The Grumpy Doc – Page 27 – Grumpy opinions about everything.

A Visit to the Vortex

On March 14, 2023

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.

Critical Thinking

By John Turley

On January 30, 2023

In Commentary, Medicine

Recently I have been reading about the significant increase in childhood diseases that previously had been well controlled with vaccines. There are a number of factors at play here. One is the pandemic which has reduced doctor’s visits and with it some routine vaccinations. But the most significant factor is the resistance among the vaccine deniers not just the COVID vaccine, but vaccines in general.

This is especially troubling to me. These are people, many of whom are well educated, who have chosen not to vaccinate their children or themselves. The majority of these decisions are based on misinformation which has resulted in faulty decision making. I’ve addressed this in a previous post entitled Fake News. However, I would like to address some additional issues related to what is commonly called “critical thinking”. The ability to apply critical thinking would most likely have resulted in a far smaller vaccine denial movement and fewer deaths and disabilities.

Just to start, I’m going to repeat the definition of critical thinking I used in that post. “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

That post was principally geared to critical thinking in adults. I wanted to discuss how to gather information, evaluate it and make a rational decision. I’ve come to realize, that by the time we are adults our method of thinking is very close to being set in stone. If we are to make a significant impact on the way our population evaluates data and makes decisions, it must start with the children.

I believe that the two pillars of early education should be reading and critical thinking. Admittedly, I am not an educator, but I believe if you can read you can teach yourself anything. But you also need the ability to decide what you should believe. The framework for being able to make these decisions is critical thinking.

In some ways critical thinking has been taught in the past, often as the Socratic method. Elements of it have been in specific courses such as philosophy, logic, and scientific investigation. These courses are usually designed for older, advanced students who most likely have already developed these skills or have a natural inclination to pursue such inquiry and evaluation.

For most students, if they haven’t learned how to gather information, evaluate competing ideas and draw coherent, fact based conclusions by the time they are in high school, it may be difficult for them to do so. Critical thinking must be a substantial part of education from the beginning. It cannot be a separate course. It must be integrated into the way every subject is taught. Students should not just be given rote information to be memorized. They should be taught how to think and evaluate and then they should be provided with all the information necessary to make their own informed decisions.

What does this mean? It means that all sides of a topic should be covered. There should be no forbidden subjects. There cannot be an effective analysis of competing information if only one side is presented. This needs to begin in the very first years of education. After all, as Americans we want education not indoctrination.

The ability to develop critical thinking and to make informed decisions requires the exposure to all varying ideas without any value judgment being attached by the teacher. The idea of an academic “safe space” where students are insulated from hurt feelings presupposes that they are unable to evaluate competing ideas and must be protected. This is the very essence of indoctrination and should be an anathema to education.

Children need to learn that the world is not a safe place. If they are not exposed to the competing ideas, how can they be expected to evaluate and recognize the harmful ones? If they are only exposed to one side, they will come to believe that side is the only true side regardless of its value.

I will use myself as an example. There were no efforts to teach critical thinking when I was a student. We were taught that everything presented in class was the right thing, and we were not to question it. Well, this might be true in math and many science classes, but it is not true anywhere else. It was not until well into my adult years that I recognized many of the things I had been taught were the result of societal prejudices and in some cases even ignorance. As a result, like many people, I tended to defend my long-held opinions even after I recognized their weakness.

I was very slow to adopt new ideas. Many of the opinions I now hold are far different from those with which I grew up. Critical thinking was not easy for me; challenging your core values never is. We don’t want our children and grandchildren to have to suffer through the same weakness of thought that we did.

Would the evaluation of competing information that is part of critical thinking have helped prevent the wide scale vaccine denial that we are currently experiencing? Many rumors are being spread about COVID and about the COVID vaccine, just as they have been about other vaccines in the past. There were many rumors that the disease did not exist and that the deaths were faked. These rumors are still on the Internet. They never had any verifiable source and anyone taking the effort to view the data would know that there was a significant death toll early in the pandemic.

The effectiveness of COVID vaccination can easily be checked on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website www.COVID.cdc.gov. A study in November 2022 shows unvaccinated Americans had a 16 times (not percent) higher rate of hospitalization compared to the fully vaccinated and a study from January 2022 shows the unvaccinated had a 12.7 times higher COVID related death rate.

There were many reports about side effects of the vaccine. Checking available medical sources, it is easy to discover that while there are some side effects, there are many misstatements or exaggerations about the COVID vaccines. The side effects are similar in frequency to other vaccines and medications in general. Vaccine side effects tend to diminish as the vaccine is improved in subsequent versions. A detailed review of COVID vaccine side effects can be found on www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines21.

