Author: John Turley Page 7 of 11

Ramps Redux

On April 12, 2023

In Appalachia, Commentary, Food and Drink

The advent of spring in Appalachia brings about another ramp season and with it all things ramp. I’ve decided to get lazy today and repost my blog from May 2021.

What Is It About Ramps?

Continuing my reminiscences about growing up in West Virginia I’m going to visit the subject of ramps. For those of you who haven’t been blessed to live in Appalachia, ramps are a type of wild leek in the onion family. They have a very pungent flavor that is like a highly garlicky, sulfureous onion. They have a short season in the spring and are highly prized by those who enjoy them.

If you think politics can be contentious, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen the disagreements about ramps. You either hate ramps or you love ramps. There is no middle ground and almost no one is neutral on the subject.

Those unfamiliar with ramps might think, “If you don’t like them, just don’t eat them.” Well, it’s just not that simple. If you think garlic or onions can give you bad breath, just standby.

Ramps may give you the harshest breath that you’ve ever experienced. But that’s not the worst part. The odor of ramps will radiate from your body for several days. Despite much folklore about the best ways to rid your body of the odor, the only thing that works is the passage of time.

I can remember many years ago when I was in school, kids who would eat too many ramps sometimes would be sent home because the odor was just too much to bear in a closed classroom. There were times when I thought eating ramps might be worth it if I got a day off school. Ultimately, I decided maybe school wasn’t so bad.

The spring of my senior year in high school a buddy and I decided to go to Richwood for the annual ramp festival. Richwood sits in a river valley and as we started down the hill, we could see a haze hanging over the town. As we got closer to the festival site I was almost driven back. I grew up in a town with several chemical plants so I thought I was used to bad odors in the air, but was I ever wrong. The only thing that kept us going was free beer. We had both just turned 18 and could legally drink.

Even the federal government has declared ramps to be a public nuisance. The editor of the Richwood weekly newspaper once mixed ramp juice with the ink for a special edition. The smell was so bad the post office refused to deliver the paper and destroyed all the copies in its possession.

People who love ramps talk about the many ways to cook them. In the spring in West Virginia restaurants seem to continuously look for new ways to present ramps during the few weeks that they are available. They have ramp burgers, ramp pimento cheese, ramp jelly and ramp omelets. There has even been the misguided ramp infused wine. It seems to me that most recipes involve ways to disguise the flavor of ramps.

It’s not just when they’re cooked that they put off this objectionable odor. Even raw they can be hard to deal with. I was out in the country with my brother and his wife when she decided to pick some ramps (leaves only, the bulb is left to grow next year’s crop). Let me say I was glad we drove out separately. He said it was at least three days before the smell of ramps was cleared from the car. He joked that while ramps may not be grounds for divorce, they certainly could be grounds for temporary separation.

If you love ramps, I hope you enjoy them. Just make sure everyone else has enough warning to avoid you during ramp season. And that is The Grumpy Doc’s opinion about ramps. Be sure and leave a comment with yours.

By Any Other Name: An Obsession with Titles

By John Turley

On March 31, 2023

In Commentary

Titles are everywhere and they likely have existed since humans began forming groups larger than the individual family. Almost all societies in every part of the world have evolved titles of one form or another. The Europeans, however, have raised titles to a whole new level. Kings, queens, princes, dukes, duchesses, lords, ladies, barons, viscounts, the list is endless. It seems almost everyone in Europe has a title of one type or another.

The European fascination with titles followed the colonists to America. As an American elite arose, they too began to award themselves titles, from the political such as burgess to the religious such as deacon and to the title of master in the slavery system. Some southern planters liked to refer to themselves as “a simple farmer,” though they were far from simple and I doubt that any of them dirtied their hands in the fields. Also, they were also quite fond of the title squire.

Two of my favorite titles are from colonial New England. Elite men were referred to as Worthy, as in Worthy Jones. I wonder if common men were considered unworthy. Married women were referred as Goodwife, often shortened to Goodie.

From the beginning of the United States, we were involved in creating new titles. After the adoption of the constitution, titles, specifically a title for the new chief executive, took up a portion of the first meetings of Congress.

Vice President John Adams suggested the following titles: “His Elective Majesty”, “His Mightiness”, and even “His Highness, the President of the United States of America and the Protector of their Liberties”.

Adams, who might kindly be described as portly, was mockingly referred to as “His Rotundancy”. Fortunately for succeeding generations, Adams’s recommendations were ignored, and Mr. President became the accepted title.

The use of titles, real or imagined, seems to have become particularly widespread in the times of the Internet. We constantly receive emails that include the name of the sender followed by multiple titles, often in the form of abbreviations and strings of letters that we seldom understand. These are meant to add an air of importance to the message. Often, we are impressed without really understanding why.

Some titles are honorary such as those awarded by universities or other such honorary titles as Kentucky Colonel. Others are just for fun such as the title I recently received, Admiral of the Cherry River Navy, the world’s only navy where every member is an admiral.

