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From Pollywog to Shellback

4 Jul

I wanted our offering today to have a patriotic theme but not necessarily flag waving. We know how hard our military trains and sacrifices for our freedom but we don’t always know about their “fun” traditions. Bill kindly agreed to share his experience of progressing from Pollywog to Shellback. I enjoy this kind of story; if you have one I would love for you to share it- Onisha

  Go Navy

      By Bill Lites

I went into the U.S. Navy when I was eighteen years old. No war raged at the time, but I had plenty of adventures.  The one thing I remember most clearly wasn’t boot camp with its marching, fire fighting, and KP duty, nor was it swabbing decks, painting everything that didn’t move, or midnight watches out in the freezing weather, once I was aboard ship. The thing I remember most is crossing the equator.

My first ship assignment out of boot camp was the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea. After a 6-month cruise to the Mediterranean, the ship was scheduled for a complete two-year overhaul in the New York shipyards.  However, the NY yards were full, so the ship was reassigned to the Bremerton shipyards in Washington State.  The ship was too big to go through the Panama Canal, so we had to sail all the way around South America to get to Bremerton.  That’s how I ended up changing my status from “Pollywog” to “Shellback” in U.S. Navy terms.

Before Modification

After Modification

 

The restrictions on initiations for Navy traditions in the late 1950’s were far less than they are today.  The “Pollywogs” were lined up, in our dungarees on the flight deck, where the ship’s “Shellbacks” had setup the festivities.

 

 

 

 

We were brought before “King Neptunus Rex” and his “Royal Court” for trial and sentencing.  First, we had to run the “gauntlet”- wet canvas clubs filled with rags.  Then on to the “tunnel of fear”- a tube,  barely large enough to crawl through on our elbows, filled with garbage. Unfortunately, this had made some of the guys going through before me sick, and that only added to the stench.   As we exited the tube, we were hit with a fire hose to clean us up so we could pay homage to the “Royal Family”. The “Royal Baby” was one of the fattest guys I’d ever seen.  “Davy Jones” would smear his huge belly with mustard as we were forced to our knees to kiss his “Royal Belly Button.”  As we did, “Baby” pulled our head into his stomach so our entire face was covered with mustard.  Then it was on to the dunking pool where we had to “Walk The Plank” as we were pelted with rotten garbage and dumped into the pool.  There were other equally gross things we had to do but I’ve managed in erasing most of them from my memory.

As you can see, it was an experience I remember well.  When you couple that with the “Crossing the International Dateline” which I did the next year on a different ship on the way to Japan you can see how these were the memorable experiences in my otherwise mundane U.S. Navy career.

I’ve heard the saying, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” I looked it up. It was the last line of John Milton’s poem, “On His Blindness,” written after he went blind. It comforts me to know that although I didn’t serve in a war, still I did my best to serve my country.

What I’ve come to understand is that no matter how talented and skillful we are, or what disabilities we may have, everyone was created by God for a purpose and has a place in this world.

Psalm 139

Order of the Rock – Transitioning the Rock of Gibraltar

Order of the Deep – Crossing the Equator

Order of the Golden Dragon – International Date Line

Typical Order of the Deep Certificate

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Hang In There Baby

27 Jun

  A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

We have two cats at our house, one Calico, named Lily, and a grey and white striped, Jasmine. It’s funny how different two cats can be.  Lily is the princess.  She is beautiful and she knows it.

Her fur is soft and silky, she purrs easily, and she loves to be picked up by my wife and carried around the house while my wife lets her look at the various things on the bookshelves and counters.  When her humans are not entertaining her, she bakes herself in a sunbeam coming through the window or on the screened porch.  But, she is very demanding and skittish and does a lot of meowing to tell us it’s time for her food, time for her brushing or that things are too loud and scary.  But, we really do love her and all her princess ways.

