It only occurs to me now, as I write these words on 10-23-2023 that I believe everybody who I ever told about going to Annapolis – which is pretty much anybody I ever knew for any length of time – assumed I washed out. That includes my whole family. My nieces and nephews. Any employer I ever had. Hah! What an effing loser. . .
That was their first mistake. They’d pay for it – every time; well, they’re paying for it now, in this epic journey we’re on.
But, really. It never even occurred to me they’d think I washed out. Of course, since they also knew I was schizophrenic, telling them I was near the top of my class would have confirmed their worst suspicions. Maybe this is a case of the subconscious blocking that out so I wouldn’t get into that much more trouble.
Damn subconscious was all beat up as is; give a guy a break!
Anyway. Back to reality. Austin. Texas. August, 1976.
As much as Spain protected me from the chaos of the ‘60s, the U.S. Naval Academy served the same purpose for a good part of the ‘70s. I’ve yet to really confront all of that, personally. The hippie-drugs-sexuality revolution mixed in with Civil Rights and backlash against the evil Viet Nam war. If anything, I will now be more isolated than ever from the zeitgeist. Before I was a clueless hillbilly from Podunk USA. People understand if I’m not hip on all the goings on. Give Forest Gump a break, will ‘ya?
Now I’m ex-military. Ex-Naval Academy no less. That throws up a whole new set of hates in people’s minds. I could at least be a deserter. A protester. Vamoosed to Canada to avoid the draft. But OMG.
He volunteered. Gave it his all. Shows no remorse. No regrets. Even PROUD of what he did. They SPAT in his face, even – and he carries on, The Last American Hero. Talk about walking around with a great, big TARGET painted on your back.
We’ll see how far that goes.
(If you want to chuckle, that’s okay. I know it’s impolite, but I don’t mind. Makes me laugh, too. Sure, it was morbid as hell at the time, but looking back? How the F can this poor guy keep getting mixed up in the most godawful situations? Hey – you ain’t seen NOTHING yet. . . )
O-kay. It’s the trailing days of the summer of ’76. I’m living in a duplex in Lago Vista, Texas, right behind the elementary school (A retired USAF couple lived in the other half.) My folks’ house was under construction a few blocks away on Lynn Lane. Steep lot. Dramatic view of Lake Travis below. No – spectacular view. The concrete slab was laid by now and some of the framing.
It was too late for me go to the University of Texas in Austin (about an hour away), so I rolled up my sleeves and Pop’s contractor Jim Brown put me to work on the construction crew. Which wasn’t really a crew at all, just two Black dudes, Benny and his uncle Jimmy.
Benny was a barrel-chested man, strong as an ox – a master carpenter. Jimmy was an old geezer, smoked a lot, but pulled his weight (which wasn’t much because he was real thin. Sorry, only kidding). The three of us built the whole damn house from the slab on up to the wood shakes on the roof. Quite an education for me. Thanks, y’all. I’ve used the important skills you learned me time and time again.
Just about the time we finished Pop’s house (he designed it), school started, and I moved into Austin. I was two years into my mechanical engineering degree, and so it took me a good two more years to finish.
The first place I lived in was a tiny apartment north of campus off Speedway. Then I moved into a one-room efficiency a block off campus. Cooked on a hot plate. Not a happy place to live. Even less happy when I met Joe Roehl, another resident. He was gay. First gay person I met. He was apparently enamored with me.
Oh, God. What do I do? I’m not a rude person. I do NOT like to offend (well, in person at least – on paper is a whole ‘nother ball game, I would learn an eternity later.) I did my level best to avoid Joe Roehl at every possible opportunity, believe you me.
Note: Joe Roehl somehow kept track of me, which is VERY creepy. For years. At one point he wrote a long letter to Mom. (Which is, like – MUCH creepier, how he found her address.) Trying to get her sympathy. Hah, good luck with that, Homer. By that time he was in New Zealand, dying of AIDS.
Should I feel guilty? Anything?
