I’m Your Man

Hello from the Gurnet again. Today is Saturday November 18th. The air temperature is 43. The ocean temperature is 55 degrees. The sky is black. There is no wind for a change. The tide was very high and it was not easy to walk in the sand full of rocks.

I did not expect to have to clean Duxbury beach again so soon. Two days ago I did a pretty good job.

There was so much to clean, that with the two fisherman lobster catch boxes that I found, I made a train and pulled them along the sandy beach all the way from beyond Tall Pines to the second crossover. I found rope from off of some of the lobster buoys and connected them. I drove my pick up down to pick every thing up after my three and one half hour eco walk.

Look at this piece of pottery that washed up. Looks like Pilgrim stuff to me.

Hey! They just found a tintype in North Carolina of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, the man who shot him dead.

Stranger things have happened . . .  such as an old man was seen Saturday morning pulling two boxes along the beach filled with litter.

Cigarette filter butts on the Kaibab at the Grand Canyon to plastic bottles in Sicily near a closed tuna factory. As Leonard Cohen used to say, “ I’m your man."

Zylonite

Handwritten Letter to David Bongiolatti in Round Rock, Texas - November 19, 2017

We were friends from Kindergarten until the end of high school. We played football. Dave was a tackle at 6 foot tall and 285 pounds. Albin Mosher was the center at 210 pounds and six foot tall. I played guard and linebacker at five foot eight inches and soaking wet 160 pounds. We grew up in the Italian section of the mill town of Adams, Massachusetts called Zylonite. It was a kind of plastic that I am sure was environmentally friendly.

Hi Dave,

I know! I know! We just talked twenty some years ago, and now I am back.

People say that life is a circle. Well the circle is back to Zylonite. Check out this 1904 map of Zylonite. Pretty awesome, eh?  I have almost no one to share it with. Sandy did not grow up there. Bucky Volpe and Karen Bechard are muerto.

The Adams Historical Society newsletter map is wonderful. It was originally taken off glass plates. Check out Zylonite. It was all Irish in 1904, compared to all Italian in the 50’s and 60’s. Did you know that the street we both grew up on was named after a wealthy Quaker named Abraham Howland? Remember the Arcadia? That was their house.

Recently there was a story about Apremont Street in the Historical Society news. In 1904 it was known as Kipper Avenue. Kipper Avenue was the first place my ancient family moved to, from Savoy. The street name was changed to Apremont to honor the men from Adams who fought a tough battle and won against the Germans in WWI in Apremont, France. My daughter says the name means "at the foot of the mountain," and Apremont Street does sit at the base of Adams' Mount Greylock. The beautiful elm trees that bordered Howland Avenue are all gone, and the carved-out and blasted mountain looks like hell, but Mount Greylock is still there.  Some things never change.

Who grows up with a friend named Sterling? Well that mystery was also solved in a previous Adams Historical Society newsletter.

I send an occasional e-mail to Betty Hish. I was in contact with Beverly Banas until she got bored with me. She worked for the CIA in Russia. Really!

Eileen Blanchette and Albin Mosher are still married, and have done really well. They live in Rhode Island. They both attended Brown.

September 30, 2017 and Sandy Zabek and I are still very happily married for 50 years.

A writer found my blog about Russell Roulier. Did you know him? He was the second Marine killed in Viet Nam -- from our town. Thomas Edison High School in Philly lost 56 young men. He is writing a book about Russ.

Brown Street, between your house and Howland Avenue School, was where my not so great great grandfather deserted his family of seven in 1900. Remember Gumbo? I think my relatives lived in the second block that the Shepherds lived in. Closer to Billy Cairns house. He is gone also. The street was named after the paper tycoon, L.L. Brown.

My great grandfathers name was Bachand, which is my real last name.

Received a call at the end of this past June from someone claiming to be one of my brother Mike's daughters. Jack Daniels killed Mike at age 36. We learned even more about the Bacon family. But after Ancestry.com and 23 & me, it turns out she is NOT my niece.

I have suggested to the Adams Historical Society that they do a piece on the New England Lime Company, where your grandfather had so much to do with bringing all the Italian families over to work. Was his name Louis -- the same as your dad? You really should sign up for this newsletter.

