Fleet's In
by
Jeff Stimpson © 2006
Jill was taking Alex to Ikea on Saturday morning,
so I decided to take Ned to Fleet Week. Fleet Week is an annual New
York event during which a few U.S. Navy warships nose up the Hudson
to a pier in the middle of Manhattan, and nestle themselves between
the WWII aircraft carrier Intrepid, which is berthed there as
a permanent museum, and cruise ships. The cruise ships are the
biggest; Ned found the warships more interesting, even after having
to wait on my shoulders in a five-block-long line while having to go
to the bathroom. Alex wouldn't have made it, though I do intend to
take him some year soon. (Alex doesn't mind Ikea, where he plays in
the ball pit -- or at least he did last trip until they kicked him
out because he kept trying to open the emergency exit door. Both
boys have a growing interest in making adults other than their
parents scramble.
Ned finally got the bathroom moments after passing
through what I think was his first metal detector while an
absolutely huge Shore Patrol officer looked on. We boarded
the U.S.S. Kearsage, a small carrier that specializes in
bringing its 1,700 marines close inshore where they can drive off in
tanks, armored personnel carriers (APCs), humvees, attack
helicopters, hovercraft, and other vehicles kids love to crawl
around. I realize of course that any one of these vehicles costs
about as much as 50 elementary schools, but all my life I have
thought this stuff is just so cool!
So did Ned. "He enlisted!" I informed Jill in
mid-afternoon.
"Don't let him sign anything," she replied.
Many parts of the Kearsage were open to the
hoards of visiting kids, their cries of excitement echoing off the
gray walls of the hanger deck. I watched Ned vanish into the innards
of an APC and emerge moments later on the top of the armor, into the
arms of a yet another strapping and tan young marine. Ned then got
to sit in the driver's seat of a humvee (a position just as suburban
as military in contemporary America, if you want to get picky), and
stab the horn of a flight deck tractor.
"Ned LOVED Fleet Week," I would later e-mail to my
big brother, who lives in Maine, "especially crawling all over and
in and out of an APC. He also pulled the trigger on a heavy machine
gun, which should prepare him for deer hunting."
"Ned's training is starting a bit early," my
brother e-mailed back, "so we'll hold off on the napalm education
until he hits 'expert' with the .50 cal." My brother is in no small
part responsible for me thinking this stuff is cool!
Ned squatted at a six-foot long machine gun and
used his tiny thumbs to make the big, big trigger go clack. I
stopped over what looked like a 5th grader in desert fatigues at
another exhibit, who was showing the crowd how to strip an M-16.
"How old are you?" someone asked.
"Just turned 18, sir!"
Up on the flight deck, Ned sat in the cockpit of
the attack helicopter. Through the Plexiglas I saw him in there
hogging the pilot's seat, yanking at the stick and punching every
red button until a tense mom tapped on the Plexiglas and tried to
make him hear that there was quite a line behind him for the seat.
Every red button he could find, I later told Joe,
an ex-infantry officer. "That's trouble for somebody!" said Joe. Joe
has a 2-year-old son. Joe was also wounded in Mogadishu about 15
years ago: first shot by a sniper, then moments later peppered with
shrapnel.
Last stop was the line of tables where they were
giving away Fleet Week posters to the kids and selling T shirts and
baseball hats to benefit the ship's Family Fund, which I'm guessing
helps the folks back home while dad -- and mom these days -- is at
sea. I bought a hat, and talked to one sailor from North Carolina.
"First time in New York? Got any liberty yet?" I asked, sounding
like either an ex-sailor or a dork who thought all this stuff was
cool.
Yessir, the sailor said, first time in New York,
and yes he'd had some time off the ship. I asked what he'd seen.
"The Statue of Liberty," he said, "and Ground Zero."
Ned didn't want a T shirt. After I bought my
Kearsage hat, I found him with another boy; they were both using
their rolled up posters to pretend to fence. I'm not sure who won
before we had to go home.
Copyright 2006 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