Now Jasmine is another story.  She is the feisty one.  She is always trying to get Lily to play with her, but to no avail.  So, she plays by herself most of the time.  We have discovered, after buying all kinds of cat toys, that what she likes to play with most is one of those little round plastic pull-top seals from a milk carton.  She will bat and chase one of those things around the house like a one cat soccer player, and when she does, we say she’s playing “Kitty Soccer.”  She also has one tiny toy mouse that she likes, we guess, because it has something loose inside it and rattles when she bats it around.

Jasmine likes to be with my wife all the time, and follows her around the house wherever she goes. If my wife is in one room, with the door closed, Jasmine wants the door opened so she can be in that room.  If Jasmine is in the house and my wife is on our screened porch, with the door closed, Jasmine wants the door opened so she can be on the porch too.  Now if Jasmine happens to be on the porch and wants in, and nobody opens the door in a timely manner, she has this habit of jumping up on the French door and clinging onto one of the wooden glass pane supports to get our attention.  It is quiet a sight, and a real attraction when we have guests.

So, we have gone to calling Jasmine our “In-And-Out-Cat.”  When the weather is nice and we have left the door open, Jasmine will sit in the opening, guarding the opening, and won’t let Lily in or out until she is ready to move.  We are not sure what that is all about, but it makes for some interesting cat stand-offs.  All her pranks and insistence just make us love Jasmine more.

Variety is the spice of life, they say. When it comes to cats it’s the truth, make no mistake about it.

Romans 5:5

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Our First Water Skiing Experience

20 Jun

 

A Slice of LIfe

Bill Lites 

Being raised in the southwest my wife and I didn’t have the opportunity to learn how to water ski, so when my company picnic was held at a central Florida lake we were ready and willing to give it a try.

I went first, and had the hardest time getting up out of the water.  Then when I did manage to hold onto the rope long enough to be pulled out of the water onto the skis, I could only stay up a few feet before I was down again.  After several tries, and a lot of laughter from the shore, I finally was able to make a trip around the small lake with only three stops and restarts.

Now it was my wife’s turn.  She decided to make her start from the end of the small dock.  After getting her skis on, she sat down on the edge of the dock, placed her skis on top of the water and was handed the rope.  The boat lined up and eased out to take up the slack.  I was just sure the boat would pull her off the dock, and with a big splash, her first attempt at water skiing would be over.  Well, boy was I wrong!  That boat driver was great.  As the rope tightened, he smoothly increased speed and my wife was pulled upright, off the dock, and there she went, in near perfect form.  I couldn’t believe it.  She was still up, and they were picking up more speed.

I wouldn’t have believed what happened next if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.  She stayed up around the entire lake, and as they headed back toward us, the boat driver gave her a signal and she let go of the rope.

Now as she slowed, approaching the shoreline, she kept her balance, skied right up on the beach, came to a stop, stepped out of the skis and said, “Nothing to it.”  I was totally undone.  I said “oh yea, let me see you do that again.”  She stuck her nose up in the air and haughtily said, “Why should I do it again when I did it perfect the first time?”

Later she told me her secret. Besides having the best boat driver on the block, she had asked everyone, who knew how to water ski, for tips and advice. Why should she ever do it again? It could be disastrous next time because after all it was only beginner’s luck.

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Fishing on the Pecos River

13 Jun

A Slice of Life

By Bill Lites

I grew up in a Southwest family of hunters and outdoorsmen.  Every winter it was the deer season hunt and every summer it was fishing in New Mexico’s rivers and lakes.  As a teenager, I really enjoyed getting away from town and out into Nature for one of our family hunting/camping trips.

This particular trip was a fishing trip in the mountains along the Pecos River.  My dad and I were working our way upstream, fishing as we went.  We had caught several nice Rainbow Trout and had them on our stringer, moving them in the water as we progressed from one likely fishing spot to another.

 

 

 

 

 

We finally came upon a bend in the river that flowed around a huge group of rocks, causing a nice eddy pool as the water coursed around the rocks.  It was a perfect spot to let my bait drift around the bend with the current into the eddy pool.

