I Joined the Navy

 https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/opinion/2020/11/i-joined-the-navy-it-was-an-obligation-to-participate-accepted-by-all-opinion.html

I joined the Navy. It was an obligation to participate accepted by all | Opinion

Updated 11:09 AM; Today 11:09 AM

U.S. Navy op-ed

Published in Newark Star Ledger and Associate publications

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By Express-Times guest columnist

By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist

By Charles E. Kraus

On Veteran’s Day, I think back to 1966. This is how I happened to enlist.

You eat because you are hungry, or because it is mealtime, or your grandmother went to all the trouble to bake the cake and even though you hate carrot cake, you love her. You enlist during times of war because you are patriotic, or – you’ve seen too many movies that glorify war, depicting battle as a thrill.

Or maybe you’ve had an argument with your girlfriend, accumulated insurmountable debts, have been living an appalling life – in rural Nowhere, or in Urban Hell, and you need a correction. Perhaps, granddad and dad had distinguished military careers and tradition demands that you wear the uniform. Maybe you are trying to become a witness – to war, to peace, to various approaches to being alive.

Only that last one rings a few bells in my profile, though I’ll probably never truly understand why, as my sophomore college year concluded, I went to visit the Navy recruiter.

My military intentions, or more accurately, fantasies had little to do with battle. Unlike my father, I’d never been a party to, nor would I ever participate in a brawl or any form of animosity requiring more than attitude and language. Most of the authors I’d read came out of the Second World War. The military helped form some of them.

The “Adventures of Wesley Jackson,” “The Naked and the Dead,” “Catch 22,” “From Here to Eternity,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “The Caine Mutiny,” as well as the play I’d done in summer stock, “Mister Roberts,” were versions of military life filed away in my head.

No one I read or knew liked being in uniform, but the obligation to participate was accepted by all. My uncles told amusing tales of their active service days. Dad, turned down by the Navy because he was half an inch too short, walked next door and enlisted in the Merchant Marines. Being an adult male meant you had polished a few war stories and incorporated them into your repertoire to be repeated again and again around the dinner table, generally told with a twinge of nostalgia.

My decision to enlist was made easier because the recruiters offered attractive extras. I’d had two years of college. That meant I qualified for a rank of Seaman First Class, two bumps up from lowly Seaman Recruit. In addition, the Navy had a wonderful enlistment option. I could sign the papers now, but postpone induction for three months.

To qualify for the three-month deal, I’d need to agree to a four-year hitch rather than the usual three-year commitment. Hell, four was just another number. Two, three, I was young and life felt endless. Endless minus four years was still endless. Agreeing to this deal meant the consequences of my rash decision to join the military wouldn’t go into effect until the end of the summer. Three months only took three months, and as the next scene opened, there I was on a train heading from New York City to Navy 101 Boot Camp, Michigan.

My four-year military career was divided into three duty stations. A tour in Nam attached to a CB unit, complete with my very own M16, a year in Virginia with an outfit called Inshore Undersea Warfare Group Two, and finally life aboard a ship. In this case, the USS Fulton, a submarine tender that remained tied up to the pier most of the time, heading for open seas only to dump nuclear waste and to cause me extreme seasickness.

In each case, I was out of my element, living with guys from Alaska, the deep south, Guam, Harlem – Blacks, Filipinos, Hillbillies, as well as cosmopolitans. Because of and despite regulations and traditions, we figured it out, got along, developed friendships, or at least comfortable relationships. Learned from one another. You could say we bonded. We saved one another, had each other’s backs, shared our frustrations and united to gripe and laugh at our predicaments.

It turned out to be formative, at least for me. It was a difficult period but more rewarding than much of my life. I received my honorable discharge in 1970, just in time to get caught up in a rapidly changing world. Been a veteran ever since.

—

Charles Kraus received a Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam. His memoir, “You’ll Never Work Again In Teaneck, NJ” includes several chapters about his military career.

An Appreciation of the Amazing Randi

An Appreciation of the Amazing Randi

By Charles Kraus

Jame Randi died a few days ago at the age of 92.  According to his New York Times obit, which ran 25 paragraphs, he was a debunker, an author, MacArthur award-winning magician and then some.  At a personal level, he was someone I knew and appreciated when I was a teen.