I ran into Tom Alleman in a mechanics of materials laboratory. We became friends, and I moved into a nice apartment with he and his other two roommates, Ronnie Bell and a biology grad student. Mike Hinds? (Who spent long overnights locked in his room with another guy “playing dungeons and dragons.” A semester or so later, I figured out they were being – gay.)
Ronnie was a country music hick. Thick Texan accent. Drove a giant tank-sized Buick car. He was an electrical engineering major. Quite happy with his C-average grades. (Hey, I was always happy to get Cs in my EE classes, too.) A regular guy who played a decent game of racquetball. Lizard skin cowboy boots. Cowboy hats. A genuine John Wayne type.
Tom was tall and thin. His girlfriend Susan was short and a little on the chubby side, but a ball of fire. (They eventually got married.) Tom was a waiter in Sue’s sorority house. (Why they would never set me up, I’ll never know.) Summers Tom roughnecked on oil rigs for Global Marine. On “drill ships,” instead of a fixed offshore platform.
We all watched Texas Football on TV. We were #1 the next fall. Earl Campbell. Ham, Lam, and Jam Jones. Russell Erxslaven. Awesome team. Unstoppable. The Audi Fox – adorned with a #1 in white shoe polish – made a splash on The Drag after one momentous victory.
One semester the faithful wheels had major problems. The engine needed a new head. (That makes two of us.) Being two ME majors, Tom and I rebuilt the engine in our living room. (Which was already a workshop because Tom’s hobby was assembling grandfather clock kits.)
I shouldn’t say this, but I honestly thought it was a goddamn miracle when – after umpteen fiddles – the engine actually started up. Every ME major should rebuild an engine. It teaches you a lot of good things. Every engineer should also have to drive around in what he just fixed, too. On Eisenhauer’s Interstate. At highway speed… Faster!
Talk about – stress!
The spring before graduation I hit it off with a cute redhead, Susan Poag. We played tennis some (I rushed out and bought all new tennis duds, including SHINY WHITE tennis shoes for the occasion).
That summer I drove down to Daytona Beach, where she was staying with family. Saw her briefly. Then, when I was out body surfing, I got NAILED by a surfing board right behind the shoulder blade. Hurt like hell. Still hurts to this very day. (The shoulder and especially the missed opportunity with Ms. Poag.)
Back on campus for the last summer school session, I took the Senior Projects Class. Students in groups do real-life projects for sponsoring companies. Ours was Reynolds Aluminum which had a bauxite processing refinery down in Corpus Christi. The climate was so humid, that the bauxite caked up in blocks and couldn’t be extracted from their storage shed.
We cooked up the brilliant idea of shaking the bauxite loose (from below, where a small railroad track with cars gathered the bauxite) with a BLAST of compressed air. One of the team did all the fluid dynamics calculations. Me and the other guy built a giant box to test it. (Yes, this is me – assigning all the grunt work while I do the PR.)
The Reynolds Aluminum company executives came up to Austin to see our wonderful, clever, engineering solution to their vexing problem. We hooked everything up. Turned the compressor on. The experiment EXPLODED! Brown bauxite dust flew everywhere. Coughs. Wheezes.
Thus awaits my glorious career as a mechanical engineer.
The following semester was my last one as an undergraduate at Texas. I took several trips to visit companies around the U.S. TEAM (“Total Energy Management,” a solar energy outfit in Washington DC with, they claimed, a decorated Marine or two from that famous Iwo Jima photo holding up the flag on their Board – might impress other folks, but sorry, not me.).
A John Deere factory in Moline, Illinois designing parts for farm implements. Texas Instruments up the road in Waco (tiny parts on a dot matrix printer). The Inland Drilling Group with Exxon in New Orleans. They all offered me jobs.
I accepted the Exxon position. Why? The obvious. I met a cute girl on the St. Charles Avenue trolley street car when I was on my visit – tooled around all night – had a heck of a good time. By daybreak the next day I was so damn tired, well… I – accepted Exxon’s generous offer.
Things weren’t going so well on back on campus. I had a girlfriend (distraction for Mr. Bill!). Played intermural soccer to impress her. Plus all the away trips on interviews. Well, my studies faltered.
