Red Ball

Boston is a deary port in March. Fog, rain, and maybe some old rotten dirty snow banks were the decor of the day. But I was deploying with my squadron to recover a space capsule – one of the Gemini. Her letter sat unopened at the bottom of the duffle bag, and I just did not have it in me to open it. Later.

It hadn’t been the fastest of relationships to develop. It had started the summer before. When I had been bumming around Maine. I had pulled out the guitar at a birthday party I had been invited to and she had glued herself into the circle that formed around me. I was doing circles in those days – Boston, Portland, and Baltimore. Everytime I hit Portland she seemed to appear. Sometime around September the vibe got real, and we became a couple.

It sputtered, blew out, relighted, and finally blew out around the time I went to Navy Boot Camp. On leave after training, and before reporting to my squadron I returned to Maine to see if anything remained. For a long weekend there seemed to be an explosion of trust, affection and deep involvement.

Two weeks passed after that of unanswered phone calls and letters.

I had no more arrived at Quonset Point than the orders to report aboard arrived. Off we went to board the Wasp. That afternoon the letter arrived. things were so rushed that I shoved it into the bottom of the duffle, feeling a bit numb, and quessing what it said. After boarding things happened fast. The ship had a appointment to make. After settling in and eating I hit the pipe rack bunk in the squadron berthing area and slept dreamlessly.

The roll of the ship, and the sounds and vibrations of a large vessel at sea woke me early. I put on my dungarees, and chambray shirt. Grabbing the letter I headed up to the flight deck. During the night we had traveled fast and hard leaving inshore New England waters behind, and making progress to the south. Sometime in the night we had entered the Gulf Stream.

The Gulf Stream was like a river in the ocean, you could see its flow fore and aft and from port to starboard for miles. It was there that I first saw flying fish. Oh, I had seen them in documentaries and heard about them from my father and uncle, but this was the first time actually seeing them. Off to port the sun was rising like a red orb.

I pulled out the dear John letter asnd read it as the sun rose, the fish flew, and the song ” Red Rubber Ball” echoed in my mind:

[Verse 1]
I should have known
You’d bid me farewell
There’s a lesson to be learned from this
And I learned it very well
Now, I know you’re not
The only starfish in the sea
If I never hear your name again
It’s all the same to me

[Chorus]
And I think it’s gonna be alright
Yeah, the worst is over now
The mornin’ sun is shinin’
Like a red rubber ball

And the worst was over. I was much too busy in the following weeks to dwell on it.

I never saw her again, the mesh of my life rewove without her in it, and I’d have to dig around old boxes of letters to retreive her name.

What remains is the memory of that morning on the deck of an aircraft carrier watching the sun rise.

Thanks to John Holton whose post stirred the memory pot and encouraged this post. Based on an actual event at sea, and in my life. I’ve fictionalized parts of it. But the ship board memories are exactly as they happened.