====

We ran into Randi constantly.  It was the 1960's.  

We were teen magicians in a New York City Parks & Rec group called FAME (this is long before the television show).  Our acronym stood for Future American Magical Entertainers.  The Amazing Randi was a regular within the New York magician's social scene.

FAME would meet on Saturday mornings, then once adjourned, members made their way to 42nd street, took the elevator to the 14th floor of the Wurlitzer Building and entered Tannens, the city's premier magician's supply store.  The shop would be crowded with dozens of prestidigitators.  Perhaps an act that was starring on Ed Sullivan's TV show that week, locals like Harry Lorayne and Dia Vernon.  The crowd often included Randi.  He was always encouraging to our club members.  Friendly, informal, informative, and very funny.

When the shop closed at 3pm, the crowd descended to the 42nd Street automat.   Here, leading magicians sat for hours performing and out performing one another.  As teens, we were allowed to watch and appreciate.  Randi was much more than an escape artist, though that was his speciality within the magic trade.  He was equally good with a deck of cards or a piece of rope.

There were endless gatherings and magic shows in the city, as well as an annual Catskill Mountain Jubilee sponsored by Tannens.  You'd find Randi at many of these events.  I recall one of his shows in particular because it demonstrated his quick thinking and showmanship.  Randi was performing a trick that required him to secretly place a large wooden block into a hat.  For some reason he'd failed to situate the prop in that location, a mistake he only realized while in the midst of presenting the routine. Some magicians would have put the effect aside and gone on to another, Randi was too quick and talented to abandon the effect in front of this audience of fellow magicians.

The hat was on his stand; the cube resting behind another effect.  He had to find a way to move it into the hat without anyone noticing.

"God, look at her!" he shouted, an expression of astonishment on his face.   Simultaneously, he thrusted out his arm, pointing his finger towards the back of the auditorium.  What he was doing is called misdirection.  Heads turned.  Eyes searched for the woman Randi had spotted.  There was no one there, but while attention was diverted, he'd secured the cube in the hat.  He was not only amazing and resourceful.  He was also pretty nervy.

"That was my sister," he explained, as he continued with his routine.

During the 1964 World's Fair, White Owl Cigars featured magicians in their pavilion. Randi was a regular.  I'd taken a date to the fair and was doing my best to impress her.  When we reached the pavilion, I managed to convince the house manager I was a friend of Randi's and that if he knew I was there, he'd let me in -- for free, of course.   Randi was summoned.  He recognized me as one of the FAME boys, and not only invited us to see the show, but talked me up to my companion.

Decades later, Randi made an appearance on a television program I was watching, and  I decided to email and say how much I'd enjoyed seeing him.  You probably don't remember me, I said.  I was a FAME boy. You got me into your White Owl show at the World's Fair.

"Ah ... he replied.  I've been searching for you for years.  You own me five bucks for the tickets."

He was kind.  Helpful and as I say, a very funny guy.

Making America Americian Again

Making America American Again

By Charles E. Kraus

My father rarely voted.  Once for Kennedy.  Once for Regan.  Once for anybody but Regan.  He was a contrarian with strongly held political beliefs that shifted.  Were he alive today, he'd be sealing the envelope right now, pounding the stamp into place and marching his ballot, his message of dissatisfaction, to the postal box.  If he could locate a postal box.

My generation really does want to make America great again.  Great meaning normal.  These past four years have been anything but that.  When you've been around for decades (I've been handicapping Presidents since 1968; prior to that I was allowed to share my father's opinions with anybody who would listen), you've obviously developed a sense of the American process.  

Wasn't there a time when politicians avoided scandal, or at least the appearance of scandal?  Didn't we go for long stretches without news events so riveting that they competed with one another for headline prominence and space in our heads?   Weren't there clear cut ways of doing things?  Holding elections, for example?  Yes, the world had dangerous rough edges.  We knew this.  We were working on it.

Seniors have the kind of perspective that allows them to understand how off course we've gone.  We are veterans of history.  Of wars and depressions, recessions, polio epidemics and assassinations.  Of Presidential elections that were landslides and others that were squeakers. In each instance, the country found itself on solid footing and was able to absorb the dilemma.

