| Chapter 2 The US Coast Guard |
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It was 1972, and I had just graduated from the Electronics Technician program at the DeVry Institute of Technology in Phoenix Arizona. The Vietnam War was in full swing and the draft lottery was being used to draft young men my age. Since I had lost my college deferment, I was at the mercy of the lottery and I really didn't feel like gambling on it. DeVry graduates were in high demand and several large companies came to the school to interview graduates. Among them was the Coast Guard Recruiter. They offered me a PO-3 ET job out of boot camp in writing. I thought this was the best course of action for me. I get to do a lifesaving job, I'm guaranteed a PO3, I get to do electronics and I don't go to Vietnam. I joined with the idea to see what the Coast Guard was all about. I had some good electronics skills, an E4 rating, an inquisitive mind and a whole lot of energy. I soon realized that the military life was not for me but I was committed to do the best job I could do for the four years of my enlistment. The one and only duty station during my entire four years was Group Monterey, California. As soon as I arrived from boot camp and got settled in, a huge ATF sting operation was sprung on the local fishing fleet for the illegal selling of sea stores tobacco and alcohol. Several dozen fishing boats were seized and tied up four deep at the Coast Guard pier. Our cafeteria was turned into a command post and I was put on guard duty to ensure the security of the seized fishing vessels. We learned the reason for the sting was that Monterey fishermen were going up to San Francisco and obtaining tax free liquor and cigarettes to be consumed only at sea as "sea stores". Instead, they were taking the supplies to Monterey and selling to local private interests. As a "boot" I was immediately pressed into the situation, a walking 'midnight to four' security guard complete with walkie talkie. It was a dark time to be a coastie in Monterey as local coast guardsmen were not popular in this small fishing town. There was no lasting impact and things soon returned to normal except a big eye-opener to a nineteen-year-old. Most of the Monterey ET Job consisted of driving up and down the California coast road, Highway 1 to work on electronics equipment at various lighthouses, 95 footers and remote radio sites. Three techs serviced five major lighthouses, various beacons, fog detectors, remote radios, some small boats and other equipment including two 95 footers, the Cape Hedge in Morro Bay and the Cape Wash in Monterey. There was a lot of driving, as the group was responsible for 250 miles of rugged central calif coastline. There was little redundancy in any equipment and any failures caused the immediate dispatch of an ET to go fix whatever was broken. Driving the winding and treacherous highway 1 in storms, at
night, in rain and other ugly weather was dangerous and at times frightening.
Once we came upon an accident in heavy rain at night on our way to repair an
equipment failure at the Pt. Sur lighthouse. A car had hit a rain-soaked
boulder rockslide and was half off the road and very close to the edge of the
broiling seas and rocks below. A seaman and I were driving a CG jeep with a
radio and blue light on top. We blocked the road, turned on the blue light, stopped
traffic and helped the driver out of the vehicle in the driving rain. We called
the radio room at Monterey and got the highway patrol coming. Looking back, it
was just a little exciting blip on a continually busy CG work life. I only had
one duty station but I spent a fair amount of time visiting the five major lighthouses.
The highway one coast road was curvy and dangerous and I soon fell in love with the sweeping vistas and that rugged stretch of harsh, weather-beaten coast. In time I got to know the guys stationed at some of the remote and isolated lighthouses. They were friendly and starved for a friendly face, news and gossip. In those days two or three families occupied each of the lighthouse quarters, and most of lighthouses along that rugged coast had been built in the 1800s of local materials. Of all the lighthouses, the Pt Sur was especially alluring to me. The lighthouse and family quarters buildings were massive edifices built from large blocks of local quarried stone and hauled to the top of the tall unusual hump of rock that was Point Sur. Looking down from the top, the Pacific Ocean waters boiled and churned around the sharp and rugged edges of the rock. The Fresnel lens had been made in France and high-lined ashore from a ship in 1889. I was fascinated with the long spiral stairway, the intact brass rotating clockwork and the intricate pulley and weight system that rotated the light. Even though the light was now an airport beacon and the weights to turn it no longer used, everything was still there and the Fresnel lens was so large that three people could stand inside it. The magnification of the Fresnel system was so powerful that a curtain had to be pulled around the lens during the day so the sun's rays couldn't start a fire. I became good friends with the petty officer in charge at Big Sur, Frank. He had a big personality and he'd gotten to know people in the small town of Big Sur about five miles south of the light and was somewhat of a local luminary in town due to the prominence of the famous nearby lighthouse. It was the mid-seventies and Big Sur was the epicenter for hippies and flower children. Every time we drove the coast road to fix a lighthouse or work on the patrol boat in Morro Bay, we'd see groups of brightly clad hippies hitchhiking