home: http://minemen.us/
by Ĝan Ŭesli Starling
copyright 2003
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This is the story of not just one minemen, but of what could potentially have been the fate several dozen.
James Nosmo King was an MN2 on the SLMM team. And for the most part an all-around good guy to know. The picture which you see above was taken during our first days at SLMM C-school. (In the US Navy, A-school is your first technical school after boot camp. So C-school is what you might call fairly high-level training.) We'd barely just settled in when the instructors told us that classes were not yet ready to begin. The problem was they did not have any manuals yet. But so as not to let our resources go to waste, there was a chore that we could do. The school had some SLMM's (Submarine Launched Mobile Mines -- kind of a half breed mine/torpedo) left over from an exercise. These were scheduled to be de-mil'd (that is demilitarized -- made useless through irreparable damage prior to official disposal).
"It needs to be done," the instructors said, "and will also help to familiarize you with the weapon. So everybody just pick out a weapon and take it apart. Pile the components from each on a separate cart. Don't mix them up because they have to be cataloged. And be careful with the cables and such. Some of those we might reuse."
You know what is coming next, don't you? Of course you do. But we had no clue. The instructors had good poker faces. When we all had our weapons apart, with impressive piles of assorted cables and nameless gizmos together with various sorts and kinds of attachment hardware disarrayed on our separate carts...can you guess what happened next? What with this being the navy, I mean? Sure enough, one of the instructors makes his re-appearance just then with the just-arrived manuals.
"Oh, good. You've got them apart. I did say that we might be re-using some of those parts. So you were careful handling them, I trust? You were? Good. Those instruments are delicate and terribly expensive as well. So...change of plan. As it turns out, we'll be needing to re-use all of the parts. In fact, the navy will now be needing to have all the SLMM's back together just like they were. Here are the manuals. Get to re-assembling." So there you see Jim, manual in hand, just getting started on putting the puzzle back together.
Sad to say, that was one of Jim's better days while in the navy. The SLMM team was a fairly small group, around eight, counting both the Chief and Lieutenant. Even in a small group you have cultures and sub-cultures. There was an overall culture of recreational intoxication after hours. To this Navy-wide classification did we nearly all belong. Within this there were sub-divisions, according to personal preference of intoxicant, with cross-border membership here and there. All were solid members of the ethanol-imbibing clan. Most too were nicotine addicts. And slightly more than half were also wont to enjoy the un-processed, herbal variant of THC at least semi-regularly. Only a few, myself among them, would down pills of various sorts as rare occasion might provide opportunity.
All of this was only ever off-duty, of course. And mostly only on the weekends. All we had time for or could afford. Or inclination, for that matter...
When working in a room with thousands of pounds of explosives, it's just not permitted to smoke on duty. Nor, really, do you want to. Not even if, as in my case at the time, one might kill of a whole pack of Salems later that evening. So a degree of self-discipline becomes ingrained in one's daily habits. Further, the Chief and Lieutenant were of the ethanol and nicotine only persuasion. In fact they were emphatic about it, especially LT Gentry. So those of us with a wider array of chemical entertainments had to cultivate a healthy sense of paranoia.
Despite our careful efforts to project a politically correct demeanor, little telltales will sooner or later give one away. It is easy enough to hold aloof from officers since aloof is how they hold themselves. Keeping knowledge from the Chief poses greater difficulties, but is still just barely doable as they say in the navy. At least we hoped to have evaded MNCS Joe Balderrama's pervasive eye. Often we feared only to have ducked his official notice. We got our jobs done and kept the very lowest of profiles. Either that was enough for Joe, or else he really wasn't aware. I'm not at all sure. But obviously the difficulty increases all the more as you go down the ranks, if only because there are so many more of them.
Thus in such close quarters MN2 King could hardly fail to find us out eventually, which he did. When I say our I refer to most but not all of the MN's from First Class on down...I'll never tell which. To my recollection, all but a tiny minority of the other MN's except for the Chief were both aware and tolerant if not actual participants. And I suspect one among those few of merely affecting a courteously deliberate air of ignorance. This was not a specific attribute of the SLMM team by any means. It was merely a reflection of youth culture in the late 70's. This, I must stress, is important to know. Despite our varied indulgences, we were all very good at our jobs. We knew exactly how to comport ourselves while at work. It was only our off-duty hours which lacked for much in the way of uplifting social structure, each in our separate ways.