Please don’t think that I am mocking or dismissing the importance of titles. It’s their misuse and overuse that concerns me. Professional titles have an important place in professional situations. They help establish the expertise and credentials of people who will be working together but may not know each other. In this professional situation they can also help to establish educational accomplishments, political or social authority, or even honorary positions.

I’ve heard the argument’ “I’ve worked hard for that title and I’m going to use it.” I have some sympathy for that position, particularly for someone newly graduated with an advanced degree. But in general, use of professional titles in a nonprofessional setting strikes me as bragging.

Like everyone else, I have a title. However, unless you are seeing me in a professional situation or we are in a situation where all people are expected to use their professional titles, you won’t see an MD after my name. Occasionally when I’m having my name listed in a program or on a group roster, I tell them not to add the title, and I’ll be asked why. My standard response is that it isn’t relevant to the group.

Occasionally I’ll be working on a committee or other group with another professional and invariably they will list all their credentials in all our correspondence. For example, recently I was working with a group completely unrelated to medicine that also included another physician. We are well known to each other and know each other’s credentials. I signed all my emails with a simple John. In his emails, his full name was always followed by MD, MPH, FAAP. I know all about the automatic signature block and use it in professional correspondence, but there is a time and a place for everything. Perhaps he thinks I forgotten who he is since we talked last week.

The Grumpy Doc, HSE, AKMU

For those who don’t recognize my newly self-awarded titles, they are His Serene Excellency, All Knowing Master of the Universe. I will expect appropriate deference from now on.

The Contradictory Life of Thomas Jefferson

By John Turley

On March 18, 2023

In Commentary, History

Part I, Liberty and Slavery

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

These stirring words that Thomas Jefferson used in the Declaration of Independence put forth a clear statement of his political philosophy. Unfortunately, the man behind the words is not nearly so self-evident. To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, he is a riddle wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. Biographer Joseph Ellis referred to him as The American Sphinx.

He was a man of the enlightenment, but he was also a man clearly bound to the brutal slave economy. He dreamed of a bucolic America peopled by hardworking yeoman farmers while he lived the life of a wealthy British aristocrat. He abhorred the thought of banks and bankers but spent his entire life mired in debt. He wrote and spoke often of the need to avoid factionalism in politics but was a skillful practitioner of political intrigue. He constantly argued against expansion of governmental power but as President, without having the authority, he undertook to expand the United States to more than double its size.

So, how do we reconcile the words with the man? Perhaps we don’t. Perhaps the best we can do is try to understand the world in which he lived and the circumstances that led him to take such contradictory positions in his political and personal life. Tens of thousands of pages have been written trying to understand and explain Thomas Jefferson. Now, I’m only going to look briefly at his relationship to slavery. In a later post I’ll be looking at Thomas Jefferson as the master of political manipulation.

Of the many contradictions in Thomas Jefferson’s life, his relationship to slavery is the most difficult to reconcile. One of his first cases after becoming a lawyer was to represent a slave seeking his freedom on the grounds that his grandmother was a mulatto which would require him to be in bondage only until age 31. In an argument to the Virginia court Jefferson said, “Everyone comes into this world with the right to his own person, this is what is called personal liberty and is given them by the author of nature, under the law we are all born free.”

Both the judge and the jury were outraged that Jefferson would propose freeing a slave. The judge refused to hear any further such talk and ruled against Jefferson’s client. According to historian Winston Groom the fact that Jefferson had such a position at that time (1770) is considered significant and was a milestone in the evolution of his thought.

About that same time Jefferson was elected to the House of Burgesses and he introduced an act that would allow masters to govern emancipation of their slaves rather than having to seek the permission of the courts and the royal officers. This was met with strong opposition and did not pass. It is significant that Jefferson did not pursue either the court case or the legislation.

As a member of the Continental Congress, Jefferson prepared an amendment to the Ordinance of 1784 (a precursor to the Northwest Ordinance) stipulating the freedom of all children born to slaves after a certain date but requiring that they be deported to either the Caribbean or Africa. This amendment failed by a single vote in Congress. Reflecting on the decision Jefferson wrote: “Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man and heaven was silent in that awful moment”. But Jefferson was to remain silent as well!

To Jefferson it was unimaginable that free whites and free blacks could live together peaceably. Even years later when writing about it he said that it was “inconceivable [then] that the public mind would bear this proposition, nor will it bear at this day”. He also wrote “Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it or worse will follow, nothing is more surely written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.” According to Jefferson’s biographer Jon Meacham, he was never able to move public opinion on slavery and his powers failed him and they failed America.

As president, Jefferson signed a law making it a crime to import slaves. But at the same time, he believed that if slaves were set free, they must be deported to Africa or the Caribbean. Most of his contemporaries agreed; they felt that American slavery was equivalent to “holding the ear of a tiger”, but they saw no way to let go.

