Chapters from "TIME TRIALS"
• 17 •
Shipboard Life and City by the Bay
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After Officer’s Candidate School, I was assigned to a Radar Picket Ship, the USS Tracer AGR 15, not the most exciting duty for a young officer but one with easy access to beautiful San Francisco. It would be an astonishing 18 months out to sea for a month then in port for three weeks.
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First, the trip from the East Coast, Newport, RI, to the West Coast and that City by the Bay. We were granted two weeks to arrive at our ship assignment. This entailed a rail trip from New York to Chicago on the Nickel Plate Road then on to Lake Geneva via the North Western Commuter Line.
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After a few days in Elkhorn, Dean Millar, a Bravo Company mate, and I departed from his home in suburban Chicago, Hinsdale, with an outrageous green Cadillac. Dean arranged with an auto dealer to deliver the car to a Los Angeles dealer. We learned that low-mileage used cars drew a higher price on the West Coast than the Midwest. The dealer allowed us a week to arrive at our LA destination with a modest gas stipend. The navy also provided travel money based on the distance of our destination from Newport.
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Off we went Westward on Route 66, traversing Illinois and Missouri with an overnight stop in Oklahoma City. Given seven days to deliver the vehicle, we 22-year-old guys turned the journey into a hedonistic voyage. After visiting the Grand Canyon, we detoured off 66 for a two-day stay in Las Vegas. Camping at a $10 per night motel, we spent our days crashing the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino for its grand swimming pool, gambling, food, and refreshments.
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With a powerful vehicle at our command, we tore across the expansive West at 80-90 mph or whatever the speed limit would allow plus 10 mph. This was in a two-ton piece of heavy metal before the age of seat beats. We arrived in Los Angeles on schedule. After visiting former college friends in Long Beach, I headed north to San Francisco via bus. It was logistically challenging given my seven pieces of luggage including a set of golf clubs that mostly gathered dust thereafter.
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In the spring of my senior year at Beloit, intending to groom me for the country club set, Perry MaGill set me up with golf gear that apparently were a requisite for this lifestyle. This involved a trip to his Clarendon Hills country club that included aggressively charming the golf attendant and treating me, along with aunt Margaret, to the finest dining I had heretofore enjoyed. Such was a weekly Sunday event to which their two sons, nearly ten years my senior, were required to attend when living at home.
Flamingo Hotel & Casino Las Vegas
The Bay Bridge, Yerba Buena and Treasure Island
with San Francisco in the background
On the ship, I met engaging young officers from the East Coast, West Coast and in between. Along with shipboard duties, we enjoyed a robust social life in the “City by the Bay.”
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One of those mates was the Executive Officer (XO), Rod Flannery, a decade older than most of us junior officers but a sociable guy with an apartment available in the city. Rod was a catalyst to our partying, social life, and a career officer who would become an Admiral.
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Our Commanding Officer (CO) was a down-to-earth simple man, who rose from the enlisted ranks over the years. Albert Reid was totally into the fitness regimen outlined by then President John F. Kennedy; all shipmates, officers and enlisted men, participated each quarter. Although I hardly would be described as a “gung-ho,” physicality and agility were my assets.
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I first encountered the Kennedy-inspired fitness program at OCS. So, on board ship when the challenge came along every three months, I achieved the highest rating and “letters of accommodation” from Captain Reid. As the saying goes, those letters went into my “permanent file” only to surface later.
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My maiden voyage from our dock at Treasure Island through the Golden Gate Bridge was eventful. One lesson learned is that the waters surrounding this magnificent structure are extremely choppy. As we headed out to sea. I became ill and spent the afternoon in my cabin and head, i.e., bathroom.
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This was a mere “shakedown” cruise to check the ship’s readiness for the real thing. We returned to the base within 24 hours, but I wondered if this would be a regular experience given my propensity for car sickness, as a boy, riding in backseats. Fortunately, such was not the case when we departed a week later for the open seas. One’s body, for most of us, adapts after the first incident.
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Sailing from San Francisco onto the Pacific Ocean is a unique passage always accompanied by rough seas, as we take in the beautiful view of the city’s skyline. Within 45 minutes of clearing the bridge, most hands, i.e., crew, napped, seduced by the ship’s “rocking and rolling.” Generally, by dinner time the first day out, all is well and solid foods are a welcome antidote to tender palates.
Golden Gate Bridge with San Francisco in the background
Three months after arriving on board, I obtained a leave of absence to attend Frank McClellan’s wedding in New Orleans to Susan Waechter, his college sweetheart. It was to be a grand affair, and I was to be his best man. It also was when I learned of “military hops” and their uncertain adventures. While one flies free, you are at the mercy of where the aircraft is going.
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This was August 1962, and I departed from Travis Air Force on an aircraft that took me first to Greenville, South Carolina. From there, I boarded another plane to Birmingham, Alabama, but this was as far as military hops would take me.
In Birmingham, I made my way by cab to the downtown station, where a bus would depart for New Orleans in one hour. Innocently, I entered the bus station to purchase a ticket unimpressed by the grungy decorum. When I glanced beyond the counter, I could see through to the other side of the station that was tidy. I was in the “colored” area, and the “cracker” lady attendant motioned me to the other section with my Caucasian brethren.
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I declined, purchased a ticket, and left the building for a short walk to get away before boarding the bus. I was not about to participate in segregation requirements of the South. This was sixty-six years after the “separate but equal” ruling in U.S. Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Even then the facilities for blacks in the South were hardly equal. Jim Crow laws were alive and well in Alabama and throughout the region.
Segregated Bus Station in the South
It had been eight years since Brown v. The Board of Topeka (1954), where SCOTUS ruled that in reality to be separate is inherently unequal.