So there. Aren’t you glad we connected again? It seems we were just at your wedding in Vermont, somewhere back in the late 60’s?

Your uncle Ippol Bongiolatti treated me like a son when I worked for him in the quarry, summers between high school years. He was a first class guy.

your friend from kindergarten     
Bobby Bacon    
from Zylonite, Massachusetts

Just One Day On Isla Mujeres

Mary from Minnesota, who we met on the ferry last year, coming home from Isla Mujeres, asked, “If you had a day to ‘see’ and experience Isla, in all its glory, what would you recommend people do?

My idea of a perfect day on Isla would be . . .

• Arrive early, arrive early, arrive early.

• On the ferry, find a seat on the top level, outside.

• Have breakfast at La Cazuela M & J. Corner of Abasolo and Guerrero. If you love eggs, this is the place.

• Then I would walk to Hotel Na Balam and rent two chairs and a sombrilla and relax on what is considered one of the 10 best beaches in the WORLD, Playa Norte. They have nice clean bathrooms, and a full menu restaurant with great margaritas. I would get one made with Herradura. When you walk through reception, tell them Tocino sent you. They will be so happy, they will probably try to give you besos y abrazos, especially Braulio. Be careful of Braulio. Ja Ja Check out the grounds. Are they not beautiful? Stay here all day, or book now for 2019.

• Treat yourselves to lunch right at your private palapa, or go inside the restaurant. Its name is Oceanas.

• Stay on Isla for dinner. Do not go back to Cancun! Shop along Hidalgo.

• You can make reservations at Olivia. It is Mediterranean. E-mail is Zelzers@gmail.com Tell them Tocino sent you. That is my last name in Spanish.  Think labne, labne -- make sure to order some. The wine is really good here. Reservations only and closed on Sunday and Monday. My FAVORITE on Isla Mujeres. It is on Av. Matamoros, across from a burger place.

• Or . . . El Varadera Qubano (Cuban) and the freshest fish ever. The view will knock you out. It is on the lagoon, where the pirate ships used to dock. Not sure when it is closed. Hands down the BEST mojitos on Isla. Just tell the taxi driver -- it is half way down the five mile long island, El Baradero Cuban restaurante on Calle Septiembre. Do not be afraid when you first see it from the street . . . and try not to step on the chickens.

• Gelato …. did someone say gelato? Better here than in Sicily. The one near the super mercado and the vocala is the best. I would get coconut.

• My daughter does a Joga retreat every year here and the yogis’ favorite restaurant might just be Lola Valentina’s, right on the main street, Hidalgo, on the north end. Google and check out the awesome menu. Lola is really Lauri Dumm from Oregon, but the Mexicans cannot pronounce it so she became Lola. Well Iris in Spanish is Edys. Go figure.

p.s.

Mary, you truly made my day, thinking about Isla. Any more questions? E-mail me, por favor. Try to enjoy this special place that we have been going to for 30 years. The ferry back to Cancun runs every half hour. Next year, stay for a week or a month, or even for 50 days.

Sandy and I, y friends, are going back in Febrero y Marzo.

Gurnet & Saquish 2017

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Buenos dias amigos y amigas. It is so foggy this morning that you cannot see from one end of the Gurnet Bridge to the other. Ok, ok, you call it the Powder Point Bridge, but the sign says Gurnet Bridge 1898. The every-other-day walk out to The Gurnet is uneventful. Almost no one is on Duxbury beach today because of the cloud cover, except for a few fishermen from the shore.

I decide to take the pot-holed gravel road back to where my pickup truck is parked. Almost immediately I come upon about 30 Boy Scouts, possibly walking out to the Gurnet Lighthouse to sit and have lunch. Around the lighthouse it is all grass, and the dirt mounds protect you from the wind. In 1776 there were six cannon here that fired on an English warship. My barber Carol says you can rent the lighthouse and sleep overnight. How much fun would that be?

Sandy and I were at the Plymouth or Gurnet Light last Saturday with Robin and David Armstrong. We sat in chairs on their strip of sandy beach property, facing Plimoth Harbour. It is only three miles from here to where the Mayflower is floating. Warm food, cool drinks . . .  September on Saquish. Wow! What a treat! 