So again, we return to the question of how to reconcile Jefferson the philosopher with Jefferson the enslaver. Jefferson was a man who enjoyed luxury and the finer things in life. Today he is viewed as a wealthy planter. However, he was what we would now consider cash poor. All his wealth was tied up in property and his slaves were a large portion of that property. His land was heavily mortgaged, and his slaves were his collateral. Jefferson’s wife was the daughter of a wealthy man and when her father died Jefferson inherited his 135 slaves and his land, which was also heavily mortgaged. He also inherited his father-in-law’s other considerable debts. He worried constantly about his financial status, yet he could not control his lavish spending. Freeing his slaves would have lost him the collateral against which his many loans were guaranteed.

Jefferson recognized the evil of slavery but also benefited greatly from it. He was unable to give up his comfortable life even while bemoaning the institution which made it possible. His relationship with Sally Hemmings has been a subject of much debate and is beyond what I can address here but if you are familiar with her story, you know that this a singular example of Jefferson’s inability to subordinate his desires to his principles.

During his lifetime he freed only two of his slaves and in his will, he freed only an additional three. This compares to some other founders who freed all their slaves in their wills. Perhaps he recognized that freeing his slaves would have resulted in an immediate foreclosure on his beloved Monticello.

It is long been axiomatic among historians that people should be judged by the time in which they lived. Jefferson was a man of his times, an exceptional man without doubt. However, his was a time that was consumed by one of the great evils of history. And that evil will always reflect on his memory. Each of us will have to make our own decision about Thomas Jefferson.

A Visit to the Vortex

By John Turley

On March 14, 2023

In Food and Drink, Travel

Nacho Tots and Other Strange Things

A few years ago, Margie and I used to love watching Diners, Drive Inns and Dives on the Food Network. The host Guy Fieri would travel around the country, supposedly in his vintage Camaro convertible, visiting local restaurants, dinners, and bar and grills, in search of unique experiences. We especially liked to watch it when we were getting ready to take a trip and we were looking for places that we might want to visit.

Our daughter and her family live just outside of Atlanta and on one show Guy visited a place there called the Vortex. After watching the show, we decided we had to go there. It looked like one of the most interesting places we’d seen in this series. Of course, that doesn’t count that West Virginia gem, Hillbilly Hot Dogs that was featured in another episode of the show. (More on it in another post.)

Even before you walk through the door you know you’re in for a unique experience. You enter the Vortex through the gaping jaws of hell, and that’s just the beginning. The interior is crammed with more unusual things than you could ever see in a single visit. There are signs, posters, and artifacts of all kinds, including full-sized motorcycles attached to the walls and suspended from the ceiling. At one point we sat under a suspended motorcycle, and I was wondering just how securely it was fastened to those roof beams.

This may be the only restaurant I have ever been to where they present you with two pages of “house rules” before you get the menu. They called it Stuff You Really Need to Know. Among the many things on their list are the topics: Read Our Menu, Idiot Free Zone, No Whining, and Tip Or Die. Each of them has a paragraph long description that goes with it. They’re written in a humorous style, but I think there is absolute seriousness that underlies them. Check it out on their website www.thevortexatl.com, because even if you never go there, it’s worth reading this list.

On our first visit (yes, we’ve been several times) we decided to sit at the bar. The first time we visit a new place we often like to sit at the bar and talk to the bartender and get an overall feel for the restaurant and its environment.

Our bartender was a young gal probably in her mid-20s. She had spiky hair, multiple tattoos, and very dramatic makeup. But most dramatic was the fact that she was wearing a tank top which showed off her sculpted biceps and her full sleeve arm tattoos. She came up to take our order, Margie ordered a salad, and I ordered a burger with fries because that’s one of the things they’re known for.

Just as the waitress was getting ready to leave with our order Margie said, “I’d like the dressing to be fat free”. The waitress stopped in her tracks. She turned around, walked up to Margie, put her hands on the bar, leaned forward, and said, “This is the Vortex, we don’t do fat free!” Margie was intimidated and told her that regular dressing would be fine. I was also intimidated and thought, just to be safe, I should order a side of grease to dip my fries in.

After we finished eating the bartender who let us know that the Vortex was too tough for fat free, came by and offered Margie a drink called The Firefly, which was a tea-based drink with grapefruit vodka and a girly flavor. The guy sitting beside us started to laugh. I couldn’t reconcile “We don’t do fat free” with the frou frou Firefly. Apparently though, my beer was a manly enough order.

On our next visit I decided to be daring and try an appetizer that I had never heard of but have since seen in a few other places. That is the nacho tots mentioned in the title of this post. Imagine your standard nacho chip order but with tater tots instead of tortilla chips. The tots are roasted first then covered with melted cheese, jalapenos, onions and ground chorizo or beef and then given a quick spin under the broiler. When they first come out and they’re still hot they’re really good but when they start to get cold, not so much. I asked our waitress if these were popular and she said, ”Oh yes, drunk people really like them.”

