Senior Chief Chester Urbati has left the building

Attention on Deck!

Sandy and I spoke to Carmen Urbati  in Gulfport this sad sunny Sunday afternoon from our deck.

Chet needed a heart valve and had the operation through the groin in December 2019.

Part of the old valve broke off and did serious heart damage. He needed open heart surgery but the Navy doctor said that he was too old to possibly survive it.

Carmen arranged a drive by via their front porch for Chet's 85th birthday on June 25th. Seventeen cars drove by and the Urbatis truly enjoyed that day.

It seems he did not suffer a lot, but at the end he was ready to go. Chet was cremated along with a Navy Seabee flag.       Shocking!

Carmen met Chet in her native Puerto Rico, at the PX, when he was stationed there. Wish I watched that courtship happening. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary plus six months this year. They could dance Cajun and the four of us did just that at Mulates on the waterfront in New Orleans once or twice.

Carmen is planning Chet's funeral for 2021 in Gulfport. The funeral company is doing a write up on him. I hope they have enough paper to record the many places that he was stationed during his 44 years of service. South Weymouth Naval Air Station, Sicily, Rhoda Spain, Italy, Vietnam, Gulfport Mississippi, Guam, American Samoa, Ethiopia, Puerto Rico, and probably seventeen other places that he forgot to mention.

I met Chet in 1965. He was my section leader in the electrical shop at NAS South Weymouth. I was only 20. We kept  Barracks 76 and the NAS runway and taxi way lights, and the two airplane and blimp hangers lights, on even during the East Coast black out of 1965. We also kept the runways clear during the winter Snow Bill, during twelve hour shifts.  “Snow Bill is In," was the telephone call we would get, calling us back to the base for duty off of weekend liberty. I think it only snowed on weekends.

He totally took me under his wing, as if I was family. As a matter of fact, he even took me to his mother and father's house in Hingham, at Crow Point. They made me feel totally at home. I visited often on my own.

Did you ever see him not happy, or complaining about anything? Or even criticizing anyone? I wish I had his eternal optimism and general happiness. He was always smiling and telling sea stories. He had a way of telling original stories that made you feel you were hearing them for the very first time. I am so thankful and blessed that he was a part of my life.

He sent me a baboon skin from Ethiopia. Has this ever happened to you?

He was dating the Army captain's daughter. It was an Army base. The chief called him in to has office:  “Urbati, do you think as an enlisted man that you should be dating a base commander and officer's daughter?"  It was shortly after that that he was transferred to Da Nang. Who could that possibly happen to?  The one, the only … a true patriot: Chet Urbati.

Bacon R.F. CEW 2  10-93-10-63     United States Navy Seabee     

Mercedes Barcha & Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 

Gabriel “Gabo" and Mercedes met when they were 9 y 14 years young and he knew. She did not. Sandy and I met when we were 14 y 15 and I knew. Sandy did not. I really did. And I didn’t know much, but I knew.

We have to stay married for three more years to tie the Garcia Marquez’s. I have read many of his books. I always wondered why he would take two showers every day. An adventure to Colombia taught me why.

Is theirs a fabulous story or yes?  Sandy, Marnie and I have been to his casa in Cartagena, and even the bar at the El Hotel Santa Clara where he drank.

A friend, Charles Gregory of Albuquerque, New Mexico, pushed the book “One Hundred Years of Solitude" on me twenty years ago. Charles had spent much of his young life in a mission near the Alamo in San Antonio. 

I do not enjoy fiction. I read the whole book on the playa at Na Balam with my toes in the warm white sand. I did not like it. A little too fictional for me.

Years later on Isla Mujeres, Mexico, I found a copy of the novel abandoned at the free book table at “Cabanas" Maria del Mar. That copy sold for $3.95 in 1971. Once again. I reread it, thinking to myself. “Don’t be so serious. Enjoy the words.”  Last night in my casita on the bog, I reread the first three pages -- WOW!

