NOSTALGIA
A Sail Down Memory Lane & Let Freedom Ring
The Sailing Yacht STEADFAST is my unusual home. She was built in 1934, during the Great Depression. It was quite a contrast, then as now; the wealthy bought and sailed her, the working class built her. The NOSTALGIA of this vessel is substantial. Built by Brooklyn, New York’s Wheeler Shipyard (love the namesake) and advertised as a “Wheeler Playmate,” STEADFAST, in her early years, was RESTLESS. The maiden voyage was a tour of the Great Lakes; she must have 100K miles on her by now, at least.
During World War II she was commandeered by the US NAVY for use as a Patrol Boat in Long Island Sound and along the coast of New Jersey, complete with a mounted bow gun. I wonder about those days, the Midshipmen that handled her, sleeping on our bunks, navigating the seas with submarines below waterline and innumerable threats above. Much of our lead ballast is stamped US NAVY.
After the war she changed hands twice more, and was purchased by the Cruzan Rum family of St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, where that particular elixir has been distilled since 1760. They creatively installed a bronze rum spigot near the helm and we still possess that fabulous little piece of history. (Has it crossed our mind to reinstall?? Oh yes….not only for the NOSTALGIA, but for the pure fun and scintillating convenience of such a device! If you don’t know Cruzan Rum, try the inexpensive, quality classic. It’s still family owned.)
Our vessel experienced a distinct lack of maintenance over the years and underwent a complete rebuild in Puerto Rico in the 1980’s. That decade-long+ project was completed by Dmitri (Richard) Bernhardt who is now a dear friend following our progress as we bring her back to what she once was, better, even, this time. He was her caretaker from 1980 until 2012; she’s offered charters everywhere from St. John, US Virgin Islands, to Maine. When we purchased her she slept eleven. We are happy to be only two; our provisions, toys, tools and gear take up the balance of her substantial, soulful space.
In the process of our current repair, (check the archives for details) we removed two large, crucial components, (the stem and the knee) along with planking, all harvested a century ago. Those deteriorating pieces were utilized as templates to construct the new ones, and have been in a discard pile for weeks. We don’t need them, we can’t store them, but it’s difficult and a little heart-wrenching to put pieces of history in the boatyard dumpster to be buried somewhere like so many candy wrappers.
As the fall light was fading on the 7th, they went into that big blue trash bin, except a small chunk for…..? What becomes of that? Who knows?
The price of storing NOSTALGIA, and bad feelings, and injustice, can be expensive. If you are powerless to change any given situation, I think it is better, if monumentally difficult, to simply let it go. Cathartic, my Boatbuilder called it today, to throw those parts away and to move on. I agree. “We should have built a bonfire,“ I said to no one as the final thud echoed in the deserted yard. Something therapeutic might have come out of it.
This week and much of this year, I have found myself searching for less tumultuous days. A long-ago friend owned a ’47 Mafia-style roadster; I wish I remembered the make and model; it was the coolest old car, dark gray with tiny windows and three gears. You got in and just laughed with the red plush velvet seats and roaring engine. On the back window were the words “Mayberry, Where R U?” Perhaps that will ring bells for some, others, not so much. After many years, the phrase came to mind as I searched for, and yearned for, simpler times.
For those of you who haven’t been indoctrinated into THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, it was produced in the 1960’s and tells of a widowed small-town North Carolina Sheriff and his compatriots in the fictitious town of Mayberry. When the show ended in 1968, it was the most popular in America; it felt good. There were lots of ‘aww, shucks’ moments, and lessons on moral character. There were family dinners each evening and everyone knew everyone’s business, but not via Facebook, via face. Everyone had the same definition of right and wrong; folks took responsibility for their actions. If it was appropriate, they apologized. If someone needed help, they got it.
Sixty years is not incredibly long ago, but was a time so monumentally different that we feel the NOSTALGIA. This week, I not only felt it, I craved it. My reaction, of course, is in regard to the complex and (to me) surprising decisions that this nation made based on the information presented. Who can we believe? Is there any unadulterated, unbiased fact?
I love my home country and abide, as all members of a genuine democracy do, by the decision of the majority in order to maintain peace, order, prosperity and happiness. I wish those things for my home country and for so many others that are in turmoil.
It’s easy to be nostalgic. We must keep moving forward, hoping that history can once again teach the difficult lessons already experienced, if not learned. As I wrote this a vivacious, laughing group of eleven individuals walked beneath my window. They were not speaking English; joy is universal.