They are justifiably well known for their burgers, but one group of burgers needs special mention. These are the coronary bypass burgers. They begin with the single coronary bypass which can be ordered anytime and then they progress through the double, triple and quadruple which can only be ordered between 2:00 o’clock and 5:00 o’clock PM with no takeouts and no substitutions. They recommend you order in advance. I’m not going to go over the details of all four, but I will summarize the quadruple coronary bypass burger.

This may be the biggest monster of a burger I have ever seen, and it is hugely stacked up. First, I’m going to tell you about the buns and there are four buns, a top and bottom bun and two middle buns. Each “bun” is a full grilled patty melt on Texas toast. In between these buns are 32 ounces of grilled sirloin patties, 28 slices of cheese, 27 strips of bacon, four fried eggs, grilled onions, relish, and mayonnaise served with 20 ounces of French fries and tater tots topped with melted cheese and bacon bits. The total calorie count for this meal is estimated to be in excess of 9600 calories.

If this sounds like something you might want to give a try, you should investigate their Super Stack Challenge. In this challenge you eat the entire quadruple coronary bypass burger and all of its sides together with two 32 oz soft drinks. If you want to take the challenge, they request that you call ahead. Oh, and you have to do it in 30 minutes. Apparently, a number of people have tried and failed because they also give you a bucket in case you need to throw up during the challenge.

So, what do you get if you pass the challenge? Of course, you’re going to get a T-shirt, you get a T-shirt for everything, and you get the burger for free. Your name and photo will appear on their wall and on their social media pages but that seems to be about it. They don’t cover any of your subsequent visits to the cardiologist.

Apparently, only two people have ever completed the challenge. That’s two more than I would have ever thought could possibly have done it. If you decide that’s something you’re up for, let me know and I’ll do my best to try and talk you into ordering something not as insane. But, if you decide to go for it, make sure the bucket is close by.

Just Remember, they don’t do fat free.

My Journey into Genealogy

By John Turley

On March 6, 2023

In Appalachia, Commentary, History

My journey into genealogy began when I was in my early 60s, an age at which many people would already be calling me an ancestor. It’s not something I had ever been particularly interested in. I really had very little sense of my family history. At that time, I could name my grandparents and one of my great grandparents and the family name of some other great grandparents but little else. Of course, like everyone else, we all had our family lore such as the Cherokee Princess in the family but no real documentation of anything.

Margie’s first cousin Mary has been involved in the Daughters of the American Revolution for quite some time. She really encouraged Margie to become a member and in fact did her research and prepared her application. She asked me at the time if I had thought about joining the Sons of the American Revolution. I dismissed it as unlikely because another part of our family lore was that all our ancestors came over from Ireland during the potato famine of the mid-1800s. Like much family lore, this tended to have little basis in fact and the only ancestor I have been able to document as having arrived from Ireland in the mid-1800s was not a Turley but a Kanary, another name that I had never heard before I started my journey.

Margie’s other first cousin Barbie was also in the DAR and her husband Bob is in the SAR. Bob encouraged me to apply to the SAR, but I was convinced that there were no ancestors in my family who could trace back to the revolution. Bob said he would do the research for me if I wanted to join. My friend Dick also helped me start down this path.

Our mother had always said that she could have joined the DAR but never did. I always discounted this because she had several other family legends that she used to tell us. One of those legends was that we were related to Teddy Roosevelt. This was because her grandmother’s family name was Bullock and Teddy Roosevelt’s mother’s family name was Bulloch. I always felt this was highly unlikely for two reasons, first because the spelling was different but mostly because our Bullock ancestors were New Jersey Quaker farmers and Teddy’s ancestors were wealthy southern planters. However, despite the fact we weren’t related to Teddy, I was surprised to discover we had many ancestors who traced back to the revolutionary era on both sides of the family.

Bob did his research and found my ancestor with ties to the revolution. His name was Samuel Henry, yet another ancestor I had never been aware of. His support for the revolution came in the form of what is called patriotic public service. He served on a grand jury that was called into session by the revolutionary government of Virginia in defiance of the crown.

This got me interested in seeing if I had any other revolutionary ancestors. In specific, as a former Marine, I was looking for somebody with more manly service than a grand jury. I found my man, a Massachusetts farmer named Moses Nash who served in the Massachusetts militia as a Minuteman Lieutenant and my fourth great grandfather. Not one of the Lexington and Concord Minutemen, but a Minuteman, nonetheless. Well now I was on a roll. I thought if there are two, there must be more. My current count is eight ancestors whose service I have documented and another 19 who were living in the colonies during the revolution but for whom I have not yet documented service,

I had no idea that my family can be traced so far back into the United States. Specifically, I had no idea that a significant branch of my family has ties to colonial New England in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut. One branch of my family I have traced back to the 1620s in Massachusetts. It was fascinating to read the will of an ancestor who died in 1638. I’m now on the hunt for the Holy Grail of American genealogy, a Mayflower ancestor. Although it’s highly unlikely, it’s still an interesting search.