I was failing Gary Vliet’s graduate class on solar energy. Too much heavy math. WAY too much. I’ll never be able to catch up (“Not sure if I even WANT to sir.”)
I had a meeting with the engineering dean and managed to convince him to give me credit for a couple of “Ship Systems Engineering” classes I took at Annapolis. Phew. I even managed to graduate with honors. An “Engineering Scholar” no less.
So, hey – things are looking good, y’all. Wa-hoo!
Exxon in New Orleans was awesome. Our office was a block off Canal Street and we could lunch every day in the French Quarter. Shrimp sandwiches at a little bistro. I had my own office. No windows, but – wow, private. Four white walls. Beautiful.
I had an apartment out in New Orleans East, on a lake. Wonderful pad. Bought a bunch of halfway-decent furnishings for it. Took the city bus to work every day. Gravy street.
Then a month after I started, I got a phone call. It was Mom. Before she said one word I knew. Pop had died. Heart attack. Working on his garden in the backyard. Exactly how an old Ozark Hillbilly would want to go, with his fists full of fertile earth, his face red from the damn western sun that always dried out his tomato plants.
I drove back for the funeral. When I returned, I was a whole new person. I was still happy and outgoing, but suddenly more focused than ever on – learning. I soaked up the information like a dry sponge. Couldn’t get enough of it. Aced the month-long drilling school in Houston. Aced the Well Control School out in Friendswood toward Galveston.
Dean Mutti was my boss. Great teacher and very patient. I used to think he worked too much – like, supervising a dozen young engineers? (Ever look in the mirror, Mr. Bill?) Charlie Chadwick was the head of the Inland Drilling Group. Exxon probably saw me heading into management like Mr. Chadwick; never saw it going that way myself. I was in it for the technology.
Tom and Ronnie came to visit from Austin. Tom had come at Pop’s funeral. (Was that kind or what? He’s good people.) We went downtown to the French Quarter. Got into a burlesque club.
I was ogling the lady dancers. . . Until Ronnie said they weren’t women. Gulp. I was so embarrassed. I never even talked to them again. (So. I’ve now met my first gay man. My first transvestite. What’s next – oh, Hippie!)
I never went to any Mardis Gras events. Never had much of a social life. Tooled around the lakeshore on my bicycle a few times. That’s about all I ever saw of New Orleans. Didn’t really have any friends in the office.
We got invites to eat high on the hog sometimes – salesmen – so I at least had a chance to enjoy the exquisite cuisine in the French Quarter. I love spicy food. Cajun cooking. One event sponsored by a service company: a giant table covered with spicy crawdads.
“Roll ya’ sleeves up. Suck on dem critters. “
P.J. Trajan was my favorite person. He was a drilling superintendent, supervising all our people out on the rigs. He was an incorrigible Cajun. He’d find a stack of pink “message” slips on his desk after lunch. He’d toss the lot in the trash!
“If it’s important they’ll call back.”
Walter Skaggs was another superintendent. I ran into him in Church in my tiny little town a couple of years ago – all of FORTY YEARS since I knew him. Major league coincidence. Scared the living crap out of me. Haven’t been to church since. He passed away not long after.
Got myself promoted into the exploration drilling group, I did. New office. My new boss was John Darby (disabled, one hand was all mangled up, brilliant engineer, great boss). With a window! After only one year. Worked on designing a wildcat well in Port Hudson, north of Baton Rouge on the road we drove to St. Francisville and our camp on Lake Rosemound.
It was everything I could have hoped for. An excellent manager. Fascinating work. I loved going out on the rigs for special jobs. All the tech. Engines. Motors. I even had a half-way friend in the exploration group, Hyatt (?).
And then. I decorated the walls of my office with sci-fi space posters. Not exactly the ambiance you would expect. But I was smarter than I had any right to be, and I suppose people overlook the obvious when you’re working your tail off.
The reader will recognize the telltale subtext. Bill’s an engineer. He’s honest to a fault. His actions are a clear and direct mirror of his brain. Something nefarious is brewing. (The pity is, I didn’t see “the paintings on my walls.” Nor anybody else.)