 

On the way out, it was a full Harvest moon so David drove us past the foxes and rabbits, right up to the lighthouse. November will bring snowy owls and coyote. The past two nights in the casita I have been serenaded by two owls. One is a saw-whet and I didn’t get the second one’s name. Maybe a boreal. Who-who was it?

Just before Tall Pines, even though I am wearing earplugs, and before I can say Bob Marley, I hear steel drum music. My first thought is Duxbury teenagers, sitting in their Jeep with reggae rather than rap music, just over the second beach cross over.  That was my first thought. My other three thoughts were …

• Because of the hurricane, the music is coming up all the way from Foxy’s on Jost Van Dyke

• There must be a Morgan, pirate-looking, sailboat sitting off Clark's Island.

Or . . .

• There is a older gent, driving his old pickup slowly, while pulling horizontally a large steel I-beam, which is smoothing out the gravel road from the bridge to Saquish.

Google says Foxy’s was leveled last week. There is no wind for a sailboat this beautiful morning.

So what do you think I heard?

- Tocino         

A friend to the universe -- just don’t break the beautiful silence by greeting me

--

P.s.

Saturday October 28, at the Gurnet Bridge. I am walking out toward the Gurnet Light once again. It is the oldest wooden lighthouse in these United States. Of the 33 parking spaces, there are only seven available at the west end of the wooden bridge in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Well not really. All seven are full, but I kind of squeeze in and hope for no ticket. Denzel Washington is shooting his new movie, called Equalizer 2. Columbia Pictures has been shooting on Boylston Street in Boston, but they have a large set in the Brant Rock section of Marshfield. Rumor has it he is staying near the Fairview Inn, at a summer rental house called Shangri-La, on Ocean Street.

Monday they are shooting at the Powder Point Bridge, and that is why all the parking spaces are full. One of the larger trucks says on its side “Rain For Rent.” The pipes run right into Duxbury Bay . . .  to pull the rain water, I guess. There are porta-potties and a golf cart that says “Production” on it. Maybe the coolest things are the wind machines.

Did you catch the movie “The Way Way Back,” with Steve Carell? The Gurnet 1895 or Powder Point Bridge is in this film too. Carell plays a real rat in that one. You might enjoy it. Being the way you are. Just kidding. He owns the General Store in Marshfield Hills.

P.p.s.

• Dennis from North Carolina and North Adams is writing a book that will include a story about a kid that I grew up with, Russell Roulier, a grunt Marine, who was killed in a foxhole that was overrun in Viet Nam. He found me from a blog that I did seven years ago. YCMTS up.

• Yesterday I had lunch at El Sarape with an Army veteran of Viet Nam.

• I almost got in a fight at a bar in the liberty town of Oxnard California while in the Navy Seabees near Port Hueneme, California.  That was my closest scrape. I did manage to get Tex Ritter’s autograph.

• I told you already about the phone call at the end of June. “Hello. When I was 16, my mother told me that your brother is my father? You could say that that has sort of filled up the summer.

- Bob Bacon          

the very first person to EVER say  "you can’t make this stuff up." (I even edged out my friend Tom Donovan, who was the very first person to develop the Five Second Rule about dropped food.)

Family History Update

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The Facts:

Dawn Biagini Valenti leaves a message on our home phone at the end of June 2017.  “When I was 16, my mother told me that your brother, Michael, was my father.” Today Dawn lives in Pittsfield MA and is 50 years old.

I leave her a message saying you are half Polish and Half French. She replies "You are Jewish also."

To Dawn, I relate a SOLID family story. Alexandra Zaik, my maternal Polish grandmother, walks for two days to Gdansk while pregnant with my Aunt Blanche, to catch the steamship to Ellis Island. Her husband is in the Russian Army and deserts when he knows his wife is safe in the USA.

Dawn says NYET! She was not married. She traveled with her sister, Mary. Ellis Island wrote sideways on their entrance form, “SISTERS.” They came by way of Antwerp in Belgium. She shows me the proof.

I take a Ancestry.com DNA test.  

They screw it up.

I take a second Ancestry.com DNA test.

In her extensive research, Dawn finds that the not-so-great Great Grandfather who I have been looking for since 1976 was married to Rosalie in Can-ah-da before he married my Great Grandmother in South Hadley, MA. I never found proof that the Bacons ever married. Two families at once. How did he manage that?