I did try to discover that Cherokee Princess. I found a handwritten family history that said my second great grandmother’s grandmother was a Cherokee. Why it was listed that way rather than naming her I’m not sure. I have done some research and I have not been able to document any Cherokees in her lineage unless they were named Adkins or Midkiff or Gillespie, none of which I believe are Indian names.

DNA testing has also failed to document any Native American heritage. Although after that many generations that is not completely exclusionary. The person in question is my fourth great grandmother and on average I have inherited only 1/64 of my DNA from her. It is possible that specific Native American markers were not included in that small segment of DNA I inherited. But when the lack of DNA evidence is added to the lack documentary evidence, I have to admit that I’m not descended from a Cherokee Princess. (By the way, I’ve always wondered why it’s never a Cherokee Prince.)

So how did those ancestors get from New England to West Virginia? Right after the revolution the new United States government was almost broke. Many revolutionary soldiers were paid with a land warrant giving them a grant on the western frontier. They moved from New England and the eastern seaboard states into Ohio, western Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Tennessee. Generally, the lower the rank of the soldier the further West and the smaller his land warrant. But for men with no opportunity to own their own farms in the crowded eastern colonies, this was an opportunity they could not resist.

I have discovered a lot of things commonly believed about genealogy that appear to largely be mythology. There’s the story that the family’s name was changed at Ellis Island. If the family’s name was changed, either they did it themselves to appear more American or it was done on board ship before they arrived. At Ellis Island, ship manifests were copied into the arrival journal and no additional individual information was taken from the immigrants beyond a health examination and identification of a sponsor who would be responsible for them. Occasionally names may have been inadvertently changed later by a census taker who misunderstood or couldn’t spell ethnic names.

There’s also the “three brothers” story. This is a story where three brothers arrived from Ireland, England, Germany, take your choice, and then went to three different areas and that’s why there is significant name distribution. In fact, almost always when family members immigrated together, they tended to stay together as they moved further into the United States. DNA studies have demonstrated that most of the widely distributed name clusters have little close relationship.

If you want to find a quick and easy source of information about your family history, go to any of the major genealogy websites and look at census records. Depending on the year of the census you can find where your ancestors were born, if they could read or write, where their parents were born and what occupations they followed. It’s also surprising how large the families were. If you look at surrounding families, you can see that there are many clusters of relatives in the rural areas. Once they’ve moved into the cities they tend to be less often grouped together.

My favorite website is ancestry.com, but any of the major websites will have fascinating information. Just don’t accept everything on those web sites as factual. I have found many of the relationships listed to actually be an unrelated person of the same name. For example, in the early 1800s there were four John Turley’s in the Kanawha County area. Middle names weren’t common then and it took some research to figure out which one was my third great grandfather.

If you’re interested in genealogy, just get in touch with The Grumpy Doc and I’ll be glad to help you on your journey. Who knows, maybe we’re cousins.

About the Beach

By John Turley

On February 26, 2023

In Commentary, Travel

I’ve never been a big beach fan. I don’t enjoy laying on the beach and I’ve never seen the fascination with sunbathing. It might have something to do with the two severe sunburns that I had as a boy. My back and chest were covered with painful blisters, and I tried to sleep sitting up on a stool so I wouldn’t touch anything. I started using SPF 50 when it first was introduced and was as thick as grease. Every particle of sand I came in contact with stuck to me until I looked like a large sand monster. It had to be scrubbed off with a washcloth and I could still feel the residue. There have been improvements in sunscreen, but not enough to make me want to lay on the beach.

Even when we were stationed in Hawaii, I never spent much time on the beach. The beach was something you crossed so that you could boogie board in the waves or swim out to scuba dive. When we had friends come to visit from the mainland who wanted to go to the beach, I made sure to find the nearest shade and make a beeline for it.

As I get older though, I have found a new appreciation for the beach. I still don’t lay on the beach, and I still don’t like the hot sun. Now we tend to take our beach vacations in the winter when it’s cooler and the sun is not nearly as intense.

I enjoy walking on the beach now, just above the run up of the waves. I watch the water run in rivulets across the sand and try to avoid getting my shoes wet. In the winter the beach is less crowded and much cleaner, an altogether more pleasant environment.

I carry binoculars to watch the birds and hopefully see some dolphins offshore. But one of my real pleasures is being able to spot large ships on the horizon. I’ve always had a great fascination with ships and just enjoy watching them through the binoculars and trying to imagine where they might be going and what they might be carrying on board.

I enjoy watching the water in constant motion. It seems to me to possess both calmness and a loosely contained power waiting to break havoc on the shore. The very restlessness of the waves brings a peaceful sensation to me. It is a feeling matched only by a cascading mountain stream.

The ocean is an enigma. It is believed to be the original source of life. But, in an instant, it can turn deadly and destructive, destroying lives and property. It can transition from tranquility to fury and back to tranquility almost instantly leaving you to wonder how such devastation could occur in a few moments time.