I terminated my lease in the New Orleans East pad and moved in with – well, the first Hippie friend I ever had. Dan P. Short, a geologist in our office. He was laid back. Cool. Drove a white Porsche. Cocky. Smoked pot. The man.
But, yeah – not a good kind of person for me to be around because I absorb attitudes like a hungry vacuum. And the more stressed out I get the more and worse I absorb. Bad news bears for The Z.
Three young ladies occupied the other half of the duplex. Tina, Linda, and Maria Aguillar. I started seeing Tina, a legal assistant downtown. We never made it past the couch. She wasn’t the most attractive of the three, but definitely the most intelligent. (See there, how easily I’m able to insult all three young ladies with a single sentence?)
Suddenly the long hours, the weekends on duty in the office, the long trips into the field to work 48 hours non-stop, the drive back half asleep in a rental car. It was too much. Can’t I have a life in the deal? I joined a health club nearby, swam laps some. Had my eye on a Triumph motorcycle with spoked wheels, bribing myself to stay with Exxon.
Then Dan P. Short left. Landed a killer job at three times the pay in Houston. A new engineer in the office, a Vietnamese guy named Ba Do, moved in to share the duplex with me. Smart guy. Nice enough. Something about a brother who had been in a re-education camp in what is by now Communist Vietnam. Hmmm. Can I tell him, “I tried to stop all that?” No. That would be rude. Ever the Southern Gentleman.
You can see where this is leading. Mr. Bill is overworked and overwhelmed again. No vacations. No fun in the French Quarter. I should have been thinking of buying a house and getting a mortgage by this time. Instead, I – well, I don’t quite know what…
Then my sister Kelle visited from Canada. A week later we were on the road, headed out west. I’d resigned from Exxon. Free again…
Lost – again.
I don’t think Mom ever forgave me that decision. Leaving Annapolis had already broken her heart. (I can only hope she assumed I washed out; but I think the Academy sent them my grades each semester, and I surely told them, too.) My leaving such a great job with Pop’s venerable alma mater; well, I think it gave her grave misgivings.
As well it should have.
I don’t rightfully know why I left Exxon. I do know that Kelle was always my favorite sister growing up. After ASM when she ran off with the teacher to Morocco and then disappeared with Klimek in the wilds of Canada – well, I’d never seen her.
Don’t I have a right to catch up, with family, with lost – friends?
I don’t think my boss at Exxon even said, “Take a couple weeks’ vacation. Think it over. Please.” He just – let – me – go. I’m not sure I want to work with ruthless people like that.
As it was, it was clear Exxon had me on a fast track for management. A couple of years in drilling. Then in reservoir engineering. And on up the ladder. Nobody asked if I wanted that. If I wanted to stay in drilling. I was actually thinking of being a field superintendent at that point. Two weeks on. Two weeks off. I liked that idea.
I was also, deep in my consciousness, more than a little upset that I was making such good money. Compared to Pop – after a lifetime of service. His last office was a partitioned cubicle in nowheresville. That rankled. And here I am, fixing to go down the same path to perdition?
I think I was also a little bit upset about working for Big Oil, too. Pop was avidly green. A report came out about that time, the first authoritative one, about climate change. (Exxon et al fought to keep it from the public domain.) Not sure if I ever even read that report. . . But I might as well say I did to rack up a few brownie points.
Hah! I used to bring in cookies or a pineapple upside down cake to the Exxon offices now and then (always liked to cook). This wasn’t to make points. I was just happy to be around – well, family.
When I moved in with Dan P. Short; one time I made brownies with pot sprinkled it. (Maybe that’s why they didn’t object to my leaving.)
Anyway. Kelle and I spent a few days with a US Park Service friend of hers in the Grand Canyon that she’d met while working as a tree-planter with Klimek. We hiked the Canyon trails. One day I hiked 50 miles down to the very bottom of The Grand Canyon from the rim with a backpack full of supplies and wine for a permanent settlement down there.
I hiked back out the same day. My knees never forgave me that one.