We've benefited from Social Security.  Medicare.  Civil Rights.  Healthier foods, better medicines, safer cars.  A sense of advancing.   Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson,  even Nixon.  Left, right and center. 

Living in Washington State, where voting has been accomplished exclusively by mail for many years, it is easy for me to urge distant friends to cast ballots.  

        In the oldest of jokes, the wealthy matron hears a beggar say, "I haven't eaten in days," and responds, "My good man, you should force yourself."  Sure friends, I can advise you to stand in your Covid infested lines, in the rain, in the snow, with vigilantes stalking, pardon me, closely observing the voting process.  Or, if you live in California, urge you to do your best when it comes to distinguishing between real collection boxes and actual collection boxes.  

Fortunately, I don't have to rally seniors to turn out the vote. The necessary energy and stamina is being accessed from the same well that feeds fight or flight responses.  Everyone I know is angry.  Real angry.  And that is leading to action.  They are upset enough to withstand the discomforts and dangers, submitting their ballots as a kind of scream.  A demand for common sense.

We are seniors.  We look back and see what the current administration has dismantled.  Seems to me there are competing approaches to making American Great Again.  One is fake.  One is not.  We know the difference, and we'll vote accordingly.

.

My History with Bad Air

Take a Deep Breath - my history with bad air

By Charles E. Kraus

Seattle --      

Excuse me while I step inside for a breath of fresh air.  That joke has been making the rounds.  So has the smoke.  From time to time throughout the day I become obsessed with checking the air quality.  Ironically, my computer screen defaults to accuweather.com and all I have to do to find out the current status of unbreathability is "refresh" the page.   Something ironic about that.

I live just north of Seattle in a place called Lake Forest Park.  The signs welcome you to “Tree City USA.”  I hope forest fires can’t read.   I’m old enough to have experienced four bouts of pneumonia plus an assortment of other respiratory ailments.   This is not the first time I’ve found it uncomfortable to inhale.  But it's been a while since I could trace such problems to proximate conditions in the wide wide world.  

The bad air of my distant past had "due in part to human irresponsibility" stamped on pockets of atmosphere so thick and polluted you could carve your initials in them.

A month or two after moving to 1970s Los Angeles, I looked out my kitchen window and was startled to see mountains.  They'd simply materialized.  Beautiful, majestic mountains.  It was as if Disney had assembled them in the middle of the night.  But, no.  The explanation turned out to be that the smog had lifted revealing natural beautiful generally hidden by the unintended consequences of a highly mobile industrialized society.   

My eyes are burning today.  Sadly, I’m out of Systane.  I’d go get a refill, but am not supposed to leave the house.  The dirty air would choke me.  And besides, I'm old, and adhere to pandemic restrictions that keep me from entering stores.  

My eyes know all about the pitfalls of corrosive air.  LA was not my only California address.  I am also a surviver of Pasadena air so foul that there was a constant sting awaiting your every breath. Your eyes burned and your skin itched.  Know that mountain I had trouble seeing from my Los Angeles kitchen window?  Now I was living on it, and I still couldn't see it.

Worse than any of this was the year I spent, part of my Vietnam Era Naval career, when I was assigned a desk three decks down in a converted storage space on the USS Fulton.  The room had no ventilation system.  By the end of each day, the eight sailors who worked there, seven smoking cigarettes plus me, could not look across the florescent lighting and actually locate the bulkhead.  Pulling my undershirt off in the evening as I prepared to shower, the fabric stank so badly that I developed a habit of holding my breath as I lifted it over my head.  

The Fulton was an ancient submarine tender that only left port twice during the year I spent onboard.  Twice and for very short durations.  Out to sea to dump nuclear waste.

Respect for the environment?  Not then.  Not yet.  Air today, air tomorrow.  I hope it's better by then.

Lingering Thoughts About the Virus

Lingering Thoughts About the Virus

By Charles E. Kraus

The conventions are over.  The virus continues.

Did I?  Should I?  If I.  An endless loop of pandemic thoughts play in my head.  

