You Had to be There...

CG44331 on BAR patrol - circa 1975
Umpqua River Lifeboat Station

Over the years as I’ve adventured, fished, canoed, and photographed in various places, I’ve run across some interesting characters and down-right funny experiences.  For most of those humorous situations…well they seemed a lot more humorous at the time than the retelling of the story could possibly portray…sort of one of those…you had to be there…moments.  Well…anyway…here’s one of the funnier ones.

Back in the mid-1970’s I woke up one day and decided I wanted to join the U.S. Coast Guard.  Sounded like a great idea as at the time I had not a clue as to what I really wanted to do with my life and with three years of college behind me and one year of college left before I would have to eventually face that fact for real, I deemed it a great adventure to do something exciting for a few years.  It turned out to be a great experience, but with a lot of mundane work occasionally broken by other situations such as capsizing, boat fires, heart attacks, storms, thick fog, trailer sailor foolish antics, and more routine mechanical break downs…it was those other situations that became rather interesting and added a bit of spice to one’s life as a member of a search and rescue team.  Even with all the mundane stuff that took up most of our time, there were moments of levity. 

One of the newer 47 footers
 that replaced the old 44's

Most of my four year CG career spanned a timeframe of about two and half years serving at the Umpqua River Lifeboat Station at Winchester Bay, Oregon (sort of like a firehouse setup)…with the remainder of the next year and half spent on what is call an Ant Team, or Aides to Navigation Team, and a River Buoy Tender…in Oklahoma of all places.  I must admit…my time at Umpqua River was quite an adventure as we averaged something over 400 SAR’s…(search and rescues)…a year back then, most of them were routine and most occurred between May 31 and September 1…on one occasion we set a record at the time of something like 27 SAR’s in one day.  We operated two of those fabulous 44 foot motor lifeboats…CG44303 and CG44331 along with a couple other smaller rigs.

During the winter months, any SAR’s we had tended to be a bit more non-routine simply because the weather was nastier, but most of the time the boats were tied up inside our boathouse and we were constantly working on them.  Being that I was part of the deck crew, we spent most of the working day outside exposed to the cold and wind…even inside the boathouse.  Now the engineering crews…Snipes we called them…got to spend most of their day sitting inside a nice warm engine room pretending to actually be working on something.  We knew better as they had this habit of goofing off more than working…and took advantage of the warm environment.

Well…one particularly cold day, several of the snipes huddled in the warm engine room and as always we were freezing topside.  One additional snipe made his way past us, down into the forward compartment, then into the engine room and it was the last straw…one of the deck guys had had about enough of it and blurted out…”By gosh…(or something a bit more colorful to that effect) I’ve had enough of their slacker ways…I’m going to do something about it…follow me and just watch.”

Well, 3 or 4 of us followed him down into the forward compartment and watched him open the hatch to the engine room.  Sure enough about 5 or 6 snipes were huddled in there doing nothing.  The engine room of a 44 is rather small and can at best hold 5 or 6 people…

Web photo - Typical 44 / Chopper action

 He said..”Wait here”. …and stepped inside closing the hatch behind him.  We had no clue what he was up to.  Over the next few minutes we could hear everyone 
inside laughing and having a good ole time after which our deck friend opened the hatch, step out, then closed it and dogged down the handle leaning on it so it would be virtually impossible to open.

He said…”They’ll be wanting out of there in just a few seconds…just watch.”

Sure enough, within a few seconds we begin to hear all kinds of cursing and various sailor language explicative’s being verbally thrown around inside and several of them tried to open the hatch…which our friend would not allow to happen as he leaned heavily on the dogging handle.  They started pounding on the window and the verbal abuse increased in intensity.

We were laughing…but still didn’t know why…until our friend let us in on the deal….Seems he had released a rather long but silent fart of a highly toxic nature inside the engine room and then slipped out before anyone noticed.  Within the confines of that cramped, warm engine room the air became barely breathable…we laughed so hard that tears were streaming down our faces…it was one of the best payback moments of all time…oh…yeah…he finally  did let them out, but not until they had absorbed most of the obnoxious fumes into their lungs...anyway...you had to be there.

First Light

The rocky outcropping that stood sentinel-like overlooking the prairie arroyo by now was a familiar location and with each return visit, I sometimes just sit and allow the prairie moment to engulf my world.  Over time it has become the first location I normally hike into when I visit the Tallgrass Prairie.  Surrounding it late in spring are various prairie flowers and grasses that sway in the ever present wind.  It's the wind that seems to remind us of those special moments standing on the prairie.  With its fragrant aroma it stimulates that sense of connection to a place.  With its gentle caress one begins to feel less like a visitor and more like a part of the complexity that is the prairie.  Just before dawn, the prairie begins to come alive with the songs of birds, the wisp of the wind, the warmth and fragrance of the air, but it is first light that one remembers the most.

