“Ever see one of these? It’s a hand grenade. OK? I’m going to pass them out, but listen up! Once you pull the pin, hold the handle down. That’s the trigger. When you release the trigger, count to three—one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three—before you toss it. It goes off in five seconds. If you throw it too soon, the ‘Nips’ will scoop it up and toss it right back. OK? Remember, count to three before you throw. Then duck.”

Oh, my God! Does our commanding officer think we’re as crazy as he is? We’re dead.

Ten thousand Japanese in landing craft are headed our way. Thousands of Japanese paratroopers are climbing into planes in Manila to rain death on us. We’re all dead. I’ll never see my dearest wife and baby boy; and, instead of praying with us, he’s giving us a lecture on the care and handling of hand grenades.

We are amazed at this fearless, macho madman and his promise that we will all die the night of December 26, 1944—our blood soaking into the sands of Caminawit Point on Mindoro Island in the Philippines, our bodies torn asunder from red-hot slugs or exploding shell fragments splattering flesh, blood and bones in a blinding curtain of death.

Forty-five of us are dug in—if you call “dug in” two feet down in a narrow slit trench. Three feet down is salt water. Our other 105 base force comrades decide to haul tail into the swamps behind our encampment. They choose not to fight. The odds are lousy.

Our eight operational PT boats—out of twenty-six—are itching to launch torpedoes at the remnants of the Japanese fleet sitting off shore and bombarding us with armor-piercing shells that scream over our heads and plop unexploded into the muddy swamp. But the Army general orders our boats not to attack but to patrol the shoreline to intercept the Japanese landing craft while his 10,000 troops head for the hills in panic. Our command is to fight to the death.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He leadeth me beside still waters. He maketh me to lie down in a stinking, sandy ditch. Lo, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death and am terrified. My .45 automatic. Maybe I’ll use it on myself, but it’s so clogged with sand it probably won’t fire.
Darkness falls.

Suddenly, the pitch-black night is lit up by magnesium Japanese star shells brilliantly illuminating sea and sand and quaking cocoanut palms. The deafening roar of aircraft engines and staccato burst of machine-gun fire fill the air. Every plane—ours and Japanese—has its landing lights on, so enemy fighters can strafe our planes as they sit down on Mindoro’s three-day-old airstrip to refuel and rearm.

The blinding flare glow, the red tracers arcing and streaming across the sky, the night-fighter engine racket, the red-orange flash of the cruiser’s big guns, the barrage of 20-millimeter cannon fire—all combine to heighten my terror.

This is it—the final scene of an endlessly-repeated tragedy acted out by “civilized” man. The madness of war holds me in its deadly, unbreakable grip. The curtain is about to fall.

“Hey, remember, I’m still paying sixty cents for every Jap ear!” our noble commanding officer’s voice soars over the cacophonous roar.

Midnight comes. Then 0100, 0200, 0300. Silence descends on Caminawit Point and Mangarin Bay. The Japanese cruiser and destroyers cease their bombardment. The beach is bare, the sky empty. A cooling breeze is blowing away the stench of gunpowder smoke. The star shells fade, flicker and die, leaving a deep tropical night sky stretching like a protective canopy over our exhausted bodies. No landing craft. No paratroopers. No Japanese warships.

The first rays of dawn reveal our flag is still flying over the miserable, filthy forty-five of us squatting in our half-dug graves. A miracle. With forgiveness, we greet our slowly returning swamp mates—a mud-coated, mosquito-bitten, hangdog, motley lot. We are the gallant survivors of the “Great Japanese Counterattck on Mindoro Island.”

U. S. Navy Intelligence strikes out again.

No Title VII provision of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1964 helps Nelson Bridges, the self-employed, sixty-year-old black shoe shine “boy” who buffs the shoes of Amoco Oil Company’s Chief Executive Officer John Swearingen—the man at the top of the ladder—and shines my shoes too—one of his lowliest slaves toiling in the trenches of the Marketing Research Department at 910 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

"It’s Swearingen’s favorite slogan:‘The restless spirit of innovation is our passport to the future.’ Eleven little words that can get you a big tip.”

We are playing this little game every time Nelson drops into my office.

"Drop a handful of words into the big man’s ear, and he’ll love it.”

