The Stirring Stick

Even though he’d been working since he was 13, boot camp was the first time Dad was truly out on his own, with no family to fall back on. And once he got to McGuire, he had to figure out a lot of new things. In many ways, he was still very young. Or maybe, he was just being a guy. You tell me.

In the single-enlisted-men’s barracks, the beds are separated by lockers, one per sailor. In the locker you kept all of your worldly—and naval—possessions. Your uniforms, items for personal hygiene, any books you may have the odd desire to pick up and read (assuming you read), etc.  Unlike at boot camp, where random inspections could happen at any given moment, the locker was yours to keep organized, or not.

Dad and his buddies tended to be more towards the “not” end of that spectrum. As in not very organized, not overly fastidious, etc. You only had so many uniforms, and it was your responsibility to clean them. If they weren’t very dirty, then why spend the quarter on laundry? Just throw ‘em back in the locker. Once a week, you took the stirring stick—any handy pole, broomstick, back-scratcher or tool would do, really—shut your eyes, poked the pile of clothes, stirred it up, and grabbed whatever came out on top.

Hey, I’m just telling you what he told me.

Navy life was like that stirring stick in many ways, actually. Men (and women, although they were kept quite separate at that time) from all types of life, all traditions and backgrounds and ethnicities, were thrown together onto a base, divided into squadrons, and expected to work together. The officers came along with their chosen form of stirring stick, be it work rosters, team tasks, special assignments, or what have you, and gave that jumble of humanity a big ole stir, to see what would rise to the top.

Often, military life was the first opportunity any of these men had to see how other people came at life. There was the guy who ate his fried chicken with a knife and fork, because his grandmother would rap his knuckles if he ever ate with his fingers. That threw Dad for a loop, but only long enough to finish his own finger food. Then there was the young man from Georgia, who was called Cotton. Apparently, when he was fresh from the shower, he just looked like a big ole fluff of cotton—either that, or that was all that was between his ears.

Throw them together, these young men from all walks and stir them up, and what you found was a great sense of team identity, of belonging to something greater than all of them, of loyalty, and the sure knowledge of Naval superiority over other military branch members. This was put to the test often, as the area also was home to an Army base and an Air Force base.

 As work ended on the Navy transport planes, and those planes were sent off on missions, the ground support crews would enjoy some down time at the local pizza joint, defending the honor of the Navy against the Army or Air Force—but only if all the planes were good to go. Once, another crew lost a plane that had touched down in Africa to pick up supplies, but one of the locals had run into the fuselage with the forklift of supplies. Until the plane was repaired, the rest of the squadron had to pick up the slack. It ran them ragged, but it also pulled them together.

There was also a mighty sense of superiority over the weekend warriors—the reservists. One Saturday, the Newark Air Reserve squadron was training. One reserve pilot, running down his flight checklist in preparation for a quick flight to maintain his required hours, managed to fire off his wing rockets while he was still in parking position. At the other end of the 5000-foot runway was a large storage building, seldom entered on a weekend. Those two rockets blew that poor building to kingdom come.

That day, they took all the missiles off of the Air Reserve planes.

Across from the runways and hangars of Dad’s squadron was the hulking mass of the headquarters of the New York Air Defense Sector. Concrete, thirty or forty feet—but only two stories—and bristling with antennae. Their pilots and crew slept in a long, low, steel bunker, and when the claxon sounded, they would come boiling out of it at a run, fastening the last bits of gear as they bolted for their planes.

Now, Dad knew that on the West Coast, the Air Defense wings were dropping 50-gallon drums of water on enemy subs that were in U.S. waters, to let them know we knew they were there, and rattle them. He and his crew buddies imagined similar missions for the eastern group, although they were never privy to the reasons for the claxon sound. But they all knew this group defended the northeastern air space from any and all incursions. T

he clanging claxons meant serious business.

If you climbed on the wing of the transport plane, you could see the pilots scramble, and the crew prepping the planes, and the lead and his wing man fire up the engine and roll as soon as the chocks are removed. The mech would give the signal, and jump out of the way. You could hear the engines roar, a deep throaty rumble that would go right through you. You could see the flames of the engines. And watch as the pilots lifted off in a steep climb over the trees at the end and the runway.

Standing there on the wing, the booming rush of sound would hit you just as the jets disappeared. And you would feel just so good. Because they were our boys. Defending our air, our lands, our country. And even though you are just a small part, even though they were Air Force, and you were Navy, even if they were in jets, and you just had transport planes to work on. You were a part of something bigger, something noble and strong and right. Something all stirred together, yet rising to the top. And it felt good.