1900 – Not-so-great Great Grandfather deserts a family of seven on Brown Street in Adams. Never to be heard from again. The youngest child is six months old, and the oldest is fifteen. One of the children was a tremendous source of family history. His name was George Washington Bacon. I saved all his handwritten correspondence. In 1976, I could not afford a computer. I worked hard on the family history for two years. Proof is in my four 4-inch thick books, and a chart that goes back to Paris 1668.

2012 - I ask Barbara Sylvester to please check her Ancestry account in Rhode Island to find Charles Frank Bacon or Charles Francois Bachand -- his real name. I have not a shred of evidence that he was living there. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. She finds Charles Francois and his wife Rosalie. 117-year mystery solved. Proof is in the 1900 and 1920 census.

2017, Labor Day - Sandy and I drive to Central Falls RI, near McCoy Stadium, to 9A Fuller Avenue. Today # 9 is an empty parking lot.

Test results are back. Dawn is not my brother’s child. Dawn is devastated.

Sandy says try 23 & Me. We do.

I dig deeper in RI. 9A was a garage that was torn down in 2012. # 9A and 73 Summer Street share the same address. The Bachand house still stands, and Sandy cannot wait to go back and check it out.

23 & me test results come back.    

I am still not Jewish and I am still not Dawn’s uncle.

Now it is clear that a Jewish Adams, Massachusetts-area man is. Dawn’s mom insists that Michael is the father. Dawn’s mom’s sister says, in her younger days, Mom was a bit of a tart, to put it bluntly.

In 1968, Dawn’s mom invites my brother to her house in Cheshire, Massachusetts where she is living with her mom. Michael goes, but asks if he can bring his wife. Dawn’s mom goes into the back room and brings out the infant Dawn -- the same age as Michael and his wife’s son. Mikes wife faints.    

Today  - Dawn continues her research.      

please file under YCMTS up  

     

- Robert Francois Bachand      

Friend to the fatherless          

October 29,  2017

DNA

Of course you still remember that Dawn called me at the end of June to announce that she is my brother Michael's daughter from 1967?

When we last spoke, Sandy and I were heading for Central Falls, RI, after the Ninigret Music Festival. We GPS'd it, pulled off 95 near the Pawtucket Red Sox's McCoy Stadium, drove down Summer Street into some ghetto, and came to Fuller Avenue. 9A Fuller Avenue in Central Falls, Rhode Island, is where my not-so-great-grandfather disappeared to, after abandoning his family of 7 in Adams in 1900. The 1910 and 1920 Rhode Island censuses place him in Central Falls with his second family. Well really, it was his first family. We find #8 and we find #13 but #9 turns out to be a PARKING LOT, fairly recently paved. Sandy takes my photo in the parking lot and we call it a day.

But Tuesday is another day. I know from the swimming pool business that when you fill in a pool, you let the town know, if for no other reason than you are paying taxes on a pool that you no longer own. I place a telephone call to the Central Falls Building Department. Eileen from the Assessors Office calls me the following day and tells me that a GARAGE, not a house, was torn down on this site in 2012. BUT she investigates further, and says that #9 Fuller Avenue and #73 Summer Street share the same address. It is on a corner lot. The Bachand apartment STILL STANDS. Sandy will be  so thrilled to go back with me to Central Falls RI.

So I finally received my DNA test back  Ancestry.com. I call Dawn and we are going to go through it step by step over the telephone. Everyone thinks that cell phones are awesome, but I still love the simple telephone. I don’t even own a Facebook. I am an amateur on the computer, but Dawn knows her stuff. She had her DNA tested -- and also her brother's. In July she sent me a side by side photo of my brother Michael and her brother. Wow! We think that her mother and my brother got together again to share the good old days . . . and produced brother Bruce.

Well … Bruce’s DNA comes back and it is NOT a match. So much for that theory. Bruce and Dawn had different fathers. But we -- Dawn and I -- are still related anyway.

We carry on. Ancestry screws my sample up and I have to do another test.

Finally it arrives. I call Dawn and we go through it together. I find it fascinating. I'm 60% European, and 0% Jewish. She gets kind of quiet. Then it dawns on me. (Dawn -- get it ?). Dawn and I are NOT related. My grandfather Frank Bacon used to say, “Hold your horses."