up and down Highway 1. One time Frank invited me down for a special visit to the Esalen Institute hot springs south of Big Sur. Esalen was named after the Esalen Indian tribe and is a preeminent private center helping people transform, evolve and understand the relationship between self and world. Esalen’s cliff-side hot springs have been used in ritual and healing by the Esalen Indians and others for more than 6,000 years. In the seventies it was opened to local residents to visit after midnight. Set into a cliff several hundred feet above the water, we soaked nude in a in a large poured concrete tub of hot mineral waters. There were several tubs of people and the whole place was dark except for a few flickering candles. Watching the moon rise over the Pacific Ocean that night while soaking in hot springs was an experience I will never forget. The Coast Guard was in the process of automating lighthouses around the US and soon racks of sensors and computers were installed in each of our lighthouses and I was sent to a school at Governor’s Island in New York to learn how to maintain the new equipment. It was there that we learned the Vietnam War was over. Some guys that I had come to know staying in the dorm walked over to the EM club for a celebratory glass of beer. Back on the California coast, the families who lived at the lighthouses were transferred out, the houses boarded up, and the government furniture sent to storage. When something broke down at one of the lighthouses, backup equipment immediately came on line and set off an alarm in the radio room at Monterey. One of the techs or an electrician was immediately sent packing to see what was wrong. It was strange finding myself fixing things alone, usually with a storm raging outside and a bored seaman sent along for safety. Working in the basement of an empty lighthouse that had been occupied continuously 24/7 for the last two centuries was a bit creepy and I could almost feel the presence of past watch standers. I never felt it was haunted, even though I have heard Pt Sur was designated one of the thirteen haunted places on the California coast. But there was a vibe that I could not put into words. It was just a great place, sticking out into the pacific, warning ships with a powerful light, a fog horn and a radio beacon. You looked down and the rocks and churning waters below and you could almost envision the famous shipwrecks in the 1700s before the lighthouse was built. My CG friends and I would sometimes go there on weekends and have a beach fire and hotdogs and beer on the sweeping beach. The beach was steep, the breakers dangerous the it had a very large, coarse size of sand grains that I had never seen before. One time a group of us made sand candles. I still have one! I still went there probably once a week to fix something and used some extra time to really explore the place. I found the remains of a very old garbage dump and ran across an old silver spoon. On the top of the rock, I located the remains of some WW2 lookout buildings and found an insulator for a radio antenna. These things gave me a connection that I still have. There were two memories that I still reflect on. One was working on the radio beacon on the breakwater at Morro Bay. The Coast Guard had placed a low power radio beacon at the end of the breakwater so boaters and fishermen could find the harbor in fog or bad weather using a radio direction finder. Most every vessel that was serious about getting in and out of Morro Bay had radar by the mid-seventies but the CG still maintained this beacon. It was an old tube type radio beacon that continuously transmitted the Morse letter M. The watch stander on the Cape Hedge monitored the beacon 24/7 and called the Group OOD if it quit, which it did with maddening regularity. The beacon was located in a 6-foot diameter vertical tube bolted to the end of the breakwater. About twenty feet high and it had a watertight door at the bottom and firmly bolted to a concrete pad. It was at the very end of the breakwater and waves would break over it in storms. A ladder inside led up to a second floor where the beacon was located on a steel shelf. The structure was solid but damp and cold inside. There was no road to it. The only access for maintenance people was to be brought out to the end of the breakwater in the Cape Hedge's 14' open Boston Whaler. The ET and the coxswain driving the whaler had to work together to time a jump from the whaler to one of the huge wet granite rocks on the leeward side of the breakwater. Wave heights were typically three feet of surge. It also had to be a one-handed jump because the ET had his toolbox in his other hand. I still think about the many dangerous jumps, some wet, some dry, some with wet tools. We laughed about it but it was dangerous work. I was lucky. One achievement during my time as a tech was a remote-controlled automatic switch that I designed and was able to implement at one of our remote radio sites. The remote HF radio was on a windswept hill above the ocean about 90 miles south of Monterey near Cambria, California. This remote radio site was a damp and cold 20x20 concrete building. It was an abandoned bunker-type affair adjacent to a USAF coastal surveillance radar site and they let the CG use the building. It contained two HF Marine radios that were remote controlled over telephone lines by the duty RM at Monterey. All was fine until the RM detected that the radio was out of service, usually at night or during a storm... The duty ET was called and immediately had to drive ~2+ hours to the radio site and change the cables to the spare radio. The bad radio was troubleshot