  I climbed up on one of the rocks and cast my bait into the upstream current, letting it drift around the bend.  Sure enough, I got a strike about half way around the bend, but didn’t hook the fish.  I repeated the process several times with the same results.  This must be a wise fish, I thought, but I can be patient, and tried again.

Finally, on about the seventh try I hooked that wise old Trout, and boy was he a nice one.  My attention had been so focused on catching that fish and getting him in hand that it wasn’t until I turned and started to jump down, that I saw a snake right where I was going to land.

Our fish stringer was at the edge of the water, and the snake had moved in and was trying to figure how he could get one of the fish in his mouth.  With my last touch of my leap from the rock, I catapulted myself as far over that snake as I could.  On the way down, I must have let go of my rod and the fish I had just caught, because when I hit the ground I instantly picked up a rock and bashed the snake in the head.  I pounded him with several more rocks, until I was sure he was dead, before I was able to breathe.

Now I can handle coming upon a snake if it is a few feet away and not a surprise.  But, because I was traumatized by a snake bite as a six year old,

and now, to be almost in mid-air and realize that you are going to land right on top of “What Kind of Snake?”   That was too much for my mind to deal with in the time available.  It was probably a harmless water snake hoping to enjoy a free meal, but that’s not what my mind saw while I was on my way down.  I learned from this to not be distracted, better to keep your mind on the task at hand.

Psalm 116:6

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How to Feed a Squirrel

6 Jun

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

 

After moving to Florida, one of our favorite family pastimes was camping.  We started with a small four-person tent and over the years upgraded several times ending up with a very nice pop-up tent camper.  We especially enjoyed the many Florida natural spring camping areas.  The flora, fauna and wildlife was truly a wonderful learning experience for our whole family.

 

On one occasion, after a morning of swimming and playing, my wife headed off to the bathhouse for a shower.  On the way back to the camper, she noticed that a squirrel was following her.  She thought that was so cute and kept encouraging it to follow her.  Well, it didn’t need much encouraging, and followed her all the way back to our camper where I was shelling and eating some salted peanuts.  As you might know, my activity immediately got the squirrel’s attention and I was instantly it’s friend.  I threw a peanut on the ground out in front of me to see what it would do.  It snapped up the peanut and had it shelled and eaten in no time.  I held another peanut to see how close it would come and then dropped it close to my feet.  It didn’t take it long to come right up to me for the next treat.  So, I decided to see if it would take a peanut from my hand.  I held one between my fingers and held it out.  the squirrel came right up to me, stood up on it’s back legs, put one front paw on each of my fingers, I thought to steady the procedure, and calmly bit one of my fingers.  I couldn’t believe it!  Here that squirrel was biting the hand that was feeding it.  What kind of gratitude was that?  You can be sure that squirrel didn’t get any more of my salted peanuts.

I’ve recently learned that scrub jays like to take peanuts out of your hand. Maybe I’ll try that next time and see what happens.

 

 

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Fire in the Hole

30 May

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

I’ve always had a hard time keeping the grass trimmed along our backyard chain-link fence line.  Nothing seemed to work.  Over the years I tried hand clippers, weed wackers, motor oil and just about everything else.

Well, one day I decided to burn a nice wide clear line along that fence.  My wife was standing by with the garden hose ready to make sure the fire didn’t get out of control.  I poured gasoline from a metal bowl along the fence line, let it soak in for a couple of minutes, stepped back and dropped a match onto it.  The grass was green, so after the initial “Whoof”, the fire burned slowly, just as I had expected and the results were pretty much what I wanted.  Except for small patches here and there where the grass was extra thick, my fence clearing job looked like it had gone quick and easy.

I waited for the fire to burn itself out.   Then as I walked the fence line, checking for any of the thick unburned tufts of grass, I’d pour a little more gas on them in preparation for re-burning.  I guess one of those tufts still had a glowing ember in it that I couldn’t see and as soon as the gas hit that ember, it flashed right up the stream of gas into the bowl I was holding.  I jerked back in surprise and splashed gas on the front of my shirt before I could let go of the bowl.  Now my shirt was on fire, and my wife yelled, “Get on the ground and roll.”  I kicked my legs out behind me to do a belly flop on the ground, and that’s when everything went into slow motion.  There I was suspended in mid-air with the front of my shirt on fire.  I couldn’t believe how long it took for me to get to the ground.  When I finally did hit the ground, my body smothered the fire fairly fast and with the help of my wife spraying me with the hose, it was over.

