Hitting The Road

There is still an America out there, begging to be driven, begging to be found. Have the interstates, the price of gas and the rush of our daily lives sucked the romance out of road trips? Has the compulsion to see what's around the next bend or over the next rise been killed? Are road trips now just a relic of days gone by? Sadly, for most people, I think so.

But not for all of us. Most people like the idea of a road trip; rolling down the byways just to see what's out there, but few actually do it. I sometimes look on a map and pick out a place that catches my fancy because of its name - Fly, Tenessee; Ben Hur, Arkansas; Happy, Texas - and plot a course from here to there, taking only the 2-lane blacktop roads. I want to see country not infested with dozens of fast food places, large office buildings and traffic backed up at traffic lights. I want to be in towns where you park on the street on the town square a few feet from the front door of the business. I want to see old men sitting on benches in a park and talk to them for a while, finding where to eat the best bar-b-que and the best pies this side of heaven and yes, I'll tell Alice hi for you when she serves me. I don't mind getting stuck behind the occasional tractor using the same road I am. I want to go to places between nowhere and never heard of.

Invariably, when I tell someone I've just returned from a road trip, they ask, "Where'd you go?" And I'm stuck on how to answer, how to tell the story. They seem confused if I tell them my destination wasn't Dallas or Memphis or New York City or some other large or at least well-known spot. They don't seem to understand it's not where you went, it's what happened on the way. It's about contentment with the land you are driving through, listening to good music and loudly singing along sounding good only to yourself, thinking about your life and the choices you made (both good and bad), wondering whatever happened to old flames, and planning what you will do when you hit the lottery.

It's the joy of running into Mabel, the 88-year-old lady who still single-handedly runs the old wooden-floored convenience store on Route 66 in Oklahoma that she and her husband built "back in the day" and the house next door where they lived, loved, and raised 6 children and getting her autograph on a bottle of Route 66 root beer I bought from her. She put down her cigarette long enough to find a felt pen and sign it. Nobody was, by God, going to tell her she couldn't smoke in her own damn store. It saddened me greatly when 2 years later, I heard she had recently died and the store was closed. I'm glad I stopped. Now, when I think of the word "feisty," she is my mental image.

It's the fun of the cute small-town girl who served me a delicious bar-b-que sandwich plate in some forgotten spot along the road (hand-painted on the front window - "Almost World Famous!") with the top two buttons of her blouse undone, leaning over and smiling big as she took my order, obviously working me for a big tip. I left a $20 bill for a $9 tab and didn't mind.

When I see a map of the United States, I don't want to just see boundaries and squiggly road lines. I want my mind to see mountains and rivers and forests and wide open spaces and the 2-mile stretch of blacktop in west Texas where I encountered thousands of tarantula's crossing the road en mass one evening, my car exploding their little hairy bodies as I drove onward in pursuit of the horizon. I want to look at that map and think that's where Mabel lived and that's where cute b-b-q girl lives.

So many places, so much road. Always another bend to go around, another rise to drive over. And so very little time.

Pearl Harbor Day

Saturday, December 6, 1941 - Washington D.C. - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt makes a final appeal to the Emperor of Japan for peace. There is no reply. Late this same day, the U.S. code-breaking service begins intercepting a 14-part Japanese message and deciphers the first 13 parts, passing them on to the President and Secretary of State. The Americans believe a Japanese attack is imminent, most likely somewhere in Southeast Asia.
Sunday, December 7, 1941 - Washington D.C. - The last part of the Japanese message, stating that diplomatic relations with the U.S. are to be broken off, reaches Washington in the morning and is decoded at approximately 9 a.m. About an hour later, another Japanese message is intercepted. It instructs the Japanese embassy to deliver the main message to the Americans at 1 p.m. The Americans realize this time corresponds with early morning time in Pearl Harbor, which is several hours behind. The U.S. War Department then sends out an alert but uses a commercial telegraph because radio contact with Hawaii is temporarily broken. Delays prevent the alert from arriving at headquarters in Oahu until noontime (Hawaii time) four hours after the attack has already begun.

Islands of Hawaii, near Oahu - The Japanese attack force under the command of Admiral Nagumo, consisting of six carriers with 423 planes, is about to attack. At 6 a.m., the first attack wave of 183 Japanese planes takes off from the carriers located 230 miles north of Oahu and heads for the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor - At 7:02 a.m., two Army operators at Oahu's northern shore radar station detect the Japanese air attack approaching and contact a junior officer who disregards their reports, thinking they are American B-17 planes which are expected in from the U.S. west coast.

Near Oahu - At 7:15 a.m., a second attack wave of 167 planes takes off from the Japanese carriers and heads for Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor is not on a state on high alert. Senior commanders have concluded, based on available intelligence, there is no reason to believe an attack is imminent. Aircraft are therefore left parked wingtip to wingtip on airfields, anti-aircraft guns are unmanned with many ammunition boxes kept locked in accordance with peacetime regulations. There are also no torpedo nets protecting the fleet anchorage. And since it is Sunday morning, many officers and crewmen are leisurely ashore.

At 7:53 a.m., the first Japanese assault wave, with 51 'Val' dive bombers, 40 'Kate' torpedo bombers, 50 high level bombers and 43 'Zero' fighters, commences the attack with flight commander, Mitsuo Fuchida, sounding the battle cry: "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!).

The Americans are taken completely by surprise. The first attack wave targets airfields and battleships. The second wave targets other ships and shipyard facilities. The air raid lasts until 9:45 a.m. Eight battleships are damaged, with five sunk. Three light cruisers, three destroyers and three smaller vessels are lost along with 188 aircraft. The Japanese lose 27 planes and five midget submarines which attempted to penetrate the inner harbor and launch torpedoes.

Escaping damage from the attack are the prime targets, the three U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers, Lexington, Enterprise and Saratoga, which were not in the port. Also escaping damage are the base fuel tanks.

The casualty list includes 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians killed, with 1,178 wounded. Included are 1,104 men aboard the Battleship USS Arizona killed after a 1,760-pound air bomb penetrated into the forward magazine causing catastrophic explosions.

In Washington, various delays prevent the Japanese diplomats from presenting their war message to Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, until 2:30 p.m. (Washington time) just as the first reports of the air raid at Pearl Harbor are being read by Hull.

News of the "sneak attack" is broadcast to the American public via radio bulletins, with many popular Sunday afternoon entertainment programs being interrupted. The news sends a shockwave across the nation and results in a tremendous influx of young volunteers into the U.S. armed forces. The attack also unites the nation behind the President and effectively ends isolationist sentiment in the country.

Monday, December 8, 1941 - The United States and Britain declare war on Japan with President Roosevelt calling December 7, "a date which will live in infamy..."

Thursday, December 11, 1941 - Germany and Italy declare war on the United States. The European and Southeast Asian wars have now become a global conflict with the Axis powers; Japan, Germany and Italy, united against America, Britain, France, and their Allies. Before World War II is over, more than 60 million people will lose their lives.

Most people are not aware that there are still hundreds of service men killed in the attack that are unidentified. Even now, 69 years later, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command continues to identify recovered remains from Pearl Harbor. On the USS Oklahoma alone, 426 sailors and marines were killed, but only 36 bodies have been positively identified. On June 11, 2010, they were finally able to identify one more, Navy Fireman 3rd class Gerald Lehman of Hancock, MI. His remains have been exhumed from his grave in the National Cemetery of the Pacific where it was marked simply as "Unknown" and reburied in his home town next to the graves of family members. This young man finally found his way home.