So Nosmo knew that something was up. Then he chanced upon us somehow. It has been so long that I forget the exact details. Perhaps we were keeping too low a profile which in itself might be suspicious. Or we may have neglected to adequately seal the door. I can't remember quite exactly. But I do recall that his reaction was not the horror-struck shock and surprise that we ought to have feared. He rather expressed that why risk it disbelief such as I feel towards those who sky dive, rock climb, bungee jump or gamble large sums of money. He simply failed to understand it. And this peaked his curiosity.
What next transpired was that we, by way of necessity, converted Jim over to our point of view. This was accomplished through both logical argument and empirical demonstration. Our reasonings ran along lines similar to these... There exists no genuine difference between what we do and those who abused ethanol during prohibition. Ethanol is a central nervous system depressant. By any sane argument, a drug. Ethanol's legality is nothing more than a popularity poll. If this were the thirties, might you nevertheless still drink? You know that you would. Would not Gentry and Balderrama simply resort to downing their Tequila somewhere away from public view? We knew that they would. How really, is THC any different from ethanol? Ethanol is even quite likely worse. Ethanol's addicting, we knew for a fact since all of us were then aware of a certain MN1 (not on the SLMM team) who was under court order in Chaleston, SC due to several drunk-driving tickets, to take daily doses of antabuse. Yet still he drank, even though it made him deathly ill.
In the drug culture, viable opportunities for intervention are afforded only to the alcoholics. The reason I say this is because who will dare to call in help on someone's behalf when it will lead to their own arrest? I resented that then and still do today. It would have been a great help to Jim, had any of us been in a position to get him some proper intervention. But we were not, not without calling most unwanted evil intentions down upon our own necks also.
Jim's life was ruined you see. And I feel really bad about that. I and my mates should have offered him better guidance. It wasn't the drugs themselves which harmed him nearly so much as the consequences of being made an example by the navy alcoholics (both the full-blown and the aspiring). Jim's problem, as I now reflect upon it, was a basic honest streak. He simply lacked the skills required to lead a proper double life. Once it had come to his attention how truly wide-spread throughout the navy was the use of marijuana, it toggled a digital switch in his mind. Jim appeared to think in terms of black and white. His understanding failed when it came to shades of grey. To Jim, it seemed, things were either okay or they weren't. So it happened that our persuasions converted poor Jim all too completely.
The year was 1977. At the time, and for our part, it was commonly believed that marijuana would soon be legal. And for a fact it was legal (for private possession and use only) in one of the states where the SLMM team traveled. So as I say, Jim was won over to our side of the divide between drugs of choice: ethanol versus canabinol. Jim not only joined our side in the cultural revolt, but picked up the flag and ran headlong into no-man's land with it. It was rather sad to watch. I regret that I did not interfere more aggressively. Within the year, Jim was busted, divorced and headed for Leavenworth.
We every one had used to indulge in serious levels of chemically-induced entertainment. Everyone poisoned their brains and livers with ethanol. But no one did any heroin or morphine to my recollection. And cocaine was too expensive for most. That plus the fact that I did not like cocaine at all the one and only time I tried it. Cocaine made me all the more aware of how bored I was, an effect opposite to that I was seeking. But marijuana, yeah sure. And LSD...every now and again. PCP I only tried twice, a serious mistake both times, having bought it under the false label of crystal THC. I must tell you I hated PCP even worse than cocaine, but for a completely opposite reason. It turned my emotions completely off. I could feel nothing whatsoever. What attraction others find in that I simply fail to comprehend.
Admittedly it was all rather thin entertainment. And I would more often have rather been out on a voyage of discovery riding my chopper. Most of those times, anyway. But circumstances and/or Gentry's orders had required me to leave the motorcycle behind. Thus I would fend off after-hours boredom by mixing various combinations of legal and other intoxicants and then watch TV. I wasted my free time by sitting around getting wasted. Albeit in excellent company, but still not very to be recommended. And I shouldn't recommend it now. And that exactly is the point: one may only recommend. What could be more un-American, more un-patriotic, even evil than to dictate how others must behave in the privacy of their homes? I would have hoped that by this late date our government should have returned to its roots. Foolish me, ever the optimist. I would have footnoted this rant too were it not a concept intrinsic to the story, or at least the story's setting.
Thus we (most of us lower-rank minemen, and indeed younger sailors in general) considered ourselves members of a then-ascending sub-culture of American youth. We considered that membership not abrogated in the least by our contracts with the Navy. It was the prior among our priorities, so to speak.