I jumped up, and ripped off my shirt, pulled up my undershirt and checked myself for burns.  The shirt was one of those 1960s polyester things and it had melted, sticking to my undershirt.  If it hadn’t been for the undershirt, I would have been burned pretty badly.  As it was the undershirt protected me from the melting shirt and I only had a couple reddish spots on my stomach.  Boy, was I lucky.  Or was Someone watching over this dummy?

As you might expect, I never used gasoline again to clear my backyard fence line. My Dad always told me that if I played with fire, I was bound to get burned. Dad was right.

Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. James 3.5 NIV

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Death Valley Run

23 May

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

The first year we lived in Los Angeles my wife and I were  living on a tight budget and I was riding my 1955 Harley Davidson motorcycle most of the time.  I was going to college full-time and working part-time while my wife was working full-time as a hairstylist at a fancy salon. By the time I graduated, she had earned her PHT (Putting Hubby Thru) degree. I made some friends in the local motorcycle club, and one weekend they invited us to go on the annual Death Valley Run .   It was summer and hot in LA, so we figured it would be super hot on the desert.  Early that Saturday morning after borrowing a buddy seat, we rolled what few things we thought we would need in an old army blanket, and set off to meet our group at the starting place.

It was a spectacular sight. The line of motorcycles went on for miles.  I had never seen so many in my life. Over 1500 motorcycles of every possible description and 2500 people were all going to the same place on the same two-lane road.  We rode in groups stopping only at the checkpoints for lunch or gas.

We arrived at the Furnace Creek Ranch area (elevation 79’ below sea level) to find everything organized for us riders to have a BBQ meal and a night’s entertainment. Unfortunately, we had spent our money on gas and lunch and couldn’t afford the BBQ. Also, we hadn’t known to bring camping gear. We went into the camp store and bought a can of chicken ala king, asked the clerk to open it for us, and went off to eat it with a stick we found lying on the desert.

When we went back to the big campfire, we joined in the entertainment. They had a “Most Beautiful Leg Contest” (for men only), and my wife talked me into entering because she said I had good-looking legs.  Well, guess what?  The object of the contest really was who had the ugliest legs.  I didn’t win.

As the sun went down it started to cool off,  by 10:00 pm it was downright cold.  Most everyone slept in tents or on the ground but we only had  one blanket and no air mattress under us.  That was a rough night.  We tossed and turned trying to stay warm, all the while shifting from one position to another to find some softer rocks to lie on.

The next morning as we headed back toward L.A. the group was much smaller and spread out.  After an hour or so, our buddy seat was really bothering us, so I decided to change positions and let my wife drive for a while.  We were cruising along on this gently curving two-lane road trying to keep up with our small group.  Everything went well for about 20 minutes, until we topped a rise and the road curved sharply off to the left.  As we neared the curve, the motorcycle kept going straight.  The curve was getting closer by the second.  I reached up to take my wife’s hands off the grips, but she was frozen with fear.  I threw all my weight forward and to the left as I tried to twist the throttle closed under her hand.  It was close!  It was very close!  We almost went off the road.   If we had, at that speed, we would have probably flown a hundred feet in the air before hitting the ground.  I don’t want to think about what we would have looked like after such a fall.

After we were stopped and got our breath back, I asked my wife what happened.  She said, “I don’t know.  Every time we came to a curve I just thought to myself, turn, and we turned.”  Then it hit me.  I had been sitting there on the back unconsciously leaning whenever we came to a gentle curve, and my position and extra weight had taken us around the curves.  When we came to that not-so-gentle curve, my position and extra weight weren’t enough to overcome our speed and we were almost toast.  There is no question in my mind that Someone up there was watching over us that day.

