Nixon

Mess duty in the Chief's Mess is where I met another close shipmate friend.  C.E. Nixon was working there when I showed up.  He likes to read.  He took philosophy in college and read the type of books that most people couldn't handle the title of.  A conversation with Nixon was often an exercise in mental gymnastics.  Don't get the idea that he's some kind of intelligent stuffed shirt.  Absolutely not.  He's a nut.  He's just a fun very intelligent nut.  I'll never forget sitting on the flight deck of the Saratoga CV.60 out in the middle of nothing-but-water, discussing Fear, the basic motivation of mankind, under skies so busy with stars that you actually felt them like a heavy blanket all over you.  We spent a lot of time sitting around talking at sea.  We played chess.  We played Risk.  But mostly we just sat around talking while Nixon, who taught himself how to play guitar, entertained us with music and mind games.

He's one of the most mentally alive people I know and he spent 20 years in the navy as a parachute rigger.  While there he finished college and got married to a wonderful woman and they both experienced the world.  He could've been an engineer, a doctor, a great anything but he chose to live his life instead.  And I honor him for that.  He took me up to the flight deck where he worked.  My memory might miss some of this but I recall that you had to wear a vest with reflective markings so that people could see you and avoid killing you.  You had to wear ear covers so that you would be able to hear the world when you left the flight deck.  You had to watch closely, where you were and what you were doing and what everyone else was doing constantly while out there.  That's where the planes do their thing.  That's where multi million dollar fighter jest and bombers taxi and land and SCREAM out into the skies over the ocean and over the Saratoga.  There's where Nixon climbed up the side of those planes and checked the chutes and the jet-packs that go with them.  You see, if the pilot needs to leave the plane in an emergency situation he hits some kind of controls and those controls actually explode the canopy away and shoot the pilot seat, complete with pilot, way out into the sky and away from the plane.  Then the pilot can use his parachute to gently (or not so gently) float down into the water or forest or enemy territory.  Nixon took care of that stuff.

Since leaving the navy he went back to school to become an X-ray technician because he wanted to help people in a better way than he was doing as a social worker.  He's also made his own music album, which is pretty cool.  It's blues. 

Once upon a time on my birthday, my wife, Ms Donna bought me a ticket to fly to Cape Canaveral and visit Nixon and his wife at their home.  They have fruit trees in the back yard and a pool.  Everyone in Florida seems to have a pool.  His wife had a jar with sand from many the beaches she's been to in her life.  Each layer of sand is very different from the others.  As many memories sealed up with the grains of sand from a life of travel.  Aint nothing wrong with that.

Take it from these gusy; Don't just sit there, LIVE your life.