Memorial Day Weekend

This Memorial Day weekend I was busy in Chestertown, Maryland helping to get the houseboat "The Water's Edge" shipshape for another boating season. Docking lines needed tying and adjustments, water resupply lines run, the winterized plumbing flushed, the hot water heater reconnected, foodstuffs purchased and stocked away, bedding laid in, boat registration decals applied and so forth. It was a busy weekend.

While there, I saw this car in the marina parking lot and thought, "at least its appropriate." Many of the folks with boats at the Rolph's Wharf marina are older retired folks living out their golden years on the waterfront enjoying the sea breezes and their grand and great-grand children swimming, fishing, flying kites, and enjoying picnics on the boat and beaches.


I busied myself with cleaning the barnacles of both of the boats propellers and prop-shafts, applying new zincs and squaring away the launch and dock lines.


The boat not only floats, it is floating happily in its slip at the dock. The sun was a bit warm and the elbow grease application tired me out a bit so I sat down for a bit and greeted the old "neighbors" with a "happy new (boating) year!" and asked how their winters had treated them.


The old gentleman in the houseboat to the port side was happy to talk to me. He had all the grandkids from one of his 5 children staying with him on his boat - all 5 of them, the mom, along with him and his wife. I think the children range in age from about 4 to 12 or so, such busy bodies they were... always running here and there wanting towels or food or to feed the ducks or to pat the dogs or, or, or... So he came over to the houseboat with me to get some temporary peace and quiet.

Pops, as the grandfather is called by everyone at the marina, served in the US Navy on the ninth Wasp (CV-18) an aircraft carrier built in Quincy, Mass., by the Bethlehem Steel Co. and launched on 17 August 1943. I enjoyed listening to his reaccounting of what he did in the war, fighting in the Pacific. He was at sea for nearly 23 months straight, serving around the Phillipines (Leyte), Wake, Marshall Islands, Marianas, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Guam. Pops is an unpretentious fellow, but the list of places he saw action was an awe-inspiring litany. Asked what he remembers most and he answered he "still remembers how good the ice cream tasted when they got to San Diego, California after their tour (and the war) was over."

He got up and went to his houseboat - while I went to the grocery store and bought a couple gallons of ice cream, some plastic bowls and spoons and brought it back to the dock. For the next hour, all of his grandkids as well as about 15 people in the boats along the dock, got to sample some "San Diego" ice cream and hear about just how special Pops is, even if he doesn't think so.

Happy Memorial Day - Honor those that served.