Are you kidding me? Instead of Jewish, I am 9% Irish. Dawn's DNA indicates she has 23% Jewish blood. Our DNAs do not match. We have enjoyed each other's company and shared family stories that Dawn is not connected to. Dawn has done a pile of research on the Bacon/Bachand family history. We even walked out to the Gurnet one morning. I think she loved the whole scene. If Dawn is not family, it is sort of like reminiscing with people that you don’t know.  But, but . . . our whole little Bacon family all feel such a strong connection. Sandy is convinced that Dawn looks like my mother, Nora. So what's up with that? 

Sandy says she has had plenty of clients for whom Ancestry has messed up. “Remember," she says, "They messed up the first DNA sample that you sent in.” She suggests that we try 23 & me. Marnie’s friend Kerry used Ancestry and did not like their answers. Tried 23 and Me and felt that they were more on target. We do 23 @ me and are currently waiting for the chromosome test results, and we are trying to hold our horses. But it ain’t easy.

October 3, 2017.  I am back. Just received my 23 & Me test results, and so did Dawn. She is still Jewish and I am still not. So we are NOT related. Are you kidding me? 

Dawn texts her mom again and mom sticks to her guns. She says Dawn is my brother Michael’s child, but Ancestry and 23 say nada, nyet, no way Jose.

23 and Me hooks me up with a second cousin. I e-mail someone named Julianna Menke. My father's sister Dorothy had a daughter named Greta. Greta married Curt Menke. Greta is my first cousin. I am in touch with her sister, Paula, who now lives in North Carolina. Greta is in Ten-ah-sea. Well, that is how she says it. ARE YOU FOLLOWING THIS? I don’t blame you.

I go back to my good friend Google, and come up with another Bachand -- Rebecca -- who owns a business in Rhode Island. Sandy and I leave for Sicily tomorrow, and hope to get a reply before then. Maybe I should have just quit at Fuller Avenue.

Married for 50 years and two days so far.  Not counting the fact that we met when we were 14 and 15. Looking good. Sandy’s father said, “I hope you know what you are doing." Her mom said, “You will never make it." Gramma Hattie Bacon said, “Ask her to marry you now."

su servidor and truth finder,
Roberto Francisco Tocino, Robert Bacon, Robert Francois Bachand, Bobby Baconi

I am very confused at this point, but we did solve the 117-year-old question of where Charles Frank Bacon/Bachand wandered off to. That has been my goal since 1976.

Our secrets for a long success full marriage I cannot share with you until I get to know you better.

Neptune Burped

--> José is finally leaving us. It has been raining for five days here in the south of Boston area, especially the Cape and the islands. I stop short on complaining when I hear what Florida, Houston, Puerto Rico, and all the islands are going through.

This Saturday morning I finally get to take my 3-hour walk out to the Gurnet. It is low tide. This means that I can walk the shoreline in the soft sand but not today. The beach is a mess. I can see that the earlier tide has run right up to the snow fence where the piping plovers live. Never have I seen so many lobster pot buoys free from their pots. The wind is from the north and steady. Walking or running in the wind is not much fun but at least the rain has stopped.

Even though I am the only one on Duxbury Beach, I feel that someone is watching me. A movement catches my eye. Two large beautiful eyes with long lashes are looking at me from a pile of seaweed. I cannot believe what I am seeing. It is a seal. The waves have stranded it way in near the snow fence. It is small -- maybe four feet long. Is it a harbor seal or a grey seal. How can I help? 

 I place a white plastic basin next to him and ballast it with rocks making it easier for the rescue crew to find him. He is stranded between the first and second beach crossover. Maybe closer to the second. I will call the Duxbury Harbormaster when I get back to my pick up. Maybe it will be too late. Finally as I walk south, I see a couple walking towards me. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“Could you call the harbormaster and tell them about the seal?”

It will be a long time before I get back to my truck. I hope he will be okay. I know that sometimes seals beach themselves to take a break, but this one is so far off the water line that I know he is in deep trouble.

I find an incredible buoy. It looks like a lighthouse. Sandy loves it when I bring even more stuff home. This one will thrill her. 