Needless to say, I drove the rest of the way home, and my wife decided she didn’t want to drive my motorcycle any more after that.

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A Gator in the Street?

16 May

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

We live in a small Central Florida town in an older subdivision that is quiet and pleasant.  We have a few feral cats, the odd neighborhood dog and even one guy down the block who has chickens and a rooster that we can hear crowing in the morning.

One day I happened to look out my front bedroom window and thought I saw an alligator walking down the sidewalk in front of our house. Surely, my eyes were playing tricks on me. I grabbed my glasses and ran out the front door to get a better look.  Well, it wasn’t an alligator; it was a 6-foot Iguana!  Where in the world did that thing come from?  And where was it going?  The Iguana was just slowly walking down the sidewalk as if it did it every day.

It was heading for the woods just two houses away and I didn’t think it would be a good idea for it to be wandering around out there possibly scaring hikers to death.  So, I walked around and headed it off and It went for our neighbor lady’s front yard.  Uh oh, I hoped she didn’t come out of the house just then.  Oh good, I remembered she wasn’t home.

I watched as the creature crawled up onto her front porch and from there onto a bench. It placed its front feet on the windowsill and gazed in as if looking for someone.  I finally remembered the guy down the street with the chickens and just knew somehow that this thing was one of his pets.  I hurried down the street to his house and knocked on the door.  There was no one home.  A van in the driveway had a business logo on the side and a phone number, so I called and sure enough, the Iguana was his. He said he’d come right away and get it.  When I got back to the neighbor’s, the Iguana was still standing on the bench looking in.

When the pet master got there, he picked up the Iguana as you would a cat or a dog and a strange thing happened, it turned from a grayish/brown to a bright green right in front of my eyes.  What was that about?  Had it been scared and lonely? Did it change colors because it was glad to see its owner?  I was amazed. Do Iguanas have feelings? I don’t know.  Do you?

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Patio Visitors

9 May

 We’ve added a new blogger to bring a male point of view.We are so pleased to welcome Bill Lites.

Bill is a retired engineer living with his artist/writer wife of 55 years in Central Florida.  He was born and raised in the Southwest, did a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy, attended college in Southern California and ended up working on the Manned Space Program for 35 years.  He currently spends most of his time building and flying R/C model airplanes and supporting his wife’s hobbies with framing and marketing.  Bill’s children and their spouses, two grandchildren, a sister and her husband, also live in Central Florida so he and his wife are rewarded by having family close to spend quality time with.

A Slice of LIfe

Bill Lites

When my wife and I first moved to Central Florida and bought our new house, our patio consisted of a 10’x10’ concrete slab outside our back family room door.  After we got our dog, Baron, we began feeding him on the patio to help avoid the mess in the house.  He didn’t always finish everything we gave him so sometimes there would be food left in his bowl at night.

Since our house backed onto the woods we began to have quite a variety of animals come onto our patio to check out any leftovers.  We had frogs, raccoons, possums, foxes, skunks and who knows what else.  We never really knew what to expect when we looked outside at night.

One night as we sat watching TV in our family room Baron started whining at the door.  It was very dark out and when I turned the light on it only made a glare on the glass door.  As I started to open the door, Baron sprang out through the opening like a streak and was after something heading for the woods.  It was a possum.  They were both running flat-out but Baron was catching up fast.  Just then, the possum stopped in its tracks.  Baron was going so fast that when the possum stopped he ran right over it, skidded to a halt, whipped around and was on the possum in a flash.  But, what was this?  A dead possum?  It wasn’t  moving, not even breathing, just laying there dead as could be.  Baron sniffed around it from all sides, tried to roll it over with his nose and sniffed some more, but to no avail.  Finally, he gave up and came back in the house.

I looked out two or three times during the next 10-15 minutes but the possum was as dead as ever.  Then, the next time I looked, guess what?  No possum!  Sure enough, it had come back to life and just strolled off into the woods.  Now I know what is meant when someone says they played possum.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 NIV

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to live and a time to die.

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