“Oh no, he’s more likely to ask who put me up to it. Then you’re in big trouble. I’ll tell him it’s Mr. Blawjit on the seventh floor.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“No, we’re good friends.

"Look at the pictures you got hanging on your wall. Who’s that tall, skinny lady?”

“Sojourner Truth. One of the greatest abolitionist orators. A beautiful black woman and a powerful speaker.”

“And the chubby little woman?”

“Harriet Tubman who led more than 300 hundred slaves to freedom in the ‘underground railway’ to Canada.”

“Why’d you hang them on your wall?”

“I’m in charge of Title VII compliance in the marketing department, and these are my heroes. Do you recognize Frederick Douglass?”

“I sure do. He was something.”

“Nelson, My son has a .22 caliber, single-shot rifle I want to get rid of. Could you use it? ”

"I'd be happy to take it off your hands. I could shoot the rats around our place. Maybe you can drop it off some Saturday.”

We agree not to mock our great CEO who demonstrated the "restless spirit of innovation" when he divorced his wife of thirty years and married a trophy bride, Bonnie (“Miss Alabama”) Swearingen, who embarrassed 40,000 Amoco employees when she told Women’s Wear Daily, “I eat honey from the honeycomb before making love to John, because that’s what the Chicago Bears’ linebacker Dick Butkus does before every football game.”

The next day I deliver the rifle to my good and wise friend Nelson Bridges, professional shoe shiner, at his neatly maintained shack in the all-black Robbins suburban slum south of Chicago--my small contribution to affirmative action.

September 2007

I know it sounds vain and self-indulgent to have plastic reconstruction of a crooked nose at 86, but I have always dreamed of having a shapely proboscis, and I could not resist the prospects of being sliced up by most beautiful plastic surgeon in the world, Dr. Michelle M. Algarin, Room 520, 23961 Calle de la Magdalena, Laguna Hills, CA. 92653. Telephone: (949) 855-3376.

Of course, I’ve had a basal cell carcinoma on the tip of my nose for about three years. So, we accomplish two goals with one cutting, a skin flap and twenty-two stitches skillfully sewn into a tough old nose—a nose that has been prying for years into all kinds of nooks and crannies where it does not belong.

Now I can conduct my mischief with a new nose, thanks to Dr. Algarin.
How did I find this lovely, talented specialist in Mohs Micrographic Surgery? Not from my dermatologist whose office is down the hall in Room 500. For some reason, he sent me on a 55-minute drive to Dr. Vincent Hung in Newport Beach whose website states: “Dr. Hung is the only physician in the country with training in both plastic surgery and Mohs surgery, the most accurate method for removing most skin cancers.” Please update and correct your website, Dr. Hung. You are not alone.

I learned about Dr. Algarin—who taught Mohs surgery at UC-Davis Medical School—from a gardener friend who told me he had Mohs surgery on his forehead that required five cuttings. Only a tiny scar under his hairline reveals the cancer site. He gave me Dr. Algarin’s business card. I called, made an appointment for a consultation. When she walked into the room I was shocked and awed. Hal had not warned me. I was overwhelmed. I blurted,”You are totally beautiful, the most beautiful doctor I have ever met.” She was unfazed. Probably heard the same words hundreds of times in her five-year practice in Suite 520. Her husband, Dr. Karl Bassler, a specialist in pediatric dermatology, shares Suite 520. I’m sure he keeps an eye on his wife, protecting her from lecherous old men like me.

The surgery was at 1:00 PM, August 23. When she walked into the room I was once again overcome with euphoria. The surgical experience on my numbed nose was blissful. I brought my I-Pod and listened to “A Chorus Line,” and George Feyer at the piano playing Kern, Porter and Gershwin as her skilled hands cut off the tip of my nose, sent it to the technician for freezing, slicing and examining under a microscope, took a flap of skin from above the cut, sewed it in place with 22 stitches. Over too soon.

One week later I was back to have the stitches removed and to take this inadequate digital shot of a photogenic Mohs surgeon with whom I am hopelessly in love. She didn’t insist, as Hung had, that I stop taking all the prescription drugs designed to ward off another heart attack two weeks before surgery. She made me feel completely at ease and comfortable—except for an elevated heart rate engendered by her radiant aura.

I have another appointment in two weeks, and the time will drag until I am allowed into her presence again—hopefully not for the last time.