If I have to drive my truck down the gravel road to pick it up, I might as well do a clean up today. I have a final pool job to seal, but everything is still too wet. I have spare time. In the Navy, we called it Field Day. At Friendly Ice Cream it was called Spruce Up. Mom called it Spring or Fall Cleaning.

 I am finally back to the land side of the Gurnet Powder Point Bridge (constructed in 1892). Did that couple make the call to the Harbormaster? Did they relay properly everything I told them about the location? It is, after all, seven miles of beach. Most of the crossovers today are chained off. I call the Harbormaster he is vague about the rescue. I spoke to a policeman coming across the bridge, and he told me that they would normally call the aquarium. But what aquarium?  

I call the New England Aquarium. The answering machine says, “Press 6 if you want to report an injured or dead sea turtle, whale or seal.” I press 6 and leave a message. Even before I cross over the bridge, Nicole is returning my call. My news sounds like it is news to her. I relay all the facts to Nicole. She sounds responsible. She says, “A crew is on the way."

 

Boy, there are a lot of windsurfers out today -- and no fishermen. Many birders with their binoculars. I stop and pick up my stashes of litter and buoys. Is it bouy or buoys?

I finally reach the third crossover, where I left my lighthouse-looking buoy. There is a jeep parked there full of dogs. A woman is walking towards the ocean with a white pail. We pass as I load yet another buoy that I am sure Sandy will learn to love. OMG, it is Leslie Adams, daughter to my good friend Randy. She shows me the steamers she and her husband have collected. Randy is coming for dinner tonight. Leslie says that the bay water is kind of mucky and that is why she was getting a pail from the Atlantic, to keep them fresh.

My truck is so full of Neptune’s treasures that I decide to do an inventory when I get home. The sun still hasn’t come out. Kezia e-mails from Sutton, Massachusetts, where it is sunny and 80 degrees. WHAT THE …?

• 39 pieces of charcoal oak firewood

• 6 buoys bouy whatever

• 8 bags of dog shit in bright blue bags. I simply do not like your dog … but I hate you.

• 10 pieces of footwear, no matches found

• 1 red plastic kids’ shovel

• 109 bottles and cans, disgusting

• diapers -- How can you leave diapers on the beach road?

• 1 ball cap  -- 80% chance it was worn improperly.

This year's sand toy collection.

  

“Hello this is the New England Aquarium. Yes, the crew found him. Thank you. We carried him down to the ocean and he swam away."   

No one will believe his story when he finally sees his family. He was, in fact, a young grey seal. Nice job.

by Bobby Bacon        

a friend to all water creatures

Rosanne Cash

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On a cool drizmally Sunday night, under Pat & Don’s tent canopy, we watched and listened to Johnny’s daughter -- September 3, 2017, Labor Day weekend at the 29th annual Rhythm and Roots Festival in Ninigret, Rhode Island. Someone thought to bring Drambuie.

Our daughter Kezia is a fan. Sandy bought Rosanne’s book and asked her to sign it as a gift. The name of the book is Composed. I am reading it now, in my casita. The first house that the Cashes lived in in California was at Casitas Springs. It was a large ranch style, with adobe and redwood shingles.

My personal favorite that night was “Tennessee Flat Top Box.” John Cash wrote it in 1961. “In a little cabaret in a south Texas border town ….”  It made Bob’s CD years ago. Hardly a CD is made without a John Cash tune. He liked to be called John, not Johnny.

John Stewart, in 1987, wrote “Runaway Train.” John was with the second Kingston Trio. Do you know his big hit “Gold?”

When the lights go down

in the California town,

people are in for the evening.

Well my buddy Jim Bass

he’s a working pumping gas

and he makes two fifty for an hour.

He’s got rhythm in his hands

as he’s tapping on the cans,

sings rock and roll in the shower.

Rosanne became a friend to John and used “Runaway Train” on her album “King’s Record Shop.” The store was in Louisville but, like so many records stores, is gone now. Do you remember Laflem’s Record Store in Adams? Google didn’t know it either. So don’t feel bad. When I was in 7th grade, I would stop in every day and browse. Do people still browse? Richie Valens, Rick Nelson, Little Richard, Fats Domino.  Mostly 45’s as I remember. That album, “King’s” was big for Ms. Cash. She had four hits off of it. Maybe the biggest was “Runaway Train.” King’s Record Shop was her sixth album.