I think of the Wooden Ships that brought both immigrants and slaves to this land across fierce oceans; I think of the thousands of miles walked, every day, from Central and South America for a chance at a better life. If you’re not Native American, you or your relatives are immigrants.
The Statue of Liberty’s plaque clearly states “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” May the elected leaders of this nation continue to let freedom ring.
Thank you for following along as we SPAR with both MOTHER NATURE & human nature. For an excellent read on this topic, I offer Elizabeth’s always interesting point of view in CHICKEN SCRATCH. Take a few minutes to read it here.
~J
I feel proud to have dozens of new subscribers this week and am sending a nautical welcome to those individuals. I’m incredibly honored to have all of you here. Thanks for sharing, commenting, subscribing, following and being genuinely interested in this amazing world.
As it always will, the sun continued to rise this week.
Thanks, Janice. Plenty to think about here. A bonfire would have needed to wait until the burn ban was lifted, so it's good that you went ahead with plan A. That said, I'm glad you held onto a chunk, if for nothing more than a reminder of where you've been.
“This week and much of this year, I have found myself searching for less tumultuous days.”
I “hoard” memes like I used to “hoard” old newspaper clippings (but I digress). Believing that no thing is all one thing or the other, I keep two quotes on nostalgia. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
“Nostalgia is a dirty liar that insists things were better than they seemed.”
“The fossil is not the animal. The fossil is not the bones of the animal. The fossil is the stone’s memory of the bones of the animal. And that’s a poetry older than words.”
I’ve been thinking about nostalgia over the past year or so. I’m beginning to conclude that our younger selves, and thus our memories, were naive. Life was simple because it had not yet been layered with the complexity of experience, and disappointment, and anxiety, and pain. The memory of first love is a smile across your face on a Sunday afternoon. A lifetime of marriage and children is so much more complicated. Grandchildren are the gift that let us visit the past while still living in the present. Mayberry seemed straight forward, but it was also a time of polio, segregation, and bomb shelters.
“My reaction, of course, is in regard to the complex and (to me) surprising decisions that this nation made based on the information presented. Who can we believe? Is there any unadulterated, unbiased fact?”
I’m a student of political science and a teacher of government and politics. I strive to view the subject objectively in both my public and personal life. I read and listen widely as a check against my own subjectivity.
I squeezed my lesson on populism in before the election. My students are mostly upper middle class and secure and frankly the populism of Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump has little effect on them. But, I remind them that populism speaks to people for a reason. A candidate can’t say, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” (regardless of the context) and not expect those people to feel threatened as they continue to experience economic and social hardship.
I once read an interview with Arnold Miller, the president of the United Mine Workers. Miller is often quoted as having said, “Our people work in the mines so their children don’t have to.” He was a little more specific in the interview. His goal was to make the cost of coal labor so expensive that the industry would be forced to modernize; and in the meantime, miners would make enough money that they could send their children to college. And while that sounds visionary, 40 years later, the best paying jobs in “coal country” are in the fossil fuel industry, if you can get one.
My frustration is with the seemingly inherent tone deafness and unwillingness of a certain political party to put forward a candidate that will win. All week we hear from the media about the 57% of college educated women who voted for Harris; what about the 43% who didn’t (that’s not a small number)? When we hear about Trump’s support from women, it’s to remind us they don’t have to tell anyone who they voted for. Instead, the media chooses to highlight the Trump voters who are not educated, without trying to understand why they support him.
Part of my school’s mission is, “To stand in solidarity with those marginalized by poverty and injustice.” We do a pretty good job and then some. We teach our students that as a community, we must find ways to not leave people behind. Populism pits those “without” against those “with less”, while the rest of us enjoy the advantage of our advantages.
I’ve read that shipwrights of 100 years ago never imagined that the boats they built would last 30 years, let alone 80 to 100 years. In the 1800s, a ship that traveled from America or England to India or China required a major overhaul before the return voyage. Moitessier preferred steel because it was easier to maintain. And then came fiberglass … built to last forever.
Our love of wooden boats, I’m confident, is rooted in something greater than nostalgia. Like a classic song that reminds us of an old friend and transports us back in time, wooden boats tug at our soul. Nature transformed, crafted by human hands, the sum of the parts greater (grander?) than the whole. Wooden boats are, like a fossil, our memory to the people who built them. Their craftsmanship is evidence of a different time.