I dread having anyone cut into my nose. Thank you, Dr. Algarin, for transforming fear into bliss.

August 2007

I sit on a warm flat rock ten feet above the sea clutching a short length of broomstick wrapped in fish line, dangling a spoon-shaped silver lure armed with triple barbless hooks and no bait into the blue-green water. Instantly, a two-pound rock cod chomps down on the lure. As I haul it in, a sea gull dives at me trying to steal my catch. I quickly flip the thrashing fish into a wet gunnysack half full of flopping cod. The gull screams its frustration.

Bounding behind me in a thick grove of gnarled red madrona trees is a an enormous Belgium blue hare I shoot with my single shot .22 caliber rifle and later skin, gut and impale on a spit over an open campfire. The hare has no predators on this horseshoe-shaped island and grows to a dressed down weight of five pounds. To survive, its population must be thinned.

An inquisitive harbor seal with its bulging eyes breaks the surface and into my gun sights. I wait patiently until if fills it lungs with air before driving a bullet into its skull, so it will float, not sink. As I am about to pull the trigger a violent explosion of salt water drenches me as a huge black and white Orca killer whale swallows the seal in one gulp and disappears into deep, black water.

On a nearby sandy beach huge geoduck clams are pissing and inviting me to dig them up, toss them into a bucket of salt water for shucking, then boiled with corn meal, tenderized, sliced into thin strips and sautéed as an appetizer for a rabbit roast and a cod feast.

With my parents I am visiting Uncle Ted, the youngest of my father’s seven siblings—the most handsome, the best skater, swimmer, diver and a certified moron. He forgets to put a fender between the dock and his forty-five-foot cabin cruiser and crushes his left arm into a bloody pulp when the boat crashes into its berth.

Before departing this wonderland, we cross over to San Juan Island to witness the annual rabbit roundup at Friday Harbor. Large steel tractor seats are welded to the back corner of gasoline-powered go-carts. The driver tries to avoid tipping over in the open fields dimpled with rabbit burrows while the contestant passenger, strapped into the steel bucket seat, wields a large net to capture as many rabbits as he can in an hour. Two carts hit big rabbit warrens and flip over. The winner’s haul is fifty-six conked cottontails that barely dents the rabbit population and a check for $50, a mammoth prize in 1937.

At 16—my first time away from the landlocked Minnesota—I get my initial intoxicating taste and smell of salt water and its bounty on this enchanted island tucked in the upper reaches of Puget Sound and blanketed with towering cedars and wild, thumb-size blackberries. I scale 2,400-foot Mt. Constitution and climb thirty steps to its crowning watchtower. From this pinnacle I look down. I can’t believe my eyes. Below me is a lake. In the center of the lake is an island. In the center of this island is another lake, and in the center of this other lake is a little island. It’s magic.

My grandfather’s attic is an irresistible magnet for a nine-year-old boy.

A packed warehouse dimly illuminated by light from two dirty dormer windows that do not deter spiders from making it their exclusive territory. Cobwebs dominate the décor. The air is still and musty. No ventilation. I visit it often.

Filled with old trunks, packing crates, chests of drawers, stacks of science-fiction magazines, bundled newspapers, shelves full of books with browning pages, framed oil paintings, a chiffonier, three ladies’ dress making dummies, a banjo, ukulele, snare drum and most precious of all—my Uncle Winslow’s World War I U. S. Army uniform and equipment: a dress uniform, Sam Browne belt, field boots, canteen in a rotting cotton cover, mess kit with utensils. But it is the peaked, felt hat with a chinstrap that catches my fancy. I can’t resist. I steal it and creep slowly and quietly unseen down the squeaky attic steps and out the front door at 403 Nevada, next door to my home of 22 years.

A group of friends are playing kick the can across the street. I join them. The hat comes down over my ears and attracts the attention of my best buddy’s big brother. Cort is a muscular 15-year-old who takes one look at the oversized, regulation U. S. Army hat and decides to buy it from me. He sets the price: fifteen cents.

The attic at 403 Nevada is suddenly and sadly off limits. Grandpa is not happy about his stupid nine-year-old grandson selling a priceless piece of his son Winslow’s Army uniform for fifteen cents. The hat is promptly retrieved and returned to the attic.


(The photos are life masks of my grandfather, Charles Webster Blodgett, and my grandmother, Edna Winslow Blodgett)