We were pals even before school. Well, companions… We sat together in preschool in the sandbox under the supervision of Mrs. Boyd and we wouldn’t give this ‘Galactic Star’ cargo spaceship to fat McFlynn. Then the other McFlynns always came – three brothers – and took over the box and chucked sand in our faces.
Later, in grade school, we were joined like salt and pepper – always going everywhere and sharing breakfasts. We did just about everything together, and even fell together into an old maintenance shaft – that’s the kind of friendship we had.
When the war against Iraq started, the first, Operation Desert Storm, Ron’s father hung out a poster saying ‘I Do Not Serve Militarists’ over the entrance to the auto repair shop.
Pa, I remember, got really angry, and his friends too. They considered that ‘Old man George’– that’s how they called President Bush Sr. – is doing everything right, and Saddam needs to be punished for his friendship with the ‘reds’ and his aggression against tiny Kuwait. Generally, they thought: ‘Go ahead, sons of America!’
Once my old man and Ron’s began to argue about it ferociously in the street. My Pa shouted that an American can’t go against the president, because then he is not an American any more but a pathetic turncoat and a sluff. Ron’s Pa shouted that it is all about oil and those babblers on television had just filled the heads of people like my old man with guff.
Well, and then the auto repair shop suddenly burned down, with Ron in it. Police officers said he was making something in there, maybe a new iron hand and couldn’t get out – he’d inhaled smoke and poisonous fumes and then the roof had collapsed. Only bones were found.
After that Ron’s family left the city, and we left not long after too because Pa’s reassignment took us to Wilmington. But in Wilmington, I had no real friends, only occasional playmates.
Maybe of all the people I met in childhood besides my parents, Mr. Stanford, the history teacher at our school, was the most interesting. He was tall and grey-haired, with the ruddy face of a Santa Claus and a wrinkled neck. He invariably wore an American flag on the lapel of his no less invariable striped jacket. He constantly joked around with us, set up voluntary groups, took us on excursions, told us about things.
Once he took thirty or so of us little ones to the USS North Carolina. That was the name of a huge battleship that had been laid up at a pier in Wilmington in 1961. We just called it ‘Ship’, with a capital letter. ‘Let’s meet opposite Ship’, we’d say, and everything would be clear at once.
The USS North Carolina was an impressive construction. As a child, it seemed to me that it was no less than a mile long, and its steel masts looked taller than the skyscrapers of New York. Then I looked up the true dimensions of this battleship, and its length was actually 728 feet – which is still, you must admit, considerable. And I still remember the massive, just incredibly massive, guns with barrels so big an adult could climb inside.
There was a museum on the battleship, and Mr. Stanford led us there to tell us about the fighting history of the USS North Carolina. This steel monster was constructed in 1942, and more than a thousand people served on it. In the war, he told us, Japan attacked us and their planes bombed our ports and cities all the time, and their troops occupied all the islands in the Pacific Ocean and were coming for California and Portland. Then all the American people followed president Roosevelt’s lead, and said in unison: ‘We can!’, and we began to build new ships and planes.
The USS North Carolina and other cruisers, battleships and aircraft carriers sailed out into the ocean and began to attack Japanese military bases and ships, and assist landings to free the cities and islands.
I am telling this now as I remembered Mr. Stanford telling it – vividly, his arms swinging, acting out all the parts – wise president Roosevelt, the blood-thirsty Japanese, our courageous seamen, and even the storm and fog that lead the ships towards the enemy.
The USS North Carolina did a lot of fighting, together with the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Saratoga – and then received a torpedo hit from a Japanese I-15 submarine.
Only two seamen died but the forward part of the battle ship together with a main gun turret were damaged, so it was withdrawn from military operations and was sent to Pearl Harbor for repairs. Once repaired, the USS North Carolina was in the war for a long time, reached Japan and Okinawa, but this isn’t interesting.
What’s interesting was that those dead seamen became ghosts!
Mr. Stanford always told us about this down below, in the dark cramped space beneath the front gun turret, and in such a sinister voice that some of the little girls began to squeal in fear.
The first time ghosts were noticed on the battle ship was in 1961 when the money was raised locally to redeem the battle ship from the Navy and it was towed to Wilmington to make a museum from it.
That’s when everything began! Every year, it seemed, somebody managed to imprint on a photograph a blurred silhouette in some corridor or doorway, while awful groans and a lingering howl were repeatedly registered on tape recorders – and everyone could listen to the recording for twenty five cents at the cash desk of the museum.
I remember all this distinctly because I have always had a very good memory for information. In Elizabeth City, I was even called a marvel.
Once, I memorized twelve pages of the Gospel of Luke for a bet and didn’t make a single mistake when I repeated the text aloud. I can say it all even now.
But back to the museum. When he spoke about the ghosts, Mr. Stanford transformed himself, turning into an infernal creature. He lowered his voice to an ominous whisper, cried out as if he was attacked, distorted his face into horrible shapes and grinned like B.B. King.
The unfortunate sailors from the USS North Carolina were soon joined in his string of narratives by European ghosts such as the Canterville Ghost and the White Lady, and by the Salem witches and spirits of Indian leaders and shamans.
If Mr. Stanford hadn’t been a teacher, he would have been a preacher or a salesman. He was the kind of guy who could persuade any American to believe in anyone or buy anything.
By the way, Mr. Stanford’s second favourite topic after ghosts was Indians. He knew everything about the history of development of our state and the Indian wars which Cherokee, Croatoan (those said to have slaughtered the ‘Lost Colony’ on Roanoke Island), Maskoki, Chickasaw and others, those ‘red-skinned devils’ who were moved on from the Indian territory to beyond the Mississippi letting us, in a sense, more civilized people, live settled lives.
Mr. Stanford never stinted on color, painting vivid pictures for us school students of the awful atrocities done by Indians on our unfortunate ancestors who brought the light of civilization to these savages. Once the pilgrim fathers landed on the East coast, Mr. Stanford said, there was nothing else to do but exterminate them entirely.
The sad story of the colony on Roanoke Island, he told us, is one of the best confirmations. The slaughtered colonists carved the letters ‘Cro’ on a column to identify their ruthless murderers, the Croatoana, who painted themselves with black and white paints. But other tribes were no better, killing colonists in ambushes, attacks on farms, burning houses, and cutting, forcing and tearing off scalps.