Next stop was Kings Canyon. Camping out. Pulled the front seats out of the Audi Fox and sunned for a spell. Then to Vancouver, BC where Kelle’s good friend Kevin Gushue was in “prison” for captaining a boat full of marijuana across the border. (He later got a full pardon.)
Ahhhh. But what a prison it was. Spacious lawn. Fresh salmon grilled for the honorable guests. Fences a child could get through. But, hey – it worked.
Kevin was released only a few days later and never looked back. He became Tourism Director in St. John’s Newfoundland – even met Queen Elizabeth once when she came across the big pond for a visit.
Kelle, Kevin, and I rented bicycles. Rode around Victoria. Stayed with a group of tree-planters Kelle had worked with before. Now, here we have an example of authentic hippie sapiens. No drugs. Just high on nature and the environment.
Well, The Family were a little cuckoo on UFOs, but nobody’s perfect. (My first exposure to the whole UFO thing. Didn’t even register with me, it was so damn absurd.)
I read Dune that long summer. My all-time favorite novel. It made a tremendous impression on me. Space. Mentats. Spice. (Yeah, I know. Engineers aren’t supposed to have an imagination. Dreams. Hopes.)
Kevin and I played racquetball. Once. I’d played often when I was at Texas, with Tom and/or Ronnie, but nothing since then. Kevin considered himself quite the superb athlete. He was flabbergasted when I beat him. It was effortless. Not cocky. Just expert. I don’t think he ever forgave me that beating.
(Maybe you begin to see why people get so ticked off at me. I just – DO – things. Without thinking. I give EVERYTHING my ALL. That’s unforgivable.)
Pop’s last words to me, in a letter, were “With a little tact and tolerance, you’ll go a long way.” As you can see, I STILL haven’t learned – either.
Then, well – back to the racquetball game, and – I got a look at some gruesome SCARS on Kevin’s back. Terrible SCARS. Something SNAPPED in me. Flashed me back to when my childhood friend Skipper Hoover got run over by his father on their farm.
I clearly never properly confronted that tragic loss – until NOW. I went a little crazy. Retreated. Isolated myself in a remote hotel room. Read The Bible. Revelations. Searching for meaning. An explanation.
Why the F me, God?
Kelle and Kevin finally found me. I was still out of it. They put me on a plane back to Austin and drove the Audi Fox back themselves. I think I remember seeing Mt. Saint Helens erupting as the jet drove by. That makes two of us.
It was a dark episode. Mom made me see a therapist when I got home. I went twice. Told the doctor it felt like her meds were dissolving my brain. Never went back. Mom wouldn’t let me stay in the house. Not anywhere near her precious son John Wesley. (If I hadn’t seen much of John up ‘till now, I sure as hell wouldn’t from this point forward.)
I got a small apartment in Austin. Signed up for some classes in Roman history at the University of Texas. Never went, to speak of. Ended up withdrawing. Even thought of the Presbyterian Seminary in town.
I built a nice coffee table with a router for my new apartment. Sanded it down nice and pretty. Stained it. Then I – gave it to a pretty girl who lived down the hall. A Jewish girl. With a jade Star of David necklace.
I suppose she was offended. I only wanted a – friend.
Excuse me, but if she wasn’t at least going to invite me out to lunch or over for brunch or a brew, why the hell accept my beautiful coffee table? It’s not as if I was an ogre living under a bridge. I was attractive. Blond hair. Pale blue eyes. Happy. Intelligent. Friendly.
And yet – never, not once, one forward advance by a girl. Not in high school. College. Or anywhere in between. Then, by the time I started losing my hair (a few years from now), it was too late. What am I doing wrong, here?
I chalk it all up to how Hollywood portrays engineers as the supreme nerds. And you wonder why we work so damn hard to make this a better world. Well, maybe you don’t – but I sure do.
Is it curtains for The Z?
Yes, I’m beginning to transmogrify into a non-violent sociopath. Stay tuned to see just exactly how any number of your most powerful, respected citizens helped to further me along that dark and dastardly trajectory.