First Light on the prairie...few events are more magical as the big ebony star filled sky begins to glow first with a subtle hue and then gradually grows bolder.  It is that transitional moment when the world changes from darkness to light, when what was obscure gray begins to take on color...when the color takes shape and form...shape and form become life.  My favorite moments on the prairie have all coincided with first light...each time something new generated an amazing event and with each passing moment, the light changes and blends with the colors of the new day.

Too often I allow myself to neurotically rush around checking camera settings...composition...angles and position to reflect long enough on simply being there...to allow the moment to simply fill the void that seems to always take up way too much space inside my emotional reservoir.  Even so, one cannot help but become overwhelmed by the moment.  A simple photograph of first light on the prairie is more than a picture...it captures a unique moment in time not just visually, but emotionally.  It is an opportunity for reflection...a stimulus for return...a memory that becomes part of your soul.

A Look Back...The Class of 1970 - Okmulgee, Ok

With graduation ceremonies having ended around the country...I've included in this post something I wrote several years ago...with a few modifications...to reflect back on my own graduating class and who we were.  Although the building has changed some since those days, it still stands today with future generations walking the halls hoping someday to find their place in this world...I wish all the graduates God Speed...and good luck.

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I often reflect on those early days of 1965 when I first entered 8^th grade in the Okmulgee, Oklahoma school system and climbed those wide steps, through the arched doors of that massive, red, brick building, a newcomer.  Life changed forever at that moment as the friends and experiences that were to follow still influence my today.  When I left those halls for the final time some five years later, I was no longer a newcomer, but someone with a history and a connection to a wonderful and sometimes tumultuous experience that was lived through a unique rendezvous of place and time.

I return to the yearbooks occasionally and thumb through the pages looking at all those youthful faces from 1965 through my senior year of 1970 and beyond, well, you can’t help but wonder where they are, the juniors, seniors, sophomores we came to know.  It never ceases to amaze me how people come into our lives for what at the time seemed like a long term event, but in reality touched us for only moments…then, the moment is gone.  Even so, who they were and how their lives connected with our own, remains with us for decades.  Thank goodness for Facebook as it has allowed for reconnections I thought long ago lost.

I wondered as this skinny, insecure 8^th grader…oh so long ago…at how mature and grown up the juniors and seniors looked, and the young ladies in the high school section …I had almost forgotten…they all looked like...well…young ladies…beautiful, sophisticated, energetic.  They still do…those images…even today.  I’ll run across a name or a face and a flash of memory echoes across the decades-old forgotten valleys of hidden memories…the football hero…the big fight in the bleachers at the basketball game… a moment in the hallway or the teacher who spoke encouraging words toward greater things…the cute girl with the magnetic smile and intoxicating eyes I wanted desperately to ask out, but was too shy to do so…all the “What if or How come” regrets or the “Oh Yeah, that was fun” highs…things I haven’t thought about in years suddenly rise to the forefront.   It is the emotions of those days that stay with us…the emotions that created the memories, and those memories became, for better or worse...us…for better or worse they were the best times and the worst times…for all the same reasons.

That’s who we were…then, 1970.  We were the Bulldogs…state champions in football and basketball…and not too shabby in Baseball and Track either.  We were the generation of “One” the loneliest number, “Hey Jude” and “Temptation Eyes”, “Butch Cassidy and Sundance”.  We were the generation who in the course of our lives witnessed a President lose his life and a civil rights leader die for his cause.  We were the ones that bridged the gap of segregation, who blended cultures into common goals.  We saw men stand on the moon and heroes of another sort stand their ground in the ghettos of the south, and we watched brave young men go off to war…many to never return.  We saw a young politician refuse to ask “Why” and instead asked “Why not”…only to fall victim to fanatical ignorance.  We were a generation that questioned many things and sought solutions to that matter of ‘why not’.  We laughed…we cried…we cheered…we prayed.  We were all these things.  We nurtured friendships from once segregated classes...respect of ideas and cultures.  We were patriotic and defiant, reverent and vain, humble and arrogant, and liberal and conservative.  We were the sons of the fathers of the Second World War and the daughters of the loves they left behind.  

We were a unique generation defined by complex days with an ambiguous future, yet when our turn at bat came, we stepped up to the plate of life, and swung away to eventually take our place on the pedestal of America’s finest…to become the most productive and innovative generation in history. 

Sometimes we choose to forget about the trials and tribulations of our youth.  Even so, it’s good to ponder on such things, not to shrink into some distant past and ignore the future, but simply to remember those days and reflect on the events that helped to mold us into who we are today.

Having one amazing son now working through college and one exceptional son who is now facing consequences of ill-advised choices…I see many similarities of this current generation to the one from which we came.  They are energetic and searching, much like we were. They live in a world full of uncertainty clouded with conflicting ideals and world views, seeking difficult answers to difficult questions, yet…somehow I believe they will find their way…like we did.  They will step through their open Windows of Opportunity and take their place amongst America’s finest, because...well, they had a pretty good group of mentors to teach them about such things and when all is said and done, we have, so far, compiled a pretty good lifetime batting average.

We are the Class of 1970.

Keith R. Bridgman

1970 – Graduate of Okmulgee High