on site or brought back to the ET Shop at Monterey. My invention was a relay box that the RM could dial up and it would switch all controls and the antenna to the spare radio. Then the ET could then drive to the radio site to effect repairs in a more leisurely manner. I received a check for $80. The other achievement was a tough problem with an SPS-53C radar on the Cape Hedge in Morro Bay. The radar would lose video and would be out of service and no CG ship could go to sea without radar. I spent hours tracing the “target video” through the whole radar set. I was pulling my hair out but I kept at it. Finally, the video was found shorted out by a small blown crystal diode deep inside the radar unit. I called the RM at Monterey on the ship's VHF and had the duty driver bring me one from our stocks in the ET Shop. That fixed it. The same problem started happening to the radar, I thought it was power spikes from the generators. The next time that happened, I went right to it and was so happy. I had learned to keep at it, not give up and use critical troubleshooting skills. There was
always pressure to advance your rank by studying a correspondence course and I
worked on it in my spare time. You took the test when the coursework was
complete and you thought you were ready. Your test scores were used to compete
with everyone else in the CG for a designated number of openings. I was
promoted to E-5 after two years but I was having too much fun in 1970s
California to get too serious about the advancing myself in the military. I
already knew this was not the life I wanted after my four years were up. About once
a month, a team of four or five of us, various rates would go on a three-day
trip and visit each lighthouse and do preventative maintenance. We stayed at
local motels, enjoyed the local foods and were in contact with the station in
Monterey by walkie talkie. It was great fun and the days were easy. After the
work was done, we took lots of time enjoy the lighthouses and the adjoining
properties. When possible, we explored the areas around the lighthouses, the
edges of the grounds and certainly the beaches. Lighthouses were fenced, there
were no tours by docents and they usually stuck way out and would catch all the
best beachcombing stuff. At one time I had a box full of
abalone shells, we even used them as
ashtrays. Little did we know that the little creatures would soon be nearly
extinct.
The most influential people during my enlistment were the CO and XO at Group Monterey, The CO was Lt. Armand Chapeau and the XO was CWO4 Dale Wilkins. Lt. Chapeau was understanding and amicable during two of my worst screw-ups. XO Dale was a kind mentor and always approachable. There were a couple of times where I should have had an article 15 Captains Mast and Lt Chapeau gave me another chance. One time I was hanging out with some enlisted troublemakers on the crew and we all bought BB pistols. We were down by the small boats shooting at cups floating in the water. I left and went to eat dinner. Later it was found that the windows had all been shot out of the CG boathouse. I was called on the carpet along with my 'friends'. I could honestly say that I had no part in the damage but I was also there with the other shooters. Another time there was an electronics failure of some kind in the southern part of the group and I was called to go fix it. I was feeling sick with a bad cold or the flu. I didn't want to go, but I had to go. My girlfriend that I was living with (and later married) offered to do the two+ hour drive to Morro Bay so I could rest and get ready to fix whatever electronics that had died. She was a good driver and I tried to close my eyes and settle my stomach. As luck would have it we were driving south on the 101 freeway towards Morro Bay and the CO and XO passed us on the freeway going the opposite way and recognized the CG vehicle and noticed the driver as non-Coast Guard. This was the 101 freeway and it was a freak thing that we even passed each other at a place where we would be recognized doing 65mph in opposite directions. Lt Chapeau immediately did a U-turn across the median and activated the blue light on top of his CO's car. We pulled over as if in a real traffic stop. Lt Chapeau approached the driver’s window and asked my GF if she possessed a government driver’s license. She admitted that she did not. There was a lot of tongue lashing and then we continued south to fix the trouble (with me driving) Nothing was ever said... But it was a stupid move on my part. The event made me think about the rules and regulations. After discharge, I moved back to my birthplace in Seattle WA. I wanted to obtain an EE degree and continue in electronics. I really liked working in that field and had a knack for inventiveness and troubleshooting. Electronics had always been a draw to me. I enrolled at the local community college using my VA benefits and began taking electronics and engineering prep classes. At some point I decided I really liked the hands-on part of electronics and maybe not engineering for now. A factor was a lifelong difficulty with higher mathematics. I graduated with a 2 yr degree in electronics technology and got my FCC 1st phone license. It was time to start my life's career. I really wanted to go into the broadcasting field, took some TV production classes and wanted to work in Radio and TV. That stretch of rocky central California coast was a beautiful place to live and work and I didn't fully appreciate the assignment or the place until a few years later and especially after losing several friends to the Vietnam war.
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