.  As a veteran of the military and 9 years in a Japanese environment, I was a well practiced follower and I think Dave appreciated that.   

Dave was a good guy.  I liked him.  He put people and family first, but he couldn’t resist manipulating all of us.  Dave, like me was that frustrating mix of sterling qualities and raging faults.  Dave battled everybody, the district, our vendors, the ferry boats, the Coast Guard, anyone outside of his circle and caused us problems with nearly everyone.  The Coast Guard generally avoided the island and treated us like lepers. 

When we had the fire he insisted that he should take overall responsibility for the investigation since it was his jurisdiction.  Cal Fire, of course, didn’t see it that way at all.  The Cal Fire investigators were very competent and knew what they were doing.  Dave interfered so badly with the Cal Fire investigators that after a month or so they wouldn’t talk to us.  That was also part of Dave’s MO, to get in a power struggle with people we should have cooperated with.    

I  really enjoyed Angel Island and I hated it at the same time.  I hated that the visitors mostly wanted a character like Mickey Mouse at the docks who would wave at them and stand in pictures with their family.  I did that and enjoyed it, but a lot of the time I was the only one at the docks, during the week and in the winter and being a dock aide, smiling and waving wasn’t always that much fun.  It was a day tourist venue and the tourists could be demanding and shallow. 

I also disliked the arrogance of the boat owners, both the ones on the dock who avoided paying fees whenever they could and the ones in the moorings a few of whom displayed an arrogance of property and disrespect for the Park.  On the other hand some of the boat owners were extraordinarily nice and I got to know and appreciate the regulars.  It was one of the pleasures of being a Ranger.    

I liked our vendors.  I got to be good friends with the people at the café.  Maggie, the ferry boat operator is a special friend.  Living in a village was interesting.  I used to say if something happened on the island, it only took 15 minutes for the people on the other side of the island to know about it, unless it was a secret, then it took a half hour.  Being the Ranger for the local Park was also very interesting.  I knew the businesses in Tiburon and the local bank manager.  From doing medicals together I knew the firefighters.  Walking down the street in town whether I was in uniform or not I was well known character and exchanged greetings with people along the street.  That was different than my usual experience of being anonymous nearly everywhere.  

In my second year we got another Ranger, Eric.  Eric was a character.  He had a droll sense of humor.  He had been a Ranger for over 25 years and was pretty well burned out.  He didn’t much like the visitors and he quickly got off on the wrong foot with Dave and kept making it worse. 

Eric was called the ghost because he was hard to find.  But when I needed Eric he was always there.  There were a few times when we went out on gunfire or other questionable calls, where we didn’t know what we were going to and I always felt safe with Eric at my side.  He was experienced, competent and courageous.  Other things about Eric didn’t count much in comparison to trusting him with my life, which I did without hesitation. 

He and Paloma had a special relationship.  To her he was Uncle Eric and anybody who is friends with Paloma is OK.  Paloma also got the benefit of being in a village where everyone knew her and loved her.