Social media were quick to jump on every alternative to vaccination. It took very little research to realize that none of these alternatives (think Clorox) had documented medical justification and had never been effectively studied. The supposed studies that were cited were either significantly flawed or could never be duplicated or even be found. Because they had no experiencing in critical thinking, many people accepted the unsupported statements that most satisfied their desires, either politically, socially or medically and adopted them as truth. Unfortunately, this failure in critical thinking resulted in hundreds of unnecessary deaths and severe illnesses.

Anchors Aweigh, Part III

By John Turley

On January 20, 2023

In Commentary, History, Medicine, Travel

When I left my duty station in Key West, the Navy handed me my orders and a check to cover my travel costs. As always, they left it up to me to figure out how to get there. I didn’t worry about that for the first two weeks. I was at home in Charleston, WV, and when I had a week left in my leave, I thought it was time to figure out how to get from Charleston to Norton Air Force Base, where I was supposed to get government transportation to take me to my new duty station, the hospital ship USS Sanctuary that was cruising off the coast of Vietnam.
I asked my father. He had never heard of Norton Air Force Base either and he suggested we contact a friend of his who was a travel agent. So, Dad gave him a call and two days later I went down to pick up the tickets. The agent handed me an airline ticket to Ontario International Airport. While I was trying to explain to him that I wasn’t going to Canada, that I was going to take my orders to Vietnam, he laughed and told me that Ontario was actually in California. It was the closest commercial airport to Norton Air Force Base.
While the Navy had given me money for transportation, it would only cover coach. In those days a coach seat was about the size a first-class seat is today. That flight took me to California where I got a bus to the Air Force base for the government chartered flight to Vietnam.
It was a long trip from California to Da Nang. We stopped in Hawaii to refuel. Unfortunately for us, they wouldn’t let us out of the airport. We were on that airliner long enough that they fed us three times, once on the way to Hawaii and twice between Hawaii and Da Nang. All three meals consisted of baked chicken, peas and carrots, and mashed potatoes. It wasn’t so bad for lunch and dinner but baked chicken for breakfast just wasn’t something I was up for. In typical government style we had three meals supplied by the lowest bidder.
I arrived in Da Nang to discover that the Sanctuary only came in port about every 6 to 8 weeks to resupply and wasn’t due back for three weeks. I got assigned to the transient barracks, where the Navy puts people awaiting further assignment. Sometimes at morning muster (roll call) they gave us jobs such as unloading trucks or doing basic lawn maintenance. Most of the time we were on our own to entertain ourselves.
The transient barracks was in Camp Tien Sha, a Sea Bee run support base. The most popular place on the base for enlisted men was the movie theater. It was open 24 hours a day and was free of charge. You could bring your own beer and they even allowed smoking in the theater. (Everyone smoked in the 60s.) They only had four movies which they ran in continuous rotation. But most importantly, it was the only place on base that an enlisted sailor could go that was air conditioned. Some guys even slept there.
While the camp was in one of the most secure parts of the Da Nang area, occasionally at night the alert sirens would sound. If any place in the surrounding area was attacked everyone got an alert. We would then go out to the bunkers and stand around outside to see if there were any rockets landing close to us. If there were, we would go inside the bunker. If not, we stood around outside smoking and trying to avoid the shore patrol who drove around to make sure we were in the bunkers. Occasionally we could see an explosion or the path of tracers in the air. Mostly we could just hear them. We were never quite sure where they were, but we were fairly confident they weren’t very close.
One of the most entertaining things was watching the TV news reporters. Camp Tien Sha had a weapons repair facility. If you were near it, you could hear machine guns and other weapons being test fired after having been repaired. You could also see tanks and other armored vehicles running up and down their test track. We got a big kick out of watching reporters put on a helmet and a flak jacket and stand in front of the camera while the tanks ran up and down behind them and the machine guns fired and them saying: “I’m reporting from the front lines in Vietnam. You can hear the battle raging behind me “. Occasionally, we would laugh so hard that one of the production people would come over and run us off. I know we ruined more than a few shots.
Eventually I got called to the personnel office and was told that the Sanctuary was due in port that afternoon. They handed me my orders and told me to report on board. I asked how to get to the dock and the personnel clerk just looked at me and shrugged. I eventually found my way to the motor pool and got a ride with a jeep that was heading down towards the docks.
There were several ships in the port at that time. However, the Sanctuary was hard to miss. Unlike other Navy ships that were painted gray, the Sanctuary was painted bright white and was emblazoned with big red crosses on the hull. I walked up the gangway, saluted and requested permission to board. In Anchors Aweigh Part IV I’ll talk more about life on the Sanctuary.

Parking in Italy An Unexpected Adventure

By John Turley

On December 8, 2022

In Commentary, Travel

Over the years, I’ve complained a lot about the parking in Charleston. Not enough on-street parking. People encroaching on the next space. Parking garages are too crowded with too many reserved spots. However, I’ve gained a new appreciation for the ease of parking in Charleston.