I'm wondering If during one of my few, essential outings, someone, somewhere -- by some fluke, by an alignment of circumstances, caused just enough airborne virus to penetrate my procedures, my protective gear, my good intentions.    I'm feeling fine.  Now.  But that lingering thought says -- How will today's activities effect me tomorrow?  Was I asymptomatic when the family came calling?   Were they?   Everybody is back home seemingly doing well.  Today.  But tomorrow?  Did I give them something?  Or receive pandemic particles bound for my already shaky old lungs?   

I'm constantly weighing odds and outcomes.  

My wife and I are seniors.  These days we conduct most of our lives over the internet.   Or call in our orders.  But, they never get it right.  Dumb substitutions.  Choices we wouldn't make if shopping on our own.  Didn't they see that I specified low fat?  My wife wants to go to Safeway in person, just this one time.  Or to Trader Joes during senior hours.  Maybe I should go? Maybe not.

I go.   I'm  cautious.   Am I foolish?

First time I've visited a grocery store in months.  I'm impressed with the glass panels between customers and cashiers.  And the very responsible cliental, everyone keeping their distance.  I take a squirt of sanitizer as I leave, and after rubbing it on my hands and the cart handle, I use the excess to coat the coins I've received at check out.  Pushing the cart through the parking lot, I am trying to decide when it's appropriate to remove my mask. 

Now comes the lingering after thought.  Did I catch anything?  Will I know tomorrow?  Next week?  When do I declare this a safe and successful outing?

Visit a store, see your kids, go to a doctor's appointment or just bring an Amazon package into your kitchen and wipe it down with alcohol.  The next thing you know, you are suffering from the thought, if not the virus.  Did some portion of now set in motion a catastrophic event?  Is something, anything I'm doing at the moment, going to become part of a process that leads to my becoming a Covid 19 statistic?  The prospect does cross my mind. 

Novel corona virus is stealth.  Until it isn't.  You seem to be OK.  You might be fine.  Probably that's the case.  But tomorrow, or next week might finding you forming a different conclusion.  Life takes place every day.  What you do tomorrow may have consequences further down the road.  What you do in two days, in four, at any point in the near future, could possibly prove deadly.  Before long.  Or not.

Like I said, an endless paranoid loop of pandemic maybe plays and plays in my head.  

Charles E. Kraus is the author of "You'll Never Work Again In Teaneck, NJ."

 

Empty Stadiums, Cheering Crowds

Empty Stadiums, Cheering Crowds

By Charles E. Kraus

I was sitting in an ABC-TV studio.  Jim McKay was behind the Wide Wide World of Sports desk sampling the day's events.  One of these was a middle-weight boxing championship coming out of Italy, or Spain.  It was a long time ago.  Howard Cosell had flown in, toupee and all, to provide local color.  Something was wrong with the feed, at least that was the director's first impression.  The match was taking place in a packed stadium, but there didn't seem to be any crowd reaction.

"No, no," it was explained.  Audience's watched silently.  Or maybe they weren't miked. Either way, there was nothing to hear.

That was not going to work for American viewers so a sound effects person arrived with his sweetener.  This was a device generally used to enhance audience reaction -- you know, to goose up laugher if the comedian hadn't actually earned the chuckles, spice applause for a singer who hadn't generated a rousing response.  What did this technician have to juice up a boxing match?  

Soon, crowd sounds improved reality and the boxing match took on a whole new level of excitement.   (There was one other problem.   Evidently pictures were being generated by feeds from the US and Europe.  America's shots had the clock super imposed, counting down the minutes.  Europe also super imposed a clock.  Not a count down, but rather a count up.  Made for an interesting afternoon).

This summer, refreshment stands and fans excluded, stadiums plan to open.  The loudest sounds you'll be hearing when watching these events won't be cheers or boos.  If you listen carefully, you'll pick out a few grunts and some colorful language.  That's assuming the shotgun microphones follow athletes on their appointed rounds.

There is talk of adding recordings of crowd reaction from previous games.  In the Cosell days networks were willing to settle for generic audio, a general sense of people attending a sporting event.  Adding meaningful, reactive sound in real time is much more difficult.  What you hear has to match what you see.