Walking on the beach also gives me time to think about things I might want to write about and to organize them in my head before I sit down to put them on paper (actually, on the keyboard). When I’m walking on the beach, I don’t feel the call of the many other things I think I should be doing. It’s not a place for self-imposed schedules and deadlines. The lack of distraction does wonders for my concentration.

I’m sure everyone has their own place to find their zin. For me, it’s the beach in the winter.

Travels of a West Virginia Boy Part I, Hong Kong

By John Turley

On February 20, 2023

In Commentary, Travel

The first time I left the United States I was 21 years old and on my way to Vietnam. In one of those little ironies of life, I would visit Hong Kong three times before I ever made it to New York City. Growing up in West Virginia, my family thought a trip to Myrtle Beach was the height of travel. It’s still the destination of choice for many West Virginians and I still love the South Carolina low country and fried sea food.

My first trip to Hong Kong was in the spring of 1970. I was serving on the USS Sanctuary in the coastal waters of Vietnam. I had my R&R (Rest & Recreation) trip planned to Australia later in the summer. However, I received orders ending my tour early because I was to report for a training school in San Diego in early June. This meant if I wanted to go on R&R it would have to be soon. The only R&R destination available in my time frame was Hong Kong. I knew next to nothing about Hong Kong. The closest I had come to Chinese culture was chop suey at the New China Restaurant in Charleston.

R&R was basically a five-day vacation that the military gave you when you were serving in the Vietnam area. It was something you looked forward to for the first part of your tour and then you would dream about it for the remainder.

Even flying into Hong Kong was an exciting experience. The old Hong Kong airport was almost in the middle of the city. The flight path carried you down between the buildings. I remember looking out the window of the plane and into the window of an apartment building. There didn’t seem to be enough room for the wings in between the buildings, but somehow the plane landed without incident. That initial look out the window may have been one of the most surprising things that I have experienced.

When we first arrived, we were given the typical military orientation lecture that included warnings about venereal disease with a large map that showed us the areas of Hong Kong we should avoid. Of course, for many of us that meant those were the areas we were going to head to first. They also gave us a list of hotels we could afford without spending all our R&R money.

Hong Kong was like nothing I had ever seen before. I spent the first day wandering around the crowded streets watching the people and trying to sort out the multitude of sights and smells. There was an odd combination of delicious, exotic and downright strange. Street food was everywhere and so were street vendors. The first day I was determined to sample as many different foods as possible. They varied from delicious to inedible. I’m sure that was just me, because the Chinese people seemed to most enjoy the food I couldn’t eat.

I also looked in a lot of shops trying to decide what I should buy. The shop people were friendly and spent a long time answering my often rambling questions. I had been advised to be very careful about negotiating prices. A Chief Petty Officer who was familiar with Hong Kong (his wife was Chinese) told us, “The Chinese people are basically honest. They won’t steal from you, but if you’re a bad negotiator, they are glad to let you pay three times what it’s worth.” In Hong Kong you even bargained over the price of a pack of gum, a skill I never really developed.

I eventually decided I would have a suit made because I had never had a tailor-made suit. I also had some shoes made. I’m sure that because of my poor negotiating skills I paid more than I needed to, but I was happy with the price and that was all that mattered to me. I thought I was pretty fashionable, but looking back I probably could have done better in my selection of material. The shiny shark skin material that looked so cool on Frank Sinatra didn’t do anything for me. The shoes were nice though. I wore a size 14 narrow, and it was nice to have a pair that actually fit.

The second night in Hong Kong as I was leaving the hotel, I ran into an Australian sailor who had been to there many times before. He said he’d show me the “real action” in Hong Kong. As we walked along, he turned down a narrow and dark side street and then into a basement level bar that had a big neon sign that said “Club Red Lips” with a big pair of neon lips underneath it. The place was dark and crowded with a lot of Australian sailors and Chinese women. It smelled of stale beer, cigarettes and sweat. After two beers my new friend turned to me and suggested getting out of there and going someplace where there would be some better action.

We started down the street and as he was ready to turn in to an even darker and narrower alley, I suddenly remembered I had someplace else to be. The “real action” was starting to seem a little too risky to me.

I begged off and headed back to a better lit part of town to have dinner and drinks with other American sailors. I suppose it was something he was accustomed to, but it was a little too much for a West Virginia boy to deal with. It turned out I was not as rowdy as I thought.

Most of the rest of my R&R was spent doing the typical tourist things and riding tourist buses. I didn’t venture down any more dark and narrow side streets. But I really did have a good time.

My next trip to Hong Kong was in May of 1975. By this time, I was in the Marine Corps and was an infantry officer. I was part of a Marine Amphibious Force that was embarked on Navy ships. We had recently completed support of the evacuations of Saigon and Phnom Penh and the recovery of the merchant ship SS Mayaguez. Our ships anchored in the harbor in Hong Kong for liberty call for the sailors and the embarked Marines.