Foolish us. And ironic, too, that we then charged with preserving this imagined grand society perforce could inhabit only its suburbs, its shadowed verges. Regulations did not permit us to look the role, nor relax to its behavorial norms except in private. A gray area between competing realities existed then, and I suppose still does today. Nosmo, sadly, seemed barely to recognize the boundries between these two. He did not glide smoothly from one to the other. Jim's conversion was digital. He thereafter behaved as if the battle were over and LIBERTY had already won. Nosmo took no precautions at all. He was flagrant. We tried to advise him, I remember, but not nearly insistently enough.
I remember one time very especially. The locale was just a quarter mile inside the belt-line north of Washington DC, of all places. The SLMM team was away on deployment with full per diem (per day compensation for loss of customary services: barracks, mess-hall and the like). So we were staying all together in the same building, in efficiency apartments two to a suite. (This was while Harwell was still alive. He was my roommate.) I and another member of the team were returning via the sidewalk outside the building and just about to enter. Out strides Jim into broad daylight with an armload of obviously well-used marijuana paraphernalia (hookah, hash pipe, papers, etc) and a five-ounce jumbo baggie of grass clenched in his teeth. Since junior high I had made it a policy never to own anything I couldn't flush down a toilet. "Jim! Don't you have any sense?" I asked. "You are going to get all of us busted!"
"Who's going to see?" Jim said by reply. And looking around, there were only we three. He had a point, but a tiny one since I rather doubt that he had bothered to spy it out first. Nosmo then carried the whole of his cargo to his car, dumped it loosely into plain view on the front passenger's seat and drove away, I don't know to where.
Jim never did learn. His boldness however promoted him into becoming the SLMM team's foremost supplier. His contacts were phenomenal. Before we had often gone without for sake of being too timid to chance first-contact with some local provider. We might arrive in a new place with carefully hoarded reserves gleaned from trusted sources back home. But these supplies, being of a quantity easiliy hidden would soon run out. Jim to the rescue. Jim always had access, wherever we went. It is a wonder he did not get busted while away.
In the drug culture, viable opportunities for intervention are afforded only to the alcoholics. The reason I say this is because who will dare to call in help on someone's behalf when it will lead to their own arrest? I resented that then and still do today. It would have been a great help to Jim, had any of us been in a position to get him some proper intervention. But we were not, not without calling most unwanted evil intentions down upon our own necks also.
It could have been any one of us instead of Jim. It even almost happened to me once, the one time when I broke my own rule and assayed a local purchase. But that is another story...
So as I say I had a rule, only ever broken once, to purchase only from trusted sources. Jim was one of those trusted sources. At least he was until a few weeks before he got busted. I had placed an order with Jim for an ounce of Columbian. Jim's sources were among the best. He always vended top grade. He'd been at it a while by then but still had not learnt proper caution. It may be that he was getting heavy into cocaine. By then he'd become a high-volume broker in weed. The only need I can see for that now is to support some other, more expensive habit. That theory would go a long way to explain his apparent sense of invulnerability.
Jim made his last delivery to me in broad daylight, in the middle of the COMOMAG compound, within plain view of the Commodore's office, had Combat Chris chanced to look out at that inconvenient moment. Jim, you see, was by then running his illicit enterprise from out of his desk in, appropriately enough, the Supply Department of the MOMAG HQ. While still remaining friends, I severed my business relationship with him after that, as did a few others.
By then even the officers could smell something afoot. That's how obvious it was. Soon thereafter this new guy transferred in. I don't even think he was a mineman. Some other rate, a narc working for the NIS. And Jim got busted. I can't now remember how much dope they found in his desk, but it was a lot. And from that moment his life fell further and further apart. His wife divorced him and hooked up with another mineman, one of the instructors from that SLMM C-school we had all gone to. Jim went to court martial and from there to Levenworth.
And all these years I've felt bad about that. I wish I knew what became of him after. I feel that I owe him at least two things. Number one is an apology for not being a better friend, one would have drilled in better the political realities. I and half a dozen minemen who contributed jointly to his cultural recruitment owe him -- excepting only the one who did not live to see the day. And number two is a most sincere thank you. I and several dozen minemen owe him that. For no matter how they threatened him, Jim ratted not a one of us out.