Back when, I was involved with a number of CBS variety programs.  Sitcoms used laugh tracks.  Variety shows employed sweeteners on an as needed basis.  Certain programs created audio reaction out of whole cloth.  The Sonny and Cher Show only pretended to have audiences.  The program was actually recorded bit bit.  Sometimes a small segment would be shot endlessly, "Take 14, roll tape."  Finally, somehow, everyone got their lines right.  The keeper would be added to other keepers unit an entire show was assembled. Then the sweetener guy would rush in and replicate appropriate audience responses.  

How do I think sound should be added today's sports events?  During this pandemic situation?  Simple.  Air the event live.  Stadiums empty.  Zoom the show to a few hundred open mike homes.  Families, couples, guys who've been sitting in the same chair since March.  Blend their audio reactions and add this mix to the broadcast.  It will be authentic.  Not canned.  Not sweetened.   There may be a few extraneous sounds.  But ... did you ever go to a sports event, a real live event, that didn't have a few extraneous sounds? 

OK to begin?

OK to begin?

By Charles E. Kraus

I’m back for another Zoom show.  Hi everyone.  Everyone -- that would be about 30 four and five year-olds and their parents, generally moms, seated, standing or walking around in front of computer screens. I’m looking at the gallery view of my audience,

Tim, the school director who organizes these programs has promised to monitor the audio.  My preference is to hear the viewers and for kids to hear one another.  I want laughter to build so stay-at-homers feel like they’ve become an audience.  But Tim is right.  Sometimes children need to tell parents they want more popcorn, or a bathroom break.  Mute that, please.

Back in pre-Corvid19 days, I made thousands of live, actual, in-person magician-clown-puppeteer appearances in schools, libraries, recreation centers, hospitals, fairs and private parties.  I’m not so sure how things will shake out when the world reaches the new normal.  At the moment, I’m dealing with the current normal.  Like many children’s entertainers, I’ve taken to virtual gigging.

I have to keep it short because Zoom allows 40 minutes, and Tim uses some of that time to go over a few organizational elements with the families.  Then … it’s me.  Thirty minutes of show.  In this case, I’m doing a virtual version of my become-a-clown routine.

Tim’s school is in Los Angeles.  I’m in Seattle. Lots of rain here, but I see many of my Zoomers seated by swimming pools, others indoors, a variety of homes, modest and luxurious.  Mothers holding babies, children running in and out of frame.

Just before starting I hear one of the kids.  “It’s Charles!   Another episode!"

My backdrop frame is behind me.  It holds an eight foot long seven foot high curtain.  But it’s not very far behind me because like many people, I’m working from home.  In my case, the rooms are small and you can only move furniture so far.  I’ve been left with a narrow corridor in which to perform.  By remaining exactly here, my computer camera will capture enough of me.  If I hold out my hand, bringing it closer to the camera, my fingers appear to quadruple in size. 

The audience sees me as I am, but when I view myself on screen, I’m looking at a reverse image.  I only realize this Zoom anomaly once the show begins.  Attempting to use the screen as my mirror, I explain — “This is how I put on my clown face,” Things immediately go awry.  I’m trying to draw the blue heart on my cheek, but discover that I’m working with my opposite self.  My hands are confused and I end up looking like a Stephen King book jacket.

Zooming a performance is similar to entertaining a stadium crowd.  I’ve done that at the Olympic Arts Festival and in venues such as Pasadena’s KidSpace.  The canvas is filled with indistinguishable pixels of people.  I talk, it responds.

I’m big on sharing smiles with kids.  But that concept is pre-pandemic.  Kids sitting on the floor a few feet away.  My puppet saying something funny, me looking into the eyes of a child so we can laugh together.  Try that over the internet.

These days, no one can join me on stage to assist as I twist up a giant balloon animal.  The routine was written as a comedy piece.  Cross out those jokes.

I can’t ask children to raise their hands if they want to help me identify a color or a shape, and I can't facilitate a conversation between a youngster and Biscuit The Dog Puppet.  It's extremely difficult to select someone from the audience.  The kid over there, I mean there, the one holding the …. I can barely see people framed by their small zoom screens, more or less indicate who I have in mind.  Solution, I ask Tim to do the picking.  

Childrens entertaining is always a learning experience.  Especially these days.  I'm combining a new skill set with well honed technique.  My goal --to present a virtual program, maybe in the next episode, where meaningful interactions take place.  A show that’s an engaging dialogue between the children and the performer.