Since I was one of the few officers in our battalion who had been to Hong Kong, I was tasked with briefing the troops on the things they could do there. I spent quite a while going through the ship’s library to find a few things about Hong Kong and then doing my best to remember some of the things that I had done during my previous visit. Of course, there was no internet to check.

I was happy that I had come up with a quite detailed list of sights to see and places to go. I gave my briefing. I told them where they could catch buses and where they could catch the ferry and where there were good places to shop and where there were good places to eat. When I finished, I ask for questions and the first question was, “Is it true that there’s a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Hong Kong?” Yes, it was true.

While I didn’t have any fried chicken in Hong Kong my friend Walt and I decided to be a little adventurous. We went to a “non-tourist” restaurant. Walt ordered pigeon, thinking it would probably be Cornish Game Hen and I ordered beef with bitter melon thinking how bitter can it really be, after all it is melon. Well, Walt’s pigeon was pigeon, and it came complete with head, beak, eyes, and feet. My melon was so bitter I couldn’t eat any of it.

Our stay in Hong Kong lasted four days and then we were back onboard ship to return to our home base in Okinawa. I knew I would be returning to Hong Kong in a few months when Margie joined me for Christmas leave.

The Perfect Margarita

By John Turley

On February 14, 2023

In Food and Drink

I know there are a lot of recipes for a Margarita floating around and that they all claim to be the “Perfect Margarita”. But they are wrong! After much experimentation and working in consultation with a world-renowned Margarita expert (my wife Margie), I have settled on the following recipe.

2 oz Patron Silver tequila
¾ oz Cointreau
1 oz simple syrup
1 oz lime juice
1 oz lemon juice
½ oz orange juice
Shake with ice and pour into a chilled Margarita glass.
Garnish with a lime wheel.
Enjoy!

Comments on preparation from The Grumpy Doc:

Don’t skimp on the tequila. I tried to slip in a cheaper brand because I thought there were so many other ingredients it wouldn’t matter, but my consultant called me on it after the first sip and she didn’t know I’d made the switch. I now have an almost full bottle of middle shelf tequila gathering dust.
Use Cointreau. It’s tempting to try and save money by using Triple Sec, but it doesn’t have the flavor. Some people like to dress it up with Grand Marnier but it can overwhelm the drink.
Fresh squeezed juice only, no bottles or squeeze containers. And please, no bottled mixes!
Simple syrup made with cane sugar. Agave syrup, if you can find it, works well. Please don’t use the abomination sold as bar syrup.
A salt rim is optional but The Grumpy Doc thinks it detracts from the drink.
Drink responsibly.

CHEERS!

The Grumpy Doc Award

By John Turley

On February 8, 2023

In Commentary

This was presented to me by my friend Jack in recognition of my contributions to world grumpiness. Thanks Jack! But it could have been bigger.

Anchors Aweigh, Part IV

By John Turley

On February 7, 2023

In History, Medicine, Travel

I reported on board the USS Sanctuary in September of 1969 and went to the personnel office for my assignment. This won’t surprise anyone who was ever in the Navy, but they seemed to have no idea that I was coming. After conferring among themselves, they came back and told me that I would be senior corpsman in sterile surgical supply.

Sterile surgical supply was where we prepared and maintained all the equipment necessary for conducting surgery as well as the sterile equipment used in the clinics and wards. The Sanctuary had several surgical suites that were busy almost all the time when we were on station in support of combat operations. It was a busy place and went through a lot of equipment.

Life on board a Navy ship is a 24 hour a day, seven day a week job. There are no days off when you’re at sea. Fortunately, as a member of the hospital crew, I was what they called a shift worker. Which meant I had a set schedule. Members of the ship’s crew were watch standers. That meant they worked in four hour rotations that changed every 24 hours. We could at least have some type of a routine for awake and sleep time, but for a watch stander the schedule was constantly rotating. As a petty officer and a supervisor, I was exempt from some extracurricular duties such as working on the mess decks and taking part in working parties for regular ship maintenance and supply.

The work was hard and continuous. There was no shortage of casualties in 1969. Our job was to provide direct medical support to our troops in combat. The wounded were flown by helicopter directly from the battlefield to the ship. We got the most severely injured; the ones who couldn’t be effectively treated at a field hospital.

The crew was highly trained and incredibly efficient. From the time a wounded soldier or marine landed on our flight deck it was only minutes until he was in the operating room. The survival rate for the wounded in Vietnam was far greater than it had been in either World War II or Korea. This was largely due to the speed with which casualties were transported to definitive medical care.

We generally didn’t treat civilians, but one day, unbeknownst to us, one of our medevac helicopters was bringing in a pregnant Vietnamese woman. When she was offloaded on the flight deck she was already in labor. They brought her down to the preoperative holding area which was adjacent to our sterile supply room. When there was a heavy influx of casualties, we helped out in the preop area that functioned somewhat like an emergency room.

We were standing there, an anesthesiologist and three corpsmen, trying to figure out how to deliver a baby. Thank goodness the woman took it in her own hands and delivered the baby herself! Of course, that didn’t stop us from congratulating each other about delivering the only baby born on a Navy hospital ship during the Vietnam War. If only all our patients could have turned out so well.