Only 50 million copies sold? Published the same year Sandy and I were married. A coincidence? I think not.    

ja ja      

Have YOU read it ?

su servidor,           

Roberto Francisco Tocino

Follow this link to read Mercedes Barcha's obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/books/mercedes-barcha-dead.html

Souvenirs

I am dusting the six lighted shelves in our kitchen, in what was once a broom closet. All kinds of cool memory-souvenir-travel stuff: 
• kachinas from the Hopi Mesa
• some awesome Maya statues from Coba, Uxmal, Tulum, Campeche and Chichen Itza
• pottery pieces from the ancient village above Agua Caliente, New Mexico
• a coffee cup from Cortez, Colorado near Mesa Verde
• a rug from Istanbul (OK OK we didn’t buy it, but it is a fun story)
• a stone statue from Portovenere (port of Venus) in Italy at the south end of Cinque Terra
• a carved Maya wall piece from Palenque in Chiapas 
• a cowboy statue from Disney Land 1967
• a beautiful sandstone with a natural red heart from Capital Reef National Park in Utah
• four kachinas from Santa Fe, Canyon de Chelly, Gallup and Flagstaff
• a stone from the bottom of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River
• three pieces of cholla wood from the cholla cactus of the hills of Albuquerque
• a salad bowl that has a piece of medical tape on it that says "Nora Bacon" in my mom's own handwriting
• four types of railroad spikes that held the wooden ties of the Old Colony Railroad that once ran to the Cape through  our back yard (1845- 1939)
• a lava stone from Hawaii, and one from Phantom Ranch
• a small white Zeus or Poseidon bust from Athens
•  beat-up Pusser's Landing BVI tin cup that once held a Pain Killer drink or two
• Sandy’s father's WWII medals and his cigarette lighter
• a piece of white coral from Isla Mujeres 
• a slice of red rock from Sedona
• a flat wall rock from Connecticut that has imbedded fossils in it 
• a 6,000-year-old spearhead that I found on a pool excavation on the North River
• a rectangle rock labeled "2001 Montana" 
and 
• a Mohawk Trail plate with an elk in the center that Rich Busa gave me 19 years ago. I have family photos with my father's father on that very site on the Mohawk Trail on Route 2, at the top of the Hoosac Mountain Range. Thank you.

Why Did You Come Back?

Sandy & I came back from our winter in Mexico 10 days early. Some asked "Why?" We were afraid that we would be stranded there for months possibly. It probably is true that we would be safer in the Yucatan area of Mexico than here.

For a while we thought we would have to drive back.  How long would that have taken? It all started when a rumor spread that the Isla Holbox ferry was shutting down. It was only a rumor. When we are on vacation, we do not turn on the TV or read the news. My phone stays in my truck in Massachusetts. The last of the ten hotels we were staying at was on Isla Mujeres. Sandy said, “If they shut down the Puerto Juarez ferry, how will we get to the aeropuerto in Cancun?” 

One of the books I devoured while on vacation was Paul Theroux's “On the Plain of Snakes” (October 2019). He drove from Cape Cod to Mexico. He toured only the western part of Mexico, and it was scary. Maybe even scary enough for us not to visit Mexico City or Cuernavaca next year, or ever. 30,000 cartel people were killed in one year.

One of the girls on Marnie's Belize Yoga Retreat told of her recent escapade. She and her sister were traveling in Barcelona and Lisbon. Her sister had a serious fall in Portugal. After the hospital stay, she could not fly. They managed to get on a cruise ship to Great Britain, even though they were told that it was impossible to do so. Then they managed to get on a second cruise ship that was heading for St. Marten, full of drunken Englishmen. They got off in Florida. It took 40 days and it cost $30,000 for them to get home.

I broke a tooth in Mexico. I went to the dentist on Isla Mujeres. She said, “You need a crown.” I think that is what she said. 

My dentist from the Navy told me the same thing for years. I never got one. He retired after being my dentist for 40 years. My new Duxbury dentist has been trying to get me to do one for only $1600. I am old. I am in no pain. But now, in Mexico, I have to get it done. 

I ask, "How much?" ("Cuanto cuesta?")

She says 6,800 pesos. 

It is still early in the vacation. Tom and Sandy are figuring out all the meal bills. A margarita -- rockes y sal with Don Julio -- is $4.00. I get that. But when it comes to big things like motor scooters or refrigerators or a house, I don’t know where to put the decimal point. You have to divide everything by 20. Twenty pesos to the dollar. Right now it is 24.2 pesos per dollar. In 1988 it was only 10 pesos to the U.S.dollar. 

Anyway, after three separate trips to Dra. Victoria Arteaga, up in the Colonias, I have a brand new Mexican crown. Alfredo, our private taxi driver, drove me. His grandson is attending West Point.  ycmthissup

I paid her in cash. It cost $211 US. 

Stop by our casa some time if you want to admire it.

All-inclusives are not this much fun.        

Keep traveling!   

Tocino