Margie and I recently took a trip to Italy with our daughter Annie and her family. At Annie’s recommendation we decided to rent a car so we could travel more freely. One of the most interesting or perhaps I should say stressful parts of our trip was the driving and parking in Italy. But driving is a story for another day. Today I’m going to talk about parking.

Even the process of car rental in Italy is different from what we’re used to. I reserved a car online and filled out all the necessary forms including passport and driver’s license numbers. When we arrived at the car rental agency, they asked for my driver’s license, passport and credit card. They made a copy of my license and passport and ran my credit card. We had a brief conversation where they tried to get me to upgrade to an SUV for only an additional €20 a day. My son-in-law had already warned me that I needed to get a small car because parking was difficult. They had one more tactic to try to get that extra upgrade. Unless I upgraded to an SUV, I would have to take a standard shift car. I wasn’t concerned because I learned to drive on a standard and drove one for many years. More on that later.

They handed me a set of keys and gave me vague directions towards the parking garage. When I got to the garage and found the rental company’s area, I was expecting to be handed paperwork and to inspect the car with the rental agent. To my surprise, the agent pointed down the row and said space #26. No paperwork, no inspection and no directions on how to get out of the garage.

I finally found my way out and onto the highway. It took about an hour to get to Milan from the airport. As soon as we located the hotel, we started looking for parking. The hotels in Italy typically do not have a parking garage as part of their facility.

My first thought was on-street parking. But that thought didn’t last long. There was hardly an inch of curb that didn’t have someone parked on it. The cars were all parked less than a foot apart with little or no space to maneuver in or out. I really don’t know how anyone got out of these spaces. I know I couldn’t have. The cars were fairly small so maybe they could just drag them out into the traffic lane. I soon realized why no one left spaces between the cars. If there was more than about two feet of space, there was a motor scooter parked in it. I wasn’t yet brave enough to attempt parallel parking on the street in Italy.

Luckily Margie spotted a parking garage just around the corner from the hotel. We pulled in and I tried to get a ticket to enter. I kept pressing the button, but nothing happened. Finally, Margie got out of the car and got the parking garage attendant who was busy smoking and talking on his phone. He came over, gave me an exasperated look and did a quick double tap on the button and that produced a ticket. Perhaps that’s what it said in Italian underneath the button. I really don’t know.

But the gate still didn’t go up. I waited for a while and then thought maybe I had to back up and go over a pressure plate in the driveway. The whole time the Italian drivers were lining up behind me. Much to my consternation I discovered I didn’t know how to get this car into reverse. I tried all the things I remembered from driving standards in my younger days. I pressed down on the shift lever and tried to shift it. It didn’t work. I felt for a button on the shift knob, nothing there. I felt for a handle underneath it to release the gear shift, nothing there either. About that time, Margie noticed that the arm on the gate had opened. I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t going to complain because I certainly couldn’t back up.

We started up the ramp. Now imagine a spiral ramp much like the exit ramp in the parking garage of most large malls. Now imagine it’s about 15% narrower. And now imagine there is two-way traffic on this ramp. I was fortunate on my way up because I only encountered one other car. He had just started to enter the ramp as I got there so he backed up into the garage and I went on up the ramp. There were six floors in the parking garage and of course there were no spaces on anything but the 6th floor. I pulled into a very narrow space and told Margie this car is going to stay here until we leave town.

Additionally, if I couldn’t figure out how to get it into reverse it was going to stay in that parking garage forever. After playing with the shifter for a while I discovered that about a third of the way down the shift lever under a leather boot was a ring that you put your fingers under and pull up in order to shift it into reverse. It was very cleverly hidden, I’m sure just to confuse American tourists.

The trip up the ramp was exciting but nothing compared to the trip down. We started down slowly and I was very thankful that I didn’t upgrade to an SUV. On the way down the ramp, we passed five other cars. With each one we had to get over to the edge of the ramp and then continually jockey back and forth to work our way past, with literally inches to spare between our cars and the wall. I kept waiting to hear scraping of metal on concrete or metal on metal as the cars collided. I was watching the other car while Margie was watching the wall. I wish I had thought to turn off the car’s proximity alarm because it was dinging all the way down. Luckily, we made it to the street without any structural damage to the car.

I vowed then and there that I wasn’t going to park in any more multi-level parking garages. We went from Milan to Florence. There we found a parking garage where we pulled through the door and turned the car over to an attendant. Next, we went on to Siena where we found a parking garage outside of the main part of the city. We pulled in the door and the attendant took over and drove us to our hotel. Then he took our car back to the garage, parked it and came back to pick us up at the end of our visit to Siena. (If I had wound up on the 6th floor of another parking garage with a narrow two-way spiral ramp, I might have just abandoned the car and started sending a monthly payment to Italy.)

Parking in Charleston may not be as bad as I thought, but at least in Italy I never saw an extended bed, super duty pickup truck in a space marked “small car only”.