I just can't seem to tell this story without launching into diatribes. This the Nth re-edit, however, and I have smoothed the reader’s course by exiling all my standard rants to this section here at bottom.
I very nearly got busted myself one time in Hawaii, a block or so from Waikiki. Two other members of the SLMM team were with me when the near-bust went down. Local dealers had boldly made offers all that evening. And up until then I had declined. I didn't need any more grass, thank you. My stores were adequate in that regard.
Then we came upon a free-lance broker of LSD, my personal weakness. "What kind?" I asked. "Purple pyramid blotter." said he. After a moment's hesitation, "Any price breaks for quantity?" I then inquired. "Sure." said he, "if you want to buy a whole sheet." After years of better judgment I broke my own rule and decided to go for it. I passed over thirty dollars and he gave me a slip of paper, which I quickly stuffed into a side pocket in my wallet.
Then in just a very few seconds we were confronted first by two detectives of the Honolulu police, then by a couple of uniforms which had appeared out of nowhere. I was required to empty my pockets. The detective himself went through my wallet. They didn't find what they were looking for. This came to the senior detective as a singular surprise. He explained the situation, biding for time. That person standing next to me was known to the cops as a dealer in sensimillia, a potent strain of marijuana grown locally right there on the islands. I had been seen to hand this individual quite a number of bills and receive something in return. Would I care to explain this strange behavior?
So the cops had expected to nail me with a quarter ounce of local product. The thirty dollars I'd handed over would naturally have seemed about right. Such was the going price. I perform a fast calcualtion. "He wanted change for a twenty," claimed I. And having gotten back my wallet I produced the alleged bill, "See?" And the dealer opened his to display a varied assortment of lesser bills. What with our hair cuts, three of us were quite obviously navy types. One of the detectives still had a hold of my ID. "We're from out-of-state," I explained. "We don't even know this individual." meaning the dealer. "He's a known drug dealer." the detective re-stated, "and we saw you give money to him."
"But I don't even drink alcohol," I lied holding up my can of Coke with a nod to my to mates from the SLMM team who were standing there with me and each holding a beer. "This...err, gentleman...asked me if I had change for a twenty and I obliged." And a search of the dealer had also failed to produce any bags of marijuana. The detectives were both annoyed and rather mystified. But I played it out as an uninformed Mid-westerner just here for a visit. And after some moments the cops let us go.
That was the second-to-last time that I ever bought acid. I hardly needed to anytime soon. Owing to having just purchased in bulk I was set for over a month. Thereafter I began to tire of LSD as an entertainment. Who’d stay thrilled with riding the same old roller coaster again and again? After so many times of seeing the walls breathe and drip with color the novelty had begun to wear off. And after having once written down my cosmic insights while deeply under its mind-expanding influence, a sober ex-post-facto re-reading relieved me of any belief in the myth of its spiritual nature. Finally, a miscalculation in dose based upon hearsay report caused me the loss of one whole day. For these reasons and not out of fear for the retribution of alcoholics did I set LSD aside and never use it again. It simply wasn't fun any more, so I quit by myself.
In writing this I wax nostalgic: a culture of freedom is how it was supposed to be. Real freedom. Or LIBERTY as the Founding Fathers had used to call it (complete with capital letters and all). The original American motto, that, handed down to us from long before In God We Trust assumed its place; from before the time when Democracy was re-interpreted to mean Dictatorship of the Fifty-One Percent; from a time when individualism had not yet become a vice and before the country backslid onto a slippery slope toward incremental theocracy.
Many another dangerous hobby enjoys the support, or at least the tolerance, of government: bungee jumping, sky diving, rock climbing without a rope, swimming with sharks. How are any of these dangerous activities any less stupid and pointless than, say...smoking grass? They aren't, of course. But in being out in the open they enjoy certain advantages. If you are a rock climber and it comes to your attention that someone you'd introduced to the sport will clearly never master the art, this is a matter which you can deal with openly. If someone you have shown how to hang glide demonstrates that he lacks the requisite sense of balance, you can bring it to someone's attention. And again, if you gamble then share your hobby with someone for whom it becomes a great problem you can make a fuss about it until professionals may come to help discourage him. All that keeping drugs illegal accomplishes is to bolster the funding of police and hamper any working solution to the real problem. This drug war business (and a business is all that it really ammounts to) cannot be won. It is lingering defeat.