When I remember my time on the Sanctuary, I try not to dwell on the suffering of our patients. Their sacrifices still move me to tears. I prefer to be grateful that I was mostly out of direct combat and to focus the less intense episode that helped us maintain our sanity.

One unexpected benefit of being the senior corpsman in sterile surgical supply was being able to order those supplies. One day while going through the supply catalog I discovered it was possible to order five gallons of pure medical grade grain alcohol. And even better, it required no approval. I also ordered a large five gallon glass beaker. We had wall mounts in our work room where there were glass beakers with soap solution and acetone. We also had an empty wall mount.

The alcohol arrived, along with the five-gallon beaker. I put the alcohol in the beaker and pasted a large poison sign on it. I got green food coloring from the mess decks in return for a promise to share. It’s easy to be generous when you have five gallons. I did have to emphasize that it couldn’t be drunk straight but had to be diluted by fifty percent with fruit juice or soda.

The food coloring gave it an appropriately poisonous appearance. It also gave us the advantage of hiding it in plain sight. I quickly became the most popular corpsman on the ship.

Right after Thanksgiving the CO of the ship issued an announcement that the crew was now authorized to put up Christmas decorations. (I think I’ve mentioned before that sometimes I don’t always think through my wise cracks.) The fact that we were now authorized to have Christmas got me thinking. I made a large sign that said “All enlisted personnel desiring to have a Merry Christmas must report to the ship’s office to obtain a Christmas chit. Personnel having a Merry Christmas without an appropriate chit will be subject to nonjudicial punishment.” A chit was basically the Navy’s version of a permission slip. I thought this was pretty funny. Apparently, the ship’s office did not agree when people started lining up to get their Christmas chits.

This resulted in a stern lecture from our leading chief. It generally consisted of about every third word beginning with the letter F. I was sure I was going to be reassigned, reduced in rank, sent to the brig or something even worse. Surprisingly, after many blistering words, he dismissed me with a wave of the hand. As I was leaving, much relieved, the chief said, “And you can drop off the rest of that grain you got to the chief’s mess .” That depleted my supply and ended my short-lived popularity on the USS Sanctuary.

Right after Christmas, we had the opportunity to have a Bob Hope show on board the ship. Everyone was crammed onto the main deck to watch Bob, a few musicians and some dancers put on about an hour and a half show. I was way in the back as we had all the patients in the front. Bob’s jokes were corny. I’m sure the dancers were pretty (I wasn’t close enough to tell for sure) and the musicians weren’t particularly talented, but a good time was had by all.

Navy ships at sea in a combat zone practice strict blackout at night. Hospital ships don’t. Not only are they painted white, but they are lit up like a cruise ship with large flood lights hanging over the side of the ship to illuminate the red crosses. This illumination led to what quickly became one of our favorite pastimes.

Inshore ocean waters in Southeast Asia are infested with sea snakes and they are attracted to light. One sailor had his parents send him a sling shot and BBs and before long the ship’s rails were lined with sailors firing BBs and watching the snakes rolling in the water. For most of us, these were the only shots we fired in Viet Nam.

Once, while cruising close to the mouth of the Perfume River near Hue City, the ship went dead in the water. The rumor quickly spread among the crew that the NVA had attached a mine to the hull. Everyone rushed on deck to watch as divers went over the side to investigate. Imagine our disappointment when they surfaced dragging a large fishing net that had wrapped around the propeller.

I don’t remember as much about the trip home from Vietnam as I do about the plane ride over. I do remember that as soon as the plane lifted off the ground everyone on board started cheering and applauding and whiskey bottles were passed up and down the aisles. (Perhaps that’s why I don’t remember much about the flight.) Needless to say, it was a very happy trip.

There were other events that I may share at some point, including a misguided trip to Camp Eagle and several port calls to the infamous Olongapo in the Philippines. However, this post has gone on long enough, but I may return later to revisit these memories.

We arrived at Norton Air Force Base, which I now knew was in Ontario, California, not Ontario, Canada. They took us through customs and started searching our bags. I was wondering why, because I couldn’t imagine anything we could possibly be bringing back that would be valuable enough for customs to worry about until I saw them going through bags and pulling out weapons, grenades and even a mortar shell.

This was in the spring of 1970 and the height of the Vietnam War protests. As soon as we cleared customs, they put us in a large auditorium and gave us our welcome home briefing. One of the few things I remember from this is that we were told that if we did not have civilian clothes that we should go to the base exchange buy some and put them on before we got to LAX. Under no circumstances should we go to LAX in uniform because we would be harassed or possibly even assaulted by protesters. This was not quite the welcome home any of us were expecting.

I was on my way to an officer training program and four years in college. I was sure that by the time I graduated and got commissioned the war in Vietnam would be over. But, like many things associated with that war, nothing would ever be certain, and I would see that sad country again.