When I returned to the bus, it was full except the back row in the “negro” section. I found a seat next to a mother and her two young daughters. I introduced myself, and when asked the girls told me their ages 11 and 10. They looked younger and were reserved with the nice man in military attire.
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A white guy had summoned me to the front, where an open seat could be arranged, but I again declined. I can imagine to white passengers I was just a naïve, Yankee fool. It was to be a nearly ten-hour trip among repressed Black passengers, who likely were confused by my kindness.
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What saved me, I suspect, was my dress khaki uniform that signified respect, authority, and service. Otherwise, an ordinary white guy would have been summarily reprimanded and ordered up front or out.
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The trip was a somber 345 miles that took us by Tuscaloosa, home of the University of Alabama and founding chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. If our SAE chapter, Wisconsin Phi, had attempted to pledge a Black student, we would have been reprimanded and lost our affiliation. This was not about to happen, as racism was no stranger to the college. Ironically, Beloit had been named the SAE’s top chapter in 1961. We thought of ourselves as hot stuff.
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I dozed off as the journey took us across Mississippi on route to New Orleans. By the time we arrived the bus was nearly empty. Friends met me at the station and drove to the French Quarters for a night of partying. A direct commercial flight from SFO to MSY would have been more expedient but much less eventful and memorable. Several days later, I took a return commercial flight.
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It is said, accurately I believe, that the purpose of schooling, in a democratic and good society, is to prepare one for the journey of learning throughout life. We attend school only for a brief time, and if education is to categorically expand knowledge and eventually lead to wisdom, it must be on-going. The concept is from its Latin root “educo”—educere, eduxi, eductus—meaning “to lead out.”
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I hadn’t joined the military to be a warrior and career soldier, but to acquire more self-understanding and, yes, serve my country. Those next months, both at sea and in port, were an extension of my education in what might be called “experiential learning.”
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A few of the officers on the Tracer were adventurous and educated young men. While on board, we not only performed our duties in leadership ways but also were involved in recreational and cultural activities.
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Before being outfitted for radar picket duty, the ship had been a cargo-carrying vessel built during World War II and contained holds. With all the radar detection rigging on deck, the holds had been transformed to a workout room, theater, and basketball court. Some space, to be sure, was reserved for radar equipment and steam boilers.
USS Tracer AGR 15
Ensign Van Scotter - 1962
Pete Hilstrom, RVS, and Bruce Johnsen
We young officers made the most of these facilities when not on duty “below decks” or on watch in the “pilot house.” These were hardly cruise ship accommodations, but our lives at sea were engaging.
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During the day, in and around duties, we read and were involved often in stimulating dialogue. Meals could lead to lively political conversations with evenings often reserved for showtime. Shore leave was more of the same intermixed with partying, dining, and entertainment venues. As a communications officer, I spent considerable time in the radar room below decks.
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Duty on the bridge, conning the ship, however, could be tedious and tiring, particularly on one’s legs standing four hours at a time. Typically, those four hours occurred every four rotations, or every 16 hours through the day and night. In the meantime, we conducted normal shipboard duties.
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Our regulation shoes, for both casual and formal dress, were anything but comfortable. During one shore leave, I visited the city for a new pair. They were attractive and comfortable that I put to multiple uses—and cost $32. I recall a shipmate being startled at the extravagance, and he probably was right. Factoring in inflation over the past half century from 1963 to 2023 those restful peds might have cost $270 today, assuming “Made in America.” I did not feel the pinch, because what modest pay we received, less than $300 a month, was virtually all discretionary. It may not have been the first time learning such a lesson, but generally “you get what you pay for.”
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On one occasion at election time, we joined tavern regulars in The City to raise mugs, discuss issues. and dissect the election returns. On a misty Sunday, several of us traveled down the Pacific Coast and found a welcoming bar complete with a salty bartender, whom we engaged in lively current events and sports trivia talk. We departed early in the evening arriving on the ship in good spirits.
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Another time of a different nature, I connected with Carol Thorson, former Elkhornite and sister of Rod Thorson, who arranged for a party at her townhouse in Mountain View on the peninsula near Palo Alto. I was to invite three shipmates, and she would do the same, including her roommate and two of her friends, who lived in The City. The four once had shared a boarding house for temporary working women near downtown San Francisco. All were college graduates. It was to be a joyful, fun-filled Sunday intermixed with drinking, dining, music, swimming and dancing.
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At this gathering, I met Suzanne Starmer indirectly, who would become my wife in a year. I say “indirectly,” because during the day, I had become “sociable” with her roommate, Ingrid Wollmer, while Suzanne was the focus of my friend Bruce Johnsen. Bruce could be overbearing, obnoxious, and forward, which he was with Suzanne. As Bruce explained to me with a grin, a woman once referred to him as “lude, lascivious, and ludicrous.” This apparently was not the first time she had used the descriptor well before the “me too” era.
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I was impressed with how Suzanne confidently rebuffed Bruce with style and dignity. Given a day’s thought, I decided to ask her for a date that week rather than Ingrid. I had nothing against Ingrid; she was a beautiful Swedish woman, but I had their phone number.
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Bruce turned out to be a gentleman after I confronted him. He could be insulting nights when we were out on the town. As an “armchair psychologist,” I attributed such behavior to insecurity and envy being trounced by me in one-on-one volleyball onboard and racquetball ashore. After confronting Bruce at 1:30 a.m. in the ship’s galley, where we fried up a snack after an evening in the North Beach nightclub district, he was a changed man. In about a year, he would be the best man at my wedding in the chapel on Treasure Island.