A drug is a drug, or so we felt, regardless of whether it may occur naturally in a tropical herb or whether it be distilled from putrified vegetable matter. The only difference really is a thin veneer of hypocrisy. But law arises from politics. And politics are the essence of hypocrisy. So what can anyone do except to keep on guard? That’s how it felt to be young in the sixties. (From a cultural point of view The Sixties overlapped its decade up until the Vietnam War was over.) I’d been busted some years before as a freshmen in high school. This had taught me all due caution. One must develop a near-paranoic alertness very like that of a sparrow hawk daring to hunt in the eagle’s domain. Birds of a feather they surely are, the difference being naught but denial on the part of the alcoholic. It’s the Golden Rule. Alcoholics have more gold so they make the rules. Nevertheless a drug is a drug. Alcoholics are dope fiends by another name. Whosover denies this is both a liar and a fool.
How and why I have sworn off drugs, alcohol included by defition...
Let me here diverge for some few paragraphs so as to explain that I have long since given up drugs. In fact I gave up ethanol first. Circumstances more or less required that I do so. Of all drugs, ethanol corroded my judgment the worst. I had resolved to give up smoking. And that resolution would hold up admirably throughout the work-week. Then it would collapse in ruins about the time of my second Wild Turkey (or Polish Pure Spirts, or Everclear, or whatever...) of the next weekend's social engagements, whereupon I was sure to break down and treat myself to a fresh pack of Salems. So after quitting a number of times it dawned that I would also have to give up drinking for however long it might take to give up smoking. And then, pretty much, I just never took it back up again. I say pretty much because of a very few exceptions. Some years ago I was a guest at the home of my favorite author, Jack Vance (winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar, etc.), where cocktail hour has been a tradition since before I was born. So I have made exceptions, but somewhat rarely.
Not long after giving up ethanol at MOMAG Det 2 in Scotland I swore off also from LSD. This was in Charleston at MOMAG Det 0, the very week I got out of the navy. The occasion for this decision was my having miscalculated a dose. There was some new blotter in town. I obtained mine from another MN, one who did not himself indulge. He played middleman as a favor on account of my being unknown to the vendor. I inquired of him as to its exact potency: ug/hit. But he was uncertain. Helpfully, this other MN informed me of yet a third MN who'd taken two hits at a single dose and reported its quality to be excellent.
Drinkers judge one another on their capacity to hold liquor. One must suppose that connoisseurs of every intoxicant do the same. I knew well the MN mentioned and judged him to fall squarely at the wimp-out end of the acid-head spectrum. I had out-done him by more than twice on prior occasions. I doubted his tolerance to have greatly improved since then. Based upon this information I upped my own. Fortunately, in an unusual display of caution, I upped it by only half again.
Those in the know will verify that it may take well up to an hour to notice a good and sufficient effect from LSD, and two hours or more to peak. Almost right away I knew that I was in serious trouble. My best-ever peak was being surpassed in just twenty minutes. Then from about the one-hour mark until late in that evening I've no recollection whatever. Strange to consider that many an evening (and even whole weekends) are similarly lost by others due to ethanol, yet that this is dismissed as none too unusual.
Come the following day I investigated the dose which so-and-so had reported. It turned out that he had been mis-quoted. Of this particular brand of blotter, hits were measured as quarter-sections. So-and-so had taken half. I'd gone and downed three whole ones...so-and-so's dose times six. Decision time... I had always told myself I'd give up anything the moment it got to be a problem. Having come down the evening before to discover that my neighbor from the apartment next door had felt it needful to come over and stay with me so as to insure that I did not wander out into traffic might possibly indicate the beginnings of a problem. So I held myself to my own promise and gave it up. In twenty-five years I have made no exception.
Then still later I even gave up marijuana after coming to realize that I was wasting too many evenings watching reruns of I Dream of Jeanie and the like. So this is now, but that was then. These were decisions I made for myself and don't push off onto anyone else lest I become an even worse hypocrite than the alcoholic sort which I had so despised in the navy. Nor shall I colorize events any more than time and fading memory have already done for me.
I strongly resented at the time (and still maintain to this day) that the drug laws, at least in the navy, were enforced most aggressively by what may only be described as a lynch mob of full-blown or aspiring alcoholics. I asked it then and I ask it now. Where is the justice in this? Hypocrisy is what it is and nothing else. I have left behind intoxication as a hobby through my own free will and not on any account of their threats. But I will admit it to be a dangerous hobby.