John Stewart was a favorite of Kezia’s. While she was attending Hampshire College, Kezia went to his concert in Hartford. Hartford is a city in Connecticut. She introduced herself. John asked if she was coming to his next concert at Johnny D’s in Somerville, Massachusetts. She said no. He asked why. She said she was under 21 and could not get in to a club that served liquor. John said, “Come as my guest. You can handle the sales of my CDs.” She did. This led to John calling every time he was in New England. Sandy and I went to a concert of his out in Westboro, at the Old Vienna Kaffehaus and we became fans. Michael & Trysha Lynch know the Old Vienna.

Kezia went to a Rosanne Cash concert. When she introduced herself, Rosanne, being a good friend of John, said, “So you are Kezia.” Pretty cool. But then again, reading her book, you sense that she is very down to earth.

Last night in the book, a guitar player joined her on tour. His name is Vince Gill. He played with Pure Prairie League. Remember them?

I will keep you posted on the rest of the book. You do not have to thank me, but thank you for listening.

Seabee Memories

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The first time that I heard the name was when our drill instructor Rumsey asked us, while we were in ranks after class and before PT, “Who would volunteer for a war we have going in Viet Nam?” Almost everyone stepped forward. “Here we go, round again, won’t stop, won’t quit, never die. Why? Whiskey, women, PT, Rumsey.”   

After each school day, Rumsey would run us around the base, close to the palm trees and the chain link perimeter fence. You feel you can run forever when you are running as a company or platoon. Even in your combat boots. Rumsey was like John Wayne. One tough sonofa. . .

We were nearing the end of the Navy Seabee Class A Electrical School in Port Hueneme, California, sixty miles north of L.A. The name Port gives you a hint that it is on the coast. The year was 1964. It was before the Summer of Love in San Francisco. “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear a flower in your hair.”

It was a three-month school that ended with a month of power pole work. Not telephone pole work, power pole work. I guess they put it at the end, because if you broke your leg during this phase, it really didn’t matter. You still had the knowledge of the previous two months.

That is Elmer Berkee sitting on the cross arms, with me gaffed in under him. He was from Oregon and he did get orders to Da Nang. In country, sitting like this, you were a fun target for the Vietnamese snipers. I wonder how Berkee did over there. I heard of a Seabee who got shot in the ass upon arrival, as his plane was landing.

Mark Ruane was from Malden and he got orders to Reykjavik. Harvey went to Roda. Most everyone else went to Viet Nam. Somehow I ended up at the Naval Air Station in South Weymouth, Massachusetts. I met John Waltner at South Weymouth. John and Frank Sinatra were both from Hoboken. Every time you see John, he reminds you of that fact. Every single time. He had done two tours in ‘Nam. One on an aircraft carrier, and one in the mud and torrential rains at Da Nang. Once while crossing a river on a barge, the guy sitting next to him was shot dead. John was an Seabee Equipment operator which meant bulldozers, graders, front end loaders, and tractor trailers. When he came aboard the carrier, the Boatswains Mate Chief asked him what the hell rate was that under his crow. Waltner told him, “Seabee Equipment Operator.” The chief shook his head and said, “And what the hell am I suppose to do with you?”   

John did end up operating something on the carrier. It was called the ship’s movie projector.

My boss and friend of 52 years now got orders from South Weymouth to an Army base in Ethiopia. Chet was wounded in Viet Nam and ended up putting in 44 years in the Navy. Spain, Viet Nam, Sicily, Guam, Puerto Rico, Gulfport, and his very last duty station was American Samoa. He came to the Seabee reunion here this summer with his wife, Carmen, who he met in Puerto Rico. He is legally blind and you have to speak to him through his microphone, but he still has that same positive attitude that he had the very first day that I met him. Chet Urbati -- Navy Seabee Electrical Senior Chief and a first class person . . . and does he ever have stories to tell!

While at the landfill recently, a guy stopped by the side of my pick up. “Were you a Seabee?” he asked. I only have one sticker on my truck rear window and it is the Seabee one. “I was.” He said he recently was also, and was just returning from Fallujah. “What did you do over there in Iraq,” I asked? He said, “We built a hospital.” I said, “Thank you for serving.” He returned the compliment.

Bacon R.F.  CEW 2   693 -10 - 63